#differences between framework and library

[zer0twin]

TROUBLE

Hirai Momo x m!reader

11k words

You've heard about Hirai Momo before you ever meet her. Everybody has. She's the girl who allegedly crashed the campus WiFi because too many guys were looking her up at the same time. The girl who got asked out fourteen times during freshman orientation. The girl whose communications professor once stopped mid-lecture because she walked in late and he lost his train of thought.

She's also the girl who's failing three out of five classes and needs a tutor.

That's you. Wednesday afternoons, fifty bucks an hour, private study room in the library basement. You need the money. She needs a miracle.

You're about to need one too.

• • •

The clock on the wall reads 4:22 PM. Twenty-two minutes past the agreed time. You've reorganized the flashcards twice, reread the chapter summaries you typed up last night at one in the morning, and now you're just sitting here, staring at the study room, waiting for her.

You need this gig. Fifty bucks an hour to teach rich kids things they'll immediately forget. It pays for your half of rent, your ramen budget, and occasionally a beer that you drink alone while rereading Freud. You're living the dream.

The door swings open at 4:23. Hirai Momo walks in like she's arriving at a party instead of an academic intervention. She's got her hair down today, long and dark and shiny. Her skin has this warm golden glow to it, probably because she’s out in the open more than she is stuck in air-conditioned study rooms. Large brown eyes spaced just enough to give her that harmless, slightly airheaded innocence. Full lips glossed in something pink and slightly sticky-looking.

And then there's... the rest of her. Momo is built like every heterosexual man's fever dream compressed into five-foot-four of absolute structural devastation. She's wearing a cropped white top that sits tight across her chest - and her chest is, to use a clinical term, ridiculous. The fabric stretches across her breasts, and printed right there, right across the fullest part where your eyes absolutely should not be lingering, is the word THICC in sparkly pink letters. Like a label. Like a declaration. Like a challenge from God to test your professionalism.

Below that, a pleated miniskirt that looks more like a belt. Her thighs are thick and toned (she dances. You’ve definitely come across some of her TikToks, and don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Blame the algorithm), and she's wearing white sneakers with little platform soles that make her legs look even longer than they already do.

She drops her bag on the table with a thud and collapses into the chair across from you.

"Sorry I'm late," she chirps. "I was getting boba and the line was so long. Oh my God, you should've seen it."

"Fascinating." You slide the stack of flashcards toward her. "Chapter seven. Behavioral conditioning. We talked about this last week."

"Right. Yeah. Totally." She picks one up, squints at it, then puts it back down. "I remember. It's the thing with the dogs."

"Pavlov. Yes."

"Love that for him."

This is your life. You went through three years of a psychology program to sit in a windowless study room explaining Pavlov to a girl who once asked you if Sigmund Freud was "that guy from the Avengers."

(He is not. You checked, just to be sure, because Momo has a way of making you doubt your own reality.)

"Okay," you push on, pointing to the first section in the textbook. "So classical conditioning. The basic framework is stimulus, response, reinforcement. You need to understand the difference between positive and negative reinforcement for the exam."

Momo nods along. Her eyes are pointed at the book. Her pen is in her hand. For about forty-five seconds, you almost believe she's paying attention.

Then you notice she's drawing little hearts in the margin of her notebook. Pink ink. Tiny, loopy hearts with even tinier smiley faces inside them.

"Momo."

"Hm?"

"The book is here." You tap the page. "The hearts can wait."

"Sorry! I'm listening, I swear." She straightens up, tucks her hair behind one ear. Her earring catches the fluorescent light and you notice it's shaped like a peach. You're not surprised. "Okay, so. Positive reinforcement is like... when you give someone a treat for being good?"

"Broadly, yes."

"And negative is when you punish them?"

"No. That's punishment. Negative reinforcement is the removal of an aversive stimulus to increase behavior."

She stares at you blankly for a solid four seconds. "Say that again but in human."

You take a slow breath. "If you have a headache and you take an aspirin and the headache goes away, you're more likely to take aspirin next time. The removal of the pain reinforces the behavior."

"Oh! That makes sense." She beams like you've just unlocked the secrets of the universe for her. Then she looks down at her notebook, writes something, and turns it toward you. She's written: asprin = no more ouchie = do it again.

It's misspelled. The i in aspirin is missing. But the concept is correct, and despite everything, you feel a flicker of something that might be professional satisfaction.

"Good enough," you concede.

"Yay!" She claps her hands together. Her chest bounces with the motion and you look at the ceiling like there's something extremely important up there.

You keep going, working through the chapter section by section. Momo's attention span lasts about three to four minutes at a stretch before she starts fidgeting, playing with her hair, checking her phone under the table (she thinks you can't tell, but you can), or asking questions that have nothing to do with the material.

"Do you think pigeons have feelings?"

"Momo, we're talking about operant conditioning."

"Yeah, but Skinner used pigeons, right? That's sad. What if the pigeons didn't want to be in the experiment?"

"The pigeons didn't file a complaint."

"Maybe they couldn't. Maybe that's the real tragedy."

You are so tired.

After another ten minutes of this, Momo lets out a long, dramatic sigh. She pushes the textbook away from her and drops her pen. Leans back in her chair and stares at you with those big, ridiculous eyes.

"I'm not doing this," she declares, gesturing at the carefully organized spread of materials in front of her. The flashcards, the chapter summaries, the color-coded study guide you spent two hours on. "Can't you just, like, write my paper for me?"

"That's not what tutoring is, Momo."

"But it could be."

"It literally cannot."

"You're really smart, though. You could write it in like an hour, probably. And it would be good. I've seen your notes. They're, like, annoyingly organized."

You set your pen down with the slow, measured patience of a man who has considered several career changes in the last hour alone. "Momo. The whole point of me being here is to help you learn the material yourself. That's what your parents are paying for. I'm supposed to guide you through the concepts so that you can—"

"What if I let you fuck me?"

"What?"

"Like, I'll have sex with you if you do my homework." She leans forward, chin in her hands, elbows on the table. The motion pushes her breasts together and the word THICC warps slightly across the compressed fabric. "That's fair, right?"

You choke. Literally choke. There is no liquid in your mouth and you still manage to choke on nothing but oxygen and sheer disbelief. Your face goes hot, a full-body flush that starts at your neck and crawls up to your ears.

"That's— you can't just— Momo, that is not—" You're gesturing with both hands. You don't know what the gestures mean. Neither does she.

"What?" She blinks, tilting her head to one side. Her hair falls over her shoulder and she looks at you with total, unbothered confusion. "Is that a no?"

"It's a— I'm your tutor. There's a professional— there are boundaries, and ethical considerations, and—"

"Are you gay?"

"WHAT?"

"It's totally cool if you are!" She holds her hands up, palms out. "My friend Sana is gay. Well, she says she's 'exploring,' but she literally only talks about this girl Mina, so I think she's figured it out. Anyway, no judgment."

"I'm not gay, Momo!"

"Then what's the problem?" She's not teasing. She's not playing coy. She genuinely, truly, fundamentally does not understand why you're sitting here looking like you've been electrocuted. "This is how I've gotten through school. Guys do stuff for me and I do stuff for them. It's, like, an exchange. I need passing grades. You probably need... I don't know, what do you need?"

"Therapy, apparently."

"Is that expensive? Because I could also pay you, but I already spent my allowance on boba and these earrings." She flicks the peach-shaped earring. "They were on sale, though."

You sit there for a long, long moment. Somewhere in the library, someone is printing something. The world continues to function normally while yours tilts on its axis.

She watches you, patient and curious. Her lips are slightly parted, the gloss catching the light. Her legs are crossed under the table and one sneaker bobs up and down rhythmically. She doesn't look seductive on purpose. That's the worst part. She's just sitting there, being Momo, and it's devastating in a way that intentional seduction could never be.

"This is..." You rub your hands over your face. "This is really how you've been passing your classes?"

"I mean, some guys just wanted nudes. Which is way easier, honestly. But yeah." She shrugs, one shoulder lifting and dropping. "Everybody wins."

Nobody wins, you think. That's not what winning looks like. But you don't say that because you're too busy losing an argument with your own conscience.

"I can't."

"You keep saying that but you also keep looking at my boobs, so."

(Yeah. She's not wrong.)

"Momo, if anyone found out—"

"Who's gonna find out? I'm not gonna tell anyone." She rolls her eyes. "I'm not stupid."

(Debatable, but you keep that thought internal.)

She leans forward again, and the smell of her hits you. Sweet, peach and warmth. Her eyes are steady on yours and for the first time today, she looks completely focused.

"Look. You write my papers. I come over, we hook up, everyone's happy. I get to stay enrolled, you get to..." She gestures at you, all of you, with one hand. "Have fun. You look like you haven't had fun in, like, years. No offense."

"Some taken."

"I'm just being honest." She taps her pen against her lower lip. "So? Deal?"

The smart thing to do is say no. The right thing to do is say no. The professional, ethical, morally responsible thing to do is to stand up, pack your bag, and report this conversation to the tutoring center coordinator.

You look at Momo. She tilts her head, that little confused-puppy tilt that she does. The light catches her cheekbone. The word THICC glitters on her chest.

"Not in the library," you murmur.

She blinks. Then her face breaks into a grin so wide and bright it actually hurts to look at. "Wait, really? Oh my God, yay!"

"Do not 'yay' this. This is not a 'yay' situation."

"It's totally a yay situation." She's already pulling out her phone, typing something. "Okay so when do you want to— oh wait, should I shave first? Some guys are weird about that."

"Momo. Please stop talking."

"Right. Okay. So mysterious." She mimes zipping her lips, then immediately unzips them. "But seriously, when? Because I have a paper due Thursday."

You start packing up the textbooks. The flashcards you spent an hour making. The color-coded study guide that no one will ever use. "I'll text you," you mutter.

"Cool." She stands up, slings her bag over one shoulder. Pauses at the door, looks back at you with those enormous brown eyes, and hits you with a smile that has probably ended lesser men. "Thanks. You're, like, really nice. Most tutors are super boring."

She leaves. The door clicks shut behind her. The room keeps the scent of peach and bad decisions. You sit there for a full minute, staring at the wall. Then you pull out your phone and open the campus job board, just to see what else is available. Data entry. Cafeteria dishwasher. Overnight security at the rec center.

None of them pay fifty an hour. None of them come with a Hirai Momo attached.

You close the app, grab your bag, and walk out into the sad afternoon light, already hating yourself a little. Your phone buzzes before you reach the parking lot:

hiii its momo!! 🍑 ur place thursday?? ill bring snackssss

You stare at the screen. Three S's. A peach emoji. This is your life now.

You type back: Thursday works. And it's "you're," not "ur."

lol ok nerd 😘

You pocket your phone, adjust your bag on your shoulder, and keep walking.

• • •

You finish writing the last line of Momo's media ethics essay. Two thousand words on the moral responsibilities of mass communication in the digital age. You reread the thesis statement, check the citations, adjust a comma. It's solid B+ work - good enough to pass, not so good that anyone would suspect she didn't write it.

Media ethics. You just wrote a paper about media ethics so you could get laid. The irony doesn't just burn. It cremates.

You save the file, close your laptop, and look around your apartment.

It's bad. Not dirty, exactly, but aggressively neglected. The couch has a dent in the shape of your body. There's a coffee mug on the counter from two days ago with a brown ring at the bottom. Your bookshelf is the only thing that looks maintained - alphabetized, organized by subject - and you realize that says something about you that you'd rather not examine.

You spend the next forty minutes doing a speed-clean that borders on psychotic. Dishes in the dishwasher. Counters wiped. Bathroom scrubbed with a focus on the toilet and sink because you have priorities, if questionable ones. You change your sheets - when did you last change your sheets? (don't answer that), shove the pile of laundry into the closet, and light a candle that you bought six months ago and never used. It smells like "coastal breeze," which smells like nothing found in nature.

The knock comes at 6:14. You open the door and there she is: hair pulled into a high ponytail, hoop earrings, a tight pink top that and denim shorts that could double as underwear. She's holding a paper bag.

"Hi! I brought snacks." She lifts the bag. "Gummy bears, Hot Cheetos, and those chocolate things that look like mushrooms? I forget what they're called."

"Chocorooms."

"Yes! Those." She walks in past you and looks around your apartment the way someone looks at a museum exhibit they don't understand. Her eyes move from the bare walls to the second-hand couch to the single lamp on the floor that you never bought a table for. "This is where you live?"

"Last time I checked."

"It's so..." She searches for the word. "Empty. Do you not have, like, stuff?"

"I have stuff. I have books."

"Books aren't stuff. Books are the worst invention of mankind." She sets the snack bag on the counter, then turns to you with her hands on her hips. "Where are your posters? Your plants? A rug, at least?"

“I don't need a rug.”

She shakes her head with the genuine pity of someone whose parents probably furnished her apartment with a decorator. "We need to get you things. This is sad."

"I appreciate your concern for my interior design."

"You're welcome!"

(She missed the sarcasm. She always misses the sarcasm.)

There's a beat of silence where the reality of why she's here settles between you. Momo, apparently operating on a script she's run before, reaches down and grabs the hem of her top and starts pulling it up over her stomach, over her ribs, the fabric catching on the swell of her chest before she tugs it higher - and you see her bra, pale pink with a tiny bow between the cups, her breasts pushed up and pressed together, full and round and straining against the lace.

"Whoa, wait." You step forward and catch her hands, stopping the shirt halfway over her head. She's standing in your living room with her arms up and her stomach bare, looking at you through a gap in the bunched fabric.

"What? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"Yes, but—" You pull her shirt back down for her, smoothing it over her waist and feeling like a complete idiot for stopping the hottest girl on campus from undressing in your apartment. "Can we at least pretend this isn't a business transaction?"

She blinks. Drops her arms. Tilts her head with that look she gets when you use words with more than three syllables. "Okay? How do we do that?"

