#private process servers

[swiftwingsexpress]

Private process servers play a crucial role in the legal landscape, serving legal documents and ensuring due process is carried out efficiently. In Weaverville, one standout company excels in this domain: SwiftWings Express.

[snow-body]

Commission for Bosun (discord) and here are some steps I saved, because I live in the constant fear my PC might decide to crash.

[valyrfia]

go to pull data to try and check something for my scientific research 👍 find out that the trump administration has pulled funding support for simply ARCHIVING the data because the instrument has the word “meteorological” in the title 👍 that’s an entire scientific mission lost folks 👍

[aipurjopa]

if I were to start watching infuse smp is there like a POV I should start with or should I use their official playlists or something else?

The main thing abt infuse is that there were sorta two “eras:” infuse and then infuse revamped. Most of the playlists you’ll see around are for pre-revamp which has many different members compared to post-revamp (which is what i’ve been yapping about.

InfamousJJ (previous owner of the server) has a bunch of playlists of pre-revamp you can watch, plus one of revamp s1 up until he left.

A good gateway video to revamp is from Flame during his guest week since he’s probably a familiar face (I’m assuming you’re a ls fan lol).

I also had a similar ask where i link a bunch of other vids I liked so you should also watch those ^^

As for what I consider like “must watches,” I’d say watch Sharooh’s Apophis video and Arcn’s Apophis video, alongside one of the finale videos… also lowkey like just all of JJ’s revamp a1 videos… those I regard as like… the major events of the server… but like most smp content, each of their videos are made to be standalone (to some extent) so any new viewer can watch the vid and get what’s going on. So don’t worry too too much lol.

As for the current season, revamp s2, I don’t think a lot of videos have come out yet but most of the ccs have their vods from the first 3 days public…

[goodmorninglovelies42]

It’s weird to be a Ted Lasso fan and a Jason Sudeikis hater. Idk man; I don’t care what your ex did — serving a custody lawsuit on stage at a public event throws up huge red flags for me. And it’s hard to listen to him talk about the forgiveness and kindness as the thesis of the show when I know he’s done that.

[soulsmake]

Soulsmake Schedule

Soulsmake is an event centered on working with someone new and enjoying the process of creation!

Sign up as a writer, an artist, or either, and be assigned a random soulmate, ideally in pairs or writer+artist. Once pairs are rolled, you’ll have about a month to talk to your soulmate, find some common ground, and make an AU!

What that creation process looks like is up to the two of you—you two can draw or write as much or as little as you’d like. You can make full color art or a simple sketch, and you can write a full fic or a simple outline. You don’t even have to make anything at all! All you have to do to “complete” this event is have a single conversation.

Soulsmake is about making a friend and making a story. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Simply have fun with this low stakes, low pressure creativity event!

Below is the planned schedule, and a small explanation as to how each phase will work.

Monday, July 7 - Signups open

Saturday, July 19 - Signups close

Sunday, July 20 - Pool limiting review opens

Wednesday, July 23 - Pool limiting deadline

Sunday, July 27 - Soulmates assigned

Friday, August 1 - Soulmate reroll request deadline

Sunday, August 3 - Rerolled soulmates assigned

Monday, Sept 1 - Official completion deadline

Below the cut will be more information on each step of the event process. If you have any questions not answered in this post, check the #soulsmake qna tag on this blog to see if your question has been answered already, and if it hasn’t, our ask box is open!

Sign ups:

There will be a little over two weeks to sign up for Soulsmake. We’ll be asking you for your name, your socials, and your discord—this is the information that will be available to the other participants of the event during the limiting process.

Next, we’ll ask if you’re signing up as an artist, a writer, or either. We’ll be trying to make pairs of artist+writer, though we don’t imagine an even amount of artists and writers will be signing up, so that isn’t guaranteed. Signing up as either will help with balancing these, so if you can do both, consider signing up as either!

After that, we’ll be asking you your age bracket, specifically whether you’re an adult or a minor, and then ask if you’re comfortable working with someone in the opposite age bracket. Your exact age is not necessary, and this information will not be public.

Finally, we’ll be asking whether you’re comfortable with working in a team of three instead of as a pair. This is in case of an odd number of sign ups. We may also consider using teams of three so all teams have at least one writer and one artist.

Once you hit submit on the sign up sheet, the confirmation page will have a link to the event’s discord server. Joining that is required, as we’ll be hosting much of the rest of the event through discord!

(If you forget to grab the link before closing the confirmation page, please send an ask off anon for the discord invite!)

Pool limiting:

The next phase of the event is pool limiting. Once sign ups are closed, participants will gain access to a spreadsheet of the names, socials, and discords of all the other participants. You will then be asked to fill out a second form with everyone you want removed from your roster of possible soulmates.

This serves two purposes. The first: if you have any usual creation partner(s) you tend to work with, we would like you to write them down. We want you to work with someone you’ve never worked with before, so note down your usual accomplices to ensure you don’t get them by chance!

Second, if you see someone on the list you don’t get along with, we’d also like you to note down their names and remove them from your pool. We don’t want anyone to be randomly paired with someone they already know they won’t work well with, so this step should help minimize those conflicts by preventing them from happening.

Who you put on your limits list will be completely private, and once the event has ended, the list will be deleted.

If you do not submit a limit form, we will assume you are open to anyone who fits within the criteria from the original signup form.

Soulmate Assignment and rerolls:

[Note: Rolling soulmates may end up taking an extra day or two depending on how many sign ups we receive! If this happens, the other dates will also be pushed back accordingly.]

Finally, the soulmates will be rolled! When pairs are finalized, we’ll announce them in the discord server by pinging users. The creation period can start here for most pairs as they DM their partners, as the creation period will be done one-on-one in private DMs between soulmates rather than in the server itself.

In the first week after soulmates are rolled, participants will be asked to chat with their soulmates and get to know each other. Find out what your soulmate is interested in and find common ground!

In this stage, we’ll ask you all to be flexible and respectful. It’s possible your soulmate doesn’t watch your favorite CC, or that you aren’t super interested in your soulmate’s top favorite type of AU. That’s okay! Try to be open-minded about what your soulmate is interested in, and be flexible with what you yourself are willing to create—you’ll likely have something to bond over!

Open, kind communication will be key, as will a willingness to branch out and explore new things! If you aren’t able to be respectful and flexible, this event may not be for you.

That said, if you find that you and your soulmate aren’t compatible for any reason (ie you can find no common ground, or you’re on opposite timezones, or you just don’t really click or get along), you can come to an amicable split. If you and your soulmate decide to split, one member should head to the discord and make a ticket with the mods and ask to reroll.

Fair warning: If you and your partner cannot be respectful of each other in your decision to split, one or both of you might be asked to bow out of the event.

How rerolls will be handled will depend on how many people need rerolls and how they want their rerolls handled. Options will include rerolling new random pairs, individuals joining existing pairs, or participants picking their own new soulmate.

Creation period:

Once the pairs are solidified, the creation period officially begins! Soulmates will have one month to make up an AU together, and once the month is up, you’ll be asked to share what you have.

Again, this is a low stakes, low pressure event. You can go all out and create full art or a completed fic, or you can do some simple sketches or a simple outline. The only thing you need to do to “complete” this event is have a conversation with your soulmate!

While this is a Life Series fandom event, if you and your soulmate feel inspired to make an AU for another fandom you both share, you can do so. You can also make an original story or work with your sonas/OCs. Shipping is allowed if both parties are comfortable with it, and while we do not care if adult pairs create NSFW, we will not be reblogging it to this blog. Absolutely no GenAI or C.AI will be allowed.

More information on the rules can be found in this rules post.

You can share your work by pinging this blog and using the #soulsmake tag! If you and your partner are inspired, you are more than welcome to continue creating for your AU after the event is over.

If you still have questions after this, please feel free to check the #soulsmake faq and #soulsmake qna tags or send us an ask! Additionally, any other informational posts will go in the #soulsmake info tag.

[georgeharrisonsmiling]

There is the video of the Beatles dissolution where George is running.

and the comments are often like this:

But what I've never seen people talking about how the actual reason why George is running in the video is because he was avoiding Klein's lawyers.

Loiacono went back to the Plaza at around 10 p.m. to wait for Harrison, this time reinforced by three additional private investigators. Two of them took up watch outside the hotel, while the third stood near the elevators at the Plaza’s 58th Street entrance. Loiacono positioned himself at the main elevator bank near the Plaza’s 59th Street entrance.

Within an hour, Harrison’s entourage arrived from Madison Square Garden. Imhoff immediately spotted Loiacono. To distract the process server, Imhoff began following him around the hotel lobby, asking questions while a cameraman and lighting assistant who happened to be with the Harrison group recorded the scene. This allowed Harrison the opportunity to bolt from his car and scurry through the hotel lobby into the safety of the hotel’s kitchen elevator.

They wanted to serve him Klein's lawsuit over the ownership of Harrisongs.

[luulapants]

Because the media seems incapable of saying it, I want everyone to know that what's happening in the federal government right now is a coup. They don't have legal authority to do this just because Trump is president. Elon was not elected, and neither he nor these college students he's working with have been vetted, background checked, or given security clearance. DOGE is not a real federal agency because it has not been approved by Congress.

They have forcibly overtaken the Office of Personnel Management by forcing out all staff who refused to give high security access to people without clearance. They plugged an unvetted external server into their computer systems for the purpose of accessing private data about 2.3 million federal workers. (For the record, if I was to plug a thumb drive into my work laptop, I'd be in deep shit.) They have given this information to parties who have already created hit lists of federal employees who have made social media posts they disagree with.

They have forcibly overtaken the Treasury by forcing out all staff who refused to give high security access to people without clearance. They have administrative access to the federal pay system, which is responsible for disbursing trillions - that's a thousand billion, btw - of dollars to all sorts of federal programs, including social security payments and tax refunds. This also gave them access to the personal information of anyone who has ever received money from the federal government.

They have dismantled USAID and are in the process of dismantling the Department of Education, including plans to take down studentloans.gov. They have breached the General Services Administration and now have access to building security plans for every federal building. These are agencies approved and established by Congress, and the executive branch does not have the authority to unmake them, let alone an extra-governmental actor like Elon Musk.

This is a coup.

[foxtrology]

inertia (1)

reed richards x reader

star sailor series | ao3 link

notes: hi. so i’ve been writing this fic over the last three weeks (yes, three entire weeks, i know) and honestly it would not exist in its current form without my best friend, who is a literal physics major and walked me through so many of the equations and techy parts so reed didn’t sound like a fraud. i love her for that.

also, fun fact: reader is neurodivergent (i borrowed some of my own neurodivergent tendencies to shape her), so if you pick up on that... you’re right. thanks for being here!

word count: 12k

─────

You’ve always preferred rooms with humming machines to those filled with people.

It wasn’t shyness, not really.

Just an overwhelming awareness of your own rhythm, too far removed from the world’s noisy metronome. You knew early on you understood things differently—less about feeling out what someone meant, more about isolating the structure beneath their words, the pattern in their tone, the physics of an interaction.

Most people called it brilliance. You called it survival.

The Baxter Foundation didn’t feel like survival at first.

It felt like exile.

A postdoctoral placement handed to you like a sealed fate—"promising," "potential," "gifted." Euphemisms for "difficult," "obsessive," "odd."

They said Reed Richards might know what to do with you.

You assumed they'd meant “handle.”

But he didn’t handle you. He saw you.

Reed Richards wasn’t what you expected.

The name carried weight: prodigy, theorist, treasured in the scientific community. You imagined arrogance, an aging wunderkind with a room full of accolades and a voice like static.

But the man who stood waiting for you at the base of the Baxter Building's elevator looked almost misplaced—rumpled in a navy button up, absent-mindedly smearing graphite on the sleeve as he scribbled into the margin of a battered notepad.

He had those lines around his mouth—the kind that softened a face rather than hardened it. A sharp nose, brown eyes, and that unmistakable streak of grey curling through otherwise dark hair.

At first, you assumed it was dyed—it looked too perfect. But it was real. Of course it was.

You hadn’t realized you were staring until he tilted his head.

“You're early,” he’d said, voice warm and textured. Then, a smile that lit up his whole face—eyes first. “I like that.”

That was two years ago.

You’ve since learned Reed keeps a second toothbrush for you in his private quarters upstairs, though he’s never pointed it out.

You discovered it one night after a double shift, when he gently steered you towards the bed in his guest room instead of letting you fall asleep under your desk again. He didn’t say, “Stay with me.” He just adjusted the pillow, handed you a glass of water, and made sure the bathroom light stayed on.

It’s quiet love. A sustained frequency. A knowing.

On Tuesdays, you both eat lunch in the server room because it's the only place in the Baxter Building that maintains the kind of white noise you can disappear into.

Reed brings you a sandwich without tomato—he learned after the first week that you can’t stand the texture—and sets it beside your research without interrupting your thought process. You don’t thank him out loud. You just leave the crusts in the pattern he finds funny, concentric squares, always precise.

Sometimes, he laughs at that. Sometimes, he files it away like data.

