yurishippingolympics | YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024

a greenhouse (think of the yuri-charged greenhouses in Revolutionary Girl Utena or Gundam: The Witch from Mercury!)

on a ferris wheel

candyland

bus stop

the jjk breakup kfc

Gymnasium

There are two things Cinder becomes aware of immediately when the world takes shape around her: glass shards in the blue carpet under her feet, and the sound of someone crying coming from the closet in front of her.

The rest of the world comes into focus. She doesn’t pay it any mind. This is what she’s here to do. This is her wife crying in that closet; this is who she’s here to save.

The glass doesn’t touch her feet. She crosses the hallway and has to stop herself from throwing the closet open, because nothing would be more terrifying to an abused child than someone bursting into their one and only hiding space. Still, it’s her wife in there, so she has to force herself to sound calm when she knocks twice and calls out, “Winter? It’s me.”

The crying stops abruptly. Cinder knocks again, just to be sure. “I’m going to come in. Okay?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. They could be stopped at any moment. The more she waits, the more she becomes aware of other sounds: shouting from somewhere else in the mansion, more quiet crying, glass shattering. It’s not worth the risk. If the dream escalates, she’ll be thrown out, and Winter won’t —

Cinder throws open the door and stops short. Winter — barely six years old, curled up underneath a shelf — peers up at her, scrubbing her hands over her face, and something in Cinder’s chest jolts and sinks, sinks, sinks.

“Where’s Weiss?”

Winter flinches. Cinder realises how she must look and drops to her knees in front of her, pulling the door shut. The only light in the closet is a small Dust crystal in a jar. “I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t, um — I don’t know. Zayde took her.”

“He did, did he?” Cinder rocks back on her heels, giving Winter room to sit up properly. “Are they fighting again?”

Winter scrubs at her face again. “Yes. If Father sees me after he’s fought with Mother he gets angry, so. I’m hiding here.”

“Well, it’s a good hiding spot,” Cinder says, because if she tries to make her mouth form any other words she thinks she might burn the whole dream mansion down. “You’re okay, though? Physically.”

She nods shakily. And then she says, trembling hard, “You — you’re my Cinder.”

Relief at being recognised hits Cinder so hard that she nearly doubles over. She sinks to her knees in the closet and pulls Winter to her, crushing the two of them together. “G-d, yes, it’s me. I’m here. Come here.”

Winter makes a noise that sounds an awful lot like a sob. “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not — Weiss isn’t —”

“She’s in the room next to ours. When you wake up, we’ll go bother her. Okay?”

“Okay. Okay.” She falters, breathing hard. “I want — I want to go home. Can we go home?”

Shade isn’t even remotely close to home for either of them, but it doesn’t matter, Cinder supposes. She kisses the top of Winter’s head and runs her fingers through her hair, steadying her breathing. “Yeah. We can go home. Do you know how?”

Winter shakes her head.

“That’s okay. I’ll help.”

“Lost a bet?”

Cinder raises an eyebrow at her over the back of the seat. There’s a mostly untouched bucket of popcorn in her lap. Her phone is propped up in the cup holder, clearly prepared to record the film. Winter doesn’t have it in her to be jealous. If she was more willing to come today, she’d have bought something. “Why, did you?”

Winter makes a face. “This was my punishment.”

Cinder laughs. The cinema is completely empty aside from them; the film itself hasn’t started yet, so there’s no reason to be quiet and no one to tell them to stop. “Wow. I don’t know whether to feel bad for you or not. I’m here because I want to be.”

“Really?”

She grimaces. “No. My friends didn’t want to come, so I’m —” she gestures to her phone. “I’m being a good friend.”

She must look particularly pitying, because Cinder laughs again and hops up over the back of her seat to sit next to Winter. She jolts back, but doesn’t make an effort to dissuade her. They’re both in the cinema to watch Morbius, for G-d’s sake. She does, though, flinch a little at the sudden proximity — Cinder lands perfectly in front of her and leans into Winter’s space, close enough for Winter to see the exact amber of her eyes. “Want to make out instead?”