"I don't know. Normal things. I'll get you a drink. We'll talk. Like humans."

"We are humans."

"I'm aware. Thank you."

You open the fridge. The options are water, orange juice that might be expired, and a six-pack of cheap beer. She picks the orange juice. You pour it into the one clean glass you have and hand it to her. She takes a sip and doesn't comment on the taste, which either means it's fine or her palate is as undiscriminating as her academic standards.

You grab a beer for yourself. Take a long pull. Momo leans against the counter, ankles crossed, sipping juice and watching you.

"So," she starts. "Do we, like, talk about our feelings now? Is that the pretending part?"

"It's not pretending if it's real conversation, Momo."

"Okay." She nods seriously. "Um. I feel like gummy bears. Can I open the gummy bears?"

Close enough.

She eats gummy bears on your couch while telling you about her dance practice and a girl in her class who keeps copying her outfits. You sit next to her, nursing your beer, half-listening and half-watching the way she talks with her hands, the way she tucks her feet under herself, the way she licks sugar off her fingers without any awareness of what that looks like.

This entire situation is a textbook case of operant conditioning (there it is, the irony again) combined with what any psych professor would call instrumentalized intimacy. Momo has been taught, through years of reinforcement, that her body is currency. That sex is a transaction. That her value to other people is directly proportional to what she's willing to do with her clothes off. It's a conditioned behavioral pattern rooted in objectification, and she doesn't even see it because it's been normalized for her entire adult life.

She's eating gummy bears and talking about dance practice and she has no idea that she's a case study.

"You're staring at me," she observes.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. I'm hot." She grins. "Are you ready, or do we need more pretending?"

"It's not—" You exhale. "Yeah. Okay."

You stand up. She stands up. You lead her down the short hallway to your bedroom and push the door open. Momo walks in and does a slow rotation, taking in the full-size bed with its freshly changed sheets, the desk buried in textbooks, the single framed photo of a mountain you bought at a thrift store because the wall felt too bare.

"You literally live like a monk," she announces.

"Monks take vows of celibacy, so not for long."

"What's celibacy?"

"Not having sex."

"Oh." A pause. "That sounds terrible."

She sits on the edge of your bed, bouncing once to test the mattress, and looks up at you. The light from the window catches her face, the slope of her nose, the fullness of her lips, those wide dark eyes. She's waiting for you. Patient. Practiced. Ready to go through the motions she's gone through with however many guys came before you.

And it makes you irrationally angry.

You sit next to her. Cup her face with one hand, thumb resting against her cheekbone. She blinks, not used to this part. You can tell.

"What are you doing?" she murmurs.

"Being a human."

You kiss her. Slow. Not the let's-get-this-over-with kind she's probably expecting. You take your time with it, learning the shape of her mouth, the softness of her lower lip. She tenses for a second, then melts into it, her hand coming up to rest on your chest. She tastes like orange juice and gummy bears.

When you pull back, her eyes are a little glazed. "Oh," she breathes. "You're, like, a good kisser."

"Thanks."

"Most guys just shove their tongue in. Like a washing machine."

"That's the least sexy comparison anyone has ever made."

"I'm just saying!" She laughs.

You kiss her again. Your hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the base of her ponytail. She hums against your mouth and shifts, and then she's climbing into your lap, her thighs bracketing your hips, her weight settling onto you. The denim of her shorts is rough against your legs. Her arms loop around your neck.

She's so warm. Her body is pressed against yours and you can feel every curve, every inch of her. Your hands find her waist, grip the swell of her hips, thumbs pressing into the soft skin just above the waistband of her shorts.

"Can I take this off now?" She tugs at her own shirt, grinning. "Or do you want to do more pretending first?"

"Go ahead."

She pulls the top over her head in one motion and drops it on the floor. The pink bra again, pale lace barely containing her. Her breasts are full and heavy, pushed up by the cups, skin golden-warm in the late afternoon light. Her stomach is toned (the dancing, you remind yourself), defined lines of muscle running beneath smooth skin, and there, right at her navel, a small silver barbell glints. A belly button piercing. Of course.

"Your turn," she says, plucking at the front of your t-shirt.

You pull it off. She looks at your chest with an appraising tilt of her head.

"Not bad. You should work out more, though."

"Thank you for the unsolicited feedback."

"You're welcome!" (Again. Sarcasm-proof.)

You unclip her bra. She shrugs it off her shoulders and lets it fall, and the full weight of her breasts settles free, round and heavy, dark nipples already stiff from the friction of the fabric. They're perfect. Not the word you'd normally use, because nothing's perfect and you're a realist, but - they're perfect. Big and soft and real and right there.

She catches you staring. "You can touch them. That's, like, allowed."

"I know it's allowed. I'm appreciating the view."

"Weirdo."

You lay her down on the bed. She goes easily, hair fanning across your pillow, ponytail loose and coming undone. You unbutton her shorts, peel them down over the thick curve of her hips, her thighs - God, her thighs, full and firm, the kind that press together even when she's lying flat. Her ass lifts off the mattress to help you slide the denim free. Pink underwear underneath (she has a theme, apparently), stretched tight across the wide round swell of her butt.

You pull those down too. She kicks them off one ankle without ceremony.

And there she is. Hirai Momo. Fully naked on your bed, in your sad monk apartment, looking at you with those beautiful, deceptively innocent brown eyes. Her body laid out in front of you is almost absurd: the heavy breasts, the toned stomach with its silver piercing catching light, the flare of her hips into those thick thighs, the neat strip of dark hair between her legs.

(Any qualified psychologist would diagnose you with acute cognitive dissonance right now. Your brain is simultaneously screaming that this is ethically catastrophic and that she's the most beautiful girl you've ever seen. Both are true.)

You take off your jeans, leaving just your boxers. She tracks your movement with lazy, half-lidded eyes.

"Aren't you going to take those off too?"

"Not yet."

"Why?"

"Because I'm doing something else first."

You settle onto the bed, pressing a kiss to her collarbone. Then lower. The slope of her breast. The flat plane of her stomach. The warm skin beside her navel, the cool metal of the piercing against your lip. Her muscles twitch under your mouth.

"What are you—" She props up on her elbows, watching you move down her body. "Wait. Are you going to...?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She sounds genuinely surprised. "Most guys don't do that."

"Most guys are selfish."

"I thought that was just, like, a thing. That guys don't."

"It's not a thing." You settle between her thighs, hands on her knees, gently pressing them apart. Her legs fall open, and the sight of her, all of her, laid out beneath you, bare and exposed and looking at you with those big confused eyes - it makes your body respond before you can think. "It's just laziness."

"Huh," she manages, right before your mouth finds her.

Your lips press against her and the first thing you register is warmth. Wet, slick warmth, her body already responding before you've done anything intentional. You start slow because there's no reason not to, because she's not going anywhere, because you want to learn her before you take her apart.

Your tongue drags flat and wide from the bottom of her slit all the way up, one long exploratory stroke that makes her thighs twitch against the sides of your head. She tastes clean, faintly sweet, the salt of skin underneath. You do it again, just as slow, just as calculated. Getting the lay of the land.

"Oh," Momo breathes above you. "That's... okay, yeah."

You settle in, hands curled around the tops of her thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft creases where her legs meet her hips. The skin there is impossibly smooth. You keep your pace unhurried - long, flat strokes with the full width of your tongue, covering everything, mapping the terrain without zeroing in on anything specific yet. Her outer lips are swollen and slick, parting easily under the pressure of your mouth. You trace along the edges, slow and methodical, learning the shape of her.

Her breathing picks up. One of her hands finds the top of your head, fingers resting lightly in your hair. You drag your tongue along the left side of her slit, then the right, calculated strokes that go everywhere except where she probably wants you. Teasing, but not cruelly. Building something. Her clit is swollen and visible, peeking out from its hood, and you can feel the tension in her thighs every time your tongue passes close without making contact.

"You're really taking your time," she observes, impressed and impatient.

You pull back just enough to answer, lips brushing against her when you talk. "Is that a complaint?"

"No! No, it's just... different."

Different from what, you don't ask. You already know the answer and it would make you angry, so you let it go and press your mouth back to her. This time you use the tip of your tongue. Pointed, precise, tracing the delicate folds of her inner lips. She's pink and glistening, every ridge and contour distinct against your tongue. You follow the natural lines of her body, dragging upward along the left side, circling wide around her clit without touching it, then trailing back down the right. A loop. Patient. Thorough.

Momo's abs flex. You can feel the muscles tighten under the hand you've rested on her lower stomach, the little silver barbell of her piercing cool against your wrist. Her hips roll once, a small involuntary grind, and you press them back down gently with both hands.

"Stay still."

"I'm trying." Her fingers tighten in your hair. "It's hard when you're doing... that."

You reward her with the first direct contact. Your tongue finds her clit with a soft, barely-there flick. Just the tip. Just once. Her whole body jolts and a sharp breath punches out of her.

"Oh. Okay. That."

You do it again. Another light flick, this time with a little more pressure, and her thigh presses against the side of your head. You flatten your tongue and cover her clit completely, holding there for a beat, letting her feel the warm, wet pressure without movement. Then you pulse - a gentle rocking of your tongue that pushes against her in slow, rhythmic waves.

"How are you so good at this?" Momo props herself up on one elbow, looking down at you with bewilderment on her face. Her cheeks are flushed, ponytail completely wrecked, dark hair sticking to the side of her neck. "I literally thought you were a virgin."

You stop. Look up at her from between her thighs. "You thought I was a virgin."

"Yeah! You're all, like, books and flashcards and boring apartment. I figured you hadn't... you know. Done stuff."

"I've had a girlfriend, Momo."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "Wait, really? What happened?"

"We broke up."

"Well yeah, obviously, but like—" She seems to catch herself, registering the context of this conversation. She's naked on your bed. Your face is between her legs. And she's asking about your ex. "Sorry, that's probably not the right time."

"Probably not."

"But whoever she was?" Momo drops back onto the pillow, staring at the ceiling. "Lucky girl. If you ate her pussy like this every time? God."

"Can you stop talking about my ex while I'm going down on you?"

"Right. Yeah. Sorry. Continue."

She waves her hand in a little "carry on" gesture, and despite the absurdity of this arrangement, this girl, this entire situation, something at the corner of your mouth twitches. You lower your head and seal your lips around her clit, sucking gently. Momo's hand slams flat against the mattress.

"Fuck."

The reaction tells you everything you need to know. You increase the suction slightly, pulling her clit into your mouth with a soft, steady pressure, your tongue working against the underside in slow circles. Her hips try to buck upward but your hands are firm on her thighs, holding her in place, keeping her pinned while you work.

She's wet. Obscenely so. You can feel it on your chin, on your lips, the slickness spreading every time you adjust your angle. Her inner thighs are damp against your cheeks. Every time you pull your mouth away to breathe, you can see the shine on her pussy, swollen and flushed dark pink, her clit exposed and throbbing.

You alternate. Suck her clit for a ten count, then release, then trace around it with your tongue in wide lazy circles. Suck again, a little harder, hold it longer. Release, press flat, pulse. She's starting to figure out the pattern (or rather, her body is) and you can feel her tensing in anticipation each time you close your lips around her.

"That— right there." Both hands are in your hair now, not pushing, but holding on. "Don't stop doing that."

You keep the suction steady, tongue curling against her clit in a rhythm you've settled into - slow, conscious, consistent. Her thighs are trembling. Not the full-body shaking of an imminent orgasm, but the low-frequency tremor of sustained stimulation. She's building, and you can read it in every twitch and flex of her body.

(This is the operant conditioning she never paid attention to in class. Stimulus, response, reinforcement. You're reinforcing every sound she makes, every shift of her hips, by repeating whatever just caused it. Pavlov would be proud. Or horrified. Who knows.)

You pull off her clit and drag your tongue down, pushing into her opening. She clenches around you immediately, hot and tight, her inner walls pulsing against the intrusion. You fuck her with your tongue, slow shallow thrusts, and she whines, high and thin, and grinds down against your mouth.

"Nobody does this," she pants. "I'm— this is— nobody takes this long."

"Their loss," you murmur against her, and the vibration of your speech makes her gasp.

You push deeper, as far as your tongue will reach, and curl upward. Her hips jerk hard enough that you have to brace your forearm across her lower belly to keep her down. You can taste her fully now, that salt-sweet tang, and the way she's gripping your hair tells you she's not thinking about assignments or transactions or any of the bullshit that brought her to your bed. She's just here. Just feeling.

You return to her clit. She's so swollen now that you barely have to search. The bud is prominent and hard, a tight knot of nerve endings begging for contact. You cover it with your mouth, suck firmly, and flick the tip of your tongue across it in quick, rhythmic strokes. Fast enough to build, slow enough to sustain.

"Oh God." Her back arches off the mattress. "Oh my God, that feels so good."

Her thighs clamp against your ears. You can barely hear anything except the rush of your own blood and the muffled, distant sound of her breathing going ragged. You don't slow down. Don't change technique. You've found what works and you commit to it. Momo is unraveling above you. Her stomach is heaving. Her hands alternate between gripping your hair and fisting the sheets. Her head is thrown back, throat exposed, tendons standing out in her neck. Every few seconds her hips stutter against your mouth, trying to grind, trying to get more friction, and every time you hold her down and give her exactly what you're already giving her. Consistent. Relentless. Patient.

"I'm..." She swallows hard. "I'm getting close. I think. I don't—" A ragged exhale. "I don't usually finish from this."

She doesn't usually finish from this.

Because the guys she's been with didn't care enough to learn what she needed. Because they treated her mouth, her body, her willingness as a service rendered and never thought to return the favor properly.

You press your tongue flat against her clit, applying firm, steady pressure, and suck. Her body goes rigid.

"Don't stop." Her grip in your hair tightens to the point of pain. "Please. Don't stop. Please, please—"

You double down, working her clit with focused, unwavering attention. Tongue circling, lips sealed around her, suction steady. Her thighs are shaking violently now, the thick muscles quivering against your temples. Her abs are clenched so tight you can see every defined line, the piercing catching light with each heaving breath. Her pussy is soaked, dripping onto the sheets beneath her.

