#It's like... what meeting did I miss where we all voted on this

[adrienneleclerc]

That’s That Me Espresso

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Hispanic/Latina! Reader

Summary: Charles and Y/N have been dating for a few weeks, they met after the Suzuka Grand Prix. Even though their relationship has been short lived, there’s something about her that has Charles down bad. They are living proof of how the boyfriend should always like the girlfriend more.

Warning: Grammatical and spelling errors

A/N: For those who voted for idea 2, about Charles being auctioned off for charity? Yeah, I'm not vibing with that idea anymore. But i am working on the fanfic where Charles thinks Y/N likes Lando.

Charles was never one to chase girls. Sure, in every relationship he was in, he was the best boyfriend he could be, he would be so devoted to them. But in his current relationship, he has never felt this way before. He was away for the Imola Grand prix and he couldn't sleep so he decided to call Y/N. After a few rings, she answered.

"Bueno?" Y/N asked sleepily.

"Hello, mon ange, did I wake you?" Charles asked.

"Sort of, is something wrong, Charlie?" Y/N asked.

"Oh nothing, I'm just having trouble sleeping without you here, you know?" Charles said.

"I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to this Grand Prix, cariño, i just have a lot of in-person meetings. Plus, you've been to countless races before, you would think you'd be used to sleeping alone." Y/N said.

"Yes, but that was before i met you. Now when i'm in bed alone, it feels like I'm missing something.” Charles confessed.

“You’re so sweet. But seriously, muñeco, you have media day in the morning, and I can’t have you be sleepy during the interviews, Fred would kill you.” Y/N said.

“No he wouldn’t, I’m il predestinato, the prince of Ferrari.” Charles said.

“Muñeco.” Y/N warned.

“Alright Mon ange, I’ll go to sleep, but please FaceTime me before you go to work.” Charles said.

“Of course, Charlie. Te quiero mucho, Goodnight.” Y/N said.

“Yo también te quiero, Goodnight.” Charles tried his best to say in Spanish and he hung up.

The next morning, Y/N woke up, showered, did her after shower routine, got dressed and she was about to make breakfast when Charles decided to FaceTime her. She answered.

“Muñeco, how are you? Did you get some sleep?” Y/N asked.

“I did actually, it took a while though.” Charles said.

“Well when you’re back in Monaco, I’ll be sleeping by your side.” Y/N said, she set her phone against something in the kitchen so she can make pancakes.

“Sounds perfect, I’ll be counting down the days.” Charles said.

“You think you’ll make podium?” Y/N asked.

“I’ll dedicate my podium to you, Mon ange.” Charles said. They kept talking while Y/N made her breakfast, Charles also took his phone with him to eat when his room service came so they had breakfast together,

“Charlie, baby, i need to go to work, okay, I’ll talk to you soon, te quiero.” Y/N said.

“Yo más.” Charles replied and hung up the call. There was a knock on his hotel room door and he opened it to see Carlos. “Good morning, Carlos.”

“Morning. Were you talking with Y/N?” Carlos asked

“Yes i was.” Charles replied smiling.

“Ay, I should have known, she has you completely smitten.” Carlos says.

“I know, mate, there’s just something about her.” Charles said, sighing like a person in love.

“You are whipped, it’s entertaining to see you like that. We need to head to paddock now for the interviews.” Carlos said before him and Charles left the hotel room.

Meanwhile, Y/N was finishing up her third meeting of the day when she got w FaceTime call from Y/N so she excused herself.

“Charlie querido, what is it? I’m technically still in a meeting.” Y/N said.

“Sorry Mon ange, I just wanted to see how you are, I am on break right now and then I have more interviews before the race,” Charles said.

“I’m fine, just a little tired, I call you later tonight okay? Then you can tell me all about your day. Te quiero.” Y/N said, blowing him a kiss.

“Yo más” Charles said, doing the same thing before hanging up. Y/N was about to enter the conference room again but she was stopped by her assistant.

“You got that man wrapped around your finger.” Monica commented,

“Well i wouldn’t necessarily say that I have him wrapped around my finger. Pero es si, lo tengo mal (But Yeah, i got him down bad).” Y/N said.

“How? Like what’s your secret?” Monica asked.

“There’s no secret, it’s just that me espresso.” Y/N said.

“Ha ha, no go, you have a meeting to run.” Monica said. Y/N entered the conference room to continue the meeting.

Her workday was done and she got a text from Charles and it was a link to one of his interviews. She clicked on it and she was watching it but there was a question that Charles answered that surprised her.

“Charles Leclerc, what is your favorite saying?” The interviewer asked.

“I Don’t know if it’s a popular saying or an actual saying in general, but my girlfriend says ‘that’s that me espresso’. When she was younger, her mom would say she was like a shot so espresso because of how hyper and energetic she was as a child, basically bouncing off the walls. So now when I ask her a question about anything she does, she’ll say that’s that me espresso or it’s just that me espresso, meaning that’s just how she is. How do I get crying babies to stop? That’s that me espresso, I have no idea but I guess I just have a calming presence.” Charles said laughing. Y/N stopped the video and FaceTimed Charles,

“Hey Muñeco.” Y/N said.

“Hello, ma Belle, did you see that interview?” Charles asked.

“I did, you used my phrase.” Y/N said.

“Of course I did, it’s my favorite saying in the world, it perfectly describes you. You are a shot of espresso, a moment with you has me smiling for hours, I can’t get enough of you.” Charles said,

“Eres tan cursi (you are so cheesy) but i love that about you.” Y/N said.

They continued talking until it was time for bed.

Race Weekend was done and Y/N can continue working from her home office, she didn’t didn’t have any meetings to attend to in person, she was free. She was finishing up some files when the doorbell rang. Y/N got up and answered the door and she saw a huge bouquet of her favorite flowers (mine are peonies because of Blair Waldorf).

“Whats this?” Y/N asked and the bouquet of flowers were lowered to reveal a smiling Charles Leclerc. “Muñeco!”

“Mon ange!” Charles exclaimed, they entered her apartment and they hugged as soon as charles put the bouquet on the kitchen counter, he spun her around and out her back on the ground to leave her kisses all over her face. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow, did you come here straight from the airport?” Y/N asked, taking in Charles’s hoodie and baggy jeans,

“Yes I did. I stopped by the florist first, obviously.” Charles said, gesturing to the bouquet,

“They’re beautiful.” Y/N said. “What brings you here?”

“Because I wanted to tell you up something important. I know we haven’t been dating for a long time but I have never felt this strongly about someone, I love you, te amo, estoy enamorado de ti (i am in love with you).” Charles said. Y/N starts tearing up,

“Ay muñeco, yo también te amo.” Y/N said, hugging him. “Je suis amoureux de toi.” Now it was Charles’s turn to tear up, she just told him she was in love with him too. They kissed.

“I fall in love with you more and more each day, I can’t get enough of you, how do you do that?” Charles asked, brushing Y/N’s hair back. Y/N just shrugged.

“That’s that me espresso.” Y/N said and both of them laughed, Charles pulled Y/N onto the couch and started talking about where to go out today,

The End

I had no idea where I was going with this short imagine but I hope y’all like it!

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 12: Please Call Me Only If You Are Coming Home]

A/N: Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥳 Be sure to vote in our final poll, which will be pinned at the top of my blog per usual 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Homecoming” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“What the hell do you need that for?” Cregan says to Helaena in the next aisle over, sounding alarmed. You are raiding a Kwik Stop just outside Colusa, California, following Route 20 west towards the Pacific Ocean. But when Helaena replies, her voice is perfectly soothing, lyrical, too serene for the way the world is now.

“It’s not for me. It’s just in case anyone ever finds themselves in need of one.” And this makes sense, even though you can’t see what it is she’s taken off the disorderly, ransacked shelves; Helaena is always picking up trinkets to keep stowed away in her burlap messenger bag until their utility becomes essential.

Cregan is relieved. “Oh, okay, gotcha. Whew, you almost gave me a heart attack there, Miss LaeLae…”

Ice is stretched out and dozing on the cool tile floor. Luke and Rhaena are keeping watch by the front of the store. Aegon is standing by the decommissioned Icee machine and showing Daeron which route he’s marked on his map and why.

“Why do I need to know this?” Daeron is asking.

Aegon snorts. “In case I get killed, dumbass…”

Fluttering pieces of paper hang taped to the glass doors of the empty refrigerators: Don’t go towards Sacramento; People in Santa Rosa killed my brother for his car; Andrew Lounsbury, if you see this we are headed to Aunt Sarah’s house, meet us there! Meanwhile, in your own aisle, Aemond is watching you as your fingers flit through packages of Starbursts and Jolly Ranchers and Life Savers Gummies, separating the trash from the ones that haven’t been opened yet. His expression is wary, uncertain. “What?” you ask him.

“Are you…okay?” Aemond says, low enough that no one else will hear.

Of course you aren’t; you keep walking into rooms and looking for Rio, and he’s not there. But you know what Aemond means. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Did I hurt you? Are you…” He steps closer, the blue of his eye gleaming with attentive, penitent concern, sins he is certain he must have committed. “Are you sore, are you bleeding at all?”

You smile, just the ghost of a curve at the edge of your lips. “No, really, I feel fine.” And in your body, this is true. There is a tension that has vanished from your muscles, a softness in your bones, not shards of glass shifting beneath skin but living things like the branches of trees, flexible, green, damp life awash within.

“I was trying to…you know…take it slow and be super gentle, but then…by the end…”

“Aemond, you did everything right.”

And he exhales all the iron-heavy dread he’s been carrying around since he woke up this morning to find you already gone—showing Aegon how to flip Bisquick pancakes as Cregan browned them in a skillet in the woodstove downstairs—and you realize how much you’ve scared him. “I’m really sorry about…” He touches his chin restlessly. “I should have asked you if you wanted me to pull out, I just got, uh…kind of…distracted.”

Your smile grows; now you can feel it in your eyes, warm and luminous. “It’s alright. I did too.”

He is hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have told you to stop. And anyway, I think we’re safe.” But of course you’ve lost track of the days, and in your dark trance of grief and Tramadol you were entirely unaware of the rhythms of your body, pangs of desire or clear ample wetness, biological cues, primal timekeeping.

“Cool,” Aemond says, now trying to sound casual. “And next time…are you thinking that I should try to…maybe…just to be sure…?”

You shrug, then tell him the first thing that comes into your mind, that flashes in your skull like lightning bugs at dusk. “I’m thinking that life is too short and too rare to put effort into preventing it.”

Aemond’s eyebrows go up, but he doesn’t seem disappointed. “So we’ll see what happens.”

“If you’re onboard.”

“I’m totally onboard. I just want to take care of you. I…” He glances down at his palms—open, clean—and then looks back up at you. “I’ve never had anything that felt right before. Not my family, not myself, nothing. But this feels right. And it’s where I want to be forever.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” And this is what everyone thought: Jace, Baela, Rio. But you make the oath anyway, a hollow promise that echoes like a windchime.

“Me either,” Aemond vows.

You turn to leave the aisle and your backpack hits the shelf, knocking something off the top and onto the tile floor, where it lands with a thump. You gasp, and people come running; but it’s only a box of Honey Buns that was stashed somewhere too high for you to see. “It’s nothing,” you assure them. “We’re all okay, no need to get excited.”

“Death by Little Debbie,” Aegon says, chuckling nervously, his heart still racing.

You pick up the box and think of Rio with abrupt, violent clarity: he’s playing with French-speaking kids on the beach outside Djibouti City, he’s drinking cans of Guinness with you under a full moon on Diego Garcia, he’s reaching out from the pier to pet finless porpoises in Chinhae, he’s bleeding to death on a floor in Winnemucca, Nevada. Your vision is blurring with tears; your throat is knotted and scalding.

“I want him back,” Aegon says softly.

“I know. I do too.” You open the box of Honey Buns and pass one to Aegon first, then distribute the rest. There are only six total. Helaena tries to give hers to Cregan, but he rips it in half so they can share; Aemond insists you take the last one. You eat it wordlessly, sugar melting into your bloodstream.

“I think I saw a minivan down the side street,” Luke says as he chews his Honey Bun, waving his binoculars with his free hand. “It’s probably out of gas like all the others, but…”

“We’ll check it out,” Aemond replies, and everyone follows him as he departs from the Kwik Stop.

It’s a green Kia Carnival with a zombie trapped inside: once a young man in a Nirvana t-shirt, now a ghoul that paws at the glass with its oozing hands and licks the windows, long animal drags of a decomposing tongue. But the fuel cap is still closed, and while the van is turned off you can see the keys dangling from the ignition.

“Think there’s any gas left in the tank?” Daeron says brightly. The Targaryen beach house, following the indirect route you must take to avoid the cities, is about 250 miles from where you are now in Colusa. That’s two weeks on foot, or as few as five hours by car.

Rhaena goes for the driver’s side door. “Let’s find out.” She yanks on the handle to discover it’s locked. Cregan uses his axe to shatter the window, and the zombie tumbles gracelessly out onto the pavement, rancid skin and necrotic muscle ripping from its bones. As it crawls towards the siren call of fresh meat, Ice barks viciously and Cregan swings his axe. The blade slices easily through the monster’s skull, and its flailing, murderous limbs go still.

Rhaena reaches through the broken window to unlock the doors, climbs into the driver’s seat, and turns the key in the ignition. There is a blessed sound: the thunder of a living engine. “Half a tank!” Rhaena cheers.

Aegon gags as he opens the passenger’s side door. “Oh, it reeks so bad…”

“We’ll roll down all the windows,” Aemond says curtly.

“There are organs on the floor! What the fuck is that, a liver?!”

Aemond gives it a cursory glance. “Looks like a spleen.”

“I don’t want to sit near a spleen! I don’t even know what a spleen does!”

“Then throw it outside somewhere!” Aemond snaps. “You’re thirty years old, you can’t clean a minivan?!”

Aegon grumbles as he uses sheets of Burger King coupons from the glovebox to toss zombie guts into the grass. Aemond wipes down the hard surfaces with antiseptic. Luke keeps watch and Daeron shoots down several zombies as they lurch out of nearby houses and towards the Kia Carnival. You ask Helaena for the box of 9mm bullets in her messenger bag and she gives it to you. You load your Beretta M9, stow the remaining bullets in your backpack, and take aim at the approaching zombies to make sure you still know how to get into the rhythm, that you can still be a killer when the circumstances require it. You are out of practice, but you’re beginning to feel more like yourself again. Aemond brought you back. They all did.

When the minivan is as clean as possible, everyone hurries inside and Rhaena drives west on Route 20 under the afternoon sun. At the intersection with Route 53, Aegon directs Rhaena to follow it south around Clear Lake, then to take Route 29 west through rolling hills that were once filled with vineyards, wineries, music, weddings, horse farms. Now the land is hushed, and wild, and dotted with silhouettes that sway drunkenly and swipe at vultures when they try to gobble tattered strips of putrid flesh that unravel from bones like the bandages of a mummy.

The Kia Carnival rides Route 175 west and then Route 101 south, where the earth turns dry and rocky and barren, reminding you of northern Nevada and piling stones of heartache in your belly. In a place called Pieta—an old 1800s railroad depot, according to a plaque mounted just off the road—Rhaena slows down to get a better look at something that doesn’t make any sense. There is a souvenir shop of rocks and gems, now long out of business, and in a shed beside the main building hangs a gruesome specimen that you can see through the open doors. It has two arms and two legs, but it’s not a zombie. Its flayed flesh is a vibrant, healthy red; parts of the thighs and chest have been carefully carved away like cuts of meat are sliced from beef cattle. It is suspended on meat hooks. It is being butchered.

Cregan notes uneasily: “That ain’t an opossum or a bison.”

“I think it’s human,” Aemond says, horrified.

“Guess we’re not stopping for the night anytime soon,” Rhaena quips, then floors the gas pedal.

One of Aegon’s mixtapes spins in the CD player. From the speakers flows Somebody To You by The Vamps.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Do you see anyone now?” Aemond asks.

Luke speaks without looking away from his binoculars. “And for the fourth time, my answer remains no.”

After a night’s rest in a cabin at Camp Liahona Redwoods in Sonoma County, you followed California State Route 1 down the coast of the Pacific Ocean until the Kia Carnival finally ran out of gas just south of Olema, a small town founded in the 1850s. A ten-mile hike has brought you to the cliff where the fabled Targaryen beach house is perched with a few hours left before sunset. The ailing daylight is golden, the wave crests glittering, gulls cawing as they swoop through the salt-lashed air. From the road that twists like a snake through the slopes of Bolinas—thick with redwoods, Douglas firs, oaks, cypresses, tall grass that whips in the wind and tufts of eucalyptus—Luke is searching the property. It is less a house than a mansion, a museum, a monument, a work of art: sharp rectangular lines and glass walls, balconies, fountains, a pool, a garden.

Cregan whistles. “A place like that has to cost a million dollars.”

“Try fifteen million,” Aemond says distractedly, and Cregan gawks at him.

“Well, from what I can see it looks safe,” Luke declares, lowering his binoculars. “No zombies.”

“You really think they’re in there?” Daeron asks eagerly. “Mom and Criston?”

“Yeah, kid,” Aegon says, squeezing Daeron’s shoulder; but his voice is morose, like he knows he has surrendered to something, a path of least resistance, a hostile planet’s gravity. “Of course they are. Let’s go say hi.”

At the end of the driveway, the five-car garage is open. There is an Alfa Romeo, a Porsche, a Ferrari, a Ducati motorcycle, and a white Chevy Tahoe, which Aemond says belongs to Criston. And there are other items of interest mounted on the walls.

“Yes!” Daeron says as he runs to a quiver full of arrows for his compound bow. Aegon lifts a golf club out of its bag and makes an imaginary putt, getting reacquainted with the feeling of his hands on the grip.

