#anyway YEAH it needs a lot of fleshing out and a lot more deep thought

[6gumi]

oh my! what a naughty bunny!

synopsis﹒honkai star rail men n’ their bunny girlfriend !

pairings﹒boothill 、sunday 、dr ratio 、aventurine 、gallagher x bunny fem!reader

cw ﹒nsfw MDNI. unedited. mild dacryphilia ( dr ratio 、sunday ) 、mating press ( gallgaher . . . becuz he’s big ) 、spanking ( dr ratio ) 、fingering ( aventurine ) 、cunilingus ( aventurine ) 、blowie ( sunday ) 、dirty talk ( boothill ) 、 some of them tug on ur ears :> 、petnames ( bunny 、sugar 、etc ! )

note﹒i am slowly catchin’ up in honkai star rail so i decided tew write these ! ! :33 been thinkin’ hard about dis anyways so . . it doesn’t hurt to write a lil sumn ! mistakes might be found . . | reblogs are highly appreciated. feel free to send me an ask if you would like to talk t’me or send a thirst/rq ! — millie ♡

୨୧ 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐋

boothill couldn't help but chuckle at your pathetic attempts to resist him, you were the one who wanted him first and begging for him to fuck you . . . why are you changing your mind now? your struggles were utterly adorable and only further fueled his desire. “oh sugar," he muttered gently, reaching out to cup your chin. his eyes softened as he looked into your tear-filled eyes. the cowboy knew your body was aching for release, the desperation and excitement coursing through your veins. "i can’t understand ya, baby," he whispered, leaning in close to your ear. "do you want me or nah? ‘cause i’ll walk ‘outta this room if you keep whinin’ and grindin’ against me like this, be vocal. tell me what ‘cha need.”

“n—no! don’t wanna!”

“don’t wanna what, bunny? use ya words.”

“i . . don’t want you to walk out . .”

“good girl. see, wasn’t s’ hard to use your words, yeah?” boothill chuckled, the sound rumbling deep within his chest as he met your gaze. His eyes darkened with desire, but there was still a playful twinkle within. “such a slutty bunny,” the cowboy gave you a wicked grin, his hand trailing down your exposed stomach, stopping just above your panties. the fabric was damp from your arousal, and he couldn't help but smirk. “listen baby, ima reward you if you're a good girl . . a real pleasure show for a real naughty bunny like you."

your ears twitched at his words, squealing when he pulled you even closer. “am not a naughty bunny . . .” “yeah? ya sure?” his voice dropped to a husky whisper, "we’ll see about that. we’ll see how long you’ll last with my cock inside this pussy. trust me, sugar . . . you'll enjoy it more than you ever thought possible. just like the slutty and naughty bunny you are.”

୨୧ 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐘

“now now, don’t cry," sunday soothed, his voice low and sultry. “we’ve got a lot of time tonight, sweetheart. maybe i’ll teach you a few lessons on how to suck on my cock properly . . you’re quite sloppy, my beloved.” sunday echoed, his monotone voice full of amusement as he leaned down, capturing your tearful gaze with his own. he gently lifted your chin, his thumb wiping away a stray crystal tear. his dick twitched in your throat when he kept his gaze on your teary eyed face . . fuck. he wanted to see more of that. “beloved . . .” he cooed, feeling the rush of pleasure course through his body as he thrust into your warm, wet throat . . his hand slowly wrapping itself around both your cute little rabbit ears, tugging you forward. he could feel you struggle, the way you gagged and choked on his length, it sent a thrill of excitement through him. your boyfriend gripped your ears tighter, guiding the movement as his thrusts grew eager.

“that’s it, angel, take it. take all of it.” sunday murmured, his voice hoarse with lust. at this point, he could feel his release building up, the tension coiling in his gut. “swallow it, choke on it, make it yours." the halovian male slammed into your poor little throat, knowing he owes you warm tea and breakfast the next morning! your moans were heavily muffled by his thick cock filling your throat. the mere sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the room, punctuated by sunday’s grunts and your whines, increasing the tears that spilled from your pretty eyes. the wave of ecstasy crashing over your boyfriend and you knew it. his orgasm hit him like a foreign train, flooding your throat with his essence . . . holding you in place by your bunny ears.

“mmh . . . that was good, my little angel." his hand traced over your cheek, “but we might have to work on your gag reflex.”

୨୧ 𝐃𝐑 𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎

SMACK! a loud sound reverberated around the room . . your fluffy white tail twitched in veritas’ hold. with a force of movement, he pulled you up . . . using your tail as a leverage as he chuckled, smacking your ass again . . . you could almost feel it warming up. “naughty bunny you are. you thought it was a good idea to send me erotic pictures?” veritas’ fingers worked on your skirt, pulling it up and off. he discarded it on the floor of your shared room, leaving you in your underwear. dr ratio couldn’t help but bite his lip at the sight of your tears streaming down your face, murmuring pleas for him to pound you. aeons . . . you were such a naughty bunny. the naughtiest bunny he’d ever come across. " . . . foolish girl. your desires have consequences," he growled, “you’re a naughty slut. it’s like you’re begging me to pound you when you cry like that . . .” he adjusted himself, positioning himself at your entrance.

he raised a brow, admiring your precious submission he yearned for. the sight of you pleading for more, bunny ears twitching, breasts bouncing invitingly, your sparkly-like eyes that produced tears, sent shivers down his spine. he leaned up, capturing your mouth in a bruising kiss. his tongue delved deep, tasting his bunny’s need and desire. dr ratio wanted to push you further, testing how far he could take you before breaking point. pulling away, his large hands found themselves on your ass again, running his hands along your flesh . . , raising it for another smack. “you’re insatiable, aren't you? let me remind you again, girl, bad bunnies get punished for being naughty. or have you forgotten that?”

୨୧ 𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐄

your boyfriend’s eyes lit up at the sight of your pussy, glistening with desire. he loved every part of you, basking in the warmth of your body as he chuckled . . . reaching up to caress your little ears that he wouldn’t trade for anything else. “damn, you're soaked," he murmured, licking his lips. "i can't wait to taste you.” aventurine moved closer between your legs, pushing your thighs apart further with a smirk, flicking your bud with his thumb. “spread them wider for me, bunny." aventurine’s eyes widened as he saw how wet you were. he had to fight the urge to dive headfirst into your pussy. he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "you’re so ready for me, aren't you?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. with an eager nod, he slowly slipped his two fingers inside, filling you up pure lustrous intent. “m—more ‘turine . . .” a soft chuckle emitted from your boyfriend as he lowered his head, licking your inner thighs. "i know bunny, i know what i’m doing.” but yet, he wanted to hear you beg for it, to know that you desired him as much as he did you.

“c’mon baby . . . say this for me.” his tongue flicked against your outer lips, tasting your sweet nectar. "say . . “please, aven” . . .” he begged himself. "eat me out." his eyes fluttered open, narrowing dangerously . . . he couldn’t help but devour you with his gaze. “ . . please aven . . ‘w—want you to eat me out.” “that’s my good bunny.” aventurine’s tongue darted painfully slowly in and out of your pussy, teasing your walls. as he licked and sucked your clit, his fingers explored the depths inside your pussy, the gambler wanted to touch every inch of you, to know your body better than his own. he was determined to make you cum hard, just like he knew you'd make him. although in the back of his mind, he knew he had to fill out the paperwork that’s been due for days! but right now, all he cared about was making his cute bunny scream his name. he wanted to make you forget about everything else in the world in that dumb little head of yours except for him.

୨୧ 𝐆𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐆𝐇𝐄𝐑

you were so small against him. not only was he obsessed with your cute lil’ rabbit features, he was also obsessed with how cute and adorable you were against him, legs he had to restrain with his own hands due to you moving around too much . . . your cries echoed in the room, punctuating your passionate lovemaking. each groan fueled his dominance, reinforcing his love for you. gallagher gently placed his hand over the bulge on your belly, biting his lip at the sensation of his cock sliding in and out of your belly, grunting when he caught sight of your ears twitching. shit, you were adorable. “fuck, you’re fuckin’ tiny, baby, i could break you whenever i please if i wanted to.” his cock reached the deepest parts of your pussy in this position, knowing he wouldn’t last long with your legs pinned up against the mattress.

with a tug of your ears, gallagher savored the sound of your cries, your body folding under his weight . . your pussy taking his big dick so well heightened his arousal, driving him further into depravity. his thrusts grew more fervent, each one a declaration of love. “. . ‘m foldin’ you left and right, baby. see how good your pussy sucks it in?” with a growl, his hand gripped your ears lightly . . . sparking something primal within him. gallagher kissed you roughly like a starved man, bruising lips colliding fiercely with yours as his tongue invaded your mouth. the harsh mating press position made it harder for you to move around, trying to keep up with his harsh movements and thrusts at the same time! heavy breathing filled the room, punctuated by occasional cries of lust and pleasure. gallagher was taking what he wanted, his lil’ bunny girlfriend.

© 6GUMI. please do not modify 、translate 、share my works on other platforms 、or consider them as yours.

#millie’s writings ✔︎ #took so long . . . so sorrie every1 ! ! #honkai star rail #hsr smut #dr ratio smut #hsr x reader #dr ratio x reader #honkai star rail smut #sunday smut #boothill smut #sunday x reader #aventurine x reader #gallagher smut #aventurine smut #gallagher x reader #boothill x reader

[cuethediscoandthedrinks]

jake sully + NSFW faceriding hcs~

straight up, jake is for sure a faceriding bby just think back to that fruit he ate in avatar 1 🫠

• definitely moans hard and loud when you start to grind down onto his face. he'll nudge his nose right up against your swollen pink bud, and when you begin to hump and gyrate your hips onto his awaiting tongue he'll make all the noise he wants

• loves to talk while his mouth's full of you, too. lots of "..mffph...ffuckffph..ffuckin' hot, babygirl.." and "..uuunh-mmhm...yeah, s-shit..g'na gush for me, huh?...mhmmh.." while he's smothered in your slick juices; only opening his mouth wider, and thrusting his tongue ever-deeper into your clenching entrance

• jake's definitely a tongue-tip oral guy too; loves the little shudders and shakes your hips make when he uses just the end of his tongue, as he licks hard and fast swipes up the length of your clit, or softly suckles at your sticky and throbbing outer lips or entrance

• loves loves loves to run his long blue fingers up and and down your thighs as you sit atop him; uses his short nails and the pads of his fingers to lightly scratch and squeeze your thighs, all while he groans deep from his chest at the pleasure of feeling your legs tighten as he does

• jake also loves to makeout with your pussy too; he'll use his tongue of course, but he has a soft spot for kissing, sucking and slurping at your wet and throbbing pussy, all while he lays little spanks on your ass and upper legs; or even takes little breaks to spank your lips and clit while he dirty talks, making you squelch and clench in anticipation of his movements

• 100% jerks off while he's eating you out. he'll do this when he's just going down on you anyway, but when jake's got your whole body weight on top of him, he goes extra antsy and horny

• suddenly he's bucking up into the open air behind you; his thick, veiny blue member pulsing back and forth, slapping against his lower stomach as he ruts wantonly, needy for some form of stimulation. legit, he'll writhe so hard underneath you just to try and cum while he's slobbering all over your dripping mound

• he'll utilise the bouncing of his length, and squeezing his thighs together to get just the right amount of pressure on his swollen balls and leaking tip; he may just start spurting his thick reams right onto your back and ass as he eats you out from that alone

• but if not, jake's always game for unabashedly tugging his dick while you ride his face, circling your hips to better smear around your arousal, all the while he's fisting his cock roughly, desperate at the thought of you gushing and dripping all over him as you cum

• jake'll grasp his member extra tightly, wrapping his index and thumb around his bulbous cock-tip, or maybe push his bottom two fingers down onto his balls, squishing the soft flesh and sensitive swells to better coax out his release

• very expressive when you ride him. jake enjoys it all anyway, but when you're on top, it's more for his enjoyment than for him to impress you like usual oral; his eyebrows'll scrunch up, eyes clench extra tight in a mix of concentration and lust, with his ears back or perked up from the sensations

• sometimes he even lets out little whines. especially when you or him gets close. he'll initially groan deep and low, the erotic sounds erupting from his broad blue chest as he gets you all riled up

• but when he starts to thrust harder into his palm, little streaks of sticky white precum leaking out, or when you start to squeal in need for your release, jake's once low-toned moans and grunts morph into higher-pitched whines and huffs. the resolve he had to tease or work new techniques being replaced by a raw, primal sexual urge to have his chin, mouth and cheeks covered in your scent of arousal

• grins once you cum on his tongue. he'll mostly be so deep and full of your pussy juice, that all he can do is make little hums of approval, and let his once horned up and focused expression change to an almost childish grin of delight;

• jake'll let out little gasps of feigned-shock at your desperate movements and moans, all the while sporting a smirk or the sweetest eye-smile as he takes in your squirming form above him

• or, he'll continue to wring out your intense orgasm with some arrogant "..uh-huh, uh-huh, theeere we go...fffuck"s or "....mmmm...tastes so sweet babygirl... aaah..unhh..thaaat's it, cum for daddy, that's right, ahah...fuck"s as he widens and flattens his pink tongue to scoop up all that excess essence, and let you ride it out all over his eager face

🤭 and pls lmk ur thots!

#fffffs #jake is double sexy todAY idk why #cuethedisco #jake sully x you #jake sully headcanons #jake sully smut #jake sully x reader #jake sully #na'vi x reader #na'vi smut #avatar smut #avatar x reader #miles quaritch x afab reader #colonel miles quaritch #avatar miles quaritch #miles quaritch x reader #miles quaritch smut #miles quaritch #colonel quaritch smut #colonel catboy quaritch #colonel quaritch #avatar recom quaritch #recom quaritch #tonowari smut #tsu'tey smut

[forestwhisper3]

Welcome back to [Not Quite] Midnight Meditations, although tonight, we are surprisingly more or less on time (as long as the clock still says 12 I'm counting it as on time), where I share segments from the darker corners of my flash drive. As stated before, these are all ideas that held my interest for a bit but were left unfinished for one reason or another. It is very unlikely that they will ever be fully fleshed out, but I figured it would be fun to share them.

Continuing in order from the last post, tonight's segment is Digimon again. This one is based firmly in Gen 2 and is yet another Davis-centric fic, but the concept this time is that he turns evil.

I do remember enjoying the concept of evil Davis when I wrote this (and I will admit the idea still holds some appeal even now), but I also remember being rather put off by the execution of many of the fics I read that pursued this plot. A lot of them had everyone suddenly turn on him because of one small mistake, or he decided he was tired of being "second best" to TK. That always felt sort of lackluster and unrealistic to me, so I tried my own spin on it.

This idea didn't get as much attention as the last one, so it's considerably shorter, but I feel like it sets the mood for what could have been the rest of the story rather well. Anyway, I won't keep you any longer, so here it is.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I-…I think something's wrong with me."

"…Wrong how?"

"I've been hearing voices."

Ken rushed through the forest, the others hot on his heels, adrenaline pushing them past their normal limits. Inwardly, he was berating himself. He and Davis had both considered this possibility, no matter how reluctantly on his part, but Ken thought they might have had more time- that it might not happen because it was so unlikely…

Ken stiffened slightly while Davis grinned weakly. "Yeah, that's what I've been thinking too."

"…How long?"

"About a month now. It wasn't so bad at first- I thought it might have just been the late hours mixed with my imagination…but now…" Davis gave a deep, exhausted sigh. "I'm worried, Ken."

So he had ignored the warnings. He brushed off Davis's increasing weariness, his growing paranoia and jumpiness at the slightest things, and his increasingly frequent concerns that something serious was at work.

"We can't be sure that it's something to worry about yet," he countered a bit fearfully. "Maybe you just watched too many horror-"

"Ken. That's not it and you know it."

Davis's smile was so full of sadness and understanding that it made Ken tear up even while filling him with fury.

He had ignored it when Davis had started growing easily irritated and distant as well, although that wasn't the case with the others, who had finally caught on that something was happening. Not that they could have done anything by that point- the confrontation between TK and Davis was still a painful subject for all of them.

There was no ignoring it anymore.

"You're wrong! The dark spores were destroyed! There's no way for them to be affecting you!"

"Ken-"

"Don't! I don't want to hear it!"

Tai was the one who had found the letter.

It was as if Davis had known all along that Ken would never find the strength to admit that he was slowly losing his friend. Perhaps, in a moment of clarity, Davis had realized that it was something that they wouldn't be able to fix in time and wished to explain. Whatever the reason, he had somehow managed to sneak the letter into Tai's home and hid it away in Kari's scrapbook.

Davis went missing the very next day.

A long, tense silence fell. It was the sort of silence they hadn't felt between them since the early days of their friendship. After what felt like forever, Davis sighed and stood up.

"I need to head home. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Sure."

He nodded and went toward the door, pausing once it opened. "…Just promise me you'll think about it."

Davis was gone before he could answer. Then again, he doubted he would have been able to.

Now, they had finally gotten a reading on their leader's digivice…but he was afraid of what they would find.

Every day, the digital world seemed to grow just a little bit darker. Any digimon that weren't at Ultimate level or higher would stay hidden, and there were whispers…

"Ken?"

The tentative voice brought him out of his thoughts. The others were looking at him in concern, but he couldn't bring himself to even pretend to be all right.

"It'll be okay, Ken," Kari tried to assure him, although the way her brows were furrowed betrayed her worry. "We'll get him back."

"Yeah," TK agreed. "Davis is tough. I'm sure he's fighting whatever's possessing him with everything he's got."

"You don't understand," he whispered, not caring at how his voice cracked. "He'd been fighting it for almost a year before he disappeared. The thing about darkness is its subtlety. It waits for the best times to strike, and it always goes for your weak spots. It's amazing that he's lasted this long, but even Davis isn't invincible. One slip is all the darkness needs, and then you're overwhelmed…"

"I hate to say this, but Ken's right," Matt cut in, expression solemn. "We've all encountered darkness in some way, and we all gave into it eventually. It's a testament to Davis that he held it off as long as he did, but we have to face the fact that when we see him, he won't be himself."

