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#they were transitioning but this was so many years ago so they still used the pronouns for their asab and idk if thats what they would want
puppyeared · 6 months
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save me old flipnote studio MVs.......
#im going thru old flipnotes i used to watch years ago and ouggghhg so many good ones#is twenty one pilots still popular.... do people still remember the TRNDSTTER and marble soda meme.........#its like im unlocking some sort of primal part of my brain and everything is coming back to me. one of my biggest inspirations as a kid#i still remember thinking the final transmission lyrics were the coolest thing and watching =TopHat= Bee and Melissa over and over#theres a very specific feeling of longing and nostalgia looking back and watching these again years later#especially when there isnt anything genshin or mcyt and instead its either fnaf undertale eddsworld or another obscure#interest... and not even fnaf sister location its like fnaf 3 and 2. its THAT old. and a lot of oc MVs especially pokemon ocs and furries..#god but they were so creative u know. i still find it amazing ppl took this little lightbox animation on the fucking NINTENDO DS and#cranked it all the way to 11.. like if u look at the transitions and movement its so fucking fluid its insane..!! HOW DO YOU MAKE THE#CHARACTERS SPIN??? AND CHANGING CAMERA ANGLES??? and keep in mind youre doing this all with a shitty stylus#on a THREE BY TWO INCH SCREEN. you only get two layers you can go up to 29FPS and you only have 999 slides to work with#and 24FPS eats up a lot of that. absolutely insane it literally boggles my mind every time i think about it. AND SOME ARE EVEN FULL COLOR#i forgot how popular EDM was back then too...they were really good for timing beats though so you get a lot of MVs with#strobe last and marble soda. porter robinsons goodbye to a world was also popular with undertale and oc MVs. also a lot of vocaloid#someone made a flipnote abt the warner bros fnaf movie being announced EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AGO. it even used the stay calm audio from#the office.... i wonder how theyre doing now... i love you shitty grainy MV audio.. but i have mixed feelings abt the flashing colors#ppl LOVED animating the sans vs frisk fight. aishite and primadonna were also big ones they were SICK AS FUCK#lots of these inspired my old oc designs.. a lot of my characters had side bangs with one eye covered. animal ears and simple eyes too#now i kinda wanna try my hand at the marble soda meme cause i loved it as a kid lol.. i wonder if i should compare my old and new art here#UGHHHH IM SO NORMAL ABOUT NOSTALGIA. IM SO NORMAL ABT MY SCHOOL BOOK DRAWINGS WITH SHIBA BROWS#yapping#nostalgia
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theygender · 2 years
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I recently started playing stardew valley again and downloaded some mods to make my game better. One mod I downloaded makes it so that you get letters from your parents more often and lets you choose your family style to include single parents, gay parents, etc. I thought it would be nice bc my mom in real life is a lesbian so I downloaded it. Then it asked me to pick the names my parents would sign off with. In real life my mother is remarried and I call my stepmother by her first name, but it wouldn't feel right for me to put her actual name in there bc this isn't a 1:1 recreation of my life. I also didn't want to put in a parent name that I hadn't used in real life though. My original second parent, my mom's first partner, died when I was a kid. When they were still alive, I had called my parents Mom and Mimi. So I put Mimi in as the second parent's name. Yesterday I got a letter from Mimi for the first time, telling me a story from when they were young. I almost cried
#rambling#dont mind me just. getting wistful about some pixels#i wish i could talk to them#i wish i could find out what pronouns they want me to use#they were transitioning but this was so many years ago so they still used the pronouns for their asab and idk if thats what they would want#but ill never get to ask them#do they see me? do they know im trans too? are they proud of me?#do they know im studying social work like they were? that ill be graduating from the same school? do they see me? are they proud of me?#they were cremated and their family wouldnt let us keep their ashes. we made a memorial at the house they built but we no longer live there#the college ill be graduating from has their name in the sidewalk with all the other graduates from the year i was born#my name will be there with theirs some day#which name am i putting there? the one i was born with? the one they chose? the one thats named after them?#or will it be a chosen name that matches my gender better#how would they feel about me changing my name? im sure they would want me to be happy but its the only thing that ties me to them#the only thing i have to prove that they ever existed as a part of my life. will i ever change it?#i want to get a tattoo of the memorial that we had when i was young. it was a plaque on their favorite tree stump#i want to prove that theyre a part of me beyond just my name. that theyre with me no matter what#but i dont know what name should go on the tattoo. my mom put their legal name on the plaque. but is that what they would want?#i can never ask them
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yourmidnightlover · 3 months
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forever?
pairing: mob!bucky x reader
summary: after being forced into a marriage you didn’t want, you become very cautious of your new husband out of fear of what he’s capable of when one of his employees makes a move at a dinner meeting.
warnings: anxious reader, threat of domestic violence (reader is just worried abt it), groping, please let me know if i missed something or need to add anything!
a/n: reader is very timid in this. i know a lot of people like a reader who doesn’t take shit and stands up for herself, but i often find myself in situations where i just shut down and don’t know how to respond… so this is kinda inspired by that feeling
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two months out of forever.
two months of what seemed like wedded bliss from the outside.
in reality, that “bliss” included sleeping in separate rooms, never even seeing each other unless necessary to make appearances for either of your parents. 
the ones who arranged for this to happen in the first place. 
you were just glad you were able to have your time for yourself. you thought you would use the time to continue writing for your book, but you’ve hit a serious case of writers block. so lovely. 
on the bright side, he wasn’t as controlling as your few friends had made it seem he would be. 
they had painted this picture of a monster in your head. a man who would loom over your presence during every waking second. a man who was controlling and wouldn’t let you have a personal life or secrets.
so far, he’s been the opposite. 
for some reason, that still leaves you unsteady. 
because they also painted him in a very violent, angry, red light. 
but maybe he had a mistress. if that were the case, he truly didn’t respect you or your family. it didn’t seem like bucky to do that, though. he wouldn’t ruin a business deal that benefitted him so much. 
the reason you married him was because your father’s finance business was going under, drowned in debts while the only options were to sell to the barnes’ or the rumlow’s. the barnes’ seemed the lesser of two evils.
the only way to smoothly transition your father’s business to be under the barnes’ control without raising any question of your father’s capability was to marry. if any questions were asked about why your father sold his company, the not so good side of the finance industry would trample after your entire family. the barnes’ would get a new company and their many clients, while your family wouldn’t become entirely blacklisted by the entire country, would be putting your family under the barnes’ protection, and there would be less questions asked as to why the company had been merged.
you had a few months of “leaking” images of you and bucky together into the tabloids to prepare the public for the news of such a big marriage. some were photos of you and bucky holding hands while walking. a couple of you at a restaurant smiling. a few staged kissing photos… those may or may not have been your favorite.
those times spent with him, in all honesty, weren’t bad at all. going for walks together at sunset, dinner dates, feeling his lips against yours…
you had gotten to know more about his childhood that the tabloids didn’t feel was important to cover. his favorite subject in school and how he actually lost his arm so many years ago. you learned each others’ fears and worries in life. your favorite thing to learn about him, however, was what he truly wanted in life. 
peace.
a couple weeks after the wedding, a few photos of the reception were once again “leaked” in order to sell the “too in love to wait” bit that everyone had started assuming upon seeing the first few photos of you and bucky together. 
but all of your history with him flew to the back of your mind as bucky knocked on your office door. 
“come in,” you replied hesitantly, not sure what he wanted from you for the first time since your wedding. he stepped through the threshold and stood at the doorframe. 
“there’s a work meeting tomorrow,” his hand remained on the doorknob, so stiff you’d think he might rip it off the precious white wood in seconds. “the men are meeting at the house. i wanted to let you know. the men in this business, they expect marriages to be of the… traditional values.”
you nodded with understanding, turning to face him with a forced grin. “so i should play the part of the doting housewife, huh?” no smile in return, so you bit back your humor in turn for matching his serious tone. “what food should i prepare, then? and uh, how many guests will we be expecting?”
“whatever’s easiest for you,” he shrugged lightly. “there will be 9 of us there.” with one final look in your direction, he left the office and didn’t return to say goodnight. 
-
the next morning you got to work setting the house up for the 6pm meeting your loving husband was hosting. 
you had decided to set up a buffet-style table outside of the main dining room where the meeting would take place. for the menu, you settled on simple grilled chicken with quite a few side options. roast potatoes, asparagus, sauteed carrots, green beans, and rolls. 
you were putting the rolls in the oven when bucky got home, seemingly entranced by the smell of all the food, heading straight to the kitchen.
“it smells amazing in here,” bucky called from the archway of the kitchen. you jumped slightly from the surprise, but swallowed down the shock and another weak smile. 
“thanks,” you nodded to the edge of the island where a large chalkboard sat, your handwriting neatly displayed on the board that listed all the food to be had. “the menu. i figured a variety would be nice, and who doesn’t like chicken, right?”
“vegetarians,” if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was telling a joke. but you knew better than that. “the men are coming in a little less than an hour. do you maybe want to change before they get here?”
you looked down at what you were wearing, a pair of blue jeans and a loose t-shirt clearly not worthy of someone who had married a barnes man. “right, of course. i’m sorry,” you finished setting the timer on the oven and ran upstairs to get yourself put together before bucky saw the tears trying to seep past your waterline. 
you settled on a black cocktail dress you had worn to one of your dad’s company events before the downfall… quickly swiping some makeup on to cover the exhaustion in your eyes and pulling your hair up to a more respectable updo rather than your typical messy bun. 
luckily you had become an expert at quickly getting ready from your time in university, as you were back in time to pull the rolls from the oven, but not before pulling on your apron. you’d be dammed if you got this stunning dress dirty right before this prestigious meeting. 
t-5 minutes before the meeting was supposed to begin and you could already hear lots of rustling from the formal dining room. you knocked on the closed doors before bucky opened the door for you. 
the men went silent as their gaze rested on you in the doorway. 
“the foods ready. buffet style?” your eyes didn’t leave bucky’s pretty blues, too scared to do anything wrong in front of his men. 
“that’s perfect, my love,” his hands gravitated to your waist before pulling your body taut against his, one hand moving a stray hair behind your ear before leaning in to whisper. “you look ravishing…”
as he pulled back, you were sure your blush was evident across your cheeks. you tried to hide it behind a smile, shrugging with a shy ‘thanks’ leaving your lips. 
“what do you say to my stunning wife, boys?” his hand squeezed your waist once more before turning to the other men, ‘thank you’s being echoed throughout the room as they stood and made their way to the kitchen to make their plates. 
in a matter of minutes, all the food was gone. you figured it was best they liked the food, even if you didn’t get to try any of it yourself like you had planned. 
you got started on cleaning everything up with earbuds in your ears, starting with the dishes already in the sink from when you were cooking. then, you were sure to place the dishes that the food was in inside the sink for you to clean before starting on wiping the counters, then sweeping, then mopping, and then back to the dishes. 
you didn’t realize that bucky had called for a break in the meeting, however. you were in for quite the rude awakening when you felt a pair of hands on your waist, but not the ones you were semi-familiar with. 
you turned around with a gasp, shock evident on your face as you tried to piece together whoever this man was. blond hair, blue eyes… definitely not steve though. you knew steve well and had seen him often. 
you pulled your earbuds from your ears in attempt to better understand what was going on. his hands were still gripping your sides, but you couldn’t necessarily escape his touch. you were backed against the sink. even if you could fight him, you’d likely lose to his strong grip. 
“is the meeting-is it over already?” your voice was so much more cowardly than you’d ever expected yourself to be. 
“no, no,” he shook his head. “just a little break, some of the guys were getting antsy.” you leaned back further, trying to create some semblance of space between you. “i figured i’d say a special thank you, on behalf of all of us guys in there.” he let one hand cup the side of your face and neck, his other hand trailing down from your waist, firmly grasping your ass with a sqeeze before you jumped at the invasion.
“i don’t-i’ve got it…”
“john,” he smiled grossly, as if he could convince you to go to bed with him.
“no need for a thanks,” you tried to remind him. “i did this for bucky. for my husband.” your eyebrows rose, trying to emphasize that his boss was also your husband. 
“i’m sure he won’t mind you getting a little bit of extra special attention, don’t you?”
then, a growling voice cut through the fear running through your veins. 
“i think he might mind.”
you turned to face bucky with wide eyes before facing john, wishing the tears welling in your eyes would just go away. 
his hands slowly retracted, stepping back with a chuckle.
“sorry, sir,” he smiled before turning to face your husband. “she was just telling me how she wanted some extra attention, weren’t you, toots?” he tilted his head expectantly.
your mouth opened, nothing leaving in spite of your brain screaming at you. what would bucky do? would he take his side? would he believe you? would he hurt you? 
you’ve embarrassed him now… humiliated him in his own home. surely he’ll take action against you for this. 
your mind replayed stories your old friends had told you about him. how he would lash out at men that betrayed him. how he never took shit from anyone who showed him any disrespect. how he was the kind of man to shoot first and ask quesitons later.
and now, in a way, you’ve both betrayed and disrespected him. or at least, that’s what he’ll think. 
you didn’t even realize tears were flowing down your face until your sobs were interrupted. 
“enough!” you finally looked at bucky before his eyes softened for a second before walking closer to you. “go to the room.” he ordered sternly. 
“but the dish-”
“i’ll take care of it,” he interrupted gravely, “go. to. the. room.” 
“yes, sir,” you nodded and swiftly left the room entirely, collapsing against the door once you had shut it, sobs wracking your body. you held your knees against your chest before trying to regulate your breathing.
he won’t hurt you.
he has to protect his image.
you’ve embarrassed him.
you’re his wife.
you’re his business deal.
you’ve humiliated him.
he’ll hurt you.
you didn’t know how long it had been since the incident. 
your sobs had subsided. you had, at some point, moved to your bed. you were still rocking your body back and forth, trying to self sooth. 
and then there was a knock at the door. 
your body instinctively jumped at the sudden noise, although it wasn’t harsh in any manner, at least not one that you were expecting. 
he twisted the knob, slowly opening the door with slow movements. 
“i-i’m so sorry,” you began apologizing as soon as he stepped through the threshold into your room. “i swear-i swear i didn’t tell him that. i didn’t even realize he was there, i promise. i wouldn’t lie to you. i’m so sorry, i’m so sorry. please believe me.” your body was still rocking and you didn’t even notice he was as close to you as he was until you saw his hand moving by your head.
automatically, you assumed the absolute worst, your head ducking into your body like a fucking turtle, the meekest squeal leaving your lips mixed with a sob. your arms went over your head protectively, as if a bomb were about to go off.
“sweetheart,” his voice sounded so broken, so torn, so unexpectedly soft. 
you finally looked at him for the first time since he came in your room. his flesh hand was holding his metal one as if it were something that could kill. in ways, it was. 
“you-there’s no need to…” after looking at him for a second longer, you noticed that his eyes had tears that almost mirrored your own. “i would never, ever lay a hand on you. i’m so sorry for scaring you. i can’t…” he sighed. “i can’t believe i made you believe i’d ever hurt you.”
“i’m sorry,” you pleaded with him once again. 
“you have nothing to apologize for,” he hesitated to reach for your hands before settling on simply grabbing a spare pillow. “i came up here to apologize. for my tone earlier… i know john. he never knows his boundaries. i should’ve… you never should’ve been put in that situation. that’s my fault. that’s on me. and i will spend the rest of forever to make it up to you.” 
“you don’t have to-”
“no, my love,” he shook his head. “can i-can i hold your hands? please?” you, without hesitation, grabbed his hands yourself. “i need to make it up to you. you’re mine. you’re my wife. it’s my job to protect you, to keep you safe. and to have someone ruin that? to touch what’s mine in my own home? i’m so sorry.” he brought your hands to his lips, pressing at least ten kisses to each hand. he was so gentle and careful it was a good thing you knew better than to think it actually meant anything.
you were surprised, to say the least, at how tender he was being with you. 
how could you have ever thought he would hurt you? that he would raise his hand and swing? that he would cause you harm? he was here declaring that he would make up this incident for the rest of eternity when it wasn’t even his doing… 
“will you stay with me tonight?” his eyes lit up at the request.
“are you sure you want that?” he became a touch more reserved. “i don’t know if it’s a good idea since you were worried i would…” his voice trailed off.
“i’m sure,” you nodded before scooting over in the bed. 
sure, your marriage was arranged and didn’t stem from true love. you may not have talked outside of when absolutely necessary. you might have even been terrified of him at one point. 
but now, the thought of forever with bucky barnes didn’t seem half bad. 
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peterspinkrobe · 11 months
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Communion | AU Priest Miguel O’Hara x female Reader
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A/N: I commissioned the above Priest Miguel. Ever since the artist sent the sketch, (@ ejpuki on twitter plz go show love!) this story has been a brewin’ in my cranium. I am not a newbie when it comes to fanfic, but a virgin to writing Miguel. Please accept this offering to the mania that is fandom. Feedback is appreciated. I know the tenses are probably all over the place. Part 2 is live!!. Let me know if you’re interested ~~
Warnings: Religious content, parents, dirty-minded reader, no mention of Y/N
As you sat in the middle pew, aisle seats, you fiddled with the dress your mother guilted you into wearing. The hem of the skirt had a little fraying and you couldn’t help but pick at it.
The meddling was met with a small smack on your wrist from your mother.
“Stop! You’re going to make it worse! I know it’s an old dress but it will only look that way if you pick at it.” The sharpness in tone and the lacy lilac dress from high school brought you back to all of the Sunday mornings you’d been ripped from the comfort of your bed to attend church.
Church. Your head was already starting to hurt from the early morning light pouring through the stained glasses windows, but your tried to remain neutral to spare mom.
Your relationship with the Almighty soured not long after your father passed. Faith was hard to come by and the struggles you’d faced recently only strained that even further.
“Sorry, mama.” You say quietly, acting like you’re still twelve and not in your mid twenties.
Ever since you moved back in you’ve had to live under “her rules”. Sunday service is one of those rules. Considering the headache you’ve caused her recently, you ignore your own and do as she asks. It’s only fair.
But church? Last week was your first time back inside a church since leaving for college five years ago. It was the same one you’d been dragged to in your younger years. The same stained pews, same old books of Psalms, same feeling of estrangement despite being surrounded by the same old folks.
Your mom had turned her attention to the lady that lived on our street and you turned your own attention to your fingernails, scraping underneath them for dirt that wasn’t there. You think about how you had dropped the habit until moving back in, but was interrupted by microphone static.
You pulled your gaze to the front of the church and saw Father Steen tapping the microphone. Despite only being five years since you last saw him, the man seemed to have aged decades. His frail frame balanced on the podium as he spoke. You realized why the microphone was needed when he started speaking - amplifying the hushed tone of the elder addressing his congregation.
“Good morning and many blessings to you all this Sunday morning,” he began and you couldn’t help but lower your gaze back to the frayed bit of your dress. His monotone voice was… kinda boring. You hated thinking that way because Father Steen was such a good man and he cared for your mother greatly when dad passed. He was mentioning an upcoming surgery and you were back to picking at your fingernails. His voice eked on through the speakers, “so we will be having a transitional deacon come in to take over my position until I recover. This fine young man has graciously accepted this position as he is working to become a priest himself. Please welcome Mr. O’Hara as he leads us in prayer to begin communion for this month.”
There is respectful applause and your eyes are still on your hands until your mom elbows you gently. You start to apologize again for not paying attention but notice she and her pew neighbor are giggling as they clap. You start to clap your own hands as you look up at what they were giggling like schoolgirls about when your hands freeze in their clapped position - almost like you’re praying.
The deacon that Father Steen introduced was… gorgeous, and he was looking at you. You blushed, embarrassingly, under the gaze of the dark eyes. Could he tell you hadn’t been paying attention?