“Oh my G-d,” Weiss says loudly, “you’re going to fistfight behind the Denny’s —”

Winter slams her hand over her mouth before she can make any more noise. “I am absolutely not. Cinder offered to talk, that’s all.”

Weiss jerks away, ducking under her hand so she can see the road. “I’m driving you to the Denny’s so you can fistfight your ex.”

“That is a factually incorrect statement.”

“I’m not driving you to the hospital when she breaks all your ribs,” she warns. “I didn’t even think you knew what Denny’s was.”

Winter scowls into the rear view mirror. Behind them, a red Subaru swerves into the next lane. Someone walking on the pavement stumbles over a crack. It’s one of Mantle’s brighter days; the breeze is brisk enough to be welcome, and it’s a perfect day to get into a fistfight behind a restaurant. Or have a charitable conversation. Or, Winter supposes, make out against a dumpster. Knowing Cinder, it could be all of the above.

“Of course I know what Denny’s is. I took you to all your post-show debriefs, remember?”

“You’re the only person in the world who calls it a debrief, Winter,” Weiss says idly. “And I could have driven myself, but. You know.”

“I do know,” Winter mutters, propping her cheek on her hand.

//

“So, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Cinder says breathlessly, running her fingers across Winter’s hips.

It’s such a jarring tone shift that Winter practically shoves her away, gasping for air. “What? What the fuck, Cinder?”

Cinder grins at her. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” She kisses Winter again, threading her fingers through her hair, filling in the space Winter left behind. She doesn’t bother trying to complain; her mind goes blank almost immediately. “That can wait, though.”

“Someone will see us,” she warns when Cinder pulls away again, tilting her head up to give her access to her neck, “and then I won’t be able to bail you out.”

“Funny, I don’t think I care,” Cinder says. Her lips ghost across Winter’s pulse point, across the skin of her neck. “You’re going to college, aren’t you?”

“Atlas,” Winter stammers, “Atlas, I’m going to Atlas.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh, good,” she says faintly.

When Cinder smiles, she feels it against her throat. “Well, I’ll see you there next year. Is there a conveniently-located Denny’s there, do you think?”

//

i've never been to a denny's in my life

A renaissance festival!

Dark Hour/Midnight Channel/Metaverse (Persona 3/4/5)

Canon: Resident Evil Movieverse

Pairing: Alice/Claire pre-relationship

WC: 498

Alice comes with them and Claire is unable to express her gratitude.

Genuinely, Claire does not know how to proceed. The woman is an enigma and Claire cannot guess why she is coming to Arcadia instead of continuing her fight against Umbrella.

Claire had felt a literal rise in tension the moment they had all realized Carlos’ fate had been sealed. It was like her hindbrain had recognized a predator. She figured Alice’s freaky-ass physic powers had something to do with it. And that the woman would have been taken those freaky-ass physic powers to go kill some megalomaniac idiots.

Instead, she’s here.

For now, the woman just seems calm and methodical as she helps navigate the helicopter across the continent.

Though, Claire thinks she overhears Alice whisper “No infection” as they cross over into Canada.

***

Landing at "Arcadia" is another blow in a long line of bullshit.

Claire wants to break down, wants to grab one of the hundred derelict cars and drive it straight into the water and not come back up. She can’t though because K-Mart and the other survivors are looking at the field of metal with despondent eyes.

Claire Redfield’s not allowed to break.

Alice’s eyes scour the scene. She talks quietly. “Look, the cars are ordered, empty but not ransacked. A meeting place maybe?”

“But they leave their transportation behind?”

Alice frowns. “That’s why I don’t like it. Let’s not stay here this night.”

She lets Alice take the lead, watches the woman siphon fuel into a jerrycan before topping up and hotwiring a small bus. They had flown over a small town a little bit before the Arcadia coordinates, so that’s where Alice takes them all.

