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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

#pluralistic #uefi #owner override #user override #jailbreaking #dmca 1201 #schneiers law #descartes #nub of certainty #self-destruct button #trusted computing #secure enclaves #drm #ngscb #next generation secure computing base #palladium #pixiefail #infosec

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stayconnecteed · 5 months

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❪⠀🪐.⠀𓏔⠀i wanna be yours · masterlist⠀❫

☆ㅤif you like your coffee hot, let me be your coffee pot !!

synopsis: eight stories that take place at the 5-STAR café, known on campus as the best place to study for your exams. the owner, bangchan, recently finished his degree, and decided to turn the place into a shelter for students who are trying to get the best coffee as cheaply as possible. stay and discover the love stories that hid between the walls of the place, in which employees and customers are the protagonists.

content info: stories non-related one shots, there is no specific order, although i will post them in the classic skz order (first the older, the maknae as the last one). specified warnings on each chapter.

( hii, happy sunday!! ♡ )

01. ╱ HOT CHOCOLATE (bangchan).

Every time you tell someone that you don't like coffee, the reaction is total incomprehension, even indignation. But when your university classmates leave you standing at the café where your crush works, you decide to order a coffee to try to avoid looking bad and end up making a fool of yourself.

02. ╱ CAPPUCCINO (lee minho).

After a bad run you are forced to look for a second job, and you end up covering the first shift at the campus café. Every morning you find the same guy waiting for you to open, leaning on the wall, looking flawless, and it gets on your nerves. Until one day you see him leaving the dance academy where you teach, getting on the same bus as you.

03. ╱ FLAT-WHITE COFFEE (seo changbin).

The boy on the train you met the other day invited you on a date at his favorite cafe, and although he seemed like the perfect guy, he is turning out to be a disappointment. Luckily, the cute barista serving you has noticed, and is trying to make you have a good time, despite everything, which makes you think that you wish the date had been with him.

04. ╱ ICED AMERICANO (hwang hyunjin).

When arguments at home get too loud to ignore, you always end up grabbing your laptop to go study at the café next door, but it's not the first time you've run out of battery. Unfortunately, the tables with plugs are usually occupied, even the one next to you, where the annoying boy in your class who doesn't want to let you plug in the charger is sitting...

05. ╱ ICED CARAMEL LATTE (han jisung).

You have been working in the hostelry industry for a long time, and for a few months now at the 5STAR café, but recently your boss has changed everyone's schedule, and now the person who has the shift before you leaves you post-its stuck everywhere. It always makes you smile, until one day you decide to find out who it is.

06. ╱ MATCHA TEA (lee felix).

You haven't been in Korea for at least two years, but when you return to do a trip and show Seoul to your sister, you end up back on the campus with the excuse that you can't leave without your sister trying 5STAR's coffee. To your surprise, the freckled barista still remembers your order perfectly. It can no longer be a coincidence when your sister starts talking about him in your mother tongue and the boy seems to recognize the language.

07. ╱ ESPRESSO (kim seungmin).

With how much effort your grandmother had put into spending entire afternoons trying to teach you how to play chess, no one could have guessed that you would like it so much, or that you would be that good at it. And you had no idea that when you had accompanied your friend to the place where he works and moved that piece on the board, you were going to start a game of anonymous chess that you were more than willing to win.

08. ╱ FRAPPUCCINO (yang jeongin).

Whenever Changbin asks you for a favor, you end up regretting agreeing to help him. This time it is to be in charge of training the new barista hired, who seems to be seeing a coffee maker for the first time in his life. Even so, you take pity on him and try to teach him everything you know, even if that means listening to your colleagues' jokes and customers' comments, even discovering that maybe he didn't know so little.

taglist: @sseastar-main · @queen-in-the-shadows · @anaiii27 · @hanstarrs · @starsandrqindrops · @ivaneedssleep · @bbokari711 · @kayleefriedchicken permanent taglist: @jazziwritesthings · @rylea08 · @starlostastronaut · @manuosorioh · @kpopmenace143 · @skzms · @darkypooo · @pochaccomin · @caitlyn98s · @hanstarrs · @atinyniki

to be part of the taglist, fill this form or send an ask!!

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astrow1zar6 · 5 months

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Astro Observations-08

A lot of big comedians & influencers have Cancer suns

12th house synastry is really upsetting & confusing, in this connection you feel as if you found your soulmate and in the beginning spend a lot of time together & then this person will just vanish from your life. This synastry lights up a dark subconscious place in both the partners minds & forces them to deal with a lot of dark shit they never had to in other relationships. This can cause one of the partners to ghost the other because of the intensity leaving the other person confused & hurt. This is a connection that’s difficult for both parties to forget even years after separating.

Venus in Virgos really aren’t into sex. I’ve seen a lot of these ppl be content with sexless marriages. They prefer mental connection over physical. (Even the men) this lack of physical can hurt the passion in a lot of your relationships

Taurus moons tend to be hoarders

Venus in the 7th house synastry is the best placement to have with someone imo (especially if the woman’s the Venus and the man is the house) the house person sees Venus as their ideal partner & treats her like a princess. He sees her as very charming and beautiful. The Venus loves the attention the house gives her and gives a lot of affection back

If you don’t have synastry placements in the 5th, 7th, or 8th house with someone it will probably lack a lot of passion & sexual attraction

Leo suns love any type of attention whether it’s good or bad attention. They get this kick when all eyes are on them. A lot of Leo’s seek this much attention because either they were always the center of attention in the family or were always ignored or picked last.

Leo moons can actually be very awkward people lowkey lol

Sagittarius suns are not scared of consequences I swear. You guys are sooo impulsive. Y’all will do the craziest things on a whim then be shocked when u get punished for it lol.

Aquarius suns are the most likely to get into substance abuse

Taurus Venus’s are amazing cooks. If u marry someone with this placement you’re very lucky😩

Scorpio mars woman are very explosive while angry while the men usually loath in silence and act very petty and passive

Aries suns usually have a prominent mole somewhere on their face

Libra moons look like bunnies lol

#astroblr #astro observations #astrologist #astrology #astro notes

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skzdarlings · 1 year

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08. sharing a bed series ; skz ; i.n.

masterlist.

sharing a bed series part 8/8. because it’s the cheesiest most classic trope and it’s FUN. -

pairing: yang jeongin/reader content info: sexual content. enemies2lovers(&friends2lovers?), sharing a bed trope. reader is older than him but exact age difference is not mentioned. reader was previously married and the ex-husband is described as bad to her, though there are no detailed specifications of exactly what went on. reader going thru some growth, being rude to jeongin, resolving it. the sex is playfully rough, reader mentions "mafia" style romance novels for inspo lmao but it stays pretty tame considering that.

last chapter of the series :)

Of course it’s raining. On top of everything else that went wrong, of course a torrential downpour would hit your party.

There is a large expanse of wood on the vast acreage behind your house. To break some of the social tension, someone suggested playing hide and seek in the woods on the property. It wasn’t part of your plan but seeing as the party’s awkward tension was your fault, you agreed that an outside game sounded like fun. With the springtime sun beaming down on you and your friends, it seemed like a fine afternoon diversion.

You were already deep into the woods when the storm started. You strayed farther from the main path, confident in your familiarity with the terrain. It did you little good when the weather took a turn. The rain was not slow-coming but an immediate sheet slamming into the ground like blocks of solid concrete. You could barely see in front of you and the uneven earth quickly turned to a muddy sludge. Unsurprisingly, you slipped and twisted your ankle.

Now you are stranded, alone in the forest and far away from everyone else, shivering in the pouring rain as your wispy white dress was not designed for such fickle weather.

You seldom let your emotions get the better of you but today you let yourself cry. The tears come as rapidly as the rain, leaving you gasping and shuddering. You stumble towards a tree and slouch against it, trying to take the weight off your hurt ankle. You doubt anyone would hear you screaming over the storm and from this far away, and you don’t have a phone because this stupid dress doesn’t have pockets so you left it behind.

You are crying against the tree when rescue comes in the form of the last person you want to see.

You lift your head to Jeongin. He is also drenched but the thick denim of his overalls covers most of his body and his heavy-duty sneakers are marginally better than your flats. His glasses are streaked with raindrops and his black hair is a mop on his head. Still, he sees through the foggy glass and the messy bangs, his expression one of surprise and concern.

“Are you hurt?” he asks without hesitation, because of course he does. Jeongin is a good person. You have never met anyone as genuinely sweet as him. The guy is all dimple, his eyes constantly scrunched up with glee, always ready with a humorous comment and a steady hand on a friend’s shoulder.

He also has every reason in the world to hate you. You have done everything in your power to push him away, treating him like an enemy, no doubt convincing him of it.

He never stooped to your level. You are older by a few good years but you have undoubtedly been the immature one. You wouldn’t blame him for abandoning you now.

He doesn’t do that. He rushes toward you, leading with his hand outstretched.

“Where does it hurt?” he asks loudly over the rain.

The emotional parts of you are especially vulnerable right now. When he asks that, you stupidly want to gesture to your heart. Ridiculous and sentimental, you know, you know, but true regardless.

You point to your ankle and he dutifully looks down.

His bangs split unevenly when his long, ringed fingers push through his hair. He shakes his head like it will clear his vision.

“Okay,” he says. He opens his arms. “Come on.”

You hesitate. You have no reason to distrust him but he should distrust you. He should hate you. You want him to hate you. You know what to do when someone hates you. You know what to do when someone treats you badly. You do not know what to do with Jeongin, someone so sincerely himself, sincerely kind, sincerely good. He looks at you with nothing but concern, his arms open with a desire to help.

You suck in another unsteady breath.

“Come on,” he says again, a little more forcefully but not unkindly. He seems more perplexed than angry.

You make a slight motion towards him, still hesitant. He accepts it as an invitation and crosses that last step to swing his arms around you. Your hands find his shoulders as his arm slides under your legs. He hoists you into a bridal hold, so secure that you choke on more tears.

You want to apologize. You want to say so many things. You just hide your face as he carries you away from the tree.

There is a moment of shared panic when he stumbles in the mud, but he finds his footing again. He stops for a second under some thicker foliage, looking around, out of breath.

Your tears have subsided. With the pain alleviated from your ankle, your senses are slowly returning to you. You recognize where you are in the woods: far from the main path and even farther from home, but close to the old hunting lodge. You don’t hunt but your ex-husband did. When you took over the property after the divorce, you turned the little lodge into a cozy getaway. You haven’t visited in a while but it will provide a roof over your head until the rain subsides.

“Turn up past those bushes there,” you say, pointing ahead. “We can get out of the rain until the storm passes.”

You can’t raise your voice too loud, still blocked by residual tears, but you are close to his face. He hears you and does as told.

You crest a small hill and the single-room cabin comes into view. You swear it has never looked so warm and cozy.

He puts you on your feet once you are under the awning. Only when you are at the door do you remember you don’t have any keys on you.

“Fuck,” you say, welling up with exasperation. You slouch against the doorframe. “I don’t have the key. What was I thinking?”

Jeongin takes off his glasses and wipes his forehead. He blinks at the door.

“Um.” He looks at you sheepishly, raking his fingers through his messy hair again. “Do you mind if I—” He gestures with his shoulder to the door. “I don’t want to break it but you’re hurt and—”

“Yes,” you say, cutting him off and looking away. Those dark eyes are brimming with concern and you think your guilt might overflow. You don’t want to cry again. You wipe your nose on the back of your arm. “That’s fine,” you say, steady as you can. “I can get the locks fixed after. Just get us inside.”

He nods and folds up his glasses then awkwardly looks around. He gives you another sheepish look before handing them to you. You take them and hold them against your chest while hopping back on your good foot. You get out of his way, watching him roll up his wet sleeves and mutter something encouraging to himself. He cringes when he thumps into the door and it doesn’t give.

Much as you want to get inside, you don’t want him to hurt himself. After the second heavy thud, you reach out. Before you can stop him, he determinedly throws himself against it.

The lock finally gives. It takes one more shove for the door to fly open. He kicks the broken pieces of the shattered lock aside, too focussed on his task to notice how startled you are by the display. You are still processing it when he scoops you up again. He carries you across the threshold and kicks the door closed behind himself.

