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#there's always someone who thinks anyone not providing the absolute platinum standard of care is somehow neglect
hellenhighwater · 11 months
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Hi Hell, congrats on the exciting foster kitten news!
I just applied to adopt a kitten and had my interview for her today. The woman seemed most interested in convincing me of how terrible dry food, traditional litter (she preferred clay), and tap water is for cats. She said the carbohydrates and ingredients were terrible for their kidneys, the dust in litter is bad for their lungs, and the chlorine in water is harmful. I have a 12 year old cat named Scipio who has been using those things all his life, and now I feel guilty and scared for his health. He seems perfectly healthy to me but she said “cats are stoic.” What do you use with the Tiny Terrors? Is she extreme?
Well, I'm not a vet, so the actual answer is that your cat should be getting what their doctor recommends. But I've had those conversations with people before, and I can give my two cents--just take it with a grain of salt.
So...it's basically always true that you can spend more money on fancier 'health' options and there is, to some extent, benefit to the pricier choices. But there's a point at which that benefit is pretty minimal compared to what you get for the midrange price options. This is as true for pet health as it is for people health.
It's true that wet food is usually a better option for cats. Among other things, it helps them stay at a healthy level of hydration, can be easier on their digestive systems, and is often more palatable for cats who are elderly or have dental problems. But that doesn't mean that dry food is inadequate--Mal and Vice used to split a can of wet food daily, and graze dry food whenever they wanted. They're currently eating almost exclusively dry food, because Vice is on a sensitive skin and stomach diet to help address his overgrooming. I would avoid the bottom-end dry foods, because they seem prone to contamination, but that's more manufacturer quality than an issue with the dry food generally. Dry food is usually a nutritionally complete way to feed a cat, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Mal and Vice drink tap water. They have a bowl of still water, and a fountain with an inbuilt filter. The fountain is because if they don't have running water, they will make running water by splashing their bowls all over. I can't speak to chlorine but it's definitely healthier than drinking out of puddles, which is what they would be doing if left to their own devices.
They use clay litter because that's what's effective and affordable. When I'm changing it out I generally give it a few minutes for dust to settle before I let them at it--someone always wants to make a deposit in the clean box--but there's pros and cons to all the litter options out there.
In a perfect world with infinite resources, I'd be feeding the cats a careful balanced diet of fresh-prepared meats and filtered spring water, and they'd take dumps in a tiny kitty toilet that cleaned itself without my help. But that's not really practical or achievable for me, my life, or my cats, and frankly, it's not necessary. I want them to have a good life. It doesn't need to be a perfect one. If your cat is doing well, and their vet is giving them a clean bill of health, you probably have nothing to worry about. I'm not a professional; you should consult your vet and research options for yourself (which is what I do) but you're not doing anything wrong here.
I will say that when I was going through the process of adopting Mal and Vice, some places (usually private rescues) wanted me to jump through INSANE hoops to even apply. I respect that their hearts are in the right place, but... There are hundreds of kittens in shelters right now that need homes desperately, and the quality of the cat has very little to do with the quality of the rescue--they might have more or less vet work done, depending on where they're coming from, but nobody's managed to fundamentally change the nature of the beast. If you can provide a safe home, food, clean water, and attention to a cat, that's really all they need. The rest is just gravy.
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1kook · 4 years
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disney+ & bust
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this is part of my netflix & chill collection !
summary; There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb. It’s not. It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door.  warnings; arguments, feelings of insecurity, bit of asshole jk, smut in the forms of degradation, dumbification, choking, fingering, spit kink, self punishment, unprotected but [ passionate ] sex, jk losing his cool, return of mean jk, he is actually an emotional mess in this one wtf miscellaneous; ANGST, anniversaries, the L word😳, app developer kook, rip ‘pretty girl’ </3, we all become phineas and ferb stans word count; 13k !!
notes; me: *writes couple who’s whole arc is being silly* y’all: MAKE THEM SUFFER GIVE US ANGST!! u ask I deliver so now we all suffer 😐 ngl it was hard writing this fic n u might notice there’s some parts that seem weird n that’s bc this was TWO fics w diff wording but I ended up mixing them bc I’m insane. still had a lot of fun! felt like I challenged myself!! not proofread bc when I say we suffer we SUFFER
please let me know what you think!!! a simple ask goes a long way <3
previous part: kissanime & foreplay
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Approximately one week after The Bullet Bestie’s rise to prominence, Jungkook grows annoyed with it as his weirdly competitive nature rears its ugly head the more and more orgasms that little vibrator coaxes out of you. It turns on a weird switch in him, something slightly stuck up and snooty that he’ll never admit to out loud but is there nonetheless. By the following Friday, The Bullet Bestie is nestled deep in your garbage can and Jungkook’s back to pleasuring you with his tongue and fingers alone.
He had those moments in him, the ones where he liked to think he was better than any and everyone else, and occasionally they manifested against inanimate objects like a bullet vibrator.
Despite his polite and generally soft exterior, you catch glimpses of that cocky spirit more than anyone else. Over the past year, you’ve come to realize that Jungkook’s personality was like a coin that had been left out in the sun too long. He had this sweet and reserved nature you saw most times, a kindhearted boyfriend who adored you almost as much as you adored him. He was your angel whom you knew had a heart of gold, even if you were slowly bringing out his more childish tendencies. You knew him like the back of your hand, knew what his mom’s favorite color was and how he liked to stack the plates in his cabinet according to size and make. It was a side that was rusted from years of being out in the sun, basking in its adoring warmth, and you loved every inch about it.
And still, there was this other side to him you rarely saw. This cocky asshole who hid beneath the soft smiles and careful hands, making his appearance only through sly smirks and a tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. He was a braggart, a man who knew his greatness yielded for no one and wanted that fact shoved down everyone’s faces. This Jungkook, this other side that never saw the light of day, was like the Hyde to his Jekyll. An unexpected, almost mean side to him that only dared make his appearance when his exhilaration was at an all-time high. Like when he was fucking you into another dimension, or kicking your ass in Mario Kart, or like now, when he was receiving an award at an annual tech ceremony.
On the eve of your one year anniversary, Jungkook’s company invites him to an awards ceremony for other web and app developers like him. It’s a grand event, filled with all the biggest nerds in the developing industry here to present the baby nerds with awards. Jungkook lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, both a seasoned player and a rookie all at once. He spends the night tolling you around in a floor-length gown and fangirling over all the “legends” in the room.
You know next to none of these people and none of their accomplishments but still pretend you respect them to hell and back. By the end of the main dinner, you’re sympathizing with Barbie’s ever-smiling features because your cheeks feel sore.
Towards the end of the night, Jungkook wins that random award— okay, who were you fooling? He wins the Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award, recognizing him for all the hard work you’ve seen him put in this past year. It’s probably the highest recognition he can receive at this point in his career. It was an esteemed award that was bestowed upon only the most innovative developer of the year among tech companies, something Jungkook had briefly mentioned he always wanted. It’s basically the equivalent of placing first place in his field, but given Jungkook’s competitive industry and his young age, you think it’s like telling all these old Facebook lords to suck his big fat cock. (But that was your job when you got home.)
He gives a short little thank you speech, promising to work hard and own up to this title. The people around you are swooning, obviously endeared with his soft puppy dog features and melodic voice. They don’t know him like you do, don’t know that uppity twist to his grin like you do. It doesn’t slip off his face even when he steps down off the stage, arms wide open as he comes barreling towards you. Even with you in his arms, the congratulations that are thrown from every direction ring loudly in his ears and swell that ego of his.
The night goes like that for the most part, Jungkook’s acquaintances approaching him every few minutes to rain down their praises. He goes a little crazy at the open bar after a while, shoving the gold trophy into your arms as his beloved work seniors whisk him off for drinks. You don’t mind because you resigned yourself to a night of playing Jungkook’s perfectly perfect partner anyway, watching him politely mingling with his coworkers. Despite his earlier success, you know he won’t brag about it verbally. No, he’ll wait until the two of you get home—your place or his—and remind you how amazing he is with a quick snap of his hips.
As you said, he’ll never boast aloud.
However, that doesn’t mean you won’t.
“That’s my boyfriend,” you explain to the seventh person that greets you that night, excitedly pointing to where said boyfriend was slowly losing all sense of self by the bar. You don’t know anyone here beside Jungkook, and you’re pretty sure no one in their hammered minds is going to remember who you are anyway, so a little gloating never hurt anyone. “He won the ‘I’m Better Than Everyone Else’ award tonight,” you emphasize to the tipsy woman beside you who only laughs at your exaggeration. You assume she’s like you, accompanying one of the many developers here, because as soon as you finish boasting about Jungkook she moves to brag about someone too.
Truth be told, you spend the whole night re-analyzing the Zootopia movie you saw on Disney+ the other night in your head. So if the little fox fellow didn’t control himself would the city have fallen to ruins? Why was the useless sheep girl so evil and bitter? Why was there an unreal amount of romantic tension between the fox and the rabbit? Whatever, you’ll have to rewatch it some other night, and with your new Disney+ account, you could watch it anywhere you wanted to.
Now, you had never bothered to purchase a Disney+ subscription or even tried to swindle Jungkook for his password before. As far as you know, Disney+ was filled with old tv shows from your childhood, sitcoms that made you laugh when you were ten. There’s nothing wrong with that, but personally, you were a firm believer that that which was perfect should not be touched once finished; in other words, you were utterly terrified you’d rewatch an old episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, only to find out the same joke you’ve been regurgitating for the past ten years doesn’t actually go that way.
However, the harsh reality was that Disney+ was good for a few things. Ugh, you hate when giant corporations provide decent services. Aside from Zootopia, you’ve watched about every animated media on there as well, all of which you replay in your mind as Jungkook has the time of his life with these nerds, knocking back champagne glass after champagne glass.
Anyway, the night ends a little past midnight, and Jungkook who is buzzed on alcohol and high on exhilaration ends up calling an Uber for the two of you. Your apartment— the new one he had not only helped you hunt for but also helped you move into, greatly cutting the cost of movers out with those glistening biceps and thick thighs —is still going through her rebellious phase where the potted plants are trying to take over, courtesy of Kim Namjoon. So for now, there’s a potted plant in an awkward corner that both of you stub your toe against on your way to your bedroom.
You’re thinking Jungkook is going to go to town tonight, given the fact he’s on Cloud 9 and has had his ego stroked by a bunch of dudes for the past couple hours. Maybe you guys can try out the hot role-playing scenario you saw on GirlsWay a few weeks ago, or the handcuffs you impulsively bought from Amazon one Monday night. Or maybe, and this one really makes you flutter, he’ll let you fully take the reins for once.
All those lewd fantasies end up being for naught because just as you shimmy out of your gown (with the help of his hands, of course) and turn to climb him like a tree, he’s on the other side of the room getting your makeup remover out for you. And also talking. A lot. And way more than usual.
“Did you see him, babe?” he sighs, dare you to say, dreamily, handing you the cotton pads as he begins pulling a million pins out of your hair. Slowly and with a lot of confusion, you pull your fake lashes off and begin cleaning your face. “He was amazing.”
