#the process of blinding one's self

[conditioned-to-obey]

Our bedtime is special. Settling in with a book for us to read, snuggling in close to me. To get the best view of the pages, you say but really it's just want to feel my voice in your chest and my warmth against you. We read this way, cocooned together. Wrapped around each other, melted chocolate forgotten in a pocket. I see your dark lashes brush your cheeks as I read. Just one more chapter, just one more, please? Even as you let out kitten tongue yawns. We experience entirely new realms right here on our couch together. I wonder to myself what images your mind makes out of these printed words. Are they similar to mine? I'd love to see them set out side by side, open a crawl space to your skull. Fall into the pink cotton fiberglass of your thoughts and let the tiny cuts bleed and embed themselves in my skin. Even as my eyes grow tired, another chapter sucks us in—what joy it is to revel in old lives and new stories with you. What a gift it is.

[2hoothoots]

alright, here's my hot take on the Sasha-Raz dynamic: i think Raz represents a wish fulfilment self-insert figure for Sasha just as much as Sasha does for Raz.

Raz wanting to be like Sasha and seeing him as an aspirational future self is self-explanatory, right. Sasha is his hero from his favourite comic books, he even dresses up like the guy – it’s cute! there’s a fun hero worship angle there. but i think there’s also an aspect of it going the other way: Sasha sees Raz as an idealised past self. he's an excuse for Sasha to recast his own troubled childhood in a more flattering light, to imagine a version of himself who was more confident, more capable, more driven; and to explore the fantasy of that version of himself getting support and training and recognition, instead of the way things really played out.

here's something. when you use clairvoyance on Sasha, he sees Raz as a younger version of himself:

not as his younger self – specifically, a miniature version of his current self. there's a difference.

here's something else: from what we see in the memory vaults, I don't think younger Sasha was actually like Raz at all.

this part is heavier on extrapolation, because all we see of younger Sasha is a single memory vault; but i think the expressions and the body language tell a clear story here. the boy we see in these vaults is shy, uncertain, estranged, lonely. the distance between him and his father is palpable, physical and emotional. 

think about the things that Sasha says to Raz: your talents will always set you apart. sometimes, isolation is a good thing. those are very weird things to say to a kid as “advice”, and they’re very revealing about Sasha’s own mindset! i think it’s very easy to read Sasha as someone who had a very troubled, lonely childhood, and then sought to retroactively redefine and romanticise it. it wasn’t grief that stopped him and his father from ever forming a meaningful bond; it was just his talents, his father didn’t understand. if he was lonely and isolated growing up, well, maybe that was a good thing. just look at where he is now!

and i think Raz serves as a vessel for Sasha to project all of that onto. because their experiences aren’t that similar, not really. Sasha left home because he was unable to connect with his father; Raz ran away because his family didn’t understand or support his gifts. Sasha pushed things too far with his powers, and was shocked and unsettled by what he saw; Raz pushed things too far with his powers, and was rewarded for it. Sasha left home uncertain and afraid; Raz left home on a mission. the two stories aren’t the same, but they rhyme – you can draw parallels, if you squint, if you’re willing to change a few details here and there. and one of these stories is much more alluring, more satisfying, more compelling than the other. 

when Sasha says to Raz in the shooting gallery, “I would have done the exact same thing at your age” – sorry, but i absolutely do not buy it. younger Sasha was meek and conflict-averse, he faced one single unexpected consequence and immediately noped out. i think he absolutely would not have done the same thing. but i bet Sasha wants to think that he would have, y’know? i bet he wants to see himself in this boy, who’s driven and confident and focused and such an eager student – who has so much promise, and is in an environment where that can be recognised and rewarded and nurtured. Raz isn’t just a promising student, to Sasha – he’s also an opportunity to live out that what if, to explore the wish fulfilment of his own younger self getting that kind of recognition and support, instead of being left, lonely and alone, to fend for himself. 

one final thing: one of the big reasons i really like this reading is that i feel like it makes the scene where Sasha scolds Raz for messing with Hollis’ mind way more interesting: [screenshots from this upload of the game's cutscenes]

"You thought you could manipulate another person's mind, to bend their will to your own! There are few things worse, Razputin."

i’m not the first to point out that this feels a little hypocritical coming from Sasha, especially when you consider that this is basically the exact same thing he encouraged Raz to do in his own mind! and besides that, you could argue that it isn’t even Sasha’s place to hand out this lecture – Hollis was the one whose mind was actually messed with, and her and Raz have already hashed things out.  but if you think about Sasha as projecting himself onto Raz, then i think there’s more depth here. this isn’t just Sasha being upset because his protégé did something bad – he’s shaken because Raz did something unexpected. suddenly, Raz has broken away from the model that Sasha had built up in his mind, of the perfect, confident young agent that Sasha could easily see himself in. now he’s having to realise that Raz isn’t perfect – and maybe he isn’t just like Sasha, either.

[softservesoymilk]

This is from lrb but when I say Dism and Siffrin are similar this is the heart of what I mean ✨

[calicohyde]

i can't wait to make something with the devil in it and make him extremely southern and love country and folk music

[heeliopheelia]

𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅𝐅 𝐃𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

genre: hurt/comfort, angst, fluff

word count: 4.3k

warnings: cursing, crying, neglect, tiny mention of bleeding

a/n: i think i win the contest of overusing commas with this one 🤍 tbh this fic is just yapping so pls deal with me... it's good to write some proper angst again tho, i missed it :(( hope you guys like it and don't find them too repetetive!!

masterlist

LEE HEESEUNG

It's been two weeks since you got the opportunity to take a proper look at Heeseung. And now as you do, you find it hard to recognize your fiancé who looks like he's about to collapse from exhaustion, to say the least. 

“I never asked you to mother me or worry about me so much. Stop getting into my business so much. I’m not a child, YN.”

It’s like he was blind to how hurt his words and actions were making you feel. It’s so unusual for him, so out of character and unfamiliar to you, that you can’t help but think that maybe it really is your fault for riling him up this much.

“I worry about you because I’m your fiancé and I love you, you jerk!” You scoff at his careless words and take a step back, the aching in your heart only increasing. “I only want to look after you because you clearly don't know how to do it yourself. I mean, look at yourself! You look as if you haven’t slept in a week and I know you haven’t been eating either. How can I not worry about you when all you do is neglect yourself?”

“Dunno, maybe find yourself something to keep you busy enough. You stay at home all day, do as much as nothing, no wonder you’re so damn nosy. I would be too with this much time on my hands.”

He’s so indifferent to everything you say, you try to recall where it all started going so wrong. All you did was ask whether he’s eaten at work or not, and now the two of you are snapping at each other as if you weren’t lovers, and trying not to hurt each other was a long forgotten thought by now. 

“If you’re so unhappy with our relationship – with me, maybe it’s best we take a break,” you say as you feel your throat tighten painfully. 

“Agreed. I never even wanted this marriage in the first place,” he scowls, silencing you, words rolling out of his mouth way quicker than his brain is able to process it. 

He bites his words back quickly when he watches your face dropping along with your shoulders, and fuck, you look as if you’ve given up on him right then and there. 

You walk away then, tears streaming down your face, muttering something about how ungrateful he was being, and all Heeseung could do was stand still as if plastered to the floor, in utter disbelief of his own, untrue, words.

After his cruel statement echoes through his head for the fourth time, he finally snaps out of the self pity and rushes after you to the kitchen where you’re leaned over the counter, head buried in your hands as you cry.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he apologizes quickly. He walks up from behind you and wraps his arms around your waist, resting his forehead on your shoulder blade. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry for everything I said, sweetheart.”

He turns you around gently and feels his chest tighten at how fucking sad you look. He never wants to see you like this. He never wants to be the cause of this ever again.

And when he looks to the side, his throat closes and dries completely at the sight of your engagement ring laying on the counter right behind you. 

“Are you sure you didn’t mean it?” You ask, wiping the tears away with your hand pointlessly as another stream follows right after. “Things like that don’t come out of nowhere.”

“I didn’t, love, I swear I didn’t. I’m so fucking sorry,” he breathes out, pulling you closer to him by your neck again. 

Never again. Never fucking again. He keeps telling himself in his head as he lifts your hand to his lips and presses a kiss to your knuckles, just where your ring was supposed to be sitting snugly. Then he lowers it and places your palm against his chest, right above his heart, and covers your smaller hand with his.

That was too close to losing you, and himself, for that matter. Because he would never recover if you were gone from his life and all because of him. 

“Then why did you even say it?” You sob pitifully as you feel the warm tears dripping down the tip of your nose.

“I don’t know,” he shushes you gently, trying his best to not break you any further. 

You pull away once you feel calm enough, hands clutching his t-shirt. “It's not too late to call off the wedding, Seung,” you manage out breathily, raising your palm to cup his cheek. “I'd rather not take the step further than have you unhappy.”

“Darling, no.” Heeseung bends down to minimize the distance between the two of you and peppers your face with loving, warm kisses. He just wants to erase those atrocious thoughts out of your mind as quickly as possible. “Please, there's nothing I'd ever want more than to make you my wife. That was stupid of me to say. I'll never be happy if I'm not with you, my love.”

“I just don’t want to force this marriage on you. You need to want it as much as I do, otherwise it’s pointless.”

Heeseung almost chokes on air when he rushes out his answer even before you can properly finish your sentence. “I do want it. Please, you have to believe me.” 

“Really?”

Heeseung smiles at you softly as he wipes your wet cheeks with his thumbs. “Really. Scout’s honour.”

You breathe out, feeling relief, and look up at him with squinted, puffy eyes. “Sometimes I just wanna strangle you to death, Lee Heeseung.”

He chuckles lightly before pressing one last kiss to your cheek. “Aren't you just so adorable? You should add this to your wedding vows.”

“Maybe I’ll add this to your eulogy instead if you pull shit like that again.”

Heeseung clicks his tongue with a grin pulling on his lips. “Touché.”

PARK JAY

The atmosphere in the living room is so heavy that your chest starts to hurt. You’re standing barely two steps away from the man you love the most, yet you’ve never felt more far away from him than in this moment. 

His eyes – cold but still undoubtedly full of love, drill holes in the side of your head as you turn your face away from him to try and gather your thoughts.

Arguments with Jay were rare. You always tried to work things out immediately, keeping your heads cool. But something has broken over the last month and you can’t see each other eye to eye anymore. At the very beginning of your relationship you made a promise to never go to bed angry. To never leave things unresolved. Yet now Jay’s been sleeping on the couch for the past week, and you fail to understand what the fuck has happened to the two of you. 

And you can’t help but think that, maybe, sometimes love is just not enough. 

“You’re not even trying to find the middle ground anymore. All you do is snap at me the second I come home. I’m fucking tired of it! Would it hurt to give it a rest for a day?” 

The tension is almost palpable. You hate how you can’t seem to back away from any argument but only keep hurting him instead. 

“Put effort into our relationship first, then we’ll talk,” you spit out instead, against your better judgment.

“It’s funny coming from you who’s done nothing but put a fucking distance between us!”

“This doesn’t make any sense anymore, Jay. We need some time apart,” you finally speak into the dull silence, eyes casted downwards at the floor as your hand keeps twitching, only to finally grab for your ring finger and slip the silver band off of it. You didn’t think much of your action, hell, you didn’t even process it properly. 

Well, not until you hear the shaky exhale leave Jay’s lips. 

Silently, he presses his lips together and nods his head before turning on his heel and leaving the room. You listen intently to the shuffling, then ringing of the keys and eventually the door being shut. 

A moment of silence turns into minutes of you staring at the ring on your palm with tears burning your eyes mercilessly. 

With your heart falling low to your stomach, you drop down on the couch and tug on your hair slightly, cursing yourself for acting so mindlessly. 

You wallow in self pity in the dead quiet room. The shiny ring feels so heavy and burning in your clenched fist. You take in a deep breath, then quickly slide the band back onto your finger, feeling instantly shielded with it being on its righteous place again.

And just like that, you spend the next three hours on the verge of losing your sanity. With no word from Jay. He’s left your messages unread. He’s left your calls unanswered. 

You don’t know whether he’s okay or hurt or simply gone. All that combined is enough to leave you panicked and terrified, unable to have a second of peace. 

You never meant to take it this far. This – your words and rapid actions, that will forever remain as one of your biggest regrets. You don’t like the idea that you made your other half feel like you’ve taken him for granted. Or for what’s worse, like a person that you can use for unloading your frustration on. 

There’s this throbbing pain in your chest as you realize that maybe he’s not coming back because why would he if you can’t even love him properly?

Your fingers are bleeding from how hard you’ve been picking on your cuticles. 

And then you hear the jingle of keys and soon the front door opens quietly. You know that even after all of this he’s still being careful to not wake you up. It’s killing you how he thinks you’d ever be able to get a wink of sleep without knowing he’s safe. 

You’re quick to drop your phone on the couch and shoot up on your legs, rushing over to the door and throwing yourself on Jay’s neck. 

“I was so worried about you!” You gasp out, clinging onto your fiancé desperately as tears unknowingly make their way down your cheeks. “Please, don’t ever do that again!”

“Sorry, my phone died,” he replies after a second or two, bringing his arm up to wrap around your waist and keep you close to him. 

He’s still upset but he understands where you’re coming from, knowing well that if it was you instead of him he’d probably go insane from worry. 

He can feel your heart hammering against his chest, so he lifts his hand and strokes your hair to help you calm down. But then you start crying, feeling his gentle touch even after everything you said, that was enough to push you over the edge. You clench your trembling hands on his sweater as you burst out with choked sobs, slouching against his warm and comforting body. 

“I’m sorry, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry,” you weep into his chest like a mantra and Jay can quite literally feel his heart cracking at your miserable state. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers, hot air hitting your ear before he presses a soft kiss to its tip. “Don’t cry anymore, honey. We’re okay.”

