#about what her kids and their friends have been through

[leidensygdom]

Okay, we all know about the usual warlock-patron dynamics. Creature with god-like powers tries to do their bidding or further their plans through a mortal, who is often going to be troubled by the pact. But, I'm here to propose some alternatives, specially for warlock deals that aren't inherently very harmful to the warlock themself:

This one is pretty typical, but the patron is a family member. If sorcerers can get cool powers from having a dragon grandpa, your fire genasi can have an auntie who is a big fire elemental who is trying VERY hard to connect with her family now, so she gives her nephew an allowance in the form of a Genie Pact

Your patron is undead (and your pact is Undying), but this person is not some power-hungry lich. This is someone you knew in life: A friend, or perhaps a partner. You had fought for a common cause, and they met their death trying to see the end of it, but they refused to leave you alone. Now, within you, their stubbornness has kept them from moving on, and they lend their newfound powers to help you in your common cause.

It's an eldritch entity, a creature beyond your comprehension. Your pact is that of a Great Old One. However, this creature doesn't quite have very concise plans to bring the end of the world- You're actually pretty sure it isn't even from your world. As time goes on, and as you realize their whims seem erratic, you realize that this thing you get powers from is... Probably the cosmic equivalent of a child. Maybe it's still cocooning in the depths of a distant dying planet. And it's incredibly bored. Someday, maybe, they'll terrorize the universe, but right now, they just really want you to be their eyes on another world. Call it enrichment.

Okay, this one is a fiend. Unequivocally so. But truthfully, they couldn't care less about your world, and you're not particularly concerned about what is going down in theirs. They kinda need few things done in your plane, few resources gathered, some people talked to, and between the lines, you realize that your newfound... ally is actually trying to oppose their boss or whatever. This one is a deeply legal-minded fiend, as far as you know: The hellish equivalent to a bureaucrat, after really digging around. Your party is convinced they will turn on you sometime, but eventually you realize you're just helping something that, for a lack of a better word, has to be an infernal-equivalent of an union effort.

That sword you picked was definitely cursed, and the voice within it has been calling to you. Eventually, you lend them your ear, and now you have an Hexblade pact. But this creature isn't bloodthirsty, nor talking to you about soaking their blade with your foes' guts. Truthfully, they hate being a sword. Trapped there as part of a vengeance, perhaps, this thing longs for freedom. And it has been used for evil in the past- Maybe the overabundance of skull motifs in their physical vessel didn't help. But this creature just wants to be able to experience a life that has been robbed from them. Your party may raise an eyebrow at you getting friendly with the possibly-malignant sword, but y'all are just making plans to get them to your favourite restaurant once they're freed.

This Archfey is the descendant of a powerful entity in Feywild side of things. The heir of some great lineage, or whatever is going on within their realm. You frankly don't know, because they're a bit of a... brat. One that kinda longs to escape their situation and get to live something more normal. You only find out this over time, when you realize you're kinda that friend their parents frown about. This entity, powerful beyond comprehension, just really wants to hang out with you and have a board game night with you. They'd love to meet your besties-- I mean, your world-saving allies. And you'd love to give them the opportunity someday, truth be told, but pissing off a fey court seems to be a high price.

You got stranded far into the ocean as a kid, and the rest of the people involved in the shipwreck did not make it out. But you attracted the attention of a group of merfolk, who had barely ever had the chance to meet someone like you. People had told you tales of how they'd drown and eat anyone coming into their territory, but these creatures were instead cooing about you. You're now grown up, and you can call them for power. Your party frowns at the idea of "I kinda got adopted by a sea polycule and I got a cantrip and few other boons about it", but you know they'll have to eat their words when you bring them for dinner- If you can find a way to table them in the middle of the ocean, that is.

the celestial patron is still a dick tho

Feel free to add onto these if you'd like, I'd love to hear concepts >:3

[thedeadtalker]

-my grandfather was 8 when he and his family were rounded up on the Oregon coast, kept in a livestock pen for 3 very rainy days, then put into a cattle car to be carried out to the reservations in the east.

-my grandmother had two brothers and sister who were sent to mission school and never returned. They said they ran away. They lied.

-My mom remembers when Indians got enough citizenship to vote in Oregon. She describes her parents and their friends discussing if the should do it -vote -or if it was trick to register them.

-My friend took his grandmother out for her 100th birthday. He asked her what she thought were the most important things to happen during her lifetime. She told him: free wifi and the legal end of segregation.

-I remember those fucking nuns in mission school. I only went 1 year when the laws changed and we could go to other schools. We could live with our parents and ride a bus to school and back again and sleep that night in our own home. I remember that, you fuckers.

-I remember that my mom and two of her sisters gave birth in a hospital connected to the mission, and they didnt know for years that they'd gotten botched steralizations against their wishes and without their knowledge. I remember my parents desperatly trying to have more children. Theyd always wanted a bunch of kids. The house my dad built had many empty guestrooms. Eventually they sold it. I remember my mom having to have a hysterectomy 2 years ago because of all the health problems caused by the fucked up surgery. I remember sitting in a meeting and one of the nurses there having to put me through a fainting protocol because i got a text from my stepfather that during the hysterectomy they discovered one of mom's damned ovaries was just fucking gone. I wonder sometimes if some sick fuck retired doctor kept a genuine Indian ovary in a jar in his office. I wonder if his nazi kids and grandkids pull it out to show to guests as a conversation point. I think about how whites were paid piecework for Indian scalps amd seeing one dried out and leathery in an antique store in a small town in Idaho. There is evil in the Americas. The nazis were here long before they were ever in Europe.

- I remember my highschool history teacher showing us the number tattooed on his wrist. I remember him showing us all these recordings of ordinary German citizens talking about how they didn't see anything wrong happening. How there must have been some sort of perfecrly mundane reason for the endless smoke pouring from the ovens in the camp up in the hill. How it was all just politics. How they were reassured that all the people who were taken had just moved in the night, or were much happier wherever they'd gone to. "But you saw them all: the Jews, the other prisoners going into the camp. But you never saw them leave. Didn't you think that was odd?" "We just figured they'd moved from the camp in the night while we were sleeping." "Where?" "What do you mean?" "Where did you all think they went -in the middle of the night?" "Oh. We didn't know." "Didn't you wonder?" "Why would we?"

- I remember that same teacher explaining how the nazis had gotten a lot of their ideas from the US government's Native American policy. The death camps were modelled after our reservations. The dehumanizing and the stories of savages/gremlins that ate white babies and were less than human were based on the clever marketing campaign set up to not just enable the settler take over, but used to unite the fragmented people of newly forming colonial nation. He fucking showed us. There is publically available documentation of all of this.

-I remember getting put on the no fly list. I remember finding out about it because when we tried to buy tickets for the whole family to travel down to New Mexico for my granduncle's funeral the whole purchase was bounced. We were told why that might be the case so we tried seperate purchases for everyone. Me. It was me. Several years later my roommate's family friend -an old white guy with some pull, found out why. I was teaching K-3 and moonlighting as a computer programmer back then. And I'd printed some photos of holidays around the world to share with my students on the same computer I wrote code from. My own computer, in my own office, in my own home. He said it also didn't help that I wasn't white.

-I remember that fucker's first time in office: I remember seeing my coworker snatched from the elevator by ice agents and shoved into an unmarked van. He was a 3rd generation American.

-I remember having to warn the non-white, non-abled, non anything a nazi would want to gas you for residents of the dvsat shelter we worked with to not go out at night, not go out alone, not walk on these specific streets or go into these specific shops. I remember the time a native Hawaiian chick on my caseload didn't come back when expected and everyone was out of their mind with worry. She came back, tear-streaked and shaking, and told us about how she'd gotten lost (not in Hawaii any more, Dorothy) and ended up in one of the neighborhoods she was supposed to avoid, and being chased by some of the proud boys that patrolled our city streets in their ridiculous be-flagged pickups, and how some nearby restuarant diners had rushed her into the restuarant, and the staff there had hid her in the pantry, and all the diners lied and said they hadn't seen her. My teacher read Anne Frank to us in 6th grade. Do they still read that in schools?

-I think about that time I went into a DMV and the woman behind the counter told me to "sit over there," next to two men, and well away from the other patrons. Then a highway patrol officer came over and told us to go with him. In the parking lot he explained that he'd been called to take us to an immigration detention center. But instead he directed us to a "safe" DMV 40 miles away and walked away muttering about having had it up to here with those idiots in there. The two American Samoan men started laughing. Honestly, I didn't feel like laughing. I didn't feel like anything. I was thinking about the mission school and wondering if the detention center looked like it had.

-I've spent the last couple of weeks handing out flyers in different languages. I don't use an interpreter. I have no way of knowing if I can trust them. But somehow I manage to convey to the people I visit in field hand huts and steamy laundries that they are in a sanctuary state and what that means. That no one in our offices will turn them away or turn them in. At least I hope Im conveying that. Then I tell them, using paper language dictionaries if needed (librarians are superheros) how to get away, who to talk to, how to find the big dipper. I think a lot of my high school history teacher and those faded numbers on his wrist.

Oh I know they're coming for me first. Im your canary.

[wosospacegirl]

Grumpy - Head coach (aka manager)! Leah x arsenal! r

Summary: Reader messes up on her first day at Arsenal, and Leah, being her usual grumpy self, doesn’t make things any easier.

Warnings: A bit of angst + McCabe walking in on R and L in a rather awkward moment.

Word count: 2.6k

Masterlist here

This is a new universe I'm writing about, so just let me know if you guys enjoy it and if you have any requests! <3

..

Leah Williamson became a living legend after leading the Lionesses to yet another win in the Euros 2025 as the team captain and a defender. Unfortunately, for her, 2025 was the last year she played as a professional footballer, having suffered a career-ending injury at the end of the season.

Leah was completely distraught when she got the news. She isolated herself from everyone she knew, finding it hard to discover another purpose in life. That was, until Leah’s formal coach, Serina, stepped in and invited the blonde to some coffee in North London.

“I think I know what would help you,” Serina said, taking a sip of her cappuccino.

“Are you going to give me a new knee?” Leah asked, a hint of madness in her voice. Everybody thought they could help her, but in reality, half of her friends couldn’t even understand what was going on inside her head.

Sarina ignored Leah’s mood. “Belgium has one of the best coaching center in the world. I went there, Renée too. If you could get a coaching certificate, you could start working as an assistant, or as a youth coach at Arsenal. You’ve been there since you were a kid, and with your history Arsenal’s management would be mad not to give you a chance.”

“Coach?”

“Why not? You have a football brain, you have good leadership, people trust you. You are a full package,” Sarina responded. “Just think about it, will you?”

Sarina left the coffee shop, leaving a contemplative Leah behind.

..

“If you need anything, you have my number.” Renée’s voice echoed through Arsenal’s training grounds.

It was Renée’s last day as the head coach. Three years ago, Leah went to Brussels and got her coaching certificate. It wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be.

She was already very keen on football. After eight months of entering the Coach Academy, Leah was ready to start a new chapter of her life: assistant manager of Arsenal, alongside Renée.

The whole time Leah spent as Renée’s assistant was very productive. Leah learned a lot from the older woman, but Leah couldn’t wait to the day she would be officially named Head Coach, aka Manager. As an assistant, Leah had some type of power to make strategic changes during a match and give her two cents on matters of hiring new players, but still wasn’t enough.

Leah promised herself she wouldn’t stop until she became the manager of Arsenal women. She would build her dream team and be the best manager she could be.

And that’s what Leah did.

Renée decided to retire, and Arsenal agreed to sign Leah Williamson—the ex-captain of England Nacional team and Gunner-born—to their team.

“I have everything under control, Renée. You know I’ve been wanting your manager position for a long time.” Leah said with a smirk. “The only thing you have to worry about is your wife and daughter, alright, mate? You’ve already done a lot for arsenal.”

Both Leah and Renée were wearing Arsenal’s matching outfits. They had just left a small farewell party on the Arsenal’s event room; almost all players were there to say their goodbyes to Renée, and of course, welcome Leah into her new position.

“Still, Williamson, if you need any help, tips or even a friendly shoulder, just know that I’m here,” Renée insisted. The older woman was carrying a box in her arms, the outside having Once a gunner, always a gunner written on it.