You feel the sudden clench of her whole body, every muscle locking at once, her thighs squeezing your head, her fingers yanking your hair. Then her hips buck upward against your mouth, hard, and she comes with a long, shattered moan that fills your sad little bedroom. Her clit pulses against your tongue. You can feel the contractions, rhythmic and strong, her pussy clenching around nothing, her body riding out the peak. You soften your mouth, easing up the pressure but keeping contact, giving her something to grind against as the orgasm rolls through her. Her hips rock in small, helpless circles, abs spasming with each aftershock.

"Oh my God." Her grip loosens in your hair. Her legs fall open, thighs twitching. "Oh my God."

You ease off slowly, pulling back from her oversensitive clit with careful, gentle movements. A few last soft kisses pressed against the crease of her thigh. She's gasping, chest heaving, her eyes are closed and her lips are parted and her entire body has gone boneless against your sheets.

You press one more kiss to the inside of her thigh. Right there, where the skin is softest, where you can feel her pulse hammering against your lips. You let your mouth linger, then lift your head to look at her.

She's a mess. The most gorgeous mess you've ever seen. Flushed from her chest to her cheeks, hair everywhere, a thin sheen of sweat on her stomach making the piercing glitter. Her eyes flutter open, dazed, pupils blown wide.

"You're beautiful when you come," you tell her. Quiet. Simple. Factual.

A change ripples through her gaze. Shock flashes, then hesitation, then a softness she immediately tries to bury. Her lower lip wobbles for a split second. "You're weird," she whispers.

“I thought you’d have something better to say after I made you cum with my mouth.”

Your thumb traces a slow circle on the inside of her thigh, and she shivers beneath your touch. Suddenly she extends her arm and her hand reaches your face. Her fingers trail along your jaw, thumb dragging through the slickness on your chin.

"That was insane," she murmurs. "Like, genuinely insane. No guy has ever made me finish from just... that."

"From oral?"

"Yeah." She says it plainly, without embarrassment. Just a fact. "Usually they go down for like thirty seconds and then give up. Or they're so bad at it I just fake it so they'll stop."

"That's depressing, Momo."

"Is it? I thought it was normal." She shrugs one bare shoulder, then pushes herself up to sitting. Her breasts sway with the movement. "Okay. Your turn."

"My turn?"

"Yeah. Fair's fair." She reaches for the waistband of your boxers, fingertips hooking under the elastic. "Lie down."

There's a part of you (the analytical, overthinking, perpetually exhausted part) that wants to protest, to tell her this doesn't have to be transactional, that she doesn't owe you reciprocity just because you went down on her. But Momo's already tugging at your waistband with a determined little furrow between her brows, and the part of you that's been hard since approximately the moment she walked through your front door tells the analytical part to shut up and lie back.

You lie back.

Momo kneels beside you, ponytail completely destroyed, dark hair falling around her face in messy strands. She pulls your boxers down with both hands, lifting the elastic over you carefully, and slides them down your thighs, your knees, off your ankles. Tosses them somewhere behind her without looking.

Her eyes drop to your cock. Hard, flushed, curving slightly upward against your stomach. She looks at it the way she looks at most things: with open, uncomplicated appraisal. No shyness.

"Nice," she declares.

"Thanks. I grew it myself."

She snorts. "You're so weird." Then she wraps her hand around the base, and the laugh dies in your throat.

Her grip is firm. Confident. She gives you one slow stroke, base to tip, her fingers snug around your shaft, and you feel the calluses on her palm (from dancing, you realize, from gripping bars and catching herself on hardwood floors) and the heat of her skin.

"Okay, get comfy." She's adjusting her position, settling between your legs on her stomach, and the view is— God. Her back curves down from her shoulders to the deep arch of her spine, and her ass rounds upward behind her, full and heavy. Her breasts press flat against the mattress between your thighs. She braces one hand on your hip and holds your cock steady with the other, angling it toward her mouth.

She licks the tip. One quick, testing pass of her tongue across the head, collecting the bead of precum that's gathered there. Then she looks up at you through her lashes, those enormous brown eyes, and takes you into her mouth.

Warm. Wet. insanely soft. Her lips seal around the head and she sucks, gentle at first, her tongue circling the underside of the ridge in slow, deliberate strokes. The sensation shoots straight down through the base of your cock and into the pit of your stomach.

You exhale. Controlled. Measured. Barely.

She takes you deeper. Her lips sliding down your shaft, her mouth stretching around the thickness of you. Her tongue presses flat against the underside, maintaining contact the whole way down, a continuous wet drag that makes your toes curl against the sheets. She gets about two-thirds of the way before pulling back, and the suction on the retreat is perfect - tight, steady, the kind that makes your fingers grip the sheets.

"Good?" she asks, pulling off with a soft, wet, sound, her hand replacing her mouth in slow strokes.

"Yeah." you admit in a whisper. “Yeah, that's good."

She smiles. Pleased with herself in that unselfconscious way she has. Then she dips her head and takes you in again, and this time she doesn't tease.

(This fact about Momo is honestly kind of funny… if not a little sad: she's terrible at academics. She can't spell "necessary." She thinks Freud was in the Avengers. She draws hearts in the margins of textbooks she's never read. But she is, as it turns out, phenomenally, almost aggressively good at giving head.)

Her technique is varied in a way that speaks to experience, but more than that, to genuine attentiveness. She doesn't just bob her head in a steady rhythm and call it a day. She reads your reactions - the hitch in your breathing when she swirls her tongue around the head, the tension in your thigh when she sucks hard on the upstroke, the way your stomach clenches when she takes you deep enough to nudge the back of her throat.

She pulls off, drags her tongue flat up the entire length of your shaft, base to tip, slow and wet. Then back down. Then up again, this time tracing the thick vein on the underside with the pointed tip of her tongue, following it like a road map. Your cock twitches against her lips and she hums, pleased.

"You're sensitive here." She presses the flat of her tongue against the spot just below the head, the frenulum, and holds it there with steady pressure. Your hips jerk. Just barely, just a fraction, but she notices.

"Yep. There it is." She sounds smug. She should be.

Her hand works the base in slow, twisting strokes while her mouth focuses on the upper half. The combination is devastating: the tight ring of her fingers, the wet heat of her tongue, the soft suction of her lips. She finds a rhythm that works, a coordinated push-pull between hand and mouth, and commits to it with the same single-minded focus she brings to dance practice and absolutely nothing academic.

Your hand finds her hair. You gather the messy strands, the ruined ponytail, and hold them back from her face in a loose grip at the crown of her head. She glances up at you.

"Thanks," she says, your cock resting against her lower lip, her breath warm against the wet skin. "I hate when it gets in the way. One time I almost choked because my hair got stuck in my mouth and the guy's—" She catches the look on your face. "Not the right time for that story?"

"Not the right time."

"Got it." She winks, then swallows you down again.

Deeper this time. She relaxes her jaw, opens her throat, and pushes forward until her lips meet her own fist at the base. You feel the head of your cock press against the tight constriction of her throat and the sensation wrings a low groan out of you that you couldn't suppress if you tried. She holds there for a beat, swallows around you (and the pressure of that, the rhythmic squeeze, is enough to make your vision go slightly white at the edges), then pulls back with a gasp.

Spit and precum stretch in a thin line from her lip to the head of your cock. She doesn't wipe it away. She just licks her lips, breathing hard, and goes back in.

"You're really good at this," you manage. The line lands flat, almost accusatory, like you're annoyed about it.

"I know, right?" She grins around you, which is a facial expression that shouldn't be possible with a cock in her mouth, but Momo makes it work. "It's like my one talent."

"You can dance."

"Okay, my two talents." She laps at the head, kitten-quick flicks of her tongue that make your abs clench. "Three if you count being hot."

You feel that twitch at the corner of your mouth again. She's ridiculous. She's absolutely ridiculous and you're lying naked on your bed letting her give you the best head of your life while she counts her talents on a mental list.

She refocuses, and the playfulness drops away. Her brow furrows slightly. She takes you in her mouth again, working a steady rhythm now, and her free hand drops to cup your balls, rolling them gently in her palm, fingers careful and warm. The dual sensation of her mouth sliding wet and tight along your shaft and her hand kneading the sensitive skin beneath draws a sound out of your chest that you'd be embarrassed about in any other context.

Her jaw must be getting tired, but she doesn't let up. She pulls off to breathe, keeps her hand moving in long slick strokes (your cock is coated now, shining with spit and precum from the base to the tip), and presses her open mouth against the side of your shaft. Wet, sloppy kisses along the length of you, her tongue tracing shapes against the skin. She mouths at the base, nuzzles lower, drags her tongue across your balls with a flat, firm pressure that makes your hips shift restlessly on the mattress.

"Stay still," she echoes, throwing your own words back at you with a grin pressed into your inner thigh.

"Easier said than done."

"See? Now you get it."

She takes the head back into her mouth, and the suction is tighter now, more focused, her cheeks hollowing as she works. Her hand twists on every upstroke, a corkscrew motion around your shaft that sends sparks up your spine. She's thorough, almost methodical, covering every inch of you - tongue swirling the head, lips tight on the shaft, hand firm at the base, the other still gently rolling your balls. Your cock is soaked, absolutely dripping, spit running down to her fingers and pooling warm against your skin.

(You're a psychology major. You know about the halo effect - the cognitive bias that makes people assume attractive individuals are also competent, kind, intelligent. You've always been skeptical of it. But right now, with Momo's mouth wrapped around you, you're willing to concede that the halo effect, while scientifically questionable, is at minimum emotionally persuasive.)

She takes you deep one more time, holds it, swallows. Your grip tightens in her hair and she makes a small, satisfied sound around you that vibrates through the shaft and directly into the base of your skull. Then she pulls off, gasping softly, and wraps both hands around your cock, stroking in long, fluid movements from base to tip. The whole length of you is slick, glistening, thoroughly worked over.

She surveys her handiwork with obvious pride, her lips swollen and pink, her chin wet. She swipes the back of her hand across her mouth and sits back on her heels between your legs, knees pressing into the mattress, those thick thighs folded beneath her.

"There." She gives your cock one last slow stroke, her thumb circling the head, spreading the wetness around. "All ready."

She's looking at you with that grin, bright and unguarded, her hair a disaster and her lips puffy and her eyes still a little glazed from her own orgasm. Your cock throbs in her hand, slick and hard and aching, every nerve ending lit up from thirty minutes of her undivided attention.

Momo releases her grip and leans forward, planting both hands on your chest, her breasts pressing soft and heavy against your stomach and her face hovers above yours.

"So," she breathes, her hips settling down against yours, the wet heat of her pressing against the underside of your cock. "How do you want me?”

You stare at her. It's a mistake. You know it's a mistake the moment you do it, because looking at Hirai Momo when she's hovering above you, naked and flushed and grinning with swollen lips, is the kind of thing that makes rational thought pack its bags and leave the building.

The late afternoon light falls across her collarbones, the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her breasts hanging heavy above your chest. Her hair is a mess, dark strands stuck to her neck, and her eyes are soft and warm and looking right at you with an attentiveness you would never expect from her.

And your brain, your stupid overworked psychology-major brain, does the worst possible thing it could do in this moment.

It starts to feel.

Not just arousal. Not just the obvious biological response to having a beautiful naked woman pressed against you. Something more dangerous, something in the back of your ribs that aches when she smiles at you like that. You're cataloging her features without meaning to — the tiny mole near lower lip, the way her nose scrunches when she grins, the faint indentation on her earlobe where she took out her earring.

You're almost falling in love with her. The thought surfaces fully formed and you shove it down with both hands.

She's here because you wrote her media ethics paper. She's in your bed because of a transaction. You are a service she's paying for with her body, or she's a service you're paying for with your GPA. Either way, this is commerce. It has terms. It has an expiration date. You do not catch feelings for commerce.

You sit up abruptly, and Momo slides off your chest with a surprised little "oh."

"Where are you going?"

"Condom." You swing your legs off the bed and cross to the nightstand. Bottom drawer, behind a textbook on cognitive behavioral therapy (because that's where you keep them, and yes, you're aware of the symbolism). You pull one out, tear the wrapper.

"Good thinking," Momo says from the bed. She's lying on her back now, one knee bent, watching you. "This one guy in my comm class never wanted to use one and I was like, dude, I'm dumb but I'm not that dumb."

"Compelling anecdote."

"I thought so."

You roll the condom on, smoothing it down your shaft with practiced efficiency, and turn back to the bed. Momo is stretched out against your sheets like she was sculpted there, all golden skin and curves and that silver piercing catching light on her stomach. Her thighs are slightly parted, and between them she's still wet, glistening from the orgasm you gave her.

You climb back onto the bed, settling on your knees between her legs. She spreads them wider to make room, casual as anything, and hooks one ankle behind your thigh.

"How do you want to do this?" she asks.

"Missionary."

She raises both eyebrows. "Really? That's so vanilla."

"I want to see your face."

You don’t catch the words in time. Too open. Too blunt. Momo’s look shifts, a brief shimmer in her gaze you can’t decode, and a slow smile unfolds across her lips.

"That's kind of romantic," she murmurs.

You reach for the first deflection you can find: "Also, I want to watch your tits bounce."

She bursts out laughing. "There it is. I was like, who is this guy? Being all sweet." She cups her own breasts, lifts them, lets them drop. "They do bounce pretty good."

"I've noticed."

"Everyone notices." Momo says it without vanity, just fact. She pulls out the hair tie and the messy ponytail comes undone. She settles back into the pillow with her arms above her head, hair fanned out, body open and waiting. "Okay, come on. Show me what you've got."

