#so really. not that you asked but. i really think he shouldn't have said it lmao. bc ppl got Even Nastier after he did

[pin-k-ink]

MUSCLE MEMORY ⋆✦⋆ miya osamu

synopsis ➸ he was drunk when you called, but he sobered up the second he heard your voice. you said it was a mistake, that you didn’t mean to dial him—but he was already on his way. six months later, he’s still in your living room, dragging out every screw and instruction manual like it’ll keep you from asking him to leave.

tags ➸ exes to lovers, divorce, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, mentions of alcohol, mentions of night terrors, making out, pda, dry humping, breèding kínk, hand job, unprotected sèx, nípple play, riding, praise kínk, dírty talking, creámpie

wc ➸ 12.4k

The sandpaper rasp of the wrench twisting into place sawed through Osamu's mental haze. He paused, squinting down at the befuddling array of components fanned out across your living room floor. What the hell was he even working on now? A dresser maybe? Or was this the start of that ludicrously ornate entertainment center you'd ordered last week?

With a frustrated grunt, he raked a meaty palm down his face, grinding the heels into his eye sockets until stars burst across his vision. Didn't matter what useless hunk of IKEA crap it was - the process remained the same damn song and dance every time. You'd call him in a mild panic over being hopelessly lost, he'd show up grumbling insults about your household incompetence under his breath, then inevitably succumb to staying and handling the entire assembly from start to finish.

All because of that one fateful night nearly six months ago when you'd called without thinking, voice soft and contented in a way that gutted Osamu completely.

"Hey babe, think you could come over and help me put this new coffee table together?"

The endearment had slipped out so effortlessly, luring images of the thousands of other mundane evenings he'd reported for wifely summons over the years. How many times had you greeted him just like that after work, beckoning him over to lend his hands to whatever domestic task needed handling while you puttered around your warm, chaotic little home?

He'd frozen with the phone still cradled against his ear, a penny whiskey and lingering self-loathing temporarily displaced by blinding white confusion. That single careless "babe" ricocheted through his alcohol-addled senses like a gunshot. Osamu replayed the words over and over, hunting for any hint of mockery or jest in your gentle tones. But there was none to be found - only the breezy assumption that he would, of course, be heading your way like always when called upon.

"...Osamu?" Your hesitant inquiry several beats later had him flinching violently, nearly dropping his glass in the process. Somehow you'd already sensed your mistake, uncertainty creeping into your voice. "Oh god, I shouldn't have just—we're not—I mean, I know you're not my husband anymore, forget I asked..."

But he hadn't forgotten. Hadn't processed or responded at all, really - just let the stunned inertia carry him forward for once instead of railing instinctively against it. His body moved on autopilot while your clumsy apologies filtered through the dense cotton shrouding his mind. Keys plucked from the dish. Jacket shrugged on over his rumpled sweats. The rote motions of preparing to head out and placate your helplessness all over again, divorce papers be damned.

The words finally came in a gruff rush only after Osamu was already pulling his truck out onto the main road.

"Just send me yer address. Be there soon."

He had no justification for the abrupt decision, no reasoned explanation. Maybe it was sheer impulse driven by a lifetime of conditioning to provide for you. Or perhaps there was some profoundly deeper current swirling beneath his dependably cynical surface that wouldn't allow the separation to sever such intrinsic responses completely. Either way, Osamu was powerless to resist its undertow - and he found he didn't want to fight it as he steered towards your place with a hollow ache spreading through his chest.

That first visit was supposed to be an outlier, the exception to shut down any further relapses in domesticity. Yet somehow, it had quickly spiraled into a new normal. Every time you inevitably dialed his number with a hapless plea for assistance, he reflexively found himself throwing on shoes and grabbing his toolbox without preamble. Often he was already halfway to your door before bothering to rationalize it or talk himself out of enabling this pathetic pattern you'd lapsesd into.

Week after week, month after month, the excuses and pretenses became flimsier and flimsier. At first, he told himself it was pure ego driving him to show up - that he derived some sick satisfaction from giving you hell about being so helpless on your own without him around to pick up the pieces. Look at your dumb ex-wife, can't even follow basic IKEA diagrams!

But the more jobs he completed with that same well-worn song and dance, the less weight the cruel taunts carried. His insults grew increasingly toothless, more like ingrained preambles out of sheer habit than any genuine derision. Until finally, Osamu was forced to confront the awful truth clawing at his ribcage each time he walked back into your space:

He simply couldn't resist the unconscious pull of being your husband again, even briefly and in this limited scope of handyman duties. Maybe it was masochistic, allowing himself to sink back into those waters of domesticity he used to drown in daily before everything went to shit between you. Or maybe he was just weak in ways he'd never admit - still not fully untangled from the intoxicating gravity of your combined existence.

Whichever justification rang truest, the outcome was the same. Osamu let himself become utterly unmoored by the mindless allure of being summoned to your side again, no matter how much he pretended it was an unwanted imposition. Because in those moments of cursing and hammering and careful assemblage, everything felt temporarily right in a way it hadn't for what felt like eons. Just him, sweat gathering along his hairline as he handled tools with a familiar easy cadence. And you, pottering nearby with a ready supply of beverages and off-hand encouragement to keep his steady rhythm flowing.

It was all so painfully, disarmingly unchanged whenever he willingly shed his lone wolf persona and stepped back into his vacated role at your side. That fact alone should have stripped Osamu of any lingering delusions - the harrowing intimation that perhaps he hadn't actually let go of being your partner in all the ways that mattered most, no matter how many years or court proceedings stated otherwise.

Yet whenever he found himself standing before your disheveled array of particle-board and scattered allen wrenches, Osamu couldn't resist the same tired refrain from echoing across his brooding inner monologue:

"Gonna take me at least a few weeks to get this mess put together proper. Might as well get comfortable, sweetheart..."

The endearment slipped out unconsciously, as natural as breathing. Osamu didn't even flinch at it anymore - just accepted the treacherously effortless backslide into old habits wherever you were concerned. Because in reality, this ramshackle plywood monstrosity wouldn't take him longer than a few hours, max, to fully assemble and have operational.

He was lying through his teeth about the projected timeline, and you both knew it. But you never called him on the flimsy ruse, just accepted each revised delay with a bemused look and fresh supply of cold barley tea awaiting Osamu's eventual break. As if you inherently understood that he was grasping at straws to prolong these rare interludes of domesticity for as long as possible.

The first time you'd moved to fetch your purse and peel off some cash to compensate him for his troubles, Osamu hadn't even thought - just reacted. One large, calloused palm engulfed your smaller one before it could fully withdraw from your bag. He drew it towards his chest, splaying your fingers over the steady thrum of his heartbeat through the thin cotton barrier.

"Don't even think about it, dummy," he'd rasped, the gentle admonishment at odds with the gruff delivery. "Ya know damn well I ain't here for money."

The words hung pregnant with unspoken depths between you, a fragile tension replacing the usual playful bickering. For a fleeting moment, Osamu thought you might draw away, might finally put a stop to this peculiar pattern of his with a soft yet firm rebuke.

Instead, you simply watched him with those infinitely familiar eyes that still gutted him regularly - open and searching and far too understanding for his liking. Then you nodded once, just slightly, and allowed your hand to linger against the frantic cadence of his pulse until he released you.

Since that evening, a sort of tenuous equilibrium had settled over your strange arrangement. You never moved to leave Osamu to his own devices anymore when he played dumb about needing "more time" with a project. Just accepted his continued presence hovering around your space with all the routinized nonchalance of a spouse moving through their own home.

He, in turn, no longer fought the subtle shifts that pulled him deeper and deeper into the reassuring gravities of old patterns. Like watching you haphazardly toss off your mismatched fuzzy socks in a meandering trail from doorway to kitchen before puttering about with whatever domestic task you pleased. Or the easy silence that embraced you both as Osamu worked, punctuated only by his quiet curses or the clinking of a fresh beverage being deposited within his reaching range.

Some nights, the easiness extended even into your kitchen as he prowled barefoot through the cramped galley, fully re-immersed in the role of putting together a meal for you both. Not out of any sense of obligation or guilt, but simply because the mindless ritual of cooking for your household came as second nature after so many years' practice.

Osamu couldn't resist sneaking glances over his shoulder to watch you curled up on the sofa, bare feet tucked beneath you and attention divided between whatever book or video you had playing and the soothing sounds of him working nearby. In those flickering moments illuminated by the soft glow of lamps and candles, everything felt so oppressively, deliriously right - like stepping directly back into the warm embrace of the past in a way Osamu hadn't experienced since your world was upended.

Some nights, he let himself pretend none of it had ever changed. That walking through the front door wouldn't eventually mean a jarring return to his cavernously empty apartment and the ever-encroaching loneliness lately. That this suspended illusion of being your partner again could simply stretch on indefinitely, leaving him gloriously unmoored.

Denial was a hell of a drug, as they said. But Osamu had always been a hopeless addict when it came to you.

The vanity's cumbersome weight settled onto the bedroom floor with a muted thud, scuffing pale marks into the worn hardwood. Osamu straightened, rolling his shoulders to work out the lingering knots as he surveyed his handiwork. Not too shabby, all things considered - the ornate piece looked damn near regal set against the soft blue-grey walls.

He blew out a low whistle, dragging his arm across his sweat-beaded brow as he pivoted to scope out the rest of your bedroom for the first time. Despite all the weeks and odd jobs he'd tackled around your new place, this particular sanctuary had remained off-limits until now. Part of him had unconsciously avoided crossing that line out of respect for boundaries, no matter how blurred they'd become elsewhere.

But now that he stood amidst the intimately personal space, hints of your essence seemed to permeate every particle. The delicate woven throw draped artfully across the overstuffed armchair in the corner. The collection of well-loved books haphazardly stacked on the nightstand, their cracked spines and dog-eared pages testaments to being revisited often. Even the subtly floral fragrance woven through the summer-breezy air unmistakably belonged to you.

Osamu inhaled deeply, letting the soothing familiarity of it all momentarily envelope him as he dragged his analytical gaze across each detail, cataloging and filing away the pieces of you on display. That's when his sweeping perusal stuttered to a halt, brow furrowing slightly as realization struck like an anvil weight in his gut.

There was no bed.

He did another slow pivot, eyes roving every inch of the spacious room as if expecting the absence of something so fundamental to materialize out of sheer obstinate scrutiny. But no matter which way he turned and looked again, the bare reality remained - no bed, no mattress, nothing more than the solitary armchair and vanity occupying the wide-open floorspace.

A harsh slew of curses broke from Osamu's lips before he could rein them in. Of course...of fucking course you didn't have a proper bed set up yet. He was peripherally aware of your sleeping situation - if the ramshackle state of your living room sofa quilted with ratty blankets and travel pillows was any indication. But standing here confronted by the harsh truth amidst these walls meant to be a sanctuary hurtled the implication home with stunning finality.

He raked a hand through his disheveled hair, mouth twisting bitterly as flashes of repressed memories flickered across his mindscape. Of you curled up in the dead of night, whimpering and shaking, whole body quivering from the thrall of another night terror. How you'd instinctively burrowed against him for safety, for the solid reassurance of his bulk and soothing murmurs easing you back from the brink. Neither of you had ever acknowledged those visceral moments of vulnerability, but he knew - knew how terrified you were of the dark and of sleeping alone with only your unquiet mind for company.

That was just the first of a whole cavalcade of realizations rapidly crashing over Osamu in waves of nauseous comprehension. With no bedframe, there was no tucking you in each night and drawing you close, surrounding your slight body with his familiar warmth and protective embrace until your racing heart calmed. No nuzzling your sleep-tousled hair and breathing in those first soft, earthy exhalations in the morning before extracting himself and padding off to put on a fresh pot of coffee. The way you'd always loved waking up to its rich aroma wafting from the kitchen no matter how early Osamu rose.

No more startling upright at the smallest creak or groan of your home settling around you, every noise an intruder until Osamu made a sweeping check and eased you back down with a reassuring murmur that it was just the house, just the old frame contracting with the night's chill. No more of him lumbering up in the darkness to find the latest unfortunate creepy-crawly invader and dispatch of it before returning to tuck you securely back under the covers, soothing your shudders with warm palms and featherlight kisses until you drifted off again.

Just...no more intimacies and routines and domesticities that had shaped so much of Osamu's purpose for well over a decade, now unceremoniously stripped away by your separation.

The realization left him feeling as though all the air had been forcibly drawn from his lungs in one punishing exhale. He doubled over with the force of it, knuckles blanching against the glossy vanity's sleek countertop as he struggled to draw breath. Of course he'd been aware of the changes, the rifts now severing what had once been such an intrinsic part of sharing your lives. But coming face-to-face with this empty bedroom and how bereft of true comfort it clearly was for you sliced right through to something primal and protective deep in Osamu's psyche.

"Hey, dinner's ready whenever you're done brooding over there!"

Your lighthearted call shattered through the spiraling vortex of Osamu's troubled thoughts. He straightened abruptly, disoriented for a beat before the rich, homey scents wafting in from the kitchen reoriented him. Right, you'd mentioned putting together a meal for the both of you once he finished up for the evening.

Dragging in a deep, steadying breath, Osamu willed his turbulent emotions into an infinitesimal box to be violently suppressed for now. He couldn't allow the anguished maelstrom of domesticity's absence to show on his face, not when you were so close and oblivious to his inner torment. With a few raking swipes of his palms down his sweat-damp face, he drew himself up to his full imposing height and turned towards the doorway.

The sight that awaited him in the cramped kitchen archway very nearly unraveled Osamu's hard-won composure all over again.

There you stood in your usual cooking attire - one of his old oversized t-shirts from high school, the faded cotton bunched up around your hips and showcasing your bare legs all the way down to those ridiculous mismatched fuzzy socks you always insisted on wearing. Your hair was piled in a messy topknot, loose tendrils framing your face and catching the soft evening light in a glowing halo.

You looked...so achingly familiar. So reminiscent of the thousands of other evenings Osamu had returned home from the restaurant or the gym or wherever to find you pottering around your shared living space in that same casually intimate state of undress. Completely comfortable and unguarded in a way very few ever got to witness - the purely domestic you that he'd committed to loving and cherishing until the end of his days.

And now here you were, existing in that same warm cocoon of homemaker contentment but utterly bereft of his steadying presence as the other counterweight. The gorgeous tableau you made standing there stirring something on the stovetop with your bare feet tucked up under you felt hauntingly, tragically incomplete in a way that put Osamu's throat in a vise.

His gaze roamed over the flex of your arms as you lifted the spoon to your lips for a taste, the elegant curve of your spine as you shifted your weight from foot to foot - all the tiny, quotidian details he'd once memorized so thoroughly they felt like extensions of his own body. Little snapshots of life and movement he'd once gotten to observe and admire as freely and unguardedly as he pleased, because you had belonged irrevocably to one another.

Now that simple pleasure - the artless intimacy of basking in each other's natural state - was forbidden him apart from these fleeting glimpses stolen under the pretense of being your handyman. Osamu felt reality crashing back down in waves of visceral grief sharpened by the purgatory of never fully losing this aspect of you, yet constantly having it daringly daunt just beyond his yearning reach.

A lump swelled in his throat as images began flickering through his mind, each one more haunting than the last. Of you succumbing to winter's vicious chills with no one there to wrap you in fortifying layers and nourishing soup broth to fight off illness. Of slipping and taking a nasty spill down the narrow staircase without his steadying arm to cling to, lying there helpless and alone until you could drag yourself to a phone for emergency assistance. Of bolting awake in the dead of night with your heart jackhammering from some terror-soaked nightmare, hands scrabbling for purchase and finding nothing but empty sheets and darkness to compound the panic.

Worst of all were the flashes of you simply...existing in a state of isolated loneliness, surrounded by this hollow house that was supposed to be a sanctuary but instead formed yet another reminder of Osamu's absence. Of his failure to be there for you the way he'd once sworn to the farthest stars.

Before he could spiral entirely, your melodic voice anchored him back to the present moment at hand.

"Earth to Osamu?" You grinned over your shoulder, luminous eyes sparkling with a gentleness that sucker-punched him squarely in the gut. "You getting that broody look again cause something's too complicated for those big strong hands of yours?"

The teasing lilt was feather-light and lilting - so fondly familiar that for a single delirious heartbeat, Osamu could actually convince himself nothing had changed between you. That this was all just another evening unfolding like the millions preceding it throughout your long history together.

