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mayasinghal · 11 months ago

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Writing on the Walls:

A Socially-Distanced Ethnography of Asynchronous Communication

Son looked in vain for children. He couldn’t find them anywhere There were short people and people under twelve years of age, but they had no child’s vulnerability, no unstuck laughter… It wasn’t until he caught the downtown A that he saw what they had done with their childhood. They had wrapped it in dark cloth, sneaked it underground and thrown it all over the trains. Like blazing jewels, the subway cars burst from the tunnels to the platforms shining with the recognizable artifacts of childhood: fantasy, magic, ego, energy, humor and paint. -Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (1981, 215)

So many things begin and perhaps end as a game, I suppose that it amused you to find the sketch beside yours, you attributed it to chance or a whim and only the second time did you realize that it was intentional and then you looked at it slowly, you even came back later to look at it again, taking the usual precautions: the street at its most solitary moment, no patrol wagon on neighboring corners, approaching with indifference and never looking at the graffiti face-on but from the other sidewalk or diagonally, feigning interest in the shop window alongside, going away immediately. -Julio Cortázar, “Graffiti” (1983, 33)

In April 2020, about a month after Boston began Covid-19 social distancing protocols, posters appeared around my neighborhood in Allston, stuck to mailboxes and streetlights. On brightly colored paper, bold printed lettering read, “Meat markets cause pandemics,” referring to allegations that Covid-19 originated from human-animal contact in a meat market in Wuhan, China. A few weeks later, I took a walk around the neighborhood and noticed that someone had written on the left side one of the posters in black Sharpie: “This is anti-Chinese racism.” On the right side, in the same black Sharpie handwriting, it said, “We have them here too.”

It was not immediately clear why the poster should be construed as anti-Chinese racism. Maybe the Sharpie scribe was reading the sign as referencing racist tropes about Chinese people eating varieties of meat jarring to Western ideas of morality and health (for instance, dogs and bats). I also wondered what the commentator meant by “We have them here too.” We have pandemics here, too? We have meat markets here, too? And, what is the importance of “here” versus “there” in racialized reactions to global events? The Sharpie scribe seemed to emphasize the xenophobia central to anti-Chinese racism: that there is some fundamental, inheritable Chinese-ness that marks all Chinese people and practices as inherently blameworthy for problems between China and the rest of the world.

These posters disappeared shortly after I witnessed this graffitied commentary. They were replaced by pig head illustrations bearing the caption, “Animals are not products.” A few weeks after these posters went up, I found another poster glued on top of them. It showed two Black children, climbing on the Lincoln Memorial with large red letters that stated, “Black liberation is human liberation” (Fig. 1). It was June 2020, not more than a month since an African American man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, prompting Black Lives Matter protests around the world. Recalling histories of legalized enslavement in which Black people were sometimes treated as commodities, the “Black liberation” poster challenged the “Animals are not products” one it was placed over, highlighting tensions between animal rights and human rights. Certainly, environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution disproportionately impact communities of color around the world (Nixon 2011; Taylor 2014). And, many indigenous approaches to animal studies argue that decolonization must be a multispecies endeavor that accounts for Native peoples’ relationships to the environment and land (Struthers Montford and Taylor 2020). However, in practice, white environmentalists and animal rights activists often use concerns about non-human species to legitimate violence against people of color or prioritize non-human species over people of color (Kosek 2006). The juxtaposition of these posters raises questions about the status of arguments for animal liberation when predominately African American populations are still legally enslaved and otherwise financially exploited in the US prison system.

Throughout the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, I saw several of these graffitied exchanges about human and animal rights on walks around my neighborhood. While animal rights posters are somewhat ubiquitous around all of the college campuses I’ve been to in the Northeast, I was struck by the extent of these asynchronous conversations that took place on my neighborhood’s walls during the pandemic. In this essay, I want to think through the content of these discussions: human and animal rights in the context of the pandemic, the Movement for Black Lives, and Stop Asian Hate. I also want to think further about the form of these discussions, about doing socially-distanced ethnography by reading writings on the walls.

Fig. 1: A poster reading “Black liberation is human liberation” on top of posters that read “Animals are not products” (June 2020)

Wall Art

In the epigraph to this essay, taken from her 1981 novel Tar Baby, Toni Morrison describes New York City in the 1970s from the perspective of Son, an African American New Yorker returning to the city after a long absence. In the face of poverty and mass incarceration, Black people in the city do not seem to Son to experience childhood anymore: “There were short people and people under twelve years of age, but they had no child’s vulnerability, no unstuck laughter” (Morrison 1981, 215). They seem to be missing the kind of freedom, but also the innocence and helplessness, associated with childhood. This idea parallels a common claim from law enforcement officials guilty of using force against unarmed African Americans who insist they feared for their lives during encounters with young Black people they perceive as having the size, strength, and prowess of grown men. However, unlike law enforcement officials, who have sometimes used graffiti as evidence of local criminality, Son sees childhood in graffiti. For Son, 1970s New York is jarring, filled not only with new fashions, but, he thinks, new kinds of gender- and racially-ambiguous people: “beautiful males who had found the whole business of being black and men at the same time too difficult and so they’d dumped it” and “black people in whiteface playing black people in blackface” on TV (Morrison 1981, 216). Stunned by these changes, Son searches for signs of normative life stages: children and old people. When he finds no old people either, Son clings to his recognizable sign of childhood: graffiti. Graffiti, for him, is a public display of things that cannot be communicated publicly or embodied in other forms, a material vestige that he collects, almost archeologically, as proof that these new New Yorkers are still human.

Julio Cortázar similarly treats graffiti as an illicit method for communication under repressive conditions in his 1980 short story “Graffiti.” Going further than Morrison in this regard, Cortázar depicts a conversation through layered public art, similar to the postering that I discussed, shown in Fig. 1. Set in the context of authoritarian rule, an allusion to Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s, two graffiti artists navigate a prohibition on street art and increasing “disappearances” of people in the city. The narrator writes in second person to a male artist who makes chalk sketches on walls when one day, he finds a sketch next to his done, he is sure, by a woman. The narrator explains: “You couldn’t prove it yourself, but there was something different and better than the most obvious proofs: a trace, a predilection for warm colors, an aura” (Cortázar 1983, 34). This logic and evidence prime the reader for the interpretive and imaginative relationship the artists develop. Their art becomes a call and response, building on each other’s meanings to develop a visual language between the two of them: “if he didn’t look at it closely, a person might have said it was a play of random lines, but she would know how to look at it” (Cortázar 1983, 35). Cortázar doesn’t describe most of the drawings in detail—focusing simply on outlines or colors. However, the climax of the story is told with pointed emphasis on the art:

At dawn on the second day you chose a grey wall and sketched a white triangle surrounded by splotches like oak leaves; from the same café on the corner you could see the wall (they’d already cleaned off the garage door and a patrol, furious, kept coming back), at dusk you withdrew a little, but choosing different lookout points, moving from one place to another, making small purchases in the shops so as not to draw too much attention. It was already dark night when you heard the sirens and the spotlights swept your eyes. There was a confused crowding by the wall, you ran, in the face of all good sense, and all that helped you was the good luck to have a car turn the corner and put on its breaks when the driver saw the patrol wagon, its bulk protected you and you saw the struggle, black hair pulled by gloved hands, the kicks and the screams, the cut-off glimpse of blue slacks before they threw her into the wagon and took her away. Much later (it was horrible trembling like that, it was horrible to think that it had happened because of your sketch on the grey wall) you mingled with other people and managed to see an outline in blue, the traces of that orange color that was like her name or her mouth, her there in that truncated sketch that the police had erased before taking her away, enough remained to understand that she had tried to answer your triangle with another figure, a circle or maybe a spiral, a form full and beautiful, something like a yes or an always or a now. (Cortázar 1983, 36)

Particularly when the woman is arrested, the conversation becomes clearer. For the first time in the story, the reader is given descriptions of the drawings, but the narrator also provides the interpretations. Where the graffiti at first was a sign of the presence of others, the public life available even under authoritarian conditions, when the other is taken away, the communicative capacities of graffiti become even more clear.

Later, the man returns to the spot the woman had been arrested: “There were no patrols, the walls were perfectly clean: a cat looked at you cautiously from a doorway when you took out your chalk and in the same place, there where she had left her sketch, you filled the boards with a green shout, a red flame of recognition and love, you wrapped your sketch in an oval that was also your mouth and hers and hope” (Cortázar 1983, 37). The patrols somehow miss this sketch, and it stays up for a long time. In the last scene of the story, the man returns to his sketch and sees a reply:

From a distance you made out the other sketch, only you could have distinguished it, so small, above and to the left of yours. You went over with a feeling that was thirst and horror at the same time; you saw the orange oval and the violet splotches where a swollen face seemed to leap out, a hanging eye, a mouth smashed with fists. I know, I know, but what else could I have sketched for you? What message would have made any sense now? In some way I had to say farewell to you and at the same time ask you to continue. I had to leave you something before going back to my refuge where there was no mirror anymore, only a hollow to hide in until the end in the most complete darkness, remembering so many things and sometimes, as I had imagined your life, imagining that you were making other sketches, that you were going out at night to make other sketches. (Cortázar 1983, 38)

In this final scene, the narrator is revealed as the woman artist, after her arrest. The torture she endured has broken down her sense of self (“there was no mirror anymore”), so instead she narrates her past through the eyes of another artist who represents her hope and lingering sense of community, of social life. Through a tale of layered artworks, Cortázar treats graffiti as a form of public discourse when public discourse is limited. Where scholars often focus on graffiti as a way of communicating marginalized ideas, Cortázar’s story takes it up as a way of preserving public space and public fora. The comparison of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in the US, to an Argentinian dictatorship is problematic, not least because the US has not had mandated lockdowns. Still, the pandemic has occasioned state and municipal strictures concerning public congregation. Cortázar highlights the ethnographic importance of attending to how layered graffiti can function as a kind of artistic conversation, especially when considering how people develop socially distanced spaces of interaction.

Police and Pigs

During Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and 2021, some protestors brandished severed pig heads, playing on “pig” as a slang term for a police officer. These expressions of outrage at police violence were quickly taken up by some animal rights organizations and condemned as “hypocrisy,” “protesting against rights violations while violating the rights of others.” Meanwhile, other animal rights activists argued that it is anti-Black to focus on how Black people use dead animals to protest oppression instead of the much more serious violence against animals perpetrated by racist institutions. The layered “Animals are not products” and “Black liberation is human liberation” graffiti (Fig. 1) index these debates about real and metaphorical pigs, emphasizing the pig head in the middle of the “Animals” poster. Not only are the rights of real pigs put into tension with human rights, the rights of Black people specifically, but also the pig head becomes a representation of police, bringing these human and animal rights into greater conflict.

Animal rights and human rights, particularly those of African American people, have often been placed at odds with each other. For instance, in 2018, actress Tiffany Haddish suggested that she would not stop wearing fur until the police stop killing Black people. “So sorry, PETA!” she added in an Instagram video. “Don’t be mad at me. Be mad at the police.” The implication of this joking “protest” was that white people often seem to prioritize animal lives over Black lives; therefore, by threatening animal lives, Haddish might force white people to address police murders of Black people.

Similar arguments about people caring more about animals than African American people have been made about pets being rescued after Hurricane Katrina while many Black New Orleanians died. An analogous claim centers on the football phenom, Michael Vick, who was incarcerated on dog fighting charges, while police officers (and some civilians) accused of murdering African Americans have frequently been acquitted (Kim 2015). Yet, the utility of these comparisons is not always obvious. In fact, as Bénédicte Boisseron has argued, “The ‘America-likes-pets-more-than-blacks’ attitude… is symptomatic of a system that convulsively pits blackness against animality, forcing blacks themselves to engage in a battle over spared likeability” (Boisseron 2018, xiv). Furthermore, these comparisons also obscure real concerns about the status of animals, given anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation.

On the other hand, animal rights activists have often compared the plight of farm animals to chattel slavery to argue the injustice of animal treatment (Boisseron 2018). These analogies are troubling, not only because they recall racist comparisons between Black people and animals. As Claire Jean Kim writes:

Analogizers claim to be connecting and avowing, but in many cases they seem to be instrumentalizing the other cause in question or treating it as a means to an end. The analogizer does not connect x and y in the sense of exploring them as independently significant and conjoined logics. Rather, concerned to validate x, which is her true focus, the analogizer seizes upon y, which already enjoys some measure of social validation, and posits x = y. This exercise seeks to transfer the legitimacy and social importance of y to x. (Kim 2015, 285)

In short, by comparing the experience of enslaved African people to animals, this analogy “suggests that the Black story is a triumphalist one of overcoming racism, thus bolstering white fantasies of colorblindness and postraciality. It succinctly repackages and falsely truncates the story of anti-Blackness to serve the present purposes of animal liberation” (Kim 2015, 285).

Perhaps it is these regular implications of “postraciality” by animal rights movements that so frequently prompt people to respond to animal rights postering with graffiti about racism and slavery. In February 2021, on another walk around my neighborhood in Allston, I found a poster advertising a documentary about animal abuse papered over with an image of George Floyd, the man whose murder by police prompted the Movement for Black Lives in 2020 (Fig. 2). A few months later, a little north, around Harvard Square, I saw posters depicting a cow strung up after slaughter with the caption “Stop lying to your kids about their ‘food.’ ” On top of them, someone had written in Sharpie, “Socialism is slavery” (Fig. 4). However, the fact that graffiti about animal rights is often read by other graffiti writers as having implications for communities of color certainly also has to do with how racism references animals, from comparisons between people of color and animals to allegations that communities of color endanger animals or enact particular cruelty against animals (Kim 2015; Boisseron 2018). Shortly after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, an art director for the brand Lululemon posted a link to a shirt depicting “bat fried rice” with the words “No thank you” on the sleeves, referencing allegations that Covid-19 originated from Chinese people eating bats (King 2020). In the context of these prevalent forms of Sinophobia, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic, the exchange about anti-Chinese racism on the “Meat markets cause pandemics” poster reads into a statement about vegetarianism a whole history of associations between Chinese people and forms of meat consumption deemed “cruel and transgressive” (Kim 2015). Still, other graffiti discussions about veganism and racism begin from links that seem much less apparent.

Fig. 2: Poster showing George Floyd placed over an animal rights poster (text illegible)

Fig. 3: A similar animal rights poster as the one visible in Fig. 2, advertising a documentary called Dominion

Fig. 4: Posters showing a picture of a cow hung upside down with the words, “Stop lying to your kids about their ‘food.’” Several of the words have been crossed out in Sharpie. In pencil, someone has written “Who’s lying” on one poster. Another person has written in Sharpie, “Socialism is slavery,” which another person has crossed out in Sharpie.

If These Walls Could Talk

In October 2020, a couple months after I found the “Black liberation” poster, I saw a more extensive discussion on another set of animal rights posters. On a mailbox, someone had placed two posters of roosters with the words “Go vegan” coming from their mouths. One respondent wrote in black capital letters, “End human suffering first.” In the same handwriting, “This is cringe” was written next to the rooster, suggesting that the poster is problematic and “cringe-worthy.” Another person then added in black marker, “You can’t buy tofu and vegetables because someone else is suffering?” Yet another person added a profane statement, playing on the rooster or “cock.” Still another person, in white marker, wrote, “I don’t like ppl [people] who can’t write words.” The second poster was colored black except for the rooster to obscure the “Go vegan” statement, faintly visible under the marker, and someone added in reddish ink, “BLM,” or “Black Lives Matter,” coming from the rooster’s mouth in its place.

