luisgabriel1992

[aoioozora]

Simon.

Part 7

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13

Character: Simon Riley / Ghost

Content: Biker! Ghost x Fem! Reader, strangers to lovers, fluff, civilian au

Note: Reader and Alejandro interactions that make Simon jealous and a wee bit insecure. Tags: @cmbghost @gluttonybiscuits @paintlavillered @eatingtheworldsoffanfiction

____ pulled into the underground parking lot of the apartment complex, sighing. She had just come back from an underwhelming meeting with her editor. 

She had proudly submitted the first few chapters of her manuscript, hoping they would be a hit, but was instead bombarded with the many suggestions of changes that should be made; while the plot itself was alright, the main complaint had to do with the male lead. 

“Frederick is not captivating or interesting enough. He needs more depth and personality… Definitely something different from Elystran,” the voice of the editor echoed in her thoughts as she killed the engine of her car and stepped out of the car. The thought of it once again made her shoulders slump with disappointment. 

Just as she did, out of the elevator across her parking spot came Alejandro. He spotted her and smiled. “Hey,” he greeted, twirling his car keys around his finger. 

“Hey, where you off to? I thought you were at work already.” 

He shrugged, “Took a day off for a doctor's appointment.”

“What happened?” 

“Nasty back pain,” he sighed. Then noticing her dull spirits, he asked if she was okay. 

“Yeah, I just came back from a meeting with the editor and apparently, I have a lot of stuff to change in my manuscript.” 

“Ah,” he nodded solemnly, “I'm sorry to hear that.” 

She shrugged. “It is what it is.” 

Alejandro was silent for a moment, unsure whether to ask whatever he had on his mind. He decided to just go for it. “Do you mind if I read the manuscript? I'd like to see what it's all about. Maybe get a sneak peek into your next book too.” He winked at her. 

“I was actually thinking of asking you just that.” She beamed, happy that he asked. 

Alejandro raised his eyebrows. “Really?” 

“Yeah. Actually, most of the problems in my manuscript are with the male lead, so I think your valuable input as a man would really help me out. And your general opinion as a reader too.” 

The man couldn't help but feel flattered. “Is that so? Then I'd be happy to help you out. Just send me the manuscript and I'll read it soon.” He threw his car keys in the air and caught it in his rugged, tan hand and smiled. 

“Perfect.” Just as she was about to say something else, she got a notification on her phone, which she immediately took out, hoping it was a message from the editor changing his mind about the manuscript. 

But it was Simon. Though a little disappointed, she still smiled, and he noticed.

“Boyfriend?” he asked, raising his eyebrows teasingly at her.

“Yeah,” she nodded, grinning. She kept the phone back in her pocket, deciding to answer him later. 

Alejandro found it a little odd that she wouldn’t reply to Simon immediately, but he figured, “Maybe it’s just me,” and decided to let it be. 

“I’m offended you didn’t tell me you started dating,” he smirked, playfully putting on a tone of feigned offense as he put his hand on his chest. “How’d you two meet?”

She laughed at his dramatics and then briefly related the incident to him. 

“So you two started dating only a month and a half after meeting each other? That's… quick.” Alejandro remarked, raising his eyebrow. He knew people could fall in love at first sight, but that wasn’t the case with everyone. 

“Yeah,” her voice squeaked and her gaze faltered; she cursed herself for it. “We found a lot in common and… hit it off.” 

“Hm…” he exhaled, noticing the vagueness and lack of conviction in her voice and body language, but decided not to comment on it, not wanting to jump into conclusions too soon. “Well, good for you. I’m glad you found someone,” he said with a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He then looked at his watch. “I should get going. Don’t wanna be late for the appointment.” 

“Alright, see you later!” she said with some eagerness, wanting to end the conversation, for she didn't know how else she could cover up. 

“See ya, muñequita.” 

Simon had recently followed ____’s spam/personal account, and saw that the skeleton plushie made a very frequent appearance. It showed up even on her main account to her tons of followers. 

The story on her personal account posted late in the morning showed the skeleton perched against her laptop screen along with the caption, “Serious writer’s block rn. He’s cheering me on!”

The next image, posted three hours later was of Alejandro in front of a laptop that looked like hers, captioned, “@-alevargas is giving me some pointers. He's ruthless 💀”

Simon grunted, feeling a spurt of jealousy. He rolled over on his side on Gaz's sofa, nearly kicking Johnny– who was seated on the floor– on the back of his head. 

He didn't hear his friend's yelp as he was too busy feeling bummed that she didn't ask him, especially after the two shared meaningful conversations over her novel before. 

“It's not like I can control who she chooses to share her work with,” he told himself resignedly, “Besides, we're just friends. I'm not supposed to be feeling jealous like this.” 

Yet he couldn't help it. 

Simon decided to scope out his competition by paying a visit to Alejandro's Instagram page. Upon reaching there, he found that the man was an up-and-coming part time model with a fair amount of followers. Even though Simon saw him in real life and found him to be a handsome man, his modeling photographs rendered him dangerously handsome; he had perfectly tanned skin, thick glossy black waves styled gorgeously to suit his masculine features, straight pearly whites for teeth, a near perfect five o'clock shadow, an athletic and muscular body, and a dazzling smile characteristic of motivational speakers. He was Mexican, to top it off, which meant that he most definitely was an outgoing and energetic guy. 

Simon felt his confidence fade into insignificance. Here was a man perfect in every respect like an expertly cut diamond, and compared to him, Simon felt like an ugly, misshapen rock. His own features contrasted with Alejandro's in his brooding, glaring eyes, his pale skin, thin lips, crooked teeth, his somber and quiet outward personality, and most of all, his marred face and body. 

He immediately exited Instagram and dropped the phone on his chest, sighing. “Yeah, with a bloke like him as competition, there's no way I'm winning,” he thought to himself, now resting his arm over his forehead. 

“Oi, Ghosty,” Johnny nudged Simon's leg with his elbow. 

The familiar nickname irked him all of a sudden, as it felt like a reminder of his flaws. “What?” he asked, trying not to sound snappy. 

“Did ye ask ____ if she wants tae come for our one night camp?”

Simon grunted. “I'll ask later.” 

“No. Yer gonna forget. Also, tell her that Lindsey is coming too.” 

Lindsey. Simon remembered Johnny telling him about her soon after he confessed their stalking. A short, freckled, ginger girl; Johnny spoke about her a lot and with excitement too, even calling her ‘Jolene’ in reference to the Dolly Parton song. Simon wasn't particularly surprised that Johnny was gallivanting with yet another lady; that's what he had always been doing since high school. His wit, charm, smiles, energy, and particularly his Scottish accent recommended him greatly to the opposite sex. He only hoped that Lindsey wouldn't take him too seriously. 

Simon picked his phone back up and sent a quick text to ____  about the camping trip and its general details. No sooner was he about to throw his device aside on the coffee table to pay more attention to Gaz who was playing his electric guitar nearby, her reply came. 

Author Girl: of course I'd love to come! 

Simon Riley: great. I'll let you in on more details later

Simon Riley: Johnny has invited your friend too apparently

Author Girl: Really? She didn't even tell me.

Simon Riley: u better ask her about it then. 

There appeared to be a slight delay in her reply even though she was online, and he wondered what she was up to. Finally, a reply came after two minutes. 

Author Girl: I'll do that :) 

Simon Riley: Are you busy? 

Author Girl: yeah kind of. Alejandro is giving me some suggestions for my story

He felt a twinge of jealousy again. “He's still there? At this point, maybe they make a better pair than she and I,” he thought despairingly. 

Simon Riley: yeah, I saw ur Instagram story. How's it coming along? 

Author Girl: it's coming along great. We're almost done here

Simon Riley: he's at your place? 

Author Girl: yeah, he came over to give me some enchiladas he made and I invited him to come in. 

Another twinge of jealousy, and another skill to add to Alejandro's repertoire. 

Simon was so close to typing, “I wish you invited me instead,” but immediately deleted it. 

Simon Riley: cool. 

Simon Riley: I'll leave you two then, I got other things to do

Author Girl: sure. I'll text u back soon :) 

Simon Riley: alright. Cheers

She noticed how he went offline so quickly and stared at her phone for a moment. “Is it just me or did he seem a little off?” she wondered to herself, hoping she wasn't reading too much into it. She shrugged it off, thinking it had to do with whatever he was busy with. 

“Muñequita?” Alejandro's voice interrupted her reverie.

Her eyes snapped back to the man sitting across her. “Yes?” she smiled, not realising she had been engrossed with Simon. 

He looked at the clock on her wall. “I should get going now. It's gotten late,” he said, now placing her laptop on the coffee table and rising. 

“Oh right, I've kept you here long enough,” she chuckled as she rose too. “Wait here for a moment.” 

Alejandro, confused and curious, stood by the coffee table as he watched her disappear behind her kitchen door. She soon appeared with a can of soda, which she put in his hand. 

“That's for you, as thanks for the enchiladas and helping me out,” she said, grinning at him. 

He chuckled and playfully gave her forehead a gentle knock with the edge of the cold can. “Thanks, muñequita,” he smirked, opening the tab of the can with a single finger and taking a long sip of the soda. “Well,” he began as soon as the sip was drowned, “I'll be off now. Good night.” 

“Good night, Alejandro. Take care,” she said as she walked him to the door. 

“You too, nena,” he gave her a little smile. “Call me if you need any more help, alright? I'll be at your beck and call,” he said only half-jokingly, giving her a wink. 

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “You don't need to do that, but I'll let you know.”

As soon as he left, she breathed a heavy sigh. The conversation with Alejandro was fruitful, but she was exhausted. She decided to decompress and wind down for the night by taking a nice, long shower and a soak in the bathtub. She then had a simple dinner and just before bedtime, she was found on her bed in her satin pajamas and her phone, cuddled with the cushions and plushies; Little Simon, the most preferred and well loved, was tucked under her arm and pressed against her breast. 

Her cute animal video marathon was interrupted by a message from (Bigger) Simon. 

Simon Riley: wyd? Are you busy? 

Author Girl: watching videos. Hbu? 

Simon Riley: [photo] 

Simon Riley: watching a film with the lads. It's boring 

The photo showed a glowing television screen in a dark room, and a little cameo of Johnny's familiar mohawk at the bottom as he was seated on the floor in front of Simon. 

Simon Riley: I'd rather talk to you

She felt her heart skip a beat. 

Simon Riley: I hope I'm not disturbing you btw

Author Girl: no no you're not

Author Girl: tbh I'd rather be talking to you too 😂

It was now Simon's turn to feel his heart skip a beat. 

Simon Riley: good, because I'm in for a conversation 

Author Girl: what do u wanna talk about? 

Simon Riley: hmm

Simon Riley: how did it go with Alejandro? 

Unbeknownst her, Simon had to revise that text several times so as to not make himself sound unnecessarily overprotective, prying, and smothering. He hoped that he sounded casual and carefree enough. 

Author Girl: went well. He gave me a lot of pointers for my male characters. My editor wasn't so happy with my male lead so I had to consult an actual guy to help me out

Simon Riley: you could've asked me

Author Girl: yeah well Alejandro was the first guy I came across so I thought I'd ask him. I was going to ask a bunch of different guys too so I'll be asking you next 😁

Simon Riley: good. I'll be glad to help. 

Simon Riley: btw about the trip

Simon Riley: I need to fill u in w the finer details. Can I call you rn? 

Author Girl: sure

She sat up straight on the bed with bated breath. Though he had a few phone calls with him, she still felt a little bit nervous. She was about to get lost in her thoughts when the blaring of her ringtone made her jump with fright. She scrambled to pick up the call. 

“Hey!” she squeaked in a high pitch, and immediately cleared her throat. 

“Hi darling,” he said, his voice deep and affectionate; she could hear him smiling. “You alright? You seem a little… I don't know, surprised?”

“No,” she said breathlessly, “No, no, I'm fine.” She chuckled. When she heard the faint sound of traffic on his side, she asked, “Are you out already?” 

“Just the balcony,” he answered.” How could you tell?”

“I could hear some traffic.” 

“You're sharp,” he complimented. 

She smiled. “Thanks. Now, what did you want to discuss?” 

“Right, yes,” his voice immediately turned serious. He gave her all the finer details of the trip for a few minutes and at the end of it, he asked, “We're planning on using a car to get there since it's gonna be the five of us and it will save on petrol. Do you think we could use your car?” 

“Well if my car is in good enough condition for you, then I don't mind,” she said, a hint teasingly. 

He chuckled. “If I check it and find anything wrong, I'll give you a bollocking,” he teased back. 

“Oh come on,” she rolled her eyes, smiling, “You gave me enough of a bollocking the other day when my battery died. I'm not going to let you do it again.”

She heard him laugh, and like it always did, her heart melted. 

“You deserved it,” he scoffed. “But anyway, batteries and bollockings aside, you're okay with your car being used?”

“Absolutely.” 

“And you're comfortable driving long distances? Like I said, it will be a three hour drive, which is quite long by European standards.” 

“I'm okay with it. It's been a long time since I've driven that long though.” 

“Don't worry, if you're tired, I'll take your place.” 

“You? But didn't you say you were a bad driver?” she smirked. 

He could hear her smirking and thought he'd try to make her laugh. “If I try really hard, I can avoid hitting a tree.” 

She burst out laughing. “You're banned from the driver's seat!”

He smiled, gratified. “Whatever shall I do,” he said sarcastically, smiling and shaking his head. 

“If you can prove that you won't hit anything within the first five minutes of the drive, then maybe I'll consider letting you drive for longer,” she challenged, shifting in her seat on the bed and running her finger over the contours of Little Simon on her lap. 

“Challenge accepted,” he said with a self-assured snort. 

She smiled at his confidence and willingness. “So where are we all meeting again?” she asked. 

“At my place. I'll send you directions for it after this.”

“Okay,” she exhaled, now thinking of what his place looked like. What sort of decor and aesthetic he preferred, what sort of colors he liked, and if he kept house plants. 

The two continued to converse a little more until their eyes felt heavy and they started yawning. 

“Are your friends still watching the movie?” she asked, by this time half sitting up and half laying down on her bed. 

“I think it's almost over,” Simon, who was still seated in the balcony, looked over his shoulder at Gaz and Johnny who had their eyes still glued to the television set, despite them having melted into the sofa. “You sound sleepy, darling. You should go.” 

“Hmm…” she sighed. “But I don't want to go,” she whined in a soft, sleepy mumble. 

“Why not?” he questioned smilingly, not wanting her to hear how her sleepy whine was making him melt. 

“I like talking to you,” she replied in a tone that was trying to convince him to stay. She rolled over on her side, holding Little Simon close to her chest. 

The man's distant eyes softened as he heard this and he felt a little tickle in his stomach. His voice deepened, quietened, and mellowed as he replied, “Same here, my darling, but we'll talk again soon, alright? You sound like you're gonna fall asleep right now.” 

He heard another little whine, and he chuckled, unable to stop finding her cuteness so endearing and sweet. “Go on now,” he encouraged gently. 

She finally relented. “Good night, Simon,” she said in a half-whisper. 

“Good night, my love.” 

There ended the call, and Simon kept his phone on his thigh, feeling his face turn warm against the cool, damp air of the outdoors. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled. 

“Fuck me…” he murmured, running a hand through his hair. 

This phone call was a huge boost to his earlier insecurity. Their banter, her acting cute, her not wanting to stop talking to him was evidence enough that she preferred him over Alejandro. He could only hope that his hunch was right and that she wasn't doing the same thing with the other man. 

When the sound of her puppy-like whine echoed in his mind again, he groaned, wishing he could punch a wall so he could feel manly again. 

Any more, and she was going to be the death of him. 

The same woman, blissfully unaware of how her unintentional cuteness affected Simon, was now half-asleep on her bed, fingers curled loosely around her phone, and Little Simon nestled under her arm. 

“Elystran, from your first book, was bubbly and energetic. So I think that it would make sense for Frederick to be a little more reserved and aloof, but someone with power and authority, unyielding, and kind to nobody but Adelheid. Maybe if you knew someone with similar traits like these, you could use them as a model.” Alejandro's words from their earlier discussion echoed in her thoughts. 

Like lazily floating clouds on a clear summer's day, her thoughts drifted, trying to think of who would make the perfect model. 

Her thoughts settled on one man: 

“Simon.”

End of Part 7.

Part 8

Thank you all for your love on this series! I enjoy writing this and all your wonderful likes, comments, and reblogs fuel my passion some more. It's sm fun to write fluff; too bad I don't see a lot of it on tumblr lol. But anyway, thank you all once again. Remember, if you enjoyed this and want to be notified for updates, leave a comment so that I can add you to my tag list. x

[himegureisu]

3 | The Woman

Mycroft never texts if he can talk. Must be a root canal. - Sherlock

Did you have a domestic? -Mrs. Hudson

Caring is not an advantage. -Mycroft

A/N: Those lines above are what inspired this chapter. This is set in S1 E3 The Great Game. Enjoy!

Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, Angst (?), Sick Reader

WC: 1600~

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—————————— 🔎——————————

From the horizon, dawn begins to break upon the land.

Through the curtains, a soft golden hue is cast across the study. On the furniture, light and shadow dance, shelves of old leather tomes, and the occasional trinkets are briefly emphasized by the sun’s radiance. From the fireplace, a hint of cinnamon and fresh parchment wafts through the room.

A piece of quiet in the chaos that is life.

“Myc, I called Anthea to clear your schedule for tomorrow and the following Friday,”

Against the light, on his chair, Mycroft works. His gaze, previously on the thin dossier, turns to you as you enter.

“Why is that, my dear?” he asks. Truly clueless on this.

“Dentist appointments for you,”

Oh, that.

His tooth has been bothering him for a week and he hasn’t done anything about it. You checked. His schedule for the month didn’t include a single dentist appointment.

This man.

“You didn’t need to, my dear,” Mycroft dismissed, “It will go away,”

“You don’t know that,” In front of his desk, you stand, hands on your hips, as he winced from the pain, “You’re not a dentist, Myc,”

“I am one of the most intelligent people in the world,” he attests. His patience was thin from a long night. His ire slowly rose. Was this the only reason you disturbed him? When there was much to do than this? “I do know what this is,”

“Is it so bad that I care that you’re in pain?”

“Caring is not an advantage,” he simply answered.

What? Did he honestly just say that? Where did that even come from?

His solid gaze and silence afterward were the answer. Your heart ached at its implications. Was everything a lie? Your mind conjures every memory and moment shared between you two. His smile, laughter, and the way he longed for your touch. Your chest is heavier, the thoughts slowly consuming you.

Did he not care?

“If caring is not an advantage, then I guess this whole marriage is a sham,” your voice breaking, you turned away, “Don’t expect me for breakfast, or dinner, or even in bed tonight,”

His eyes widened in shock, at last, he recognized the implication of his words, however, too late. His study door slammed shut, as you walked out, and echoed throughout the house. Regret and shame weighed heavily on his shoulders.

What has he done?

—————————— 🔎——————————

True to your word, you weren’t at breakfast. You couldn’t face him. Your cheeks are stained. Your eyes puffed from crying in the guest room. Your rings seem to mock you on sight. It was tempting to throw them off the Thames but decided against it.

It was too early for that.

Your chauffeur dropped you off at work as usual. Your eyes are hidden behind a pair of shades that others did well not to comment on. Your head aches from the tears and turmoil, but you know that life goes on.

Your phone is slowly bombarded by his messages that you rightfully ignored.

Throughout the morning, your headache worsened. Your focus is off, the letters on your computer screen blur, and the room spins a bit around you. 

Every joint in your body hurts, not because of Mycroft, but because the warmth radiating from your breath is the only sign you need.

A fever. You couldn’t work, not like this.

Your manager was informed of your condition and tasked not to tell your husband that you were sick. Your chauffeur immediately returned to pick you up when he started to text him.

“Don’t you dare report back to him,” you snap at the man withdrawing his hold on the phone, “If he cares, then he’ll text me directly not you,”

“Yes, ma’am,” they comply.

At home, you bundle yourself in the guest bedroom. Medicine on one nightstand, soup on the other as you hide beneath the sheets, tears falling once again hoping that everything would turn out okay.

—————————— 🔎——————————

Your genuine interest in who he was beneath the stoic persona was what first attracted him to you. Other people didn’t do that. Other people never did that.

But evidently, you weren’t other people.

That’s why when you didn’t come for breakfast, for the first time, in a long time, he was scared. Scared of losing you because of who and how he is.

When his messages were ignored when he asked for an update and your driver simply answered I can’t say, sir, her orders. The pit that formed in his stomach only went deeper. His anxiety escalates with each passing minute.

He couldn’t work, not like this. He was wrong. He needed to make it right.

“Anthea,” he called over the intercom, the young assistant quickly appeared phone on hand, “Do clear my schedule for the rest of the day I’m going home,”

“Sir?” Anthea inquired, as he started to walk out, “What about —”

“No, this is important,” The most important.

“Of course, sir, I’ll have your car waiting outside,”

His driver takes the fastest route back upon his insistence. His thoughts were a whirlwind of the worst scenarios. What if you were gone? What if you truly left, rings on the countertop and a letter in the kitchen to explain?

By five in the afternoon, he was home. The earliest he’s been in years.

God, he could do better than this. He should. You shouldn’t need to wait for hours for him to come home. He should be a better husband than that.

“Darling, I’m home!” he announced, as soon as he crossed the threshold, though no one answered, and looked around, “My dear, please we need to talk,”

Nothing.

Panic. Complete and utter panic takes over the great Mycroft Holmes.

His heavy steps echoed through the halls as he rushed to the master’s bedroom to find no one. Yet, your effects remained where they were. He goes through every single room in the house until he opens the door to one of the guest bedrooms.

On the bed, beneath a thick lump of blankets, you curled up miserably and ignored his arrival.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed out, walking over to the side of the bed, “My dear, please look at me,”

“No,” you quietly answered, “Go away, Mycroft,”

His heart sank at your firm position away from him. He did hurt you, so bad that you couldn’t face him.

Though, you weren’t exactly presentable.

There were tissues crumpled on the other side of the bed. Your cheeks were wet, nose stuffed and red, and eyes swollen from crying as he started to speak.

“I am sorry. I can’t say that enough to make this better,” he paused, his gaze on the mound that separates you, “I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t care about you. I do care and love you. To love and to cherish, till death do us part that’s a vow I intend to keep, my love,”

Your attention is caught by his term of endearment. He rarely ever calls you that.

“It is that I simply choose what I care about and the rest is insignificant,” he explained, “Caring for trivial little things like a dentist appointment doesn’t matter to me,”

“It does matter to me. You take care of others far too well but you neglect yourself.” you softly said, from beneath the blankets, “Your parents, brother, and I are under constant protection of guards but who protects you Mycroft? Who protects you from yourself? Who cares for the carer? I don’t want you to die early Mycroft. There’s so much life has in store for us,”

Your headaches after that little speech. A sharp pain briefly passes through causing you to wince and close your eyes.

“I understand. I will endeavor to do and take care of myself better,” he says and turns to see the back of your head poking out from the sheets. 

“My love, please look at me,”

You shake your head no. Big mistake.

Your pained groan comes to his ears loud and clear as he leans down to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear.

“Darling?” His fingers touch the side of your head, very warm. No rather alarmingly warm, “You’re sick,”

He deduced and finally, you push the blanket down a bit to face him. Your body is a raging furnace. Your skin is too pale in the light. Your breaths are shallow and insufficient. His hand is cool on your skin as he places it on your forehead with a frown.

“How long has this been?” he asks, noticing the medicine and cold soup on the nightstands, “How are you feeling? When did you last take medicine?”

To think, he thinks he doesn't care when he fusses like a mother hen.

“Just this afternoon, I’m tired, hot yet cold, one nostril is clogged annoying and my head hurts so much,” you confessed, “I drank paracetamol when I came home so it’s been five hours,”

“You can take another one then,” he stands up, “After I ask for food from the kitchens,”

“Okay,” you concede, as he kissed your cheek, “Myc, don’t. You’ll get sick,”

“I never get sick, love,” he walked over to the door to leave, but paused in step, “Are we okay?”

His eyes glisten in hope and fear of your answer. Your lips slowly turn upward as he quietly continues to assess you and your condition.

“We’re getting there,”

You say a sense of relief washes over you both. He nods, a small smile playing on his lips before he heads out to fetch food for you. As he leaves, he can’t help but feel grateful that in all of the people in the world, you loved him despite everything.

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[mrs-n-uzumaki]

SimplyBridal: Thank you for making an appointment with us.

Me: Unless I forgot I was hopelessly single, you've got the wrong email.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 39]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright. Time to get a bit of studying done.

Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

 “Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

 Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

 Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

 “Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

 “What?” asked Pat.

“Either I put on the wrong jewelry this morning… or my timepiece isn’t working.”

“Well, then I’m guessing we’re in the right place,” Janus said. He turned to Pat. “Your stuff still working?”

Pat brought up whatever device was on his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like something is just starting.” Just as he said it, there was a violent crash of thunder.

“Well,” Janus said. “We should probably find the source and soon. Which way?”

Pat glanced around himself and then motioned with his wrist. Suddenly there was a 3D display of the church in front of them.

 Janus could see immediately where the problem had to originate. There was a swirling mass of some sort of energy centered at the top of the bell tower of the church. As he watched, he saw the picture of the church glitch out a bit. He had a bad feeling about that.

“Is there something wrong with your display?” he asked, or more hoped.

Pat shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so…” The room seemed to shift suddenly underneath their feet. It felt a bit like time travel, but also wrong. The picture on the display flickered harder, part of the building fracturing and dissolving before appearing back in place. The room settled after a moment, but Janus’s stomach did not.

 “Whatever is going on,” Janus said, “We need to stop it right now.”

Pat nodded. “The quickest way up would be that way,” Pat said pointing. The display closed as he did.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

The world was eerily calm as they all started off in the direction Pat had pointed out. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

“Where’s the nearest window?” Janus asked when they came out on the second floor.

Pat glanced at his hand. “There should be a couple a few feet that way.” Janus nodded and left them standing there. When he glanced out of the first window he came to, it appeared to be night. Yet, when he walked to the next window, he saw daylight.

26606

“Time is fracturing,” Janus informed them. “We need to be careful.” This time distortion was much more intense than any of the other ones the agency had been tracking down over the last few months. It had also come on much faster. Usually there was some time between when the time distortion began and it started having extreme effects on the environment. He was suddenly very glad that he and Remus had not split up today. He was even glad for Pat’s company, no matter how aggravating he may be sometimes. Not to mention, he was glad for the man’s technology that seemed to circumvent whatever was blocking Janus and Remus’s timepieces.