Well, you most certainly were now.
You pulled your eyes away from him to look at your mother who was wiggling her eyebrows at you, causing you to blush even deeper and turn back to the front.
The first thing you notice about the man standing at the front of the church was his height. He towered over the podium he placed a hand on. Father Steen came up to only just above his elbows with his hunched body.
The eyes that were watching you now surveyed the room and the light from the windows shown dark, warm pools of irises. His face…
Sharp symmetry made up his countenance. Distinct cheekbones bobbing as the smooth bronze skin stretched upwards into a smile. The strong jawline accentuated with the muscles of his lips pulling back, revealing a dazzling toothy smile.
When he spoke for the first time, you understood why your mom cried during Psalms at times. His voice was gospel.
“Thank you, all, for welcoming me into your parish. I know that you have received excellent spiritual guidance from Father Steen. I can only hope to at least partially fill his shoes in his absence.” His voice boomed throughout the church with no need for a microphone. “Before we begin the sacred ritual that is communion, let us bow our heads in prayer.”
The church around you dutifully lowered their heads, and you did the same. Hating closing your eyes to the alluring man in front of the church. At least his voice still filled your ears with song.
“Heavenly Father, we are gathered here today, in your house, in the name of your Son to receive the Body and Blood of Christ…” you decide it won’t be such a terrible sin to sneak a peek during prayer. You lift your head up to catch another glimpse at the ethereal creature leading prayer while he wasn’t looking.
But he was looking. Right at you as he continued to recite, “We are all sinners, and we are all in need of your grace and forgiveness.” You start to think about how much you needed his grace, when you pinch yourself for the blasphemy.
You’re still staring at each other as he finishes, “We pray that You will bless this communion and that it will deepen our relationships with You.” You instantly feel heat in your gut when you wonder just how deep it can go..
You think you see him grin slightly, but he pulls his eyes away from yours and you quickly put your head back down.
“In Your Blessed Name, Amen.” He ends. “Amen”, the church responds in unison and you squeak it out as well.
The first pew stands and approaches the front of the church, choir boys retrieving the communion goods. You notice that there is a split in the line as one is given the small wafer and grape juice shot by Father Steen and the other line the new deacon.
You can’t keep your eyes off him as he offers the sacrament to each person in line. He is taking longer than Father Steen, seeming to ask questions before presenting the body and blood of a savior.
As it came to be your pew’s turn, you stood. With only a few people in front of you, you studied Miguel’s figure in short glances.
Along with being a towering figure, he was a wide one as well. Muscles filled in the long-sleeved black button down shirt. His large upper body tapered off into a slim waist, tucked neatly into dark pants. A belt accentuated the fit waist even further. Your eyes trailed quickly across the thick neck that was accessorized by the all too familiar white collar of priesthood. When you were just behind one more person, your eyes fell to the floor.
Part of you wished you would be on Father Steen’s side as you feel as though you’re about to burst from this proximity of the giant man. He was bent over speaking to an elder of the church, giving her a soft smile as she blessed him for coming to ‘our little church.’
The man in line in front of you stood to Father Steen and the woman was letting Mr. O’Hara go from a sweet embrace.
Thank God, you guessed, for the years of attending communion as your muscle memory tore your legs from their form rooted position at the altar.
You approached the tall figure and your eyes are locked on the lips of the man in front of you. You see them move, hearing nothing but the beating of your heart in your eardrums.
“I-I’m sorry. What?” You sputter the words and heat creeps into your chest and face.
A soft chuckle escapes his full lips and he smiles as he repeats, “What is your name?”
You give it to him. And he says it. The way your name sounds in his music makes you smile up at him. He holds your gaze for a moment before speaking again.
“The Body of Christ.” He extends his hand in an upward position, the white wafer between his index finger and thumb.
You bow your head slightly in reverence of the offering. As you start to pull your head up again, his pinky and ring finger catch under your chin, lifting your face the rest of the way.
You breathe out a small gasp and open your mouth. He seems to mirror the action slightly as his own mouth drops slightly open. You extend your tongue a little as he places the thin wafer onto it.
His gaze is heavy as he watches you take the offering into your mouth. Your breath hitches when he runs his thumb across your pouted bottom lip, catching some saliva with it.
“Amen.” You respond and it’s not until he pulls his hand from your face when you turn to grab a small glass of grape juice. “The Precious Blood.” You hear him say behind you as you bring the glass to your lips, relishing the sweet refreshment.
Your face is red hot as you turn to walk back to your pew, ignoring your mother’s glances as she had already been back to her seat.
The burning in your cheeks is even more fiery as it dawns on you that the whole church saw the exchange. You hope, you pray, that it was perceived as a normal moment between a new Shepard and a member of his flock.
Communion wraps up and Father Steen takes a seat behind the the new head of church as he begins his sermon. The slight pressure of his thumb on your bottom lip created a pool of heat in your belly that wouldn’t go away.
You try to pay attention to the Good Word, you really do, but your mind is other places. Definitely not holy places.
Maybe coming to church won’t be too bad after all…
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littlestpersimmon · 2 months
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When ppl talk about the "banality of evil" its often about how boring the system that upholds imperialism is, but it's also how evil is commonplace, an ingredient to the cement that builds the foundation of the imperial core. You read about what the IOF is doing to Palestinians and yet fail to realize that American soldiers were doing the same things in the Philippines in 1902 during the american occupation, which is still not recognized as a genocide to this day. You think about Congo today but don't realize that a hundred years ago within the same land, the king of Belgium would cut off the hands of natives if they didn't collect and extract enough rubber, and its not much different when you replace"rubber" with "cobalt", "Belgian king" with "American oligarch".. the world immediately, utterly feels godless. One war seamlessly transitioning into another. How can there be so much grief for something as ordinary as a component to something I am literally holding in my hands right now. How can you make sense of that.
In the Philippines, there is a legend that says that the sturdiest, strongest buildings are constructed using the blood of a thousand children. The most prominent structure to remember this legend by, was a bridge called "Tulay ng San Juanico", built by none other than Philippine Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who is renowned to this day by his record of unfathomable human rights abuse. San Juanico Bridge stands, used for commute in the daily lives of filipino civilians under the shadow of the empire, in an all consuming, impenetrable and unbearable mundanity. You can find 20, 45, a hundred, a million people who are kind, but at the same time I think about how so many of these kind people walk this earth without thought or personal responsibility, completely and totally unwilling to lose an iota of comfort and convenience, without once stopping to think, what do they owe the next coming generation, the ones that are still here, and the ones nameless and buried in this world's wreckage, in the necessity of its evil.
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centrally-unplanned · 6 months
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In my list of orphaned projects is a big damn essay on the fertility transition , which I never wrote. I had this in the docket for almost a decade, back when worrying about fertility rates was still a hot take. But alas the ship has sailed, everyone is talking about it now and has written it all out already, and I have mountains of projects, so I will just outline it quickly, sans graphs and footnotes. Maybe doing that will incentivize me to write up a full one someday, and it also gets my cohesive viewpoint out there.
The Future Is Exowombs & the Global Fertility Transition
The Trendline
The fertility transition has long roots - going back to 19th century France, originating in metropoles like Paris and culturally exporting itself to the countryside.
It seems broadly linked to material prosperity in ways that are load-bearing, one implies the other.
It is a 'sticky' cultural transition - once a country begins to move towards lowered TFR it never recovers outside of temporary blips.
It is not related to "western" cultural norms or specific contingencies of religion or ethnicity - those can matter at the margins, but rarely make a huge difference.
Starting in the 1990's, following sharp increases in A: global economic growth and B: global cultural diffusion/global monoculture, a trendline that used to be reserved for wealthy countries has rapidly accelerated, affecting countries at almost every income level. The fertility transition is now fully global.
The Cause
The primary driver of this phenomenon is the positive realization of desires - and by that I mean it is not something forced on people due to a lack in their lives.
It is not primarily caused by growing singleness; the number of people having any kids at all today is lower but overall pretty similar to the number of people who did a hundred years ago. It makes a marginal difference but not a huge one.
It is not linked to money, or housing prices, or other economic issues - fertility rates do not notably change with income levels or other price factors. At the margins, sure, but not at relevant ones.
It is not linked to specific technologies like contraception. People have understood how to prevent pregnancy for centuries - though like many things they do contribute at the margins. Additionally, you can’t uninvent them.
It is by a large majority linked to the death of large families. It was previously common for there to be families with 5 or more children, sometimes way more. 10+ children was not that rare in the past.
These families were disproportionately engaged in agricultural production; cities have always been fertility sinks.
In a world of manual household labor, rural living, low rights for women, low economic opportunities for women, and high death rates for children, these large families made sense. The 'opportunity cost' of the endless pregnancies & sicknesses was low (economically, not gonna handwave the immense personal toll)
All of these reasons have vanished. People want to have families, and love their children. But enduring multiple painful pregnancies, putting your career on hold, and spending huge chunks of your lifespan on child raising no longer tracks. The experience of having ~2 children is superior, along almost every metric, than the experience of having ~5 children for most people. This is what I mean by positive desires - the family structures of the past were built on misery and necessity, and will not return willingly.
The Problem
Many will point to the economic & social consequences of the Fertility Transition. They are very real, particularly at sub-1.0 fertility rates. If you are South Korea today, you have no plan for how your economy will truly support itself 50 years from now - you will vanish as a country in a few generations.
The focus on nearish-term crises also misses the opportunities lost - economic growth is premised on specialization, and specialization is premised on scale. A smaller world is a poorer world per capita, and a less innovative world, problems which have compounding effects. The difference in the long term is orders of magnitude.
But, far more importantly than any of that, is that we are nowhere close to the capacity of the earth to support humans. Supporting double or even triple the current population of the earth is trivial; a 10-fold increase would be quite easy, particularly once innovation is factored in. Being alive is a good of worth incomparable to anything else - the 'future' is literally defined by it. Time only meaningfully passes through the eye of one who can behold it.
The Failed Solutions
Money cannot buy lifespan or reclaim lost time - all attempts to throw money at the problem of fertility can help at the margins, but won't change the fundamentals. Some people want to have 2 kids, but can only afford 1. Or are prioritizing a career, but will work part time to have 3 kids. But the current policy crop of tax benefits or subsidized child care has not found a way to make someone truly want a larger family size, just mitigate gaps between desire and ability - and only barely.
Could radically larger amounts of money solve this problem? A professional career track in giving birth, 100k+ salaries for full-time mothers? I am open to the idea - but society isn't. The fiscal transfers needed are too radical for the current political environment, no one is proposing this.
Immigration was frequently proposed as a stop-gap, but its a 90's idea, premised on the idea that the Fertility Transition was a western problem that other countries did not face. It is not and never was; as every country's fertility declines, immigration becomes a zero-sum solution.
Turning back the clock on cultural change is A: impossible, the material logic of modern industrial production broke the need for it, and culture is downstream of material constraints. And B: its barbaric - if your answer to humanity's obstacles to greater flourishing is to condemn half of it to misery, we are better off dead.
So population levels will either stagnate or decline - unless something intervenes.
The "Future" Aka Getting Rationalist On Main
Exowombs, aka artificial wombs, allow you to grow a human child outside of the need for a person to incubate it. The baby (hah) step they let you do is strongly lower the cost of having a child; this is time & health given back to a mother, it will make having larger families easier.
But that won't fundamentally, shift the reality - that most people only want 1-2 kids, they don't want to raise more than that. However, with exowombs, you don't need to; you can make children outside of a family's desire for one. You can do that pretty trivially, actually. A society, if committed to solving its fertility issues, could mass-produce people with exowombs. Which would be very good to do ethically, because living is good and I personally don't think kids at orphanages should be euthanized to end their suffering, they are fine.
If some society, somewhere, did this, they would rule the world in a few generations. No one else is solving this problem, and meanwhile the human capacity to live on Earth is being woefully underutilized. Before natural human growth would solve this eventually - now it seems that will never happen, so anyone who actively tackles the problem wins. They literally win the future, by being the future.
Now, no one is going to do this soon - proposing this idea is not my point. Exowomb research is harshly regulated or illegal everywhere, modern society hates the idea of this kind of experimentation. We are, in so many ways, allergic to the idea of solving this problem. It doesn't even have to be exowombs, maybe we do the salaried mothers idea. My point is just the illustration - the future where there is 100 billion people dwarfs any current trendline future. That hypothetical dominates the worldline space, because arriving there organically seems to have faded away. The fact that we are not going to take that future, that it is probably gone now, is really, really sad.
But of course there is the other solution, the reactionary specter - instead of the technological solution, we choose the social one, of cultural regression and expanded reproductive control. I am not so worried about this, personally? Because I think it would unsustainable and result in a lot of bleed to liberal societies. It should not be taken lightly though - in a world where everyone has 1.0 fertility, and the social and economic consequences are becoming dire, I wouldn’t discount the willingness for radical solutions. I myself prefer the technologist side. But I think odds are we don't get either, just the long decline.
TL;DR - don’t let the Mormons win. Build exowomb factories.
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lvis44 · 11 months
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Freak Like That // LH44
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Lewis Hamilton x Y/N
Warnings: SMUT 18+ (Minors DNI), Angst, Kind of Cheating? (depends on how you look at it), Unprotected Sex (wrap it before you tap it), Alcohol, Not Edited/Proofread
Word Count: 8.9k+
Summary: Seeing him again shouldn't be as hard as it is, but the universe has funny ways of making sure you end up back in his arms.
Notes: I'm aware I said this was coming like 3 weeks ago but your girl has her first corporate job that has been much more demanding week by week so I've been busy!! I toyed with turning this into more of a fic so if you're interested in a pt.2 of them LMK. Sweet Escape Epilogue is still on its way but has turned into a bit of a stand alone fic within a chapter, don't hate me, or maybe you'll love me for it. I didn't proofread this and wrote part of it while I was a tad bit drunk, oopsie! Love you all!
I am not a professional writer and all of this is a work of fiction and is strictly for fun. Enjoy! xxx
It had taken everything in you to move on from Lewis. You had done everything in your power to forget him, how he felt, how good he was to you, but the thought of him always lingered. You would have been a fool to ever think that anything could ever truly happen between the two of you, you were mature enough to know it was always just sex, it would always be just sex. That didn’t mean you never fantasized about how it would feel to be loved by him. It was never a relationship between the two of you, there was never any commitment from him. He had been more of a fuck buddy, a sugar daddy in many senses. He was older than you, detached, and loved to shower you with gifts. You only ever had his attention in private, and when you did he made you see stars. Lewis had always managed to unlock something within you that you didn’t know existed, bringing alive senses you’d never felt. He taught you things about your body and needs that you had been so naive to. No one had ever been able to compare to him. Parting from him had been one of the most difficult tasks you had ever been faced with, but you knew the agreement between the two of you wasn’t sustainable, you were only ever destined for heartbreak if you continued with him. You had done so well for the last year, ignoring his texts, doing your best to avoid his heavy presence online. Him being in the same room as you however, was something that you were not prepared for. He looked ethereal, his beige suit jacket showing off just a peak of his chest, enough to force the images back into your head, his tattoos glistening above you as he wears you out. He has one braid hanging perfectly in front of his face, all you can think of is how his braids felt tickling your neck when he would pant dirty words into your sticky skin.
“Y/N? You okay darling?” The voice that came from beside you startled you. When you looked to your side, your boyfriend was looking at you with concern written all over his face.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, sorry about that, just zoned out for a second.” You try to fake laugh it off, not wanting him to pry.
He continues to look suspicious but doesn’t press any further, instead seamlessly transitioning into a conversation with one of the businessmen standing with him. You find your attention returning back to where Lewis had stood, his attention now fully on you. His smirk is knowing as he drags his eyes shamelessly up and down your body. You have to use every ounce of power in yourself to pull your eyes away from him as one of your boyfriends business partners directs a question to you. You put your fake smile on, engaging in boring conversation as you do your best to ignore the strong presence that is Lewis. You had been worried that one day you would run into him, your boyfriend working in the fashion industry made it almost inevitable.
You managed to stay relatively strong throughout the night, the champagne helping immensely. Lewis had disappeared into the crowd and you had done your absolute best not to look for him. You spent your evening tailing behind your boyfriend, being introduced to random men that you assumed worked in the same circles as him. Your boyfriend kept his hand on your lower back throughout most of the night, the only acknowledgement that you were even really there. He was a fine man, he had taken his time winning you over, taken you on romantic dates, but the spark still wasn’t there, and the arguments were becoming more and more frequent. You knew he cared about you, treated you well, but he was simply the safest option, and he was getting sick of your lack of interest in his work. You were growing increasingly tired of being his arm candy, using you to show off to his business partners. The intimacy lacked passion, nothing matched the raw passion you had with Lewis once upon a time. It wasn’t fair to compare him to Lewis, he was actually there to be your partner, not just a fun time, but it was almost impossible. 
“There’s only a few more people I need to talk to and then I promise we can go.” Your boyfriend whispered into your ear. You couldn’t wait to get out of your heels and be in a quiet room, away from the people faking sincerity in hopes of investments and business opportunities.
You grab another glass of champagne as your boyfriend orders an Old Fashion before once again pulling you along through the crowd of people, evidently in search of someone.
“Ah, there he is.” You hear him exclaim, not yet able to see who he’s approaching.
When you come out from behind him you want to scream, he has approached Lewis, completely unaware of the situation he has just put you in.
“It’s so fantastic to meet you, I’m Brian, we work with a lot of the same people around here. It’s an honor, I’m a big fan.” Your boyfriend extends his hand to Lewis eagerly.
You can’t help but be confused, your boyfriend has never once mentioned racing, you can only assume he’s a fan of his work in fashion, or he’s lying.
“Nice to meet you too,” Lewis responds politely with a small chuckle, returning the handshake before turning his attention to you, “and always wonderful to see you Y/N.”
You want to melt into the earth below you. You can see the devious look in his eyes, blatantly announcing your familiarity, you thank god your boyfriend doesn’t know the depth of familiarity you have with the man in front of you, not yet at least.
“You two know each other?” Your boyfriend asks, confusion covering his face. 
“Oh yeah, we know each other well. Y/N hasn’t told you?” Lewis continues, a wide smile across his beautiful lips. To anyone else it would look kind and genuine, but you know he’s playing at something else, daring you, challenging your boyfriend in the simplest of ways.
“No she’s never-“ Your boyfriend starts before you cut him off.
“I wouldn’t say we know each other well, we’ve just met at things like this before.” You rush out, it’s not entirely a lie, that is exactly how you first met him. Your boyfriend doesn’t need to know the rest.
Lewis sends you a smirk, cocky and mischievous.
“All I can say man is you landed a very talented woman.” Lewis says to your boyfriend, the words falling off his lips in such a tone that your stomach flips.
“She is pretty incredible.” Your boyfriend smiles at you, wrapping his arm around your waist, completely oblivious to the meaning behind Lewis’ words. You can see out of the corner of your eye how Lewis glances down at the action, his jaw tightening momentarily.
Your boyfriend is on a mission, immediately transitioning into talking business with Lewis. You do your best not to undress him with your eyes, opting to look down at his feet throughout most of the conversation. You can feel Lewis glance at you every once in a while, trying so hard to ignore the way his gaze makes you feel. As you hear someone calling your boyfriends name you think you are finally free from the situation.
“So sorry, it sounds like I’m needed elsewhere, it was truly great meeting you, it was an honor.” Your boyfriend says to Lewis, shaking his hand once again before turning to you. You're ready to follow after him, happy to be dragged into yet another boring conversation, “Why don’t you stay here and catch up for a moment, I’ll find you later.”
