#there’s no way they’re fixing anything atp

[yourqueenb]

Me reading today’s Blades chapter:

#choices bolas #choices blades #blades of light and shadow #choices stories you play #playchoices #how disappointing #as always I have thoughts #but I don’t think I have the energy to complain anymore #I should really just stop expecting/hoping for things to be better #it’ll be chapter 14 next week after all #the book is damn near over #there’s no way they’re fixing anything atp #guess I just need to accept it for what it is #never thought I would feel resignation towards one of my favorite series… #it’s really sad actually #choices #choices app #pixelberry studios #pixelberry

[kithtaehyung]

u suck !! (m) (3tan special) | myg

3tanoween special: u suck !! pairing: 3tan!yoongi x reader(f)  series: masterlist | three tangerines | fireworks | house party | basketball |  stay |  sidewalk talk | friends | dalo | like that | anytime | sundress season | yoongi’s interlude | forfeit | flutter | video call | busted rating/genre: m (18+) ; angst , fluff , smut ; brother’s best friend au, implied age gap au summary: jimin’s cul-de-sac is filled to the brim with autumn leaves, trick-or-treaters, and halloween spirits. but the scariest part of the night? yoongi himself. and the way he looks downright sinful in his costume. note: BOO!! :))) happy halloween and i love you all so so much. if you haven't read three tangerines or the rest of the series yet, i highly recommend diving into that first! this would make a whole lot more sense lol note 2: this is gonna be heavily unedited bc i literally started it on tues🥹 and consider this a pocket universe/side story for now until i mention anything otherwise :)) warnings: [explicit warnings under the cut] language, house party, alcohol/drug mentions, vampires are present but there’s a different type of sucking going on HEYO!!, tight spaces, yoongiiiiii🥺🥺🥺, one (1) uncomfy hug, jimin is a warning, yoongi is a bigger warning, kissing is a staple warning atp, yoongi in black leather and chains ahahahahah, tension, angst bc it’s me🤪, you have to be quiet :)), but it’s so hard :))), yoongi hands🥴, so many doll mentions, cus this reader is a barbie!!!, this yoongi is out of control and i’m not stopping him 🤷, ermmmmmm yoongi’s voice🧍‍♀️this is all i can say🧍‍♀️, ...VMIN??? drop date: oct. 28th, 2023, 12:17am est  word count: 11.5k🫣

explicit warnings: choking, head/hair tugging, min yoongi king of consent wbk, fingering, breath play, oral (m rec), ass play, chains lmfaooo, tears, face fucking, back shots, cum swallowing, breast play, protective sex, …public sex🫣, nasty dirty talk, he’s rude and we love it and he knows that we love it😩

—

—

“Oh, did you get the cookies?” 

“Yeah, they’re already in the back,” you huff out as you rush around the car. After getting in and catching your purse strap on your very pink heel, you explain while slipping it free, “And don’t worry, I made un-iced ones for you.” 

Your brother sighs in relief, as if you’ve never done that for him before. “Thank god.” As he backs out of the driveway, he gives your costume another glance. “That damn movie. I feel like I’m gonna see three hundred of y’all tonight.” 

“Barbie was great and you know it.” 

“Whatever. Aren’t you gonna be cold later?” 

“I got this.” 

Steering the wheel, he sighs, “Okay.. You’re gonna regret that.” 

“Yeah, probably.” 

Fixing your tee and smoothing out your skirt, you make a mental note that he didn’t comment the usual things about your costume this time. Whether it’s because you grilled him about the Dalo incident or not, you’re pleasantly surprised. 

The only thing he complained about was that couldn’t dress how he wanted in peace. 

“You still could’ve been Ken, you know,” you think out loud. “All you had to do was throw fur over that jersey.” 

“Nah, the coat I got is expensive as fuck.” 

“So is the jersey?”

“I have two of these.”

“…I will never understand you.”

The drive to Jimin’s isn’t too far, and the streets are already occupied with people in various characters. When you pass by a Ghostface costume with pink heels and a sign that says ‘This Barbie has a knife!,’ both you and your brother give it an approving laugh. 

If the atmosphere in the neighborhood was buzzing, it’s Jimin’s cul-de-sac that bursts with the biggest Halloween charm. 

Every yard around the semi-circle is chock full of decorations, from the ghoulish to the whimsical. Orange and purple lights scale whole houses, trees are covered in ghosts, and inflatable spiders and kittens rest on every surface you can see. Glee spreads throughout the whole setting as trick-or-treaters of all ages stop along the sidewalks, gawking at the views and running up to doors to procure sweets. 

It’s magical. 

But you can’t enjoy it at the moment because your brother has to park way down the main street. Which means you’re subjected to his teasing as you make the trek in enormous heels. 

Ugh. 

At least he’s carrying everything. 

“Damn, look at that house,” you point, adjusting your purse and almost teetering over.  

“That’s a shit ton of cobwebs.” 

“The lights are so nice, though.” 

“Uh huh.” 

After forever, you finally get to Jimin’s house, going through the open garage and already greeting the yells and hugs upon arrival. Some people are dressed up and some are in their regular clothes, but everyone seems chipper. 

And it’s even louder inside the house. All of you have to practically yell to hear each other. 

“Hey! You made it!” 

Damn, Jimin looks good as a vampire. 

As your brother says hi, you try super hard to not stare at his silver hair, avoiding his bare chest under that ruffled white shirt entirely. “Hey, Chim! You’re all decked out, holy shit.” 

“Ah, thank you! We both are. The lady at the Halloween place gave us a discount.”

“For what?” 

“Uhh, being cute? What else?” 

Adorable. If he went with Taehyung to get costumes, you wonder how extravagant your best friend looks. 

When you laugh, Jimin stops to look at you with his jaw dropped. “Wow, look at you, Barbie!” Turning to your brother, he teases, “You let this happen?” 

“I will throw you against the wall right now, fang boy,” he responds with no hesitation, which pulls a high cackle.

“No fighting tonight, please,” you drone, smiling while giving the handsome vampire a side hug. “Everything looks so good!” 

“Yeah? Spent all day decorating.” 

“Well, it shows.” Noting how Jimin always has great cologne, you take the trays from your brother while asking, “Where do you want these?” 

“Ah, in the kitchen! Here,” he offers, sliding them onto his puffy sleeves. “Follow me. You can see what we have.” 

His cloak brushes both your legs as you’re led into the big area, and your eyes feast on the assortment of themed desserts and drinks. 

Whoa. There’s even a bubbling pot of red punch? Jimin really has gone all out this year. 

Maybe Tae has something to do with this uptick in ambition. 

“Yoongi! You, too?” 

Huh? Him, too? 

“Yeah, it’s fucking hot.” 

Hot? What could possibly be—

Oh. 

Fucking.

Hell. 

It’s your fault for assuming it was Tae that Jimin went to the store with. It’s your fault for not even entertaining the possibility that Yoongi would dress up. 

And it’s all your fault for not being able to process what’s happening because even your own brother teases you when you cannot form words. 

You can’t help it. There’s literally no way. 

Because seeing this man up close, decked out head to toe in shiny black leather and hair properly tousled as if he just had wicked sex? 

How the fuck are you supposed to react! 

“I think you broke a wire in there somewhere,” Jimin comments through puffs of giggles, finally snapping you out of your inappropriately timed trance. “Ah, there she is!” 

Recover. Holy shit, you gotta recover.

“I just—” You gesture to the demon with your hands. “I didn’t think you’d ever dress up.” 

And Yoongi has the audacity to respond with, 

“Why?” 

“I mean. I thought you were..” Flailing for anything, you blurt, “I dunno, boring?” 

Amusement shoots out of both your brother and Jimin, carving a sickly upward curve into Yoongi’s face. When he looks away to poke his cheek, you know something’s coming.

But when he glances back and drags his eyes from your feet to your awaiting face, you're completely unprepared when he drawls, 

“And you dressed basic for what?” 

Disbelief slams your jaw straight into the ground, your little audience bent back with laughs so loud that some people around your group glance over. 

Oh, you wanna launch yourself at him so fucking bad. Wipe that stupid, smug taunt off his face. 

But there are other ways to come out victorious. And you can’t exactly do anything with your sibling so close. 

“Alright. Okay,” you hum, nodding and thinking of a thousand ways to incite revenge in private. “I’ll remember that.” 

“Won’t help you, doll.” 

Shit, did he really just call you that out loud?

Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it he’s just saying that in the open because you’re a Barbie. “Whatever, Neo.” 

Yoongi quickly smiles in confusion. “Neo? I’m a vampire!” 

“Oh, yeah, cus you suck.” 

Your brother and Jimin are full on titillated now. While one blows out air, the other plants a hand on Yoongi’s shoulder while creasing over from glee. 

And you spot your friends arriving, which turns into perfect timing for you to slowly retreat with a middle finger and a lip bite. “Bye, suckas!” 

Your brother can only shake his head before turning to grab a cup, and you barely—just barely—catch the fiendish spark in Yoongi’s eyes as he bites his grin right back. 

You can’t believe you got through that whole interaction so smoothly. 

Because every time you’ve caught peeks of Yoongi since then, your body’s reaction is downright visceral. Borderline feral.

And it reaches its peak when you get a text from the devil himself.  

Yoongi [10:02pm]: Fuck 

Shit, you can’t do this. 

If you start texting now, too? There’s no way you’re gonna be able to resist him. 

But the two drinks in your system are very smooth talkers, and you’re convinced immediately. 

You [10:02pm]: what🥺 

“Let’s go!” Yuri yells, dragging you along. 

“Where’re we going?” 

“Garage. Table’s about to be open.” 

From the backyard, it takes a minute for you all to weave through the people inside to get to the designated card game area. So you don’t get to read Yoongi’s text until you’re waiting for a table to clear. 

Yoongi [10:04pm]: You know exactly what 

You [10:04pm]: 🤪🖕

Yoongi [10:04pm]: I better not find you alone 

Fuck, you want that. Frankly, there’s literally nothing you want more right now. 

It’s been way too long since you’ve seen each other, and even more since you’ve gotten to do anything that leaves you breathless. 

So being this deprived and witnessing him in that costume? Yoongi’s the vampire but you’re the one that wants to suck the soul out of him. 

You [10:07pm]: maybe i want that 

It’s official. You can’t hold back your replies tonight even if you try. 

Between drinking and a haze of thoughts solely connected to him, you find yourself getting more and more needy. 

Yoongi [10:07pm]: You don’t 

You [10:08pm]: but shyyy 

You [10:08pm]: whyyy* 

This is bad. 

Why can’t he be super annoying instead—

Yoongi [10:10pm]: 🤷‍♂️ 

Well. 

You [10:10pm]: 😐 

Yoongi [10:10pm]: Lmaooo 

Taehyung chuckles next to you, and you immediately lock your phone while giving him a slight nudge. “Shut up…” 

“I will once you stop sexting.” 

“We are not!” 

“Uh huh. And I’m not wearing a suit.” 

Scoffing, you give him a once-over, wondering why everyone except for Yoongi decided to forego a goddamn shirt today. “What are you supposed to even be?” 

“A model.” 

He’s full of shit. “You just wanted to wear this outfit, huh.” 

“Yup.” 

Small huffs leave you both as you wait just a bit longer, and you let the night air and music lift your spirits until you get another text. 

Yoongi [10:13pm]: You look great, doll 

Why does he have to say all the right things?

You truly don’t know how you ended up here. To be able to receive compliments like this from him of all people? It’s a wonder this whole thing isn’t just one big dream. 

Fueled by the excitement and comfort only October can bring, you lean into this conversation and type a genuine reply. 

You [10:13pm]: so do you baby 

You [10:13pm]: i better not find you alone either 

Wait. 

Have you ever been that bold? 

Seems like tonight is making you a bit scary, too. 

Yoongi [10:14pm]: 👀 

And rude. 

You [10:14pm]: 😛😛😛

“Get off your phone, babe! Enjoy the night!” 

“Sorry, sorry,” you whisper, belatedly dropping your device in your purse and following everyone to scraping chairs and rustling clothes. 

The air feels even chillier at the table, and you’re thankful for the warm metal seat this time when your bare skin makes contact. Peering out of the garage, you can see that the night is still active as ever with more and more people walking around. 

Maybe poker and cool autumn weather will quell the heat swirling in your core. 

Nope. 

Even your card game can’t distract you from what happened. You still have the whole thing running through your mind, replaying Yoongi’s expressions and feeling more and more want build between your legs. 

Under a skirt that's completely the wrong length for how it feels outside.

But you try your best to focus on having fun with all of them, especially since Dom and Tae keep eyeing each other and smirking at you whenever you try to ask what’s up. 

“You know what’s up.” 

“Dom!” 

“Don’t act like we can’t see it.” 

Hiding your smile with a cup, you break, “What!” 

“Babe, you are thinking hard about something,” Dominique points out as she swishes her long white locks—a perfect Storm on your left. As she lays out cards, another comment flies out, “And I don’t like that smile you got going on.” 

“Yeah, what’s that all about!” Yuri joins in, and you pout at her high pigtails while she stares at her hand, chucking her cards in the center. 

Then Reia folds, too, her pretty nails extending the sleeves of her ninja getup so well. “Probably thinking about her boyfriend.” 

“He’s not my—”

Four pairs of eyes instantly give you a look to just give it up already, and you flounder as they all tease you in various ways. 

“Is he coming?” 

“Yeah, are we finally gonna meet him?”

“Yeah, babe,” Tae repeats, resting his smug cheek on a palm. “Are we gonna meet him?” 

Glaring, you respond to the pair of cards in your hand. “Not yet,” you answer honestly. “Call.” 

It’s you against Taehyung, and Dom flips another card in the center. 

“Hold on,” he stops. Turning to you, he bets, “If I win, we get a name.” 

What? 

Gawking, you try to send him every single signal in the universe telling him to take that back. The chills you get compound with the dropping temperatures, and you suddenly can’t move your fingers.

Even Dom is shocked trying to play fair. “Hey, we don’t have to force them.” 

But Yuri and Reia are already all for it, siding with Tae and getting excited for the face-off. 

Shit, shit, shit. Your cards are good, but you never fucking know with your opponent. Someone even more mysterious than Min Yoongi. 

Fuck it. “Fine,” you blurt, watching Tae’s eyes fully enlarge in surprise. 

Oh, shit, did he not expect you to call his bluff? 

Fuck, what if his hand is better! 

Sweating while frozen all over, you wait for Dom to flip the final card. 

Damn, damn, damn. You can just make up a name, right? You can just brush it off with a pseud and call it a night. 

But you know they’d be able to tell you’re lying. So you have to win this, you have to win…

That last card may have just saved your ass.

You and Taehyung give each other a look, and you can’t tell if he wants to beat you or is sad that he thinks he did. Either way, he looks stricken.

“Straight,” he claims, laying down his cards while Yuri and Reia cheer. 

And you breathe, checking your hand one more time before regarding him again. 

With a flourish, you reveal your cards with a boisterous, “Full house, bitches!” 

Loud groans mix with Dom’s close-call hiss of an exhale, and all the slaps on the table get the attention of everyone in the garage. 

And outside of it. 

While you’re raking in everyone’s chips, you glance over to see Jimin and Yoongi looking in from the sidewalk, some of their friends also wondering what the hell happened. 

At this, you get so shy that you don’t even acknowledge them, instead turning right back to the table and sitting down with your winnings. 

When Dom gives you a look, she asks, “You good?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” you stumble, rubbing the cold from your arms. “Let’s keep going.” 

After another shuffle and deal of cards, you finally gain the courage to look out into the driveway. 

Only to see them talking amongst their group again. 

This is agonizing. 

Why the fuck did Yoongi have to dress up? It’s doing things to your insides that you never would’ve guessed, and watching him be all casual while looking like sin incarnate isn’t helping. 

Maybe it’s the way his hair is still so ruffled, or the way his shoulders stand so broad—which never fails to destroy you.

Or maybe it’s the way some people give him the biggest heart eyes and others rope him into pictures, knowing that you’re the one that he just texted. 

Your next hand is quick to be tossed on the table, which gives you a chance to glance again. 

Of course, the thought that some people here are probably ones Yoongi’s been with before awakens darker parts of you. 

Like that girl that just caressed his arm. 

But they aren’t as powerful as before, because you’ve been reassured a thousand times over. 

He’s not like that anymore. 

But as he’s pulled in for a picture with some other Barbie’s, you’re promptly reminded that he’s still not outwardly taken, either. 

Which coaxes another, sadder side of you to come out of hiding, casting a shadow over a fun Halloween night. 

How much longer can you take being the one in the dark? 

Screw waiting to find Yoongi alone.

You’d rather be standing together. 

Activities bustle about the house while the neighborhood is very much still alive.

Some kids do brave Jimin’s scary yard and, thanks to his foresight, anyone who’s near the open doorway simply tells them to grab as much candy as they want from huge plastic cauldrons—while hiding any drinkware they might be holding. 

The only reason you know any of this is because you found yourself near his front door with your friends, and two tiny witches walk up to the porch with full buckets. 

You and Tae are the ones to greet them, with him beaming a hi and you following up with a question,  

“What’s your favorite candy?”

“Chocolate!”

“I like gummi bears.”

Ah, that might be a no-go for the second one.

Leaning forward, you rummage through one of the plastic bins. “Ooh, I know we have plenty of chocolate, but.. I don’t know if we have gummi bears out here. Tae, can you check inside?”

“Yeah! One sec.”

As he leaves, you keep searching while Reia asks them another question,

“Can we know what spells you ladies are learning?” 

One of them doesn’t respond, but the other in a frilly dress fires out an answer, 

“I’m learning how to turn boys into cats!” 

Excellent. Wide-eyed, you wholeheartedly support their decision. “That’s the best spell to learn. Can I see?” 

“Yeah!” 

Just as timing has it, Taehyung is far gone. 

But a wonderful replacement shows up in Jimin and Yoongi as they're spotted walking across the yard, and you quickly call them over. It seems they’re joined at the hip tonight. 

“What’s up!”

“Come here real quick!”

When they oblige, you check with the parents on the sidewalk and see if you’re taking too long. 

When they give you a thumbs-up, you turn back to the kids, “Alright, let’s see it!”

“Okay!”

Yoongi gives you a look, and you grin. “She’s learning a new spell.” 

As soon as the girl waves her wand, she shouts, “Turn into a cat!” 

Straightforward. Succinct. Admirable.

Jimin immediately lets out a gasp and holds paw hands in front of his face, which makes the little witch giggle like hell. 

But what Yoongi does makes everyone react, and your jaw unhinges while something wildly potent rushes through your stomach. 

The man puts fingers on his head in the shape of cat ears—something you didn’t even know he knew how to do—and in the plainest voice, lets out a low, 

“Meow.” 

Oh. God.

Not only does Jimin burst at the seams, but you, your friends, the little girl, and her quiet companion all start laughing. 

And Yoongi’s wide grin at the child almost brings tears to your eyes. 

“That’s not a cat!” she corrects while smiling, and he’s immediately affronted. 

“Yes, huh!” 

“No!” 

“Look! I have ears!” 

“No! You sound like a human!” 

“You need to keep practicing that spell then!” 

Delighted, the little girls burst into laughter again. 

Who is this man? You feel like you know more about him than you ever hoped to, and yet… Yoongi’s still a mystery. 

One beautiful, scary, amazing mystery that you will never get tired of discovering piece by piece. 

When your thoughts dissipate, you notice that he’s now aiming expectant eyes your way, and your heart beats extra extra loud. 

But quickly, you understand. Raising your arms above your head, you do the same ear-shape with your fingers, beaming when he looks satisfied and feeling full when the little ones try it, too. 

“We’re all cats now!” you exclaim, and they shout in agreement before running down the sidewalk to continue their adventure. 

You have no idea what just happened. Zero clue. 

But what you do know? 

You’re not letting that go. There’s no way Yoongi’s escaping that interaction and you’re gonna hang it over his silly old head forever. 

“I didn’t find gummi bears but we have fruit snacks—oh, they left?”

Swiveling, you regard Tae with shock. “Wait, you really looked that whole time?”

“Ah.. Yeah. Felt bad cus, umm. All the gummies in there are definitely not for kids.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Chuckling, you give the other two boys a grateful look. “I think they left pretty happy anyway.” 

There’s one other thing you know for sure. 

Seeing how Yoongi can be with children? 

Any sanity you had left to give has been absolutely, positively vanquished.

Jimin’s whole cul-de-sac seems to always throw parties that people love to stay at. 

An hour later, it’s still packed around the semi-circle of houses, and even you are delightfully buzzed and joining in some of the action. 

But even though the alcohol is helping, you are still freezing. 

Of course, there’s no way you’re letting your brother get another told-you-so in his bucket, so you endure the cold as you watch him and Shiv challenge Yoongi and Jungkook in beer pong. 

To no one’s surprise, the youngest one has also chosen to not wear anything under his white suit. With clattering teeth, you refuse to believe he’s not shivering under that thing, too.

“Y’all took so long to win that one,” your brother shit talks early. “You ready?” 

Kook’s brows pinch as he whines. “I thought he was good at this!” 

“I am!” 

As Yoongi fires off excuses to an unconvinced Jeon, you and a couple people laugh at their spat. But it’s when he claims that he’s just rusty that your sibling interjects, 

“Oh, bullshit, Yoong’s lying! I do all the work when we duo!” 

Ah. There they go. Eyes and mouths adorably creased to hell, “The fuck you don’t!” 

“Oh, yeah? You don’t do shit!” 

“Me? What the fuck happened last time!” 

Gosh, there’s a lot of bodies walking through the backyard right now. You have to shift around as they pass your area, and what the fuck did someone brush your ass? 

You jut your head sideways to see if anyone looks guilty, but the whole crowd just keeps moving. 

Well. It wasn’t a blatant slap or anything. You definitely would’ve thrown hands if that was the case. 

Their argument comes back into focus as you shiver. 

“When?”

“At Hobi’s?”

“Okay, wait, that doesn’t count.” 

“It does—!” 

Your brother’s unannounced shot drills into the cup right in front of Yoongi’s crotch, and everyone around the table stops on a dime. 

“Can we play now?” he asks, tilting his head. “It won’t take long.” 

Shiv adjusts the red cap on his head, and it’s hilarious seeing him so serious in a full pokemon trainer costume. Especially when he shrugs at your opponents while they pin him with annoyance. 

If you weren’t freezing, you would’ve laughed a little more. Your arms are fully caging you in at this point, and it’s hard to even rub your legs together. 

More people walk through the area, and you have to shuffle backwards again to make room as they pass by. 

“You look so good, Barbie!” one of the girls praises, and you compliment her matching aesthetic just as genuinely.

Your brother was right yet again. 

There are plenty of pink and white outfits walking around. 

Unfortunately, this combo that you decided on pulls eyes the whole night, all of which you are choosing to ignore. 

There’s only one person you dressed up for today. Everyone else can take a damn hike. 

Maybe this is why you’ve gravitated towards your brother and his friends instead of wandering more. Taehyung and the girls went back to playing cards, but you wanted to watch this game despite going solo. 

Oh, well. There’s a whole group of you watching and you’re getting a little warmth from body heat now. 

“Course it won’t take long.” Yoongi rubs a wrist, and you puff out air when he gives Shiv flack. “Not with him on your team.” 

“Hey!” 

The game commences, and everyone’s missing cups by the slightest mistakes. But one by one, they get set aside as shots finally start falling for Shiv and your brother, and pretty soon they’re down to the last one while Yoongi and Jungkook have a bunch. 

Frankly, you don’t exactly remember how it all went down. Because all you can think about is how attractive Yoongi looks when he competes.

And watching him dip soaking fingers in water cups isn’t helping your mental in the slightest.

Fucking hell, you didn’t think this through. The price of finally getting to be around him? You can’t do much else except watch.  