"You saw the changes," Tai added grimly. "The Davis we know would never act that way. All we can do is fight and hope we can reach him like he reached Ken."

Hesitantly, they nodded.

Still, they weren't prepared for how much their friend had changed.

==============

#[Not Quite] Midnight Meditations #[NQ]MM #Digimon #Digimon Adventure 02 #Davis Motomiya #Motomiya Daisuke #Davis is a genuinely good guy going through a bad time #He has Friendship for a REASON and I will die on this hill #No sudden betrayals going on here no siree #No jealous arguments over Kari either #They're all friends your honor #Anyway this was fun to look at again. Hope you liked it too #Again. It's unlikely I'll ever continue this but if anyone else wants to then be my guest #Anything I post with the [NQ]MM tag is free real estate unless stated otherwise #Now I'm off to write a bit for the stories I do have posted #Bye for now!

[master-kohga-dating-sim]

Gently Now

surprise fanfic for @bugger-loz!!! i came up with this idea literally like an hour ago loll but i didn't want to tell you because i wanted a blind reaction,,, anyways here's some eepy snrrrkkk mimimimimimi dad sakiru and baby temple bosses :3

Word count: 611 Characters: Sakiru, Kohga, Colgheri, Gohrra, Moruka, Gyba Warnings: none

Crickets.

Crickets, all around, singing to the deep blue sky. It was funny- Sakiru thought they couldn’t survive in the snow. Had they changed in the ten thousand years he had been gone? Were they in the napping spot instead of the highlands? Probably not, Kohga couldn’t lay eyes on a bug without squealing for Sooga to come step on it.

His thoughts were interrupted by Gohrru stirring in their blankets. He moved a segment of his arm to make sure she wouldn’t fall before sinking his head against the head of his lounge chair again.

Kohga rose up from his cushions, rubbing his eyes through his mask before stretching out his arms and yawning. He looked up to see Sakiru, still stargazing even after all the kids had fallen asleep. “Ah, hey Sakiru. It’s getting pretty late, you know. I’m gonna head to bed, I’m exhausted.”

“Mmh, yes. It’s been a very active day for you, I’m sure.”

“Hey! I do a lot of work around here, you know! It’s not easy being top banana!” He carried his voice with him as he picked up his plushies to go inside, but went quiet when he passed by Sakiru and the kids. He stopped in his tracks, just looking at them. “...They really are sound asleep, aren’t they? Didn’t think that all that…” He gestured vaguely over Sakiru’s body. “...Stuff could be that comfortable.”

Sakiru gently brushed his hand over Colgheri’s feathers. His little body felt so small and delicate compared to Sakiru’s solid form. “The blankets cushion it.”

Despite his organs not being in their original places, they still worked constantly in their jars. He could hear them if he was quiet enough; bubbles, rumbles, squeaks, a slow and steady thump. Without the flesh to muffle it anymore, it was easier to hear his organs than others. “...I wonder if they can feel my heart beating.”

“There’s a… heart? In… there..? Actually, you know what, not gonna question it anymore. Yeah, there’s a heart in there. Sure.” He started to walk again.

“Good night, Kohga.”

“Night.” As he left, Sakiru could’ve sworn he heard him whisper good nights to his plushies, too.

Once Kohga was gone, the night went quiet. The crickets had settled to the back of Sakiru’s mind and let him more clearly hear the soft snoring of the heirs.

Colgheri was curled up in his left arm like a baby sparrow in a nest. Gohrru was laying over his chest, supported by Sakiru’s right arm and his little sister Gyba. Moruka had used its lack of bones to squish itself between Sakiru’s head and shoulders. All of them were wrapped up in the Yiga Clan’s finest wool and linen blankets.

Sakiru’s body didn’t long for the vulnerability of sleep anymore. He was a machine, and machines didn’t need to rest. But the peace of this moment… it was something different. It reminded him of all those peaceful moments eons ago. It made him think of the smell of night air and the softness of cushions and the taste of dessert still on his breath. And when all of those things happened at once, he had only ever done one thing. And what a lovely, relaxing feeling it gave him.

Moruka nuzzled the underside of Sakiru’s jar. His skull slowly settled next to them as the lull of sleep pulled him in.

Although he couldn’t feel temperature anymore, he knew that the heirs could. He could only imagine how cozy and safe it was to sleep like this. For once, he wasn’t trapped upright in that stone temple as his vision faded out. He was warm.

Yes. Warm.

#legend of zelda #loz au #totk au #dark disciples au #master kohga #colgera #colgheri #marbled gohma #gohrru #queen gibdo #gyba #mucktorok #moruka #seized construct #sakiru the alchemist #fanfic #fanfiction

[b-afterhours]

Avenue of Sins: Neon

A sequel to Avenue of Sins

SUMMARY: '90s. It's the aftermath. Jaded, Bill and Alma navigate their new lives as they try to drag themselves out of the dark debacherous trenches they had once ensnared themselves in. It's easy to forget their evils when a silver lining introduces itself into their lives but can they create a less hedonistic life that would be just as satisfying?

WARNINGS: adult content, mature readers only.

The completed first series can be read and found here.

Chapter Three

December 1992

Alma was changing Echo into a blue sweater set that had embroidered lambs on the sweater while she waited for Ulyssa to come downstairs the next day. They were going out shopping and her daughter and Bill would stay home together. She was a bit nervous but she kept it to herself when she saw that Bill was much more nervous than she was. She assured him everything would be okay, that it was the same as any other day caring for her. It didn’t seem to put him at ease though.

“Yeah but what if-” 

“No, nothing will happen,” she interrupted him. She didn’t need him second-guessing his parenting, especially not now because she had been looking forward to shopping. She was tired of shopping at the thrift or department stores full of dowdy clothing in Seattle. She picked up Echo and kissed her head. “Tell Papa you won’t give him any trouble today,” she said in her ear. She smiled and reached out for him. “See. She’ll be a good girl today.” 

He held her in his arms with a grin on his face and she rested her head on him. “She’s always good. Okay… just us two then. Could you take a pager with you at least?” 

They began walking out to the living room to meet Ulyssa but Bill stopped her and asked her to follow her into their room first. He walked over to the nightstand with Echo still in his arms and grabbed his wallet. 

“I know you don’t like me to open this when your friend’s here,” he smirked thinking Alma was silly for not liking him to flaunt their money when it was quite obvious they had the means. He took a wad of cash from inside and gave it to Alma. “Happy shopping.” 

“I have my own you know.” 

“Don’t start a pissing contest, love.” He said happily watching her put it in her purse anyway. “Find me something nice, too. Something, lace or sheer.” 

“I don’t think the lingerie department has your size?” Alma joked. 

Bill smirked and shook his head. “Can you just say thank you and kiss me now?” 

…

Alone in the living room, Bill gazed at Echo asleep on his lap bundled in a blanket. He brushed her hair back and thought to himself. These past weeks she had been home with him and caring for her he couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would think of him now. Compared to his awful carousing father she was a saint on earth. He couldn’t remember much about her because she had passed away when he was only six years old but his remaining memories of her always felt warm. She would have been a terrific grandmother to Echo despite how he turned out. He might have even turned out better if she were still alive. He hated to think that in a lot of ways he was like his father but when it came to his daughter that was far from the truth. 

Deep down it infuriated him because what his father put him through wasn’t deserved like he thought so growing up. That maybe he was just a defective child. There were times in his adult life when he still felt like the kid who was locked in the basement cellar and had to sleep on cold damp filthy ground because he had complained that he was hungry. Even the scar on his cheek he earned as a teen when his father threw a beer bottle at his head but it burst on the wall behind him when he ducked yet a piece of amber glass ricocheted cutting him. Who could berate and belittle and beat their flesh and blood in that way? He couldn’t even fathom it. He had dwelled on what his father did to him and his brothers for far too long. Once Echo was in his life he tried to look in deeply for the memories of his mother instead. It was painful but necessary. It taught him more about himself, that he could be a father in the same way he was mothered. 

That neglect and the loss of his mother is why he attached himself to Myrna when he was much younger. She didn’t judge him and she saw what a good kid he really was deep down. She knew his brash rudeness was a wall amongst many walls he had created to protect himself. He recalled a time when he was caring for her in her last days when she said he would make a good father one day. He brushed it off then, never intending for that to happen to him in his lifetime. Why would he want to continue his unpleasant lineage? When Alma came along again, they hadn’t ever spoken of having children. They liked their hedonistic freedom. He wondered if she had stayed in New York and told him that she was pregnant from the very beginning if he would ask her to terminate it. And he hated knowing that he most likely would have – mostly out of fear – had that been the case. It didn’t matter how much he loved Alma. It was probably another reason as to why she stayed away, he thought, because she knew.

Echo was here now and he wouldn’t want it any other way. He wondered if Alma would want another kid. From what she told him she had a hard arduous labor from the sound of it, it seemed unbelievably unbearable to want to go through again. He wasn’t so sure if he did but the thought of doing it again excited him in more ways than he wanted to admit. If Alma said yes, he decided then that he wouldn’t mind. If she said no, that was okay too.

As the day grew darker and colder he wondered where Alma and Ulyssa could be. Surely, they couldn’t still be shopping but they very well could be. It was the holiday season after all. Echo was sitting on the rug playing with her toys while a children’s show played on the TV. She wasn’t paying attention and being a bit bored Bill grabbed the remote to surf the channels. Echo screeched and looked at him with much offense. 

“Ah?! Papa?” She said pointing at the TV she had been ignoring. 

Bill sighed and put it back on the children's show for her to just ignore again. He decided to get up and grab the phone that sat in a little niche in the hallway and call Bianca to catch up on the club happenings. When she finally answered, she sounded a bit exasperated on the line. Bill checked the time on the large clock that sat over the fireplace, it was much too early for her to sound like she did. 

“I was dealing with the bar supply guy,” she explained. “Something about their warehouse is back-ordered and we only got half our booze in.” 

“What? Are they fucking crazy!?” Bill ran his hands through his hair now feeling the exasperation Bianca was feeling. It was the holidays and they couldn’t afford to be understocked when there was money to be made. 

“Queenie absolutely lost it on the delivery guy. The only thing we thought of is sending some security out and having them buy out some other stores?” 

“Shit, yeah,” Bill said as he anxiously fiddled with the telephone cord. “Yeah if that’s the only option, it will have to work for now.” 

“Is Alma around? She used to talk nice with the liquor supply owner maybe she could pull somethin’?” 

“Nah, she’s out with her friend. Shit… I’ll page her. But have the guys go and buy out where ever just in case. We’ll make the money back off that regardless.” 

Alma and Ulyssa were on 5th Avenue looking through racks while other shopping bags hung from their arms when she heard the pager beep. She excused herself and walked up to a cash counter asking them to borrow their phone. Though hesitant, they obliged. 

“Is everything okay,” she asked once Bill answered. 

“No! I mean yes! Echo is fine,” he said pinching the bridge of his nose out of stress. “She’s okay.”

“You almost gave me a fucking heart attack!” She said with a hand on her chest trying to settle the spiked heart rate he gave her while ignoring the looks she had gained from other shoppers. “What is wrong with you?” 

“I’m sorry! But there's an issue with the liquor shipment at the club. They only brought half of what we had ordered. I was wondering if you could talk to the warehouse owner for me?” 

Alma sighed. “Did they say something bogus like it’s on back order?” 

“They did. Has this happened before?” 

“Forth of July in ‘88. He says that shit to upsell. Putting whatever is on ‘backorder’ as a rush order. Yeah, I’ll talk to him page me his number.” 

Alma laid the phone back on the counter with so little as a thank you. She looked for Ulyssa and asked her if was okay by herself while she found a pay phone. She decided to follow her friend instead and stood by a bit as she called a number and began speaking sweetly to someone on the other line. It was even a bit overly flirtatious. She had heard Alma on the phone speaking to customers on the phone with a more jovial professional demeanor unless they were rude of course but this was different. 

“Aww, that’s so sweet. Oh, I would love to see that Hank,” she lustfully hushed into the receiver. “Thank you so so so much. Oh and you too, Merry Christmas!” She sneered when she hung up the phone harshly. “Alright, sorry about that,” she said turning around to her friend. “You want to leave these bags with Ricky and grab something to eat?”

They found themselves at a queer dive bar that served food once they left their things with Ricky, the chauffeur Bill had gotten for them. Both of the girls discussed that they were almost tired of eating such big meals while shopping so they each shared an order of fries and had a hot dog. They ordered beers and sat by the window as the place slowly filled for karaoke night. This time Ulyssa insisted on paying. She hadn’t spent a single dime besides the fare for the subway and little souvenirs since being in the city. Alma let her, she knew her friend only wanted to do at least one nice thing after she had taken her shopping. 

“Are you liking your time here so far,” Alma asked after a rambunctious drag queen dressed as an anthropomorphized Christmas tree opened the karaoke night performing a rendition of Wham’s holiday hit, Last Christmas. 

“Hella fun! And thank you so much! Bill too. I almost don’t want to leave,” she giggled. “I think the last thing I want to do is go to a Broadway show?”

“Definitely! We can hopefully make that work,” Alma said after finishing her beer. Luckily, a server was walking around then and they ordered another round plus shots. 

They were enjoying the karaoke surprisingly it seemed they were in a place full of decent singers. Though there was no doubt that the singing would get worse the more people became drunk. Alma could feel herself getting a bit tipsy and she looked over at Ulyssa who looked a little bit more drunk than her. 

“You want another and we can go home?” She suggested. 

“I put my name on the waitlist for the mic remember?” 

She did not so she just nodded. She excused herself to go order themselves another beer and when she turned around with drinks in hand she bumped into a tan tall man with dark curls and her body went cold. She felt like she had seen a ghost.

“Fuck!” She said recoiling causing the liquid in the glasses she was holding to slosh around and spill out some.

The man looked down at her perplexed by her startled reaction. He was standing a bit close but it was a small bar, it wasn’t intentional. “I’m sorry miss… I’ll step out of your way.” 

Alma straightened up and glanced back up at him for a second. He was just a young college student. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Craig. It couldn’t be. “Sorry, uh, thanks.” 

When Alma came back with the drinks she noticed Ulyssa taking a shot by herself. “Where’d you get that,” she asked concerned.

“That guy over there gave it to me,” she pointed to a dark corner of the bar where there was no one. And after her fraught experience at the bar, that spooked her a little bit. 

“Ulyssa you shouldn’t take shit from people you don’t know?!” When she said that the server from earlier had passed them by an overheard. 

“Oh, I’m sorry it was me, girl.” He said pushing his hair behind his ear. “It was a wrong order and I offered it to her.” 

Alma nodded relieved about that but the shot wasn’t going to help Ulyssa in her state regardless if it was spiked or not. 

“Can I ask you something?” Ulyssa said a bit slurred but straightened up trying to gain some composure. 

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Is Bill in the mob or something?” 

Alma laughed. “No, he’s not. He’s not Italian either.” 

“Ha! Ha!” Ulyssa sarcastically responded. “I don’t know there’s something…” she trailed off. “I was talking to my cousins yesterday and they went to this bar, right? And I think I know?” 

“Know what?” Alma asked fishing for her next assumption. 

“You know like I believe women should be free to express themselves and make a living however they like so I’m not judging okay? I’m not judging!” Ulyssa stressed. 

“So you’re cousin’s told you then?” Alma nervously sipped her beer.

“No! I figured it out when my young cousin Luca said he drank a shit ton of Alma’s at a strip club the night before.” 

Alma’s heart fell to her ass for the third time that day. Bill was right she wasn’t as naive or oblivious as she assumed. She knew about that drink. Queenie had added it to the bar menu in her absence as a form of respect for taking over her position. 

“And I know you used to be a bartender,” Ulyssa continued. “But I get it, okay. If you used to dance I would never judge you for that!” 

“What?” Alma tossed her head back in confusion. 

“Wait,” Ulyssa took a deep breath and rubbed her brow. She was getting her thoughts crossed. “Fuck I’m drunk. I didn’t mean that. I mean Bill, he works there?” 

“Um, yeah… that’s his business. That’s how he makes a living.” 

“Holy fuck. Alma, why did you think you’d have to keep that from me?” 

“Well, it’s not really an easy topic, you know?” She said gulping her beer as did her friend. “I hope you won’t look at Bill differently now that you know. He’s still the same person he’s been this whole time you’ve been around him.” 

Ulyssa’s eyes were heavy then, she could hardly keep her head up. Alma sighed and all that she could hope for was that she would be too drunk to remember any of their conversation the next day. 

“Um, how ‘bout we finish these beers?” Alma proposed. 

“Huh? Right right,” Ulyssa nodded. 

They arrived home a little past midnight. Bill answered ready to thank Alma for getting their other half of the liquor shipment delivered to the club until he saw her struggling to hold Ulyssa up on her feet. 

“Jesus,” Bill said amused. “What happened?” 

“She’s a lightweight, obviously. Could you help?” Alma said straining to keep her upright. 

Ulyssa could only keep one eye open enough to focus and she said hi to Bill when she finally noticed his presence but then she was out again. Ricky walked in to set up their shopping bags by the entrance and left on his way just as quickly.

“I’m going to pick you up,” Bill told Ulyssa and scooped her in his arms before she could agree to it but it didn’t seem like she could anyway. Alma hurriedly collected two bottles of water from the fridge and some snacks and met them again in the hallway. 

“Are you drunk?” Bill asked peering down at Alma. 

“Eh a little,” she shrugged but she had a silly grin on her face. “She knows about you. Like where you work.” 

“You told her?” 

Alma shook her head. “She figured it out.” 

“Well, I thought you said you didn’t care if she knew or not.” They stopped just before reaching the back stairs and Bill repositioned Ulyssa so that half of her slung from his shoulder while he held her legs so he could walk up the stairs better. Alma followed behind. She helped Bill gently lay her down on the edge of the bed. Almost as if they were dealing with an oversized baby though flashes of them rolling Craigs' body in plastic came to mind but they shook those memories away. Bill grabbed the small bin by the nightstand put it next to her on the floor and turned her head towards it while Alma took her shoes off. 