Then reality came crashing back down, that infinitesimal box of suppressed emotion cracking open until acidic undertows were lapping at his ribs with every inhale. Osamu sucked in a harsh breath through his nostrils, jaw clenching hard enough to grind enamel as he struggled to reign himself back in.

"Very funny," he managed at last, aiming for nonchalance but hearing the ragged edges fringing his tone nonetheless. "You got a mouth on you tonight, that's for sure."

Rather than rising to the bait and firing off another salvo of playful barbs, you simply hummed thoughtfully before turning back to your cooking endeavors. Osamu watched, feeling increasingly disoriented by the casual domesticity, as you deftly transferred portions to waiting dishes and carried everything to the small dining table in the adjacent room.

"Well c'mon then, no need to make yourself a stranger!" you called over your shoulder with a grin. "That vanity won't be ready to use until you've refueled for the night."

The lilting words wrapped around Osamu's senses, both grounding and disorienting him further into a dizzying vortex of memories and yearning and desperate, crippling fear.

Dinner proved to be even more torturous than Osamu could have anticipated. Seated across from you at the cramped little dining table, he found himself repeatedly clenching his jaw and fists to restrain from simply reaching out and clasping your hand in his. To twine those deft fingers with his own calloused ones and revel in the featherlight caress of your pulse fluttering against his wrist.

You carried on with breezy conversation, utterly oblivious to the brutally visceral war he was waging to keep from shattering every pretense between you. With each lilting anecdote and bright peal of laughter, Osamu's resolve fractured further - hairline cracks spiderwebbing outwards from his restraint's foundations. By the time you rose to start clearing dishes, his composure hung by a few bare threads.

He watched with bated breath as you padded around the kitchen, hips swaying in that unconsciously hypnotic rhythm he'd admired for over a decade. The column of your throat worked with each swallow, clavicles casting distracting shadows that drew Osamu's heated stare like a magnet. Resisting the overwhelming urge to simply cross the scant distance separating you and wrap himself around your pliant form was swiftly becoming an exercise in agony.

You paused by the sink, back to him as you efficiently rinsed the first plate. The soft sounds of running water and your quiet humming curled around the nape of Osamu's neck, sending goosebumps rippling across his flesh. His fingertips twitched with yearning to reach out and ghost along the elegant inward curve of your waist, palms settling possessively on the flare of your hips to tug you snug against his chest. He could perfectly envision nuzzling into the juncture of your neck and shoulder, lips skating across the hammering pulse point as you shivered and instinctively arched back into his embrace...

Osamu's throat clicked with a muffled groan as he abruptly shoved away from the table, scattering the remaining dishes in his haste to create distance before he could surrender to the impulse clawing at his ribcage. The harsh screech of wood on tile finally made you turn, blinking owlishly at him.

"Everything okay?" The words were innocent enough, but Osamu flinched like he'd been struck. Didn't you realize what you were doing to him with even the slightest movement or vocal caress?

"I—yeah. Just...gonna get a head start cleaning up the rest of that mess." He gestured vaguely at the half-assembled vanity parts still strewn in the living room to divert your questioning stare. You hummed in acknowledgment before returning your focus to the sink and dishwater.

It took every ounce of Osamu's waning self-restraint not to immediately retreat right then as planned. Instead, some masochistic impulse rooted him to the spot, gaze helplessly drinking in every curve and subtle shift of your body at work. The nearly irrepressible compulsion to wrap you up in his arms and relearn each dip and swell with hands and mouth was becoming a physical ache, radiating from the cradle of his hips.

By the time the final dish clattered into the drying rack, Osamu felt positively feverish - a maelstrom of need and desperation simmering beneath his clenched jaw and white-knuckled fists. He watched with rapt hunger as you turned towards him once more, swiping loose tendrils of hair back from your flushed cheeks. At the first glimpse of your softened features and those infinitely gentle eyes regarding him, a tremor shivered through Osamu's broad frame.

"So..." you began, seemingly unaware of the storm roiling behind his rigor-tight exterior. "That should just about do it for assembling everything I needed help with, yeah?"

Your words were like the death knell, reverberating through Osamu in waves of wretched comprehension. Whatever dizzying spiral of domesticated bliss he'd spun himself into was about to end. This illusion of being your husband and provider again, however fleeting, would shatter permanently the instant he returned to the barren, yawning silence of his own empty apartment. And some small, wretched part of him wasn't sure he would survive the transition emotionally intact a second time.

Osamu tried and failed to formulate a response around the steadily constricting vise encircling his throat. He simply stared at you mutely, gut clenching with all the farewells and protestation scalding at the back of his tongue. Don't make me leave. Don't eject me from this little world we've reconstructed and straight back into the bone-deep loneliness, not yet. I'm not ready—

"Hey." Your soft murmur coaxed Osamu's awareness back to the present just as you'd begun tentatively closing the distance between you. Your palms cupped his bristled cheeks with infinite tenderness, calloused thumbs sweeping in gentle arcs. "This was...really, really amazing of you, you know. Coming through for me again and again like this despite everything. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to properly thank you for—"

The gentleness in your tone and the exquisite warmth of your touch against his skin proved to be Osamu's ultimate undoing. With a harsh rumble torn from the depths of his sternum, he surged forward and engulfed you in the circle of his arms - swift and utterly inescapable. You made a soft sound of surprise quickly swallowed by the solid wall of his chest as he crushed you against his painfully rigid frame.

"Don't..." Osamu rasped out the single syllable with such gruff vehemence that you instinctively froze in his unrelenting embrace. He squeezed his eyes shut, savoring the feel of you - so achingly familiar yet electrically new after weeks of deprivation. The scent of your hair, the pliant curves yielding to his unyielding musculature, the stutter of your startled inhalations puffing against the bare skin of his throat. It was intoxicating, dizzying, devastating in equal measure.

"Don't you dare thank me," he managed at last in a low rasp against the crown of your head. His words vibrated into the very marrow of you with their quiet intensity. "Like I'm some stranger doin' you a favor instead of..."

Instead of what? His wife, his partner, his entire goddamn world until the cosmos decided to twist the knife a little deeper? The sentiment clung bitterly to the back of Osamu's tongue, sullen truth cloying in his throat until he swallowed hard against it. No words could adequately capture the depths of what you were to him in this moment, wholly encompassed in his arms once more.

With a shuddering inhale against your hair, Osamu simply allowed himself to sink further into the comforting abyss of holding you so intimately. This was what he'd been so desperately aching for all along - not the mere ability to lend his capable hands in putting together inanimate pieces of your new life, but the privilege of simply being present as a visceral part of it once more. Of slipping so seamlessly back into being your steadying anchor, your shelter against the world's crueler contradictions that you fought so admirably to rise above.

Time seemed to melt and blur around the two of you frozen together in the dimly lit kitchen as a galaxy of contradictions warred behind Osamu's eyes. He breathed you in with every lungful, each molecule of your essence searing straight through to scorch his withered soul. Memories flickered like dying embers - thousands of other embraces shared over countless evenings, each as mundane and life-alteringly significant as this one.

Yet in the same breath, this felt profoundly and irrevocably unprecedented between you - the first time since your legal separation that Osamu had dared clutch you with such brazen, unguarded yearning. As if enveloping your pliant form was the only talisman still binding him to reality, to whatever remnants of purpose and identity were inextricably tethered to simply...being yours. And you his, despite the distance contrived to render the notion dead letters on a decree.

The thud of Osamu's rabbit-kicking pulse reverberated through every inch of his suffocating embrace. Each hammering cadence seemed to scream the same lament - Never leave me again, don't make me surrender you and this world we've only just reconstructed. I can't, I won't, don't ask me to—

His silent inner turmoil must have vibrated outwards, bleeding into the aura of frantic desperation enveloping you both. For you made another small, unintelligible sound against Osamu's heaving chest that sparked like a livewire to his nerve endings.Instinctively, he stiffened his arms into unforgiving bands until you were utterly subsumed within him. As if the slightest allowance of space would mean your immediate, irrevocable loss forever more.

Then, with a ragged exhalation escaping his gritted teeth, Osamu reluctantly dragged his lashes apart and allowed his forehead to drop against yours. Your faces hovered achingly close, close enough for your trembling breaths to mingle and eyes to blur together into a universe of their own making. Little more than a hairsbreadth separated your primed lips, Osamu's gaze fixated on the infinitely delicate swell of their petal-soft flesh as you unconsciously swiped your tongue over the seam in a devastating swipe.

A low, gravelly keen vibrated up from the confines of his ribs as feverish compulsion took over. Osamu found himself leaning infinitesimally forward without conscious thought or restraint, magnetic and undeniable. He angled his head just enough to allow your noses to brush in the faintest caress as your lips...your lips were suddenly so impossibly close his entire being vibrated with the need to surge across that final searing distance and—

Your trembling fingers found purchase against the taut cords of Osamu's nape, digits splaying wide to anchor him in place. He shuddered at the scorching brand of your touch, gut clenching in anticipation of either being pulled infinitely closer or utterly severed from your tempting orbit.

But you didn't relinquish the tenuous connection thrumming between you. If anything, the barest hint of pressure from your palms coaxed Osamu to sway another infinitesimal fraction nearer until the whisper-soft swell of your lips hovered an exquisite hairsbreadth from his own.

A tremor rippled through his whole body at the first searing brush of your breath fanning hotly against his mouth. Osamu's lids slipped to half-mast without conscious thought, transfixed by the plump blush of your lower lip as your tongue swiped out to wet them with devastating intent.

He was already leaning in, succumbing to the magnetic draw, when you surged upwards to crash against him in a searing collision of velvet heat.

A deep, guttural keen reverberated from the depths of Osamu's chest as your mouths melded with urgent insistence. He swayed dangerously on the precipice of his restraint for all of a heartbeat before surrendering completely. With a harsh rumble of pure visceral need, his arms constricted around your pliant body until not an inch of space remained between you.

Then, like a starving man who'd glimpsed an oasis after years of deprivation, Osamu simply allowed himself to indulge without hesitation. To sate the endless aching hollow that had steadily consumed him since last he'd sampled your essence so intimately.

His lips moved with hungry, devouring strokes - licking into the searing cavern of your mouth with relentless undulations that stoked the wildfire rapidly engulfing your entwined frames. You arched helplessly against the scorching heat of his broad palms spanning your lower back, fingers splaying wide to knead against the flexing muscles working just beneath the surface of your skin.

When the first desperate keen spilled from between your kiss-bruised lips, Osamu wasted no time in coaxing it into a resonant moan that buzzed against his stinging mouth. He canted his hips with purposeful pressure, pinning you immobile as he ground his rapidly stiffening cock into the softness of your pelvis with deliciously torturous friction.

It wasn't until the two of you were both trembling and gasping into one another that Osamu found the iron-willed strength to slowly disengage. He gentled the devouring sweeps of his tongue, teeth scraping in a lush caress as he gradually coaxed the tempo into something slower and infinitely more searing. Each excruciatingly tender glide of your mouths was a convulsive give and take - a tantalizing farewell embrace soaked in poignancy and desperate longing.

Finally, with a ragged groan torn from somewhere primal, Osamu tore himself free. Only to sway there gasping as if punched in the gut, foreheads pressed flush and lungs heaving in ragged synchronicity. His chest still cradled yours, hard ridges and sweat-dewed flesh sealed as one.

You whimpered first - a soft, infinitely vulnerable sound that fractured straight through to Osamu's very marrow. It took every ounce of restraint still lurking in his hollowed bones not to immediately surge back in and silence the anguish with his lips and tongue and wretched, yearning soul.

Instead, he found his hands drifting upwards until his palms cradled your feverish cheeks with infinite tenderness. Osamu drank in every precious detail of your features through a sheen of unshed desperation. The frantic flutter of your lashes against freshly kissed skin. The lush, swollen contours of your mouth that panted in time with his own.

"Let's get you a fuckin' bed already," he rasped out at last, the sudden gravel of his voice making you shiver anew against him. A ghost of a smirk tugged at the corner of Osamu's mouth, underscored with a hundred different roiling emotions barely restrained behind it. "Can't have my wife spendin' another night on that worn-out sofa, now can I?"

The endearment slipped free before he could bite it back, weighted with layers of yearning and promise and a profoundly deeper intimacy than simple words could convey. But from the way your breath hitched and crystalline eyes sharpened to laser focus entirely on him, Osamu knew you heard every one of those unspoken depths loud and clear.

He didn't look away or attempt to backpedal — simply held your searching stare with that same molten intensity even as his thumb stroked tenderly across the upswept beauty mark below your parted lips. An anchor, a tether, a binding vow of intent all shored up in one infinitesimal caress.

You held Osamu's piercing stare for a long moment, feeling pinned in place by the smoldering promise flickering behind those gunmetal irises of his. Finally, you gave a slow nod. "Okay...let's go get a bed then."

The drive to the local furniture showroom passed in a weighty hush, punctuated only by the occasional burst of evening traffic and sideways glances you stole at Osamu's grim profile. He kept his eyes locked on the road ahead, forearms tensed against the steering wheel with hands gripping tight enough to strain the knuckles. You couldn't begin to fathom the cyclone of thoughts and emotions warring behind that brutally calm facade.

Eventually, you pulled into the dimly lit parking lot and climbed out without a word. Osamu fell into step beside you, radiating that aura of surly disquiet you'd grown so familiar with in recent weeks. Yet there was an undercurrent thrumming between you now - a new vibrating frequency wrought from the lingering echoes of your impassioned embrace and whatever fragile agreement you'd stumbled upon.

Once inside the cavernous showroom, you felt some of the leaden tension release its vice grip enough for you to draw a deeper breath. Almost instinctively, you found yourself gravitating towards the furthest display of luxurious mattresses and bed frames, fingers trailing along the opulent fabrics and polished woods as you passed.

"I've always liked the look of the sleigh beds," you commented idly over one shoulder, watching Osamu steadily approaching through your periphery. "With the curved headboards and footboards, you know? They feel so sturdy and supportive without being too overbearing."

He hummed noncommittally as you came to a halt before an incredibly lavish mid-century piece. Despite its grand presence, the subtle embellishments and deep coffee wood stain exuded warmth and familiarity in a way you found immensely appealing. Beckoning, even.

You sank down onto the plush mattress with a contented murmur, feeling the high-quality memory foam contouring to your weight and cupping your curves enticingly. Almost without conscious volition, you leaned back onto your elbows and stretched out — shameless in your indulgence to test the comfort and support in your usual sleeping position.

From the corner of your eye, you watched Osamu's throat work in a harsh swallow as his gaze raked over the lines of your body. There was a weighted heat searing behind those slate irises of his, a predatory promise reminiscent of your fervent embrace only an hour earlier. The memory of his unyielding frame pinning yours into searing compliance made an insistent fluttering erupt low in your abdomen.

"Not bad," was his only terse assessment after a prolonged pause. You watched, mesmerized, as he slowly circled the bed like a wolf scenting its prey. Each unhurried footfall felt charged with blistering tension and roiling intent.

When Osamu reached the footboard, he braced both hands against the smoothly curved wood with enough force to whiten his knuckles further. His shoulders tensed and released as he inhaled a measured breath before pivoting to pin you with that loaded stare once more.

"Lots of space to stretch out," he remarked in that same low, thrumming rasp. "Seems sturdy enough, too. Built to take on a lotta...friction without fallin' apart."

The blatant insinuation curled around your nerves like physical caresses. You bit the inside of your cheek sharply to smother the whimper threatening to break free at the spark of liquid heat pooling between your thighs.

Perhaps sensing your body's visceral reaction, Osamu's mouth curved into a smug facsimile of a smirk as he leaned forward incrementally. Until his weighty presence consumed your periphery, obliterating every other stimulus apart from the sandalwood-musk cologne and smoldering promise radiating off his solidmuscular frame in waves.

"You think it'll do, babe?" His gravelly rumble was pitched for your ears alone, dripping with dark promise that liquefied your bones. "This the kinda bed you want me puttin' you through your paces on every night?"

A violent shudder ripped through you at the mental images his words conjured — of slick flesh trailing scorching paths across rumpled sheets, sinuous bodies arching and rocking in unbridled ecstasy. Osamu's smirk deepened into something utterly ravenous at whatever he glimpsed flickering across your features. He opened his mouth to undoubtedly ratchet up the torment further when a discreet cough from across the showroom shattered the lascivious fog wreathing you both.