And your self-control has never been tested so egregiously in your life. 

“Any last words?” your brother asks, his partner rolling an airy ball in his fingers. 

And Yoongi takes a deliberate sip of his liquor before responding with a drone, “Yeah, hurry up.” 

Smiling, you feel pity for the vampire. Because he’s about to lose whether Shiv makes this or not—which he in fact sinks with no issue. 

Your brother only shrugs as people yell around the table, and you taunt Yoongi with your eyes as he turns to poke his cheek, fishing out the shot with long fingers. 

Still a goddamn menace. 

“I thought you were good at basketball,” Jungkook complains in a huff, roping his attention. 

“I am.” 

“So do something!” 

“Am I holding a basketball?” 

Jeon groans, but Yoongi quickly eyes Shiv with all the confidence in the world as he switches his attitude with a resigned, 

“Fine.” 

And he makes a quick dagger shot, too. 

All of you react as mister basketball holds lazy arms out, and your sibling calms the crowd down with swipes. “Fluke! Nah, hey, that was a fluke!” 

“Don’t listen to him.” 

“Okay then, do it again, bitch.” Immediately, your brother hits a fast one into the same last cup, and people erupt again while Yoongi and Jungkook regard the solo with dread. 

Your laugh seems to reach both their ears, because they both look at you with different faces, 

“Whose side are you on!” 

“You got something to say?” 

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” you clarify with a smile. “You all suck.” 

While Yoongi cocks a brow, your sibling calls you out with a knowing laugh, “You wanna shoot for them?” 

“No, I’ll make it.” 

He chortles again, and you get the strangest look from his best friend—someone that doesn’t know you’ve had plenty of experience doing this with your brother when you were both bored at home. 

Is that pride? Curiosity? An intriguing mix of both? 

Whatever it is, you feel wings flutter about your stomach and fight to keep your emotions internalized.

“Just lose already,” your sibling taunts. “Then we can do that thing Jimin’s talking so much shit about.” 

“The haunted house?” 

“Yeah, that.” 

After both guys fail to make a comeback, you watch your brother and Shiv gloat as much as they possibly can. 

And you’re about to move forward when another group of people blocks your way, damn near tripping as you step back. 

While you’re waiting, a guy spots you and throws his arms up in recognition. “Hey! What’s up, how’ve you been!” 

Huh. 

Who is this man? Are you supposed to know him? 

“Hi!” you call back, deciding to stay polite more than anything else. 

Truly, you kinda feel bad because you have no idea who this is oh he’s going in for a hug. Okay. Strange but that’s whatever okay whoa it’s a full hug. Ah, he’s really squeezing you. Alright. Interesting. 

As he lets go, you try to make small talk and ask how he’s doing. Because you feel terrible for not… remembering him...

He’s already walking away. 

And you feel the most uncomfortable you’ve felt in months. 

Umm.

What the fuck was that? Did he know you or not? 

…Did he just want a hug to feel your tits?

Motherfucker.

Your eyes find Yoongi as soon as you feel an ick, now exceedingly cold both inside and out. All this time, you’ve avoided all the stares and only smiled while politely leaving others behind. 

So to feel that disrespected just because you were considerate makes you want to hurl.  

But when Yoongi moves to strip off his coat, you freeze for another reason. 

Because he’s watching that dude leave. 

Looking pissed. 

Something deep inside of you rumbles to life, and you can’t explain what it feels like wait what’s he doing now? Why’s he walking right towards you why is he—

He’s not—

What is he doing?

He’s not gonna—not in—not in front of everyone, right? Not in front of your brother, right? 

Right?

…This is bold as fuck. 

Your denial is so substantial that you don’t even move when he gets close, handing you incredibly warm material and looking murderous in a black tee and pants. 

“Here,” he offers, voice hardened gravel. “Put it on, doll.” 

Damn. No subtlety this time?

You don’t even wanna know what your brother could possibly look like right now. All you feel are several eyes watching your every move, including some that aren’t particularly friendly. 

But you whisper out a quiet thank you before he shakes his head. 

“I should’ve done this sooner.”

“You didn’t know.” 

“Doesn’t matter.”

When you take one look at his expression, you drop any other sentences you were gonna say. 

Yoongi is actually furious.  

Your stomach churns up a flurry of emotions as he turns, nodding to your brother that’s looking over with Shiv. 

Ah, fuck. Did all of them see that, too? 

They don’t need to do anything drastic. You’re fine if just.. feeling a little violated. 

Okay maybe you’d look the other way if they avenged you.  

“Y’all good over there?”

“Yeah.” 

Oh. Your brother didn’t see a thing. 

That’s probably best for everyone involved. 

“Let’s go then!” he yells, finishing his drink while Shiv puts all the cups back in place.

And Yoongi stays next to you, not caring if people give him looks. “Come on,” he mutters. “Just stay with us.” 

“Okay.” 

No other words are spoken as you walk out the backyard. 

But when Jimin pops up with Taehyung and your friends, Yoongi pulls him aside while you ask how the poker games went. 

The usual comments spring up immediately. Yuri complains about Taehyung being too good, and Dom and Reia quickly tell her she needs to work on her face. 

Laughing the edge off, you see your brother checking his phone. 

And just like the shadowed expression Jimin now has on his face, the hand your sibling smoothes over his head doesn’t seem like a good sign.

The haunted house was amazing, and it was a wonder you got through it in your shoes. 

But you need a break after all that screaming. And you already spent a lot of time saying goodbye to your friends before they left. 

So instead of joining Taehyung and his group in conversation, you keep to your own thoughts, sipping on punch while watching balloons cross kitchen tiles. 

Ironically, you need anything to get through the loneliness. 

Even more people latched onto Yoongi earlier. Which you should’ve seen coming after his whole ensemble was revealed. 

But he had to keep them entertained because he isn’t taken. Not officially; not to them. There couldn’t be hints of him being cuffed, especially when your brother could see him at any moment. 

Did you feel jealous? Upset? 

To your pleasant surprise, not really. 

Because unlike New Years, there’s been more history between the both of you that can never be repeated anywhere else. Ties that have woven between your bones and connections that you have no plans to sever. 

You cherish them. And you’d like to think that he does, too. 

All the flirting just sucked to see up close, though. 

A sudden tap on your shoulder makes you jump. 

“Fuck, sorry. You okay?”

As you see your brother and not another stranger, relief floods your system. And you hate how jumpy you are. 

So you lie a bit. “Yeah, why?” 

Hmm. He looks… out of sorts. You’re halfway into questioning the bend in his brows when he quickly asks, 

“You good to go home with your friends?” 

Wait, huh? That’s new. “Oh. They left but Tae’s here. You okay?” 

“Something came up at work so I’m heading back.” 

“The fuck? On Halloween?” 

He shakes his head before running a hand over his chin. “Yeah, I dunno. But if you don’t wanna leave just have him bring you back.” 

Damn. He’s not even concerned about you staying? What the hell is going on? 

And thinking about things… do you wanna stay anyway?

Looking out into the house, you do a quick sweep before deciding that you’re gonna tough this night out. Taehyung’s still here, and you can hang with his circle. 

You’re staying. Wishing for the best, you let him go. “K. Hope it’s all good.” 

“Nah, it’s fine. I just have to clean up someon's mess.” Your sibling squeezes your shoulder in a final goodbye before stepping away. Pointing to the ground, he warns, “No one better try shit with you.” 

“Go,” you usher with finality. “Text me when you’re home.” 

“K.”  

He heads out, and you’re left with your cup that you forgot you even had. 

Staring into it, you somewhat wish you heard a familiar laugh in your ears. Throwing yourself back to that New Years night when Yoongi hung back in the kitchen just to talk. 

Maybe he’s still preoccupied. Even after you gave him back his coat, ignoring his look of confusion.

After another half hour of feeling alone, with no vampire man in sight, you admit you're a little defeated. 

Maybe you should have left, too. 

Your purse buzzes, and you slowly fish out your phone while not looking at anything in particular.

But when you focus on your screen, your heart squeezes in double time. 

Yoongi [12:43am]: Where are you?

Feeling a mix of emotions—relief, confusion, anything in between—you text back. 

You [12:43am]: kitchen. but i was about to leave..

Yoongi [12:44am]: Don’t

Yoongi [12:44am]: Gimme a sec 

This is it. 

This is why you stayed. 

Because one thing Yoongi has always proven to you is that he will make time. Whether it takes him a day, three months, or two hours. 

Yoongi [12:50am]: Come up, doll

And you will wait forever. 

However long it takes.

You [12:51am]: ok

It’s a short trip up the stairs from near the kitchen, and you wonder what’s gonna greet you when you get to the second level.

Are people up there? Is he just telling you to come so he could be near you? Or is this a clandestine meeting where he steals you from the night like the fiend he’s dressed as? 

All of these thoughts wander about your head like specters. 

But as soon as you reach the top, all you see is Yoongi, glancing up from his phone before stowing it in a coat pocket. 

So unfair.

In the obnoxiously red and orange lighting, he looks even more devastating, standing like he’s been haunting your dreams for years. 

And you hate how small your voice is when you greet him with a measly, “Hi..” 

Very much unlike yours, Yoongi’s energy is loud. Powerful. He takes his time, consuming you with his gaze and making you feel so, so shy in heels that are somehow still on. 

“Come here.” 

“You sure?” 

He hesitates. 

And with a heavy heart, you wonder if he has the same question. 

But he walks toward you instead, and you feel vulnerable. Nervous. 

What’s he doing? What are either of you doing?

There’s a lot of people here still, and it’s not like they don’t know you. And they clearly know Yoongi quite fucking well.

God. You hate this uncertain, murky feeling. Because it could be solved so simply, so quickly. 

But nothing in life is ever quite that easy for you, nor for him. So the paranoia lingers and lingers. 

However. 

When this man leads you away from the stairs, your fear spins into thrill, your nervousness taking on a new meaning. 

“Yoongi…?” 

With a shuffle of leather, you’re positioned right in a corner, breath catching because holy shit anyone could come up at any moment. 

Why is Yoongi not nearly as concerned as you feel? Is he not jittery with nerves? 

Judging by his lowered lids and unbothered line of lips, no, he is not. 

As he looks around, warmth from his coat slowly swallows you on both sides. His hair cascades forward; his breath can be heard in the space between.

And you really do feel like he steals you away—from the night, the party, the world.

“Now what,” you whisper in pure nervousness. “Gonna bite me? Drink me? Suck me… Dry…”

His lips ghost along your neck, and you grant him all the access you have when he murmurs, 

“Is that what you want?”

Your check for understanding is a sigh, “Want…hmm?”

“Me to suck you dry.”

You know what he means. And you’re already fighting for air as your exhale shakes. “Yes,” you admit. “Lemme do it, too.” 

His dark hum rumbles your core. “Uh uh,” he rejects, one arm separating you from the rest of the room. “Only good girls can do that.”

That’s unfair. Fuck, that is really unfair.

You pant before gripping his coat in your fingers. “I’ll be good.” 

“You’ll be what?” he asks, licking a small stripe along your throat and making you flinch. 

“Fuck.” Your breath is harsh now. Very, very harsh. “A good girl.”

“Good.” 

You feel the slightest nick of teeth as he lunges into your neck, and you have to clamp your lips shut to keep from mewling out loud. 

Holy fuck, you’re already so wet.

There’s no way Yoongi can suck you dry at this point. Certainly not with the limited amount of time you have.

And the motherfucker knows it, his laugh pulsating down your spine. “So sensitive.”

“Yoongi—”

Again, he attacks, sucking hard once before running his tongue along the sting. 

Thoroughly overwhelmed, you dissolve into mush. Your legs buckle under the pleasure, sparks of desire firing along your limbs as your ankles work double to keep you upright. “Baby...”

“You taste so fucking good.” 

More. You need more and you need it now. “I wanna—”

Without warning, his lips finally find yours, arms fully encasing you in leather as he slams both hands on the wall. 

“Yoo—”

And your heart leaps into the kiss while your fingers zip right to his face, tugging him in until your noses smush. 

For someone with a million concerns before, you’re devouring him without any shits given and it’s magnetic. Electric. Magic. Sparks zip down your skin, pebbling your nipples and sending your toes in curls. 

Hints of whisky and smoke pepper your tongue, and you know your breath proved similar if just a bit more reserved.

But you can tell something’s off.

He’s holding back.

Why? Why are his hands still firmly on the wall? Why is he keeping his distance even though you’re standing right here?

If you’ve been fiending to touch him the whole night, he had to be feeling the same way.

So what’s with the sudden hesitation?

Your body thrums with need, yearning for those large palms to roam and venture across every inch. Aching for him to erase that stupid hug from earlier in a way only he can. 

“Baby,” you whisper. “Please.” 

“Please what.” 

“I need you.” 

“I’m right here.” 

“No, I”—you grip one of his wrists—“Please touch me.” 

“In here?” He pauses, pinning you with concern. “You sure?” 

Swallowing, you take in the music and conversations downstairs, hearing laughs and other exclamations. 

Were they always that loud?

“I’m doing this for your own good, doll.” 

Heart stuttering hard, you question, “Why?” 

Yoongi only lets out a huff. “Cus…” Leaned in fully, his hot breath fans your face, all of his dark syllables drenching you in hellfire, 

“If I touch you, I’m not gonna stop.” 

“Fuck,” you rush out, breathing so hard your chest billows out. “I want that.”

“You don’t.”

Fuck yes, you do. You aren’t letting another chance pass by. You’re feasting on him whether it’s for two seconds or one thousand, and he’s gonna do the same to you. 

Because as much as he’s holding back, you can tell he wants nothing but to tear you apart. A monster in the red lights strung around the game room.

And you’ll let him.

Consequences be damned. 

“I do,” you finally admit with a whoosh. “I don’t give a shit right now, Yoongi, just do it—”

Any other words are snatched from your mouth as you’re pinned against the wall, your reward in the form of rough skin and thick leather sliding all along your sides. 

Immediately, the coil in your belly rumbles to life, tightening click by thrilling click as you tug him in even closer.

Between kisses, you grit out how stupidly attractive he looks, and his chuckles are so dark that you feel them shake your core.

“Thought I was boring.”

Another groan into his mouth. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“Say sorry then.”

It’s your turn to giggle, “And if I don’t?”

Fingers ghost along your throat before they squeeze in warning. “Try it.”

Attempting a whine, you press your shoulders back into the wall, fingers still clinging to his dark shirt. “I kinda… I kinda want to.” 

“I know you do.” He shoves one of your legs away with a strong thigh, pushing his weight forward and accusing, “Wanna be a brat so bad, huh.”

Desire is doing wonders for your confidence. You’re not gone, but you’re influenced enough to let your thoughts flow. 

All you needed was the last hit of this man’s magnetism. “Wanna be a lot of things for you..” 

Amusement rumbles out like thunder. “Like what.”

Giggling, you admit, “I didn’t dress like this for nothing.”

“I know.” He kisses you in a way that has you swooning. “I could get used to this.” 

“This wouldn’t get old?” 

“Fuck no.” His hands move straight to your ass. “Not if it’s you.”

Confused, you pout in a whine. “You said it was basic.”

“It is.” He goes right for your neck for another feast. “And it’s fuckin’ hot.” 

He then nips your skin in earnest, tugging his name out of your throat and causing you to claw into his hair.

“That guy just wanted to feel me,” you suddenly sigh, hating how you’re still thinking about it even now. 

“I know.” Yoongi stops before watching your eyes. With a finger on your chin, he checks, “You okay?”

“Just make me forget it.”

He keeps his gaze on you for a moment more, forehead pressing against yours before he vows, “You will. He won’t.” 

And your lips are fully captured before you can respond. 

You missed this. You missed this so fucking bad and you’re pretty sure you’re saying everything out loud but you don’t mind. Yoongi deserves to hear it and you are gonna live this out to the fullest.

If he doesn’t hear you, he certainly feels you. In the way you rake at his hair, tug at his chest, sling your arms around his beautiful neck.

But your frantic actions are stopped when he growls,

“Fuck, you shouldn’t’ve come up here.” 

“Wait, why—”

“Cus now I’m—Fuck it, come on.”

Before your mind catches up, your body is being rushed into the nearest door: a guest room that’s surprisingly not occupied. 

“Yoongi, what—” 

He holds a finger on his lips before peeking through the door, and he shuts it with a click when he seems convinced. 

And you’re even more alone with the demon of your dreams—now shrouded in bright white from the string lights in this space.

You have no choice but to submit to his hands, stomach flipping as he seizes your lips with newfound energy. When you respond in kind, he backs you up until your legs hit the guest bed, setting off another alarm in your fizzing brain.

“Baby, you sure?”

“I won’t do much.” Yoongi lowers you down, steadying himself on an elbow. “Do you trust me?” 

“Yes.” His gaze is steady on yours. “Nervous, though.” 

Because it’s true. Even if your brother isn’t in the house, there’s a high possibility one of his friends walks through that door. One of Yoongi’s friends, even. 

“We don’t have to, doll.” 

And if you’re honest… 

The thrill of it is enticing.

“We can.” 

“I got us,” he assures with a kiss, now grinning like mad. “Lemme live this out just once.” 

A bit shy, you bite your lip to combat your nerves. And the million butterflies raging in your ribcage. “And what would that be.” 

“Not telling.” 

Of course. “You suck.” 

Puffs of mirth leave his mouth before he consumes you, and you feel unbelievably scandalous and loving every second. 

Because you saw Yoongi leave the door unlocked. There’s no recovering if someone opens it without you both hearing them, because the closet is opposite from the bed. You will absolutely not get there in time. 

Be it the holiday itself, or the fact that Yoongi’s positively enjoying himself, you feel more enthralled by the danger than you’ve ever been. 

And the fluttering in your chest triples when he lifts your tee. “Baby—!”

“Chill, love,” he laughs, a glint in his eye as he kisses your bra. “Never done this before?” 

“No, but—fuck.” 

Your soft moan stems from him slipping your bra down, licking at your chest and groaning at your scent. 

“God, you’re so perfect.” 

Fervently disagreeing, you reply so lightly, “Not at all.” 

“You are.” Another kiss to your lips before he moves down to your throat, squeezing one of your breasts with purpose. His weight feels heavenly on your torso, which you label the most ironic given how sinful he looks. “Couldn’t fucking wait to get you alone.” 

Fucking hell, do you feel the same. Truthfully, you didn’t think you’d even get the chance. As you arch into his chest, your bare skin heats under his mountain of dark clothes. “Wanted to be with you all night…” 

“Same.” The next kiss proves deep, and he slides a hand under your head to claim as much of you as he can. His lips leave yours with a pop before he grips you with conviction. “Fuck, you should’ve been.” 

Oh. 

You know why he’s holding you so hard. 

And it touches the deepest, softest parts of your soul. 

Gently holding his taut wrist, you whisper, “It’s okay, baby.” 

His eyes stay closed, blocking you from hearing anything that he could be thinking. 

But it’s your turn to lift his chin with a finger, and you reassure him with everything you have, 

“Nothing happened. Don’t worry, okay?” 

Yoongi still doesn’t answer, which makes you sad. One dude shouldn’t ruin both of your moods hours after the fact. He can eat shit and Yoongi deserves to be the one enjoying a perfect night. 

So you vow to make that reality. 

“Besides,” you continue, waiting until he finally looks at you. When he does, you slyly smooth both hands over your breasts, pushing them together right in front of his face. “These are yours, right?”

Like a switch abruptly flipped, Yoongi’s whole demeanor changes on a dime. 

Hungry eyes rake over your chest before he plants a kiss on your fingers before anything else. “What else is mine.” 

Your cunt quakes at the question, making you drag one of his hands down to the side of your ass. “This,” you whisper, biting back glee as he grabs right at it. 

His mouth hovers over yours now, voice so low it sounds more like distant thunder, “What else, doll.” 

And whatever made you so bold washes away in an instant. Because you know what you wanna say but it’s the hardest one to let fly. 

Of course, Yoongi knows this. It’s the only reason he’s being so cheeky about it now. “That it?” he asks with a lilt. “You sure?” 

Gnawing your lip, you shake your head, garnering more and more courage to tell him one last answer. 

“Don’t be shy,” he orders through a wicked grin. “Tell me.” 

Just say it. All you have to do is whip it out of your mouth and you can get on with it—

A bunch of voices start getting louder and louder from outside the door, and Yoongi reacts before you can process what to do. 

Tee shoved back on and skirt rumpled to hell, you’re quickly rushed to the closet, thankful that Jimin’s house is fucking enormous and gives every bedroom double-doored enclosures for clothes. 

Conversation gets even closer. Someone is definitely coming in holy shit shit shit. 

Adrenaline courses through your veins as you settle on a sidewall, and the fact that there’s enough room for you to stand sideways is enough to distract your harrowing thoughts. 

But Yoongi shuts the doors with practiced ease, dousing the space in darkness with only small strips of light to illuminate. 

So fucking unfair. 

Just him peeking through the crack in the doors makes you suffer, chains dangling from his chest and the mischievous glint in his eyes giving you pain. 

Why does his side profile have to be so perfect? Why is this bad boy adjacent version of him enough to send you into orbit? 

Suddenly, two voices burst into the room. 

And you recognize both of them. 

“—like you said, right?” 

“I know, but…” 

It’s Tae. 

And Jimin. 

“Then hey,” you hear your friend say with hope. “It’s okay.” 

The coincidence of those words in that room does not get past you. 

“You really think so?” 

There’s a bit of silence before Taehyung responds, but you suddenly get distracted by someone much, much closer. 

Because Yoongi’s slowly roaming a finger along the hem of your skirt, hooking it in and slowly tugging you forward what the fuck!

When your wide eyes meet his, you can tell he’s thoroughly enjoying this. And you have to clamp your mouth shut when he casually starts feeling over your shirt.  

What the fuck is he doing! 

This man is going to be the end of you. 

“So yes. Let’s go back down, yeah?” 

“Okay… Just give me a moment.” 

Delirium. You’re approaching delirium as Yoongi now watches you suffer, and you buckle when he travels under your tee—up, and up, and impishly ducking his thumb under your bra. 

And you almost can’t deal with the feeling. 

Because your senses are upped to the highest setting, body on full alert and having to keep quiet when at his mercy. 

You feel legitimately wild, mad, drunk off Yoongi’s presence alone. There are literally people on the other side of thin wood and he’s driving you up every closet wall in the house. 

Out of your mind, you aim for his neck when you launch your own silent ambush. 

And it’s his turn to suffer when you grab at his chains, because you tug him enough to get access to his neck as soon as you hear your friend again. 

“Even this room looks nice and it's unused. Seriously, you did a good job.” 

“Most of it was your idea.” 

“Me? I only suggested it because I knew you could do it.” 

Yoongi’s breath puffs over your shoulder, and he buries his head in your tee while you lick and suck him with a vengeance. His hands grapple your hips, taking no time in circling back over your ass. 

“Thanks. Okay, I’m ready.” 

“Finally. It was getting boring in here.” 

A laugh tinkers out before Jimin hums in confusion. 

“Weird. Thought I told people to not touch this bed.” 

“You just sat on it.” 

“I didn’t sit on that side.” 

Taehyung responds right as you grope Yoongi’s crotch, and his body locks so hard you flinch at his grip.  

“It’s probably nothing. The bed’s still made.” 

“Yeah, you’re right.” 

Mercifully, the guest door opens again before shutting, and you’re left in the weighty silence and faint bass of music coming from downstairs. 

Adrenaline still at its peak. 

“You’re gonna pay for that.” 

“Says you,” you pant, mewling when his lips latch onto your neck for the umpteenth time. “What do we do now?” 

After another suck, Yoongi lifts his head. “With what?” 

“This,” you clarify, gesturing to the closet space. “We have to leave, right?” 

“Do you want to?” 

