#and I picture this guy who's soared to the top of his company fast and now deals with stupid amounts of money

[urne-buriall]

Dreamy Drabble Prompt: Adventure

It was between them and the family adventure park, and on Dean to convince the financer, Rich, to fund the money-sink of a blind horse rescue.

After a tour of the farm they clustered around the kitchen table. Dean paged through budgets, blueprints of new outbuildings, program plans for some small revenue. Cas' knee knocked against Dean's to stop it bouncing.

Rich sat back, looking around with long consideration, then pinned his eyes on Dean and Cas.

"You're together," he said. So flat and plain that Dean struggled to respond.

Rich took out his chequebook. "My Dave just loves horses."

prompts :: spirit of the west

[jimlingss]

Sugar and Coffee [12]

Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13

➜ Words: 2.1k

➜ Genres: 99.5% Fluff, 0.5% Angst, Pâtisserie school!AU

➜ Summary: It isn't hard to be a pâtisserie chef, but it's not a piece of cake either. It seems like for you in particular, life keeps throwing in one wrench after another. It always finds ways to make your sweets bitter. The cherry on top is Jeon Jungkook — a rival with a sensitive sweet tooth who always finds ways to complain about you.

cr.

“Never stop believing, never stop dreaming, and never stop doing your best!”   There’s deafening applause, standing ovations, and you get onto your own feet, clapping your hands together. The graduates are wearing bright smiles and they throw their hats into the air simultaneously. You watch them soar, knowing one day soon that’ll be you too.   Proud parents are gathered together, taking pictures while teachers are shaking the graduates’ hands, wishing them luck for their future endeavours. In the meanwhile, you hold the bouquet of flowers to your chest, paper crinkling underneath your grip and your eyes sweep the crowd.   “Do you see him?” you ask Jungkook.   He hums, hand placed on his brows to shield the blazing sunlight away. “No….oh, there he is!”   The two of you are dressed up for the ceremony. You’re in a modest dress that church goers would approve of while Jungkook is in a suit and tie like he’s going to prom. You appreciate him being here. He didn’t need to come, but he didn’t hesitate when you asked him to.    Jungkook just gives you the moral support you need.   “Y/N? Jungkook!” Seokjin is in his navy graduation gown, rich in colour. He wears a matching coloured hat with a yellow tassel and you muse the whole grad get-up looks good on him.   “Hey. Congratulations, man.” Jungkook smiles as a form of salutation.   “C-Congratulations on graduating.” You smile as well and extend your arm.   “These are for me?” He indicates the flowers, the corners of his mouth lifted. When you nod, Jin laughs and takes them. “I love them, thank you!”   “It’s nothing. I always promised I would see you walk the stage, so I’m just following through.”   “A woman of her word.” Seokjin grins, making you release half of a scoff and half of a laugh.   “Of course I am.”   You glance at Jungkook and he takes the cue. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.” The boy hitches his thumb over his shoulder, slowly walking backwards. “I haven’t gone for about an hour now and my bladder is just killing me.” He stiffly laughs, almost bumping into some old lady. “Alright then. See you later.”   You sigh at his awkwardness and turn back to Jin. “Sorry about him.”   “No, it’s alright.” Seokjin smiles softly. “So you’re finished with all your finals?”   “Yeah, they’re all done. I don’t get much of a break though. My internship starts in two weeks.”   “Oh yeah!” He recalls, eyes lighting up. “Good luck. It should be really exciting. I still remember mine.”   “Thanks. I’m actually looking forward to it.”   “Good. You’ll make great memories, trust me.”   The pair of you stare at each other and you exhale lightly. “So this is it, huh, Kim Seokjin? All done with your schooling, you lucky bastard.”   The older man grins. “It’ll be you soon.”   “I know and I might beat you as a pastry chef one day, so you better watch out.”   Laughter bubbles out of his chest and it’s melodic to the ears. “I will.”   It’s a bittersweet moment, a nostalgic one. You remember going to his high school graduation, him at yours. Now he’s moving onto a new stage of his life again and in a way, you are too.    It occurs to you how grown up you’ve both become, how you’re not so young and naive anymore. “Can you congratulate Moonbyul, Sandeul, Ken and Hani for me?”   “I will. I’ll tell them you came by. They’ll appreciate it.”   You nod, but before you bid a final farewell, Seokjin raises his arm and gently ruffles your hair. The tension dissipates with his sincere smile. “I’m glad you came, Y/N.”   “Me too,” you say with an equally earnest smile.   “How’d it go?” Jungkook asks once you’ve regrouped with him again. You found the mop of black hair in the midst of parents and graduates, somehow munching on a hot dog he bought, and getting ketchup on his black blazer.   You hum, cheeks swelled with the biggest grin. “Good.”   You’re glad you came, that you followed through with a promise made a long time ago, one you could’ve pretended to forget. But you don’t regret showing up.    You and Seokin are almost strangers now, but you’ve realized somewhere down the line that it doesn’t make your time spent together any less fond. You loved him once and loved him wholeheartedly. He allowed you to do that. Allowed you to have those feelings and experiences.   You wonder if this is what closure is. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders, that your mind has been put to ease. Like you’ve finally closed a chapter of your life.