“This is an iron,” Aegon says when he catches you watching him. In the shade of the garage, he pushes his neon green plastic sunglasses up into his windswept hair. “It’s metal all the way through and gives you good control over the shot. Drivers are for long-distance, and wedges and putters don’t have enough power. But an iron is just right.”

“Are you going to teach me how to golf?”

Aegon grins, his first real smile all day. “You think you can handle it, SunChips?”

“I don’t,” you answer honestly, and he laughs.

“If you teach me how to shoot, I’ll teach you how to golf.”

“An unfair trade! My skill is useful.”

Aemond knocks on the door that connects the garage to the main house. “Mom? Criston?” There is no response; all of you wait for one, listening intently through the crashes of waves and reverberating gull shrieks. Ice begins to pace agitatedly and nudges Cregan’s hands. He looks at Aemond, half-fear and half-sympathy.

“No,” Aemond says. “No, she’s wrong.”

“She might be,” Cregan replies, steady and ever-agreeable. Helaena is wringing her small, gentle hands. Everyone is watching Aemond to see what they should do next.

He pounds on the door again, this time with a closed fist. “Mom, we’re home! Mom? Criston? It’s me! It’s Aemond!”

Still, there is no answer. Aemond tries the doorknob, and it turns unimpeded. It is unlocked. He opens the door, peeks inside, and then crosses through the threshold. The rest of you trail him like he has eight shadows, the last in the shape of a wolf.

You step into the living room: wide open windows, the ocean breeze breathing through the house. The air tastes like sand and saltwater, sun and blue skies. There are three-story glass walls that overlook the water, a staircase leading up to the next floor, pristine white couches, black end tables topped with vases full of dead flowers, grey marble floors, bejeweled golden crosses that glint cruelly in the bloody late-afternoon light, family photographs on the mantle of the fireplace. There are many pictures of Aemond, and some of Helaena and Daeron as well. You don’t see a single photo of Aegon. He notices you scanning the snapshots in the frames and looks away, ashamed.

“Mom?” Aemond calls, his voice ricocheting through the vast, open space, clinical like a hospital or a morgue. “Criston?”

“Grandpa?” Helaena says meekly. Cregan is clutching his axe and peering around vigilantly. Ice whines and paces, her strange yellow eyes glowing like flecks of gold in a stream. Rhaena tries to soothe her with ear scratches; Ice begins to howl, low long mournful sounds.

You catch Aegon’s attention when he glances at you again. “This isn’t right,” you whisper. “If they were here, they would have heard us by now.”

Aegon turns to his brother. “Hey, Aemond…”

And then there are footsteps from upstairs, slow and shambling. Everyone looks, and it appears at the top of the steps like a mirage or a night terror, like a wrathful god glaring down from Mount Olympus. Long, filthy strands of white hair hang from what is left of its scalp. Its gore-stained teeth are bared. Its eyes are cloudy like the poisoned atmosphere of another planet, one gasp enough to singe your lungs and infect your bloodstream. The snarls pour out ragged and rasping from its disintegrating vocal chords. The man was wearing a suit when he died, and the pale blue shirt is now splattered with crimson and bits of rotting flesh. The black leather shoes on its feet clop as the zombie descends the staircase with staggering, unnatural steps, its decaying arms grasping for the mortals who wait below.

Daeron says numbly: “Dad?”

Aemond’s eye is wide and dazed. Ice is growling. Helaena is screaming and fleeing towards the wall; Cregan embraces her and she clings to him. “Aemond? Buddy?” Cregan shouts. “How do you want to handle this?” And what he means is: Do you want to kill it, or should someone else? Do you need time to process what’s happened? How can we help you?

“Aemond?” you say. You touch his arm; he doesn’t react. Rhaena draws her Ruger but doesn’t shoot yet. She is looking to Aemond for permission. Luke is standing in front of Rhaena and forcing her backwards as the zombie nears the bottom of the staircase. Now you can smell it: dark wet rot, spoiled meat, blood and oily fat and organs putrefying in a threadbare patchwork of flesh.

“Dad!” Daeron wails, and he’s covering his face with his hands because he knows what this must mean for the rest of his family too.

“Aemond?!” Rhaena yells. “Aemond, what do you want us to do?!”

You reach for your M9 as the zombie’s leather shoes settle on the marble floor. This seems to shake Aemond from his paralysis.

“No,” he says. “I’ll do it.” He grabs his Glock and aims, but his finger hesitates on the trigger. And you can see the ghosts of the people who have died by his hands lurking in the crystalline blue of his remaining eye: Alys, Jace, Baela and her baby…and now Viserys Targaryen too.

In the lull, in the indecision, Aegon roars and swings his golf club. The metal head collides with the zombie’s skull. Weak corroded bone collapses; blood and brains the color of black mold leak out onto the polished marble.

“It wasn’t enough, huh?!” Aegon screams, then hits the zombie again. The corpse crumples to the floor, but Aegon isn’t done yet. “You couldn’t just fuck everything up when you were alive, you had to keep torturing us from beyond the grave, you sick bastard, you selfish prick, what is wrong with you?!” He whacks the carcass with his golf club again and again. “I hate you! I hate you! You deserved so much worse than this! We crossed an entire goddamn country, and Jace died, and Baela died, and Rio died, all so we could get back here, and now it’s all for nothing because you’ve destroyed everyone you’ve ever touched! I fucking hate you!”

Aegon strikes the zombie one last time—the skull is a pulverized soup of gore and bone fragments—and before anyone can reach for him, he has bolted up the steps to search the rest of the house. You find them in their final resting places: bones in the hallway interspersed with gold rings and a medallion of Saint Irene of Thessaloniki, bones in the shower pierced with stainless steel surgical screws from hip and knee replacements, bones in the master bedroom entangled with shreds of a bloodstained silk nightgown and long locks of auburn hair. Daeron is sobbing, and Cregan takes Helaena outside to the garden to calm down, and Aemond wanders through the rooms in shock. You don’t know what to say to him; you remember how nothing anyone said made a difference when Rio died. But Aegon is furious. He tears away from everyone and goes to his bedroom: racks full of CDs, neon green blankets, an acoustic guitar propped in one corner. Then he ravages his hiding places—inside drawers, under his mattress, on tiny shelves he carved into the walls behind golf and Green Day posters—and collects mint tins. Then he pours out the white powder inside onto his desk and arranges it into lines like contrails behind airplanes, like wagon trails across the earth.

You try to stop him. “Aegon, wait, please don’t—”

“Get the fuck out,” he hisses, and for the first time you see the cold reptilian sheen of something like hate in his eyes. “You don’t have to pretend to love me. I can be alone. I’m used to it.”

“Aegon, I’m not—”

“They’re gone. You can leave too.” Then he slams the door and locks it.

~~~~~~~~~~

While Aegon is upstairs getting high and Helaena is downstairs inventorying supplies in the massive walk-in pantry, the rest of you use shovels from the garage to bury what is left of the bodies in the backyard, unceremonious shallow graves, the soil too rocky for anything more elaborate. Rhaena uses her jagged sliver of slate to mark stones with their names and a few kind words about each of them; but Viserys’ stone is left blank. Then Rhaena returns inside to help Helaena prepare for dinner, while Daeron inspects the perimeter of the house with Cregan and Ice. Luke uses a telescope near the pool not to gaze up at the rising stars but to study the neighboring properties.

Aemond murmurs as he stands in front of the four graves: “I should have gotten here sooner. Maybe I could have saved them.”

“You still have a family,” you say, begging him to believe that there are things worth living for. “You have Aegon and Daeron and Helaena, Rhaena, Luke, Cregan. And you have me.”

Aemond stares out over the Pacific Ocean. The sky above is red and lavender, fire and dreams. “How do we get to Diego Garcia?” He is only half-joking.

“Well you just find a boat and row about 10,000 miles that way.”

He sighs and drags his trembling fingers through his hair. It has always been his job to know what happens next, and now he doesn’t. Gulls squawk and wheel in the air. His right cheek glistens with tears.

“I never saw the ocean until I joined the Navy,” you say, and Aemond looks over at you, curious but not wanting to react in the wrong way and scare you into going quiet again. He’s always mining for details of your past, and you’re endlessly evading him. But perhaps you have been too secretive. He wants to know these things because he wants to know you, and you have no idea how long you’ll be here to shed your mysteries. If a story dies with you, it dies forever.

“Really?”

“Yeah. My mother…Mama, I always called her Mama…she went to Virginia Beach a few times while I was growing up, and that was her favorite place in the world. But she never took me with her. She’d go with my aunt or my oldest brothers. So when I got to basic training on the shore of Lake Michigan, that was the closest thing to an ocean I’d ever seen, and it absolutely amazed me.”

“Lake Michigan,” Aemond repeats, trying not to sound like he’s mocking you.

You smile. “And then of course I ended up in some more impressive places. But compared to Soft Shell, Lake Michigan was a whole different planet.”

“Soft Shell?”

“Like softshell turtles. They’re one of those animals that are so ugly they’re almost cute. We have a lot of them in Kentucky. Well, we used to. Maybe people ate them all when the food ran out.”

“Soft Shell, Kentucky,” Aemond says. “What was it like? I mean…I know you left, and I know you had good reasons…but I’ve never been to Kentucky. I’ve never really been to Appalachia period.”

“It’s beautiful. You get all four seasons, and you’re out in nature all the time, and it feels old, like hardly anything has changed there in thousands of years. You feel connected to the earth. I loved the forests and the mountains. I don’t think I realized how much I loved certain things about where I’m from until I’d been gone for years. I didn’t leave because I had to get away from Kentucky. I left because I had to get away from who I was when I was there, you know? Someone lonely and helpless. But how my family was isn’t Kentucky’s fault.”

“No,” Aemond muses. “I suppose not.” You begin walking together back towards the house.

“Ready for more bad news?” Luke asks, and gestures for you and Aemond to peer through the telescope. Aemond lets you go first, and immediately you see what Luke means. There are zombies in the surrounding hills, and not just a few. There are hundreds, stumbling around aimlessly and posing no current threat; but you are not safe here.

“We don’t have enough people to defend ourselves,” Aemond says once he’s taken a look, tapping his chin in that way that he does when he’s fearful but trying to hide it.

“No, we don’t,” Luke agrees.

“And there aren’t many natural resources here to subsist on. Even the fishing prospects aren’t great without a boat or a pier.”

“Right,” Luke says.

You wonder if Aemond is thinking the same thing you are. He might not know what has to happen next, but you do.

~~~~~~~~~~

The dining room table—large enough to seat twenty—is illuminated with candles, meticulously arranged with china and silverware, and cluttered with canned soups from brands you’ve never seen before: Amy’s, Pacific Foods, Health Valley. There are cases of Perrier and San Pellegrino to drink, and bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild red wine. Everyone else is here except Aegon. You are just about to go find him when he comes rushing down the staircase and into the dining room. He is wearing clothes from his closet here: a salmon pink polo that emphasizes his sunburn, khaki shorts, a white puka shell necklace, Sperry Bahama sneakers. The left shoe just barely fits over the bandages still protecting his healing left leg. There are fingerprints of white powder on the front of his shirt.

“Oh, look!” he announces. “Isn’t this precious? A family dinner?”

“Aegon, please sit down,” Aemond says briskly.

“Come on, it’ll be just like old times. We have all four of us kids, and then…Rhaena, you can be my dear departed Grandpa Otto, you just have to scowl at everyone…and Luke can be Criston.”

Luke is confused. “What—?”

“No no no! Don’t worry. It’s a very easy part. All you have to do is gaze worshipfully at Aemond and talk about how brilliant he is. There’s really not much to it, and honestly you do a lot of that already. And then…” Aegon floats by you, skimming his palm down the length of your hair. Something about the weight of his hand gives you goosebumps: careless, careful, fleeting, intimate. He sighs: “My beautiful, tortured mother.”

“Aegon, sit down,” Aemond orders.

“Father!” Aegon cries out suddenly, spotting Cregan at the head of the table. Cregan looks around the dining room, baffled. “You’ve joined us! How unusual! Did your Titanic replicas spontaneously combust? Did the world end? Well, actually, it sort of did…”

“Buddy, I have no earthly clue what you’re trying to—”

“Now this is a tough part,” Aegon says forcefully. “Patriarch of the Targaryen dynasty, big shoes to fill! But don’t worry, I’m here to help. I’ll give you your lines. All you have to do is repeat after me, okay?”

Cregan studies him and does not assent.

Aegon slams both palms down onto the table. “You’re so fucking stupid, Aegon. You’re a humiliation, Aegon. Why can’t you be smart like Aemond, or sweet like Helaena, or obedient like Daeron? Why did my firstborn child turn out to be such a fucking waste?”

“I’m not going to say that,” Cregan replies quietly.

“Say it,” Aegon seethes.

Now Daeron is weeping between spoonfuls of Amy’s tortilla soup straight from the can. “I want to go home.”

“We are home,” Aemond says.

“This isn’t home anymore, Aemond,” Daeron sniffles.

Aegon is still trying to feed Cregan lines. “Have you found a wife yet, Aegon? No, of course you haven’t. You’ve got hands like a rat and a disposition to match. You’re an overgrown vermin, you’re a plague to every house you enter. Who would fuck you out of anything but greed or pity?”

“Aegon, please stop,” Aemond pleads, wincing and rubbing his forehead.

Helaena folds her arms atop the table and rests her head on them, hiding her face. Luke and Rhaena keep their eyes downcast. Daeron reaches for a bottle of red wine, but Aegon swats his hand away.

“Nope. Illegal. You’re not 21.”

“Aegon, seriously, I’m so over that joke—”

“Shut up. You can’t even get a tattoo without parental consent.”

“Our parents are dead!” Daeron shouts. “They died terrible deaths and they’re never coming back and you’re making everything worse!”

“Then get rid of me! Put me out on the street and I won’t be anyone’s problem anymore! I’ll get murdered or eaten and it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you!”

Helaena breaks down sobbing, and before Aegon can register what’s happening Cregan scoops him up off the floor and throws him over one broad shoulder. Then Cregan lugs him upstairs as Aegon struggles and yowls and punches at Cregan’s back, all in vain. You can hear a lot of commotion and then finally Cregan reappears, sweat beading on his brow but otherwise composed.

“I tied him to his bedframe with an extension cord,” Cregan says. “I don’t think he’ll be making any more trouble this evening.”

“Thank you,” Aemond replies, defeated.

“If he’s going to be up there all night, he’ll need water and food,” you say. “And enough blankets to make sure he’s warm.” It gets chilly when the sun goes down here, as low as the 50s. You grab two bottles of Perrier off the table and stand to bring them upstairs to Aegon, but Cregan gently takes them out of your hands.

“I’ll make sure he’s well supplied, Miss Chips,” Cregan insists, and you are convinced he thinks he’s doing you a favor. He doesn’t want Aegon to have the opportunity to upset anybody further. And yet a part of you is undeniably disappointed.