You startled, eyes swiveling guiltily to find a middle-aged saleswoman regarding you with a look of polite incredulity. Clearly she'd witnessed enough of Osamu's provocative stance looming over your prone form to gauge the situation accurately. Heat flooded your cheeks as you scrambled upright, surreptitiously tugging your skirt back into proper place.

Osamu simply leveled the hapless employee with one of his signature inscrutable looks, not bothering to extricate himself from his position caging you against the mattress. If anything, he seemed to lean in fractionally closer - a barely perceptible assertion of dominance that had your pulse skittering anew.

The poor saleswoman cleared her throat again, shifting awkwardly. "My apologies for interrupting...I simply wanted to let you know we'll be closing the showroom in about fifteen minutes if you need any assistance with your, er, selection this evening."

"We're good, thanks," Osamu responded gruffly, not even bothering to glance her way as he continued pinning you with that incendiary stare.

You studiously avoided the employee's surprised look until she gave a jerky nod and retreated towards the front offices. Only then did you realize you'd been holding your breath, letting it escape in a shuddering rush as your shoulders sagged infinitesimally.

"So..." You swallowed hard against the unexpected burst of uneasiness now seizing your nerves. Tentatively, you raised your eyes to meet Osamu's heated regard head-on. "We're really doing this again? Uh, g-getting...a bed together, I mean?"

His expression didn't so much as flicker, maintaining that composed intensity that somehow felt more loaded in the wake of your question. You fought against a sudden urge to squirm under the weight of that smoldering appraisal, abruptly regretting the wobble of uncertainty now coloring your tone.

For several beats, the silence stretched unbearably taut between you. Then, just when you thought you might shatter from the stifling tension, Osamu leaned in until you were practically cross-eyed from his proximity. Until you could make out every subtle shift of gunmetal and amber swirling through his irises, every calloused ridge scoring the seam of his lips as they parted to murmur:

"Baby, if you think I'm gonna put us both through that fresh hell of gettin' separated again...well then, you must be confusin' me with some sorta moron. Because I already updated my life insurance policy. Listed you as the sole beneficiary again. You know, just in case I accidentally choke to death on any more crappy pickup lines I might try on you from now on."

The words were spoken with such dull candor, so utterly devoid of humorous inflection or levity of any kind. Yet the sheer unexpectedness of Osamu's customary deadpan delivery combined with the saccharine endearment and sappy-as-hell promise slammed into you with startling impact.

You stared at him, feeling your lips twitch as incredulous euphoria bubbled up from your core. Osamu's brows furrowed in apparent consternation at your lack of verbal response. But you were powerless to fight against the rising tide as it crested, expelling in a sudden peal of loud, uninhibited laughter that echoed freely through the cavernous showroom.

"You—" You gasped out between wheezing guffaws, clutching at your midsection. "You absolute sap! Did you...really...just say that...with a straight face?"

Osamu's expression remained utterly impassive as you gradually descended into intermittent hiccuping giggles. If anything, his severe features seemed to sharpen even further in affront at having the solemn weight of his declaration demolished so thoroughly.

"Yeah, and what about it?" he growled at last, the underlying gravel of his tone only serving to rekindle your mirth. "That's you spoken for, end of story. I ain't goin' through losin' my goddamn mind again just cause you can't wrap your brain around a simple fact."

His eyes fairly smoldered into yours, lips thinning into a mulish line that should have been intimidating yet only struck you as unutterably endearing in that moment. You reached up without conscious thought, palms cradling the prickly warmth of his jawline as a fresh bubble of giggles escaped on a sigh.

"My big ol' grumpy bear," you murmured through your smiling stupor, thumbs stroking across the sharp ridges of his cheekbones.

Osamu's carefully cultivated scowl faltered infinitesimally as the searing intensity in his gaze transmuted to something softer, more vulnerable. Like he'd just been robbed of his last defenses against the rising swell of cautious optimism blooming between you.

With a low growl that rumbled straight through to your bones, he surged forward and crushed his mouth against yours in a searing reclamation of heated devotion.

The apartment felt almost cavernously silent in the aftermath of your laughter at the furniture showroom. You sank back against the worn cushions of your living room sofa with a contented sigh, the last few giddy giggles tapering off into the warm evening quiet.

Osamu settled in beside you without preamble, one thick arm draped along the back of the couch as his frame angled bodily to face yours. You watched, transfixed, as his piercing slate eyes slowly carved a path from the crown of your head down to your bare toes and back again in one unhurried sweep.

The weighted regard made your skin prickle with rising heat that had nothing to do with the temperature. You recognized that look - the same dark, hungry simmer he used to level your way when you were still newlyweds and Osamu couldn't seem to get enough of simply...observing you existing around him.

"C'mere," he rumbled at last, voice rough as flintstone in a way that liquefied your bones. Without a second's hesitation, you leveraged yourself up and swung one knee over to straddle Osamu's solid thighs, knees sinking into the frayed upholstery on either side of his hips.

His spine straightened at the sudden change in proximity, those brooding steel irises darkening further with naked want. You could actually feel the scorching brand of Osamu's stare skating across the swell of your breasts now devastatingly close to his line of sight, unconsciously squirming a little closer at the intoxicating sensation.

Thick cords of muscle flexed and jumped beneath the sleeves of Osamu's shirt as his hands drifted up to bracket your waist, thumbs stroking idle patterns against the jut of your hipbones. His palms felt like searing manacles as his fingers splayed possessively, fingertips just grazing the soft undercurve of your ass to tug you infinitesimally nearer still.

A throaty sound of pure satisfaction rumbled up from Osamu's barrel chest as your bodies melded flush together, his thick thighs cradling your hips in a scorching vee. You could feel the rapid kick of his pulse stuttering against the notch of your breastbone where it was sealed to his own swiftly rising and falling with quickened breaths.

"Fuck, I missed this..." he rasped in a gruff undertone, the words more felt than heard with how intimately you were entwined. Osamu's knuckles traced the elegant inward curve of your spine through the thin cotton barrier of your shirt. "Missed gettin' to look my fill whenever I wanted, no matter how greedy it made me."

Your nails scored lightly against the nape of his neck, noses brushing in an achingly delicate caress as your mouths hovered infinitesimally apart. "Well you've got your chance now, don't you?" you whispered in return, stomach clenching at the rasp of Osamu's harsh exhale ghosting across your sensitized lips. "All the time in the world to drink your fill again."

His eyes slipped to half-mast, pupils swallowing up nearly all the quicksilver irises in a look of pure, unguarded yearning that stole the air from your lungs. With purposeful leisure, Osamu's broad palms mapped every dip and flare of your torso in slumbering strokes before reversing course. His gaze followed the journey, hooded and predatory, like a man committing every intimate landscape to indelible memory after nearly being rendered sightless.

You found yourself hopelessly captivated in turn by the minuscule changes flickering across Osamu's ruggedly beautiful features as he absorbed you in. The way his jaw tended to tick subtly whenever your upper bodies brushed together with each shared breath. How his brow pinched when large hands found a new swell of softness to reverently mold and explore. And most distractingly, the steady darkening of those piercing grey eyes until you felt pinned and utterly claimed beneath their singularly focused weight.

It wasn't until you felt the first wayward tear searing a path down your flushed cheek that you realized the gravity of what was unfolding between you. More followed in their wake, hot and silent, prompting a low keen of alarm from somewhere deep in Osamu's broad chest.

You smothered the wounded sound with your mouth before he could give voice to his concern, lips parting on a desperate whimper as they crashed together in a searing tangle. Your tears continued unabated even as your bodies writhed and strained closer, cradling Osamu's whiskered jaw between your palms while his calloused digits dug in with bruising possession.

Neither of you pulled back until breathing became a secondary need to sating this newly rekindled inferno raging between your fused frames. Chests heaving in ragged unison, you simply clung to one another through the aftermath - foreheads sealed, noses brushing, lips so closely aligned that the softest whispers could be savored with searing intimacy.

"We're really doin' this for good, aren't we?" Osamu murmured at last, the usually gruff rasp nearly inaudible but rippling through you with sledgehammer impact. You felt his hands - those powerful, work-roughened appendages you'd once admired in daily reverence - tenderly cup the hinge of your jaw. "You and me, all chips in and no more runnin' the second shit gets sideways again..."

Somehow, you managed a jerky nod through the fresh swell of tears rapidly clouding your vision. Osamu drank in the silent confirmation with undisguised adoration and soul-deep longing painted across his chiseled features, thumbs brushing away the molten salt streaking down your cheeks with exquisite tenderness.

"Good," was his only graveled response before tugging you back into another searing, desperate kiss that seared you both straight through to your very marrows.

You surrendered wholly to the scorching tempers of Osamu's questing mouth, fingertips digging harsh furrows into the dense cords of muscle spanning his shoulders and back as you clung on for purchase. The room seemed to tilt and spin dizzyingly in your periphery until the only stable anchors were the unyielding planes of his body and the ravenous sweeps of his tongue claiming you in rough strokes.

Eventually, oxygen deficiency began to pound thick drums in your skull. You tore away with a shuddering gasp, lungs heaving in great draughts of air that did little to steady your racing pulse. Osamu simply watched you through half-lidded eyes, lips curved in a smugly satisfied slant as he dragged the back of his knuckles down your flushed cheek.

"Who'da thought the mighty [Y/N] would be such a crybaby after all these years?" he rasped, black depths glinting with teasing amusement despite his own labored breathing.

You blinked at him owlishly for a moment, still struggling to comprehend anything beyond the electrifying aftershocks of his kisses ricocheting through your nerve endings. "What...?"

The raspy chuckle that rumbled up from Osamu's broad chest vibrated through you in delicious waves, prompting fresh tingles to erupt across your skin. "Don't act like ya don't know what I'm talkin' about, babe," he goaded, leaning in to brush the words directly against the swell of your kiss-bitten lips. "You bawlin' yer pretty eyes out over the dumbest little things. Like that time ya got so hysterical over the snowglobe I gave ya for our first Christmas..."

Recognition instantly dawned, rapidly giving way to a fierce burn of arousal and indignation in equal measure. You immediately attempted to pull back, twisting your torso away from Osamu's heated vicinity as the memories resurfaced with embarrassing clarity.

"Don't you dare bring that up again, Miya!" you huffed, chin jutting mulishly even as mortified tears began prickling the corners of your eyes anew. "It was a sweet, thoughtful gift and the timing couldn't have been more meaningful! I was allowed to be a little emotional over it..."

But Osamu simply crooned in a low tone of unbridled satisfaction, strong arms banding around your waist with sublime indifference to keep you trapped against the scorching brand of his frame. "Sure, bawlin' for a solid hour while puttin' a dent in the couch cushions from hidin' your face was totally proportional to the occasion..."

You attempted to cut him off with a fierce shake of your head, but he easily overpowered your squirming until your bodies were melded together in a seamless wall of unyielding muscle and feverish, tingling softness. Emboldened by your tearful indignation, Osamu simply smirked and pressed his advantage - ducking to brush his whiskered jawline along the fragile tendons straining in your throat.

"Or what about the time yer favorite shitty boyband dropped a new album right before finals week?" he practically purred against your hammering pulse point, teeth grazing wildly sensitive flesh just enough to make you shudder violently. "Pretty sure I had to pick ya up off the floor when ya got so overwhelmed ya passed right the fuck out from blubberin'..."

"Stop it!" you cried in a watery burst, chest hitching with miserable laughter even as you feebly swatted at Osamu's questing hands and wicked mouth. "You're such an ass, bringing up all that ancient history like it means anything!"

But even as you scolded, your thighs instinctively parted to grant him deeper access, spine arching to present your vulnerable throat in clear supplication. Osamu rumbled deep in his chest again - this time a low sound of pure masculine satisfaction that skated like a physical brand across your nerve endings. His broad palms found purchase on the undercurve of your backside, fingertips digging in with delicious urgency until your hips were rocking in a slow, salacious grind against the formidable bulge rapidly taking shape beneath the snug denim.

"So what's got ya cryin' this time?" he growled against the fragile hollow just beneath your ear, trailing heavy open-mouthed kisses downward. "Me finally puttin' a baby in that pretty belly of yours after all these years? Can't think of a better reason to get those waterworks flowin' again if ya ask me..."

The sheer audacity of his words - the carnal filth as much as the undisguised insinuation that this reunion was only the opening salvo to so much more - punched a startled keen of pure, searing need from your very marrow. You twisted with renewed urgency, mouth finding his in a souling embrace of slick heat and tangling tongues as the desperate flames licking between you swiftly roared into an inferno once more.

Osamu kissed you back feverishly, his thick tongue delving deep to taste every corner of your mouth. His large, calloused hands roamed over your body, squeezing and caressing. He broke the heated kiss with a ragged gasp, lips trailing open-mouthed kisses down the side of your neck.

"God, I've missed you..." he rasped against your skin, voice dripping with raw need. "Missed the way you taste, the way your body feels against mine."

You shivered at his words, nails digging into the firm muscles of his back as you arched against him wantonly. Osamu groaned deep in his chest, the bulge in his jeans grinding against your core. His hands grasped your hips, guiding you into a slow grind that had you both panting harshly.

"Spent so many fuckin' nights after we divorced just lying there, remembering what it felt like to be inside you," Osamu confessed in a low, gravelly tone. "So deep I couldn't tell where you ended and I began. Thinkin' about it drove me crazy with how much I wanted you back."

A desperate whine spilled from your lips at his words. You hastily pushed his shirt up, desperate to feel his heated skin under your palms. Osamu aided your efforts, quickly stripping the garment off and tossing it aside. His eyes burned with molten intensity as your hands mapped every ridge and muscle of his powerful torso and shoulders.

"Wanted to feel you wrapped so tight around me again," he growled, the rough timbre of his voice sparking liquid heat in your veins. "To get so deep in that velvet pussy until we were both lost to everything but being joined."

You swallowed thickly, body thrumming with need at his filthy words. You knew exactly what he meant - the feeling of being utterly filled and completed by him in the most carnal sense until the world faded away.

Osamu captured your lips in another bruising kiss, all clashing teeth and tangling tongues. His hands roamed over your clothes, desperate to bare more of your feverish skin to his ravenous touch. When you finally parted, you were both panting harshly.

"It felt like I could breathe again when you first called after the divorce," he admitted in a rough rumble, steel-grey eyes boring into yours intensely. "Even though it was just asking for help with some dumb furniture, it was like...like I was still yours when you said my name like that."

You made a choked sound at his confession, heart clenching at the rawness in his tone. Osamu didn't give you a chance to respond, claiming your mouth in another searing kiss that had you melting against his solid frame. His hands found their way under your shirt, calloused palms mapping every inch of newly exposed skin as the kiss turned messy and frantic once more.

Finally, he tore his lips away to mouth hot, open kisses along your jaw. "Soon as I heard your voice, I was already moving without even thinking about it," he panted roughly against the hinge of your jaw. "Out the door and in my car before I could second-guess just like all the other times you needed me."

You gasped shakily in understanding, fingers tunneling through his hair to hold him close. You vividly recalled that first fateful call and Osamu showing up without hesitation, just like he had done a thousand times before when you were still married. Despite the legal separation, some intrinsic part of him was still bound to answer your summons without question.

Osamu pulled back slightly, eyes blazing as he cradled your face in his big palms. "Never stopped being yours, no matter what kinda shit happened between us," he stated simply, calloused thumbs stroking your flushed cheeks. "Always gonna come runnin' when you call, woman. You hear me?"

His raw declaration hung heavy in the charged air between you. You searched his ruggedly handsome features, taking in the grim set of his jaw, the intense heat smoldering in those gunmetal irises. Osamu meant every single word - you could feel the solemn truth behind them down to your bones.

You let out a shaky exhale, fingers splaying against the solid planes of his chest. His heart thundered beneath your touch, a rapid cadence you knew matched your own racing pulse.

"Osamu..." you began, then halted uncertainly. So much still lay unspoken between you beyond the heated admissions of desire and longing. Questions and doubts flickered like candle flames, threatening to undermine the fragile foundation you'd reconstructed.

Sensing your hesitation, Osamu's calloused thumb stroked your cheekbone soothingly. "Just say it," he rasped in that deep timbre that never failed to make you shiver. "Whatever's goin' through that big brain of yours. We're layin' it all out on the table here."

You drew in another fortifying breath, leaning into the solid warmth of his palms cradling your face so tenderly despite the rough calluses scoring your skin. When you finally met his piercing stare again, you found yourself talking without conscious thought.

"I want to try again," you stated plainly, forcing the words past the lump in your throat. "You and me, for real this time. No more separating or letting things fall apart between us."

