So I got some prompts from a fellow fan to write about my OTP so here's some random Usa/Mamo drabbles from all over canon (but they are canon. or supposed to be). Sorry it's not something more special.

heh.

When I'm on the edge of insanity, I'd hope you'd come to save me.

Between Dream Mirror attacks, final exams, two final thesis essays and a national standardized language test, registering for next year's classes and his adviser on his back to pick a major already, Mamoru felt like a walking experiment in sleep deprivation.

Days were blurring together and he found himself falling asleep for hours and not feeling any better, dizzy when he sat up and coughing at night. He brushed it off as stress but knew it was no excuse, the girls had it just as bad as he did, worse even.

When he didn't come to Sailor Moon's aid in a battle, Usagi would be cross with him for nearly a full minute or two, and he'd have to make it up with some sort of purchased confection or promise of future recompense. He was already in really deep with favors owed to her, actually, now that he thought about it.

And lately it wasn't even that, he had canceled dates, unreturned phone calls and missed group outings to answer for... he was terrified. How long before she just gave up on him altogether? He couldn't even remember the last time he saw her outside of throwing a rose in battle and quickly returning home to collapse in exhaustion.

With the banging on the door he realized he had slept right through the phone ringing. He had dozed off over his study guides in the early afternoon and by now long shadows of late evening snaked through the apartment. A million curse words shuttered through his head in the time it took her key to click open the lock and her footsteps to pad through the doorway.

But before he could open his mouth to issue forth apologies and beg forgiveness for missing dinner, she just bent and kissed him and for a few peaceful, blessed seconds nothing existed except her fingers on his chin and her bangs tickling his forehead.

Then he was looking into wide blue eyes that just barely masked deep concern with mock-reproach.

Usagi rested a large brown bag on the floor beside him. "I brought dinner," she said, with a motherly grin. "You need to eat, mister."

At the delicious smell of warm bento take-out, Mamoru realized he hadn't eaten since breakfast. Or had he even had anything besides coffee that day?

"Don't worry about a thing," she chirped, "I'll get this all set up-" plastic utensils, disposable chopsticks, napkins and canned tea all flew out of the bag with gusto and in an instant his coffee table was a make-shift dinner table with a make-shift dinner. Usagi looked ridiculously proud of domestic prowess, and he felt a smile on his face for the first time in days.

I wait forever for the day when you'll see me as more than just a friend.

"I used to think you were worst person in the world," she said, her head turned away from him, looking at the city lights. He could only see the back of her head, the part of her hair, curls at her neck and stress hunch of her shoulders, reacting to what he had just told her - to the situation - to the close space - the danger pressing down on them from every direction.

For a second her hand clenched. Then she turned toward him and smiled.

"But now... I think... second worst!" Usagi's cheeks flushed a little, and she turned away again, quickly.

Mamoru was sure Zoisite meant him to die here tonight, in the Starlight Tower. But the look in Usagi's eyes just before she glanced away made him want to fight death just that much harder.

I need to gather the strength to just let go.

The third train pulled out of the terminal through the blur of tears in Usagi's eyes. For the third time, she did not get on. The Narita Express Train ticket, the last thing Mamoru had purchased for her, was becoming soft in her hand as she ran her fingers over and over the perforations. "It's easy, just take it to Nippori station and you are only two stops away on JR ... Usako, are you listening to me? This is the quickest way to get home safe..." his hand on her waist, his eyes so kind.

She hadn't wanted to think about having to return from the airport, alone, empty with the spot beside her so much colder, so she just... hadn't.

Now she had to wait. Until she was ready. To face the world, so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time.

Another train pulled in, passengers leaving nosily, tugging suitcases behind them, more filing on. No one gave the small, empty-handed girl a second look.

Usagi took a deep breath, nodded, and stepped onto the train just as the doors were closing.

Your love hurts, stings, and is addicting. Is it poison?

Mamoru could stand his own heartbreak, as gut wrenching as it was to imagine life without Usagi, he could bear that. It would protect her, after all, and that was his purpose.

Her heartbreak, however, was another kind of hurt altogether and he was utterly unprepared for the freight train of raw emotion that derailed into his rib cage when she brokenly apologized for bothering him all these days, with unshed tears in her eyes. That was true hurt.

And every time she looked at him with hope, biting on her lip, weaving her fingers together. When she still insisted on asking him, if maybe ... now...? Nothing stung like seeing that drop of blood on her lip, when she bit down too hard after hearing his rejection again.

