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fernpost · 3 years

Text

looking forwards

[link to ao3]

Angus McDonald, boy detective. Greatest detective, if you asked him. And if you asked most of his clients.

He could solve any case, any mystery or murder or missing persons case. He’s always able to find the truth.

He just struggles sometimes, when it comes to himself.

His own emotions are swirling masses of weird bubbly feelings . He does not like how hard it is to decipher his own feelings.

Deciphering people's feelings about him is often just as hard. He knows social cues. He’s studied them thoroughly, and knows why people say what when he’s asking them certain questions and what they’re hiding when they ask him to leave.

Working a case is easy.

He’s solved plenty of murders before. Those are easy. Child’s play! And Angus is not a child anymore. He’s twelve whole years old, and had the first birthday party he’s ever really enjoyed to celebrate with all his friends.

Sure, most of them were adults, but he’s always gotten along really well with adults.

And they’re his family, so it’s fine-

Well. They’re not really his family. He’s not blood related to them. He’s not sure he has any immediate family now that his grandpa is gone. He’s never asked Taako or Magnus or Merle of Kravitz or Killian or- or any of them if they consider him family.

They’re his friends. That’s fine. He’s perfectly content with that (he thinks. Again, his own emotions are confusing).

But that’s okay. Because he’s going to school soon. It’s kind of far away from where most of them live, though. Far from the home Taako, Lup, Barry, and Kravitz have been sharing. Where Angus has been staying.

Very far from where Magnus has been setting up his school. And a whole day's ride away from Killian and Carey’s home.

The school is three hours away from Angus’s ho- from Taako’s house, where Angus is staying.

He hasn't- he hasn’t told Taako he’s going to school yet. He doesn’t know how to tell him he’s going to need to move out because obviously he would never ask Taako to uproot his whole life- all of them to uproot their lives just for Angus to be able to attend school. Not when they finally got settled down.

He really doesn’t even need school, but when his parents passed away and he went to live with his grandpa he dropped out. And if he wants to go on to college (if Lucas is serious about the potential teaching job) he needs to at least graduate high school. He was almost done too, but his grandpa didn’t have a lot of money like his parents did, so he started solving more and more cases to help out.

His parents didn’t give his grandpa any of their money because they didn’t expect him to be around when they passed on- not that they were bad people! He doesn’t mean to make them sound bad. They weren’t bad. They weren’t the best, he guesses. They’re not as fun as Taako, or as warm as Lup, and didn’t give as many hugs and Magnus, and didn’t talk to him about science like Barry, or-

But they were nice. They just weren’t really into parenting. They still left their small fortune to him, he’s just not old enough for it.

He’s thinking of petitioning the banks and saying he’s perfectly independent to get the money so he can move out easier.

He wonders if Kravitz would help, because he’s really good at that type of stuff, and the bank workers would be much more likely to listen to an adult than him.

Being young had its perks when solving cases, but it sucked for his day-to-day life.

It also sucked when his stomach churned for no reason that he could deduce. He’s just sitting in the kitchen, watching Lup cook in her still-slightly-fresh body as she sings a funny folktale song (Barry is sitting next to him, and he’d leaned over when she’s started singing to tell him how she learned this song early on in a world that had no writing system, and the song was about a man who could never remember where he left his pants. Angus didn’t really get it, but Barry kept laughing and smiling like it was the funniest thing in the world. Angus was pretty sure Barry would laugh at anything Lup did as a joke, though. He didn’t need to be a great detective for that).

But despite how good the food smells, his stomach hurts really bad. He’s barely eaten today, so it can't be food poisoning. Not that he’s had that since moving in- the Taaco’s are wonderful cooks and he trusts anything they feed him implicitly.

He tunes out Lup as he thinks.

The stomach pains are probably anxiety. Kravitz was telling him how he used to get them all the time, so it’s possible it’s just that.

But he shouldn’t be anxious . He’s a big kid- he’s just waiting for Taako to get home so he can tell him he’s moving out.

He has already looked for an apartment. Once Lucas' Academy of Arcane Sciences is fully up and running, he should have a highschool diploma and will be able to move on campus to work on his own degree. And be a student teacher while he works on it. It’s very exciting! If he should be feeling any physical effects from his emotions, it should be excitement, not this. This gross conglomerate of mushy feelings he can’t piece together.

He hates this.

Lup is holding a spoon to him, and Angus snaps back to the present to hear her softly ask, “you okay, little dude?” He doesn’t like the look of concern on her face- she’s been through too much to have to worry herself with him (he can’t get the century out of his head, these people are so amazing and they just let him hang around them. He doesn’t know what he’s doing right and he’s scared he’s going to stop doing that and they’re not going to like him anymore).

“I’m fine, Miss Lup! Thank you for asking.” He folds his hands tighter in his lap as he smiles. Whatever is on the spoon smells great, but he’s not sure his stomach is up for it yet.

Lup continues to stare at him for another second before pushing the spoon a little closer, “if you say so. Now, tell me, how’s it taste?”

Angus shakes his head and pulls back, “my stomach isn’t feeling too good right now, I don’t want to infect the rest of the food if it’s contagious.”

A hand appears on his head and he jumps a little, still not used to the casual touch-language of the household, and Barry’s nasally voice joins the conversation. “You don’t feel hot. Want us to call Merle over and give you a check up?”

The spoon is back, “it’s a good soup, Ango. It shouldn’t upset your stomach, and I can just get a new spoon. Barry can call Merle while you give me pointers.”

“You don’t need to, it’s fine really.” He waves his hands at Barry before turning to Lup. “And I’m not sure what help I can be with the cooking, I haven’t improved much these past few months even with Taako walking me through those other recipes.”

Lup snorts, “you’re improving much faster than Barry ever did. And I haven’t been helping Kravitz much with it, but he’s worse than anyone I’ve ever met at cooking. You’re doing just fine.”

Angus straightens up, discomfort momentarily disregarded, “Mr. Kravitz hasn’t needed to eat or cook in a long time, so he’s forgotten a lot of the basics so it’s not fair to judge me against him.”

“Sure, sure.” Lup waves her free hand in the air, the other still holding the spoon. “Still, this spoon is staying in the air until you taste it.” She glances at Barry, “and don’t worry about bothering Merle, he’ll never admit it but he likes the excuse to come over. Barry will pick him up; gives him more practice on perfecting the portal spell.”

Angus frowns, but reaches out to take the spoon anyways, “you really don’t need to call him. I’m sure it’ll pass by tomorrow.”

A hand is now on his shoulder, and Angus glances over to make eye contact with Barry, who speaks. “I won’t call him tonight, but if you still feel bad tomorrow we’ll tell him, okay?”

“Okay.” He’s not going to tell him if his stomach still hurts tomorrow, because it shouldn’t. Because he’s going to tell Taako right when he gets home and there will be nothing making him anxious or sad or excited or whatever that will make his stomach hurt. Because he’s going to do it.

He punctuates the thought by sticking the spoon in his mouth. Lup has turned back around, a fresh spoon stirring the pot, so she doesn’t see Angus’s eyes widen, but she turns back to face him with a smile when he gasps.

“This is really good, Miss Lup! Thank you.”

“Anything missing from it?” She crosses her arms, a new spoon dangling from her fingers as she twirls it around. It feels like a test, and the stomach ache is back.

Maybe it is from anxiety, because he used to get them before really hard tests. But why is he anxious? Taako is most likely going to take the news well, because Angus will finally be out of his hair.

(But maybe he doesn’t want that. Maybe Taako being okay with him moving out would hurt. Maybe the thought of Taako not just being okay, but being excited at the thought of him moving out is making him sick with worry and sadness and-)

“I’m not sure what else. It tastes perfect as-is.” He can’t think about cooking anymore. “I’m going to read on the couch, if that’s alright.”

The twirling of the spoon pauses, before she gives him a smile he knows is a bit forced, “okay, but when Taako comes home complaining that something is missing from the soup we’re blaming Barry.”

“Hey!”

Angus slides from the stool, moving to the sink and placing the spoon in there before heading to the couch. The living room is open to the kitchen and dining room, and he can hear Lup puttering around in there as she and Barry speak quietly to each other.

He’s unsure if they’re talking about him, or just being polite because he said he was reading, but his stomach twists again anyways. He picks up his book from where he set it on the coffee table this morning, and tries to read- he really does.

But he can’t focus.

The words blur together as he stares down at them blankly. He’s so zoned-out he misses the sound of the door opening, and the ensuing whispering in the kitchen.

It’s only when a hand is on his shoulder does he notice someone else is in the room, and he almost jumps out of his skin. Turning his head quickly, he catches sight of the gaudy sequin coat Taako had bought a few months ago. He’s paired it with a pair of jeans with tassels, and Angus doesn’t know much about fashion, but he’s fairly sure that’s not a normal outfit combination.

“Lup said your stomach hurt? Did you eat the so-called muffins Barry made yesterday? Because I told him those were toxic for human consumption. Probably dwarven consumption as well.”

Angus shakes his head, eyes following Taako as he slips his coat off and throws it on the armchair. He’d taken one look at those burnt muffins and slid them behind the milk, hiding them to prevent anyone from eating them. The elf walks around the couch and sits on the opposite side as him, tucking his knees under him as he stares at him with those eyes that are far more observant than most people think.

“Uh-huh. I’m throwing them out anyway. Don’t want to risk it.”

Angus nods, fiddling with the pages of his book. He runs a finger down the edge, finding a temporary calm in the weird texture of the uneven edges. He’s wearing a crease into the sides, he knows, but that’s fine. His grandpa liked to talk about the beauty of a well-loved book.

He’d spent all night planning on what he was going to stay. He wants to make sure Taako knows he isn’t throwing his kindness back in his face, and that he is going to be able to do this mostly on his own. He doesn’t have many belongings, so the move itself would be pretty easy. There won’t be much for Taako to worry about. Angus has always been very self-reliant. He isn’t a pushover, and is fine taking care of himself. While living here has been nice, he’s fine going back to living like that.

A foot knocking against his knee gets his attention, and he glances over to Taako. The elf’s face is pinched, ears flicking back and forth.

It’s a weird expression to see directed at him. Taako speaks, “you with me, Agnes?”

He nods, eyes flitting away. The nickname is an endearment, something he figured out soon after he started living on the moonbase. Their story being projected into his mind only reinforced that knowledge; seeing how Taako interacted with the others (and how the others teased everyone as well) proves that Taako being mean normally shows he cares.

He states instead at the fireplace; it’s still kinda dirty because no one has wanted to clean it out from when Lup caused it to flare up during a particularly intense board game night (they banned board games when the fire was going after that, at least while Lup was in her lich form. Far too much magical energy waiting to be released).

“Angus. You sure you’re feeling okay?”

He doesn’t mean to flinch, but seeing a hand come towards his face after already being stressed all day caused him to react unfavorably.

The hand yanks itself away, and Angus forces himself to look over at Taako, apology already leaving. “Sorry, sir. I just didn’t expect it- I’m fine, really.” He almost says ‘I promise,’ but stops himself. He doesn’t like lying, and it wouldn’t have been a lie but it wouldn’t have been the full truth.

Taako doesn't seem to believe him anyways, as he squints at him. “You’re a terrible liar.”

Angus starts, “I’m not sick!”

“I know you’re not sick, but you’re acting all weird.” He wiggles his fingers, and it almost makes Angus laugh.

He takes a deep, steadying breath. It only makes his stomach clench even more. His face gets hot, and suddenly his throat is tight and he can’t- he can’t do it- he doesn’t want-

“I need to move out.” The words leave him at once, just barely slow enough to be comprehensible.

The soft conversation in the kitchen stops at once, though neither of them walk over to the couch. Taako is staring at him, face blank.

He finds himself beginning to ramble. He hates it, he’s normally more composed, but working a case is much, much easier than navigating people he cares about. “Mr. Miller offered me a position at his school once I graduate, and the school is on the other side of town. I can’t make the commute each day, it’s too far and the walk would be too much. So, I found a small place that’s cheap, and once I get access to my parents money they left me I’ll be fine on that front. And-”

“Miller? Lucas Miller?” Taako cuts him off. He hasn’t done that in a long while, and it shuts Angus up immediately.

“Yes? He’s opening his school, the Academy of Arcane Sciences.”

“And he wants you to teach there?”

Angus' face flushes, and he gets hot with indignation. “I’m very smart, sir. I am very qualified to teach, and it’s not a stretch that he would seek me out and-”

Taako puts his hands up. “Not what I was implying. You’re just young.” He glares off to the side, before pulling his crystal out. “Thought Miller was above hiring a child.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“How old are you, then?” Taako glances back over at him, eyebrows raised in that annoying way he gets when he thinks he’s made an excellent point. He’s typing without looking down, and Angus wants to know what he’s doing.

“I- that’s not what I meant.”

Taako leans back on the couch, looking back at his crystal. “You should be focused on being a kid, not teaching nerds at Lucas’s subpar school.”

The indignation that started when Taako brushed off what he’s been worrying about has been building and building. He clenches his hands into fists, letting the book drop to the floor as he stands and yells, “stop trying to make me have the childhood you wanted!”

He regrets it immediately, but can’t bring himself to look at Taako. The room is so, so quiet. It’s almost worse than if they yelled at him. He runs past the couch, dodging the hand that reaches out as he passes by Taako. He slips into the room he’s been staying in, closing the door and locking it behind him. He sits on the floor, back resting against his bed, and shoves his face into his knees, pulling them tightly into himself.

At least he made it easy, right? He’ll wait for Taako to cool down, finish packing his things, and leave.

He doesn’t even know why he said that. He knows Taako was just being nice, even if he phrased it poorly. He just wants him to be a kid because he knows what it’s like to not have a childhood. Angus had no reason to say that. He didn’t mean it.

The hot press of tears builds in his eyes and he forces them down. He has no right to cry when he was the one in the wrong.

Knowing Taako, Lup, and Barry are in there, talking about him, is almost as bad as the guilt. Not knowing what they’re saying is disquieting.

It doesn’t take long for a soft knocking on his door to fill the room. He says nothing, but looks up at it. He stares at the handle, checking it’s still locked.

“Angus, it’s Lup. Can I come in?”

He considers not answering. They’ve been good about not barging in before, when he makes it clear he wants to be alone. He doesn’t want to be alone, though. He’s just not sure he wants to have this conversation.

“Yeah.” He stands, unlocking the door and holding the handle. Breathes. Opens the door.

Ears tilted down low, Lup stands there with hands in a neutral position at her side. Gods, she’s being so aware of her movements right now so she doesn’t startle him. He turns, walks over to his desk, and stands by it. He’s now very aware of his backpack and small suitcase against the wall, half-packed. Not enough to be obvious, but enough so that when he told them he was moving he could do so quickly.

Lup is staring at it. She hesitates, then goes to sit on his bed. She doesn’t shut the door all the way, leaving it just barely cracked.

He hates being treated like this.

“We’re not mad.” She begins, and Angus can’t bring himself to look at her as she talks, staring instead at his bags. “Taako isn’t mad either. We’re just confused as to why you want to move out.”

Angus furrows his brow, glancing over to Lup for a second before retraining his eyes on his bags, “I told T- I said that it was too far for me to walk there each day.”

“Me and Barry have basically mastered rifts, we could bring you there and back you know. So could Kravitz.”

“I already thought about asking you to, but you’re called to go help the Raven Queen randomly, and I wouldn’t want to be stuck on campus.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “I didn’t phrase it very well out there.” He forces himself to make eye contact, “I am very grateful for everything you all have provided me, and I’m not leaving because I’m unhappy or anything. I just know I’ll be fine on my own, and I really want to go to school.”

Lup purses her mouth, “I’m not going to argue that you aren’t responsible or that you couldn’t live on your own. But you are young, there’s no reason you should be teaching at this age.”

“I’m not though! I’m finishing high school, and then student teaching until I graduate from his school. I’ll just be helping the professors until I have the proper qualifications.” He clenches his hands, trying to keep himself calm. He doesn’t like when people don’t understand what he’s saying.

She takes in what he says, keeping her gaze steady. “Okay. That’s better. But, you still shouldn’t be living on your own, little dude.”

“I used to-”

She holds her hand up, “come on, this is a group conversation. The other two people living here should be here for this.” Angus casts an anxious glance at the door when she says that. She continues on, “before we go out there, though, we do need to talk about what you said.”

Panic fizzles through him again. “I know! I didn’t mean it, and I’m really, really sorry. I just got frustrated because he was patronizing me and I don’t like being treated like that. I’m very smart and capable- I’ve done- I’m just-” He feels his emotions begin to well up again, and it only makes him more upset. He knows he’s more mature than this. He’s caught numerous serial killers, solved murder cases, and helped so many people. He can keep up with serious adult conversations, as well as banter with everyone easily. He’s good at words. He hates getting sensitive like this.

“Hey, hey. Angus, it’s okay. Breathe.” She steps towards him, moving slowly to not startle him and he hates how he’s already shown that she needs to do that. “Taako was being rude when you spoke to him, no one is denying that. But what you said at the end was also pretty rude. And we understand needing to take a minute to ourselves, but we have to make sure we have hard conversations. You’re telling us you don’t want us to treat you like a child, and we are not going to baby you. But you are still very young, especially compared to us.” She closes the gap to him and rests a hand on his shoulder, kneeling down. “Being mature means hard conversations. Being nice means having harder conversations. All we want from you, Angus, is for you to be honest with us and listen to us when we want to be honest with you.” She removes her hand from his shoulder and spreads her arms wide, offering a hug.

If he says no, she won’t make a fuss. He knows this.

He crashes into her, smushing her face into her shoulder. Her arms tighten around him as she runs her hand through his hair. “Here’s the plan. We go out there, Taako apologizes to you for being an asshole, you apologize for snapping, and then we all talk about you moving out, okay?”

Pulling his head away from her shoulder, he nods. He knows if he tried to speak, he would devolve into tears. She smiles and pulls him back into the hug.

They stay there for another moment, before Angus pulls away. Lup stands and gestures for him to lead the way.

His stomach clenches again, but some it’s not as intense as it was a few minutes ago.

They walk down the short hallway, and find Taako and Barry sitting on the couch. Both are staring at them as they enter the room, and Angus finds his hands twisting into the hem of his shirt.

“I shouldn’t have said that, sir. I’m sorry.” Angus says it fast. He hopes it doesn’t sound dishonest, the way it tumbled out of his mouth, but he knows if he slowed down the tears would fall too and he doesn’t want that.

Taako moves to stand, but Angus watches as Barry’s hold on his hand keeps him on the couch. Taako, instead smiles. “It’s okay, Ango. I was being an ass first. Should have listened to you all the way instead of cutting you off. Taako’s better than that.”

Lup brushes past Angus, moving to sit on the armchair next to the couch. Angus stays where he is. “I am still moving, though.”

No one speaks for a moment, but all three of them look at each other. After a moment of silent conversation, the type born from living together for a long, long time, Taako speaks up. “Okay. We’ve been talking about getting a bigger house anyways. This one is too close to the city and when the others visit it’s far too crowded. We need more extra bedrooms.”

Angus blinks. Then blinks again. “What?”

Lup sighs. “That’s one way to bring it up. We’ve already been talking about it- there’s a chunk of land just outside of the east end of the city. It’s not far from the school we assume is the one you plan on attending. Magnus has already said he’ll help us fix up the house there.”

He is still wildly confused.

Barry gathers that, and he sighs, “we will all move. So you can be closer to your school.”

He starts shaking his head, “no, you guys just settled down, you don’t need to do that.”

“Do you really think you could make us do anything we don’t want to do?” Taako asks as he begins to walk over to Angus. He mimics the position Lup took earlier, squatting in front of him. “If you really don’t want to live with us, fine. But we had already been talking about getting a bigger place. This isn’t a sudden decision- if Krav wasn’t on some mission he could tell you the same thing. The house we were looking at was empty before the Hunger arrived, and it got fucked up even more during the fight, so the land there is cheap. So if you want to stay with us- and I’m not asking what you think we want, I’m asking what you want- then one of the rooms will be yours.”

The tears he’s been working so hard to hold back begin to fall, so he just nods quickly. He lets Taako pull him into a hug, “I’d- I like living with you. Are you- you sure?”

“When has Taako ever lied?”

Angus just laughs, and does so even harder when he hears a pillow thwack against the back of Taako’s head (it’s a common occurrence in this house).

He feels someone approach on the side, and their hug is yanked to the side, both of them stumbling as Lup pulls them towards her, and he glances up to see Barry hovers right beside them. Taako must see him too, “Come on, Barold. Looks like it’s hug time.”

It’s awkward, and not at all very comfortable, but it’s warm. Angus’s tears have dried up, and he’s about to pull away when the familiar zip of a portal being created precedes Kravitz’s voice.

“Oh, am I interrupting?”

Taako laughs, “just missing out on a group hug.”

“Come on,” Lup speaks up now, her voice coming from just behind Angus’s ear, “it’s a family hug.”

Angus barely has time to process that when Kravitz steps forward. He’s almost as awkward as Barry, but it’s nice.

They separate eventually, Lup heads back to the kitchen to finish the food, with Barry close behind. Kravitz gives Taako a hello kiss, the two of them sitting on the couch, and from their low tones Angus can tell Taako is giving him a quick rundown of… today.

Angus see’s his book was placed on the coffee table at some point, and sits on the armchair once he grabs it, pushing Taako's discarded jacket to the side. Opening it to where he left off, the page is bent with a large crease down the center, from when he dropped it on the floor. He reads for a minute, before Taako speaks up.

“Mending should get rid of that crease, if you like.” Taako says.

Angus just smiles and shakes his head. “It just proves it’s used.”

He shrugs, looking down at his crystal, and Kravitz nudges him. It causes Taako to huff and hold out the crystal. A flyer for a recreational soccer team is displayed.

Join the new Neverwinter recreational soccer league! Ages 10-14. Help your kids make new memories and friends- Create everlasting bonds!

Angus frowns, “what’s this?”

“Soccer team. Was looking for one in the area when we started looking for potential houses to move to. Planned on signing you up.”

Tears begin to well up in his eyes again, and Angus finds himself frustrated. Not with Taako, no, of course not. Not now, not with this. But with himself, and how emotional he’s being.

Because he’s been talking about Caleb Cleveland books at Taako for so long now, and he’d always assumed he’d only been tolerating it. But Caleb Cleveland was a part of a soccer team- it wasn’t even a big part of the books. Angus has probably only mentioned it once or twice. And yet, Taako specifically looked for a soccer team and-

“Thank you, Taako!” He grins, and the way Taako’s ears are flickering, he knows he’s embarrassed.

“Just thought you could use the exercise. You know, you can’t be running around solving crimes if you can’t run.”

The smile doesn’t leave his face as he snarks back, “but sir, you never do physical training and you saved the world.”

“I just transmute my legs to be strong and fast if I need it. Or get Magnus to carry me.”

He leans further onto Kravitz, who smiles. “Or he just calls me to pick him up.”

“Exactly!”

Snuggling back into his chair, Angus holds the book close to his chest, “thank you, really, sir.”

“Come on, little dude. We’ve been over this. The ‘sir’ thing is so formal.”

“Would you prefer me to call you ‘sappy bitch’?” He turns up his fake innocent charm, the one he uses often on cases, as he says it.

Kravitz bursts out laughing, and he can hear Barry and Lup in the kitchen do the same.

Taako flares up, pointing an accusing finger at him, “who taught you that kind of fucking language!”

“I’ve always known curse words!”

“Not in my house!” Taako stands, and Angus climbs out of the chair and starts running. He knows what will happen if Taako catches him, so he runs to Barry, calling out for help.

Barry, the traitor, only holds him still so Taako can grab him and ruffle his hair. He begins yelling at Barry, cursing his name, but it’s hard to get the words out through his laughter.

Kravitz is the one who saves him, pulling him out of their arms and holding him high in the air. “Do not assault the child, please.”

Taako steps towards Kravitz, “you heard what he called me, didn’t you?”

“And he was right.”

Taako’s affronted gasp is so loud, it must scratch at his throat as he begins coughing.

Angus is giggling, kicking his dangling feet lightly in the air.

Whatever Lup is pulling off the stove smells delicious, and he cannot wait to begin eating.

As they sit down, Taako looks over at him and says, "you know, you should be careful about accepting a teaching job at Lucas's lame school. Taako here is working on a much cooler idea, and he could use a smart kid like you, if you can pass the rigorous application process."

"What is it?" Angus asks, getting excited. He hasn't heard Taako talking about anything like this.

"Top secret."

Angus laughs, "it won't be for long!"

"You're pre-emptively fired, then."

"Wait-"

#angus mcdonald #taako #lup #barry bluejeans #taz balance #my works

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wonderful-wells-writing · 3 years

Text

Fanclub; Chapter 1

EoWells x Reader

Some of the STAR Labs employees have a secret fanclub where they discuss Harrison Wells and share pictures they take when they think he isn't looking. Problem is it's not quite as secret as they think it is. The man himself seems to have taken an interest in the the little group, finding it to be the perfect place to find willing partners to satisfy his needs. And you're his next pick.

Work is dying down for the evening at STAR Labs. Chemists are checking that all the storage units are set to the proper temperatures. Engineers are making sure that everything that needs to be powered down is. Lab techs are cleaning up their stations. But nearly everybody is discussing their plans for the weekend.

There is one worker who is not engaging in such conversations. You are currently crammed between two sections of machinery, determined to get this wiring finished before leaving for the day. That way, Monday, bright and early your team can start doing test runs.

You are not engaging in conversation with others but rather are talking to yourself as you work. “Some red over here, blue wire over there.” Your grin would light up the room if anybody could see it. “I just love when a color-coded array comes together.” There’s a buzz on your right butt-cheek, and you squeal in surprise.

“Everything alright in there?” One of the other scientists looks up from the desk.

“Yeah, Bri,” you extract yourself from the machine parts. “My phone just went off, and I thought something shocked me.”

“Girl, I can not tell you how often that happens to me,” Bri takes her purse from a drawer and a jacket off the chair. “So, what are your plans for the weekend. More number crunching?”

You pull your phone from your back pocket. “Actually my college roommate is having a bachelorette party tonight. So I said I would swing by the bar for a bit.”

“Sounds fun,” Bri gives a wave before heading to the door. “Don’t party too hard.”

She returns the wave before opening a group chat app on her phone to see what the notification is about.

KittyCat42; O.M.G did you see Dr. Wells today? a shirt THAT tight can not be workplace appropriate!!!

Attached is a photo taken from a smartphone at an angle in which the subject does not seem to be aware their picture is being taken. Dr. Harrison Wells is leaning over a desk, examining something on a monitor. Kitty is right; his shirt is very tight, his biceps bulge through the long black sleeves.

You grin, considering sending a reply, but another message comes in first.

YummyBitch73; Think he’s got plans? Looking that good, he’s got to be going out tonight.

Your thumbs move across the screen to type a quick response.

BabyDoll14; Maybe he has a date tonight?

KittyCat42; wonder who the lucky girl is?

You lean against a nearby workbench, smirking at the screen.

---

On the other side of the lab, somebody picks up their phone to check the barrage of notifications coming in. They chuckle before adding their own two cents.

Speedy22: Hey, who knows, it could be a lucky guy.

YummyBitch73: Oh you wish, he is a lady killer through and through

BabyDoll14: I mean, who are we to judge if it’s a lucky lady or gent. Maybe he swings one way, maybe he swings both ways. Who cares, we’re just here to talk about his ass behind his back.

“Speedy’ nods, almost respecting the woman on the other side of the screen for staying objective about objectifying her boss.

Speedy22: Speaking of ass, I got this one yesterday

He opens his gallery and scrolls until an ‘appropriate picture is found. A nice shot of Dr. Wells from behind; the quality is incredible for a smartphone shot. The man’s shirt is riding up, showing a nice strip of the skin of his back, even a bit of where his boxers rise above the waistband of his hands.

YummyBitch73: Damn Speedy, you always get the good ones. You’ll have to teach me some photography lessons sometime.

KittyCat42: what kind of camera are you using? The quality is so gooooood.

“Hey,” a woman’s voice draws his attention away from his device. “Are you staying late again tonight?”

Harrison Wells takes a breath to look her up and down, mentally running through his mind all the employees to try and remember who it is at his office door. “I’ll be headed out soon; I just have to wrap some things up.”

He recalls who she is when he sees the look she’s giving him. Brianna Masters, a specialist working down in Lab C. She would have had to go out of her way to get to his office before leaving. Self-proclaimed president of the Dr. Wells Fanclub, he had just been interacting with the group chat of; after the former president left with a job offer at Mercury Labs. She had been making goo-goo eyes at him since her interview three months ago.

“Well,” Bri twirls a curl of her hair, fluttering her eyelashes. “Harrison, you know I was wondering if you might like to take me out to get some drinks tonight?”

Dr. Wells tries to hide his displeasure at the thought. She wasn’t his type, physically, mentally, emotionally, “I have plans in the morning that require a clear head. Miss. Masters. Now is there anything of importance that you need?” The man was not adverse to flights of fancy to pass the time; he wouldn’t be keeping an eye on the little Fanclub of his if he wasn’t willing to look for ‘interested parties,’ but this particular woman has been of no real interest to him.

For reasons such as how she pouts at his response, “Well, having fun is important.” She mutters before wandering off down the hall, turning her attention to her phone.

YummyBitch73; holy Shit! He just asked me out for drinks. It sucks so much that I have to drive out to Coast City; I”d have taken him up in a heartbeat otherwise.

----

Back in Lab C, you finally finish with the maintenance on the machine. You check your phone once more while heading over to the desk and nearly cackle at what you’re reading. Everybody knows that Bri is full of shit, but there’s no point in calling it out and causing discourse.

You mute the phone to focus on your computer. While humming a quiet tune, you work on moving files to the USB stick plugged into the monitor.

“Fuck,” you whisper, seeing the download time in comparison to the clock on the screen. Of course, you could just leave it be, take the weekend off. It’s not like you get paid extra to run calculations at home.

17 minutes later

“Nonononono, wait, please!” You’re half running to the street as the bus pulls away, leaving you in the illuminated circle of a streetlamp, cursing yourself. That was going to be the last bus coming this way for the night. If you walk home, you’ll never make it in time to change for the party. You might not even make the event at all. You pace up and down the sidewalk, contemplating your options.

A car pulls up beside you, tinted window rolling down, “Need a lift?”

You stop, shocked, “Oh, no I…” you pause, looking through the window, “Dr. Wells, hi...hey.” You swallow your pride. “I would really love to get a ride on-with, with you.” Internally you cringe at how that came out, but figure he probably wouldn’t have heard such a minor slip.

The lock clicks open, and you reach for the door.

“Maple Apartments on South 11th street, right?” Harrison glances at you as you get in the car.

You pause before shutting the door, “do I want to know how you know that?”

He laughs, and you jump a bit at it, “I can see how that would sound a little suspicious.” His smile is reassuring, and his blue eyes are kind behind his glasses. “It was on your registration forms when you started. I enter new employee data myself. Total recall can be useful even for small matters.”

You breathe a sigh of relief, shutting the door and buckling in. “I really appreciate this Dr. Wells, I would have been so late tonight if I didn’t get home to change soon.”

“Bit plans tonight?” Harrison asks as he starts driving. Truth is he had suspected you’d be missing her bus. He had seen you running after the last bus or driven past you walking home numerous times out his way out. You had quite the habit of working until the absolute last moment.