It’s the end of the year. All of you are halfway done with your diploma, if you’re not counting the internship and only the lectures and workshops. But it’s unfathomable how fast time moves when you don’t take notice or count the seconds ticking as you sit idly by.    Your first year is over — and you can still remember coming to this institution months ago wide-eyed and nervous. It wasn’t that long ago, but you can also see the light at the end of the tunnel, the end coming near. A lot has happened and a lot still needs to occur.   “Your internships are starting on the fourth?! Lucky, you guys get like a whole week break,” Taehyung grumbles, pouting. “I haven’t even finished packing and I’m leaving tomorrow.”   “You’re going to a catering company, right?”   “Yeah.” Taehyung perks up with a smile. “I might be starting sooner, but on the bright side, at least I’m not making wedding cakes.”   “Why does everyone hate wedding cakes so much?” You take offence, defending your internship that you’re actually excited for.   “Maybe because it’s probably one of the hardest things you could make. Wedding cakes are humongous. It’s laborious and takes days to make. There’s a reason why they’re so expensive.” Yoongi leans back as he’s proving his point. “Plus have you ever worked with bridezillas before who want everything perfect? There are Karens galore. I’m not eager to work at a restaurant, but it’s still easier than a wedding cake company.”   “I’m sure it won’t be that bad.” You have yet to learn how to actually make a wedding cake, but how hard can it be? At the end of the day, it’s just a bigger cake for a fancier occasion. You look over to Jungkook. “Right?”   But he doesn’t look you in the eye.   He mutters incoherently and when you roughly nudge him, he sighs. “I can’t say I’m….excited.”   “Didn’t you want to go somewhere that works with chocolate?” Hoseok asks, his own internship at the Marriott hotel. It’s a sweet gig and apparently close to where Aeri will also be working for her own cooking fellowship.   “Yeah.” Jungkook sighs again, running a hand through his black locks, picking up the habit of Jimin. Said man is already gone, left yesterday for a pastry shop in the city next door — a cute place he told you about called Bread & Butter. “But apparently the man who runs the place with his wife is a chocolatier.”   “It’s not about the place, it’s about the mentor,” you chime and he remains unimpressed.   “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”   You quirk your head to the side, lashes batting. “What? Not excited to spend a whole summer with me?”   Jungkook glances at you and then diverts his eyes quickly. He gives you no answer.   You click your tongue in annoyance. At least Taehyung can appreciate it, openly wishing he was working with someone that he knew.   Jungkook is probably the biggest reason why you aren’t afraid or anxious. You know you have each other’s backs, that you’ll learn together, and there’s no way he can be better at cakes than you are.   The man might be good at his chocolate but his cakes are dry.   //   “Try not to rip each other’s heads off,” Hoseok says moments before getting on the bus, duffle bag in hand. He’s the last one to go.   “Nah.” Jungkook throws his arm over your shoulder and pulls you towards his chest. “I still need someone to take the blame when things go wrong.”   “Excuse me?!” You turn to him and he laughs boyishly, making you pout.   Hoseok grins, bidding his last farewells before he gets on the bus and waves goodbye as the vehicle takes off down the road.   