It is blessedly dry inside the little lodge but it is also freezing cold from lack of use. You are both soaking wet and the chill wastes no time stabbing its way to your bones.

There is a small couch that folds out into a bed and Jeongin sits you on it. He goes down on one knee as he gently places you down, mindful of your shivering. You look at him, his face not far in this position.

He ducks down, taking your hurt ankle carefully in hand. You hiss, instinctively withdrawing, but he holds you in place.

“How bad is it?” he asks.

“Not too bad,” you say. “Just sore.”

“Are you sure?”

You would say yes even if it wasn’t true. Jeongin kneeling in front of you, holding your foot in his lap, looking so attentive and concerned – it’s all a bit much.

You nod. Satisfied, he moves onto the next thing and reaches past you to hit a light switch. The room stays grey, lit only by the overcast light outside the windows.

“Of course,” you say bitterly, groaning. “Oh, of course the power’s out. Why wouldn’t it be?”

He snorts, his dimples deepening as he looks at you. Your gut instinct is to recoil from the flicker of heat under your skin, to look away from his smile. You let yourself hold his gaze a little longer than usual.

“You’re funny,” he says with another smile. He looks over his shoulder at the same time a shiver crawls up his spine. He shakes his shoulders and looks back at you. “Is that electric or will it work?” he asks, pointing over his shoulder to the unlit fireplace.

“It will work,” you say. You are about to explain how it works when he gets up and goes over without further preamble. You are watching him work when you realize you still have his glasses. “Jeongin,” you say.

He looks back at you, those silver-ringed fingers once more raking through his hair. His face is open as always, attentive, brows lifted. He really is very handsome.

“Yes?” he asks when you are quiet for too long.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” you say and hold out his glasses. “You probably need these.”

He smiles, his eyes crinkling up in that delighted way.

“Thank you. They’re just for distance,” he says. “I can see everything in here.”

He turns back to the fireplace and resumes his work. It only takes another second for the flames to sparkle then roar, an orange glow flooding the room. He smiles and claps his hands with satisfaction.

“Not bad,” he says. He is still smiling but his eyes look glassy with faraway thought. His breath of a laugh is not very humorous, smile softer when he says, “I’m not totally useless, I guess, right?”

You close your eyes. You don’t want to see his face. You don’t want to know if he feels good about throwing that at you. You definitely don’t want to know if he feels bad for saying it, because he shouldn’t feel bad. He did nothing wrong.

Jeongin has been nothing but kind to you from the day you met him. You have a mutual friend in common so at first you only saw him in other people’s company. Then your husband hired a team to do some renovations in the kitchen and, by sheer coincidence, Jeongin was one of the crewmen. You started seeing him a lot more often, and in your own home at that.

He was respectful and distant, at first, as was appropriate. Jeongin is nothing if not polite.

Jeongin is also undoubtedly a young man with a strict internal code. The better he knew you, the better he knew your husband. Your husband’s moral compass skewed considerably contrary to the kind-hearted Jeongin. You had thus far survived a bad marriage by pretending the worst of it away. Jeongin’s sudden affection and sympathy – his sudden acknowledgement of your situation being bad – was too much for you to handle.

You reacted badly. He only ever tried to help you but you were not good at accepting help; it meant admitting something was wrong. Even when you finally got around that stage, you still recoiled from his kind eyes and gentle words.

Jeongin likes you as more than a friend. He liked you from the start, when he was puttering around the worksite and you brought him lemonades and laughed with him about nothing.

You liked him too. You still like him. But Jeongin is young and sweet and hopeful and you…

You know it’s silly, but your heart feels used up. Someone like him should be with someone younger and full of equal hope, not you with your mess and baggage and nonsense.

You resented his kindness, his youth, his hope. You didn’t know what to do with his love.

You tried to convince yourself you actually hated him. When that didn’t work, you tried to convince him and everyone else. If you couldn’t hate him, maybe you could make him hate you. Maybe if he hated you, you could both move on. But Jeongin isn’t like that. He just kept moving along, just kept smiling, just kept looking at you like he could see right through your nonsense.

Today you went on a little tirade to your friend. You complained about feeling obligated to invite Jeongin to your party because you shared a friend group. You complained about Jeongin in general, describing things that weren’t true. You claimed he was naïve and annoying and always in your face, but that for all his pestering he never actually did anything useful.

You weren’t exactly careful about who was listening. Apparently, most of the party overheard you.

It was that foolish, twisted feeling: you wanted to be heard because you were bursting inside, but then you realized that was the wrong release. It brought no satisfaction, only shame. You embarrassed him and yourself, and for what?

“Jeongin,” you say in a small voice, already knowing that any and all words will fall woefully short of rectifying the situation. Still, you have to say something. With your eyes still closed and arms still crossed, you sigh and say, “I’m so sorry. You know you’re not— You know I didn’t— You know I don’t—”

You open your eyes. He is illuminated by the fire, all traces of his smile dissolved. He shivers and it seems to pull him out of his trance. He rubs his forehead, then he turns to you and smiles politely.

“It’s okay,” he says with a forced smile. “I’m sorry. Um. Miss. I shouldn’t have said—”

“Don’t apologize,” you say as firmly as you can. “Or speak formally. It’s fine. Jeongin, you— Me— I mean—”

Your stammering is half emotion, half the cold. His expression changes as he seems to recognize that. You are shivering so much your teeth start to chatter. You haven’t even dropped his glasses because it would mean uncrossing your arms.

He gets to his feet so quickly that he almost falls, slipping in the puddle caused by his own dripping clothes.

“D-do you have a phone?” you ask, to which he nods and retrieves it from the front pocket of his overalls. “C-can you call or t-text one of the boys and t-tell them we’re okay? We just need to w-wait out the st-storm. Sometimes th-they last a while.” You can’t bring yourself to meet his eyes, your gaze on the middle of his chest, but you can see he is shivering too. “We n-need to w-warm up so we don’t get s-sick. There’s sh-sheets— there—can we m-make a bed—” You nod your head vaguely in the right direction.

You close your eyes and rock a little, trying to warm up. It’s useless with your soaking heap of a dress clinging to every wet inch of you.

You can hear Jeongin bustling around, doing everything you asked. When you open your eyes, you see he has made a makeshift bed out of blankets and pillows near the fire.

He is facing away from you. A proper little burst of heat sparks inside you when he takes a breath and starts unclipping his overalls. He kicks off his shoes at the same time. You look away as he strips down his outer layers, sensibly removing his soaking wet things and laying them out by the fire. You open your eyes at the same time he turns to look at you, his hands on the waistband of his briefs. His ears are very red, chest and cheeks likewise dusted pink.

You think your mutual shyness might be providing more heat than the fire.

“Sorry,” he says, grabbing a blanket and covering himself. “It’s just—we should probably take off—” His voice squeaks and he clears his throat.

You find yourself smiling in spite of yourself. You nod.

“No, you’re right,” you say. “S-sorry for, um, looking.”

“That’s okay,” he says with a relieved laugh. He smiles and says, “You can look if you want.”

Jeongin has a remarkable ability to flicker between shyness and confidence. The sparkle in his eyes tells you that his comment was not a thoughtless blunder. Especially because he doesn’t wait for you to look away before tying the blanket around his hips and reaching under to shuffle out of his last article of clothing.

You look away and back again. You suppose he works a fairly laborious job and is in good enough shape to haul you up a small hill, but still. You find your breath stolen by his lean, subtle musculature, an effortless elegance to the long lines of his body.

He smooths down his hair. Your eyes are on his hands when you realize he is looking at you. You look away quickly.

“Haha, um, here,” Jeongin says. He holds up a sheet in offering and turns his face away, eyes closed. “You should change too.”

You stand slowly, arms still crossed though you finally drop the glasses on the seat.

“Thank you,” you say. “For everything.”

He looks at you, probably supposing it is appropriate because you are still dressed, but your thin white dress has soaked completely through. It is plastered to every inch of skin, the vaguest sheen of translucent white pulled over every dip and curve from your neck down.

His gaze jumps, surprised, dark brows lifting as he looks down the whole length of you. His mouth falls open and he looks away with the tips of his ears flaming red. He holds up the sheet again.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” you say.

“No, sorry,” he says again. “I know you don’t… always like me…”

You lower the sheet but he still doesn’t look at you. You say his name and he replies with a hum.

“Jeongin,” you say again, heart pounding. “You can look too.”

He fumbles and drops the sheet. He leaves it on the floor and looks at you with surprised eyes.

Despite your words, he awkwardly covers his eyes when you reach for the straps of your dress. Your laughter is breathless from the cold, but he still paints a charming sight with his red ears and hand over his eyes, contrasted to just how lovely those big hands are, to the shape of him, to the flattering shadows cast by the fire.

You peel the dress down and let it hit the floor with a splat. You feel better to have it gone but you are still cold. You instinctively cross your arms again, rubbing your biceps.

“Jeongin,” you say.

“Hello,” he replies, eyes still covered.

“C-can you help me?”

“Oh.” He pauses for a second. “Help you… get undressed?”

You really are too old to act like a little girl with a crush, but you feel that way. You don’t remember the last time you felt like this, if you ever have. It’s nice, a little scary. You feel vulnerable and it has nothing to do with the amount of skin showing.

“Yes please,” you say. “I can’t reach behind me to unclasp my bra.”

“Oh,” he says again. “Oh. Okay.”

You turn around. You give in to your smile, helplessly charmed by his sincerity. Then he is touching you, his proximity radiating warmth, and the next shiver feels like the cold leaving your body all at once. He fumbles a little with the clasp but that might be because his fingers are still stiff, but he gets it undone. He steps back while you remove it. When you turn around, he is already holding the sheet in offering. He doesn’t cover his eyes though he does make a point of only looking at your face.

“Thank you,” you say, taking the sheet.

Despite his undoubted gentlemanly politeness, you catch him sneaking a peek before you wrap the sheet around your body. You tuck it under your arms and tie a little knot. Like him, you shuffle out of your underwear from under the sheet.

He gathers your wet clothes and lays them beside the fire with his own. With a little limp, you approach the nest of blankets and pillows, all arranged cozily on the thick, fluffy rug not far from the heat. Even though it is obvious you will have to share the makeshift bed, you still hesitate just outside it. Jeongin is kneeling in the centre, stretching out the clothes so they will dry faster. He looks up when he sees you waiting.

He holds out his hand.

“You should rest your ankle. And warm up,” he says. “You’ll get sick.”

With only a little struggle, you manage to overcome your hesitation. You take his hand and step onto the rug.

You swear more heat alights under his gaze than from the fire.

He shuffles back, making room for you between him and the fire. You would try and argue, to offer him the warmer space, but you doubt he would let you and you are still so cold. You sit down gingerly, minding the sheet. Your movements are mutually stilted and awkward, but then you smile at each other and relax a little. You lay down so you are stretched in front of the fire, Jeongin sitting upright behind you. You gaze up at him, watching him look around the room.

“This place looks different,” he says, an understatement. The ugly little lodge has been redone, stripped of the hunting gear and tables and replaced with a little library and reading nook. There are plants under the window and little paintings on the mantlepiece. It is a lot more welcoming than before.

Perhaps it is that gentle coziness that makes you suddenly braver. This space feels safe. You do not hesitate in raising your hand, in stroking a few fingers softly down his arm. His skin does not feel cold anymore so when he shivers, you don’t think it’s from a chill.

He looks down, blinking those dark eyes at you.

“It’s still a little cold,” you say. You already know your next words are going to be so blatant and so cheesy, so you have to bite your lip to stifle your own amusement at them. “Maybe we should cuddle up for warmth?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He smiles, dimples deep again. “Good idea.”

There is some embarrassed, breathless laughter as you shuffle around. He pulls up a thicker blanket to cover you both. Even with your explicit invitation, he is clearly still uncertain about what you want. You show him, taking his arm and pulling it around you, laying down with your back to him, pressed close and separated only by your individual sheets.

You look into the fire, taking a few deep breaths. You feel him settle around you.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Mhm,” you say. “Definitely.”

“Good. Good.”

You smile, biting your bottom lip again.

You lay there for a while, listening to the fire crackle, letting the heat wash over you. He doesn’t budge an inch, as if scared jostling you will disrupt the peace. His arm is slung over your middle and you touch his hand. You trace your fingers over a ring. He exhales.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, his voice low. “It’s a little serious.”