You pause. 

If you leave now, you can sneak out of the room and no one will ever know you spent seven minutes in heaven with Min Yoongi. 

But if you stay… 

“Not really,” you whisper in admittance. “You?”

“Fuck no.” 

Your giggles end up in his mouth when he claims you, and you grab at his chains in earnest, tugging him closer before raking impatient fingers through his ruffled locks. 

And you’re already fine with this situation. Making out with this man in a closet? Who would’ve thought you would have this opportunity in the history of ever? 

So when you feel wandering fingers between your legs, your reaction comes out a high mewl. “Wait—What are you—”

“Careful, doll,” Yoongi quells. “Gotta keep that mouth shut, yeah?” 

You nod before realizing he probably can’t see, so you whisper an affirmative before slamming your lips shut. 

Because one touch of his fingers on your covered slit has you already losing it. 

A manicured hand slaps over your mouth as you widen your legs, gripping his coat with the other as he surrounds you mentally and physically. All you can think about is the way he’s calmly shifting your panties, expertly sliding over your cunt and chuckling right in your ear. 

“You’ve been this wet this whole time?” 

Gasping, you hum out a yes, and Yoongi laughs the scariest you've ever heard him,

“Nah, we’re fucking in here.” 

Holy fuck, what? 

“Baby,” you plead in his ear, wanting him in every way possible but knowing you don’t have a condom. “We can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“We don’t have—”

“Yeah, we do.” When he senses your confusion, he peeks out the closet door before... leaving. 

What the fuck! What is he doing why is he going for a casual stroll with a boner right now? 

Oh, he’s back already. But you’re still holding your heart with a goddamn fist. 

When Yoongi holds one up, he laughs. “I actually didn’t know if he had some up here, by the way.” 

“Sure you didn’t.” 

He smirks before pocketing the package, grabbing your face and kissing all the lingering fright from your features. His tongue slides all along yours before he sucks, and his teeth drag over your plush when he lets go. “You down?” 

Drunk off his continuously great make-out sessions, you slur out, “Hmm?” 

“We don’t have to.” 

Your smile is automatic. Knowing Yoongi’s still asking even though he was dead set on it makes giving him the go-ahead even easier. 

But you both hear another smatter of activity in the game room outside. And it seems like people are starting to use the pool table. 

Fuck. 

Do you really go for it? 

You’re gonna have to be silent as the grave if you do, because this will be the most sordid position you can be found in. 

…Fuck it. Screw it. It’s Halloween and you’re dancing with the devil. 

“Yes we do,” you scoff. “But if you break my heels we’re gonna fight.” 

His quiet bout of laughs makes you melt, and his fingers feel positively intoxicating when they find your cunt again. 

Your shoulders hit the wall with a soft bump as you arch, back to sewing your mouth closed and smushing your head in his clothes. His name slips out on your breaths, and his growls make you quiver with more and more impatience, 

“So fucking wet.” 

Fuck. 

“Gonna take this dick so well.” 

Nope. You can’t wait anymore. You don’t care who the fuck is out there, you’re folding and folding fast. 

“Please, baby,” you pant. “I need you. Now.” 

Yoongi obliges immediately, spinning you around and pinning your front against the wall. 

Well, you think he’s on the same page. 

Until he clamps a hand over your mouth before fingering you from behind holy fuck you might come any moment now. 

Your hands slide into fists on the wall as you moan in his fingers, shoving your ass back to glean as much delicious friction as you can. 

“There you go,” Yoongi praises. “Just like that.” 

You’re gonna come. You’re already gonna come and he’s hitting every fucking spot to speed up the process. It’s almost unbelievable how quickly he can launch you off the edge, but you suspect this time has something to do with the thrill of your whole situation. 

You feel bad. 

And it feels fantastic. 

“Babe,” you whisper, turning your head. “I’m already close.” 

When you clasp a hand around his wrist, he finally finally finally grants you into heaven’s gates. You feel him let up, and you wait with tiny shakes as he rips the condom pack open with ease. The clink of his belt tickles your ears just right, and you quickly think about other dark things. 

After a moment and more clothes shuffling, you feel his hands slide along your hiked up skirt before gripping your ass, never failing to worship your body and making you feel fucking pretty. 

When he leans forward, his warm shirt and chilly chains on your bare skin alone push you even further. “Hands over that mouth, doll,” he rasps in your ear. “Can’t be loud for me this time.” 

“Mmhmm.”

“Good girl.” 

As soon as you do what you’re told, you regret not pressing down harder. 

Because Yoongi plunges into you so smoothly that your moan almost flows right out of your fingers. 

Holy shit you really were that wet. But he's still so big. So, so big, and filling you too well fuck are you being too loud because it feels so fucking—

“Thought you were just gonna dip without saying bye?”

Oh, fuck.

Yoongi did not wait until he was inside of you to say that.

“Think you’d just show up looking cute and talk some shit, huh.”

Damn it. He did. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’s a demon and you have nowhere to run now. 

Delightfully frightened, you shake your head in denial. Repeatedly and full of terror.

“Show me up then.”

He stops all his movements, and you’re left to your own devices. Stranded on his dick with only the wall and your heels to support you.

Oh, he’s a killer. 

And he’s all yours.

Thrusting back, you start slow, groaning into your hand at how large he is. It’s a wonder you can even move, and your jaw unhinges when you feel his dick hit a certain spot just right.

Again, and again, you fuck him as deep as you can take, slamming your ass into his pelvis and finding pride in the divots he’s sinking into your cheeks.

Yoongi’s still unhelpful, but you can tell he’s breaking. His grip is getting harder, his minuscule groans lower and more forced. Even the tiniest curse makes you preen, and you throw a look over your shoulder to hear him better.

Which is the worst best thing to do. 

“Fuck, doll.”

With quickness, he rams himself into you, a sweaty hand clasping right over yours just as you yelp.

“We aren’t finished with that,” he promises through gritted teeth, and he takes over before you can process what that means. 

And his pace is relentless, pumping into you so well that every thrust catapults you across space and time. 

You’re outright panting now, feeling him deep in your guts and the strong lines of his forearm pressed into your chest. 

“Breathe in for me.”

And you do, feeling his hand close around your throat while fingers lodge themselves inside your mouth. 

Fuck! 

Your eyes roll so far back you can probably see him if you had light, and you’re mercifully let go before you need to gasp for oxygen. 

“Again.”

When you obey, Yoongi chokes you again, and you’re finding it euphoric as he clasps your column even harder. Every time he does, you clench around his cock, and a warm feeling washes over you every time he lets go. 

“How’s that feel, baby girl,” he asks, humming in approval when you drag a reply out,

“So good.” 

“Good.” He kisses your sweaty cheek before easily admitting, “I like it, too.”

Stilling, you turn as far as you can to regard him, asking in the tiniest voice, “You do?”

He darts his eyes to your lips before nodding. “You can try it next time.”

You smile, not knowing why you feel shy in this position of all things. But maybe you’re just happy that he said that. Because he didn’t need to admit something so intimate in the moment. 

“We’ll do whatever you want,” you vow in a murmur, closing your eyes when he captures your lips.

After sliding a tender hand down your cheek, he whispers, “Turn around.”

You immediately do, untwisting your back and relieving the tension in your neck. When you slowly move to face Yoongi again, he steadies you the whole way. 

And as soon as you’re settled, he kisses you so hard you fall back against the wall again. 

Hands come up to shove your tee upward and unhook your bra, and he gropes at your chest before ducking to take a nipple in his hot mouth.

Surging with pulses, you bury your face to muffle your moans, squeezing your eyes shut from pure ecstasy.

How the fuck are you doing this? With him? If you travelled back in time to tell yourself that this was gonna happen at a party someday, you would’ve been told to piss off. 

“Love these tits,” Yoongi grits. “Fuck.”

“I didn’t wanna wear a bra.”

He immediately chuckles. Darkness and sin brushing your chest. “I would’ve left.” 

You hum in mirth, knowing exactly what he means by that. As much as you wanted to tease him, you know that decision would’ve immediately gotten him in trouble. 

And definitely other people, too.

But the more he keeps licking and sucking, the more you feel it coming. Release. The inferno. It’s on the horizon and you’re just awaiting the crash of relentless deluge.

“There you go,” he rumbles. “You gonna come?”

You pant out before nodding, every muscle thrumming like hell. 

And he orders low in your ear, yanking your orgasm right out of your very center,

“Then come for me, doll.”

Your body wracks with jolts, stabs of lightning hitting every limb and locking them at hard angles. A rush of pleasure surges through, filling the closet with a heady scent that makes Yoongi groan pride into your neck.

“Uh huh,” he praises. “Still wanna talk shit?”

And you do. Tears leak from your eyes as you nod, orgasm riding farther than ever, waves unending and your mental shore nowhere in sight. 

“Course you do.” Yoongi claims your mouth. “Fuckin’ love it.”

Still, you feel pulled, lost to the universe that’s him and him alone, and you want to reciprocate the same pleasure that he’s providing. 

“Baby, I’m still—”

“Fuck—”

You don’t know what comes over your brain, or your body, or whatever else runs on autopilot. But you use the rest of your strength to shove him back, pushing him until he hits the other wall of the closet.

“D—”

You rush out a question before lowering yourself, “Did you come?”

“No, but—”

“Take it off.”

Stunned, Yoongi rushed to unsheath the wrapper, rubbing himself before you take control. 

Nothing will stop you at this point. Anyone could come in and you’d still be pleasuring Yoongi until he breaks. 

Because you want this. He’s earned this. 

Your knees hit the ground right as you take him in your mouth, tasting the strange mix of salt and latex but knowing it won’t be for long. 

This is what you’ve been wanting to do since he gave you his goddamn coat, and your imagination has been so vastly outdone by reality that you feel like none of it’s truly happening. 

When you flick your eyes upward, you get another thing you’ve been yearning for. 

Yoongi is fighting for his life. 

You can barely see that his eyes are squeezed tight, and you catch a tiny glimpse of his mouth agape before he bites it shut. When you suck in hard, his whole body flinches, and for the first time that night, he’s the one with a hand over his mouth. 

And you feel so fucking elated that you welcome the hot strings of cum painting your mouth, groaning around him and giggling when his essence slips right down your throat. 

He’s promising dark and wonderful things above your head, and you feel him grip your chin as soon as you pop off of his dick.

“Open that mouth.”

You show him, hoping he can tell in the dim light that there’s no drop left on your tongue.

“Goddamn.”

You’re tugged up before your mouth is smothered by his, and you teeter on your heels for balance as he whips you back against a solid surface.

It looks like he wants to say something. 

But nothing comes out as he clenches a fist next to your head. 

As you both calm, only your breaths fill the closet, your scents of passion clinging onto coats and jackets, all of which you could’ve worn in place of the one he gave you. 

But Yoongi did something so bold tonight that it was only natural for you to want to take the same risk. 

As he kisses you slow, you respond in kind, rolling your lips with his and enjoying coming down from this high with him every time. 

Shouts and yells from the game outside pierce into the closet, but both of you exist in your own little world. With you tracing the lines of his shirt and him gently straightening your clothes. 

“Thank you,” you whisper.

“For what, doll,” he asks in return. 

“Making me yours.” When you slightly pull on his jacket, you hope he gets what you mean. “Even if no one else knows.” 

His tiny peck on your cheek is genuine and, if you aren’t mistaken, a little prideful. “They’re going to, doll,” he vows into your skin. “I told you, you're gonna get tired of me.” 

"Lies," you sigh in peace. “So I get Halloween pictures with you next time, too?” 

Yoongi freezes, standing straight before fishing out his phone. 

And you fuss up a quiet storm before he lets you fix yourself, smiling at his camera as he squishes his sweaty, satisfied as fuck face right next to yours. 

If anyone ever comes across those pictures on his phone, you will never ever tell them the context. They'll never know why your makeup looks like that, or why his hair is even more haphazard, or why you both look way too happy to be in a closet.

Even if they frightened you to death. 

Some time later—and after a stressful time sneaking out with a smug Yoongi in tow—you find yourself downstairs and heading out the door with Taehyung. 

After he asks where you were, you simply tell him the truth: you were with Yoongi. And end it at that. 

With one look at your neck, he hums in amusement.

And you immediately slap a hand over it in shock, embarrassed to hell when he laughs.

But you let Tae tease you all the way home, knowing that you also caught a small glimpse of his life with Jimin. Not that you’ll tell him that until months from now. 

When your phone buzzes, you immediately check what awaits you. 

And you dissolve into mush yet again.

Yoongi [2:45am]: Text me when you’re home 

You [2:45am]: but im not going to your place :((  

What is home, if not where you feel the most at peace? Where you feel like you can be yourself and not worry about sneaking around? Where you know someone will protect you and be that person you can go to without any questions asked? 

Yoongi [2:47am]: Next Halloween you will be 

It’s definitely with Yoongi. 

Right now, you know your home is with him. 

Smiling, you type another text, full of contentment and looking towards the day all of this can be lived the way you both want. 

You [2:47am]: turn into a cat 

Yoongi [2:47am]: 😒

Taehyung looks at you when you laugh, and his grin grows when he can tell you’re genuinely happy. 

And when Yoongi actually sends you a selfie matching the ear gesture he did earlier, you feel the endearing prick of hot tears in your eyes. 

Yoongi [2:49am]: 1 Attachment 

He has a distinct matching mark on his neck.

And you are one thousand percent sure he took the picture knowing it's visible.

Yoongi [2:50am]: Meow :)

Happy Halloween indeed. 

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end :)

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🍊ahhh what do we think !!🍊| join the taglist!

a/n: thank you all for reading! i know this is super super late to post but i wanted it to be decent for y'all before letting it free. if you did enjoy, please interact however you can! even a like is okay at this point, but all tags, reblogs, comments, messages, and submissions in the feedback box are super appreciated.

a/n 2: to any men reading this series, let me tell you.. that hug situation happened to me and some people i know and it suuuucks :(( ladies - and guys, anyone really - if you've had that happen to you i am sending you the biggest genuine hugs and a 3tan yoongi to make it better. and if it hasn't happened to you, then good.

++feedback box: ⇥ of course, any reblogs/comments/messages are appreciated! ⇥ for the ones that are too shy to reblog with a review, comment on this, or send a message, i went ahead and made another anonymous form where you can send in what you think! ⇥ no emails collected, no need to put in a username. it’s literally just a comment dropbox :D feedback can be as short/sweet or as long as you’d like! ⇥ here! ++ more links: ⇥ masterlist  ⇥ three tangerines masterlist

#BOO!! :)) happy halloween! #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts fic #bts fanfic #yoongi fic #yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #yoongi smut #yoongi x you #yoongi x reader #*ryenfictalk #ryenwrites #three tangerines #3tan #3tanoween #*latest #bts smut

[soobnny]

classmate au | nishimura riki

❝ did you guys see that? i was the one who taught her how to do that!❞

heeseung | jay | jake | sunghoon | sunoo | jungwon | NI-KI

nishimura riki….

the absolute menace that this boy is

The Class Clown

being seatmates with him is probably the worst decision you have ever made

not bc of him and his jokes !!!!!

no he’s very funny actually

he makes you laugh all the time

he just ALWAYS whispers the wrong answer to you during oral recitation

and you ALWAYS fall for it

“what is the second stage of cell division?”

“meiosis,” he’d whisper so confidently

“m…meiosis?” you ask more to him bc u know he’s wrong but the teacher hears you anyway 😭😭😭

he is just SOOOOO !!!! unbearable

also btw he calls u by ur last name

the type to be close friends with all the teachers

he’d just casually reply to them in class (ofc in a respectful enough manner)

always makes the class laugh

he’s always doing some shit honestly like just don’t try to understand him atp

he likes to switch with the person seated behind you sometimes so he can sit beside a close friend but ALSO so he can play with your hair

ni-ki will just do ANYTHING .. put your hair in poor braids, put it in a ponytail ltrly anything

he has started his own hair salon behind you

tells you not to fix your hair for the rest of the day

so yes you end up sporting his poorly styled ponytail where some strands are sticking out

also the type to draw on your arm

in the case that he doesn’t switch with the person behind you, he’ll just start drawing on your arm

ANYTHING absolutely anything

hearts … maybe even a dick im sorry he is a Man and he will start giggling to himself when he draws it on your forearm

tbh u just let him do it

it’s bc he looks so cute … like he’s so focused on your arm while you’re focused on your teacher

during those class seminars, he is STILL seated next to you

but you guys don’t listen to the speaker most of the time

he’ll have the 8ball app loaded on his phone and you guys will just silently play billiards on his phone

changes ur contact name to “sucks at 8ball”

when it’s his turn to make a move, you try and pay attention to the speaker

but then he nudges your arm to signal that it’s your turn and he hands you his phone so you can make a move

BTW idk how to explain this but the seats r like those in the movie theaters

imagine …. your arms on the same arm rest … side by side …. touching

he is actually so slick with it

unlike jake, you’ll often find him at the volleyball court instead of the basketball court

you enjoy sitting at the sides too

ur friends like playing so sometimes they’d play against riki or on the same team as him and you’d just watch as u wait for ur sibling to get u from school

or until you can commute back home with your friends

sometimes you’d join too

BUT only after telling them you’re bad at the sport over and over and over again and them telling you it’s ok over and over and over again too

you finally join in and play volleyball with them with the reassurance that they’re just playing for fun !!!!!!

honestly it’s so much fun but Menace Riki loves to target the ball in ur direction

(it’s so you can play too since most of the time … the ball doesn’t go in ur direction so ure just awkwardly standing in ur position 🧍‍♀️)

the next day, this mf drags u out of class HIMSELF to the direction of the volleyball court and teaches you how to set

“okay, hands above ur forehead, okay? 😒” and u’re just trying to take his directions

he’d be soooooo annoying when you set a ball properly for the first time too

would ltrly turn to everyone in the court with his loud mouth and start praising you

“hey, did you guys see that?? i taught her how to do that !!! i’m her mentor”

ofc it becomes something about Him instead but it’s just cuz he can’t risk everyone knowing about his big fat crush on you

(sucks to be him bc everyone already knows like … have you seen the way he looks at you?)

he’s secretly so proud and plays volleyball with you to the side instead of playing an actual match

it’s to help you improve

bc he’s your self-proclaimed mentor 🥹

and when his friends drag him to play, he’ll insist you play too on the same team as him

you know how like .. one touch .. two touch .. volleyball is until three right?

ni-ki loves to set the ball or toss it to you so you can actually play too

your hype boy 😍😍😍😍

another funny story with this boy was when you and your friend were on your way to go home

and it started raining

ni-ki’s bff and ur bff r dating ok !!!

so naturally, his best friend leaves his side to shade his gf (ur bff) with an umbrella

now u’re left behind with riki

u do NOT expect him to grab his umbrella, open it up, and tell you to start walking with u

shields you so now you’re following behind ur dating bffs

honestly it’s actually kind of a cute memory

sharing an umbrella .. so romantic 🥰

ofc ur friends tease u !!! those who witnessed it happen and when u and ur friend r safely sheltered from the rain,, riki’s bff starts pushing him and teasing him for finally making a move

the direction ni-ki needs to go to isn’t even where he had walked u to but he still did it so you wouldn’t get sick

ANYWAYS he’s the teasing to get ur attention when he has a crush type so

good luck

expect him to always be up in your business and calling your name out

just embarrassing you in all possible ways

ALL GOOD INTENTIONS i swear

he’s just bad at expressing his feelings

u guys r just an old married couple bickering in class sometimes

your classmates start making bets on when you two will finally start dating

when he finally asks you out, his cocky teasing behavior is just thrown out the window

he stutters and scratches the back of his head and looks anywhere but to you

indirectly asks you out

“wanna eat um street foods after class?”

“who’s coming with,” you’d ask

“JUST ME… just me. just us…”

ltrly something as simple as that has him blushing all over 😭

he has no problem embarrassing u and drawing dicks on ur arms and calling ur name in the hallway and throwing an arm around ur shoulder

but the moment he asks u to eat out with him ?? even just for street food ?? bye he’s so shy and nervous

it’s SOOOO unlike him

“oh, sure!”

his eyes would light up please stop

then his cocky behavior would come back a little .. just enough to be tsundere as he is

“okay… don’t think i wanna hangout with you alone or anything. it’s just a treat for properly setting last time we played vb”

likeeee no one believes you ni-ki

the last time u played vb was like two weeks ago so why r u suddenly treating NOW

it’s actually so cute when u start dating

he has such a Soft Spot for u

LOVES annoying u but is secretly so doting like please

i hate happy couples !!!!!!!!!

i hope u guys r HAPPY <3

note. credits to user @.luvknow for the layout of this post! let me know what you think! please discuss these with me i’m crazy

#k-labels #enhypen x reader #ni-ki x reader #enhypen ni-ki #niki x reader #enhypen nishimura riki #enhypen riki x reader #nishimura riki x reader #riki x reader #ni-ki imagines #ni-ki headcanons #ni-ki scenarios #enhypen scenarios #enhypen imagines #enhypen blurbs #enhypen headcanons #enhypen drabbles #enhypen reactions #enhypen fluff #classmate au #ni-ki fluff #riki fluff #niki fluff #reader insert #enhypen fanfic

[kakujis]

𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓… ☽

geto vers | baji vers

synopsis: when your husband and best friend are targeted by a hitman, the aftermath leaves you in shock. but suguru has always instilled one line into you: forever has no meaning unless you're in it.

warnings: gn!reader, vampire!suguru, vampire!choso, vampire!satoru, hitman!toji, character death ( + resurrection), depictions of blood and violence, almost blind devotion, a bit angsty but also fluffy.. but also not really? idk what to tag this as LOL, canon divergent (gojo n geto are attacked much later in life), you have no clue they’re sorcerers 👍, swearing, sfw, if choso is ooc im so sorry idk barely anything about/cldnt get a read on his character from one episode djknj

ft + wc: vampire!suguru x reader, 3.2k

tags: @enchantedforest-network, @em1e (u guys should totally read em's necromancy fic btw)

a/n: hi! idk wtf this is, this is just how i deal with chara death i think? this idea came to me when i realized i was writing two fics about dealing with grief (baji fans are u here ?) and wrote nearly 2k for both in one sitting haha. anyways, i feel like atp i'm edda from ffxiv coded except suguru is 1000x better than avere. if you'd like to listen to her theme, it's here. thank u to wallaby for proofreading!

there is something about the morning light, filtered through the white blinds that you’ve forgotten so many times to replace, that feels just like a hug. it’s this light that kisses your eyelids and pulls you out of bed faster than your mother on a school morning. 

you’ll yawn, then stretch, pulling your arms up and over your head arching your back as you do. then you’ll get up, set up a pot of coffee before heading off to brush your teeth and wash your face. and you’ll pretend that you don’t see the eyes, red and shimmering, from the shadows in your closet.  

“go to bed suguru,” you sigh, before lightly pressing onto your puncture marks, hissing when they’re still tender. “it’s morning.” 

“i could fix that… if you’d let me.” he responds, the hinges of your door creaking ever so slightly before you gasp and rush to close them before the light bleeds in. 

“don’t!” you snap, hand trembling, “don’t… you dare.” 

you crouch down, before slotting your pinky into the smallest slit you can with the door still providing adequate coverage. before long, his cold finger entangles with yours and you smile. 

“by the way babe, when are we moving?” he jokes and when your eyes finally adjust to the dark, you can see him stretch his limbs, hands entangling with your hanging clothing. “it’s pretty cramped in here not gonna lie.” 

“well… i put in that application a few weeks ago and they did get back to me… so soon. we just need to go through the final steps.” you reply, fighting the urge to crawl into that small space with him and sleep the day off. 

when it comes to suguru, you’d do anything and everything, from the hairs on your head to the tips of your toes, you pledged yourself to him fully. 

