#i had this thought also for the first time today running through the industrial estate that what if someone thinks i’m casing the joint

[fingertipsmp3]

Going for a run when I don’t want to makes me feel like the most productive person alive idk

[lyledebeast]

Since I answered the ask about Anne Howard and had to think about her relationship with Gabriel, I also spent some time thinking about the other heterosexual couple in The Patriot. And something about the way Benjamin and Charlotte weirdly flirt reminded me of another couple, but I could not put my finger on which one until today.

Even though Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) is my second favorite play by my second favorite American playwright, I haven't thought about it in years: a tragedy for which I am compensating now! It's set in the mid 20th C South, so prepare yourselves for some unhinged names. The story focuses on three unhappily married couples: Brick and Maggie, Goober and Mae, and Big Daddy and Big Mama, the parents of Brick and Goober (because what else could people who chose those names for their sons possibly be called?) The two young couples, and the numerous children Goober and Mae have together, have gathered at the family plantation on the Mississippi Delta to help break the news to Big Mama that her husband is dying of cancer (along with less noble motives we'll discuss later).

Inheritance of land and birth as a source of rejuvenation in the face of death are important themes in Cat as in The Patriot, but the comparison of the two highlights a third theme that is likely unintentional on Rodat/Emmerich's end: heterosexuality as industry.

Brick is the younger and favorite son, but he and Maggie have no children. It transpires over the course of the play's three acts that Goober has married Mae, a former beauty queen, and had all these children in an attempt to charm his father's affection away from Brick and inherit the estate. This plan is foiled at the end when Maggie triumphantly announces that she is carrying a child "sired by Brick out of Maggie the Cat." This line in which she compares her husband to a stud and herself to a broodmare was recalled to my mind by the "They come from good stock on their mother's/father's side" exchange between Benjamin and Charlotte. The baby in Charlotte's arms at the end of the film demonstrates that at least one of Benjamin's hopes and prayers for the new nation has come to fruition. There is new stock, even if the bloodlines are, uh . . . not so new. The baby Maggie promises carries the same hope for the future with one notable difference. It's based on a lie, and it's hardly the first one to appear in the play.

Brick is, in addition to being a former football star and an alcoholic, a deeply repressed gay man, one of the few to actually appear on stage in a Williams play. Usually, his gay characters are dead before the plays begin and yet among the most important characters in them, and this play has one of those, too! Brick's relationship with deceased fellow football player Skipper is the most important of his life and a source of deep resentment and jealousy in Maggie. When she confronted Skipper about his feelings for Brick, he attempted to prove her wrong by having sex with her, but failed. He also tried to get Brick to run away with him, but failed in that as well, and then he committed suicide: a typical cheery 1950's representation of gay life. Brick fares little better; the play ends with Maggie locking up his liquor supply to coerce him into sex so they can "make the lie true."

Cat is a scathing critique of the role lies play in heterosexual family life. Goober and Big Daddy do not love their wives any more than Brick does, instead seeing them only as a means to an end. Mae seems well-aware of this, but by God she has committed to winning away Maggie's fortune by out-breeding her, and she is going to see it through! Big Mama has performed her roles as the dutiful wife for so long she seems incapable of anything else. Big Daddy, at the end of his life, has decided to part way with "lies and mendacity," which in part means confessing to Brick how he came by his land, an inheritance not from his father but from another couple that could not have children . . . because they were both men. Perhaps he, like Brick, only married because he had something to prove.

Benjamin is already proven as a sire of seven children; why does he need to marry again? This is a question I ask each and every time I revisit, and the film fails to answer it in a way that has anything to do with Charlotte herself. When she reminds Ben that "I am not my sister," she is voicing everyone in the audience's thoughts out loud, and Ben's "I know" is not very reassuring. She seems to be in love with him from their very first scene: pinching her cheeks in the mirror when his arrival is announced, giggling like a schoolgirl when Ben's children jostle them into each other. He, on the other hand, only seems to think of her as a convenience. The only time he speaks her name are when he tells his children to go to her in the event of his death and when he delivers a voice over recap of the war's end framed as a letter addressed to her (and the children, of course). When she is not a destination for his children she is a womb provided to supply him with more!

It is hard to resist making a connection between these two stories about straight marriages brought to life by gay men, but Williams and the wives in Cat deserve better. After all, the tragedy is not simply that these men are trapped in loveless marriages but that the women are trapped with them. Maggie in particular is vastly richer and more nuanced character than Charlotte. But, if we consider who always manages to catch Benjamin's eye, who never fails to get a rise out of him, whose death brings about the end of Ben's engagement with the main plot of the story and his settling down with the mute props his wife and children have become . . . maybe Ben has something to prove after all.

[itsany62]

SteveTony - Alternate Universe

Here are some Alternate Universe fics that I love. Don't forget to leave kudos and nice comments in every fic!

Food for the Heart, by LagLemon, 14 k >, Cooking, No Powers.

After being introduced to a gourmet food on a budget blog by Pepper (a gift for her elderly, cheapskate mother) Tony starts cooking again. The recipes are good, but the blog owner is even better. Still, Tony isn't so sure Captain America, the guy who runs the blog, can compete with Hot Bagboy, the gorgeous blond who works at the grocery store.

"Free to Good Home" by Captain_Panda, 7 k > words, Alternate Universe - Animals.

"Oliver and Company" AU.

There's a great big world outside the box.

But it's a dog-eat-dog world, and Tony's just one cat. Then a stray dog comes along, looking for a friend.

A Day In Principal Stark's Office, by nannersmelo, 10 k > words, Steve Single Parent, Director Tony.

Tony Stark has his hands full with not only Stark Industries, but also his beloved mother's life project: The Maria Stark Academy, and as he enters his office in order to deal with a ferocious mother whose son was apparently assaulted by one of his brightest students, he was sure this day would culminate in nothing but a heinous headache. Little did he know - he was in for one hell of a surprise.

I Am the Night by gottalovev, 6 k > words, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampire Tony Stark, Wizard Steve Rogers.

That's it. Tony is doomed. He rolls on his back, crosses his wings over his belly and closes his eyes. He'll await death here, misunderstood by the world to the bitter end.

C is for Calculus and Compromise, by heydoeydoey, 11 k>, Gifted AU, Post-Divorce, Angts with a Happy Ending.

Steve's just trying to give his prodigy daughter a normal childhood. Enter a meddling school administrator, Tony Stark, and too many lawyers.

tell you my love for you by jelliebean, 22 k > words, Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Based on Love Simon.

A guy at Shield High comes out on tumblr, anonymously. Tony thought he was the only gay guy on campus--not out, because of Howard--and sends him an email.

“Hey, Flying. Same here. I’ve got a secret too, and it’s like I’m hiding who I am, every day. From everyone. All the closest people to me. But I just can’t tell them. I’m gay, too. It feels like I’m putting on this mask, this shell of who I think they want me to be. Even though I don’t think my friends would judge me. I don’t know why. I just. I’ve got a secret. –Shell”

The guy seems great--amazing, even, and then Hammer has to step in and ruin it all.

Mergers & Acquisitions by Robin_tCJ, 33 k > words, Angst, sex as currency.

Steve Rogers is the CEO of the Rogers Corporation, which he built from the ground up. When he learns that Hydra International is making a bid for a hostile takeover of Stark Industries, he decides he has to do what he can to stop Hydra from overtaking the market and becoming an unstoppable, unethical conglomerate. Tony Stark asks for something Steve isn’t sure he should give, but he does it anyway – and it completely changes everything. But when Hydra keeps coming, Steve and Tony realize there’s more to this than they’d realized.

Meeting the Monsters by itsallAvengers, 23 k > words, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters.

Tony's at public school with kids his age for the first time in seventeen years, and he is determined that this year is gonna be his year. He's going to make friends. He's going to be popular. People will like him.

Unsurprisngly, none of that actually happens.

He does sort-of-maybe fall in love with a vampire in his class that everyone is terrified of, though. So... there's that.

(I Want You To See) The Darkest Side Of Me by ann2who, 45 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Post-World War II.

In Monte Carlo, Steve meets the wealthy widower Anthony Stark. It’s love at first sight—at least for Steve—and he can’t believe his luck when Tony asks him to live at Stark Mansion, his large estate in Malibu. Never in his life had Steve thought something like this was possible… never had he been this happy. However, soon Steve realizes that Tony is still deeply troubled by the death of his first wife and haunted by the many ghosts she left behind. The longer Steve lives in her shadow, the more he understands that… He can never be what Tony’s wife had once been for him. And Tony might never truly love him.

Gift With Purchase Remix by sabrecmc, 43 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, hooker Steve, Sugar Daddy.

Gift With Purchase Remix wherein Steve actually is a hooker. But for a Really Sympathetic Reason.

The Little Glass Screwdriver by ann2who, 19 k > words, Cinderella AU.

When Prince Steven is forced to find himself a bride, true love gets in the way. As the night of the grand ball unfolds, the prince meets a mysterious knight who might just change his entire life in a way he could have never imagined.

**Cinderella AU**

Covered in Lines by royal_chandler, 3 k > words, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Alternate Universe - College/University, Age Difference.

He can’t lose sight of pale, deft hands that gesture on transitive verbs, an ink-stained thumb edging underneath Tony’s ribcage with an affection that can only be called dangerous.

half-wild and glimmering by deathsweetqueen , 15 k > words, Alternate Universe - Western, Prostitution.

“Give me a drink, Tasha,” Tony sighs as he lands in front of the bar. “I’ve had one hell of a day.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Have you really?” she asks, loftily, sliding a tumbler of whiskey along the well-polished wood.

Tony lets his head hang, the sweat beading on the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to put myself through today,” he sighs, wearily.

“I would not know. You will not let me work the rooms,” Natasha retorts, her voice a little strained, busying her hands in a dirty glass.

“I don’t let you work the rooms ‘cause you’re liable to kill anyone who touches ya the wrong way and we can’t lose that much of our business,” Tony reminds her, wryly amused, sipping at his whiskey. He shakes his head at the burn. “We peddle flesh, darling, not death.”

peers, fears and holiday cheers by jacobby, 24 k > words, Parent Tony Stark.

“He’s only two years older than you,” Tony finally says when the silence becomes too much to bear.

“Dad, Teddy is turning twenty-seven next year.”

“I am not dating your husband—”

“I’m not implying you are. I just want you to be...aware that he’s practically the same age as my husband.”

AKA

Tony Stark's new boyfriend is only two years older than his adult sons. Telling them is one thing, introducing them is another. What Tony doesn't expect is that the past always has a way of catching up to him, of biting him in the ass when he least expects it. Well, at least they're all together for the Holidays. What more can he ask for?

A Higher Form of War by sabrecmc, 292 k > words, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Historical Romance.

Tony is a King with a surprising number of people out to kill him. Steve and the rest of the Avengers are fighting for Pierce's rebellion and end up with Tony as their prisoner. Oops.

you can call me babe for the weekend by complicationstoo, 10 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, actor Tony Stark.

Tony left his small town for Los Angeles after high school, leaving behind everything to pursue his dream. Ten years later, he comes back for the first time and finds that some things are impossible to let go of.

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be by iam93percentstardust, 72 k > words, Alternate Universe - Theatre.

Famed director Phil Coulson brings Shakespeare’s beloved play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to Broadway. This production though comes with a twist: a brief but passionate love affair between the faerie king, Oberon, and his attendant, Puck. In the roles of the two star-crossed lovers, Coulson casts America’s darling Steve Rogers, fresh off his third Academy Award, and Broadway royalty, Tony Stark. Steve quickly finds himself falling for the quick-witted and sarcastic actor but Tony is dating the stage manager. Unwilling to come between the seemingly happy couple, Steve steps back but all isn’t right behind the scenes and Tony may need him when everything falls apart.

and so we rebuild by raeldaza, 26 k > words, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Soulmates, Mutual Pining.

Sometimes, a voice whispers: you will never atone for your mistakes.

Tony believes that, believes it so strongly some days he drowns in it, but he still tries. Tries through Starfleet, tries through inventions, tries through missions. Then, one day, he meets his new Captain, and things change.

and teach this heart (how to beat with light), by starklystar, 40 k >, AU Hospital, Single parent Steve.

Eight years ago, at a funeral with a baby's cries ringing in his ears, Tony Stark decided to turn his life around. He's a genius, billionaire, philanthropist. What's so hard to adding 'doctor' to that list? And after that, it can't be that hard to add 'husband' and 'father' too, right? But the past has a way of haunting even the very best of us, and in any universe, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers have never had an easy love.

Featuring: drama, chaos, Peter's scheming, meddling friends, and doctors learning again that the heart can never be as simple as four chambers and four valves.

Catching Lightning in a Bottle by sabrecmc, 120 k > words, Alternate Universe - Sweet Home Alabama Fusion.

College student Tony meets janitor Steve at MIT and they fall blissfully in love, until Howard happens and things fall apart. One divorce paperwork snafu courtesy of the ever-helpful Jarvis, and ten years later, Tony has to get re-divorced from Steve.

This does not go as he imagines.

Or, the Sweet Home Alabama AU that no one--well, okay, a few of you--asked for.

The Night Shift by weethreequarter , 16 k > words, Alternate Universe - Hospital.

Welcome to the Emergency Department of San Antonio General where Dr. Tony Stark joins the team fresh from his most recent tour in Afghanistan and - much to the consternation of the other staff - strikes up an instant rapport with Nurse Steve Rogers. Meanwhile, new resident Bruce Banner refuses to give up on his patient, and Dr. Sharon Carter learns something from her own patients. Throw in a pissed off hospital administrator, Clint using the coffee pot as a mug again, and a major car crash and you have, well, just another night shift.

Cake It Till You Make It by ChocolateCapCookie, 10 k > words, Kid Fic, Alternate Universe - Bakery.

Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have a lot in common. They're single parents, they own rival bakeries at the center of town... and they both hate each other's guts.

When a mix-up at Peter and Morgan's school has both fathers scrambling to prove they're the better baker, they do the mature, adult thing and compete in a bake-off. Between the mixing and the creaming, the baking and the icing, Steve and Tony find that hate is actually not that far from love.

Looking for Heaven by foxxcub, 31 k > words, Alternate Universe - Regency, Marriage of Convenience.

When young Lord Anthony Stark learns Steven Rogers has enlisted in the army, he thinks he's seen the last of his tiny, headstrong, haughty stable boy. But four years later, Lord Stark gets an unexpected visit from Steve, whose mother has fallen gravely ill and into financial ruin. Even more unexpected, Steve agrees to a shocking proposal: they will marry, giving Steve the necessary funds to save his mother, and Tony the much-needed reprieve from harassing would-be suitors. It is a business arrangement, nothing more. But as time goes on and circumstances arise, Tony begins to learn that keeping his heart away from his husband is easier said than done.

just a guy, standing in front of another guy by theappleppielifestyle, 12 k > words.

“It’s not real,” Tony says, still smiling, jaw twitching with effort. “The fame. It’s - I’m just a guy."

(Or, Notting Hill AU, with a twist.)

Mother of Exiles (A Titanic AU) by BladeoftheNebula, 21 k > words, Alternate Universe - Titanic Fusion.

“You’ll never guess what just happened!” Steve said, taking a deep breath to try and calm his breathing. “I met someone. A guy from first class.”

Dublin 1912: Steve Rogers is barely making ends meet, living in the tenement slums of Dublin. But a stroke of good luck gives him and his best friend the chance to change their fortune. Two tickets to America on board the RMS Titanic.

The Devil You Know by shetlandowl, 17 k > words, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Author/Novelist.

Best selling author Tony Stark revives the bodice ripper genre for a modern audience. From frisky gay cowboys to ravenous lesbian pirate queens, he consistently delivers riveting thrillers full of romance, drama, and the filthy, unapologetically kinky sex that has become his trademark specialty.

Tony has everything a man could dream of - horny, adoring fans, and boatloads of money. Or that's what he thought, until Detective Steve Rogers walks into his life and turns it all upside down.

Bears and Mountains and Lumberjacks Oh My! by justanotherrollingstony (adoctoraday), 24 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Lumberjack Steve Rogers.

It was supposed to be easy--go meet the reclusive artist and buy some art. And then came the broken down car. And the snowstorm. And the lumberjack with a face like a greek god. So yea, Tony is stuck in a cabin in the woods with a hot lumberjack till the storm clears. Could be worse.

Series: A Furious Vexation by Annie D (scaramouche), 18 k > words, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse.

A Steve/Tony post-apocalypse AU that exists pretty much just for the smut.

That Feline Beat by Tito11, 5 k > words, Alternate Universe - Animals.

Presenting Steve and Tony in the Aristocats!AU

Tony and his three kittens have been kidnapped from their fancy Upper East Side apartment while their owners are away and deposited on the mean streets of Harlem. Unsure of where they are or how to get back home, they'll have to rely on street cat Steve to guide them. Will they get home safely? Will Tony's fear of abandonment cause him to drive away the best tomcat he's ever known? Only time will tell.

do you fondue? by calciseptine, 16 k > words, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting.

Tony has done crazy things in the name of food, but falling in love with Steve Rogers really takes the cake.

a glimpse of heaven's love by parkrstark, 13 k> words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Terminal Illnesses.

The child begins to empty his pockets. He starts to count coins on the counter. Tony huffs a little impatiently as he realizes most of them are pennies.

The cashier actually humors the kid and counts along with him. They reach 3 dollars and 54 cents before he shakes his head sadly. "Sorry, kid. There's not enough here."

The kid sounds close to crying. "I need these paints for my Papa. It's Christmas Eve and these...he doesn't have any. The doctors said he doesn't have long. I want him to have these. In case he meets Jesus tonight, I want him to paint one more time. Please."

Tony takes a step forward, arms still full of toys he's buying just because. He can cover this child's gift for his dying father. Money. Money is what he's good for.

"I'll buy them."

--

Or, the Christmas Shoes AU no one but me asked for.

If you survive first impressions, you're good to go by itsallAvengers, 3 k > words, Parent Tony Stark, Alternate Universe - No Powers.

The first time Peter Parker-Stark sees Steve Rogers, he may or may not be standing in direct path of the man's motorcycle.

His daddy is really not going to be happy about that one.

A Rat-ional Conclusion by BladeoftheNebula, 6 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Veterinarians, Parent Tony Stark.

He had a strong flurry of patients throughout the morning and by the time it rolled around to noon, he was just about worn out.

He walked out into the reception, stretching until he felt a satisfying pop. “Are we done?”

Bucky checked the screen. “Just about. One more before lunch - a rat, singular.”

Steve breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully straight forward then. “Great, let me know when they-”

He was interrupted by the bell over the door and looked up to see a little girl cradling a small animal carrier, being shepherded through the door by easily one of the hottest men he’d ever seen in real life.

Oh wow.

Tidal Pull by sabrecmc, 97 k > words, Octopus Tony Stark, Alternate Universe - Shipwrecked.

After the American Civil War, Union soldier Steve Rogers takes a chance on an opportunity to sail with the Stark Trading Company down in the Caribbean. During a terrible storm, his ship is lost. To his surprise, he survives, and ends up stranded on an island that isn't quite as deserted as he first thinks.

Or, a reverse Little Mermaid tale where Steve has to fall for the fish-man.

Twelve Days by elysianprince, 22 k > words, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Ghosts.

In which Tony finds himself in a town that looks like it crawled out of a Hallmark Christmas movie, trying to sell an inn he didn't know he owned, all while dealing with Steve Rogers, the resident ghost who has returned to haunt the inn each December during the twelve days of Christmas for the past seventy years. Tony has only one logical solution that benefits them both: break the curse that binds him - but falling for a man almost a century old wasn't among his plans.

She kissed me by S_Horne, 1 k > words, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting.

“Your mom kissed me.”

Steve blinked awake and lifted his head from his pillow to look over at the silhouette in the doorway. “What?”

“Your mom,” Tony reiterated. “She kissed me.”

“Yeah,” Steve said simply, “she does that.”

[notebooknebula]

When Finding Deals in Real Estate Is Challenging, Make A Shift, Adapt! |  Alex Pardo & Jay Conner

https://www.jayconner.com/when-finding-deals-in-real-estate-is-challenging-make-a-shift-adapt-alex-pardo-jay-conner/

Alex Pardo shares his strategy in finding deals in real estate when times are tough and inventory is low.

Alex Pardo is the Founder of Creative RE-Solutions, a home buying company based out of South Florida. The company’s purpose is to help people by providing solutions to unwanted properties.

In addition, Alex is the Co-Founder of ASCEND, a high-level mastermind and coaching community for Entrepreneurs that want to experience a better life and business.

Alex is also the Co-Founder of Holiday Mastermind, which was created to unite entrepreneurs that are passionate about go-giving, enhancing their businesses, all while doing so in a world-class setting.

Alex is the host of the Flip Empire Show, a top-rated podcast designed to help anyone achieve financial freedom through real estate investing. The show was launched in 2016, features industry thought leaders and cover a variety of topics like entrepreneurship, real estate investing, marketing, team building, systems and automation, personal development, vision building, and more.

Through his businesses, masterminds, coaching, and podcast, Alex is able to fulfill his purpose of helping others achieve Freedom, while passionately living his vision with his family.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: https://youtu.be/GycIG32exwg – “Ascend Your Success In Real Estate with Alex Pardo & Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority”

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11266/when-finding-deals-in-real-estate-is-challenging-make-a-shif

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

Talking about real estate investing specifically. You’re still a very active real estate investor yourself, you know what’s going on in the market. And I don’t know about you Alex, but Carol joy, my wife and I have been full-time real estate investors since 2003. So we’re now into the 18th year of this. And in these years I have, I have yet or I’ll never before have I found it more challenging to actually find the deals, right? For more than one reason, number one: there’s no inventory, right. And as soon, We’re not going to rely and I never have, but we’re not going to rely on. We can’t rely on the multiple listing service because there’s nothing in there, right? There’s no deals right now, foreclosures are starting to open up and you’ll see a bank owned property in there every now and then starting up. But my question to you is in this economy, in this market where. Well, first of all, I don’t want to assume, would you agree that it is more challenging to find deals today? And we have to find them in different or more ways say than we did a couple of years ago.

Alex Pardo:

That’s a tough question to answer. I think it can be more challenging but I think we just have to adapt. And I think we have to, you know, so what the marketing that we were doing 12, 18, 24 months ago might not be as effective now. And so I think it’s really a matter of I hate to use the word pivot because that’s overused, but we have to shift. Right? And so while one of the things I like to do when it comes to marketing is when people are fishing in this pond. I like to figure out other ponds that people just haven’t discovered. I remember years ago, cold calling became very popular but there was a handful of people that really discovered cold calling before it became popular. And then it was ring less voicemails. And then it was SMS marketing.

And now SMS marketing is becoming more challenging because of certain laws and regulations. What I find Jay and I’ve had conversations with mutual friends about this is that the more competitive and challenging finding deals becomes the more archaic effective marketing is. And what I mean by that is while I would love to be on your show here and sharing the next greatest sexiest way to generate leads and close deals direct mail things like that still work. The question is, “Do you work? Are you going to remain consistent?” You know, are you putting all your eggs into one marketing channel or do you have at least two or three, and are you consistently testing, tracking, tweaking, and improving on your marketing channels? So I think it can be more challenging, but one of the things I have found to be most effective when it comes to marketing is regardless of what marketing you’re doing, I would prefer to go an inch wide and a mile deep.

And what I mean by that is be consistent and committed to your marketing, whatever that is consistently do it. And then don’t just be lazy. You know, one of the things that when I was running the wholesaling operation, we had a swipe file. So when my acquisition manager would go meet with a seller, I would always see if they could collect the direct mail pieces. And 99% of the copy all said the same exact thing. We buy houses with cash as is we pay your closing costs. And I like to separate ourselves. So when people are zigging, you want to zag. And so we attempted to make our direct mail pieces, very personable. We didn’t even allude to, “Hey, we can close quickly.” Because guess what if they don’t want to close quickly? So figure out how you can separate yourself from the competition and in copying your marketing is just one of many ways to do that.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Dark AU: The Problem

In an alternative universe where @untilthepainstarts‘s Lev married (and murdered) Martin, his captor, only to prove a thoughtful, fascinating criminal mastermind... in a timeline where @whumpiary‘s Cass becomes Cassius Bergen, who takes over the Estate after Christopher Bergen goes mysteriously missing... so there is also a Kauri.

Friendly, charming, engaging, flirtatious, this Kauri is a live-in stray at the Bergen Estate, known to come and go as he pleases. He spends an awful lot of time in Cassius Bergen’s office, and rumor has it he’s not in there to perform administrative duties.

Dot, Nell, and I have had fun along with our group of friends talking out the idea of the Dark AU, and honestly, I couldn’t resist seeing where Kauri might fit into it. I even wrote a thing, which I have been given permission to share here!

So, without further mucking about trying to explain it... here is Dark Kauri. Just sit back and enjoy the pretty.