Your heart races as you know there are a million serious questions he could ask you, but you nod. “Of course,” you say.

There is a breath of a moment. His hand turns under yours, fingertips brushing yours.

“Why,” he says slowly, “would you ever pick that wallpaper?” He points to the far wall. “It’s dark in here and it’s still so ugly it’s hurting my eyes.”

You burst out laughing, caught off guard. Your laughter makes him laugh, his hand catching yours when you lightly slap at him.

“Jeongin,” you say with a little whine, “don’t torture me.”

“I’m not!” he says. “It’s a serious question!”

“Ahh!” You laugh some more, rolling onto your back and covering your face with both hands.

He laughs, tugging at your wrist to uncover your face. You pout at him and he just smiles back. He lays on his side and props his head in his hand, grinning down at you. You take his free hand and trace the shape of his ring again, looking up as his goofy expression softens.

“You’re funny too,” you say. “I’m sorry for being an idiot to you. I was wrong and you didn’t deserve it.”

“You’re not an idiot,” he says softly, looking down at where you are fiddling with his ring. “You were going through a lot.”

“Still,” you say. “I’m a grown woman and I’ve been acting like a child, bullying the nice boy I like because I don’t know what to do with my emotions.”

You thought that would be hard to say out loud, but once it’s out there you feel a lightness in your chest. You take in a deep breath.

“That’s not being an idiot,” Jeongin says after a moment. He curls his fingers around yours and squeezes lightly. “Maybe just a little stupid,” he adds.

You laugh again, rolling to face him and his silly grin.

“I really am sorry,” you say. “I know it’s not enough to say it, but—”

“It’s enough,” he says. “You know, I followed you when you came this way because I wanted to tell you that.” When you cover your face with your hand, he moves it. “Also,” he says, “you were running too far away from everyone else. They wouldn’t have found you if you hid so far out here, you know.”

“That’s the point of the game,” you say. “It’s hide and seek.”

“Yeah, but…” His free hand finds yours again. He looks into your eyes. “I don’t think winning like that is actually fun? If you’re alone, and never let anyone find you again.”

Oh. Of course Jeongin would ask ‘a serious question’ to spring a joke on you, then sneak the truly serious topic in a discussion of hide-and-seek.

You drop your gaze to your joined hands.

“I guess,” you say. “I guess also it’s… um, well.” You figure you might as well drop the metaphor as it isn’t fooling anyone. “You don’t get hurt when you’re alone, Jeongin. And the happier something makes you, the worse it feels when it hurts you.”

“I would never hurt you,” he says, completely serious. He squeezes your hand.

You look at him, smiling gently. You know that promise is a big one, and nearly impossible as people can hurt each other without trying. The declaration is innocent but also heartfelt. You understand what he means.

He seeks your gaze to ensure you understand him, so you look at him and nod. You feel a bit watery again.

“I know you would try,” you say. “Is it stupid how that scares me even more?”

“Oh,” he says, separating his hand from yours so he can cup your face. You think he is going to say something tender when he just smiles and nods and says, “Yeah, probably.”

You snort with laughter, grabbing his hand and moving it off your face.

“You’re terrible,” you say.

“Maybe,” he says, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “But… you’re the one who likes me, or so you said…”

“I take it back,” you say, starting to roll away.

He grabs your shoulder and pulls you back, giggling. “You can’t take it back,” he says. “We’re sharing a bed so… that’s the rules.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

You find yourself endlessly charmed by him. His cocky smile is cute, especially because the tips of his ears are still red. You find yourself tracing the curve of that ear, his blush darkening with your attention. His smile turns affectionate, his eyes creased with happiness. The unremitted pleasure draws you in and grants you access to the more confident parts of yourself. You let your body lead you, experience fueling instinct as you guide him onto his back and lean over him.

You touch the side of his face, fingertips tracing his jaw. His mouth opens and he blinks away his surprise.

“What?” you say.

“Nothing.” His smiles widens. He raises a hand to touch the side of your face too, surprising you in turn. “You’re pretty.”

The simplicity of the compliment makes you a little shy. You smile, leaning into his touch.

“You’re cute,” you say, only for his face to scrunch up with theatrical displeasure. “What?” you say, laughing. “You are!”

“Puppies are cute,” he says dryly. “Babies are cute. I’m not cute.”

“You are.” You can’t help but tease, his smile encouraging you. You poke his dimple. “Soooo cute. The cutest.”

You laugh until he slides one hand around the back of your neck. With his hand protectively cradling the back of your head, he flips you over so it’s you laying under him. You find yourself looking down the length of him, his chest and abdomen, the place the blanket parts. You look up when his nose nudges your chin, tilting your head back. You realize you were holding a breath and swallow one down, shaky.

He laughs but gently.

“You’re cute,” he says, voice barely louder than the crackling fire.

“I’m not cute,” you say, tipping your chin up. “I’m older than you.”

“Sooo cute,” he copies you. “The cutest.”

You realize this game of one-upping each other could quickly turn into a torturous teasing session – each of you just looking, daring, goading the other into more without fully surrendering.

You smile and tip your head, sighing in a feathery-soft voice and wetting your lips.

“Am I?” you ask, lifting a leg so it separates your sheet. You can see his breath catch.

You have butterflies inside you, fluttering away like never before.

You undo the knot of the sheet. You watch his eyes lower as you slowly peel the whole sheet open. All the playfulness leaves his face, his jaw gone slack, surprise once again taking over as he stares.

“Wow,” he finally says. “Wow. You’re— wow.” His expression shows he means it.

“You’re exaggerating.” You turn your face aside.

“I’m not,” he says. His hands move to either side of your head as he holds himself over you. It draws your gaze back to him. “Stop hiding, okay?” he says softly.

“I think I’m doing the opposite of hiding right now,” you say, a gentle joke that he answers with utmost seriousness: swooping down and kissing you.

It is not a soft kiss, burning and wanting, his mouth a hungry thing against your own. It feels like a kiss he has thought about, a kiss he can’t help but hurry towards.

Just as desirous, you fall too, the kiss so hard that you find it hard to slow down. He eventually guides you to a gentler press, closing his lips against yours, letting them linger.

A breath passes between you.

“Remember when you hated me,” he says, smiling, “and you tried to convince me we were incompatible?” He kisses you softly. “I think you were wrong.”

He doesn’t leave room for a reply. He kisses you again, just as hotly as before. This time he rests more of his body against yours and you can feel where he is already hard beneath the blanket. You can also feel it is more than substantial, drawing a gasp from your lips as he presses against you.

“Jeongin,” your voice comes out breathless. It is still more coherent than his reply, which is just a grunt as he starts kissing down your throat.

It is dizzyingly hot. You have to close your eyes to stay grounded, arching against him, running your fingers through his already messy hair.

You are still able to giggle when he struggles to remove the blanket. He laughs back. You can’t remember the last time you laughed during sex. It makes you feel like you are floating, light and carefree, driven by pleasure and nothing else.

He gets the blanket off but before you can look down, he is sliding his hand between your bodies. Your eyes close again, head falling back as his fingers stroke your inner thigh. He teases there for a long time, making you strain and buck and chase his fingers. Finally you whimper and grab some of his hair, pulling his face close to yours.

“Are you trying to make me hate you again?” you tease.

He smiles against your lips, his fingers just barely brushing between your legs. Your thighs part, making room, but he waits.

“You never hated me,” he says.

Your reply gets caught in your throat when he finally slides one finger against you. It is torturously not enough.

“Jeongin,” you say again, running your fingers to the back of his neck. “Please.”

“Tell me you hated me,” he says, even while proving you very much do not hate him: gathering so much wetness on his fingertips, lightly circling them up and over the most sensitive part of you. “Can’t you?” he asks. “Let me hear you say it.”

“I—I—”

“Hate me?”

You shake your head, opening your eyes to look at him imploringly. You gasp against his lips when he slides that finger inside you. There is a ring on the one beside it, the smooth ridge gliding against you. You cant your hips up, wanting more while he teases you.

“You don’t hate me,” he says, to which you shake your head again. He kisses you, licking into your mouth at the same time his fingers sink deep inside you. He is good with his hand, his fingers long and steady, working you up until you are soaking him and clawing at his shoulder.

“Please,” you say, dizzy from the stars bursting in every place his fingers reach. They curl inside you as if telling you to come. Your head falls back and his lips go down your throat as he brings you over the edge with his touch.

He doesn’t stop when you come, drawing the whole thing out so the peak seems to last minutes. Tears of pleasure spring to your eyes. Only when you are gasping does he carefully withdraw his hand.

He looks at you with a smile then kisses your cheek. With a smile, you lean in to kiss him, then he suddenly ducks. His hands dive under your thighs and then his face is right there, tongue taking a swipe at your still distended clit, making your whole body shudder. You dig your fingers into his hair, holding on and closing your eyes. It feels so good but you are still sensitive and not good at coming multiple times in a row, so after enjoying his very adept movements, you tug on his hair to lead him back up your body.

You grab his face and kiss him hard, tasting yourself all over his wet mouth. He moans into your mouth and presses hard against you. His hands cradle your hips. You spread your legs around him.

You feel lighter after coming. Relaxed, not just physically. Suddenly words are easier too, spoken thoughtlessly in such close proximity to his lips.

“I wanted you so much,” you admit. “For so long. Even when I was pretending to hate you.”

“I was here,” he says, kissing along your jaw. “I’m still here.”

“I know.” You tug on his hair, tipping his head back so you can kiss his face too. You nip under his jaw, his neck, luxuriating in the sound he makes. “This is going to sound silly, but I used to fantasize—no, never mind.”

“Wha—”

You roll him over before he can ask, taking a turn to work your mouth down his body now too. It sufficiently distracts him as your mouth dives down, down, down. You pause for a moment just to look at him, your gaze one of admiration and maybe slight intimidation. You haven’t slept with anyone since before the divorce and that was a while ago. Jeongin is bigger than most of your toys. When you put your mouth on him, you barely get past the head before you have to use your hand for the rest of him. You try to take a little more but you are very out of practice, choking a little and drooling all over him.

It used to confuse you: the idea anyone would enjoying giving pleasure this way. For the recipient, it made enough sense, but not as the giver. You realize now that difference in desire was partner. When Jeongin moans and curls his fingers into the rug, thighs parting to make room for you to comfortably sit there, you understand. Messy as it is, you eagerly dive back down, wetting him with your mouth and working him in your hand.

When he closes his eyes and drops his head back, he misses the pillow. The rug is plush and softens his landing, but you still hear a very heavy thump when his head hits the ground. He hisses, his face scrunching up in pain as he reaches to cup the back of his head.

“Oh my god,” you say, sitting up and wiping your mouth. You try not to laugh. “Jeongin, are you okay?”

He gives you a thumbs up with his free hand. Then he curses and sighs in exasperation.

“My hand is stuck,” he says, jerking the arm that is folded under his head. “My ring—is in my hair—”

“Oh nooo…” You are laughing properly now, in a fit of giggles as you climb up beside him to look behind his head. You help untangle the hair from the ring, though a few strands still get yanked out of his head. The sudden swing makes his head bounce, thunking into yours. You both groan in pain. You grasp your forehead and sit back on your heels.

“This is not how I pictured this going,” he mumbles.

“Which part? The storm, the threat of hypothermia, or the multiple injuries?” you ask.

He grins at you, then moves to kneel in front of you. He kneels upright while you are sitting back, putting you close to eye level with your previous task. You look there, reaching, but he takes your hands in his and holds them.

“Actually,” he says, “the part that surprised me most was you saying you thought about us,” he smiles here, “and it was so bad you couldn’t even admit it.”

You try to cover your face but he holds your hands, still grinning. You throw back your head and groan.

“It’s not bad,” you say.

His hand runs up your arm to your neck, thumb stroking your chin as he gently pulls you forward. You go up on your knees too, following his angle for a kiss. He leans close but doesn’t seal it, saying, “You know if you don’t tell me, I’m going to imagine the worst.”

“It’s nothing,” you say, hiding your face in the crook of his shoulder. He pats the back of your head, still giggling to himself. You lean back to look at him again, pouting just a bit, then reaching between your bodies to take him in hand. You smile sweetly at him. “Can we fuck?” you ask, watching the flicker of surprise and desire cross his face. “Birth control, so I’m good if you’re good. Come on.”