“I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve you,” you whimper quietly. “Please, don’t leave me.”

“Don’t say that,” he scolds you with a frown. Your whimpers twist his guts even more than your harsh words from before. “It’s not the first nor the last time we’ll have an argument. It’s not worth losing your pretty head over it, okay?” 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat one last time. “I promise I'll never take it off again. I’ll never lash out on you like that ever again too.”

Jay grabs your hand and runs his thumb over the thin silver band, the same one he was picking so carefully for weeks, and a small smile tugs on the corners of his mouth. He hates how shameful you sound. 

He’ll never tell you how the sight of you pulling your ring off your finger made him physically sick to his stomach. He can't have you feeling even worse than you already do. So instead he brings you close to him and rests his forehead on yours. 

“I’m so stupid,” you whisper quietly as you close your eyes, your heavy eyelashes letting go of another few droplets of crystal tears which Jay’s lips soak up instantly. “I don’t know what I’d do if you actually left.”

“You know me better than to think I’d let us break it off over such a petty fight.” And, yes, you do. But your lip wobbles with silent agony at the sole thought of that. “Hey,” he tries again as he presses a loving kiss to your red nose. “I’m not leaving, okay? How could I ever?” 

“I love you.”

With his thumb caressing your burning cheek so tenderly, you feel at peace again.

“I love you too,” he replies without skipping a beat. “No one can handle you as well as I do. And no one sees me for me like you do. We complete each other. We belong together.”

He kisses you silly then, until there’s no more tears left in your body and you’re barely able to breathe anymore. He kisses you until your legs give in and he swoops you up to carry you into your shared bed for the first time in what seems like forever.

He kisses you until it engraves in your mind that there’s no other person for him in this world but you.

SIM JAKE

“Baby, I already apologized.” A groan lingers at the back of his throat but for his own sake he stifles it inside. “I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

You sit on the edge of your shared bed and clench your fingers on the silky duvet. “How about you start showing up to things we both agreed on attending to?”

He runs his hand down his face. “I know. It just slipped my mind, that’s all. You know how busy I’ve been this week.”

“This shouldn’t be my business only, though. I mean, for christ’s sake, it’s our wedding! I would really appreciate it if you participated in something for once!”

Flowers and cake. That’s literally all you’ve asked of him to go and pick with you for the wedding reception. Knowing his tight schedule, you picked the date carefully so that it wouldn’t meddle with his work and you could even go grab some dinner afterwards. But your plans all went out the window when he didn’t even bother showing up or giving you a heads up text, standing you up yet another time when it comes to your wedding preparations.

You’re honestly getting tired of it.

“I’ll be there next time,” he assures you quickly as he nervously taps his fingers on the doorway of your bedroom. 

“You said you wouldn’t do that,” your voice wavers as your shoulders drop with resignation. With the back of your hand, you wipe off the tears that made their way down your cheeks. “You promised to help, Jake. But you left me alone with everything, as usual.”

“It’s not even that big of a deal. This can be rescheduled any time. Baby, stop stressin’ so much.”

“But it is a big deal to me!” You cry out, palm reaching up to pinch the bridge of your nose. You breathe out heavily. “I don’t want to do everything by myself! We’re supposed to be in this together! If getting married means that I’m gonna be alone with all the responsibilities that you don’t consider important enough, I’m not even sure I still want it.”

To back up your words, your hand moves half-consciously to your ring finger and you twist the cool piece of jewelry in between your fingers. 

“No, no, no, no.” Jake moves quickly, nearly tripping over himself as he rushes towards you to desperately clasp your hand in his two and stop you from whatever the hell you were about to do. He drops to his knees in front of the bed, right at your feet. “Baby, you promised you’d never take it off.”

You’re at a loss of words as you look into his wide eyes, the seriousness of your actions only catching up to you now. You gasp quietly, eyes watering just like his, quickly relaxing your tensed hand in his and letting him slide the ring back down your finger, just where it belongs.

Silence envelopes the two of you, besides the sound of your sniffles. 

You feel awful. 

Jake feels even worse. 

Leaning forward, you press your face to his shoulder and melt instantly when he brings a hand to caress your hair. 

“I'm sorry,” you whisper, clenching your hand to feel the cool ring against your skin. “I don't know why I did that. I didn't mean to.”

“I know,” he soothes you just as softly. He stands up from the floor and carefully maneuvers the two of you so that you’re placed on his lap as he sits with his back against the headboard. “It's my fault. I'm sorry. I never meant to disregard your feelings like that.”

At the end of the day, both of you would rather set themselves ablaze than watch the other one hurting. 

You nod silently, heart pounding in your chest before you bring your arms up and throw them over his neck.

“I’m sorry I was so impulsive.”

“No. You did nothing wrong.” His soothing voice carries over the room, enveloping you with warmth. “I promise I'll be here whenever you want me to from now on. I don’t want you to feel neglected by me, especially now when you’re this stressed over the wedding. I won’t let you down, again.” 

“I just need a little help, that’s all,” you mumble tiredly into his skin.

“I know.” His warm lips press to your forehead lovingly. “I’m sorry for being an insensitive douche. It won’t happen again. I’ll take some days off next week, hm?”

The tears on your face dry slowly as your hold on him tightens. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Then it’s done. I'll be all yours and you’ll be all mine then,” he hums and noses at your cheek, finally bringing out a small giggle out of you. After all these years, he still melts at the sound. “I won’t let things get this out of hand again, YN. I promise.”

“Okay,” you whisper. Tilting your head up and bringing his down towards you, you join your lips in a kiss that you’ve been longing for for days. His movements are slow and careful as he tries to soak up as much of the moment as possible. 

His kisses slowly put your broken pieces back together. He never knew how much seeing you cry like this would hurt him. And he’ll make damn sure he won’t ever have to experience that again for as long as you're with him.

“If I have a life to spend, it'll only be with you, sweetheart,” he lowers his voice to match yours, cradling your cheek in the palm of his hand. “You're it for me. I'll never give you a chance to doubt that ever again.”

PARK SUNGHOON

“You’re never home! There’s always a hundred things more important to you than spending an hour of your time with me. Your fucking fiance! Are we really about to get married when you’re clearly so tired of me already?”

Your heart pounds in your chest as you finally voice out everything that’s been sitting on your chest for the past month. Things have not been working out well with the two of you, much to your despair. He’s been neglectful, always too busy to help you with anything – even the wedding related things that you should’ve gotten done weeks ago. 

And you know that he’s swamped with work and it's not his fault. You understand everything. But to ask him to spare you an hour or two of his day shouldn’t be too much. It shouldn’t make him snap at you unlike what he just did the second he came back home. You slowly begin to lose your hope.

“God, have you always been this needy? Why can’t you accept that I can’t always put you first? No matter how much I’d want to, sometimes I just can’t! Deal with this!”

“Fucking- Fine.”

Your hand moves quicker than your brain, and the next thing you know, your shiny ring is being pulled off your finger and resting in the palm of your other hand. 

You can see the disbelief flashing through his face briefly before it completely morphs into a scowl. 

“You really think that this will solve the problem?” He asks, eyebrows narrowed as he glowers at you from across the room. “Really? Does that ring mean so little to you that you go and throw it away with any minor inconvenience?” 

You try to blink away the frustrated tears, hand raking up to brush your hair away from your face. “No, fuck, I just- I don’t know what to do anymore, Sunghoon. I feel like I’m the only one in this relationship. I need you to give me something more because whatever you’re doing now is not enough for me.”

“Well, I’m putting out everything I have, YN! I love you! If that’s still not good enough for you, then maybe it’s not meant to be.”

The silence that falls in the room doesn’t last long as your sudden sob pierces Sunghoon’s ears quickly, making his stomach drop to the soles of his feet. His heart wrenches and twists as the anger simmers down and evaporates from his body within a second, and he’s quickly coming back to his senses at the sight of you breaking down right in front of him. 

“Can’t you just try?” You cry into your hands, shielding your face away from your fiance. “That’s all I’m asking of you. Is it really so hard to try?”

No, it’s not. Sunghoon knows it without a second of thinking. It’s not too hard to try, never if it’s for you. And his throat dries so quickly when he basks in the weight of his words that finally made you break as well. 

“You don’t know how much it hurts to feel like you’re too much for your partner,” you wail with a small voice, shoulders trembling and hands quickly getting damp with tears. “You’ll never know how it is to feel unwanted, because you’ll never have to when you're with me. Because I love you, asshole, but now I’m doubting if you’re saying it back just for the sake of it.”

With air getting stuck in his throat, Sunghoon looks at you wide-eyed before quickly crossing the living room and enveloping you in his arms. His warmth wraps around you in what you've always considered to be safety, but now it just makes you cry more. 

He finds it hard to breathe. The hesitation in your eyes feels like a stab to his chest.

“Of course I still love you,” he says, voice muffled by your hair. 

He hates how he made you feel the opposite. He hates how you’re right and he never had to worry about any reassurement of such kind from your side because you’re just that good to him. And his heart breaks with the realization of how much of a lousy partner he’s been to you when all you ever were was nothing less than perfect.

So he places his hand on the back of your head and presses you even closer to his shoulder as you cry, his own eyes burning with tears at the sound of your sobs and sniffles. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling,” he apologizes with a heavy heart, fearful of what’s about to come next. “I didn’t mean to neglect you this much. I could say that I’m tired and the work has been a lot lately, but I know these excuses are not enough to make up for my actions.”

You’re mad and hurt, but you love him and would never want to give up on him, so you wrap your arms around his middle and hold him almost as tight as he holds you, burying your wet face in his chest. 

“I love you more than anything, YN.” He pulls away from you only to cup your face and make you look at him. His long fingers wipe away the tears with gentle touch, soothing your stinging skin instantly. “You could never be too much for me. I want all of you. I promise I’ll do better. I’ll love you better.”

And when you’re looking up at him with these shiny eyes of yours, he closes the distance and presses a loving kiss to your swollen lips, hoping to take at least some of the pain away. He doesn’t think he can hold you any tighter. He can’t love you any stronger than right now, and it messes with his head how easily he could’ve had it all ruined only minutes ago. 

He’ll never take your love for granted ever again. Because if he did, he’d never be able to pick up the parts of whatever was left of him, and put himself back together ever again. 

You can feel his warm hand opening your closed palm before he takes the ring you've been clutching so tightly and holds it in between his fingers. 

“Can I put it back on, baby? Please.”

You nod wordlessly while you try to tame your tears. You hold your slightly trembling hand up to him. He takes it, gently, and watches as your bottom lip wobbles while he slides the ring on your finger just like he did months ago. 

“I'll never screw up like that again. You have my word for it.”

You sniffle quietly when he kisses you right on the cool band adorning your skin. “You better not, Park Sunghoon.”

His long fingers caress your cheek, wiping the remains of the tears away. “Can you forgive me, darling?”

You don't need to think long of an answer. “You know I can never stay mad at you. Even if you're a idiot, I'll never stop loving you. You have my whole heart, Hoon. Please, don't ever make me regret trusting you with it.”

permanent taglist + taglist: @bambisgirl @arizejkt19 @luvmura @milisabunny @cathy-1997 @satoruskitchenrag @ramenoil @jenjnk @jaylaxies @yoongspi @nichoswag @s00buwu @dazzlingligth @goreconsumer @i4kt @heehoonsnemo @seongslutt @seongclb @iamnotalicia

© heeliopheelia 2024 // ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT copy, translate or repost any of my works on any other social platforms.

[pookalicious-hq]

365 party girl ...

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⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ : paige ends up having to pull you away because who the fuck did Ashlyn Watkins think she was, talking shit to your freshman? tags: swearing, paige bueckers x baddie!reader, mention osf "wife beating", bballl player reader, not proof read so many typos, established relationship

Anyone could tell when someone was made to perform. There was always a distinct look in their eye, a deep breath released in what should’ve been a career-changing action. It didn’t take an expert to figure out that you were meant to be seen.

It was in the way the cameras always found you—during warm-ups, during time-outs, even in those fleeting moments between plays. Your presence wasn’t just noticed. It was felt.

UConn’s most dominant defensive guard alongside with an offensive playmaking machine. A nightmare for any offense, quick-footed and relentless. You were everywhere—pressuring passes, cutting off lanes, moving in ways that turned good guards into hesitant ones. They knew if they fumbled, if they hesitated even a second, you were already on them.

And still, even in the chaos of the game, you looked perfect.

A flawless base, lashes full and fresh, nails a sleek, polished set—practical enough for the court, but still you. Hair laid to perfection, untouched by sweat despite the intensity of the game and atmosphere. When the camera cut to you, lips slightly parted, eyes burning with intensity, everyone watching across the nation didn’t know if they wanted you or wanted to be you.

The arena was electric. The matchup was personal. Everyone was here to watch UConn, to watch South Carolina.

To watch your girls.

And tonight? Under the blinding lights of March Madness, against South Carolina, with the whole world watching?

This was your stage.

So who the fuck did Ashlyn Watkins think she was, talking shit to your freshman?

The piercing tone of a whistle broke through the crowd’s outraged cries, and the image of Sarah Strong on the ground.

The foul was blatant—a hard block, sending Sarah sprawling onto the hardwood. But it wasn’t just the foul that set you off. It was the way Ashlyn stood over her, staring her down, like she had the right to intimidate her.

Like she had the right to intimidate anyone.

Before the refs could even get between them, you were already there. Your body moved before your mind fully processed it, stepping right into Ashlyn’s space and giving her a solid push—just enough to separate her from Sarah, just enough to send a message.

Ashlyn barely budged. But her expression shifted instantly—no longer that smug, self-assured look. Now, it was something harder, something pissed. She wasn’t used to anyone daring to move her.