“gonna go to work?” he asks and you nod, albeit with a pout. he snickers when he sees your expression, “aw, don’t cry. i’ll be right here.” 

you bite your lip, trying your best not to draw blood because you know. you know that suguru will always be right there, whenever you need him. 

you made sure of it. 

-

his name was choso. you remember the night you met him after a round of drinks at the bar. he was nice, if not a bit quiet, and loved to talk about his siblings. suguru and satoru talked aimlessly with shoko while you made new friends. it was a fun little past time. 

you don’t remember how you left the bar or how he even convinced you to follow him out. your mind muggy as you followed him, like a moth to a flame, down a back alley before you finally snapped to your senses and shoved him off before he could make a move. it wasn’t until you saw the razor sharp pearly whites of his teeth that you stopped. 

you asked him what he was, but he simply shrugged, asking, “have you ever dreamt about being saved from someone or something?” 

you nodded, of course you did. everyone has. 

“then that’s me. something you can dream about.”

it was a cryptic message, but a message you got nonetheless. choso was not of the day, flourishing under the midnight sky. but for some reason, he wasn’t necessarily scary. in the small amount of time you had spent, he seemed to listen to you and your woes. gotten to know a little bit of your family history, and perhaps decided you would do better with his. 

you remember hearing suguru’s panic laced voice calling out for you and you spun around to call back out. turning back, choso was gone. with a hand placed on your shoulder you were pulled into a tight embrace. 

“where were you?” suguru asks, nearly crushing you in the heat of his body, “almost lost my mind trying to find you.” he glances behind you, eyes scanning the alleyway in search of something or someone. 

“honestly… i don’t even know how i got out here,” you mumbled into his shoulder, hands trailing the familiar sensation of his clothing. “can we go home?” 

“yeah, i’ll just let gojo-“ 

“no!” you exclaimed, the uneasiness in your stomach now palpable, as you balled your fists into the fabric of his shirt, “let’s go now, please.” 

he blinks, before nodding, “okay, yeah, okay. let’s go home.” he presses a kiss to your forehead, almost like a seal of protection, before he’s throwing his arm around you and walking you home. 

you don’t ever recall meeting toji fushiguro. it was just another night out underneath flickering street lights, outside the same bar where you met choso, the street familiar yet empty. your husband smoked into the evening air, the scent wafting over and tickling your nose. 

“no offense, satoru, but i didn’t listen to a single thing you just said.” he stated, lips curled up into a smirk with the cigarette dangling between his fingers. 

“good,” satoru snorts, before glancing at you, “i wasn’t asking for their opinion anyway.” 

you feign ignorance, perking up and asking, “hm? what were we talking about?” 

“man the two of you are so fucking annoying.” he whines, head hung back as you both laugh. 

“care for a third opinion?” a voice asks and you gasp, jumping back. 

the man was tall, handsome, with dark hair and a scar on his lip, wearing a simple outfit of a tee and sweatpants. he seemed otherworldly as well, just like choso. maybe, it was the aura he exuded, more like the lack of, but it set your hairs up on end. 

suguru was quick to pull you behind him as your fingers instantly grabbed onto his shirt. 

“don’t really care for a stranger’s opinion,” satoru drawls, glancing over the tips of his sunglasses. but you can read his body easily, a culmination of friendship over the years. it was screaming: danger. 

“c’mon, don’t be like that. why don’t we introduce ourselves then? i’m toji.” he said, sticking his hand out for a handshake. but neither satoru nor suguru moved to grab it, instead they tensed, waiting. 

“suguru.” satoru whispered, a command with only one word. he understood exactly what it meant. you don’t remember suguru being able to run so fast, the force from his pull almost knocking the air out of you. nor do you remember satoru being able to fight so efficiently. 

you do remember suguru hiding you away and making you wait, even when you tried to hold onto him, he assured you it’d be fine and made you wait. but seconds ticked into minutes, long, monotonous minutes that made the pit of uneasiness in your stomach bloom into a festering bouquet of chrysanthemums. 

“suguru?” you called, stepping out into the dreary moonlight. no response. 

“satoru?” you tried again, quietly walking back towards the area they were in originally. it’s strange how quickly the night changes, how suddenly the flickering street lights aren’t an annoyance but one of your only sources of comfort, as if the dark can swallow you. 

“suguru,” you call out again, voice teetering on a breakdown and eyes scanning the desolate street.  “please res-“ 

you stop suddenly, the sickening squelch of something warm pooling beneath your feet halts you. you feel sick as you start to take in shallow breaths, eyes following the stream of ichor until it reaches its source.

suguru. 

you remember dragging his lifeless body down that familiar back alley. knowing that anyone would be able to see that trail of blood and find you. the darkness of that alley covered you, looming over you like a guardian, while the scent of trash almost, almost, covered the sharp tinge of iron that permeated the air.  

you propped suguru up against the wall as best you could, your body still thrumming with adrenaline. “just gimme a sec, okay?” you mumbled through tears, knowing that he couldn’t hear you. “i’ll figure it out, just like you always do.” 

you’re not sure why you were compelled to scream out that name, but maybe it was because in your dreams, he appeared when you least expected him too. 

“choso!” you screamed, waiting for a brief moment before you filled your lungs with air once more and tried again. “choso!” 

nothing. 

choso!

still nothing. 

and when nothingness almost consumed you, taking you into it’s ghostly clutches, you felt it: the sudden heaviness in the air. 

you feel like you screamed for hours, the name tumbling off your tongue and into the moonlit air like a siren song. just a little less pretty. in reality, it was probably only a few minutes before the brunette arrived, dark rimmed eyes and all. your new guardian “angel”. 

“he looks pretty bad if you ask me.” he started, already crouching down to your level, before reaching up to brush the red coated strands away from suguru’s face. “looks pretty dead.” 

“fix it.” you whispered, continuing even after choso shot you a look. “fucking fix him.” 

“what makes you think i can do that?” 

and in that moment, you feel compelled to tell him about the dreams that you’ve been having lately. the ones where he’s in them, beckoning you to stay under his protection. call for me and i’ll be there. 

but you keep it simple, too pressed for time. “you’re in my dreams, right?” you answer. 

he’s quiet, face softening as he mulls over your words. “good to know.” his eyes wander over to the crimson trail, that bleeds from the streetlamps to your waiting spot. “he’ll probably find you.” 

“toji?” you ask and he nods, “i don’t even know why he’s after us.” 

“he’s not after you, he’s after him.” he says, cupping suguru’s face, dribbles of blood falling from his mouth, and you twitch, almost reaching out to snatch his hand away, “he’s never liked sorcerers.” 

“sorcery…?” you mumble, glancing once more at your lifeless husband. 

but you’ve never heard that word, believing that magic cannot exist, that what you saw could not be explained so easily. there is no magic, only reality, and what is this but such painful, excruciating reality that sucks the air from your lungs and the color from your eyes.

choso dodges the question, “well then. let’s get out of here.” before he places a palm on the back of your neck, sending you back off to dream. 

there’s a voice that pulls him out of the light. low and drumming, it snaps him back into the present and out of his stupor. he sits up, scrambling to make sense of just where he is and who is talking to him. the bed he’s in is similar to a hospital bed, although the white sheets are now stained red. 

“… stay out of the sunlight, feed only when you’re hungry, animal blood counts, it just doesn’t taste that good,” choso continues listing things off, not taking into the account the shock etched so firmly into suguru’s face. “you can feed on them and if they ever wanna turn, let me know, i’ll teach you how to do it.” 

suguru whips his head around, spotting you sitting in a chair with blood covered and bruised knees, the sweat and tears now dried on your face. you glance up at him, giving a little wave and a tired smile. he notes the dried blood that seems to be caked even under your fingers. 

“what the fuck did you do to them?” 

“you mean, what did i do to you?” the brunette retorts. “you wanted to stay together, right? now you can.” he answers, crossing his arms and leaning back against his desk. but suguru’s not sure if he’s asking him or you, the one who smells so much sharper and sweeter than he remembers. you also smell of blood. so much blood that he can hear it coursing through you with each thump of your heartbeat. 

and like a moth to a flame, you stand on wobbly knees, the pads of your feet hitting the floor in sluggish steps as you pad over and throw yourself onto your lover. 

“don’t be mad at me,” you whisper, your eyelids fluttering as you try to fight back your tears. “i thought i could figure things out like you always do… because i always rely on you, right? i was too scared to be alone.” 

he’s so cold now and you’re so unbearably warm, the perfect juxtaposition of your souls. although he doesn’t need to, he takes a deep breath, before pulling you into his embrace. 

“you’re cold, sugu.” you mumble, yet you press harder, deeper into his embrace. 

“is that a turn off?” he jokes because he can’t be mad at you, not now and not ever. and any fragments of anger always dissipate like a puff of smoke. you giggle, before finally giving in and crying, digging your nails into his stiff skin. you cry until you can’t anymore, going limp and falling asleep in his arms. 

suguru’s gaze shifts upwards, as he holds you protectively, one arm wrapped firmly around your lower back, the other on the back of your head, fingers laced in your hair. 

“so, no introductions?” he asks, trying to be friendly, although the intonation in his voice betrays him. it’s first time meeting such a strange man, who can blame him? 

certainly not choso, who responds in turn, “my bad. you can call me choso. i fixed you up on their behalf.” 

“and satoru?” he asks, scanning the room to see if he can find the familiar white tufts of hair. 

“is fine,” choso replies, before jutting a finger out towards you, “they made sure to cover all the bases.” 

suguru shifts you in his hold, pressing a kiss to your forehead, that familiar seal of protection once again placed within your being. but also, as thanks for trying to keep everyone safe.

“then, where is he?” he asks while the other sighs and points over to another bed in the corner. dark eyes follow and the familiar tufts of silver hair peek immediately confirm it’s satoru. 

“he’s gonna wake up soon too. i’ll fill him in on the details.” before suguru can reply he’s cut off, “you should go soon, before the sun rises.” 

“am i actually a vampire?” 

“vampire, dracula, nosferatu, the undead. you can choose whatever you want.” 

“… i see.” he pauses, glancing back at satoru’s sleeping form before deciding he’ll be fine on his own. “we’ll be going then. …thanks.” 

he places his feet on the floor, still wearing his shoes from earlier and starts to walk off, cradling you in his arms. 

“when you feed, geto, don’t overdo it. or they will die.” 

he stops mid-step, gripping you tighter in his embrace, his brow furrowed, before finally walking off. 

you really should’ve taken a photo for satoru of the realtor’s perplexed expression when only you showed up to a three bedroom home, insistent on your need for space. 

when you do get that house, situated so nicely in the countryside, away from the buzz of the city, you think about what life would be like if you changed. if you no longer saw the sunlight. but you shake your head, pressing your fingers up to your neck once more, rubbing over the now scabbing indentations. 

you know suguru can’t feast on you forever as your body ages and his does not. but the thought of him feeding on someone else makes your stomach turn. 

“woow,” satoru hums, breaking you out of your trance as he takes in the new home, “not bad! not bad at all.” 

you smile, “thanks, satoru. i wanted to make sure you had your own space too.” 

“whats the third room for?” he asks, peeking his head in as he saunters around the new home. 

“office space.” you reply, “remember i work from home?” 

he nods, replying, “ooh, makes sense,” before he’s suddenly in front of you. his once crystalline blue eyes, now a deep crimson. “can i get a quick snack? i’m hungry.” 

“always so insatiable, satoru.” you tsk, rolling your eyes, but hold up your wrist anyway.

“not my fault you just so happen to be the best tasting human around.” he says, smiling against the thin skin of your wrist. 

luckily for you, he’s fast, the pain is almost nonexistent beyond the prick of his fangs but you still shut your eyes, waiting for it to be over. and when it’s over, gojo thanks you for the meal with a large bow before leaving to settle in his room. 

it’s so different from suguru who plans out the days that he’ll feed, keeping you in his clutches for what seems like hours as he sips away at your blood, making sure to maximize the experience.

the blood loss always makes you so dizzy, dizzy and pliant. he likes to watch over you afterwards, splayed against the sheets, fingertips running over your veins as if he’s painting over them in hues of ice. 

in your half-conscious state you never notice the furrow of his brow as he contemplates turning you every single time. you won’t last forever, too fragile, too soft, too alive. and suguru believes that forever only exists if you are in it as well. he asks you one night, while the house is almost too still, if you’d stay with him forever. 

“… of course…” you murmur, head dazed and body heavy, “always, sugu.” 

“even if you lose yourself?” 

“i can’t… lose myself if i’m with you.” you smile contently, reaching out to him with one shaky hand. 

“then how would you feel…” he asks, fingertips snaking up the veins of your neck, “if i turned you?” you shiver under his touch, eyelids fluttering not only at the sensation but also the low timbre of his voice. 

“turn me?” you mumble, pressing your hand against his, encouraging him to continue carressing your skin, “like… choso did with you?” 

he grins, albeit a small one and nods. hand now exploring the curves of your face, “just like that.” and while his hand is ice cold, it sears your skin with his touch, a testament to how deeply you’ve fallen. 

you pout, finally relaying your fears, “won’t you feed on others though?” 

“you want me to starve?” he jokes, still running his touch over you. 

“let’s go vegan.” you hum, your consciousness starting to drift until the thrum of his fingers. 

with your eyes closed you don’t catch the expression on his face, but you catch his laugh, drifting down into your ear. “i don’t know if that’s how it works, honey.” 

“animals...” you mumble, breaths becoming deeper with each passing second. “like humans… but diet… is how choso… explained it right?” 

he smiles, letting you fall deep into sleep. he keeps his hand intertwined with yours, knowing that even in dreams you hold onto him as if you were awake. he thinks you look so beautiful in the moonlight, better even than the moon or the stars themselves. 

and he is so sure, that forever cannot exist, if you’re not in it. 

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x you #geto x reader #geto x you #suguru geto x reader #suguru x reader #pibby writing

[mickyaltierisgf]

I saw you said that you might write for Roman and Mickey so could you write some shippy Romickey head canons please? I'm obsessed and theres nothing😭😭

i'm dissociating from this reality and living primarily in the romickey timeline now

ROMICKEY headcanons

They have completely messed up sleep schedules. Mickey is more of a night owl. He prefers to do literally everything at night. Filming, editing, killing, etc. He usually sleeps in past noon if he can get away with it.

Roman isn’t exactly an early bird himself, but he leans more towards this. He’s used to super late/early shooting schedules.

Mickey will purposely disable Roman’s alarm when he’s not looking so it won’t disturb him in the morning. Roman has multiple alarms and he knows Mickey knows this, so he has decoys of the decoys.

Mickey loves showing up on set to bother "help" Roman. If he has to be up early, he might as well stop in. Roman gets him thrown off set most times, but Mickey just sneaks back in and hides in his trailer.

Mickey also really likes going to the movie theater, but Roman doesn’t care too much, so if he wants Roman to come with him, he usually has to let him pick what they’ll watch.

In return, Roman will let Mickey pick what to watch at home, but if he doesn’t like it, he’ll talk over it and nitpick everything. Mickey doesn’t care too much if it’s just a generic movie, but he’ll get very pissy if it’s one he actually likes. So the next night, he’ll deliberately pick something stupid he’s sure will actively piss Roman off.

They both like popcorn, but Mikcey enjoys throwing it around more than eating it half the time. Roman will invariably have to find a way to distract him from doing it, especially if they’re at the cinema. They’re both very aware of this, so Mickey acts out on purpose to give Roman an excuse to distract him.

Roman's a casual drinker, Mickey not so much. So occasionally Roman will fake getting drunk to watch Mickey get smashed for real. Makes him easier to exploit/influence/control. Jokes on him though, cause Mickey’s into it.

They secretly (not so secretly on Mickey’s part) film each other often and threaten to use it as blackmail. A few clips have made it onto the web, but never anything with their faces showing.

Mickey has definitely used Roman’s ai voice changer to make prank calls. Used it so much that Roman had to fix it multiple times and ended up just hiding it until Mickey lost interest. This is a ploy; Mickey never loses interest in chaos.

If he’s losing an argument, Roman will just pretend not to understand what Mickey’s saying. "I don’t even know what that means!" It drives Mickey crazy.

Mickey doesn’t lose arguments. He’s never wrong, and even if he is, he’s going to twist it around until he's right. Roman's used to it, so he just tunes him out atp.

Mickey has absolutely used the "if you had a mom" line on Roman when he was particularly pissed about something.

Roman flies off the handle. Despite appearances, he’s the first one to escalate things. Knives are thrown. Honestly, everything gets thrown; they’re both pretty good at improvising.

Mickey is unpredictable and reckless. Depending on his mood and/or the severity of the fight, he’ll either get turned on and start treating it like foreplay or go batshit and treat it like it's a wwe no disqualifications match. And he will not hesitate to fuck anyone up, including himself.

Then it’s up to Roman to control himself and rein Mickey back in before he does anything too crazy.

But not all their fights are quite that intense. Sometimes Roman just casually makes bomb threats, which Mickey laughs off until he finds out Roman actually has blown someone up before and probably could figure out how to build his own explosives.

Mickey fucking loves that, though. He wants to blow shit up too! Of course, Roman won’t show him how to make them. Mickey has to concede that this is probably for the best.

That doesn’t stop him from making a phone call or two to the police about fake bomb threats to the studio Roman works at. Using Roman’s voice.

In retaliation, Mickey’s computer suddenly gets a lot of pesky viruses, and he can no longer login to most of his online accounts.

They call a temporary truce, but Mickey’s an opportunist, always looking for the right time to strike again, and you can bet Roman’s already anticipated this.

#scream #ghostface #mickey altieri #roman bridger #romickey #headcanons #slashers #ghostface headcanons #scream headcanons #slasher headcanons

[enluv]

cocooooo !!! :)) i was introduced to riize when they first made their ig and it appeared on my feed,, my friend told me about them and i decided to give it a try and stan them and I DO NOT REGRET IT loll the bias life in riize is def hard 😭🫂 when i first saw the members,, SEUNGHAN had caught my eye, i remember seeing him after watching him perform and was like “who’s this fine looking man that can sing,, dance, and is just an all rounder in general” i stayed like that for a good month until i saw EUNSEOK that man istg I LOVE HIMMM our unbothered king (black hair looks so good on him like hello? 😵‍💫) and then again it stayed like that for a month until I SAW WONBIN AHHHH he makes me wanna scream ,, he’s so talented and is such a good center for riize , he’s literally the full package he serves looks, talent, personality and cuteness what can he not do and ofc everything was going fine until i was on TikTok and i saw this one edit of sungchan and he was in the fit he wore for their talk saxy comeback live,, HIM THERE >>> i be getting nostalgic sometimes seeing him with nct as someone who was an nctzen 😭 BUT LIKE SUNGCHAN i literally love listening to him rap sm IMA NEED SM TO pull up and give ma boy more next comeback so right now that’s how my bias situation is lmaoo (its sungchan rn but idk what the future will hold 😝) and that’s not to say I don’t love the three other members that were mentioned and the other three that weren’t mentioned,, I LITERALLY LOVE THEM ALL just cant pick a bias 😭😔

(IM SO SORRY THIS WAS LONG,, I JUST BE HAVING A LITTLE FUN SOMETIMES WITH RIIZE 😭😭🧡)

MY BAD DASH I DID NOT KNOW I WROTE SO MUCH LEMME ADD A READ MORE 😭😭😭

they definitely hit the instagram algorithm jackpot because tell me why I had friends who weren’t into kpop asking me who wonbin and seunghan were 😭 but so real! I don’t regret it either hehe I just adore them seriously!! but don’t worry picking a bias is so hard like I don’t see how you can atp 😭 they’re all amazing and deserve the world (sm needs to burn and I’ll do if I have to!) SEUNGHAN IS SO GORGEOUS HE FR FR CAUGHT MY EYE TOO LIKE SIR YOU ARE ACTUALLY VERY GORGEOUS AND BEAUTIFUL AND CAN SING AND DANCE???!!! completely get it and im TOTALLY normal about him……🧍🏻‍♂️I AM SO GLAD YOU SAID THAT BECAUSE EUNSEOK WITH BLACK HAIR IS MY FAVORITE EUNSEOK AND HE NEEDS TO KEEP IT BLACK ALWAYS BECAUSE OMFG I need to bite him. I can’t explain it but I seriously need to. The way I felt every emotion you went through too 😭😭 wonbin has me in a chokehold at the moment because he’s just so my boy yk like and he is a star boy and I am such a star enthusiast and I actually did not know he had a thing for stars for a while so when he caught my eye I was super surprised and then I learned about his star interest and (this may sound insane) but I felt like the moon and stars were fr leading me to him like 😭😭 ik that sounds crazy but I seriously did feel like he was meant to be my bias or like just an idol I enjoy yk? Sungchan and I need to fight because one why are you so tall and two why are you so tall and talented and a literal 10/10 like leave something or anything for the rest of us PLEASE! I COMPLETELY GET THE NOSTALGIA PART WITH SUNGTARO IT KILLS ME ESPECIALLY IDK IF YOU SAW BUT IN THEIR LITTLE BEHIND VLOGS WHEN HE IS LIKE “I used to come here alone and always wished to come with a group, and now I can do that so I’m happy” I actually cried so bad because him and shotaro deserve it like I am so freaking happy to see them here in a fixed group with people who love them and deserve it just as much 🥹 atm ig as an update I am just going to consider myself OT7 because I can’t pick a bias to save my life 😭 wonbin and anton have a chokehold on me but I’d fold for eunseok and sungtaro will always be my babies no matter what and sohee + seunghan get me everytime so I just can’t pick atm 😞 but maybe in the future one will slip through the cracks and be my bias 😭 but seriously ITS HARD TO PICK ONE 😭 I need to burn sm down though especially with the way they’ve been treating seunghan lately like that recent riize and realize episode? oh that pissed me off BAD! sm needs to burn ! ALSO DONT APOLOGIZE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT RIIZE ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I DONT KNOW MANY PEOPLE WHO STAN THEM HERE ON TUMBLES SO I LOVE HAVING SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THEM 🥺🤍

#literally thank you for indulging in them with me 😭 #I love talking about them so much they’re just so my babies 😞 #and I know know many briize on here hehe so it’s nice!! #I apologize for how late I replied to this!! #but please keep coming and talking to me about them!! I love it 😁🙏 #💬.direct message?! #mooties !

[pi-cat000]

BNHA: Kakashi dimension hops crossover (6)

Summary: Kakashi gets dumbed into the My Hero Academia universe through random plot devise.

Characters:  Kakashi Hatake

Fandoms: My Hero Academia and Naruto

WARNINGS: Mentions of violence/injury

START  / PREV / NEXT 

As predicted, the day following the seal’s application is miserable. His chest is tight with almost anxiety, pins and needles run up and down his arms making his skin itch, and he is increasingly lethargic. All symptoms of a chakra imbalance and to be expected when one’s normal chakra replacement rate was thrown out. The sensations would pass once his body adjusted as they had with his sharingan.

He is eating three square meals a day, doing the bare minimum when it came to exercise routines and avoiding excess chakra use. It had been literal years since he had had this much bed rest. If he were ever going to slap a chakra collecting seal on himself, this was a perfect time. Okay, so maybe he should have steadily increased the chakra drain over the course of a few weeks for a smoother adjustment period. Hindsight and all that.

What mattered was that he would be fine, and he just had to wait it out. Bright side? No one had commented on the seal yet. Oh, he has definitely noticed serval people throwing the odd confused frown at his shoulder, but that was as far as anyone had gone in acknowledging it. His oh so clever strategy of acting like nothing was wrong worked so much better when he wasn’t surrounded by other shinobi and medic-nin.

“Your blood pressure is still too high. Are you sure you haven’t been experiencing any additional fatigue or other symptoms? Is something about the hospital causing additional stress? If there is something wrong, we should work on strategies to fix the problem.”