You go to lay down but he catches the back of your neck, pulling you back to him. He lifts one eyebrow.

“You’re not gonna let this go,” you say dryly.

“I would never force it out of you,” he says, “but the curiosity is killing me.”

“Well,” you say, tingling under the attention of his intense gaze, of his hand so strongly holding your neck, of his nonchalance. He isn’t even trying. You take a deep breath. “It’s sort of what you just said.”

“What… killing me? You wanted to kill me?”

“No!” You smack his chest. “I hate you again. No. I just… Not that I wanted to the truth forced out of me but…” You look at his face, his expression curious but not judgemental yet. “You know all those cheesy romance novels? Like… mafia leader stuff? That.”

“You wanted me to be Italian?”

“Genuinely gonna kill you.”

“I’m kidding, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, continue.”

“You know what I mean! The button popping and bodice ripping stuff.” You mime tearing his nonexistent shirt open. “I liked you and I wanted to do something about it, but I also didn’t want to do something about it. So I wanted you to do something about it. No one needs to tell me what it’s like for a shitty guy to take advantage of you, so that’s not what it was— I just—” You sigh. “I wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to be you. Because you aren’t a shitty guy. You’re the best guy I know. So I would’ve let you have anything, because you would be taking what I wanted to give. And there would be no need to talk about it or work it out. It would just be… easy.”

“I like talking,” he says, tipping his head as if studying you. “But I think I get it.”

“Mhm?” you ask, a little dryly. You quirk an eyebrow at his cheesy, dimpled grin. “Sure about that?”

“Yes,” he says, smiling so bright it goes right up to his eyes. “I’m sure.”

His grip tightens on the back of your neck, pulling you right up against him. Your chests press together and you gasp, shivering when his lips graze your ear.

“Like this, right?” he speaks lowly. He threads his fingers into your hair, close to your scalp so there is a controlled, gentle burn when he tugs. “Just take.”

“Yes,” you say, rasping. “It’s already yours.”

“You’re mine?” he asks. His other hand is suddenly between your legs and this time he doesn’t tease, his knuckle parting your wet folds. Two fingers curl inside you. “Or this is mine?”

He tugs your head back, looking in your eye as he finger-fucks you, all the playfulness gone from his expression. His sharp features look suddenly more severe: the cut of his jaw, his cheekbones, his brow. You swallow hard.

“I can’t say,” you speak in a husky voice. “My husband would be angry. You should go before he finds you.”

His fingers move out of you, your thighs shaking in their withdrawal. The hand in your hair stays steady. Then he squints, looking almost cartoonishly fierce when he says, “I’m in the… mafia. I killed your husband?”

“Oh.” You bite back a laugh. “You don’t literally need to be in the mafia.”

“You did say—”

“That was just, like, a genre example—”

“Oh, okay, I get it now.” He nods his head. “I’ll stop if you say stop.” He clears his throat. “You don’t want a guy like that. And you don’t want your husband.” He puts a hand on your lower back and tugs, sweeping you over. His arms hold you safe as he spills you onto your back. One hand skims your body, hooking under your knee to bring it up around his hips. “You want me,” he says.

The gleam in his eye seems very genuine.

“That would be inappropriate,” you say, not needing to fake your breathy voice when he moves against you, the length of him hot and hard and close to where you want him. You clench around nothing, your heart picking up in speed with anticipation.

He smiles, not quite his usual smile.

“It would be very inappropriate,” he says.

Then his hands are on your hips and he is turning you onto your front. You sprawl with some genuine surprise, getting your arms under you only seconds before his hand is back in your hair. You lift when he pulls, his grip careful but strong. He holds you there, up on your hands and knees. He goes up on one knee behind you, careful when pushing inside you, then sliding in all the way and staying there.

Oh, you feel him. Not just because it’s been a while. You let yourself enjoy it, happily sinking into pleasure with the secure knowledge he will listen if you ask to stop, that his pleasure is tied to yours. So you let your mouth fall open and eyes close, let the heat of the flames brush over you, let him hold you how he wants. You take as much as he does, soaking in all that sensation. He fills you up and fucks you deep – fast then faster. You squeeze around him, practically singing with how you moan and sigh.

“Yes,” he says, pulling you back into his arms as he moves to lay on his side. He stays inside you, drawing your leg up and fucking you like that.

You look back at him and don’t mind at all when he breaks character, yet again, this time to kiss you sweetly.

“It doesn’t hurt?” he asks in a whisper, slowing down. “You’re so… small.”

“I’m not,” you say with a little laugh. “You’re just big, baby.”

“Baby—okay. That’s good. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know, Jeongin,” you say, hiccupping a little because he is still fucking you hard despite his gentle words. It makes you feel a little insane in a good way, him so very nonplussed as he screws your brain out. “Thank you,” you say.

“For what?” he asks.

“I don’t knooow,” you say, reaching behind you to hold onto him. “Just thaaank you, auugh, it’s good.”

“Oh, I get it,” he says. “For this. Okay.”

How he’s simultaneously cute and insanely sexy, your brain will just never compute. But he wraps an arm around you and puts his hips to use, fucking you until you can feel an orgasm building without even rubbing your clit. You think to try but all you can do is cling to him, letting your worries fly away as he pants and groans and holds you steady in his arms.

“Like that, like that,” you say, your last coherent sentence until you fall apart, repeating his name as he follows you over the edge.

He holds you tight, kissing whatever he finds first. He rocks you through the end of it, easing you into rest. When he pulls out, you shiver, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

You roll over in his arms, wrapping your arms around his neck. He kisses your cheek and temple, then rests his forehead against yours.

“I’m not cold anymore,” you say, making him laugh lightly.

“Me too,” he says.

“Thank you,” you say, leaning back to look at him. “For everything.”

He smiles that smile you love, cupping your face.

“Thank you,” he says, “for showing me your hiding place. Can I come here again with you?”

Joking right after sex was never a habit before, but you find yourself bursting into a silly grin and saying, “Baby, you already know you can come wherever you want—”

It makes him laugh too, the unexpectedness sending him over. You laugh at him laughing so much, curling up close to him with the heat of the fire at your back.

The cabin is warm. Your clothes are probably long since dry. The storm stopped a while ago and you only notice now.

#skz smut #stray kids smut #yang jeongin smut #yang jeongin x reader #IN x reader #skz x reader

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pandenewie · 1 year

Text

Dress Coded Masterlist

SYNOPSIS:

Dress codes are dumb. And everyone in school agrees. So why is the dear student council president Yang Jungwon so insistent on upholding such a stupid rule? And why is Y/n so insistent on changing his mind?

Y/n finds a new way to break the dress code each day, purely to spite the student council president and make him change the stupid rule. But what started as a simple act of rebellion soon takes a turn as more is found out about the goody-two-shoes president.

PAIRING: jungwon x gn!reader

GENRE: nonidol!au, highschool!au, socialmedia!au, sorta fake dating (you'll see), mild enemies to lovers, fluff, suggestive, angst (light), cursing, attempted humour. Ft. Enhypen Ni-ki + Jay + Jake, P1Harmony Soul + Jongseob, Kep1er Bahiyyih + Hikaru (+ Youngeun mention), Le Sserafim Eunchae, IVE Wonyoung, ZB1 Ricky, Seventeen Wonwoo

**any pictures used of "yn" are for outfit descriptions only and do not represent yn's gender/race/physical appearance in any way :))**

STARTED: 08/04/23

FINISHED: 02/10/23

STATUS: completed

PROFILES:

Sk8ter Bois | H2hoes

CHAPTERS:

00 - The Dress Code | 0.3k words

01 - White Privilege

02 - Pu$$y Gang

03 - A Little Manipulation

04 - Manifesting

05 - when bae gets you in trouble | 1.9k words

06 - Shota's Minecraft Girlfriend

07 - It's my turn to use the braincell

08 - It's Giving Control Freak | 1.7k words

09 - Enemies 👹 to Enemies 😊

10 - Damage Control

11 - I have the mind of a mastermind

12 - Potato Chips | 1.8k words

13 - DRUGS?? 😱😱

14 - Real Men Clean Bathrooms | 2.4k words

15 - Dr Dilf

16 - L + Ratio + Y/n will never love you

17 - Stuco Rizz | 2.1k words

18 - From homies to nomies

19 - De-yassified

20 - Mama I'm in love with a criminal | 1.6k words

21 - Prison Wife Era

22 - Family Vacation | 2.9k words

23 - Please No Feelings | 2.5k words

24 - Trauma Bonded ❤ | 1.9k words

25 - BREAK HIS HEART ❗❗

26 - This wasn't part of the plan | 1.9k words

27 - Gold Star

28 - Good Boy Gone Bad ❌ Good Boy Gone Sad ✔

29 - If it isn't the consequences of my own actions

30 - No More Hobocore

31 - Somebody that you used to know | 1.2k words

32 - Jongseob Marriage Counsellor

33 - Cute, platonically

34 - Where we went wrong | 3.2k words

35 - Ronald McDonald if he slayed

36 - No More Mr Nice Guy

37 - It's Giving Grease | 3.0k words

38 - The Updated Dress Code | 0.5k words

39 - Do-over Date | 2.6k words

FINALE - #savejungwonfromyn

TAG LIST (closed): @kang-yeosangs-initials @kpopstanmeg @b1ndignity @soobiverse @dudufodd @mikadorbs @pagesofmiracles @tya0 @ilovewonyo @bringer-ofchaos @huening-ly @latriii @callmeblondie @run2min @straykids-riley (can't tag) @rikimylove @chaechae-23 @lacimolela @n1ght-maring (can't tag) @luvvsjungwonn @yenqa @tzuyusluv @viyqe @vocaloshin @deadgirlwalking3 @flamiricky @hanniesss @grayscorner @wonqr @neozon3nha @beomgyusonlywife @ahnneyong @lani-heart @jayujus @str4wb3rizz @yunwonie @danielleismyname @spilled-coffee-cup @jaylans-stuff @oceanmsxoxo @j-wyoung @mrowwww @lazy-miya @shinsou-rii @minkyungseokie @s7noo @beatr2x @thatoneembarrasingmoment @soobawrz

@miumiuoi @lucyinthesky-00 @wrapmeinatortilla

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eundiarys · 1 year

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OMG, kang taehyun

pairing : kang taehyun x fem!reader

genre : fluff, angst, crack, idol!au, fake dating au.

inspired by : OMG by newjeans (one line. but still), and my delusions

summary : in which — yn who just debuted gets into a dating scandal with one of the most famous group members because of a misunderstanding and is forced to fake date with him. what happens if it isn’t as bad as she thinks? and and what if she finds comfort with him? (❗️ — dia’s jueun is used to potray yn! )

notes : this is a plot that was literally inspired by the line (They keep on asking me, "Who is he?"). i waited for awhile to fully think of a proper plot and here it is! hope u enjoy <3

STATUS / completed ( taglist is now closed )

UPDATE -> if you enjoyed this and also like enhypen, im writing an enhypen version of this smau and ynhyun will be featured in some chapters there :) click here to check it out~

CHAPTERS & PROFILES !

(newjeans) . (txt) . preview #1 . preview #2

01. guys what if we flop :/ 02. sweet stranger 03. DEBUTATION! 04. its been 4 days. 05. giggles cackles 06. bangs head on wall 07. inspo mark lee 08. dispatch please be serious 09. what are the chances 10. ynhyun_OUT! 11. controversy 12. twenty questions? 13. detective hyuka 14. i love sza yass 15. i hate love 16. last date 17. i be in situations 18. my jobless era 19. all too well 20. ur a menace 21. this is cruel 22. idiots (in love) 23. CHEATER!! 24. my boyfren

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deathbyyoongx · 8 months

Text

stuck with you; part 1 — myg

╭ parts: 1, ...

╭ word count: 5.2k

╭ summary: After your best friend Hoseok told you you could stay at his place for two weeks, you couldn’t help but be more than thrilled. A studio in the middle of the city, away from home, and close to every club you loved to go to? It couldn't get much better than that. However, when you heard the news his roommate's plans got canceled, you soon realized you had to spend those two weeks together with none other than Min Yoongi. It wouldn’t have bothered you if you had to spend two weeks together with a hot guy, but unfortunately for you, you already knew Yoongi from high school.

