This side-by-side was built by the Rockford Desk and Furniture Co., which only existed from 1891-1895. I've found one singular other example of this cabinet, which was auctioned over a decade ago, and was stained a dark cherry color. I personally like the color of the quartersawn oak as it is, so I'm not planning a full restoration.
Wait I just realized this puts her in line of sight with my favorite chifforobe and I love how they look together. Very different periods and styles (art noveau vs art deco) but I feel like there's a dialogue there.
We are not judging the mess in my drawing room, that's a later problem. Work table all covered in nonsense...
"what if someone regrets transitioning" if you are 18 or over in free country usa you can walk into any tattoo parlor and ask for a tattoo that will be on your body forever and ever and ever and they will give it to you with the understanding that if you dont like the result or you regret it later that's your fucking problem and not theirs
Summary: You aren't a very competent stalker, but Tenna finds that endearing — so much so that he orchestrates a plan to show his appreciation.
Tenna had dealt with stalkers before — or more often than not, his security personnel and legal team had. It was usually harmless, just an annoyance or an inconvenience. Rarely, when he couldn’t track down the source of his missing boxers or the random camera flashes, it would unsettle him, but even then, things would get resolved after a few months. He was a high-profile celebrity, after all, and law enforcement worked their asses off to cater to him.
“Yes, I want a restraining order,” Tenna would announce dramatically when the perp was finally caught, his mind drifting to late-night crime dramas and docuseries. “Yes, I want to press charges.”
Oh, but it had been so, so long since that era, and now he was here. The ratings had plummeted, the fanbase had dwindled, and he had stopped glancing behind him when walking alone at night. He didn’t have stalkers these days simply because there was no one left who cared enough to stalk him.
Until you came along, sloppy and uncoordinated and absolutely smitten.
You always followed too closely behind and rarely wore anything to hide your identity. When you dug through his trash, pulling out disposable coffee cups, you never shied away from his surveillance system, never hid the way your lips brushed the same parts of the lid his had. On nights when he was away and you climbed the fire escape into his penthouse, you always left behind evidence: dirty dishes in his sink; makeup smeared across his pillowcases; and once, most notably, a lacy pair of panties on the floor of his closet, traces of you still soaked into them.
When he had first shut himself in his home office and rubbed the soft, damp fabric against his dick, he wondered fleetingly — and somewhat hopefully — if you might be watching him from somewhere he’d never think to check. His suspicions faltered as soon as they had taken form; he knew that if you were there, you would've already found a way to give yourself away.
Maybe you wanted him to catch you. Maybe you just knew by now that he wouldn't report your behavior, and you didn’t want to waste any needless effort on being sneaky. Maybe you were just dumb and pretty! He wasn’t sure what was driving your obsession or when it had started, wasn’t sure what series of events had led to you being such a freak.
All he knew was that he adored the attention. You were the gorgeous younger woman nursing his wounded ego, and he was the glamorous TV star you were lucky enough to bask in the presence of. It was a perfectly symbiotic relationship. Your habits and routines made it borderline domestic.
You were good for him and such a sweetheart, giving him a reason to get out of bed even on the days he wouldn’t be filming. You were a constant, doting audience to perform for. With you, he was finally wanted again.
There came a point where it felt rude of him not to put in the effort to get to know you. The thought occurred to him days after he found a camera on the lip of his bathtub, when instead of removing it, he gave you a show, leaning his heaving body against the tile wall and stroking himself with soap suds until he came. He imagined that instead of coating the camera in his release, it was you who knelt before him, mouth open and ready to take whatever pieces of him you could get.
Had you touched yourself to the footage? He hoped so. He hoped you revisited it often and watched him finish again and again and again. He hoped you fantasized about being on the receiving end, with shaking breaths and flushed skin.
Ultimately, the two of you had been intimate, even if separated by time and space, and he prided himself on being a gentleman. He couldn’t leave you feeling unseen and unappreciated, scavenging through his dumpster for scraps of connection. You needed to meet him face to face.
***
To lure you back to his penthouse, Tenna pulled out all the stops: a business trip slotted on his calendar, plane tickets, packed bags, email threads, a chauffeur waiting outside that took him on a thirty-minute joyride before quietly dropping him off right back home. He knew it was overkill; you probably would’ve stumbled your way in if he just stepped out for a fifteen-minute grocery run.
But Tenna liked to do things right, he didn’t like deviations from his grand plans, and he did not want to risk screwing everything up and spooking you. If he did, it would cement a truly pitiful pattern in his relationships that he was not equipped to face.
That left him as the one on his fire escape tonight, peering into his own dimly lit home like some kind of voyeur. Not unlike the way you tended to.
His breath caught in his throat when he saw you shuffle into his living room. He’d witnessed the aftermath of your visits, the wrinkles in his bedsheets and crumbs on his counters, but this was the first time he was able to catch you in the act. You had taken his coat off the hanger by the door and wrapped it around yourself — with the size difference, you drowned in the fabric — one hand holding it closed and the other wrapped around the half-full glass of water he had left out on the counter just for you.
“There you are,” he sighed to himself, a hazy smile flickering to his face. “My number one fan, my always-loyal devotee.”
The coat shifted as you plopped down onto his couch. Underneath it, though he’d only gotten the slightest glimpse, was your fully nude body. Had you stripped down to feel closer to him? Did you want the scent of his clothes to seep into your flesh? He felt the ache of the concept deep in his core and almost reached for his belt buckle.