Today, the two of you are working on a stabilization algorithm for experimental gravitational anchors—Reed's theory, your math. The simulation keeps failing, and Reed mutters something under his breath about quantum decay before turning to you.

“Show me again how you’re quantizing the drift interval,” he says, pushing his chair slightly closer to yours.

You don’t flinch. He always asks to see your work like this—not to correct, but to understand. He thinks your brain is a mystery worth mapping. And maybe it is.

You pull up your calculations, annotated with your usual shorthand that no one else in the lab pretends to follow. Reed doesn’t blink. He reads your annotations like they're a shared language.

“You inverted the modulus,” he says quietly, quite in awe. “God, that’s...elegant.”

You look down. Compliments still stick to you like static. You’ve never known what to do with them.

“It was obvious,” you murmur, tapping the screen once to clear the render.

“Not to me.”

His voice carries something like reverence. Not the kind people fake when they’re talking to someone younger, or different. His is heavier. Sincere. Measured.

You chew the inside of your cheek.

“Can I show you something?” you ask.

That’s how you always start, even though Reed never says no.

The observatory lab is empty when you both arrive.

He unlocks it with his palmprint, but you go in first, navigating in the dark by memory. You’ve had an idea simmering for days—a tweak in boundary calibration using harmonic frequency overlap, something even Reed dismissed initially as too unstable.

But last night, at 2:43 a.m., your model ran clean for the first time. No drift. No bleed. Pure coherence.

You bring it up on the projection wall, fingers moving fast. Words tumble when you’re excited—sharp, fast, too much for most people. Reed doesn’t interrupt. He never has.

When the model stabilizes on the fourth run, you glance over your shoulder.

Reed is watching you.

Not the simulation. Not the math. You.

You freeze.

He steps forward slowly, like if he moves too fast you might vanish.

“You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”

You look back to the projection. “No. But it was worth it.”

He exhales a soft breath, close enough now that you can feel the warmth of it on your temple.

“You can’t burn like this all the time,” he murmurs, but his voice doesn’t hold judgment—only concern.

“I can,” you reply simply. “And I do.”

He lets out a low laugh, almost involuntarily. Then, more gently, “Let me take care of you. A little.”

He says it like a hypothesis. Something untested.

You don’t answer. Not out loud. But you lean into his shoulder—not quite a nod, not quite an invitation—and he stays there. Long enough that the simulation cycles again, quiet and steady in the background.

Later, you’ll find that he’s updated the cafeteria schedule in your calendar to make sure no one disturbs you between 12 and 2 p.m. on Tuesdays. You’ll notice that he’s ordered extra noise-cancelling panels for the lab, without ever saying why. That the lights outside your lab space dim slightly when you stay past midnight.

All Reed’s doing.

He never says it out loud.

But this is how he shows you.

In recalibrated thermostats. In cups of tea left cooling on your desk. In letting you be silent when silence is the only thing that fits.

The world outside moves too fast. New York never sleeps, never softens. There’s always construction in the distance, always an ambulance shrieking down Fifth, always people spilling from cafés and rooftop bars like they’re late for something invisible.

But in the Baxter Building—six floors above the ghost of the old Avengers Tower—the hum of your controlled environment remains undisturbed.

For now.

It’s the kind of phrase that hangs in the air longer than it should, like steam after the kettle's been lifted, like the echo of a chord when your fingers already left the strings.

You don’t hear it, of course. Not consciously. But the sensation trails you anyway, ghost-like, as the day folds open and the building shifts around you.

You return to Lab B-3, where a data stream from the gravitational anchor prototype pulses in pale blue on the screen. You prefer this room to the others—less foot traffic, colder air, fewer variables. The walls are lined with the modular panels you installed yourself, after three months of fighting sensory burnout from the old fluorescents. The air purifier in the corner hums at a frequency you can tolerate.

It smells faintly of dust and ozone, like a server farm on a rainy day.

You’re cataloging the last ten hours of micro-interference logs when the door hisses open behind you.

“Hey.”

You don’t turn. It’s a mistake, maybe, but you assume whoever it is has entered the wrong lab.

You’ve put the sign up: DO NOT DISTURB — QUANTUM MODELING IN PROGRESS. A laminated shield between you and the rest of the building’s noise.

The voice cuts through again, sharper. Louder.

“Hey—don’t ignore me.”

You blink at the screen. Your heart doesn’t race. It clenches, tightens like your ribcage is shrinking inward. You turn slowly.

It’s Dr. Ian Delmont. One of the senior engineers. Jacket unzipped, badge swinging loose around his neck like a noose that can’t make up its mind. His face is already red, already pulled taut around the mouth.

You recognize the body language...shoulders set forward, hands ready to gesture. Angry people always move in patterns. You learned this years ago, the way some people learn fire drills.

“Why the hell did you rewrite my core schematic without logging the revision?”

You stare at him.

“I didn’t rewrite anything. I optimized the redundancy logic. It was bottlenecking the chain reaction model.”

“That’s rewriting.”

Your voice stays steady, your mouth forming the words in the exact order they should go. “No, it's not. It’s a correction. The existing code couldn’t handle parallel iteration under dual-load conditions.”

“You didn’t clear it with me.”

“It was a bottleneck,” you repeat.

Ian’s voice raises. “I don’t care if it was a goddamn chokehold, you don’t get to touch my work without authorization.”

He says it loud enough that it ricochets off the walls. Too loud.

Your neck goes hot. You feel it in your jaw, down your arms. Your hands twitch just enough to knock your stylus from the table and you bend down to retrieve it—too fast. You bump the corner of the desk, hard. The pain doesn’t register, but the sound does.

Too loud. Too loud.

Ian takes a step forward.

“Every time I turn around, you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong—”

“I was fixing it.”

“You were showing off.”

That does it. You freeze.

This isn’t about the code.

You blink. You don’t blink. You can’t remember. You try to open your mouth, but your tongue sits wrong in it. The sound you try to make stalls halfway up your throat. Your hands curl into themselves like you could fold out of sight.

The lights feel wrong. The texture of your sleeves is wrong. The hum of the purifier is gone, replaced by the jagged, ugly timbre of yelling.

“I don’t care what Richards says about you,” Ian mutters. “You don’t run this place.”

“Hey.”

The sound comes from the door. Not a shout. Not sharp. But it cuts through everything like glass through butter.

You both turn.

Reed Richards steps into the room like he’s always belonged there, like his presence is not new or sudden or charged with a heat you’ve only ever felt in gamma pulses and untested energy chambers.

His mouth is tight, drawn. There’s nothing soft about his expression now.

“I suggest,” he says slowly, like each word has been smoothed against the edge of a scalpel, “you take your tone down. Immediately.”

Ian hesitates. Then his jaw sets. “With all due respect, Dr. Richards—”

“No,” Reed interrupts, walking further into the room, voice calm and sharp all at once. “Don’t. Don’t try to play seniority. This isn’t about protocol. This is about how you just cornered one of my lead researchers and yelled at her while she was running live code on a multivariable anchor model.”

“I was confronting—”

“You were posturing,” Reed cuts in. “And you were wrong.”

Ian blinks. Reed’s voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to.

“She didn’t rewrite your schematic. She corrected a critical flaw that should have been caught weeks ago.” He stops beside you. Not in front of you, not shielding—beside. “The only reason that anchor hasn’t destabilized is because she stepped in.”

Reed turns his head slightly, glancing down at you. His eyes soften, fractionally. He doesn’t touch you, but he lets the silence hang, as if waiting for you to reclaim your voice if you want to.

You don’t. Not yet.

“Ian,” he says without looking away, “I want you out of this lab. Now.”

Ian’s mouth opens, then shuts again.

Then he leaves.

You’re still breathing too fast. You know you are. You can feel the microtremors in your fingers, the irregular skip of your pulse. But the room feels real again. Your body is slowly remembering where it ends.

Reed waits until the door hisses shut.

Then, “Can I sit?”

You nod, once. He pulls a chair close—closer than he usually would in a shared lab space—and sits beside you with the kind of silence that doesn’t ask anything from you. His knees are angled toward yours. His forearms rest loosely on his thighs. His whole posture is a quiet question you don’t have to answer.

You stare at the screen. 

“I wasn’t showing off.”

Reed lets out a sound between a sigh and a laugh. Not at you. With you. “I know,” he says gently.

“I just…saw the error. It was obvious.”

“I know.”

He pauses.

“You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone in this building. Least of all him.”

You press your thumbnail into the meat of your palm, grounding.

“I’m not good at…tone.”

“That’s not a flaw.”

“I always think I can just fix it quietly and not deal with the…other part. The confrontation.”

He nods once, his eyes still fixed on you. “The way the world expects communication isn’t the only valid way to exist in it.”

Something in your chest cracks open at that. Quietly. Invisibly.

You lean back against the chair, your breath finally settling into a rhythm.

Reed stays where he is. His presence doesn’t press against you—it anchors. He’s always been like that. Dense and still, like a planet with just enough gravity to make sense of things.

You glance over at him.

“Thank you,” you say finally.

He shrugs. “I don’t like mean people.”

You look down at the table. You trace a line in the condensation ring your tea left behind earlier.

“Are you going to fire him?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I’m going to make it very, very clear who’s indispensable here.”

You don’t ask who he means.

You already know.

Later that night, you’re still in the lab, long after the rest of the building has gone dim.

Reed comes back with a takeout container—your favorite, though you don’t remember ever saying it aloud. He doesn’t mention the incident again. Just passes you the food, leans back in the corner chair, and starts updating his lab journal aloud, knowing you like to listen to the way he thinks.

Outside, New York glitters like a malfunctioning galaxy. Inside, the lights are low, the air quiet, the world small and manageable.

Just you, your notes, and the man with the grey streak in his hair who watches you like you built the constellations from scratch.

A quiet love, not yet named.

But it’s there.

Always has been.

It’s late now, nearly eleven, but the labs on the upper floors of the Baxter Building don’t abide by clocks. Here, time stretches. Pools. Slows down when the work is good. Speeds up when the math gets too beautiful to let go of.

You and Reed are the only ones left.

Everyone else has long since clocked out, their departure announced by the usual symphony of zipping backpacks and elevator chimes. The security team downstairs knows better than to check on you. You’re a known variable—an equation that balances best in silence, after dark, with only the man beside you and a cooling takeout container between you and the void.

Reed is sketching something in his notebook—a systems flowchart annotated with arrows that curve and overlap like a child’s drawing of a galaxy.

He’s humming, under his breath. Just a few bars of something he’s probably not even aware of. It’s familiar, not because you recognize the tune, but because you’ve heard him do it before, under the same kind of fluorescent moonlight and the same clean, ticking quiet.

You finish logging the day’s simulation data, close the terminal, and pull up your schedule for the upcoming weeks. The glowing display casts faint shadows over your face, which you don't notice but Reed glances at, once, over the edge of his notebook.

Monday. Field trip.

You hadn’t forgotten. Not exactly. It had just sat at the bottom of the week like a pebble in your shoe—felt but not seen.

You stare at the words for a beat too long.

VISITOR OUTREACH: 9:30–11:15 — RICHARDS / YOU

Group: PS 22 — Grade 2

Your fingers twitch at your side, a muscle memory of anxiety without the adrenaline to match. You don’t say anything, but your mind is already running the old loop, quiet and tight, like rewinding a tape you didn’t want to play in the first place.

You’d been paired with high school seniors last time.

They came in loud, late, and bored. One of them had a vape pen tucked into their hoodie drawstring.

You remember the boy in the back who asked if you “did anything real” or if you just “sat in rooms with graphs all day.” Another mimed falling asleep when you began explaining atmospheric coding inputs for small-scale gravitational fields.

You hadn’t raised your voice. You hadn’t snapped. You just shut down the projection early and handed the rest of the presentation off to the intern whose voice sounded like she smiled even when she didn’t mean it.

Afterward, you’d sat on the roof of the Baxter Building and stared at the clouds. Told yourself they were just kids. Told yourself they didn’t know.

But it stuck. The way they laughed when you said you worked on electromagnetic resonance feedback models. The way one of the girls whispered “so basically nothing” to the boy next to her like you weren’t even there.

They didn’t know.

That your work stabilized quantum harmonics in the kinds of silicon they tap on all day, every day.

That your programming makes the screen light up when their crush texts them back.

That the interface delay they complain about in video games used to be twenty seconds instead of two, and you helped design the equation that closed that gap.

They didn’t know you once pulled Reed out of a theoretical blind alley and into a breakthrough he’d later call elegant, a word he doesn’t use lightly.

They didn’t know how much you cared. That the caring was the point.

So after that, you asked to be reassigned.

“Elementary school kids,” you’d told Reed in his office one morning, already chewing at the inside of your cheek. “They’re too small to be cruel yet.”

He didn’t laugh, but you remember his eyes. How they softened. How he nodded and said simply, “Okay.”

And now here it was. Monday. Second graders. A classroom full of kids with juice boxes and velcro shoes and hands that still shoot up when they’re curious.

You can handle that. Probably.

You close the schedule tab. The screen goes dark.

Reed looks up from his notebook. “Everything okay?”

You nod once.

He doesn’t press. But he waits.

