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shuahoonie · 7 months

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unspoken words | jeon wonwoo

pairing: non-idol!wonwoo (svt) x fem!reader

notes: office!au (kinda?), fluff, suggestive jokes, swearing, idiots 2 lovers. alcohol consumption, jeonghan the matchmaker. the one where reader and wonwoo’s paths kept missing each other until they didn’t. loosely based on the song unspoken words by mxmtoon.

word count: 5.1k

summary: you and wonwoo always had a complicated relationship— no matter how hard you two tried, your lives had a funny way of getting intertwined.

and stubborn may you both be, wonwoo will always admit his feat when it comes to you.

part of the to x, with love mini series

shuahoonie's masterlist | to x, with love masterlist

“i never asked you to stay,” wonwoo muttered as you helped him clean up after the info session that your work had conducted for a group of students.

“this is ridiculous,” you sighed more so to yourself “there’s no way you could’ve done this by yourself.” you said while you held the blue recycling bin, gathering all of the leftover flyers and other papers that had writing on them. you also had a separate bin for the coffee lids and cup sleeves to put in the recycling as well.

“you could’ve just left,” wonwoo was watching you the entire time, making a mental note that you were serious about putting away your trash. “i know seokmin is waiting for you in the lobby.”

“it’s okay.” you replied, not even bothering to look him in the eye. instead, you gathered everything in a neat pile.

“you shouldn’t keep him waiting,” the words came out so harsh when he said it. even wonwoo was surprised, he wasn’t usually like this.

“he’ll be fine,” you said dismissively, not really in the mood to argue with him.

“yn,” wonwoo calls your name as if he hated doing it. “go.”

it took everything within you to stop yourself from yelling at him. “your anger will mean nothing,” seokmin’s words would ring in your ear. so you took a deep breath, dropped what you were doing and left without another word.

“oh, seok, i was ready to pounce him.” you grumbled, stabbing the lettuce on your salad a little too aggressively.

"what, like sexually?" seokmin realized it was a bad joke. the way you were practically throwing daggers at him made it painfully obvious that you were not in the mood to kid around. "i'm sorry, yn, but you really need to lighten up."

"if there's anyone who needs to lighten up, it's him," you argued, munching on your greens. "in fact, maybe i should light him up."

"i still don't understand how you two got off on the wrong foot," seokmin points out, hoping a proper explanation will emit from you.

you shrugged because you didn’t know what to tell your friend. the first time you properly met wonwoo was at your workplace. you even thought he was cute— quiet, had the nicest smile. your other coworkers were even raving about how polite and kind he was.

imagine your surprise when the ‘polite’ cutie from the editorial floor practically threw daggers at you as soon as you stepped into the office with the cerulean blue folders. this threw off wonwoo as he did the preparation for the meeting.

“in my defence, i saved both our asses when i replaced the folders during that important meeting with the new york office,” you grumbled.

unbeknownst to you, wonwoo kept a close track of your encounters. the first time wonwoo met you was through university.

you were the president of the school’s undergraduate publication journal and you were only in your second year. wonwoo was one of the new student recruits, he was a third year. he actually thought you were cute until you had assigned him to deal with international relations— wonwoo had applied for the editorial layout section. wonwoo was not happy.

you probably don’t remember him, wonwoo knew it. how could you? you were running around, trying to figure out the logistics, gather and have people review these submissions, edit and have it all printed before the next term starts. meanwhile, wonwoo was stuck somewhere, trying to solve things on his end. you only left notes on his work, you two barely met during meetings. you two had no direct contact.

once you were in your third year, you had to step down as president and become a casual editor instead. wonwoo became the publication journal’s president that year. you two still had no direct contact.

you unintentionally beat him for that librarian assistant position that wonwoo was gunning for as it'll boost his resume.

somehow, for wonwoo, you were always one step ahead of him and he doesn't like that one bit.

so the day you pranced into the office with your signature bright smile, wonwoo felt territorial over a place where he felt like he finally was one step ahead of you.

wonwoo didn't even like that seungcheol served you the last chocolate cake the day he stopped by at heaven's cloud cafe.

"how could you, cheol?" wonwoo huffed, his arms crossed, as cheol placed the iced americano and a slice of strawberry cake on wonwoo's table.

"it's just a slice, dude," seungcheol looked at him weirdly. "and you don't even like chocolate.”

“yeah, but i wanted a chocolate cake today.”

“jeon wonwoo, quit being weird and eat your cake,” jun comments as he appears behind seungcheol, dropping his things on the floor and sitting on the opposite of wonwoo.

while jun waits for his order to arrive, he worked on the monthly report that his boss has been pressuring him to do. as jun went on rambling about how much he hates his job, wonwoo is occupied with the idea of you. how you were always a step ahead of him.

from then, jeon wonwoo declared a one-sided competition against you.

your idea of jeon wonwoo was simple— he was the cute guy from the editorial team who hates your guts. why? surely, you don’t know.

one rainy afternoon, seokmin made sure to tell you that he won’t be able to give you a ride home, so he gave you the spare umbrella that he had.

“please be kind, ynnie, and let someone stand under your umbrella if they don’t have theirs,” seok reminded you.

“you know damn well i’m always kind,” you huffed with a pout— in which seok just gave you a pointed look before he handed you an umbrella and your lunch.

it seemed that your words had come to haunt you because here you were, walking under the rain using seok’s tiny umbrella, passing by wonwoo who was waiting in front of the office building— probably waiting for the rain to stop as he had no umbrella.

“he’d be waiting all night,” you thought to yourself. you had a long internal battle whether you’d just ignore him but seok’s words were ringing in your ear.

taking a deep breath, you asked “do you want to share an umbrella?”

wonwoo’s startled eyes looked at you and your umbrella. “i’m calling a cab,” he answered. wonwoo wasn’t exactly lying, he’s been trying to get one but the rain has made it extremely difficult to find one.

“well, you’d be calling all night. cabs are extremely hard to find especially at times like these,” you answered. wonwoo hated that you were right. again, always one step ahead of him. “subways are still running, do you want to walk together?”

wonwoo stared at you for what felt like an eternity before you rolled your eyes and pulled him under your umbrella. “we’re walking, stop overthinking it.”

you two were walking quietly in the rain. you’ve been coworkers for almost a year now and you can’t remember the time you and wonwoo had a proper conversation— one that you two didn’t end up bickering about senseless things. you didn’t even know why you two were always butting heads when you two were always working closely together.

as you tried to squeeze the two of you under seok’s tiny umbrella, you noticed that his shoulder was practically soaking wet. of all the umbrellas that he’d give you, he had to choose the tiniest one he owned. this prompted you to hover the umbrella more on his side, allowing the rain to soak your exposed shoulder instead.

wonwoo noticed how you moved the umbrella towards him, making him raise an eyebrow. you were wonwoo’s greatest puzzle— he can’t guess your next move and what’s worse is that you’re always one step ahead of him. “what are you doing?” he asked with furrowed brows.

you looked up at him, suddenly aware of how tall he is. no wonder your arms were getting tired from holding that damn umbrella up. “what do you mean?” you asked, confused by his question.

wonwoo grabbed the umbrella from you— your hands touching for a brief moment. you ignored whatever was forming in the pit of your stomach. maybe you’re just hungry? wonwoo hovered the umbrella closer to you, fully aware of the fact that his shoulder was getting wet from the rain. “you’re getting soaked,” wonwoo replied curtly.

“so are you,” you pointed out as you held the umbrella and tried to move it closer to him. however, wonwoo resisted it.

“i’m fine,” he says.

“whatever you say,” you huffed “it’s not like you intended to have annoyingly broad shoulders anyway,” you grumbled more to yourself, hoping he didn’t hear it. however, wonwoo heard your frustration over his shoulders and he couldn’t fight off the smile on his face.

it was the first time he could openly admit to himself that you made him smile. it was also the first time you caught him smiling.

“oh, how adorable,” mingyu grinned upon hearing the umbrella-sharing story from wonwoo. “and you said you weren’t one for office romances,” he teased earning a glare from wonwoo.

"because i'm not," wonwoo rolled his eyes "and i don't like her," he said almost defensively.

mingyu snorted "yeah, as if i haven't heard that line before." he said while setting up the living room for a movie night between him, wonu, jun, and chan. jun and ichan were running a little late as they were buying drinks.

"well, it's true," wonwoo crossed his arms "there's something about her that makes me feel like..." wonwoo trailed off, finding the right words to say.

"like?" mingyu sat on the couch, turning towards wonwoo— clearly invested.

"like... fuck, i don't know..."

mingyu lets out a dramatic gasp. "dude," he stares at wonwoo in complete awe. "you swore..."

"and?"

"you never swear unless you're completely frustrated," mingyu pointed out, a teasing look glimmering in his eyes. "you like yn, huh?!"

before wonwoo could even answer, mingyu's doorbell rang. saved by the bell, wonwoo thought.

"oh, this is not over, jeon wonwoo." mingyu said with a smirk, making wonwoo groan.

"seok, quit looking at me like that," you whined as you hugged the pillow tighter, placing your chin on top of the pillow.

"what?" seok grinned "it's nice to know that your beef with your coworker is slowly coming to an end."

"he was probably thinking how ridiculous i sounded for mentioning his shoulders," you grumbled. "why did i even mention his shoulders?!" you groaned.

seokmin couldn't help but laugh at how adorable you were being. "oh my sweet, ynnie," he cooed, ruffling your hair.

"here you go, yn," vernon said as he handed you a pint of ice cream. you were hosting a sleepover with seok, vern, and kwan. you three were waiting for seungkwan to arrive with the rest of the snacks.

you initially thought that you'd have the ice cream later but vernon thought that you might need it sooner than later. "thanks, nonie," you smiled at him.

"for what it's worth ynnie, he finally smiled at what you said." vernon said before taking a bite of his ice cream.

"and now yn is acting up because she thought he was cute," seokmin said teasingly, making vernon laugh.

wonwoo believes that the universe is out to get him. he kept complaining that you were always one step ahead of him and now, the universe is starting to retaliate.

"take yn," his manager tells him, making wonwoo clutch tighter on his notebook.

"sir?" wonwoo must be hearing things. there's no way that his manager actually asked him to take yn, right?

"take yn ln," his manager stresses your name. "didn't you two work on the last summit?"

"yes, but sir—"

"then it's final," his manager dismisses wonwoo "you two did a wonderful job with the last summit, i'd like you two to work on this year's professional development sessions."

"you two make a wonderful team," was the final thing that his manager said. without another word, wonwoo left the office feeling defeated. how can wonwoo be one step ahead of you if the universe is making him walk alongside you?

it was no surprise that wonwoo was everyone's office crush in the editorial department. people would often turn their heads whenever he walked by. this time was no exception.

the people on your floor knew the budding tension between you two. so when wonwoo was walking towards your desk with two coffees and a bag of dessert in hand, heads definitely turned and people were bound to talk.

