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My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

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

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Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

cdessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

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

#pluralistic #transmediale #lectures #enshittification #big tech #berlin #mcluhan lecture #Youtube

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bigbigtruck · 1 month

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Hi EK!!

I was wondering if I could possibly get your advice on something. You absolutely don't have to answer this. It's A LOT.

So, I'm an undergrad senior who's about to graduate from university, and I want to make comics professionally. I'm really on the fence about getting an MFA in Sequential Art. Shit's EXPENSIVE, but I'm really looking for community and networking opportunities and I know cons exist, but im not sure I'll get the same kind of connections with other artists I would than if I went back to school.

Do you believe that it's possible to have a successful career in comics without getting a degree in comics?

Thanks for your time!

vvvrrrrmmmmmm [quickly taking to the air in a little Cessna with a banner that reads:]

Comics is a low-paying, physically punishing job with no security. PLEASE DON'T GO DEEP INTO DEBT TO LEARN COMICS.

Learning by diving in and doing it, getting your hands in the muck, with guidance from texts like Understanding Comics or a series of remote or online classes, is a way more affordable option.

The Cartoonists' Co-Op is working on gathering resources for comic artists, and is definitely worth looking into: http://cartoonist.coop

And... that's as far as I'm qualified to answer, I'm a little embarrassed to say.

So opening this up: I know some folks who follow me on here are genuinely successful and / or have done advanced education in comics. What are your experiences? If you're successful, how did you get where you are, and how did education figure into that?

#making comics #ask #reply #jadajdoodles #comics education

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syrupfog · 13 days

Text

Law thinks he has it figured out.

That scrawny kid who just wandered into the university’s yearly flu vaccine clinic Law was manning and just DECIDED that Law was his new best friend— Luffy, he said his name was. Monkey D. Luffy, as if anyone could take that name seriously.

Law thinks he’s figured it out, though. How Luffy CHOOSES the people he does, and adds them to his group.

(not that Law is IN his group, absolutely not).

Sanji’s the most obvious one. He’s INCREDIBLY useful, no one could deny that. He cooks obscene amounts of food for everyone.

Nami, too, feels like a given. She has CONNECTIONS, knows how to use them, keeps records and receipts and organizes all the parties that Luffy spontaneously seems to decide on. She’s the brains.

Zoro Law struggled with at first, the man seems to just think about swords—

but seeing them out in public, Law realizes he’s like a human guard dog, leering over Luffy’s shoulder at anyone who disagrees. Chopper seems a little young— is the kid even in undergrad?— but he’s first aid trained and Law’s seen him put it to use on numerous occasions already.

Now Nico Robin— how on EARTH Luffy managed to make friends with the youngest tenured professor GLU has ever had is beyond Law, but she has connections in academia the way Nami does on the streets. Law would bet money that Robin’s the only reason Luffy is still enrolled.

Usopp’s an odd one, but he’s… well, funny might not be exactly the right word. Entertaining. And more importantly can fix anyone’s computer or phone within an hour. He adds weird features when he does, but his work is solid.

Franky is a GIVEN, he’s the one with the converted old double decker bus — Law didn’t think they even HAD those here — and auto garage. Luffy says the word and he’ll fix anyone’s car free of charge. It’s ridiculous what Luffy can get people to do.

Brook is also obvious. Most famous musician this side of the East Blue, how on EARTH did Luffy meet him? Regardless, the man’s surely a millionaire slumming it with the rest of them for the chance to play what he wants to play and be appreciated for it

Jinbei was confusing until Law learned how they met — that protest that Luffy (along with half his crew) were arrested at last semester. Professor Emeritus in the law department, he was once famous for organizing protests around campus, and eagerly bailed them all out.

So, Law’s figured it out. As much as Luffy SEEMS like a carefree brainless soul, he’s been strategic from the very first step, surrounding himself with everyone he needs to stay on top. He’s incredibly devious, honestly, Law’s almost intimidated.

He also knows that this means he doesn’t have a place among them.

As much as he’s always planned on being a surgeon, things just don’t work out sometimes. Like when your adopted uncle frames your adopted father for tax fraud and make it look like HE’S a millionaire—

Meaning you suddenly end up with a dad in jail AND getting rejected for FAFSA. No money, no loans, one single scholarship that Law’s about to be dropped from. Sorry Luffy, you’re going to have to find a surgeon somewhere else. Chopper will be good enough, surely.

He tries to separate himself from Luffy, but that’s easier said than done, as Luffy sticks to him like glue when they’re in the same place. The man’s incorrigible, impossible, guileless, brazen…

Law ends up yelling at him in the middle of a party thrown at Jinbei’s house.

Shouts that he’s dropping out, failing, not going to live up to whatever role Luffy’s recruited him to fill. Tells him to find another surgeon, they’re a dime a dozen on med campus anyway. Storms out before he does something dumb like tear up.

Oddly enough it’s Usopp who follows him.

He sits down next to Law, looking stiff and uncomfortable, and declares that he “knows what Law’s going through”, which feels, well, patently untrue.

“I did this like a year ago,” Usopp says. “Tried to tell him to drop me.”

They’re sitting on the curb. Law scrunches grass between his fingers and stares at the road.

“I had a car,” Usopp says. “She was BEAUTIFUL. Best car you’ve ever seen. Two hundred miles to the gallon and ran on French fry grease.”

Ah, this is one of those stories.

Usopp deflates. “Then she died,” he says. “We’d just met Franky and he told me she was beyond repair. Then he offered up that bus he has, replacing her before she was even in the ground yet! And like, I’m not going to say he was replacing ME, but like—“

Law nods.

“It’s not like I had a lot going for me anyway,” Usopp says. “Not compared to Nami or Sanji or Chopper. I thought I was just lucky Luffy found me early, when his standards were lower.” He laughs, but there’s no joy behind it.

“Anyway,” he picks at the laces of his shoes. “That car’s at the bottom of a lake now, may she rest in peace. And after I tried to pull what you just pulled, Luffy really fucking let me have it.” He ducks his head. “Told me I was being fucking stupid, and he was right.”

He glances up at the sky and Law watches, a queasy feeling in the base of his stomach.

“Turns out,” Usopp says after a long pause, “Luffy really does just choose people he likes.” He sighs. “You’re just lucky, actually, because I don’t think he’s liked anyone as much as you.”

Law grimaces. He doesn’t FEEL lucky.

Usopp, taking his queue, stands up. “The sooner you admit what you’re dealing with, though, the more he’s able to help.”

Then he leaves Law alone.

And Law… finds he doesn’t want to BE alone.

He slinks back into the party maybe twenty minutes later. It’s chill. Brook is taking song requests. Sanji is handing out grilled halloumi.

Luffy immediately walks up to him. “Why didn’t you TELL ME,” he asks, indignant.

“What, that my life is a mess?”

“Everyone’s life is a mess, silly,” Luffy says. “But we can HELP, duh.”

“I think even YOU can’t keep me from getting kicked out of GLU,” Law says.

“No,” Luffy agrees. “But HE can.”

He points to Jinbei, sitting at an old yellowed desktop computer in the corner.

“I have friends in the law department who haven’t retired yet,” Jinbei says. He has small spectacles perched on his nose. “They know people. Sending a few emails now.”

Chopper walks up to the two of them, looking shy. “I can help you study,” he says. “N-not that you need it!”

Nico Robin comes over, cocktails in each hand, pushing one of them into his. “Student services is accommodating,” she says. “If you know who to ask.”

“YOW!” Shouts Franky from the couch. “And I just hacked their system and changed your grades!”

Law chokes on his drink.

“SEE?” Luffy huffs, crossing his arms. “It’s FINE. You freaked out for nothing!”

Law squints at him. “And if it’s not fine, Luffy-ya? If none of this helps and I still fail out of school?”

Luffy purses his lips. “Duh, then you can just come live with me.“

He looks incredibly petulant. “It’s not like I like you BECAUSE you’re a surgeon. I like you because I asked for two of every shot and you said I’d have to choose a fake name instead of telling me no!”

Ah. He did do that, didn’t he.

“And anyway, *i* don’t have a degree and I’m fine!”

“You’re GETTING one,” Law points out.

Luffy looks at him like he’s lost it. “I attend classes because they’re fun,” he says. “I don’t even have a high school degree, I don’t care about that stuff.”

…huh.

“Now come on,” Luffy says, wrapping small boney fingers around Law’s wrist. Zoro’s going to play snooker with me and I need you to watch to make sure he doesn’t cheat, because I don’t know the rules.”

And Law follows him.

And follows him.

And when he starts his next semester with his dad out of jail because Jinbei’s connections are honestly a little scary, and when he doesn’t sleep for three days in a row during finals week, and when he gets into the exact fellowship he wants, working under Marco himself—

Law follows Luffy.

Because nothing else makes sense.

Law hasn’t figured Luffy out at all But he’s figured everyone else out. Understands the magnetism they’re all drawn to.

And when he falls into bed with Luffy at the end of long days and weeks, He knows he’s the lucky one.

#lulaw #lawlu #my writing

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mellomaia · 10 months

Text

One memory that I've come to recontextualize as a manifestation of infodumping now that I've self determined as autistic is how, when I was in 4th and 5th grade, I LOVED learning about animals. I could talk and talk and talk about animal facts. I would correct people immediately if they said things about animals that I knew to be false, thinking, "They wouldn't want to have misinformation about animals. I'm sure they'll appreciate the correction." If you said something like "blind as a bat" near me, you would hear about it. I found animals fascinating and it didn't occur to me that others didn't.

When I did learn that, it became harder to talk to others. As many have pointed out, infodumping is less about the subject of the infodump, and more about showing someone how much you like them and enjoy spending time with them by being willing to share your knowledge on something. So when I realized that infodumping was more likely to push others away or make them think I was weird, I was really lost and didn't know how to connect with others in a way that they would recognize as me trying to be their friend.

I often didn't understand the references others made or interests they had. Most of the times that I tried to be interested in something my classmates seemed to be interested in, it backfired. Once, for instance, I noticed others talking about music they liked. I thought about what music I liked, which wasn't that much because I didn't follow celebrity culture. I think most of the people I felt I was a fan of were people who had performed as the musical guest on All That at some point. I would think to myself, "Yes, now I have something to talk about them because I like music, and they like music." Then I would ask my parents for permission to buy CDs by artists whose music I enjoyed.

Then, I come to find out that the celebrities I happened to choose were ones that classmates thought were uncool. So then I didn't feel I could speak about this subject either, and I had to go back to the drawing board. It's not to say I never had any friends, but before undergrad, none of my friendships never lasted longer than 2 or 3 years back then. Not just because of this dynamic; other factors were involved, but still. It probably didn't help that I felt I couldn't be genuine, I'm sure. Feeling chastened against communicating about a subject I was passionate about made social interaction way harder than it needed to be.

Anyway, I don't have a much more complicated conclusion than, I think the world would be a much better place if it was socially acceptable to ask people what animal fact they learned recently and what their favorite animals were, instead of, like, the weather, and asking "how are you" when it's also not socially acceptable to say anything other than "fine," or maybe "tired."

#actually autistic #high blogging #memories #long post

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drdemonprince · 2 months

Note

Do you worry about being so open about your sex life under the same name you use professionally? How did you settle on your current approach to talking about kink/fetishism publicly?

That's my question. Below is some background but feel free to ignore it.

I'm asking because, like many people, my kinks are integral to my sense of self and engaging in BDSM has been significant for my psychological wellbeing. I don't like keeping these important aspects of myself separate from the rest of my life and I'm jealous of the people I meet at munches who share openly kinky stuff on their regular Instagrams. But I also have relatives on all of my socials, including a few adult family members who take any opportunity to create drama or get on their high horses, and teenage cousins who obviously shouldn't be given information about my sex life.

I like using social media to connect with people, and it feels harder to do that when big parts of me are walled off. I'm so worried about sharing anything 'inappropriate' that I'm only presenting this bland, watered down version of myself and it makes me feel alienated. Making side accounts is one option, but it feels like compartmentalising and involves more 'personal brand' management than I care to juggle.

That's without even touching on in-person disclosures. How do I embrace these aspects of myself without acting like they're shameful, but also without being obnoxious or unfair on other people who might not want to know?

I know "authenticity" can be an unattainable ideal, especially on social media platforms that necessitate curation, but I do want to stop tying myself in so many knots over this (in the figurative, unsexy way).

Sorry for venting in your askbox.

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this.

I don't worry about the potential of my speaking openly about my sex life ruining my professional life because I hate my professional life and professionalism in nearly all forms. I have nothing but contempt for the academy, social psychology, my employer, the publishing industry, 99% of the organizations that hire me to provide workshops, and a decent-sized subset of my readers who are of the more liberal end of things. Alienating myself from these institutions and people and making myself incompatible with their viewpoints feels as necessary to me as breathing air.

when I was very young I was concerned with making myself palatable to academia and shucking off everything that was unprofessional and hillbillyish and childish and weird about me, but then I learned what success within the academy really entailed. I heard faculty members shrug and say they "didn't really care" about the topics they were studying (topics like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc) and were just publishing work on these subjects to further their own careers. I was trained to use questionable research protocols that generated false positives and specious results. Nearly all the research that I worked on for three years of undergrad and five years of graduate school would eventually be discredited due to failure to replicate. And I realized that I was being taken advantage of all the while, mined for cheap labor on meaningless projects that meant nothing scientifically, making $14k a year in a field where there were no future job prospects.

by the time i finished my PhD I knew that I wanted to be nothing like the people that had trained me and taken advantage of me, and that I had useless skills in a dying field. I was plenty happy to cut the shit by then and be real about who I was, what I believed, and what was and wasn't a virtuous use of my time. This only became more pronounced after I was screwed over by even more employers as a part-time instructor, and then finally hired full-time in a department that was doing good work, but which was constantly getting undercut by those in higher up administrative positions.

My entire career I have essentially been daring people to fire me and they never seem to do it. No matter how much shit I talk about the university and my profession and no matter how much I bear about myself, I just keep getting rewarded for it and allowed to float along relatively unbothered. There's a power in having a lot of audacity. I am not ashamed of who I am and I don't worry about how my employer and colleagues see me because as a whole I have zero respect for any of them or their opinions. (I have some individual coworkers who are great! but they dont represent Psychology or Academia as a whole or its values. my coworker friends are supportive of my freaky trans kinky self).

It's much the same dynamic in my family. I have no respect for the majority of people in my family and I don't concern myself with how they might react to the things I have to say. When I first started writing openly about Autism some relatives found it deeply offensive and talked a lot of shit about me behind my back, saying that I was embarassing all of them by associating us with a disability they found shameful, but my mom communicated to those relatives in no uncertain terms that I was gonna just keep doing whatever the fuck I wanted and they'd have to find some way to deal with it.

My mom had already learned that about me firsthand. I complain about her sometimes but I do have immense gratitude to her for just accepting who I am, even if there are elements of it she can't understand and probably does not feel good about. She learned a long long time ago that I was on my own separate planet and that there was nothing she could do to stop me from running my mouth and living my life, and I'm thankful to her for that. My actions have set the tone with my family pretty clearly: i came out as trans publicly before I told them, I started hormones and changed my name/gender marker without consulting them and then told them it was a fact already and they'd need to get in line. I approach most things about myself that others might take issue with in the same way: it's a fact, it's fucking happening, and you can't tell me shit about it that is going to keep me from doing it. and if you're too much of a dick about it I might end up writing about you in a book or essay so watch out, I guess.

That sounds more vindicitive than how I actually feel most of the time, of course. I just don't think about the opinions of people I don't respect. I care about what my friends think of me, and the people I look up to, and I try to rise to a level that is worthy of them. And of course I do experience fear of ostacism and failure in those respects and have not always coped with it in a confident, principled way. But with my aunts and uncles or my boss? Fuck them. I have no desire to win their approval because I've seen what they approve of and it sucks.

All of this is possible because I am not financially reliant upon my family, of course, and because if I lose my job I would have a back-up plan. I've always done freelancing and side writing gigs, even back when I was a part-timer with really insecure teaching jobs, and so the loss of any one position has never felt that catastrophic to me. I was already released by my PhD program into economically shaky ground and I never had a prayer of having a successful tenure track academic "career", so I'm not afraid of losing that. that's already gone. I feel generally pretty confident in my ability to scratch by making a living doing this or that even if somebody fires me, and I won't have to ask relatives for money so it really does not matter if I alienate any of them. that is an IMMENSE PRIVILEGE and someone not in that position shouldn't compare themselves to me or expect themselves to have that same degree of confidence. sometimes you have to just keep your head down to survive and there's no shame in that either.

as for the question about "authenticity" as an idealized end state and how to reconcile it with social media, here are some of my thoughts: it's not authenticity if it is focused on how other people interpret you. authenticity is letting go of trying to manage what other people think about you. that means you dont ever have to broadcast everything about yourself to the public or on social media, you dont ever have to share something that you dont want to, the pursuit of being perfectly understood is one that will never be fulfilled and there is no need to make oneself unnecessarily vulnerable just for the sake of appealing to people who might not ever understand and accept you anyway. authenticity is more about an energy than about revealment. it's an energy of self acceptance, not necessarily self love, and it's not something that one broadcasts, it's something one cultivates by developing secure, supportive relationships, improving one's self knowledge, and by working through one's baggage.

