apocalypse never

Eddie the Unforgiven. (ya know, like the Metallica song…)

Sorry, y’all know I had to make a sad comic about our new sweetheart.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

unable to sleep, rose has plenty of time to think after that night at the club. | 2151w

rose stares at the ceiling. the champagne from earlier in the night has left her mouth dry and her temples fuzzy. there's water on the bedside, put there by shane before he kissed her shoulder and turned onto his side with the covers pulled up to his ear. drinking the water would mean moving, and moving would mean alerting the man lying next to her that she is awake, and if she alerts him to fact she is awake then he will feel obligated to turn back around and pretend like he hasn't spent the last three hours faking sleep. she can tell. he's too still, like a rabbit caught in a trap. so, rose stares at the ceiling.

there's a cobweb dangling from the lampshade. one lone thread, thick with dust, sways back and forth as if the room itself is breathing in tandem with them. she hasn't taken a full breath since the light clicked off. her chest aches.

that's all it is, she thinks, this constricting feeling. one deep breath, rosie, and you'll feel all better.

she closes her eyes and draws in a long, quiet breath through her nose but all it does is gather prickly heat under her eyes and wall up her throat. she swallows back the tears.

she can still feel all the places he touched her, careful and controlled, and the weight of him bearing down on top of her even as he held himself up politely by the elbows. the hollowed out, used, feeling between her legs stretches to her stomach where it churns against champagne and the three bites of sushi she had before going out to the club.

the night had gone well. right up until it hadn't.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

Ask part 2 important followup I do feel that the rush would come after ilya “one million check-ins” rozanov made sure shane was okay and emotional-release crying not pain-overwhelm-bad crying and Then something would snap in his brain about making thee shane hollander cry on his cock

Ok sugar. YES see I have 2 ideas about it all of like when it happened. Like if the first time Shane cried was during the situationship hook up phase then yes yes yes completely I love your vision. Like maybe it’s been one of those times they’ve gone a few rounds, and Shane is all shivery and sensitive and Ilya is fucking him on his stomach, Shane pressed flat to the bed and he’s so fucking deep shane feels like the only part of him that exists is where Ilya splits him open, where he touches him.

The world has narrowed down to that. The metros had won the match and the win had felt fucking good, it always did, but the usual congratulations from his team, all the people that orbited around him, but somehow it has left Shane with his buzzing ache. He only wanted to know what one person thought about it in the end- he’d be rushing back to his apartment to see Ilya and he wanted to feel him, feel the loss in Ilya how it made him rougher- but he wants to hear the few words he’d give Shane about it. If he thought it was deserved or not. Shane had felt oddly alone on his drive home from the game that night, unsure why.

And now, now Rozanov is melting him into the bed, talking him apart and he’s not even in his body, he’s not in the ache of his thighs or legs from his shifts, from the hits, he is not Shane Hollander in his body he is pleasure. He is saturated in bliss, he is where he takes Ilya and nothing else. He doesn’t want to be anything else. Shane’s heart is rabbiting, he’s squirming and Ilya’s hands grip his hips and pull him back into his punishing thrusts and mutters out “so fucking good” and behind Shane’s eyes start burning. He squeezes them shut.

He’s being so stupid. Why the fuck does he feel like he’s going to cry. Shane turns his face further into the bed, swallows hard hard and bites his lips and he’s close and he wants to cum and he wants to cry he wants to cry. Ilya’s hand smooths down Shane’s back, finds the back of his neck and grips, grips, thumb rubbing at the short hair there.

“So fucking good for my cock huh Hollander? Good for me” Ilya growls fucks his hips harder, deeper and his thick cock presses in to Shane’s prostate over and over, nails the sensitive part of him that makes his whole body ache his whole body die come back to life gives him that divine ache that exists nowhere else in the world and it’s fucking good and he needs this feeling forever he doesn’t ever want to loose this feeling this pleasure, this is where he exists and the feeling fizzes so suddenly, that between one blink in the next Shane has wetness on his cheeks.