“Well?” Bill said putting his hand on his hips as Alma covered her with a blanket. “Do you or do not care if she knows?” 

“I don’t. I just want her to see who you are outside of that. I want her to see you the way I do.” 

Bill pulled her in for a hug. They looked back once before leaving down the stairs and it looked like she’d sleep stiff the rest of the night. 

“I get it, okay,” Bill said watching Alma get out of her clothes to take a shower. 

“It’s just, you’re sort of a different person there. Hell, even I am. It’s just how it is in that environment.” 

“Can I get in with you?” He asked even though he was following her right into the shower across the hall as he undressed behind her. 

He didn’t even follow her for sex. He could tell she was more drunk than she was letting on with how she was cautiously taking her steps but they just looked awkward to someone sober as he was. Most times she could get away with it – she could be pretty high functioning while drunk – but he knew her. She let him wash her hair and a couple of times she would place her hand out on the shower wall to rebalance herself. The liquor was hitting her suddenly, she thought maybe it was the steam of the shower making it worse. Bill hurried so that she could go and lay down while he finished showering himself. 

Bill walked into the bedroom and dried himself off with a towel and he was surprised Alma remained awake drinking a glass of water in the light of the red marquee. He had expected to see her passed out. 

“How much did you drink,” he lightly chuckled slipping into bed next to her. 

“I didn’t eat well enough, that's all,” she sighed laying her head on her pillow and facing him. “How was Echo? Not so bad right?” 

Bill smiled. Earlier in the evening while Echo was playing with her toys he was making himself a hearty sandwich for dinner and had gotten momentarily distracted. He felt too comfortable because he could see right into the living room from the kitchen. He noticed suddenly it was too quiet and when he looked up he saw her little hands digging in the edges of the fireplace. Luckily, he hadn’t turned it on that day but she had managed to run soot through her hair, rubbed it in, and was licking it off her little hands. He was a bit appalled because surely that had to taste disgusting but she didn’t seem to think so by the way she gleefully giggled to herself. He quickly went to her and moved her away which only made her cry revealing her blackened mouth. He figured she had to be hungry if she was eating soot but also she needed a bath so her mother would never know of this incident. 

“She’s an angel,” he smiled. 

~~~

Ulyssa woke up with an awful taste in her mouth and her head pounding almost as if it were expanding. As she slowly moved her stiff body she winced as she sat upright on the edge of the bed and suddenly felt nauseous. She noticed the trash bin next to her ducked her head inside it and vomited. There wasn’t much in her stomach to purge but she felt better. Embarrassed she tied off the trash bag in the bin and brought it with her to the bathroom to stuff into the bin in there. Weakly, she brushed her teeth and she could hear Echo babbling loudly from downstairs and her parents laughing and speaking to her. Her anxiety kicked in then. She could hardly remember last night. She vaguely remembered leaving the dive bar but had no recollection of coming home. However, she could partially remember that Alma confirmed her suspicions. Bill owned a strip club, it didn’t matter how drunk she had gotten she couldn’t forget that. 

She started to draw a bath when the phone rang in the room. It sat on a small stand in the loft area by the loveseat. Hesitantly, she left the bathroom and was just about to pick up the receiver when it stopped ringing. What she didn’t know is that from below Alma could see her shadow cast on the ceiling and so she called out to her from the living room. 

“Ulyssa? Are you okay,” she asked. 

“Uh, yeah I just need to, get my bearings I guess,” she said peeking her head out from the loft. Alma smiled at her as she held the phone and she saw Bill looking at her while Echo stood on his lap and pulled his ear which made him flinch because she tugged at the thin gold hoop he wore in it. She was surprised to see that they had erected a freshly chopped Christmas tree next to the fireplace. 

“That’s okay. Take your time,” Alma assured. 

Ulyssa lazily walked back to the bathroom with a bottle of water and graham cracker snacks and turned the tub faucet off. Though she was moving slowly she eagerly undressed and settled into the warm bath. She sighed with relief but her anxiety loomed over still. She felt like an idiot. These people invited her into their home and all she did was pry. She usually wasn’t a nosy person but curiosity got the best of her. What right did she have to dig into their private lives? Sure, Alma and her were friends but she didn’t have to know every single detail of her life and because of that she felt so juvenile. 

Down below the family was lounging around the living room. The TV was broadcasting some old black-and-white Christmas movie which Bill muted to turn on the radio to have music lightly play. Meanwhile, Alma unboxed ornaments as she sat on the rug with Echo by her side inquisitively watching on. 

“How’d she look,” Bill inquired when he sat down on the couch and Alma scooted to sit between his open knees. He was just about to flatten the empty boxes to feel included before Alma stopped him reminding him that they’d be reused after the season. 

“I don’t know,” Alma sighed. “A bit haggard. She’ll be fine though.” 

“Does she usually get wasted?” He lightly laughed. 

“Not really,” she said resting the back of her head on his knee, and looked up to speak to him. “We’ll have a beer or two after work sometimes but I’ve heard stories from Ash. The first time I ever hung out with her outside of work she invited me to go hiking.” 

“You went hiking,” Bill said surprised, running his hand through her hair affectionately. 

“It’s what people do there,” she laughed. “But it was fine because she offered me shrooms and it kicked in when we got to this cute little hidden stream. I just kind of laid there looking up at the canopy of trees and it felt like I sunk into the earth. I was like that for like two hours.” 

“Okay, I see why you went then,” he chuckled.

“But yeah, I didn’t know she got down like that until then so she’s not a big square. I just wonder what she remembers from last night?” 

“Maybe I should just talk to her?” He asked looking up towards the loft for a moment. “Whenever she comes down.” 

“Yeah, just keep it surface level. She dabbles but she doesn’t do hard stuff. She doesn’t need to know all that.” 

“You told me her cousins told her about the place maybe she already knows?” 

Alma paused. She should have dug into what Ulyssa knew more when she had the chance last night. “Maybe. But if they know their cousin probably not.” 

“What is the deal with everyone treating her like she’s twelve years old? She’s like what 23? She’s not naive.” 

“She’s 24 but yeah I know. But not everyone needs to be fucking corrupted like us.” 

“I suppose...” Bill sighed.

Alma handed him some sparkling crystalline ornaments of various sizes and shapes and then grabbed her share after Bill helped her to her feet. “You cover the top and I’ll cover to bottom,” she instructed. “When it sounds like she’s coming down, I’ll fuck off and you can talk to her. Just say I’m wrapping presents, it won't be a lie.” 

“Besides what I asked you to get me yesterday. Did you get me anything else?” He raised an eyebrow. 

“Only if you got me something?” She winked. 

~~~

She was chugging the second bottle of water upstairs after fixing her hair. After the bath, Ulyssa walked out to the balcony, pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands, and held herself as she inhaled deeply. The cold air settled her head but she missed how crisp and earthy the air in Seattle was this city smelled like motor oil and garbage. Finally, she mustered up the courage to finally go downstairs. Passing the alarm clock she noticed it was a little past two in the afternoon. 

It was fairly quiet downstairs until she descended the back stairs and could hear faint music playing as she walked down the hallway. She spotted Echo giggling past as she ran from the kitchen to the living room with her stuffed bunny in one hand and a piece of cheese gripped in the other. When she turned to her left she saw Bill looking into a crockpot full of what smelled like pot roast. He turned his head when he noticed her standing at the threshold and he flashed her a dimpled smirk. 

“Hey, you feeling better?” He said resting his hands on the other side of the island where he stood. 

Ulyssa snickered a bit embarrassed. “Uh yeah kinda. The tree looks nice,” she said pointing at it with her thumb.

“Thanks, I don’t think I’ve had a tree up in a few years. We have aspirin?” He quickly suggested walking towards a cupboard behind him and he was glad that Ulyssa took it upon herself to grab a bottle of water from the fridge herself. He felt a bit awkward being alone with her. He relied on Alma’s cues regarding her friend the whole time she was with them and now he was left to his own devices. He slid the tablets across the island towards her when Echo ran past her and up to his shins tapping them. 

“Papa. Sheese?” 

He laughed when he heard Ulyssa laugh and cut another piece from the cheese he had out on a cutting board on the island. She gleefully ran back to the living room after. 

“She so stinkin’ cute. She’s grown up a lot being here I think. When she was born you could just tell she’d have a big personality.” 

Bill scratched his stubbly mustache uncomfortably. “Ah yeah,” he nodded.

“Sorry, I uh-”

“It’s okay. Well… not really but that situation isn’t your fault,” he turned around again and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and decided to make coffee. Alma could wait a little if she finished wrapping presents. 

He invited her to sit with him at the dining table. He angled the chair at the head of the table towards the living room so he could keep an eye on Echo while Ulyssa sat to the left of him in his eyeline. She was nervously holding onto her warm coffee mug. 

“Where is Alma,” Ulyssa asked. 

“She’s wrapping presents in our room,” Bill said taking his focus off his daughter to look at her. “So I just wanted to say, ah, thank you. For how you helped Alma when she was pregnant and how you and Yolani have helped with caring for her like you do. I’m glad Alma had someone.” 

“Oh. Thanks. I could just tell… she needed someone.” 

Bill took a sip from his mug to swallow the lump in his throat. 

“She told me at the time, that you two had broken up?” Ulyssa continued. 

“Mhmm,” Bill responded. It was a lie, Alma told her. “It was a lot of things,” Bill shrugged and wished that he had a cigarette right then. “I heard you figured out where I work?” 

Ulyssa gazed down into her caramel-colored drink. “Yeah…” 

“I’m sorry if that may offend you,” he really wasn’t he didn’t care if she approved or not but for everyone’s sake he’d play nice. “I think Alma was worried about revealing that because people generally have terrible preconceived ideas about strip clubs.” And they’re mostly right, he finished in his head. 

“Right,” Ulyssa nodded. “But I wouldn’t have cared either way. I would have still been Alma’s friend. And I get how people think but I don’t think it’s anyone’s right to judge how a woman should and can earn money. Female sensuality is constantly under scrutiny and overly regulated.” 

Bill was slightly prepared to hear her feminist interpretation of his establishment but he had to agree. “You know I inherited it from an old friend? She was a vaudeville dancer way back. Her name was Myrna.” 

“Echo’s-” 

“Middle name,” he finished for her and nodded. He loved that Alma gave her the middle name but he must admit that it was a bit dated he thought it fit enough to juxtapose the unconventional first name at least. “It was kind of a dump once it was given to me. It had some challenges here and there but I built it back up and once I and my business partner Bianca merged we remodeled this past year and it looks fucking great if I say so myself,” he said smiling. 

“Do you think I’ll be able to visit while I’m here?” 

Bill was surprised to hear that, he wasn’t expecting her to actually want to go for whatever moral principle she had. Just then Echo ran to him with her fist out so he put his palm outwards and she dropped a balled-up piece of soggy cheese in his hand. 

“All done,” she said as she ran off back to her toys. 

“She’s a little crazy, isn’t she?” Bill laughed placing the ball of cheese next to his mug. “Um well, I’ll have to talk to Alma about that. We have Echo so…” 

“Right, right I shouldn’t have asked.” 

“No, I don’t have a problem with it at all.” This was actually the best-case scenario for him. He had been throwing bread crumbs trying to convince Alma to go to at least see the new renovations. He had built a whole new loft that sat above the bar and he wanted to show it off. “Do you mind watching Echo for a moment?” He said rising from his chair. 

Once Ulyssa delegated herself to the living room to play with Echo she had run off and tried to follow her father. He scooped her up, kissed her on the cheek, and brought her back placing her next to Ulyssa. 

He assured his child that he’d be right back and then paused a moment. “Do you think sometimes you could tell me more? About, you know, how she was when she was smaller and how Alma was? She’s told me plenty but… I’d like to know it outside of her perspective too. Objectively.” 

Ulyssa looked up at him and nodded. “Yes of course.” 

Bill excused himself, turning back a few times to make sure his daughter wasn’t following him. When he knocked he heard Alma yell at him to hold on a second. He could hear paper crumpling and her walking around the room trying to gather things. 

“Okay, come in.” 

He slowly opened the doorknob peeked his head in and saw her rerolling wrapping paper. 

“Don’t look in the closet,” she said to him. Once he closed the door behind him she spoke again. “So… was she fine with it?” 

“Um yeah, she’s actually pretty chill about it.” 

“I knew she would be but thank god.” 

“She asked me to take her to Trigger Finger.”

Alma’s eyes widened in shock and then she looked highly annoyed. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

#my bill writings #bill skarsgard #avenue of sins #aos neon #aos

[acaplaya-musings]

Not-Fully-Human Voiceplay AU (part 2)

(Yeah so I was originally planning on posting this either the same day of or the day after the original post, but turns out I had a lot more thoughts than I first realized, and typing it all became trickier than first expected, and I realised I was overthinking things just a little and this is supposed to be fun) A follow up to this post that's basically "what if Geoff wasn't actually 100% human (and neither are Layne and Eli), with me adding elements of magic/fantasy to the real-life story of Voiceplay so far (some of it anyway - I don't claim to be an expert and this is not a flawless/fully fleshed-out story or whatever, it's just a mostly-coherent collection of ideas that my brain came up with, and it's just a bit of fun really). Go look at Part 1 if you haven't already, then click the Read More to keep reading!

When 4:2:Five's original beatboxer, Scott Porter, left the quintet [to become an actor], Layne was more than happy to take over the role. He was shown the ropes of beatboxing by Geoff [true], and was a fast learner, especially when he started to have fun with it.

The lineup of the group changed a little, and 4:2:Five became Voiceplay, which brings me to...

Eli: [I don't know when exactly he joined the group but I'm guessing it was at some point after the name change.] Human who keeps getting reincarnated after death. Started out in the Norse/Viking era (that's as far as his memories go back anyway), was a travelling bard during the Middle Ages, rode on pirate ships here and there during the Golden Age of Piracy, and was in a rock'n'roll band for a while in the early 2000s [true, though I don't know the exact years he was in the band for], before finding his way to Voiceplay.

Eli is, by and large, mortal (on a physical/physiological basis at least), though he often seems to have a little less need for air while singing than the average human [no seriously go watch VP's Part Of Your World mini]. And he's of course a bit more knowledgeable about certain parts of history than most, but don't expect him to help you with any history assignments ("you probably can't remember everything that happened in your life, let alone when, but you think I can keep all my lives straight and chronological in my head? Please."

Now I can start getting into the interesting bits, like the matter of subharmonics! First of all, here are the genuine reality facts that I know: Geoff stumbled across a video talking about subharmonics and how to do them while touring with the rest of Voiceplay. I don't know exactly when this was or even what part of America they were currently in at the time, but I also know that the first video that he used subharmonics in was a Twenty One Pilots mashup video that VP did with Kurt Hugo Schneider on his channel, which was released in November 2016. Now here's how I'm explaining things, using the lack of other specifics to my creative advantage:

I really wanted to have Geoff have some sort of association with earthquakes, because well, y'know, and after doing some snooping around on Wikipedia, I discovered that a magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurred in Oklahoma in September of 2016, and it's apparently the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the state.

Maybe it was just a "regular" earthquake, maybe it wasn't, but one way or another, it unlocked something deep within Geoff (who was in Oklahoma at the time while touring with Voiceplay), and though the ground did not in fact swallow him whole, the rumbles and vibrations sent him a message; he was still no ordinary human being, and constantly trying to act like one was only wasting his potential.

(I know the common trope is "half-human half-fantasy-being comes into their abilities when they enter puberty or first reach adulthood", but that doesn't really fit with the "real" timeline here, and I've got my own explanation, though it may seem a bit contrived).

Geoff would have been 36 when this happened, his birthday being a couple weeks earlier in August, and hear me out: half of 666 (the demonic/'devil's' number) is 333, and what do you get if you add the second and third individual digits together in the number? 36! (insert It's Always Sunny meme here)

So Geoff and the guys are rehearsing in the tour bus one day, like let's say the day after the earthquake, and suddenly Geoff hits a low note that he's never hit before, without barely even trying, and it sounds... different.

Earl: "Woah, that was impressive! What did you do?" (Earl is still human, but knows The Truth, given that he went to school and college with both Geoff and Layne) Geoff: "Currently, your guess is as good as mine."

In this universe, Geoff's subharmonics (which Eli ends up nicknaming "subterraneans") are different to the human equivalent of them. Think of it like a world where magic-users (witches/wizards/warlocks/etc) exist, but there are still ordinary humans that can do "stage magic" using special props, trick items, sleight of hand, etc. So the Youtube video on subharmonics is used as a cover story/explanation, which then makes it easier for Layne to convince Geoff to start using them in their song covers. Layne reasoned that the collab with Kurt Hugo Schneider was the perfect opportunity to properly try them out in a video, because if Geoff wasn't fully content with the final result, it didn't matter as much, as it wasn't going to be on their own YouTube channel anyway, and it could just be explained as a special "gimmick" or the like.

As it was, Geoff didn't do a subharmonic/Subterranean on camera again till months later, the following year [the earliest sub I can identify in one of Geoff's vocal lines on a Voiceplay cover is Daddy Sang Bass]. And well, the rest is history!

Right, enough linear narrative stuff, time for various headcanons and stuff that inspired me to make this in the first place!

Maybe the decision to grow his hair long was in some way connected to his true nature, maybe it wasn't, but one way or another, it went neatly hand-in-hand with Geoff's shift to "insane bassmaster 3000" that lured in new fans and had pre-existing fans loving him even more.

All the stuff about Geoff calling himself "old and boring" or "a baritone with a bass range"? Yeah it's a cover; a personal attempt to make himself seem like a "normal human", kinda like Clark Kent attempting to avoid any possible suspicions of him being Superman whatsoever. (A lot of Geoff's fans think he's way too humble, if not just in a whole lot of self-denial).