You speak without looking at him. “Monday's outreach.”

He leans back in his chair, notebook on his lap. “Right. You’re with me.”

You nod again.

“I asked for the younger group this time,” you add quietly, almost like you’re confessing something. “The older ones were…”

You trail off.

You don’t finish the sentence, but Reed catches the thread anyway. Of course he does.

He doesn’t say they were cruel. He doesn’t say you didn’t deserve that. He doesn’t fill the silence with anything easy.

Instead, he says, “You’ll be good with them.”

“Because they’re not old enough to be bored yet?”

“Because you care,” he says, looking directly at you. “And kids remember that. Even if they can’t say it.”

You pick at the corner of your sleeve. You’re still thinking about Monday. About the fear that your voice will tremble again. That the wrong word will come out. That your quiet will make them fidget and giggle and whisper.

But then you think about the last time a kid visited the Baxter—seven years old, wandered away from the main tour. Found his way into your lab by accident. You showed him how magnets repel in zero gravity fields and he tried to high five you with both hands at once.

You’d smiled for hours after that.

Maybe Reed is right.

Maybe caring is enough.

By the time you both shut down your stations and gather your coats, it’s nearly midnight. Reed holds the elevator for you without asking. It’s just the two of you, the soft gold of the lights reflecting off the brushed metal doors as they slide shut behind you.

You watch the numbers tick down.

Reed stands beside you, shoulder not quite brushing yours. Quiet, like always. Present, like always.

“Do you want me there?” he asks suddenly, softly, as the elevator hums downward. “Monday. With the kids.”

You blink. “You’re already scheduled for it.”

“I know,” he says. “But do you want me there?”

It feels like a trick question. But it’s not. It’s just Reed, offering steadiness in the places you don’t always know you need it.

You nod.

He nods too.

Outside, the city glows like it’s forgotten how to sleep. Yellow cabs streak past in lazy arcs. Rain clings to the pavement like it’s not ready to let go.

You stand under the awning of the Baxter Building, both of you half-heartedly pretending to check your phones, neither of you quite moving to go. It’s a ritual now—this lingering. Like the day doesn’t want to end, so you don’t let it.

Reed finally speaks, his voice low and near your ear.

“You know…you do more than keep this place running. You are this place.”

You glance at him. He’s looking at the sky like it might answer back.

“And if some bored teenager can’t see that, it’s only because they’re too young to understand the shape of things.”

You swallow. The city smells like damp concrete and neon and early summer.

You don’t reply. But the words lodge somewhere behind your ribs.

And they stay.

In the space between you and Reed, that sentence hums like background radiation—silent, but measurable.

He doesn’t look at you, not directly, but the softness in his posture says enough. The kind of softness he reserves only for you. For late nights and unsaid things. For quiet field trip fears and tired bones after thirty-seven straight hours in the lab.

You shift your weight from foot to foot under the awning, fingers fidgeting at the edge of your sleeve. The city is wet and warm and humming in that uniquely New York way—trash trucks groaning down Sixth Avenue, a taxi horn blaring three blocks over, the subway beneath your feet thrumming like some subterranean heartbeat.

Reed checks the time on his phone, but it’s performative. He’s not really looking at it.

“You can stay upstairs if you want,” he offers. Voice neutral, like he’s suggesting you borrow a pencil.

You know what he means.

His quarters above the Baxter labs—spare and quiet and clean, like an extension of his brain. You've stayed there before. Once after a storm knocked out the subway, once when you got a migraine so bad you couldn’t walk home without throwing up. The guest room is always ready, with a weighted blanket you know he ordered just for you. The lights dim at 30% automatically, and the fridge always has tea.

Still, you shake your head.

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

You shrug one shoulder.

“But I’d feel like I was bothering you.”

There’s no irritation in your voice. It’s just a fact. A line drawn lightly in pencil, not ink.

He doesn’t argue. Reed knows better than anyone that pushing you when you’re already overstimulated only drives you deeper into the quiet.

“I’ll walk you,” he says.

You almost tell him it’s not necessary.

That you’ve done the walk a hundred times alone. That it’s late and he must be exhausted too. But something in the way he says it—low, certain, without any edge—stills your protest before it can take shape.

You nod once.

The streets are emptier than usual, rain thinning to a mist that catches in your hair and softens the world around the edges. You button your coat up to your chin. Reed tucks his hands into his pockets, his long strides slowing instinctively to match yours.

You don’t speak for the first few blocks. You don’t need to. It’s not awkward—it’s companionable. Your silences have always been functional. Built like scaffolding. Structural.

You pass a late-night falafel cart and the warm, oily scent of fried chickpeas folds around you. Someone’s playing Miles Davis through a cracked open window above a bodega. A cab splashes through a puddle without slowing down.

You glance at Reed. His hair is slightly damp from the rain, curling a little at the edges. The grey streak catches in the streetlamp glow and glints like metal. He looks tired, but the good kind—brain-tired. Soul-deep contentment worn like a worn-in coat.

There’s something in the way he carries himself now that feels looser than it used to. Since you.

You think about that sometimes. The before of him.

You’ve seen the photos.

You’ve read the papers.

The man with ideas too big for gravity, with headlines like The Modern Da Vinci and Richards' Law stapled to his name before he was even out of his twenties.

You used to resent those profiles.

How they smoothed over the things that mattered.

How they all insisted on brilliance and ignored what he really was...careful. Constant. Gentle in ways that science rarely rewards.

He wasn’t always like this. He told you, once, in a rare moment of openness, that he used to believe love would only slow him down. That affection dulled the edge of genius.

He doesn’t say things like that anymore.

But he doesn’t say the other thing either.

You know what you are to him—friend, confidant, collaborator.

His mind matches yours, nearly. But not quite.

You run faster. Not always more elegantly. But faster.

You see the equations before he does.

You make intuitive leaps he can only reconstruct in hindsight.

He admires that. You see it in the way he watches you work, the way he lets you lead without hesitation.

And still, he hasn’t said the thing.

Because once it’s said, it can’t be unsaid. And Reed Richards has never risked a variable he couldn’t account for.

“You know,” he says softly as you cross Park, “when you rewrote that module today… I think that was the first time I felt—” He pauses. “Old.”

You glance at him. “You’re not old.”

He chuckles. “My knees would disagree.”

“That’s not science.”

He smiles. “No. But it is gravity.”

You snort.

He watches you carefully. Then says, “You don’t realize how good you are, do you?”

You look down at the sidewalk. The rain has turned the concrete slick and mottled.

“I do. I just don’t know how to be proud of it.”

He nods like he understands. “Because pride implies…audience.”

You don’t answer. But your silence agrees with him.

A block later, you say, “You’ve taught me how to be better without making me feel small.”

It slips out before you realize it. The kind of truth that rarely finds a voice.

Reed stops walking.

You look back at him. He’s staring at you like he’s memorizing the moment.

“You’ve done that for me too,” he says quietly.

It should be more than that.

But it isn’t. Not yet.

Your building is a brick structure tucked on a quieter side street. Sixth floor, walk-up. Rent-high, because New York is cruel and physics has been paying you back a lot recently.

Reed’s been here before—once when you locked yourself out, once when you were sick with a stomach bug and couldn’t get out of bed to pick up your prescription.

He always waits at the foot of the stairs.

Tonight is no different.

You fish out your keys and glance back at him.

“I’m okay,” you say.

He nods. “Text me when you’re in.”

You hesitate. Then, a beat later, “Thank you for walking with me.”

“Always.”

You step inside. The door swings shut behind you with a soft click.

Reed watches the rectangle of light shrink until it’s gone.

Only then does he turn.

He walks back slowly, hands deep in his coat pockets, rain heavier now. The city is hushed, its noise folded in on itself. His shoes splash through puddles he doesn’t try to avoid.

He thinks about you.

The way your voice tightens when you talk about the things you care about.

The way you never apologize for being brilliant, just for being visible.

The way you notice every small thing—every decimal, every gesture, every change in temperature—and store it away like evidence that the world can be read if only you learn its language.

Reed Richards has spent his life searching for patterns. For the math behind miracles. He’s found some. Lost others.

But you?

You remain his favorite unsolved equation.

He doesn’t say the thing. Not yet.

But it lives just under his tongue, waiting.

The next morning you wake up earlier than you meant to.

Not by choice. Not by discipline.

But because your upstairs neighbors, despite living in an apartment complex with allegedly soundproof walls, have spent the last six and a half hours making the most expressive use of their vocal cords.

Moans.

Laughter.

Something you’re fairly certain was a vase being knocked over around 3:12 a.m.

You’d counted.

You’d logged the minute it started—12:49 p.m.—and the moment it finally slowed to quiet again, or at least to something muffled enough that you could hear yourself think.

There was nothing logical about it, and therefore nothing you could fix. No formula to solve thin drywall. No algorithm to isolate human behavior into something quiet, contained, reasonable.

So you’d stared at the ceiling. Then at your wall. Then at your ceiling again.

And now it’s 5:47 a.m., and your alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.

You sit up.

The air in your apartment is slightly too warm—residual heat from the radiator you can’t adjust. Your mouth is dry. The muscles in your back ache in the specific way they do when your sleep’s been interrupted just enough to confuse your circadian rhythm but not enough to explain it to anyone else.

You don’t bother lying back down.

Your morning routine is exact. Not out of compulsion, but out of necessity. A lattice structure of steps that keep the rest of the day from collapsing.

Boil water. Black tea, no milk.

Brush teeth—no mint toothpaste, only the kind with baking soda, because you hate the artificial sweetness.

Shower. Warm, not hot. You step out and wrap the towel tightly around you like armor.

Dressing is harder. The shirt you wanted to wear feels off today—too scratchy, too bright. You change into the navy knit Reed once said brought out your eyes.

That memory shouldn’t matter, but it does. You feel steadier when you put it on.

Bag. Notebook. ID. Keycard. Noise-canceling headphones, just in case.

You skip breakfast.

You always do when you’ve been overstimulated. It makes your stomach feel like wires have been crossed.

The subway is half-empty this early. The kind of silence particular to Friday mornings—the city not quite buzzing yet, just flickering. You stand near the doors and stare at your reflection in the opposite window, your face hovering over the tunnel blur outside like a ghost.

You think about the model you left open in Lab B-3. About the field trip on Monday. About whether or not you remembered to reroute the final data loop in the harmonic anchor sequence.

You think about Reed, and then try not to.

By the time you arrive at the Baxter Building, it’s just before seven.

You enter through the side entrance, swiping your badge through the sensor and waiting for the familiar mechanical click. The lobby is dark except for the ambient lighting that glows along the baseboards. The city hasn’t reached in yet.

And then you see him.

Reed.

Sitting on the bench just inside the front hallway like someone who forgot what time it is—or didn’t care.

He’s wearing the same navy coat from the night before, his hair still slightly damp from whatever morning shower he took before stepping into the day. His notepad is on his lap, open, but untouched.

He looks up at the sound of the door.

“Hey.”

You blink.

“You’re early,” you say.

“So are you.”

“I didn’t sleep.”

He stands slowly. “Your neighbors again?”

You nod, already tugging your bag strap higher on your shoulder.

“I’m thinking of writing them a formal request to conduct their mating rituals at a lower decibel range.”

That makes you snort, despite yourself.

“They’d probably just find that hot.”

Reed’s laugh is soft. “You’re probably right.”

He falls into step beside you without needing to be asked. You head toward the elevators together.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” you say as you press the button. “You're never this early unless there’s a test run.”

“I was hoping you’d show up early,” he admits, sheepish but not apologetic. “You didn’t text last night.”

You look down. “I forgot.”

“Neighbors really did a run on you, huh?”

You ket out a breathy laugh meeting his eyes.

Soon the elevator arrives. You both step in.

He doesn’t say anything else, but the quiet settles around you like a blanket. You don’t have the words for it, but you know he does this often—positions himself near you, close but not invasive, like a planet finding the right orbit. Something about it always makes you feel tethered.

The elevator stops on your floor.

As you exit, he doesn’t turn toward his own lab. He follows you.

“I figured I’d sit with you for a bit,” he says simply, “if that’s okay.”

You nod. You don’t say thank you, but your body does—shoulders uncoiling, pace slowing, your breath evening out.

Your lab still smells faintly of ozone and the synthetic lemon Reed always insists on using in the electronics-safe cleaning spray. You flick on the under-lighting instead of the fluorescents. It’s quieter that way.

He watches you unpack, the same way he always does when he’s not pretending to be distracted by his own work. You can feel his gaze—clinical, affectionate, reverent.

You settle at your station and glance over.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.”

He sits across from you at the small corner table, flipping open his notebook. “I kept thinking about the field trip Monday.”

You groan softly.

Reed smiles. “You’ll be fine.”

“They’re going to ask me if I built Fortnite.”

“Just say yes.”

You narrow your eyes. “That’s unethical.”

He shrugs. “You do kind of power their world.”

You chew the inside of your cheek.

“I know you’re dreading it,” he adds, more gently. “But you’re going to surprise yourself. I’ve seen you explain quantum turbulence to a twelve year old. You used two chairs, a glass of water, and a slinky. It was borderline performance art.”