You smile, twiddling your thumbs to keep your hands occupied. “Yeah, I’m meeting a friend at the new bar that opened down the street from my place. She’s getting married soon, and since I can’t make the wedding, I promised I would spend at least a couple hours at her bachelorette party.” You aren’t exactly sure why you’re volunteering this information to your boss. It would be inappropriate to be so casual with him; then again, it’s also inappropriate to be part of a Fanclub that secretly takes pictures of him and talks about how great his ass looks.

Harrison ‘hmms’ in thought. “Why can’t you make it to the wedding?” He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, taking a moment to take in the way you sit, act, look, before returning his eyes to the road.

“Oh, they scheduled it for a Wednesday, so,” you look towards him just moments after he looks away. The first thing you notice is his hair; whenever you’ve seen him in the morning, it’s perfectly combed and straight, but it seems like as the day went on, it began to take on a life of its own. While the back is still nice and neat, the front is sticking out in all kinds of directions.

“You could have asked for the day off,” Dr. Wells offers, “Am I such a terrible boss that you think I”d deny you some vacation after all your hard work?”

You feel a heat rise to your cheeks at what seems to be a compliment to her work ethic, “Oh no, I don’t think that at all. It’s just that, well, we have so much work to do. Every day we get a little closer to your dreams of the particle accelerator, and I want to contribute absolutely everything I can to that dream.” You smile. “You’re going to do such incredible things for the world of science Dr. Wells, and I don’t want to waste any time that could be spent helping you.”

The man is somewhat stunned by this. He’d attributed her long hours and determination to personal ambition. “What about you? Do you want history to remember you for your achievements?”

You bite your lower lip in thought at the question, “I mean sure, it would be nice to be recognized for my contribution, but,” she takes a deep breath, “I’m more concerned about how my work will impact the world, not so much if I’m remembered for it. Anyways you’re the true genius. I can tell that STAR Labs will make big changes and put humanity on a path towards the future. As long as I get to be a part of that, it’s all I really need.”

Harrison does a low chuckle at your sentiment, amused by the naivety. You speak with such hope and wonder and admiration. If you knew the truth, how horrified would you be? The realization of the end goal of the particle accelerator, the effects across history that your determination would wreak.

He grins, “Well, I am glad to have such a dedicated employee, but I do believe that one off day is not going to hurt our progress.”

You purse your lips, “You don’t come down to Lab C very often; you’d be surprised how off the rails things can go when I’m not there. Anyways I would rather work than go to a wedding. It’s not my kind of scene.”

He can sense that you are holding something back but doesn’t press the issue any further. He’s reached your apartment building anyways.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be more than happy to give you the time off,” he says as he parks.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you reach for the door handle, “oh, and thank you so much for the ride. I really owe you one.”

Dr. Wells makes a mental note about cashing in that favor later. “You just stay safe and enjoy yourself tonight.” He smiles warmly at you as you wave goodbye, but when the door shuts, his grin turns a bit darker. He watches you walk away, eyes tracing the curve of your figure, resting on the beautiful shape of your rear, right up until you disappear into your building.

As he begins to drive away, he catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror. There is something about this form of his that seems to drive the ladies crazy, and he wasn’t opposed to taking advantage of that. While pulling back into the street and driving away, he thinks on his situation.

For 13 years now, Eobard Thawne has been trapped in this god-forsaken time period. For a while, he had focused solely on his mission, rarely interacting with others unless it served a greater purpose. But he was still a man, subject to desire. At first, it was almost enough to make him regret allowing Harrison Well’s wife to die, she could have filled his needs easily. But that woman had been intelligent; she’d have discovered his identity eventually, so allowing her to die had been for the best.

Still, after a few years of isolation, Thawne had found the need unbearable and began seeing ways to fill the hole that was forming in his chest. Little flings, one-off nights where he indulged his carnal side, allowed himself the pleasure of another’s body before quickly parting ways with them, when he discovered that a fanclub devoted to him had been formed amongst his employees, that made the whole thing easier.

Joining the group chat under a false name was easy enough. It inflated his ego every time he read them discussing how great they thought he looked, and he was more than happy to provide material for them to gush over. And with that, it was like he had been given a list of women who would fuck him with no questions asked. All he had to do was choose. Of course, he has to be wary of those who might get too clingy or go off telling other people. But it’s not that hard to week those types out of the pack.

Thawne notices magenta neon as he’s driving. A club with a grand opening sign out front. He smiles, knowing that now not only does he have a new prey lure in, but the perfect hunting ground as well.

#eowells x reader #eowells fanfiction #harrison wells x reader #harrison wells fanfiction #eowells #harrison wells #jade writes

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letarasstuff · 3 years

Text

Breaking Protocol

(A/N): This was requested by an anon. I hope you like it, I really enjoyed writing for JJ for the first time :)

Summary: What will happen, if JJ isn't technically allowed to tell her family about the Anthrax Attack, but tries to do it anyways?

Warnings: Mentions of a sick child, Spencer eats Jell-O, so food

Wordcount: 1.8k

✨Masterlist✨ __________________________________

JJ always says that even though she is a communication liaison for the FBI, she is a mother first. This is something she promised her daughter when she first began to work there. And she is set on keeping that promise.

But today it turns out to be more difficult than ever. Hotch’s strict instruction to keep the information about the Anthrax Attack in the circle of the BAU and the military forbids the mother to say anything to her family. Still, her family is constantly on her mind.

If she is right, Will planned a trip with one year old Henry and 14 years old (Y/N) to the park. JJ can’t think about anything but her most important people in the world laying in the ER, coughing their lungs out and spluttering blood, while she is stuck at the office with the power to warn them.

Spencer comes into her office, asking for a certain file. “Spence, what would you do if your family is in potential danger?” He stops for a second to think about it: “Given the fact that my mother is in a sanctorium with guards and medical staff, I consider her pretty low risk and can’t put myself in a situation where she is in real danger. So I take all of you and since I see you as my family and the people that keep me going I think I would do anything to keep you safe.”

She looks up at him with her blue eyes. “Even if it means to break protocol?” “Especially if it means to break protocol”, he answers her firmly, exactly knowing what she means. Spencer knows that her little family means the world and more to her. If anything happens to them she would never be the same.

Meanwhile JJ sits there contemplating putting her job on the line for an eventually that maybe isn’t even true, Will runs around the house frantically.

“Maybe I can go and get some? I’m sure we can’t disturb mom at work”, (Y/N) suggests as she tries to console the crying Henry in her arms. Her stepdad considers the offer. They originally wanted to go to the park to have a small picnic and maybe even invite JJ to meet them there on her lunch break. But Henry caught something overnight and the only thing he does is crying and puking.

Will is looking for any kind of medicine, but he can’t find anything appropriate for children. “I guess you are right. Do you know which one we need? I’ll try to get him to sleep or calm down at least. Thank you so much, (Y/N), you are a lifesaver.”

“Of course, I do anything. When I get lost or something at the pharmacy I can still call you, right?” He nods while taking his son out of her arms in order for her to be able to put on her shoes. “Good, then see you soon. I’ll hurry up.”

(Y/N) takes her bike and decides to use the shortcut through the park. It’s a nice sunny day with a warm soft breeze going through the bushes. In moments like these the teenager knows that the world is alright. That somehow everything will be good. Always.

Buying the needed medicine for her baby brother takes place without any complications and soon she is back on track with her bike. Shortly before reaching her house, the teenager’s phone is ringing.

In case that Will needs something else (Y/N) has turned her ringtone on. Surprisingly it’s her mother, she sees after descending her bike and looks at the caller ID.

“Hey Mom, is everything ok? Did something happen?” As sad as this may sound, but in 90% it’s the case that she was hurt on her job or anybody else when she calls (Y/N) during her workday.

But JJ is relieved to hear her daughter safe and sound. “(Y/N), honey. Everything is fine. Did you go to the park with Henry and Will?” Slowly the girl continues her way back, pushing her bike. “No, we didn’t. Henry got sick overnight, so there is no way we could have taken him. I think it’s just a stomach bug. Will and I couldn’t find any medicine for him, so I did a quick run to the pharmacy. I’m actually on my way back right now. Why are you calling?”

Once again the mother tries to not answer her question. “Aw, poor Henry. Can you tell him that Mommy will be home soo- Wait, to which pharmacy did you go?”

Puzzled by her mother’s sudden harsh tone (Y/N) stops in her tracks. “Mom, what’s the problem? You never call me during work except when something happens. Is anybody in the hospital? Did you get kidnapped? Is this your last call to a loved one? Mom, answer me!” Panic sets in as the silence grows from JJ’s side.

“Honey, please tell me you didn’t go to the one on West Street. Please.” Her begging tone alarms the teenager further. Is this a clue?

“I did, Mom. I took my bike, went through the park to West Street. It’s the closest one and Henry really doesn’t feel good, so I had to hurry up. Can you please tell me what’s going on?!” But her mother stays quiet for several moments, as if she is calculating something.

Being finally fed up with her, (Y/N) speaks again: “If you don’t want to tell me anything, don’t bother call-” She is suddenly cut off by a huge coughing fit.

“(Y/N)? Honey, are you ok?” The agent’s mind goes into momma bear mode, completely ignoring any protocol in the world. But her daughter isn’t able to answer. Too stunned is she by the fact that she just coughed up blood. How is that poss-

“(Y/N), please answer me”, she begs again. “M-mom, I just c-coughed blood.” JJ feels like her heart stops. This can’t be happening.

“Stay calm, (Y/N). I- There- I’ll send people to you. They will come and get you. They will explain to you what this is, they know more about it than I do. I’ll call Will and tell him that you are not coming home. Penelope will ping your phone, just don’t move.”

After a few more reassuring words JJ hangs up and bolts into Hotch’s office. “Hotch, (Y/N) got infected, she rode her bike through the park and back to get medicine for Henry and I told her to stay where she is. That somebody is going to get he-”

Aaron stops her rambling by putting both hands on her shoulder. “I’ll let Doctor Kimura know. Meet them at the hospital.” “Bu-” Again he cuts the blonde off. “No buts. You always say that you are a mother first. Your family, especially your daughter, needs you now more than ever. Go and be a mother.”

Encouraged by her boss’ words she makes her way to her car, simultaneously calling Will to let him know what’s happening.

Shortly after this the small family sits in a hospital room. (Y/N) lays passed out on the bed, paler than anybody has her ever seen. JJ grasps her hand, mentally kicking herself for not calling sooner. For letting regulations destroy her family. Will holds Henry, who finally is asleep, in his arms and tries to console his girlfriend.

“You weren’t allowed to say anything. Also, I wanted to go to another park if Henry wasn’t sick. There was absolutely nothing you could have done differently.” His accent is thicker than ever.

Before she is able to respond, a nurse enters the room with an inhaler in hand. “What is this?” Ever since (Y/N) was admitted to the hospital, the mother is careful to know what they give her and what not.

“This is a cure for this strand, Doktor Reid found it in Nichol’s office. We already tested it and it’s 100% effective.” More or less convinced JJ let’s the nurse do her job, watching her every move like a hawk.

And then they wait again. And wait. And wait for the cure to kick in. For (Y/N) to open her eyes. To be able to form a sentence. A coherent sentence without being interrupted by a coughing fit.

Once JJ leaves her bed reluctantly, Will forces her to take a walk and get a coffee from the cafeteria. On her way back she visits Spencer’s room, who is already awake.

“Hey Spence”, she smiles softly at him. He stops shoving a cup of Jell-O into his mouth to smile back. “Hi. How is (Y/N) doing?” A frown quickly spreads onto her face. “Still not awake. But the doctors say she will be fine. I wanted to thank you. If you wouldn’t have put your life on the line, none of the others would be alive. Thank you, for saving my daughter”, at the end the blonde’s voice breaks. She can’t imagine a life without her oldest child. Without anyone of her family.

“Hey, it’s alright. (Y/N) is fine. I’m fine. Everybody got their own happy end. Now go back to her, I’m sure she’ll wake up in no time.” She nods and gives him a hug before going back to (Y/N)’s room. There she sits back in her seat, handing her boyfriend his own cup of coffee.

A few minutes later a small groan is heard. “Can anybody turn off the sun? It’s unbelievably bright today.” Not registering what’s really happening, the teenager finds herself in a big family hug with Henry on her chest. “Woah, did I fall asleep during our picnic or something?”

JJ smiles through her tears of relief, seeing her daughter being her confused self again. “No, I’ll explain it to you later. Get some more rest, we’ll stay with you.” “Rest, this sounds nice.” Just a few minutes later (Y/N) is asleep again.

Luckily both she and Spencer make a quick recovery and even get a “Welcome Back to the Living” Party (organized by the one and only Penelope Garcia). From this moment on JJ makes sure to warn her family one way or another. Hotch generously lets it slip, acting like he doesn’t know about it after this close of a call.

In the end the only thing that matters is that they all are back to being healthy and make up for the missed picnic.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch

#jennifer jareau x reader #jennifer jareau x daughter!reader #jennifer jareau x teen!reader #jj x reader #jj x daughter!reader #jj x teen!reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid #x reader #insert reader #x teen!reader #x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner

340 notes · View notes

r1ntaros · 3 years

Text

home // c.jh

Pairing: mafia!jongho x fem!reader

Word count: 5.7k

Genre: slight angst, fluff

Warning/s: language, mentions of weapons, food, blood and kissing

Prompts:

17 - “I don’t think that’s legal, but we can work around it.”

41 - “Don’t touch that.” five minutes later. “Oh, I… uhm… I broke it.”

47 - “Is that… is that your blood?

masterlist

Jongho woke up to a commotion happening downstairs. Now out of his bed, he can’t hear anything but the sounds of rushed footsteps and loud speaking voices. Everyone is rushing, the aroma of food lingering around and most importantly, Park Seonghwa, his boss, barking orders to every single household worker as they do the job he asked them to. He tried to peek down but his grogginess is getting the best of him, taking a lazy peek and nearly slipping down the railings if he hadn’t caught himself in time.

He heard another footsteps coming from his right so he took a glance, only to see his half-brother, Yunho, walking towards him with a bright look on his face. It seems like he’s been awake for quite some time now because he’s already dressed in a soft blue cashmere sweater and a black ripped jeans. Confused with his surroundings, Jongho asked, “You’re awake early, what’s happening downstairs?”

His older brother shrugged, “You know.. Just getting ready,”

“Getting ready for what?” Jongho tried to remember his schedule, thinking if he had missed another day for another mission but all he can remember is the biggest ball happening three weeks from now.

Yunho must’ve sensed his confusion and he ruffled his younger brother’s hair, “The little princess is coming home so everyone’s preparing for it.” He tried to comb his hair just to make it look a little bit presentable and added, “Seonghwa hyung let you sleep in more so that you’ll at least be prepared for your one and only love’s arrival.”

Jongho swatted his hands away and glared at his brother, “You could’ve woken me up so I’ll have more time to freshen up.”

“Well, you’re awake now so go!” His older brother pushed him back in his room, adding a little bit more force making him stumble in the floor. If he hadn’t caught himself in time, you’ll see a sleepy Choi Jongho trying to stand up after getting face planted.

He did his morning routine but this time with extra caution. As much as possible, he wants to impress the woman he’s been trying to bag ever since he met her as a kid. He undid his hair a lot of times until just settling to putting it in a slick back manner.

Maybe she likes men who show their foreheads now, he thought as he carefully gelled up his baby hairs.

He settled for a plain black shirt and a black pants to go with so it wouldn’t be too obvious that he’s dressing up for her. He took one last glance of himself and when he’s finally content, he made his way downstairs.

Seonghwa was the first person to see him while he’s in the middle of feeding his own child. He noticed that Jongho styled his hair a bit more than he usually does making him smirk. He calculated Jongho’s activities before calling him out, “Hey apple boy.”

Jongho froze a bit then glared at his boss, “I thought I made it clear to stop calling me that?”

Satisfied with the reaction, Seonghwa just laughed, smiling when his daughter giggled at the sound of her father laughing. He stroked her cheek with his finger then gave Jongho a piercing look to which the other returned, “I have a test for you though.”

Jongho slightly tensed but Seonghwa proceeded to speak, “I would like to know where your loyalty lies.”

Turning his back and continuing his cereal shenanigans, Jongho answered, “My loyalty is dedicated to your sister.”

Seonghwa couldn’t help but laugh, deeming Jongho as a keeper, “Welcome to the family, apple boy.” He said as he placed the dishes his own little family used for eating.

The younger slammed his hand at the table as he yelled, “Stop calling me that!”

Seonghwa’s little daughter just giggled and pointed at her uncle and said, “Apple boy!” Earning laughs from the people around them, specifically his friends.

Jongho just lets out a sigh knowing that he doesn’t have the heart to fight his little niece.

“Is she really going to arrive today?” Jongho’s glad that it was San who first snapped out of his impatience as they’ve been doing nothing but sitting in the living room as they wait for Seonghwa’s little sister to arrive.

The older brother himself is just as impatient as he glanced at his phone and frowned, “She told me she’s arriving today.”

Wooyoung let out a huff and said, “I swear if she doesn’t arrive I’m gonna eat the steak all by myself!”

However, as if by miracle, the sound of engine revving outside could be heard and the main security of the manor started barking out orders to those who were outside. Seonghwa’s daughter stood up first and ran to the door, her father following her then the rest.

Truly, outside, is the person they’ve all been waiting for. Helping the workers unload her things even if they didn’t ask for her help. She noticed the commotion at the front door and immediately rushed as her big brother who opened his arms for her to run into.

“I missed you!” She squealed as she tightened her hold in his waist, earning a groan from Seonghwa, “You became more handsome, big bro. Fatherhood suits you.” It earned a smile from Seonghwa who planted a kiss on her forehead as a welcome.

Her niece then started jumping up and down, “Auntie y/n!” She squealed, her arms raised, “Auntie y/n!”

The female smiled and lifted her up and poked her nose, “Hello, little Luna. I brought lots of gifts for you!”

Luna lets out a happy sound as Seonghwa sighed and took his own daughter in his arms. She was welcomed by the others who she fooled around with until she saw the man that she’s been wanting to see ever since she found out that she can finally go home.

“Hey, Jongho.” She said with a smile on her face to which the other returned, “Hi.”

And then silenced followed them after that.

No one dared to speak as they just stared at each other.. the others expecting a lot more than just the greetings but they grew impatient, especially San and groaned, “Guys, for the love of God, stop eye fucking each other!”

“We’re not eye fucking!” Jongho defended as he glared at the older, “It’s what you call appreciating each other’s presence.”

The others just laughed at his lame attempt at defending himself and Hongjoong just place his hand on his shoulders and said, “Since the both of you are appreciating each other’s presence, we would also appreciate it if you accompany our lovely y/n from Paris to her own room so she can rest.”

It’s been a good two weeks ever since y/n had arrived and to say that things are going crazy is a total understatement especially since it’s Jongho who usually gets involved.

One time it was in the middle of the night, somewhere around 3am when she disturbed Jongho in the middle of his gaming hours and said, “Jongho, I need you to accompany me to Mcdonald's and steal a thousand of their chicken nuggets.”

Jongho gave her a weird look, “I don’t think that’s legal,” he said making the girl whine and say, “You’ve done much more worst illegal things than what I-”

Not letting her finish her tantrum party, Jongho took his black card out of his wallet and said, “But we can work around it. Instead of stealing, how about I buy you the hundred pieces of chicken nuggets?”

Y/n just pouted and negotiated, “Two hundred?”

The male let out a sigh of defeat and said, “Fine. Let’s go.”

She let out a squeal full of excitement and instead of going back to her room to grab some warm clothes, she opened Jongho’s wardrobe to grab one of his hoodies and wear it.

Jongho admits, she looks good with it but he just wants to tease her, “Hey, you’re not allowed to wear my clothes.”

“Wha-” She had a look of disbelief in her face, “Since when?!” She screeched making the male in front of her laugh.

“Ever since you chose Paris over me.”

An exasperated gasp was heard between the two of them then suddenly, Jongho’s holding a clinging y/n, “Jongie, I’m so sorry but you know I’m doing it for our future babies.”

Jongho furiously blushed but he raised an eyebrow, “Future babies?”

“Yes, the future offspring of ours.”

“What makes you think that I want an offspring with you?” He deadpanned making the girl in his arms whine again, “C’mon Jjong, I know you love me.”

“I don’t.”

“You do!”

“Nope.” He said popping the p out.

Y/n whined even more, “You doooo!” She insisted with a pout.

Jongho broke his facade and laughed, “Okay maybe I do.”

She gasped and gave him an expression like she’s been scandalized, “Maybe?! Just maybe?!”

“I’m still not sure about it,” Jongho teased and puts her down on the floor, “Now, nuggets?”

She squealed and immediately made her way downstairs faster than Jongho making him laugh.

God she’s infuriating but I love her a lot, he thought with a smile as he grabbed his car keys and made his way downstairs where his little nuisance was waiting for him.

It was around 9:30pm when their meeting ended. Jongho has made his way out of the planning room and proceeded to go to his own room to freshen up and play some games.

He immediately started a hot shower and did his own little concert at the same time. Deeming his tensed muscles are finally loose, his vocal cords strained and his body thoroughly cleaned, he went out of the bathroom to get changed only to scream in shock when he saw y/n sitting down in his gaming chair, looking equally shocked as him.

“Goodness Jongho, for a mafia assassin you sure do get scared easily.” Y/n said when she had finally calmed down from the initial shock her crush had given her.

Jongho glared at her and defended himself, “Who wouldn't get shocked if I suddenly saw an intruder in my room with my computer turned on, especially when I don’t remember turning it on.”

Y/n just let out a small hmph and said, “Go wear your clothes.”

“Get out.”

“No.”

Jongho deadpanned and tried to be as threatening as possible, “Are you going out or do I have to throw you myself out.”

Y/n squirmed in her seat and retorted, “But your gaming chair is so comfy!” She then lit up and said, “You go get dressed while I play phasmophobia!”

“Are you sure you’re going to play phasmophobia?” The male asked with a smirk and couldn’t help but laugh at the eager nod he received as he got dressed.

—

After playing one round of phasmophobia, Jongho holds a shaken up y/n as they eat their midnight snacks and watches the movie he put up on his TV.

Jongho couldn’t help but laugh at her state, “Don’t say I didn’t ask you if you were sure about playing it.”

Y/n sniffled, “Shut up, I didn’t know it was that scary.”

He just giggled and planted a kiss on the crown of her head, “Want to sleep here and cuddle or do you want me to carry you to your room and keep you company until you fall asleep?”

Tightening her hold on his waist, she shook her head, “Want to sleep here and your cuddles.” She answered, making Jongho smile softly and said, “I’m here baby, now go eat your fries.”

The next day, y/n stayed a bit more in his room after waking up as she watched her favorite anime on Jongho’s huge TV. He can’t blame her though, Seonghwa hasn’t set up her whole room so it’s kind of boring and dead still.

Jongho was once again in the shower, freshening himself up. She waited for thirty minutes and that’s when a freshly bathed Jongho, wearing a plain white shirt and sweatpants, emerged from the bathroom.

He planted a kiss on her cheek and said, “I’ll be right back.”

It seemed like he caught her attention as she pouted in his direction, “Where the fuck are you going?”

He snorted, “I’m just gonna go to the storage room and have one of my guns fixed.” He replied as he grabbed a bag that was hidden under his closet, “I swear I’ll be right back.”

“Can I not just come with you?”

With her sporting a puppy eyed look, Jongho knows that he can’t resist her. He lets out a sigh, “Fine, as long as you don’t do anything stupid or accidentally shoot me in the head or something.”

—

Y/n, somehow, did ended up doing something stupid.

But it wasn’t as severe as he had expected her to do.

Jongho sometimes forgot that she’s like a child who needs to be under supervision.

He was just having one of his guns cleaned, entertaining y/n by answering her questions regarding the mafia life that Seonghwa refuses to get her involved when she looked at one of the enormous pistols that’s currently in Jongho’s ownership.

Not missing a beat, he warned her, “Hey, don’t touch that.” Thinking that she listened to him like an obedient girl she is, he went to the back room to grab more stuff to clean his weapons and fix the gun that had y/n’s attention earlier.

He went back to the main room and was satisfied to see y/n sitting down on one of the couches Jongho told her so. He proceeded to clean his stuff and five minutes later, he decided to fix the gun.

Looking around, he asked, “Y/n, where’s the gun?”

The girl had a terrified look on her face and Jongho knew, he just knew that something had happened, “Oh, I uhm..” She stuttered, refusing to meet Jongho in the eyes, “I broke it.”

“How the fuck-” Jongho shook his head, “You know what, never mind. Just show me where you placed it then I’ll see what I can do.”

Y/n pointed at the drawer and Jongho opened it then examined the gun she claimed that she broke.

It only ended up getting even more loose on the part where the shells should be inserted and Jongho fixed it without having any more problems and y/n watching him do his work obediently.

A day before the mafia’s big day, Jongho was called by Seonghwa in the office. It’s only 7am that time so him being summoned by the big boss at his office at this early hour means that it’s a serious matter. He was given thirty minutes to freshen himself up but this time, he resorted to washing his face, brushing his teeth and breaking an apple into half using his bare hands.

He knocked at Seonghwa’s office, hearing a muffled squeal from Luna inside and then the door was opened, “Good morning uncle Jjongi!” She squealed and he placed his index finger in his lips and said, “Indoor voice, Luna. Not everyone is awake yet.”

The young girl placed her hand on her mouth, a muffled “oops” coming from her as she immediately rushed back to her playpen inside her father’s office.

He entered the office silently, only seeing Seonghwa with his hair down unlike his usual slicked back hairdo with his eyeglasses perked up in his nose. However, he wasn’t alone. Y/n was sitting in one of his couches in the office, hugging her knees close to her chest, looking as problematic as her brother.

“Did something happen?” He asked as he gave y/n the other half of the apple he’s holding, receiving a silent thank you from her. Jongho gave her a small smile then diverted his attention to her brother as he sat down on the chair in front of his table, “A penny for your thoughts, hyung?”

Seonghwa removed his glasses and massaged his temple and said, “Someone has y/n’s information and was planning to attack here in the manor by the time we leave tomorrow for the ball.” He opened a folder containing the files and information regarding the plotted attack, “I don’t know what to do. I’m planning to bring her along with us but that means she can get totally exposed to the mafia world. If I were to leave her alone here, it’s quite risky because you know.. Despite this place being my second guarded establishment, there’s still a 1% chance out of 99 that it can still be infiltrated. I can’t just make any of you stay here with her because that means I have to redo the plan for tomorrow.”

Jongho weighed his options for a while and said, “You actually can leave one of us here instead, hyung.”

Seonghwa looked at him as if he had grown another head, “You know I don’t function well when the eight of us are not complete. I even have to bring Yeosang alone with us even if he works in the mafia’s internal functions!”

“Yes I know, but think about it. Will you rather not function properly or live along, carrying the guilt that you could’ve saved your sister’s life by letting at least one of us stay here?” Jongho took one big bite of the remaining edible parts of his apple and threw it in the bin near Luna, making the girl amazed that her uncle was able to shoot it right there, “You’re bringing Luna and your wife back to her brother’s territory right? Why don’t I drop them off to her brother’s territory so I can bring y/n with me then we’ll go to my penthouse in the downtown.”

The mafia boss looked baffled, “You’re volunteering yourself to stay?!” He exclaimed and scoffed, “Jongho out of all people you-”

“Play the most important part in the mafia, I know.” He then glanced at y/n who just shrunk at her place even more, “But y/n plays the most important part in my life and I just want her to be safe.” Jongho said it in a quiet voice, enough for only Seonghwa to hear but he forgot how Seonghwa had told his own daughter to listen sharply in conversations and use her sharp ears well. It’s helpful most of the time but it brings them in trouble.

And now is one of those times. Luna suddenly gasped and pointed at Jongho, “Uncle Jjongie likes auntie!” She shrieks and clapped with a cute smile of hers, “Cousin, I want a baby cousin!”

Seonghwa face palmed himself, “Oh my goodness,” he then picked up Luna and placed him on his lap, “Luna what did daddy tell you before?”

Luna pouts and plays with her father’s hand, “Never get involved with adult conversation.”

Her father smiled and kissed the side of her head, “Don’t do that again, okay?” Luna nodded. “Oki, daddy.”

He then gave Jongho a look who now had his face planted on the desk and he took a quick glance at his sister who seemed shocked by the sudden revelation. He pats Jongho in his forearm, “Since Luna caused a bit of an issue, I think letting you go with my sister wouldn’t hurt the mafia a bit.” A small smile suddenly broke out in his face, “Besides, you said that your loyalty lies within my sister. Now, prove it to me.”

“No daddy, I want to go with you!” Luna tightened her hold on her father as tears streamed down her cute little face. Seonghwa held a pained look in his face as he tried his best to not fall for his daughter’s whines. He sat her down on the seat of Jongho’s audi and wiped her face, “Baby, you’ll be seeing me in three days time again. For now be good to your mom, okay?”

Luna nodded but then she asked, “Will mommy miss you too?”

Seonghwa’s wife laughed and planted a kiss on her daughter’s cheek, “Of course baby, mommy will miss daddy too. For now, be good to uncle Jongho and entertain him as he drives us to uncle Inseong’s place, okay?” Luna agreed to her mother’s statement, already standing near the driver’s seat where Jongho and y/n silently sat.

The tension between the two of them is not awkward but it’s full of repressed feelings that haven't been let out in the air. Jongho felt y/n’s hand crawling its way to his and gave it a squeeze of reassurance that they’ll talk and Jongho felt relieved that she’s willing to do so.

Now that Seonghwa had finished his temporary farewells to his little family, he went to Jongho’s side and smiled at him, “Take care of yourselves. I want my family to come back to me alive and whole.”

Jongho gave him a sincere smile, “I will, hyung. Finish the mission safely and look after my other big brother. Yunho can be quite clumsy when he’s on a killing streak.” They both laughed at that but still got an affirmation from his boss.

With finality, Jongho started to drive away from the manor.

He first dropped off Luna and her mother to the Kim territory before driving to his penthouse that is only used for undercover purposes or for times like this. It isn’t the first time that Jongho has his life on the line hence the reason why he doesn’t abandon this penthouse despite having been obligated to live in the manor.

He safely parked his car in his reserved parking space and helped y/n with her things. They didn’t talk, but it wasn’t an awkward silence as well. They rode the elevator that led to the highest floor in the building and Jongho punched in the password. Once his access was granted, he went inside along with y/n.

The girl behind him is so fascinated, “You own a place like this, wow.”

Jongho just smiled and put their bags down in the living room, “Your brother pays well.”

“How long do we have to stay here?” She said and ran her fingers in the framed pictures of him and his family along with his friends who now play the huge part in the mafia, “I kind of just want to stay here with you.” She added and giggled at the silly photo of the Ateez affiliates, especially when her own brother looked so offended with San and Wooyoung fooling around with him in the picture.

Jongho went behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He had done this a lot of times before but his affection hits differently now, “We can stay here as long as we want but Seonghwa said the maximum is one week.”

Plenty of time to talk, y/n thought and she glanced at Jongho over her shoulder, “Tired?” She asked and played with his hair.

The other shook his head a no, “Just enjoying your presence?”

“Should we move this to the bedroom?”

Jongho kept himself at a distance after that statement and looked at her teasingly, “I thought we’re going to talk?”

Y/n looked at him in disbelief, “Get your mind out of the gutter, we’re going to talk in the bedroom.” She said and elbowed Jongho at his side, earning a yelp of pain from him. She lets out a giggled and strutted towards what she assumed as Jongho’s room, the other just following her and guiding her when she nearly entered the wrong room.

Making herself comfortable in his bed, she called out for him, “Jjongie, cuddle me.”

Jongho lets out an amused snort, “I thought we’re going to talk?”