---

CW: Referenced past noncon and pet whump, hints of fucky headspace regarding spice, some low-level spiciness (like PG-13), conditioned behavior

“Take it off.” 

“Mmn… no.” Cass kept his head tilted to the side, watching Kauri stand frozen in the doorway, one hand resting lightly on the frame. Lithe and willowy, the Bergen Estate’s fascinating, gorgeous semi-permanent ward looked every inch the gangster’s moll today. Impeccably dressed, like Cass himself.

Cass wore a black suit over a deep purple pinstriped button up loosely unbuttoned just enough to show off the wide-banded black satin choker he wore around his neck. 

The choker was what Kauri’s eyes were locked on, slightly widened.

“Take it off, Cass.” Kauri’s voice caught this time, just slightly, and Cass felt like a shark smelling blood in the water. He could feel the way Kauri’s wants poured out of him, a waterfall of nerves and fear and dark places he was desperate to keep hiding from. “I mean it.”

“Lev’s coming over later, you know,” Cass said, voice light and airy. The blade he cut with, in moments like this, was nearly invisibly thin. 

Kauri bled, just the same, whenever and however Cass wanted him to, and somehow he never ran away, no matter how hard Cass tried to push him.

Mostly, he didn’t. Mostly he liked being a safe place for Kauri in a world that had very few of them. But some days Cass felt restless, angry, hungry to prove to Kauri and everyone else that he was exactly the monster he should be. 

One day he’d find the thing that chased Kauri away.

Today, he was trying this.

“Do you think he’ll like it?” Cass gave Kauri a half-cocked grin, beautiful poison, crooked two fingers to ask him to come closer even as he wanted to say, Run away this time and stay gone, it’s only what I deserve.

Some of the fear settled, and Cass felt the pulse of his desires begin to shift, to change. Kauri didn’t have what Cass had, but he could read some things, too, in his own way. Instead of turning to leave, Kauri braced himself and stepped forward, moving across the room with each step placed with careless grace. “What? You want me to ask if Lev Viklund-Reid will like your collar, Cass? After he had to wear one?”

“Yeah.” Kauri stopped next to his chair and Cass swung it around to face him, legs apart, sitting back and looking up at Kauri, head tilted. “I want to know if he’ll like my collar. Saw it in a shop two days ago and it made me think of you. And him.”

Kauri’s face didn’t change, but Cass could feel the way his desires twisted, shifted, became darker and started to turn on themselves. Anger, justifiable and justified on every level, was there. But stronger than the anger… 

“You want to put one on me, Cass?” Kauri asked, and his voice was low, too deep for how pretty he was, as he moved forward to stand briefly framed on either side by Cass’s suit pant-clad legs. Then he climbed up into the chair, straddling him, the pressure where their hips met entirely too pleasant.

This… wasn’t quite what Cass had expected him to do. “... no, Kauri,” He admitted, and some of the easy confidence was lost, in that moment. The power balance shifted as Kauri rocked his hips forward, rolling them, as his hands laid flat on Cass’s stomach over his shirt and then slid slowly up. 

Kauri took over, somehow, in the way his body could light Cass up without even touching bare skin.

Cass cleared his throat. “This isn’t-... Wasn’t my plan.”

Kauri laughed, low and husky, and the spikes of disgust generously ladled over the darker wants that curled around the two of them were heady, making Cass feel half-drunk and outmatched. “What was your plan, then?”

Hands traveled slowly upward, skimming to the sides under his suit jacket to press against his ribs through the silky-smooth fabric of his shirt. They paused over his chest, pressed against his collarbone and then around behind his neck. He felt his curly hair, soft against Kauri’s hands, shift over his neck as he met the warm, wide blue eyes of a runaway pet, someone else’s escaped whore.

Cass knows the feeling, although he didn’t escape - he became the whoremaster instead. Sort of. Sometimes it felt like being whoremaster, trying to hold the Bergen Estate together.

Sometimes, though, Kauri looked at him like this and Cass felt less like he had control and more like Kauri could have shredded him and he might have thanked him for the touch.

“...I wanted to hurt you,” He admitted, not sure why he spoke the words out loud when he didn’t mean to speak them at all. “And Lev. Wanted to see if I could.”

Kauri rolled his hips forward, and the pressure coiled heat low in Cass’s belly, setting the constant low pulse of arousal he felt nearly every time Kauri entered a room into a flame. He hadn’t even felt the pet undo the choker’s little buckle at the back of his neck, blinking in surprise at the feel of the satin sliding away, leaving his neck bare.

“You’d only hurt me if you put it on me,” Kauri said, voice low, husky, warm with need. He held up the strip of silky cloth right in front of Cass’s eyes and tore the buckle off the end in a sudden burst of violence, dropping it with a clatter onto Cassius’s desk.

His smile widened even as Cass felt his smile returning. “I wouldn’t, you know, Kauri.”

“Wouldn’t what?” Kauri knew the answer, but still wanted to hear it out loud. Cass could respect that.

“Collar you. I would never collar you, you know that.”

“Do I know that?”

“Yes.” Cass’s voice cracked, caught, and he repeated, insistent, “Yes, you do.”

“You might, one day, if you wanted someone to see you do it. I’d let you, too.” Kauri shrugged, seemingly unmoved, even as Cass felt the stir of fear that ran through him and around him, half-buried by want for other things but still there, a thread he could pull, unravel, undo if he wanted.

He wanted. And Kauri knew it.

Cass stared with a mouth suddenly too dry for speech as Kauri simply bent himself over backwards, his knees still on either side of Cass’s thighs, and arched his back until he was looking upside down at the industrial-strength shredder Cass kept next to his desk, reaching one arm out while the other went palm-flat to the floor.

Cass’s hands moved fast to grip onto Kauri’s hips and hold him steady as the other man fed the band of shining black satin, torn at one end where the buckle had been, into the shredder. It kicked on automatically, a high roaring whine as it fought to destroy threads instead of paper.

Kauri’s position was nearly obscene, his own growing hardness pressing against Cass’s, shirt riding up to show a flash of pale skin. Cass wanted suddenly to lick his way up or down and he wasn’t sure which or if he would ever stop once he started.

He could see the faintest outline of a bruise along one hip showing above the waistband of Kauri’s pants, his own teeth indented there in a deeper purple surrounded by red and yellow. Biting down had made Kauri scream for more.

If his mouth had been dry before, it became the fucking Sahara when the shredder finished its work and Kauri’s stomach muscles tightened, simply rolling himself back up, curving back to sitting in Cass’s lap again.

He leaned forward, sliding his arms around Cass’s neck, mouth moving against his ear. His teeth nipped lightly at Cass’s earlobe as he whispered, “I’ll wear anything and nothing you want me to wear, Cass, but I won’t let you collar yourself. Now fuck me before Lev gets here or don’t fuck me at all today.”

When Lev arrived, Cass was seated right behind his desk, his shirt wrinkled and suit jacket misbuttoned, half-cocked grin right back on his face, a red mark blossoming along the right side of his neck.

Kauri answered the door for Viklund-Reid with a flush in his face and a swollen look to his lips as he held out his hand. His sweater was on backwards and inside-out. It might have looked accidental, if you didn’t know Kauri.

Which Viklund-Reid didn’t, although he didn’t look surprised, either.

Lev looked to Cass first, eyebrow raised, and he only shrugged in return, giving him a rakish, devil-may-care grin. “Have you met Kauri, yet, Viklund-Reid?”

“I haven’t,” Lev responded, voice warm and slightly lilting, shaking Kauri’s hand without the faint curl of his lip in disgust that some of the others did, either unbothered or just incredibly polite. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

Kauri shot him a smile, sunny and winning, and leaned up to kiss Lev on the cheek, fingertips sliding down the lapel of his suit. “You will,” He murmured against the faintest hint of stubble on Lev’s skin, and then moved past him out the door.

Lev and Cass both stared, for a second, in silence at the slight sway of his hips before the ex-pet disappeared around a bend in the hall. Cass let himself soak up the hint of Lev’s desires in the air - they weren’t too far off from his own, although Lev’s were far subtler, buried.

Lev turned back, pressing invisible wrinkles out of his suit. “Are we going to have a problem?”

“Nope,” Cass responded, sunny and bright. He felt a low throb at the spot where shoulder and neck met, a growing hickey that would be a dark bruise by night. He was surprised they hadn’t heard him react to that out in the hall. “What possible problem could there be?”

Lev gave Cass a flat stare and said dryly, “I think I see why you couldn’t wait until after my visit.”

“Wait for what?” Cass asked, innocently. 

“Bergen-“

The shredder kicked on, surprising them both as it spat out the last few black satin threads into the trash bin below it. Cass slid the collar’s broken buckle, with its bit of tattered fabric clinging to it, carefully into one pocket.

[softyoongiionly]

Mama Mia 🗺

Your boyfriend Jungkook has become the worldest youngest billionaire after inventing the most sought after wine on the planet. After meeting you and falling in love, he decides to ditch the bustling streets of Seoul for a picturesque villa on the Greek island of Mykonos. Today, is the first day in your new place.

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Word Count: 3.5k

Genre: Smut, fluff, Boyfriend! Jungkook, Billionaire! Jungkook

Warnings: SMUT (18+ only please), there’s a lot of fluff, also Jungkook speaks Korean again and, this deserves a warning, language

A/N: I swear that Yoongi is my bias...I’m just really going through it for this man. Love you guys!

***All italicized/bolded words indicate when characters are speaking Korean***

“Jagiiii!” Your boyfriend beckons from the front door

You giggle to yourself, moving from your seated position on the floor to jog over to him.

He’s stumbling in through the stone archway with far too many cardboard boxes in his arms.

“You’re going to break something, what are you doing?” You laugh, grabbing one of the boxes that is threatening to crash to the ground.

“I hate making multiple trips…” He grumbles, pouty lips slightly chapped from the summerwind.

Shaking your head, you usher him into your villa, nodding at the dining table: one of the few items you’ve managed to unpack, “I’m just stacking everything here for now until we get everything inside, I’ll help you finish unloading….”

You go to turn towards the door before you feel your boyfriend rush up behind you, wrapping his strong tan arms around your waist, “Nooooo don’t help, I got it. The rest of the stuff is heavy, I don’t want you to hurt yourself…”

“Me? You’re the one who keeps trying to bring in 10 boxes at a time…” You point out, giggling as his black, fluffy hair tickles your neck.

It’s been getting so long recently and, you’re really into it.

“It was only 8…” He grumbles, brow furrowed as he hugs you tighter, “Please let me finish, I really want to help, you’ve been working too hard.”

Jungkook wasn’t much for speaking with strangers so, in the process of your international move, you’d been the one communicating with the real estate agent and, the movers to get everything arranged.  He doesn’t like feeling inadequate so, when it came time for heavy lifting, he was all over it. Packing up your former shared apartment in Seoul and, unpacking once the two of you had arrived in Mykonos had been his sole mission.

With a sigh and, the absence of a backbone, you smile, kissing his partially exposed forehead, “Fine but, take it easy yeah? I’ll be in here if you need me…”

Jungkook’s bunny smile informs you that he’s pleased with your response and, he nods eagerly before kissing your cheek and, rushing out of the front door.

You return to the living room floor and continue to focus on the box you were previously unpacking. The labeling system the two of you had figured out proved to be quite effective. However, moving is never simple, regardless of ones efforts to make it so.

This box, for example, did not belong to the living room, it belonged in Jungkook’s old study but, that doesn’t stop you from smiling at its contents. Awards, medals, his first bottle of wine he ever made, along with his certifications and licenses to sell liquor, all things that ultimately lead to the two of you meeting , falling in love and, moving half way across the world together.

Jungkook was the youngest billionaire in the world and, he made his fortune from patenting his own brand of hangover-proof wine. Sounds gimmicky right? Many people thought so but, Jungkook’s family had been in the wine making business for generations so, with his passion for the craft and his disdain for severe hangovers, he sought out to create a product that would revolutionize the industry.

And boy, did he do just that.

At the age of 22, he launched Azucar De La Luna or, Sugar of the Moon.  After 7 years of research, he managed to create the most delicious, hangover-proof wine the world had ever seen and, ultimately launched himself and his family into international fame.

You had met him at an art exhibit you were running and, the two of you instantly had chemistry. It was rather cheesy actually, he was charming and handsome, you were unaware of his status and, he was into that.

 It didn’t take long for things to heat up and take off.  

Two years later, you both decided that Seoul wasn’t giving you what you needed. Jungkook, being an extreme introvert, was growing weary of the hustle and bustle of life in the city. He loved his work and, had an immense passion for what he did but, he was tired of being treated like some kind of rock star. He yearned for a simpler life, off the grid, where he could live and create in peace.

After months of discussion and planning, you settled on relocating Mykonos, a beautiful island in Greece. With both of your statuses and, massive wealth, it was extremely easy to place an offer on a beautiful, cliffside, villa on the quieter part of the island.

“Jagi, where do you want the books?” Your boyfriend’s voice brings you out of your thoughts, swinging around a pillar with a larger box in his arms.

“Go ahead and, set them in here for now, I have your certificates and stuff too…” You nod to the coffee table and, he obliges. He sets the box down, pushing up the sleeves to his striped sweater.

He smirks down at you, starry eyed, “ You look cute.”

“I’m so sweaty right now”

His nose scrunches up as he chuckles, shaking his head, “You’re still cute. You can shower when we’re done, did you see it? It’s so cool…”

You push the box aside, setting his things in a neat pile before smiling, “It’s incredible, there’s so much room, you could literally hangout in there…”

“Y/N if you want to shower with me, you can just say so, we have to be honest in our relationship, communication is key…” He emphasizes, smirking and wagging his brows at you.

You groan, laughing at his antics, throwing a wad of newspaper at him, “Get back to work, before I banish you to the stables…”

He snickers, a boyish smile on his face, saluting to you, “Yes mam.”

With a shake of your head, you attempt to wipe the love-struck expression off of your face as you return to the task at hand.

An hour passes and Jungkook meanders into the villa, finally shutting the creaky wooden door behind him. His hair is partially stuck to his forehead, his sweater sleeves are pushed up as far as they can go and, his cheeks are splotchy from all the exertion.

“All done?” You smile from the floor, breaking down one of your last boxes for the day.

You two had been moving in since the early hours of the morning, eager to get your new place set up. The California king bed had been delivered around noon which caused you to breathe a sigh of relief that you wouldn’t be sleeping on an air mattress again.

“All done,” He affirms with a sigh,  I just have to run down to the gate to make sure its locked…”  

“I’m finishing up too, are you hungry?”

He smiles at the mention of food, nodding eagerly, “I’m starving. Do we have enough to make something here?”

Jungkook could cry at the thought of going into town after such an exhausting day.

Thankfully, you provide the news he’s after, “Our neighbors dropped off a bunch of stuff for us this morning,  I’ll figure something out after I shower.”

Another smile is sent your way, “Sounds good, you can go first then. I’ll be right back.”

While the two of you would love nothing more than to shower together, you both understand that given the amount of sweat and dust covering your bodies, it wouldn’t exactly be the sexy experience you were after.

Christening the new place could come later.

After getting the living room somewhat organized, you make your way into your shared bedroom. Most of your clothes are still in boxes so, you opt for the soft blue cotton dress that stuck out of your suitcase. It’s comfortable and breathable but, more importantly, it requires minimum effort.

The bathroom is absolutely immaculate. Marble flooring and countertops, oversized standing tub and, the biggest shower you had ever seen. The walls were mostly windows covered by white linen curtains that allowed the natural light of the sun to envelop the space.

You stunned by the idea that this place is actually your home.

Smiling to yourself, you step into the shower and, allow the warm water to wash away the dirt and tension from your body. Jungkook loves the smell of your shampoo so, the two of you share most of the products in the shower, except his loofa, that’s off limits.

He’s such a Virgo…

After your shower, you apply your moisturizer and, a few spritzes of your favorite perfume before pulling your dress on. Jungkook’s already in the bedroom, his sweater thrown in the laundry basket, his slacks hugging his slender waist. He’s rifling through his suitcase, brow furrowed as he searches.

“Jagiya? Have you seen my black shirt? The really big one?”

His question causes a snort to leave you, “You have approximately 400 big black shirts, you gotta be more specific…”

He smirks  tossing his dirty sweater at you, not looking up from his suitcase, “It’s Gucci, it has two little triangles on the back…”

You move in his direction, shuffling beside him and, Jungkook could literally melt as he gets a whiff of your perfume.

A second or two of searching goes by before you find what he’s looking for, “This one?”

Your boyfriend’s bunny smile makes an appearance as he takes the t-shirt from your hands, “How do you always do that?”

With a smile, you lean up towards his lips, brows rising, “Magic powers…”

He chuckles warmly, pressing a kiss to your nose, “Uh huh, I’m sure. I’ll be out in a minute, I have a bottle of Luna in the wine cooler if you want some with dinner. The rest is still being imported…”

You’re still leaning towards his lips and, you notice him trying to move away from you, “Are you not going to kiss me after I valiantly searched for your t-shirt???”

He grimaces, kissing your forehead again, “Jagi, I’m so gross right now and, you smell so good, I don’t want to ruin it. I’ll kiss you when I’m out…”

You concede with a short laugh, pointing in his direction, “I’m holding you to that…”

A smile breaks through his grimace then as he kisses your forehead once more, “I’ll be right out, don’t start without me.”

Your neighbors had dropped off a basket of cured meat and fancy imported cheese that you plan on slicing up along with some dried fruit and, freshly picked grapes. Obviously, Jungkook had ensured that the Villa be situated on an expansive vineyard which had delayed your moving date quite a bit. However, after popping one of the grapes in your mouth, you decided it was completely worth it.

Your charcuterie board takes 20 minutes or so to put together and, as your placing the finishing touches you feel two strong arms wrap around your waist.

“You did so good Jagi…” Jungkook’s voice caramelizes in your ear, the woodsy scent of his body wash warming your senses.

“It’s not too bad right?” You turn in his arms, pecking the side of his head, causing a smile to play on his lips, “It will work for tonight at least, we can go into town tomorrow for groceries…”

“I’ll have them delivered…I want to rest with you tomorrow, you’ve work too hard lately…”

“We’ve both been working hard, not just me…you worked your ass off today.” You point out

He nods, eyes closing as he inhales, “We’ll both rest then. Did you get the wine?”

His eyes open with his question, his chin resting on your shoulder.

“Not yet, do you want to grab it for us? I have water too…”

Jungkook moves quickly and as he makes his way to the wine cooler you notice he’s only wearing his t-shirt and a pair of white boxers, his long hair, stringy and wet from his shower.

God, he’s really beautiful.

“Can we eat on our balcony? It’s so nice out right now …” Jungkook suggests as he grabs two wine glasses from the cardboard box on the counter.

With a soft smile, you nod, securing the platter in your hands as the two of you make your way to the French doors.

Jungkook rushes in front of you, ensuring he’s there to open the door for you.

“Oh my god, look at the sunset.” You gasp as you see the scene before you, quickly setting the platter down before rushing to the edge of the balcony.

Your villa overlooks the Aegean Sea which sparkles as the sun attempts to stay above the horizon. The sky is littered with hues of purple, pink and orange which compliment the striking blue of the sea water.

“Wah…” Your boyfriend beams beside you, his hands holding the banister, a look of awe in his eyes, “It looks like a picture…like a screensaver or something.”

You giggle, nodding at his comparison, still in amazement that you can call this place home.

“We’re going to have a good life here Jagi…” He smiles, his eyes deep in thought, fingers reaching out to you.

Warmth envelops your heart as you return his smile, taking his hand in yours, placing a kiss to his knuckles.

“I think so too…”

Another hour passes and, after stuffing your face with quality food and, sipping a few glasses of wine, both you and your boyfriend are feeling rather good.

“Jagiyaaa…why’re you so far?” Jungkook slurs, his voice deepening in his slightly inebriated state.

You laugh, reaching out for his hand, “I’m right here, what are you talking about?”

He pouts, brows furrowing in his own adorable way, clumsily grabbing your hand, “Want you over here…on me.”

You don’t deny him, the mood is too good for any resistance. Stumbling over to your boyfriend, you notice to how toned and tanned his thighs looks in his white boxers.

Did you mention he was beautiful?

“Better?” You hum as you sit in his lap, placing hands on his shoulders

A satisfied grin finds its way onto his mouth, “Mmm much better…c’mereee.”

You snuggle into his chest, tucking your face in his neck and wrapping your arms around his waist, “I’m hereee…”

He giggles at your imitation, both of you far from sober but, not quite drunk, well, not on the wine at least.

“Good. Stay here. Don’t leave. Ever.” He grunts causing you to laugh, placing a gentle kiss on the tender flesh of his throat.

“Ever? What if I have to pee?”

He shrugs, leaning his head back against the back of the chair, closing his eyes “Figure it out…”

You laugh again, sneaking your hands underneath the hem of his t-shirt, smoothing over his toned skin.

“This batch is good, did you put anything different in it?”

“Mmm love…” He murmurs, hands resting on your back, fighting a smile.

You pinch his side, laughing again, “You’re so dumb…”

“You’re dumb…” He parrots, grinning, his hands slowly sliding down your back.

Another kiss is pressed to his neck as your hands slide further up his body,  a certain feeling stirring between your legs, “You’re gonna get really tan living here, I can already see it just after you working in the sun today…”

“Good, it makes me look healthy…like a big burly, working man…” He grunts as you shift on his hips, his voice faltering slightly.

“Ah yes, my big burly working man, the strongest man alive…” You giggle fondly, your eyes closing now as he moves his hands over your ass, squeezing gently.

“Damn right…” He chuckles.

A few more moments of silence and passive touching pass before a sigh leaves your boyfriends lips.

”Are you…uh in the mood for…something?”

You smirk, “Something?”

“Lovemaking…” He utters in his native tongue followed by another chuckle.

He knows what that does to you...

“Why do you have to say it like that?” You whine, pulling out of his neck before pinching his cheek.

His laughter comes in full force then, pleased with your reaction, “It’s a new home Jagi, we have to christen it right?”

Jungkook’s eyes are open now and, slightly darkened, the touching and alcohol causing him to feel all kinds of tingly.

With his pouty lips and, perfectly disheveled hair, you’d have to be made of stone to deny him.

“You’re not wrong…” You lower your voice, one of your hands sliding to the base of his boxers, “No foreplay though, I’m too tired for that…”

He chuckles, his hands sliding up your thighs, “I’ll go slow then…”

You bite your lip as you watch his hands slide further up your thighs and, all you really do is nod, the warmth in your body becoming too much not to fall into.

“You’re not hard yet…” You point out and, he smirks his fingers beginning to walk up either sides of your inner thighs.

“I’m getting there…”

Jungkook pushes up the blue cotton of your dress until it sits around your hips. At the sight of your choice in panties, he lets out a shaky breath.

“Can we leave these one? They’re my favorite…”

You nod, tugging on the hem of his t-shirt, “As long as you take this off…”

He snickers but, obliges, pulling it off and throwing it onto the balcony floor.

The action causes your brows to furrow, “Didn’t you say that was Gucci?”

Jungkook just shrugs, “I have like 6 more…come here…”

He cuts off any response you may have given him before leaning into your lips eagerly, capturing them between his.

The kiss is slow and messy. It tastes like wine and, is equally as intoxicating. It makes Jungkook swell in his boxers which only encourages you to make him harder.

Your fingers tug at the band of his underwear, Jungkook lifting his ass off of the chair to assist you. His dick springs back against his stomach and, the sensation causes Jungkook to smirk into your mouth.

“The first time we made out, I got hard…that’s how I knew you were the one jagi…” He murmurs and, you scoff at his brashness, hitting his shoulder lightly.

“You’re so romantic…”

He beams, leaning back against the chair, chuckling “I try.”

His brows furrow, nodding to your dress, “Take it offff…”

Jungkook is whiny when he’s tipsy and, you wish you could deny how much you like it.

You’re powerless though and, instead, you pull off your dress, discarding it.

Jungkook grins, his eyes lulling completely as he slides his hands up your body to your breasts, “So good…”

You giggle at his choice of words before pulling your panties to the side and, securing his length in your hand, “Hold these over for me…”

With an unsteady hand, Jungkook hooks his fingers into your underwear, holding them over.

A sigh passes between you as you sink down on him, the stretch and burn of him, salacious and relieving.

“Whoa…” He grunts, smirking as his eyes close, head falling back against the chair again.

“Mhm…” You hum starting to move your hips against him, your hands bracing against his hips.

The setting sun is warm against your back, the tender flow of the summer breeze caressing your body.

You’re in heaven, you must be.

Jungkook clearly shares the same conclusion, his face smoothed out in pure pleasure as he meets your hips halfway, his hands freely exploring your body.

“Feels good on my dick jagi…so good…” He’s speaking Korean again, something he often does when the two of you are at it.