Sarah, still wide-eyed and holding her head, reached up for your hand. Without hesitation, you gripped her wrist, pulling her up with authority, keeping your focus locked on Ashlyn. Sarah stumbled slightly, her hand coming up to her head, but Paige was there, steadying her her voice low, checking in on Sarah.

The gym was in full chaos—shouts, gasps, the air so thick you could feel it in your chest. Everyone felt the heat radiating off you. You were like a fuse waiting to explode, and Paige? She’d seen it before. Knew how deep that fire ran. You’d fight through hell for anyone on your team, and right now? Sarah was yours to protect.

Ashlyn’s smirk came back, but it was laced with pure irritation. She tossed her head back, then scoffed. “Make sure you hit the weight room, fucking rookie,” she muttered, her voice a venomous drip of arrogance.

And that was it.

Your jaw clenched. The muscles in your neck tensed. Your nostrils flared. Ashlyn knew better to keep her mouth shut. Before you could even think, the words shot out of your mouth like a bullet.

"Better stop hitting anyone else or we might hafta call the cops again, fuckin’ wife beater."

The gym froze.

For a half-second, just long enough for the weight of your words to crash down. The crowd was silent, processing what you just said, trying to piece it together. 

Then? Chaos.

The crowd exploded. Some in shock, some in laughter—loud, boisterous, the kind of reactions that only March Madness could ignite. On the UConn bench, Geno’s face was already in his hands, an exhale that said he’d seen this trainwreck before. One hand on his hip, the other rubbing down his face, mentally preparing for whatever he’d have to explain later.

In front of you, Ashlyn’s face twisted from irritation into pure rage.

Before you could fully process the chaos around you, Ashlyn was already in your face. Her steps were heavy, chest puffed out, eyes burning into yours.

“The fuck you just say to me?”

You didn’t move a muscle. If anything, you stood taller, chin lifted just enough to show you weren’t scared. The air between you two thickened, crackling with tension. The gym wasn’t silent—far from it. Whispers swirled through the stands, the crowd unsure whether to stay quiet and hear what was going down, or to keep up with the drama. 

“I said,” you drawled, each word slow and sharp, “maybe you should stop hitting people… or should we check the police reports, sweetheart?”

Behind you, Paige muttered low enough for only you to hear, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Sarah, still holding her head, glanced between you two, unsure whether to step in or just let you handle it. Her hand stayed by her temple, like the hit was still rattling around in her head.

Ashlyn’s nostrils flared, her voice dropping lower, filled with venom. “Watch your mouth.”

You laughed. It wasn’t just a chuckle—it was a mocking, unapologetic laugh, sickingly sweet. “Or what? You gonna hit me next?”

The gym hummed with tension now. People were leaning in, trying to hear every word exchanged, but only a select few could actually catch what was said—UConn's team, some of the players around you, and those courtside. The rest? They could only pick up on the heat radiating off the exchange.

Paige was still close enough to mutter under her breath, “She’s not worth the tech.”

You didn’t care. Not one inch. You stood your ground, your voice low but cutting. “Honey, I’ve got 911 on speed dial and two thousand witnesses who’d love to see you with an ankle monitor.”

Ashlyn’s face twisted in anger, her eyes narrowing, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. But before she could respond—before you could provoke her further—Paige made her move.

With effortless ease, Paige wrapped her arms around you, lifting you off the ground as if you weighed nothing.

“Nope,” Paige’s voice was firm, carrying through the chaos around you.

“Paige, put me down, right now.” You kicked your feet, your anger still boiling just beneath your skin. You could feel the crowd’s eyes on you, the way they were all in suspense, waiting for something to happen. You weren’t about to let them down now.

“Nope.”

“I’m fucking serious—”

“I know, babe.”

Still kicking, still throwing insults over Paige’s shoulder, you shot a look back at Ashlyn. “Yeah, that’s right, keep walking, Ashlyn. You got more fouls than made shots, anyway.”

The gym exploded. The noise went from tense whispers to full-blown shouts and laughter. The stands were electric, people on their feet, some hooting and hollering, others still trying to catch the tail end of what had just gone down. UConn’s bench was fired up, while South Carolina’s players shifted, looking to see who would make the next move.

From the bench, Azzi’s voice cut through the noise like a knife: “Paige, sit her ass down. I’ll grab the duck tape.”The crowd’s laughter reached a fever pitch, some of the students clapping, others just shocked at the boldness of it all. This wasn’t just a game anymore. This was personal. You’d stood up for your team, your freshman, your entire squad. And the gym knew it. Ashlyn? She was in over her head, and everyone watching could see it.

a/n: from a situation that just happened with me and my teammates...

I LOVE MY WIFE

[pin-k-ink]

MUSCLE MEMORY ⋆✦⋆ miya osamu

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

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

wc ➸ 12.4k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You couldn't help but agree.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ms-demeanor]

Hey friend! So while I'm incredibly skeptical, I'm not strictly against alternative medicine, like you are. I saw you mention reiki, and thought you might geek out on this article like I did:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200308195914/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/reiki-cant-possibly-work-so-why-does-it/606808/

It's called "Reiki Can't Possibly Work. So Why Does It?" and I highly encourage reading the whole thing. It first of all thoroughly debunks a lot of the claims reiki practitioners make but it also details all of the studies that have proven its effectiveness and provides what I find a pretty compelling explanation: that much of modern western medicine is stressful and traumatizing. Of course laying in a quiet room with the lights dimmed while a kind person sits with you and wishes for you to be well is effective. It reduces stress and all of the negative biological processes it triggers, which promotes healing.

The article mentions that for years we didn't understand the mechanism by which acetaminophen worked - we just knew it did. I knew a man who was really into "chakra therapy" in the 90s where he had a set of colored sunglasses that, supposedly, would rebalance one's out-of-whack chakras through light therapy. He found that attending to his throat chakra, yellow, helped him sleep better. Years later, formal studies found that yellow lenses filter blue light and can help regulate circadian rhythms.

When I was really little, my uncle sold magnet therapy products (which claimed to promote circulation?? I think??). I had a huge meltdown at a family reunion and no one could get me to calm down. My uncle put a blanket full of magnets on top of me, and I immediately relaxed. Imagine my surprise hearing that story for the first time as an adult who now uses a weighted blanket for stress.

I agree that people need to be really careful about these practices, about getting scammed, and especially about herbal supplements that can have dangerous interactions. I also think there's an extent to which you can analyze the risks and benefits and say, "Okay, I have no idea why this works but it does and there's no major downsides."

Hey so I get a bit heated in this response but I want you to know that I approached this ask in good faith because I know you and I know that we have a lot of the same values and interests and this touched a nerve that was not at all your fault and once I get past the direct response to the article I think I come off a little less. Um. Like the aggression there is not directed at you, it's directed at the article and at one person mentioned in the article specifically who is part of why my reaction to the article is so not good. But I promise after the last bullet point I come off as less reactive, I think. (I'm also publishing this publicly because I think it may be helpful for people to see how CAM stuff often gets away with a veneer of skepticism-that-isn't-actually-skepticism - the article claims to be skeptical but then makes a ton of assumptions and cites some truly mind-bogglingly bad sources that a lot of people won't recognize as bad if they don't have a hair trigger trained by far too much time on the bad CAM parts of the internet).

I've actually read that article a few time times, and would like to do a quick rundown on why I find it unconvincing:

She doesn't cite any decent studies on reiki; one that she does cite is just a self-reported questionnaire response from 23 people in 2002.

While we don't know the exact mechanism of action for acetaminophen, we do know that it does work - it measurably reduces fever and in double blinded RCTs produces reproduceable results in reducing certain kinds of pain. The Science Based Medicine authors cited in the article who called for an end to studies on reiki did so both because there is no plausible mechanism of action for reiki (specifically as energy work, not as 'being in a room with a patient person who listens to you') and because there is no good evidence that it works. (And they wrote a follow-up to the Atlantic article; I like SBM but it's quite sneery, as are most of their write-ups of reiki). When Kisner asks "why should this be different?" when comparing reiki and acetaminophen, the answer is: because there is not only no plausible way that reiki *could* work, there is not any good evidence we have that it works better than placebo.

"Various non-Western practices have become popular complements to conventional medicine in the past few decades, chief among them yoga, meditation, and acupuncture, all of which have been the subject of rigorous scientific studies that have established and explained their effectiveness." This one sentence needs probably twenty or so links in response, suffice it to say that western medicine has emphatically not established and explained the effectiveness of AT LEAST acupuncture and the casually credulous way Kisner accepts that acupuncture is effective (effective FOR WHAT?) throws some serious doubt on her ability to assess these kinds of things.

The title of the article is "Reiki can't possibly work, so why does it?" and that's probably the Atlantic's fault more than Jordan Kisner's fault, but she doesn't ever demonstrate that it works. She says she got a buzzy feeling after her training, she says that patients at the VA were asking for reiki as treatment for pain and sleep disorders, she says that people remembered "healing touches" from parents and loved ones and that the same mechanism might be what makes reiki 'work.' She says that reiki "has been shown by various studies that pass evidentiary muster to help patients in a variety of ways when used as a complementary practice" and the two studies that she includes that weren't just a questionnaire were 1) a non-blinded study of heart rate variability post heart attack where the reiki arm involved continuous interaction with a trained nurse and the other two arms involved resting quietly or classical music (so relaxation as a result of additional focused attention by attentive medical professionals could account for this? Why was the control for this study not having a med student sit and hold the patient's hand?) and 2) a study of patients who sought out reiki who were surveyed after treatment and noted improvement on one of twenty mental or physical markers (this study is like, GOLD for an example of a bad study; no control, self-selected participants who believe in the efficacy of the intervention, exceptionally broad criteria for a positive result - I find it really really really challenging to grant any credence to someone who confidently cited this as an example of reiki "working")

Near the end of the article she says "At the same time, this recalled the most cutting-edge, Harvard-stamped science I’d read in my research: Ted Kaptchuk’s finding that the placebo effect is a real, measurable, biological healing response to “an act of caring.” - if she read any of Ted Kaptchuk's research she didn't link to it; what she did link to was a 2018 New York Times profile of him and Kathryn Hall, researchers at Harvard's Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter program. Being any flavor of journalist and citing Ted Kaptchuk as your source for cutting-edge, institutionally-backed science is disqualifying.

I now need to do some yelling about Ted Kaptchuk.

For clarity: I have as much medical training as Kathryn Hall and Ted Kaptchuk, which is to say: None.

Hall is a microbiologist with a PhD in Public Health, so she at least a background in science. Kaptchuk is an acupuncturist with a BA in East Asian studies and a doctorate in Chinese medicine - notably NOT a medical degree; he was forced to stop calling himself a doctor and had papers retracted after enough people questioned whether the school he claimed he attended even existed and the documents he presented to claim that he was an "OMD" were conclusively translated and did not have any indication that the granted a medical degree of any kind - Science Based Medicine was involved in investigating this because they've been comprehensively anti-quack forever and Ted Kaptchuk has been a quack forever (after recieving confirmation from the government of Macau that Kaptchuk's alma mater was not a medical degree granting institution SBM STILL gave him the benefit of the doubt and had people translate his documentation for final confirmation).

He is also an author on of one of my most beloathed ever studies, which showed that sham acupuncture, placebo, and albuterol all produced the same effect on patient-reported well-being, coming to the conclusion that patient reports can be unreliable and that "placebo effects can be clinically meaningful and can rival the effects of active medication in patients with asthma." That fucking line, that stupid goddamned line, gets cited in every piece of woo bullshit about how acupuncture or chiropractic or some scam-ass diet all work, I've run into this study while looking through at least twenty bibliographies and it is one of the biggest, reddest flags that whoever is writing the paper you're reading is full up on some bullshit. Because, see, the paper found that "placebo effects can be clinically meaningful and can rival the effects of active medication in patients with asthma" in terms of *patient-reported* markers, but the fucking study found that only albuterol produced an actual effect in lung function. Here's the sentence BEFORE the one that gets cited all the time: "Although albuterol, but not the two placebo interventions, improved FEV1 [forced expiratory volume in one second - the measure for lung function used in the study and used to diagnose asthma] in these patients with asthma, albuterol provided no incremental benefit with respect to the self-reported outcomes." It doesn't matter if the patient *feels* better if they can't actually breathe! It doesn't fucking matter - feeling better but still having poor breathing leaves you more vulnerable to dying of a fucking asthma attack! I hate this goddamned study so fucking much and it's used all the time to claim that placebo can be just as effective as medicine for making people FEEL better but, like, they're still sick even if they feel better! I HAVE HAD PEOPLE CITE THIS STUPID FUCKING STUDY TO ME AS EVIDENCE THAT I DON'T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT TREATING MY FUCKING ASTHMA BECAUSE I DON'T GET ACUPUNCTURE TO TREAT MY FUCKING ASTHMA. If sham acupuncture makes you feel better when you've got the flu but doesn't lower your fever or make you less contagious, you shouldn't act like you don't have a fever or aren't contagious this study makes me INSANE.

Okay done yelling.

I think this look at placebo in the midst of her article about reiki is really interesting because it's very common for CAM practitioners to claim that it's as effective as placebo - which just means that it's not effective. This is a great explanation from The Skeptic on why placebo isn't and can't be what Kaptchuk, Hall, and the like claim. It's also interesting to me that Kisner didn't choose to link to a 2011 New Yorker profile of Kaptchuk that is somewhat less rosy about his placebo studies and includes this absolutely crushing statement: "the placebo effect doesn’t appear to work with Alzheimer’s patients. Trivers suggests that this is because most people who have Alzheimer’s disease are unable to anticipate the future and are therefore unable to prepare for it."

But to the actual point of the ask: I honestly think it's fascinating how much CAM success probably rides on "well did you listen to the patient and pay attention to what was wrong with them and sympathize with them and help them lay out plan that made them feel like they had some agency in this exceptionally frustrating situation (chronic illness, newly diagnosed issue, totally undiagnosed issue) that they're dealing with?"