"here," wonwoo hands you an iced americano and a bag of what you assumed was a slice of chocolate cake, catching you off-guard. your desk computer was showing the available job listings in the other departments. "are you thinking of transferring?" he asked as he leaned closer to your monitor— closer to you. his cologne was easily filling your nostrils. you hate that he smells good. how are you supposed to despise a man who smells good?! you thought. wow, the bar is literally on the floor.

"i'm keeping my options open," you answered as you crossed your arms, snapping yourself to reality. "it's not like you're making my life any easier here," you muttered the latter sentence, though you did hope that he heard it.

it's been a month since you and wonwoo started working on the company's professional development sessions. it's also been a month of torture. you've gotten frequent migraines that you started looking up if taking tylenol frequently will kill you. you didn't like the results.

wonwoo heard the latter sentence. while the month has been torture for you, wonwoo didn't mind your company at all. sure you were butting heads most of the time, but he noticed how much you were willing to compromise just to settle a conclusion between you two. wonwoo liked pushing your buttons. he found you cute even if you wanted to bite his head off.

"is this a peace offering?" you motioned to the coffee and the cake that was sitting on your desk.

"for what?" wonwoo smirked, playing coy. "you agreed to the after-session event, fair and square."

"bitch?!" you stared at him as if he's gone mad "if anything, you made it your life's mission to annoy me into agreeing that going to an escape room is what we need after overloading our brains from the sessions."

"yn ln, you know i can go to HR because you cursed at me, right?"

"jeon wonwoo, you know we're banned from that floor unless there's a serious allegation," you said, massaging your temples. "now humour me, what's with the coffee and cake?"

"oh, i stopped by at heaven's cloud café earlier and jeonghan practically insisted that you have these," wonwoo said casually, looking away.

you stared at him suspiciously, "thanks, i guess." you haven't spoken to jeonghan in a while since you've always been swamped with work. but maybe that's why you got free coffee and desserts?

before you could even ask wonwoo another question, he quickly left without even looking back at you. deciding to ignore it, you snapped a quick picture of the coffee and the cake, shooting jeonghan a quick text, "thanks for the coffee & cake, hannie! miss u! ♡"

"jeon wonwoo, is there a reason why yn sent me a text earlier, thanking me for the coffee and cake that i didn't give her?" jeonghan asked wonwoo, who was busy typing away on his laptop. wonwoo stopped at jeonghan's place after work as their other friends will be dropping by later as well.

"i don't know what you're talking about," wonwoo mumbled, not looking at han in the eye.

jeonghan was having none of it. "i'm texting yn that you gave those things to her," he threatened, pulling out his phone.

knowing jeonghan is probably going to commit to it, wonwoo sighed and threw his hands in defeat. "fine."

“and so the plot thickens,” jeonghan smirked, crossing his arms. “so is there a reason why?"

"she was having a rough day," wonwoo explained, closing his laptop. that report will be dealt with tomorrow. "i felt bad."

jeonghan raised an eyebrow at him. "i thought you didn't like her?"

"i don't."

"funny, because that's an odd way of expressing how you dislike her," jeonghan said, making wonwoo roll his eyes.

“i can at least recognize all the work she’s been doing in planning the pd session,” wonwoo replied, defensive.

jeonghan smirked because he knew. he knew that wonwoo was walking on a thin line. in fact, jeonghan was 100% sure that his friend has gone soft for you. “okay, whatever you say.”

“ynnie!” seungcheol calls your name as he spots you, busy choosing what kind of juice you are going to buy. you decided to stop by at the grocery to grab a couple of things for the fridge.

you gave him a small wave, smiling. seungcheol, however, was eager to give you a hug. you, cheol, and han shared a couple of classes back when you three were in university. you were always supportive of their endeavours that’s why cheol & han always had a soft spot for you— they considered you like a little sister that they always had to take care of.

“how was the cake from earlier? you know i’ve been taking a lot of baking lessons recently,” cheol said with a proud smile.

“oh, it was great, cheol!” you said sincerely “i sent jeonghan a text earlier, saying thanks.”

“thanks for what?”

“for the cake…?” you trailed off, a bit off-guard by the confusion plastered on seungcheol’s face.

“why would you thank jeonghan?” seungcheol asked, even more confused.

“jeonghan wasn’t there?”

cheol shook his head no. “unless jeonghan told wonwoo, but i assumed wonwoo bought it for you. i was teasing him about it too, since he doesn’t like chocolate that much.”

“ah,” was all you could say as you felt your cheeks burning, surprised by cheol’s sudden information. is that why jeonghan hasn't replied to your text at all?

cheol suddenly felt like he just triggered a bomb. oh, he fucked up. as if on cue, his phone started ringing. mingyu was calling. "okay, i'm heading off, ynnie."

you just nodded and waved goodbye, feeling confused. it was a good thing that you won't be seeing wonwoo during the weekend otherwise you would've gone mad.

heaven's cloud café was buzzing with people when you came in.

you spent a lot of time debating if you had to improvise how you would spend your sunday morning. you would usually stop by the heaven's cloud café and spend a good chunk of your time there— reading or chatting with jeonghan and seungcheol.

however, knowing that wonwoo might stop by at the cafe, it left you questioning if you wanted to derail your usual sunday routine.

and yet, your pride got the best of you. no matter how much you didn't want to see wonwoo, you weren't going to derail your sunday routine especially if it involved coffee.

although the café was usually busy on the weekends, today was unusually busy— you wondered if there was a special promotion taking place. jeonghan hasn't even acknowledged your presence yet as han is busy manning the till while also preparing the drinks. cheol is probably in the kitchen, preparing food.

you settled on the last empty table at the very back— dropping off your things, deciding to order a bit later once the line from the till calms down.

while you were busy scrolling on your phone, someone placed a tall glass of iced americano and a slice of strawberry cake on your table.

"you should try this, it's a house favourite," someone with a deep voice said. you looked up and saw jeon wonwoo with slightly messy hair, wearing your favourite black specs and a white button-up, smiling at you. fuck, he looks good. is hell officially frozen?

"are you perhaps a twin of jeon wonwoo?" you asked, completely boggled.

"yn, what the hell?" wonwoo laughs at your incredulous take, making you even more confused. why is this wonwoo variant laughing and smiling at you? most of all, why are they bringing you food when you haven't even ordered?! "what made you say that?"

you reached out your hand and poked his cheek, making him laugh. "are you really wonwoo from sector17 press?"

"yn, seriously, what makes you think that it's not me?"

"why are you so smiley all of a sudden," you cried, weirded out. "and why are you serving me food?"

"my, do you like it when i give you a hard time?" wonwoo said, teasingly "is that a kink of yours?"

"you're fucking weird, jeon wonwoo," you smacked his arm. "i've never met the weekend version of wonwoo and i don't think i like it," you cried quietly to yourself.

"cute," wonwoo says quietly, still smiling at you. "i'll talk to you later, okay? i'm helping cheol and han for the day and i feel like they'll beat my ass if they see me slacking off." wonwoo gently ruffled your hair and walked away, leaving you flabbergasted.

you felt that familiar feeling in the pit of your stomach. oh god, what the fuck just happened?

the friday night that jeonghan found out that wonwoo used jeonghan’s good name to protect his image, was the same night that seungcheol bumped into you at the grocery store.

drinks were getting passed rather at a rapid speed. for them, this night was a gem among other nights. most of jeonghan’s friends were at his place, enjoying the night away.

“ya, wonwoo,” cheol suddenly calls wonwoo, who was barely drinking— as per cheol’s opinion. “i thought tonight was the night that you were going to get loose.”

wonwoo chuckled, “i’m pacing myself.”

jeonghan snorted. “cheol, you’re talking to the guy who still cannot admit his high school crush on our ynnie.”

this earned a couple of laughs from the group, mainly from mingyu and jun.

“yoon jeonghan, just because you’re in a happy relationship—” wonwoo threw a balled up napkin at him, obviously not knowing how to reply.

“oh, wons, that reminds me…” cheol started rubbing the back of his head “i told yn that it was you who gave her the food and not jeonghan.”

as soon as the words left cheol’s mouth, it’s as if wonwoo felt annoyingly sober. he downed the tall shot of bacardi that was supposed to be mingyu’s shot.

“i don’t get why you’re tiptoeing around your feelings for her,” mingyu pointed out, filling the shot glass again. “it’s not like there’s a company policy against dating your coworkers.”

“isn’t there?” joshua asked. wonwoo shook his head no. “lucky bastard.” shua muttered, taking mingyu’s shot.

“you guys, what’s the point of doing rounds when you’re taking the shots as you please?” mingyu whines.

“i thought you didn’t like yn?” jun asked wonwoo, taking a bite of the kimchi jeon. “or is that like a weird defence mechanism against your feelings?”

"oh please," mingyu rolled his eyes "wonwoo had a huge crush on yn ever since our uni days," he pointed out, prompting wonwoo to hit him.

"weren't you two in like a school publication together?" jeonghan asked, taking the shot from mingyu.

"oh, right! you had like a one-sided beef with yn," jun's eyes lit up briefly, then proceeded to smirk at wonwoo, "ya! is that how you show your affection?"

"obviously not," cheol grins "our wonwoo is the type to show his affection through actions, not words."

"what are the chances that they'd end up working under the same company though," joshua commented with a fond smile.

"and in the same department too," jeonghan added.

wonwoo groans, before taking a shot, "i hate all of you."

"you two have a deep history, have you two never talked?" joshua asked, now invested.

wonwoo shakes his head, "we only talk about work."

"if they talk about work," mingyu laughs, "all they do is argue."

"how do you know all of this, gyu?" cheol asked in disbelief, laughing, "you work at a different company."

"i work with seokmin," mingyu replied "and seok likes to tell stories about yn."

"ya, didn't we invite him tonight?" cheol suddenly remembers, looking at his phone to check his message thread with seok.

"he's probably with yn," wonwoo muttered before taking another shot. this gets attention from the rest of the group— a series of teasing smirks and playful looks being exchanged.

like a kid on christmas morning, a bright smile appears on mingyu's face. "won, are you perhaps jealous?" he teased, with the new-found information.

wonwoo scoffed but didn't answer the question. wonwoo swore he wasn't the jealous type. but for some reason, he can't get over the fact that his friend was closer to you.

wonwoo knew that there was nothing going on with you and seok.

however, seok was your person, wonwoo would always think. you felt happier around seok. if wonwoo didn't know any better, he would assume that you liked seok. maybe she does, wonwoo can't help but think.

"you know they're just friends, right?" mingyu reminded wonwoo.

wonwoo doesn't say anything. he was just waiting for his friends to butt into the conversation. wonwoo's eyes caught jeonghan's. jeonghan smiles, that mischievous smile of his, leaving wonwoo confused.

"won, do you wanna know who she likes?" jeonghan instigates, leaning forward.

wonwoo waits, does he really wanna know?

jeonghan smiles, then says "you."

wonwoo didn't believe in signs— for him, every little decision a person makes is pulled by the desired outcome. however, you were his only exception.

"if ynnie stops by at the café on sunday, will you finally talk to her like civilized beings?" jeonghan's words rang loudly in wonwoo's ear.

"i don't believe in signs," wonwoo states simply.

