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[all-you-need-is-paul-mccartney]

Across The Universe (Paul McCartney x Female!Reader)

A/N: Yeah, I’m totally about to drop this, and a new chapter for TCND today. I don’t know how many of y’all like the Beatles, but I wrote this, and wanna see if anyone will really want another part.

OKAY SO I’m gonna say right now that I do not own, or are affiliated with the Beatles in any way (RIP), and this story is based off of/ heavily inspired by the 2007 movie Across The Universe, but the main characters, Jude and Lucy, are represented as Paul and the Reader. All of the characters mentioned, or are in this chapter (Other than Vick) are either real people, or characters from the movie. 

Although all of the descriptive writing is mine, the concept was taken from the movie. A lot of the writing here has been altered from the movie to better fit the characters and situations they are in. I’ve added/ changed parts that weren’t in the movie in the first place, and I left a little out, again, for the purpose of the plot to kinda make more sense. This fic will be more focused on the relationship developing between the two love interests than in the movie, so lots of iconic scenes from the movie (Such as Prudence’s first scene, Jojo’s introduction to New York, etc) won’t be included in the fic, though those characters will make appearances at some point.

I will make up for the lack of content there with more scenes of Paul and the Reader interacting/ in situations that didn’t happen in the movie.

I advise you watch Across The Universe, or have already watched it before you read to prevent spoilers, bc there will probably be a lot of those. (Watching it when high makes it even better tbh, there’s some trippy stuff in that)

A L S O , In this AU, the Beatles do not exist, although it is set in the 60′s!! Paul is legit just a 23 year old guy who wants to see the world.

Summary: Paul decides to head to the United States; You say good bye to your boyfriend before he leaves for Vietnam.

WARNINGS: Swearing, mentions of War, Mike McCartney calling Paul out on some bs, probably a couple of grammar errors bc it’s like... 5:30 AM where I am, and I haven’t slept yet :)

This little fic will be rated T. just because of the swearing

Prom went just as you'd expected it to: You had a nice meal, and did some wonderful dancing with your boyfriend. Despite the blisters on your feet from your shoes, you disregarded them as a temporary memory of one of the last times you'd see Daniel before he took off for the war.

When he got the letter in the mail, he opened it in your presence. Up until the day he died, he felt guilty for making you one of the first to know of his draft.

He cried in your arms for a long while, and you put all your strength into holding your tears back to bring him comfort in such a difficult time.

America had only just entered the Vietnam War, and it didn't seem real to any of you until the day Daniel got that fucking letter.

After talking it over with him, Daniel proposed that the both of you should just enjoy the remaining time you had before he'd have to leave.

And that's what put you here, in the passenger seat of Daniel's car, his mouth leeched onto your neck as his fingers tangled themselves in your hair.

"My mum and dad are home," you explained gently; solemnly. Daniel pulled away from your neck, instead moving to rest his lips on your forehead. "Of course."

He pulled away completely then, stepping out of the car and moving to the other side to hold your door open for you.

You stepped out, and Daniel interlaced his fingers with yours as you both walked up the drive to your house. The both of you listened to the clicks of Daniel's shoes on the pavement-- you were barefoot, your heels hanging from your fingers.

When he'd brought you up the porch, you turned to lean against one of the house's banisters. Daniel saw the look on your face, the one that just screamed 'please don't leave.'

"I'll be home soon," he said confidently, reaching out to squeeze one of your hands. "They give you a furlough after boot camp."

"And after that?" You never got a verbal response. Daniel just wrapped his arms around you tightly. You squeezed your eyes shut, and hugged him back with all the strength you had.

_____________________________

And at this time, across the Pond in Liverpool, England, Paul McCartney was walking home his girlfriend Molly, who he'd been out at a bar with all night, drinking and dancing to the live bands said bar had to offer that evening (and morning).

"Who'll take me out next week? You'll be halfway around the world." She threw a glance over her shoulder, and all Paul could do was offer her a cheeky smile.

"Well it better not be Phil Scully."

Honestly, Paul knew he deserved the shove Molly gave him not moments later, but he just threw his arms around her with a laugh as they turned down her street.

Paul tried to slip into his back door as quietly as he could, being sure to force a fake cough so he could discreetly lock the door.

He was finally safe. He took the time to puff out the air he'd been holding in his lungs, and he rested his forehead against the door.

"... Finally back, I see?"

Paul cringed.

Fuck.

"Yeah... sorry, Dad."

Paul turned around, and sure enough, there his father was: at the table, an empty plate of crumbs sitting in front of him, a cup of tea in his hand, and the Liverpool Echo in the other.

"Your brother just got home, too," Mr. McCartney mumbled as he brought his mug to his lips.

"He was with his girlfriend."

"I was, too," Paul defended as he opened the refrigerator and snagged an apple off one of the shelves before kicking the door shut and leaning against the counter.

Mike, Paul's brother, had just stepped into the kitchen with the same intention as Paul: getting breakfast.

"Mornin!'"

Paul nodded his head to his brother, mouth already full of apple.

"But I know who Mike's girlfriend is, James."

"Ooh," Mike smiled wickedly. He'd come in at just the right time. "Yeah, James, Dad knows who my Bird is."

Paul cringed a little at the name. James. The only people he really allowed to call him James was his parents.

"I just haven't... found the right time to introduce her, 's all," Paul excused after he swallowed. To avoid saying anything else, he went in for another bite of the fruit.

"No, it's because I actually love my girlfriend," Mike chortled as he popped a slice of bread in the toaster by Paul's arm, which just resulted in a playful shove from his older brother.

"I love my girlfriend," He argued back.

"But have you even told her that?"

Paul rubbed the back of his neck. "Well... not exact--"

"Point proven," Mike pointed to his brother, eyeing his father proudly.

"Look, all I'm saying, James, is that clearly, if you're stalling an introduction, you don't plan on keeping her 'round," Mr. McCartney explained.

"Dad, it's... it's complicated." Paul was rubbing the back of his neck again before taking another bite from his apple.

"There's just no point in wasting your time with someone you're just gonna throw away,"

"Whoa whoa whoa," Paul put his hands up at his brother's comment. "Who said anything about throwing anyone away?!"

"Well, you are going to America in a couple of days," Mike pointed out, grinning widely as his toast popped. He moved around the kitchen for a knife and some butter from the table.

"You really gonna stay with her when you're gonna have all those single American girls around to choose from?"

Paul didn't answer. He just shoved the apple into his mouth, rolled his eyes, and moved to the other side of the room, where the staircase leading upstairs was located.

He took a seat on the first two steps as he continued eating away at his breakfast.

"Paul, when I was your age-- maybe even younger than you, I met your mother. I knew she was The One after our first date. I took her home to meet my parents immediately."

Paul waited patiently for his father to get to the point.

"If you're not bringing her 'round, maybe she ain't the right one. Just think about it."

No one really said much else. Mike had started eating his toast, and Mr. McCartney turned his attention back to the paper, so Paul went upstairs.

He shut the door to his room when he arrived, and sighed happily at the sight of his bed. He climbed right on without taking his coat off. He kicked his legs up and stared at the ceiling as he finished off his apple, tossing the core into the waste bin next to him.

He understood where his father was coming from, and maybe he was right. But, Paul wasn't exactly looking for a long-term partner like all his other friends had done after they graduated from school.

Even Mikey had hopped onto that gravy train.

Paul was twenty-three. He still had plenty of time to find a girlfriend and settle down. That's why he decided to take off to The Land Of Opportunity. He wanted to get out and experience what it was like outside his dreary hometown before he devoted the rest of his life to a wife and kids, and living as a boring, stereotypical family until the day he died.

Did he have a Visa to legally work in America?

Fuck no. But it's not like that was gonna stop him from finding some form of income, whether or not it was technically legal.

Paul sat up in his bed, turning to peer into his closet.

He was pulling his suitcases from there moments later, and he unzipped all of them to begin packing. There was nothing he really needed to pack rather than his clothes, cigarettes, passport, a photo of his mother, and a small notebook containing all the phone numbers he'd had to keep over the years.

His cousin's number was the one he was particularly packing the book for. Paul managed to convince him to make room for him at his place he shared with his friends just outside the Princeton University Campus, where he was currently studying.

"You're a lifesaver, Vick" Paul mumbled as he tossed the book into one of the suitcases, and zipping it back up.

_____________________________

"Sometimes I feel like you're not tellin' me everythin'," Molly mumbled as she pulled away from the swelling kiss Paul was trying to leave her before he parted for America.

"I just need a break from here, Molly. I'll be back before you know it," he tried to comfort her with his gentle words, but she just looked upset. 

"N'd a break from me," it sounded more like a statement.

"Don't be ridiculous," he offered a smile, but when she didn't really react to it, Paul slipped his fingers into her hair, and threw it behind her shoulder.

"I'll be missing you by tomorrow,"

"I bet," she mumbled, eyes fixed on a pebble on the sidewalk between her feet.

Paul pinched her chin, and tilted her head so she was looking right at him. He looked more serious now.

"I'll write home everyday."

"You better."

"N'd I'll send all my loving to you."

And that's all it took.

"You bastard," Molly tried concealing her grin, but Paul had her wrapped around his finger, and she gave in to his charm.

And not long after, she was giving into another one of his desperate kisses.

_____________________________

"I promise, every day I'll write, babe. I love you so much," Daniel rushed his words out between quick kisses he left on your lips, his hands squeezing your own tightly. He pulled away soon enough to give you a smile, and then the car he was in started driving away. 

His hands slipped away from yours, and you suddenly felt cold.

You wanted to chase after the car, but your feet stayed glued to the road. Your heart felt strained as you watched the car drive off and around the corner.

Good-bye, Danny.

_____________________________

A/A/N: If you want me to continue on with this, please let me know! I really really like the Beatles, and I wanted to give Paul x Reader a try. As always, likes, replies, and reblogs are always appreciated. And I promise, the next chapter to this will be much, much longer, if y’all want it enough <3

[kayteewritessteve]

DT - Drunk Twitter 1/3

Description: One stupid drunken night leads to an uncomfortable week from hell. That only gets worse when you are forced to face the problems, that your drunken escapades caused, head on. Yeah, you are never going to drink ever again.

Masterlist HERE.

Word Count: 8,380 ish.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader.

Rating: PG.

Warnings: Lots of curse words, awkward moments, and a slightly frustrated reader. Little angst here and there, but lots of stupid humour.

Requested: Nah, this just randomly popped into my head and I ran with it.

A/N: I sadly don’t own any of these characters. And no beta reader, so I do proudly own all the errors and this story, so there’s that.

You groan loudly as your hand flails out from under your duvet cocoon, blindly searching for the hellish contraption that currently insists on screaming at you. It is far too early for such an ungodly sound, and you are far too hungover for this shit right now.

Your hand finally makes contact with the screeching little asshole that is your alarm clock, causing a loud smash to echo through the room, just from the sheer force of your flailing limb alone. And then instantly your room falls back into silence once again. Though the constant ringing in your ears, both from the alarm and your hangover, makes that last fact slightly unknown to you in this moment.