He backed away from the windows and returned to the others.

“Whatever you do,” Janus said. “Don’t let anyone be in a room alone.”

“I know what time fractures are this time,” Pat promised.

“It was as much for the idiot as it was for you,” Janus said.

“You accidently bring a bubonic plague infested rat to 900BC one time and you never live it down.”

“I’d say I should put a leash on you, but you’d twist it into something disgusting.”

“Probably,” Remus agreed.

“Where next?” Janus asked, ignoring him.

“That way,” Pat said.

They walked together to the door he’d indicated. “Please don’t be bullshit,” Janus prayed. He opened the door and immediately got bowled over by a stream of salt water.

 Chapter 19

Janus landed flat on his back, a wave of water splashing over him and then quickly retreating, but still leaving him absolutely drenched. He sighed, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t,” he warned, “say a word.”

Of course, he was with the two most impossible people in all of space and time, so neither of them headed him.

“I thought you said we were far from the ocean, Jan,” Pat said.

“Yeah, Janny,” Remus immediately jumped on board because he was an asshole. “I thought we were far from the ocean!”

“Maybe I’ll achieve my goal of finding the Flying Dutchman after all!”

 “Ooo ghost pirates! I’ve never gotten to fight ghost pirates before. Any good with a sword Patty?”

“My friend has a sword and he let me use it before… but all I did was cut a hole in our couch, and then Lo was mad at us.”

“I mean… just pretend the pirates are a couch and we’ll be good!”

Janus slowly sat up. There was still water on the floor and every so often a wave would crash into the room as though the door frame signaled the edge of a beach. Pat reached down to offer him a hand up and Janus slapped it away.

 “Rude!” Pat claimed, but his eyes were alight with mischief.

Janus shoved himself to his feet on his own power.

“You deserve it,” he hissed. “For all of this!” he waved his arms around.

“Water you talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You are on thin ice.”

He looked down at his feet with a contemplative expression. “Looks like water to me.”

“Arg!” Janus spat, throwing up his arms.

“I don’t sea why you’re screaming, Janus.”

“Yeah,” Remus contributed. “You seem overally emotional to me.”

“Yes, yes,” Pat replied. “Very em-ocean-al.”

“One may even say he’s pretty salty.”

“I know where you live, Remus,” Janus reminded.

 “Alright, alright Remus, reel it in,” Pat said.

Remus opened his mouth to respond, but Janus cut him off. “Why don’t the two of you dedicate all of that brain power to figuring out how to cross the literal ocean in the next room,” Janus suggested hotly.

And it was a literal ocean. If one ignored where they were and the fact that there was a staircase climbing out of said ocean about 80 or so meters away. There was sand being washed up across the door frame and a seagull flying in the distance. At least it looked like a nice day in the room with the way the sun was glinting off the water. At least it wasn’t storming there. Yet.

Janus’s head throbbed with the thought of what had to be happening with the time distortion to plop a piece of the ocean into one single room in a church. Usually they’d be calling the TPI for backup or at least for information, but that was a loss. Even if they tried to get out of range of whatever was disrupting their timepieces, time was so unstable, they’d very possibly get dumped somewhere dangerous. It was better to just get to the time distortion as quickly as possible and stop it.

 “Hmm,” Remus said. “I wonder how deep it is. Do you think there are man eating sharks in the water? Or giant jelly fish? Remember that one time I got stung by a jelly fish and almost died?”

“Yes,” Janus said, lips pursed, “and it was entirely your fault.”

“I just looked so squishy!” he declared, “I didn’t know it was a murder blob.”

“I think I have a boat,” Pat said.

They both turned to him. “What?” Janus asked. He was looking at his hands and just hummed in response to Janus’s question. The next thing he knew, Pat made some motion with his hand and a yellow raft started to autofill from his palm. “...Why?” Janus asked.

“I… recently started carrying a wilderness survival pack in my time device.”

 “I’m not going to question it. It’s better than swimming.” By the time the raft was completely deployed, they’d all been shoved into the walls by it.

“Huh, on second thought. I probably should have put the raft in the room before blowing it up.”

“You think?” asked Janus.

Pat glared at him over it. “I never really thought about how to open it in a narrow second floor corridor.”

“Just try to shove it through the door without popping it.”

“Why are you looking at me?!” asked Remus.

They managed to somehow squeeze the raft through the door into the other room after a few minutes.

 Pat squinted at the tottering raft he was holding to the door frame. “After you,” he offered.

Janus glared at him.

“You’re already soaked!” Pat defended himself.

Janus sighed and very carefully climbed into the raft. It tottered dangerously, but he didn’t immediately fall out, so that was a plus. The other two of them slowly also climbed onto the raft with him. They then sat in it for a few seconds. “Is there an oar?” Janus asked.

“Oh right!” Pat did something else with the device in his hands and an oar slowly unfolded from his hand.

“Seriously, I want one of those,” Remus said.

 “Let’s just get out of here,” Janus said, snatching the oar. The staircase luckily wasn’t too far away. They probably could have swam it if necessary, but the raft gave them some modicum of protection. Everything seemed to be going in their favor, which of course meant everything was about to go incredibly wrong.

They were about halfway across the water when the entire world around them rumbled.

“…I hope that was a giant jellyfish,” Remus said.

It was unfortunately not a jellyfish or any sea creature at all. The world around them fractured, the ocean seeming to split right down the middle so the water right of the staircase was 6 feet higher than on the left. The sky flashed red and yellow before the water split completely like Moses splitting the Red Sea.

 There was a millisecond as the split widened until it was only a few feet from them, to decide whether when they landed they wanted to be on the side with the water or on the side without it. On one hand, going towards the side without water could mean they fell to their deaths or the water crashed back down on top of them when it settled. On the other hand, if the fissure was closing or shifting to a new area, it was very possible that they’d end up trapped in the middle off the ocean with no connection to the church.

 Well, the best chance to actually get to where they were going was probably the side without water. It seemed everyone had the same idea at once because as he grabbed for both of them, they both grabbed for him and they all went tumbling off the raft into what could have very well been a bottomless pit.

Janus learned after a couple of seconds of free fall, that it was definitely not a bottomless pit. He landed hard, flat on his back and saw stars. The next moment something landed on top of him, squeezing all of the air out of his lungs.

 Something else fell half on top of his legs.

“Ow,” Pat said from near his ear.

“Yeah, well you’re the one on the top,” Janus groaned though his teeth.

“Wow, I never took you for a bottom, Janus,” Remus said from near his feet. Janus kicked up his legs into whatever part of him was on top of Janus and he gave an “oof.”

Pat snorted a bit and Janus glared at his… shoulder? He shifted around a bit so he was less thrown across Janus and more just on top of him. Janus blinked. There was a wooden ceiling above them, so that was a good sign, though there was also a giant dark hole of nothingness directly above them which was not as good.

 Janus moved slightly. He could tell he was going to be bruised later, but he didn’t seem seriously injured. “We should,” he started, but was interrupted as the hole above them pulsated and dumped a bunch of sea water.

Pat shrieked as they were all drenched with the chilly water. Luckily, they seemed to be on higher ground because, while water kept pouring out of the hole, it drained away just as quickly instead of drowning them.

Water still hitting his back relentlessly, Pat peeled his head up to look Janus in the eyes. A giggle bubbled out of his mouth.

“It isn’t funny,” Janus informed him. Pat just giggled more, leaning his head against Janus’s chest and cackling.

 Janus just rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is an entirely appropriate reaction. Thank you for your contribution to our very important mission.”

Pat seemed incapable of stopping laughing completely, but he did calm himself enough to peel himself off Janus’s chest and lean forward so their noses almost touched. “It’s hilarious and you know it,” he claimed.

“In what way is this ‘hilarious’?”

“In many waves,” was the joy filled answer.

“You’re horrible.”

Pat hummed. He hadn’t moved to get off of him even though they really should be moving in case something worse than water came through the hole in the ceiling. He hadn’t even moved his face away.

“No, no, you two just tell me when you’re done being gay for each other,” Remus interrupted. Janus was surprised to see he’d stood up at some point and was now hovering over them.

 Janus flipped him off even while Pat laughed once again. Pat finally drew away and rolled off of him so Janus could sit up. Pretty much everything hurt when Janus moved, but he was able to stand up, so he was probably fine enough. “So,” he said looking around. “Where are we now?”

 Chapter 20

Janus looked around himself while Pat booted up his map to try to figure out where they were. They were in a small room that may actually be considered a large landing as there were staircases on either side of it. The water that was still coming out of the ceiling was running down the staircase that led down from the room.

 Something was stopping the water, creating a pool on the steps that was already about to overflow into the room. With the speed the water was flowing, they should have enough time before the room completely filled up with water and drowned them.

Janus wondered if they were in the church or not. It was not out of the question and there was church like décor around them, but who knew? He could feel a strange vibration in the ground and the one window in the room shone with green light.

“Hmm,” said Pat. “That looks not good.” He’d projected his map so they could all see everything.

 The map itself was moving. Rooms were phasing in and out of focus and fracturing down the middle. One room was even spinning lazily around in circles. Janus could see the room they were in. It was connected to the bigger blob of rooms, and there was a black line connecting it to another room from the top which was obviously the hole spewing water at them.

“Well, at least the time distortion is still coming from the bell tower,” Remus said. Janus shot him an unamused glance. Said bell tower was currently upside down and shuddering as well as divided from any other room by at least two inches of empty space.

28842

“How are we supposed to get there?” asked Pat.

“We don’t,” Janus said. “It’s literally impossible.”

“There has to be some way,” Pat argued with a frown.

“If we try to use time travel, we’ll definitely get shredded by the warping time and space around it and walking there isn’t an option. There aren’t even any entrances!”

“Well, there were at one point.”

“Yeah, before,” he gestured wildly to the ceiling that was still pouring water into the room.

“So?” Pat asked.

“’So’?! What do you mean ‘so’?!”  

Pat shrugged. “When one door closes, cut another one.”

Janus froze and looked at him for a long moment. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

Patton raised an eyebrow. “You.”

“I don’t think like that anymore.”

“Well then I guess we’ll die,” Pat said lightly. “Of course, that’ll make an even worse time loop considering I’ve met older versions of you.”

“Fuck,” Janus spat. “Fuck. Fine. Give me a minute to think. Not that I even know if we have a minute because,” he gestured once again to the room.

 “Okay,” Janus said. “The room with the source of the time distortion is separated from us by a swirling pool of dark nothingness and there is no way to get to it. But, the only way we’re going to stop the distortion from ripping apart time and killing us as well as probably a bunch of other people is to get to it. That is an impossible situation. There is no solution. That door is closed to us. What other ways are there to look at it?” He looked at the visual representation of the rooms. One of them suddenly went spinning out and his eyes tracked it. We need to be in the same place as the source,” Janus said. “That is fact, but we don’t have to get to it.”

“Um, what do you mean?” Remus asked. Pat shushed him.

 “If you want thing A and thing B to be in the same place, there’s more than one way to do it. If you can’t move thing A to thing B, you might be able to move thing B to thing A. Pat, you have a working time device. We can’t travel with it because that would kill us, but if we can make it do a stutter warp, it could draw the time distortion to it.”

“You…” Remus said. “Want to create another time distortion in hopes that the original time distortion will be pulled into this room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sounds good to me!” Remus said.

 He maybe had expected Pat to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved his hand to his wrist. There had been nothing there before, but when he touched down on his wrist with two fingers, there was suddenly a metal bound around it that Janus immediately recognized from the times he’d seen Pat’s timepiece before. How was it made invisible? He shook the thought off as Pat offered it up wordlessly. Janus took it and Pat leaned over his shoulder to look.

Despite the fact that the device looked nothing like his own, the interface was surprisingly convenient. “I assume you have safety setting to prevent a stutter warp,” Janus said. “How do I turn those off?”

 Patton pointed at a gear icon on the screen. “You put it under your normal settings?” he asked.

“I have to put in my password or use my fingerprint!” Pat defended.

“It doesn’t matter right now.” He navigated through the settings. He was interested to see that there were many different saved default security settings, but he didn’t get much of a chance to read what all they did. He just turned them all off.” It popped up with a message to put in the password and Pat pressed his fingertip to it. Another message popped up warning them that turning off these settings could cause damage to the machinery, the person using it, and time itself. Janus pushed “okay.” A message popped up that asked “Continue” and Janus pressed “yes.” One last message popped up that said “Security functions disabled.” Janus pressed “okay.”

 “Anything else I’d need to disable?”

“Nope,” Pat confirmed.

He navigated back to the main screen and then bought up the manual travel input screen. Yet another message warning him not to do this flashed and Janus once again ignored it. He copied the space time coordinates that the device said they were currently at and put it in the ‘travel to’ location. “Well,” he said. “Here it goes. Let it be known that if I die, it’s my own fault for allowing Remus into a church.”

“Really?” Remus said. “That’s what you’re choosing to be your last words?”

Janus just raised an eyebrow.

“Love you too Janus.”

Janus nodded and hovered his finger over the travel button. He quickly mashed his finger to the button 22 times.”

 The device warmed in his hand enough that he almost dropped it. Time literally froze for a few breaths as whatever Deity that may or may not exist processed their stupidity.

Janus was not a scientist or technician, but he had a good idea of how badly they were fucking up right now. The timepiece was attempting to travel over and over again to the exact same place and time. This basically punched a small hole through time, that if left unfixed would grow and disrupt space time all around them. As it was, their current position, all gathered around it and staring at it while one of them had it literally in their hand, was perilous.

 There was a rumble under their feet and the world tilted on it’s axis. The all went tumbling down in a pile of limbs to new floor of the room which had once been a wall.

Of course, this change of gravity caused the water that had been building up in the staircase to dump on top of them.

Janus would have cursed, but he was too busy being under the water. He maneuvered himself away from the other two flailing bodies and managed to shove his feet against the wall turned floor. His head popped above the water in time to see the ceiling, or well, it would be the opposite wall, rip in two and the other walls/floor/ceiling start to fold in.

 “Give me a boost!” Pat called over the noise of water rushing and walls crunching.

“Give you a boost where?” Janus asked.

“Up!” Janus wasn’t sure if ‘up’ really existed right now, but he still nodded. The water was a few inches over his head, so he held his breath and interlaced his hands so Pat could put his foot in it. He was shoved down into the water, but it gave Pat enough leverage to shoot up out of the water. When Janus resurfaced, he saw that the man had grabbed ahold of the crumbling wall and was pulling himself up into what for all appearances seemed to be absolutely nothing.

 It took a moment, but then Janus blinked, and he was suddenly in a new room entirely or perhaps it was the same room. He honestly didn’t know at this point. Remus was next to him. He couldn’t recall if he’d been there before the shift or not, but they were both treading water. Pat crashed into the water next to them. Janus’s wrist buzzed as his timepiece came back online. “Got it!” Pat declared when he resurfaced, holding a device up. It looked almost the same as the device they’d found in France, but this one was definitely different if it was able to cause that much chaos that quickly.

 Janus looked around and pointed at what appeared to be a set of stairs. The three of them swam over and pulled themselves out of the water.

“Where are we?” Pat asked.

“Looks like a basement,” Remus replied. “A flooded basement.”

Janus pulled up his timepiece and pushed some buttons to stabilize Pat’s timepiece. It slowly stopped vibrating and cooled. “Here,” he said, handing it over to him. “I suggest you put the safeties back on now.”

Pat nodded and took it.

“We’re still in Cuba,” Remus informed them, looking at his own timepiece. “Same church too, but in the basement and… two and a half centuries later.”

“Remy is going to be pissed,” Janus said.

Remus shrugged. “He’s always pissed… at least at me.”

“Well,” said Pat, slipping his timepiece back onto his wrist. “Thanks for being willing to pool our resources.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Stop.”

“Ah, mi sirenito-”

“I hate you.”

“-never.” He disappeared with a pop which was when Janus realized, he’d never handed over device that had caused the first time distortion.

“…You bastard!” he yelled at thin air as though the man could hear him.

“Well,” said Remus, “that mission went swimmingly.” Janus reached over and shoved him back into the water.

 Chapter 21

“We should probably get out of here,” Janus said, very much not helping Remus out of the water. Remus pulled himself back up onto the staircase and shook like a dog. Janus crinkled his nose as water droplets hit him. They didn’t smell salty anymore, he noted. In fact, there was a broken pipe spewing out water on the other side of the room.

Janus and Remus cautiously snuck out of the church, not wanting to be seen and blamed for the flooded basement. They came out on a city street that was much different than the one they’d entered from.

 They walked down the street a bit, Janus’s eyes scanning the buildings. His eyes caught on a sign and he tugged Remus towards it.

They entered the small paladare and the person delivering food to one of the tables blinked at them both. Right. They were in clothing from the 1700s and were soaking wet. He met eyes with the woman, challenging her to say something. She did not.

They found a seat at one of the tables.

“Ah…” the worker said, approaching them. “English?”

“Ron,” Janus said, “por favor.”

Remus turned and started ordering the both of them food in Spanish. Janus didn’t pay attention to what he did.

 After his second shot of rum, Janus sighed and brought up his timepiece to ping the TPI. The reaction was almost instantaneous from their perspective. Remy all but kicked down the restaurant’s door and walked over to them. “How the fuck?”

“Ah, Remy,” Janus said calmly. “Have a seat. We’re waiting on our food.”

He did, but probably only because people were looking at them. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been a long day,” Janus answered, “and I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, it certainly looks like you’re interested in the food,” Remy said, eyeing the empty shot glasses.

“Let’s just say, I’m glad Cuba started letting paladares legally serve liquor a few years ago.”

 It’s clear that Remy wanted to ask them what had happened, but he also was cautious enough not to make a scene here and Janus wasn’t planning on getting up until he’d at least gotten his food. “Why are you soaked, by the way?”

“Turns out the ocean isn’t as far away as we thought,” Janus said.

“Also, a church basement is flooded,” Remus said.

“Fantastic,” Remy replied.

They sat there mostly in tense silence until their food came, and then Remus and Janus ate. Remy slapped down some pesos once they were done and then proceeded to all but physically drag them out of the restaurant.

 They were led to an alley way and then through an old almost hidden door. Remy immediately rounded on them. “What the hell happened?” Remy asked.

“The time distortion caused level 5 time fractures in its vicinity, we almost drowned three times, and the worst person in the universe fucked me over again.”

“To be fair,” Remus said. “He did save our lives before that.”

“I saved our lives first,” Janus said. “I don’t have to be fair.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Curl Up In A Ball And Perish. I’m sure we would have been fine without him.”

“Anyway,” Janus said to Remy. “If you want your lump of flesh, I suggest you take it now, because Khalid is going to murder me, and then fire me, and then rehire me so she can put me on desk duty and make me do paperwork until the end of time.”

[bald-tales]

No going back. By Titan

This was my first story.