Fig. 5: “Go Vegan” posters with annotations and redactions

This exchange highlights another kind of graffiti debate concerning animal rights and human rights through revision, or what Christina Sharpe might call “Black annotation and Black redaction.” For Sharpe, the most familiar work of annotation and redaction takes the form of violence against Black people: captions included with photographs of Black death and suffering and redacted government files about Black activists, for example. Through “Black annotation and Black redaction” (emphasis added), Sharpe proposes a radical reappropriation of these editorial tools. They are “ways to make Black life visible, if only momentarily, through the optic of the door” (Sharpe 2016, 123). Sharpe uses the examples of the annotations on the second autopsy Michael Brown’s family requested after he was murdered by police officer Darren Wilson in 2014 and her own redactions of a New York Times article to highlight the voice of the Black girl who was its subject. She argues that through these Black annotations and redactions, we see the lives of Black people beyond how they are portrayed by the state.

In the example of the mailbox “Go Vegan” and “Black Lives Matter” graffiti, the Black annotations and redactions make visible Black people who may or may not have been there before. As one of the graffiti writers asked, “You can’t buy tofu and vegetables because someone else is suffering?” Or, as Boisseron has asked, “Why should the black become so blatantly visible against the animal rights backdrop?” (2018, xix). In part, in October 2020, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police were still central in the national conversation about social justice, and communities of all kinds were organizing under the slogans: “X for Black Lives.” As such, one reading of the annotations and redactions here is that it places animals in solidarity with Black people. Where, in the first poster, the rooster is meant to highlight the animal lives at stake in “going vegan,” through Black annotation and redaction, the rooster becomes an animal arguing for Black lives. Perhaps part of the appeal of this message, too, is that the animal rights posters I saw never highlighted how the environmental impact associated with farming animals impacts communities of color. Instead, I only saw comments on the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic as a whole (“Meat markets cause pandemics”). By avoiding how animals and people of color are connected, not merely compared, these posters invite people to write back to them—to paper over them, annotate and redact them—to highlight the diverse groups implicated in any project concerning animal rights.

Open Letters

I want to suggest another genre to make sense of this form of political graffiti: the open letter. Laurence Ralph, in his 2020 book The Torture Letters, experiments with the open letter as a form of ethnographic writing by writing open letters to a variety of people and groups affected by the cases of torture by police officers in Chicago between 1972 and 1991. Ralph writes that his method of “ethnographic lettering”—

includes three ways of layering field research. First, it transforms research “subjects” into “interlocutors” during the research process by focusing on the projects they are already invested in as a way to explore broader social problems; second, it includes exchanges with interlocutors in the research and writing phases of the project; and third, it positions one’s interlocutors and the communities they want to address as the primary audience for the ethnographic material that will ultimately be produced. (Ralph 2020, 192)

This method, he explains, is indebted to James Smith and Ngeti Mwadime’s Email from Ngeti (2014), which is written through the authors’ email correspondence; however, Ralph writes, “As I have written to a host of dead people, others who had no interest in responding to me, and to another group who did respond but whose responses are not included in this book, my idea of exchange is much more expansive than Smith and Mwadime’s approach” (Ralph 2020, 199). Ultimately, Ralph explains that his method of “ethnographic lettering”—and letter writing generally—requires an invested audience and “a sense of voice and a sense of purpose” (Ralph 2020, 199). Certainly, these criteria apply to any form of writing, but Ralph’s book of open letters does highlight the uniqueness of the open letter as a genre of writing.

If a standard letter’s audience is the named addressee, an open letter’s audience is not. It is possible, but not necessary, for the open letter that the addressee will read it. The audience of an open letter is the public, who is recruited to witness the writer speaking toward the addressee. Written in the second person, Cortázar’s story, “Graffiti,” functions similarly to an open letter as well. The reader is positioned as a witness to the narrator speaking to the artist she addresses as “you.” Similarly, the creators of the original animal rights graffiti posters need not ever return to their pieces for the graffiti commentators’ discussions to be effective, as the point of these layered posters, annotations, and revisions is to register disagreement or offer an alternative perspective rather than to change the original writer’s mind.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, open letters have also been an important mode of public art and activism in more official capacities. In response to anti-Chinese violence by people who blamed China for the pandemic, people around the country began “Love Letters to Chinatown” projects. Inspired by the first Love Letter initiative started by the Wing On Wo Project in New York’s Manhattan Chinatown, Pao Arts Center in Boston collected its own set of love letters to Boston’s Chinatown, which they translated into English and Chinese and posted around the neighborhood. Many of the letters are addressed to Chinatown as a whole, while others are addressed to specific shops and restaurants that people hold dear. First shared online and then posted throughout Chinatown, these open letters become part of the street art landscape of the neighborhood—ways of communicating support to a neighborhood particularly hard-hit by the pandemic, often by people who are no longer frequenting Chinatown’s streets due to public health concerns. Projects like these are fascinating ethnographic sites in themselves to consider the innovative ways that people have found to conduct public dialogues in public space, despite social distancing requirements. In conjunction with the graffitied conversations about animal rights and racial justice, these open letters shape how I read the possibilities of street art as a kind of letter writing. Rather than seeing graffiti only as a one-directional form of protest or speech more broadly, the graffitied discussions during the pandemic have served as forums for people occupying the same space at different times to argue over how to weigh concerns about animal rights and human rights and racialized and culturally specific approaches to food. With restrictions on public space, graffiti served as a mode for people to discuss some of the most fundamental issues about how Covid-19 impacted all of us yet impacted us differently.

Works Cited

Boisseron, Bénédicte. 2018. Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cortázar, Julio. 1983. “Graffiti.” In We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 33–38. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Kim, Claire Jean. 2015. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

King, Michelle T. 2020. “Say No to Bat Fried Rice: Changing the Narrative of Coronavirus and Chinese Food.” Food and Foodways 28 (3): 237–49.

Kosek, Jake. 2006. Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Morrison, Toni. 1981. Tar Baby. New York: Vintage Books.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA.

Ralph, Laurence. 2020. The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Sharpe, Christina. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC.

Struthers Montford, Kelly, and Chloe Taylor, eds. 2020. Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Dorceta. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: New York University Press.

#essay #pandemic #animal rights #blm #human rights #graffiti

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viraltrendsspot · 12 days ago

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Heidi Klum's Halloween Costumes in 2020

Heidi Klum showcased her creativity during the 2020 Halloween season by adapting her celebrations to the COVID-19 pandemic. She wore a costume that disguised her as a wall to hide from her children, blended into her bed, dressed up as a mummy while wrapping her kids in toilet paper, and donned a suit of armor. This series of costumes highlighted her ability to innovate in challenging times

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jcmarchi · 5 months ago

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MIT-Takeda Program wraps up with 16 publications, a patent, and nearly two dozen projects completed

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-takeda-program-wraps-up-with-16-publications-a-patent-and-nearly-two-dozen-projects-completed/

MIT-Takeda Program wraps up with 16 publications, a patent, and nearly two dozen projects completed

When the Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and the MIT School of Engineering launched their collaboration focused on artificial intelligence in health care and drug development in February 2020, society was on the cusp of a globe-altering pandemic and AI was far from the buzzword it is today.

As the program concludes, the world looks very different. AI has become a transformative technology across industries including health care and pharmaceuticals, while the pandemic has altered the way many businesses approach health care and changed how they develop and sell medicines.

For both MIT and Takeda, the program has been a game-changer.

When it launched, the collaborators hoped the program would help solve tangible, real-world problems. By its end, the program has yielded a catalog of new research papers, discoveries, and lessons learned, including a patent for a system that could improve the manufacturing of small-molecule medicines.

Ultimately, the program allowed both entities to create a foundation for a world where AI and machine learning play a pivotal role in medicine, leveraging Takeda’s expertise in biopharmaceuticals and the MIT researchers’ deep understanding of AI and machine learning.

“The MIT-Takeda Program has been tremendously impactful and is a shining example of what can be accomplished when experts in industry and academia work together to develop solutions,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of the School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “In addition to resulting in research that has advanced how we use AI and machine learning in health care, the program has opened up new opportunities for MIT faculty and students through fellowships, funding, and networking.”

What made the program unique was that it was centered around several concrete challenges spanning drug development that Takeda needed help addressing. MIT faculty had the opportunity to select the projects based on their area of expertise and general interest, allowing them to explore new areas within health care and drug development.

“It was focused on Takeda’s toughest business problems,” says Anne Heatherington, Takeda’s research and development chief data and technology officer and head of its Data Sciences Institute.

“They were problems that colleagues were really struggling with on the ground,” adds Simon Davies, the executive director of the MIT-Takeda Program and Takeda’s global head of statistical and quantitative sciences. Takeda saw an opportunity to collaborate with MIT’s world-class researchers, who were working only a few blocks away. Takeda, a global pharmaceutical company with global headquarters in Japan, has its global business units and R&D center just down the street from the Institute.

As part of the program, MIT faculty were able to select what issues they were interested in working on from a group of potential Takeda projects. Then, collaborative teams including MIT researchers and Takeda employees approached research questions in two rounds. Over the course of the program, collaborators worked on 22 projects focused on topics including drug discovery and research, clinical drug development, and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Over 80 MIT students and faculty joined more than 125 Takeda researchers and staff on teams addressing these research questions.

The projects centered around not only hard problems, but also the potential for solutions to scale within Takeda or within the biopharmaceutical industry more broadly.

Some of the program’s findings have already resulted in wider studies. One group’s results, for instance, showed that using artificial intelligence to analyze speech may allow for earlier detection of frontotemporal dementia, while making that diagnosis more quickly and inexpensively. Similar algorithmic analyses of speech in patients diagnosed with ALS may also help clinicians understand the progression of that disease. Takeda is continuing to test both AI applications.

Other discoveries and AI models that resulted from the program’s research have already had an impact. Using a physical model and AI learning algorithms can help detect particle size, mix, and consistency for powdered, small-molecule medicines, for instance, speeding up production timelines. Based on their research under the program, collaborators have filed for a patent for that technology.

For injectable medicines like vaccines, AI-enabled inspections can also reduce process time and false rejection rates. Replacing human visual inspections with AI processes has already shown measurable impact for the pharmaceutical company.

Heatherington adds, “our lessons learned are really setting the stage for what we’re doing next, really embedding AI and gen-AI [generative AI] into everything that we do moving forward.”

Over the course of the program, more than 150 Takeda researchers and staff also participated in educational programming organized by the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health. In addition to providing research opportunities, the program funded 10 students through SuperUROP, the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, as well as two cohorts from the DHIVE health-care innovation program, part of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program.

Though the formal program has ended, certain aspects of the collaboration will continue, such as the MIT-Takeda Fellows, which supports graduate students as they pursue groundbreaking research related to health and AI. During its run, the program supported 44 MIT-Takeda Fellows and will continue to support MIT students through an endowment fund. Organic collaboration between MIT and Takeda researchers will also carry forward. And the programs’ collaborators are working to create a model for similar academic and industry partnerships to widen the impact of this first-of-its-kind collaboration.

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pranalipawarshinde · 1 year ago

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Stick and Sachet Packing Machine Market to grow with CAGR of 7.9% by 2031 | ARANOW Packaging Machinery, S.L. (Spain), Duravant LLC (Spain)

The global stick and sachet packing machine market was valued at US$ 7.2 billion in 2021 and it is anticipated to grow up to US$ 12.4 billion by 2031, at a CAGR of 5.5% during the forecast period.

Packaging machines are used for packaging products or components. The need for packaging machines to integrate with upstream manufacturing processes has resulted in the development of automation techniques for several sectors. This product area includes equipment that forms, fills, seals, wraps, cleans, and packages at different levels of automation. Packaging machines also include related machinery for sorting, counting, and accumulating.

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A stick pack machine is a single lane vertical form fill seal packaging machine where a roll of film is cut, multiple small stick pack bags are formed, and products are filled and sealed inside it. The main applications include small packagings such as sugar sachet, small ketchup sachet, and coffee stick packing machine.

Sachet packaging is extensively used in the cosmetics & personal care, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical industries. Sachets are small, sealed, flexible pouches manufactured from paper, plastic, aluminum foil, and cellulosic and contain liquid, powder, or capsule products. As they are cheaper than large-size packets, sachets are generally used either for promotional trial packs or to cater to low-income or price-sensitive customers who prefer economical packs.

Market Drivers and Trends

Sugar sachet packing machines, milk sachet filling machines, sachet stick packs, and tea sachet packing machines are some examples of sachet packaging machines that are increasing in demand, and the demand for small sachet packing machines is expected to drive the market’s revenue growth due to the presence of many food and beverage manufacturers.

Sachet packing machine is most extensively used in medicine packaging. Sachet packing machines can easily produce blister foils, slip packs, and easy-open pouches at high speed which has increased manifold due to the growing demand for pharmaceutical products are expected to drive the growth of the sachet packaging machine market.

Therefore, increasing demand in food and pharmaceutical sectors are boosting the global stick and sachet packing machine market growth.

Market Restraints and Challenges

The higher costs for the production and import activities for the integrated packaging machinery, such as wrapping, automated labeling, palletizing machines, and significant others, require higher capital costs. Such factors are hindering the overall growth of the packaging machinery industry. Further, the taxes imposed on the customs duty in developing regions such as India, Argentina, and other countries were also negatively influencing the overall growth of the packaging machinery industry. Thus, the higher costs for the production and import activities and taxes imposed on the customs duty in developing regions are anticipated to hinder the growth of the global stick and sachet packing machine market.

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Major Players in the Global Stick and Sachet Packing Machine Market

The key players studied in the global stick and sachet packing machine market are ARANOW Packaging Machinery, S.L. (Spain), Duravant LLC (Spain), Ilapak International SA (Switzerland), Körber AG (Germany), Matrix Packaging Machinery, LLC (US), Nichrome Packaging Solutions (India), OMAG Srl (Italy), SmartPac Verpackungsmaschinen GmbH (Germany), Syntegon Technology GmbH (Germany), and Universal Pack S.r.l. (Italy).

COVID-19 Impact

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic challenges owing to subsequent lockdowns. In 2020, the manufacturing industry was severely affected due to a drastic decrease in product demand, falling prices, and storage shortages. A swift decline in manufacturing revenues due to virtually nonexistent manufacturing demand and slow production capabilities had limited the expenditure on the production of stick and sachet packing machines worldwide. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the global stick and sachet packing machine market in 2020.

However, in 2021, the manufacturing industry started recovering from the significant labor and supply chain challenges that triggered the production of stick and sachet packing machines.

Global Stick and Sachet Packing Machine Market Segmentation

By Type

Stick Pack Packing Machine

Sachet Packing Machine

By Product Type

Powder and Granule

Liquid Products

Others

By End User

Food and Beverages

Pharmaceuticals

Chemicals

Cosmetics

Others

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coraldreamersandwich · 1 year ago

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The Time Traveler’s Dilemma

Sam was a time traveler who worked for the Temporal Agency, a secret organization that monitored and corrected the timeline. He had been on many missions, but his latest one was the most challenging and personal.

