Deluxe Shoofle! @shoofle@cybre.space

@spiders it's valid to have criticisms and think things could have been done differently but rather than publicly attack the action *while it's happening*, get on the bus and talk to folks about how things could be done differently next time. This is the first action - the next one will be bigger and better but ONLY if those of us who can see that things are going in the right direction cooperate and work together to make it so. @javitrino

pair programming is when i write the code, and you kneel blindfolded under my desk, with your hands tied behind your back and your mouth ready for me to use

if i want your opinion, i'll tell it to you, and then watch you wipe it off your face with the edge of your skirt afterwards

yo tbh?

some of y'all fediverse developers need to go apply for bluesky and aim to co-opt this thing

"i have no idea why this worked the first time," Mel says, twirling the wrecked prototype collar around her finger. "it made sense when i thought it up, and it worked the way it was supposed to, until it actually broke, but it didn't break in a way that made sense."

Audra sits on Mel's computer chair and watches the collar spin on her _mumble_ friend's small hand. She sighs. "I really, really need this to work. Ripping the soul out of everyone I kiss sounds horrifying. How about you explain it to me?"

"i don't even know where to start. you don't know formal Infernal, let alone Liminal," Mel begins, "i'm not even sure a human can _see_ Liminal… i had to invent my own paracall mechanism and notation to get the compiler to understand where handwritten Liminal _might_ be involved…"

"Then it's a good thing I'm not human any more." Audra crosses her eyes and coughs with the unfamiliar effort of manifesting her horns on purpose. (Normally, she tries very hard to keep them _de_-manifested, so she doesn't have to answer any _more_ personal questions at work.) There they are; she can feel the way her hair moves around them, the slight extra weight of two times five inches of sharp cherry-petal-pink inhumanity.

Usually Mel can't get enough of them. Today, she's not even looking.

"…and you don't know any of the theory…" the shorter demon continues, staring off past Audra.

"Hey."

"…but you'd be surprised how forgiving ethereal tensor mechanics is, compared to the mortal equivalent…" Mel mumbles, taking her dirty round wireframe glasses off and cleaning them with the hem of her only slightly cleaner LLVM T-shirt.

"Hey!"

"…mind you, i'm not sure anybody else does, i was kinda making it up as i went along, so i kinda doubt you could follow it…" She puts them back on, but now she's looking at the floor.

_Okay. That's about enough of that._ Audra stands up. She's not as tall as she used to be, but she's still tall for a girl, and Mel's pretty much pocket-sized. Audra's found that she can loom over the smaller girl pretty well when she wants to. She pokes Mel in the sternum, then traces her finger slowly up to Mel's chin. Mel trails off.

"**Hey**."

"…hey."

She lifts her finger a bit more, pushing Mel's chin up, gently tilting Mel's head back. Mel's gray-violet eyes go wide and lock onto hers.

"I'm not one of your dumbass coworkers. I'm not one of the horny idiots you eat. I'm definitely not the gormless, enthralled, smitten boy that you decided to collar with the damned untested… _aura condom_… that is the reason we're having this conversation. You pulled me off that level and onto yours, to where I can feel and see things that nobody human can, and I may not know what I'm doing, at all, but I'm at least potentially your equal. And you need to treat me like one. Okay? We're gonna figure this out _together_. Say 'yes, Audra'."

"yes?"

She's not entirely convinced. Audra takes her finger away; Mel doesn't move a millimeter.

"What are you saying yes to?"

"um." Her eyes close. When they re-open, she's not meeting Audra's gaze any more, but looking up somewhere else. "yes to us figuring this out together. and, um," she continues, "i really really like you and i'm sorry for talking down to you?"

Audra lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Okay," she says. "Good girl."

Mel's cheeks color rapidly at that.

"Just… just try to explain things. I may not get them at first but I'll try to learn. If we get frustrated, we take a break. Now gimme your glasses, they're filthy. I'm gonna go clean them in the sink."

She doesn't wait for Mel's assent, but pinches the bridge of the other girl's round wireframe glasses and slides them off her face.

Audra enters the bathroom down the hall, but instead of washing Mel's glasses immediately, closes the door, slumps against it for a minute. _That went better than I was expecting,_ she thinks. _Dr. Garcia would be proud of me. Something something asserting boundaries something progress whatever._ Then she washes Mel's glasses with liquid hand soap, twice, because they really are a mess, and dries them carefully with a tissue. _Maybe less approving of what I'm gonna do to that girl next._

She walks back into Mel's bedroom to find that Mel is still standing in exactly the same place she left her. _Huh._ Audra puts Mel's clean glasses amid the clutter on the desk, and without further prelude, sits on Mel's bed, then pulls Mel down on top of her.

"Talk dirty to me in Infernal."

"the bed might catch fire," the shorter succubus protests.

"I don't care," the taller one purrs.

"yes, Audra."

"Good girl."

It's actually one of the pillowcases that goes first.

girl is a recursive backcronym for "GIRL in real life"