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starscabaret · 2 months

Note

How would Cynthia react to a love sick puppy dog reader that admired her so much as a first year?

Lovesick Student Introduction

pairing: yandere! Graduate Student Fem Cynthia 📚 x Fem Reader

summary: you are in her class

warnings : mentions of a minor, no actual minors, this is wlw, sapphic, gay, all that!

Authors note : yall are so smart with your request I love that !! check out my oc profiles to learn more about cynthia pookies !

Cynthia enjoyed graduate school. She was very excited to be furthering her education. She also worked in a field she loved and was very passionate about. The professors she worked under were very kind and had her best interest in mind. It was obvious she would go far after obtaining her master’s degree.

There were some parts of grad school she enjoyed much less than others. At her university, all of the graduate students were required to be Graduate Teaching assistants. Her job was to help a professor with their class and build a bridge between students and faculty. She graded papers, held office hours, and occasionally led the lecture.

Cynthia knew that just a few months ago she was an undergraduate but she still couldn’t help but find some of the undergraduates she assisted complete nuisance. Sending her emails in the early hours of the morning, asking simple questions that were obviously on the syllabus, crying about their grades during office hours, the list went on.

But she would grin and bear it, at the end of the day she had to. But then there was you. An undergraduate freshman. You looked so naive and full of life. So excited about college. Something that had been sucked away from Cynthia after 4 grueling years of undergrad. She wouldn’t exactly consider you a nuisance like the other students. But you were a nuisance in other ways.

You stirred something in her she hadn’t felt since junior high school. She didn’t know what it was but she didn’t exactly like it… or hate it. The only way she could describe it was like the first time she saw Megan Fox in the movie Jennifer’s Body. She came out as a lesbian the next day.

But you were forbidden… you were technically her student for Christ’s sake. And not only that but you were a freshman … how old were you? 18? what if you were 17? ugh gross, she couldn’t even think of that. No matter what a relationship between you two would be completely inappropriate, no matter your age, and no matter how strong her desires were.

But you didn’t make it easy. You came to all of her office hours and stayed the whole time no matter what you were doing in class that week. You would sit at her desk making sure to lean over it so she could see right into your cleavage and ask her, “Is this good Miss. Cynthia?”. Of course, it was good, you had a perfect score in the class, she doesn’t know why you continue to come to office hours. And she told you to stop calling her that. It was just Cynthia not “Miss.Cynthia”, that stirred something in her she wasn’t sure she could control.

This wasn’t your only attempt at tempting her. You signed every email to her off with “Can’t wait to see you next class, Love Y/N”. As the semester went on it became increasingly obvious you were a love-sick puppy for her. You only came to class for her approval and to see her, hoping she’d see you in that way. You only did well in the class because you wanted her to see you as smart and mature.

You had no clue that Cynthia more than saw you in that way. She was strong and stoic. She would ward off your every advance with kind professional language. But inside she wanted nothing more than you make you hers.

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little-diable · 11 months

Text

Lucky Shirt - Prof!Benedict Cumberbatch (smut)

I got the chance to work with @writingliv once again – yes, I am very much fangirling, y'all know how much I adore Liv – and boy, I am so proud of us and of this beautiful fic we've written together. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this! Enjoy my loves. xxx

Summary: Professor Cumberbatch was perfect. He was sweet, supportive, ever-willing to help. He was attentive and loved to praise your achievements. It came to no surprise that you had ended up trying and succeeding at becoming his favourite student. The two of you had become an unstoppable duo, however, could there be more than mere passion for academia behind it?

Warnings: 18+, smut, piv, lots and lots of tension, small sprinkles of angst, age gap, professorxstudent relationship

Pairing: Prof!Benedict Cumberbatch x fem!reader (about 9k words, she's a long one)

Professor Cumberbatch led a life full of rules, keeping clear schedules, boundaries, and conversations. Honest, passionate, and helpful would probably be the three words most people would use to define him. A life dedicated to teaching, to helping, to learning. He never swayed away from his clear-cut schemes unless it was for somebody else’s benefit. Selfless… Professor Cumberbatch was also incredibly selfless.

You, however, would think this set of facts did not do justice to his character. Professor Cumberbatch was not just selfless. He was an absolute saint. He had been your point of guidance since you first joined his class in your last year of undergrad and had offered you a place as a research assistant as a Master’s student. He had happily stayed until late hours helping you with your first dissertation and had never failed to answer any question related-or-not to his topic. Benedict Cumberbatch was your hero, which made your crush on him so much more inappropriate.

You had tried to stop thinking about him that way, feeling guilty at the idea that this saint of man was so willing to help you and take you under his wing, and all you did was fantasise about him breaking all the university rules and fucking you. It was an awful feeling, especially when you were sure he didn’t feel the same way, but it was something you couldn’t yet find a way to get rid of.

So here you were, sitting in his office, wearing that baby blue shirt he had once complimented a year ago or so, waiting for him to come back with news on whether you had been accepted to attend the most important conference in your field. You had excused your continuous wear of the shirt by referring to it as your lucky colour, making it the perfect attire for any important moment you had shared with the professor.

Your black heels had been incessantly tapping his beautiful Persian rug as you tried your best not to bite your nails when the door of the office finally opened incredibly slowly, and a gloomy Cumberbatch appeared on the opposite side wearing a shirt of a starkly similar colour as yours. “I am sorry…” he started to speak, and you felt your heart drop immediately, your hands moving to your face, covering it. “That you will have to cancel all your plans for the week April 19th because we are going to the conference!” He shouted your way, a gigantic crooked smile filling his mischievous face. You couldn’t believe it, instantly uncovering your face and checking his expression for a bluff.

You couldn’t help yourself jumping up from the excitement and reaching for him, giving him a hug. Your professor seemed to equally disregard all decorum, wrapping his hands around your waist before whispering to your ear, “it seems like your lucky colour works.” You tried your best to hide the growing warmth on your cheeks as he let go of you.

“Thank you so much for this! I am so excited! I cannot believe it!” You replied once the two of you were at an appropriate distance again, still looking at each other with the utmost admiration and excitement.

“Do not thank me. You did this all yourself. I just had to answer a reference request, and you may be surprised about this, but I find it incredibly easy to tell people how incredible you are.”

…

“Can anybody tell me when Operation Overlord was fought?” Professor Cumberbatch’s voice echoed through the classroom, eyes flickering to meet yours at any given chance. It felt like you two were playing a game, a game whose rules you have long forgotten, unable to focus on anything but him.

Him, the one you dream of when the nights grow warmer, when the heat fills your bedroom like the heat filling your veins whenever he speaks to you.

Him, the one that makes you tremble whenever his skin meets yours, never in an inappropriate way, though forced closer like magnets unable to part.

Him, the man that popped up in your thoughts when you wake and when you are about to fall asleep. An ever present sensation you slowly but surely adapted to.

You didn’t pay attention to the answer of the student that tried to catch the professor’s attention for the past minutes. Your thoughts weren’t able to grow quiet, a loud sound that rang through your mind like a song you couldn’t stop singing. It was wrong, so awfully wrong, and yet you couldn’t stop yourself from craving his touch, wanting to feel his body pressed against yours without any clothing caught in between.

Professor Cumberbatch needed a few moments to rip his eyes from your features, breaking eye contact with a slight scowl tugging on his face. The nagging voice inside your head made you wonder if he was annoyed with the other student for cutting your shared moment short. There was always something so intense about the way he looked at you, forcing you to sit straighter, eyes unable to move away.

“Anything else you want to add to today’s lesson? If not, you are good to go.” Your heart picked up its beat as his eyes found yours once again, a silent way of communicating, asking you to stay behind for a few more moments. The other students pushed past you all too impatiently, wanting to flee from the classroom, but you didn’t move, not able to even try to imagine another place where you’d rather be.

“I won’t hold you back for long, I just wanted to give you these folders. It’s everything they gave me for the conference.” Your fingers brushed his as you took the folder, breath hitched in your chest. His eyes followed your every move, watching you thumb through the papers, unable to bite down your smile.

“I am so excited, I can’t wait for us to go there!” Your voice left him smiling, unable to bite down his excited grin. Your nerves were running wild, wondering how being at the conference with him will play out, praying to whoever was listening that you’d be able to also focus on something else besides the gorgeous professor you wanted to call yours.

…

Soft music filled Professor Cumberbatch’s office, ringing in your ears without distracting you from the essays you were grading with the professor. It wasn’t unusual for you to join in on his later sessions, finding comfort in his closeness, even though you wouldn’t share many words, just a few glances here and there.

“What is it? You are biting your lip again.” Professor Cumberbatch’s voice ripped you out of your trance, eyes snapping up from the paper. Heat flushed through you as you let go of your lip, teeth no longer buried in the warm flesh.

“Sorry, I struggle to follow their argumentation, it simply makes no sense, and you know how much I hate saying this.” Your voice was soft, not wanting to interrupt the calm atmosphere you two were trapped in. You watched him move closer, admiring the way he carried himself, the way his beige trousers hugged his legs, and how the rolled up sleeves of his black dress shirt exposed just enough of his muscular forearms and the watch clinging to his left wrist. Fuck, you’d dream of this tonight, you were sure of it.

“Let me have a look.” The professor sat down next to you on the comfortable sofa placed in the far back of his office. The scent of his cologne crawled up your nostrils, making you shudder as his leg was pressed against yours. His eyes carefully followed the sentence you had highlighted, concentrating on the arguments the student seemed to have struggled with. “Yes, I see what you mean. Leave it on my desk later, I’ll add some comments myself.”

He pushed the essay back into your hands, eyes meeting yours. Neither one of you dared to move, eyes not wanting to break contact, hearts calling out to one another without finding the right words to express what was burning on the tip of your tongues. He broke the intense moment first, clearing his throat before he rose back to his feet.

“I think I’ve kept you here long enough, you should get some rest and start packing your bags.” Disappointment filled your system, slowly nodding your head as a quiet “Of course” left your lips. And with one last glance shared, you left his office with a racing heart and sweaty palms.

…

You arrived at your apartment and dropped on your bed, sighing loudly. It was getting too difficult to deal with, to keep your gazes in check, to keep him from knowing how you felt. It was overwhelming. It was driving you crazy. You were growing so desperate for any hint of reciprocation that you had started to imagine things, seeing lust in his gaze when it couldn't be there, when it shouldn’t be there.

You decided to check your already packed bag one more time, giving into the parting words of your professor. All the outfits for the conferences lay perfectly organised in your bag, each accompanied by a pair of matching lingerie. No. you were not planning on sleeping with anyone at this event. It was just an old trick that you had once read; wearing matching lingerie makes you feel confident even outside of the bedroom.

You were about to close the bag when your phone rang on your nightstand. You picked it up, surprised to see Professor Cumberbatch calling you at almost 1 am.

“Hello?” you picked up, your fingers playing with the silky material of the matching nightgown to your lingerie.

“Hey there, apologies for the late phone call,” his voice sounded tired and stressed. You knew exactly how badly he wanted all his students to do well, and grading always put him in a bit of a bad mood.

“No problem, Professor. Is everything okay?” your question was filled with worry as you sat down on your bed and wondered if he was still in his office.

“I was just thinking about our conversation from earlier, and I was worried you would think I dismissed you because you couldn’t finish correcting that paper. You know how much I appreciate you helping me with corrections, and I wouldn’t want you to think anything bad of my dismissal. It was just so late and… I sometimes worry that I am stealing all your time. I am sure you have better things to do on a Saturday night than spend it with me, correcting papers with me.” He ranted away nervously. You could hear the sound of his dress shoes in the background as he paced through the room.

“There is no other place I’d rather be,” you blurted out right away, immediately realising the finality of that statement.

“Really?” he chuckled bitterly, “I am sure any other woman your age would disagree. Your twenties are important for your career but also to go out, have fun, make friends, and make mistakes. Please don’t let me keep you away from doing all of those things.”

“I am having fun, and I have friends,” you laughed, slightly hurt that he thought you were a complete loser.

“You know what I mean,” he chuckled, embarrassed.

“No, professor, I am not quite sure. From what I understand, you think I am a loser with no friends or fun,” you laughed, teasing him further.

“What I was trying to say is that there are significantly funner things to be doing on a Saturday than correcting papers with me. At your age, I was doing much more interesting things, at least.”

“What were you doing, Professor?” It was an inappropriate question, especially in the tone you had spoken it. You were not sure where it had come out from, but the exhaustion and comfort of your bed had pulled it out of you.

“I don’t know…” he seemed to be thinking, trying to understand himself where he wanted to draw a line before this conversation broke his rules, “I was partying, drinking, getting into trouble, trying to get girls.”

“I do all of those things,” you replied confidently, a foxy smile on your lips and a particularly strong inflexion in the all.

“Girls?” he asked, cursing himself right away for falling into your obvious trap.

“Girls… boys…” you laughed, “I am usually not the one trying, though. Especially recently, nobody has really caught my interest that way.”

“I guess I should take advantage of it and continue to monopolise your time until you do,” his answer sent a shiver down your spine. It was late, and neither of you was thinking perfectly straight.

“I think you should,” you replied before a yawn took over your voice.

“I should let you get some sleep. We have a long week ahead of us. See you at the station tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Professor.”

…

You watched the scenery pass by, the lush green countryside, the houses that seemed empty and once left behind in a hurry to disappear from rural places like these. Your heart ached at the thought, finding sadness in the empty places, wondering who had once lived inside these buildings.

It had been a good two hours since you had met the professor at the railway station, boarding the train to the conference. And while he was sitting next to you, elbows and thighs close to touching, eyes focused on a book he was reading, you didn’t find the needed comfortableness to focus on your book nor on your notes.

Your mind painted a colourful picture, wondering how the upcoming day with him so close would play out. Even though you were used to seeing him every single week, this was something new, something exciting, something that left you gasping for air.

“Are you cold?” His voice stroked your limbs like the soft April breeze, hands instinctively finding your arms.

“No, I’m alright, thank you.” You shot him a tired smile, cursing yourself for going to bed that late. A yawn clawed through you, eyes momentarily fluttering close. Perhaps you’d be able to find a few moments of rest, nothing long, though just enough to settle your mind and heart.

It felt like a trick of your brain, focusing on the elbow that was slowly pressing against yours, the forearm that met yours on the armrest separating your seats. Your heart was back to jumping in your chest, pounding louder than the rattling noises of the train.

While your mind started overthinking his move, trying to read between the lines, your body seemed to understand what it was supposed to do. All too slow, you placed your head on his shoulder, eyes not daring to flutter open in case you read the signs wrong. A soft exhale of air left the man, hand finding your knee to squeeze your soft skin.

“Get a bit of rest.” His voice successfully managed to lull you to sleep, heart slowly but surely finding a pace that would allow you to rest.

…

“We are here,” a voice shook you softly awake as you realised you had fallen asleep on the man’s arm. You instantly retracted back to your seat, putting as much distance as the train allowed. He looked at you entertained as he stood up, offering you his hand so you could do the same.

You grabbed it slowly, savouring the way his slender long fingers held yours so confidently and got up.

“The hotel is just a 10-minute walk from the station,” Cumberbatch added as he brought down both of your bags from the shelf at the top and then handed you yours.

…

You made sure to fill up the walk with every possible fun fact you had on the city, describing the few monuments you passed by and making sure you to search for your professor’s eyes, incredibly afraid that you had crossed a line by falling asleep on him. He listened to every single one of your words attentively, nodding and smiling as you made the third energy joke in a row.

“We are here,” Cumberbatch finally interrupted you, pointing at a beautiful historic hotel. You exhaled, thankful that soon you would be able to be in your room, away from him, and finally able to think straight.

The two of you entered the hotel and approached the reception, where a pretty, tall girl offered you a smile. “Hi, how are you? We have a four-night reservation under the name Cumberbatch. Two rooms.”

“Mmh… Cumberbatch?” the woman spoke back as she typed the name. A worried expression crossed her face before she looked up, meeting your eyes first and then the professor’s. “I only have one room for two reserved. Not two rooms.”