He had to go back to the year 2020, the year of the pandemic, and stop his younger self from making a terrible mistake. He had to prevent himself from breaking up with his girlfriend, Mia, who was the love of his life.

He remembered how it happened. He and Mia had been dating for two years and were living together in a small apartment. They were happy and in love, until the pandemic hit. They had to stay indoors, work from home, and avoid contact with others. They started to feel bored, restless, and frustrated. They argued over trivial things, such as what to watch on Netflix, what to order for dinner, or who should do the dishes. They stopped communicating, cuddling, and laughing. They drifted apart.

One day, Sam decided that he had enough. He packed his bags and left Mia a note saying that he was sorry, but he needed some space. He moved out and stayed with a friend. He thought that it was for the best, that they would both be happier without each other.

He was wrong.

He soon realized that he missed Mia terribly. He tried to call her, text her, email her, but she never replied. He found out that she had moved on and was dating someone else. He felt heartbroken and regretful.

He wished he could go back in time and fix things. He wished he could tell Mia how much he loved her and how sorry he was. He wished he could make her happy again.

He got his chance when the Temporal Agency assigned him a mission to go back to 2020 and stop a rogue agent from altering the course of history. The rogue agent was planning to assassinate a world leader who would play a crucial role in ending the pandemic and restoring peace. Sam had to stop him before he succeeded.

Sam accepted the mission, but he also had another agenda. He decided to use this opportunity to save his relationship with Mia. He knew it was against the rules, but he didn’t care. He loved Mia more than anything and he was willing to risk everything for her.

He traveled back to 2020 using a device called a chronometer, which allowed him to jump through time and space. He arrived at his apartment on the day he left Mia. He saw his younger self packing his bags and writing the note. He felt a surge of anger and pity for his past self.

He knocked on the door and pretended to be a delivery guy. His younger self opened the door and looked surprised.

“Hi, I have a package for you,” Sam said.

“Who is it from?” his younger self asked.

Sam handed him a box wrapped in brown paper. “It’s from your future self,” he said.

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packaging2 · 2 years ago

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Luxury Rigid Boxes Market Key Players, End User, Demand and Consumption by 2030

The luxury rigid box market is anticipated to generate US$ 4.0 billion in 2022 and US$ 5.4 billion in 2030, with a forecasted CAGR of 3.9%.

Jewellery, cosmetics, and other expensive items are commonly wrapped in upscale rigid boxes. Thanks to their excellent product protection and high-quality construction, these boxes are perfect for both carrying and storing things. As global demand for luxury goods rises, it is projected that the market for luxury rigid boxes would grow significantly over the next years.

According to the poll, the growing e-commerce sector would increase demand for premium rigid boxes over the next years. There is a growing need for premium packaging options that can safeguard the products during delivery and handling as more people purchase online.

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The Asia Pacific region is expected to experience considerable growth in the luxury rigid box market over the course of the projection period. The rising desire for luxury products in nations like China, India, and Japan is to blame for this. Additionally, the sector in the region is expanding as more ecologically friendly packaging solutions are used and sustainable packaging practises are made more widely known.

In conclusion, the market for luxury rigid boxes is anticipated to experience rapid expansion in the years to come, driven by the rising demand for premium packaging options for luxury items and the expanding e-commerce sector. With businesses concentrating on product innovation and the creation of sustainable packaging solutions to acquire a competitive edge, the Asia Pacific area is anticipated to emerge as a significant market for luxury rigid boxes.

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Key Takeaways of Luxury rigid boxes Market Study

Consumer goods industry is estimated to account for more than 1/3rd of the luxury rigid boxes market by 2030

Two piece boxes estimated to have an incremental opportunity of US$ 268 Mn by 2025

Paper and paperboard estimated to account for 68% of the global market by value, and reach slightly over US$ 3.6 Bn in 2030

Magnetic closure is estimated to gain by 180 bps of current market share during the forecast period

Foam inserts are estimated to have a significant market share by insert types, accounting for more than half of the market share by 2030

Asia Pacific is estimated to have an incremental opportunity of US$ 930 Mn by 2030 with the increasing demand for luxury boxes for confectionery product packaging

“Luxury rigid boxes are the elegant and sophisticated medium for presenting products. Additionally, these boxes promote impulse purchasing of the products. Demand for luxury rigid boxes among end users is consistently increasing to build and enhance positive brand image. In spite of declining phase of luxury rigid boxes market in 2020 due to COVID 2019, significant revenue generating opportunities are anticipated with explosive nature of e-commerce and digital shopping,” says and FMI analyst.

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Competitive Landscape

The key manufacturers operating in luxury rigid boxes market are focusing on increasing their production capacity to meet the increasing demand for luxury rigid boxes. Moreover, the key players are increasing their product portfolio to cater for the growing luxury rigid boxes market.

In February 2021, Robinson Packaging develops and manufactures bespoke luxury rigid boxes. With expertise across many major markets, including confectionery and food, toiletries, cosmetics and multimedia, Robinson creates top quality boxes for every vendor.

In January 2019, Metsä Board, the paperboard and packaging manufacturer, introduced new luxury box named SkinCare 2.0 gift box which uses fibre-based materials to replace plastic.

Key Players:

PakFactory Canada

Madovar Packaging Inc.

Burt Rigid Box Inc.

Taylor Box Company

DS Smith plc

Bigso AB

Robinson Plc

Sunrise Packaging Inc.

Luxury Rigid Boxes Market by Category

By Packaging Type:

Hinge lid Box

Collapsible Box

Rigid Sleeve Box

Shoulder Neck Box

Two piece Box

Telescopic Box

Others

By Material:

Fabrics

Metals

Plastics

Paper & Paper Board

Wood

By Closure Type:

Magnetic Closure

Ribbon tie

Mechanical Lock

Others

By Inserts:

Without insert

With insert

Foam Inserts

Plastic Inserts

Paper or Paperboard Insert

By End Use:

Fashion Accessories & Apparels

Watches

Jewelry

Sunglasses

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ten-ten31 · 4 years ago

Text

Dear Yuletide Writer

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you so much for writing for me! :) I can't tell you just how excited I am. This is my first Yuletide and I guess I'm super nervous, but also looking forward to it. :)

Please feel free to browse my ao3 (KitKaos) and/or tumblr to get an idea of what I stan, like, read or write. I hope I can give you some broad ideas and inspirations in this letter to help you plan. Do feel free to fall back on my general likes if the prompts don't do anything for you. Or just use the prompts, whatever works best for you. Oh, and should you, dear Yuletide Santa, want to write in German and not in English, then I'm definitely okay with that. I'm fluent in both, so whichever you feel more comfortable with. If there's something missing or if you have a question, you can reach out to me via the mods.

General likes: I'm a sucker for the old friends-to-lovers or even enemies-to-lovers (with all the drama of grudginly admitting that the other party maybe isn't all that terrible and all). Things I'll never get tired of include coffeeshop AUs, spy AUs, musical AUs, found families, fake dating, pining, crossdressing, drunken shenanigans, fish-out-of-water situations, pop culture references, etc. Just about any kind of scene you can sneak in there about cooking or eating food (also characters being picky about certains foods and other characters going to some lengths to accommodate that) will make me happy, too. I do have a thing for descriptions of food and expecially impressions of taste - and if you want to make it kinky: food play. ;) I also have a bit of a hand fetish - so descriptions of hands are always welcome. If you want to do it, I probably also won't say no to someone breaking the Fourth Wall, any kind of alternate history AU, crossovers of my fandoms, or even some lovely steampunk aesthetics.

Do Not Want: rape/dubcon/noncon, watersports, scat, humiliation, A/B/O, soulmates AU, vampire/werewolf AU, second-person pov, character bashing of any kind.

Fandoms

Just two more thing before I go into detail: 1. The prompts below are nothing more than ideas - feel free to ignore them if you have a better one. :) 2. Not all of the characters need to be used in every prompt; pick and choose as desired.

Dial H for Hero (DC Comics)

- Summer Pickens, Miguel Montez

The 2019 12-issue run is just pure love! There is worldbuilding galore, relatable characters, a wonderful coming-of-age and initiation plot, interdimensional shenanigans, the question how Joe Average could get addicted to sudden superpowers, and so much fun with the concept of Superhero Secret Origins. Summer is a wonderfully strong and caring female lead and Miguel is a self-conscious little oddball.

As for prompts: Seeing more of their Metropolis adventures or Red/Yellow/Blue/Black Dial transformations would definitely be a lot of fun. Also, there's this cute boy Miguel asks out in the comics and I would love to see that first date. And what about Summer? She definitely won't be reduced to sidekick!

Feel free to include any other ((teenage) superhero) cameos you feel like. Please do not pair up Summer and Miguel romantically - although I don't have any problems with a fake relationship fic for them. ;)

Where to find it: Your trusted comicbook supplier.

Masks: A New Generation (Roleplaying Game)

- any / worldbuilding

I only just disovered Masks as an RPG, and ever since I started playing, it's probably the most fun rping I've had in a long time. I love that playbooks are not by the type of power but the type of problem each teenager faces personally. Like, how do you juggle school, first love, being different in a way no one should know about, being different maybe in a way people will immediately see, adults telling you who to be, chores, and being part of a young superhero team that wants to make a name for themselves? It's hard. And the best sessions alternate between deep emotional connections, hilarious teenage drama and great action scenes.

As for prompts: I would love me some good worldbuilding - so maybe there is a reason the Scarlet Songbird is still around? What was Halcyon City like back in the days of the Golden-Age heroes? What has changed since then? How do especially the older generations view the naming conventions going around for new heroes? Is there a code to follow? Who in Halcyon City pays for all the damage to buildings and infrastructure caused by superhero-supervillain fights? What was it like back in the olden days for the Golden Age heroes as opposed to now? Are there cultural exchange programs with any of the alien races visiting from time to time? Give me a day in the life of an average Halcyon City citizen - they don't even have to be all that close to an epic fight or something. Just their way of coping with the daily madness of a huge city housing most of the world's superheroes. If you like something a little more character-specific: The one actual-play podcast that does it best in my opinion are the Theatre of the Mind Players with their "Future Shock" and "Past Tense" seasons of Masks. And I would love to read more about these characters. Have Sparrow and Figment finally get together. Give me a glimpse of how Horizon assembled his ersatz mom. What will Helix and Remix get up to?

Where to find it: The core rulebook is available from Magpie Games. The Theatre of the Mind Players’ Masks sessions can be found on Youtube.

Super Sons (Comics)

- Jonathan Samuel Kent, Damian Wayne

Super Sons is how I finally came to like and care for Damian Wayne - which, if you know me, is a major achievement! He is still a huge brat, don't get me wrong, but Jon's influence on him and the way he is confronted with certain issues he has... it's magical! It's wholesome! It's healing! They are both so fiercely protective of each other, and they both grow as characters from their experiences with each other.

As for prompts: So, dear Yuletide Santa, give me character growth and banter and friendship galore. I can see slumber parties at Wayne Manor or at the Kent farm. I can see them getting lost in space and time. I can see more adventures once they're at the same school. I can see a canon-divergence AU where Jon is finally admitted into the the Teen Titans at age 13 - how would that go? Or how about an Interrail Buddies AU?

If you want to write slashfic for them, I will not say no but would probably prefer to age them up a bit. I also most definitely don't mind any background appearances of any of their families.

Where to find it: Your trusted comicbook supplier.

Superman Returns (2006)

- any (Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Richard White)

I still love this movie a lot - not because it's particularly spectacular, but it treats the characters with love, it treats the legacy of the Reeve movies with love and it leaves SO MANY questions for fanfiction authors to answer. ;) I mean, I've been a Superman fan for a long time and I've discovered that I'm most comfortable with a Clark who wears a mask both as Clark Kent and as Superman, who isn't either of those two (and who is fallible). And whenever someone learns of his secret identity, they will see that he's so much more than either Clark or Superman. I know Lois is a fairly underdeveloped character in this movie, so I would love for her to be treated not just as a prize, especially since there were those years of her having to put her life back together after Supes just up and left.

As for prompts, I've always wondered about the different coping mechanisms (Lois turning bitter, Jimmy starting up daydrinking - WTF?!) and just how their day-to-day business changed without Clark and Supes there. Give me the Planet staff banding together to rescue Lois when she remembers just that second too late that there will be no superhero to save them (I also wouldn't mind any of the Bats helping out secretly, if that's up your alley). Give me Jimmy trying not to think too much and instead getting on Lois' nerves until he's rescued by Richard intervening. I am also an absolute sucker for continuation fics, so how do things settle down after what happens in the movie? I would love for some real Clark and Jimmy bonding moments, maybe even Jimmy finding out or having known all along and covered for Clark. I would love for some truce and real friendship blossoming between Clark and Richard, as they are both intelligent, compassionate, insightful men. If you want to include Jason anywhere, feel free to do that, as he makes for such a wonderful catalyst for disaster. Feel free to write gen or any canon pairings - I'm also okay with non-canon het/slash pairs (or threesomes) as long as they make sense in-universe. ;)

Where to find it: Sadly, the movie doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere, but since it’s 14 years old now, you can buy it relatively cheap.

Young Justice (Comics)

- Tim Drake (but do feel free to have any of the other characters in the story, too)

No matter if you're into the old 1990s YJ comics, the companion comics to the cartoon show, or the new 2019/20 version of the comics - I love all of them! So much I don't even know where to begin... The snark! The lovable teenage stupidity! The friendship that goes above and beyond! My definite favourite is Tim, because he is such a bright, snarky, secretive, repressed little bird (the moment he takes off his domino mask to reveal a second one underneath? priceless)! I also love his deep friendship with the others because that's his found family. Yes, Batman is his mentor (even though Tim might understand B better than the other way round sometimes) and Dick is his older brother and idol (hero worship, anyone?), but Young Justice is where he wants to be himself and all of it.

As for prompts: Even though I did not put either Cassie or Cissie in my request as I want something Tim-centric, the dynamic with those two strong-willed girls is definitely something I would love to see explored more. Also how the dynamic with the bats is so very different than the Young Just Us dynamic. What's it like being the one without powers in a group of hormonal teenage superheroes? I also just realized that I would love to see more of Mister Sarcastic trolling the rest of the gang. Or how about: What if Tim had powers for one day? If you're into the 2019 comics, how about a 5+1 of Why Drake May Or May Not Be A Good Superhero Alias. If you want to include the rest of the gang, you're definitely more than welcome to. Tim and Kon's bickering and outright arguments in the beginning turning into such a solid friendship (or more) is something I can read about time and time again. Pretty much the same goes for Tim and Bart. Or how about some Wendy the Werewolf Stalker shenanigans? Why is having girls in your group a bad/good idea? How did Cassie's becoming the team's leader affect Tim's sense of self? Heck, if you feel like it, open up the love triangle Tim-Cassie-Kon since there's like a ton of history there. Oh, and anyway, why is Stephanie Brown never part of any of Tim's teams? Dear Yuletide Santa, do also feel free to include any of the other teens (I have a soft spot for Li'l Lobo/Slobo).

Where to find it: Your trusted comicbook supplier.

Overall, I’m sure I’ll love what you have for me, and I'm looking forward to reading it! <3

#yuletide 2020 #yuletide #dear yuletide writer #dyw #yulebuilding #cheftide #wrapping paper challenge 2020

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luckyqueenreign · 2 years ago

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The islanders hearts go racing in this classic challenge, but Suresh and Gemma's memories from the past collide with the present.