He doesn’t give you even a moment to object as he presses a kiss to your temple and quickly makes his exit. You both watch as your boyfriend walks away, you in fear of the situation he’s left you in, Lewis in excitement of the exact same thing.
“Soooo,” Lewis draws out, finally looking directly at you, “how have you been?”
“Seriously?” You bite at him, unamused by his behavior.
He just shrugs, taking a sip of his drink, the glass barely hiding his amused smirk.
“What the hell was that? There’s no reason he needs to know anything.” You say, your tone low and harsh.
He just laughs, “There’s no way youre fucking that dude. I doubt that square can make you cum. Not the way I did.”
“Lewis,” You hiss at him, looking around hoping no one heard him, “he’s good to me, leave him alone.”
“So I’m right, he can’t make you cum can he.” His words come out as a statement not a question, so confident in himself, in his knowledge of your needs.
“Untrue, he’s perfectly fine, and he offers so much more than you ever did.” You throw back at him, not happy at his assessment of your relationship, he has no right to assume anything. Even if he’s partially correct.
“He might not break your heart baby, but I doubt he can break your back the way I did.” He’s gotten closer to you, his voice lower, seductive.
You can feel your breath hitch, the familiar smell of him engulfing your senses, his words going to your core unwillingly. He notices it too, the tip of his tongue coming out to wet his bottom lip. All you can think about is how that same tongue has felt in your mouth, all over your body, inside of you, so many times. He chuckles as he watches you get lost in thought, knowing exactly where your mind has wandered.
“He’s gonna be busy for a while, we could relive some old times.” Lewis says quietly, his head gesturing back toward the hall where the bathrooms are.
“Lewis, no.” You say against your will, desperately wanting to follow him mindlessly down the hall and let him have his way with you, but you can’t let yourself do it to your boyfriend.
“Offer stands, always, ya know when you finally get sick of him.” Lewis says casually.
Within moments your boyfriend has appeared at your side once again. You worry that he’s heard something but he seems unbothered, unaware of what you were just offered.
“Vance and I are going to go grab drinks down the street, talk about the contract somewhere a little quieter.” He says to you, ignoring Lewis entirely.
You sigh, realizing just how much longer your night had just gotten, “I really just want to head back to the hotel.”
“Really? You know these meetings always go better when you’re around. You take the focus off of me.” He half complains half laughs.
“We’ve been here forever babe, I really just want to get out of my dress.” You say softly, trying to get out of the boring boys club meeting.
“You’ll be fine, besides how would you even get back to the hotel? I need to have the car take Vance and I and you’re never going to find a cab with all of this going on.” He gestures back towards that large party, his voice starting to sound annoyed.
“I’ll figure something out, I really just want to go back to the hotel, the day has been long enough as is.” You sigh, hoping he lets it go.
“C'mon babe, we’re supposed to be a team.” He continues to try to convince you. 
Never have you been part of his business ventures, only the arm candy that he  brings to meetings when he is trying to show off to someone.
“And we are, I’m just not up to staying out so late tonight.” You say, growing agitated, embarrassed that this conversation is happening in front of Lewis.
“We won’t be out late.” Your boyfriend continues to argue, “And how are you even going to get to the hotel?”
“I’ve got a car coming in just a little bit, I’ll get her back.” Lewis pipes up before you can respond, not looking at you but directing his attention to your boyfriend.
Your boyfriend lets out a frustrated huff before conceding.
“That would be great, I appreciate it man.” Your boyfriend agrees without asking you, shaking Lewis’ hand.
“Anytime, don’t worry, she’ll be well taken care of.” The smile on Lewis’ face is so sweet you could almost believe he is just being polite.
Your boyfriend doesn’t even say another word to you, walking away toward his business partners after patting you on the shoulder.
“He evidently trusts you.” Lewis says, raising his eyebrow at you.
“He has absolutely no reason not to.” You fire back at him, feeling defensive.
“Come on, let’s go get a drink.” Lewis ignores you, wiggling his now empty drink in the air. 
“I thought your car was going to be here in a second.” You say, raising an accusatory brow at him as you cross your arms over your chest.
“I said it would be here in a little bit,” Lewis starts, taking note of your eye roll at his words, “It will be fine, I’ll have you back before Prince Charming gets his drunk ass back to your room.”
“He’s not drunk.” You defend him unnecessarily, making Lewis laugh.
“If he’s getting drinks with Vance, he definitely will be by the time he’s back. Come have a drink with me, I’ve missed you.” Lewis shakes his head, evidently familiar with the man your boyfriend is getting drinks with.
“You’ve missed me?” The words come out of your mouth without meaning to, you’re genuinely surprised he’s even thought of you since you parted ways.
“Yes, of course I have,” He laughs, directing you toward the bar, “I always enjoyed myself with you. I still don’t get why you left.” His voice sounds vulnerable as he lets the last bit slip.
“You know exactly why I left.” You say, mindlessly following him to the bar against your better judgment.
“No I really don’t, you never really gave me an explanation. You just disappeared.” Lewis argues with you, keeping his voice low as he directs you onto a bar stool.
“Lewis, we both know nothing about what we were doing was sustainable. There’s no way you could have ever given me what I need.” You sigh, not wanting to have this conversation, especially not in public.
“And what is it that you need? Some guy that can’t satisfy you? You’re really trying to tell me that you’re happier with him than you were with me?” Lewis continues to push you, waving down the bartender.
“Lewis, I was never with you, and besides that, you have no idea what our relationship is like.” You defend yourself, not directly answering him.
“I think I saw enough to know that you’re not having fun.” Lewis shoots back at you, waiting for the bartender to make his way over to the two of you.
“It’s not about fun, it’s about stability.” You say, trying to stand your ground.
“You deserve both.” Lewis mumbles as the bartender appears in front of you.
Lewis orders for you, not needing to ask what you want, confident in his prior experience with you.
Your mind wanders back to the rare times that you would go out in public with him, hidden in the back corner of dive bars. The two of you getting tipsy off of shitty drinks before falling into bed together. It was rare times like those that made you fantasize about actually being in a relationship with him, dream about what your life would be like with him giggling through kisses as a permanent fixture.
“What have you been up to?” Lewis pulls you out of your thoughts, thankfully changing the subject.
“Just the usual, not much has changed.” You shrug, taking a sip of the drink in front of you.
“Descriptive,” Lewis teases you, “nothing new? How’d you meet your square?”
You can’t help but roll your eyes, “You really want to talk about my boyfriend?”
“I need to know what I’m up against.” Lewis shrugs as if it's the most normal thing in the world.
“You’re not up against anything because it’s not a competition.” You deadpan, annoyed with his confidence.
“Everything’s a competition babe, that’s life.” Lewis laughs, taking a sip of his drink,
You can’t help the way your stomach flips at the familiar pet name, it’s been so long since you’ve heard it fall off his lips, it came so naturally to him.
Somehow you find yourself engaged in a normal conversation with Lewis eventually, discussing his race season and other projects he’s been working on. You’ve always loved to hear him talk about the things he’s passionate about, easily getting lost in his words. You stay with him, enjoying the shockingly easy conversation, indulging in more drinks than you should. It’s not until you see him check his watch do you think about how much time has probably passed.
“So is your car here yet, or are you planning on holding me hostage?” You ask him, filling the momentary silence.
“Not used to many hostage situations that include free drinks,” Lewis laughs, “but we should probably head out front, car will be here soon.”
“Thank you for the drinks by the way.” You say quietly, sliding off your stool to follow him out of the venue.
He just smiles, no words leaving his mouth as he places his hand on your lower back, guiding you out with him. It doesn’t take long before his car is at the curb, his hand not having left your back as he urges you into the car. Despite the multiple seats available, he settles into the seat directly next to you, his thigh touching yours sending electricity through your whole body. You curse yourself for how simple it is for him to draw a reaction from you. 
“So where’s the square got you staying?” Lewis asks, a teasing lilt to his voice.
“Shut up.” You mumble before giving him directions that he relays to his driver.
There’s a large part of you that’s surprised he seems to actually be taking you back to your hotel, expecting him to try so much more before actually granting you your freedom. You can’t help but be slightly annoyed with your boyfriend for putting you in this position, even if he doesn’t know your history with Lewis, the rumors surrounding him should be enough to keep your girlfriend from being alone with him. Even if your boyfriend trusts you, why does he trust Lewis so much?
The drive is mostly silent. Lewis has his arm up over the back of your seat and as much as you want to fight him on it, push him away, you can’t bring yourself to do so, you enjoy the feeling of being so close to him. His body heat is intoxicating in the worst way, you can’t help but relish in the familiar feeling, so used to being cocooned in his arms. You can tell that you’re getting close to your hotel by the familiar streets, Lewis still scrolling on his phone as if he could care less that you’re sat next to him for the first time in nearly a year. Maybe he’s given up, you think. Maybe he’s finally respecting your boundaries. All of that is thrown to the wind when the car begins to slow down. He scooches even closer to you, his head dropping to your neck.
“My offer always stands, I meant it when I said I miss you.” He whispers in your ear before placing a kiss to your throat.
A small whimper leaves you involuntarily, secretly missing the way that his lips feel on your skin. You can feel a slight smirk on your skin as he pulls away, not far. His face comes up, directly in front of yours, his nose just grazing your own. Everything inside of you is screaming at you to get out of the car and not turn back, but your body is drawn toward him, he can feel it too. One large hand finds your thigh, running up the outside of it, just under the hem of your dress. You relish in the feeling of his calloused fingers on your skin for the first time in far too long. His eyes are heavy as he stares at you, hooded and darkened with lust. He leans forward just the slightest bit, ghosting his lips over yours. When you don’t pull back or fight him, he takes it as a good sign. His grip on your thigh tightens as he leans forward and properly connects your lips. The second his mouth is on yours he lets out a deep groan, one that seems to have been locked inside him for a long time. It doesn’t take long for the kiss to deepen, his tongue finding yours mindlessly. His tongue swirls against yours as his other hand comes to find the back of your head, pressing you harder against him. Your hands have a mind of their own, coming up to find the sides of his strong neck, not even thinking, you’ve been in another world since the second his lips found yours. When he finally departs you find yourself chasing his lips, making him peck yours once again.
“Come back to mine, babygirl.” He whispers, out of breath.
You let out a small whimper, your brain clouded by all of the ways you could explore him tonight, let him explore you.
“Yeah?” He coaxes, his head dropping back to your neck, “We can have so much fun babe. Everything you’ve been missing this last year, I promise.”
“Lewis, I can’t,” You just about groan, frustrated but sticking to your guns, “we’ve already crossed too many lines. I can’t do that to him.”
You try to push Lewis away but it’s worthless, his light assault on your neck is welcomed despite your words.
“Yeah, maybe we crossed a line. Why not cross some more? Hmm?” His words are spoken through kisses trailing up your neck and across your jaw, slowly making his way back towards your lips.
“Lew,” You breathe out, pushing at his chest once again, finally he disconnects from you, just barely, “I shouldn’t. I can’t, it’s not fair.”
“No, it’s really not fair is it.” Lewis shakes his head, his eyes darting from your eyes to your lips, a whole different meaning to his words.
“I need to go.” You whisper, moving to get out of the car.
“Hey,” Lewis stops you, a hand on your wrist, “you still have my number, let me know if you change your mind. I’m only a few blocks down.”
You offer him a small smile, not sure how to respond and not able to be in his presence any longer. You slip out of his grasp, closing the door on him as you do. You can feel the heat from where his fingers gripped you, a burning sensation on your skin. You try to shake the sensation from your body as you make your way up to your room. You can hear his car drive away in the background, having to stop yourself from turning around and going back to him. When you arrive back to your room, its empty, your boyfriend nowhere to be found, evidently still out at drinks. You sigh, flopping down onto the mattress. You want to scream. It’s so unbelievably unfair that someone can still have such a hold over you, despite having not seen him in a year. Lewis is addictive, and reintroducing an addictive substance to someone who has just barely become clean is always dangerous.
It’s a few hours before your boyfriend finally returns to the hotel. You’ve long since changed into comfier clothes and are lounging on the bed watching a random show, grateful to finally be out of your heels. When he finally arrives you can tell he’s beyond wasted, just like Lewis had predicted.
“Hey hun.” He slurs, swaying in the hallway as he tries and fails to steady himself.
“Hi,” You giggle, “have a good time with Vance?”
“Yeah,” He laughs back, “woulda had a better time if you had came along though.”
“You look like you had plenty of fun,” You raise a brow at him, “go change and come to bed.”
“I just don’t get why you didn’t want to come, honestly I would have closed that deal so much quicker” He says as he goes into the bathroom 
“I told you I wanted to get back to the hotel, I was tired.” You sigh
“Not too tired to hang out with Lewis Hamilton.” You can hear the anger in his voice and it makes you want to laugh.
“Really? You’re the one who told me to stay and hang out with him, not only that but you trusted him to take me home. How is that my fault?” You’re already annoyed as the words leave your mouth, already frustrated beyond belief in so many ways.
“Jesus Y/N, if I knew getting drinks would put you in such a mood maybe I would have come home sooner.” Your boyfriend says from the bathroom.
You have no idea where his sudden attitude has come from, you refusing going to drinks should not have put him in such a mood.
“I’m not in a mood, I just don’t appreciate you implying that I turned you down just to hang out with Lewis.” You argue as he exits the bathroom, his shirt now off, just in his suit pants.
“I know you didn’t leave that gala for quite some fucking time.” He spits at you drunkenly.
“What are you even talking about?” You ask him, confused how he even knows, not that it should even be an issue.
“You were too tired to come get drinks with me to help me with an important investor but you can stay and have drinks with Lewis Hamilton for another hour?” He accuses you, not taking into account that it’s partially his fault.
“We were waiting for his car so we got a drink,” You defend, “and how do you even know how long we were there?”
“People know you're my girl Y/N. Apparently people find it a bit strange when they see my girlfriend drinking at the bar with one of the most notorious playboys in the game.” His voice is slowly getting louder, putting you even more on edge.
“Oh so you have people keeping tabs on me now?” You question him.
“I don’t need to ask, they just do it. It’s embarrassing Y/N. I don’t need people thinking that my girlfriend is out fucking athletes.” He throws at you, rolling your eyes.
“All that should matter is that you know!” You yell at him.
“Do I?” His voice is laced with venom, a sudden distrust that you’ve never seen from him before.
“Well you certainly fucking should.” You say, crossing your arms over your chest.
“How do you know him?” He ignores your argument, taking a step closer to you.
“I told you.” 
“Yeah you told me how you met him, sure. How do you actually know him, because you seemed to be pretty fucking close.” He fires at you.
Your anger has reached a peak, not wanting to deal with your boyfriends drunken anger, you let the walls down.
“You really want to know how familiar I am with him? Hmm?” You challenge him.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” He scoffs.
“Yeah, he fucked me for a year straight. Best I ever had.” You shrug, your voice venomous. You have let all of your cares slip away.
“Excuse me?” Your boyfriend is seething, your last comment sticking with him.
“You heard me.” You say, your voice eerily calm. 
“You say that and then expect me to believe you didn’t fuck him tonight? How stupid do you think I am?” He sounds almost amused as he asks the question.
“I could have, oh god I could have, I was this close,” You hold up your fingers to emphasize your point, “but I didn’t. Ya know why? Because I’m in a relationship, I fucking you! I couldn’t do that to you. Yet here you are accusing me of going behind your back. You left me alone with him, you let him take me back to the hotel. Why? So you could prove a point about what you think of me?”
“If you were so close to fucking him, why don’t you go do exactly that?” Your boyfriend just about screams at you.
You’ve never had a fight of this magnitude, especially over something like this. Hearing his distrust and anger makes you rethink everything about him. Your mother always told you that drunk words are sober thoughts and you can’t help but feel that in this moment. In that moment you give up, why even try to convince him to trust you, if he thinks you’re going to cheat on him now why would he ever think differently.
“Fine.” You shrug, your voice calm.
“Seriously?” He’s taken aback, clearly not thinking you would act on it.
“You obviously don’t trust me so why not.” You say, not looking at him as you gather your things. You have no real plan about where you’re going to go, sure you are leaving things behind but not caring, just needing to get out of the room and away from his vile behavior.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re literally proving my point right now, you’ll fuck anyone who gives you attention. I thought I had managed to tame that shit in you.” He spits, watching you pack your things.
“Tame me?” You whip around at his words, “First of all, I’m not a fucking zoo animal. Second of all, if you’ve never trusted me why the fuck are you even here?”
“Jesus, I thought you could be better, you had so much fucking potential.” He sounds remorseful and it makes you want to scream. How dare he think you needed fixing.
“Fuck you, I’m done.” You say, your things finally zipped in your bag as you put on your shoes. 
He’s still yelling things at you as you make your way out of the room, not caring to stick around to hear what other awful things he has to say to you. You don’t properly breathe until you’re in the elevator, finally sure he’s not following you. That’s when you realize you don’t have anywhere to go, a lump forming in your throat as you think of everything that was said. Mindlessly you take out your phone, hesitating for a moment as you look at Lewis’ number, blocked for so long. You unblock him as you step out of the elevator and into the lobby, walking out to the street as you call his number, praying he’s not asleep. Going to him is probably the last thing you should be realistically doing, but he’s the only person you want to see right now.
“Hey stranger, I knew you’d end up calling.” His voice is cocky through the phone, you can hear his smirk.
“Lew.” You croak out, your tears finally coming to the front.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” He asks, his tone changing drastically, immediately aware that something isn’t right. 
“You said you were staying nearby, can I come over?” You almost want to laugh at how desperate you sound.
“Of course, I’ll send you a car. Are you still at the hotel?” His voice is laced with concern and care and it makes your tears fall harder. It’s ridiculous that someone who had never been emotionally available could care for you more than your boyfriend.
“I’ll walk, just tell me where you are.” You shake your head as if he can see you.
“Y/N, it’s too late for you to be out walking alone, I’d be worried the whole time. Let me send you a car.” He argues.
“I need the fresh air honestly, just tell me where to go. Please.” Your voice breaks at the end of your plea, convincing him not to argue with you more, he can tell he won’t win.
Against his better judgment he finally tells you where he is, offering to stay on the phone with you while you walk. You’re tempted to take him up on it but you need the time to yourself. You’re still not sure why you feel such a desperate need to see him but it’s all you can think of at the moment.
The walk helps your head immensely, your agony switching to anger. Part of you wishes you had just gone back with Lewis when he offered, you would have proved your boyfriend right and still had a good night. If he doesn’t trust you, why be good for him?
When you arrive at Lewis’ hotel, he’s waiting in the door to his suite for you, his suit from earlier still on. He immediately takes note of your scowl and bag, his eyebrows raising. He doesn’t say a word as he steps aside to let you enter the room.
“That fucking asshole.” You say, dropping your bag as you finally turn to face a very concerned Lewis.
“What happened?” He asks you, cautiously approaching you.
“He doesn’t trust me! I could have come here and fucked you hours ago, but no, I stayed in his room and waited for his drunk ass to get back like a good little housewife. What do I get when he gets back? Accused of fucking you.” You let out in one big breath.
Lewis’ eyes widen, a slightly amused look on his face underneath the concern.
“So he accused you of cheating on him?” He questions, still trying to fully figure out what he’s dealing with.
“Oh not only that, he said he thought that he had tamed me, told me I embarrassed him.” You let out a bitter laugh.
“So he’s a square and a dumbass.” Lewis states with a cock of his head, frowning.
“Oh fuck you.” You spit at him.
“I’m just saying, no man in his right mind would ever be embarrassed by you.” He says softly, approaching you to put his hands on your arms gently, rubbing up and down softly in hopes of calming you somehow.