Aegon has been gone for ten minutes, and you miss him already.

~~~~~~~~~~

In Aemond’s childhood bedroom, a huge, impersonal, spartan space, the very few pieces of furniture all in the same color scheme of white and navy blue, you cannot say anything to bring his family back to life, or his friends, or the possibilities of what his life might have been before the dead began to walk. But you remember what he did for you when Rio died and you were sinking in dark, numb despair, and so you take Aemond’s hands and place them on your body—skimming under your t-shirt, circling around your waist—offering yourself like a sacrifice that you both desperately need, like a shot of antivenom that will only buy you hours. He draws you into his lap, and beneath your palms and your lips and your thighs, you can feel him coming back to you, filling up with light like a horizon at dawn.

“I’m still here,” you whisper as he throws you down onto the bed, eases himself into you, carries you away like a ship coasting out into open water. I don’t ever want to be anywhere but here.

Aemond holds you after, ensnared in sweat-damp sheets and entwined fingers, and he confesses: “I knew it was possible that they might not still be alive. Logically, I knew that. But it was like I never allowed myself to feel it. And now it’s…it’s…it’s all at once and it’s too much. I can’t fathom that I’ll never see them again. But I don’t even have time to mourn. I need to figure out where we’re going next.”

“Aemond?”

His lips to your forehead, his voice a drowsy murmur: “Hm?”

“I have to tell Rio’s family what happened to him.”

He pulls back to look at you. “You want to go to Oregon?”

“What if Odessa really is safe?”

At first he is bewildered; then he begins to consider it. “Criston’s Tahoe is in the garage. If we siphon the gas left in all the vehicles, we might have enough to get us halfway there.”

“That’s a lot better than none of the way there.”

“We’ll all have to vote on it. The trip will be dangerous.”

“Everything is now.”

“Almost everything,” he teases, his hand sliding down between your legs, taking you far away again.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, you find Aegon at the cliffside smoking one of his Marlboro Golds, slow meditative drags, eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep. That’s alright. He can nap in the Tahoe. Rhaena won’t need his directions for a while; you’ll stay northbound on Route 1 for 200 miles before cutting inland as you near the Oregon border.

You sit down on the sandy, shrub-strewn ground beside Aegon and wait for him to speak. It takes a while, but you don’t mind. You’ve always had patience; you’ve always been a better listener than someone who fills silences.

At last Aegon says: “I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

“Then stop.”

He smirks bitterly, glaring out into the sunrise, orange light like fire on his sunburned face. “You make reinvention sound so easy.”

“It’s not easy. But it is simple. You decide to get out, and then you do it. You don’t let anything convince you to give up or change course. The only way out is through.”

“I have a proposition.”

“I’m still not interested in fake dating you.”

He cackles. “No, it’s something else.”

“Okay. Let’s hear it.”

Now Aegon is serious. “I don’t ever want to split up again. Not in a year, not in ten years, not in twenty. Never.”

You smile as you watch the reflection of the dawn in his eyes, murky faraway blue like oceans all across the globe. “I didn’t know you thought so highly of commitment.”

“I want to take care of you until you die. I want you to take care of me until I die. And that’s as far as commitment goes with me.”

“Deal.” You offer Aegon your hand.

He shakes it. “Deal.”

Two hours later, Criston Cole’s white Chevy Tahoe is loaded high with supplies—including several of Aegon’s golf clubs and his acoustic guitar—and heading north on Route 1, a Fall Out Boy song from one of Aegon’s mixtapes blaring through the speakers:

“When Rome’s in ruins

We are the lions, free of the Colosseums

In poison places, we are antivenom

We’re the beginning of the end…”

You rest your head on Aemond’s shoulder and wait for the sapphire-and-gold Bay Area to become the misty, primordial emerald green of the Pacific Northwest.

[runningfrom2am]

leveling the playing field // epilogue

summary: seven years later.

pairing: coriolanus snow x fem!reader

wc: 2.7k

masterlists / nav / requests

tags/warnings: capitol brat!reader, maybe slightly ooc coryo, idk i tried my best. this part is quite tame! idk, discussion of the games as a concept is pretty messed up? obviously r & coryo are both delusional but whats new??

a/n: this is it :') thank you all so so so much for all the love on this fic! it means so much to me that you guys enjoyed it! but don't get too sad (like me) bc i am not ready to let them go so i'll probably do like blurbs and stuff ab this series so stick around for those!

series masterlist // playlist

~ seven years later ~

"You've got this, Darling. It's going to be perfect." Coryo insists, kissing your temple as you relentlessly adjust your hair, trying to tame any imaginary flyaways in your flawlessly straightened hair.

"As long as it's not a disaster..." You mumble, giving up on your hair and refocusing on making sure you have all your papers.

Arena map? Check. Tribute and mentors list? Check. Schedule?

"With you in charge, I do not doubt that it will be anything short of flawless. I know you. You wouldn't have it any other way." Your husband assures you, taking your spot in front of the large mirror to adjust his red coat, matching to yours.

You sigh, tucking the large stack of meticulously organized papers into your bag. "I mean, does anyone honestly expect it to be perfect? It's my first games... There's a small margin for error, right?"

"No." Coryo replies sternly, turning to face you. He grabs your chin as you groan, forcing your eyes to meet his. "There's no room for error, but it will be perfect. So don't worry." He plants a gentle kiss on your lips. "And if you need anything, just call."

"Okay..." You hum, smiling as you look up at him. "I'm going to miss you, though." Your smile shifts into a pout, and he kisses your forehead.

"I know. I'll miss having my assistant around, too." He mumbles against the softness of your skin.

Your time working together under Dr. Gaul had been a dream. Why did everything have to change all at once? You've been together every day for years, and you had the most fun helping plan the games and pitching all your ideas to Dr. Gaul, staying up late over ideas due the next morning and too many cups of coffee, giggling over how funny it would be to see a games where the people of the Districts got to vote over who to send in.

"Do you think it's because that's kind of what happened to Lucy Gray?" You giggled in the dark, feeling Coryo's form shift under the blankets next to you before you felt his breath hit the side of your face.

"Now that you mention it..." He laughed quietly. "Yeah, it totally was."

You had always come up with Dr. Gaul's favourite ideas together. But now, she was gone. And it was just you. You honestly thought that woman was some kind of immortal beast, but clearly, no one is fully bulletproof.

She had offered the position of Head Gamemaker to both of you in her will. You and Coriolanus had worked well together, she had always said that about you. That the two of you were her favourite experiment.

"No, Darling. You take it."

"What? No, we've always done everything together." You protest, furrowing your brow. "She's offered it to both of us, we can do whatever we want, no more waiting for her approval. We can run with it! Come on, it'll be so fun, Coryo."

"That's your dream. Not mine." He smiled at you, brushing his thumb over your cheek.

You frowned, focussing yourself on pulling the buttons of his shirt so they were perfectly aligned. "Are... Are you sure? I don't know if I can do it without you."

"You'll never do anything without me, you know that." He hummed, pushing your hair out of your eyes. "If you need help, just ask. I'm right here. Always."

"I'm not an assistant anymore." You laugh. "Technically, you're kind of my assistant now." You shrug, leaning down to pull on your shoes, white with bottoms red to match your coat.

"Okay, well, I wouldn't put it like that..." He laughs, shaking his head at you and holding out a hand to steady you while you adjust yourself to accommodate your heels.

You take it gratefully, standing up and brushing off your coat once more with your free hand. "Be honest, Coryo, do you think the bear is too much? I feel a little like it's cheating, they don't even really have a chance. Do you get what I mean?"

"Darling," He cups your cheeks in his hands. "No one will be able to look away. That's the most important part."

"I just... I want it to be something different. Something people will still want to watch."

"Everyone will be watching." He assures you. "Now, let's get going. You have a big day ahead."

"Yes sir, Mister President."

"My name is Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, your favourite and only host of the annual Hunger Games on Capitol TV, and I have a very special treat for you all this morning before the beginning of the games." You gently remove your coat as you sit down across from Lucky, holding it out for someone to take before the cameras flit your way, though the live audience can already see you.

"For anyone who lives under a rock, this beautiful woman here with me is our lovely First Lady of Panem, and now, Head Gamemaker, Dr. Y/N Snow." He continues as your coat is taken away, and you smile across at him. "Thank you so much for squeezing us into your very busy schedule. Now, how are you feeling about today, Miss Snow?"

"Doctor is fine." You correct him politely, to which he utters a quick apology. "And I am feeling very good about my first games. Dr. Gaul left some big shoes to fill, but I've been working with her for years so I have some really exciting ideas that I just can't wait for the world to see."

"Yes! I'm certain you do." Lucky grins. "Now, I don't know how much of our audience will remember this, but the first time we met was during the tenth games, I was hosting for the first time and you and your husband were both mentors! Just young academy students with some big dreams, isn't that right?"

You laugh, nodding as he speaks and letting the cheers die down. "Yes, I remember that. All of us were kind of getting a feel for how things would work, and my husband was actually the one who came up with the ideas of betting and sponsorships. He has truly always been such a leader, and so smart. He was the one who asked Dr. Gaul if I could help him with his mentorship, and she agreed, and then she just really loved how well we worked together so she kept us around to study under her all these years. It has been such a fun and kind of... fulfilling journey for us both."

"And now, here you are." He nods at you.

"Here I am." You echo it back to him, waiting for another question.

"Now, we have to address what can only be described as the elephant in the room..." He starts, and you try and hide your confused look as you straighten your posture. If there was some kind of problem you should have been made aware before you set foot on stage. "That summer, after your mentorship. Tell us. What happened? Both of you disappeared off the face of the earth right after your success in the games, then came back with these shiny new internships under Dr. Gaul, how did you swing that?"

"Oh!" You laugh, partially relieved it wasn't about these games, but hesitant because everyone knows better than to bring up the tenth games in any sort of detail. "Well, that was the beginning of our internship with Dr. Gaul, and she wanted us to gain some life experience, so we did some touring of the Districts on our own to get to know the people of Panem better. Neither of us had ever left home before, so it was definitely a unique experience that I think was really good for both of us. It was a super secret thing, for some reason. We weren't even to tell our families."

"I see! Well, I hope you learned everything you sought out to?"

"We did." You nod. "And more."

"Okay, well, with that cleared up, tell us more about the games you have planned for us this year. Is there anything new we should be expecting?"

"Oh, definitely." You nod, smiling wide now that you can once again talk about your games. "But I wouldn't want to spoil anything, so everyone will just have to watch." You shrug.

"I don't know if you are aware of this, Dr. Snow," He leans in a little closer, smile on his face. "But one new thing that we know for sure is changing this year, is that the president, your husband, has made it mandatory to watch the games. Not just here in the Capitol, but everywhere in the Districts as well. He made an announcement just this morning, he wants everyone to see what you've worked so hard for."

"Aw." You blush, pressing your hands to your chest. "That's so sweet! No, I didn't know that." The audience eats up your reaction, and you try to keep your eyes on him instead of acknowledging all the clapping and shouts from below you.

"Well, that's just about the cutest surprise! He has a lot of confidence in you." He laughs, reaching over and patting your leg. "You've all heard it here, he's just as good a husband as he is a president!"

"It's true." You agree, hardly audible over the crowds enthusiasm.

"Speaking of your husband..." He says, turning back to look into the wing of the stage and nodding at someone. "He set us up with a little surprise for you, if you don't mind."

"Oh, please." You laugh, covering your face as your cheeks heat up. "Of course he did." You shake your head, whistles from the audience not helping your blush.

"Okay, you can look now. Don't hide!" Lucky laughs, and you lower your hands from in front of your face to be presented with a bouquet of white and red roses. It wasn't an extravagant gift from him, the amount of roses he has gifted to you since your return from Twelve together is astronomical by now, but it's a gesture you cherish nonetheless. You smile as you take them.

"Beautiful, as always." You grin, making a point of smelling them before handing them back to the assistant who's waiting with a vase for them.

"And we have one more thing here, I believe..." He hums, looking back again while you're distracted passing off the wrapped flowers.

When you turn back to look at him you gasp, hands flying up to cover your mouth, fearless of whether or not you would smudge your lipstick. "Is that for me?" You ask, voice higher in octave from the excitement as one of the stagehands walks out with a small dog, fur dyed a soft shade of red with a matching bow around its neck.

"Indeed it is!" Lucky laughs as you're handed the puppy.

"Oh my god..." You smile, tears brimming in your eyes. "Hi there..."

"I think there's a note for you there too..." Lucky urges you and you grab the tag tied onto the bow. "Mind reading it for us?" He says, holding his handkerchief out to you.

"Thank you," You laugh, dabbing under your eyes with your free hand. "A new assistant to match your shoes." You read, laughing at the inside joke.

Everyone laughs, and you get from Lucky's confused expression that you should explain. "Uh, working under Dr. Gaul we would always joke that he was my assistant and vice versa." You laugh, wiping your eyes again before you continue. "I am so proud of you. Finally, the world will see you as I do. Intelligent, strong, and beautiful. Unstoppable. That's why I love you, you're as pure as the driven Snow."

The audience awe's, but you know none of them get it the way you do. "Another inside joke." You nod at Lucky, trying to hold back from crying so much you turn into a mess.

"I stand corrected. That is the cutest surprise." He points to the dog in your lap. "Both literally and figuratively."

"I don't know what I'll do with it." You laugh, shaking your head as the puppy jumps up against your chest, trying to lick your face.

"How about a name, to start?" Lucky prompts you.

"Oh, gosh. Well..." You giggle, lifting it and setting it back down so it will sit in your lap. It's so small, hardly bigger than your hands. It'll likely never grow larger than your lap. It's perfect. "What about Lucky?" You tease.

"Oh, you flatter me, Y/N. Come on, something better."

"I don't know!" You laugh. "I'm not good at naming... things."

Lucky laughs. "Our Head Gamemaker with no ideas? That seems unlikely."

"Okay, okay. You're just putting me on the spot here, I'm a little nervous." You laugh, stroking over the dog's head. "I tell you what, before the games begin this morning I'll come up with twelve names, assign them randomly to the districts, then whoever shall win the games will determine the name of my dog. Does that sound fair?"

"Ah! That's brilliant!" Lucky laughs, clapping his hands together. "And that's a good incentive for anyone who hasn't yet placed their bets or sent in donations for the tributes! Your donation may just be what gives the First Lady's dog its name. How fun!"

"It'll be interesting." You giggle, looking down at the puppy in your lap. It must have been white before the dye, it took so well. Maybe it will fade into a pink before it grows out its natural white fur- you wouldn't want it to stay red forever, but for show, it was perfect.

"Now, we really shouldn't be taking up any more of your time. You have a busy day ahead!" Lucky says and you nod in agreement, standing up and carefully tucking the small dog under your arm. "Thank you for making time for us, I know I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us."

"Thank you. I really hope you all enjoy the games!" You smile, holding out a hand for him to shake which he takes quickly, then allowing you to walk off the stage.

As predicted by a certain Mister President; Coriolanus Snow, your first games as Head Gamemaker went without a hitch. They were perfect in every way. Capitol citizens were buzzing- not just about the games, the mutts you incorporated into the newly decorated arena, or the most shocking kills, but also about your dog. The people loved her, and so did you. She hardly ever left your lap or your side for the duration of the games, which only lasted a matter of days.

The party your husband threw for you at the presidential palace, your home, at the end of the games was extravagant. Coryo couldn't help but broadcast his pride to all of the Capitol. He loved you; you were his, and he needed everyone to know. Not a soul in all the world was anywhere close to being on your level, and shaping you into the perfect wife and First Lady was what Coriolanus Snow considered his greatest achievement. As you stood next to him, his palm tucked neatly against your lower back, you were perfect. More perfect than you were the day you fought for a spot in the mentorships that he granted you, more perfect than the he first time he kissed you, and more perfect than both of the days he had killed someone for you. Without question, he would do it all again if it meant he would get to hold you even just one more time.

"I'm so proud of you, Love." He gently rubs your back, looking down at you while you overlook your garden from the patio off of your bedroom.

You smile, standing up on your toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Snow lands on top." You whisper, biting your lip when you see a shift behind his eyes.

"You bet we do." He hums with a smug smile, lifting you up and carrying you back inside.

And somewhere, thousands of miles away in the Northern shambles of a still recovering District Thirteen, while you and your husband are celebrating, Sejanus Plinth and Lucy Gray Baird share knowing, sorrowful glances when it's announced on the crackling radio that the winner of the Seventeenth Annual Hunger Games was a boy from District Two, and because of this, the First Lady of Panem's dog shall be called Sage.

taglist: @totallynotkaibiased , @stelleduarte , @klplynn , @secretsicanthideanymore , @bejeweledreverie , @gloryekaterina , @andrewgarfieldsbitch , @queenofspades6 , @pepperonipastas , @ladybug0095 , @lunamothwrites , @sbrewer21 , @mus-tbe-a-weasley , @splxtscreen , @unclecrunkle , @karmaswitch , @coconut-dreamz , @nekee-lilac02 , @ooooglymoooogly , @riddlerloveb0t , @lovedbalances , @notyourwildestdream , @snowlandson-top , @too-lit-for-fanfic , @utopiakys , @deafeningballoonnacho , @roosterschanelslut , @chmpgneprblem , @cosmoetik , , @urvampgfsworld , @carolanns-world@nan-nie , @shakespearseclipse , @iovemoonyy , @notyoursweetheart-honey ,  @xyzstar , @eatpizzasass, @slytherinholland , @queenofshinigamis , @elodiebeau , @soulessjourney

taglist is closed for coryo unfortunately, but my requests for him are open!! so send me all your suggestions!! requests here!!

[writerslittlelibrary]

We can be your family

masterlist part 2

summary: having been in the foster system all your life, you don't expect much when your case worker tells you you're being moved again. what happens when the car suddenly stops in the most expensive neighborhood in all of New York…

pairing: Natasha x teen reader, Maria x teen reader, Blackhill

warnings: mentions of abusive foster families, vague mention of sexual assault 

genre: fluff

words: 3542

a/n: this one was voted for the most, and I'm so happy it was. I was super excited to write this and I love the idea of foster parents Blackhill so much, I think they're adorable. I hope you like it and please let me know what you think and whether you'd want more foster family Blackhill :) 

maybe I’ll make this a two parter or a series, seeing as I found this already pretty long but I do want to write more about it

You do not have my permission to repost, copy or translate my work