Osamu's jaw ticked subtly, but he remained silent and impassive, letting you forge ahead unfettered.

"But I need to know you're all in," you continued, willing your voice not to waver. "That you're not just going to take off again if things get tough or we hit another rough patch. Because I can't..." You broke off, blinking rapidly against the burning swell of tears. "I can't survive that a second time, Osamu. Losing you nearly destroyed me."

The anguished admission seemed to reverberate between you, cracking the simmering tension briefly. Osamu's brow creased, eyes softening imploringly as he pulled you flush against his body once more. You went willingly, savoring the steadying anchor of his solid frame and familiar, intoxicating scent.

"Baby, I ain't goin' nowhere," he murmured gruffly against your hairline, one big palm cradling the back of your head. "Should never have left in the first place, no matter how bad shit got between us. That was the biggest mistake of my damn life."

You squeezed your eyes shut at the regret saturating his gravelly rumble, fingers flexing against his skin where they rested against his chest. After a steadying moment, you felt Osamu pull away just enough to lock eyes with you again. His gaze was open and earnest, burning with an intensity that stole your breath.

"I'm all in here," he vowed simply, stroking the pad of his thumb over the swell of your cheekbone. "No more runnin', no more wastin' time apart when we both know there ain't nothin' for me without you by my side. We're gonna make this thing between us work this time, you hear? Even if I gotta spend every day for the rest of my life provin' it to you..."

His words trembled through you with the weighty promise behind them. You searched Osamu's stormy gaze for any hint of prevarication or doubt, but found only steadfast resolution burning there. A dawning smile tugged at the corners of your lips as the vice of uncertainty unclenched around your ribs.

"Well, you'd better get started then," you murmured, shifting to wind your arms around his neck and bring your foreheads together. "Because I'm going to keep putting you through your paces until I'm absolutely certain you're not going to flake out again, Miya Osamu."

Osamu's deep chuckle rumbled against your body, the vibration sending tingles skittering across your sensitized nerves. "Gettin' my ass put through the wringer every day for the rest of forever?" His calloused palms roamed soothingly over the dip of your waist and flare of your hips. "Sounds like my kinda livin' hell, babe."

Unable to resist any longer, you closed the scant distance and sealed your mouths together in a slow, drugging glide of velvet heat. Unlike before, this unhurried press of your lips and tangled tongues spoke to something deeper - a resounding connection and intimacy born from years spent in each other's orbit. It was a familiar kiss that nevertheless sparked fresh flames of passion and hunger, igniting the dormant fire between you with all the raw power and promise of a phoenix rising.

Osamu's broad palms gripped and molded every inch of you they could reach, stoking the building flames further with each hungry sweep and caress. You responded in kind, dragging your fingertips through his silken, ash-brown locks and raking across his scalp with just enough force to make him groan. Your tongues curled and twined as you savored the wet heat and tangling strokes, bodies pressed close enough to feel the thundering cadence of his heart racing against your breastbone.

A sudden surge of impatient desire had you tearing at Osamu's jeans, desperate to feel him fully bared and pliant beneath your wandering palms. He helped you shuck his belt and shove the snug denim down his hips, boxers quickly following until his cock sprang free - swollen and heavy, pulsing with every rapid throb of his hammering pulse. You hummed appreciatively at the sight, wrapping your fingers around the familiar weight and length and giving a few loose, languid pumps.

"Fuck, that's good, baby," Osamu grunted, eyes slipping shut in pleasure. His head fell forward to rest against yours, breath ghosting hot and quick over your flushed cheeks. "Been too long since I felt those pretty little hands on me, missed you so damn much."

Your own eyelids fluttered shut, drinking in the husky, graveled rasp of his voice and the feel of his thick cock twitching against your palm. "I've missed this, too," you murmured, swiping a bead of pre-cum from his tip and using it to slick your hand as you began stroking him with intent. "Missed the feel of you, how good you always made me feel. How perfectly we fit together."

Osamu let out a guttural sound, his hips bucking involuntarily into your touch. He quickly recovered, though, deftly working the fly of your jeans open and pushing them down over the generous curve of your hips. His mouth sought yours again, swallowing your moans as he palmed the generous swell of your ass and squeezed, grinding his rock-hard erection against your belly.

"Let me get my mouth on you, baby," he begged between messy kisses, tongue sweeping deep into the cavern of your mouth. "Wanna taste that pretty pussy of yours, feel you comin' apart on my tongue."

Your entire body jolted at the carnal filth spilling from his kiss-swollen lips. You'd always had a weakness for his wickedly talented mouth, and the prospect of it licking and devouring you like some succulent feast had you instantly slick and throbbing. But tonight, you wanted something else entirely.

"Later," you breathed against the corner of his mouth, nipping his bottom lip sharply before pulling back. Osamu's pupils were blown wide with desire, his gaze burning hotter than the sun as he stared at you uncomprehendingly. You couldn't help the wicked smirk curling the edges of your mouth.

"Tonight, I want you buried inside me," you declared bluntly, delighting in the way his eyes went hazy with lust. You let go of his cock long enough to wiggle out of the confining denim and kick the jeans aside, then immediately grasped his hand and guided it between your legs.

"Want you filling me up, fucking me until I'm sore and aching," you continued, biting your lip as his fingers parted your slick folds. The first teasing brush against your clit had your entire body bowing and thighs clenching, but you forced yourself to meet Osamu's scorching stare once more. "Making sure I'm thoroughly bred, so I can never forget who I belong to ever again."

For a moment, all Osamu could do was gape at you in mute astonishment. Then his nostrils flared, pupils blown so wide the blackness nearly eclipsed the steel-grey of his irises entirely. A low, animalistic growl ripped from his chest, and the next thing you knew, his mouth was slanted over yours and his thick fingers were pumping into your molten core.

"Fucking hell, woman, what're ya tryin' to do to me?" he snarled between biting, desperate kisses. His free hand found purchase on the swell of your breast, squeezing roughly before rolling and pinching your nipple through the thin fabric of your shirt. "Gonna be the goddamn death of me with that dirty mouth."

You arched into his touch, panting heavily as he worked you higher. His long, thick fingers stroked and rubbed your sensitive inner walls, coaxing wave after wave of slick honey from your throbbing channel. You writhed against him, hands scrabbling for purchase on the corded muscles of his shoulders.

"Please, Samu, I need you inside me," you moaned, hips bucking against his hand. He cursed harshly, fingers stilling inside you for a moment. Then he withdrew, making quick work of the buttons on your blouse before yanking it down your arms and tossing the garment aside. He followed up with your bra, leaving you bare before him save for your panties.

"Look at you, all soft and pliant, ready to take me," Osamu growled, calloused hands skating reverently over the curve of your belly and hips. "Finally gonna make me a daddy, huh?"

He dipped his head, latching onto the supple flesh of your breast and suckling deeply. Your hands found their way into his hair again, fingers digging into his scalp as you moaned wantonly. When he finally released your breast, he blew gently over the stiff peak, causing it to pucker even more.

"You know you can never go back once you have my baby," he continued, trailing open-mouthed kisses across the valley of your breasts and up the column of your throat. "No other man would ever measure up after that. You'd be ruined for anyone else, just like I was the first time I was inside you."

You keened sharply at his possessive, primal words, head falling back to grant him better access. "Good," you gasped, nails scoring the planes of his back and shoulders. "Because I've never wanted anyone else, Samu. It's only ever been you."

He groaned against the shell of your ear, grinding his thick, heavy length against the damp fabric still concealing your aching core. "You're damn right, and it's always gonna stay that way."

One powerful hand found purchase on the back of your neck, holding you firmly in place as he devoured your mouth with bruising, punishing kisses. At the same time, his other hand slipped between you, ripping away the final barrier separating your bodies. The shredded material was summarily discarded, and you barely had a chance to draw breath before he was lining up and plunging home.

"Ride me, sweetheart. Just like you used to."

The command was a deep, resonating purr against your feverish skin, one that sent a shiver dancing down the notches of your spine. A whimper escaped your throat, fingers flexing against Osamu's muscular back. You could already feel his length pulsing inside you, stretching and filling you to the brim with that familiar, delicious ache.

"Fuck, that's perfect," Osamu hissed between his teeth, his head tipping back and eyes slamming shut as you began to roll and undulate against him. You were already impossibly wet and aching, his thick, swollen shaft bottoming out with each fluid pump and grind of your hips. He was seated so deep and full inside you, it felt as though there wasn't a single molecule of space between your bodies.

You couldn't help but agree.

"You feel so good," you moaned, eyes fluttering closed at the delicious stretch. You shifted slightly, finding the best angle to allow the bulbous head of his cock to graze and stroke the sensitive cluster of nerves hidden deep within your slick channel. "So big and hard inside me, splitting me open. Like you were made for me."

Osamu's rough chuckle vibrated against your chest. He dropped a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to the hollow of your throat, teeth grazing the tender flesh. "Damn straight, I'm made for you," he affirmed, voice muffled against your skin. "Just like you were made for me. Fuckin' perfect, we are."

You sighed in contentment, arching into his touch. Your hands skated over the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders, reveling in the familiar sensation of his solid, warm frame and the taut lines of his body moving against yours. The scent of his skin - that intoxicating, masculine musk and subtle hints of spice and citrus - enveloped you completely, filling your senses and flooding every corner of your mind.

The room quickly filled with the slick, obscene sounds of your coupling - the wet squelch of your joined bodies, the breathy sighs and ragged grunts as you both raced toward the edge. Your bodies were in perfect sync, instinctively attuned to each other despite the years apart. Every roll and thrust, every shift and cant of your hips, was matched and amplified by his.

It wasn't long before the coil of pleasure in the pit of your stomach began winding tighter and tighter, threatening to snap. Your breath was coming in short, gasping pants, nails digging into the taut sinews of Osamu's shoulders as you clutched him tighter. He sensed the subtle shift in the air, and a low growl rumbled in his chest.

"My beautiful girl," he murmured, calloused palms cradling the sides of your neck and jaw. His piercing stare was focused entirely on you, the intensity of his gaze making your heart trip over itself. "Never knew what I did to deserve a woman like you, but I'll spend every day of my life tryin' to live up to it."

The raw vulnerability in his deep, graveled rumble tugged sharply at your heartstrings. A trembling breath spilled from your lips, eyes prickling with sudden emotion. You reached up, mirroring his hold as you gently cradled his rugged features.

"You don't have to be anyone other than who you are, Osamu," you assured him, voice thick with the swell of emotions roiling in your chest. "Just...just be with me. That's all I've ever needed."

A beat of silence passed between you, a suspended moment that seemed to stretch an eternity. Then, like a thread snapping, Osamu's expression crumbled, and he crushed his mouth to yours. The kiss was desperate, hungry, conveying everything unsaid with a ferocity that threatened to consume you whole.

"I love you, Y/N," he panted roughly between biting kisses, calloused palms roaming restlessly over the bare expanse of your back and shoulders. "Fuck, I love you so goddamn much."

Tears pricked your eyes, the lump in your throat thick and hot. "I love you, too," you choked out, kissing him again and again. Your bodies never faltered, the slick slide and pump of his thick cock still pistoning in and out of your molten core.

When Osamu finally pulled back, his pupils were blown wide and black with hunger. "Come for me, beautiful," he urged, thumb slipping between you to circle and rub your swollen clit. "Need to feel you milkin' my cock, wanna feel you cum all over me."

The tension in your belly snapped, white-hot pleasure surging through you like lightning. You cried out, the sound swallowed up by his ravenous mouth. Your cunt spasmed around him, gripping his pulsing shaft and wringing him dry.

Osamu came with a guttural snarl, his body seizing and jerking against yours as his hips pistoned erratically. Thick ropes of seed splashed against your womb, painting your walls and filling every nook and cranny. He kept pumping through his climax, drawing out both your orgasms for as long as possible.

You were both boneless and panting when it was over, limbs tangled together and foreheads pressed close. The heat of the moment was slowly dissipating, replaced by the steady thud of your hearts and the soothing warmth of his bare skin against yours.

Osamu's thumb brushed the swell of your cheek, calloused pads smoothing the lingering tracks of tears. "What's the verdict, babe?" he murmured, dark brows pinching together slightly.

Your own lips twitched in a small smile. "I think you've made a pretty compelling argument so far, Miya," you quipped lightly, then leaned in to kiss him. "But you know, they say it takes a few rounds to really make sure a job's done right."

He chuckled, a low, husky rumble that made the heat stirring in the pit of your belly flare to life once more. His mouth curved into a crooked smirk, the glint in his eyes promising wicked delights and the fulfillment of many, many desires.

"Guess we'll just have to keep tryin' until it takes then, yeah?"

[ohtobeleah]

I bet chameleon!reader gives Abbot the biggest glares whenever they pass each other. Its a true “Are you sure she doesn't hate him?” conversation starter.

Chameleon //

Previous Concept

The biggest. But it goes against every fibre of your being. You try your best to convey a sense of disdain for your husb–ex, ex-husband. But its hard to give off that vibe when you really, really fucking love the shit out of him. 

“Hi.” Jack coos. He knows he shouldn't be bothering you. He has no reason to be talking to you right now. But when he saw you down in the Emergency Room, body encapsulated with those bright pink scrubs you so desperately defended, he couldn't help but naturally gravitate towards you. “How’re you today?” 

“Small talk?” You reply over your shoulder with a sigh, and not a second passes where you take your eyes off the screen in front of you. “Least you recognised me this time.” The dig struck a nerve inside Jack. If he had rolled his eyes any harder at you, he might have fallen over. Which didn't bode well for him in his old age. 

“Ouch.” Jack looks over at Shen, he's already looking away from the car wreck that was any interaction between the two of you. No one wanted a bar of your relationship problems, but everyone wanted the winning pool of cash that had been piling up since August. “You’re gonna make me do some serious damage control over that, aren't you?” 

“Because you aren't doing damage control already?” It was another low blow, but a blow Jack Abbot deserved. He’d been missing in action inside your marriage for far too long. You knew what you deserved. So did he. Something had to give. “Do you have something you wanna talk about, or are you gonna suck the joy out of one of my free time too?” You hissed. It was like venom against Jack's skin. 

There are a lot of complex things and nuances that make Jack Abbot, well, Jack Abbot. Ex-Military trauma surgeon turned Pittsburgh Emergency room attending physician. He carried a lot of weight on his shoulders. Night often scares him. So much so, he prefers to work the night shift. 

Love never came easy. It was hard to love when you didn't know how to. It's made even more perplexing when you believe you aren't worthy of love. Jack was that classic, rugged, ‘I’m fine, it's everyone else who has a problem.’ He never knew how to ask for help when he needed it. 

But through all the therapy, through all the work he’s done to get back to a place where he could have you in his life again, he was still scared to admit you scared the ever living crap put of him. It was your eyes. They were the entrance to the soul.

Seeing what Jack had done to your soul. How he watched the light fade from your normally bright, bubbly personality. He hated himself for killing a part of you that just wanted to love him. A part that still loved him. A part that entertained his gestures in a way that still made him work for you, every day. 

“I was just wondering if you maybe wanted to get breakfast with me sometime soon?” He said nervously. You knew asking that would have been something he was thinking about doing for his entire shift. 

“Define soon?” You couldn't say no straight away. You also couldn't laugh at how silly this was. Jack was still your husband at the end of the day. By law. On paper. In any court of law. Jack Abbot was your husband…Yet here the two of you were. You’d let your marriage crumble into a wasteland of hopes of dreams. 

“When you get off?” Jack added quickly. He shrugged it off nonchalantly like it was just another day for him. Like his heart wasn't beating inside his chest cavity. If you took his blood pressure right now? He’d be heading right for cardiac arrest. 

“You’re asking me, your ex-wife, out for breakfast?” You were starting to forget what you were doing on the screen before you. You had been writing up some patient notes. Now? You were just pressing the ‘P’ button over and over again. 

“Would you rather me ask one of the residents?” Jack teased. He knew that would get you going. Put a little heat under your seat. Even though you were standing. 

“You wouldn't do that, the residents don't like you, and they would probably say no too.” For a split second, Jack’s heart sank. You were turning him down. You were really over him. Maybe divorce was on the cards? Maybe you were ready to move on from him and his inability to express his love and thankfulness. 