The gentle action makes you want to cry again, fall into him and never let him go. As if he can tell, he pulls you into his chest, holding you tight. You wrap your arms around his neck. You let yourself revel in the feeling of being in his arms, holding you so tight you almost can’t breathe, but you welcome it, you’ve missed it for so long.
“So why are you here baby, to piss him off?” Lewis asks quietly, loosening his grip on you slightly to get you to look at him.
“I don’t even know, I think I just wanted you.” You sigh, embarrassed by how needy you sound.
He smirks, pleased in the knowledge that you may want him in any way shape or form.
“Why the hell are you still dressed up?” You suddenly ask him, confused by how much time has passed since he left the event.
“Had an after party I had to go to, just got back a little while ago.” He shrugs, his arms still wrapped around you.
“So why the hell were you trying to get me to come back with you if you had things you had to do?” You question him.
“If there was any chance in hell you would come back with me I was blowing that party off in a heartbeat, don’t care if I pissed anyone off. Haven’t seen you in ages, couldn’t let the chance slip.” He explains, looking you dead in the eye.
The thought that he would have rather spent his night with you than going out and networking makes your heart clench, it’s something your own boyfriend never would have done, evidently. His admission makes you throw caution to the wind, missing the feeling of being wanted, you pull the back of his neck so you can connect your lips to his. He seems almost surprised for a moment, not expecting anything to happen due to the state you had arrived in. He only hesitates for a moment before responding with full force, his lips fully claiming yours like they’ll never touch another set.
He groans into the kiss, the sound going to your core immediately, its always been one of your favorite sounds. You take your hands from around his neck, pawing at the button of his jacket, desperate to feel the smooth skin and hard muscle he has hidden underneath. The second his jacket is open, running your hands up his torso, reveling in the strength, your lips never parting from his. He pulls back slightly, a cocky smirk spread across his swollen lips, his hands firmly on your backside.
“What do you want, baby?” He questions, his tone knowing.
You whimper in response, trying to catch his lips again as you work to push the jacket off his shoulders.
“Words Y/N, you know that.” He reprimands you even though he is reaching behind himself to pull his jacket off, throwing it over the nearby chair.
“Fuck, I want you, please.” You whine out, annoyed you even have to ask. 
His hands come back to your ass, taking greedy handfuls as his lips drop to your neck, brushing over the skin as he speaks, “You want me to show you what you’ve been missing out on? Remind you how good I can make you feel?”
All you can do is nod as you brace yourself on his large biceps, a panted ‘yes’ falling from your lips. Within seconds his hands have fallen to your thighs, scooping you up to walk you towards the bed in the large suite. He drops you down on the bed, letting you bounce as he stares down at you with hungry eyes. The mood has shifted so drastically since you arrived, the whiplash is making your brain spin. Within moments he’s on you again, his lips hungry against yours as his large hand trails up under your sweatshirt. You wished you were wearing something cuter but the feeling of his hands on you threw every thought out the window. As his lips trailed down your neck you explored every inch of his muscular back under your palms, feeling the way the muscles flexed every time he adjusted his position. Wordlessly your sweatshirt was thrown up and over your head before his lips attached to your bare breast. The moan you let out was something you didn’t recognize from yourself anymore, a sound you hadn’t made since the last time you had him.
Over the course of your relationship with your boyfriend, sex had become more of a chore, something you knew you needed to do to keep the relationship working, it obviously didn't work. Your boyfriend tended to rush through things, chasing his own high with yours as more of an afterthought. Lewis however, he took his time with you, he always had, he would never be done until you were absolutely wrecked beneath him.
Lewis’s lips were trailing down your body, his tongue tracing every inch of skin it could reach. Hot, wet, sloppy kisses being left against every dip and curve of your figure. When he reached the waistline of your sweatpants, his eyes flicked up for a moment, locking with yours. There was a faint question in them and all you could do was nod, bucking your hips up towards him, urging him to take them off. 
“So eager.” Lewis just about chuckles, pulling down your pants and thong in one move.
You can’t help but squirm when his eyes lock onto your heat, staring at you like he’s going to destroy you. His large hand splays across your bare waist, keeping you in place as his other holds one of your thighs out to the side.
“Patience babe, don’t worry, I’m gonna take care of you.” His voice is teasing but you can hear the tension behind his words, he’s just as worked up as you are, the evidence is visible in his dress pants.
He leans down, pressing soft kisses along your hip, making his way further down slowly, much too slow for your liking.
“Lewis, please.” You whimper, hoping he will speed up the process and ease the ache between your legs.
He smirks, locking his eyes with yours as he latches his lips around your clit with no warning. You shriek, the sound turning into a guttural moan as his tongue laps over your nerves. You can feel the stubble of his beard on the inside of your thigh, his eyes still have left your face. You can feel the cocky smirk that spreads across his face as he lowers his face, lapping at your drenched entrance.
“Fuck baby, you really needed this didnt you?” He taunts you, breathless.
All you can do is whine his name as his skilled mouth returns to your core.
“God I missed you, always taste so fucking good.” He murmurs against you.
His tongue makes his way inside of you as his thumb comes to rub at your clit, making your back arch. Finally having him inside of you feels so good, but you need so much more and he knows it.
He pulls his mouth away, his thumb still tracing patterns across your nerves.
“Need you to come for me babygirl, could feel you clenching around my tongue, I know you’re close.” He’s out of breath and when you finally look at him you can see your arousal glistening on his lips.
You writhe on the bed as he presses a finger against your entrance, teasing the slightest bit of pressure before inserting the thick digit deep inside of you. His tongue comes down to replace his thumb against your clit as he slips another finger inside of you, massaging the spongy spot inside of you just right that you scream. The sound rips out of your body coming from deep in your throat as your pleasure courses through you. You can feel yourself soaking Lewis as he laps up your release, humming contentedly, like youre the best meal he’s ever had. You barely have the ability to push him away, too sensitive and he knows it, that cocky smirk plastered across his face as he finally sits back. You barely even register that he’s moved back over you until you feel his fingers on your bottom lip, your own pleasure covering them.
“Open up babygirl, need you to taste just how amazing you are.” His voice is soft yet strained as you let his fingers slip past your lips, swirling your tongue around them. He lets out a soft groan, his eyes locked on your mouth as you put on a little show for him, still half delirious. 
When he finally slips his fingers from your lips he trails them down your chin and across your chest, leaving a trail of moisture that makes you shiver.
“Think you can take more? Hmm?” His lips are near your ear, you can feel the hot air of his voice against your humid skin.
“Please, god please.” You beg him, desperate to feel him again after so long.
“Been dying to be inside of you since the second I saw you tonight.” He admits into the skin of your neck as he works on the button of his dress pants. You attempt to help but its useless, you’re a useless pile of mush at this point.
He moves himself to stand at the end of the bed, finally kicking off his pants before grasping himself in his large palm. Your lips part inadvertently at the sight in front of you. His bare chest is glistening with sweat, making his tattoos that much darker and showing off the prominent shape of his pecs, his tattooed bicep is flexing ever so slightly as he slowly strokes himself, his eyes wandering over your naked body. When you finally trail your eyes down, your breath hitches in your throat. You’ve been with him countless times, but nothing can ever prepare you for just how thick he is, just how long he is. He has a cock that most men would pay to have and he knows it. He notices your staring, one side of his mouth curving into a knowing smirk. You’re sitting up, crawling towards him mindlessly, desperately trying to get your hands on him. You don’t even have time to properly register it when all the sudden you're being picked up like a rag doll and maneuvered onto all fours in front of him. You’re not even sure how he did it, his strength and your delirium making everything happen so fast. Within moments you feel his body pressed up behind yours, his mouth coming down next to your cheek.
“Gonna make sure my girl knows that no one will ever make her come like I do, gonna have you screaming my name baby.” He whispers, his voice sounding like pure sex. Your stomach clenches when he calls you his girl.
You feel him lining himself up with your entrance and all you can do is whimper into the pillow below you. With one hand grasped around his cock and the other a bruising grip on your hip, he takes a second to tease you, giving you the slightest pressure at your aching hole before slipping out and thrusting forward to nudge your clit. He’s leaving you a whining mess before he’s even inside of you and he’s absolutely loving it. He stills momentarily, lined up with you again before thrusting into you all at once. The force makes all the air leave your lungs as you slump even further forward. You hear a loud groan leave his chest and you wish you could see him, see the ecstasy across his face. His large palm soothes down your spine before pushing down, making you arch your hips up toward him even more. He barely gives you a moment before he’s rocking his hips, your body still working to accommodate the size its gone so long without.
“Good girl, you can take it.” His voice is low, demanding yet endearing. He’s the one that taught you about your praise kink, always so vocal about how good you make him feel.
His pace slowly starts to build, his thrusts becoming harsher as he keeps pressure on your back, keeping you just how he wants you. You can feel yourself getting even wetter as you listen to the moans leaving his body, your own sounds being nothing but gasps and whines. He’s hitting the perfect spot, over and over, and you can feel your stomach start to tighten. Rarely have partners even been able to make you come with just penetration, but everything is different with Lewis, it always has been.
“Fuck, already?” Lewis asks, his voice sounding almost amazed from behind you, “Fuck babe, I can feel you clenching my cock already, you gonna come again? Gonna fucking soak me like a good girl?”
His pace picks up, determination behind each thrust as his grip on your hips becomes even tighter. His voice alone is enough to send you over the edge again, the sound of pure sex. He groans loudly as he feels you come around him, working you through it but collapsing over you. He lets your hips go and you're dropping down flat on the mattress as he continues to pound into you from above. You can hear the slick sounds of him fucking into you and it makes everything so much dirtier. You’re moaning his name like it’s the only word you’ve ever learned.
“That’s it baby, just like that.” He coaxes you through a groan.
He doesn’t let up, the new angle making your toes curl as his weight bares down on you. He has one hand on your hip once again while he leans on his forearm next to you. You feel him start to move himself up, hooking your legs over his hips, your back bending backwards for him. He slows his pace ever so slightly, adding more force behind every thrust, making you squeal and grab at the sheets beneath you.
“Fuck, Lewis, I can’t, I-“ You whimper, too sensitive and too fucked out to properly string a sentence together.
“Yes you can baby, I know you can, go ahead and give me one more.” He soothes you, slapping your ass in contradiction to his kind tone.
You blindly reach your hand out behind you, wanting something to ground yourself on. He grabs your hand, giving it a squeeze before pulling out of you entirely. The sudden loss of contact leaves you confused before he’s flipping you onto your back, spreading your legs and sliding home once more. This time he grabs both of your hands, lacing your fingers with his as he braces them next to your head. His pace is still slow but unforgiving. His pupils are blown out and hooded as his eyes bore down into your own that are now teary.
“I got you, m’right here, let go, I know you can.” His voice is strained and you can tell he’s trying to hold his own release off, desperate to feel you come again.
His lips attach to yours, sloppy and wet as he sucks on your tongue. One of his hands lets go of yours as he trails down to your cores, gently flicking at your nerves to feel you clench before settling on a relentless speed that has your eyes rolling into the back of your head.
“Say my name baby, tell me who’s making you feel this good.” His tone is possessive and cocky as he pulls away to stare at you, obsessed with your face as you climax.
You scream his name as your orgasm washes over you, feeling like a tidal wave that has washed away anything but him and the ecstasy youre floating in. You hear him let out a deep guttural groan as his hips falter, trying so hard to fuck you through your own climax but the feeling of you squeezing around him is too much. You feel like you're floating when you feel him twitch inside of you, coming for longer than he ever has with you. You revel in it as he collapses down onto you, a comfortable crushing feeling that makes you never want to leave the bed.
You’re not sure how long you laid there, letting him pepper your neck with sloppy kisses as you tried to stroke his sweaty back, your efforts not the most successful as you felt like jello. You could feel the comforting feeling of him softening inside of you, still so big. You still didn’t feel like you were inside your own body when he finally pulled out and cleaned you up. It wasn’t until he was turning off the light and climbing into bed next to you, still naked, that you really felt human again. As he pulled you into his chest you felt an overwhelming sense of dread, knowing there was no good way for this to end. You were silent, nuzzling into his chest, trying to hold on to the moment for as long as possible.
“For the record, I meant what I said, no man in his right mind would ever be embarrassed by you.” Lewis says, tightening his arm around your waist.
You don’t respond, just press a kiss to his chest, enjoying the scent of him.
“I should know, I fumbled you pretty fucking hard.” He continues, much to your surprise.
You lift your head to look at him, shock written across your face.
“I’ve missed you.” He says, staring into your eyes in the dark room.
“I’ve missed you too.” You admit, laying your head back down to rest on his chest.
“I’ve got some other events to go to this week, come with me.” His words sound less like a question and more of a statement.
“Excuse me?” You look at him again, once again surprised.
“Come with me and let me show you off how you should be. I fucked up once, not doing it again.” His words are confident, sure of himself in every way.
You’re not sure how to respond, elated by the fact that this is exactly what you’ve wanted for so long, and terrified by the same thing. Words don’t come to you, all you can do is stretch up to kiss him, your mouths frantic against each others. His arm tightens around your waist as he pulls you up to lay on top of him, your legs falling around his waist. You kiss him mindlessly, brain dead at the feeling of his lips.
“Like I said, my girls gotta be taken care of.” He says against your lips as he moves you to slip himself inside of you once more.
As you slide down onto him once more, feeling him fill your heart and your core, you know no one else will ever be good enough for either of you again.
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beskarandblasters · 3 months
Text
Repent Your Sins
Stepdad!Din Djarin x Mandalorian/F!Reader
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Main Masterlist | Din Djarin Masterlist
Author’s note: Consider this a little celebration for the 1 year anniversary of the Mandalorian season 3 premiere! Thank you @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin for beta reading! 🥹🤍
Summary: Ever since the Mandalorians reclaimed Mandalore, you’ve been apathetic about moving there. To top it all off, your mom got remarried. Your new stepdad, Din, suggests visiting the Living Waters to feel more connected to the creed. When you’re finally alone, pent up feelings come to the surface, leaving you to ask yourself— Are you really about to fuck your stepdad?
Word count: 2.9k
Warnings: canon divergent, post season 3 finale, reader is able-bodied, stepcest, fingering, semi public sex, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, creampie, pet names (cyar’ika, mesh’la), light angst, Din’s a little creepy in this lmao, no use of y/n
Fic notifs: @beskarandblastersfics Fic recs: @kelbellsficrecs
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Life on Mandalore has been nothing short of hectic. It’s not that you don’t like having the clans living amongst each other. But the fact of the matter is you don’t feel like Mandalore is your home. You didn’t grow up on Mandalore and based on the legends you didn’t understand why the others were so determined to come back. And now that you’re living here, you still don’t get it.
They’ve done their best to make the place feel more like a home. Houses made of stone have been built but they’re more utilitarian than cozy. They’re still trying to figure out what land can be used for farming and it’s a miracle no one’s starving yet. 
And then there’s your mother. Your mother decided to get remarried once you got settled here and she chose to marry none other than Din Djarin. You expected your mom to get married again sooner or later. She’s been lonely since your father passed away during battle many cycles ago. But you didn’t expect her to marry Din. You’ve heard the rumors about him but you didn’t meet him until right before everyone went to reclaim Mandalore. You didn’t have time to address your attraction to him back then but that’s when it started. Between the saunter in his step, how broad he is, and his brilliant silver armor you’re head over heels. Not to mention how good he is with his then-foundling and now son, Grogu. 
He’s been the only person concerned about your transition to life on Mandalore. As if your attraction to Din needed to grow any deeper. Your mother has been busy with Bo-Katan and the Armorer, developing infrastructure and surveying land for farming. Which left you alone with Din and Grogu. He’s been great with checking in with you here and there. 
On the rare occasions when he went with the others to attend to matters, you were left to watch over Grogu. And it made you seethe with jealousy. Not that you didn’t like watching Grogu. You just felt like you should be out there with your man. Because deep down, you developed not only a crush but a slightly possessive one at that. 
You think he feels it, too. There have been times when his visor lingers on you. And although you can’t see his face like he can see yours, you can only imagine what his expression is like underneath his helmet. Or it’s a pat on your shoulder or his hand on the small of your back as he’s trying to scooch behind you. It’s literally anything. It doesn’t matter what because your mind has convinced you that he wants you like you want him. Sometimes you think you’re crazy, that you’re foolish for believing that your stepdad could possibly be into you. 
But maybe you’re not so crazy after all. 
It’s another typical day for you. You’re sitting outside, looking up at the muddled atmosphere. You sense Din beside you out of your peripheral, towering above you. 
“Doing alright?” he asks, crouching down to sit beside you. He sets Grogu down, letting him waddle around on the rocks, lifting a few of the small ones with the Force. 
“Not really. But it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. What can I help you with?”
“Probably nothing. I’m just never going to get used to this place being home.”
“Can I suggest something?” 
“What is it?” you ask, turning to look at him. 
“What about doing some things to feel more connected to the creed?”
“Like what?”
“Have you visited the Living Waters?”
“No.”
“I would start there.”
“I thought you only had to go there if you messed up. You know… like you did,” you joke. 
“Very funny,” he deadpans. 
“But I’ll go if you think it’ll help.”
He scoops Grogu into his arms and stands, offering his free hand to help you up. You grab your helmet and take his hand, standing so close to him it makes your stomach flutter. You look down before replacing your helmet on your head and see his hand flex after he lets it go. And it leaves you wondering what that could mean. 
You bid him goodbye, feeling his visor burn a hole into you walk away. The journey to the Living Waters is uneventful. Most if not all of the threats were cleared out by the others a while ago. 
Once you get there you take off your helmet and jetpack, sitting on the stone floor by the water's edge and enjoying the solitude. It’s actually peaceful down here and you hate feeling that way. You’ve gotten so used to being apathetic about every aspect of this place that feels weird to enjoy something here for once. Since moving here you’ve gotten used to being alone, since your mother and the other clan members have been so busy. Aside from the moments with Din and Grogu, of course. But here it feels like you’re alone on your own terms like you chose for it to be this way instead of the others just abandoning you. 
“How are you doing?” a voice says behind you. 
You startle with a jolt, turning your torso to get a glance at who’s there. It’s Din, of course. Who else would it be? No one else cares this much to come all this way to see how you’re doing. You’re surprised you didn’t hear him but you must’ve been too far in your own head, reflecting. 
“I don’t mind it down here,” you say, turning to face the water again. 
He detaches his jetpack and sits beside you like he did on the surface, but this time he spins around to face your side, back nice and straight up nice and straight with his hands resting on his knees. You scooch around to meet him in the middle, both of you facing each other. Grogu’s noticeably absent this time. 
“Where’s Grogu?”
“Playing with the other younglings.”
“My mother?” 
“Still with Bo-Katan and the others. Something about planting a few test crops to see how they take.”
“Ahh.”
“Just admit you like it down here,” he says. You can just by his voice that he’s wearing a smug grin on his face. 
“Fine,” you roll your eyes, “But don’t tell anyone. Or else they’ll start asking me to help out.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m just glad something finally got you to feel better. Even if it’s just a little bit.”
“Yeah…” you trail off. You turn your head back towards the water and ask, “But why do you care so much?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you care if I’m happy or not?”
“I know what it’s like to move to a strange place, to feel like you don’t fit in.”
You stifle a snort, prompting him to ask, “What?”
“When have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in?” you say, turning your head back towards him. 
“Lots of times. Especially when I’m the only Mandalorian in a room.”
“Oh yeah? So what did you do to make yourself feel better?”
“It’s empowering not to fit in.”
“How so?”
“It means there’s something about you that sets you apart from the others.”
“I don’t think I have that.”
“You do. You just don’t see it.”