“You’re going to kill me…” You giggle, moving your hips faster against him, creating toe curling friction inside of you.

He chuckles darkly, his eyes opening as he stares up at you, his cheeks completely flushed, “You like it…don’t lie… Go faster for me…I’m getting close…”

A smaller moan bubbles over your lips as you lean back, giving yourself more leverage as you start to bounce up and down on him, your clit buzzing and throbbing with the movement.

Jungkook sits up then, hands securing around your waist as he pulls you close into his lap, his lips finding yours.

“I’m gonna fuck for us jagi ok? You just cum for me…I can feel how close you are…”

His words do a number on you and, all you can do is nod, your breath growing shakier as you near your high.

“Good girl…just rest your head on me, I’ll make you feel so good…” Your boyfriends low voice rings in your ear as he pounds up into you, his dick throbbing inside of you.

“Fuck…I love you…” You whimper into his neck as your orgasm hits, your body growing limp as he fucks you.

“I love you…”

He cums too, not much longer after you do, the two of you collapsing back into the chair as you try to settle your breathing.

Nothing can be felt but, pure bliss.

You stay like that for quite some time before you eventually decide to get cleaned up and, take the food inside. On slightly shaky legs, you gather the platter and make your way inside, Jungkook grabbing the trash and, the wine glasses. He take his place behind you once again as you rinse off the platter in the sink, his lips brushing against your neck.

“I’m gonna marry you one day, if that’s cool…” He says matter of factly, arms tightening around your wrist.

Your heart blooms with love and, you try to resist the huge grin that threatens your mouth.

“That’s cool…I guess…”

[geekywritings]

Rise of a Queen - Nikolai Lantsov x OC PART 12

The end of the war could have marked the perfect beginning of a fairytale for Nikolai and Taya. He was Tsar, the Darkling had been defeated, Ravka could finally breathe again and the couple could start focusing on their relationship. But the reality was no fairytale.

Only days after the crown had been placed on Nikolai's head, he became swept up in the responsibilities of a ruler. Endless meetings, balls, travels, and negotiations began, along with the much-needed rebuilding of the cities that had suffered during recent times. Whenever he was in the palace, there was always someone there requesting his attention or calling him to a meeting or following him with paperwork. Though more often than not, Nikolai was absent from the capital, traveling around his kingdom to meet his people and mend relations with West Ravka. It felt as if sleep or a peaceful meal had become a luxury a king could not afford.

Taya wasn't fairing much better. She tried to help Nikolai whenever she could, but she was soon also swept up in the Saadovska affairs. She had inherited the family fortune, but also her father's businesses. And there were more of them than she had ever expected! Not only did her family own several remarkable fabric businesses in Ravka, they also held shares of companies in Fjerda and Shu Han and had close business ties with Kerch traders. Furthermore, there was more land in her family's possession than anyone in all of Ravka could even imagine, including large estates and even simply lands for agriculture. It was so much that Taya spent a good few weeks trying to wrap her hand around it all before starting correspondence with her father's former business partners. Some of them were kind and understanding, but there were also those, who refused to work with a woman or tried to cheat her. For Taya this meant a lot of studying. She would spend many nights in the library, reading up on economics and business practices or former contracts until Nikolai would come and carry her back to bed after she had fallen asleep. Whenever he was not around, this task fell to Andrej or one of the twins.

Ultimately, the couple didn't have much time for romance. Ravka was like a child that required constant attention and within the first years, Nikolai and Taya felt burnt out. Yet at the same time, they couldn't feel happier. The country was flourishing, steadily gaining stability, military strength and even some recognition. So although Taya was usually the one pushing them to work more, it was her who announced one morning: "We need a break."

Nikolai had returned from a long journey to the West just the day before and still looked incredibly tired even after a good night of sleep. "What do you suggest?", he asked, his face still half-buried in the pillow. "That we run away?"

Taya chuckled, as she sat up, running a hand through his hair. "I don't think we'd get very far.", she admitted. "But I do think we can take a vacation for a couple of days without Ravka falling apart again. Besides, there is this small estate by the sea I want to visit."

"Estate by the sea?" Now Nikolai's curiosity had been piqued and he slowly half sat up as well, hazel eyes staring at her full of interest.

"Yes, apparently it has been in my family's possession for quite some time. My great great grandfather bought it for easier business with the local fishing industry. And it would be my chance to see the ocean for the first time."

Although she had joined Nikolai on several of his journeys, none of them had taken her all the way to the sea, which she longed to finally visit. "Let's do it.", Nikolai agreed, suddenly fully invested in the idea. "We will tell everyone today and be on our way by the evening."

Taya loved his enthusiasm and spontaneous nature and she nodded enthusiastically. "I will take care of packing.", she said, already mentally going over everything they would need for the short trip.

It was with a newfound energy that the two started their day, making sure that everyone knew about their departure, while also preparing for the journey. Tolya and Tamar insisted on coming along, but Nikolai refused. He wanted some time alone with Taya and where they were going, they would need neither servants nor bodyguards, he figured.

Everyone was so taken aback by the Tsar's sudden decision that nobody had much time to argue or raise concerns. And by evening, Nikolai and Taya were ready to depart. They hadn't packed much and could easily take one of Nikolai's smaller aircrafts, where he took care of navigation, while Taya kept the airship going. Traveling at night was difficult, but also much safer.

The sun hadn't even risen when they arrived at the small estate on a hill, overseeing the sea and the nearby fishing town. It was a two-story building beaten by the rough coastal weather, but still in good condition. Surrounding it was a garden full of wildflowers and tall grass. It was clear that nobody had tended to this place in quite some time. Using the key she had found in her father's study, filed correctly to the matching estate, Taya opened the door, revealing a dusty hallway, smelling of sea salt and stuffy air. At least they found that the place was equipped with working lights.

Leaving their luggage in the hallway, Nikolai and Taya just explored, opening all windows to air out the place. There was a parlor downstairs, as well as a study, a kitchen, three servant rooms, and a storage chamber. Upstairs were bathrooms and generous bedrooms, offering a stunning view of the ocean. The sunsets from this place would be quite the sight, Taya thought.

The furniture had been covered in sheets to prevent them from dusting, but they would still need to air out all linens, pillows and covers the next day. "Seems like your ancestors were quite the passionate sailors", Nikolai announced, as he joined Taya upstairs. He had found some old photographs and paintings in the study, showing her grandfather and great grandfather in this estate together with sea captains or standing in front of ships themselves.

Taya looked at them with interest, seeing them for the first time. "I didn't know that. But maybe it explains why I always wanted to go to sea.", she ran a finger over one of the photographs, realizing how much her grandfather resembled her father. A pang of pain shot through her, but she didn't allow it to take over. She would make her family proud by doing her best to carry on their legacy instead of shedding tears.

_____________________

After two days, Nikolai and Taya had settled into their little sea estate. Seeing as the linen had continued to smell of stuffy room, Taya had simply brought fresh ones in town. Not wanting any servants to disturb their peace, the couple took care of everything themselves and Taya discovered that she knew nothing about actual housekeeping. But it was fun to learn and try, even though the first meal she attempted to cook ended up being more burnt than edible.

Nikolai caught some fish, which they roasted over a fire and that tasted better than anything Taya had eaten in a while. Still, they decided to start eating in town to be among people and see what they lived like. Taya had bought some local clothes, allowing the two to blend in and for Nikolai to go unrecognized. It was lovely, living a normal life without duties or burdens.

"One day, when we are old and grey, I hope we can sit here and watch the sunset as well.", Taya said on the last evening of their stay, when the two were sitting in front of the house by the cliff, waiting for the sun to turn the ocean into the stunning shades of orange and purple Taya admired.

Nikolai smiled at her. It would be a lovely future indeed. "And who will be running Ravka?"

"Not us, for sure.", she replied with a laugh. "I suppose it would be our son."

A son. Nikolai had never thought about children before. He had been too busy being Sturmhond, getting the crown, fighting a civil war or just being Tsar. But now that she had said it, the vision would not leave his head. What would their son look like? Would his hair be darker? And whose eyes would he inherit? He hoped it would be his mothers, for he loved the blue more than he could put into words. He also hoped he would have Taya's personality, far more suitable for a ruler.

"If we do have a son, let's name him Mikhail. After my father.", she suddenly added. It was common for a prince to carry the name of a former ruler, an ancestor from the father's side, but Taya was ready to break with that tradition.

"Mikhail... I like it.", Nikolai said finally, his arm sneaking around Taya, as she leaned her head against his shoulder. "Though if he ends up anything like us as children, I feel sorry for us already." Both laughed and then just enjoyed the spectacular colors of the sunset before them.

________________________________

After the trip, Nikolai returned to work with newfound purpose and energy. He wanted to build a strong Ravka for the people and for the future. He wanted a stable country should he and Taya indeed have a son one day. He was also more determined than ever to finally marry the woman, who had been by his side for so long.

"I have an important task for you.", he announced, as Genya entered his office one afternoon. "But I must ask for utter discretion."

"Of course.", the redhead vowed, looking more and more intrigued.

"I need you to plan something"

"A Wedding?!", Genya almost squealed. "Your wedding?!"

Nikolai didn't even have a chance to answer before Genya rushed forward, both hands slamming on his desk. "I have everything thought out already.", she announced. "I have been planning this since your coronation. It needs to be a grand affair, of course. Worthy of a Tsar. But it definitely needs personal elements. I'm thinking of a lot of blue highlights to symbolize your time at sea and Taya being a Grisha and..."

"Genya... Genya.. slow down.", Nikolai spoke, even though he felt almost guilty interrupting her. She seemed so excited and he was glad to know that he had so many people behind him.

"Oh, I apologize."

Nikolai smiled, shaking his head. "No need. But what I specifically want from you is a design for a ring. Traditionally, Taya would get the Lantsov Emerald, but that is off the table.", he explained. "But I don't just wanna choose something from the treasury. I want something especially made for her. Something meaningful."

So it wasn't a wedding, but Genya was still excited nevertheless. "Oh, I will think of something!" It would be blue, she thought, but it definitely needed elements of green to hint at the traditional emerald. Without a second to waste she got to work, while Nikolai went back to planning on how he could ask Taya to marry him again.

The last proposal had been a lousy one, he thought. Absolutely not worthy of a future Queen and especially not worthy of someone like Taya. She wouldn't like an over-the-top gesture, he figured, but it had to be special nevertheless. Perhaps the finished ring would offer more inspiration.

He had no idea that he would not be asking Taya for quite some time...

[mariequitecontrarie]

Pistachio

Summary: While secret newlyweds Belle and Leland Gold are on their Saturday hamburger date, Gold’s estranged mother pays an unexpected visit. Rating: T+  Notes: Secret marriage AU in which where Gold's mother is her horrible, extra self and Belle stands up to her on Gold's behalf. Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Thanks to @galactic-pirates and @maplesyrupao3 for the help.

On AO3

“Sweetheart, are you sure you don’t want to eat someplace different?” Leland Gold asked as they settled into their usual booth at their usual place.

Lunch at Granny’s Cafe was their Saturday ritual, but he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before Belle grew restless with him and his obsession with routine. His new wife was spunky, bright, and adventurous. He, on the other hand, would be more aptly described as a murky pond. Stagnant, dark, and stuck in his ways.

“It’s Saturday,” Belle replied, as he knew she would. “Do you want to eat somewhere else?”

His thoughts traveled back to the new Italian restaurant they’d spotted on their drive into town and he hesitated. Maybe next week.

“No,” he confessed, shaking his head. He unfolded his napkin and smoothed it across his lap. As long as he was with Belle, he could eat anywhere. Nothing else mattered.

In the eight weeks since they’d met, dated, and decided to marry, today wasn’t the first time he’d wondered if he could make her happy for a lifetime. Their courtship had been short, but he’d known since he first touched her icy fingers in the freezer aisle of the grocery store that Belle French was the perfect woman. To his utter amazement, she told him almost every day how lucky she was to have him for a husband. Yes, he had a brilliant, stunning wife who adored him beyond all reasonable comprehension.

Perhaps his worries were only newlywed jitters. He pushed them aside, declared himself a lucky bastard, and broke a hot biscuit open with his fingers. Since Ruby Lucas had taken over for her grandmother at the beginning of the year, the cafe had started serving complimentary biscuits to every table.

“Granny’s is my favorite. You know that!” Belle closed her menu with a grin and swatted his arm with it, teasing a snorting noise out of him. Reading the menu was a mere formality. They both knew what they were going to order.

“Was that a laugh I heard just now?” Belle asked, her eyes dancing with mirth at the running joke between them. “I’m writing this one down,” she said, pretending to rummage through her purse for paper and a pen.

The corner of his mouth turned up in an indulgent half-smile. “As you wish, my love.”

“Hey, lovebirds.” Ruby Lucas flipped open her order pad and pulled out the sharpened pencil tucked behind her ear. “Usual for you both? Extra pickles for Belle?”

Their usual was hamburgers all the way with fries and iced tea. Ruby knew the double order well after serving it every Saturday since Belle and Gold had met.

Gold nodded. “Thank you, Miss Lucas. I mean, Ruby,” he amended quickly with an embarrassed smile. Although he was new to marriage, he was not new to Storybrooke. After so many years of eating here and calling her Miss Lucas, it was hard to remember to drop the formalities. However, Ruby had not only attended their wedding, but she also happened to be Belle’s closest friend.

Marriage to her best friend made Gold her friend too, Ruby had informed him.

“Like it or not, you’re gonna get used to me, Gold,” Ruby had insisted at the wedding ceremony, then softened her sass by straightening his tie and kissing his cheek.

“How’s Granny enjoying retirement?” Belle asked. Everyone called Ruby’s grandmother Granny whether they’d known her all their lives or had only heard of the no-nonsense widow who’d founded the cafe.

“She’s great. Been into axe-throwing lately, believe it or not.” Ruby rolled her eyes and laughed. “What a hobby, right? I know she’d love for you guys to come for a visit, so I’ll set something up soon?”

“We’d like that, wouldn’t we Belle?” Gold said. His wife was nodding eagerly and he was proud of himself for accepting the unexpected invite with grace. He sat up a little taller in his seat.

“Great! So two burgers and two iced teas, extra lemon slices, and no seeds.” Ruby scribbled a note on her pad. “Should be up in a jiffy.”

“Actually, Rubes...” Belle flipped the menu open again before Ruby walked away. “I’m gonna go chicken parm and white wine. And make it the bottle, please.”

Gold furrowed his brow. Belle didn’t care for wine in general and never during the day. His face must have registered his surprise because she burst out laughing.

“Darling, I’m kidding,” she said. “The usual, please, Ruby.”

“Ruby, please bring us the usual, as well as the chicken parmesan to share. Also a bottle of white wine. The pinot grigio should do nicely with both, I think.” He winked at Belle, delighted by how the smallest concessions made her happy. “It’s Saturday. We should live it up.”

Ruby scribbled on the pad again. “Anything for one of my favorite couples.”

“We live it up all the time, Leland,” Belle said after Ruby left to put their order into the kitchen. “My idea of living it up is being with you.”

He rubbed his fingers together, an absent, nervous gesture he’d acquired sometime back in law school. “I meant doing something spontaneous.” Maybe he should have pushed for them to try the new Italian place after all.

“You planned us a two-month honeymoon in Europe beginning with Paris, my bucket list city,” she said. “That will give us plenty of opportunities to be spontaneous--in public and in private.”

She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and his face grew hot, his imagination running wild with all the ways they could get into trouble together if his wife had her way. Being arrested by the Paris police for sexy shenanigans at the Eiffel Tower wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

“A proper honeymoon is the least I can do for you,” he countered. “Seeing as we didn’t have a proper wedding.”

“You being you is more than enough for me.” She caught his hand where it rested on the table and brought it to her mouth, placing a quick kiss at the juncture of his thumb and forefinger. “Besides, since when have we done anything the traditional way?”

The gentle reminder made him smile. It was true.

They’d been married in a quiet, candlelit ceremony out in the forest by the old, moss-covered well. Archie Hopper, the town psychiatrist who also happened to be an ordained minister, had officiated and Ruby had been a witness. Two weeks later, word hadn’t made it around town about their nuptials yet and he was secretly glad. They weren’t hiding the wedding or the marriage, but they weren’t publicizing it, either. Love shouldn’t be a spectator sport, Gold reasoned. People would find out in time, and the longer it took, the better. Small and intimate was what they both wanted. Rather, it had been what he wanted and Belle hadn’t argued. Although Belle had claimed to be fine with their quiet wedding, doubts tugged at him. What he knew about women could fit into a teacup, but the grandness of the wedding industry said otherwise. There had been no wedding cake, no reception, no confetti thrown at the blushing bride. Women liked to make a fuss, especially over happy occasions.

Two months ago, he’d met Belle on a Saturday evening in the freezer aisle at the Storybrooke Grocer. Both of them had opened up the ice cream case and put their hands on the last container of pistachio gelato. He could still feel the brush of Belle’s cold fingertips against his like an electric jolt. Awareness sparked in her eyes, an immediate connection forming between them. It was a memory he would never forget.

They tugged the carton back and forth in a playful tug-of-war, falling into a good-natured argument about whose day had been harder and therefore deserved a treat more. Belle, a librarian, argued that she’d completed and turned in two grant applications, and on a weekend. Gold, a shop owner, countered that small businesses worked every weekend. In addition, his shipment of jewelry for his antique shop had been delayed and wouldn’t be on time for an advertised sale.

“Sounds like what we both need is some company,” Gold had suggested in a rare moment of boldness with a woman. They collected their groceries and went back to his house to share the cold, nut-studded confection. Usually, he was terrible at talking to women and even worse at asking them out. With Belle, he never ran out of words to say.

They both loved books, listened to classic rock, and shared a fondness for Candy Crush. Both lived in Storybrooke alone with no family. Belle’s parents were back in Australia where she was from, and she saw them only once every two years. Gold’s father was reliving his teenage years by backpacking through Europe, while his mother lived in a New York City high-rise on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Fiona was too busy running the family commercial real estate business to make time for her son, but that was nothing new.

After talking long into the night on their first evening together, Belle and Gold had fallen asleep on the sofa with Belle’s head on his shoulder and the empty ice cream carton cradled between them. They became inseparable from that day forward. Pistachio gelato, preceded by lunch at Granny’s Cafe in the center of town, became their weekend ritual.

Melting into a life together seemed a natural next step. Six weeks to the day after their impromptu date in the freezer section, he brought Belle to the well at sunset. And in the serene glow of late afternoon light against the backdrop of a brilliant pink sky, he’d asked her to be his wife.

She leaned back in the booth and sipped her iced tea, the same serene look of contentment on her face today as when she’d said yes to his marriage proposal. Sometimes there were blessings like this, he mused. Two lonely people who found love and happiness on a trip to the grocer for a carton of ice cream.

Ruby delivered their food with her usual efficiency and a broad smile. He inhaled the comforting aromas and took a bite of his piping hot hamburger. Delicious as always.

“Mr. Gold,” Belle said with mock sternness, “we talked about the timing of our honeymoon. You had inventory at the shop to finish and I wrapped a writing workshop at the library. Alice is helping at the shop today and now that it’s May, she'll be finishing college for the term. Why doesn’t she run the store while we’re gone?”

He brightened at the suggestion. “Robin Mills might like to help. Give those two kids an excuse to spend some alone time together.”

Belle nodded in eager agreement. She’d been wanting to play matchmaker for Alice and Robin for months. “Think of it, Lee. Paris in the summer. The Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées--there are so many places and landmarks I want to see.”

Her face was wreathed in joy, her travel dreams reflected in her bright blue eyes, and it tugged at his heart to see her so excited. “Anything you want, Mrs. Gold.”

He’d tasted the burger, now it was time to give the chicken parmesan a try. He cut into the juicy meat with gusto, forking it up with a twirl of spaghetti when disaster struck.

“Love, what is it?” Belle asked, her face draining of color. “You look like you’ve seen—”

“My mother.” He dropped the forkful of parmesan and it clattered onto the plate, splattering bits of sauce onto the tabletop.

“Your mother, what?” Belle mopped up the stains with her napkin.

“She’s here.” He gripped his cane with both hands to stop himself from shaking. There she was, wearing her usual sleek black trench coat, breezing through the front door of the cafe like she owned it.

“In Storybrooke?” Belle squeaked.

“At Granny’s.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. Belle had yet to meet his mother and with good reason. Fiona Blackwell was a raging bitch. His preference, if given one, would be to keep her as far away from Belle as possible for the rest of their lives. It seemed he didn’t have that kind of luck.

Belle smoothed back a wayward lock of curly auburn hair and chanced a look toward the door. “Your mother is here right now?”

“Now, and coming this way.” Gold lurched to his feet, grabbing his cane and moving to Belle’s side of the table to stand beside her. He laid a protective hand on her shoulder and braced himself for the oncoming storm. When Fiona paid one of her rare visits, it was always unannounced and always with an agenda. What would it be this time? Must be desperate if she was seeking him out at Granny’s.

Belle tugged on his sleeve and bit her lip. She knew something of his lonely home life, of course, but his mother hadn’t been a major topic of conversation beyond Gold confessing they didn’t have a strong relationship. “What if she doesn’t like me?” Belle murmured, her eyes wide and worried.

“Don’t trouble yourself, my love.” He soothed her with a tender stroke of his fingers against the underside of her face. “She doesn’t like anyone.”

Helpless, that was how he felt. If only he’d had time to warn Belle, to prepare, but his mother’s heels clicked against the floor at record speed. Frankly, he’d never expected her to show up in his town anyway.

“Hello, Malcolm.”

He glared at the woman who’d given birth to him, rendered speechless by her rudeness within seconds of her arrival. According to his birth certificate, he was Malcolm Alexander Leland Gold III, but no one ever called him by his father’s name. It had always been Gold or Leland. Only his mother found calling him Malcolm to be some glorious joke.

When he didn’t respond, Fiona arched a black eyebrow. “I believe the greeting you’re looking for is ‘hello, Mother’.”

“Fiona.” He leaned stiffly into her light hug and air kisses without returning either. “What’s it been? Three years this time?” He shook his head at her supple, glowing skin. Here he was, 42 years old, and his mother appeared to be a solid ten years younger than him, making her look closer to Belle’s age than his. “Must be tough to find a moment to visit between facelifts.”

Annoyance marched across her face to wrinkle her perfect brow and he smirked, satisfied the barb had hit its mark. May as well enjoy getting his digs in while he could. “However did you manage to find me? I don’t think this place even appears on most state maps.”

She sniffed in disdain. “Well, it wasn’t easy. Dove dropped me off at that musty little store of yours and I walked here.” Dove was the chauffeur and the one person from his joyless upbringing that he missed.

“On your own two feet? Surprised you made the two-block hike down Main Street without stopping for a latte.” He sat down next to Belle and patted her knee under the table.

“I’m a New Yorker,” Fiona said archly. “I can handle anything this podunk town throws at me.”

“Not without your Peloton and one of those Mirrors,” he muttered into his iced tea.

“Now, now. Retract your claws, dear. We shouldn’t be arguing here in public in front of this…who is this?” She gave Belle a quizzical look as if finally noticing someone else was there.

Then again, why was he surprised? His mother always did believe she was the center of the universe.

“This is Belle French,” Gold said, his mouth tight at the corners. The moment he introduced her by her maiden name, he realized his mistake. Belle stiffened beside him but she didn’t falter.

“Mrs. Gold, a pleasure to meet you,” Belle said smoothly, offering her hand across the table.

Fiona frowned at Belle’s proffered hand like it was covered in dirt. “Mrs.Gold? Pet, no one’s called me that since the day in court when I took that bastard for every cent I could squeeze.” She tittered at her own cleverness. “The name’s Blackwell. Fiona Blackwell.”

“That’s her fourth ex-husband’s name, sweetheart,” Gold supplied.

His mother did a double-take at the endearment but didn’t comment.

“Mrs. Blackwell, then.” Belle smiled, always willing to give people a chance, even in the face of blatant mockery. Some called it naivete, but Gold knew Belle’s extraordinary patience came from a generous, loving heart. She gestured toward the empty side of the booth. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Charmed, pet.” Fiona tossed her long, dark brown hair and settled into the bench across from them. “But you should really scurry along now. My son and I have things to discuss.” She ran a finger over the Formica tabletop with a distasteful shrug and looked at him. “Unless you have someplace more upscale where we can have a decent meal?”

“Perhaps Granny’s isn’t much to look at,” Belle said, “but I never judge a book by its cover. These are the best burgers in town.” She took a large bite for emphasis, making it clear she had no plans to go anywhere.

“I’m vegetarian.” Fiona exhaled sharply through her nose, regarding their hamburgers and shared chicken with disgust. “This indulgent display of animal fat is most unwelcome.”

Gold ground his back teeth. “Speaking of unwelcome, Belle and I were in the middle of a pleasant lunch. Why don’t you head back to the city, Mother?”