Occasionally, when Layne arranges a cover for the group, Geoff will see his part and be like "there's no way I can sing this", but not because it's too difficult, but because he believes it to be pushing the limit of believability just a little too much in regards to appearing/acting human (he can occasionally be persuaded though, like with that glorious ~15 second B0 Sub in Valhalla Calling)

Alien!Layne, though, has no such qualms about showing off his full vocal abilities, and will make vocal percussion look like literal child's play (see: the These Boots Are Made For Walking mini for Layne being absolutely unhinged). Sleigh bell noises? Sure! Bubble sounds? Easy! Inhaled bass? Pretty uncommon for humans to do it, but heck, let's hit an A0 while we're at it! (Sh-Boom).

Geoff, however, would be lying if he said he didn't also get into the spirit of fun and theatrics from time to time, and well, after the massive response that Oogie Boogie's song got, there was really no turning back

Oh and finally, J None also finds out the truth, but Cesar hasn't yet. The others swear that they will sooner or later, they just "haven't found the right opportunity yet".

I could go on, but I think I've typed enough for the time being, and if literally anyone is interested in this and wants to talk to me about it, I'm down! But that's all for now! I'm out!

#Voiceplay #Voiceplay Not-Fully-Human AU #geoff castellucci #layne stein #eli jacobson #earl elkins jr #Fanfic-adjacent #acaplaya writings

[bloodynereid]

i know a lot of ppl ship show eddie & camila (including myself) but lowkey when the show first came out, i thought eddie and warren would’ve made a cute pairing. like i know they’re prob very straight but in another queer world they would be best friends/band mates to lovers… do u think u could write a little ficlet about them? thanks <3

Reconciliation

pairing: warren rhodes/rojas x eddie roundtree

a/n: so... my first time writing a character x character fic and it will probably be my last cause I kind of hate how this turned out but hopefully u still like it anon cause i love this pairing. anyways i kind of went with the concept of warren and eddie getting reunited after the whole argument during the finale. enjoy + let me know ur thoughts :)

tw: coffee spilling, mentions of weed, cursing, mentions of drinking

description: old friends reconcile but will they become something more?

Warren: So it was actually a few years ago when I finally saw Eddie again. We didn’t leave our, I guess, you could call it friendship at the best of terms.

Eddie: I was an asshole, plain and simple. I regretted that conversation with Warren for my entire life. I kind of still do. I always felt a deeper connection with him and then I just went and squandered it over a stupid little rivalry I had with Billy.

Warren: I divorced Lisa back in ‘84. We didn’t fit well together… I mean we did at the beginning. But she wasn’t what I wanted and she made it abundantly clear I wasn’t what she needed. We’re still friends though. That never changed.

Eddie: So did Warren tell you how we reconnected?

Warren: Oh you want the full story well it all started on the day I was helping a band record some tracks at this fancy new record label…

When the producer finally gave him the greenlight to get out of the recording booth, Warren was beyond exhausted. It had been a rather grueling session, it was a quite literal miracle that he had lasted this long.

Before leaving he gave his customary goodbyes and grabbed a coffee from the break room, but just as he was about to leave the room to head home he ran smack dab into someone.

Coffee went everywhere. The scalding hot liquid burned through the flesh of his open shirt. Expletives flew every which way and those were quickly replaced by apologies from both parties.

“Fuck I’m so sorry man, that’s totally my fault.” Then Warren realized he recognized that voice. The deep baritone of the man he totally didn’t have a crush on for basically his entire life.

“Eddie Roundtree?!” Eddie’s eyes met his and the familiar sparks flew again. They might look over a decade older but those same butterflies still settled in his stomach at the blonde’s handsome face.

“No fucking way Warren. It’s good to see you man.” Eddie went to hug him but then they both realized that they were still covered in coffee. Rapidly cooling coffee that was sticking everywhere due to the insane amount of sugar he still demanded to put in it.

“Uh I’ve got some extra shirts and towels in my office. If you need any-”

“Yeah that’d be great.”

The walk over to his office was awkward but it was starting to fall into the realm of awkwardly comfortable. When Eddie finished unlocking the door and shepherding him into the space (which had abnormally large floor length mirrors), Warren finally realized that the glinting off the walls was due to all the producing awards.

Warren hadn’t realized how incredibly famous Eddie had gotten in the music industry. Of course, he had looked him up a few years ago but he seemed to have just been playing at random bars. It was insane how quickly he turned that around and he hadn’t heard or read about it.

“Hey, here's the only thing I had sorry. It might be a bit small on you… and not exactly your style.” Eddie’s face hid a slightly sheepish smile as he tossed me an ugly Christmas sweater that exactly matched the one he had on. Warren let out a loud laugh before stripping out the soaked button down shirt and tossing the replacement on.

“Okay from a scale from 1-10 how ridiculous do I look?” He asked as he did a small twirl.

“Definitely not as ridiculous as I do.” Eddie said as he let out a strained laugh.

“Okay spit it out, cupcake. You look constipated.” Warren said as he finally took a seat on the couch and patted the spot next to him. Eddie reluctantly followed him and twisted his hands together.

“Fuck I guess I just wanted to apologize for all the shit I said all those years ago. I really am sorry, Warren.” Eddie looked up at him and Warren gave him a reassuring smile.

“Hey it’s fine, already forgotten about. I’m just glad to see you again Eddie. Would you believe it if I said I missed you?”

“I probably would say you are severely sleep deprived.” They let out a laugh at that one.

“It’s only 3 a.m. Remember when we used to party until sunrise?”

“Oh god those were the days… but just so you know I’ve missed you too.”

“Well good. I’m sure you did cause I’m Warren fucking Rojas.”

“That you certainly are.”

Eddie: That night I got to reconnect with the one person who was always with me through thick and thin. And… the one who always chose me first.

The camera comes out for a wider shot as Warren walks in trying to balance 3 glasses of whisky.

Warren: I obviously made the first move, let’s keep the record clear with that one. It was about a year after that fateful night.

Warren was feeling those sparks again… it was probably from the weed that they were smoking but it was mainly because of those stupidly beautiful brown eyes. The eyes that belonged to the man he somehow became friends with again. The man who he had a crush on since middle school.

“Hey Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“What would you do if I kissed you right now?” A brief expression of shock flew over Eddie’s face and Warren suddenly worried that he completely misjudged the situation.

“Probably kiss you back.”

Eddie: Okay fine yeah Warren made the first move, happy sweetheart?

Warren: Definitely.

They both shared a kiss as the video slowly faded out.

requests and asks are open as always <3

taglist: @yesshewrites1

(lmk if you want to be added to any specific taglists)

#warren x eddie #warren rhodes #warren rojas #warren rojas imagine #eddie roundtree #eddie roundtree imagine #djats #djats fanfic #warren x eddie fanfic #daisy jones and the six #daisy jones and the six fanfic #taylor jenkins reid #amazon prime

[sopherfly]

Escort Or a padawan no more!

Thank you, anon, for this ask, and for giving me options! I’ve gone with Escort because that one is much more fleshed out.

From this wip ask game!

So, Anakin has been working as an escort to make money for grad school. (He’s very good at it. He’s young, and pretty, and knows how to be irresistible and follow instructions when there’s a good incentive anyway.) He’s made all the money he needs, he’s reached out to his agency to tie up all the loose ends, and his last day is today.

It’s already early afternoon, so he’s not expecting a call—but he gets one, saying that one of the other escorts had a last minute conflict, and would Anakin be able to fill in? It’s not a hard job, and he’s exactly this client’s type. (In fact, this client asked for him specifically, since his picture hasn’t yet been pulled from the site.)

Anakin meets briefly with the client—Obi-Wan Kenobi—just to make sure they’re a good fit. Though he’s gotten the brief from his agency, he and Obi-Wan talk about what he’ll be doing. Surprisingly, Obi-Wan isn’t interested in sex. Just someone to attend a gala with him.

The contract just says to do whatever Obi-Wan wants, within his written and reasonable limits. But Anakin needs to ask again, just to be sure. “You’re paying me a lot of money.”

It’s not exactly a question, but Obi-Wan offers a knowing smile and answers him all the same.

“What I want is someone who will look good on my arm,” Obi-Wan says, giving Anakin another appreciative once-over. “Someone to distract me from the monotony enough that I can make it through four hours without drinking myself into oblivion.”

Anakin tries his best not to look disappointed. Obi-Wan is—well, there’s no sugar-coating it. He’s sexy as hell. The hottest man Anakin has ever met, client or not. It’s a shame he’s not interested, because Anakin is. Desperately. 

He takes a deep breath and grins, giving Obi-Wan his ever-effective combination of mischievous and demure. “Okay,” he says cheekily. “I can definitely do that.”

But of course, this is Anakin and Obi-Wan. And even though Obi-Wan claimed not to want sex… before the end of the evening, he’s having second thoughts.

“What if I were to tell you I’ve changed my mind?” Obi-Wan asks, his gaze flicking down to Anakin’s lips. “Would that be alright?”

They haven’t even kissed, and already it feels like Obi-Wan has stolen the air from his lungs. He’s burning from the inside out; he’s never wanted anyone as badly as he wants Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“Yeah,” Anakin says, rough and ragged and needy. “Fuck, yes.”

They get up to a little mischief at the gala in one of the private powder rooms, and then more mischief back at Obi-Wan’s place. 🔥

#obikin #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #my wips #fic #asks #anon asks #sopherfly writes

[marymauk]

Fic recs: a few things that didn't happen.

Okay idk what holds this rec list together, I am simply going with the vibes. And the vibes say: these guys belong on the same list! Okay, vibes.

time and hour runs through by StarryCleric, T, 6k, Caleb pov

The Mighty Nein are caught off guard and captured one night while traveling across Xhorhas.

Caleb stalls for time.

Caleb, getting tortured: *deep sigh* You're doing it wrong...

put them together and you can hear it (it's the song everyone knows) by elsinorerose, T, 4k, Widojest getting together

"So go on. Convince me."

He catches his breath. "Convince you?"

"Yeah, give me one good reason."

"One good — I can give you twenty good reasons."

"Oh yeah?" Jester says, raising her eyebrows, like she's just so surprised, like she's ready to be so convinced, you guys. "Okay. Go ahead then."

"Go ahead and…?"

"Give me twenty. If you can give me twenty good reasons why we shouldn't be together, you win."

Fluff and Angstttt

we all need someone to hold by QueenWithABeeThrone, T, 5k, Widomauk

The moon is shining bright above them, and in the moonlight Caleb almost seems to glow.

I don’t know if I can let this go, Molly thinks, and it’s a sharp, sobering thought.

or: Molly catches up with the Mighty Nein and pines after Caleb, the latter of which was a lot easier before he died. now things are a little more complicated.

okay okay the part where Caleb tries to pet the hallucinated cat lives in my head rent free

Snow angel by DefaultJane, T, 7k, pre relationship Beauyasha

Yasha and Beau have time to kill and decide to take a moment to experience what is marketed to them as the “authentic sauna experience” by the eccentric woman they meet at Balenpost, said experience including hanging out naked, washing each other’s hair, talking and laughing late into the night...You know, just gals being pals.

yeah, what the summary said

Super Secret Sex Handshakes by Somebodys_Hermione, T, 1k, background Beauyasha and Fjorester

Yasha and Jester keep running into each other at 3am sneaking out of their respective partner's rooms. Like, it *keeps* happening.

Asfdfgdsfsds this is so funny.

infinity in the palm of your hand by mousecookie, T, 6k, Caleb pov

At the end of the blood-spattered Aeorian hall, the Mighty Nein find a rusted iron door.  

They also find Essek.

uhh AU where *gasp* Essek is in Eiselcross too..! But like written before we knew Essek was in Eiselcross too. Anyway, remember all those Dynasty explorers Lucien murdered?... Hurt/comfort.

won't leave you behind in the void by essektheylyss (midnightindigo), T, 2k, Essek pov

If there is anything worse than losing all sensation and movement, it might be losing all sensation and movement while entirely untethered, floating in the aorta of a flesh city.

I've reread this... so many times. I simply like the vibes.

#good stuff here.. #not that I'd rec you something that wasn't #m9 #critical role #fic recs #the mighty nein #my post

[emp-blast]

sigma planet au because i have brainrot atm

-> uhm. so yeah it's basically just different versions of sigma but as planets.

-> they are assigned as protectors of their respective planets.

-> their main job is just to keep order. so like,,, no weird space-time shenanigans.

-> i kind of want this whole thing to work sort of like disco elysium; different emotions (the planets, in this case) try to influence the person's actions (the solar system as a whole)

-> it's just one, giant internal monologue.

-> i'm already thinking about different characters- imagine reinhardt as the leo constellation and then the solar system and the leo constellation fall in love haha jk... unless

-> anyways idk what the conflict would be... maybe a blackhole is starting to form, and that threatens to like,,, destroy the entire solar system. idk.

-> so yeah, most of the planets don't want to get sucked into a black hole (understandable). but they all have different ideas on how to stop it. and they argue amongst each other. like a lot

-> also i should mention that the planets' personalities are heavily inspired by "the planets" by holst.

-> for example, one of the movements is called 'neptune, the mystic'. and i think he'd be the one to think that one of the planets has to be sacrificed for the greater good. yeah, no one really takes him seriously 💀

-> while the sun is the most powerful cosmic entity in the solar system, earth, mars, and jupiter have the most influence on the solar system as a whole. the sun doesn't talk a whole lot anyways. and no one speaks to the sun out of respect.

here is a very short description on each planet, each named after the movements of holst's suite.

mercury, the winged messenger: idk if i want to lean into the whole "hermes" archetype tbh. greek/roman gods have never really interested me. so for now, i'll save mercury for another time.

venus, the bringer of peace: the idea i have for venus is a sort of lawyer type personality? argumentative and the debate type. formal and quick thinking. will play the devil's advocate from time to time just for funsies (this annoys the others). the "bringer of peace" title is a bit misleading tbh. he often mistakes order for peace.

earth: so holst didn't write a movement for earth so uhm,,, i gotta make stuff up ig. i think i want to go for a more empathetic personality? i think the others are all formal, but earth is more casual. he's very friendly and understanding. he's kind of the odd man out though :/

he often gets lost in overseeing his planet, since it is the only one with life. the others think he's being condescending whenever he talks about life on earth. but he's just passionate about his planet. the only reason why he has any authority is because the sun talks to him the most.

all in all, the earth has good intentions but the others are jealous (to varying degrees) and he is often ostracized from the others.

mars, the bringer of war: despite having "war" in his title, he's not necessarily malicious. he just doesn't have a problem with using physical force to attain his goals. he's often serious and doesn't talk much. he sees himself as superior to others, but doesn't make it known. he is also the most jealous of earth, but no one suspects that. he'd rather destroy mars himself than every let himself show an ounce of emotion.

he's authoritative, direct, and keeps his composure, making him a good leader. but deep down he has a lot of conflicting emotions and thoughts that he has yet to work through. sooner or later he'll have to confront those emotions, or else he'll end up having a massive breakdown.

jupiter, the bringer of jollity: very likeable, loud, and cheerful. he never fails to lighten the mood. he's kind and listens to everyone and what they have to say. and that's all i really have for now. i need to flesh jupiter out more.

saturn, the bringer of old age: he very much likes order and harmony. he's powerful in that he has control over time itself, but only uses it to correct "mistakes". for example, one time an asteroid bumped into saturn's rings and ruined it, causing it to become all wavy and jagged. he reversed time to "correct" the course of the asteroid. it ended up crashing on earth. No, he didn't care. No, he didn't bother reversing time to fix that since it was "the natural order of things".

yeah, he's hypocritical and will *not* use his time powers for others. he's conceited and blunt, even a bit mean at times. he likes music and his favorite instrument is the harp. he forces everyone to listen to him whenever he plays. yeah... he isn't very likeable but he is confident. and there is an undeniable charm about him. and he is helpful in that he works hard to keep everything in order. so yeah, no one really knows how to feel about him.

uranus, the magician: hmmm, all i know is that he and neptune are close friends. they're like the crazy duo of the group. i think i want to give him the power to control space/mass? but i'm not too sure yet. i also like to think that he's a bit mischievous. sometimes he'll pull pranks and finds it humorous to purposely aggravate the other planets.

neptune, the mystic: no one really knows what this man is saying half of the time. he is actually the most intelligent out of all of them, but he has a difficult time differentiating fact from fiction. so the things that he spits out just comes out as nonsense. he often has a cold/calm demeanor, but can get worked up easily. he bounces ideas off of uranus, and uranus tries his best to translate what neptune really means to the others. but sometimes neptune is just,,, incomprehensible.

neptune likes creating little light shows- think of something similar to the northern lights.

uhmmm, okay imma stop here but i still have other cosmic entities to go through. but i'll do that at another time. i am so eepy rn 😴

#this is LONG- so open at ur own risk #just something to read while i get the neptune and uranus drawing done #(also i didn't proofread this)

[deerydear]

I apologize for my actions and attitudes.

I've been approaching tumblr with the assumption that "the reader" is a depressed bastard, which gave me an imaginary free-license to make a depressed bastard of myself.

There is a lot of depressive writing and argumentation on the platform, yet there is still a Silent Majority that doesn't participate, just observes... like people coming to the coliseum to watch gladiators maul eachother to bits.

I remember back in 2013, when I was starting to get really into the SJW clique. I still had some fairly level-headed friends who had used tumblr, but they slowly backed off, because: "they're trying to make me feel bad for being a straight, white male".

I thought his sentiment was absurd, at the time... even though I knew exactly what attitude-of-the-party he had been talking about.

I thought it was "penance required".

Aside: before I jumped on the SJW bandwagon, I was in a Dom/sub relationship. My partner didn't really like me, so I started looking elsewhere for attention. (chorus of laughter) Anyways, if I would be honest about the details: this is not a blame on that person, but on myself. I didn't really like her for herself, either. I liked my own mental image of what I thought "she could become", but she didn't want to be that. Background, yeah... I was really young. This was ten years ago, dude. So I think we had the same feelings about eachother, when it came down to it.

Is all fair in love and war? I say not... but that's my opinion.

I had this really deep, weird, pain inside of me, "and I need you to make it deeper."

I want to be a cavern of flesh, a cavern of hell, one of Bosch's grotesque paintings come pulsating, flickering alive.