You allow yourself the smallest smile.

He studies you for a beat.

“I waited this morning,” he says, voice lower now. “Because I wanted to see you before the day started. I figured if you didn’t sleep, you’d need a buffer.”

You look up at him.

“A buffer?”

“For the noise. The world. Everything.”

You don’t answer for a long moment.

Then, “You’re good at buffering.”

Reed closes his notebook. His eyes don’t leave yours.

“Only for you.”

You look away too quickly. Your stomach flips, your thoughts scatter like dropped dice.

This happens sometimes.

The intimacy of Reed. The nearness of what he doesn’t say.

The feeling that he’s handing you something fragile and invisible, and asking you to decide whether to name it or leave it untouched.

You pull up your simulation model and begin reviewing last night’s logs.

He watches you for another minute, then opens his notebook again and starts annotating something beside you, close enough that your knees brush once, and neither of you moves.

The morning settles.

Quiet.

Unspoken.

Waiting.

The building wakes slowly, like a body stretching into motion. The light outside the lab windows tilts, warmer now, brushing across your workstation and catching on the rim of your teacup. You don’t drink it, but it’s there—heat fading, a symbol of routine more than comfort.

One by one, the others begin to arrive.

Keycards beep. Footsteps echo off tile. The rhythmic click of heels and the soft, buzzing shuffle of rubber soles on linoleum fill the air in the way only a scientific institution ever sounds. Conversations start up in clipped, caffeinated tones. Someone’s talking about a failed simulation in Lab A-2. Someone else is complaining about the elevator skipping floors again.

You don’t look up.

You’ve already built a wall of focus, exact and methodical—three simulations running in parallel, an error log cycling in your periphery, two graphs comparing harmonic distortion levels under varying environmental noise inputs.

Reed hasn’t moved far from you since you sat down.

Every now and then, he leans slightly over to ask a question—never invasive, always curious. He taps the edge of your screen to point out something and waits for you to explain it in full before speaking again. His voice stays low. His body language remains small.

He is very, very careful with your space.

At some point, you adjust the variables in one of the testing loops. Reed notices before you explain why.

“You brought down the feedback tolerance?”

You nod. “I think it’s overcompensating for impulse drift. If we calibrate to a slightly lower resilience threshold, we might expose the weak nodes in the structural harmonics.”

He lets out a low hum of appreciation.

“I wouldn’t have caught that.”

You glance at him.

“That’s because you were trained to trust the tolerances.”

Reed raises an eyebrow, amused. “And you weren’t?”

“I was trained to notice what doesn’t belong. Even if it doesn’t make sense yet.”

He leans back in his chair, studying you with something just shy of awe.

That’s when the others start to notice.

There’s no whispering. No gossip. That’s not the culture here. Baxter doesn’t reward spectacle.

But still, people look.

It’s subtle—an extra second of eye contact, a glance exchanged between postdocs in the corridor. Even in a building dedicated to research and theoretical physics, attention has a shape. You feel it.

You’re used to being watched when you speak, but this is different. They’re watching him.

They’re watching how Reed stays near.

How he lowers his voice when he speaks to you.

How he doesn’t interrupt when you’re mid-thought.

How he laughs at things you don’t mean to be funny.

How he tracks your gestures with the full, unguarded focus of a man trying to memorize not just the content of what you’re saying, but the rhythm of it, too.

You register the attention. You don’t engage with it. You would get too flustered.

Instead, you pull up a different dataset.

Across the room, someone’s looking at you over their glasses. You minimize the screen and adjust your chair slightly so your back is to the rest of the lab.

Ben Grimm arrives around 9:15, coffee in hand, hoodie pulled up like armor against the morning.

You like Ben.

You liked him even before you knew him—when all you had was a list of his mechanical engineering contributions and the curious note in his file that simply read “Reed’s oldest friend. Trustworthy. Not academically inclined. Smarter than he lets on.”

He sees you before you see him.

“Hey, Doc,” he calls out, his voice gravelly but warm.

You glance up and, for the first time since the building really began to fill, smile openly.

“Hi, Ben.”

He walks over slowly, avoiding the edge of the test rig you have set up. His eyes sweep the table, reading the mess of wires and calibration notes without actually processing them, which is part of his charm—he doesn’t pretend to understand your work. He respects it anyway.

“You eat today?”

You blink. “Not yet.”

“You want half my bagel?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“It’s everything seasoning.”

He grins. “You’re too sharp for your own good.”

You raise an eyebrow. “I’m just observant.”

Reed, still beside you, chimes in dryly, “She’s also allergic to sesame.”

Ben winces. “Oh, right. My bad.”

You wave it off. “It’s not lethal.”

Ben hands you a sealed granola bar from his pocket instead. “From Alicia. She said you looked pale last week and told me to keep snacks on me in case I ran into you.”

Your mouth twitches.

“Tell her I said thank you.”

“Tell her yourself. She’s coming by Monday.”

You nod, then return to your screen, not rudely, just efficiently. Ben doesn’t take offense. He pats the table lightly and leaves you to your work.

Once he’s gone, Reed glances at you sidelong.

“You like Ben.”

“He doesn’t talk to hear himself speak,” you reply.

Reed smirks, folding his arms across his chest. “So I guess I should be worried.”

You don’t answer. But something in your cheek lifts. A small, unspoken response. Reed ntoices it. Files it away like he does everything about you.

By late morning, you’re too deep in the math to notice anything else.

Three out of five anchor simulations fail—but not catastrophically. The new feedback threshold is revealing the pattern you hoped it would. Reed asks if he can run his own version of the loop. You nod without turning, already exporting the baseline parameters to his terminal.

You hear someone outside the glass wall whisper, “Is Richards still in Lab B-3?”

And then, “I think he’s shadowing her today.”

“He shadows her every damn day.”

You pretend not to hear. You shrink slightly into your collar. Not from shame. Just to stay small.

Reed doesn’t respond to the comment. But you notice that he reaches over and very quietly pushes the door shut.

Not to hide.

But to give you quiet.

The rest of the morning passes like this—like a film spooling out in perfect rhythm. Reed occasionally types beside you. Sometimes you work in parallel, other times in sync. You don’t speak unless necessary, but the air between you is charged in a way you can’t name. Not love, not yet. But a proximity to it.

And even though others look—at him, at you, at the space between—you don’t notice anymore.

You’re too busy trying to catch the shape of something hidden in the data. Something just out of reach.

Like truth.

Or a confession.

Or gravity.

Fridays at the Baxter Building settle into their own kind of orbit.

Every lab has its rhythm—Lab A-2 always wraps their protein sequencing early, because Dr. Lyman likes to jog at 1:15 on the dot. Tech Ops syncs their systems for overnight updates before noon. Environmental Engineering runs its daily dehumidifier diagnostic with exaggerated ritual, a kind of inside joke no one explains to the interns.

It’s been that way since you arrived. It wasn’t written anywhere, but you learned it all the same.

And the unspoken tradition...Reed Richards forgets about time.

By now, everyone has made peace with it.

On Fridays, he’ll get caught chasing some quantum trajectory through a dozen notepads and open tabs, muttering to himself about temporal flux interactions or pattern resonance mismatches. If someone reminds him what time it is, he’ll blink, check his watch as though it’s betraying him, and then wave his hand vaguely in the air—“Take two hours, go. Ben, order something greasy.”

And everyone will. With relief. With a kind of reverent affection for their slightly scattered, brilliant leader.

Except you.

You stay.

Always.

It’s nearing 12:45 when the lab thins out. Ben claps his hands once, loudly, to announce, “Twenty-four-inch from Mario’s. I got half with olives, don’t fight me about it.” Someone cheers from the hallway.

You don’t look up.

The simulation in front of you is finally stabilizing under increased pressure loads, and Reed’s scribbling new hypotheses across his tablet at a manic pace—“If we compensate for decay acceleration by adjusting the sequence resolution window down to 10 seconds, the cross-bridging might resolve on its own—”

You hum without meaning to, fingers typing out the updated code.

“I’m serious,” he says, pushing his chair closer to yours, legs brushing under the desk. “We’re so close. This could finally solve the vibration decay issues in the dynamic anchor builds.”

“It won’t,” you reply calmly, running the next set. “Not unless you account for the spectral density shift around the 170 Hz mark. It’s going to collapse again.”

Reed pauses.

“You already ran this model.”

You nod.

“When?”

“Last weekend.”

He looks at you like you’ve handed him a paradox.

You let the silence stretch, then: “Try adjusting the constraint to reflect a Gaussian distribution, not linear. The peaks are too soft, and the algorithm’s compensating for noise that isn’t actually noise.”

Reed exhales slowly, reverent. “How does your brain do that?”

You don’t answer. You don’t have the words for how you see things. You just do.

He smiles like he’s in the presence of something sacred.

He leans in again, close enough that his shoulder presses lightly into yours. You shift slightly to give him access to your terminal, and he doesn’t pull away.

He’s always been tactile like this—with you, at least.

Hands brushing yours when you pass equipment.

A palm steadying your wrist when you’re assembling small, sensitive components.

Once, you found yourself gripping his forearm without realizing it during a particularly volatile magnetic resonance test. He didn’t mention it. Just let you hold.

But today, it’s different.

Today, something lingers.

You're both staring at the screen. The simulation is stabilizing now, running longer than it has all week. Your throat tightens with something like triumph, or relief, or maybe just fatigue disguised as euphoria.

Then, softly—soft enough that it catches you off guard—Reed reaches up and brushes his thumb across your cheek.

You freeze.

Out of disbelief. Out of awe.

His hand is warm. The pad of his thumb gentle.

The touch isn’t performative. It’s not even decisive.

It’s hesitant. Like he needed to check that you’re real.

That this moment isn’t just one of his half-formed ideas scrawled into the margins of a late-night notebook.

Your eyes flick toward him.

He’s already looking at you.

Something unspoken and heavy passes between you. It hums underneath the fluorescent buzz of the lab lights, underneath the whirring fans of the machinery, underneath the working theory you’ve spent days fine-tuning.

You don’t lean in.

But you don’t lean away.

He doesn’t move his hand.

You don’t say a word.

Ben opens the door a few feet down the hall, holding a pizza box in one hand, a Coke in the other.

He sees you.

Sees Reed.

The hand. The closeness. The moment.

And just as quietly as he entered, he steps back. Sets the pizza down on the nearest desk. Walks away without a word.

You and Reed don’t notice.

The simulation pings complete. For the first time in eleven models, it doesn’t fail.

You blink.

Then breathe.

Reed drops his hand, slowly, like it doesn’t want to leave but knows it has to.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he.

But something has shifted.

In the lab’s stale, climate-controlled air. In the simulation still pulsing faintly on your screen. In the trajectory of two minds moving dangerously close to each other’s center of gravity.

You get up first, walking to the sink in the corner to splash water on your face. The cold helps. Reed stays in his chair, scribbling, though you can tell his mind isn’t entirely on the notes.

You find the pizza box. It’s already cold. You bring two slices back to the workstation.

You don’t mention the moment. Neither does he.

But all through the second hour of your “break,” you work with that electric tension still threaded between you.

You pass him a slice. He accepts it.

He says your name, once, softly, like an answer to a question you haven’t asked yet.

And you don’t look up. Not yet.

You’re afraid that if you do, everything will change.

Or maybe—it already has.

“Hey,” Reed says again, this time your name folded into it, spoken low and careful, like he’s afraid of breaking it. Like he’s afraid of breaking you.

You don’t answer right away.

Because you know what he’s asking without asking.

And you know that if you answer—if you meet his gaze now, if you name the thing humming between you—it won’t go back in the box. It will take shape. It will have mass. It will alter the gravitational field between you forever.

You chew the edge of your lip and keep your eyes on the simulation results, blinking too fast.

He doesn’t push. Reed Richards never pushes.

But he stays there, watching you like a question he’s been trying to answer for years. Like a proof that’s always been just outside the edge of comprehension.

He wants you.

You can feel it in the heat of his gaze, in the way his hands twitch with unspent energy, in the way he shifts closer every time he speaks. He wants you the way he wants knowledge, reverently. With hunger and hesitation in equal parts.

But more than that—he respects you. And that respect builds a boundary he’s too careful to cross without your invitation.

So he doesn’t speak again. Not yet.

Instead, he clears his throat gently and leans back into the moment he knows how to inhabit best—the work.

“You were right about the Gaussian window,” he murmurs, eyes returning to the data on your screen. “The mean deviation narrowed just enough to stabilize the micro-vibrational bleed. Look.”

He tilts his tablet toward you.

You peer at it, grateful for the anchor. “The variance dropped below 0.0003. That’s lower than the threshold for secondary echo.”

Reed nods. “It’s still not perfect. But it’s holding. For now.”

You echo it before you can stop yourself. “For now.”

He smiles at that—soft, and only for you.

The tension doesn’t break. But it shifts. Warms.

You pull up the residual energy pattern charts and begin comparing them to your older models. Reed swivels his chair to face you fully, chin resting lightly on his knuckles as he watches you work.

Your voice steadies.