And he absolutely despises your guts ever since.

╭ pairing: yoongi x brat!reader

╭ genre: smut, just smut, okay maybe a bit off fluff, can't help it

╭ warnings: enemies to lovers, angry/stubborn yoongi, y/n is an aboslute brat but that's the usual in my fanfics, ex-friends from high school, he hates you but you don't really know why, back and forth bickering, drinking, hair pulling, name-calling, hate sex (?), spitting, hickeys, slapping, voyeurism, being stuck with a hot guy that secretly would love to fuck you for two weeks, ...

╭ author's note: I had to put some fluff into it, I couldn't help it. It's the hopeless romantic in me. Also haven't reread it (24/08) I'm tired.

btw, use InteractiveFics for a better reading experience ;)

“Are you sure about this, Hobi? I mean, the man despises me.” Today was the day you would stay over at Hoseok’s shared studio apartment. It was only a few rooms away from a full-on apartment, which you were not complaining about. The plan was, that both Hoseok and his roommate Yoongi would be on vacation, which meant that you had this lovely space all for your own. But of course, fate had other things in store for you when you heard that Yoongi’s plans got canceled. His friend got a bad stomach ache after eating at some shady place downtown, pity. If this news had come to you a few years ago, you would be more than thrilled. Yoongi and you used to be good friends in high school, so the idea of spending two weeks with him wouldn’t be anything to worry about. But ever since college…things changed between the two of you.

“Look, I promised you could stay over and you’ve already adjusted your schedule to it as well, so he’ll just have to get used to it. And besides, it’s not permanent, I’ll be back in two weeks. He’s usually in his room anyways, so he won’t be bothered by you too much.” Hosoek explained, trying his best to reassure you about the sudden change of plans. “Plus, he agreed to it so-”

“Yeah, when he was still planning to go on vacation himself. But none of us expected his plans to be canceled because his friend ate a bad lobster.” You felt bad for the friend, but at least the doctors said it would be alright. But still, now you were in this sticky situation.

“Yeah, that's very unfortunate.” Hoseok said pitifully. “Plus, how bad could it be” That’s when you both heard the sound of keys unlocking the front door, which made you turn your heads at the same time. While Hoseok didn’t change anything in his behavior, you on the other side tried your best to stay cool and not to think too much about it. But god, did this make you nervous. Especially since it has been a while since you’ve seen Yoongi. The last time you saw him, he was rocking that bowl cut, which did look undeniably cute on him, but that was already five years ago. Where did the time go? Now you were both in your early to mid-twenties, so you knew that he wasn’t going to be the same boy from before. So when the front door finally swung open, you were captivated by Yoongi’s change of appearance over the years. Fuck. He was painfully beautiful. He grew his hair out, and the back of it even touched his shoulders. He traited his bowl cut for a middle part, and fuck, did it look good. And even though he was only wearing a hoodie and a pair of jeans, you noticed how broad his shoulders had become. Yoongi briefly looked up, and that’s when he finally noticed your presence. It was of short due because your eyes only met for a second before he looked back down. “Oh, good. I was just planning to leave-” Hoseok quickly spoke to defuse the obvious tension.

“Enjoy your holiday, Hoba.” Yoongi quickly said before locking himself in his room.

“Very bad, alright.” Hoseok looked at you, almost apologetic that this was the situation you had landed in. “Make the best of it.” Was the last thing Hoseok said before hugging you goodbye. He grabbed his luggage and headed out of the door. You just chuckled to yourself. If this is how Yoongi wanted to be me, let him. You were going to enjoy yourself, whether he liked it or not.

Day one went by faster than you expected. The best option for you was leaving that grumpy man alone for the first day, letting him slowly accept the situation on his own. You just went to the bar with your friends, enjoying the fact that everything was so near to you now. You still lived with your parents, but you were slowly earning enough money to move out. It was just a matter of time. That’s why Hoseok did you the favor to stay at his place while he’s on vacation. He only suggested it because he knew Yoongi would be away as well, not knowing that his plans were short-due. Besides the fact that out of all people you were staying at their place, it’s the fact his expensive vacation got canceled that made him extra annoyed. Leading to situations like you bumping into each other, saying ‘hi’ to Yoongi, and him completely ignoring your ass. Nice. But today was day two. Another day of playing another game of: will Yoongi finally speak one word to me, or will he act as if I don’t even exist? Let’s find out!

So there you were, sitting on the couch Tuesday morning, eating your honey cereal as you were watching one of your favorite shows. The sound of Yoongi’s door opening up made your ears perk up, making you turn your head to the right to look at his sleepy figure walking towards the kitchen. "Good morning." You greeted, but without any luck of getting a greeting back. You child. “Hope you slept well.” You turned your head back to the television as you listened to Yoongi grabbing something out of the fridge and heading back to his room. “Great talk.” You said in a sarcastic tone, mouth full as you heard his door slam shut again. You knew he was a stubborn little guy, but you weren’t planning on giving up. Maybe he still needed some more time to cope. Yes, that’s obviously the answer.

[10:18] y/n: Joonie

[10:18] y/n: Wanna go on a coffee date with me?

Namjoon was one of your best friends, who is conveniently enough also friends with Yoongi. You could always go to him for advice or just a good time. I bet he knows what to do with Yoongi, right?

[10:21] Namjoon: of course

[10:21] Namjoon: I’ll pick you up around 12

“I tell you Namjoon, he just fully ignores my ass whenever I’m there. It’s like I’m a ghost.” As soon as you two sat down in the little café down the street and ordered, you started venting your heart out about this whole ordeal. “I’m real right?!” You started poking his cheek, making him scrunch up his nose and telling you to stop. It made you giggle.

“I just think he needs some time…maybe. He really started disliking you ever since college, you know.” Whenever Namjoon talked, he sounded wise. Even though he wasn’t that much older than you, he managed to sound like he had years of experience. “I never really knew why though, you two seemed to be good friends before.”

You took a quick sip from your coffee and quickly regretted it since you burned your tongue. “I know right?! It’s super weird. Besides Yoongi, is Hoseok the only one who knows, but he doesn’t want to tell me.” You sighed out of defeat and a pout formed on your lips. “I don’t remember having a fight or saying something inappropriate to him, so I have no clue what the reason is.” You took a moment to think and recollect your memories, but there wasn’t one that could indicate the reason for Yoongi’s sudden hatred towards you. You graduated high school one year after Yoongi, you went to college, and all of a sudden he stopped replying to your texts and avoided you at all cost.

Namjoon softly smiled as he gently placed his hand on your arm. “I know he’s stubborn, but he can’t ignore you forever. You’ll get through him one way or another.” His words were warm and sincere, making you feel more at ease about the whole situation. “Besides, you’re stubborn too, so I know the only option is for him to talk to you eventually.”

His comment made you laugh, ‘cause you knew it was true. “We’ll see.” You sighed. “I just feel bad for him that he needs to live with someone that he heavily dislikes. I wanna make it up to him, you know? One way or another.”

Namjoon thought for a second, stirring his little silver spoon around his coffee cup. “Maybe Hoseok’s knows what to do? You can always text him, he won’t mind”

A hopeful smile appeared on your face. “You’re right, but enough about me! How have you been? I heard you started writing a new book, that’s exciting!” After college, Namjoon started writing books. His first one wasn’t as successful as he hoped to be, but he had not lost heart, and luckily for him his last release was a hit. It’s kind of impressive how fast he could come up with new ideas. He also had a very poetic way with words, so to you it was just a matter of time until he got recognized.

“It’s going okay. I have a bit of writer's block, but I’ll get through it. And coming out of the house is fortunately one of the key factors of breaking it.” He smiled, his dimples shining through. The sudden buzz of Namjoon’s phone caught the both of you off guard. He fished his phone out of his bag, letting out an annoyed sigh as he read the caller ID. “It’s Jungkook, this is gonna take a while, sorry.”

Of course. Jungkook, your mutual friend, was known to keep himself busy with things that he knew he shouldn’t. You were just wondering in what kind of trouble Jungkook got himself into this time.

Day two wasn’t as successful either, but you weren’t planning on giving up. Besides, Yoongi and you used to be friends. Weird, right? Yeah, sure, it was high school, but you didn’t expect him to change his demeanor towards you that much. Besides, what could you have done to make him hate you so much? That’s why day three, you decided to ask for some help. And hey, the third time’s a charm, right?

[17:41] y/n: hobi istg this man doesn’t budge

[17:42] Hoseok: It's that bad huh?

[17:42] Hoseok: Maybe ask him to drink with you? I’ve never seen him say no to alcohol

[17:43] y/n: bet

Now you had a plan and all you had to do was wait until he got home. You just had to ask him to have a drink and he will finally be nice to you, easy right? So tonight, you decided to stay home, trying to socialize with Mister Grumpy. You were patiently waiting for him to get home as you were watching TV again. It was already 22:05, so he would arrive any minute now. So hearing the magical sound of the keys turning in the keyhole made you as ready as ever. “Welcome home, you wanna-”

“I don’t know why you keep on trying, but if it wasn’t obvious yet, I’m not interested in talking to you.”

Excuse me?! “Excuse me?” If Yoongi’s first sentence wasn’t enough to make you offended, his cold tone only added to it. Yoongi however, just ignored you again. He took his shoes off, took something from the fridge, and just went to his room again. You just scoffed before you yelled “Look, it’s only for two weeks. Then you’ll have your precious Hobi back.” But the lack of response made you even angrier. “It’s also not my fault your plans got canceled, so no need to be so mean!” You just pouted in your seat, not sure what your next move could be, if you even had that. Should you just ignore the fact that Yoongi was ignoring you? Absolutely not, you still had 11 days left with that bastard. So when day three arrived, you decided on a different approach.

“Yoongi, can you-“ And with that, he closed the door in your face. Nevermind. You thought if you were more direct, he would finally be less of a jerk, but alas, you were wrong again. The weather seemed to be in your favor, however. It had been raining cats and dogs ever since this morning, meaning you were stuck with one another whether he liked it or not. You planned to stay in the living room for the entire day, so whenever he needed to leave to get something, he had no other choice but to be in the same room as you. But Yoongi wasn’t naive, he knew what you were doing. So this morning he grabbed enough resources to keep himself fueled for the day. The bastard.

But there it was, a sign from above.

It was already close to midnight when all of a sudden you heard a certain man curse every curse word you could imagine in the comfort of his own room. Not only that, but the living room light suddenly shut off, leaving you alone in the darkness with the only light source being the one from your phone screen. But before you could fully comprehend what was happening, Mister Grumpy had finally left his room. “Did you turn the electricity off?!”

You couldn’t help but scoff at his accusation. “First of all, I don’t even know how to do that. Second of all, how dare you accuse me of such a thing! I’m not that desperate for a man's attention…” You nagged. “The power just cut off. I bet it’s from the storm from outside, but maybe you haven’t noticed it since you locked yourself in your room all day.”

“I have a window in my room you know-“ A loud thunder interrupted Yoongi’s sentence. “Jesus.”

You placed your phone away, looking sheepishly at Yoongi who was wearing an oversized black shirt and gray sweats that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. “I guess you’re stuck with m-” But before you could even finish your sentence, Yoongi was already heading back to his room. Oh no, I don’t think so. You bolted out of your seat and jumped in front of Yoongi’s door, blocking his entrance. “Not so fast!” Even though his annoyed expression was enough for you to move out of his way, this was just a perfect opportunity that you couldn’t let go to waste. “You wanna drink with me?”

Yoongi scoffed at your suggestion, crossing his arms as he spoke to you. “Why would I wanna drink with you?”

You forced a smile. “Because Hobi says you like drinking and we are gonna be stuck with each other for some time.” You explained. “Besides, because of the weather the internet is cut off. So I need some sort of entertainment.”

“So you only wanna talk to me 'cause you are bored.”

This bitch. “Ugh, stop being such a drama queen. You’re the one who keeps ignoring me.” How dare he imply that you were the reason you guys haven’t properly talked the last four days? “Now sit!” You said in a demanding way, making him well aware you weren’t planning on backing down tonight. Yoongi just did as he was told and placed himself down on the couch reluctantly. Pleased with your accomplishment, you quickly headed to the liquor cabinet, grabbing the first bottle that seemed decent to you. You placed it down on the coffee table, together with some glasses, but by Yoongi’s expression, you could tell he was not pleased.

