Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. ~Jane Howard

"Cover me," she said, tilting the turkey so the butt end was more accessible. "I'm going back in." "Yeah, I'm not sure I should be here for this conversation," Scott said. Melissa just wanted their first Thanksgiving together to go perfectly. As if.

Clint wants to give his kid the world. Isobel's not complicated; she'll settle for a couple of superheroes and a train set.

Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

The first time Jensen meets Max, he's cuffed to a chair with a dislocated jaw. Things don't improve significantly from this point onwards.

Stiles runs away from his old pack on a Monday. He meets his dad for the first time on a Sunday, and he falls in love on a Thursday.

He had died- honorably, he'd like to think, despite living as a villain and an assassin for over half a century- and that, as far as Xanxus had ever figured, would be the end of that. No heaven. No hell. Just life when you were breathing and nothingness when you stopped. Except that it didn't, quite, turn out that way. Except he came back as the son of the kindest, sometimes saddest father in the world. In both worlds. A father that he knew, without a doubt, to be his flesh and blood. All at once, Xanxus had everything he'd wanted as a child. A home. A family. Stability. And he was going to fight like hell and beat down anyone who tried to take it from him, no matter what his age. (In which Sakumo raises a son who speaks multiple languages from birth, all of them gibberish to the poor single father jounin, spits vulgarity with the same ease as he does his praise and burns with an unshakable determination to build himself a family that will not fall, no matter who or what is thrown against it.)

A series of vignettes about Tsuna, his guardians, and the people closest to him—snapshots of the impact they all have on each other (and that life has on them) over ten years. He never wanted to stand out, not in either direction. Is that really too much to ask? He’s not asking for great! He’s asking for normal, normal. Apparently it is too much to ask. Apparently it’s always going to be all or nothing with him.

Hana finds that it’s difficult to take care of your best friend when your best friend has all the self-preservation instincts of a lemming. Hana doesn’t know how this happened. No, wait, she does know how it happened. Kyoko made that pleading face, and Hana is weak to the pleading face. She knew Kyoko made poor life choices, but she didn’t realize they were contagious.

Everyone watching the spectacle that is Hibari Kyouya raising a child in fascinated horror. Hibari treats child-rearing almost exactly like animal-training—the same basic pattern modified for a bipedal, very intelligent creature. It’s a little upsetting to watch. On the other hand, both his animals and his child seem happy, if odd, so maybe it works out.

The one in which Tsuna and his friends consciously disperse to the four winds when they reach high school, and somehow, all of Tsuna's classmates manage to fall desperately for him before the end of their first year together. And have to find some way to deal with it, since life doesn't stop just because the most unremarkable guy in their year seemed to become irresistible overnight. The most popular defense in their arsenal? Is the phrase, "Sawada Tsunayoshi? Makes. No. Sense." (Or: All Tachibana Ren had wanted was to make a place for himself, away from Iwatobi and the protective hovering of his family. Nothing could have prepared him or the rest of his class for what getting through high school alongside one Sawada Tsunayoshi would mean for them in the long run.)

Growing up in the Mafia isn't necessarily an easy or kind thing. The earth spins, life moves on, and Tsuna finds himself taking slow steps forward, back and forward again. (Or, ten times that Tsuna remembers it being easier to have sex with Xanxus rather than dealing with the insanity of the world around him)

It took Xanxus two years to bring himself to Japan to visit Hibari instead of waiting for Hibari to come and visit him in Italy. Two years and the realization that he wanted more from their relationship than spontaneous visits that began with destructive fights and ended with them bloodied in bed. Once there, things that have been developing over time finally, finally, come to fruition.

When Hibari orders a bottle of sake at the end of their dinner, Gokudera decides to push his luck and stick around to drink with him. When Yamamoto drifts into the conversation with bitter words about his soulmate, the three of them reveal who they have and what they think of their fated partners. When Gokudera decides to help the drunken Hibari home, he discovers temptation has dark eyes, cold hands, and whispered admissions.

"Maybe I'll stay," Ramsey says. "Just for a little while. Since I haven't got anywhere else I need to be." Or: Ramsey isn't looking for a home, but one finds her anyway.

Your conversation with your mom is less informative than your conversation with your sister. You text: > Hey so are you kicking me out of the house for Thanksgiving or what She responds: > Dont put it like that > But yes > Hv fun w/the gberts! Followed by a series of emoji: a turkey, a pie, a kiss, and a firework.

the stories of the August 8th cluster and their children in all forms.

Jin Ling had begun to suspect years ago that there were parts of his family history that had been crossed out; long streaks of black where Wei Wuxian had been. The truth is more like whole books being brought up from their hiding places again. Or: Jin Ling tries to figure out what family means, now.