Leah stared at the box, she had seen Renée packing things up in her office earlier that day, carefully putting pictures, books and even newspapers articles about Arsenal inside the container. It being full meant that Leah’s new office was officially ready for her to take in.

Both women walked through the front door of the Arsenal Training Grounds, and a cold breeze met Leah in the face, making the women shivered. Renée looked at the busy street ahead of her until she pointed to a black Audi A3. “That’s mine, guess I’ll go then,” Renée said, a bittersweet smile on her face.

Before Renée could walk, Leah gave her a hug. “Thank you for everything, If I ever need you, I’ll give you a call.”

Renée hugged the blonde woman back before heading to her car. Before she could open the driver’s door she turned to Leah.

“Don’t forget about the new girl coming in tomorrow, Leah. You’ll have to show her around and everything, plus she’s not from the UK, so—”

“Renée don’t worry!  Y/n is coming tomorrow at 9am, I have everything planned out,” Leah rolled her eyes playfully.

Leah watched as the ex-Arsenal manager got into the car and left.

Leah Williamson. New Head Manager, now official.

..

Leah thought her first day as Manager would be unfazed. What could go wrong? It was her first day of manager, of course, but it wasn’t like she was completely new to it. The team hadn’t changed much compared to last season, aside from Y/n, the newest Arsenal player.

And Y/n was exactly what made Leah’s day go wrong.

It was 9:37 am and the girl was nowhere to be seen.

Leah was waiting alongside the media team to greet and get to know Y/n officially for the first time. Leah didn’t participate a lot in Y/n’s hiring; it was mostly Renée doing the work of checking her statistics and all the bureaucracy of recruiting someone from another country. Leah didn’t even agree with Renée at first, she couldn’t see why Arsenal needed another defender.

“Arsenal needs a sweeper,” Renée had argued during one of their meetings. “Someone who is faster, logical but not aggressive. This kid Y/n is great for the position.”

“Leah, we really to get going, we need to take solo photos of the players, maybe when Y/n gets here we can try to make a small welcoming video, or something,” Clarice, the media director said as she looked at her watch. “I mean she is very late, and we have so much to do—”

“Yeah, of course, Clarice, you all can go. If she arrives, I’ll give you a call,” Leah said, impatience clear in her voice

How can someone be late for their first day of training? It was clear to Leah that Y/n didn’t care so much about being the priciest Arsenal hiring in the last 10 years since she didn’t worry about actually coming to training.

Leah walked around, tapping her foot against the pavement. 5 minutes. Leah would wait 5 more minutes and if Y/n wasn’t here, she would go inside, into her office and let the new girl fend for herself. Leah was busy and she needed to watch a bunch of matches to study Arsenal’s future opponents, but instead she was here waiting for this girl like a fool.

9:42am.

Leah turned around, heading to the door. feeling stupid about waiting on someone who was not coming.  

Before Leah stepped into the building, she felt a warm hand on her shoulder and turned around slowly, not enjoying the non-welcoming physical touch. Leah locked eyes with a girl.

Y/n.

Leah, for some reason, was expecting to find the girl in full footballer mode, perhaps with her hair tied back, or dirty clothing from and intense match, but Leah was not expecting to find a very… cute girl instead. Leah had only watched the videos Renée sent of Y/n on the pitch, so she was rather surprised to see the new girl didn’t naturally have grass all over her hair.

Y/n was wearing what looked to be five layers of clothing, and a coat which was way too big for her. She was wearing very inappropriate shoes for the light layer of snow accumulation on the floor. It was like Y/n didn’t know how to dress for cold weather.

Before Leah could blink, the new girl began rambling.

“I am so, so sorry, ma’am,” Y/n quavered, taking her hand off of Leah’s shoulder as she watched the frown on Leah’s face form. “So, you see, my cat ran away, and I had to chase after him and that took me twenty minutes, and then I took the wrong tube—”.”

“You are late,” Leah said before taking a last glance at the girl and getting inside. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Leah heard the girl walking behind her, the squeakiness of her shoes making Leah even more angry.

“I-I’m sorry, and of course, it won’t happen again, ma’am” Y/n apologized, looking down at her feet.

Today was supposed to be a good day, Y/n thought. She had written down on her planner everything she needed to do in order to get to the club in time. She had printed the map of the Tube so she could get around easily and not get lost, but of course it didn’t work out and now her new manager was clearly pissed at her.  

And of course, the women angry at her had to be THE Leah Willianson, one of the most skillful defender of all time and one of Y/n’s biggest inspirations.

Great Y/n, just great. When Y/n thought things couldn’t get worse, she heard Leah snap.

“And don’t call me ma’am.”

..

Y/n was trying to see the bright side of this situation. She was in a new country, had her own apartment, she had signed with one of the best teams in the league right now, but she just couldn’t shake the feeling of Leah’s harsh treatment against her.

Now, laying in her bed after her horrible day, Y/n could recap every bad interaction she had with Leah, which was, unfortunately, all of them, but it seemed Y/n just had the talent to make everything worse.

“This is the locker and the changing room. You can grab that one on the left,” Leah pointed at one of the lockers, with no identification on its door. “Basic rules: don’t let your clothes or boots lying around, lock your locker and just keep tidy. I hope can do that.”

Y/n hated Leah's tone. It was like the manager wanted to be everywhere else in the world but here with her. But she couldn’t blame Leah, she wouldn’t enjoy it if somebody kept her waiting for almost 50 minutes.

“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened earlier,” Y/n mumbled, following Leah through the corridors. She didn’t know where they were going. Maybe the kit room? “I’m normally very punctual.”

“Hm,” Leah said, sounding indifferent.

Maybe Y/n was going to cry on her first day after all.

Leah took a turn on the corridor and both women were in front of a white door, “Medical Room” written on it.

The room was fairly normal, having a couple of physios and massage tables. It looked like the place hadn’t been used today, since the tables were all made. A few Pilates objects were scattered around, making the room seem more lived in.

What really caught Y/n’s attention were the photos on the wall. Y/n took a step closer to the wall, leaving Leah behind her.

There was Kyra and Alessia smiling, both receiving massages from an older woman, whom Y/n guessed was the physiotherapist. Kim Little was right next to the girls’ pictures, wearing an air cast and using a crutch.

Vivianne Miedema and Beth Mead laying on a massage table, holding hands as they smiled for the picture. “ACL couple #1”, written just below it.

Next to it was a picture of Leah, a few years younger — maybe she was Y/n’s age — running in her arsenal kit. “Leah’s first run after ACL”, written in the same way as Vivianne and Beth’s photo.

Y/n felt her heart ached for Leah. Y/n was young, but she remembered how the football world was talking about how much Leah was trying to be back after her ACL tear during the Euros. She did everything available, every new therapy, and nothing worked. Sure, she could walk and even run for small periods of time, but Leah would never come back to football again.

Y/n wondered how Leah felt having to look at that picture every day.

“This is obviously the physio room,” Leah said, breaking the awkward silence that had formed. “I’ll email you the medical staffs ‘scheduled. if you ever need anything, you can just talk to them.”

When Y/n turned around to talk to Leah, she didn’t expect the blonde to be so close to her. Their bodies bumped together, making Y/n lose her balance and, if things weren’t bad enough, she stepped right into one of the exercise objects on the floor.

Y/n closed her eyes and waited for the impact of her head on the wall, but Leah was faster, holding her waist with one hand and her head with the other.

Y/n held her breath, feeling Leah’s torso against her, well, as much as she could considering she was wearing seven layers of clothing.

Y/n opened her eyes, meeting Leah’s gaze just for a second. Both women seemed like a deer caught in headlights.

“Hey Mary could you see my knee—”

Y/n and Leah were met with Katie McCabe, her green eyes staring at the two women in confusion.

“Am I interrupting something?” Katie said. Y/n could swear she heard teasing in the Irish women’s voice.

“What?! No, of course not.” Leah blurted, taking her hands off of Y/n’s body abruptly, if it wasn’t for Y/n year of balance training, she would have fallen again, that’s for sure. “I was just showing Y/n’s physio room, but Mary wasn’t even here so…” Leah seemed defensive now, looking everywhere but at Y/n or Katie.

“She almost fell,” Leah continued, overexplaining herself. “She tripped on this thing,” Leah lightly kicked the equipment, it was just a rubber ball. Y/n would laugh if Leah didn’t seemed so nervous all of the sudden. “You know I hate when things are left lying around.”

“Leah.”

“Yeah?”

“You are rambling,” Katie said making the blonde close her mouth.

“Why don’t you go do some manager things and I’ll finish the tour with her, yeah? It’s Y/n, right?” Katie offered her hand to Y/n, shaking it firmly. “I’m Katie.”

“Hi, yeah I’m Y/n, so sorry this is how we met,” Y/n said, looking down. “Guess I’ll just go with her, if that okay—.”

“More than okay,” Leah mumbled. “Bye, McCabe, I’ll see you at training.” Before Y/n or Katie could responded, Leah had already left the room, a frown on her face.

Katie was a way better host than Leah, showing all the places in the facility without making the young girl feel like a chore. The Irish woman couldn’t help but notice that Y/n wasn’t as happy as new players usually were when they first visited the club, so Katie asked what had happened.

“She hates me,” Y/n confessed to as soon as they get to the pitch, the last place on the tour.

“Who?”

“Leah.” Y/n mumbled “I was late earlier, and everything went south after that. I don’t know how I’m gonna get her to like me.”

Katie placed a comfortable hand on Y/n’s shoulder. “She doesn’t hate you, she is just grumpy like that, Leah doesn’t like when things don’t go the way she planned, she’ll come around.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Of course, it’s your first time at Arsenal, but it's also Leah’s first time as our manager. She never had a new player before; you are her first. Renée was the one handling the greetings and initial meetings with the players. Leah will understand that other people don’t always react in a way she expected.”

Y/n hoped Katie was right.

[ultravi0lence14]

HIGH TIDE

DEAN WINCHESTER X MERMAID!READER

WARNINGS: hurt/comfort, reader being a baddie

SUMMARY: back at the bunker, sam and dean learn that their fishy friend is more well versed than they assumed.

WORD COUNT: 1.3k

the sound of a whirling air conditioner and freezing cold air was the first thing you felt when you woke up. you were more than groggy; more or less feeling like you’d been hit by a bus none the less.

everything was a blur. you remembered saving that kid, watching as that man stared at you from his place in the ocean, but you couldn’t pin point what happened afterward. it was all blurs of pain, anguish, and a weird comfort followed by the feeling of smooth leather under your skin.

your eyes had yet to peel open, the throws of darkness keeping you company as you laid limp on a cold surface. as your senses started to come back, you could faintly hear voices arguing; two, to be exact.

“what are we going to do with her?” voice number one asked, voice lilted in that of slight anger. “we’ve never dealt with a problem like this before.”

“i don’t know, dean,” voice number two said, addressing voice number one as dean. “i’ve been researching the best i can, and nothing is coming up about mermaids losing their ‘magic’ or whatever you want to call it.”

dean, what a beautiful name — wait. losing magic?

at the exact time when the second voices words registered in your head, you felt yourself try and flap your tail. all that resulted was you smacking your leg against the table and searing pain to shoot up your body.

“ow.” you groaned, peeling your eyes open and then throwing your arm over them when the bright lights blinded you. you were so confused. yet slowly, everything was coming back to you in pieces.

the pain in your tail. the sea urchin attacking you. the words these two strangers were spewing. your magic had been ripped away from you, making you a mermaid no longer.

everything you’ve ever known had been ripped away from you. the liberation of the sea, your fishy friends. you didn’t have a family, not remembering ever having one, but the feeling of being torn away from your only home made salty tears leak from your eyes.

somehow, the salt from your sadness brought a semblance of comfort. a reminder of home.

“oh jesus. is she crying?” the voice that you recognized as dean had tore through your reins of sadness and made you slowly peel your arm away from your face. “sam, what the fuck do we do with a crying mermaid?”

not being able to lie to yourself, you couldn’t help but admire the attractive man standing above you. with wild green eyes, and golden skin like that of a sun god, you couldn’t help but stare at his stubbly jaw and attractive features as who you assumed to be sam also leaned over you.

his hair haloed around his face, and you wondered if these two were related from the similarities they bore.

