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etirabys · 2 months

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meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

#rambl #orson scott card #eti reads stuff #eti reads the homecoming saga #songmaster #content note: homophobia

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greensagephase · 9 months

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Nonviolent Communication - Part One

** BEAUTIFUL fanart for this part can be found here by the lovely @lauraolar14 . I'm not over how soft and beautiful these sketches are 😭 😭 Please show them some love!! Thank you again, @lauraolar14 ❤️**

Miguel O'Hara x FemReader

Summary: You don't show up to a meeting or report for other duties as a Spider Society member because of your period. Your boss shows up to your apartment.

Word Count: 5,144

Warning: A little bit of angst?/Mention of death

Part One

You were recruited four months ago into the Spider Society. Ever since the beginning, you couldn’t help but gravitate towards the leader and founder of the society. You learned quickly about his past and the way he carried himself these days.

Miguel O’Hara worked day and night. If he wasn’t in his lab working on something, he was out on missions with a select few members or on his own. There were days that you wouldn’t even see him. You wondered if anyone did on those days. You told yourself to mind your business. It’s not like you were friends and you hardly interacted anyway. You were a member of the Spider Society but one of the newest ones. You weren’t part of the most trusted members for Miguel.

And yet… There was something. You felt a need to look after him. You couldn’t understand it. You wanted to chalk it up to interest. Maybe you found his story interesting. How a man had simply replaced a version of himself in another universe to be a father, only to lose her when that universe collapsed. How heartbroken and guilt-filled he was over it. That had to be it, you told yourself. It was just intrigue.

You figured that if you just gave in to your interest, it would go away eventually. It would fade away… So, you allowed yourself to be interested. You showed up to meetings earlier than anyone else when Miguel scheduled them. You stopped by the cafeteria to pick up coffee cups beforehand and arrived at the meeting earlier. You came in, looking unbothered and uninterested as you placed the cup of coffee in front of him, greeting him.

“The cafeteria staff gave me another cup, and I didn’t know what to do with it,” you’d say as he looked up with an uninterested look on his face.

You’d walk away and take a seat a few chairs away, picking up the nicely done reports he provided at every meeting. You did this every week with a different excuse each time. You didn’t know if he ever wondered why the cafeteria staff gave you so much coffee since that was usually your excuse. You doubted he even cared; you were just another member.

The first few times, you noticed the cup would sit in the same exact spot you’d leave it. Miguel wouldn’t even acknowledge it after looking up at you. You still brought it each week. After some weeks, he wouldn’t even look up when you placed the cup in front of him on the desk but – he started giving you a small grunt of acknowledgement. You’d walk away with a little grin, quickly putting it away when you sat down on your usual seat so he wouldn’t notice it.

Then about two weeks later, you saw it. As he was going over the reports and listening to Ben Reilly ramble on about his past because of some anomaly he caught that week, he picked up the coffee cup and took a sip. You looked away as you felt his gaze about to turn to you. The reports looked very interesting indeed.

All throughout this, you also started showing up to his lab after he and Jessica requested to see you about a mission. You noticed there was quite a mess of gadgets lying around. You offered to organize it, as it is something you enjoy and are good at. You didn’t even know why you offered but Jessica seemed eager about the idea while Miguel frowned.

“Oh, come on, Miguel. Some organization around here wouldn’t hurt, you know? Look at this mess,” Jessica said looking around, pointing at different areas cluttered with all sorts of tech pieces.

“Fine,” Miguel said as he walked away, apparently done with the conversation.

Jessica beamed at you. She seemed to like you a lot since you did your job well and didn’t get into any drama. You were like the perfect pupil. You nodded at her, with a warm smile.

So that’s how you ended up showing up once a week to Miguel’s lab to do some organizing. You show up and organize as he works on something. Sometimes he is up in the air on his platform, going through monitors. You simply greet him as you arrive before you begin organizing and cleaning. Sometimes there is no response, other times there is just a “hmm”.

These visits have led to Lyla taking a liking to you. She often asks you questions as you work while Miguel is there. You don’t know if he pays attention to what Lyla and you talk about. You honestly doubt he even listens. He is always so engrossed in what he is doing.

Lyla definitely makes the time pass faster. It isn’t like you wanted it to but the silence in the lab is… off sometimes. Lyla asks you all sorts of things like whether you have plans for that weekend, if you enjoy a certain activity because other spider members enjoy it, if you like a certain food, or how missions have gone, etc. It is always something different. You respond to her questions as you work. You are fast and efficient.

You never miss a week, and you are never late as you have made it a habit to show up at the same time. Except this week that is. You started your period and this month is kicking your butt with excruciating cramps and lower back pain. You barely make it to your home after patrolling your city, sliding into bed in pain.

You dig through your nightstand, looking for the specific medicine you take to take care of this even if it makes you extremely drowsy and dizzy. You take it and lie down, hoping it will help right away as you groan in pain. You lie in bed, clutching your stomach. The medicine definitely makes you drowsy and dizzy, but it doesn’t seem to help much with the pain. You pass out a few times but wake up again, the pain too much.

You’re so out of it that you don’t notice the time. You don’t remember the day. You don’t notice the sun out behind your closed blinds. You don’t hear a multidimensional portal open in your small apartment living room. You don’t register the heavy footsteps that move through your apartment. Your eyes are closed, hands clutching your stomach, soft groans escaping your lips. You don’t see the large shadow moving through your room until the last second.

“Go away,” you say weakly, thinking someone has broken into your home.

Despite your pain, despite feeling drowsy and dizzy, your mind still has the time to find this funny. The one day you feel like absolute crap is the day someone decides to break into your apartment. And you’re Spider-Woman! How ironic, you think. Let them take whatever they want, you think, as long as they don’t hurt you.

However, you are surprised when you feel a warm and heavy hand pressed to your forehead.

“No fever,” the voice says stating it as a fact.

You continue to clutch your stomach, eyes closed. Unbeknownst to you as you lay in bed in and out of it, a man is in your apartment. His height towers over you in bed.

Miguel O’Hara is in your apartment… Checking on you. He stares down at you as you lay in bed. He sees you clutching your stomach and as he observes carefully, he sees no injury. There is no sight of blood either. His eyebrows furrow in confusion. You are clearly in pain but why? He turns to your nightstand, noticing the bottle of pills. He inspects it. Painkillers…

His eyebrows furrow further as he realizes what it could be. He walks to your bathroom to confirm. His suspicion is confirmed when he takes a look at your garbage can, spotting the plastic wraps of feminine products. His suspicion is further confirmed when he sees a pack of feminine products on the counter, ready for easy access.

“Coño,” he says quietly as he realizes his suspicion is true.

He walks out of your bathroom, looking at your shape in the bed. You are still clutching your stomach and soft groans escape from your lips ever so often. Miguel remembers the days he used to take care of his wife before everything collapsed. It was a long time since he had even thought about doing that for a woman, but his mind started remembering everything he did to ease his wife’s pain each month. He stood there, thinking before he walked out of your bedroom and into the one room that was the kitchen, the living room, and dining room all at once… New York apartments, Miguel thought, as he took in your apartment.

You were organized and clean, but that didn’t surprise Miguel. You did organize the lab each week with such ease despite Lyla peppering you with questions the entire time. Your apartment was warm with its colors. It gave the impression of someone happy and warm. Miguel noticed a bookshelf in the part of the apartment that plays the living room. It is filled with so many books that you have some stacked horizontally over the vertical ones. An avid reader, Miguel thinks before he heads to your kitchen.

It is clean for the most part except for a plate and a cup. Miguel searches through your kitchen, looking for something specific. He returns to your room, looking through your drawers looking for something else. A few minutes later, he returns to your bedroom. You lay still. Seems that you have passed out at last. With ease, Miguel slides some homemade socks with warm rice under your sweatshirt. He places one on your stomach and the other one on your back.

A satisfied hum escapes your lips, letting Miguel know his idea was somewhat successful despite it being homemade. He gives you one more look before heading out to your living room.

He doesn’t even know why he came. All he knows is that you didn’t show up to organize the lab like you did each week. You didn’t show up to the morning meeting either. Jessica hadn’t heard from you in hours and there was no activity from your gizmo.

A few hours later, you wake up from your slumber. You yawn and stretch your body gently. You lay in bed for a few seconds, realizing your pain is gone. Now you just feel the exhaustion that comes from having a period. You sit up in bed slowly, feeling something on your stomach. You look down. Your sweatshirt is tucked into your shorts on both sides. You untuck it and two socks filled with something slide out. You furrow your eyebrows as you lift them up to inspect closer. You bring them to your nose.

“Rice…” you say, recognizing the specific scent of rice. Your eyebrows furrow but you shrug. You don’t even remember getting up to make these, but you thank yourself for doing it despite being out of it. You get up from bed slowly and check the time. It’s already evening. You decide to take a shower to ease your muscles.

Your shower is hot. You fill the bathroom with fog, but it doesn’t matter. It makes you feel like a million bucks when you get into fresh clothes, all shower and fresh. You head out of your bedroom to get something to drink and that’s when you see it. The lamps in the living room are on, there is music playing from your record player. You look confused as you step out further.

“Mierda,” you hear an annoyed male voice, causing you to jump a little.

You turn to the voice, located in the kitchen and find…

“Miguel?” you say slowly but with confusion as you find him with his back to you.

He stands in front of one of your kitchen cabinets, holding it open. There’s a screwdriver in his hand. He turns around at your voice.

“Y/N… You’re awake,” he says turning fully around now.

You take him in. He’s in his suit as always. You’ve wondered many times if he ever just dresses in casual clothes since he’s always in his suit. He stands tall, of course, and you can’t help but think how he makes your already small kitchen look ten times smaller than it is with him standing there. You rub your eyes, making sure this isn’t just some hallucination.

“Um- you are here,” you say looking at him again.

Miguel nods, turning back around to the cabinet. You watch as he uses the screwdriver. You remember then. Your loose cabinet that has been a pain in the butt for months now. You look around the place. There were some dishes in your sink, or at least you remember there being some but now they’re gone. You notice the trash was taken out. Clean dishes were put away. And to your surprise, there’s food on the stove. There’s also a sweet scent lingering in the air that you cannot pinpoint right now.

“You feel better?” Miguel asks, with his back still to you as he finishes fixing the cabinet.

“Yes. A lot better, actually…” you say as you cross your arms across your chest, finding this situation so strange.

Miguel turns around to face you now. He looks at you before looking down at the screwdriver in his hand. The screwdriver looks like a toy in his hand, you notice.

“Yeah, well…” Miguel starts, looking up at you again. “Jessica was worried about you. She said you didn’t report to the meeting we had this morning. She asked if you had gone to my lab to organize it and when I told her no, she grew worried something had happened to you since she also noticed no activity from your gizmo. She wanted to come herself and check on you, but the baby kept her busy today. She asked me to come in and check for her.”

I nod, realizing that makes perfect sense. Jessica has grown fond of you after all, you just never realized she was that fond of you.

“Well, thank you for checking in on me for her. I’ll be sure to thank her tomorrow,” you say looking around the kitchen again.

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” Miguel says, putting the screwdriver down on the counter. It looks normal sized again. You raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t like it when people thank for her… caring. If you want to thank her, just get her a coffee and tell her you appreciate her mentorship,” Miguel explains, resting his hands on his hips.

You nod slowly, maybe it was better to just thank her for everything instead of just this act. You sigh.

“I guess you’re right,” you say, scratching your neck softly. “Did she also tell you to fix my cabinet, or did that just bother you so much?”

Miguel’s face remains void of any expression. You wanted to ask about the homemade socks with rice since it became apparent to you that you weren’t responsible for them, but you kept your mouth shut.

“I was looking for – rice when I noticed your loose cabinet and other messed up things around here. You have a shitty landlord or something?” he asks, looking around.

You shrug. “Yeah, but the rent is good.”

“You’re not exactly strapped for cash, are you?”

You shake your head. It was true. You had some money. You could afford to move somewhere else where the landlords were better but…

“Why are you still here then?” Miguel asks.

His question is laced with interest, and you can’t help but think about how this is the longest conversation you’ve had with him since… meeting each other. And even then, that conversation was probably about three minutes long. You avert your gaze from him, looking at the wall nearest to you. Your eyes land on a single picture amongst many.

You lost your Peter three years ago, just like many of your spider colleagues. Losing him has been the hardest thing you have ever experienced. You have been punched till the air was knocked out of you, you have laid in ruble with buildings crushed over you, and you have been on the verge of death many times, but nothing has ever nor will ever compare to the pain and grief of losing Peter.

As you look at the picture of Peter and you, the one you took the first day you moved into this apartment, you think about all the memories in this apartment. It was all the two of you could afford back then but you two loved it. It was your place. It was the first time you were living together, and it didn’t matter much that it was a little rundown. You guys just wanted a place to live together. You two made it what it is now. A warm and happy place where you two could come home after a long day of work. You spent hours thinking of how to decorate it. Choosing the right and most affordable couch, choosing the wallpaper, choosing where the furniture went.