“I think we can reduce the decay rate even more by using a layered harmonic buffer. Not just a single envelope. Something like... like a tri-modal stabilization frame.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Using phase-offset looping?”

“Yes,” you say, eyes lighting up. “But slightly desynchronized. So each frequency compensates for the loss in another—like an algorithmic relay. Less like a barrier, more like... a conversation.”

You feel him watching you, not the charts.

There’s a kind of electricity in your blood now, not from caffeine or adrenaline but from being understood, seen at the level you need to be.

And for once, the way you talk—fast, disorganized, precise, too much—feels like the exact shape of something he’s been waiting to hear.

You meet his gaze finally.

He’s smiling.

That soft, quiet, wrecked smile of his. The one he only wears around you.

“You know,” he murmurs, “you say I taught you how to be better without making you feel small. But you make me feel like I don’t have to be better all the time. Like just being...with you is enough.”

You don’t know what to do with that sentence.

It sits too heavy in your chest. It rearranges your molecules.

Reed notices your hands twitch—how your fingers twitch at your sleeves when the air gets too loud inside you. He leans forward just slightly.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” you say too quickly. “You didn’t.”

Then, after a breath, “It’s just... I don’t know what to do when people say things like that.”

“Okay,” he says. “Then we don’t have to do anything. We can just stay here. With the work.”

But there’s softness in the offer. No withdrawal. No hurt.

Just the way he always gives you room.

It’s quiet again.

The others are still gone. Outside the lab, Friday spills forward in lazy arcs—someone arguing about where to eat next week, a song playing faintly from someone’s portable speaker. You can hear Ben laugh somewhere near the stairwell.

Inside, Reed starts sketching again. You realize, after a while, that it’s not a schematic. He’s drawing the harmonic layering you suggested, but not in code—in lines and waves, almost like music. It’s abstract and a little chaotic and not how he normally works.

It’s your method. Translated.

You watch him for a moment. Then you reach over and pick up a stylus of your own.

You add to it without asking. Adjust one arc. Shade one line.

He doesn’t flinch.

This is your intimacy. Shared language in waveform. A courtship of the mind.

The pizza gets cold. No one bothers you. Not even Ben, who peeks through the glass once more and then nods to himself like he's witnessing a rare solar event—better not to interfere.

And Reed…

Reed reaches over again at one point, softly, thumb brushing your cheek once more. This time he doesn’t look away when he does it. And you don’t freeze.

He doesn’t kiss you.

Not yet.

But you both feel it coming.

Not like a crash.

Like a calculation converging.

Like an inevitable, elegant solution.

Friday settles into its soft descent.

Outside, the city shifts into its end-of-week hum. That specific kind of tonal change—less frantic, more languid. Like the buildings are exhaling.

But in the lab, the world is still quiet, contained in the steady blinking of data streams and the near-inaudible whir of cooled processors.

You sit on the floor now, legs crossed beneath you, a cluster of components spread around you like offerings. The modeling station sits nearby, quietly compiling your last run.

Reed is at the console, sleeves rolled up, hair curling faintly at the temples from the humidity that’s crept in through the vents. He’s biting the corner of his thumbnail absently—thinking.

You watch him.

And then you remember.

“Did you finish the sensory-feedback demo for the field trip?” you ask, voice soft but cutting clean through the air between you.

He blinks up from the console, eyes going immediately bright.

“I did. Mostly. I was going to test it tonight.”

You tilt your head. “Can I see it?”

He smiles—a real one, unguarded and boyish. The kind he only wears with you.

“You can help me run it.”

He gets up, walking to the supply cabinet in the corner, pulling down a heavy black case the size of a carry-on. You follow, standing now, hands folding in the sleeves of your sweater as you watch him unlock the case with the smooth familiarity of a man who designs entire universes and still finds joy in the click of good mechanics.

Inside, a scatter of wires, motion sensors, a series of spherical objects that look like oversized ping pong balls, each one patterned with conductive filament and dotted with touch points. You recognize the layout—a modular, reprogrammable interface system with haptic feedback, originally built for mobility therapy.

“You modified the base algorithm,” you say, eyes narrowing with appreciation.

“For kids,” he replies. “It runs a simplified tactile-reward loop. Kind of like a visual puzzle—kinetic memory reinforcement. Color-coded neural feedback.”

“Accessible interface?”

He nods. “Built for neurodivergent learners. Adaptive texture mapping. It reacts to the user’s input in real time. No static pathways. No performance grading.”

Your chest tightens a little. Not painfully. Just precisely.

“You built a toy.”

Reed shrugs. “It teaches basic physics concepts. Friction, acceleration, force vectors. Just…disguised as fun.”

“That’s not just a toy,” you murmur.

He watches you closely.

“No,” he says. “It’s not.”

You set it up together on the floor of Lab B-3, moving the tables back, laying the tiles out in careful rows. The modular touch-nodes blink softly as they come to life—first red, then green, then a low, pulsing blue.

The algorithm kicks in after calibration. Reed holds the interface tablet, flipping through the menus. You hover close behind him, watching how he reprograms the environmental variables on the fly.

“Want to try it?” he asks.

You nod.

He sets it to manual mode. The first node lights up in your periphery. You move toward it, tap it lightly with your finger. It flashes yellow, then blue, and vibrates beneath your touch.

You laugh, just once—quick, surprised.

“Positive reinforcement,” Reed says softly. “Each node has a different tactile response depending on approach angle, velocity, and touch pressure.”

“So they learn physics by playing.”

He nods. “Exactly.”

You test the next one. And then another. As the nodes light up, the floor becomes a low-lit constellation, flickering gently around your movements. It’s beautiful. You crouch down near one, tracing your fingers across the filaments, letting the haptic buzz hum beneath your fingertips.

“Reed,” you say quietly. “This is... really, really good.”

He kneels down beside you.

“I just wanted to build something that made them feel like science was listening back.”

You look over at him.

That sentence hangs there, too delicate to touch.

Your hand moves before your brain registers the decision—slowly, instinctively—and you reach for him.

You had reached for his hand but landed on his thumb.

Just his thumb.

You wrap your small hand around it gently, like it’s the only part of him you can hold without consequence.

Reed freezes.

Not from discomfort. From something else.

He turns his head toward you, slowly, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he moves too quickly. His smile is soft, stunned. As if he can’t believe you’re doing this. As if he’s afraid that if he acknowledges it too directly, it might stop.

You don’t look at him. You just hold his thumb in both your hands, watching the floor blink beneath you.

It’s a strange gesture, almost childlike in its simplicity. But to you, it’s everything. It’s grounding. Permission. Trust.

Reed lets out a breath like he’s been holding it for years.

He doesn’t move his hand away.

Instead, he uses the other to reach forward and adjust a setting on the control interface without looking. The lights shift. The nodes pulse in a new pattern. You follow them without letting go of his thumb.

He’s smiling now, wide and quiet.

Completely and utterly gone for you.

You test every mode together—gravity simulation, frictionless slide, kinetic echo. Reed talks softly through each setting, explaining how he rewrote the original code to simulate Newton’s Laws in modular intervals, adjusting for sensor latency so kids could trigger reactions with slower or less precise movement.

You ask questions. Not because you don’t understand. But because you do. You want to understand it his way.

He answers everything.

By the time you’re done, the lights in the lab have dimmed into their evening cycle. Reed packs up the demo system slowly, like he’s folding something sacred.

You’re still holding his thumb.

Finally, gently, he uses it to tap the back of your hand.

“You know,” he says quietly, “you don’t have to hold back around me.”

You look at him, expression unreadable. You squeeze his thumb once, then let go.

“I’m not,” you say.

And you aren’t.

Not anymore.

The lab is dark when you both leave.

Outside, the city has begun to cool. You walk beside him in silence, shoulders brushing once, then again. Not by accident.

You don’t talk about the moment on the lab floor.

You don’t have to.

It happened.

It exists.

Like an inevitable, elegant solution.

The sky has turned the color of television static. Not black, not gray, just faded. Soft enough to feel unreal. Streetlights flicker on in stuttering intervals. A breeze curls up the avenue and catches at the hem of your coat.

You and Reed stand just outside the Baxter Building entrance, neither of you moving to leave, as if there’s some invisible membrane between the lab and the world you’re not quite ready to pierce.

You should go home.

That’s the next step, isn’t it?

That’s what people do when the day ends. They go back to the place with their name on the lease and try to remember who they are when no one’s asking them questions.

Except your place has neighbors.

And thin walls.

And you're too tired to pretend your own exhaustion doesn’t vibrate at the same frequency as their pleasure.

You shift your weight from foot to foot, knuckles tucked deep into your sleeves. You can feel the buzz of the day behind your eyes—not anxiety, not anymore. Just too many thoughts stacking on top of each other like tetris blocks, and you don’t have the energy to make them fit.

Reed stands beside you, hands in his coat pockets, quiet as ever. The edge of his sleeve brushes yours every so often, an unspoken rhythm that makes you feel here.

Not tolerated. Not managed.

Just here.

Ben soon exits the building. Hoodie zipped to his throat, a half-eaten brownie in one hand. He slows when he sees you both.

“Well, well,” Ben says, raising an eyebrow. “You two finally gonna leave the building or should we start paying you rent inside the lab?”

You glance at Reed.

He shrugs, noncommittal.

Ben smirks. “Alright. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then he gives Reed a look. “Which ain’t much.”

Reed doesn’t respond, but his smile is quiet. Affectionate.

“Goodnight, Ben,” you say softly.

“Night, genius.”

He walks off into the dark.

You stay.

Reed doesn’t ask if you’re going home.

You don’t say anything for a while. You just look at the sidewalk. The cracks in it. The faint smudge of oil near the curb. The headlights of a cab bending light across Reed’s cheekbone, catching on the streak of gray in his hair.

Finally, you say, “Can I stay?”

You don’t explain. You don’t need to.

He doesn’t ask why.

He just turns to you, and for a split second, something in his expression softens so completely it’s almost painful. His eyes widen like he’s been caught off guard, but then his entire face warms, lips parting slightly, like you’ve just handed him something fragile and beautiful and unexpected.

“Yes,” he says immediately. “Yes, of course.”

You nod once, eyes down, and he opens the glass doors for you with his keycard.

Reed’s private quarters are located on the top floor, built into the architecture like a quiet secret.

The space is sparse but intentional. One long wall is lined with windows that overlook the city—lights shimmering like data points, static and alive at once.

You’ve been here before. The air smells like him. The surfaces are all smooth, clean, designed for function rather than comfort—except the guest bed, which he quietly upgraded after the second time you stayed, replacing the stiff mattress with something memory foam, orthopedic, weighted blankets in navy and grey.

He never mentioned it. But you noticed.

Now, you step out of your shoes and move instinctively toward the small kitchen alcove, placing your bag on the counter where you always do. You hear Reed behind you, taking off his coat, the soft clink of keys being set in the ceramic dish by the door.

“I didn’t want to go home,” you say, very quietly.

“I know,” he replies.

He fills the kettle without asking. He doesn’t ask if you want tea. He just knows that the ritual helps.

You settle on his couch while he prepares everything. There’s something deeply intimate about watching him move in this space—not as a scientist, but as a man who’s built a life designed for quiet. For stillness. For you.

“Did you finish that secondary circuit loop in the interface?” you ask, voice small.

“I did,” he says, turning toward you with two mugs. “Replaced the original buffer with a superconductive braid. Reduced the thermal variance by thirty percent.”

You take the mug with both hands.

“That’s going to make it more stable in hands-on mode.”

He nods. “Exactly.”

You sip the tea. It’s perfect. Rooibos, no caffeine. Subtle and warm.

You look down at your knees.

He sits beside you, not too close, not too far. Just right.

“I’m still thinking about that tri-modal stabilization relay you suggested,” he says. “It could actually be used in more than just the interface model. If we layer it into the resonance prototype, it could compensate for secondary harmonic bleed without adding mechanical dampeners.”

You glance at him. “It wouldn’t even need a power supply. It would just borrow from the existing vibrational field.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

You smile faintly. “We should test it this weekend.”

“We should,” he agrees.

But neither of you move.

You sit there in the dark, the city lights flickering behind the glass, the tea cooling slowly between your palms.

And then, Reed shifts slightly closer.

His fingers brush the side of your hand where it rests on the couch cushion.

You don’t pull away.

“I’m glad you asked to stay,” he says, quietly.

“I don’t always know what I need,” you admit.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “Not with me.”

You turn your hand palm-up.

He hesitates—barely a second—and then sets his own hand into yours. Warm. Long fingers. Calloused thumb.

You wrap your hand around his thumb again.

It’s small. Stupidly small. But it feels like precision.

Like the alignment of orbitals in a new chemical bond—unexpected, improbable, but somehow inevitable.

He stares at your hands like they’re a proof he’s just solved.

And you can feel it now, radiating off him.

That Reed Richards is completely, irrevocably in love with you.

It sits in his stillness.

In the way he lets you hold him without needing to be held back.

In the careful cadence of his breath next to yours.

In every half-finished sentence he doesn’t speak because he’s still calibrating the right moment to say it.

You close your eyes.

The lab can wait.

The world can wait.