My name is Mathew, and I really love the idea of letting a barber have absolute control over what hairstyle I should be wearing. Only trouble is that up until now, I haven't had the nerve. But here I was in my favourite gay bar, considering surrendering my hair, which at the moment was just starting to hit my shoulders. You see, I'd been sitting at the bar with a beer in hand, looking at the different haircuts on the guys around me. They were all typically short, mine the longest by far. I'd been glancing through the local gay newspaper, and noticed a small advertisement, with barbers pole. The shop was called simply, 'Jakes'. Monday were Barbers' choice, it stated. Then in small print at the bottom of the ad it said; 'Monday evenings, special looks by appointment only.' I now had a raging hard on and knew I had to give this shop a try, besides it had been a long time since I'd been in a barbershop, getting my dark, long locks styled in one of those upmarket salons up til now. Here I was, Monday evening right outside number 26 Curtis Street. That was the address that Jake had given me on the phone after I had rang the number in the ad. He explained that as he delt exclusively with a gay clientele, he never advertised his address. It had just turned 6 o'clock as I pressed the bell. The front door gave no clue what was behind it, in fact, I was starting to wonder if this really was a barbershop. My nerves gave way when the door opened and a large, beefy man with a handsome face, stood smiling at me. He wore a traditional barbers tunic with the name Jake, embroidered on it. "Mathew?", he said. "Come on in". I followed him down a small corridor to another door that had a spinning barbers pole beside it. As Jake opened the door, my cock showed my excitement. The room I entered was exactly fitted out as a traditional barbershop. Although well lit it contained no windows, which I did think was strange at the time. Jake the barber motioned me to the barbers chair in the dead centre of the room. With a little hesitation, I climbed up into the big red upholstered chrome chair, that had what looked like a huge light shade hanging above it. "How about a drink",Jake enquired cheerfully. "Sure, wouldn't say no." I replied. Jake walked over to a small fridge and asked,"Is a beer okay?" "Sure is", I replied. As he came back with the beer, I noticed that Jake had a completely hairless head. I mean it didn't look shaved as I couldn't see any sign of a shadow anywhere on his head. He was a big man, well over 200 lbs I guessed, carrying what looked like a lot of that weight around his middle. Normally I wouldn't be attracted to such a man, but seeing him standing there before me in his barbers tunic was really turning me on. As we downed our beers,Jake asked me a few more questions about myself. When I spoke to him on the phone previously, he had asked me what style my hair presently was and what styles I liked. "So, Mathew, you have quite alot of hair there on your head, is it the same on the rest of your body?" he asked with what looked like a glint in his eye. This caught me by surprise. I told him I thought I was moderately hairy. "Let's have a look ", he said, and without any hesitation he started to unbutton my shirt. "I would say you've got more than a moderate covering of hair ,boy". Jake said as he ran his enormous hands over the hair on my chest. I hoped he couldn't see the tent in my pants getting bigger. He had! "Now you told me on the phone you were looking to get something quite different to your present cut." Jake said as he got a stripped cape and placed it around my neck, and secured it with what appeared to be velcro . "Well, I thought a change would be good as I've worn my hair this way for much too long". I began to tell him, "I'm not real sure what style would be good on me, so when I saw your ad, I thought the barber would know the best style, something I would never be game to ask for myself". Jake knew straight away, that this kid was begging to be taken as a slave. He was certainly easy on the eye; he couldn't be more than 22, with a trim, atheletic body, standing nearly 6 foot. But he knew he had to be careful not to scare this boy away before he'd had a chance to work his magic on him. "So your willing to let me do whatever I want?" Jake suddenly asked. I then realised the situation I was in, and beginning to feel a little fearful, replied,"You wouldn't do anything too radical, would you?" Jake just smiled and went to the mirror in front of me. He drew my attention to a board attached to the side. It had a numbered list of hairstyles, many I hadn't really heard of before. "Now I'll tell you what hairstyle will suit you and you tell me if you think it's too radical, okay?" he asked me. Now, that seemed fair I thought, and so I told him,"Go ahead". The clippers felt unbelievable as they travelled up the back of my head, and I knew my cock agreed. Jake had earlier reassured me that the haircut numbered, 5, would be the one he would like to do on me. I was actually a little disappointed as the haircut featured beside the number 5, was an ivy league. I had visions of this guy taking more hair than that off me. When Jake had finished with the clippers, he picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded trim the hair on the top of my head. I had been a little anguished when Jake had first picked up the scissors and cut off all the length I had grown. But when he turned on those Oyster Clippers, I knew I was going to enjoy the new me, especially with summer just beginning. One thing did strike me as odd, when Jake had first started cutting at my hair. It still felt like I had some length at the back close to the crown. I wasn't facing the mirror as Jake had explained he wanted to surprise me with the final transformation. When Jake had finished with the scissors, he said the finished style needed some product in it to keep it in place, but first he had to condition the hair. He rubbed a very thick goo through my hair, making sure it was well coated, but again it felt like he was missing a spot at the back of my head. I really enjoyed the head massage, so much so,I did not notice him lowering that dome light above my head. "This is just to help the conditioners work through your hair, and particularily your scalp." Jake assured me, as he set the dome just over my head. The warmth of the light was really relaxing me, I think I could just drift off to sleep. As Mathew slept, Jake lowered the heat lamp a little lower until, it covered the top of Mathew's head. This 'special' appliance was his pride and joy, as it accomplished quite a few jobs in a very short time. Firstly, it contained a sleep agent, rendering the person under it, unconscious. As a heat lamp, it was drying the cream that Jake had put on Mathews head, letting it completely penetrate the hair shaft. This was the exact treatment that Jake had used on himself. That's why, he had no shadow of hair anywhere on his scalp. The cream was designed to be a permanent hair removal solution, and Jake didn't want his new boy to have hair anywhere on his body. This slave was going to be as smooth as the day he was born, except for one spot on his head. Jake had already decided, he wanted this 'pretty boy' made to look a little freakier. He was going to give him a Mongol look, so that was what Mathew had felt left behind by the clippers, a lock of hair just below the crown, 3 inches round and falling nearly 7 inches long. Jake had also been careful to leave the cream off this hair. Jake switched a lever at the side of the heat lamp. Soft music could be heard coming from under the lamp. While Mathew slept, the Music emitting from small speakers on the inside of the lamp, was designed to put Mathew in a hypnotic state, then he would be bombarded with powerful suggestions. As the sleeping drug effects wore off, this would enable Jake to control him, without the use of restraints or gags. Jake took a look under the lamp, and saw the cream was completely dry. Mathews hair was rock solid, as if he was a mannequin in a store window. He switched the heat-lamp off, and went to his counter where he picked up another jar of cream. Opening it, he began to apply it to Mathews face, around his chin area and above his lip. This was a beard and hair growth accelerator, designed by a doctor friend of his, making the hair grow fifty times as fast as normal. Jake knew how well it worked as he often used it on himself, when he wanted to grow facial hair. In fact Jake decided to spread some of that hair cream on his own face, he thought it was time for a full beard again. He left the shop and Mathew to let the hypnotic suggestions take effect. He was also feeling a little hungry, and another beer wouldn't go astray. He'd check on his new boy in a few hours. Jake had just finished his fourth beer, and as he rubbed his belly, realised he'd better check on Mathew. Looking at his watch, it was nearing 10.30 pm. Mathew had been under his 'Hypno Light' for nearly four hours. It's subliminal messages and hypnotic music should have altered Mathews mind to the effect where he believed he really belonged to Jake; body and mind. Scratching at his face, Jake liked the feel of his new beard. The hair accelerator he,d applied worked fast. He was now sporting a thick, dense beard, completely hiding his chin and neck. Going to the bathroom, he took a pair of Oyster beard trimmers and proceeded to fashion a new look for himself. Trimming the coarse whiskers away from his ears, he removed most of the hair from his cheeks and neck, leaving behind a wedge shaped goatee, that began well back on his jawline. His moustache was left thick and luxurious, trimmed to sit just above the top lip. Pleased with his work, he lathered his face and removed the remaining stubble. He couldn't wait to team up this look with his brand new leather outfit. Meanwhile, across the road............. Billy knew his life was in a rut. What sort of life was it for an 18 year old to spend so much time in front of his window, like some old spinster. Well for this teenager, he could think of nowhere better to spend his time. Since moving into the neighbourhood a few months back, he'd noticed a lot of men coming and going from the house across the road. What was stranger, the men always came out with much shorter hair then they went in with, sometimes radically so. Billy was hooked. He'd always been fascinated with traditional Barbershops, from a very early age, and here was one set up right across the street from his apartment, albeit a hidden one. The owner of the house fitted the big daddy barber type. Shaved head, built like a tank, with plenty of weight around the middle. Definitely not Billy's type, in fact Billy had seen 'his ideal man' enter the house earlier this evening, through his binoculars. Tall, long dark hair, not much older than himself, this particular guy was hot! But what was keeping him so long! He'd gone inside around 6 pm and now it was nearing 11.00. Billy was sure he hadn't missed him, as he'd never left the window for a second. His toilet was here,( a large old fashioned bedpan belonging to his Gran), an ice chest filled with beers and cola, and a couple of cold pizza slices, from an earlier delivery. He was more than prepared for a long night by the window, he certainly didn't want to miss one minute of the action at number 26 Curtis Street. Jake ran the warm water all through Mathews stiffened hair. He'd reclined the Barbers chair back so his new slaves head was fitting into a groove in the basin, designed to support the neck. Jake had just returned from upstairs, and after switching the Hypno-light off, continued with Mathews transformation. As the water softened the dense, hardened, cream, that had turned Mathews hair rock solid, large clumps of hair began to fall away from the scalp. Pink, smooth, skin began to show all over his head. Everywhere the cream had been, hair just slid away as the water softened the hair. The hair root had been eaten completely, leaving nothing for the hair to attach itself to. The chemicals had totally fried the hair remaining above the skin, only the 7 inch long ponytail at his crown, remained. When he'd dried off the scalp, Jake began work on Mathews newly grown goatee. Grabbing a set of trimmers, he got rid of most of the bulk, leaving a sharp edge on the chin almost an inch long. He reduced the mustache, to more a Clarke Gable width, before fashioning it to hang down at the sides, fu-style. Firing up the lather machine, he shaved the remaining stubble, creating a perfect edge goatee and thin mustache. Next, Jake bleached the beard, eyebrows and remaining hair. He decided to dye everything jet black, but that could always be changed. After finishing the colouring, Jake fired up his electrolysis needle and began to tidy the scalp around the remaining lock of hair. He'd been careful to keep the hair removal cream away from this area, and now he was creating a perfectly round circle of hair growing out of the scalp, as if by magic. When he finished on the scalp, Jake set the needle to work thinning down Mathews eyebrows. He narrowed the centre and made them appear to go higher on the outside end. He really was looking like a Mongol slave by this time but his skin was still very pale. Now Jake picked up a paintbrush and began to apply a thick golden oil all over the newly balded head and face, covering every single area of skin. Jake lowered the Hypno-light again and turned on the heat lamp, leaving Mathew to 'baste' for awhile. Part 5 ............Billy was feeling the onset of tiredness. It was well after Midnight and there was definitely no sign of life from number 26. Obviously, the young guy that Billy had observed enter the premises earlier, was staying the night. Billy wished he could be a fly on the wall, as he knew there must have been some serious haircutting, happening to that spunky guy! With a huge yawn, Billy went to bed, and hoped to have some erotic dreams. ............. When Jake returned to his shop to check on Mathews progress, he couldn't believe his eyes. The kid's skin was now a deep, golden brown. He looked so much like an oriental warrior, it was hard to believe that less than 7 hours ago, Mathew was a typical, white, all-American, college boy. Jake raised the Hypno-Light, and switched the heat lamp within it ,off. Time to wake the kid up, said Jake to himself as he waved some strong, smelling salts under Mathews nose. Almost instantly, Mathew's head jerked, backwards, and with a few coughs and splutters, Mathew tried to move his body. He couldn't move his arms or legs, as Jake had secured him earlier with leather restraints. "What's going on .....aaagh! My head...where am I? Why?...aarrrh....why can't I move my arms! Mathew started to garbal as he slowly came to. As Mathew began to focus on the man in front of him, slowly things began to make sense. The bald, bearded guy in front of him, was the barber. He'd come to this shop for a haircut, but why did he feel so groggy, and why was he restrained like this? Jake reasurred his new slave, "Your with me now, Mathew, your perfectly safe, you've just had a little catnap, while I've been working on your new look". Jake then grabbed one of his cigars, and lighting the end, sucked deeply on it. He blew the smoke directly at Mathew, who began to cough repeatedly. Mathew was so confused he couldn't think straight and now his eyes began to water from the acrid cigar smoke. "Don't like the cigar, lad? Well, we are going to have to change that, aren't we?" Said Jake as he blew some more smoke at Mathew. "Now it's time to see your completed haircut", continued Jake. He always liked this part, that's why he did the brainwashing in stages; he wanted them to remember their former self as he did the big reveal. "Okay, here goes", he said as he slowly turned Mathews chair, to face the mirror. Slowly, Mathews eyes began to focus on the man in the mirror. All he could see was a dark, oriental guy, with a completely bald head, except he could see hair coming out of the crown. The guy had a black mustache and goatee, it was hard to guess his age. "Aaarrrgh....." suddenly screamed Mathew as he realised the guy he was looking at was himself. "What the... shit! it can't be....what in the hell have you done to me.....? Mathew struggeled against the restraints as he tried to make some sense of all this. Jake leant in close to Mathews ear, and calmly said, "Relax Mathew, just relax, this is what you wanted, you know it's what you wanted". As Mathew became fully aware of what was happening, he began to think back to the beginning of the haircut. "What the fuck are you on about!" "This isn't the haircut we agreed on" Mathew argued. Jake replied, "It sure is, let me show you". And with that, Jake went to the mirror where the numbered board containing all the different hairstyles, was hanging. "Now, it was number 5 we agreed on wasn't it?" asked Jake, mockingly. Mathew leaned forward, and could clearly see the haircut listed beside the number 5: Ivy League. Suddenly, Mathew's focus caught sight of some small print at the bottom of number 5. He started to feel sick, as he read to himself;'Monday Evenings - number 5: Mongol Braid'. "You bastard! You tricked me, you knew I wouldn't be able to read that small print... I'm gonna get the cops....." Jake continued to speak calmly, close to Mathew's ear,"Come on, don't be so melodramatic, or I'll gag you. Your already getting off on this new look," as Jake pointed towards Mathew's growing bulge in his pants. Mathew was confused. On one hand he was shocked and angered, at what he was looking at, but at the same time, this complete transformation was making him very horny. Could it be that he really wanted this? Part of him was already accepting this, how is that possible? Jake leaned in close to Mathew's ear."Your going��to love serving me boy. Your new slave name is Boon." Suddenly, Mathew was feeling completely relaxed. He couldn't remember what he'd just been saying, all he could focus on was the bald , bearded man beside him; his voice was so soothing, his eyes, trusting, all Mathew knew was that he had to serve this beautiful man. Mathew's conditioning was working 100 percent. You see, Jake had just said the keyword, Boon. It had been placed as a subliminal message, to activate, the information contained now in Mathew's sub-conscience. At the mention of the keyword, Mathew was now on course to begin his new life, as Jake's slave warrior. "Now Boon, I'm going to release you from the restraints, you will remain calm". Jake said in a soothing voice. "Yes Master", replied Boon with his eyes still shut. "There is still much work to do", said Jake as he went to work, fashioning a braid out of Boon's ponytail. He worked methodically, sepperating the strands of black, shiny hair and wrapping them tightly into a perfect Mongol Braid........all the time, Boon said nothing; he just sat perfectly still. Part 6 Billy couldn't sleep; he was too restless.All he could think about was what may or may not be happening across the road. He got up and thought he should try some hot chocolate, maybe that might help him sleep. As he entered his small kitchen, he thought he heard a scream - not loud, but none the less it was definitely a scream. Going to the window, he peered across at number 26. A light was on in the upstairs window, and every other apartment close by was in complete darkness. What was going on at that address? Billy knew he couldn't go back to sleep now. Without thinking, Billy returned to his room and started to dress. Meanwhile...... Jake continued to apply the special hair removal cream all over Boon's body. Laughing to himself, he thought maybe it should be called; Hair Destroyer! Jake had Boon completely in his power, so he continued to transform Boon's body, Boon just lay there as if in a trance. Jake had transferred Boon to a collapsable table, he'd sourced at a camping store. Here he could complete his work on Boon's body. When he had completely covered the front of the body, Jake wheeled over, a large infra-red lamp. Turning it on, it began to glow a fiery red as he lowered it closer to Boon. Soon the cream would dry, exactly as it had on Boon's head, and when washed off, would remove all the hair, including the deadened root. "What was that?" Jake said aloud to himself. He'd just heard something fall outside. He thought it sounded like the alley out back. Leaving the shop, Jake went to the back entry to the shop and turned on a video screen near the rear door. He pressed a button that gave him four different screens. One picture was of the front door, one of the alley beside his rear door, and two other pictures showed inside his barbershop. Peering at the rear shot, he pressed a button that brought up just the rear alley camera shot. Sure enough, he could see movement; not real clear in the darkness, but there was definitely, something or somebody, near his rear shop window. This window, only looked in on a small room, that contained a fridge and coffee-maker. It was mainly a supply room for the shop. Jake suddenly remembered he'd left the blinds open, and the light from the barbershop would be filtering through the open door. Jake knew he had to move fast, so he went back in the shop, grabbed what he wanted, and made his way to the front door. Billy couldn't believe he'd come down to this back alley in the middle of the night. What with hearing a scream and not knowing anything about this 'Barber', wasn't this insane? He was beginning to think so as he peered into the back window. He'd climbed up on a trashcan to be able to see in. He could make out what looked like a small storeroom and light seemed to be coming from an open door. It had to be a shop, Billy said to himself. Suddenly the trashcan gave way, and Billy fell to the ground. The sheer noise magnified in that small alley, made him not have to think twice. Taking a moment to gather himself , he started to run as fast as his legs would carry him. His adrenaline pumping, he was nearing the end of the alley, and he started to feel safe. As he rounded the corner of Curtis Street he felt a huge arm grab him from behind. Before he could scream for help, a hand covered his mouth. He tried to struggle, but was having trouble taking in air. He could feel everything going blank. As Billy stopped struggling, Jake knew the either had worked as he kept the cloth over the victims mouth. Part 7 Back in his shop, Jake secured his prisoner to the barbers chair. Using the leather restraints, he fastened them around the kids, neck, chest and arms. He fitted his legs to some custom-made stirrups that could be raised from the side of the chair, and in a semi-reclined position, gave the barber complete access to the groin and leg areas for shaving. Jake studied his captive carefully. Straight away, Jake recognised the kid from the apartment across the street. He'd noticed him many times, just sitting in his window; this had started to worry Jake. He knew the kid had probably noticed the continual stream of men, coming in and out of this address. And now he was snooping around out in back, in the middle of the night. Had he seen anything he shouldn't have? Jake's Barbershops very existence, relied on remaining hidden from the straight world, and the authorities. Wow, Jake thought, this kid was certainly a looker; couldn't have been more than 19. Jake turned his attention, back to Boon, who was still lying on the table in his hypnotic state. Jake would wait for his new prisoner to wake before deciding on his fate. The hair removal cream needed a little longer to dry, so Jake turned his attention to the piercings. Wheeling over a small trolley where he had laid out all the necessary equipment earlier, Jake pushed a large needle through the right earlobe. Working a large gold hoop through the new piercing, he then pierced the left earlobe, fixing a much smaller but thicker gauged ring. All the time, Boon remained, perfectly still. He'd been programmed to enjoy the thought of having multiple piercings, and already his cock was at full mast. Working quickly, Jake continued to work now with a small needle gun and before long, Boon's left ear sported eight gold studs around the edge. In the glow of the infra-red heat lamp, the brillance of the golden colour of the piercings, accentuated, Boon's tanned face. Next a small gold barbell was fixed to the bottom of the thinned down eyebrows. Finally, a small spike was placed under the bottom lip, setting off the black sculpted goatee. It was time to remove the body hair, which by now had completely dried, and hardened. Using wet towels, he rubbed them all over the front of Boon's body, taking away the deadened hair forever,leaving nothing but smooth skin in it's place. He then asked Boon to turn over, and sure enough, Boon obeyed. Jake now applied the hair removal cream to the back of the legs, arse and back. He fixed the infra-red lamp back in place to continue the process of removing Boons remaining hair. Yawning, and feeling a rumble from his stomach, Jake realised how long it had been since he'd ate anything. He went upstairs to fix himself a snack, besides, Boon needed time to bake! Part 8 Conclusion Billy began to come to. He felt as if he'd been hit by a truck. He couldn't remember what had happened; he was having trouble focusing on his surroundings, then slowly, he remembered being in a back alley. Then running as hard as he could, he was grabbed from behind..... then all he could remember was darkness. As he began to take in his surroundings, he realised he must be inside the Barbershop. As he tried to move, he quickly became aware, he couldn't move; there were leather straps holding him to a barbers chair. Fear started to take over, as he became fully conscious. It was then that he noticed a naked guy, lying on a table to his left. Billy couldn't tell if he was awake or not, but he seemed to be completely hairless, except for a long braid, and a beard, and beside him stood some large heat lamp. Billy really started to panic now. He began to yell, "Get me out of this chair." Just about the same time, Jake was returning to the shop,"Pipe down cutie, no one wants to hear your whinning". Almost at once, Billy started to babble about how much trouble the barber would be in if he wasn't released this very minute; "The cops are gonna be all over you, when they hear what you've done, you fat pervert." Jake got in close to the chair and almost whispering in Billys' ear, said; "I think your the one in alot of trouble, Don't you?" "What were you doing, snooping around out back, in the dead of night, eh boy?" Billys' heart suddenly sank. Shit, he hadn't thought about his own actions tonight. How does he explain to the cops how he'd been looking for a delicious hunk that had gone into the shop earlier....Jake had him there. Billy would seem like the pervert! "Listen man," said Billy nervously,"It's all a big mistake. You see I was out for a walk and I thought I heard screaming..........just ahh, let me go and.... I won't say anything." Billy was trying to think quickly now. "What do you take me for?" Laughed Jake. Billy didn't know what to say, he just knew he was in big trouble. "So, what's your name then boy?" Jake asked as he started to fiddle with the Hypno-Light. "Billy". Billy replied nervously as he could see the Barber doing something with what looked like an oversized opperating theatre light. "So tell me Billy, why were you really checking out my shop tonight, could you have noticed a young guy comming in earlier? Your always in that window of yours, nearly every night! Surely you must have seen the guy, waiting outside my shop?" Jake continued as he started to lower the lamp closer to Billys' head. "Well, sure I did see him go in, but I heard a scream and I never saw him come out". Billy thought it didn't matter telling the truth as this Barber was obviously gay as well. "That's because he hasn't come out; Billy meet Boon." Just as Jake pointed towards the dark guy on the table, Billys' eyes began to widen. Suddenly it was as if he'd seen a ghost. Just as Billy began to scream, Jake placed duct tape over his mouth, then switching on the Light, said; "Let's see what we can do to improve your looks, eh Billy?". Music could be heard, strange, melodic music. Slowly, Billys' muffled screams began to subside.

[sweetheartjeongguk]

pretty kitty 3 (m)

pairing: taehyung x reader

genre: hybrid au, camgirl au, fluff, smut

rating: nc-17

warning(s): drunk sex, impregnation kink, daddy kink, mentions of drugs and alcohol, taehyung and oc having the feels 

word count: 6.6k+

summary: you’re both jagged pieces of a puzzle, but you fit rather nicely together. 

the discovery | the denial | the meeting | the aftermath | the payback

masterlist

“You tired already?”

You huff out an annoyed breath. “Easy for you to say. You just stick your dick in while I gotta deal with your sweaty body on top of me. It’s like Niagara Falls every time you top.”

Seojoon clutches at his chest in offense. “How dare you? First of all, might I remind you that I made you that spicy ramen last night even though we all know it starts World War III in your guts and you were stuck on the toilet for an hour crying over your ‘ruined asshole’?”

“Why, you little—”  

You launch a pillow at his face, but unfortunately for you, his reflexes as a panther hybrid allow him to easily avoid your attempted assault.

“Anyways, I gotta get going.” Seojoon sighs in fake disappointment. “Hyungsik wanted to binge-watch My Hero Academia with me, but I’ve been avoiding him ever since I accidentally watched the season already.”

“Yikes, good luck dealing with that mess.”

You never really liked Hyungsik, and you’re 99.9% certain that the feeling’s mutual. Just something about him strikes a wrong chord with you, but Seojoon shrugs this off as irrational paranoia. Unwilling to argue with your friend, you force yourself to muster up the brightest phony smile whenever you stop by their apartment to hang out or drop something off.

“See you tomorrow!” He shouts as he escapes through the front door after slipping his clothes back on. “Great work today as always! Don’t forget my money, bitch!”

“Love you too, jackass.” You grumble as you lay in a starfish position on your mattress.  

The livestream ended an hour ago, but Seojoon stayed to help you clean up and recuperate after the camming session. While he’s a dumbass half the time, you admire him for his consistent attitude for quality aftercare, even after the most vanilla of encounters. This particular session gained you a hundred more viewers and a decent amount of money for you to share with. If your elementary school-level calculations serve you well, the night’s earnings combined with your last solo stream are enough to cover textbook costs and the money you owe Seojoon for the time you overflowed his toilet after trying to flush his toothbrush down after accidentally flinging it inside and wanting to “destroy the evidence” before Seojoon came home.  

Your next defense was to blame it on Hyungsik, but he didn’t seem to appreciate the joke.

As recompense for your so-called “crime against humanity”, you offered a substantial portion of your earnings if he helped with filming. Sex came natural to the both of you, lacking the expectation of blatant resistance when you first brought up the idea. Casual sex with a trustworthy friend while making a couple hundred bucks every five minutes? Seojoon couldn’t find any fault with that.

After all, you sucked him off in a frat house bathroom just an hour after you two were officially introduced.

You stretch out across the bed with a wince. Maybe you’ll invest an hour-long massage once your money gets transferred to your account. Better yet, you’ll force Seojoon to pay for it since this is his fault in the beginning. The man’s built like a god but fucks like the devil.  

When you unlock the screen of your cell phone, you’re bombarded with the sight of multiple texts from Seulgi and an email about your Music 101 class being cancelled on Monday. After browsing through bland Instagram stories, you finally decide to appease the witch in your inbox.

Right off the bat, you regret opening up the message.

BITCH YOU BETTER ANSWER ME BEFORE I COME OVER AND TELL SEOJOON ABOUT UR CRUSTY VAGINA PROBLEMS.

You’ve had plenty of experiences with Seulgi barging in during your not-so PG moments and having her fall into an exaggerated spiel that has your partners running out of your dorm in record time. You’d be a fool to fall into her hands again so with a heavy heart, your thumbs type out your response.

yes ur majesty??

Not even five seconds later, your phone beeps with a new message.

wOW look whos here, puss in boots has finally blessed me with her appearance.

Before you can type back your offended retort, you’re blasted with the annoying Facetime ringtone. With a sigh and silent prayer to whatever higher power is up there, you accept the call.

“I almost thought the dick went to your head and not your vagina.” Seulgi snorts when your less than glamorous face comes into view on her screen. “How was your dick appointment, sunshine?”

“I’m doing fine, thanks for asking appropriately.” You flash her an unimpressed stare. “I made over $5k tonight so cancel your plans for tomorrow. We’re going shopping at the outlet tomorrow!”

“Okay, Little Miss Fancy.” Seulgi wiggles her eyebrows in approval. “Just in time too. There’s going to be a party at Jennie and Jisoo’s this weekend, and I’m trying to get dicked down before I’m forced to graduate with cobwebs on my clit.”

“Okay, first of all…I’m not even going to ask.” You shudder in disgust. “Second of all, don’t you have your project due the day after? Might I remind you of what happened last time?”

Seulgi blanches white. “Please don’t. I’d rather not remember that when there’s a dick in my mouth.”

You hold your free hand up in surrender. “Alright then, your problem. Just so you know, I think that you should have started that project months ago.”

“And I think that I should be married to Gong Yoo with two beautiful children, but we don’t always get everything we want.” Seulgi harrumphs. “Anyways, don’t be a party pooper. Who knows, maybe you’ll find Sugar Daddy Number 163 there?”

“My finger is literally hovering over the end call button as we speak.”

“Do it, bitch. I’ll throw away that catnip that you think I don’t know about in the secret drawer inside your closet.”

“That is low, Kang, that is just low.”

“Hey, there’s a party at Jennie’s this weekend? You down?” Jimin calls from the couch as he scrolls through the influx of messages in his dance class group chat.

Taehyung is fully immersed in washing the pile of dishes in the sink that he almost doesn’t catch Jimin’s voice over the running faucet. When he contemplates this in his head, he just shrugs indifferently.

“I don’t know, I’m not really friends with her.”

“She’s cool, man. The rest of us are going too anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to be by yourself.” Jimin points out.

“Knowing you all, you’re going to be dragged off into a game of beer pong against Jungkook or caught up in some random hook-up in a closet somewhere, Namjoon’s going to get himself stuck in another piece of furniture again, and Jin and Yoongi are going to make another stupid bet that’s going to get Jin stuck in jail again.”

“What about Hoseok?”

“He gets red after two sips.” Taehyung scoffs. “The most I had to do was stop him from calling his parents to apologize for drinking and never calling enough. He’s the least of our worries.”

“You might find someone to spend the night with?” Jimin singsongs. “Get your dick wet after all these months of being a loser and staying home jerking off to porn?”

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “Staying home doesn’t make someone a loser.”

“That’s something a loser who stays at home jerking off to porn would say.”

Taehyung sighs up at the ceiling, hands soaked and wrinkled from the soapy water. “I don’t even know why I try at this point.”

“Just think about it.” Jimin stands to grab his jacket hanging off the side of the couch. “You might be pleasantly surprised.”

“Highly doubt it, but thanks for the advice.” Taehyung actively avoids the flick of Jimin’s middle finger as the latter leaves to head back to his own dorm.

Once he’s finally alone, Taehyung takes a moment to actually think about Jimin’s proposal. If he does go to the party, there’s a 50-50 chance of him getting lucky with some hot stranger desperate for a random dick for the night or him returning home with six (or five, depending on Seokjin’s law-breaking kink) drunken idiots.

His Plan B (B standing for “Better Option”) would be to just forget about the party and stay home where he can happily jerk off to porn while digging into a huge bag of Hot Cheetos. Thankfully, he’s learned his lesson on how to jerk off without accidentally using the Hot Cheeto hand.

Taehyung had the case of spicy dick for a good five hours until Jimin came over to check up on him. However, the only thing Jimin could do was fall back in crazed laughter and snap a Polaroid of Taehyung’s distressed tears from his Cheeto dick.

Maybe the party idea isn’t sounding too bad after all.  

You fidget uncomfortably in your seat as you adjust your too-tight top. You had forced yourself to sit through an entire styling process from Seulgi who decided that you needed a little more “oomph” in your appearance.

In the words of Kang Seulgi, “God, Y/N, you’re a popular camgirl known for her sexual appeal, and yet you continue to dress like a middle-aged librarian mixed with Maria from the Sound of Music.”

You couldn’t help but shrink back in offense – your wardrobe isn’t that terrible. Sure, you wear too many casual clothes, and the only time you wear expensive lingerie or anything remotely “sexy” is when you go on camera, wearing the gifts given to you by loyal viewers.

Regardless, you let Seulgi work her magic in the brief time you had to yourself before Ji-Eun arrived to drive the three of you to the party.

Seulgi passionately performs a mini concert in the backseat with her own rendition of “God is a Woman” while Ji-Eun boils in the driver’s seat, her hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel. You don’t know which is worst at this point.

“God, will this car go any fucking slower?” She grits her teeth as another person honks their horn at Ji-Eun to let them through. “Why do they have to live so far away in the ass crack of nowhere?”

“They’re only 15 minutes away from us…”

“You better watch your mouth, Kang, or else you’re walking home.” Ji-Eun scowls into the rearview mirror.

Seulgi slouches back in her seat, no longer feeling the need to belt out the last notes of the song as it comes to an end. Angry Ji-Eun’s a side to the usually cherubic Ji-Eun that should never see the light of day no matter the circumstances. You busy yourself by scrolling through your Instagram feed, liking a couple pictures from your friends back home and laughing silently at some random dog videos that pop up in-between. Your scrolling comes to a halt, your thumb hovering hesitantly above the heart button of a certain photo.

If it wasn’t for the owner of the account, you would have found the courage to double-tap.

“Oh, isn’t that Kim Taehyung?”

“It is…” You mutter quietly, ignoring the close presence of Seulgi’s face near yours.

You’re desperate to scroll past, but Seulgi reaches her hand out to hold your phone.

“You should go for him, Y/N!” Ji-Eun whistles when she catches the picture of his selfie from the corner of her eye. “I heard he and Sooyoung already broke up, so you got a shot.”

The corner of your mouth quirks up in a half-assed smile. As if.

“They broke up already?” Seulgi asks curiously as she hands you back your phone. “I could have sworn that they were messing around together a couple weeks ago.”

There goes your fleeting moment of happiness.

“They weren’t really a thing, I’m pretty sure.” Ji-Eun pauses in thought. “They hooked up a couple times, but I think they’re just friends or at least just in the same friend group.”

You silently stew in your seat, clicking out of the app and locking your phone. Thanks to Seulgi, you’re aching to burn the image of Sooyoung wrapped around Taehyung from your brain. Not that you’re jealous, of course.  

Ji-Eun sighs in relief as the sight of the house comes into view. After parking precariously on the side of the street, Seulgi rushes your trio inside and through the living room teeming with drunk college students and into the kitchen to grab the first drinks of the night. You twitch your nose at the stench of musky cologne, hormones, and hard liquor intermingling as you approach the bartender of the night who just so happens to be Seojoon.