In the end, it had turned into a beautiful apartment. It was a haven for the two of you but what mattered the most was that you shared it with him, your Peter. You sigh, feeling overwhelmed by the loss again. You had moved on, of course. You had to. How else would you live otherwise? And you had promised Peter you would. Your mind is overwhelmed by the sudden memories as he laid in your arms. He had been crushed by ruble during an attack by a villain, his body was weak, his eyes glistened as they looked at you. You remember caressing his face and hair. He loved it when you did that. He always said it was the perfect way to soothe his nerves. The perfect way to get him to relax and nap after a stressful day.

Your own eyes were filled with tears as you saw it. The way his life was slowly leaving his body. What hurt a million times more, if it was even possible to hurt that much, was that you knew he knew. He knew that was it. There was no turning back. There was no miracle. There was no secret medicine or miracle serum that could make him get up and walk away from this unscathed. That was it.

You held him in your arms, rubble all around you. He looked at your eyes, his own hazy, as you caressed his face and hair. He gave you a gentle smile as he reassured you, he was okay.

“You will move on, right, baby?” he asked you, his voice indicating how little time there was left. “You have to… You must promise me you will. This city depends on you.”

You nodded your head and unable to hold them back any longer, your tears spilled down your face. You remember how some of your tears had landed on his pale yet still beautiful face.

“You must promise me, out loud, darling. Please,” he said, struggling more to get his words out.

“I promise. I promise I will try my best…” you said, and he had nodded. He looked satisfied with your response.

“You must continue – you are my hero. You always have been. And you are the love of my life, darling… I only wish we had more time. That I had more time to make you happier… To make you, my wife. Please – promise me you will be open to other loves,” he had gasped out.

You shook your head. That was impossible. How could you fall for someone else when Peter was the love of your life? Peter, noticing your reluctance, lifted his hand weakly to your face. Despite everything, he was still trying to comfort you. You felt something in you break further. He wiped your tears and gave you a weak yet comforting smile.

“Please promise me you will allow yourself to love again… If there is someone out there that makes you feel like that, please promise me you won’t shut them out. Please, love, promise me,” he said, looking at your eyes and cleaning your tears away.

His voice was weaker, and you noticed his chest was beginning to rise slower and slower. The time was running out…

“I promise I will. I will open my heart if someone comes along but I promise I will never stop loving you, Peter,” you had answered, trying to make him happy in his last minutes. He smiled at you, sweetly, and thanked you. You held him close to you, breathing in his scent. You tried to hold on to his warmth desperately. You clung to him, like you could defend him from Death herself. Like you could defy her this one time.

You cried your soul out as his heartbeat ceased to beat. You cried out as his body became limped in your arms. You cried as his chest stopped moving. You cried, cried, and cried as you held him close to you like your tears and grip could bring him back.

You cursed Death.

You often worried about hurting Peter if something happened to you. You never counted on Peter being the one who left too soon.

You inhale shakily. Your vision has become blurred with tears as you continue to stare at the picture on the wall. You turn around, remembering that Miguel is there. You wipe your tears discreetly. You swallow the lump in your throat, trying to force it down. Otherwise, the moment you speak, your tears will flow. You clear your throat.

“It doesn’t really bother me – and besides, I spend a lot of time out,” you finally say, sounding somewhat normal now. Though the ache is there, deep in your chest. It’s like someone stabbed you in the heart with a wooden stick and left a small piece of it stuck. It always hurts, it always aches.

Miguel doesn’t reply as you turn back around, feeling more in control of yourself. However, you can see something in his eyes. Perhaps understanding? You guessed he probably knew to some extent what had happened to you. It was a canon event for all spider-people. To lose someone.

“Have you eaten anything?” Miguel asks suddenly, dropping the apartment conversation probably for your own sake.

You shake your head. It was hours since you had eaten something. Since yesterday, really.

“There’s some food here. Let me…” he says trailing off, turning around to get a plate from a cabinet. You can’t help but feel a little surprised at how fast he learned his way around the kitchen. Then again, it’s not that large you realize. You approach the kitchen island and take a seat on one of the two island chairs as Miguel turns around with a plate of pasta. Your eyebrows raise in surprise. It is one of your comfort foods. Miguel slides it over to you, gently. A fork is already on it, ready for you.

You slide the plate closer, the scent of it making your stomach growl instantly. You’re definitely hungry.

“Thank you,” you say before you dig in. You can’t help but smile with satisfaction. It is amazing. “This is really good.”

Miguel doesn’t say anything, just watches you. You eat some more, feeling a bit self-conscious as you feel his gaze on you, but you ignore it. Or try to.

“So, are you a really great cook or is pasta one of the few things you can cook?” you ask, slowing down on your eating, trying to fill in the silence.

Miguel shrugs. “My mother taught me how to cook when I was a teenager. It stuck.”

You nod, still eating. “Great skill to have, really… It helped me and –“ you pause, realizing you were about to mention Peter. You swallow. “It helped Peter and I when we were in college,” you finish, looking down at your plate.

A hint of a smile forms on your face as you remember Peter and you cooking for the week over the weekends. You guys lived separately but shared groceries to help each other out. It saved you guys a lot of time and money and brought the two of you closer.

“It is a great skill to have,” Miguel agrees quietly as you continue to eat, looking down at your plate.

You nod silently as you finish eating. You look up at Miguel, he’s looking down at the counter. His hands are flat against the counter, and he looks lost in his own thoughts. You can’t help but take this time to look at him. The sight of him in your kitchen is really something. You think about how great he is at these things like looking after a woman when they’re on their period or cooking. You want to facepalm yourself as you realize it’s obvious he would be good at these things. He did have a wife and daughter at one point, you remind yourself. You look down at your plate.

“Oh, I made this for you, too,” Miguel says at last, breaking the silence.

You look up curiously, wondering what else he had made. He turns around towards the stove and you watch carefully as he retrieves a mug from one of the cabinets. Again, you feel surprised seeing how he knows exactly where to find what he’s looking for. It disappears from your view in front of him and you hear him pour something. He turns around again, holding one of your mugs. Whatever it is, is hot as you can see steam from the top. He sets the mug down on the counter and slides it over to you. Again, his movements are gentle. You lean forward and reach for it.

“Careful. It’s hot,” he warns, as you pull the mug towards you gently.

The scent fills your nostrils quickly and you recognize the sweet scent that met you earlier when you exited your bedroom. You look up at him.

“Canelita,” you say, grinning.

Miguel nods. “Growing up, my mom said it helped with cramps. It used to help my…” he trails off.

You nod. “Yeah, my grandma used to say that, too.” You pause as you inhale the sweetness of cinnamon. “Thank you…” you reply, with sincerity, still meeting his eyes.

Miguel only nods. You drink the warm liquid, enjoying the warmth that spreads down your throat, chest, and finally your stomach. As it settles in your stomach, you feel warm and cozy.

Miguel clears his throat then and looks down at his gizmo. “Well – I should get going. I have some things to catch up on,” he says turning his attention back to you.

You nod as you place the mug on the counter gently and get up. He walks out of the kitchen portion and heads to the middle of the room. He starts clicking on his gizmo, presumably starting a multidimensional portal. You walk towards him, leaving some distance, of course. He looks up at you as the portal appears in the middle of your apartment behind him.

You clear your throat. “Hey – I just wanted to say thank you… For everything. I know Jessica asked you to check up on me, but you did much more than that. I truly appreciate it,” you say, hoping that you’re fully expressing how grateful you are.

You can’t help but think about how you’d probably still be in bed right now. Miguel nods.

“It’s no problem…” Miguel replies, though he looks like he wants to say more. You watch, waiting but he just stares back with little emotion until he nods at you and turns around. He starts walking into the portal. The bright lights coming from the portal create shadows in your apartment. You watch wordlessly until he looks behind his shoulder. “Don’t forget – don’t mention it to Jessica. She can be weird about being thanked sometimes.”

You nod. “I won’t bring it up, no worries. Thank you again. Enjoy your night!” you call out and he just nods before he disappears into the portal. The portal disappears a few seconds after him, taking away its shadows with it.

You sigh as you stand there for a few more seconds before taking a seat again on the counter island. You drink more canelita, still cherishing the warm feeling. You look at the stove. Everything is in containers and there’s no sight of dirty pans, pots, or utensils.

“Cooked and washed the dishes…” you say to yourself before taking a sip again.

Your attention turns to the cabinet you found him fixing earlier. You get up and walk towards it. You open it with no issue. You think about all the little nicks this kitchen has. Like the drawer that doesn’t come out fully or the other cabinet door that makes a noise every time you open it. Curiosity gets the best of you because before you know it, you are pulling said drawer. Your lips part in surprise as the drawer fully slides out without issues. You check the other cabinet door. No sound.

You sigh as you look around, your eyes landing on the containers. One of them is full of leftover pasta and the other one contains the canelita. Your thoughts are interrupted as you hear your gizmo go off. You turn in the direction it came from, trying to remember where you left it last night. You are usually very careful with it but last night you barely made it through the door.

You find the gizmo on the console table in the living room section of your apartment. You realize there are a few messages from your colleagues like Hobie, Miles, Ben, and Jessica. You quickly reply to the first three who asked about your whereabouts before you move to Jessica’s. You realize she sent multiple messages all ranging from asking how your last mission went to why you weren’t answering to asking if you were okay. The last one makes you stop. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion as you read it.

“Okay… You haven’t replied to any of my messages. Do I need to send someone to check on you? You’ve been MIA all day. Let me know you’re okay!!”

You look up towards where the portal was opened just minutes ago. You shake your head and reply to Jessica, notifying her about what happened. You leave out Miguel though. You put away your gizmo in its usual spot and look around your apartment, thinking. The lamps in the living room section are still on, the record player has stopped playing, however.

“Hm.”

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

Might do part two. If it matters, I listened to "Nonviolent Communication" from the ATSV album as inspiration. Such a lovely song for Miguel, I think.

Translation for italicized words:

Coño - fuck (it varies by country)

Mierda - Shit

Canelita - a tea made out of cinnamon sticks

I love Miguel O'Hara. That's all.

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asteroshearts · 4 months

Text

My Type

Oh no! Nanami's wife is just Itadori's type!

Or the story of how, upon meeting Nanami's wife, Itadori just can't take his eyes off her.

Nanami x Reader

Tags: this story was referenced here, but can be read completely alone, she/her pronouns, discussions of body types, Itadori's a bit of a pervert here (but he doesn't actually see anything!! Nanami, however, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)), typical anime flashing

Hey Ken: How are you feeling?

You: Like shit My fever got worse after you left

Hey Ken: I'll be home soon. Please take ibuprofen, drink lots of water, and rest as much as you can. I'm finishing up now.

You: I just checked our cabinet We ran out of Bufferin UGHHHH I feel terrible I fucking told Daiki from accounting that he should go home if he was coughing but he said it was fine AND COUGHED IN MY FACE And now look at me

Hey Ken: We're out? I'll pick some up on my way home while I grab our other groceries. Please wait for me until then. Take a nap if you can. You're just going to get more exhausted thinking of the idiots in your office.

You: I looked online, delivery is going to take over an hour I'm getting dizzier I don't want to wait I'm going to go to the Matsukiyo near us to get it myself

Hey Ken: What?

Hey Ken: Don't go. I'll pick it up.

Hey Ken: Darling. Read my messages.

Hey Ken: Pick up the phone.

(10) Missed Calls

Several moments ago…

Itadori already thought that today got off to a weird start.

To begin with, it wasn't Ijichi in the driver's seat to pick him up today, but Nanamin. It also wasn't the Jujutsu Tech standard vehicle, but a nice, sleek, and expensive Porsche.

"W-Woah! Nanamin!" Itadori called then. Eyes wide and bright at the polished paint that glistened in the heavy sunlight. "Nice ride!" he said giddily, running his fingers across the aerodynamic doors. Popping his head up toward Nanami's window, he said, "This must've cost you a fortune!" And he thought that Gojo-sensei spent crazily.

"It was a gift," Nanami flatly said. The boy gaped at him like a fish. But who would just give away a car like this? They had to be really close — or maybe he had saved some rich guy and he thanked Nanamin by giving him a brand new car! The boy's eyes shone. Maybe one day he could get a nice gift like — "Get in." The doors unlocked.

"Hiya, Ijichi-san! Must be nice not driving for once, huh?" While marveling at the car's clean interior, he hopped into the back seat, feeling the leather under his hands and the cool blast of the AC hit his sweaty hair after being in the summer sun.

"Good morning, Itadori-kun," the dark-haired man said with a nervous smile. The car rumbled beneath them as Nanami turned the engine back on. "Nanami-san is surely giving me a nice change of pace — "

"Our duties will not change," Nanami stated, turning the wheel. "Ijichi-san is still required to do his job, as well as you, Itadori-kun. Don't get distracted." The pink-haired boy pouted in the backseat. "It just so happens that I have urgent errands to run after this, so time is of the essence."