You brace one hand beside her head. The other grips the base of your cock, guiding yourself to her entrance. She's so wet that the head slides against her easily, skating through the slickness, and you position yourself at her opening. Press forward. Just the tip, just barely parting her, and the heat is immediate and intense.

Momo's breath catches. Her eyes are on yours, wide and focused. You push in. Slow, controlled, feeding yourself into her inch by inch. Her body resists for just a second, that initial tightness, and then she relaxes around you and you slide deeper, feeling her stretch to accommodate you. Warm. Wet. Tight enough that the pressure registers along every nerve in your shaft.

"Oh, fuck," she exhales. Her hands come down to grip your forearms. "Go slow."

"I am going slow."

"Slower."

You stop halfway, holding still, letting her adjust. Her inner walls pulse around you in soft, rhythmic contractions, her body figuring you out. She's breathing through her mouth, chest rising and falling, and those gorgeous breasts shift with each inhale.

"Okay," she whispers. "More."

You press the rest of the way in. Her pelvis meets yours, your hips flush against the insides of her thighs, and you're fully seated inside her. The feeling is… a lot. She's clenching around you, intentionally or not, and the squeeze is tight enough that you have to hold still and take a measured breath through your nose.

"You feel really good," Momo tells you. Plainly. "Like, filling? In a good way."

"I'll put that on my résumé."

"You should. Under special skills."

You pull back, a slow drag that makes her grip tighten on your forearms, then push back in. Steady. Unhurried. Letting both of you feel every inch of the stroke. Her pussy grips you on the outstroke, like her body doesn't want to let go, and the wet friction on the re-entry sends heat pooling at the base of your spine.

You find a rhythm. Deep, full strokes, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in. Your hips meet hers with a soft, wet sound each time, and her body rocks beneath you. And there they go - her breasts, heavy and round, swaying with each thrust. They move in opposite rhythm to your strokes, rolling upward when you push in, settling back when you pull out. Hypnotic. You weren't lying about wanting to watch.

"Enjoying the view?" She catches you staring.

"Immensely."

She grins, then gasps when you angle your hips slightly, changing the trajectory. The head of your cock drags against the front wall of her pussy on the upstroke and her whole body reacts - abs clenching, thighs squeezing your sides, a sharp inhale through her teeth.

"That," she breathes. "Whatever that was, do that again."

You do it again. And again. Finding the angle that makes her gasp and committing to it with methodical precision. Each stroke pushes against that swollen spot inside her, and you can feel the difference in her reactions. Her moans get louder, less performative, more involuntary.

"Fuck." Her head presses back into the pillow, throat arched. "This is so much better than I expected."

"What were you expecting?"

"I don't know, like..." She gasps when you thrust particularly deep. "Three minutes and a pat on the head."

"You've been sleeping with the wrong people."

"Obviously!" She laughs, and the sound breaks into a moan when you pick up the pace.

You shift your weight to one arm and bring your free hand to her breast, palming the heavy swell, thumb finding her nipple. You roll it under the pad of your thumb, firm circles, and she arches into the touch. Her skin is hot under your hand, slightly damp with sweat.

The rhythm settles into something insistent. Faster now, your hips working in steady, driving strokes, and the bed frame is tapping quietly against the wall with each thrust. Momo's legs wrap around your waist, her heels pressing into the small of your back, pulling you deeper. Her pussy is soaked, the sounds between your bodies obscene and wet, and you can feel her clenching around you in rhythmic pulses, tighter each time.

"That angle." Her nails drag down your forearms. "Right there. Don't move, don't change anything."

You maintain it. Same depth, same angle, same pace. Her body starts to tense beneath you, a gradual tightening that begins in her thighs and spreads upward through her stomach, her chest, her shoulders.

Her eyes are getting hazy. Her mouth is open, breathing ragged. Her breasts are bouncing with each thrust, nipples hard, and the silver piercing on her stomach flashes in the fading light.

"I think I'm..." She swallows. "Oh my God, I think I'm going to—"

You bring your hand down between your bodies. Your thumb finds her clit, swollen and slick, and you press against it firmly. She jolts beneath you.

"Fuck!" Her hands fly to your shoulders, nails biting in. "Oh, fuck."

You rub her. Tight, fast circles against her clit, your thumb sliding easily through the wetness, while your hips keep their rhythm. The dual stimulation hits her hard, you can see it happening, feel it in the way her pussy clamps down around your cock, the way her thighs start trembling violently against your ribs.

"Don't stop,” she moans “Please, please, don't stop, right there—"

You press harder, rub faster, and thrust deep. Her body goes rigid beneath you. Every muscle locks, her back arching clean off the mattress, her breasts pressing against your chest. Her pussy clamps around you in a vise grip, pulsing hard, and her eyes roll back, literally roll back, the brown disappearing under fluttering lids as her mouth falls open in a silent scream that takes a full second to find its voice.

The sound she makes is raw and broken. Long, shuddering, her whole body convulsing around you. Her legs lock behind your back, pulling you in as deep as you can go, and her hips buck in erratic, helpless circles against your thumb. You feel every contraction, every pulse of her orgasm gripping your cock in tight, rhythmic waves.

You ease up on her clit but keep your thumb resting there, light pressure, while the aftershocks roll through her. Her thighs are shaking uncontrollably, the thick muscles twitching and jumping. Her stomach spasms, the piercing shivering with each involuntary clench of her abs. She's gasping, each breath a ragged, broken thing, and there are tears at the corners of her eyes; not from sadness, just from the sheer overwhelming intensity of it.

"Oh my God." Her grip on your shoulders loosens. Her eyes refocus, glazed and stunned. "Oh my God."

You stay still inside her, letting her come down, feeling the last contractions pulse weakly around your shaft.

"No guy has ever..." She blinks. Swallows. Tries again: "No guy has ever made me cum like that. Not even close. What the fuck."

You look down at her. Wrecked, trembling, tear-streaked, the most beautiful mess you've ever seen in your life. Flushed from her hairline to her chest, hair plastered to her neck, lips bitten red.

"I'm full of surprises," you tell her, and brush a damp strand of hair off her forehead, your thumb tracing the edge of her jaw before you can stop yourself from being tender about it.

You lean down and kiss her. It's unhurried, almost lazy, your mouth moving against hers while she's still trembling from the aftershocks. Her hand comes up to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, and for a moment it's just this - mouths and breath and the quiet of your apartment settling around you.

She pulls back first, blinking up at you with those glazed, enormous eyes. Her gaze drops between your bodies, to where you're still hard inside her, and her brows knit together in confusion.

"How have you not cum yet?"

"Willpower."

"Seriously, though." She shifts her hips experimentally and you grit your teeth at the sensation, her pussy still clenching in residual spasms around your shaft. "Most guys would've finished like twenty minutes ago."

You pull out slowly, the drag of her swollen walls along your cock enough to make you exhale. "It's been a while since I've had sex. I wanted to make it last."

"How long is a while?"

"Long enough that I'm not going to rush through this."

She studies you quietly, tipping her head to the side the way she always does when she’s thinking. Something flickers behind her eyes. Then a grin creeps over her warm cheeks, unhurried and just a little bit wicked.

"Okay," she says. "Then I'm going to reward you." She pushes herself up, rolls onto her stomach, and gets on all fours.

And you understand. Immediately, viscerally, with every single neuron in your overworked brain, you understand why every guy likes this position.

Momo on all fours is a religious experience.

Her back slopes downward from her shoulders in a smooth arch, the line of her spine dipping deep before curving up into her ass. And her ass. God, her ass. It's right there, round and full and heavy. Her cheeks are thick and smooth with just enough softness that they bounce slightly as she adjusts her knees on the mattress. From this angle, the curve of each cheek swells outward in a perfect crescent, the cleft between them deep and shadowed. Below, between her spread thighs, her pussy is swollen and glistening, pink and wet from two orgasms.

She looks back at you over her shoulder. That grin again. "You're staring."

"I'm processing."

"Take a picture, it lasts longer." She wiggles her hips. Actually wiggles them, a small side-to-side sway that makes her ass jiggle, and your brain short-circuits for a full second.

"Don't tempt me."

"You could. I don't mind."

"Momo."

"What! I'm just saying. Anyway." She faces forward again, drops to her elbows, and the new angle pushes her ass up higher, the arch of her back deepening. Her breasts hang heavy beneath her, swaying slightly. "You can go hard now. Like, intense. I can take it."

Her wish is an order. You position yourself behind her. One hand on her hip, the other guiding your cock to her entrance. She's so wet that the head slips against her twice before you line up, the slick heat smearing across the inside of her thigh. You press forward, and her body opens for you easily this time, her pussy stretching around you in one smooth, continuous glide.

She moans into the pillow. Low, throaty, muffled by the cotton. Her walls grip you differently in this position - tighter, the angle pushing you against the front wall, and you can feel every ridge and texture of her insides as you bottom out.

"Oh, that's deep," she gasps, fingers curling into the sheets. "That's really, really deep."

You pull back and push in again. Harder this time. The impact of your hips meeting her ass produces a dull, fleshy sound that fills the quiet room, and her whole body rocks forward with the force of it. Her ass ripples on contact.

"Harder," she tells you, and there's no hesitation in it. "Come on. I told you I can take it."

So you give her harder.

Your grip tightens on her hips, fingers sinking into the soft flesh, and you set a pace that's consistent and firm. Each thrust drives deep, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in, and the sound of skin against skin fills the room alongside her breathing. Her ass bounces with every stroke, the heavy cheeks absorbing the impact and jiggling in a way that's honestly pretty distracting.

You spread her. Both hands on her cheeks, thumbs pressing into the yielding flesh, pulling them apart. And there it is: the full, explicit view of your cock disappearing into her pussy. Her lips are stretched tight around your shaft, flushed dark pink, clinging to you on every outstroke. The slickness between you catches the light, obscene and glistening. You watch yourself sink in, watch her swallow every inch, watch the way her entrance flutters and grips.

"Fuck," you mutter.

"Good view?" She's breathless, cheek pressed against the pillow, one eye looking back at you.

"Incredible."

"Told you this position is the best." Her words dissolve into a sharp gasp when you thrust particularly deep, your hips flush against her ass. "Oh, God. Right there."

You hold her cheeks apart and keep going, eyes fixed on the place where your bodies connect. The visual feedback is devastating - watching yourself fuck her, seeing every detail of it, the way her pussy grips and releases, the wetness that coats your shaft and strings between you on every outstroke. You pick up the pace and her moans get louder, less controlled.

"You fuck so good," she pants. Her elbows slide on the sheets and she drops lower, chest against the mattress, ass pushed up even higher. The angle shifts and you sink deeper. "Like, seriously, what the fuck. Where did you learn this?"

"Practice quiz."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

Her laughter turns into a moan when you snap your hips forward hard enough to make her whole body jolt. You're finding a groove now, a relentless rhythm that has the bed frame knocking steadily against the wall. Your hands alternate between gripping her hips for leverage and spreading her cheeks for the view. Each time you pull them apart and watch your cock plunge into her.

"You're so fucking wet," you tell her.

"That's your fault." She fists the pillow, burying her face in it for a second before coming back up for air. "You and your stupid mouth and your stupid tongue and your stupid—" A particularly hard thrust cuts her off. "Oh, fuck. Keep doing that."

You lean forward, changing the angle, one hand braced on the mattress beside her ribs. The new position lets you drive downward into her, each stroke grinding against the front wall, and her reaction is immediate. Her back arches sharper, her toes curl against the sheets, and a sound comes out of her that's rawer than anything you've heard tonight.

You maintain the angle and the pace, each thrust deep and grinding, your hips meeting her ass with a steady slap that punctuates every stroke. Sweat is beading along her spine, collecting in the small of her back, and her whole body is trembling.

"I'm gonna cum again." She says it with a note of disbelief. "How am I going to cum again? I never cum this many times."

"Just let it happen."

"I'm—" Her fingers twist in the sheets. "Oh my God, I'm really close."

You reach underneath her. Your fingers find her clit, swollen and slippery, and you press firmly, rubbing in fast circles while your hips keep their punishing rhythm. The combined assault of your cock driving deep and your fingers working her clit tears a sound out of her that's almost a scream, muffled into the pillow she's biting.

You feel the orgasm ripping through Momo, her inner walls seizing in hard, rhythmic contractions that grip your cock in waves. Her thighs are shaking violently, her whole body convulsing, and her back arches so severely that her ass presses hard against your hips. Her toes curl, uncurl, curl again. She's gone, completely gone, riding it out in helpless, full-body shudders with broken and incoherent moans against the pillow.

You slow your thrusts, letting her feel every pulse, and ease your fingers off her clit as the peak crests and begins to recede. She's trembling so hard the mattress vibrates.

"Oh my God." It's barely audible. Her legs give out and she collapses flat onto her stomach, your cock slipping out of her in the process. She lies there, face down, panting, absolutely destroyed. "Oh my God."

She turns her head to the side. One glassy eye finds you. "No guy," she whispers, "has ever made me cum like that. Not once. Not ever. What the actual fuck are you."

"Full of surprises." Your hand runs down the curve of her spine, a slow, gentle sweep over the sweat-damp skin. "I did say that."

She lets out a weak, breathless laugh. "You're unreal." She's still catching her breath, but she rolls her head to look at you properly, reading the strain on your face. "Where do you want to cum? I can tell you're close."

You look at her. The mess of her hair, the flush on her cheeks, the sheen of sweat across her shoulders. And her breasts, pressed flat against the mattress, spilling to the sides.

"Your tits."

"Good choice." She grins, lazy and satisfied, and rolls over onto her back. Her breasts settle heavy on her chest, full and round, nipples dark and stiff. She stretches her arms above her head, arching slightly, presenting them to you. "All yours."

You straddle her, knees on either side of her ribcage, and strip the condom off. Your cock is painfully hard, slick from her. You wrap your hand around yourself and start stroking, fast and tight, and the relief of direct friction after all that teasing, after her mouth, after her pussy, is overwhelming.