“Is that your way of turning me down?” Jack asked softly, like he was begging you not to. It was a different octave than you were used to. There was a worry evident in his tone. An expression of sadness was written in the lines on his face. Suddenly? Jack wasn’t feeling all too confident about this date idea Robby had put in his head at changeover last night. 

You let him sit in it a bit. Tried to make Jack squirm under his own company. Then, over the left shoulder of your ex-husband, you saw Dr. Ellis…

“Fuck him!” She mouthed. It was your turn to roll your eyes. 

“Suppose we get breakfast,” You entertained the idea for a split second. You finally paused what you were doing as you turned into Jack. The two of you were probably standing a little too close for two people who didn't even live together right now. “Then what? Do I end up back at your apartment?” 

Jack caught the subtle glint in your eye. Were you flirting with him? Or was he reading into this too much? Did you just say yes to breakfast? Or were you patronising him? 

“Only if you can stand to be around me for more than twenty minutes.” He replied. Looking down at you as he raised his chin slightly. The pink scrubs did look fucking good on you. But Jack had an idea, perhaps they would look better on the floor in the bathroom? 

“Last time I checked, you only needed five.” You smiled wickedly. It felt good. This felt good. But you still had your walls up. You weren’t stupid…

“Now, who's flirting with who?” Jack raised his eyebrows in shock. This was new. This was good. This was more like it. You actually gave him the time of day. 

“What can I say, old and deprate and slightly geriatric, looks good on you.”

[beef-brisket]

((Sorry this took a hot second, I had to reread things 😂))

Holy shit. He couldn't believe it. Could this work in his favour?

The first man continued to eat his pancakes but occasionally looked up at Lucifer. When he saw his angels, eyebrows furrowed, and he got the sinking feeling again. Like he was drowning. Like something bad was happening and there was nothing he could di to stop it.

Adam: Luci? Are you okay?

The kimg continued to stare at the letter before finally snapping out of it and smiled at Adam: Uh- fine! Fine, buddy! Don't worry about me- how are you pancakes? Still good?

Adam laughed: Luci, I already told you I liked them! I can tell some things wrong... you get that look on your face- your eyebrow twitches when somethings wrong!

With wide eyes, Lucifer touched his forehead, and sure enough, his eyebrow was twitching. He smiled softly. Of course, Adam would notice a detail like that about Lucifer.

Lucifer: I promise, Addie. Nothing's wrong- just... a letter.

Adam: A... letter? What's that?

Lucifer: Paper with writting-.

Adam: Paper?

Lucifer: ...I'll show you paper later on- but, for now, uh... just eat your pancakes, okay? And I'll be back in a minute- I need to see Charlie. Stay here, Adam. Promise me?

Adam smiled: I promise, Luci!

Lucifer kissed his forehead before teleporting out of the room. Adam started to eat his food again, enjoying the strange silence of the kitchen. That's when a shadow opened up, and out came the radio demon.

Alastor: Adam! There you are!

The first man coughed when he jumped as he was swallowing, but he still smiled up at Alastor.

Adam: Hi, deer man! How are you?

Alastor's smile twitched: How kind of you to ask. I'm... very well. But you, my deer fellow, won't be.

Adam: Uh... huh?

Alastor: If you keep eating that poor excuse of a plate of food.

Adam: But... Luci made these for me-.

Alastor: Pancakes are... below average in general. But MY cooking, on the other hand...

Adam: You cook?

The demon almost smirked when Adam smiled widely: Why, certainly! Would you like to try some?

When Adam nodded and moved his plate of pancakes to the side, Alastor snapped his fingers, and a plate of meat and vegetables appeared in front him.

Alastor: Now, this was scored locally, my deer! All products on your plate were brought from Cannibal town! At one of the prized butchers!

Adam: Wow! I have no idea what any of that means- but it sounds good! And smells good! So... it has to be good!

Alastor: Exactly! How about you have a taste, and tell me what you think~.

-

Charlie reached up, putting away some files when she heard a loud groan, making her pull her papers close to her chest. Spinning around, her eyes locked with her father, who was leaning against her desk.

Charlie: Dad?! You scared me...! What's wrong?

Lucifer: C-Chaaaarlie- Heaven! Heaven want a meeting!

Charlie: Oh... dad, we knew this day would come-.

Lucifer: It's about Adam!

Charlie: ...Oh. that's... not good.

Lucifer: They said he's dead! They don't know he's alive- and I want to keep it that way!

Charlie: Dad, you can't choose that! Adam should get a say, shouldn't he?

Lucifer looked up from the desk: Charlie. Apple. Duckling- Adam can't make choices like that! If something stresses him too much... he might...

Charlie: ...Gain his memories back?

Lucifer: ...Yeah... that.

Charlie: ...Dad. I... I think he should choice. Free will, right?

Lucifer: ...F-Free will? He... he hasn't had the apple- o-oh god- he's... he's- fuck.

Charlie quickly went to her father's side and rubbed his back: You need to talk to him, dad. Adam, he's... incredible. You don't give him enough credit. Speak to him. Really speak to him.

Lucifer: ...Will... will you come with me?

Smiling, Charlie nodded: I'll come with you, dad.

-

The king breathed in and out before walking into the kitchen. His daughter was still at his side: Addie-.

The first man looked up from his meal, smiling at Lucifer. He was more than halfway through eating some weird meat on his plate.

Lucifer: Adam? What's... where did you get that?

Adam smiled widely: Can't tell you, Luci! It's a secret! Would you like some? It's really good!

In Your Head

Lucifer sighed as he held the guitar that he took from the battlefield. It was Adams guitar and aside from a few scratches it looked like it was in perfect condition.

Lucifer: I'm going to miss you old friend.

Though, was friend the right word? Adam was so much more than a friend to Lucifer.

Watching him get stabbed like that had been very hard.

Was it though?

Lucifer snapped his head up, eyes wide as he looked at the angel he thought to be long dead, his helmet gone and golden blood staining his robe.

Lucifer: A-Adam? What, how are you here!?

Adam smiled at him and it was too sweet for the Adam of today the one that he turned into. But not the Adam he knew in Eden.

Adam: Oh come on Luci, you're smarter than that. No one comes back from an angelic blade to the heart. Thanks for that by the way.

That nickname sliced through his core, he hadn't heard it in so long he almost forgot that's what Adam used to call him.

Lucifer: You're not real are you?

Adam: Bingo baby! Awww, it's actually sweet. You miss me so much that I actually take up space in that head of yours.

Lucifer: Why are you so..... Nice? But look like that?

Adam shrugged and moved to sit down beside him: Probably because you don't really remember what I looked like in Eden, but more how I acted. So you just kinda...... Married the past with the present. I don't know boo, it's your mind.

Lucifer felt Adam touch his hair as if to tuck it behind his ear, but since he wasn't real the hand just went right through him.

Lucifer: I don't get it, you weren't like this in Eden.

Adam: Maybe I'm a version you've always wanted.

That made sense in a way.

Lucifer: Why would I want a polite slightly flirty version of you?

Adam smiled gently and leaned in: Come on Luci, you know why. Stop lying to yourself.~

His breath hitched in his throat, sure he had always thought about what could have been between them but...... It was always just a fantasy.

Adam: A fantasy you could have made real.~

Lucifer: You didn't want me.

Adam: How would you know? You never asked or tried. You could have had me all to yourself.

Lucifer: I could have?

Adam: Yeah. But now you never will.

@fanofstuff01 @beef-brisket

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 12/05

@carcinogeneticist-writes-fanfic asked: I know your policy has been to hold off listening to the official albums until you're done with HS and I totally get that, wanting to hear them in the context of the comic first is totally valid. That said, would you be willing to give early consideration to Michael Bowman's solo album, "Mobius Trip and Hadron Kaleido?" It's got the rather dubious honor of being one of only two or three official albums (out of like 30!) to NOT see any rep in the comic at all and I'd hate for you to miss out.

Found it on the Collection! It's generally a very chill album, with a lot of lower-energy tracks that might have been hard to fit in one of Homestuck's high-octane Flash animations.

It's not really my type of music, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate something different every once in a while! I think my personal favorite is Dawn of Man.

@likelyvampirical asked: While on the subject of Bowman, On The Thirteenth Day has been sent to you.

This one's fucking great. It feels like the kind of track you'd hear over the opening/ending to a Homestuck anime.

It also sounds vaguely like Sburban Jungle, but I don't know if I'd call it a remix; it feels more like it's gesturing meaningfully in Sburban Jungle's direction, which I like a lot.

@shelbybunny asked: re: voice headcanons in the (as of writing) latest ask comp; i think a good voice headcanon for John is Toby Fox’s voice in his ska cover of sunsetter or Michael Guy Bowman’s cover of How Do I Live

It's still so weird hearing Toby Fox's actual voice. He feels like the kind of guy who shouldn't have a concrete presence in our reality.

Anyway, these voices are both fairly close to how I imagine John sounding. Toby even looks somewhat like John - or, at least, his hair does.

@heattth asked: Hi, I believe you mentioned once that if Tumblr died you would continue this blog on Discord. I don't know how likely this is to happen, but, could I ask you which server that would be?

I currently run an on-and-off gaming Discord which is open to all the blog's followers. If Tumblr goes down for good, I might just convert it into the new primary liveblogging platform - although Discord has its own issues, so I'm not 100% committed to that. Guess we'll see what happens!

@manorinthewoods asked: I've heard the Hockerberts (Hockengberts?) called the House of J. Unsure how common that is. ~LOSS (28/4/25) @cationicflood asked: the prospit kids may also collectively be referred to as the J-squad, as all four of them have names beginning with J (this is a trait that i do not think any other character outside this group possesses)

Yeah, there's no real way to legibly combine all four names. I came up with 'Prospit Patrol' the other day, and I honestly kind of love it - but I guess that'd technically include the Prospit trolls, too.

Anonymous asked: i think the key difference between jade and jake’s social lives despite being completely isolated is that jade at least had bec and prospit. with jakes dreamself dead (which presumably never woke up) and no guardian to speak of, hes pretty much completely alone out there

Actually a very good point. We eventually learned that Jade was in contact with the White Queen, so she was doing some in-person socialization. Clearly, that mattered a lot more than I realized.

@morganwick asked: Recall that future Jade shared your frustration over causal time loops, wanting ideas to actually come from where they came from. She did manage to get Karkat to be just vague enough to get her to do what she wanted herself to do while still giving herself enough room to come up with as much of the idea as possible herself. Karkat technically didn't even tell her to captchalogue the window, only draw it, the assumption/understanding being that she'd use the scribblepad to do so.

I definitely like that interpretation a lot better than the idea that the information was spontaneously stable-looped into existence, so I'm adopting it as my personal canon. The less loop-generated intel we have, the better.

@that-good-ol-fashioned-mothgirl asked: funny how Jane “biggest fan of a baking empire” Crocker subscribes to empiricism

Clearly, an 'empire' is any organization that values tangible evidence over logical reasoning. Jane's brainwashing is clearly benign - the Condesce is just trying to make her a better skeptic!

@that-good-ol-fashioned-mothgirl asked: the green sun is the theoretically infinite felt on English’s temporal pool table

In other words, the entire multiverse is part of Lord English's game. Seems fitting to me.

@elkian asked: Something I put together recently thanks to your blogging: the more conventially intelligent/sapient a Sprite component, the better a Sprite can communicate with the Player. BUT, these are also more independent and can operate on their own impetus, proving in some cases (like Jadesprite) to be unwilling/unable to help the Player for whatever reason. It's a neat balancing mechanic.

That's actually a really good explanation for why Jadesprite was so independent.

She's not the only one who's exhibited this trait, either - Davesprite also seemed comfortable with resisting sprite programming!

@mhafanlol2000 asked: Dave spent his childhood with Cal, too, and he doesn’t seem hypnotized. What makes you so convinced that Dirk will turn out to be worshipping English, or something?

Ah, but Dave didn't actually own the doll.

Bro was the one carrying it around all day, and he can't be flash-stepping around Dave that often. For the majority of the time, he was the one receiving the lion's share of Cal's miasma, as he has been since the moment he was cloned.

Dirk is the same, of course, but he's only had Cal for sixteen years, while Bro was in his thirties, at least. Dirk seems a lot more normal than his counterpart, so we can at least assume he's less corrupted than Bro.

Anonymous asked: I'm not going to lie, the fact that the entire acts 1-5 of homestuck are ONE DAY is one of my favorite fucked up facts about this story. Like, honestly maybe more than 24 hours passed, but because we got untethered from Earth time immediately after entering and it's not like the Incipisphere has a day/night cycle, A VERY LONG MONDAY AFTERNOON INDEED

The second the camera cuts away from John and Jade, they're going to immediately pass out for a good twenty hours.

Hey, do we think Davesprite needs to sleep? Surely not, right? Alright, he can look after them, then.

@elkian asked: Just wanted to say that I'm loving the liveblog in general, and in particular I really like your take on how the Alpha timeline works. "Based on what this character would most likely do in this situation" not only frees it from some of the rigidity of predestination, which can definitely get stifling or flatten a story if taken too far; it's also a good explanation in terms of meta. It works as both a general explanation and story-themed one, and I like it a lot. Seems accurate, too!

You can thank Terry Pratchett for putting the idea in my head, back when I was first reading Night Watch. It's a really satisfying way to resolve the identity issues surrounding time travel, isn't it?

@drakethedeep asked: Keep that thought in mind regarding a timeline involving interfering with the green sun. On a similar train of thought, timelines seemed to become doomed when they can no longer contribute to the timeloop that created them to begin with. For example, in the first doomed timeline we see, because John dies, he cannot perform the ectobiology that results in the creation of him and his friends/family. so keeping that in mind, what conclusion/ theories about the alpha timeline do you have?

Initially, I thought that any timeline which could no longer satisfy its own loops would be instantly doomed - but that would have caused Davesprite's timeline to fade long before Future Dave actually left, since John's death immediately made the Veil cloning impossible.

However, the wording you use here comes close to fixing that issue. Davesprite's timeline could never fulfil the time loop created by John's Veil cloning - but it still contributed to the Alpha Timeline, via Davesprite. Maybe a timeline only fades once it can no longer contribute to the Alpha in any way whatsoever.

@wolygan asked: Kinda neat how as Sollux is dying his powers change from the red and blue to just his blood colour, as if he is casting from his health instead of just having an ability, now that his eyes are burnt out.

Oh, interesting. I didn't consider that!

Sollux has said he's retiring his duality schtick, and apparently that includes his red/blue motif. After all, he's not really 'the duality guy' anymore - he's just Sollux.

@liliflower137 asked: This is probably a little late as I'm still catching up but,,, gush, Vriska's conversation with John, where she expresses regret, where she thinks back on what she has done… It made her my favorite character for a while. Just. The potential of her learning to be different, of becoming something more than the world she was born into. Seeing a character so HORRIBLE, so AWFUL, turn around and… realize. It's so powerful.

Yup. Super fucked up that she died before she was able to complete her metamorphosis - but I'm confident that her story's not over. After all, we've already started hanging out with her ghost!

@liliflower137 asked: Hello!! I am not quite caught up yet but your description of Scratch as thinking like an author is BRILLIANT, I never would've thought of that and it makes him make so much more sense!!! Man he's way more interesting to me now, thank you!!! This liveblog continues to be the most fascinating read of all time!!

Thanks - it just made sense to me, y'know? Scratch even talks a little like Hussie sometimes, and the idea that he's a pseudo-author is the only thing I can think of that explains some otherwise extremely strange phrasing on his part.

@liliflower137 asked: Hello hello again! I've just seen the map you showed of Rose's coordinates and you can literally see the town i live in on that map!! So I can tell you Northern New York State, at least around that section, is VERY rural. The closest Starbucks is in Canada and its mostly dairy farms and cornfields around here! New York is a big state and aside from the city itself and some other places it's actually surprisingly empty. Hell, I've lived here for like 9 years and I've never even been close to NYC! But its definitely not remote, people live and work in that national park nearby! And there's plenty of burger kings for sure. (I'd even say maybe the one 40 minutes away was the one in my town but I'm pretty sure it opened after I moved here so probably not) It's so wild I could pretty easily drive to where Rose's house would've been… crazy.

Oh, fun - it's like you're her neighbor!

If you're that local, you might be living closer to Rose's address than any other Homestuck fan on the planet. You've got to be at least in the top ten, right?

@liliflower137 asked: Another addition to the jade seer of light fakeout that I've noticed during my own reread (inspired by yours!) Remember Jade's wardrobifier? One of her possible shirt symbols was the symbol for the Light Aspect!