“Uh-huh,” you say, having absolutely no idea who ‘he’ is or why Jungkook is so in love with him and not you at this very moment. “But so were you,” you add. Perfect. Stroke his ego and then stroke his cock.
Jungkook sputters at your praise. He’s carefully placing your hairpins on your thigh, cheeks flaming red every time he leans over you. “Was I?” he murmurs, voice sweet in that cute little way it always gets when he’s downed one too many shots of whiskey, enough to be buzzed but not enough to be wasted.
You turn and the pins clatter to the floor and across the bedsheets. “Yes,” you confirm, ignoring his sad huff at the mess you’ve made. Instead, you grab him by the collar of that pink button-up he taunted you with all night. “You were fucking incredible and I think incredible men deserve to have their dick sucked.”
Jungkook laughs at your vulgar statement, holding you gently by the hips as you climb into his lap. “Is that so?” The soft, shy persona is gone now, replaced by the gentle stirring beneath his dress pants. You nod hurriedly, plopping down on his lap and running your hands through his styled hair.
“Yes,” you confirm, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Luckily for you, I know this nymphomaniac who would gladly gobble up your cock at your every command.”
He snorts just as you push him into his back, nose adorably scrunched up. “First of all, you know I hate that word,” he chuckles, finally gracing you with a sweet peck that only makes you want him to fuck you into the fifth dimension. “Secondly, please don’t ever say you’ll gobble my cock up ever again.”
Something inside of you squeals with excitement as he rolls the two of you over, firm body pressing down on yours. “Oh, baby,” you groan, lazily throwing a leg over his hip. Jungkook grins and then decides to entertain you for a few minutes with a sloppy kiss.
You say a few minutes because just as things are heating up, he pulls away. He smiles apologetically. “As much as I’d love to be here with you, I actually have an early morning tomorrow.”
You frown at the sudden change in events. “Huh? They’re gonna make you work the morning after a Gatsby party?” you gasp, sitting up as he gets off of you. With every step he takes away from the bed your heart breaks a little more. “They can’t do that— that’s illegal!”
From the doorway he levels you with a comically raised brow. “No, it’s not.”
You scamper after him down the hall, watch the muscles in his back flex as he pulls his suit jacket on. “You can’t work on our anniversary— that’s illegal!” you offer instead.
He stops at your front door, feet squeezed back into his shoes. “Baby, it’s not,” he rolls his eyes, leaning down to peck your forehead. “It was either I work in the morning or work at night,” he explains, giving your messy hair a soothing caress. He’s looking at you with those eyes, the ones that make your heart lodge itself into your throat and make life a tightrope experience. There’s a devastatingly lovesick part of you that wants this moment, this kind face, to be engraved into your mind for the rest of your life. You want this to be the first and last thought you have and nothing else: just Jungkook’s adoring gaze on you for the rest of time.
The moment ends too soon when he flutters one last peck against your lips. “I���ll be done in the afternoon, okay?”
You pout. “Okay, your place?” you huff, making sure to get one last octopus squeeze around his waist. He nods. “Promise you won’t be late?”
The corners of his gaze soften. “You know I won’t,” he smiles, leaning down to bump your noses together playfully. “Can’t stay away from my pretty girl too long. Besides, I have a gift for you tomorrow.”
It’s with that sentiment and a hammering heart that you let him go. With Jungkook gone, there’s really nothing for you to do now. You took the next two days off in preparation for your anniversary sex, so you don’t have to head to sleep early like usual.
With nothing else planned, you decide on rewatching that Zootopia movie that had plagued you all night, ready to dissect every plot hole to hell and back. You don’t think Jungkook’s seen this movie yet so you add it to your long list of animated movies you’re forcing him to watch.
Part of you is actually really surprised Jungkook left. Well, kinda sorta, very, but not really. Jungkook was a good boy, that much was obvious. He took his job seriously, and if his job wanted him to come in at the asscrack of dawn, then he’d come in before the sun even rose. He was a goody-two-shoes, but even so, you were occasionally able to bring out that darker side in him.
Jungkook working, like actually working in an office setting, was pretty rare though. The dude had a chill job that let him stay home most of the time, and essentially clock in whenever he wanted. Every now and then you were able to convince him to stay, tucking him beneath your body or the covers, depending on the night, and refusing to let him go the morning after.
Once he had eaten you out until the wee hours of the day, ravenous between your thighs, and then went to work the next morning like he hadn’t broken you. Another time you had persuaded him into watching every season of the 2017 DuckTales reboot through the night. When the alarm had rung in the middle of the season finale, he had simply gotten into your shower and gone off to work.
So maybe you were a little confident in your skills, and Jungkook slipping between your fingers tonight was a huge bummer. But there was no use crying over spilled milk, you tell yourself, flinging your bra off somewhere in the corner as you snuggle back into your sheets. You’re ready to tear this Zootopia movie apart, scene by scene.
Even though your apartment is a little cold, you’re comforted by the fact Jungkook will be here to keep you warm all day tomorrow.
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All men do is lie.
Despite his promise to come home early the next day, Jungkook ends up lying. The meeting he had been in all morning— the same one that had stopped you from getting bent like a pretzel the night before —drags on well past noon. Then, Kim Namjoon, AKA Jungkook’s favorite senpai in the entire world, catches wind of Jungkook’s success last night and absolutely has to take him out to lunch to celebrate.
You scoff, glaring down at your phone and the impulsive messages you’d sent out an hour ago when Jungkook had first texted you telling you he would be late.
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You whirl around to stomp off in the direction of his living room, where all of yours and Jungkook’s favorite foods were growing colder by the minute. You had spent the longest time carefully laying them out, making sure the fried chicken was closer than the pizza but not closer than the breadsticks. Truthfully it’s a nightmare. There are about eight stomach aches worth of food sitting on his coffee table, the greasy stench makes you gag and will certainly stick to your hair for weeks, but none of that mattered because it was all for your beau.
Your very late beau who was making you grow more and more agitated with each minute that passed. Ugh! How inconsiderate of him to test your patience on a day like this. You didn’t want to be upset with him, but this was your first, real milestone as a couple with him. You had wanted to spend the whole day cuddled up, maybe finally tell him how much he really meant to you— definitely not waking up alone with eyeliner crusted eyes and an aching heart.
Deciding you’re being a little too dramatic, you head into the bedroom to calm down. This was fine, you tell yourself, carefully laying out the damn near harlotrous lingerie you had yet to put on. Jungkook would come over soon and everything would be A-okay.
Except for the part it’s actually F-not okay because soon it’s nearing sunset and the food has gone cold so you’ve stocked it into the fridge, and the pretty sheer bra has a wonky wire that’s two seconds away from piercing through your heart, but that doesn’t even matter because Jungkook being late for your all-day anniversary celebration has already ripped it to shreds anyway.  
You plop down on the couch in defeat, impulsively opening up the Disney+ app to cry through another episode of Phineas and Ferb. You’ve abandoned the satin robe that came with the lingerie in favor of donning a big t-shirt that smells like him and makes your heart hurt even more. The setting sun paints the living room in muted oranges, the chirping of birds outside the soundtrack to your lonely day.
You end up watching some other cartoon on Disney+, avoiding the Marvel section because you had promised Jungkook he could be there when you lost your Marvel virginity. Well, at least one of you was good at keeping promises, you think bitterly. For a second, you think about randomly watching one of the infamous MCU films out of order just to spite him. But then you think of that soft puppy gaze and how disappointed he’d be in you.
Whatever! It wouldn’t ever match up to the way you felt now.
Anyway, you circle back. When you’re five episodes into Phineas and Ferb you hear the doorknob rattle.
You sit up just as the door swings open, visible from your spot on the couch. He meets your gaze almost immediately, big doe eyes caught in the act. What act? You’re not really sure. In fact, you don’t even know what you’re looking at when he walks in because he’s drowning in shopping bags. His lips twist into a grin. “Honey, I’m home,” he says playfully.
You don’t laugh.
Jungkook frowns, dumping all his bags down at the entrance before waddling over towards you. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, coming to stand before you and cupping your face in his hands. He’s towering over you, so tall and gorgeous but for the first time, you’re not dazed by his beauty.
“Kook, you said you’d be back hours ago,” you say slowly, avoiding his gaze. You try to keep the frustration out of your voice, but you’ve had hours to dwell on it now, and those annoying cartoon characters, though charming at first, had only served to multiply your annoyance.  
Jungkook blinks, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I mean… yeah. But I got you presents?” he beams, glancing back at the mountainous pile he made by the door. You look over too. There are some luxury bags squeezed in between other shops you like, the occasional jewelers' logo on the side.
You stand with a sigh, sauntering off into the kitchen with him on your tail. “I don’t want presents,” you mumble, reaching to pour yourself a glass of water. You’re briefly aware of how childish you must seem. Jungkook hovers behind you.
“What? Yes, you do,” he says. “You had an entire wishlist on my Amazon of things you wanted.” It’s his turn to level you with an unreadable expression, slowly crossing his arms over his chest.
Your frown only deepens as you turn to match his stance against the counter. While it may be true that you did indeed have an entire list of impulsive items on his Amazon, that didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them all. Sometimes you just wanted to stare longingly at a pair of satin gloves without actually buying them. You don’t know how to explain this much to him. “They’re not…” you stop with another deep breath. “Forget it. Thank you for the presents.”
Now it’s Jungkook’s turn to question you. “What,” he says in an unimpressed tone, padding over to you before you can escape back into the living room to watch the entire princess movie collection on Disney+. “No, tell me what’s wrong.”
For some reason, that’s exactly what you don’t want to hear. “Jungkook,” you say flatly, narrowing your eyes at him. “You come home six hours after you said you would without telling me why, and normally I wouldn’t care, but today was supposed to be a special day for us.”
Jungkook reels at your bluntness. “Babe, I was out getting stuff for you. I know it’s our anniversary— that’s why I wanted to treat you,” he responds, oddly condescendingly like you’re a child who doesn’t understand what exactly he was doing.
You brush his hands away from your shoulders. “Yeah,” you huff. “Now I know that. But I spent all day waiting for you,” you stress, chest puffing as you grow more and more agitated by his inability to understand you. God, can he let you go now? At least a bunch of animated, geometrically drawn cartoons won’t question you like this and make you feel as childish as he was.
When he doesn’t say anything else you stomp back into the living room, snatching up your phone from its forgotten spot against the couch. “I’m going to bed.”
At that Jungkook seems to kickstart back to life. “What? ___, it’s barely six,” he says as he follows after you into your bedroom. You ignore him, shuffling beneath the covers. In all actuality, you’re going to bed to mope and watch more animated family shows, maybe cry under the guise of the plot just being so sad. Jungkook sits beside you just as you click back on to finish off your episode. “Baby, I don’t get it,” he sighs. “You’re always talking about how much you want this or that, and I go out and get you it all but now you’re mad?”
You bite down on your lip, eyes lasered in on the pictures moving before you. “Jungkook, just forget it.”