“Oh, dear.” Fiona’s mouth puckered. “I thought perhaps she worked in your little shop. I had no idea this was a date.”

It was a shameless fish for information and he wasn’t allowing it. He squeezed Belle’s hand under the table in a wordless apology.

“There is zero shame in working in Leland’s antique store,” Belle said crisply. She lifted her chin, daring his mother to contradict her. “It’s a charming place filled with treasures. I, however, am a librarian.”

“How quaint to play with books all day for a job,” Fiona said in a saccharine voice. “Can’t be much of a moneymaker, though.”

Gold fisted his free hand under the table, the insinuation that Belle’s profession was a waste of time making him see red. And God forbid anyone would work for the sheer joy of pursuing a passion. His refusal to work in Fiona’s commercial real estate business in favor of  ‘tinkering with his toys’ was a sore point for her. With his mother, all of life came down to dollar signs.

“Belle is brilliant,” he gritted out. “And universally adored. Children wait weeks to join her reading groups and every book she recommends is in immediate demand.”

“I’m sure she’s very talented.” Fiona’s tone was cool and appraising.

“Everything okay over here with my newlyweds?” Ruby rushed over, her arm covered with steaming plates from shoulder to wrist. “Oh! You have a guest,” she said, her alarmed gaze settling on his mother. “I’ll be right with you, ma’am.”

Fiona gasped. “Did that girl just call you newlyweds?”

“That’s right.” Not caring for the attention his mother was drawing, Gold glanced around the restaurant and lowered his voice. “Belle is my wife.”

Although after today, Belle would probably demand a divorce.

His mother picked up his wine glass and quaffed the contents in one gulp.

“God, I needed that.” She set the glass down with a thump and upended the half-full bottle until the glass was filled to the top, then she drained it, too. “You’re married?” she demanded, her voice loud and shrill. “You’re married and you didn’t tell me.”

“What’s to tell?” he shrugged at her wounded expression.

“I’ve never heard of the name French.” Deciding she would get no information from him, Fiona set her shrewd sights on Belle. “Do your parents get out into New York society much? Surely they expect a reception. At the very least an announcement in the Times. ”

“My father is a florist and my mother is in market research,” Belle replied in an even voice. “But they’re back in Australia. No galas at the Met, I’m afraid.”

Fiona leaned back against the back of the banquette looking crestfallen. Her attempts to bait Belle weren’t working, so she turned back to him. “What about Milah? I always thought you and she would--”

“Mother, you are positively delusional.”

Belle crossed her arms. “Excuse me, who is Milah?”

“She was my prom date.” He threw his mother a level look and turned to Belle. “Back in prep school. Last I heard, she married another one of our classmates, Killian Jones. There’s nothing between Milah and me and hasn’t been for a long, long time. I couldn’t even tell you where she is.”

“Back to the point at hand, you’ve yet to explain why you’re here.” He glanced around the cafe again, hating the idea that they were on display. This wasn’t the way he intended to announce his marriage to Belle, in the middle of a crowded restaurant with his estranged mother wailing and rending her garments. However, he refused to give Fiona the satisfaction of more privacy. He had nothing to hide.

“What is it you’re after this time?” He pretended to study his nails. “Money? Surely you haven’t run through my father’s entire estate?”

“Really, Leland.” His mother cast Belle a shriveled sideways glance. “This is a family matter.”

“What do you know of being a family?” he bit out.

From the moment he’d seen her enter the cafe, he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t overreact or walk into her traps. Yet her very presence sank beneath his skin and rotted like a disease. “Unless you count the headmasters at the boarding schools you sent me to, I never had a family. Until Belle. She is my family, and anything you have to say can be said in front of her. We have no secrets between us.”

“Fine.” “Fiona pouted, wringing her hands. “I want you to come back to New York, son. I need your help with the business. Lily and Blue have left me and I can’t run things without you. I would make you General Council and we would share control of the firm.”

Lily Kaplan and Marianne “Blue” Azure were his mother’s business partners. Tough, calculating, and smart--the three of them had dominated the Manhattan real estate landscape for the last fifteen years. The only difference was Lily and Blue had scruples, and Gold had known it would only be a matter of time before they tired of his mother’s duplicitousness and insatiable thirst for power.

“Hell will freeze before I ever come to work for you,” he snarled. “I knew you wanted something but I never figured you would stoop to guilting me into returning to the city. To run your company? Utter madness. As I’ve told you on many occasions, I am a simple shop owner.”

“It’s your birthright, son. Your legacy. Everything I’ve created has been for you and someday it will all be yours. If you don’t want my company for yourself, think of your wife.” She turned to Belle, attempting to plead her case. “And now that you have a wife, your future children. You owe them--”

“Love is what I owe them, Mother. Which is far more important than anything money can buy, and more than you were capable of giving me.” He wrapped a protective arm around Belle’s shoulders. “Since I’m well aware you thrive on the possibility of scandal, let me save you the trouble of speculation. Belle is not pregnant, so don’t run off at the mouth telling people that’s why I married her.”  

Panic flashed across Fiona’s face. “If you have no secrets, why are you so worried about our conversation being overheard?” Her look turned craven as she tossed his words back in his face. “Yes, I’ve seen you looking around the cafe like you’re being hunted. Don’t bother to deny it. Are you ashamed of your wife, Leland? Or is she ashamed of you?”

“Enough!” Belle said.

He’d felt her seething beside him while they’d confronted his mother, fierceness mounting with every harsh word, but until this moment he’d never seen her furious. Now her eyes were cold with rage and her lips were pinched. It was satisfying to see that his mother looked cowed, and maybe even a bit afraid.

“The only person who should feel shame here is you, Mrs. Blackwell,” Belle spat. “You have already spoiled our lunch, which has now gone cold. How dare you come here and try to spoil our happiness as well? Leland is a good, kind man and a wonderful husband. I love him, and I don’t care who knows it!”

He was awed by Belle’s courage. Awed and humbled. No one had ever come to his defense like this before. Pride and admiration made his heart swell and he put an encouraging hand on the small of Belle’s back, supporting her while she supported him.

“Despite what little acceptance you’ve shown my husband, he deserves love, and I intend to be the one to give it to him. You’ve missed your chance. There’s nothing here for you now, so please, tuck yourself back into your stretch limousine and return to where you came from. Leland Gold is too good for you.”

He wasn’t sure how long his mother sat there with her mouth open before she gathered her belongings and swept out the door in silent fury.

xoxo

Dinner that evening was a tense, pensive affair.

Too tired to attempt cooking after the emotional acrobatics of lunch with Gold’s mother, Belle had ordered pizza for early delivery. She wanted to eat and go to sleep--anything to bring this awful day to an end. There was a fresh carton of pistachio gelato in the freezer, the usual capstone to their Saturday evenings, but she doubted it would come out tonight.

After they ate, Belle curled up on the living room sofa under a blanket, the remnants of their makeshift dinner still littering the coffee table. She’d been trying to lose herself in a re-reading of Persuasion , but when she felt Gold hovering in the doorway she realized she’d read the same page five times. Abandoning the effort, she tossed the book on top of the pizza box and turned.

Having the mother-in-law from hell was reason enough to feel sorry for herself, but she was far more concerned about Gold. He looked battle-weary and drawn from his mother’s unexpected visit. Belle had lost count of the number of times he’d apologized.

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

There it was again.

“No more!” she demanded, harsher than she intended. She threw off the blanket and went to him, lifting her hands to cradle his haggard face. “I won’t listen to you apologize for her behavior anymore.”

“The way she treated you was unforgivable.” His shoulders were slumped in defeat and he shook his head, as though he couldn’t quite distill what had happened.

“Come and sit, Lee.” She took his hand and led him to the sofa. She laid her head against his chest and tucked the blanket around them both. “She did what bullies do, love. She bullied us. But you are the one who has been hurt by her time and again all these years, so please stop worrying about me. I’m fine.”

It was no wonder that when they’d swapped stories about their upbringings, he’d been so tight-lipped about his mother. Her parents lived far from her now, all the way across the world, and she missed them. But his parents had been absent even in childhood, too busy building a legacy of money and power to give their son what he needed most--love and attention.  

“We didn’t finish lunch. You barely touched your dinner.” Gold nodded toward the coffee table at the plate still holding her untouched pizza. “If you’re not upset about her, what is it? I can tell something’s bothering you. Is it me?”

Unsure of how to answer, Belle tucked her face into the nook between his neck and shoulder and closed her eyes. His cool, masculine scent gave her the most wonderful butterflies in her stomach and she sighed against his warm throat. Who wouldn’t want to feel this way every moment of every day? When they met a couple of months ago, she could hardly believe her good fortune--a handsome, charming, considerate man showed interest in her. Not only in her pretty face but in her ideas, what she had to say. In her experience, boyfriends were interested only in droning on about themselves and taking her to bed. Leland was her whole world, but she’d somehow failed to make him recognize how much she loved him.

When he’d proposed the idea of a quiet wedding, she’d readily agreed. He loathed gossip and she wanted to honor his wishes. Now she felt she’d allowed the secrecy to go too far. The presents, the fancy food, and the floor-length gown were pretty, empty nothings. Only Leland mattered. But a wedding should be an announcement, a celebration of mutual commitment.

After the way he’d behaved at the cafe earlier, though, whispering and craning his neck to see who might be watching and listening, she feared his mother’s barbs had hit too close to the truth.

Did Gold believe she was ashamed of him?

“Belle,” he said again, pulling back from their embrace to search her face. “Is it me? Am I the problem?”

“Do you want it to be you?” she asked in a careful, quiet voice.

“What?” His caramel eyes darkened with despair. “No. I don’t understand.”

She tucked her fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, holding him close so she could stare into his face. “When you asked me to marry you, I said I was fine with our private ceremony and I am, I was. But it’s been two weeks now.” She took a deep breath. “Without counting your lunatic mother, no one in town but Archie, Ruby, and Alice know we’re married. Why is that?”

Worry flitted across the angled planes of his face, and he looked away, drumming the top of the sofa with his fingers. “I thought we were having fun keeping our relationship quiet.”

She lifted his chin to give him a sad smile. “At first, yes. There’s something to be said for a little private delight. After today, though, I’m starting to wonder if you want to hide our marriage because you think I’m going to leave you, hurt you the way your mother did. And if I do make that choice, you’re safe. You’re safe because so few people know the truth.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No.” But the tremble in his lips gave him away.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘we accept the love we think we deserve?’” she asked. “It means we only allow ourselves to receive as much love as we believe we’re worthy of. It’s silly, really, because it gives the impression that love is something to be earned, like a salary or a merit badge.” She shook her head. “You can’t do anything to deserve my love for you. It’s a gift, freely given. All you have to do is open your heart. Trust me when I say my feelings for you are real and true, and never going to fade. If anything, my love for you grows every day.”

He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, his lips vibrating against her skin. “Belle, I’m so grateful to have your love. The day you said yes to marrying me was the highlight of my life. But I don’t want to trap you into forever if it’s not what you want.”

“It is what I want,” she said. “I love you. Today. Tomorrow. Always. And tomorrow, I’m calling the Storybrooke Mirror to announce our marriage in the newspaper.”

“Oh, Belle.” Light entered his tear-filled eyes. He took her mouth in a hot, desperate kiss that had her gasping and tearing at his clothes, needing to touch him and be touched in return.

“Belle.” He pressed her back into the sofa and gathered her to himself, cradling her close. “My sweetheart.” More kisses seared her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, their clothes melting off their bodies into puddles on the floor. “I love you,” he muttered between kisses. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

A long time later, he lifted his head from her chest. They were lying in a tangled heap on the floor, the room plunged into darkness. Belle guessed it was sometime in the middle of the night. They had spent hours making love, forgetting about his mother and other people’s opinions in favor of losing themselves in each other.

“There’s only one thing that could make this better,” Gold said, then pressed a kiss behind her ear.

Belle stretched beneath his body, feeling luxurious and sated. The nightlight from the adjacent kitchen illuminated his body, and his voice was raspy and thick with sex, making her want to pull down the blanket resting on his hips and shower him with love all over again.

“Gelato?” she guessed with a giggle.

“ Pistachio gelato.” He kissed her nose and groped in the dark for his boxer briefs. “Wait here, wife. I’ll be right back.”

“Leland?” Still sprawled on the floor in decadent laziness, Belle propped herself up on one elbow.

“Yes?” He paused in the doorway en route to the kitchen, his hair sticking up at ridiculous angles.

She was going to be able to wake up to that crazy hair and this beautiful man every day for the rest of her days. There was no more glorious way to spend a life.

“Don’t forget the spoon.”

###

[thelonesgroup]

Do YOU Have a Buyer?

Of course you have a buyer! It seems about everyone has a buyer these days who is searching diligently for a property. Often these buyers have missed out at least a couple of times in a multiple offer situation, are disappointed, deflated, and the agent has provided a glimmer of hope that they might be able to secure a home by sending a letter to local homeowners.

Before you do that, however, I highly suggest you have a plan, some rules around how that plan will be rolled out, and have a general buyer letter template ready to go that you can customize as your buyers' needs change.

Has the Buyer Really Stepped Up to the Challenge?

If the buyer hasn't been thoroughly vetted and approved, isn't being realistic about what financially it is going to take to buy a property, is going after properties that they really can't afford in this market and won't expand their search parameters, then the buyer HASN'T done their part. If they haven't, why are you spending your time and hard-earned money to send out a letter?

In my rulebook, Buyer not ready? Buyer not realistic? No letter!

Have a Strategy Session

If you have determined the buyer has indeed and will indeed do their part, before sending a letter, have a strategy meeting with the buyer about their expectations and targets, and then have a discussion that asks the “what if”s. What if you have a homeowner that is willing to sell off-market but they want to negotiate a price? What if the kitchen is in need of updates? What if during the inspection you learn that the roof needs to be replaced?

Starting the conversation with a homeowner who doesn't have their property on the market and with no photos to go by can be a challenge and you don't know what you are going to get. Having some good conversation ahead of time to make sure your buyer is prepared to complete a transaction in a non-orthodox way will save everyone time and money down the road. Some buyers may mistakenly think that because the seller is willing to work with them off-market they have a leg-up. However, I have heard of many a seller who decided that working with a demanding buyer just wasn't worth it but already had it in their mind to sell and decided to list on the open market, leaving the buyer standing there with their mouth open in surprise wondering what just happened.

No Throwing Mud

I have heard of agents sending out thousands of letters to homeowners all over the area. And then, who gets the calls? The agent! Who has to go meet with the homeowner to see if the home is even a contender? The agent! Who has to field the phone calls? The agent! And who has spent their hard-earned money? The agent!

Don't let the buyer dictate how this process is going to go. Indicate how many letters you are willing to send out at once and then give the buyer some homework to do. You can either get a list of properties that meet the criteria from a title company or your company or MLS may provide a service that allows for list generation and then have the buyers eliminate any houses they have no intention of buying. That may include entire streets or individual houses, but get them eliminating so you don't waste your time or money.

Don't Just Send a White Envelope

I literally just had one of my favorite agents, Rae Anne Catron, say this week that she got a listing because she sent a letter in a branded envelope. It was compelling enough for an investor owner to open, read, and make contact. If you have a brand, it begins to make a personal connection as soon as the mail is picked up. The chance you run by sending a non-branded envelope is that it isn't interesting enough to open and if they don't recognize you name, they may think you are trying to sell them an extended warranty to their car and toss it. Every letter you send is a marketing opportunity!

Get Specific!

The most successful letters don't just say, I have a buyer who is interested in a house like yours. Call me. The most effective letters offer some sort of proof that this buyer exists and may actually be a buyer prospect for that particular property. Something like:

"My buyer has recently moved here from Texas and her mother lives on 34th St. Her mother is aging but would like to stay independent in her home with her daughter living nearby. The buyer is looking for a single-story home, with at least two bedrooms on the main level. The buyer also needs a two-car garage. Public records show that your property checks all these boxes. However, the buyer is also looking for a home with mature landscaping, and from what we see from the street, it has."

In addition to indicating you have an actual buyer, these details also engage people's natural desire to help. Some agents who have used this letter have indicated that homeowner recipients actually reach out with suggestions of homeowners to contact and some pass the letter onto others.

Close Strong

It is important to keep to the topic at hand and not be tempted to throw in if you are interested in listing, give me a call. That negates the buyer's need and can turn the letter into a negative! Instead, focus the call-to-action back to the buyers:

"If you have thought of selling and would be open to allowing my buyers to walk-through your home and start the conversation around buying and selling, please give me a call or send an email. I would be happy to talk with you first to answer your questions as I realize this may be a different approach than what you are used to in a real estate transaction."

Letter-writing sounds like old-school marketing, but with homeowners being inundated with new-school marketing, old-school may be just what you need to stand out and get your buyer into a property.

Learn more about how reverse offers work with Denise Live! Reverse Offers - available only to Club Zebra Pro members. Not a member? Join this week and get your first month free!

What does a reverse offer look like in a seller's market? Rather than waiting for a seller to offer a listing, your buyers are ready to make offers on homes that aren't even on the market. Learn how it works, how to make a compelling offer, and how to protect your buyer when taking this alternative approach to finding listings at this week's Denise Live.

May 4th at 9:00 am Pacific

Open to Club Zebra PRO Members! Not a member? Join today and get a month for FREE!

CLICK HERE AND JOIN TODAY

(free offer expires May 5th)

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By Denise Lones CSP, M.I.R.M., CDEI - The founding partner of The Lones Group, Denise Lones, brings nearly three decades of experience in the real estate industry. With agent/broker coaching, expertise in branding, lead generation, strategic marketing, business analysis, new home project planning, product development, Denise is nationally recognized as the source for all things real estate. With a passion for improvement, Denise has helped thousands of real estate agents, brokers, and managers build their business to unprecedented levels of success, while helping them maintain balance and quality of life.

[stuck-in-hawkins]

When He Left: Chapter 1 October 28th, 1993

Stranger Things Fanfic: Byeler

Rated: Teen and Up

Summary: Will looked back to see Mike at the gate, his forced smile starting to crumble. Will had managed to get the chance of a lifetime: a scholarship to an arts college in California. He would be there among the monster makers of the movie industry. He was pursuing his dream, but what was he giving up in exchange?

It has been four years since Will left Hawkins. Everybody went in their own separate directions. But it has been 10 years since the Gate opened and Will's nightmares are getting worse. So, the party reunites and old feelings ignite.

link to read on ao3

October 28th, 1993

Will felt the sunlight across his face and opened his eyes. The covers were insulating the heat from him and the man laying beside him. That thick mop of black hair, the curvature of his tan back. Will reached out and traced the muscles beneath.

Ishaan stirred. Will thought, “Don’t wake up, don’t wake up.” He laid perfectly still. But alas, the man turned over and looked at Will, still groggy but the blanket of sleep quickly wearing off.

Will spoke softly, “Sorry I woke you. I was just gonna make breakfast.”

The man looked away and mumbled, “I have to get to work.”

There it was. The shame. Ishaan was a flame that Will seemed to keep flying back to. He was exactly his type. Tall, beautiful, and incapable of committing to a relationship. They were drawn to each other.

Ishaan was still very much in the closet. But he would come to clubs. He loved that Will had this quiet, inviting exterior. He’d actually told him this. That Will was safe. He wasn’t “that” gay. That he could pass as straight.

Ishaan had no idea about Will’s occasional drag nights.

Ishaan grabbed his clothes quickly with a speed Will had become familiar with. Will had hoped he could open Ishaan’s eyes, and help him learn to love and accept himself for who he was. But when the morning light came, so did the shame. Will embodied all the things Ishaan didn’t want to face and he would put as much distance between him as he could.

Will put on his pj bottoms and walked down the hallway in time to see Ishaan throw on his jacket.

“Ishaan.”

Eye contact.

“Someday, I’d love to have breakfast with you.”

Will could see him try to swallow a lump in his throat.

“I’m sorry, Will.” He opened the door and walked out.

Will padded his way to the kitchen, and opened the fridge, looking at the eggs and bacon sitting inside. He felt deflated. He could feel a familiar tug, trying to pull him back to bed so that he could curl under the covers. But he knew that if he did that, he’d lose the day. And it seemed like a beautiful one to waste. He turned to the window and cranked the handle, opening them. The air was fresh and warmed from the sun.

Will brought out the eggs, bacon, toast, and butter. He’d remembered feeling the same way Ishaan had. He remembered when he first came to the city in college and kept his identity confined to the night. He used to have a similar elitism, trying to separate himself from gay men that seemed especially feminine, doing anything he could to distance himself from the stereotypes that plagued his sexuality. But going to group helped with that. He opened his mind to become more accepting. He even experimented in his identity and found freedom in the exploration.

He cracked the egg into a bowl. Ishaan hadn’t wanted to go to any of the groups Will recommended. He was in denial. He picked up another egg. He thought, 'You're just something he craves.'

Crack.

“Damnit.” He’d gotten eggshells in the mix. He picked them out. Will was beginning to realize that it would take a lot of soul searching for Ishaan to accept himself. Something Will couldn’t help him with. How long would it take? How many more mornings did he have to watch him run out the door?

Will turned on the stove and let the butter simmer while he whisked the eggs together. Dustin’s words rang in his head.

‘You deserve to be more than someone’s secret.’ Dustin didn’t mince words but he was right. And it just seemed like Will was always drawn to the type that didn’t want to come out.

He heard a door open. Dustin groggily walked in from the hallway. “You are a Godsend. Is that eggs I smell?”

Will smiled. “And bacon will be next.”

“Screw all these other guys. Marry me.”

“Pretty sure there are some terms and conditions you wouldn’t be up for there.”

“Forget them. I’ll do all the butt stuff. Just make me eggs every day.”

Will threw the dish towel at him.

Dustin got the grounds out and started making coffee. “Your man-friend still here?”

Will shook his head.

“That’s too bad. He’s missing out on an awesome breakfast.” He smiled, “And some great company.”

Will smirked. He loved living with Dustin.

___________________________

After breakfast Will got ready for work. It was Sunday and he knew he didn’t have to go in, but he needed a reason to get out of the flat. He didn’t want to sit alone, pining for Ishaan. Will could feel that it was ending. It was a transition that he’d done before. It felt all too familiar but still hurt.

The worst part was seeing them months later, out, proud, and in a relationship. He’d be happy for them, but then he’d wonder. Why hadn’t it been with him? Why wasn’t he enough? Why did it seem like they only changed after he left?

But then, again, he knew that wasn’t always true. There were guys that never came out. Like Hartford, who had a wife and kids that were completely unaware of his Friday escapades. Dating him, being his side piece, was a low point for Will.

And then of course…. There had also been Mike.

‘Nope,’ Will thought. He shut down that train of thought and brought out his sketchbook. He needed to distract himself with a project. Studio time helped with that. After all this time, he still had a weakness with Mike. He’d made his peace with pretty much every guy after. But with him, there was a tenderness that had never faded. And if he thought about Mike when he was like this, in the throes of rejection, he’d fall to pieces.

He grabbed his headphones out of his bag as the Metro carried him across town to his stop. These days, his Walkman turned mostly Sonic Youth albums. Today it was Dreamnation. He got off and headed to The WereHouse.

It was a prop house popular among the independent filmmakers and even the occasional large studio. It was owned by two brothers. One ran the historical prop store, located in another part of town. That shop was mostly a gallery of antiques from all different periods, some originals, some reproductions. That had been where Will had gotten his start, running around thrift stores, estate sales, and antique shops trying to find period correct pieces for their inventory.

But when his boss saw Will’s sketchbook, he got transferred to The WereHouse. The other brother’s creative dungeon of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror props and prosthetics. Will was living his dream, getting to make monsters for movies. Though… most of his work consisted of prop dummies that ended up being burned, buried, or otherwise mutilated. Some weeks were spent meticulously painting disembodied limbs, fingers, and heads. Occasionally larger more creative opportunities arose, like the one he was working on now.

The whole project was very hush hush. When studios put out work like this, they were looking for more than monsters: they were looking for talent. Will was pouring in extra hours because getting this deal would mean he’d be part of something big. It wouldn’t just be low cost props for independent filmmakers. They’d have the backing of a studio. It meant potentially being a part of the next blockbuster.

He could be responsible for the next Xenomorph. The idea was both terrifying and elating. As a result, he spent most of his days either drawing or sculpting with the occasional break to eat and sleep. But it took his mind off of the trials and failures of his love life.

He opened the door and nodded to Anderson, who manned the reception desk. He was currently nose deep in the novel, Dune.

Will walked through the vestibule, where some of the past projects were displayed and made his way through the giant room with shelves scraping the ceiling. One row consisted of nothing but body parts: From whole limbs and torsos to severed fingers and toes. On another row, there was a treasure trove of cursed objects: elvish daggers, cauldrons of all different sizes, stitched leather books, crystals of every color.