So this idea of "repentance", really.... appealed to me. Sickness attracts sickness. Illness compounds. A compromised immune-system...

One person will leave me, but an entire party? A rigorous system of thoughts and laws?

I created my own hell. I stepped inside the torture machine.

Something that lives inside. A parasite.

I wrote about this, in various elucidated forms... but when I was seventeen, I realized with a start.. that I actually deeply hated the social groups that I had made myself into a part of. The people spoke so gratingly, so "therapeutically"... To sum and retort it back:

...but I'm not claiming innocence, either. Who is? Are you?

Perhaps, perhaps. I don't believe innocence to be impossible. I believe in a goal. I believe in something to strive for. I believe in achieving that goal through honest means, not putting my thumb on the scale. An honest weight is the only one that matters.

It took me five years to actualize my rebellion. I still had fragments of rhetoric lingering in my mind, talking back to me... accusing me, wheedling and whining about what a terrible person I would become through this act.

Eventually, I banished most of that. It reduced back down to a more elemental form, its original form: "What if someone who feels this way would read my opinions? How would they react?" Do I want to pander? Do I make myself a depressive clown for the depressed bastards out in the world? Whose sensibilities am I appealing towards? Who am I? I realize how much that I, as a person, like to cling to stories. There is a story where a rogue FBI agent runs away with a psychologist. The psychologist has secretly been torturing and hypnotizing this man. The psychologist is a murderer. He executes a murder to place doubts in the minds of the agent's superiors. He then escalates further, to frame this agent as guilty. To his face, he had always been cordial and accepting. Concerned and fatherly. Yet, the agent has an inkling, a doubtful feeling in his gut... but the whole world begins to turn on him, and so he runs to the only pair of open arms left to him: Hannibal.

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

He was lying on something that felt like a camp bed, except that it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in some way so that he could not move. Light that seemed stronger than usual was falling on his face. O'Brien was standing at his side, looking down at him intently. At the other side of him stood a man in a white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe.

Even after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings only gradually. He had the impression of swimming up into this room from some quite different world, a sort of underwater world far beneath it. How long he had been down there he did not know. Since the moment when they arrested him he had not seen darkness or daylight. Besides, his memories were not continuous. There had been times when consciousness, even the sort of consciousness that one has in sleep, had stopped dead and started again after a blank interval. But whether the intervals were of days or weeks or only seconds, there was no way of knowing.

With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of crimes -- espionage, sabotage, and the like -- to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: 'I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. There were also longer periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly, because they were spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He remembered a cell with a plank bed, a sort of shelf sticking out from the wall, and a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and bread and sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving to scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike, unsympathetic men in white coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over him in search for broken bones, and shooting needles into his arm to make him sleep.

The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment when his answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were not ruffians in black uniforms but Party intellectuals, little rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who worked on him in relays over periods which lasted -- he thought, he could not be sure -- ten or twelve hours at a stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was in constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears, pulled his hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water; but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that he said, convicting him at every step of lies and self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous fatigue. Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in a single session. Most of the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the Party left to make him wish to undo the evil he had done. When his nerves were in rags after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him to snivelling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards. He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed that for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and had been a member of an underground organization which had included almost every human being he had ever known. It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody. Besides, in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the enemy of the Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was no distinction between the thought and the deed.

There were also memories of another kind. They stood out in his mind disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all round them.

He was in a cell which might have been either dark or light, because he could see nothing except a pair of eyes. Near at hand some kind of instrument was ticking slowly and regularly. The eyes grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly he floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes, and was swallowed up.

He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under dazzling lights. A man in a white coat was reading the dials. There was a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door clanged open. The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two guards.

'Room 101,' said the officer.

The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not look at Winston either; he was looking only at the dials.

He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide, full of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and shouting out confessions at the top of his voice. He was confessing everything, even the things he had succeeded in holding back under the torture. He was relating the entire history of his life to an audience who knew it already. With him were the guards, the other questioners, the men in white coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling down the corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been skipped over and had not happened. Everything was all right, there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven.

He was starting up from the plank bed in the half-certainty that he had heard O'Brien's voice. All through his interrogation, although he had never seen him, he had had the feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It was O'Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the guards on to Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend. And once -- Winston could not remember whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in a moment of wakefulness -- a voice murmured in his ear: 'Don't worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.' He was not sure whether it was O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had said to him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' in that other dream, seven years ago.

He did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There was a period of blackness and then the cell, or room, in which he now was had gradually materialized round him. He was almost flat on his back, and unable to move. His body was held down at every essential point. Even the back of his head was gripped in some manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with pouches under the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He was older than Winston had thought him; he was perhaps forty-eight or fifty. Under his hand there was a dial with a lever on top and figures running round the face.

'I told you,' said O'Brien, 'that if we met again it would be here.'

'Yes,' said Winston.

Without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's hand, a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening pain, because he could not see what was happening, and he had the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to him. He did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether the effect was electrically produced; but his body was being wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought the sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose, trying to keep silent as long as possible.

'You are afraid,' said O'Brien, watching his face, 'that in another moment something is going to break. Your especial fear is that it will be your backbone. You have a vivid mental picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid dripping out of them. That is what you are thinking, is it not, Winston?'

Winston did not answer. O'Brien drew back the lever on the dial. The wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had come.

'That was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. Do you understand that?'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien's manner became less severe. He resettled his spectacles thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down. When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and persuade rather than to punish.

'I am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make. Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. At this moment, which power is Oceania at war with?'

'When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.'

'With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, has it not?'

Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak and then did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from the dial.

'The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me what you think you remember.'

'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested, we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for four years. Before that --'

O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.

'Another example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a very serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three onetime Party members named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession -- were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evidence proving that their confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.'

An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was the photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.

'It exists!' he cried.

'No,' said O'Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.

'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'

'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.'

'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.

Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.

O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child.

'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'

'"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,"' repeated Winston obediently.

'"Who controls the present controls the past,"' said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?'

Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.

O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?'

'No.'

'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'

'In records. It is written down.'

'In records. And --?'

'In the mind. In human memories.'

'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'

'But how can you stop people remembering things?' cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!'

O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.

'On the contrary,' he said, 'you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.'

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your diary, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four"?'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

'Four.'

'And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?'

'Four.'

The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four.'

The needle went up to sixty.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!'

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Five! Five! Five!'

'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?'

'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!'

Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it.

'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.

'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'

'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'

He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs tightened again, but the pain had ebbed away and the trembling had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold. O'Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white coat, who had stood immobile throughout the proceedings. The man in the white coat bent down and looked closely into Winston's eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against his chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O'Brien.

'Again,' said O'Brien.

The pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien had drawn back the lever.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see five.'

'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?'

'Really to see them.'

'Again,' said O'Brien.

Perhaps the needle was eighty -- ninety. Winston could not intermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.

'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four, five, six -- in all honesty I don't know.'

'Better,' said O'Brien.

A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O'Brien arm. He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that it bottom it did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O'Brien was a person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. O'Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk. O'Brien was looking down at him with an expression which suggested that the same thought might be in his own mind. When he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.

'Do you know where you are, Winston?' he said.

'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.'

'Do you know how long you have been here?'

'I don't know. Days, weeks, months -- I think it is months.'

'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?'

'To make them confess.'

'No, that is not the reason. Try again.'

'To punish them.'

'No!' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?'

He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous because of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was seen from below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation, a lunatic intensity. Again Winston's heart shrank. If it had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the bed. He felt certain that O'Brien was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantonness. At this moment, however, O'Brien turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then he continued less vehemently:

'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were the totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few years the same thing had happened over again. The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.'

Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a momentary bitterness. O'Brien checked his step as though Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.

'You are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to destroy you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallest difference -- in that case, why do we go to the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were thinking, was it not?'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou art". No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed -- Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford -- in the end we broke them down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping -- and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean.'

His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretending, thought Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes every word he says. What most oppressed him was the consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. O'Brien was a being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had, or could have, that O'Brien had not long ago known, examined, and rejected. His mind contained Winston's mind. But in that case how could it be true that O'Brien was mad? It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted and looked down at him. His voice had grown stern again.

'Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.'

He paused and signed to the man in the white coat. Winston was aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being pushed into place behind his head. O'Brien had sat down beside the bed, so that his face was almost on a level with Winston's.

'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head to the man in the white coat.

Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped themselves against Winston's temples. He quailed. There was pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a hand reassuringly, almost kindly, on his.

'This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed on mine.'

At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what seemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether there was any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although he had already been lying on his back when the thing happened, he had a curious feeling that he had been knocked into that position. A terrific painless blow had flattened him out. Also something had happened inside his head. As his eyes regained their focus he remembered who he was, and where he was, and recognized the face that was gazing into his own; but somewhere or other there was a large patch of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his brain.

'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What country is Oceania at war with?'

Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also remembered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not know. In fact he had not been aware that there was any war.

'I don't remember.'

'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?'

'Yes.'

'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war. Do you remember that?'

'Yes.'

'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at which you first invented it. Do you remember that?'

'Yes.'

'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?'

'Yes.'

O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.

'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'

'Yes.'

And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.

'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left Winston saw the man in the white coat break an ampoule and draw back the plunger of a syringe. O'Brien turned to Winston with a smile. In almost the old manner he resettled his spectacles on his nose.

'Do you remember writing in your diary,' he said, 'that it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at least a person who understood you and could be talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane. Before we bring the session to an end you can ask me a few questions, if you choose.'

'Any question I like?'

'Anything.' He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial. 'It is switched off. What is your first question?'

'What have you done with Julia?' said Winston.

O'Brien smiled again. 'She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately -- unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness -- everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case.'

'You tortured her?'

O'Brien left this unanswered. 'Next question,' he said.

'Does Big Brother exist?'

'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.'

'Does he exist in the same way as I exist?'

'You do not exist,' said O'Brien.

Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play on words. Did not the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O'Brien would demolish him.

'I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big Brother exist?'

'It is of no importance. He exists.'

'Will Big Brother ever die?'

'Of course not. How could he die? Next question.'

'Does the Brotherhood exist?'

'That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.'

Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little faster. He still had not asked the question that had come into his mind the first. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as though his tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of amusement in O'Brien's face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear an ironical gleam. He knows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows what I am going to ask! At the thought the words burst out of him:

'What is in Room 101?'

The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He answered drily:

'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room 101.'

He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently the session was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston's arm. He sank almost instantly into deep sleep.

...

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

Furthermore:

I think that that previous relationship ended up failing, because I wasn't really into it for sex. Sex was an aside. Sex was secondary to the primary goal.

It was an attractor, a bait, a reward. A sign of penance and giving. It was a sign of nothingness and total submission.

That's all.

At a later date, I ended up with another man. He saw that same look in my eyes and he stopped, and he held me. I realized how much it wore most people down on the inside, to hurt another person like that. I thought it would make someone like me. That's such a strange sentiment, said out loud… but this thing festers best in stagnant, silent waters.

The implication.

I was making murderers. I sought a destroyer.

"I".

[daydreaming-memories]

u ask questions u already know the answer to(yes)

yknow i'm gonna answer this by throwing quotes of allie and honeydrop incorrect quotes because i need to so bad think about this duo more

Honeydrop: Are you ready to commit?

Allie: Like, a crime or a relationship?

Honeydrop: We should be partners.

Allie: You mean like, partners in crime?

Honeydrop: Yeah... that’s precisely what I meant.

Honeydrop, watching the news: Someone tried to fight a squid at the aquarium today!

Allie: walks in covered with ink Well, maybe that "squid" was being a dick.

Allie: Here's some advice

Honeydrop: I didn't ask for any

Allie: Too bad. I'm stuck here with my thoughts and you're the only one who talks to me

Allie: Don’t worry, I have a permit.

Honeydrop: ...This just says “I can do what I want”.

Honeydrop: Wow, that was quick thinking on that phony sacrifice stuff.

Allie: Oh, that was all real.

Honeydrop: Wait, you were trying to help them kill us?!

Allie: If I’m gonna be sacrificed, I’m gonna do it right.

Honeydrop: You can’t have a gun on stage!

Allie: WRONG AGAIN! I can have a gun, and I must have a gun, that’s the rule of Chekhov’s Gun: have a gun. And now that it’s been seen, I will have to shoot someone before the end of the play.

Honeydrop: Two bros!

Allie: Chillin' in a hot tub!

Honeydrop and Allie, in unison: Zero feet apart 'cause we're GAY AS FUCK!

Honeydrop: You’re not jealous, are you?

Allie: No!

Honeydrop: Good, ‘cause I consider my fake relationship with you a lot more meaningful.

Honeydrop: When surrendering, Allie is to hand the sword over HILT first

Allie: Answers phone. Hello?

Honeydrop: It's Honeydrop.

Allie: What did they do this time?

Honeydrop: No, it's me, Allie. It's actually me.

Allie: What did you do this time?

Honeydrop: Don’t worry, I know exactly what I’m doing. Everything is going to be fine!

Allie: How can you still say that?

Honeydrop: Because sometimes, when things get tough, denial is all we have.

Allie: The first time I saw you, you stole my heart.

Honeydrop: But I'm a kleptomaniac, so that doesn't mean anything.

Honeydrop: How many children do you have?

Allie: Biologically, legally, or emotionally? Because there is a difference.

Honeydrop: I should've left you on that street corner where you were standing.

Allie: But ya' didn't!

Allie, talking about Honeydrop: WHAT THE FUCK I WAS ARGUING WITH THEM AND I SAID “OOH YOU WANNA KISS ME SO BAD” AND GUESS WHAT? THEY DID. THEY KISSED ME. WHAT THE FUCK WHAT DO I DO.

Allie: Stop doing that.

Honeydrop: Stop doing what?

Allie: Saying things that make me wanna kiss the hell out of you.

Allie: Do you care if I take the skin off this Furby?

Allie: I want to make him a god. Once he is free of his sinful flesh, he can begin a path towards enlightenment. He will take care of us.

Allie: I also want to softhack his circuits.

Honeydrop: I literally could not care less but never say anything as frightening as that ever again.

Allie, trying their first ever cup of coffee: I am ENERGY!

Honeydrop, an avid coffee drinker, on their twelfth cup of the day: Someone slap me awake or I am literally going to fall into a coma in ten seconds.

Allie: You know what I’ve realized?

Honeydrop: Some thoughts are better left unsaid?

Allie: Nice try, anyways-

Honeydrop, shakily: Please, just tell me what the book is about. The plot, please.

Allie, reading an annotation on the cover of a book, unfazed: A subversive masterpiece. A deep and touching story. New York Times Bestseller.

Allie, now looking directly at Honeydrop: Go fuck yourself.

Allie: I am 39 cheetos tall.

Honeydrop: Why... are you measuring your height in cheetos?

Allie: Because we're out of doritos.

Honeydrop: Are you this rude to everyone?!

Allie: Yup.

Allie: Don't think you're special.

While planning to break in somewhere

Allie: Hey, let's do "Get Help!"

Honeydrop: What?

Allie: "Get Help."

Honeydrop: No.

Allie: C'mon, you love it!

Honeydrop: I hate it.

Allie: It's great! It works every time!

Honeydrop: It's humiliating.

Allie: Do you have a better plan?

Honeydrop: No.

Allie: We're doing it!

Honeydrop: We are not doing "Get Help!"

A Minute Later

Allie, carrying Honeydrop: Get help! Please! They're dying! Help Them! throws Honeydrop at guards, knocking them out

Allie: Ahh, classic!

Honeydrop: gets up I still hate it. It's humiliating.

Allie, laughing: Not for me, it's not.

Allie: We have a problem.

Honeydrop: No, YOU have a problem. I have an idiot who keeps making them.

Allie: I made lightly fried fish fillets for dinner.

Honeydrop: Allie, It’s 1:15 am, what the fuck.

Allie: Do you want the lightly fried fish fillets or not.

Honeydrop: Well, I mean yeah.

Allie: So come downstairs while they’re still hot.

Honeydrop: Wait, you just made them?

Allie: Yeah, I wasn’t tired so I decided to make lightly fried fish fillets.

Honeydrop: Say lightly fried fish fillets one more time Allie.

Honeydrop is speaking on the phone

Honeydrop: Yeah, I'm with Allie.

Allie: Im fucking dying-

Honeydrop: Yep, they're okay.

Allie: I have a knife in my chest!

Honeydrop: No, they can't talk right now. They're sleeping, sorry.

Allie: IM BLEEDING OUT-

Allie: Everything’s fine, Honeydrop.

Honeydrop: Allie, I know your relationship with the english language is strictly casual, but you- I- deep inhale ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU WHAT’S NOT FINE.

Honeydrop: I want a trip down memory lane.

Allie: proceeds to grab every warrior cats book they have and sets them in Honeydrop's lap

Allie: I heard you needed these?

Honeydrop: YES! ALL OF THEM!

Honeydrop: I fell—

Allie: From heaven?

Honeydrop: No, I literally fell—

Allie: In love with me the moment you saw me?

Honeydrop: MY ARM IS BROKEN!

Allie: Okay, but do you think I'm pretty? Be honest

[^ also fits the drawing i need to do, counterpart to let's get therapy image i did]

Honeydrop: I'm trash.

Allie: As someone who's environmentally conscious, it's my duty to pick you up. Does 7 work for you?

Honeydrop:

Honeydrop: You smooth motherfucker.

Honeydrop: And yes it does.

Allie: Honeydrop and I are no longer friends.

Honeydrop: ALLIE THAT IS THE WORST WAY TO TELL PEOPLE THAT WE’RE DATING!

Honeydrop: PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT UPSEXY IS!

Allie: Could you rephrase the question, in like, two words maybe?

Allie, to the Squad: The real secret to immortality? Not dying. You want to be immortal? Okay, that’s easy. Just don’t die. That’s it. Refuse to die. There you go.

Honeydrop: But how-

Allie, ignoring them: “But how”, you may ask. Well, easy. Just don’t do it. Refuse to. Say “no thanks”.