It’s sad to see all your friends going to different places, to forge their own separate ways. But you know goodbyes are inevitable and that it won’t be long till their return. You’re just glad that right now Jungkook is with you.   Campus empties out in the days that follow. Only you and Jungkook are staying in your dorm rooms over the summer. Hoseok is getting accommodation at the hotel he’s working for, Jimin is staying at a boarding house during the duration of his internship, and the rest going home where it’ll be more convenient for them.   It’s eerie to see the paths so empty, the dining center closed down, and the corridors void of people and noisy conversation. It’s apocalyptic. A ghost town.   There’s no one around but the pair of you.   “Are you ready?” you ask, breaking the silence. You spin around on your heel with a smile to face him, attempting to bring up the somber mood.   You don’t realize the small action has such a big impact.   Jungkook’s heart stutters. Your hair is flying in the breeze, the side strands brushed away behind your ear. Your eyes are glimmering as the sun sets, casting a golden hue on you that makes you glow. And you look at him so happily.    Jungkook has to resist the urge to pull you in. To kiss you.    He doesn’t know how he’s going to spend an entire summer with you and just you.   But he’s ready. “I am.”   “I’m gonna crush you, Jeon.” You laugh, not helping with his situation. Jungkook wonders what it takes to capture this moment and make it tangible. “Make the best wedding cakes anyone has ever seen.”   “You better walk the talk then.”   “Course, I will.”   Jungkook’s initial impression of you was never wrong. You’re stubborn, childish, a brat. You’re also annoying and irritating beyond belief. It’s amazing how sometimes you can just grind Jungkook’s gears without even knowing. But you’re also sensitive, sentimental, softer than he expected — and it’s what led him to have a closer view of you.    From the time you bursted into tears in the kitchen to when he called out your name to join him for lunch. Bringing you over to his friends' place and his family for the holidays. Teaching you how to temper chocolate and making truffles on Valentines for your ex. Going out on the town to be his wingwoman and having you as his partner in a competition and winning.   Those tiny moments lead him closer and closer.    Little by little.    One by one.   Without him realizing….   In these months that you’ve spent together, Jungkook has become unequivocally captivated by you.   “Y/N.”   “What?”   “I like you.”   Jungkook admits it out loud. Unabashedly. He tried to get over it, ignore it, clear his mind. He did all of it while trying to keep you by his side as his best friend, but it didn’t work. He can’t.   His feelings for you overwhelms him.   It’s a container overflowed with spillage all over the sides — he can’t repress it and doesn’t want to. He faces it head on, even if it’s reckless.   But you merely snort after a beat. “Thanks, grinch. I like me too. You’re not too, too bad, I guess.”   There’s no way you’re this obtuse. You’re not dense. Jungkook knows you well enough and he suspects you’re feigning ignorance, maybe because you’re traumatized and not willing to risk friendship again. But he presses on, not allowing you to ignore his heart on his sleeve.   “I mean it.”   “I mean it too.”   Jungkook assertively grabs your arm, stopping you in your tracks, He looks you dead in the eye, going for a bold strategy with no room for escape or for you to disregard what he’s spilling out to you. He corrects himself—   “I’m in love with you.”