You groan, grumbling incoherently as you pull your hand back into the warmth of the little blanket bundle that has now become your life. You plan to spend the rest of your days just hiding in this dark little cove, and then eventually one day dying here. Which from the aches and pains wreaking havoc on you currently, might be sooner, rather than later.

Why the hell did you drink so much?! Who let you polish off two bottles of wine last night?! Like, where the hell was your adult?! Clearly from this day forward you’d need someone to constantly make life choices for you, so that you never ended up in this position ever again.

You vow in this exact moment, that from this day on you will never ever drink again.

But then you remember your best friend's birthday is in 2 weeks, and you groan loudly. Okay, so you kinda have to drink for that, but mark your words now, that will be the very last time that you do!

Your phone buzzes on your bed beside you, lighting up the dark little fortress you’ve created around yourself. And whelp, looks like you never plugged it in last night. You’re honestly surprised it’s even still alive. You’d have to write a tweet to Apple about how their phone actually made it 24 hours on one charge. You’re sure that’s something they’d like to know about, as that was a highly uncommon thing to actually happen.

You reach over to grab your phone, picking it up and bringing it close to your face, before hissing at the brightness and yanking it away with such force you’re surprised you didn’t fling it across the room. You squint your eyes as you fumble to turn the brightness down, and once you successfully have you bring the screen back to you. Directly in front of your face so your blurry, dry eyes can actually read it.

And instantly you gasp loudly, your eyes watching as notification after notification pops up on your lock screen. Your twitter is blowing up right now and a cold sweat promptly rips through you. Because oh God, did you do it again?! Did you seriously post something while stupidly drunk again?!

Fuck. You groan, unlocking your phone quickly to check. Because for some ungodly reason, drunk you always insisted on posting the stupidest tweets. Normally you’d wake up the next morning, hungover and a little closer to death than the day before, and you’d open your twitter to find all the ridiculous shit you’d posted about, the previous night. Usually all of which only had maybe a retweet or two, a couple likes and usually at least one comment—thanks to your lovely best friend. Her comments normally consisting of both laughing at you and calling you out for being a crazy drunk tweeter. She just knew you and your quirks far too well. It was seriously a problem.

But this time, this time was clearly entirely different. However that was just an educated guess, due mainly to the hundreds of notifications that you now had, thanks to whatever your dumb drunk ass had posted, which had obviously blown up. And now you’d be lucky if you could sweep it under the rug like you’d always done in the past.

Oh God, please don’t let it be another praising tweet to some figure head or celebrity. That seemed to be your go to favourite thing to drunk-tweet. You had this weird need to cheer random strangers up when you were drunk. This insistent desire to support and appreciate the people you idolized. Oh please God say you didn’t tag the person the tweet was about this time.

Your shaky thumb clicks the iconic blue and white, Twitter app icon. Completely ignoring the ridiculous number in the little red circle on the icons top right corner, as you do. You haven’t even read the tweet yet and already you’re freaking the fuck out.

You quickly make your way to your profile and your eyes widen at the insanely large rant, that’s continued through multiple separate tweets, and is now sitting at the top of your page. Your eyes skim over them all, in order of posting, and you cringe, truly and utterly mortified now.

‘Do you ever just hear of someone in passing, or see them in the media, and have this instantaneous deep longing emotion within you. Not a longing in the sense of wanting them, but entirely due to hoping with everything inside you that they find their true happiness one day..’

‘..‪That they wake up in a few years and smile, like truly smile, because they are exactly where they wanted to be. Where they deserved to be. That they’d ended up with every desire they had yearned for. And I’m not talking about material objects. I’m talking life goals and accomplishments..’‬

‪‘..I’m talking about the true important aspects of life. The things that actually matter in the grand scheme of it all. Well, that is how I feel whenever someone brings up Steve Rogers. Or whenever I see an article or a news story about him. I instantly have this desperate want for him..’‬

‪‘..to be happy. Truly and utterly happy. The man deserves exactly that, and yet so much more. What with everything he has done for us and this planet. If anyone in this world has earned their happily ever after, it’s that man.’ ‬

‪Oh God. You groan, as your free hand comes up to cover your face in sheer horror and embarrassment. I mean, at least the silver lining here is you didn’t make any major spelling mistakes, and you also luckily, completely forget to actually tag him in it. So those are both small victories, in and of themselves. ‬

‪But the fact parts of that rant had blown up, regardless of you actually tagging him, is a little disheartening. You’re pretty sure he’s either seen it or been informed about it by now. And even if by the off chance he hasn’t, you know it’s only a matter of time before that changes. ‬

‪You scroll through the notifications and you feel your heart stop, as all the blood leaves your body and goes—honestly who knows where it goes, but it definitely doesn’t stick around to be apart of this train wreck of a situation. You abruptly sit up, the blankets falling from your upper body and pooling around your waist now.

‪Tony Stark retweeted your post. ‬

‪5 little words that make you want to delete every social media account you currently have, plus move to ‬Lesotho or something. Never heard of Lesotho? Well, that’s exactly why you’d picked to move there. Because most people don’t really know it even exists, nor where to find it on a map. So it would be the perfect place to hide away, and start a new life under a fake name.

Yup, it’s settled. Pack your bags, we’re moving to Lesotho!

You don’t even have it in you to read Mr. Starks response back to your tweets, nor dig any further into your notifications to see who else may have retweeted this whole mess. God, what is wrong with yo—

Your phone ringing scares the complete shit out of you, damn near chucking the metal brick across your room, for the second time this morning if anyone is keeping tabs, as your heart thumps loudly in your chest. However, you manage to keep a firm grip on your phone, but just barely. Effectively saving the thing from an untimely death, thanks to being forcefully introduced to your bedrooms brick wall.

Though come to think of it, maybe smashing it would be the best option here?

You sigh deeply as you finally notice it’s your best friend calling, a groan leaving your throat as you then instantly realize that she is probably calling thanks to your stupid Drunk Twitter rant. You contemplate not answering for a second, you could pretend you’re still asleep. But you know she’ll just keep calling until you answer, or worse, she’ll just show up at your house and let herself in with her spare key. Then you won’t have the luxury of hanging up on her if her teasing gets to be too much.

So as you click the answer button and hesitantly raise the phone to your ear, you prepare yourself for your incoming humiliation. I mean, more so than your already currently experiencing. Which is both surprising and frustrating, because who knew you could ever be this mortified in real life? You certainly didn’t, but yet here you are.

“Oh my God, Y/N!” Lindsey’s loud voice mixed with her unabashed laughter rings out of the phones speaker, it’s so loud that you instantly yanked the phone away from your ear. Your headache coming back tenfold as you groan loudly and message the side of your skull.

“Giiiiirl!!” She hollers now, and so lustrously that you can hear her perfectly, even with the phone still being nowhere near your ear. “What the hell were you drinking last night? And where can I get me some!”

You grumble out a, “you need to lower your voice or I’m hanging up on you.”

“Awe, is someone a little hungover today?” She coos in a motherly voice, though at a much quieter level now, at least enough to warrant putting the phone back to your ear once again. However her voice may be softer now, but the playful and teasing edge to her tone is as loud as a freaking bomb.

“More like dead,” you mumble falling back down to lay on your bed and slinging your free arm over your eyes. “Or at least I wish I was.”

Her gleeful cackle rings out of the phones speaker now. “Girl, don’t say that! I’d miss you too much, and you’re fucking famous now!”

You just groan, not even remotely interested in what she means by that.

“Oh, and why am I famous now, Lindsey?” She says in a mocking tone, clearly trying to impersonate you, but in your opinion not coming anywhere close. “It’s so wonderful you should ask Y/N! Probably because your tweets are all over the news stations, social media and the internet. Even most of the Avengers have already retweeted it, most notably Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson AND Bucky Barnes. Ya know, all of Steve Roger’s best friends. But yet, no one has commented on whether the recipient of your beautiful drunken words has actually seen it or not. Buuuuut we can all assume he probably has.”

“Can we just not do this today?” You roll onto your side, your free hand now pulling the duvet up and over your head again. “I am in far too much pain and far too humiliated to be having this conversation right now. Can we please, for the love of all things that are holy, talk about something else? Anything else, I beg you!”

“Hell no!” She exclaims, you wincing at the abrupt volume change. “My best friend is famous! And all because she drank too much wine and tweeted a ridiculously sweet rant about thee Captain America! Honestly, this. Is. Just. Too. Damn. Good.” She squeals, “you can’t even write better shit than this!”

“Lindsey,” you groan, “I am way too hungover and under caffeinated for this right now. Seriously, I’m going to hang up now and hopefully fucking die.”

“Fine, fine,” she relents but you can still hear the humour in her voice, “I promise I’ll drop it, for now. But get your sexy ass out of that bed and meet me in the kitchen STAT.”

“Uuugh,” you drag the sound out. “You’re freaking in my house right now, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she says gleefully. “But before you flip shit, don’t. I brought coffee and bagels, so be a good girl and get your ass out here or I’m going to eat all of it myself.”

You don’t even respond as you hang up the phone, she had you at ‘coffee’. You quickly flip the blankets off yourself and roll out of bed. Not even bothering to check yourself out in the mirror because honestly, Lindsey has seen you at your worst. So she is entirely used to this from you.

You trudge your way out to the kitchen, seeing your best friend pulling wrapped food from a brown bag and you groan again, but this time happily. Her eyes dart up to you and she gives you a once over, a small frown on her lips now.

“Oh boo thang, you look horrendous,” she says softly, sweetly, as you reach her, and she hands you the large to go cup of coffee. “Drink this. Then go jump in the shower, you stink like shame and poor life choices,” she scrunches up her nose playfully.

“I honestly don’t think a shower will remove those particular smells from my skin. I think that’s just my natural scent now,” you giggle as you take a deep waft of the glorious life juice’s warm aroma, a content sigh coming out on the exhale. You bring the drink to your lips and almost moan. Yes, you are this much of a coffee nut. You take a few generous gulps then stumble over to the counter stools and plop down. “But a shower does sounds like a good plan,” you nod, the cup staying close to your mouth for quick and easy access.

She hums in agreement, nodding as she hands you a wrapped up bagel. “So, should we talk about what caused you to want to get ‘Sappy Drunk Tweets’ wasted last night or?”

You sigh, “I just had a shit day at work. My boss was a raging asshole, yet again.” You shake your head, “but what’s new?”

“I can not stand that evil little man!” Your friend growls. “You seriously need to find a new job, Y/N. You can’t keep working for that piece of shit anymore. And I honestly don’t think your poor liver can take much more of these semi frequent beatings. Somethings gotta change.”

“I know, I know,” you nod, “I’ve been searching for something else, but there just isn’t many available jobs at the moment. But I’m hopeful I’ll find something soon.” You take another large gulp of the sweet, sweet liquid gold, feeling as the warmth radiates throughout your whole body, as your brain slowly begins to rejoin the land of the living.