Well… it worked on everyone who wasn’t Wada. The man was irritatingly persistent in his doctoring. Apparently, the pressure of adjusting to an increased chakra drain wasn’t doing his body any favours.

“Maybe it’s a part of my quirk. High regeneration. High blood pressure.” Kakashi shrugs loosely not bothering to look up from HEROES and HEROINES May Issue. Unlike his previous reading material, people gave him odd looks when they saw him reading these magazines which immediately upped their entertainment value 100-fold.

Wada undoes the compression sleeve he had been using to measure Kakashi’s blood pressure, lecturing as he goes, “From what I can tell your cells produce more energy-rich molecules, ATP, NADH, then is typical, increasing cellular functions. Where your cells are getting the energy to produce these molecules, I have no idea seeing as you eat about the same amount as any baseline human. What I can safely say is that it should not influence your blood pressure. If anything, your blood pressure should be a bit lower than average. Now don’t dodge the question.”

He pauses, waiting for Kakashi to cave and suddenly confess. Kakashi, an old hat at dodging medical questions, continues reading unperturbed.

“I’ve been at this for over 30 years. An attack like the one you suffered is understandably traumatic, not to mention the stress of severe amnesia. I’m sure, whatever is bothering you, I’ve heard it before.”

Kakashi very much doubts that. “I feel fine.”

Wada huffs, unconvinced, “Young men. You all think that admitting you have a problem is a sign of weakness. High blood pressure can damage your heart and lead to problems  later in life so finding the cause is important.” Good thing a shinobi life spans tended to max out around 30. The odds of him making it to an age where he’d have to worry about the long-term effects of anything were pretty low. He doesn’t voice this opinion, continuing to read.

Wada continues talking with greater gusto, “No matter, I’ll prescribe you something for stress hopefully that’ll help with your blood pressure. However, this is no replacement for healthy habits both physical and mental. You should consider professional therapy.”

Kakashi snorts. Yeah, that sounds about right.

“Oh, you think that’s funny do you,” Wada makes to grab HEROES and HEROIENS and he lets the doctor pull the magazine free from his hand. It gives him a good view of the man’s irate expression.

“No, of course not.” Kakashi attempts to placate and gets a light smack over the head with said magazine for his troubles.

“There is no shame in pursuing a healthy mind!”

“Weren’t we going to test my quirk today?” He complains to derail the current line of questioning.

“I have half a mind to put it off and have you rest another week,” is threatened before Wada’s stern expression relaxes, “Lucky for you, I’ve booked you into serval tests that can’t be rescheduled.”

Kakashi breaths out dramatically. He thinks Wada might have made a good medic-nin if he had lived in Konoha. Sure, he is a little too trusting, but he was also not above pestering his patients into taking better care of themselves. Sakura would approve.

The doctor, with the assistance of an attending nurse he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of, helps Kakashi out of his bed and into a wheelchair, ignoring his protests about his leg being all but healed.

“You’re to avoid putting weight on it until you start physical therapy,” Wada snaps at his continued complaints, “You’ll need to be careful, extended bed rest and surgery can leave your muscles weakened. Also, leave that magazine behind. You’re doing eye tests when do you think you’ll have time to read!”

Kakashi doesn’t push the matter further, resigning himself to being wheeled down the hospital halls like the invalid he was pretending to be. It is not like Wada knew about his frequent excursions to the roof or the fact that he has been running through strengthening exercises on his own time for several weeks now.  Best he keeps that information to himself.

Partway down the hall, he pulls out HEROES and HEROIENS from where he had slipped it into his shirt, enjoying Wada’s exasperated expression. Of course, he stops reading when the doctor threatens to start lecturing again. The man could definitely talk when given the chance.

Wada and the nurse take wheel him to a set of double-door elevators which take them down several floors below the ground level. The hallway they exit of a mirror of every other hospital hallway. Grey and white walls, pale blue lino floor and bright fluorescent overhead lights. The only difference is that this hallway is lined with heavy-looking metal doors. From snooping through patient files, he knows that all quirk tests are carried out in specially designated underground ‘safety rooms.’ That doesn't make him any more thrilled about being several stories underground. It cut down on his escape roots.

“These are some of the more secure recovery wards in the hospital,” Wada explains as their little group stops at a small reception desk where the doctor taps away at a computer screen, “they’re mostly for treating patients with unstable quirks.” Kakashi maintains a neutral expression, accepting the explanation.

Wada wheels him up to a steel door, swiping his ID card which also doubled as a key to many areas of the hospital. The heavy door is automated and slides open. A lot of the doors in the hospital operate this way and always made sneaking around slightly more troublesome.

Inside walls and floor are plain white and there is an odd number of tables and chairs pushed to one side out of the way. Everything stinks of disinfectant. On the far wall is a single solitary painting of a tree in a field, the only splash of colour in an otherwise depressingly sparse room. A poor attempt at living up the space. The opposite wall sports a rectangular, reflective surface which was probably some sort of observation booth. Well, if being underground hadn’t put him on edge, this obvious confinement room definitely did the job. Kakashi eyes the space. Worse comes to worst, he could use the kamui and remove the adjoining hallway wall then climb his way out through the elevator shaft. There are only two other people in the room with him and one woman at the reception desk, all were most likely unenhanced with quirks unsuited to combat, easily removed.  He doesn’t let his body language reflect his unease. He is just a little on edge because the new seal is messing with his body’s natural homeostasis. If this is a trap there would have been other signs of deception before now.

“Yes, I know it might seem like a whole lot of fuss just to run through a few flashcards,” Wada comments, oblivious to Kakashi’s poor mood. He waves to his assisting nurse who wheels over and lowers one of the metallic tables so Kakashi doesn’t have to move from his wheelchair. “But it’s a standard safety procedure when an unknown quirk is involved. Trust me, this is a lot easier than travelling to an external testing range.”

Wada stops to give Kakashi a once over, frowning, “How much do you know about your quirk sub-type?”

Kakashi shrugs, “Nothing much.”

“Ah,” The doctor’s frown grows, and he grimaces, “Of course you don’t.” A sigh.

“Typically, ocular quirks will act to enhanced sight in some way or improve base level memorisation and recall ability. It is also common to have a replicating function, allowing the user to produce some sort of copy of things they see. In rarer cases, ocular quirks result in precognitive abilities.” Wada explanation falters, “They can also have a line-of-sight emitter effect, such as laser vision, optical blasts, a few instances of mind control and other mental effects. These can also be incredibly dangerous if the user isn’t in control. There have even been instances where whole buildings have been levelled.”

“I see.”  He supposes Wada's irritation at this private 'quirk' testing made a bit more sense. A doctor faced with an unknown and possibly dangerous ability would be annoyed if said patient went about experimenting without taking safety precautions.

“I should have checked whether you knew the dangers instead of just assuming. Apologies. That is my own error.”

He peers at Kakashi, almost guilty now, “and you don’t have a phone either so there would have been no way for you to research quirks yourself.”

“Ah,” Kakashi rubs the back of his head not likening how torn up the other man seems to be seeing as Kakashi had ever been in any real danger. “Don’t worry about it,” he reassures.  

His reassurances land flat, the doctor still frowning, “I’ll see if I can get you access to the internet somehow.”

Privately, Kakashi adds 'research' to the list of functions ‘phones’ apparently provided and 'internet' to his growing list of terms to investigate.

Wada sighs again. “Regardless, let’s get these tests done first.” He places a thick folder labelled National Standard for Registration: Kit Type 3 alongside one of those portable keyboard-less computers the doctors tended to carry around.  “Hold on, been a while since I’ve done one of these. Need to find the rights files. Ah, here we go. First, these rooms are monitored, and all tests are recorded. The data collected is confidential, accessible only to the patient and physician unless doing so causes the patent harm. Information regarding quirk function and use is shared with the Registry Office. You have a right to stop testing at any point. You got that?”

Kakashi grunts, his already poor mood souring further. He is not sure he wants the hospital - or anyone - keeping records of anything sharingan related.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wada continues unperturbed, a testament to his serval weeks of trying to doctor Kakashi, “remember to let me know if you’re experiencing any discomfort. Don’t want you busting anymore blood vessels.

Kakashi lets out a tired breath, “Sure.” The sooner they left this room the better.

“We’ll test memory and vision first to compare to your baseline, then we’ll run through the replication and precognitive tests just in case.”

The nurse, who had been on the opposite side of the room waves, “All ready over here.” There is now a large poster with letters of varying sizes hung on the wall. He recognises the chart from his previous eye tests.

“Okay, let’s start with just uncovering it. Make sure you’re looking away from me as a precaution.”

Kakashi resists rolling his non- sharingan eye at the obvious instruction, shifting his attention to the poster on the wall. He flips his padded eyepatch up with his index finger so it partially rests on his forehead. All the letters, no matter the size, immediately snap into sharp focus. Nothing spontaneously combusts under his gaze. When he glances at the painting of the tree, he can now see a lack of brush texture, suggesting that it wasn’t a painting but a print of some sort. With that useless information now forever etched into his memory, he turns back to examine at Wada.

The sharingan picks out all the wrinkles and pores lining the older face. It focuses in on minuscule muscle movements as the man’s expression shifts from professional and accommodating to curious. The doctor’s fingers twitch ever so slightly over his computer. Most likely an unconscious habit. The man’s breath is slightly uneven like his chest can’t smoothly expand, suggesting some sort of lung problem. A past smoking habit perhaps? Nothing threatening is revealed.

“Doctor.” Kakashi prompts when Wada spends a little too long staring back at him. The sharingun did have a weak hypnotic effect, encouraging extended eye contact to help catch targets in genjutsu. Kakashi rarely uncovered his eye in the presence of civilians so he doesn’t know if the effect is more pronounced or if Wada is just curious.

Wada blinks, “Well…I certainly see where the ‘wheel’ description comes from.” He spends a second more staring then turns to start writing notes and tapping away at his computer screen. “I wonder if those spinning tomoe are purely cosmetic or if they have some other function because they are certainly fascinating to look at. There is also faint bioluminescence to the eye which is a common feature of ocular quirks…”

Honestly, the blatant eye contact is weird. Even his closest allies tended to avoid looking at his sharingan out of habit - expect for Naruto who was an outlier in almost everything - for understandable reasons. He thinks the people here would also exercise caution if an ocular abilities included mind control or exploding a person through eye contact. But no, Wada just goes right ahead and stares. A few seconds later and the unnamed nurse is also looking curiously at his eye. … …

Aside from redoing a standard eye exam, Kakashi runs through a marathon of flashcards to test both his memory and then precognitive abilities. The tests are done with lights on then in the dark and Kakashi is given a perfect 20/20 and an enhancement score of ‘15 grades above average’ for both. There are also several pages worth of words and numbers in progressively complex arrangements to test his information retention. Of course, everything is easily remembered with the sharingun active.

“Well, it seems to give general across the board vision enhancement alongside perfect recall and retention,” Wada finally concludes as he records all Kakashi’s results, “Of course, we’ll have to re-test retention in a few days so see if the information degrades over an extended period and we don’t know whether your quirk effects your long distance eyesight, but, for now, this appears to be all. The link between your quirked eye and the regenerative side-effect is still unknown. Odd that we couldn’t trigger any ‘copy’ function considering the quirks name though  ‘copy’ could also be a reference to memorisation.  If any other features do reveal themselves make sure you alert a medical professional.”

… …

Kakashi despises the process of getting an MRI with a heated passion. He hates having to lie prone in a loud confined space. It is the height of discomfort, making him tense up and clench his jaw. It is only the fact that Kakashi had researched and mentally prepared himself for the experience that stops him from accidentally snapping someone’s neck.

“We’ll have the results back in a few days,” Wada informs once the trying ordeal is over with, “From there we’ll update the Registry so you’re properly in the system. Speaking of which, have you made any progress on remembering a surname? I need something for the forms.”

“Hatake,” he grunts, too irritated to bother evading - he just wants to return to his room and wait out the side effects of his seal in peace- the question like he had every other time the man asked, “I think I prefer Kakashi though.”

It wasn’t like the name meant anything here and, who knows, maybe someone would come looking for him. This way they would have a trail to follow.

NEXT

#bnha #bnha fanfic #naruto #boku no academia #CrossOver #kakshi hatake #dimension travel AU #fanfiction #my hero academia #more hospital stuff #probably a bunch of medical inaccuracies #quirk biology #quirk stuff #world building

[turkishdreams]

before i get to giffing this week’s episodes..

i normally don’t do write-ups for baht oyunu or ada masalı but i just had some thoughts that i really wanted out of my head. this got a bit out of hand and became longer than i intended oops 😅 and ofc, beware of spoilers!

so this week’s episodes of both baht oyunu and ada masalı dealt with quite a lot of pain and heartbreak, which really put my shipper heart thru the wringer. but that’s what we get for clowning and investing as much as we do, right? 🤡

i really wanted to give a special shoutout to AM for finally having all the cards on the table. a lot of the times with dizis they tend to drag out the miscommunication and lies to no end, but seeing them confront all the lies and deception in one go was so flippin’ refreshing. not to mention, that scene where haziran and poyraz were locked up in that hotel room and just hashing everything out.. that deserves all 👏 the 👏 awards👏 their acting was so well done, i had tears in my eyes by the end. 

and you know what? i also really appreciate that the writing gives haziran a lot of credit for trying to fix her mistakes and still wanting to stick around as opposed to her moping around and leaving the island out of self-pity, which is what we normally see. even just her locking both of them up in the hotel room just so she could have a chance to present her side of the situation was legendary behaviour, but for her to step out afterwards and claim her mark on this island, knowing she would be ostracized and heckled was the cherry on top. im HERE for this queen shit 👑 they really don’t write female characters like this so i'm just so excited that we’re going somewhere new that i personally haven’t experienced before in diziland.

also, thank god that 🐍 hakan got exposed for the lying cheat that he is as well. i was so worried that he would still get away with all his crimes and just blame it all on haziran, but he also got what was coming for him and i’m just so pumped about that. sure he got away by the end of the episode, but that ass-whooping was SO satisfying.

of course, the next couple episodes are gonna be pretty intense and filled with a lot of pain, but they’ve ripped off the bandaid at this point and now everything just has to settle down and heal. which means they can get back to falling in love without any more hurdles and lies!! what a win, right??? like honestly, as a viewer & fan, i feel respected in a sense bc they’re not wasting our time with any more intricate lies and we’re finally getting down to the bottom of things, we’re not beating around the bush anymore.

which leads me to baht oyunu..

trust me when i say i actually enjoyed this latest episode a lot, purely for the angst. but at some point, the can of worms has to come out, right? and the lies just keep piling up, there’s no end to it. the worst is that SO many ppl are becoming involved, right down to ada’s prof - who’s a real one btw - for not clarifying with bora that ada never graduated.

i hate to compare, but after seeing this week’s ep of AM, it’s hard not to wish for something similar to happen in BO bc as a viewer i’m starting to get confused about who’s in on all the lies and who’s not. as far as i can tell, the major lies seem to be that a) ada’s married - happily and b) ada graduated, but because of these lies, a lot of smaller lies have stemmed like selin being married. 

i know with a show like BO where everything is more light-hearted, we can’t expect the same sort of fallout like poyhaz had in AM but man it would be really cathartic. i just want all cards on the table, i want everything cleared up so that adbor can also move on and fall in love without anything burdening them. with the way the show has been going so far, i really thought they would be switching things up and having a confession earlier on, but i’m starting to think we’re gonna have to wait for it just like every other dizi. i hope to god i’m wrong tho. 

also, if we really think about it, why would bora even be personally affected by these lies? like she basically just lied on her resume and got the job, and is amazing at her job. if bora wasn’t already falling for her, would this really be that big of an issue to him? it shouldn’t matter, right? the most this would be is a breach of contract, a breach of trust, but the longer they drag it out, the more involved he becomes (unnecessarily). she didn’t exactly do him dirty by lying and getting the job, she got the job for her own means, not as a favour to him or anything.

the fragman for next week’s ep doesn’t really make me feel any better, but obviously i’ll still be around, esp to see jealous bora lol. idk, i just feel like it’s really unfair to both ada and bora’s characters to have all this be so dragged out, esp considering how much all this is weighing on ada's conscience and how supportive bora has been this whole time. 

bora continues to surprise me with how he's ALWAYS there for ada and notices the tiniest things about her. he's becoming one of my fav characters in any turkish dizi. which is why im equally as jumpy to see how exactly he would react when all the truths are exposed. i highly doubt he'll be as erratic as poyraz, he'll more likely be very emotional and disappointed. and he's been trying to connect the dots since the beginning instead of being totally blissful so when exactly do we get to see the outcome of that? atp im more impatient than he is for everything to be laid out 😅

all in all, these episodes were still fantastic and we better gear up for more pain coming our way before our mains get the peace and love they deserve 🥲 im gonna get to giffing tonight so if you have any requests pls hit me up (that is if any of you are still reading). also if you like these write-ups, i might do more in the future 😊

also also, im lowkey thinking about making a twitter account so that i can be engaged in the dizi fandoms in a different way and possibly share more of my thoughts, is that something you guys would be interested in seeing or nah?

EDIT: i did end up making a twitter account, check it out @ xturkishdreams if you wanna give it a follow!

as always thanks for the support, until next time 💖

#baht oyunu #baht oyunu spoilers #ada masalı #ada masali #ada masalı spoilers #misc

[alarawriting]

52 Project #36: Escape from Sonnebend

Trigger warnings: This is a story about Meg. (Supervillain protagonist of my WIP novel, and the main character of story #18, “Thirteen”.) It does not have as much triggering content as the last story about her did, but Meg herself is triggering content. Story contains mentions of rape and torture, bioengineered diseases and horrible deaths. Also, being a victim of awful things doesn’t stop Meg from being a terrible person.

Title is shit and I may change it later.

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

It’s been three days since anyone has ordered her to go anywhere, a week since she overhead two of the scientists talking about the future. Apparently Bush lost the election, and they expect Sonnebend to be shut down. Probably, the entire black ops agency that allows Sonnebend to exist will be shut down before Bill Clinton comes into power. She’d be eager to see it, except that she knows they’ll never let her go free. If Sonnebend is shut down, either they’ll send her to a different prison, keep her around to heal elderly politicians and work on their bioweapons… or they’ll kill her.

Activity has been winding down since mid-November. Now it’s mid-December and things are almost dead. High-powered researchers and administrators are taking their Christmas vacations. Meg doesn’t know if she’ll be alive when they come back. Are they moving their project to another location, or is it shutting down entirely? She doesn’t know if they know yet. She knows for a fact they’re not telling her.

Do they need to keep it open? They’ve got what they want.

She lays on the bed in her cell, because hiding under the bed doesn’t help. If she’s laying on the bed when the guards want to rape her, they’ll do it, and if she’s hiding under the bed, they’ll drag her out, beat her, and then do it. There’s no point to it. No point to trying to protect herself. No point in trying to protect anyone else.

Christmas is coming, but Meg strongly suspects she won’t live long enough to see it. Not like it matters. She remembers her last Christmas with David, the two of them in the tiny apartment on the 11th floor, a living tree that was heavy as fuck to carry but she’d gotten it up there with its pot and its soil, and she’d put it in the window so it would get sunshine, which meant they didn’t get any in the small common room because the tree was blocking it. David had experimented with chemical lights, blues and reds and greens and whites that ran on oxygen, slowly, and they’d covered the entire apartment with them, lights around every window they could see and lights around every door and lights criss-crossing the ceiling. She’d taken the drugs he was cooking up in order to test them, and as soon as she’d determined that they wouldn’t poison anyone, she’d let herself experience the high, giggling like the teenager she’d been as she lay back on the floor and pretended the ceiling lights were stars, making up fake constellations like The Butthole and Zeus’ Balls. All that December, she’d made cookies, pizzelle and horn cookies and Christmas-shaped iced sugar cookies and traditional New York black and white cookies, and eaten most of them because David had had a chronic low appetite and not much taste for sugar anyway. And then on Christmas she’d given him a Nintendo and a couple of games, and he’d given her a dozen CDs and Stuffy, a stuffed white and gray cat.

In August of the following year, the Special Service killed David, in his bedroom, unarmed. His blood ended up all over Stuffy. Meg never washed it out. His DNA embedded in her plush fur would comfort Meg when she cuddled Stuffy at night; it was a memorial no ordinary human would respond to, except perhaps in the abstract, but Meg could feel David’s DNA in the splatters of his blood. Slowly decaying – there wasn’t a lot of DNA in blood in the first place, since red blood cells don’t have nuclei, and it doesn’t last forever. But it was still there, the last time she saw Stuffy. In the townhome she shared with Tara, in her bedroom.  

Is Tara still there? Is any of her stuff still there? It’s December. She was kidnapped in April. The billing service would probably have continued to pay the rent, but if Tara had moved out, Meg’s checks wouldn’t be enough to keep the lease.

Does it matter? Does any of it matter? She’s never getting out of here alive, is she? She’ll never see Stuffy or any of her other things or Tara or the apartment again.

She wants to cry, but she can’t. There’s no safety here, nowhere they can’t see her.

Four diseases, two viruses and two deadly bacteria, tailored to strike only Proximas. They’ll breed in the presence of catalysine, or they’ll look for the Proxima gene and insert themselves into the DNA there, breaking it in a way that will slowly poison them. They gave her no choice, but that’s a lie, there are always choices. She could have found a way to kill herself. She could have forced them to trigger the bomb around her neck. She could have waited until they had her in the sealed room, with the collar off, tasked with healing some important old man… and she could have killed whichever man she was supposed to fix that day, and forced her captors to shoot her.

But Meg wants to live. She did something terrible because she wanted to live, and she didn’t want to be tortured. She made those diseases. They gave her no freedom to do anything but study, genetics and biology and chemistry, on top of her medical school training and the training David used to give her in neurobiochemistry, and she used that knowledge to do what they asked. Because she knew they would check.

She remembers the blue homeless man vomiting, over and over, until he had no electrolytes left in his body and he died. The prostitute who could make a light show dance over her body, shaking and seizing until she was dead. The old man whose power mitochondria went into impossibly high gear, burning up all the phosphate and magnesium in his body to make too much ATP, and then his telekinetic power going out of control and tearing him apart. The homeless teenager crying as the poisons built up in his body. All her fault, and there will be thousands more, maybe millions, if her captors release the diseases they made her make into the population.

She hates herself, but she wants desperately to live, because she knows how to undo them all. She can immunize her people. She can. If she can get out of here alive. But the collar that suppresses her powers has a bomb in it. If she were to leave this place with it still around her neck… it would be the last thing she ever did.

There’s a click in the lock. Meg doesn’t look. She has no power over what’s going to happen, and if she turns her head to look, if she sits or stands up, if she visibly braces herself… then they’ll know she cares. They’ll know they’re hurting her, they’re frightening her. And she won’t give them the satisfaction… not until she can’t help herself, anyway. Without access to her powers, she only has a normal human ability to control herself.

“Get up,” a harsh female voice says.

Well. Small mercies. This isn’t going to be a rape, most likely. And they don’t torture her much anymore, not since she started cooperating. Torture doesn’t really work to get information – she knows that well, having tried it several times when she was a teen thug working for drug lords – but it works very well to terrorize people into doing as they’re told. But she’s been doing as she’s told. So it probably won’t be that.

It could be the execution she’s been expecting, but even if it is, there’s nothing she can do about it.

Meg gets up. Slowly, but not so slowly that the guard will decide she’s being insolent and shock her. The collar suppresses her powers, and it keeps her from escaping because of the bomb, but it’s also got electroshock capabilities, that all the guards can trigger by remote any time they want to. Electroshock’s how they captured her the first time – they went after her with the Special Service, the cops in hardsuits that her powers can’t get through, and the Special Service shocked her over and over, until her powers couldn’t handle keeping her conscious, and then while she was unconscious they put the collar on her neck. Since then, they’ve been able to shock her any time they want to, and they use it, frequently. Especially when they think she’s not being deferential enough.