The female just glared at him and said, “We can cuddle while talking, you fucking asshole.” She pulled her down with him and said, “Beside, right after this talk we’ll be doing this a lot more.. hopefully.”

Jongho positioned himself properly and said, “Okay, what do you want to talk about first?”

Y/n did not speak for a while until she giggled, “Remember when we were kids? You gave me the last chocolate because you don't like sweets?”

The other laughed and ran his hand through her hair, “I remembered how you squealed so loud that your parents thought I was bullying you or something.” He suddenly breaks out into a smile, “I thought I was gonna die or something but then you helped me.”

She then took his other free hand and played with it, “We spent a lot of time growing up.”

“I know, we went through a lot of pain but I think the most painful one was when your parents announced that you have to go to Paris to study.” Jongho remembers that day clearly. He remembered how he comforted y/n as she cried into his arms, not wanting to leave her best friend behind.

But Jongho assured her, despite him getting teary, that he’ll wait for her no matter how long it takes for her to come back.

Jongho’s glad he did or else he wouldn’t have her here in his arms.

“You know, y/n, every single waking day without you, I always think of you. If you’re having fun, if you’re eating well or taking care of yourself. I even thought once if you’ve started dating someone and if you did, are you happy with him?” Jongho looked down only to see her looking up at him with eyes full of adoration, “Every single day, my feelings have not faded. I always planned the day where I’m going to tell you that I want to be with you. If you decided to go back to Paris, I’m willing to go back with you.”

“Jjongie, you’re being too serious.” Y/n teased as he poked his abdomen.

“You said we’re going to talk. You know that Luna just exposed me so I figured we’re going to talk about that.” He then huffed, “That brat.”

“Hey, don’t talk about my niece like that. She’s a sweetheart.”

“Yeah but her father spoils her too much. If she’s not just cute I would’ve flicked her forehead already.”

Y/n just laughed and then suddenly squirmed. She relocated herself and straddled Jongho’s hips, “I like you too.”

Jongho smirked, “Oh yeah?”

She rolled her eyes at him, “When I said I want to have babies with you, I really mean it.”

Wanting to teased her more, Jongho urged, “Really? I thought we were just platonic flirting?”

“Choi Jongho!”

“Alright, I’m just kidding, come here.” He said and pulled her close to his chest. “From now on, I’m going to protect you with my whole being. I’ll swear on it up until the day that I die.”

“So it means you’re my boyfriend now, right?”

“It’s so lame but yes.”

Y/n just hummed contentedly and planted small kisses on his jaw, making him laugh, “If you want to give me kisses might as well do it on my li–”

He was suddenly cut off when he was silenced by a hungry kiss. He was taken aback but he reciprocated it in no time after he came up with the initial shock. His hands traveled down her waist until he reached the hem of the hoodie she was wearing, to which he figured was his, and inserted his hands inside of it where he could feel the warmth of her skin.

She whimpered in his mouth, making him tighten his hold on her waist. Jongho felt her pinch the back of his neck which prompted him to bite her lower lip.

After they ran out of air, Jongho sat her properly in the bed and asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Thank you for your service.” Jongho bowed at the cashier who gave him no interest as he carried the plastic bag that contains their cup noodles, chips, sweets and drinks. He cupped his pants and some places in his body, making sure that his weapons are well hidden and secured.

Once he deemed himself secretly armed, he immediately went out and walked towards where his car was parked only to be grabbed by a hand to which he tried to resist until he felt a blade press towards his side.

“Where is she, Choi?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Who are you?”

He heard the person behind him and dug their knife deeper in his side. He felt his own skin break, followed by a sting but Jongho still refused to talk about her.

“Tell me, Jongho then I’ll spare your life.”

He did not move but either way he slightly moved away from the knife and tried to move away but the person was able to match his speed which earned him a deep gash on his side. He groaned in pain but then earned him the upper hand as he landed a solid punch on the guy’s face and pulled out his knife strapped on his thighs and pushed it deep on the person’s side until they’re bleeding themselves out.

He immediately rushed to his car, not forgetting the plastic bag and drove himself as quickly as possible back to his penthouse.

—

Y/n was just chilling in the bedroom when he heard the door harshly open, making her jump from her spot.

Curious about the commotion, she went out and saw Jongho clutching his sides and muttering curses under his breath.

“Jongho? What happened?”

The guy in question looked at her and managed a smile, “Hey,” he croaked out weakly, “I bought us food.”

She studied the man in front of her and noticed that the side he’s clutching has crimson liquid coming out of his sides. With fear and concern overcoming her senses, she dumbly asked, “Is that… is that your blood?”

Jongho still managed to let out a weak laugh, “Don't go on shock with me, baby and help me.” He said and walked slowly, “Come on, doctor y/n. Don’t go useless on me.”

Letting out a deep sigh she said, “Right. Come on, let’s bring you to the bathroom.”

—

Immediately tending to her lover’s wounds, y/n made sure to take care of her well. The adrenaline rushed out of Jongho’s body immediately knocking him out to sleep.

Sighing deeply, she stared at his peaceful face. She knows that this is one of the risks of dating Jongho. She has to face that every single day, there’s a threat in their lives and a gun pointed at their heads. But either way, when it happens, she’s willing to tend him until death.

Her stupor was broken when she heard her own phone ringing. She stared at the caller’s ID first and let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it’s her own brother calling.

“Hey, Hwa.” She greeted, a small smile making its way to y/n’s face, “Are you safe? How did it go?”

“It went successful,” Seonghwa said, triumph evident in his voice, “How are you and Jongho? You can now go home anytime. Yunho and the others were also able to eliminate the gang going after you.”

Y/n frowned as Jongho squirmed beside her and involuntarily let out a groan of pain, “I’m good but we might come home after three days. Jongho needs to rest.”

“Huh? What happened to him?”

“Got stabbed at his side and it’s quite deep. He lost some blood too, but don’t worry, I immediately tended him.”

Silence enveloped the two of them for a while until Seonghwa spoke, “Thank you y/n. I don’t know what he’ll do if you’re not there with him.”

“It’s nothing Hwa.” She smiled and then suddenly remembered something, “Oh by the way, I have something to ask you that I’ve been wanting to ever since I arrived.”

“Sure, hit me up.”

“Can I apply as the mafia’s doctor?”

“Captain Luna is speaking. Say your names, over!”

“Agent golden retriever is here, over.”

“Daddy night fury is here, over.”

“Mommy light fury is here, over!”

“Uncle mountain, over.”

“Wooyu uncle is here Captain Luna, reporting for duty!”

“Uncle Joongie here, little night light.”

“Uncle hehetmon is currently on duty!”

“Uncle Minki reporting to princess Luna for duty.”

Most of them had answered Luna from the walkie talkie but Seonghwa watched his own daughter frown and say, “Where is uncle Jelly Bear? Has anyone heard of Uncle Jelly Bear?”

There was no answer from the others and Seonghwa frowned. Jongho and y/n are supposed to be away for only a week but it’s already nearing a two, making Luna miss both of them terribly. Y/n always made sure to give him an update about Jongho’s recovery but the last few days, he received nothing.

Maybe they’re just too busy with each other.

He was cut off from his thoughts when his daughter let out a frustrated scream as her tears fell and threw the walkie talkie in her hand when she received no answer from Jongho.

Seonghwa immediately went to her side to calm her down when static signals were suddenly heard and a voice spoke, “Sorry, Uncle Jelly Bear was late but he’s home!”

Saved from another temper tantrum, Seonghwa thought as he carried Luna and talked to her, “Uncle Jjongie’s home baby, let’s go downstairs to meet them or do you want to wait for them to come up here and report to daddy?”

Luna pointed at the door and said, “Go downstairs please, daddy.”

Seonghwa smiled, “What a polite girl you are.”

The father and daughter duo immediately went downstairs just in time for them to see Jongho plant a kiss on y/n’s lips and pat her bum as he maneuvered her to the kitchen.

Luna then gasped, enough to be heard by the new couple and pointed at the two of them while looking incredulously at her dad, “Daddy, they did the thing that you and mommy do every day!”

Her father couldn’t help but laugh, “Yes baby, it’s because uncle Jongho and auntie y/n loves each other like how daddy loves your mom.”

The little girl clapped her hand excitedly and said, “Does that mean I get to have a younger cousin now?!”

Jongho tensed at the question while y/n just laughed and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at her boyfriend, “What do you say, Jongho?”

The man in question let out a pained smile, “Let’s get married first, okay?”

#ficscafe dpe #ficscafe #ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez imagines #ateez scenarios #ateez x reader #ateez fic #ateez fluff #ateez angst #ateez au #ateez writing #ateez jongho x reader #ateez jongho #choi jongho #choi jongho x reader #ateez mafia au #mafia!ateez #mafia!jongho

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hotdamnhunnam · 3 years

Text

Eat My Crow

A/N: So who else is obsessed with jealous Jax?!? 🤤 This fic is based on the two below requests – in which you and Jax make each other jealous and end up having a huge fight over it, followed by super hot makeup sex!

Pairing: Jax Teller x F!Reader Warnings: smut, swearing, ANGSTY ANGST, rough sex, possessive jealous dom!Jax Request: Two separate anon requests – (1) & (2)

Word Count: ~2.5k

So you married a snack. There’s no problem with that. You’ve accepted the fact that your husband, the crown prince of Charming, is going to strut his fine ass around town calling everyone darlin’ and flashing his signature slut-magnet smile, ‘cause that’s just his style. You’ve gotten quite used to it now after being his wife for a while.

But the problem with Jax... well, he’s more than a snack. He’s a whole fucking feast. He’s a goddamn buffet, on display every day, all-you-can-fucking-eat. And the bitches attack when he walks down the street. You’ve been taking this shit in stride, telling yourself it’s alright. And it is, you decide. Because it’s gotta be. Even when he flirts back, he’s assuring you constantly that no one else means a thing to him, honestly.

Babe, it’s just business. I promised you my pussy-hounding days are finished. And I mean it. Really do. Ever since you and I started this, I’ve never thought of sex with anybody else, not for a minute. Have you even seen yourself? So fucking beautiful you’re on another level. No crow eater could ever get my dick so wet and take it so damn well. I’m serious. The whole Cara Cara crew doesn’t got shit on you. Fuck all those whores. I mean, maybe I did... before. But baby, now my heart is yours, and yours belongs to me too—doesn’t it? Just gotta trust me with it.

And you do believe it’s true, that you’re his one and only princess in a sea of faceless bitches. Jax loves you, and no one else. Love is your witness.

Still... some nights the dirty bastard really tests your fucking limits.

Like tonight. You watch him from across the room and feel the daggers you’ve got glaring from your eyes. He’s flirting up a storm and working all his charms, one pornstar clawing at each arm, while your arch nemesis is practically grinding her pussy up against his thigh.

What kind of shameless cunt seriously goes by the name of ‘Ima Tite’? Of all the clingy twits who think that Jax will be attracted to their false lashes and fake tits, she’s your absolute least favorite. A couple times she even tried to pick a fight. You always put her in her place, but she can’t seem to stay away...

Just then, an unexpected voice distracts you from your jealous daze. “...Hey.”

You look up from your drink, with a few blinks to chase the daggers from your gaze. This random guy is a new prospect that you recognize; you’ve seen him once or twice. He’s kind of cute, you think, in quite a clueless little fuckboy kind of way.

Though normally you don’t have eyes for anyone but Jax, you force yourself to see this cheap vending machine treat as a satisfying snack. ‘Cause if your man is gonna keep on letting his married ass come under attack... then that’s a game that two can play.

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

“Babe, you okay?”

You glance up from the bathroom sink to see your husband standing in the doorway. “Yeah, I’m fine,” you lie, trying to hide the true reply that’s shooting from your eyes. Just go away.

“Know there’s no point in ever lying to me, right?” he tells you as he steps inside.

You heave a sigh, meeting your own bitter stare in the mirror, well aware that Jax takes pride in reading your mind. “It’s nothing; I’m just—”

“Sick of seeing me swimming around in a pile of sluts?” he finishes the sentence. Coming through. “Come on, Y/N, just... please don’t let ‘em get to you.”

Already he’s fucking you up with the force of his presence, the way he moves close and surrounds you in his manly scent, drowning you in his essence.

“Babe, you know I hate these pornstar parties just as much as you do. Boob job Barbies aren’t my thing, but I’m taking one for the crew. Apparently letting the girls rub up against the prince of Charming keeps them coming. Keeps the whole damn business up and running. Who knew?”

“I did, for one,” you groan, as he enfolds you in his flannel-clad arms and looks up to lock eyes in the mirror, smiling at the view. “And stop being a cheeky little shit, ‘cause you did too.”

Jax doesn’t fight you on that since it’s too blatantly true. “What do I have to do to prove—”

“That’s just the problem, Jax,” you snap as you reluctantly pull out of his embrace, stepping away, pushing him back. “You shouldn’t have to ‘prove’ your love.”

“Damn right I shouldn’t,” he huffs, not too happy about how you just shoved him off. “But here you’re telling me the way I love you isn’t good enough.”

“No, I’m not,” you mutter, not even wanting to get into the real reason why you’re so mad. Because it doesn’t matter. “I never said that.”

“Think I don’t know how to read between the lines? Told you a thousand times that I will always read your fucking mind.”

“Yeah well, read this, genius,” you hiss, flipping your middle finger in his face. Because of course you’re so fucking mature that way.

The gesture was so pointless that he easily dismisses it, that very instant. “Seriously, Y/N. We talked about this. It’s business. They’re just emp—”

“Empty or not,” you interrupt, ranting without a second thought, “they’re always all over your ass, and you know how I feel about that. Know it pisses me off seeing so many hoes eating my fucking crow.”

Jax rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Babe, they’re not ‘eating’ shit—”

“Yeah, well they’re feeding it. Constantly smothering my husband in a sea of tits. Raking their filthy fingers through your hair, while I’m standing across the room right fucking there.” ... as if I don’t even exist, you finish in your head, not saying that aloud. Not yet.

“So the hell what? You don’t trust me to handle myself around sluts?”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about trust.”

“No, that’s exactly what we’re gonna talk about. ‘Cause clearly you don’t have any in me,” he counters forcefully. “Clearly you still have doubts, when I tell you that all of this business is meaningless, empty—”

“I’ll tell you what’s empty,” you snarl, slamming both hands into his chest aggressively. The suddenness of your attack has him reeling until his kutte-clad back is pressed against the wall. “Your fucking promises. That shit you’d always tell me. Guess all that was also just part of your business.”

Beautiful blue eyes blink at you. Appalled, confused. More than a little shocked. Just what you meant, he has no clue. And he’s ashamed that he can’t see straight through you in this moment, just the way he loves to do. “Y/N, the fuck...?”

Right then, as you’re all set to spell it out for him... you hear a familiar voice just outside the bathroom. Loud enough to hear through the closed door. It’s that fucking whore. She won’t bother to knock, you’re pretty sure. And all of a sudden... the lioness lurking behind the woman in you feels a spiteful kind of urge you’ve never had before.

“I need your cock,” you grunt, which is an honest statement; Jax’s dick is the one thing you’ll always want. No matter how, no matter what. “Like, now. Let’s fuck.”

Jax takes a pause, clenching his jaw, dim lighting glinting off his golden locks. “Babe, we should talk...”

“No, we should not,” you snap, pressing your lips to his to shut him up, heavy and hot. “Fuck that. Just fuck me, Jax.”

And the lust-driven lion in him knows there’s no use trying to fight back. He cedes to your demands, leather and flannel sliding down his flawless body as you pull at them with frantic hands. Giving in passionately to exactly what you want—and in a split second, he’s suddenly the one on the attack.

You rake your fingers through the lustrous head of blonde hair that belongs to you, the way those other bitches love to do. Fuck all those whores. Every last lock is yours, just as his cock is yours, and you both know it’s true.

Once Jax is slamming you against the wall like an insatiable animal, that’s when the bathroom door opens. And Ima stands there gawking for a moment, just as you’d been hoping. Just as you had planned.

Jax doesn’t even register her presence—far too deeply engrossed in ferociously fucking you over—as you and she briefly make eye contact over his shoulder, you shoot her a fierce, fiery glance. Bitch better back off my fucking man.

Now that you’ve staked your claim, you’re finished with this game.

Jax isn’t done—he hasn’t come—but today, just for once, you decide that you want it to end that way. Allowing him release would grant him victory.

You’re well aware that you’re being the cattiest, brattiest bitch in fucking history. But maybe you deserve to be. Maybe that’s one of the perks of being queen. You’ve earned the right to whip your claws out and to get a little mean.

“Okay—enough,” you say, pushing him off.

He’s never looked so shocked, still impaling you on his massive monster cock. “Uhhh... what the fuck?”

“Jax, I was just using your ass to make a point in front of one of your crow-eating sluts,” you tell him, clear and blunt. Pretending not to care as you see him flinch in disgust. “And now I’m done. Got what I want.”

He looks incapable of processing the shit you’re dishing out. Stung by each word out of your mouth. Apparently still clueless as to what this is about.

You know deep down you shouldn’t blame him, but the only other option is to blame yourself. And you just can’t. At least not right this instant. Shit would hurt like fucking hell. He wouldn’t understand. The reason you escaped into the bathroom in the first place, just to wallow in your heartbreak... fuck’s sake, you don’t even fully understand.

Hope he doesn’t notice as you wipe a stray tear with the back of your hand. “Did you hear me or not? Get the fuck out.”

He noticed. Definitely did. Holds back his own somehow. “Y/N, who even are you right now?”

“The fact you have to ask, Jax...” you murmur, pushing him further back. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d only looked at me just once tonight. The way you promised me you always would, right? No matter what? Promised that I’m the only woman in your life, the only face you ever see, even when you’re buried in sluts? Maybe that’s where you really want to be. Because you’re fucking blind, apparently.”

Quietly shoving his unsatisfied dick back inside his pants, he tries to hold you in place with his other hand. “Y/N—can...”

“No, Jackson, we can’t just talk about this shit. Because it honestly makes me sick that you didn’t even notice, when—when I...” your voice trails off into a shaky sigh, terrified to admit the unspeakable thing you almost did. “Fuck this. Right now there’s nothing you can say.”

You turn to leave, wiping more tears on your sleeve. You hate yourself so much more than you hate him, in this moment. Truth is you don’t hate him one bit. Couldn’t even if you wanted. Just hate the way that loving him drove you to do something so stupid and dishonest. Hate yourself for being so ashamed about the fact Jax didn’t notice. Is that his fault? Yeah, it probably is. But not nearly as much your fault for having done what you did in the first instance. You crossed a line that he didn’t. A line he never would, because he’s good.

Whereas your sorry ass... you reckon, right this second, that you’re no better than any of those damn crow-eating cunts you hate so much. Much worse, in fact. The truth is you don’t deserve Jax.

“For someone who can always read my mind, you sure as hell fucked up today,” you choke the words out of your throat, knowing they’re out of line. Trying your best to keep your dignity afloat, though it’s an ever-sinking boat. “Why don’t you get back to your business. Prince of Charming keeping everything running, just like you said. For once now I won’t let you have the cake and eat it, act like you’re some loving husband, as if I’m your one true princess. ‘Cause I’m not, okay? Guess the prince doesn’t always get his way.”

Once you’ve fled from the bathroom—ignoring how you only feel worse now that you’ve turned your back on him—you drown out the pain in your heart with a series of shots at the bar. Wondering if you should run back into his arms and explain everything and tell him just how sorry you are.

Just a minute afterward, you hear the front door to the clubhouse slam shut, hard. Fucking loud, as Jax furiously storms out.

That’s when you notice, finally, that the prospect you had almost kissed, right on the motherfucking mouth, not long ago tonight... is sitting at the far end of the room, with a few concerned club members and crow eaters hanging around at his side. The poor bastard is healing from some fucking serious wounds.

That’s all you need to see, to realize suddenly—Jax did notice. Of course he fucking did. And you could kill yourself in shame for having ever doubted it.

Why hadn’t he confronted you with that shit, when he joined you in the bathroom after pummeling the prospect with his jealous fists? Hadn’t your man been mad about it? Fucking pissed? Why didn’t he step in between the two of you and stop it sooner, if he’d noticed, so it wouldn’t have to come to this...?

Truth hits you now, somehow, long overdue—it must’ve been because he trusted you. Figured you were playing some stupid game and trusted that you wouldn’t overstep your limits, though you ultimately very nearly did. He must’ve trusted you the way you should’ve always trusted him. Clarity hits you just as hard as the door slamming when he’d stormed out of the room.

And you have never felt like such absolute shit.

You had hoped that Jax would be pissed, to be honest. Because you’re so fucking mature. Had wanted him to channel all that alpha male possessive jealous rage toward you, for sure. That was what you had expected. After dishing out a lesson to the overstepping prospect, he would be all set to ruin you in bed...

But you had ruined any chance of that, by being so insensitive and immature and insecure instead.

Now all you want is just to throw yourself at him, wherever he has gone, shamelessly begging for forgiveness, for the stupid awful shit you’ve said and done... beg for possessive, jealous Jax to savagely punish your sorry ass, as soon as he gets home.

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

... Continued in Part 2!

Hope you enjoyed this and would love to hear if you did! 🤗❤️

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

Text

Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 8

Cult girl and Hannibal go through an exhaustive list of potential adoptive couples.

@wisesandwichshark

Trigger warning: sexual harassment, christianity, discussion of pregnancy and family planning, adoption, murder and cannibalism

Step two: find an adoptive family.

Some would say your list of expectations for potential adoptive parents was too extensive. Impossible for any human to reach. But it was really just the bare minimum.

Regardless of if they were two men, two women, one of each, or a few people, the parents had to be trustworthy. It wasn't easy to earn Hannibal's trust, but he could recognize those who had the capacity to right away. It was a little instinct you had dubbed 'friend or food'.

On paper, the apostolic pastor and his wife of 19 years seemed like the perfect candidates. The adoption agency tried to push them on you, as they had a great track record with adopting from them prior. Three boys, all of which were honors students.

Hannibal insisted on a formal introduction, during which you could conduct a proper, though surreptitious, interview. It was an invitation to dinner.

He invited the couple into his office, where a pot of tea and an interrogation was waiting for them. Then there was you. Barely-pregnant little [F/N], feeling entirely safe so long as your fiancé was beside you.

"You're doing the right thing, y'know." The woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Landon, said upon meeting you.

"How do you mean?" You asked, already knowing the answer.

"All god's life is precious." She said, placing a hand on your not-even-remotely-showing-yet stomach. "You're walking in obedience to the lord by giving this child a shot at life."

Strike one: bringing up religion unprompted. Strike two: touching me without asking first.

You wanted to swat her hand away, but remembered that patience was a virtue. She and her husband took a seat across from you.

"Y'know," The man began, his mannerisms eerily similar to those of his wife. "I don't usually begin with the god talk, but I think a higher power had to have been involved in the conception of this- well, our child. I'd like to think the good lord brought us together today."

Strike three: already believes he is entitled to my child. You're outta here.

"Don't flatter the adoption agency like that, Jacob." Hannibal chuckled, placing his teacup on the side table.

"I'm serious, Dr. Lecter." Jacob interjected. "Faith and I really do believe that god put us on this earth to prepare his smallest soldiers for the spiritual war."

You shot Hannibal a side glance that said 'can we please just eat them now?'.

The answer was no. Hannibal liked to play with his food.

"And your adult children have all moved out?" He asked.

"That's right." Jacob nodded. "We have plenty of room in our five-bedroom house for the new little slugger to run around in."

"And if it's a girl!" The wife interrupted. "We have enough closet space for all the denim maxi-skirts money could buy."

Strike four: arbitrarily genders the behavior of a nine-week-old embryo.

The man then returned the teacup to the table, not bothering to use the saucer and instead leaving a nasty ring of condensation on the polished mahogany.

"Okay." Hannibal huffed, resignedly rising from his seat. He pulled two hypodermic needles from his back pocket and carefully, subtly stuck them onto the couples' necks. They couldn't even scream.

The tacos al pastor that followed (after a few days of marinating, of course) were exquisite.

The next week brought a new couple to your doorstep. Frank and Angela, they were named. Their claim to fame was that their oldest son played football for one of those big southern party schools. Either Auburn or Alabama. There was hardly a difference.

You sat for what felt like hours listening to the man speak in unintelligible football babble, waiting for him to take a breath. Surprisingly, it was the mom who got him to finally shut up.

"Frank, please." She said with more frustration than this one situation even remotely warranted. Either she had enough intuition to know she was being tested, or she’d spent the last decade putting up with this. Possibly both. "You're boring our hosts to death."

"What? No way! She loves it!" Frank replied, then turned to you. Not to Hannibal, just you. “Aren’t you having a great time, sweetheart?”

Strike one: takes advantage of the female socialization to be passive and polite, allowing himself to take up the most space.

You shook your head. “I hate football.”

His wife looked quite pleased with herself.

“Angie, I just wanted her to know what good breeding her son is going to have.” He said, without a lick of irony or self-awareness. He eyed you up and down and licked his lips. “And it is mutual, I see.”

The room went quiet as everyone tried to determine whether he was serious or if it was just a fucked-up joke. The longer the silence lingered, the more you realized he wasn’t kidding. Angela looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

“I don’t know what the agency told you, Mr. Wyatt,” Hannibal said, trying not to grit his teeth. “She isn’t a surrogate. She’s already pregnant.”

Frank’s jaw hung dumbly open. “I thought you were looking for a sperm donor? I just-”

“No.” You cut him off, raising your hand and covering your face. “I don’t want to know what you thought.”

“Well, I would!” Angela interjected, righteous fury eclipsing what should have been crippling embarrassment. “What exactly did you think this was, Francis?”

“The file said that he was over fifty, so I just assumed--” Frank rationalized, his voice far too loud for the room. “Y’know? That she wanted a baby that wouldn’t come out all funny-looking?”

“You’re disgusting.” You blurted out.

“Francis Howard Wyatt,” Angela scolded as if she were talking to her son. “You are forty-eight and the only increasing part of your body is your blood pressure. Why on Earth would any woman choose you over her smart, handsome doctor fiancé?”

This made Hannibal sit up a little straighter. He wanted Francis on the butcher’s block yesterday, but he momentarily considered letting Angela live.

“They’re not married?” Frank whispered, or whatever the loud-aggressive-toxic-masculinity version of whispering was. He paused, as the dead hamster on the wheel powering his brain crept back to life. “That actually makes sense.”

Angela loudly smacked her hand against her face. “Dr. Lecter, Ms. [L/N], I am so sorry.”

“It’s quite alright, Mrs. Wyatt.” Hannibal stood up, readying the next batch of needles. “It just makes what I’m about to do easier.”

It took quite a bit of restraint to not make their deaths hurt, but he made up for it when it came time to carve. He had fun running his fittingly small penis through a meat grinder. Not with any intent to cook it, though. Just because.

Hannibal wanted to make Francis Wyatt into the least dignified meal imaginable. You quickly recalled going to a friend’s barbeque in Georgia and encountering a horrendously Southern delicacy known as Frito Pie. You proposed the idea to Hannibal, who, after reviling in abject horror at the notion of eating something out of a bag, agreed that it was the most fitting end. He could spare a few pounds of flesh to grind up and make into chili.

The third week brought yet another couple. They seemed smart enough to realize your invitation wasn't the friendly olive branch the others had interpreted it as. Their healthy skepticism was refreshing, to say the least. Then, you met them: Max and Archie.

"You'll have to forgive my partner's paranoia." Max said upon entering the house. He tugged playfully at Archie's hand. "We watched Get Out recently, so an invitation to the suburbs sounded some alarms in his sleep-deprived brain."

"I love that movie." You chimed in. "It reminds me of my family."

"Oh no." Archie's eyes widened in only half-pretend fear. He shot an I-told-you-so look in his partner's direction.

"But my favorite horror flick has to be Midsommar." You added. "My friends and I saw a midnight screening and we didn't sleep at all that night."

"But have you seen Hereditary?" Archie posited.

"Of course." You shrugged. "Aster is totally genius."

You made more than just polite conversation with the couple. Max, despite his young age, was a skilled data analyst and day trader. He attributed his success to the hard work of his immigrant parents. Archie was an environmental lawyer and land activist. He was also a bit of a thrill junkie, indulging in everything from scary movies to bungee jumping.

It didn't take long to realize that you wouldn't be eating them. They were far too pleasant of company to eat.

"So when is this baby planning to make its entrance?" Archie asked, gesturing to you. "You don’t look all that pregnant to me."

You put your hand over your slightly-protruding stomach. "Late August, I believe. If everything goes according to plan."

"You're not far along at all, aren’t you?" Max observed. "That gives us plenty of time to prove ourselves to you."

"Believe me." You put up your hand. "You're doing a great job so far."

“If you like horror stories, we might have to indulge you in the last two encounters we had.” Hannibal commented, leaning back comfortably in his chair. That was a good sign. “No blood was spilled, thank god. Would have ruined my carpets. But believe me when I tell you it came very close.”

The couple laughed along. Archie leaned in like he was about to tell a life-shattering secret. “You wouldn’t believe the hoops we had to jump through to even have the chance to adopt. And I don’t want to say that it’s because we’re an interracial gay couple, but...”

“Agencies aren’t exactly colorblind.” You finished, via his prompting.

“She gets it.” Archie pointed to you. “See, Maxie? She agrees with me.”

Max pushed his glasses up his nose. “I never said I disagreed.”

You spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the conversation to take a sharp left turn off a cliff, but it didn’t happen. They were wonderful company; polite, intelligent and articulate. Exactly the kind of people you’d want to see taking care of your child.

You’d have to look for you next meal elsewhere.

#hannibal #hannibal x reader #hannibal x you #hannibal lecter x you #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter #hannibal nbc #cult girl #cult girl 2 #cult girl doctorate

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carltonlassie · 2 years

Text

Just thinking about how today a guy at work said my idea for a hackathon week (=a week to try out and learn new things you've never done before) is a waste of time because it won't yield anything tangible. """In his experience""" (experience as what? He's never done anything like this before!) it's a waste of time. He kept on cutting me off to say the same thing over and over, saying in his view it's a waste of time and a bad project. Ok for more context I said we should get an account of the information the users care about the most so we can translate that into a design. Bc what's the point of just putting random shit together if none of it's based on what the users actually need. but apparently it's a waste of time to understand what the users really want and we should force our ideas onto them bc users don't know anything lol. And then he proceeded to ask people to vote for his idea which he already had prior agreement with his posse? (Why are we voting? This is a week for me to try out new things and if I wanna do something I'll do it, I don't need people's vote to do what I wanna do? It also seemed like my vote didn't matter since his had majority vote from his posse.... And they're gonna do it anyways regardless of it gets votes or not) so What is SO wrong with me wanting to try out something new. Whereas he can just do something that half of the team doesn't even know about. He says this is gonna yield crucial impact but I can argue the same thing that his idea is a waste of time and it could be better spent fixing stupid bugs his posse introduces daily?