Allie: I learned a valuable lesson from this.

Honeydrop: I’m guessing they are all horrible distortions on the lesson you actually should’ve taken away…

Allie: DEATH ISN’T REAL AND I AM BASICALLY GOD!

Honeydrop: Why can’t we all just get along?

Allie: Because most of us are assholes, Honeydrop.

Allie: I got us matching friendship bracelets, and you say I don't care about our relationship.

Honeydrop: These are handcuffs.

Allie: Yeah, 'cause we're partners in crime!

Allie: So Honeydrop, how did your first time cooking dinner go?

Honeydrop: Pretty good if I do say so myself.

Allie: Oo! Okay, what are we having?

Honeydrop: Alright, so for appetizers, we have a potato.

Allie: A whole potato?

Honeydrop: Yes. And then for the main course, we have grilled cheese sandwiches!

Allie: These just look like big slabs of black.

Honeydrop: Because that's what they are!

Honeydrop: And then for desert, we have chocolate.

Allie: These are just chocolate chips?

Honeydrop: They sure are!

Honeydrop: And then for drinks, we have toast!

Honeydrop: lifts up a glass of blended toast Bon appetite!

Allie: Are we fighting or flirting?

Honeydrop: I'm pinning you against a wall with my hand around your neck-

Allie: Your point?

Honeydrop: When I was young, I left a trail of broken hearts like a rockstar. I'm not proud of it.

Allie: You're kind of proud of it. You work it into a lot of conversations.

Honeydrop: Hey, wanna help me commit arson?

Allie: What the hell!?

Honeydrop: Oh, sorry, my bad.

Honeydrop, whispering: Wanna help me commit arson?

Allie, whispering: Of course. What do you need?

Honeydrop: Why are you burning our marriage certificate!?

Allie: Good luck trying to return me without a receipt.

Honeydrop: Treat spiders the way you want to be treated.

Allie: Killed without hesitation

Allie: My future partner must be brave, strong, intelligent, successful and organized.

Honeydrop: steps on a caterpillar and proceeds to drop to their knees and sob while apologizing profusely

Allie: That one. I want that one.

Honeydrop: Allie, you’re offered 500,000 dollars, but, if you accept it, the person you hate the most in the world gets 1,000,000 dollars. Would you take it?

Allie: Of course! I mean, why wouldn’t I want 1,500,000 dollars?

Allie: Just trust me. Have I ever put you in an unsafe or uncomfortable situation?

Honeydrop: All the time.

Allie: Then you should be used to it by now.

Allie: Wow, they really hate us.

Honeydrop: Yes, perhaps they’re homophobic.

Allie: But we’re not gay, Honeydrop.

Honeydrop:

Allie:

Honeydrop: We’re not?

honeydrop: Remember when you didn't try to solve all your problems with attempted murder?

allie: Stop romanticizing the past.

honeydrop: Accidentally hits allie in the face

honeydrop: Trying to decide between saying 'I’m fucking sorry' and 'Are you okay'

honeydrop: ARE YOU FUCKING SORRY?!

allie: What’s wrong with you?!

honeydrop: This is such a bad idea.

allie: Then why are you coming along?

honeydrop: One of us need to be able to talk the cops out of arresting us when this inevitably goes wrong

honeydrop: Please, I'm begging you go to a doctor.

allie: I'm sorry is this OUR stab wound? Stay out of it.

honeydrop and allie skipping stones on lake

honeydrop: It’s such a beautiful evening.

allie, whispering: Take that you fucking lake

honeydrop: Look. I may not be a saint, but it's not like I’ve killed anybody. I’m not an arsonist. I’ve never found a wallet outside of an IHOP and thought about returning it but saw the owner lived out of state so just took the cash and dropped the wallet back on the ground.

allie: Okay, that's really specific, and that makes me think that you definitely did do that.

honeydrop: allie was banned from the chicken shack, so we had to go out of town to get some.

allie: Well, they shouldn’t say “all you can eat” if they don’t mean it.

honeydrop: allie, you ate a chair

#daycosm 3 #allie and honeydrop are so chaotic #i love their dynamic

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (342): Wed 22nd Feb 2023

I binge watched the entire fist season of The Outlaws today. I don’t watch that much TV nowadays but man this show is incredible. It’s created and written by Stephen Merchant and follows a group of criminals renovating a dilapidated community centre as part of their community service. All the characters are really well written and not a lot of fleshing out needs to be done on any of them. Often with TV shows the first series serves as a sort of sacrificial lamb where the writers can experiment and see what works and what doesn’t but occasionally a show knocks it out of the park right from the get go and this is certainly one of them. The show is best described as like a funny, much less violent version of something like The Wire or The Shield and stylistically resembles a modern day western that happens to be set in Bristol. Merchant himself is really good in this as a newly divorced socially awkward lawyer, as is Christopher Walken as an elderly lifelong conman and Eleanor Tomlinson: Oh My Days Eleanor Tomlinson. I had never heard of Eleanor Tomlinson before today and now I’ve dismissed every other girl I’ve ever fancied as a hideous pig in comparison to her. Holy shitfingers she is gorgeous. Her character, an upper class social media influenced is really funny too. Each episode is an hour long which I normally hate about tv shows because of my short attention span but that didn’t play in at all with this show as I happily sat for six hours and watched the entire show. I wanted to get stuck right in to the second series but I figured I’d only get about half way through before I’d have to go to sleep so I’ll wait until my next day off and binge watch it then. I also listened to the radio dramatisation of the zombie movie Pontypool which was called Pontypool Changes Everything. When I watched the film I thought that the concept of a radio station getting reports of a zombie outbreak happening in its home city and covering the events as they came flooding in would be a much better fit for a radio play rather than a movie. I gave this a listen and while it definitely is more effective it’s still not done in the way that would make it most effective. I think that they should have just had the host and his boss wearing microphones and headsets but instead we have the host wearing the gear and we hear what he says during his broadcast but we also hear them talking off air which kind of ruins the illusion because it should be presented like we’re listening to this radio show and if that was the case we wouldn’t hear the banter between the host and his boss while the show was in commercial break. I’m fully aware that there would be zero chance of anyone listening in to his show and thinking it was real (…maybe Trump) but that’s not the point. If you’re going to do something like this be a stickler for detail as the finished product will be better. Much like the movie the radio play uses the idea of the infection spreading as a result of language being spoken and that if you say your infected word you end up becoming a zombie…I dunno it’s something like that anyway. Personally I think this is an unnecessary plot device which I’m sure sounded good when the writer thought it up but in execution it just feels convoluted and there’s for the sake of trying to look clever. There would have been more than enough mileage in a story about a radios station being made aware of a zombie outbreak and reporting on it and then the zombies trying to get inside. Yeah plot wise it wouldn’t be original but that’s why you get deep into character and motivation to get the audience invested. It was still an entertaining enough listen but I just think they missed the ball creatively.

[zipegs]

kahootqueen69

I am already SO invested in the fitzier one like 👁👁 please tell us more!!!! (If u can and want to ofc!)

ahh i’m so glad!! of course!! 😊 it was originally just supposed to be like... a 3k-or-so weird, atmospheric piece, and i never really went back and fleshed out my ideas for expanding it, so it’s still very much in a nebulous concept phase.

basically, not only are the lads facing scurvy, starvation, etc., but the inhospitable landscape is more or less insidious to the crew, and actively attempts to thwart their escape/survival. it was meant to feel like weird fiction, tangentially lovecraftian in vibe, never fully explained. during the first part of the walk out, paranoia and fear spread through the crew. fitzjames has a bunch of weird body-horror dreams centering around the landscape, even francis is touched by the vague sense of dread.

even in its expanded form, i only ever really planned for it to be something like 10k - 20k max (although to be fair i’m notoriously Bad at predicting wc). fitzier probably gets together somewhere toward the middle, seeking solace in each other as shit gets Weird (although by that point, there’d probably be some psychological horror and Memory Stuff that gets in the way of them being totally connected and secure. i do see that as being the fic’s horror reprieve overall, though).

anyway, they start to find oddities in the landscape—ridges where there were none, inexplicable surface changes, even some places where the landscape takes on animal-body characteristics—rotting stinks at the bottom of long, wet fissures, the ground ‘bleeding,’ hills that seem to inhale and exhale, stuff like that. it starts to get actively hostile, turns them around a few times so they end up going in circles, never able to progress past a certain point—i toyed with the idea of them even getting turned around back to the ships at one point. being surrounded by hills/mountains, the ice forcing them under, separating them into smaller and smaller groups. and all the while it’s poisoning their minds!

sadly i’ve got nothing more specific than that (or, if i did, i’ve forgotten it by now lmfao) but it’s been a persistent brain worm for *checks watch* about a year and a half now lmao. and here was the tiny opening i’d started out with, for one more lil snippet!

They are within a day’s march of King William Land, and James has never felt farther from safety.

At first, leaving the boats seemed a triumph, each step its own journey in the direction of rescue. The ice that stretched before them was alive with promise. James met the icy wind with relish, let each footfall land proud and steady. Around him, the company’s hope swelled like a hearth fire; determination blazed brighter in them than ever before.

But the ice takes, and it does not give back.

This place wants us dead, Francis said. Out here, in this maze of endless white, James is beginning to understand.

#this is a whole lot of word vomit #and not a lot of content i'm so sorry #anyway YEAH it needs a lot of fleshing out and a lot more deep thought #but i really do wanna write it eventually lmao #the terror #fitzier

[elysianslove]

shameful lust; suna rintarō

synopsis; he’s off limits in every way, but that only makes you want him more. based off of this, this, and this. the smut is inspired by my bunny anon’s birthday idea :) bunny, you know the one :)

pairings; brother’s bsf!suna rintarō x fem!reader

genre; porn with kind of plot lmfao

word count; 5.5k what the fuck??

trigger warning; age gap (not specified, & everyone’s 18+), masturbation, unprotected sex, creampie, squirting, humiliation, praise, mini panic attack, link for the lingerie (slight nsfw warning)

it started off innocent, as most things do. you were sixteen when you first felt the butterflies nestled deep in your stomach, the drop of your heart, the heat of your cheeks, only around him. you’d thought it was a natural reaction; after all, you’d known suna rintarō since, quite literally, forever, and you were a growing girl, hormones imbalanced and thoughts as confusing as ever. it was normal, completely ordinary to feel as nervous as you did whenever his hand so much brushed against yours, or whenever he’d barely glance your way to offer a small, teasing smile.

it meant nothing, of course. you were just a young girl, sixteen, desperate to lose yourself in some sort of fantasy. a silly crush on your brother’s best friend was nothing strange, and definitely inevitable.

it would go away.

you’re eighteen when the feelings don’t go away, and when they begin reshaping into more— impure thoughts. the more you see of him, the more hyperaware you grow of everything that he is. suddenly your eyes easily find the small strip of skin revealed when he stretches his arms up, and suddenly you can’t help but constantly think about the way he sits, legs spread so wide as if to... accommodate something. suddenly your thoughts always find their way back to the way he’d hugged you goodbye, arms squeezing you so tight to him, allowing you to feel every ridge and ripple of his muscles, and the way he had ruffled your hair and his hand, so large, so easily sinking into the strands— and you’re left wondering what else his fingers could do in your hair, to the rest of your body—

it’s bad. it’s really bad. every day you try and convince yourself it’s innocent, and every night you prove yourself wrong when you find yourself on your stomach, face buried in your pillow and teeth biting down on it, mouth dampening the cloth as your fingers rub harshly at your clit and sink into your dripping cunt— all with his name falling off your tongue as you heave and cry. every night you think about how much thicker his fingers are in comparison to yours, how much longer, how they’d feel inside of you, curling within you. you know he’s dexterous, insanely good with his hands. you’ve seen the way his fingers fly across a keyboard or tap urgently at a gaming console. you know it, and it in no way helps in calming your frustration.

it’s bad, of course, but you live with it. after all, he is in every way off limits. a lot older than you, and much more experienced, suna would have to lose his mind before he ever thinks of you the way you think of him. what would a girl like you have to offer a guy like him anyways? your shaky hands and clumsy mouth? your tight cunt that can barely fit two of your fingers? you’d only leave him unsatisfied, and leave yourself utterly humiliated.

worst of all, however, you can’t imagine how devastated, how betrayed, your brother would be if he’d caught you fooling around with his best friend.

so although you’re yearning to say fuck all and fuck him, you don’t, because it doesn’t make sense in the slightest for you to do so. you continue to make due with what shirtless image of him or that time he slept over and went commando, waking up at the same time you had and his — his dick was hard— you could see—

fuck.

you need to grow up.

as you sit with your back to your headboard, your knees bent up and swinging slightly, two simple knock erupt on your bedroom door. it’s late afternoon, the sun’s brightness dimming slightly, casting your room in an orange glow. in all honesty, it’s soothing.

looking up from your phone momentarily, you call out for the person knocking to come in, your eyes returning to your screen once more.

“hey.”

at the sound of the awfully familiar voice, your head snaps back up and you lock your phone, looking up with newfound excitement at the man standing at your doorway. “hi,” you return with a smile, sitting up and crossing your legs.

suna smiles back, walking into your room with one hand tucked behind his back. “your brother said i’d find you here,” he explains, walking towards you.

you quirk a brow, curiously and amusingly smiling as you ask, “whatcha got there?”

he’s quiet for a moment as he walks over to your side of the bed, maneuvering in a way that doesn’t reveal what he has hidden behind him. you twist around on your bed, leaning on your knees to face him properly, and it’s just when you lift up slightly to settle comfortably that he leans down, bends over to get close enough to whisper, “happy birthday, pretty girl.” he gives you not another moment to process how close his face is — how close his lips are to yours — before the hand behind his back comes around between you.

tucked in his hand is a medium sized bag, not related to any sort of brand, so you assume it’s a simple bag he’d gotten from a convenience store. that would really only mean one thing— that he’s gotten you more than just one gift. you can’t see what’s in it since there are colorful papers stacked within it, obstructing your view, but you’re still flustered at the mere thought he’d even considered to buy you a gift. it’s not unusual; suna, every year on your birthday, has gotten you a gift, yet it’s usually more so a gag gift than anything. some inside joke of yours, maybe he’d pay for your dinner, things like that. never a full on, thought out gift.

“you didn’t have to,” you say, settling back down on your knees and hesitantly taking the bag from him.

he waves you off, disagreeing. “course i did; you’re nineteen now.”

you roll your eyes. “wouldn’t eighteen be more special?”

“fine,” he decides, playfully taking the bag from your grasp and pulling it to him. “guess i’ll just give this to someone else then— maybe your mom—“

“suna!”

at your reaction, he laughs boisterously, and against all odds, you find yourself smiling too. quickly, you reach out for the bag again, pulling it back to you.

“open it when you’re alone,” he disclaims, almost as if in warning.

warily, you eye the bag.

“sure.”

you try to be quieter when unboxing suna’s gift, but the paper’s scrunching is just so damn loud. after cursing it out, you finally rid the bag of its first layer of paper, and are met with a scented candle and some lotion. basic, expected. there‘s a card there too, and when you open it, there’s a note in his messy handwriting, reading out a simple happy birthday— and a good couple of yens too. money, a candle, lotion.

so basic.

there’s still more paper beneath, but you don’t expect it to be for anything except decoration, not for—

what the fuck.

what the fuck.

What The Fuck?

your two hands dip into the bag, reaching out for the final gift, grabbing it by its straps and—

holy shit, he got you lingerie.

it’s so— sheer? you don’t think an inch of you will be properly covered, even with the lingerie on. it’s properly transparent, with only the intricate lace designs to modestly cover you. when you dig into the bag, you find the panties to match the bra and— well, it’s pretty, you can’t lie. there are dark, almost flowerlike designs all over, and it’s a deep black, nearly blue or green. there’s also a garter belt, but there aren’t any stockings in the bag to attach to the clips. maybe he’d expected you to take care of that?— ah no, you stand corrected. there are stockings.

fuck, he thought of everything didn’t he?

but more importantly, what the fuck does all of this mean?

burying the lingerie deep inside the bag again, and making sure to cover it up with the paper, thoroughly, you place the other gifts and the card back in and on top, before putting it aside on your bed.

and now, to gather your fucking thoughts.

you had to text him to thank him for the gift, obviously. but there was no way he’d accidentally misplaced the lingerie there. it was deliberately placed, with the way it was folded and tucked neatly, underneath an extra layer of paper above and beneath it? yeah, definitely on purpose. but— why? had he taken notice of your feelings towards him? was this his way of making fun or... reassuring you they were mutual?

god, what the hell are you thinking.

snatching your phone from your bedside table, you check the time.

2:01 a.m.

okay, everyone‘s bound to be asleep by now. hopefully. you eye the bag, so cautiously one would assume there’s some sort of killing machine within it. you contemplate. shake your head. no. the gears twist. yes.

no.

yes. no. yes. no—

fuck it, it’s yours anyways, isn’t it?

you snatch it loudly, rushing off to lock your bedroom door, then rushing to close the blinds, tightly, surely, then rushing to turn the lights off and turning the small lamp by your bedside on instead. what else are you meant to do with lingerie other than, well, put it on? it’s rational, you think, obvious.

it’s fine.

stealing one last, deep breathe, you dump the contents of the bag again, and pick out the lingerie.

it fits.

it fits perfectly.

the bra is snug against your chest, pushing at your breasts but not digging in uncomfortably. your nipples peak through what‘s revealed of the mesh, and when they stand perky and hard, you blame it on the fact that you‘re half naked. the garter belt wraps tightly around your waist, not squeezing to the point of discomfort and pain, but not loose that it’s a nuisance, and the clips that hang from it are attached to a pair of stockings that stop mid thigh, squeezing at the flesh. finally, a pair of panties rest on your cups, cupping your ass perfectly. it too is sheer, and god— you can see so much of you.

is this— what he would‘ve wanted?

you can’t deny that you do look good. it shows your figure off appealingly, and coupled with some dark lipstick, your messy hair, and the slightest smudge to your day’s eyeliner— would— would he have wanted you like this? all dolled up for him?

is this what suna likes?

doubting the fact that you’ll ever have the courage to put this set on again, you grab at your phone, clearing the area before your mirror, then sitting down at the edge of your bed. might as well enjoy it while it lasts, shouldn’t you? posing in the mirror, you appreciate the way you look, the way the dim lighting complements the atmosphere, the way the piece hugs your body and shows you off. you look so good.

so good— for him.

reveling in this surge of confidence, you snap a good amount of pictures, posing differently in each of them, taking them at different angles. your camera roll overflows with them, and as you fall back on the bed, hair splayed out on the mattress, you smile proudly at the pictures.

do you look good enough for him to see?

the thought strikes you suddenly; it tickles at the pit of your stomach, makes your knees bend and your toes curl.

should you?

the messenger app is open at the text messages between you and him before you can think, a picture of you uploaded and ready to send.

should you?

you tuck your lower lip between your teeth, mulling it over anxiously.

no, you most definitely shouldn’t.

quickly, you swipe out of the messenger app, and onto safari. porn it is.

you should‘ve turned the ac on. fuck, it’s hot.