"and you can't make an exception for yn?" jeonghan knew how to play the game. he's just waiting for wonwoo to swallow his pride and address his suppressed feelings.

"maybe." wonwoo answers, making jeonghan smile mischievously. and so, it begins, jeonghan thinks.

it was ridiculous— waiting for something to happen when he could've just started a conversation with you. but it's so hard when it's you. god, it's so hard for wonwoo when it's you because you make him feel things that he thought were only exaggerated by films.

wonwoo didn't know if jeonghan's revelation about you was a lie, but he'd be lying if he said that it didn't affect him— because it did. it felt like he was back in high school and he's not sure if that's something he liked.

jeonghan and seungcheol were very much aware of your routine. every now and then, you would visit the café every sunday— even during the morning rush. they were most definitely aware of what's waiting for you and wonwoo.

the two owners had tasked wonwoo to help with serving the orders as more people flooded the café. "make yourself useful while you wait for your girlfriend!" was all jeonghan said as he handed wonwoo an apron.

and so when you entered the café, wonwoo gathered all his strength to talk to you casually, even if it sent him through an overdrive.

while you were walking towards the washroom, you bumped into jeonghan who was grinning at you. you knew that man long enough to know that he's hiding something when he's smiling like that.

"ya," you pulled jeonghan to the side. "what are you hiding?"

"what do you mean?" han answers, blinking at you innocently.

"why is wonwoo being nice and smiley," you asked him with a huff, crossing your arms. wonwoo being smiley was something you didn't know would affect you this bad. "he's being too cute for my liking," you muttered the latter part.

jeonghan laughs at your dilemma. "isn't that what you wanted?"

"what do you mean—" you were confused with jeonghan's comment until it dawned on you. you remembered the time you went out for drinks with jeonghan and seungkwan. "yoon jeonghan!" you slapped his arm, making him yelp but he was still laughing.

"what?" he looks at you, acting confused as he rubs his arm. "i'm being supportive here!"

"you promised me you wouldn't tell him," you pouted.

"oh please, he was jealous of seok, i had to throw him something."

"so you told wonwoo about the time i got drunk with you and professed my undying feelings for him instead?!"

"no," jeonghan replies. his eyes moved past yours, looking past your shoulders, and smiled. "but i think you already did." jeonghan says, patting your shoulder before he left.

wonwoo was sitting across from you with a smile on his face. you've never seen this man smile at you this much, it was starting to freak you out.

"don't look at me like that," you grumbled, glaring at wonwoo.

"i can't help it," he looks at you almost tenderly. "you look adorable even when you're sulking like that."

you felt the familiar sensation in your stomach. how can jeon wonwoo just say things like these to you? does he not care about your well-being?! how you'd feel?

"that was a long time ago, by the way," you said in defence— as if the damage hadn't been done. wonwoo waits for you to continue your sentence. "you know, me having a crush on you," you continued, your tone getting quieter after each word.

"i'm sorry, what was that?" wonwoo leans closer, as if he didn't hear what you just said. you knew he was just teasing you as you noticed that he was trying to fight off a smirk.

"i don't like you, jeon wonwoo," you whispered, prompting wonwoo to only focus on your lips.

"that's too bad because," wonwoo paused briefly and leaned even more, "i like you."

his face was dangerously close to yours— wonwoo didn't care if half of his body was practically hovering over the table. he wanted to lean closer to you.

you felt frozen in your place. a part of you wanted to lean back and smack him, but there's also a part of you that just wanted to grab his stupid face and kiss it.

"ya!" jeonghan suddenly appeared beside your table "if you two are going to make out in my café, can you move to cheol's office? i'm planning to keep this place family-friendly," jeonghan snickered.

maybe you should just kiss wonwoo and smack jeonghan instead.

hello hello friends! i wrote this while i was sick in bed & was high on buckley's flu meds, so this is v cheesy. i hope you are all well & healthy! ♡

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clockwayswrites · 6 months

Text

City Pigeons Bleed Green Part 7

WC: 1109 Masterpost CW: panic attack, dissociation, past imprisonment

Danny felt like he was on a roller coaster. One moment he would be feeling safe, embarrassingly falling asleep on Hood mid meal, and the next a stool would scrape across the floor. That screech of metal on linoleum was distinct enough that Danny could swear he was back in the lab. His newest wound stung. The collar pinched at his neck. The acidic bite of bleach stung his nose.

They were talking.

They were talking too close to him.

Danny wanted desperately to hide, but there was no hiding in the lab. There was no hiding in the Box. Acrylic walls on all six sides, electrified metal frame, coated in a ghost shield; the box was torture. Danny pressed himself into the corner and squeezed his eyes closed. He didn’t want to watch their faces. He didn’t want to see the cold cruelty in their eyes, not even one more time.

Had it always been there?

It must have.

It was never true, he was never their son.

How had he ever thought that they cared?

He was so stupid, stupid, stupid—

Something pressed into his hands. Something soft and warm. The smell of herbs burst around him, chasing away the scent of bleach. Danny clutched at the warmth, curled around it. It was never warm in the lab, not unless they were experimenting on him with heat. And that was never warm like this.

“There you are, Kid.”

Kid?

“That’s nice, isn’t it? You can kept it as long as you need. Just keep breathing for us.”

Who?

“You’re in the safe house. Your wounds are treated. The collar is off.”

Danny felt around his neck with shaking fingers. The skin was tender under the bandages, but there was no collar.

“It’s just me, Red Hood, and Nightwing. Nightwing is getting you a drink. Do you think you can drink something?”

No, no he didn’t. His throat felt tight.

“That’s okay, Kid. How about a suck’em candy?”

Warm fingers brushed against the back of his hand, actual skin touched his. Danny shuddered. He let his hand be turned for the candy to be placed in it.

“Pop that in your mouth.”

Danny listened to the warm voice. He wanted to bury himself in that warmth. Why was it so warm here?

Tart citrus bloomed over his tongue, chasing away the rotting taste of stale recycled air and bile. He moved the candy around his mouth. Each breathe filled his nose with the lemon scent mingled with the herbs. The tension went out of him so suddenly that he collapsed.

Those warm hands caught him. He was pressed against a whole band of warmth and Danny let out a sigh. The earthy scent of death joined the other smells. A liminal. Red hood. He was… safe. The safe house.

They took turns staying awake that night. While they likely would have anyways, what with it being the kid’s first night with them, the panic attack pretty much guaranteed they would sleep in shifts. Dick slept first and it was only training and a strong cup of coffee that had him alert and ready for his shift. He was glad for the second cup when he heard stirring from the bedroom.

It was early, early enough that the sun wasn’t up yet, but the kid was standing on slightly shaky looking legs, peering out of the door.

“Hey there,” Dick said softly and with a smile. He approached the door but left a good few feet between them. “Did you sleep well?”

The kid nodded. “Better… than in a long time, yeah.”

“That’s great! Are you hungry.”

He nodded again before glancing to the side. His hand flexed where it was holding onto the door jam.

“Is there something else you’d like before food?” Dick asked gently.

Another nod.

“It’s okay to ask. We want you to be comfortable.

The kid’s mouth worked for a moment before he managed to ask, “A shower? It’s just that… Hood mentioned one and…”

“Of course! I bet you’d like to be clean,” Dick said. “I’d like you to use the shower chair we have and to leave the door open, in case you slip or something, but I wont look in unless I hear something concerning.”

“Okay,” the kid agreed quickly; quickly like he was afraid Dick would take away the offer. They had a lot of work to do.

Dick stopped at the closet and grabbed a bath towels, two wash cloths, and the med kit. He set the towels down on the closed toilet seat and the med kit on the small sink counter. “We’ll put a water proof bandage on your new stitches and get you wrapped back up after the shower. Be gentle around it and your neck, but you should be good to clean up well!”

“I will be. I won’t make you redo your work.”

“Hey, no, that’s not what it’s about,” Dick said quickly. “We just don’t want you to hurt yourself, okay?”

“I… okay?”

Holding back a sigh, Dick instead turned with a smile and bandage. It was good to see the stitches didn’t look too bad and they were soon covered up with the temporary covering. Dick explained how the shower worked, pointed out the shampoos, conditioners, and body wash, and then left the kid alone. He took up watch just outside the door. If the kid slipped, he wanted to be able to be there at a moments notice.

“Kid already awake?” Jason rasped from the couch after the sound of running water filled the apartment.

“Yeah. He’s in the shower now. The wounds look good.”

“Credit goes to Tim, he did the stitching.” Jason stood and stretched with a pop.

He had taken off most of his uniform, as armored as it was, to be able to sleep. Still, he looked stiff and rubbed uneasily at his arms. Dick would have to make sure the other took some pain meds once they were at the new safe house and that he got some more sleep.

“I’ll be sure to pass it along,” Dick said instead of voicing any of his current thoughts. He was sure they wouldn’t be welcome right then. “I figured we’d do breakfast here?”

“Yeah, I want to get some food in the kid since we didn’t really get another chance yesterday,” Jason agreed as he made his way to the pitiful kitchen.

Dick closed his eyes and listened to the running water and Jason clanking about.

They could manage this. They were through the first night. They just had to handle it an hour at a time.

---

AN: I'm so out of it I almost forgot Trauma Tuesday! Luckily I had this written on Saturday. Poor Danny had a hard time of it, but his brothers are there to help!

I no longer tag, but you can subscribe to the masterpost.

#dp x dc #batpham #city pigeons #trauma tuesday

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hedgehog-moss · 1 year

Text

I’ve been having a bit of a hay shortage lately—January was very cold and snowy so the animals ate a lot, plus I have an extra mouth to feed this year, and I hadn’t realised Poldine would eat so much in her first year! Next summer I’ll make sure to buy enough hay for 4 animals rather than 3 and a half.

In the meantime I’ve been offering various hay substitutes, such as brambles, or my Christmas tree. It was waiting on the pile of green waste I intend to burn in early spring, until I remembered seeing someone’s ad in the local paper that went “if you want to recycle your Christmas trees, give them to me, my goats will love them!” I figured well, llamas are tall goats, maybe they’ll enjoy a bit of Christmas tree, and they did !

(Baby Poldine is always very circumspect about new foods, but she did end up tasting it.)

Pirlouit was also pleased with this unexpected breakfast. They all took turns nibbling at the tree until only the trunk was left :)

Still, I was trying to contact nearby farmers to ask if they have some hay to spare (it’s not that I’ve run out, I just want to be prepared in case of another cold spell), and I also moved the animals to my other pasture down the road, as there’s still some dry grass there. It’s not well-fenced though, and I wasn’t very confident in this pasture’s ability to contain Pampe, but I figured—there’s no grass to be found in any nearby pasture, so why would she try to leave this one?

(Because Pampe.)

I left the llamas & donkey frolicking in this exciting new place (Poldine looked enchanted to explore a new pasture, she was bounding around like a baby goat!), and I went skiing today, as a (late) birthday gift to myself. The skiing station is just half an hour away and this has become a very anticipated birthday ritual since I moved here! This year I waited until I had found some way to keep the animals busy before taking a day off, so there would be no llama leaks in my absence.