Ugh anyways I really hope I can switch to the design team. I feel like my talents are wasted here because I'm honestly doing whatever they're telling me to do because I CAN do it but it doesn't mean I enjoy doing it... I think that's the thing. I CAN do all the things im doing rn and I'm pretty good at it but I don't see a future in this? I can take up another job on a whim but I think I'll run into the same problem of apathy and lack of ambition towards the """"""career trajectory""""""" these people love to harp on about. I simply don't see a trajectory where I'd be happy doing this but with even more responsibility and miniscule pay increase. The rubric they hand out for different levels is so funny because I've been kinda doing all that since the very beginning. They've loaded so much work onto me that I've juggled, idk, 5 different roles! I'm sending out marketing emails (marketing team/PM role), creating ui/ux mockups (designer role), doing testing (QA role), working on infrastructure (DevOps role), answering customer questions (customer support role), and on top of that he's been making me lead team fun and games sessions/baby showers/parties and general glue role that doesn't get recognized when it comes to promotion cycles (idk, emotional labor role), doing elevator pitches, presentations and demos (Sales role), and all this is on top of my regular job title Software Engineer lmao what the hell I'm a one man band and they're throwing pennies at me to do this stupid jig?? Anyways. The point is that the rubric is funny because I'm doing all of it already and I'm not even motivated to apply for promotion. I actually never want to apply for promotion because then it will be EVEN more work for not that much pay increase. And I don't want to be doing the same kind of work any more. And it's not an issue of my team nor my company because engineering is just boring like this. Never given enough time and resources that people write shitty code... And the company trying to hire "rock star' developers who they can exploit rather than taking the time to train someone to do good.

At least when I'm on the design team I'd be able to do more stuff that's interesting to me. Like, I wanna know how to best display the information for ease of use. I wanna try to do rapid prototyping where I generate twenty different ideas and pare it down to get to the best solution. Problem solving as an engineer role is so limited by frameworks that you should use (or what's the most trendy and therefore should use) and we're not given enough time to truly try out different options. I guess I got pretty close to doing something like that with my current one but the upper management thought it was a waste of time to explore and do this right because they wanted user facing features with High Impact and Revenue Right Now. So we got pressured into wrapping it up asap and still are getting pressured when the only resource allocated is me and this other guy. And two contractors. One dropped out and we never got a replacement lol. Uggghhh anyways. I hope I'm not escaping reality by thinking the design team would be better lol. I'm sure it has its fair share of problems but I think culture wise too......, I don't think I want to work with my coworkers anymore lmao

#work shit

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yandere-sins · 3 years

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The Exception

My friend let me try playing Hades on her switch and well... I kinda liked it. Namely, I liked all the characters, so my brain went like “what if they were yandere” and I had an idea for this story that I threw together this morning before working on the Fox Wedding (: The latter isn’t done yet, but this sure is, so who knows, mayhaps some of you will enjoy it! Just tried to answer the question how we could get Thanatos to whisk us away.

Characters: Yandere!Thanatos x Reader Warnings: Yandere, Blood, War, Wounds/Impaling, Major Character Death (???) or well dying, I read into greek history for almost an hour but if I gotten something wrong then so be it

Thanatos had seen enough of the world to know that he didn't want to stay on the surface forever.

The current battle spreading before him was a mere reason to sigh deeply as he watched bodies fall left and right, their souls soon leaving to a better, or perhaps worse, place. It was mandatory he stayed, but Thanatos was well aware of which side was winning and which was losing. It was his duty and his work to know these things, even though it didn't make the fighting any less futile in his eyes.

Letting his gaze wander over the battlefield, he watched the red splatters on the ground, heard the crushing sounds of iron against iron and the cacophony of fearful and devastating screams. He still couldn't believe Zagreus would want to come to such a place. A place where there was futile fighting and too much light, but perhaps, it was a world that fit the Prince of the Underworld, as he was the same, even if Thanatos only recognized this fact bitterly.

Finally, the battle was closing in on its end, just like the hundreds of people that found their death because of it. The ones who weren't dead yet slowly but surely started to hesitate and retreat. Even as the personification of death, Thanatos reckoned that a pointless death was scary, even though so many humans chose it over desertion. Their death was inevitable, preordained by Thanatos sisters. Still, he had seen many hold on to the last sparks of hope that they could escape Thanatos' grasp.

And then, on the other side of the coin, were those that practically would have offered their life to Hades and fought to the end.

You weren't an exception. Yes, your quest and pride were your downfall, and by the gleam in your eyes Thanatos could tell you knew. You knew and recognized that you'd die. However, as if you were spiting him personally, you still continued to fight ahead of everyone else, gaining questioning glances from your comrades and contempt from your enemies, which you pulled to the ground one after another and sending them to hell.

Many before you had this overzealous compulsion to make that best out of their inevitable demise. Thanatos would admit that yes, most had a good reason for it, like saving their family or fighting for their own life. Others simply lucked out on the gift of pride and ignorance, forcing themselves and occasionally many more lives with them into the deep, dark pits of death.

What was your reason? Thanatos wondered.

He still had time before he needed to take action, he could allow himself a short - minuscule, really - different thought than his upcoming work, and you presented yourself so nicely to him as the incarnation of death waited for the end of today's battle. It wasn't often that he had the leisure to let his thoughts wander, so Thanatos intended to use these few seconds, which would fall under the radar, to still his curiosity.

By the looks of it, you weren't an inexperienced fighter. Or perhaps, you were just a farmer judging by your muscles. Surely, you seemed enthusiastic about your task, so were you fighting for something more significant than the glory of your country? Family? A loved one? Thanatos couldn't help but be curious about what your drive was, as he had seen so many reasons, yet they were all the same. Perhaps, yours was new?

Even so, you were graceful as you swung your sword around. What did he know about footwork, but at least, yours seemed to pay off as you weren't dead yet. When one of your foes managed to smack off your helmet, Thanatos believed that was it, but alas, you regained your strength, charging at the very same attacker.

In a way, fighting was like an elaborate play. The only difference was that neither of the parties knew the other one's move. The person reacting better was the winner. He couldn't find joy in watching wars, but even Thanatos had to admit that it was a joy watching you. Even if you lacked the enthusiasm as the heroic shades that lingered below, like Theseus, had, you fought a fight worth mentioning in the books as well.

Every move you made, Thanatos could see the calculations in your eyes, that keen shine reflecting in them. The sun seemed to break through the clouds just to reach out to you, making your armor sparkle in its rays. Yes, you were a formidable human, and Thanatos caught himself thinking that it was a shame you were fighting even if you looked so beautifully while doing it.

Taking another deep breath, he could see the swirls in the air left by it. While the winter wasn't affecting him, no matter how little clothes he wore, Thanatos felt a second of pitiful understanding for everyone who had to fight in those conditions. Undoubtedly, the cold armors, freezing hands and weapons, and frozen ground were another nemesis for every soldier out here. Even if their bodies stayed warm from adrenaline and running, it certainly was another reason many of your human bodies gave out quicker, merely submitting to their fate. It was fair enough for Thanatos. It meant his work was over faster, and judging by you being circled and the other soldiers at your side beginning to see the end coming towards them with long spears and sharp swords, it was all over soon.

You had fought bravely, that much he could give you. Perhaps you had impressed him enough to put in an unusual good word for you with Hypnos, who'd pass it on to Hades himself, granting you a shot on being put into Elysium. But your fate had long been decided, and as you fell to the ground, the battlefield erupted in victorious screams, announcing your time of death.

And also, his start of work.

As the winners retreated one after one, happy whenever they found a friend that survived too, Thanatos passed by them and onto the battlefield instead. Unseen by the human eye, he began his duty of reaping, one soul after the other, as mangled and frustrated over their death as they were, following his orders as he shushed them away. Usually, some pleaded and bargained with him for another shot of life, but even if Thanatos had wanted, there was no way for him to help them. But that day, everyone seemed awfully aware that there was no negotiating nor mercy waiting for them as they looked at his figure, frightened and frustrated. A pointless battle, with meaningless deaths, brought forth the self-pity in them, but this wasn't the first battle Thanatos tended to, so he felt nothing akin to that. It also wasn't his duty to take care of the souls gathered here, as it was Hermes' job to lead to them.

He had something very different on his agenda. You.

It was unfortunate for both of you, but when he reached you, you had yet to breathe your last breath. One eye slowly and in pain, opened, the other one damaged from the blow to the head you had received. However, as you looked at him, serene clarity laid in your gaze, and you recognized him, mayhaps by the giant scythe he carried around. Your stare was clear and less afraid than he expected you to be when acknowledging him, but you closed your eyes as a cough overcame you, hot, red blood dripping down your lips.

"Guess that's it," you croaked, and Thanatos could only stare. Conversing… wasn't his strong suit, and there wasn't exactly a reason to talk to you.

"Are you going to kill me?" you continued, undeterred by his silence, and Thanatos weighed his actions. "No, of course not," he eventually spoke, shaking his head slowly, the hood on his head shifting along to his movement.

"Ouch, that's cruel. You'll just wait until I die like this?"

Your words were nothing he hadn't heard before, and he didn't feel offended by them. However, he didn't expect your lips to briefly curl into a smile, adding a jesting notion to what you said. Even that wasn't new, but… it struck a chord inside the usual stoic bringer of death. "I can't end your suffering," Thanatos explained, hoping you'd simply know about the unspoken rule that he couldn't harm you.

"I think, I get it," you heaved, feeling worse by the minute. "You are just making sure I know I am supposed to die here."

That assumption wasn't wrong, even though there had been more playing into his service than just that. Too many kept trying to escape their fate, and sort of, Thanatos was just checking and cleaning up what would be left. You still had some time before your organs would fail and finally take you to the grave, different from the other souls that were already leaving for their new home.

"No, you will die here," he retorted firmly.

"I could," you chuckled, followed by another painful cough.

"Don't test me, Mortal."

In between deep breaths, you allowed yourself a short laugh. Just like him, you were probably aware that there was nothing worse that could happen to your situation, so his threat was just a way he hoped to shut you up with. In silence, he watched over you, until eventually, your eye opened up again. This time your gaze was searching for him - or something really - but your sight had already begun to cloud. No matter how proud and achieved you are in life, in the face of death, everyone looked the same.

"I think I did a good job. You know, fighting. Thought that if I already had to do it, I might as well give it my damn best."

More coughing. Thanatos watched the puddle of blood around you grow by the second. The spear inside your body must have been stirring up your insides the more you talked. Thanatos had expected something like this, you, young as you still were, had been led by the belief that doing your best could make up for the fact that you'd die. "But in the end, it was worth nothing, right? We lost after all."

Thanatos could only stare as he wondered what you expected him to say. He came here, knowing your life would end here, so really, the hope you had put into yourself didn't have the same disappointment to him now as it did to you. And yet, as he listened to you, seeing your body battered up with cuts and bruises, for the first time in centuries, he felt something akin to pity for you, and you specifically.

"Why did you fight then?" he asked, perhaps against your expectations.

"Why? Because they told us too. The King ordered us to fight this battle, and only he could have known how many soldiers our opponent would bring."

"You could have run." Thanatos tried to stay as detached from you as possible, though it didn't quite work, your words taking their influence on him. "Can you?" you retorted before letting out a long sigh. Death was near, literally as well as figuratively.

"Can you run from your duties? You don't have to do this either, do you?"

"I do--"

"Really?"

There was no immediate response this time, your question justified, despite your little mortal soul undoubtedly never understanding the burdens on the shoulders of Gods. The world would stop if they all decided to not continue their work and fulfill their duties and expectations. If Thanatos stopped, no one would die anymore, and but the suffering of everything would never disappear too.

"Dying sucks," you whispered, turning your head away.

"I reckon," he muttered indifferently. Not like he could talk about it from experience. It must be painful, dreadful, and, depending on the circumstances, frustrating too. Right now, though he couldn't imagine the extent, you must have felt so hopeless and so, so scared. There wasn't much other reason for your banter.

"Thanatos… I always thought it was a pretty name, even if everyone feared it." Regaining his attention after finding himself momentarily lost in thoughts, he looked down at you again, watching as your eyelid closed slowly. "Say what you want, but you can't blame them for fearing death, and alas, me."

"Perhaps if they talked to you, they wouldn't be so afraid."

"Meaning you don't feel so afraid anymore?"

A smile danced over your lips once more, a truly unusual sight for a soul so close to their end, and especially after talking to him. Hypnos often teased Thanatos with being too formal and dutiful to be amusing, and Hades beware, comforting. Though he didn't care for his twin's words, yours did make him feel... happy.

"Let's go then," you whispered, and Thanatos kneeled down, his hand falling to your wrist, listening to your pulse. Even with the feeling of your heart still desperately pumping blood through your body, only to lose it through your wounds, you didn't utter another word afterwards. You undoubtedly were dying, but perhaps, for now, you were merely unconscious as your lungs didn't stop reaching for air, and your heart used all your strength to function.

Once more, the sun broke through the clouds, shining down right at you two, bringing Thanatos into the predicament of being blinded as it reflected off your armor. Perhaps he understood it now. Understood how unfair it was that someone like you, innocent and kind, was doomed to die out here. How awful his job on this day was, forcing him to take you to Tartarus and put you before the judgment of the god residing there.

So what if... he didn't.

He couldn't heal your wounds, nor make you feel better. But what he could do is battle the fate, earn the scorn of many, but at least, even if he took out the spear from your bloody body, you'd live. You'd live to tell your tale, and who knew, even he could apply some bandages, so maybe you'd recover some.

It was a risk, and one Thanatos did not like taking, nor found pleasure in executing. But you couldn't refuse to come to this battle, whereas he, perhaps, after all these years, could refuse to do his job once. For your sake, and unbeknownst to him at that time, for his own even more.

His scythe disappeared in favor of Thanatos grabbing for the dreadful spear. Never before had he experience the kind of sound a wound could make from so close, and by the gods, he hoped he never would again. It was just your luck that you were unconscious, or the pain would have perhaps killed you faster than your wounds.

Leaning down, he scooped you up, his hand sullied with your blood and the dirt on the ground. The snow wasn't cold when he touched it, but your body was warm in his arms and still alive. Your threat of fade wasn't cut yet, and he wouldn't do it. With you in his arms, he stepped back, looking into your sleeping face before he retreated from the battlefield with a quiet, "Let's go."

No, the surface wasn't a place Thanatos liked to linger. It was too loud, too wrong, and too bright. But to see your smile, lively and happy, one more time, he didn't need to stay above ground. Where you were going, it was dark and, at times, lonely if you weren't a being born there. But you'd also be safe and alive for as long as you wished to.

And Thanatos would be with you, even if everyone would turn against him and his decision, for all eternity if he must.

#thanatos #thanatos hades #yandere thanatos #yandere!thanatos #hades #hades the game #yandere hades #yandere!hades #yandere #yandere imagines #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios #yandere fanfiction #yandere writing #yandere oneshot #yandere drabble #yandere x reader #yandere x darling #Yandere TW

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atlafan · 4 years

Text

It’s Electric - One Shot

a/n: I have no idea what this is or why I thought of it, but enjoy CEO!Harry with a blue collar!Y/N

Warnings: Smut (slow burn, I’m so sorry.) Not proofread, sorry!

Words: 15.2K

Being a female, blue collar worker was interesting to say the least. Most of the guys you worked with were either fresh out of college and starting their apprenticeship, or they were in their mid-forties, married with kids. You did the college thing, and got a degree in mathematics, but you didn’t want to be a teacher, and you sure as hell didn’t want to go into computer science. Your father was an electrician, and you asked him for help getting into his union. Electrical work involved a lot of math, especially trigonometry.

You were in your mid-twenties, able to live alone, and working a job that had good benefits. A lot of your friends didn’t quite understand it because you sometimes had to work traditional holidays, and you really couldn’t take time off. But the overtime pay was incredible, and when you were able to take a vacation, you had plenty of money for a good time. The one thing you were sort of missing was companionship.

Most of the guys on the job just assumed you were gay. It was a stupid stereotype. To be fair, you did have to wear a lot of flannel and you never wore makeup, and you constantly had hat hair from your hardhat. Again, a lot of stupid stereotypes.

Your union had gotten a contract together to do maintenance on a specific building in the city. It happened to also be where one of your best friends works so you’d be able to go on lunch together.

“Y/N!” She squeals. “Look at you, I’ve never seen you on the job before.” She tugs at your flannel. “I think you’re the reason mom jeans came back into style, you look so cute.” She was the best hype man there was.

“Thanks, Stacey.” You chuckle. “I don’t wanna get in trouble, I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

You had never changed so many lightbulbs in one sitting. You hated maintenance work, but it beat being on unemployment. Next on the list was to run some tests on the electrical outlets. You make your way through specific people’s offices. You see your friend again, her desk was outside the CEO’s. She was his executive assistant.

“Let me just make sure he’s not on a call.” She says and you nod. She knocks on the door and opens it. “Mr. Styles? The maintenance crew is here to run inspections in your office.”

“Thanks, send ‘em in.”

She smiles and gestures for you to go in. She grabs you first, pulling you back.

“Remember, he’s British, and very hot.”

“Stacey…you have a boyfriend.”

“I’m well aware, I’m just preparing you.”

You roll your eyes and walk in.

“I’ll try to keep it brief.” You tell him and he nods. You click your pen and make a few notes on your clip board. You grab your outlet tester from your tool belt and get to work. He tries to continue typing at his desk, but curiosity gets the better of him.

“This might sound rude, but I was expecting some old guy to come here for this.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” You smirk at him and continue around the room. “This office is huge.”

“Well…it should be. Worked hard enough for it.”

“Right, you’re the CEO?”

“That’s right, darlin’.”

“Don’t call me that.” You make a disgusted face.

“Sorry, it’s just something I say.” He blushes.

“I need to get under there.”

“Excuse me?”

“Under your desk, I need to check the floor outlets.”

“Oh.” He stands up and moves his chair out of the way. He looks away as you get on your hands and knees, but he’s a man, so his eyes flicker down to your ass. He looks away immediately. You stand back up and make some notes.

“Alright, all set. Have a good one.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty routine inspection. You all take good care of your offices. Nothing to worry about. We replaced all the lightbulbs that needed it, made them all LED.”

“Thanks.” He smiles.

You walk out and confirm with Stacey where you’ll be meeting her for lunch. Harry notices this. After you’re gone, Harry goes out to Stacey’s desk.

“Stacey, you’re friends with that woman?”

“Yeah! We go way back, Mr. Styles. She’s my best friend, actually. We’re having lunch in a bit, would you like to join us?”

“No.” He chuckles. “No, that’s alright. Um…so she’s an electrician?”

“Mhm, she’s really smart. She was top of her apprenticeship program a few years ago. She’s part of some union now that he dad was in. She likes it.”

“Ah…” He looks away for a moment. “You and I know each other pretty well at this point, right?”

“I’d say so. I mean, my boyfriend and I have been to your house for parties.” You giggle. “Why?”

“Is she single?”

‘Y/N? Yeah! Totally single.” She beams. “Not that she can’t get a date, she can. She’s just been busy lately.” She bites her bottom lip. “Do you…want me to give you her number?”

“Only if she wants to. See what she thought of me on your lunch, would you?”

“I’m on it.”

You and Stacey meet up at a Panera Bread not too far from the office building. You’d be doing inspections there all week, on every floor.

“Alright, I’m just going to come right out and say it. Harry wants your number!” She squeals.

You nearly choke on your salad.

“Who?!”

“Harry! Mr. Styles, my boss. The CEO of-“

“Okay, okay. What the fuck, I talked to him for like two seconds. He also called me darling, I didn’t like that.”

“He calls everyone darling, or love. He’s British, remember.”

“What does that have to…? Never mind.” You shake your head.

“He must think you’re cute. He hasn’t dated in a while, as far as I know. He’s super sweet, Y/N. Can I give him your number, please? He could really sweep you off your feet.”

“I’m not looking to be swept, I’m looking for a partner, someone to spend time with. Not someone who flashes cash around.”

“You’re making excuses.”

“Fine.” You shrug. “Give him my number.”

Stacey can’t wait to get back up to her office to give Harry your number. She knocks on his door and enters. He’s just finishing his lunch.

“Here.” She slaps a piece of paper on his desk. “That’s her number. I’ll warn you, she’s stubborn, so…play it cool.”

“Don’t I always?”

“I said cool, not suave. She hates that shit.”

“When should I call? I don’t wanna seem too eager…”

“She might think you’re playing around if you don’t call her tonight. Call her after work.”

You were hanging out on your couch, fresh out of the shower in a tank top and shorts, digging into a pint of ice cream. Your phone goes off, and you see it’s not anyone you know. You swipe to answer and stick your phone between your cheek and shoulder.

“Hello?”

“Hi, uh, is this Y/N?”

“This is she.”

“It’s Harry.”

“Who? Oh! Mr. Styles from the office building.”

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “That’s me.”

“Stacey gave you my number?”

“She did. I hope it’s alright that I asked her for it.”

“Hey, however your relationship works is none of my business.” You take a bite of your ice cream. “So, why’d you want my number anyways?”

“So I could ask you out.”

For the second time today you choke on your food.

“Excuse me, one second.”

He hears you coughing and he tries not to laugh. You get a glass of water, and sit back down.

“Sorry about that.”

“No worries.”

“Why do you want to ask me out?”

“I, well, to be blunt I’m attracted to you.”

“Why?” You scoff. “Got a thing for girls in loose jeans?”

“They weren’t that loose.”

“What?”

“Nothing, listen, I think you’re pretty and I just thought-“

“Pretty? Wow.” You scoff.

“You’re really going to make me work for this, aren’t you?” He sighs.

“Hard work doesn’t seem foreign to you. It’s how you got that nice office of yours isn’t it?”

“Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go out for dinner with me some time?”

“I’m free Saturday if you are.”

“I’m free.”

“Pick me up at seven, I’ll text you my address when the time comes.” You hang up before he has a second to say anything else.

You text Stacey to let her know you’d be going out with Harry on Saturday. You were actually sort of excited.

On Saturday, you go to your hairdresser for a blow out, and to have your nails done. It was a very nice treat. You get your make up on and pick out one of the dresses you never get to wear. It was black and simple, but you were exited to wear it. You get a call from Harry right at seven.

“Hello?”

“Just pulled up, I’m downstairs.”

“Be down in a second.” You grab your purse and head down.

Harry had a suit on and was standing outside a black car. His jaw nearly drops when he sees you. All he had to go on was that day in his office. You looked like a completely different person.

“You look…lovely.”

“Thanks.” You smile. “I don’t get to dress up very often.” You blush slightly.

He opens the back door of the car for you and you raise an eyebrow.

“I have a driver.”

“Oh…fancy.”

You slide into the car, and Harry comes around on the other side. He taps on the partition, and the car moves.

“I hope you like Asian food.”

“Love it.” You say. “Oh! Are we going to that hibachi place?”

“No, but it’ll sort of be like that.”

“Do you always use a driver?”

“For city stuff, yeah. When I’m out at the beach or upstate I drive myself. Sometimes I get my picture taken when I’m out, learned a long time ago it’s best to just have a driver.”

“Like…paparazzi?”

“Yeah…sometimes. Not that often anymore. There was this, uh, model that I dated a few years ago-“

“Tell me again, why were you so attracted to me?”

“You caught my attention. Not a lot of people do.”

Your cheeks grow slightly red. You feel the car come to a full stop. The driver gets out and opens the door for you. Harry slides out after you. You watch as he tells the driver how long you’ll roughly be. As you walk into the restaurant, the hostess greets Harry almost immediately. You follow her past the main dining area, and are brought into a private dining room. There was a table for two set up already. You give him a confused look.

“I like my privacy.” He pulls your chair out for your and you sit down.

“Is there any particular reason we’re sitting next to each other.”

“The chef is going to make our food for us in a few minutes. Told you it was sort of like hibachi.” He grabs the bottle of wine on the table and opens it. “Would you like some? It’s plum wine, it’s delicious.”

“Um…sure.” He pours you some and you take a small sip. “Hm, different.”

“So, how does one become an electrician?”

“How does one become a CEO?” You smirk. “Lots of hard work, school, and luck.”

Before Harry can speak again the chef walks in, and a few other follow him in with a cart. There was a flat top where he’d be able to make whatever you wanted. One of the waiters brings over a tray of sushi to start with. You grab your chopsticks and take a piece.

“Oh, that’s good. I love sashimi.” You say.

“Good evening, folks.” The chef smiles. “Tonight I’ll be preparing a delicious steak, kale salad, and for dessert fried banana ice cream.”

“That all work for you? I sorta had to tell them ahead of time.”

“Sounds amazing.”

You watch as the chef prepares the steak and the kale. It smelled delicious already, and it was cool to watch as it was done. You and Harry continue to enjoy the sushi in the meantime.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“About what?”

“Becoming an electrician.”

“Oh…well, my dad was one, and he was in a union. I have a B.S. in Mathematics, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it, so I asked my dad for some help getting into the union, and the rest was history. I get to use my degree every day. Not a lot of people can say that.” You smile and take a sip of the wine. “Do you always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Schmooze on a first date.”

“I’m not schmoozing.” He gasps.

“I’m just saying…this is, like, really fancy. You could have taken me to a burger joint, I’m not picky. I just don’t want you thinking you to need to flash your cash around. I get it, you’re reach and do well for yourself, you know? I wanna know what’s underneath all that.”

Two plates are put in front of you.

“Thank you.” Harry says to the chef and everyone else leaves the room. “I wasn’t trying to flash my cash.” He cuts his steak and takes a bite. “I just wanted to show you a good time.”

“By booking a private room at a really nice restaurant?” You smirk and take a bite of your steak. “Although, this food is delicious.” You use your napkin to pat the corners of your mouth gently. “How’d you get into the business that you’re in?”

“Well, I always wanted to be in sales, do a little bit of traveling, that kind of stuff. When I was in uni, the idea of property management sort of intrigued me, so I looked a little more into that. I started off in the mail room while I was getting my MBA, and then just sort of worked my way up. I bet my company has provided a lot of work to your union, other than just maintenance.”

“It definitely does, I recognized the name. You guys have put up buildings all over the place. You’re kind of like Richard Gere’s character in Pretty Woman.”

“I suppose I am! I love that movie.” He clears his throat. “So, you didn’t want to become an engineer or anything?”

“Nope, I like working with my hands.” You shrug and take a sip of your wine.

“Is it hard being in a male dominated profession?”

“Isn’t it pretty male dominated up in your office?” You raise an eyebrow at him. “Most of the women up there were either assistants or other low ranking positions.”

“Are you saying your friend works a low ranking position as my executive assistant?”

“Stacey likes what she does, she feels fulfilled and needed, at least that’s what she tells me. I’m just saying, anywhere I would have gone, it would probably look the same. Besides, I’m not the only woman on the job, I’m just one of few, and I’m one of the younger ones. The guys are all nice enough.”

A few moments later a waiter comes in to clear the plates and someone else brings out the fried ice cream.

“I’ve never had this before.” You smile. “I’m excited to try it.”

“Fried ice cream is delicious, especially after eating a steak with so many spices in it.”

You both dig in. You lick your lips after taking a bite.

“Mm, that is so good.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Harry squared up the bill, and out the two of you went. You thanked him over and over for paying. He wanted to ask if you felt like grabbing another drink anywhere, but he wasn’t so sure if you’d be into it. Maybe that could be saved for a second date. His driver brings you home and Harry gets out to walk you up the steps of your building.

“I had a great time.” He blushes. “I’m glad we could do this.” All you do is smile and nod. “Um, well, so I have your number, I’ll give you another call sometime?”

“Okay.” You get your keys out of your purse. “Thanks again for dinner.”

You key into your building and he watches you disappear inside. He was stunned. Not even a goodnight kiss, hell, even a hug would have sufficed. Usually when Harry took a woman out on a date at the very least he got a kiss on the cheek, if not that most of the time he would get invited up. Did he do something wrong? Were you not as attracted to him as he was to you?

“Tell me everything! I wanna know what to expect tomorrow morning and if I need to add a caramel swirl to his coffee.” Stacey giggles over the phone with you the next morning.

“It was…okay.”

“Just okay?! Didn’t he take you to that nice Japanese place?”

“Yeah, the food was excellent, but the atmosphere was weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“He had us seated in a private room and we basically had this personal chef. It was awkward when things got a little quiet. There was a little music in the background, but I would have felt more at ease in the main dining area.”

“He likes his privacy.”

“So he said. Apparently sometimes paparazzi follow him?”

“Yeah, about a year ago he was dating this Italian model. He started getting photographed. They followed him around a bit after they broke up, but we haven’t seen too many in a while.”

“I don’t know why he’d want to go from a model to me…”

“Oh, stop it. You’re gorgeous! So…are you saying you won’t see him again?”

“I don’t see why I would. I didn’t feel any sparks flying between us. He seems sort of hollow, Stace.”

“No! He’s so sweet! He can just be sort of…I don’t know…awkward. He’s amazing when he’s making a deal, but outside of work I know he can be a little social awkward.”

“I don’t think I wanna be with someone as rich as he is.”

“He was just trying to impress you, I’m sure. You didn’t have any fun?”

“I had a little…but not enough to go on a second date.”

Stacey swallowed hard. Harry was a very sweet man, and extremely respectful…but he wanted something he worked for it. There was no way he was going to let this, or you, go.

“Morning, Stacey.” He says to her with a smile. He grabs his coffee from her desk.

“Morning, Mr. Styles.”

“Have a good weekend?” He asks as she follows her in. He looks at the mail she’s already put on his desk.

“Yeah, Dan and I visited his parents out at the lake. It was nice.”

“Good for you guys.” He looks at her and smiles. “Been together a few years now, right? When’s he popping the question?”

“Oh, Harry.” She swats a hand at him as he chuckles. “Soon. Anyways, you’ve got a meeting at nine, and then this afternoon you’re to go to that new property we just bought. The construction workers will be there, it’ll be good for you to meet the crew.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. I’m dying to see the place again. Haven’t been since we saw it last.” He sits down at his desk. “Hate wearing those hard hats though, they always mess up my hair.” He smirks.

“I don’t think anything could mess up your hair.” She laughs and turns to leave to go back to his desk.

“Wait, uh, did you happen to speak with Y/N at all?”

“Oh! Um, was this past Saturday the big date?”

“You know it was, quit playing.”

“We spoke, yeah.”

“Did she mention me at all? Trying to gauge when I should call her next.”

“Oh, so you wanna see her again?”

“I do.” He smiles. “So, she say anything?”

“Yeah…um, she said she had a nice time.”

“Was that it?”

“Pretty much, but to be fair, we talked more about my weekend. Barely let her get a word in, you know how I can be sometimes.”

Stacey walks awkwardly back to her desk. She prayed that if he did reach out to you, you’d at least let him down easy.

Harry leaves around one in the afternoon to head to the property. He and the COO go together in a car. When they get there they both shake the foreman’s hand and walk around the property.

“The electrician’s showed up this morning. They’ve certainly got their work cut out for them.” The foreman says. “Great workers though, union contract just how you like.”

Harry nods and continues walking. He notices the electricians on their afternoon coffee break.

“Check out the suits.” Frank says to you. You smirk and look over your shoulder. You immediately look back at Frank. “What?”

“I know that guy…the one in the blue suit.”

“No shit, how?”

“He, uh, took me to dinner on Saturday.”

“What?!”

“My friend is his executive assistant, she gave him my number after we met last week doing those inspections.”

“No offense, but I thought you were gay.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“Frank.” You pinch the bridge of your nose.

“So…some big wig took you out? How was it?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, and I certainly don’t want to-“

“Y/N?”

You turn around slowly to look at him.

“Hi Harry.”

“Y/N, you should address him as Mr. Styles.” Your foreman says.

“That’s quite alright, we know each other.” He smiles at you.

“We sure do, excuse me.” You grab your hard hat, stick it on, and head inside with Frank.

“How do you know her?” The foreman asks Harry.

“She’s good friends with my assistant.”

The foreman brings Harry and the COO inside to show them the bit of progress that’s been made on the interior thus far. Harry sees you up on a ladder helping a wire get fed through a hole.

“Got it!” You yell up, and secure it.