If you’ve ever believed me in anything, believe I want what’s best for Jin Ling, the first line of the letter reads. Jiang Cheng has to stop and take a moment before he continues on to the next line: You must come to Carp Tower as soon as you can and lavish praise on the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.

It happened like this: Jin Ling was a sect leader now, which was, and Jingyi really meant this, fucking hilarious. There were few things funnier, in his honest opinion. Because he was young, and inexperienced, and also — it had to be said — a real shithead, there was apparently some belief amongst his advisors that the best way forward, to promote the picture of a stable, mature sect leader who absolutely did not cry at the drop of a hat, was for Jin Ling to get married. - OR: Jin Ling and Jingyi get engaged. Things spiral from there.

Crumpled at the base of Koi Tower’s long stairs for the second time, Jin Guangyao presses his face into the stone, takes a deep breath despite re-broken ribs, and arranges his features as carefully as he knows how. Then he stands, moving carefully around the pain, and bows deep, arms held straight and true. The walk back up the steps to his father's side is painful enough to wipe the smile from his face; it is not painful enough to prevent him re-taking his place as seneschal, bowing again at the top of the steps. As he straightens, he prioritizes his plans for his father’s demise over all else.

Five years after the death of the Yiling Patriarch, Jin Guangyao calls Jiang Cheng to Carp Tower, to involve him in a plot. It doesn't go the way Jin Guangyao thinks it's going to go.

If Wen Qing had realized sooner that she wasn’t in the afterlife or hallucinating, but had actually traveled back in time, she’d have done things differently. There’d have been less murder, for one thing.

After one scandal too many, Patrick Kane gets traded. Eventually it stops being the worst thing that's ever happened to him.

AU: Sidney Crosby is a foster kid growing up in Nova Scotia. Geno Malkin is a Russian transplant. They play hockey. And also have sex. I claim to know very little about the junior hockey league and even less about Canadian Childrens Aid Services.

"Stay with me," Tim asks in a rush. "I... Bruce can't lose you again. I need to know you're alive and well." Jason scoffs. "He nearly killed me, I don't think he cares." "Doesn't matter. I think he cares, so I'm offering you a deal. Come to my place. Sleep, shower, get something to eat. Maybe stick around for longer. Just stop... Stop staring at the ground like you're thinking about jumping without a line."

Hawks didn’t expect Tokoyami to get stabbed during a League of Villains attack. He didn’t expect Eraserhead to start investigating him. He didn’t expect to be caught in an alley making out with a known murderer. And, he definitely didn’t expect Aizawa to understand.

For most people, dying and waking up in your eight-year-old body is a second chance at life. For Dabi, it is a chance to make his shitty father’s life a living hell. Or: Dabi sucks at this whole time travelling thing. In his defence though, there’s really not much a kid can do in the grand scheme of things… or so he thought.

“Luffy.” “Yeah?” “Please tell me I’m hallucinating.” Fear. The smell of it, the sound of it. Luffy’s never felt fear like this come from Sanji before. He hates it. “He’s real. And I think he’s you,” Luffy says. __ A reunion. A camping trip on an uninhabited island. A question. And a gift, or perhaps, an answer. Wherein a Sanji straight from the dungeons of Germa appears in their midst and no one, least of all Sanji, knows what to do about it.

Alpha-17 was made for war. He was made to kill the enemies of the Republic. He was made to die. He was not made to deal with a Jedi lineages interpersonal drama. He was not made to deal with a conspiracy at the heart of the Republic. And he sure as fuck was not made to be witness to Cody's weird as shit relationship with General Kenobi despite not even being assigned to the 212th. And Yet. Here he was. (This was written over the course of a long spell of insomnia. Pecked at during the worst of my 4am insomnia fugue states. So it is what it is and I have no idea what this is. Enjoy.)

[“Are you dead?” Are the first words that come out of Zuko’s mouth. Lu Ten winces. He’s barely adjusted to the idea himself, but he still wasn’t expecting Zuko to reach that conclusion so fast. He can’t lie to him. He nods. “I am.” “But you’re real.” “Yeah. Real dead.” He tries for a joke but Zuko bursts into tears instead.] Or, Lu Ten makes a promise, Lu Ten dies. Lu Ten comes back.

Despite his best efforts, Andrew finds himself a family.

Sex and feelings and Neil Josten in the middle. In both sexy and unsexy ways.

“All right,” Ned Stark says. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. No one was supposed to, but I guess it’s my own damned fault for not keeping it to myself. Now, I know that if I told you to forget this you’d try, but I remember – I remember how it was when I was your age, myself. Boys of seven can forget that kind of promise easily, if they don’t know why they’re making it.” He takes in another breath. “Robb,” he says, his voice dropping so low it’s barely audible, “do you love your brother?” Or: in which Robb knows about Jon's true heritage all along.