“That cannot be.” Benedict’s voice was firm and serious as he calmly placed his arms on the front desk.

“I am very sorry. People sometimes get confused when booking from more than one person and assume there are separate rooms.” She spoke politely, showing her best apologetic look.

“I will then pay for an extra room,” Benedict replied, not once turning to look at you.

“We are fully booked,” the woman replied, pressing her lips together, “I am very sorry.”

“There must be SOME available room,” he doubled down before you interrupted him.

“It is fine. We can make it work. The room has a couch, right?” You tried to ease off the tension, smiling at both your professor and the receptionist.

…

“I am so sorry. I have no idea how this mistake could have happened,” Benedict apologised for the tenth time as you reached the elevator, his eyes as soft and heavy as he tried to find a solution to this situation.

“Professor, it is completely fine.” You finally stopped him as the two of you entered the elevator, “there is a couch in the room. I am happy to sleep there.”

“I won’t let you sleep on the couch,” he replied, shocked that you would even think that was an option.

You sighed, closing your eyes, trying to decipher whether this was a dream or your worst nightmare. All you wanted right now was to be alone, to be by yourself, away from the overwhelming need this man filled you with. You had no idea how you would survive sleeping in the same room, regardless of whether it was on a couch, on a bed or on the ground.

The two of you walked towards the room’s door as Benedict bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from apologising again. He opened the door and was met with a queen-sized bed and a tiny minuscule couch. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, turning back around to you to apologise once again, but you stopped him.

“Let’s grab dinner! I heard some people from the conference are also staying at the hotel and grabbing dinner close by! Let’s go!” You patted him on the back and dropped your bag, ready to leave the room and what it would bring in the following days.

His heavy steps pounded against the ground, following you back towards the elevator. An almost uncomfortable silence was now following you two around, urged on by the inappropriate thoughts you both couldn’t shake off. Perhaps dinner would manage to distract the two of you for a moment, letting go of the tension and relaxing in comfortable chairs with other academics close by.

…

“Some more wine?” Benedict’s breath tickled your neck, forcing you to swallow loudly as you wordlessly reached your glass out for him to refill. His gaze was stuck on your features, on the smile you couldn’t stop from widening whenever he spoke up, murmuring facts about the academics you were now surrounded by.

“You have to tell us, (y/n), how does working with a stubborn man like Benedict Cumberbatch work out?” Your chuckles rumbled through you, eyes finding the piercing ones of the man sitting next to you. By now, you have forgotten most facts Benedict had shared with you, could barely remember their names, and yet you tried to play along, elbows placed on the table with your face placed in your hands.

“Let me tell you, it’s an utter nightmare.” Laughter boomed through the evening, through the garden that surrounded a few tables and chairs. The cosy atmosphere that lingered in the restaurant eased some of your tension from earlier, allowing the two of you to breathe calmly. “I am very lucky to have him by my side. No other professor has ever taught me this much.”

The hand of his that was resting on the back of your chair found your shoulder, fingers stroking your skin softly to communicate the gratitude he was feeling. Benedict was all too used to praises, and yet your words had a new meaning to them, making him sit a bit straighter as he began to pay attention to how some of his colleagues looked at you, unable to bite down their curiosity.

“I am the lucky one, I’ve rarely met students as bright as (y/n).” Heat flushed through you, forcing you to take another sip of your wine. You weren’t nearly as tipsy as you wanted to be, unable to accept his praises, the words he spoke that left your insides churning in excitement.

“Be careful, Benedict, otherwise, we may steal her from you.” One of the men sitting close to Benedict spoke the words without much thought, or so it seemed, not expecting the hard expression to widen on Benedict’s features. The professor didn’t reply, eyes searching yours as you shot him a small smile, hand finding his knee before you could give the gesture much thought. His muscles tensed underneath your hand, but before you could even try to move your hand away, he placed his hand on top of yours, squeezing yours.

“We had a long day, we should catch up on some sleep. Have a good evening.” Benedict’s words forced you to your feet, murmuring a soft “Goodbye” to the others. Your breath got stuck in your lungs as Benedict’s hand found your waist, pulling you closer to him as he guided you out of the restaurant. Once again, you felt your thoughts race, focusing on the way his fingers stroked your clothed waist, guiding you through the warm evening towards the hotel.

No further word was spoken as you stepped into the elevator, standing in front of Benedict with your eyes searching his. You couldn’t ignore the way his eyes flickered between your lips and eyes, praying deep inside that he’d finally close the gap. The two of you stood closer than needed, with his hand still placed on your waist and your hand finding his other one. Perhaps this was the moment you had been desperate for years, hoping that he’d finally cross the invisible line between you.

The mere thought of finally feeling his body pressed against yours left heat to fill your veins, heart pounding in your chest. But before either one of you could move again, the elevator came to a halt, forcing the two of you to step out. Only as the darkness of your shared hotel room lured you closer did you begin to realise that the night wouldn’t end like you had hoped it would.

He turned on the light and spoke, “I will take a shower before going to sleep, but don’t wait up for me, sleep well, (y/n). Please take the bed.”

…

Benedict entered the bathroom and left you alone in the bedroom, leaving you to wonder what you had possibly done wrong to ruin such a perfect moment, to stop him from kissing you. You sat on the bed, defeated, as you heard the sound of the shower turning on. Fuck. Maybe it was the alcohol or the burning feeling on your skin, but this felt like too much, too close, too little. It was ridiculous, nothing that deserved you crying over it, yet you could feel your eyes tearing up. The need was too much. He was too much. It almost felt unfair for him to leave you wanting the way he did.

As the sound of the shower stopped just for a second, you snapped out of your pity party, cleaning the tears from your face and getting changed before your professor could exit the room. You opened your bag and searched for your pyjama, only then realising you had brought your nightgown as your only sleeping option. You sighed loudly, covering your face and then dropping your arms to decide.

“Fuck it,” you spoke to yourself as you took off your clothes, putting on the nightgown that barely covered your ass and left little to the imagination for much else. If he could tease you all night, touching your waist, looking at you the way he did, you could do the same and even if he was not interested at all. Even if you had made every sign up in your mind, no man would not at least be tempted by such an outfit.

The bathroom door opened a few seconds later as you were busy folding your clothes back into your bag. You didn’t even dare to turn around to meet his gaze, suddenly feeling a wave of embarrassment overcome the boldness of the alcohol.

Your professor cleared his throat, and you finally met his gaze, feigning being completely and totally oblivious to what you were wearing. His blue eyes looked almost black by how dilated his pupils were, and you couldn’t help but offer him an innocent smile. He was wearing a loose black T-shirt and some grey pyjama pants.

“I am sorry. I didn’t think I would be sharing my room tonight,” you acknowledged the outfit, walking by his side, brushing his arm just so slightly before entering the bathroom with your toothbrush at hand.

Benedict had to command every single one of his muscles not to turn around, not to look at you walk into the bathroom, not to follow you, to pin you against the sink and fuck you right there.

You left the door of the bathroom open as you brushed your teeth, giving him the possibility to look into to watch as the hem of your nightgown rose high enough to show the curve of your ass. He, however, didn’t. Going straight to his couch and grabbing a pillow and duvet from the cupboard, and laying down.

You exited the bathroom excitedly, hoping to have one more chance to tease him before heading to bed but found him already deep asleep. Facing the back of the couch as he uncomfortably tried to fit within it.

…

POV Benedict

He didn’t dare move, eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around his too tall frame for a couch this small. Benedict tried to listen to your breaths, counting them to try and figure out if you were already asleep. His cock was aching, twitching in his boxers in a desperate need to be touched by you.

Fuck, he felt like a young boy, unable to guide his body, to pick up on his needs and urges, and to stop himself from giving in before it got too much. He hadn’t expected you to wear something like this, something that left his heart racing, pumping blood straight to his cock. It was torture, the worst situation he had been forced to live through so far, Benedict was convinced of it.

The second his mind painted a picture of your body pressed against his, he shot up from the couch, searching the false comfort the bathroom offered him, door falling shut with a thud. He could only hope that you were truly asleep by now, not picking up on his movements, the heavy breaths leaving him.

His hand pushed his boxers down his legs, just enough to free his hard cock. Precum was bearding his tip, veins shining through the thin skin, fuck, how much he wanted to feel and see your hands wrapped around him. Would you use your mouth on him? Would you stroke your tongue along the underside of his cock before sucking on his tip?

A heavy moan threatened to leave him, caught seconds before it could echo through the bathroom. His teeth left marks on his lower lip as his hand picked up its pace, fucking himself without any mercy, working on the fleeting time night offered him. Deep down, he hated himself for pushing you away this very night, wondering why he hadn’t given in, why he hadn’t chased the closeness you had been willing to offer. But something had held him back, something he was now regretting.

He couldn’t stop another moan from not leaving him, eyes squeezed shut, head rolled back. His orgasm was close, a desperate need to finally get over the sensations the mere sight of you had pushed through him. Benedict had to stop himself from choking on your name, from talking to the (y/n) he imagined kneeling in front of him.

With one last heavy breath leaving him, white cum began to cover his hand, sticking to his skin. Benedict pumped his cock a few more times before he let go of his cock, settling down on the toilet seat.

…

POV Reader

This night probably counted as the top three worst nights of sleep in your life. You had spent it between nightmares and sweats, waking up every couple of hours, feeling incredibly restless. You were thankful to see that it was already 7 am the next time you were shaken awake by another terrible dream. It took you a second to ground yourself; remember where you were. You instantly turned to the couch and found it empty, the bedsheets of your professor perfectly folded on top of it.

You scanned the rest of the room, sitting up, finding it equally as empty. A mix of disappointment and relief filled your chest as you were equal parts thankful he wouldn’t have to see you with this exhausted face and sad you didn’t even get a glance at how he looked right after he woke up in the morning.

You checked your phone and found a message from him, “Good morning! I wanted to give you some privacy before the big day. I will be waiting for you at the lounge if you want to grab breakfast together.”

You smiled at the message, forgetting all about last night. Everything was okay. The two of you were okay. He was your professor, after all, your rock. He had every right to reject you. Everything was okay.

…

You took your time getting ready, trying the different outfits you had brought as options and opting for the simplest one. Your ‘lucky’ shirt, some black suit trousers, and black stilettos. You exited the room confidently, your bag with your presentation at hand and your earphones in your ears. Your “gameday” playlist playing at full volume.

You entered the hotel lounge, finding your professor sitting on a beautiful leather couch, a newspaper on his lap. He was wearing a white button-up and some navy trousers. You approached him eagerly, removing your earphones and greeting him with a smile, “good morning, professor.”

“Good morning,” Benedict spoke, not meeting your gaze once. Eyes stuck on the newspaper.

“Should we get breakfast?” You kept on the smile, sure, he was just very enthralled by whatever he was reading.

“I have actually already eaten,” he replied with a sigh, intensifying his gaze on the paper. You pouted, disappointed, confused by his sudden coldness. “I have some meetings to attend before your presentation. Do you mind if we meet there already?”

You hesitated in answering, trying to keep the disappointment on your face from turning into clear sadness. He finally looked up, noticing your silence. His eyes were empty, cold like they had never been before.

“Of course,” you finally replied after he raised an eyebrow, “I…I will just go over the presentation by myself.” You had to look away before your eyes started to water, which seemed to pull a reaction right out of you.

Benedict stood up and placed a hand on your shoulder, “you will do amazingly. You are smart and incredible. You don’t need me for this. I will be in the crowd cheering.”

You tried to look at him, thankful that it had just been a small weird moment of coldness, but he had already started to walk away towards the exit of the hotel, leaving you standing there.

…

Were this many people always supposed to be at the event? Had everyone just suddenly realised your topic was cool and decided to listen to you talk? Where was he? You were starting in mere minutes, and there were barely any seats left. Where was he?

You squeezed the flashcards in your hands, trying to stop the trembling in your hands. You peeked once again from the stage, searching for him between the rows of mostly middle-aged men.

“You are going up in three,” some random guy with an earpiece said as you nodded emphatically, shutting your eyes and trying to control your breathing.

You stayed there for a couple of seconds, controlling your breathing, reminding yourself that this was your research. That you could do this alone. That you didn’t need anybody else. You were about to open your eyes when a hand on your shoulder startled you. Blue. All you saw was blue for a second until you could focus on the rest of his face. He had changed. He was wearing your lucky colour.

“Everything will be fine,” Benedict nodded softly, a thin layer of sweat covering his forehead as he seemed slightly out of breath.

“You are here,” you exhaled the words out.

“I am sorry, I-” he lowered his gaze in shame, but he was stopped by the earpiece guy announcing you were up. “You can do this. You are smart. Your research is incredible, and you are so incredibly charismatic that I wouldn’t be surprised if every professor in the room would try to steal you after this. Go show them how amazing you are. I am here.”

You nodded emphatically, instinctively pulling him into a hug and burying your face in his chest just for a second, feeling as he stiffened under your touch. You let go of him and nodded a little more, breathing in and out and walking onto the stage.

…

“Thank you, everyone, for listening,” you closed your presentation as the room broke into a myriad of applauses, a feeling of euphoria filling your chest as you turned to look to your professor, that stood still behind the curtain, giving you the most idolising smile you had ever seen.

You walked out of the stage with a gigantic smile straight towards your professor, whose hands immediately cupped your face, “that was incredible.”

“Thank you,” you looked up at him, immediately filled with all that tension that had been there the night before.

You were interrupted by a group of listeners approaching, and Benedict immediately moved away from you, looking down, realising the inappropriateness of his proximity. It felt as if this moment managed to rip you out of your trance, the bubble of excitement and happiness had popped, and once again doubts began to fill your mind. You were hurt, sad, and angry that Benedict hadn’t been there to support you through the hours leading up to your talk, hiding away from you rather than murmuring comforting words.

Whatever game he was playing, it was a game you found no pleasure in, growing antsy as you began to overthink what had happened in the past hours. From the second he had told you about the conference, Benedict had promised that he’d be with you on that very special day. He’d guide you like a mentor, like a friend, empty promises you were now clinging to. The ship had left the harbour, but the waves of anger had ripped it to the cold ground before the crew could swim to safety. Swimming had always been easy with Benedict near, but drowning had felt so much easier today.

…

The glass of champagne felt cold against your palm as you let your eyes wander. You were able to spot a few familiar faces in the crowd of scientists you were trapped in, celebrating your and their success. Benedict stood close to you, focused on the conversation he had been pulled into, unable to escape before the others had noticed him.

“An impressive talk, (y/n), I hope you’re proud of yourself.” One of the men you and Benedict had dined with yesterday evening was now standing in front of you. He was handsome, almost as tall as Benedict, but his eyes didn’t have that mesmerising blue colour you’d always recognise, his hair wasn’t brown like the coffee Benedict would bring you whenever you helped him grade essays, and his hands weren’t as big as the ones you wanted to feel on your body.

“Thank you! I am very happy about the crowd’s reaction to it.” A smile tugged on your lips as you took a sip, buying yourself some time. Fading seconds Benedict used to study you, the fake smile he instantly saw through, the slightly uncomfortable shifting of your weight from one leg to the other. He stepped closer, hand trying to come to rest on your waist, but you pulled away before he could touch you. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll get myself another drink.”

You felt his eyes burning through your back, standing on the spot you had been standing on seconds ago, jaw muscles clenched. With every step you took away from him, your heart picked up its pace, pounding in your ribcage, fuelled by your anxiety and anger. Why did he have to be so cold towards you this morning? Why did he have to chase the distance rather than finally closing the small gaps between you?

Slowly you made your way through the crowd, holding onto your refilled glass with an iron grip. You weren’t nearly as tipsy enough as you wanted to be, pouring down big gulps to try and get rid of the tension that held your system hostage. Piercing blue eyes found yours from afar, wordlessly guiding you closer, surrounded by men and women you haven’t met before.

“May I introduce you to my wonderful (y/n)?” Benedict’s voice had a strange undertone to it, pronouncing your name with a newfound possessiveness dripping from it. This time you didn’t get to pull away as his hand gripped your waist, pulling you into his side. Your thoughts were racing as fast as your heart, but you tried to smile at the people that now shook your free hand, eyes not wandering from your features. Benedict’s fingers kept boring into your skin, not giving you the slightest chance to even try and escape him.

Only as the people moved on, finding new conversations to get lost in, did you manage to free yourself. With your gaze set on your glass, you took a step away from him and another before his patience seemed to snap. His big hand came down on your wrist, the other took your glass from you to place it down on the nearest table before he started pulling you through the room.

“Where are we going?” He ignored your question, pulling you outside into the hallway.