“No,” he says, more sternly than he’s ever been with you before. “If there��s a problem, tell me.” There’s a heavy pause, and then he says, “don’t make me waste my time guessing what’s wrong, okay?” 
“Waste your time?” you scoff, sitting up with pinched brows that you find match his. “I’m not trying to waste anyone’s time— in fact, that’s hot coming from you, Jungkook.”
He rolls his eyes. “What are you even saying? You’re mad because I took a little long getting presents, for you, might I add,” he huffs, plopping down on the edge of the mattress beside your knee. “You’re always saying you want this and that, but you can’t handle me going out to get those things? Do you hear how weird you sound?”
You whip the covers off of you. “Me talking about things doesn’t always mean I want them,” you defend.
Jungkook snorts. “Yes, it does,” he says. “Anytime you ramble about stuff for minutes like a little kid it’s because you want me to buy it for you.”
You blink. “Like a little kid?” you repeat, stunned by his comparison. Granted, you always knew you were the more childish of the two, but you never thought that would equate Jungkook thinking of you as a child. Something red and nasty flares in your chest. “Well sorry,” you spit, crossing your arms over your chest defensively, “sorry we all can’t be perfectly mature golden boys who would never see the light of day if I constantly wasn’t dragging them out.” You know it’s a somewhat low blow, especially because Jungkook’s told you before how his introverted tendencies were a sensitive issue growing up, but you can’t help it.
Jungkook groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Baby, don’t do this now,” he warns, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Stop acting like this.”
“Like how?” you spit, “like a kid?” Jungkook says nothing, leveling you with a blank stare from the corner of his eye. You roll your eyes, phone falling off your lap. Another episode of Phineas and Ferb had started, the corny opening tune filling the space between the two of you. “At least now I know what you think of me,” you mutter over the guitar riff.
“Oh my god,” Jungkook blurts, sitting up wildly. “Of course I’m gonna think of you as a stupid little kid, look at you,” he seethes, gesturing at the phone beside you. You flinch. “All you do is watch kids shows and whine whenever I wanna watch anything normal adults watch. You complain every single day about the most normal things, like your job? Why should I fucking care that you’re working a dead-end office job in a field you didn’t even study for— that’s not my problem, __!” he snaps, eyes narrowed into little slits. “I just won an award last night,” he says suddenly, voice back to its regular volume. “I’m at the height of my career and I’m only going up, but I can’t even enjoy that because I have to come home and cater to you,” he finishes, a loud scoff punctuating the final word.
You had never imagined Jungkook finally bragging about himself would be at your expense.
A beat of silence passes, the angry glint in his eyes quickly fading away the longer you don’t say anything. You sniff once, turning your head idly to the side where Phineas and Ferb is still blaring loudly from your phone speaker. Picking up the device, you throw it across the room where it hits his closet door with a terrifying bang the breaks the silence.
The sound snaps Jungkook out of whatever shock he’d been in. “Baby…” he says slowly, carefully, like you’re a caged animal that’s just escaped the zoo.
“I’m going home,” you say, also a little too calmly. You saunter over towards his closet where your shattered phone screen glares up at you as you yank a pair of sweats off a hanger. Jungkook is still frozen on the edge of the bed, watching you with wide eyes as you move about the room.
It’s when you’re in the hallway leading downstairs that Jungkook finally snaps out of his daze, scampering behind you as you descend the stairs. “Baby,” he rushes out, loudly bounding down after you, “___, wait,” he gasps, catching you by the kitchen counter collecting your keys. “I-I didn't mean that,” he rushes out, eyes wide and frantic as they flicker over your expression. “I don’t think that—I don’t, baby, please, just… let me explain, please.”
“Jungkook, let go of me,” you respond, shaking your wrist in an attempt to release yourself. He’s not even holding you tightly— he never would—but the sound of your heart pounding in your ears makes your movements jerky and erratic. “I wanna go home.”
“No,” he chokes, cornering you against the counter. “No, baby, please just listen to me, I-I—“
“You what, Jungkook?” you snap, placing a hand on his chest and forcefully pushing him away. He lets you, stepping back with a wobbly bottom lip. “You need to tell me how you’re too good for me? How much I hold you down because I wasn’t lucky enough to get a job like yours straight out of college?” He says nothing, swallowing roughly as you jab a finger into his chest. “Well let me tell you something,” you snarl, chest heaving, “I may be childish and a huge complainer, but I’m not stupid enough to let someone walk all over me like this.”
With that, you make your great escape. Truthfully, you don’t want him to see the tears in your eyes as you yank his door open, stomping down his steps and in the direction of the nearest bus stop. The door opens right after you tug it shut, painting your shadow across the sidewalk. There’s the scrambled sound of house slippers against the concrete that follows you down. “Go the fuck back inside,” you snap without missing a beat.
Sensing your obvious anger, he pauses before he can reach you. “Text me when you get home?” he calls out quietly.
“No,” you respond.
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You would never admit to anyone that you spend the entire night eating a tub of mint chocolate ice cream. It’s disgusting and makes you gag, but it’s the only one you have in your apartment. And of course, it was brought over by none other than Jeon Jungkook himself a few days ago. Even when you’re trying to comfort yourself over how mean he was, on your anniversary night no less, you’re plagued by thoughts of him everywhere.
As much as you want to brush his words off, put on that cool girl exterior you’ve maintained since high school, there’s something different about this situation. You guess it’s impossible to brush off such hateful words when they come from someone you love and adore so much.
Were you too childish? You had always believed that side of you was what made your relationship with Jungkook so perfect. The two of you meshed well because of your differences, like yin and yang. So how had he been able to so easily deconstruct every inch of that balance in a matter of a few seconds? Was this perfect reality all in your head this whole time?
You want to tell yourself it was just a heat of the moment outburst from Jungkook, give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s never snapped at you like this before. Of course you’ve fought a couple of times in the past year, but neither of you had ever stooped as low as you did yesterday. Furthermore, the insecure part of your brain says he obviously felt this somewhere in his heart to bring it up at all. What he had said to you wasn’t something someone could make up on the spot.
You don’t text him when you get home, partly to spite him, but mainly because you had left your phone at his place anyway. You know he tried calling you last night because the call log is synced up to your laptop. He called on and off for about thirty minutes before he probably found your phone in his room. Whatever, he can mope in his regret for all you care
—is what you wanna say, but the longer he goes without showing himself to you the more your insecurities and hurt fester. Was this it? Was this the end of what was probably the best year of your life? It’s too painful to think about, to even consider the possibility that Jungkook might have gained a new insight last night and decided, hey, maybe this is for the best after all.
You drown yourself in an ungodly amount of sugar for breakfast, your laptop blaring yet another episode of Phineas and Ferb on the dining table. Muscle memory has you making Jungkook’s favorite pancakes before you can stop yourself, and by the time you do realize, you’ve resigned yourself to the blueberry smell anyway.
There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb.
It’s not.
It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. You open the door with a fright, jumping back when he slumps forward and almost crashes face-first into the floor. “You didn’t call,” Jungkook cries, leaning a little too much of his weight onto you when you reach out to steady him.
The thundering of your heart slows upon registering it’s him. “Kook?” you frown, nose pinched at the ungodly stench of alcohol wafting off his clothes. “Have you been drinking?” you ask even though the answer is staring you right in the face (and in the nose).
He groans, staggering deeper into your arms. You blindly push the door shut behind him, resigning yourself to this new situation while your pancakes grow cold in the other room. “Baaaby,” he slurs, letting you guide him into the living space. He’s unceremoniously dumped onto the couch, half-opened eyes gazing up at you. “Let me,” a hiccup, “explain.”
You won’t lie. There’s a very obvious sense of discomfort sitting in your chest, torn between two paths that you don’t wish to choose between. His skin is warm and flushed like he’s just walked all the way here in this morning sun. You step over to the window that faces down onto the street below. There’s no sign of his car; you would have killed him if he ever tried to drive in this state.
“Did you walk here?” you ask instead, deciding there’s no need for one singular path, not when you can walk straight down the middle, both cleaning him and grilling him at the same time.
Jungkook’s response is delayed, head lolling from side to side as you help him out of his sweater. His skin is sweaty beneath, scorching to the touch. “Uh-huh,” he groans. Jesus, you sort of assumed but him confirming it really set things into perspective.
By no means did you and Jungkook live on opposite ends of the earth. On a good day, a drive from your place to his took about ten minutes. But walking? Easily an hour. Had he walked all the way from his place, drunk on top of that?
You brush his hair away from his face, his eyes fluttering shut at your touch. His lips are pouty yet chapped, dehydrated from the sun and the alcohol he reeks of. “Sit up for me,” you instruct, scampering off to your room for chapstick and water.
“Anything for you,” Jungkook wheezes, throat probably dryer than a desert. When you return, he’s two seconds from face planting into the coffee table and breaking that pretty face of his. You catch him with a hand on his shoulder, keeping him balanced. “Tell me what to do,” he chokes out, voice hoarse.
“Just need you to drink some water,” you say, pressing a cup against his lips. He drinks it, but a drop still dribbles down his chin.
“No,” he groans, catching your wrist in his hand when you reach up to apply some chapstick on him. “Tell me what to do,” he stresses, “to fix this. Fix us.”
His words make you pause, the tube of chapstick hovering over his plush lips. “You don’t have to do anything,” you respond quietly, trying to finish the application so you can pull away.
Jungkook doesn’t let you go. You try to look away, but there’s something about him that looks off. Maybe it’s the raw skin under his eyes, red and swollen. Or the sad droop to those same eyes that hold you captive. Or maybe it’s the subtle tremble in his hands, the fingers that hold tightly to your wrist, not to keep you there but to ground himself. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he rasps out, shakily bringing your hand to his mouth, where he presses one airy kiss to your knuckles. “Tell me ho-how to fix this and I’ll do it,” he pleads, a vulnerable look in his eyes.
Unable to withstand the sheer amount of agony on his expression, you look away. “___, please,” he chokes out, stumbling off the couch in his drunk and desperate haze until he’s kneeling in front of you. “I can’t… I can’t,” he sniffles, tears clouding those pretty eyes you’ve come to love so much. “I don’t know who I am without you.”
You clench your jaw. “You’re Jeon Jungkook,” you murmur, slipping your hand out of his hold to run through his hair. It’s knotted and a little too greasy, two things Jungkook would usually never allow. “This year’s Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award recipient,” you remind him, trailing your thumb across his cheekbone when he turns to look up at you with those big Bambi eyes. “Sweet and shy, but you love being rowdy with your friends. You love movies and TV and organizing your shirts according to fabric type. You work harder than anyone I know and never complain. You date me, even though I’m a huge child,” you smile sadly.
“No!” he jumps, turning that frantic stare back into you. “Y-You’re not— it’s not,” he stammers, words still slurring together. “I’m a liar,” he cries, resting his forehead on your knees. His shoulders shake. “I don’t deserve you,” he weeps quietly. You place a hand on his shoulder. “Y-Y-You make my life so much better, ___, so colorful and fun. I-I wish I knew you in high school,” he admits, “maybe I wouldn’t have been so emotionally constipated now.”