“why are you crying?” sam asked, shifting an arm around your back as you tried to rise on your elbows into a sitting position.

“we’re not going to hurt you, i swear.” sam’s words did nothing to calm your racing heart, and you couldn’t help but glower at the man has he helped you sit at the edge of a wooden table.

“i’m crying because i just got my home and birthright ripped away from me jackass, not because i think you’re going to hurt me.” your words had sam’s eyebrows shooting up, and a snort leaving dean’s lips.

“i like her, sammy, she’s got spunk.” dean smirked over at you, and you couldn’t help but turn your cold glare onto him. pointing a finger at you, dean gave an incredulous look in your direction as he spoke with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “don’t go all ursula on me, princess, i’m the one who saved you from being six feet under.”

a small shred of gratitude shone through your chest at his statement. for if it wasn’t for him, you’d be dead.

though you couldn’t help but narrow your eyes at him, jutting your chin in sam’s direction as you spoke to his companion. “thanks, i guess. but could you tell your friend over there to stop asking stupid questions like a total seaweed brain? i’m trying to grasp onto everything that just happened.”

with his hands in the air, sam took a step back from you and watched nervously as you kicked your feet back and forth, an expression of interest on your face. the flannel around your shoulders and the pair of boxer shorts on your hips had you staring in confusion, yet you decided not to dwell on one of these two changing you and focus on your new found legs.

you always had a tail, never becoming accustomed to legs in general. this was all new to you, and you realized then that you would need these two dopes help if you wanted to make it in the real world.

sighing, you scrubbed a hand down your face before turning to both of the men in front of you. “so sam and dean. . .”

“winchester,” sam replied, crossing his arms over his chest when he assumed you didn’t want to throttle him anymore. “we’re brothers.”

“thought so,” you shrugged, grimacing at the ugliness of the brown coloured shirt on your shoulders. “anyway, i’m very grateful that you two saved me, yet i can’t help but assume i’m not going to be turning back into a mermaid anytime soon. correct?”

sam sheepishly nodded, and dean couldn’t help but marvel at the pair of balls this assumedly innocent mermaid had on her.

“so, i thought maybe you two could help me.” your words left no room for questions, and dean couldn’t help but quirk a brow at your somewhat ridiculous statement.”

“help you?” he inquired, scratching at the stubble on his jaw as he stared at you with a smirk on his face. “i saved you from becoming sea food, isn’t that good enough?”

shrugging, you started combing your fingers through your hair. “in my books, no.” dean’s eyebrows shot up, and you held out a finger to him when he opened his mouth to speak. “i just need a bit of help getting on my feet; literally.” dean smirked at your joke, and you found it fair enough to continue.

“we could work together. maybe find something that could turn me back into a mermaid, maybe not. either way, help me become human for the time being, and i’ll try not to be annoying. deal?”

you spoke to the two brothers like you were making a gang negotiation, and both sam and dean wondered where you got this type of personality from living under the water all your life.

“i know what you’re thinking, and to answer your question, i am a very perceptive person. i see how you humans act and i create my own personality.” nudging sam’s knee with your foot, you grinned at the two men. “how am i doing so far?”

dean smirked at you, eyes racking up and down your frame as he watched you try and get down from the library table. “you’ve got yourself a deal, princess.” arm shooting out as you stumbled on your new found feet, dean steadied you into his chest so you wouldn’t completely fall on your ass. “first thing: try not to fall and break your neck before we could start though.”

“shut up.” you groaned, hands clutching dean’s shoulders as you stared into his sea foam eyes. “now, the first thing i want to deal with is this hideous thing you call clothes.”

“hey!” sam protested, speaking up for the first time in a couple of minutes. “that’s mine!”

“yeah, and it’s ugly.” you shot back, making dean snort and sam to drop his mouth like a gaping fish. “you guys got any dresses? i always saw the pretty girls on the beach wearing them.”

dean made eye contact with sam, silently giving each other an ‘oh dear lord’ look as dean slung his arm over your shoulder and helped you sit down in one of the library chairs.

‘yeah,’ dean thought, rubbing his brow slowly. ‘this is going to be a handful.’

TAGS: @starzify @whisperingdaze @titsout4jackles @daylighted @deansbeer @bluemerakis @gibson-g1rl @haunteres @honeyryewhiskey @florchids @figthoughts @misatxox @a-lil-pr1ncess @flow33didontsmoke @ilovedeanwinchester4 @whump-loverz @reluctanthalfwayoptimism @djudy99 @ryngzmn

NAT BABBLES: i wanted to make our girl whimsical but also a total princess and slight pain in the ass to both sam and dean (mostly dean)

[bwat5-blog]

Saying Goodbye: Arcane's Songs Of Grief

**Spoilers For Arcane**

Working on a Jinx post the other day it occurred to me I'd never really delved too much into the music even though it is SO IMPORTANT to the story. This is less critical analysis and more just something that interested me so if you don't care I don't blame you! But I get something out of it every time I get to spend time thinking on and digging into this show, so maybe you will to. This won't be too long as quite honestly I feel that-

A: These are fairly self-explanatory

B: I don't have the mind for lyric/poetry analysis and never have

1. Vi's world falling apart

Goodbye: song by Arcane, Ramsey, and Riot Games Music Team ‧ 2021

So this is the song that plays at the end of season 1 act 1 when we were all collectively saying something to the tune of "OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!?"

It was a beautiful and tragic moment in the show and seriously set the tone for the rest of the story. I see this song as Vi's perspective as her world is completely falling apart around her.

Vander is dead

Mylo & Claggor are dead

Her possible last interaction ever with her little sister was deeply traumatic for the both of them, leaving her with crushing guilt over her loss of control and hurting Powder

She has literally been kidnapped and imprisoned in an adult prison without cause or trial (there is no pit of hell deep enough for you Marcus)

"I can hear the sound of a heartbeat before it goes out Won't ever leave my memory of bloodshed all around, And I can see a tear on my father's face before it falls out" :

Vi is hearing Vander die and telling us she won't ever be able to shake the memory of all this death and pain. And that comes back around unfortunately...

"Oh, my enemy, how could I have ever let you down?

Oh When all these trees saw us grow Cut our teeth and make our bones right here We'd play with shields made of stone Share our dreams and sit our thrones":

I see this as all about Powder/Jinx and Vi's crushing guilt over how they were parted. The trees watching them grow and the place where they played and dreamed of better days clearly being Zaun. But the line that is so indicative of Vi's trauma here is "how could I have ever let you down". As her guilt over how things happened will go to impact the course of her entire life.

"Be still, 'cause I see smoke up ahead and I got steel in my hands We will return like warriors, I swear, that we'll find glory up ahead Tell me

Where is my home? I don't recognize the faces anymore, no Where is my friend? The one I've known since I was only just a kid

I think it's time to say goodbye Goodbye, goodbye Goodbye, goodbye, woah":

This entire last section speaks to Vi's future when she returns to Zaun. Her entire world has changed. Powder has become Jinx. Ekko is a rebel leader and a warrior. The demon (don't yell at me Silco people I'm talking Vi's POV) who took her entire world away from her sits in her father's house. And when Vi returns she returns with fury and steel aiming to reclaim what she lost. Until she has no choice but to admit the world she knew is gone. Which takes us into our next song.

2. Jinx loses everyone

What Could Have Been: Song by Ray Chen and Sting ‧ 2021

I'd call this the song that captured the world's attention from Arcane. I mean having Sting alone was huge but this whole sequence was once again so beautiful and horrifying at the same time. Vi spends the whole show trying to get through to Jinx up until this point and you want to believe she is going to pull it off. Jinx is recognizing what Silco took from them, and the Council is starting the vote for Zaunite independence.

But it all falls apart. Silco is dead, and Jinx feels like Vi cannot love her anymore and feels rejected by her after everything that has happened. And this song begins, taking us into Jinx's POV as she lashes out in this moment of terrible grief and loss and angry. I'm not going to do the lyrics for this one like I did above because they are all pretty clear and direct. As Jinx makes the long walk to her destiny and fires the weapon that will destroy her people's chance at independence, she is telling Vi, Silco and the world how they have wronged her.

But the trick with Jinx is to remember she is an unreliable narrator. So when we are with her in this moment seeing it through her eyes we have to remember we cannot take everything at face value. So even though throughout the show we have seen Vi's guilt over what Jinx has become driving her, and after Silco's death Jinx essentially seems to blame Vi for what follows because she cannot "love her like she used to" because they are different. Where does that missile actually go?

I am the monster you created You ripped out all my parts And worst of all, for me to live, I gotta kill the part of me that saw That I needed you more

I hope you know we had everything And you broke me and left these pieces I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and I want you to lose like I lose when I play what could have been Oh, what could have been

Why don't you love who I am? What we could have been

I am your ghost, a fallen angel You ripped out all my parts I couldn't care what invention you made me 'Cause I, I was meant to be yours

I hope you know we had everything And you broke me and left these pieces I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and I want you to lose like I lose when I play

I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and I want you to lose like I lose when I play What could have been

3. Death touches Caitlyn Kiramman

I Can't Hear It Now: Song by Arcane, Freya Ridings, and League of Legends ‧ 2024

This song takes us into Caitlyn Kiramman's POV as she is plunged into the darkness of her mothers death at the hands of Jinx. Once again visually and musically it is a stunning moment. There is a notable difference to this one compared to the other two that I wanted to mention.

Vi's song-"Be still, cause I see smoke up ahead and I got steel in my hands, We will return like warriors, I swear, that we'll find glory up ahead Tell me"

Even with all of the loss and grief and pain in the rest of the lyrics there is a moment of hope. A promise of justice and righteous return

Jinx's song- "I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and I want you to lose like I lose when I play What could have been"

Full of anger and blame and hurt . Nothing positive but A LOT of emotion.

Now let's look at Caitlyn's lyrics:

There is an ocean so dark down below the waves Where you watch while these dreams gently float away And there is a silence so soft it's only memory Like the way your voice always sounds when you sing to me

But I can't hear it now Just tell me how to keep breathing while pretending I'm not drowning I don't know if I could I watched the door close for good 'Cause I couldn't keep it open

I just watched as the door closed for good 'Cause I couldn't keep it open

Just tell me how to keep breathing while pretending I'm not drowning I don't know if I could I watched the door close for good 'Cause I couldn't keep it open

Vi and Jinx are full of emotion and pain and loss but they are expressing it, even if it is misguided or negative. Caitlyn is drowning in her grief but trying to force herself to keep going and failing, and blames herself.

"But I can't hear it now ,Just tell me how to keep breathing while pretending I'm not drowning"-

Caitlyn so badly wants to hear her mother's voice again but she cannot. And she is trying to go on, be the new head of her house, testify before the council and everything else while maintaining her composure when inside she is completely and utterly destroyed. I mean for gods sake, revisit the moment she finally is alone with the person she can show vulnerability with:

it's like she barely makes it to Vi before her legs give out...

"I watched the door close for good 'Cause I couldn't keep it open"-

These are the last words of her goodbye to her mother. Not a lament of how the world is changed and she has to say goodbye. Not an angry accusation at those who wronged her. But blaming herself...

Conclusion:

Anyway! I hope you get something out of this. I did by writing it. I love the music of this show, and as a life-long band nerd and music lover seeing a show weave it's music into the storytelling in such an original way was truly special to me. Thank you for reading and take care!

[deusvervewrites]

Young Jedi or Sith Padawan/apprentice Izuku is transported to Mustafu, where Inko adopts him. (Whether the mha world is an alternate universe or in the same universe just a different galaxy is up to you)

Darth Bainus is a Sith Apprentice, taken on due to his strong force sensitivity. However, despite the master's best efforts, Bainus is simply too empathic--and doesn't even have the decency to be sadistic. While his passions and emotions are strong, he refuses to channel them towards suffering. Eventually, his master decides to cut his losses, betraying and disposing of Bainus. While Bainus is able to escape, his warp drive malfunctions, stranding him in uncharted space. Specifically, Earth.

While shopping for groceries, Inko happens to catch a child in the act of using his Quirk to shoplift food by hypnotizing a cashier. The kid, having apparently realized she was there, is about to do it to her too, but you simply cannot beat Inko's maternal instincts and she was already paying for them both. And taking him home. And making him dinner. He's her son now, she doesn't make the rules. He's so completely overwhelmed by this that he just kinda rolls with it.