3:10 a.m. 45 minutes since you’d put the lingerie set on and had your mini photoshoot, ten minutes since you’d started masturbating. everything’s still in place except for the garter clips, which have snapped off of your stockings at some point in the past few minutes, but you pay it barely any mind as your legs spread wider, one hand dipped beneath your panties, the other pressing hard against your mouth, trying to keep yourself quiet.

it’s not that you generally had a problem keeping down your noises. your home was constantly filled with people, and you’re almost always sexually frustrated at the most inconvenient times. this time, however, it’s different. it’s different because you’re wearing a lingerie set that suna picked out, that suna bought for you, that suna gave you himself. would he have wanted to watch you touch yourself like this, dressed up so pretty? or— would he have wanted to fuck you while—

shit, you’re gonna cum.

you let out a broken moan, bleeding into a desperate son, muffled barely your hand. your fingers fuck into your cunt faster, squelching lowly as you arch your back, pressing your palm harshly against your clit.

“ugh, hngh,” you whine, squeal, wrist aching. “fuck, rin— please—“

you’re so loud, shit, shit, shit.

beside you, your phone dings! loudly, alerting you of a message received, but you can’t stop, not when you’re so close. it dings again, and again, but you continue to ignore, chasing your own high so desperately, faster, faster, faster. the coil tightens, your body tenses, mind hazing over and eyes rolling back— so close, so fucking close.

“well aren’t you a doll.”

your eyes snap open, and you only manage one second to process who the fuck and what the fuck before your hips are trembling and twisting, and your legs are shaking so awfully as your back arches deep. the moment you hear his voice, so deep and clear, looming just by the edge of your bed where you lay spread, fucking yourself, you cum— and you’re convinced you have a humiliation kink. you didn’t cum because you’d simply been close— you came because you heard him catch you.

in your post orgasmic daze, you pant deeply, chest heaving, rising and falling rapidly as you try to catch your breath. your fingers pull back from your panties, falling to the bed, sticky and wet, while your other hand falls from from your mouth, drool and spit dripping from the corner of your lips.

“aw, you ruined the set.”

you sigh. “rin.” the way you say his name isn’t in a way that’s calling out for him, but neither are you scolding him nor brushing him off for teasing you. you’re just simply trying to process the fact that he’s here.

“i like it when you call me that,” he admits, and in a second he’s falling over you, hands bracing and steadying him beside your head, keeping himself hovering at a small distance. “why do you always insist on calling me suna?” he wonders, head tilting curiously.

blinking slowly, you breathe in, and out, and ask, “what are you doing here?”

above you, he shrugs. “you were the one that sent me those—”

immediately, you’re pushing him off you, sitting up all too quickly as you reach out for your phone. you shakily unlock it, typing in your password and opening the messenger app. he’s right— shit. you could’ve sworn you’d deleted the photo, because you’d explicitly decided just how stupid sending it would’ve been. 

well, look at you now. 

“that wasn’t— oh my god, i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean to,” you stutter, turning your body towards him once more, but avoiding his gaze, your body, only barely having just cooled down, heating up once more. 

“oh?” he tests. “was it not meant for me?” 

“no, i—“ 

he’s smiling all too wide for him to not be getting off on your embarrassment. at the thought of that, your eyes unintentionally snap up to him, to his crotch, where beneath his sweats is a bulge, and god, it’s like all those nights ago where you’d seen his dick through his sweats and he’s big, he’s so big—

“just where do you think you’re looking?” he sneers, hand all of a sudden gripping your chin, tilting your head back up and forcing you to finally, for the first time, meet his eyes. they’re dark, almost sinister, as they narrowly glare at you, begging you for explanation. 

your mind’s no longer clouded over, all pleasure dissipating from your veins, pathetic humiliation replacing it. “i’m sorry,” you mewl, eyes tearing up at the look on his face. of course he was disgusted. just as your stupid crush on him was natural, so was his reaction. “i’m sorry, please don’t tell anyone,” you beg, lower lip wobbling. 

his grip on your chin tightens as he furrows his brows. “tell anyone?” he questions. “about what?” 

had he not— heard you? 

he says your name, firmly, deeply, in a way that has you stifling your sobs and biting your bottom lip to stop its quivering. patiently, you wait for him to speak, to say anything, until finally, he asks, “do you want me to fuck you?” and your heart stops. “yeah?” he continues, his other hand reaching for your wrist, your hand, the same one that’s still sticky with the evidence of you. slowly, as he brings his lips closer to yours, fingers slipping so that he’s squishing your cheeks tightly, he leads your hand to his crotch, to where his dick is painfully hard beneath his sweats. your initial touch is featherlight, and he doesn’t fully press your hand to his clothed cock, but still, just the smallest, tiniest feel of him has the lust in your veins thrumming alive. “you think you’d look pretty—” he pauses, lips hovering by yours, eyes searching for any sign of hesitance or resistance, “sitting on my cock?” 

“i’m sorry,” you apologize again, but he swallows it by finally, finally, pressing his lips to yours. his lips are so soft, softer than you’d imagined and fantasized a thousand times over, as they press against yours, managing to pull the softest moan of surprise and pleasure from you. you’d forgotten, in your moment of shame, just how much you’d craved suna rintarō. just how often you thought about him, those same fingers gripping your chin to be buried inside of you, those pretty lips sucking on your tits and clit. “want you so bad,” you hiccup, kissing him back. “so bad.” 

he hums, amused, pulling back. licking his lips with a grin, as if tasting you, his hands leave you entirely, reaching for the hem of his shirt as he lifts it up, freeing himself of the piece of clothing. “don’t you think i know, sweetheart?” he teases, daringly. at the sight of your eyes widening, he nods with a dramatized serious expression, tutting as he adds, “so dirty, thinkin’ ‘bout me like that.” 

you whine again, hands lifting up to obstruct your face from his view as you fall back on the bed, body bouncing slightly. “stop,” you plead, not for him to pull back but for him to stop reminding you of just how wrong it is to feel the way you do. still, you spread your sticky thighs for him when he presses his hands to your knees, and you shiver at the feel of his fingers tickling at your skin. “i’m sorry.” 

“that’s okay, pretty girl,” he reassures you, faux sweetness dripping like honey off his tongue. he leans in, carefully slow, hands following the curve of his body and yours. “i want you too.” he smiles mischievously, leaning close once more. “so bad,” he mimics you, lips hovering right above yours before he kisses you once more. you want to pinch his arm for outright mocking you, because really, how infuriating can he be? but it’s impossible to want to do anything but desire him in every possible way at the moment, especially when he presses himself harder against you, hips slotting between your legs and clothed cock brushing against your dripping panties. 

“rin,” you plead, hands clawing at his back, grasping at his shoulders. god, his skin is so warm. 

“yes?” he drawls, wet lips kissing the corner of your mouth, trailing easily to your jaw, and down to your neck. patiently, he waits for you to speak. 

with a trembling voice, you ask, “be quick. please.” 

a little stunned, suna pauses his ministrations at your neck, but it’s barely for a second. because moments later, he’s grinning sinisterly into the crook of your neck, sucking hotly as he replies, “sure thing.” 

you do want to take your time. you want him to stuff his face between your legs and sink his fingers so deep inside of you. you want him to force your mouth down on him, want to bury your face in your lap till you’re choking and gagging on his cock. you want him to take his time stretching you for his cock before he sinks inside of you, letting you feel every single inch and ridge of his dick until he bottoms out. you wish. you wish. 

but you’re desperate, and needy, and frustrated, and most of all, you’re not even sure if this is real. you’re scared to blink and have him disappear all of a sudden. you’re scared to wake up with soaked panties and no gift from suna, no suna above you, hard cock pressing against your cunt, only the same suna from all these past years, the same suna you pine over at a distance, wanting but never having. 

so you whimper so quietly, “be quick,” again, because he’s still too slow for your liking.

his fingers grasp the sides of your panties, pulling as quick as he can, sliding them down your thighs, watching as the cloth rolls at the urgency as it slides past your knees, your shins, your ankles, legs lifted high up. at the final loop around your right ankle, as suna flings it off, he kisses at your ankle, gripping it tightly and using it to spread your legs. 

as your legs spread, your pussy, soaking from both your past orgasm and this unbelievable build up, spreads too, glistening and dripping for him. his eyes easily fall to it, and, with that same glint in his eyes, he grins, and licks his lips again. “wish i could have a taste,” he admits to you, shuffling closer and bending your legs closer to your chest with one hand. the other hand frantically pushes at the hem of his sweatpants, tugging it low, beneath his balls. “god, i’d have you sit on my face for hours.” 

he’s going to kill you. 

he’s going to fucking kill you. 

at his words, your cunt pulsates and clenches tightly, hole glistening as you moan. you hope he doesn’t notice, but he does, somehow, and he laughs, too fucking loud. “you liked that, hm? bet you’d look so cute,” he spurs you on, and your entire body trembles. 

you wish to say something, to find the courage to belittle him, degrade him, remind him that if you’re in the wrong for wanting this then so is he, but it’s so hard to find your voice. it’s like he’s stupefied you completely, reduced you to this dumb, wordless, horny mess. god, fuck, it’s embarrassing. you can only watch with wide, tearful eyes and quivering lips and trembling legs as he spits on his hand and fists his cock, quickly, getting himself all nice and slick for you. his cock is— he’s so big, fuck. if you’d been shocked feeling him beneath his sweats, well, your entire body’s rigid with anticipation now. 

just as promised, suna’s quick. with one hand pressing and steadying firmly at your lower stomach, right by your hip, he guides his cock to your cunt with the other, wasting no time by pushing in. no way, no way, no fucking way. 

how is he fitting? 

“ease up,” he orders sharply, forcing more of himself inside of you.

in response, you bring both hands up to your mouth, clasping them tightly above your lips. you remaining quiet is as impossible as ever, with the way he’s stretching you so wide for him, so you press down harder with your hands and throw your head back as he sinks in deeper, and deeper. 

“aren’t a good girl?” he praises sweetly, his other hand mirroring the one on your hip. he watches as you lower your head again, lifting it up slightly to look between the two of you at where he’s fully bottomed out, buried deep inside of you. “feel good?” he wonders, even if he knows the answer. your head falls back again and you nod with your eyes squeezing shut. “feel so full, yeah?”  you’re glad he’s speaking for you, because you doubt you could find your voice at the moment, even if you tried. 

you nod again instead, urgently, just as he pulls out until only his tip remains inside of you, before pressing back in quickly, thrusting into you suddenly. the sight of him above you is better than anything your mind has ever made up, hands squeezing at your hips tightly, both ensuring you keep your legs spread for him and keeping himself up, steadying himself as he fucks into you. his arms bulge and the muscles in his abdomen tighten and tense with every thrust. his chest, so flushed red; his hair, a little sweaty, a little messy; his brows, furrowed deep in concentration; his lips, wet and red, so fucking red, his tongue jutting out slightly as he picks up the pace, as he thrusts faster, harder. 

and best of all: the noises he makes. he’s shameless, fucking into you with abandon, moaning and grunting and whining for you, like he’d been the one yearning, pining, and not you. and, you suppose, with the way he’s fucking into you right now, that there might’ve been some truth in his words, that he’s wanted you just as bad, that this wasn’t some pity fuck— poor little girl, his best friend’s sister, sending him lewd and inappropriate photos because she’s so desperate, she can’t help but lust after him, every single day. 

his hands squeeze even tighter and he grunts, gritting his teeth sharply. “fuck, m’already close,” he grunts, and somehow, that makes your heart swell, pride deepening. “cunt’s so fucking tight, shit.” you’re making him say those words, you’re going to make him cum so quick, it’s you. you. 

when his hands crawl up to your breasts, squeezing and kneading through the bra, your hands fall to his forearms, gripping so tightly and digging your nails into his skin. “please, please, please, cum inside,” you beg, trying to be as quiet as you can. “please rin, please.” 

the bed creaks with the effort and speed of his thrusts, your body bouncing as his cock fucks deep into your cunt. his head bows in, smooth hair swinging forward as he curses. “are you— hm..hngh—sure?” he asks, and you nod so rapidly you feel dizzy, arching your back as much as you can to get him deeper inside of you. he’s a mess of curses and pants as he fucks you even faster, one hand remaining at your breast, grasping tightly, the other lowering to your wet clit, rubbing furiously, messily, clumsily. 

no words are exchanged as he desperately circles your clit with the rough pads of his fingers, squeezing and kneading your breast as he angles his hips, trying to get you to cum before he does. and just as as before, just as he’d caught you earlier, your body starts to tense up, shaking in anticipation as your orgasm draws closer and closer.

but there’s something— different. 

“rin!” you yell out, still half-whispering in an attempt to keep quiet. your eyes well up as you call out for him again, your orgasm unbearably close. “rin, feels weird— oh m—”

he only just barely manages to shove his hand against your face before you’re screaming, throat aching and scratching as you thrash beneath him. around his cock, your cunt spams and clenches down tightly, cum splashing and spraying all over his lower stomach and past his cock to his balls. you’re still thrashing, still squealing and screaming, and he’s spilling inside of you, filling you up impossibly, his cum splashing and dripping as it mixes with yours. 

“holy shit,” he breathlessly marvels, hips still rocking and grinding against yours as he helps the both of you ride out your highs. “you ever—“ he steals in a breath, steadying himself slightly, “—cum this hard?”

you’re sobbing, hiccuping and mewling and whining and crying, your body impossibly sensitive. tears stream freely down your cheeks as you sink into the mattress, feeling quite literally like jelly. slowly, suna pulls his cock out, trying not to get distracted by the way your cunt squeezes out some of his cum, and instead focuses on you, his hands cupping your cheeks softly. 

“hey, hey, eyes on me,” he encourages, kneeling above you as his thumbs brush at your tears. 

“m’sorry, ri— suna,” you heave, hands grasping his as your eyes water again, fresh tears joining ones that are yet to dry. 

“what for, sweet thing?” he asks gently. when you start to lift yourself up, he leans back, sitting on your bed, giving you space to get comfortable. he watches with worried eyes as you furiously rub at your eyes with your palms and the back of your hands, as the tears never stop flowing. shit, did he fuck up somehow? he calls your name again, cautiously reaching out for you. when you don’t reject his touch, his heart settles, just a little. “tell me what’s wrong?” he offers again, and you sniffle. 

“are you not disgusted?” you ask, voice wobbly and cracking. 

his brows furrow, and he cocks his head. “because you... squirted?”

you slap at his arm with a roll of your eyes. “no, suna.” 

“when did i lose my first name privileges?” he asks, dramatically shocked. again, you roll your eyes. well, at least the tears have ceased. softening slightly, suna sighs. he’s shit at this. he’s worse than shit at this. talking in general? awful. talking about his or someone else’s feelings? he’s sure the devil would be better comfort. still, he can’t just— leave you. he’s sure that would make things a thousand times worse.

and honestly, neither does he want to leave you. 

“i can’t read your mind, pretty girl,” he reminds you, and momentarily, you look away. 

until you inhale sharply, and meet his eyes again. “it’s okay...” you begin, trailing off as you attempt to gather your words, before continuing, “that i feel this way for you?” 

at your words, at the much needed clarity, suna sighs in relief. so that was it. “more than okay,” he promises you. 

you nod in understanding, before prodding further, “not weird?” 

he thinks it over, before answering. if he’s honest with himself, the most he’d felt with you was sexual attraction. he liked the way your tits bounced when you ran to greet him or the press of your ass against his crotch when you passed by him to get somewhere. he liked— he liked thinking about your body, your lips, your hands. it’s why he sent you that lingerie set, the one that sits so pretty on your body right now. not that he’d been expecting you to send him anything, and he’d even anticipated that you might feel disgusted, might throw it in his face and slap him too. but he knew you better. suna was observant. he knew more than he let on, more than anyone could imagine. if he hadn’t realized your eyes on him in the past years, he must be blind.

still, he’s not sure if it was ever more, or if it is more. but, he supposes, it’s not an unimaginable feat. he thinks that maybe, there is a chance. he likes you, sure; you make his belly twist and his heart jump. but is he going to risk leading you on? 

he doesn’t know. 

he settles for, “good weird.” 

your face is the definition of a question mark. “what the hell is good weird?” 

“your face is good weird,” he retorts. it’s a bad comeback, terrible actually, but his face is flushing a dark red, and he needs to get away. you’re flustering him and it’s pissing him off. 

“that’s so mean!” 

yeah, the devil would’ve been better comfort. he wasn’t around though, so he made sure suna had been sleeping over that night instead. 

worked in your favor didn’t it? 

end note; my godddddfhksfhbskjbsb ,,, sorry if you found mistakes this took me all day and im not assed to proofread <//3 but i hope you liked regardless!! 

#suna #suna smut #suna rintarou smut #suna x reader #haikyuu smut #suna rintarou x reader #rintarou smut #suna rintaro smut #suna rintaro x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x reader smut #hq smut #sal's thirst tag <3

[babyboibucky]

The Match - Part 9

Pairing: CEO!Bucky x Fem!Reader

Summary: Bucky brings you and Mackenzie with him to an important meeting.