“You’re not,” you reassure him softly.
He disagrees. “You bring out the best,” he hiccups, “the best in me.” Your heart skips in your chest. “I-I love you, you know that?”
You sputter, eyes wide at his sudden confession. “I… love you so much, y’know? I think about you ev-every night, ___,” he rambles, eyes dreamily gazing off into some miscellaneous spot on the wall behind you. “I can’t get you out of my head. Like you're a song, o-on repeat but it’s not annoying because it’s my favorite song, and I could listen to it for the rest of my life, y’know? My favorite song, I know all the words b-because it’s all I think about! I love... My love… I love you so much.”
“Kook,” you rush out, cheeks flaming as you try to pull him away from where he’s slumped over your legs. His passionate speech has you abuzz, body tingling everywhere until you feel overwhelmed, head spinning like you’re on a rollercoaster. “Let’s get you to bed.”
He nods sleepily, seemingly coming down from whatever alcohol induced rampage has allowed him to walk for an hour straight in this searing heat just to confess to you. “Y-You don’t have to say it back,” he continues to stutter as you guide him through the living room on wobbly legs. “I just-I just— can I?” he babbles. “Can I love you, ___?”
You pass through the kitchen space, where whatever you were watching on Disney+ is blaring loudly. It distracts Jungkook for about two seconds before his attention returns to you. When you don’t answer, he presses on. “Is that okay?” he asks, whirling around to face you, catching your shoulders in his hands. He towers over you by the entrance to your bedroom, dark curls tickling your forehead. His eyes are dark and glazed over, both in tears and an emotion so raw and unfiltered it squeezes around your chest until you can’t breathe. “Is it okay for me to love you?” he murmurs softly, knocking his nose against yours.
Your cheeks blaze. “Yes, th-that’s fine, Kook,” you blubber, placing a hand over his chest, where his heart is also hammering away. “Just need you to go rest now, okay?”
He nods sleepily, nudging your nose with his one last time, like a soft almost-kiss, before letting you push him into the room. “Yes, yes,” he breathes, his body finally crashing from his adrenaline spike. He flops down onto the bed unceremoniously, dark waves fanning across your pillows. You try to wiggle him out of his shirt, but it only gets about halfway up his chest before he blindly reaches for the covers. His legs stick out awkwardly, clad in the sweatpants you’ve come to associate with him.
When he’s all swaddled up in your blanket he finally goes limp, tiny snores leaving his lips as he dozes away from reality. You sigh, pressing a palm to his forehead. He’s still warm and clammy, but at this point, there’s nothing you can do but wait for him to sober up.
With a final kiss to his forehead, you leave the room, closing the door behind you before sliding against the wooden surface. There’s a trapped bird in your chest, wildly flapping its wings in an effort to get out, and it’s all stupid Jungkook’s fault in the next room. Stupid Jungkook who demolished and remodeled your heart all in less than twenty-four hours. It doesn’t calm down, even when you rush off into the kitchen for a glass of water, or when you try to immerse yourself in some other show on Disney+. It stays beating against your ribs and your chest until you’re forcing yourself to sit down on the couch and process.
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He wakes up a little before dinner. You hear him from the living room, where you’re flicking through the options on Disney+ for the nth time that day. You’ve seen the first fifteen minutes of about twenty different series and movies by now, always growing antsy and abandoning them early on. The only reason you know he’s awake is because the shower turns on for a few minutes, and then his bare feet are heard padding across the hallway back into your room.
By the time he resurfaces in the living room, you’ve resigned yourself to just more Phineas and Ferb, nonchalantly watching the silly cartoon. (Except you’re anything but nonchalant, and your heartbeat rings in your ears.)
Jungkook hovers by the door, clad in a pair of shorts he’s left here before, and a t-shirt you stole from him. “Hey,” he says quietly, lingering by the doorframe. You nod back in response. “Can I watch with you?” Again, another nod.  
Slinking over to the couch, he’s rather careful as he sits down, leaving a few inches of space between the two of you. You don’t even think he can see the screen of your laptop until he murmurs, “he’s my favorite character,” when Perry the Platypus appears on the screen.
You hum. “Thought you didn’t like these kids shows?” you ask. You don’t mean it to sound as petty and backhanded as it comes out, but that’s really no one's fault but his own.
Jungkook’s breathing tightens beside you. “No,” he admits, “I don’t. Only watch them because I know you like them.” You contemplate pausing the episode and engaging in a real conversation with him, but at this point, you’re very tired from the events of the last day. Jungkook doesn’t press either, just shuffles more comfortably beside you.
You get about five minutes in, quiet chuckles shared between the two of you, before he strikes. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, so hushed you almost don’t hear it. His hand is resting in the space between you, pinky brushing against yours. “About… being late. And the presents.”
You inspire slowly. “That wasn't even the problem, silly,” you brush off. From your peripheral, you see Jungkook’s slow nod. “I didn’t want any presents,” you mention, “I just wanted you.” You look away from the screen immediately after, pretending like the spot on the ceiling is actually really interesting.
The two of you fall into silence, the animated characters on your screen rapidly chattering away. “Oh,” Jungkook says after a moment.
You roll your eyes. They’re moist but you don’t want him to see. “Yeah, oh,” you parrot back softly, relaxing into the couch again. “Did you eat the food I left out?”
Jungkook shuffles beside you, the soft lull of the speakers soon being cut as he reaches over to pause Phineas and Ferb. A couple of seconds pass and then he’s leaning into you, head resting on your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, placing a palm over the hand he had been teasing for the past few minutes. “I thought I knew what I was doing but I was wrong.”
His voice is so soft and sincere, it makes your chest ache. You try to burrow your face against your opposite shoulder, try to hide the stray tear that escapes out of the corner of your eye. “It’s fine,” you brush off, voice choked off and hoarse.
Jungkook leans up, pecks your cheek so tenderly it makes you go mushy. “No, it’s not fine. I acted like a know-it-all and said something way out of line,” he murmurs, raising his head to look at you. His hand feels warm over yours. It’s the touch you craved all day and yesterday, the warm feel of his body against yours. You’re embarrassed at how easily you melt into it. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long time,” he tells you, holding your hand close to his chest. “I had no right to say those things to you.”
You sniffle, resting your head against his shoulder now. His heart beats loud enough for you to hear. “Was it true?” you mumble. “Do you really think of me like that?”
He shakes his head, his soft breaths fanning across your forehead. “No, never,” he answers. “I think you’re incredible. My brain was just trying to justify my dumb anger.”
You nod, even if you don’t believe it just yet. But that was a conversation for later, you suppose, sometime in the future when you aren’t on the verge of tears and threatening to crumble apart at the simplest word that leaves his mouth.
“I should have come home like you wanted, thought about my words before saying them,” he says, snuggling closer to you. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” you sniffle, covering your face with your free hand as he presses a kiss to the vein that runs over the back of the hand he’s holding captive. “Now it just sounds like I'm just being inconsiderate of your gifts and a crybaby.”
Jungkook kisses your temple softly, gently. “Don’t think about the gifts,” he says. “Just tell me what you wanted to do, doll.”
His voice calms you, has you like putty in his arms. “Watch movies,” you mumble, toying with a thread on your couch cushion. “Be with you.”
He hums. “Then we’ll do that,” he says, reaching for your laptop again. The screen nearly blinds you when it flickers back to life before you, Jungkook’s low breaths against your ear making it near impossible for you to process the titles on the screen. “You liked Disney+?”
Belatedly, you nod. “I like the animated movies,” you admit quietly, the anxieties of before slowly melting away, even more so when he slides his arm around you, pulling you close against his chest.
Unlike other times where he’ll critique the hell out of such childish films, Jungkook says nothing as he starts up the Zootopia movie instead, the same one you had wanted to show him before, right from the beginning. “That bunny looks like you,” you murmur when Judy Hopps first appears on the screen.
Jungkook snorts. “You say that about every cartoon bunny.”
You turn your head to glance at him over your shoulder. He meets your gaze with a small smile you return. “It’s because you’re so cute,” you say softly, lips twisting playfully when his cheeks grow scarlet.
He knocks his forehead against yours, eyes fluttering shut. “Not cute, just lucky,” he chuckles. “Lucky enough to have you.” Your heart turns over in your chest, threatening to burst out of your rib cage at his words. You try to turn in his arms. Before you can say the words that have been sitting on the tip of your tongue for months now, he’s beating you to it once again. “I love you,” he confesses in a hushed whisper, no alcoholic influence. 
Something inside of you blossoms, eyes wide as he chastely kisses you. He pulls away without you ever reacting, too caught up in surprise to kiss him back properly. He stays close, curls tickling your forehead as he leans over you. “You don’t have to say it back, I just wanted you to know. I love you,” he says again, long lashes blinking down at you. “So much. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager again, going to the mall to buy a gift for my crush.” He laughs sheepishly, reaching down to tangle your fingers together. “Is that okay?” he asks quietly, pressing a kiss to your knuckles.
It mirrors the confession he’d given you that morning, those slurred words and teary eyes. It had been difficult to pinpoint the legitimacy of it before, the meaning scrambled by his hazy mind. But with him staring at you like this now, like you single-handedly plucked the stars from the sky to put them in those sparkly eyes of his, it makes something inside you ache.
Still, you choke on your own spit. “I-Is it okay for you to love me?” you sputter incredulously, realizing the oddity of the same question he’d thrown at you earlier. But now, you’re both sober and you can really tear apart that sentence. Jungkook nods a little too seriously for your liking. “Are you crazy?” He blinks in confusion, brows pulling together as you slowly but surely lose the last bits of your sanity. “You’re an idiot, Jeon Jungkook,” you huff, “a stupidly handsome, rich, walking dream, idiot who goes out with stupid girls like me.”
“Not stupid,” he murmurs, closing in on you again as he finally understands the truth behind your masked insults. He smells minty and like his favorite body wash of yours.
“No,” you deny. “You’re actually, like, insane. You have a bachelor pad, make enough money to sustain an entire litter of kittens, look and talk like every teenage girl’s dream boyfriend— but you mess it all up by dating evil, conniving hoes like me who lose their shit over Disney cartoons.” He says nothing, watching you with an amused grin as you talk over yourself, basically regurgitating his statement from yesterday except it kinda seems plausible now that you’re over it. “It’s stupid. No, you’re stupid. No— I’m stupid.”
Jungkook chuckles, kissing the corner of your mouth gently. “Done?” he says, a dimple appearing on his cheek. You could kiss it away, but you need him to know the amount of stupidity in this room was astronomically high. “You’re not stupid, baby,” he says. You level him with a look. “Well. You have your moments.”
“Moments?” you repeat, standing up in a hurry that has him flopping down beside you. Your laptop is lost somewhere on the cushions, the voices faded as they grow farther away. “I am so stupid. I called Namjoon a whore for taking you out for lunch!” you cry. “I am the stupidest person in the world.”
Jungkook cackles, standing up beside you. “Yes, yes, you’re my stupid girl,” he teases, tapping the pout on your lips playfully. “So stupid she slanders herself instead of just telling me she loves me too.” He bumps your noses together, dark eyes staring at you almost daringly after his claim.