Will remembered how awestruck he was the first time he came here… well, honestly for the few months. Now, it was just a part of his life. He’d still get these moments of “I can’t believe I’m working my dream job.” But it had become his new norm. He wished the whole party could see it. Dustin had completely lost his shit when he saw it. But they were the only two of the party in Burbank.

Not for long, though. Lucas was nearly finished his last year in the Navy, and Dustin had been pulling every string he could to make sure Lucas got a position as an engineer at the company he worked for, AECOM. Max has been living with her dad on the coast the past few years. Despite being in the same state, she was still about five hours away. Once Lucas was back on shore, there was a chance of them getting back together and her moving closer. But she had that software job and it was more likely Lucas would move up to her.

Over the years, Will had tried to convince Mike to come over to the coast, to get out of Hawkins. Maybe if the rest of them were together, that would be enough to change his mind.

Will walked into the studio, a large space lined with workbenches and cork boards. Mannequins, busts, and chairs for prosthetics and monster makeup were scattered around the room. And the whole space smelled of curing latex, acrylic paint, and plasticine clay. He sat down at the spot reserved for him, that had pictures tacked up as inspiration, along with a multitude of sketches. And there on the bench was a little model, about a foot high, that he had been carving out and tweaking all week. This was the 3rd version.

The studio was looking to create a new kind of monster. Normally, the producer or director would give some parameters of guidelines. But this one was an open book, which meant it was an audition of sorts. Will looked at his board.

In truth, it wasn’t the monster that was terrifying. It was the world the writer built, the atmosphere the director created. The actors, who made the audience care about the characters on the screen. Even the best monster design could be undone with poor timing, shoddy lighting, or terrible acting. They were all vital components of the final product. Once the audience cared about the world, about the characters, they would become invested. Will’s mind began to ponder.

The scariest parts about everything he experienced was the fear of losing it all. Of never seeing his mom, brother, or friends again. Of being alone at the end. Nothing had been more terrifying than losing himself to the mind flayer. To feel his words and body being driven by another. The most terrifying monsters were the ones that you didn’t see. The ones that transformed characters you loved from human to monster.

Will took pictures of his miniature model as it was. He always did before destroying it. Then, he squished the sculpted figure, wedged the clay back into a ball. From there he began the shaping of a human figure. But he arched the back, as if the body was fighting against itself. Where the spine was, legs that were like spiders but out of bone emerged. The muscle tearing at itself, reattaching to the new limbs. The most frightening monster was the one you watched yourself become.

Art was cathartic. It was how he processed everything. It was what got him through the worst parts of college. It gave him power and strength. He had control over his nightmares now. He could create them and destroy them with his own two hands.

In so many ways, coming to California saved him. He learned methods to cope with his identity, with his trauma. He was in a new place where there were less things to trigger flashbacks. The fear didn’t rule his life like it once had. There were days he questioned whether it was all even real. But, lately, he could feel himself backsliding. His nightmares were getting more vivid. They were trying to claw their way into his life here. They held on tighter so that it was harder to wake up. Sometimes, he forgot them as soon as he woke up. He'd be in a cold sweat, the fear shaking him, and he couldn't remember a thing. He was relieved that Ishaan had stayed the night. Having someone beside him seemed to keep the nightmares at bay. This week, he dreamt about the Mind Flayer, about being trapped inside his own head. He remembered sending his friends the code to close the gate. He knew what it meant. He had been resigned to it. It was a cost he had been willing to pay to ensure that the Shadow Monster would be dead for good. He woke up in tears at how willing he had been to accept his death. He cried at all the things he would have lost and felt relief to be alive.

It was because his family managed to pull it from him. His party refused to leave him behind.

He sculpted the man’s pained face. He hoped that if this movie got made, that they’d save the man. That the characters would be as heroic as his friends had been. _____________________________________

Will got off the metro, exhausted, both mentally and physically. Eight hours in a chair, bent over his desk and sculpting, did a number on his back.

He was still listening to Sonic Youth so he didn’t hear the chatter as he reached his floor. He didn’t hear the laughter when he put the keys in the lock. He didn’t hear the voice of the man that used to make his stomach flutter. If he had, he would have prepared himself. He would have made sure to tuck his heart in his chest, instead of on his sleeve.

But alas, he opened the door unsuspecting and the sound he made betrayed himself. It held in it all the love he felt in seeing him again.

“Mike.”

[notebooknebula]

A Vision Is What You Want Your Life To Be About | Alex Pardo & Jay Conner

https://www.jayconner.com/a-vision-is-what-you-want-your-life-to-be-about-alex-pardo-jay-conner/

A Vision Is What You Want Your Life To Be About

Why is it important to have a vision? What are some of the important factors that you need to consider when establishing your own vision?

Answers to these questions when you watch this short video by Alex Pardo & Jay Conner.

Alex Pardo is the Founder of Creative RE-Solutions, a home buying company based out of South Florida. The company’s purpose is to help people by providing solutions to unwanted properties.

In addition, Alex is the Co-Founder of ASCEND, a high-level mastermind and coaching community for Entrepreneurs that want to experience a better life and business.

Alex is also the Co-Founder of Holiday Mastermind, which was created to unite entrepreneurs that are passionate about go-giving, enhancing their businesses, all while doing so in a world-class setting.

Alex is the host of the Flip Empire Show, a top-rated podcast designed to help anyone achieve financial freedom through real estate investing. The show was launched in 2016, features industry thought leaders and cover a variety of topics like entrepreneurship, real estate investing, marketing, team building, systems and automation, personal development, vision building, and more.

Through his businesses, masterminds, coaching, and podcast, Alex is able to fulfill his purpose of helping others achieve Freedom, while passionately living his vision with his family.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: https://youtu.be/GycIG32exwg – “Ascend Your Success In Real Estate with Alex Pardo & Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority”

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

#RealEstate #PrivateMoney #FlipYourHouse #RealEstateInvestor

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11259/a-vision-is-what-you-want-your-life-to-be-about-alex-pardo-jay-conner

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

I can tell you over that Thank goodness I learned the lesson years ago. I wish I had learned it earlier than I did, but over the course of my business career, every time that I got involved in some type of business or some type of opportunity and the main reason I was in it or the only reason I was in it was for the money and the profit. I never succeeded. And so, in all my businesses that I’m involved in like you, Alex, I have a much deeper reason that I am in the business. So again, it’s no doubt that we connect on these topics. Now, one thing you said a moment ago that you said is important and you also help entrepreneurs with, and that is helping people figure out or established and write down what their vision is. So multi-part question here about vision creating. Why is it important to have a vision? And before you even answer that define what you mean by vision. I mean, there’s vision there’s goals. But first define what you mean by vision. And then how does someone go about figuring out what their vision is?

Alex Pardo:

People have the wrong idea that people think that a vision is goals. Hey, I want to accomplish this, this, and this. Those are our goals. That’s not a vision for me. Think of your life as a blank canvas and you’re the artist, and you can create this image. You can create this masterpiece, so to speak, which is your life. If you could have it any way, how would you design your life? And for me a vision at least the way that I’ve done it is on one sheet of paper. And it’s broken down into eight categories. You know, we have spiritual family, health, money career and so on and so on, right? Hobbies, fun friends. So for me, it’s broken down into eight categories. And one of the first things that I do is I prioritize what’s most important in my life.

So spiritual and families at the top health is also up there. And I kind of go down the line. So a vision is what you want your life to be about. A vision is you know, we only get as cliché as it sounds. We only get one crack at this. It’s unfortunate that sometimes it takes a tragedy, it takes somebody close to us passing away or a celebrity, or it takes something happening for you to realize that we’re mortal. Like we’re here today and we can be gone in the next minute. And so one of the things I always ask myself, when I wake up is how am I going to squeeze the juice out of life today? Like, how am I going to live my vision and how am I going to live to the fullest? Understanding that again, the next minute, the next day isn’t promised.

And so for me, a vision is how I want to live in those different categories within my life. If I could have it any way without regards to money or time or any limiting beliefs, how would I live my life in those different areas? I prioritize it. And then I simply figure out what it is I truly want. And I’ll always ask myself, “What do I want? Why do I want it?” And then I’ll run it through one more filter. I’ll ask myself, “Is this what I think I want based on what I see others doing on social media or otherwise, or is this truly what I want?” Right. For whatever reason. And it’s important to your point, Jay, that you understand what the reason is behind it, because I think that reasons and the big, why is what’s going to push you through when the inevitable adversity comes, which we’re all going to face.

And so for me, I have a very specific on one page, one sheet of paper, I have a vision for my life and those different areas, spiritual family health and so on. Right. And my goal is to live that vision every single day. Now I falter, which is why I go back to it often. And then what I tend to do is I create goals that are in alignment with that vision, right? Because if your goals are not aligned with your vision, and you know, your goal is to take a company public and go a hundred million. Make a hundred million dollars in the next five years. But your vision is you want to travel a lot with your family and you want to serve people and you want to do this. Those goals is the goals and the vision aligned. Right. And that’s one of the things that I think people struggle with is not understanding that goals is not the same thing as having a vision.

[ravenforce]

Ta ta touch

Prompt: “Hi! If you feel like writing something. I have an idea: Lena x f!reader with a prompt: "Please stop petting the test subjects". Something cute and fluffy where the reader is visiting Lena's lab for the first time and wants to touch everything, press all the buttons since everything there is fascinating and exciting to her. Lena tries to keep her gf from causing problems to herself or L Corp.”

Requested by: @pentagoniablue

Pairing: Lena Luthor x Reader

Word Count: 2825

Warning/s: None.

A/N: I will go ahead and apologize for that ending. Was it intentional? Maybe. LOL. I hope you guys like it. If there are any mistakes that escape me, please forgive me. Let me know what you think!

***

You've been best friends with Alex Danvers since you were kids. You've been the honorary youngest Danvers since you moved next to their house in Midvale, and you just moved back to National City after living and working in your family business in France. You can hear multiple voices inside the address Alex gave you, you're not really nervous but you double checked yourself before you attempted to knock on the door. Before you can knock though, the door was almost ripped out of its hinges when Kara opened it in excitement.

"(Y/N)!" Kara squealed as she pulled you into a hug.

You laughed at her enthusiasm, at least that didn't change. Alex walked out of the kitchen and into your periphery looking like the broody big sister she has always been. You walked directly towards Alex for a hug after Kara released you. She wrapped her arms around you and you rubbed your face on her shoulder. She let out a laugh remembering how you used to always do that.

"Welcome home," Alex said against your hair. You pulled back when a girl with long hair cleared her throat. You peered over Alex's shoulder and fought the blush in your face at the number of people witnessing your moment with your sisters.

"Hi, I'm Nia. You must be (Y/N), we heard so much about you," she said with a warm smile.

You extricate yourself from Alex and moved around to shake everyone's hands. Everyone seems to be genuinely nice and warm, not that you're surprised; Alex and Kara are a good judge of characters. You're sitting next to Alex on the couch when you noticed someone in the balcony, Alex saw where you're looking.

"That's Lena. Lena Luthor," Alex said before drinking from her wine glass.

***

After finishing her call, Lena came back inside Kara's apartment and almost knocked you down when she walked in the kitchen. She would have fallen if you hadn't caught her wrist using your other hand that's not holding a fresh bottle of Moscato. She fought the urge to stare and shiver at the feel of your warm hand on her skin.

"Hi, are you okay?" You asked after letting go of her wrist. Lena immediately missed the contact.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking at where I'm going," Lena said fighting to get her heartbeat in control.

"It's okay, no casualties," you said beaming at her. "I'm (Y/N) by the way."

Before Lena could respond, Kara came in at the kitchen looking weirdly at her best friend.

"What's going on here?" She asked. Shit, Lena cursed in her head. Kara might have heard her heart racing.

"Nothing," you said while exiting the kitchen. "Your friend is breathtaking," you whispered only loud enough for Kara to hear.

She let out a loud laugh that startled Lena. Both of them followed you in the living room to continue playing Pictionary. Winn suggested to change the game to Monopoly, which he only realized is a bad idea with two CEO in the room. At half past midnight, only you and Lena were playing and everyone else just broke off in various parts of the room to chat.

"How about we just say we're both winners?" you suggested.

Lena looked at you like it was a trick question. "Only if you buy me dinner sometime," she teased.

"Done," you said before you extended your hand for Lena to shake. She laughed before shaking it. When she came to game night today, she was stressed about work but meeting you certainly made her brain shut off anything work-related. All she can focus on really was the way you laugh, the crinkles on the side of your eyes when you smile, and how generally great you are.

***

It took two weeks before you saw Lena again. Lunch hour just passed, so the restaurant was blissfully empty except for a few others. You were looking for an empty seat when you saw black hair, pale skin, green eyes, and red lips sitting alone in the corner. The mere sight of her lifts your mood instantly.

"Is this seat taken?" You asked innocently. Lena was ready to tell the stranger off but when she looked up from her phone and saw you she instantly smiled.

"No," she answered.

Lena non-subtly looked at you from head to toe, taking in your tight-fitting trousers, loose white button up and black trench coat before she gestured for you to take a seat. You smiled warmly at her ignoring the fire in your gut ignited by the way she looks at you.

"Late lunch, Ms. Luthor?" you asked smiling. Lena can't help but return it. Something about you just makes her feel safe like Alex does, and warm like Kara does. At that moment, she realized why you're considered the youngest Danvers sister; you take on quite a few characteristics of the two. She's intrigued how different you are from both though.

"Yes, my assistant Jessica locked me out of my office," Lena said. Completely abandoning the email she was writing before you walked up to her.

"Ah! Yes! My secretary once had security drag me out of my office after I've failed to leave for 48 hours," you said as you look at the menu. Lena laughed.

Of course, she knows about your family business. Your an only child, hence the responsibility of continuing your parents legacy as one of the most successful real estate tycoons falls upon you. You're two years younger than her but also incredibly mature and intelligent. Also unbelievably beautiful and soft, which intrigues her how you survive in the industry without being eaten by sharks.

You ate and talked with Lena for almost two hours. It would have gone well to dinner if not for both your phones continuously alerting you of new messages. Both of you looked at your phones and knew it's time to go. You walked Lena back to L-Corp, secretly not wanting to end your time together.

Lena was walking to her elevator when you had the courage to speak. "Lena," you said aloud. She turned around to look at you.

"I still owe you dinner," you continued. She smiled at you.

"Sure, I'll clear my schedule for you," she said before entering her elevator.

***

Alex and Kara were hanging out at your new condo Friday night. It was apparent that something is on your mind, your sisters can see right through you. When you wiggled on the couch one more time, Alex had enough; she reached for the remote and paused the movie you're watching.

"Okay. What's wrong?" Alex asked, turning slightly on her seat to look at you. You're cuddled next to her. You nibbled your bottom lip and glanced at Kara before sighing heavily.

"It's about Lena, isn't it?" Kara asked. You tried to hide your surprise but with the smile on her face, you know you just gave yourself away.

"I hear the change in the rhythm of your heartbeat every time someone so much as mention her name," Kara teased. You sighed, there's no point lying to an alien with super hearing and a black ops.

"Yeah, I owe her dinner but I don't have her number so I don't know if tomorrow would work for her," you said. Kara laughed before she pulled out her phone, wiggling her eyebrows at you.

"Jeez, all you had to do was ask instead of interrupting my TV show," Alex said as she hit play on the remote, Kara dictated Lena's number.

Once sure that you got it correctly, you ran towards you balcony to call Lena. One ring, two rings before Lena picked up.

"Hey Lena, it's me (Y/N)," you greeted cheerfully hoping it'll hide the nerves.

"And here I thought I'll never hear from you," she can't help but tease. She's been waiting all week, she even contemplated asking Kara for your number.

"Sorry, I've been busy moving. Are you free tomorrow night?" You asked.

"For you, I will be," she answered. Is she flirting with you, you wonder.

"Great, I'll pick you up at 7?" You're bouncing at the sole of your feet.

"Sure, ask Kara for my address. See you tomorrow," Lena said smiling like a giddy teenager.

"Yes, see you. Wear something casual," you said before hanging up.

When you came back inside, Kara and Alex are smiling widely at you. You rolled your eyes at your sisters.

***

Saturday couldn't come fast enough. You swapped your black McLaren P1 with Alex's black Rubicon for the night, which she agreed to easily. You texted Lena that you have arrived and is waiting outside. Not a moment later, you looked up and nearly fell on your knees looking at how beautiful Lena is wearing dark skinny jeans, green blouse, and black boots. You felt completely underdress in your washout jeans, faded MCR shirt, black leather jacket, and yellow Adidas Gazelles.

"Is this the most casual you could go, Ms. Luthor?" you teased when she stood a foot away from you. Lena laughed, she always laughs when she's around you it seems.

"You look great," she said while running a hand on your chest over your leather jacket. You thank heaven you're still leaning on side of the car or your knees would have given out. You wonder how you're going to survive the night.

"Right," you said while opening the door for her.

"Is this Alex's car?" she asked when you sat on the driver's seat.

"Yeah, my car isn't built for where we're going," you said before reaching out at the back seat.

Lena was already secured by the seatbelt when you handed her a bundle of sunflowers. She gaped at you while you pulled out of the parking lot. She cleared her throat to hide her growing blush. It's been a while since she dated, the last one was James, and you're far more charming than him. Lena finds it very easy to talk to you about anything, she found you very smart and you showed genuine interest in her work and ideas. You don't flinch or doubt her intentions as she tells you some of her project that involves the Harun-El.

You listened to her intently while keeping your focus on the road. When you crossed the city limits, Lena wonders where you're going but not long after she saw fairy lights and soon a Ferris wheel is looming in front of you. You watch her take in your destination.

"I know I said dinner but I found this place while I was moving. Thought it's been forever since I've been in one, we can go if you hate it," you ranted. Lena looked at you and smiled.

"Hate it? I love it! I've never been in one," she admitted.

Without further ado, you jumped out of the car and waited for Lena to join you. The carnival is located in a huge clearing near the woods a little outside the city. It's huge enough not to feel cramped even though it's crawling with people. Out of reflex, you held Lena's hand all throughout the night. Lena didn't complain, wouldn't complain. She already loves the feel of your hand in hers.

***

Since she admitted to never being in a carnival, you made it your mission to give Lena the full experience. First, you made it through the parlor games; Lena absolutely sucked at shooting moving targets. Thankfully, Alex taught you a thing or two about guns since you arrived back in NC. She pouted when you won a dog plushie but she immediately smiled when you handed it to her. Second, you made her ride all your favorite carnival rides like the bump car, octopus, anchors away, Ferris wheel, and the horror train.

Two hours have passed before you both decided you're famished. Great thing there was a dedicated area for food trucks. You eyed her curiously as she surveyed her choices.

"Are you sure you want to eat here? We can leave and get food in a proper restaurant," you suggested.

"There are tacos over there," she said before she's dragging you to the said food truck. There's a small queue but Lena doesn't seem to mind, she looks so happy in that moment. Plus the tacos smells divine. Lena ordered one of each item on the menu, the trucker gave her a funny look.

"Is this too much?" She asked as she helps you carry her orders on a nearby picnic table.

"Maybe a little but I understand the logic," you said.

After finishing up on food, you carried your trash to the segregation bin. Both of you decided it's best to just walk around before heading home. If you're both being honest, you just didn't want to go home yet. You walked around the carnival holding hands, talking about everything and anything under the sun. You even shared cotton candy and took some photos together.

Eventually, you had to go home; by the time you decided that the sun is already rising. Both of you laughed at how time evades you when you're having fun. When you pulled up in front of her building it's already 7 in the morning.

"Thanks for last night, (Y/N). I had so much fun," she said before she kissed your cheeks.

"I had fun too Lee," you said unable to fight the blush that crept up your neck and face.

"When you're free next week, I'll give you a tour of my lab," she said before closing the door of the car and heading inside her building.

***

It's almost a week since you took Lena to the carnival and you want to see her already. You were watching the shadows on the ceiling of your new office when you heard your notification alert. You ignored it thinking it's probably just Alex and/or Kara. On the fifth unanswered message, whoever was texting decided to just call.

"Hey, are you ignoring me?" Lena's voice sounded on the receiver.

"Hey, no!" You defended quickly. "Well, I'm ignoring my whole phone. Sorry."

Lena chuckled. "How about that lab tour? Only if you're not busy," she said a little self-conscious.

"Be there soon," you said already grabbing your keys.

It took thirty agonizing minutes before you arrived in L-Corp with a bag of Chinese take-out on your hand. You were surprised to find Lena sitting at her assistant's table waiting for you.

"Took you long enough," she teased beckoning you to come closer. When you're at arm's length, she tugged you so she can kiss your cheeks. She took the take-out from your hand and left it at Jess's table. Then shes dragging you back to the elevator to go down to her lab.

“When we get there, don’t touch anything,” she warned. You just smiled at her.

When you entered her lab, you weren't surprised to find it sleek and modern just like her office. She watches you as you take in every detail of the lab. You asked her excitedly about anything that piqued your interest, and she answered you eagerly. Sometimes you'd forget you're not supposed to touch anything, and she'll be instantly beside you swatting your hand gently.

“(Y/N),” she whined when you picked up a petri dish. You smiled apologetically.

When you come around the part of the lab that houses the Harun-El, you were fascinated you tried to reach for its glass case but Lena stopped you.

***

In an instant, she's tugging you away from the space rock and you found yourself pinned against the opposite wall. She held your hand over your head.

"For the last time, no touching," she said with a low growl.

"Lee," you whispered but before you could apologize, she's surging forward and kissing you.

You've had your fair share of kisses before but nothing as intense as this. You lose your breath every time Lena moves her lips against yours, at every nip and tug you feel yourself getting wet. It doesn't help your cause when she let go of your hand in favor of running hers through your neck, to your shoulders and down your chest. Your breath hitched when you felt nimble fingers undoing the buttons of your oxford shirt. She slightly pulled away to look at your disheveled look, blushing cheeks, and kiss-swollen lips.

"God, you're beautiful," she said before she's kissing you again, her arms wrapping around your waist.

She walked you towards the nearest table without breaking the kiss, you're impressed and hella turned on. You felt her hand squeeze your ass before you felt your back hitting the table. She helped you sit up the table and guided your hand towards the edge.

"Hold on, (Y/N)," she said while looking at your eyes.

"You let go, and touch me I will stop. Do you understand?" She husked.

[moveslikebuckywrites]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Good Omens (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Beelzebub (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Ligur (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens), Sandalphon (Good Omens), Original Characters Additional Tags: is it a coffeeshop au if it's not an au?, the long suffering silence of your local barista, also don't forget to tip your baristas

Summary: In which three well-meaning but underpaid Baristas are subject to the tensions of the (unknown to them) demons and angels that work in Broadgate Tower.

It's no worse than any of their other regular customers.

_____

This is for a weekly prompt fill over in @ladyoutlier‘s Ineffable Outlier’s discord!

It’s a super fun time over there, y’all should come check it out!

_____

Broadgate Tower was, at the outset, an altogether normal office building.

There were real estate offices, sales offices, legal offices, offices that did some sort of business that even the people working there weren’t sure about; any office you could think of.

Like most office buildings in the 21st century, there was a coffee shop in the lobby. Hard to handle the daily grind of the corporate sector without a boost of caffeine. Office workers of all kinds would flock to the little shop every day, in their smart three-piece suits and overly-expensive shoes, for their much-needed fix.

Yes, most of the workers in the Broadgate Tower were very well-paid corporate entities. Not so much the baristas in the coffeeshop.

When you work for the minimum wage, you get used to certain things. You get used to being treated like you’re not entirely human. You get used to hearing things that normal people with manners would never say to anyone they actually gave a toss about.

Demands to see the manager over the inability to make a drink that they don’t even carry the ingredients for (what exactly is supposed to be in a Pokemon Go Frappuccino? We still don’t know, really. This isn’t a bloody Starbucks.)

Flash bastard suck-ups who really want to be the CEOs of their company loudly complaining into their phones about the wait times (what, exactly, did they expect when tower staffing would only budget for three baristas during rush hour?).

Screaming over lattes being 5 degrees too cold, then about them being 5 degrees too hot after being remade (the machines are automatic, both drinks were the exact same).

The same individuals, after having their drink remade three times, saying things like “See, it’s not so hard, is it? You’re just making coffee after all!” while laughing shrilly, covering their mouths with their hands to show off their overly expensive French manicures.

“Whatever ‘hell’ actually is,” said one barista, after a particularly crazy morning rush, “It can’t possibly be worse than that.”

“Just wait, Rose, you’ll get used to it,” Kristy, the shift lead, added as she tried to unearth the condiment bar from the seemingly endless pile of sugar and sugar substitutes that had buried it, “It’s only your first day, and you’re doing great.”

“They really need to get us a fourth morning shift,” said Jisel, the last of the three, currently grinding coffee to replenish what the morning stampede had obliterated, “It’s bad enough to deal with the rush, worse when they show up.”