So of course I got a text from a neighbour in the afternoon, telling me my llamas had been spotted on the road, going towards the village. (“Pampe looked determined. She was going to the grocery shop to get muesli.”) (Pampe is so famous, people even know her favourite snacks 😭)

Since I was literally on a ski slope I decided to turn my conscience off and pretend I hadn’t seen the text. I thought, if the llamas do end up in the village I’ll get more texts updating me on their position and I’ll be a responsible llama owner and go home (promise), but they’ll probably get off the road and into the woods somewhere between my house and the village and they’ll spend the afternoon eating communal shrubs and they’ll be fine.

When I went home a few hours later, I found my donkey alone in the pasture where I’d left him in the morning—we both had to wrestle with a moral dilemma today, and Pirlouit’s was “do I loyally follow my friends and potentially starve to death, or do I stay by myself in this place with very adequate dry grass to munch on?” He really hates being alone, yet he chose food over friendship.

I brought Pirou back to his normal pasture (he wouldn’t have liked to find himself alone after sunset) and went looking for the girls. I’d had a neighbour on the phone who had talked to someone who’d talked to someone who had seen the llamas and had “shooed them in the general direction of your house.” That was some very helpful shooing, because I found them just a couple of kilometres away, and indeed going in the right direction.

Pampelune leading the way, determined to go home before night; Pampérigouste last, internally grumbling that it was still early and they could have explored the world some more.

I usually jog with the llamas when I bring them home so we don’t spend too much time in the middle of the road, but there aren’t many cars when the road is icy and also after a day of skiing, you don’t really feel like jogging a few km at a brisk pace in heavy snow boots. So we went home in a slow and solemn procession.

I called the people who had told me about the llamas’ whereabouts to thank them, and explained that this escape was the result of a failed attempt to move the animals to my poorly-fenced second pasture because I don’t have a lot of hay left—and one of them told me he could spare a bale and he’d bring it to me tomorrow!

“So I’ve done everyone a favour” (is probably Pampe’s conclusion.)

I gave them hay as I figured they hadn’t had time to graze much in the other pasture, but only Pampe was hungry. Well, Pirlouit is always hungry, but Pampe indignantly rebuffed him. “You chose food over adventure. You don’t get to eat the food I’m getting as a reward for a successful adventure.”

Pirlouit is completely resigned to the fundamental unfairness of a dutiful donkey’s life.

#crawling along

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faeriekit · 14 days

Text

Down and Out

phic phight prompts taken from @sillysugargliders and @akela-nakamura

“Technowizard!” Tuck declared, pointing up towards the glass ceiling. The ratty Hack-A-Thon tee-shirt and Star Wars print pants did not an imposing outfit make.

Sam’s avocado-coated face barely even looked up from her phone. “Lame.”

“The Finest Pharoah!” Tucker tried again, glaring straight down at Sam as he posed again— this time, with his other hand.

“Cringe,” was Sam’s bland contribution.

Tucker threw both his hands in the air in sheer exasperation, narrowly avoiding sending Sheila2 flying up into the air with them. “The— oh shoot— the Tech Menace! The Electric Enemy!”

“Makes you sound like a bit-rate villain,” Sam drawled, finishing out her level of tetris with perfect accuracy. She clicked off the phone before she could get suckered in. “Tucker, have you considered any good names? At all?”

Fair revenge was fair revenge, and Tucker didn’t want to waste his own pillow on vengeance. Using Sam’s bamboo-woven pillowcase against her facemask was fair game— and her shriek of rage over the smeared facemask was just desserts.

Tucker eventually lost, of course, smothered underneath the very same pillow he’d assaulted his friend with, but hey; he’d given it his all, and that was what mattered in the end.

Winning would be nice, though. You know. One day.

In the meantime, though, they were squatting in Sam’s greenhouse, reclining on air mattresses on recycled wooden palettes. It was kind of cold— Tucker was glad Sam had thought ahead and brought blankets— but there were no bugs, and there was no rain, even if there were frogs singing bleakly outside glass walls throughout the night.

Sam was good at pretending it didn’t bother her.

Tucker knew it had to, though. Sam was used to having things. Being comfortable. Having her bamboo toothbrush and toothpaste tabs at the ready, with her natural fiber blankets and her desktop computer and a credit card that would solve the majority of her problems.

Instead they had used the cheapest versions of everything at the dollarstore. Abrasive discount soap. Deodorant with added aluminum. They’d brushed their teeth at the spigot where the hose screwed on, and tomorrow they’d wash with the hose the same way.

Card could be traced. Tucker was the only one who’d been carrying cash in the moment.

Man, Tucker thought, tunnelling himself under his blankets. Running away sucked. At least the only thing Tucker had to miss was his parents. And his spare parts.

…He hoped his parents weren’t looking for him. The "proper authorities" had probably already informed them he was infected. They should…they should hopefully know that being gone was safer than being there.

Sam’s black-nailed thumb and green-coated face peeked at him from under the covers. Without his glasses, she mostly looked like a blob, so Tucker just waved. He wanted to be social. He wanted to be happy.

It felt like everything was falling apart through his fingers, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

“Hey,” Sam said. “If you want to charge your tech, I’m out of the plug.”

It was a sweet gesture. “Thanks,” was all Tucker could say. But he didn’t want to leave his cave.

Sam, of all people, knew what level of trust the gesture meant when Tucker gave his phone over to her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to; it was the same level of trust Sam was showing to him by letting them stay here, together, instead of apart, the way Jazz had originally planned.

Running away properly would have been safer. But here, in this moment, they were warm, and safe, and somewhat fed.

Tucker stuck his face into his pillow and thought It doesn’t get much better than this.

…Man, it was supposed to be roast beef dinner tonight. He was missing out!

“...I still think that Technowizard is a cool name,” Tucker grumbled to himself. Sam shot him a fond, if exasperated look.

“No.”

“Fine, bossy. What did you pick?”

“Foxglove,” Sam replied simply. “Most famous poisonous plant in the Western world. It’s poetic.”

Tucker thought on it. It…had merit, but… “You know people are going to shorten it to Foxy, right?”

Sam paused.

…She set her phone down with clear disgust. “Ugh. I hate that you’re right.”

“I’ll never let you down,” Tucker offered, very seriously. “I’m always right.”

Sam pulled the blanket back down over him until he squawked in indignation.

“Okay,” Sam’s voice came in muffled through their blanket barrier. “Maybe we can both hold off on names until we decide how we’re doing this, exactly.”

This, of course, being their new life on the run— ideally, taking down the GIW and their hold on Amity Park, or in the short run, cutting and ditching in every effort to not get captured. Their plan so far wasn’t much better than “wait for Danny to get home from Space Camp”, but, you know…needs are as they must. Or something.

“How about Cryptid?” Tucker offered, poking his head out of his blanket hovel. His glasses were…somewhere, but no matter where he groped for them, his hands still came up empty. “Short. Simple. Lots of hard consonants. Easy to muddy up in an internet search with other information. They’d be looking for you and find, like, the Entfield Horror.”

Sam gave that thought its due while Tucker found his glasses. “It’s…better than Inviso-Bill for sure.”

Okay, that one was worth the laugh.

“You could try Technomage,” Sam tried out in turn. "It would be like naming a snake 'snake', since you’re going through magical puberty or whatever, but…”

Tucker snorted. Magical puberty.

…But.

She’d been the first to notice when Tucker hadn’t even needed to touch Edna (PDA of the month) to write her new programs in class. She’d taped over his stylus to prove it to him— and Tucker hadn’t even noticed with the weight of a phantom stylus in his hand as he coded telepathically. Realizing he hadn’t been tapping any of the buttons had been. Spooky.

His phone didn’t need a SIM card anymore. He was saving his family a lot on outgoing and ingoing calls, apparently, and the reported number of texts they’d had to pay for was a big fat goose egg.

Also, he was pretty sure someone was emailing him at the moment.

…He wasn’t sure how he knew. But. It kind of tasted like blue raspberry. It was probably Danny’s sister.

So. Um. the magical puberty thing hadn’t been too off track. It had certainly been less subtle than Sam’s newfound ability to speak with plants, but…at least talking to your flowerpots looks normal from the outside looking in.

Apparently lawn mowing day at school gave Sam real trauma, though. Finding her in the nurses’ office with her head buried under her denim jacket had been scary.

“Better than nothing,” Tucker begrudgingly agreed. He left his glasses wherever they were; he’d find them in the morning. “I mean. We technically don’t even need names. If we just start breaking their stuff, they’ll probably name us anyway.”

Sam laughs. The green on her face is gone; she likely wiped her mask off when Tucker couldn’t see. “With you hacking their stuff?”

“And you growing your freaky vines out of their gear,” Tucker added. “The…what’s the one. The one that ate that one house?”

Sam leans her head down onto Tucker’s mattress. Her clean, damp face swims into view. “Oh. The kudzu?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, I can cultivate that— not here, since it grows so fast. Did you know Kudzu’s supposed to be eaten? People usually take it off the roadside in China for an easy food source. That’s why it overtakes so much stuff here: there’s no one taking on the role of its natural predator.”

Huh. Well, sounded like something Sam would know. Tucker wedged his pillow further underneath his head; Sam’s still had some goop on it, so he gave her his extra blanket instead.

Sam stuffed it underneath her head with no issue. Without her purple lip and filled in brows, she just looked like Sam— just like a girl in his class, who wanted to make the world a better place, and didn’t know how to do it.

Tucker wanted to do better too.

But they wouldn’t do it alone. They’d be better off with Danny than without.

“All we have to do is make it until Danny comes back. And then we can reconvene.”

…And then what?

“And then?” Tucker asked, a little too quiet.

Sam had never backed down from a challenge. She never would. “And then we kick ass.”

Well. When she said that, it was all so simple.

The lights clicked out in the greenhouse, and just in time— the outside started to burst with light and sound as agents tore up the road outside the Manson property.

The door was locked. The daisies at the door and the wispy strings-of-hearts would give them more than enough warning if the agents swept through.

It was bedtime, or good enough as.

Sleep wasn’t restful, but the quality of the night didn’t matter; it only had to get them to the next day.

#phic phight 2024 #danny phantom #Phic phight #tucker foley #Sam Manson #ambiguous timeline when they're on the run from the GIW! 🎉#Danny's fine he's just out of town #'where' space camp. he's on a break #giw as a bad guy with local regulatory power #fill

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max-levchin · 9 months

Text

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.”

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work.

It doesn’t.

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth.

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing.

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans.

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh.

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time.

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time.

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia.

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party.

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home.

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing.

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch.

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful.

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K.

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each.

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto.

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest.

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result.

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted.

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair.

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers.

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0) through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct:

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files.

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases.

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key.

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly.

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination.

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident.

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service.

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt.

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly.

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless.

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed.

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion.

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file.

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago.

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see.

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris.

Except it wasn’t completely clean.

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened.

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.”

RTFM indeed.

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed.

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event.

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now.

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email!

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calicovobo · 4 months

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Cat Chronicles

Summary: The snippets of life captured by a stray cat.