Turning into an alleyway, Nanami smoothly hit the brakes and put the car into park. "Let's go."

Luckily for him, the curse was a low-level one mostly used for teaching Itadori the ropes, and the two of them managed to exorcise it in record time. For someone who was just thrust into the world of curses several weeks ago, he was doing well. As well as anyone could in his situation.

The boy was still a bumbling newbie, but he had a good head on his shoulders and was a strong opponent for most curses that they dealt with on a daily basis. Lips twitching into a frown, the blond thought that if Gojo didn't poison the youth's mind, surely Yuji would continue having a nice and mature head on his shoulders.

Nanami had to drop Ijichi off at his next assignment, but other than that, all he needed was to drop Itadori off at the college and then he could return to his sick wife. Paperwork still needed to be done, but luckily he could finish that at a later time. Unfortunately, last night you had a major headache and showed signs of an upcoming sickness this morning.

He had just barely convinced you to not do remote work and just take the day off to rest instead. However, as he checked on his messages with you, he found out that you were insisting on double — no, triple mask to go to the pharmacy yourself. All while you had a 37.5-degree fever.

He tried to call you once, thrice, and all of them were left for voicemail.

Cursing inwardly, Nanami leaned his head back on the headrest. Normally, the blond man was the arbiter of restraint and level-headed thinking, but all of that went out the door at the mere thought of his sickly wife dragging herself out in the street to get some medication. Why did you have to be so stubborn?

"My apologies, Itadori-kun." Nanami pushed up his glasses. "I need to take a detour before I drop you off at your dorm. I apologize for the inconvenience."

The boy blinked owlishly. "Oh that's alri — GH!"

Without another word, Nanami quickly turned left, jolting the teen to the side from the momentum, increasing the speed of his vehicle, and raced down the streets.

Within five minutes, Itadori felt like a dog left in the car as his "owner" raced into the nearest grocery store to grab medication, vegetables, and grains for the upcoming, proverbial storm. Even as the cashier tried their hardest to ignore the intense stare of the tall blond man before them, every second that ticked by as they scanned his purchase felt like hours.

As soon as he nearly threw his money on the tray and took all of the grocery bags under his toned arms, Nanami was off again, shifting into drive and ignoring the speed limit all the way back home.

Nanami could've nearly run into his apartment's chain-link garage doors if it had lifted any slower, allowing him access to his own underground parking before he landed in his designated parking spot within three seconds.

Racing out the car, he took all of the grocery bags over one muscular arm and was prepared to run off until he remembered he had a teen in the backseat.

"Itadori-kun," he said hurriedly. "Can you — " The man stopped himself short.

He originally planned to tell the boy to wait for him in the car, but caught sight of the boy's skin gleaming with sweat, reflecting one of the garage's low lights. Summer was brutal right now, with insane humidity that made Itadori's hair damp as if he had just taken a dunk in water. Even though the parking garage was cooler than it was outside, it was still unbearably hot, not to mention cruel, if he had forced the teen to just sit here and deal with it. Itadori had already waited in the hot car when he went out to grab groceries, and although he rolled the windows down, suddenly Nanami remembered all of the articles of puppies and toddlers dying in the back of cars during the summer.

Sighing, the man pushed his glasses up. "Behave yourself. Come with me."

"Ken?" Eyes wide, you held the door open. Keys were lifted up in the air in the man's hands, but you had beat him to the chase and opened the door before he managed to get the key in the keyhole. "Oh! I didn't know that you were bringing a guest." Stepping back quickly, you realized another person was standing behind your husband. "If I had known, I would've worn a surgeon mask!" Alert, you said. "Hold on, I'll go grab one right now — !"

"No need. We'll make this fast." He was about to take a step forward, but then realized that the student hadn't moved an inch ever since you opened the door. "Itadori-kun?"

As still as a statue, pink slowly rose from the boy's neck all the way up to the tips of his ears. He couldn't rip his gaze from you for even a second. Although your hair wasn't done and your face was covered, he could tell just how beautiful you were.

Furthermore, you looked just like the pin-up models he had in his room — you were just his type! Your little chemise barely ended at the middle of your thigh, and although everything important was covered up, it left little to the imagination with how the fabric hugged your waist and hips. As you held the door open for them and leaned forward, the loose triangle top of your nightgown was teasing him with the exposed curves and valleys of your chest.

You were too hot!

"Itadori-kun," Nanami repeated, irritated.

Way too hot for Nanamin!

"Nanamin! You didn't tell me that you were married!" Eyes nearly bugging out of their sockets, Itadori almost thought they had gotten the wrong apartment when you had just opened the door. While his mentor was an attractive man, it was like a mountain and a molehill to the teenager. Not to mention that this strict and serious ex-salaryman was hitched! To a babe no less!

Certainly, you didn't marry for personality!

He couldn't imagine what your daily life was like while Nanamin talked about doing the bare minimum and never smiled.

Raising an eyebrow, Nanami followed Itadori's stare to your state of dress. You weren't even wearing your indoor slippers, and you were absolutely breathtaking even if you had a dark clay mask over your face. He wasn't an idiot, and he could feel his blood vessels pumping harshly. Trying to remind himself with mantras of how Itadori was just a stupid, hormonal teenager, and you could dress how you wanted, and that he especially couldn't beat up Itadori. Pinching his nose bridge, the man couldn't even look at the boy. "My personal life and my work life are completely separate. I wouldn't anno — !"

"But you don't even wear a wedding ring!" Itadori insisted.

"Why would I wear my rings when my daily job involves fighting and getting messy?" Nanami rhetorically asked, stepping through your door with all the groceries in one go. "Wedding and engagement rings are investments, and I'd be damned if I lose my rings and be forced to inflate the wedding ring industry any more than I already have."

Grinning, you beamed at Itadori. Only you really know how seriously Nanami took the "three month's salary on rings" tradition, especially on his sorcerer's salary. "Now you know, Itadori-kun! If you catch him committing adultery while he's out without his ring, you'll shank him for me, right?" Placing both of your hands on your husband's waist, you laughed when you playfully tried to shake him. Of course, that didn't do much. Your man continued to stand there like a stone statue, as if you tried to rock a brick wall while he remained wholly unamused.

From your weak roughhousing, all that managed to do was drop your spaghetti strap from your shoulder. With your dress threatening to slip, Nanami sighed and quickly stood in front of you, blocking your body from Itadori's gaze. He carefully and slowly pulled your shoulder strap back up your body before you managed to flash the poor teen. When you looked up, his brown eyes met with yours.

Gently rubbing your bare shoulder with his large hand, he asked, "I thought you said you were going to Matsukiyo?"

"I was," you rasped out, voice raw from all the coughing you did. "But then I took one step outside and it was too damn hot." Laughing weakly, you said, "I slunk back like a vampire the second the humidity hit me."

The man sighed deeply, and his shoulders dropped in relief and exhaustion. While he ran around like a chicken with its head cut off from worry, he was glad that you ended up not going out after all.

"Why didn't you pick up my calls?" he said deeply, leaning in close enough for you to feel his breath on your ear.

"I was making okayu with kombu," you explained. "Sorry," you said genuinely, "that's all I managed to make for our dinner today."

"I'm upset that you cooked in the first place," Nanami scolded. "You should be resting. I said I'd take care of it. Why were you in the kitchen when the hot fumes could make your fever even worse?" Turning away from his nagging, you pouted.

"I'm hungry though…" you mumbled, far too much like a spoiled child, and Nanami was sure, in some way, that you were spoiled, of his making too. He always prioritized you and let you have your way. "And I already ate the miyeok guk you made."

"You could've ordered delivery," the man countered.

"Nothing interested me there."

Inhaling deeply once more, Nanami tried to calm the upcoming headache he felt. There was no point in arguing with you, not when you were coughing and sick like this. "Stay here. I'm going to whip up a bowl of okayu to have with your medicine," the man ordered before he picked up a blanket you had draped over one of your couches and wrapped you in it like a burrito. When you opened your mouth, your husband only sternly repeated, "Stay."

Playfully rolling your eyes when he left to go to the kitchen, you puffed out your cheeks in mock irritation. Closing the door to your apartment so the AC couldn't escape anymore, you turned to the teen who was standing awkwardly in your home.

"Aw I'm sorry," you said, voice sounding like sandpaper again. "You know, Kento's kinda strict, but I assure you he's a good man," you said gently. "Thank you so much for taking care of him."

"M-Me?" Itadori sputtered. "I'm not the one taking care of him! He takes care of me! Um…" The boy grew demure when he realized he had no way to address you.

"Oh," you realized you didn't introduce yourself. "I apologize! I totally forgot! I know you since Ken talks about you and Ino all the time, but I didn't realize you didn't know me!"

Itadori gasped. "He talks about me?!"

"Of course! All good things!" you assured. "Even though Kento seems like a meanie, he's a genuine person and wouldn't exaggerate, so he wouldn't praise you unless he absolutely meant it." You knew that this was the teen that hosted Sukuna, the King of Curses. It was a heavy burden for someone who wasn't even an adult yet, and your heart grew heavy at the thought of this boy's fate.

"Before I forget…" Quickly, you ran to your bathroom and cleaned off your clay face mask before you returned with your bare face wet and a cloth Pompompurin headband keeping your hair out of the way. "I need to introduce myself."

Now Itadori was sure that you two were married with the way you introduced yourself nearly identically to your husband. With your back straight and shoulders squared, hands flat, and arms straight at your side, you closed your eyes and bowed.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Itadori-kun." You acquired your business card out of thin air and held it out for the boy. "My name is Nanami [Name], and I'm a senior project manager at Yurukawa Corp. If you or your friends ever get tired of exorcising curses and want to look into engineering, you can ask me!"

Huh?

It was too silent.

When you rose and looked up, you realized that your husband had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. Standing in between you and Itadori, your husband's stern expression could freeze hell over as he stared down at Itadori with a frown, arm outstretched and his hand held up — right where Itadori's eyes would've seen your cleavage when you bent over to bow.

"Itadori-kun."

"Y-Yes!"

"We are going. Now."

The car was completely silent the entire way to the dorm rooms. Quickly shifting the car into park, Itadori jumped at the sudden stop.

No one said a word. The entire ride felt like the air was heavy enough to drown in.

"Itadori-kun." Nanami's eyes were hidden by the reflection in his glasses.

"…Yes?" the boy squeaked out, pressing his index fingers together.

"Never ogle my wife again."

#nanami x reader #nanami kento x reader #nanami kento #jjk #jjk x reader #jjk nanami #nanami fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #nanami

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shurisneakers · 3 months

Text

unsolved (i)

Summary: Bucky doesn't even believe in the paranormal. So who the hell thought it was a good idea to stick him in a series about everything haunted for the internet's amusement? With his loose-canon of a teammate who has no concept of subtlety or any shits left to give, to make things even worse. (Buzzfeed unsolved AU)

Warnings: swearing, frustrated bucky at his little shit supreme, Very Loud reader, images and memes that all have alt texts.

A/N: yes this is literally harmless in a different font. do not ask me if anything doesn't make sense. i cannot explain. i resurface every 3 years to present you with ideas born from menty b's. ANYWAY shout out to my beloved ryan and shane. pls enjoy <3

Bucky doesn’t appeal to the youths.

Apparently.

On God, he cannot fathom why.

He had definitely left the house in the last six months, maybe. Smiled in at least two pictures that existed on the internet. He even knew what Discord was. Sort of.

By all accounts, he should be treated as the modern day icon that he was.

“The youths?” he repeats, the word so foreign on his tongue it felt odd to even say it.

“Your numbers are the lowest of the whole team.” The latest tech-dude, with a tablet twelve models ahead of the one Bucky had in his room, tells him monotonously. “Wilson, Romanoff and Barton score the highest. Everyone else lies around the middle. You are dead-last.”

Bucky has the audacity to look offended.

“Anything to say?” Their PR head, Maya, asks him, amused.

He stares, formulating the wittiest one liner he could in three seconds.

“I don’ care,” he mumbles.

Maya sighs. “Look, the team took the decision together. As far as I’m aware, you are still a member. You need some PR if you guys want to stay in the public’s good books.”

“No one’s gonna listen to me.” Bucky wasn’t exactly the poster child for American values. He couldn’t even vote until three years ago, and that came only after the full wrath of a Steve Rogers descended on the email inbox of the DMV.

“That’s why it’s important to get them to like you,” Maya emphasizes. “Or the idea of you at least. A very sanitized, corporate friendly version.”

His eyebrow twitches unintentionally.

“And also you signed the contract.”

Well. Shit.

Truth be told– and he has openly and rather loudly stated this on numerous occasions even especially when no one asked– he doesn’t understand why they need a PR team. The world has calmed down significantly over the last few years. Bucky hadn’t really been out crime-fighting as much as he was people-watching. There hasn’t been an earth-shatteringly dystopian-level event in the longest time, and there seemed to be a group of spandex-clad teenagers who seemed to do a good job at taking care of them when they did threaten to occur. Go kids.