“What is going on with you? You’re behaving like a child.” Benedict’s words cut right through you, forcing a scoff from you. For a second, you allowed yourself to study him. His eyes no longer reminded you of a cloudless blue sky, but rather an angry storm threatening to unleash its power, fuck, why was he still so very handsome.

“I’m the one behaving like a child? You left me hanging this morning, even though you promised not to leave me alone before the talk!” He clenched his jaw, eyes growing even darker as he took a step closer, towering over you.

“Is that how you speak to your supervisor? I’d be careful of my tone if I were you.” You barely recognised his voice, dark and husky, leaving your thighs clenching and your hands shaking. Even though you were angry at him, so fucking angry, you couldn’t help but let your gaze flicker to his lips, wanting to feel them pressed against yours.

“Are you threatening me? You know what, fuck you, Benedict!” The words left you before you could stop them from rolling off your tongue, trying to turn away from him with hurried steps. But you didn’t get far, pulled against his hard chest with one of his hands cupping your warm cheek and the other resting on your waist. For a few seconds, Benedict studied you with dilated pupils and heavy breaths spluttering from his thin lips. Seconds that passed by all too slowly, torturing you and your racing heart. Something seemed to give him the final push, lips meeting yours before you could speak another word.

Your mind didn’t get any time to focus on the situation, guided by your body, by the way your lips moved in sync with his. For years you had tried to imagine what kissing Benedict may feel like, but this was a new sensation, something raw, something full of emotion, something you were addicted to from the first second on. Your hands found his suit jacket, clinging to him for dear life as if you were scared he’d part from you way too soon.

His tongue moved along your lower lip, coaxing a moan from you. The kiss grew more heated with every passing second, relishing in one another’s touch, the beats of your racing hearts, the blood rushing through your veins, a beautiful mixture. Benedict slowly parted from you to catch his breath, staring down at you with a smirk, an expression that left your insides churning in anticipation. With his hand finding yours, he wordlessly pulled you down the hallway towards the elevator that would take you up to the floor of your room.

Was this it? Was this the moment you had thought of too many times to count? Was this the moment you had thought of as your wandering hands took care of the ache between your legs?

The second the doors of the elevator started to close, you were pulled in for another kiss, pressed against the mirror you didn’t dare look at. You could only guess that you looked like a mess, hair tousled, lips swollen, eyes wide – all because of the man that couldn’t stop touching you.

“I,” Benedict murmured against your lips, hands toying with the fabric of your lucky shirt, struggling to find the right words. “I’m sorry for being this cold towards you, I still struggle with what you make me feel, and with the power my position holds over you, I don’t ever want you to think that I’m using you. You need to know, if you want me to stop, you can always say so.”

His thumb ran along your swollen lips, unable to bite down his smile as you pressed a kiss to his digit. The elevator came to a halt, allowing the two of you to find your way to your hotel room, pushed inside by his big hand finding your lower back. Benedict didn’t let you get far, hands pulling you against his chest, eyes getting lost in yours.

“I need your spoken consent before I touch you.” His lips ghosted over yours, patiently waiting for you to speak up. It took you a few seconds to speak up, unable to concentrate on anything but his touch, the fire he had unleashed inside of you, a fire so daunting he wouldn’t ever be able to tame it.

“Touch me, please, professor.” The use of his title seemed to push Benedict over the edge, growling against your lips as you were guided towards the big bed. His lips found your throat, sucking on the spots that left your toes curling and your heart skipping needed beats. Skilled hands undid the buttons of your shirt, pushing the fabric off your shoulders to expose the lacy lingerie you were wearing. Benedict marveled at you, freezing the moment for seconds as his eyes took in the sight in front of him, wondering how and why he got so lucky.

You murmured his name, snapping him out of his trance, hands working on his shirt. The moment pushed your nerves over the edge, hands struggling to undo the small buttons, signing in relief as he pushed you away, tugging the shirt over his head. Benedict didn’t give you any time to take in his upper body, the muscles you wanted to run your hands across, the freckles and small spots you wanted to kiss, forced down onto the bed. Your professor towered over you, lower lip caught between his teeth as he watched you undo your bra, exposing your breasts to his wandering eyes.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to see you like this, at my mercy, ready to give me whatever I’m asking of you.” His raspy voice left you gasping, eyes rolling back as his hands undid your trousers, helping you out of them. By now, you were only wearing your soaked-through, lacy panties, a sight that could make the blind see again, Benedict was sure of it. A work of art, the finest creation his eyes would ever get to take in. He wanted to take his time with you, wanted to love on every inch of your skin, but his own desperation drove him closer to you, shuffling out of his trousers with hurried movements.

He crawled up your body, flipping the two of you around for you to settle in his lap, feeling his hard cock pressing against your core. Fuck, you were already done for, balancing along the line of your state of pleasure only he’d push you into. His hand found the back of your neck to pull you in for another kiss, eyes fluttering close as his free hand found your chest, cupping your breast, tugging on your hard nipple. Moans clawed through you, all too shamelessly, all too freely, unable to hold back the sounds he elicited.

“I knew I'd never be able to hold back once I touched you, and I was scared of losing my control around you.” You knew he was talking about yesterday evening. You knew he was trying to smooth out the wrinkles on your heart he had crumpled like a piece of paper, and yet you couldn’t focus on them. You kissed him again, murmuring a soft “I need you, professor” against his lips.

His strong hands found your hips, grinding your core against his clothed cock, making your breaths get stuck in your lungs. The both of you were close to snapping, skipping the foreplay just to feel one another, and yet Benedict tried to hold back, not wanting to end your moment together this fast. Your legs quivered, the feeling he pushed through you with the grinding movements left your walls clenching around nothing, forcing a “More, please” out of you.

“Ask for it properly, you know how to be a good girl for me.” Benedict’s teasing words left you whining, eyes fluttering close as he stopped your movements, holding still to patiently wait for you to express your every need.

“Want your cock, fuck, need you inside of me.” A growl was forced out of Benedict, flipping you around once again, panties forced down your legs before your mind could even begin to catch up with his movements. With your body fully exposed to him, you were lying beneath him, staring up at him with lust-blown pupils and your teeth buried in your lower lip. His big hand found your core, brushing his fingers through your folds, moaning as he felt your wetness. You were dripping for him, body showing him how much you needed his touch, how desperate you were for him, for his fingers, for his cock.

His soft fingers circled your pulsing bundle of nerves, forcing your back to arch and your hands to fist the fabric of the blanket you were laying on. Benedict found himself obsessing over your sounds, hoping that he’d get to coax them out of you for endless nights to come, very well aware that he’d never be able to part from you and your bond again.

“Oh fuck, don’t stop.” He had pushed two fingers into your tightness, curling them against your swollen spot. Both of you knew that he was teasing you, fucking you all too slow, wanting to prolong the moment for as long as possible. Curses rolled off your tongue, forcing one of your hands to find his forearm, nails clawed into his skin, set on leaving marks he’d have to hide for the next few days.

“So desperate for me, so pretty, I knew you’d be perfect for me.” His praises left your skin growing warmer, eyes unable to meet his intense gaze. You felt your orgasm growing closer, wanting to let go, giving room to the intense sensation you were aching for. But just a second before you could give in with his name rolling off your tongue, Benedict let go of you.

Your eyes snapped open, staring at him with parted lips and furrowed eyebrows, a moment of confusion passed as you watched him reach for his wallet, pulling out a silvery foil packet. His eyes searched yours as he pulled his cock free, boxers left on the ground next to your panties; you couldn’t pay any attention to the fabric, eyes wandering down his naked frame, taking in the sight of his hard cock. His tip was flushed red, length twitching in his grasp, close to combusting.

“Are you sure about this? We can always stop.” Benedict was once again towering over you, not daring to move as he stared down at you. With one hand, you pulled him down to you, lips finding his as you murmured a soft “Fuck me”. Skilled fingers rolled the condom down his cock, aligning himself with your entrance before he slowly pushed into you. The both of you had to halt for a moment, eyes squeezed shut to take in the new feeling, adjusting to the tightness of your walls to the size of his cock.

“Move, please.” Your command was met with a groan, building a slow rhythm that took a few thrusts for you to get used to. The moans that tried to claw through you were held back by your pressed-together lips, not wanting to give your loud sounds enough room to reverberate through the thin four walls you were surrounded by, something Benedict easily picked up on.

“Don’t hold back, let me hear you, love.” The use of the nickname broke the dam, allowing your sounds to rumble through you. Your nails left marks down his back, scratching at his skin in a desperate try to hold onto him. His hips met yours with every thrust, forcing himself deeper into you, needing to etch this every moment into your mind. “You’re doing so well, my pretty girl.”

The second his tip met your swollen spot, you choked on your gasps, letting go of a high-pitched “Oh god”, very well knowing that you’d cum all too soon. Benedict’s smile began to widen as he picked up on your desperation, fingers finding their way back to your clit. You gripped his shoulders as your orgasm began to rock through you, filling your every pore, overtaking your whole body.

Benedict fucked you through your high, getting lost in your pleasure and drunken features, feeling his own high filling his body. He gave it a few more thrusts before he came, holding still as his cum filled the condom.

…

The rest of the week was spent between conferences, lingering touches, and long nights of fucking. Benedict could barely keep his hands away from you when you were in public. His eyes were always searching for you when you weren’t by his side. His hands perpetually on your waist as the two of you made small talk with other academics. Sometimes you couldn't make it until the night, sneaking into an empty hallway, a bathroom, back to your room. He was addicted to you, and you could barely believe all your dreams had finally come true.

It was safe to say your grading sessions were never the same again. They mostly occurred in his house now, and they included dinner and a couple of fucking-breaks. They weren’t as efficient but significantly more fun.

#Benedict Cumberbatch smut #Benedict Cumberbatch imagine #professor fic #doctor strange #bbc sherlock #Benedict Cumberbatch x you

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fortheloveofwonderland · 11 months

Note

Hello, I would like to make a request for your lyrics Spencer reid stories. I would like Spencer Reid and reader and the song She will be loved. Thank you.

This was really cute and more angsty than I meant it to be 😅 also let’s just pretend Spencer’s addiction didn’t happen for the next 2700 words.

She Will Be Loved

Gif does not depict the appearance of reader. Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader

Summary - Spencer knows your pain as well as you know it yourself and he’ll do anything to shoulder some of the burden for you. Even if you’ll never reciprocate his feelings, as long as he’s alive you will always be loved.

CW - reader is very troubled, mentions of past trauma but nothing specific, heavy drinking, mentions of casual sexual encounters but nothing explicit, friends with benefits, kinda unrequited feelings, drug use, drunk and disorderly, jail cells, mentions of Spencer’s knee injury and Haley’s death, accidental confessions of feelings, hopeful ending.

WC - 2.7k

Spencer knew, as much he would like to deny it, that your heart was never going to belong to him. Not the ways his own did to you anyway.

You’d been just a couple of eighteen years old when you’d first met, you were an undergrad and he was working on his second PhD.

Your eyes locked across a questionable looking bowl of punch at a party that Spencer had been entirely reluctant to go to in the first place.

But then you smiled at him over the strange coloured concoction and he’d been instantly glad to be in attendance.

He soon came to learn you were a troubled soul with a tormented past for which you found yourself trusting Spencer enough to tell. You liked to drink a little more than you liked to apply yourself in school, preferring parties to libraries.

On paper the two of you had nothing in common but yet you still gravitated towards one another.

Spencer knew he wasn’t your first but you were his. He’d even told you as much as you’d been helping him out of his clothes that night.

You’d simply smiled at him before continuing to undo his buttons and placing kisses on the exposed skin of his neck.

Admittedly he probably fell in love with you that very first night. But somehow even then he knew you would never belong to him.

There were always other guys in the picture, a string of one night stands you always complained about to Spencer after.

And then you’d kiss him and he’d succumb to you and the two of you would fall into bed once more.

It became a vicious cycle that he couldn’t break. For years he would sit by and watch as other men took advantage of you and then have to hear all about it before allowing you back into his own bed.

Even after he moved to DC to work at the BAU it continued. You’d narrowly managed to graduate college with a lot of help from Spencer but had no plan for the rest of your life.

So you followed him across the country. And somehow things went from bad to worse.

Instead of having one night stands with idiot guys you started dating them. You told him you were looking for something real, and he wished he could tell you that you were looking in all the wrong places.

Your choice in men was contentious at best. The guys you dated were jerks, not a single one ever treating you the way you deserved.

He knew it was a reflection of how you saw yourself, you didn’t believe you were worthy of love and you picked guys who would never give it to you.

But still, once one relationship ended, you would crawl back to Spencer. Every damn time.

You’d show up at his door ranting about your latest break up whilst working on undoing his shirt or his pants and leading him to his bedroom.

Spencer knew what a complete idiot it made him, and it stripped away more and more of his soul every time he took you to bed knowing that was all he was ever going to be to you.

But no matter what, he would always be there for you. Even when you belonged to someone else. Love made everyone a little crazy in its own way.

He wasn’t sure exactly when the drug use started. Maybe if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in work he would have noticed it sooner.

Perhaps if he wasn’t still recovering from being shot in the knee and maybe if that hadn’t then coincided with Hotch losing Hayley at the hands of The Reaper, he would have seen the signs earlier.

It was possible he had noticed it sooner but chosen to ignore it for whatever reason.

But when he got a call in the middle of the night from a New York police officer telling him you’d been detained, he wished he hadn’t buried his head in the sand for long.

He should not have gone. How were you ever going to learn if Spencer was always there to make all the bad things go away?

He shouldn’t have gone. But he did.

He drove for miles and miles in the dead of night just to be there for you again and inevitably receive nothing in return. He was a fool alright. A fool in love with a woman who would never feel the same about him.

Your bleary eyes and skittish demeanour when he arrived told him everything he needed to know. He would barely look at you as you were released from your holding cell or when you were filling out the paperwork in the police precinct.

He didn’t look at you until the two of you were sitting in his car outside the station. When he did finally glance over at you, you were looking sheepishly at your lap, tugging at an errant thread in your dress.

“Drunk and disorderly? Really Y/N?” He sighed as he spoke, not necessarily angry but certainly not happy.

“That cop was an ass.” You rolled your eyes.

“He said he was trying to break up a fight between you and some guy and you got belligerent.” Spencer watched the side of your face. “So I can only assume you were fighting with Charlie?”

Charlie was the latest in a string of unsavoury boyfriends. Spencer had the pleasure of meeting him once and he’d spent all night sending snide remarks Spencer’s way.

“He was flirting with another girl. It pissed me off.” You grumbled.

“So you got in a fight and he just left you? In a holding cell miles from home?”

“I told him to.” You shrugged. “I broke up with him. He’s probably off banging the slut he was flirting with.”

“I really don’t relish being dragged out of bed and having to drive two hundred miles in the middle of the night.” He sighed as he started the engine.

“No one forced you to come.” You scoffed with a roll of your eyes.

“So you propose I should have just left you here to spend the night in a cell?”

You finally turned to look at him and it was your eyes that gave you away, probably why you hadn’t been looking at him in the first place.

Your pupils were so constricted he could barely separate them from your irises. The whites of your eyes were entirely bloodshot.

You were high. As if his night couldn’t get any worse.

“Spencer I don’t care what you do, quite frankly.” You spat, harsher than he’d ever heard you. “You wanna leave me in New York? Be my guest.”

He didn’t reply, there wasn’t much point. Instead he put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb in silence.

***

It was a long drive back to DC and the sun was starting to peak over the horizon by the time he finally pulled up in front of your apartment. A glance at his watch told it was a little after five am.

Neither of you had spoken another word since leaving New York and still didn’t speak now as you both exited his car and wordless he followed you inside.

You ignored him, pretended he wasn’t even there. You kicked your shoes off and tossed your bag on the couch whilst making your way to your bedroom.

You got halfway to the door before Spencer finally broke the silence.

“What are you on?” His voice was tired, exhausted from years of being your unwanted saviour.

You slowly turned back to face him, rolling your lip guilty between your teeth. But you didn’t speak, and so he spoke again.

“What drugs are you on, Y/N?”

“I just smoked a little bit of pot.” You shrugged.

“I thought the drinking was bad enough.”

“It’s just weed, Spence. It’s not a big deal.”

“Tonight it was just weed. It isn’t always though, is it?” He folded his arms across his chest, looking like a father about to scold his child.

To his surprise you smirked at him, fishing inside of your pocket and pulling out a pre-rolled joint. You cradled it between your lips before taking out a lighter.

You kept eye contact with him, almost daring him to stop you. You watched his jaw clench tightly as you flicked the lighter and took a heavy pull on the joint.