 |——————————— ⴵ ———————————|

It was late when the car came to a stop. It had been two days ago when you were told you were going to have a new foster family. You had been moving around all your life, having been left at the door of a police station merely days after you were born. You had never met your parents, and you were put into the foster system almost immediately. 

No one had ever adopted you, which unfortunately for you meant that you were still going from foster family to foster family, sometimes even group homes when there were no foster families available. 

In your life, you had learned it was best never to connect with your foster families. Usually, it didn't take very long until you were off to the next one anyway.

And so, two days ago when the service worker called, you had started mentally preparing for the next mess you were going to be thrown into. You had learned that most foster families were only in it for the money, and that was often very noticable, ever after the first day you'd be there. Often, they didn't care much for you, which was fine. You were perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. It was the times they did care for you when you had to be careful.

When they did care, they'd usually have a long list of ridiculous rules, all of which you had to follow. When you failed to follow their ridiculous rules, there'd usually be some type of insane punishment, which more often than not ended up with you hurt, usually because you'd take a beating.

You were a little nervous to meet a new foster family, worried they'd be another collection of horrible people that called themselves a family, yet, you weren't quite fond of the family you were with now, so you didn't care much.

For now, you'd simply hold on to the hope that this new foster family would be better than the old one. 

When your case worker came, you'd already packed. Seeing as you had never owned a lot of objects, you were done rather quickly. All your stuff easily fit in one trash bag, your valuable objects, such as your beloved stuffed bunny and your favorite book were all put in your school bag.

When you had gotten into the car, you definitely didn't expect much, but when the car drove through one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York, you were definitely surprised that that is where the car stopped. 

Either your case worker was gonna leave you at the dumpster, or your new foster family is rich rich. 

Alice opened the door for you with a smile, and she got your (trash) bag from the trunk. You held onto your school bag tightly as Alice walked inside the huge apartment building, you following closely behind. When you were both inside, Alice walked to the large reception desk at the left side of the lobby. A man dressed in a neat suit sat behind it.

You had never ever been in an apartment complex fancy or rich enough to have a security guard in the lobby. 

You were standing next to Alice as she told the security guard you were there for a Miss Romanoff and a Miss Hill. You were looking around the large and beautiful (and extremely fancy) lobby, too busy to even notice Alice mention two women.

The man typed some numbers on some device, then pointed Alice towards the elevator. Alice walked towards it, and you followed suit, too nervous to even spare a glance towards the security guard. 

Even the elevator looked fancy, and to say you were surprised when Alice pressed the penthouse button would be an understatement. 

When the elevator made it all the way to the top, Alice let you walk out first. There was only one door in front of the elevator, and you figured the penthouse was the only residence on the floor. You turned to Alice, who stood there waiting for you to knock on the door. You took a deep breath and took a few steps forward, pressing the fancy looking doorbell. How rich were these people if they even had a fancy looking doorbell?

The door opened soon enough, a brunette standing in the door frame with a smile on her face. She looked nice, but in your many years of experience you had learned that looks could be very deceiving. 

“You must be y/n,” she said as she looked at you, and you were too nervous to do anything but nod. She gave you a kind smile before shifting her gaze to Alice, glancing at the trash bag with concern. Alice took a step forward, extending her hand to the woman. 

“You must be Miss Hill. I'm Alice, we spoke on the phone,” she mentioned as she shook the hand of Miss Hill. “I am indeed, I'm so glad you could make it.”

Miss Hill stepped aside, allowing you to look into the penthouse. 

“Please come in, my girlfriend will join us shortly,” she said, and you took small steps into the apartment. Girlfriend? You could've known. She looked too well dressed to be straight…

Alice followed you inside, and stood awkwardly in the little hallway as Miss Hill closed the door. She walked in front of you and went to the right, walking into an expensive looking kitchen. It had a kitchen island, and around it were a few high stools. 

“You can sit down right here if you want. Would you like anything to drink?” Miss Hill asked, and you just shook your head. She then turned to Alice, who also shook her head with a smile. “No thank you, I'll be going shortly,” she stated as she set the trash bag next to the kitchen island, reaching into her own shoulder bag for a few papers.

She pulled out a map with documents, just as another woman joined you. “Oh, Miss Romanoff, so glad I got to see you too,” Alice stated as Miss Romanoff walked towards her, shaking her hand with a small but pleasant smile.

Miss Romanoff went to stand next to Miss Hill, both standing across from you as Alice handed the map to Miss Romanoff.

“Here are the last documents, and I will be going then. If you have any questions don't hesitate to let me know, my number is somewhere in there. Of course there will be some surprise inspections, and if you would like to get rid of the child please contact the number at the bottom,” Alice stated, and you grimaced at the words she used. 

Natasha was uncomfortable with the use of words as well, but you missed the worried glance she sent you and she took the documents from Alice. 

You just kept your gaze on your hands, picking at the skin around your fingers as Miss Hill walked Alice out. When she returned, she took a seat, Miss Romanoff now sitting as well. 

“So, y/n, I am Natasha, and this here is my girlfriend Maria. It is so nice to meet you,” Natasha smiled, but you kept your gaze on your hands. When Natasha noticed you weren't going to reply, she continued speaking. “I know this must be very scary for you, but I just want you to know it's a little scary for us as well. This is our first time fostering anyone, so if we make any mistakes you just let us know okay?” Natasha asked, and you just nodded your head.

“So where are all your bags? Is someone bringing them over later or?...” Maria asked, and you glanced at her slightly before pointing towards the trash bag. “Those are my clothes…” you said in a quiet voice, and it took everything in Natasha to not say how ridiculous that was.

“Okay, we'll just have to get you a proper bag then, huh?” Maria said kindly,  before standing up. “Would you like to see your room?” Maria then asked, and you nodded as you stood up too, going to grab the trash bag. “It's okay, I got it,” Natasha mentioned as she bent down, picking it up. “It's just this way,” Maria said as she led you through a hallway. 

She opened a door that carried an empty name plate, pushing it open and standing aside. 

“We didn't really know what you liked, but we tried our best. If you would like to change anything, maybe paint a wall or get some decorations you just let us know okay?” Natasha said, and you nodded as you put your school bag down by the bed, sitting on it. 

“All this is for me?” you asked as you looked around the room, taking in all the objects already in it. The desk and cabinets were empty, so were the walls, but the room was massive. 

Natasha nodded with a smile, walking into the room and turning to the door on the right. She opened it and stepped aside. “This is your bathroom, and right there is the closet,” she said as she pointed to another door next to the bathroom. 

“I have my own bathroom?” you questioned in disbelief, and Natasha nodded with a smile. 

“There is another closet right here,” she said as she opened another door, a small, undeep closet revealing itself. At the door hung a mat with little pockets, all filled with different snacks and treats. 

“We didn't really know what you liked, so we just bought a little bit of everything. These are all yours and you can eat them whenever you like. If anything ever runs out or if you would like some other snack or treats, just let us know and we can get it for you,” she explained, and you nodded with a small smile as you stared at all the treats and snacks.

You had never really gotten any treats or snacks, and you didn't exactly have your own money to buy it. 

Maria stayed at the door, wanting to give you your space while getting used to the new environment. “We'll just go and get started with dinner, so we'll leave you to settle in a little bit. Is there anything specific you'd like to eat? We can always order something, I'm never one to skip a good take-out meal,” Maria smiled, and Natasha walked to her side. 

You shrugged, not really knowing what to say. 

“We could order pizza? Or maybe sushi? Anything is okay,” Natasha pushed when she realized you weren't going to say anything yourself. 

“Pizza?” you asked quietly, and Natasha smiled and nodded. “Pizza it is. Do you want a specific one?” Natasha asked as she pulled out her phone, and you shook your head softly. 

“Just a margarita pizza please?” you asked, and Natasha nodded.

“We'll just be in the kitchen if you need us,” Maria told you, and she and Natasha left the room, closing the door behind them. 

You dumped your clothes on the bed, throwing the trash bag aside and going through them. Most of them were old and worn, but they still fit so no one ever decided you needed new clothes. After you folded them all neatly you walked to the closet, surprised at how big it was. Your clothes didn't even fill 10% of the closet, and you wondered if rich people really needed that many clothes.

Natasha and Maria seemed like really nice people, and even though you'd never admit it, you were excited you got to be with them. 

Of course you'd never trust some so fast, but until now they seemed nice and decent. The closet full of snacks definitely made you like them a little more, but you were still hesitant. You'd been in other families where they seemed nice at first, but the moment you'd make a mistake they'd beat you. You shuddered at the thoughts, grabbing a little bag of your favorite candy you found in the closet. 

You sat on the bed and took out your stuffed bunny, sitting against the headboard and holding the bunny close. 

You were scared and intimidated at this new place, but you were also happy you weren't at the other home anymore. Until now, this place seemed like a much better home to be.

-------------------------------------------------------------

After dinner, where you had mainly kept quiet and tried to avoid the questions they asked you, you went to your room and went straight into your bed. 

You didn't sleep the entire night. You didn't know these people, and you were afraid they'd come into your room and hurt you. That happened once, in a foster family you had about a year ago. The foster father had gone into your room and he had touched you, hurting you more than you ever thought was possible.

Since that foster home, you'd always stay awake the first night, wanting to be ready if one of the foster parents did come into your room.

Of course, tonight, nothing happened. Natasha and Maria had gone to bed shortly after you had, and the entire apartment was quiet. When the sun rose the next morning, you knew you had to ask either Natasha or Maria for some electronic device.

You didn't have a phone or computer, but you were homeschooled and followed an online program. With all the moving around and switching homes, it was always difficult to find a high school you could consistently go to. And so, you had gotten an online course and some data to login. However, you'd need an electronic device for that, and you didn't have that. 

When you walked into the kitchen around 8 am, Natasha and Maria were already awake. Maria was sitting at the kitchen counter, doing something on her laptop as she ate some toasts. Natasha was scrambling some eggs at the stove.

When Maria noticed you, she smiled and closed her laptop. "Good morning. How'd you sleep?” she asked and you shrugged. “Fine,” you said even though you knew damn well you hadn't slept at all. 

“How do you like your eggs?” Natasha then asked, turning to you shortly before focusing on the eggs in the pan again. 

“Scrambled is good,” you said as you sat down at the counter as well, preparing yourself to ask your question. After you took a deep breath and Natasha put some toast with eggs in front of you, you looked up, not really facing anyone but the counter top.

“So I was wondering…” you started carefully, and both Maria and Natasha looked at you as they waited for you to continue.

“I am doing online school, and I was just wondering if there is maybe an electronic device I could use? I don't have a phone or anything, but I do kinda need it…” you finished, your eyes darting around to Natasha, Maria and then back to the counter top again. 

“Of course. We can do some shopping today, to get you some essentials,” Maria said as she got up, opening the fridge and grabbing some orange juice.

Your eyes widened slightly. They couldn't possibly mean they'd buy you a phone, could they? 

-------------------------------------------------------------

After breakfast you, Maria and Natasha had gotten into their car. Their very expensive, very beautiful car. Natasha drove as Maria sat next to her. After about half an hour's drive, you arrived at a mall, and Maria opened the door for you. You thanked her and got out, following Natasha and Maria as they walked inside. 

Once inside, the first place they headed for was an apple store. You were shocked to say the least, really hoping they weren't going to spend so much money on you. 

When you entered the store, a worker came towards you three, asking if you needed help. Natasha said yes and asked him for the best phone they offered. 

The worker led you there, and Natasha thanked him as she picked it up, examining it. You stared at the phone wide-eyed, but more so at the price. That phone was higher than 1.500 euros, and you didn't believe they'd actually buy that for you.

“Well, it looks great, what color would you like?” Natasha smiled as she went to pick up a box from the shelf. 

You shook your head in shock, not believing they'd buy something like that for you. “I meant… like a device you have… that I could use… I didn't mean…” you stuttered out, and Natasha smiled as Maria laid a reassuring hand on your shoulder.

“Listen, sweetie, we just wanna get you everything you need. I promise you that we want to do this, okay? And you don't have to feel guilty that we're spending money on you, because we want to,” she told you.

Natasha looked at you too, smiling reassuringly. “We have plenty of money, and we can buy this for you easily. I promise you,” she explained.

“Okay…” you said quietly, still a bit unsure. 

Natasha smiled and walked towards the phone cases, Maria, with her hand still on your shoulder followed her. “You can pick out any case you like,” Natasha explained, and you nodded as you picked out a clear case. Natasha smiled as she took it from you, putting it in her basket. Why did she need a basket? 

After picking out the phone case, Natasha walked towards the ipads, looking over them and settling on the most expensive one, convinced that that would be the best. 

You were about to protest, but before you could even open your mouth, Natasha turned to you. “You can't possibly do online school on a phone now, can you?”

“I really don't want you to spend so much money on me…” you told her, and she smiled at you before picking up the same color ipad the phone was. Then she turned to you, putting her hand on your shoulder. 

“We want to get you whatever you need, and the money is not an issue for us, I promise you. Please let us get you what you need,” Natasha told you, and you simply nodded. 

Natasha smiled and made you pick out a case, putting a keyboard case in her basket as well, claiming it was so you could use the ipad for school. You insisted you didn't need it, but Natasha just said they'd buy it just in case then. 

After the most expensive trip to a store you had ever taken, resulting in an iphone, an ipad and airpods you really didn't expect them asking if you were okay to go to another store.

You said you were fine, and so you walked into another store where Natasha and Maria got you all kinds of things. All things for your bedroom, either to decorate or use. They had told you to pick out whatever you wanted, and after a lot of reassurance you had picked out several books, notebooks, some pens, markers and pencils, and some other stuff you liked.

They also let you pick out new covers for your bed, and after you told them you were fine with the cover that was on now, they told you that was one of their covers so you could pick some new ones out. 

The cover currently on your bed was a new one Natasha and Maria had bought especially for your arrival, but you didn't need to know that. They wanted you to pick something you liked, and soon enough you left the store with some pillows, stuffed animals and new covers.

Everytime you came out of a store, you three had to take a trip to the car to dump the stuff you bought before you could continue your shopping spree, but at the end of the day you really had fun.

You felt a little bad that they spent so much money on you, but with their constant reassurance that they wanted to do it and that they had plenty of money, you felt a little better about it.

After you had gotten back home, Natasha and Maria both helped you put all your new stuff away, and you think you thanked them at least a thousand times for everything they bought you. After everything was put away, you went to the kitchen, sitting on the stool as the apple store bag was still on the counter. 

Maria started dinner as Natasha sat down with you.

You opened the bag and took out the iphone first, opening it carefully and setting it up. Natasha helped unpack the case and handed it to you when you had set the iphone up. 

You couldn't help but smile at your very first phone. You weren't old or anything, but you were definitely at an age where it was odd you still didn't have a phone. When you unpacked the ipad it was the same. You unpacked it and set it up, while Natasha took the cases out of the packaging and handed them to you. 

After everything was taken care of, you thanked them once again, and they once again told you it was their absolute pleasure. 

Maybe this foster home would be different…

(if you’d like to be on a permanent tag list, so you’d be tagged on every fic I post, please let me know:))

[devildomwriter]

Their First and Last Words in the OG Game

*not including text* in this list is the vert first dialogue they are given, even if it’s not in-person (such as over a call) or not fully formed words like a distant call for help*

Lucifer

First (1-1): “I will explain everything to you.”

Last (80-22): “I knew it wouldn’t stay quiet around here for long…”

Mammon

First (1-1): “Huh? Who the hell are ya? You ain’t Lucifer” or “Are ya foolin’ around? Who the hell are ya?”

*first words via call are dependent on player choice*

Last (80-22): “Nuh-uh!!”

Leviathan

First (1-7): “How about this? I vote for YOU to die, Mammon.”

Last (80-16 Hard): “AAAAAAAAH!”

Satan

First (1-2): “Hmph. At least he didn’t ignore you altogether. How do you think I feel?”

Last (80-22): “No, MC’s mine.”

Asmodeus

First (1-2): “Oh, come now. Really? You should be honored that you get to introduce such a sweet and charming little brother like me!”

Last (80-22): “Oh MC! I’ve missed you sooo sooo SOOO much!”

Beelzebub

First (1-2) “Nope, I haven’t eaten any souls…yet.”

*this dialogue is only available by choosing a specific option in the game but it is the earliest available speech he gives*

Last (80-22): “In that case, we’ll be able to see each other whenever we want from now on, huh?”

Belphegor

First (2-15) “…el…”

Last (80-22): “Right, exactly. Because MC’s mine.”

Solomon

First (2-2): “Hey, you there.”

Last (80-16 Hard): “All right, all right…fine. We’ll go to the book signing with you. Okay?”

Simeon

First (2-13): “Ah, but I notice that you didn’t deny the part about him being cute, did you?”

Last (80-16 Hard): “Anyway, I feel like maybe I’ve made a bit of progress on my personal journey now?”

Raphael

First (60-22): “I can see that, yes…”

Last (80-19): “…Have you forgotten that I’m standing right here? If you’re about to have a “moment”…don’t.”

Luke

First (2-13): “Pff, of course not! Duh! That was a put-down! An insult! He’s taunting you!”

Last (80-22): “Aww… I want to see MC too, but they aren’t leaving me enough space to get through…”

Michael

First (38-17): “Hello there, MC.”

Last (44-18): “Goodbye. Until we meet again, MC…”

Thirteen

First (65-3): “Ahahahaha!” or “Ugh, what was THAT?! Honestly, I don’t believe it!”

*her first dialogue is dependent on player choice*

Last (80-17): “No. This is my first time studying at RAD, remember? My program runs for a full year.”

Little D. No. 2

First (7-10): “Now, now, I think it’s nice to have at least one foolish character in the group you can tease. It lightens things up a little, don’t you think?”