Even if they needed PR, he could arguably understand the appeal of Sam and Nat and why the people would want to see more of them. Bucky, on the other hand, looked like he crawled onto Earth most days of the week.

“What do I have to do?” he asks ultimately, knowing there was no way to get out of this. “Interviews?”

The intern shares a look with Maya. Bucky shares a look with the ceiling.

“The team agreed to do a series of videos, each focusing on a different niche,” she begins, “Crash courses on science, pointing out mistakes in spy movies. Once a week.”

Bucky nods along. He can pinpoint Bruce and Nat for those.

Maya stares at him.

Bucky stares back.

“So,” she says slowly, like he’s a moron, “you would–”

“No.”

The intern sighs heavily like they discussed that this was going to happen. Bucky was getting predictable. This annoys him even further, for some reason.

“Only once a week, and it doesn’t have to be anything crazy–”

“I’m not doing videos,” he interjects. “I’ll tweet a few times. I’ll even go outside. But ’m not doin’ videos.”

A big step was to get the Avengers off Twitter after the regular shit-storm that occurs every time they’d quote-tweet another politician calling them shitheads. Getting them back on seems counterproductive.

“Fine,” Maya relents, looking at the intern. “We'll work something out.”

Bucky leans back in his chair, and meditating on ways he can weasel his way out of those too.

So they stick him in a couple of interviews.

Bucky, as the recluse extraordinaire that he was, does unsurprisingly terrible at them.

Variety does a piece on him that was supposed to take up 2 pages. They send back half a page worth of usable material and Bucky gets a lecture on how monosyllables don't count as answers.

He grunts in return. Maya’s itch to smack his shoulder with the rolled up draft increases.

They set him up for pap walks. Just him getting fast food for the team, or sitting in the park.

They don’t take into account that Bucky was trained professionally for years on how to hide, sneak in and out of places without a soul knowing he was ever there.

The paparazzi spend three hours waiting for him outside the pizza place, while he’s been home for two hours with two demolished pepperonis and an order of mozzarella sticks.

They give him access to his Twitter.

He tweets some dumb shit and gets shadow banned by that evening.

Maya is sick and tired, and the interns have shifted three times since the whole ordeal started. Bucky honestly feels a little bad. Maybe he should try to be like Scott, who not only wrote a book, finger-gunned at photographers, did an interview a week, but also agreed to a podcast and a video series about literally anything they suggested.

“Play nice,” Sam tells Bucky one evening.

It’s an off-hand comment, not even really looking at him while he says it.

Bucky doesn’t need to ask what he’s referring to, but he thinks that maybe he has gone too far.

He begrudgingly agrees.

Therefore, it begins.

They stick him in the background of a few videos. Just to interact, add his commentary on what was going on, suggestions.

Then the jokes really start.

“I just don’t got anything to add,” Bucky tries, in a failure of an attempt to justify his lack of contribution.

Maya only stares at him, but Bucky swears he can hear her curse quietly, even though her lips don’t move even a millimeter.

He is not put in another video.

And so he finds himself here.

In a meeting room that he’s convinced is barricaded from the outside so he can’t slither out the door again. Another intern with pink-tinted glasses that took up half their face.

Maya’s in the midst of explaining to him that sure, his numbers had gone up by a decimal, but that was because people had started editing him into the backgrounds of other pictures for other users to find in a perplexing take on Where’s Waldo.

“Videos seem to be working,” she ties it together. “But we need more than you just standing silently behind Captain Rogers.”

“But it’s working,” Bucky objects. “I don’t see why it has to change.”

Maya sends him a glare. Bucky decides then it’s good to shut up.

“Are you on the internet a significant amount?” the intern asks. The glasses on their face have changed colours to green. Bucky’s eyebrow furrows.

“No.”

For the next thirty minutes, he is subjected to a pop quiz about too many words ending with ‘core’, ‘coded’ and ‘eras’. He’s surprised that he knows what cottagecore is. He definitely doesn’t fucking know what a tomatogirl, nor does he want to.

“What do you like doing?” the intern enunciates, pulling up a spreadsheet of niches that had built a dedicated community around themselves over the years. “Makeup? Cleaning? Parkour?”

Bucky wonders if they’d really create a montage of him just micro cleaning the kitchen every week. It doesn’t sound half bad.

Beyond that, the only thing he can think of is woodworking, which Sam introduced him to. While he spends time creating little figures, he wouldn’t say it was–

“You really are dead silent,” the intern breaks his train of thought, tone almost that of wonder. “Guess the whole ‘ghost story for seventy years’ is more true than I thought.”

Bucky throws him a weary look, and works on unclenching the fist that tightened involuntarily.

“Was that necessary?” Maya’s voice comes coldly. “Take fifteen. Go find the other one we were supposed to meet.”

While sheepish and somewhat apologetic, the kid still looks relieved to be out of there. To be honest, Bucky isn’t really offended– he’s grown a thick skin over the years. But he also thought the guy was a little shit now.

Maya turns back to him, but Bucky finds that the table contains wonders far more interesting than the conversation at hand.

“Back to what we were talking about.” She ruffles through something on her laptop. “Puppets? History?”

He wordlessly shakes his head.

Been the former, seen too much of the latter.

Maya’s head tilts abruptly. “You like ghosts?”

He wonders if the prior conversation had anything to do with this insightful question.

Bucky shrugs. “Don’t exist.”

“Really,” Maya deadpans. “Aliens and multiversal baboons are fine, but no ghosts.”

“I’ve seen aliens and multiversal baboons. Never seen a ghost in my life,” Bucky argues right back.

“Other people have seen ghosts.”

“Good for other people.”

The door swings open right as Maya’s eyes narrow at him. Guess it wasn’t padlocked.

“Whatever it is you think I did, Maya, I didn’t. I think,” you announce in a volume too much for a closed room, stopping when you see Bucky sitting cross-armed and looking delightfully disgruntled. “Oh hey, Barnes. Fancy seeing you here.”

Bucky had met you. The newest addition to the team that had made a grand entrance a couple of weeks ago. He thinks you stay on the floor below him, but he has nothing backing this hypothesis other than the disco funk music that had started appearing at odd hours of the night.

“Please sit,” Maya cracks a smile at you that Bucky had yet to earn. “Sorry, I know our meeting is scheduled for later, but I figured we could kill two birds with one stone.”

You look between her and Bucky, who hasn’t moved an inch since you got here, much less even said hello.

“You must be really bad if Maya had to call me in,” you tell him outright. “I’m usually like, her last option.”

“Thanks,” Bucky replies dryly.

“Look, here’s my final pitch.” Maya sighs, before turning to you. “You’re new, and we need something to introduce you slowly to the public.”

“Oh, am I finally getting hard launched?” You grin, and Bucky doesn’t know what that means. “Just imagine me kicking my feet, giggling or whatever.”

“And he needs… an upgrade.” Maya’s thumb juts out towards Bucky who simply rolls his eyes.

“Right.” Your sight lands on him from across the table. “I’ve seen the memes.”

“What memes?” he grunts, because while the team had definitely seen them, it didn't occur to anyone they should show it to him. He loves them. Really. So much. Die for them.

You only look too happy to pull out your phone and start typing.

“Do you know what skinwalkers are?”

“No.”

“That’s what they say you look like, lurking in the back of all your friends’ videos,” you continue, swerving around your phone to show him.

Bucky doesn’t look impressed. He can’t say he blames them either, which makes him inexplicably maddens him.

“At least they’re calling you their boyfriend,” you add, entirely unhelpfully. “That’s gotta count.”

“Right.” Maya clears her throat. “The both of you–”

“Are getting paired together, I suppose,” you hum.

Bucky’s eyebrows pull together.

He barely knows you. Just a little bit on how you ended up here, that you enjoyed hanging out with the team, figuring out your place in the compound, and were seemingly doing a great job at it.

You were… loud. And open.

Bucky feels the compulsive need to compensate for that by doubling down on how silent he could get, as if the two of you couldn’t co-exist in the same space in equilibrium.

Maya pointedly raises a finger at you. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“For the right price, I will believe in whatever you tell me to.”

Her face lights up brighter than Bucky's ever seen.

“Great.” Maya slams her laptop closed. “See you later.”

Bucky’s left staring as she exits, not even throwing the both of you another look.

“That was quick,” your voice cuts through the silence. “What was that all about?”

“Don’ ask me,” he grumbles, with a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what was about to follow.

“Ghost hunting?” Bucky echoes a week later, as expected.

“Yes,” Maya tells him simply. “Two of you. A series based on paranormal activity.”

“I don’t even believe in them,” he reiterates.

“That’s the point,” she emphasises. “Skeptic and believer. It makes for a good contrast.”

“Why us both?” He hopes it doesn’t come off as offensive. He just doesn’t see why he can’t do this with Sam. Even Clint, if a gun was really pressed to his head.

“I’m new, no one gives a shit about me,” you say brightly and full of promise. “Yet.”

“Exactly. It’ll be low key. Not an overwhelming number of viewers, no expectations. It’s perfect for launching one Avenger and re-launching another.”

“Sounds rad.” You grin, leaning back as your feet rest on the chair in front of you.

Maya looks relieved for a moment that at least one of you was on board. “No promises on anything. We shoot one video, and if it does well, we stick with it.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Bucky argues.

“Then you have until tomorrow morning to give us another feasible idea,” Maya dishes back.

Bucky retreats into his seat, arms crossed over his chest.

Truth be told, he considered himself to be the most boring person in the team and though he had made his peace with that, he was sure thar bringing that up now would entail Maya shooting him in the foot.

“Fine,” he agrees and the sighs around the room are loud.

He scoffs. So fucking dramatic and for what.

“Put her there, partner.” You stretch ungracefully over the large table, sticking out your hand.

Bucky eyes your hand. “Do you even believe in ghosts?”

“I do now, yeah.” You nod seriously. “Love ‘em. Can’t get enough of them.”

“One video,” Maya reminds him as a balm. “And if it doesn’t work, you’re off the hook forever.”

Off the hook? Forever? For Bucky?

Yay.

“One video,” he reiterates.

You roll your eyes before smiling when he leans forward to grab it. You yank it up and down clunkily. He blinks at you, letting go slowly.

“Thank fuck,” Maya groans, head dropping onto the table.

Your smile is wild. “Guess we’re doing this shit together.”

He doesn’t even have to look very deep in his soul. He already knows he’s going to suffer.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

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

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

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/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

#pluralistic #moral injury #enshittification #worker power #google #dont be evil #monopoly #sam altman #openai #vocational awe #making a dent in the universe

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irisintheafterglow · 10 months

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You Are In Love (Gojo Satoru x You)

summary: you can't stop dreaming about him, and your friends start to notice a change in your behavior. (2.4k words)

cw/tags: mild angst to comfort, friends to lovers, pining, idiots in love, profanity, elder sorcerers being assholes, pet names (doll, gorgeous, etc), uhh gojo loses his cool and blows up a building lol, kissing, one instance of foreshadowing manga spoilers but only if you squint

note: HELLOO GOJO NATION. ok so i'll be so honest with you, this stupid man was my #1 for so long and i think those feelings resurfaced so i got a little carried away with writing this (it's my longest fic so far, my bad). but yk something about gojo, hawks, and kuroo all being played by the voice actor just gets me. the prompt for this is from the AMAZING @creativepromptsforwriting and was supposed to be a drabble but turned into a full fic. anyways, hope you enjoy it!!

likes/reblogs/feedback are always appreciated!

“It’s too quiet. Can I tell you guys a joke I heard on TV?”

“Mmm, please don’t.”

“But it’s funny!”

“Satoru.”

“Ooh, using my first name. Something��s up with you.”

“Something is not up with me, weirdo.”

“No, something is definitely off with you today.” You thought Suguru and Shoko had stopped listening, but they chimed in with evidence of your odd behavior.

“You said good morning differently,” Shoko added, casually taking a sip of her soda and peering at you over the rim. Her hair sways gently in the breeze outside of the convenience store you four had stopped at before heading back to Jujutsu Tech. You glare at her and open your mouth to defend yourself when Suguru adds his two cents.

“You tripped up during that last mission that should have been a cakewalk,” which was true, but you thought your mistake had gone unnoticed. The truth was, the spirit had caught you off guard with a simple teleport trick. It warped behind you and unlatched its grotesque jaws to end your life faster than you could blink. You should have been able to predict the movement with your eyes closed, but you’d been too focused on making sure a certain white-haired sorcerer was alive after your group had been ambushed several hundred feet underground. Suguru had given you a curious look after one of his demons saved your ass, and you’d flipped him off hoping that would be the end of it. “And you also flipped me the bird instead of saying thank you,” he shrugged.

“You also finish your food the fastest out of all of us, and today you haven’t even taken three bites,” Shoko says, finishing her drink and standing to toss it in the trash bin. “Something’s going on with you, and I, for one, am incredibly curious as to why.” Satoru watches you with a smug glint in his eye, and it takes all your willpower not to strangle him.