“Hey guys!” Seojoon chimes as he finishes up mixing Hyungsik’s drink who stands cross-armed against the wall with a look of boredom directed at the three of you, mostly at you. “I was wondering when you’d be getting here.”

“When did you get here?” You greet him with a short side-hug, stopping to glare at him until his traveling palm averts its course from your ass.

“Hyungsik and I got here beforehand to help set up.” Seojoon nods towards the brooding man in the corner. “Jisoo stuck me with this job, and now I can’t leave until the party’s over or at least until I’m forced to go out to buy more alcohol for these heathens.”

You scrunch your nose in annoyance. “That doesn’t sound fun. Why can’t they do it themselves?”

Seojoon clears his throat. “I quote, ‘because getting dicked down by the hottest guy in the room is the main priority of the night’.”

“Hear, hear.” Seulgi nods distractedly.

You smack your hand against her bicep. “Can’t you think without your genitals for a second?”

“Y/N…sweetheart.” Seulgi pats your cheek as if you’re an innocent child. “You must not know me at all.”

“Nevertheless, ladies, please enjoy the party.” Seojoon pulls you back before you can take a swipe at your best friend. “Y/N, I’ll be seeing you later.”

Seojoon clicks his tongue suggestively, reveling in your eyeroll and not-so discreet middle finger. After grabbing your drinks, the three of you head towards an empty corner of the room, away from the concentrated cloud of marijuana and crusty men who crave a quick grope.    

“Dang, was the dick that bad?” Seulgi scoffs jokingly. “Maybe if you’re not interested, you can spare a little bite...”

“Wait, since when you and Seojoon a thing?” Ji-Eun’s eyes widen.

You subtly glare at Seulgi’s apparent struggle to hold back her knowing laughter before turning to answer Ji-Eun with the most innocent look imaginable.

“I don’t know where Seulgi gets her delusions.” You smile through gritted teeth. “Seojoon and I hanging out from time to time does not equate to us fucking.”

Seulgi lets out a snort. “Something smells fishy…I think it’s your va—"

She squeaks in pain when she feels the stab of your heel into her foot. The music drowns out most of her cries of distress which Ji-Eun fails to notice. She takes a large gulp of her drink, grimacing at the strong aftertaste of the mostly-vodka mixture.

“God, I want to sue Seojoon for making us this terrible drink.” Ji-Eun stares at the cup with utter hatred in her eyes. “Seriously, it tastes like straight-up ass paired with off brand Caprisun.”

“I second that notion.” You swallow back a gag as the concoction slips uneasily down your throat.

“Me three.” Seulgi grimaces but forces herself to finish the content. “I’m undoubtedly puking later, so I’m going to go off and find some nice dick before that happens. Tootles!”

You silently devise a plan involving bear traps and superglue as you threaten to bore a hole through the back of Seulgi’s head with a scorching glower as she blends into the crowd in search of her next friend with benefits, leaving you to deal with the most infamous lightweight of your friend group.

“You okay?” Ji-Eun questions curiously.

“I’m fucking fantastic.”

“Y/N, I love you.” You remain stone-faced as the drunk girl leans against you with her entire weight. “You’re always so good to me, and I love you for that. I’ll make it my mission in life to help you find a boyfriend, okay?”

Her arms are like spaghetti, and her knees knock together in an attempt to keep straight. The cup once clutched in her hands is now dumped in a random corner of the kitchen, but you shrug it off as Seojoon’s responsibility. He did make you terrible alcohol after all.

“Hyung, n-no, I’m not d-drunk.”

You momentarily glance up at the voice, suddenly blanking out at the figures slowly approaching your corner of the room.

“Oh God, please turn around, please turn around.” You desperately pray as they inch closer.

Much like your situation, Taehyung struggles to hold his unmistakably intoxicated friend – Jungkook or something along those lines – in an upright position. He mutters angry words that were inaudible to you into Jungkook’s ear, but the boy keeps trying to shove Taehyung away.

“I w-wanna go party-y!” He hiccups. “They’re p-playing beer p-pong without me.”

Jungkook twists his body to make a run for the living room, but his own clumsy feet send him back to square one in his friend’s arms. You can see Taehyung roll his eyes as he hauls Jungkook’s heavy body towards the row of chairs where you’re forced into cuddling an equally drunk Ji-Eun.

Taehyung fails to recognize you until your uncomfortable shifting in your chair lets out a shrill squeak. When his gaze settles on you, you notice that his entire body freezes. Heat rushes to your body as his eyes trail over you in a bizarre manner – almost as if he’s scanning you to make sure that you’re actually there and not just a figment of his imagination.

Before you can muster up the courage to utter one phrase to the boy, he turns to the side to tend to Jungkook who’s stuck mumbling and drooling, much like a newborn baby. There’s an itch in the pit of your stomach that begins to bother you more than you’d expected it to. You feel an obligation to say something over to Taehyung – at least something along the lines of “Drunk friends, am I right?” – but you decide to push aside whatever tempts you to say something.

Between the choices of not saying anything and not having Taehyung know who you are or uttering your sentence and making a complete fool of yourself, you’d prefer the latter by a long shot.

“Um…is she okay?”

Your head shoots up in surprise. Taehyung allows his friend to lay on his side across the row of chairs, taking up the entire space while he’s forced to cram his body onto the tiny chair a seat away. Your gaze trickles down to Ji-Eun who mirrors Jungkook perfectly, completely passed out and drooling away on your lap like there’s no tomorrow.

“She will be.” You abruptly clear your throat. “She’s always like this at parties, so it’s nothing new.”

Taehyung nods in agreement. “Same, I’m always stuck watching over all my friends which is why I didn’t really want to go to this party in the first place.”

“Ugh, same!” You groan as you cradle your forehead with a palm. “My friend Seulgi’s no help either. She’s probably off choking on dick in one of the guest rooms right now while I’m stuck here on babysitter duty for someone older than me, for fuck’s sake.”

When Taehyung answers with an awkward cough, you’re hit with the sudden realization that maybe you shouldn’t be so open with a complete stranger, even if that stranger is Kim Taehyung who you’ve had a crush on for years now.

Just a thought.

“Sorry…” You force out a laugh, sounding uncannily like a robot. “You probably don’t want to hear about that.”

“No worries.” Taehyung shakes his head. “My friend Jimin’s the same way. In fact, I think that’s them over there.”

You squint your eyes in the direction that Taehyung points towards. When you finally catch onto the sight, you instantly wish you hadn’t.

There, practically undressing each other in the middle of the dance floor with their tongues curled one another, is Seulgi and Jimin.

“Yup, time for me to burn my eyeballs.”

Taehyung giggles at the horror in your eyes, throwing you overboard into a sea of useless emotions. The worst part of it is that he’s not even trying – that’s just how he is.

‘Ugh, pretty boys.’

“You’re telling me.” Taehyung cringes. “But that’s not the worst situation I’ve caught Jimin in, so I guess we’re spared this time.”

“H-hey.” A voice hiccups from below.

You both direct your attention to Jungkook who points a shaky finger towards you.

“You l-look familiar…” The boy slurs. “Have I seen you before?”

“Nope.” You answer with a shrug. “School, perhaps?”

“N-no.” He hiccups again. “Are you a Y-Youtuber?”

‘Not exactly, kiddo.’

Instead, you reply with another shake of your head. He opens his mouth as if to ask another question, but even uttering a complete sentence proves too difficult a task for Jungkook to complete. With a slurred humph, he slumps against the row of chairs again with his head resting on Taehyung’s right thigh.

“Sorry about him.” Taehyung mutters apologetically. “He rarely drinks, but when he does, this happens.”

“Don’t worry about it.” You smile politely. “That makes two of us.”

Five minutes into a conversation with Taehyung, and you’re scared of falling back into the dreaded Awkward Silence. If only Seulgi was here to save you, but she’s probably too busy giving Park Jimin the suck of a lifetime while you’re floundering to save your conversation with the cutest boy in school.

You’re suddenly thrown back into the image of you as a shy middle schooler, silently crushing on the cheery tiger hybrid in Mrs. Lee’s classroom across the hall. Those were the days before you discovered the wonders of makeup and Moroccan oil and when you would sit in the corner of the lunchroom with your eyes glued on a certain boxy smile as he laughs with his best friends and the rest of the popular kids. The lasting memory of you in his mind was probably the Kindergarten Incident with you crying on the playground after your mother dropped you off in the morning. You long to change his perception and show him who you are now, flaws and all, but you have no idea where to begin.

Curse you and your inability to socialize.

You take your time scanning through the room for a potential lifesaver or topic to blab about to make yourself look semi-interesting to Taehyung. You go to blow away a strand of hair that falls into your vision, unaware of the pair of eyes watching you softly.

Taehyung holds back the urge to brush the troublesome strand from your skin and place a gentle kiss where it used to lay.

“Hey, do you…” Taehyung choking on his words cause you to turn towards him with a raised eyebrow.

“Do I…” You trail off.

Taehyung pales as he forces the words from his mouth in an awkward splurge of word vomit.

‘It’s now or never, Kim.’

“Doyoumaybewanttogohavesomefunonourown?”  

Taehyung could almost die at your stoic appearance. Nothing in your eyes or your smile (lack thereof) gives him any clue into the thoughts churning around your brain. Just as he’s ready to give up and find an excuse to escape with a sloppy Jungkook in tow, you begin to giggle.  

Now, Taehyung’s 99.9% sure he’s about to die.

A smile plays at the side of your lip. “Alright, Kim. I second that notion. But first, let’s go find some beds for these guys first.”

It takes you roughly 10 minutes to scour the house for either Jennie or Jisoo, eventually finding the latter hanging around the poolside with Soyeon and Chaeyoung. You thank a higher power for the Kim girls’ wealth from part-time modeling that allows them to buy a house with more than one guest room. After accidentally opening up occupied rooms and getting more than a couple dick flashes, Taehyung and you finally find two empty rooms that are decently far away from the loud chattering and music blaring throughout the house. Quickly, you plop Ji-Eun down onto the soft comforter of the bed and turn her on her side, shoving a trashcan beside the bed just in case that night’s menu decides to make an appearance when she wakes up.

“All set?” Taehyung asks, a hint of hopefulness in his voice. You brush it off as wishful thinking.  

“We’re finally free.” You beam with a wide grin.

Taehyung sends you a soft smile before grabbing your wrist to pull you downstairs and into the kitchen for drinks. Seojoon eyes you carefully as you approach, curious as to your sudden acquaintance with Mr. Kim Taehyung. He knows a little bit about your not-so-little crush but holds back his questions for another time; however, it’s completely obvious that he’s holding back from making a crude sex joke in front of the two of you.

“Enjoy, you crazy kids.” Seojoon winks, sending a flood of embarrassment to your cheeks.

Taehyung eyes Seojoon with a subtle glare, one that you barely notice but one that Seojoon senses immediately. You’re none the wisest towards the display of dominance, but Seojoon notices it all – from the way Taehyung subtly puffs up his chest to the growing feral glint in his eyes.

“Kiss my ass, Park.” You hiss when you snatch the cups away from Seojoon’s fingers.

“Gladly, sweetheart.” Seojoon purrs back without missing a beat.

It takes all of Taehyung’s inner strength to force his irritation down to an unnoticeable level of annoyance. Even then, his bad mood is still visible to anyone who dares to look closer. After grabbing your drinks from an amused Seojoon, you begin to guide Taehyung out of the kitchen to head back upstairs.

With your back turned, Taehyung chances a dangerous snarl at Seojoon. The older raises a hand up in surrender, but the aggression does nothing to deter Seojoon. If anything, it just makes him even more pleased than before.

Oh, how he can’t wait until you finally become a couple.

“Sorry about him.” You apologize meekly as you two head onto the balcony connected to an empty guest room in the farthest part of the house. “Seojoon can be a little annoying when you first meet him, but he’s actually not that bad.”

“Ha, you’re telling me.” Taehyung mutters annoyedly.

Before you can question Taehyung’s irritation, he’s already chugging half the cup’s contents down his throat. You hold back your disgust for the taste as you follow in Taehyung’s footsteps and gulp down the fiery alcohol. You’ve already developed a small buzz from your first round of drinks, but you feel yourself slip into a more relaxed state with your second.

“So, Miss Y/N…” You lazily turn your head. “Tell me a little about yourself.”

The two of you rest your elbows on top of the balcony railing, inviting the cool autumn breeze to blow across your skin and through your hair with a gentle caress. The party music is muffled behind the glass door of the balcony, but you can still feel the bass thumping within your chest. You hum for a moment as you rack your brain for something, anything interesting to say.

“There’s not really that much about me.” You shrug. “I’ve lived here most of my life, and I plan on leaving once school’s over to explore the rest of the world. My two best friends are Seulgi and Ji-Eun, just not tonight...and that’s all to me really. I guess I’m just an open book with a little too many blank pages in-between.”

Taehyung nudges his elbow to your side. “Ah, there’s more to you than that. Surely, you like to do fun things. Unless you’re one of those boring people whose favorite show is Jeopardy and likes to go to the mall just to walk around.”

“Hey, Jeopardy is a great show, Mr. I-Have-The-Mental-Capacity-Of-A-Walnut.” You retort jokingly.

Taehyung laughs wholeheartedly at your teasing jab. “Okay then, fair enough. I’ll take your word for it.”

The moon beams down on your figures as you continue to chatter about random topics and sip on your disgusting drinks with only a small grimace. Little by little, you learn more about Taehyung’s passions in life and what he wants to do after graduation while he learns more about your friendships with Seulgi and Ji-Eun and all the horror stories from freshman year. You share giggles and playful nudges as if you’ve been friends for decades.

Every sip from your cup sends a tingly buzz that fills you from your head down to the tips of your toes. Your bright eyes grow lazy with a familiar drunken glaze, and you find yourself leaning a little closer into Taehyung’s side.

It’s when you finally make eye contact with Taehyung that he makes the first move.

Your bodies move in an almost fluid yet messy choreography, your lips latching onto one another in utter desperation. Taehyung quickly parts your mouth with his tongue to finally taste the hidden sweetness hidden within. His large, veiny hands slip down from the sides of your face to clutch your hips against his body, forcing your hands to rest against his broad chest.

“Want to go inside?” He pants when you eventually separate for a breath.

“Please.” You whine urgently.

You squeak in surprise as he grips your body with one arm while the other slams open the balcony door leading into the guest room. In a blink of an eye, Taehyung drops you onto the comforter and frantically suctions his lips to your jawline, creating soft marks on your supple skin and kneading the soft flesh near your inner thighs. You bite back a moan as his lips trail down your neck and towards the cleavage of your top.

“Take this fucking thing off.”

Without missing a beat, he rips your top over your head and returns his mouth to the valley between your breasts. Taehyung’s pleasantly surprised at your braless form, and he can’t help but brush a thumb across before replacing it with his tongue.  

“T-Tae…” You sigh airily as he circles around your nipple, drawing them to a hardened peak and leaving thin traces of saliva on your skin. “P-Please.”

“Relax.” He coos into your ear. “This is all for you. You just lay back and enjoy it, my little kitten.”

“I’ll enjoy it once you’re inside of me already.” You whisper coyly, your hands tracing down the curve of his spine and down towards his ass. “I want you to fill my pretty pussy up with your come already.”

With one look into his frenzied pupils, you shrink into yourself as though you’re some meager prey hybrid with a bloodthirsty predator chasing after you.

Oh, how you love it.

He peppers a series of small kisses down your stomach, his movements slower than before. He wants to make you feel as frustrated as he does whenever he watches your videos and yearns to reach through the screen to feel your body against his.

However, with the real thing’s in front of him, his biological urge to mount you and pump you full of his kittens starts to overpower his original plans of taking things slow.

“Fuck, you smell so good, baby.” Taehyung groans as your excitement seeps through the fabric of your jeans. “I can’t wait to taste this sweet little pussy. My little kitten’s been waiting so long for me.”

Your muddled thoughts fail to form into coherent words as Taehyung’s tongue slides across from the top of your pelvis and down towards your core drenched in your excitement. He relishes in your whiny moans at the ticklish flicks he gives your swollen clit, noting cockily how your nails grasp at the bedsheets with reckless abandon and how your toes curl in delight at the warmth filling your bloodstream.

“Are you all wet just for me, kitten?” Taehyung murmurs, cheeks completely soaked from your excitement. “You taste so good, baby. So sweet.”

“Y-Yes, I’m all wet just f-for you, baby.” You whimper as his tongue licks larger stripes against you. “P-Please, Tae, I want you.”

“Want me where?” Teasing you is quickly becoming his new favorite pastime.

“I-Inside. Please, I want to feel all of you.”

“Isn’t that a little too easy?” Taehyung clicks his tongue as he wipes away the excess slick from his chin.

He holds in his shudder when you pull his hand towards you to envelope the come-stained fingers inside your mouth, moaning in delight as you taste yourself.

“I-I think I n-need something in return before your little pussy can earn its treat.”

Taehyung is quick to unbutton his jeans and shrug them along with his boxers onto the bedroom floor. The tip of his cock drips small strings of pre-come onto the sheets, reddened and sensitive to the touch. You quickly discover this when your small fingers reach forward to briefly tease around the head with the pad of your thumb.

“Open up, sweetheart.” Taehyung bites down onto his lip as he guides the first two inches inside your awaiting mouth.

You moan at the salty taste that you’ve grown to love that coats your tongue, sucking lightly for the first few seconds before hollowing your cheeks and applying more pressure with every stroke. Taehyung hisses as your mouth sinks even deeper, nearly driving the head into the back of your throat.

“You’re so good to me, huh?” Taehyung lets out a low moan when he feels you hum in agreement, sending vibrations across the sensitive head of his cock. “Does my baby deserve to be fucked now?”

Your watery eyes connect with Taehyung’s as you choke on the smooth length. Suddenly, you feel miniscule and powerless underneath his lustful gaze, but you welcome the degradation wholeheartedly.  

“Turn around, baby.” Taehyung grunts as he slips himself from your mouth. “I want to see your tight little ass when I fuck this little pussy open.”

He props you up on your elbows with your back arched as far as you can go. There’s a slight pressure in your lower back as you present yourself to him, but the discomfort is nothing compared to the uncontrollable need to finally be fucked by Taehyung. He admires the sight of your awaiting pussy, completely soaked with your come and swollen from his relentless ministrations on your sensitive bud.  

You draw out a long mewl when you feel the tip nudge your seam before pushing inside, clenching hard as he continues to bottom out.

Oh, how he loves it.  

“Fuck, baby, you’re so tight.” Taehyung chuckles lowly as he begins a steady yet hard-hitting pace. “You’re making Daddy proud. His kitten’s taking his cock so well, don’t you agree?”

You smother your face into a pillow to muffle your cries, not wanting someone barging in during the fuck of your lifetime. With every hard thrust, your pussy sucks him back inside with a lewd squelch, desperate to hold him there whenever he tries to retract. His fingers are sure to leave marks on your skin in the morning from the way he’s grasping your hips for dear life. .

You fuck yourself almost every week, and yet you’re still the tiniest hole Taehyung’s ever had the pleasure of fucking. It entices him to continue his thrusts, in hopes of absolutely ruining you and filling you to the brim with his seed. His mind floods with images of you overflowing with come, carrying his potential kittens deep within and yet, still demanding for more.

This daydream alone has Taehyung stuttering in his movements and nearly blowing his load before you can squeeze around him in your own mind-melting pleasure. You have to come first, and Taehyung would be damned if he ruins that for you by acting like a pubescent boy who came in less than a minute to his very first porn video.

“Taehyung…” You cry pathetically. “T-Touch me.”

He’s quick to follow your orders, rubbing at the bundle of nerves between your legs with two wet fingertips and earning a sharp “F-fuck, Daddy!” in response. Your body threatens to curl inward, and you force yourself to grip onto the pillowcase instead of onto Taehyung’s thigh to force him to fuck you even harder.

He wants to feel you absolutely fall apart with his cock splitting you open – and fall apart, you do.

A surprised hiss escapes the tiger hybrid as you spasm underneath his body, your euphoric release dribbling onto the sheets below. Your claws that unsheathed a second before your orgasm have shredded through a good portion of the pillowcase you buried your face into. It’s not long until Taehyung’s hips lose their rhythm and suddenly, you’re filled with copious amounts of his warm seed.

All for you.  

“F-fuck, kitten, you made Daddy come so much.” He admires the sight of your completely battered pussy as he goes to pull out, stuffed to the brim with his seed that slowly starts dripping out. “Stuffed full of Daddy’s kittens. Such a good girl.”

You sigh in relaxed pleasure as he starts cleaning around your entrance with a skilled tongue, a strong hand massaging each cheek. There’s something satisfying about the fact that Taehyung’s tasting himself which seduces you into pushing through the overstimulation by twisting your hips in tight circles to aid him in his taste test.

“You little—” He laughs as he lands a light smack to an ass cheek. He groans internally at how it jiggles under the force, drawing a tiny moan from you and a string of come that seeps from your used pussy and down your thighs.  

Before he can treat himself to another taste, you flip over and grab at his neck. “My turn.”

Taehyung nearly falls forward on his face when you connect your lips together, your tongue sliding through for a mixture of your releases. They’re still both salty and bitter on your palate, but you’ve gotten used to the taste by now. If anything, Taehyung makes it taste even better.

As you sink further into the mattress deep in the kiss, Taehyung lifts himself up to pull you onto your side. You let out a tiny squeal at the sudden shift in position, especially when his lips tickle the crook of your neck with a trail of wet kisses.

“Now, sleep.” Taehyung kisses your cheek before nuzzling his face into the back of your neck.

“Weirdo.” You purr groggily before succumbing to the inevitable fatigue that seeps into your bones and muscles.

Once you’re deep in sleep, Taehyung leans closer for a better glimpse of your face. Your skin’s still flushed red and sweaty, but you still look like an angel in Taehyung’s eyes. The entire room smells of come and sweat, but he can still sense your unique sweet scent of your skin, and it pains him to hold himself back from tasting some more. The stress that wrinkles your brow is smoothed out and replaced with a peaceful expression, one he sees quite often during your streams after you finally fall back down from your high.

Taehyung is finally brought back to reality when his ears pick up incessant cheering from drunk patrons outside by the poolside accompanied by loud EDM blaring from the outdoor speakers. He ignores them all with an exasperated wrinkle of the nose, and instead he chooses to savor in the warmth radiating from your body that just so happens to fit perfectly against his own – just like pieces of a jagged puzzle.  

Taehyung smiles. You’re finally in his arms, and he doesn’t want to let go.

[cherylblsom]

The Definition of Perfect - Ch.3

(A/N): After 27 years I am finally providing you with an update!!

Pairing: Cheryl Blossom x Toni Topaz

Word Count: 2,521

Warnings: just some swearing 

Read it on AO3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

**flashback**

“So what did you wanna tell us T?” Fangs asks, he’s sitting on the couch in his trailer, Sweet Pea is perched beside him with his feet up resting on the coffee table. Toni is standing in front of the pair, she’d been pacing back and forth when they’ve arrived and had finally stopped to look at the pair. 

“Yeah, what’s the hot gossip?’ Sweet Pea chimes in, flashing one of his signature smiles in Toni’s direction. “Let me guess, Cheryl finally convinced you to write about her for your journal entry in the magazine”

“No and how did you even know about that? Whatever doesn’t matter, moving on…” 

“Ohh” Sweet Pea nods as if understanding ”You need sex advice? Now listen I don’t know a whole lot about-“

“Sweet Pea shit UP” Fangs cuts in, he lands a soft blow to his friend’s shoulder before turning his attention back to Toni, she offers him a grateful smile before opening her mouth.

“Cheryl and I, well I guess Cheryl technically, is pregnant…” she says slowly as she watches their faces closely to gage their reactions.

“Oh my god Topaz!! That’s awesome” Fangs replies, a huge smile pasted across his face.

“No shit!! I’ve been waiting for this” SweetPea says, his face lighting up in response. “Tell me you’re naming the baby after me. Sweets jr?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, they’re naming it after me” 

“Fangs c’mon we all know that your name just doesn’t have as much baby potential I mean think of-“

“Oh and your name does? You’re nuts if you-“

“GUYS!!’ Toni says loudly, stopping the boys dead in their tracks and causing them to look up at her with wide eyes. Growing up with these two had taught her early on how to stop their bickering, even if it was just playful at the moment. “It’s twins”

“One for both of us” they say in almost perfect unison before falling back into the couch laughing. 

“Oh my god” Toni groans, rolling her eyes in response to her best friends. “I hate you two”. She walks over to the couch and flops down between the two boys who immediately pull her into a tight bear hug from both sides. 

“You know we’re stoked for you Topaz” SweetPea says, his voice shifting to a more serious tone. “It’s what you two deserve, a family to call your own”

-

“What do you mean by complication?” Toni asks slowly, Cheryl is gripping her hand tightly and shifting her eyes between Toni and the doctor as she awaits a response. 

“What’s wro- oh FUCK” Cheryl practically screams as another contraction hits her full on, she squeezes Toni’s hand so hard she’s afraid it might break. 

“It’s just that one of the babies is in the wrong position, sort of turned sideways. It’s not uncommon for twins actually, and can be an easy fix” the doctor finally responds once Cheryl has been coaxed through her contraction.

“So what does that mean exactly? And why didn’t the other doctor pick up on this?” Toni asks. She can feel how hard Cheryl’s heart is racing just by the pulse from her wrist and she gives her wife’s hand a reassuring squeeze to try and calm her.

“Well she most likely would have on your next visit but since Cheryl went into premature labour the doctor didn’t get a chance to see their positions. Usually we would turn the baby now but since it’s behind the other one we will have to turn the baby after the first one is delivered”

“Is that even possible?”

“Yes, but it can be risky and if we can’t do it in time we would have to rush Cheryl into an emergency C-Section. The other option is we just go with a C-Section to begin with and deliver both babies that way” 

“What’s the better solution?” 

“That’s not a decision I can make for you, both options come with their own set of risks but I can promise you we will do everything we can to keep everyone safe. And if you decide against the C-Section I would strongly advise an epidural since turning the second baby will result in an increased level of pain”

“Toni.. I- I don’t want a C-Section. It wasn’t the plan…” Cheryl’s voice says quietly, she turns her head to catch her wife’s eyes with her own. 