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Uhhhh hmm work tension, sexual tension, idk Bucky and Mackenzie being annoying as usual lmao

A/N: ALSO I know I haven’t mentioned what the fuck Bucky’s company is all about because c’mon, I didn’t expect I’d get this far lmao so IDK there might be continuity issues or inaccuracies or whatevah, just ignore it lmao it’s fiction. ANYWAAAY, I just want to say how GRATEFUL AND OVERWHELMED I am with the amount of attention that this series is getting. I appreciate every feedback, every ask and every freaking debate about this shit lmfao. I love you guys. I can’t put into words how much I appreciate you all askcnasjkcnak bye

The Match Masterlist || MAIN MASTERLIST

Don't let Bucky or Mackenzie get to you.

Mark's advice rang in your ears like a chant as you watched Bucky and Mackenzie's exchange about the project. Joining them in the conference room for a major brainstorming session was you and a couple of people from your team with Beverly taking down the minutes of the meeting.

The upcoming project was a huge one, given that Barnes Group of Companies was a huge name in the automobile industry. Meanwhile, Wilson Enterprises is one of the biggest autonomous vehicle technology companies out there. This partnership was one for the books, possibly an industry changer too.

You wanted to be a part of it, wanted to spearhead the entire thing and watching Mackenzie take the reigns on this one was truly making your blood boil.

"That sounds like a nice idea, Kenzie." Bucky praised, nodding his head.

Mackenzie shrugged, "It's what I do, Buck." she said.

"Yeah, it's a great idea. I do have some comments though, if you don't mind?" you asked.

Bucky and Mackenzie exchanged glances before turning to you. You glanced at Bucky for a quick second before ignoring the way he was eyeing you with genuine interest.

"I know that bringing in a celebrity to endorse this brand new model would definitely create noise around the partnership. Although I think that would take the spotlight away from the actual product we're creating here. We want customers to focus on the brand new car model and the technology that Wilson Enterprises will be providing it with, not on the celebrity endorser." you explained.

Mackenzie hummed, "I get where you are coming from. That's a good point, actually. But a celebrity endorser will pretty much do everything for the brand. Have him up on billboards and different advertisements and you're all set." she further explained.

You chuckled, "But then how will people understand what the entire partnership is all about? Aren't we supposed to be communicating a certain message to our consumers? Wouldn't it be better to hold an event to launch the product instead? Invite the press and key opinion leaders to spread the word. Have Bucky and Mister Wilson talk about this partnership. They're famous and powerful enough to get the message across. Why waste the budget on a celebrity when we literally have everything we need to make noise?" you shrugged.

The entire room was silent after your feedback, even Mackenzie wasn't able to respond to your suggestion. Glancing over at Bucky, you saw that he was giving you the look-- the one with half-lidded eyes matched with a head tilt, the one that often resulted to him giving you a very nice reward once office hours are over.

Feeling your breath hitch in your throat, you quickly looked away and shrugged your shoulders, "I mean, that's just my two cents. Having worked here for years, I just based it on my experience. You're the expert here, Mackenzie." you offered a proud smile.

Mackenzie tried to brush it off and turned to Bucky, "What do you think, Buck? I'm still into the idea of hiring a celebrity. That's good publicity. And let's not get worried about the budget now," she said, placing a hand on top of Bucky's that was resting on the table, "I have a lot of connections so I can definitely get an endorser for a much lower rate." she reassured.

"We may have a huge budget for this, but that doesn't automatically mean that we have to use it all up. We can allocate it somewhere else, maybe start a CSR campaign as well? We are, after all, coming out with an environmental-friendly model." you suggested.

You heard Bucky when he took a sharp inhale, bringing his hands up to rub his lips as if in deep thought. He then turned to Beverly, however, his eyes remained on you.

"Take note of everything she says." he reminded her before standing up.

He asked everyone else in the room of their opinions, whether it was your or Mackenzie's idea that the company will go for. The team was divided in half, some of them preferring Mackenzie's celebrity pitch probably because they didn't want to do a lot of work.

Bucky nodded, "Well, I guess we'll have to discuss both ideas with my partner Sam and let's see where we will go from there. I have a meeting with him this afternoon, I need you and Kenzie with me there." he said, looking at your before turning to Kenzie with a charming smile.

Don't let them get to you.

-

You've never wanted for the ground to swallow you up until this moment as you stood behind Bucky and Mackenzie in the elevator. This felt so much more uncomfortable than when you shared it with Bucky after swiping right with him on Tinder. There was still tension and it felt so much worse now because you didn't know whether it was between you and Bucky or him and Mackenzie.

Fucking Mackenzie and her nicely manicured nails which always seemed find its way around Bucky's arm. You eyed her hands as they squeezed his arm, the both of them talking in hushed voices as if you weren't standing behind them.

"I've been dying to try this restaurant, I heard they serve good food. Do you want to go have dinner there sometime this week?" she asked Bucky.

"I'll check my schedule, which restaurant is this?" he asked.

When Mackenzie uttered the name of that restaurant where you celebrated your promotion, you and Bucky choked on your own spits at the same time. Warmth crept up to your cheeks at the same time Bucky's ears reddened.

"Oh, what's going on?" Mackenzie asked with a nervous chuckle as she looked at you and Bucky, struggling with your coughs.

You recovered first and shook your head, "Sorry, I get allergies. Anyway, I've been to that restaurant. They do serve good food, the staff was very hospitable as well. I'm sure Bucky would enjoy it there." you said with a smile, pushing your way past them when the elevators door slid open.

Mackenzie asking Bucky whether he was up for dinner was the last thing you heard. Good luck explaining to her why he's banned from there, you thought to yourself.

Bucky led the way to his car and it instantly brought certain memories back. You weren't going to lie, you missed the fucking and how Bucky always made sure to take care of your needs. Seeing his car was enough to make your thighs clench at the memory of him fingering you as he drove.

His gaze was on you when he opened the door to the passenger's seat, his eyes inviting as you approached him. And just as when you were about to slip in, he turned over to Mackenzie and gestured for her to get in.

What a fucking asshole, you thought to yourself as you took a step back to ride in the back instead. You tried to keep your expression stoic when you saw that Bucky checked for a reaction. He seemed perplexed when he saw that you didn't react that much to what he did.

One hundred points to Gryffindor.

-

The location for the meeting was at a nearby restaurant so you didn't suffer that much during the entire ride. Mackenzie was busy with her phone anyway, typing out messages with those manicured fingers you were beginning to hate.

By the time all three of you arrived, Sam was already there. He donned a navy blue suit and he was rocking it. You'd seen his photos on the internet and knew that he was good-looking, but seeing him in the flesh, you were stunned at how gorgeous he was. Sam stood up when he saw Bucky, offering a kind smile to you and Mackenzie.

You weren't sure whether you were just being assuming or what, but you noticed how his eyes lingered on you longer that it did with Mackenzie.

"Sam." Bucky greeted, shaking his hand before introducing you and Mackenzie.

Sam shook Mackenzie's hand first before he turned to you. You took his hand and introduced yourself, "Mister Wilson." you said.

"Please, just Sam." he told you as he gently squeezed your hand before letting go.

"Have a seat." Sam said to Bucky and Mackenzie before pulling out the chair next to him, motioning for you to sit down.

You thanked him and sat down; straightening up, you were met with Bucky's watchful gaze as he sat down across you. Your attention was taken away when Sam asked what you wanted to order, he even suggested a certain dish and immediately went to discuss that it was his favorite thing to order.

This was going to be an interesting meeting.

And interesting it truly was, because you didn't expect for Sam to be so laid-back and easy to communicate with. He wasn't one of those uptight CEOs who were very intimidating to work with. Simply put, he was the complete opposite of Bucky. While Bucky was ice cold, Sam was sunshine and warmth with his attitude.

When it came down to pitching your and Mackenzie's ideas to him, you suddenly got nervous. Sam wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth; from what you've read, he started off working regular jobs before he climbed his way to the top. He was a self-made man and he had extensive knowledge in the marketing industry, having a doctorate degree in the said area.

Mackenzie was the first to discuss her strategy about hiring a celebrity endorser. She said it was fast and straight to the point. When it was your turn, you started off a bit shaky but eventually found your pacing.

"We wanted to ask you how this should go on about. I know that the offer for a partnership came from our end and that we're supposed to pitch the details for it. But we wanted you to be involved in this as much as we are." Bucky further explained.

Sam nodded and let out an amused chuckle, "I really appreciate this, Buck. I was going to ask you if I can contribute with the planning as well. I'm very particular when it comes to marketing our products." he said.

"That being said, I loved both ideas. I think hiring a celebrity endorser is good." he said, making Mackenzie smile proudly.

"But I would rather hold an event to launch the product. You understand the product and what we want to do with it. It's not just a brand new car, it's an innovation and the messaging is very important. I'm very impressed." Sam said, his attention geared towards you.

"Wow, I'm honored." you laughed. "Coming from you, I mean I've read about the marketing studies you did. Pretty big deal to receive a compliment from you." you admitted.

It was meant to be a genuine reaction, really. You had no ill intentions for it, you didn't do it to make Bucky jealous or get the upper hand. However, your passion for your career and area of expertise seemed to favor you. It had Bucky on edge, seeing you and Sam get along so well.

You didn't even need to check for Bucky's reaction because he simply cleared his throat and excused himself to go to the restroom. Mackenzie seemed unbothered though, when Sam favored your pitch over hers. You couldn't read her, sometimes she'd come off competitive but right now, she was unaffected.

When Bucky got back, he was quick to finalize the meeting, "I guess it's a done deal then. We'll work on the details of the launch and maybe we can set another meeting for the major presentation for your approval?" he asked Sam.

"That sounds like a plan. I'm looking forward to working with you." Sam told everyone, although he did seem to be directly addressing you.

"Alright, I'm leaving too." Mackenzie announced after Sam left the restaurant.

"Oh, you're not heading back to the office with us?" Bucky asked.

Mackenzie shook her head, throwing her bag over her shoulder, "I have another meeting. You know how it is with freelance work." she said as all three of you stood up to head outside of the restaurant.

"My Uber's here, I guess I'll see you both sometime this week." she said and waved at you before turning to Bucky and pressing a kiss on his cheek.

"I'm counting on that dinner, okay?" she reminded before slipping into her Uber, leaving you and Bucky to head back to the office together.

Alone with Bucky. In his car. The exact same car where plenty of fucking happened. Again, you chanted Mark’s advice in your head over and over again.

Don’t let Bucky get to you. And most of all, don’t cave in.

You quickly slipped inside the front seat of Bucky’s car before he could even open it up for you. The air was thick between you and Bucky and it almost felt like it was suffocating you. Reaching for the seatbelt, you tugged at it but it wouldn’t budge. Cursing to yourself, you tried again but to no avail.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked.

“Nothing. Seatbelt’s just stuck.” you grunted, using both your hands to pull down at it.

“Here, let me.”

Suddenly, Bucky reached over to your seatbelt and tried to fix it. His face was inches away from yours and you literally felt your insides jump at how you were immediately drowned in his perfume. If you moved forward so much as half an inch, your lips would already be pressing against the corner of Bucky’s mouth. And that thought was sending your senses into overdrive.

Do not. Cave. In.

The loud click of the seatbelt made you relax and thank goodness that Bucky was quick to move away from you, fixing his suit before starting the engine. The office may just be nearby but the fact that you and Bucky were together was making it feel like it was going to be an hour-long drive.

“So what do you think about Sam?” Bucky asked out of the blue.

He was gauging you, trying to get a reaction from you. Maybe he was expecting you to be flirty with your response, or be defensive even? You weren’t going to give him that.

“I think he’s great. Like I said, I’ve read his marketing studies and they were very insightful. I learned a lot.”

Plain, simple and safe. There was no hidden meanings and no malice; you were doing great at this whole not letting Bucky get to you thing. You made a mental note to thank Mark for his advice.

“He seems interested in you.” Bucky said again, shrugging his shoulders a bit and trying to be as nonchalant as he could.

“Well we are in the same field of expertise and I was very straightforward about admiring his skills. I’d be disappointed if he brushed off my ideas.” you slightly chuckled.

“I liked Mackenzie’s idea better, honestly.” Bucky blurted out.

By this time, you had Bucky’s plans figured out. He was coming for your job, using it as a bait to get a reaction out from you. He knew how much your career meant for you, how competitive you were in your field. Whenever his other tactics wouldn’t work, he’d always go for the career aspect.

“It was good.” you agreed, turning to Bucky with a small smile. “I think we can do that for other campaigns. Just not with this partnership. I like her.” you said.

“You do?” Bucky asked in surprise before he cleared his throat upon realizing that he sort of broke his facade.

You shrugged, “She’s a headstrong woman. She reminds me of myself actually.”

If you were alone, you would have given yourself a high-five because that statement truly made Bucky think. His forehead creased as he drove, his hand rubbing his chin and his jaw clenching as if he was in deep thought.

It was silent inside the car for a brief moment, before it was interrupted by the trilling of Bucky’s phone. He fished it out of his pocket but before he could even answer it, it slipped out of his hand and disappeared beneath his seat.

“Fuck.” Bucky cursed, both his hands on the steering wheel as he continued to drive, his attention divided between driving and searching for his ringing phone.

“Shit.” he hissed again, not knowing how to get his phone while driving. He quickly glanced at you before focusing on the road again. “Baby, can you get it for me?”

You almost missed the term of endearment. Almost. It was obviously a slip of the tongue because he genuinely didn’t seem to realize that he called you that. Bucky was more focused on the road rather than processing what he just said. You chose to ignore it the same way you did to the butterflies that erupted in your stomach.

“Yeah, okay.” you said and reached over to him, bending down to look for his phone.

In a split second, your face was right in front of Bucky’s crotch as you tried to reach beneath his car seat. You tried to ignore the bulge that was staring right at you and let your hand do the searching.

“Can you reach it?” Bucky asked.

You straightened up, “No. Can you pull aside?” you asked.

Bucky checked the surroundings and then the rearview mirror, “We can’t. We’re at a no loading and unloading zone.” he explained.

The phone continues to trill and it doesn’t seem like it would stop any time now. You sighed and removed your seatbelt before stretching your body over Bucky, slipping underneath his arms on the steering wheel so you can fully reach under his seat.

From another car’s view, you looked like you were giving him a blowjob. Not that you haven’t done that before, in this same car.

Finally, you felt his phone at the tip of your fingers and stretched further, your free hand coming to grip Bucky’s thigh unintentionally. It was only when you felt his muscles flex beneath his trousers that you realized how near your hand was to his crotch.

“Did you,” Bucky cleared his throat. “Did you get it?” he stammered.

You still have a certain effect on him, how very nice. Biting back a smirk, you hummed in response before pulling back and then handing him his phone casually. Mackenzie’s name was flashing on the screen as the phone continued to ring.

“Sorry, can you answer it and put it on speakerphone?” Bucky asked again.

You shrugged and did as you were told, holding the phone near Bucky as he continued to drive.

“Hey, Kenzie. Sorry, I dropped my phone. What’s up?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah, so my meeting got cancelled at the last minute. I was thinking maybe we can grab that dinner tonight instead?”

Bucky stole a quick glance from you but your face remained stoic, your hand steady as you held out his phone.

“Sure, how does around 7pm sound? I can pick you up.” Bucky offered.

“Sounds great. So are we checking that restaurant I was talking about?”

Bucky’s ears turned red again but he quickly recovered, “I was thinking of trying out a different one. I honestly didn’t like their dessert.”

Huh, that was weird. You and Bucky didn’t even make it to--

Fuck, he was talking about you, you realized. Clenching your jaw, you tried to keep calm. He was trying to get a rise out of you, don’t give in. Don’t react. Bucky’s conversation with Mackenzie didn’t last long and ended when they settled the location for their dinner.

The ride back to the office was quiet again, until your phone lit up from a notification. Bucky was already parking in the basement when you checked your phone, an audible gasp slipping past your lips upon reading the notification from LinkedIn.

Samuel Wilson wants to connect with you.

-

The Match Special Tags:

@marvelslag @weird-mumbling @propertyofpoeandbucky @lostinthoughtsandfeelings @mostly-marvel-musings @squishybabies @megzdoodle @suchababie @annathesillyfriend @xhollycowx @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @5-seconds-of-mendes @gogolucky13 @countonthesun @iloveshawnieboi @learisa @borikenlove @scarlet-natasha89

Everything Bucky Tag List:

@ddowii​​ @jessou893​​ @stealapizzamyheart​​ @bagelofthelord​​ @mxnt​​ @dontputyourfckingdrinkonmytable @jeeperky​​ @ohladymacbeth​​ @wildflowergubler​​ @supraveng​​ @twinerd14​​ @buckysmar @bakugouswh0r3​​ @sweetcoldharmony @wintersfilm​​ @charminivy​​ @amelia-song-pond​​ @iamvalentinaconstanza​​ @mcubqrnes @im-squished​​ @tcc-gizmachine​​ @sipsteacasually​​ @prettyintopeerpressure​​ @weloveyasmin​ @est19xxshit​ @bloodhon3yx​ @dressed-in-prada​ @lizette50​ @thatfangirl42​ @sunflowerbunny2​ @unmagically​ @okiegirl24​ @sugarpunch-princess​ @enlyume​ @vvipgotbb @slimeyderp​ @lyoongx​ @just-deka​ @nobody-will​ @jaziona92 @elisebuitron​ @dpaccione​ @suvikamahes98blr​ @buckybarneshairpullingkink​ @earthtonav @x-judyjude-x​ @nani-kenobi @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @belladonnabarnes​ @iloveangstposts​ @weenersoldierr​ @asemistablehundredyearoldman​ @reidbuck​ @lizzarooni​ @girlfriday007​ @bonkywobble​ @lost-in-the-stars03​ @its-yasbxtch​ @whoth3hellisbucky

#bbb writes #the match #bucky barnes #bucky #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky x you #fem!reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky smut #sebastian stan