It’s been a few days since your stupid drunken escapades on Twitter, and a few days since Lindsey visited. You both had enjoyed your coffee and bagels, talking about everything and nothing. Luckily she had kept the drunk tweet talk to a minimum, like she promised. And once you were all done that, Lindsey headed off to work and you hopped in the shower, before spending the entire day on your couch, watching movies and pointedly ignoring your phone. Or rather, the never ending string of notifications on said phone.

So now you’ve been basically hiding out since then, only leaving your house to go to work or to make a quick trip to the store down the block from your apartment. The stupid tweets are still blowing up, people are still retweeting them and talking about them.

You’d hoped this would have all blown over by now, that something else ridiculous would have come along and stolen everyone's attention. But alas, you aren’t that lucky. Because not a damn thing is going on in the world right now, obviously, as everyone is still very much hung up on your whole embarrassing sap fest.

So much so that you are being recognized now as the ‘Steve Tweet Woman’. Which is just fucking outstanding—ha! not!

News outlets, websites and talk shows have been blowing up your phone and email, asking for comments or to set up interviews. Wanting to know if anyone from Steve’s camp has reached out to you, or if you’ve been invited to the tower to meet the team. Also asking if you and the Avengers are now friends, or at the very least acquaintances. And those are just a few of the things they are asking you. Honestly, those are the least ridiculous questions—which is freaking sad.

So leaving your house has become a damn chore now, you have to wear a full disguise just in the hopes no one recognizes you. This is not what you wanted at all. Shit, you don’t even know what you wanted from making that tweet, but this for sure was not it. Not even close.

You’d avoided Twitter along with all your social media playforms since that dreadful morning, as well. You were just too overwhelmed with all the notifications and messages you’d been receiving ever since. Far too many to ever read, let alone even keep up with. Nor did you want to see what any of them actually said.

You sigh, trying to focus back on your computer monitor. You were currently at work, hiding out in your cubicle and keeping your head down.

At the moment you worked as a writer for a news and entertainment website, much like Buzzfeed but nowhere near as large or well known—And I know! Ironic right? Uuuugh! Your damn life was just such a joke.

Your cubicle neighbour, Tyler, springs up over your divider wall. His arms resting on the top as his chin sits on them, a small frown on his face. So this obviously isn’t going to be good.

“Do I even want to know?” You ask quietly before he can utter a word.

He sighs, “probably not. But sadly you kinda have to know.”

“Okay,” you spun slightly in your chair to face him fully. “I’m ready, lay it on me.”

“The boss saw your tweets,” he starts and you wince in embarrassment. “He messaged me as your email keeps sending his messages back undelivered. So you should probably check into that, but first, he wants to see you in his office.”

You groan, dropping your forehead onto your desk with a thud, “my email has been so swamped the last few days that I shut down the receiver.”

“Understandable,” he says quietly, and you can hear that the frown is still present on his face.

“Does he want to see me now?” You peek up at him.

He nods, “yeah, said it was urgent.”

“Shit,” you mumble and sit up, grabbing a notebook and pen quickly as you stand from your chair. “Well, wish me luck, hopefully he doesn’t just fire me the second I walk through the door.”

Tyler shakes his head, “he’d be an even bigger idiot than we all currently think he is, if he did that. Don’t sweat it, at worst he’ll probably just throw a tantrum and give you a slap on the wrist.”

“On second thought, I think I’ll just quit instead,” you say playfully as you walk out of your cubicle. Hearing Tyler’s deep chuckle behind you as you do.

“But then who will keep me entertained everyday?”

“You’ll find someone,” you giggle, shrugging. “My replacement, most likely. Though sadly they will never be as awesome as me!”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he agrees as he lowers back down into his chair and you continue on towards your bosses office.

A moment later you find yourself standing outside of his closed door, notepad clutched to your chest. You have no idea what this impromptu meeting will be about, but you can only assume it has something to do with your stupid drunken posts.

You take a deep breath in, raising your fist up to knock on the door. And a moment later hearing a muffled and authoritative, “enter.” God, he really was just such an entitled asshole.

You open the door and peek your head in, “you wanted to see me, Sir?”

He glances up and nods, “ah, Y/N. Yes, come in.”

You quickly open the door and make your way into his office, closing the door and then hastily moving to stand in front of him.

He interlocks his fingers together and rests his hands on his desk, just staring at you. “Why isn’t your email working?”

“Oh, uh,” you shift awkwardly in your spot. “I um, I shut it off for a bit.” You nod, “just till I could get caught up on the emails I already have.”

He raises a brow at you, “your email is being swamped with messages, I take it?”

You nod again, “ah yes, Sir.”

“Does that have anything to do with the tweets you sent out last week?”

You almost groan, almost, but manage to contain it. “It—it does, Sir.”

He nods, glancing to his monitor, “now normally, foolish shenanigans such as this would be grounds for termination. And I was going to fire you for the embarrassment you’ve brought on this company, but I had a change of heart. So you won’t be losing your position just yet.”

You nod slowly, wishing you could give this idiot a piece of your mind. But your need to pay bills and have a job forces you to bite your tongue. “Oh, um, thank you, Sir.”

“But,” he flicks his beady eyes back to you, “you will have to make this up to me.”

You almost gulp, what the hell does that even mean?! “Um, how,” you clear your throat, “how exactly would you like me to do that?”

He leans back in his chair, a smirk on his lips. One that instantly causes a chill to run down your spin, and this time you do gulp. “There is a press conference in 3 days. You are going to attend it on behalf of our website.”

You nod, following along so far, and honestly this doesn’t sound so bad. Getting to be at a conference first hand is a huge accomplishment. Being trusted enough to be the one present is a big deal in this company. Normally only seasoned writers get to attend such functions.

Yet, something about this feels...off. Like there is a shoe about to drop nearby and you can’t shake that thought. “Okay, um of course, Sir. But what is the press release for, exactly?”

His smirk grows into a full blown grin and your heart rate picks up instantly because of it. “I’m so glad you should ask,” he nods, “It's a press conference for the Avengers. They are opening their new facility and are holding a press junket to cut the rope and answer some questions.”

And instantly you choke on air, no joke, then coughing a few times to clear your airway. Because oh fuck. Fuckity fucking fuck fuck. Why you?! Why does life always do this to you?!

“Um, Sir,” you start quietly once you stop coughing. “I don’t um—this is not to say that I’m not completely honoured that you’d choose me for this job. But uh, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to send me to this. Not with everything currently going on, at least.” You swallow thickly, your hands turning clammy as your nerves pick up. “There, ah, there has to be someone more qualified to send to this event. Ya know, someone other than me.”

He shakes his head, “there isn’t. And even if there was, I can’t send anyone else. You were specifically asked for by name, we weren’t even originally supposed to attend this press release. Only larger media outlets were invited.” He opens his top drawer in his desk and pulls out an access pass on a lanyard, holding it out to you. You gingerly step forward to take it then take a few hasty steps back once it’s in your grasp. “You were the only one invited, and were given an all access pass for the whole event.”

You gaped at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as you glance between your boss and the press pass currently in your hand. “But ah,” you shake your head, “why me?”

He shrugs, “probably because of those silly posts you made. You clearly caught someone's attention. So get to work, you have a press conference to prepare for,” he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

But you just stay firmly planted in your spot, “Sir, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Oh but it is.” His eyes shoot to you and narrow, “so you either attend that conference or I’ll fire you. We are making the most out of your blunder here, don’t mess this up. You only have one shot at this, and I expect the article from this to not only be outstanding, but also on my desk Monday morning. This is the break our website needs, but if you aren’t willing to pull your weight and fix your mistakes, then we don’t have a place here for you anymore. So it’s your choice, Miss Y/L/N.”

You sigh defeatedly, and nod, “okay, I’ll do it.”

“I figured you would,” he nods once then turns back to his computer screen. “Close the door behind you.”

You nod, spinning on your heels and exit the room. Shutting the door softly behind you like he’d asked and then heading back to your desk to start preparing for this press conference.

But all you can think about is how truly mortifying this whole week has already been. And it’s clearly only going to get worse from here on out. How do you get yourself into these things? Now someone from the Avengers team has specifically requested that you be there. Great.

Were they planning to embarrass you further? Were they going to make a mockery of you because of a stupid drunken mistake? Were you going to regret accepting this article instead of just quitting?

You glance down at the press pass in your hand and sigh, there is no way to know currently just how this will all play out. But sadly, you’ll be finding out the answers to your questions soon enough. And in a little less than 3 days, at that.

You stand in front of your full length mirror—wearing the seventeenth outfit you’ve tried on so far this morning—and trying desperately to find faults with it. In all honesty, all the outfits you’ve tried on had looked perfectly fine and would have worked. But you were determined to stall, to waste as much time on pointless outfit changes as you could, so that you didn’t have to face your reality.

That reality being that today was the day, today was the Avengers press conference at the new facility. And oh God, how you really did not want to have to do this today.

I mean, the moon wasn’t in the right placement. Nor was Jupiter currently aligned. And your horoscope had warned you about ‘life changing events should you venture out of your box.’ And you could only assume said life changing events weren’t going to be good ones, and this was very much venturing outside of your box. Plus like, you just had this strange gut feeling, something deep inside you telling you that something was going to happen today—And one should always trust their gut in true times of crisis.

So really, that was all to say that this was a horrible idea, and you should probably just stay home. Yeah, it’s settled then, you’ll stay home. That was a much smarter plan for sure.

Your hired car pulls up to the large, intimidating steel and glass structure and you instantly feel like you’re going to puke. And if the hired car didn’t charge you your first born for doing just that, you’d gladly probably have puked in this exact moment. It comes to a stop and you thank the driver before collecting up your belongings and climbing out.

Glancing around you notice a bunch of people hanging about, some with large camera’s around their necks, others with microphones. But all are wearing various passes, some look similar to yours, however none match it entirely. Your hand grabs on to the pass around your neck and pulls it away from your body to examine it more closely.

Yeah, yours is the only one like it, that you can currently see. Which yeah, that’s extremely odd, for sure. You release the pass, letting it fall back to your chest and head towards the check in booth, just wanting to get this all over with so you can promptly go home and die of humiliation in your bed. Alone and away from the world.

You give one of the ladies at the table your full name and instantly notice a wicked smirk appear upon her lips as she hears it. Which honestly can’t be a good sign for what’s to come. No, this is a sign you should probably just leave now. The universe is clearly trying to warn you, but your dumb, job needing ass can’t leave. No matter how much you desperately want to.

She hands you a map, pointing to the location where you will be standing for the conference. Then she points behind herself, in the direction you are to head and you mumble a quick thank you before heading the way she showed you.

As you make your way to the location, you continuously glance between the map in your hands and the area around you. The last thing you need right now is to get lost on this insanely large property, and end up missing the press release all together. Oh God, your boss would pitch a fit if that happened.