“As glad as I am to know that you all pay such great attention to my habits, I promise there’s nothing wrong.” The three of them stare at you skeptically but thankfully decided to drop the subject, instead pivoting to who’s most likely to go to jail first (it’s Gojo).

After the late lunch, you begin the walk back to Jujutsu Tech as the sky transforms into faded shades of orange and pink. The vanishing sun casts shining reflections on the surrounding skyscrapers, bouncing off the windows of speeding cars and zooming trains. Satoru and Suguru walk ahead, playfully shoving each other and almost falling over doing so.

“Alright, are you gonna tell me what’s going on now that Dumb and Dumber aren’t here?” Shoko asks as she falls into step with you. The sides of your mouth turn down, realizing that she didn’t forget about your conversation at lunch. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to tell your closest friends what was going on; you just didn’t know how to explain what you had dreamed about the previous night and the night before that, and all the nights the past two weeks.

It began with a look he had given you after a meeting with some higher-ups in the sorcerer world. They had visited Jujutsu Tech unexpectedly, stating that they would be evaluating the skill levels of random students. Out of your group of friends, only you and Satoru had been pulled to be tested. Principal Yaga had instructed both of you before entering the room to give the evaluation your best effort and to not become indignant if they judged you poorly.

The brass declared your evaluation to be first, and you poured all of your energy into showcasing the power of your Cursed Technique. You even managed to pull off a few strikes of extension techniques that you’d been perfecting for months. Though the entire performance lasted less than ten minutes, you were breathless and light-headed when the panel told you to stop. After bowing deeply, you moved to exit the room, desperate for fresh air, but they stopped you and began listing every single reason why your demonstration was unsatisfactory. Besides “inefficient technique, predictable attacks, weak offense, insufficient defense,” and a general lack of power compared to that of other sorcerers at your level, they informed you that your Cursed Technique was obsolete and would eventually render you useless as more innately talented sorcerers take your place. You were speechless at their blunt criticism of your effort, on the verge of breaking down, but you managed to nod in acknowledgment as you stepped out of the room.

But then you saw him sitting there, waiting on his phone and looking up at you with a bright smile as he stood to greet you. A confusing blend of disappointment, anger, sadness, and loneliness panged in your heart and spread to the rest of your body, and you rapidly tried to blink away the moisture welling up in your eyes while Satoru approached. He was halfway through a snarky remark about you blowing away their expectations when his smile dropped and his eyebrows furrowed with concern. Shit, he’d noticed you crying.

“Hey, hey, hey, look at me. What the fuck did they do to you?” Dashing blue eyes found yours through the clouds in your vision, and his thumbs gently brushed away stray tears that escaped down your cheeks.

“Do you think I’m weak, Satoru?” Your voice cracks when the words finally spill out, swallowing hard to push down the sobs threatening to break loose from your constricted lungs. Satoru freezes, eyes searching yours. He doesn’t answer your question immediately, but instead asks again.

“Doll, what the fuck did they do.” You can’t get a reply out in time before his focus snaps up to behind you, and a second later you hear the door roll open, one of the officials commanding Satoru to enter for his evaluation. His large hands hold your face and turn you to look up at him, and you move unconsciously to cover his hands with yours. “Stay here for me, okay?” He glanced at the official waiting in the doorway, blue eyes dark with suppressed rage. “This won’t take long.”

His evaluation lasts two minutes and four seconds. At first, the room was silent and you couldn’t hear any demonstration of Satoru’s technique, almost as if the panel was having a conversation with him before they began. Then, at two minutes on the dot, the room was blown to splinters. The door, the ceiling, the porch, and all of the furniture inside were violently thrown outward in an explosion that made the ground beneath your feet tremble. Curiously, none of the debris had hit you, but you coughed through the dust and saw that the panel hadn’t been so lucky, all of them buried under shredded beams of wood and canvas. And, standing at the center of the room’s remains with a satisfied grin plastered on his beautiful face, was Satoru. He found his way over to where you stood in disbelief and took your hand in his, interweaving your fingers and guiding you away from the ruined building.

You two walked hand-in-hand in silence back to your dorm, where he seemed reluctant to let go of your hand. Before he walked away, he finally answered your question from earlier.

“I tell you this not just as your friend, but as another sorcerer. You are not weak. Your technique is special and something that those shithead elders haven’t seen in decades, and they don’t like what they don’t understand. I know the thought of leaving Jujutsu Tech crossed your pretty little mind, but you shouldn’t. People need you here, Shoko, Suguru, Mei Mei...” He hesitated, taking a shallow breath and reaching back for your hand.

“Me,” he said, his voice low, and his voice got even softer until it was almost a breath. “I need you here.” As quickly as the fondness in his voice appeared, it disappeared. “And, plus, you definitely can’t leave us here with ol’ Yaga. What the hell am I gonna do if I can’t hide in your room while he’s trying to beat my ass?”

You laugh, and the feeling makes you feel better. He makes you feel better. You smile back at him and finally bid him farewell, and he raises your hand to his lips as he says goodbye.

After that, he’d appeared in your dreams for two weeks straight. The dreams started as a continuation of what would have happened if you didn’t just say goodbye to him, if you’d invited him into your dorm, or if you’d let him pull you into his. They transformed after the fourth day into what it would be like to love him and receive his love in return: stolen kisses, flirty whispers, and movie dates to name a few. All these dreams added up to the previous night’s nightmare, where a mission had gone bad and he’d been imprisoned with no hope of breaking him free. You’d startled awake covered in sweat, and barely fell back asleep before your alarm forced you to start the day.

“It’s… hard to explain,” you reply apologetically, and Shoko looks at you with so much skepticism written on her face that you have to turn away and look in the other direction.

“So something is bothering you.”

“Yeah, there is. I’m sorry; it’s just really, really hard to verbalize.”

“Can I take a stab at what’s bothering you?”

“If you could actually stab it that’d be great, but sure. Knock yourself out.”

“It’s Satoru, isn’t it?” You stop mid-stride and her face lights up with amusement. “Holy shit, it’s Satoru. You like Gojo Satoru.”

“Jeez, Shoko, go ahead and say his name four hundred million times, why don’t you? But really, what tipped you off?”

“Ten seconds ago when you asked me to stab your problem, I figured it out,” she chuckles, bumping her shoulder against yours playfully. “If it’s any consolation, I’m 99% sure he’s felt that way about you for a while.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“How do you know?”

“Would you let me off the hook if I said it was hard to explain?”

“Har, har, very funny. Could you at least try?”

“Mmm, I think it’s better if he explains it himself.”

“You’re no help, Shoko.”

“Yes, and you love me anyway. But not as much as you love Sa–” You groan, covering your burning face in both hands and increasing the speed of your steps to escape your friend’s teasing chuckles.

When you finally arrive at school, the stars have started rising and the moon hangs in the sky. You walk in the direction of the dorms when Shoko suddenly unlinks her elbow from yours, winking at you over your shoulder.

“Suguru, can you help me move something from the gym real quick? I forgot a few things over there.”

“Sure, but why do you need my help?” Shoko gives him a pointed look and realization quickly washes over his features. “Oh, OH. Okay, of course, sure.” Suguru turns on his heel awkwardly, briskly walking in the direction of the gym.

“Satoru, walk them back to their dorm. Don’t want anything happening to them after their little slip today,” she adds before heading in the other direction with Suguru, who tries and fails to communicate something to Satoru with a nod of his head.

“Alright, pretty girl, you heard Shoko. C’mere and let me walk you home before she beats my ass.”

“I think you have too many people on this planet that want to beat your ass. And, for the record, I’m one of them.”

“It’s the price of being this gorgeous, gorgeous.” A soft laugh escapes your mouth, and you swear Satoru’s smile gets a little wider. The rest of the short walk to your dorm is just as easy and comfortable, Satoru making stupid comments and you replying with a quick remark over and over until you’re back in the same situation you’d been in two weeks ago. But, this time, you realized that Satoru was a lot closer to you, leaning back against your door with your hand touching the handle but not opening it. You both spend a few moments there, just looking at each other, and his mesmerizing eyes flicker to your mouth when you unconsciously lick your lips. He opens his mouth to say something smart, but you beat him to it.

“If you’re gonna look down at my lips and say something stupid about it, you might as well do what I’ve been wanting you to do for ages.”

“Oh? And what’s that, pretty girl?”

You sigh in mock disappointment and look up at him through your eyelashes. “If you don’t know what it is by now, then I guess… you don’t deserve to do it.” His pupils are blown wide with desire, and you resist the impulse to laugh.

“God, you’re intoxicating,” he says, before pressing his lips to yours. Your eyes flutter shut and you melt into him, arms snaking around his neck while his hands find your waist and hold you up from your knees that have turned to jelly. The first kiss is gentle and experimental, but having the flirtiest asshole in the country chasing your lips as you briefly pull away gives you a newfound wave of confidence, pulling him closer and closer until his body is flush against yours. When you finally pull away from each other and catch your breath, he doesn’t go very far, resting his forehead against yours.

“You know, I wanted to kill them. Those wrinkly assholes two weeks ago that had the gall to call you weak. And I would have, you know I would have, but you were outside… and you were crying… I just didn’t know what to do. I saw red, and, uh, then the building exploded.” You chuckle at his confession and he presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth, rubbing his nose against yours.

“I had a dream about you. Well, a lot of dreams.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Really?”

“Mhmm. Got a little nervous today when I heard you talk with Shoko about liking a boy, but it helps knowing now that the boy is me. And, hopefully, it will only ever be me.”

“You pretentious asshole.”

“You know it.”

“You’re a dork.”

“Yeah, but I’m your dork.”

“I know you are.”

“And I’m never going anywhere.” He kisses your forehead sweetly, and it’s just like the dreams that had plagued you for weeks before. “Ever.”

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

#gojo x you #gojo fanfic #gojou satoru x reader #gojo angst #gojo x reader #satoru gojo #satoru x you #satoru x reader #satoru x y/n #jjk x y/n #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk shoko #jjk suguru

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nanaminsmoon · 9 months

Text

𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐫!𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐱 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

a/n: this has just been sat in the vaults for a month and i'm just in eren brainrot mode rn so here she is😁 also, i just imagined rapper!eren being like central cee. so just imagine him wearing a nike tech in every interaction lol.

cw: fingering, pnv, infidelity, mentions of breeding, finger sucking, eren calls reader; 'ma', 'my girl', 'baby', and i don't cosign homewrecking be respectful y'all😭

cw: 4590...

rapper!eren who tells you it was never meant to go this far, because it truly wasn't. it all started because you had similar music taste, so you understood the influence of his favourite artists (which happened to be your favourite artists) on his music.

you first met rapper! eren when you bumped into one another at the record store. he was a popular up and coming artist, so you somewhat recognised him but you couldn't pinpoint where from. you had been in the same section of the shop and he liked your outfit, thought you had great taste and, when you turned around, he saw that you were bad. so he sparked up a conversation with you. he was used to people pretending they didn’t know who he was just to get into his inner circle but, upon further conversation, he could tell that you really barely had any idea who he was. and, initially, that was a punch to his ego (because damn his music isn’t reaching baddies like that??), but he just decided it was for the best.

rapper!eren who called you after you gave him your number, which you found quite interesting because you barely knew each other and he was calling you before even texting you?? but you answered, and conversations about anything and everything meant that when you looked up from the doodle you had been focused on while talking to him, the small clock hand had moved forwards three numbers. saying you were ‘surprised’ by his depth makes it seem as though you expected him to be an idiot, but you were just taken aback by the way that every other word he said to you was an echo of the thoughts you had never gotten the chance to shout out into the world.

rapper!eren whose words had your cheeks heating up as they begun to ache from smiling at his flirtatious tone. honeyed syllables flowed into your ears, only just to run back out, slowly caressing your skin on its way down to the space between your legs. though not necessarily obscene, rapper!eren‘s words dirtied the scenes running in your mind, painting a packed gallery of lude images you wanted him to paint all over your body.

“did you just giggle?”, he chuckled over the phone, and you shook your head furiously as if he could see you.