“You know, you should try it. It might loosen you up, dislodge that stick in your ass.” You exhaled the smoke into the room, the smell of the weed immediately washing over him.

“I’m an FBI Agent.” He shook his head, his back straightening as you started towards him.

“Your knee still giving you grief? I noticed you limping up the stairs. It’ll help you know, with the pain. Physical and mental.” You took another drag as you got closer.

“What pain are you trying to alleviate?” He tried to switch the conversation, arms dropping back to his sides.

“You know my past, do you even have to ask? You know exactly what pain I’m trying to ease.” You scoffed, right in front of him now.

The smell of the pot was almost overwhelming and you purposefully wafted the joint in front of his face. He swallowed, trying to ignore it.

“I don’t know how long I can sit back and watch you ruin your life.” He shook his head sadly.

“It’s my life to ruin.” You shrugged.

“I don’t mind spending every day out on your corner in the pouring rain if that’s what it takes. But you need to want my help, and recently I feel more like I’m forcing it on you.” He tried to ignore another strong scent as you took another drag, eyeing him up curiously.

It wasn’t hard for him to find the broken smile, the one you'd worn for as many years as he’d known you. All you needed to do was ask him to stay a while and he’d stay forever.

But he couldn’t keep twisting your arm to let him help you.

“I’ve never wanted your help, Spencer.” You sighed. “Since the moment I met you I’ve been like some kind of project to you. The poor broken girl who needed someone to lift her from the darkness. You’ve got some kind of hero complex and you’ve been hell bent on saving me since we were eighteen years old. Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want saving?”

“And did it ever occur to you that I want to help you because I’m in love with you!” He surprised himself with his words, not meaning them to come out here and now, or ever for that matter.

Your eyes widened and you stumbled a little on your feet, hand holding the joint falling to your sides. You looked as though you’d been hit by a freight train as you fell back to the couch, dropping the joint in the ashtray on the coffee table.

A horrible, deafening silence encompassed the room. Spencer didn’t know if there were words that existed in any language that could make this better.

He slowly padded closer to you, dropping down to the floor in the front of the couch despite how much it hurt his knee.

He moved between your legs, looking up at you with large doe eyes, begging you to speak. Your lip was quivering and he swore he saw tears in your eyes.

“You think you love me? Spencer, you don’t even know me.” Your voice was trembling.

“Are you kidding me? You think I don’t know you?” He frowned at you. “I know you hide alone in your car when you get overwhelmed. I know you pick men that you think you deserve because you don’t believe you’re worthy of love.

I know you put on a front but you’re actually deeply insecure. I know you use alcohol and drugs to mask the pain you’ve suffered. I know all of the things that make you who you are. And I know you’re going to try and push me away because you pretend that goodbyes mean nothing to you. But if I was to walk out of that door I know you would come back and beg me to catch you every time you fall.”

At some point during his speech your tears overflowed and Spencer instinctively cupped your face in his hands and wiped them with his thumbs.

“Y/N I sometimes think I know you better than I know myself. Maybe I do have a hero complex, maybe that’s not so far out of the realms of possibility. But all I have ever wanted is to make you feel beautiful. And for you to know that you will always be loved.”

He’d kept these words to himself for so many years, hidden away in a dark recess of his brain never to see the light of day. His feelings for you made him feel foolish, they made him feel so stupid he sometimes questioned his own IQ.

But if those words could help now, in any small way to make you smile, then he’d happily feel stupid in order to help you.

Your tears continued to fall as you stared at him, disbelieving. Your cynicism showed on your features, your doubt in the idea that anyone could truly love you, let alone the incredible Spencer Reid.

“I’m not good enough for your love, Spencer.” You meekly replied.

“Yet here I am, giving it to you anyway. Because I think you’re good enough. You, my love, are good enough just the way you are. It doesn’t matter how many times you push me away, how many times you choose another man over me. I will love you through it all. Loving you is as inherent to me as breathing. I couldn’t stop even if I tried.” He was speaking from the heart, that much you could tell.

His eyes held a kind of sincerity you’d never witnessed before. His smile was small but genuine. And you didn’t how you’d never seen it before, but at that moment you had absolutely no doubts about Spencer’s love for you.

“I…I don’t know what to say.” You sniffed, nuzzling against his hand gently holding your cheek. “No one has ever told me they love me before.”

“And that is one of the world's greatest tragedies.” He whispered his reply. “I don’t need you to say anything. All I need from you is a will to let me help you, to let me be there for you. I don’t need you to love me back, I’d rather it if you tried loving yourself first.”

“I…I’ll try.” You nodded as he continued to wipe away each and every tear that fell from your eyes. “And maybe once I learn to love myself, I’ll be in a position to love someone else.”

Spencer nodded his understanding as he got up and sat next to you on the couch. You fell into his open arms, burying your head against his chest.

Perhaps there was always a part of you that loved Spencer, a feeling you’d never really understood until right at the moment. Maybe once you had a better appreciation for what exactly love was you would realise it was what you’d felt for him all along.

You’d always taken Spencer for granted, relied on him to be there for you through thick and thin. On the surface you’d belonged to others, but in your heart you always belonged to him.

It was only now you were able to start to see that clearly. And like he accepted you into his arms, you would in return finally learn to accept his love.

He held you firmly enough that you knew he’d never leave but gently enough so as not to stifle you. Every now and again he placed a tender kiss on the top of your head.

As he held you, Spencer closed his eyes and made wordless vows to faceless deity’s he didn’t believe in. But if anyone was listening he needed them to hear his pledge.

Don’t worry, I got this, he whispered out into the cosmos, sending the universe his silent promise to look out for you. Don’t worry, she will be loved.

#milestone celebration #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds

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atlafan · 1 year

Text

Carnal Attraction - Part One

a/n: sexology professor!harry is here!! Just a reminder, this is the only part being posted on here. The rest will be on Patreon. I can’t wait to know what you all think so far. This is going to be a good one, I think.

Warnings: talk of sexual acts, mentions of sexual misconduct

Words: 4.7K

Tumblr Masterlist I Patreon Masterlist

The world of academia is astounding. People stay in higher education for so many different reasons. Some go off to become medical doctors, others become doctors in specific fields like psychology or literature or philosophy. Some choose to stay in academia because they don’t want to sell their souls to industry work. Mavis always loved school. She was one of those kids that did well no matter what the subject was. She studied hard, wanting to take in more and more information. She was naturally gifted in the art of time management. Everything clicked for her. If something was puzzling, she’d figure it out.

There isn’t much she can’t figure out. Which is why she’s grown increasingly aggravated with her sexology professor. She can’t figure him out. She swears he hates her. He’s short with her, and less personable with her than he is with the other students. She’s never struggled like this with someone before. And he wasn’t even supposed to be the one teaching her courses!

When Mavis tells people she’s in graduate school for a master’s in sexology, they look at her funny. Furrowed eyebrows, puzzled facial expressions, etc. No one can ever piece together why someone would get an advanced degree in a subject like this. That’s because people can’t get their minds out of the gutter. In undergrad, Mavis majored in psychology, and minored in gender and sexuality studies. She eventually wants to produce literature and perform psychoanalysis on sexual behavior and sexual issues. She thought she wanted to be a psychiatrist, but that involves medical school. And as smart as she is, she’s rather squeamish when it comes to blood. So, then she thought maybe being a psychologist, some type of sex therapist would be good, but she honestly has a tough time speaking aloud about the various subjects. And sex therapy isn’t just for helping couples have better sex, a lot of it is helping people with history of sexual abuse recover and find ways to heal. Mavis doesn’t have the stomach for that. She cried too many times reading case studies about it in undergrad.

All that being said, she eventually wants to get her doctorate in psychology with a concentration in sexology, so when she found a graduate program to help get her started on that journey, she went for it. She could write about sexual disorders and the like all day. When she’s writing and researching, she’s quite helpful to others. She enjoys learning about sexual history, those were always her favorite courses. Learning about how trans people in the 1800’s used binders to hide their breasts, learning about how two opposite sex couples would get married, go in on a duplex together, and use the basement to sneak over to sleep with their same sex partner, learning about different gay and lesbian liberation movements, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and so much more was where her interest was. It all just fascinated her, it all astounded her, and a lot of it just made her downright upset. Tears would litter her textbooks as she read about people being beaten senseless until they were left for dead in the streets. She’d cry because all of it was happening not too long ago. She cried because it still happens today.

She’s quite empathetic, and almost too much to a fault. But she can’t help that she cares! She enjoys studying the psychology side of things, how the brain functions of these people work, how the brains of bigots function, if there’s a disparity between the two on scans or octopuses. All Mavis wants to do is hunker down in her own academic sanctuary and research and read and write and publish.

Mavis had been assigned an advisor over the summer, one whom she emailed with frequently to make sure she was taking the correct courses in the correct sequence. Her advisor recommended courses with one specific professor, Professor Amaro. Apparently, her classes were top tier, and she was a favorite amongst the other graduate students. No brainer – sign up for Amaro’s courses.

Except when Mavis showed up for her first day of Human Sexuality, a co-requisite for her Sexual Pleasure Education course, there was a man standing at the podium, hooking his laptop up to the HDMI cable so he could project onto the screen up front. At first, she thought maybe he was a TA just setting up for Professor Amaro. She paid it no mind. She found a seat in the middle front, and got her own things set up. It’s syllabus week, so there won’t be much to go over, but Mavis still likes to take handwritten notes. She pulled her agenda, a notebook, and her copy of the syllabus out, and set them on her desk. The classroom is small, only meant to hold about twenty-five people. Mavis prefers small classrooms. She’s not a fan of lecture halls with stadium-style seating.

“Is anyone sitting here?” A woman’s voice took over Mavis’ attention. The desks are set up for two people to sit at. “If it is, I can sit somewhere else.”

“Oh! No, go right ahead.” Mavis smiled. “I’m Mavis.”

“Thanks.” The woman says with relief as she sits down. “I’m Taraji, I use she/they pronouns.”

“Nice to meet you. I use she/her. Thanks for letting me know yours.”

“Nice to meet you too, and no problem. It’s something new I’m trying out. I don’t…I don’t always feel like a she, you know?”

“Totally get that.”

“Sorry, I hope that wasn’t too much info too soon.”

“No worries.” Mavis waves her off. “We’re going to be talking about some real shit in this class, it’s best to just be open and honest.”

“Agreed.” Taraji takes out her own agenda and notebook. “I hate that we have to take this course in conjunction with the sexual pleasure class. I feel like I’ve taken a million human sexuality courses at this point.”

“I know, it seems a little odd, but I figure there must be more high level stuff to discuss since this is at the grad level. And review isn’t always a bad thing, I like refreshers.”

“Well, aren’t you full of silver linings?” Taraji smiles. “We need more people like that in this world.”

The girls continue to chat while the class fills in. At 10:30, the man at the front closes the door and turns the projector on, revealing his screen. Mavis’ stomach drops when she sees Human Sexuality – Professor Styles – M/W 10:30-12:00 in big bold letters.

“What happened to Professor Amaro?” She whispers to Taraji.

“Beats me.” Taraji shrugs. “Maybe we signed up for the wrong section?”

“That can’t be it, this is the only section being offered.”

The man, Professor Styles, clears his throat to get everyone’s attention. He’s wearing a button up, but it’s not buttoned up all the way. You can see his undershirt. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing quite a few tattoos. Round glasses are on the bridge of his nose, and his hair is pushed back with a couple of curls falling forward on his forehead. He looks young. Who the fuck is this guy?

“Morning, everyone.” His deep voice fills the room as he rounds the podium to stand in front of the desk attached to it. He leans back against it, gripping the edge behind him. “I’m Professor Harry Styles, I prefer to be called professor, so please try to remember that. I’m sure you’re very confused as to why I’m standing here and not Professor Amara.” He pauses to take a sip of water from his Nalgene. “I quite literally found out the other day that I would be taking over her courses. To be transparent with all of you, Professor Amaro is under investigation for sexual misconduct with her patients. As many of you know, a lot of the professors in the psychology department have their own practices outside of academia. Summer is when Professor Amaro picks up new patients. There was someone undercover seeing her for therapy, and she was caught taking advantage. It’s extremely disappointing. So, not only will she be losing her licensure, but she has been let go from the institution as well. We do not condone the abuse of patients. We also do not want someone so unethical being the one to teach our future therapists. How many of you are in here as part of the clinical licensure program?” More than half of the class raises their hands. “Right, I thought so. I usually teach undergraduate courses, but I’m fully prepared to teach at the graduate level just the same. I know many of you have already taken different iterations of Human Sexuality, but this course is integral for you so you can fully get what’s needed out of the Sexual Pleasure Education course. It says 10:30 to noon up here, but I’ll typically only be keeping you for about an hour, if that. Many of you have research and other time consuming things to do, and I want to be cognizant of that. I am also working towards my PhD, I’m about two years into my program and research.” He pauses again, knowing he just word vomited. The class is stunned with the bomb he just dropped about Professor Amaro, and they’re whiplashed going from that to the basic information about the course. “Any questions so far?”

“I have one.” A brave soul in the back raises their hand. “Which undergraduate courses do you teach? Will you need any TA’s since your load just got bigger?”

“Great question, thank you for asking. I will end up needing TA’s, but I have to wait to meet with the department chair to see what our budget is. I teach the undergraduate intro to gender and sexuality studies, and I also teach some of the higher level special topics courses. This semester I’m teaching the history of feminism, which is one of my favorites to teach, and I’m also teaching the film history course that focuses on how sex has been depicted in film since its start to the present.”

“You’re teaching a course about feminism?” Another person asks.

“Yes.” Professor Styles smirks. “It’s one of my main focuses of study. I may not be a woman, but I am a man that believes in equity and equality. Plus, I’m a huge history buff, so I enjoy teaching about how the movement began and how feminism has transformed over the years, both the good and the bad of it.”

Mavis swallows thickly. She’s a history buff too. Maybe she could be a TA for one of his classes. The extra money would be nice, and so would the bit of teaching experience if she were allowed to give a lecture or two.

“Let’s focus on this class. We’ll be going over a number of topics, and at times you may feel the need to giggle because of nerves. We’re going to discuss endorsement, communication, fantasy, masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, desensitization and resensitization, female and male sexuality, sexual enrichment, special problems, therapy, and cultural expression. So, this gives us a base for what we’ll be discussing in the co-requisite course. Now, I’m going to do something that I do with my undergrads, I’m going to say a ton of words and phrases that you’ll feel the need to giggle about as we discuss certain topics. This is your only chance to laugh. If you do it throughout the semester, then we’re going to have a problem. If you become a sex therapist, you can’t laugh at your patients. We’ll get into why these words make us feel nervous, and why we feel the need to laugh when we hear them.” He grabs the remote for the projector and clicks it. Everyone gasps and starts laughing when they see many words and phrases appear. “Alright: penis, vagina, pussy, cunt, cock, dick, mutual masturbation, anal, penetration, fingering, eating out, going down, blow job, hand job, sucking someone off, breasts, boobs, nipples, fetish, BDSM, whips, chains, handcuffs, threesomes, orgies, condoms, contraceptives, birth control pills, IUD, sex toys, dildo, vibrator, cock ring, lube, dirty talk, dominant, submissive, daddy, baby talk, douching, porn, clit, clitoris, prostate, prostate orgasm, orgasm, vaginal orgasm, stimulation, fucking, fisting, getting wet, wet, come, precome, squirt, squirting, ejaculation, and sex.”

The entire class is snickering and giggling and laughing, even Mavis. Hearing all of those things back to back and watching the words dance on the screen in an animated fashion is hilarious. What a fun approach to getting people more comfortable with these terms.

“There are many more words and phrases, obviously, but these will be the ones we use more often.” Professor Styles explains, smiling fondly to the class. “If you’d like to be considered for a TA position, please come up to me after you’re dismissed. “Any questions?” No one raises their hand. “Great, then you’re dismissed. Enjoy the nice weather.”

Mavis and Taraji exchange contact info, and agree to meet for coffee tomorrow morning before their sexual pleasure course. A few people go up to Professor Styles to tell him they’d like to be a TA, and he takes down their information. Mavis is the last in line, the last student in the classroom with Professor Styles.

“Name?” He asks, not looking up at her.

“Mavis Ashford.”

“Alright.” He looks up at her now, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Do you have a preference?”

“I’d love to help out in the feminism course or the film history course. I like the historical side of things when it comes to studying this content.”

“Great, those are usually the ones I have trouble finding help for.”

“Really? I’m surprised.”

“Since a lot of you are here to become licensed therapists or psychologists, not a lot of people are interested in the theoretical aspect of things.”