“And what’s that?” 
“Your spunk.”
“My spunk?”
“Yeah. You’re not afraid to let your mother have it. That’s for sure.”
That gets you to laugh, a real laugh. Maker, you haven’t laughed or felt this much joy since before you moved here. 
“Thanks for saying all that,” you say, inching closer to him. 
“I mean it,” he says, leaning forward. 
Without thinking you inch closer even more and now the gap between you two is almost nonexistent. You gaze directly into his visor, imagining what he looks like underneath his helmet. As if he read your mind, he gravitates his hands towards the bottom edge of his helmet, lifting it off of his head. You throw your hand over your eyes out of respect. Is he crazy? He just redeemed himself for doing this not that long ago. 
“You can look. We’re a part of the same clan after all.” 
His voice. His unmodulated voice. 
“Really?” you ask. 
“Yes really,” he chuckles. 
You put your hand back in your lap slowly, taking in his appearance. He’s better than you ever could’ve imagined. His brown curls are slightly matted from his helmet, albeit in a cute way. His facial hair is slightly graying along his jawline. And his eyes, so warm and brown they make you melt. 
You’re so close to him that his warm breath tickles your face. He’s so intoxicating it makes your mind short-circuit. Without thinking you lean forward, closing the small and almost nonexistent gap between you two, pressing your lips against his. He freezes, his body going tense and stiff before melting into the kiss. His hand finds your chin, his rugged and calloused fingers gingerly touching your skin. The kiss grows more and more passionate; more heated. His tongue brushes against your lips, begging for access. But it’s almost like that brings you back down to reality. This isn’t just any man you’re kissing. This is your stepdad. 
You pull back and look at the water again, hoping that he doesn’t notice how flustered you are. 
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Don’t be sorry. You were just acting on your feelings.”
“My feelings?” you say, looking at him again and raising an eyebrow. 
“Yes, your feelings. It was only a matter of time before you acted on them.”
Your heart drops to your stomach. 
“H-How long have you known?”
“A while. Since before your mother and I got married.”
You place your head in your hands, mortified and groaning in embarrassment. You feel him inch closer again, bringing his head by your ear like he’s whispering a secret. 
“Don’t be embarrassed. I feel the same way,” he whispers, tickling the shell of your ear. 
“You do?!” you ask in disbelief, poking your head up. 
“Mhm,” he says, kissing you again with the same grip on your chin.
“But aren’t we breaking the creed?” you ask, pulling away again but hovering over his lips. 
“Look where we are, cyar’ika. We can just bathe in the Living Waters after.”
“I guess you’re right…”
“Relax, mesh’la. Let me take care of you.”
He gently pushes you so you’re lying on the stone floor. He pulls off one of his gloves and hovers over you, ghosting his fingers over the fly on your flight suit. You’re embarrassed by how wet you are already. But it’s natural given how much you’ve fantasized about this moment. You just didn’t expect it to take place here beside the Living Waters. 
He opens the fly of your flight suit and palms the wetness in your underwear. His mouth curves into a devious smirk before he bites his bottom lip. You look down between your legs and see the bugle in his fight suit, his cock hard and straining against the fabric. 
“You’re so wet, cyar’ika. I’ve barely touched you.”
You whimper in response and he chuckles darkly, watching as you writhe under his touch. He loves every minute of it. 
“Have you touched yourself and thought of me?”
Your mouth opens to respond but no words come out, surprised at his bold question. 
“You can tell me, cyar’ika.”
“Y-Yes,” you admit. 
“What did you think about?”
“Uh, something not too far off from this.”
“Tell me,” he repeats. 
“You sneaking into my room at night, touching me while I sleep.”
“Dirty girl,” he says, resting on the back of his heels. He opens your flight suit more, taking your underwear in his hands and ripping apart the fabric. You gasp but he doesn’t stop, tearing your underwear in half before pulling them off of you and tossing them to the side. 
“Din!” you say, turning your head and glancing at the strewn fabric. 
“Need you. Now,” he grunts, taking his pointer and middle fingers in his mouth, slicking them with his saliva. You spread your thighs apart farther, aching for his touch already. He slides his pointer finger inside you, curling it painstakingly slowly against your g-spot. 
“Mm, Din please, I need more,” you whine. 
“Are you begging?” he asks, hovering his face mere inches above yours. 
“Kriff… Yes, I am.”
“Say it.”
“I need more… more fingers,” you whimper.
“Good girl,” he praises, pushing his middle finger inside you. 
Soon the cavern is filled with your moans, echoes bouncing off the rocky walls. He brings his head over your cunt, spitting a wad of saliva over your clit before rubbing his thumb over it. Your back arches up off the floor and he steadies you with his other hand on your hip. 
“Wanna feel you cum all over my fingers, cyar’ika. Can you do that for me?” 
“Harder,” you beg. 
He obliges, picking up the pace of his fingers inside you and his thumb on your clit. With one last push against your g-spot, you cum, walls clenching and releasing his fingers. 
“Good girl,” he praises, astonished at the amount of wetness you produced. 
You ride out your high with a jumbled string of moans, whimpers, and curse words, letting your orgasm subside. He pulls his hand from you, holding his fingers above your mouth. They glisten under the dim lights of the mine.
“Open,” he commands. 
You do as you’re told, opening your mouth for him. He places his fingers inside your mouth and you taste yourself on your tongue. He guides your mouth close with a hand on your jaw, commanding again, “Suck my fingers.”
Once he’s decided you’ve done enough, he pulls his fingers from your mouth and grabs your chin, kissing you deeply while his other hand pulls out his cock. He rests on his heels and takes off his other glove, gathering your spend and slathering it on his cock. You prop yourself up on your elbows to get a look and somehow it’s more than you could’ve ever imagined it to be— long, thick, and uncut. 
“Are you ready, cyar’ika?” he asks, hovering over you again and coaxing you to lie back down. 
You nod and he thrusts into you slowly, burying himself down to the hilt. 
“You feel so good like this pussy was made for me,” he says, nestling his head into the crook of your neck and sinking his teeth in your skin. Your response is barely coherent, another mix of moans and curse words. 
“Use your words, cyar’ika.” 
“Harder, p-please. I can take it.” 
He pokes his head up and meets your gaze again, lips curled into that damn devious smirk. 
“I knew you could,” he says before kissing you. He draws his hips and slams into you. It’s a symphony of pants, whimpers, the sound of skin slapping against skin, and the wet, squelching sound your pussy makes. You tangle your hands in his hair, tugging on it lightly. He moans into the kiss and thrusts into you harder, until you cum around his cock. He pulls his head back and studies your face as you cum. Tears roll down your cheeks as your orgasm ripples through you, core muscles spasming erratically. 
“Good girl,” he says, repeating it over and over again while the pace of his thrusts never falters. 
He cums inside you, balls deep and hitting the deepest angles inside you. You’re filled with the warm feeling of his release, looking at his face as he cums. His eyes are closed and his mouth is open in a soft O. The curls on his forehead are matted with sweat and sticking to his forehead. You can’t help but absentmindedly bring a hand to his cheek and stroke his facial hair. He’s beautiful. 
He pulls out of you and sits between your legs. The post-orgasm clarity is settling in and you’re left with the reality of what just happened. You zip up your flight suit and sit up, looking at him with a wild expression in your eyes. 
“What now?”
“Into the waters we go.”
He puts his cock away and stands up, offering you his hand. You stand and walk down the steps with him, slowly submerging yourself in the water, never letting go of his hand. 
“Repeat after me: I swear on my name. And the names of the Ancestors, that I shall walk the way of the Mand’alor… and the words of the Creed shall be forever forged in my heart.”
You say the phrase back to him, looking in his eyes the entire time. Although you’ve just repented for your transgressions, you can’t help but feel like it doesn’t matter. The feelings you have for him only run deeper after what just happened. 
He leads you out of the water where you replace your helmets and reattach your jetpacks. He turns to you one last time before leaving and says, “No one can know.”
“No one can know,” you repeat before he takes off and you’re left with the stillness of it all, wondering if that will be the first and last time you have sex with your stepdad. 
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beatrixstonehill2 · 19 days
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"This was me at nineteen versus now at twenty-one..... This sucks so bad! My transition was going so well, I was so pretty, my cock was tiny, my tits were big and full. Men absolutely adored me, I could hardly keep them off me. I miss having so many cocks rammed in my ass every day against my will, it was so hot! Ughhh..... I went to the doctor like normal, they tested my bloodwork and stuff. The doctor remarked that my cock was extremely small. I said I was fine with that and wanted SRS, but he smiled and said he thought I'd prefer it if I got to experience real orgasms with my cock before resorting to something extreme like SRS. He also told me I was very skinny for a trans girl my age and asked why I didn't want to be curvier. I told him I wouldn't mind a big butt and bigger boobs, and he put me on some crazy high dose of estrogen.
I rolled my eyes and agreed, because I'm a true submissive. Well..... after about a month I packed on twenty pounds and my cock was already five inches fully erect and I couldn't keep my hands off it. My balls finally got big and plump. It was so fun to jerk off. I used to need a cock ramming my prostate to cum, and even still, my cock would be flaccid, one inch, and barely ooze out one shot of clear cum. Now I was jerking off eight to twelve times a day, shooting rope after rope of milky white cum like a boy. I loved it SO much! Men loved it, too. They had a nice toy to play with as they fucked my ass. My cock became so red and swollen all the time, I posted pics of it on social media constantly! My parents were also thrilled by all the fun I was having with my cock, encouraging me to masturbate all day and go out to get fucked way less.....
I kept packing on more weight, at least twenty pounds a month. I tried to rationalize that it would taper off, that I wouldn't keep getting heavier. Plus in the short term I was so thick and sexy, and men found me even hotter, despite the fact that I had this huge cock now. Or because of it..... Six months on the new meds and I was about 210lbs, almost doubling my weight, and my cock was about a foot long, thick as my wrist, with two extremely generous testicles, both the size of a lemon. They were so hard to sit with and even walk with at times, but I could cum so fucking hard. Fifteen to twenty huge ropes of cum every orgasm. I'd moan like such a slutty princess every time, whether I was getting fucked at a party or at home, covering myself and my computer area with so much glorious cum, I never bothered washing it off. I loved stinking of it, sitting there, my fat belly jiggling, my boobs bouncing, my thick thighs pushing against my oversized balls.
But it kept getting worse. I got fatter and fatter every month. Now I'm so disgusting. You'd never know I was so sexy a couple years ago, barely any cock at all. Now I weigh almost 600lbs, and I can't stand it. I feel so gross and unsexy. Men want nothing to do with me, I'm just another smelly, fat trans girl who turned into a slob. I'm so fat I can barely walk, I just sit home, never bathing, never doing makeup or trying to look good. My cock is about sixteen inches, buried under loads of fat, my balls feel ready to burst all day. But my doctor recommends I don't jerk off, since my health is so bad and my blood pressure is through the roof.
The medication blew me up like a balloon, I wasn't even overeating, but now I stuff my face since it's one of the few pleasures I can still indulge in, even if it makes me feel even grosser knowing I'm just getting fatter. My cock is so hard all day but my doctor tells me all that excessive masturbation I like has put me at a very high risk of heart attack. Sometimes I'm naughty and push my belly down on my cock as I watch pretty girls on Instagram dance at parties like I used to. Their big tits bouncing, their bellies full of kids as they take shots and get fucked all night. I'm so jealous. My favorite is when I follow a trans girl who's nice and petite, getting fucked every night like a good girl, rubbing her tiny cock, only for a few months to pass, and I see her little cock grow to six inches, shooting thick ropes of cum suddenly. Her boobs get bigger, her thighs and butt get super thick, and she gets a cute belly to form, her pretty face getting round, with a double chin, looking so perfect and sexy. I push my giant gut on my cock knowing in a couple years she'll be just as fat and disgusting as me. I crush my huge cock, as my heart pounds through my chest, I moan and pant, and I finally cum, my chest gets so tight, my pulse feels impossibly fast and I make the biggest mess between my legs. Rope after rope after rope. I'm covered in sweat, feeling like my heart might finally give out, and slowly I settle down, my parents scolding me for cumming, despite how they used to encourage me to jerk off all day.... I know I'm so unhealthy and my heart can't take these heavy orgasms of mine, but it's soooo worth it, even if I am a disgusting pig now. I'm so glad my doctor put me on these meds...."
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$100 billion later, autonomous vehicles are still a car-wreck
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Autonomous vehicles were always a shell-game. The last time I wrote about them was a year ago, when Uber declared massive losses. Uber’s profitability story was always, “Sure, we’re losing money now, but once we create self-driving cars, we can fire our drivers and make a bundle.”
https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/30/death-to-all-monopoly/#pogo-stick-problem
But Uber never came close to building an AV. After blowing $2.5b, the company invented a car whose mean-distance-to-fatal-crash was half a mile. Uber had to pay another company — $400 million! — to take the self-driving unit off its hands.
It’s tempting to say that Uber just deluded itself into thinking that AVs were a viable, near-term technology. But $2.5b was a bargain, because it allowed the company’s original investors (notably the Saudi royals) to offload their Uber shares on credulous suckers when the company IPOed.
Likewise Tesla, a company that has promised fully self-driving autonomous vehicles “within two years” for more than a decade. The story that Teslas will someday drive themselves is key to attracting retail investors to the company.
Tesla’s overvaluation isn’t solely a product of the cult of personality around Musk, nor is it just that its investors can’t read a balance-sheet and so miss the fact that the company is reliant upon selling the carbon-credits that allow gas-guzzling SUVs to fill America’s streets.
Key to Tesla’s claims to eventual profitability was that AVs would overcome geometry itself, and end the Red Queen’s Race whereby adding more cars to the road means you need more roads, which means everything gets farther apart, which means you need more cars — lather, rinse, repeat.
Geometry hates cars, but Elon Musk hates public transit (he says you might end up seated next to “a serial killer”). So Musk spun this story where tightly orchestrated AVs would best geometry and create big cities served speedy, individualized private vehicles. You could even make passive income from your Tesla, turning it over to drive strangers (including, presumably, serial killers?) around as a taxicab.
But Teslas are no closer to full self-driving than Ubers. In fact, no one has come close to making an AV. In a characteristically brilliant and scorching article for Bloomberg, Max Chafkin takes stock of the failed AV project:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere
Chafkin calculates that the global R&D budget for AVs has now exceeded $100 billion, and demonstrates that we have next to nothing to show for it, and that whatever you think you know about AV success is just spin, hype and bullshit.
Take the much-vaunted terribleness of human drivers, which the AV industry likes to tout. It’s true that the other dumdums on the road cutting you off and changing lanes without their turn-signals are pretty bad drivers, but actual, professional drivers are amazing. The average school-bus driver clocks up 500 million miles without a fatal crash (but of course, bus drivers are part of the public transit system).
Even dopes like you and me are better than you may think — while cars do kill the shit out of Americans, it’s because Americans drive so goddamned much. US traffic deaths are a mere one per 100 million miles driven, and most of those deaths are due to recklessness, not inability. Drunks, speeders, texters and sleepy drivers cause traffic fatalities — they may be skilled drivers, but they are also reckless.
But even the most reckless driver is safer than a driverless car, which “lasts a few seconds before crapping out.” The best robot drivers are Waymos, which mostly operate in the sunbelt, “because they still can’t handle weather patterns trickier than Partly Cloudy.”
Waymo claims to have driven 20m miles — that is, 4% of the distance we’d expect a human school-bus driver to go before having a fatal wreck. Tesla, meanwhile, has stopped even reporting how many miles its autopilot has mananged on public roads. The last time it disclosed, in 2019, the total was zero.
Using “deep learning” to solve the problems of self-driving cars is a dead-end. As NYU psych prof Gary Marcus told Chafkin, “deep learning is something similar to memorization…It only works if the situations are sufficiently akin.”
Which is why self-driving cars are so useless when they come up against something unexpected — human drivers weaving through traffic, cyclists, an eagle, a drone, a low-flying plane, a deer, even some pigeons on the road.
Self-driving car huxters call this “the pogo-stick problem” — as in “you never can tell when someone will try to cross the road on a pogo-stick.” They propose coming up with strict rules for humans to make life easier for robots.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17530232/self-driving-ai-winter-full-autonomy-waymo-tesla-uber
But as stupid as this is, it’s even stupider than it appears at first blush. It’s not that AVs are confused by pogo sticks — they’re confused by shadowsand clouds and squirrels. They’re confused by left turns that are a little different than the last left turn they tried.
If you’ve been thinking that AVs were right around the corner, don’t feel too foolish. The AV companies have certainly acted like they believed their own bullshit. Chafkin reminds us of the high-stakes litigation when AV engineer Anthony Levandowski left Google for Uber and was sued for stealing trade secrets.
The result was millions in fines (Levandowski declared bankruptcy) and even a prison sentence for Levandowski (Trump pardoned him, seemingly at the behest of Peter Thiel and other Trumpist tech cronies). Why would companies go to all that trouble if they weren’t serious about their own claims?
It’s possible that they are, but that doesn’t mean we have to take those claims at face-value ourselves. Companies often get high on their own supplies. The litigation over Levandowski can be thought of as a species of criti-hype, Lee Vinsel’s extraordinarily useful term for criticism that serves to bolster the claims of its target:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#dont-believe-the-hype
Another example of criti-hype: the claims about the risks of ubiquitous drone delivery — which, like AVs, is half-bullshit, half self-delusion:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#droned
Today, Levandowski has scaled back his plans to build autonomous vehicles. Instead, he’s built autonomous dump-trucks that never leave a literal sandbox, and trundle back and forth on the same road all day, moving rocks from a pit to a crusher.
$100 billion later, that’s what the AV market has produced.
Image:
Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Gartner (modified): https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle
[Image ID: A chart illustrating the Gartner hype-cycle; racing down the slope from the 'peak of inflated expectations' to the 'trough of disillusionment' is the staring eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, chased by speed-lines.]
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bon2bonn · 1 month
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Change of winds
22!F1!grid X female!driver!reader
Words count : 3.2k .
* I'm so sorry for the long delay 🙏🏻 💔 . 💀🤦🏻‍♀️Life is shit in general and I can't finish any of my WIP list , so this might be the last update for a while until I could make/find the time to breathe and get some proper writing done .
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2.october
Stretching after a long dreadful meeting was the first thing she did once everyone dismissed themselves out of the room , suppressing a yawn by covering her mouth as she leaned back in her chair in exhaustion . Today was a full schedule and that means back to back meetings along with legal and audit reviews of months worth of work , not to mention the preparations for upcoming events and gala's due to end of year celebrations back in headquarters .
To say her schedule was packed would be an understatement, but she made sure to not overwhelm herself and made time to check on the guys . she hated how they all got distracted by their busy schedules and lives in general, now they barely got a chance to meet eachother at their Spare time, and that was hard on all of them , the transition of going from spending most of their time working together even spending their off time close by to separate across the globe with them traveling constantly and her tucked away from one meeting to another not to mention the different timezones far away from their reach .
They still made the effort to call and leave voice messages daily, keeping her up with what's happening on the grid, and she in return left them all with voice messages and calls before every race , wishing them luck and a safe drive , religiously tuning in to every quali and race despite the time gaps and the work load , even indulging her now employees to enjoy the sport too , unknown to them how she herself used to race not long ago , some even recognized her but kept quiet out of respect to not get her unwanted attention, so she made most of the time to distract herself from the pit of uneasiness growing in her chest , and her almost overflowing schedule helped in that aspect.