Word Count: 927

A/N: Hello! This is my first piece of writing on this page, I hope you enjoy! <3

Part Two

You loved looking at buildings. As a cat who barely reaches the bottom of a park bench, buildings were always so tall and intriguing. The buildings with the pretty string lights draped across to the classic solid concrete ones that parents warn their children not to get close to unless they wanted to get taken by some villain, you loved them all. They each had their own story, inside and out.

But, what you really loved about buildings was the amazing fight scenes you got to see with a front row view, watching as the heroes with their typical flashy quirks chase and take down villains. And while excited pedestrians had to stay back and cheer from a distance, you got to be right up close to the battle scene. You admit that you were quite a fan of these heroes, and in a classic cat feature, the bright lights never failed to catch your eye.

No one noticed you in your hiding spots next to dumpsters or in alleyways. It was perfect for your small and flexible body, and when the fight was as dramatic as they are, the attention is always pinpointed in a separate direction from you.

“Great capture tonight Eraserhead, you just gotta finish up signing some forms and we’ll take care of the clean-up.”

After a rather mediocre battle at 2AM, Aizawa couldn’t wait to go home and sleep. But as he was watching the clean-up crew start moving debris and damaged parts around the area, he saw in the corner of his eye a small figure trapped under a slanted plank of wood.

‘Aw great, how am I supposed to get out of this’ you thought as you watched this giant piece of wood encapsulate your hiding spot. You just wanted to watch the infamous Eraserhead take down a villain! But instead your excitement made you too greedy for action and you found yourself trapped when they were battling. The slanted plank fell low enough to the point that you couldn’t fit to escape.

‘Maybe I can slither into this tiny crack…yeah that may work- or or maybe when they do recycling tomorrow I can run out and leave!’ With your brain rushing to come up with ideas, you didn’t notice the slow but deliberate footsteps coming your way.

“Come here, sorry for getting you caught up in the fight.” Startled, you watched as he, with his big strong muscles hidden by his classic dark fabric, lifted the plank and set it aside roughly. Looking up at him with your big green eyes and tri-colored fur, he was enamored by just how cute you were. Your calico coat was just so pretty and with those kind eyes, he couldn’t help but wonder if you were someone's beloved pet they lost.

‘Big hero man is looking at me!’ You couldn’t believe that the hero of the night just became your personal hero! What a dream come true to be so close to one of your many idols! Your enthusiastic chirps and meows brought a soft smile to the tired hero’s face.

“I’m glad one of us has enough energy to last the night.” Though he adored your obvious passionate energy, he couldn’t help but worry if you really were someone’s pet with just how trusting you are. He gladly complied as your warm body curled around and rubbed against his legs, just begging for pets.

“Does this cat have an owner?” Aizawa asked as a member of the clean-up crew walked past with his big hands still giving you rubs.

The worker was surprised as Eraserhead was infamous for leaving right away after his duty was done. “H-huh? Um, no I don’t think I’ve ever seen that cat before. Maybe it belongs to one of the buildings nearby and just got lost? I can contact the shelter to get it out of your way.”

“No need. I can deal with it.” Aizawa said as he continued complying to your needy cravings of pets. The scene would make anyone freeze in their steps; a hero known for their deadpan and tired attitude petting a very happy and affectionate calico cat who was sticking to him like glue.

‘Oh my gosh I love him!. Right there right there! It feels so good.’ It was impossible not to hide your pleasure as Aizawa rubbed behind your ears. You were putty in his hands and didn’t want the night to ever end!

“Do you belong to anyone tiny? I have to go soon, got a class full of brats to teach tomorrow, tch.” He knew you couldn’t answer him but he didn’t want to leave you out here all alone. He was aware of the animal and cat haters who weren’t afraid to kick you aside, especially with how friendly you are towards humans. But, as the sky continued to get darker and as he remembered that he had an early class to attend to tomorrow, he knew he had to leave eventually.

Aizawa had thoughts of just taking you into his arms and bringing you home with him but, if you really did have a family looking for you, he didn’t want to take you from that spot just yet. You looked at him curiously as he spiraled into a mental debate with himself. And, just as he was about to make his decision, you gave him one last head bump to his leg and hurried away.

You loved humans but you were a cat meant to explore and venture, nothing could hold you back!

#bnha x reader #aizawa shouta #aizawa shouta x reader #bnha fluff #bnha x cat reader #aizawa shouta fluff #aizawa x reader #aizawa fluff #cat reader #mha x reader #mha x cat reader #mha fluff #bnha #mha

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petermorwood · 3 months

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youtube

This popped up on my YouTube the other day and not to brag, but...

Oh, why the hell not? It's a small brag, but satisfying. :->

I posted about refilling the Pilot Vpen (IRL-UK) / Varsity (US) - and adding how-to links - about 4 years and then again a year ago.

Here are the how-to links; I'm glad to see they're still active.

This one, like the video, calls for pliers and suggests removing the nib:

This one doesn't use pliers or separate the nib from the feed.

*****

Bragging aside, I'm pleased to see Brian Goulet of Goulet Pens giving this hack a higher profile (and Kudos for it, too - as a retailer it's more in his interest to sell them than refill them!)

His reason is very sound: those cheap little pens (usually about 3-to-4 local currency units whether €, $ or £) are ideal for FP-curious newbies or as no-loss-worries when travelling or no-damage-worries loaners.

They also have much better nibs than the price would suggest. Indeed that seems common to all the inexpensive Pilot pens I've tried, which includes every nib size of MR / Metropolitan.

In addition, IMO the notion of "disposable" fountain pens goes completely against the principal FP virtue, where once you've bought the pen, all you USE is the ink.

So in the US at least * buy that ink from Goulet. They've got one or two to choose from and a selection of samples in vials or sets...

( * In Ireland, with Pen Corner in Dublin now gone, I get mine from CultPens or Penstore.)

*****

I should mention, for completeness, that some "starter" fountain pens have prices not much more than these disposables and, refilled by "proper" ink cartridges / bottle-refill converters, don't involve anything like this trouble.

Just saying...

*****

It just so happens that one of my two Vpens was about due for a refill, so here are some pics of the process.

I scrubbed the markings off the barrels a long time ago so I could see what was inside, since refills mean the ink in the pen often has nothing to do with its colour-indicator cap.

First, disassembled and washed in changes of warm water until the water stays clear.

Here's the nib and feed: they've always come out of both Vpens as a single unit, with no need for pliers. Since the nibs show no desire to come off I've no desire to force the issue and maybe break something; those little ink-guide fins are delicate.

The filler is a small syringe begged from our local vet. I also use it to refill cartridges with custom ink colours (yup, I sometimes roll my own...)

Its "needle" is plastic tubing (an empty Pilot gel-pen cartridge, appropriately enough) which fits the syringe perfectly, and a pointy end made by stretching the tube over a candle-flame then snipping to length. If it gets too stained - this is nearly there - just chuck it in the recycle bin and make a new one.

The ink could have been any of the 30-odd I have at the minute, or something mixed specially, but I chose this one - a nice dark green - for the same reason @dduane had me buy it.

It's a very cute bottle... :->

*****

And here's the "disposable" pen refilled, reassembled and re-writing.

It really does have a better nib than you'd expect from a supposedly single-use pen...

*****

It sometimes takes a while for the ink to work its way by capillary action down from barrel to nib, especially if everything has been left to dry after washing. Put the cap on the pen and be patient.

Or speed things up by taking the cap off and running a thin stream of hot water over the barrel for 30 seconds or so. This increases internal pressure, forcing the ink along the section fins.

NB, this step is only for a refilled Vpen / Varsity. Don't try it with anything else, and in case it's not obvious, do this at a washbasin or sink, because You Never Know.

Now use a bit of kitchen paper or loo roll to blot the water which has got on the nib. This has a mild "suction" effect, and when you see ink on the paper (you might need to wet the nib again) your refilled pen is ready for use.

This wet-and-blot nib step can be used to encourage any stubborn fountain pen to get back in action, but the hot water trick, once again, is Vpen only.

Anyway, done.

#Youtube #fountain pens #disposable fountain pen #refilling disposable fountain pens #Pilot Vpen #Pilot Varsity

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delightfully-deranged-dagur · 3 months

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TD OCs Redesigns part 2! At long last!

Lulu

This Clown didn't change much in concept but she definitely changed in design.

Previously I already made a more casual look for her when she's not performing, and that became the basis for her redesign. Her old outfit will be repurposed for her performance outfit. Still need to draw that.

Besides that she got a new hairstyle! And a hint of that Pinkie Pie inspired front swirl.

Madileighn

The Influencer had a massive overhaul from her 1st look to her 2nd. The first look I've actually recycled for her mom's design. Who I'll post here eventually.

Anyway Madi got a warmer yellow tone, some bangs and a shorter coat. She's still looking fabulous!

Marlo

The Prankster kept a lot of his original elements. Purple + green colors, curly black hair and a bomb on his clothes.

The hoodie became a jacket. The hair got more sharper in the back and the bomb was moved to his shirt. His shorts and nose kept changing but I finally settled on something I like.

Olive

The Shy Doormat stayed very consistent in design. The clothes just became baggier, the nose changed shape and her colors more muted.

But she still hates the spotlight and is still a lesbian disaster.

Parvati

Immediately, the Mythology Buff became more tomboy-ish. Her features became a lot more sharper and a bit more androgynous.

Her outfit stayed the mostly it just evolved. Less cluttered details. A more eye pleasing color pallette. All changes for the better.

Phoenix

He's a menace this one. Definitely the one that gave me the most trouble redesigning.

Like Parvati I removed a lot of unnecessary details and gave him a more eye pleasing pallette. His skintone got a cooler undertone to better see the line work.

And the big change. His hair. Less knock-off Hobie Brown and more his own person. I'm very thankful for my friend Howai for giving me the idea for locs.

Rachel

Ah Rachel. The Rodeo Star. Who actually started out as a pathetic Heather Wannabe. She became something way different. Now an antagonist more in line with Bowie.

Her design barely changed from V2 to V3. Just changed her bangs direction and gave her abs. Why mess with perfection?

I just realized Rachel gained boots and lost her sandals, while Madileighn lost her boots and gained sandals. Huh. Fun trade-off.

Raheem

The Oblivious Hearth Throb is still as good looking as ever.

Now he gets to take his hair down and really make people swoon. Not that he realizes.

I basically made his outfit more warm weather oriented then cold. Also, he went from green to gray. A more neutral color helps him stand out from the cast.

Sasha

Now if Rachel isn't the one with the least changes. Then it's Sasha. I struck gold with the first design. And she barely changed after that.

The 2 big differences are her hair, from flowing waves to bantu knots. And her concept.

Originally she was a singer going on TD to promote herself. Now she's a nepo-baby who's uncle got her onto the show. She doesn't realize her well connected, rich girl experiences aren't universal.

Tony

Last and certainly never least. The Short-Tempered Greaser.

Tony's outfit barely changed. Just some color adjustments. But his body definitely changed. The 2nd time I designed as someone short and not just shrunk someone down.