I know part of why people with chronic illnesses turn to CAM is because they're ignored and dismissed by allopathic practitioners who are largely looking for horses, not zebras - this is one of the reasons that I'm really big on reminding people that (at least in the US) DOs are fully licensed physicians who use a holistic and patient-centered approach so if you are someone with a chronic illness who has had trouble getting diagnosed or had trouble getting doctors to believe you, swapping your MD for a DO as a primary care physician might be really, really helpful to you.

But the flip side of that is that is that I worry deeply about the question of where harm starts; the example with your uncle is really great because you do have a solid instance of something working but for totally the wrong reason (pressure being the mechanism that actually helped, versus magnets being the reason given by the person who did the treatment). Some of this stuff has very little likelihood of causing direct harm, but has the distinct possibility of having indirect harms, which people in the anti-CAM space generally divide into two categories, treatment delay and unnecessary costs (opportunity costs, monetary costs, wasted effort, etc.)

I'm going to step outside of your specific example and look at magnet therapy generally, which really is a spectacular thing to focus on because it honestly doesn't have any direct harms; nobody is allergic to magnets, the kinds of magnets used aren't strong enough to interfere with medical devices, it's even safer than the whole "well herbalism is sometimes just a cup of tea" thing because there are "safe" teas that can do real harm to large populations! But simply being around magnets is not going to hurt anyone (unless they're swallowed; nobody swallow magnets please).

One of the things that I think goes under-discussed when talking about placebo and CAM is that the people trying the alternative solutions desperately WANT the alternative medicine to work (I suspect that this is why the self-selected study of reiki patients has such a significant finding). They are pulling for it; they may be looking at it as a last resort, or they may be hoping that it will work to avoid a treatment that is more frightening, expensive, or inaccessible. I think this actually contributes a lot to the delay of care that we see with CAM.

The absolute worst case harm I can imagine from magnetic therapy is delaying treatment. Let's suppose we've got a diabetic patient with gradually increasing peripheral neuropathy; they have reacted poorly to gabapentin in the past and are looking for something more natural, and they hear from their chiropractor that magnet therapy can be used to treat neuropathy. They buy some compression socks with "magnetic and earthing properties" and sleep in the socks. Whether through the compression controlling some edema or through the simple desire for the socks to work, they feel some relief from the nerve pain they were experiencing and decide that this is a success. The socks work! They continue wearing the socks with occasional pain, but less than before. However, because they are focused on the lack of pain, they don't notice that it's accompanied by increasing numbness. The numbness significantly increases their risk of injury to their feet, which significantly increases their risk of amputation.

It probably sounds like catastrophizing to say "using magnets could lead to amputation" but honestly I don't think it's that far out of the realm of possibility (every time I post on this topic I get flooded with the saddest stories in the world about people whose loved ones died because of delayed treatment for cancer or heart disease).

The second category of harm is cost, which is honestly pretty minimal with magnet therapy, as long as you aren't spending $1049 on a magnetic mat

or paying a chiropractor to give you magnetic treatments. For some other medically harmless treatments like reiki, cost is the thing that I worry about - while I was looking up information related to the article I found that people are charging anywhere from $60 to $225 a session, and selling multi-session packages for thousands of dollars - and if someone thinks that something works, even if it only works by being in a soothing space where someone cares about you - they'll pay for it.

I'm aware that all of this is also extra complicated because of the cost and lack of access to allopathic medicine - a chiropractor broke my spine because I could pay her $60 per appointment but I couldn't pay $125 to see an MD when I didn't have insurance. People who are sick are going to look for treatment; people who have been denied treatment or dismissed by doctors are going to look for alternative treatments.

But man, I really wish I'd spent that sixty bucks on half of a doctor's appointment because the chiropractor didn't know about the benign tumor that I had that weakened the structure of that particular bone when she did her adjustment; it also didn't make the pain go away, it made a different pain start and get worse because it turns out I was having debilitating muscle spasms that then had a bone injury added in on top.

(Chiropractic, for the record, goes with chelation therapy and many many many many cases of herbalism where it's NOT just cost or delay; people claim these treatments are harmless and they are not. They can do tremendous harm).

But yeah I'm not going to deny at all that all of this would be a hell of a lot better if people (especially marginalized people) didn't have to jump through hoops to prove to a doctor that something is wrong with them, and didn't have to do so in an appointment that attempts to cram whole person care down into fifteen minutes, and didn't have the possibility of bankrupting you. Interacting with allopathic medicine is a nightmare and I totally understand why people want to look outside of it for treatment.

I've just heard too many horror stories and seen too much predatory CAM to cut much of it any slack.

At the end of the SBM response to the Atlantic article, the author (I can't remember if it's Gorski or Novella) makes the point that reiki is a spiritual practice, and that we've known for a long time that spiritual practices can improve a person's well-being in a number of ways; they can reduce anxiety, they can provide community, they can give people a space to feel and express emotions that they certainly aren't going to be able to process in a doctor's office. Spiritual practices can be wonderful, and we know there are a lot of people who they can help. But they aren't medicine, and attempting to replace medicine with them (which I don't think that most reiki practitioners are trying to do, to be fair, but which Ted Kaptchuk DEFINITELY is in trying to 'harness the power of placebo') is a disservice to people who need an inhaler instead of acupuncture.

Also, and I know this was not your point but I have to bring it up because people ask about it whenever discussions of placebo come up:

The placebo effect is not treatment. The placebo effect, whether achieved through deception or when someone says loud and clear "this is a sugar pill" does not improve an illness, but it may improve how a patient *feels* about an illness. In some cases, this may as well be the same thing - if you're dealing with muscle pain because you're stressed and no matter what you do it doesn't go away because your shoulders are always up around your ears and you're grinding your teeth and you're sleeping poorly, then literally just talking to someone who is in an office and says "this is a sugar pill, go ahead and take it" may make your muscle pain feel better, but it isn't going to reduce your stress and it isn't going to last, and if your muscle pain is because you're feeling angina as a result of a partially blocked artery then it SURE AS FUCK is not going to make you better and may mask symptoms that were a warning sign of a much more serious problem. People who are sick deserve actual treatment, and placebo is not treatment, which is part of why Ted Kaptchuk makes me want to tear my hair out.

[conditioned-to-obey]

Thinking of a little doll with big wet doe eyes. Speaking softly, shes pressing my hand against her cheek while we talk about what's making her violin string voice shake the faintest bit. And I tell her what I've loved and lost and she tells me what she has too. Such a little life, such big feelings.

"It's just you and me, kid. From now on, it's just you and me."

[rafesplaymate]

Yes, daddy.

Older!Rafe Cameron x Stepdaughter!Reader

⋆⁺‧₊☽ navigation. ⋆⁺‧₊☽ masterlist.

warnings: step / fauxcest. infidelity. manipulation / gaslighting. abusive behaviors. immoral though process. threats of abuse. choking / manhandling. mentions of smut. dark themes / adult content. suggestive themes. slight plot twist?

a/n: this was completely self indulgent. for the girls with daddy AND mommy issues. not apart of my ‘Off to the Races’ AU. Can be read as a stand alone.

⋆⁺‧₊☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊

She can’t stand it. Can’t stand her mom and most of all can’t stand the way he’s —her’s.

Rafe Cameron came into her life like a whirlwind. Leaving her completely dazed and her mind fuzzy the moment he stepped into her line of sight. He was just so strong, so domineering and had an energy about him that screamed; no matter how much he could harm you —he could keep you grounded and tamed all the same. And ever since then, he’s been all she thinks about. All she wants.

And unfortunately for her. He’s her mom’s husband. A spiteful, vindictive woman whose nasty attitude taints her physical beauty. She can’t help but constantly wonder how someone as out-of-touch and controlling as her was able to tie down the enigma that is Rafe Cameron —but she thanks her for bringing him into her life all the same. Even if it’s not the way she’s been dreaming about or what she wants.

Regardless, she’ll take it. Because the way he allows her to shut off her brain, to find solace and acceptance in his embrace —will forever mean everything. The way he defends her and protects her like his little exotic, rare —caged bird he wants to keep locked away and from the hands of harm. Harm that her mother constantly perpetuates onto her and constantly leaves her in a spiral of hopelessness and resentment.

But not him. No, never him. For once in her life she has someone who stands up to the looming presence that is her mother. Who shuts her up and puts her in her place. So use to the purposeful blind eyes of the rest of her family, so use to the constant repeated words of “suck it up.” It’s validating, it’s acceptance. It’s something that makes her feel less crazy and frees her from the shackles of constant manipulation and gaslighting from her mother.

And now, she stands on the other side of the wall from the home office —sniffling with tears streaked cheeks and a consistent impending fear settled deep in her gut. Rafe and her mother were going at each other’s throats. Verbal attacks and words of rage being thrown around as he defends her being and her mother debases it. Spewing rants of her being an ‘ungrateful brat’ and ‘fucking crazy.’ Her mom’s words of degradation nothing new to her; but it feels like knives stabbing all the same.

It’s when Rafe speaks with pure loathing and booms out one final, “get the fuck outta my house. Now!” Does she hear her mother, for once in her life, slightly realize the gravity of the situation and her perpetuated actions. Her voice breaking slightly and now calmer as she speaks out a, “you don’t meant that. Rafe, she’s my daughter. I have every right to treat her the way I’d like. I wouldn’t be so fucking angry with her all the time if she didn’t act the way she does.” Firmness and disdain laced within each word. The knives stabbing deeper into her daughter’s already fragile being. Hopelessness filling her up —once more.

But it’s the immediate scoff that comes from the one person who’s always sided with her; that makes the pain less unbearable. “Maybe take a look in the fucking mirror, instead of thinking your daughter is the problem here. She’s not, you are. And quite frankly, I’m sick of it. Everything about you —is revolting.” He speaks gruffly, steadiness and profound confidence laced in every truth he shoots back at her.

She listens to his work shoes scuffing across the floor as he steps closer to her mother, his tall frame bending to level his eye contact with hers. Pure disgust, and indignation pooling in his beautiful cobalt eyes as he intimidates her mother. The older woman shrinking slightly under his gaze, but her stubbornness refusing her to completely submit. Staring back into the eyes of the man she once thought was her’s, now slowly but surely become her daughter’s.

“I meant, what I said,” he spoke lowly. His voice confident and tone domineering as he cornered the threat on his little girl. His baby, his sweetheart, his everything. Determined to eliminate it. “Get. The. Fuck. Out of my house. I don’t care where you go, I don’t care what you do or what happens to you. All I know is I don’t want you in my fucking house or my fuckin’ life anymore.” He drawled with pure abhorrence. A snarl on his lip like a lion ready to devour and defend his cub.

He watches as the woman he once thought he loved, he once thought he wanted —completely fold in. The obstinance in her gaze now replaced with despondency —her heart cracking as it finally clicked that this wasn’t just another fight that would pass. Another trial she put her daughter through that would be forgiven. No. This was her getting reprimanded for all the harm she’s pushed onto her. And for once in her life, she’s left speechless. Her mouth opening to reply -much to Rafe’s dismay.

“No. I’m done listening to your bullshit. You heard what I said, I’m gonna give you 20 minutes to take any necessities and get the fuck out.” He snarled once more, pushing her further against the wall as her back hit it. Trapped like a prey in the lion’s den and realizing she was no longer the lioness she once believed herself to be.

When Rafe finally saw her submission, her giving up. It’s only then, did he crack a mocking smirk. The same smirk that attracted her to the man and her daughter too. Yet, this one wasn’t playful —no. It was Rafe’s display of asserting his dominance, asserting that he was the one who ran things and she was manipulated by his whim no matter how much of a ‘hot shit’ she thought herself to be.

“Don’t even think about taking any of the nice shit, either. I bought it, it’s mine. You can take whatever crap you came with, including yourself.” He told her once last time, holding her gaze with his own as his jaw ticked. Imploring her to understand the gravity of the situation, the honesty in his words. Standing straight up to his full height once more when he feels he got his point across and turning his back to the woman he once loved. A physical representation of him shutting her out —once and for all.

And it’s when Rafe exits his office, that he find his princess sniffling with wide, defeated eyes. Manicured hands fiddling together as her pretty, pedicure toes pressed deep into the ground while she fidgeted with herself. Her cheeks streaked with ruined makeup and her gorgeous eyes blood-shot, wispy faux lashes clumped with tears. A frown on her plump lips as her chest heaves and she looks at him with pure melancholy. It’s a sight that both fills Rafe with immense satisfaction but anger at who caused it. His baby bunny, who he would forever keep bound to him —regardless of her relationship to his wife.

His demeanor immediately softened, a mocking coo falling from his pink lips as his large hands reached out and grasped her smaller body against his. Both palms cupping her sticky, wet cheeks as he rubs his nose against hers softly. Watching as her clumped, faux lashes flutter shut and she whines. Falling into him once more and fisting her hands into his already crumpled button up. A fresh batch of tears making their trail down her flushed face as whines turn into pitiful sobs —clinging onto the only lifeline she knows.

“Sh, sh, sh,” he consoled —pressing soft kisses to her lips, tip of nose, forehead and then finally both cheeks. Face manipulated in his grip as she pushes herself deeper into him. It’s when he kisses her cheeks, that his chest burn again with his intoxicating desire for her. The taste of her salty tears against her lips satisfying the twisted darkness inside him. Lightly bringing the tip of his tongue out to lick a new drop that fell. Groaning when it hit his tongue; her despair a drug to him.

Yeah, sure Rafe hates the way her mom treats her. Manipulates her and leaves her daughter’s head constantly fuzzy with stress. But only because he feels that he’s the one who’s entitled to treating her that way. Not her mother, not her family, not her friends or any lovers he’ll ensure she never has. No. Only him. Because she was made just for him to destroy and he’ll be damned if anyone else does.