Momo watches you from below with eyes half-lidded, that lazy grin still curving her lips. "That's hot," she murmurs. "Watching you jerk off over me. I like it." Your hand moves faster. The tension in your gut coils tighter, tighter, every muscle in your core bracing for it. "Come on," she encourages, licking her lips. "Give it to me."

Your cock pulses hard in your fist, the tension that's been building for the last hour finally snapping, and the first thick rope of cum shoots out of you in a heavy arc that lands across her left breast. A white streak, dense and warm, splattering across the full round swell of it and dripping down toward her nipple in a slow, obscene trail.

"Yeah," Momo breathes beneath you, her eyes locked on your cock. "Give me all of it."

Your hips jerk forward, your hand keeps moving in tight, fast strokes, and the second shot follows - just as thick, just as heavy, this one catching her right breast dead center. It lands with a wet sound against her skin, a long white stripe that pools in the crease where her breast meets her chest before overflowing, sliding down into the valley between them.

"Fuck." The word grinds out of you through clenched teeth, your abs clenching with each contraction.

"God, there's so much." She's staring down at her own chest, watching your cum paint her tits, and her tongue drags across her lower lip. "Keep going, don't stop."

A third pulse. This one hits the upper slope of her left breast and her collarbone, a messy splatter that streaks across her skin in thick white lines. Her nipple is coated now, cum clinging to the stiff peak, dripping off the sides in slow rivulets that trace the curve of her breast before soaking into the sheets beneath her.

"All over my tits," she murmurs, her breasts shifting with each breath and smearing the mess further. "That's so fucking hot. You're making such a mess of me."

The fourth shot is weaker but still thick, landing in the valley between her breasts, adding to the pool that's already gathered there. The cum slides in both directions, trickling down the inner slope of each breast. Your cock throbs in your grip, each pulse wringing another load out of you, and a fifth spurt hits her right nipple directly, coating the dark bud in a thick white glaze that drips down onto the swell beneath.

"Look at me," she says, and you do. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted and wet. "You came so hard. That's all because of me, right?"

"Yeah,” you murmur weakly. "All you."

"Good." She grins, watching the last of it drip from the tip of your cock. Thick droplets fall onto her sternum, her chest, her stomach (one lands just above the silver glint of her belly button piercing). "I love watching you cum. Your face gets all tense and serious. It's cute."

You're still dripping. The final weak pulses leave thin trails of cum that roll down your shaft and over your knuckles, and you stroke through them, milking out the very last of it. A translucent string stretches between the tip of your cock and the wet mess on her chest before breaking, landing on the inner curve of her breast.

Her tits are covered. Streaked and splattered in thick white ropes, glistening under the fading light. The cum has pooled in every dip and crease - between her breasts, around her nipples, in the soft hollow of her collarbone. Some of it has started to slide down her ribs, thin trails running over the sides of her breasts toward the sheets.

You let go of yourself. Your thighs are trembling against her ribs. Below you, Momo looks down at her own chest with an expression of amused assessment.

"Wow. You really did save up.”

"Told you it'd been a while."

She brings both hands to her breasts. Her fingers spread through the mess, smearing your cum across her skin in slow circles. She rubs it over the swell of each breast, across her nipples, coating herself in it with an unhurried thoroughness that makes your spent cock twitch against your thigh. The white streaks thin and spread under her palms, turning her chest slick and shiny.

Then she lifts one hand to her mouth and slides two fingers between her lips.

She licks them clean. Eyes on yours the entire time, those big brown irises holding your gaze while her tongue curls around her fingertips, collecting every trace. She pulls them out, goes back for more, scooping a thick smear from the curve of her breast and bringing it to her mouth. Her tongue catches the glob off her index finger, and she swallows without breaking eye contact.

"Salty," she announces, like she's providing a Yelp review.

You stare at her. Hirai Momo, lying on your bed, covered in your cum, licking it off her own fingers with the same casual ease she'd bring to eating gummy bears.

She takes your cock in her hand, soft and spent, and leans down. Her full lips press against the tip in a gentle, deliberate kiss. Not sexual, exactly. Tender. The kind of gesture that doesn't fit the arrangement you've agreed to. Her mouth is warm and soft against the oversensitive head, and your stomach does something complicated that you refuse to examine.

"Do you do this with everyone who cums on your tits?"

She pulls back, still holding you loosely, and looks up. "No." She says it simply, without performance. "Only you. You deserve it."

You lie side by side on the bed. The sheets are wrecked, tangled at the foot of the mattress, the light has gone from gold to amber to the thin blue-gray of early evening. Momo is on her back, one arm draped across her stomach, the other extended above her head. Her breasts rise and fall with each slowing breath, still faintly glossy. Your cum is drying on her skin in thin, translucent streaks that she hasn't bothered to wipe off.

You're on your back too, staring at the ceiling, acutely aware of the warmth of her body beside yours. Your shoulders are almost touching.

"Can I use your shower?" She turns her head to look at you. "I have a party tonight."

"Of course you do."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Bathroom's through there." You gesture toward the door.

She rolls off the bed with a bounce that shouldn't be possible for someone who just had three orgasms, and pads across your room barefoot. Naked. Completely, unselfconsciously, magnificently naked. Her ass sways with each step, the full heavy curve of it shifting left and right, and the light from the window traces the contour of her waist, the dimples above her tailbone.

She pauses in the doorway to look back at you. "Do you have a towel that isn't sad?"

"All my towels are sad. It's a matching set."

"You need a girlfriend." She disappears into the bathroom, and a moment later you hear the water start.

Hirai Momo is naked in your apartment. Using your shower. After having sex with you in exchange for a media ethics essay. You lie there on your wrecked sheets, staring at the ceiling, and try to pinpoint the exact moment your life became a bad college movie.

She comes back ten minutes later, wrapped in your sad towel, hair damp, skin dewy. She gets dressed in front of you without a shred of modesty - stepping into her underwear, clasping her bra, pulling the top back over her head. She checks her reflection in your laptop screen, fluffs her wet hair, and deems herself acceptable.

"Okay, I'm going. My paper's due Thursday, right?"

“It’s already finished. I’ll send it to you later.”

"You're the best." She blows you a kiss from the doorway. "Bye!"

The door closes. The apartment is quiet. You lie there for another full minute, then get up, strip the sheets, and start a load of laundry.

• • •

You told yourself it would only be once.

It is not once. Momo keeps showing up. She has a talent for finding you on campus - in the library, in the psych building, in the cafeteria where you eat lunch alone with a textbook propped against the napkin dispenser. She materializes beside you like she has a GPS tracker on your location.

"I have another paper due," she announces one Tuesday, sliding into the seat across from you at the library. She's wearing a cropped hoodie, no bra underneath (you can tell, you can always tell now, and you hate yourself for always checking), and those same tiny denim shorts.

"What class?"

"Intro to Sociology."

"When's it due?"

"Tomorrow."

"Momo. It's Monday night."

"I know! That's why I came to find you." She leans forward, elbows on the table. "I'll make it worth your while."

She bites her lip. Not seductively; she's just chewing on it the way she does when she's thinking. But the effect is the same, and your resolve, which was already the structural integrity of wet cardboard, collapses entirely.

"Fine. Two thousand words on social stratification?"

"Is that the one about rich people and poor people?"

"Close enough."

"You're amazing." She reaches across the table and squeezes your hand.

You write the paper. She comes over the next evening. The cycle repeats.

More assignments, more sex. Her communications midterm prep (you write the study guide; she rides you on the couch). A group project presentation that her partners are too starstruck by her face to complain she contributed nothing (you build her slides; she blows you in the kitchen while the coffee brews). A reflection paper on gender dynamics in media (the irony continues to cremate itself; she lets you bend her over the desk).

The tutoring sessions become a formality. You really try to maintain some semblance of academic purpose. You print out practice questions, prepare vocabulary lists, bring flashcards. Momo sits across from you, pen in hand, notebook open, and lasts approximately four and a half minutes before the fidgeting starts.

"Okay, but what if Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but for snacks?" she proposes during one session, her feet in your lap under the table. "Like, the base level is water, then chips, then gummy bears, and the top is boba."

"That's not how Maslow works."

"It should be. His version is boring."

She doodles in the margins. She mispronounces "epistemology" so badly it sounds like a skin condition. She asks you if Karl Marx and Groucho Marx are related (they are not). She spends ten minutes trying to understand the concept of cognitive dissonance before declaring, "That's literally just being a Gemini."

And yet. She tries. In her own scattered, easily distracted, fundamentally Momo way, she tries. She reads the chapters you assign her - slowly, with her finger tracing each line, mouthing the words. She attempts the practice questions, and even when she gets them wrong, she furrows her brow and asks why. She texts you at midnight with questions that are sometimes insightful and often unhinged ("if everyone is socialized by their environment, does that mean I'm the product of K-pop and TikTok? because that tracks honestly").

She's never late for the sex. Not once. The girl who showed up twenty minutes late to your first tutoring session with boba in hand arrives at your apartment with military precision when there's an orgasm on the line. You'd find this insulting if it weren't so on-brand.

Her grades improve. Nothing dramatic. She inches from failing to passing, from D-territory into low C's. Her sociology professor emails her a "nice improvement" note and she screenshots it and sends it to you with seventeen exclamation marks and a string of emojis that includes, for reasons unclear, a lobster.

"I'm basically a genius now," she tells you one afternoon, lying on your bed in just her underwear after a session that stopped being academic approximately ninety seconds in.

"You got a C minus, Momo."

"That's passing! That's literally passing! I've never passed sociology before."

"You've taken it before?"

"Twice." She holds up two fingers. "Third time's the charm."

"That's not the flex you think it is."

"Everything is a flex if you believe in yourself."

The arrangement works. It's simple, clean, mutually beneficial. You write, she fucks, everyone wins. That's what you tell yourself every time she shows up at your door.

But today, things don’t go according to the usual setup

The sex is good. It's been good for almost two months. You've figured each other out by now. You know which angle makes her toes curl. She knows how to squeeze around you at exactly the right moment to make your brain go blank. You get each other off. Every time. No fumbling, no guesswork.

But tonight, after she comes (hard, gasping, her nails leaving fresh red trails down your forearms), something different happens.

She doesn't get up. She doesn't reach for her phone. She doesn't ask to use the shower, doesn't mention a party or a dinner or a friend she's meeting. Instead, she rolls onto her side, tucks herself against you, and lays her head on your chest.

Her cheek presses against your skin, right over your heartbeat. Her arm drapes across your stomach, her fingers curling loosely against your ribs. Her hair fans across your chest, dark and damp at the temples, smelling like your shampoo from the last time she showered here.

She doesn't say anything. Her breathing slows. Her body gets heavier against yours.

"Momo."

Nothing.

"Momo, don't you have somewhere to be?"

Her response is a small, sleepy mumble that contains no actual words. Her fingers twitch against your ribs and then go still.

"Momo." You nudge her shoulder gently. "Hey."

She's asleep. Fully, completely asleep. On your chest, in your bed, in your sad monk apartment. Her lips are slightly parted, her breath coming in slow, even puffs against your skin. One of her legs has tangled with yours under the sheets.

Wake her up. That's the move. Shake her shoulder, find her shirt, get her dressed, get her out, get your head straight. You know this. You know the rules because you made the rules. No sleepovers. No cuddling. No stroking her hair like you're doing right now, slow and careful from her forehead to the crown of her head, like she's something fragile, like she's something yours. When did your hand start doing that? You don't remember deciding to. Doesn't matter. You're not stopping.

Her hair is soft. You already knew that. You've grabbed fistfuls of it while she sucked your cock, pulled it while you fucked her from behind. But that was different. That was part of the arrangement. This is you touching her because you want to. Because she's warm, close and sleeping on your chest like she trusts you, and you don't have the guts to stop.

At some point the sun went down and you didn't bother turning on a light because that would require moving and Momo is asleep on you and you'd rather die than disturb that.

Momo burrows into your neck in her sleep and makes this little noise, barely there, and her arm squeezes tighter around your stomach. Your hand has been running through her hair on autopilot for the last ten minutes. Very normal behavior. Nothing to unpack there.

You're looking at the ceiling because it's the only safe place to look. The crack in the plaster is still there. Still shaped like a question mark. Still annoyingly relevant.

You have two options for dealing with what's happening inside you right now: you can dress it up in clinical language. Pair bonding. Oxytocin release. Attachment formation through repeated intimate contact. You can write yourself a whole paper on it, cite sources, get a decent grade.

Or you can just admit you're in love with Hirai Momo and deal with the consequences.

She mumbles something in her sleep and nuzzles deeper into your neck. Your hand pauses. Her face scrunches. You start stroking again immediately, like a trained animal. Pavlov would be so proud.

"I'm fucked," you inform the ceiling.

The ceiling doesn't respond. Momo sleeps on, warm and trusting, her hand curled against your ribs, completely unaware that she just ruined your life in the best possible way.

[elodieunderglass]

Hi! As someone who grew up in (I think?) New England and now lives in the UK, is living outside the US all it's made out to be? I know you moved a while ago and didn't go to "escape the US", but I imagine you can offer some insight. I'm sorry to be projecting some envy on to you, but the life you describe seems so lovely and livable. Your neighbors, your chickens, your gardens--it seems like you have some actual community. I (probably incorrectly) picture you living in the stereotypical British cottage that all of the British chicken-keeping companies seem to use to advertise their products. When I picture life in Europe, I picture the small fragments of life that we get from you and other bloggers, like the one with the escapist pet llama in France. I know that the UK has plenty of problems, and that we are only seeing slivers of your actual life, but do you think there's a different sense of community and livability over there that we don't have here? New England is also so standoffish that it might just be negatively skewing my perception of the US, too. Thanks for your thoughts, if you want to give them!

I’m sorry it took so long to reply!