[kat-tamin]

bailemos (let’s dance)

Kat makes a plan. Rafael goes along with it. Sonny wonders what the fuck is happening.

Ship: Kat x Sonny x Rafael

Warnings: Threesome, Smut: Oral, Hands, Anal, Vaginal. The whole shebang.

Word Count: 4501

Normally during big cases like the Mickey Davis one, Sonny and Kat’s sex life would take a dip. Kat would have to take care of herself, a vibrator in one hand, phone in the other. But lately Sonny would come home from work and fuck her into the mattress, almost before she could properly greet him.

After meeting Barba, Kat thought she understood why. He was a frustrating man to deal with, the epitome of a snaky lawyer. It seemed like Sonny was getting out his stress by fucking her. That’s what she thought was happening, until Sonny admitted one night that he and Barba had history. Not just work history, but sexual history. Sonny said it basically ended as fast as it began, with Barba leaving New York soon after.

Kat wasn’t angry. They both had histories, some better left in the past, but she looked at Barba differently after that. She saw the brief glances he sent her boyfriend, packed with unsaid words. His frustrating lawyer talk now sounded like flirty banter to her ears. The reasoning behind their sex became clearer. Sonny wasn’t frustrated: he was turned on by Barba.

Kat expected to feel jealous, but her mind pictured the two men together. Her own movements got more passionate at the thought. She would go to court, her body having a Pavlovian response to Barba's presence, because Barba + Sonny = Kat cumming. She would watch the two men argue, her panties becoming wetter and wetter.

The Davis case was over, a hard one for everyone involved. For her own selfish reasons, Kat didn't want it to end. But then Sonny invited Rafael over to his and Kat’s new apartment for dinner. They both wanted to relax and catch up.

Sonny made homemade pasta with red sauce. Barba brought over a bottle of Tequila, straight from Mexico. After dinner, they moved to the living room, the two lawyers sitting on the sofa together. Kat curled up on the chair across from them taking in their conversation, her head swiveling between them, like she was watching a tennis match. She could debate with the best of them, but tonight she could barely hang on, their words like a roller coaster.

She sipped at her red wine, tuning out their words to look at their faces. The stress of the past few weeks had evaporated from her boyfriend, Sonny looking so happy to be in the company of his former mentor. Mentor slash ex, she reminded herself.

Barba seemed happy to be here too. He hadn’t excluded Kat from he and Sonny’s conversations, keen to get to know her too. It turned out they were both Bronx babies, and they talked extensively about the changes in the borough.

So he was nice, and, if Kat was honest, pretty damn sexy with that beard. It was too bad he had to shave it off for trial. Her mind wandered, wondering what his stubble would feel like between her thighs.

She shouldn’t be thinking this, she thought, tipping her head back to drain the rest of her wine. She was in a committed relationship with a great guy who treated her perfectly. She didn’t need anybody else.

Sonny said something, making Barba laugh. The older man’s hand dropped to Sonny’s knee, giving it a small squeeze. Sonny stopped laughing, his blue eyes growing wide. He looked at Kat, panicked. Barba quickly withdrew his hand, the tops of his cheeks turning pink.

Kat waited for the drop of jealousy to well up in her chest, but instead, a rush of arousal flooded her core. 

It felt too warm in here. Her hand went to the buttons of her blouse, undoing the buttons until she had a nice deep V that showed off her cleavage. Both men eyed her, Barba's gaze going straight to her chest. 

Kat stood up, reaching for the tequila and the shot glasses. “It’s a shame if we let this go to waste,” she said, pouring out three shots. She handed one to Barba along with a lime wedge, her fingers lingering too long to not be deliberate. Rafael’s brow raised. Kat just shot him a slight smirk, confirming his suspicions. 

They all clinked glasses, throwing their heads back in unison. The alcohol burned all the way down Kat’s throat, heating up in her stomach. Her body felt like liquid, her courage soaring. 

Barba sucked on his lime wedge, the obscene noise going straight to Kat's clit. His eyes never left her’s as he sucked every last drop from the fruit. He found her very attractive, with a tight, strong body apparent even under her clothes. Her bright brown eyes were arresting, pulling him in.

Kat leaned forward in her seat, putting her hand on Sonny’s knee. She massaged gently, rubbing up and down his thigh.“You didn’t even flinch, baby. Do you like that?”

Sonny lifted his brow, looking at her quizzically. “Yes…” He glanced at Barba, lifting his glass in a toast. “Very good bottle.”

“It’s a special occasion,” Rafael said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He shifted in his seat, angling his body towards the man beside him. “Only the best for you, Sonny.”