Before they get into town, there’s a structure. The fact that they find a hunting lodge with fucking ammo left is a miracle. Claire could cry. Food’s a concern, but they’ll all have to go to bed hungry tonight. Even if it’s Alaska, it’s too dangerous for anyone to venture out into the darkness.

However, they can afford some comforts. Alice gravitates to the lodge’s hearth, building a fire that everyone gathers around to sleep. Claire takes a spot on the edge, towards the front entrance, just in case. Alice joins her.

“I’ve been selfish. I’m putting you all at risk.”

“There’s no life without risk anymore.”

“No I mean…” Alice wrinkles her nose and then cracks her neck. “Coming with you all on the helicopter, that means I left the job undone. They’ll be back after me again. That was my chance to get them off my tail for good and yet I’m here.

Claire stares across the mass of sleeping bodies and into the fire. Once again, she’s unsure how to respond. It was easier when she had first met Alice, to say the woman needed to stay away.

Alice sighs. “I think I’m done with being alone.”

Claire reaches over, grabs Alice’s hand and squeezes. “Good because you don’t have to be.”

In a pillow fort

In a forest, at night, where there is definitely nothing to make them freak out

Blue Lock

Cinder dreams of being a child again, it turns out.

Winter wanders long, empty hotel corridor after corridor, following the sound of distant crying. She recognises where she is from the news years ago; the Glass Unicorn, the hotel that burned down in the middle of the night when she was twelve or thirteen. She never forgot it — they said they found human remains in the basement, the long-rotted bodies of what they were sure were the owner and her family.

Needless to say, she put the pieces together when she met Cinder. She understands the crying, really.

Winter walks until she doesn’t think she can anymore. The crying doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, and she’s sure that if she sits down Cinder — dream-Cinder, the part of Cinder that got lost in her own mind — will come and find her. They always seem to find each other. It was annoying, once.

She sits down against a wall and crosses her legs. The sound of her clothes rustling echoes.

“Cinder,” Winter says once, just so she can’t say she hasn’t tried, “it’s me.”

No response, of course. She wouldn’t do that. Her terrified child self wouldn’t do that.

Winter tilts her head up to look at the ceiling, at the shattered remains of a gaudy chandelier. There are thick black marks on the paint. The whole place smells of smoke, as do most things where Cinder is involved. She’s grown to like it.

“I’ve come to find you,” she says to the chandelier. “I won’t let you stay here. It isn’t fair.”

Something echoes back at her; a small, terrified sob. Winter knows Cinder better than to lurch towards the sound. She sits still, stares upward. Waits.

Eventually, something else moves. More cloth shifting, more footsteps — and then a child Cinder, small and wide-eyed, running. Winter stands up to meet her, breath caught in her throat, and catches her as she comes.

Cinder presses her face into her shoulder, making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Oh, G-d,” she says, “you came. You came for me.”

She’s so small. Her limbs are shaking with the effort of running. Winter drops to her knees and pulls her closer, practically crushing the two of them together. “Of course I came.”

Winter falls asleep next to the gravestone. It wouldn’t be the first time.

//

Someone has put a blanket over her. It doesn’t make much sense; it’s the middle of summer, and Winter came wearing a jacket anyway. Still, she’s grateful for it when she wakes up, even if she can’t figure out who left it.

//

At first, she assumes it must be the groundskeeper. He seems friendly and sympathetic; he speaks to her whenever he sees her, even if she doesn’t feel much like talking, and offers her hot chocolate in the colder weather.

(He’s been on paternity leave for the past three weeks. And even if he weren’t, he’d shake her awake and make her go home when he found her.)

The second time she falls asleep by the grave in as many weeks, she knows it can’t be him, because there’s no way in hell he’d let it happen again.

//

The third time, she wakes up in the coffee shop across the street. A woman is applying something cold and damp to her forehead, and no matter how hard she tries, Winter can’t quite make out her face.

She falls back asleep almost immediately. When she wakes up again, she’s home with a fever and a message on her phone from an unknown number reading: take a nap cutie

Edited 2024-08-21 22:04 (UTC)

Winter wraps her arms around Cinder’s waist the moment she wakes up and doesn’t let go until they reach Cinder’s gate at the airport. She must have had a shower at some point before Cinder got out of bed; her hair smells faintly of coconut.