Last (68-16 Hard): “Y-Yes sirrr…”

Mephistopheles

First (63-1): “Don’t touch that!”

Last (80-17): “It’s the same with Solomon. Your terms should be ending soon, right?”

Barbatos

First (2-13): “Huh. Whenever you make an important announcement, the demons here couldn’t care less. But rumors… they really do spread like wildfire.”

Last (80-22): “Shall I go make some tea?”

Diavolo

First (1-1): “Welcome to the devildom MC.”

Last (80-22): “Ahaha! Come on, take it easy…all of you. You’re going to suffocate MC.”

MC

First (1-1): “Where am I?”

*technically these are just thoughts but I’m counting it*

Last (80-16 Hard): “I think you’re taking it a bit too far…” or “Just don’t summon Lotan by accident, okay?” or “Now you’ve got ME bawling, too!”

*dependent on player choice*

[dotster001]

Hiii!!! first, before I start I'm very socially awkward and my English sucks so this might be a bit cringe to read... but I just have to say, I LOVE your writing!!! you have such a cool writing style and your way of writing characters is always in character you're just AWESOME!!!! if it's not too much to ask, can I request a fight between all the dorm and vice-dorm heads (just dorm heads is cool too) when they overhear that the reader/MC has a crush (i simp for all of them)? again, love your writing so much!

Battle Royale

A/N: you have no idea how surprised I was that this wasn't the one voted for the last day. 😂 it's fine though, and I hope you enjoy!

3k follower Masterlist

Trein had held you after class today, and you were a little scared, to say the least. You didn't think you or Grim had done anything wrong today, but you could never be too sure.

Once the last student had left, he looked up at you.

"You've been acting odd lately. I've raised two children, and taught thousands of students, so I know why."

You didn't think you'd been acting odd. But you weren't the most self aware out there, if the numerous overblots you'd nearly missed were anything to go by.

"Oh?" You asked.

He sighed heavily, and gently took your hand. 

"You've ingratiated yourself into my heart, like one of my own kids. So I'm going to tell you this; none of the boys at this school is worth the trouble."

"Huh?"

"I don't know which one you have a crush on, but there are less than a handful that deserve the attention."

Your cheeks began to warm, and you gasped. You hadn't thought too deeply about it, but there was definitely someone you'd had your eye on, maybe a bit too much, recently. If Trein had noticed…had he noticed as well?

"I'll uh, I'll keep that in mind."

"Please do," he gave you a firm stare, then turned back to his papers.

You were so out of it, that you didn't notice your two friends who had stayed behind for emotional support.

….

"It's definitely me."

"In what world would it ever be you!"

Trey entered the kitchen to check on the bread in the oven, and sighed to himself as he watched the freshmen fight with each other.

"What are you up to?" He asked.

"Nothin-" Deuce muttered, but was cut off by Ace.

"If Y/N had a crush on someone, it'd be me, right?"

Trey stared at the two, then slowly turned to the oven.

"Where is this coming from?" He asked.

"Trein kept Y/N behind today, and told them whoever they have a crush on isn't worth it."

"Hm. And you both think it's you, because?"

Both of them froze. They could hear the challenge in Trey's voice, and neither of them knew how to approach it.

"Well, why wouldn't it be?" Ace snapped. "We hang out with them more than anyone. If it's anybody, it's me or Deucey." 

Trey smiled at the temporary unification of his freshmen, and calmly asked, "Wouldn't it make sense if they went for someone with more life experience? Someone more mature?"

The freshmen were silent again, before Deuce asked, tentatively, "Has…has Y/N said something to you?"

Trey hummed, putting together Riddle's dinner tray.

"No. At least, not verbally."

And then he left the kitchen. He couldn't wipe the soft smile from his face. Riddle noticed it as Trey poured his tea. 

"Did something good happen?"

"Hm? Oh, the freshmen found out Y/N had a crush on someone, and assumed it was one of them. I told them it would probably be someone more mature."

Riddle hummed thoughtfully. "True," he sipped his tea, "Y/N would go for someone more mature, who is someone who was also not that much older than them."

"Oh, you think so?" A challenge.

"Yes." A retort.

….

From there, Riddle took his information to the housewardens meeting, who took it to their vicehousewardens, who in turn spread it to the rest of the school.

In less than a couple hours, Malleus and Leona were literally at each other's throats, as the rest of the school egged them on.

"Y/N has more class than to fall for a mangy housecat!" A bolt of green lightning nearly hit Leona, who dodged at the last second.

"They certainly would never fall for a scaly lizard!" The air around Malleus filled with sand.

"Shouldn't we put a stop to this?" Silver asked Lilia, who was busy restraining Sebek.

"Kids will be kids," Lilia laughed in response.

Ruggie tapped Azul on the shoulder, holding out his open hand. "Five thaumarks to join the pot. Who do you think will win?"

Azul smirked, "Neither, because Y/N is surely in love with me. They've all but said so."

"Sure, sure," Ruggie rolled his eyes. "Because out of everyone they could choose, it would be the person who takes 20% of their tips, and not the person who shares home cooked meals with them."

"I couldn't help but overhear your discussion, boys, but don't fool yourselves. The only person Y/N could possibly fall for would be the embodiment of the fairest Queen," Vil hummed as he passed them, fully intent on stopping the fight which was already well out of hand.

But he was halted by a hand on his wrist. 

"Schoenheit, don't be a silly boy and embarrass yourself," Lilia hummed, his eyes turning more crimson than fuschia. "Besides," he laughed lightly, going back to playful, "rumor has it, Y/N is in love with someone with life experience, something I have more of than anyone else here."

"Sure," Vil muttered at his peer. He was quickly pulled into the fight when he reached them, purple magic joining the sand and emerald lightning.

Rook was watching the fight with wide eyed enthusiasm. His emerald eyes were taking in everything they did, studying their moves for use at…well…a later date. 

Idia's tablet, meanwhile, was focused solely on Rook, the terror practically radiating from it. It was muted, but if it wasn't, people would have heard Ortho hyping him up. But Idia did not want to fight the hunter. Not with the way his eyes were glittering with blood lust.

Jade was about to prevent Floyd from elbow slamming his way into the fight, when all the boys were forcibly separated by an unknown force. All eyes traveled to Trein, who was staring at them all in disgust.

"Animals. The lot of you," he snarled, staring everyone down. "Anyone involved in any way will be punished accordingly."

….

"Why did Professor Trein keep you behind today?" Asked Jack, who was blissfully unaware of the war going on. He had offered to help you study after class, and had been curious as to why he'd beat you to Ramshackle.

"Oh," you hesitated. "Well, he noticed I'd been behaving odd lately, and told me to be careful."

"Y/N's in love, and teach said no one was good enough!"

"Grim!" You cried, burying your face in your hands.

"Oh," Jack said, trying to be as cool as possible. "Who is it?"

You peaked through your fingers, opening and shutting your mouth a few times.

"If you don't tell him, I will," Grim snickered.

"Don't," you whined. You took a steadying breath, and began, "Okay. It's…"

[sashi-ya]

𝑨𝑩𝑶𝑽𝑬 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑪𝑳𝑶𝑼𝑫𝑺 ⛈ [chapter 1: introduction] 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐭! 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐚𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐱 𝐅! 𝐂𝐄𝐎! 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫.

⇝ Interactive fic format welcome to the first chapter! as mentioned previously this will be an interactive fic! how does it work? by the end of every chapter you will find a poll section where you will be able to vote for what's coming in the next chapter! what will reader do? what will be the consequences? have fun! ⇝ tw: the story is set to be an awakening for reader. you will find topics as loneliness, hints of depression and suicidal tendencies. be specially careful if this topics are triggering for you. there is no smut in this chapter, but it will be in the following ones. ⇝ don't forget to vote at the end of every chapter! ⇝ masterlist

Nobody, never, told you no. And nobody, ever, will. Miss Independent. Miss Successful. The Boss.

“I don’t care about a stupid storm, get me a damn ticket NOW” you order. The sound of your voice echoes against the many glass windows of your rooftop office. You don’t mind, nor care for your safety… all you have in your life is your job. Biggest enterprise that leads many markets and won’t ever stop growing. At least not on your watch.  

Your hills click harder against the cold marble of the floor, a tuft of hair gets curled around your finger, the insides of your mouth are heavily bitten. Nobody, however, knows you can get anxious. And nobody should, either.

“The… the airport is closed, Miss” your assistant, Usopp, informs.

Your eyes are glued to the blurred image of the city. You can see almost all of it from your position. And it’s that, exactly, what money and power makes you feel; like you are above them all.

“Then get the jet” you venously spit, as if your assistant was stupid enough not to think of that already. “I don’t give a fuck if it’s closed, we are taking off from the vineyard runway”

You notice your secretary nervously trying to find any type of words that could stop you from doing such stupidity, but he finally gives up and simply says “yes, boss...”

He walks away, already with his phone in his hands. He needs to call the private pilot on a Thursday night, with a cyclone outside, just because you couldn’t wait.

The tuft you’ve been playing with around your finger is now behind your ear. You tucked it. As always, your hand did it. Your long red nails did. Loneliness never made you less successful; in fact, quite the opposite.

Through the glass wall, covered in uncountable raindrops, your blurred vision finally fixes into the many buildings around. All of them, so late in the evening, begin to show candid lights throughout them. Families that join and play together. Lonely people hugging their pets. Couples dancing and kissing, or even looking through their windows. None of them, but you, show a single silhouette tonight.

“Boss, I’m- I…” your assistant breaks your bubble of hate and self-awareness. “The pilot says he is not flying tonight. It’s too dangerous” he excuses himself. In fact, his head bowed down exposes how mortified he is by not being able to accomplish your orders.

You turn around and massage your temple. There is a very important meeting you need to attend tomorrow morning. You can’t wait.

“Put Doffy on the line and leave me alone” you straight and coldly say.

He nods, leaving immediately, closing the heavy doors behind him. Not even five seconds after, the sound of your phone announces  Mr. Donquixote is waiting on the line.

“My sweet (Name), to what do I owe the pleasure of your call? Are you feeling lonely tonight? You can come home whenever you can” the excentric billionaire, who you sometimes fuck with, sings through the phone.

“I need your private pilot. Now. Flying my jet from the vineyards” you say, not much information is given. He probably understands.

He laughs. Extremely loudly.

“No pilot will take you anywhere tonight but let me see if my nephew wants to risk his life. The kid wants to die often, and apparently you too” he keeps laughing while telling you such terrible statement.

“I need a pilot, not a kid Doflamingo” “He is, indeed, a pilot. Give me twenty minutes, I’ll send it to your vineyard. But you owe me one… you know exactly those lips are my weakness”

Done. Problem fixed. You always know who to call when you need something; you know nobody really cares about your wellbeing but only the things they could get in return if you owe them something.

A carry on is always packed with essential stuff on your office; many are the times you spend travelling compared to those you spend at your own house. You grab it along with your coat and your keys.  You don’t wait for your chauffer; you don’t want to hear blabbering about safety.

“It’s just rain. What’s gonna happen? Am I getting my stilettos wet? So what?”

There isn’t much traffic, the many lights are indeed going the opposite way to yours. Everybody seems to be returning home, while you are driving straight to the outside of the city. Your vineyards aren’t that far but are certainly on a much rural zone.

Thunder roar in the open sky, the darkest night seems to be only illuminated by the power of those flashing lights inside growing grey towers of fluff.

“Bet is gonna be a very fun flight ~” you hum, as you imagine the little powerful plane crossing the menacing clouds ahead.

It takes you little time to arrive to your destination, the engine of your car is way more powerful than most of the automobiles out there.

Right by the door of your vineyards, a man that seems to be on the bones, salutes you.

“Yohohoho! What are you doing here, Boss? Welcome! Do I prepare a glass of Merlot or maybe a Pinot Noir for you tonight? ” he asks, taking his hat off, revealing an amazing afro underneath.

“Brook, take this to the jet. The pilot will be here at any minute, he is a new one so let him pass the door” you instruct your housekeeper, throwing your carry on at him.

His eyes, deep into the sockets of his skull, open wide. Of course, nobody expects you to fly with such storm outside… but that’s just you, and exactly how you are.

“Sure, Boss. I’ll sort everything out for you right away”

You take a swift look at the main house of your vineyards. Everything is perfectly clean and well kept. You are satisfied; your personnel works perfectly well. Except your private pilot, that one is already fired.

You sit down, flopping maybe onto a fancy couch. Nobody is watching, you are allowed to rest for at least just a moment. However, the calm lasts no longer than a couple of seconds.

“Miss (Name), the pilot is here” Brook comments, making your shut eyes to open slowly and -mostly- annoyed. You didn’t expect to see a man standing right next to your employee, but there he is.

“Who are you? why aren’t you on the plane already?” you ask, not even standing up but crossing your legs as you stiff your back muscles. Your thighs, flash a little bit of them underneath the cut of your pencil tight skirt. Your red nails carve on the sides of the armchairs.

The man, of steel eyes and dark hair smirks just a little with defiance and superior demeanour. Something you most likely don’t fancy but makes your insides… anxiously alive.

Wearing nothing but a private pilot uniform, he stands right in front of you. It shows that he is clearly not used to serve, but to be served. And you soon remember this man, who’s been called a “kid”, is in fact Donquixote Doflamingo’s nephew.

“You must be Doffy’s nephew; you are just like him; you don’t bow before anyone. Don’t you?” you ask, this time standing up. Not even your high heels are enough to surpass his height.

He hums. “Trafalgar Law, and I’m not like him” he spits. Apparently he is not only spoiled, but also hates his own family. “I’m not here to work for you, I am here because I’ve been told you needed a favour. You should know how to fly planes by now” he states.

You burn. How dare him tell you are not independent enough.

“Indeed, I do. Apparently you aren’t aware of the fact that I can’t fly without another pilot because of stupid laws and regulations. This isn’t a helicopter; this is a jet” you inform him, walking right pass him and asserting dominance with your hand on his shoulder.

You look him in the eye with a side look. Law, does the same. You are close, so close you can hear his breathing. And your image, imponent and beautiful, reflects on the golden hoops that hang from his right ear.

Both, intensely fight in silence. For what, however, none of you exactly know. And the energy between you two, could probably alter the weather, and the world itself…

“Come on, I have no time to waste. I need to be in London by tomorrow morning” you break the silence. Walking towards a big hall that takes you to the hangar, you turn around just for a couple of seconds to give a last lethal look at your new young companion.

Just a hint of flustered cheeks show in his face, but it’s enough for you to feel like you have won the battle of dominance. Or that’s what you thought.

The heavy steps behind you, makes you internally smile. You are used to be followed by almost mute employees, walking on eggshells not to piss you off. But Law is different; he is not doing this for the money, nor status. He is as suicidal as you, flying in this weather should be prohibited… in fact, it is. But the rich never ask for permission. You are know you are above everything else. And that includes the clouds, too.

“Give me a second, let me sort the charts” Law says, taking a look at the papers in his hands before climbing into the jet.

You nod, as you do the same with your laptop. Something inside you tells you to stop; that those conditions will bring more than mere turbulence. Yet, your cold heart, tells you something louder than your reason; “who cares if something happens, after all? Just do it”

Half an hour after, and a couple of swift looks at each other, Law and you are already set to departure.

For the first time since he arrived you notice the tattoos on his hands; knuckles inked with the word “D.E.A.T.H” rip a scoff from you. It is quite funny to you, that those hands could most likely either fly you to death if you aren’t lucky enough, or to London if you are.

“We don’t need to fly now, we can wait until the conditions seem better” Law murmurs, as those inked fingers turn on every button of the plane. “Your plans aren’t more important than any life”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤOh. So, he is not that willing to die as Doffy said…

[mothocean]

Fuck it. Steampunk era new albion tumblr

⚙️ mcallisterindustries Follow

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of my beloved mother, Annabel Mcallister, whose passion for science has inspired me since i was a young boy. Without her, the memory of her death aching in my heart, driving me to pursue a way to bring back those lost to time, Mcallister Industries wouldn't be where it is today. To honor her memory, we are holding a 30% sale on all new doll models, and a 1+1 deal on reanimating newly dead loved ones! Call 1-DOLL-800 to find out more about upcoming sales and order your loved one's new doll body today!

5 notes

💀 voodoopunk-official Follow

We're meeting again at the crossroads tonight!! Bring your doll-ay doll-ay spirit!

- Mod B

#voodoopunk #vote voodoopunk we dance with you on your graves

704 notes

💀 voodoopunk-official Follow 🔁 averagealbioncitizen Follow

🤵 averagealbioncitizen Follow

man can these dolls play literally anything else. i keep retuning my granny's radio but it always plays that elysian night song :(((

🔁 💀 voodoopunk-official Follow

You just don't get it like we do

- mod A

1 notes

🟥 redhairedbisexual Follow 🔁 redhairedbisexual

🟥 redhairedbisexual Follow

my bro died so i have to take over the family business now :(( anyway hmu if you need anything special iykyk 😜🤙💯

🔁 🟥 redhairedbisexual Follow

update: who tf keeps stealing our stock im gonna fucking bootleg doll you

7 notes

👑 aliceinfutureland Follow

made some progress today :) the angels will be proud

0 notes

🤖 doll34221543 Follow 🔁 doll356857543 Follow

🌠 newalbionmayor-official Follow

Elysium, the silent sighed lost lullaby...

56.7K notes

💀 voodoopunk-official Follow 🔁 bi-bye-byron Follow

🕶 destroy-da-dollz-deactivated

🔁 🎩 bi-bye-byron Follow

JASPERSWEEP

🔁 👯‍♀️ dykes4dolls Follow

What a self own lmao

🔁 💞 dollay-darling Follow

op did u really think people were gonna vote against the doll? On the voodoopunk website?

🔁 🕶 destroy-da-dollz-deactivated

'voodoopunk website' up my ass y'all let the power get to your head. You fucking rusty ass stoner cultists ain't gonna last here

🔁 💀 voodoopunk-official Follow

THEY DEACTIVATED HAHA GET REKT

- mod B

4,306 notes

🕶 crossroads-acolyte-deactivated

My dad's been really terrible lately... at least i have the dolls to comfort me

🔁 🕶 crossroads-acolyte-deactivated

Their song is so beautiful... if only i could join them...

🔁 🕶 crossroads-acolyte-deactivated

Elysium, the silent sighed lost lullaby

Elysian night

Read more

2 notes

🤵 averagealbioncitizen Follow 🔁 voodoopunk-official Follow

💀 voodoopunk-official Follow

With great agony, we announce the passing of one of our dear members. Mod A, also known as Acolyte Amelia, you will be missed.

- Mod B

🔁 🤵 averagealbioncitizen Follow

I KNEW THOSE DOLLS WERE PROBLEMATIC FROM THE START UGH... don't support the voodoopunks they're lying to you #killthedolls #antivoodoopunk

🔁 💀 voodoopunk-official Follow

Amelia didn't die because of the dolls dumbass you're just using her death as a means to further your stupid political agenda smh 🙄

- Mod B

🔁 🤵 averagealbioncitizen Follow

AND YOU AREN'T???

36.8K notes

🚫 destroy-da-dollz-remade Follow

I FUCKING TOLD YOU GUYS

#anti voodoopunk #kill the dolls #i fucking said it from the start but y'all didn't LISTEN

0 notes

🤵‍♀️ kate-the-nyarrator

can anyone even hear me

[wolfjackle-creates]

Answer My Call Chapter 3 part 1