You fold soon enough. “I love you,” you mumble, “even if I’m too stupid to say it.”
He rewards your confession with a kiss, pulling you into his arms soon after. He sighs, almost wistfully. “Whatever shall I do with my very stupid girl?”
After exactly three minutes of feeling safe and loved in his arms, he abandons the living room in favor of leading you back to your room, where he pushes you down against your mattress. You cling to him, leaving him positioned over you at an angle. His chest presses against yours, arm curled around the back of your head. “Gotta get up, baby,” he laughs.
You shake your head, caging him in your arms. “Nuh-uh,” you murmur, legs wiggling when he places a hand on your hip.
Jungkook chuckles, pressing a kiss against the side of your ear. “Your movie is still playing in the other room,” he reminds you, thumb drawing soothing circles on your hip. You don’t release him, his mindless touch only encouraging you to keep him close. “Babe?”
You say nothing, relishing in the comfort of Jungkook’s presence. His hair smells good and feels even softer against the side of your face. The cotton shirt he found is crumpled beneath your fists, dark blue pattern wrinkling. Finally coming to terms with his new home, Jungkook eventually relaxes into your hold with a sigh.
“Alright,” he hums, patting your hip as he repositions himself more comfortably. “I get it. My pretty girl must’ve missed me, huh?” You nod, soaking in every detail about him in this moment. Jungkook shifts, the hand on your hip suddenly falling over your thigh instead. “Or should I say my stupid girl?” he purrs, hand slipping between your thighs. “My stupid, little girl?”
A gasp catches in your throat when he runs his fingers over the front of your panties. Your legs kick out wildly at the sudden touch, toes curling at the hands you dreamt about all day and night. “Oh,” you pant, each brush of his fingers feeling better than the last.
“What?” he says, mouthing against the side of your neck. His tongue feels warm, but the trails of saliva he leaves have you shivering. “Too dumb to speak?” he scoffs, biting down against a particular spot on your neck. You whimper, unsure if it’s because of his hands or his mouth.
“N-No,” you try to sneer back, fingernails digging into his skin through his shirt. His hands are getting braver now, the pad of his pointer finger dancing over your engorged clit. The sheer material of your panties certainly doesn’t help, each touch feeling like it’s being magnified three times over. And if it felt this good with underwear, you can’t even begin to imagine how it’d feel without.
You don’t have to ponder for long, because soon after Jungkook is slipping his hand beneath your waistband, touching your sensitive pussy head-on. “Kook.”
He uses your momentary vulnerability to ease himself from your hold, finally recoiling enough to smother your mouth with his. You moan in surprise, thighs quivering as he gets to work circling your hardened bud sans your panties. Jungkook isn’t the least bit kind as he kisses you ruthlessly, likes he’s trying to compensate for something with his movements. When he finally pulls away it’s with an obnoxious pop and cherry red lips. He huffs, glancing down to see where he’s got his fingers pleasuring you.
Your thighs are squirming back and forth, closing around his hand every few seconds. Jungkook snorts. “Huh, look at that,” he mutters, trailing down until his fingers are gliding over your quickly sopping folds. “Stupid girl is good for something.”
Your cheeks burn. “Kook, I’m not—“
Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Not what? Not stupid? But I could’ve sworn you just spent the last few minutes saying you were,” he drones meanly, landing one light slap against your cunt that makes your hips buck.
You bite down a whimper. “I was just…” you trail off, eyes rolling back when he teases one finger against your opening.
“Kidding?” he supplies. “Well, I wasn’t.” Your heart stutters in your chest, eyes growing wide as he finally pushes himself off of you, propping himself up with an elbow beside your head. His gaze is dark and unrecognizable. “I think you’re so fucking stupid, doll,” he sneers. “And what are you gonna do about it?”
You should have seen this moment coming, the manifestation of that shiny side of the coin finally reaching its full potential.
While Jungkook wasn’t exactly shy about his interests, he certainly wasn’t tripping over himself to tell you every new kinky thing he wanted to try. You sort of guessed he had some interest in this sort of play a few weeks ago when you watched the Barbie movie at his place. A lot of that night had branded itself into your three am wet dreams, but there was one particular moment that stood out to you. That was you, on your knees, with him condescendingly patting your head. Or just last week, you vaguely remember the term slipping through his lips as he pleasured you with The Bullet Bestie.
The thing about Jungkook was that, until last night, he would have never admitted, or so much as even thought, that he was better than you. That was fine because you would say it enough for the both of you anyway. Did you think Jungkook was amazing, an absolute diamond among these measly rocks? Absolutely. (Were you slightly biased because you were his girlfriend? Skip.) However, you also had this insane evil villain complex that made you want to brag about everything you possibly could, especially if that meant bragging about your boyfriend.
Realistically speaking, he was better than you, that much you could look past yesterday’s anger to admit, and not even in a stuck-up, conceited way; he had a really good job, an architecturally amazing house, and a hot girlfriend. Meanwhile, you had a mediocre job, an okay apartment, and an insanely sexy Calvin Klein boyfriend, half of which he had pointed out yesterday. Regardless of how powerful that third factor was, he still outnumbered you three to one.
Sue you, Jungkook was amazing. Anyone could see that! Except, maybe, himself.
And if the only time Jungkook would openly brag about his greatness or establish how much better than you he was, was in a post-fight, sex-induced setting, then you were more than happy to be his punching bag. So long as it was on your terms, and not as a result of his weirdly bottled up feelings.
(Yeah, you would have a long talk about that tomorrow.)
But for now, you pout up at him, clamping your thighs shut purposefully. “You’re stupid too,” you defend, “stupid and mean.”
Something in his expression changes. Suddenly, he’s moving at superhuman speed as he snatches his hand out from where you had previously trapped him between your legs, yanking you up by the front of your shirt. “Mean?” he mocks. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” You shiver, fingers wrapping around the wrist that holds your sweater. “Wanted me to be mean and push you around like a little rag doll?”
Jungkook looks at you for another two seconds, before he’s slowly pulling away from you, leaning back on his knees. His tongue is pressing against the inside of his cheek, jaw tightening from the movement. “Baby,” he says so quietly it instills a prickle of fear in you, tainted with delicious excitement.
“Yeah?” you whisper, sitting up tentatively as you watch him, He was a bit frightening, like a wild animal about to devour you whole.
Jungkook rolls his neck, the joints in his spine cracking as he begins tugging off his shirt. You salivate at the sight, too focused on the sinewy muscles of his body to catch the dark gaze he levels your way. He throws it off to the side, his sleeve of tattoos that wraps around his bicep and begins to crawl down his chest wonderfully unobstructed now. “Eyes up here,” he says and you quickly meet his gaze. He leans forward, muscled arms coming to cage you against the headboard. “Stupid little sluts don’t have the room to make such comments,” he rasps out, unamused expression adorning his normally soft features. “Don’t you think so?”
“I-I don’t know,” you stammer, leaning away as he comes closer and closer, eventually just turning your head to the side to avoid that emotionless look. It’s the wrong move, and Jungkook lets you know as much by forcefully digging his fingers into your cheeks and turning your face back around to meet his gaze.
A hand grabs beneath your knee, tugging harshly until you’re flopping down onto your back with a squeal. You settle with his knee pressed hotly against your core. Jungkook stays towering over you. “Dumb little girls who make me watch cartoons,” he spits, tracing a hand over your chest, molding your breasts beneath his hands roughly enough to make you gasp. “And watch little animal movies on Disney+. Aren’t they just so stupid?”
“So stupid,” you concede, subtly shifting your hips for some desperately needed friction. Jungkook snorts, finally granting you your wish with one rough slide of his thigh against your core.
“I agree,” he says, and surprises you with a hand around your throat as he leans in to properly grind his thigh into you. “All they’re good for is being dumb little sluts with good pussy,” he murmurs darkly, thumb pressing into the side of your neck forcefully. “Sometimes, they don’t even do anything,” Jungkook continues, his other hand on your hip hauling you higher up his thigh. You mewl, soaked panties rubbing roughly against your folds. You miss the soft swirl of his thumb, the gentle prod of his fingers. Even so, you can’t deny this change in Jungkook is doing something to you, riling up a part of you that you hadn’t known existed. Maybe it’s the horniness from yesterday that was left unfulfilled, the one year anniversary sex that was put on pause. “Just lay there and take it, too fucked out and dumb to say anything.”
His fingers loosen for the briefest of seconds and you gasp for breath. “That’s terrible,” you whimper, rolling your hips up into his thigh, so close to his swollen cock.
Jungkook chuckles without an ounce of humor, pressing your foreheads together as he helps grind you to completion. “Isn’t it? I think that stupid little girl is cute though.”
“I’m sorry,” you blurt, vision spotting as he tightens his hand back around your throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you moan, stomach tight from all the stimulation.
Jungkook hums, slowing you down with a tight grip on your waist. “Hm, what are you sorry for?” he croons, pink lips pulling into an evil smile. “You said you weren’t that stupid girl, __.”
You shake your head, trying to roll your hips up again but he’s holding you too tightly now, rendering you immobile beneath him. “I am,” you choke out shamefully, grabbing at the hand on your hip in a feeble attempt to remove it. “I am a stupid little girl.”
Jungkook smirks, leaning down to slot his mouth over yours. “That’s right,” he murmurs, “nothing but a dumb little slut.”
You shiver, opening your mouth when he slides his tongue against your bottom lip. He’s not the slightest bit nice, and more messy than usual. He pulls away with a bite to your lower lip, meeting your trembling gaze with that same unrecognizable glint in his eyes. “Come on, dummy, keep up,” he snarks before devouring you again. You try to, you really do, but he’s moving like an animal today, despite his slow and drunken movements from that morning. So you end up with his saliva dripping down your throat, clinging to the corners of your lips as he begins slowly grinding you against his thigh again. He flashes you a wicked smile, pearly teeth on display for you as he glances down at your messy appearance.
“Are you gonna touch me?” you ask, lower lip trembling at the thought after your desperate rutting. Jungkook purses his lips together in thought.
“Mmm,” he hums. “Don’t know yet.”
You whine. “Jungkook, please,” you whimper, wrapping your legs around his waist. “I need you.”
Jungkook chuckles, running his hand up your waist and taking your shirt with him. He slips his fingers beneath your bra, pushing the wire over your chest as he mouths at your neck. “Cute,” he says. “Can’t do it yourself?”
You tremble, chest arching into him as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “I-I can,” you gasp. “Just feels better with you.”
Jungkook follows your statement with a nip against your skin, tongue soothing over it right after. “Why? Because I do everything better than you? Even make you cum better than you?”
Your cheeks heat up at his blatant ego rearing its head, hands carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. You say nothing, and that only eggs Jungkook on. “Come onnn,” he teases, finally, finally rolling his hips down onto your core. You squeak, head falling back against the pillows as you’re granted the one thing you’d been chasing. “Say it.”