It's been a long time since Darth Bainus has sensed genuine affection towards him that he really doesn't know what to do about it anymore and just goes through the motions letting Inko mother him. It's... nice. He doesn't have to be berated and punished for refusing to hurt people anymore, and she's paying for food and clothes now so he doesn't have to steal. He slowly opens up to her, revealing more about himself and his past, like the fact that he doesn't have a Quirk. Eventually, Inko offers to legally adopt him, and he doesn't hesitate to agree. While he doesn't remember his original name, he doesn't really want to go by Bainus anymore. Midoriya Izuku is a much nicer name.

Going to public school for the first time in his life is a thrill for Midoriya. He's making actual friends! Though it's a bit weird that Inko was so insistent on going over Quirk Use Laws with him but the school doesn't seem to care. And the teachers... they kind of remind him of his old master, but he may not be have the context to know that's weird yet.

Izuku was never trained in the Light Side of the Force, and he's not super fond of the Dark Side philosophy, so he's kind of making up his own training as he goes now. It's not like he has anyone to ask.

[wurmh0le-aol]

a mother’s reckoning, chapter 7: one mother to another

“Afterward, Dylan's friends scattered like beads from a broken necklace. Not surprisingly, many of them suffered serious difficulties for years. Nate stopped by our house on his way out of town. He asked for an item to remember his friend by, a request that moved me, and I was happy to see him choose a pair of Dylan's sunglasses—they reminded us both of Dylan, in happier times.

But Nate had something to tell us, too. He'd seen Dylan give a large wad of money to a guy they worked with at Blackjack Pizza. When Nate pressed him, Dylan told him the money was for a gun.

We were dumbfounded by this news. Even Tom was willing to finally express anger toward Dylan for lying to us. We had been clinging to the belief that Dylan was an innocent victim, ensnared by Eric at the last minute—and yet here was evidence that he had taken an active role in buying a gun, more evidence that my son had not been the person I thought he was.”

— sue k, a mother’s reckoning (pg. 90)

i often see criticism towards sue for her supposedly “perpetuating the leader/follower myth,” and while i do believe that there are times where she downplays dylan’s involvement or passes more blame onto eric, a lot of what she talks about in her book is how she’s trying to reconcile with the fact that he did commit this crime and that he was her son who she loved so dearly.

this chapter is probably the one where she goes most into depth about it, though it’s kind of a general through-line in the book. a few pages later, she even states, “Even if Eric had masterminded a plan and urged Dylan to participate, Dylan was a smart kid. He could have found a way to get himself out of it if he wanted to. Why hadn't he?” (pg. 101).

besides, if a family member of mine ended up committing a crime like this, i feel like i would probably also want to believe that they were somehow less culpable in order to keep myself sane, so i honestly can’t pass all that much judgement on her for doing the same.

[starry-eyed-psychopomp]

I NEED more Jian Lan fics. Bc like, she was a member of the Xianle nobility. She’s as old as all the other characters from Xianle, she’s seen a LOT of the same shit they did, had a seriously traumatic death, and has seemingly just been palling around Ghost City for the past few centuries?? Like what was going through her head this whole time? She probably met Qi Rong at some point in life, so I’m just imagining every time he attacks Ghost City poor Jian Lan is just like, for fuck’s sake not that little freak again. I’m assuming she didn’t recognize Xie Lian immediately when he came to Ghost City (otherwise she’d have stayed the FUCK away from him), so what was her reaction to finding out that Taoist with erectile disfunction was actually the former prince of her dead homeland who her parents always tried to set her up with and also her baby daddy’s ex-best friend? Not to mention, when she was arrested and taken away, it DEFINITELY seemed like she and Hua Cheng knew each other, so like. Were they friendly? Did he make a habit of offering refuge to ghosts from Xianle, and take a liking to her because she didn’t hate Xie Lian? For all the fics of Hua Cheng having genuine friendships with Black Water (unlikely) and Yin Yu (debatable), where are the Jian Lan BFF fics??? You can’t tell me they didn’t laugh about the whole General Big Dick situation together. I just want a series of her desperately trying to Mind Her Fucking Business and look for her kid while 800 years of Plot happens in the background

[dandysworldhcs]

Flutter Headcanons GO!! >:D Also sorry in advance this is probably a lot to read but Flutter is my favourite little blorbo and I haven't gotten to share my headcanons for her before.

Flutter tackle 'hugs' her friends when she's excited to see them. Which is a majority of the time tbh. Never with enough force to hurt anybody. But she's knocked down multiple Toons multiple times.

She's a pretty expressive toon. She expresses herself through her eyes and body language. She can communicate well even without words.

In the show, her expressiveness is exaggerated much more, making it easier for the children watching the show to understand her.

Flutter was supposed to be a Moth Toon but got changed at the last minute which is why she has the thorax fluff and why she's interested in lights.

The hearts on her wings are painted on by one of the Toon Handlers, but sometimes, they let the kids paint her wings. Usually as part of celebrating Valentine's Day.

Her favourite flowers are Fuchsias. Both because they look pretty and she likes how their nectar tastes.

(I hc this because I'm pretty sure I remember eating fuchsia nectar when I was younger lol)

She's always been curious how most foods taste considering she can't eat them. Sometimes she feels envious of everyone else since they take eating for granted while she can't.

She's learned to do most things herself despite the lack of arms, but it takes more energy to do so. She struggles with asking other Toons for help because she's used to being the helpful one. The only one she feels really comfortable asking for help from is Gigi.

She enjoys reading and goes to the Book Club from time to time, she finds it interesting to see what books the other toons like to read! She's not picky about what she reads but finds reading with one of the others the most exciting for her.

She probably writes in her diary with those glittery gel pens and uses stickers and other pretty stationery stuff. She likes to do little doodles sometimes too!

Gets the zoomies. Has crashed into multiple walls and boxes, and it will happen again.

Bonus Twisted Flutter Headcanons because why not :O

She was separated from the other toons when she became a Twisted. She roams the floor without stopping, looking for someone to help her. Or at least that's what she thinks, she doesn't know why everyone runs from her and she doesn't know the damage she's causing.

She's always moving because it hurts to stop, even for a split second, the pain is unbearable for her. To the point, she'd rather to never stop moving than have to go through such pain ever again.

FLUTTER MY BELOVED /p

[until-the-house-shakes]

Adoption Fight

Wolfstar raising Regulus / Werewolf! Regulus

-

Remus should have known this was going to happen. It’s only been a few months of him and Sirius taking care of Regulus, and each day ended in some terrible blow out- the brothers screaming at each other, doors slamming, and hatred easily being thrown about.

Why did he think this topic would be easy sailing?

For some brilliant reason, Sirius decided to legally get Regulus’ last name changed to mirror their own and get the adoption process started as well. The name changing process was easy enough seeing as Regulus’ parents legally gave up all parental rights of the werewolf, but they still needed a few signatures from the kid himself.

Getting his signature and trying to even discuss adoption was not going as easy as they hoped.

It started off as an easy conversation, asking if Regulus enjoyed living with them, and if he wanted to make his stay more permanent.

“Won’t maman have an issue with me staying here permanently? I thought this was just for the summer?” Regulus asked, looking through the papers his brother handed him. It looked innocent enough, but he wasn’t stupid. He read the words ‘adoption’ and ‘legal guardianship’. He knew what these two men are planning.

“We already talked to her. She thinks this is a better place for you to live.” Sirius lied. Regulus knew he was lying. He was awful at it.

“You’re lying. This isn’t what she wants. She’ll get mad and punish me! You know that.” The young werewolf was now on his feet, getting louder with each passing second.

One issue the married couple have yet to get a grasp on was the younger’s temper. He easily went from the sweetest kid anyone has met to meaner than both his parents combined. Remus should have known this would happen, as it was a very common symptom many werewolves dealt with, but adding in the ‘Black Madness’? He felt woefully unprepared.

“She won’t punish you, Regulus.” Sirius started, getting closer to his brother.

“How do you know? You know nothing! You haven’t been home in ye-“

“Because she fucking abandoned you! You left you! She made me and Remus take care of you because she couldn’t be bothered. She fucking hates you, told me herself.”

The world seemed to freeze once that comment left Sirius’ mouth. It was obvious to even an outside eye that the youngest Black was no longer ‘mama’s precious boy’ but to say she hated him? That she abandoned him and gave parental rights to his brother of all people?

And for what reason?

Because he was turned? Because one of their shitty friends made him a monster? That wasn’t even his fault, so why is he getting abandoned for it!

He could do better. He could be better. He could be the perfect son his maman was raising him to be, even with his stupid furry little problem.

“She doesn’t hate me.” Regulus mumbled, running straight to the kitchen. Looking for something to destroy. Something to get his anger out.

Glass plates.

Perfect.

“Hey, Reg. Let’s not do anything cr-“ Remus tried to calm the boy down, but to no avail. Before he could finish his statement, one of their wedding plates was thrown at the wall- effectively shattering it.

“I’m not fucking crazy!” Regulus screamed, throwing yet another plate. This time aiming for his lying brother.

“Regulus please stop! Being a Lupin isn’t a bad thing! I think it’s much better than being a Black.” Sirius flinched from his spot, much too scared to get closer to his brother- not wanting to make the situation any worse.

“I’m a Black. Not a fucking Lupin.” Regulus growled, throwing yet another plate at his brother, watching as it shattered.

Hearing and seeing all the tiny pieces of glass hit the floor, was the only comfort Regulus got during this conversation.

The only peace.

His mother hated him. His dad saw him as a monster. He was stuck with his brother who left when he was four, and another monster.

Regulus didn’t know what peace was. Until he saw the plate shatter against the wall.

-

The tantrum only lasted another two minutes until Remus was able to get his wand and move the plates far away from the angry ten year old.

“Alright, I think that’s enough. Go to your room, and calm down. Once you’re willing to talk calmly to us, we can resume this conversation.” Remus pointed at Regulus’ room, up the stairs. This was not the first time he had to intervene in an argument between the two brothers, and he was starting to get very sick of it.

He loved having Regulus live with them, but after watching this shit show and having his wedding plates- which were a family heirloom from his late ma- shattered all over his living room floor, Remus wasn’t too sure where he stood on the ‘adopting regulus’ matter.

“I fucking hate it here.” Regulus grumbled, stomping his way up the stairs and slamming his door shut.

The two men spared each other a fleeting look before starting to pick up the mess left by the youngest member of the house.

Sirius opened his mouth to say something, likely a pitiful excuse on why he lost his temper, but Remus was quick to raise his hand and shake his head, “not right now. I want to hear nothing from you.” It was clear the brunette was close to tears, and it broke Sirius’ heart.

Remus always had to deal with the brother’s bullshit, and now he was the only one negatively affected by one of their regular blowouts. Sirius looked at the pile of glass that surrounded their feet, and felt even worse once he realized that no amount of magic could fix the million pieces of glass. Nothing he did could bring the plates back to how they used to be.

Nothing could make Remus not mad at him.

-

Two hours later, Sirius was hunched over a pile of glass in his office. He tried every single spell he knew and nothing brought the plates back to their former glory. In a moment of weakness, Sirius thought about apperating to Wales to buy a set identical to the broken plates, but then remembered that it was a ‘one-of-a-kind’ set that Hope had received from her mother, who received it from her mother, who received it from her mother.. and that pattern seemed to never stop. Needless to say, the plates were irreplaceable and the last thing Remus received from his mother before she passed.

And now a majority of them were broken in a pile in front of Sirius.

What was he going to do?

Sirius’ self wallowing was cut short by a soft knock at the door.

“Come in.” He answered, hoping to see Remus walk in, but was instead greeted by a much smaller werewolf.

“Hey Reg, feeling any better?” Sirius asked, opening his arms for his little brother to take comfort. Yes, he was still very upset with the younger boy for reacting how he did, but he would never take away any comfort Regulus might seek out. He was not his parents, and would never act like them. No matter how mad he was. He was going to drill it in Regulus’ mind, that he was always safe and welcome in his arms.