“what? no!”, you sat up on your bed, the defence on your features evident to both you and the walls surrounding you. he wasn’t wrong, you did giggle. but you wouldn’t let him hear that admission. it felt slightly ridiculous, because you had only known him for a few weeks, but whenever you saw the name ’eren<;3’ appear on your phone, the muscle between your ribs would begin a high intensity workout. the effects manifesting themselves in the endorphins flying through your body, and the way he just made you feel…giddy.

calls started off as being once every few days. then it was once a day. then his name was painting your phone screen twice a day. then it became a few times a day; he would call you when he woke up, and you would try your best to not lose it over his morning voice, especially when he said shit like:

”i wish i could see you right now, i feel like you look cute in the morning. nah? i don’t believe that”.

you would call him on your commute, then you’d eat dinner together over facetime. then, once the sun set, every step in your night-time routine would be interrupted by rapper!eren’s inquisitons about literally everything: ”what’s that for?”, ”what does that do?”, ”your skin is perfect you don’t need all that.” and, soon, the texts began sprinkling themselves in between those calls; ’good morning’ texts, ’how’s your day goin?’ texts, ’show me your fit’ texts, ’facetime?’ texts, and ’you got time to call?’ texts.

then two, or so, months passed and you came to find out why the beginning of your relationship was mainly just calls: so it couldn’t be traced back to him. though he had your contact saved, he could always just delete your call logs, and you would have no way of proving that you actually spoke. this revelation struck you shortly after a tiktok came up on your foryoupage showing someone talking about rapper!eren and his rumoured girlfriend. said ‘rumoured’ girlfriend who really just looked like his actual girlfriend with the way his arm was slung around her shoulder, her hand reaching up to hold his, as he nuzzled his nose against her cheek. as soon as rapper!eren noticed the cameras, he peeled himself off of her and put his hands in his joggers. and, as pissed as you were, you could admit that the girl was cute; standing shorter than him, with short brown hair.

rapper!eren whose eyebrows met to screw in frustration at his calls and texts going unanswered. a part of him grew unreasonably pissed off when he kept calling you and kept getting sent to voicemail. at first, he assumed you were just busy so he just postponed his call because he knew what time you usually ate dinner, meaning he knew when you usually called him. but to make sure you weren’t still busy, he texted you and again, it was just ‘read’.

“what the fuck?”, he whispered at his phone screen as he sat in the back of the black suv. no matter what he tried, rapper!eren got no response and he didn’t know why that cut him so deep. he was inured to female attention so your replacement was nothing more than a dm away. but…he didn’t want to replace you. talking to you had become so pivotal to his day-to-day routine and he didn’t like that being taken away from him without him having a say. but after three days of dodging his calls, you finally texted him.

…: you have a gf?

rapper!eren: thats what this shit was about y/n?

…: this shit?? nigga you have a girlfriend tf you mean this shit??

rapper!eren: its more complicated than that

…: is it???

…: she’s either your gf or she isn’t how’s that complicated?

rapper!eren: dw abt it

rapper!eren: come to my studio tonite. got smth i wanna run by you

…: huh??

read.

rapper!eren who finally responded a few hours after that conversation. but, instead of the explanation you were looking for, you got sent an address and a message telling you that someone was on their way to come pick you up. you quickly texted rapper!eren your address, then you had just half an hour to get ready. had this been a week ago, you would’ve done a bit more; matching underwear and all. but instead, you just decided to keep it cute but simple—both your outfit, and your makeup.

you got a text telling you to make your way outside and when you did, you were met with a black suv with tinted windows. as weird as it looked, the driver asking for your name reassured you and you got in. the drive to the address was silent. it was just you and the driver in there, and he didn’t even spare you a glance once you got in the car, so you were just left with your thoughts. and they made it a very gruelling 30 minute journey. once you arrived at the building, the driver took you to the door, where you were met with rapper!eren‘s manager. that’s when you found out that the building was where rapper!eren‘s studio was.

rapper!eren who sat alone behind a translucent door, looking down at his phone until his manager opened the door. you hadn’t seen him in person since the first time you met and, knowing what you now knew, your heart was at the pit of your stomach. so your first few moments there were spent stood, abashedly, at the door. an unreadable smirk braced his face at your appearance, before he made his way to hug you. being polite, you hugged him back. and those nasty wasps in your stomach were mixing with butterflies. you hated it to say it, but you were attracted to rapper!eren and the strong smell of his aftershave was enough to drive the butterflies in your stomach to migrate to the space between your legs. but, at some point, their wings would be clipped by the fact that the man had a girlfriend.

rapper!eren who noticed you looking a little skittish, and moved to stroke your arm to calm you down but you just looked at him blankly so he moved away. the weird feeling in your stomach had yet to go away, and it only grew once you looked around and saw that the only lights on were red LED lights, and a few candles placed on random tables.

“you drink?”, rapper! eren picked up a bottle of expensive looking red wine and two big wine glasses.

“not with men who have girlfriends, no.”, you quipped, taking your hoodie off, and putting it on the sofa.

rapper! eren who really did call you there to ask you about something because he had made a new song, and he wanted to see how you liked it. no one else knew what his vision was but, having similar music taste, he knew you would. but the second your hoodie came off, his intentions wavered. at that very moment, he could feel the very thing he had been trying to bury for the past few days, making his dick twitch in his joggers. making it infinitely harder to ignore—if he even wanted to do that anymore.

rapper! eren whose eyes glimmered at the sight of you thoroughly enjoying his song, even giving him real feedback that he knew would make the song better. you were sat by his laptop and the way your knees would touch whenever you moved to the beat did not go neglected. despite your prior apprehensions, he had poured you both some red wine, and you were slowly making your way through your glasses. mid-conversation, he caught you staring at his chains. especially the pendant with his name on it; bussed down and twinkling even under the minimal lighting.

“you like ‘em?”, he looked down at his chest, smirking, and you nodded at him.

“are they heavy?”, you giggled. that chain was thick but the pendant on it looked like it had some weight on it too.

rapper! eren‘s answer wasn’t verbal, instead he just reached behind his neck and took it off, holding it toward you,

“try it on”, he said, quietly and you shook your head. the man had a girlfriend why was he drinking with you, and asking you to put his chain on??

“nah, bro, that’s too far. you’ve got a gir—”, you began, and rapper! eren rolled his eyes as he got up from his chair,

“first off, she’s not here. second, don’t call me ‘bro’. that’s what my boys call me.”, he stood, looking down at you, obviously waiting for you to stand up. your guilt only grew, to subside again, as you got up. and then he stepped closer. you were sat pretty close before, but now the tips of your shoes were meeting. then he leaned forward and reached behind you to put his chain on you. once it hung around your neck, you got the answer to your question; it was heavy.

lost in observation, you hadn’t even realised the way rapper! eren‘s hands hadn’t left your body, they had just changed locations. they moved from the back of your neck, to your cheeks where he held you to face him. fuck. this man was fine. yes, you felt bad but she was purring. you didn’t know his girl so what loyalties did you have to her? and plus, who are you to judge other people’s relationships? maybe she’s okay with him cheating…

you knew damn well you were just being selfish, but that didn’t stop you from moaning into rapper! eren‘s mouth once his lips collided with yours. the way the baby, blue shimmer of the diamonds bounced off the gloss on your lips made them impossible to ignore. they were just asking for rapper! eren to mess them up, and replace the sheen with the one provided by his saliva. this wasn’t the first time he had cheated on his girlfriend; he was surrounded by beautiful women who wanted him every single day, and he had the self control of a dog who hadn’t been fed in weeks. but this time felt like more than just kissing, rapper! eren didn’t want anyone else to have you. and he hadn’t realised that until he saw you with his name shining around your neck.

the slow, fervent kiss grew haste when rapper! eren‘s hands started moving to grip anything he could through your dress. soon, you were straddling him on the black leather sofa, slowly grinding on him as he pushed you down onto the tent forming in his grey nike tech. naturally, your dress began to hike up your body, and rapper! eren aided its trek by pulling it up so the end of the dress was lightly pecking the top of your black lace thong. it was at this point that rapper! eren knew that there was no going back for him; if he didn’t fuck you now, he would be dreaming about it until he did.

his lips did not leave you once—moving from your own to your cheeks, jaw, neck, chest. his hand laid on your clothed tit, the other being pulled out from under your dress, and quickly covered by his swollen pink lips. the way his tongue swirled around your nipple had you throwing your head back, your hips not stopping once. veins that once transported blood became the primary vehicle for the pleasure he was providing you, you hadn’t even noticed his hand moving to the space between your legs. slipping your thong aside, he began rubbing circles on your clit.

“’ren, p-please”, you whined, breathlessly. thoughts weren’t connecting properly anymore, so you didn’t even know what you were pleading for. you just felt the need to say something.

“w-wait, please”, you breathed out, and he hummed against whatever skin he was kissing at that point, you really didn’t know anymore. your entire body was on fire, so it all just felt like one big sensation.

“i am waiting, ma”, rapper! eren cooed, “there’s a lot more i wanna be doing right now.”, he nipped your other breast that he had alternated to at some point, and you knew he would leave a mark. and that’s exactly what he wanted.

a few minutes passed before rapper! eren inserted his middle and ring finger inside you. shivers ran a marathon all over your body as his bussed down star ring grazed your thigh, while he pumped his tattooed digits in and out of you. all the while, rapper! eren‘s eyes never left your face; the glistering jades illuminated every feature on you—your moistened pert nipples, your bleary gaze, and your parted lips. your drool mixing with his saliva still on them.

it didn’t take long for you to cum all over his fingers, trembling and cantillating his name into the space around the both of you. no part of your body could handle that wave once it washed over you, the tide pulling your forehead onto his chest, that was heaving almost as deeply as yours was. you hadn’t done much, but rapper! eren was so turned on by the fact that he was making you feel good. but even knowing that, his fingers didn’t relent.

once you were able to lift your heavy eyelids, and open your eyes, you saw a space grey patch on rapper! eren ‘s light grey tech, and that aroused a small panic in your stomach.

“’ren, s-stop”, you began, and as soon as that word left your mouth, his fingers stilled. a billion thoughts raced through his mind; maybe you’d changed your mind, maybe it didn’t feel good anymore. but when he found out that it was just because you didn’t want to get his tech wet, he chortled at how cute you were, and stroked your teary cheek with the hand that wasn’t pumping in and out of you again.

“you think i care if people know how wet my girl gets when she’s with me?”, he spoke onto the skin on your neck. fuck. you hated how good it felt to be called that, but you couldn’t stop the way you clenched around his fingers at that nickname. the same nickname that belonged to another woman.

“you like that? me calling you ‘my girl’?”, rapper! eren teased, lifting your chin when you tried to evade eye contact, “you want me to fuck you with my chain ‘round your neck? make you mine for real?”, his hand was wrapped around the top of your neck to hold your chin in place, and you just nodded furiously. fighting your need for him was futile, so you would give in now and regret this later.

confirmation received, rapper! eren picked you up and placed you on the sofa on your back, lips still glued on your neck. it wasn’t until he paused momentarily to take off his hoodie and shirt that you realised where things were going and panic returned. you placed your manicured fingers flat on his chest, providing a bit of resistance as your head shook slightly. but you didn’t say anything, simply hoping the look in your eyes would communicate everything your mouth couldn’t.

“your girlfriend”, you spoke, voice barely above a whisper. and rapper! eren moved closer to your face, meeting your lips. then he spoke against them,

“tell me you don’t want this, and i’ll stop”, he told you sincerely and you stammered, words failing you once again. or, really, you failing yourself because there were no words you could string together to hide the way you wanted needed this man to fuck you until you started crying. you’d heard the stories, you’d heard the song lyrics, and there was no smoke without fire. so you wrapped yourself up in a fire blanket and walked straight into the blazing heat. you shook your head at him, and reached for the bulge poking you in your stomach. and he smiled down at you before kissing you again and pulling back to get condoms from a drawer next to the sofa.

rapper!eren whose mind could barely grasp the concept of anything that wasn’t how tight you would feel around him. at this point in time, he didn’t know where he was anymore, nor did he care. the faint sounds of people talking in the hallways outside his studio were hushed static compared to the soft whines escaping your lips. you were desperate; this man had thrown a lasso around you, pulled you into his orbit, and then was just tangling you in front of himself. almost as if he was teasing himself—placing you in front of his face, legs wide open, yet not doing anything to close the faucet responsible for his leaking, throbbing, pink tip. but only rapper!eren knew that the reason for his eyes sprinting across your body, unbothered by the finish line, was because he didn’t know where to start with you. he had stripped you of your dress; he didn’t plan on doing so originally, but he needed to see your tits bounce as he fucked you so it had to come off. but now that you were whining underneath him—spit sliding down the corners of your mouth, making its way down onto the sides of your neck as you sucked on his tatted fingers, eyes locked with his own, he didn’t know what to do with you. your eyes had rendered him paralysed; yes, he may have been on top of you, but you were in control. He was on his knees for you, literally! he was on his knees on the sofa, with his legs caging one of your own.

rapper!eren who, as mesmerised as he was, remembered that he couldn’t just gawk at you forever so he positioned himself at your entrance. looking at you before he put it in, he saw a smirk painted on your face,

“nervous?”, you teased, and he scoffed at you. all it took was for his tip to softly poke your entrance, for you to cry out his name. if he was in his right mind, he might’ve given you shit for how quickly you were eating your own words. but all he could think about was how he hadn’t even done anything and you were already falling apart underneath him.