NC-17

Tagging my Suresh Girlies: @future-mrs-suresh @squishy-noodles @fujihime-litg @0shewrites0 @sophie260896 @kunepie @hi-im-karla

LONDON - 2020

“Good evening, Sir. Welcome to The Savoy. Can I assist you with anything?” An eager doorman asked, opening the front door to the hotel.

Suresh stormed past the hotel attendant without saying a single word. Rushing through the ornate lobby to the elevators, he impatiently slammed the elevator button, willing one of the four elevators to come down faster. It had been an incredibly difficult day for him at work where everything that could’ve possibly gone wrong, had. Suresh was working on the largest case of his career, a case that if he won could land him a seat as the youngest junior partner at his corporate law firm, but equally had the potential to catapult him back to obscurity if he lost. And Suresh was currently losing. What was supposed to be a one week trip to London to close this deal, had now turned into a three-week stint with no definitive end date in sight.

Suresh rushed into his hotel suite, slamming his briefcase down on the large oak desk that was already cluttered with miscellaneous files and paperwork. This sent a few papers flying across the room, Suresh closed his eyes running his large fingers through his thick hair and sighed, resigning to leave these papers for “Future Suresh” to clean up. He removed his suit jacket and tie, draped them haphazardly over a chair, the tie falling to the ground almost instantly. Another problem for “Future Suresh” to handle. He rolled up his white button down shirt and walked over to his mini bar and settled on a Scotch. He let the warm amber liquid coat the back of his throat, the oaky caramel notes danced on his tongue as he raised the glass to himself. “Happy Birthday, Suresh.”

Just then he heard a soft knock on the door. Suresh hadn’t ordered room service, and he wasn’t expecting visitors. He had asked Gemma to fly down to London to be with him for his birthday, but she told him that she couldn’t take the time off work. She promised they would celebrate when he was home, but Suresh couldn’t help but feel dejected that he was spending his birthday alone.

“Housekeeping. Turndown service.”

He opened the door and couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing before him in a tiny, body hugging French maid's costume was Gemma. With a smoldering stare and a seductive smile she pursed her fiery red lips as she said, “Good Evening Sir, I’m here for your turndown service.”

Gemma sauntered past him, outlining half his face with her feather duster.

Suresh noticed a small overnight bag and coat in the hallway, quickly gathered those things inside the room and feasted his eyes back on Gemma.

“Gem…I thought you said you couldn’t make it. You look … incredible.”

He moved towards her but Gemma raised her arms to stop him.

“Sir, please!” she said with mock annoyance. “I could get fired! I’m not supposed to fraternize with the guests. Please just let me do my job…Look at all of these papers everywhere…I should pick them up.” Gemma turned with her backside facing Suresh, she opened her stance, legs straight and bent down, slowly moving her hips. Her perfectly round ass was on full display begging to be touched, to be slapped. Gemma feigned innocence and used her white feather duster to attempt to hide her black lacy thong.

“Oops, I’m sorry sir,” she blushed.

She walked over to his discarded tie and picked it up from the ground, snaking it between her long toned legs.

“Did you want me to put this away for you, sir?” She said as she rubbed the tie back and forth between her legs.

Suresh’s breathing hitched as he took all of her in.

“Y-yes please.”

Gemma smiled as she strutted over to where he sat on the couch. She silkenly straddled him, wrapping her arms around his neck, lacing her fingers in his thick hair.

“Happy Birthday Babe,” she said as she melded her lips onto his. The kiss was hot, passionate, and desperate. He needed her. His hands roamed her body wanting to touch as much of her as possible. He slapped her perfect ass and she let out a soft moan in his mouth as she continued to kiss him. Suresh refused to let her go, to end this kiss, but he was getting uncomfortable on the couch and wanted to move to the bedroom. Without warning, he lifted Gemma in the air and carried her in his arms into the bedroom. Their clothes came off distractedly, the only thing Suresh could focus on was Gemma. His mouth traced the outline of her jaw, making his way down her neck to her breasts. He stopped to admire the bounty, taking one breast in his mouth and one in his hands, he gently swirled her nipple in his mouth while massaging the other with his fingers, making her softly moan and arch her back with desire. Suresh continued trailing kisses down Gemma’s stomach, reaching her inner thighs where he gently distributed small kisses and delicate bites, causing Gemma to arch her back pleading him to touch her. Gemma twisted her body under him, searching for his mouth but he continued to tease her. When he knew she could barely contain it, his tongue greeted her slit hungrily. Gemma moaned loudly as Suresh devoured her.

“R-reshhh…”

Suresh pushed his face deeper while bringing his fingers to her clit. Gemma moaned loudly and pressed her thighs up against his head, losing control over her body as she neared climax.

“I’m so close…”

Gemma was soon overwhelmed by the precise movements of his tongue attacking her clit, combined with the constant pumping of his large fingers deep inside her. She lost all control, eliciting the loudest moans from her yet and turning her into a quivering mess. Suresh kissed her inner thighs lightly as her body still lightly trembled from the aftershocks as he made his way up her body.

“Resh…” her voice barely above a whisper. “I need you…” Gemma moved from under him and climbed on top, straddling his waist guiding his dick in her wet folds, making him groan loudly.

“Fuck...Gem. You’re so wet.”

Suresh grabbed hold of Gemma’s waist and pushed down hard, both moaning loudly. She rode him slowly at first, adjusting to his size before picking up speed. As she picked up speed Suresh also deepened his thrusts in unison with hers, causing her to moan loudly.

“I’m going to cum…” she said as she quickened her pace and her walls closed in on him. He continued to thrust under her as Gemma lost herself to the orgasm. She dug her nails into Suresh’s shoulders and she could feel his legs stiffen, while his body shuddered, underneath her as he came. She crashed her lips onto his and they kissed for a while, losing themselves in the moment.

“Happy Birthday, Baby.”

“Best gift ever, Gems.”

PRESENT DAY

Gemma laid in Suresh’s arms on the daybeds, their bodies tangled together as they lazily watched the other islanders, that afternoon.

“Do you know what I was just thinking about?” She said as she sat up slightly to look in his eyes.

“Hmm?” he asked looking at her sea green eyes.

“Your birthday in London that one year…” she said with a mischievous smile.

He wrapped his arms around her tighter and pulled her in for a quick kiss.

“I still don’t think you understand how much I needed you that night. The case was falling apart and three weeks away from you felt like forever. Seeing you that night meant everything to me and you definitely reenergized me to win that case.”

Gemma snuggled closer to him, absentmindedly stroking his hair.

“It was so nerve wracking keeping the secret from you, but I was never going to miss your birthday.”

“That outfit…” he said, biting his lip. “Whatever happened to it?”

“I’m not sure…I never saw it after that night. It’s not like we were very careful with it to begin with.”

“Damn…I would’ve loved to see you in that maid’s outfit again.”

Gemma giggled, “Maybe when we get home, with less cameras around.”

“I like the sound of that.”

He wrapped her in a warm embrace and brought his lips to hers. Letting their tongues find each other. When they finally pull away they’re both flushed and breathless.

“Ugh …get a room, you two,” Kat said as she and Gabi walked by. Gabi pretended not to notice them and took a drink of her water. The two continued to walk down to the pool and sat on the loungers.

*Text Ping*

“Hey guys I got a text!” Lulu shouted from the kitchen.

“Read it out then, Lu!” Alfie said.

“Islanders, tonight you will get each other’s hearts racing in a boys vs girls challenge #DirtyDancing #HeartsOnFire”

“Oh my god, girls we’ve got to go get dressed,” Kat squealed.

“YES! Do we get to pick our songs, too?” Gabi asked with a mischievous glint in her eye.

Gemma turned over to Suresh threading her fingers through his hair, with a smirk on her face.

“So, what should I wear to get your heart racing?”

Suresh wrapped his arms around her waist pulling her body closer and whispered in her ear, “Nothing.”

Gemma giggled as she gave him a kiss on the cheek and ran to get ready with the girls.

—-

The boys sat around the firepit impatiently waiting for the girls to come out.

“You ready boys?” Finn asked.

“Never been more ready, geezer.” Alfie said with an excited smile.

“Whatever Gemma’s got on, she’s going to look incredible,” Suresh said smiling.

First to make an appearance was Lulu, she looked stunning in a barely there, two piece pink and red, feathery, heart lingerie set.

“Oh my days!” Alfie gasped.

“You alright then boys?”

She expertly twerked on the boys reserving her best moves for Alfie.

“Well, I definitely lost the challenge for us there, boys,” Alfie said.

Dana was next in her fireman’s outfit, then came Kat in a catsuit, Suresh’s heart rate remained unchanged for both girls.

“You got me some type of way …Ain’t used to feelin’ this way..” Ariana Grande’s fluttering staccato blared through the villa speakers.

Suresh didn’t immediately recognize the song but Finn and Alfie looked at him warily as Gabi walked out in a silver glittery, two piece outfit.

“The girls chose their songs didn’t they?” Alfie asked, looking at Suresh knowingly.

Suresh looked up to see if he could find Gemma on the roof terrace but she wasn’t up there with the other girls.

As Gabi sashayed closer to Suresh he heard Ariana singing “Break up with your girlfriend yeah, yeah, ‘cause i’m bored you can hit in the mornin…”

Suresh rolled his eyes when he heard the lyric. Pathetic. He could feel his heart rate starting to rise not because of an attraction to Gabi, but how annoyed he was that she would be so obnoxious to try to hurt Gemma. Starting with Alfie, she moved her body all over him, focusing on his crotch, leaving him blushing and biting his lip. She crossed over to Finn who looked eager to see her. She pressed her tattooed breasts up against his face, before turning around and grinding on him. She gave him a small kiss on the cheek before moving towards Suresh. She sat on his lap, moving her hips side to side in slow fluid motions but he barely flinched.

There was only one girl left, the only girl he actually cared about seeing tonight.

“I’ma care for you…I’ma care for you, you, you, you…” The Weeknd’s voice trilled over the speakers as the boys looked up to see Gemma strutting over in a maid’s costume.

“Holy hell,” Suresh said wide eyed.

“Sheesh!” Alfie said.

“God damn!” Finn said.

If there was ever a place for Gemma to be in her element, this was it. The villa lights seemed to shine differently for her, casting a glow that perfectly accentuated her hourglass figure. Her breasts were perched up so high that every step she took, threatened to break them free from her costume. Her skirt with its tiny apron, covered even less. Even as she walked towards them, Suresh could make out the outline of her perfectly round ass shaking as she walked. He knew she would save him for last but his eyes begged her to come to him first, she responded back with a provocative smile but made her way over to Finn. His eyes lit up as she brought her breasts dangerously close to his face. Finn held his breath as she turned around, opened her legs wide and bent down, touching the ground. His eyes transfixed on her perfectly round ass that was on full display, the only thing covering her was a tiny lacy black thong. She delicately guided her feather duster up her leg slowly, and when she reached her inner thigh she slapped her tiny black thong, causing Finn to skip a breath. His hands flinched at his side from wanting to touch her, she winked at him and moved on to Alfie. Using her feather duster again, Gemma lifted her skirt to tease him and give Alfie a preview of what was to come. She winded her hips in tune to the music, making him bite his lip as he stared at her.

Suresh knew he had already lost the challenge for the boys, but watching their faces now, a mixture of awe and a hungry lust for her, he knew they didn’t stand a chance either. The memory alone of Gemma in her maid costume was enough to skyrocket his heart rate.

Alright Gems come on, enough teasing, get over here.

As if reading his mind, she sauntered over to him, Suresh tried to steady his breathing but it was proving to be difficult. She grabbed his large hand and seductively sucked one of his large fingers, before climbing on top of him. This wasn’t the first time Gemma had danced for Suresh, or their first time with an audience, but they still lost themselves in the moment. She started to grind on him in tune to the beat of the music, their faces touching as she weaved her fingers through his thick, dark hair. His hands explored her body, finding their way to her ass, he slapped her hard.

“I’m in charge,” she whispered as she pulled his hair back.

Looking into his eyes, Gemma crashed her lips onto his. The kiss was frenzied but passionate, transporting them away from the firepit and the villa and the rest of the islanders, back to the privacy of The Savoy.

“Jesus! Get it Geezer!” Alfie said.

Alfie’s voice bringing them both back to the villa, Gemma released Suresh, both breathless and flushed.

“That was something else, Gemma,” Finn said, still recovering from what he’d just witnessed.

—

After the boys finished their dances, Suresh came over to sit next to Gemma putting his arm around her.

*text ping*

“Islanders, it’s time to find out who got your hearts racing the most tonight,” Gabi read.

“Alfie, your heart rate was raised the most by…Gemma.” Alfie blushed as Lulu gave him some side eye.

“Finn, your heart rate was raised the most by…Gemma,” Gabi continued, her voice dripped in annoyance when she saw Gemma’s name for a second time.

Finn looked at Kat wide-eyed, who glared at him. “Babe, it’s because I’m so comfortable with you!”

“Oh because that makes me feel so much better, you’re comfortable with me so I can’t make your heart race anymore. Nice one Finn.”

“No babe that’s not what I meant…”

“Can we just get on with this and you guys can discuss this later?” Dana asked.

Taking her cue, Gabi continued, “Suresh, your heart rate was raised the most by…Gemma.”

“Damn babe a complete shutout 3/3. I’m a lucky guy,” He said as he pulled her close and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Gabi rolled her eyes, and continued to read out the results for the girls. Lulu’s heart rate was raised the most by Alfie, Kat’s by Alfie, Gabi’s by Finn.

“Gemma, your heart rate was raised the most by…Suresh.”

Suresh squeezed her tighter and kissed the top of her head.

“The team that sent the opposing team’s heart rate soaring the most and therefore the winning team…the girls!”

The girls cheered as Gemma received another text.

“Gemma and Suresh as the only couple to set each other’s hearts racing the most, you’ve won a night in the hideaway suite. #MaidForEachOther #DoNotDisturb”

“That’s not fair! Finn and I deserve a night in the hideaway just as much as them!” Kat said.

“They literally had a hideaway night like last week, that is actually unfair!” Gabi said.

Suresh looked at Gemma with fire in his eyes and got up from the fire pit, he held out his hand to her and everyone else in the villa seemed to disappear before them. He couldn’t hear their annoyance or bickering about the unfair deal they had. All he saw were her green eyes shining back at him and her smile. They were no longer islanders, they were no longer at the villa, when he stared into her eyes they were once again back at The Savoy, heading to their room for “turndown service.”

#litg fanfic #litg suresh #litg mc #ex in the villa #litg ex in the villa #litg #litg s5 #love island the game #love island game #luckyqueenreign #litg fanfiction #litg ff

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teddy06writes · 4 years ago

Note

sorry to request yet another one, but you are such an amazing writer. Could I possibly have a romeo and juliet type story where reader is sleepybois sibling and is in love with either poly dream team (dream,George,sapnap) or just george xx

dream x george x sapnap x reader + sleepy boys x sibling!reader

trigger warnings: swearing, yelling, character death, Wilbur being a dumbass

premise: you are one of Philza’s children, and have fought for L’manburg’s independence, we follow your secret romance with the enemy, of course, this tragedy knows no happy ending

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You carefully dropped down over the side of the L’manburg wall, ducking into a roll before standing up and dusting yourself off, starting to sneak away.