She kisses the top of Winter’s head, tucking her head against her shoulder. Winter makes a sound that could be vaguely classed as a whimper and curls her fingers into the small of Cinder’s back, breathing heavily. “I’ll miss you.”

The straps of Cinder’s backpack are digging into her skin. She pretends not to notice for Winter’s sake. “I’ll miss you too. I’ll call you when we land.”

“Please do,” Winter says damply. She’s always hated the idea of flying.

“It’s only a couple of months. And then I’ll be back.”

“And then you’ll be back,” Winter echoes.

“And then you’ll get sick of me. I’ll be here so often you’ll send me away.”

“I’ll buy you a house,” she breathes, “next to mine, so you don’t have to go far.”

Cinder grins at the top of her head. “What, are you planning to kill your dad?”

She huffs. “I’ve had ideas in the works for decades. Don’t try me. I’ve already got Whitley to alter the will.”

“Well, call me when you need an arsonist,” Cinder says, and Winter bursts into teary laughter. She tucks her head into the curve of Cinder’s neck, practically forcing her to lean forward so she can reach high enough. The neck of Cinder’s shirt starts to cling damply to her skin; she kisses the top of Winter’s head again. “I won’t be gone long, I promise you.”

“I know.” She swallows thickly. “I know you won’t.”

“I told you we’d be close by,” Cinder grins, dumping her bag on Winter’s bed. Winter lurches forward a little, as though to adjust the duvet she inevitably fucked up, and halts once Cinder drops down next to it, clearly giving up. It’s cute, really.

“You did,” she says, defeated. “How you got into Atlas in the first place, I’ll never —”

Cinder kicks her ankle. Winter yelps, reeling away. “I told you, babe. Hard work. Who’s your roommate?”

She shrugs, scowling a little. “I don’t know yet. They haven’t shown up.”

“It’s been a week.”

“Exactly!”

Cinder wriggles back until her back is pressed against the wall, her shoulder slotted under the shelf at the end of Winter’s bed. Looking reluctant, Winter crawls in next to her, curling her arms around her sides. “Want to watch something?”

She looks down, then back at Cinder. “Watch what?”

“A show?”

Winter makes a face. “What show? What shows do you even watch?”

“Oh, you know,” Cinder says, waving a hand. “We’ll find something.”

She roots around in her backpack for her laptop, ignoring Winter’s expression as she peers over her shoulder. They have a lot of free time and nothing to do with it; it makes sense to spend it with Winter. “You ever seen She-Ra?”

“Excuse me?”

“Apparently not, then.” She extracts her laptop from between two folders she doesn’t need and boots up (pirated) Netflix. “How long have you got until your, like, dick-measuring society starts?”

Winter scowls at her. “Fencing, 6 pm. Seven hours.”

“Oh, perfect,” Cinder says, dumping the laptop on her crossed legs. “We’ve got loads of time.”

Fandom: Genshin Impact
Pairing: Lumine x Amber
Format: audio/MP3

Link to fill here! ...if genshin was a gameboy game and this was the high energy title screen music? 8-bit adventures await~

(for reference, the first melody is a snippet of the main theme/loading screen melody and the second is amber's theme by ear, since amber is the first to join lumine when she enters teyvat!)

Ship: Watanabe/Sato from The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, link to ao3 fic here!

“He’s dead,” Winter announces, rising to her feet from beside the body.

Cinder gestures to the pool of blood on the floor. “Obviously.”

She flashes her a look that Cinder brushes off. Winter has never been all that intimidating to her, not for a while. “He could still have been alive. We could have called an ambulance, and all this could’ve been done with.”

“Oh, please, like any of us want to be here,” May says stiffly. Funny, Cinder had almost forgotten she was here in the first place. She’s wearing an awful lot of blue.