“fuck.”, he breathed out as he looked at his dick, still visible between your legs.

rapper!eren was a very sought after man, women wanting him did not surprise him. but you moaned his name like you needed him. like you were flirting with the brink of insanity every single second his dick wasn’t deep in your guts. and, rapper!eren may have been a very unloyal man, but he was very possessive. and there was nothing he hated more than people fucking with what’s his. so he would rip you from the hands of insanity, and fuck you until the afterglow was so prominent that everyone would know to go nowhere near you.

“just wait for me, baby, yeah? I’m right here”.

rapper!eren who lets out a deep sigh as soon as he starts pushing himself inside you, his eyeballs exploring the back of their sockets when he felt how tight you were. he had been intent on watching you take him in, inch by inch (all 8 of them), as he sheathed himself into you. but how wet you were was making him delirious. it felt like you were tightening around him with every half an inch that you took of him. probably because you were. everything was hitting you all at once, and your body was just reacting without even consolting you. it was how sexy he was, the sound of his heavy breathing, low moans hitting your ear. bitch it felt like you were doing the damn tiktok kegel exercises.

from what you had barely seen earlier through your drenched eyelashes, you knew that there would be a lot of rapper!eren to take in. but it seemed like the man was just never ending. when you thought he was fully inside you, he would push some more and you would feel yourself stretch around him. it wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, just a lot to get used to. so your arms were reaching across his back, scratching slightly as he bottomed out inside of you.

deep sighs and whiny protests soon became blissful incantations of pleasure leaving your lips to hit rapper!eren‘s bare shoulder. his tatted fingers were digging into the fat surrounding your hips, waist, anything he could reach. not too long after you two began fucking, his manager had opened the door to ask if he was ready to go. but, when he opened the door to the soundproof studio and saw you two fucking on the sofa, he figured rapper!eren had some loose ends to tie up before he left to go to his hotel. neither of you had noticed because you were too busy focusing on the sweet words leaving this man’s mouth, as well as his chains hitting your skin. no soul would’ve guessed that this man’s pen game was crazy with the fucked out nonsense he was spewing on whatever skin he was kissing at the time.

”imma fuck you so good nobody’s gonna be good enough f’r you. hm? you want that? fuck, if I wasn’t so stupid(?) i’d fuck a baby in you. i promise you. this pussy’s so fucking tight, i don’t even care anymore. i got money, i could take care of a kid. you wan’ it? you wan’ me to just get you pregnant? let everyone call you my baby mama? you’re a slut you know that, yeah? just wan’ my nut leaking outta you? fuck, y/n, you’re gonna get me in trouble.”

rapper!eren whose fingers teased your clit, slow and gentle as if he wasn’t pounding into you with reckless abandon on some small sofa in his studio. but the few seconds that those two fingers sped up on your little bud of nerves were enough to have you drenching his lower abdomen, and fingers. too lost in the moment, he had forgotten to taste you earlier, so he put his fingers in his mouth and he rolled his tongue around them. the taste of you in his mouth dropped his eyelids, his hips moving faster and faster as your arousal coated his tastebuds.

rapper!eren who couldn’t remember the last time he was that turned on by anyone. his hips were moving on their own, rushing to get that release. he wanted to hold it, because he wanted to give you round after round after round and he wanted you to cum, at least, one more time before he did so himself. if it were up to him, he would pick you up and take you into the booth and fuck you in there so he could get some adlibs for his next song. but he just couldn’t do it.

“i’ll—fuck—i’ll make it up to you. i swe—shit”, he quickly pulled out of you, and scrambled to take his condom off. his hand managed one stroke on his dick before his nut spurted all over your chest, specks finding themselves on your chin. before the last droplets of his release dripped onto your stomach.

once he finished, rapper!eren pulled back and, as his eyes regained focus, he was just mesmerised by you. eyes barely opening, bodily fluids all over you, but his chain remained proud at the centre of your chest. he had to take his phone out and take a few pictures of you just like that. spurts of his cum acted as an adhesive, sticking his name onto your heart. yeah, he wasn’t letting you go now. he didn’t know how to feel about the cum splattered on his chain, but he just settled on getting a new one and just letting you keep that one. how he would explain that to his girlfriend, he had no fucking clue but he would figure something out…

after he took you to a hotel suite and made up for nutting quicker than he had hoped…by fucking you senseless:))

#nanaminsmooninc #aot x black reader #aot x black y/n #eren x black reader #eren x black fem!reader #eren smut #rapper!eren #aot eren

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darlingdarkly · 3 months

Text

New Year, New You Part 4

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish x f!reader

Personal Trainer AU

4.9k words

CW: dubcon!, dark fic, dark content, obsessive behavior, dirty talk, explicit language, E rated, NSFW, smut, 18+, mature themes, Exhibitionism without any exhibition

Part: 1, 3, 5

It’s too late for things to change, you see that now. He’s taken it to the next level, one you couldn’t possibly have imagined. Time has passed and as it did the situation between you has progressed. You don’t make videos of your homework assignments anymore, Johnny oversees them. Your sessions, while they’re still structured and progressive towards your goals, the goals he’d set for you, they’re now spaced intermittently with chaste make out sessions.

You pushed your limits on your reps, doing fifteen of an exercise instead of ten? Make out session. You stretched just a bit further, legs nearly full split? His lips crash to yours in bruising haste. You ran a full twenty minutes with no rest? His tongue is in your mouth, exploring the depths of it, using the advantage of your jelly legs to push you how he wants you. You can see what he’s doing, you’re not blind.

He’s Pavlovian in his tactics, positive reinforcement, emphasis on the force, but it's working. You find yourself pushing your limits, just to feel the push of his lips. Driving yourself farther, faster, better so he’ll drive you up against the wall.

It’s debilitating, the intensity of his kisses. They have a certain dizzying quality that makes it hard to resist or think or even breathe really. What you haven’t done is fuck, and that’s not for a lack of trying. Johnny has, on multiple occasions, initiated but you kept finding ways out.

Several occasions he’s pushed a hand down your sweats, fingers rubbing against your clit in heated circles. Brazenly out in the middle of the gym he’ll pull you back against him, to the outward eye it appears he’s just correcting your form but in reality all he’s really doing is rubbing his hard cock against the back of your thighs, enticingly. It’s a promise, a tease to your ruination. He’s hungry, had one taste of seeing you fall apart and now he’s on a warpath to make it happen around his cock.

But you’re stalling, nothing, besides heated kisses and frenzied groping has happened since your FaceTime encounter and you can feel Johnny growing impatient. It’s been a week since you walked into Baliquinox for the first time and you think it’d be like any other session but when you come in Johnny has a small gift bag in his hand and waves you over excitedly.

You sit down at your usual table with him and he pushes the bag across the tabletop towards you, giddy with excitement like the gifts for him even though you’re the one opening it. You pull away the tissue paper to reveal a small box, you pull it out and immediately recognize it, ads have been popping up on your Spotify for months for the FitBit luxe. It’s gold and gorgeous but also pricey, you know because you looked at them before Christmas as a present for your mom.

The one he’d gifted you is literally the newest, most expensive model, with a regular pink wristband and interchangeable soft gold chain to dress it up. You stare at the watch as he begins to explain its features. He tells you it tracks your vitals, sleep patterns and exercises. It counts your steps, monitors your breathing and stress levels, it’s also waterproof and has a five day battery, on top of that you can get your call and text notifications through it, it’s GPS enabled to track your miles, pacing and the route you took on your walk or run, the damn thing can even track your menstrual cycles for you.

“Oh gosh, Johnny. I don’t know what to say.” He reaches across the small table and takes the box from your hands, opening it and pulling the watch out, the gold chain already attached. “Dinnae have tae, just put it on.” So you do, holding your wrist out while he attaches the high tech jewelry to your arm, You push the button on the side and the little screen lights up, your name flashes across the screen in a beautiful gold scroll before the sensors against your skin already begin picking up on your heartbeat and breathing rate.

Johnny must have programmed it before giving it to you. You thank him, a bit bashful at the expensive gift and let him kiss you when he comes around the table to grab the empty gift bag and box from you. It’s slow but passionate and he chuckles as he pulls away and your new watch beeps, indicating the upward tick in your bpm.

He ushers you away towards the women’s locker room to change and you can’t help but admire the new weight on your wrist, it’s certainly beautiful. You’re pretty sure you read that they are supposed to be paired with a phone, you’ll have to figure it out later. You quickly change and head into the gym, finding Johnny by the machines.

He pulls you over to the mats to start your warmups and stretches. You’ve made progress since you’ve started, your warmups you now have down to a tee and your stretches nearing a full split without whines or whimpers. When it’s time for your first exercise he guided you to the pull up bar, something you haven’t tried yet.

You stand to the side and watch as he demonstrates. Jumping up to catch the bar and pulling himself up until his chin is over the top of it. He drops and repeats, arms flexing as he effortlessly completes rep after rep. His shirt keeps riding up his body with each lift, exposing the flat, toned expanse of his stomach, there’s a dark trail of sparse hair leading down into his shorts, but you remember where it goes from there, growing thicker as it wraps around the base of his cock. You find yourself thinking about it, that night, you’ve been thinking about it a lot actually, every time you pull your vibrator out of the drawer you come to the thought of him watching you. Those baby blues roaming your body, hungry.

You’re pulled from your erotic daydreams by the beep of your watch and Johnny lets go of the bar, standing before you with a sly smirk. “See something ye like, bonnie?” Stupid watch. How were you ever going to get through today with it going off every five minutes and giving you away? He pulled you unnecessarily close to press a few buttons on the gadget and turned it on to activity mode so it’d stop doing that every time it spiked, but not before it sounded off once more with the effect he was having on your body at this proximity.

“Yer turn.” You walk in front of the pull up bar and spin around, facing him. His eyes hold yours as you jump and grab hold of the bar with both hands, dangling from it. He walks forward and his hands brush the exposed skin of your hips and it makes you shudder. “Good, now up.” You lift, the first half is easy but the last four or five inches to get your chin over the bar are the worst.

It doesn’t help he’s so close, never having backed up and you realize his mouth is level with your pussy at the moment. You come down from your first rep and are ready to let go but you know you can’t do just one. “Come on, lass. Again.” You do as he says, lifting your body weight with nothing more than the strength of your arms.

Those last few inches are a strain and you’re not sure you’ll make it, arms quivering as you pull your chin up over it again, your arms go numb and you bring yourself back down but you know you’ve got one more. He can see you’re struggling though and wraps his arms around the backs of your thighs.

“Last one hen.” You lift and you can feel his hands push up on the globes of your ass, gently assisting you. It helps but also doesn’t make it any easier as your whole body shakes with the effort of those last few inches. You’re stuck at mouth level, that last inch it takes to get your chin over the bar looks impossible but then you feel his mouth on the exposed skin of your stomach, kissing you right over your waistline, the soft curve of his lips caressing you ever so lightly and the jolt it gives you pushes you over the top and he allows you to drop, singing praises and pulling your limp body against his.

“So good fer me, bonnie. Ye did so good.” He lifts your chin from his chest and kisses you, his mouth swallowing yours and instead of just basking in it, letting him damn near consume you like usual you kiss back, matching his pace and pushing your tongue in his mouth for a change. He growls and it’s a rumble you can feel as well as hear, a rockslide in his chest. When you pull away his eyes are deadly serious and that little voice in the back of your head is screaming at you that it’s dangerous, like eyeing up a predator but something else in you is failing to care.

You’ve had about enough of this little game. The back and forth, the teasing touches, the soaked panties. You don’t avert your gaze and his head tilts just slightly, challenging. It’s visceral and exhilarating this line you can see drawn in the sand before you as you anticipate the crossing of it. You reach forward with bold, calmness and glide your hand along the imprint of his cock, teasingly fondling the length.

You had meant to just tease him back a little, give him a taste of his own medicine for once but the effects were more drastic than you’d anticipated and the reaction was immediate. It’s the first time you’ve ever shown him any kind of sexual initiative and it’s all it takes. Suddenly he’s dragging you through the gym with urgency. You think you know where he’s going until he makes a detour, hauling you down the hall and into one of the big glass rooms where classes took place that was currently empty.

You watched as he picked the tablet up from its place by the door. He made a few successive taps on the screen and you watched as the glass took on a dim sheer, graying over slightly. The expanse of the hallway was still visible to you but you knew, just as you had seen walking into the gym for the first time that if you were to walk outside you’d see nothing through the glass but opaque grayness.

You had just a moment to marvel at this before he was on you, your face pressed up against the cool surface, hands caught by his behind your back, ass pressed into the seat of his crotch, you could feel something hard there, poking you. He spoke just behind you, the heat of his breath puffing at the shell of your ear.

“Yer playing a dangerous game, hen.” It sends a shiver down your spine, the threat and its delivery, but it fails to unnerve you. You’ve made your bed and are more than ready to lie in it, there’s just one more thing holding you back.

“I want you to tell me something Johnny.” And you can tell he��s growing impatient by the intensity of his thrusts against your ass and thighs, rutting into you through your clothes.