“Say what?” you ask, voice wobbly as he continues to slowly rut against you, the front of his shorts pressing against the soaked crotch area of your panties. “Oh, oh, Jungkook,” you whine.
Suddenly he bites down harshly, teeth digging painfully into your skin. You yelp in surprise, pussy throbbing at the pain that shoots throughout your body. Jungkook pulls away and doesn’t bother soothing over it as he leans up to capture your jaw this time. “Say you’re a stupid little slut who can’t do anything without me,” he purrs, kisses too soft for the words he says.
Your mind blanks, torn between the humiliating phrase he wants you to say and properly checking him in his place. In the end, it’s with a twisted need to please him that you’re repeating the words back to him. “I-I’m a stupid slut,” you whimper, fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he continues pushing you right along the edge. The rope pulled tightly in your core is slowly being pulled apart, threads hanging on for dear life. “Can’t... can't do anything without...”
“Without who?” he asks, reaching down and untying the front of his shorts. “Can’t do anything without who, baby?”
“Without you, without you,” you cry, bucking your hips up against his, the combined movements of both your bodies making you shake like a leaf. “Ah, K-Kook,” you wail, hips stuttering as your orgasm finally swallows you up. Your panties quickly grow wet and icky from your own arousal that pools between your thighs. Jungkook lets you writhe beneath him as you chase your high, mouth sucking a pretty blossom against your jaw.
You know better than to expect the night to end here, especially after seeing the glint that had been in his eyes as he watched you unravel.
He leans close, let’s his nose brush against yours as you catch your breath. “So perfect for me,” he groans, slotting his lips against yours. You can barely keep up with him, languidly going along with his hot tongue. “Perfect, perfect girl,” he murmurs, a stark change from the less than friendly adjectives he used just moments before. “Tell me you love me?” he says softly.
You nod, mind fuzzy as you wrap your arms around his neck. “Love you,” you exhale, letting your fingers knot in his hair. Your proclamation does something to him, makes him grind the front of his cotton shorts hard against you. For someone that was often rough and brutal with you in bed, he sure was sensitive to the mushiest of things.
“Don’t deserve you,” he huffs, hot breath fanning across your skin. He switches gears fairly quickly. “Tell me you hate me,” he begs hoarsely, rutting against your soiled panties. “Tell me I’m a piece of shit and you could do better without me,” he pleads, voice too airy to be another one of his usual sex-induced thoughts.
You shake your head, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he rolls his hips. “It’s not true,” you whisper, “I love you more than you’ll ever understand.”
Jungkook groans, suddenly winding back and tearing your ruined panties down your legs. You gasp in surprise, letting him haul you about in his blind, self-inflicted rage. “Stupid, stupid,” he huffs, though at this point you can’t tell who it’s directed at. With your underwear out of the way, he wastes no time plunging his fingers back into your cunt, bypassing the tight ring of muscle around it without any of his usual care. “You should hate me,” he snarls, lips pressed against your ear.
You moan, back arching at the sudden pleasure that blossoms between your thighs. “I-I don’t,” you gasp, toes curling.
Jungkook groans, the sound traveling down your spine and straight into your pussy. “Stupid girl,” he huffs, slipping an arm around you to pull you so close until you can’t breathe, chests lined up together. His skin is warm to the touch, scorching almost. “Fuck,” he groans, curling his fingers inside of you. You whimper and moan, incapable of staying still beneath him as he tortures you with a thumb to your clit. “Tell me you hate me,” he seethes again.
Despite the fog that’s settled over your mind, you still manage a resolute shake of your head. “N-no,” you cry, digging your nails into his back. They run dark red lines over his skin, making him hiss at the sting.
Whatever punishment he’s trying to put himself through is falling through with your refusal to admit such a thing. It aggravates him even more, your adamant stance on loving him so, and he’s retracting his fingers before you can cum again. “Please,” he chokes, face tucked into your neck. He’s sloppy with his movements; as he pulls his shorts down and kicks them away, he nearly suffocates you with his weight. “I don’t deserve you, ___, please.”
“I love you,” you whimper for lack of explanation. Jungkook leans back, that same madman gaze in his glossy eyes. He’s looking at you in disbelief almost, pouty lips puckered and swollen. Your hands slip from around him, falling on either side of your head.
Like a cobra he strikes, collecting your wrists in one hand he pins above your head. The sudden movement has him leaning in close, lips brushing over yours. His lashes are coated in a wetness he refuses to acknowledge, looking at you like you drive him insane. “If you ever try to leave me,” he whispers, jerky breath fanning over your skin, “I’ll lose my mind.”
He loves you so much it aches.
“I won’t,” you whimper, feeling your own eyes well up with an emotion that consumes every inch of your being. “I’ll never leave you, you stupid, stupid boy.”
A faint smile crosses his features at your words, lips quirking to the side. You relish in it for all of two seconds before he’s ramming his cock into you, your sensitive walls spawning around him. You sob loudly, eyes rolling back into your head. Your legs instinctively hook themselves around his waist, digging into the base of his spine as he rolls his hips into you.
You feel full and complete like he belongs there in this moment and every moment after this. It makes your heart constrict painfully. Jungkook’s soft groans follow your more unraveled noises, the vulgar slapping of skin on skin the underlying melody to it all. “Ffffuck,” he spits, greedily swallowing your moans up. You whine, arms bucking in an effort to hold him close. But he’s determined in his act of restraining you, long fingers tightening around your wrists until they hurt. “I warned you, didn’t I?” he huffs, snapping his hips into you.
Your walls clench around his hard cock, the drag as he exits sending shivers throughout your body. Jungkook’s body towers over you, glistening in sweat as he nails you into your mattress. “Remember what I said?” he asks, voice but a shuddery exhale. You shake your head numbly, overwhelmed by the rough drag across your walls. “All those months ago, when you first came over,” he adds. The hand on your hip abandons its post to cup you beneath the jaw, palm pressing sinfully against your throat enough to block the tiniest of airflow. “I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he murmurs, voice deeper than the pits of hell. He licks a fat stripe over your cheek like you’re nothing but a sweet for him to devour. “Do you remember that, pretty girl?”
You nod jerkily, hips arching up into him when he thrusts into you again. It’s a memory that replays in your mind every so often, your first night with the man you had planned to humiliate over a mere misunderstanding, now your boyfriend of one year. “Want that,” you gasp, tears blurring your vision when he begins picking up the pace. “Wanna be y-your pretty girl forever.”
Jungkook groans, kissing the corner of your mouth. His thighs are some magnificent beings, keeping his pace consistent even as he loses himself in his overwhelming need to kiss you. “Always,” he manages, soft lips pressed against yours. “I won’t ever let you leave.”
A shriek tears itself from your lips as he picks up that harsh piston, releasing your jaw to hold both wrists above your head. It makes his curls dangle in front of his eyes, covering that beautiful dark gaze. It makes his thin little necklace swing back and forth too, though it’s too small to actually touch your face. The rhythmic swing has you hypnotized, just like everything else about Jungkook.
With the length of his hair, you’re left staring at his lips, pulled taut between his pearly white teeth. The word from before sits heavy in your chest, begs to drip from the tip of your tongue. But he’s moving too fast and too hard, scrambling your thoughts until all you can think about is the cock plunging into your heat. His name falls from your mouth like mindless blubber instead, arms thrashing as your second orgasm swallows you up. It sends you crashing, body spasming as the sheer euphoria waves over you slowly and then all at once.
“Perfect,” he grunts, leaning down to slot his mouth against yours, “my perfect girl.” Your cum makes the sound of his hips erotic, the loud squelching following your panting. Still sensitive from your high, your body unconsciously tightens around him, keeps his cock from fully leaving. It brings a soft whine out of Jungkook, one he tries to muffle against the side of your face.
“Inside,” you whimper, even though your body feels like jelly beneath him. “Cum inside, Kook, please,” you beg.
It only takes a few more thrusts into your leaking hole for him to finally reach paradise, hips stuttering when that first shot of pleasure hits him. “Fuck, fuck,” he growls, wildly snapping his hips into your achy cunt. You moan, feeling just about brainless at the overstimulation. His cum leaves you full, almost makes your belly bulge from it. When he’s done he doesn’t bother pulling away, simply slumping into your limp form. His cock, though quickly softening, serves as a plug for the cum threatening to spill out of you.
There’s a muted noise coming from the other room, the faint sound of the mail slipping through your letterbox, the quiet chattering of the street outside. And of course, the loud blaring of your laptop playing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Jungkook registers it at about the same time as you, a soft chuckle leaving his lips.
He pushes off of you soon after, leaning on his palms over you. He’s got that molten look on his eyes, the heat of a thousand suns burning behind those irises as he looks at you. Like he can’t get enough, even though he’s just about taken everything there is to take. “Love you,” he murmurs quietly.
A drop of sweat rolls over his forehead, clinging to the end of his eyebrow. You reach up and brush it away, let your hand trail down his face to cup his cheek. Immediately he leans into the touch, eyes falling half shut. “Love you more,” you respond.
“Impossible,” he scoffs.
Soon after you’re both stumbling out of bed, clothes haphazardly shrugged back on as you drift through the living room. There’s a thin, hot pink package sitting at the door, just having slipped through the letterbox; the stark Sexuality Unleashed logo is printed on the visible side, so you have to wonder what Doyeon could have possibly ordered this time that could be so thin. The laptop is awkwardly sandwiched next to a throw pillow, barely open a crack. Jungkook retrieves it, sets it on his lap as you scamper over to the couch.
“More Phineas and Ferb?” he asks quietly. He hates it, you know he does. And still, he wants to watch it with you.
You nod. “Please.”
He isn’t so concerned with the plot as you, clicking some random episode to start. You snuggle into his side, quietly singing along to the opening. After a moment, Jungkook speaks again. “Phineas and Flirt?” he offers cheekily.
You roll your eyes. “That might’ve been your worst one yet,” you sigh, trying to drown out his indignant huff by focusing on the screen.
“I don’t exactly see you coming up with these,” he points out, obviously feeling wronged.
Without missing a beat you say, “Disney+ and bust.”
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epilogue
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commercial break one ; the resolution
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Copyright © 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.
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council-of-readers · 3 years
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Back Into Annihilation
Chapter one has been beta read and is ready for upload! Here it is, folks. You can also follow it on Ao3, if you're so inclined!
Tags: slow burn, crossover, enemies to lovers, mutual pining, eventual smut
Work rating: M
This chapter: T
Description: Centuries after they last spoke, Spike comes across an old, begrudging ally, and former feelings start to bubble to the surface once more.
Spike lifted the cup to his lips and grimaced at the taste. It tasted absolutely horrid, but it did the job. He almost respected the humans who drank it regularly. Luckily, he'd be off this moon within the week. He couldn't stomach staying for a second longer than he had to. His work brought him to all sorts of barren worlds, and life on the border planets wasn't unfamiliar to him. Truthfully, it suited his tastes. It was a pity their alcohol tasted so foul. Otherwise, he would spend more time among them.