She’s a former street kid and assassin for gangsters. She was living on her own since the age of 17. She went to superhero school with people who hated her, who’d fought her – and lost—when she was a supervillain. And she’s from Brooklyn. None of this lends itself well to respecting anyone’s authority or being deferential; she gave that up when she was thirteen and traded in a life as a Catholic school girl for a life in the criminal underworld. So when she first got to Sonnebend, they shocked her a lot.

She’s learned, though. Meg keeps her hate and her rage and her desire to commit bloody murder out of her eyes, out of her body language. If she ever has the chance, everyone who works here will die… but she’ll never have the chance, and she knows it.

The guard’s a black woman, head shaved, muscular. What progress America has made, Meg thinks bitterly. Now you can be a government thug and torturer even if you’re female and black! The guard motions her out the door, where there’s a second guard, this one a generic bland-looking dark-haired white man like practically every other guard in this place. “Keep moving,” the black woman says.

“Where are you taking me?” Meg asks. “What’s going on?”

“Keep your mouth shut,” the black woman says, but doesn’t shock her.

They’re taking her to her execution. She’s sure of it. Two guards usually escort her when she is taken anywhere, but she doesn’t recognize either of these two, and they’re not walking her in the right direction to be going either to the labs or the chamber with the one-way glass where she heals powerful old men, collar off but guns trained on her outside the chamber where she can’t see.

For a moment, Meg considers the possibility of killing these two guards. Even without her powers, she can fight; the absurd things she can do when she has her powers, the power-jumps, extending her arms, making tentacles, all that kind of thing… those are icing on the cake. All she needed to do to learn martial arts at master level was to find a dojo where the sensei had advanced skills and the urethane on the wooden floor had worn away enough that she could reach into her sensei with her powers and copy what he was doing down to the level of specific nerves firing and muscles contracting, and now she’s an expert. She could, maybe, grab the white guy, use judo to throw him into the black woman, then kick both of them in the jaw hard enough to snap their necks.

But what good would it do? She sees no evidence that they’re carrying keys that could unlock the collar; usually only a couple of specific people carry those keys, which have a distinctive appearance and are too large to hide in a pocket, and they wait for her in the chamber rather than walking around the base with them. She can’t get out, and any one of the guards can trigger the electroshock remotely, without even being near her, so she can’t escape. And if escape isn’t possible, what’s the point to killing these guys? It might make her feel better, for a few moments, but their friends will blow up her head, so it won’t help.

So she walks, with the white guy in front and the black woman behind, down a corridor she’s never traveled before. And probably never will again.

There’s a checkpoint, right before a door outside. The guard at the checkpoint looks up. “Where’s she going?”

“Where you think?” the black woman says, and hands him a sheaf of paper.

The checkpoint guy – another generic white dude, with sandy blond hair instead of black – looks at the papers, and then chuckles. “So I guess Williams and Becker aren’t getting a piece tonight, huh,” he says, and confirms what Meg suspects. Those are her execution papers. The guards who rape her nearly every night aren’t going to have the chance to tonight, because she’ll be dead.

Once again she considers killing them all. It won’t save her life, but at least it’ll take down a few of them with her. Once again she lets it go. Maybe, if she has a chance while she’s outside, since it looks like they’re taking her outside to do it. But she wants to see the sun again. If they’re going to bring her outside to kill her… then at least she won’t die in this nightmare building, where she hasn’t seen so much as a window since she was captured.

Is there snow outside? She doesn’t even know where Sonnebend is; no one’s ever told her what state they’re in, and with no windows, she can’t look at the sun and plants and try to guess. It could be Texas. It could be Florida. It’s probably not either since there aren’t enough guards with Latino names, but maybe it’s North Dakota. Maybe it’s Indiana. She has no way to tell.

The white guy with her chuckles, just a second later than you’d expect, like he’s not a native speaker and took a moment to parse what was just said. The black woman doesn’t. Stone-faced, she takes back the sheaf of papers. “Get moving,” she says to Meg, motioning her toward the door.

Outside, they’re behind the building. There’s a dumpster, and a loading dock, a short distance away. The black woman makes Meg walk in the opposite direction, along a wall with no windows or doors in it, nothing but unbroken beige brick. It’s cold; Meg’s breath makes clouds in the air. But there’s no snow. In the distance there’s grass and trees, but where they’re walking, there’s nothing but concrete. Meg stares hungrily at the grass and trees, at the sun in the sky, at the clouds overhead and in front of her mouth, as if she can make up for eight months of never seeing them by looking at them really hard, right now.

“Kneel down,” the black woman orders, and the tears Meg hasn’t shed in months well up. Not for herself. She has this coming. She may have tried to reform – first by being a superhero, then by becoming a doctor – but she’s always been a terrible person. She murdered her father, and then she became a murderer for hire, and then she’d helped David design drugs, and then she’d been a murderer again. She’d been a vicious jealous bitch around her first boyfriend, and had seduced her second, a man three times her age, just so she could take him away from her mentor. And then she’d gone to medical school, she’d tried to be a better person, but they’d kidnapped her and made her make diseases and because she was too weak to stand up to torture, many, so many, people will die. She’ll never have a chance to undo what she had done, to protect the Proximas of the US, or the world, against the engineered plagues she was terrorized into creating.

“Oh, you gonna cry now?” the black woman said.

“Fuck you,” Meg snarled through the tears. “I know you’re gonna kill me, so just do it.”

The woman sighed like she was at the end of her patience. “Kneel down, girl.”

“No. Shoot me standing up. I’m not gonna kneel to any of you anymore.”

“Have it your way,” the woman says, and points her gun at Meg.

It goes off, a deafening sound, but nothing that happens after that makes any sense. Meg sees her own body topple backward behind her, turning in time to see it fall, but she hasn’t been hit. There’s no pain. Is she a ghost? There’s her own bloody, headless corpse on the ground, and the black woman and the white man dragging the body off, but the black woman is also still here, tapping her foot.

“What—”

“Figure it out yet?” the black woman asks, and turns blue. The azurin mutation. In a small percentage of Proximas, melanin converts to azurin instead, and the person ends up blue. White people turn pale blue, with blue or green or purple hair, and black people turn deep blue, with blue eyes and blue hair. The buzzcut vanishes, replaced by a bright blue Afro that in shape and fluffiness looks like it came straight out of Cleopatra Jones. The woman’s face also changes, subtly, small aspects of eye shape and cheekbone placement altering, so she looks similar to the woman she was before, but not the same. Like sisters, or cousins. Except that one of them’s blue. Which means Proxima.

“You’re a Proxima?” Meg asks. She can’t quite believe this is really happening. She can still see the brown woman with the buzzcut and the dark-haired white man dragging her own corpse toward the corner of the building. Is this like Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or something?

“Sure fucking am,” the blue woman says, and puts out her hand. “Shadow. Illusionist. And you’re Megamorph, the bio-controller.”

Meg has never heard her power referred to as bio-control, but it makes sense. Any organic tissue she’s touching, she can do nearly anything to, and any organic tissue she can reach through an organic channel, like a wooden floor or a shaggy wool carpet, it’s the same as if she’s touching it. She takes Shadow’s hand, tentatively. “Why… if you’re an illusionist, couldn’t you have told me what you were doing to begin with?” The tears are still in her eyes. Angrily, she wipes them away.

“Conserving power. I have to create the illusion of what they expect to be happening, and hide what we’re actually doing. The more you move around, the harder it is. Now kneel down. I was serious about that part.”

“Why?”

“Hard to rescue you if you’re missing a head,” Shadow says, and pulls off her belt something that looks almost, but not exactly, like the keys that unlock Meg’s collar.

“Those don’t look right. Are you sure they’ll work?” Meg hates that she sounds plaintive, almost whiny… but if Shadow’s here to rescue her, she really doesn’t want to get her head blown up on the verge of freedom.

“Tested them already. They’ve got some collared corpses in the pit around the corner.”

There’s a pit around the corner full of dead bodies. This doesn’t surprise Meg in any way – it makes perfect sense – but it horrifies her, hitting her in a nerve she’d have thought burnt out by all the horror she’s endured. Her knees go out from under her, which she manages to make look as if she’s kneeling like Shadow told her to, rather than that she’s half collapsing.

Shadow puts the key to the collar. There’s a clicking sound. Meg holds her breath despite herself.

And then the collar falls to the ground.

It works by magnetic induction, suppressing the part of her brain that controls her body’s production of catalysine, and suppressing the part that allows her to perceive and control her powers. Stopping the magnetic induction doesn’t instantly replenish her body’s catalysine, and without the catalysine, she doesn’t yet have any powers to perceive and control. So she doesn’t feel any different. “My powers will come back, right?” she asks, knowing it’s a stupid question – she knows how the collar works, she knows how Proxima powers work probably better than anyone. She knows they’ll come back. But at the moment, she feels painfully young, and not like an expert on anything. She wants Shadow to reassure her the way a mother might reassure a child.

Shadow nods, her expression gentle. “Of course they will,” she says. She reaches a hand down and helps Meg to her feet. “We need to get out of here.”

“Wait.” Meg takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want to admit to this, but she won’t let people die for her pride. “Do you know if… that pit, are there any of the victims there? The experimental subjects, of the bio-engineered diseases?”

“I figure that’s probably where they are, yeah,” Shadow says.

“I’m sorry, but… is there any way you can cover me to get in there? I… they made me make those diseases. I have to stop them, but I couldn’t keep samples. It’ll be a lot easier to inoculate people if I can get samples…”

Shadow grins. “Oh, yeah. We knew all about those diseases. That’s why the World Unity Collective decided to rescue you.”

World Unity Collective is Caesar Primus’ group, a supervillain gang dedicated to creating a world where the Proximas of the world unite and take over, which is supposed to bring about a utopia for everyone, Sapiens and Proxima alike. Meg thought it was a stupid idea when she first heard about it, training with Peace Force Tau, and she still thinks so. Proximas are different from Sapiens by exactly one gene, and there is absolutely no reason to think Proximas will treat the world any better than Sapiens have. But she doesn’t care anymore.

Over and over, in her prison, she called out in her mind, begging her mentor to hear her. Suri Chandrasekhar is the leader of the Peace Force, and an incredibly powerful telepath. Suri knew where Meg was going to medical school; if she was paying attention, if she cared, she would know Meg had been kidnapped, and with her powers she should have been able to find Meg… if she was looking. But she hadn’t. No rescue came from the Peace Force. And right now, Meg has reasons to hate Sapiens – reasons that are illogical, because there are billions of Sapiens and they cannot possibly all be responsible for the torments she’s suffered over the past eight months, but Meg’s reasons for hate are rarely all that logical anyway. If it’s Proxima supremacists who’ve rescued her, then yay for Proxima supremacy.

“I’ll ask you how you knew about the diseases later,” Meg says.

“Yeah. Let’s get this done quick.”

***

The pit’s covered with a tarp. As soon as she peels the tarp back, Meg has to shut off her sense of smell. She hasn’t eaten since the terrible cafeteria-grade scrambled eggs for breakfast, so there’s nothing in her stomach anymore – it’s all moved on to the intestines by now -- but if she had to smell this without her powers, she’d be puking up all of the nothing in her stomach over everything.

It’s not hard to find her diseases. There’s maybe twenty bodies in here, tangled together in a heap, most in a fairly advanced state of rot. All of them are infected. Or were, when they were alive. Apparently Sonnebend doesn’t kill lots and lots of people as a general rule. This isn’t a concentration camp; it’s a research facility, where part of the research is on how to kill people with diseases. And since the people had to be Proximas, that limited the supply; only one in ten thousand people has that one gene that differentiates Sapiens from Proximas. Can’t very well murder five thousand people in testing a disease if you have to screen fifty million to find them.

The viruses are easy. With the machinery of the cells stopped, they’re not replicating, but a lot of them are intact, easy to capture. The bacteria are harder. They’ve been dying since they killed their hosts. But there are a couple of subjects that still have live bacteria. Meg pulls them in and stores them in tiny nodules of fatty tissue in her breast, with no capillaries feeding them so they don’t have much chance to get out into her bloodstream. Not that it would matter; Meg’s powers automatically destroy any organic matter that would trigger an immune response. She can’t get sick. Even at Sonnebend, the fact that they removed her collar every few days so she could heal some politician or CEO or important donor meant that she couldn’t get sick; in the hour or so she had her powers, her body would destroy any potential source of infection. She’s going to have to be more careful to make sure her body doesn’t annihilate these infectious agents before she has a chance to engineer an inoculation or cure than she will to make sure they don’t actually infect her.

She climbs back out of the pit, with Shadow’s help. “I’m done. I’ve got everything I need.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here, okay?” Shadow says, and ten minutes later, they’re in a car parked outside the barbed wire fence, driving away.

“It’ll take them some time to figure out you’re not dead,” Shadow says, driving the car with a cigarette in her hand. “I took back the fake papers for your execution, so they’ll have a hard time figuring out who authorized it, or where I went, or who I even was. If they compare video feed of the outdoors to the indoors, they’ll see me and the fake guy I made walk back through the door but then never show up at the checkpoint right inside, and maybe that’ll give them a clue, but none of their video will have anything real.” She takes a deep drag from the cigarette. Meg wants to warn her about lung cancer and suggest she quit, but she looks up to Shadow too much to be her condescending prick doctor persona.

“What were you doing? Manipulating light?”

Shadow nods. “And sound, but fuck it’s hard. It’s so much easier for me if I just work on the brain. Altering myself and making another dude is almost the limit of what I can do with sound and light, whereas if I’m going in through the brain, I can make people see a full Hollywood spectacular. Aliens shooting laser guns all over the place. An army of Picts with bows and arrows. Whatever I want.”

“That’s really cool,” Meg says, somewhat awestruck. “Doesn’t that mean you really have two powers? Because a psionic illusion power and the ability to manipulate sound and light sounds like it’s two entirely different things.”

Shadow takes another drag on the cigarette. “Used to just be the psionic part. I got fixed up by a guy named Giovanni. Told him I wanted to be able to fool cameras. Closed-circuit cams were getting big around then. It was hard to pull a job when the security guys can see you on the cam, even if they can’t as soon as they get close enough to use their eyes.”

“Wait… this Giovanni guy can give people powers?”

“Yeah, though all he does is give Proximas new powers. He won’t give powers to a Sapien and he’s got some weird rule about what kind of powers he’ll give a Proxima, but what I wanted sounded to him like it’d work with what I already got. Gives me a motherfucking headache if I overuse it. I gonna need a whole fucking bottle of Tylenol tonight.” She laughs.

Meg puts her hand on Shadow’s shoulder. “No, you won’t,” she says. Her power can hurt when she invades people with it, unless she’s working to numb them or make them feel good, neither of which is safe to do while someone is driving… but it only takes a second, barely time for Shadow’s body to register that Meg’s power is inside it, to clear away the tension that’ll lead to a migraine.

Shadow turns her head. “What the fuck you doin’, girl?” she demands.

“I fixed it,” Meg says, beaming. “So you won’t get a migraine. I owe you a lot more than that, but that’s the least I can give back to you.”

For some reason Shadow does not look happy. She rolls her eyes and slumps slightly forward against the steering wheel, which is all right because they’re at a traffic light. “Listen, kid. I know you meant well, and I’m not mad. But you can’t just go doing things to people’s bodies without even telling them, let alone asking them. You gotta ask permission. If it’s a friend or an ally, anyway. I could give a shit, what you do to enemies and Sapiens, but with friends and allies you ask.”

“Oh.” Meg feels terrible. She’s overstepped a boundary she should have remembered, because in Peace Force Tau, Suri told her this, but she’s so excited to have her powers back and so grateful to Shadow and so desperate to show that gratitude, she forgot. “I’m sorry. I, I really should’ve known better, it’s just, I’ve been locked up so long… I’m really sorry…”

“Look, kiddo, forget it. S’alright. No harm done, and I do feel better. Just, remember next time. Ask.” She pronounces the word as “axe”. This makes Meg feel strangely nostalgic. One of her best friends from the days right after she got her powers, a teenage prostitute named Rhonda who was one of the most level-headed people Meg has ever known, used to talk that way. Most of the girls she’d known in those days had, actually. Whereas no one in the Peace Force or medical school would have used anything less than 100% proper English, like back in Catholic school.

***

It turns out Sonnebend is in Minnesota, near the Great Lakes. World Unity Collective headquarters is in Florida. They’re going to drive to Chicago to use something called a “transmat” to teleport to Florida, but lake-coast Minnesota to Chicago in Illinois is still what Shadow calls a “long-ass drive”. “We’d go faster if we had a boat,” Shadow jokes, and shows Meg the route on the map.

There are explanations. Shadow won’t tell her how she knew about the diseases – “you’re not cleared to know that, yet,” she says – but she explains eagerly why Meg was recruited. “We figured, since you created the bioweapons, you’d know how to stop them… and you might be able to stop others they come up with. Or create ones to threaten them with, if they keep pulling this kind of shit.”

“I don’t want to create bioweapons. Not against Proximas, not against Sapiens, not against anybody.”

“I hear you,” Shadow says. “You don’t have to. You do whatever you feel comfortable with, for the cause.”

Shadow talks a lot about the cause. Talks about being thrown out of her home for being a “devil child”, when she was 12 and turning from brown to blue. Talks about the Human Definition Amendment, a thing some conservative Senator has proposed that will define “human”, in the law, to mean “Sapien”, meaning Proximas will essentially legally be wild animals, with no legal protections whatsoever. Talks about Proximas being killed as “witches” in Africa, especially the ones with the azurin mutation, who couldn’t hide being Proximas, and being turned into weapons for the government in Russia and China and who knew where else.

Talks about the Special Service killing unarmed Proximas who are suspected of crimes, and that one hits hard, because that’s exactly what happened to David. His power was to see chemistry at the atomic level, completely useless for fighting, and he was a skinny twenty-something nerd and he wore coke-bottle glasses with a tint because he was photophobic, and he was unarmed, and they’d gunned him down in his apartment, and Meg had only lived because he’d sent her on an errand to find his lawyer. Because she’d assumed, when he said he’d need his lawyer after they arrested him, that of course, that was normal, that was how it worked. She was pretty sure he’d known they were coming to kill him, and had sent her on that errand because they’d have killed her too.

Caesar Primus – it means “Emperor First” and it’s pronounced the Latin way, like “Kaiser”, not like the salad – is, according to Shadow, the smartest and most experienced man on the planet. Meg assumes the experienced part is probably true, because apparently, he is somewhere around 2,000 years old, and was a gladiator in ancient Rome. She’s not so sure about smartest. The guy apparently still believes that Sapiens and Proximas are different species. A lot of people believe that, but mostly they are idiots, or at the very least, they know nothing of science.

He’s also bought into a lot of silly ideas about evolution, or claims he has and teaches them to his people. Shadow tells Meg that Proximas are the next evolution of humanity, superior because they are more evolved, destined to rule over humanity, and will survive instead of Sapiens because they are stronger. Meg can identify five errors in Shadow’s concepts of evolution off the top of her head, without any kind of deep dive, but she says nothing. If Shadow wants her to worship at the altar of Caesar Primus… Meg hasn’t done worship at an altar since she left Catholic school, not for anyone, but for Shadow’s sake, she’ll pretend.

And if it’s true, as Shadow implies, that Primus sent her to go rescue Meg, then she owes him as much for her freedom as she owes Shadow.

***

A transmat turns out to be a platform, where you put in some coordinates, step on the platform, and are instantly somewhere else, on a transmat platform elsewhere. It reminds Meg of Star Trek transporters, but makes more sense – she’d always wondered, how did the transporter beam know how to reassemble when it got where it was going?

The base is in a swamp, and the only ways out of the base are either to wade through alligator-infested waters, or take the transmat. Or fly, she supposes, for those that can do that. Wading would be annoying, but can’t hurt her; neither mosquitoes nor alligators, nor anything else in the water, can cause her any harm. But it’s obvious to her that that’s not going to be true for most people, and it bothers her a little. If the cause is so wonderful and important, why make it so hard to leave the base?

“It’s not to make it hard to leave,” Shadow explains. “It protects us from so-called superheroes, and it means that if you want to go anywhere, you have to take a risk. Keeps you strong.”

“But if you’re going by transmat that’s not a risk.”

“Yeah, but you can’t go anywhere by transmat unless Caesar agrees.”

The building’s far too much like Sonnebend. It’s made of concrete rather than bricks, a big brutalism box in the middle of a swamp, and there are windows all over the upper floors, but it goes down several floors underground. Sonnebend had linoleum tile and World Unity Collective headquarters has concrete flooring, like a warehouse, but either way there’s nothing alive, nothing for her powers to sense through her feet or the canvas shoes she makes herself from rubber and cotton. She’s not going to spend much time here, she can already tell.

“I need to go back to Baltimore,” she tells Shadow. “I don’t know what happened to anything I owned when I was kidnapped.”

Shadow is skeptical. “Do you really need any of that stuff, or do you just have a sentimental attachment to it?” she asks. “Revolutionaries have to be ready to break free of any material possessions, at any time. You can’t have sentiment. And here, your room and board are provided for, and I know with your powers you can make your own clothes whenever you want…”

“I want my medical textbooks,” Meg says. “I was trying to become a doctor when they kidnapped me.”

Now Shadow raises an eyebrow. “You think being a doctor is the best way to serve the cause?”

Meg smiles. That particular smile is the last thing some gangsters saw, once upon a time. “To heal, you need to know intimately how the body works and how everything fits together. That’s also what you need to know to be really creative about hurting people. You know, if it’s going to advance the cause to hurt someone in a particularly creative way.”

That makes Shadow laugh. “Oh yeah, I knew I was right about you. You’re gonna be a fantastic asset to the team, Meg.”

There’s no one else important in the base right now – Primus is apparently in DC, and his other top-ranked minions are away on various missions. No one here but Proximas with low power levels who work as grunts. Thugs, like she was once. The only person here to give permission for transmat use is Shadow, and she’s all in favor of Meg getting her medical textbooks once she understands what Meg can use them for.

Except that Meg’s read them all already. The term had been about to end when she was kidnapped. Her ability to directly sense bodies and how they worked had gotten her through med school in record time – she’d been there a year, and she’d learned two years’ worth in that time – and then Sonnebend had taught her more, because to create the diseases they wanted her to create, or heal the ailments of rich old men, she’d needed to know more. It’d been all she had to do that gave her any kind of pleasure in any way.

She’s not going back for medical textbooks. Shadow the true believer can give up material possessions and eliminate sentiment, if she wants. Meg believes in very little of this bullshit. She just worships Shadow for saving her.

World Unity Collective maintains a transmat in Grand Central Station, and Shadow’s able to advance Meg some cash, since of course she doesn’t currently have an ATM card, a credit card, or checks. Meg takes the subway from Grand Central to Penn Station, and from there the Amtrak to Baltimore, and then a cab to the Johns Hopkins medical school campus.

***

Meg walks down the street to the townhome she used to share with her roommate, breathing in the winter air. She can't stop looking at the buildings, the trees without their leaves, the sun behind the solid wall of white winter clouds. The people. There are so many people and they're so beautiful and they know nothing about the way the world really works, nothing at all. She wants to kill them, to save them, to tell them the truth. To take the men, at least, home and screw their brains out because she's free to choose not to, now. She doesn't do any of that.

She doesn't have the key to her old apartment any more, but the music inside tells her that her housemate Tara is there right now. Meg knocks, hard.

Tara opens the door. "Meg?" she asks, sounding shocked.

"Is my stuff still here?" Meg asks.