A hand clamps around your forearm, pulling you around the side of a tree.

You hold back a yelp, instead turning with a smile, whispering, “Mr. Sapnap we simply must stop meeting like this.”

“And what? You’d have us march through your gates announcing ourselves to your brothers, I think not.” Nick chuckled.

“Well, I suppose that would put a damper on things.” You grinned, pressing a kiss to his lips.

He fit your hand into his, pulling you along as you started for where the others would be waiting, “Especially when they are so against our dear Dream.”

“To be fair, he was against us.” You argued.

“But no more.” The man himself pointed out, stepping out of the shadows, rising his mask enough to press a kiss to your knuckles.

“Because we continued to fight? or Because you wanted an excuse to talk to me without it being over a declaration of war?”

“I believe it was because Tommy gave up his disks,” George offered, leaning in to place a kiss on your cheek, “Hello dearest.”

You sighed, “Phil gave him those disks. They were one of the only things to survive the blast.”

Behind the mask you could tell Dream’s face fell, and he started to turn away, “I- we did what we thought was right.”

“Blowing up my country was what you thought was right?” You challenged, crossing your arms, “You even had the audacity to cheer as my head was separated from my body by the sheer force.”

“Here we go again.” George muttered.

“We didn’t know you then! Things have changed! You and your people are free now!”

“That does not change our history.” You said indigently.

“What about when Sapnap burned the forests? That’s part of your history too yet we don’t see you yelling at him!” Dream exclaimed.

You sighed, “The forests were replanted with his help, and he has shown remorse, and regret over his actions.”

Surprisingly Dream wrapped his arms around you, pulling you flush against his chest, “If that is what I takes to gain your trust, then I am sorry. I hope my past mistakes do not haunt you any longer.”

Reluctantly you wrapped your arms around him, smiling as the other boys joined the embrace.

After a few moment Dream pulled away, “c’mon, we may even have time for a proper date.”

“An election?” You questioned, “But your already the president.”

Wilbur grinned, “But I put myself in that position, if we do it this way everything is fair!”

You glanced down at the papers littering his desk, “Wil I don’t see how this makes things fair, I mean,” You picked up the note book where he’d been witting makeshift ballots, “Closing the ballots early? The people will only have one option! How is that fair?”

“Actually, I’m running as well.”

You turned to see Quackity entering the office, “You? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

The man frowned, “Well, I figure if Wilbur here gets a chance to do it fair why shouldn’t I?”

“We’ll be able to beat him easily.” Your brother quietly assured you.

“You alright love? You seem stressed.” Nick said quietly.

You sighed looking up at the sky, “Wilbur plans to hold an election. He believes we can over take Quackity and Swag 2020, but now Fundy and Niki have made there own party as well.”

George turned, propping himself up on his elbow, “That doesn’t sound good. If he’s already in charge why does he need to be re elected?”

“We put him on the throne, Tommy, Tubbo, Niki, Fundy and I. He wishes to be there fairly with the support of the people.”

Dream hummed, “Do you think he could win?”

“It’s possible,” You sighed, leaning back against Nick, “But campaigns have been tricky, Tommy managed to dig up Jshlatt. They though he could help, but now he’s trying to make a claim to having a spot on the ballot.”

“I thought he was dead.” George said.

You laced your fingers through his, “Well now he’s just a drunk who’s running for president. God I hope it was just a joke.” You muttered the last part.

The boy shared glances, Nick hazarding, “What happens if someone else wins?”

“Well, I suppose it wouldn’t change much for me, technically I hold no office other than managing my brothers and the campaign, it’d shift me further out of public eye, but, I think Wilbur wouldn’t handle it well.”

Dream began to trace shapes into your open palm, “Well, with you in charge of the campaign I doubt your brother will fail.”

You smiled, “Let’s hope so.”

A few hours later, as the sun began to disappear beyond the hills of L’manburg you stood up from the picnic, bidding your lovers farewell, “Wilbur’s meeting starts soon, and I’ll be missed.”

After a few traded kisses you started back through the woods toward L’manburg, sneaking back in through a gap that had never been fixed in the wall, pausing at your house to change back into your L’manburg uniform before hurrying off to the white house.

“Your late!” Tommy called sharply as you entered Wilbur’s office.

“I lost track of time working on the last of the posters.” You pulled the rolled up tubes of paper from the bag you’d grabbed at the house as well.

Wilbur took the tubes as Tommy looked at you skeptically, “Yeah, doing that and what else?”

“Well I was talking to Phil today telling him about the election,” You sat down next to Tubbo, “But not much else.”

Wilbur sighed, dropping a flyer on the table, “We have more important notion to discuss, it would seem that Shlatt is serious about this.”

You grabbed the flyer, looking over the bolded, ‘Shlatt 2020′ and then back at Wilbur, “This can’t be real. I thought you closed the ballot.”

“The people favor him enough to allow him a spot on the ballot.” Tubbo sighed.

“We still stand a chance though,” Tommy said quickly turning to Wilbur, “Right Wil?”

Your older brother hesitated, wavering for a moment, before nodding, “Yes. Yes of course.”

“(y/n) I must ask you some thing.” Wilbur said as the meeting ended and Tommy and Tubbo headed out.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you sneak out?” Your breathing hitched but he continued, “Who are you meeting? What are you hiding? Who do you talk too from- from the SMP lands?” His voice turned to acid at the last words.

“I don’t go anywhere, outside L’manburg. Other than for walks in the forest on occasion.” You lied.

Wilbur examined your face, as if searching for something, “Fine then. Don’t tell me, I will find out sooner or later.”

He strode out of the room, leaving you to pull out your com tablet, privately messaging Dream, ‘it might be a bit before I can see you guys again’

‘:(’

You rolled your eyes quickly typing, ‘Wils getting suspicious, I’m just trying to keep you safe’

‘george also says :(’ Was all you received in reply, so you quickly put the tablet away, heading out of the office and out to the street.

You took a deep breath, looking back at the podium, ballots would be collected tomorrow, and then everything could change.

“Last night, before the last of the ballots were collected, Mr. Quackity of the SWAG 2020 party made an agreement with Mr. Jshlatt of the SHLATT 2020 campaign, that if neither party won the popular vote, they would combine there votes, creating a collation.” WIlbur announced.

From your place to the side of the stage you froze, fear coursing through your veins.

“And so, the combined percentages of SWAG 2020 and SHLATT 2020, bring the coalition to 46% of the popular vote.”

Your heart pounded in your ears, feeling Tommy freeze beside you.

“Which means, the coalition government of SWAG and SHLATT 2020, have won the L’manburg election, by 1%.”

The world seemed to slow as parts of the crowd erupted into cheers, Quackity jumped around on the stage yelling as Wilbur slowly moved away from the podium, out of the corner of your eye, near the back of the stands you see your boyfriends all looking down, but you paid them no mind, instead looking Shlatt dead in the eye as he grinned maliciously at you, before turning to address the crowd.

Wilbur tugged you and Tommy away from the stage, “We’re citizens tonight.”

Shlatt leaned over the podium as you took seats near the front of the crowd, “Well that, was pretty easy.”

You felt your brothers grip your hands, as you stared up at Shlatt.

“You know what I said when I announced this campaign? I said ‘things are gonna change’ I looked every citizen of L’manburg in the eye and I said ‘you listen to me... this place will be a lot different tomorrow.”

He smirked down at you, “So let’s start making that happen. My first decree as president of L’manburg- as EMPEROR! Of this great country!”

Your breathing hitched, “Is to revoke citizenship-! Of TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot, and (Y/n)! Get them out of here!”

Suddenly it seemed as though every weapon in the city was trained on you as Tommy dragged you up out of your seat.

Wilbur was yelling at you to run, but you remained frozen on the spot, turning to look at the podium one last time before following your brothers, only a few steps behind, most of the crowd beginning to disperse

Some one practically screamed your name, and you turned in time for an onslaught of arrows to bury themselves in your body.

The last thing you saw before crumpling to the ground was Dream, Nick and George rushing toward you.

Shlatt strode off the stage, trying to move closer to your body only to be blocked by Dream’s outstretched sword.

He peered around where George had flung himself over you, “I want them out of here as soon as they respawn.”

You woke to someone pressing a damp cloth to your forehead, and excruciating pain spreading throughout your body.

Your eyes flicked open, looking around at the cave you found yourself in, in confusion. When you tried to sit up a gentle hand pushed you back down, “Don’t, you only respawned fully a day ago, you're too weak for that.”

“What’re you doing here?” You groaned.

Technoblade chuckled, “I heard someone say rebellion.”

You looked at him confused for a moment before he elaborated, “This is Pogtopia, cause apparently Wilbur can’t go more than a few months without establishing a new country. Tommy found the cavern after they were ran out of L’manburg. Tubbo is working with Shlatt to hunt you guys down, and Wilbur is trying to start a plan to get the country back.”

“How’d I get here? my bed is all the way in L’manburg.”

Techno grabbed one of the baked potatoes he’d brought up to your room, offering it to you, “That’s the thing I was meanin to ask ya, is there a reasonable explanation as to why it was the Dream Team who brought your body back here? All dramatic and not wantin to leave?”

You face flushed and you turned your head away from him, “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” You brother said, moving to lean back against the wall.

You giggled nervously, “I guess it technically started when L’manburg was still fighting for independence...”

You told him of the strange glances during war councils, the way Nick had stopped in his tracks when he saw the way you looked forlorn at the burning wood, the way George found ways to sneak you trinkets signed ‘from someones special’, and the way you were never in any real danger during many battles.

You recalled your first real meeting with Dream after you had gained independence, the way he’d seemed so different then than at the signing of the peace treaty, the way that You’d received help replanting the forests, and the quiet still moments shared by the channel George almost unaware of your being there.

It was the first time you had really spoken about your lovers to anyone, and though it took a weight off your shoulders it added another as Techno subconsciously pulled out his axe and began to sharpen it.

“They wouldn’t hurt me, and the conflict that we shared was between the SMP Lands and L’manburg, not us.” You finished quietly.

Techno looked at you quizzically, “Your telling me Dream, the Dream, Mister Manhunts and smp and god among men Dream, would willingly put away his conflicts, his gains, his leverage, just for you?”

“For all of us.” You said firmly.

“That why he kept Tommy’s disks?”

“Tommy willingly gave up those disks for the country.” You muttered.

Your older brother ignored you, “That why he openly endorsed Shlatt as soon as your back was turned?”

You froze, pushing yourself to sit up, even as it made your head spin, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Shlatt’s key endorsement, you know, the endorsement given to the guy who was suppose to endorse Wil?” He watched as your face fell, before quietly starting out of the room, “I won’t tell either of them, but if Dream loses a life cause you find out it was true, don’t look my way.”

You fished your com tablet out of the pack that was lying next to your cot, ‘we need to talk.’

“(y/n)! Thank god your okay!” Nick exclaimed, throwing his arms around you.

You hugged him back before turning to face Dream, “Why did you endorse Shlatt?”

He opened his mouth to say something but you cut him off, “And I don’t want a denial or an excuse, or- or any of that. I just want to know why you did it. Why you didn’t tell me?”

Shakily Dream pulled off his mask, looking you in the eye, “I didn’t mean to do anything that would hurt you. Technically I never publicly endorsed him, he took a piece of advice and ran with it to the people. If I had known he was going to do that I would’ve never talked to him in the first place. If I had known he was going to exile you, if he was going to take one of your lives I would have killed him where he stood with no hesitation.”

The mask shook his hand, and George gently took it from him, lacing there fingers together encouragingly.

“I know I fucked up talking to him but if he goes near you, or tries to get you exiled further, or anything like that, he’ll be dead. I- I will do what it takes to help you get L’manburg back.”

You bit your lip, still partially holding on to Nick, “Why did you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to add to the stress.”

“Also, you said Wilbur was getting suspicious, and you stopped talking to us for two days.” George pointed out.

You nodded, quietly rubbing at your eyes, “Uh, yeah, uh, so Techno knows.”

Nick stiffened, “What?”

“Technoblade knows about this- uh- us.”

“T- Technoblade, your brother, as in, The Technoblade, Mister violence, and blood god and technoblade never dies, knows about us?” George gulped.

“He only threatened Dream, so don’t worry?” You said sheepishly.

Nick chuckled, “Wonderful, that means we get out with our heads and Dream gets to fight to the death.”

“I don’t see how that’s fair.” Dream pouted.

“Maybe I just thought it better to threaten you cause I know if I tried to take the other ones you’d come for me anyway.” Techno said, striding into the clearing.

The boys sat there looking at him for a moment before he sighed, turning to you, “You better get back inside ‘fore Wil goes insane. An’ you guys better clear out before Tommy sees you and goes berserk.”

Reluctantly your boyfriends nodded, quickly muttering goodbyes and leaving, only slightly in fear of Techno, and you turned to your brother with a sigh, “He can’t keep me locked up forever.”

“He’s worried. Paranoid even, thinks Shlatts gonna send someone to kill you again,” Techno explained, guiding you back towards one of the entrances of the cavern, “The stress is getting to him.”

The days spent in Pogtopia began to blend together, the only memorable ones being the ones that were spent sneaking out and seeing your lovers, though you never excepted to see one of them within the cavern itself.

You had come down one of the narrow walkways of your new home, and when Tommy had grabbed your wrist, hissing “Dream is here! And he’s going to help Wilbur blow up L’manburg!” you were not nearly prepared to see him handing Wilbur a rather large bag.

Wilbur grinned wickedly, “This is perfect.”

“Wilbur,” Your little brothers voice was shaking, “Give me that tnt.”

Dream drew his sword, holding it up almost lazily in Tommy’s direction, “I’m going to have to step in on this one Tommy.”

You could see him smirking under the mask as you pushed Tommy behind you, “Wilbur what are you doing?”

“What needs to be done.” He said coldly, “If I can’t have Manburg no one can have Manburg!”

“And you think blowing up our home is the right move?” You said cautiously.

There was something different in Wilbur’s eyes, “No survivors.”

Techno watched this from his spot on the wall, “Wilbur I think we need to have a discussion, things like this take time to plan. (Y/n) why don’t you escort our guest out.”

You nodded sharply, starting towards the back of the cavern, “This way green boy.”

As soon as you got outside the cave you grabbed his wrist, shoving him against the rock wall, “What the fuck are you thinking?”

The now lopsided mask reviled his cocky smirk, “Shouldn’t this be the other way around?”

“Shut the fuck up! What are you thinking?” You hissed.

“I’m helping you get back your L’manburg!” He sounded all too happy about it.

“By siding with him? He’s gone manic Clay! He’s fucking insane!”

Dream winced at the words, “He’s your brother. You have to side with him.”

“My brother is gone. I side with that man because I am loyal to my family, so long as Techno and Tommy are with him I am. If there was ever a time for you two to ever get along it would not be this.” You backed away from him.

“(y/n), I’m just trying to help.”

“I know,” You said softly, turning back to the cave entrance, “I’ll see you soon.”

“Wars tomorrow.” George said quietly.

You nodded, carding your hand through his hair, “That it is.”

The month had passed quickly, and after the incident at the festival, and then Quackity’s meeting with Shlatt you seemed to have blinked and the eve of war was upon you.