You must have been a supremely bad influence on him, because he found himself making plans to press his nose into the part of the cushion where your bare cunt now rested. He’d get himself off on your residual scent, and he’d cum against the spot you were sitting. This was a thought he never would have even entertained before, but you devoted yourself to him so freakishly that it was changing the way he intended to devote himself to you.
Maybe it wasn’t your fault — maybe that’s just how things always were from this side of the window. Maybe that’s what had made you so crazy.
He had to clasp his hands together to avoid touching himself in the moment. It was one thing to perform for you, treasuring your panties and preening for your cameras, but it was an entirely separate matter for him to dirty the wholesome image of you cozied up on his sofa in that too-big jacket, blissfully unaware of his predatory gaze. He mustered all the restraint he had, which admittedly was not much.
In all honesty, he almost gave in to his urges. The only thing that stopped him was the sight of you, always so frustratingly clumsy and clueless, standing up and immediately — almost impressively — falling flat on your face. The glass you’d been holding shattered against the hardwood floor as you landed, hard, sending shards scattering in all directions.
Tenna moved before he could think, sliding the window open in a single motion. Whenever you broke in, you had to lift yourself strenuously over the window’s ledge, but for him it only took a measured step before he was in his living room, rushing to help you to your feet.
Your eyes were wide when you saw him, your lip quivering and tears gathering in your lashline. His heart ached for you; he had startled you, and you were terrified that he would cast you out and call the police, but you were mostly scared of losing him completely. That’s what he surmised, at least. He was certainly scared of losing you.
You spoke first: “I’m so embarrassed.” It was the first time he’d heard that hushed, perfect voice of yours.
Tenna crouched down as much as he could, his speech already prepared. “Don’t be! I’m happy you’re here, and you should know I'm always eager to entertain guests.” He said it like you’d shown up to a dinner he’d invited you to, not like you’d broken into his home. Maybe if he pretended this was all normal, you would too. “It’s okay, I promise, sweetheart. I’m not mad about any of this. We’re past it all.”
“No,” you whimpered, seemingly unaffected by the confirmation that he knew everything you’d been up to. In the lamplight, his screen glowed against your skin. “I’m embarrassed you just saw me trip over my own feet. And I broke your glass! It was such a nice glass, and you use it all the time, and now it’s ruined. I ruined it.”
This was weird, but good! You weren’t spooked, and you weren’t leaving. Holy hell, he hoped you wouldn’t leave later and lose interest now that the thrill of being caught would be gone, now that you were finally within reach. He swallowed, instead choosing to focus on how flattered he was that you remembered something as trivial as his favorite glass.
“I forgive you,” he assured you. “I’ll get a new glass. I’ll get you one of your own, too! For you to use on these... visits.”
You shook your head, just short of petulant, and pulled his jacket tight around yourself. “I like using yours.” You paused for a second after pulling yourself to your knees. Realization crossed your expression. “I should go.”
“No! Stay, please. Please.”
You could keep drinking from his glasses. He’d provide for you in other ways, stocking the bathroom with skin-safe soaps and getting you your own toothbrush — or maybe that would be another thing you’d prefer to share with him, since it went in his mouth. It seemed like something you might be into. The thought was gross and depraved but in a way that had his dick hardening once again. He laid a shaky hand across his lap to hide it.
“I really, really shouldn’t be here,” you said. Your words came to you slowly, as if it took you just a bit longer than appropriate to finish your thoughts. “And you shouldn’t either, I think? You have a plane to catch, Mr. Tenna.”
It was so cute that you’d used his full title — a bit too formal after you’d seen footage of him hunched over the side of his bathtub pleasuring himself, but you were polite and compassionate and you didn’t want to offend the person at the center of your world. You had moxie and manners aplenty, and he loved that about you. It made him smile so wide his screen twitched.
He put a firm hand on your shoulder as you tried to stand, holding you in place. “Careful! You’ll cut yourself on all this glass, hot shot. Let me at least carry you to the door.” He would woo you there, where you didn’t have to feel cornered with no way out. Again, he was a gentleman, always cognizant of your needs.
You didn’t object as he picked you up; you just inhaled deeply, breathing him in, your eyes dragging over the details of his face that you wouldn’t have been able to see from your usual distance. It was endearing, the way you were always looking for ways to know him better. Your hand, impulsive and jerky, reached up and experimentally twisted a dial that was peeking through the collar of his shirt.
A spark shot through him, and he swivelled on his feet, his resolve faltering.
In the next moment, he was making a beeline away from the door, speeding toward his bedroom with you tucked against his chest and the last shreds of his restraint left somewhere between the shards of broken glass.
In retrospect, it's hilarious that Stratt made everybody on the vat speak English in deference to Grace being monolingual
Because with how quickly Grace was able to pick up Eridian, even with literally NOTHING about it being familiar the way a human language would be, they probably could have chosen Mandarin as the universal language on Stratt's Vat and he would have just. Learned it.
Hanahaki disease is a psychosomatic illness. It's a thing that your body does in response to stress over constantly repressing/concealing your feelings in settings with high background magic. It's like you've been ignoring pain for a long time and suddenly your vision starts going dark, because your affected body is just YANKING on random alerts trying to get you to PAY ATTENTION there is a PROBLEM. Yes the flowers do really exist. So do non-magical psychosomatic symptoms. The flowers aren't special.
This does of course open up the trope to options for non-romantic concealed feelings. Which I think is great. There is something viscerally satisfying about the person who seems so outwardly chipper coughing and hacking and spitting up Depression Flowers so now everyone has to know they're hurting. Isn't there?
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
theartofmadeline