Harry and the COO stick around for quite some time making sure everything was to their liking. He’s there until the end of the work day and sees you walking with your toolbox to your car. You wave goodbye to Frank as you get everything in your trunk. It was a nice size SUV. He watches as you unclip your tool belt and slightly rub at your hip bones. He decides to come over to you.

“Hi again.” He smiles and you nearly jump.

“Jesus, you’re just everywhere.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, darling.” You scrunch your face at the word. “Sorry.”

“You apologize a lot.” You shake your head and throw your hard hat into your trunk. You take your hair out of its bun, and shake your hair out. “Can I help you with something?” You close your trunk and lean against your car, crossing your arms.

“I just, um, well, I was wondering when I could see you again.”

“You’re seeing me now.”

He chuckles and shakes his head.

“I mean, when can I take you on another date?”

“Harry…” You look down, then back up to him. “I…”

“I should have texted you afterwards, right?” He sucks his teeth. “I didn’t wanna seem too eager.”

“You really had that good a time with me that you wanna take me out again?”

“Well, yeah. Didn’t you?”

You had two choices. You could either crush the man in front of you and walk away, or you could cut the guy a break and give it another go. Would it be so bad to let him take you out again? Maybe this time you could call the shots.

“I did.” You swallow. “I’d like to go out again.”

“Great!” He beams at you. “I was thinking we could-“

“I’d like to plan it.”

“Oh…well, alright. What did you have in mind?”

“You’ll find out Friday night. You’re free then?”

“I can definitely make myself available.”

“Perfect.” You turn on your heel and get into your car. Once again you leave him standing there, stunned.

“You’re giving it another shot?!” Stacey practically screams through the phone.

“Mhm.”

“What made you decide?”

“Well, he was just standing right in front of me. I felt sort of bad. I figured maybe I was being too harsh before. It can’t hurt to go out again.”

“Where are you going to take him?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I was thinking of going to that bar I’ve been to with Frank. I’ve taken you a couple of times.”

“Oh! That place with the darts and the live music?”

“Yeah! I think he needs a night to be a little less fancy, don’t you?”

“Definitely! He won’t know what hit him.”

Harry was on cloud nine all week. He couldn’t wait to see you again. He even had flowers sent to your job site. You were thoroughly embarrassed. The guys all gave you shit for it. He was a little surprised when you didn’t even text him to thank him for them, but he just brushed it off and kept his cool. When you did finally text him Thursday evening, he nearly squealed.

You: what’s your address? I’ll be picking you up around eight tomorrow

Harry: late start to the evening, where we headed?

You: that’s for me to know ;)

His stomach filled with butterflies all because you sent a winky face. He was having a few doubts that maybe you didn’t like him that much, but you were being playful with him now. This was good.

Your hair was down and wavy, you had a white tank top on with a dangly necklace, and some jeans. You drive to Harry’s building. It was much nicer than yours, naturally. You text him and let him know you’re on the street. He comes walking out moments later in a black silk shirt and a pair of yellow patterned dress pants. You squinted through the window and noticed they were sort of tight around his thighs. He waves at you and you wave back.

“This is fun already.” He says as he buckles up. He looks down at you. “I’m overdressed.”

“Not at all. You’re dressed like you, that’s good. This is how I like to dress.”

“You look cute.” He says.

“Thanks.” You start to drive off towards the bar.

“So, now will you tell me where we’re going?”

“To a bar, hope you’re thirsty.” You smirk at him.

As you continue to drive Harry takes note of the music on the radio and even the way you drive the car. You were only using one hand, on the bottom of the wheel. You were so easy going.

“This is a nice car.”

“Thanks, bought it last year. I used have a dinged up old truck.”

“Do you miss having a truck?”

“Not really.” You shrug. “I wanted something more like this. When you have a truck everyone always wants your help with stuff. It’s bad enough that I’m the handy friend.” You chuckle. “I’m always being asked to help repair stuff or whatever. I don’t mind, but sometimes it’s a lot.”

You get over to the bar and find a place to park.

“Can’t remember the last time I was on this side of town.” He comments as you walk inside.

There were a lot people around, and the bar itself was packed. There was some sports game playing, but it wouldn’t be on long once the live band would start. There were people playing darts and munching on popcorn.

“Go snag a booth, I’ll get us some beers.”

“Oh, uh…”

“What’s a matter?”

“I don’t really like beer.” He takes his wallet out. “I can grab the drinks, tell me what you want.”

“I want you to go grab us a booth. I’ll get you something other than beer.”

You turn and go up to the bar. You greet the bartender who knows you pretty well. You decide that if Harry didn’t want beer, then you wouldn’t get one either.

“Two long islands.” You grin.

You get your drinks and find Harry at a booth. He stuck out like a sore thumb, he wasn’t hard to find. You place the glasses on the table.

“I’ll grab us some popcorn. We’ll grab some real food later.”

You go up to the popcorn machine and grab a bowl to fill up. You say hello to some people you recognize and head back to the booth.

“What made you decide on a long island ice tea?” He raises an eyebrow at you.

“Thought it would be fun to just get drunk.” You smile. “What sort of mixed drinks do you usually get?”

“I don’t. I usually just get a scotch or something.”

“Ew.” You grimace and then take a sip of your drink. “This is much more fun.”

“You could have gotten a beer still.”

You toss a piece of popcorn into your mouth and take another sip. Harry takes a sip as well and coughs when he’s done.

“Bit heavy handed.”

“I can get you something else…”

“No, it’s fine.” He smiles. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Sometimes. Some buddies from work brought me here, and I liked it. They have free darts, and live music. The band should be starting soon.”

You were two drinks in, and you both were giggling messes. The band was loud, but fun. You had gotten into a little game of getting popcorn into the other’s mouth. Maybe Harry could let his hair down a little and act like a normal person.

By the time you each were on your third drink, you definitely knew you were drunk, and so did Harry. He was having a great time.

“I’m hungry, are you hungry?!” You had yell over the music.

“Starved!”

“Come on!”

You grab his wrist as you walk out of the place. It’s a bit chilly outside, and without thinking, Harry wraps his arm around your shoulders as you walk. You wrap yours around his waist, and he feels butterflies again. You lead him to a McDonald’s and walk in.

“Two medium big mac meals, please.” You slur as you walk up to the counter.

“I’m paying.” Harry insists.

“Nope, I got it.” You slap your credit card down. “Go fill up our drinks, I’ll wait for the food.”

Harry shuffles over to the drink station and fills the paper cups up with coke. You come over to the table he found and you both dive into the greasy food.

“Mm, I can’t remember the last time I had McDonald’s.” He grunts as he eats the food.

“Right?! It’s like, the perfect drunk food.” You suck down the coke. “I would have gotten us some flurries but the machine’s broken.”

“I have ice cream back at my place…got stuff to make sundaes actually.”

“Are you kidding?!”

“Nope, always keep that stuff around. Never know when you’re gonna need some hot fudge.”

“Well, I know where we’re going next.”

“What about your car? We’re both way too fucked up to drive.”

“It’s called uber.”

“Nonsense, I’ll call my-“

“He’ll be here in two minutes, finish up your fries.” You say, looking at your phone.

“You’re very impulsive.” He chuckles and throws some fries into his mouth.

“Live a little.” You yank him out of the booth and go outside.

You both crawl into the uber, and giggle during the ride. Harry hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. When you get to Harry’s building, he says hello to the doorman, and you just smile and wave. He keeps his hand on the small of your back as he leads you into the elevator. It was a beautiful lobby. You watch, through your foggy eyes, as Harry presses the button for the top floor where all of the pent house suites were. He leads you down a hall and keys into his place. You jaw nearly hits the floor.

“I didn’t know they made apartments this big. It’s like…a house in here!” You walk around. “Is this a staircase?!”

“Yeah, it’s two stories. There’s four bedrooms total. My main guest room is down here, and then upstairs are the rest. Got an office down that way, nice big balcony.”

“What’s a single guy need all this space for?”

“Got family and friends that come to visit. I end up hosting functions quite a bit too. Catered events, and all that.” He grabs your hand to lead you into his massive kitchen. “Can I get you some water?”

“Nope, got any alcohol?”

“You want more to drink?!”

“We’re going to have ice cream right? How about some kalua?”

“You know, I do have some. I could put it into some shot glasses.”

“Works for me.” You smile.

Harry get everything out for the sundaes. His kitchen looked like it belonged in a restaurant, but it made sense since he did say he had catered events. If he had cooks come they’d need state of the art equipment. He runs the scoop under some warm water, rolls up one of his sleeves and scoops the ice cream into two bowls. Your eyes widen as you see the veins in his hand and forearm peek out. He adds the warmed up fudge, sprinkles some nuts, and then adds some whip cream.

“Why do you have all this stuff?” You ask as you make up the shots.

“We had an ice cream social here a week or so ago. I like having themed parties.” He bites into his ice cream and moans. “I hate throwing out leftovers.”

“This fudge is really rich.” You lick your lips after taking a bite.

“Shoulda made milk shakes with this.” He takes his shot of kalua and so do you.

“Next time.” You spoon my ice cream into your mouth.

“Next time, eh?”

“Sure.” You smile. “I’m having a good time.”

“Better than last time?”

“Harry.” You put your bowl down and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical, but when you let your hair down, you’re a lot of fun.”

“So…you didn’t have any fun last time?”

“It’s not that I didn’t.” You say, shoveling more ice cream into your mouth. “But I feel like I got to know you better tonight.” You hop up on his counter and sit there comfortably as you finish your ice cream. A little bit of hot fudge lingers on the corner of your mouth.

“You have a little, uh…” He taps the corner of his mouth to show you. He moves to stand between your legs and you look up at him.

“Did I get it?”

“Not exactly.” He cups your cheeks and leans in. You can feel his breath on you. He runs his thumb over the spot. “Got it.” He sucks his thumb into his mouth and smirks at you.

Just as he’s about to turn to grab the bowls you grab at the collar of his shirt, and pull him to you, crashing your lips to his. He sinks into it, only for a second before backing away. He presses his forehead to yours.

“What’s wrong?” You breathe.

“I don’t want this to happen like this.”

“Like what?”

He steps away and looks at you.

“We’re both pretty out of sorts, Y/N.”

“It was just a kiss…”

“But it could lead to more, and I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

“Are you really going to tell me you’ve never hooked up drunk?”

“I have.”

“So…I’m sorry, I’m just really confused.” You hop down so you can stand on your feet.

“Y/N.” He cups your cheeks so you’ll look at him. “I want to be completely sober so I can fully enjoy you.”

“You’re…such a weirdo, Harry. Who says shit like that?” You step away from him.

“You know, most people find me charming.”

“Well, then I guess I’m not most people.” You roll your eyes at yourself. “Ugh, I didn’t mean for that to sound like I’m not like other girls, that would be a weird thing to say. I feel like you say things you think I’d wanna hear.”

“No, I really feel that way. I don’t want…look, if we decided to do it, I’d wanna remember it, that’s all I was trying to say.”

“So just say it like that!” You start laughing. “That I can understand.”

“I don’t know what to say around you. It’s like everything I do is wrong.”

“Not true.” You grab the whip cream can and spray some into your mouth. “You make a mean sundae.”

“Don’t hog it.” He opens his mouth and you spray some whip cream into his mouth. You both giggle.

“So…you don’t even want to keep kissing?”

“I do, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“What do you wanna do instead? My car’s all the way back at the bar, I’m way too fucked to drive…”

“You could stay here if you want. I could give you some pj’s and-“

“No, I’d rather sleep in my own bed.”

“I could call my driver.”

“This late?!”

“He’s on call.” Harry takes out his phone and sends a text. “It’s his job.”

“You’ll come for the ride?”

“Of course!” He smiles. “I have a question for you…”

“Alright.”

“Did you get the flowers I sent you earlier this week?”

“I did.” You move some hair from your face. “I’m sure you meant well, but you shouldn’t do that while I’m working again.”

“Why?” He frowns.

“It was embarrassing. Some of the guys gave me shit for it. Just…if you do it again, I mean, I like getting flowers, just have them sent to my apartment. I don’t need gifts at work. I didn’t even know where to put them.”

“So, we’re definitely seeing each other again?”

“I’d like to.” You smile.

“Great.” He smiles back. “Sorry…I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Do you want me to have someone fired? Cause I can do that.”

“No.” You laugh. “But thanks.”

Harry leads you down to the car and you both get in the back seat. You sit really close to him. You were incredibly riled up and horny. It was the alcohol, but you were sort of disappointed that you wouldn’t be getting laid, and it sort of turned you on that Harry was being such a gentleman. You look up at him.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?” He looks down at you.

You move his arm to put it around you, and you look up at him with big eyes. He sighs and leans in to kiss you. His lips were so soft, and he still tasted like the hot fudge. Your hands slide up to his hair and tug on his curls. You just wanted his tongue in your mouth, but he was being so timid. His other hand goes down to your thigh, and he squeezes it, his thumb digging in to your inner thigh. You whimper slightly and then he lets go of you. The car comes to a stop, and your door is opened by the driver. Harry gets out to walk you up to your door.

“I’m going to be out of town for the next ten days.” He says, tucking some hair behind your ear. “But when I get back, I’d love to see you again.”

“Me too.”

“Good.” He gives you one last kiss before getting back into the car. He makes sure you’re inside the building before he lets the driver go. He presses the button for the partition to go down. “Charlie, I had my doubts, I really did, but she likes me, mate.”

“That’s great, sir. I’m glad she agreed to see you again.”

“Me too. She’s so…different! She’s sort of blunt too. I like that. I feel like women always just like me for my money, but she could care less! This could really be something, I can feel it.”

You told Stacey all about your date with Harry, and how good of a kisser he was. You weren’t sure how’d you last the next ten days without his lips on yours again, but you’d find ways to manage. Work was a great distraction. However, your friends continued to shit on you. One of them snuck a magazine that had Harry on the cover into your toolbox.

“Very funny.” You roll your eyes as they laugh. “What’s so funny that he likes me?”

“It’s not funny, think they’re just jealous.” Frank smirks and looks at the magazine. “It’s just odd that you’re into him.”

“He’s not exactly the type of guy I’d usually be interested in, but he means well. He’s sweet…in his own weird way. He’s quirky. I took him to that bar we’ve been to on Friday, we had a great time.”

“Look at you, trying something for a second time. When do you see him next?”

“I don’t know. He’s out of town for a couple of weeks.”

“Doing what?”

“How the fuck should I know? I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“It’s none of my business. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but he is the guy you’re seeing.”

“I’ve been on two dates with him, nothing’s set in stone.” Your morning coffee break ends you sigh. “Great, time to go into this stupid basement.” You put your hardhat on and a mask and head in with Frank.

On Thursday evening, you were just hanging out, watching TV after a long day of work. Your phone goes off and you see it’s a call from Harry.

“Hello?”

“Hi, beautiful!”

You’re sitting there with your hair up in a messy bun, pimple patches on your blemishes, and a raggedy t-shirt with stains all over it. You roll your eyes.

“What’s up?”

“Well, I finally got a free moment, and I wanted to call you. Are you busy? Should be about eight o’clock, right?”

“Yeah it is…where are you?”

“I’m in London.”

You think for a moment and you gasp.

“Harry, it’s like two in the morning over there!”

“Like I said, I finally got a free moment. I’m just getting into my flat, getting cozy.”

“What did you go to London for?”

“Business of course…and to see some family. Killing two birds with one stone.”

“Do you travel a lot?”

“Sometimes. There were some buildings I wanted to look at out here.”

“How come you didn’t bring Stacey?”

“She doesn’t always need to travel with me. We’ve connected, don’t worry. I’m not one of those helpless idiots who can’t survive without their assistant. Besides, need her there to hold down the fort.” You hear some shuffling and then the creaking of a bed, and a big sigh from him.

“So…what kept you out so late?”

“Business.”

“What Business could you possibly need to conduct at two in the morning?”

“Things operate differently over here. People like to go out late. I actually left early because I was tired.”

“That’s wild.”

“Very.” He chuckles. “What are you up to?”

“I was just watching some TV before I hit the sack.”

“Anything good on?”

“Not really.” You laugh and turn the TV off. “Kinda like hearing your voice.” You slap your forehead because you literally don’t know what possessed you to say that.

“Like hearing yours too. Sorry I haven’t been able to text much.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not, really. I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t interested or something.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good, because I’m still really interested.”

“When do you come back?”

“Monday evening, then it’s back to the office Tuesday.”

“You never stop, do you…”

“It’s hard not to, but I like what I do.”

“I would hope so.”

“How’s your week been?”

“You should get some sleep.”

“Can’t, too awake now. Tell me how your week was, how’s the building coming along?”

“I’ve been in a dimly lit crawl space in the basement feeding wires all week. Tomorrow’s the last day of doing that. Then next week my group of people will move up to the regular basement, and then after that we’ll move on to the lobby. Other people are working on the outside as well, and then once all that’s done we’ll be able to move on to the individual offices inside.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“Mhm, but it’s honest work. I can take a step back at the end of the day and see what I’ve done. I like that.”

“You’re a visual person, then.”

“I am.”

“So am I.”

“Nice to know we have one thing in common.”

“We have other things in common.” He sounds offended.

“Like what?” You giggle and sit with your knees hugged to your chest. His voice over the phone was oddly soothing to you.

“Well…I’d say we both enjoy a good joke. We both like food, although, I have to say, my stomach was pretty angry with me after I had that bic mac.”

You burst out laughing.

“So was mine. It’s always good going in.”

“Mhm, and we like each other.”

“Oh, we do?” You ask sarcastically. “Teasing. I like you.”

“You didn’t at first though.”

“You didn’t make a great impression by calling me darling in your office.”

“If I knew how derogatory it was going to come off, I never would have said it. It’s just…part of my vocabulary.”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“When I get back, I’d love to see you again. Maybe we could have lunch or something.”

“On my jobsite? I don’t think so.”

“We could go out for dinner, then? I mean, I’ll be coming by the site next week to check out the progress.”

“Please, don’t even acknowledge me if you see me. I want things to be professional.”

“Reputation to uphold?”

“Sort of. I have a couple good friends, but not all of the guys are so accepting of women on the job. I don’t want any of them thinking I’m getting special treatment or anything because I know you. Someone put a magazine that had you on the cover in my tool box as a prank.”

“I’m sorry…I don’t really know what the big deal is though.”

“It’s like I’m in elementary school and everyone found out about my cruck. Boys never really grow up, so I’ve come to find out.”

“Can’t say I can argue with that. We’re an immature lot.” He chuckles and then yawns.

“You should really go to sleep.”

“But I like talking to you.”

“You can call me this weekend.”

“Oh, that sounds nice.”

“Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight…sweet dreams, Y/N.”

You sigh as you hang up. Your stomach felt weird. Did you have butterflies? You never had butterflies. Harry was definitely growing on you.

Wednesday morning, Harry came to the jobsite to check things out. He stayed in the trailer with the foreman with quite some time before going inside the building. He didn’t see you, and he was sort of sad about it. He hears a whistling noise and sees a bunch of people filing out and taking their hard hats off.

“Morning coffee break.” The foreman explains. Harry nods and squints at everyone. His eyes widen when he spots you.

He watches as you grab your thermos and pour your coffee into the little cap that works as a cup. He desperately wants to go over and say hi, but he also wanted to respect what you asked of him.

“Hey, Y/N, isn’t that your boyfriend?” One of the guys says and makes kissy noises. “Go say hi, give him a big wet one for us. Show him some appreciation for giving the union so much work.”

“Very funny.” You roll your eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’ve been out two times.”

“That guy’s dated models, what’s so great about you?”

“Bob.” Frank says, warningly. “Don’t be a prick.”

Harry watches as the group laughs, and Frank puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Everything alright over there?” He asks the foreman.

“Yeah, they’re just giving her a tough time. They seem to think you’re her boyfriend.”

“And what if I was? Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No, sir, of course not…it’s just…up until a couple weeks ago everyone thought she was gay, or at least, just not into dudes.”

“Why? Because she didn’t try to fuck one of the other guys? She’s a beautiful woman, and-“ Harry stops himself. He can feel his blood boiling. He wasn’t your boyfriend, and he knew that, but he still wanted to defend you.

“What’s it like fucking a dude with so much money? Surprised you haven’t quit yet to become his live in lady.”

“Bob, I’m about two seconds away from ripping your balls off.”

“Not a very nice thing to say.”

“You’re being a dick, Bob.” Frank says. “Why do you wanna know what it’s like to fuck Mr. Styles for? You like him too?” He smirks.

“Frank.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “What’s happening here, you’re going to turn this around to make some gay joke to defend me? Not cool. You all need to grow the fuck up.” You finish your coffee, put your hardhat back on and storm off.

Harry watches the scene and goes over to the group of men since you now left.

“Everything alright over here?” He asks them. The foreman was shaking behind him.

“Just fine, sir.” Bob says.

“Are we sure? Because that worker seemed a bit upset. I hope you’re all working as a team, I hate to see people not being team players. It makes getting a job done well very difficult.”

“The guys have been ragging on her because of you.” Frank says. “Apparently they think it’s funny that you’ve been out a couple of times.” He turns to all of them. “I think you all forget that she works with us and has fun just like the rest of us, but she’s still a woman. She’s allowed to go out on dates with people not like us. Just because she doesn’t want any of you doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to find someone.”

Frank huffs and storms off himself. Harry was impressed by him.

“I don’t have much to add to that other than that her personal life is just that, personal. Please remember that, and keep things professional. Then, none of his will have a problem.” He says sternly and walks away. The foremen glares at all of them and follows Harry.

He just wanted to make sure you were okay. He saw you inside, back to work, as if nothing had happened. Frank was holding the latter you were on. He still wanted to respect what you had asked, so he turns and walks back out of the building.

Stacey had her phone out when Harry got back to the office. She was texting furiously with someone. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she had a frown on her face.

“Everything alright, love?” Harry asks, concerned.

“With me, yeah.” She looks up at him and smiles. “I’m proud of you.”

“For what?”

“For not stepping in to defend her. She’s good at taking care of herself.”

“So that’s who you’re texting?”

“Mhm. I’m gonna meet her after work for some drinks. When do you see her next?”

“Friday.”

“Good, that’ll be nice.”

“So I shouldn’t show up while you’re having drinks?”

“No! She needs girl time. You mean well, but keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t suffocate her.”

“It was so hard to not run over to her earlier. We chatted a bit over the phone while I was gone. It was so nice.” He sighs and leans against her desk.

“You’re a romantic, Harry, and I love that about you. But…Y/N…well, she prefers to save that for the movies.”

Harry’s eyes widen and he gasps.

“I just figured out what I’m gonna take her to do Friday!” He hugs Stacey quick. “Thanks, Stace!” He rushes into his office and closes the door.

By the time Friday rolled around, you were exhausted. You really didn’t want to do anything crazy, and Harry assured you that you’d just be hanging out at his place which put you at ease. His car comes for you around seven. You come out in a pair of jeans, a nice shirt, and your hair down. He gets out and practically runs over to you. He takes you in his arms and kisses you.

“Missed you.” He says against your lips before kissing you again.

“I guess I missed you too.” You smile. “Thanks for being so cool at the site the other day.”

“No worries, I just hope those guys have cooled it.”

“They have.”

“Good.” He smiles and leads you into the car.

“One of these days I’m going to see what you look like behind the wheel.”

“That just means you’ll have to come out to my beach house.”

“That doesn’t sound too terrible. It’s getting warmer out by the day.”

“I hope you’re hungry, I’ve got something good prepared.”

“Did you cook?”

“God, no. I’d burn the house down if I made something other than a frozen pizza.” He chuckles. “No, I had someone come and make everything I wanted.” You make a face at him. “Oh, stop it. You’ll be thankful once you see it, trust me.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Once you’re at Harry’s place, he leads you inside. You take note on how he always says hi to all of the workers. You liked that he was so kind to them. When he gets you inside your jaw drops. There was a popcorn machine full of popcorn, hot dogs on a rotisserie, and all of the fixings on a table next to it, a nacho station, and homemade candies and chocolates.

“So, this is, like, the concessions area, and then down the hall is my home theater. Thought I’d bring the movies to us. Do you like it?”

“This is so…extravagant.” You walk up to where all of the sweets are.

“I had my chef make up those chocolate covered cookie dough bites, I thought you might like them.”

“I love those…thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He kisses you cheek. “Well, let’s make up what we want and then we can go find our seats.” He chuckles at his own joke and it makes you giggle.

You each make up a tray of snacks, and head down the hall. You gasp when you see a movie poster on the wall outside of the door.

“Pretty Woman?”

“I remember you mentioning it on our first date. Would you like to watch it?”

“Sure!”

You walk inside the room. He wasn’t kidding, it really was a home theater. Three rows of luxurious recliner seats, a large screen and a projector in the back.

“Where would you like to sit?”

“Middle row?”

“Works for me.” He smiles and follows you up. He sets his food down on the chair next to him and takes his phone out. “There’s an app linked to the projector so I can just it play from here and even dim the lights.”

“Pretty cool.”

“Very cool. Makes things so much easier.”

The lights dim, and previews start playing.

“Previews from when the film first came out, makes it more immersive.”

“Nice touch.” You saw, biting into your hot dog. “Oh, wow. This is delicious.”

“All freshly made with a natural casing. Still not the best for you, but at least it’s made with good ingredients.”

You sip on your soda and toss some popcorn into your mouth as well. Once you both finish up some of the cookie dough bites, you set your trays aside, recline the chairs, and get comfortable. Harry lifts the armrest between you and puts his arm around you.

“This alright?”

“Mhm.” You cozy up to him and sigh as you watch the film.

Even though you thought he was flashing his cash again, you knew he wasn’t doing it for bad reasons. He wanted to give you a nice evening, and this was how he knew to do it. You appreciated him putting all this effort in just for you. It made you rethink your first date completely. He was just trying to show you a good time, and you felt bad for being sort of rude. You’re happy you gave him another chance.

You sling your arm over his lower stomach, and put one of your ankles over his. His cologne smelled so good, you just wanted to have him closer to you. Harry was swooning. He hadn’t felt this happy in so long. His hand strokes your arm and shoulder mindlessly as the movie goes on. You both laugh and giggle at the funnier parts. When it gets to the part of the film where Vivian goes down to where Edward is playing the piano, and she sits on top of it and they start having sex.

You bite your bottom lip and look up at Harry whose eyes are glues to the screen, but you could feel his heart beating rapidly. He notices you looking up at him and he looks down at you with a slight smile. You reach one of your hands up to the back of his neck to pull him down to you. His lips brush over yours, and then you both sink into it. You tug him by the collar of his shirt so he’s hovering over you on the large seats. You wrap your legs around his waist to have him as close as possible. You swipe your tongue along his bottom lip and he opens up for you. You both groan into the open mouthed kiss, happy to feel the other’s tongue.

He kisses down your jaw and makes his way to your neck. Your hips buck up towards his when he starts to suck on your skin. You crane your neck to give him more access, and you practically push his head further into you. You whimper and bite your bottom lip as your hips move up towards his again. He sits up and pulls you on top of him so you can straddle him. Your lips find his again as you roll your hips down on his growing bulge. You tug at his hair as you suck on his bottom lip. His hands were press on your back to keep you close.

“Y/N?” He breathes.

“Mm?” You mumble as you kiss on his neck.

“Do you wanna take a break so we can finish the movie?”

“What, why?” You pout with your now swollen lips.

“Well, it’s just, that scene where Jason Alexander tries to…um…you know, is coming up and I’d feel weird making out while that happens.”

“Oh.” You chuckle and move off of him. “Makes sense.” He puts his arm back around you as you both catch your breaths.

Eventually the movie ends and the lights come back on. You have to blink a few times to get used to it. You and Harry grab your trays and go out the kitchen to clean everything up.

“Did you enjoy that?” He asks as he loads up the dishwasher.

“Yeah! I mean, I love that movie, and it was cool to watch it privately like that.”

“That room used to be another bedroom, I had it renovated shortly after I moved in. I’m glad I did. It got difficult to go out once the paparazzi started following my every move. Plus, it’s fun for parties. My family loves it when they come to visit.” He dries his hands on a towel and tosses it on a counter.

“Do they still follow you around?”

“Not as much anymore, thank god. At least, not to see who I’m dating. Sometimes after I do an interview for a magazine they follow me to see if I’m going out to get drunk or something.” He scoffs and shakes his head.

“You end up on a lot of thirty under thirty type magazines.”

“Yeah…I’ve done those, made it onto Forbes too, that was pretty cool. Then in a couple of years when I do turn thirty, it’ll be forty under forty. It never ends.” He shakes his head.

“How’d you end up dating some Italian model?”

He steps closer to you and tucks some hair behind your ear.

“Is that something you really wanna talk about?” He asks, just above a whisper as he starts to kiss on your neck again.

“No.” You gasp as his hands squeeze your hips. “Can we go to your bedroom?” You hear him sigh against you and he leans back against the counter.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Not ready for that yet?”

“You make zero sense!”

It’s true. Harry wasn’t making much sense. He was used to moving too fast with women, and it always went wrong. He really liked you, and he didn’t want it blowing up in his face.

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” He squeezes your hand. “I just think we should go out on a few more dates before we get to know each other like that…don’t you?”

“No, I’d like you to take me to your room and fuck me.” You cross your arms.

“Y/N.” He chuckles. “I promise, it’ll be worth the wait.”

You knew he was right. You felt his fully erect dick when you were grinding on him earlier.

“I just want us on the same page, make sure we both want the same things before diving into all that.”

“God, of course you’re, like, a good person.” You roll your eyes. “Fine, let’s go out a few more times.”

“Great.” He smiles. “I want you to know, too, I’m not seeing anyone else.”

“Neither am I.”

“And you won’t start, right?”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs.

“Harry, I barely have the time to juggle one guy, I don’t think I’d have the energy to entertain more than one.” You laugh.

“Alright.” He blushes slightly. You step closer to him and wrap your arms around his neck.

“I’m surprised there isn’t a line of women knocking at your door.”

“Oh, there is, I just ignore it.” He smirks and you roll your eyes. “Kidding.”

“Mhm.”

You both smile and stand there kissing for a little while. Harry makes sure you get home, giving you a ride in his car. Just like last time, you spent most of the ride making out in the back seat. You really didn’t want to leave, but it was late and you needed to sleep. You say goodnight to each other, and he makes sure you’re inside before letting Charlie drive away.

“Mr. Styles, don’t forget you’ve got that gala this weekend.” Stacey says to him Monday morning.

“Shit, I’ve completely forgot about that.” He sighs. “Do I have to go?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I saw the guest list and…Carina’s going to be there.”

“Of course she is!” He groans and slumps into his chair. “Fuck, and I don’t have a date.”

“You could ask Y/N.”

“Do you think that’s something she’d wanna go to? She’d need a ball gown and-“

“She’s an electrician, but she’s still a woman. She has a lot of pretty clothes. I actually borrow a lot from her when I have events to go to.”

“She’s having me over for dinner tonight…I suppose I could ask her then.”

“Wait, she’s having you over?!”

“Yeah…” He raises an eyebrow of confusion at her.

“Wow.” She smirks. “She must really like you. She never invites guys over.” She winks at him and leaves his office.

After work, Harry has Charlie drive him over to your place. He rings your buzzer and you let him up. Your door was open a crack for him already, so he goes tight in, loosening his tie.

“Hi, Harry!” You smile.

Your hair was up in a messy bun, and you still had all your work clothes on, but your flannel was unbuttoned, revealing your white tank top and plenty of cleavage. You go over to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Not as big as your place, but it has what I need.”

“It’s lovely. One bedroom?”

“Mhm, and two bathrooms.” You say proudly. “I hope you like food from the crockpot. I set up some chili this morning before I left.”