The temperature of the room seemed to go up a couple of degrees, the tension thickening. Kat looked at Rafael, trying to communicate what she was thinking; what she wanted.

His mouth curved into a smirk, picking up on the vibes she was sending him. His hand went to the back of Sonny’s neck, tugging on the strands of his hair. Sonny shivered at his touch, once again looking at Kat, who was running a finger over her own lips. She was looking at him like a wolf looked at a rabbit. Sonny peered at Rafael, who had the same leer as his girlfriend. 

“Okay, what’s...what’s going on?” Sonny tripped over his words, the drinks making his tongue thick in his mouth. They were acting weird. Not drunk, but just… weird.

“Do you wanna know a secret, Rafael?” Kat asked, tilting her head. Her brown eyes looked black with want, making Sonny even more confused.

“Tell me,” Rafael answered, his fingers still stroking patterns into Sonny’s skin. Sonny unconsciously leaned into his hand, seeking his touch.

“Sonny and I have been fucking non-stop since you got into town.” The words spilled out of Kat’s mouth before she could stop them. Not that she wanted to.

“Kat!” Sonny hissed, his eyes wide as saucers. What the fuck was she doing? He thought, his heart leaping into his throat.

“I think he was thinking about you,” Kat continued, as if Sonny hadn’t said anything. Her tone wasn’t accusatory or jealous, but an almost purr, ladened with arousal.

“Hmmm, is that true, cariño?” Rafael moved closer to Sonny, his mouth near his ear. His hot breath brought goosebumps to Sonny's skin. “Were you thinking of me?”

“I-” Sonny couldn’t speak, too baffled at what was going on. Rafael’s stubble scratched at his cheek, making his shudder. His girlfriend was watching them, her breathing slightly laboured.

She was turned on. Sonny’s mind spun, trying to make sense of it. She was turned on watching Rafael and Sonny together. She was biting down on her bottom lip, her nails digging into his thighs. What the fuck?

“Cariño, do you want this?” Rafael asked in a husky voice. He brushed his lips over the shell of Sonny’s ear. “Do you want me?”

Sonny hesitated, his gaze once more seeking Kat’s. She laid a hand on Sonny’s cheek, soft compared to Rafael’s scratchiness. “It’s okay, baby, tell the truth.”

It was like a dance, but Sonny didn’t know the steps. He looked from Rafael to Kat and back again, trying to get the rhythm. He paused, wondering if this was a good idea. But the beat was too intoxicating to step away.

He took a deep breath and joined their dance.

“Yes,” he answered in a rough voice. He looked between his current lover and his former one. “I want you. I want…” He swallowed, suddenly nervous about saying what he truly desired. “I want both of you.”

Kat let out a breath of surprise, sitting back in her seat. “Really?”

Sonny’s light brows drew together in a frown. “Of course I do.” She was his girlfriend, and no matter what she might say, he felt like being with just Rafael would be cheating.

Kat crossed her legs, trying to control the throb between her thighs. “I was just going to watch, but…” She looked at Rafael for reassurance, licking her lips nervously. “If that’s okay with you?”

Rafael let out a low chuckle, rolling his eyes. “You’re really asking if I’m okay having two of the sexiest members of the Special Victims Unit at the same time?” He got to his feet, offering his hands to Kat who took them without hesitation. “It would be my pleasure.”

Kat rose up with Rafael’s help, pausing to touch Sonny’s shoulder. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

It was no surprise that Rafael and Kat took the lead. They both loved to be in control, even more when they were in control of Sonny. He loved it even more, all his thoughts evaporating at their touch.

As soon as they entered the bedroom, Kat's lips were on Sonny's, frenzied and hungry. She undid the buttons of his shirt, so fast she almost ripped them off the fabric. Kat felt a mouth on her neck, strong hands on her hips. Rafael stood behind her, pressing into her. She could feel the slight bulge in his pants, a slight moan escaping her throat. Rafael kissed up and down her neck, stubble rubbing at her skin.