“Neither was going into labour a month early, but maybe this is safer for the babies”

“No.” Cheryl says more forcefully then she meant to, but there was no way in hell she was letting anyone, especially a doctor she doesn’t know, cut into her. 

“I’ll leave you two to discuss. But the contractions are getting closer and she’s already 5 centimetres dilated so we don’t have a ton of time” Dr. Roberts says slowly, she nods at Toni before exiting the room and letting the door click shut behind her. 

-

**flashback**

Veronica had decided to throw them a baby shower, because of course she has insisted on that. And this was Veronica Lodge they were talking about, so Cheryl was well aware that it would be an over the top occasion despite Toni’s protests and assurance that they just wanted something small. After all, when Veronica set her mind to something there was no changing her mind. But what Cheryl wasn’t expecting was the bombardment of questions Veronica has decided to throw at the pair over just how the event should look and sound and even smell. Every time Cheryl thought there wasn’t possibly any more questions Veronica could come up with another one would fall from her mouth. They were currently seated at the kitchen table in Cheryl and Toni’s house, mugs of tea steaming into the air between them as Veronica typed furiously at her MacBook keyboard. 

“As fascinating at this is…” Toni says, holding herself back from rolling her eyes at Veronica’s ridiculous questioning. “I have a hair appointment, so I’ll leave you to it!” She leans in to kiss Cheryl gently and run her hand over her belly, at almost 6 months pregnant her bump has grown significantly and Cheryl was almost constantly complaining of back pain. 

“I love you” Cheryl says softly, she kisses Toni again before letting her slip out of her grasp, she hears the sound of door opening and closing mere moments later and sighs softly before turning her attention back to her best friend. 

“So flowers! I’m thinking roses, they have a certain… ambience that just screams baby shower to me. Especially yours. Now there’s the matter of colour. White for purity, yellow is typically used for friendship but of course also symbolizes new beginnings. And then there’s the classic red we can’t forget about…” she trails off lost in thought. She has her glasses on which Cheryl knows means business. Veronica hums softly and clicks her pen on her bottom lip before her eyes light up. “What about yellow and red together? That symbolizes happiness and excitement and then of course they have their individual meanings, we could even add in a few white if you want?” 

“You’re the expert” Cheryl says, she laughs lightly in response to her best friend, typical of her to got way overboard for a simple baby shower. But Cheryl had to admit she kind of liked the papering. “I’m just excited to meet them - I have a feeling they’re both girls, did I tell you that?” Cheryl looks up from rubbing her stomach to make eye contact with Veronica. 

“Only like twice a day for the past two weeks” Veronica says, a smile spreading across her face. “I however - disagree, but all will be answered in due time. I’ve been thinking of ways to do the gender reveal and need your opinion” 

“Of course you have” Cheryl rolls her eyes while picking up her mug of tea and bringing it to her lips. 

-

The day of the baby shower had arrived and by the time Cheryl rolls out of bed she already has 10 text messages and 4 missed calls from Veronica despite the fact it’s only 10:03 A.M. 

“You behave today” Cheryl says, looking down at her stomach. “No making me sick okay? Its a big day” 

The morning was chaotic with Veronica running around decorating the house with every colour of the rainbow and making last minute calls to ensure everything would be going to plan. Cheryl had to hand it to her, the girl knew how to plan an event. When she walks downstairs she’s awed by the beauty of it. Red, white and yellow roses are littered around the living room and kitchen in different coloured vases. Over the doorways hang streamers with hints of colours at the ends and over the couch is a banner that showcases a blue and pink bear with a question mark at the end. To the side of their couch is a table decked out in white and gold ribbons that looks like it's set up for a variety of baby related games. And on yet another table a plate of cookies shaped like bottles and diaper pins and rattles is layed out. The French doors leading to their patio are open and a soft breeze is blowing into the dining room and cooling down the heat emanating from the stove. Their motorcycles are still parked to the side of the patio and Cheryl smiles fondly at them, she hasn’t ridden in months and she didn’t realize just how much she misses it until now. Veronica had even gone the extra step to deck out both their motorcycles in pink and blue ribbons which danced lightly in the breeze. 

“Are you ready to find out what’re you’re carrying?” Veronica says softly from behind Cheryl, she breaks her stare focused on the bikes and turns towards the voice. 

“Of course” Cheryl smiles. “But you know, you never did tell me what you’re doing for the reveal”

“A wise women never reveals her secrets” Veronica replies. The doorbell rings suddenly, casting an echo through the house and Veronica hurries away to open it.

By the time everyone has arrived Cheryl is completely exhausted from welcoming them all and talking about how she’s both and excited and nervous for the new additions to the family. The table near the front door is stacked high with all sizes and shapes of gifts, I guess nobody had listened when the pair said not to spoil them or the babies. Cheryl is currently seated on the couch between Archie and Betty, the cat is settled on her chest, her paws resting gently against Cheryl’s belly. She’s purring softly as Cheryl runs her hand over her back in even strokes. 

“Does she always do that?” Betty asks, a light chuckle behind her voice. 

“Cherry? Oh yeah she loves to cuddle. Especially now with my stomach, it’s her favourite place to nap”

“A personal guardian for the twins” Betty says, she reaches out to pet the cat’s head and smiles softly at Cheryl. 

“Okay guys!” Veronica calls suddenly, emerging from the kitchen with Toni on her heels. “Let’s all make our way outside” 

People make their way out slowly, Cheryl and Toni emerging last. Her back is in an increasing amount of pain but Cheryl would be damned if she let that keep her down today, this was the last big thing happening before the birth of her babies and she wanted to be present for it.  Veronica ushers the pair to the side of the patio where they have a perfect view of their motorcycles and Cheryl raises her eyebrows at her wife who just shrugs in response. Veronica is beaming and Cheryl wonders for a moment who’s most excited about this gender reveal. Sweet Pea and Fangs step up from the crowd and each swing themselves onto the seat of one of the motorcycles, keys in their hands. 

“Ready?” Veronica asks, eyeing Cheryl and Toni. They both nod in response and Cheryl reaches for Toni’s hand to give it a couple reassuring squeezes before turning her attention back to the motorcycles. The boys crank the engines in perfect sync and the bikes roar to life, the exhaust sputters out as a dull grey colour at first before changing to more vibrant colours. The bike Fangs is sitting on is spilling pink exhaust from the tail pipes while the other spills blue and Cheryl’s face lights up as she takes in the moment. 

“SEE!” Sweet Pea calls, noticing his bike is the blue one, “A sign you should name the baby after me!”

Toni laughs in response and rolls her eyes before turning to Cheryl and pulling her against her lips, she kisses her deeply and passionately. Cheryl can’t help the tears that have started to fall down her face in response, she kisses Toni back hard as the pink and blue smoke swirl around them and then dissipates into the air.

-

Cheryl lets out a loud scream and grips Toni’s hand as she shakes through another contraction, they’re getting increasingly painful and longer as the time drags on. She falls back into the mattress when the worst of it is over and turns her head to look at her wife. 

“I’m not letting them cut into me” Cheryl says sternly. Toni nods in response before reaching to wipe Cheryl’s head with a damp cloth. 

“Then you need to get an epidural. And I know, you don’t want to. And it wasn’t in the plan. But we gotta go off the plan babe, it’ll be okay”

“Toni… I don’t know”

“Cher.. you’re so strong, the strongest person I know. But I can see you’re in a lot of pain and it’s only going to get worse. I promise this will get easier if you agree, and we’ll make sure the babies are safe and sound okay?” She runs her thumb over Cheryl’s knuckles and smiles down at her. A soft whimper falls from her wife’s lips and then she nods slowly in response before clicking the call button to the right of her bed. 

The relief that comes from the drug is almost immediate. Cheryl, who is laying on her side in the bed now, relaxes as it makes its way into her bloodstream and starts to numb her pain. She smiles up at Toni, thanking her silently for convincing her to make this decision. 

“You did so good baby, not much longer now” she leans down to press a kiss to Cheryl’s temple, her eyes flutter close in response and she relaxes further into the mattress dosing off lightly. She isn’t sleeping long before she’s woken up with the pain of another contraction, the doctor had told them an epidural can speed up how fast you dilate but Cheryl hadn’t expected it to be so quick, it was barley 30mins later. Dr Roberts rushes in at the sound of Cheryl’s scream and immediately goes to checking how far long she is. 

“Cheryl… you need to get ready to push” she says slowly. 

(next)

[gunjitmittal-blog]

Apply through “Linkedin”: A Product Review

There are a lot of products these days which are immaculately designed and make work easier for us. But lately, more I use and learn about the new features of Linkedin, more amazed I am. As a student trying to land a job, I am especially thankful to Linkedin.

User’s need and product goals

Main thing which makes Linkedin so lovable is its value proposition. In today’s day and age, when there is no such thing as job security, one needs to have an active professional network to keep his/her options open. Linkedin provides a platform to connect with professionals and keep track of latest trends in industry. It is a centralized place to keep your resume and apply for jobs. It let’s you connect with the recruiters and provides opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

Additionally, it has a multiple delighters as well. Bluetooth scan feature let’s you instantly connect with people you met in a networking event, which makes follow-ups a lot easier. 

Advanced search features enable users to look for extremely focused groups of people. For example, I can look for product managers residing and hiring in Seattle for entry-level product manager positions, with whom I am not directly connected. To elevate the frustration of job seekers of filling up similar application forms hundreds of times, they have recently launched “once click apply” feature, which as name suggests, let’s you apply for job with just one click. Job search has been made extremely convenient by this networking platform.

Engaging and non-intrusive design

Linkedin, like Facebook and Twitter, uses habit-forming design practices as well. It follows the rule of trigger-action-reward-investment to make the platform a daily habit for its users. But unlike others, it does it for the good. Linkedin provides users with knowledge regarding the industry, hiring trends in their network and provides a plethora of learning opportunities. It helps people get the job, progress in their job and be successful in their careers. Some people blame the tech for employing addictive designing principals to grow their business, but Linkedin proves that it can be done for the good of people as well.

Coupled with offerings from Linda.com, Linkedin provides educational opportunities to acquire the right skills you need for your dream job. And for a better understanding of the skills you might require for a job, skills are listed along with the job post.

No real competition

Linkedin’s target market is composed of businessmen, professionals and job seekers. This is basically everybody but unlike other social media like Facebook, it appeals to different side of its users. This way, Linkedin avoided competition with Facebook, Instagram or Google+. 

And currently, Linkedin, as a product has become so ingrained in our daily lives, that no other product comes to mind when I try to think about next best option. It has completely revolutionized the way hiring is done, professionals connect and share experiences.  Strategically, they got it right, it would have been extremely hard, if not impossible, to beat Facebook because of its networking effects. But tapping into completely new side of its users, Linkedin has built a sustainable competitive edge for itself. With its continuous innovation like previously mentioned “one click apply” its poised to become the ultimate platform for job seekers and recruiters.

Changing the way hiring is done

On a broader level, I think Linkedin has had a huge impact on the world. It has helped thousands if not millions in finding jobs. These days we hear that unemployment rates are at their lowest historically, I believe Linkedin might have a role to play in that. With more transparency and accessibility, Linkedin still has the potential to connect the industry and job seekers and eradicate unemployment. It can direct future workforce towards in-demand skills, it can help people find the work they feel passionate about and increase their work satisfaction.

It can bridge the gap between the industry needs and academia.

Miles to go

Linkedin has definitely made a dent in its effort to fix the broken recruitment system. But it still has a long way to go as it still has many shortcomings. Some of my recommendations for products are:

1. Recruitment events and conferences: Linkedin should have separate features to organize conferences, handle attendees and tickets. This will make it easier for both organizers and attendees. As a job seeker, I definitely want this feature ASAP as it gives me additional headway to network with hiring managers and recruiters. 

2. Message broadcasting and profile segmentation: Recruiters and hiring managers are bombarded with messages on Linkedin, because of this they are unable to help everybody even if they wanted to. Here we have an opportunity to launch new features to send automated messages to candidates based on their career profile.

3. Preparation guides and mock interview community: Additional features to provide crowd sources preparation guides for companies and job positions. Means to connect with other candidates applying for similar jobs would be specially useful for job seekers to practice together. 

4. Calendar and video calls on Linkedin: These features can eliminate the need to use other tools outside of Linkedin platform. Booking appointments and interviewing on Linkedin itself would increase engagement and convenience to both recruiters and job seekers.

[aesjae]

Boyfriend! Winwin

Stand alone continuation to Confession! Winwin

#1 of Boyfriend! Series

Taeil | Johnny | Taeyong | Yuta | Kun | Doyoung | Ten | Jaehyun | WinWin | Jungwoo | Lucas | Mark | Xiao Jun | Hendery | Renjun | Jeno | Haechan | Jaemin | Yang Yang| Chen Le | Jisung

Word Count: 994 Style/ Genre: Imagine- Headcannon/ - Date posted: 30/07/17

winwin is such a fluff ball i love him

so winwin as a boyfriend

winwin is really shy but i can see him being courageous for his girlfriend

because ever since you came into his life, you were his hope 

and the love he has for you is his daily motivation

every morning he wakes up and you’re his first thought

every time his phone lights up, he hopes it’s from you

every time he sees a familiar silhouette at the corner of his eye, he craves for your presence

and as the relationship progresses he would start to be more sensitive to your feelings

he would unconsciously memorise your habits, your likes, your dislikes, your tendencies

before he knew it, predicting your emotions and your next moves were instinctive and natural

it was like he knew you better than the analysis of the bible

holy

okay then 

winwin being the acrostic poem master, would wittily do lots of cheesy poems for you

“ L -- Loving you was a blessing   O -- Once again, I will look for you high and low in my next life   V -- Vividly, the image of you is always in my mind   E -- Extinguishable, my love for you, shall it never be”

wow so i wrote that

but it’s all for winwin all’s good

winwin could sense your bad mood when he picks you up from work

probably then bringing you to your favourite restaurant for dinner

allowing you to eat all you like and have a lavish dinner

and not worrying about the bill

because winwin would be settling it

after dinner, he would bring you to somewhere quiet, and where you can see the beautiful skyline of the city

just enjoying the peace and quiet in each other’s presence

you snuggled in winwin’s arms

winwin would be a considerate gentleman

personally sending you to the front of your house

giving you a goodnight peck on the forehead

next morning you would probably find winwin at your doorstep

with a huge teddy bear, a bouquet of roses in his hands, and a cute dog helium balloon

you were amazed that winwin even managed to bring all that here

he would cook your breakfast while you got ready for work

even though his cooking wasn’t the best, he put his heart and soul into cooking

because winwin always worried about your health

the amount that you were eating,

the amount of water you were drinking

the amount of sleep you were getting

what a caring boyfriend

even at work, winwin would bombard you with text messages

‘(Y/N)-ahhh, how’s work so far? Is it very stressful?’

‘Your boss didn’t reprimand you again did he? If he did, I would personally go to your office and show him a piece of his mind’

‘(Y/N)~~ Take a break okay~~ Don’t overstress yourself, wrinkles don’t look good on you. If you’re stressed, look at my picture~~’

// WinBae ❤︎ sent a photo //

opens to winwin’s silly selfie

which made you chuckle and cause all your colleagues to just look at you weirdly

but winwin was too cute

winwin would love to make jokes with you, just to make you happy and smile

he loved seeing your smile and hearing your laughter

and he would do anything to bring you happiness

winwin would enjoy dancing for you, sometimes free dancing sillily too

but only to you, because he knew that only you could tolerate such a side of him

and he knew that you loved every aspect of him

dates with him would be adorable

winwin would always have his camera with him

being your personal photographer

and him taking photos of you at every moment

cute amusement park dates :-D

winwin dragging you everywhere

to every ride and every booth

winning every game at every booth and giving you the prize ( cause winwin yeh ;) )

omg living with winwin as your boyfriend would result in really funny moments

like winwin chasing you around the house

and him setting the pan on fire while frying an egg

i swear that boy probably even considered hiring taeyong as both of your personal chef

“Errr (Y/N)..?”

“Hmm?”

“I think I dropped my toothbrush into the toilet bowl... And yours too...”

“WHAT?!”

“THEY JUST SLIPPED OUT OF MY HANDS SPARE MEEEE”

now it’s your turn to chase winwin around the house

dongsichengalmostdiedthatday

winwin would be very concerned about your dental health too

but you would then always remind him of the previous incident

and his face would go really red

but dental health was still utmost priority to him

“(Y/N)~~ Guess what~~”

“Well,, You scheduled another dental appointment for us?”

“Awww you know me so well~~”

honestly uall would have dental appointments every 2/3 months despite not having any dental health problems

but because of someone

and jealous winwin

“Baobei ah- I know Taeyong hyung is handsome but i’m your boyfriendddd,, only look at me please (Y/N) ahhhh” 

so whiny ohmy

20 y.o. dong si cheng is such a child omg

at home, there would definitely be normal couple moments too

like movie nights

winwin also enjoyed attacking you with cuddles and hugs

engulfing you in warmth

and im so warm and soft here

the shy winwin from the start of the relationship would grow into a confident boyfriend

because you changed him for the better

you gave him confidence

you gave him hope

you boosted his self-esteem

you gave him belief

you were his happiness

he was so grateful for you and he couldn’t ask for more

even after years into the relationship, his heart would still beat with the same excitement and nervousness whenever he was with you

the feeling of reliving the first moments of falling in love again

because everyday, he was falling deeper in love with you

there was no end to it

every night, he would kiss the top of your head to end the day

this was without fail

“ I Love You”

[works-of-shyvioletcat]

Sweet and Sour: Part 3 - Rowaelin

Here it is! Part 3!

Fine parts 1 and 2 here.

Part 1

Part 2

Tagging these lovely peeps because they’ve been so kind and eager @pharaohleviphantomhive @the-lost-queen-of-terrasen @viajandosinalas @aelin-and-feyre @im-the-sass-in-assassin @squirrel-or-moose

Rowan couldn’t help the small smiled that played on his lips as he walked back to the dental surgery. That girl… she was something else. He couldn’t help but stare at her when she left. That sway in her step, Rowan just knew she had put there to catch his attention, and it certainly did its job.

The door of the dentistry opened smoothly with a quiet tinkling of bells. Rowan chanced a glance at Remelle behind the reception desk. The glower on her face almost caused a burst of laughter to escape from within his chest. He would definitely tell Aelin about this. When they would go out again. Very likely a real date this time.

In the break room he retrieved his surgery coat and put it back on. He had a full afternoon of appointments and a quick glance at the clock told him his first one would be here in 5 minutes. So Rowan washed his hands and made his way to his surgery.

Fenrys was waiting for him.

As Rowan entered the dental assistant spun in his chair to face him, arms folded, eyebrows raised expectantly. Rowan ignored him. “Well?”

“Well what?” Rowan replied as he took his own chair and faced the computer. 

“How’d it go on your date?” Fenrys said with a wiggle of his eyebrows. 

“It wasn’t a date." 

"Ha!” Fenrys practically shouted. “You did take her out." 

Rowan rolled his eyes. "As a thank you. Nothing more." 

"Nothing more my…” Fenrys was cut of by a message pinging on the computer. 

Rowan looked at it for a moment in surprise, usually Remelle slinked down here to tell him his patient had arrived. If she sent a message she must be pissed. Fenrys said as much and it made Rowan snort out a laugh. “There! Further evidence it was ‘nothing more’,” Fenrys said pointing an accusing finger at Rowan.

“Remelle not gracing us with her presence isn’t eveidence, Fenrys,” Rowan said as he clicked the confirmation on the notification.

“That’s not what I was talking about. You never laugh at my jokes. Did you get her number?” Fenrys asked as he stood to retrieve the patient. Rowan didn’t answer and just gave Fenrys a blank stare. “I won’t leave until you tell me.”

Rowan gave a long suffering sigh. If Fenrys just even dug his heels in a little they would run late the rest of the afternoon. 

Rowan nodded and Fenrys gave him a wicked grin.

~~~~~

The whole way home Aedion bombarded Aelin with questions about her ‘date’, even though she told him over and over it wasn’t a date that’s what Aedion insisted on calling it. While she spoke Aelin eventually got all feeling back into her face, and like Rowan had said, where she bitten was starting to hurt. She gave it an exploratory poke and winced.

“What?” Aedion asked with a sideways glance.

“I bit my lip when it was numb and now it’s starting to smart,” Aelin replied.

“It’s starting to what?” There was a definite laugh in Aedion’s voice. 

Aelin hadn’t realised she’d used Rowan’s word until Aedion reacted. Aelin was pretty sure she had never used smart in that context before in her life and didn’t really want to think of the implications of her using it now. Rowan had stirred something in her. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time, and she put it down to his good looks and accent. So Aelin decided to ignore Aedion’s question entirely and was luckily saved by the arrival at their apartment before he could ask about it again.

Aelin sprung from the car before Aedion could fling another question or accusation at her and casually said over her shoulder that she was going to shower to get the smell of the dentist off her.

“We talking person or location?” Aedion called out as he locked up the car.

Aelin’s only reply was a vulgar gesture over her shoulder. 

Once inside Aelin dumped her bad on her bed and made her way to her bathroom, stripping away her clothes as she went. Her next task would be to wash those clothes because the sterile, antiseptic smell of the dentist clung to them. She hated the dentist, and for a fleeting moment she thought about burning them instead. Just get rid of them all together. But the dentist hadn’t been all bad this time, Aelin contemplated as she stepped into the warm shower. There was the fact that everyone there was ridiculously good looking and if someone did have to inflict a visit to the dentist upon themselves there would be no better place for it. Just looking at their faces was enough of a distraction to forget about the pain. 

Then there was Doctor Rowan Whitethorn. 

That had been a surprise. She hadn’t expected him to be so… polite. Nice even. And he had got nervous enough about her favour that it brought a smile to her face just thinking about it. Aelin almost regretted leaving the ball in his court. Now it was up to him to contact her. What if he didn’t? What if he changed his mind? How would she deal with that? Because Aelin most certainly wanted to see him again. Those questioning thoughts were enough to prompt Aelin into quick action and she washed her hair and self as quick as she could. Definitely not so she could check her phone. 

When Aelin was dried and dressed she went to the loungeroom and found Lysandra waiting on the couch next to Aedion, arms folded, an expectant look on her face. Aelin rolled her eyes and flopped into the armchair.

“I did not have a date with the dentist,” Aelin said, not even looking at her newly arrived friend.

“That’s not the way Aedion tells it,” Lysandra replied.

“Well that’s because Aedion was not listening all the way home,” Aelin said. “I did him a favour and he took me to lunch to say thanks.”

“Hell Aelin, what was the favour?” Lysandra said with a laugh and Aelin scowled. “Come on, hurry up. I’ve got to leave to get Evangeline in 15 minutes.”

Aelin sat up and recounted what happened, careful not to sound to eager when describing Rowan and their lunch outing. When Aelin had finished Lysandra confirmed that it had not been, in fact, a date.

“But what about future dates?” Lysandra said knowingly.

Aelin couldn’t help but smile, “I gave him my number.”

“And did the hip sway as you walked away?” Lysandra asked eagerly.

Aelin smiled and nodded.

“Where’s your phone!?” Lysandra exclaimed, practically jumping from the couch.

Aelin did jump up from the couch and ran to her room. Scrambling through her bag she pulled out her phone and looked at the screen. Her face fell.

Nothing.

Aelin was almost morose as she walked back to the loungeroom, phone in hand. 

“Oh come off it,” Aedion said when he saw his cousin’s expression. “It’s been like, what, an hour and a half since you saw him? He’s probably just working.”

Aelin looked to Lysandra who nodded in agreement. Aelin knew they were right. She had just got so excited by their talk that she had expected something to be there.

Lysandra stood. “I’ve got to go get Evangeline, call me if he sends anything.”

She left, placing a kiss on Aedion’s lips as she did, and now the two cousins were left alone again. 

“You know what, I think you’re right. It wasn’t a date,” Aedion said and Aelin sent him a sceptical look. “I was a trail date.”

Aedion didn’t even try and avoid the cushion that was flung across the room at him.

~~~~~

After dinner Aelin was lying on her bed reading, her phone placed a little too casually by her side. On loud. With the volume right up. The book was doing a very good job of distracting her and she almost jumped out of her skin as her phone started ringing. Aelin bolted upright grabbing her phone as she did. It was a number she didn’t recognise. She quickly swiped to answer, not want to miss it.

“Hello.” Aelin cursed herself for the octave her voice had risen to.

“Hey Aelin. It’s Rowan.”

Aelin would deny to her dying day that her heart skipped a beat. What surprised her further was that he had called, not texted. It almost seemed quite gentlemanly.

“Hey,” she said in reply. Her voice graciously back to normal now.

“How was your afternoon?” Rowan asked.

“I was fine. You were right about my lip though,” Aelin answered.

An awkward silence began to spread between them and Rowan cleared his throat.

“So, do you like Japanese food?”

[shitizsrivastava]

TB#10 || How Facebook Marketing is changing the face of business and why you should delve in it too.

Gary Vaynerchuk opened one his seminars asking people whether they have heard the name of a company called Wish.com. No hands were raised. It was then he told them that this company’s turnover is more than 6 Billion dollars. Then he waited for few seconds to note their reactions and they were spot-on what he was expecting.

Wish. Com is an e-commerce company like eBay and Amazon started by two young programmer friends at google and yahoo, which sell products directly to its customers and the most astonishing fact about that company is that it spends nearly 98% of its marketing money on Facebook advertising.

I reckon that when Facebook was opened to people in 2004 anybody literally thought that it would become such a giant marketing tool.

As of 2018, it boasts of more than 2. 3 billion active users. When Myspace died a few years after the advent of Facebook, the active users of myspace literally emptied by 2012. Orkut suffered the same fate. People thought maybe in a few years Facebook will face the same destiny.

Facebook proved them wrong. In fact, the destiny of Facebook is on ever-rising slope ever since they came into existence. The recent scandals like the Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal that maligned the name of Facebook briefly did not affect its user base, instead, it just kept on growing.

That is where the genius of Zuckerberg comes in. He didn’t start gloating in the glory of his billions of dollars in the bank and neither he got immersed in the intoxication of his massive popularity, instead he invested his time in researching, data finding and changing Facebook to make it better and better year after year, something that Orkut and Myspace didn’t do and you know what happened to them.

Facebook has become the premier marketing tool for business companies, top fortune 500 companies too, to promote their websites, products, values, contents and what not.