Being planet-side out here was much preferable to the core. He fit in better with the locals. In terms of look, anyhow. He was less likely to be bothered. Even less so if he was on a job. Most knew better than to barrage strangers with questions. Plenty of them had reasons for being here that were less than palatable. It was safer if you didn't know. Keeping your head down, focusing on your work, and moving on. That was life out here. It suited him just fine.
People always had too many questions for his taste. Too many inane ones, that is. He didn't mind questions. Small talk didn't even bother him too much. It was always the same, though. People would always ask the same, repetitive, invasive, uninspired questions, and he was expected to respond politely each and every time. It grew old, as did he. That's why the border planets were preferable. Of course, every town, every moon, every planet had its problems, but they were petty. They rarely ever affected him as a visitor, and if they did, he could handle himself well. For the vast majority of his years visiting these worlds, he'd been able to go in, do his work, and leave unbothered.
On the core, however, that wasn't really an option. Their technology was invasive, to say the least, and he wasn't able to even walk into a shop without being clocked. He was followed by discreet, or so they liked to think, undercover feds wherever he went. In addition to this, their culture was utterly alien to him. No, he didn't get humans. He hadn't in a long time. He was convinced, though, that these people, the ones that chose core life, weren't fully human themselves. They seemed almost robotic. Unfeeling, pristine, and impenetrable. He hated them. At least the people on the edge, as detached as he felt from them, understood his way of life. Understood his choice to work instead of layabout. They didn't care if your clothing was dirty. They cared if it wasn't. He'd choose their company over the elite any day.
The gap between humans and vampires, he found, had become too wide to bridge easily. Spike found himself exhausted by conversation, convention, and companionship. Vampires had long ago integrated into human society, almost seamlessly since interstellar travel made them almost immune to death by sunlight. There hadn't been much study put into it. The conclusion most folk arrived at was simply that the only sun that affected you was the one you were sired under. A vampire could travel without worry, provided they had a good idea of where they were going, and when they'd be arriving.
Still, though. While they walked side by side, the cultural gap was vast. Vampires had become secluded and insular, far more so than on Earth-That-Was. They no longer needed to hunt, and so they no longer needed humans. Besides, hostility towards vampires had never really cooled. Vampire on human attacks were rare, but they happened frequently enough that most humans felt uneasy around them. This was fine by him. He much preferred to be left to his own devices. To their credit, though, they did put on a good show.
A drunken man slammed into the bar beside him. He let out a string of slurred curses before readying his fists and heading back into the fray. Not long ago, Spike would have revelled in the violence and wasted no time in throwing himself amongst them. Now, he was content simply drinking and listening. Humans never ceased to entertain.
He wasn't quite sure what had gotten them so riled up, but he didn't much care. He didn't bother to pay attention to these things. It didn't concern him. The sounds of fighting grew louder behind him, the noise beginning to get on his nerves. Some of them were there simply to drink and forget. It was plain disrespectful to start a bar fight and get the entire bar involved. Well, most of it, anyhow. Spike and a few other lone gentlemen did their best to ignore the ruckus. What had become of him, truly? He hadn't grown soft. Just tired. Tired and bored.
It had been ages since he'd had a good brawl. Vampires strength grew with age and experience, and Spike actively trained to this day. He had won the majority of fights he got into, and the ones he didn't weren't fair nor fun to start with. Long gone were the days he could get away with tossing someone through a holographic window, much like the rowdy bunch behind him had just done. Vampires had some fairly strict laws on them considering hurting humans. Not to mention that the law wasn't afraid of averting their eyes to any vigilante justice. It was better for him to keep to his own.
The angry men poured out of the bar, likely in pursuit of the poor sods they'd tossed out of it. Again, though, he didn't give their reasoning much thought. So long as it was quiet again.
He turned his attention back on his drink. It truly tasted horrible, but it was better than nothing. He decided he'd leave after he finished it. No point staying here longer than he had to, and he preferred to be back before dusk.
It had been a while since he'd done anything but drink alone. Of course, he could find company if that's what he desired. It just wasn't a priority anymore. He had grown accustomed to his own company. It never bothered him much in the past. Being alone, that is. Especially if it was by choice. And it was.
Spike took another swig, downing more than he probably should have. He grimaced at the taste. He'd been lost in his train of thought and had forgotten the unpleasant taste of the liquid in front of him.
Sure, he felt lonely sometimes. If it ever got unbearable, he'd find someone to fill the void for a bit. He'd make a few friends, if they could be called that, and then they'd move on. Or he would. That was alright by him. They didn't have to stay, and neither did he. Everyone served a purpose, and when theirs was done, he let them go. That's what you do.
He'd been here for far too long. Nostalgia was creeping in. It was never pleasant. The past was fun, but it stays in the past. There wasn't any point in fixating on what was. On what should have been.
The barkeep offered to fill his glass. Spike declined and tossed him the platinum he was owed. He stood up, much too sober for his liking, and shuffled out of the bar. The sound of roaring ship engines filled the air behind him. Likely some of the drunkard's allies coming to the rescue. The voice that spilled out of the boat's speakers confirmed his suspicions. The fight must have been more loaded than he'd guessed. Might have been worth the risk to get involved after all. It was too late now, though.
He fished a pack of cigarettes out from his pocket. A vice he still carried with him. With how technology had advanced over the last few centuries, he'd been able to keep up his smoking habit and avoid his teeth yellowing as a result. That was something he was grateful for. Spike hated to think about giving it up. Especially now. At least lighting up gave him something to do. It could fill small portions of his time; time that would otherwise be empty. It added up after a while, and his little ritual became a solace of his. He'd get drunk, smoke, sleep, and maybe invite someone to join him for the night. That was a rarer occurrence than he liked to pretend. He was disinterested in most of vampires, humans, and demons the verse had to offer. His standards weren't high. Spike had his fill long ago. Sex passed the time, but he didn't crave it like he once had.
Still. If he happened to spot someone that caught his fancy, he wasn't above flashing a grin and charming them into his bed. His looks were classic enough that he could have almost anyone he wanted. Provided he put in the effort. It rarely took much, but even the little he did have to exert wasn't worth the reward. Spike was old, not old fashioned. He wasn't above staring at the pretty girls that hung out in alleys, or the lovely shop keepers. He'd even sprung for a companion once. Likely, though, he wouldn't do it again. Not quite to his taste. If it was fully lacking in romance, he preferred his tumbles to have an edge to them. Companions couldn't provide that for him. He did leave a sizable tip for their time, though. The experience wasn't unpleasant, and he felt generous that day.
His mind was wandering. The alcohol in his system wasn't helping this issue. If he wasn't careful, his drifting eyes might cause him a spot of trouble, especially considering the part of town he was travelling through. He wasn't sure how he ended up around here. Nostalgia was a powerful drug. It wasn't his fault that his mind was stagnating in the past. Though, he couldn't fully blame it on the drink, either.
It wasn't important.
He scowled subconsciously and took a drag off his cigarette. When did he light it? His brain was foggy. He needed to get home. For last week or so, home had been a rented room out of a farmhouse. He lived on a ranch himself, back on Clarus, so it wasn't the worst adjustment he'd ever made for a job.
It was well paying, but unbearably dull. He was tasked with protecting a family of three from the goons of a man they owed. They'd had to chase off five of his men the night before Spike arrived, and significant damage had been done to the house. The family mutt was injured in the tussle, as well. Once word got out, though, that they'd brought in hired help, his lackeys hadn't made a move.
Cowards, the lot of them.
It did make him grin a bit. His reputation preceded him.
He'd built a name for himself over the last 50 years or so as muscle for hire. Work at his ranch was never dull, especially given what he raised, but it was nice to get out and stretch his legs. Though, as evidenced by his earlier reaction, when most folks heard a vampire was on the job, they tended to stay away. Better for them, and worse for him.
The quiet life had never been one that called to him. White picket fence suburbia had long ago died off, but it's memory remained. A nice yard, good money, 2.5 kids, the works. Something about that way of living kept calling humans to it, and he couldn't quite understand why. Living in one place, surrounded by the same people, year in and year out seemed like Hell to him. It was part of the reason he started taking on these side jobs. The monotony of farm life took its toll, especially so when you hired help. Things were boring enough when he ran the place. Now that he had no hand in the work, he needed to find jobs to occupy his time. His own sanity was at stake. The extra cash flow didn't hurt things much, either.
It's not like he was completely broke, but he was always just a few bad years away from complete desolation. Most were, especially if you didn't stay on the central planets.
It was barely noon, and he was a few miles out. If he hurried and kept his head down, he could make it there by mid-afternoon. If luck was on his side, he could rest his eyes for a while before his shift started. The thought brought him a bit of peace. Rest was just what he needed.
Spike looked around to orient himself. The street signs were blurred a bit, but he could make them out well enough. Fortunately, he had gotten on the right path back to the ranch, despite not putting much thought into where he was going. He made a note to bring his horse into town with him next time, if only to make the trek back a little easier on him.
The fight from earlier weighed on him more than he thought it would. Namely, his apathy towards it. There was a time where he'd revel in the chance to let loose. He'd grown soft in his age. Ranch life, coupled with a lack of opportunity, had lead him to shy away from a fight. Because, what? He was afraid of the consequences with the law? It had been a while since he'd been confronted with a chance to get roughed up, something he previously enjoyed, and he made a silent promise to himself that he wouldn't let the next one slip through his fingers.
Hopefully this shift wouldn't be as dull as the last one. He really needed an excuse to hit something.
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martinahlijanian · 3 years
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In Search of the Lost...CLM
It’s Springtime in Boston – new beginnings, growth, shaking off the doldrums of winter (especially this recent one!!)  In that spirit, I’ll throw off my dusty 2020 sanitized cloak and admit to you all something unprofessional, yet based in beauty and a deep love – some might call it a devotion. My beloved??  The Moody Blues.  Yup, I’m a devoted fan – have been for decades. Make your elevator music joke – I don’t care.  I know – nowhere nearly as cool as Post Malone, T-Swift, Dua, Doja, Don’tya, whomever. But majestic, original, thoughtful, and DEEP.  Long ago in a New England portion of the galaxy far, far away, a suburban ethnic kid picked up a handful of vinyl albums at a yard sale, and the incredible double album “This Is The Moody Blues” was in the pile. I was immediately hooked. Have seen the boys several times in concert, and they never disappoint (though to steal a line from Don Henley about his own band, they don’t exactly dance around the stage – they mostly loiter.)
 By now you’re probably thinking “the connection between THIS and Contract Lifecycle Management systems (“CLMs”) will be the most tortured bootstrap in history”, but if you followed the Moodies, it would be so very clear and obvious.  Back in the medieval era (certainly not the dark ages) the boys released an album called “In Search of the Lost Chord”, an appropriately pretentious title implying not only that the Moodies knew of a unique, world-changing musical chord (typically 3-5 notes played together simultaneously), but that they, and no one else, found it!  If your experience evaluating CLMs has been anything like mine over the past few years, you’ve been on a similar quest, but with less than satisfying results.  Here are some of my impressions from my search for a perfect CLM.