“When who shows up?” asked Rose, “I thought that was the bulk of it?”

“The ‘gangs’,” Kristy said sarcastically, “Bit of an odd bunch; seem to absolutely hate each other. Never can figure out what their offices do, but it always feels like a bomb is gonna go off when they come in the morning.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Rose’s eyes widened, “can it?”

“The tension is the worst,” Jisel groaned as she set up the coffee baskets to brew, “like they’re waiting for a war to come or something.”

“One group works on the top floor,” Kristy said as she scooped out more sugar into the dispensers, “Those are the ones that wear all beige and gray. The other work in the basement, wear all black and some of them stink. Upstairs is all fake smiles and downstairs is all depression, it’s quite odd.”

“And don’t get me started on their manners,” Jisel pressed the ‘brew’ button on the machines and turned her attention to the pastries, “One of them, some American asshole with purple contacts, always calling our food ‘gross matter’. Like, buddy, it’s not my fault this is what corporate sends us.”

“Oh! Or the baldie, always staring! Shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that leering, creeps me right out!” Kristy suppressed a shiver of fear at the thought of the bastard.

“Isn’t he the one with the grills in his teeth?” Jisel winced at the thought, “What does he think he’s a millennial or something? He’s not fooling anyone, he’s gotta be at least 45! Or even the short one, with the fly hat!”

“What, like, a cool hat?” asked Rose.

“No, like, a literal house fly but it’s a hat on their actual head,” Jisel said waving the pastry tongs about, “They wanted to fire me for wearing a necklace one day and this one gets to wear a hat that looks like a housefly?”

“Come on now, you know they don’t work for tower staffing,” Kristy had given up at this point and taken position at one of the tables to watch whatever shit was on the tele currently, “Whatever company it is must be pretty lenient.”

“Dunno how lenient you can be when the best place you could rent out is a basement. All the ones that wear black work in the basement.” Jisel poked at a stale scone with the tongs, “Seems ever so dreary.”

“’Cept for the one with the sunglasses, he’s always good for a joke.” This whole job was a joke. A sense of humor had always been something Kristy could appreciate, even if most of their customers couldn’t.

“Yeah, when he’s here. Usually just the rest of the lot though,” The scone continued to be regarded with disdain before being unceremoniously tossed in the garbage and replaced with a fresher one,

“What about the professor looking fellow from the upstairs group?”

“The fuddy-duddy?” Kristy asked, wrinkling her nose and flipping through the channels. Rose had taken to cleaning the same tabletops she’d already cleaned.

“That’s not very nice,” The tongs hand moved on to poking at one of the unfortunate looking breakfast sandwiches, “He always leaves good tips!”

“S’pose that’s true; day always seems to go better after he visits.”

“Still haven’t figured out how we seem to have marshmallows when he’s here,” Jisel said, “We don’t usually have them do we?”

“Probably best not to question it.” Kristy, out of everyone, had been there the longest and had seen the majority of the strangeness the ‘gangs’ (as the baristas all called them) could be. Sometimes things happened when they were around and if you thought too hard on it, you’d find yourself with an upset stomach or a migraine.

This was how it was with coffee shops. Part of the business. Marshmallows existed when the fuddy duddy was around, and that was that.

“Um, ‘scuse me,” Rose piped up from where she was cleaning the same table a third time, “Did it get colder in here?”

“Ah,” Kristy stood to take back her position behind the bar, tossing the remote on a table, “They’re here.”

It was only three of them today (a blessing, if you believed that sort of thing) but it would have to be the worst possible three. She knew their names, of course. You didn’t work in the same place this long and not learn customer names. Beelzebub, Hastur, and Ligur. Weird names, but a coffee is a coffee.

The first, hot chocolate with cinnamon - extra whipped cream.

The second, black coffee with two shots of espresso.

The third always changed his order with the season. Sometimes she could swear his eyes changed color, too. She thought to her old worn out glasses and thought how nice it must be to afford contacts, much less color ones.

“Finally!  I might spare your deaths for another day,” the one known as Ligur said, “It appears you’ve all come to your senses and deigned to bring my preferred drink back. I’ll have the pumpkin spice.” He said this with a snarl, making it sound eviller and foreboding than any overly-sweet sugar-drenched latte should. Which was difficult, because around here “Pumpkin Spice” was a four-letter word. Jisel punched the order into the till with the complete indifference one can only gain by working in the customer service industry.

Rose looked like she might jump out of her skin from her position by the oven, and Kristy couldn’t really blame her. There was a certain aura that came with the basement workers; doom and gloom was the best way to describe it. The fact that the one seemed to have a reptilian hand sticking out from under his blonde hair didn’t help.

Best to ignore that.

Also best to ignore the beady eyes boring holes through her as she filled half of the large cup with whipped cream for the weird fly-hat person. Did they even blink?

“Cinnamon if you pleazzzz.” Beelzebub said with a buzz and obvious disdain, poking a straw into the lid that was clearly not for straws. Kristy turned her attention to the espresso shots running for the black coffee. She was sure that she very much did not see the person offer the straw to their hat and most certainly did not see the hat actually drink from it.

She had gotten very good at not seeing things.

The other two joined the first at the hand-off plane, both grumbling.

“I don’t see how you drink that blessed shit,” said the one called Hastur, “You know that Crowley got a commendation for it1.” He said the name ‘Crowley’ the same way one might say ‘toenail fungus’.

“It’s awful.” Said Ligur who, for today, seemed to have settled on a highlighter-yellow for his color contacts.

“Oh,” said the other, “Well that’s alright then.”

They often spoke like this. Backwards, in Kristy’s mind.

“Um,” Rose piped up from her position as Kristy added the swirl of whip cream to the pumpkin-only-in-name latte, “Now it feels warmer in here?”

“Nah, it’s cuz you’re by the oven,” Jisel said.

Kristy declined to comment; she already knew they were coming. She’d had lots of days seeing the tension flooding into the depressing group in front of her.

Sure enough, in walked the upstairs department. All four smiling so wide as if there was something just behind their teeth trying to claw its way out.

She knew all the names but one. The tall American never ordered, only complained. Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon were the other three.

They all got the same thing. Americanos. No room, no cream, no sugar.

The small person in the fly hat stared at the American. The American stared back at them.

“Ah, Beelzebub,” the man said, clasping his hands in front of him, stooping down slightly to address who they knew as Beelz, “What an absolute pleasure to run into you again.” He said ‘pleasure’ the same way one might say ‘mandatory monthly torture meetings’.

“Gabriel,” fly-hat replied, looking altogether taller than they had a few moments ago, “Not too bzzzy being self-righteouzzz elzzewhere?”

It always astounded the baristas how they could so easily talk down to another who had a good three feet of height on them. Impressive, to say the least.

The tension in the room was palpable. Like being stuck in pea soup. Like being on a knife edge. Like any moment something was going to snap, and they’d have to run to the phone and call in the police for the inevitable brawl that would definitely probably break out today.

But that was just a typical Friday afternoon at any other time of the day, so Kristy went on with making the Americanos.

The two individuals stared at each other for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. Jisel didn’t speak. Kristy didn’t speak. Rose, well, tried not to speak but definitely whimpered from her little corner of the back bar.

First days were always overwhelming.

And then, as it had transpired every other day, fly-hat broke the eye contact and began walking past the American, head held high. Defiant. Them and the other two would walk out the door, the upstairs people would leave shortly after, and the rest of the day would proceed along as it always does.

This time, fly-hat stopped.

“You are aware,” they said, pure anger palpable even to the baristas behind the bar, “It izz only five more dayz. We are The Fallen, and we will rizze from the ashezz.”

“Whatever helps you make it through the day, Beelzy,” the American said mockingly. Kristy saw fly-hat bristle at this nickname, “We all know the greater good will triumph in the end.”

And with that, the downstairs people left. The upstairs people were given their drinks. They smiled their fake smiles; they didn’t leave a tip2. The baristas stared after them, as they always do, still not sure what to make of it. Even after five years, Kristy’s never figured it out.

"What do you think they meant by that, Kristy?" Jisel asked, "Five days until what?"

"No idea, probably just some corporate garbage, like it always is."

The beeping of the coffee timer kicked them out of their stupor and back to business at hand. Nothing new really, world keeps spinning on as it always does.

______

1 – Crowley had been quite proud of his influence in the creation of the phenomenon known as the “Pumpkin Spice Latte”. An entire pumpkin based beverage without a bit of pumpkin in it, just the spices usually associated with it. It had been a big hit and he’d received a commendation from it on the sheer amount of vanity and addiction it had produced. This of course backfired on him when Aziraphale had proclaimed them to be “quite scrummy indeed”.

2 – Sandalphon, however, did entreat them to “Climb every mountain and ford every stream”, which did little more than confuse the baristas.

[cryptosharks1]

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Finance & Global News – March 22nd 2020

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi guys. Thanks for tuning in to tell episode of nuggets news. Well another truly amazing week we’ve got so much macro news and crypto news to get through. A lot of that is intertwined these days so I do encourage you to watch the full video. We welcome a couple of thousand new subscribers. Thanks so much for following us we’re trying to give you the most up to date information we’ve got literally thousands of people contacting us through all our channels wanting to know how to learn about gold and silver Bitcoin crypto currency what is going on in the economy. So we’ve got all these free resources on our Web site guys. So said friends and family they’re all your favorite videos. This video we encourage you to share all that content. That’s why we’ve been busy making it all for you for the past few years for these types of situations particularly a big thank you to our members like all businesses we are relying on you for our revenue and I employ 13 people now and I know I need that money coming in to keep them employed to keep giving you guys the best content. So huge thank you. 58 new members in our premium area read that welcome post guys stick by the rules it’s all functioning really well for the most up to date information you know to the minute type updates from everything around the world and I can’t thank you guys enough for the way that’s all running at the moment. Let’s get into the local news first where Prime Minister Scott Morrison has just gone live. He’s unveiled a far bigger stimulus package. I’m all for anything that gets money in the hands of people that are losing their jobs. We just need to make sure that people can get by. And I know a lot of people are still saying he says well you know how do I keep my business going and this time the other big guys. The reality is businesses are going to close. It’s going to be bad. This is what I’ve been talking about. A lot of people have never had a rainy day and we need to acknowledge that you know let’s support people. Let’s make sure there’s food on the table. They don’t have to pay their rent their mortgage their power bills. We need to just you know do everything we can to get by until this all passes and it will pass so I’m not getting into all the details of that package. We’re going to go through all the different countries and what they’ve done so I’ll let you guys read the details of those specifics but I certainly think there’s been no mistruths pushed by the media. So look at these stats again from today from Core Logic and all the real estate industry telling us that house prices are still going up by the day. I mean who on earth believes this stuff and we know that it’s all connected particularly in Australia where we need to protect house prices from going down. That’s very hard to do when people start losing their jobs and have a lot of investment properties because it’s all connected now. Our banks the most exposed in the world in terms of their mortgage books. So yes the government are going to do everything they can to rescue the banks. We’ve seen all these excuses around the world now encouraging people not to take out cash or you know telling you the reasons why you can’t even spend your own cash. So look these things are to be expected. If you’ve been following the channel we’ve been saying this is going to happen and it’s just happened probably faster than we thought because of these recent catalysts. So earlier this week a lot of super funds including Australia’s largest Super Fund sent out emails to clients basically saying you know markets go up and down you have to really ask yourself if it’s if it’s a work taking these unnecessary risks and trading your super assets. So a bit of a typo there that tells you that that was rushed and panicked and telling people not to sell. Markets are since down another 15 per cent and I know a lot of people with their super fund are hurting at the moment. I certainly feel for you guys the RBA coming out and they’re going to have to print this money and buy our bonds. The next step is obviously corporate bonds and then stocks you know mortgage backed securities in other countries. It is just insane the level of stimulus that we’re seeing at the moment. And obviously bitcoin and go to the two things they can’t print. We’ll get to that in just a second but all this leads to the collapse of the Aussie dollar down to 55 cents you can’t quite see that behind me there sorry. That’s. This is one of the side effects of our economy that I’ve been warning about since we made our documentary over a year ago. And this pushes up yields. So when the government is now issuing debt because governments are going to run up huge huge debts and they’re issuing these bonds trying to get people to give them money but people aren’t going to give them money when they know the economy’s in trouble and this is when interest rates rise and that’s when central banks might be forced to raise interest rates. And that is just the nightmare scenario having to raise interest rates. Well everyone’s got all this debt. This situation is really messy and that’s why everyone is looking to escape into these perceived safe haven. So look good timing over in Italy where some of those banks are opening up bitcoin trading. One point two million you’re in lockdown. So these are the options the on ramps that we’ve been talking about that are now really global for people to escape the crumbling financial system. I did a detailed video on that all the different options you have to get into US dollars gold silver Bitcoin stable coins the counterparty risks of each of those so watch that video share it with friends and family if you haven’t already. FCX have got two gold stable coins a T and Pax G is the other one over there and they’ve also recently added Aussie dollars as an on ramp so you can connect your bank account and it’s a very quick way to get into US dollars or stable coins and then you can withdraw those and keep them on your hobby wallet or your ledger as well as other tutorials I’ve done recently on how to hedge if you’ve got your gold and silver holdings or bitcoin holdings as well there’s ways to hedge with the other products. All right. So what are you that managing your own money. Very happy right about now and we’re hearing all these stories about super funds and the delays. We’ve had a record amount of people start to manage their own so finding super funds so I’m gonna get Mike on this week because there’s a lot of questions now about can we withdraw from our super fund another thing that the government announced today. So hopefully we can address all those questions really clearly. One thing I will mention with that announcement from the government is that if people are withdrawing that ten thousand dollars or more from their super you remember the stock market is down it’s probably gonna keep going down. So all that money that you’re drawing now could be more down the road. Now some people don’t believe we’re going to have retirement funds in decades from now but that can start more of a ceiling because traders and investors are going to say Well everyone’s going to be selling to take many of their super. I’m going to front run that selling. And so that can I just think it’s coming together. There’s nothing that is going to make markets go higher anytime soon until this all passes. So that’s the financial side of things in terms of the health care side of things. I thought our government were going to announce more measures on Friday. They’ve come out again today and extended things encouraging people not to do non-essential travel. But it’s still not really enforcing any of this. It’s up to you as the individual just like no one’s going to save you from the world of finance. No one’s going to make you healthy and no one is going to protect you and look after you guys you have to take that responsibility yourself and a lot of you guys know that you’ve been following the channel you prepared for everything that’s happening now. So yes schools still aren’t closed. There’s talk as I’m recording of New South Wales and Victoria looking to implement that in the next 48 hours as soon as one state does it they’re probably all going to follow. But yeah I’m certainly surprised I’m giving everything that’s happening firstly on Friday. It was one cruise ship. Now it’s five separate cruises that have all had confirmed cases those people are scattered throughout Australia. We haven’t really seen that spike yet but if this doesn’t scale nothing will. This is a beach on easily 12 days ago. This is absolutely reminiscent of what we’re seeing in Australia down here in Tassie. I spoke to friends. They went for a walk this morning. All the restaurants are packed all the bars are packed. No one is taking this seriously yet and no one is taking it seriously. In Italy twelve days ago just have a look at where they are now. These excuses that we’re hearing it’s only all people 54 percent of New York City’s cases are between 18 and 49 year olds. So it is not just affecting all people at all. We’ve now got cases of babies as young as seven months old and and children that are getting this so please guys you have to realize the severity of what’s going on at the moment. I’ll just press refresh here. There’s a couple of Web sites giving us up to date information on the Australian statistics. But this is just growing continually. You know 20 percent a day exponentially we haven’t even slowed it yet mathematically we are still on track to you know to hit the number that is going to overwhelm our hospitals unless we slow this down. So we’re not quite as bad as Italy and Iran. We’re somewhere in the middle here. We are certainly not down here near Singapore and we’re not flattening the curve like the government is is telling us that they you know they’re really happy with the job they’ve done so look a couple of positives here. Kofi to help dot com today you. This is a website built by one of our friends. It lists all the freebies and the help how you can help other people charities check that out in the time of need we’ve got to come together and help each other globally. Let’s just refresh that. Three hundred eight thousand now at time of recording the deaths ratio has actually gone up a little bit recently. Again we don’t know how accurate this is in terms of total that are going undiagnosed and not tested recovery takes a little bit longer. Two or three weeks you’re in hospital in a lot of cases. So we get the deaths before we get the recoveries. That’s all to go through the system but the wiring thing here is that even on the exponential scale we’re now accelerating higher again in across Europe across Australia across the US. All right let’s go to China another 50 percent plunge after 44 percent last month. So these auto sales a lot of industries are down 90 percent. There’s talk that China’s factories and people going back to work. Now we don’t know if they just try to push out those stats or if that is the truth. I certainly don’t believe the numbers we’ve seen some photos from hospitals with new cases in China. So they’re saying I’ve got zero new cases I’m not sure if I believe that Secretary I’m a nutrition. Now the same guy who said that cash is not used for money laundering now says that won’t cause a recession in the US so I’m not sure what he’s looking at. But if you have a look at some of these State of the restaurant industry statistics Australia hasn’t been hard hit yet because we’re a week or two behind the rest of the world. But globally restaurants are down 98 percent Canada is down 100 percent. The friends that I talk to that own restaurants and businesses having to fire staff this week there’s just no nice way to put it guys this is the reality we face where we have to lock down and if we do that for a month that gives us the greatest chance to pull through the other side. Five hundred thousand jobless claims in Canada. I certainly think some of these estimates about unemployment and GDP are going to be around 10 per cent loss. And this is kind of the slack that governments are gradually picking up in terms of the stimulus that they’re putting out. Trump looking to give every American a thousand dollars. We’ve now got similar things in all the different countries. Yeah. I think you have to do it. Some people get to complain about government debt. That’s another issue altogether. They were already running huge deficits but we’ve got to make sure that people have food on the table in the US. Some of my friends are telling me that the swearing over there about how the system is you know treating different patients with different health care and insurance and some of the backlogs for just getting those admissions and claims and whatnot it’s another headache altogether. So if you know more about that let me know down in the comments below about how that’s going to work once those U.S. hospitals start to get busy and people losing their jobs. New Jersey the latest one to shut down. I think the total is now around 100 million in terms of Americans that are in lockdown. National Guards deployed because people aren’t taking it seriously. Similar over to the UK in Europe now where British police are giving people powers to detain suspected cases of people that quarantine themselves. And this is where the totalitarian invasion of privacy is beginning now. There’s all sorts of conspiracy theories going around but the big tech giants being asked to hand over all that data once they do that there’s no going back. I guess that’s what what worries me. So yeah they’re asking the big tech giants to hand over all these tracking data so they know where you are every time even if you turn your location data off and your phone off. Edward Snowden has told us that you know these new smartphones. That’s why you can’t take the battery out because they’re always triangulating your signal to the different cell towers. Now tying that together with how you can maintain your privacy with a VPN a P2P VPN office offering free services so it’s lovely to see all these communities looking out for each other. In this time of need so orchard this is actually a cool little project that I’m going to talk about more in future. Great stuff there at the brave browser. If you don’t use these already to block all the ads and to block all the data it’s free to use download brave browser but are they really taking on the big tech giants with all these privacy issues at the moment. Bank of England have canceled all their stress tests. Look all these stress tests don’t plan for these sort of situations so you know it’s all a bit of a walk in the park and they take these boxes and tell the public how strong the banks are. Well look look at them now they’re all getting bailed out. You know a week into a bear market Britain 2000 sorry. Twenty five thousand dollars to the local businesses there AC base got out their bazooka in terms of QE and other stimulus. The stock market has hit record highs in the VIX closing at 82. So that’s perceived volatility from the stock market. They’re saying that markets could currently what they’re pricing in is that it could go 82 percent lower. Now that rarely actually eventuates but that’s just the level of fee at the moment in the S&P 500 in the volatility index. The Lehman playbook continues So the Fed have unveiled another bailout this time for the money market funds. The Fed is going to have to bail out everyone the engineers of the 2009 bailout say that this has to be bigger than the GFC bailout. These numbers are off the charts. Outflows absolutely everybody is getting out of ETF bond funds. The stock market investment grade bonds people are just running for the exits and trying to go into US dollars. And there’s simply not enough dollars in the world at the moment that’s why the Fed is having to expand their credit and bail out all the different countries including Australia at the moment distressed debt has doubled in the U.S. in two weeks half a trillion dollars now. So this is that spike that they’re talking about the interview with Marika to star will be out this week. He’s the commodities expert and a lot of these junk bonds that have been issued by the U.S. oil frack is shale producers. They can’t pay that. They don’t have any revenue and positive cash flow they’re going to default on all this debt and that can stop the next wave down in the stock market. So Boeing is just one example of a company that repurchased over 100 billion dollars in stock and now they’ve had their debt downgraded to sorry 4.5 trillion dollars worth of buybacks have occurred. And this is what’s pushed up stock prices and now all these U.S. execs are demanding that taxpayer funded bailouts of shareholders after they’ve spent all that money buying back shares and making themselves rich. The Fed extending its currency exchange program to all those central banks around the world. I just mentioned that confirmed these theories and these rumors that were going around earlier in the week that the Fed are now bailing out hedge funds. Absolutely crazy stuff and a lot of people still completely unaware this is happening. Insiders were dumping their stock. So this is Kelly Loeffler who came out and denied that she said all her investment fund manager. So really stock so the day after they were briefed about how things were how bad things are getting in China and how it was going to affect other countries and come to the U.S. these you know the elites that were in this meeting room dumping millions of dollars of shares in things like hotels and airline companies and whatnot. So wait to see if that goes to criminal charges. But man I mean these people are just so corrupt. So the record number of CEOs left they saw this coming. Two hundred nineteen CEOs left in January after we already had record amounts in the months leading after that. So the reach that are paying themselves a hundred 200 or 300 times the salary of the average worker they’ve got so much money they’ve gone to their private islands or their bunker or whatnot and they’ve got out privatized the profits and then published the public put stumbling my words he guys publicized the losses. So get the government to bail you out. Taxpayers. So so frustrating to watch these happen and I hope this brings about change. You know the bank of Japan have been buying up trillions of dollars worth of yen of stock markets. They own all the ETF. And a lot of shares they own all the government bonds and I’ve lost money doing so. So if this doesn’t bring about radical change in our financial system I just don’t know what does. We need a new system and obviously hopefully a lot of the decentralized world those ledges that cut out people in the middle and bring about transparency and trust was what would get a 10 to couple of positives to finish on the FDA have authorized these new 45 minute rapid point of care tests. We’re getting stories that people of you know in one case people have died waiting for test results to come back. There’s more tests and newer tests being designed in manufactured in Australia. Hopefully these things are still a few weeks away. But look all the smartest minds are out there trying to work on solutions. High hopes for a treatment. We’ve seen some positive results in a few of these other HIV drugs. I spoke about that in yesterday’s video a little bit say look these trials are going to take weeks as well. Anti malaria drugs. There’s a few others that have shown benefits for me. What I recommend you do. I’m going to do a whole whiteboard video about this but it’s just getting your immune system as healthy as you can help. You know he’s eating healthy trying to de stress I know that’s tough at times like these with meditation or going for a walk or just tuning out at nighttime you know you vitamin C.. Personally I love eating you know that the spicy foods getting you chilli garlic Asian food really healthy style diet. Guys get your immune system ready to fight off anything that he catches a lot of jobs are going to come out of this as well as a lot of job losses so people are going to all be wanting to get hired at Amazon Coles and Woolworths are putting on people. I think we tend to see huge demand for extra health care workers. Maybe we can do some fast tracking you know one month basic nursing course. Something like not just all hands on deck society coming together almost like a wartime effort until we until we beat this. For those of you that are wanting to trade this just remind you of how risky and how volatile markets are. But if you do want to short the stock market don’t use any leverage or anything like that. It is possible to still make money but I think for most people now it’s about hedging whether that your currency risk your portfolio your crypto holdings or whatever you want to be hedging and protecting your capital. So we’ve got that hundred dollars free bitcoin sign up for those that are interested in trading these guys off of that virtual account. And if all you want to do is practice trading in these sort of conditions you know that is going to be a lifelong skillful when we have that you know the next market cycle whether it’s 10 or 20 years from now. So look even a practice account is good for learning while you’re at home. Let’s get into the crypto news where bonds and with Xerox have announced a 50 million dollar block chain fund in India. These guys are doing great stuff. They’ve got a token that’s been performing extremely well again of late. So once crypto markets turn around I think exchange tokens are ones that are going to do well. Ripple have cemented their Asian presence with more partnerships in Thailand with fintech Company D money their car down in the headlines again. Charles Hoskinson did go live and say this wasn’t a big deal. This was an old partner. Nothing to worry about and it’s not going to affect the launch of their may net which has been months and years in the making now. So hopefully Shelly does come out soon. The Teslas Foundation has settled a lawsuit for 25 million and saying that they’re sick of paying all these legal fees. We know how much lawyers love to charge and in the crypto world we’ve got steam in the community. They’re actually hard for the network and they’re relaunching hive as they’re calling it they’re after everything that’s been going on with Justin sun trying to buy out the network. So great to see a decentralized community coming together there storage decentralized cloud storage is in computing. I’m very bullish on these type of projects. They’re tardy grade upgrades now live. This is a perfect example all the theorem being able to have these censorship resistant file storage so Chinese journalists are sharing reports on a theorem because if they tried to share them on the Internet they can get censored and blocked and shut down. So this is the decentralized World in Action that Micah has had its issues this week. The system didn’t function as it should because the theorem got clogged during that huge sell off. So they had to issue some more make it tokens and that is the way the system was designed to function. That was the emergency backstop those auctions have all finished now. There were plenty of buyers in the make a token and that one has bounced back really well in terms of price after a lot of people were fearful that was the end for the project. With all these issues happening in the world of day at the moment insurance has never been more important. So Delphi digital did a great research piece on all the best insurance projects in the world of five. And um I’ve spoken out nexus meet you had them on the channel open. I’m going to have those guys on as well. Ether risky is another one you can’t see behind me there are some very cool little projects there. So I read that report from Delphi digital. HTC are getting right behind Kibo and a lot of these smartphone companies are really integrating with crypto wallets and what not so great to safety for public awareness. The theory and baseline protocol is now open source on github. So this is the the protocol for building private systems for corporates and businesses to use the fear in public chain while still keeping the data that they need to private. Using this protocol layer on top of the theory in public chain open browser have enabled Apple Pay debit card crypto purchases in the U.S. So as if they didn’t have enough on ramps already it’s more these developing countries which is really the rapid expansion of getting the millions or billions of people into the crypto world that I’m excited about. But Coinbase Coinbase has said that traffic broke records and so huge volumes during the recent market collapse. So these are very similar to the stories that I’ve been hearing. Like I spoke about at the start of this video the website traffic was it was through the roof. We’ve had thousands of people and hundreds by Go Silver and bitcoin for the first time because with everything happening as ro says here Heyman I’ve been talking every day at the moment because it’s kind of you know you need to branch out with so much happening around the world. But in some ways it’s exciting for the bitcoins and the people that have been expecting this and bunkering down living within their means and saving getting into your goals you Silver’s getting out of shares and if you’ve been prepared hopefully there’s a lot of good that can come from from the bad at the moment when people lose their jobs. Hopefully the new system when the dust settle it’s going to create a better job and a better quality of life for a lot of these people. That’s what I hope can come out of all of this. I certainly think that decentralized system is going to play a huge role in all that. So just quickly looking at the charts here. Bitcoin has had a pretty decent bounce this week. We’ve got to be careful that this is just a bear flag when we see a huge sharp sell off like this. But you know my thoughts that that liquidation on Pete makes actually push prices a lot lower than they maybe otherwise would have gone if we didn’t have that cascade where they had to shut the systems down and other exchanges were getting dragged lower. So there’s plenty of healthy buying like gold and silver have not been immune from this either. It’s ridiculous to see the price of silver under 12 dollars when you can’t get physical silver at basically all bullion dealers around the world. So that is going to break in the coming weeks when people actually buy those futures contracts and they demand delivery at the 12 dollar price. So the paper market is going to break and it’s going to come back to the real world price and demand for silver. The same with gold. You’ve got your digital options. I’ve done videos on that guys hang in there. I just can’t explain how bullish I am with the governments and central banks around the world printing trillions of dollars. What this means for these finite currencies that can’t be printed longer term so hang in there. We’re all in this together. Head over to our website to check out our resources. Join up to our community if you want to join the discussion and stay up to date with everything that’s happening. Thank you for supporting the channel more than ever guys place mass that like button subscribe. You haven’t already shown these videos around and I’ll talk to you again soon. Cheers.