“Well, I definitely do not want to be a therapist. I want to do research, eventually get my PhD, like you, I suppose. I’m sad about Professor Amaro, I heard so many good things about her.”

“None of us knew about any of it. She hid what she was doing well. She had been doing it for years, supposedly.” He sighs and takes his glasses off, putting them into their case. Mavis catches how green his eyes are, almost like sage. “Did you have any other questions? I need to get across campus to my office so I can take some time to edit the Canvas courses a little more.”

“Oh! No, sorry. Guess I was just curious to know how long you’ve been teaching for. You mentioned you were in your second year of your doctoral program, so-“

“There’s a bio page for me. My listing lives under the Psychology department. I’ll keep you in mind for my special topics courses. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.” Mavis watches the very flustered, unorganized man leave the room in a rush. His papers were all over the place, and he just shoved all his things in his bag. How chaotic. Maybe if she’s able to become his TA, she could help him with that.

Since Monday went so well, including Mavis’ other courses, she’s excited for Tuesday. She meets Taraji for coffee, as planned, and then they head to class. A course about Sexual Pleasure Education at 9AM is wild, but if coffee doesn’t wake the class up, the content of the course sure will. Harry is at the podium, connecting his computer, just as he did yesterday. Mavis and Taraji sit at the same table they did yesterday. The class eventually fills in, and Harry turns the projector on.

“Let’s see, did I scare anyone off since yesterday?” He asks out loud, but it’s more for himself, as he checks off names on his attendance sheet. “Great, you’re all here.” He smiles. “I know you’re probably thinking how I could have possibly memorized all your names already, but I haven’t. I just have your student ID pictures next to your names on my sheet.” He leans back against the table, gripping the edge of it, same as he did yesterday, and scans over the class. “Welcome to Sexual Pleasure Education. In this class, we will discuss strategies for improved sex life, sex aids, sexual approaches, and male and female pleasuring. We will also be stressing the value of various body work techniques for persons intending to work in the field of sex therapy and counseling. Lastly, we will discuss sexological exploration of objects which have been created in response to sexual desire and experience.” He pauses to take a sip of water. “Basically, this is sex ed on crack.”

“Professor Styles?” A girl in the back raises her hand, and he nods for her to continue. “So, are there going to be, like, demonstrations in class?”

“Yes. Most people learn best by doing. And it’s important for you to know what you’re talking about if you end up becoming the type of therapist that has to make recommendations for couples. The conversations we’re going to have in this class are going to feel awkward and taboo. There are going to be days where we look at various sex toys and how to use them, and why people use them.”

“I sort of meant, like, is anything going to be demonstrated on an actual person?” The same girl asks.

“Considering that this isn’t a tantric sex workshop, no.” He smirks. “We’ll look at various anatomical diagrams to go over specific areas where people find pleasure and how best to get them to feel it in those areas.”

“Professor Styles?” A boy in the front raises his hand, and Harry nods for him to continue. “I know this isn’t technically a psychology course, but are we going to get into kinks and why some people have specific ones or like using specific objects?”

“Yes and no. We’ll discuss the psychology behind kinks in our Human Sexuality course. What we do on Mondays and Wednesdays will be more theoretical, and what we do on Tuesdays and Thursdays will be more practical. Great questions so far. Anyone have anything else?”

“Will there be trigger warnings?” Taraji asks. “For both classes?”

“Yes, when we get into some of the heavier topics, there will be trigger warnings. I’m working on updating the syllabus so you’ll all know when to expect those. If the topic is so heavy that you don’t feel as though you can come to class, please let me know so we can have a one-on-one session so we can go over the material. I can meet in-person or on zoom.”

“Thank you.” Taraji smiles softly.

“Are we going to be talking about our own personal sex lives in class?” Another girl asks.

“That depends on how comfortable you feel. We may share anecdotes, and we may not. If you become a therapist, remember that what might work for you, might not work for others. However, your patients will ask you about your personal experience with some of the things you recommend to them. I’m not saying you need to shove a butt plug up your ass in order to have a frame of reference, but sometimes it helps for your patient to know you’re a real person. Just don’t cross any hard boundaries. We all know that many patients tend to experience romantic feelings towards their therapists. That can happen twice as much with sex therapy. You need to make it clear right from the start that even though it’s a safe space for them, things will still be professional. No one is to ever take their clothes off during an appointment. That’s what leads to things like what happened with Professor Amaro to happen. Respect will be integral to this course, as well as not kink-shaming. You may find something weird that someone else may love, and vice versa. You don’t have to agree, but please be mindful of how you speak to and about others.” He drums his fingers behind him as he takes another pause. “All of that being said, if we do discuss personal sexual experiences, you need to speak about them educationally. I don’t want to hear things like, ‘this one time I was fucking this dude and he,’ blah blah blah. Okay?”

The class makes a collective noise of agreement that makes Harry very happy.

“I’m hoping to have the courses updated to my liking by next Monday. I should also know by then about TA positions for my undergraduate courses. Do we have any other questions right now?” No one answers. “Excellent. For tomorrow’s Human Sexuality class, I’d like you all to fill out these surveys.” He starts handing out papers row by row. “They’re to give me a pulse check on what you already know a lot about, and the areas you need a bit more information on. It’ll help for Thursday’s lesson in here as well.” Once all of the papers are passed out, Harry goes back to the front of the room. “If no one else has any questions, you’re all free to go.”

Everyone begins packing up their things. Mavis is stuck looking over the survey questions. Her cheeks are beat red, she just knows it.

“You coming?” Taraji asks her.

“Um, yeah.” Mavis blinks and starts packing up her things. “I just have a few questions for Professor Styles. Wanna get lunch later?”

“I’d love to. Text me later.”

Mavis nods to her new friend, and goes to the back of the line of students that have questions for Harry. Just like yesterday, it’s the two of them alone in the room. He doesn’t look at her as he stuffs his papers into his bag.

“Have you ever thought to use an accordion folder for all of that?” She asks him.

“You waited in line just to ask me that?” He looks up at her, taking his glasses off and putting them into their case.

“No.” She laughs sheepishly. “I just had a few questions about this survey.”

“Alright, shoot.” He tells her, crossing his arms over his chest loosely.

“The first question says to list five common sex toys that I know of.”

“Correct.”

“Then the second questions says to explain the function of each of the toys.”

“Also correct.”

“What if you’re not familiar with well-known sex toys? Is it okay to look up the functionality?”

“No, just give your best guess as to why someone would use it.” He looks at her, studies her. He has a question of his own to ask, but it could come off as inappropriate. “I’m going to try to phrase this in the most professional way possible…do you not have much, um, first-hand experience with sex toys?”

Mavis’ eyes widen. All she can do is shake her head no. Harry nods in understanding, not being the least bit judgmental.

“It’s not that I haven’t wanted to know more about them, like, I know a lot about the history of them, the…the theoretical side of things, as you mentioned before. But in practice…I guess that’s where I need to learn more.”

“That’s fine, you can just say that on the survey. You can keep it anonymous too. I didn’t leave a space for your names at the top.”

“So, it’s not a big deal if I haven’t personally done some of the things we’re going to discuss.” She says for clarification.

“Perfectly fine. You could be a virgin for all I care. You just need to be able to discuss and write about these things knowledgably and eloquently.”

“Well, I’m not a vi-“ She’s about to scoff, but he raises his hand to halt her from finishing her sentence.

“I don’t need to know the particulars of what you have and haven’t done, Miss Ashford.”

“You just said we need to be able to discuss these things, though.”

“Yes, as a class, when other people are around. Not when you’re in here alone with me. Someone could get the wrong idea about why we’re having this very conversation.” He slings his bag over his shoulder. “Don’t over think it, it’s just a pulse check.”

He leaves her there, sweating. Did he think she was coming on to him? Did he think she was flirting? She wasn’t! She would never do something like that with a professor.

The rest of the week goes by smoothly. Mavis makes sure not to ask Harry any questions after class. In the second session of Human Sexuality, they went through all the changes Harry made to the course Canvas page and to the syllabus. They did the same for the second session of Sexual Pleasure Education. Pretty easy stuff that the students are thankful for. The other courses Mavis is taking are research methods and a high-level sociology course. So starting off on the slower side is a major bonus. Harry lets them know that he’ll post a paper on his office door on Friday with who has been selected as TA’s.

Around noon on Friday, after a work out and a hearty breakfast, Mavis makes her way to the building Harry’s office is in. She takes her headphones out as she gets inside, and makes her way upstairs and down a hallway until she gets to the psych department office suite. His door is closed, so the paper is easy to read. Her eyes scan over it, and she’s taken aback when she doesn’t see her name. Four students were chosen: Eric, Alyssa, Mohamed, and Liza. Mavis frowns deeply. How could she not have been chosen? She spoke to Harry directly about helping with his higher level courses. What made these students better choices than her?

She hears the squeak of a sneaker skidding, and turns her head in its direction. There Professor Styles is. He looks rigid, almost like he had stopped short and was about to turn around. He sighs heavily and makes his way down the hall.

“Miss Ashford.” He nods and unlocks his office door. “I would have thought you would have been here first thing this morning.”

“Why didn’t you just email the students that got selected instead of making all of us come down here?”

“Because I didn’t make my decision until very late last night.” He tells her, opening his door and setting his things down on his desk. His office looks like a tornado hit it.

“Still, you could have emailed-“

“Miss Ashford, what is it that you need? I don’t have office hours today and I’m very busy.”

“I want to know why I wasn’t selected. I told you how much I love the history courses, I could have been a major help.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I didn’t think you were the right fit for what I needed.”

“You came to that conclusion from only a week of knowing me?”

“I know the four students I selected better. I had them in my courses as undergrad students. They already know my teaching style and the learning outcomes of the courses.”

“Again, if you knew-“

“You need to go now.” He tells her, taking a dominant step forward, making her take a step back. “Don’t take it personally.”

“How can I not when you just told me I wasn’t the right fit?” She pouts, and she swears Harry’s eyes flicker down to her mouth, only for a millisecond.

“Mavis, I don’t feel comfortable with us being alone like this. There’s no one else in the office right now, I’m one of the few instructors that actually utilizes their space on Fridays.”

“But if you had office hours, I’d be alone with you.”

“Yes, with the door open, while other people are around.”

“Are you afraid of someone accusing you of doing what Professor Amaro did? I feel like you’re being overly cautious…with me.”

“You ask a lot of questions, and it’s annoying. You’re annoying. That’s why I didn’t select you. I don’t have any desire to be around you more than I’m already obligated to.”

“Are…are you allowed to speak to me like this?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “Or maybe not. Who’s to say? It’s your word against mine, right? No one else is here. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? I already told you I felt uncomfortable, now please go before I have to call campus police to escort you out.”

Mavis is stunned, and about ready to cry. Harry rolls his eyes when she doesn’t budge, so he goes into his office and slams the door in her face. What the fuck is his problem?!

173 notes · View notes

daechwitatamic · 1 year

Text

III. So I Speak Your Name || KNJ

(banner by @/itaeewon)

Title: My Feet to Follow, and My Heart to Hold (Masterpost)

Rating: NSFW - minors dni

Genre: college!au, roomie!au, angst, s2l, the absolute slowest of burns

Pairing: Namjoon x female reader, unrequited Taehyung x reader

Beta'd by @/kookstempo, @/casuallyimagining, and @/toikiii - thank you endlessly!

Summary: You know a lot about the many types of love thanks to Kim Taehyung. You love him as the only person you see as “family”, you love him as your very best friend, and you love him as the beautiful, funny man he’s become. But when a twist of fate during your senior year has you rooming with his good friend Kim Namjoon, you just might find that you have plenty left to learn about love.

Lesson One: there are such things as a right way and a wrong way to love and to be loved.

You and Namjoon bond over literature and alcohol.

Section Warnings: language, drinking, drinking games, bar scenes, pov switches between OC and Namjoon a few times

WC: 7.5k

The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold. - Journey | Edna St. Vincent Millay

Tuesday October 9th

On Sundays I visit graveyards, paying my respects to the many words that have died on my lips.

On Sundays I leave flowers commemorating each admission that I struck down before it could reach you.

On Sundays I leave stones atop marble markers to memorialize those that you and I chose to leave unturned.

They say you only exist as long as someone remembers you, so I speak your name like my own Hail Mary full of grace.

You scratch out the last four lines and read it back. Then you change your mind, decide you like them, and add them once again at the bottom.

The final so turns into an and. Then you change it back to so. You sigh in frustration, closing your eyes.

“You sound angry,” someone says, and you nearly leap off the stool in your kitchen. Namjoon stands in the doorway, holding a grocery bag, a carton of eggs sticking out the top.

“Why did I choose a writing degree when I’m so bad at writing?” you ask him plaintively.

It’s a little more honest, a little more personal than you two have been before. It just sort of slips, honestly, your head still a bit stuck in the world of words and phrases instead of in the present.

He smiles ruefully and moves into the kitchen, starting to put away his groceries. “I know that feeling,” he admits. Then, not looking at you, he adds, “I didn’t know you were in the writing program. I did it, too, for undergrad. You have Jemisen?”

“Really?” you ask. “How did we live together for a month and not know that? And yeah, Jemisen.”

Namjoon chuckles lightly, and you catch yourself watching his shoulders move as he reaches high in a cupboard to put a box away. “I guess we don’t talk that much,” he admits. “Are you doing fiction for your thesis?”

“Poetry,” you tell him.

He turns to look at you over his shoulder, clearly surprised.

“Wow,” he says, brows furrowed. “Really?”

You laugh a little at the circular nature of your conversation. “Yes, really,” you say, smiling. “Though I will admit to regretting that decision on more than one occasion.”

“Again,” he says, finally folding up his reusable grocery bag and stashing it between the fridge and the counter, “I know the feeling.”

“Are you doing writing for your grad program too?” you ask, suddenly curious.

He nods, leaning back against the counter. It’s that magical golden hour in the apartment, your favorite, when the outside light comes in orange and glowing. It casts a honey tinge over Namjoon’s skin, a softer brown showing up in his dark hair. There’s something sharp in his gaze suddenly, something that’s not usually there - like he’s honing in on something for the first time.

“Fiction?” you prod. This is more interesting than your poetry homework, for sure.

“Unfortunately,” he jokes. “So, poetry? My buddy did that track, he said it was hard. I thought about it, but I didn’t want to give up on fiction entirely, and I knew I couldn’t handle both. Plus my poetry’s pretty bad.”

“So is mine,” you grumble, eyeing your notebook grumpily.

Namjoon gives a sigh and moves towards his room. “I have class tonight,” he tells you, “but if you want to order extra dinner and leave me the leftovers, I’ll pay you for it.”

“Sure,” you say easily, glancing at the clock. You hadn’t really thought about dinner yet, but you’ll need to soon. “Text me what you want. I’ll probably get our usual.”

It strikes you, suddenly, that you two have a usual. It’s early October, the leaves barely starting to turn. It’s the part of fall where you’re too hot when you walk in the sun, and chilly when you walk through the shadows. You’ve only lived with Namjoon for about a month and a half, and somehow you have a usual takeout order.

It’s strange.

But you don’t hate it.

Namjoon leaves a few minutes later, a brown cross-body bag settled against his lower back. You sit at the breakfast bar, your poetry notebook closed in front of you with your pen marking your page, and wonder about your mysterious roommate. You wonder what his poetry is like, what it would tell you about him if you ever got the chance to see it. You wonder if his fiction writing is what keeps him holed up in his room day in and day out, the lights low.

About an hour later, you text Taehyung to see if he wants to come eat dinner.

“Can’t,” he answers. “Already have plans for dinner. Sry!”

You sink onto the couch, grimacing. “Already have plans” means a date.

The thing is, you know you could ask Taehyung to take you to dinner, and he’d do it. Hell, you could probably even say, “Take me on a date,” and he’d do that, too - wear something nice, spray on a more expensive cologne, open the car door for you and pull out your chair, all that shit. He’d do everything exactly right.

He’d do everything for the sake of irony.

That’s what it boils down to, and you know it in your bones: intention. Taehyung could spend all twenty-four hours treating you exactly how a boyfriend should, but at the end of the day his intention was not romantic, and there was nothing you could do to change that.

You turn on the tv, determined not to waste your night wondering how his is going.

Thursday October 11th

Thursday marks nearly the middle of the month. It’s unseasonably warm when you walk to class, but you carry a jacket, knowing that when you leave the bookstore after your shift, the chill will warrant it.

You have a bullshit class, one that doesn’t apply to your degree concentration, something that the university requires for everyone. The only saving grace is that it’s short.