Earlier it was difficult to market your product as there were no absolute means. Companies hired marketing teams, advertising teams, research teams, analytics team which would cost them millions of bucks with no guarantee of sure shot results.

But today, all that team of hundreds of people have got concentrated to just one person whose only qualification is that he knows how to do facebook. Anyone on Facebook can open his page for free and do his own marketing, advertising, research, analytics and get done with all the work in few hours, costing him only a few hours and literally no money.

The old concept of opening an office and operating from there so that you meet people and impress them with your team, work and infrastructure has gone in the past and is now well replaced with a Facebook page where you can show your entire infrastructure, team and work where both the parties can see it from the convenience of their home and do business in their pyjamas.

Social networks earlier were just social networks but today nearly every social network has turned itself into a marketing tool and is helping thousands of business and startups to sell their ideas, profiles and products.

I pity people who are on facebook and yet avoid talking to people on it, refrain from adding friends on it and protect their profile like it has some secret information when the entire premise of social media is to share your life with other people. If it contains personal stuff, it is your fault so you better not put it there. It is as simple as that.

I use Facebook for my personal benefits. not for sharing my personal life. These days meeting people in their offices is very difficult so I contact most of the people on Facebook and nearly every time they would reply to me without ever asking where my office is.

I don’t have to take appointments anymore and I don’t have to bother calling their secretary again and again and bombarding them with my resume and visiting card. My profile is now my resume and my profile is now my visiting card.

Most importantly I have used Facebook to arrange workshops, seminars and inform people about my work. Imagine this — earlier I had to make DVDs and CDs of my work and force people to watch them because there was process attached to it on their part also. They had to take the DVDs out, put it on the DVD player and watch it but they would close it if the first few seconds were not good. Most of the time they would not even watch it.

Today however they will at least take a look because they don’t have to do anything. While scrolling their feed if my video pops up, it plays automatically and no matter whether they chose to watch it or not, they get to at least know about it.

I also use Facebook as a means to update myself on what is going in the world and in the lives of people. I am a filmmaker and facebook updates me about who is doing what in the film industry all the time. My entire knowledge of the film industry and whos who mostly comes from Facebook. Facebook is my magazine, my directory and my newspaper.

When Facebook realized that marketers are using its users to promote their products through profiles, messages and pages they started offering their own services.

Now you don’t even have to own a website to become influential on the internet. All you have to do is make a facebook page, post content and start increasing your followers so that you can shout about your products and work on it.

Yes, I do understand that with due course of time the digital marketing on Facebook and other platforms have become complex and now there are courses offered to teach people how to reap the maximum benefits from it.

Institutes like IIMs and other top universities all across the world now have Digital marketing as a major in their curriculum. Philips Kotler has even written a book about Digital Marketing. So yes, the abundant case studies and the analytics is a little complex, but then it is an only a little complex. I can assure you that if you will watch only ten videos on any digital marketing topic, you won’t need the eleventh video to find yourself expert in doing it. It is not obvious but at the same time, it is not that difficult that only people with a certain degree can understand it.

However, let me make it easy for you. No one still knows exactly how the digital marketing works and the more rules and case studies they are creating every week, more exceptions to those rules and case studies are popping up every day on the internet. They are guessing in the guise of chapter names and specific works, that’s it.

If you meet a digital marketer, he would throw heavy words on you like CPC, CPA, CPM, CTR, organic views, backlinks, bounce rates, crawler and many more but when you get to know what they mean you will realize that they are just random jargons and means the most obvious thing. Like CPC means cost per click. How difficult it is to decipher it? Backlinks are links to previous articles in the current articles that take you to other articles which helps in increasing user time on your website. Was that difficult to know? I don’t think so.

Facebook is pretty easy and simple to use. Just remember this one rule — show, don’t tell.

Put a lot of photos on Facebook to attract people to your page. There might be things which you think are not very important which you can put in simple text and post it as a status but try to avoid that. Try putting texts on photos and ahem, try to attach a human face next to it. It affects people psychologically and makes them want to read it. The mind thinks in terms of images and the more images you will use to define your ideas, the more successful you will get.

Facebook does not have too many restrictions on their posts like many other social networks. Some websites only allow photos, some allow mostly texts but Facebook allows everything and the interface it uses is really simple which makes it all the more useful for people, even people who haven’t handled internet before. My parents who are not tech savvy can use only Facebook and WhatsApp on their mobile. I tried introducing them to other social networks but they just don’t get it. There is a reason why more than 2 billion people are using it every day.

You don’t have to employ yourself in posting content every day. The best part of social media networks these days is that they are very friendly to marketing people and inviting more and more people to use their platform to promote their products. Making it complex will limit its use too few specialized people. The interface of Facebook is designed simple because they want more and more people to feel powerful and not helpless. If they find you suffering from a problem and simultaneously they find more users suffering from the same problem than they will introduce a new algorithm to make it useful for you. That is why they keep collecting data from users, their browsing patterns and keep asking them for their reviews. Constant updates on their interface is what makes facebook stand out.

Use Facebook wisely and it can turn your business into an overnight success. There are numerous courses like LinkedIn Learning, Lynda, Udemy and myriads videos on YouTube to teach you everything you want to know about it. Start working.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 42]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Gotta finish my first draft of my research paper today, so let’s go!

Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

 “Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

 Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

 Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

 “Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

 “What?” asked Pat.

“Either I put on the wrong jewelry this morning… or my timepiece isn’t working.”

“Well, then I’m guessing we’re in the right place,” Janus said. He turned to Pat. “Your stuff still working?”

Pat brought up whatever device was on his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like something is just starting.” Just as he said it, there was a violent crash of thunder.

“Well,” Janus said. “We should probably find the source and soon. Which way?”

Pat glanced around himself and then motioned with his wrist. Suddenly there was a 3D display of the church in front of them.

 Janus could see immediately where the problem had to originate. There was a swirling mass of some sort of energy centered at the top of the bell tower of the church. As he watched, he saw the picture of the church glitch out a bit. He had a bad feeling about that.

“Is there something wrong with your display?” he asked, or more hoped.

Pat shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so…” The room seemed to shift suddenly underneath their feet. It felt a bit like time travel, but also wrong. The picture on the display flickered harder, part of the building fracturing and dissolving before appearing back in place. The room settled after a moment, but Janus’s stomach did not.

 “Whatever is going on,” Janus said, “We need to stop it right now.”

Pat nodded. “The quickest way up would be that way,” Pat said pointing. The display closed as he did.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

The world was eerily calm as they all started off in the direction Pat had pointed out. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

“Where’s the nearest window?” Janus asked when they came out on the second floor.

Pat glanced at his hand. “There should be a couple a few feet that way.” Janus nodded and left them standing there. When he glanced out of the first window he came to, it appeared to be night. Yet, when he walked to the next window, he saw daylight.

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“Time is fracturing,” Janus informed them. “We need to be careful.” This time distortion was much more intense than any of the other ones the agency had been tracking down over the last few months. It had also come on much faster. Usually there was some time between when the time distortion began and it started having extreme effects on the environment. He was suddenly very glad that he and Remus had not split up today. He was even glad for Pat’s company, no matter how aggravating he may be sometimes. Not to mention, he was glad for the man’s technology that seemed to circumvent whatever was blocking Janus and Remus’s timepieces.

He backed away from the windows and returned to the others.

“Whatever you do,” Janus said. “Don’t let anyone be in a room alone.”

“I know what time fractures are this time,” Pat promised.

“It was as much for the idiot as it was for you,” Janus said.

“You accidently bring a bubonic plague infested rat to 900BC one time and you never live it down.”

“I’d say I should put a leash on you, but you’d twist it into something disgusting.”

“Probably,” Remus agreed.

“Where next?” Janus asked, ignoring him.

“That way,” Pat said.

They walked together to the door he’d indicated. “Please don’t be bullshit,” Janus prayed. He opened the door and immediately got bowled over by a stream of salt water.

 Chapter 19

Janus landed flat on his back, a wave of water splashing over him and then quickly retreating, but still leaving him absolutely drenched. He sighed, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t,” he warned, “say a word.”

Of course, he was with the two most impossible people in all of space and time, so neither of them headed him.

“I thought you said we were far from the ocean, Jan,” Pat said.

“Yeah, Janny,” Remus immediately jumped on board because he was an asshole. “I thought we were far from the ocean!”

“Maybe I’ll achieve my goal of finding the Flying Dutchman after all!”

 “Ooo ghost pirates! I’ve never gotten to fight ghost pirates before. Any good with a sword Patty?”

“My friend has a sword and he let me use it before… but all I did was cut a hole in our couch, and then Lo was mad at us.”

“I mean… just pretend the pirates are a couch and we’ll be good!”

Janus slowly sat up. There was still water on the floor and every so often a wave would crash into the room as though the door frame signaled the edge of a beach. Pat reached down to offer him a hand up and Janus slapped it away.

 “Rude!” Pat claimed, but his eyes were alight with mischief.

Janus shoved himself to his feet on his own power.

“You deserve it,” he hissed. “For all of this!” he waved his arms around.

“Water you talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You are on thin ice.”

He looked down at his feet with a contemplative expression. “Looks like water to me.”

“Arg!” Janus spat, throwing up his arms.

“I don’t sea why you’re screaming, Janus.”

“Yeah,” Remus contributed. “You seem overally emotional to me.”

“Yes, yes,” Pat replied. “Very em-ocean-al.”

“One may even say he’s pretty salty.”

“I know where you live, Remus,” Janus reminded.

 “Alright, alright Remus, reel it in,” Pat said.

Remus opened his mouth to respond, but Janus cut him off. “Why don’t the two of you dedicate all of that brain power to figuring out how to cross the literal ocean in the next room,” Janus suggested hotly.

And it was a literal ocean. If one ignored where they were and the fact that there was a staircase climbing out of said ocean about 80 or so meters away. There was sand being washed up across the door frame and a seagull flying in the distance. At least it looked like a nice day in the room with the way the sun was glinting off the water. At least it wasn’t storming there. Yet.

Janus’s head throbbed with the thought of what had to be happening with the time distortion to plop a piece of the ocean into one single room in a church. Usually they’d be calling the TPI for backup or at least for information, but that was a loss. Even if they tried to get out of range of whatever was disrupting their timepieces, time was so unstable, they’d very possibly get dumped somewhere dangerous. It was better to just get to the time distortion as quickly as possible and stop it.

 “Hmm,” Remus said. “I wonder how deep it is. Do you think there are man eating sharks in the water? Or giant jelly fish? Remember that one time I got stung by a jelly fish and almost died?”

“Yes,” Janus said, lips pursed, “and it was entirely your fault.”

“I just looked so squishy!” he declared, “I didn’t know it was a murder blob.”

“I think I have a boat,” Pat said.

They both turned to him. “What?” Janus asked. He was looking at his hands and just hummed in response to Janus’s question. The next thing he knew, Pat made some motion with his hand and a yellow raft started to autofill from his palm. “...Why?” Janus asked.

“I… recently started carrying a wilderness survival pack in my time device.”

 “I’m not going to question it. It’s better than swimming.” By the time the raft was completely deployed, they’d all been shoved into the walls by it.

“Huh, on second thought. I probably should have put the raft in the room before blowing it up.”

“You think?” asked Janus.

Pat glared at him over it. “I never really thought about how to open it in a narrow second floor corridor.”

“Just try to shove it through the door without popping it.”

“Why are you looking at me?!” asked Remus.

They managed to somehow squeeze the raft through the door into the other room after a few minutes.

 Pat squinted at the tottering raft he was holding to the door frame. “After you,” he offered.

Janus glared at him.

“You’re already soaked!” Pat defended himself.

Janus sighed and very carefully climbed into the raft. It tottered dangerously, but he didn’t immediately fall out, so that was a plus. The other two of them slowly also climbed onto the raft with him. They then sat in it for a few seconds. “Is there an oar?” Janus asked.

“Oh right!” Pat did something else with the device in his hands and an oar slowly unfolded from his hand.

“Seriously, I want one of those,” Remus said.

 “Let’s just get out of here,” Janus said, snatching the oar. The staircase luckily wasn’t too far away. They probably could have swam it if necessary, but the raft gave them some modicum of protection. Everything seemed to be going in their favor, which of course meant everything was about to go incredibly wrong.

They were about halfway across the water when the entire world around them rumbled.

“…I hope that was a giant jellyfish,” Remus said.

It was unfortunately not a jellyfish or any sea creature at all. The world around them fractured, the ocean seeming to split right down the middle so the water right of the staircase was 6 feet higher than on the left. The sky flashed red and yellow before the water split completely like Moses splitting the Red Sea.

 There was a millisecond as the split widened until it was only a few feet from them, to decide whether when they landed they wanted to be on the side with the water or on the side without it. On one hand, going towards the side without water could mean they fell to their deaths or the water crashed back down on top of them when it settled. On the other hand, if the fissure was closing or shifting to a new area, it was very possible that they’d end up trapped in the middle off the ocean with no connection to the church.

 Well, the best chance to actually get to where they were going was probably the side without water. It seemed everyone had the same idea at once because as he grabbed for both of them, they both grabbed for him and they all went tumbling off the raft into what could have very well been a bottomless pit.

Janus learned after a couple of seconds of free fall, that it was definitely not a bottomless pit. He landed hard, flat on his back and saw stars. The next moment something landed on top of him, squeezing all of the air out of his lungs.

 Something else fell half on top of his legs.

“Ow,” Pat said from near his ear.

“Yeah, well you’re the one on the top,” Janus groaned though his teeth.

“Wow, I never took you for a bottom, Janus,” Remus said from near his feet. Janus kicked up his legs into whatever part of him was on top of Janus and he gave an “oof.”

Pat snorted a bit and Janus glared at his… shoulder? He shifted around a bit so he was less thrown across Janus and more just on top of him. Janus blinked. There was a wooden ceiling above them, so that was a good sign, though there was also a giant dark hole of nothingness directly above them which was not as good.

 Janus moved slightly. He could tell he was going to be bruised later, but he didn’t seem seriously injured. “We should,” he started, but was interrupted as the hole above them pulsated and dumped a bunch of sea water.

Pat shrieked as they were all drenched with the chilly water. Luckily, they seemed to be on higher ground because, while water kept pouring out of the hole, it drained away just as quickly instead of drowning them.

Water still hitting his back relentlessly, Pat peeled his head up to look Janus in the eyes. A giggle bubbled out of his mouth.

“It isn’t funny,” Janus informed him. Pat just giggled more, leaning his head against Janus’s chest and cackling.

 Janus just rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is an entirely appropriate reaction. Thank you for your contribution to our very important mission.”

Pat seemed incapable of stopping laughing completely, but he did calm himself enough to peel himself off Janus’s chest and lean forward so their noses almost touched. “It’s hilarious and you know it,” he claimed.

“In what way is this ‘hilarious’?”

“In many waves,” was the joy filled answer.

“You’re horrible.”

Pat hummed. He hadn’t moved to get off of him even though they really should be moving in case something worse than water came through the hole in the ceiling. He hadn’t even moved his face away.

“No, no, you two just tell me when you’re done being gay for each other,” Remus interrupted. Janus was surprised to see he’d stood up at some point and was now hovering over them.

 Janus flipped him off even while Pat laughed once again. Pat finally drew away and rolled off of him so Janus could sit up. Pretty much everything hurt when Janus moved, but he was able to stand up, so he was probably fine enough. “So,” he said looking around. “Where are we now?”

 Chapter 20

Janus looked around himself while Pat booted up his map to try to figure out where they were. They were in a small room that may actually be considered a large landing as there were staircases on either side of it. The water that was still coming out of the ceiling was running down the staircase that led down from the room.

 Something was stopping the water, creating a pool on the steps that was already about to overflow into the room. With the speed the water was flowing, they should have enough time before the room completely filled up with water and drowned them.

Janus wondered if they were in the church or not. It was not out of the question and there was church like décor around them, but who knew? He could feel a strange vibration in the ground and the one window in the room shone with green light.

“Hmm,” said Pat. “That looks not good.” He’d projected his map so they could all see everything.

 The map itself was moving. Rooms were phasing in and out of focus and fracturing down the middle. One room was even spinning lazily around in circles. Janus could see the room they were in. It was connected to the bigger blob of rooms, and there was a black line connecting it to another room from the top which was obviously the hole spewing water at them.

“Well, at least the time distortion is still coming from the bell tower,” Remus said. Janus shot him an unamused glance. Said bell tower was currently upside down and shuddering as well as divided from any other room by at least two inches of empty space.

28842

“How are we supposed to get there?” asked Pat.

“We don’t,” Janus said. “It’s literally impossible.”

“There has to be some way,” Pat argued with a frown.

“If we try to use time travel, we’ll definitely get shredded by the warping time and space around it and walking there isn’t an option. There aren’t even any entrances!”

“Well, there were at one point.”

“Yeah, before,” he gestured wildly to the ceiling that was still pouring water into the room.

“So?” Pat asked.

“’So’?! What do you mean ‘so’?!”  

Pat shrugged. “When one door closes, cut another one.”

Janus froze and looked at him for a long moment. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

Patton raised an eyebrow. “You.”

“I don’t think like that anymore.”

“Well then I guess we’ll die,” Pat said lightly. “Of course, that’ll make an even worse time loop considering I’ve met older versions of you.”

“Fuck,” Janus spat. “Fuck. Fine. Give me a minute to think. Not that I even know if we have a minute because,” he gestured once again to the room.

 “Okay,” Janus said. “The room with the source of the time distortion is separated from us by a swirling pool of dark nothingness and there is no way to get to it. But, the only way we’re going to stop the distortion from ripping apart time and killing us as well as probably a bunch of other people is to get to it. That is an impossible situation. There is no solution. That door is closed to us. What other ways are there to look at it?” He looked at the visual representation of the rooms. One of them suddenly went spinning out and his eyes tracked it. We need to be in the same place as the source,” Janus said. “That is fact, but we don’t have to get to it.”

“Um, what do you mean?” Remus asked. Pat shushed him.

 “If you want thing A and thing B to be in the same place, there’s more than one way to do it. If you can’t move thing A to thing B, you might be able to move thing B to thing A. Pat, you have a working time device. We can’t travel with it because that would kill us, but if we can make it do a stutter warp, it could draw the time distortion to it.”

“You…” Remus said. “Want to create another time distortion in hopes that the original time distortion will be pulled into this room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sounds good to me!” Remus said.

 He maybe had expected Pat to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved his hand to his wrist. There had been nothing there before, but when he touched down on his wrist with two fingers, there was suddenly a metal bound around it that Janus immediately recognized from the times he’d seen Pat’s timepiece before. How was it made invisible? He shook the thought off as Pat offered it up wordlessly. Janus took it and Pat leaned over his shoulder to look.

Despite the fact that the device looked nothing like his own, the interface was surprisingly convenient. “I assume you have safety setting to prevent a stutter warp,” Janus said. “How do I turn those off?”

 Patton pointed at a gear icon on the screen. “You put it under your normal settings?” he asked.

“I have to put in my password or use my fingerprint!” Pat defended.

“It doesn’t matter right now.” He navigated through the settings. He was interested to see that there were many different saved default security settings, but he didn’t get much of a chance to read what all they did. He just turned them all off.” It popped up with a message to put in the password and Pat pressed his fingertip to it. Another message popped up warning them that turning off these settings could cause damage to the machinery, the person using it, and time itself. Janus pushed “okay.” A message popped up that asked “Continue” and Janus pressed “yes.” One last message popped up that said “Security functions disabled.” Janus pressed “okay.”

 “Anything else I’d need to disable?”

“Nope,” Pat confirmed.

He navigated back to the main screen and then bought up the manual travel input screen. Yet another message warning him not to do this flashed and Janus once again ignored it. He copied the space time coordinates that the device said they were currently at and put it in the ‘travel to’ location. “Well,” he said. “Here it goes. Let it be known that if I die, it’s my own fault for allowing Remus into a church.”

“Really?” Remus said. “That’s what you’re choosing to be your last words?”

Janus just raised an eyebrow.

“Love you too Janus.”

Janus nodded and hovered his finger over the travel button. He quickly mashed his finger to the button 22 times.”

 The device warmed in his hand enough that he almost dropped it. Time literally froze for a few breaths as whatever Deity that may or may not exist processed their stupidity.

Janus was not a scientist or technician, but he had a good idea of how badly they were fucking up right now. The timepiece was attempting to travel over and over again to the exact same place and time. This basically punched a small hole through time, that if left unfixed would grow and disrupt space time all around them. As it was, their current position, all gathered around it and staring at it while one of them had it literally in their hand, was perilous.

 There was a rumble under their feet and the world tilted on it’s axis. The all went tumbling down in a pile of limbs to new floor of the room which had once been a wall.

Of course, this change of gravity caused the water that had been building up in the staircase to dump on top of them.

Janus would have cursed, but he was too busy being under the water. He maneuvered himself away from the other two flailing bodies and managed to shove his feet against the wall turned floor. His head popped above the water in time to see the ceiling, or well, it would be the opposite wall, rip in two and the other walls/floor/ceiling start to fold in.

 “Give me a boost!” Pat called over the noise of water rushing and walls crunching.

“Give you a boost where?” Janus asked.

“Up!” Janus wasn’t sure if ‘up’ really existed right now, but he still nodded. The water was a few inches over his head, so he held his breath and interlaced his hands so Pat could put his foot in it. He was shoved down into the water, but it gave Pat enough leverage to shoot up out of the water. When Janus resurfaced, he saw that the man had grabbed ahold of the crumbling wall and was pulling himself up into what for all appearances seemed to be absolutely nothing.

 It took a moment, but then Janus blinked, and he was suddenly in a new room entirely or perhaps it was the same room. He honestly didn’t know at this point. Remus was next to him. He couldn’t recall if he’d been there before the shift or not, but they were both treading water. Pat crashed into the water next to them. Janus’s wrist buzzed as his timepiece came back online. “Got it!” Pat declared when he resurfaced, holding a device up. It looked almost the same as the device they’d found in France, but this one was definitely different if it was able to cause that much chaos that quickly.

 Janus looked around and pointed at what appeared to be a set of stairs. The three of them swam over and pulled themselves out of the water.

“Where are we?” Pat asked.

“Looks like a basement,” Remus replied. “A flooded basement.”

Janus pulled up his timepiece and pushed some buttons to stabilize Pat’s timepiece. It slowly stopped vibrating and cooled. “Here,” he said, handing it over to him. “I suggest you put the safeties back on now.”

Pat nodded and took it.

“We’re still in Cuba,” Remus informed them, looking at his own timepiece. “Same church too, but in the basement and… two and a half centuries later.”

“Remy is going to be pissed,” Janus said.

Remus shrugged. “He’s always pissed… at least at me.”

“Well,” said Pat, slipping his timepiece back onto his wrist. “Thanks for being willing to pool our resources.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Stop.”

“Ah, mi sirenito-”

“I hate you.”

“-never.” He disappeared with a pop which was when Janus realized, he’d never handed over device that had caused the first time distortion.

“…You bastard!” he yelled at thin air as though the man could hear him.

“Well,” said Remus, “that mission went swimmingly.” Janus reached over and shoved him back into the water.

 Chapter 21

“We should probably get out of here,” Janus said, very much not helping Remus out of the water. Remus pulled himself back up onto the staircase and shook like a dog. Janus crinkled his nose as water droplets hit him. They didn’t smell salty anymore, he noted. In fact, there was a broken pipe spewing out water on the other side of the room.

Janus and Remus cautiously snuck out of the church, not wanting to be seen and blamed for the flooded basement. They came out on a city street that was much different than the one they’d entered from.

 They walked down the street a bit, Janus’s eyes scanning the buildings. His eyes caught on a sign and he tugged Remus towards it.

They entered the small paladare and the person delivering food to one of the tables blinked at them both. Right. They were in clothing from the 1700s and were soaking wet. He met eyes with the woman, challenging her to say something. She did not.

They found a seat at one of the tables.

“Ah…” the worker said, approaching them. “English?”

“Ron,” Janus said, “por favor.”

Remus turned and started ordering the both of them food in Spanish. Janus didn’t pay attention to what he did.

 After his second shot of rum, Janus sighed and brought up his timepiece to ping the TPI. The reaction was almost instantaneous from their perspective. Remy all but kicked down the restaurant’s door and walked over to them. “How the fuck?”

“Ah, Remy,” Janus said calmly. “Have a seat. We’re waiting on our food.”

He did, but probably only because people were looking at them. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been a long day,” Janus answered, “and I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, it certainly looks like you’re interested in the food,” Remy said, eyeing the empty shot glasses.

“Let’s just say, I’m glad Cuba started letting paladares legally serve liquor a few years ago.”

 It’s clear that Remy wanted to ask them what had happened, but he also was cautious enough not to make a scene here and Janus wasn’t planning on getting up until he’d at least gotten his food. “Why are you soaked, by the way?”

“Turns out the ocean isn’t as far away as we thought,” Janus said.

“Also, a church basement is flooded,” Remus said.

“Fantastic,” Remy replied.

They sat there mostly in tense silence until their food came, and then Remus and Janus ate. Remy slapped down some pesos once they were done and then proceeded to all but physically drag them out of the restaurant.

 They were led to an alley way and then through an old almost hidden door. Remy immediately rounded on them. “What the hell happened?” Remy asked.

“The time distortion caused level 5 time fractures in its vicinity, we almost drowned three times, and the worst person in the universe fucked me over again.”

“To be fair,” Remus said. “He did save our lives before that.”

“I saved our lives first,” Janus said. “I don’t have to be fair.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Curl Up In A Ball And Perish. I’m sure we would have been fine without him.”

“Anyway,” Janus said to Remy. “If you want your lump of flesh, I suggest you take it now, because Khalid is going to murder me, and then fire me, and then rehire me so she can put me on desk duty and make me do paperwork until the end of time.”

 “What did you do?” Remy asked.

Janus grimaced. “Made a time distortion.”

“You were the one who made the time distortion?” Remy asked.

“Not exactly,” Janus answered.

“He made the second time distortion,” Remus said. “It was actually pretty cool.”

“It was not cool,” Janus snapped. “It was irresponsible and dangerous. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“We would have died,” Remus said.

“And we could have done worse than dying if it had gone poorly,” Janus argued. “I just…” he tugged on his hair a bit, and Remus gave him an alarmed look. “I’m going to go talk to Khalid,” he said. He didn’t give Remus any time to speak, but just waved his hand to travel back to the TPI.