His baby who he wants to breakdown with her malleable compliance to him. Break her entirely into his sad, little doll that wouldn’t be able to breathe without him. His brainless little girl, who would let him exploit her to his heart desires. Manipulated at his whim, never anyone else’s. His prized possession he’ll keep locked away and submitted next to him while he breaks her down day by day into nothing but his devotee. Making sure she never misunderstands her place in life —to be his brainless, little fuckdoll. Forever and always.

“Don’t cry, hmm. At least not this way.” He taunts with a small chuckle. Watching as she looks deep into his darkened gaze. And the look in her pretty eyes is all the confirmation he needs to know her has her. Not matter what. Pure resignation and undiluted adoration filling the large pool of her iris’s. Her eye color disappearing with the enhancement of her pupils as she looks at him with something that a follower would look at the God they worshipped if he came to stand directly in front of them. He would be everything she’ll ever know.

“That’s it, sweet girl.” He cooes sweetly, bringing his right arm to wrap around her back and his left hand to wrap harshly around her throat. Hearing her breathy gasps as her brows furrow and she lets him cut off her air supply. “The only reason you should be crying is because of me. Not your mom, not anyone else. Me. I want you to save those pretty little tears, you’re gonna need them when I show you how I can really make you cry.” His grip tightens, a wicked smile plastering along his features as he watches her eyes flutter shut and her small fist banging against him to let her breathe. He wants her to know that she only breathes because he allows it.

When Rafe sees her eyes flutter once more with a sign that she’s falling into unconsciousness —does he finally loosen his grip. Watching as her pretty lips widen and she gasp air deeply into her chest. Coughing and gathering herself until she’s back to. Her cries returning with a force as she sobs, letting him pull her into his chest and ruin his white button up with her tears. Swaying them side to side as she weeps into his chest. Deep, twisted triumph filling Rafe’s entire body as she does exactly what he wants. Kissing the top of her head and then nuzzling his cheek against it while her hands come to pull him closer to her and grip the back of his shirt. Hanging onto her lifeline.

It’s when they heard a loud thump, does Rafe’s head turn to the side to eye whatever caused it behind him. His wife standing there, her bag having dropped with a purposeful force on the floor as she takes in the scene in front of her. The twisted feeling in her gut and her resentment toward her daughter deepening as her deepest suspicions are confirmed. All those soft moments, all those borderline incestual touches and gazes. All those crossed boundaries —finally showing what they truly were in front of her.

Her gaze full of pure repugnance as she watches this twisted display of love. Her daughter gazing over her stepfather’s shoulder with a look that left her stunned. Her daughter’s manicured hand releasing his shirt and coming up to grip the back of his strong neck, standing on the tips of her manicured toes as she lifts herself to his level. Whining to him for his attention once more which he gladly grants after glaring at his wife. Pressing her lips to his with haste the moment he faces her as his tongue shoves deep into her mouth. His hand coming to grip the back of her head and keep her pressed right against him as he dominates her once more.

As he dominates her in front of her mother —and leaves no room for questioning at the new regime of Tannyhill. Imploring her again to know her place once and for all.

And it’s when they hear the front door slam shut, does Rafe disconnect their lips. A string of saliva keeping them together as she whines and seeks him out once more, his hand coming to grip her face to hold her back as he lets out a teasing scoff. Watching her eyes look back into his once more, no sign of anything but thoughts of him in her gaze.

“You know your place. And now she does too. Get your ass upstairs. Want you naked, face down in the sheets by the time I come up, princess. Go on.”

He sends her off with a harsh smack to her ass after her turns her around, shoving her forward and toward the staircase as her brain goes into autopilot and her body moves by the will of his words. One thing replaying in her mind over and over again.

Yes, daddy.

⋆⁺‧₊☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊ ☽⋆⁺‧₊

a/n: want him to use & abuse me so bad. I will be releasing my ‘Euphoria’ AU soon so if anyone would liked to be on the taglist please feel free to comment or message my inbox.

[checkeredflagggs]

The Story of Us: Chapter 4

pairing: logan sargeant x famous!fem!singer

summary: logan and you have been keeping a secret from everyone but it might be time for it to come out

a/n: while I do my best on most of my works to be race neutral, this one is very very very self indulgent 🤷🏻‍♀️

a/n2: this is part 4 of 5, which will be released when they’re finished and I’m using pretty much everything from Taylor Swift

a/n3: I still don’t understand instagram so - no one but those that follow you can see a private accounts comments (even on a public post). Also I still hate twitter so I’ve replaced it with Bluesky.

a/n4: Also timelines? Never heard of them. This is set in 2024 but I’ve moved Miami to before Australia and changed some of the results of races.

a/n5: sorry this one took so long! Been dealing with some stuff

Masterlist | Taglist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Valentine’s Day

y/n

liked by logansargeant, charles_leclerc, carlossainz55, oscarpiastri, and 17,824,192 others

y/n: the vault is open and it’s treasures are yours.

In the process of writing and polishing up my albums, certain songs have been put aside, treasured but not shown the light. Now it’s time that changed — time for the secrets to come out.

view all comments

user1: oh my god yes

↳user2: banger after banger after banger

↳user1: as always!

oscarpiastri: why must I suffer…

↳logansargeant: 🤣🤣

↳landonorris: I don’t like your tone young man

↳oscarpiastri: you are 2 years older than me

↳landonorris: respect your elders!

↳oscarpiastri: whatever you say old man

↳oscarpiastri: as long as you stop squawking about the garage trying to sing

↳user3: so brutal…

↳landonorris: YOU MUPPET

user4: FAVORITE SONG? And if it isn’t All Too Well (10 minute version) you’re wrong

↳user5: Electric Touch!

↳charles_leclerc: timeless!

↳maxverstappen1: say don’t go

↳user6: babe!

↳pierregasly: is it over now?

↳carlossainz55: you all over me

↳lilymhe: Slut!

↳user7: better man obviously

↳alex_albon: Mr. Perfectly Fine

↳alexandrasaintmleux: when Emma falls in love

user8: she still has the grid all up in her comments…

↳logansargeant: they were fighting in the group chat on who’s the biggest fan

↳user8:😂😂 drag them!

↳alex_albon: mate…

↳logansargeant: it was 3:30 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep because of your stupid fight idk anymore

user9: this is the best thing happening so far this year

↳user10: right? Better then some sitcoms

user19: secrets come to light!?!?

↳user53: they’re totally gonna reveal themselves soon right?

↳user19: within the week is my guess!!!

↳user11: you guys are freakishly in sync

Private Messages, Logan and y/n

f1gossip

liked by logansargeant, landonorris, estebanocon and 92,913 others

tagged: georgerussell63, lewishamilton, landonorris, oscarpiastri, estebanocon, pierregasly, maverstappen1, hulkhulkenburg, kevinmagnussen, alex_albon, logansargeant, carlossainz55, charles_leclerc

f1gossip: I Can See You…talking about y/n and her newest album! The fanstage this weekend at Imola was full of people asking the drivers their thoughts on y/n, her newest album, the Eras tour, and even their thoughts on her emerging relationship!

view all comments

user12: one of the best fan stages ever

user13: worth getting up at the ass crack of dawn to watch

user14: I think you mean it was full of them getting asked a tangentially related question and yapping nonstop about her until someone managed to cut in?

↳user15: thank god I wasn’t the only to catch that…

↳user14: you’d have to be blind deaf and dumb to miss is…

↳user16: that’s describing about 50% of the grid when talking or thinking about y/n then…

↳user14: 😂😂😂

user17: poor Oscar, Logan, and Nico looked so done

↳user18: if the past is to be believed, Oscar probably spent the last week listening to Lando try to belt out the entire album…

↳user20: oh dear 🤣

↳user18: and as user19 says…Logan has been dealing with the grid and their girlfriends flirt with his girlfriend for a couple of months now.

↳user19: I vote he just goes bowling this weekend. Knock them all out liked by not_y/n, not_logan, not_oscar

user19

liked by user53, user, user and 18,012 others

user19: I’m guessing the Logan and y/n relationship reveal is happening very very VERY soon. Tonight all of y/n’s outfits were of the blue variety (excluding, of course, the reputation bodysuit and Red combos). I’m guessing she wore blue to publicly support Logan (especially after that shit vowles pulled in Australia). My guess is this weekend — after tonight she has a 5 day break (enough time to jet over to Italy for Sunday’s race and still make it back for the start of the New York shows)

view all comments

user21: I believe it

↳user22: after the last few months of following along with the crazy conspiracy theories…yeah I do too

↳user19: y’all should have just believed me in the first place!

user23: if she shows up at Imola, I’m gonna scream!

↳user24: imagining her as a wag…

↳user25: let’s be real — Logan is still the wag in that relationship 😂😂

↳user24: that’s true!

user26: oh my god I can’t wait! My family has been Williams Racing fans for years — even more fans to join the family

↳user27: oh I can’t wait for her fans to drag vowles through the mud…

↳user26: …yes that’s also a big plus. He desperately needs an attitude adjustment

Bluesky

user28: SHE JUST CHANGED RHE LURICS

↳user29: FOR REAL????

↳user28: FOR REAL!!!

user30: my stream cut!! what happened!!!!

↳user31: SHE CHANGED TBE LYRICS!!!

↳user30: what lyrics???

↳user31: Karma! “Karma is the guy on the tracks coming straight home to me”

↳user30: OH MY GOD

user19: I WAS RIGHT. I KNEW IT. ITS HAPPENING!!

↳user53: congrats baby!!

↳user32: WAIT WHAT

↳user33: BABY??? YOU GUYS ARE DATING NOW??

not_oscar: oh my god this is like throwing fire on gasoline…

↳not_y/n: oh yeah prepare yourself. I’m coming to Imola

↳not_lilyz: really??

↳not_y/n: yes! Want me to stop in England?

↳not_lilyz: please!

↳not_oscar: I’ll set a ticket aside for you lily liked by not_lily

↳not_logan: oh I can’t wait

↳not_y/n: …it’s been a long time coming?

↳not_oscar: ugh

↳not_y/n: come on it was right there!! liked by not_logan, not_lilyz

user34: omg i literally can’t wait for Imola now!!

↳user35: she’s gonna slay it!

y/n

liked by lilyzneimer, oscarpiastri, yoursister, and 19,283,913 others

tagged: logansargeant

y/n: I’ve loved you for 14 summers now but I want them all.

view all comments

user36: oh my god

↳user37: 14 YEARS

logansargeant: you’ll have them all

↳y/n: just like I planned

↳user38: because you’re a mastermind?

↳y/n: 😊😊

↳logansargeant: MY mastermind

↳user39: oh you guys are the type to be publicly gross aren’t you

↳oscarpiastri: yes

alex_albon: WHAT

lilymhe: Oh dear…

alexandrasaintmleux: 😳😳

iamrebeccad: Oh!

user40: ok now that this is out of the way…release the baby photos please

↳y/n: 😊😉

↳logansargeant: what??? NO

user19: hem hem??

↳user41: yes yes yes. You’re right, we’re wrong

↳user41: BUT COUPLE OF THE YEAR HERE!!

user42: never thought I’d be involved in something that broke the internet…

user43: ARE YOU GUYS MARRIED &/OR ENGAGED???

↳y/n: No we’re not

↳logansargeant: yet

↳y/n: 😳😳

Private Messages, the Grid (Unserious)

y/n

liked by logansargeant, oscarpiastri, and 17,284,824 others

tagged: logansargeant, williamsracing

y/n: Imola you are so beautiful — thank you for treating my man right.

Logan, my love, congratulations on the points. It was lovely to see you chase your dream

comments have been restricted on this post

logansargeant: it was one of the best days of my life having you here. thank you for coming out in the middle of your tour

↳y/n: there is nowhere else I’d rather be than right by your side

↳y/n: no matter where that might be

oscarpiastri: it was good to see you again!

↳y/n: you as well Oscar! And congrats on the podium — it was a well deserved 2nd place

lilyzneimer: thanks for the ride! It was good to catch up with you again

↳y/n: it’s always a good day when I get to talk to you Lily!

yoursister: ummm some warning next time! That’s 2 times now — I wanna go to a race too!

↳y/n: next time for sure

↳y/n: I have breaks for Montreal or Silverstone?

↳yoursister: or both?

↳logansargeant: both please!

Private Messages, y/n

Taglist

@anamiad00msday @suns3treading @daniskywalkersolo @awritingtree @justheretoreadthxxs @coral7161 @lost4lyrics @mastermindbaby @freyathehuntress @angelluv16 @nichmeddar @mxm47max @justaf1girl @a-beaverhausen @tallrock35 @elizamoe133 @imlonelydontsendhelp @jessica3478 @il0vereadingstuff @msimpala-67 @Americanvenom13 @taylorrrrrrrrrrswiftttt @widow-cevans @1-of-my-many-obsessions @theendofthematerialgworl

[meowrimo]

SLOW MORNINGS — ༉‧₊˚.

ft. kuroo tetsuro !

꒰ SYNOPSIS ꒱ : after two years, you finally agreed to move in with kuroo and after your first night together, kuroo reflects on his perspective of love — and how much you’ve influenced it.