You had snuck out, now spending your last night before the world changes again with your boys, huddled up together in one of the castles parapets. (It had been quite a shock to you when Dream dethroned Eret)

“We will be on different sides, how will this even play out?” Nick asked.

“Only time will tell.”

Dream, mask long since forgotten to the side, bit his lip, “(y/n), George, I want you to stay out of the fighting.”

“We can handle ourselves.” You argued.

“It’s George’s job to stay neutral, and you’re on your last life. None of us want to lose you.” He said softly, looking over Nick’s head at you.

“I will fight for my country. No one will stop me.”

“Even if Phil came back and told you not too?” Nick asked with a chuckle.

“Well-” You laughed, “I suppose it would depend.”

A while later, you began to head back to Pogtopia, your boys insisting on walking you back.

Upon reaching the cave you kissed each of them, “Until we see what tomorrow brings.”

They gave similar goodbyes, and you darted back into the cavern.

Coming around the corner someone grabbed your wrist, tugging it hard, and you came face to face with Wilbur, “Where the fuck were you?”

“uh- o- out.” You stuttered.

“Out with your boyfriends?” He taughtened, dragging you down through the cavern, past the new rooms that had been carved out recently, “When were you planning on telling us of this little fling?”

“What are you talking about?” Tears sprung to your eyes.

“Oh I know all about you and Dream and Sapnap and George! You and your fucking betrayal! Why the fuck would you try to betray me? I’m your brother!” He exclaimed, practically throwing you into a newly constructed cage.

You dug your nails into your palms, “Wilbur, please.”

“I know it was them who disconnected the TNT, who you keep sneaking out to meet, who you were conspiring against me with!” He locked the cage and you caught a glimpse of Techno, leaning against a wall looking down.

“Wil I never conspired against you!”

“We’ll see about that.” He hissed, “You’ll stay here until this is over. I may fail at regaining my L’manburg but I will not fail to kill those men.”

As he strode away you looked to Techno, “Techno what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry.” Was all he managed before hurrying away.

Tears began to stream down your cheeks as you looked around the abandoned alcove of the cavern, there was no getting out of this.

Quietly you pulled your com tablet from your sleeve, sending a messege to Phil, ‘dad I need help, Wil’s gone insane’

You leaned against the bars of the cell, Pogtopia’s few members had long since left for the battle, and you were still here, trapped where Wilbur had left you, none of your boyfriends were responding to your pings, feeling utterly hopeless.

“(y/n)?” A yell echoed through the cavern.

“Phil!” You called desperately, “I’m in here!”

A few moments later your adoptive father appeared in the doorway, shocked upon seeing the locked cage and your tear stained cheeks, “(y/n).”

You nodded as he quickly began to work at the lock, pulling you into an embrace as soon as the cage opened.

“Dad,” You hiccupped, fighting back a new wave of tears, “He’s insane! He’s gonna try to blow up Manburg again! And he’s gonna try to kill them!”

“Who is?” He asked gently.

“Wilbur! He’s gone mad!”

Phil pulled away from you to look you in the eyes, “Are you sure?”

You nodded, sniffling.

Phil took a deep breath, looking around, “Okay, you get down to where they’re fighting, you try to keep Wilbur distracted once it’s over, I’ll try to think of something to stop the tnt.”

You nodded, quickly forcing yourself up, running out of the cavern.

You hurried through the woods, pushing yourself to go faster, making it to the crest of the hill as people flooded out of the van, cheering, people of Pogtopia, L’manburg and the SMP lands alike.

You charged down the hill, not seeing Wilbur standing to the side.

“Dream! Sapnap! George!” You yelled.

They turned to see you running at them, relived to see you okay, still not understanding the cryptic things Wilbur had been saying.

“(Y/n)-” Dream was cut off a yet another arrow planted its self in your back.

“Love?” You whispered, before crumpling to the ground.

They rushed forward, but it was too late, you were gone, and George early screamed, burring his face in an expressionless Nick’s shoulder.

Dream looked up at Wilbur, whos cross bow was still raised, utterly broken, “What the fuck have you done?”

#mcyt x reader #mcyt imagines #dreamwastaken x reader #georgenotfound x reader #sapnap x reader #dream x george x sapnap x reader #dream team x reader #teddy06 writes

965 notes · View notes

lillywillow · 3 years ago

Text

Anniversary Surprises

Summary: After a huge argument right before your anniversary, you and Remy break up. Fortunately, Remy comes to his senses and comes back to you

Word Count: 787

Prompts Used: Melancholy/ Distrust

Pairings: Remy LeBeau x Female Reader

Warnings: Fighting, Sadness, Mild angst

Written for @captain-rogers-beard ‘s Month of June 2020 Flex Your Writing Muscles Challenge

The night before your anniversary, Remy broke up with you, claiming you had been cheating on him. Sure to the untrained eye, it may have looked that way but the truth was that you were planning a special surprise for your upcoming anniversary. It hurt you so much that he could think that, after all, Remy was the only man you had ever been with. With your heart broken, you went the only other place you called home; the X Mansion.

You were an incoherent mess by the time you arrived at the mansion. Ororo gave you a cup of tea and once you had calmed down enough, you told her everything. The people at the mansion had always been like a family to you, even after you had graduated the classes and were ready to go into the world on your own.

“I... I thought he l-loved me. H-how could he think that I... I could cheat on him? A-after all we’ve been through...” Ororo rubbed your back as your poured your heart out.

“I never even got the chance to tell him...” Logan had overheard your whole conversation and went to talk... well, more like beat some sense into your now ex-boyfriend.

...

The following day, you had spent most of it in bed, hardly eating anything, feeling too nauseated and when you weren’t sleeping, you were imagining what could have been with Remy You didn’t even react when there was a knock on your door. When you didn’t answer, whoever it was just entered.

“Cherie?”

You peeked up from your blanket cocoon to see Remy standing there with a bouquet of your favourite flowers.

“R-Remy? What are you doing here?” you asked, rubbing your eyes. You could now see that he had a busted lip and a few bruises.

“Logan talked to me... told me to get my butt over here and beg for your forgiveness...”

“What... what exactly did he tell you?”

“That I was an idiot for even thinking that you would cheat on me... that you had something special planned for our anniversary...”

“Is that all?” He nodded, a small sense of relief washing over you knowing that Logan hadn’t told him everything.

“I am so, so sorry, ma Cherie... I really was a stupid, stupid man. I never should have listened to the guys I play poker with...” You let out a very unladylike snort.

“You think? Between them they’ve got like eight divorces and so many one night stands it’s a miracle none of them have caught some kind of disease. Do you really think they’re the best people to go to for relationship advice?”

“No. You’re right. You’re totally right and I will never doubt you again... So... do you forgive me? Please? I’m still so in love with you, and I was a complete fool to ever think you would ever cheat on me...” You managed a small nod and he walked over to you, sitting next to you on the bed.

“I’ll do everything I can to make things up to you... I promise,” he vowed, kissing your head and holding you close. You were happy to be in his arms again.

“Do you want me to give you your present now?” you asked him.

“Do you still want to give it to me?” You nodded and went to get it. It was one of the few things you grabbed when you left. You handed him the small, wrapped box.

Remy carefully undid the ribbons and paper, his eyes widening when he saw what was inside. You had ordered a silver, jewelled card case with a customised deck inside. Remy quickly flicked through them all, noting how much love and thought you had put into this gift. The thing that caught his attention was the court cards in the hearts suite. The king was of course Remy, you were the queen and the jack was a child who looked like a combination of the two of you. Remy looked at you.

“I’m pregnant... I had everything planned out before... Remy, please... you’re the only man I have ever loved, ever been with or ever want to be with. Our baby needs their daddy...” Remy teared up and kissed you deeply. You wrapped your arms around him and kissed back, smiling softly into it.

“I’m gonna be a daddy,” he breathed against your lips, smiling as well.

You spent the rest of your anniversary in bed holding each other, happy to be back together again after your horrible fight. It still hurt a little after he had accused you but you would work on it, especially with your baby on the way.

#Flex Your Writing Muscles June 2020 #fluff #remy lebeau #remy lebeau x reader #Pregnancy #makeup #breakup #Love #anniverssary surprises #Storm #logan howlett

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maddiwrites · 3 years ago

Text

The Hybrid (I)

Pairing: JJ x Reader

Summary: The Pogues rekindle their friendship with their old childhood best friend and JJ’s first crush, Y/N. Old feelings resurface for JJ and Y/N, possibly leading to a summer neither one of them could ever forget. Due to past trauma, Y/N is reluctant to let anyone into her heart, but JJ never backs down from a challenge, even if he knows it will come back to haunt him in the end.

Note: Thank you for being patient with me as I slowly write this series. I had this idea a long time ago and I’m not finding motivation to write it but the inspiration comes and go. I smile with every comment that is left on my fics and I’m so grateful for this community. Thank you for letting me pursue my creative writing without judgement. Love you guys! (Also, yes. If you didn’t see my last note, I based YN’s family off of the Gilmore Girls characters. That’s who I picture as them.)

Word Count: 8k

Masterlist Prologue

You wake up to someone falling on your bed next to you with a dramatic sigh. Knowing exactly who it is, you choose to ignore her and try getting back to the dreamless sleep you were peacefully having before you woke up.

That is, until she sighs again.

You flip onto your back and stare up at your ceiling fan that’s quickly spinning above you. “What, Rory?”

“How did it go with Andre and that boy?”

You look at her with one brow raised. “You woke me up to hear about Andre’s love life? That hardly sounds like you. You don’t care about high school drama or hookups.”

“You’re right,” Rory says. “But I thought I would ease you into what I actually need to tell you.”

You turn on right side and look at your sister confused. “What?”

She sighs. “The cafe’s basement flooded last night. Mom needs us there to help her clean up and take inventory on what’s salvageable.”

You turn back on you backside and close your eyes, exhaling a deep sigh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Unfortunately not,” Rory says and pats you twice on your covered thigh as she sits up. “Come on. I made you pre-cafe coffee. It’s sitting in the kitchen.”

You throw your sheets off of you and trudge to the bathroom to brush your teeth and clean your face. It’s about 8 a.m. At least you were able to get about six hours of sleep.

Last night, it was hard to let your brain rest to fall asleep. You kept tossing and turning, thinking about the blonde Pogue who walked you home. You missed how easy it was to talk to someone who you felt truly knew you. Your banter rolled off your tongue easily and you never had to worry about offending him because you knew him like the back of your hand. You knew what he could take and what he couldn't.

Talking to him brought back childhood memories you had hidden deep in your mind. How JJ would constantly poke you until you ripped into a smile on days that were grey. How you used to steal John B’s bandanas until he was chasing you around his house to get them back. How you would draw a mustache and a unibrow on Pope’s face when he fell asleep by the water.

Those days felt like they were decades ago. So far away, you didn’t know if you’d be able to reach for them again. If it was even possible to get back.

You thought about texting him. Thanks for walking me back. We should all get together soon! You had written out. But then you deleted the whole message, telling yourself it was because you didn’t know if he even had the same number. But deep down, you were just afraid of the rejection.

Its been about three years since the four of you had been together in one place. You don’t know what they’ve been through or if they’ve changed. They for sure as hell don’t know what you’ve been through. You don’t know if they're dynamic has changed. Clearly you and JJ can still joke with each other but what about John B and Pope? You heard about John B’s father disappearing at sea, most people believing he’s dead, but John B holding onto hope that’s he’s alive. You always thought about calling him to reach out and offer your condolences. But for the same reason you didn’t text JJ, you never called. It didn’t feel like your place. They had Kie for that now. A little part of you felt jealous of her, like she had replaced you and any memory of you. She seemed nice, but she wasn’t you.

“Ready?” Rory pops her head in to your room as you slip on a cropped plain white zip up jacket over your cropped black tank.

“As I’ll ever be,” You say and snag the car keys out of her hands. “Don’t even think about it. I’m driving.”

Rory rolls her eyes. “I want to get there safely.”

“And I want to get there quickly.”

“Fine. But we’re taking my car. It actually has doors.”

For your sixteenth birthday, your grandparents gifted both you and Rory your own individual cars and even let you pick them out. Rory chose a black 2020 Honda Civic for it’s safety features and reputation for longevity as if she was planning on handing it down to her future kids. And you picked out a white 2020 Jeep Wrangler with a hard top that pops off along with the doors for a very open and thrilling ride. Everyone but you called it a death trap, but you found it to be the perfect summer car.

You park Rory’s boring Honda Civic in the back of the cafe in a lot used specifically for employees. The cafe is already booming with teens and families, waiting for their morning coffees and fresh pastries. Kids your age are running around behind the counter with sweat dripping down their brow bone to get everyone’s orders out in a timely manner.

In the back of the store, your mom walks up the steps from the basement with two large trash bags and immediately notices the two of you. “Oh good. You’re here. Rory, help the girls behind the counter. The dishwasher’s broken and poor Hailey is hand washing everything. Y/N, come with me downstairs.”

“Why does Rory get the fun job?” You grumble and follow your mom back downstairs after she tosses the two trash bags.

“Because she’s actually nice to the customers.”

“Treat others how you would like to be treated. Isn’t that what everyone always says?” You smirk. You never agreed with the phrase ‘the customer is always right.’ It’s complete bullshit and being the employee shouldn’t mean letting yourself getting verbally abused by a ‘Karen’ on the other side of the counter.

The basement is used for the cafe’s storage, lined with wooden shelves Steve put together that hold to go cups, back up espresso machines, boxes of coffee and food and ingredients, etc. Now all the boxes are dark and sopping, creating puddles on the concrete floor.

“Oh my god. Mom. How did this happen?”

“Jenky water pipe busted in the middle of the night,” Steve walks down the stairs and passes your mom a knowing look. It didn’t surprise you that he was here. He’s the jack of all trades. Owns his own automotive shop, builds a lot of his own furniture, actually cooks a decent meal, and has the same outlook on customer service as you do. He was probably your mom’s first call. “Talked to the plumber. They can’t get here until at least noon.”

“Noon? We’ll be underwater by noon. I might as well turn all my employees into a swim team,” Your mom says.

Steve shakes his head. “I was able to hold the leak until he gets here. You should be fine.”

Steve was the first person that actually helped your mother out when's she moved to the Cut. Six months pregnant, she pushed her car into his automotive shop after it broke down on the side of the road. Their banter was similar to the one you and JJ have. He helped save your mom money by building yours and Rory’s cribs, changing table, and dressers. And ever since, the two of them had been connected by the hip, although they both refuse to admit it. You think the pair are just trying to deny the love they clearly share for each other. And you think the main reason for that is because of the incident four years ago with your mom’s ex boyfriend. No thanks to you.

“Look at you constantly building your resume,” You smirk at him.

Steve scoffs. “It’s more than what you’re doing.”

You roll your eyes. Steve is the closest thing you have to a father. He practically helped raise you with your mom. He’s the one you turn to whenever a fight with your mom goes too far, which isn't too often but it happens. He usually lets you stay at his house for the night to let you cool off. But he’ll never sugar coat his advice when it comes time for him to give it. Even if you don’t ask for it. He knows growing up with Rory has been challenging. She was clearly your mom’s favorite, or at least that’s what you thought. She has a 4.0 GPA with a realistic dream to get into Brown University and study journalism. She played by every rule, never got into trouble, and spent most of her free nights getting ahead of her school work or staying late at the cafe with an open book from the library across the street. She was an absolute angel to everyone else, making you look like her evil twin.