 Remus followed him instantly, of course, but Janus proceeded to ignore him until they were out of decontamination. Janus walked himself straight to Khalid’s office.

He knocked on her door and she called for him to come in. He did and sat heavily in the chair in front of her. She frowned at him. “You really should go to Cultural Outreach first.”

“Just fire me,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“I just shouldn’t work here anymore,” he said. “At least not as a field agent. Really any type of agent.”

She paused and reached to her desk to pull up some file on the screen there. “I’ll fill out the incident report myself instead of Dr. Eran then,” she said. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

 Janus explained everything that happened, and Khalid diligently wrote it down. It was far outside her job description, but she didn’t explain or really react to anything he said more than nodding to say she’d gotten it recorded.

When he was finished, she saved the file and leaned back.

“Well,” Khalid said, folding her hands in front of her and scrutinizing him. “Honestly, this isn’t anywhere near a fireable offence.”

“But I…”

“You went against policy certainly, but policy sometimes has to be broken in disaster scenarios. You know that.”

“It was stupid,” he bit out, feeling sick to his stomach.

“Is it if it worked?” she asked.

Janus didn’t answer.

 “The major reason I originally assigned you to be a field agent is because you’ve always been good at thinking your way out of difficult situations even when they go against the rules we set. You have good instincts that I trust, but you haven’t seemed to trust them lately,” she said.

“You shouldn’t trust them,” Janus said darkly.

Janus felt his throat tighten as she considered him for a long moment. “This isn’t the first time you’ve asked me to fire you,” she said. “You wouldn’t tell me why then, and I respected it at the time, but…” she paused. “You’ve changed, Janus.”

 “Well then I’m not any good to you.”

“I’d beg to differ,” she replied, “but fine.”

Janus was actually surprised by that. He looked up at her. He somehow thought he’d feel better when this happened, but he didn’t in that moment. He just felt ill.

“I’m not firing you,” she continued, meeting his eyes, “but if you don’t want to be a regular field agent, fine. I have a particular mission in mind for you.”

“What?” he asked.

“This ‘Pat’ thing is getting ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t have enough resources to focus on it right now considering how much is going on, however, but I trust you and you’re already involved. So, I’m going to reassign you. No more missions. No more dealing with in department duties. You find him and his source of time travel. That’s your job. Whatever you think you need to do that job is fine. Request whatever trips or resources you need. Bring on Remus when you need or even Fred and Lena.”

“You’re…” he said. “Giving me more freedom and resources?”

“Like I said, Janus. I trust you. The one time I didn’t, after all, Pat ran off with a timebomb, so I learned my lesson.” She smiled briefly and stuck out her hand. “Deal?”

Janus sighed and once again resigned himself to staying at the TPI. “Fine,” he said. “Deal.”

 Chapter 22

Janus sighed. This was stupid. What was he even doing? He glared at the large hologram that took up a good portion of his office now. During the day, he usually shrunk it so he could only see part of the diagram he had up, but right now the office was abandoned other than him, so it took up and entire two walls. He rubbed his forehead. Why had 2pm Janus thought putting a bunch of words on this hologram was a good idea? Even the pictures were starting to look like they were vibrating. He drew a red line between “Nick Jonas” and “iPhone,” and he honestly wasn’t even sure why at this point.

His board didn’t even make sense. Why did he think this would be a help? He swiped a picture of the first device he’d found that had made the time distortions off to the side with his own (bad) artistic rendition of the one Pat had stolen. There wasn’t a pattern with Pat’s behavior that he could see other than, perhaps, a liking for early 21st century pop culture.

Frustrated, he turned away from the board. He needed a walk, he decided. He stepped out of his office into the TPI hallway and chose a direction at random. There were still some people in the building as even this late at night, someone had to be on call, but for the most part, the building was abandoned.

 He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, and even if he had been, he likely wouldn’t have realized where he was because he’d never been to the AMO offices since he’d gotten his house, and they’d moved since then.

He paused in front of it the doors, eyes touching on the lit-up names on the door’s screen. He focused on his own last name until it stopped looking like letters at all.

“Did you need something?” a familiar voice asked.

Janus jumped and whipped around. “You… it’s late, what are you doing here?” he asked Emile.

“There are at least two AMO workers at the office at all times. Today is my night,” he explained.

 “I… see.”

Emile tilted his head. “Did you need anything?”

“No,” Janus said, perhaps a bit too fast. He bit his lip. “I was just going for a walk. I didn’t mean to come here.”

Emile folded his hands in front of him and rocked onto his heels. “I heard that you almost died,” he said.

“Yeah,” Janus said. “I fucked up.”

Emile arched an eyebrow. “And is that why you got a promotion?” he asked in that mild tone of his that informed Janus that his brother was wholly convince he was an idiot. Janus looked away and Emile sighed.

 “Well then,” Emile said, walking past him to the door. Despite himself and the fact that it was his fault, Janus felt hurt at how short Emile was letting the conversation be. Then he felt disgusted with himself that he even dared to feel that way.

Yet, Emile paused at the door. “If you ever decide you want that help, I offered, you know where my office is now.”

He wouldn’t, Janus thought, but he didn’t say anything. He just let Emile push open the door to the AMO and disappear inside.

Why was he even here right now? Janus wondered to himself. It was the middle of the night and he didn’t remember the last time he’d slept. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been home.

 Yet the house by the lake wasn’t home, was it? Going there to the nothing that pervaded the place made his throat tighten. He’d had different homes in his life. The small childhood home, the claustrophobic apartment he’d had in his college days, the first home the AMO had assigned him which he’d shared with his brother, but none of these were available to him anymore. He brought up his timepiece. There were only three pre-programed space-time coordinates in his device. The first would only take him back to his office with the frustrating board that wasn’t giving him any answers and the third took him to the lake house he couldn’t bear to see empty right now.

 That left him with only one option. He selected the second saved coordinates and stepped forward into Remus’s house. He landed in total darkness, which was expected considering it was around 3 in the morning and Remus lived about 3 decades before electricity was invented. Janus stumbled forward in the dark, his eyes very much not adjusted, until his shins hit the couch. He carefully turned and sat before blowing out a breath.

“Mew?” came from the corner, and Janus titled his head to see eyes shining in the dark.

“Hello,” Janus said. “Sorry to wake you.”

Diesel Fuel make a little burrhr sound and padded over to him.

[freelanews-blog]

Akinwunmi Ambode: Et tu Tunji Bello?

By Victor Ojelabi The very short title of this article, Et tu Tunj Bello is an allusion to one of the greatest political literary works in the world. Originally from the famous question, Et tu, Brute? a Latin phrase literally meaning "and you, Brutus?" or "also you, Brutus?" and often translated as "You as well, Brutus?" or "Even you, Brutus?," is notable for its occurrence in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, where it is spoken by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar to his friend Marcus Junius Brutus at the moment of Caesar's assassination. Caesar utters these words in Act III, scene 1, as he is being stabbed to death, having recognized his friend and protégé Brutus as one of the assassins. However, there is no evidence that the historical Caesar spoke these words. Though different scenarios, former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s exit from the Lagos State house and the incidents that led to it has some similarities to that of Caesar’s. Caesar’s betrayal by Brutus was more painful than that of others because of the closeness and perhaps the position the latter occupied in ‘his’ government. Most recently, the former Secretary to the State Government, Mr Tunji Bello who served under Ambode had said the government of his former boss, Akinwunmi Ambode, failed over what he described as lack of emotional intelligence, among other issues he supposedly raised with colleagues in what was described as a farewell message not intended for public consumption outside a platform. Bello’s assessment of the administration in which he was the third most powerful person, after the governor and the deputy governor, has been seen as a further betrayal of a Governor that has suffered other forms of betrayal from party members and officials at Alausa, part of the reasons that made him fail to get the endorsement of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), for a second term. He became the first Lagos State governor to serve one term since 1999. Among other things, Bello was quoted by the Punch Newspaper to have said the following on the Ambode led government: “Our main drawback is our government’s inability to apply enough emotional intelligence in the administration of the state. Emotional intelligence includes interpersonal skills, interpersonal relationship, humility, respect for the well-established mores of governance, disregard for the accomplishments of others. “…We undertook gigantic projects without the soul. We were too self-opinionated and narrow in our approach to governance. It is a big drawback which prevented the administration from returning because it was punished for its lack of inclusiveness in a democratic setting. In leadership, emotional intelligence is 70 per cent of application while individual brilliance is only 30 per cent. Successful leadership across the world in history have thrived on this fact. “Besides and apart from lack of enough camaraderie compared to previous administrations, our cabinet has been less rigorous, less fulfilled, less engaged and less accomplished. And for the first time since the time of Governor Lateef Jakande, this cabinet departs unappreciated and disenchanted.” No doubt many have hailed Bello’s assessment as dispassionate, objective and straight to the point. Some others have even hailed him as been brave to stand up to Ambode without fear or fervour. I have refrained from talking on this issue to observe others' reactions to it. I must say some people have managed to surprise me all the same, hence my take on the issue. To me, Bello’s statement showed the calibre of people Ambode worked with as a governor. Like Caesar, he was surrounded by enemies who could only gather and collectively stab him in the back when the opportunity presented itself. The former SSG’s statement, coming at the end of Ambode’s tenure is a demonstration of lack of discipline and responsibility. If you have been part of a government for four years and you think such a thing is happening and you are not man enough to walk out of that government or speak out while in service, it clearly questions the man in you. Such a person lacks self-dignity and respect. I for one see no honour there. I see the much touted objectivity and dispassionate analysis of Ambode’s government as a cowardly attempt at disparaging Ambode’s efforts in the last couple of years. As one of Ambode’s aides anonymously noted albeit, correctly, Ambode should praise him for doing that much, knowing that he was surrounded by people who from the beginning were out to sabotage him. “It was clear that so many of his aides were against him. We should commend him for staying on for four years. So many of his aides deserted him at the dying minute and these were the people who hailed him for four years.” The aide added, “Rather than bring Ambode down, they are only disgracing themselves. If because this man wanted to be a governor twice and he did not make it, should that be enough to disgrace a man who gave you a chance to be SSG? They know that he fought tooth and nail to achieve what he achieved despite the opposition. I am one of his aides and I can tell you that the man put in his best. He does not sleep. He is on the streets at 2 am, 3 am. The new governor should watch his aides. He should not trust anyone because obviously governance in Lagos State has been bastardised.” Perhaps, Bello is currying favour from the new Sanwolu’s government or merely carrying out a ‘suppressed or hidden vendetta’. Many are of the opinion that the Fifty eight year old Lawyer, Journalist and Publisher has not been a happy man for long as he bemoans the fate that has made Lagos House slipped off his hands, yet again. Recall that Bello oversaw the media unit of the Babajide Olushola Sanwoolu Campaign Organization BOSCO even though Comrade Sesan Daini is the face of the unit. Daini is however rumoured to be a mere tool in the hands of Bello who controls the budget and purse of the unit which ran into hundreds of millions of naira. To add to that, it was believed that Bello, a native of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital laboured alongside other pro-democracy activists for the actualisation of the June 12 mandate, made no pretence about his desire to become Lagos State helmsman. He was among the team detailed to set up Vintage Press Limited publishers of The Nation newspaper. He was drafted in public service as the Managing Director of Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency LASSA and he later served as Commissioner for Environment in the Babatunde Raji Fashola administration before his appointment as the Secretary to State Government by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode a position he held till the end of his tenure. It will not be out of place to say that Bello’s recent statement has a direct connection to Bello’s ‘frustrated’ political ambition which is to become the Executive Governor of Lagos State. It is rumoured that from inception of the Ambode administration, he continually bombarded Bourdillon residence of the national leader with alleged tales of “official recklessness and abuse of office” on the part of Governor Ambode, threatening to resign at a point. He complained that Ambode gave out “juicy assignments” meant for his office to the commissioners. He was so unruly that it was alleged that Tinubu had to caution him to control his emotions, promising that he will call Ambode to order. Tinubu had to wade in by directing Ambode to recall the “juicy assignments” back to Bello’s office. Perhaps, Bello’s pain which many understood, is the fact that, not only was he bye-passed and Ambode chosen, he was also bye-passed for Babajide Sanwoolu, though he was considered but his ill health in 2014 for closed his choice back then, even as the Deputy Governor. He had a mild stroke hence he was not anointed as the Deputy Governor. Ambode in his characteristic manner refused to join issues with him and others who took it upon themselves to report the activities of his government to Tinubu, with the absolute believe that his performance will suffice at the end. In an article by Public Affairs analyst, Tunde Okikioposu which is titled ‘Dirty couple of Lagos power house the story of the Tunji Bellos’ it was noted that currently, Bello is responsible for the negative press Governor Ambode got from The Nation newspaper. He was said to have acted in partnership with Mr. Dele Alake and Mr. Wale Edun the Chairman of Vintage Press. It further quoted, “Unknown to many Bello was among the saboteurs of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative of the Ambode administration. He had a recycling company that bided for the recycling arm of the business, but lost to others. He used his contacts from his days as Commissioner for Environment to sabotage Visionscape Sanitation Services, instigating these firms not to cooperate with Visionscape. Bello was allotted 28 waste evacuation detail contract in Lagos; but he deployed only one truck, to cover these details, yet collects 28 truck payments from Lagos State Waste Management Agency LAWMA. He is indeed a greedy fellow. “He had serious altercations with Fashola who accused him pointedly to stop scheming, he was among the cabal that occasioned the media blackout of Fashola’s post tenure book launch. He was stunned alongside his clique when President Muhammadu Buhari name Fashola as the federal cabinet appointee for Lagos State,” the article noted. The new Sanwo-Olu’s administration has just started. It is only wise that the sitting Governor learns from the mistake of his predecessor. Learning from the experiences of others, sometime is far better than learning from personal experience. Like the elders are wont to say, “The cane with which the first wife was beaten is always available for the second. This advice will not be necessary if the current administration watches out for ‘Brutuses’ like Bello who will only be too glad to drive the knife at the back without an iota of remorse. Read the full article

[thatsrightmytrash]

Live by the Sun, Love by the Moon Pt 2

Pt 1 - Pt 3

Genre: Angst, college AU, future Smut

Pairing: Bff Hoseok x reader x Tattoo artist Yoongi

Warnings: Explicit sexual content.

Rating: NC-17

Summary:  One was like the sun, abrasive, warm, as if you had just been kissed by morning light.

The other was like the moon, dancing carelessly, breathlessly with the stars in the darkness of the night.

Two sides of the same coin you needed both, but in which side would the coin fall?

A/N: Sorry if i have grammar mistakes, English is not my first language.

The great thing about the next few days was the feeling of experiencing for once in your life new things, things as simple as meeting new people, people approaching you to speak to you because they really wanted to talk to you, perhaps for others this was something rather common and normal but for you it was something completely new, something that you weren’t used to but with the passing days the discomfort and the foreign feeling went away allowing you to walk freely through campus.

Jimin and Tae bombarded you with texts almost every day, you could say they were your friends by now, at first it had surprised you how well you got along with both of them, with only two weeks the awkwardness completely vanished as if you had been friends for a long time.

In these last two weeks you had met with them more times than you had left your apartment in a whole semester. Taehyung and Jimin were like two children inside the bodies of two handsome young adults, you couldn’t fully understand that duality they had, at home they were two fools who played all day and made jokes, out of house they were these handsome men that practically all women- and even some guys- wanted to conquer. It was funny to know their other side and to think what the others would think if they had the luck to witness the nonsense that you had seen.

Both told you anecdotes practically all the time, memories of their childhood, their teenange years; in almost all of them was Hoseok.

Hoseok, your best friend, with whom you hadn’t talked for 15 days in fact you had never stopped talking for so long before,  you couldn’t remember how much you both had lasted without talking, only one time when he went camping and had no phone signal but that didn’t count. To say that you only missed his presence was an understatement, you missed not only his presence, you missed his voice, his eyes, his laughter, his touch, the chats, the small jokes, the way he frowned and his mouth made a pout every time you denied something that he wanted just to end up accepting his request.

 However it was not all bad about your time apart from Hobi, time away from him had helped you to think a little more about things, look at them from the outside, but there were many things that you couln’t solve or had a clear or concrete answer to. As for example the fact that Hoseok had the quality -or power- to make you obey every thing he said. All those times that you had agreed to do things that you didn’t want to just because Hoseok had asked you ... the parties that you didn’t want to go and ended up going just to please him, only to end up leaving after setting foot in the place.

The times that you had wanted to do things for yourself but Hoseok had convinced you otherwise, you hadn’t perceived it as something negative at the time but now you were scared to think that maybe there were second intentions in his acts and also the passive way you behaved when you were with him wasn’t at all normal, right?

All these doubts still hovered in your mind, and you knew that at some point you would have to face him, face your fears, your doubts and just talk to him.

Also the fact of having befriended his two best friends complicated things a little, Tae and Jimin knew of the state of your....Relationship, and they didn’t want to force you to talk things out with him or have to see him, which is why in the last time they had had to make excuses to Hoseok to spend time with you on the sly, you didn’t like them to have to lie for you, because You knew how much they cared for Hobi, and you also recognized that sooner or later the truth would come out.

You looked at the clock on your wrist and muttered some bad words, grabbing the keys to your apartment and quickly getting out your front door. You were late for your appointment in the tattoo shop. The piercing of your nose had not infected and it was past the time that Suga had told you so you were able now to change the ring to a new one.

Suga, the strange tattooed young man with white hair had flooded your thoughts since you first met him, you couldn’t understand that it was exactly what attracted you to him, like... he was more than handsome but so were Jimin or Taehyung and yet none of their names made your heart skip a beat while crossing your mind.

You were nervous, as if it was a date or something, you had chosen your clothes very carefully and until the last moment you were retouching your makeup and your hairstyle - the reason for being late for your appointment.- you entered the mall and headed quickly to the section of the second floor where the shop was located. You visualized its facade of neon lights and the display of piercings in its window. You sighed deeply and gave a pair of strong and confident strides to the door of the shop.

The pink-haired girl who had welcomed you the previous time was sitting behind the counter again, reading something in her cell phone while some background music quietly flooded the place. When she heard the noise of the door, she raised her head and sawing who it was, she immediately smiled knowingly.

"Oh, welcome back, you came to change your piercing right?" The young woman asked rising from her chair, you simply nodded your head and she headed to the back door of the shop.

"Suga y/n is here!" Shouted the pink-haired girl turning around to see you and giving you a wink.

A few seconds later a snow-white head appeared through the door, and your heart almost turned over. If you thought that the last time you saw him he was handsome, now he was FUCKING beautiful. He was wearing some black pants torned in the kness, a black shirt that showed his collarbones, the tattoos on his neck and arms on display for the world to adore his beauty, the sight seemed too ethereal to be real.

You quickly shook your head and raised your hand to greet him. "Hey there" you whispered a little shy.

Suga displayed a gummy smile and at that moment you decided that besides Hoseok’s this was the most beautiful smile you had seen.

"Hey, time to change your piercing, come in the room please." The pale-skinned young man gestured for you to follow him further into the shop and automatically your legs moved to the room where you had your piercing done for the first time.

"Did you have any complications, did it hurt or had you had any secretions?" Suga asked as he sat down in his work chair.

"No, not at all, it just hurt me a bit" You answered by sitting on the comfortable black leather chair. "Well, I was worrying about your absence." He smile satisfied and your heart skipped a beat.

"Momo informed me that you wanted this particular piercing" Suga said showing the piercing in his hands already covered by latex gloves. You assumed that Momo was the young girl with pink Hair and quickly nodded your head.

Then the young man approached your face, gently holding your head in place, the touch sending electricity through your body even with the gloves of latex in between, he took the ring that you had chosen with one of his hands as he put his other hand on your cheek and with the other hand skillfully put the new piercing in place.

"That’s it!" he exclaimed, moving away and giving you space in the small room to get up from the chair.

Repeating the same thing you did when you first were in the room, you went to the mirror on the wall to look at the piercing of your nose smiling broadly. It was exactly what you wanted. "How much do I owe you?" You asked the tattooed young man turning to grab your purse.

"Nothing," the young man replied simply, taking off his latex gloves and tossing them into a small garbage can lying around the corner.

You shook your head in disapproval, how could you not pay!? "Nonsense, really how much do I owe you?" You asked again, insisting.

A few seconds passed, where the young man hesitated and reformulated his answer, an answer you didn’t imanige he would tell you.

"What if you pay me in some other way?” Your eyes widened without knowing what to answer but the young man quickly added "I mean, how about paying me with going out to take something with me and my friends, just a friendly night”.

You let out the air that you had not noticed that you were containing.You thought for a few seconds what to respond, but an answer had already formed in your mouth.

"That would be nice, but only if I pay for the drinks," you proclaimed smiling, and Suga nodded. "Would it be okay if I go with two of my friends? I promise they are very funny though somewhat a little weird" you consulted just in case, since he had said to go have a drink with his friends, it only would be logical that you also went with your friends, clearly it wasn’t a date.

"My friends are also a bit strange, don’t worry." You shared contacts, giving each other your numbers, to confirm the day, time and place of the meeting during the week, he explained that everything depended on his work and his friends so that everyone could find a day where they were free, but assuring you that it would probably be at Friday or Saturday.

You saluted Momo and Suga before leaving the shop with a huge smile on your face, not being able to wait for the week to pass by.

 The next few days as if time wanted to torture it went by extremely slow, waiting for a text message that still didn’t arrive, you had already demanded to Jimin and Tae to have their weekend free, explaining the situation and telling them about the young tattoeed man.

"And Y/N….? has the tattoo artist written you yet?" your blond friend asked curiously, sitting next to you on the sofa of your house. It was Thursday and Suga had not yet texted you, by this point you already believed that he would never text you.

"No, he didn’t text me, and I don’t think he will do it by this point." Suddenly Jimin bounced down on the other side of the couch, the two young men on either side of you, crushing you like a Sandwich, Jimin put his arm on your shoulder and Taehyung put an arm around your waist.

"Maybe he missedpelled your number!" Tae suggested trying to make sure you didn’t lose hope and that surely there was a reason why the young man had not yet written you.

"To be honest, you never text a girl promptly, you always have to make her wait a little," added Jimin with a sly grin.

You hit him at the waist with a little yelp "YAH! I don’t want to hear your cheap seduction methods!” Both young man cackled to your comment and you couldn’t avoid joining them.

"Seriously there's a reason for his tardiness, who would miss the opportunity to go out with you?" Jimin continued and Tae quickly nodded to his friend's comment.

"And why did none of you asked me out then, huh?" You teased, giggling a little, watching as your friends faces contoured leaving them speechless but Taehyung quickly returned "That's because we've already seen the y/n that throws herself on the couch to eat and watch movies without any concern about her appearance.”

"Although if you want a date, I have no problem, then we can go back to my house and I'll show you the side you don’t know about me" he raised his eyebrows seductively and you responded by punching him in his arm and laughing out loud.

Your laughter was cut off when your cell phone buzzed and a light went on. You looked first at Jimin and then at Tae, afraid to grab your phone and only to have your hopes being destroyed with a message from Suga telling you that he didn’t want to meet you.

Jimin rolled his eyes and in a single movement grabbed the phone from the table that was in front of the couch, unlocking the device and remaining silent for a few seconds, without showing any expression on his face.

Okay, suga had canceled you, it was obvious, it was too good to be true, stupid y/n!  thinking that a handsome guy is going to invite you out.

Jimin gave you the cellphone and eyed you a few times as you tried to focus on the screen, holding your breath.

-Suga: "Hey, sorry for the wait"

-Suga: "Is it okay if we meet tomorrow?"

You hit Jimin hard, the young man was lying in the couch, clutching his stomach, laughing hard. "YAH! Why do you play this way with me!?" You said while you continued beating him.

"Are you going to answer the poor man or not?" Taehyung exclaimed, grabbing the phone to see what the texts said. You pulled the device from his hand and looked at him with a frown.

"That was I was about to do, but SOMEONE distracted me" you snapped looking at Jimin who was still laughing about the little joke that he had played you.

You wrote and deleted an answer a couple of times until you sent a definitive text which you found yourself satisfied with.

-You: "No problem, time and place? "

You bit your lip waiting for a reply, your two friends looking at the screen of your cellphone waiting for the answer, all three looked like three high school girls.

Your phone vibrated again in your hand and you quickly opened the text message without waiting a second.

Smiling to yourself, you read your answer aloud.

-Suga: "At the Black Swan, 9 pm sounds good?"

-You: “Yeah! Perfect, See you there".

You sighed deeply and giggled like a schoolgirl, closing your eyes and relaxing in the couch.

Jimin and Tae took the opportunity to tickle you and bother you a bit more about the situation. "I told you so" exclaimed both while you tried to hold your laughter and breathing. These bastards made your life difficult, but you were grateful to have them.

 The next day passed rather quickly, vaguely paying attention to your classes, being unable to concentrate on anything other than the meeting you had that night, you had never been in a situation like this, and although you told yourself a thousand times that it wasn’t a date, Tae and Jimin had made sure to get into your head that it counted as a date and that you should be well dressed and cute if you wanted to take him to your bed.

Obviously you didn’t think about the last but…. Perhaps it was going to be more than a friendly reunion, and that you should be in optimum conditions for the night, after all the first impression was always the most important, and not only would you be meeting him, but also with his friends, you should give a good impression.

Generally for this kind of thing in other similar situations you had Hoseok to advise you what to wear and what makeup you should use, you had gone to bars and clubs with Hoseok and a couple of his friends in other times, in addition to the parties to which he had dragged you so many times before.

Hoseok always told you that it wasn’t necessary for you to wear a lot of makeup, or to wear provocative clothes because that was what whores did, and you weren’t one of them, and that you were just perfect by going simple.

You didn’t think exactly that way since you didn’t believe that the clothes had anything to do with the sexual life of a person and if so it wasn’t anyone business.

But of course you would also end up paying attention to Hoseok, wearing something rather simple, never much makeup only eyelash mascara and eyeliner.

The most provocative thing you had wore was a black dress a little shorter than usual once for a party, Hoseok had told you to meet in the place instead of going together from his house or from yours as you usually did, so he didn’t have the opportunity to "advise" you about what clothes to wear. It was a dress that your mother had bought you one time and that you really wanted to wear, but you would always end up wearing other thing because Hoseok told you that you were doing well in Jeans.

The moment he saw you enter the party in that dress, he quickly approached you, holding you by the hand and taking you to a corner of the party.