Happy WIP Wednesday! Answer My Call won by all one one vote last week. I was a bit nervous since I'm starting a new POV and I wasn't sure if I wanted to write from Tucker's POV or Tim's, but I settled on Tucker because it would let me dive into the action a bit sooner.

Story Summary: Danny's missing. The GIW have taken over Amity. Jazz, Tucker, and Sam are under constant surveillance and have been scattered across the country.

When Jazz's messages to Danny go to the wrong number, Red Hood decides to step in.

First, Previous

Word Count: 1.6k

-----

Tucker was alone in his dorm room working on homework. His desk was in the corner in a way that meant his computer screen faced the wall. It meant he had barely three feet of space to sit in, but after everything that had happened, he couldn’t let anyone sneak up behind him to spy on his work.

His roommate hated him for it because it took up so much extra space in their small room, but he was never around anyway, so Tucker didn’t really care what he thought.

He jumped when a loud knocking sounded on his door.

“Coming!” he called out as he took the time to save everything he had open and close all programs. He slammed it shut and squeezed out of his chair, half running to the door. “Sorry ‘bout the wait. Tyler isn’t here right now, I think he said something about spending time with Liz?”

Then he actually looked at the people at his door. The one was a broad boy wearing a spiked leather jacket over jeans. The other had a bulky sweatshirt on and a baseball cap. His face was shadowed as he was looking down at a tablet, typing away.

The bigger one was grinning at him. “You’re Tucker, right? We’re here to see you, not Tyler.”

Tucker blinked at them. “Why?” he asked, confused. People had given up on being friendly with him weeks ago.

The boy with the tablet huffed. “We’re here to invite you to our club.”

Tucker looked between them in confusion. “What?”

Tablet guy still didn’t look up. “We heard you like ghosts. We’re the officers of the student horror club and wanted to offer you a spot. Mind letting us in so we can tell you about it?”

Tucker rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not interested in joining any clubs right now. Thanks, but no thanks.” He went to shut the door, but leather jacket stuck out his foot, keeping it from shutting.

“Just hear us out. We think you’d be perfect for it as an expert on ghosts.”

Tucker clenched his fists to hide their shaking. What did they know? Who sent them? He glared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tablet boy raised his head slightly, revealing a domino mask covering his eyes. He grinned, more a baring of teeth than anything. In a tone just loud enough to be heard, he said, “One of my associates is currently in Boston. I decided to come here instead.” In a normal ton he added, “Let me tell you about the horror club.”

Tucker’s mouth fell open. How? Boston? What had Jazz done? His eyes flitted down the hallway. But they were blocking his path and he wouldn’t be able to get past them. Dumbly, he stepped back, opening the door further.

Leather jacket grinned at him. “Thanks, dude,” he said.

Behind them, Tucker shut the door. His hand fell to his pocket where a lipstick laser was hidden.

Tablet boy was already pulling the blinds down over the window. When done, he handed his tablet to Tucker. It was open to a message that said: “We’re on your side. Turn off your devices. I’m going to set off a EMP and signal jammer.”

Tucker nodded and handed the tablet back.

Leather Jacket cleared his throat. “So, with the horror club, we meet once a week…”

Tucker only half-listened to his spiel. He used his phone to send a coded warning to Dani before turning it off. Then he went through his belongings and did the same to every laptop, PDA, tablet, and gaming system. If he turned on a ghostly recording device hidden inside an action figure, however, no one would know.

As soon as he was done, he nodded to Tablet Guy who pulled out a black cube from his backpack and pressed a button. The he pulled out another device and turned that on as well.

“That’s enough, Kon,” he said, pulling off his cap.

Leather Jacket—Kon?—grinned. “What, you don’t want to hear about my favorite horror movie, Rob?”

“I introduced you to your favorite horror movie. I know it as well as you do.”

Kon just laughed. Then he unzipped his jacket, revealing a blue outfit with Superman’s “S” on it.

“Holy shit,” breathed Tucker. What had Jazz done?

Tablet guy followed, pulling off his cap and removing his hoodie, revealing a red costume with a gold bird medallion in the center of his chest. “Nice to meet you, Tucker. I’m Red Robin, and this is Superboy. I’ve got some questions for you.”

Tucker’s eyes jumped between the two. “Holy shit,” he repeated.

Superboy laughed. “Didn’t expect to see us?”

Tucker could only shake his head. “You said Boston?” he asked.

“Red Hood is with Jazz as we speak. She asked for our help in rescuing Danny. We agreed.”

Tucker tensed. He was lying. They’d talked about reaching out to the Justice League dozens of times, but had decided they couldn’t be trusted. Jazz wouldn’t have gone to them. He reached into his pocked and pulled out the lipstick.

Both heroes tensed, though their wariness turned to confusion when they saw he only had a small lipstick tube.

Good, let them underestimate him. “Jazz wouldn’t go to the Justice League. We agreed it wasn’t safe. Why are you really here?”

Red Robin grinned at him and held up his hands. “All right, you’re right. I simplified for time’s sake. Jazz has been sending messages to a phone number she thought belonged to her brother Danny. But really, they were going to Red Hood. He’d been getting them for ages now, but was…out of town. As soon as he got back, he began looking into Amity and the GIW. When he couldn’t find anything, he brought me in on the case. When that still didn’t work, we called Jazz back. She decided to take a chance on us since Red Hood doesn’t work with the government. And, honestly, I’ve done quite a bit outside the law, too, even if I’m not as public about it.”

Tucker’s grip on the lipstick tightened and he stuck his nail under the cap, ready to flick it off at a moment’s notice. “Prove it.”

Red Robin pulled up his tablet again and tapped a few places. An audio recording started to play.

Tucker stopped breathing when he recognized Jazz’s voice. He closed his eyes and just listened. When he heard her demand a picture and the pose she asked for, he huffed out a laugh.

The recording ended and he slid the lipstick back into his pocket and wiped at his eyes.

“Okay, I believe you. What’s the plan?”

“Right now we want to make sure you, Jazz, and Sam are safe and find out as much information as we can.”

Tucker nodded. “I’m not as closely watched as Jazz. The school keeps close track of us students and the Guys in White rely on their records. Though they do have an agent stationed in admin who checks up on me at least once a week. I don’t keep my most sensitive belongings in this dorm as it’s searched every other week.”

Red Robin grinned at him. It sent shivers down Tucker’s back. “Does that mean your real stuff is kept somewhere else?”

Tucker smirked. “Of course. Cover yourselves back up; we need to go.”

Red Robin did something with his jammer and EMP and then began talking excitedly about the horror club again. “So glad you’ve agreed to come to our next meeting, Tucker! We’ve been trying to build the club.”

Superboy winked at him. “What do you say we get to know each other a bit before then? Want to come play video games with us?”

Tucker bit his lip and looked towards his desk and laptop as if he were undecided. “I should get back to my homework…”

“Oh, come on, it’ll still be there tomorrow,” said Red Robin. “Let’s go.” He looked back down at his tablet and headed towards the door, grabbing Tucker’s hand as he did.

Tucker looked over his shoulder one last time, but let himself be pulled along. They kept conversation light as they exited the building. Red Robin was an expert at angling his baseball cap to hide his masked face from every camera they passed.

Would he be willing to teach Tucker how to do that?

Once outside, Tucker took the lead. One of the first things he’d done after he’d been enrolled was memorize blueprints for every building on campus. On top of that, he’d made himself a good dozen different IDs. Three of those were copies of other students’. Those students he kept close track of to make sure their records didn’t show them in two places at once. Other ones belonged to various faculty and staff members. But his pride and joy was the one that belonged to Gabriel Carter. Gabriel was a janitor at the Academy and so could access any building. Gabriel also didn’t exist.

It was Gabriel’s ID that got them access to the basement level of one of the buildings. Hidden deep in the building was a set of rooms currently not in use. And in one of those rooms was a closet.

Tucker had built the locks on the door himself and, even having all the keys and codes, it took five minutes to get in.

He smirked when Red Robin himself let out a gasp of surprise at his set up.

-----

Hope you enjoyed!

Now, how did Kon get involved? Easy. Tim used the zeta tube from the cave to Titans Tower. Kon happened to be there. When Tim said he was working a case with Red Hood, the guy who tried to kill him once, Kon insisted on coming along. I debated having other members of the Young Justice, but I'm actually trying to keep character counts down for this one, so...

Check out the subscription post if you want a notification when I update!

[xoxoxkisses]

HELLOOO! How are you! , well l hope you are doing just great!☺️ and l was hoping lf you could do a request for me? lts a random one , lts where the reader ls Douma’s child , and she turned out exactly like him but she doesn’t want to be shown as a demon child so she ran away and trained to be a hashira until one day at a mission with one of the hashiras (prob muichiro since l want lt to be a muichiro x reader) , Shinobu realized that the reader has the same rainbow eyes as douma and she let the master know and they confronted her , afterwards the reader disappeared and went to stay with douma after so much time and Muichiro misses his lover , this was after Muichiro and her got together.😅 btw l love all your content 🤩

one of a kind

Muichiro x reader

warnings: not proofread

————————————————————————

I always knew I was different from the others. My father was a demon, and my mother..well I don’t know anything about her. My father however, was a weird demon, he was always unusually happy and bubbly. He had multi colored eyes which most demons didn’t have. I had them. I also had his personality. When I realized I was becoming just like him, I ran away. I didn’t want to be known as the demon child, or especially his child.

That’s why I became a member of the demon slayer corps. No one knew I was half a demon. I could go out into the sun, and I didn’t have fangs. The one thing was my eyes.

I was a Hashira, the highest rank you could be. I had amazing friends, and an amazing boyfriend, Muichiro. We had been dating for 2 years. Everything in my life was perfect, absolutely perfect.

Well that was until one day.

Muichiro and I had been assigned together for a mission. It went pretty good, there were no injuries reported and everyone was safe. One of the demons had accidentally flicked something into my eye during battle and it was swollen, so I had to stop at the butterfly mansion to get it looked at.

I told Muichiro to go on without me and that I would meet with him soon. I went inside and asked Aoi for Shinobu. It didn’t take long for her to wave me into her office.

“What’s wrong Y/n?” “During my mission, a demon flicked something into my eye. I just need it looked at.” She nodded at me as she went to her desk and opened a drawer and pulled out a small light. She walked back over and asked me to open my eye, I did, and she held the light up. I saw her breath catch in her throat as she looked at it. “Is everything ok?” I could sense her nervousness. “Yes! Everything is perfectly fine, just looks like there is just some dirt. Here, take these eye drops.” She handed me a bottle of them and sent me on my way. ————————————————————————

Master called us to a meeting the next day. Everyone was confused because there was nothing to meet about.

“Good afternoon children. I suppose you’re all confused on why you’re all here, correct?” Everyone answered with ‘Yes master.’ He smiled softly as he began to speak again. “I have been informed a demon has been fighting amongst us.” Everyone gasps, including me, but my heart also sinks. “Y/n, come here please.” Everyone’s eyes went to me, I looked at my boyfriend who looked at me worriedly. i walked up to the master and stood beside him. “Children, Y/n here is half of a demon. Ms Kocho has informed me that her father is uppermoon 2.” I gasped. That’s why she was nervous yesterday.

Everyone stared at me. They were voting on what to do with me. Finally they suggested to execute me. This scared me. I broke free from the masters grip and ran off. ————————————————————————

I went back to live with my father. No one has seen me in years, and i wanted it to stay that way. However, I missed Muichiro. I wished he was there for me, but he wasn’t. Little did you know, he missed you and looked for you everyday.

I went out for a walk one day to get out away from my father. Today was one of his eating days and you hated them. As I was walking through the forest, I felt a familiar presence. I decided to check it out, so I went further into the woods and found a small clearing. There sat my boyfriend. My Muichiro. I wanted to cry. He looked so different now. Unfortunately for me, he looked over and saw me, his eyes went wide. I ran off, he was also running after me. He had gotten a lot quicker, and i had gotten slower. He caught up to me.

“Y/n! I can’t believe it!” He spun me around, admiring Me. “Hey Muich-“ He pulled me into a kiss. I had missed this, a lot. “Y/n, please, come back, or take me with you.” I shook my head. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous for us both.” “Then let’s run away together. I want to be with you Y/n.” I took his idea into consideration, but agreed. I would run away with the love of my life. ————————————————————————

We ended up running to a far away village. We made a home there. No one had heard from the two of us in years. My life may not be perfect now, but at least I have the one thing I always wanted: Muichiro

————————————————————————

a/n: this is rushed I’m sorry. I’m surviving off of 3 hours of sleep and I’ve had workouts so I’m tired. I’ve also had 0 motivation.

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

06/29/2024 - 06/30/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Rhys Darby; Taika Waititi; Guz Khan; Vico Ortiz; Rachel House; How To Fuck Off With Con O'Neill: CW; AdoptOurCrew Charity Raffle Update; Gold Derby Voting; Fan Spotlight: Cast Cards; Our Flag Means Fanfiction; Big Gay Energy Podcast; Teal Oranges & Garlic Soup Week; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Today's Taika

== Rhys Darby ==

Quick sighting of Rhys with Kirk Thatcher and another commercial for FFXIV!

Source: kirkrthatcher's Instagram

Source: FFXIV's Instagram

== Taika Waititi ==

Quick shot of Taika and Rita with Andy Hernden!

Source: Andyhernden's Instagram

= Guz Khan =

A shot of Guz with Mark Silcox-- apparently this is a hint at Season 5 of Guz' show Man Like Mobeen!

Source: Guz Khan Official Twitter

== Vico Ortiz ==

Lots more sightings of Vico out and about!

Source: Vico Ortiz Instagram

== Rachel House ==

Yet another chat show with Rachel house!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Last Video Store (@lastvideostorebetoota)

Source: The Last Video Store instagram

CW: Con O'Neill in Underwear under the cut.

== How to Fuck Off w/ Con O'Neill ==

Many of our crewmates attended the Momentus class with Con O'Neill on Saturday! When Samba did his cooking class, the video was released to youtube a week or so later so hopefully this one will be too. I did try to transcribe some of the information, if it is quoted it should be word for word minus uhms. Non quoted is paraphrased. This was 3 hours long if you did the meet and greet so I've only added what I was able to get through. If I have time I'll transcribe more.

Con showed up on camera with no pants on

Re Izzy: When David approached him, Izzy was just a thought, a husk yet to be formed

David saw Izzy as a Salieri from Amadeus, or Iago (from Othello)

Con "Agreed with David" but also "saw [Izzy] as a man desperately, painfully in love. So his passion, and his anger, and his fear and his love, all erupted in his expletives, i loved him from the off, I loved his directness, I loved his fearlessness, pain, and of course his fabulous use of profanities"

Con then taught the class how to do various types of "fucks" "shits", "twats" etc.

Some fun quotes:

"A happy shit is one with a smile"

"A sad shit is one you say with a frown"

"Everyone give me an orgasmic twat"

Some Transcribed BTS Info:

"In Season 1 I was terrified of ad-libbing, improv, which I've said many times. We had great writers and everything we needed was on the page-- Except for the day 'Daddy' came to visit."

"I have no idea where that line came from, no idea which part of my dark perverted psyche it erupted from but as soon as it was out, it was out."

"In Season 2, again, everything I needed was on the page, our writers are/were will always be spectacular, they gave Izzy such beautiful stuff, and I will be forever grateful to them, to David Jenkins, to the whole cast and crew, and to you all for your continued support."

"But towards the end of the shoot, we were filming the tavern scene with me and Erroll, aka Ricky and it was the 'belonging to something' which was so beautifully written it took my breath away."

"And we shot many many takes, and I was tired, and emotional, and I knew we had it nearly. There was something missing. There was a beat, a moment to end what was really Izzy's epitaph. And then-- our brilliant director Fernando came up to me and he whispered in my ear 'we'll do one more take, let him go' and we started the take and I could feel myself getting emotional."

"This was Izzy's big moment, it had to be right, it had to be right, and then as we reached this final line, instead of what was written, I heard Izzy say: 'and you are a rancid syphilitic cunt' and to my dying day, I will never ever understand how we got that on the telly, but we did because sometimes in life only a rancid syphillitic cunt will suffice."

== Adopt Our Crew Pride Month Charity Raffle Update ==

Well done everyone! $7041.72 was raised for 148 LGBTQ+ charities around the world! Thank you so much to @adoptourcrew for all the wonderful work they did and all our crewmates for all the donated art, writing, crafts, etc to make this happen!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Twitter

== Gold Derby Voting ==

Rhys, Taika, and Our Flag Means Death are up for some more nominations-- this time the Gold Derby for best Comedy Series / Comedy Actors! It does require you to sign up, but if you'd like to add to the nominations you can follow this handy guide:

Thank you to @adoptourcrew for sharing the goldderby information!

Source: AdoptOurCrew's Twitter

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Cast Cards =

More cast cards from our dear @melvisik!

Simone Grace: "Tonight's is another Emmy submission "for Outstanding Period Costumes in a Series for Impossible Birds" - @adoptourcrew"

Francesco Toby: "Credited as Jean Luc, the beret-wearing French sailor in Pete's story."

Source: @melvisik's Twitter

= OFMD Colouring Pages! =

Once again our kind and wonderful friend @PatchworkPirateBear has more colouring pages for Pride month! Hosted by @adoptourcrew! Wanna following PatchworkPirateBear for more colouring pages? Visit their socials!:  Instagram / Twitter / Tumblr 

Source: AdoptOurCrew's Tumblr

= Our Flag Means Fanfiction =

There's a new episode by our lovely friends over at Our Flag Means Fanfiction! This time a ranking of the top 10 Rhys Darby moments by members of the Rhys Darby Faction! Visit https://linktr.ee/ofmff to pick out your favourite listening platform!

Source: Our Flag Means Fanfiction Instagram

== Big Gay Energy Pod ==

Another episode of Big Gay Energy Pod! This time covering Season 2 Episodes 5/6! Check them out on Youtube, or their https://linktr.ee/biggayenergypod!

Source: Big Gay Energy Pod Instagram

== Teal Oranges & Garlic Soup Week ==

As you may remember, our crewmates over at @garlicsoupweek have been hosting a wonderful prompt week for our favorite Polycule! I would love to do a much bigger fan spotlight, but I was only able to get permission from some of the artists to share-- so I'll do more if I can get more permissions from folks! You can also scroll through all the awesome art/writing/edits on @garlicsoupweek!

= OhTangerine=

First up is the absolute stunning work done by @ohtangerines on Instagram and here on tumblr! The faces, and background detail is just so amazing-- please visit them on instagram or here on tumblr to check out more of their awesome work! Check them out on the various socials on their carrd! https://ohtangerines.carrd.co/

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🍊Maria I. (@ohtangerines)

Source: @ohtangerines's Instagram

= Sonorawent =

Next up for Teal Oranges is our dear crewmate @sonorawent! Check out their incredibly gorgeous water colour of our Jim and Oluwande! I adore the colour blending! You can follow them on Twitter / Tumblr!

Source: sonorawent's Twitter

= Blackbeardskneebrace =