"Uh, yeah, yeah, of course. The landlady was just wondering where you were -- she says she's been getting your rent checks in the mail, but she sent us a note about the electric bill going up and you didn't increase the amount you were paying, and she was trying to get hold of you, but I had no idea where you were so I just paid it for you."

"I'll reimburse you." Meg walks into the apartment. She looks around the place. Everything is just as she left it. "Pack up my stuff for me and I'll have movers come get it. I'll pay the landlady for your share of the rent for the next two months."

"What happened to you, Meg? Where did you go?"

How does one explain that one was kidnapped by the government and has spent the past several months being raped, tortured and forced to work on biological weapons? One doesn't. "Something came up."

Stuffy is still sitting on her bed, David’s dried blood still all over her. Dried blood looks brown; she explained the stains on Stuffy as chocolate sauce to everyone in Peace Force Tau. Tara never went into Meg’s own bedroom, so she never had to make that explanation. Meg picks up Stuffy and puts her in her coat. She suddenly wants to cry, but badass supervillains don't cry, so she uses her powers to suppress the urge. She's going to have to figure out somewhere to put her. Obviously she can’t bring a stuffed animal back to a base full of supervillains.

"Meg, are you okay?"

She doesn't look at the Sapien who used to be her friend. "I'm fine," she says shortly, and thinks, No. Not even slightly.

Back on the street, it's cold and crisp and she can walk anywhere she wants. She can walk to a hot dog cart and get a hot dog. So she does. And ice cream. The whole time she was imprisoned she never had ice cream.

Tears sting her eyes again. Stupid that she has to keep using her powers for this. She should be tougher than this. She stopped crying after the first month in prison, never did it again until she thought Shadow was about to kill her. Why is she crying now?

When she was at Sonnebend, she never stopped wishing for her freedom, but she stopped believing or even hoping she would ever be able to walk around on a city street and buy a hot dog ever again. And then Shadow walked into Sonnebend and brought her out like Orpheus freeing Eurydice from Hades, except of course that Orpheus hadn't succeeded in the end. And Shadow did that because Caesar Primus had ordered her to. Most likely. She’d never specifically said, but Meg could read between the lines.

If Primus sent her to rescue Meg, Meg will do anything for him.

Meg knows his ideology is ridiculous. Right now she doesn't care. She'll burn the Sapiens' world down for what they did to her, and she'll enjoy herself doing it. Out of gratitude for the gift of her freedom, she will do anything for the people who saved her.

She’s got financial things to arrange – Meg has a lot of money. Being the most terrifying killer in New York City used to pay really well. She’ll reimburse Tara, get movers to take all her stuff to a storage unit. Buy some clothes – she doesn’t need new clothes, since her powers can reshape the ones she has, but she likes to shop for clothes. She likes to dress up in clothes that make every man around want to fuck her, and maybe she’ll pick some of them out and do it. She hasn’t had sex because she wanted to in eight months. Maybe she’ll fuck away some of the memories of Sonnebend before going back to Primus’ hideout.

And then she’s going to be the most vicious badass she can possibly be, with all the skills she acquired as a teenage assassin and all the knowledge she gained in Peace Force Tau, and Johns Hopkins medical school, and Sonnebend. She’s going to combine it all and she’s going to make Shadow proud of rescuing her, and Primus of telling her to do it. And she’s going to make humanity pay for what they did to her.

#52 project #proximas #cold light #holidays5 #superpowers

[uncloseted]

I don’t really understand calorie counting because surely eating only 2000 calories worth of fruit and vegetables for a month will make you lose more weight than if you eat only 1200 calories of fast food for a month

I’m not saying fast food is bad for you if you are eating it in moderation or if some days you do just eat 1200 calories of fast food that’s not bad either!!!!

I just don’t understand how calorie counting works at all, like I get burning more calories than you are eating but I don’t understand how eating less *bad* food is going to make you lose weight faster than eating more *good* food

They’ve actually studied this!  1200 calories is 1200 calories, whether it’s fruits and vegetables or McDonalds.  There’s a science teacher who tested this very hypothesis back in 2015- he only ate McDonalds for six months and lost 56 pounds through limiting his daily intake to 2,000 calories and exercising for 45 minutes five times a week.  Certainly, if you eat McDonald’s every day, you’ll be worse off nutritionally and may be sluggish (which in turn could lead to a lowered total daily energy expenditure, the amount of calories you burn in a day), but you won’t gain or lose any more weight than if you are the same number of calories of raw vegetables.  On the flip side, you can absolutely gain weight as a raw vegan.  A lot of “healthy foods” are very calorie dense, and that can add up quickly.

The reason “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie” holds true is because of the first law of thermodynamics (bet you didn’t see a physics lesson coming 😂).  The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created or destroyed; it can only change form.  A calorie is just a unit of energy- it’s literal definition is the amount of heat needed to raise a quantity of water by one degree of temperature.  So the amount of energy it will take your body to digest a calorie is fixed, and the amount of calories per mass of different food components is also fixed.   Fats are 8.8 calories/g, ethanol is 6.9 calories/g, proteins and carbohydrates are about 4.1 calories/g, etc.  Your body can’t tell the difference between 24 grams of fat in a “healthy” food like an avocado, or 24 grams of fat in an “unhealthy” food like a chocolate bar.  It just knows that it’s consumed 24 grams of fat.  “Healthy food” and “unhealthy food” are essentially just arbitrary labels that we’re giving to different foods.  Some “healthy foods” really aren’t that great for you (like protein bars, for example), while some “unhealthy foods” have health benefits (for example, dark chocolate). 

So, if we understand weight loss to be a product of thermodynamics, then weight loss is just a math equation; if the calories you eat are greater than the number of calories you burn, you gain weight.  If they’re equal, you weight stays the same.  If the number of calories you burn is greater than the number of calories you eat, you lose weight.  This is called “energy homeostasis”.  When a calorie of food is consumed, one of three things can happen- the calorie is stored as body fat, triglycerides, or glycogen, the calorie transfers to cells and gets converted into ATP, or the calorie is dissipated as heat (”burned off”).  When you lose weight, the fat is converted into carbon dioxide and water.  You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s expelled as urine or sweat.

If you get to a really detailed, bio-chemical level of detail, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that, but the impacts that those nuances have on day to day life are minimal.  That’s not to say that an all-McDonalds diet is a good way to lose weight- it’s not.  But it’s not because it’s “unhealthy” so much as it’s because it’s lacking in needed nutrients and it would be an unsustainable diet for most people.  The important thing when it comes to weight loss is not which diet you’re doing, but which diet works for you and your lifestyle.  Some people find being vegan works really well because it limits their choices and gives them a non-dieting reason to turn down food.  Some people find that intermittent fasting works for them because they never really had time for breakfast anyway.  Some people find keto works for them because they were already eating a lot of protein and because they like the community.  Some people find Weight Watchers works for them because it acts as an accountability system... etc. etc.  But the important thing is not the contents of the diet; it’s that the diet is sustainable.

I hope that helps to answer your question at least a bit.  I’m not a science teacher or anything so I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself well.

#Anonymous #effys-closet #effys closet

[solarheroine]

with everything going on, a dear friend of mine has recently decided to leave the rpc. they don’t have a known blog or a platform, so they asked me to use this blog to broadcast what they told me. this was via discord so sorry for the bizarre formatting.

this whole thing is why i don't wanna get in the rpc. very performative it's supposed to be about fcs of color but all of that makes it about everything But that ppl don't care about representation they only care about virtue signaling and making it known that ~they're inclusive~ i've just been watching on that lil throwaway blog i don't use and i'm just very rubbed the wrong way by the entirety of the rpc rn  i just find any of it hard to believe when the ppl making the lists aren't using any of the fcs or if all the fcs are light  no one truly cared until another black person was murdered and black people, once again, had to bear the brunt of making shit shake to bring things back to the conciousness nobody in the rpc has good enough race politics to do any of the talking everyone's doing rn. everyone's misinformed and uneducated and really just clearly haven't done any of the needed leg work when it comes to sociopolitical research and reading and it shows like blatantly clear i'm reaching a point where i'd rather nobody talk about it at all, bc this continued dialogue of the blind leading the blind is literally harmful like real life harmful  and it's the fact that i wanna say something but if i did it'd get ignored i don't have the platform, plus i'm black so atp i give up the rpc isn't a home or a community for me and so i don't feel a heavy enough obligation to try and fix it  it's not even that it's not welcoming, it's that all the niceness is fake and smoke and mirrors bc nobody knows what they're talking about there's no point in anyone talking about inclusivity or race politics if they haven't done the required reading and idc how good their intentions are at the end of the day  but everyone acts like everyone's good and growing and learning and that's not the truth no one's growing if they're not actively making moves to understand the things they're talking about so many of the questions the rpc asks could be fixed if anyone just read a book literally so many foundational texts that exist for these exact conversations and frameworks and it's all one google search away(edited) but instead the entire rpc would rather talk amongst themselves or ask their handful of black friends and create this echo chamber where the marginalized aren't represented and everyone else is blind it's exhausting to watch and i don't want parts of it(edited) i'm starting to see why ppl don't wanna join ooc discords when rpings. like genuinely i have no interest in knowing any of these ppl for real, i don't have the energy for self righteous ignorance  and another thing is the rpc has a fundamental error in ignoring intersectionality trans issues are antiblack issues, sexist issues are race issues, and vice versa and so on and so forth the rpc talks as though everything is separated and it's not and that's another source of so many issues of the terrible race politics of the rpc i saw [ REDACTED ] make a list of trans fc to use and not one of them was darker than a paper bag: that's an issue and the fact no one said anything is an issue ppl fail to see how all of these problems inform one another again bc no one's done the required reading. probably couldn't spell kimberle crenshaw's name if their life depended on it  and if u wanna share or spread anything i said, u can bc i think it's important that ppl hear these things and that they hear them clearly and bluntly. being nice has gotten very old for me cause if i try to spread this around imma cuss somebody out, period. and i'd be well within my rights to 

#rpt #rpo #rpc #racism tw #antiblackness tw

[idk-my-aesthetic]

isle kingdom au

so i’ve had this idea for an AU for a little while, but i don’t wanna actually write anything for it until i’m done w/ my current descendants wips, but i also wanna talk about it lol so ig im making a post? please send me asks about it i wanna talk about it.... anyway

**tw for child abuse and semi-graphic descriptions of violence.

basically the premise of the au is that even though he tried to get it passed at first, ben never went through with pulling the vks off the isle. he kept meaning too, but it just kept being pushed to the back of his list of priorities bc he was so busy w/ being king and never happened 

so bc of this, the core 4 stayed on the isle and never got off it. if you’ve read the stuff in my keep them close series u probably have a better idea of my hc of the isle, but the basics of it are that 1) most of the parents are really bad and abusive + the conditions are disgusting 2) none of the kids are really evil and 3) the vks are all kinda frenimes/rivals and will work together to keep eachother alive even if they act like they hate eachother or will even hurt eachother

so, in the ‘canon’ timeline before going to auradon the core 4 are a gang and slowly gaining power. they’re already the top of the vk gangs and are like gaining on some of the adult ones.

bc they never go to auradon, they just kinda keep doing what they already are and gain more and more power. but, as they gain power their parents start becoming afraid of them and acting like more abusive in attempts to keep the core 4 under their control 

ok bare w/ me for this next bit bc it’s gonna sound real ooc for like a sec then make sense

so, as they’re gaining power and their parents are haveing more and more trouble controlling them their parents are becoming more and more violent.

im not sure on the order yet, but basically cruella, jafar, eq, and malifacent all do something like really really bad to their respective kid, so one of the other core 4 kills them bc like. yeah. 

i have some vauge ideas of what each of them could have done and i don’t really know if i want to say them or even use them tbh bc they’re like.... bad, like real bad. which they kinda have to be, you know? bc like.... none of the core 4 would turn to killing if they didn’t have a real good reason, and their parents continuing the abuse that they always have woulden’t be enough, so the parents would have to do something really really bad for one of the others to justify killing them 

its important to mention that none of them kill their own parent. it’s always one of the other 4, im not sure who kills who just yet, but none of them kill their own parent. They’re saved from their parents by each other and they never really have any confrontation with their parents (which will change l8r 👀👀, let me explain)

Even tho they didn’t kill their own parents, everyone kinda assumed they did in order to take their places/gain power. A handful of their friends know the real story, but it’s mostly kept under wraps and it’s like general “knowledge” that they killed their parents for power. They’re not really hiding it or anything, I mean they did still each kill one of the 4 most powerful villains so it’s not like anyone is gonna be less afraid if they knew the truth. ppl just make assumptions and never really question them and they just let ppl think what they do

So bc their parents are dead and they let everyone assume they killed their own parent they very easily climb up the ranks and end up in charge of the isle bc atp they’re seen as the most ruthless/evil/powerful

So now that they’re in charge of the isle they start like..... actually making it a livable place. Ofc at first they try to make a version of Carlos’s machine to break the barrier, but they can’t get it to work so he just modifys it to steal magic from the barrair for them to use. (Another idea stolen from my keep them close series but like I like the idea lol)

And when I say they make it a livable place I mean they start doing stuff like building water purifiers, making like safe houses, establishing some kind of working economy, taking control of the barge drop offs and how everything is distributed, fixing broken electricity, etc etc

A lot of what they do is based off of Carlos’s machines and designs, which like obvi other ppl are helping him gather materials and for and build, since he has power bc he’s like one of the ppl in charge. And he like teaches other ppl how to do what he does and fix anything that goes wrong

Evie kinda puts herself in charge of setting up like medical centers + homes for kids and stuff. Also some kinda way to grow food. B4 they’re in charge nothing can really grow but they use the magic they steal from the barrier to make stuff grow. And evie can use it to make like lots of healing items and such

Jay ends up mostly in charge of like collecting and distribution of their recourses. At first like the barge is kinda a hugeeee problem to deal with bc ppl are fighting over the like moldy food and destroyed clothes and stuff. But eventually they get it organized and have stuff sent to the respective place it should, like clothes and scrap fabric are sent to a place that repairs and sells them, parts and electronics are sent to Carlos or his helpers, etc

Other minor vks like Celia, dizzy, the sea three, Diego, etc are all in this two but this is already really long so just know they’re like helping and like pretty high ranking/highly regarded. Send me an ask with questions please

Mal is kinda regarded as the ultimate leader/queen of the isle ig even though the other 3 have basically the same amount of power. Mostly bc her job ends up being keeping the adults who dislike them inline and keeping their power as heads of the isle

Most ppl are just kinda chill w/ them being in charge, especially a lot of the ppl who were banished for minor crimes. A few of the adult villains try to fight them and end up dead lol, and anyone caught doing especially bad things, like r*pe, hurting someone they shouldn’t have, being a child abuser, etc will end up killed by mal or one of the others. They don’t kill u for like every crime obviously only the like inexcusable ones. Stuff like stealing or mental illness or w/e they basically just help you work through

They’re aren’t any like real laws ig but they deal with issues as they go and give harsh punishments if needed. It serves to keep themselves seen as strong/evil/powerful despite all the good they do and helps keep others too afraid to challenge them. Like frollo isn’t going to challenge them if Ursula tried the same thing and got killed. (The fact that she abused uma and her siblings obviously had nothing to do with that,,,,,,,,,,,)

So yeah! They basically turned the isle into a inhabitable place in the years that they spent as its leaders, and it functions as its own kinda kingdom despite its harsh and confusing laws/rules

But we ain’t done yet, lol

Basically everything I’ve just explained is.... mostly backstory? Kinda? It’s the type of thing where you slowly find out about all this stuff while they actual story goes on, but I figured it’d be less confusing to explain it first :3

So the Actual story starts a few years after when Ben originally was supposed to take the vks off the isle. He, all the other princess/princes he want to school with, the core 4, the sea 3, etc are all in their mid to early 20s.

Auradon has basically no clue what’s the deal w/ the isle. They’re only interaction w/ them is through the like goblins that bring over the trash barges, but those guys are chill and basically don’t tell the aks anything lol.

So Ben is ruling his kingdom, and the core 4 are ruling their own, both sides are doing pretty well and ignoring each other, but then! All of a sudden there’s these sudden deaths/fires/some kinda terrorist attack on the outskirts of the kingdom.

I haven’t thought through this part too much, but basically he knows that they’re is some kinda threat, but he doesn’t know excatly what it is. All he does know is that the villain that is attacking is demanding to speak to the children of malifecent, jafar, cruella devil, and the evil queen.

He basically rounds up the heroes of those respective stories bc they’re all being threatened in some way or another. The mystery villain continues to do more damage and seems basically impossible to beat, and has given them a time limit b4 they’ll go and start destroying more

They discuss their options and decide their best plan is to go to the isle and convince them core 4 to help, bringing along the heroes and some of the main aks w/ them

Obviously it doesn’t go well bc they show up and mal basically has them arrested lmao

Again I have more in-depth ideas for this part but this post is already wayyyy to long so I’m trying to hurry and finish up

The talk, vks meet their respective heroes, everything is from ak/hero POV so as they explore the isle and talk to the core 4 and other vks they slowly find out about all ^^^ that stuff up there

The core 4 are eventually agree, and they go to face the villains only to find out its their parents who have been resurrected!!!! Fuck!!!!

Idk how or why just yet lmao but I will soon

Parents are obvi pissed, core 4 face their own parents and finally get like some kinda closer or smthn idk I feel like y’all get the gist

in the end auradon agknolages the isle as its own kingdom and the core 4 as its leaders and open trade/remove the barrier so the isle can continue to grow bc it’s been struggling due to lack of recourses

And that’s like the basic outline of my au! I wanna write it eventually but tbh I’m expecting eventually to be like 3 years from now bc of how much other stuff I have so for rn I’m just gonna blog about it. Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff/plots/emotional arcs etc I didn’t talk about bc like This Post Is So Long I’m So Sorry, So please please please send me asks/questions/comments/even your own ideas!!! Please. Everything about this will be tagged with “isle kingdom au” :3

#isle kingdom au #descendents #descendents 2 #mal daughter of maleficent #mal descendants #carlos descendants #carlos de vil #jay son of jafar #jay descendants #evie descendants #evie daughter of the evil queen #celia facilier #descendants dizzy #sea three #ben descendants #ben son of belle and beast #ships are kinda iffy so im tagging possible ones #mal x carlos x jay x evie #malvie #jaylos #my writing #my post #idk what else to tag #i just really really want ppl to see this.... #anyone i tag is gonna be in it i promise #i already have ideas for all of them just not enough room to talk about them all lol

[bolachasgratis]

NOS Primavera Sound 2019: printable timetables, our preview and playlist

It doesn’t matter how conservative or liberal you are: people are naturally resistant to change, especially if the previous form of what’s changing was so dear to them. We get it: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Judging by the tone and content of most comments we can find online about this year’s Primavera lineup, both in Porto and Barcelona, folks ain’t happy about “the new normal”. Yes, some of the biggest pop artists in the planet have claimed most of the spots with the big font in it. Yes, there’s a shortage of loud, extreme music we often found at the long gone ATP stage, and every year there are less and less historical, cult indie rock bands reforming for a Primavera performance. But, other than that - tiny specks on a lineup of over 120 bands in Barcelona and over 60 in Porto - has it really changed that much? Is the Primavera DNA gone? (Was there really a “Primavera DNA” to begin with?)

We don’t think so. In this year's preview of NOS Primavera Sound, we’re looking back on our ten years of going to Primavera festivals (since our debut in Barcelona 2009, we only missed it in 2011). We identify five pillars of what we think makes a typical Primavera lineup - and reflect on what’s new and what’s missing. In the end, we can say we’re actually more excited for this years’ edition than we’ve been in the past three or four years. 

Our preview playlist (which you can find below) features 33 artists, and we tried our best not to include the very obvious ones. 

Download the timetables (always subject to change): Regular PDF / Mobile PDF / Customisable Excel file

The historical indie rock bunch (and a couple of reunions) 

This lineup has got Built to Spill performing “Keep it Like a Secret” (Thursday, 19:50). It’s automatically good just for that reason, even if it was a late addition after a cancellation. It’s got the first ever Guided by Voices performance in the Iberian Peninsula (Saturday, 20:45) and a rare appearance by cult hero Liz Phair (Friday, 22:00). It’s got Low still fresh out of their most lauded album release of the past fourteen years (Saturday, 23:20). What about reunions? We get it, everyone expects so much of a festival where bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive or Pavement have first performed after long periods of retirement. Stereolab (Thursday, 23:20) were one of the most inventive, genre-defining and influential bands of the 90s and return to the stage after a ten year hiatus, and the Basque band Lisabö (Friday, 19:15), who has released in 2018 their first album in eight years, was once one of the most powerful post-rock/hardcore bands in Europe. And, you know... the real reason why we never, ever miss a single NOS Primavera Sound edition is the fact that it’s the most likely place in Europe to be able to witness a rare sighting of the best live band in rock music. Let’s all raise a toast to Shellac (Friday, 21:00). If they weren’t in the lineup, yes, we would think Primavera is gone. But, as long as Albini, Trainer and Weston are with us, can we really say the festival is not what it used to be?

Up-and-coming indie singer-songwriters 

Some of them we’ve seen and talked extensively before on our NOS Primavera Sound and Vodafone Paredes de Coura previews. Courtney Barnett (Friday, 19:50) played for a half-empty tent before we all hit the jackpot with her debut LP and was one of our biggest highlights of that year. Lucy Dacus (Saturday, 18:50) and Big Thief (Saturday, 19:15) played two of our favorite shows at last year’s Vodafone Paredes de Coura. They’re both competing for our attention this year, along with Tomberlin (Saturday, 19:00), who is also playing in the same time slot and appeals to the same fanbase, which makes us a bit sad to miss the others. Even if we think this was a scheduling mistake, it’s still an indicator of how good this lineup is. And you’ve still got Snail Mail (Saturday, 20:30), hopefully with a full band, when you’re done with the gig of your choice. Just before Barnett on Friday we’ve got two songwriters who released two of the most exciting albums of 2019 so far. We have missed Aldous Harding (Friday, 17:45) every time we had the chance to see her (either due to cancellations or her being placed in tiny venues in festivals) and we’ll try not to fuck it up this time around. We'll probably skip Nilüfer Yanya (Friday, 18:50) since we’ve seen her play with her band in a tiny anarchist venue less than a month ago, but you shouldn’t. And, if you don’t care about Jarvis Cocker (sacrilege) don’t miss the only male songwriter in this list: the Canadian songwriter MorMor (Thursday, 21:25) has released a superb EP earlier this month.

Unique, experimental-ish contemporary artists

There’s always space on a Primavera lineup for some of the best performers we’ve been seeing in the past few years that don’t really fit in any big boxes. Synth-heavy Let’s Eat Grandma (Thursday, 23:45) is not only the best band name in the lineup, it’s one of the most exciting new acts coming out of England in the past few years. Spoken word queen Kate Tempest (Saturday, 22:30) is debuting her new album ahead of its release later in June and shall compete for your attention with Tirzah (Saturday, 22:00) and Rosalía (Saturday, 22:10), the hottest artist out of Spain in God knows how long. Later on, Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry (Saturday, 23:30) presents her much lauded recent LP Broken Politics. Experimental rock outfit Jambinai **(Friday, 18:00) are known for using traditional folk Korean instruments to produce some of the sharpest sounding post-rock these days, while Shabaka Hutchings brings four drummers to his Sons of Kemet XL** (Friday, 20:20) jazztravaganza.

Nobody’s taking your guitars away

Playing a bit softer or harder, we’ve already listed tons of guitar music above. Yes, there’s less heavy music than a few years ago, but was that really ever a defining quality of a Primavera lineup? Still, besides all the indie rock bands we mentioned before there are a few more options for guitar-heavy partying, from returning experimental-ish hardcore behemoths Fucked Up (Friday, 22:15) to upcoming Aussie punk rockers Amyl and the Sniffers (Saturday, 21:00). Although very different from each other, Hop Along (Saturday, 17:45) and Viagra Boys (Saturday, 18:00) will compete for your attention in the beginning of the last day of the festival.