“I’m sorry.” Regulus whispered, shoving his face in his older brother’s chest. Trying to hide from his mistakes.

“Do you really hate it here?” Sirius asked, petting the short black curls.

“I don’t. I promise. I… I was so upset. I was hurt that mom didn’t want me anymore and… it stung when you said she hated me. So I freaked out. I wanted to hurt you too. I’m sorry.”

Sirius sighed. Of course this traumatized kid was hurt and wanted to even the playing field out. It made sense. That’s exactly what Sirius used to do until he spent a few years with a mind healer and in a healthy relationship. When he was hurt he wanted others to hurt just like him or worse. Being hurt meant he was vulnerable, so if he made others vulnerable, he had nothing to worry about. It sucked that his poor baby brother had the same idea.

“I’m sorry too. I lost my temper and said things I should not have said. If it makes you feel any better, mother hates me too and disowned me long before she did you.” Sirius laughed, hoping it would make Regulus laugh as well.

It did not.

“I don’t hate you though. Neither does Remus. We love having you here, which is why we want to adopt you. We want you to legally be our kid, our family. That’s why we want you to share our last name. To really seal the deal.”

Regulus looked at his older brother with wide eyes. Was he being honest? Did he really want Regulus to be a part of his family? For the last two months, all Regulus did was cause fights, scream at Sirius, insult Remus, and make everyone’s life difficult. His own birth parents didn’t want him. So why did his brother want him?

What was so special about him?

“You promise you actually want me?” Regulus whispered. Too scared to speak any louder. Too scared to burst this bubble of safety his brother carefully created.

“I pinky promise Mon Ètoile. I want you here more than anything.”

The small promise filled Regulus with such a warm feeling. Much warmer than any feelings his maman could make him feel. It was almost too much.

Actually. It was too much.

Far too much emotion.

Like he couldn’t control it at all. He couldn’t hold it in. All his emotions had to escape. It had to leave his heart and mind and become physical.

It was terrifying, and hurt just a little bit.

But then in a flash. It was over. His emotions felt normal yet again.

Odd.

“What just happened?” Regulus asked, looking around the room as if one of the inanimate objects would answer him.

“I think you had some accidental magic happen, Reg. Nothing to worry about! You were feeling some big emotions and they had to come out. No big… no fucking way.” Sirius cut himself off, looking at some plates on the desk next to him.

Wait. Those were the plates Regulus broke. Or at least, he thought he broke them.

“Did I just fix the plates?” Regulus asked, awestruck at what he just did.

“I think you did mon ètoile. Why don’t you go grab Remus and bring him here so he can see? I’m sure he’ll be very happy.” Sirius smiled, ushering his brother out of the room to grab his other guardian.

In the few minutes he had by himself, Sirius tried to wrap his head around what just happened. He spent two hours trying to fix these plates and had no luck, but his brother managed to fix them with a rush of accidental magic?

It made no sense.

Oh well. It didn’t really matter as long as they stayed fixed.

-

Later that night, the three boys were all cuddled together on the couch, watching a muggle movie on a ‘telly’ as Remus called it. Regulus really liked all the muggle inventions Remus showed him. They were always so interesting!

“… Can I still change my name?” Regulus asked once there was a pause in the movie. The two adults haven’t said anything else about the adoption or his last name changing since he apologized for his outburst, and he was worried that they were going to take back their offer.

He didn’t want them to take away their offer. He wanted to be a Lupin. He wanted to be wanted by someone.

“Of course you can, cub. We can continue the process tomorrow, but I can’t promise it will happen anytime soon. Stuff like this tends to take a while.” Remus answered, bringing Regulus closer to his side. It warmed the older werewolf’s heart to know the kid genuinely wanted to be a part of their family, even if they fought.

“I would love nothing more than to share my last name with you again, mon ètoile.” Sirius ruffled his brother's hair, laughing as the younger complained about it.

Sirius looked over at his husband cuddling with his brother, and felt his heart swell. Sure, these past two months haven’t been an easy adjustment with Regulus living with them, but they’re making it work, and soon they’ll legally be a family of their own.

A happy little family

Hopefully.

[gothamite-rambler]

Cutting to the chase

This is when Bruce had a fifteen year old Tim Drake as his Robin and a what if because for me I've never liked this ship. Fictional characters or not this one is gross to me and super force. At least Dick and Babs was slightly wholesome to me.

Jim: All right, so I’d start in Bowery, then work my way around there. You look ridiculous. By the way, did you ever have sex with my daughter?

Batman (delayed shock): Right... what?

Robin!Tim (flipping through the case file folder): He said we should start at Bowery and work around. Something about your suit, then he asked if you violated his daughter.

Jim: That’s why I like him; he’s good at repeating and remembering information. So, did you ever violate my daughter? Good phrase to use.

Robin!Tim: I thought it would fit. Thanks.

Batman (clearly unsure how to react): You’re asking me if I ever had sexual relations with Batgirl?

Robin!Tim (sarcastically): Good defense, use the actual lie Bill Clinton said. Makes you look less suspicious.

Batman: I didn’t… I wouldn’t… We never did any of that! I thought we were friends, you asshole! Why would I ever have sex with her? She’s practically the same age as my kids!

Robin!Tim: I mean, outside of this, you do present yourself as a bit of a playboy.

Batman (turning Tim around): Could you read the damn folder over there?

Tim shrugged and walked off, humming a jazz tune, clearly enjoying his time researching a kidnapping case. Batman groaned, covering his eyes in frustration.

Batman: I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I swear to you, I’ve never done anything with her.

Jim (crossing his arms): Would you be willing to take a lie detector test?

Batman (flatly): Those are bullshit and you know it. You can trust me.

Jim: Ever kissed her?

Batman *grossed out): No.

Jim: Had a hug that lasted too long?

Batman: I don’t even hug actual girlfriends for too long, but no, we've hugged like five times and it was quick and platonic.

Jim: Ever had sex with her on a roof?

Batman: That was with Catwoman, and she swore to keep that secret!

Jim: I… didn’t need to know that.

Batman: The point is, I haven’t had sex with Batgirl or viewed her as some kind of sexual prospect. And I saw what you were doing with hos you asked the questions to force some confession out of me, but once again Batgirl is my friend. Why is it so difficult for people to accept a man and woman can be friends?

Jim and Barbara (in unison with her voice coming through the comm device): Because we know you.

Batman: I’m into many weird kinks, yes I have had relationships that some would label strange-

Robin!Tim (from far away): He's talking about Talia, Selina, Jillian Maxwell, Phantasm-

Batman (shouting, turning to his sidekick): READ THE CASE FILE!

Jim tilted his head, chuckling at his friends reaction and beginning to be reassured he hadn't slept with his daughter.

Batman (turning back to Jim): I’m genuinely pissed off that you’d think I’d do something so… reprehensible. She’s not just my friend, she’s like a daughter to me.

Barbara (over the comms): Aww, that’s so sweet.

Batman (pressing his comm to yell at her): What did you tell him? Why would you tell him that? I thought we were friends! Why is everyone being mean to me?!

Barbara: Relax, I’ve actually been denying all of that. He said he was going to ask, though. Just be glad I talked him out of bringing a gun.

Batman (to Jim, hurt): You were actually going to shoot me?

Jim (nonchalant): Oh yeah, just in the upper thigh, between your legs. You would’ve lived. I can be overprotective at times, but a man who's only a few years younger than me… having sex with my daughter? The guy he knew when she was a teenager would set me off. Not gonna lie.

Batman: Okay… oddly enough, I respect that. Thank you for asking instead of shooting me. Do you believe me now?

Jim: I do. Plus, your reaction was hilarious. For a stoic guy, when you snap like that, it’s funny. That’s why I’m glad we’re friends.

Barbara: Aww!

Batman (closing his eyes and holding his head down): I have weird friendships, but thanks, Jim.

[send-me-a-puffalope]

I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of Vanessa having memory loss due to trauma either post-possession in the games or post-MCI in the movies. So naturally, I’m thinking smth along the lines of Sophie Walten from TWF or Elizabeth Lail’s other movie Unintended.

Brainrot with me here: Vanessa-centric fic in which she’s been on anxiety meds since childhood and has essentially repressed most of her memories from childhood, remembering bits and pieces of the good times with her father but completely blocking out the MCI and William’s more abusive side. She remembers him as a good man who loved her, though he died when she was a teen.

Conflict starts when she runs out of her meds and she starts having weird dreams featuring children she doesn’t recognize but look familiar. They obviously know her though. They’re in a pizzaplex and she’s around the same age as them. The first night ends with her alone in the pizzeria. Something happened that she doesn’t remember but the next thing she knows, she’s awake.

She gets her meds refilled but doesn’t take them, instead looking forward to dreaming every night in hopes of figuring out more about this strangely familiar pizzeria but mostly because she feels a lighthearted, floaty joy that she hadn’t felt in years in her dreams.

She begins to start skipping work, instead obsessively sketching details from her dream she remembers because things were too familiar, too vivid to be just a dream. The next night begins much the same, except there’s a new character. A yellow rabbit. The dream ends with Vanessa sprinting to catch up to the yellow rabbit as he lures the final kid into the back room, but no matter how fast she runs, she can’t catch up. She wakes up to the sounds of children screaming still ringing in her ear.

Vanessa begins not showing up to work at all. Mike (unemployed), her only friend, shows up to her house with Abby in the backseat. He’s worried obviously since she hadn’t been answering any of his messages and he stopped by her work only to find out she hadn’t been showing up. Vanessa’s in rough condition. Disheveled, eyebags, dishes stacked up in the sink, and sketchbook papers crumpled up across the ground.

Vanessa thinks Mike won’t take her seriously because it’s absolutely insane to claim that there were murders that occurred at some secret old pizzeria by a man in a yellow rabbit costume and she knew that because she dreamt it.

But weirdly, Mike believes her. He asks if Vanessa wants to take a road trip to her old hometown and even offers to drive. Unfortunately she doesn’t remember where that is, so it’s a lost cause. Until they (including Abby) begin digging through all of Vanessa’s stuff in hopes of finding smth from her past only to find a very bare bones photo album (suspiciously empty, as if Vanessa had purposely disposed of many of the old photos because they were too painful to look back on). The magnum opus is a photograph of Vanessa’s 8th birthday at a very familiar pizzeria, labeled Freddy’s. On the bottom was scribbled an address.

The next day they set out with Abby in the backseat, singing to the radio and staring out the window, and Vanessa feeling the dread sink in. Mike noticed her spacing out and asks what’s wrong, with Vanessa responding that she couldn’t believe it took her this long to realize that she didn’t remember her childhood. She had faint flashes of memories but nothing concrete. She couldn’t even remember if she had friends, siblings, a mom. It’d always been just her and her dad. Vanessa asks him why he offered to do this with her. Mike’s response is that he’s no stranger to weird dreams and trying to change the past through them (Garrett).

The sun’s setting when they get there but sure enough, it’s Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, in all its abandoned glory. Vanessa is too shaken to move but Mike pressures her to join him in taking a peek. Abby is forced to stay in the car. Vanessa and Mike enter, trying the lights only they don’t work. Right when they’re about to turn tail, the whole pizzeria comes to life. The curtains pull back, the speakers blast 80s music, and the entire animatronic gang is on stage, jerking robotically in their horrific dance. Vanessa and Mike leave as fast as they entered, deciding it wasn’t safe and they’ll come back in the morning.

After a long, sleepless night in a local motel, Vanessa asks the owner if there was any kind of… murders that occurred around here only, to her surprise, for the motel owner to laugh and say duh. She’s surprised Vanessa didn’t know about the Missing Childrens Incident. After all, that’s all the town was really known for, even after all these years. Vanessa and Mike go back to Freddy’s. They take Abby with them but instruct her to stay in the car (she doesn’t listen). When they enter, to find, to their horror, that the animatronics aren’t on the stage anymore. Vanessa and Mike make their way through the back halls, getting to the security room and find the breaker box, turning it on and looking through all the barely working feeds only to see Abby, talking with something. She’s smiling and slowly walking towards that something. It takes a moment for Vanessa to realize she’s talking to Freddy. They sprint for the main stage to the sound of Abby screaming, hearts pounding, expecting the worst. Abby introduces the fazgang and Vanessa recognizes the names as her imaginary friends growing up. She comes to the conclusion that she came here growing up.