I'm going to write a personal response about the impact of material conditions on parenting, because I think that's the most useful response and outcome. However, this response will be missing a lot of the political framing that it ought to have. I believe that describing the policies and infrastructure that the UK has, and how they impact on myself, explains a lot about how I am able to parent, what my life looks like, and in turn how that impacts a society. I think it is useful to outline SPECIFIC POLICIES and show what they do, because understanding specific material changes is a necessary part of any shift, let alone revolution. So this is not about escaping anywhere, or anywhere being better than anywhere else; it's about frameworks that I use which are (essentially) nonexistent in the USA, and how they contribute to a liveable society. It might seem like "why does a question about your life sounding nice, with chickens, start with 'maternity leave'?" but... this is the answer.

1. Parental Leave In the UK, parental leave is a minimum 6 months. After the first 6 weeks of full pay, the government pays you a very small stipend every week (currently £188/week) plus a very small child benefit. Some jobs offer better-paid leave as a benefit. You accrue your fully paid vacation time (6+ weeks) while on leave, and therefore most people use it at the end of their leave to pad it out. Parental leave can usually be split between parents. A perfectly normal thing is for a mother to take the first 6 months, then hand the baby to Dad for his three months off with it. Impacts of parental leave on my personal life: - I had time and space to adjust to being a parent. - I was able to pay my bills while not working. - Our children went to nursery (daycare) when they were over the age of 1. - I was able to return to work in the exact same job, back into the benefits of working (which, for me, include intellectual exercise and making a positive impact on the world.) Impacts of parental leave on society: - "it takes a village to raise a child" - well, here's the bloody village. - You spend time attentively raising a baby, in a stage of life where that returns a lot of dividends. - You have a year to make "parenting friends," forming networks and not being isolated. Everyone else with a baby the same age is doing exactly the same thing too. - Babies grow up in social circles with friends pre-installed. - Parents develop support networks. - "Toddler group" culture is normalised. On parental leave you are supported to build and structure a social life. - There is daily foot traffic and people moving around towns during the day, because Not Everyone is At Work. Some number of mothers are in coffee shops with babies every day of the week. Some number of parents are always drifting through libraries on a Thursday morning. In any town there will be adults in their 30s engaging with local resources, shops, events, classes, museums, culture, and friendships during the weekday - because they are having a year off with their baby. This is hard to articulate, but has huge knock-on effects. - after all, things like shops and museums and libraries are expected to be Always Open (staffed by workers) but workers are also expected to be Always Working (at places that are open) so when are working people going to use these resources? - people can be friendly and know the people in their community if they have had some time, space and reason to meet them.

Culture of part-time working In the UK it's very normal for kids to have two working parents, with one - or both - parents working part-time. That's what my husband and I do. Impacts of part-time working on my family: - My partner and I each spend one day a week with our nursery-age child while the other two are in school, allowing us to have a relationship with the youngest that isn't a constant four-way tug-of-war. - We meet our friends in a regular, routine heartbeat of connection, social expression, and support. It is extremely good to see your good friends once a week, and maintaining friendships over years is extremely good for you. - it's very good for the kids. not only do they have a lot of parental attention (which improves behaviour, teaches them skills, makes them good citizens, etc) but they see their own best friends all the time, building their own relationships and connecting THEM to the networks of "village." - we have adults during the week who can do things like go to the bank, pick up prescriptions, or do other capacity-balancing things within work hours. - we can collect our schoolchildren from school and they don't need afterschool care 2 days out of 5, saving money and letting us see our kids. - working part time means that we need to take less time off work over school half-terms and holidays. Impacts of part time working on society: - more working adults are available during the week to do things like the PTA, local committees, local volunteering, local mutual aid, local classes and groups. More working adults can do things like walk their dogs, have allotments, and take their kids swimming. Working adults can run toddler groups for new parents, who then return to work part-time, to come and help run the toddler group. - I feel like this is obvious, but if you want a society with amenities, then you have to staff and use the amenities. - If you don't have part-time workers, you're relying on retired and nonworking people to run your communities during the week - and they do a brilliant job! - but a balanced society should have people of different ages and abilities working together. - again, you have people in coffee shops in the week; you have people USING things and DOING things in the week. - you are NOT forcing one parent into Permanent Babycarer Role and one parent into Permanent Worker Role! This is threaded through all of these points, but you do NOT have to set up a permanent Stay At Home Parent / Working Parent dynamic when your society offers infrastructure for flexibility and supportive policies.

More Holiday (and different school holidays) Okay, so you're a working parent in the USA. You get 2 weeks of vacation time a year... and your kids are off school for 10-12 weeks of summer. how do you work and also raise your kids? well, usually through some unholy feats of juggling, expensive summer camps, and relying HEAVILY on family. This isn't sensible or necessary. (It's also incredibly hard on American teachers.) but it DOES mean that parents are in a vulnerable state in America. In many American families, the three-month childcare gap in summer makes it really hard for women in particular to work, widening inequality. In the UK, workers usually have 6 weeks of holiday. School summer holidays are only 6 weeks long. There are lots of other holidays - every six weeks, kids get a week off for Half Term - but with two parents and a culture of part-time working, you can just about cover it every year, and still have a bit of vacation time for yourself, Christmas, and travel. What this means for my family: - We can have three kids and two nearly-full-time jobs. - We see a reasonable amount of our children. What this means for society: - you've possibly picked up on the recurring theme that the USA requires a Designated Parent to be removed from the workforce/society and turned into a permanent caretaker, because otherwise the family couldn't manage the admin. The knock-on effects (resentful caretaker, resentful breadwinner, stressed out children, family with less economic/emotional resilience, caretaker expected to do all domestic chores and admin, breadwinner expected to exhaust themselves to provide resources, children do not interact/engage with breadwinner) form the backbone of the American family unit, which is not a great (or default) way of actually raising kids. - another huge expectation in America is that Family and the Church will step in to provide this missing material support - i.e. church summer camps. or grandparents taking the kids. Which - what do you do if you're not Christian? if you're estranged? if you're queer? if you moved away from the small town where that would have worked? if your parents are harmful or unsafe? again, policy changes and infrastructure are making family life workable.

Better Nursery Options (and nursery support) The UK has some of the worst nursery options and highest bills in Europe, I think? (citation needed) but it's still cheaper and higher-quality than the USA. My mother in the USA is always ranting about "don't you want to raise your OWN children?" and "they will be harmed by their carers, or made to watch TV!" but on the contrary - I LIKE my kids having multiple caretakers and a qualified professional care team. they are NOT watching TV. their nursery staff take them to do LOVELY THINGS and I can work an ENTIRE DAY without being CLIMBED ON. There is SOME financial support available for sending kids to nursery. From the age of 3, or younger if the parents are low-income, kids receive 30 hours a week free childcare from the government. (in practice they've just changed this and it isn't as great as it sounds but it's a slight savings). What this meant for my family: - I could afford three kids. And they are EXACTLY three years apart (lol). this means that as each child turned 3 and got cheaper childcare, the next one started, so we were never paying 2x nursery bills. - This allowed us to have children, a nice number and a nice age gap, who would therefore grow up together as a nice sibling set, but we could afford it and afford their childcare. - this literally shaped my family. size, age gap, and choices. everything about their dynamics, their relationships, and their future as siblings was shaped by this random scrap of policy. What this means for society: - EVEN STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERS IN BRITAIN SEND THEIR THREE-YEAR-OLD KIDS TO NURSERY. - EVEN CHILDMINDERS (people who run in-home childcare facilities alongside raising their own kids) PUT THEIR KIDS IN OTHER NURSERIES! - that's right - stay-at-home mothers DESERVE breaks. it's an EXHAUSTING job, with no recharge time or holiday, and tremendous pressure to be perfect all the time. - it is so, so normal to use nursery. it's not a bad choice, or a place to "park" your children, or something Bad Parents do, or something you Must Become A Stay At Home Parent to Avoid Using. there are no terrors of satanists or people being hurt or kids being locked in closets, as many Americans do worry about. having help with childcare is just a wider village, a care team, another aspect of your kids' lives. - seriously, if you speak to American parents on the internet, it isn't just a financial thing - daycare is perceived as being BAD for children, something a good mom should break herself to avoid using. - in the UK it's... nursery. Kids go to nursery. you pick the days. they go and pick daisies. - it's okay to have a break from parenting and being Touched all the time. - it's very good for kids to start making friends and having other carers.

Decent schooling In England, free public schooling starts at aged 4. children wear uniforms from age 4. hot meals are about £3 a day and are free for the first few years. there are no metal detectors or shootings. kids learn phonics, cursive, maths, tech, cooking, art, sports, etc. at a reasonable standard, not dependent on local property taxes - okay, so, background: in the USA schools budgets are state-set, but are ALSO often linked to local property taxes and local funding pots. so schools in "poor" areas generally have less resources, while schools in areas with nice houses and Good School Districts have a completely different experience. In some USA schools, teachers have to use food banks and buy pencils for their own students. It's all pretty wild and inconsistent. This is somewhat true in the UK (better schools tend to be in 'better' areas) but the funding is more consistently given and there is a national-level monitoring and regulation program. (it isn't left up to 50 insane separate states who all want to strip school budgets and cut their funding to do this according to Personal Vibes.) this means that you can just... send your kids to school. they learn things. and then come home. It's fine. you can just send your kids to school. everyone else is too. Many communities are walkable, and "driving kids to school" is not the default. Kids are expected to become independent earlier, and society is expected to be safer. at the age of 11 they usually walk to school with their friends. What this means for my family: - my kids are pleasant, the older two can read, they have opportunities and are supported. I don't feel like school is damaging them. On the contrary. - it isn't on me as (Femme Parent) to be their entire cultural and intellectual education. they're exposed to diverse viewpoints, people, and teachers. their mental landscapes are broader and more resilient than if it had just been me. - (I was homeschooled, you see.) What this means for society: - children are mildly educated. - children are fairly safe when they're Away From You. - teachers are a reasonable profession that's normal to go into. and teachers live fairly normal lives. - social inequality is reduced through equity introduced in education. - educational opportunities are more consistent and less stratified. - children can safely get out of family homes (and parents can work).

walkable communities, but you got that.

public transport, but you know about that.

socialised healthcare, but you get that. As a result of all these things, raising a family is materially different in the UK, with effects that knock on throughout. With one or two tweaks - now you have present and engaged fathers. Now women can be working parents without breaking themselves in half. Now babies make friends they'll keep their whole lives. Now you CAN be distant from toxic family because you don't need family support to raise kids. But all of those things could be put into policy. They are not something British people invented. ANY SOCIETY THAT LAYS THINGS OUT COULD ACHIEVE THIS. And I think that's worth saying and laying out. Livable communities can be made livable with livable infrastructure. infrastructure is something we can make.

[xoxolovlies]

brains and breaks

Pairing: Arvid Linblad x Reader (desi was requested) - this uses fem pronouns :)

(single part fic)

Summary: While the paddock hums with engines and adrenaline, Arvid Lindblad watches, quietly in love, as everyone else realises his girlfriend might just be the most intimidating person there, and not for the reasons they expect.

Word Count (roughly): 2,292

all photos from pinterest ⋆‧°𓏲ּ𝄢

The paddock is loud in a way that never really fades.

Even in the quieter moments, there’s always something, engines in the distance, radios crackling, footsteps moving with purpose. It’s a world built on speed, on instinct, on precision measured in milliseconds.

And then there’s you. Sitting cross-legged on a spare chair just outside the garage, completely unfazed by any of it.

Your notebook rests open across your lap, pages filled with neat, structured handwriting, sections underlined, arguments carefully built, references scattered in the margins. A pen is tucked between your fingers, tapping lightly against the paper as you reread a paragraph, brows slightly furrowed.

You don’t look up when someone walks past. You don’t flinch when a car roars to life a few metres away. You just keep writing.

It’s Oliver Bearman who notices first. He slows as he walks by, mid-conversation with someone else, his attention snagging on something that doesn’t quite fit.

Because you don’t look like you belong to the chaos of a race weekend.

You look like you belong in a library. Or a lecture hall. Or somewhere quiet and serious and filled with people who say words like theoretical framework without blinking.

He stops. Just slightly. “What are you doing?” he asks, genuinely confused.

You glance up, blinking once like you’ve been pulled out of a completely different world. “Oh hi,” you say, polite but a little distracted. “Just finishing an essay.”

He looks at the notebook. Then back at you. “Here?”

You tilt your head slightly. “Yeah?”

Like it’s obvious. Like there’s nothing strange about writing a sociology paper in the middle of a Formula racing paddock.

“What’s it about?” he asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

You hesitate for half a second, like you’re deciding how much to explain. “Post-colonial identity and how it shapes modern social hierarchies,” you say finally.

There’s a pause. A long one. Oliver blinks. “Right.” He nods slowly, like he understands. He does not understand.

“Are you okay?” another voice cuts in. Franco Colapinto leans in slightly, glancing between Oliver and you.

Oliver gestures vaguely in your direction. “She’s writing an essay.”

Franco squints. “About what?” Oliver opens his mouth. Closes it again. “…something really smart.”

You suppress a small smile, turning back to your notebook. “It’s just sociology,” you say lightly.

“Just?” Franco repeats, like the word itself is offensive.

You shrug. “It’s not that deep.”

Oliver lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “I think it is.”

They linger. Neither of them quite sure why.

Maybe it’s curiosity. Maybe it’s the way you’ve already gone back to writing, completely unbothered by their presence, like they’re the ones intruding into your space rather than the other way around.

Your pen moves quickly now, thoughts spilling out in a way that feels practiced, natural. Confident. You pause only to flip a page, scanning over something you wrote earlier.

“…wait,” Franco says suddenly. “What’s that word?”

You glance down. “Hegemony.”

Silence. “Is that English?” Oliver asks.

You laugh softly. “Yes.”

By the time any others walk past, there’s a small, unintentional audience forming. “What’s going on here?” a voice asks.

Oliver points at you again, like you’re some kind of phenomenon.

“She’s doing homework.”