“Ah’ll tell ye the last four of mah NINO if ye want. Anything, jus’ name it.” There’s a moment of anxious hesitation on your part, unsure of where things will go depending on his response, or even if you want to know what he’s going to say in the first place, but you didn’t come this far to chicken out now.

“Why did you pick me out? Why did you choose me?” And he must approve of the question because he chuckles darkly in your ear, moving your body back from the glass to begin stripping you as he answers.

“Ye wanna ken why I singled ye out, hmm? Why I chose ye?” He’s pulled your shirt off and he’s working at the hem of your sports bra, freeing your breasts to the cool air, your mind freezes, your first instinct is to cover yourself, there’s people walking up and down the hallway constantly. Strolling right by as you stand half naked with nothing but an inch of glass and a special electronic filter to shield you from sight.

It shouldn’t make you this wet, being stark naked in front of strangers, strangers who you know can’t see you but you can see them, commuting through the gym like normal while you’re bare and on sinful display behind the glass, but it does. He’s working at your sweats, pulling them down your legs, stooping down as he does to kiss your skin as it’s freshly exposed.

Between kisses he answers. “At first it was just attraction, when ye looked up into me eyes while ye were jogging. I felt something, this urge, I had to have ye. Then after yer exam ye dinnae run away or complain, jus’ did as I asked an’ took everything I gave ye like a good lass.”

He’s tugging at your panties now, stopping long enough to groan and bite into one of your ass cheeks, making you squeal and instinctively push forward into the glass. Your bare tits and thighs smush obscenely against the cool surface, nipples beginning to pebble from the cold as he moves forward to keep you pressed there. One hand coming around to secure itself around your throat like a collar, the other kneading at the flesh of your ass, pulling it apart and releasing it to enjoy the jiggle.

“I dinnae ken if ye’d even come in the next day, but there ye were, and I ken right then that ye were mine. Everything from there jus’ solidified it. The way ye answered all mah questions, even if ye tried to cover it up by complainin’ about bein’ spoke tae that way. When I broke into yer house and ye dinnae call the police, jus’ called me tae yell at me then came all nice and pretty for me while I watched.”

You were filled with mixed emotions. Shock, shame, growing horror, but most of all, overtaking the rest was arousal, pure lust. You sucked in a breath as his fingers dipped down, stark naked as you were, it’s all it took to feel the evidence of it as it coated your thighs. He pulls his fingers out, wet with your juices and licks them clean right behind your ear. “Even now I’ve got ye stripped naked and absolutely soaked, and ah’m still fully dressed.”

He’s right, there’s no way to hide or deny it. “Yer just as dirty an’ fucked up as I am, aren’t ye hen?” He slides a finger past your lips, breaching you and you can’t help the moan that spills out, eyes closing in self indulgence, the pleasure staining your self conscious inhibitions, muddling them. He gets closer, harsh and gruff in your ear, demanding an answer. “Aren’t ye?” You whine out a yes that sounds pathetic even to your own ears.

He pulls the digit out and the warmth of his chest disappears from your back, making your eyes blink open and needy whimpers escape your lips. “Dinnae whine, greedy thing.” He presses back up against you, the hard length of him slotted between your thighs, you feel him for just a moment, rubbing the tip up and down your soaked slit before he’s pushing in, full length buried deep in one brutish thrust.

It has your back arching, head falling back against his shoulder as your mouth drops open and a hearty low moan flies from your throat like an uncaged bird. He rubs soothing circles into your hips as he gives you time to adjust. When your head dips forward he begins, sawing in and out of you slowly at first, making you groan with each fully sheathed thrust.

“Johnny, please.” He leans forward and nips at the skin of your nape, assaulting your neck and ear with his lips and teeth as he picks up the pace, giving you what you asked for. It feels euphoric, the full stretch of his cock and it puts all the thoughts you’ve had of him, the erotic daydreams, the nights spent touching yourself to the thoughts of what it’d be like to shame.

He’s attentive and sensual, listening intently for which of his movements drive you wild. Your head dips forward and you close your eyes but he’s not having it, gripping you beneath the chin and forcing your head up, eyes opening as he growls in your ear from behind. “Look at them, hen. Can ye imagine what’d they think if they could see ye right now? See this body, beautiful and bare like I can.” His arm slips down and around the back of your thigh, grabbing purchase in the pit of your knee and lifting, your leg comes up, hiked up level to your hip and he holds it there while he fucks into you from behind. You’re pleasantly surprised at the ease in which you can maneuver this way, those stretches finally paying off, almost like it was planned from the start.

The new angle makes him able to slide devastatingly deep, your body jolting with each thrust, moans quickly filling the room, yours and his. You remember seeing the people dancing, their bodies in sync to the music you could feel in your feet but was inaudible to you from outside and was suddenly glad for it as he pulled all the way out before thrusting back in with the snap of his hips and you let out a startled and involuntary noise that was half moan, half scream.

“Sound so good like this, panting an’ moaning like a bitch in heat fer me. Squeezin’ me so tight, does it feel good lass? Better than yer fingers?” You’re beyond words at the moment so you just give him a frenzied nod, head leaning forward to rest on the glass as he lays waste to your cognitive ability. But then he stops moving and it all comes back, although the only thing you can articulate at the moment is whines of his name and pathetic pleas for him to keep going.

“Asked ye a question, lass.” Your mind reels and you start babbling, a series of yeses and broken sentences, anything to get him to start again. His hand snakes up and laces his fingers between yours, as the other keeps a firm grip on your knee, spreading you nice and wide for him.

He picks up a breakneck pace, hips stuttering into yours violently as you just try to hang in there, you can feel it, your orgasm building rapidly. He can feel it too, the way your pussy clenches down around him as you beg him not to stop. “Are ye close, bonnie? Gonna fall apart all over mah cock?” You don’t dare leave him waiting, chanting out affirmations like prayers falling from your lips, if he stopped now you may have a meltdown.

“Do it fer me, hen. Let me feel ye come fer me.” You’re thrown over the edge, whole body tense as he drives you through, quite possibly, the most violent orgasm of your life. Your legs shake in his hold, eyes squeezed shut and head thrown back over his shoulder as you all but collapse against him. He holds you up and doesn’t stop, pushing you through it and out the other side into overstimulation.

Your constant moans just spur him on, he can feel his own release building slowly. “What’s my rule on sets, hen?” Your fuzzy brain is having trouble grasping his question, or even the relevancy of it, until it dawns on you and he must feel you stiffen as the implication of it sets in. “Aye that’s right. Tell me.”

You answer in a quiet whisper but he lets it slide. “Sets of three, always.” He drops your leg and the combination of the blood rushing back in, tingling like static and the continued drag of his cock is mind numbing. “Aye, good girl. Sets of three. One down, two tae go.”

His hands come down to grip your hips, pulling you back into each thrust with force. You brace yourself against the glass, the side of your face and both palms of your hands pushed up against it as he ruts into you without mercy or ceremony.

You watch as a set of women pass by the room, their eyes seem to pass right over you without seeing and they stop momentarily in front of the glass for one to share something on their phone with the group, their eyes all widen and they mime a fit of giggles and continue on, unaware of your ruination inches away.

He grabs a fistful of your hair and lightly tugs, pulling your face back from the glass, at this new angle your nipples make brief contact with the glass on every inward push and it drives you ever closer to careening off the edge for a second time. “Johnny! I’m- ah! I’m fucking close! Fuck!” He keeps thrusting into you until you squeeze him for dear life a second time, only then does he pick up the pace, relishing in the way he can alter the pitch of your moans by the little variations in his thrusts.

You’re fucked out, lost to bliss and delirium as you come down from your second orgasm. You can’t possibly see how he could pull another from you until he leans forward, hand sliding down your body until his fingers find your clit and your body involuntarily jerks from the touch, but he just reaches out again and finds it, muscling you into place so you can’t buck away.

“You know the rules lass, one more.” You shake your head and sob. “I can’t Johnny! S’too much!” He’s enjoying the slurred nature of your speech, the pleading tone of your protests, he’s going to come soon, he can feel it. “Ye can and ye will. I’ll make ye. Be a good lass and take it.”

He rubs your clit in frenzied circles and it’s almost painful the sensation, your sensitive nerves too overworked to handle it so your hands come down to grab at his wrist, anything to stop the motions, else you’re apt to lose your mind.

He’s ready for that though, pulling one hand away from the apex of your thighs and securing it behind your back in an iron grip, the other he traps beneath his hand, making you rub circles into your own clit as he guides you.

It threatens to make your knees buckle underneath you as he holds you up and stretches you open simultaneously. He whispers filth into your ear as your eyes roll back and you teeter on the edge of sexually induced lunacy. “Did ye get more than ye bargained fer, hen? Poor thing. All fucked out an’ creamin’ all over mah cock? Yer gonna do it again, lass. One more fer me and I’ll let ye rest, aye? Be a good lass an’ come again.”

He pushes you over the edge for the third time and your whole body shakes, convulsing around him as you lose the battle against your pleasure and ultimately succumb to it. He feels his own orgasm closing in and holds it off for just a bit longer while you recover, keeping even steady strokes while your pussy squeezes around him through your aftershocks. When your eyes reopen and your breathing levels in one fluid motion he pulls out of you, spins you around and forces you to the floor.

You open your mouth to speak but he’s stuffing his cock down your throat before you can utter even a word. Your head backs into the glass and he uses your mouth like a pocket pussy, hands bracing on your head as he thrusts into your open throat a few erratic times, his balls sticky from your cum tapping against your chin as he reaches his peak. Loud guttural roars echo off the walls and ring in your ears as he comes down the back of your throat hard and fast.

He pulls out and a string of your saliva connects your puffy bottom lip to his tip for the briefest of moments before snapping. He’s staring down at you, chest heaving from the exertion of his climax with the slyest smirk on his face and a twinkle of satisfaction in his bright blue eyes.

He stoops down to your level, face to face when he speaks next, slightly hoarse. “Did ye swallow?” He asks as if you had much of a choice coming down the back of your throat like he did but before you can even answer he’s pulling down on your bottom jaw with his thumb. Your mouth falls open, tongue lolling out as he tilts your head from side to side and groans. A wave of panic surges through you as he leans in and kisses you passionately, tongue invading the space of your mouth as he tastes his cum off your lips. His hands cup your face as you begin to worry he’s gearing up for a second round.

He must feel you tensing under his touch because he pulls away and smooths your hair as he calms you. “Dinnae worry hen, just three fer today. We’ll stretch yer limits another time.” The promise of more makes you shudder and he helps you up off the floor to clean you up and help you redress, it’s hard because your limbs seem to refuse to cooperate as your mind commands them to, too shaky and loose to comply.

When you’ve dressed and regain your ability to walk he ushers you down the short hallway and into a seat in the smoothie alcove where he walks up to the counter, once more skipping the long line and orders you a smoothie, but not without mentioning you’ve just been through a very intense session and need it immediately, to your embarrassed dismay.

He walks back over to the table, drink in hand and sits across from you, smug as can be as you take it from him and drink. Moaning quietly as the cool drink slides down your sore throat. “Good?” He asks. And you non verbally nod to signify your content, still untrusting of your ability to articulate as of yet. “Good.”

You’re not sure where things will go from here, a secret part of you that speaks from deep in the back of your mind, where your true subconscious desires reside is scared that now that he’s had you he will be done with you. You push that thought back down into the murk of your subconscious, it doesn’t help and all of the context clues suggest it’s not true but that doesn’t stop it from bubbling to the surface.

It also doesn’t help when he tells you not to worry about your homework tonight. You sit, a bit dejected in your seat and try not to let disappointment seep into your tone. “Oh, ok.” And failing. He seems to pick up on it and leans forward and settles a hand overtop yours from across the table. It’s warm, and the touch of his skin is something you won’t admit that you really needed at that moment.

“Jus’ dinnae want ye sore, bonnie. Ye can still call me tonight if ye’d like.” You nod in agreement and after you’d finished your drink, you got up, grabbed your things from the locker room and left.

Johnny watched from his phone as you made the trip home, watching the blip on the map making various stops and turns until it reached your address. He got home and monitored it all through the night as you cooked, took your shower, caved and made your call to him and then hung up to go to bed.

He watched as your bpms slowly rose and spiked as you climaxed for the fourth time that day, reliving the day's events in vivid memory and wished it was his hands rubbing circles against your clit and playing with hard nipples until you saw stars. He continued to watch as your respiration levels evened out and the app indicated you’d started your sleep cycle.

In the morning he read your sleep logistics, learning you reached rem sleep, dreamt and even woke up twice in the night to pee. He picked it up in between reps during his workout and watched your stress levels while you were at work, the early morning rush had you on edge, you chilled as lunch time came around and then spiked again right after until it came close to quitting time and you relaxed as soon as you’d clocked off.

He sat in the smoothie alcove and watched your little blip get closer and closer until you were right outside. You turned into the building and he looked up to see you crossing the lobby towards the check-in desk, returning your pleasant smile and wave as he locked his phone and put it away so you could begin your next session.

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