The force of Winter’s glare switches from Cinder to her. “You think this is a game? A man just died, May.”

“Jimmy Ironwood was a fascist and an asshole who spent nearly twenty years grooming you to become his successor,” she says shortly, “so forgive me if I don’t exactly feel sympathetic.”

Winter’s face twists. It’s rather startling to see; Cinder doesn’t think she’s ever seen that exact combination of grief and self-hatred on her old best friend’s face before.

She wipes her bloodstained hands on the white of her trousers and steps neatly over the blood, avoiding both Cinder and May’s gaze. “That may be, but he is — he was like a father to me. Someone in this house killed him, and I want to know who.”

“Well, I would also like to know if we have to share a mansion with a killer,” Cinder mutters, because someone needs to fill the weird silence she left behind. “Maybe we’ll even get lucky and they’ll take Councilwoman Slate out, too.”

There’s that glare again. Cinder stares back defiantly anyway.

May makes a noise like a tire deflating and storms out of the room, the bloodstained hem of her dress trailing behind her, presumably to alert the other guests. Cinder doesn’t particularly care, but she hopes May bothers to tell them not to leave anyway. There’s something a little bit dangerous in the thought of letting a potential murderer run around downtown Atlas.

“Well,” Winter says as soon as the door shuts behind her, “that was illuminating.”

Cinder shoots her a sharp look. “Why? You think May killed him?” She kicks Ironwood’s hand for good measure. Winter winces.

“Not her, obviously. May likes to get her hands dirty, but she’s one of Robyn’s.” She looks at Cinder out of the corner of her eye, mouth pressed into a thin line. “I haven’t ruled you out yet.”

“We were making out in the closet,” Cinder snaps. Winter flashes her a grin.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re capable of. For all I know, you staged the entire thing to frame me.”

“Oh yes, because the fact that you wiped your own hands on your fucking trousers is somehow my fault —”

Winter surges across the room, pinning Cinder’s back against the wall next to the door. She doesn’t even have it in her to be surprised by the suddenness of it all, but the forwardness does give her pause. She tilts her head to the side, waiting.

There’s no kiss. Not even a brush of her lips against the hollow of Cinder’s throat, which is what she’s come to expect in meetings like these. Winter just leans forward, resting her head on the curve of her shoulder, and murmurs, “I’d like to come home with you tomorrow, if you wouldn’t mind.”

And that’s the end of that, really.

All in all, it’s a pretty good day.

Winter is bad at speeches, but Weiss asked her to, so she makes one anyway. Cinder insists on sitting on her lap, even when they’re eating; Winter kicks both her legs up onto her abandoned chair and flashes Weiss and Penny one of her new, unsure smiles whenever they shoot a questioning look her way. Cinder successfully avoids burning down the marquee when Qrow taps her on the shoulder and asks to move past.

She also, through somewhat nefarious means, catches the bouquet Ruby throws. Winter decides not to question how. She’s just happy to be able to call the wedding a success, really.

Much later, they’re sitting side by side on the edge of the newly-cleared dance floor, watching Penny spin both Ruby and Weiss around with one arm, when Cinder slips her hand into Winter’s and asks, “If I asked you to marry me, would you say no?”

“What?”

“Well, if you’re asking,” Winter says, ignoring the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. “I mean, I don’t have any opposition to the idea. I’d quite like that, actually.”

The lights in the room flash green and blue and red, cycling gently above. Cinder tilts her head up to watch them, avoiding Winter’s gaze. “I’m not asking asking. Except maybe if I was. But I haven’t got a ring yet, so. I could be, if you —”

“If you ask me, I’ll say yes,” she says decisively. “So you can. Ask me, I mean. Get a ring. All that.”

“Good,” Cinder says quietly. She still doesn’t look at Winter, but maybe it’s better that way. She’s been one wrong move away from crying all day.

“Good,” Winter echoes.

Ship: Asahi Minato/Saki Mitsurugi (Ultraman R/B)
Words: 200

-----

“You shouldn’t have come here.” Saki says, not looking away from the moonlit night sky, when Asahi’s footsteps click behind her in the office she has claimed for her own.