Hussie's Trick continues to bamboozle the unprepared.

@liliflower137 asked: After sending you a bunch of asks while reading, I'm finally caught up!! Whew I can finally stop accidentally staying up until like 5am reading your incredible analysis and being distracted at work! I'm free!! Thanks for the ride!!

Hah, this really is a serious compliment. Don't worry, I've been staying up till pretty close to 5 lately as well. That's what happens when you're gaming on a server in a US timezone!

Anonymous asked: hello ms wertsearch! i have just finished binging your entire liveblog in lieu of any meaningful way to access homestuck OR the unofficial homestuck collection (kind of a lie - i'm sure it's on the wayback machine) and i have to say you might just be the ideal homestuck reader! you analyze these characters AND this story so quickly and perfectly it is very awesome to read. i cannot wait for you to stick it out through the rest of act 6! have a wonderful day!!!

Thank you so much! As far as I'm aware, there are still a couple of unofficial mirrors of the comic floating around online. I asked around on the Discord and was provided with this link, which seems perfectly functional to me.

Anonymous asked: I just want to send a message to let you know how much I appreciate and enjoy your blog. Ive had a very rough couple of years (who hasn't, right?) and reading this blog has been such an escape. It makes me feel like I'm 13 again and reading homestuck on the school computer with my friends. You have such insightful things to say about the comic. I never really jelled with the homestuck fandom outside of my irl friends I read the comic with, so your blog is kind of like a second shot at participating in the fandom for me. I'm having so much fun. Thanks for doing this. <3

As always, messages like these are the greatest motivator I have for continuing to liveblog. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but thank you for sharing! :)

Anonymous asked: Your liveblog is So fun to read, especially when you predict plot points that are either extremely true or extremely false (like when you theorised at the very beginning that jade was genetically modified to be a sburb player! Or when [spoiler] and also [spoiler] and especially [spoiler]) Are you planning to read through your own liveblog when you've finished reading the comments to see how many things you jokingly predicted that came true? Or are you relying on asks to point out things like that?

I'm definitely reading through it when I'm done! I've even half-jokinly considered liveblogging the liveblog, but that might be a bridge too far even for me, lmao

@manorinthewoods asked: I've found another HS liveblog! 'researchhpurposes'. They've not made it through Act 5 yet, so hopefully they're spoiler-free - although, like you, they're going in only mostly blind, so there might be a stray thing here or there. Going to read through and see if there's anything extraordinary. ~LOSS (29/4/25)

(I'm noticing they *do* engage with reblogs, so without reading the whole thing, I'd say there's probably *some* spoilers. -V)

I can't wait to take a gander at some other liveblogs - but, yes, strangely enough, some of them can still spoil the comic, even if they're even farther back than I am!

@mrjocrafter asked: Once Upon a Time, a serialized live action soap opera / fantasy show with a batshit convoluted plot on par with Homestuck (i highly recommend it) has this concept called The Author, who's an individual blessed/cursed with the power to rewrite reality by literally writing in book(s), but if this power is suppressed, overpowered, or lost, the wielder is just some guy with a pen/quill. This is how I like to think of character!Hussie in Homestuck.

I've actually been watching a Once Upon a Time retrospective series on YouTube, and it's been an enjoyable watch so far. I even checked out the first couple of seasons myself - and, yes, batshit is exactly how I'd describe the average day in Storybrooke. Why the fuck wasn't it in Kingdom Hearts?

Anonymous asked: Yo so i was just rewatching Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and i was thinking since you like homestuck you should watch that if you haven't seen it already. Similar vibes. It's super excellent, it stars Elijah Wood. It did get cancelled after season 2 which sucks but each season is its own story with its own resolution. The stuff they were setting up for season 3 looked so dope tho, it's so tragic i'll never get to see it. It's the only thing that gives me the same feeling as homestuck. I don't want to like, say what it's about cuz like homestuck i think it's best to just jump in blind. If you have already seen it i'd love to hear your thoughts.

I haven't seen it myself, but I know the book it's based off. Dirk Gently shares an author with one of my favourite series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I feel like the show is probably up my alley too. Will definitely add it to the list!

Anonymous asked: Community is a sitcom about a study group at a community college. I recommend it, it's got a wit to it that I think you'd like.

I've seen a couple of clips of Community, but it didn't really click with me. That said, it's hard to judge the overall quality of a show from just a handful of clips, so I may give it another chance.

@manorinthewoods asked: There's a further benefit to the three-year time skip; it'll bring the characters roughly in line with the IRL time movement. April 2009 -> November 2011 is five months off the three-year timespan - which is sensible, since you need that time to actually write the story. Five months is. Probably a reasonable expectation, from the outset, for how long it might take to progress to the end of the timeskip - but, of course, this is a webcomic, and webcomics are very well known for taking absolutely ages to write. ~LOSS (29/4/25)

If that's true, and Hussie is timing things so that the kids emerge in November, then they're kind of playing with fire here.

I mean, committing yourself to maintain a consistent posting schedule for five months? Couldn't be me, is all I'm saying.

[storiesforallfandoms]

brown jacket and a thick accent ~ tangerine;bullet train

word count: 3124

request?: no

description: who's the cute boy with the brown jacket and the thick accent? maybe it's all in her head, but she thinks they'd have really good bed chem

pairing: tangerine x female!reader

warnings: swearing, smut (fingering, oral m receiving, protected sex (tangerine isn't risking nothing and neither should you!), multiple orgasms, aftercare)

masterlist (one, two, three)

based on this song (but y'all probably guessed that lmao)

I noticed his suit first. It was hard not to notice. No one ever casually wore a three piece suit. But he was, and he looked damn good in that suit.

And then I heard him speak.

He was walking past, grumbling some complaints to his companion, and I almost spun around to ask him to speak to me more. He had the hottest British accent I had ever heard. Like, panty dropping hot.

Soon enough, though, he was gone, and I was sure I'd never see him again because of this stupid long bullet train.

But then, I was at the bar in my Kyoto hotel when I heard a familiar voice down the bar ask, "Whisky on the rocks please, love."

When I looked, there he was. Shedding a brown tweed jacket to reveal his blue suit. The bartender placed his drink in front of him and he mumbled a soft "Thank you." I tore my eyes away from him, trying not to seem like a creep for staring. But it was like he was a magnet, because my eyes were drawn back to him very quickly. Trying to look away seemed impossible now. I was trying to remember every detail about him, for when we'd inevitably part ways and I'd only have my memory of him.

"It's impolite to stare, darling."

I jumped at the sound of his voice. I shouldn't have been shocked. I wasn't being subtle at all in my staring, and there wasn't anyone else at the bar. There was no going back now, so I may as well embrace it.

"It's not every day you see a handsome British man in a suit in Japan," I responded.

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "I suppose not."

"What are you all dressed up for anyways?"

He paused a moment before responding, "Work."

His hesitance made me think he was lying, but I didn't know the man so I wasn't about to call him out for it. Instead, I teased, "Must be some boring corporate job if you have to go around in a suit."

He chuckled. "You could say that."

We fell silent again. I turned back to my drink, almost empty now. Once it was finished, I'd have to go back to my room. I couldn't sit around the car all night just to gaze at the hot British man. Even though I really wanted to.

I was taking the last sip of my drink when the bartender came over and placed another drink in front of me. I looked up at her in confusion. Before I could tell her I hadn't ordered another drink, she said, "From your friend over there."

I looked over to see hot British man already watching me. He smiled and raised his own glass at me.

"That's very kind of you, business man," I said.

"Call me Tangerine."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Tangerine? Like the fruit?"

He nodded. There was no hint of humor in his expression, so I guess he was being serious. I bit back another teasing comment that was on the tip of my tongue. We may have been going back and forth, and it may have just been playful flirting anyways, but the man had bought me a drink. I shouldn't push my luck.

After a few sips, I found myself moving to sit next to Tangerine. Soon enough, one drink became two, and I returned his generosity by ordering two more drinks for him. And then the three drinks total started to hit, and my filter went completely out the window. I wasn't drunk enough to forget anything that I was saying, so I knew once I was sober I'd regret it all, but for now I was tipsy and I had the attention of an attractive British man.

Eventually, three drinks each turned into leaving the bar together. Leaving the bar turned into waiting in the elevator to go up to his room. Waiting in the elevator turned into Tangerine's lips on mine, kissing me hungrily. He pressed me against the elevator wall, his tongue slipping past my lips. I could taste the whisky he had been drinking. It made me feel even more intoxicated.

His hand slipped under my skirt. I gasped as he traced his fingers up my thigh, getting extremely close to where I needed him most.

Then the elevator dinged and his hand was gone. He had the two of us straightened up before the doors opened, revealing a group of young women dressed for a night on the town. Their eyes immediately landed on Tangerine, drinking him in from head to toe. He smiled at them, took my hand, and walked past them towards his room. I could feel their eyes boring into us as we walked away, but I was too focused on wanting to finish what we had started in the elevator.

Tangerine was quick to unlock the door. No keycard fumbling or anything. He was just so smooth. He opened the door and gestured for me to go in. Once he shut the door behind us, he was on me again. His hand was between my thighs again, this time getting to the place I needed. His fingers skated over my clothed core, causing me to whimper against his lips.

"So wet already," he noted. "You always get wet this easily?"

I shook my head. He smirked. "So this is all for me?"

I nodded, then gasped when he pressed against my clit.

"Cat got your tongue, love?"

I wanted to bite back with the same teasing nature I had at the bar, but my mind was cloudy now. I could barely form a coherent thought, let alone put those thoughts into words. All I could think of was how good his fingers felt rubbing circles into my clit. I had a few one night stands, and very rarely could a guy ever find my clit, let alone knowing how to use it to make me feel good. But Tangerine read my body language so flawlessly and knew exactly what to do to pleasure me.

When his fingers slipped past my underwear and into my sopping cunt, I let out a loud moan. I managed to come to my senses enough to quickly clap a hand over my mouth, but Tangerine pulled it away with the hand that wasn't deep in me.

"Don't you dare cover up those pretty noises," he warned.

"B-But the o-other p-people."

"I don't give a fuck about no noise complaint, love. I want this whole hotel to know how good I make you feel."

As if to punctuate his point, he curled his fingers inside of me, making me yelp. He massaged the spongey spot, making my vision blur and my knees buckle. Tangerine held me as I started to tremble, my orgasm washing over me so suddenly I barley even had time to register it was happening. He whispered praises in my ear as he continued to finger fuck me through my high. When it became too much, I put a hand over his wrist and he understood the message.

He pulled his hand from between my legs and brought his fingers to his mouth. I felt a new heat forming within me as I watched him suck his fingers clean, his eyes never leaving mine as he did so.

"Just as sweet as I expected," he said.

With that, I was finally able to regain control of my body. I dropped to my knees in front of Tangerine and started pulling at his belt. He watched me, an amused smile on his face, as I finally unclasped his belt and pulled it through the loops. I discarded it somewhere onto the floor, and made quick work of unbuttoning his pants. As I was pulling both his pants and his boxers down his legs, he tossed his tweed jacket and his blue blazer aside and was starting to unbutton his dress shirt. I would've liked to completely undress him myself, but at this moment the only thing on my mind was returning the pleasure he had given to me.

His cock had sprung free mere inches from my face, red and hard. I silently thanked whoever was watching over me that he had a decently sized cock. Too many hookups often ended in disappointment when the pants came off.

I wrapped my hand around the base and pumped him a few times before putting the tip in my mouth. Tangerine let out a breathy moan as I swirled my tongue around the tip, then slowly took him into my mouth as much as I can. Whatever I couldn't take, I kept my hand around. I slowly started to bob my head, up and down his shaft. I flattened my tongue under him, letting him rest against it as I pulled his dick all the way out of my mouth then slowly put it back in. He was groaning, reaching down to tangle his fingers in my hair. He didn't force me to change my speed or to take him deeper. He just held my hair in his fist, watching me as I kept going up and down, up and down.

I started to pump just a little, moving my hand in time with my mouth. I didn't want this moment to be over too soon, but I wanted him to feel good. And I could tell by the sounds he was making that I was definitely achieving my goal. Between moans he gave me more breathless praises, telling me that I was doing a good job. When I looked up at him, we locked eyes. I held eye contact as I took him as deep as I could go, and just held him there. He was heavy on my tongue, and he tasted just as sweet as he claimed I did.

After a moment, Tangerine shuttered and pulled at the hair still tangled around his fist. He pulled me completely off of him and to my feet. He crashed his lips against mine again, this kiss a more needy than our first one in the elevator.

"I wouldn't have lasted much longer like that, love," he said. "And if I cum before I get to be inside of you I think I'll be right angry with myself."

All I could manage in response was a whimper. And there was his smirk once again.

He finally led me further into his room, to the bed. Along the way, he stripped me of my shirt and pulled my skirt around my ankles. I was left in just my panties and bra as he lightly pushed me to bend me over the bed. I expected him to rip my panties off and to start fucking me right then and there, but he didn't. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and turned to see that he had gone to his suitcase. I was about to ask what he was doing, until he came up with a foil packet in his hand.

"You carry condoms when you go on business trips?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You never know when you might need one."

To prove his point, he gestured to me. He had a point, but I didn't want to think about how many other women he may have slept with, or intended to sleep with, on this trip.

Tangerine ripped open the condom packet and tossed it aside. He rolled the condom onto his cock and approached me again. He put a hand between my shoulder blades, pressing my chest against the bed, before lining himself up at my entrance. I didn't realize I had been holding my breath in anticipation until he pushed into me, and the breath let out with every inch deeper he went inside of me.

He was slow at first, like he was allowing me to adjust to him inside of me. It stung a little at first. It had been so long since I had last had sex, but he had more than sufficiently prepared me for him. It didn't take long for his thrusts to start gaining speed, and before I knew it he was absolutely railing me. My soft moans quickly turned into cries of pleasure, mixing with the sound of skip slapping against skin. I had completely forgotten about anyone else who may be in the rooms around us. I truly did not care if anyone knew what was happening, and it was clear that Tangerine didn't care either. It was like he was making it his mission to get the loudest, most lewd noises out of me, before he would give me any rest.

He had both his hands on my shoulders, pressing me into the bed as he pulled me back to meet his thrusts. He was going deeper inside of me than I had ever felt anyone be before. The head of his cock was perfectly abusing my g spot, sending shockwaves through my body every time he thrust inwards. At first I didn't think I would've cum again. It felt more like I was becoming overstimulated. But then I felt the pressure building up inside of me, just as quickly as it had the first time.

One of Tangerine's hands moved to my hair and pulled again, pulling me off the bed so that my back was against his chest.

"Is that another orgasm I feel?" he asked. "Are you gonna cum all over this cock, love?"

I nodded, but he moved his hand from my hair to wrap around my throat. "Use your words."

"Yes!" I cried. "Fuck yes, I'm gonna cum! I'm so fucking close, fuck!"

He chuckled, his hot breath against my ear. It was all too much. I couldn't hold it back anymore. I cried out his name as I came around him, harder and more intense than I had the first time. My vision spotted for a moment and my brain fogged over. I was completely fucked out.

Tangerine wrapped his arms around me, holding me up again as he continued to fuck into me. It didn't take him long to reach his own climax. As he did, he turned my head so he could kiss me again. It was a softer kiss this time, as we both rode out our highs together.

Tangerine slowly lowered me back onto the bed and pulled himself out of me. I whimpered at the loss of contact, hoping he hadn't heard. I listened to him shuffle into the bathroom to discard the condom before coming back out. He gently touched me, and I sheepishly turned my head to look at him.

"C'mon," he said. "We gotta take care of you before you drift off to sleep."

I wanted to tell him he had already taken care of me, but I didn't have the energy. Instead, I let him pull me to a stand and lead me to the bathroom. He made me use the washroom (the most unsexy thing you can do in front of someone you just slept with, by the way) before running a quick shower for us to wash ourselves off. The water was a perfect temperature to cool off my hot skin.