“You got the wrong one.” He spoke softly.

“What?”

“This is the cheap alcohol Hobi picks for parties and stuff. Wait-“ You and Yoongi switched places, you sitting down on the couch and he headed over to the liquor cabinet. He rummaged through it for a few seconds, quickly swapping the previous bottle with another one. “Here, this is the good bottle.” As Yoongi placed the bottle down, together with himself on the couch, a good distance away from you, you couldn’t help but notice it seemed a lot more expensive than the previous bottle.

“You ignore me for days, but at least I deserve your expensive liquor.” You say backhanded. It didn’t help the he-hates-my-guts situation, but hey, you couldn’t help it.

He just scoffed as he poured a drink for the both of you. “Need to enjoy a quality drink if I want to tolerate talking to you.” He handed one glass to you. “Here.”

“Ah yes, of course.” That made more sense. You accepted the drink, waiting for him to clink it. “To a lovely night.” You said, forcing a smile again. You noticed he did the same before you clinked glasses, simultaneously taking a sip from your drink.

By the way you scrunched up your face as you took your first sip, Yoongi quickly realized that you usually didn’t drink stuff like this. “Not used to the hard stuff, huh?” He said in a cocky manner.

“Absolutely not.” You said, face full of disgust. “But hey, if it makes you hate me less-”

“I don’t hate you.” Yoongi quickly added, cutting off your sentence. “You just annoy me.”

You just laughed as you took another sip. “I guess that’s something.” The more you drank from it, the better it got. “Why though? We used to be friends in high school, but ever since college you started to act…different.” Yoongi didn’t answer, all he did was shrug his shoulders before he finished his drink in one sip, quickly pouring himself another glass. He was hiding something, but you didn’t know what yet. “Fine, don’t tell me then.”

“The fact that you can’t remember the reason why, makes my annoyance to you even more justified.” Yoongi explained as he was swirling his drink around. “But I guess you do have a weird sense of memory. Like that one time, when you forgot what color rose I gave you, but you seemed to have remembered I cut off the thorns so you wouldn’t prick yourself.” He said slightly annoyed. “It was lavender by the way, but I also don’t think you remembered the meaning behind it.”

“Wait, you remember that?” After all those years, Yoongi still remembered that? It was a very early memory of you two, you were both 15 at the time. It was Valentine's Day at school, and since you knew neither of you would have a valentine, you decided to be each others’. He gave you that lavender rose while you gave him a weird videogame that he was into back in the day. You were slowly sipping that nasty drink Yoongi handed to you as your mind was lost in a sea of nostalgia.

He tried to brush it off, not acting as if it was anything special. “Just a random memory I have.” But he couldn’t. “Or maybe I just treasured our friendship more than you did.” There it was.

You forgot to tell Yoongi you were a lightweight, so the dramatic gasp you let out was partially that dramatic because of the alcohol. “That’s not true! You were one of my closest friends.” An angry pout formed on your face. “But then you started to act like a meanie.”

Yoongi couldn’t help but scoff. “Oh, I was a meanie?! You were the one that started forgetting about me ever since she got into college.”

“Heh?!” You could feel yourself getting more drunk by the sip. “You were the one who started ignoring my texts!” Yoongi’s lips parted for a second, ready to snap back, before closing them again. He was saying too much. There was a reason for his change of behavior, but his pride was the reason he couldn’t say it. “Yeah, now you don’t know what to say, huh?!”

“Whatever.” Yoongi mumbled as he took another sip of his drink, finishing it as well, making him pour another one. He wasn’t planning on staying sober tonight, especially after exposing his feelings too much.

The alcohol was starting to get to you, because the longer you started at Yoongi, the cuter you found him. You also noticed his cheeks were redder than before, but you weren’t sure if it was out of embarrassment or because of the alcohol. Unlike him, you couldn’t handle your liquor that well, making you say things like “You know, you’d be a lot cuter if you weren’t such a dick to me.”

Yoongi stayed quiet for a second, swirling his drink again as if he were searching through all the possible comebacks to that comment. “I thought assholes were your thing?” He scoffed.

You tilted your head out of confusion, mixed with a pout on your lips. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, by all the guys you’ve been fucking, I can tell there is a pattern-”

“Are you slut shaming me, Min Yoongi?!” You gasped, a bit over the top maybe, but still justified. “Never expected that from you, I’ve never been so disappointed.”

Yoongi’s face turned a pale white, not expecting for this conversation to turn out this way. “No, wait-” You crossed your arms and dramatically turned your head away from him. “That's not how I wanted to come across.”

That’s when you started to overthink this situation, which made a grin appear on your face, making Yoongi even more concerned. “Wait…so are you being an asshole because you thought that was my type?” His eyes were wide and his lips were tightly pressed against one another. He truly didn’t know what he just got himself into.

“No, not like-”

“Waaait-” You moved a bit closer to Yoongi and words escaped your mouth before your mind could fully understand them. “So, you saw me fucking a bunch of so-called ‘assholes’ and thought, lemme do the same? Didn’t know you actually liked me that much, Yoongi.” You teased.

“I think you’re looking a bit too hard into this-”

“So you were not trying to be my type?”

“Not intentionally, no.”

“What if I said that you are my type though?”

The words came out casually, but you didn’t realize how impactful those words were to Yoongi. “W-what?” he stuttered.

“And not because you suddenly became a dick to me, just for clarification!” You quickly added, we wouldn’t want any misconceptions. Maybe you shouldn’t have had that second glass, what even was that drink? It sure wasn’t anything like the cheap stuff you got at the bars. You looked up at Yoongi and you could tell the red of his cheeks wasn’t from the alcohol. “Hehe, someone’s flustered.”

Yoongi’s body language had changed, he wasn’t as relaxed as a few minutes before, which was understandable. He was more tense and you could tell he was nervous all of a sudden. “You’re just saying things now.” Was all he could say, almost like a defense, like he couldn’t believe you just said that, let alone mean it.

Your sudden laugh caught him off guard. “Why would I lie about such a thing? You know me better than that.” You looked up at Yoongi, his eyes almost as innocent as a deer. His gaze was fixated on you and even though his mouth was shut thigh, you could tell more than a thousand words were going through his mind right now. “Ah, you’re so cute when you’re embarrassed, Yoongi.“ You leaned in ever closer, surprising him with how little distance there was left between the two of you.

He couldn’t help but look away, this was just getting a bit too much for him. “You don’t mean that.” He said under his breath.

You pouted again as your eyes were studying Yoongi’s features. The way his black hair fell, the fluttering of his lashes, the rosy color of his cheeks, he really was a work of art. “Maybe I can prove it to you?” Yoongi’s eyes slightly widened at your suggestion, making him turn his head back to you. It painted a smile on your face. “What’s going through your mind right now?” You teased, noticing you piqued his interest.

His breathing got heavier, and you noticed the quick glance he took at your lips before he fixed them back to your eyes. “The same that’s going through yours, I hope.”

A smirk formed on your lips as you looked at his. “Is that so?” Yoongi wanted to say something back, but he couldn’t. “Is that why you’re so nervous all of a sudden?” You moved your hands up to his cheek, slowly caressing it with your fingers. “Because a lot of dirty things are going through my mind right now.” Yoongi seemed to be starstruck, unable to make a move. “You really can’t find your words, huh?” That’s when you noticed…“But your little friend says more than enough.”Your eyes drafted towards the tent in his gray sweats, making you smirk out of satisfaction at the sudden surprise. You moved your hand away from his face, laying them down on his thighs. “Can I?” You asked as you slowly caressed your fingers on his thigh, just inches away from his ever-growing erection. Yoongi took a deep breath before slowly nodding, almost seeming like he was fighting himself to give in. His response made your eyes twinkle, and you moved your hands up to caress his aching bulge. Your eyes were still focused on his’ as your hands were doing it’s own thing. You loved seeing his reaction to you touching him. The look of annoyance slowly faded into pure lust. His breathing got heavier with every caress your hand made, making his dick twitch out of response. Yoongi’s eyes moved down at your lips, almost looking desperate to have them against his’. “If you want to kiss me, then do it.” You teased. You wanted him to give in to his desires. You wanted him to admit it to himself how much he wanted you right now. And oh, did it drive him mad. You could see the hint of frustration in his face, his pride and desires were arguing, but one was obviously the winner since it only took him seconds before he leaned in to kiss you. His lips hesitated a bit to move as they touched yours, but when you were the one to start the motion, he had no choice but to follow along. You felt his hand creep in around your waist, pulling you in closer. A raspy moan left his lips since your hands had found their way underneath his gray sweats. “Nice to hear you haven’t lost your voice.” You whispered teasingly.

“Shut u-fuck.” With circular motions, you spread his precum all over his tip before giving him a hard stroke. “Please, y/n-” You never expected Yoongi to moan your name so desperately, but here you were. The man who had been ignoring you for the last couple of days was now more than desperate for your undivided attention. You couldn’t help but chuckle as you pressed your lips against Yoongi again, the sweet taste of his liquor still lingering. For a brief second, you let go of his twitching dick, leaving the comfort of the couch to sit on the ground, just the right height for easy access. You grabbed Yoongi’s sweats at its hem, dragging it down, making his erection even more visible. You were surprised by his size, making you even more excited to touch him. Saying you never expected to be in this situation would be a lie since you’ve fantasized about it multiple times during your college days. But unfortunately for the two of you, that’s when Yoongi decided to start ignoring you…

Yoongi’s eyes were fully focused on you, admiring the view you had given him. You tucked your hair behind your ear before grabbing his cock by its base, giving it a slow lick from there all the way to the top, without breaking eye contact. You circled your tongue around his tip before fully taking him in, making him let out a long heavy moan, almost sounding like a sigh of relief. Your hand followed the motion of your lips, starting out slow. The sound of you sucking Yoongi off in combination with his heavy breaths filled the room, which for you, was music to your ears. Occasionally, he would let out a small whimper, making you ever so proud of what you were doing. Yoongi’s head was thrown back in his seat, unable to continue looking at you as his hair fell in front of his eyes. He was getting lost in the pleasure, moaning your name under his breath mixed with cuss words. You removed your lips from his cock, making him let out a moan out of reflex. You quickened the pace of your hand as you kissed the inside of his thighs, eyes fully focused on him. “Don’t stop-” Managed to come out of his mouth as his heavy breathing became full of moans, making it clear to you that he was getting closer. You wrapped your lips back around him again, making him let out a raspy moan. “Fuuuck-“ You felt Yoongi’s hand finding the back of your head, grabbing a fistful of your hair, moving your head even further down so he could enjoy the gagging sounds you made. “Just like that.” Like the good girl you were, you went along with the pace Yoongi had set for you, not caring that the tears in your eyes were ruining your mascara. “You’re taking me so well.” You looked back up at Yoongi, noticing he had his eyes back on you. How could your eyes look so innocently up at him as you were absolutely ruining him at the same time? “Where do you want it?” The twinkle in your eye and the lack of response as you continued to suck him off made it clear to him where you wanted it. He threw his head back again and the subtle twitch in his legs made it obvious he was nearly there. “Shit-I’m gonna-fuck-“ You made it hard for him to speak as you increased your speed, making it all harder for him to suppress his orgasm. A raspy groan left Yoongi’s mouth as you felt him filling your mouth with white ribbons of his cum. The feeling of it against the back of your throat made you whimper for a second, but you tried your best to clean it all up. But fuck, was there a lot of it. You tried your best to clean every drop of Yoongi, and when his dick left your mouth, it was already turning limp. You couldn’t help but smirk as you wiped the excess off of the corner of your lips, enjoying the view of Yoongi being absolutely worn out. Yoongi gathered the last of his energy to sit up straight, leaning towards you to kiss you again. “I wanna make you feel good as well.” He whispered in between kisses.

A menacing grin appeared on your face, however. “Hmh, no.” You whispered back before pulling away.

“Wait, what?!” Your answer made Yoongi snap out of his high, not sure why you would refuse his offer.