Because here, in this quiet room on the top floor of the Baxter Building, the noise of the city fades into static, and two brilliant minds sit side by side, slowly, carefully falling into something that even physics doesn’t have language for.

Yet.

You’re still holding his thumb.

The weight of it feels small and ordinary and terrifying, in the way intimacy always is when it sneaks in sideways—quiet, soft, patient.

The tea between you has gone slightly cold, but neither of you moves.

Reed glances at your hand in his again like he’s not sure it’s real. Like he’s afraid any shift in air pressure might break whatever this is.

He doesn’t want to lose it. You can feel that. It lives in the quiet of his body. In the way he breathes more carefully now, like your closeness has changed the atmospheric composition of the room.

You can’t explain it.

Not exactly.

But you know the moment has arrived—like a threshold has been crossed without either of you noticing when.

You lift your eyes.

Reed is already watching you.

And then you kiss him.

There’s no warning. No lead-in. No poetic pause.

You just lurch forward and kiss him like your brain caught fire.

You cup his face with both hands—awkward, determined, imprecise. You feel the stubble on his jaw beneath your palms. You feel the soft surprised puff of his breath as you press your mouth against his with more force than you intended.

Reed makes a startled noise.

You pull back slightly, embarrassed, but he surges forward like a current finding its charge.

His hands find your waist, anchoring—not possessive, not demanding, just present. And then his mouth is on yours, properly this time. He kisses you with a slowness that makes your skin buzz, then deeper, until you forget how to think.

You chase it.

You chase it harder than you meant to.

You end up half in his lap, straddling his thigh on the couch. He grunts softly in surprise as you pull him closer by the collar of his shirt. Your hands roam. One settles in his hair, the other at the base of his neck, grounding yourself in the shape of him. His body is warm and solid and older than yours in a way that feels deeply comforting—experienced, steady.

“Wait—” he whispers into your mouth, breathless but laughing.

You pause.

“I—God, I didn’t think—” he tries to say, and then you kiss him again.

It’s clumsy and desperate and real. Your teeth bump once. Your nose is probably smushed too hard against his.

But Reed groans quietly like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Because it is.

Because it’s you.

Eventually, you slow. Not because you want to. Just because you run out of breath. You ease back a little, your forehead resting against his, both of you flushed and dazed.

His fingers trace up your spine, slow, careful, reverent.

You say nothing for a while.

Then, softly, eyes still closed, you murmur, “I need to take a shower.”

He blinks, dazed.

“Oh,” he says, voice rough. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

You make no move to get up.

He doesn’t push.

Then, without looking at him, you say, “Will you come with me?”

Reed stills.

It’s not a seductive invitation. Your voice is too quiet. Too vulnerable.

You mean with you. Not to see you.

There’s a difference.

A difference he understands immediately.

He exhales once, very slowly.

“Yes,” he says.

The bathroom in Reed’s quarters is clean and understated. No clutter. Neutral tones. A single towel folded perfectly on the heated rack. The kind of space made by someone who needs things to stay quiet, even in private.

You peel off your clothes with your back to him. You don’t ask him to turn away. You just move, deliberately, like someone trying to stay present in their own body. You don’t rush.

He undresses behind you.

You don’t look.

Not because you’re afraid.

Just because this isn’t about looking.

When you step under the water, he follows. The spray is warm. Steam begins to rise immediately, curling around your shoulders, softening the edges of the room.

You don’t speak for a long time.

He helps you rinse shampoo from your hair.

He rubs a towel gently across your upper back, washing you between passes of the water.

You stand in the quiet, eyes closed, while he reaches for the soap, his hands careful and broad. You’ve never felt so heldin a room without touch. Even when he does touch you, it’s so measured. Like he’s calibrating pressure in real time.

He never touches more than he needs to.

He never looks longer than you let him.

You begin to wash him in return—his arms, his back. Your fingers map the ridges of his shoulders. The plane of his chest. 

He smiles at you when you look up at him.

You smile back.

Afterward, you towel off side by side. You slip into the oversized sleep shirt he keeps in the guest drawers—the one you claimed without asking the second time you stayed over. Reed pulls on a soft cotton shirt and gray sweatpants, hair still damp, curls a little unruly.

You both brush your teeth in silence. The kind of silence built on trust, not absence.

You spit and rinse and then, leaning over the sink, you say, “You’re not what I expected.”

Reed glances at you in the mirror.

“I’m not?” he asks, toothbrush in hand.

You shake your head. “You’re a better equation.”

He stares at you for a moment, then leans over, presses a kiss to your temple, and whispers, “So are you.”

You fall asleep in his bed, facing each other.

You don’t touch—not at first. But at some point, your foot slides across the sheet and brushes his calf.

He doesn’t bother to move.

You drift off like that.

And he stays awake for a while longer, just watching you breathe, memorizing the sound of it, calculating the half-life of the moment in real time.

He doesn't think there's a formula for this.

But if there were, he’d already be solving for you.

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[pansylair]

How did you get started with ceramics? I always thought it was going to be what I did for a living but out of high school everything has remained prohibitively expensive. Surely there are avenues for people who are serious about it but don't have the money to drop on pottery guild memberships and kilns, right? Would it just be knowing the right people at that point?

After I graduated from my high school and its art program (I’ve never had post-secondary education) I went to my communal studio and paid roughly $6-800cad a year for a higher level of membership (storage space and full studio/glaze kitchen access 24/7), give or take. It’s been ages so I can’t remember the exacts, and fees on everything in general has been slowly creeping up. You are correct in that there is a lack of financial accessibility regarding artisanal crafts and global inflation isn’t helping in the slightest, my rental fees are a bit over $1k now and clay prices have tripled ($71cad after tax for a sleeve of the cheapest clay body ((tack on supply shortages and mine closures to the list of problems)) :(

I’ve seen some communal studios with absolutely ridiculous expensive membership fees to ones with various membership options like my studio starting at lower price points, and studios with paid or unpaid internships.

Many ceramicists are very understanding and give their insight and tips, or hooking someone up with their old equipment. I’ve been offered using/sharing a kiln or space in people’s private studios if ever needed. So continuing to try and reach out to servers/pages of online and in person communities and can be worth it.

Government art grants can allow for some studios themselves to be more accessible in multiple ways, including financially, and applying for and receiving individual grants has been a giant aid to the careers of friends and coworkers. It varies on a country to country basis but. god, would sure love to have art funding globally valued and well sustained.

One small mercy and neat thing however is microwave kilns. basically exactly what’s written, it’s a vestibule you put into a microwave, turn it on, and you get small, low fire ceramic (or glass) work which I’ve seen many people use for small sculptures.

I’ve also seen people make gorgeous work via pit firings, raku in a charcoal grill for example, or build a simple wood fire outdoor kiln. Kick wheels are also a possible cheaper investment for wheel throwing.

I’ve dug up and processed some lovely and pretty wild clay around where I live and hope to do some pit firings with it as tests have gone well.

I’ve seen small secondhand kilns starting at $250cad for a manual and seen programmable ones at $600cad. Understanding prices for rewiring, repairs, installation and ventilation etc. also needs to be taken into account, lots of research needs to be done before investing in one.

I hate that I have no clear and helpful answer for you, but if you’re still searching, I sincerely hope much sooner than later you can do ceramic work without having to worry about affording it

[judesmoonbeauty]

A Day With Jude Jazza: "25:00 - Epilogue"

Please expect grammatical errors and translation inaccuracies. This is a full translation. Creative liberties are taken for characterization and smoother translation process. Cybird owns everything. Re-blogs are appreciated, but please do not post my translation elsewhere. Thank you for your support! ☾.

CW: Awkwardly translated smut. I'm sorry. Additionally, I chose to use an explitive where I felt it was allowed.

The moon is still revoltingly far away.

Kate: Nngaah.

Jude: Yer mouth’s flappin’ open like a fish.

Kate: Whose fault is that -

Jude: Ya can’t breathe right when I kiss ya, so it’s yer fault.

Kate: Mmm

She can’t breathe because I capture and torture her tongue; and whenever she turns away to catch her breath, I torture it again.

She’ll grip my shirt tightly and then loosen it when she reaches her limit, and when that happens,

I’ll release Kate’s lips for a moment, she’ll take a shallow breath, and then I deprive her of it all over again.

Kate: I…can’t….kiss…anymore.

Jude: Seem pretty excited ‘spite sayin’ that.

Perhaps, because of all the teasing, Kate’s already soaking wet down there,

And like they were begging to be touched, I pinched her nipples through her clothes.

Kate: Ahh.

Jude: Hurts so much it ‘n yet feels good does it, Princess?

Kate: Mmn, that’s not true.

Jude: Ain’t a bit convincin’, who’d believe that?

Kate: AHNN!

When I flick my girlfriend’s nipple, she cries out so sweetly,

(Yer a real masochist.)

Driven by sadistic feelings, I shove my finger through a gap in her knickers.

Kate: Oh!

Jude: Look, ain’t even touched it, but my finger’s already slipped in.

This literally translates, “Look, I haven’t even touched you, but my finger’s already inside.” I felt the alteration flowed better.

I lifted Kate up, and had her look between her legs,

Kate: D-Don’t show me!

Although on the verge of tears, she glared at me with a flushed face, and I couldn’t help but enjoy it.

Jude: I’ll put another in……here.

The finger I inserted into her made a wet sound, and I felt a slight clench.

Jude: Ya almost came just from me puttin’ it in.

Kate: No, I - Aaah!

I suddenly pressed firmly onto Kate’s sensitive spot, while she gripped my arms, her body quivering.

(No matter how many times I do it, her reaction’s good.)

When I teased her by pumping my fingers,

Kate: —!

Kate came silently and leaned into my body.

A sweet scent from her neck lifts from her body, seducing me like a poison.

(Why’s it smell so good?)

While I strip off her clothes, I bury my face in her neck and leave numerous marks behind,

I carve them into her body, so Kate can’t leave me.

Kate: Jude…..

Jude: Yeah?

Kate, with her flushed cheeks, watery eyes, trembling voice and body,

Kate: Can it be a little rougher….?

The instant I was coaxed, my body grew extremely hot.

(Blindly provokin’ me.)

Her trembling hands try to remove my belt, but I stop them and hold them.

Jude: ‘Though I teased ‘n tortured ya, ya wanna be tortured some more?

I quickly undo my belt and press myself against Kate’s pussy.

The kanji literally translates as “private parts/geni****,” I hate the "g" word. Anyway, EN server might translate it as entrance….but not me.

Jude: Ya really are a masochistic pervert.

Kate: AAAH!

The second I pentrate her without hesitation, her back arches and I latch onto her waist as Kate comes instantanesouly.

Kate: Wait, I just came!

Jude: Don’t matter if ya wanna wait or not.

Kate: Mmmm.

Like giving chase, I ram myself into her over and over, and each time I smash into her depths she climaxes, and then I repeat the movements without stopping.

Kate: J-Jude.

Jude: Haaaa…

Whenever I do that, Kate goes mad from coming and starts to cry,

So, I’ll pull out and pin her onto the bed, as she tries to escape upward.

But the way I see it, it’s like she’s stoking me by offering up her hips.

Jude: Ain’t no way I’d let ya escape.

Kate: AAAHN!!

I grip her thighs again and thrust into her hard, her body’s exhausted and sinks into the bed.

Laying on top of her, I put my lips to her ear,

Jude: Toldja.

Kate: Oh…..

Jude: I’ll take real good care o’ ya.

Once again, I drill deep inside her.

Wrapped in white sheets, I wipe away the remaining tear stains with my thumb.

Kate’s passed out sleeping.

(It’s more fun bullyin’ Kate, than hurtin’ nobles.)

I realized that my amusements had changed before I knew it.

Noticing the marks that I left on her stomach, I reach out with my fingers.

(Such a thin belly…..probably’ll die as soon as it’s stabbed.)

The red marks on her pale, flawless stomach stood out.

Jude: Won’t forgive if ya get any other injuries ‘sides these.

When I look up, I see the gemstone on her chest reflecting the moonlight.

(When I saw this, first thing t’come to mind was Kate’s face.)

At first glance, Kate, whose meddlesome, earnest, and stubbornly refuses to give up, may not look like the moon.

Jude: But, yer like the moonlight t’me.

Although I wanted to give up everything, I couldn’t end it, but I also couldn’t turn back and my life kept festering.

You’re a being that’s like a pale, gentle light guiding me in the darkness.

Jude: …..If it weren’t fer ya, I’d have stayed like that.

Unable to go to the moon, and fated to die.

That day might have come sooner.

Jude: You ‘n I both started likin’ troublesome people.

Jude uses ‘suki’ here, but it does not appear that Kate heard him at this point. Further, I opted to translate this as ‘like’ instead of ‘love’ because saying the word ‘love’ is a no-no for Jude atp (even though he does love her), and I feel like Kate would’ve made a huge fuss over it if she had heard him say it.

I murmured as I held Kate tightly in my arms.

Jude: ……Fer the rest o’ my life, I’ll never let ya go, so when ya leave, kill me off proper.

Kate: ……Please don’t let me go for the rest of your life.

Surprised by the reply, I loosened my arms, and Kate, with her eye’s still closed, laughed with a carefree look.