Our next artist spotlight is none other than the magnificent @blackbeardskneebrace! You may recognise them from their wide variety of artwork styles (medieval, peanuts, tradition, etc) whatever style they decide to create in -- they've gifted this fandom with such beautiful work! Please visit their tumblr, or their Ko-fi, or their twitter for more brilliant work!

Source: BlackbeardsKneeBrace's Tumblr

= _SilverSheep =

Next up on our fan spotlight for the evening is @_silversheep on twitter! This adorable rendition of Cambell's Soup has such cute details hidden in the label, I'm so glad she was kind enough to allow me to share it with you! You can check them out here on their twitter, or her https://linktr.ee/asisherright !

Source: _Silversheep's Twitter

= LibroseITM =

Back again is our absolutely lovely @libroseitm! They were kind enough to let me share this steamy scene with our Polycule for @garlicsoupweek based off of Sense8! Want to check out more of their work? Visit @libroseitm on Tumblr, or Twitter for more beautiful work from LIb!

Source: LibRoseITM's Twitter

= ipomoea-batatas =

Next in our fan spotlight is the briliiant @ipomoea-batatas! I cannot tell you how much I adore the detail on their work! Look at those faces, it's like looking at our dear Archie, Jim, and Olu in person! Capturing Olu's smile and excitement is no small feat too! Wanna check out more of their awesome OFMD art? Please visit their tumblr here on tumblr!

Source: ipomoea-batatas's Tumblr

= TheseAreTheKids =

Another incredibly talented crewmate - thesearethekids on twitter put together this very sweet cross-stitch pattern for our polycule! She was kind enough to make a downloadable PDF chart and put it up on her Ko-Fi as well so you can work on it yourself. Want to follow them for more cross stitch/embroidery fun? Visit their Twitter!

Source: TheseAreTheKids Twitter

= ErosTheArtist =

Back again with more artwork from the lovely @erostheartist! This time with our Polycule in the Teal Orange outfits! I love it! Love their work? Follow them here on tumblr, or on instagram/check out their https://linktr.ee/eros_the_artist!

Source: Eros The Artist Tumblr

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies! I hope you had a wonderful weekend-- and an even better pride month! There has been so much queer joy this month-- and everyone's been celebrating being themselves and celebrating all the wonderful people around them-- and I'm so very happy so many of you have gotten to experience that. If you aren't out yet, or pride isn't your thing, or maybe this month is always tough on you, that's okay too. Your safety, and comfort is more important than anything, so please don't feel bad if you aren't experiencing that joy like others are. Just know that no matter what stage of your journey you are in-- your crew loves and cares for you. I wanted to send a gentle reminder, I know that after so much excitement, sometimes our brains can rebound a bit and go the same distance in the other direction. This is perfectly normal lovelies, so if you feel a bit sad tomorrow or the upcoming month, just remember to take it in stride. If you are feeling heavy feelings, remember to embrace them and acknowledge them, and let them go in your own time. No matter what gender, sexuality, or various degree of queer you are, or not queer at all, please know that you are so very loved crew. Truly truly loved. You are beautiful, and unique, and brilliant, and wonderful, and no one gets to say otherwise, okay?

Rest well lovelies, tomorrow is another day.

== Daily Darby / Today's Taika ==

Tonight's gif just exudes Last Day of Pride Month for me -- as well as running straight into July's Queer Wrath! Tonight's gif courtesy of the wonderful @edsrosetattoo!

[blueishspace]

Looped Sun 2

Loop #16

They didn't stop looping in time, but at least they had eachother. Grian had to admit that it was almost fun with Scar around, definitely felt less lonely with someone else to talk to.

Loop #19

It took 3 loops for Scar to suggest having some fun with this, spice it up. Grian hadn't expected stealing Martyns and Ren bit would be their objective this time but he didn't mind. Getting to be king and screaming "red winter is coming" was actually quite funny and being all shady in Last Life was nice too. As Secret Life comes to an end Scar whispers.

Scar: Alright alright, let me be king next time ok?

Grian laughs at the suggestion just in time for-

Loop #21

Grian had noticed soon that not every loop started the same exact day a while ago but he never expected to wake up already during Limited Life.

Surely things couldn't get weirder then that.

Loop #26

He spoke too soon. This time around he woke up as he was singing a piece of paper, a declaration of indipendence, while wearing a very weird blue american indipendence outfit together wih people he had never met before.

He just went along with it of course and fighting against a weird masked guy for indipendence had been a breath of fresh air but Scar was still missing and Grian was very confused the whole time.

Well until ...

Scar: Thank you Soot, however I think that I could run this country far better!

Grian: Scar? Where were you!? ... What are you doing!?

Scar: That's why I'm going to run myself! Vote for Scar 2020!

To be fair it took some times for things to go badly.

Grian: This is your fault you know that right?

Scar: Hey! Look! At least the country didn't explode or something-

*Boom*

Grian: ...

Scar: ...that wasn't me.

Loop #31

Grian: Damn I didn't bring enough tnt to rig the enchanter. How did I forget??

Scar: Don't worry! I got some!

Grian: Oh thank... where did you get it?

Scar: I kept it in my second inventory from last loop.

Grian: Your what?

Scar: We have a second inventory now! Didn't you notice!

Grian: I see it now ...how?

Scar: It keeps stuff safe from one loop to the other! Cool right!?

Grian: ... Like an enchanting table? But for loops?

Scar: I guess?

Grian: How are you not freaking out about this!?!

Loop #33

This time they woke up early, back in season 6! Grian doesn't understand why Scar doesn't care because he does! Why can't someone explain it to him for ender sake.

Loop #36

Someone explained it. He and Scar woke up somewhere completely different and it was confusing and scary but they finally got answers.

Grian: So our universe is part of a big big big tree?

Anakin: Yes, like every other.

Grian: And the tree is what, under maintenance?

Anakin: Basically.

Grian: And so we are stuck looping?

Anakin: You don't need to pretend to be calm, I can feel your emotions in the force.

Grian: So... we are stuck? Forever?!?

Anakin: Not forever forever, until the tree is fixed-

Grian: So possibly for billions of years!?!

Anakin: Some of the older loops have been going for trillions even.

Grian: ... I'll... I...need to think.

Anakin: I'll write some useful terms down so you can read them once you aren't... You know.

Grian: Guess I have all the time in the world to come to terms with it... Scar is going to hate that he didn't get to meet you.

Loop #37

Scar: ....soooo what you up to?

Grian: Memorising these terms Anakin gave us.

Scar: Ooh sounds...fun!

Grian: Every loop has an anchor, without it the loop can't exist. I tought I was the anchor but it's not possible because I was sent to a different loop last tims.

Scar: So am I the anchor?

Grian: You were missing for the first loops Scar... the only option that makes sense is that both of us are anchors. But even then...

Grian underlines the term "co-anchors" a bunch of times.

Scar: Does that mean I'll get to meet Anakin Skywalker?

Grian: Probably? One day?

Scar: Wooooho!

Loop #38

They were waiting for the moon to crash when Scar posed the question.

Scar: Do you think we can just... stop the moon?

Grian: Hmmm... I guess I never tought about it, why?

Scar: I don't know, just thinking.

Grian: I have an idea...

Loop #43

Scar: Grian what are you doing?

Grian: You remember how last loop started in s7?

Scar: ... Yeah?

Grian: I decided to keep something in my pocket this time around.

Grian took out a golden gauntlet with 6 colored glowing stones.

Scar: ... The button?

Grian: The button.

Grian snapped and the moon disappeared.. He then carefully removed and pocketed it again.

Grian: Well, I'm surprised it actually...worked...

Scar: But what happened to it?

Grian: I just made it really really small.

Loop #51

This was unbearable, Grian tought it was weird when this loops Timmy was acting like an incapable child, then he became worried when he saw that Scott was a pacifist who wouldn't hurt a fly, and then Cleo started burning down literally everything and he started to question his life choices. Everyone was barely themselves, it was like they had been replaced by very cheap imitations.

(Poor Grian had to walk into fanonland)

Loop #67

Scott Smajor liked to think he was often in control of the situation. Not many people liked that about him but if he died it was by his decision.

He didn't feel very in control at the moment, back in the Last Life with Grian and Scar being completely different from what he remembered them being... And he didn't like it one bit.

Scott: Ok ok, stop it!

Grian: What do you mean? We aren't doing anything wrong!

Scott: It isn't right! You are supposed to be in a team with Jimmy and Martyn and you Scar should be alone on a mountain!

Scar: ...

Grian: ...

Scott: ... Sorry that was-

Grian: You remember too?

Scar: New looper! New looper!

Scott: ...uh?

Prev Next

[whowantslovergirl]

My kind of woman

Cedric Diggory x muggle! reader (reader is female with she/her pronouns)

warnings: pure fluff, ^this means start the song 💋

harry potter masterlist

Summary: Y/N being the girl of Cedric’s dreams

posted: September 4,2023

Voted best couple for three years in a row. Y/N and Cedric. Everyone either wanted to be Cedric or Y/N. And Y/N is the girl of everyone’s dreams especially Cedric’s. ^

Oh, baby

Oh, man

You're makin' me crazy

Really drivin' me mad

Y/N looked so beautiful today. Her hair is in a beautiful up do. The way she did her uniform. Everything about her looked beautiful. Cedric saw her and his eyes lit up.

“Hi Cedric.” She said with a soft spoken voice. “Hi beautiful. You look amazing.”

“I wear the same thing every day Cedric.” She said while smiling. “Then you look amazing every day.” He leaned in for a kiss. And she returned it with a smile on her face.

That's alright with me

It's really no fuss

As long as you're next to me

Just the two of us

Cedric was going crazy. He couldn’t find you. He asked everyone and no one knew. Then he asked your friends and they said you’re in your dorm.

He never ran so fast.

_____

“Darling!” You jumped at Cedric bursting in your room. “Cedric?! What the f-!.” You hit cut off by a hug and a kiss. “I missed you and I couldn’t find you anywhere!” He exclaimed.

“I just want you next to me darling.”

You're my, my, my, my kind of woman

My, oh my, what a girl

You're my, my, my, my kind of woman

“You are my dream girl.” Cedric and Y/N were cuddling in the common room. In complete silence but comfortable silence. Well before he broke it. “Oh am I?” You said giggling. You love how Cedric is not afraid to tell you what he feels. It makes you feel all giddy inside.

“Yeah you’re my kind of woman.”

And I'm down on my hands and knees

Beggin' you please, baby

Show me your world

“But Cedric you already know what muggles are like!”

“But I don’t what your muggles are like!”

Cedric really wanted to meet your parents. Well in your house.

He met them but at Hogwarts. He wants to see what your room looks like, what your kitchen and living room looks like. Just the whole layout, he wants to know where and how you live.

“Are you embarrassed? Cause if you are we don’t have to darling.” He had a concerned look on his face. The last thing he wanted to do was make you uncomfortable. “No Cedric! It’s just you know I am insecure about being a muggle.”

“You have nothing to be insecure about. Just show me your world darling.”

Oh, brother

Sweetheart

I'm feelin' so tired

Really fallin' apart

And it just don't make sense to me

Cedric was at odds. He didn’t know why you liked him so much. Do you like him for his looks? Or his personality? He just doesn’t know what is so special about him.

I really don't know

Why you stick right next to me

Wherever I go

“Why do you like me?” You were sitting in the courtyard with your friends. You quickly get up and pulled him away from everyone. “What?!” You were so flabbergasted. Where is this random burst of emotion coming from?

“I just don’t know why you stick with me.”

“You wanna know why I love you Cedric?” He nodded eagerly.

“Well do you want specifics?”

“Just internal stuff like nothing on my looks.” You just nodded and told him everything you loved about him. And when you were done he just smiled.

I love you Y/N.”

I love you more Cedric.”

“I love you most.”

You're my, my, my, my kind of woman

My, oh my, what a girl

You're my, my, my, my kind of woman

And I'm down on my hands and knees

Beggin' you please, baby

Cedric loves you so much. He would do absolutely anything for you. Die for you, kill for you, even lie for you.

You’re his kind of woman.

Show me your world

An: THATS ITTTTT hate to be tht bitch but I HATE MEN bf of 5 months cheated like ugh ik thts not a lot but cheating is so annoying like JUST BREAK UP WITH ME BRO IF YOU SAW THE TANGLED REFERENCE YOU THE BEST FR but yea thts it until i post again my lovers 🤍 *hint: Nate Jacobs x reader*

[laurenkmyers]

i'm finally watching all of kingdom: legendary war instead of just the stray kids' performances (oops), and my brain knew that their cover of "i'll be your man" apparently ranked last, but i dead ass refused to believe it because that song is without a doubt one of my favourite covers of all time. so imagine my utter shock/horror/DISGUST to learn that the rumours were in fact true.

after watching all the performances and then watching stray kids nail one of the most vocally insane songs ever... truly, and i say this with the utmost disrespect to the 'experts' who voted- but, royally fuck you.

there is no fucking way that performance deserved last place. for the han/seungmin/changbin verse (you fucking know the one) alone they deserved top 3 at bare fucking minimum.

you've got my man changbin cracking that rap line out at lightning speed whilst barely taking a single breath- a verse that was actually performed by two people in the original version, please note gentle reader. then we see seungmin's neck vein popping so vigourously on the crisp as fuck harmony that blends so spectacularly with han it gave seonghwa chills, and lastly, the bias wrecker to wreck all biases, my 4th gen ACE, han fucking jisung belting out top fucking c's (please correct me if i'm wrong it's been a while since i last had to sight read) like his life fucking depends on it and you mean to tell me you ranked my boys dead last?

so once again i say,

FUCK.

YOU.

(aaaand- you're wrong. thank you. and goodnight.)

side note, ps, whatever you wanna call it...my precious baby innie who apparently hit a bum note at the end there? WHERE? WHERE? AAAAAAND WHERE? If I didn't have to watch my precious maknae cry his little heart out over a performance he apparently 'messed up' i would never have known he did. that last note of his was gushing with emotion, and i know these boys pride themselves on *perfection* but sometimes an emotional vocal "crack" can make a performance so much more intense and convey the message of the song so beautifully. that's exactly what that note did for me. it solidified the devastation of the sacrifice. and if i ever get lucky enough to meet baby jeongin i'll tell him exactly that.

(also special mention to my man bang chan for his insane backing vocals- hello high note, i heard you, i love you. keep doing you. felix- your vocal range drives me insane for all the best reasons. and lee know, baby, that falsetto??? fuck me UP. hyunjin- i miss you more than air. don't ever leave me again.)

[fiercynn]

otw july 2 board meeting: what the hell was that

so the otw (@transformativeworks) board had their Q2 meeting yesterday, which was highly anticipated given everything that's gone down in the past months:

the @end-otw-racism campaign demanding action from otw on their own commitments made three years ago to better address racist harassment in otw and on ao3 (btw, support end otw racism's current campaign #Vote To End OTW Racism!)

recent revelations about how otw has mistreated its volunteers, regarding azarias and how the org reacted after the CSEM attacks on volunteers last year, as well as how the policy & abuse committee (PAC) is overworked and treated by the legal commitee overall (documented here)...

...and ongoing mistreatment of chinese, chinese diaspora, and chinese-speaking volunteers, particularly regarding an incident last year that put volunteers in mainland china at risk, and the board's recent unilateral decision to close the otw weibo account without input from the weibo account leads or any chinese-speaking volunteers

the AI shit

and probably more that i've missed, honestly. so! this is my summary of the meeting, focusing mostly on the issues related to racism; i have screenshots of the whole meeting but will at this point only share those i find most relevant/interesting! alt text will be included for every screenshot in the image, not below it.

and hold on, because this is going to be LONG!

pre-meeting ableism in #help channel so shit actually started going down the previous day in the otw board discord's help channel where there was a pretty ableist resposne to a person who asked if the board could consider adding the pluralkit bot to the server. i wasn't there, but hojarasca on dreamwidth posted about it, and i believe some other folks who were there will post screenshots soon too.

all of that conversation was deleted from the help channel by today, which is not unusual but did mean that a majority of people at today's meeting might not know what went down.

board meeting starts; immediate chaos the board meeting started at 8pm UTC, and it was clear almost immediately that the board was unprepared. what you have to understand about otw board meetings is that they are not really meetings where the board members discuss anything with each other. basically otw board members show up, share an agenda , give written updates on the items on the agenda, take votes on board decisions (but without any discussion publicly), and take questions. none of the materials like the agenda or relevant documents were shared ahead of time, and the board did not offer a way to submit questions ahead of time specific to the board meeting. (otw does have a contact us form to email their board or committee chairs, but i've never gotten a response lol.)

another weird thing that happened before the meeting started was that board member alex tischer was active answering questions in the help channel up to five minutes before the meeting, but didn't stay for the meeting. i don't think a reason was shared for this. this is relevant because alex has been criticized for racist responses to chinese volunteers, particularly those that ran & interacted with otw's weibo account, both in the past & last month when they closed their weibo account without any notice to the volunteers. this will also come up again later in the q&a section...

anyway. the meeting starts. all of the discussion directly about the meeting is supposed to happen in one discord channel called #public-board-meetings; the #help channel is supposed to be for tech issues etc. there is no separate channel for asking questions to the board - those are supposed to be posted in the main board meeting channel. and as far as we can tell, there are no mods of either of these channels apart from board members.

at the start of the meeting there are at least 209 attendees. for context, the last board meeting in march had 31. i've heard from people who have attended board meetings for the past couple years that there are usually 10-40 attendees per meeting. but again, given what's been going down, it's not surprising that so many people showed up!

and because there are a lot of people who haven't attended these meetings before, attendees immediately start asking questions, both process questions about the meeting and actual questions they want to ask the board. which again is understandable because there haven't been many answers given in the #help channel, and the board immediately muddies things further by giving confusing instructions about when to ask questions. they first say this - that they are going to proceed through their agenda, so people should hold questions that are NOT about any agenda items until the end. they imply that questions that are about agenda items are okay as they go through the agenda, but there will be conflicting instructions about this later...

agenda is posted & actual meeting content begins...kind of here's the meeting agenda that was shared. not...terribly descriptive lol

- Decisions taken since the previous meeting - Strategic Plan vote - Update on OTW's Diversity Work - AOB (Any Other Business) - Time for questions

people immediately start asking questions about various agenda items & also procedure questions. very few of these are answered. the first agenda item is posted - decisions taken since the previous meeting.

the board gives us "a couple minutes to read the above". everything's getting a little muddled already because people keep asking questions (reasonably!) about agenda items. there are several questions about the specific agenda item of "decisions taken since the previous meeting". some of the questions are getting answered by otw volunteers but none by board members at this point.