A light knock snapped her out, followed by her assistant Lauren who peeked her head in , giving her an apologetic look making her sigh deeply before ushering her in " what now? " Lauren winced as she briefed her on the situation " you remember Mr Solly ? , head of the Australian branch is outside waiting on for an urgent meeting, something to do with the recent changes regarding the finance and marketing department " she tilted her head at the name " he came all the way to France to complain?" Lauren just nod not knowing what to say, making her huff a laugh " that's dedication, I'll give him that " taking a quick glance at her watch she then decided "Alright, I have 20 minutes before the next meeting so send him in , and please make sure to send out the Japanese deadline notice before we head to Montreal " Lauren nods as she typed on her pad then handed her the next meeting files " this will be our final meeting for the French branch , tomorrow will be field day and you have an appearance at Paris d'or gala , then you're free till Wednesday night , we'll be heading to Spain for the launch then we'll fly to Montreal form there before heading to New York on the 13th " she slumped over the desk dramatically , Groaning as she grumbled " and I thought my media duties were torturous " making Lauren remember " by the way the new Media team are going to attend the event tomorrow evening and will accompany us through the rest of the way back to UK " she snapped her head at the news " what!? , no no no " Lauren nod at her miserable face " yes, be grateful they're not following you everyday" , she straightened her posture and nods " if they try to get on my nerves I'm ditching them for good " Lauren nods in agreement " fair enough " then she made way to the door , letting Mr Solly in before closing it behind her .
The man walked in confidently with a certain look in his eyes, one she saw too many times to recognise with ease, he was sizing her and at the same time giving off the illusion of power , of having the upper hand over the situation, and she wanted to see the show he was trying to put up to it's end so she held her tongue as she greeted him " Mr Solly, you're a long way from Australia" he nods stoically " Ms L/N, I apologize for the inconvenience , I know how demanding your schedule is these days " she gave him a bored look " good to see we both think of it the same way " , her statement made him clench his hands but he kept his cool and proceeded " well , it's about the financial arrangements you installed previously and we see that they're a bit , extreme " she leveled him with a raised eyebrow " and may I ask who is we? " He cleared his throat " well the .... The directors and ..." She didn't waste time listening to his lame excuses " if my memory serves me right , and it does. The 'arrangements' as you called them were approved by the board members along with the department manager himself and the shareholders " his breath hitched and she didn't stop there " these arrangements came in time with various complaints from within the department about missing numbers from the accounts and they're not just small undetected numbers, they're big Mr Solly, too big to get swiped aside as human error or collateral casualty, so I'm asking you directly Mr Solly, do you have something to say? " , he clenched his jaw before he gritted out " what are you insinuating? " She leaned back on her chair with a wide grin " I'm not insinuating anything Mr Solly, I'm just asking obvious questions? But you seems to already know the answers " , He straightened his back and dropped his fake smile " you have no idea how things work, this is bigger than you , you think you can just come in and run around as you please just cause you're sitting on that chair? It's only a matter of time before everything crumbles because of your ignorance , you won't be smiling then " , she feigned surprise " are you threatening me Mr Solly? " He seemed satisfied with her reaction as he smugly answered " no , I'm simply enlightening you " she shook her head in boredom, staking her files and intertwined her hands on top of the stak giving him a wide smile unfazed by his falling apart façade " then let me enlight you in return , in two weeks time will be the next evaluation, I'll expect one of two things when I turn up by then , either your full report along with the missing accounts and data or your resignation letter, it's up to you to choose which one I'll be receiving first " .
She stood with a silent huff , not giving him space to react or answer back to the accusations and collected her files " now if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be , I'm sure you know your way out " she made her way to the door and left like nothing happened.
The man was at the point beyond seething, he screamed at the empty chair, slamming his hands on the desk and proceeded to kick at chair before him . She stood by Lauren's desk, not bothering to glance at the closed door where the shouts of anger radiates off " charge him if he damaged anything and be sure to have at least one of the security to..... help him out if needed , and let me know if Martin call back or send the files I asked about " with a final nod she made her way to the next meeting .
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Posted Tuesday , 4.oct .2022
The L/N official
📍Paris, France 🇫🇷
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Liked by Lewishamilton , Pierregasly, Redbullracing , and 2,274,119 others
TheL/Nofficial . light mode ☀️, night mode 🌑✨ , First official post with our lovely boss @Y/nsworld, we kicked off our journey with Paris 🗼 enchanting glamour, thank you France for the hospitality and we can't wait to return for more 🇫🇷♥️ .
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4.october 2022
Letting a chuckled at her frowning face , then shared an amused grin over her head with Sergio who extended his arm out for her to hold into " I thought you'd be more hungover than this " , she gave him a hard glare reaching blindly to smack him as she replied emphasizing with each smack " and I thought you'd be nicer " he dodged the last one groaning as he held his wounded shoulder from her assault " you ditched me for months!! and when you show up you hit me !? " She shrugged " I'm suffering and you're the one responsible for it so you have to suffer too " she turned to Sergio who was now laughing at their fight while kylian scoffed at her "it's not my fault you drink like a bottomless pit ! I told you to slow down !" She turned her head back to scowl at him " I was nervous!! and you dared me to drink half of what we had!" He looked away at her accusations finding interest in the ceiling , away from her glaring eyes .
She rolled her eyes and asked " where's Leo ? He's my favourite anyway, and he's for sure nicer than you " he pouted and made his way behind her to wrap his arms around in a tight hug, swaying them from side to side as he whined " I thought I was your favourite?! " She held his arms with one of her hands while she used the other to reach back to give him a hard pinch on his side " not when you're amplifying my headache " making him yelp in pain and flinch away holding his side " fuck! " , she ignored him and turned to Sergio who was holding back his laugh and raised an eyebrow at him with her eyes narrowed " you want one ? " He backed away raising his hands in fear " no thank you" she nods and made her way towards the rest of the team waiting for the tour guide to lead them further into the newly built facility .
Her father's company has been one of the main investors which made the responsibility to attend on a short notice to attend the tour either along with the other investors from other companies or with the team itself, and since she was barely conscious that morning when Lauren flooded her phone with SOS messages to drag her not even 15 minutes later to attend with the team their first tour on the newly built facility .
So here she is , willing her tired self to push through the day in favour of sleeping her killer hangover away , not to mention her little shit of a best friend who is making hard for her to not throw him in one of the construction containers to serve him for poking fun at her .
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5.october
Tom made his way to the stairs, avoiding the crowded lift in order to clear his mind a bit , a little exercise with some music won't do him any harm , so with his headphones on loud he took the first two floors before contemplating his choice as his legs started to shake , and it didn't take long for him to deem his choice a shitty one and used the exit door to find the lift in the third floor .
He leaning on the wall to support his weight as he waited to catch his lost breaths , and when it finally arrived it was way less crowded than he expected, with only one lady standing on the side with her hands clapped before her in an elegant way , he adjusted his hoodie and greeted her in a polite " hello " receiving a nod back before taking the other side further from her after pressing the top floor, focusing his eyes on his phone to pass the time , after a moment she asked after noticing where he's heading " you're going for a meeting too ? " He looked at her then shrugged " you can say that " she hummed in thought then pointed at what he was wearing , a hoodie along with jeans and his hair a mess , and gave a disapproving face " I don't think you have an appropriate attire for such place " even shaking her head with disdain " kids these days " he gave her a side glance , huffing a laugh under his breath before speaking aloud " well , it's a good thing i didn't ask for your opinion nor approval on that , seeing it's none of your business " leaving her with her mouth shut and hands clenched into fists , and made his exit when they reached the floor , rolling his eyes at her then turned round the corner and out of her sight.
He came face to face with Eddie who looked ready to head to a meeting, giving him a glare as he stood his ground with his arms crossed making Eddie clap his hands in a pleading manner " it's a last minute meeting, I wouldn't go if it wasn't urgent, it's only half hour consultation " when he didn't receive any answer he went for bribery " I'll get you a brand new set " Tommy gave him an unimpressed look " Bibi already did send me one from France " Eddie rolled his eyes with a mumble of " of course she did " before huffing at his youngest brother and asked " what do you want ? " Tommy extended his hand with his palm up " I'm driving back , and for the next week " he glared back at him and Searched his pockets before throwing his key at Tommy's waiting hand pointing at him in warning " just this time " and hurried down the hall to the meeting room , he swung the keys around his finger as he made his way to Carlton , his brother's longtime assistant who sat behind his desk as usual , making the later look up when he made his way over , smiling up at him as he leaned on the desk " look what Van Gogh dragged in " Tommy's smile widened , with his dimples on full display as he peeked his head over the screen that Carlton was working on minutes ago , " oh , no need for insults , you could just say you missed me " Carlton raised an eyebrow at him and scoffed " yeah sure , I do miss you missing up my files and distracting me half of the time you're here , and the other half you spend whining up and down about being board " Tommy kept his grin and teased with his eyes squinted " so you do miss me ! " Carlton rolled his eyes and sighed going back to his work " sit your ass down, I got work to do " he saluted and made his way over to set of plush chair across from the desk and made himself comfortable then started working on one of his sketches , moments later he heard his name being called, and when he looked up he was greeted by a slightly medium sized bag aimed at his face but he caught it before any damage could happen, and before jumping to send it back at Carlton he looked at the bag and his smile returned at the sight of his favourite candy , and called out in a sweet voice " ooooh , so you did, did missed me !? " making the other mumble under his breath " sometimes I regret doing so " making Tommy ask loudly " what was that ? " , " nothing! , if you don't want it give it back ! " The call made Tommy hug the bag and lean away "ok! I want it ! And thank you for thinking of me ! " making Carlton groan and burry his blushing face on his hands almost regretting his action , almost , but the sound of Tommy's loud humming made him take it back , " huummmn , sweet , but not as sweet as you~ " , yup he definitely regrets it now .
Back to Edward who was making his way to his urgent consultation after handing over his car keys, taking a breath before unlocking the door and stepping in , about to greet the Clint who turned out to be a woman standing by the window overlooking the skyline of London with her back facing him , but his words died in his throat when she turned around to face him , a smile made it's way upon her lips and she didn't hesitate to greet him , taking notice of his stunned face and stiff shoulders " hello Edward , it's been a long time " , he couldn't grasp if it's real or if he was having a cruel dream , no a nightmare . but it took him a moment to find his voice again and ask in disbelief " Mom ? " .
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wannabe-fic-writer · 7 months
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Wanda Maximoff x Reader - Pick-up Line
Summary: Perhaps being a little corny isn’t so bad.
Warnings: None
Word Count: 1,801
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Laughs and giggles ring out around you, a hand pushing gently at your shoulder as your friend urges you on.
“You gotta do it Y/Ln.” He says, still lightly pushing, the playfulness clear in his gesture.
Shaking your head, you duck your gaze from the woman you’d seen at the bar.“ I’m not nearly drunk enough to go embarrass myself, thank you very much.”
For a second it seems they accept it, until your closest friend, Darcy, pipes up.“ I dare you.”
Sounds of instigation circled the booth instantly after and you shot a narrow eyed look at the brunette from across the table.
After a rather hard day at work, you and your friends all decided to come blow off some steam at a bar not too far from your job.
On a Friday night the place was growingly crowded but you managed to slip into a booth that seated you all comfortably and after two shots, paid for by your friend, you stopped caring how many people were in the building.
Music filled the space alongside chatter and laughter from the other patrons, only adding to the atmosphere that allowed everyone to start unwinding.
Drinks were ordered almost as fast as they were drunk, jokes filled the air, and the usual conversation and banter accompanied all of you. For the most part, you managed your avoid being the target of the jokes, until you were caught staring.
A woman had come into the bar, clad in black heeled boots, black skinny jeans, and a simple dark red top which was only revealed after she removed her coat, and she looked gorgeous.
You were nearly mesmerized at the way her long auburn hair flowed and bounced with each move. Becoming even more so when she turned to face the stage and you caught the sharp cut of her jawline and her high cheekbones. You didn’t have to be close to see that she was beautiful.
Sadly though, you were caught “ogling” her, and was promptly teased which transitioned into them telling you to go talk to her.
Knowing that you were no more than a gay mess, you hardly entertained the idea. You could appreciate beauty from afar and avoid embarrassment all at once.
Your friends knew that’s how you felt and told you not to take yourself too seriously. According to them you couldn’t go wrong with humor so Sam suggested you try a pick-up line to which you had to admit, you only knew lame ones that the internet provided.
Unswayed, he told you to go use one and your bashful ‘no’ met nothing but encouragement from everyone. That is until Darcy dared you.
Of course you could say no, avoid the humiliation and go on about your night, but you really couldn’t.
Having known Darcy since you were in college together came with baggage. Not the bad kind, just the kind that had you wishing there was none.
One truth or dare game at a party years ago, where the both of you swore you would never back down from a dare, was carried through years of friendship. Three little words, ‘I dare you’, more often than not led to one of you making a fool of yourselves and it seems that tonight, it was your turn.
The split second you take to consider saying no is met by a raise of the brunette’s eyebrow and your pride swallows the word.
After tossing back a shot for courage, you push yourself up from your seat and make your way across the room, fingers nervously tapping against the pockets of your jeans.
The distance between each barstool provides enough space for you to slide up beside the redhead with ease.
Now that you’re here: beside her with the burn of your friends’ obvious stares, you clam up a little. But you accepted the dare, and you’d honestly come too far to back out. Seeing how gorgeous she is up close however makes you wish the first thing out of your mouth wouldn’t be some lame pick-up line.
Still.
Clearing your throat, you turn your body to face her, plastering on a look of curiosity.“ Excuse me for bothering you but I saw you from across the room and I couldn’t help but wonder… is your father a thief by chance?”
Instantly, an expression of clear offense covers her features. A little line forms between her eyebrows as she frowns.“ Pardon me?”
“Well, I just have to assume he stole the stars and put them in yours eyes.”
A second of silence passes in which her frown gives way to confusion. The second she processes what you said a laugh tumbles from her lips and she slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle the rather loud sound.
Heat rushes up your neck to your face as she continues to laugh and more than a few eyes land on the two of you, plus the loud laughter of your friends coming from the booth a few feet away. Embarrassment floods your body and you wish the ground would swallow you whole right about now.
“Um, sorry,” you find yourself saying, a hand rubbing at the back of your neck,“ I- just- enjoy the rest of your night.”
Before you can even fully walk away, soft yet cold fingers circle your wrist and you turn back to see the woman looking at you. Amusement dances through her eyes and across her face as she studies you.
“I’m sorry, don’t go. I didn’t mean to laugh like that.” She gives an almost apologetic smile.“ I promise I’m not laughing at you, I just was taken off guard by where that went.” As she speaks, you pick up the accent in her voice.
Using her words as an invitation to keep talking, you ease back into the space by her seat.“ It’s okay, really, I know that was rather corny. My friends dared to do it and I did.”
Her head tilts in the slightest, her eyebrows slightly furrowed.“ Corny?” She questions.
At first you’re not sure what she means by reiterating it but the genuinely puzzled look in her eyes tells you she’s unfamiliar with the term.
“Oh, it means like, lame or unoriginal.” You try to explain, then adding,“ embarrassing.”
The way she looks at you after makes your breath catch in your throat. While you can’t quite place the expression in them, you now notice the brilliant color of her eyes, the low bar lights casting a golden glow in her green orbs.
Tongue darting out to wet her lips, fingers gingerly twirling the little red straw in her glass, she says,“ I don’t think it was corny,” she smiles a little,“ I thought it was quite cute.”
“Really?” Playfully you quirky a brow while leaning on the bar.“ Because I could’ve sworn you thought I was offending you by calling your father a thief.”
Yet again she laughs, hand over her mouth. Only this time, the cutest little snort sounds from her right before she does.
As her hand lands on your arm, laughter still spilling from her, you smile and resolve to keep eliciting that cute sound from her so long as she wants to be bothered by you.
It turns out, she wanted to be bothered by you all night.
From that moment on, the two of you never once stopped talking. You briefly paused after your friends closed out their tab and bid you goodbye, then you fell back into the enticing aura that the woman radiated.
You both nursed another drink or two, split an order of loaded french fries, and even discussed the music being played by the solo performer on stage. All throughout, you managed to ease ever closer to each other.
Having started with her hand on your arm then shifting to shoulders bumping, leaning closer to hear over the loud environment, fingers brushing while reaching for more fries, or her chest pressing against your arm as she moved to grab a napkin.
In the beginning you were sure she was just being friendly, entertaining you so as not to have you leaving the bar embarrassed by your poor pick-up line, but each conversation or lingering touch led you to believe maybe there was more there.
Still, even after last call was given and you paid for both of you before exiting the bar together, you never veered too far from the line of “friendly” despite your rapidly growing attraction to her.
Her hand slips around your arm as the two of you fall into step with each other, heading towards the parking lot.
The cool air feels incredible on your cheeks, warm from the drinks and sore from smiling so much. It also seems to make the woman a little cold though, or you assume so as she presses even closer to you.
“Um,” you clear your throat,“ how far back did you park?”
“I’m actually right here.” She points to a red hybrid car not but two spaces down.
In silence, you walk her the rest of the way to the car. She fishes her key out and unlocks it but neither of you make much of a move to leave after.
Looking around, you take in the darkening night and still lively surroundings before looking back. Green eyes are already on you, roaming over your face in an observant way that you’ve come to recognize.
“What?” You chuckle, ducking your gaze.
“Nothing,” she shakes her head.“ Just- thank you. It’s been a while since I’ve laughed so hard.”
That makes you smile, hand rubbing the back of your neck as you reply.“ No problem. I’ve been told I’m pretty funny. We can meet up again and I’ll give you my stand up routine,” you say teasingly, followed by a chuckle.
“Okay.” Her tone is void of any teasing, eyes holding serious interest. She digs into her pocket again and steps closer.
Taking your hand in one swift motion, she flips it palm up and click a pen, before gently writing on your hand.
“Call me,” she clicks the pen again and backs up to her door,“ I’d be more than happy to laugh at you.”
With a teasing smile and wink, she gracefully gets into her car, leaving you dumbstruck in the middle of the parking lot.
As she pulls off she waves and you do the same, still partly frozen.
Of all the things you expected of tonight, getting the number of a gorgeous woman wasn’t on the list. And it happened because of a stupid dare.
It’s after you’ve slipped into your car that you pull your phone out and tap on the most recent conversation.
‘Thanks.’ You send.
‘You’re welcome dumb dumb.’ - Darcy
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Taglist: @owloftheshadows @blackxwidowsxwife @b-5by5 @lostandsearching @iliketozoneout @alotofpockets @caspianalexander @yeeterthekeeper @ecruzsalaz @natasha-danvers @fayhar
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tiannasfanfic · 1 year
Text
Second Place
Eddie Munson x Reader (Angst)
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| Eddie & Steddie Masterlist | AO3 Link |
Summary: Four years ago, when Eddie Munson chose Chrissy Cunningham over you, it sealed the coffin on your budding romance, as well as your longtime friendship. Now, seeing him at a bar one night brings back a lot of painful memories.
Rating: General Audiences
Author Note: Gender neutral Reader, they/them pronouns used (if any). Angst and Hurt. I have no idea where this came from, I had the idea today and put everything else on hold to write it.
CW: Eddie being a dick; two different breakups; social alcohol use; tobacco use; mentions of past sexual encounters (suggestive, no details); suggestive dialogue.
Word Count: 2,123
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“We’ve only been dating for three weeks, Y/N. I don’t see what the big deal is. We can just go back to being friends while I see how this plays out.”
“It doesn’t fucking work like that, Eddie! Not for something like this!”
You sighed, remembering that night four years ago as if it were yesterday.
The memory of all the pain, the hurt, the anger you felt back then rose up to the surface of your mind. You vividly remembered how sick you felt, how fuzzy your head became, how much your heart broke.
“If things don’t work out with Chrissy, we can pick this up right where we left off, I promise.”