“Tsuru-chan,” Asahi’s soft voice calls, so close yet so far, “I don’t want to say goodbye just yet.”

Say goodbye. Tomorrow, Leugocyte will arrive. Tomorrow, Saki is blowing herself, the Earth, and that detestable creature into smithereens. Tomorrow, those pesky brothers of Asahi’s will try to stop her and probably get all of them killed by the monster.

Saki doesn’t want to say goodbye either.

“How come DRLN let you in?” She says instead, and it’s a legitimate question, even if she knows she won’t get a satisfactory answer. Asahi doesn’t understand what happens around her better than anyone else does.

“Because we’re friends, aren’t we?”

Saki sighs.

“If you say so.”

“Would you rather we be something else?” She’s so close now, leaning on Saki’s shoulder by the windowsill. It’s far too much.

“In a softer world, perhaps.”

“Can’t we make it one?” Her gentle murmur right next to Saki’s ear is far too sorrowful for comfort.

“No.” Still she rubs Asahi’s head in a soothing motion. “We can’t.”

“Okay, but like,” Cinder starts, and Winter groans, “what did you even do in here?”

“Sleep,” Winter says, pointedly avoiding her gaze. She crosses the room so she doesn’t have to look at Cinder’s shoes on her bed and starts awkwardly rearranging some of the books on a high shelf, wrinkling her nose against the inevitable hail of dust. “Train, sometimes.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Cinder point questioningly towards the mirror. “Against yourself?”

Weiss must have snuck in at some point after she moved out (and started sleeping in the guest bedrooms whenever she visited), because there are stickers all over the bottom part of the frame. She didn’t even know Weiss liked horses.

“On occasion. When I wasn’t allowed out of my room.”

Cinder snorts. “You really were a stubborn kid.”

“The only reason my father let me out of the house in the first place is because I wouldn’t stop brandishing swords at him,” Winter says idly. Someone must have borrowed one of her books and placed it back in the wrong order; she focuses on correcting it, leaning up onto her tiptoes instead of bothering to use the stepping stool, so she doesn’t have to see the range of expressions Cinder’s face goes through in the space of a few seconds.

“Swords,” she says eventually, too casual to be anything but forced. “You had a sword collection as a kid?”

“Hardly a collection.” Winter steps away from the bookshelf and turns back to her on the bed, hyper-aware now of her eyes following the trail of scuff marks and lines around the room. It only looks pristine until you look closely. “My swords are my grandfather’s. I had a dagger I trained with for a little while, too, but I didn’t really learn how to use it until I went to the Academy.”

“Anything else?” Cinder drawls.

Winter tilts her head to the side, thinking, ignoring the sarcasm. “I used rifles whenever I went on business trips with my father — clay pigeons and so on, you know — but it was hardly training. I’m fairly good with an axe. I understand how to operate weapons that use Dust, obviously. Most training guns for the younger children at Huntsman academies have standard-issue bullets, though, so that was more of a personal project.”

Cinder snorts, ducking her head. Her legs kick up on the other side of the mattress and trail in the air, and for a moment Winter has to wonder just what her childhood could have been like if she was there. “Wow. Normal childhood, huh?”

YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 7

PROMPT: TEAM KITTYURI

PROMPT: TEAM KITTYURI

PROMPT: TEAM KITTYURI

PROMPT: TEAM KITTYURI

PROMPT: TEAM KITTYURI

PROMPT: Team Kittyuri

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

PROMPT: TEAM TRANSFORMERS

PROMPT: Tokusatsu Yuri Ships United Front

FILL: Team Transformers

Prompt: Team Webcomics/Webtoons

Prompt: Team Webcomics/Webtoons

PROMPT: Team Kittyuri

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

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FILL: Team Anime/Manga

FILL: TEAM FIRE EMBLEM

FILL: Team Kittyuri

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FILL: Tokusatsu Yuri Ships United Front

FILL: Team Anime/Manga