The post Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Finance & Global News – March 22nd 2020 appeared first on Cryptosharks.net.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/finance-global-news-march-22nd-2020/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bitcoin-cryptocurrency-finance-global-news-march-22nd-2020

[lanaisnotwool]

404 From Teacher to Investor - Interview with Todd Dexheimer

http://moneyripples.com/2020/06/22/404-from-teacher-to-investor-interview-with-todd-dexheimer/

Chris Miles, the "Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor," is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.

Listen to our Podcast here:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/05/31/404--going-from-teacher-to-investor-with-todd-dexheimer

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

Chris Miles (00:00): Hello, my fellow Ripplers. This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Welcome you out for a wonderful show. Show that's for you and about you. Those of you work so hard for money and you're ready for your money. Start working harder for you. Now! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Today! Not 30, 40 bazillion years from now, but right now, so you can live that life that you love doing what you love being with those that you love, but it's so much more than you guys. Than just having a lot of money and being comfortable and, you know, driving flashy cars and that kind of thing. Because if you're following us, we're not those kind of people. We're real people. We're sincere. We're authentic. And the truth is that you're a Rippler. That you, yes, you can create lots and lots of money create the life of your dreams, but your life is much more than that. You want to create a ripple effect through the lives of those, around you, whether it be your family, whether it be your community, the country, or across the world. And that's ultimately what this ripple effect's about. And I appreciate you guys allowing me to create a ripple effect through you because without that, we couldn't do it. And you guys have been bingeing on these shows. You've been spreading the word you've been sharing it. And I love seeing these numbers grow every single day. So thank you for being a part of this.

Chris Miles (01:20): Hey, as a quick reminder, check out our website MoneyRipples.com. You've got the great ebook on there called Beyond Rice & Beans. Seven Secrets. Free up cash today, and you can check out other information on there as well. So check it out.

Chris Miles (01:29): Alright! Today, guys, I'm bringing on another great, great investor on our show here. This is actually a guy by the name of Todd Dexheimer here. Now, Todd, like Todd's been doing real estate. He got in right during the last recession. Like he was born out of the fire, right? He was born out of those flames when everybody says real estate stinks. And that's exactly when Todd said, alright, let's do this. He actually started as a high school industrial tech teacher. Then went to real estate in 2008. Now, interesting thing about him is that he's the CEO of venture properties, LLC. Yeah. He's also been, has purchased and renovated over 800 units guys. Has focuses on syndicating value, add multifamily and emerging markets, as well as coaching other inspiring investors. He's the host of the Pillar of Wealth Creation Podcasts that actually I've been on as well. He's also been doing contributing things like Bigger Pockets. And he's been on various shows, whether it's like, you know, big real estate investing advice ever, or the Michael Blank show and many, many more. And so he lives in Minnesota, his wife, and two kids love skiing, hunting, camping, hockey running. Of course he's in Minnesota. He's got to love hockey. Right? So anyways, Todd, welcome to our show.

Todd Dexheimer (02:41): Yeah. Appreciate you having me on, I appreciate the introduction, man. I'm like, I'm pumped up. I, that intro was awesome! I'm pumped up to hopefully add some value to the show and yeah. This is, this is an exciting community. It sounds like we got here. So...

Chris Miles (02:58): Absolutely. No, these are good people. These are the best ones you'll ever, ever witness. I'll tell you that. So, you know, tell us like, how did you even go from, you know, high school teacher to real estate? Like what even sparked that because everybody's freaking out in 2008 and you're like, Hey, why not? Right.

Todd Dexheimer (03:14): Yeah. I've been, what was I going to lose, man?

Chris Miles (03:16): That's right!

Todd Dexheimer (03:18): I was making you know, not very much as a high school teacher. And I think there was, I don't, I don't know exactly what sparked it like it was, I don't know if it was just a spark, but I've always, I think had this entrepreneurial spirit with me. I actually built shipping crates for my dad's company that he worked at. He was a manufacturing engineer and they're making these vises and I built shipping crates for these vises. So I had my own decks, custom crates business that my brother and dad kind of formed and along with me, and then I took over and did that. So that was fun. And that was when I was in high school, I had the lawn mowing business, you know, but then I decided to be a teacher and just, just quite frankly, it just didn't click. Like I thought it was going to be great. And there was parts of it. That was, was great, but it just didn't click. And it wasn't for me. And I bet within like a month or two, I was telling my wife, I gotta figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up because this aint it. And so...

Chris Miles (04:26): It, wasn't a scary moment for her to say, wait, all of this to now say you want to get out. Right?

Todd Dexheimer (04:31): Well, we just started our life together, you know, as like all this. So it was kind of crazy, but at the same time I knew it wasn't for me. So it was just exploratory and just trying to figure out and real estate made a ton of sense. And like you said, it was right during that like firestorm, right. Everything was crashing. Everybody was running in the opposite direction. And I got in a little bit about, you know, I was naive. I didn't really understand a hundred percent what happened cause I wasn't involved. Like I didn't lose anything. Right? So it was a little bit of maybe me being naive, but also seeing the opportunity. Understanding like that real estate will go back up in value, even though some people sat and I heard this a lot of times real estate will never go back up to where it used to be. Never. And that's very shortsighted. And I knew that it was like, yeah, see, but these are people that got, just got burned. Right? And so it just made so much financial sense and I understood the industry being an industrial tech teacher and you know, doing construction through the summers too, work my way through high school and college. It just made sense.

Chris Miles (05:44): Yeah. So what was your first deal? Like what'd you start out doing?

Todd Dexheimer (05:48): You know what, I did three deals pretty much at one time, which is, which is crazy. And I didn't have any money, by the way. My wife and I had probably like $30,000 saved up, maybe $25,000 saved up. And so we bought a single family that we ended up living in, but it was a foreclosure. We did this 203K loan. So you can get in for very little money. And then we did the renovation ourselves, big renovation. I mean, when we moved in, there was no plumbing, water wasn't working. So like the first, like, I shouldn't say when we moved in, like probably the day we moved in, I just got it going. I can still remember working on some, we didn't have heat, which is fine. Cause we moved in in August, but we had to get heat because at Minnesota, by end of September, you need heat. So I, they like get around is we're on a time deadline. Yeah. But so that, that was one of them. The other one was a flip that I partnered with a guy that had money and we did the fix and flip. And then the other one was a single family rental house. I bought that out of foreclosure. For like 60,000, somewhere around there stuck another 10, 15,000 into it. Did all the work myself with my wife and a couple of friends came and helped me in, but that was it. And then was able to then refinance that house actually in that snowball, from there. Fix and flip, actually ended up being a flop. I bet I made a thousand dollars on it. I did all the work

Chris Miles (07:27): You got to learn pretty quickly. Like it's probably better that happened because in some people's case where they hit really big on that first flip, they think that's the way it's always going to be. Right?

Todd Dexheimer (07:35): Oh, this is easy!

Chris Miles (07:37): Yeah, exactly. And you're like, okay, that wasn't as cool as I thought that was, that was like a dollar an hour. Gosh.

Todd Dexheimer (07:43): But it probably wasn't even that much.

Chris Miles (07:47): Well, that's great. And you've done. I mean, you've done flips, you've even done mobile home, parks and you did a ski resort, is that right?

Todd Dexheimer (07:53): Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Miles (07:55): Tell us about that.

Todd Dexheimer (07:55): Well, I bought a defunct ski resort, so it was just a ski resort that, you know, we had some really bad winters in the early, the late 90's to early 2000's where there just wasn't a lot of snow. And so when that happens, these little skiers are just can't handle it. And so they ended up shutting it down. Somebody got hurt really bad too. And so there was a big lawsuit. And so it was just shut down. The guy that owned it originally passed away, handed down to his kid and grown adult, but yeah, just didn't want to do it anymore. So they ended up shutting it down and we stumbled upon it. Actually the business partner at the time was actually hunting nearby and he was seeing all these deer trails. And they all led into this property.

Todd Dexheimer (08:48): So we went and talked to the owner and then was like, Hey, what's going on here? And we ended up striking a deal. Then we ended up getting the property and we got it for such a cheap price that we had a bank that financed it a hundred percent.

Chris Miles (09:01): Wow!

Todd Dexheimer (09:02): It appraised for a million dollars and we were buying it for $450,000 and they fund us to a hundred percent of the deal.

Chris Miles (09:10): That's incredible.

Todd Dexheimer (09:12): Yeah. It was incredible. And that was 2000, maybe 13 or 14. So things, I mean still were a little iffy, you know, probably 13. Yeah. We're still a little iffy. There is banks. Weren't being super friendly. Yeah. Not like that, but...

Chris Miles (09:29): But the numbers made sense. It said, all right. Go for it.

Todd Dexheimer (09:32): Yup. Yup. So we ended up just taking that. We did some work to it. We were thinking about doing something with it, but it ended up just being more of a distraction to try to get it up and running. So we ended up selling it. So I basically flipped the ski resort. You know, I tried to convince my wife to move down there. She said, no.

Chris Miles (09:50): I'm saying it as a skier. You were probably really tempted weren't you?

Todd Dexheimer (09:53): Yeah, it was great. It was. And it's amazingly beautiful piece of property and it's just amazing.

Chris Miles (09:59): That's great. What kind of deals are you doing now? Like what kind of multifamily stuff are you doing? Cause I know with different people I've had on the show, some were kinda like, you know what, I'm getting so strict with my underwriting. Like I am almost refused things left and right, right?

Todd Dexheimer (10:13): Yup. Yup. And kind of the same actually. Things were heating up quite a bit, obviously that was pre-COVID. Things were heating up quite a bit and it was really tough to find a deal that made sense. Now people were just buying these properties for crazy amounts and we weren't willing to. So I'm buying, you know, value add, B class multifamily, typically a hundred plus units. So we can have some scale. We can have the onsite staff and, and we're buying those in a few markets cross country that are kind of emerging or markets that have some, the, all the right fundamentals that we're really looking for and we're doing the syndication. So we're raising the funds for down payment, all that kind of stuff. So that's, that's kind of our bread and butter. And I anticipate that to still be our bread and butter as we kind of emerge through this whole COVID deals will probably come out of this. You know, we don't know exactly the future yet, but I think there'll be some opportunity down the road.

Chris Miles (11:24): Yeah. I mean, not that I, I glory in people's pain right? Or do something bad, but I definitely foresee that there's a lot of deal operators that really weren't operators. They were just greedy people wanting to get in on the, on the ride. Right. And buy these properties even probably have investor's money out there. And, but they've never done a deal before and they don't know how to operate something. And I imagine that's where there could be some good opportunities coming up.

Todd Dexheimer (11:47): I think so. I think so. And like you said, we don't like for me, it's you, when you look at it and go, Oh, I really, so some people are excited. They're like, Oh, it's great. I can't wait for people to start losing their properties. It's like, well you do you understand like that, that actually only hurts you as well. Like I've got properties. So if the guys around me guys and gals around me lose their properties, those value, my property pretty value is going to go down. Right. And so it's, it's it's yeah. Well, do I wish ill will upon anybody? No. But the matter of the fact is exactly what you said, likely there's going to be people that are gonna end up maybe not losing the property, but be told to sell. Lenders have low incompetence and you are going to be told to sell if you're not hitting your numbers. And so you're going to be forced, basically forced to sell and yeah, you're right. A lot of those people had no clue what they're doing or even if they did have a clue what they're doing, they were just going about it the wrong way, or they're going after these properties for fees. I think that's a lot of things. A lot of what was happening is people are going, wow, I can do this deal. I can syndicate it and I can make $300,000 right up front on this deal. That's a great payday Al's I need to do is one to two of those each year. And I'm doing really well. And some people are doing two, maybe three deals a year, they're making 600 to a million dollars, man. They didn't care how good the deal was. That's, Unfortunately I think what was happening.

Chris Miles (13:21): Yeah. No, there's, there's definitely, I've seen that. I have definitely seen that out there and you're right. Like we don't want people to have to sell off, like in a sense of just being, you know, selling off for dirt cheap or anything like that, you know, I would more see like where's the opportunity of increasing profits and it's something that's already there. Right. It's like, you know, where they just didn't operate it well, and yeah. In your opinion, like right now, I mean, what are you seeing? Are you seeing like good deals or you see in most everything's just junk currently?

Todd Dexheimer (13:50): Yeah. So currently I would say we haven't seen much adjustment. The sellers aren't quite ready to take a discount and yeah, I don't need the salaries to take a bath. Like I don't need, in order for me to feel comfortable with the buy. It's not like I need the sellers to sell for 40% discount or something like that now would that be great? Sure. You know, I need the sellers to come off of their, their price by let's call it 10%, maybe 15% and then, okay, I'm ready to, I'm ready to start buying. For me, my company. We don't need to buy Properties, dirt cheap. Now will we? If that happens. Absolutely. But all right. It's still about the fundamentals of the piece of real estate and how the numbers work and can we get our business plan to be able to take any, can we execute it? And so that's what really important part. So...

Chris Miles (14:43): Yeah. What kind of cash flow or NOI can you get from it? Right?

Todd Dexheimer (14:46): Yup. So I've been talking to a lot of brokers that deal in my space and they're kind of the same, most sellers are looking for right now between a 10% and a 20% discount or sorry, most buyers are looking for a 10% to 20% discount. Most sellers are well expecting to sell either at the previous high or within at least 10%. So they, I have heard from brokers, but a lot of sellers are understanding. They've got to come down 5% to 10% and but most buyers are actually even more than that. So we've got a gap there eventually that'll close.

Chris Miles (15:22): Yeah. It's got to take some time before they start adjusting and believing the numbers and say, okay.

Todd Dexheimer (15:27): Real estate. It's not the stock market. I mean, you're right, Chris. I mean the stock market goes like this and actually overreacts quickly. Where real estate actually Under reacts and takes a while for those, those drops to happen.

Chris Miles (15:41): Isn't that the beautiful thing about real estate? Is that it doesn't happen overnight. Right. Where people are used to, if they'd been watching the stock market, it's, it's painful to watch. You can't watch it, you know, without freaking out, you know. Where at least the real estate there's slow adjustments typically. I mean, whether the price go down or up, usually there's there's time involved.

Todd Dexheimer (16:00): Yup. Yeah. I mean, right now I've got a property on the market and I have priced at about the 15% below where I would have expected to sell it just a few months ago and I'm kicking myself because I should have sold it in January, but I didn't know this was happening for some reason.

Chris Miles (16:16): Of course.

Todd Dexheimer (16:17): But I still want to sell the property and I'm happy to take a 15% discount because quite frankly, it's still gonna, I'm still gonna do really well on it. And I see there's opportunity potentially coming. So I'd rather take that capital, be able to have it, be able to do it. Okay. Put it out there when better deals do come. So right now, if you're wanting to be a seller, it's Still sell because real estate slowly, as you said, it's going to take awhile.

Chris Miles (16:43): That's a good point, too. Like you said, you don't always have to find bad deals. It could be someone just like you, who already bought a great deal. It's appreciated, you know, you've add value to it. And of course now price is great. Even if you have to take a discount, you're still gonna make good, good money on it. So there's plenty of those deals too.

Todd Dexheimer (16:59): Yup.

Chris Miles (16:59): Well, great. Well how like, like tell us more about your show, the Pillars of Wealth Creation Show. Tell us about that.

Todd Dexheimer (17:05): Yeah. So Pillars of Wealth Creations, mainly a real estate show, but we're, we also talk to a lot of people that not aren't necessarily real estate investors first and foremost. So we're, the show is kind of more catered towards the business side of the real estate. Like not necessarily talking the nuts and bolts of real estate. I can learn that in a book for the most part. And there's a lot of other podcasts that talk about nuts and bolts. But one of the big things that we like to focus on is how do you really build a business the right way? So how do we take cause so many real estate investors are transactional, right? They think they think about real estate as just buying a piece of property and that's it. And then we're going to, we're going to be passive, right? We're going to buy this piece of property. We're gonna buy this a hundred unit apartment. And then we're going to be able to sit back on the beach and relax. Cause now we got all this cash flow. Well, that's not how it works. If you want to do that, then you need to passively truly passively invest in real estate.

Chris Miles (18:05): That's right.

Todd Dexheimer (18:07): But, if you're going to buy the piece of property and that you're going to be a part of that deal, you've got to be an active business owner. You've got to learn how to make a business plan. You've got to learn, you know, how to set up systems and processes. And you've got to learn how to build teams. You've got to do all the things that a regular business owner does. And so many real estate investors have no clue that that's even part of what they should be learning.

Chris Miles (18:28): It's so true. Like I'm in a kind of a high level mastermind group where you usually have to have at least a hundred doors to be in that group. And it's so common even with those guys, those guys who legitimately do have a business, right. Even for them to say, Oh, like I am getting up at 4:00AM, 5:00 AM to basically get to work and just hammer this out. And I'm trying to manage everybody. And I don't know if I should have a CEO or not, or a COO or, you know, they're like going nuts. They went from just trying to make money on a few flips and deals like that. And now they're like, man, like just to make these millions of dollars, I have no life like no real passive income. And, and that's a big difference. There's a big difference in lifestyle between that active investor, right? The person that is a business owner versus those that are just passively investing in. Like some sort of what you offer.

Todd Dexheimer (19:14): Yup. Yup. Absolutely.

Chris Miles (19:17): Yeah. Well, great. So obviously like if people follow your show, you, when you talk about syndications, you're probably talking about your syndications and deals you're doing right then too. Right. If you're, if people are looking for passive investments, you've got to, you've got your own funds as well, right?

Todd Dexheimer (19:30): Yeah. You know, on the show, I try not to, I don't probably talk too much about the deals as are going, but if we, when we close on a deal, I usually will give kind of a, Hey, here's what we did. Here are the lessons we learned along the way, you know, here's maybe some things we, you know, found in due diligence and why we made adjustments. And so we'll talk about, yeah, there's a lot of mistakes and lessons learned even along active deals, I've been doing this for a while, but I still make mistakes. I still learn a lot of things on every single deal that I feel like it can bring to my audience and allow them to hopefully learn as well. From what I've learned from my mistakes. So...

Chris Miles (20:13): Well, the thing I love is what you do is you're not the kind of guy to say, Hey, this deal looks awesome. Like you're not just, you know, running around like a monkey with a machine gun. Right. You're actually like, Hey, this deal doesn't fit my parameters, next. Okay. Like takes me 30 seconds. See this, this one's a no, like you just keep passing and passing. And those are like the best investors in my mind are the ones that say no to almost everything just like Warren Buffett did. He would always say, I say no to almost everything. And yes, the very, very few things, you know, and then you have to, you have to right. Like, there's, you can't be successful if you're just chasing after every little deal, you're going to have big, you're gonna have losses and maybe some gains, but you're gonna have a lot of losses. You won't be in business very long.

Todd Dexheimer (20:52): Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, Warren Buffett's obviously a pretty smart man. And you know, there, he says that for a reason, there's so many deals out there and those are deals for everybody else. Not for me.

Chris Miles (21:06): Yeah. I actually remember him. He said a quote. And he said that to one of my friends in an interview, he said the difference between the successful and the ultra successful is that the ultra successful say no, almost every time.

Todd Dexheimer (21:16): Yeah.

Chris Miles (21:17): You know, I know it's true. And I know you're that kind of guy too. So same way as you know, listeners, you guys, those who are following this, like check out his website, for sure. What's, do you have a website that people could follow?

Todd Dexheimer (21:30): Yeah. A couple of websites, Pillars of Wealth Creation. They can get to my podcast and then just my general website, which should, they can actually still get to my podcasts or that is at VentureDProperties.com. So it's venture and then D as in dog or Dexheimer properties.com.

Chris Miles (21:49): Awesome. Yeah. I'll definitely make sure we get to get those links in the show notes. So if you can follow you, follow your show or even check out your site and get to know you more, obviously, especially if people are looking for investing in opportunities and things of that nature, because obviously you're looking right now, you're actively looking for the right deals. Not just any deal.

Todd Dexheimer (22:06): Yeah. Looking for the right deals and there's opportunities that are going to come down the pipeline. And I think the important part for people that right now to be just thinking about is, what are the paradigms that are going to be shifting through this whole event, right? People's paradigm shift. Consumers, thoughts are going to shift, workers habits are going to shift. So there's going to be different things that are going to come out of this. And how can we make sure we're positioning ourselves to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us. And it's not necessarily take advantage of other people. It's take advantage of the people's wants and needs that, you know, the consumers wants and needs out there. If you can best serve them. I think you're going to have a lot of success. And that's what I'm working with. Multifamily with real estate in general, I consider myself a value add real estate investor multifamily. I love a lot, but I also look at other asset classes. So we look at, you know, what are the strengths and weaknesses? What are the trends? Where do we, I think that things are going to be going, and we're trying to make the best decisions obviously for ourselves and our investors on that.

Chris Miles (23:06): Yeah. Working to improve upon something and make it better, you know, for everybody. Right. And that's...

Todd Dexheimer (23:10): Absolutely!