We stepped out and dried off with the hotel provided towels. I expected to put my clothes back on and to go back to my own hotel room. I knew this was nothing more than a one night stand. I didn't expect to stay the night or anything. But, to my surprise, Tangerine took me to his bed and tucked both of us into it. There was no question about it, no mentions of what was to come in the morning. He just pulled me into his arms and turned out the lights, letting the two of us drift off to sleep with just the sound of our hearts beating filling the room.

~~~~~~

I woke up the next morning to the sound of a knock.

It took a moment for me to remember where I was and what had happened. I knew I wasn't in my own room - it was much bigger than the little one bed room I had booked - and I was aware of the fact that I was naked. Once the memories from the night before came rushing back, I smiled to myself.

I was suddenly also aware of the fact that Tangerine was missing. I sat up in bed and looked around the room, but there were no signs of him.

Another knock came at the door, followed by a voice saying, "Room service."

There was a hotel robe laid out on the other bed, next to my folded up clothes. I pulled the robe on and made sure it was secured around me before I went to the door. A young man in a hotel uniform wheeled in a cart with food that smelled so good it made my mouth water.

"Thanks," I said as he left. I closed the door behind him and turned back to the cart.

There was a metal lid over the food, a cup of coffee, and a note. I reached for the note first, curiosity getting the best of me over my desire to eat.

"Good morning, darling," it read. "I had to be off early for work. I extended the checkout time of the room, so you are welcome to stay as long as you need, and I ordered you some breakfast for when you woke up. You may need to pop back to your own room to get your things, though. Thank you for a lovely night. I hope you enjoy your time in Japan. ~ Tangerine"

I sat back down on the bed and looked at the cart in front of me. I read over the letter again, willing for there to be something else written there. Like a phone number. Or a way for me to see him again.

It was just a one night stand. You knew that.

I did. But I couldn't help but feel disappointed. He bought me drinks, fucked me so good I knew I was ruined for other men, and held me as I fell asleep, only to slip out in the morning. At least he bought me breakfast and coffee, but still. I would've liked for him to be there when I woke up.

I read over his note one last time and found myself smiling involuntarily. Even if I was never going to see him again, I also was never going to forget him.

The cute man in the brown tweed jacket, and the thick British accent.

~

toss a coin to your witcher!

ko-fi.com/storiesforallfandoms

[markantonys]

My Mom Reacts To: wheel of time season 3 episodes 5-8 (no book spoilers)

season 1 (book spoilers)

season 2 episodes 1-4 (no book spoilers)

season 2 episodes 5-8 (book spoilers)

season 3 episodes 1-4 (no book spoilers)

3x05

since i'd already watched the episodes on our account back when they came out, the player attempted to pick up where i'd left off and opened this up at the very end of the episode and so my mom saw a few seconds of the egwene-lanfear-rand cliffhanger scene as i was frantically trying to pause and rewind, so she knew that was coming haha but even at this initial glimpse she wasn't shocked or anything, perhaps because while it was loading she was reading out the episode summary about "egwene learns rand's dark secret" and asked "what's rand's dark secret?" and i said "guess" and she said "lanfear" and i said "yes. oh, maybe i shouldn't have told you that."

as soon as they showed cold rocks hold, she started wondering about how the aiel survive with so little water and seemingly no place to grow food. once again, a woman after robert jordan's own heart! she wants to know all the little anthropological details!

she went "oh! he has different wives?" but that was her only comment on the aiel polyamory loredrop

elaida: i know what you are. river trash. mom: TUH!

"i feel like egwene suffers so much" -mom seemingly apropos of nothing (egwene was just sitting in the temple talking to the wise ones), but maybe thinking of the spoiled end of the episode lmao

she finds all the dream lore stuff very confusing. i do too! thankfully, she only asked me basic-level questions that i knew how to answer.

my dad loved elaida's dramatic hand-flick shooing motion when she was sending the novice away from adeleas haha

mat: [runs out of the ship cabin after being repeatedly told not to, while elayne yells at him to stop] mom: mat is always doing the wrong thing. every episode, someone is saying "mat, don't do that!"

Mat Cauthon: A Summary

"that doesn't really look like him" critiquing min's art skills

multiple mentions throughout theses episodes about how concerned she is by the prospect of these four young people haring off on a dangerous mission all by themselves. she would definitely be the kind of person to go "but where are their parents??" when reading a YA fantasy book.

min: no eye contact mat: [stares at the hanged man] mom: no eye contact, mat!!!!! me: it's a corpse mom: oh

when whitecloaks appear onscreen: "i don't like these people"

mom: so elaida's not black ajah me: no mom: then why is she siuan's enemy? me: she can be her enemy without being a darkfriend mom: [sighs] i guess that's true

once again she is distressed by how many different factions of Bad Guys there are

the cauthon girls: perrin what's happened to your eyes? mom: i don't think that would be the first thing i'd notice right now me: you wouldn't notice if someone you used to know suddenly had bright golden eyes??? mom: well, it's dark in here

perrin: i thought you were a good man dain: I WAS!!!!! dad: [chuckles] that's a good answer

rand: [gives his earnest speech about how he believes lanfear can be a good person again] mom: [sadly] oh rand, you have rose-colored glasses

so! she doesn't seem to blame rand about the whole randfear situation (perhaps because seeing the ending kiss scene first helped prepare her, perhaps because all my rand sympathy seed-planting in the first half of the season was successful, perhaps because the "this naive young man is getting preyed on" angle comes across more clearly to the middle-aged mom demographic than it does to some other demographics who dismiss it as cut-and-dry rand-fault cheating. who can say?)

and at various points in the episode she asked "what does lanfear want, just to rule everything?" and "does she actually love him or is she just saying that?" so i don't think she has ever been taken in by lanfear's tricks for one second even though many viewers did feel swayed by her "i want to break my dark oaths" schtick haha my mom never has any time for the forsaken's sob stories, like when she went "so kill yourself then" while ishy was delivering his sadboy nihilism monologue. WOT if my mom was a ta'veren: 1 book

mom as egwene is preparing to give moiraine a ride to a meeting: how are they traveling around to these places? me: they're going there in a dream dad: which is the only way anyone seems to travel anywhere in this show

mom while moiraine and siuan are kissing: .........is egwene still watching all this?

during the montage of all the friends' dreams she asked if this was halfway through the season because "it feels like they're giving us a recap" (but i reminded her that last episode was the halfway point)

speaking of last episode, before we started this one she said that she liked that episode because it was only about one plotline so it was easier to keep track of what was going on

3x06

"i vaguely remember him" about thom

mom during the weird moggy montage: what is she doing???? me: she's just really weird idk

when egwene pushed the wise ones out of her dream my mom gasped and thought egwene had destroyed them

rand: do i kill egwene? mom: [gasp] is that prophesized???? me: no he's just worried it might happen when he goes mad dad: it can't be prophesized if she [moiraine] keeps saying things will happen "sometimes"

(it felt dishonest to transcribe that sentence more efficiently as my dad saying "moiraine" himself, because i need you to know he does not know a single name of any character in this show)

faile talking about her backstory: she killed him mom: her own son???? faile: her own son mom: oh, i guess if i'd just waited a second

mom: does elayne stay good forever? me, incapable of shrugging mysteriously and letting her think elayne might become evil: yes she does mom: oh good. it's hard to get invested in characters when i'm always afraid they'll turn out to be evil.

mom after the hills of tanchico: i thought they were trying to be subtle

she liked "i don't mind strange" and faile's reaction to finding out mat blew the horn, but was feeling wary about her. "i don't know if this is a good thing or not" when faile and perrin kissed, then in the next episode she asked 1) is faile secretly evil? and 2) will perrin kill her by accident like he did his wife? and i told her no on both counts, sometimes i've just got to spoil her for the sake of soothing her worries haha

even after the kiss she referred to faile as "perrin's new friend". diversity win: straight couple gets "and they were roommates" treatment

after all my wondering, she ended up having absolutely zero reaction to or comment on the randgwene breakup! oh well, i don't think she minds it or blames rand too much at least, or else she would've said Something, and she definitely seemed fond of both rand and egwene throughout the season, so maybe it came through fairly successfully as a balanced No Bad Guys breakup for her.

3x07

she was so happy to see the s1 tuatha'an again!

perrin: it may be the season of falling leaves, but when people see how bare the trees are, they'll long for spring mom: [chuckles] when did he get so wise?

someone mentioned lord luc and she went "who????" lmaoooo he really was such a "go girl give us nothing" character this season

i've had to go "that's the son of the guy whose dad perrin killed" just about every time for dain's first scene per episode, she never remembers who he is

she also asked "who's that?" about egwene's mom no joke at least 5-6 times during this episode

in loial's first scene this episode she was like "i want him to have more to do, he's one of my favorites" and i was internally thinking "well, she's about to get her wish............."

ila: there is no leaf without the seed dad: they have a lot of weird sayings in this show

"since they have two rivers nearby, why don't they just dig a moat around the village to keep the trollocs from entering?" perrin come hire my mom as your new strategist

dad about alanna taking out a huge chunk of the army with her hailstorm: "that feels like cheating somehow"

my mom was very sad about loial! but she figured it was coming because "angels started singing" right before his final moments.

me: he doesn't die in the books, but in a show you can't keep as many characters around forever, so that's why they killed him off here mom: but they don't understand that he's my favorite character

then i said "what about lan?" and she said "he's a different kind of favorite character" haha and she went on to say that she liked loial for his comic relief and also because he was a scholar who showed the importance of books and stories in a world full of warriors and battles. RIP loial!

she does not believe for one second that padan fain will keep his promise to perrin and thinks he'll be coming right back to attack again sooner or later

mom taking stock of the battle results: so, Worst Whitecloak is dead and Peddler escaped and is still alive

3x08

mom about the amyrlin election: it's like the conclave for the new pope

leane to siuan: you haven't once told me how you know this mom: i guess she can't exactly say "somebody told me in a dream" can she?

when sammael says lews therin gave him his scar: "lews therin is something to do with rand right?" oh mom

moggy to liandrin: mistress has been very busy mom: she sounds like gollum

mat and nynaeve: [put on their veils to follow liandrin] dad: [scoffs] THOSE are their disguises?

mom about lanfear's little wedding dress number for her meeting with rand: she always has the best costumes

moiraine: we leave for alcair dal mom: where? me: just some other location don't worry about it

mat: [making for the doorway] min: mat wait! mom: he never LISTENS! he's so ANNOYING!

but then him yelling at the eelfinn about being sick of every magical force on the planet got a hearty chuckle, so it's not all losses for mat in her esteem haha

she was worried about thom dying because she "likes his voice"

mom about min's CPR: i can't believe that worked

she was upset with nynaeve for not hiding or disguising herself while waiting for the others, solidarity with @butterflydm haha

dad when nynaeve parts the sea: too bad no one else is around to see how cool this is mom: too bad liandrin isn't around to see that she needs to try harder!

she said fondly "he's gotten so smart" about rand at some point during his convo with moiraine

mom when lanfear shows up in her Ultra Goth Supreme getup: who's that? me: lanfear mom: oh. she looks different every scene!

my dad likened the Dueling Car'a'carn Presentation to a gameshow lmao

mom had a moment of panic thinking lan might die, so i had to blurt out that he was not going to die

mom: he made it rain in the desert? the other guy's gonna have a hard time topping that!

she's getting very concerned about rand doing big channelings since it will bring him closer and closer to madness every time he does. the show's done a good job emphasizing those stakes for viewers!

after it was over she said "so many good guys died this season! i'm so upset!" in the same sentence as asking hopefully if there would be an s4 haha

later that evening: "i really hope they do more seasons, because i'm not reading all those books". i hope so too!

[liquidluckandstuff]

Another Destiel drabble?

Because I can't stop thinking about this one send help talk to me about this please. I wanna write it so bad but my writing battery has been stolen. I left the group that helps Sam out vague so you can fill in the blanks.

Someone is able to mimic the effects of famine and Cas gets hit. It's not as widespread as the actual horseman, but he needs to be kept on lockdown in the bunker in case he does something stupid.

Dean is the one who is roped into staying behind (he really wanted to anyway but he had to be a dick about it) while Sam and some other of the family go hunt down the source of the trouble. While Dean and Cas are in the bunker, Dean gets a bunch of stuff together for burgers because if Cas is going to eat them he is going to ENJOY them damn it. It shouldn't take Sam and company to figure out the problem right? Plus Cas is tough he can handle it.

It becomes apparent that Cas is only pretending to be interested in the burgers and has something else on his mind. So much so that Dean starts to worry about him. Maybe there is something wrong? Maybe it didn't actually affect him at all? He's just worried about him. He's always worried about him. He doesn't really want to let him out of his sight. One of them goes into the other room and it makes their chests tight. It happens again not even an hour later, and the other jumps up to follow, offering their help.

They find it harder and harder to keep any distance between the other until they realize "Oh shit Cas DID get affected by the famine curse again and maybe Dean did too except this time it's completely different because they hunger for each other so bad and its been YEARS in the making." They contemplate trying to separate from one another, Dean even calls Sam to see how things are going, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice because he isn't sure what is going to happen next. They (he and Cas) both realized what happened at the same time but they still haven't said anything out loud just like they NEVER said anything out loud. Sam says it's going harder than they thought and they don't know how much time it will take. Asks about Cas and Dean assures him that Cas is fine. Cas is right here in front of him. He's doing great. Right where he is supposed to be. No you take your time Cas and I can handle this it's fine.

And the second he hangs up the phone the personal space is gone and they are not even a breath away from each other not even sure why they are fighting it anymore and oh god they are so fucking hungry for each other.

Dean and Cas finally kiss and touch and start to lose their sense of sanity. They don't know which way is up or what color the sky is or how long they entangle themselves in each other. Every injury Dean might get, Cas heals almost instantly. Not that he cares. It's Cas and they need to be as close as possible because what if one of them leaves again?

What if Cas leaves and he never sees him again? What if Dean thinks he has to sacrifice himself again because they can't find another way? They can't take it anymore. There is too much space between them.

Cas remembers how he cradled Dean's soul in his grace, his true form and it's driving him feral knowing they haven't been that close since then. It's been a long time since he thought of his body as a prison, but now he thinks of Dean's body as one too even as beautiful of a prison it is.

"Say yes," Cas eventually says. Begs him actually. Cries for it. Maybe Dean is crying too because most humans would have died from Famine's curse already. But Cas keeps healing them over and over and Dean isn't close enough and Cas isn't close enough and it was pure torture.

Dean doesn't even know if he hesitated. One minute he is so alone and the next Cas is finally there with him. He is being held in a way that no one ever has held him before (except yes they have, he remembers it somehow. Cas saved him didn't he?)

When Michael possessed him it wasn't anything like this. He was drowning and everything was horrific. This was love.

Cas was entertaining himself with Dean. This wasn't even real possession, not in a way Dean or even Cas ever understood. There was no one truly in control. It was better than Heaven and they would know.

The laugh they let out was pure soft madness? Joy? Love? Slow blinks and drug eyed bliss they never knew they could have.

When the curse was broken, Sam tried to call Dean but wouldn't pick up. Fearing the worst, he and the group that went with him come back to a clean bunker, and Dean lost in thought staring blankly at a Movie that had long since stopped playing and had gone back to the title screen.

"Where is Cas?" Sam asked when he got back. "why didn't you answer?"

Dean/Cas who can't even separate their minds enough to tell each other apart, don't really have an answer for Sam. Sam at first thinks Dean found some drugs or something, but quickly becomes more and more concerned as Dean just does not act like himself.

He is too... Happy. Which isn't a bad thing, but he keeps blinking too slow with a lazy smile and whatever drug he took should have worn off by now.

Sam eventually goes into Cas' bedroom and finds his body completely lifeless / stasis on his bed and starts to panic.

"Dean! What happened to Cas?" Sam asked angry? Fearful? Dean should have known about it. Why didn't he say anything?

"Nothing. Everything is fine," Dean smiles again except now its creepy.

"What happened while we were gone?"

Dean giggles. Actually giggles. Drug induced wacked out happy brained giggles.

There comes a point while Sam is trying to figure out what the fuck happened to his brother and Cas where someone, something, attacks Dean. Sam fears the worst until the bight glowing light of grace shines from Dean's eyes and bursts forth from his hands and kills the thing.

Sam instantly figures out what happened. "Dean... Cas?" He asks his brother, Cas?, slowly. "What happened while we were gone."

Dean looks to his brother with that strange too happy, drugged out smile, and says "We got hungry."

(I have an ending for this)

[babelrevived]