You glare at him before turning to your mom with crossed arms. “What do you want me to do, Mom?”

“Actually honey. Can you go to Heywards and grab more coffee filters and napkins. The water soaked right through the plastic wrapping on our last box.”

You nod, leaving your mom and Steve to clean up the basement themselves. Before heading out, you sneak behind the counter and make yourself a quick coffee to go.

“Where you going?” Rory asks as she reaches behind you to grab a banana for her customer at the register.

“Heywards to grab a couple things for Mom.”

“Oh. Make sure to grab toilet paper while you’re out. I think we’re almost out of it.”

“Got it.”

Heywards is only a short drive from your mom’s cafe. It’s the closest convenient store that isn’t crazy pricey. It’s where your mom gets all her supplies whenever she runs out of things before shipment gets there.

You use to always come here when you were younger with the boys, each of you, even Pope, stealing a small bag of chips or a candy bar here and there. Little did any of you know, Mr. Heyward caught your thieving hands every time but never said anything.

The bell above the door chimes when you walk into the store. You know this place as well as you know the cafe, finding the toilet paper and coffee filter immediately.

When Mr. Heyward looks up from the counter, his smile grows. He can pick you out of a crowd anywhere, but he hasn’t seen you in a long time. Last time he saw you, you had braces and overgrown bushy brows. Now you had bushed hair and shaved legs.

“Hi. Mr. Heyward,” You grin shyly at him. You don’t know how he’s going to react to see you, unsure of what Pope might have told him about you.

“Little Miss Y/L/N? Is that you?” Heyward smiles widely, pulling your own lips into a wider smile. “I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy with school and my mom’s cafe...” Both of those things were a lie. You just avoid the Cut to avoid the Pogues.

“How’s the fam?”

“They’re good,” You say as Heyward hands you your bags. “Mom says hello by the way. I’m actually taking these to her store now.”

“Well, don’t be a stranger. We miss your smiling face around her. Anette, too.” Heyward says, mentioning his wife.

“Tell her I said hi.”

“Of course, darling.”

Heyward and Anette always had a special place in their heart for you and Rory. They’re not one for gossip, but they knew a little bit about what your mom’s been through and have heard plenty of stories about your grandparents. They always thought, despite your mom’s background, that you and your sister were raised impressively. Anette always hoped that one day Pope and Rory would get together. Everyone always wanted their child to be with Rory.

As your about to leave the store, the bell chimes again with another customer. Only it’s not another customer. It’s Pope and John B. They don’t see you at first, and you wonder if maybe you can sneak out without them seeing you. But something about that felt wrong. Especially because Heyward would more than likely mention to them that you were here.

Pope sees you first and stops in his tracks. “Y/N?”

“Hey, guys. Long time no see,” You smile at both of them. You bite down on your lip awkwardly when you meet John B’s stare. You don’t know if you should mention anything about his dad’s disappearance. But what would you say? Sorry? What good would that do?

“How’ve you been?” Pope gives you a small side hug, then John B.

You shrug. “You know, living the dream.”

“How’s life as a Hybrid?” John B smirks.

You roll your eyes playfully and groan. “Oh god. Never call me that again.”

You may be considered a Hybrid by everyone else, but you would never put yourself into that category. You grew up a Pogue, the same way everyone else did around you. The only thing tying you to the Kooks are your grandparents.

“Why?” John B smirks. “I wish I was a Hybrid.”

You smirk back. “Maybe you will be one day. I hear you have a Kook of your own for arm candy.”

You saw a faint hint of blush on John B’s cheek at the mention of his girlfriend but you don’t mention it. “Sarah, yeah. She’s not like the other Kooks.”

“I would hope not. Her brother’s a dick.”

“Yeah,” They laugh.

“We miss you, you know.” John B says. Pope looks at you, trying to read your expression. John B’s not wrong. They do all miss you, especially Pope. He felt like you were the only one who really understood him. Of course his other friends are great, but you actually took the time to try and understand his passions. Like forensic science.

“I miss you guys too. It’s been a while.”

“Well, hey. We’re actually all getting together tonight at my place. Nothing big. Just a bonfire and a couple beers. You should stop by,” John B says.

“Yeah,” Pope says, immediately getting hopeful that you’ll show up.

Your smile falters. The invite makes your heart swell and your lungs contract. It’s an invite you’ve been wanting for three years. And now that you have it, you don’t know what to say. It’d be different if it was just the four of you like old times. But now there’s Kie and Sarah and although you have nothing against them, you’re afraid they won’t accept you. The thought of your boys picking them over you terrifies you.

“Okay. Yeah, sure. I’ll try to swing by later.”

Pope smiles wide and looks at his friend to see his reaction. John B grins and nods, almost impressed that you had agreed. But he saw the twitch in your lips when the question was asked.

“Great. I guess we’ll see you later then.”

You nod. “Okay. Bye guys.”

You suck in a deep breath when the fresh air outside of Heyward’s store brushes over you. Your heart thumps wildly with both excitement and nerves when you’re finally able to collect your thoughts. You don’t know what you’ll do tonight, but the possibilities can change your entire summer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You spent the rest of the day mopping up the cafe’s basement and rearranging the shelves. You smelled of sweat and coffee grounds by the time you were done and dreamt of the shower you would be taking when you got home.

Rory drove you home after the two of you closed up the cafe for the day. Neither of you said much. Rory was exhausted from running around behind the counter and you were too busy thinking about whether you’d go back to the place you used to call your second home.

You took a longer shower than usual, still pondering what your night would be like. Your head was telling you to stay home but your heart pulled you in the direction of the Cut. You yearned to hear about what the future held for Pope, and listen to John B retell stories of when you were kids, and be able to stare into JJ’s bright blue eyes without him noticing.

You changed into a pair of jean shorts and a plain red cropped tank. Rory walks into your room as your brushing out your hair and looks at you as if you lost your mind.

“Are you out of your mind? You can’t wear that,” She says.

You brows scrunch together in confusion. “What are you talking about? I wear shit like this all the time.”

“Not to the Country Club, you don’t.” That’s when it hits you. Today’s been so hectic, you forgot what day it was. “It’s Sunday.”

Sunday dinner at the Country Club is now a weekly commitment forced upon you by your grandparents. Each week, your mom, sister, and you are forced to spend one dinner with your grandma and grandpa. This is basically your mom’s payment back for sending you and Rory to Kook Academy. Only they actually pay for the dinner. It’s usually the longest two hours of your entire week. It’s hard to listen to your grandfather rant about Real Estate and your grandma slyly critique your mother in almost every aspect of her life.

“Shit. I completely forgot,” You say.

“Well, you better change. We’re leaving in about five minutes,” Rory says then plucks a gold necklace from your dresser. “Oh and can I wear this tonight?”

You sigh. “Sure.”

You change into a baby blue wrap around dress and pin your wet hair into a half up half down due. It’s gonna have to work for the limited time you have to get ready. After applying a thin layer of makeup to look the least bit presentable, you meet your mom and sister by the front door.

“Finally,” Your mom says when she sees you.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was Sunday.”

“It’s okay, honey. I just don’t think I can handle another late remark from Mom today.” She looks you up and down and grins. “You look great.”

Despite the many fiery fights you and your mom can have, she is also your best friend. It’s kind of like a love hate relationship. Steve says it’s because you’re exactly like your mom - almost like a sixteen year old version of her.

You really hope that isn’t true. You’re not ready to have a kid in two years.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Your grandparents are already sitting at a round table in the corner of the country club by the two tall windows that reach up to the ceiling with a view looking out into the golf course. The best seat in the house for the richest a holes on the island.

“Lorelai,” Your grandmother grins, but you can instantly tell it’s sarcastic. “Did you have to walk here?”

You speak up before your mom could. “Sorry Grandma. It’s my fault we’re late.”

Your grandparents are hard on your mom but easier on you and Rory, especially Rory.

“Well, you’re here now,” Your grandpa says. He’s usually the mediator between your mom and grandma. Although he’s usually sucks at it. “Sit. Sit.”

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, JJ shuffles through his many coworkers with his apron in one hand and a piece of fried calamari from Miss Carol’s appetizer in the other.

“JJ -” She scolds and slaps his hand away from going in for a second piece.

“Good evening Miss Carol,” JJ smirks and makes his way to the area between the kitchen and dining room where most of the servers and bust boys hang out. Some of the boys slap him on the back or shove him by the shoulder, chuckling to themselves. “What’s going on boys? Busy crowd?”

“What are you doing here? You never work Sundays,” His friend, Mitch, says.

Luke Maybank was behind on several bills - worse than it’s ever been. They already shut off their electricity and JJ wanted to make sure the water wouldn’t be next.

But JJ shrugs nonchalantly. “Little extra dough can't hurt.”

“Well, you picked a good day,” Raymond walks up to the blonde, rolling his sleeves. “You got Kook Royalty and their Hybrid offsprings in your section.”

“What?” JJ looks through the small square Plexiglas on the swinging door. He knows exactly where to look and immediately sees you sitting with King and Queen Kook, looking absolutely miserable, pushing around your food with your fork.

“Damn, Maybank. Almost broke your neck - you turned so fast.”

“Shut up, Easterling. I was just seeing how crowded we were,” JJ lied. He really just wanted to see if you were here. And now that he sees you are, he’s a little nervous to do his own damn job.

Raymond Easterling chuckles. “Yeah, I know what you were looking at. But don’t get your hopes up. There’s a reason Kooks call that girl the Heart Sucker. Not even the high and powerful JJ Maybank could get a piece of that.”

The guys around JJ and Raymond chuckle and nod in agreement, hearing the stories of how you’d reject every single guy that’s ever asked you out. Sometimes you’d go on a few dates, trying to push yourself out of your comfort zone, but then things would quickly become too much, and you’d get overwhelmed.

JJ didn’t like the way Raymond talked about you or how the others laughed at your expense. His hands clenched into fists, tempted to throw a punch in Ray’s cocky face. The guy’s just being a jerk because he’s one of the guys that got rejected by you, he thought.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” JJ shakes his head and ties his apron around his waist to distract his hands.

“No?” Raymond challenges him. “You think I’m wrong? You think you could pull the infamous Hybrid over there?”

JJ glances back through the window. You’re looking at your grandma with a clearly forced grin. You’re twirling your hair between your fingers, a habit you picked up when you were little to do when you’re bored. JJ would find you doing that in school all the time.

You’re gorgeous, he thought. It’s no wonder that almost every guy on this island has tried to make a pass on you, including JJ himself, but his remarks always come off as playful, afraid of actually telling you how he feels about you. His fantasies about you went further than just getting you between the sheets. He could picture getting married, having children, and growing old together. Years ago, the two of you would talk about your future. Neither one of you cared about money or fancy jobs. All you wanted was to be free - of this island, of each other’s families, of responsibilities placed on you from birth. You hold the same values as JJ, and he’s never met another person like you.

But JJ has a hard exterior. No one other than his best friends know his true heart, and he wasn’t going to let someone like Raymond Easterling find out about his soft spot for you. He would never hear the end of it.

JJ looks at you one last time. You’re talking to Rory, your face in his direction. This time you’re smiling, probably discussing something other than your grandparent’s expectations of you. He’d kill to see that smile every single day.

What’s the worst that could happen? You reject him? Yeah, that might kill JJ inside, but maybe you’d still be his friend, or continue to be acquaintances like you are now. As long as he gets to see you, he’d be okay. There was always the future. But who knows? Maybe you’d say yes? He’ll never know unless he tries. Right?

JJ fakes the same cocky grin that Raymond wears. “I haven’t failed yet.”

The guys around him whistle and shake their heads with smiles.

“All right, Maybank. Let’s make a bet. I’ll give you one hundred dollars to get Y/N Y/L/N in the sack by the fourth of July.”

JJ scoffs. “You like giving away free money?” He ignored his racing heart at the thought of being that intimate with you.

Raymond nods. “Okay. Let’s put your money where your mouth is. Get her to say ‘I love you’ by the end of the season and I’ll raise you an extra hundred and cover all your dishwasher shifts in September.”

JJ raises his brows with surprise. No one offers to take the dishwashing shift. Sometimes the boys are pulled back there when the kitchen is short staffed and it’s easily one of the worst jobs at the Club.

This bet was almost too good of an opportunity to pass up. “Deal.” JJ says.

The boys shake hands on it and the other guys whisper to each other about how intrigued they are to see this play out.

JJ wipes his sweaty palms against his apron and pushes the door open to approach your table, hoping he can hear you over his thudding heart.

“Good evening folks. May I take those empty plates out of your way?”

You look up at the voice you know so well and a smile raises on your lips. JJ meets your eyes and he winks at you, splattering your heart in flutters.

“Please.” Your grandmother pushes her plate away from her, stuffed with filet and red wine.

“JJ,” Your mom grins up at him. Growing up, your mom always had a soft spot for the blonde Pogue. She’s heard the stories about his father, mostly from Steve, who actually grew up with Luke Maybank, his cousin. As a child, he was sent to live with Luke Maybank and his single father. Lets just say, he’s not surprised by the way Luke turned out. “Look at you. You’re all grown up now. Last time I saw you, Y/N was still pushing your head in the sand for stealing her popsicle.”

“Yeah. I quickly learned no one should mess with Y/N and her food,” JJ says.

“Never stopped you though,” You smirk at him.

“Lorelai. Who is this?” Your grandma asks, disregarding the boy himself.

“Mom,” Lorelai gives her mom a warning look. “This is JJ Maybank. He went to school with Y/N and Rory.” Lorelai knew to play it safe with her wording. She didn’t know where you and JJ stood. It’s been so long since you’ve seen him and she knew better than to ask.

“Nice to meet you,” JJ says politely. “I’d shake your hand but mine are kinda full.” He motions to the plates in his hand.

“That’s quite all right.” Your grandma’s smile is so forced, it makes you uncomfortable.

“I won’t hold you up. Has your server been around with the dessert menu?” JJ looks at you. “We have chocolate cake tonight.”

Heat rushes up your neck. Not because of the cake itself but because JJ remembered your favorite dessert. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles. It was safe to save you were a choco-holic. The boys use to make it for you every year for your birthday. It usually came out burnt, none of them ever remembering how to properly make it. But it was all you needed to feel like a very special girl.

“Your favorite,” Rory elbows you.

Your grandma cringes. “Sounds like diabetes on a plate.”

“Mom,” Lorelai scolds.

“What?” She asks, not understanding the concept of a filter.

Now heat rushes to your cheeks for an entire different reason. “He did. We’re not doing dessert tonight. Thank you, though.”

JJ nods but feels disappointed by the way your face flinched at your grandmother’s comment.

“My pleasure,” He says like he was taught to do and excuses himself to drop the plates off in the back before he can say anything else that would probably get him fired.

Your mom looks at your with raised brows. “He’s cute, honey.”

“Lorelai, please. He’s the busboy,” Your grandma says.

“He’s a good kid, Mom.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” You stand up. “I have to use the restroom.”

Rory gives you a knowing grin as you walk away from the table. When you walk into the hallway between the dining area and the front lobby, you immediately feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. Sometimes just the presence of your grandparents and their pompous judgements can be suffocating. You do your best to bite your tongue around them, excusing yourself when you feel yourself getting heated.