Your heels click on the cement ground, thankful you aren’t trudging it through grass at the moment. Heels and grass do not mix, and with your luck you’d probably end up twisting an ankle or snapping a heel. And the last thing you want right now is to draw unwanted attention to yourself. Ya know, more so than you already have.

You glance down at the outfit you’d finally begrudgingly decided on, choosing to stick to basic shades to help you blend in a little better. No fancy or colourful prints or shades today. No, blacks and whites was what you went with. Hoping that most of the other press members would be dressed similarly. And with one glance around you, that hope actually came true.

You’d decided to go with a black pleather pencil skirt, that was form fitting but also flattering to all your softer areas. With a long sleeve white shirt tucked into it, and simple black pumps. It was a pretty basic look, but that’s exactly what you were going for. You wanted to blend in, praying none of the Avengers or press would even noticed you, let alone figured out you were the drunken Twitter tweeter.

God, doesn’t that just sound so stupid? The ‘Twitter tweeter’. Just ridiculous. And to think, this is your life now! This is who you are now. Seriously, the next time you drink, you are going to leave your phone at work. As you clearly can’t be trusted with it when you’re intoxicated.

As you make your way closer to the spot the nice lady had shown you, you realize that you are the only one in this location. All the other press are further down, in front of the stage, whereas your place is off to the side. It has a perfect view of the stage, but there is nothing and no one to hide behind.

You halt your steps, and even though it’s a beautiful sunny day, you feel a cold sweat come on. Are they segregating you? Are they going to make an example out of you? Or treat you like some circus clown?

You know these thoughts are ridiculous, these are world heroes we’re talking about here. Good people who put their lives on the line everyday for everyone else. But maybe they are going to force you into speaking to the press, maybe they are going to use you for good PR. Your stupid tweets are the hot topic at the moment, everyone is wanting the inside scoop on you, your life and your possible new affiliation with the mighty team.

But being in the spotlight isn’t your thing, you like to be unknown, anonymous. Just another face in the crowd. And if this is an ambush, then take you the fuck off that sign up list. You are not interested in this being spun around on you. Fuck that.

You turn on your heel and head back to the main press area, you’d just hide out there amongst all the other reporters and journalists. At least you could hang in the back and keep your head down while you take notes.

You might be overthinking this. Or be acting a little too irrational at the moment. But cut yourself some slack, this week has been hellish and overwhelming, to say the least. And your poor frazzled mind is in overdrive mode, overthinking the smallest things and making you a bit of a basket case. Clearly you don’t handle stressors like this very well. That’s obviously a flaw of yours, but one you very much do not plan on addressing today. Or ever, maybe. But definitely not here and now.

You reach the main press area and tuck yourself into a back row chair, lowering your large black purse onto the ground and digging through it to grab your notebook, recorder, pens and your phone. You’d record the whole press release, taking notes and photos here and there. Then when it was all over you planned to hightail it out of here, long before anyone noticed you. Hopefully. That was the plan anyways.

You glance around, noticing a few nearby press members staring intently at you. God, you hope none of them cause a scene and point you out. You quickly glance up at the stage, seeing that it is still empty and none of the team is up there yet. So you drop your eyes down and decide to just doodle in your notebook till the junket begins.

Time seems to be ticking along at an alarmingly slow pace. Probably just because you are so desperate for this to all be over, therefore it’s doing the opposite now. The minutes currently feeling like hours to you.

Finally, after weeks of waiting—at least you swear it’s been that long. You hear commotion up on the stage, and notice as everyone around you is seated now, taking photos. You grab your phone and flick your eyes up to the stage, seeing the mighty group of heroes slowly ascending the stairs and fanning out on the platform.

You snap a few shots and then prepare your recorder, hitting the button to start it once Tony Stark makes his way to the microphone. You balance the recorder on your left leg, your notebook open on your light and pen at the ready. Your phone sitting in between both legs, fully charged, set to silent and camera app open.

The conference starts with Tony doing a speech, thanking everyone for being here and just general PR stuff. You are sort of paying attention, but also not. You know that you can always listen to the recording later if you miss any part of this conference, so there isn’t a huge weight on you to be fully listening currently.

So instead, you get lost in your own mind, continuing to berate and chide yourself for your horrible life choices. Ya know, all the ones that led up to this very moment. You keep your eyes down for most of the event, only glancing up periodically to snap a few more photos here and there. But then they flick back down to continue doodling in your notebook.

On the plus side, the grassy, flowery meadow you have been drawing this whole time is looking wonderful. Even if it’s only in all blue and black pen ink. But focusing on this is better than possibly locking eyes with the poor victim of your latest drunk tweets. You know he is up there, because they all are. And the last thing you want is to look at him currently. Your immense guilt and humiliation preventing you from even entertaining the idea of ogling the handsome man right now. Not even a little bit, no matter how badly you want to. No matter how much you want to see just how attractive he is in person. You can’t allow yourself to.

You don’t even really deserve to be here right now, the only reason you are, is because drunk you is a sappy asshole. Had you not posted those stupid tweets, you wouldn’t have been invited here today. God, how you wish you had a time machine right now.

You’d made a bunch of mistakes throughout your life, I mean, who hasn’t? But this one was by far the worst, you were definitely paying for this one. Tenfold. Maybe this is the wake up call drunk-you needs though. Hopefully she will have learned her lesson from all of this. Buuuuuut knowing her, probably not.

You sigh, picking up your phone to take a few more photos as the time nears to the official opening of the facility. To the rope cutting, which is the true reason you are all here today. You keep your eyes on your phones screen, but movement off to the side of the stage catches your eyes and they snap from the screen to it.

They lock with a greyish blue set, and you see the owner of said eyes glance over your face momentarily, before a smirk breaks out on his lips. Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier aka Steve Roger’s lifelong best friend. You are currently having a stare off with an ex hydra assassin, and an insanely good one at that.

You are just about to break the eye contact when you notice him elbow the blonde super soldier to his right. Leaning in once he has the other man's attention and whispering something in his ear, before his head nods in your direction. Oh God, this also can’t be fucking good.

The blonde furrows his brows for a moment, his eyes scanning the crowd before they land on you. And the second your eyes meet, you are fucking trapped. Because, Jesus! This man is basically a human bear trap, and your ass just willing stepped right on to it.

Greeeeeat. Now you’re having a stare off with thee Steve Rogers. Just exceptional. Note the extreme sarcasm.

And then you notice as he frowns, most likely now realizing you are the crazy lady who tweeted about him. He snaps his eyes away from you, turning to glare at his best friend. Who only grins wider in return and then shrugs his shoulders before nodding his head to the billionaire at the podium. Mr. Roger’s heated gaze then flicks to the side of Mr. Stark’s head, narrowing a little more and honestly, if looks could kill, everyone here today would be witnesses to a murder. To the death of Iron Man, at the eyes of Captain America.

And oh fuck, this is not going well. So much for going unnoticed. You can’t do this, you can’t be here any longer. This is all just too much and you want to go home.

You quickly pack up your belongings, throwing them haphazardly into your large purse. As the tears of humiliation begin prickling in your eyes. What did you do to deserve any of this? Clearly you fucked up in a past life and now you were paying for it in this one.

Your eyes involuntarily glance back up to the stage, tears threatening to fall but you try to force them to hold off until you are away from this place. Away from all the prying eyes. The last thing you need is photos of you crying like a baby, at the Avengers new facility opening, to start circulating the internet and only adding fuel to the fire.

They’d probably play it up like you were this insanely huge fan, and just being here made your crazy come out to play. Bawling your eyes out for just being here, in the presence of the hero you so clearly had lady wood for. But yet, that wasn’t it at all. You know most of these people were probably too focused on Mr. Stark to even notice the moment between the super soldiers. You’re pretty sure you were the only one who actually did see it.

Your eyes lock once again on the intense pair of blue ones, finding yourself momentarily trapped all over again. Then his eyebrows furrowing snaps you out of it, thankfully, and you feel a tear slip down your cheek. You quickly wipe it away as you turn and hastily make for the press area exit.

You don’t look back, you can’t bare to see the relief probably on Mr. Rogers face now. He is probably thankful you are leaving early. He probably never wanted to actually see you in the flesh. He probably thinks you are just some ridiculous, crazed fan who went out of her way to either try to get noticed by him, or boost her career via the exposure.

God, how far from the truth that actually was. But not like you’d ever get the chance to prove that to anyone now. You vow in this exact moment to delete your twitter the second you get into the Uber. Like completely deactivate your whole account. Then you’d have no way to embarrass yourself ever again. At least not publicly, not in front of the entire world.

As you reach the spot where the hired car had dropped you off, you pull out your phone and open your Uber app. You had a hired car set up to pick you up later on, for when the press release was supposed to be over. But as it was still early and now only over for just you, you needed a ride and fast.

You begin filling out the order, hastily walking down the laneway towards the main road. Like hell were you going to stay standing on the facilities grounds any longer. Risking being seen or stopped by random press members. You’d just meet the car down the road a bit. That was the best plan here.

But as you are making your hasty get away, you hear fast footfalls coming up behind you. And you cringe slightly, too nervous to turn around and see who is coming towards you currently. You pray it’s just someone running to meet their car. Maybe one of the press people has an emergency and needs to leave early because of it?

“Hey, hold up,” a deep voice calls from behind you, effectively killing that last thought dead in its tracks. Much like you wish would happen to you right now. If you could just drop dead in this moment, you totally would. You didn’t have suicidal thoughts, ever, but in this exact moment, you’d take any out you could get. The sheer humiliation of this week finally crashing down on you.

You sigh, quickly wiping your cheeks of the few tears that refused to stay put in your eyes, and slowly turn around as the footsteps near you and come to a deafening halt. You know whoever it is, is now only a few feet away from you and there is no avoiding this awkward situation any longer.

You instantly realize the person now standing mere feet from you, is the very last person you want to be anywhere near right now. Even with keeping your eyes down, focused entirely on the ground so that whoever the person ended up being wouldn’t see the tears, now in your eyes. You still instantly know that it’s Steve Rogers, the newest and current victim of your drunken praise, and it now takes everything in you to not start rambling out a ridiculous apology, while also bawling your eyes out.

A heavy silence looms over you, starting to feel as if you are being crushed by it. You take a deep breath, keeping your eyes honed in on the cement ground. “I um, I’m really, really sorry,” you start, the words coming out raspy from your unused and tear tingled voice. The volume barely above a whisper so you quickly clear your throat, “I shouldn’t have come here today. I ah, I didn’t want to ever make you feel uncomfortable in any way. And I guess I just need to apologize to you for my ridiculous antics last week. And ah, and for stupidly agreeing to come to this junket. I’ll just um,” you glance over your shoulder momentarily. “I’ll just be going now,” you finally glanced up at him, as you gesture with your thumb over your shoulder and take a step back. “Sorry again, for um, for everything.”