The big difference this time is his hair. I love the pompadour+swirl but I wanted something different to differentiate him from how i draw Johnny Spirit. So he got a quaff. I think that's the right word.

Anyway lastly his pose makes his personality more clear. He's cranky and impatient.

Thank you for joining me and listen to me ramble about these guys.

I'm hoping to get the first chapter of my OC season out sometime this year. So stay tuned.

#my art #total drama #total drama island #total drama action : take 2 #total drama oc #oc art #oc lulu #oc Madileighn #oc marlo #oc olive #oc parvati #oc phoenix #oc rachel #oc raheem #oc sasha #oc tony

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reflective-leaf · 7 months

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The Climate Movement Needs Your Creativity, Not Your Guilt

(This is an annotated transcript of the TEDx talk I gave in April 2023. It’s 10 minutes long. I’d suggest watching it first and then coming here for supporting materials.)

youtube

Does climate action feel impossible?

When I was a kid, I was interested in everything. I’d need about 10 careers to do it all. So I got out my green and blue markers and made a calendar to keep track of which job I’d have on which day of the week. On Monday, I’d be a scientist, on Tuesday, a painter. Friday — some kind of explorer, because I loved nature documentaries. I related to how animals seemed fascinated by whatever was right in front of them.

Every documentary ended with a reminder that these animals needed our help, and all the ways they were threatened by human activity. I couldn’t believe no one had managed to do something about this. But I figured I would know how when I grew up.

So, though I kept changing my mind about what I would be, the one constant was that it would have something to do with climate and conservation.

Years later, I was working as an engineer and plugging away at my art and writing. I didn’t tell anyone about my master plan to connect it all to climate, but I hadn’t forgotten it. I kept looking for ways to make my engineering work overlap with climate science or renewables.

Still, I avoided climate news. I didn’t need to hear over and over that climate change REALLY WAS real to motivate me to take action. I didn’t need to see a picture of an animal choking on plastic; I already had the master plan. Meanwhile, I kept circling climate action from a distance without taking the plunge.

But that changed in 2020. The United Nations issued a report giving us a deadline of 2030 to make steep emissions cuts.

Taking action couldn’t stay theoretical and future tense any longer. So I dove into the research to catch up on what I had missed. And I started — tentatively — talking to people about climate change and my intentions.

And I got wave after wave of bad news. It wasn’t just the tight deadlines, scale of changes needed, and years of deadlock.

It was also the confusing responses I was getting in my conversations about climate change. I’d bring up something I found fascinating, people’s faces would drop. The’d say “Yeah… I should be doing more.” And the conversation stopped there.

We’d all finally grown up! and I was ready to jump into the master plan, but I hadn’t factored in when I was 10 that no one would want to jump with me.

And it was 2020, and the air in California was full of wildfire smoke — a constant reminder of what was at stake.

Defeatism had hijacked the climate conversation and it was everywhere.

Eventually, the gloom shifted just enough for me to start wondering. Maybe we were all so bummed because we couldn’t see through the haze. We’ve all been peppered with directives — reduce, reuse, recycle. Drive less. Fly less. Turn off lights. Don’t buy plastic.

And we try, pushing against a system that wasn’t set up for any of that. But we don’t have a clear picture of how this helps.

We may have a vague idea of our individual reductions adding up to collective reductions — but then, every single one of us would have to cut our individual emissions by over half, and then to zero. We can’t imagine the effort it would take to scale up our reductions by that much. And convincing every single human to do the same? Impossible.

This picture doesn’t add up because it requires us all to be perfect. And worse, it makes us feel like we are failing, every single day.

But let me paint you a different picture. If change could only happen with 100% participation and perfection, change would never happen. But I think we can all agree that sometimes change does happen, even positive change. So — how?

For one thing, you can move society in a positive direction without being perfect. Think of it like electric current. We are the electrons.

When we imagine current flowing through a wire, we might imagine an orderly stream of electrons all moving in the same direction.

But actually, even before the current starts, the electrons are moving — randomly, at high speeds, in all directions.

And when we apply a voltage to create current, it still looks like they’re moving at random, except there’s a change you can only see when you look at the wire as a whole.

Each electron shifts its velocity a tiny bit, all in the same direction. You don’t need perfect electrons to create current.

Society is a bit more complicated than electric current. Still, it doesn’t matter that we aren’t each moving in a perfectly sustainable direction as long as our changes line up. And more importantly, pick up speed.

So what’s the voltage that directs us? I called it “the system,” and what I mean is the way all the organizations that touch our lives are set up — what they prioritize and where they get their materials.

We are constantly pushing against the system while trying to influence “our” consumption. What if we tried influencing the system instead?

So how do systems change? I found the answer in one of my math textbooks. Transformation builds under the surface as ideas brew, minds change, and small clusters of supporters gather — all while progress appears to be slow or non-existent, until suddenly, the support reaches a critical mass, and the system transforms rapidly in an emergent process.

Nearly every social movement that succeeded followed this pattern of slow, then all at once. To get to that point, a certain percentage of people need to participate (estimated variously as 3.5%, to 25%), but importantly, it’s not 100%.

So don’t think of the climate movement as something you’re guilted into. You can choose to be one of the 25% who become early adopters of change.

And you don’t have to worry about the people you can’t convince. They will change when the system changes because that comes first.

Changing the system requires creativity. The first act of creativity is to imagine the possible paths to transformation.

The second act of creativity is to imagine where you can fit into that picture. Old ideas need to be replaced by new ones — about everything from technology to our day-to-day lives. The new ideas spread through you.

To make that happen, ask yourself these three questions.

One. What is a movement you want to throw your weight behind? Pick a trend or organization that’s already building, and that you can help accelerate. You can be another piece of its critical mass.

Two. What’s a practical obstacle that’s been keeping you from participating? Anything from not knowing what a word means, to having trouble deciding where to volunteer.

If you have this obstacle, others do too. So brainstorming a solution will help more than just you. That obstacle doesn’t stand a chance against your formidable skills at creative problem solving!

Question Three. What social circles that you’re already a part of, can you share your solutions and experiences with? Sharing in the circles where you can be heard is how your solutions amplify and ripple outward.

We’re facing unprecedented challenges, so our imaginations need to be nimble — zipping like a hummingbird — from the big picture, to our immediate surroundings. From where we’re starting from — to where we want to get to.

We can’t be nimble like this if we’re stuck in guilt and perfectionism, and gazing endlessly within our own homes and wallets at all the things we’re doing wrong.

No movement in history has been made up of perfect people, so stop worrying about the ways you’re not perfect. Perfect people are not required.

Instead, think of all the ways your creativity could accelerate us in the right direction.

If you haven’t already, check out the recording of my TEDx talk! And you can hit ‘like’ on the video if you want to help get the YouTube algorithm to distribute it.

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federationgothic · 7 months

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Engineering updates

Noticed while skimming episodes the other day some changes in Main Engineering during the first couple of seasons that I hadn't noticed before (or just forgotten about).

Specifically, I'm going to focus on the back end of Engineering, where the Master Systems Display is located:

Nice and busy

Now that area doesn't show up in Encounter at Farpoint, the couple of shots in engineering are centered around the warp core and the catwalk surrounding it (the open elevator connecting the two gets a lot of use in there).

Hot elevator action!

The MSD appears in the next episode The Naked Now but it's all alone.

Nothing more than a repurposed wide corridor where we stuck a giant screen, and it's green (it will stay green for the first two seasons). There's also no isolinear stacks underneath the MSD, and the hallways panels are missing some LCARS. Oh and we don't have our pool table MSD table.

The next time we see engineering from this angle is The Last Outpost.

A lot of progress for sure, but it's not right. The LCARS panels have been added to the bulkhead and the isolinear stacks are now underneath the display. The MSD Table, itself recycled from Star Trek 4, hasn't fully undergone the TNG conversion and looks out of place.

Here it is in The Voyage Home:

The Lighting elements that are flush against the Display are the wrong shape, flanking it. for comparison:

And now, a brief interlude to Where No One Has Gone Before:

They're GREEN. I had not...it had not clicked with me before (at least not consciously) that the lighting panels were green for the episode. I don't know if they were still tweaking the look or decided it should be green bc of Kosinski's so-called upgrades but in any case it's green and distracting now that I see it.

table's still wrong:

I feel like they're going to show us some x-rays on here.

By the time we reach 11001001 the table looks right (hard to tell from this angle but looks like the entire surface is reflective now).

the big lights are off, for some reason.

Another quick detour, this time to Home Soil, where the MSD also acts as a viewscreen:

also when you put chairs there it really emphasizes how those controls look like navigation (you can control the ship from Engineering I guess you could set it up that way).

The rest of the season won't see any further changes. Season 2, starting with Where Silence Has Lease the lighting elements around the MSD will have been updated to the ones that will remain throughout the rest of the series

The lighting might have changed between Where Silence Has Lease and Q-Who or just might be colour processing.

Finally, season 3 brings us the updated MSD with more detailed okudagrams on it

There might be rubber duck in there.

It will remain mostly unchanged for the rest of the series, except at some point someone slapped a label on the bottom left.

(this occured at some point between s3-4)

A final, minor, update was brought to the MSD where the label was removed and two lines were added to the pedestal for Star Trek: Generations.

(similarly to how the runabouts had a bunch of random lines that looked like electrical tape to make the sets pop).

#chairs appear around the pool table whenever its necessary #Star Trek #Star Trek The Next Generation #TNG #Engineering #Main Engineering #Galaxy Class #Federation #Starfleet #starship design #MSD #Master Systems Display #MSD Table #federation gothic #long post

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mysterious-moonstruck-musings · 4 months

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The Knight & His Queen: Part 1

Fic Masterlist ||| Main Masterlist

Dieter Bravo x OFC

Summary: While looking for the perfect Christmas gift for his niece, Dieter Bravo finds himself in a small mystic shop, owned by the sweet and eccentric Amina. After an impromptu tarot reading with unexpected and surprising results, the two quickly find themselves entranced by each other.

Warnings: Spicy language, alcohol consumption, smut, & mentions of drug use. Mystical topics such as tarot readings, spirit guides, chakras, etc. Dieter Bravo comes with his own warnings.

Chapter Quote: “The first one’s free. That’s how I get you hooked.”

Amina POV

My Monday morning started like most of my days had recently. I woke up…alone. Even though it had been seven months since splitting from a long-term relationship, it was still weighing on me. I was such a mixed bag of emotions, struggling with loneliness but also swearing off men for the foreseeable future. I felt stuck and unsure of my path forward after watching all of my plans crumble down before me within hours, altering all aspects of my life. All because my significant other suddenly decided he needed someone a little less eccentric for his corporate lifestyle.

I was finally settled into my small LA apartment, everything was unpacked, but it still didn’t feel like home. As I lay staring at the ceiling, I could feel a dark shadow over the place. Like this wasn’t where I was supposed to be or like an important piece of my life was missing.

I was jolted out of my thoughts when my long-haired black cat, Miss Pickles, jumped up on top of me. Her intense green eyes showed her annoyance that breakfast had not yet been served. She gave a low growl before rubbing her head roughly against my chin.