Jude: Awake were ya?

Kate: I just woke up….

When she touched the necklace, Kate thinly lifted her eyelids,

Kate: Until we go to the moon, I will be the closest moon to you.

Kate: A moon just for Jude……

She mumbled in a relaxed voice, so I stroked her hair.

Jude: If ya don’t shine right, then I can’t reach ya.

Kate: Hehe….Leave it to me. Love’s a curse, right?

Kate: This necklace has placed a curse on me again, so I can’t leave you Jude.

Despite being cursed, Kate smiled happily,

Jude: Yer the one who’s cursed me more.

Kate: Hmmm? Then we’re in the same boat.

You robbed me of my choice to give up hope, and cursed me so I can’t die until I fulfill my promise.

(Just how big d’ya think this curse is?)

But, she probably doesn’t realize just how big it is.

And that curse, is as gentle and warm as the moonlight.

Jude: Hurry ‘n sleep, ‘cause ya gotta fight paperwork tomorrow too.

Kate: That’s what I want.

Kate smiled joyfully, closed her eyes and fell asleep instantly.

Jude: Ain’t that too quick?

The gemstone rises and falls on her chest, catching moonlight again and sparkles.

The moon is still revoltingly far away.

(But…..)

Jude: No way I’ll give up.

As long as the moonlight in these arms shines like a beam of hope, this festering life,

—Each day, I’ll move forward to fulfill my promise, because tomorrow will continue to occur.

[Event Master list]

T/L Note: Full disclosure, this was the a roller coaster to translate, my brain is fried. Good luck to the EN team if this comes to the EN server. Anyways, I just want to say that I'm pretty sure Jude is into cervix play, because although it doesn't explicity state it word for word, he was basically smashing into her, and that makes sense because in the Drunk CE, he asks Kate if she wants to be fucked straight to her stomach basically. Jude's smut goes two ways, he can be extremely gentle (like we saw in his BD event), and he can go full on yakuza boss who fucks his woman until she's brain dead. Either are fine with me. I may write my full thoughts on the event later because I have a lot to say.

So, what did you all think???

If you wish to be added to my translations tag list, and are +18 YO, then please comment below! If you wish to be removed, please do the same.

Tag list: @sh0jun @theimaginativelyreticent @sapphire-323 @velisle @nateko @greatwitchsongsinger @injudescoat @aeyumicore @complexivelovely @cosmowgyral @lunaaka @rosalyne08 @8the-perfect-lie8 @voydsoul @goustmilk @kraiyne

[taikeero-lecoredier]

CHAT CONTROL STILL ALIVE

Original tweet As more meetings are planned with the potential adoption of Chat Control (without any fixes!! Not even adressing the huge issue it is, like EU citizens not being allowed to send videos,pictures,or links anymore via their private messages/emails if they refuse to be scanned by artificial intelligence ??) We need help to help spread the word, as with recent snap elections among some EU countries,its unclear if some countries will keep opposing Chat Control. I'm in the process of building a Linktree to gather all useful links to help fight against it, its still a work in progress as of now. I am also looking for translation of scripts against Chat Control. https://linktr.ee/stopchatcontrol

You can also go to Patrick Breyer's website for more actions and infos https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo

Come join our Discord server against it,we are tyring to organize actions against it. Even if you don't speak english everyone is welcome,we need more people ! https://discord.com/invite/e7FYdYnMkS

[trippiexlove]

Stone Cold Sinner

Author Note: Based on the song Stone Cold by Dess Dior

Warning: Smut, Bit of Angst, Bit of Fluff, Profanity, Adult Content, Praise.

Pairing: Jey Uso x Black OC (Ari Fletcher as FC)

Word Count: 3,397

Said he callin' from Atlanta, say he miss me....well, well, well

Guess he better send that private out to get me...

Expect this to be a long cold winter...

You fuckin' with a stone cold sinner...

Soriya walked into the restaurant where she was meeting her best friends. She looked around before spotting them as they waved her over. 

"Hey Y'all" she smiled as she greeted them. She quickly sat down, putting her purse beside her. The server came over to get her order before walking away. 

"Hey girl we haven't seen your ass in a while" Tiffany took a sip of her mimosa. 

"I know I've been busy as hell, what y'all been up to?" she said looking between her friends. 

"We're so close to closing this deal" Tiffany stated sitting her glass down. "Mr.Johnson said he's been talking to the higher ups and your girl may be getting a promotion "

"You deserve it, you been putting in a lot of work so it's about time" She looked over at her friend Breanna "How's my nephew doing?" 

Breanna playfully rolled her eyes "Getting on my nerves, his little ass starting to walk so he's just tearing up my house"

"Don't do my baby like that," she slight laughed, looking up as the server brought over her food and mimosa "Ima have to come get him and take him out somewhere"

"Girl you're more than welcome to keep his ass to" she joked as they all laughed. 

"Nah baby, the beauty of being an auntie is giving him right back to his parents" Soriya raised her glass before drinking some. 

"Speaking of that when are you going to make us aunties" Tiff sipped her mimosa as Soriya shook her head. 

"I'm not looking to have kids anytime soon, there's so much I want to do before then" She expressed to her friends. 

"Well you need to speed this process up we ready to be aunties" Bre said as Tiffany agreed. Soriya rolled her eyes playfully at her friends. Their conversation switched once the server brought their food over. 

Soriya waved bye to her girls, as they walked their separate ways to their cars. She connected her phone before pulling off to go home. 

After a few minutes of driving, the song she was listening to was replaced by her ringtone. J 🩵 came across the screen, making her smile instantly. 

She quickly pressed the green button before the call ended.  "Hey stranger" she greeted as the phone call connected.

She could hear the softness of his chuckle fill the car. "Don't do me like that baby, I just been busy. My ass just got back to Atlanta" 

"Mhm, but you still could've sent me a text" 

"Sounds like somebody missed me" the playfulness in his voice couldn't be missed, making Soriya slightly shake her head. 

"And what? You saying you ain't miss me?" Soriya stated with the same playfulness. 

"I do baby," she heard some slight shuffling in the background before he continued. "That's why I'm calling, you free this weekend?" 

"I could be" Soriya pulled into her driveway, putting her car in park. 

"Good, be at the airport tomorrow. I'll have that private waitin' for you. Bring that one outfit I like" 

She nodded as if he could see her "Ok I'll see you tomorrow" 

They hung up as she did a slight happy dance. She grabbed her purse before practically rushing into the house to start packing. 

The next afternoon Soriya was being dropped off to the familiar black jet. She got out as the driver grabbed her bags, loading them on the plane. 

She was greeted by Jenina, the stewardess, the two had become friends with how many times she flown on the plane. "Hey Nina" 

"Hey girl," she smiled as she brought her into a hug "it's been a minute since I've seen you"

Soriya laughed lowly "I've been busy working girl" 

"Mhmm, don't let it go this long again" she pointed towards her, playfully shaking her head.

"I won't I promise" Soriya quickly took her seat and it wasn't long before they were in the air. Jenina quickly served her a glass of champagne. 

riyaofficial_  8m

The flight wasn't long from Miami to Atlanta and they were landing within two hours. She stepped off the jet to see a black truck waiting for her. She said bye to Jenina as the driver loaded her bags in the car and they pulled off the tarmac. 

The traffic wasn't too bad as they were soon pulling up to a hotel within 45 minutes. The driver came over and opened her door for her, and grabbed the things. They walked through the lobby, checked in and made their way up the elevator. 

They got to the penthouse suite and the concierge brought her things to the room before quickly leaving out. Soriya smiled as she walked into the master suite seeing a huge bouquet of flowers with a note attached to it.  

We got reservations tonight. Be ready by 7 beautiful.

-J

She put the note down, checking the time to see it was just a little after 5. She went over to her bags, looking through it to find that outfit. Once she found it she placed it on the bed before walking into the large bathroom to start the shower.

She hopped in the shower quickly doing her routine before getting out. She sat at the vanity in the bathroom and started doing her makeup, which wasn't much. She grabbed her phone seeing it was now half past 6. 

She quickly curled her hair and threw on the outfit before she heard the door of the suite open and close. She fixed the straps on her heels before grabbing her purse walking out the room. When she walked into the living room she made eye contact with Josh. 

He took a moment looking her over. Clearly liking what he was seeing. He slowly walked over to her, standing only merely inches from from her. 

"Damn," he stated lowly, looking her up and down. He took her hands in his, slowly turning her around in a 360. When he turned her facing him, he immediately pulled her close, his hands laying comfortably on her backside. "You look good as fuck mama" 

Soriya took in his appearance, his cuban chain she got for him some time ago glistened in the light. "Thank you baby. I can say the same thing about you" 

"Ready to go?" she nodded her head as he took her hand, leading them out of the penthouse. They made it downstairs to the waiting black SUV with the same driver from earlier. He opened the door for her, letting her in first. Once he climbed in and shut the door the driver pulled off. 

They made the short drive to this exclusive restaurant. Josh got out, holding his hand out to help Soriya out the car. They walked hand in hand inside being greeted by the hostess. The hostess then lead them to their table before their server came to get their drink order. 

They both made small talk as they looked over the menu. The server came back over, placing their drinks in front of them. Giving her their order before she quickly dipped off again. 

Josh focused his gaze on Soriya. "So what been goin' on with you ma?" 

"Business is good, just dropped this new collection and it's going well" She smiled thinking about the success of her makeup business "almost sold out in the first week I was surprised."

"It should be no surprise. You know everything you do gon' comes out fire" his comment making the smile on Soriya's face widen. 

"Thank you baby." She shifted her attention. "What about you, though? What's been going on?"

Josh sighed leaning back in his seat. "Work been kickin' my ass for sure. Especially with it being WrestleMania season"

"But you're hyped, right?" she asked, a playful glint in her eyes.

"Hell yeah," he admitted, a grin spreading across his face. "I been wantin' this for a while now. I'm just happy they finally givin' me a shot at the World title" Their conversation was momentarily interrupted as the server delivered their food. They both murmured a Thanks as she walked away.

"Well I'm happy for you." Soriya said, her voice filled with genuine enthusiasm. "I'm gonna be screaming so loud when you win." 

"I appreciate that ma," Josh leaned up a bit adjusting himself "Yo, speaking of WrestleMania, I was wondering if you'd come. I really want you to meet my family."

Soriya's hand paused mid-air, her fork hovering over her plate. She met his gaze, searching for any hint of jest, but his eyes held only sincerity.

"To meet your family?" she repeated, more to herself than to him. "I don't know, Josh"

A flicker of confusion crossed his features. "What'chu mean, you don't know?"

"I mean," she slightly hesitated, trying to piece together her words. "I don't know if I should be meeting your family Josh. We're not even together for real. Wouldn't it be weird to introduce your family to someone who ain't your girl."

Josh scrunched his brows together "Who said you ain't my girl? Do you honestly think I treat just anyone the way I treat you?" he asked, his voice soft but firm. 

Soriya's eyes softened, her shoulders sagged a bit "I get what you're saying it's just that with everything that I've dealt with in the past it just made me wary of getting too close to someone. I've had to learn to protect myself" Her voice laced with vulnerability. 

Josh demeanor softened has he took ahold of her hands. Rubbing her knuckles with the pad of his thumb. "Soriya," he said, his voice low and sincere, "I'm serious about you. I know you've been hurt before, and I'd never do that to you. I'm not them. I want you to meet my family because you're important to me."

A wave of warmth washed over Soriya, threatening to overwhelm her. She blinked back a tear, her heart swelling. She nodded, unable to speak. Josh leaned in, capturing her lips in a tender, passionate kiss. After a moment, they broke apart, the unspoken understanding hanging in the air. They shifted the conversation, enjoying the rest of their dinner with lighter, more comfortable topics, the weight of their earlier exchange lingering beneath the surface.

The car ride to Josh's penthouse was a slow burn, a simmering tension that threatened to ignite at any moment. Every glance, every brush of their hands, amplified the anticipation. 

Waiting for the elevator felt like an exercise in restraint. Soriya could feel Josh's energy, a palpable force that made her breath catch in her throat. She wanted him just as fiercely, a secret she no longer cared to hide.

The elevator doors hissed open, and they stepped into the empty car. The moment the doors sealed shut, Josh's hands were on her, pushing her against the cool steel wall. A startled gasp escaped her lips. 

His mouth found hers, a possessive, urgent kiss that stole her breath. His hand cupped her chin, angling her face, while his other hand explored the curves of her body, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

"Couldn't wait, huh?" she whispered, pulling back for a breath, her voice laced with playful challenge.

"Not a for damn second," he rasped, his eyes dark with desire. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open to his floor.

He gripped her hand, his fingers tightening around hers, and pulled her down the long hallway. The tension crackled between them until they reached his door. He entered the code, and the door clicked open. 

The air inside thrummed with unspoken desire. Josh closed the distance, his lips meeting Soriya's in a kiss that was both demanding and tender. Her arms slid around his neck, drawing him in.

With a low groan, Josh swept her into his arms effortlessly, Soriya's legs automatically circling his waist. He carried her through the spacious living room, the soft glow of the hallway lights guiding their way to his bedroom. 