But he couldn't stop himself from coming to her aid in every battle, even though he had to admit they could handle it fine without him most of the time. When he saw her he couldn't stop himself from starring, when she ran into him in the street he could never let go of her arms right away. Training his mouth to form her given name was still difficult. He lived for the look in her eyes when she saw him, that split second when she forgot they weren't together anymore and she was delighted to see him and for a second he was, too.

Lived for it and hated it because it still. hurt.

I want you so bad, but you want someone else.

"Oh, Mamoru-sama," Natsumi linked her arm through his, and he didn't pull away. "Since we have to work so closely in the Snow White play, let's walk home together."

The brunette shot Usagi a victorious look as she left, with her head pressed close to Mamoru's shoulder, as they talked quietly.

The door to the gymnasium closed behind them.

Dimly, Usagi was aware of Makoto slamming her fist into her palm, and the girls' conversation around her.

It was Naru who eventually came and put a hand on Usagi's arm. "Usagi, are you okay?"

Like a vibrating string in a hollow box, Usagi pulled on anger as hard as she could until it filled her until she couldn't feel anything else.

Anything painful. Anything scary - like that a gorgeous girl with shiny hair and olive-shaped eyes and a delicious foreign accent was alone with the man Usagi loved more than anything in the entire world. Or that he might never remember Usagi. Or that every day she fell deeper in love with him and every day he seemed to think she was weirder and weirder.

"UGH WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS!" Usagi wailed, "Stealing the part that's rightfully mine and trying to kiss my Mamoru-san? ARRRUUUGH!"

Anger was easy. Anger was safe.

And Usagi could do anger.

Don't ever change. Not for me; not for anybody else.

"So then he said," Usagi waved her hand like it what she was about to say should be obvious, "that Ami shouldn't spend so much time with me, because I'm, ya know." A shrug. "Such a bad student and probably a drain on her... what's the word? ... potential."

"Your principal said that?" Mamoru's incredulous tone must not have masked the anger underneath his words because Usagi flushed and mumbled back.

"He didn't know I was eavesdropping."

"Well, that explains a lot about today," he said thoughtfully. Glancing down at her, he could only see the top of her head as they walked along the deserted city street, bringing her home after dropping Ami off at her complex nearby.

"I thought if I stopped asking Ami for any help at all we could stay friends. If I was careful not to, um, be a drain on..."

"-her potential?"

"I know I was wrong," Usagi said quickly, "I mean, Ami made that pretty clear."

Mamoru sighed then, in that way he did a lot around her, deeply and methodologically. As if he needed a few moments to regroup internally before facing the task before him.

"When Ami thought she lost part of your friendship, she lost her direction for a bit," Mamoru said finally.

"Her direction?" She pulled on his arm until he stopped and faced confused blue eyes and wrinkled little nose. "Like a compass? North, South, East, West?"

"Usako-"

"If anything, Mamo-chan, if *anything* I'm like that thing you put next to a compass that makes it go all crazy." She waved her finger around haphazard arcs and circles in his face until he rolled his eyes and grabbed it.

"A magnet," he said. "And you aren't. I mean, if we want to start talking in metaphors I'm sure I could take this somewhere very poetic but for now let's just say, as far as Ami is concerned, as far as any of those girls are concerned, you are their focal point, their source of strength - just like they are to you."

Mamoru realized he was still standing on the street, awkwardly holding her pointer finger in his hand while she blinked up at him in the moonlight. Mentally rolling his eyes at himself, he threaded his fingers through hers, and started walking again.

"Usako, all I'm saying is, you don't need to change yourself, or your friendship with Ami. No matter what some blowhard in charge of Juuban public schools says. Okay?"

She was silent, mulling over his words.

"Hey, Mamo-chan?"

"Yeah?"

"What, exactly, did Ami-chan mean when she kept saying 'she wouldn't give up on that either'?"

"Usako," he said warningly.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't think you are going to get away with shamelessly carrying on extraneous flirtation with one of my best friends!" Taking a few jogging steps forward, she pounded his chest playfully with her free hand. "Hey! Answer me!"

"That's not what extraneous means."

"Don't focus on word-choice! Mamo-chan! Hey!" She pulled on his other arm while he fought back a smile of relief as he noticed the trouble that was clouding her eyes at the beginning of their conversation had faded away.