꒰ CONTENTS ꒱ : fluff, fluff, fluff ! — WC : 1k

꒰ NOTES ꒱ : this was lost in the abyss on kuroosdarling but i rescued this cheesy lil piece. enjoy !! dividers by @/cafekitsune ᰔ

reblogs and interactions are always appreciated ! (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ᰔ*.ﾟ

love was something kuroo always found in fiction.

whether it would be from the stories his grandmother used to read to him as she tucked him into bed, her sweet voice filling his mind with a longing desire to one day have even a fraction of that love.

or in the books his father swore he didn’t own but yet somehow found themselves nestled in between the self help and business books that collected dust on his bookshelf. the tattered covers showing signs of wear and tear that could only come from a devoted reader.

but he never thought he’d make it here and experience a moment like this for himself. he never thought that this was something he’d ever even want at all. relationships had always been pushed back into the far corner of his heart, the fear from his parents ultimate brutal destruction overshadowed his desire for it.

so he never chased after love.

but then you chased after him. and he couldn’t help but welcome you in his arms. you were everything he never thought he needed. you brought peace and serenity into his life. kept him grounded, balanced but still somehow always knew how to push his buttons and keep him on his toes at the same time.

you were the perfect partner for him.

the day he met you, he had no idea how much you were going to infiltrate his life. you went behind enemy lines, storming towards his heart all without making a noise. the perfect stealth attack that left him questioning if he ever had any defenses to begin with.

but he supposed that all boiled down to a simple fact. he could act blind all he wanted, but his soul knew better, for it was the very thing that led you right into his heart, letting you steal it and make it yours.

he was just happy that it was finally in safe hands.

it all brought him crashing down to this moment — seeing your toothbrush innocently sitting next to his in the little ceramic glass by the bathroom sink. the little reminder that showed he shared his space with someone, actually letting them into every crevice of his heart. the thought had him getting a little emotional at 6 in the morning.

because he could easily look over to his right, through the opened bathroom door and see you still peacefully asleep in his bed — your shared bed. and it warmed his heart to no end.

as if you could sense his thoughts, you shift awake, watching him as he stared back at you.

“morning tetsu.” you whisper into the otherwise silent apartment. it took him a second to process the words as they spilled from your lips, watching as you slowly get up and stretch in a way that reminded him of a cat when they first rise from their slumber.

“morning sweetheart.” he smiles, his toothbrush haphazardly hanging out of the side of his mouth. you giggled at the sight, causing his grin to spread wider — wide enough for it to slip out of his mouth and into his hand. his reflexes from volleyball always came in handy when he needed it most. but he supposed he still looked like a fool in front of you — you just had that effect on him.

“you still asleep in there or something?” you ask, teasing him as you wander into the bathroom, wiping some toothpaste off his cheek before wrapping your arms around his bare waist.

“tell me, is it possible to get too much beauty sleep? because you’ve never looked more gorgeous.” he murmurs back, his large hand covering yours as he held your gaze in the mirror. he relished in the flustered expression you tried to hide as your face burrowed between his shoulder blades.

“so cheesy this early? my oh my, we’re off to a good start.” you giggle, your lips pressing against his bare back as the sound escapes you, sending chills all throughout him.

“you better believe it.” he smirks, happily leaning back into your touch. “how’d you sleep?”

“i slept great.” you poke your head out from behind him, smiling as you met his gaze in the mirror once again. it was hard for him not to immediately match your smile, the light in your eyes already brightening the dawn of the day. so he didn’t bother to fight it as his lips lifted upward. “our first night together in the apartment.”

“our apartment.” he quickly corrected, his palm patting your hand soothingly.

“our apartment.” you repeat. you pivot so you’re next to him, lightly bumping his hip with yours so he’d step to the side, giving you some room in the cramped space. you reach over and grab your toothbrush, the very one he was so caught up in only moments ago.

the quiet space now filled with life as you start your morning routine. he resumes brushing his teeth, watching each step you take.

how could something so mundane fill him with such joy?

your pretty eyes meet his in the mirror once again as you start brushing, slightly widening them in surprise under his watchful gaze.

and you were just so cute, sleep still clinging onto your sweet features as if you were internally fighting to stay awake. the two of you had plenty of sleepovers prior to you moving in, but this felt different.

this was the start of your lives together.

and it made him happy. so happy that he couldn’t help but chuckle, watching your face scrunch up at the strong minty toothpaste he used.

you couldn’t hold back your laughter either, lovingly looking at him through the mirror as your shared giggles fill the room.

if this was the first day to the rest of your lives together, he knew it would be filled with nothing but love. the kind of love he thought only existed in cliche movies and sappy poems. the kind in the bedtime stories his grandmother would read to him. the kind he found between the annotated pages of his father’s books.

but he found all of that within you, the love of his life.

thank you so much for reading :3

[kazusys]

౨ৎ i can be a better boyfriend than him.

after being stood up again, you call upon your best friend to come pick you up. / fluff / no cw / other: college/modern au (❕) a/n: little appetizer before i work on something big… for @aritsukemo. this isn’t your whole gift/request btw! thanks for being the sweetest! :D

characters included: scaramouche

wc: ~1.1k words

it’s so cold.

the rain is really coming down now, but you still can’t bring yourself to make an effort to cover yourself up. the wet feeling of your clothes sticking to your skin makes you feel as if you’re stuck, turned to stone and permanently inert.

you wondered if your boyfriend, who had stood you up, was worried. worried that you were caught in this weather, worried about you, because even though this is the fifth time he’s done this, maybe he just… forgot. again. because he’s busy. because of his late parties. because he’s out with others, forgetting his loyalties and embracing a stranger more than he’d ever with you.

and to think you dressed yourself up this much, this long— only for the loser you did it for to not even show.

your eyes were so blurred and unfocused that it was hard to process the two feet in front of you and the ceased piercing drops of rain against you.

“you really are stupid.”

the voice makes you tilt your head up. you force words out of your dry mouth. “…you came.”

“of course i did. what else would i have done?” scaramouche scoffs. he then gives a long sigh. “…i told you so. i told you that he was bad news.”

you want to hit him for saying something so obvious and obnoxious now of all times, even if it was true, but instead you nod as he comes closer, draping his coat around you. it was warm and cozy, making you put your arms through the sleeves with a little bit of his help.

you also didn’t respond in any way because of the soft way he spoke those words. an underlying worry and care coated his sentences, a voice you seldom heard him use with others.

he offers a hand to you. taking it, you let him carefully guide you up. then, hand in hand, you walk together to his car.

his grip on yours is firm, but not suffocating; paired with how close you two are under the umbrella, you silently hope that you’re not the only one who’s a bit happy with how things are heading.

“scara?” you wince at the way your voice croaks.

he hums as a response.

“…thank you.”

you see a small smile forming on his face as he nods in acknowledgment.

you slightly roll your eyes. “stop being nonchalant and just say ‘you’re welcome.’”

you feel him peer at you. “you’re welcome. happy?”

having reached the vehicle, scaramouche opens the passenger door for you.

you go to step in before hesitating. “won’t i ruin your sea—”

“no,” he cuts in, “just sit.”

although you feel a twinge of guilt at sitting and dampening the seat, you can’t deny how comfortable it is compared to the bench you were sitting on earlier.

you watch scaramouche enter the car, his form having not escaped the total onslaught of the downpour, although there’s much less on him than you. but there’s enough for you to notice, with how his hair and clothes stick and the way he looks with droplets running down his body.

he near slams the door. you can tell from that that he’s annoyed.

you turn to watch raindrops race down the window as he turns on some music to fill the silence. he keeps it at low volume though, so you take the opportunity to talk.

“i’m sorry. i should’ve believed you sooner when you said that… he was a piece of scum. if i had followed what you said… maybe none of this would’ve happened.”

“not your fault,” he shrugs. “not your fault he’s blind to what’s in front of him. ignorant people like him are hard to change.”

you nod along to what he’s saying as he runs his fingers through his hair.

you’ve always known scaramouche, one of your closest friends, to be attractive. maybe too attractive for his own good. combined with his intelligence and athleticism, it’s a recipe for a big ego.

he’s self aware. but underneath all his bites, you dug out a heart that cares, sympathizes, and (although you don’t realize it yet) beats hard for you.

as the night sinks in, you feel your own emotions surfacing, a soft, soft feeling resting on your own heart.

“your ex was the worst. the most insufferable, pathetic human of his kind.” you heard scaramouche murmur. “don’t believe that any of this is your fault.”

“i know. thank you, again.”

”it’s no problem.” looking outside, you see that you’re already in the parking lot of your apartment building. “come on, i’ll walk you.”

the rain stopped somewhere along the ride, so the earthy scent always following overtook the air as you followed in tow.

it was peacefully quiet going up to your apartment door. although you had lots on your mind, you decided against sharing.

having been elsewhere in your focus, you bumped into scaramouche when he came to a stop.

“sorry,” you muttered, taking out your keycard. “i…”

you pause, trying to articulate something.

“…oh, here. i almost forgot.” you start to take off the jacket he gave you, only to be stopped by his hands on your shoulders, keeping it in place.

“keep it. since it seems as if you don’t possess any jackets of your own given that you were out dressed…” he eyes you subtlety, “…inadequately. check the weather next time, moron. or do you need me to teach you how to use your own phone?”

“i did check the weather for your information, but…” you trail off.

you don’t see it, but his eyes soften as he takes you into his arms, hugging you so nicely that you feel like crying right there. you resist the urge and instead hug him back, the warmth of his body cradling you.

“…stop lowering your standards for dregs like him. you obviously deserve better, so quit thinking as if you don’t.”

your eyes widen at the next sentence he utters under his breath.

“i could be a better boyfriend than him.”

and he leaves your arms, stepping back.

you’re left dumbfounded. it’s as if the world became clearer, more sharpened. you yell at yourself to find your footing.

you tackle him in a hug and less-than-perfect kiss. but in that moment echoed all the hidden feelings you could never express through words to live up to its sentiment.

he cards through your hair as his other hand finds itself at the small of your back, holding you close as the years of pining came to a close.

and as you part, you find yourself wishing you had had scaramouche as your lover much sooner.

©️kazusys — 24/12/24; do not plagiarize/steal, repost, translate, and/or claim any of my works as your own.

[chrissv4mp]

♫ YOU'LL ALWAYS BE A DUMB BLONDE

⋆ warnings. angst, mentions of self-harm, mentions of suicidal ideation, mental health struggles, hate comments, toxic fame, language.

⋆ synopsis. billie's getting older, more mature. guess that means she's gotta cut her blue hair off.

⋆ words. 3.4k

⋆ letters. this is either really good or really bad sooo idk, have fun reading & please keep the warnings in mind!

you remember the way her hair caught the setting sun that one day during the middle of summer—bright but not blinding, dark but not mistaken as black, just something... her.

billie's phone sat beside your head, your limbs sprawled out in the half-dead grass of some field in the middle of nowhere. billie just told you to keep driving, and you did—that's how you ended up here. her phone played some old beatle's song, just loud enough for billie to hear from a few feet away.

she was only seventeen, still a kid finding her way—figuring out if music was what she wanted to do the rest of her life, or if she should pick up dance again. a loose shirt fell over her shoulder, the breeze hit her skin, cooling her for just a second in the warm air of california.

a quiet thud caught your attention, head snapping over in the direction of the noise—only to be met with the sight of billie laying on her stomach, face in the grass.

she cackled a second later, rolling onto her back and looking up at the sky. hues of orange, pink, and blue were hidden behind the clouds, the sun quickly setting behind the mountains.

"d'you think i'll still be like this when i'm twenty?" billie asks suddenly, not looking at you as she reached out her hand to the sky.

you cock an eyebrow, sitting up on your elbows and chuckling softly, "blue haired and dramatic? absolutely."

billie scoffs playfully, brows furrowing as she scoots over to you, shaking her head and tossing a light-hearted glare your way.

"no, i mean... this lost. like i don't even know if i wanna go to college or not," billie hums, sighing softly and looking behind you at the open fields that went on for miles.

you straighten up quickly, tilting your head at her comment, "you're not lost, bil. you're just... still trying to figure yourself out. so is everyone else our age. that doesn't mean we're all lost, does it?"

billie glances at you again, taking a moment to process your words before she ultimately shrugs and nods slowly, laying back on the grass beside you.

the following minutes were spent in comfortable silence—and an occasional buzz from billie's phone. but then it just kept going, the notifications kept on coming in and with a frustrated sigh, billie sat up and reached over your body to grab her phone, pausing the music.

"i swear, if it's some stupid..." billie trails off upon seeing the real cause of the endless buzzing.

you notice the change in her demeanor and facial expression almost immediately, her shoulders tensing as she dragged her lip in between her teeth. her fingers twitched around the device, and she just kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling—until you reached out and placed a gentle hand on her bicep.

her eyes drifted to you, the spark from earlier slowly fading as she bit her lip harder. a sigh of exasperation fell from between her full lips, her eyes shutting briefly.

"what is it?" you ask cautiously, sitting up so you could see her at eye-level.

billie shook her head tiredly, "just more stupid comments." she locked it. placed—more like threw—it face down on the grass. but not before you saw the words "childish" and "immature" flash on her screen in big letters.

"another one of those dumb hate pages?" you scoff, feeling your fists subconsciously clench tight, "fuck them, nobody's even paying attention to it."

though, by billie's silence, you knew it was quite the opposite. she dropped her hands slowly into her lap, fingers still twitching like she wanted to grab onto something to ground herself.

her silence was too long to be considered normal.

you reached out to brush a stray strand of hair away from her face, fingers brushing against her cheek softly, "billie."

"no, it's all good," she says, brushing it off quickly, "they're right anyway. i am getting older, and the blue's gotta go sooner or later."

"but that doesn't mean it has to go now," you interrupt, "or ever, if you wanna keep it that way. if it makes you happy, who cares what they say?"

"i'm almost eighteen, dude." she laughs, but it's bitter. "this shit isn't gonna cut it any longer. my childish attitude, the way i dress. it's just—it's not—fuck."

your chest tightened at how upset she'd gotten herself. you knew she was changing. it was written all over her body—the taller frame, the sharper cheekbones, the way her eyes didn't sparkle the way they used to when a song came on that she loved. but that wasn't her fault. the media wanted her to be someone else before she was even done being herself.

"you don't have to change for them," you say, tone firm. "that's not how it works."

but she didn't answer, which began to be a common theme in your relationship after that point.

and i tried to hold her,

but it didn't really last long.

she's getting older,

i guess she's gotta cut her blue hair off...