Josh sat on the edge of the bed, Soriya straddling his waist. She moaned into the kiss as his hands slid down her back, giving her backside a tight grip. She grind her hips against him, earning herself a groan out of him. 

He quickly flipped them over, , the movement fluid and charged. Separating only for a few moments while he took his shirt off. Throwing it across the room. He slid the bottom of her dress up, seeing the white lace thong she had on. He quickly tore that off throwing it behind him. 

He took one of her legs into his hands, leaving trails of kisses down to her inner thigh. He reached her intimate area that was already glistening for him. Soriya could feel the little tingles throughout her body as she watched, anticipating his next move. 

Josh kissed along her inner thigh to tease. He placed his large hands on the back of her thighs to spread her open even further. Giving Soriya one last look he flattened out his tongue before sending a long swipe in between her folds. A sharp, pleasurable gasp escaped Soriya, her back arching in a delicate curve. 

He took one of his hands, removing them from the back of her thigh, and began fondling with one of her breasts. His used his other hand, taking two of his fingers, and began slowly pumping in and out of her. His lips wrapped around her sensitive bundle of nerves. 

Soriya's moans heightened as the sensation sent a wave of pleasure through her. Her hand immediately finding their place within his curls. The sounds of her moans gave Josh motivation as he increased the strokes of his fingers, continuously grazing her spot which made her clench around his digits. 

"F-fuck Josh" she let out in a breathy moan. "Fuck baby I'm finna cum" 

He groan, sending a vibration through her. "Go head mama, make a mess on my face" He wrapped his lips around her clit again, increasing the stroke of his fingers. Soriya moaned loudly as her released near, crashing against her in waves. 

Her body shook as Josh didn't let up, riding out the wave with her. Once he pulled away he licked her essence off his fingers. His kissed up her abdomen, chest, and neck. Heat left after each kiss. Til he reached her lips and kissed her, sticking his tongue practically down her throat, Soriya tasting herself. 

The intensity of the kiss finally eased, his eyes, dark pools of desire, locked on hers. "Take this shit off," he rumbled, his voice a deep, commanding caress. The sound of his voice sent a wave of heat through Soriya, and she bit her lip, a silent acknowledgement of his request.

Slipping the dress over her head, putting it to the side, She caught how Josh's eyes seemed to look over her. Slow as if he wanted to savor this moment altogether.

He leaned down bringing her back into a passionate kiss. Pulling away, his lips barely touching hers. "On all fours for me" 

She quickly got in position, arching her back perfectly just like she knew he liked it. Earning her a smack to her plump backside. Moaning at the contact. 

As she waited, she could her the sound of Josh unbuckling his belt and the soft thud his pants made when hitting the ground. Feeling the bed dip slightly behind her and Josh's hands grip her waist. 

Josh groan at the sight of her, running the padding of his thumb through her wetness. Soriya's body involuntarily pushed back against him, looking for some type of friction.

Josh laugh lowly, "who's impatient now" his voice laced him humor. 

She looked back at him, a smirk on her face "Don't be such a tease" 

Josh hummed in amusement, before slowly eased in. They both caught their breath as he stretched her out. Soriya thought she would be used to him by now, but everytime felt like the first. 

Josh's grip on her hips tightened as he inched slowly into her. Muttering profanities underneath his breath. Josh stilled his movement once he was all the way in, allowing her to get adjusted to him. When she began to along his length, he began pumping slowly. His strokes slowly increased in speed. "Fuck Riya," he moaned out as he continued his pace. 

She loved hearing him moan out her name. She started meeting his strokes. The sound of skin slapping skin was heard throughout the room, along with her moans. 

"Shit, you taking me so good baby" Josh moaned lowly. His hand smoothed down the curve of her back, gripping the back of her neck. He pulled her up, the coldness of his chain contrast with the heat of her skin.

"Look at yourself baby, look at how pretty you are taking all of me" Josh whispered in her ear. Soriya couldn't say anything as she looked at their reflection in the mirror across from the bed. "Who's my pretty girl?" Soriya's mind was too clouded to respond, earning a smack to her ass making her squeal out. "Who's my pretty girl Riya?" 

"Me," she gasped out with everything in her "I'm your pretty girl, baby I'm bout to cum"

Josh abruptly stopped, turning Soriya on her back. He lifted one leg on his shoulder before re-entering her at a relentless pace. Soriya closed her eyes throwing her head back, feeling that knot in her stomach grow stronger. 

Her eyes flew open who she felt Josh wrap his hand around the base of her throat, applying slight pressure. "I want you to look at me when you cum, you understand" She nodded her head, moaning out in response. 

He felt her clench around him, signaling she was on the edge of release. "Tell me who is it ma" when she didn't respond, he angled his hips, hitting a different spot, causing her to moan loudly "Hmm, tell me who is it and you better hold it til I say so"

Desperate for a release she cried out "it's yours" she took a deep gasp as the knot was becoming unbearable. 

Josh groaned deeply, feeling his own release nearing "That's it ma, let it out". That's all she needed to hear before she released. Her orgasm triggering Josh's as he continued to pump slowly, before dropping right next to her. 

After a few moments he heard her labored breathing, getting up to get a warm wash cloth wiping him and her off. Once he got back in bed he pulled her close to him before drifting off to sleep.

The weekend had come and gone. Filled with nothing but being tangled up in the sheets. Josh spoiled the fuck out of her, taking her on a shopping spree, letting her get whatever she wanted.

Soriya was sad about going back to Miami, knowing she won't be seeing Josh for a while since he'll be overseas doing shows for a few weeks. 

He decided to drop her off, so they were currently riding in his car. Her hands in his as he drove down the highway towards the airport. 

The car was quiet except for the hum of the engine and the music playing softly in the background. After an hour of sitting in Atlanta traffic, they finally pulled up to the private departure area. 

They stepped out, Josh handing her bags over to the airport worker to load onto the jet. He turned towards Soriya who had a visible pout on her face. 

He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Don't look like that" Soriya rolled her eyes, earning a smack to her backside, hissing at the sting it left behind. "Don't roll your eyes at me" 

Soriya smacked her lips before looking into his eyes. "Ima miss you"

"Ima miss you too ma" he smiled giving her a quick peck to her lips "these few weeks gon' go by fast before you know it. Plus I'll see you at Mania, right?"

"Of course I wouldn't miss being there for your moment" Josh nodded, leaning down giving her another kiss. This one last a bit longer before they both pulled away. 

"I love you" he whispered. 

Soriya's heart swelled. "I love you too," she replied, giving him one last soft kiss before turning to board the jet. Settling into her seat, she watched as Josh's car disappeared from view, a sense of anticipation mingling with the sadness of their parting. She eagerly awaited the moment they would be together again.

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riyaoffical_ Forever having MY way ✨

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Part 2

If you would like to leave a request go comment on this post. Check out my master list for other one shots and my other stories.

Tag list: if you want to be added to the tag list comment below!

@xbriexx , @mindairy , @tribalchief2112 , @theusotwinzcom , @yana3sworld

[ravenstargames]

Are there any wedding customs in Limbo? And do the LIs have their own image of their dream weddings?

✦ Are there any wedding customs in Limbo?

(I purposely left out the second part of the ask because this is gonna be long enough OTL im sorry...)

There are wedding customs in Limbo! However, the Sovereigns "officiate" the "weddings".

Limbo's weddings are referred as Bonding Ceremonies or Trials and require to overcome a few...well, yes, trials. Every Sovereign has a different way of approaching this. They themselves don't get bonded with anyone. It's not seen as fair neither to the people of Limbo nor to the people they'd want to be bonded with. Which doesn't mean it hasn't happened befo—

Also, you don't have to be bonded to anyone to be considered legal partners. That can be done signing a few papers!

To quote myself from the Discord server a while ago where we briefly discussed what a bonding trial would entail if you were to ask for The Mindbender's blessing...

It's seyl yapping time with some corrections :^)

Each Sovereign focuses on certain blessings and "rules" you have to follow for them to agree to bless the ceremony. When it comes to blessings, for example Raeya is Strength in the face of adversity, Amon is Determination in the face of failure, and Gael is Knowledge in the face of ignorance.

If you ask for Gael's blessing you basically have to prove him you and your partner/s have the drive to learn from each other constantly. You have to accept your naivety and your ever-changing nature. You have to be willing to accept actions and reactions (independently of if they're considered morally right or wrong) are born from the knowledge (or lack of) you've acquired throughout your experience as a living being. So basically it requires a long period of meditation, self-discovery and understanding of those you want to be bound to forever. People prepare for this for years.

As for the trials—first of all there's a cleanse of the soul and mind done by "priests". Each participant is taken to a small empty room with no windows and no external stimuli with only a priest, covered from head to toe to not be recognized. I'll save the details of this ritual for the sake of not literally writing the whole lore of the ceremony.

Then the participants are evaluated personally by Gael; this process is a bit painful as he basically gains access to any relevant memories and is able to explore them at will. For this he manifests in some sliver of his true form, which can shake the soul of the participants, in which case they're deemed unworthy by the priest. Gael can protest to this, but it has rarely happened.

The rest of the memories have been temporarily cleansed by the priest, beforehand, to preserve the participants' intimacy to an extent, so Gael only has access to things related to the Bonding Trials.

He then decides if they're adequate or not to receive his blessing. If they fail, they are welcome to try again in the future.

If they're worthy, their memories of the previous ritual are completely erased by Gael himself for their safety. Basically the participants just remember they have been deemed worthy.

Then we move to the soul-linking ceremony! This can be public or private. This step is vital for every ceremony in every "pantheon". All the participants kneel down, hands linked together between them with a special rope / tie. Every participant has to be personally linked to the others so in ceremonies with more than one participant this process can take a while as the tying of the rope is very specific.* This is done by another "priest".

*if all the participants want to be linked to each other. if there's two participants who don't want to be linked to each other but they want to be linked to the third participant, that's doable too!

(There's more stuff happening but we'd be here until tomorrow and I have to work or my team will kill me) (I wrote this in the discord message and it's still relevant)

Then Gael extracts a fraction of the essence of every participant as well as blood (this done again by the priest) and mixes it together. It's then solidified in an essence crystal (or more than one if not all participants want to be bound together) that he breaks in as many parts as participants in the ceremony. The crystals symbolize the permanent, unbreakable union of the participants. When Limbo claims their souls in death, they'll travel back to the Great Void together, which is seen as the utmost declaration of love among Limbanians.

After this, everyone is free to celebrate how they see fit!

Some people describe the bond as being able to understand their partners to a deep, spiritual level, or feel them. Others don't notice anything changing.

[bunnwich]

have you seen #them and if yes what's your favorite ob animation

Overblot Animation Thoughts (So far)

Unfortunately, I do not usually play on the Japanese server, but for fun, I installed it last night and spedran through Chapters 1 and 2 to see what the animations were looking like! (I need to level up my cards more to beat OB!Leona grrr) Here's what I'll say since I can't share them: (if anyone wants to privately share the other 5, that would be cool!) SPOILER TALK BELOW!

So far, the animations follow a similar pattern: the overblotter holding their face, the blot monster appearing behind, dripping the blot onto them, and consuming them. Then each person is revealed in their OB! outfit. From what was shown, the blot initially is an antagonistic force, but then becomes something they embrace. (I think it's mentioned in either the light novel that Leona was "petting" or "cuddling" his lion-like blot monster post OB) The way it is depicted there is an implication that the blot is a parasite. Which...yeah, it can kill them, so it makes sense, considering it feeds off negative emotions. Seeing it fully animated makes it look quite horrific of a process. And it's interesting how the blot monster just seems to appear behind them. I have to think the animation quality of these clips is what we are getting for the anime, so I am very excited! Overall, they are well done, and we get a bit of screaming/laughingby the VAs. Out of the two I've seen, I have to stay loyal to Savanaclaw and say I was more hyped to see Leonas'. However, I feel Riddle's had some cool shots/imagery. It seems like the main difference between each one will be the method by which the blot "splashes" on the blotters and their subtle reactions to being consumed. With Riddle, the blot monster grabs hold of him and blot leaks slowly on his face, whereas with Leona, it sorta splashes in his eyes and fills his hands. I wonder if there is any correlation in the slight variations to the Disney villain lore or maybe why each person blots. (Leona, for example, being more of an emotional overblot, and Riddles a combination of both, since he used an excess of magic as well.) Leona's struck me. (bc of ofc) So, there is a split second where we see a shadow of the blot monster symbol as a shadow behind them. For Leona, it was a lion head and the way it's done, maybe bc he overblots in a stadium made me think of a spotlight? Like reflecting his desire to be seen maybe?? A similar thing happens with Riddle in teh rose maze, but with Leona, it very much had that "spotlight" look to me. Hmm. ALSO!! There is a small part where Leona reaches his hand up as if to seek something, maybe help or support. Then only for his palm to be filled with blot. OOOOO, just the way it looked, like that got me for some reason?? Like the only thing he feels he has to fall back on is sorrow and anger. But, I love to over-analyze! Anyways, maybe once I see the rest, I can have more to say!