But instead of making you rage or even have a panic attack, watching Eddie on stage from across the bar just made you sad.
Sad for so many years of friendship ended.
Sad for a romance that had only just begun.
And sad that looking at him still made your heart ache.
“I’m not going to settle for being second place, Eddie.”
It had all been so great at first, all those years ago. Eddie asking you out had been a dream come true after falling hard for him years before in middle school. While you knew he had a sweet side, you didn’t know how sweet until you were the object of his affection.
There were a few dates, a few hangouts, a few steamy nights in the back of his van. It was amazing and everything you had ever wanted with Eddie
But then he started dealing to the newly single head cheerleader at the start of Spring Break and soon it was all over.
Despite the fact they hadn’t spent time together since middle school, Eddie’s childhood crush on Chrissy Cunningham had carried over throughout the years. Seeing and talking to her on a regular basis brought it right back to the surface, especially once they began hanging out after each deal.
Since your relationship was so new, not many people had really figured out that the two of you had made the transition from best friends to lovers. The guys in Hellfire knew, your other best friends, Robin and Nancy, knew but that was really about it.
And so, when Eddie told you that Chrissy asked him out, you couldn’t be mad at her. It was an honest mistake, especially since you and Eddie were on the opposite end of the social caste from Chrissy.
However, you could be mad at Eddie since he told her yes.
It was the most bizarre experience of your life, listening to him tell you how much this meant to him having Chrissy notice him, and how excited he was about it, and how he knew with you being his best friend that you would understand that he had to see where things went with her.
You most certainly did not understand. Who would?
This resulted in an argument that ended all aspects of your relationship with Eddie, both the long term friendship and the new romance.
Once the words were said and ties were severed, you were both quiet as you gathered up the belongings you had left at the trailer over the years. You were quiet as you walked through the living room, passing by were Eddie sat on the couch, eyes downcast. You were quiet when you walked out the front door, careful like you always were to not let the screen door slam behind you.
And you somehow managed to stay quiet until you were alone in the confines of your room, where the dam finally broke.
Luckily, you only had to put up with seeing them together at school for a little over one month. Once you all graduated, you hadn’t seen Eddie at all except for in passing, neither of you acknowledging the other.
Presently, your friend, Gina, elbowed you a bit roughly in the ribs.
“Hey, no sad faces on my birthday!” she giggled at you, already a bit tipsy.
“Hmm?” you said, finally breaking your gaze away from Eddie to look at her. “Oh! Sorry.”
“You alright?” she said, eyeing you worriedly. “For a second there, you looked like you were about to charge the stage and punch that lead singer in the mouth.”
The visual her words conjured up in your brain made you chuckle, but you shook your head.
“Nah,” you said. “That song just reminded me of someone I used to know.”
Gina nodded knowingly and patted you on the arm. She understood all too well what kind of power music had. Sensing the need to cheer you up, she broke off that line of questioning and steered you back into the conversation at the table, which steered your thoughts away from Eddie.
The conversation flowed for the remainder of Corroded Coffin’s set, as well as afterwards. Once the band was offstage and the sound system switched back over to the jukebox, it was a lot easier to hear each other.
Having spotted you in the crowd, it wasn’t long before Gareth, Jeff and Grant made their way over to you to say hello.
They never stopped being your friends after the breakup. They had been just as surprised as you by it, always figuring the two of you would end up together, and we’re a bit angry about the whole thing.
So angry, in fact, that when Chrissy broke up with Eddie two months after graduation, Jeff called to excitedly tell you all about it.
Chrissy thought they were just too different. They didn’t have much in common, she said. Their interests were too varied, their life goals on different paths.
While you could have told Eddie all of that yourself beforehand, and did, you didn’t feel vindicated like Jeff sounded.
No, you actually felt really bad for Eddie as Jeff was filling you in about it all.
Despite how hurt you were, you did still care about Eddie and you really hoped it would work out for them. You didn’t want Eddie to go through what he put you through. Plus, now he had to live with the knowledge that he sacrificed one of his oldest friendships with someone who truly loved him for nothing.
Okay, so, maybe you were a little vindictive and that latter bit was nothing more than wishful thinking on your part, nut everyone has dark thoughts like that from time to time when they have been hurt.
But, from the sound of it, Jeff was feeling vindictive enough that he really wanted Eddie to think about that exact thing, too.
“Give him a few months,” he said. “He’s going to realize how much of a dumbass he was. You’ll have him back before you know it.”
“Jeff,” you sighed. “I don’t want him back.”
“Don’t you still love him?” he asked. “Four months isn’t long enough to get over someone you liked that much for so long.”
He was right and there was no point in trying to deny it.
“Of course I do,” you said. “But no matter what, I’d always be his second choice. I would think about that every day, that he’s only with me because Chrissy didn’t want him anymore. I’m not going to do that to myself.”
Thankfully, the topic never came up again, but you were even more thankful that Jeff’s prediction didn’t come true. Eddie never tried to contact you in the years since then.
The guys didn’t visit for long before going to hang out with their friends who came out to see them play.
After some time had passed, the bar had gotten busier and the noise level of the crowd started to get under your skin. You excused yourself away from your friends to step outside for a cigarette and a bit of fresh air.
Not long after you settled back against the building to smoke, you heard the door of the bar open.
“Those things will kill you, you know,” came a familiar voice.
You looked over to see Eddie walking towards you, lighting his own cigarette.
“So I’ve heard,” you said, taking a drag off yours.
Eddie came to a stop near you and, leaving a few feet between you, also leaned against back the building.
“Nice night tonight,” he said, looking up at the sky.
“Yeah, it is,” you agreed, as you gazed across the parking lot.
And then silence.
While you’d imagined what you would say to Eddie if he ever talked to you again plenty of times, you found that you weren’t as riled up by his presence as you’d pictured yourself in those scenarios. You felt pretty neutral about his presence, not really bothered by it except to wonder why he followed you out here.
You didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Hey, um,” Eddie said, breaking the silence. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry I was such a dick to you. That was a bullshit move I pulled, and I’m really sorry.”
You turned your head to look at him. Eddie was still looking at the sky but lowered his gaze to meet yours. You could see that he was genuine. It was all over his face and in his eyes.
While you’d also imagined what you would say on what you thought was the incredibly rare off chance you ever got an apology from Eddie, you suddenly realized none of those responses you always saw yourself saying seemed appropriate anymore.
Instead, you nodded politely to him.
“Thank you,” you said. “I really appreciate that.”
Eddie nodded in return, then you both looked away to stare at the pavement.
Neither of you spoke again until after you had finished your cigarette and ground it out on the sidewalk with your heel.
“Hey, Y/N?”
You looked by over to Eddie to find him watching you with a nervous expression.
“Would you ever want to go out sometime?”
You stared at him for a moment, seriously thinking it over. He watched you, waiting patiently for your answer.
This was another one of those scenarios you had thought of often, especially after Jeff had put the idea in your mind. But, unlike all those other scenarios you had thought of, this one you never could imagine how you would react to.
After you thought it over, you met his gaze and slowly shook your head.
“I told you, Eddie,” you said. “I won’t settle for second place.”
The disappointment was evident in his face, but he nodded understandingly.
“Can’t blame a guy for asking, can ya?” he asked, throwing you a halfhearted grin.
“No, I can’t,” you agreed, but didn’t return his smile.
You walked past him to head back inside, but then stopped halfway to the door. A spark of anger suddenly ignited into a tiny fire in your brain. It took a lot longer than anyone would’ve thought, but Jeff’s prediction had come true.
And, after four years of radio silence, that suddenly struck you as the most ridiculous thing you had ever heard.
Suddenly, you found yourself turning around.
“Hey, Eddie?” you said, keeping your voice steady despite your sudden anger. “Can I ask you something?”
He turned to you with a hopeful look on his face.
“Anything, sweetheart.”
It took you a moment to figure out the way you wanted to phrase your question.
In the meantime, you looked him over while he patiently waited. You couldn’t deny he was as gorgeous as ever, especially when he was still flushed and hot from the flushed high of adrenaline of performing on stage.
Briefly, your mind flickered back to the memories of the nights you came to see Corroded Coffin perform while you were dating. Eddie nearly ravaged you after each show, leaving you sore, walking slow and grinning for days.
Judging from the slight dilation of his eyes, and the way they kept flickering to key spots on your body, you knew all it would take is a word from you and his lips would be at your throat, his hands wandering all over your body in all the places you’ve missed them.
But even as your anger drained away as you looked at him, you decided you needed to know the answer now that the question crossed your mind.
“Looking back on it now,” you said slowly, keeping your tone even and measured. “Was it all worth it?”
Eddie studied your face for a moment then his expression fell into one of regret as sighed sadly and looked down at the ground.
Even though he said nothing, he spoke volumes. It was all you needed for an answer.
You turned around and went back inside the bar, not feeling any happier now in the least.
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Eddie Munson Taglist: @eddie-swhore @tayhar811
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Text
The Boyfriend Experience - Ch.2
Author's Note: I'm sorry this took me like 289380 billion years to finish. I hope you guys like it
Word Count: 5.9 k
Pairing: Eddie Munson x Reader
Warnings: Depression, loneliness, isolation, negative thoughts and emotions but fluff to make up for it
You do not have permission to copy, translate or repost my work onto other sites or social medias. This work is my own and it is owned by me.
Nothing was happening. At this point, you thought Eddie had forgotten all about his ‘Boyfriend Experience’ proposal. Since that night in your apartment, Eddie hadn’t done anything. You had both seen each other, too. So it wasn’t for the lack of being around one another. Once a week the party gets together to hang out. Sometimes it was a movie night, sometimes an excursion to do other activities depending on the season. It was getting closer to fall. The heat was starting to break and cool down more and more in the daytime, staying nice and chill in the evening. You loved this transition into fall. All the things of comfort that you loved. Comfort food, soft blankets and scary movies. It made you happy. However, you also found yourself thinking of Eddie. When you curled up on your couch with a horror movie on and some good food, your mind wandered to how nice it would be to have someone with you. Before, it used to be a vague idea of a ‘someone’. Just wanting another body next to yours, enjoying the same things that you enjoyed. But now? Now all you could think about was the warm smell of Old Spice and brown curls out of the corner of your eye. 
Your hope that you had shamefully attached to Eddie without him knowing was starting to dwindle fast. The more time that passed without him bringing up his plan or doing much of anything with you made that hope fade and fizzle out. Eddie was still nice to you, of course. Like he always had been. He talked to you, included you in the conversation with the group when you grew quiet and off to the side. He even gifted you a little affection when in front of the others. It dawned on you one day that he probably didn’t want to do anything because of the others being around. Of course, it made sense! Why would he want everyone to know he had done something with you? Kissed you? It all made sense now. Even if a small voice at the back of your mind said Eddie wasn’t that type of guy. But you weren't the one most wanted. 
You went through phases like the one you were in now. You were fine with being alone a lot. You had been and felt alone for most of your life. Not many friends, no romantic partners, and just faded into the background. You grew accustomed to loneliness. However, every now and again, you yearn. You yearn for companionship. Wherever you could get it. You once again found yourself in that position. Yearning. As you scrolled on your phone, you saw a few Instagram posts from friends, liking and commenting on some things. You chuckled as you spotted a photo of Nancy and Jonathan looking at puppies in a pet store. You transitioned to your messaging app, texting Nancy asking if she and Jonathan were planning on getting a puppy now that they lived together. After a few more minutes of scrolling, you decided to set down your phone and get some chores done.
You spent time dutifully cleaning your apartment. You always felt better when your place was clean. Too cluttered with mess made you feel like you coudn’t think or focus. However, you decided to take a break from running around busting your ass and sat down with some water, picking up your phone. You went to see if Nancy texted you back since you had texted her a while ago. No new messages. You opened up your text to Nancy.
Read: 2:17 pm
You looked at the time on your phone. 5:45 pm. You deflated, setting your phone aside. ‘Maybe she’s just busy’, you tried to rationalize. But the tiny voice in the back of your mind told you otherwise. No, she just didn’t care enough to answer. You sighed, going back to Instagram seeing another recent post from Nancy. So she was on her phone. You tossed your phone across the couch. To anyone else, this wouldn’t be a big deal. You were being too sensitive, you tried to tell yourself. You took the pillow from behind your back and shoved it on top of your phone as if it would somehow silence the bad thoughts swirling in your head. 
When things like this happened, you knew it was time to step away. If you continued the way you were, you would only get hurt. So you ignored your phone for the evening. Sometimes, that helped, but sometimes it didn’t do much to ease the thoughts swirling in your mind. Instead, you tried to stay positive. The next day, you decided to venture out of your home. You got dressed in something that made you feel comfortable. A large black hoodie, some black leggings and your red boots. Large and comfy, not wanting to feel self conscious today in any way. You found yourself wandering back to Family Video to rent some movies. When you walked inside, Steve and Robin weren’t alone.
All the gang, minus the kids, were there talking about something. When you walked in, Eddie was the first one to look up and see you. You smiled softly at him and wandered over to the horror movie section. Seconds later, Eddie was there.
“Hey, sweetheart.” he greeted, leaning against the shelf of movies.
“Hey, Eddie. How’s it goin?” you asked as you pulled a few movies from the shelf.
“Pretty good. Work’s keeping me busy,” he sighed, “But money is good. Means I can do more fun things.”
“Oh yeah? Like that?”
He grinned. “Spend it on something or someone I care about.” He shrugged, as if his answer meant nothing.
You looked at him, raising a brow before frowning. “If you think you’re gonna be spending any money on me, put that back in your head.” you warned, and Eddie sighed dramatically.
“C’mon, babe.” he murmured and moved closer. “Can’t treat my best girl to something?” Best girl. His best girl.
You shook your head. “You’re a ham, Eds.” you told him, bumping your shoulder with his as you head back to the counter. You placed the old movie you rented on the counter, adding the new ones to be rung up, too. Steve jumped to take care of your movies.
“So we can all leave here by six tomorrow? Should make it there on time. Maybe get a motel for the night?” Nancy suggested to the group, the others nodding along.
“There something going on?” you asked them.
Eyes turned to you as Nancy nodded. “We’re heading to the city to go and check out this club.” She answered.
“You’re all going?” you asked, glancing around the group as the others confirmed they were going. “Oh,” you murmured and silence followed.
“We know clubbing isn’t exactly your thing. That’s why we didn’t invite you.” Steve supplemented when the awkwardness began to kick in. You thanked whatever god was out there that you managed to control your face quick enough when you realized everyone was looking at you. You felt the ache in your chest of being excluded. Clubbing wasn’t Jonathan’s thing either, yet he was invited. Eddie didn’t like clubbing either unless it was somewhere that played music he liked. Yet, he was invited. You managed to school your face into a neutral expression. Neither happy nor sad. Just nothing. You felt the familiar burn of tears threatening to make themselves known and averted your eyes to the top of the counter. You dug into your pocket and handed your money to Steve. This was the second time now you’ve come into Family Video and had your feelings hurt. Maybe next time you’d rent somewhere else…
“Have fun.” you murmured with a small smile, taking your movies and swiftly exiting the store. You didn’t make it very far before tears gathered on your lash line. You got to your car and pulled open the door, sliding into the driver's seat and tossing the movies into the seat beside you. You took a long, shaky breath and turned the ignition. You saw the door to Family Video open up, Eddie stepping outside. You already pulled out of the parking spot, turning and heading back to your house before you could even think about what Eddie wanted. He most likely was stepping out for a smoke since Steve had had to yell at him in the past for trying to smoke in the store.
—----------------------------------------
Eddie was trying to take things slowly. He realized with his proposal that he might have come on too strongly. He didn’t want to scare you. No, he wanted this to work out well. Not scare you off before he gets the chance to get close to you. So he kept a little distance. He hadn’t meant to be as distant as he was as work took over his life. He wanted to see you. He missed you. He cherished it when he’d get to see you at least once a week at group functions. Eddie was invited to Family Video by Steve, something about plans they were making. So he had gotten dressed and hopped into his van, driving over to Family Video. When he walked inside, he saw everyone but you and felt the disappointment take hold at not seeing you standing with everyone else. He wandered up to the counter and scrunched his nose hearing a club mentioned. The only time Eddie liked going to clubs was if they played the music he liked to listen to. He wasn’t fond of the usual shit the clubs played. He’d go just to have some overpriced drinks and smoke inside, but otherwise he had no stake in it. He agreed to going, assuming that you had also been invited but weren’t here to make plans for it. You usually went along with whatever plan was made beforehand. 
When the door opened and the bell went off, Eddie looked over and grinned at seeing you walk inside. Of course, as soon as you broke off to go look at movies, he followed after you. He hadn’t seen you in two days, not that he was counting. He walked with you back to the counter and when you had asked what was going on; it hit him that you weren’t in on the plans to go to a club in the city. The second that ‘Oh’ left your lips, he wanted to hug you. Hearing the sad tone was enough to crack his heart. At Steve’s words, Eddie couldn’t help the prickle of annoyance in his chest. They knew he didn’t like clubbing either, but they had invited him. He knew the last time you all went to a club you had practically stuck to whoever was closest to you, not wanting to be left alone with all the drunk strangers. 
Then Eddie saw it. 
He had been looking at you and after Steve’s words he saw the flash of hurt on your face. It was in your eyes and on your face for all of half a second. Then he saw your face melt into indifference. Nothing shows on your face to betray your feelings. He just watched you go stone cold in seconds to cover how you felt. But he knew. He saw it. He saw the hurt and rejection. Even your tone as you told them to have fun held no emotion in it. The smile you offered was one to throw them off. Then you were gone. Eddie watched your retreating back and he looked back at the others. They seemed none the wiser. Eddie knew that they had good intentions. That they didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable in any way. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling he got seeing you school your features to not let the others in on how you were feeling. Eddie moved without thinking and without explanation, pushing the door open of Family Video just in time to see you pull away from the store. He wanted to jump out in front of your car. Anything to make you not run off from them. From him. But Eddie watched you go. Standing out there in the parking lot was when Eddie decided he would not be going tomorrow evening. No, he couldn’t do that to you. Instead, he headed back inside to let the group know he was bailing on them. Citing something more important that he had to do and ignoring the looks from Jonathan and Nancy as they glanced at one another.
The next evening was when Eddie’s plan came into action. He knew you well enough, listened to you well enough to know you would be at home in comfy clothes, keeping to yourself. So Eddie packed himself an overnight bag and headed to your place. It was sunset, and he knew you were home. He was happy to see your car parked outside your apartment and quickly made his way to your door. He could hear you inside. It sounded like you were cooking something. He knocked on the door a couple of times. When the door opened, he grinned at the sight of you. You were in a hoodie, hair pulled into a messy bun at the top of your head. Your sweatpants were baggy and tied around your hips like you had bought mens sweatpants and were unable to keep them up. Orange socks with jack-o-lantern faces on the tops of your feet poked out from the legs of your sweatpants. 
“What’s cooking?” Eddie asked, smelling something savory coming from your kitchen.
—--------------------------------
It was homemade chicken noodle soup. A comfort food for you. After the past few days, you were ready to just take time for yourself. Sometimes a self care day just makes you feel the tiniest bit better. So you planned a good meal, a bath, skin care and lots of comfort. You had chopped up all your vegetables. The usual carrots, celery, onion and garlic go into the pot. You seasoned your chicken bone broth with thyme and a sizable bay leaf. You always made more soup than one person probably needed. Usually getting a couple of bowls out of it, but you didn’t care. You had put all your veggies into the broth to simmer to soften the veggies and get some good flavor into them. You shredded up some chicken, noodles already ready to throw into the soup when it was finished. A movie played in the background as you tossed some garlic bread into the oven. Jack was just touring the hotel he would be working in for the winter. You smiled softly as you moved to your coffee table, lighting up a candle and going back to the kitchen for a drink when you heard a knock on the door. You stopped mid-stride. You certainly weren’t expecting anybody since all your friends had gone into the city to that club and you had no other friends. You frowned and approached the door carefully before leaning up on your toes for the peephole. Despite the fact that the thing was murky as hell, you could always recognize the mop of brown curls on the other side. You quickly opened the door, staring up at Eddie. At his question, you opened your mouth and closed it again. Why was he here? Shouldn’t he be with everyone else? Your eyes drifted to the bag on his shoulder. 