But holy fuck, he is so much better looking than you could have ever imagined. Up close and personal he is a freaking dream boat—Argh! You have no right to ogle this man! Give your damn head a shake. You are the very last person on this planet who is allowed to fangirl over him right now.

You quickly turn and continue to hastily make your way towards the road, not even giving him a moment to respond to your words. You don’t need him to say anything back though, he doesn’t owe you a damn thing. You are the dick that brought this all on to not only in yourself, but this poor man as well.

You got the chance to apologize to him, which is more than you could have ever asked for. Now you just want this all to be over. You just want to go home and pretend like this entire week never happened. He can go back to his normal life, and you to yours.

God, you could really use a stiff drink right now, but that’s what got you into this whole mess in the first place. So that’s probably not the smartest idea at the moment. So instead you’ll settle for a giant tub of ice cream and a lengthy, tear filled, phone call with your bestie.

“Wait,” he says softly, probably so he doesn’t startle you any further, as you feel a large warm hand grasp your elbow, urging you to turn back around.

You clench your eyes shut, why can’t this just all be over already?! Why you?! You take a deep stuttering breath in then open your eyes and turn to face him again. He releases your elbow as you do and then you awkwardly lock eyes with him once again.

One of his large hands comes up to rub the back of his neck, the action almost looking sheepish. Clearly he also has a few words for you, and whatever they are you’ll totally deserve them. Even if they are chastising you for your stupid posts. So you quickly steel yourself for what’s about to come.

“I ah, I wasn’t—“ he pauses then quickly corrects himself, “I’m not uncomfortable about you being here,” he shakes his head, “not at all. I just—firstly, I just wanted to apologize to you, actually. I know they probably forced you to be here today, I don’t really know how, but judging by your reaction to all of this, I’m guessing you really had no say in being here.“ He sighs deeply, “I had no idea that they’d actually invited you, so I can only assume that Tony played a huge hand in all of this. He really likes to insert himself into other people's lives, so I apologize that you got dragged into this. He doesn’t really know when to butt out.”

You nod slowly as you glance down to the ground again, “it’s okay. You really don’t owe me anything, I honestly brought this all on myself. I um, I don’t blame anyone else for any of this, but thank you for saying all of that.” You look back up at him, “it really helps to hear. This week has just been—“ you cut yourself off with a deep sigh, as you wave a dismissive hand around, “sorry, that’s really not important. Um, just basically thank you, ya know, for easing my mind with all of this.”

He frowns a little, but quickly corrects it. And you still just honestly want this all to be done with. But he looks like he still has more to say, so looks like your hopes will go unanswered this time. And just as you suspected he speaks up again.

He shakes his head, “don’t mention it, but I should really be the one thanking you.”

Awe, isn’t that just so dang sweet of him—wait, what?! I’m sorry, come again?! Your eyes widen as your mouth falls open slightly. You imagine it’s a super attractive look—note the sarcasm again—but you honestly can’t bring yourself to care about that at the moment. Because what did he just say?

Your eyebrows furrow after far too long of a moment with you just gaping up at him. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but um, why exactly would you owe me a thank you?”

He smiles down at you, then quickly glances over his shoulder before looking back to you. “I’ll explain all that, but first, can I show you something?”

You find yourself nodding before you’ve even realized it. “Um, yeah. Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, great. Just uh, just follow me then,” he says through a hesitant smile as he leads you off and away from the gathering. You aren’t sure where exactly he is taking you, but for the first time all week, you aren’t worried at all. Probably because this is Steve Rogers, the man out of time, and a true gentleman, in every sense of the word.

And maybe, just maybe, your hellish week that all began thanks to one stupid drunk moment, might just end on a way better note. Maybe your Drunk Twitter escapades weren’t all bad. Maybe they weren’t entirely horrible.

But honestly who really knows, you’d just have to wait and find out.

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

Part 2 of this, from Steve POV, will be coming sometime this week! So stay tuned for that!

@caps-lockdown @itsstillnotwhatyouthink @tfandtws @boxofteenageideas @wangdeasang @giggleberts @casuallydarktiger @theonelittleone @agentbadbitch @ratwrites @starrystellars @bandsandanimefreak @rockyroadthepastryarchy @lovvliies @cuffski @icesoccerer @alwaysright4 @lilsthethrills @steeeeverogers @zombiepotterfour @mu-mu-rs @ledandan1244 @straightforwardly @denzmallows @xremember-me-notx @gwynethjodie @lollipopdomination @capstopavenger @jemimah-b99 @rcvenqers @justkending @alagalaska @silent-loucidity @sabertooth-potato @pies-wands-and-more @interstellarmess @gabriella69816 @phantom-soilder @wordlesscaptain @captain-hammer-of-asgard @starstucknature @viarogers @pixieferry @kaithezaftig @the-kinkiest-goblin @hysterically-original @badassbeckettswan @heyiamthatbitch @zlixlle @capsicledoll @givemehopenfandoms @pretendingandpreposterous @frozen-phoenix17 @emotionallysalty @saturngirlz @atomicsludgedonutbiscuit @ivannagotthebeat @bohemian-barbie @marvelous-capsicle @ivoryhazlewood @steverogersxreader @cjhorseback @jasminecalia @secondstar2disney @jessiedaeum @betsynodak @capricornprince118

[fandom-smut-shots]

Quarantine Chapter 4

Chapter 3 

        “If you like this guy so much, why don’t you just ask him out?”

         Being Toru Oikawa’s best friend was an exhausting job for one Hajime Iwaizumi. For weeks now, he’d been the primary recipient of Oikawa’s lovesick droning. He could probably pick your face out of a crowd based solely on the brunet’s description of your luscious (h/c) hair and dazzling (e/c) eyes.

         Oikawa, true to his brand, wailed in response. “I can’t do that, Iwa. It’s not like I can take him on a date, and he goes to Karasuno!”

         “Karasuno?” Kindaichi chirped, his attention piqued as he watched the exchange between his two teammates.

         “What does that matter?” Iwaizumi questioned, lifting an irritated brow. “It’s not like he’s in the volleyball club. He just goes to the games.”

         “The guy you like goes to Karasuno?” Kindaichi repeated while Oikawa pouted childishly.

         “I have an idea,” Iwaizumi stated, and the brunet captain lifted his head, giving his best friend his full attention. “How about we just add him to the call?”

         Oikawa’s cheeks burned as his eyes widened. “We can’t do that, Iwa!”

         “Why not?” Kindaichi questioned.

         “Because- because-!”

         “Because you don’t want him to know how much of a lovesick brat you sound like when you talk about him?” Iwaizumi supplied, earning a glare from the captain’s chocolate orbs.

         “I think we should add him,” the middle blocker smirked, partly interested in unofficially meeting you and primarily looking forward to the idea of turning Oikawa into a blushing bride.

         “Shittykawa, if you don’t add (y/n) to the call, I will,” Iwaizumi threatened. Oikawa crossed his arms over his chest, a pout set firmly on his lips.

         “Okay,” the vice-captain sighed. “But he’d appreciate it a lot more coming from you. You haven’t called him today, have you?”

         “When would he have had time?” Kindaichi wondered aloud.

         “My point exactly.”

         “Fine!” Oikawa whined. He clicked a few icons on his screen while gnawing on his lower lip, waiting impatiently for you to see the notification.

           Kittykawa is video calling you.

           Your heart leapt into your throat as your laptop chimed, drawing your attention from the book you’d been reading. Biting back a grin, you accepted the call, though your eyes widened upon discovering that Oikawa wasn’t the only one on the other side. The screen split into four sections, including yours. One displayed Oikawa, and the other two you didn’t recognize.

         “Hey, (y/n),” the brunet greeted, offering you a toothy grin.

         “Hey…” you murmured slowly. “Uh, what’s going on?”

         “I’m Iwaizumi,” one of the unfamiliar faces stated, his expression neutral and slightly bored. “I messaged you a few days ago.”

         “Oh, right,” you nodded in recollection.

         “I’m Kindaichi,” the other boy introduced. “I’m on their volleyball team.”

         “Okay,” you nodded again. “What’s with the group call?”

         “They want to humiliate me,” Oikawa pouted.

         “I told Whinykawa that if he didn’t shut up about how cute you were, I was going to add you to the call so you could listen to it instead,” Iwaizumi explained, and you felt your cheeks flushing at the realization that the boy you were crushing on had been talking about you so much.

         “I can’t say he was wrong,” Kindaichi commented. “You are pretty cute. In the friendly way, of course.”

         “T-thanks,” you stuttered out, dropping your gaze to your lap to avoid further embarrassment.

         “We wanted to meet you,” Iwaizumi added. “Feels like I already know you with everything Puppykawa has told us.”

         “Iwa!” Oikawa whined, jutting out his lower lip in the fullest pout you’d ever seen – fuck, it was cute. “You can’t tell him that!”

         “What has he said?” you inquired, a grin threatening to split your lips.

         “Nothing!” Oikawa insisted, waving his hands at the camera in a futile attempt to cease his best friend’s words.

         “Mostly how cute you are,” Kindaichi supplied innocently.

         “The texture of your hair, the exact shade of your eyes,” Iwaizumi followed, his expression adjusting from endlessly bored to slightly amused.

         “Guys!” Oikawa wailed, hiding his face in his hands. You could only grin in response.

         “What else?”

         “Didn’t he say something about baking?” Kindaichi recalled thoughtfully.

         Iwaizumi nodded. “Yeah, Shittykawa wouldn’t stop talking about wanting (y/n)’s milk bread for a week. I was starting to think it was a euphemism.”

         Another blush danced across your cheeks at the implication, and you nibbled absent-mindedly on your fingernail.

         “Also that,” Iwaizumi nodded. “How did he word it, Kindaichi?”

         The spiky-haired boy hummed in response, rubbing his chin in thought. “’The way he bites his fingers is so kawaii it makes me want to kiss him’.”

         The words sounded decidedly awkward coming from Kindaichi’s mouth, completely somber and lacking Oikawa’s squealing. Still, knowing you heard them had the brunet attempting to slyly sneak out of camera view, but Iwaizumi caught him in the act before he could successfully escape.

         “Get back here, Loserkawa!” he growled, and Oikawa jumped before slinking obediently back to his chair.

         “We’ve been telling him to just ask you out already,” Iwaizumi concluded.

         Kindaichi nodded in agreement. “As annoying as he is when he fixates on something, we can tell he really likes you, and if you’ve put up with him for this long, you must like him, too.”

         “Uh, yeah, I do,” you admitted.

         “So you want to date him?” Iwaizumi clarified, narrowed eyes flicking to Oikawa’s section of the screen in a silent I told you so.

         “Well, yeah,” you nodded, ducking your head shyly. “But I mean, we’ve never met in person, and this whole quarantine deal kind of prohibits proper dates, and I wasn’t sure if he was actually interested in me or just… killing time.”

         “Ha!” Oikawa shouted triumphantly. “See? He totally gets me! Asking him out would be pointless because of the quarantine!”