Franco looks at you. At the notebook. At the very serious expression on your face as you scribble something down, muttering quietly under your breath.

“That’s terrifying,” he decides.

“I can hear you,” you say without looking up.

“Sorry,” Franco replies immediately, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s just, what are you even writing?”

You sigh, finally setting your pen down and looking up properly.

“I’m analysing how historical power structures influence contemporary social systems,” you explain.

There’s a beat. Franco blinks. “…yeah, no, I stand by what I said. That’s terrifying.”

“What’s terrifying?” The voice is familiar. Warm. And instantly grounding. You don’t even need to look up to know he’s there.

Arvid steps into view, still in his race suit, hair slightly messy from having just taken his helmet off. There’s a lightness to him, the kind that only comes after being in the car, focused energy slowly settling back into something softer.

His gaze finds you immediately. It always does. And just like that, his expression shifts, almost softer.

“She’s writing something insane,” Oliver says.

Arvid glances at your notebook, then back at you. “What is it this time?” he asks, voice quieter.

You tilt the page toward him slightly. “Essay due tomorrow.”

He scans a few lines. There’s a small pause. And then, a smile arises, not surprised, not overwhelmed, just proud.

“Yeah,” he says simply, glancing back at the others. “She’s really smart.”

There’s something in the way he says it, like it’s obvious. Like it’s something he’s known for a long time, like it’s one of his favourite things about you.

“You understand that?” Oliver asks him, almost accusingly.

Arvid shrugs lightly. “Some of it.”

You raise a brow. “That’s generous.” He grins.

“She used the word hegemony,” Franco says, still processing.

Arvid nods. “Yeah, she does that.”

“Regularly?” Franco asks, once more.

“Mm,” Arvid hums. “All the time.”

There’s a quiet shift in the group, not intimidation exactly, but something close. Because while they spend their lives mastering speed and precision and reaction times, you sit here, casually dissecting entire systems of thought like it’s second nature.

“Do you ever, like, take a break?” Oliver asks.

You glance back down at your notes. “This is my break.”

He stares at you. “That’s even worse.”

Arvid laughs softly, stepping closer until he’s just beside you. His hand rests briefly against your shoulder, not drawing attention, just grounding, familiar. He leans down slightly. “Almost done?” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” you reply. “Just finishing the conclusion.”He nods, like that makes perfect sense. Because to him, it does.

The others exchange looks. Because somehow, he’s the only one not intimidated, not confused, not overwhelmed.

“How are you so calm about this?” A voice asks him.

Arvid glances back at you, then at them, a small smile tugs at his lips. “Because she’s my girlfriend,” he says simply. “I’m supposed to think she’s amazing.”

You look up at that. There’s something soft in your expression now. Something quieter than all the words you’ve been writing.

“And?” Oliver presses. Arvid shrugs again, but there’s nothing casual about the way he looks at you. “And she is.”

You close your notebook. Finally, the tension in your shoulders easing as you set your pen down. “Done,” you announce. The group collectively exhales like they’ve just witnessed something monumental.

“Can you, like, explain it to us?” Franco asks cautiously.

You smile, a little mischievous. “Sure.” They immediately regret asking.

Arvid doesn’t. He just stands there, watching you talk, watching the way your hands move as you explain something complex like it’s simple, watching the way everyone else struggles to keep up. And he smiles, soft, proud, and completely, utterly certain.

Because in a world that moves as fast as his, you’re the one thing that makes him slow down. And then you think, and slowly you realise something.

That intelligence doesn’t need to be loud to be powerful, and love doesn’t need to be complicated to be certain, especially when he’s looking at you.

⋆˚꩜｡

this was a request

motorsport tag-list: @cem3tarygat3s @rosesanddiaries @hungrilysymbol

[the-lost-seven-7]

I would like to specifically discuss Mike and Will's relationship at the end of Season 5, because what they showed us completely contradicts their actual characters. (And I will also mention the others at the end of the post.)

From Season 1, they began developing a deep bond between Mike and Will. We repeatedly saw Mike's profound concern for his close friend. He searched for him and believed Will was alive, despite "Will's body" being pulled from the water. That was a huge trauma for a 12-year-old Mike to see your childhood best friend pulled out "dead" - yet somehow, this was conveniently forgotten by the finale.

In Season 2, their attachment was shown from all angles: Mike's worry for Will, his care, staying by his side, emotional support, attention, the line "We'll go crazy together," sharing their fears with each other. All of this reveals the true emotions and feelings of these two characters; it shows their deep emotional attachment.

Season 3 showed us their conflict and how they tried to resolve it. But this very conflict became the groundwork for Season 4. Yet even despite the fight, Mike immediately drives to Will's house in a heavy downpour to apologize, because he still values their deep connection and Will himself. And throughout the entire season, he repeatedly asked about how Will was feeling.

Season 4 is where things get really interesting - the hidden conflict between the characters. Awkwardness, distance, and avoidance become the main problem in their relationship, which they gradually work through over the entire season, and it feels very realistic. First, there's awkwardness, then conflict, avoiding the conversation, and finally, an honest talk. Even the scene where Mike apologizes to Will, saying "Hawkins isn't the same without you. It's like I lost you," is described as "intimate." This already points to the importance of the characters' emotional depth, something without which they would be empty.

The beginning of Season 5 started well for Will and Mike. They showed us how Mike was inspired by Will's words and became the leader of the group and a protector again. The emotional depth was still present in Volume 1. Short dialogues and moments of concern fit well into the framework of their relationship, along with small details like "touching a shoulder," "sharing a look," etc. That dialogue in the field was perfectly and deeply written, had meaning, and could have become the foundation for subsequent relationship development, culminating in a powerful payoff.

But then Volume 2 comes out, and the entire emotional core of the characters, especially Mike, just collapses. The character suddenly becomes empty and is pushed to the background. The entire plot started revolving solely around the fight with Vecna, forgetting about the characters themselves. As a result, after Volume 1, we didn't get a single proper, substantial dialogue between Will and Mike. Well, we did get one dialogue at the radio tower, but it turned out to be so dry and meaningless it's almost laughable.

None of this aligns with what came before. The characters became different, all their progress was destroyed, and they regressed in development to Season 3. Honestly, it all looks like a joke, but unfortunately, it's reality. The writers couldn't handle writing the emotional core of the characters, which is always, ALWAYS important for a COMPLETE show. It feels like I watched a cheap action movie.

And the most disappointing thing is the epilogue - how the characters are presented in their future. Lucas and Max just go on dates? Couldn't they have been written doing some activities together? It came out very dry, as if their entire personality is built solely on their relationship. Dustin will just spend all his time in the library now? It's strange that everyone forgot about Suzie. They could have written his future with Suzie, where they finally meet and start doing science together, studying and creating something new. Will just turned into his father Lonnie, started drinking and smoking, going to gay bars, and met some random guy in whom he "found happiness"? That even sounds ridiculous. Will is the character who was ALWAYS afraid of becoming like his father. His future clearly shouldn't have been LIKE THAT. And Will certainly wouldn't be hanging around bars looking for a new love interest. He is a character who, for a long time, LOVED Mike, the person who UNDERSTOOD him COMPLETELY. They went through so much together, they've known each other since kindergarten, and always had a deep attachment to one another. And when Will called Mike his Tammy Thompson, that was really dumb. I'm sorry that the writers completely butchered the character.

El, who, according to Mike's theory, actually survived and is now traveling the world, having found a quiet village with three waterfalls. I'm still sitting here in shock that such a good character, who went through so much hardship, just dies. And the death was so illogical because a different plan could have been devised. But in the end, El, who was on a path to independence, for some reason listened to Kali and decided to sacrifice herself. This death could have been written so much better and more emotionally. But it all came down to the fact that, for some reason, Mike turned out to be the most important person to El. What about Hopper, who raised her for so long? And Will, who became like a brother to her? They spent most of their time together and understood each other much better. And what about Max, who showed El that she needs to choose herself, not others? They basically forced the character to regress to her Season 2 self, when El didn't yet have the agency to decide for herself. And it's pretty strange that, in the end, she chooses specifically Mike to say goodbye to, to kiss, and to tell him she loves him, and gets nothing in return.

And Mike himself, who sees his future as a writer of stories. But did the REAL Mike want a future like his father's? To look like his father and never leave the house? The real Mike is completely different from what they showed us in the epilogue. They killed this character by making him "normal." This is literally what haunted Mike throughout all the seasons. He tried to be "normal" not because he wanted to, but because he was afraid of standing out. And instead of allowing the character to open up from another side, to finally accept himself and come out of the closet, they made him the most clichéd, depressed character, who will now remain a closed-off and insecure person for the rest of his life. In the end, all of Mike's character development boils down to him just being a bad friend and boyfriend. Yet he had so much potential; they could have revealed a different side of him, but they didn't.

[zealsoughtsequesterustanxiedemon]

I was telling a friend earlier, but despite being a heterosexual harem-esque story, re:zero appeals a lot to queer people for various reasons. Obviously, it's just a very popular, well-written show and some of that will generically drive that interest, but I do think it has a lot of different elements that despite the show basically all fitting within a heterosexual framework, feel very validating to me.

Like as just one example, Beatrice's story arc in season 2 appeals a lot to me thematically.

The last thing before dying that her mother told her to do was to watch over and protect said mother's library until "that person", one suitable for inheriting their knowledge, comes to save her. This came gifted with a magic tome of wisdom that can read the owner's future and provide guidance on how best to reach their desired goals. She ends up seeing this tome as an extension of her mother and follows it religiously.

Beatrice never ends up finding "that person". Despite many trying, notably only men shown in the montages of the anime, she ends up turning them all away and stays bound to that library for 400 years, growing lonelier and depressed. She admits to Subaru that she has given up on finding that person and that the Tome of Wisdom has been blank for a long time, determining that she has no future.

Subaru offers to save her and she snaps at him, berating him in tears about where he's been for 400 years, about how awful she feels and how she has long given up. Then she pulls a hellish ultimatum on him, either put her first above anyone else or to kill her himself. He fails to answer such a question and she throws him out.

Subaru then gets to meet the spirit of said mother, Echidna, and being so distraught over Beatrice's situation, he prompts her about it. She says that she didn't have anyone particularly in mind to be "that person" and that she was deeply interested to see who Beatrice would specifically pick.

This all ends up reading to me as a big allegory for The Heterosexual Life Path and how cruel in concept it is. Daughter, please wait for your destined partner, one who you will know is suitable to inherit our wealth and the one who will put you first over everyone else. He will save you from your directionless life and finally bring you happiness. Dedicate your whole life to this goal. Oh, no one ever came? You gave up on it? Well I guess that's it. You have no future. Your life is over. It has no meaning.

Needless to say, but the resolution to this story is our protagonist convincing her to abandon that path. In the middle of the library engulfed in flame, Subaru convinces her to escape with him. That he will never be "that person", that she's strong enough to not need to be saved by any one guy, that he can support her without fulfilling that role, that she's been waiting for someone to convince of her that all this time. And she saves him (along with herself) from being burned alive in her own inheritance.

And since then she's never been happier. She's not a love interest; instead she's become something between our protagonist's daughter and his closest friend. She's his biggest confidant, she's the only way he can cast magic anymore, they are frequently attached at the hip and constantly being cute together. She has a much better relationship with other women, now that she doesn't feel in competition with them, particularly of Emilia who she was jealous for having both Puck and Subaru. This little girl is free from the weight of the heterosexual life her mother set out for her and it's the best thing that's ever happened to her.

[docholligay]

Straw to the Fire

This is an old return to form--if you have missed the high-noble patter of my Michiru, HERE YOU ARE. Special thinks to the Folger Shakespeare Library, this sounded so easy when I came up with the idea ahaha. 1800 words! For the Same Prompt Party.

Swear. 

Hamlet hears the cry from the earth, calling him to revenge. The earth is, of course, some offstage area, perhaps the buzzing sound system of a college drama school, or even below it, were we to enter The Globe. Though, who could ever hear a ghost whisper, so near the pit, where the rabble scream and cry for more? No, the true ghost, the ghost Shakespeare imagined, he must never have whispered. The ghost screamed, and rattled his chains, and howled like a true shade, one confined to the darkness of an unclean death without honor or absolution. Screaming into the night, into the crowds, past anything else, to be heard over the din.

Swear. 

But one must imagine himself Hamlet, and the crowds dissipate, hand on a sword with only a promise given to a love now condemned to the darkness. Does your ghost whisper? Is it a chilling wind that one could excuse easily enough? Close enough to silent you believe it might be your own mind? 

I believe the ghost screams. I believe I can hear her now. 

Swear. 

The tragedy, so the classicists say, is a function of hamartia, that error in judgment that leads to the inevitable tumble from grace. As with so many things I was taught to regurgitate as a child, I do not know if this is so, or if we have all reassured ourselves it must be so, adding some explicable two act framework to the common and capricious cruelty of life. 

I was raised of a Shakespearean bent, and the Poetics were not yet translated at that time. I do not know if I believe it universal. But I suppose he, too, wrote that it was not in our stars, but in ourselves. 

It is true, I suppose in a light. She made so many errors. Can an error borne of love truly be called as such? She was brave, and devoted, and true. Haruka. She did not see love in herself or for herself--I suppose it is impossible to see the end of one’s own nose--but that was her truest error, should we assign one to her. 

Sleep seldom visits sorrow, so Sebastian tells us. I have had sad hours, seeming long, to consider these things. Walking the same steps over and over again, wondering if I could make the play end differently, if only I shouted loud enough. 

But the error was not hers, in the end. It was not, and I will not call it so. The error was that moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her mercurial appetites and imagined histories, sent us off to die in her holy war, the young blood feeding the machine of the old, as it ever has been and ever will be. 

Haruka believed in it. My Haruka, with eyes grey as kitten fur, her hair falling over her brow like a farmboy that should have been made prince, but did not possess the birth nor the casual malignity of that office. A beautiful thing, set against a cruel one like the blossoms against a spring frost. 