Hearing Vanessa’s name as Abby introduces her though, the animatronics have weird reactions. Some seem hostile, while others sad. Vanessa is taken aback. What had she done to make them act this way around her? She finds the wall of drawings. The one in the middle depicts the children from her dream. And one another little blonde girl. Her. And the yellow rabbit. Her conclusion is that she was supposed to also have been murdered in the MCI but managed to escape. Vanessa was supposed to have been the 6th missing child.

When they get back to the motel for the night, the motel owner makes a comment that makes Vanessa stop in her tracks.

“Yknow I always thought it was that handsome owner that did it.”

“Did it?”

“Killed those kids. Everyone always said Bill was too sweet of a guy to ever do something like that but it’s always the sweet looking guys people never suspect right?”

“Bill?”

“If you’re going to come around here asking about murders, at least do your research first. You’re embarrassing the locals. Yeah, William Afton. That’s the name and don’t forget it.”

“…yeah. I-I don’t think I will.”

Vanessa leaves the motel in the middle of the night. She goes to the pizzeria alone with a flashlight she stole from a 24 hour convenience store. She lingers alone the drawings again, reading names she vaguely remembered but couldn’t put a face to. Flashes of memories came coming back but they just caused more confusion. William Afton. William Afton. Her father. Her dead father who loved her. She thought harder. Her dead father who loved her… and she had no memory of how he died. She moved deeper into the pizzeria. Unbeknownst to her, the animatronics are following her, slowly encircling her and herding her further down the hallway funneling into the back rooms.

Who was William Afton? What did he do? How did he die? Did he love her? Is this love? Vanessa’s flashlight flickers and goes out. She hits it once, twice. It comes back on again, faintly. The beam of light illuminates the weathered head of an animatronic— no a springlock suit. The yellow rabbit. Vanessa held her breath. Then the eyes of the suit flickered on and the yellow rabbit jumped towards her, its gloved hand just barely missing her arm. Vanessa screams, running back into the hall only to notice the animatronics, their eyes now red, blocking the exits. She ends up locking herself into the security office, slowly unscrewing the screws of the vent to the sound of the power slowly draining and animatronics pounding on the door. She gets to the other side of the vent, escaping into the main room but being cut off from the entrance by the Yellow Rabbit, her dead father.

Behind him are Mike and Abby. Abby had noticed Vanessa was gone and the both of them convinced the motel owner to let them borrow her car because of an emergency. They’d come at a bad time however. And now they were being held hostage by the Yellow Rabbit.

His words are garbled but Vanessa can still make out what he’s saying. He repeats her name. Insults her like he did when she was a kid. Kicks her when she’s already down. He’s the one that turns the final key in her brain. She was never going to be the 6th victim of the MCI. She was the one who lured them back there in the first place. Because they were her friends. And they trusted her.

Vanessa yells back at first, finally letting out her anger and frustration. Finally (rightfully) blaming him for manipulating her into harming other people. For raising her wrong. For teaching her the wrong form of love: possession. There’s tears welling in her eyes as she stares up at her dad’s towering figure and suddenly she feels like a kid again. He grabs her by the neck and she struggles. He gives Vanessa one last chance to apologize for her insolence and her forgetting about him. She spits in his face instead and the entire pizzeria is silent as the sound of a blade tearing through skin fills the air. The Yellow Rabbit commands the animatronics to tear Mike and Abby to pieces in front of Vanessa, forcing her to watch as black fogs her vision. What he didn’t expect though, was for the animatronics to not obey him. Instead, they surround the Yellow Rabbit, looking towards Vanessa. She nods faintly and the animatronics each grab one of the Yellow Rabbits limbs, overpowering him. He yells and kicks and screams, becoming less and less coherent. Less human, more monster. A personification of agony. The animatronics begin to drag him to the back. Right before he’s dragged into the darkness, the Yellow Rabbit bellows as one of the animatronics rips off one of his limbs, showing the exposed human flesh underneath and leaving a trail of blood in his path.

Vanessa harnesses the last of her strength to get to Mike and Abby, her hands shaking too much to untie the knots so instead, because she’s thinking so clearly and assumes she’s going to die there anyways (in her head thinking, die where all the other kids died. die where i belong), she pulls the knife from her stomach and cuts the ropes bounding Mike and Abby before collapsing on the tiles.

She wakes up in the hospital with Mike and Abby beside her. Happy ending, my thumbs are tired. Abby highk did nothing this entire story, I just felt weird not having her. I did NOT realize how long this was, I just had such a distinct idea of how I wanted this to go. I applaud you for being one of like three people willing to read all of this.

[lunaandco]

her boy

pairing: gavi x ofc

summary: gavi lost a bet with someone he despises

warnings: suggestive content, implied retraining, sub!gavi, olympique de lyon player!ofc

taglist: @htpssgavi ; @joaosnovia

masterlist // I do not take requests

Gavi hated lots of things: shrimps, pickles, Real Madrid, parking the bus... but there was one person he hated even more: Noa Paredes.

If someone told his fifteen year old self that he would have such feelings for her, he would have laughed in their face. Noa and him had been friends since they started sharing clsses in La Masia, when they were twelve year olds.

It had been a match made in heaven. Noa required competiton to keep herself entertained, Gavi, as shy as he was, needed someone to force him out of his shell. Which meant that the two midfielders would spend most of their joint training trying to outshine each other.

Their competition was not as tough as it was with the other kids of their own gender. They knew, deep down, that they could not take each other's spots in their respective teams, which meant that their arguments would always end amicably.

But the issue was, they were both too emotional to handle certain aspects of their relationship. Like for exmaple, the fact that everyone thought they were a couple. Or the fact that they actually weren't.

Moving up to the first team meant Gavi won, he had made it first.

But it also meant he lost.

Noa had completely different schedules, and little by little, they started seeing each other less and less. Until they were almost strangers.

The thing about Barça Femení was, their midfield was stacked, and Noa would not find a spot so easily. Which meant that when the offer came through, she had no real reason to stay. As much as she loved the club, her caeer was more important, and she would have more minutes in Lyon. So she packed her bags.

Maybe if Gavi had had the guts to talk about his feelings, none of it would have happened.

But he chickened out, and she started to play for the one and only Olympique de Lyon.

It wasn't a decison that sat well with the club. Many board directors were pissed, that such talent had slipped through the cracks of their farmhouse. Others criticised how easily Noa shrugged the blaugrana jersey.

But Gavi? Gavi hated that she was now, in a way, truly his enemy.

He texted, months after she left. It was a challenge.

"I bet I can score more goals than you this season."

And jsut like that, their banter started again.

💙❤️

Having that secret dynamic, was fun. Gavi felt like he was having a secret affair, something none of the stupid journalists could even imagine, but based in hate and not love.

But sometimes, their competitiveness meant their bets got out of hand.

Gavi had inisited in making a a very risky bet: if Noa lost her next wucl match, she would have to do everything she said for a day. But if she won... then it would be him doing everything she said.

Noa had smirked at that, and he was now scared of what she could ask of him. Because of course, Lyon beat Real Madrid with ease.

The bet had been set weeks earlier, and Noa still hadn't claimed her reward. Until she suddenly attended his game without warning him.

Gavi spotted her by chance, when he was trying to find where the injured players had been seated. She was next to Jana Fernández, a girl he remebered her having a decent realtionship back in the day, which he imagined had gone cold after her move.

Gavi blushed, his knees going weak. He was more nervous that he had ever been in years.

Suprisingly, the match went well for him. He assissted Lamine's winning goal in the 73rd minute and won all of his aerial duels against a dude a head taller than him.

His teammates wanted to celebrate, but Gavi scurried away as soon as he could. Once he was safe at home, he texted Noa.

"What do you want?"

"You know what." She replied. "It's time to pay."

"Come home."

💙❤️

Noa was wearing the same outfit as in the match. Gray sweatpants, a white tank top and an oversized bomber jacket. She also didn't take long, as if she had been waiting for him to give her permission to come.

Gavi didn't say anyhting and neither did Noa. it was as if the weight of the situation had frozen thier rivalry. It was the first time they saw each other in the flesh since she had left La Masia, two years earlier.

"You know we don't have to do anything, right?" Noa's words took him by surprise. Gavi had not expected her to pull back in a situation she clearly had the upper hand.

"Are you scared?" he questioned, a smirk pulling at his lips.

"You should be," was her retort. Gavi hummed.

"You keep saying that. What could be so bad?"

"I could ask you to post a selfie to your official account wearing Vinicius' jersey." Noa replied without missing a beat.

"Nah. That would be boring."

He was right and he knew it. Noa took a step forward.

"What if I told you to take your clothes off. Would you do it?" She arched an eyebrow, as if daring him. Gavi's breath caught on his throat. Suddenly his clothes felt itchy, like he actually needed to take them off.

"Maybe." His voice was strained.

"Then go on." Noa's suggestion was barely a whipser, but Gavi obeyed anyway. Her lips parted, as her gaze fell on his chest. "You know you can back out any time, right?"

"You've said that before," he muttered, hands falling to the waist of his pants. "Starting to believe you want to back out."

Noa's hands joined his by the zipper.

"Just making sure."

Gavi kissed her. It was an impulsive act, grabbing her jaw and pushing her into a fiery kiss. She seemed taken by surprise, but it took her an instant to react. Her hand shot up to his neck, and it squeezed, warning. Gavi gasped, and as their lips parted, she pushed him to the bed.

"Do I need to restrain you?"

He did not know how to answer that question. His mouth opened and closed without uttering a sound.

"Maybe?"

Noa smirked, coming to sit on his lap, hands on his shoulders.

"Don't make me do it." She advised, biting his ear. "You won't like the outcome."

Gavi gasped, profoundly doubting that statement, but he nodded.

[bqstqnbruin]

Just Friends - Part 13

Happy last part of this fic! I let Johnny be unhinged in this for my own entertainment.

Thank you everyone who read this fic!!! 💛💛💛

Warnings: alcohol, swearing

WC: 4698

Read the last part here!

Enjoy!

___________________________

“So your profile said you’re a teacher?” Emeline was tired of answering this question to guy after guy, boring date after boring date. She was sitting in front of Luke, a California transplant that she had an ok conversation with on the app and over text. She had hoped that he would be better in person.

He wasn’t.

“Yep,” she responds, nodding as she takes a sip of the drink in front of her, the non-alcoholic one that Luke cringed at while he ordered a cocktail.

“What grade do you teach?”

“Mostly sophomores, then juniors and seniors in my AP.”

“I bet the boys love you,” Luke smirks, Emeline already feeling like she was going to leave the date early. 

“I mean, I don’t think any of my kids have a problem with me or anything.” 

“I would have paid attention in school if I had a teacher that looked like you.” 

Emeline bites the inside of her cheek, pursing her lips and nodding at him. “Gross,” is the only thing she could think of saying. 

The worst part, that was the best conversation they had. Luke spent the rest of the date talking about himself, no longer asking anything about herself while she just nodded and said, “oh, nice,” or, “cool,” or some other unenthusiastic variation of that. 

Emeline gets home to find her roommates watching a movie on the couch, one of the nights where the guys are on the west coast playing late night games that they end up missing instead of watching their friends. Emeline groans as she flops down next to Maddy, covering her face with her hands while Fran pauses the movie.

“That bad again?”

“I got the, ‘I’d have listened in school if you were my teacher,’ line for the third time,” Emeline says, the girls groaning in disgust. “How many times do you think we have to go through this before I actually find someone decent?” 

“I mean, you do have a decent man right next door.”

“I can’t,” she says. “He doesn’t want that.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Johnny groans, throwing his head back against the couch. “I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

“Johnny,” Maddy starts, Emeline seeing a look of panic cross her roommates face. 

“No, Mads, I can’t. Emeline, Jeremy has been in love with you since the moment he saw you. I had heard nothing for months about any topic other than ‘the most beautiful girl with red hair that might live in the building.’ Then he realized not only does this girl live in our building, but she’s right next door. You’re right next door and you three become our friends, and honestly, you, Emeline, get closer to Jeremy than you are with your actual best friends, and he gets closer to you than he is with anyone on the team, while everyone around you watched you while you were falling in love with him, and he was falling deeper in love with you. He has not stopped loving you. You have not stopped loving him. Neither of you will be anything other than in love with each other and so help me, God, I need you two to fucking do something or I’m going to launch myself into the Charles.” 