         “Stupidkawa,” Iwaizumi hissed, bringing a hand up to his forehead. “Did you miss everything else that (y/n) said?”

         The captain was quiet for a moment, and you worried that you’d spilled too much. Was he backing out?

         “I think we should go,” Kindaichi stated.

         Iwaizumi nodded. “Don’t fuck this up, dumbass,” he instructed Oikawa before the two exited the video call.

         “Well, they seem nice,” you commented. “Iwaizumi likes to insult you, though.”

         “Iwa’s always been that way,” Oikawa shrugged, and you wondered how nonchalant he truly felt about it.

         “I’m sorry if I said too much,” you couldn’t help but apologize. “Your friends caught me off guard and I didn’t want to lie to anyone.”

         He was quiet for a moment, pondering the turn of events. “So you like me, huh?”

         You nodded. “From the sounds of it, you like me just as much.”

         He grinned, leaning forward. “Even though we’ve never really met?”

         “I’d be willing to overlook that,” you replied. “But… there’s the quarantine. Who knows how long it will be before we can meet.”

         “I bet it would be worth the wait,” he insisted. “To spend months bragging about my adorably hot boyfriend and then wrap him in my arms when we finally go on a date?”

         You exhaled nervously, a soft chuckle falling from your lips. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

         “So, (y/n),” he purred, resting his elbow atop his table and propping his chin up with the palm of his hand. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

         Your heart hammered in your chest, and your head nodded of its own accord. “Of course I will.”

         The resulting cheer from Oikawa’s side of the call was shrill enough to burst eardrums.

[cdelphiki]

So how does Scrivener work cdelphiki? Any specifics? I think you talked about it a fair bit before, early in November, but I can't quite remember.

Scrivener is awesome!! Basically, it’s a word processor on steroids specifically for writers (and not student/business purposes, like Microsoft Word/Google Docs) Although you can use it for student or business purposes, if you wanted.  

Basically, you use it by first creating your project. It has a lot of templates to choose from, and once you pick what you want to do, it has instructions of how to structure your project in your newly created file.  There are a ton of template options, but I’m here for the novel format: 

But you can write pretty much anything you can imagine in scrivener.  

Pick what you want and click “choose” then save it somewhere. I have the app for ipads/iphones, so I save all my projects on dropbox so I can access them from my phone or computer. (This is how scrivener is set up for synced across platforms: over dropbox, not icloud for mac users. It took me a hot minute to figure out.) It has you name and save it up front so it can start backing up your work!!

Once it’s got the project created, it will give you the informational page for the template you selected. Read through it for a lot of good information on how to use all the organizational tools for your specific project. 

Now you basically just start working. There is no real wrong way to go about putting together your story.  I use scrivener for both one shots and multi-chaptered fics.  I actually keep most my one shots in one project, titled “Tumblr Prompts,” just to make it easier than having a zillion project files for single stories.  

If you want a pretty detailed walkthrough of how I use scrivener, I put it all below the cut. :D

Here’s one of my my well-used project files: 

There’s a lot going on here. The left column is your navigation bar. This is basically your entire book. As you can see I have folders within folders. The main one, called “Manuscript” by default, is basically the book in its entirety. I then use more folders for each chapter.  Right now, since I’m still drafting, I actually just have it broken into ‘events,’ rather than chapters. This is just a me thing and is what I figured out to help me keep better track of everything. 

So I have the Prologue, and then event 1.1 (act 1, event 1), 1.2, 1.3, etc.  In 1.3, as you can see, I have both chapter 3 and 4 as scene cards.  1.4 has five scene cards that will likely turn into 7 chapters, once I do a revision! 

All the various colors of text are revisions.  By default, the first draft is written in black.  

When you’re ready to do a revision, you can turn on revision mode and select which version you’re on. I’m on my third revision. I really like this function because it lets me see my progress. 

Now, inside all these folders you can see a couple different symbols there.  You can actually change the symbols of these things yourself by right clicking on the object in the navigation pane and selecting “change icon.”  I put the pencil on all my notes, so it’s very easy for me to know what to get rid of when I’m cleaning up and about to call something “done.” On Precedent, for example, whenever I publish a chapter, I go ahead and name the chapter folder in Scrivener and get rid of all the note cards so all that is left is what I actually published.  

Probably one of the best things about Scrivener, is when you want to get rid of something, you don’t have to erase it entirely.  On this project here, you can see I have a file a couple under the file selected for viewing called “trash pile.”  Whenever I remove large chunks of text, I actually just copy it over to a blank scene card so it’s not ‘lost.’  I then “move to trash,” so it’s not in the way, but it’s always available to me.  Scrivener does not delete anything you ‘move to trash’ unless you specifically move to that trash bin and make it delete it.  This is great because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ‘thrown something away’ just to realize, sometimes months later, that that exact scene would work perfectly now! And good thing I saved the draft, so I had something to start with!  

Now, back to these ‘scene’ cards.  Scene cards are just the files you actually write on. I don’t know if Scrivener calls them that or not, but they’re set up like notecards. I don’t know if you ever did the notecard method in school, where you wrote major points on note cards and then arranged them into a logical order on the table? That’s basically what this is. 

To get to this screen, I selected the folder for section 1.4.  You can pick any folder you want, even the over all manuscript to get here.  Then you pick the view option, where the top arrow is pointing.  The first view option shows it as a document, as my other pictures have already demonstrated. 

What the notecards are going to show you is your synopsis, if you have one written.  Each and every file, even the folder itself, has a spot for ‘synopsis’ and ‘notes,’ which do not count into your overall word count.  It’s really nice for keeping stuff out of the way.  I’ve found I prefer having my notes as actual scene cards, but the notes section is handy for throwing important things.  I also save the link to where I’ve posted stuff on tumblr for easy saving or research so I don’t lose anything.  

If you do not have anything written in the synopsis section, the card will just show as much as the text as it can in a dark grey, rather than the black ink of the synopsis.  I rarely use the synopsis section, so you can see all my documents just have the first bits of text.  

On this screen you can start dragging around cards and move them however you think things need to line up.  This works remarkably well if you write in a lot of small scenes, and need to reorganize because you realized that Tim needs to have a panic attack before he faces Ra’s.  Or whatever.  You can also reorganize at any point in the navigation pane itself.  I drag stuff between folders all the time.  That’s another reason I love having my notes on actual scene cards, because a lot of times I end up punting scenes off into the future, and it makes it way easier to drag and drop it into the next chapter folder to deal with later.  

Another feature I really like is ‘targets.’ 

To get here, I selected the overall manuscript, and then switched to the third view option, up there next to the note cards option.  It shows me my whole book this way, as well as the status of each folder or document (which I have to set myself.)  It also shows me if I had a target word count, and how close I am to reaching it.  I like my chapters to be about 3k words, so I make that my target. (set your target by clicking on the target icon on the bottom right corner of a document while in document view.)  The purple goes from a dark purple to a lighter one the closer you get. (This is because I am using the ‘theme’ “Purple Haze.” The color is based on your theme. I forget what the default is.)

You can also set daily word goals, and up at the top, below the project’s name, it’ll show you progress toward that goal. I’ve written two words today.... so I don’t have a progress bar yet.  The bar above the project’s name is for the overall word goal set. I have this project set to 100k. 

I think that’s pretty much it.  The only other feature I use regularly I haven’t mentioned is the split screen.  

Basically, click where the arrows are pointing. When you’re in just regular view, it’ll look like a split screen, rather than a single document view button.  When you hit it, it opens your currently selected document twice, on both sides of the screen. Click on the bar for the document you want to change and then select whatever you want from your navigation pane.  I use this mostly for putting my notes on one side and my actual working document on the other. Yesterday I was using while revising, throwing anything I didn’t want anymore into my ‘trash pile’ by just dragging it across.  

Once you’re done with something, you can run spelling and grammar check (because it does not check as you go, unless you go into settings and make it do that. It’s turned off by default. I find the squiggly lines distracting, so I love this feature) and use the various text tidying tools, such as the one that turns all multiple spaces into single spaces! 

So yeah! That’s Scrivener. I love it so much. It has made writing so much easier. I wrote most of Life Happens in a single Microsoft Word document, and that was a huge mess and horrible and really difficult. I’ve written two long fics in their entirety now on Scrivener and I won’t ever go back.  

Oh, and if anyone was curious, this is how I use Scrivener for my one shots: I just label the folders with the main relationship or the collection they’re from, rather than treated the folders like chapters.  I then name the scene cards either with their actual titles or a brief description (if I didn’t give them titles) to let me know what’s been published and what isn’t done.  

[elizaviento]

Protect & Serve (part 2)

SFW -- But a bit of violence.  

(FYI:  Additional chapters of Protect & Serve can be found in the Rick Fic Masterpost link in my blog description.  Or, you can click the #protect & serve tag in this post, within my blog, to access additional chapters.)

*****

The moment I crossed the threshold of the abandoned building, I knew something was… off.  

It was an old apartment building that had obviously seen better days.  The smell of mildew and mold hung thick in the air and I could hear the sound of dripping water from somewhere nearby.  Based on what little information I had on the building, I knew it would be no small feat to locate the Mortys.  Odds were they were huddled up somewhere – bonded together by the chips of the same Rick.  But, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that they could ambush me from all sides.  

Standing still in the middle of the dingy foyer, I heard the click of Officer Sanchez’s shoes on the scuffed linoleum tile.  I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up one hand in a bid to keep me silent as he cocked his head to the side and listened intently for any sign of movement. After several moments, he pulled and began to fiddle with a foreign device from his utility belt. 

“What’s that?” I asked, instantly curious.  The device resembled a tablet of some sort and had several icons displayed on the screen.  

“It’s a Morty Pad,” he replied, tapping on one particular icon that opened to reveal an endless line of code.  Quickly, Rick’s fingers tapped away on the display’s keyboard, changing sections of the code seemingly at random.  I’d heard of Morty Pads but only had a basic understanding of their purpose. “I-I-I’ve figured out a way to hack them to track any manipulator chip.”

Stepping closer and peering over his shoulder, I watched as the screen’s display flashed several times before resetting to the original home screen – only now there was a tracking icon in the bottom right corner.  Tapping the new icon, he explained further, “Now it’ll locate all Morty manipulator chips within a – uh – a 10 mile radius.”  And, sure enough, five manipulator chips popped up in the exact location of the building we were inside – all linked to a Rick from dimension K-518.

“Wait a second –” I started, pointing toward the screen, “– five manipulator chips?  I’m only searching for four.”  This new development set me on edge.  Why hadn’t the fifth Morty been identified among the group previously?  

A clatter that sounded like it had come from the floor above caught our attention and Rick suddenly went into full on cop mode, grabbing my arm and thrusting me behind him as he tucked the Morty Pad back into his utility belt and pulled his gun. I felt myself flush at the visual of his wide leg stance as he pointed the gun in the direction of a nearby door labeled ‘stairway’.

“Stay back,” he ordered as he slowly crept toward the door.  The clatter arose again, only louder, and I flinched.