"night," billie had told you, turning her back to you on her ride of your bed. she hadn't shut her eyes, didn't even try to get comfortable or move the pieces of hair that were tickling her face.

she just laid there and hoped you believed that she had gone to sleep. and you did, because you'd been believing it ever since the night you and billie had that conversation in the dead field.

but now, at the dark and uncomfortable time of two a.m., she was standing in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror and picking apart each of her features and personality traits that seemed childish, or stupid, or immature, or... her.

her blue hair looked more like a pale green in the dim, natural light of the night. she didn't bother turning on the lamp when she stepped in, not wanting to disrupt you and make you worry about her sleep schedule or well being.

billie bit her lip, heart stopping when she felt a lump in throat beginning to form. her hands clenched at her sides, eyes barely holding back the tears that threatened to form.

she was crying over nothing.

but nothing started to mean everything.

just the sight of herself after that night made her sick. every time she walked into a studio for a photoshoot or an interview and she saw her face on the magazines and tv, it made her want to scream, to tear down the posters and bash the screens.

the hate had only gotten stronger after that particular hate page began to surface. she saw more and more start popping up after their third post, and then it just spiraled from there.

when someone anonymous made a tiktok account with multiple posts telling her she should just hide away and die, it finally got to her. she couldn't take it anymore.

so, she clumsily reached around in every cabinet of your bathroom to find a pair of scissors. a sharp pain coursed through her fingertip when she reached in a cabinet of the far left of the counter, a hiss of pain escaping her.

it subsided quickly, though. and she couldn't be quicker to grab it and shut the cabinet with a quiet thud of the wood.

she glanced over into the bedroom through the small crack of the door, noticing that you'd rolled over onto her side of the bed. she just hoped you didn't notice her disappearance.

the blade pressed against her skin without her even noticing, eyes snapping back to her wrist only to see that she was applying pressure to her skin with the sharp metal.

her mind drifted, her heart pounded, and her breath hitched.

"billie!"

she flinches—no, she jumps. really jumps, like she was waking up underwater—when the lights turn on. her hand jolted, the razor scraping against her skin before it slipped from her fingers and onto the floor with a dull clatter. little droplets of blood surrounded it. not much—but enough for you to know exactly what she had done to herself.

you grab her wrist instantly, eyes wide. your mind was rid of any sleepiness or grogginess you might've felt before, the sheer panic running through your system enough to wake you fully.

blood was slowly trickling down her wrist, her skin jumping up in irritation from the scrape that followed after you startled her.

your voice was trembling, somewhere caught between frustrated and terrified. "what the fuck are you doing?" you whispered, chest rising and falling like you'd just sprinted a whole mile.

not a word came from billie.

you should've expected it, but right now? in this scenario?

you couldn't believe she had nothing to say.

her lips parted, dry and cracked, but nothing came out. her eyes were wide and glossy, like she was just as surprised as you were—but the tears didn't fall. not yet, anyway.

you reached over to the counter and grabbed a handful of paper towels, quickly pressing them against billie's cut and watching her attentively to see if you were hurting her further. you could feel her racing pulse even through the paper towels, could almost feel the way it skipped a beat.

"i didn't mean to—" billie gasps, like she only just learned how to breathe again. "i wasn't really gonna do it, i just—"

"you were, and you did, billie." you say, voice gentle but firm, leaving no room for billie to argue back. your heart broke.

then she tore her arm from your grip, stepping away entirely and beginning to search the cabinets for the scissors again. you furrow your brows in confusion and frustration, trying to reach out for her. but she pushed you away again.

with her quick, frantic movements, she was quick to find them. and, without any hesitation, began to cut wildly at the ends of her hair like she'd die if she went any slower.

"so stupid," she mutters under her breath, grabbing fistfuls of her hair, cutting them off one after another.

you stepped toward her again, and this time she didn't move back. she only paused her motions and looked at you in the mirror, "billie..."

"i don't wanna be her anymore." she breathed, voice shaking. "the girl with the blue hair. the weird one. the kid who can't grow up."

that's when the tears finally began to fall, sliding down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. she sniffled, a low whine dying in the back of her throat as she let the scissors falls from her hands and onto the floor with a loud clatter.

and she cried over nothing,

so there was nothing i could do

to stop her from cutting

her beautiful blue hair off...

her knees weakened, and she let herself sit on the edge of the bathtub, mind spiraling, body numb.

you slowly drop to your knees, the soft rug making the pressure lighter on your skin. your hands come up to rest on billie's own knees, drawing imaginary circles on her kneecaps.

"you still think i'm pretty?" billie murmurs through sniffles, eyes flicking to yours for barely a second before flicking back to the razor on the floor.

a soft chuckle slips past your lips. there was an obvious answer, but billie didn't know that. so, you scoot closer and pull her hands into yours, squeezing comfortingly.

"of course i do." you reply quietly, eyes trailing over the way blood seeped into the sleep shorts she'd stolen from you, "you'd be pretty even if you went bald, bil."

she laughed at that, a small, bashful grin turning up on her dry lips. you leaned up to kiss them, hands slipping away from hers to cup her face and bring her closer. she melted into you instantly, sighing softly, contently.

it was quiet after you pulled away, pressing your forehead against billie's and just taking in her presence. holding her. but then she stood up suddenly and walked back over to the counter, causing you to fall back to sit on your heels.

you stand up upon seeing billie lean over the counter and toy around with her hair. that's when she spoke.

"i think i wanna go blonde," billie whispers, voice genuine.

and now you're back at square one.

"not just the ends, though. the whole thing." she adds, glancing at you through the mirror with a soft, hopeful smile.

you exhaled slowly—not angry, just... sad.

because you knew what that meant. it wasn't just a color.

not for her, at least.

it was her way of finally surrendering. her way of saying that the media had won. it was a disguise. a way to shut out the version of herself that the internet had decided was too much, too childish, too loud, too her. it wasn't about wanting something new—it was about burying her old self.

"you don't have to do that, billie," you say gently.

she didn't reply. didn't even pay you any mind. she only picked up the razor and the scissors from the floor, setting them both in the sink before glancing back at you and walking out of the bathroom.

with every step, a blue strand fell from her head, making your heart shatter even more at the knowledge that her blue strands would be found everywhere in your room even after she dyed her hair again.

a reminder of the girl you lost.

there's really no way of winning,

if in their eyes,

you'll always be a dumb blonde...

you were scrolling half-awake under the covers when the notification hit your phone.

billie posted. your eyes drifted sleepily up to the top of your screen, thumb tapping on the notification out of habit before it went away. your breath caught.

not in a bad way, no, of course not.

it just caught you off guard—she was in the center of the photo, a light pink corset around her body, beige satin gloves that almost reached her shoulders, not smiling, not frowning, just staring into the camera, and most importantly, her hair was blonde. she was on the cover of vogue.

your thumb hovered over the screen, heart stuck somewhere between awe and ache. your eyes flit over to the caption.

billieeilish do whatever you want whenever you want. fuck everything else.

but you weren't the only one reading it.

there were hundreds of comments before it even reached the two minutes mark of being posted.

"damn, i liked her better when she wasn't trying so hard."

"blonde looks amazing on you!"

"crazy how fast she went from cool to just another dumb blonde."

"this isn't her. it's the industry."

"baggy clothing didn't work for the guys, now she's gotta go full on slut? pathetic."

"you guys seriously can never make up your minds. maybe she's finally free??? you guys are so weird."

the comments were a war zone. half of them applauding her for evolving, the other half clawing her apart like she'd just betrayed something sacred.

your frown deepens the more you scroll, suddenly not feeling very tired anymore. your fingers were twitching to type out responses, to argue that they didn't know anything about her.

then your doorbell rings.

and you know who it is immediately.

so you toss the covers off your body and let your phone get lost in the mess of the sheets before padding out of the room and down the hall until you get to the main room.

you unlock and open the door, only to be met billie. her blonde hair falling just above her shoulders, the porch light illuminating the little droplets of rain water on her face.

she steps into your house before you can even greet her, her breath already frantic and coming out in short, frustrated gasps for air.

"fuck," is all you hear when you shut the door and turn around to face her.

a loose hoodie was wrapped around her body, her hands pulling at the sleeves like they were cutting off circulation to her arms. her eyes were bloodshot, entire body trembling.

"bil, hey—hey, what happened?" you asked, stepping forward. but you knew. of course you knew.

but she backed away quickly, eyes shut tight and fists clenched at her sides.

"they're right," billie seethed, "they're fucking right—shit, i knew this was gonna happen. they think i'm a joke all over again, i knew—"

"billie slow down—"

"don't tell me to slow down," she snapped, eyes flicking to yours for a split second, "i can't—" her voice cracked, cutting her sentence short.

she pulled her hoodie over her head, tossing it onto the couch before pacing around wildly again. something still felt like it was suffocating her.

billie shook her head, looking down at her hands before clenching them back into fists, "i look ridiculous." but she didn't believe that. no, that's what they made her believe.

you tried to reach out again, taking a smaller step forward than the last. but she flinched back again.

"they're calling me names," she murmured, stopping in her tracks, "and it's more than before. some asshole said i looked like a dumb blonde." billie scoffed, "so what, i dyed my hair and now suddenly i'm a slut?"

she began pacing again—back and forth in the same spot—hands in her hair, tugging at the roots. her breath came quicker now, like the room was caving in on her.

"i hate this," billie whined. "i hate how this feels. like i'm not even in my own body. like everything i wear, everything i say—it's all wrong."

you finally stopped her, stepping in front of her so she couldn't go anywhere else. you grabbed her wrist, and she winced. but out of pain this time.

and i guess, i'll just miss her,

even though she isn't even really gone.

but things are just different

ever since she cut her blue hair off...

"billie, please stop," you begged softly. "you're gonna make yourself sick—"

"good, maybe they'll finally leave me alone," she spat, curling in on herself. "i never should've done this. i never should've posted it or even said yes to it in the first place. i should've stayed the same."

and that's when you finally snapped, the words slipping out instantly.

but you didn't mean for it to come out like that.

"i told you you didn't have to change!"

the words rang out like a slap in the face.

billie held her breath for a moment. the silence was so thick it made your ears ring, your heart pounding faster.

she looked at you. finally, really looked at you. and something behind her eyes shattered.

"so you think i changed too," she said, voice quiet now.

"that's not what i meant, billie, you know that." you argue.

"no, you did," she laughed, hollow. "you said it. you're exactly like them."

that made you drop her arm, fists clenching at your sides at her words, "no, i'm not."

"yeah, you are." she swallowed the lump in her throat, blinking back fresh tears, "you think i gave in. that i'm fake now. that i dyed my hair and put on some lace and stopped being yours."

"billie, stop."

"stop fucking telling me to stop!" she shouted, stepping back. "don't you get it? i was dying in that old version of me. i hated seeing myself on the big screens and in magazines. i hated looking in the mirror, hated even seeing myself in the reflection of the windows in my car. i hated the hiding. i hated how i never felt good enough. and now that i tried, now that i changed—everyone wants to kill me for it."

you walked toward her slowly, hands up like she might bolt away from you.

"i don't care what you wear, bil. i don't care what color your hair is. i just hate seeing you like this—tore to shreds over people who don't even know you."

billie's lower lip quivered.

"but they feel like they know me. they feel like they're entitled to me. they decide who i'm allowed to be."

"fuck them," you said, firm. "they don't get to decide anything. only you do."

she didn't say anything back. instead, she took a step forward and finally fell into your arms. her head hit your shoulder like a dropped weight, your hand slowly coming up to run through the tangled strands of her blonde hair.

you didn't say anything else.

because there wasn't anything that could fix it.

not now.

you just stayed there, holding her in your arms as her breathing slowed and her head nuzzled into your neck.

she was tired, trembling, torn apart.

but now all that you could do was help her find the way again. and hold her hand through it this time.

tags. @mseilishmwah @sophloveswomen @mxqdii @livvydunneness @vyntagess @wiidfi0wer33 @loving1dsworld @tan1shere @fallingforfalll2 @cierraonline @dandelions4us @scarlittt @ifwdominicfike @slxtarchive @stonerfromlesbos @bilsdillldough @47lake @hopingforgoodblogs @karaeilishh @mybluebossanova @sturnsmia @moralesluvr @justtr @greenbttrflyy @billsbaby @natbelovasblog @lottiepierce @northlndnisred @asterisk-eyes @dragoneyelashart @xxangelfarrlzxx @ilomiloblohshh @fawninlove @meliciousmel13 @jul3esz @rightarion @svelish @hkkuugu @eeuni

[lowkeyerror]

Death and Dinner

Rio Vidal x Reader

Word Count: 1.8k

Notes: Fluff, banter, minor angst, technically character death (you're dead), mentions of minor character death, more comfort than hurt, comedy aspects

Summary: You are Death's secretary. When she can't remember how you died, she convinces you to tell her over dinner.

An: This idea comes from that one person on tiktok that does the Death and Secretary skits I think you can find them @ FlickerSpark on tiktok.

Masterlist | Masterlist 2

The natural order of things can be very meticulous at times. While it may seem as though things just happen and the process is self-sufficient that is not always the case.

When it came to the process of dying, there were many steps to make it to eternal bliss or damnation or something in-between.

Death used to handle all of those pesky decisions on her lonesome, but eventually to make her job easier, she got a secretary.

Someone who could handle all the mundane aspects of the life cycle, so that all she had to do was collect the souls. It left the grim reaper with an abundance of free time to run amuck.

Rio loved to run amuck.

You hardly think she was Lady Death with all of the fun she had. There was nearly always a smile on her face, she always had something smug to say, she was something like a light. So bright that you could go blind just by looking at her.

“Y/n, how’s my 4 o’clock looking?”