“Chili sounds amazing, I love spicy food.” He takes his suit jacket off and throws on your couch.

“Great.” You smile and grab some sour cream and cheese from your fridge. You grab a couple of bowls and some spoons and you both serve yourselves. You both sit down at the small table you have in your kitchen.

“This is delicious, thank you.” He smiles.

“Oh, I’m so glad you like it.”

“I’m happy we could get together tonight.”

“Me too.” You smile.

You had fully warmed up to Harry at this point. You’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, and you had let many walls down. You liked him, you really liked him. You two also hadn’t done more than make out, and it was absolutely killing you.

“Do you have plans Saturday evening?”

“I don’t believe so, why? Another movie night?” You ask sort of excitedly and he chuckles.

“No, I wish. I have this charity gala to go to that I actually forgot all about until Stacey reminded me this morning. I’d love for you to join me.”

“Oh…a little fancier than I thought, but, sure.” You shrug. “I could do that. I’ll have to call my hairdresser to see if she can squeeze me in, I’m assuming I’ll probably want my hair done?”

“Only if you feel comfortable…”

“Will I need a gown?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, I have a couple to choose from in my closet. Do you know what suit you’re wearing?”

“Uh, yeah, here.” He takes his phone out to show you. It was pink with a design on the front. It was beautiful.

“Hm, I think I have a green dress that would look good with this. Pink and green look so nice together.” You use your napkin to wipe your mouth and stand up. “Come on.” You nod towards the hallway.

“Come on what?”

“I wanna show you the gown I have.”

“Oh, alright.”

He follows you into your room, but he stands in the doorway as you go into your closet. It was much smaller than his, but he liked the way you decorated. You utilized a lot of space. You can always tell when a tradesperson lives somewhere because everything always looked really nice. Here were built in shelves and storage units.

“You make those?”

“Mhm, and I made this closet twice as big.” You find the gown you’re thinking of and hold it up in front of your body to show him. “What do you think? Will it do the trick?”

“It’s beautiful, Y/N. Why do you have it?”

“When I was younger I used to participate in pageants. The scholarships were super helpful for college. Anyways, past winners get invited back pretty often and you’re supposed to dress really nice when you go, so I have a couple of formal gowns for when I get those calls.”

“I never would have taken you for a pageant girl.”

“I’m not really…but I needed the money, and I figured out how to play the game. I came in first twice in two different competitions. However, the girls I participated with weren’t very nice, so I wasn’t exactly sad when I got too old for it.” You hang the dress back up. “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to look the part with all your fancy friends.” You smirk and walk out of your room. You sit on your couch and he sits next to you.

“A lot of them aren’t really friends. Acquaintances really. Um, Stacey showed me the guest list today and my ex is apparently going to be there.”

“The model?”

“Yeah.”

“Wonderful.” You scoff. “So are we finally going to have the conversation?”

“What do you mean?”

“She was your last relationship right? Tell me what happened.”

“Not much to tell. We met at a dinner party for a mutual friend. We met in London, actually, but we both had places here in the city, so we kept seeing each other. I didn’t realize how well known she was, so that’s when the paparazzi started. We were together almost a year before it just got to be too much. She wanted me to basically give it all up for her so I could travel with her, but I thought it was selfish of her to ask me to do that, so we broke up.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did.” He says bluntly. “But it wasn’t the type of love I wanted. I don’t have any feelings for her whatsoever, I want you to know that.” He places his hand on your knee. “I just know she’s going to come over to me and look you up and down, and she’s going to be really snotty. She’s…well, she’s a bitch, to put it simply.”

“And you dated her for a year because?”

“Vanity. On paper, we were the perfect match, but I realized it felt like I wasn’t living my own life anymore. I’m much happier now.” He gives your knee a squeeze.

“Alright, well, I’m sure we’ll have a good time. Is it a sit down dinner?”

“It is.”

“Open bar?”

“Yup.”

“Dancing?”

“A little.”

“Sounds like a good time to me.” You smile.

“You’re amazing, thank you.” He leans to kiss you and that was that.

The day of the gala, your hairdresser was able to squeeze you in for an updo. You showed her the dress you’d be wearing, so she gave you an elegant bun. You had your nails done as well. You were glad you did because you had a nasty bruise on your thumb. That’ll be the last time you use a regular hammer and not just a nail gun.

When you get home you take out an old pearl necklace that was your great-grandmother’s that would go perfectly with the green dress. It was strapless and fit to your form, with a nice slit starting at one of your thighs. You found a pair of heels that went perfectly with it, and a white shall. You apply your makeup, and take a step back to take yourself in. You looked perfect. You take a selfie to send to Stacey.

Stacey: omfg!!! You’re gonna give Carina a run for her money, have fun!

You smile at the text and find your clutch that goes with the dress. Harry picks you up around seven. You gasp when you see a limo, and not just the regular car he usually picks you up in.

“All this for the two of us?” You ask as he gets out of the car. His suit looked so good. His jaw drops when he sees you.

“You look stunning, Y/N.” He gives you a gentle kiss on the cheek, and help you into the limo. “The limo’s just to keep up appearances. We’re essentially walking down a red carpet into the building. Know how to pose?”

“Oh, I can give face when I need to.” You smirk. “It was fun getting all dressed up since I don’t get to often.”

“I like your flannels too, I hope you know how sexy you look in your work clothes.”

Your cheeks heat up. Harry didn’t really talk like that to you often.

“I’ll have to wear my tool belt for you sometime…just my tool belt.” You whisper in his ear and then face forward. You send a shiver up his spine. He couldn’t wait for that.

When you pull up to the event, Harry gets out first. Cameras start flashing, and he extends his hand out to you. You stand up and nearly feel blinded, but you get through it. You walk with him, his hand on the small of your back. You’d stop occasionally to be photographed. There were reports asking Harry what your name was and other questions, but he didn’t answer a single one. Once you were inside you took a deep breath.

“You did amazing, thank you.”

“No problem. How come they wanted to know who I was?”

“So they can print some story about us. I don’t wanna give up your privacy, so my lips are staying sealed for now.”

You’re brought into a large ball room. There were silent auction items all around the perimeter that Harry would need to put some money down for.

“I hate these things. I’d be happy to just donate without having to get anything in return, you know?”

You walk around with him to look at the items.

“How come you’re not writing anything down?”

“I’m waiting for other people so I can put a larger amount down. They deduct the value of the item from the actual donation, so I wanna make sure enough money gets put down.”

“That’s…really philanthropic of you, Harry.”

“All the proceeds tonight go to inner city schools to get them new computers and other technology they’re in desperate need of.”

You weren’t sure if you’d ever meet Harry’s mother, but you hoped you would just so you could thank her for raising such a kind man. You both mingle with a few people, and eventually Harry puts his bids down for a few different items.

“If I win I’ll just donate this shit. I don’t need anything else.” He shrugs.

Waiters come around with h'orderves and drinks. You snatch a flute of champagne and a shrimp puff.

“Good, babe?” He smiles at you as you lick your lips.

“Very.” You giggle.

His smile fades when he sees Carina from across the room. She had a lovely blue gown on, and some man’s arm was snaked around her waist. She sees Harry and she sends him a small wave. He clutches your hip a little tighter. You look up at him.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, uh, wanna find our table?”

“Sure.”

You find your table and you both take your seat. You chat with the woman sitting next to you, and other people begin finding their seats. As the event gets started, waiters come around with food. Someone on a stage comes out and announces who has won what items. People clap. Harry won a couple of the items he bid on. He stands as people clap, and you clap as well. You kiss him on the cheek as he sits back down. Once dinner is through, some people start going out to the dance floor, and others stand around to mingle.

“Well if it isn’t the CEO himself.” Harry turns around the second he hears the accent. “Hi, Harry.”

“Hi, Carina.”

She takes him in for a gentle hug, and kisses him on both cheeks. You want to gag, but you know it’s just a cultural thing.

“And who might this be?” She looks you up and down.

“I’m Y/N.” You extend your hand and she shakes it. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same to you.” She smiles and looks at Harry. “I’m surprised to see you here with someone.”

“Could say the same to you.” He nods over to the man she came with. He was over talking with some other people.

“Oh, that’s Richard. He’s lovely. We met a few months back. He works remotely so he’s able to travel with me. It’s perfect.”

“Good for you.”

“What do you do?” She asks you.

“I’m a union electrician.” You say with a bright smile. “I got a degree in Mathematics and then I joined the trades world.”

“Oh my…I never would have guessed.” She smiles nervously. “Harry, may I borrow you for just a moment? Andrew is here too, and he misses you so much.”

“Um…sure.” He looks at you.

“Go ahead, I need to use the ladies room as it is.”

He watches you walk away and turns back to Carina.

“Andrew’s not here.” Harry says to her.

“I know, I just said that so we could chat. She’s not for you, and you know it.”

“What makes you think you have the right to say that to me?”

“Harry, you can’t be with some blue collar worker.”

“And why not?” He scoffs. “I’ll have you know she’s lovely and elegant, but she’s also not afraid to go to McDonald’s and stuff her face. In fact, she’s not afraid of food at all.”

“I’m on a very strict diet and you know it.” She huffs.

“Why don’t you worry about yourself and Richard?”

Harry turns on his heel and walks towards the restrooms. You were just coming out when you see him waiting.

“Are you alright?” You ask him.

“Yeah, feel like having a dance?”

“Definitely.”

You take his hand as he leads you back into the ballroom and onto the dance floor. The band was only playing slower songs, but that was just fine. Harry was really light on his feet. It made you smile as he led you around.

“You about ready to get out of here?” He whispers in your ear.

“Mhm.”

He smiles at you and leads you out. He says goodbye to a few people, and gets you outside. There were still reporters, but he gets you into the limo quickly.

“So…your ex…was she civil with you?”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about.” He throws his arm around you and kisses your hairline. “Okay to come back to mine?”

“Definitely.”

He gets you up into his place and gets you a glass of water.

“I had a lot of fun tonight.” You tell him.

“Me too, you definitely made it more fun. Those things can be so dreadful.”

“I just look at it as a free dinner.” You laugh.

“Oh, is that all it takes with you?” He smirks.

“Pretty much. I’ll go to a party like that with you anytime.”

“Good to know.” He wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you close to him. Yours go around his neck and you start kissing. You giggle when you let go of him and see your red lipstick all over his mouth.

“Sorry.” You try to rub it off with your thumb.

“No worries.” He chuckles. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

“I would.” You take your heels off, and follow him up.

He leads you into his large bedroom. You gaze at the beautiful furniture.

“I’ve got a walk in closet too.” He says. “You’d probably appreciate the craftsmanship.”

He opens the door for you and you step inside.

“It’s beautiful. I love built ins. Whoever did this did a great job.”

“I only hire the best, but you knew that.” You grip at his suit jacket and push him up against the doorframe of the closet. You slot your lips over his and he welcomes it.

“I want you, Harry.” You say against his lips.

“I want you too.” He kisses on your neck and bites down on your shoulder.

He walks you over to his bed until your legs his the frame. He keeps you steads as his hands find the zipper on the back of dress. You push his suit jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. He unzips your dress, but holds it up.

“Are you okay with all this?” He asks.

“God, yes.”

Your dress falls to the ground and pools at your feet. Your fingers work to unbutton his shirt. His eyes widen as he looks at the underwear set you’re wearing. You were wearing a strapless black bra with a black lace thong to match. Of course you still needed to wear a bra, your breasts were too large to without. You get his shirt off and you take a step back to admire his tattoos.

“I didn’t know you had so many.” Your hands trace off the ones on his collar bones, his torso, and his hips. “Even your arms.”

‘Got a few on my legs too.” He loves the way your hands felt on his body.

“I thought you just had the cross and the anchor. These are so cool.”

“Thanks.”

Your hands move to his belt buckle and get it undone, his pants drop to the floor moments later. You lick your lips when you see his tight boxers.

“Fuck, Harry, I want you so badly.”

You push him down on the bed and straddle him. His hands go to your hips, rubbing circles into your skin with his thumbs. He reaches up to unhook your bra, and tosses it to the floor. You switch positions so you’re lying on your back. He caresses your breasts and kisses on each of them. He puts his face between them and just enjoys the way your skin feels on him. You start giggling and he looks up at you.

“Breast man, huh?”

“Sorry, was that weird? You just have such a beautiful body.”

“Not weird at all, they’re yours to play with.” You grin.

“Oh, I like the sound of that a lot.”

He takes one of your nipples into his mouth and sucks harshly. You gasp as your hips buck up towards him. He does the same thing to the other before kissing down your body. His hands tug your thong below your hips.

“Can I take this off?”

“Please.”

You lift your hips to help him. He looks down at you and then up to your eyes.

“Can I?”

“Can you what?”

“Make you feel good.”

“Sure, but I wanna hear you say what exactly is going to make me feel good.”

His eyes darken as he looks at you.

“Y/N, I’m going to lick into your cunt until you’re screaming that you can’t take it anymore.”

Your mouth falls open as he parts your legs. He kisses from your knee to your inner thigh. Sucking on where he pleases. He uses his forearm to hold your hips down when he finally gets his tongue on you. He licks a flat stripe from your center up to your clit. You clutch at the soft blankets on his bed as you watch him. He makes eye contact with you when he starts to suck on your clit.

“Oh my god.” You moan as your head falls back. You feel him smirk against you. You start to tug at his curls when he swirls his tongue around you and then flicks it quickly on the nub. “Christ.” You say through gritted teeth.

His tongue moves back to your center where he licks into you. He groans at the taste of you. His middle and index finger move to rub your clit in circles while he uses his tongue to essentially fuck you. Your body was starting to feel hot all over, and you could feel a familiar knot tightening in your lower stomach. He assumes you’re starting to get close because you were starting to tighten around his tongue. He licks back up to your clit, and plunges his fingers inside you.

“Oh, fuck!” You cry out as his fingers work your insides. Your eyes roll into the back of your head when you feel him knuckle deep. “Harry, it’s so good, don’t stop!”

He groans his response as he sucks on your clit again. He curls his fingers up against your front wall where he knew you needed it. He feels you pulsating around him. He could hear you panting and it was music to his ears.

“Shit, oh, fuck, oh my god!” You scream as your orgasm washes over you. He continues to pump his fingers slowly to help you ride it out.

He sits up on his knees and wipes the slick away from his chin with the back of his hand. He licks his lips and smirks at you. You catch your breath and look up at him. You sit up slightly and grab at the band of his boxers.

“Do you want me to-“

“Next time, I really just want to fuck you.”

You bite your lip and nod at him. He takes his boxers off and your eyes grow wide when you see his full length. You spread your legs back apart for him, and he lines himself up.

“Shit, uh…condom.” He backs away from you and rummages through his night table for one.

“I’m on the pill…”

“Found one!” He looks at you. “What did you say?��

“I’m on the pill…if you didn’t feel like using one.” Your cheeks were starting to grow red. “I’m clean. Wouldn’t have let you go down on me if I wasn’t.”

“I’m clean too. So…you don’t want me to use one?”

“Nah, I kind of want you to come inside me if I’m being honest.”

“Jesus.” He grunts and tosses the condom aside. He gets back between your legs and rubs his tip along your slick folds and clit. “You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

He leans down to kiss you as he slowly pushes inside. He swallows you gasp and moan once he bottoms out. You tighten around him involuntarily. He gives you a moment to relax and adjust to him. You hadn’t been stretched out like this since god knows when.

“Go on.” You whisper.

He smiles into your neck as he starts to rock in and out of you. Your arch up into him. Your hands search for a nearby pillow.

“Hold on.” You tell him and lift your hips up, sliding a pillow under you. “Okay.”

“You’re killing me.” He breathes.

He sucks your bottom lip into his mouth as his thrusts pick up the pace. You wrap your legs around him and move along with him. Your hands slide down to his ass so your nails can sink into the fleshy area. He bites down on your collar bone as you keep moving along with him. He was used to women just starfishing under him, this was so nice. He felt really connected to you.

“Oh, shit.” You press your forehead into his chest. “Harry.” You moan.

“Gonna come again?”

“Mhm.”

He snakes a hand between the two of you so he can rub your clit, and that pushes you over the edge. Your nails rake up from his ass to his back as you come, making him moan out at the overwhelming feeling of being marked up by you.

“Can I bend you over the bed?”

You moan out your response. He pulls out of you and gets you on your feet, bending you over. He grips your hips and slips back inside you. All you can hear is his skin slapping against yours. You prop yourself up on your elbows and arch your back. He was hitting so fucking deep, and his tip was brushing against your g-spot. One of his hands goes back to your clit while the other grips the back of your neck while he pounds into you.

“Taking it so well, Y/N.” He grunts.

“Feels so good, fuck!”

He watches as your back arches more and sweat slides down your spine.

“I’m, I’m close.” He says.

“Yeah? You wanna come?”

“Yes, fuck.” He moans out and fills you up while you come again with him.

He had you screaming just like he said he would. He hold you close to him for a moment, his chest flush with your back. He kisses your back before pulling out. You clamp your legs together before anything has a chance to make a mess.

“Let me get you a rag.”

“S’okay, I’ll just use the bathroom.” He helps you stand up and you turn to face him. You grab him by the back of his neck to kiss him. “That was really nice.” You giggle.

You waddle to his bathroom while he grabs a fresh pair of boxers. You clean yourself up and come back out.

“Can I give you something to wear?”

“Please.” You smile. You couldn’t stop smiling, really.

He hands you one of his bed shirts. It had his initials embroidered on the chest pocket. He watches as you button it up.

“Comfortable?”

“Very.” You crawl onto the bed with him. You throw a leg over his and rest your head on his chest. He looks down at you and cups your cheek, pulling you in for a kiss.

“You make me really happy, Y/N.”

“You make me happy too, Harry. I may even let you stay over at my place sometime.” You chuckle.

“I’d like that.” He kisses your forehead. “But only if I’m staying over there as your boyfriend.” He grins.

“I think I’d feel comfortable with that.” You kiss his soft, swollen lips.

“Really? You’re into all this, you’re not just saying that because we had some hot sex?”

“Harry.” You giggle. “The sex was really hot, and I may have had my reservations about you, but we’ve gotten to know each other well, I’d like to be your girlfriend. Let’s make it official.”

“I have to warn you, I’m gonna want to spoil you rotten. You may get annoyed with me.”

“You can’t buy my affection, just remember that.”

“I know, I just can’t help wanting to just give you everything you want.”

“You’re what I want. I don’t care about all this.” You gesture to his extravagant bedroom.

“I know you don’t, I think that’s why I like you so much. You could care less!” He laughs. “It’s amazing. You’re totally not shallow. It’s refreshing.” He settles down further into the bed and you kiss him a few times on the cheek.

“I get busy a lot. When there’s over time I take it. I may have to break dates once in a while.”

“Same here.”

“If you’re traveling, I won’t be able to just drop everything to go with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. I like that you work hard and that you actually want to work. You have an honest job, and I really admire that.”

“Thanks.” You kiss on his chest. He liked that you were a kisser. Harry loved being loved on. “However, if you want to plan a trip to that beach house of yours…I certainly could put in for some vacation time.”

“You’d love it out there. It’s nice and private, we’d have our own beach. I have a boat too with a kitchen and bedroom below deck. It’s great.”

“This will definitely take some getting used to.” You laugh. “I’ll have to keep bringing you to dive bars so to knock you down a peg.” You joke.

“Whatever you need to do.” He smirks.

“I’m also going to teach you how to cook. We don’t need to have a catered meal every time we hang out here.”

“That seems fair. Could we start with that chili you made? It was so fucking good.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

You sigh happily and snuggle into his chest as he holds you. You both slept really well that night. You weren’t sure what exactly being a girlfriend to a CEO would entail, but as long as the both of you stayed on the same page about your values, you saw this relationship lasting for a very long time.

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allthingsfangirl101 · 3 years

Text

97%–Zac Efron

Zac and I have always been close but we've never crossed the line. Until a month ago. We were at our friend's birthday party and both had way too much to drink. We woke up the next morning in bed together.

After getting dressed, we forced ourselves to sit down and talk about what happened the night before. After a lot of stalling, we finally decided to move on. It was awkward at first, but we eventually got past it.

Even though we moved on, there was still this awkward tension between us. At least on my end. I found myself continually thinking about that night. I couldn't stop thinking about what it felt like to be held by him, kissed by him. . . Under him.

We've always been extremely close. He was my best friend. He knew everything about me and I knew everything about him. The only thing we didn't know was what it felt like to do that.

Now we knew and I couldn't forget.

A month later, I was feeling sick. It wasn't until I realized I was late did I understand what was happening. I went to the pharmacy and got a test. As I waited for the two minutes to be up, I felt sick.

What was I going to do? It's obviously Zac's. But his job. . . If news spreads that he got his best friend pregnant after a drunken night. . . It would ruin his career. The baby and I would ruin his career.

I jumped when the timer on my phone went off. With shaking hands, I walked over and looked at the test. My breath got caught in my throat when I saw the positive sign.

I was pregnant. I'm going to have my best friend's baby.

I dropped the test, my shaking hands coming up and covering my mouth. I took a few steps back, stumbling when my feet hit the tub. I sat on the edge, repeatedly running my fingers through my hair.

I jumped again when my phone started ringing. My eyes widened when I recognized Zac's ringtone. I took a shaky breath and stood up, answering my phone before it went to voicemail.

"Hey," I said shakily.

"Hey, you," he laughed. "I just found out I'm not filming today. Do you want to do something?"

I could tell him. . .

"I can't," I stuttered.

"What?" He laughed. When I didn't say anything, he cleared his throat. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said shakily. "I just. . . I'm not feeling very well today."

"Really?" He asked. "What's wrong? Do you need anything? I can come. . ."

"No!" I said a little too quickly. I cleared my throat before adding, "I don't want to get you sick. You're crazy busy with work and getting sick is the last thing you need right now."

Well, not the last thing he needed but still. . .

"But Y/N," he sighed, "you're my best friend. If you're sick, I should. . ."

"I'm fine," I said, cutting him off again. "I should probably just rest."

"Okay," he said, his voice dropping. "Call me when you wake up, okay? And let me know if there's something I can do."

"I will."

I hung up before he could realize I was lying.

* * * * *

I woke up to the sound of someone opening my bedroom door. I sleepily moaned as I sat up.

"Zac," I gasped. "What are you. . . What are you doing here?"

"You said you were sick," he said like it was obvious. He reached forward and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "You are a little warm," he whispered.

I looked away, turning so his hand dropped. I cleared my throat as I slowly got out of bed. As soon as I stood up, I got dizzy. Zac must have seen me sway because he ran over and gently grabbed me.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," I stuttered. I bit my bottom lip when his hands slid down my arms and he intertwined our fingers.

"Come on," he whispered. "I should make you something to eat."

Still holding one of my hands, Zac led me into the family room. He had me sit on the couch before going into the kitchen and making me a sandwich. While I waited for him, I nervously played with my fingers.

I heard him walk in, but didn't look up at him. He held out a plate with a sandwich on it, waiting for me to take it.

"Y/N," he said softly. When I still hadn't grabbed it, he sat on the coffee table in front of me and put the sandwich down. He reached over and grabbed my hands, making me look up at him.

"Hey," he whispered. "What's going on with you? You've been acting kind of weird lately."

"I'm pregnant," I blurted out.

His eyes widened and he slowly let go of my hands. He leaned back, studying me.

"You're. . . How. . . When. . . What. . . Who. . ."

I chewed on my bottom lip, waiting for everything to sink in. When it finally did, he scooted towards the edge of the table closer to me.

"Is it mine?" He asked under his breath.

"It is," I said, looking down at my hands.

I had tears silently streaming down my cheeks. I wasn't sure how he was going to react, but it still hurt how surprised he was. It was almost like he couldn't believe that I would be pregnant with his baby.

"I don't understand," he stuttered. "I mean. . . We used. . . We used protection."

"You know what they say," I mumbled, still looking at my hands and trying to hide my tears from him.

"What do they say?" He asked, sounding numb.

"Condoms only work about 97% of the time."

"What?" He gasped, slightly scoffing. I held my breath, trying to calm my breathing so he didn't know I was crying.

"That's. . . 97%? Really? That seems. . . I mean. . . They should warn you or. . ."

"It's on the box," I mumbled.

"I can't. . . Wow, this is just. . . I can't believe this is happening. We were. . . I mean, I know we were drunk but still. We used protection. That's supposed to stop this sort of thing."

"Alright," I said, clearing my throat. "I think you should leave."

I stood up, his breath getting caught in his throat when he finally saw the tears streaming down my face. "Y/N," he stuttered. "I didn't mean to. . ."

"Please," I said, my voice breaking. "Just go."

I turned on my heel and walked into my room, closing the door behind me.

* * * * *

I stayed in my room the rest of the day. Between crying and sleeping, I couldn't stop thinking about Zac's reaction. Instead of focusing on me being pregnant with his child, he couldn't let it go that condoms only work 97% of the time.

When I finally gathered the strength to leave my room, I wasn't expecting Zac to still be here. He was sitting on my couch, reading through a few of the pregnancy books I had boughten when I got the test.

"You're still here," I said under my breath. When Zac heard me, he jumped up and quickly turned around.

"I am so sorry," he rushed out. "I was just shocked and I know I didn't handle it well. I'm really sorry, Y/N. I should've handled it better."

When I got in front of him, he reached down and gently grabbed my hands. He looked at our hands, taking a shaky breath.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N," he whispered. When he looked back up at me, he studied me. "Let's talk about it. And this time I promise not to overreact."

"Really?" I asked, my breath getting caught in my throat. Without saying anything, he smiled and pulled me back to the couch. He sat down, still holding my hand.

"What are you thinking?" He asked.

"Well," I hesitated, "I don't feel right about. . .aborting it, but I know how this could affect your job."

"Whoa," Zac said, gently interrupting me. "Y/N, I don't care about my job right now. I'm not even thinking about it."

"But if people find out," I stuttered, the anxiety attack starting again. Zac must have sensed it because he scooted closer to me.

"Y/N," he whispered. "Don't worry about my job or how the baby could affect it. What do you want to do?"

I looked into his eyes, hesitating. I opened and closed my mouth, struggling to find the right words. He reached up and cupped my cheek in his hand, slowly pulling me closer to him. I held my breath as he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine.

I fluttered my eyelashes closed as I kissed him back. He slowly broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against mine.

"What do you think we should do?" He whispered. I leaned back and looked into his eyes.

"I want to keep the baby," I confessed softly. I held my breath, waiting for his response. He slowly smiled at me as he grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers.

"I do too."

"Really?" I asked, my voice breaking.

Zac leaned over and pressed his lips back to mine. I softly moaned as I started to kiss him back. Our lips moved in sync, speeding up the longer they were pressed together. This time, I broke the kiss and leaned my forehead against his.

"Are we really doing this?" I asked under my breath. "Are we really going to be parents?"

"Yep," Zac chuckled as he leaned back. "We're in this together, Y/N. I promise. I will be by your side every step of the way."

"But this complicates things," I stuttered. "With your job. With us. . ."

"Hey," he said gently to get my attention. "I can't think of anyone better to carry my baby than my best friend."

#zac efron #zac efron imagines #zac efron x reader

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 3 years

Text

Burn The Bread Book: Industrial Communism Will Not Liberate You

The True Cost of Bread

For years I've watched a man drive his pick-up truck into the forest around me and cut down all the trees that aren't legally protected. So, every tree that isn't a pine or an oak. The moment a carob or olive or hawthorn or mastic or strawberry tree grows big enough to burn, he cuts it down and drags it away for firewood. He even fells trees I planted, while smiling and waving at me like he’s doing me a favor. I glare at him silently but don’t say a word, knowing he has the full power of the state behind him.

He uses the wood to fuel his traditional bakery which has several large outdoor ovens. The much-loved industrial product he produces is bread; a product that has rapidly replaced all the native food-bearing plants of the area as they’ve been cut down to make room for wheat fields.

The villagers are proud of the bakery because it attracts visitors from all over the island and thus creates further opportunities for them to earn profit. The local bureaucracy; the democratically-elected village council, gives the baker free reign to do as he pleases since so many livelihoods depend on his bakery.

Because the baker cuts everything down as soon as it reaches human height, the trees never get big enough to fruit, so they don't spread their seeds and grow new trees. The forest slowly dwindles to nothing but pine trees and can no longer sustain most animal life. The climate dries, the soil erodes, the air grows stagnant and depleted of oxygen. All that’s left in the few remaining forests that haven’t been bulldozed to grow more wheat is a sterile pine desert.

The baker will soon no doubt lobby the village council to allow him to harvest the pine trees too, otherwise the all-important bakery will cease to be operational when he runs out of legal trees to fell.

In just a few years, all the fruits, nuts and berries that sustained the people in the area for millennia are wiped out and replaced with a consumer product that is made from a single grain crop. A thriving ecosystem has been replaced with a wheat monoculture that could collapse at any moment and take the lives of everyone it feeds with it.

It’s worth noting that the baker, like most people in my village, and in fact most people on the island, considers himself a communist. The village has a “communist party” clubhouse and they always elect “communist” local leaders and vote for “communist” politicians in the national elections.

Any anarchist worth their salt has no tolerance for these faux-communists, or “tankies” and their brand of collectivist-capitalism because they cling to money, states and rulers and really only embrace Stalinist politics because of the promise of cushy government jobs for them or their relatives.

The Stalinist politicians openly buy votes by promising jobs in the public service to their supporters. A job in the public service here is a guaranteed free ride for life for you and your family, with the salaries multiple times higher than private sector salaries and benefits out of the wazoo - including multiple pensions. They get a full pension for each gov sector they worked in, and the more connected civil servants are rotated through jobs in multiple sectors in the last few months leading up to their retirement to ensure the maximum pay-out possible.

I’m confident anyone reading this knows Stalinism is designed to enrich the bureaucrat class and give them complete control over the state’s citizens. No anarchist sees that shit as communism. But in a “real” communist society; an “anarcho-communist” society where money, state and class have been abolished, the local baker would presumably still bake that bread, and since it would be offered freely to everyone far and wide, he'd need to bake a lot more of it and thus need more wood. More forest would be razed to keep the bread production going. Everyone living in the village and anyone passing through, and people in faraway cities will expect to have as much gourmet bread on their plates as they desire. More bakeries would need to pop up on the mountain as demand rises for delicious bread in the cities below, with the rural population working hard and doing their duty to feed the hungry urban population.

Over the years, I’ve put a lot of thought into envisioning how the workers seizing the means of production would end the environmental devastation this bread production brings to the mountain. I struggle to see any scenario where communism would stop the devastation being wrought on the ecosystem. The forests would continue to be razed to ensure production won’t slow down.

Free bread for everyone today means no bread (or any food) for anyone tomorrow as the top-soil washes away, the climate warms, the wildlife goes extinct, and the whole mountain rapidly turns to desert. It’s inevitable that soon even wheat will cease to grow in the fields surrounding the village.

Regardless of the economic system in place, the villagers being able to consume as many fresh loaves of baked bread as they can carry means all the forests in driving distance of the village are eviscerated, eventually all the fields become barren, the crops fail, and everyone starves. This is already well on its way to happening, and switching to a communist mode of production would do nothing to allay this inevitability.

“How would you feed people then, genius?” I hear you scoff. The answer is simple; tried and tested for millennia. I wouldn’t feed people. People would feed themselves instead of expecting others to labor to feed them; an entitlement that arose with industrial civilization. People would be inclined to protect the forests instead of bulldozing them for the supposed convenience of industrial food production if they picked their food directly from those forests everyday.