When it ends, you have some choices. You don’t have to be at the bookstore until three. You could go back to the apartment. It’s certainly enough time. Or you could get lunch on campus and handle any academic errands you had, as it were.

And, you sort of had an academic errand swimming in the back of your mind.

You head to the building that houses the staff offices for the writing and literature professors. They’re all tucked away in a little wing back behind where the classrooms are. You’ve been there a few times over the years - twice to talk to your academic advisor about your upcoming schedules, and once to help a professor carry her armload of papers and her laptop back from the classroom.

You scan the names on each door until you find Jemisen, and knock tentatively. He turns, surprised.

“Y/N,” he says, and then glances at his computer, as if trying to determine if you’d scheduled a meeting and he’d forgotten.

“I wasn’t sure if it was your office hours,” you say quickly, to let him know he hadn’t made a mistake. “But I had a quick question about my last assignment, and I was already over here on campus…”

“Ah,” he says, understanding. “Well, it is my office hours, but it just so happens that I was called into a last-second budget meeting, because how we spend our money is certainly more important than my students’ academic success!” He looks at you, seeming to think belatedly that this little sarcastic rant might have been better staying in his head. “Anyway, I have a TA here who could help you look at it? I trust him implicitly.”

You’re a little uncomfortable with the idea - Professor Jemisen has been reading and working with you on your poetry for over a year; you don’t want to work on it with a stranger.

“Oh,” you say, “I’m not - I could -.”

A body comes around the corner. “I heard TA. Have I been summoned?”

It’s Namjoon.

You want to vanish through the floor.

“I’ll just -,” you start to say, but Professor Jemisen cuts you off, collecting some papers off of his desk and reaching for the jacket he’d placed on a hook beside the door.

“This is Y/N, she’s a senior in my poetry thesis class,” he tells your roommate. “She’s looking for help reworking a stanza on her last submission, right, Y/N?”

You bluster, you struggle to make words. You want to shake your head no, but your body isn’t cooperating.

“I’m happy to help,” Namjoon says to you. “My office is two doors down.”

Professor Jemisen is already through the door, clapping Namjoon on the back in thanks as he goes. This gives you the chance to collect yourself, jump-start your brain again.

“You get your own office as a TA?” you ask wryly, one eyebrow lifting.

Namjoon smiles. There’s something different about him here, an easy confidence you don’t see him exude when he’s just at the apartment.

“Come on,” he says, and you walk out into the narrow corridor. Namjoon closes Professor Jemisen’s door behind you and leads you to his own space.

“To answer your question,” he says, still smiling sort of sheepishly, “no, TA’s do not get their own offices. This one was empty because Bianca - Professor Whyte - retired and they haven’t replaced her yet… I sort of commandeered it. I share it with two other grad students, technically. Just until the university hires someone.”

He sits at the desk and motions for you to take the chair next to it. The office is clean and pretty empty - a tall bookshelf holds only about half a dozen books, taking up just a small section of one lone shelf. There are two small potted plants on the windowsill, and a coffee mug shoved behind the computer monitor. Otherwise, the room seems unowned, devoid of any identifying artifacts.

“This is very weird,” you say, because you have to say it.

“What is?” he asks absently, his eyes on one of the windowsill plants.

“My roommate reading my poetry,” you say flatly. “My roommate workshopping my poetry with me.”

He turns to look at you, surprise and perhaps a touch of hurt flickering across his face. “If you’re uncomfortable, I can ask someone else to work with you, or you can wait for Professor Jemisen. I didn’t realize…”

You sigh inwardly. You hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. “You don’t think it’s weird?” you challenge, trying to keep your voice light.

He shrugs. “I’m just doing my job. I’m on the clock. But like I said… if you’re uncomfortable, then let’s find a Plan B.”

“You’re Plan B,” you grumble. “We’d need to find Plan C.”

You kind of want to take his offer of walking away. But you’re already here, and you don’t want to hurt his feelings worse and make things weird at home.

“Here,” you say, rummaging in your bag. “Just don’t, like, peer into my soul or anything.”

Namjoon laughs like he’s surprised by this. “It’s poetry,” he says, grabbing a pen and turning to see what you put on the desk. “I don’t think that’s optional.”

You slide your notebook over to him. “Professor Jemisen hated the second stanza,” you say.

He looks at you, eyes wide. “He didn’t say that.”

You chuckle. “No, but it’s still true.”

Namjoon reads the poem to himself silently, lips moving with the words.

On Sundays I leave flowers commemorating each admission that I struck down before it could reach you.

“Okay,” he says finally, “I think you should keep the top line of the stanza the same - to keep the pattern.”

You nod, listening.

He presses his pen against his lips, eyes narrowed as they scan the lines again. “I think the word admission is too chunky,” he says. “In the second line.”

“Confession?” you supply. “Commemorating each confession?”

“That gives you some nice alliteration,” he notes, nodding.

“Does it flow better?” you prompt.

Namjoon repeats the first two lines to himself, under his breath. “On Sundays I leave flowers, commemorating each confession. Yeah, I think it does.”

“I’ll change it,” you decide, and he does it for you, scratching out admission and writing confession next to it in red ink.

“The third line sucks,” you muse, reading over his arm.

“It doesn’t suck,” he says mildly. “What were you trying to say?”

You think about this. “That each admission - confession, whatever - that the speaker didn’t voice…it’s almost like those words were trying to reach their recipient, but the speaker shot them down in flight, you know? Does that make sense?”

Namjoon ticks his head to the side, thinking. “It makes sense,” he assures you. “I’m just thinking about how to say it.”

You both peer at the stanza in silence, thinking.

“You’ve got this imagery of shooting something down mid-flight, like you just said,” he murmurs, eyes on the page, “but in the first stanza, you say the words die on the speaker’s lips, meaning they never get said in the first place. Maybe you need to change the imagery to holding it in instead of stopping it once it’s out?”

You scan the first stanza again, nodding slowly. “Commemorating every confession that suffocated beneath fresh-packed earth,” you say, voice almost a whisper as you listen to how the phrase would sound.

Namjoon chuckles darkly. “Buried alive? Harsh.”

You tap the page, finger on the bottom stanza. “The confessions - the words - are what died and got buried. But then, in the final stanza, she’s saying she keeps him alive by remembering him, but maybe she’s keeping her confessions alive as well. Like, she’s continuing to give them life by continuing to speak life into them. It works on two levels.”

Namjoon nods, letting out a quick, impressed breath almost like a laugh. “That’s good,” he says, sliding your notebook over to you. “Write it down before you forget.”

You scratch out the second stanza and write in the space next to it,

On Sundays I leave flowers commemorating every confession that suffocated beneath six feet of fresh-packed earth.

“I like it better,” you say, reading the whole thing back to yourself.

“It’s definitely better,” he agrees.

You put a hand on the page, ready to slide it completely away from him, to put it back in your bag.

Namjoon places his fingers on the page, just inches from yours. His index finger strokes the last line, where your hand had pressed the pen to the page and placed there, Hail Mary full of grace.

“What would happen if you stopped visiting?” he asks, voice very low. He’s leaning forward, his shoulder close enough to yours that you can feel the heat coming off his body.

“Excuse me?” you snap. This was exactly what you hadn’t wanted - interpretation, application to your real life.

“The speaker,” he corrects quickly, eyes flicking down to the page and then back up to meet yours again. There’s something gentle and coaxing in his voice as he continues. “What would happen if the speaker decided to spend their time elsewhere? Wouldn’t it be better for them to just… let the dead stay dead?”

Goosebumps cover your arms, but you’re also suddenly pissed. “I don’t have an answer to that,” you say firmly. “It’s poetry, it’s not real life.” You slap the notebook shut and toss it into your bag, tugging on the zipper like your life depends on it. You stand, hiking your bag onto your shoulder.

He’s still looking at you contemplatively, leaning back in his chair, long legs stretching under the desk. Then, he seems to snap out of it, and he peers up at you apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m used to that kind of thinking and response from my grad classes. But you’d already expressed that you weren’t comfortable… I should’ve left that alone.”

You shift from foot to foot, still stinging. “It’s fine,” you tell him. “Thanks for the help. I’ll resubmit this version.”

“Y/N,” he calls, stopping you in the doorway. You pause, turning to look. “Would it make you feel better to see a really personal one of mine?” His smile is rueful, his dimples teasing.

You exhale on a laugh. “Only if I get to question your poor life choices when I’m done,” you say.

He laughs at this. “I accept,” he says seriously, a smile still tugging at his lips. “In exchange for your forgiveness.”

You slap your palm lightly against the wooden doorframe, twice. “It’s a deal,” you say, and disappear down the hallway.

–

He sends you a screenshot two hours later. Before you can enlarge it enough to read anything, he sends, “Good GOD this is bad. Enjoy!”

I love you by pressing my fingertips into soil. Is it too dry? Can it go another day? I love you by pushing ceramic just two inches to the left where the sunlight hits at exactly four pm. I love you by wiping dust from leaves just how I'd wipe tears from cheeks. I love you by admiring each new bloom as it appears.

And when I’m thorn-pricked it doesn’t hurt because my only expectation was for it to grow.

You read it twice, then a third time.

[3:22 PM] You: that is NOT bad omg [3:23 PM] You: i need more context so i can mock your bad decisions [3:23 PM] You: that was the deal 😤 [3:27 PM] Namjoon: haha stop it. [3:28 PM] Namjoon: i cringed so hard when i read it again [3:29 PM] Namjoon: but i hope you actually forgive me now

Friday October 12th

‘-yet with everything left unsaid, still they said goodbye.’

Namjoon pounds twice on his desk in victory as he rereads the last line of the chapter he’d just finished. It’s good, he thinks. It’s actually good, the whole chapter. Not perfect - nothing ever would be - but good enough that he feels excited to send it to the cohort and get some feedback.

There’s a noise from his doorway and he spins in the chair, minimizing the document out of habit.

You smile at him from the door. “It’s going well, huh?” you say, a little playfully.

Namjoon feels something like cold run down his legs. It’s the absolute horror of being known. “What are you talking about?” he asks, voice even.

You fold your arms over your chest like you feel defensive. “You hit the desk when you’re happy about it,” you explain.

Namjoon stares at you, absolutely dumbfounded. He hadn’t realized you even knew he was writing, let alone that you’d been tracking his habits well enough to pick up on little things like that. He’s always kept his writing - and his behavior as a writer - pretty private. The only person who had ever seen behind the curtain, so to speak, was Elyse. And look how that turned out.

Namjoon decides to side-step this. He doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he goes with, “Did you need something?”

He knows it’s cold. He doesn’t even mean to be cold. But something about this interaction has all of his mental alarm bells ringing - telling him that this might be inching towards dangerous territory.

Territory he’s been in before. Territory he clawed his way out of.

“Oh,” you say, a little taken-aback. “Well, yeah. I was trying to see if anyone would be into the idea of a game night this weekend? What do you think?”

Namjoon’s about to answer that he doesn’t mind when his conversation with Yoongi and Hobi floats into his brain. He remembers their bony chins digging into his shoulders as they read your texts and affirmed that, yes, he’d hurt your feelings by leaving last time.

“Game night,” he repeats slowly. “Care to elaborate on the plan?”

This makes you smile again, like you’re pleased that he’s entertaining the idea. “Smaller crowd than last time,” you say. “Game categories up for discussion - could do board games, drinking games, video games… maybe a rotation?”

“A rotation,” Namjoon repeats flatly, not sure if you’re joking.

Your smile widens, eyes crinkling. It had been a joke. “We can decide what we feel like,” you say. “I was thinking maybe Saturday night?”

“Okay,” Namjoon says.

“Okay I can plan it… or okay, you’ll be there?” you ask, chewing lightly on the inside of your cheek.

Namjoon feels himself smile despite himself, despite the alarm bells, despite your dead-on observation of his habits. “I’ll stay,” he promises.

Saturday October 13th

The night actually does rotate. Or, rather, you all start with a board game and it delves soon into drinking games. Namjoon finds himself sitting on the living room floor, a whiskey and soda in his hand, watching across an abandoned game board - pieces still laying sideways, forgotten - as you giggle into Taehyung’s shoulder after being brought down by a very targeted round of Never Have I Ever.

(Never have I ever… worn a bra. …used a curling iron. …put on mascara. …cried to a Hallmark movie. The guys went right down the line, 1-2-3-4-5, you never had a chance.)

“You have to drink, Y/N,” Jungkook says, poking you with his socked foot.

“Get your toe-socks off of me,” you try to snap, but you’re still fighting giggles and you sound as menacing as a puppy.

“I think we need a no-targeting rule,” Yoongi says fairly, watching as you dutifully down your cup and rise to mix yourself a new one. “Or Y/N will end up in the hospital tonight.”

“I am not holding your hair this time,” Taehyung shouts into the kitchen. “Once was enough!”

“It was enough for me, too, believe me,” you answer him seriously, but your mouth twitches. You’re still fighting giggles.

“He’s right,” Jimin speaks up. “No more targeting - not just Y/N, for anyone. It won’t be fun that way.”

“Should we switch games?” Hobi asks. “How about Kings?”

Namjoon groans. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”

“Then get drunker,” Taehyung tells him, nodding towards the kitchen bar - littered with half-full liquor bottles and various mixers - where you’re still standing with your cup.

“I’m working on it,” Namjoon tells him, lifting his nearly-empty cup as proof.

You settle back onto the floor across from him, carefully holding your freshly filled cup so that it doesn’t slosh over the edges. “What’d we decide?”

The game of Kings begins harmlessly - Jungkook picks an 8 and chooses Jimin to drink whenever he drinks, no surprise there. Jimin picks a 4, and everyone slaps the floor - Yoongi is last, so he drinks.

Then Hobi picks a King - make up any rule, any rule at all - and his eyes sparkle with unspilled mischief.

“T-Rex arms!” Taehyung shouts. “T-Rex arms for the rest of the night!”

“Funny accents for the rest of the night!”

“You have to drink every time you say someone’s name!”

“You have to drink every time anyone says ‘what’!”

Everyone shouts their suggestions, but Hobi waves his hands to quiet them.

“If you say someone’s name,” he begins, and everyone leans forward, interested, “they get to tell the group some tea about you.”

Everyone lets out an ooooh of appreciation.

“That’s gonna get messy,” you observe, eyes wide.

The game continues, everyone being careful to tap each other’s knees to get their attention instead of calling their names. But as the hour grows later and the alcohol flows, you all forget to be so careful. When Jimin gets up to grab another drink, Jungkook calls, “Jimin, will you bring me a beer?”

“You said his name!” Nearly the whole circle shrieks it at once, pointing sloppily at Jungkook in accusation.

“Ji- I mean, sir in the kitchen, you get to tell us some tea about Jung- I mean, this one,” Hobi says, correcting himself around a series of belly laughs.

Jimin grins like the cat who ate the canary. “He’s the one who broke his good headphones.” He points at Yoongi to indicate which his he means since he can’t say Yoongi’s name.

“Hyung!” Jungkook cries, betrayal written all over his face and voice.

At the same time, Yoongi’s head whips around to look at his younger friend in accusation. “You owe me money for those! They were my favorite!”

“I told you,” you say, your voice carrying sweetly over the din. “Messy.”

The game continues, pausing when Yoongi misses his turn as he’s too busy looking up how much his headphones cost so he can show Jungkook.

Without thinking, Namjoon lazily says, “You’re up, Yoongi.”

Everyone looks at him, grins growing like predators who have discovered injured prey.

“Oh, damn,” he sighs. Yoongi looks up from his phone, eyes glinting.

“Well,” he says, clearly enjoying his audience and the chance to embarrass his best friend, “when this friend was getting over Elyse, he played Davichi’s Beside Me on repeat for hours at a time, and I know for a fact that he still knows every word.”

Namjoon’s not sure how to name the emotion that surges from his stomach up to his face; mortified, sure. Angry, a little. Everyone around the circle is laughing - Jimin’s even wiping a lone tear from under his eye. Is it funny, from the outside? He guesses it is. He feels a little detached, a little floaty.

“Oh shit, Elyse!” Taehyung sort of shouts, sitting up a little. “I forgot about her!”

“That’s cute,” Namjoon says. “Wish I could.” Even he can hear how bitter he sounds.

“What ever happened with her?” Taehyung asks, more musing than actually directing the question at Namjoon, or anyone.

“Tae!” you scold, elbowing him. “You’re such an insensitive ass, do you know that?”

To his credit, Taehyung looks abashed and backpedals immediately. “I mean - sorry - I’m just curious. Didn’t mean to put you on blast.”

“It’s fine,” Namjoon says, but he’s dying to get out of that room, out of everyone’s sight, away from the fading laughter and from the sideways, searching look you’re giving him. He stands, tries to keep his face passive. “I’m gonna… go pee.”