the board moves on to the next agenda item without answering questions about the "decisions" item. people are asking for a separate channel for questions but none is created. board members tell us they will try to get to all the answers at the end, but that we should send any additional answers to the board through the otw contact us form. many people point out that they've rarely gotten responses that way.

board gives a brief update (that was NOT on the agenda) from the finance committee chair, who was not at the meeting, to say that the 2023 budget was posted earlier this year, and that people can send questions via the contact us form. i'll note here that i sent a message to the finance committee with a question about the 2023 budget two months ago and have not gotten a response.

strategic plan update + question procedure still unclear the board then starts to give an update on the strategic plan, which board members are to vote on today. attendees ask if the full strategic plan draft was shared publicly before this meeting and we are told it was only shared with volunteers, not with members or the public.

they do share an infographic summarizing the strategic plan. hilariously, the first version they upload is so blurry that it's unreadable. they then share a gdoc with alt text. if you are new-ish to otw stuff, this infographic and the jargon in it are probably pretty confusing.

the board keeps giving us "a few minutes to check things out". people ask them to not do that and proceed because we can read while they are typing. questions to the board keep going unanswered and various other people say that we're supposed to hold questions until the end. we again get told conflicting things about how to ask questions. a board member asks us to hold ALL questions until the end, but an otw volunteer points to an earlier statement from a different board member & says that questions on the current agenda item are allowed.

at 45 minutes into the meeting, when most questions are going unanswered (and a lot of only being answered by otw volunteers, not board members), the board disables messages in the main channel so that they can proceed with the agenda. this is not usual board meeting procedure and was unannounced until they did it. people start getting really creative with emoji reactions because they can't ask questions. the board admits that they were unprepared for the number of attendees at this meeting.

attendees then start asking questions in the help channel, which has been put on "slow mode", which means each user can only post every thirty minutes. multiple otw volunteers share in the help channel that they warned the board about preparing for the meeting, and the only change the board made in response was to make it 30 minutes longer than usual.

in the main channel, the board does not have any public discussion on the strategic plan (which has not been shared, only the infographic has), and votes unanimously to approve it.

diversity work update, aka a glorified otw news post the board moves on to the "diversity work update", which is now a standard section of every board meeting. they share two updates - firstly, that caste has been added as a protected class in the code of conduct, and secondly that they've heard the concerns coming from @end-otw-racism supporters and others. both of which were already shared a month ago in this OTW news post from a month ago, which they link to.

seriously, nothing new is shared in this part of the meeting that wasn't in that post. some update!

q&a part one the board asks for emoji reactions again to see how many people are in attendance. unclear why they do this unless they were hoping people might have left? but alas for them, there are still 182 people that emoji react saying they are in the meeting!

the board FINALLY starts answering questions, but they do not yet re-enable messages so that users can ask more questions. they start by addressing the pluralkit issue from yesterday, but they don't give any response about the ableism that was allowed to go unchecked in the channel.

then, BAFFLINGLY, they start with answering questions from someone who wasn't able to make the meeting. how did this person submit those questions beforehand? NO ONE KNOWS. fortunately this person had (imo) good questions, but again, why were their questions given preference? unclear.

okay there were a LOT of questions and responses, so i'm going to stick to sharing the ones that were most important to me, which were about addressing racism within the otw and on ao3. hopefully someone else will summarize other issues!

we finally get our FIRST REAL NEW RESPONSE on a diversity/racism issue! the board says they plan to hire a diversity consultant by the end of the year.

we also hear that changes to otw's terms of service are being proposed to give the policy & abuse committee more tools to address harassment, including "racially-motivated" harassment.

board says the best way for people other than otw volunteers to get involved with anti-racism issues is...to stay up to date on what otw is doing, attend public meetings, and send questions through the comment form. what.

the board does not answer how they have reached out to fans of color in their work to address racism, which i assume means they haven't; they instead say that fans of color are free to provide input/feedback via the contact us form. emoji reactions explode

the board says that the strategic plan has initiatives to combat racism including improving diversity in recruitment (of...who? volunteers, board members? potential future paid staff?), hiring a diversity consultant, & forming "volunteer coalitions"

slight digression from my focus on racism issues because of how many times the board has told us to submit questions via their contact us form: very little clarity on how long it will take for answers to be questions, or how long people spend on responses

the goals for the future diversity consultant are to do an audit of the organization and offer recommendations on how to proceed. couldn't be vaguer lol

otw does not currently have plans to have an internal committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion work, since they're relying on the external consultant, but if the consultant recommends it they'll consider

by the time they've gotten through these responses, there are only five minutes left in the meeting! remember, messaging by attendees has been disabled for the past 40 minutes, so everything the board has answered so far is from people who got their questions in during the first 45 minutes (or, apparently, one person who managed to get in questions before the meeting).

q&a part two at this point, the board FINALLY re-enables messaging for new questions, but clarifies that they will only take them until 9:30pm UTC. which means anyone who did actually wait to ask their questions now only has five minutes to ask them! questions start rolling in immediately. again, going to focus on the ones about racism.

i'm listing questions in chronological order that they are asked, but please note that the corresponding answers from the board are coming WAY later than the questions. the board took until 10:20pm UTC (almost an hour after the meeting was supposed to end) to answer all the questions. mostly i'm telling you this because the emoji reactions on the answers by the board get more limited as people understandably have to leave the meeting lol

the first question of round two is about how chinese & chinese diaspora volunteers have been treated re: the weibo account closure, & board member alex tischer's role in this.

board response is horrifyingly empty, only promising the creation of a new "anonymous form" to receive feedback from chinese and chinese diaspora volunteers on the situation.

an attendee asks for better prioritization of racism & equity issues in the meetings, and better preparation from the board. (note that the addition of "diversity work update" to the agenda is not new, i believe it was instituted late last year)

in response, board admits they were unprepared despite volunteers warning them, says they will take advice from this meeting forward. emoji reactions are out in full force

an attendee asks more details about how the diversity consultant research officer (who is NOT a hired diversity consultant, but an otw volunteer in charge of the hiring process for a consultant) engages with the board & what goals they have for the future consultant

response from board is that they meet weekly, and that the research officer is herself in charge of identifying goals for the future consultant

an attendee points out that "curate your space" tools are not enough to protect users from targeted abuse, including racist abuse, and that asking fans of color to reach out to the board instead of the other way around is bullshit (my words haha)

the board's response to this is to offload that onto the future diversity consultant. SERIOUSLY.

an otw member asks if the diversity consultant will also look at accessibility for disabled users across the otw

board essentially says "yeah, sure" lol

an otw member asks how otw will remove barriers to becoming a voting member and diversifying membership & committee leadership

board's response is that they don't know the demographics of their members or volunteers, which...somehow means they can't remove barriers that would help fans of color or non-western fans from becoming members and volunteers? lmaoooooooo

an attendee asks for accountability in ensuring that the incoming board keeps the current board's promises re: DEI, pointing to improvements made by the 2015 board that were later reversed by a new board make-up

board does not seem to understand this question so answers an entirely different one! (seriously, i double-checked which question they were responding to.)

an otw volunteer asks what the plans are to deal with the "ongoing exclusion and alienation of chinese-speaking volunteers"?

the board repeats that they have opened a feedback form for chinese-speaking volunteers. that's it.

so those are all the questions i saw on racism; as i mentioned, there were TONS more good questions on board transparency and communications, protection of volunteers, moderating board meetings better, lack of feedback collection on the strategic plan, etc.

at PRECISELY 9:30pm UTC, messages are disabled again so that no more questions can be asked. all of the otw board responses that i shared above are from after messages were disabled again.

takeaways this meeting was a complete mess. the process was extremely unclear and made things inaccessible; while the board did (from what i can tell) answer all the questions posted, people were not able to ask all the questions that they'd planned because of the unannounced disabling of messaging.

and then, of course, there's the fact that the majority of the answers are bullshit, which is probably the least surprising thing about this meeting.

it's just ridiculous that they weren't prepared for this. given everything that's gone down in the past months, why on earth wouldn't they assume that people would show up with hard questions? the mismanagement and incompetence is frankly astounding. which i guess is the story of the last few months re: OTW anyway!

so...see you at the next one in a few months, i guess? 🤷🏾‍♀️

[ryuseiired]

mahiru. 12.

im expecting this to be an answer that requires a read more. go, autism boy, go. talk about mahiru and all the ways people sleep on her character

I LOVE YOU. YOU KNOW ME SO WELL. right. yeah here we go. i Do have thoughts. on this one.

12. what do you wish would be discussed more often about them in the fandom?

ok. well first off. i think we should just talk about mahiru more in general because i love her. but here is my biggest thought on What Exactly Some People, Especially Not On Milgramblr, Are Sleeping On About Mahiru: there's a lot of talk about her murder case, and that's great, but... i think a lot of the things that really draw me to her as a character and to her case tend to slip by people on account of the way milgram likes to- as kazui shows us in cat- keep it simple, victim and perpetrator. but i think trying to understand her better also gives a better understanding of where exactly things did go wrong in the relationship that put her in milgram.

the rest of this answer where i elaborate more will, in fact, be under a cut because you are right that i have an essay locked and loaded on this and actually this turned into a mahiru analysis/theory post by accident i meant to answer mostly normally but unfortunately i'm not normal about mahiru shiina.

let's talk about this is how to be in love with you. can we talk about this is how to be in love with you? i'm dying to talk about this is how to be in love with you. and god, its english name is a mouthful, i understand why some people just go with calling it ai nan desu yo.

obviously (hopefully) we all know mahiru getting guilty voted over this mv was absolutely fucked and unfair. i'm still mad about it. especially because i think that if you look at this is how to be in love with you (and her interrogation questions from its trial) in particular (as well as some other stuff), it says a lot about mahiru as a person, and in turn about her crime.

it's easy to miss underneath how friendly and cheerful she is with the other prisoners, how she seems like such a social butterfly, but... i don't think mahiru actually had a lot of connections other than her boyfriend, and i think this is a big factor in what happened with him. mahiru... seems lonely. like her life is... very empty. and i don't see people focus in on this fact a lot, despite how her first trial voicelines even say as much:

there's nothing left without him, and at least if she's here she can talk to es and the other prisoners. mahiru's interrogation questions paint a picture of someone who doesn't really have a lot in their life. when asked in t1's interrogation if there's someone she can confide in, mahiru's answer is the lady who works at the beauty parlor she goes to. this doesn't seem like the answer of someone who has close friends to talk to instead, at least to me. like. that's not... you'd think if she had friends she felt she could talk to, she'd have mentioned that here, right? that'd be the place to mention any close friends?

in this is how to be in love with you we see her spending days off at cafes alone, and she tells us about having hobbies that are generally solitary, we see her reading in the mv and interrogation reveals that prior to milgram her hobby was watching dramas. she tells us in interrogation that growing up, she was a sheltered girl. she also appears (taken from this is how to be in love with you) to have recently arrived in tokyo, meaning she may not know a lot of people there and has probably moved away from most of her family (though she does mention attending a relative's wedding).

i think part of the problem is that when mahiru meets her boyfriend... she doesn't appear to have much in the way of anyone else. mahiru is social, mahiru loves talking to people, mahiru doesn't really know how to act without copying others... and her boyfriend is the only person she's close with. she appears to be relying on him for almost all of her social connection.

as i just mentioned, she also has the habit of copying others, incessantly. the infamous "i'd smoke if my lover did too" interrogation answer, and again, the text in this is how to be in love with you...

(transcriptions into english from here!)

see the things that jump out here? "even though i'm just copying everyone else in everything. is that the right thing to be doing?", "i thought to buy the same bread he did", "i wasn't really thinking when i blurted out "me too", so now we run together". you can see this in the lyrics too. "i'm going to start relying on you if you're kind to me, so please forgive me!"

i think these are key traits in why her relationship went the way it did. i don't think mahiru is uniquely "toxic" or too needy/clingy in a way that means she can never have a relationship (and god, don't get me started on how i've seen people say this). i think she's obviously a highly social person, and was in a situation where she was relying on one person (assumedly with lower social needs than her) to fulfill all of her need for that. i think she's horribly anxious about losing that connection and having to be alone again, and she doesn't know how to deal with it other than to constantly (and annoyingly, disruptively) ask for reassurance. i think she bases herself on others and ignores her own desires in order to imitate them and/or do what they want, and if her boyfriend also didn't have a particularly strong sense of identity and/or also wasn't the type to stand up for himself, it would be really easy to get sucked into this horrible loop where you're both trying to copy and please each other and now you're both constantly putting aside what you actually like for the other person and neither of you are happy.

except mahiru is happy, or... she thinks she is, because she's happy to give herself up for love. she says as much herself: "we fought sometimes, i was happy to get hurt." but... there's something else in the lyrics, isn't there? "i pretended to be a good girl, i don't want to be "ok"". my take is that mahiru isn't getting what she wants/needs out of the relationship, and knows it on some level. but she isn't going to leave him, either, because she's decided this is true love and also if she did that she'd be alone again. so she hopes something will just change instead, or convinces herself that she is satisfied. but she's not. near the opening of this is how to be in love with you: "i guess we can just say that this feeling is happiness, i can't stop feeling like there's something missing." so she keeps pushing, she keeps trying, and... well. we know how that ends.

so after all this rambling, what's my point, exactly? i don't think either mahiru OR her boyfriend were any sort of perpetrator. nor were either of them a victim. i don't think the relationship fits neatly into that framework, even though milgram judged mahiru a murderer and her boyfriend to be her victim. i think there's a reading that doesn't need any of that: two people who seemed to get along well and have similar interests who got into a relationship, and who were actually incompatible in their deeper needs in a relationship. mahiru clings to this relationship despite this, because she needs it. because she can't be alone again. because having a boyfriend who fails to fulfill what she wants/needs is better than having nothing.

neither of them are bad people, nor (from what we can see and from my opinion on it) did either of them do anything particularly wrong. what makes the most sense to me is a competing access needs sort of situation. mahiru needs reassurance and a lot of attention/interaction (especially from a romantic partner, something she idolizes having because of how special you're supposed to be to each other!), while her boyfriend needs more space than what she's giving him... but mahiru, at least, definitely doesn't want to break up. so eventually, they end up in a situation where he feels there's only one way out.

i think this lens can be supported by what we see in i love you, too! note lyrics like "this can't go on, something's got to give", "why won't you just accept me", "mon-mon-monstrous, cuz i love you so much". and...

here's something else she says in i love you: "i don't need anyone else, as long as i have you." but the truth is... mahiru does need other people. the truth is that one person can't fix the underlying issue that mahiru is desperately lonely and has very few connections in her life. the truth is that it's incredibly unfair to rely on one person to fulfill all of your needs and to desperately insist upon staying in a relationship just to avoid being alone, and mahiru realizes this too late.

so. um. i've never really seen anyone else talk in too much detail about an interpretation of the character/situation like this. i see a lot of "they were both toxic" but i think that's a kind of weak simplification of it, you know? what is "toxic". it's bad, obviously. do we think they're bad people doing bad things, or just that the relationship was bad? is that "toxicity" inherent to them as people, or could things have gone better in a different relationship? are they both "toxic" or are they just both stuck in an incompatible relationship where neither of them are wrong but they are unable to meet each others' needs?

i don't know. it's 4am and i've been writing this for two hours and i'm honestly not sure if it's coherent or not. but to end this here's another footnote of something i cant stand people sleeping on about mahiru: she is so stupid forgiving of literally everything and it kind of kills me and i dont really see anyone else point this out as being a bad thing that could get her really hurt. like. she forgives kotoko for almost killing her and says she doesn't resent anyone for anything. she puts up with anything, as seen by what i mentioned about her desire to stay in the relationship with her boyfriend even though it was obviously not giving her what she needed and it was hurting her too! i think if mahiru had ended up in a relationship with a different guy, it would be entirely possible for her to be in an abusive relationship and refuse to leave it because of this particular tendency. and i don't see this mentioned much. probably because, again... mahiru's framed as a perpetrator. she killed her boyfriend, right? so obviously she's not the one who'd be hurt in a relationship.

ok. i'm done now i promise i am so done with this for real. um. if you read this whole thing thank you. i'm sorry it's so long or if it's incoherent in places. i just have a lot of thoughts about mahiru shiina