Once Sonny's shirt was on the floor, Kat turned to kiss Rafael, his tongue plunging into her open mouth. He tasted like lime and salt. His five o’clock shadow scratched at her skin, pain mixing with pleasure. She worked at the buttons on his shirt, a bit more carefully than she did with Sonny. His clothes looked a tad more expensive, and she knew she'd feel guilty if she wrecked the fabric.

Sonny went behind Rafael, helping him out of his shirt, leaving him naked from the waist up. Kat ran her fingers over his hairy chest, rubbing his soft stomach. His body was different from Sonny's, but it was just as sexy.

She ended their kiss with a soft nip at his lower lip, stepping away from Rafael. She intended to strip off her clothes slowly, give them a show, but the two men weren't even watching. They were drawn together like magnets, their bodies pressed close to each other. As she got rid of her top, Kat watched Sonny and Rafael kiss, almost manically. They kissed like they had to make up for lost time. Rafael gripped Sonny’s cheek, trying to bring his face as near as possible. Sonny sighed into his lips, feeling content. His hands roamed over Rafael’s body, remembering each dip and curve.

Kat wasted no time getting naked, cupping herself as she watched them kiss. Her body was positively burning with desire. She carefully reached for Sonny's belt, not wanting to disturb their makeout session. As soon as she tugged it off him, Sonny drew back from Rafael, breathing hard. He stepped out of his pants, stumbling in his haste. Rafael put out a hand to steady him, his own face flushed. "We have time, cariño. Don't worry."

Rafael turned his eyes to Kat, widening at her bare body. He had been so busy focusing on Sonny, he didn't notice her getting undressed. He swept his eyes up and down, taking in her part nipples and the dusk between her legs. His cock began to firm at the sight. "You're so beautiful, Katriona," he murmured. Her name sounded like honey in his mouth, making her even wetter.

"Thank you," she responded, moving towards him. "But I'm very interested to know what you're hiding under here." She touched the waistband of his trousers, trailing her fingers to touch his hardening cock. 

Rafael's hips instinctively rutted against her hand, seeking friction. He undid his belt, shimmied off his trousers and briefs. Kat and Sonny gasped in unison as they finally saw Rafael's prize. His cock was shorter than Sonny's, but thicker with a delicious looking vein on the underside. Sonny wrapped his hand around the shaft, feeling like he was greeting an old friend.

Kat's mouth began to water, her cunt clenching at the sight. She sank to her knees in front of the two men, putting her face to face with their cocks. Sonny was already at full staff, precum leaking out of his slit. She started there, licking up his salty fluid, the taste familiar but exquisite. Her hand came up to hold his cock steady as she took him into his mouth. Sonny let out a loud groan, echoing in the small room. His girlfriend was one of the best cock suckers he ever had. She could swallow him whole without even flinching.

As she began to bob her head, Kat's other hand went to Rafael, squeezing the base of his cock with her strong fingers. He was so fat, she almost couldn't fit her whole hand around him. She let her hand go to his balls, heavy and full. She fondled him, still sucking Sonny off.

She felt Sonny’s hips get more and more erratic, a signal that he was close. She wrenched her head back, switching to engulf Rafael's cock. She took all of him in one swoop, making him shout. Her other hand jerked Sonny off, using her own spit as lube. Her mouth was hot and wet around Rafael's cock, her tongue swiping along his skin. Pleasure radiated down his spine, growing with thrust into her mouth. 

Over the next few minutes, Kat pleasured them both, alternating between her mouth and her hand. Her mind went blissfully blank, only focusing on her instinctual need to please them. Wetness was leaking from her cunt, leaving a puddle between her legs. Her knees were burning from the cheap rug, but she paid it no attention. 

She just needed their cum.

Rafael put his hand in her hair, yanking her away from his cock. She whined at the loss, her tongue going for Sonny's. Rafael stopped her with another tug of her hair. "What do you want, Katriona?"

"Your cum," she panted, not even thinking. "My face. My mouth." She looked up at Sonny, her eyes pleading. "Please cum for me."