“Rick, they’re just kids.  Is the gun really necessary?”  I knew he was only following his training, but the idea of the Mortys having a gun pointed in their faces didn’t sit well with me.  He took a quick glance back at me before continuing toward the door as before. “They’re probably scared to death as it is.  How about I go up by myself first, just to check it out?”

“You – you’ve gotta be kidding,” he said as he reached the stairway door.  “Do you even realize how dangerous those Mortys can be?”

“I’ve been a case worker for over a decade, so yeah, I know how dangerous any person can be,” I replied, rolling my eyes.  

He sighed and relaxed his stance only a bit, realizing that I was bound and determined to be a hard ass.  “I – I’ll be right behind you,” he offered in compromise.  I only nodded and bypassed him to enter the stairway and climb my way up.

The second floor of the building contained a long corridor with apartment doors on each side.  Each door was close enough to the next to assume that the apartments were no larger than studio size which also meant that there were more places for the Mortys to hide than I had anticipated.  Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, I turned back toward Rick who had already removed the Morty Pad from his belt to attempt to locate their exact location by zooming in on a map.  

“It – uh – it looks like they’re further down.  Probably in one of the last four apartments,” he confirmed.  Taking a deep breath, I inched my way down the hall until Rick tapped my shoulder from behind, indicating that we’d reached the general area.  “Don’t shut the door behind you,” he warned as I turned the knob and slowly cracked it open.

The apartment was pitch black which was suspiciously odd considering it was a sunny day and the outer walls of the building were covered in large windows. Cracking the door open further, light began to leak through from the hall to reveal dark blackout curtains covering each window in this particular apartment.  Waving off Rick as he poked what felt like the blunt head of a flashlight against my lower back, I tentatively stepped inside and tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness.  

“Morty?” I called, keeping my tone light and friendly.  “Mortys?  It’s okay, you can come out.  I’m here to help you.”

Silence.

“I know you’re all probably scared but I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“What – w-w-what about the pig?” I heard a small voice call from the darkness.  Several other voices rose in a chorus of harsh whispers that I couldn’t quite understand.  I whipped my head in the direction I thought they had come from, squinting my eyes.  

“He won’t hurt you either,” I said, stepping into the darkness further.  “None of you.”

“Bullshit!” the voice called again, though I couldn’t be sure if it was the same one that had spoken prior.  “He’s a – he’s a Rick!”  There was shuffling and footsteps in the darkness, indicating that the Mortys were splitting up to cover all sides of the small, dark room.  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the flash of one as he ran through the strip of light coming from the hall.  

“Okay. I get it,” I said, attempting to quell their fears.  “I’ll make him wait outside if you all agree to just talk to me.”

“NO!” Rick harshly whispered in my ear, digging the flashlight into my back even harder as he pushed himself forward.  I reached behind me to yank the flashlight from his hand but ignored him otherwise.

“He’s going to shut the door and then I’m going to turn on my flashlight so I can see you.  Alright?” The sound of scurrying footsteps erupted again and I felt like I was in the middle of a game of musical chairs where I knew I’d be the odd man out.

“What the fu–” I heard Rick growl as I bumped him back with my hip, pulled the door shut and locked the knob before clicking the flashlight to life.

The blinding bright beam of light seemed to cut through the pitch black like a knife as I slowly passed it through the room.  When it landed on a Morty huddled in a corner behind a floor lamp, I lowered the beam slightly so it wasn’t shining directly in his eyes and slowly approached. Behind me, the doorknob jiggled as Rick called my name.

“God damn it! Open – unlock the door!”

“Just ignore him,” I cooed, reaching my hand out as I got closer.  “How long have you been here?  Where’s the Rick that chipped you?”  The Morty only seemed to fold in on himself tighter and the beam of light glinted off the manipulator chip embedded securely in his neck.  Of course.  Only the worst types of Ricks chipped Mortys in places where removal almost certainly meant death.

The jiggling of the knob abruptly stopped as Rick began to pound the door, most likely trying to kick it open.  I hadn’t locked the deadbolt, so I knew it was only a matter of time before he barged in and ruined my chance to gain the Mortys’ trust.  

“Now!  Do it now!” I heard a Morty yell from behind me.  When I whipped my head and flashlight around to try to locate him, something pushed me from my right side.  Not expecting it, I tumbled to the floor, banging my hip on the hard wood with a cracking thud and lost my grip on the flashlight.  Groaning, I watched as the beam rolled across the floor, illuminating four sets of feet before it settled against the far wall – well out of my reach.

“Ah, jeez!” the Morty in the corner cried.  “Do we – do we have to hurt her?  She seems nice, ya know.”  Before any of the other Mortys could reply, Rick successfully kicked the door in and rushed the room, sweeping the beam of another flashlight until it landed on the group of Mortys looming over me.

“Don’t!” I yelled when I saw Rick raise the flashlight and his gun level to his face, taking aim.  “They’re just scared!”  For a brief second, I considered removing the taser from my back pocket but quickly felt ashamed.  These were children.

“Ah, man. What – w-w-what do we do now?” the Morty in the corner whined, hiding his face in his hands.  

“Back up!” Rick warned, his gun still aimed on the four who had ambushed me.  Two of them turned toward him while the other two squatted to my level and began pulling me along the hardwood floor into the darkness.  

“STOP!” Rick shouted, moving forward even as the two Mortys not dragging me away blocked his path.  

“We’re keeping her,” one of them said.  “We – w-w-we know who she is.  She’ll take care of us.”

“She’s too good for a Rick,” the other said.  From my new place in the darkness, I could see the beam of Rick’s flashlight shaking when he pushed past them in search of me before it swirled through the air as he gracelessly tumbled to the ground.  

“I did it, guys!  I-I-I tripped him!” the Morty from the corner called in triumph.  I struggled to stand but the two Mortys who had dragged me away had pinned my arms and legs.  

“Rick, don’t hurt them!” I called through the sounds of his grunts as he also struggled against the three other Mortys.  Suddenly, I felt hands groping my ass and I yelped.  “Hey, stop that!” I admonished, not entirely surprised the hormones of teenage boys couldn’t be quelled – even at gunpoint.  However, I was surprised when I felt something slip from my back pocket seconds before the taser sparked to life with an electric hum.

“I’m really sorry,” the Morty holding down my legs said as I felt him lean over my body to press the taser to the back of my neck.

The pain was immediate and intense – like nothing I had ever felt before; the electric current seizing every muscle in my body until I was rigid as a board. Faintly, I could hear Rick’s roaring voice as jolt after jolt ripped through my body.  

“How long do I do it for?” the Morty tasing me asked the other holding down my arms.  

“Until she passes out!”

And, seconds later, the blackness of the room mingled with the blackness of unconsciousness.

  To be continued…

[batclevercandystudent]

Are you looking for an honest (and easy to understand) SiteGround hosting review?

Cool, I’m glad you’re here. This article is for you.

Here’s the thing …

After reading countless hosting reviews myself and searching for the fastest WordPress hosting I could find – I found SiteGround.

As of today, I have been using SiteGround for 5+ years. In that time, I’ve learned the pros AND cons – the ins and the outs.

So I decided to write a fluff-free SiteGround WordPress hosting review to share what I’ve learned.

I’m going to go in-depth, but at the same time keep the jargon out of it.

Whether you are looking to get a side hustle idea going, you’re starting a podcast, or you want to get an online business idea up and running, this review is exactly what you need to choose your website hosting.

Here’s what we are going to cover in this review.

SiteGround hosting reviewed

Another WordPress hosting review?

What is website hosting and why is it important?

My love and hate relationship with SiteGround

My recommendation (fully explained)

Final verdict: do I recommend SiteGround?

Another WordPress hosting review?

If you’ve been looking for a hosting company that you can trust your online business with, you’ll find the internet flooded with hundreds if not thousands of hosting reviews. Most of them are total BS.

Unfortunately, they’re mostly written to talk YOU into buying the hosting that offers THEM the highest commission.  

Do I get paid a small commission if you decide to purchase SiteGround hosting through a link on this page?

Yes, indeed.

Is that why I chose to write a review about SiteGround?

No. I’m writing this because I’ve been using SiteGround since 2014! And it’s the one that powers my entire online businesses today.

It’s also why I recommend SiteGround as the very first tool on my best online business tools page.

Here’s a screenshot of my bill for SiteGround’s GoGeek Hosting

Bottom line: I’ve used SiteGround long enough (5 years) and am aware of pretty much everything there is to know about it.

Also, I host this website with them. Further on in this article, I’ll show you the results of some speed tests I ran while writing this.

Affiliate Disclaimer: This review contains affiliate links that pay me a commission if you sign up through them. However this in no way affects my recommendation. I do not recommend SiteGround for everyone. (more on this later)

What is website hosting and why is it important?

If this is your first time building a website, you might not know what website hosting even is. While this can be intimidating, it doesn’t have to be. Once you understand the fundamental principles of how hosting works it’s quite simple.

For simplicity, here’s a quick breakdown.

A website is a bunch of different files connected to the internet. These files hold data and need a ‘space’ that’s secure and accessible to the internet.

This ‘space’ is what a hosting company offers.

As you can see, your website host is responsible for holding all the data of your online business.

This is why website hosting is super important to your success, and in no way should be neglected.

Here’s what happens when your hosting service sucks.

A host to a website is what a foundation is to a house. If it’s shaky, it’s all going to come tumbling down.

My love and hate relationship with SiteGround

Just like in every relationship you will have the good and the bad. The same is true with SiteGround.

While there’s a ton that I love about this hosting, there are also a few things I don’t.

Here’s a brief breakdown.

What I love about SiteGround web hosting

1) Well-trained customer service

Sure, if you’re an experienced website developer, you don’t need customer support. However, for the rest of us, it’s crucial.

When you’re new to the world of WordPress and websites, you’ll run into problems and when you do – having reliable support to get help from is a real lifesaver!

SiteGround’s customer support is excellent!  Stellar, in fact.

They invest in trained experts, not general support that acts like they understand your problem.

At times when I’ve had to communicate with them, I’ve found their customer reps to be extremely friendly, helpful, and patient.

You have multiple ways to reach them ranging from live chat, telephone to a ticket based system.

Note: They even tell you how many customers are ahead of you, and in most cases the wait time is minimal!

2) 99.99% uptime rating

Uptime is the number of hours your website is live and available on the internet. Downtime is the exact opposite.  

Ideally, you want 100% uptime because a downtime implies your website is not accessible to people trying to access it.

To a business, this can lead to lost traffic, leads, and sales — lost because you chose a crappy hosting company and your website is down.

Downtime can also have a negative impact on SEO, and this will prevent your website from getting to the first page of Google, and that’s the last thing you want.

Fortunately, SiteGround offers 99.99% uptime which in the web hosting industry is the gold standard.

Note: If you ever experience more than 0.1% downtime on a yearly basis SiteGround will compensate you credit in your next subscription.