The indie/alternative big guns

You wouldn’t set up a 30,000 capacity festival where the headliners are six indie singer-songwriters with two records under their belt since 2016, right? We know we wouldn’t even though that’s basically half of what we listen to. Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker is back with his new project JARV IS (Thursday, 21:00), which is apparently “primarily a live experience”, mostly limited to festivals. We don’t know what to expect and we don’t want to read about it beforehand. Can we still be surprised sometimes, is that too much to ask? It’s been over a decade since we last were excited about anything related to Interpol **(Friday, 23:45), but reports from Barcelona and All Points East tell us at least 2/3 of the setlist is composed of Antics and Turn On the Bright Lights songs, so there’s that. Later that night, **James Blake (Friday, 01:00) is back with a new album that we didn’t care to listen to, but we thought his past two concerts we saw in festivals were way more interesting than his records, so we’ll probably give him a shot. On Saturday we witness a rare European show by Jorge Ben Jor (Saturday 19:50), the MPB giant who rarely performs outside Brazil, before the neo soul queen Erykah Badu (Saturday, 00:30) takes the stage as the closing big act of the festival.

The new normal

Yes, something changed at NOS Primavera Sound over the past couple of years. But did it change for worse? This was a festival that, despite running until the early hours of the morning, lacked an electronic dance music programme that was as consistent as its daylight and prime-time programme. This has changed last year with the introduction of new stage Bits, and has considerably improved this years when it comes to DJs. Yaeji (Thursday, 03:00) has released some of the most non-obvious house hits since 2017. Together with Peggy Gou **(Thursday, 01:30), **Helena Hauff (Friday, 04:30), SOPHIE (Friday, 02:30) and JASSS (Friday, 00:00), the Korean-American producer and DJ is the flagbearer of an experimental, female-fronted, fresh sounding clubbing scene that not so long ago was pretty much nonexistent in Primavera. Producer Yves Tumor (Saturday, 01:00) brings another side of the same scene with his full band; Modeselektor (Saturday, 23:45) are hardly newcomers and have performed in countless editions of Primavera, both as Modeselektor and Moderat. 

But maybe that’s not the addition of a good clubbing programme with a stage dedicated to clubbers that’s really bothering a seemingly substantial part of Primavera’s typical festival goers. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the big slots in the lineup - even though those represent only 10% of the festival’s lineup - are occupied by big, guitarless, not-really-indie acts. But can we really rule them out and say they’re not “Primavera artists” based on their (lack of) artistic merit? Of course not. It’s been seven years since Solange (Thursday, 00:30) has released “Losing You” and stopped being referred to as simply “Beyoncé’s younger sister”; we are yet to find a bad review for her latest two albums. Hip-hop ends up being underrepresented this year, compared to past editions, with the likes of Danny Brown (22:20), Tommy Cash (23:25) and Allen Halloween (22:15) all competing for your attention Thursday night, and newcomer ProfJam (Friday, 17:00) getting an extra early slot the next day. But what’s really grinding people’s gears is the presence of one of the most important artists in the world today. Colombian J Balvin (Friday, 22:15) is one of the most important regaetón singers today, and, through his many collaborations with English-speaking artists, played an instrumental role as the genre definitely took over Western audiences and became the most popular genre of pop music worldwide, toppling the long dominance of hip hop, R&B and EDM. Literally every song on his setlist is a major hit. All killer, no filler. Can you really say the same about any other artist in the lineup (except Shellac, of course)? Name one.

Our playlist this year has 66 songs by 33 artists. We couldn’t make it shorter, it’s still impossible to see all those artists, and we could definitely add some more. Do you still think this is a subpar lineup? It’s not.

#nos primavera sound #live #j balvin #built to spill #jarvis cocker #allen halloween #solange #modeselektor #yaeji #sophie #yves tumor #jorge ben jor #rosalía #fucked up #amy and the sniffers #interpol #james blake #viagra boys #hop along #sons of kemet #kate tempest #let's eat grandma #nilufer yanya #aldous harding #big thief #lucy dacus #snail mail #jambinai #low #stereolab

[ninjasai]

Starting Gear and Supplements

I mentioned the other day that you're gonna need some starting equipment to get things going.  This is a little guide as to what I recommend you invest in to get yourself off on the right track:

1)  Tank top/workout shirt.  Don't wear a normal t-shirt to the gym.  Not only will cotton soak up sweat and leave you feeling damp and gross, it's too good of an insulator.  You're going to be sweating and generating a lot of body heat, so you'll want to stay as cool and comfortable as possible.  Go to the sportswear section of the store and pick out a thin, light tank top made of polyester/nylon or a poly/cotton blend that'll help wick away moisture.  If the material isn't labeled just feel it.  You'll know it's right since it isn'tnormal cotton T-shirt material.

2)  Workout pants/shorts.  Be sure to get a pair that is really light and breathes well.  Track pants or shorts of the same material as your top.  For the love of god don't work out in sweatpants.  Aside from being the crocs of legwear they're much too thick and will trap body heat.

3)  Water bottle.  Gotta stay hydrated.  Preferably get one with one of those little metal balls that'll help whisk whey protein when you shake it.  That helps a ton.

4)  Workout gloves, with a wrist strap.  This serves two functions.  First, it helps prevent the formation of calluses on your palms and fingers when you lift heavy.  Second, the wrist strap is crucial.  Make sure it's thick and sturdy, and wraps around your wrist completely once, before you fix it in place with the velcro section.  Once you get into more advanced training and you're working with really heavy barbells, a wrong move can really screw up your wrists.  I've injured both wrists before because I used gloves that didn't have a strap, and I was doing military presses with an 80 pound barbell.

Each of these things shouldn't cost you more than around 10$ if you shop around right.  In all, this would be 40-50 bucks worth of gear.  Pretty cheap, considering that you’ll be using these things for years.

Now when you're working out you're trying to get your body to do four things:  1) build up muscle (and bone for the more elderly out there), 2) reduce muscle loss, 3) build up stamina to make it through a workout session, and 4) burn fat.  Nutrititional supplements help with these, and you'll want to pick up the following:

1)  Whey protein.  The first and most important supplement, protein is one of the basic building blocks of your body and is one of the major components that makes up muscle.  Whey protein in particular is important because it is rapidly absorbed by the body.  Thing to remember is that some protein brands are better than others: either the stuff is purer, or it has less filler.  Personally, I go for Optimum Nutrition brand whey protein.  While there are whey protein compounds that are better quality, this brand is both relatively cheap and is also pretty good quality stuff and comes in loads of yummy flavors.  After your workout, fill your bottle a little less than half full with water, add two scoops, shake, and give it a minute or two for the foam to clear.  Then chug.

2)  Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs).  Proteins are built up of amino acids, but amino acids are more than just the building blocks of cells.  Many have hormonal and cell-signaling functions, and branched-chain amino acids play multiple roles as a workout supplement.  BCAAs help promote muscle building as a nutrient, but they also may help prevent muscle breakdown and enhance stamina.  There is one problem with BCAAs however:  they do NOT dissolve well in water.  Instead of mixing them into your whey protein, you'll want to buy BCAAs prepackaged in capsule form.  Take one BCAA pill before your workout, and one after.

3)  Creatine Phosphate.  If you remember your high school biology, the most basic unit of energy trasfer is high-energy phosphate bonds.  The main carrier of high energy phosphate bonds is ATP.  Unfortunately your muscle cells only have a limited amount of ATP, and that's where creatine comes in.  By taking creatine phosphate you boost its concentration in your muscle cells, which provides an extra pool of energy for your muscle fibers to draw on when you're exercising.  This means you'll have better stamina when you're lifting.  One minor side effect of creatine however is that it'll lead to a little water retention, and you may gain a few pounds as a result.  But worry not:  it's completely temporary.  Just stop taking the creatine supplements and wait a few weeks and you'll piss out the excess and lose the extra weight without doing anything else.  Take 5 grams a day with a meal.  I just add 2 teaspoons to my morning coffee.

4)  Omega-3 Fatty Acids (Fish oil).  Omega-3 fatty acids have several important functions, and you should probably taking it anyway if you can.  It helps prevent cardiac issues, is crucial for your immune system, helps adjust how your body uses and stores fat in good ways, and works to improve protein absorption.  Fish oil can be the priciest of the supplements I've listed however.

So there you have it.  Your starter pack for the new swole life.

#gym #workout #fitness #blogpost

[cristinajourdanqp]

CrossFit’s Criticisms: How Do I Keep Energy Levels High on Primal?

Over the past two posts in this series, I’ve explained how a Primal way of eating can not only support a heavy CrossFit schedule, but elevate it. Today, I’m going to explain how going Primal can help fix a common complaint among CrossFitters: fatigue. No energy. No pep. A distinct lack of physical and psychological motivation to train, let alone hit PRs. This doesn’t just make it hard to finish workouts and make gains. It bleeds into the rest of your life and makes that worse, too.

Here’s a typical query from a committed CrossFitter suffering from low energy.

I feel like I have been doing everything right lately. Eating clean, working out everyday. But recently WODs that would typically do pretty well at have been killing me. To the point I am the last finished in every class. This came out of nowhere. What could it be? Anyone else experience anything like this?

“Eating clean”: Eating too few calories and/or carbohydrates. We already know what’s wrong with that.

“Working out everyday”: This isn’t just hard on the body, it’s downright counterproductive. Daily workouts will shatter most people, particularly on the level of CrossFit WODs, and have them out the other end in worse shape than before. I’ll be doing a post on CrossFit and recovery soon, but it’s worth noting for today that CrossFit recommends three days on and one day off. That plan may or may not work for an individual based on any number of factors (more to come there…).

Or this one, from the CF forum:

I have gone off my usual oats that i used to have for breakfast. i have reduced my fruit to 1.5 servings a day, nor am i currently consuming anything starchy, like, beans or sweet potatoes (my fave), i eliminated these and all dairy just to see what happens. Now my body is reacting with sluggishness and fat cravings (sunflower seeds, anyone?) Despite that I still go train hard and sweaty but I noticed it’s taking me forever to recover. My leafy salads and eggs and chicken breasts (all i eat basically) are just not cutting it. how do i get over it? please help! grains are disgusting, they bloat me. dairy causes breakouts. no going back. thanks for advice…

The reasons for this person’s lack of energy is even more glaring. “Nothing starchy,” no longer eating “my fave” sweet potatoes, leafy salads and chicken breasts. She’s barely eating!

I’ve said my piece on macronutrient interventions. Since a major reason for fatigue is inadequate food and macronutrient intake, increasing carb intake and eating more calories overall from whole-food Primal sources will give you more caloric and nutrient density.

I’m not here to suggest you modify the workouts. They are what they are. This isn’t about changing CrossFit. This is about working with it. That’s the beauty of this Primal stuff—it applies to everything because it’s all-encompassing, because it’s about making you the best, healthiest, most productive human you can be. And humans do all sorts of different things. Like CrossFit.

So, what does Primal have to offer a CrossFitter who wants more energy for training sessions and normal waking (yawning) life?

Honor Your Circadian Rhythm

Most people think of the circadian rhythm in terms of sleep and sleep alone. Sleep is a big part of the circadian picture, but it’s not everything. Every single cell in your body follows a circadian rhythm. Circadian clocks are attached to every piece of peripheral tissue, embedded in every organ, enmeshed in every physiological system. Even your skin’s resistance to UV damage follows a circadian schedule.

What does this mean? If your circadian rhythm is off-kilter, every cell and physiological process in your body functions differently. Problems arise. Energy production slows. Every standard physiological process runs a little funny. When your circadian rhythm is off, you’re off. Nothing works quite right. You’re not yourself.

Expose yourself to natural light during the morning and daytime. This helps set your circadian rhythm and gets you in tune with the sun’s rise and fall. It also energizes, and that’s great. Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamin-like substances around. But sunlight is also a great source of blue light that keeps us awake at night and alert and energized during the day. It has to be real, natural light. For all our access to artificial lighting indoors, our daytime light exposure is downright pathetic.

Limit artificial light at night. Blue light (from screens, smartphones) tricks your circadian rhythm into thinking it’s daytime all over again. UVEX safety goggles block blue light, are completely affordable.

Get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Miss sleep, miss reps. Lose sleep, lose your footing during the jerk. Sleep is when we recover from past bodily insults, like doing Fran or high rep zercher squats. It’s when we consolidate memories. It’s when we burn fat and release growth hormone. It’s even when we release a large amount of ATPe, a surge of the body’s energy currency. Miss your sleep, miss that surge.

Balance the Intensity of CrossFit with the Tranquility of Nature

CrossFit is stressful. It’s acute stressor after acute stressor, which is a double-edged blade. This is why it works so well but also why some people can burn themselves out. A person simply can’t go hard without resting. There are limits.

Get out into nature every day if you can but at least once a week, preferably twice. Nature is a hard reset for your monkey mind. It’s returning home to the source. Extensive research shows that this kind of excursion can reduce stress, the same stress that’s pushing you over the edge and destroying your will to live. Spending time in nature is an easy fix (if it works, and it often does), providing a quick but effective stanch against the stress.

Nature doesn’t have to be the forest. It can be desert, beach, lake, marsh, swamp, meadow, prairie, bog, jungle. Even a city park can work. Use what you have.

Focus on Micronutrients

The Primal eating plan has always identified and promoted the consumption of otherwise obscure micronutrients, many of which play major roles in energy production.

Iodine: The raw building block for thyroid hormone, which drives metabolic rate. Low intakes can cause hypothyroid, and then you’re lagging. Best sources include seaweed (especially kelp/kombu), dairy, and eggs.

Selenium: We need selenium to convert inactive thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone, the stuff that actually has an effect on our energy levels. Brazil nuts (just one or two will provide the RDA) and wild salmon are the best sources.

Magnesium: Magnesium is a cofactor in over 300 physiological systems and enzymatic reactions making it a crucial…. blah blah blah. You’ve heard the spiel before. Magnesium is important. For energy levels, it’s almost everything. Without adequate magnesium, we produce very little ATP, the body’s energy currency.

Glycine: Taken an hour before bed, glycine—the primary amino acid in gelatin/collagen—promotes more restful sleep and promotes wakefulness and better performance the next day, even if you force sleep restriction.

If you’re doing CrossFit without paying attention to your intake of iodine, selenium, magnesium, and glycine/collagen, you risk losing energy levels.

Get Fat-Adapted

Though I’ve focused primarily on non-dietary factors today, I’ll close with perhaps the most momentous modification you can make to support your daily energy levels: getting fat-adapted.

Fat-adaptation allows you to easily tap into your own body fat stores in between meals, providing a steady source of clean-burning energy. Fat-adaptation tends to normalize blood glucose readings, so you’re no longer chasing the sugar dragon up into hyperglycemia and down into hypoglycemia.

Fat-adaptation doesn’t imply exclusive low carb eating for life. CrossFit and other intense training regimens give the fat-adapted a lot of leeway with their carb intake. As Peter Attia explains, you can still carb up before and after your training sessions without compromising your ability to tap into body fat for energy as long as you create a glycogen debt that must be refilled and your carbs don’t exceed the debt. CrossFit, with its full-body, high-intensity, moderate-to-high-volume training, just might be the most reliable way to create an economy-rending amount of glycogen debt.

(Note: For those who aren’t fat-adapted yet, understand that it’s a process and will take a few weeks. It will likely require a temporary change to your training schedule to accommodate the metabolic shifts taking place. Let adaptation trump performance for a short time. Results aren’t instantaneous, but they’re worth the short-term adjustment.)

In the end, having adequate energy boils down to support.

Eating enough calories and carbs and protein and fat to support your training.

Supporting your biologically-appropriate circadian rhythm by getting bright light during the day, dim light at night, and having a reasonable bedtime.

Eating adequate amounts of the basic micronutrients that support energy production.

Spending time in nature to support your body’s need for rest, relaxation, and green spaces.

Thanks for reading today, everyone. Have thoughts or questions on energy and high intensity exercise? Share them below.

[fishermariawo]

CrossFit’s Criticisms: How Do I Keep Energy Levels High on Primal?

Over the past two posts in this series, I’ve explained how a Primal way of eating can not only support a heavy CrossFit schedule, but elevate it. Today, I’m going to explain how going Primal can help fix a common complaint among CrossFitters: fatigue. No energy. No pep. A distinct lack of physical and psychological motivation to train, let alone hit PRs. This doesn’t just make it hard to finish workouts and make gains. It bleeds into the rest of your life and makes that worse, too.

Here’s a typical query from a committed CrossFitter suffering from low energy.

I feel like I have been doing everything right lately. Eating clean, working out everyday. But recently WODs that would typically do pretty well at have been killing me. To the point I am the last finished in every class. This came out of nowhere. What could it be? Anyone else experience anything like this?

“Eating clean”: Eating too few calories and/or carbohydrates. We already know what’s wrong with that.

“Working out everyday”: This isn’t just hard on the body, it’s downright counterproductive. Daily workouts will shatter most people, particularly on the level of CrossFit WODs, and have them out the other end in worse shape than before. I’ll be doing a post on CrossFit and recovery soon, but it’s worth noting for today that CrossFit recommends three days on and one day off. That plan may or may not work for an individual based on any number of factors (more to come there…).

Or this one, from the CF forum:

I have gone off my usual oats that i used to have for breakfast. i have reduced my fruit to 1.5 servings a day, nor am i currently consuming anything starchy, like, beans or sweet potatoes (my fave), i eliminated these and all dairy just to see what happens. Now my body is reacting with sluggishness and fat cravings (sunflower seeds, anyone?) Despite that I still go train hard and sweaty but I noticed it’s taking me forever to recover. My leafy salads and eggs and chicken breasts (all i eat basically) are just not cutting it. how do i get over it? please help! grains are disgusting, they bloat me. dairy causes breakouts. no going back. thanks for advice…

The reasons for this person’s lack of energy is even more glaring. “Nothing starchy,” no longer eating “my fave” sweet potatoes, leafy salads and chicken breasts. She’s barely eating!

I’ve said my piece on macronutrient interventions. Since a major reason for fatigue is inadequate food and macronutrient intake, increasing carb intake and eating more calories overall from whole-food Primal sources will give you more caloric and nutrient density.

I’m not here to suggest you modify the workouts. They are what they are. This isn’t about changing CrossFit. This is about working with it. That’s the beauty of this Primal stuff—it applies to everything because it’s all-encompassing, because it’s about making you the best, healthiest, most productive human you can be. And humans do all sorts of different things. Like CrossFit.

So, what does Primal have to offer a CrossFitter who wants more energy for training sessions and normal waking (yawning) life?

Honor Your Circadian Rhythm

Most people think of the circadian rhythm in terms of sleep and sleep alone. Sleep is a big part of the circadian picture, but it’s not everything. Every single cell in your body follows a circadian rhythm. Circadian clocks are attached to every piece of peripheral tissue, embedded in every organ, enmeshed in every physiological system. Even your skin’s resistance to UV damage follows a circadian schedule.

What does this mean? If your circadian rhythm is off-kilter, every cell and physiological process in your body functions differently. Problems arise. Energy production slows. Every standard physiological process runs a little funny. When your circadian rhythm is off, you’re off. Nothing works quite right. You’re not yourself.

Expose yourself to natural light during the morning and daytime. This helps set your circadian rhythm and gets you in tune with the sun’s rise and fall. It also energizes, and that’s great. Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamin-like substances around. But sunlight is also a great source of blue light that keeps us awake at night and alert and energized during the day. It has to be real, natural light. For all our access to artificial lighting indoors, our daytime light exposure is downright pathetic.

Limit artificial light at night. Blue light (from screens, smartphones) tricks your circadian rhythm into thinking it’s daytime all over again. UVEX safety goggles block blue light, are completely affordable.

Get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Miss sleep, miss reps. Lose sleep, lose your footing during the jerk. Sleep is when we recover from past bodily insults, like doing Fran or high rep zercher squats. It’s when we consolidate memories. It’s when we burn fat and release growth hormone. It’s even when we release a large amount of ATPe, a surge of the body’s energy currency. Miss your sleep, miss that surge.

Balance the Intensity of CrossFit with the Tranquility of Nature

CrossFit is stressful. It’s acute stressor after acute stressor, which is a double-edged blade. This is why it works so well but also why some people can burn themselves out. A person simply can’t go hard without resting. There are limits.

Get out into nature every day if you can but at least once a week, preferably twice. Nature is a hard reset for your monkey mind. It’s returning home to the source. Extensive research shows that this kind of excursion can reduce stress, the same stress that’s pushing you over the edge and destroying your will to live. Spending time in nature is an easy fix (if it works, and it often does), providing a quick but effective stanch against the stress.

Nature doesn’t have to be the forest. It can be desert, beach, lake, marsh, swamp, meadow, prairie, bog, jungle. Even a city park can work. Use what you have.

Focus on Micronutrients

The Primal eating plan has always identified and promoted the consumption of otherwise obscure micronutrients, many of which play major roles in energy production.

Iodine: The raw building block for thyroid hormone, which drives metabolic rate. Low intakes can cause hypothyroid, and then you’re lagging. Best sources include seaweed (especially kelp/kombu), dairy, and eggs.

Selenium: We need selenium to convert inactive thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone, the stuff that actually has an effect on our energy levels. Brazil nuts (just one or two will provide the RDA) and wild salmon are the best sources.

Magnesium: Magnesium is a cofactor in over 300 physiological systems and enzymatic reactions making it a crucial…. blah blah blah. You’ve heard the spiel before. Magnesium is important. For energy levels, it’s almost everything. Without adequate magnesium, we produce very little ATP, the body’s energy currency.

Glycine: Taken an hour before bed, glycine—the primary amino acid in gelatin/collagen—promotes more restful sleep and promotes wakefulness and better performance the next day, even if you force sleep restriction.

If you’re doing CrossFit without paying attention to your intake of iodine, selenium, magnesium, and glycine/collagen, you risk losing energy levels.

Get Fat-Adapted

Though I’ve focused primarily on non-dietary factors today, I’ll close with perhaps the most momentous modification you can make to support your daily energy levels: getting fat-adapted.

Fat-adaptation allows you to easily tap into your own body fat stores in between meals, providing a steady source of clean-burning energy. Fat-adaptation tends to normalize blood glucose readings, so you’re no longer chasing the sugar dragon up into hyperglycemia and down into hypoglycemia.

Fat-adaptation doesn’t imply exclusive low carb eating for life. CrossFit and other intense training regimens give the fat-adapted a lot of leeway with their carb intake. As Peter Attia explains, you can still carb up before and after your training sessions without compromising your ability to tap into body fat for energy as long as you create a glycogen debt that must be refilled and your carbs don’t exceed the debt. CrossFit, with its full-body, high-intensity, moderate-to-high-volume training, just might be the most reliable way to create an economy-rending amount of glycogen debt.

(Note: For those who aren’t fat-adapted yet, understand that it’s a process and will take a few weeks. It will likely require a temporary change to your training schedule to accommodate the metabolic shifts taking place. Let adaptation trump performance for a short time. Results aren’t instantaneous, but they’re worth the short-term adjustment.)

In the end, having adequate energy boils down to support.

Eating enough calories and carbs and protein and fat to support your training.

Supporting your biologically-appropriate circadian rhythm by getting bright light during the day, dim light at night, and having a reasonable bedtime.

Eating adequate amounts of the basic micronutrients that support energy production.

Spending time in nature to support your body’s need for rest, relaxation, and green spaces.

Thanks for reading today, everyone. Have thoughts or questions on energy and high intensity exercise? Share them below.