“Alright, alright, I’m getting up,” I said to her with a huff.

There was a chill in the air as I made my way to the kitchen to portion out a bit of premade raw food onto Pickles' recycled green glass plate. She sat on the counter, impatiently whipping her tail about as she watched me prepare her meal, then meowed excitedly when I sat her plate on the food mat. She wasted no time digging in. I gave her a quick scratch above her tail as I walked toward the bathroom to shower and get ready for the day.

I emerged from my bedroom, wrapping a deep forest green scarf around my neck. I grabbed a dark red coatigan from the closet and shrugged it on over my olive green tee, kicking my favorite brown leather lace-up boots out of the closet as I did so. After putting my boots on, I walked over to the island, digging through my large brown leather satchel to make sure I had everything I needed for the day. Pickles walked over to paw at the feathers clipped into my wavy black hair. I paused my movements, laughing at her sudden attack, before giving her a quick pat on the head. She stood, swatting me with her tail as she turned to paw at my tarot deck that I was about to stick in my bag. She let out a loud meow as she looked at me, then back to the deck. I sighed.

“Why bother? You know it’s gonna be the same thing that it’s been for the last seven months.”

She meowed at me again, “Fine… but don’t get mad when I say I told ya so.”

I grabbed the deck, tapped it three times, then did a quick shuffle before pulling my one card for the day. Death. Again. The end of possibilities in one aspect with a transformation on the horizon. Clearly, I had not let go of whatever baggage I was holding onto from my past since the spirit guides were still telling me to move on and close that door before the next could be opened. I rolled my eyes, grabbing the card pouch to pack them away and toss them in my bag.

I sighed, “See, what did I tell you? The same damn thing.”

Pickles whipped her tail out of frustration and meowed again before jumping down to go sit in her window.

“I’ll see you after work. Please try to stay out of trouble today,” I added before grabbing my bag and heading out the door.

I walked two blocks in the crisp December air to my shop, Enchanted Curios, that I opened five years ago. It was a mystic shop of sorts, with carefully curated spiritual items from all over the world. Anything from books, herbs, crystals, totems, elixirs, and home decor lined the shelves. It was fairly popular since there was a little something for everyone. It was one of the things that made me too eccentric for my ex. He had wanted me to give it up for something more fitting to his high class persona. The judgy looks he got when he shared what his fiancé did for a living was too much for his fragile ego to handle. He had set foot into a world that was no longer compatible with mine and it became the final crack in our already crumbling relationship.

I entered through the front door of the shop, turning on the pink neon sign that indicated we were open for business before making my way around to turn on all the other displays and diffusers for the day. I could hear the shop manager and my best friend, Heidi, in the back near the loading dock talking to one of the delivery guys as he carted in boxes off his truck. Once they were finished with the delivery, Heidi dramatically walked through the beaded curtain from the back, “Good morning, Mina.” She was a little too chipper for it to be so early.

“That must have been the cute delivery guy from the candle place,” I said with a smirk.

“It was. I’m pretty sure he was flirting with me this time. I think I’m gonna ask him for his number when he comes back.”

She looked energized and excited by the thought of this as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

“Did you pull a card today?” Her mood shifted, more serious now as she took in my glum expression.

“I did. Still the same.” I rolled my eyes as I moved to straighten up the counter displays.

“Maybe you should try dating again or something. Wouldn’t that help take your mind off you-know-who?” She moved to lean against the edge of the counter on the opposite side from me.

“Ugh, I don’t think I’m ready for that. I just don’t trust my judgment when it comes to men right now. I’m feeling a little vulnerable and I don’t want a rebound thing, you know what I mean? I don’t want things to get messy.”

“What if you knew what to look for? Take out some of the guessing. The cards can give you an idea.” She was practically vibrating at the thought. Heidi was new to tarot reading, but she was a natural, immediately in tune with her intuition. She wanted to do a reading for anything and everything at this point just for practice.

I gave her a dismissive laugh as I shook my head, “You’re too much sometimes.”

“No, I’m serious. Let me do a three card spread for you. Let’s see what happens.”

I gave her an admonishing look, not wanting to go down that road, but she wouldn’t let it go as she reached for her deck under the counter with a grin.

“Ok, fine. I’ll humor you,” I relented, leaning against the counter to watch her work.

Heidi went through her routine of shuffling and clearing the cards before pulling the first one.

“Ok, so this card represents you, the Queen of Cups. Full of compassion, creativity, and intuition. Well grounded, sensitive, and empathetic… this card is associated with water which can be gentle, but powerful when needed. Also, the Pisces star sign…” She raised an eyebrow at me, questioning if that was correct. I nodded. She looked pleased with herself before continuing. She pulled the second card, the Knight of Wands.

“This card represents your ideal partner…interesting. He’s gonna have that masculine fire energy and lots of charisma. That’s definitely not you-know-who…” She had a smirk on her face as she glanced in my direction, waiting for a reaction.

“Ha ha. You’re hilarious,” I said sarcastically, before waving for her to continue.

“So, your guy is most likely gonna be either a Leo, Sagittarius, or Aries. A very passionate and enthusiastic lover. Probably adventurous in the bedroom too…I feel like you could use a little adventure in your life.” She busted out laughing as she watched my eyes widen in horror at her words.

I shook my head, “Was it that obvious?” Heidi nodded, “I could tell just by looking at the guy that he probably wasn’t a good time. Too uptight for that.”

I chuckled, “I guess there’s no hiding that my sex life has been very vanilla then. I sure know how to pick em…”

Heidi laughed before continuing, “Ok, I feel like this guy is gonna be super energetic and bold. Maybe even a little eccentric and spiritual in his own way. He’ll probably love attention and be a little impulsive and impatient…but your water energy could help him balance those things out.”

“Great…so a man child then. Got it.” I scoffed and rolled my eyes at her.

She gave me a pointed look, “Come on, be a little open minded…please. It might help get that death card out of your life.”

I raised a brow at her, not at all encouraged or impressed by her words. She shook her head at me as she pulled the third card from the deck, the lovers. She inhaled deeply, eying it in the spread, “Well…this card is meant to tell us what your relationship would be like if you found this person.”

We stared at each other for a beat, both of us surprised by the pull. “Well, I feel like that’s a long term sort of meaning behind it. A serious connection of souls…like a true life partner…a spiritual connection with a strong bond. It’s an honest relationship of trust and respect for each other…which you totally didn’t have before...”

A sly grin spread across her face. She seemed pretty damn proud of herself.

“I don’t believe that. That sort of thing doesn’t exist,” I said, shaking my head as I made my way toward the front display window to place one of my handmade statues in a recently vacated spot from a sale. As I stood arranging it just right, a young girl, possibly in her teens, stopped to admire the display. She was soon joined by a tall man that I didn’t pay much attention to. I smiled politely at the girl before walking back toward the counter.

I noticed Heidi had focused on the two figures outside as I approached her, “Ooof, Mina, I think that guy was checking you out. He’s kinda hot.”

“He’s with a kid, I’m sure he’s married…Not interested,” I shot back without even giving him a second glance. I heard her huff out a sigh of defeat beside me as I moved to pick up the cards off the counter, accidentally dropping a few in my haste. All were facing downward on the floor, except one…the Fool. I suddenly felt goosebumps form on my skin as I looked back toward the front store window to see the man and young girl continuing down the sidewalk until they were out of sight.

“Mina, you ok?” Heidi asked suddenly with a concerned look.

“Yeah, I just…never mind.” I furrowed my brow, confused by the shift in energy that I had just felt. I shook my head to clear my thoughts, leaning down to pick up the cards.

As the day turned to evening, I forgot about the odd feeling I had. Choosing to focus on updating inventory instead. I was standing by the side wall double checking numbers when I heard the low tinkling of the bell above the front entrance. When I turned, still looking down at my clipboard, I nearly crashed into a towering stranger.

“Oh geez! I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed, nearly dropping my pen and clipboard over his sudden appearance.

When I finally looked up at him, he had a half smile on his pillowy lips as he slowly slid his dark sunglasses down his nose before removing them altogether. I noticed he had what looked like a bullseye tattoo on his left hand, just between the thumb and index finger. His chocolate eyes were wide as he took in my expression. He didn’t say anything at first, looking just as surprised as I was. I laughed nervously under his gaze, “Umm, did you need help finding something?”

“Uhhh, yeah, sorry. I was…um outside earlier with my niece. She noticed the…statues in the window.”

He held my gaze, not blinking as his eyes darted around my face. I could feel the energy shifting again causing goosebumps to form all over my body.

“Oh, the magical creature collection?” I raised my brows in question.

“Yeah, she’s been looking for one of the horse things with wings. Do you know if they make one of those?” He scratched at his patchy beard, looking unsure of himself.

“I don’t have any made right now, but I would be happy to do a custom piece for you.” I smiled nervously as he processed what I was saying, realizing that he actually looked a little high.

“Ohh, so you make them? That’s… amazing.” He sighed in relief, visibly relaxing some. “Is that something you could have done before Christmas? I don’t want to put you in a tough spot with it.”

“Absolutely, let me just run and grab the custom order forms.” My smile widened as I moved toward the checkout counter. I passed through the beaded curtain in a flurry, looking through the supplies on the shelf. Heidi appeared next to me from the office asking where the fire was.

“I need a custom order form.” I could feel my heart rate picking up.

“Why?” She asked as she peeked through the curtain. “Is that the guy from earlier…with the kid?”

I responded with a clipped tone as I turned to face her, “Yes. Where are the forms?”

“Under the counter, where they always are…”

She was staring at me with wide eyes and a smirk, “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing, I just couldn’t find them,” I said over my shoulder as I went back out front toward the checkout counter. I took the opportunity to get a better look at him from a distance as he looked around the shelves. He had dark brown hair that looked like it had been carefully crafted into a messy style, sticking out in all directions. He was wearing a gray and black zebra print sweater with dark cargo pants and lace up boots. I could see the glint of a small silver hoop in his left ear lobe and a couple of large rings on his left hand. He definitely had some interesting style choices.

After I found the forms, I made my way back over to him. As I approached, he nearly dropped the wolf figure incense burner he had been inspecting, before quickly sitting it back on the shelf and patting the top of it for good measure. He quickly turned to face me with a crooked grin on his face as he squeezed his hands together.

“So, you said she wants a Pegasus sculpture, right?” I asked, scribbling notes on the order form.

He nodded, “Yes, but not a white one. She was pissed that they’re always white.”

I quirked an eyebrow in his direction, waiting for him to clarify.

“She said she wants a dark one… I guess maybe black? I think flat black is boring though… maybe you could add undertones of purple and blue? Sort of like a Raven’s feathers… but also make it pretty.”

“Pretty?” I raised both brows at him this time, unsure of what he meant.

“She’s thirteen, do with that what you will,” he added, shrugging at his explanation.

I nodded, figuring that probably meant a long flowing mane and some girly teenage flare.

“How big would you like this to be…height wise?” I was still scribbling notes as I waited for him to respond.

“What’s the biggest you make?”