“Uh, chicken noodle soup and garlic bread.” You answered, stepping back to let Eddie inside. He moved inside like you had expected him. There was a dull thud as his bag hit the floor. Eddie crouched down and opened up his bag, pulling out clothes. You blinked, slowly backing up into the kitchen, a little more confused now. You opened the fridge and poured yourself some water. “Water or beer?” You called out.
“Water!”
You grabbed another glass and poured Eddie some water. You shuffled back to the living room and stopped short seeing Eddie changing in the middle of your living room. “Uhh, Eds?” you tilted your head to the side. His pale skin contrasted his tattoos well. Black ink against alabaster skin portraying things Eddie had drawn up himself. Unique art on a unique human being. For never being a jock, Eddie had muscle. You’d seen the amplifiers he had picked up before, so you knew his arms were muscular before you even got this chance to ogle them. He had a little waist and a tiny bit of pudge on his stomach. It was funny to you in that moment that you admired his tummy, but you hated your own. You wanted to poke at his tummy and hug him, feel the warmth of his skin against yours and the contours of his body.
“What’s so funny?”
You moved your eyes from Eddie’s chest to his amused face. “Nothing,” you murmured and held out the glass to him.
Eddie took the glass and took a sip before humming and shaking his head. “Nope, something was definitely funny. Was it something about my chest? You were staring pretty hard.”
Your face immediately grew warm knowing that he had caught you staring at him. “I-”
“You can stare all you want, sweetheart. Take a picture if you want, too.” Eddie set his glass down and reached for his belt, undoing it faster than you had ever seen someone unbuckle and remove a belt from their person. He popped the button on his jeans next.
“Soup! Gonna… soup.” You half shouted, half mumbled before retreating into the kitchen quickly. You removed the lid from the pot and stared down into your soup as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
When you finally got your breathing under control and you stopped picturing Eddie taking his belt off in your living room, you returned to your task of making dinner. You pulled the garlic bread from the oven and dumped the egg noodles into the pot. You reached up to grab some bowls, but another pair of hands stopped you in your tracks. Eddie grabbed the bowls, chest pressed to your back. He grabbed two of them and two small plates for the garlic bread, then set them on the counter. You swallowed thickly and wondered if he had put a shirt on. You turned your head and discovered that he hadn’t. You wiggled around until you faced him. Eddie smiled, placing his hands on the counter and trapping you in. “Not cold?” you murmured softly.
Eddie shook his head. “No, not cold,” he murmured back. One of his hands moved to your hip before sliding behind to slide up into your hoodie, touching your back. 
You stared up at him, chewing on your lip thoughtfully. He stared back at you and you watched as his eyes wandered from your eyes, then down to your lips. As he leaned in, you reached up and placed your hand on his jaw, your thumb resting on his lips. “Hold on, before you distract me,” you chuckle, feeling his lower lip jut out a little under your thumb in a pout. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the city?”
Eddie’s face shifted at your inquiry. No longer pouting, he now looked a bit sad and you thought you might have hurt his feelings by making it seem like you didn’t want him there. You moved your thumb off of his lip to let him speak. “I guess? But I knew you weren’t going and I wasn’t going to go without you…” he murmured. You watched his face for a moment. He looked like he had more to say to you and you hoped your silence would soon egg him on. You nodded your head a little. “How did you do that?” he finally asked quietly after a few moments of silence. 
“Do what?”
“You shut off.” You raised a brow at that. Shut off? Shut off what? “In the store the other day, Steve mentioned why they didn’t invite you. You looked upset for half a second, sweetheart, then… nothing. Like it never happened. I watched you just kinda… shut off?”
Oh. “You noticed that?” you whispered and Eddie nodded. His fingers soothingly rubbed the skin of your back. 
“Yeah, I noticed that.” he answered, “What was that?”
You didn’t want to tell him. You’d learned sometimes it was far better hiding your feelings than making other people ‘deal with’ them. You didn’t want to bother anyone with your emotions. “It was nothing, really.” you waved it off but Eddie was stubborn and you knew this. So it didn’t surprise you when he shook his head. 
“No, no. Not nothing. C’mon. Boyfriend time. Be honest with me and how you feel.” 
You sighed. There was only so long you could go with this and you knew this. Eddie was persistent when he wanted to be. Your hands moved to his chest before settling down at his waist. “I just… hid it.” you murmured with a small shrug as if it was nothing.
“Hid it?”
“My reaction. How I felt.”
“Why?”
The simple question in and of itself stopped you. You knew why but you also knew for some people it probably was a hard thing to grasp. You took a breath and sighed. “Because it’s better to tuck it away than to let people know you’re upset. So they don’t get upset that you’re upset and have to deal with how you… I, feel.” you murmured your explanation, distracting yourself with the tattoos inked into Eddie’s chest instead of looking up at his face. “It happens. Especially when I’ve had a rough week. It just… feels easier to tuck it away for the time being.”
“And what happens when it doesn’t stay hidden away?” Eddie practically whispered his question like he was afraid of the answer.
“You wouldn’t want to see that when it happens. It isn’t pretty.”
“I’m not here for just the pretty.” 
Your eyes moved up to his face. “Yeah?” your voice cracked a little and you resisted the urge to ask why he had waited all week to kiss you then if that was how he felt. Why he didn’t want to in front of everyone else. It never occurred to you that it might be for your comfort and not his own.
“Talk to me,baby. Tell me what’s happened this week.” Eddie murmured, pressing closer to you. His lips met your forehead in a soothing touch as you took a shaky breath. 
“I just felt…” your lips closed again. It was nerve wracking just telling someone plainly how you felt. How you hurt.
“Go on,”
“I felt ignored this week,” you admitted softly.
“By who?” Eddie asked, pulling back so he could see your face now.
“Nancy was first. Reached out and she left me on read that’s all… there was also what happened at Family Video the other day. You and Jonathan got invited to the club and I know it isn’t my scene but it isn’t yours either but you guys got invited. Then,” you stopped. The last thing had been Eddie. Not hearing from him since the first night he was there at your apartment with you and when he did see you he had acted as if none of this was happening. It made you feel a way you didn’t want to feel again.
Eddie was too observant in his day to day life but sitting there watching your face intently as you spoke he knew not just from your trailing off into silence that there was something else but he could see it in your eyes. He gave your side a gentle squeeze as if to pull you back to him. “Then,” he murmured softly.
Your eyes moved back up to Eddie’s face. You were afraid to hurt his feelings and the urge to tell him that it was nothing was strong. The way Eddie watched you made you feel like you should just tell him. If you didn’t, you risked him acting as if nothing had ever happened again. It felt almost like being used. “I know this isn’t real.” you started, “but you… I just hardly saw you this week and I know I’m probably overthinking it like the idiot I am but I didn’t see you for so long and then we finally have a party gathering and… I don’t know. I expected something, I guess.” 
“Something? Can you give me more details?” he asked, his other hand now moving to cradle the back of your head.
Band aid. Just rip it off. “Did you not want to kiss me in front of everyone else? It’s because it’s me, isn’t it?” you practically rush out. 
The look on Eddie’s face has your face growing warm with embarrassment. The shock written on his face at your words like he almost couldn’t believe you had asked him that. “No! No, Y/N. It’s not because it’s you. How could you… Fuck, babe. I’d kiss you in front of all of them but I didn’t for you. Not because of you. I didn’t wanna scare you off and I also didn’t want everyone to have a million questions especially cause I had no idea what you were thinking after last week. Trust me, if I thought I could get away with it I’d make out with you in front of all of them and risk whatever would be thrown at us to make us stop.” Eddie chuckled, tucking a piece of your hair back into your bun that attempted an escape. You pouted, lightly swatting his side as he mentioned making out with you in front of the others. It made sense what he was saying. If no one else knew of your ‘arrangement’ it might seem weird it happened. Besides that, one moment you both were just friends and the next you were all over one another? You supposed it wasn’t far off. “I know you’re also not huge on public displays of affection.” Eddie added on.
You shrugged your shoulders. That was actually due in part to being on your own. Being so lonely, yearning what other people had and those experiences sometimes made it hard to see people lavish affection on one another. It usually brought on a bitter feeling and thoughts about how you would never know what that would feel like. It was better not to see it than to see it and crave what you couldn’t have. You pressed your face to Eddie’s chest and sighed, taking in his warmth. “More like jealousy than anything else,” you mumbled your confession against his skin. You’d never been this close to a shirtless man before. 
“Jealousy, huh?” Eddie hummed and you could hear the smirk in his tone. “Might just have to make out with you on our first public date outting. Movies? Go real old school with it.”
“Not really old school like Skull Rock or Lovers Lake?” you tease and rested your chin on his chest.
“Oooh, you wanna go really old school, huh?” Eddie laughed and nodded his head, “We can do that.” 
You felt a little better having talked it out with Eddie. The conversation didn’t go deeper after that, but even the little that you had touched on felt like a weight was lifted off of your shoulders. Eddie made you feel validated. Not that your feelings were unimportant in any way. Sometimes you knew what was upsetting you could be ridiculous and was linked to a deeper problem at the time but it was nice just to be heard. There were multiple reasons why someone might not answer their phone or decide they will answer later and just forget. You sometimes just got into these depressive episodes where it felt like everything was the issue. The smallest thing was blown up in your mind because your mind was telling you these negative things. It was why you found nights like these helpful. A good meal, some movies and self care could sometimes knock you into a good headspace to start fresh again.
After your conversation, you and Eddie took your food into the living room. You both eat in silence as you watch the movie. Every now and again, Eddie makes a comment on the film or your cooking. When the food was finished and the rest put up, you sat on the couch and knew you should move on to your other parts of the evening before it got too late. Eddie dramatically draped himself over your legs as you stretched out on your couch. He wriggled his way up until his head rested on your stomach. “So, what else do you do on these cozy nights of yours?” Eddie asked, eyes glued to the TV.
“I do some skincare, have a good bath or shower. Get all pretty and soft skinned.” you answered as you began playing with his hair. It then occurred to you that Eddie was there. You moved your hand to his face, feeling his cheek before feeling his forehead then his nose. 
“Sweetheart… what are you doing?”
You giggle at his question and shrug. “Feeling your face compared to your T-zone.” you answer as if it was obvious.
“My what zone?” Eddie lifted his head to look at you.
“Your T-zone.” you poked his forehead, running your finger across his forehead, then down the bridge of his nose to form a T. “Some people are more oily in their T-zone. I was curious about your face. Do you wanna join me?”
“Are you gonna touch my zones again?”
“I’m gonna touch all over your face. Maybe your neck too.” you laughed. If you really wanted to you could spoil him by laying him down and giving him the full treatment. “Shower first though.”
Eddie immediately grinned. “Are we gonna shower together?” he wiggled his brows at you.
“I think it’s a tad early for you to see me naked.”
“Damn it.” Eddie sighed dramatically, “... you can still see me naked though.”
“You almost did show me. Remember?”
“Oh yeah… where did I throw that belt?”
—--------------------------------
Both of you took separate showers. Once you were clean, you had set out your stuff on your night table and sat on your bed. Eddie laid down on your bed with his head resting in your lap. You already had a face mask on and had diligently pulled Eddie’s hair back, strapping a headband onto him to keep his hair at bay from his face.
“So this is supposed to be good for you?” Eddie asked, eyes closed as you picked things up off of your bedside table.
“Yes, Eddie. It’s good for you.” you laughed as you wet Eddie’s face. You squirted some of your face wash into your hands and lathered it up before starting to clean Eddie’s face. You made sure to massage the cleanser into his skin. A small smile tugged at your lips feeling Eddie’s body relax further as you massaged his face. Once it was clean, you took a damp towel and wiped the cleanser off.
“Tranquilizer fingers over here.” Eddie mumbled quietly. You hummed as you started to paint a mask onto his face. “Oooh, what the fuck, is this normal?” Eddie asked, chocolate eyes open and turned up towards you.
“What’s happening?” you asked him with a frown.
“My face is tingly. Is my face gonna fall off?” his eyes were wide, concerned for the state of his face.
“Does it tingle or burn like a sunburn?”
“Tingle. It doesn’t hurt.”
You laughed and shook your head. “That’s normal, babe. If it burned then no.” you reassured him, smoothing more of the mask over his face.
“Oh thank god. My beautiful face,” he sighed dramatically. “So this relaxing stuff, you do it often?”
You nodded your head. “It helps me relax. Forget about everything that happens when it’s a bad day. Makes me feel fresh and renewed in a way. Relaxed, too.” you explained with a small shrug.
“Do you masturbate on these nights too?” Eddie chuckled, “Sounds like it’d go well together.”
You roll your eyes and nod. “Yeah, perv. That goes hand in hand too.” you laugh, gently tugging on his hair. 
Eddie managed to let you finish doing a face mask on him followed by putting some hair products into his hair. You even managed to paint his nails for him. Black, of course. At the end of the night when the beauty products were put away and the dishes cleaned, Eddie crawled into bed with you. You curled up beside him, snuggling close to him as he turned the night table lamp off. You listened to his heart beat. You took a breath and shut your eyes.
“Eddie,”
“Hm?”
“Thank you for spending time with me tonight.”
“Of course, sweetheart. Anything for you.”
—---------------------------------
It was still chilly. You were thankful for it. You had been watching your curtains blowing from the breeze coming through the open window for a while now. You looked over at the clock. It was later than you usually woke up but you had the day off and you currently had a man cuddling you. You found you liked cuddling or maybe you just liked cuddling Eddie. Either way, you were content. His breath fanned over your skin every time he breathed out, very much still asleep. You had entertained the idea of getting up and making coffee but that meant moving from where you were. Comfy and warm under your covers. Eddie’s arms tightened around you as if in his sleep he was telling you not to move either. You laid there just a bit longer.
It was your need for the bathroom that finally made you move. You carefully extracted yourself from Eddie’s hold and grabbed your hoodie from last night, pulling it back on. When you slept it was like a delicate balance of temperatures. Nice and cold inside the room but you couldn’t bundle too much to sleep or you’d grow too hot. You started up some coffee and then started making scrambled eggs with sausage. Just as you were finishing up Eddie stumbled out of the bedroom. You let your eyes linger on Eddie’s shirtless form walking mindlessly towards you.
“Hi,” you laughed as he shuffled towards you.
Eddie grunted, wrapping his arms around you and leaning in. His lips pressed against yours, lingering there, pressing gentle kisses against your lips. You melted against him, kissing him back and deciding this was something you could get used to. When he pulled away you whined quietly at the loss of his lips on yours. “Hi,” Eddie answered, voice gravelly from sleep. “You make me breakfast?” he murmured as his head moved to press his face to your neck. 
“Mhm,” you hummed, rubbing your hands over his back before wrapping your arms around him. “Hungry? Got coffee too.”
“So good to me,” Eddie murmured before lifting his head to kiss you again.
“C’mon,” you laughed, nudging him gently before pulling away to give him a mug.
Eddie took the mug from you and started to make his coffee. Soon the two of you were cuddled up on your couch to enjoy your breakfast together. Sitting there having coffee with Eddie felt good. It was comfortable and you found yourself thinking maybe you could get used to something like this. Maybe, just maybe, this was something you could have.
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barrenclan · 2 months
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(gestures to that one panel in the new issue) you see you can tell their family because of their matching eyebags
in all seriousness you are making me soo insane. i barely even touch tumblr but every once and awhile ill come check “new patfw updare? new patfw update?” like a lil parrot and i reread different pages so much i just. my brain chemistry has been altered. outside of the story and all that i love how you format the whole thing. ive never seen a comic formatted like this in my life with like the. the. the text outside of explicit dialogue still there you know but it scratches a little itch for me and you utilize it SO WELL. like i feel like if you were to switch patfw to any other format, outside of the effort itd obviously take to make it itd just be. really hard to get right if that makes sense. its just… so tied to its strange little format its great. if i may ask like. stupid question but is this just like a type of formatting you just decided to use or did you see it somewhere else beforehand? bc like it may be common or smth i dont read many comics man
weird tangent aside i love the characters, story all that too of course! theres just. so much to talk abt there i wouldn’t know where. To Start. youve done admirable job of fleshing out so many characters to some degree in the time youve had. some of barrenclan may be assholes but theres something to be said about all of them. beeface isnt mean all the time etc, you know? they dont feel static in the sense that they feel like they are living their kitty lives. slug family in particular just scratches a little itch for me i could go. on and on. i miss asphodel. if you kill any more of them i wont. do anything but i would be very sad.
i cant imagine the type of dedication and effort it would take to keep smth like this going and just. yeah!!👍 good luck with ur silly kitty comic solider
Thank you so much for all your kind words! I'm so glad you like the comic! I've had a lot of fun making it and the response has been truly flattering.
The "style" is not my own creation; it is inspired by one of my favorite webcomics, Paranatural, which transitioned out of traditional comics into this format a couple years ago. :] Like so:
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That is what it's based on! And I've seen setups like it in other places before, though none come to mind. However it's not very common in webcomic spaces - although my friend haw does have a new comic @pipjackal which uses a similar setup! Read Pip Jackal, please, for me. And Paranatural.
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uncanny-tranny · 2 months
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Something beautiful about the word transsexual is that contrary to popular (often by transmeds) belief, it has always included people who don't medically transition in anyway. It simply is an older word for what a lot of people would now call transgender and there are so many transsexual elders who never went on hormones and never had surgery but have identified as transsexual for decades and still do. I know transmeds have been around back in the day too, claiming that transsexual is only for medical transitioners, but many elders will disagree. Even if you look at some trans glossaries from 15 years ago they will define transsexual the same way that we define transgender. Transsexual and transgender are largely synonymous with different connotations to different people. The beauty is that we as trans people get to choose whether we want to reclaim a term that was put on us by cis people, or if we want to claim a term that was created by us for us, and both are beautiful and radical in their own way.
The thing about the history of transness is... we have documentation of trans people having existed for at least a thousand years. Trans history is ancient. We are a fact of humanity, not an option.
The interesting thing about transsexual is that it's a new word - coined in German as Transsexualismus by Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1920s, introduced later as transsexual. Around this time, more people were interested in what would be known as transsexualism. It's around this time and after the war that more and more medical transition options became wide-spread and practiced. Medical transition is by no means as experimental as people fear monger it to be, but in terms of trans history, we're living in a vastly different era than our trans ancestors.
The understanding of transsexual depends on who you ask, but it's my opinion that we ought to include as many transsexuals as possible. The idea that transsexuals are the Good Trans People, the ones who Put In The Work is an idea that's based on transphobia, not the language that's used. The attitude is the problem, the idea that we are inherently broken or must prove ourselves worthy is separate from the words that we identify with or are used to describe us.
It's for this reason that transsexualism is important to me. It's for this reason that I want as many people to be transsexuals as possible, whether or not you medically transition. I personally started preferring transsexual because I see it as political, as personal, as a community of beautiful people I want to help make good. If you don't identify as transsexual, that is great! But, please, know that transsexuals are also not stereotypes. We're not the Good Ones. We are part of the broader trans community, and thus, we should all work together.
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