Her presence startles you as it always does. Rio just likes to pop up unannounced rather than use the door.

You click a few things on your desktop, “Not that busy, but it seems like a lot of accidents. Slipped and fell with knife, choked on dinner, ingesting paint.”

“Ingesting paint does not sound like and accident,” Rio places her hand on her forehead.

You shrug, “All that to say you’re not dealing with the brightest bunch here.”

She groans, “I wish you could come with me on the pick-ups, you have way more patience than I do.”

“True.”

Rio scoffs playfully, “You were supposed to disagree.”

You roll your eyes at her, “Oh no Lady Death you are so patient and kind.”

She laughs at your sarcasm, “I’ll have you know I am very patient. Why do you think people get live past the age 30 now? When I was alive 30 was old, now we got people living past 100.”

You nod in faux-agreement, “Sure, if you say so.”

Rio narrows her eyes, “You’re not… you weren’t 30, right? When you died?”

It’s your turn to laugh, “No, I was not.”

She sighs in relief, “Whew, for a second there I thought-”

“I was 27,” you cut her off.

There aren’t many times that Death is left speechless, but this is one of them.

“And you died how?” She says after a long silence.

A small smirk plays on your lips, “You’re going to have to remember that one.”

“Y/n,” she whines. “People die all day, everyday.”

“But only one of those people is your secretary. Now go reap those empty headed souls, it’s 4,” you shoo her away

She points a finger at you, “This isn’t over.”

“Looking forward to it, you retort.”

When Rio leaves you’re somewhere in the back of her mind. She remembers picking you as her secretary in the 90’s? Maybe it was the 2000’s? There was definitely internet.

She remembers picking you because of how smart you were. Being cute definitely didn’t harm the decision making process. She remembers the confusion when she saw someone like you was supposed to float off in purgatory for eternity.

She comes back into the office when she’s done, opting to use the door for once. She put her elbow on the desk, so that head could rest in her palm.

“Did you kill yourself?”

You don’t look up from your keyboard, “Not exactly.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

You shrug, “The true kind.”

“You’re killing me baby,” Rio puts a dramatic pout on her face.

“Statistically improbable,” you finally look up at her.

Her eyes are scanning over your face, “Ok, clearly I don’t recall, but I want to know. How about, as a sorry for not remembering how you died, I take you out of this stuffy old office? We can get dinner and then you can fill me in on your passing.”

“That kind of sounds like date,” you point out.

Rio just counters, “It sounds like dinner.”

“I can agree to those terms.”

She smirks, “Let’s go then.”

“Right now?”

She extends her hand to you, “No better time than the present.”

You put your hand in hers, “I don't get to get ready?”

Rio’s eyes drag over your figure, “You look perfect, but if wardrobe is a big thing for you, I can take care of that.”

With your hand in her’s it’s hard to hide your blush. You can see the cocky smile on her face already forming.

“Let’s just go,” you avert your gaze from her.

With a snap of her fingers you’re at a restaurant table. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s nice enough to make you wish you’d changed.

“Worrying about your clothes and not having any questions about how you are on Earth again is pretty strange,” Rio whispers from across the table.

“Well in case you missed it I'm having dinner with Death. I feel like the rest is pretty self explanatory,” you toss back at her.

She sends you a lopsided smile, “Then you should trust me not to let you come to a place like this in a hoodie and jeans.”

You glare at her, “You said I looked perfect.”

You look down to find yourself in a more upscale outfit. Something that still felt soft and comfortable against your skin.

“You always look perfect to me,” she says it offhandedly, but there’s something there.

You don’t get a chance to answer before the waiter approaches the table. He’s speaking to you in French. Before you can work out what to say, Rio has ordered for the both of you and sent the waiter along with a joke that makes him chuckle.

“You speak French?”

“Honey I’m Death, I speak every language. Even the one’s that don’t exist anymore,” she teases you.

“So you remember forgotten languages, but not how your secretary died? Interesting.”

Rio pouts, “Did you ever tell me?”

You look at her slyly, “Maybe, maybe not? Shouldn’t you know regardless, I mean you were there.”

She rubs her temple, “I’m always there. For everyone.”

You take pity on her and sit back in your seat, getting a little more comfortable, “Tell me what you remember from when we first met.”

Rio recounts some details, “I remember that your soul was going to purgatory.”

You hum.

She continues, “You had to be wearing that hoodie. You literally wear it almost every day so I'm assuming it sentimental.”

You nod, “I was wearing the hoodie.”

Rio looks in your eyes, “Did you save someone?”

Your eyes turn a little glossy, “I’d like to think I did, but I died before I really knew for sure.”

The conversation doesn’t progress any further before the food comes. You’re grateful for the break. The two of you eat with lighter small talk sprinkled throughout the dinner.

When you’re done Rio pays and you leave the restaurant. You walk the streets together enjoying the fresh air on your skin. You don't remember the last time you felt it.

Rio’s hand slips into yours at some point. She’s cold, but that's nothing new. You always found her cool skin comforting.

She’s lead you to a small park. The wo of you sit on a bench. Her hand doesn't let go of yours.

“I remember now,” she breaks the silence.

You let out a heavy sigh, “A little brutal, but I did it to myself, I guess.”

Her eyes bore into yours, “No, you didn’t. You did it to save his life.”

You close your eyes to stop the tears from falling. You turn away from her. It might not help, but you can’t help it as you whisper, “Did I save him?”

It was a question you never knew the answer to. Something that haunted you relentlessly. Did you act fast enough to save your son?

“You did.”

Squeezing your eyes closed didn’t stop the tears from falling. He was okay. You had always hoped that when you pushed him out of the way, he survived. Part of you was skeptical, maybe you pushed him to hard or maybe it wasn’t fast enough. Hell maybe there was another car driving the wrong way on the one-way street.

“I always wondered if I had been quick enough,” there’s a small patch of relief in your voice.

“Life can be such a mysterious thing sometimes,” Rio murmurs.

You wipe at some of your tears, “Why do you say that?”

Rio gently lifts your face, just enough to swipe away your tears with the pad of her thumb, “I lost my son too.”

Your eyes soften for her, “You had a son?”

Rio smiles sadly, “Nicky was only 6 when I lost him.”

“Did you have to-”

She chuckles bitterly, “Of course, I did. I tried to make it as pleasant as possible for him. On the inside it felt like I was dying all over again. His mother never forgave me. I lost everything in one foul swoop.”

Everything is silent for a moment. There’s a heaviness blanketed over the both of you. Yet there is also some comfort knowing that neither of you is alone in this experience. She knows how you feel, and you know how she feels. Two sides of the same coin, with loss as the common denominator.

“I’m sorry, didn’t know that dinner would end in so many negative emotions,” you attempt to joke.

Rio leans into you, “Usually all the trauma comes long after the first date, but we’ve known each other awhile now.”

“Date, I thought you said it was dinner?”

She gets even closer, smiling when you don't back away, “Well it’s just dinner unless we kiss. If we kiss, then it’s date.”

“Is that so?”

Her eyes dart to your lips, “Last time I checked.”

This time you lean in, “Then what are you waiting for."

She doesn’t waste any time planting her lips against yours. It surprises you to find out her lips are warm. They’re plush like as the carefully mix with yours. You could lose yourself to the sensation.

“You know we could kiss forever. Neither of us need oxygen,” Rio breaks the kiss.

“Then why'd you stop?” You whine.

Rio kisses your cheek, “Because I'm a gentle woman, and this is the first date.”

“Well you have a gap around 2pm tomorrow. Let’s do lunch,” you suggest.

Rio smirks, “Trying to speed up the process, so you can get into my pants?”

You send her coy smile, “And if I was?”

Rio stands from the bench extending her hand to you, “Then I’d say I’m excited for our lunch date.”

You take her hand and she pulls you into her side. Her arm drapes over your shoulder. You nuzzle into her warmth.

“Me too.”

[ddejavvu]

wait your new hotch blurb got me thinking what about they got secretly married and everyone knows that hotch is married they just don’t know it’s to bau!reader because he seemed very genuine in the wanting privacy so (after complaining) they respected that, and maybe one of the team members sees hotch and bau!reader kissing in the hallway of a hotel or something and confront him about cheating on his wife

"How could you cheat on your wife?"

Penelope's harsh, degrading accusation hits Aaron directly in the chest, through the layers of stoicism that he's come to forge over the years of working in criminal investigation and straight to his heart.

All Hotch can manage is a, "What?", and Penelope's eyes dim further.

"Don't do that, Hotch. I saw you. I saw you and Y/N kissing in your office. How could you do that to your wife?"

She looks so crestfallen that Aaron's chest actually aches, so unprepared to see the famously bubbly Penelope Garcia close to tears. Close to tears because of him, no less.

Aaron might have chosen his words more carefully if he hadn't been so startled by Penelope's unusual devastation, but his jumbled brain forgoes its job and his mouth takes over, uttering the thoughtless statement, "That's- that's what she's there for."

And in his mind, it's true, if not the complete truth. You are there for him to kiss, you're there to be kissed and loved and appreciated and cherished, but he's momentarily forgotten that Penelope doesn't know that you and his mystery wife are the same person, and his words so easily warp into possessiveness and disregard.

Her face contorts into a mixture of disgust and rage that could take out a serial killer, and he seriously considers recruiting her as Chief Lecturer of the BAU, "Hotch? How- how could you say that? That your wife is just- just some thing to wait on you while you run off with someone else? You- Aaron, I can't believe you, I thought you were better than that!"

She tries storming away, tears budding in her eyes but Aaron catches her elbow, ignoring the way she flails and squirms at his touch.

"Let go of me!" She tearily demands, but he grabs her by the other arm now, holding both of her shoulders.

"No, Penelope, listen-" He tries, reminding himself to send her to Derek later for a self-defense lesson, because the weak shoves that she's pushing at his chest with do very little.

"No! No, I'm tired of listening to men," She shrieks, "You were supposed to be better than that, Aaron! I trusted you, you were supposed to be the kind of man that I could admire, and- but you're not! You're just like the rest of them, you're some egotistical, possessive, heavy-handed, domineering son of a-!"

"Y/N is my wife." Aaron cuts her off, his voice slightly raised, but not harsh. Never harsh, not to the sniffling mess of ruffles and glitter in his arms that handed him her resume on pink stationary all those years ago.

She falls silent, finally, but her lips still tremble. Aaron squeezes her arms tighter, not rough but comforting, "Y/N is my wife. We married privately late last year. We kept it secret for safety reasons, but I'll admit we didn't need to hide it from all of you. I was not cheating on my wife, I would never-" He thinks momentarily of Haley, of the gut-wrenching sound of her cell phone ringing with a call she wasn't brave enough to answer in front of him, "I would never do that to Y/N."

It's a lot of new information to process, and Aaron grants Penelope all the time she needs to work through it. When her red-stained lips part again she breathes, "You married Y/N?"

"I did." Aaron nods, and though it's not the time to smile, he can't help that a ghostly one flits over his features at the mere thought of the day he'd married you, "I'll show you pictures when we're done here. Penelope, you can trust me. I don't blame you for accusing me- in fact, I'm glad that you did. I'm glad that your loyalty isn't blind. But Y/N is my wife, and that's why I kissed her."

A very wobbly, "Oh." Is all that Penelope can manage, and she sniffles again, staring at his tie rather than his face as he holds her steady in the hallway. He's glad that they've both shown up early for the day, but you're due to return with coffee for the three of you any minute now, and he offers her his pocket square to wipe beneath her eyes.

"You said-" She chokes out sheepishly, voice unsteady as she smears the tears off of her cheeks, "You said you have pictures?"

That's how you find them when you return, seated on the couch in his office peering down at his phone. You have to set the tray you'd been carrying down on Aaron's desktop before you can properly greet either of them, but you're immediately alarmed by the tears streaked over Garcia's cheeks when she stands to face you.

"You-" She starts, not giving you a second to speak, "-are a rat! You got married," She gushes, and Aaron chuckles deeply from beside her, standing and pocketing his phone.

"You got married to our boss, and you told me nothing," She hisses, but slumps so easily into your chest for a hug that you're more than willing to give her.

"I'm sorry, Penny," You gush, squeezing her tight, "We just- we were worried about safety. The more people we told, the more dangerous it would become, so we didn't share it with anyone. But- but we should have told the team, I know."

She sniffles and you draw back to pick up her drink from behind you, sugary and pink and topped with a thick layer of whipped cream, "I got you a drink. Forgive me?"

"Reluctantly," She tries scowling, but she's never been very good at it. She takes the drink from you huffily, jamming the straw inside and taking a drag at the thick liquid. It's barely nine in the morning, far too early for the concoction she's sipping, but she nods after she draws back from the straw.

"This is delicious," She decides, "And you two are traitors, and I'm telling everyone about this."

"You should," Aaron laughs, stepping up behind you to press his shoulder to your own. It's comforting just having him there, and you relax against him as Penelope takes her leave.

"I mean it," She warns, wiping another stray tear from her cheek and sipping at her strawberry drink, "I'm telling everyone. I'm- I'm gonna hire some guy to fly a plane over the city, and the banner is gonna say, 'Y//N Y/L/N and Aaron Hotchner got married without me'."

"That's fair," You nod, not bothering to bite back a grin as she lingers in the doorway of Aaron's office.

"And so help me god," She narrows her eyes at you, once more falling just short of intimidating, "If you try to take some extended-sick-leave time, and I find out you're hiding a pregnancy from me? No amount of frappuccinos in the world will make up for it!"

"Noted," You call out as she leaves, and Aaron's hand comes up to press against the near-indiscernible bulge of your belly before the door even clicks shut.

"She's good." Aaron observes, and you reach for your own non-caffeinated drink with a grin that's hard to drink through.

"Let's tell her about the baby at lunch," You propose, "I think she's more than earned a secret to keep."