I paused, that wasn’t a normal question. It was usually ‘how small can you make them’ because of the cost. I looked up at him, gauging his reaction, “Twelve inches…those are pricey though.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that…it cost what it cost. Also…I noticed you have crystals. Do you think you could add some in around the base? That would be cool, right?”

He briefly looked excited by the idea, but then he pinched his brows together in question, suddenly unsure of himself again.

“Yeah, that actually would be. I’ve never thought of doing that…”

I was surprised by his suggestion as I watched his lopsided grin return. He suddenly looked like a big fluffy dog who was excited about being called a ‘good boy’. His brown eyes further added to the illusion by sparkling brightly and crinkling at the corners. I was momentarily transfixed by him, before snapping back to reality.

I cleared my throat before looking down to scribble a couple more notes on the order form as I spoke up.

“So, I’ll do a mockup drawing for your approval. I’ll also pull some paint samples and crystals for you to look over. I have some new iridescent paint shades that I haven’t used yet that I think will look really neat on this piece.”

When I looked back up, he was intently staring at me with wide eyes. Once he realized I was done speaking, he nodded enthusiastically with a small smile on his face. He had odd mannerisms, but there was something almost endearing behind them.

“Hey, I noticed the tarot reading sign...I’ve never done that before, is that something you do…personally?”

Heidi suddenly appeared at my side, “Yes, she does do them, and she is excellent at it. Would you like a reading? I can go grab the deck for you…” She glanced toward me, widening her eyes and raising her brows, silently telling me to do it as she nudged me toward the small bistro table where we did the readings.

“That’s…I would love that.” His lopsided grin returned as he closed his hands into fists at his sides, almost vibrating from excitement. He seemed to radiate a childlike energy that was kind of infectious. I couldn’t help but to smile over his enthusiasm.

“Yeah, just have a seat. Is there something specific you need guidance on or want to ask the cards?” I questioned as I sat down across from him, moving the decorative crystal ball out of the way to make space for the spread.

He seemed to be momentarily distracted by the decoration as I pushed it out of the way, “It’s not real. I think it’s just a glass paperweight actually…”

He chuckled, reaching to run his hand over the wooden stand holding the ball, “I was just admiring the detail in the base. I love elephants.”

I gave him a small smile as he met my gaze, “I do too. That’s why I got it.”

Heidi reappeared at my side with the deck and gently set it in front of me. I picked it up, taping three times before shuffling.

“So, what would you like to know about?” I asked him.

“I’m not sure…I didn’t know I would be doing this. What do people typically ask about?” He scratched at his chin, seeming unsure of himself again.

“Oh, you know…jobs, money, major life decisions…” I replied.

Heidi cut in, “Or relationships…love.” I narrowed my eyes at her, and she gave the both of us a beaming smile in response.

The man laughed, “My love life is a disaster. It seems I keep going after the wrong kind of people. I’ve kind of given up on all that.”

He glanced over at me, but quickly diverted his eyes to look down at his hands on the table.

Heidi’s eyes lit up and her smile grew impossibly wider, “You know…you could do the three card spread for him. To see what characteristics his ideal partner would have.”

I furrowed my brows at her. What the hell was she up to?

“You know…the one I did earlier this morning.” She gave me a pointed look.

“That might be interesting to know,” the man said in a low voice. “Yeah, let’s do that. Maybe it’ll change my life,” he chuckled as he relaxed back into his seat.

I gave him a tight lipped smile as butterflies formed in the pit of my stomach. I shuffled the deck a few more times for good measure just to make sure Heidi wasn’t up to some funny business.

“Ok. Let’s get started then…”

The handsome stranger raised his brows and leaned forward in his seat to get a better look at what I was doing. His energy shifted to something more serious and intense as he awaited the outcome. I pulled the 3 cards, leaving them face down to add a little dramatic effect. When I flipped the first card, my breath nearly caught in my throat. It was the Knight of Wands. I suddenly felt Heidi’s hand resting firmly in my shoulder. She didn't have to say anything for me to know what she was thinking. My eyes shifted upward to meet his. He seemed to sense my hesitation as a concerned look formed on his face.

“This card represents you and who you are as a person. Is your star sign a Leo?” I didn’t know that for sure, but my gut said it was.

His mouth hung open slightly, “Yeah…how - how did you know that?”

I smirked at him, “This card represents someone who is either a Leo, Aries, or Sagittarius. My gut said Leo.”

“I’m an Aries moon,” he added as the corner of his mouth lifted.

Heidi interjected, “Ooooh, doubling down on that fire energy…nice.”

She winked at me, then they both laughed as I shot her a dirty look before continuing, “The Knight of Swords tells me you're adventurous, but not in a typical or expected sort of way. You tend to be passionate and creative about your endeavors and full of confidence and enthusiasm. Your charismatic energy often attracts people to you...You can be a little impulsive with your choices, so it might be a good idea to slow down and think through things every once in a while.”

He was listening attentively, now leaning forward with his elbow on the table, “That is freakishly accurate, and I humbly accept that advice.”

I gave him a half smile as I moved to flip the second card, “This card represents your ideal partner…” I paused, looking down at the card in shock. It was the Queen of Cups. There was no way this was actually happening. What were the odds?

I glanced up at Heidi, who was covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes round. She was just as shocked as I was. The stranger glanced between us with a perplexed look. I cleared my throat before speaking again, “The Queen of Cups represents the star signs Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio…. the water signs. This person would balance out your fire energy and bring emotional stability and compassion to the relationship. They would be very in tune with your feelings…an excellent communicator. They’ll probably have a creative side that you would strongly connect with. They would also be very intuitive when it comes to making decisions, which could help balance out your impulsive habits.”

The man exhaled slowly, “Wow. That’s…that is life changing. I’ve clearly been going for the wrong type,” he chuckled in astonishment.

I was still reeling from the cards, almost afraid to flip the third. I felt a little lightheaded and had a chill creeping up my spine. I forced a smile before reaching for the last card. It was the Lovers. Heidi let out a low, “Holy shit,” as she took in the spread.

“What’s wrong, is that a bad card?” The man asked with a worried tone.

Heidi chuckled before walking toward the beaded curtain, shaking her head as she went, quickly disappearing to the back. I let out a nervous laugh, meeting his gaze before responding, “No, it’s…not a bad card. It’s ideal actually. It represents the overall energy of the relationship…long term. It shows a meaningful and honest connection between partners. Like a soulmate type situation…an intense emotional and sexual connection. A strong harmonious bond, two opposites that make a whole.”

The tension left his body as he sunk back into his seat, considering my words. “That’s…a lot to take in. I didn’t think there was potential for something like that…for me.”

His brows pinched together as he studied me, the gears in his head working to make sense of it all.

“Can the cards tell me when I’ll meet this person…or what I need to do to find them?”

He seemed almost desperate now. Like he finally had the answers to something that had plagued him for an eternity and needed to act on it at once.

“I mean, they don’t give specifics, obviously…but we can see what they have to say. I’ll pull one more and see what we get.”

I reached for the deck to pull one additional card. When I flipped it in my hand, I paused briefly, feeling another wave of goosebumps breakout across my body. It was the Fool. I inhaled deeply, tilting my head to the side as my eyes met with his beautiful brown ones. They were rounded with anticipation. I set the card down, face up.

“I’m not really sure how to interpret this. The fool isn’t necessarily associated with time…it usually means new beginnings or a new journey. An unexpected opportunity you should immediately take the chance on when it’s presented. So maybe you’ve already met the person and you just need to take the leap to give it a try? Or maybe it could happen at any time at an unexpected moment?”

I could feel my heart rate picking up again…I was feeling something, but what, I was unsure. The man chewed on his plump bottom lip as he studied me, digesting my words. He raised his brows, “Well that certainly gives me something to think about.”

I gave him a small smile, “Indeed. That’s…a lot to process,” for the both of us…

Our eyes locked for a moment, before I shook my head to clear it and looked away.

“Umm so, your order…” I reached for the clipboard I had set to the side. “I need you to fill in this top part with your contact information. I’ll shoot you a text once I have the mock up ready so you can come in to look at it and the samples for approval.”

When I met his eyes again, there was something different about his expression. I felt like he was looking into my soul. It also made me clench my thighs together, that familiar ache forming in my core. My breath hitched slightly, before I moved to hand him the form. He gave me a smirk before glancing down to fill in his information, almost like he could sense the effect he just had on me.

While he scribbled on the form, I stood and collected the cards from the table and took them to sit on the counter. When I turned back around, he was there in front of me with that goofy crooked grin of his. He held up the clipboard to hand over to me. As I took it, he cleared his throat to speak.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your name…in case I have questions or…” he started wringing his hands together. He seemed nervous to ask.

“It’s Amina, or just Mina is fine too. Let me grab a business card for you.” I couldn’t help the wide smile that spread across my face as I turned to pull a card from beside the register and handed it to him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before…It’s beautiful. It…suits you.” I could fill my face flush as he looked down at the card, biting his lip, and scratching at the back of his neck. Was he flirting with me? I wasn’t sure, but I felt like he was.

I smiled shyly, “Thank you.”

His eyes widened as he looked back up at me, “Oh, I’m Dieter.” He hesitantly reached out to shake my hand. As soon as our skin touched, I felt the warmth of him spread throughout my body, igniting something deep inside. His large hand engulfed mine as we held onto each other a beat too long. Once we realized the awkwardness of it, we both chuckled and dropped each other's hands.

“Ugh, well I have a thing for work, so I need to go…but I guess we’ll talk soon…and I wanna check the shop out properly too. It seems right up my alley. What do I owe you for the reading?”

“Oh, nothing.” I turned to point toward the tarot reading sign, “The first one’s free. That’s how I get you hooked.” I bit my bottom lip as I winked at him. What the hell was I doing? It seemed to momentarily take him off guard, but it didn’t take long for his grin to return.

“Well, you most certainly did that.” He snickered as his tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip. I probably focused on his mouth more than I should have. I hoped he didn’t notice. “I’ll see you soon. Have a good evening,” he said with a hand flourish, before turning on his heel and exiting the shop.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding as Heidi busted through the beaded curtain from the back. “What the hell just happened? Did that really happen? That’s not normal…right?”

I rubbed at my forehead, stiffly shaking my head from side to side.

“No, I don’t think that’s normal…that was really fucking weird.”

Heidi reached down and grabbed the clipboard from my hand and started looking over the attached form.

“Oh shit.” Her eyes widened as she looked up at me.

My head snapped up to meet her gaze, “What?”

“I thought he looked familiar. That was Dieter fucking Bravo,” she said excitedly.

I shrugged, “I don’t know who that is…”

“The actor...”

I stared at her blankly, “You know I don’t watch a lot of movies…”

“Jeez Louise, never mind. I think he was into you though.”

I rolled my eyes, “Don’t start with that. He’s a customer. No.”

She gave me a sarcastic look, “The cards disagree.” “That had to be a coincidence. Maybe I just didn’t shuffle them well enough or something.”

That had to be what it was, right?

#dieter bravo #dieter bravo fic #dieter bravo fluff #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #the knight & his queen

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