You stood up from off your knees, feeling them being red from sitting that long. “Maybe if you’re a bit nicer to me the next couple of days, I’ll let you. But for now, no.” You said nonchalantly and full of attitude, even though this didn’t seem to be in your favor, ‘cause shit were you horny. You walked away from the couch and towards Hobi’s room. “Goodnight, Yoongi.”

Yoongi was dumbfounded and confused for a good minute, not sure what just had happened. All he knew was that he wished had made you cum first.

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folkookie97 · 2 months

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❝why'd you only call me when you're high?❞ — MYG

— SUMMARY: ❝ It's Yoongi's birthday and he starts feeling guilty for breaking up with you when you most needed him. ❞

— PAIRING: rockstar!yoongi x actress!reader

— TYPE: light angst, mild dark | rockstar!au, celebrities!au

— WORD COUNT: 907

— WARNINGS/TAGS: Part of "I Bet on Losing Dogs" One-Shots Collection, toxic love, exes to lovers, second chance romance, secret relationship, non-graphic smut (not with the reader), semi-public sex, Trust Issues, Implied/Referenced Alcoholism, ambiguous/open ending, Unplanned Pregnancy, arguing, Yoongi is bad at feeling here (maybe a lil bit toxic too lol), This part is based on Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? (Arctic Monkeys), POV Second Person

— NOTES¹: This one-shot is part of the "I Bet On Losing Dogs" Collection, random scenarios of my AU where Yoongi is a toxic rockstar with trust issues and an alcohol addiction who secretly dated an actress at the beginning of her career.

— NOTES²: Happy bday Yoongi my sweetheart, I love you so much <3 (he was my ultimate bias from 2015 to 2019 guys, but I'll never get over him 😭😭)

— RELEASE DATE: March 08, 2024

— CROSSPOSTING: ao3

"So you must be the birthday guy of the party. Happy birthday, bro!"

Min Yoongi heard that last sentence a trillion times during the night, the insincerity of the congratulations already going unnoticed by his confused brain as he filled his body with an absurd amount of alcohol.

He hadn't been worried about nothing more since the last few hours. His face was no longer anything more than a mask whose faked fellow feeling had the sole intention of at least not making the situation even more uncomfortable for the guests and their random companions.

When the idea of celebrating his birthday with a party full of other celebrities came into his own mind, Yoongi didn't figured the bad scenarios that could happen at the private club. He just wanted to get rid of the feeling of loneliness that had been damaging him over the last few months. The impostor syndrome haunting him during sleepless nights with the creative block, whenever he tried writing some new songs for his new album.

The deadline until the new tour's start was short, and his patience was even shorter.

Yoongi just wanted to de-stress. Celebrate his special night with some friends from the same celebrities' world, drink a lot, eat some snacks and maybe have sex with random models. Everything he used doing before he met you.

All it took was drinking too much until he went to a far corner to make out with a Victoria's Secret's Angel who wasn't that famous, but at least made up for her lack of fame with her beauty and tongue technology.

However, maybe the weight of having a different mouth touching him after being used to feeling only someone specific for so long had been too much for his emotions heightened due alcohol.

Or maybe he felt guilty. Guilty for letting another woman touch him after sharing so many good moments with you.

Guilty for saying such cruel words to you during your latest arguments. Guilty for don't understanding your desire to see him publicly deny his dating rumors with other women. Guilty for accusing you of being paranoiac, too jealous and also accusing you of blame him for always putting his career before your relationship.

Guilty for never prioritizing you.

But mostly, guilty for leaving you when you needed him most. Guilty for accusing you of pregnancy trick for his fame and money. Guilty for always being a toxic boyfriend and already being a bad future dad.

Yoongi would always love you. He knew that. Everyone in his inner circle knew that. Even that hot model could realized that when he started crying right after cumming in her mouth.

But he didn't deserve your love. He didn't deserve your baby.

And being there, at his own pity party with his lips — and eyes — still swollen and more glasses in his hands as he continued greeting his guests only proved this cruel truth.

It was his fucking birthday. All he really wanted was being with you. Cuddling you, playing some of both of you favorite songs on his guitar, caressing your pregnant belly, talking to the baby...

Damn it! He just wanted you again. He just wanted being with you forever, being your husband. He wanted having a family with you. He needed to get you back. He needed his stupid party end up being useful, at least knocking some sense into his fucking mind.

With his vision blurred from tasting different colorful drinks, Yoongi searched for your number in his blocked contacts, letting out a long sigh with the increased guilt that hit in his chest when he realized that you didn't block him back.

So he pressed the call icon and waited.

Three rejected calls. Four missed calls. He could almost daydream, remembering you carrying your own shoes and calling him every possible curses while leaving your old apartment after one of your arguments.

Even though the clock on his cell phone showed that it was past three in the morning, he knew you were awake. Or at least you woken up with his fucking annoying stubbornness.

I'm so sorry love

It wasn't something very special, but it was as much as his high drunk state allowed him typing in your DMs without looking more stupid than his usual.

It wasn't a decent apology for everything he'd put you through lately. All the arguments, the swearing, the shade comments on the internet, his neglect about the baby...

Yoongi knew you deserved better words. You deserved all the love in the world. All the love he felt for you but never showed you in a healthy way.

But deep down, Yoongi knew you would answer him. He wasn't proud of being sure about that, but he knew it. He knew you better than you knew yourself.

Hi. Why'd you only call me when you're high?

And you unfortunately also knew him enough to know that alcohol was the cause behind his sudden motivation to contact you, after months of just ghosting your attempts to still save your relationship. Save your future family.

I'm so sorry

He practically repeated the same message before trying to click the call icon again.

This time, you answered, barely giving him time to process the situation before your trembling voice echoed through his phone. "Prove it to me without being fucking drunk as usual. Prove it to me without being at your stupid birthday party."

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yuan4i · 1 year

Text

CULT OF DIONYSUS al haitham x reader x kaveh

SYNOPSIS kaveh, al haitham and you are close friends and went to the same high school. but after your junior year, you left them and sumeru behind for liyue’s 2 year med school exchange program. now you’re back in sumeru for a class reunion and attending sumeru akademiya.

STATUS 01/14/23, on going, slow updates

GENRE social media au, modern au, college au

CONTENT WARNINGS childhood friends to lovers, mentions of cheating, angst, love triangle, suggestive, implied female (they/them prns), written before kaveh's in game release, messy timestamps, will add more later!

TAGLIST closed for now! please let me know if you changed your username

*************************

CHARACTERS

4LYFERS | overwork no sleep

ACT I - "I'M FEELING DEVIOUS"

01 . still sleeping ? 02 . packing 03 . reunion message?? 04 . bitch this you? 05 . i'll try to miss you ✿ 06 . bro's down bad fr 07 . 10/10 08 . reunion day ✿ 09. what's his problem? 10 . pretty boy 11 . asked them out 12 . why r u here? ✿ 13 . his text 14 . lying to me? 15 . you? upset? 16 . call me if u get lost

ACT II - "YOU'RE LOOKING GLAMOROUS"

17. is it too late to switch majors?? ✿ 18. third wheeling? 19. tall, blonde and gorgeous ✿ 20. cuddles on the couch 21. do you like him? 22. wingman !? 23. tickets (and backstage) 24. welcome to the renaissance ✿ 25. you guys knew?? ✿ 26. get drunk 27. sober up, bitch 28. cruel summer ✿ 29. can i kiss you? ✿ 30. good for them. | 30.5 cult of dionysus notes ✿

ACT III - "LETS GET MISCHIEVOUS"

31. hello panda cookies 32. man wtf ✿ 33. get me out 34. homophobia arc 35. fuck this 36. exams 37. fool ✿ 38. tba... 39. tba...

ACT IV - "AND POLYAMOROUS"

tba...

TAGLIST @yelshin @alizaneth @red-chester @luoch4 @sunsinrinn @achy-boo @cerisearan @ceylestia @afoxesgreed @im-bili @pyrrhicgaze @victoria1676 @akagism2 @kokxm1 @rifran @squishychongyun @sharkiestory @cafezjjn @gautier-lei @scaramouche-slut @hangecanweholdhands @aixaingela @kay-stryker @giggles8899 @imma-too-many-fandoms @starryeyedkoko @awritingotaku @ittosoneandoniwife @sukunasrealgf @crowbird @jaeminbabygirl @rainbowsaz @h4chi @myaaones @prettypei @jiminscarmex @istgnature @vvasant @dreamingkace @sunsethw4 @aludicpoet @just-simping-over-genshin @scarlet-kazuha @icedmocha1 @kittycasie @hydration-is-for-weenies @jayvolans @angelkazusstuff @ky-uuu @vanitasbrainrot @temshouineichi @kaoyamamegami @samyayaya @serenareiss @lordbugs @lez-zuha @boxdisappeared @tamikahoshiko @makimakimi @yuminako @minty-vxnilla @eunchaeluvr @sukunasin @screechingxiaolover @ragnvdnr @cicato @letthewindlead @jkbubbs @simp4bakuh03 @kunikuzi @mochicurls21 @celestair @amaruthine @spadecentral @kitsunechan707 @jjkclub @younganarchist @kokoscutie @warcelia @tinandabin @pomeiu @annoying-and-upset @twstmemebox @ashhh-14 @wonderland-fan @cartoon-obsessed-aroacelesbian @sunnyskiesv2 @anteroz @bloombb @teapartyspilled @butterflyqueen234 @cindywasneverhere @parcqq @randomidk-123 @crazydreamcat

(tagged only on chapter updates)

#⁺◟✿ cult of dionysus : al haitham x reader x kaveh #al haitham x reader #al haitham smau #kaveh x reader #kaveh smau #al haitham x kaveh #genshin smau

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heartss4matthewq · 2 months

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NOTHING TURNS TO SOMETHING (pt.1)

Summary: You’ve known chris your whole life. When he gets a girlfriend you are happy for him, right?

Warnings: fluff, dom!chris, fem!reader,

—————————

CHRIS POV

7:00 PM

“matt hurry the fuck up we gotta pick up mya” i said.

mya is my girlfriend. we recently got together and our 6 month is coming up so i decided to take her out for dinner. We’ve been arguing a little more recently. I thought this would be a nice gesture.

“yo why don’t you shut the fuck up and get your drivers license then maybe you could pick her up yourself!” matt yells

“bro can you guys stop arguing, matt you do need to hurry up though chris doesn’t wanna be late” nick says

“wait mya’s calling me hold on” i said answering her call.

📞

“hey”

“hey, what’s up?”

“soo i kinda cant make it tonight..”

“what? why?” i said clearly upset

“well you know zack right? my best friend?”

“yeahhh…?”

“well he’s coming over cause’ like he called me and asked if i was busy but i kinda told him no and i missed him because we haven’t seen eachother since like….october so yeah sorry”

i heard her start..laughing? was she already with him?

“uh that’s fine i guess, i just thought we could have a night to ourselves”

“yeah well sorry but goodnight, bye chris.” she hung up on me.

📞

well what the fuck.

—————————

Y/N POV

8:08 PM

i was about to fall asleep when i got a text from chris

i’ve always said i was happy for chris and mya but was i?

i have had a crush on chris since i was little.

i know it’s bad and i truly am happy he found someone but, why couldn’t it be me?

8:30 PM

“bro lowkey mya’s a bitch don’t mind her” matt says to chris

“yeah exactly i mean i’m not tryna dawg on her but why would she do that if she knew you wanted to do this tonight??” i said sounding annoyed.

“yeah i don’t know guys i’ll just talk to her tomorrow morning, i mean she hasn’t seen him for a while.” chris wants to make the situation sound better.

“yeah you fucking better” nick says emerging from his room.

a couple hours pass and we had just been playing games and laughing until…

—————————

CHRIS POV

“guys myas calling!!” i said laughing a little.

📞

“i think we should talk” my face immediately drops

“uh about what??”

“we need to break up.”

“what?” i said clearing my throat

“i said we should break up.” she says firmer than before

“why, i thought we were okay?”

“well we aren’t, plus zach doesn’t like you so..” she trails off

“so that’s it? we’re done like that?”

“i mean yeah, that’s what i said.”

silence.

“also i’ve been sleeping with zach for 3 months”

“what?” i said angry and upset

“yeah, love ya, peace out chrissy”

📞

—————————

Y/N POV

everyone has fallen asleep by this point except me and chris.

we all tried comforting him but nothing seemed to work.