Do you imagine a battlefield? Can you? I scarcely could, when I was young, the whinny of the horses as they crashed into the mud, the clash of sword. All overlaid by powerful speech--If we are marked to die, we are enow. To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honor. 

Dramatic. Childish. The words of the hopelessly naive. You cannot imagine the heavy thunk of steel on a body. The low cry of someone desperately wounded. The hot pounding in your ears as you walk a tightrope between life and death. No, it is not a tightrope. it is a tug of war. There must be a loser. Even the winner walks away in mud, hands rubbed to bleeding. 

A true soldier does not hear the glorious trumpet, nor the stories of heroism. These things are for the hoi polloi, clamoring for a true story of greatness. Begging to hear that the nobility and honor of this land are worth fighting for, so long as they never have to do it themselves.  But the solider who fights? No. The solider lying in the darkness hears one thing, and one thing alone. 

Sleep no more. A murdered ghost calling out of the earth. Sleep no more. 

I am no murderer. No, that is an untruth. I am not her murderer. 

Yet I hear her cry all the same. And I obey. 

You’re right. I should stop the prelude, and come to it. But I set this stage as explanation for everything about to come. A war, a promise, a notion of intangible near-lies like justice and love. 

The world ended under the blue-grey sky of winter, a call to arms made. A galaxy, a star, another of the endless enemies that come to the door of the innocent in their own mind. It began with her pinky touching mine, the warmth of it full even beneath her glove. To love each other so long, and still to play like children in this way. It was her gift. I was a teenager forever in the sweet tempest of her devotion. 

It feels like a twinge, at first. When you are called. A stomachache you could almost ignore, then it becomes a twist, a chain dragging to where you are needed. Ah, this isn’t how you imagined it. I confess that makes two of us. But please remember we are not a volunteer squadron. Attendance is mandatory. 

And so it was, as snowflakes tangled off the edge of her lashes, and I felt that easy, careless foolishness of great love, that the little interloping devil of a pain came into my stomach, entering through my back like a sniper’s shot. A danger had come to us. Again. One we were never permitted to take down, not fully, but only to repel, like one might spray a cat on the counter with water. 

A tabby cat, in our treatment; a tiger in theirs. 

The wind blew cold, up my skirt. Haruka convinced herself that it was so very Roman of us to cover our legs with only a scrap, and she would prove this point with her little short sword brandished. Minako used to laugh, at that, but rarely did she argue. She more than anyone knew that you needed to carry with you whatever you could to sweeten the medicine. 

I should give the full story, here. I should speak on that aforementioned thunk of steel on a body. And yet, for all the poetry and fine words spilt on the matter, I cannot call them up for that day. It was not a poem. It was not an epic. I barely remember it, and the things I do recall are as if seeing through stained glass, the sounds dampened by the stone church of my own remove. 

I saw the red, streaking across the bright white. This I recall with perfect clarity. Snowflakes still resting on her long lashes. 

From somewhere, there came a scream, tortured and tearing. A ghost among us even then, so suddenly. 

The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours.

We are the flowers of the Moon Kingdom, they say in . It is a cold garden, in which we are planted, an open field blooming with marble and gold leaf, row on row. A bloom forever frozen, honored with the chance to be forever spoken of in speeches and children’s stories alike. In that garden we stood, to see the honored soldier offered up with honeyed words. The princess was crying. This was what united the battlefield with the ramen shop, in truth, was her capacity to weep. Some people are born to their gifts. 

Swear. 

The ghost shrieked of an unjust end, and I did know the culprit, even as she stood next to me crying. The others did not move, taking it for the wind whistling through the trees. A mere effect of chance and meteorology. 

But one must imagine himself Hamlet. 

The error was not Haruka’s. She was the fallen sparrow, the providence of God made flesh in the choice. No. That is pretty words, wrapping up the truth. Forgive me, I am terribly prone to such. I have been taught since I was young. Let me make it plain. She was murdered. She was murdered.

I made a promise. I set my hand on the sword that had be hers, and I swore in such a fashion as I have never known. I have believed myself empty, for so much of my life? Do you laugh to hear me say that? But it is true. 

The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the tables of celebration. It was a short time, where we commemorated another victory, another routing of the enemy who would only regroup and return, the curtain rising again on that same play, now down a a member of the cast. But you would know no such thing, to see the food laid on the table, the drinks sparkling in the light. A few sniffled words about how lovely it would be if Haruka were here. 

One must imagine himself Hamlet. 

Swear. 

I have you told you this, to explain to you my reasons. I am no great evil, though you will surely think me so. I thought myself empty, but I have found a warmth and fullness in myself. In hating her murderer, I have discovered a dangerous humanity in myself. Macduff, of course, but I have understood Iago. I have sympathized with Richard most of all, his weak and ineffectual king, forced to snivel and bow until the moment he was freed by his own blade. 

I made a promise. I will keep it. I hear the ghost screaming even now. 

Royalty. Choice. They say a king envies the common man his sleep. And yet she sleeps so peacefully, within. She who gave me great sympathy and cried on my shoulder over a girl she sent to die for an ideal, a dream, a fantasy. Heavy hangs the head that wears a crown. 

I shall relieve her the weight. I that have neither pity, love, nor fear. 

I have you told you this, to explain to you my reasons. I am no great evil, though you will surely think me so. I will not longer, like a whore, unpack my heart with words. My voice is in my sword.  It is true, my captive on the floor, that you failed as a guardian, but perhaps you will find success as a messenger. I will take her blade, upon which I swore, and I will end this. 

One must imagine himself Hamlet. Freed of the indecision. 

Swear.

[creator-chaos]

Dear op,

Just saw your tshd and queer theory post and it has moved something inside me. Please use this ask to talk about it more. I need all the details! As a person who has been in Yoshiki's shoes before AND actively grieving loss of a loved one due to cancer, this type of meta posts rewires my thinking. Where do you begin to read queer theory? Any recs? How does TSHD relate to queer theory in your opinion? Im all ears!

OMG thank you!!! I'm not an expert, but I took a queer theory grad class and read a bunch of trans theory, so I'll share my thoughts. ^.^ (Spoilers for the manga below!)

In general, queer theory is an approach that "queers" social norms and assumptions, in terms of critique, "making strange" what goes unquestioned, etc. The overall framework of queer theory fits really well with TSHD's themes of the limits of labels/language, trying to understand others without forcing them into existing categories, and interrogating moral assumptions.

Something I've been thinking about is Hikaru's moment of understanding the value of life, in that the narrative isn't telling us to just accept moral claims we're told, or to disregard what we don't understand and stick with our own intuition--instead, Hikaru ends up seeking out other's perspectives and thinking about how it relates to his own experience, and arrives at valuing life for a reason rather than an unquestioned assumption.

There's also Yoshiki and Asako's conversation outside the hospital where Asako questions Yoshiki's insistence on the difference between "humans" and "monsters", with the implication that while we shouldn't be assuming that the "human" way is the right way and "monsters" should assimilate to that, we also shouldn't get stuck on the idea that "humans" and "monsters" are fundamentally different and unchangeable. Basically, monsters serve to queer human norms, but we can also queer the labels of human and monster and accept a fuzziness and fluidity between the two (a pretty easy metaphor for straightness and queerness).

Oh, and with what I said about grief, Ahmed critiques the idea that "healthy mourning" involves letting go of an "other", highlighting that for something to be a "loss", it was already part of us, not an "other". She suggests that the "ethical" approach to grief is to keep alive the way the lost love was part of us--recognizing our indebtedness to others--and that by continuing to live and become connected, we keep alive that person's impact on the world. (That's my simplistic interpretation, anyway.) And 'Hikaru' is a concrete representation of og Hikaru's impact on Yoshiki and others living on--actually living, being changed and reshaped, not just a static memory.

Some of the big-name authors that I remember are Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick (particularly fun for lit analysis), Sara Ahmed and Jasbir Puar for bringing in more queer of color critiques of nationalism--I'm definitely missing lots of important queer of color/Black queer and more recent writers, so anyone feel free to offer recs!

I also think reading queer theory isn't about agreeing with everything said (I'm sure there's lots I disagree with from the above authors), but rather making opportunities to play with ideas and reframe assumptions to be able to see in new ways. I'd honestly suggest starting at your local library and seeing if they have collections of essays to get you started with a variety of authors and topics. Or you could search for "queer theory" and whatever topic you're interested in on Google scholar and see where that gets you. Also, some queer theory writing can get dense or obtuse, so don't feel bad about skimming around until you find something you want to dig into.

Eek, I really took your invitation to ramble, lol. If I haven't bored you, feel free to talk to me more about this!

[rikudaa]

༉‧₊˚Blue Paint and Binary

Tim Drake/Red Robin x Reader | Part 1. >>>

ღA/N: I haven’t finished the Jason’s one yet but already started on Tim, I don’t have any excuse your honor. Dividers are made by @cafekitsune ! Also there’s a familiar name, I wonder why it’s there👀

Note: This is a Yandere story but for the start off the chapter it’s just a life of being student in university. You’re an art major with a psychology focus, and he’s in another major likely something strategic, analytical, or tech-heavy. Academic rivals are ruled.

No gender mention for reader, just “You” and “Y/N”. Enjoy!

You see him again.

Fourth time this week. Fifth if you count the reflection in the library window Monday night, where he didn’t notice you watching him stalk through the neuroscience wing like he had a hitlist tucked in his backpack. He probably did. Probably alphabetized, color-coded, timestamped. You don’t know what his major is, exactly. You just know it involves enough data and silence to make your teeth itch.

You’re not even sure how it started, this thing between you.

Maybe it was the day he tore down your entire color-theory thesis in front of the honors seminar like you hadn’t poured eight weeks of insomnia into it. Or maybe it was when you psychoanalyzed the subtle ways he corrects professors, like he’s trying not to challenge their authority outright. A boy raised in the shadows, needing to be smarter than the room but invisible at the same time.

He hated that.

You liked that he hated that.

It made things interesting.

Now you both sit two rows apart in the interdisciplinary lecture you don’t need, but keep taking anyway. You, because it fulfills a loose psych elective. Him, because–well, you’re still figuring that out. You suspect it’s just to keep an eye on you.

His laptop is open. Of course. Always typing, even when the professor is off-topic or ranting about Kantian frameworks like anyone in this generation gives a damn. You sketch while he types. His fingers never pause. Neither does your pencil.

You don’t know what he’s writing. He doesn’t know you’re drawing him. (He probably does)

Sometimes you wonder what it’d be like if you weren’t circling each other like dogs bred for war. If you weren’t two kids with too many ghosts and not enough peace. If you weren’t chasing two versions of control in different languages–his clean, hard logic versus your bleeding, beautiful chaos.

“Drake,” you mutter when he passes by your table at the campus café.

He looks up. Neutral expression, polite voice.

“Y/N.”

The way he says your name–it’s never soft. Like it’s a task. Like he’s filing you under ‘problems to solve later.’

You sip your coffee. He doesn’t sit, but he also doesn’t leave.

“I heard you’re presenting at the symposium next month,” he says. Tone clipped. “Didn’t think postmodern expressionism was ready for prime time.”

You smile over the rim of your cup. “I didn’t think future CIA agents attended art showcases.”

His lip twitches. A crack in the porcelain. You almost write that down. Instead, you offer a shrug.

“It’s about trauma translation in visual mediums,” you say casually. “Memory distortion in painted narratives. Thought you’d be into that, don’t you guys love poking at trauma?”

“I don’t poke,” he says. “I dissect.”

“Wow. That supposed to impress me?”

“No,” he says. “But I’m guessing that’s your default response to feeling threatened.”

You narrow your eyes. “I’m not threatened.”

“Sure.”

You hate that you want to throw your coffee at him and kiss him at the same time.

There’s no label for what you two are. You share a dozen classes. Compete for the same awards. Sit on the same late-night panels when professors need overachievers to flex for alumni donors.

You’ve even been grouped for the occasional cross-discipline project where you talk, and he listens, and then he talks, and you sketch the slope of his mouth when he forgets he’s performing.

Sometimes you work in silence for hours.

Sometimes you fight.

Sometimes you wonder what he dreams about when he forgets to pretend he doesn’t dream.

You catch him reading your analysis paper once. The one you left out in the shared research lab. He doesn’t know you’re watching from the stairwell. He reads it twice.

You never mention it.

Weeks pass. You win the campus-wide art grant. He wins the dean’s medallion. You both pretend not to care about the other’s win, but neither of you stop looking. Comparing. Weighing.

During one particularly brutal review, your advisor calls your piece “Catharsis in Crimson” emotionally erratic.

You leave class furious, chalk-stained fingers clenching your coat.

Tim’s outside already, leaning against the wall like he’d been waiting. You scowl.

“If you came to gloat–”

“I liked it.”

You blink.

“What?”

“I liked your piece,” he says. “The one they tore apart.”

Your voice is smaller than you want. “You don’t get to say that.”

“I know.” He nods. “But I’m saying it anyway.”

It’s quiet for a beat. You look at the sky to avoid looking at his face. The clouds are heavy and gray and stubborn. You think, Maybe we’re like that too.

“I don’t know what we are,” you admit.

Tim exhales slowly. “Neither do I.”

You laugh softly but the bitterness already etched on your tongue.

“Must drive you crazy. Not knowing.”

“It does,” he says. “You’re an outlier. I don’t have a model for you.”

You look at him then. Really look. There’s something honest in the way his hands curl at his sides. Something tired in the slouch of his shoulders, like he’s been fighting a war no one sees.

“I could say the same.”

“I know.”

And there it is again. The space between you, small and sharp and unbearably loud.

You don’t touch. You don’t cross the line.

But you both know it’s there.

Waiting.

Next up: Observe and Detach | Part 1. >>>

©𐙚 rikudaa—Please do not repost or copy this content to other websites.