"y/n do you know how dangerous it is to come alone dressed like that? You should have told me to go with you" You looked at him and saw concern and something else that you couldn’t pinpoint what it was. You bowed your head feeling guilty for worrying your friend.

"Sorry, I didn’t really think it that way," you whispered.

"Aish, just don’t get away from me tonight, I don’t want anyone trying to do something with you." You never thought about the reason for those words already hidden deep in your memory.

For the rest of the night you only remember your hand and the hand of Hobi intertwined at any place that you were going. And that memory was more powerful than the hidden motive of your best friend's words. Reasons that neither he remembers nor that he had thought seriously at the moment.

The last class ended with the teacher announcing a new exam next week, but you were too distracted to pay attention or give it any importance, just making a mental note in your mind to start studying the next day. Today you just wanted to put your energy and concentration into one thing, or rather one person.

You came out of the room in a hurry, looking through the crowd to your friends, they generally didn’t make too much communication on campus for fear that Hoseok would see them and start questioning and asking things, having to face it once and for all, but today you were too abstracted to think clearly about the consequences of your actions. Finding quickly the two heads of your friends sitting on a bench in the outside- a place you had already memorized by then - you stepped towards it.

"Hey you, ready for tonight?" Tae asked, putting his arm around your shoulder.

Denying with your head you quickly sighed "I'm not ready for anything, I don’t know what to wear or what make up should I use, I feel like I'm a 12-year-old girl."

Jimin put his other arm on your other shoulder, both young men squeezing you in their bodies, walking slowly away from the bench where they were, to head to your apartment.

"Don’t worrt we are your fairy godmothers, as in Cinderella!" Jimin Chirped out, causing laughter in all three of you as if nothing was wrong, as if no one was missing in that conversation and unaware of a silent observer.

Hoseok looked at you from afar with his mouth open, eyes wide in surprise and suddenly a straight line forming on his lips and eyebrows furrowed in rage. Feeling the anger and his blood seep through his veins like he had never felt before, another feeling he couldn’t exactly describe flourishing in his chest, as if his heart had turned over. Only to be replaced with pain, and disappointment, because at the end of the day the one who had to be there by your side was him, and the only one who was to blame ... was himself.

 Taehyung and Jimin turned out to be very good advisers, they clearly had experience with dating girls, and although you had repeated them a thousand times that this was NOT a date, they had turned deaf ears to your complaints, removing the clothes from your closet, scattering them in the floor of your room trying to look for more than jeans and T-shirts stained with some kind of sauce.

"YAH! This is all you have? "Taehyung exasperated looking through the clothes scattered in the floor while Jimin kept his head tucked into your closet looking for some magical garment that could work for the night. Taehyung you had learned, had something for fashion, liked to buy expensive clothes, combine different things, and you knew for a fact that he followed all the great fashion designers on Instagram, but his favorite brand was Gucci.

"You're my fairy godmothers, you should turn one of my dirty T-shirts into a pretty dress!" You exclaimed, raising your arms to the ceiling of your room and looking up in despair until Jimin gave a little squeal from inside your closet.

"Perfect!" he squeal, pulling out his head and displaying the found garment; The black dress your mother had given you and that you had only used once at a party.

The memory of that party made you blush instantly, remembering the penetrating look that Hoseok had thrown at you that night and how guilty you felt.

You shook your head in rejection. "No, not that dress."

Taehyung turned upside down to shout you were crazy but when he saw your head down he regretted it quickly and whispered "Why don’t you want to wear that dress? I think it would look perfect on you. "

You hesitated a few seconds to respond and Jimin took the opportunity to approach you and put your hand warmly on your shoulder comforting you "Hey, whatever you are thinking at the moment doesn’t matter, what matters is now, and I'm sure you look splendid in this dress." You looked up and saw the two men showing you their warm smiles, making sure everything was fine. The truth is that you didn’t want to talk about the dress, or the situation you had experienced while wearing it but you really liked it and wanted to use it again.

You've always felt guilty for not using it more than once, because your mother gave it to you and a couple of times she had asked you why you didn’t use it to what you always answered that you really didn’t like it too much, hurting your mother in the process.

You grabbed the dress from Jimin's hands and headed to the bathroom to change once and for all.

When you looked at yourself in the mirror you opened your eyes in admiration by looking at the image in front of your eyes. You looked…. Different, different but well, not used to wearing dresses much less.

You came out of the bathroom a bit embarrassed, head down, trying not to regret it, Tae and Jimin immediately focused on your slender figure, the dress discreetly tightened everything that had to squeeze, without being too provocative or too boring, showing exactly what you had to show.

"What? Do I look bad? Aish, I'd better change" you were about to turn around and go into the bathroom again when Tae got up from the bed and ran up to grab you by the wrist.

"Don’t even think about it," he said looking seriously. Jimin then rose from his place and walked slowly, seductively as he always did when he wanted to seduce a girl.

"Why don’t you just leave that Suga boy and spend the night alone with us?" He said with his typical smirk that made you want to hit him in the face right there and then. "No fucking way, you seductive brat!" You exclaimed, chuckling.

The rest of your outfit was complemented it with some black heels that you had wore in your graduation, and a jean jacket that was rather an accessory since it wasn’t that warm. As for the makeup, you hesitated a bit about going natural or not, opting to simply use mascara, eyeliner and a red lipstick as the final touch.

When you were done fixing your hair, your friends looked at you with their mouths open, emitting wows from their lips. "Wow y/n you look good!" Taehyung gasped without being able to take his eyes off of you.

It was too much attention, more than you wanted but you pushed the thought to the back of your mind and simply shrugged your shoulders.

"Let's get a picture all three of us together!" Jimin chirped, approaching you and Tae to enter the three on the screen of his cellphone. The two men looked more than good, always so handsome.

Perhaps in other circumstances the roles wouldn’t have been the same, and you would have known the two men in another way, what would have happened if you hadn’t been friends with Hoseok? Would you have dated any of them in that case?

Hoseok…Hoseok had to be here tonight, accompanying you, being with you, giving you advice, assuring you that everything would work out, meeting the friends of Suga and Momo, presenting himself as your best friend, guilt began to bloom in your chest threatening to leave in form of tears but you kept your feelings away hiding them deep.

Hoseok wasn’t here, and he wasn’t here not for your decision but for his.

 The Black Swang was about 20 minutes away from your apartment, so you decided to take a taxi and pay for it together, because of Taehyung you had hurried out of your home, the man had taken a few more minutes, acclaiming that his hair was bad and that he had to fix it.

You showed your IDs to the security guard and you entered the place, a quiet R&B music echoing on the black walls of the bar, dim lights decorating the ceiling, groups of people sitting at some tables, some other loners sitting at the bar, you went through the place with your eyes, assimilating the new place, never had been in the place before but it seemed to be pleasant, a place where the music was not too loud for conversation, not too many people where you couldn’t breathe, and definitely no drunken man trying to take you home.

Suddenly you saw a white head and a pink head on one of the tables in the one of the tables at the back of the bar, you beckoned Tae and Jimin to follow you, they had clearly already seen the two colored heads with their own eyes.

When you came to the table you met two other people, both men, a very handsome young man with broad shoulders and brown hair next to Momo and the other young man with glasses and blond hair similar to Suga but not so white, showing a few small dimples on either side of his mouth. He seemed a very intelligent man.

“Hello y/n! I’m glad you came I was hoping to have some female company tonight once and for all” Momo chirped happily.

"Hi y/n, these are Namjoon and Seokjin" Greeted Suga motioning first to his side where the young man with glasses was and then to the other man with brown hair.

"Nice to meet you!" greeted Namjoon shaking hands. "We heard a couple of things about you, call me Jin." Seokjin added, extending his hand.

"These are my friends, Taehyung and Jimin" The two men greeted the other 4 people and sat in their respective places, leaving you the only free place next to Suga.

“I’m glad you came” He articulated with a low voice looking deeply into you, you noodeed and gave a little smile.

“So, tell me what you do y/n?” Namjoon said looking at you now, while the others where in their own conversations, Jimin and Tae chattering eagerly with Momo and Seokjin.

“Well, I’m in my Junior year at college, I’m studying literature” You explained to him while he and Suga observed you. “What about you?.

“Literature? That’s interesting…” Suga whispered more to himself than anything. Namjoon ignored him and answered “I major in English so I guess we have something in common”. A Smile already forming in your lips, this was such a good coincide you never had someone who you could talk to about language, it was a boring aspect to far too many people.

“Do you study at college too? I heard Momo said something the first time I went to the shop” You asked looking now to the white haired man at your side, suddenly you felt too close.

“Not anymore but I used to study Photography at the local university” He said as a matter of fact. You widened your eyes recalling the pictures you saw at the tattoo shop. Your curiosity took the best of you and you inquired him more about it “The pictures hanged in the Shop are all taken by you”.

He nodded his head at you. “They are really good, I didn’t know you tattooed and also had an eye for photography” you confessed without a doubt.

He showed you his characteristic gummy smile before thanking you “Thanks, is no big deal though”

“Oh don’t let him fool you, he is amazing at what he does, he is also a good composer, he even took some poetry classes to compose better songs” Namjoon bragged looking at his friend with a big smile, patting him in the back.

“You are a box of secrets, aren’t you?” You whispered to him, not really knowing that indeed he had a lot of secrets, some he didn’t want to share with you.

Before he could answer, you were interrupted by Jimin and Tae who were speaking out loud like they always did. Now paying attention to the conversation that was being held in the opposite side of the table.

“So how long have you been together?” Your blond friend asked Momo and Jin.

“We have been together for 3 years now, she is a pain in the ass but I love her” Jin giggled putting his arm around her waist and giving her a peck on her lips.

“Just say that you are with me because of my Pink hair” Momo joked and the whole table blurted out in laughter.

“Yeah, I love her pink hair but I love her more” Jin said before kissing her a little more eagerly than before.

Yoongi rolled his eyes at the sight “get a rooooom!” he exaggerated causing everyone to laugh.

Momo and Jin where such a cute couple, Momo yold you that Jin loved pink color and that he actually put his eyes on her because of that exact fact, he was studying at the library when she entered and the first thing he saw was her hair, he waited for her to end up his study lesson not wanting to bother her and when she finally got up from her sit he went straight to ask her to grab a coffee together, before they knew it they were already head over heels for each other.

The conversations flowed smoothly, talking about everything and nothing at the same time, Namjoon was a very intelligent person and he could talk about almost every topic known by men, and the fact that both of you studied something similar was great but your focus was on someone else, on some white haired dude you couldn’t seem to stop stealing glances at.

Jimin and Tae had suggested going out to a club since the bar was getting kind of boring, the same music all night long, sure it was nice for a while but the alcohol in their bodies was asking for something more exciting.

You all agreed to go to a club near the bar, just ten minutes away, to lazy and drunk to walk. You and Suga were the only ones who seemed kind of sober, you were a little tipsy nothing too serious. The rest was all fucked up, laughing out loud, yelling, doing stupid things that drunk people usually do like start running to see who was faster.

Both of you stayed behind walking slowly, taking your own time to enjoy the chill air of the night not making effect in your bodies due to the alcohol running through your veins.

“So… what kind of name is Suga?” You inquired observing him as the wind played with his bangs.

“That’s my nickname, my real name is Yoongi” He said as you both continued walking, just only one block away from the club.

“Do you mind if I call you Yoongi? I like it”.

“Sure, I would like it for you to call me Yoongi” Showing his gummy smile he took your hand in his, a little taken aback with the sudden gesture, electricity once again running through your body at his touch as you walked the few meters that were left.

The club was busting out with people, some dancing their worries away like there was no tomorrow, some others drinking their lifes away, couples making out in every dark corner, and the music echoing at the same time as your heart beat.

It had been a while since you were at a club but the foreign feeling was quickly dismissed as Taehyung and Jimin dragged you to the dance floor. Being followed by Momo and Jin who were all over each other, too far gone to care. They gave you a bottle and you were hesitant at first to drink only to be fueled up by Jimin and Tae.

“Chug, chug, chug, chug!” they chanted loudly through the music as they watched you swallow the burning liquid.

“Damn y/n! I didn’t know you could do that!”Jimin cheered while he continued dancing as a fucking dancing king along with a little more stiffed Taehyung who tried to follow his friend.

You looked at them giggling before making your way to the booth were Yoongi and Namjoon were sitted at.

“You don’t dance?” You asked to the men sitting at the booth, both of them drinking a beer.

“I’m awful at dancing but since you had mentioned I will try it” Namjoon shoot off of the booth to the dance floor.

You looked at Yoongi in a questioning gaze. “What about you, don’t you dance?”

“I don’t really like dancing, I prefer to be here and watch others embarrass themselves, do you like to dance?”.

You let out a sigh and looked at the dance floor “It has never been my forte to be honest, but I got used to it since my…” You stopped for a second thinking what to say before you added “One of my friends is a dancer”. You grabbed the beer that Namjoon left at the table and quickly gulped it down.

“Easy there, I saw you drink almost one entire bottle over there” He motioned at the dance floor were your friends and Yoongi’s friends where at, they were all wasted and the sight made you laugh your head off.

“I think I’m starting to get a little wasted myself, this is the last drink I promise” You standed up and went to Yoongi extending your hand for him to grab it.

“Let’s go dance” You cheered observing his reaction.

“I’m not good at dancing” he answered but you still held your hand until he rolled his eyes and grabbed it, standing up from his position and finishing his beer. “Good, I want to watch you embarrass yourself” you teased him and he only huffed with a little grin.

You made your way through the dance floor to where your friends were and started dancing without a worry, Yoongi was hesitant at first but watching that his friends and you were all actually dancing like idiots besides Momo and Jimin he followed you along.

The music shifted to a The Weeknd’s song, a very dark tune it made you want to swing your hips, Yoongi got closer to you, reaching your waist with your hands, placing them just slightly as he waited for you to give him a sign of disavowal, but there was none, you instead bucked your hips into him, as he pressed his chest on your back, his mouth right next to your ear.

You stayed like that for a while until he finally spoke “I want to kiss you so bad right now”.

You gasped and pushed your hips more into him before turning around to meet his gaze, his dark eyes were piercing into your lips and you whispered “Then just kiss me”.

You had never done this before, this man made you do things you thought, made you do things you wanted to do but didn’t have the courage.

You put your arms around his neck bringing him closer to you, feeling only his presence in the club when he finally kissed you, his lips where soft, wet and warm, you opened your mouth to let him explore it with his tongue, a mix of alcohol and mint mixing up in your interlaced lips. You left a pant and he stiffened the sound with his mouth, griping your waist harder, you yearned for his touch but he slowly detached his lips from yours to breath, looking at you fiercely.

“If I don’t stop I will make a huge fuss right here” He whispered into your ear, you were about to tell him to take you home, when Jimin touched your shoulder.

You annoyingly looked at him “What happened?” you grunted.

“Tae and Momo are really wasted, we are calling it a night”. You looked around you to find that the rest of the group were gone and were sitting at the booth, Jin trying to make Momo drink some water and Tae was made a little ball probably already asleep.

“I think we should should go too, It has been a long night” Yoongi concluded, and so you and the rest of the group made your way out of the club.

Momo, Seokjin and Namjoon took a cab together since their apartments were in the same direction. You took a cab with the rest, both of your friends got off first since their apartment was closer than yours from where you were.

You were seated right next to Yoongi in the cab, he discretely laid his hand on your bared thigh, making you shift in your place trying to close your legs but he slowly went on, pressing his fingers at your covered core, you closed your eyes and swallowed a moan. You didn’t want the driver to found about your “little” play game but you were so far gone into his touch that you didn’t care, what was this man doing to you?

Yoongi shifted his mouth to your ear “Be a good girl and don’t make a sound” he whispered seductively. Before you could let a high moan get out of your lips the taxi stopped, you opened your eyes and saw that you were already outside your apartment.

You sighed handing the driver the money as both of you got out of the cab. Entering your apartment Yoongi slammed you against your door, planting kisses all over you until he settled for your neck, you finally let out the moan you had been containing. “Fuck I love the sounds you make”. Yoongi gasped at your neck.

You buckled your core into his waist feeling his hard member through the fabric of his jeans. Your mind was spinning, not caring about anything anymore you grabbed him from his neck stronger than before as you rubbed yourself on him “Yoongi…” you gasped and he sudennly snapped, revoing his lips from your neck “I…. I think I should go” he stammered between breaths.

You stopped in your tracks “Is there something wrong, have I done something wrong?” you asked worriedly.

“No, no you didn’t” He sighed before continuing “It’s just I can’t do this right now, but it has nothing to do with you I promise” he said covering his face with his hands.

You stiffened at the sight, his words not leaving you assured. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, if you don’t want it I’m totally okay with it.” You said thinking that indeed you had done something wrong.

He looked at you and he got closer grasping tightly your jaw, he plunged back into your lips giving you a soft deep kiss “Don’t think that I don’t want you because I’m sure as hell I do, I will call you okay?”. He said before giving you a last peck on the lips. “Okay” you whispered.

He stood there for a few seconds observing you, something in his eyes you couldn’t pinpoint as he finally turned around and left.

You entered your house and sighed deeply as you leaned against the now closed door, his words didn’t leave you at ease at all, feelings of worry and guilt flooding your mind at the sight of the last look the man had given you.

[cutsiecuters]

The Whisper Part 10

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Summary: You find yourself pregnant with Idol Park Jimin’s baby. You knew no one in their right mind would believe you but you needed to tell someone. What you didn’t expect was for someone to start messaging you, and helping you? 🤔

- Jimin's pov -

This can't be happening! No, no, no, no, no, he can't fucking come here! Why does everyone have to be here right now!? Why can't Namjoon, Yoongi, and Hoseok be at the studio or something? Oh my god, what is Jin going to say when he finds out!?

"I'll get it!" Taehyung suddenly said excited and ran to the door. Shit! Is he here already? "Jae Hyung!" Damn it.

"Hey, Tae!" I hear him before they walk into the living room. "Hey, Jimin," he says looking at me.

"H-hey, hyung," I said earning a quite skeptical look from Namjoon who was sat on the couch next to me.

"This is for you," he says holding out a small piece of paper to me. I hesitantly take it. Kind of concerned in the back of my head since everyone is so quiet around me.

As soon as I turn it around a gasp leaves my mouth, my eyes widen as I stare at the ultrasound picture.

"Is that-"

"Yes, it is."

"What is what?" I hear behind me. I nearly jump out of my skin from Jin Hyung's voice so close by.

"Nothing!" I say too quickly and hide the picture.

"Jimin, you have to tell them," Jae-Hyun said sighing as he took a seat.

"I can't," I mumble, hanging my head.

"What is this, Jimin!" I look up again to see Hoseok next to Jae-Hyun who showed him his picture of the ultrasound. What a good friend you are.

"Nothing!" I answer again.

"An ultrasound is not nothing!"

"Why do you have an ultrasound, Jae-Hyun?" Jungkook asked him, looking over Hoseoks shoulder. Jae-Hyun looked at me with a pointed look making me sigh.

"I got someone pregnant," I mumble looking back down, moving my own picture back into view.

"Are you kidding me, Jimin!?" Jin said loudly. "When would this even happen!? Why does Jae-Hyun have to give you the ultrasound picture!?" He bombarded me with questions.

"Three months..." I hear Taehyung mumble, next to me as he looks at the information on the picture.

"You've been hiding this for three months?" Namjoon said.

"Yes," I mumble. I knew this would happen, now all of them are disappointed in me. "I didn't mean too, I just didn't know how to tell you guys."

"Alright, and what brings Jae-Hyun into the mix?" Yoongi, who was still sat in the same place on the couch as he had been the whole day, observing all that just happened in the span of 10 minutes.

"I am the one who keeps on meeting with her," Jae-Hyun answered. "Since he obviously can't."

"Don't act like you hate it!" I said giving him a pointed look. "You wanted to ask her out on a date."

"That doesn't have to do with anything," he says. "I can't tell her that you know, and I have to hear her thanking me while you are the one who is actually doing things for her, all I do is, come into view when she wants to meet up."

"What have you been doing for her then?" Hoseok asks me with a confused look.

"She got kicked out by her parents when she told them, so I am paying for the hotel room she stays in now, I pay for a driver who brings her to college and back and I pay for her room service," I list off.

"Well, at least you are taking some responsibility," Jin mumbled. "But how are you sure she isn't lying to you?"

"I can actually confirm she isn't lying," Jae-Hyun says confidently.

"Oh, my god, please tell me you didn't watch it?" I ask covering my face with my hands, embarrassed over the fact Jae-Hyun could have seen it.

"Watched what?"

"Y/n, her friends, taped the whole thing," he answers wanting to continue explaining only to be cut off by Taehyung.

"She's got a tape of them having sex!?"

"Yes, please stop talking about it," I mumble as an answer, my face probably as red as a tomato at this point.

"Y/n felt really ashamed when she found out," Jae-Hyun continues to explain. "She didn't even know there had been a camera to film the whole thing, until the next morning when Jimin had already left."

"Does Y/n still have it then?" Yoongi asked.

"Of course she does, it's her only proof it's him," He stated like it was obvious.

"What does she plan on doing with it?"

"Nothing," I answer. "She's already embarrassed enough herself, and she doesn't want to invade my privacy even more by spreading it around. She hasn't talked to those "friends" of her ever since she found out," I take out my phone to look at the last picture she sent to me of her belly. 

"Jae-Hyun, do you know who took this picture?" I ask him showing the image.

"I did, she wanted a pretty picture of her so she could put it as her background, I actually took it before we left for the doctor's appointment."

"You've been in her room?"

"Yes, I have, three times now."

"How come I didn't know about this?"

"Because I knew you wanted to keep it a secret so I gave Nari my phone number so if Y/n ever needed me, Nari could call me and I would come right over."

"Why?"

"Because I get annoyed when you ask me to go do stuff for you," he answers with a sigh. "When I hear it from her directly, it's a lot better because I can actually hear the tone in her voice so I can tell if it's something serious or not," I let out a sigh. "Oh, by the way, her doctor hates you."

"What do you mean, she hates me?"

"She hates the fact that you left her pregnant."

"But I didn't even know she was until after the first week and I've been there for her ever since!"

"But neither of them know that now do they?" he tells me. "But you have an opportunity to meet her."

"What do you mean?"

"The doctor found of the gender, but she is keeping it a secret to not only me but herself too," he says. "She wants to give a small gender reveal party."

"Really?" I ask to be sure. "Who do you think she'll invite?"

"Uhm, I'm guessing this guy from her college, Nari, me, maybe her parents but I'm not sure, oh the driver too and I think that's it really," he lists. "But since you are actually me, or the other way around, my invitation is meant for you."

"But I can't go."

"Are you sure? It's not she's going to hold it somewhere too public, plus if you plan it yourself you can make it as private as you want."

To be continued…

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Requests are open

[lovetusk]

Very hard few days.

Shit has been very bad for me lately.

On Monday, I went into Matrim’s doctors appointment expecting to walk out just as I walked in. Instead, I walked out worried. Matrim LOST weight, and they couldn’t figure out why. Everything pointed to maybe something was wrong with him. I was given 3 days to try and get his weight back up. Breast and formula became our routine. But the more formula I added, the less breast he took. When I pump, I get nothing. And half the time, he won’t even take the breast for more then 2-5 minutes before he’s frustrated and screaming.

As we got closer to today, I got more anxious, and more scared. Because if he didn’t gain 60 grams, we were being sent to the hospital because something was wrong.

I asked Pat for something. Just for some affection, I needed to stay out of my own head. He had excuses when I asked, and all but led me to believe it would happen later. Later never came. The longer I waited, the more in my head I got, until I couldn’t take it.  I had been out right ignored, and he didn’t seem to care how I was feeling. I started to feel unattractive on top of everything else.

Yesterday I spent the day in bed. I was in and out of sleep, and I didn’t eat all day. I was alone, and miserable. I was depressed. And no one seemed to care, add feelings of worthlessness to the pile. Pat took care of the kids, but not once did he ask what was wrong.

Not until he came to bed for the night. He finally realized how bad I was doing, he finally gave me some form of affection that I had needed badly the night before. I got cuddled for a few minutes, told he loved me. He had excuses again for the night before, but I didn’t care. I just needed someone to hold me, that’s all I had really asked for.

I was up most of the night, so when morning rolled around and I was woken up, I jokingly said “why do I need to get up.” And the progress, the apologies from the night before went out the window. Forgotten.

I was given shit. I got in shit before I walked out of the room, and I got in shit moments later, when I mentioned he didn’t have to change the diaper, that I had just needed to pee and would have done it.

I cried while I fed Mat. Then I got everyone ready, woke him back up and we left for Mat’s doctors appointment to get weighed  and Pat took Luke to the park. I was scared, really fucking scared that he was losing more weight, but who did I have to talk to? So I stayed quiet. I moved through the motions, just not wanting to get shit again.

He gained weight. They wanted the 60g, he gained 40. It was enough for them to not send us to the hospital, because they realized I was the problem. Not Matrim.

Queue feeling like a failure, again. This is the third time in 3 weeks my body was failing to do something it was designed to do. I felt like shit. And I didn’t want to go home. I felt like crap as it was, I didn’t need more of that morning.

When I did go home, and I told him what they said, told him it was my fault, he once again realized how bad I was doing. I still feel the hurt of this morning, of yesterday, and the night before that. I still feel like I’ve failed all around, but at least he’s not piling on the shit.

My mother though, she is. I know my mother too well. If there was something wrong, if we had to go to the hospital, that’s when I’d tell her. Otherwise, she’d blow it up bigger than it is, make it about her, and put everyone in a panic. I didn’t need that stress.

She was upset that I didn’t call. She was upset that I didn’t update her, when I hadn’t been on fb for days and didn’t see her message on there. She called the second I got in the house, and when I tried to use humor to mask my pain and said “He’s surviving.” with a chuckle, I got yelled at and hung up on. Because how dare I not tell her what I hadn’t told anyone yet.

And when I took the time after collecting myself to send her a fb message, KNOWING she wouldn’t answer my call, I got bombarded with her victim complex of how much I hate her because she’s a terrible mother, and she’ll never bother me again

I ate today. I drank tea, and juice and water. We did some errands, and I got meds to help boost my milk supply. I’m trying. I’m trying so fucking hard to hold it together here, and she dropped that on me.

I just want someone to hold me. Tell me it’ll be okay.

3 weeks old today, and I’m already a fuck up.

But I guess I’ll keep trying.