The girls stare at him, dumbfounded by this outburst. 

“You’re staring at me like that because you know I’m right,” Johnny shrugs, pulling out his phone and scrolling through one of his social media apps. 

“Jeremy still loves me?” Emeline asks out loud, to no one in particular. 

“You are not that stupid that you would think he wouldn’t.” 

“It would be better if you could be helpful.”

“I think I’m plenty helpful.”

___________________________

Ben had texted again, asking to see her. Why she said yes, she wasn’t sure. He said he wanted to take her to some sort of restaurant, the same one she went to with Luke, where she definitely had gotten some sort of mild food poisoning from the dinner she barely ate to begin with. She didn’t want to go.

“Is it too late to cancel?” she groans, flopping on the couch next to Maddy, not caring that it would probably wrinkle her outfit, something that Ben had commented on last time. The bar was literally in hell, and men still couldn’t clear it. 

“What time is he supposed to be picking you up?” Maddy asks, not looking up from her phone. She was probably texting Johnny, Emeline remembering something about the rest of them having plans to go out tonight. 

Emeline reaches for her own phone, three texts from Ben showing up on her screen and making her feel nauseous. “He was supposed to be here in five minutes, but I guess he’s waiting downstairs now.” 

Emeline starts to get up from the couch, Maddy resting her hand on her arm. “You have five minutes before you’re supposed to meet him. If he doesn’t like that, then too bad.”

“I shouldn’t be this nervous for a date, should I?”

“It’s probably not a great sign since you look like you’re going to vomit.” 

Emeline groans again, another text from Ben coming through. All four of them that he had sent since she last opened her phone were asking where she was and if he should come up to meet her, asking what her apartment number was. “I don’t want him knowing which place is ours,” she says, having to force herself off the couch to head downstairs to meet this guy.

She gets into the elevator, a feeling of dread and anxiety washing over her as it goes down to the ground floor. The doors open, Ben standing in the lobby of the building, looking slightly annoyed as he frowned at his phone. “Hey,” she lets out, her voice shaking with a fake smile plastered onto her face.

“You took a while.”

The smile faded, Emeline trying to hide the disgust that she felt. “Well, you said to be ready by six, and here I am, at 5:58.” 

Ben shrugs, turning and heading out the door without saying another word. If only he could stay like that the rest of the date, it might actually be tolerable to be with him. 

Before they can reach the door, Fran comes rushing in, tears streaming down her face.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” Emeline stops, Ben groaning at the hold up despite her glaring at him.

“I got fucking fired.”

Emeline gasps, taken aback that Fran’s father would ever even think about firing his top performing employee, his golden child, from the job that was going to help her take over the company when he finally decided to retire. “What?”

“Can you please come upstairs? I really don’t want to be alone right now.” 

“Um, Maddy’s there,” Emeline says, “You want me, too?”

“Please?”

She couldn’t say no to Fran. “I’m sorry,” she says to Ben, rushing towards the elevator she just came down, leaving Ben standing at the door while he called out something stupid about dinner reservations. She didn’t care if he ever texted her again, honestly. 

“Ok, so what’s the game plan?” Emeline asks as the elevator doors close, looking over to Fran who has her phone in front of her face, open to her camera. “You’re not crying anymore.”

“It’s windy. You know my eyes water like I’m sobbing when it’s windy.”

“I hate you.”

“You really think I’d get fired?”

“If you did, you have a great career as an actress ahead of you,” Emeline laughed.

“You seem weirdly ok for someone who just bailed on a date,” Fran points out, pulling her back towards their apartment. 

Emeline thought about it. She should be mad that she spent too much time getting ready for a date she wasn’t even going on now, checking her phone to see Ben already breaking it off with her for bailing, feeling no remorse about the situation. “I think I’ll be ok,” she tells Fran, showing her the texts. 

“After the first date, I’m surprised you even said yes to a second one.” 

“I’m surprised you managed to get her back up here,” Maddy says when they get back to the apartment, Johnny sitting on the couch with her, his arm around her. 

“Don’t you have your own apartment?” Fran asks Johnny.”

“I’m not Keelan,” he reminds her.

“She told me she was fired,” Emeline says.

“And you believed that?” 

“Johnny,” Maddy scolds. “So, now that you’re not going out with Ben, that means you can come out with us.”

“Trent should be here any minute.” 

“Great, so I can fifth wheel your double date?” Emeline laughs, Maddy and Johnny smirking.

“Hold on,” Fran says. “Trent and I are not dating.” 

“But he does like you,” Emeline points out.

“Look at me. Plenty of men do.”

“He’s going to ask you out eventually,” Johnny tells her, a look of panic on Fran’s face. 

Fran scoffs. “We have to fix Emeline before we even come up with fake scenarios for me.”

“I’m not broken.”

“But you and Jeremy aren’t together.” 

Emeline rolls her eyes. “I still don’t want to be a fifth person with no one to sit across from at a table while these two are either looking at each other stupidly in love or actively engaging in PDA and Trent is drooling over you.” 

“We could invite Jeremy. He’s genuinely just sitting in the apartment right now doing nothing.” 

“What if he has plans?”

“Yeah, of course,” Johnny starts, pulling out his phone. “The guy whose teammates are either married, engaged, in serious relationships, or cannot legally drink has plans on a Saturday night when his family is in fucking Alaska and he can’t go on a date with a girl if his life depended on it definitely has plans.” 

“You and Fran really are the same person,” Emeline says, both of them yelling at her for her comment. 

Before anyone can say anything else, Jeremy walks into the apartment, slightly disheveled as if he had just woken up from a nap. “You changed my text tone to the same sound as my alarm?”

Johnny shrugs, getting up off the couch and pulling Maddy with him. “It’s the only way you’d pay attention to me since you’re barely checking your phone any more. Anyway, we’re going out to dinner tonight and we’re just waiting on Trent. Want to change and join us?” 

“Um, I,” Jeremy starts, looking at everyone in the room except for Emeline. 

“Perfect, go change, I’ll help you pick out a shirt,” Johnny says, pulling Jeremy out the door. 

___________________________

“Ok, you need to calm down,” Jeremy says, shaking Johnny off him after he physically pushed him from the girls’ apartment into Jeremy’s bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“You and Emeline are going to finally start dating tonight,” Johnny says, rummaging through Jeremy’s drawers.

“You’re making a mess,” he says, pushing his roommate out of the way and trying to put his shirts back the way he had them. “And what are you talking about?”

Johnny pulls out a shirt and throws it at Jeremy, closing the drawers and plopping himself down on the bed. “You and Emeline have to get over whatever weird thing is going on between you two because it’s becoming fucking insufferable for the rest of us. Emeline keeps going on horrible dates with awful guys because she’s convinced you don’t care about her, Fran will not even consider the fact that she and Trent would have a lot of fun together because she’s so worried about you and Emeline never getting together, and Maddy and I have been sleeping together way less lately because Maddy can’t get over the fact that you are not dating her roommate when, as she puts it, you two are soulmates.” 

Jeremy stares at him, pulling the shirt he was wearing over his head and throwing it into his hamper. “You just want us to make up so you can start having sex again.”

“No,” Johnny protests as Jeremy puts on the new shirt, surprised that Johnny would have picked it out. “I’m doing this because my woman needs to have needs met and her worries to stop and I cannot help her right now because of you.”

“How chivalrous.” 

“Whatever the reason,” he says, starting to run his hands through Jeremy’s hair in an attempt to help combat the bedhead, despite Jeremy swatting his hands away, “You and Em need to get back to normal so the entire group doesn’t feel awkward. It’s weird for everyone that you two can’t be around each other anymore.” 

Jeremy sighs. “I doubt we’ll get together tonight, but I’ll try to talk to her.”

“Thank god,” Johnny says, dragging him back to the girls’ apartment, where Trent was already waiting outside the door. “You alright there, bud?”

“I didn’t think you guys were in there and I didn’t want to be alone with the girls.” 

“Why?”

“Fran,” the three of them say together, Jeremy and Johnny trying to hold back a laugh while Trent looks terrified. 

“You could just ask her out, you know.” 

“What if she says, ‘no?’”

“What if she says, ‘yes?’” Johnny counters, opening the door to the apartment to let the girls know they were ready to go. 

What if she says, yes? For some reason, Jeremy hung on to those words. Johnny was annoyingly smarter than he seemed, and Jeremy knew that somehow what he said to Trent was meant for him, too. 

He takes in a deep breath, walking back into the girls’ apartment to find the three of them running around and attempting to pregame with what appeared to be very little alcohol, Emeline trying to get Fran and Maddy to drink water. 

“Are we going to dinner or to a bar?”

Emeline stops and stares at Johnny, Jeremy recognizing the look on her face that told him she was trying to remember something she knew was gone in the depths of her mind. “Ladies, when was the last time we ate?”

“I had breakfast before I left for work this morning,” Fran said, immediately going back to chugging the wine she had open in front of her.

“I think I ate lunch,” Maddy stops, opening the fridge.

“I think I ate dinner last night.”

“How the fuck do the three of you survive?” Johnny groans. 

“We’re all twenty six, we had to have done something right,” Fran shrugs, putting the bottle in the sink to wash later. “I say we go to a bar that serves food and kill two birds with one stone.”

Trent looks up from his phone. “We’re killing birds?”

“I need better friends,” Johnny says, grabbing his phone and taking Maddy’s hand. “I know where we’re going, come on, idiots.” 

“That’s bold when the three of us have six degrees between us and the three of you have three brain cells total,” Fran says, rolling her eyes and falling in step with Trent as the six of them head down to the lobby of their building. 

“Especially when Jeremy normally has all three of them,” Maddy chimes in, the group of them laughing as Johnny’s cheeks turn bright red at his girlfriend's words. 

Johnny leads the group to the T, taking them on the red line towards who knows where. Emeline sits down in an empty row, another seat next to her. Jeremy stands awkwardly, holding the railing above him. 

“You can sit down, you know,” Emeline tells him, clearly looking as nervous as he felt. 

“Thanks.” He takes the seat, trying hard not to make direct eye contact with her as his leg started to shake uncontrollably next to her. “Um, how,” Jeremy starts, staring down at his lap. “How have you been?”

He sees Emeline nod out of the corner of his eye. “Good. School’s good.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“Huh?”

“How have you been?”

“Oh. Good, too.”

“That’s good.” 

God, he wanted to throw himself into a river. Whatever bacteria the Charles had festering in it had to be better than whatever this feeling was. Talking to this girl next to him used to be so easy. He shouldn’t have to fight internally to find the words to talk to Emeline when he was this in love with her. 

They spent the rest of the ride in silence, Jeremy getting more uncomfortable by the second being near her. He missed her. At this point, he didn’t care if he ever dated her, he just wanted the Emeline who had become his best friend back. 

Johnny calls for them to get off the train as it pulls to a stop, Jeremy practically sprinting off the train and grabbing Trent away from Fran. “I think I need to go home.”

“Why?”

“I can’t be around Emeline.”

“Why?” The two of them fall behind the rest of the group, Johnny leading them to a bar they frequent way too often for their own good.

“I don’t know how to talk to her anymore. Whatever Johnny thinks is going to happen between us is never going to happen.”

“What do you mean you can’t talk to her? You just open your mouth and words come out, Jere.” 

Jeremy stands there, staring at his teammate. “You did pass some classes when you were at Wisconsin, didn’t you?”

Trent shakes his head. “I mean, it shouldn’t be hard for you to talk to her. You two love each other. You’re just in a weird place and you need something to break the tension so you can go back to normal.”

“Normal was me in love with her and her dating Keelan.” The rest of the group goes into the bar, not bothering to wait for the two of them as they continue to talk to each other outside. 

“You know, I don’t know Emeline that well, especially not as well as you do, but I can see why you two love each other. I see the look on her face when she talks about you, that light in her eyes when you get brought up that just fades when she realizes that you two aren’t together and that you two are in this weird place right now. It’s the same look you get when Fran or Maddy mention Emeline. You look like you’re bursting with love one second, then like you’re about to crumble the next.”