JJ catches a glimpse of your light blue dress out of the corner of his eye when he rounds the corner to collect the plates off a different table. He looks over his shoulder at Raymond, who’s staring at the blonde watching you, and winks.

“Hey, Y/N,” JJ says, walking up to you.

You look up from your phone and immediately smile. “Hey. I was actually hoping I’d catch you out here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” You nervously tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. “I’m sorry about my grandmother. She can be...”

JJ shakes his head. “Hey. It’s okay. I work for Kooks almost every single day. I’m use to it.”

You sigh. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Don’t apologize for something you can’t control,” JJ says. “Besides, that’s probably the nicest she’s ever been to me.”

You hide your face in your hands. “Stop. You’re making it worse.”

JJ laughs and takes your wrists in his hands, slowly pulling them away from your face. Your eyes shoot up to his, immediately feeling a tingling feeling run through your skin, straight to your heart.

“It’s okay. I promise,” He says softly. His voice is so sincere that you have no other option but to believe him. It almost makes your feel guiltier, wondering how much bullshit he’s been through with ungrateful Kooks that it’s so easy for him to forgive and forget.

“Okay,” Your voice is a whisper, taken off guard by how close he is to you and how he still hasn't let go of your hands.

In that same moment, JJ realizes he’s still holding you and gently removes his hands. He coughs awkwardly and scratches the back of his neck, where sweat begins to bubble. Why is he so nervous?

“So um...” You say, suddenly feeling nervous too. “You going to John B’s tonight?”

JJ’s eyes shoot up in surprise. How did you know that? “Yeah. I’m heading over there after work.”

“I saw him and Pope at Heywards earlier today and they invited me over. I wasn’t sure if I should come or not.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Because it’s different now, you wanted to say. But you didn’t because you feel like the elephant in the room would only grow. And you didn’t want to admit you were nervous to meet Kie and Sarah outside of school.

You shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You should definitely come. The boys miss you.”

You pretend like a little piece of your heart didn’t just break when JJ didn’t say ‘we.’

“What time do you get off of work?”

“Around 9ish.”

You nod. “I can pick you up if you’d like and we could go together?”

Your heart races after you suggest it. What if he says no? Why were you feeling this way? This is the same kid you use to make fun of for pouring milk into his bowl before his cereal.

“Yeah. That’d be perfect.”

“Great!” Your phone pings with a text from Rory, telling you that your grandparents are wondering where you are. “Shit. I have to get back. I’ll see you at nine?”

“See you then,” JJ nods and turns back to the kitchen. When his eyes meet Raymond’s, he’s reminded of what he agreed to. Almost surprised how quickly he forgot about it. You were able to take his mind off of anything without even trying. He clears his throat to get rid of the giddy grin he was wearing after talking to you, wanting to look tough and casual in front of his coworker. “Easy.” He says to him. But that felt anything but easy. He could vomit with nerves.

“There’s still plenty of time for you to screw up, Maybank.”

JJ huffs. He’s not wrong.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You drive up to the front of the country club and park in front of the main entrance. It’s 8:57. You’re early and will look eager. So you wait until 9:06 to text him that you’re here.

You changed into a pair of dark washed denim shorts, a yellow cropped tube top, a grey flannel, and navy converse. You changed your outfit about four times before deciding on your first one, not wanting to look too casual or too dressed up.

For the last three years, you wondered when the four of you would get back together as a group. You wondered if it would ever happen. And now that two Kooks are involved, you feel more nervous than excited.

You jump when the passenger seat door opens, lost in the depth of your own head. JJ smiles, not seeing your reaction.”Cool ride,” he says and looks around the interior.

“Thanks,” you say, pulling out into the road.

“I got you something,” JJ says.

You glance at him with furrowed brows. What could he have possibly gotten you since you saw him last? A book mark from the Country Club’s gift shop?

JJ reaches into his backpack and pulls out a plate with clear wrap around it. Your mouth drops when you see the chocolate cake on a plate in his hands, the smell immediately hitting your nose with pure delight.

“You saved me a piece?” You jump in your seat excitedly.

“Had to hide it good too or else Miss Carol would have had my ass handed to me,” JJ jokes and even pulls out two forks. He undoes the wrapping and cuts off a piece. He waits until you hit a stop sign and says, “Open up.”

You look at him and immediately open your mouth. He gently places the fork between your lips and you take the piece of cake off with your teeth. Like a baby.

Your eyes close with pure pleasure. “Oh my god. That’s amazing.”

“Miss Carol does know how to bake a mean cake,” JJ says and takes a bite of his own.

“Another one,” You say, glancing at the cake again. Like you said, choco-holic. “Please.” You say when JJ teases you by holding the fork away from you.

JJ laughs. “I like hearing you beg.”

You slap him in the arm with the back of your hand. “In your dreams, Maybank.”

“You got that right, Y/L/N.”

The two of you finish the cake with only a few bites each. Small but rich in chocolate that leaves you craving more. You were gonna have to meet this Miss Carol woman.

After he puts the plate back in his bag, JJ reaches for the aux cord, but you quickly slap his hand away. “Hey. What do you think you’re doing?”

“You’re seriously gonna make me listen to this the entire way to John B’s?”

You scoff. “I’ll have you know Blink-182 is one of my favorite bands.”

“It’s also soccer moms’ favorite band,” JJ laughs at you.

You turn up the volume, blasting ‘All the Small Things’ and point to your ear. “Sorry. Can’t hear you!”

JJ rolls his eyes but laughs along with you, even bopping his head to the beat. You drive with the windows down, dancing and singing along to a bunch of throwback songs with JJ as if the two of you have been doing this forever.

You pull up to John B’s and park behind his dad’s old van, better known as The Twinkie. When you turn down the music, JJ looks at you with a shake in his head. “Next time, I’m driving.”

“What was wrong with my driving?”

“We’re in the Outer Banks, Sparky, not NASCAR.”

You scoff and follow behind JJ who’s leading the way up John B’s driveway. As you get closer, you smell the smoky scent of a bonfire nearby and eventually hear John B’s laugh mixed in with a female’s. Your smile falters as nerves gather in the pit of your stomach.

“What’s wrong?” JJ asks.

“Nothing,” You say, but JJ easily catches your lie and gives you a knowing look. “What if they don’t like me?”

“Who? Pope and John B? I’m pretty sure they like you more than me even after three years -”

“Not them, you idiot,” You shove him playfully by the shoulder as you two let yourselves inside. “Sarah and Kie.”

“Don’t you go to school with them?”

“Yeah, but we don’t talk,” You say quietly, not wanting them to hear you.

“Hm.”

“What?” JJ shrugs. “Nothing. I just didn’t think you cared about what other people thought.”

“I don’t,” You say quickly. “But they're your best friends. It’s different.”

“You don’t need their approval. You technically were here first.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been replaced,” You try to say it as a joke and even throw a smirk in there.

But JJ stops in his track and looks at you seriously. “No one can replace you. Not even if they tried.”

You open your mouth to respond, but you’re at a loss for words. It’s not a common occurrence that JJ gets all serious on you. Warmth covers you like a blanket and the longer he holds your stare, the weaker your knees become.

“JJ! Is that you?” John B calls out from the backyard.

“Yeah,” JJ yells back. He opens the fridge in John B’s kitchen. “Want a beer?” He offers to you.

You shake your head. “No thanks.”

For the first time, you take in John B’s home. It looks the same as it did three years ago, only a lot messier. The pull out couch looks like its been used recently with blankets and sheets tossed about on it. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts are thrown messily on the coffee tables and the air smells faintly of old marijuana.

JJ leads you out to the back where four people are gathered around a fire. Three out of the four immediately smile when the two of you approach them, but Kie’s eyes narrow and her head tilts with confusion.

Shit, you think.

“You came!” Pope laughs and hops up from his beach chair and embraces you in a hug.

You laugh, not expecting the embrace, but welcoming it all the same. John B’s next, giving you a quick hug and shaking his head.

“I gotta say, I didn’t think you were going to come,” John B says.

“You can thank me for that later,” JJ says jokingly.

“Actually when I heard JJ was coming, I almost changed my mind and stayed home,” You joke and smirk JJ’s way.

“Just like old times,” Pope says, looking between you and the blonde. The banter felt like the yall never separated in the first place.

“Hey, you know Sarah and Kie, right?” John B points to the girls. Sarah stands up to say hi, and eventually Kie follows her, not wanting to look rude, but stays off to the side, keeping her distance.

“Yeah,” You wave awkwardly.

“Hey!” Sarah says sweetly. “I didn’t realize you guys use to all hang out.”

“Y/N grew up down the street,” JJ explains and sips at his beer.

“You want a drink or something?” Pope asks you, not knowing JJ already did.

“No thank you,” You say again.

“You don’t drink?” Kie asks. It was the first thing she’s said to you.

“Not usually,” You say and hold her stare. You try to get a read on her, but she’s had to get a tell on. You can’t tell if she just doesn’t like you or just doesn’t know you. Either way, it makes you uneasy.

“Here, I’ll go grab you a chair,” Pope says and walks to the side of the house to grab another beat up beach chair.

As the night goes on, you feel the tension in your shoulders loosen and your body feel lighter. Most of the night was spent retelling childhood stories the four of you shared. Sarah would laugh at most of them, occasionally rolling her eyes at her boyfriend from the stupid shit he would do, although it sounds like he’s no different to you now.

You talked about the time you and JJ stole a golf cart for a joy ride on Figure Eight, or when you and John B pranked Pope by putting a dead fish in his locker, or how you and John B learned how to play guitar from youtube tutorials.

Midnight came around quickly and exhaustion was slowly taking over your body. It’s been a long day between the cafe flooding, dinner with your grandparents, and now this.

JJ was the first to notice you slowly fading.

“You okay?” He asks you quietly as everyone else is caught up in conversation.

“Yeah,” You say, lazily grinning at him.

“We can leave if you want,” He says.

“You’re not staying?” You ask. It sounded like everyone was planning to spend the night here. And as much as you wanted to, you just didn’t feel comfortable enough yet.

JJ shrugs. “My dad’s out of town tonight. It’ll be nice to have the house to myself.” Before you can say anything, he stands and brushes his hands against his pants. “All right, losers. We’re out of here.”

“Aw, you’re leaving?” Sarah pouts.

“Yeah, I’m beat and Y/N’s my ride home,” JJ says.

You were glad he didn’t call you out for being tired. You didn’t want to look lame in front of everybody, especially Kie.

“Thanks for having me,” You say to everyone. It might have been John B’s house, but it was everyone’s night you intruded on.

John B stands up to hug you. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

You nod. “I won’t. I promise.”

Pope hugs you next. “Text me when you get back safe.”

“I will.”

“Bye!” Sarah waves and Kie exhales a ring of smoke from her blunt.

You wave at them before following JJ back to your car.

“Nuh-uh-uh,” JJ says. You didn’t realize you both walked to the driver’s side.

“What? No.”

JJ nods and holds his hands out for your keys. “I’m not dying tonight.”

“You’ve been drinking and smoking all night,” You say. You didn’t think JJ was drunk or even that high, but you were not going to let a teenager with an ounce of alcohol in his system get behind the wheel. “Next time. For now, hold on to the cupholder.”

JJ sighs dramatically and goes to the other side of the car and hops in the passenger seat.

This time you keep the music quiet, listening to the hum of the radio instead of your phone.

“Take a left,” JJ says.

“JJ, I know where you live. And it’s not left.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

You snicker. “Not in the slightest.”

JJ rolls his eyes. “Just take the left.”

You hold your hands up in surrender and take the left turn. He directs you for a couple more miles until he has you park in front of a 24 hour diner.

“What are we doing here?” You ask.

“I’m in the mood for a milkshake.”

“We just had cake!” You say.

“Come on, Sparky. Show me what that mouth can do,” JJ smirks.

You go to hit him again but he takes off running to the front entrance and pulls the door open. You chase after him, almost running into his back at the front host stand where JJ safely smirks at you in triumph.

“Two please,” He says to the hostess.

The old cranky woman leads you to a booth off to the side next to a window without a word.

A couple minutes later, a waitress walks by and asks if you’re ready to order.

“Yes. One chocolate milkshake and one black and white milkshake,” JJ orders for both of you, already knowing what flavor you’d want.

“And fries, please.” You say. The waitress nods, takes your menus, and walks off. JJ raises his brow at the extra order. “What?” You shrug. “Just showing you what my mouth can do.”

JJ scoffs. “What a tease.”

You playfully kick his shin under the table.

“Did you have fun tonight?” JJ asks.

“Yeah,” You answer. “Felt like old times. The girls are nice too.”

You were about to only mention Sarah, but you didn’t want to cause any issues with Kie. Not yet at least. Maybe she just needed time to warm up to you.

“See? I told you they wouldn’t bite.”

A couple minutes later, the waitress comes back with your milkshakes and fries.

“How’s John B doing? You know, with the whole Big John thing?” You ask delicately, unsure of how JJ would react to you pestering about John B’s business. “I didn’t want to ask and bring the mood down,” You explain yourself although you don’t need to.

JJ shrugs. “He’s in denial I think. Won’t sign a death certificate until he sees a body. He could be worse, though.”

“Yeah,” You say softly. You don’t know what you would do if you were in that situation. In a way you felt lucky that you never knew your dad at all. It would be harder to lose him, knowing who he was.

You take a fry and dip it into your milkshake before taking a bite. This makes JJ freeze and look at you like you have two heads.

“What?” You say with your mouth full.

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” You say and give him a look to do it.

JJ reluctantly picks up the fry and dunks it into his milkshake. He looks at the fry questioningly before popping it into his mouth. Somehow the sweetness of the milkshake and the saltiness of the french fry complement each other beautifully and his widen in pleasant surprise.

“Oh wow,” JJ says.

“Told you,” You smirk.

You spend the next hour catching up, trying to fit the last three years into an hour. JJ does most of the talking because you want to know more about what John B, Pope, and JJ have been up to. Your life was so boring and depressing, you didn’t want to bore JJ with the details.

You drive JJ home and talk for a few minutes more when you park. He seems to be procrastinating getting out of the car, but you don’t mind. You could talk to him all night, suddenly not feeling tired anymore.

“All right. I’ll let you get home before the sun rises,” He says and opens the door. He pauses when his feet hit the ground and he looks back at you. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I have to work at the shop, why?”

“Well, there’s a storm coming in. John B and I might go out to surf the surge before it hits. You still surf?”

You scoff. “Do I still surf?”

JJ holds his hands up in surrender. “Just checking. You think you can handle the surge?”

“Let’s not forget who the better surfer is, JJ.”

“I didn’t. It’s still me.”

“You wish.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Now you have a point to prove. You have to show JJ that you’re still the better surfer.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” You agree.

“Great, it’s a date.” He winks and shuts the door before you can tell him otherwise.

You giggle to yourself as JJ walks up the front yard and stay there until he you see he gets in safely.

You pull out of the driveway, wishing he had asked you out on a real date. One that didn’t involve John B.

Tag list: @super-funky-bisexual @sunsetswithjj @moniamaybank @throwawayfish @poguestyle17 @5am-cigarette @jjpouggues @fly-away-from-here @buckys2thicc

#JJ Imagine #jj fic #jj maybank imagines #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank #jj obx #jj fanfiction #jj maybank imagine #outer banks imagine #outer banks imagines #outer banks fic #jj maybank one shot

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