Hey so I really really love your interpretation and I have to say it did make me look at s2 Vander in a new light. That said, while I do think this interpretation of their characters and relationships to eeach other and Felicia is compelling, it really only works if s2 was a stand alone and not a follow up to s1. And I think that's the biggest problem with s2 (aside from the oversaturated plot), and it's that it's trying to tell a different story than the one s1 set up.

To start off, you mention that Vander felt guilty for giving up on the promise he made to Felicia. In s1, we see the opposite. We see him feel guilty for ever even taking part in the violence that led to the bridge fight. He says it to Vi. He says that he was responsible for all these people and his violence is what got them killed.

In your longer post, you said that the "blisters and bedrock" at the end of the letter shows that he wants Silco's forgiveness and wants to patch things up. It also implies that Vander wanted to uphold the promise once again. None of this is even alluded to in s1. In fact, in s1e3, Silco straight up OFFERS him a way to redeem himself, to patch things up. He offers him the "blisters and bedrock". He was trying to recruit him back into the movement. Vander doesn't take it. He feels awful about what he did and probably desperately needs Silco's forgiveness to even begin to forgive himself. But he still doesn't take it. And that's what really makes me love his character in s1, because although he's kind of a twat, this scene showed a kind of selflessness where even though he wants Silco's forgiveness, what he's asking for in return Vander believes will get more people killed. He believes that they can never win a war against Piltover, that's why he gave up. Making his reason for giving up all about Felicia and her kids makes it more personal rather than ideological, which takes away all his selflessness and he's a poorer, less sympathetic character because of it.

Another thing I want to mention is the fact that not once during their ep3 conversation do they ever mention Felicia or their promise to her. The doylist explanation for that is that it would have ruined the "big twist", but whats the watsonian explanation? Wouldn't that have been the perfect moment for Silco to remind Vander of the promise? At least he could have said "blisters and bedrock" if they didn't want to mention her name. And when Silco unleashes his gang of henchmen on Vi Vander could have said "what the fuck are you doing, that's our dead friend's kid," but instead he says "this is between you and me". I think the problem with Felicia is that she makes their falling out seem to be more personal and emotional rather than political, and I think the reason why many of us felt that it was a political clash that happened despite their love for each other is because their entire conversation was almost entirely politics. At this point, they hadn't seen each other for years and Vander probably didn't even know Silco was alive (judging by his reaction when he saw him), but they immediately start talking about the base violence and you'll never win a war even with your monsters and yada yada yada, they only mention the drowning halfway into the conversation, which is when it starts to become personal. Vander then tries to make it even more personal by saying that he shouldn't have done it because Silco was his brother, at which point Silco backtracks and turns the conversation political again. If the betrayal happened for emotional and personal reasons then none of that energy was present in this confrontation scene. the Vander s2 tries to paint is just a completely different Vander than the one we were shown in s1. And I'm not saying that s2 should have filled the blanks of their backstory the exact same way that I did, but the problem is they didn't try to fill in the blanks, they tried to write a completely new story.

Also sorry for the long post I got carried away lol.

^^^ This “criticism” often comes at the expense of details in the scene they laud so highly.

Vi and Powder approach a burly man beating someone up without fear in a setting where any normal person would be terrified to meet someone who might do them harm.

They approach him and point to themselves, indicating they’re looking for their parents.

Vander ACKNOWLEDGES their gesture and points to their parent’s dead bodies. Meaning not only do they know he’s someone they can trust, but that he KNEW who they were and who their parents were.

The “revelation” in season 2 that Vander knew them doesn’t change the way this scene plays out in the opening. It’s clear as day that they aren’t just some random kids he adopts. He KNEW them. They knew HIM. That’s all shown in the opening scene.

I do not understand where this wishful misinterpretation comes from.

[mollypaup]

i think a really great aspect of oofuri is how much it gets mihashi's ass for being overly timid and dependent. it would be really easy to write off the way he and abe interact as being abe's fault because he is overbearing, and a lot of people do, but it has some really great moments of going "hey, you cannot hide behind abe or depend on him to make every decision. it's not good for you, or him, or the team."

[pocketgalaxies]

hi! seeing you during all this ep95 mess has been a breath of fresh air. you seem to have a really firm grasp of canon so I wanted to ask what you think of the recent discord message from Liam where he says Orym didn't know that Laudna was under Delilah's influence when she killed Bor'dor? I watched the clip from 4SD, & it's pretty clear that Liam says Orym understood Laudna was opening the door for Delilah when he encouraged her to kill Bor'dor & even says "we'll need that." But the Discord message seems to walk that back. It's been super frustrating being accused of vilifying Orym or infantilizing Laudna for repeating what Liam himself said. I just don't really know how to reconcile these two statements from Liam & it has me a bit confused on Orym's character.

hi anon, thank you!

this turned into a much longer one than i was expecting dfksjdkfs

so last week i posted this Really Long Ask about the whole discussion, if you want to take a look. but i intentionally didn't bring up liam's discord message because you're right! it seemed contradictory to something that was stated in the past, which was confusing

honestly i think the most realistic answer is that liam probably didn't mean for what he said on 4SD to be understood as such a strong and maybe even polarizing character choice. i think a lot of us heard it as "orym sees delilah as a useful/necessary asset that outweighs what might happen to laudna afterward." particularly because he framed it as something that made the whole situation "even creepier," and during that same convo, marisha was emphasizing the psychological impact that killing bor'dor had on laudna. it's a strong stance and it reflects what orym is doing to himself (handing his endgame over to the questionably fickle nana morri to increase their chances of success against ludinus)

but i suppose liam's clarification suggests that he meant it in a softer, more practically level-headed way, like "orym knew he couldn't do a whole lot about delilah's return but he also thought it could have benefits," or something along those lines. they're obviously two hugely different interpretations with pretty big implications on how we understand orym's relationship with laudna

i'm not a connoisseur of orym's character by ANY means so i can't confidently tell you what the change might mean from a narrative perspective, but i personally still prefer the former stronger stance. because i think it raises interesting questions about how orym views his own place in this war and whether or not it's valid for him to (intentionally or subconsciously) project that placement onto the other party members. is it okay for orym to expect the same level of personal sacrifice from laudna, or imogen with predathos (a whole separate can of worms), or anyone else? is it safe? etc etc. but maybe liam doesn't want to go in that direction, or maybe he does but just not in the way we expect, i don't know! only time will tell!

also regardless of what he meant, i think it's important to acknowledge that it's really easy and completely understandable to feel like he was walking something back. that episode of 4SD was almost a whole year ago! many of us built that statement into our perception and understanding of orym's character for a long time, so it's totally valid to go "wait what the fuck???" when liam suddenly pops into the discord to say that's not what he meant. those feelings are valid and real! especially when discourse can already make you question your own intelligence and your personal interpretations of a story, having that pillar, as big or small as it might've been in your mind, knocked over can be really jarring. you are very much not alone in that, and it's okay!!

[summerfated]

skyler  couldn't  understand  why  this  was  happening  again.  let  alone  to  people  that  don't  even  deserve  it.  she  couldn't  help  but  agree  with  luka.  "no..  no  one  deserves  any  of  this  and  it's  scary."  this  is  probably  why  she  shouldn't  of  let  herself  continue  to  think  about  this.  it  was  a  normal  reaction  she  thought.  it  seemed  as  though  most  people  had  been  feeling  the  exact  same  way.  "i  meant  it  as  a  compliment.  there  was  something  about  me  that  drew  me  to  you  and  i  don't  know  what  it  was."  honesty  …  was  coming  out  now  all  of  a  sudden.  skye  still  did  like  him.  not  knowing  where  the  two  stood  now  that  they  had  been  over.  "we  do..sometimes  we  don't  know  any  other  way  to  get  through  it."  it  was  such  an  odd  thing  to  stand  here  and  talk  to  him  like  this.  felt  like  forever  since  they  actually  were  just  able  to  talk.  with  no  fights,  just  talking.  "no,  but  i  could've  still  protected  myself  and  not  let  the  people  i  care  about  think  i  didn't  care."  the  way  he  hugged  her  pulled  at  her  heartstrings  a  little.  she'd let herself   lost  in  the  nostalgia  of  what  once  was if she hadn't pulled back quickly.  she  then  had  to  snap  herself  back  into  the  reality  of  where  they  were  and  who  they  were  now.

as  soon  as  skye  pulled  back  she  glances  back  up  towards  luka.,  not  letting  herself  fall  back  into  the  old  habits.  especially  being  the  main  reason  for  why  they'd  ended  to  begin  with.  "it  isn't  the  worst  but  i'd  also  say  it  isn't  necessarily  the  best  either.  not  for  me.  i  could  understand  not  being  able  to  ditch  it  though."  meeting  the  people  you  care  about  most,  having  your  family  here,  made  it  all  the  more  difficult  to  want  to  try  and  leave  it.  "you  did?!  luka..  good  for  you!  i'm  really  glad  you  were  able  to  move  on  and  do  what  was  right  for  you.  you  really  needed  that."  happy  to  hear  that  he  had  done  what  was  the  hardest.  there  was  no  way  that  sort  of  thing  was  easy  for  anyone.  "good..  i  suppose  i'll  look  forward  to  it  then..  you  know  since  you  said  so.."  laughing  when  she  had  caught  that  wink  from  him.  this  was  going  to  be  anything  but  uneventful.  "luka...  are  you  asking  me  out?"  the  brunette  would  laugh  and  nudged  his  side  to  let  him  know  that  she  was  meaning  this  jokingly.  wasn't  like  she  could've  read  the  thoughts  in  his  own  head.  "i'll  go  with  you!   hey,  no. i  wouldn't  make  you  pay  for  everything.  you  really  don't  have  to.."

“fuck… this is insane and why now after all these years? and why feyza? she didn’t deserve to be murdered, nobody does…” all these questions luka was asking because he was struggling to come to terms with reality. that at any moment someone else could die and there wasn’t nothing anyone could do but wait. “i’m not sure if i should take that as a compliment.” an amused hum trails behind his word. he was a tad disappointed to hear the past tense of like. they had been done for a long time now and maybe he was holding onto the past too much. he did know he was reading too much into things and that if he continued, he might push her away again. “we all do things just to survive, skye.” luka wishes he could reassure her better. take away her guilt and pain. he wasn’t good with words though. and he wasn’t sure there was anyway he could show her differently. “pushing people away meant protecting yourself. no one should blame you for that. including you.” his knees become weak when she reciprocates the hug. a spark ignites him and he has to remind himself again… he’s reading too much into this. especially when she pulls back. “i hope so. westhaven isn’t the worst but there’s a lot of bad memories here. but i dunno if i have it in me to ditch this place...” his voice falters after the words fall out of his mouth. he always talked about leaving this place but he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to move and there was also good memories here. ones with his siblings and friends. there was also the good memories with skye. he was almost too sentimental to leave. “i get that. you know… i cut my mom off finally? i guessed i finally realized i needed time too.” luka felt a little bad saying that aloud. he knew he did what was right for himself when he cut his mom off but there was guilt too. skye and him weren’t really different. “you can look forward to that.” he winks. his palms forming sweat before continuing. he didn’t want to step on her feet and imply he was wanting more. he did want to see her again though. “well, you do that by going to the spring festival with me. it’ll be fun to go with a friend. i’ll even pay for everything.”

[s2pdoktopus]

Me with my favorite fictional morally dubious terrorists/war criminals: Half the things they are experiencing is their own fault but they deserve better actually, for you see; if that didn't happen they wouldn't have to do these.

Me with my ocs who killed at most 10 people: EVIL! You have your reasons but that's no excuse. SUFFERRRRRRRRR!!!

[nobodybetterlookatme]

Wait I think I missed something in this incredible saga. Are you going on a date with the coworker??? I swear the last thing I saw was “no I would never” lmaoooo. If so, I (like the rest of snzblr) are anxious for updates about your love life. You’re one of the top snzblr couples now, enjoy 🤙

I did say I would never and I was a fucking liar apparently 😔 it's not technically a date tho bc I never told him it was bc I need to be so casual and mysterious ahdkaksk but it's a date To Me lmao. It's tomorrow tho bc we're still at work rn and it doesn't look like we're leaving anytime soon so at least I have that to look forward to I guess lmao

[azriona]

Update on hand:

So the short version is: I wasn't paying attention and I swung my hand in the wrong direction and caught it on a sharp bit of metal and sliced the back of my left hand open, resulting in a 4cm-long wound that required 6 stitches. This happened Friday night, approximately twenty minutes into what was turning into a disaster of a vet appointment and also twenty minutes before Bill & 10yo had to be on the road to the Cub Scout weekend camping trip, so needless to say I effectively upended everyone's plans.

Anyway, lessons learned:

1. When the doctor asks you "how did this happen", if the first thing out of your mouth is "it wasn't the dog's fault", you're gonna get some looks. 

1a. It really wasn't the dog's fault; she is perfect and has never done anything wrong in her whole life.

2a. I mean, look at her!

2. Trying to describe a metal sticky-outy thing as a metal-sticky-outy thing to the doctor and nurse does not necessarily help with convince them of #1.

2a. This is the thing, except with square edges instead of angled. You tell me how to describe it. I'll wait.

3. Lidacaine is amazing.

4. I read a fic recently where the EMT was joking about it being his first time in an ambulance and I thought reading that fic, "wow, I'm not sure I'd find that funny if I were his patient", but the only time I've been in an ambulance it was my kid who was the patient and no one made that joke. Whereas the ER doctor was cracking jokes the whole time and he was very funny except the only one I remember was after he was done with the stitches he said, "Not bad for watching a YouTube video!" Which was totally funny so I take back my earlier hesitation regarding inappropriate jokes in medical settings.

4a. OMG, I should have told him he was so funny he was keeping me in stitches. GET IT???

4b. No, I shouldn't have said that, he probably gets that every time. LAME.

4c. I am, surprisingly, not still high on lidacaine.

5. Best reaction goes to the person who, upon learning this injury happened during Stella's vet visit, wanted to know if the vet just sighed and stitched me up. (Answer: no, but the vet took one look and immediately said, "You, ER, now." He also called the next day to check up on me and apologized for not taking care of the wound but he is "a dog vet not a people vet." Which was not as funny as the YouTube video but still made me laugh.)

6. My hand looks like Frankenstein, but it's still better than it was yesterday: the swelling's gone down and the bruising has cleared up. And I have a bright pink wrap for it because hey, if I'm gonna wrap it up, it might as well be pretty. I'm typing a lot better too: Trying to type anything on Saturday was slow but I do have feeling in all fingers and nothing's numb and I have full range of movement (I just can't put my hand in a fist without pulling on the stitches so I'm not doing that). I'm not breaking any speed records today but at least I'm able to actually press the keys (which I couldn't really do yesterday at all).

Anyway, here is my hand in a pretty pink wrap:

And under the cut, for those of you who like Frankenstein, is what my hand looked like yesterday without the wrap. (It looks way better today, I just didn't photograph it.)

The doc said he normally leaves the hand stitches a little gapey because of... I don't know, medical-sounding reasons that sound very medically sound. Anyway, it doesn't really hurt unless I do something stupid to pull on a stitch and the only meds I have apart from antibacterial ointment is ibuprofen and apparently the angle of the cut means I might have a SCAR so there's that.

I think I'll give myself the weekend and then reply to comments tomorrow.

Hello good morning ow. (Six stitches.)

[born-to-lose]

Okay now is the time for you to confess how many band guys cheated on their s/o with you 🤐 I've only been following you since the Italian singer incident but your concert stories are insane

Wellll, that depends on what you consider cheating 😭 keep in mind I didn't know about any of their s/o's previously so I had no idea what's going on. Also I'm keeping these anonymous because I feel kinda bad for it because even if I didn't know they were taken, I know how much it sucks to get cheated on AND I'm not proud of being cheated with or anything, I just like to brag about the events themselves ignoring the fact that it's cheating to me but not necessarily to others, I don't know their boundaries etc

The one that was definitely cheating in my opinion was the kiss with that Italian singer (I only found out he had a girlfriend afterwards and a few months later he posted about recently getting his heart broken 😭)

Then the bassist of that Swedish band hardcore flirted with me (but respectfully and he was so adorable, he kept hugging me and asking if he could buy me a drink, I could go on forever; he was also the one who tried to convince me to jump in the van and go to Gothenburg with them) and the next day when I posted a photo with the band on Instagram (regular group pic, nothing risky) I noticed in the viewers list that his girlfriend of almost two years at that time saw it 😭

Something that was part of the show during Queen Obscene and not serious but still worth an unrelated mention because it almost made me swoon (and I need to yell about it again after it's been so long), especially since it was my first concert, was Gabriel Keyes checking me out and singing a line of the chorus to me, but I don't read anything into it because he's in a happy relationship and has a kid 💕

[no1cutiepatootie]

hi do y'all remember lj