Fuck. Sonny's hips stuttered, so close, her words spurning him on. "Open wide," he said through gritted teeth.

Kat leaned back on her heels, Rafael's hand still tugging on her hair. She put her hands on both their cocks, quickening her strokes. She opened her mouth into a large O, waiting like a baby bird for food from its mother. 

Sonny came first, a stream of cum hitting her cheek. She reached her tongue out further, catching his release. Rafael came a moment after, shooting his cum right into her mouth.

Kat swallowed as much as she could, their seeds mixing together in her stomach. It was salty and delicious, coating her tongue. A few strands landed on her face and chest, painting her dark skin white. 

Sonny thought she never looked more beautiful, cum spilling from her mouth. Her brown eyes were dark with desire, her cheeks a faint pink. 

Rafael thought so too, cupping her chin to get a better look at her. "So beautiful," he murmured, swiping his thumb along her bottom lip. He brought it to his own mouth, tasting his and Sonny's mixture.

Kat got to her feet, unsteady from being on her knees for so long. She stumbled to the bed, laying down on her back. Her chest was heaving, making her tits jiggle.

"Now, this won't do," Rafael announced. He knelt on the bed beside her, looking at her body. Her thighs were sticky with her juices. He licked his lips. "We can't leave you like this, now can we?"

Sonny got on the bed, tucking himself behind Kat. She placed herself between his legs, his chest pressing into her back. Sonny tweaked a nipple, making her jerk in surprise. “You want Raf to eat you out, doll?”

Kat nodded enthusiastically, thrilled her fantasy was about to become a reality. 

Rafael knelt between her legs, his hands ghosting over her shins. “What do you say?” the lawyer asked in a mocking tone.

Damn him and his fucking words. Kat was no sub in the bedroom but something about Rafael’s voice made her want to obey. “Please, Raf… Touch me.”

Rafael’s face broke into a wicked grin. “With pleasure.”

He dipped his head between her thighs, cleaning up the mess she had made on herself. Goosebumps erupted all over her body, made worse by Sonny touching her breasts. Her boyfriend played with her nipples, twisting and pinching softly.

She needed more. Her hips jerked to try and meet Rafael’s mouth. He just chuckled softly, looking up at her. “Impatient.” His gaze shifted to Sonny. “Hold her down, will you?”

Sonny obeyed, his strong hands moving to Kat’s hips, pinning her down. She whined, craning up to look at him. Sonny just grinned, enjoying the tortured look in her eyes.

Rafael finally moved his head to her core, his stubble scraping her sensitive thighs. She gasped at the sensation, another drop of wetness escaping her pussy. Rafael caught it with his tongue, licking into her entrance. She wanted to thrust against him, but Sonny stopped her again, his fingers surely leaving bruises.

Rafael moved to her clit, sucking the bud into his mouth. Kat threw her head back, almost knocking into Sonny’s chin. “Fuck, Raf… Just like that.”

His talented tongue circled and swiped along her clit, sending sparks up her spine. Pressure began to build in her core. She felt fingers at her entrance and eagerly spread her legs.

Rafael stopped his movements, ignoring Kat’s whine, to ask Sonny: “How many fingers can she take?”

Sonny thought back, biting his lip. His face curved into a smirk, nuzzling at Kat’s hair. “3 easily, especially when she’s this wet.” In honesty she could take more, but Sonny wanted her to be able to do a few rounds tonight.

Rafael shot them a decisive nod, going back down her body, flexing his fingers. Sonny was right: Kat swallowed all three fingers with ease. Kat shrieked at the intrusion, Sonny having a hard time keeping her still. Rafael’s fingers were bigger than Sonny’s, stretching her further than her boyfriend usually did.

Rafael thrust into her, angling his fingers to press into her front wall. His tongue didn’t stop, lapping at her clit. Kat screwed her eyes shut, her pleasure building and building. 

Sonny could feel her shaking, so close to the edge. He put his lips near her ear, whispering: “Let go, doll.”