He whines, upset at the loss of control, turns his face into the bed as Ilya fucksfucksfucks him into it, the sound of it loud in the room, the wet click of the lube, the shift of the sheets. Shane rubs his face into it try to wipe the tears away and he’s shaking, pushes the soft skin below his thumb and above his wrist between his lips and chews on it, the tears keep coming, the pleasure keeps coming, heavy big fucking waves in up and over him, through his whole body, from his toes to his cock and the base of his spine.

So fucking good Shane thinks

For me Shane thinks

Good for me good for me good for me Shane thinks

And his lashes are clumping together and his hands are shaky, he tries to focus, pushes his hips back and up into Ilya, but his body aches and he can’t hold it, then tries to push onto his knees, wobbles and slides forward back into the bed.

Ilya’s hands are on his ass, then glide down to his sides, one big hand rubs by his ribs, big warm circles.

“Let me do it hollander” Ilya grumbles and Shane says nothing, biting at his own skin of his hand, and his eyes wet the sheets under him. Ilya stops his thrusts and Shane whines, whines, a heartbroken sound, he can’t help it- why the fuck did he stop it’s good it’s so fucking good.

“Sh sh” Ilya replies and then he’s laying over Shane and Shane is tucking his face to the opposite side, kicks his leg in a silent hurry up, he needs it he needs it back it was so good he was being so good why did Ilya stop. Shane starts to push his hips back back back, up, chasing a thrust, chasing Ilya’s cock. He needs. He fucking needs this. He needs this. He stutters a breath and tears are hot down his cheeks and he slides his hand out of his mouth to pull in a deeper breath.

“Hey” Ilya is there then, his face hovering over Shane’s shoulder and his hand is gripping Shane’s face and tugging till he can see him, wet cheeked and heavy eyed, fuzzy.

Ilya is big frown and serious and “bad?” He asks in that short direct way when he wants an answer now.

“No no” Shane babbles, shakes his head. Terrified at the concept of Ilya pulling out its just- it’s nothing - he’s just so close and he just- he needs. He was being good.

“Good, good, Rozanov it’s. Just fuck me- I just it’s nothing just fuck me come on” Shane forces out, in fear of being empty.

And then, once Ilya has looked at him for a blink longer, his thumb tracing the line of a hot tear with a dark look in his eyes, where it lands by Shane’s lips.

“Okie” Ilya says, grips Shane’s face and holds it there in video and goes back to deep rolling hard thrusts, the type that make Shane’s breath punch out in gasping half sounds and oh fuck. Thank you. Shane thinks and lets his eyes roll back into his head, eyes shut and lets go, let’s go because Ilya is gripping him.

“Good?” He hears Ilya ask and Shane nods, nods, good he’s being good, this is good, he’s good for Ilya, this is so fucking good. And he shivers and tears are dripping off his nose and chin.

“Fuck Hollander, like cock so much it makes you cry huh? So pretty, needy boy” Ilya cooes over him and Shane is falling apart he’s cutting off into galaxys, he’s a heartbeat and nothing else. He’s whatever Ilya does to him. Shane is nodding, still, trying to tell Ilya he’s. Yes it’s good he’s I like it so much yes I’m needy.

Rozanov is laid over him, heavy weight on him and Shane’s going to cum- he’s going to cum against the sheets and then Ilya is licking over his cheeks, the salt tracks is Shane’s tears and Shane just implodes. Comes so hard it pulls all of his body into and out of it. Leaves him shaking, an ache on the bed and then Rozanov is licking licking licking into his mouth and Shane wonders if he did die, at some point during that. If he’ll come back, if he’ll stop crying.

Ilya stays inside him too long, spends time he doesn’t have kissing Shane into the sheets, carries him to the shower with the tease of telling Shane is “lazy hockey boy making his hookup do the all the work” he rinses Shane off and places him in the bed, smacks a kiss to his cheek and ruffles his hair and then has to rush to get back in his clothes- he needs to go, he should have already left.

Shane chugs a sports drink, thrown at him by Ilya from his own fridge just before he’d left, it had hit his shoulder hard actually- the fucker.

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.