 Keeping with the musical theme for just another minute, my other non-work passion is synthesizers. I’m the proud owner of 6, ranging in age from 29 years old to 4, with the toddler being an absolute musical powerhouse of seemingly infinite possibilities called the Yamaha Montage.  The synthesizer market exemplifies Moore’s Law, that old chestnut that says the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles every year, with corresponding performance increases and speed gains resulting from denser integrated circuits. That’s certainly the case with my synths. My boat anchor of a keyboard in 1981, an Italian-built instrument called the Crumar Orchestrator (no longer with us), was very heavy, cost $1,050 (Armenians never forget prices), and produced a whopping 5 sounds, though two sounds could be layered together.  Needless to say, the new Yamaha plays rings around it, for only a few bucks more, but requires extensive training and synth engine tweaking. No one could seriously consider the two as peers – the Yamaha is a high-end laptop embedded into an 88-key digital synth with touchscreen programming that would make Dr. Moog himself drool.  And yet there was something wonderful about the simplicity, intuitiveness, and real-time access of the Crumar’s sounds. In CLM terms, the Crumar didn’t have many bells or whistles, but did the job, and did so quite well and dependably.
 Back in 2016, I had the pleasure of serving the team at SmashFly Technologies. We realized we needed a high-functioning CLM, and after a thorough RFP process, we selected SpringCM as our first system, enjoying a fantastic relationship with both the SpringCM team in Chicago and the platform itself. The integration of our prospects’ contract forms into the platform for redlining, version control, and eventual e-signing was a key element of our use case, shortening the sales lifecycle substantially.  And internal workflows created with the system were embraced by both our Sales and Customer Success teams for both new and upsell/renewal business, respectively. Did the platform have every possible mind-numbing feature?  No, but it was always there when we needed it and fit our business needs perfectly, with secure, real-time support and document processing. Definitely a Crumar relationship!  
 Author and theologian Richard Foster has written often on the virtues of simplicity, counseling one to “strip away all excess baggage and nonessential trappings”, and even the Moodies themselves, despite being known for complex orchestral production and cosmic lyrics, have echoed this concept (yes, with another keyboard reference), singing:
There's one thing I can do Play my Mellotron™ for you Try to blow away your city blues Your dreams are not unfound Get your feet back on the ground
So, in the spirit of the Moodies’ grandeur (pomposity?), I’ll attempt to blow away your CLM blues and get your feet back on the ground with an overview of my CLM experiences and suggestions for core requirements, particularly with respect to recent CLM market developments. As you may’ve guessed, I tend to lean toward simplicity, but as someone who has embraced technology since my garage band days, I get as excited about bleeding edge product developments as much as anyone, so I’ll try to keep the scales balanced.
 In my startup-oriented world (ranging back 9 years), speed is everything.  Correctness is assumed, whether it be contract version control, updated pricing/BAFOs, or proposal submissions – those are as fundamental as breathing.  But speed varies greatly between organizations and markets.  A twenty-four month (or longer) RFP pursuit under a federal government procurement, being run by a large publicly-traded company, doesn’t have the same day-to-day time pressures as the end of a quarter at an IT startup, particularly one that is chasing B or C-round funding or later investment/sale avenues.  So like my beloved Crumar, a selected CLM must be fast, intuitive, and dependable. I can’t write code, and never want to be deep into programming instructions of my CLM; if we’re at that point, we’ve failed. As I’ve told my engineering colleagues for years, “this company is in DEEP trouble if you want me to write code”.  (The corollary to that, of course, is “and we’re in equally deep trouble if engineers are interpreting contract terms”, but I digress, and you know I love you guys. )
 Any system that has a steep learning curve, plods along in terms of system performance, and/or has numerous updates (so-called “upgrades”), patches, and maintenance downtime beyond market standards must be avoided.
 Uptime availability should be as close to 99.9% as possible, if not higher.  If you’re reading this, you’re probably a contracts, legal, or compliance pro, so you know any firm that won’t state that uptime availability percentage specifically in the contract’s SoW or SLA is telling you they’ll never hit it; run for the hills! Similarly, data center operations should be with a well-established, secure North American supplier (you know who they are – they certainly don’t need free advertising from me) to the CLM company, and the history of that relationship should be explored.  A firm that bounces between all of the major cloud providers may try to argue that they’re always trying to get the best deal for their clients, but for my money, stability, security, and dependability are best served by a long-standing CLM-cloud provider marriage.  
 In addition, CLM implementation times should be clean and short.  If you hear too many horror stories in the market, or references to “Well, Sue, it all depends on the amount of legacy data you’ll be transferring into our Platinum Platform, and what condition your data is in”, keep looking. You haven’t played the lost chord – just some sour notes.  We all understand that dysfunctional customer data is not the responsibility of a new supplier, but my experience has been that a supplier who tries to foist performance concerns on the prospect early in discussions is typically the one who has the most problems during the contract term, and as a result is either terminated or churned at renewal time.
 Speaking of pet peeves and more bootstraps, you may not believe there’s any connection at all between CLM demos (or the lack thereof) and a long-term positive relationship, but I maintain there is, and have experienced it.  A company that plays hide-the-ball with its product may not be as confident in its features as its collateral or website proclaim.  I certainly appreciate the arguments against a “demo right out of the gate” view – limited SE resources, non-serious buyers just trolling, numerous demos placing company IP at risk, SDRs need more due diligence discussions to properly tailor the demo, need to avoid multiple demos for the same prospect (so wait a bit and get all stakeholders on the same call), etc. But any experienced SDR or Account Exec/Regional Sales Manager should be able to tell from the first discussion with a prospect whether she/he is serious, has an immediate need and budget, and has authority to move forward or needs to have a senior exec (or two) participate in any demo.  Hiding the ball from a serious prospect is counter-productive to the aims of the relationship and quite frustrating.
Wow – now I’m fired up. Given that I’m writing this late on a Tuesday, perhaps I should play the Moodies’ classic hit “Tuesday Afternoon” and mellow out!
 My friends know that I LOATHE the use of jargon, but I have to use the phrase “table stakes” just once here – it’s in the context of a CLM’s e-signature capabilities.  Any CLM with kludgy e-signature placement, or non-intuitive use (or worse, multiple drop-downs/windows before insertion in a document) should be avoided.  Simplicity really should reign here.  In most companies the contracts or legal reviewer is not likely to be the signatory, so any digital doc in a CLM should be easy to prepare and forward for senior management’s execution.
 Your company’s templates and forms, and especially your Fallback 1 and Fallback 2 clause libraries, will require a bit more heavy lifting from the CLM partner, but given the evolution of CLM systems across the board, this process should be fast and clear. And the redlining of a prospect’s Word doc should never send the CLM into a spin.  
Your selected CLM should have easy-to-create workflows that integrate with your company’s CRM, and appear as a widget or new page within the Account or Opportunity section thereof. If workflow creation requires multiple calls to the CLM provider’s tech support team, or worse, a purchase order for fee-based tech services, you’ve selected the wrong company.  Which leads me to report generation…
 In the synthesizer world, drum and percussion effects generated from the keyboard sound cool on the sales floor of Guitar Center or Sam Ash, but in terms of live performance, I can unequivocally state I’ve never used them, and never given them a second thought. And my studio friends tell me they’d rather use software-based drum sounds & loops than 90’s-style percussion from their synths. Basically, a “bell” of limited value. Report generation hardly falls to that level, and my CFO and CMO depended upon recurring reports generated automatically from the CLM, as did my SDR Manager.  But ad hoc ROI report generation gets too much press, in my humble opinion, and may be touted at great length by your intrepid CLM sales rep.  As far as I’ve seen, every CLM in 2021 has report generation; I wouldn’t be too swayed by a firm that crows about this as a product discriminator, unless your senior management is asking for numerous non-standard reports other company systems can’t provide.
 I hope my earlier levity about engineers doesn’t generate too much hate mail – I have the utmost respect for them, as they know; that same sentiment applies to my beloved Sales colleagues. But having said that, for the safety of all, I only provide my Sales pros with access to NDA templates.  That’s it.  Your CLM will certainly have a rules-based structure where you can provide, or remove, access to forms or project documents based on department, unit/function, individual name, or transaction.  Again, simplicity should be the rule, not the exception here.  Ask for sandbox or live “dummy” system access and have the provider walk you through the gory details of this process. You should be able to do it alone, on a real-time basis; time-sensitive special projects (often M&A related) sometimes arise with little notice, and with strict guidelines about disclosures to other team members.  If you can’t readily change access rules yourself, you’ll have problems, and will spin your wheels – while the clock is ticking and the C-suite is waiting for a reply – all because this process is too difficult.
 Every app on the planet needs to have mobile functionality, and CLMs are certainly no different.  As we emerge from COVID travel restrictions, the need for airport/Acela/in-meeting access to your CLM will return to 2019 levels. Any hiccup or frustration with the mobile use experienced during demo should receive substantial negative demerits in your evaluation phase.  I’ve seen everything from a unique mobile app for a vendor’s platform to the identical (though hard to read) platform access using a browser on your iPhone or Android device. This comes down to personal preference, and what an otherwise high-scoring provider is selling. So long as core functionality is present in a mobile platform, I wouldn’t make a final decision based solely on this.
 Lastly, a CLM platform’s ability to host a private document that could be shared via public URL, such as your company’s Supplier Code of Conduct or SLA, should be easy to find today and require nothing but the most basic training steps to create.  
I suppose no essay on technology would be complete today without a reference to AI or ML. And pitch deck references to AI/ML are just as ubiquitous; there isn’t a major CLM player who isn’t emphasizing AI.  However, make sure a vendor’s AI solution isn’t substantially dependent on a third party’s tool; I know of at least three heavyweights in this sector whose AI is subject to the vagaries of their supplier relationship with subs.  
 The distinction between strategic roadmap and current offering is an important one as well.  No one wants to repeat the selection and implementation process any time soon, so a company’s track record of creative product development, as well as its record of actually delivering those future-proof features, should be an important part of your investment strategy.  Today’s flavor of the month that either doesn’t have the R&D resources, including funding and personnel) or technical acumen (or both) to evolve the product over time will not be a solid choice, particularly if your company is in high-growth mode.
 Another core requirement in 2021 is digital transformation. Where e-contracting automated processes within the Contracts, Legal and/or Sourcing department, digital transformation takes the data in our world and shares it with finance, ops, HR, and other company systems, beyond your CRM.  If your vendor doesn’t at least address this, keep looking.
 Which brings us back to synthesizers.  Do I miss my Crumar? Absolutely.  Was one of COVID’s silver linings less time sitting in traffic and more time embracing my Yamaha….oh, and of course my family? Heck yes!  But my favorite synth of all-time is actually a wonderful instrument called the Korg N364. It’s modern-ish, but with many live performance capabilities and instant access to over 500 sounds.  It’s absolutely bulletproof in terms of construction and reliability, and is playable right out of the box.  While the Moody Blues never did find The Lost Chord, I’m convinced one could come VERY close with uninterrupted time, extreme creativity, and the Korg machine.  It’s the perfect balance between features, reliability, and intuitiveness.
I hope some of these thoughts help you find the best CLM for your team!
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