He slides into the dark of his room and heads for the bathroom. He doesn��t even need to go, he just needs it to look like he left for a reason. Behind him, he can hear Yoongi despite his purposely lowered voice as he says, “She left him back in June. Same shit as always - he loved her way more than she liked him.”

Namjoon wishes he could refute this. Even if he’d been out there to defend himself, he couldn’t. Yoongi knew every detail about Namjoon’s last relationship and the break-up that ended it, and his assessment was right.

Namjoon had liked her - loved her - more than she liked him. His expectations were too high for what she could give him. Sometimes he wondered if she was the problem, or if he was. Were his expectations for a partner too high in general? Was he asking too much, wanting someone to care for him the way he cared for them?

When he comes out of the bathroom, Yoongi is leaning against his desk waiting for him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “The song part is funny - I was thinking about it because you were humming it in the library yesterday. I didn’t think about the… Elyse of it all. I wasn’t trying to make fun of you. Especially in front of…” He trails off. But Namjoon knows where the sentence was going.

He doesn’t even have the oomph to argue it.

“I know,” he says simply. “It’s okay.”

“If we hadn’t been drinking…” Yoongi says, voice a little thoughtful. “I mean, I’m not trying to make excuses. I just would have considered my words a little more carefully.”

“I know,” Namjoon says again, insistent. “It’s okay, hyung. I’m not mad at you. Let’s go back.”

When they return to the group, it seems that in their absence you had organized the board game again and gotten everyone focused. He wasn’t sure if you’d done it on purpose, diverted their attention to rules and set-up so they wouldn’t look too closely at his face as he took his spot again, but he appreciated it regardless.

Taehyung catches his eye, grimaces in apology. Namjoon gives a shrug and a headshake, letting him know they’re alright.

How can he be mad? Are they supposed to pretend his mistakes don’t exist? He can’t impose his own rules on others, it wouldn’t be fair.

Friday October 19th

The week passes in a blur. Namjoon works on his book, workshops for his classmates, goes to class, attends his TA hours, eats, sleeps, walks outside when he can. You exist in orbit around him, sometimes communicating in passing - but only in passing. You spend no time together, have no conversations, share no text messages or meals.

It’s starting to feel safe again, Namjoon thinks. Those alarm bells have quieted down. Now they act more like disgruntled guard dogs who think they saw something in the yard; they keep their narrowed, suspicious eyes on the gate, giving unhappy grumbles now and then.

Of course, the universe never lets him rest for long. On Friday night, Hobi texts him at eight, “Bar! You have two hours to mentally prepare! I will see you there or else!!!”

Namjoon texts back, “you need to calm down with the exclamation points”. But he still turns to eye his open closet, pondering what to wear.

–

Sometimes, Namjoon just watches people. People watching is a thing, right? He catches himself at it all the time - at train stations, on campus, in malls, and here - now - at the bar.

He watches throngs of young women mix onto and away from the dance floor, ebbing and flowing like high and low tide, like they obey the moon too. He watches men his age eye the scene like hawks.

He watches the bartenders hustle from one end to another, hands in constant motion as they exchange money, clutch shakers, wipe out glasses, open beers. He watches the bouncer sweep his gaze over the crowd, like a seaside lifeguard.

He watches Hobi and Yoongi bend their heads together, talking animatedly over something on Hobi’s phone. He watches Jungkook and Jimin dance near the edge of the crowd, peeking surreptitiously over their shoulders to see if any of the girls near them are looking. He watches Jin throw his head back in laughter at whatever the pretty girl before him has said.

He watches you lean forward on your elbows, eyes on Taehyung’s face like they’re magnetically drawn, as he talks to you. You both laugh at something; you finish your drink. Namjoon watches as Taehyung leans over to say something to you, slides off of his barstool, makes his way towards the dark hallway that houses the restrooms. You flag down a bartender, ordering a new drink.

You aren’t watching Taehyung make his way back from the bathroom, but Namjoon is. He watches as Taehyung is intercepted by a beautiful, dark-haired girl who stands only as tall as the middle of his chest. He watches as Taehyung stops in his tracks, a grin slowly growing across his face, starting sly and ending open and friendly. It’s deadly, and Namjoon knows he knows it.

Namjoon sees it happen when the girl cocks her head towards the front entrance, sees it when Taehyung nods and leans down to say something to her before zig-zagging his way through the crowd back to where you sit, waiting for him.

Namjoon sees it when your smile crumples, when you quickly stitch it back together and nod eagerly, when you wave goodbye. He sees it when Taehyung and his date slip out the front door, sees it when you let your head drop to your hands, shoulders heaving with one single deep breath.

When you raise your head again, your eyes meet his.

And he sees it - all of it. He sees the crushing disappointment, the resignation, the acceptance.

He’s moving without making the decision to move, his beer glass cold against his hand as he makes his way to the empty spot next to you.

“Sorry,” he says, not hiding that he’d seen exactly what happened, had witnessed Taehyung abandon you for preferred company.

You give yourself a little shake and give him a tiny smile. “Don’t be,” you say easily. “Good for him - I wish I had half his luck.”

Namjoon wouldn’t say he knows you that well if he was asked, doesn’t think himself an expert on your personality. But he knows it’s bravado. He can just tell.

But he’ll let you save face. He’d want the same.

He struggles to find something to talk to you about. His brain goes empty, like static, the second he relies on it. Finally, as you stir the ice cubes around your drink, trying not to look as dejected as you feel, he asks, “How’s senior thesis going? What are the criteria for poetry students?”

You perk up, sitting up straighter and releasing the plastic straw you’d had pinched between your fingers. “It’s going okay,” you tell him, glancing over sideways at him like you want to make sure he’s actually interested in the answer, not just asking to be polite. “The criteria? It’s half a written portfolio, half an author study.”

“Who’d you pick?” Namjoon asks, taking a sip of his beer and finding it low.

You smile at him mischievously, eyes sparkling a little. “Guess,” you challenge.

He feels himself smile in return. “Rumi,” he shoots out.

Your laugh bursts from you, surprising both of you. “That’s your first guess?” you laugh. “Seriously? Going straight to Rumi?”

“Am I wrong?” he asks, chuckling.

“Yes,” you insist. “Try again.”

He ponders it for a second. “Whitman. Yeats. Eliot.”

“Absolutely not,” you say. “Quit naming dead white dudes.”

Namjoon laughs again. “Poe?”

“Still a dead white dude!”

He stops, thinks again. “Olds,” he finally guesses.

You raise your eyebrows. “Wow, obscure.”

He shrugs. “She seems like your type.”

You laugh at that, a peal of laughter that has you hunching over your drink. “You’re not wrong about that,” you admit.

“I think you need to just tell me,” Namjoon admits.

“Surely you know more poets than that!” you tease accusingly.

“Of course I do,” he allows. “But I think this little game could go on for a very long time.”

You laugh again, and Namjoon feels a smile tug at his lips.

He growls a mental shut up at the part of him that wants to keep making you laugh.

“St Vincent Millay,” you say, caving.

“Wow,” he says, just a bit struck dumb. Because what are the odds you’d pick her? “A favorite.”

You smile at him, eyes crinkling. “You know hers?”

Namjoon is pretty sure he has a copy of Alms stuffed between pages of his favorite notebook, a memento to his post-Elyse days, when he was - yes - listening to Beside Me on repeat and reading every heartbreak poem he could get his hands on, all in the name of feeling understood. All in the name of feeling less alone.

“My heart is what it was before, / a house where people come and go; / But it is winter with your love -” Namjoon quotes from Alms instead of answering.

You keep your eyes on him, steady, as you finish in a quiet voice, “The sashes are beset with snow. Alms? I wrote about that one for my thesis the other day.”

Namjoon catches the bartender’s eye. “If I get a few shots, do you want one?” he asks, looking over at you. You nod, he orders something cinnamony, and then he returns to your earlier conversation. “Alms is one of the only ones of hers I can quote off the top of my head. But it’s… my favorite of hers.”

You give him a sly smile. “I argued in my thesis that Alms is a diss-track.”

Namjoon splutters. “What?” he demands.

You grin, loving this. “It is winter with your love? Like, tell me your lover is cold without telling me your lover is cold. Plus, all those lines in the middle about how she tends her plants in winter? Of course that’s your favorite.”

As the bar-tender pushes filled shot-glasses towards him, Namjoon just stares at you. You have this uncanny way of knowing things about him, and it’s unnerving. Partly because he doesn’t know that much about you, and partly because he hadn’t realized he was so easy to read.

You each take a shot glass, clicking them together before knocking them back. The burn of alcohol in his throat urges him to speak up, to address it.

“You remember how you mentioned that I tend to hit the desk when I'm happy with what I wrote?”

You frown with your whole face, brows and all, not following his line of thought at all. “...Yeah…” you say, voice wavering with uncertainty.

Namjoon looks away, at the wood of the bar beneath his fingers, at the crowd of people shouting their conversations around them, at the empty glasses waiting to be whisked away. “What else do you know?”

He’s not sure what makes him say it. Maybe he’s tired of you dropping these little observations here and there and wants them all out at once.

You trace a whorl in the wood with your pointer finger. Thoughtfully, voice sounding somewhat far away, you tell him, “You pace when you’re stuck. You listen to rap when it’s flowing and classical when it’s not.”

Namjoon lets out a single, shuttering laugh, barely louder than an exhale. “I’m trying to think of a less rude way to ask this, but why - how - do you know this stuff?”

You twist your mouth sideways into the cousin of a smile, self-deprecation written all over your face. “I spend a lot of time in the living room,” you say defensively with a bit of a laugh. “I can’t help but notice. You’re not very secretive.”

That’s the thing. Namjoon thought he was.

You sit in silence for a minute, the loudness of the bar’s music and chatter flowing around you. Then, completely unprompted, you add, “I know that poem you sent me is about your ex.”

Namjoon’s head snaps up, his eyes finding yours. He searches your face for anything unkind, anything mocking. Elyse had made him feel stupid - something he had very little experience with - and he was evading that feeling every second since. But there’s none to be found as you look back at him patiently.

“Y/N,” he says finally, “don’t take this the wrong way, but what the fuck.”

Once you’re sure he isn’t going to get mad or defensive, you relax, shooting him a knowing smirk. “Please,” you protest. “The line about how you can’t get hurt because you had no expectations? A juxtaposition to when you have certain expectations of a partner, and how it hurts when they’re not met. Like expecting someone to love you back, and then they don’t.”

“I think I need to be rescued from this conversation,” Namjoon jokes, pretending to look around for a life-line. “Quit it with the direct shots!”

You shrug innocently. “I’m not making any judgments about it. Just saying I understand the message.”

“How many drinks have you had?” Namjoon demands.

“I don’t know… three or four? Why?”

He can’t say because you’re saying very honest shit and people are usually polite enough to not do that. “You’re just… dropping words like juxtaposition and I…. truly don’t know how to handle it.”

You give him a wide smile, proud and teasing. “Just admit that I have a big, sexy brain.”

If this is the game you want to play, he thinks, he can play it.

“Well,” he counters, “I know that your poem about the graveyard is actually about -” He snaps his mouth shut, sober enough to know a mistake when he’s shin-deep in it, buzzed enough to fail at stopping his gaze from flicking over to where Taehyung and that girl had disappeared through the front door.

He watches - literally watches it happen - as a wall crashes down over your face. The open, teasing expression flattens into dull nothingness, your smile melts into a thin line, your eyes leave his and settle on your hands.

Namjoon opens his mouth to apologize, but the heavy weight of someone’s arm across his shoulders distracts him.

“Are you two talking about poetry?” Hobi asks, voice a touch too loud. “We already have a resident nerd, Y/N, we don’t need another.”

You grasp at the interruption desperately. “Not just any poetry. His poetry.”

Hobi gasps dramatically, clutching at his chest like a wounded man. “He let you read his own poetry? My God.”

Namjoon sits back, allows Hobi and Yoongi to incorporate themselves into the conversation, lets the moment slip away. He zones entirely out of the conversation, lost in his own thoughts, letting the others pick up his slack.

He’s thinking about Alms and thinking about Elyse, thinking about how St Vincent Millay’s line “But it is winter with your love” had rolled around his brain for a solid month as he was wrestling with the insecurity and pain of loving someone who just didn’t feel it too. Elyse hadn’t been cold - at least, not until the very end. Yet, even still, it had never been… enough.

He’s thinking about the way you just noticed things about him, the way you made him feel seen when he was used to feeling the opposite.

He’s thinking, and it’s probably a little fucked up, that Elyse had lived with him for over three months - sharing a bed, even - and had never picked up on his mannerisms this way.

He keys back into the conversation when he notices you signing to close out your card.

“Are you going home?” he asks you, the first words he’s said in a while. Both Yoongi and Hobi turn to look at him, as if they, too, forgot he was sitting there.

“Yeah,” you tell him. You meet his eyes, but your voice is still a little flat. “I was gonna Uber.”

“Wanna share?” he suggests.

You look at your hands again. “You don’t have to leave just because I’m leaving,” you say.

Hobi and Yoongi swivel their heads back and forth in silence, watching this conversation like a table-tennis match.

“I’m ready to go. But I can get my own ride if you’re uncomfortable.”

“No,” you say quickly. “I’m not. That would… that’s fine.”

You say goodbye to the guys and Namjoon follows you through the bar. He’s tempted to reach out a hand and guide you, help you navigate the drunken, dancing crowd. But you aren’t his to protect, and he’s just this minute starting to examine where the urge comes from, what’s blooming here, a tiny bud forming seemingly overnight.

Outside, the silence hits him like the slap of an ocean wave. The night is warm, despite it being late October.

You walk silently towards the curb, phone in your hand. You don’t look back at him.

“Y/N,” he says quietly. You glance over your shoulder, frosty, but you soften almost instantly when you look at him. The apology must be clear as day on his face. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

You sag with a sigh. “No,” you say. “I asked for it. I started it. You’re not supposed to dish it if you can’t take it, or something.”

Namjoon doesn’t agree or disagree, doesn’t shake his head. He just keeps his gaze on you, heavy and serious, and repeats, “I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

You drop your eyes again - he’s noticing you do that when you’re nervous, unsure of your words. Then, eyes on the road instead of on him, you say, “Assuming I was right about… you know, the poem… I’m sorry you went through that.”

Namjoon raises his eyes, up past the bar’s neon sign, up past the yellow-lit apartment windows above it, up past the fire escape and the rusty rooftop structures. He finds stars, glinting and joking from behind swiftly moving wisps of clouds.

“Thanks,” he says. That’s all.

“It’s hard when the people we love…” you trail off, rub your hands up and down your arms as if to ward off chill on a definitively unchilly night. “It’s hard when they disappoint us. For whatever reason.”

“Yeah,” Namjoon says. The Uber pulls up, and you check the license plate against what’s on your phone screen before reaching for the back door. He’s got that same urge again, to reach out and guide you into the car. He shifts his hand into a fist, wills himself to get his shit together. As you slide over to make room for him, he lets one last breath out towards those same stars. “Yeah, it is.”

–

Inside the Uber, you scoot to make room for Namjoon to slide in next to you, folding his long legs in behind the front passenger seat.

The ride begins in silence, except for the driver’s music, which currently plays an advertisement in a language you don’t speak and can’t even identify.

You feel a little dizzy, maybe from the drinks. Maybe from getting vulnerable with your roommate. You lean your head back against the headrest and close your eyes. You can feel the heat from Namjoon’s side, can sense him, solid, less than a foot away.

“You okay?” he asks, voice low, to keep the conversation as close to private as possible.

You open your eyes, looking sideways at him. He looks back at you, searchingly. You’re struck for the first time, here in the back of a stranger’s shitty Kia, by how pretty his eyes are - full of warmth and depth, but also something sly, like he constantly knows something you don’t, yet.

Looking at him, you’re tempted to lean against him; the desire comes out of nowhere, comes from the surety you feel that he would feel… safe. Protective. You feel sure he wouldn’t move away.

What is this? you wonder. It’s just a moment, just a fleeting thing that will be gone by the next red light, but as tiny as it is, there’s a voice in your head pointing out that you haven’t felt this kind of anything for anyone in your whole life except Kim Taehyung.

You fold your hands in your lap, turn to look straight ahead through the windshield. You can’t lie to him while looking at him.

“Yeah,” you say. “I’m fine.”

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thank you so much for reading!!!! we're past the set up, stuff is movin!!!! please consider some type of feedback, even just 'loved it!' or a keysmash lets me know it's not hot garbage!

Section IV will post on Friday, February 3rd. I hope to see you there!!!!

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