Cool guarantee, bro. I’d rather have a site that doesn’t go down.

4) An extremely intuitive interface

Another benefit of SiteGround hosting is how it simplifies the complex process of managing a website server – right from setting up the website to creating a new one and later transferring it.

A glance of SiteGround’s interface consists of well-organized and highly descriptive icons that make it extremely easy to identify what’s what.

Their hosting is great for anyone new to websites, as you won’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure things out.

Alright, on with the SiteGround reviews!

5) Free website migration (for GrowBig/GoGeek)

If you already host a website with another service, you will need to do a website transfer, which can be a difficult and complicated process.

If you don’t have the technical know-how, you’re going to run into problems.  Sure you can hire an expert to transfer it for you, but this comes with its own set of challenges.

Fortunately, SiteGround simplifies this process by handling the transfer for you – and for free!

What does ‘free’ really include?

SiteGround’s free website transfer lets you move everything from your old host – the website, FTP accounts, configurations, etc. – at no extra cost.  

Note: this service is free exclusively to GrowBig and GoGeek tiers.

Basically, you’re going to have everything transferred from your old host by an expert who knows what he’s doing – and that means no bugs, unforeseen issues, or downtime!

Okay, how does the website transfer work?

Step 1: Sign up with SiteGround

SIGN UP WITH SITEGROUND

The first step is to sign up with SiteGround. Remember, if you want to take advantage of the free website transfer,  you’ll have to pick either the GrowBig or the GoGeek plan.

Step 2: Request your website transfer

After you’ve signed up with SiteGround you have two ways to request a website transfer:

1) Request website transfer through the setup wizard:

I recommend this method if you haven’t set up an account with SiteGround.

All you have to do is select Transfer a website in SiteGround’s Account Setup Wizard and click Confirm.

Next, an inquiry will be generated to which SiteGround’s amazing support team will promptly respond.

2) Request website transfer through support section:

Alternatively, you can directly raise a support request by heading to your SiteGround User area and then to Support > Request Assistance From Our Team > Proceed to contact us here link.

Among the list of services select Advanced Technical Services and click the ‘Transfer Website’ option.

From the dropdown under Select Account choose the website you want to transfer. Next, choose the radio button  ‘I am transferring from another web host.’

Note: If your previous host is not running CPanel you will have to transfer email accounts, configurations, etc. manually.

Lastly,  fill in the all the required fields and click Submit. SiteGround’s support team will be notified about your inquiry and get back to you.

CLICK HERE TO TRANSFER YOUR WEBSITE

5) Cloudflare CDN with one-click activation

Setting up a  Content Delivery Network (CDN) can be complicated. However, with SiteGround you can activate your CDN with a single click.  

Cloudflare’s CDN significantly reduces page load time and is recommended by WordPress in their speed optimization Guide.

6) Great affiliate program (Up to $150 commission!)

Another thing worth mentioning is SiteGround’s affiliate program that offers generous payouts of up to $150 per referral.

Now while this may not be directly related to the hosting itself if you use it right  — you can pay for your entire subscription by simply recommending it to friends and family.

Pretty cool right?  Yeah, I thought so too.

Alright, you get it, I’m a HUGE fan of SiteGround.

But what do other people think of it? Let’s take a look.

SiteGround Reviews: What Do WordPress Users Think?

Lastly, I looked at what the community has to say about SiteGround. In my research, I found a popular WordPress hosting group on Facebook.

As you can see, it’s not just me. Many other WordPress enthusiasts recommend SiteGround as their #1 hosting solution.

This is just one of many other polls conducted where SiteGround takes that number one spot – and for a good reason!

What I don’t like about SiteGround

Now onto the bad stuff you won’t see in those “genuine” SiteGround hosting reviews.

1) Higher renewal prices

SiteGround may seem quite affordable at the beginning especially with all the services they offer.

However, when the time comes to renew your bill will be quite hefty. This is because their first subscription is offered at an introductory price!

The renewal price is much higher than their introductory price, which will come as a shock.

When you look at the hosting service you’re getting in return, you’ll find the cost well justified.

Here’s the thing, if your online business can’t afford to pay your hosting after a year, you’re doing something wrong.

2) Limited resources (and the hidden benefit)

While SiteGround’s features are amazing, they are not the most generous in sharing their resources.

The three plans offer a limited amount of bandwidth and storage, which could be troublesome if you have a massive site.

But remember, I run 5 websites and get 10s of 1000s of visitors a month, all on my single GoGeek account. With 100% uptime!

That said, here’s exactly what you’ll get with your SiteGround hosting account.

You’ll get a limited amount of space. This varies with the plan you sign up for:

10GB of storage for StartUp plan

20GB of storage for GrowBig plan

30GB of storage for GoGeek plan

But where’s the hidden benefit I mentioned?

This limit on storage per account is a blessing in disguise and benefits you and your websites.

How exactly?

Multiple users share a single server in a shared hosting plan. So if one user experiences a surge in traffic, he’ll end up using more resources from that server.

This means fewer resources for others in the same pool, and you don’t want that!

However, by setting a limit on the space per account SiteGround ensures everyone uses the server fairly – this ensures that no one ends up hogging more server space and resources.

This translates into a faster website for you!

With the pros and the cons behind us, let’s move this SiteGround hosting review onto a comparison of the three tiers.

Tier Comparison: StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek

StartUp GrowBig GoGeek $3.95/mo $5.95/mo $11.95/mo Single Unlimited Unlimited 10GB 20GB 30GB 10,000 visits monthly 25,000 visits monthly 100,000 visits monthly Get Started Get Started Get Started

What is the best SiteGround tier?

The three tiers offered by SiteGround all have their limits (bandwidth and storage), but these limitations are not linear – making some SiteGround hosting tiers better than others!

Wait… what?!?

Let’s crunch a few numbers:

StartUp 10,000 monthly visits for $3.95 = 2,500 visitors per dollar spent

GrowBig 25,000 monthly visits for $5.95 = 4,200 visitors per dollar spent

GoGeek 100,000 monthly visits for $11.95 = 8,300 visitors per dollar spent

As you can see, you spend less by going for the supposedly more expensive tiers like GrowBig and GoGeek.

However, that doesn’t mean that I recommend everyone sign up for the GoGeek tier.

I do recommend GrowBig over StartUp.

For just $2 per month more (as compared to Startup), you can host multiple websites and accommodate an additional 15,000 visitors every month!

Before making a decision, ask yourself the following questions:

Do you want to host single or multiple websites?

How much traffic do your websites get?

Do you have a high requirement for resources?

First, realize your hosting needs, as that should make it clear as to whether the GrowBig or GoGeek plan is right for you.

Now, let’s take a look at my decision to use SiteGround’s GoGeek for my online business.

SiteGround’s GoGeek plan: reviewed and tested

Why did I get GoGeek in the first place?

When I was looking for hosting, I wanted something that could handle my high-traffic websites and at the same time wasn’t too expensive.

SiteGround GoGeek plan was the best option for me. It was just as fast as a dedicated hosting solution (and at the same time it didn’t empty my wallet.)

Siteground themselves refer to this plan as a semi-dedicated hosting. The servers are built with state-of-the-art infrastructure and shared amongst fewer users than the lower tiers.

Is GoGeek the fastest WordPress hosting?

We live in a world where we can get everything at our fingertips, and the same is the case with websites. That’s why I demand the fastest WordPress hosting I can find, and you should too.

If a visitor experiences slow loading websites, they will most likely go somewhere else, and this is the last thing you want.

Although SiteGround uses state-of-the-art servers that render high performance, I decided to validate it further by running a bunch of speed tests. The results were awesome.

Using GTmetrix, my website reported a loading time of only 2.3 seconds!

When I ran a speed test using Pingdom the loading speed reported was even less at 1.03 seconds.

Finally, Google’s own PageSpeed Insights gave my website a page speed score of 99 out of 100!

As you can see, the results are pretty darn good and well above the average page load time.

With testing complete, I think choosing SiteGround was a good choice for my websites.

Best reasons to get the GoGeek tier

Reason #1: Resources are shared amongst fewer users

Although GoGeek is technically a shared hosting plan, it’s shared amongst only a few users. This results in GoGeek users getting access to far more resources than the other (lower) tiers.

SiteGround claims GoGeek users use up to four times more server resources than lower tiers!

For this reason, SiteGround calls it a semi-dedicated hosting solution.

Reason #2: Priority support (under 10 minutes!)

Now, while SiteGround’s customer service is excellent regardless of the tier you choose, it gets even better with the GoGeek Plan and their dedicated priority support.

In the past, I’ve had technical issues resolved within minutes, all thanks to the priority support available with the GoGeek plan.

They say time is money, and SiteGround’s GoGeek plan is made to save you both!

Reason #3: State-of-the-art server infrastructure:

With GoGeek being a semi-dedicated hosting plan, it uses superior server architecture.

Their servers are similar to ones used by a dedicated host – think SSD powered storage, NGINX, and CDN – top-notch tech that will make your website load extremely fast. As we saw in my tests above.

Reason #4: One-click staging

People often refer to staging as a benefit that’s nice to have. I disagree. To me, it is an essential feature.

What is website staging?

Staging is a carbon copy of your website that you can create with a single click.

This copy of your website is where you can do work, fix errors, or install new plugins. Once you’re happy with your changes, you click one more button and all your changes get pushed to your live website!

This enables you to work on your website without the fear of breaking anything.

This feature is handy if you’d like to test new code, or plugins before implementing them onto the live version of your website.

Reason #5: Automated backup (with assisted restore)

SiteGround automagically performs daily backups and holds 30 copies of your site in storage. 30 copies!

With this kind of automated backup in place, you never have to worry about your website again. If it crashes, click restore!

So if you screw up and break your website, SiteGround will manually restore it for free!

Reason #6: E-commerce ready (plus PCI compliant with free SSL)

GoGeek servers are PCI compliant with free Let’s encrypt SSL. This makes it extremely easy to set up a safe and legal e-commerce website without hassle.

In 2019, every website should be secured and using an SSL certificate. In fact, Google is going to start penalizing sites that don’t use SSL.

To give you some background on SSL, here’s what Google says about securing your website.

I mention the free SSL certificates because there are hosting companies (cough, cough… GoDaddy … cough) who still charge their “valued customers” $50+ per year for SSL!

Final verdict: Do I recommend SiteGround?

We’ve reached the end of this SiteGround hosting review, and you probably are wondering if I recommend it?

Yes, absolutely.

In my opinion, if you’re serious about the security and speed of your online business, SiteGround is the best option you can find among WordPress hosting providers.

SiteGround is one of the few hosting providers recommended by WordPress, and that says a lot about their quality as a WordPress host.

Sure it can be a little bit expensive, but if you want excellent service, a blazingly fast website, and peace of mind with automatic backups, then SiteGround is the perfect choice for you.

Well then, you have to be ready to pay a bit more. But remember, you always get what you pay for.

Get Started Right Now and Get Up to 70% Off SiteGround

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