Chris Miles (23:12): What cooler way to make money than actually bettering people's lives and making money from that? I mean, that's the way life and that's where the world should be in my opinion. Yeah. Well, great. Hey, I appreciate your time so much Todd. Like this is awesome. Again, everybody check out the links in the show notes, you know, follow his podcast or check out his site. So everybody, you remember, it's all about patience. It's all about looking for the right thing. Not just anything but the very right thing. So follow Todd and everybody, I hope you make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We'll see you later!

[ill-skillsgard]

The Mirror - Bill Skarsgård

Title: The Mirror

Warning: Smut, Swearing, Pseudo-incest (not actual incest but you’ll see)

A/N: This is a re-post of the very first Bill fic that I ever wrote. It was originally titled “Face the Mirror” but I decided to change it a little. Enjoy!

The sun was beating down hard that day. We took solace underneath umbrellas, sipping icy cocktails and wrapping our bodies in soft cotton towels of lilac, pink, orange, and cyan. The water shimmered like an endless mirror, a portal for us to enjoy our summer within. The sounds of splashing, the chirping of birds and the smell of cut grass only added to the comforting world of familiarity.

I had spent my childhood by the pool and by the beach at my parents’ estate. Our family traditions always revolved around pool parties, trips to tropical destinations with clear water, blue sky and warm sun.

Blessed I was as a kid to have wealthy parents. They were both well known in the film industry. My father had started his career in animation as a young man. To this day he had framed cells of hand-drawn pieces from many popular animated movies he had worked on. My mother had started off as a voice actor, and that was how they first met. The two married young and the joining of their talents forged a powerful bond. My mother progressed into acting on-screen and my father took up directing. Over two decades, they had six children, and I was smack-dab in the middle of all of it; a product of happiness and money.

Because of family history, most of my siblings became actors by the encouragement of our parents. The only two kids that didn’t pursue a professional career in acting were my youngest sister and me. She was too young to know what she wanted and I simply had no interest in being in front of cameras. My mother had pushed me to try modelling and when I didn’t take to that she tried to put me in ballet. That I also wasn’t a fan of.

The pressures to become a star never ended even after I turned eighteen and could legally make all my own decisions. I saw how stressful all the travelling and line-memorization and auditioning and how people slammed you as a person, online and in tabloids. It wasn’t a life I wished upon myself. I had born witness to many emotional breakdowns from my older siblings. All the rejection and judgment… I just didn’t want to be part of it.

Naturally, being related to actors garnered attention for me whether I liked it or not. It was alright though. It was easy for me to snub interviews and deny offers because I had the means to. I had my parents to thank for that. All I really had going on was school and my many family gatherings.

Truth be told, I liked to write and often did so in private. It was a secret pleasure of mine that I hadn’t shared much with my parents because I knew if I did tell them, they would jump down my throat about it and smother me with their encouragement. I knew they would want to get too involved and before I knew it, it would come down to what I could produce for their approval. I liked having the freedom and nobody to preside over me with scrutiny and loving suggestions.

No, I enjoyed my private life behind closed doors. The only time I ever got thrust into the limelight was premiere events and lavish industry parties. My family had lots of famous friends so there was never a shortage of parties to attend. Parties I could do but premieres were something I dreaded almost to the point of hoping and praying I wouldn’t be obligated to attend every single one. Too many flashing lights, too many voices calling for your attention. That’s why I preferred to be surrounded by movie stars in the comfort of my family home. The only cameras going off were the ones on our cell phones and nobody was screaming in your face or picking apart your outfit.

Today we were hosting a birthday party for my oldest brother. Everyone that our family was friends with got an invitation to come, including all of the members of another acting family that we had been close with for a long time; The Skarsgards.

My parents had been great friends with the Skarsgards since before I was born. They were so close that we had even vacationed in Sweden and stayed with them on numerous occasions. I remembered play dates and family outings with them. We even put them up whenever they were in Canada. They were almost all actors too, like our family.

I was closest in age to their son, Bill. Whenever his family had work close to us, my parents offered to put up a couple of the brothers in our home. They were all thin as rails, pale, light of eye and polite. We used to play hide and seek all around the estate. Our games would run for hours and the housekeepers dreaded whenever we got to play. If you put us all in a room together you got a tornado of endless energy and more than likely, a broken object.

That was what my life was like. Non-stop entertainment. Always playing, enjoying, watching, celebrating. It was a good life to have. I must have been thirteen the last time the Skarsgards had come to stay over. At that point though we were too old to play make-believe or chase each other around the courtyard with hockey sticks and tennis rackets. Instead, we put on scary movies and gorged on snacks in the family room while our parents were out doing the actor thing. Gossiping and poking fun at each other in that awkward stage of puberty was the new activity.

Bill had had a couple of roles in some Swedish films by that time and started to carry himself more like a grown-up instead of the gangling, playful boy I used to hang out with. I never thought much of it though since I was pretty mature for my age too. He had definitely quieted down though which was unusual since I had all sorts of memories of us and our brothers and sisters running around screaming, playing with toys and pushing each other down the staircases on snowboards.

In the darkened family room the younger kids laid on the floor buried in blankets and surrounded by bowls of popcorn. I sat on one of the sofas, my younger sister beside me. She had been writhing during the opening credits with anticipation of having the shit scared out of her.

“Oh my God, it’s going to be so scary!” She squealed.

“Yeah and if you have nightmares you better not tell mom that I let you watch this movie,” I warned her.

“Relax,” Bill said from his spot on the love-seat adjacent to us. “This one’s not even that bad. My brothers let me watch movies way scarier than this.”

My sister looked at me, all excited as befitting a ten-year-old girl. “Don’t worry,” I assured her.

So there we sat, all bundled up in our blankets, watching scary movies and generally behaving well. Partway through the movie Bill got up and I watched him leave the room for whatever reason. I focused my attention back on the movie though. I was at that age where boys became very intriguing to me.

I couldn’t pretend to not notice that Bill was getting really tall. He had been acting sort of distant than I remembered him and I tried not to take it to heart. Maybe he was starting to get that stupid actor ego and thought he was too cool to be hanging out with a bunch of kids. I knew some of my older siblings had big heads on their shoulders and sometimes the snobbishness really showed through. But Bill’s family were always so nice and didn’t really act all stuck-up like some of the other actors I had met. It was hard to picture Bill as a snooty actor-type, having known him for my entire life.

My sister grabbed onto my hand at a particularly gruesome part of the movie. The surround sound pumped out the dissonant soundtrack of the movie. Piano keys tinkled eerily as the protagonist turned the corner, axe poised to strike at some freakish entity that was sure to pop out any second. Violin strings pulled and all of us watched on, eyes wide and mouths open.

Suddenly as soon as the pop-up scare happened, a blood-curdling scream erupted from behind us and a huge hand grabbed my shoulder and shook me. This caused me and my sister to scream, setting off a chain reaction with the others on the floor.

“Oh my God, Bill!” I yelled at him as he keeled over laughing.

“You guys were so scared!” He howled, lips pulled into an infectious smile.

The laughter continued and I couldn’t help but crack a smirk at the young Swedish boy laughing at us all. I launched a throw pillow at him playfully. Maybe he wasn’t “too cool” for us after all.

That was so, so long ago. Now we were almost all grown up and off doing our own things. We still had our family get-togethers on holidays. Even birthdays were missed now since we were all spread out across the country pursuing our own respective interests. Today was an exception though. My brother had landed a really big role in a major budget film and it was also his 30th birthday so we were throwing a “Dirty Thirty” themed birthday party for him. Whatever that meant. To me, it meant I got to lounge around in my parents’ huge house getting drunk and catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“J, sweetheart. Say hello to the Skarsgards!” My mother exclaimed.

I had had my nose buried in a book as I laid on a beach chair underneath an oil-paper umbrella but when I heard the Skarsgards had arrived I soon dropped everything, wrapped my body with a purple sarong and stood up to greet them.

It had been a very long time since I saw my “Swedish parents” and we exchanged hugs and stories of good news and memories.

I couldn’t help but notice that Bill hadn’t come in with them. I wondered if he would come. Last I’d heard Bill was doing really well with his acting career and made it onto a bunch of American talk-shows and was being photographed for lots of magazines. Typically, I wasn’t one to keep up but it was hard to ignore when my parents seemed to always mention people they knew who were doing well in the industry.

As the conversation carried on and more guests arrived I started to give up on the thought that he would come. He was probably very busy and couldn’t be bothered attending a random birthday party for a person he most likely didn’t talk to very much. It was alright… That sort of thing happened a lot with large families of busy people, yet I caught myself watching the door more than a couple times.

Eventually, I made it back to my comfy spot on the beach chair with my book and a fresh glass of homemade red wine sangria. I greeted people as they came and went, returning remarks and laughs between pages.

“Are you going to read this whole time or are you going to get up and be a good host?” A familiar voice asked me.

I looked up over my sunglasses and saw Bill standing in front of me, obscuring my view of the pool. He had a drink in his hand, a smile on his face, an expensive watch on his wrist and an even more expensive outfit on. He wore fitted pants with long pleats in the front that made his already long legs look even longer. Underneath a matching sport jacket, he had on a dressy button-up shirt that wasn't fastened all the way up at all. His sharp collarbone stayed exposed, pale, broad, and jutting out into some of the most capacious shoulders I had ever seen. He must have shot up another two feet in height since we last saw each other.

“Wow, Bill,” I said, unabashed that I was making it obvious how impressed I was with his look.

His face had changed. Not in a bad way at all. He still had those big pillowy lips, the pointed nose, and the most indescribably light green eyes. His hair was slicked back stylishly and he had a pair of designer sunglasses hooked into the pocket of his jacket. I left my book on the table beside me to stand up. I didn’t bother covering up this time because I wanted him to see how I had grown up too. His smile made his lips all but disappear as I approached him for a hug. He opened his long arms and I hooked my arms underneath them.

“It’s so good to see you.” I sighed into the material of his jacket. He smelled wonderful. I was only tall enough for my head to rest on his broad chest.

Bill held me out at his arm’s length and continued to bestow that innocent, boyish smile upon me. “It’s good to see you too. It’s been far too long.”

“Well… We can’t all be movie stars.”

Bill laughed and brought me in for another brief hug. “Oh shut it. Let’s not talk about work all night long. I know that’s all our parents ever want to talk about. Let me escape for a while, will you?”

Once our embrace ended, I stepped back to drink him in some more. It was difficult not to stare too long and too hard. After all, my childhood friend was standing before me, no longer the awkwardly skinny boy I knew before but a man who had more than inherited his family’s trademark good looks.

“You look so different. I can’t believe how goddamn tall you are.” I declared.

“Yeah…” Bill agreed, looking around at all the party guests and then settling his gaze back to me. “Before you ask, yes, the weather is great up here and you haven’t grown an inch, so who’s the real freak?”

“Oh, Bill! Come here darling! Oh and J, you too sweetheart!” My mother called to us from the shaded terrace where she was standing with a mixture of Skarsgards and my family members.

They summoned us all to take a picture together since it had been so long. It reminded me of a ski trip we had taken together in Switzerland when our parents forced us all to take family-portrait style pictures the whole week. Only now we weren’t all gawky kids with braces, acne and matching turtleneck sweaters. We stood in a group, limbs hanging off each other, smiles plastered on our faces for the camera. Bill stood next to me, arm over my shoulders. The warmth of his body was enough to make me shudder. And if that wasn’t enough, after a few moments his hand floated from my shoulder to my back. His fingers gently trickled down the base of my spine. I straightened, uncertain how I should feel about Bill touching me in such a non-fraternal way. His thumb travelled around so he could lay his palm flat on my hip.

He seemed to be just as friendly with everyone else during the party. Everyone wanted to talk to him and congratulate him on the success he had found breaking into American film. His presence was warm and everyone’s eyes sparkled when they spoke to him.

To me, all the movie-talk sounded pretentious but he was suave and so grounded that when he spoke about his experiences it didn’t at all sound like the hollow ramblings of a well-paid actor. Usually, I’d roll my eyes whenever my brothers and sisters talked about how their next roles were going to be a turning point in their careers or how a meeting had gone down with a big-time director. To me, it had no meaning at all but when he spoke, the whole room listened, as did I.

We had transitioned from the poolside to inside the house once the sun started to set. Inside there was more champagne to be drank and platters of fresh fruit to be picked at. We also had a custom cake made for my brother who had politely declined to make a speech about turning thirty. Instead, my father decided to pipe up and congratulate his eldest son on three decades of life. We all stood around with our flutes fizzing, cheeks blushed with inebriation and ears perked as my father spoke of how all of his success in his lifetime paled in comparison to how proud he was of his clan. I smiled wholeheartedly when he raised a glass to his children- all of his children.

“And yes that includes my beautiful non-actor children. It has always been you to knock us down from our high-horses.”

We all had a round of cheers for my brother and for family. The music was turned back up and everyone was encouraged to keep on drinking.

I had done a good job of pacing myself, that was until I saw Bill exiting the kitchen onto the terrace wearing swim shorts. He was unaccompanied. I approached the window so I could see what he was up to. I watched as he circled the pool, took one last sip of his drink before setting it down on the deck and standing up straight. Like a cat he readied himself to dive into the pool. It brought back so many memories to see him in our pool again. I almost felt like I had regressed in age and was but a little girl and not as jaded about actors and giant bank accounts. The nostalgia warmed me, or it could have been the alcohol.

I decided to take a shot of tequila to loosen up a little bit more before leaving the house to join him in the backyard. I wasn’t sure if he wanted company at all but I took the liberty anyway. Bill was doing laps as I came out and didn’t notice me until I was standing at the edge of the pool.

“Are you going to come swimming?” He asked me.

“No, I’ve had enough for today. There’s only so much chlorine my skin can handle.” I admitted.

“That’s alright,” He said, strained as he lifted himself out of the pool. “I was just about finished anyway.”

Water fell down his body and dripped onto the concrete deck. By contrast to his milky white skin, his lips looked so blushed like he had been sucking on a lollipop. I never noticed until that moment how gorgeously luscious I found his mouth and how cute it was when he smiled. My Swedish god-brother had become more attractive than I wanted to believe. Alas, there he was, standing in front of me, a glistening vision of wet Scandinavian perfection.

“Okay if I use your shower?” He asked me, eyes trailing up and down on me.

“Of course. You know where everything is, Bill. You don’t have to ask.”

He smiled again at me and I could felt a heaviness in my feet and my heart skipped a beat. “Thanks, sis.”

When he moved by me my smile disappeared. Thanks, sis.

It was foolish of me to think of him as anything but what he was- practically a brother. Our parents were as close as siblings themselves. Why was I thinking about Bill like that? Suddenly, I was ashamed that I had been lusting after him all day long. It was weird. The alcohol in my system was not enough to make me forget that this man was almost related to me.

I lingered in the backyard for a few short moments, inhaling the breezy air and for the first time in my life wondering if I should have listened to my parents all those years ago and pursued the family trade. Shaking my head, I snapped out of my light trance and asserted myself mentally; no, I was good enough as I was. I didn’t have to prove myself to anybody, especially not my own family and close friends.

I went back inside and found myself yawning every few minutes. The day-drinking was starting to catch up with me and I figured it was time to get out of my bathing suit and sarong and into something more evening-friendly. Most of the men had left to shoot pool in the basement, leaving the women and girls to talk and giggle amongst themselves over their glasses of vintage wines.

I started up the stairs to my old room that my parents still insisted on keeping up on. I had a wardrobe full of clothes that I could change into. I closed the door as I entered the room and smiled at all of the things that had once and still belonged to me. My king-sized captain’s bed, my high white wardrobe that had been built into a walk-in closet. My desk, still laden with books that I’d read in high school. All of the informality was not enough to rip my thoughts away from Bill though.

From my wardrobe, I chose a simple black sundress,  gathered some undergarments and was about to head into the en-suite bathroom before I heard a clearing of a throat behind me. I turned around and there he stood with a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Hey, did you have a nice shower?” I asked.

Bill smiled, stepped into the room and closed the bedroom door behind him. “I haven’t showered yet.”

I giggled nervously. “I was just about to take one.”

His hand held the towel in place and I could only wonder whether he was naked beneath it. God if he would just stop looking at me like that perhaps I could think of something else besides how attractive had become.

“J… Do you remember taking baths together as kids?”

I blushed profusely and clutched my change of outfit to my bare abdomen. The air was starting to lick at my exposed skin and I could feel the goosebumps all over my body.

“Yeah… I remember. Why?”

Bill came even closer to me. “Do you ever think it sucks that our parents tried to raise us all as one big family?”

“No… Never. I mean… no. Why would that suck? I love your family.”

“Yeah, I know but… Do you think it would be weird if I said I’ve really wanted to see you?”

“It’s not weird, Bill.”

“Well…” He inched closer to me. “What if I said I want to fuck?”

The explosion of surprise and instant arousal I felt from his revelation was enough to make me tighten in the chest. “W-what?”

“Well?”

I grasped at any words I could find to answer him but I kept coming up short. He could tell I was having a major inner struggle so he approached me, walked me back into the bathroom, shut and locked the door behind us and then towered over me with lust darkening in his eyes. He looked positively evil staring down at me with his murky eyes burning.

“Is it weird?” He repeated the question.

“No, it’s not weird… Well… I mean it kind of is but.. fuck it.” I said and dropped my clothes on the ground beside me.

Then we kissed and it was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It felt wrong to touch him, wrong to let our tongues touch and our lips to move together. The sensation of his mouth on my skin was simply too much after an evening of watching him talking and smiling. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up onto the bathroom counter, forced my thighs apart and came in close. Quickly, he untied my bikini top from behind and pulled it off of me so he could stare at my breasts.

“Goddamn it, you got so fucking sexy.” He said as his large hands cupped my breasts and squeezed, thumbs running over my nipples.

He dove in, hands still on my chest, lips connecting with my neck but I shied away from the tickling sensation, causing him to pull back as well.

“What?” He asked.

“Nothing,” I giggled. “Just tickles.”

He bit down on his bottom lip. “Oh, I’ll fucking tickle you, alright.”

His skin was so soft and there was so much of it to feel. I felt tiny against his torso yet so emboldened by what was happening that I couldn’t think straight. Soon his hands were trailing down my spine, over my hips to the front of my bikini bottoms. Without untying them at all he brushed his thumb over my crotch and when I purred with pleasure, he did it again.

“You like that?” It was more of an encouragement than a question. I nodded my head and he continued stroking my pussy over my bathing suit bottoms.

Before it became too much, he lifted me off the counter and turned me around so that we were both facing the mirror. He smirked at our reflections for a moment but didn’t let it distract from what was happening. He pressed his groin into my back as he gave me a few more strokes and then pulled the strings of my bikini, letting them fall down my legs so that I was completely naked.

He lifted my right leg and made me raise it high enough to rest on the counter so that my other leg was my only support. Pulling back, he took in the image of me exposed to him and sucked air through his clenched teeth. “Fuck.” He whispered before dropping to his knees behind me.

I could feel my own wetness from the anticipation of what he was about to do. I twisted around to see this gorgeous man on his knees in front of my ass just getting ready to have at me like a hungry animal but not before giving me a couple swift little spanks.

“Bad girl.” He growled lowly. “Bad, bad girl.”

Bill had a little more fun groping me and squeezing my ass, getting me ready before he let his tongue draw a hot, tantalizing trail up my left ass cheek. I had to steady myself when his mouth finally connected with my clit,  however brief it was before he pulled another salacious strip of saliva up from my opening and all the way to the base of my spine.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head as I watched him eat me out from behind. His tongue made delicious lapping noises as he kissed and sucked on all of my parts, never neglecting to rub my clit to keep me going. It was too damn much sensation all at once and every time I looked back to watch him, the entire image was just too exquisite. Bill’s gorgeous face was buried in my backside and I couldn’t help but feel like I was falling a little in love with it.

It didn’t take long for me to reach the edge of an orgasm. I couldn’t remember a time in my life where any man had brought me so close, so fast. But before it went too far, Bill pulled away and stood up with the towel still somehow wrapped around his hips. Although, it was quite evident that he was hard from all the playing.

“Turn.” He whirled a long finger. “Turn, face the mirror.”

I obeyed as I heard his towel drop to the floor tiles. I had to look back though, I wanted to see and what I saw was not disappointing.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

His eyes met mine after I had a long enough look at his hard cock. It was so, so long, like the rest of him. Symmetrical and picture-perfect. Even the pulsing veins in his shaft looked appealing.

“Face the mirror.” He repeated himself.

After I turned away again, I could only watch in the reflection. With his eyebrows coming together in concentration, he readied himself to enter me and as soon as I felt the head of his cock prodding me open I swear I had never been wetter. Every inch forced in slowly and I watched his expression release into one of sexual immersion to pure, raw bliss. His eyebrows curled up and his eyes closed for a moment, no doubt revelling in the sensation of dipping into me from behind.

It felt so full and warm and when he pulled back out we sighed in unison. Our differing heights made it a little awkward to get our footing but we quickly settled into each other and after a few long draws in and out, Bill finally relaxed his shoulders and stood back up, matching my stare in the mirror.

“Such a tight little pussy.” He whispered in my ear as he rammed himself in harder, causing my whole body to lurch forward.

He gave me another spank and picked up the pace, pulling in and out and in and out, causing me to moan. I cracked a smile as we stared each other down in the mirror. We writhed as he started fucking me harder. My knee started knocking on the wood of the bathroom vanity and I was almost afraid that we may have been making too much noise. I twisted my neck around to attach our lips again and I couldn’t care at all.

A few times he pushed in too far and the striking painful pleasure of his cock hitting my cervix made me gasp. His right hand gripped my throat with purpose but not violence and then he forced his long index finger into my mouth. I took it down to the second knuckle, swirling my tongue around it obediently.

“Bad, bad girl.” He kept whispering in my ear, glaring at me in the mirror.

It was like looking into another dimension; a place that did not and could not exist. Bill had always been there, but not like this. He wasn’t this beautiful man shoving his cock inside of me. He would never whisper to me how bad I was and how good it felt to fuck my pussy and how long he had been vying to make me squirm. In another dimension, he had been almost my brother. He was my friend. He was a little boy that wanted to play.

He popped his finger out of my mouth and slid it down my stomach back to my clit to rub little circles over it.

“I want you to come for me.” He told me, voice deep and shaded so only I could hear.

When I didn’t answer he thrust into me harder. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes. Fuck yes, I’ll come for you.” I promised.

He dropped his head on my shoulder, using me as support for his endless thrusting. In the mirror I saw his damp, dark hair hanging around his temples, his eyes closed, his hands holding onto my shoulders, hips, breasts, and neck, never picking a spot to stay.

He looked up at me, eyes bleary and lips hanging open. He brought his chin to my ear and whispered, “I’m going to come inside of you.”

We rocked together, pace slowing. The moment he reached his hand down to rub my pussy again I was twitching from the pleasure. His fingers caressed me over and over and the more he circled my clit the closer I got to orgasming.

I tightened as the edge of a fantastically orchestrated climax ripped through my body, starting at my center and working its way through the rest of me, down my spasming legs, up to my arching spine and through to my fingertips that were clawing up from the marble counter-top.

“Yes,” he drawled. “Fuck yes.”

It was scary for a moment as his pumping turned desultory and he lost control, letting himself succumb to the pleasure. His hardness was numbing and then suddenly he shuddered, releasing inside of me, as promised.

He staggered back, hand around the hilt of his still hard cock. A string of cum fell from the swollen tip onto the bathroom floor, the last of it. The rest was already starting to leak down my inner thighs.

“Shit.” He gasped.

I brought my leg down off the counter, wincing as my stiffened muscles tried to relax. As soon as I stood up straight with both feet on the ground I felt the smooth creaminess of his cum still lingering between my legs

It took him a moment to come down from his high. Even I was having a hard time coming to terms with what had just happened.

“Bill… Jesus.” I said, exasperated.

“I really hope that this doesn’t… complicate things between us and our families.”

A laugh burst forth from my mouth. “Oh my God, I think that this is probably the most complicating thing we could have possibly done.”

He laughed too. “I’m sorry for just, you know, going at you like that. I really wanted that to go differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“For one,” he began. “I wanted to at least ask you to come out with me sometime. But when I saw you going into your room I just…”

“You just what?” I urged him to continue.

He shook his head with a smile. “I don’t know… I really don’t. Seeing you today has just made me feel different.”

“I feel different too.”

A silence fell over us for a moment before he broke it.

“Listen, I'll be going into hiding for a bit. I’ve got this role- now don’t say anything because I know you don’t care-”

“It’s not that I don’t care.”

“Okay good. I just wanted to tell you because I’m not going to be around and all contact with the family will be minimal, but once I’m done, I want to come back to see you, alright?”

“Okay.”

“And it won't be weird?” He asked.

“Well… That I can’t guarantee, but… yeah. That all sounds good.”

“Now, if you will excuse me, madame, I think you and I have been missing for long enough and I still haven’t had my shower.”

With that, Bill leaned forward to press a satisfying kiss to my forehead and sent me on my way out of the bathroom with a smack on the ass.