“it’s okay chris, it isn’t your fault she’s a self centered bitch” i said wiping his cheeks.

“yeah but what if i wasn’t giving her what she wanted. and she said she was sleeping with zach for 3 months” he said through sobs

“she did FUCKING what??”

“yeah, i know. what if i’m bad at sex and she just hates me because i couldnt give her what she wanted”

“chris i’m sure you’re good at sex and she’s just talking out of her ass, i bet zach can’t even make her cum” i said laughing

“yeah, maybe”

an awkward silence fills the room

“can i show you that i’m good at sex?”

———————————————————————

#chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #matt sturniolo #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #spotify #sturniolo smut #sturniolo triplets smut

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lovelywritersgarden · 11 months

Text

GLITCHED

PAIRING: Dick Grayson x Fem!Reader

SYNOPSIS: Y/N L/N, codename 'Metis' has always been extremely intelligent. Because of this, she was immediately placed under the watchful eye of the big bad bat. She was recruited for a team of specialized teenagers a 'Young Justice' as their technical analyst, 'girl behind the chair' , or their 'Tech Support'- hilarious.

STATUS: In Progress

Young Justice: Season 1

Table of Contents

Chapter 00: Prologue

Chapter 01: Welcome to Happy Harbor

Chapter 02: Drop-Zone

Chapter 03: Schooled

Chapter 04: Infiltrator

Chapter 05: Denial

Chapter 06: Downtime

Chapter 07: Bereft

Chapter 08: Targets

Chapter 09: Terrors

Chapter 10: Homefront

Chapter 11: Alpha Male

Chapter 12: Revelation

Chapter 13: Humanity

Chapter 14: Failsafe

Chapter 15: Disordered

Chapter 16: Secrets

Chapter 17: Misplaced

Chapter 18: Coldhearted

Chapter 19: Image

Chapter 20: Agendas

Chapter 21: Insecurity

Chapter 22: Performance

Chapter 23: Usual Suspects

Chapter 24: Auld Acquaintances

--------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Hey guys! I hope you are ready to dive right into the first season of Young Justice! I love the 'girl behind the chair' idea and can't wait to make Y/N a part of it! I will be updating soon, keep your eyes peeled! <3 Thank you!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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America's largest hospital chain has an algorithmic death panel

It’s not that conservatives aren’t sometimes right — it’s that even when they’re right, they’re highly selective about it. Take the hoary chestnut that “incentives matter,” trotted out to deny humane benefits to poor people on the grounds that “free money” makes people “workshy.”

There’s a whole body of conservative economic orthodoxy, Public Choice Theory, that concerns itself with the motives of callow, easily corrupted regulators, legislators and civil servants, and how they might be tempted to distort markets.

But the same people who obsess over our fallible public institutions are convinced that private institutions will never yield to temptation, because the fear of competition keeps temptation at bay. It’s this belief that leads the right to embrace monopolies as “efficient”: “A company’s dominance is evidence of its quality. Customers flock to it, and competitors fail to lure them away, therefore monopolies are the public’s best friend.”

But this only makes sense if you don’t understand how monopolies can prevent competitors. Think of Uber, lighting $31b of its investors’ cash on fire, losing 41 cents on every dollar it brought in, in a bid to drive out competitors and make public transit seem like a bad investment.

Or think of Big Tech, locking up whole swathes of your life inside their silos, so that changing mobile OSes means abandoning your iMessage contacts; or changing social media platforms means abandoning your friends, or blocking Google surveillance means losing your email address, or breaking up with Amazon means losing all your ebooks and audiobooks:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Businesspeople understand the risks of competition, which is why they seek to extinguish it. The harder it is for your customers to leave — because of a lack of competitors or because of lock-in — the worse you can treat them without risking their departure. This is the core of enshittification: a company that is neither disciplined by competition nor regulation can abuse its customers and suppliers over long timescales without losing either:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It’s not that public institutions can’t betray they public interest. It’s just that public institutions can be made democratically accountable, rather than financially accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by “voting with your wallet.” In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your ballot. Admittedly, that doesn’t always work, but one of the major predictors of whether it will work is how big and concentrated the private sector is. Regulatory capture isn’t automatic: it’s what you get when companies are bigger than governments.

If you want small governments, in other words, you need small companies. Even if you think the only role for the state is in enforcing contracts, the state needs to be more powerful than the companies issuing those contracts. The bigger the companies are, the bigger the government has to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Companies can suborn the government to help them abuse the public, but whether public institutions can resist them is more a matter of how powerful those companies are than how fallible a public servant is. Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds. Because companies are so big, they abuse us with impunity — and they are able to suborn the state to help them do it:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

This is the dimension that’s so often missing from the discussion of why Americans pay more for healthcare to get worse outcomes from health-care workers who labor under worse conditions than their cousins abroad. Yes, the government can abet this, as when it lets privatizers into the Medicare system to loot it and maim its patients:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-01-patient-zero-tom-scully/

But the answer to this isn’t more privatization. Remember Sarah Palin’s scare-stories about how government health care would have “death panels” where unaccountable officials decided whether your life was worth saving?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26195604/

The reason “death panels” resounded so thoroughly — and stuck around through the years — is that we all understand, at some deep level, that health care will always be rationed. When you show up at the Emergency Room, they have to triage you. Even if you’re in unbearable agony, you might have to wait, and wait, and wait, because other people (even people who arrive after you do) have it worse.

In America, health care is mostly rationed based on your ability to pay. Emergency room triage is one of the only truly meritocratic institutions in the American health system, where your treatment is based on urgency, not cash. Of course, you can buy your way out of that too, with concierge doctors. And the ER system itself has been infested with Private Equity parasites:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Wealth-based health-care rationing is bad enough, but when it’s combined with the public purse, a bad system becomes a nightmare. Take hospice care: private equity funds have rolled up huge numbers of hospices across the USA and turned them into rigged — and lethal — games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Medicare will pay a hospice $203-$1,462 to care for a dying person, amounting to $22.4b/year in public funds transfered to the private sector. Incentives matter: the less a hospice does for their patients, the more profits they reap. And the private hospice system is administered with the lightest of touches: at the $203/day level, a private hospice has no mandatory duties to their patients.

You can set up a California hospice for the price of a $3,000 filing fee (which is mostly optional, since it’s never checked). You will have a facility inspection, but don’t worry, there’s no followup to make sure you remediate any failing elements. And no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks complaints.

So PE-owned hospices pressure largely healthy people to go into “hospice care” — from home. Then they do nothing for them, including continuing whatever medical care they were depending on. After the patient generates $32,000 in billings for the PE company, they hit the cap and are “live discharged” and must go through a bureaucratic nightmare to re-establish their Medicare eligibility, because once you go into hospice, Medicare assumes you are dying and halts your care.

PE-owned hospices bribe doctors to refer patients to them. Sometimes, these sham hospices deliberately induce overdoses in their patients in a bid to make it look like they’re actually in the business of caring for the dying. Incentives matter:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

Now, hospice care — and its relative, palliative care — is a crucial part of any humane medical system. In his essential book, Being Mortal, Atul Gawande describes how end-of-life care that centers a dying person’s priorities can make death a dignified and even satisfying process for the patient and their loved ones:

https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/

But that dignity comes from a patient-centered approach, not a profit-centered one. Doctors are required to put their patients’ interests first, and while they sometimes fail at this (everyone is fallible), the professionalization of medicine, through which doctors were held to ethical standards ahead of monetary considerations, proved remarkable durable.

Partly that was because doctors generally worked for themselves — or for other doctors. In most states, it is illegal for medical practices to be owned by non-MDs, and historically, only a small fraction of doctors worked for hospitals, subject to administration by businesspeople rather than medical professionals.

But that was radically altered by the entry of private equity into the medical system, with the attending waves of consolidation that saw local hospitals merged into massive national chains, and private practices scooped up and turned into profit-maximizers, not health-maximizers:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-qa-corporate-medicine-destroys-doctors/

Today, doctors are being proletarianized, joining the ranks of nurses, physicians’ assistants and other health workers. In 2012, 60% of practices were doctor-owned and only 5.6% of docs worked for hospitals. Today, that’s up by 1,000%, with 52.1% of docs working for hospitals, mostly giant corporate chains:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-04-when-mds-go-union/

The paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring transhuman colony organism that calls itself a Private Equity fund is endlessly inventive in finding ways to increase its profits by harming the rest of us. It’s not just hospices — it’s also palliative care.

Writing for NBC News, Gretchen Morgenson describes how HCA Healthcare — the nation’s largest hospital chain — outsourced its death panels to IBM Watson, whose algorithmic determinations override MDs’ judgment to send patients to palliative care, withdrawing their care and leaving them to die:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/doctors-say-hca-hospitals-push-patients-hospice-care-rcna81599

Incentives matter. When HCA hospitals send patients to die somewhere else to die, it jukes their stats, reducing the average length of stay for patients, a key metric used by HCA that has the twin benefits of making the hospital seem like a place where people get well quickly, while freeing up beds for more profitable patients.

Goodhart’s Law holds that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Give an MBA within HCA a metric (“get patients out of bed quicker”) and they will find a way to hit that metric (“send patients off to die somewhere else, even if their doctors think they could recover”):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Incentives matter! Any corporate measure immediately becomes a target. Tell Warners to decrease costs, and they will turn around and declare the writers’ strike to be a $100m “cost savings,” despite the fact that this “savings” comes from ceasing production on the shows that will bring in all of next year’s revenue:

https://deadline.com/2023/08/warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-gunnar-wiedenfels-strikes-1235453950/

Incentivize a company to eat its seed-corn and it will chow down.

Only one of HCA’s doctors was willing to go on record about its death panels: Ghasan Tabel of Riverside Community Hospital (motto: “Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life”). Tabel sued Riverside after the hospital retaliated against him when he refused to follow the algorithm’s orders to send his patients for palliative care.

Tabel is the only doc on record willing to discuss this, but 26 other doctors talked to Morgenson on background about the practice, asking for anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the nation’s largest hospital chain, a “Wall Street darling” with $5.6b in earnings in 2022.

HCA already has a reputation as a slaughterhouse that puts profits before patients, with “severe understaffing”:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/workers-us-hospital-giant-hca-say-puts-profits-patient-care-rcna64122

and rotting, undermaintained facililties:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/roaches-operating-room-hca-hospital-florida-rcna69563

But while cutting staff and leaving hospitals to crumble are inarguable malpractice, the palliative care scam is harder to pin down. By using “AI” to decide when patients are beyond help, HCA can employ empiricism-washing, declaring the matter to be the factual — and unquestionable — conclusion of a mathematical process, not mere profit-seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/ggarbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

But this empirical facewash evaporates when confronted with whistleblower accounts of hospital administrators who have no medical credentials berating doctors for a “missed hospice opportunity” when a physician opts to keep a patient under their care despite the algorithm’s determination.

This is the true “AI Safety” risk. It’s not that a chatbot will become sentient and take over the world — it’s that the original artificial lifeform, the limited liability company, will use “AI” to accelerate its murderous shell-game until we can’t spot the trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/10/in-the-dumps-2/

The risk is real. A 2020 study in the Journal of Healthcare Management concluded that the cash incentives for shipping patients to palliatve care “may induce deceiving changes in mortality reporting in several high-volume hospital diagnoses”:

https://journals.lww.com/jhmonline/Fulltext/2020/04000/The_Association_of_Increasing_Hospice_Use_With.7.aspx

Incentives matter. In a private market, it’s always more profitable to deny care than to provide it, and any metric we bolt onto that system to prevent cheating will immediately become a target. For-profit healthcare is an oxymoron, a prelude to death panels that will kill you for a nickel.

Morgenson is an incisive commentator on for-profit looting. Her recent book These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America (co-written with Joshua Rosner) is a must-read:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

[Image ID: An industrial meat-grinder. A sick man, propped up with pillows, is being carried up its conveyor towards its hopper. Ground meat comes out of the other end. It bears the logo of HCA healthcare. A pool of blood spreads out below it.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #hca healthcare #Gretchen Morgenson incentives matter #death panels #medicare for all #ibm watson #the algorithm #algorithmic harms #palliative care #hospice #hospice care #business #incentives matter #any metric becomes a target #goodhart's law

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