“So what do I do about that?” Jeremy asks, looking back and forth between the bar and Trent. 

Trent shrugs. “You might just have to fight it out. Get whatever ew things you’re feeling out in the open.” 

Jeremy laughs. “You had me there until, ‘ew things.’”

“Shut up, you know what I mean. Get everything out so you can get together and the rest of us can finally relax.”

Jeremy lets out a deep breath. “Let’s head inside.” The two of them go in, finding Fran, Maddy and Johnny standing at the bar waiting for drinks. 

“We ordered you guys your drinks, too,” Maddy tells them before they can ask. 

“Where’s Em?”

Fran shrugs. “She said she was going to try to find a table for us, probably somewhere in the back.” 

“Thanks,” he says, rushing off to find her as soon as possible, despite his friends calling for him, clearly confused by the sudden change in his demeanor. He wouldn’t even know where to start telling them what had changed in his mind in the short time between talking to Trent and now; it barely made sense to him. All he knew was that he had to find Emeline. He had to figure this shit out with her now before he was sure he was going to lose her forever.

The bar was more crowded than he had anticipated for it being seven pm. He was pushing through people far too drunk for their own good, feeling like the room was closing in on him as every additional person bumped into him.

It didn’t matter. He had to find Emeline.

He finally breaks through the crowd of people, his heart dropping when he sees her.

She was at a table big enough for all of them, a guy sitting right next to her who looked surprisingly like Keelan. He stood frozen as he watched her smile at him, throw her head back and laugh as he leaned back and put his arm on the back of the booth they shared. She leans back, snuggling into his arm, his hand running up and down on her arm. 

He couldn’t be with her. Not when she was with someone else. He thought he finally had his chance, and he was already too late.

Someone drops their glass behind him, everyone around them drunkenly screaming. Emeline finally looks away from the mystery man who was leaning in already, the color draining from her face when she makes eye contact with Jeremy. 

He couldn’t watch this. He turns to leave, pushing past Trent, Johnny, Maddy, and Fran on their way back with drinks, calling his name. 

It had started raining, a sudden downpour that none of them would be ready for if they left the bar anytime soon. It didn’t matter to him. He barely felt it. 

How could he be so dumb? She had barely spoken to him in months. They had no idea how to be around each other any more. Why would he think that he even still had a chance with her? Why would she want to be with him when she was practically avoiding him whenever she got the chance? Yes, they had those few moments where it felt like everything could be finally falling into place for them, but they were few for a reason.

“Jeremy, wait,” he hears Emeline call out, the sound of her running after him as her feet hit the pavement, splashing in the puddles that were quickly forming on the sidewalk.

“Why?”

“Where are you going?”  

“Nowhere,” he snaps, Emeline flinching. “Home.”

“Jeremy.”

“I’m fine. You’re doing your thing with whoever you want, and I’m just-” 

“You’re what?” she asks after he trails off.

“Alone.” 

Emeline looks at him, confused, her voice getting soft. “What are you talking about? You have all of us. You have your family, your teammates.” 

“What does any of that matter when I’m losing my mind watching the girl I told I love a couple of months ago flirt with other guys and not even think about me when I’m trying everything to try to figure out how you could have told me you wanted me and then changed your mind so fast. Do you think that it’s easy to stop loving someone like you? Do you think I want to sit here feeling like this? Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone take up every free thought you have when you know they don’t think about you at all?”

“You think that I don’t think about you? You’re all I can fucking think about.” Jeremy involuntarily lets out a scoff, Emeline’s face turning bright red, tears forming in her eyes. He looks away, knowing that he would break if he saw her starting to cry because of him. “You asshole, this is so easy for you to stand here like this is a one way thing, that you like me more than I like you or something.”

It starts to thunder, Jeremy praying that lightning doesn’t follow, Emeline’s makeup just starting to run down her face, her mascara smudging as the rain draws it down her cheeks. He looks up at the sky, knowing that it was better than looking at her. Trent was right, though. “God, Emeline, do you think this is easy? Do you think I like this? We should be in there having fun with our friends instead we’re out here on the sidewalk in the middle of a fucking screaming match. I don’t want to be here if it means I have to watch you hit on someone else.”

“What am I supposed to do? So what if I hit on guys I have no interest in? The guy I want to be with, the guy standing right in front of me, looked me in the eyes back in December  and told me that he and I shouldn’t be together because he didn’t want to be a rebound. Well, guess what? These guys are my rebound. These guys are lining up to be the guy you didn’t want to be.” 

“No shit, I don’t want to be your rebound. I want to be more than that. I want you to be more than that for me. I don’t want to end up as a one night stand.”

“For fucks sake, Jeremy. It’s been since December, you and I doing this awkward fucking dance around each other,” she repeats, “I'm not here for a one night stand. I don’t know how you could think that you would ever be just a rebound to me when you are everything. I don’t want just one night. I don’t want one shot. Fuck, Jeremy, I want chapters, I want a novel, I want you and me to finally be something. If you have spent all this time thinking that I only want the bare minimum with you, then you don’t know me at all. That means we have spent the last how many months trying to ‘get to know each other,’ with nothing to show for it.” 

“Emeline, you have avoided me every chance you get. I have to hope for those few moments when we’re alone and you actually want to be around me. But we can’t even be around each other anymore. It was almost worse than all those other times it was just the two of us. If someone saw us interact, they’d think we had never fucking met before that moment and didn’t want to be around each other any longer than we had to be. Then there are the other times when I try to talk to you, and you avoid me. You ignore me, which I don’t even know if that’s worse or not. Everything I do I feel like I’m losing you more and more. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you as my friend even though it’s clear you don’t want anything to do with me.” 

“For fucks sake,” Emeline says, stomping her foot on the ground. “Why is this so hard for us? All of our friends are trying to push us together and we can’t figure out how to be around each other.” 

“Maybe they’re wrong.”

Emeline stares at Jeremy, swallowing what he was sure was about to be a sob. He felt himself crying, too, blinking away the tears as they mixed with the rain that ran down his face. “I don’t want them to be wrong.” 

“We have to both want this, then, Emeline.”

“When you die,” Emeline starts, her voice shaking, “Your brain goes on for seven minutes playing back all of your happiest memories. You are my seven minutes. I want you to be all seven minutes, don’t you get that? I don’t want other people. Of course, I want you, too, you fucking idiot.” 

Jeremy couldn’t tell if she was still crying at this point or if it was the rain going down her cheeks. Her makeup was everywhere down her face, but she still looked perfect to him. 

He takes a step forward, raising his hands to cup her cheeks.

“What are you doing?” she asks, stepping back slightly, despite her body getting noticeably more relaxed.

“Will you just stand still?” he asks, taking her face in his hands and finally kissing her. He could feel her smiling against his lips, not stopping himself from doing the same as his hands tangled in her wet hair, the taste of the rain mixing in as their lips moved together. His mind stopped, he swore his heart was about to stop, everything around him stopped as he stood there in the rain, kissing the girl he had wanted to be with. 

***Stay tuned for a Bet on Us ft. Fran and Trent***

[flycoffee]

Man! you have no idea how much I wanted Loid to have conversations with dads where it’s from school or parks, preferably school! My brother and I have this conversation about his daughter/my niece being too popular for his liking because sometimes my niece doesn’t the other kids keep wanted to be friends with her while she plays in the park, and my brother tells me it him puzzled him that she would always get attention like that, and it worries him a bit for the her future, and I jokingly said maybe he should enroll her to some self defense classes while she is young for future troubles, and he genuinely think it’s a good idea. It’s a funny memory.

Anya after the bus hijack becomes very popular among her peers, it showed in the school dance and winter sheep festival, Twilight as a spy has yet see the problem and he wanted her to make friends and they are just kids so why worries plus Anya seems to enjoy the attention, but what if there will come to an opportunity where Loid would be socialized with other parents and have some dad conversation I don’t knows what dad talks about, but I hope some of the conversation will awaken the deep father instinct in him.

“You most be Anya Forger’s father I am some rich name my son admired your daughter so much after the bus incident said that he wanted to be as brave as her”

“My daughter too! And wanted to know how she can be so carefree even after she got her second Thunderbolt!”

And in true Loid fashion Twilight socializes with them with ease.

They talk, have some other topics Twilight gathering data, and so on then one of the dad said.

“It’s nice that she is popular amongst her peers now it will make the years after easier but you must have some worries too hmm? My daughter tell me she was quite popular among the boys in the school dance and lot of boy want to dance with her, I have an elder daughter and the boy she chooses to go out with” the dad signed and looked sad.

Some other dad said my daughter who is in 10th grade some rich name, who is the emperor scholar and they heard of her before with her achievement in Eden.

“The boys that surrounding her sometime and send those gift to my doorstep just make me want to pull out my guns” who look displease and angry, all the dad there agree.

At this moment twilight tries to imagine Anya as a teenager and the boys who asked her to dance at the party are also teens in a similar scenario asking Ayna to dance, and he quickly shakes the thought away “Calm down twilight you won’t be there when she reaches to that age, hopefully. And Yor would probably pull her out of Eden because of the fees I just need to think of the excuses for Yor to let her study in public school before I exit this mission.” But then the image of regular teenage boys wanting to go out with Anya startled him too, “would it be better if Anya chose to be with someone from the higher social circle of Ostania? But she is such a care free girl to think she will get in to a family of strict rules and manners would she be happy in those kind of relationship? wait what am thinking here I have no saying in Anya’s distance future, who ever she chooses will be her choice I just need to trust Yor would guide her through those phases, the worst Anya could chose is properly someone like Franky, a boy who is active from underground world, hopefully not.” all these happened in 0.9 seconds in Twilight’s head. But one of the dad said

“My wife have been reading a book about raising teenagers and want me to spend more time with our daughter apparently little girl will base lover preference on their father, how I treat her and her mother will be the mobile for her future spouse”

One of the dad said “what? then it’s already too late for me!” All the dad laughed at it except for Loid.

“No twilight! The worst isn’t someone like Franky at least Franky is genuinely want to be with someone the worst possible outcome is Anya falling in love with someone like ME!!!” At the point Loid had excused himself from the dads.

“Did we scare him” one of the dad ask.

“Base their future lover on me as Loid Forger might have been okay but I know all too well that Loid is a fake he is too perfect and nice if Anya bases her preference on that she might be fooled by an Espionage someone who is too perfect to be true, what if this mission get discovered in the future and enemy spy trying to find my weaknesses and use Anya as a pawn, what I did to those women will come back biting Anya” it is this moment Twilight couldn't imagine the worst karma that might happen on him/his daughter for the mission.

I have yet to know how Twilight will snap out of it but it's hilarious to imagine him as in parenthood turmoil for the mission!



[tetedurfarm]

idk if i talked about it here but my original plan for the goats was to have four does and breed them in pairs: one pair in fall and one in spring, so i can essentially milk year-round and i don't have to buy store milk. this plan was going pretty well other than a couple of poor planning moments on my part, but then i bought derek and sold orion

and derek is huge

which is perfectly fine for violet, phoebe, and possibly turnip, but it's not okay for hallow, who is teeny even by nigerian standards. i am terrified to breed her to him because i don't really want my friendliest doe torn asunder by her overgrown kids, but it also obliterates my plans to have two does milking over winter. not that any of the other girls probably couldn't keep us in milk on her own, but y'know, the whole point was to split the task.

i'm just...really torn. i don't want two bucks, i don't hear a lot of success stories of housing bucks together peacefully, and i definitely do not have anywhere to make a second buck pen. i can't borrow a buck from someone to breed her because of the CL, and none of my friends who trust me to not be an idiot about my disease status want a nigerian buck for me to borrow. ai is really finicky and expensive and i don't think i want to deal with it. so like...i guess i have a pet? but also her going into season makes larry VERY annoying and i worry he's the reason she's been short-cycling so much bcause she will stand for him and if she's being 'bred' with inviable sperm...idk what that's doing to her poor little system.

so like, do i just have three milking does and force one to carry us through winter on her own? do i buy/keep a FIFTH doe and put more burden than planned on my feed bill? do i buy another buck (and do much of the same plus possibly needing to build a new enclosure)?

i tried so hard to get my shit squared away this year so i could just coast from now on but noooooooooo