They’d protect the forests with their very lives because they’d need the food that grows in the forests to survive without industrial farms, bakeries and factories outsourcing food production and then hiding the ecocide they cause just out of sight of the villages and their carefully manicured streets.

Bread and other industrial products alienate us from our ecosystem and cause us to stop caring about how our food is produced, so long as it’s there in the store when we want to eat it. Putting food production back into the control of the individual is the only way to preserve the ecosystem. Direct food is the only anarchist mode of production. When other people are tasked with growing your food, they will take shortcuts because the food isn’t going into their own mouths or the mouths of their loved ones. Food harvesting needs to go back to being a way of life for every able-bodied person, rather than something industrial farm workers are tasked with to serve an elite class of privileged office workers who are completely disconnected from the food chain.

All over the world, complex centuries-old polyculture food-forests that sustained countless lives for generations are destroyed by the arrogance of industrial production, replaced for a short while by a wheat or corn monoculture so people can pick up their bread down the street from their home or workplace instead of muddying their feet to gather food from the wild as their ancestors did. This convenience seems like “progress” to civilized people, at least until the destructive industrial agriculture process renders the wheat fields infertile and farms all over the world are turned into a vast uninhabitable dust bowl. A sustainable way of life that kept us alive and thriving for centuries has been tossed aside in favor of a short-lived attempt at industrial convenience that has already proven itself a horrible failure; bringing us and every other lifeform to the verge of extinction.

Industry is not sustainable. Industrial systems are all destructive. Communism, capitalism, fascism, they’re all founded on ecocide. The authority of the baker is upheld over everything else because domesticated people would rather consume “free” industrial bread for a few years than unlearn their destructive consumerist habits. If we are to survive these times of devastating ecological collapse, humans need to go back to fostering vast food forests as our ancestors did for millennia; producing and gathering our own food without destroying the very ecosystem that gives us life in the name of luxury and convenience.

"The People's" Authority: How “Anarcho-Communism” is Authority-Forming

If someone kept cutting down all the trees to bake bread, the people who depend on the forest to survive would of course have to intervene to stop the loggers from destroying the forest and thus killing their way of life.

This happens in rainforests today where indigenous people who have been let down by the state gleefully issuing licenses to corporate loggers, and turning a blind eye to illegal logging, instead take matters into their own hands and shut down the loggers using force.

They put their lives on the line to do this, and a lot of them are killed by the loggers who value their profits over the lives of indigenous people. They know if they don’t act to stop the loggers, the forests they call their home will be decimated and their way of life will have been destroyed forever. They’ll be forced into the cramped cities and have to labor all day everyday to buy the bread and beef that stripped their forests bare.

So how would an anarcho-communist society deal with someone who cuts down all the trees to bake bread? In an anarcho-communist society, everyone will be environmentally conscious and consume sustainably, right...? No. Not if you’re engaging in any kind of critical thinking.

Loggers can only destroy forests at the current explosive rate if the society imbues them with authority. If they have no authority, there's nothing stopping others from using force to end their pillaging of our natural resources. Without the authority of civilization behind them, the loggers have incredibly diminished power and no real motive to risk their lives to fell trees.

Anarcho-communism is an industrial ideology based around the notion of seizing the means of production and then running the factories, saw mills, oil rigs, mines and power plants democratically. Industrial civilization is an incredibly totalitarian authority that is nevertheless upheld by “anarcho”-communist theory, even though anarchists supposedly oppose all forms of authority.

In an industrial communist society, much like in a capitalist society, logging is necessary to further the industrial production the society is built around. As long as production drives the system, trees will have to be felled for all kinds of reasons: from lumber and paper production to making way for crops and cattle.

So, logging is highly valued by the people that uphold the industrial society, and in a real world scenario, these “anarcho” communists would have to take measures to protect loggers from repercussions from a small, uncivilized minority – the indigenous inhabitants of the forest. These measures are, by any definition, an authority. A monopoly on violence. A state in everything but name.

But since the loggers are providing this valued service to good, decent, reasoned, educated, domesticated, egalitarian, democratic, civilized anarcho-communists in big shiny cities who are accustomed to a litany of luxury consumer products being delivered to their doors everyday… Decidedly authoritarian methods will need to be taken to ensure the anarcho-loggers can do their anarcho-work without facing retaliation from the “primmie” forest dwellers. These methods can easily be justified in the ancom’s mind; there’s nothing an ancom loves more than to “justify” authority with their mighty reasoned logic™️.

So when faced with the conundrum that the anarcho-communist city needs lumber, paper, corn and meat, and the only thing standing in the way of production is a few indigenous tribes, the ancom will put their anarcho-Spock ears on and declare: “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. Just as capitalist and socialist states today violently suppress the indigenous people who take action to shut down logging and mining operations that quash their way of life, the anarcho-industrialist will send a red-and-black army in to escort their red-and-black bulldozers and discipline anyone that interferes with the will of “the people”.

The indigenous inhabitants of course won’t give a shit that their forests are being felled by communists rather than by capitalists. They won’t give a shit that the bulldozers are now owned collectively or that the land they’ve lived on for millennia has now been designated as belonging to “the people” (the civilized voting majority) instead of to the state or to capital.

The forest that nurtures the indigenous people and their children is still being decimated to maintain the destructive lifestyles of apathetic city-dwellers. Their lives are still being ended because to civilized people, they’re a backwards, regressive minority standing in the way of progress... Damaging the revolution, inhibiting the growth of their glorious egalitarian civilization. The educated, “progressive” majority outvote them. Anyway, everyone who has spoken to a red anarchist knows primmies are dirty reactionary ableists who want to stop us from building wheelchair and drug factories, right?

Civilized people always have pushed the notion that the “common good” or the good of the many will always outweigh the needs of individuals or small groups of people, ever since Aristotle, in his "The Aim of Man” wrote:

"The good of the state is of greater and more fundamental importance both to attain and to preserve. The securing of one individual's good is cause for rejoicing, but to secure the good of a nation or of a city-state is nobler and more divine." Communism is even more adamant in this “the will of the majority is paramount” shtick, going as far as to declare the industrial-worker class as the only voice that matters, with everyone needing to become part of the worker class in order to abolish class differences.

This logic is why the USSR, China and other communist experiments forced collectivization on self-sufficient indigenous peoples and then slaughtered them when they inevitably resisted. If people won’t consent to being displaced from their ancestral lands to work on the industrial farms and factories that fuel the destruction of their homes, they’re branded “kulaks” and “counter-revolutionaries” and “reactionaries” and are systemically genocided, usually by destroying their food sources.

Industrial goods are valued by industrial society over the forest and its inhabitants because domesticated people want to eat bread and microwaved pizza and the real cost of those products (environmental destruction) is of no real concern to industrial society beyond empty gestures like an occasional “save the rainforests” or “go vegan” banner.

The inhabitants of the forests and their strange foreign culture are too far removed from the busy cities for the average urbanites to involve themselves in their plight. Even the civilized rural people who live around the forests are forever striving to urbanize their villages in the unending quest for upwards mobility. In my experience, they’ll happily trade every tree in sight for a gourmet bakery, Apple Store or coffee-shop so they can feel as civilized as the people in the big cities who tend to look down on them for being “hillbillies” or “country bumpkins”.

“The people in the big cities of Sao Paulo and Rio, they want us to live on picking Brazil nuts,” a farmer says. “That doesn’t put anyone’s kid in college.” (From RollingStone.com.)

The settler-farmers who are burning what’s left of the Amazon rainforest to the ground say they’re doing it for their children... To make the cash to pay for their children to be educated and get good jobs in the city. It shouldn’t be controversial for me to say civilized people value their civilized life and will always put their civilized needs before the needs of uncivilized others.

Civilized people can relate to their civilized neighbours who have the same struggles as them: paying their bills, educating their kids, buying good insurance, washing their car, deciding where to go on vacation, renovating their kitchens, choosing the next Netflix show to binge watch... So it’s not surprising that they’ll do everything they can to prop up civilized people and kick down the uncivilized people who stand in the way of their quest for ever-increasing industrial comforts.

I can already see the denial stage setting in on some of your faces as I type: “But us anarcho-communists aren’t like capitalists, we’re good caring people. Humane people. We’ll make industry green, we’ll manage the forests in a sustainable manner using direct democracy, unions, unicorns and equality!”

Why would anyone swallow that crock of shit? Why would thoroughly domesticated people used to all the comforts of destructive industrial civilization suddenly decide to forgo those comforts because of democracy? Why would 7.7 billion people suddenly change how they live because anarcho-communism has been declared? How would ancom civilization make industry “green” when it’s clearly demonstrable that all industry is destructive to the environment and to wild people, and modelling a society on an industrial system has had disastrous results throughout history, regardless of what the attached ideology was named?

All controlled mass-society, including every historical experiment at building a communist society has created authority; bodies of people that hold power over others. That power grows over time and takes the “communist” society further and further away from its revolutionary origins. Every indication is that authority would continue to be manifested with industrial anarcho-communism. There is no evidence that anarcho-communism would avert authority when it’s so dependent on destructive, exploitative, alienating, domesticating industry and the control and domination of a global population of workers.

All Industrial Goods Free for All People: A Recipe for Disaster

In communism everything is free for the taking and resources are often treated as if they're infinite. If you decide you need something, you take it from the communal store. Kropotkin said no one has the right to judge how much an individual needs, except the individuals themselves.

Since most reds hold that resources should be allocated according to “need”, decisions would need to be made to determine who in the community has “need” of the biggest shares of resources.

I know most ancoms, like Kropotkin, claim every individual will just take whatever they “need” (want) from communal stores, but I'm going to cry foul on that because it's really not practical in an industrial society. Resources aren't infinite and no one is going to spend their life doing gruelling manual labor and then just give everything they produce away to some random stranger who shows up at the communal store with a dumpster truck and says "I need your community's entire monthly output of goods today, so load it up". For some reason ancoms think assholes would cease to exist in a communist society. Why would anyone work their asses off, wasting their life away doing menial manual labor just to watch some shitlord drive away with everything they produced because he announced he “needed” it?

“But as woke anarcho-communists in an advanced fully-automated luxury communist society, labor will in fact be quite limited and fun because we can divide duties between all our comrades! And profit will no longer be a concern since everything we make will be given to anyone that wants it free of charge, so we don’t need to worry about marketing our products and that will further minimize the amount of labor we’ll do, giving us ample leisure time to enjoy the fruits of our production!”

For the purposes of cold-hearted mockery, I’m slightly paraphrasing an ancom who responded to an early draft of this piece. What fantasy realm are ancoms living in where all the massive problems posed by industrial production (including the ongoing extinction of near-every lifeform on Earth) will evaporate when you remove profit and marketing from the equation?

I keep saying this in my writing but here I go again: In an industrial society that aims to give everyone in the world equal access to consumer goods, industry does not decrease; it increases. If everyone in the world suddenly has free and equal access to the mountains of wasteful shit that Western consumers consider necessary to life, not only would production need to massively increase, but we would run out of resources to exploit much more rapidly.

That’s assuming anyone would even want to work in the mines and factories in a supposedly equal society if they no longer had guns to their heads. Why would anyone go back down into that mine once their chains are broken? Does anyone honestly think those Congolese kids give a shit if you have a new phone every year? Should they really be expected to sacrifice themselves for your entitlement? So you can continue to live in luxury with all your little conveniences?

In a real world implementation of industrial communism, communities will no doubt quickly impose limits on what can be taken from communal stores after a few people take way more than they have any right to and other people go without as a result, despite them laboring for hours a day to produce those goods. Kropotkin might insist we’ll all be happy toiling away all day to make this consumerist shit just to give it away to random strangers, but he was a privileged scholar who never had to work a day in his life, so what do you expect?

Industrial society right now is fed by the ceaseless labor of billions of exploited people in the Global South. People are forced to toil in mines from childhood to procure the materials that other people (also including children) then assemble into consumer goods in factories, all for starvation wages. This is debilitating, dangerous work that leaves the people who do it sucked of their youth after a few years.

Anyway, let’s play along with communist mythology for a bit to get to my next point. In an ideal communist society (where I guess minerals are somehow found equally all across the planet and not overwhelmingly located in the Global South as in the real world), outsourced labor would presumably go away because communists would never exploit workers in distant lands (who ever heard of an imperialist communist, right? Right??) So instead production would need to be localized, and then the goods would be distributed according to need.

For resources to be allocated according to need, you'll have some kind of deciding body in place to judge what each person's needs are; what resources each person should be given.

There are lots of factors to take into consideration when deciding someone’s “needs”, like how far they live from work, how far they live from the store, how many calories they burn doing the labor they do, the size of their family, their dietary restrictions, disabilities they might have, their particular metabolism, how many parties they throw, how many friends they have and thus might invite to the parties, their religious and cultural practices, the size of their house, the size of their garden, the type of insulation their house has and how quickly it loses heat, the fuel efficiency of their car... I could list hundreds more things but I’ll stop myself.

Giving bureaucrats this power will no doubt mean certain favored groups / individuals will be rewarded and less desirable groups / individuals will be neglected, or even punished. This is the nature of authority. You’ll need a body of full-time bureaucrats to collect all this data and measure how it should determine your share of the pie, and those bureaucrats are going to have biases. If a computer does it, the programmer will have biases. And you'd still need bureaucrats to collect the data and feed it to the computer. Then they could easily feed incorrect or selective data to the computer because of their biases.

It's always felt like a recipe for corruption and exploitation to me for a bureaucracy to determine someone’s worth... Which is probably why Kropotkin stipulated that everyone should be able to just take whatever they themselves decide they need from the stores.

Of course, the real solution would be to not base your proposed utopian society on industrial production in the first place... Promising industrial production will be unlimited because everyone will voluntarily agree to work real hard in the factories and mines and slaughterhouses and the goods will be distributed to everyone everywhere somehow while maintaining a sustainable ecological green solarpunk paradise just makes you a smug fucking liar. No different than a grinning politician promising to give us freedom, liberty and prosperity if we vote for him.

The only red anarchist tendency that made a modicum of practical sense in my mind was anarcho-collectivism, because at least the workers would receive the direct value of their labor hours instead of having external bodies decide how much value / worth to assign to them as a person.

If you're going to spend your life toiling in a factory or farm to produce goods for other people, would you really want a bureaucrat or a committee or even a direct voter body deciding how much you deserve for that labor, while giving someone who does the same job (or a much easier job) more than you because of potentially biased reasons?

Regardless, anarcho-collectivism still only really values the workers who are most willing to submit to the factory grind and put in the most hours. Anarcho-collectivism still holds ecodical industry and luxuries for cityfolk up above all life on the planet... So that 19th century ideology isn’t going to save you either. Throw it right in the trash with the bread book because this “reform-industrial-society” charade isn’t helping when the planet is on fire.

If industrial communism were actually implemented in the real world, you can be relatively certain that some kind of authority would need to be put in place to prevent bad actors from showing up at the store and taking a community’s entire monthly production. People would need to police the store and judge whether someone is worthy of taking as much as they’re taking. They’d need to become authorities, upholders of law and order. Purveyors of “justice”.

Let’s be clear now because I know a lot of red anarchists are going to try to “justify” this authority as being “necessary for the good of society” as they will do. Policing who can take food and how much they can take is a clear authority. Not a “justified” authority, because such a thing simply does not exist.

And this store-policing is not the anarchist tactic of “direct action” either, let’s make that clear right now, because it’s a frightenly common misunderstanding with red anarchists. Creating a police force has nothing to do with direct action.

Direct action is an isolated use of force unconnected to institutional systems of power. People who engage in direct action are not appealing to a higher authority for legitimacy. Their action is not legitimized by anyone and they receive no protection or reward from an authority as they take the action. There’s no monopoly on violence being granted to them by an authority, so there’s nothing to guarantee their safety from retaliation if the action fails or succeeds.

There’s no institutional power-imbalance being created when someone takes direct action against an authority. The authority already created the power imbalance, and your direct action is a form of defense to shield you, your ecosystem or your community from that imbalance.

Direct action is an entirely anarchist tactic, but pinning badges on people, officiating them, and giving them the authority (and the monopoly on violence) to police a store and withhold food and products from certain people for whatever reason has nothing to do with anarchy. Building a hierarchy like this has nothing to do with anarchy.

Police officers and judges (authorities) ruling over a communal store is authoritarian. An officiated police force is a completely different thing from the isolated use of force by a lone actor or a small group of actors to preserve life and combat authority (direct action).

Creating a police force, even if it’s formed of volunteers, even if they were elected, even if they make decisions collectively, even if their uniforms are red and black, even if the officers placed on duty are regularly rotated, is authoritarian by any definition. There are no anarchist cops. An “anarchist cop” couldn’t be a bigger oxymoron.

Here’s an example of direct action: me punching a logger who is cutting down my favorite tree. This action is completely removed from structural systems of authority because I have no authority or structural power behind me. There’s nothing legitimizing my use of force or giving me a monopoly on violence. My use of force doesn’t extend beyond my own two fists. Since assault is illegal, and his logging is legal, the logger has the full authority of the law behind him, so any action I take to oppose that authority is punching up. It’s fighting to curve a gross power imbalance. It’s anarchy.

In this civilized world, I could be severely punished by law enforcement for using force to stop his desecration of a forest. As the state gave him his logging permit, he has authority over the forest and every life that depends on the forest to survive. He punches down every time he fells a tree. He is the full embodiment of archy. If I choose to stand in his way, there’s no state behind me, no court, no police force. Me physically stopping a logger from felling trees is an isolated use of force to strike back at a system of authority. The logger destroys life for profit, and if I take action to stop him because I don’t want to see the forest become a barren desert, I don’t become a state or any kind of authority based on that decision to fight back.

Forming a police squad and a bureaucracy to patrol and govern an officiated communal store, appointing authorities to sit and judge how much each individual deserves to eat, on the other hand, creates legitimized systems of power and an institutional monopoly on violence. It creates a state, or at the very least a proto-state that will later develop into a full-blown state as the bureaucracy grows.

The German philosopher Max Weber defined the state as a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. State violence, whether it’s committed on behalf of the state by a politician, a judge, a cop or a logger, is always a legitimate force. Any violence the state does is immediately “justified” simply by virtue of it being dispensed by a legitimate state actor who is doing it for the good of the state and its authority.

A logger with an official permit to slice up a forest is thus fully justified in the eyes of society to do as much harm to the forest as is deemed necessary by the authorities who granted the permit.

A state exists wherever an authority can authorize and legitimize violence. There is no way for an anarchist to “justify” a coercive, authoritarian institution such as a police force that will no doubt be biased against minority groups and lead to the accumulation of power by the dominant group, and abuses of power by the people doing the policing. Even if minority groups are involved in the police force, the majority group will still oppress their groups.

A society that mass-produces goods and distributes them in communal stores will manifest itself as a state, regardless of Kropotkin’s insistences that everyone will work voluntarily and then take whatever they want from the stores. There’s no practical scenario where industrial labor is truly voluntary. There’s no practical scenario on this Earth of rapidly diminishing returns where “free” stores won’t need to be policed to deny unlimited goods to individuals and groups who the governing body decides are less worthy of the fruits of their labor.

Anarcho-communism simply isn’t revolutionary as long as we are depleting all our resources in the name of industrial civilization; something anarcho-communism demands as an industrial, work-based ideology that revolves around civilizing the land and its inhabitants in order to extract resources and labor. There’s nothing revolutionary about continuing the global ecocide under the guise of democracy. Every anarchist should understand the difference between isolated force and authority, but very few self-identifying social anarchists seem interested in this and are content prating on about “justified authority”, debating “how an anarcho-communist police force could work” and excitedly discussing Chomsky’s latest speech telling them to vote for a lesser-evil neoliberal politician.

I know I sound bitter, but I’ve been disillusioned with the majority of red anarchists I come into contact with for years now and they only seem to get worse as industrial society plods on and the sands and seas climb further up our necks.

Anarcho-communism is not the solution to fighting authority, it’s simply a skin-deep re-brand of authority. A sparkly new paint job. There’s a reason so many ancoms strive to “justify” authority. They don’t actually care about reaching for anarchy.

Is Communism Always Authority-Forming?

In my mind, communism can only work outside of industrial mass society. A small community gathering or growing supplies and freely sharing them with the rest of the community. Each community trading with other small communities. Marx and Engels ironically dubbed this hunter-gatherer form of society that had long existed in human history as “primitive communism” and suggested it was inferior to their advanced industrial communism that valued the factory and centralized city life above all else.

Mass industry requires mass agriculture, mass labor, mass transport, mass resource extraction, mass construction, mass policing, mass military... Mass society and will only lead right back to capitalism and statism because it's so unwieldy and authority forming. Any communist tendency built around industrial exploitation is going to create all kinds of fucked up hierarchies and just lead us right back to the apocalyptic status quo.

Most communists I’ve talked to about this are unable to accept that some people will still act like assholes if capitalism collapses, which I’d probably find endearing if these people weren’t such giant assholes themselves; calling me a privileged reactionary for daring to suggest their blessed ideology might have some flawed logic. They insist everyone will cease being selfish assholes once capitalism is done away with because “assholes are only assholes as long as capitalism pits them against each other.”

Even if we wake up one morning and marketing, consumer culture and wealth are all done away with, we still have generations of indoctrination in authoritarian behavior to contend with. That doesn't go away overnight. But even without consumer culture to guide them, people are still completely capable of being assholes. Going back to before mass-society even existed, people would murder each other and take their stuff. They'd raid each other's settlements, they'd steal their children, they'd fight over territory and cultural differences. These aren't things that were invented by capitalism and they won’t go away just because communism is declared.

People aren't inherently just or unjust. Humanity is not good or bad. Every person is an individual, each with different experiences, motivations, traumas. Communism expects everyone to be altruistic. Capitalism expects everyone to act out of greed and self preservation. Neither is true because both are ideologically driven worldviews that attempt to define human nature in order to instruct us how to behave by instilling us with their morals. People are greedy, people are generous, people are kind, people are mean-spirited. Every person in the world is all of these things and more. People are not defined by one single personality trait their entire lives.

I’m haunted by every shitty thing I’ve ever done and I’m sure I’ll do more shitty things yet, despite my best intentions. No one is above making mistakes. Mutual aid is a great thing, but it needs to be earned. There are people in our lives that we trust and people we can’t stand to be around. Not everyone is deserving of the products of our labor. Some people in the world will always try to exploit you, even if they already have everything their hearts could possibly desire. Some people will be kind to you no matter how big an asshole you are.

I’ve been accused by communists of being cynical, of being “regressive” and “counter-revolutionary” because I don’t buy into the communist notion that humans are inherently good and they just need the right industrial system to bring that good out of them.

Any society where I’m expected to just sit back and watch as a logger destroys my ecosystem because he’s serving the “greater good” isn’t a society I want any part of. I value my autonomy over the desires of traumatized workers pushing buttons for 8 hours a day in a city far-removed from me. I’d rather take the logger’s chainsaw away than fiddle my thumbs as he takes everything I know, and to hell with whatever bureaucratic process enshrined him with the right to decimate the forest to give bread to the workers. Fuck the workers and their bread and their fully-automated luxury communism and their divine democratic rights.

There’s simply no reason to believe exploitative assholes will go away if communism is ever enacted.

There’s a man I know who constantly exploits me for my labor, and I always go along with it. He dangles a carrot on a stick in front of me every time; promising that after I help him, he’ll hook me up to his well so I can have free water for my trees. For years he’s made this promise.

I’ve spent countless hours doing dangerous work for this guy with no reward. He always disappears after I do the work without giving me what he promised. Then the next week he wakes me up again at 6am on a Saturday by honking his horn, apologizes for not getting around to hooking me up to the well yet, saying he was too busy or in the hospital or had a family emergency, promises he’ll do it this week, and then I’m hanging off a cliff or a roof repairing pipes for him all day while he barks orders at me.

I do it because I’m a fucking pushover who can’t say no to people due to my ridiculous kind nature. But whenever I ask him for anything, I’m met with a blank stare, an abrupt subject change or a sorry excuse. I was stranded a two hour walk down the mountain last week when my car broke down, and he drove right around me and didn’t even slow down. When I saw him later, he swore on his life that he didn’t see me because the sun was in his eyes. I nodded and shrugged.

Communism wouldn’t stop this lying dipshit from exploiting me; he’d still need someone to fix his leaky pipes, start up his diesel generator, saw off the upper branches of his olive trees and climb shoddy makeshift structures for him regardless of the economic system in place. He’d still give me a sob story about his painful ulcer and I’d still do the hard work to spare him the pain of doing it himself. He wouldn’t stop being an exploitative asshole just because democracy is installed in the workplace. He wouldn’t start practising mutual aid when he goes to great lengths to avoid all work and shames other people into doing it for him.

Red anarchists throw every insult in the book at me when I voice my doubts about their wistful ideologies; condemning me for being critical of the amazing breadman Kropotkin or their “green industry” tsar Professor Bookchin... It’s hard to give my perspective as an indigenous anarchist to these people who are so hostile to any worldview that doesn’t validate their luxurious industrial lifestyle and their driving desire to make that lifestyle more democratic in order to receive a bigger share of the pie.

Between the shouts of “reactionary lifestylist” and “dirty primmie” they lobby at me, I try to explain my perspective to them. I see suffering in the world and I want to make sense of it. I’m not satisfied just handwaving it away and clinging to fanciful utopian ideologies designed to energize European factory workers from the 1800s. I don’t believe red-industry will cure society of all its ills and free humans from their chains.

The warehouse I’ve worked in for more than a decade will not become magically liberating if I’m given the power of democracy. It’ll still be a miserable fucking place filled with toxic pesticides that are slowly killing me.

Some ancoms will no doubt unironically reply to this piece with reasoning that just amounts to "no, actually, anarcho-communist industry will be a utopia because Kropotkin said so". They’ll quote a bunch of literature to me that is nothing but empty promises by long-dead European philosophers for industrial egalitarianism. I’ve really run out of patience for that line of thinking. It’s no different than a 7 year old trying to win an argument by insisting “because my dad said so”... But when it comes down to it, that’s all most reds can do. Quote their heroes and cling to the hope that they’ll be proven right some day. That hope is what keeps them going as their miserable civilized lives burn the world up. “All our suffering will end once we have democracy in the workplace”. Those poor, deluded, hope-filled souls.

Everything I know tells me industry cannot be made "green" any more than capitalism can be made ethical. All agricultural industrial society in history has resulted in ecocide and eventually collapse. When you extract resources, burn fuel, manufacture goods and distribute them to millions or billions of people, you do real irreversible harm to ecosystems and human lives. Ancoms are not magical beings that can somehow escape the consequences of this because they're supposedly "good" and “egalitarian”.

If anarcho-communism were ever attempted, half the "nuances" it has will be thrown out for being fantastic, half-baked and impossible to implement in an industrial mass-society. Compromises will be made to make the system functional. A lot of things have been claimed about communism, but whenever its been attempted in real life models, almost none of those claims have come to fruition and they never will because:

a) Resources aren't infinite.

b) Industrial output has a high 'hidden' cost, and most importantly:

c) Work isn't voluntary.

No matter how much you swear you’ll make labor democratic, no one is working because they really want to. They’re working because the system requires them to work to survive. No amount of democracy will stop the system from asserting its authority on everyone inside its suffocating walls. Abolishing the borders between territories will do nothing if industrial civilization continues to box us in and starve us if we dare to resist its rule. If we can’t escape civilization, the whole world is nothing more than one big prison.

Civilized people labor to create consumer goods because the system gives them no other option if they want to survive. The only way people will continue to toil in the factories and warehouses in "a communist society" is if they are forced to by the system. No free hunter gatherer will voluntarily give up their freedom to stand at an assembly line pushing buttons so other people can have Corn Flakes, weedkiller and AAA batteries. It's something that needs to be forced on humans by domestication and the joined threat of violence and starvation that props up the industrial system.

Industry is a clear authority and anarcho-communist theory is completely oblivious to that. Anarcho-communism is nothing more than an attempt to reform the tyranny of civilization to give it a sly smile. It’s the anarchist version of Barack Obama promising change but just delivering more of the same and expecting you to celebrate it.

Seize the Means of Destruction! (And fucking burn it to the ground…)

Ancoms insist “people would choose to produce only what is needed” in an anarcho-communist society. That word; "needed" is really useless. Anyone can define anything as being "needed", but almost none of the things defined as such are actually needed. This is why industrial communism isn't really compatible with anarchy: anything and everything will be defined as "needed" by domesticated people, no matter how authority-forming the things are. If it means they get to keep consuming, anarcho-consumers would happily define everything from pesticides to slaughterhouses to automobile plants as “needed”. This is the power of democracy. Whatever narrative the collective adopts becomes the official, approved narrative and anyone questioning it will be seen as subversive and dangerous and a threat to order and common decency.

This "needed industry" argument is a lot like the "justified authority" argument a lot of red “anarchists” keep making to uphold every shitty authority they cling to all the way up to the state, prisons and the police.

Usually they’ll just rename these authorities “the commune”, “the social re-integration facility” and “the peacekeepers” and be satisfied that they’ve come up with a real change. It's meaningless. Domesticated people will not allow themselves to see past the carefully manufactured alienating world they’ve inherited. Very few civilized people are willing to risk losing what they perceive as the great comforts imbibed to them by industrial civilization.

Even if they recognize how strangling these “comforts” actually are to them and everything else on the planet, instead of rejecting them outright, they draw up elaborate plans to reform the way those “comforts” are produced and dispersed. Most of these plans, when deconstructed and debullshitted, ultimately amount to little more than slapping the word “anarcho” in front of everything and trusting it’ll be all good because it’s anarchized now.

People thrived without industry and agriculture for millennia. Civilization has led to the extinction of near everything on the planet. 99.9% of industrial goods are not "needed" by humanity, they're wanted.

Ancoms aren't going to suddenly decide to give up their phones, Doritos and washing machines when they find out they're environmentally destructive. They'll just rubber-stamp all the things they want as "needed", “eco-friendly”, “sustainable” or “green” and call it a day. And we’ll be expected to keep working our miserable jobs and like it because now they’re anarcho-jobs in an anarcho-society with anarcho-exploitation and anarcho-masters.

Keeping people in the mines and factories building those consumer goods that "the people" decide they "need" will require massive authority that will be just another iteration of capitalism in all but name. Just like “communist” Russia and “communist” China and “communist” North Korea. Not a trace of communism will survive once industrial civilization is done grinding everything up. There’s nothing about “anarcho-communism” that will spare it from the same fate. Claiming to be anti-authority rings hollow when you cling to authoritarian industrial civilization, workerism and all the other authorities ancoms at large decide are “justified”.

A bureaucracy will always be instilled in an organized mass-society and this is why industrial communism isn't tenable. It’s why every time industrial communism has been attempted, it has simply been manifested as a perverse collective-capitalism with even more centralized power than regular-flavor capitalism. The bureaucracy will quickly morph into a state, and by definition the society will no longer be communist. But of course, it’ll keep calling itself “communist” and ensure the distinction between capitalism and communism remains paper-thin so people won’t be able to envision a better world than the brutal industrial wasteland we’ve all been born into.

Any system that allocates resources and polices people is functionally a state, regardless of what it brands itself as.

All implementations of industrial society have failed to liberate people, instead making their lives more and more miserable with each stage of industrialism, and to claim that attaching “anarcho” to the front of an industrial system will make a difference is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Communism has never succeeded at liberating us historically and will not suddenly succeed just because you promise you’re better than other communists and you and all your super-libertarian ancom comrades will pick up cans of paint and make all the chimney stacks bright green.

Authoritarian behavior will only ever be repeated if society is structured around authoritarian institutions like industrialism and democracy. Both Marx and Kropotkin’s communism are centred around these institutions because their ideologies require that people be controlled by bureaucracy. Whether it be decentralized democratic bureaucracy or centralized party bureaucracy is irrelevant. The result is the same: Authority and control.

Without this bureaucracy, the society would descend into anarchy. Yes, wonderful, amazing, freeing anarchy. The very thing every red fears most because it would mean they’d no longer get to forcibly structure society and people around their sacred ideology and force their authority and morality on them. Domesticated people sit trapped in sterile little boxes, fed a steady drip of pesticide and high-fructose corn syrup as they labor, consume, consume, consume and then die.

This isn’t life. This isn’t anarchy. This is a waking nightmare, a depraved hell-world that has all of us thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it acceptable. Branding it “communist” or “libertarian socialist” or “democratic” or “egalitarian” or “decentralized” or “anarcho-communist” will not end the nightmare. It will not stop the planet-wide ecocide civilization has wrought on all living things. The means of destruction being controlled by industrial workers instead of industrial bosses will not stop the ecocide.

Seizing the factories and making them democratically managed as all reds yearn to do won’t do anything to save us from violence, misery, alienation and eventual extinction.

The only way to destroy authority is to burn industry to the ground before it devours every last lifeform on the planet.

The only chance we have to survive what’s coming in the next few years as our ecosystems are collapsing all around us is to tear down every factory and close every port and slice up every road until civilization is in ruins.

But in all honesty, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to watch television and sip iced tea and we’re going to wait for the end. I’m going to keep watching in silence as the local bread man fells the last remaining wilderness.

Maybe the planet will recover somewhat in a few millennia and maybe the next lifeform that evolves will have more sense than the desertmakers. This is the last hope I cling to.

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flowers-of-io · 3 years

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@eri-223 you brought it upon yourself, now I won’t shut up c:

OKAY SO

I can’t really draw neat straight lines between the two, but there’s so much aesthetic similarity to me, particularly with Toland and the Hive-Ascendancy thing. Maybe it’s just me dying for the vibes (or loving POTO in general since I was 9), but it struck me today how Eris/Toland--when it’s made a Working ship--is basically everything Christine/Erik is not. There is so much to be said about Christine/Erik alone, but to me it’s an epitome of why gothic-novel-esque dynamics don’t really work in the long run when they don’t move past being just Gothic and Tragic. And hear me out. A goodhearted, elfin woman at her vulnerable point (grief over father) meets a honey-voiced stranger and has this secret thing with him, this music they share in the dead of night, and it’s intoxicating because music *is* her passion (and something she has deep emotions over in itself, the thing that is most hers in the world) and it’s secret, and a whole other world to what she’s facing in the daytime. The mystery is intriguing, and that’s intoxicating too. And there’s an uncomfortable power imbalance but it doesn’t bother you just yet, because there isn’t really any attraction between the two--not in the romantic-as-in-love sense at least, rather this romantic-as-in-romanticism pull all dark beautiful secret things have.

And here we can shout a fucking thank you at Erik for completely ruining that beauty by being an absolute creep. But Chrissie doesn’t know that yet. And so he leads her deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. And she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that is so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

And this, THIS is the best moment of the entire thing to me. This story could be well off without Raoul (whom I deeply love and cherish but he ruins the gothic) because he adds this romantic tension of a love triangle (which I absolutely loathe because ugh. love triangles.) to what could have been a tale of a girl torn between the world of day and night rather than two men who each love her in a different way. There’s so much of Persephone-sque struggle in Christine’s soul that has been shunned by the story imo, and would have made the whole thing better in the long run (and maybe less grossly-abusive on Erik’s part).

So let’s circle back to Toland, another pale, bony, possibly disfigured brunet in a dark coat with a living room full of skulls and candles (the vibes, huh. he probably owned a boat and a horse too). If we take Eris/Toland as starting off before the Hellmouth (I’m really starting to tentatively test my ground on this hhhng), it feels like the same story slightly to the left. Granted, Eris has more agency, but there’s still a huge power imbalance in her and Eriana coming to Toland--an exiled genius|madman with an evil black crow (Guren) perching on his shoulder--and asking him for help, laying their and their team’s lives at his feet - him, who could probably kill them in seventeen different yet equally fancy ways were he more invested! And there is so much darkness here already because how dark it must have been in Eris’ soul to agree on this revenge fantasy, what an abyss Eriana’s eyes must have been hiding; how desperate they must have been to come to him, to even consider this, to choose a possibility of painful, screaming agony in the Hellmouth over the ache they were feeling now. And so there’s vulnerability, too, in a way - because they’re desperate, because they’re hurting, because everything has been taken from them and they have nothing else to do but this ridiculous, mad plan. And oh he can abuse this void, he can make them do whatever he wants and they’d do it gladly, and I have a feeling both Eris and Eriana are aware of that.

And so they work, in secret, cracking secrets of the Hive, tasting the rot of the forbidden fruit, hiding from the daylight with their dark, heretic, nighttime folly. I think there is a threshold at wherever it is they are meeting--be it a room or a house, Eriana’s kitchen or Toland’s disturbing “lab”--in the doorway, between the bright but empty world of patrols and strikes and dead friends and this horrid, twisted, yet fascinating realm of promised vengeance. And I think Eris learns, hungry for secrets, hungry perhaps for Toland’s eyes on her because all dark beautiful secret things have a pull, and she can’t tell if she’s more drunk on the adventure, or the heresy they’re so blatantly committing, or him. And maybe he reciprocates in his own twisted way, maybe they talk or kiss over the parchment pages, and she cannot tell--she cannot tell if his eyes are truly for her or the Hive, the mystery, the thing they’re doing. I’m thinking of what you wrote, how “he wanted Ascendance as badly as she wanted him”. But despite that--or maybe because of it--she allows herself to be led deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. Is it the Hellmouth? Maybe, though I think it’s a process that spans between their secret studies of the Hive and the midst of their descent, when Vell is dead and maybe they’re all doomed, and Toland’s eyes twinkle in the dark and it’s such beautiful madness she cannot help staring. And the checkpoint has come, time to show cards--and she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that was so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

I think this is Ir Yut, or maybe a little bit earlier, but nevertheless the bubble bursts and Eris is left in the dark alone and betrayed. That’s of little concern, of course, when the Hive is hunting you down and all you hear is your friends’ dying screams, but it still hurts, it’s still bitter, it’s still so, so wrong. I like to think he comes to teach her then, maybe give her the journals, and it’s a whirlwind of madness and horror and fury and gore, but he’s whatever comfort she can hope for at this point. It’s twisted, it’s awful, it’s dark-gothic rotten, it’s as wrong and horrid as Erik/Christine is as a whole.

But then they’re given the chance Erik/Christine never got. They’re allowed to outgrow the rot. There’s so much dysfunctionality and disturb going on in most gothic-esque “love” stories because it’s not love, it’s attraction taken for a spin and often grossly abused. Love is growth. I like to think of what must have been going on in Eris’ head (and Toland’s too, perhaps, though I doubt he had one at that point) when they were exchanging the letters, the dearest Eris right next to did you watch me carve out each eye; now that she’s wiser, and scarred, and not so stupid anymore--but there’s still that dark pull she can’t help, now even scarier than before that she knows him for what he really is, now that she’s seen the rot. There’s so much hurt to be outgrown, so much betrayal, but she finds he’s yet again whatever comfort she can hope for (that entry *is* called A Light In The Darkness, huh). I could wax poetic about this whole process but I think you captured it so well in STM I don’t have much else to add.

I wanted to throw quotes into it but couldn’t quite fit them into this, uh, essay (which I didn’t absolutely re-read), and I guess Music of the Night would apply here but it’s ripe with uncomfortable sexual tension?? And aside from that (which is in its entirety a trip) just consider these ah

this whole moment

also this

He'll always be there singing songs in my head Is this Eris in the letters phase? maybe. I performed a vibe check and it showed positive

Wandering Child for how unhealthy-twisted and beautiful it is (ignore Raoul, I have no metaphor for him in this au)

For either way you choose, you cannot win It’s just a good quote y’all

Farewell my fallen idol and false friend / We had such hopes, and now those hopes are shattered

Angel of Music, you deceived me / I gave you my mind blindly (HOW SHE WHISPERS THAT LAST PART IN THE MOVIE OK)

Stranger than you dreamt it now you’re stranded in the Hellmouth good job

What warm, unspoken secrets will we learn / Beyond the point of no return

The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn

Down that path into darkness deep as hell but Toland smiles while he sings this

And of course the classic, And in this labyrinth where night is blind / The Phantom of the Opera is here inside my mind

Wow! I didn’t even get to the Dreaming City! It’s way more vague than the whole Eris/Toland thing because of course ships take up 80% of my brainspace but idk I just find it so incredibly fitting when it comes to paralleling Savathun/Dul Incaru terrorising the Dreaming City with what Erik does to the opera. Like, everybody knows he’s There but no one can do anything about it, he sends vague threats and kills people but nobody can catch him, and the place is just a giant playground for him to have fun and achieve his personal goals in. And whatever the hell is going on in Masquerade, like

Masquerade! Seething shadows breathing lies Masquerade! You can fool any friend who ever knew you Masquerade! Leering satyrs, peering eyes Masquerade! Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you

wow that sure is subtle. Seething shadows breathing lies, huh. Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you :) And then he crashes the party in a fucking Red Death costume. If this doesn’t have huge Dul Incaru/Siren of Riven energy I don’t know what has.

And of course the shitshow only starts when we kill Riven but the seeds have been planted long, long ago. If you listen closely, you can hear Petra screaming in confusion somewhere under box five.

I know most of this second part is a stretch, BUT! this is my au. And for the record, I know there are very mixed feeling about the 2004 POTO movie but to me personally it was a formative experience, first watched on a very crappy TV in music class at the age of 9 and not even in its entirety, but I was already captivated and shaken to the core, and there’s still, after all those years, something that screams at my soul when I hear the first notes.

And, as a treat for those who suffered with me until the end of this essay,

#i may or may not be singing up to three poto songs next tuesday on a concert #which may or may not have been my teenage dream #reply #eri-223 #phantom of the opera #toland the sarky #eris morning #eris/toland #destiny 2 #npc talk #what is this even #i have no idea how to tag this #headcanon #ships #ir yût #dûl incaru

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cryingcow · 3 years

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Character Story - Saejima (1985)

Now for a Saejima story that’s much longer than the last :D Ch. 3 is set in Y5, so super minor spoilers for that (which makes this a Christmas story!). This will probably be my last for the near future, COVID situation-depending (or at the very least I’ll be much slower in translating lol cuz I really need to study and this story is just making me guilty XD).

Story: In the month before he attempts mass murder, Saejima gets to live out his dream of being a teacher.

Boy: “How do I solve this problem?”

Saejima, carrying a gun in his mouth: “Bluplaguhabulahebluwa.”

Boy: “I see! You know, you’re way more understandable than my actual schoolteachers.”

CHAPTER 1

One day in March, 1985 . . . one month before Saejima Taiga became the “Legendary 18-Count”.

Saejima: “Haa~. I might have had too much to drink with my kyoudai, because my head is fuzzy. Will I wake up if I drink some coffee? . . . Hm?”

Café Alps Waiter: “Sitting down with just 1 cup of coffee for hours! If you’re studying, do it at home!”

Boy: “I can’t concentrate at home! There aren’t many customers anyway, so it’s okay!”

Saejima: “Oi. Are ya picking a fight with a kid?”

Café Alps Waiter: “N-No. This kid has been sitting here since morning. Just 1 cup of coffee, for hours.”

Boy: “I was studying. I’m taking an exam soon. At home, my family is noisy and no good . . .”

Saejima: “Is that so . . . Ain’t it crowded at the café? Can’t you overlook him?”

Café Alps Waiter: “I can’t ignore this problem. What if the other kids copy him?”

Boy: “Hey, the mock exam is near, so 1 more hour! A good idea, right?!”

Café Alps Waiter: “It’s useless! Look, go over there! Shoo!”

Saejima: “. . . If you want to stay, why don’t ya order another cup? Look, I’ll get one, just let him study.”

Café Alps Waiter: “Eh? You?”

Boy: “Ojiisan! Is that okay?!”

Saejima: “Yeah.”

Boy: “Thank you! Ojiisan!”

Saejima: “. . . Brat. It’s not Ojiisan. It’s Saejima.”

Ichiro: “Saejima-no-ojiisan then! I’m Ichiro! Nishiyamada Ichiro!”

Saejima: “Ichiro. It’s time for you to study. There are people in this world who even if they want to study, they can’t.”

Ichiro: “Yup! I’ll work hard!”

----

|A few days later . . .|

Ichiro: “Stingy!”

Café Alps Waiter: “This is a business! If you’re not buying anything, then go home!”

Saejima: (Oi, oi. Not again.)

Saejima: “Are ya at it again?”

Ichiro: “Ah, Saejima-no-ojiisan . . .”

Saejima: “Ichiro, are ya studying at the café again?”

Ichiro: “Yup . . .”

Café Alps Waiter: “The other day, did you know that this kid stayed until closing after you paid for a drink? One extra drink is not enough . . .”

Saejima: “. . . It can’t be helped. Oi, Ichiro. You can’t study if you’re not in a quiet place, yeah?”

Ichiro: “Yup. That’s right, but . . .”

Saejima: “Then I know a place. Follow me, I’ll take ya there.”

Ichiro: “Eh? Is it a good place?”

----

Ichiro: “Ojiisan, what’s here?”

Saejima: “Ah, this place is . . .”

Saejima: (I can’t tell him it’s an abandoned hideout once used by the Family . . .)

Saejima: “Yeah, uh . . . it’s an acquaintance’s building. You can use it as much as ya like.”

Ichiro: “Hmm, all right. But . . . don’t you have a desk?”

Saejima: “How about those mandarin orange boxes over there? With cushions . . . we can use the cardboard box.”

Ichiro: “Yeah! . . . Somehow, this place looks like a secret base.”

Saejima: “. . . Didn’t ya say you were taking an exam the other day?”

Ichiro: “Yup. There’s a school I want to go to. So there’s a mock test soon . . . But I’m not good at studying. My grades don’t improve at all.”

Saejima: “Not good at studying, huh . . . Ichiro, how do you do it?”

Ichiro: “Um . . .”

{Ichiro demonstrates to Saejima.}

Saejima: “Hmm. That’s an inefficient method. I’ll teach you the right way. Let me show ya how.”

Ichiro: “Eh? Saejima-no-ojiisan? . . . You know how to study?”

Saejima: “Idiot. Even if I look like this, I was aiming to be a schoolteacher. When I was a kid, I was able to study well.”

Ichiro: “Eeh?! Really?!”

Saejima: “Really. Now let me show ya how.”

{Saejima demonstrates to Ichiro how to study Math.}

Saejima: “So, do it like this. The trick is to solve the same problem over and over again.”

Ichiro: “Wow! With Saejima-no-ojiisan’s teaching, it’s very easy to understand!”

Saejima: “Heh. Ain’t that right? Now, is Social Studies next? Let’s see . . .”

{Saejima continues teaching Ichiro.}

----

Ichiro: “Ojiisan, thank you for today!”

Saejima: “Sure. Do your best.”

???: “Oi, isn’t that Ichiro?”

Ichiro: “Ah . . .”

Saejima: “. . . Do ya know them?”

Ichiro: “Y-Yup. I think they’re friends of Oniichan . . .”

Thug-like Youth: “Ichiro-kun. We’re a bit short on pocket money. Will you lend us some again?”

Ichiro: “. . . I-I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.”

Thug-like Youth: “Lies! I heard from your Oniichan! Didn’t you have pocket money yesterday?! Hey!”

Ichiro: “Hiii . . .”

Saejima: “You guys . . . aren’t ya embarrassed to be asking such a thing from a child?”

Thug-like Youth: “. . . Ossan. It’s nice to look cool and all, but have you seen how many we are? If you’re going to pick a fight, maybe you should check out the other party first?”

Ichiro: “Sa-Saejima-no-ojiisan. Don’t do it. These guys are a group of runaways. They’re really strong . . . We should do what they say . . .”

Saejima: “. . . Ichiro. I’m not saying to get into a fight that ya can’t win. However . . . there are times when ya shouldn’t run away. Remember that.”

Ichiro: “Eh?”

Thug-like Youth: “Ossan, what the hell~, you think you can win? Just because you have a good body build? Then I’ll make you cry through sore eyes!”

{Saejima defeats all of the thugs.}

Thug-like Youth: “H-Hiii . . . Strong . . .”

Saejima: “You guys . . . try and lay a hand on Ichiro next time, and you’ll be sorry.”

Thug-like Youth: “U-Understood, damn it!”

{The thugs run away.}

Ichiro: “A-Amazing. . . . Saejima-no-ojiisan, you’re really strong too!”

Saejima: “It’s no big deal. How about you, Ichiro, are ya alright?”

Ichiro: “Y-Yup.”

Saejima: “. . . Geez. Shaking down a child. What bad friends. Ichiro, if they come after you again, tell me, okay?”

Ichiro: “Yup! Thank you! But I can’t just be protected by other people all the time. I have to become strong.”

Saejima: “Hm? Strong?”

Ichiro: “Actually, I want to be a police officer. A good police officer just like my dad.”

Saejima: “Wh-What? Officer? Your dad?”

Ichiro: “Yup. Is something wrong?”

Saejima: “N-No. So that’s what ya want. So ya want to be a police officer too?”

Ichiro: “Yup. My dad is a great police officer. He bravely confronts the Yakuza. It’s his job to protect the general public by not putting up with those bad guys.”

Saejima: “. . . A good father.”

Ichiro: “Yup. But I’m worried because he often gets hurt. Kamurocho is full of dangers.”

Saejima: “Well, that’s true. It’s a dangerous city . . .”

Ichiro: “Hey, Saejima-no-ojiisan. Teach me how to fight.”

Saejima: “What? How to fight?”

Ichiro: “Yup! I want to be strong like you so I won’t lose to bad guys!”

Saejima: “Yeah, but . . . how about ya don’t get into a quarrel with a bad guy? If you can do that, that would be the best.”

Ichiro: “But you have to be strong if you want to be a police officer! So Ojiisan! Make me your disciple!”

Saejima: “. . . And if I’m strict? Even then?”

Ichiro: “Yup! It’s fine! Thank you, Saejima-sensei!”

Saejima: “Ha, Saejima-sensei. I’m a bit tickled.”

Ichiro: “Fufufu. . . . Oh, by the way . . . what does Saejima-sensei usually do?”

Saejima: “Th-That is . . . it’s a freelance business.”

Ichiro: “Freelance? Hmm. I don’t really get it.”

-END-

CHAPTER 2

|One day in March, 1985 . . . 10 days before Saejima became the “Legendary 18-Count”.|

Saejima: “. . . Hmm. That Ichiro didn’t come today either. Did something suddenly happen in the past few days . . . ?”

----

Saejima: “. . . Hm? That’s . . .”

Ichiro: “. . .”

Saejima: “Oi, if it isn’t Ichiro.”

Ichiro: “! Sa-Saejima-sensei . . .”

Saejima: “What a miserable face. Ya haven’t come by the past few days to study, what happened?”

Ichiro: “. . .”

Ichiro: “Uugh. Uwaaaaaa.”

Saejima: “O-Oi, what’s wrong?”

Ichiro: “Uwaaaaaa . . . Saejima-sensei . . .”

Saejima: “. . . F-For now, calm down. Okay?”

----

Saejima: “What happened that ya suddenly started crying?”

Ichiro: “. . . Dad . . .”

Saejima: “Hm? What happened to your father?”

Ichiro: “. . . He was shot and gravely injured.”

Saejima: “Eh?! What do you mean?”

Ichiro: “He got mixed up with yakuza . . . He protected a woman who was likely to get shot, and . . .”

Saejima: “. . . And wh-what?”

Ichiro: “The place where he got shot was so bad that he might not be able to walk anymore . . .”

Saejima: (So that’s why I haven’t seen him the past few days.)

Saejima: “That’s heartbreaking . . .”

Ichiro: “. . . U-Uuuugh . . .”

----

Saejima: “Are ya alright? Can you go home alone?”

Ichiro: “Yup. I’m fine. . . . Hey, Saejima-sensei. It’s about your cram school . . .”

Saejima: “Cram school? Oh, that abandoned place? Did ya go there?”

Ichiro: “. . . I’m thinking of quitting. I don’t want to be a police officer.”

Saejima: “. . . That so . . . Is it because of your father?”

Ichiro: “Yup. That’s why teacher’s cram school . . .”

Saejima: “. . . Did ya get scared?”

Ichiro: “. . . Yup.”

Saejima: “. . . I see.”

Ichiro: “Saejima-sensei . . . what should I do?”

Saejima: “. . . That’s right. You’re having a hard time now, so how about ya sleep on it. However . . .”

Ichiro: “However?”

Saejima: “It’s no good to lose sight of the back ya want to emulate. If ya lose your way, I will guide you back myself.”

Ichiro: “Back . . . to emulate?”

Saejima: “That’s right, your father was a good police officer. That doesn’t change no matter what. What ya saw on your father’s back . . . it’s still a fine gate to aim for. Ichiro, having that in your heart should guide you when ya get lost, okay?”

Ichiro: “Saejima-sensei . . .”

Saejima: “But for now, you should take a rest. Don’t worry about the cram school.”

Ichiro: “. . . Yup. Thank you, Saejima-sensei.”

Saejima: (So, is it a yakuza-related crime? If I dig little, I can figure out who’s involved.)

----

Yakuza: “Haa . . . haa . . . Go away! Leave me the fuck alone!”

Saejima: “Wait!”

Yakuza: “Haa . . . haa . . . zee . . . zee . . . Damn it! What the hell are you?!”

Saejima: “The other day, a fight between yakuza took place behind Pink Street. Are you the yakuza involved in it?”

Yakuza: “Yeah?! What of it?!”

Saejima: “Were ya the one who tried to shoot a respectable woman? Moreover, the bullet that hit the cop on the scene . . . At the time, you escaped successfully. Did ya think that was enough?”

Yakuza: “Hey, are you a cop? You don’t look like one . . .”

Saejima: “No. Sorry. This is . . . revenge.”

Yakuza: “Revenge? Heh, interesting. In that case, I’ll throw it back at you!”

{Saejima beats up the yakuza.}

Yakuza: “Damn . . . strong . . .”

Saejima: “(For Ichiro, there is no relief. Even if I took revenge . . .)

----

|A few days later . . .|

Saejima: “. . . Hm? In that abandoned building I used with Ichiro . . . It seems the light is on, but it shouldn’t be . . .”

Saejima: “Oi, Ichiro.”

Ichiro: “Oh, Ojiisan. You’re here.”

Saejima: “Because the light was on. Rather, are ya all right?”

Ichiro: “. . . Yup.”

Saejima: “I see.”

Ichiro: “. . . Hey, Ojiisan. I’ve been thinking since then . . . I shouldn’t give up on my dream to be a police officer after all. Saejima-sensei taught me about ‘a back to emulate’. I still admire his.”

Saejima: “I see . . .”

Ichiro: “In addition, it’s not just my dad’s. The back that I admire.”

Saejima: “Eh?”

Ichiro: “Because it’s not just my dad that I admire, it’s also Saejima-sensei!”

Saejima: “! Ichiro . . .”

Ichiro: “So from now on . . . thank you!”

Saejima: “. . . Heh. Got it.”

----

|A few days later, at Saejima’s apartment . . .|

Phone: “Bururururu . . .”

Saejima: “Yes. This is Saejima. . . . Eh? Talk with me? Is it important? . . . Understood. I’ll head out.”

Saejima: (Something important to tell me? The hell could it be?)

----

Saejima: “. . .”

Younger Delinquent: “. . . Then, if you are decided, please contact me. Everything will be confidential.”

Saejima: “Yeah . . .”

Saejima: (I would do anything for Boss Sasai . . . is what I thought . . . To kill. The target is the leader of the Ueno Seiwa. My heart is set. But before that, there’s something else I have to deal with.)

----

Ichiro: “Eh? Ends today? Wh-Why?!”

Saejima: “. . . I’m sorry.”

Ichiro: “Why? Why?”

Saejima: “I’m not the kind of guy you should follow. I don’t want ya to chase my back.”

Ichiro: “. . . Ojiisan. I don’t know . . .”

Saejima: “Ichiro. I’m sorry. . . . Become a good police officer.”

Ichiro: “Ojiisan . . .”

----

|April 21, 1985. . . . Saejima Taiga kills the Ueno Seiwa leader along with many members. This is the incident that later dubbed him the “Legendary 18-Count”. Saejima will receive the death sentence for that crime . . .|

-END-

CHAPTER 3

|December 2012. Kamurocho. 27 years after Saejima’s 18 kills. Saejima escaped from Abashiri Prison in Hokkaido after learning of Majima’s death. When he returned to Kamurocho to find out the truth . . .|

Saejima: “Haa . . . haa. Tch, they can’t find me with this many people . . . !”

Police: “The jailbreaker is over there!”

Saejima: “Damn it!”

----

Saejima: “Phew. Somehow, I managed . . . hm?”

Punk: “It should be around here . . .”

Saejima: (It can’t be helped. I’ll have to hide until they leave.)

Male Voice: “Oi, did you bring it?”

Saejima: (. . . Police?)

Punk: “Oi, how much longer do I have to pay up?”

Police Officer: “Are you in a position to complain? If it wasn’t for me, you think you’ll be eating good food in a dangerous prison?”

Punk: “Shit!”

Saejima: (What? Is he giving money to the police officer? What’s he doing? I should go elsewhere.)

{Saejima steps on glass as he tries to escape.}

Saejima: “!”

Police Officer: “Who’s there?!”

Saejima: (Damn it. I’ve been found . . . !)

Police Officer: “. . . Sa-Saejima . . . sensei?”

Saejima: “Huh?”

Police Officer: “After everything . . . is that all? I heard you’d broken out of jail . . .”

Saejima: “. . . Y-You, no way . . . . . . Ichiro?”

Ichiro: “. . . Long time no see.”

Saejima: “. . . Did you become a police officer?”

Ichiro: “Yeah. As you can see.”

Saejima: “Really. That’s good. I want to rejoice in our reunion, but it’s not the best timing. . . . Ichiro. I’m sorry but can’t you overlook that ya saw me? I still have something to do. I can’t afford to get caught . . .”

Ichiro: “. . . Heh. Are you going to kill someone again? I was surprised you killed 18 people, ‘Saejima-sensei’ . . .”

Saejima: “!”

Ichiro: “You also kept it a secret that you were yakuza. Even so, you were a good teacher . . .”

Saejima: “No, that is . . .”

Ichiro: “. . . Very well. I’ll overlook you. I don’t know what you’re going to do, and I don’t care. But you’ll have to pay me 500,000 yen.”

Saejima: “Ichiro . . . you . . . Was the money you received from the punk earlier a bribe? Where did ya learn such a thing?”

Ichiro: “Saejima!! I’m no longer an innocent kid!”

Saejima: “. . . . . . Won’t your father be sad? Did ya become a good police officer?”

Ichiro: “. . . Murderers often bring that up. . . . Well, whatever. Just pay me.”

Saejima: “. . . Ichiro. I have no money to pay you now.”

Ichiro: “I see. . . . But you’re not going to come quietly, right?”

Saejima: “Yeah.”

Ichiro: “In that case, what to do . . . You guys! Time to make yourselves useful!”

Punk: “Eh?”

Ichiro: “Beat the hell out of Saejima. But don’t kill him.”

Punk: “H-Haa?! Why should we? Making us do such a thing on top of making us pay . . .”

Ichiro: “Robbery with assault. How long do you think you’ll get?”

Punk: “Ugh . . .”

Ichiro: “Do you want to eat smelly rice in prison?! Do you want to have the rest of your life ruined?!”

Punk: “D-Damn it!!”

{Saejima beats up the punks.}

Punk: “Im-Impossible! Impossible, impossible! This guy is as strong as a monster!”

Saejima: “. . .”

Ichiro: “What are you doing, you useless piece of junk!”

Punk: “B-But he’s too much for us! This guy’s strength is inhuman!”

Ichiro: “. . . If that’s the case, then use this. I confiscated this dagger today.”

Punk: “!”

Ichiro: “So stab Saejima! He’s not going to die!!”

Saejima: “. . . Ichiro. You . . .”

Ichiro: “Saejima! This is the price for betraying me! I’ll take the credit!”

Ichiro: “What’s wrong?! If you don’t do it, I’ll get rid of you too!!”

Punk: “. . . U-Uugh . . . . . . . . . . D-Damn iiiiiiit!! Cut it out, you fucking cop!”

{The punk points the knife at Ichiro.}

Ichiro: “What . . . What do you think will happen if you go against me?”

Punk: “Shut up! I’m going to mess you up! You’re dead!!”

{The punk rushes in to stab him.}

Ichiro: “U-Uwaaaaaa!”

Ichiro: “Eh?”

Saejima: “. . . Shit . . . as expected, it hurts.”

Punk: “. . . Ah. A-a-a-a-a-ah . . . Uwaaaaaaaaa!”

{The punks run off.}

Ichiro: “. . . . . . Wh-Why?”

Saejima: “Nothing to it. You were about to get stabbed. I can’t let ya meet your father like that, can I?”

Ichiro: “. . .”

Saejima: “. . . Kuh. Tch . . . He really used quite the force . . . stabbing that in . . .”

{Saejima falls to the ground.}

Saejima: “. . . Ichiro, what’s wrong? Aren’t ya arresting me? No way I can fight back now.”

Ichiro: “. . . . . . Ha, hahaha. You haven’t changed at all. Even though my hands are so dirty . . .”

Saejima: “! Ichiro . . .”

Ichiro: “. . . . . . 27 years ago . . . I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to think they got it all wrong. . . . I was shocked. It was really because I saw your back . . . . . . But now, once again . . . I feel like it’s been shown to me.”

Saejima: “. . . Ichiro. . . . Uugh . . . shit . . .”

Ichiro: “I know an underground doctor. He’s just nearby . . .”

Saejima: “No. I don’t need this taken care of. I’ll do something about it myself.”

Ichiro: “No, but . . .”

Saejima: “Heh. Don’t look at me like that.”

Ichiro: “. . . . . . Then run away before anyone sees you. Is there something I can do?”

Saejima: “Something? Forget ya saw me.”

Ichiro: “Heh . . . I’m already dirty. After all this time, the least I can do is overlook you.”

Saejima: “. . . I’m sorry, Ichiro. But . . . if I can do what I need to do, I will atone for my sins. I will take responsibility.”

Ichiro: “. . . Atone for your sins . . . ? . . . Hey. Can I ask you something? Is it still possible for me to start over?”

Saejima: “Yeah. Humans can always start over, if they want to.”

Ichiro: “. . . . . . Really?”

Saejima: “Heh. I’ve been in prison for 25 years. Don’t doubt me.”

Ichiro: “Haha. That may be the case . . .”

Supporting Police Officer: “Over there! Saejima!”

Saejima: “Tch. They found me? Gotta go, Ichiro. Do your best!”

Ichiro: “Back at you. . . . . . . ‘Saejima-sensei’.”

Saejima: “! . . . . . . Haha. That really does have me tickled. . . . bye!”

{Saejima escapes.}

Ichiro: “Should I emulate that back . . . ?”

Ichiro: “. . . . . . Saejima-sensei. You really are . . . the best teacher.”

-END-

Masterlist

#Saejima's such a nice guy #RGG Studios please let this man live his dream instead of forcing him to be yakuza :(#rgg online #rggo lore #rggo #rgg #Ryu ga Gotoku #yakuza #saejima taiga

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