She did, with a long, loud scream. Wetness coated Rafael’s fingers as she came. He kept thrusting into her, letting her down easy until she stopped twitching. He withdrew, putting his fingers in his mouth to taste her sweet juices. The tangy liquid tasted like sweet nectar, straight from the Gods.

Sonny let her hips go, rubbing the red skin tenderly. She opened her eyes, looking glassy eyed. “How was that?” he asked her, pushing a strand of hair off her sweaty forehead.

“Amazing,” she answered lazily. She looked at Rafael and repeated her words: “Amazing. Fuck, you got a mouth on you.”

“So do you,” he replied, bringing her in for a kiss. She could taste herself on his tongue, a bolt of pleasure running down her spine.

Kat sat up, rolling off Sonny’s body. She laid down on her stomach, exhaustion settling in her bones. “Okay, your turn. I need a minute.”

Sonny’s head turned to Rafael, his gaze expectant. His blue eyes swiped down his ex’s body to his half-hard cock. The sight made his own dick twitch. He got to his knees to give Rafael a kiss. Their tongues danced with each other, wet noises emerging from their mouths. 

Sonny felt Rafael’s strong hands moving to his ass, kneading the pliant flesh. A thrill went through Sonny’s body. He knew what was coming next.

Rafael swiped a finger down Sonny’s crack. “I missed your ass, cariño.”

His words sent shivers through Sonny’s body. “I missed you in my ass,” he admitted, swiping his tongue along Rafael’s lower lips.

Rafael groaned at the admission, his grip tightening on Sonny’s hips. His cock hardened to it’s full state, precum leaking out of the tip. “Get on your knees.”

There was no room for discussion. Sonny got onto the bed on his hands and knees, his ass in the air, his face near Kat. She watched, her gaze sharp, taking in everything.

Rafael looked down at Sonny’s pink hole, virgin tight with disuse. It would take a bit to open him up, but Rafael was confident in his abilities. 

“Do you have…” he trailed off as Kat rolled off the bed, rummaging in the bedside table. She emerged with a bottle of lube, almost empty from use.

“Sorry,” she said, handing it to him. She walked to stand beside Rafael, putting a hand on the base of Sonny’s spine to signal her whereabouts.

She followed Rafael’s movements as he drizzled a healthy amount of oil on his fingers and Sonny’s ass. She took the bottle from him when he was done, like a nurse in an operating room.

“Have you done this before?” Rafael paused to ask her, lube dripping onto Sonny’s cheek, making the other man flinch in surprise.

Kat nodded. “Not with a guy, though.”

Rafael’s brow shot up. “Really?” 

Kat shrugged; shot him a coy smile. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, counsellor.”

The title went straight to Rafael’s cock. Normally he abhorred being called that in the bedroom, but he found himself liking it coming from her mouth. His mind spun, picturing himself fucking into her, Kat moaning the title into his ear.

Sonny’s ass wiggled impatiently, drawing Rafael back to the present. “Sorry, cariño.” He rubbed his finger around Sonny’s asshole, making the other man jerk back into his touch. He started slowly, pressing his ring finger into Sonny, working past the tight ring of muscle.

Kat’s breath caught in her chest as she saw Sonny swallow Rafael, the man’s finger disappearing into his ass. Rafael, very patiently, stretched Sonny until he could fit another finger.

Sonny moaned at the intrusion, pleasure radiating at his spine. Every thrust of Rafael’s fingers brought sparks behind his lids. It didn’t take long before he was meeting his movements, seeking more.

“Are you ready?” Rafael asked, rubbing Sonny’s left cheek.

“Fuck yes,” Sonny asked, his voice strangled. He was already panting.

Rafael smirked, withdrawing his fingers out of Sonny. Before he could adjust to the emptiness, Raf pressed the tip of his cock to his hole. He slid into Sonny, Kat watching as it went in, inch by slow inch.

Rafael bottomed out, his pubic bone pressing against the swell of Sonny’s ass. It was heavenly, feeling Sonny’s ass around his cock. He was so hot and tight. “Good boy, cariño.”

He began to thrust into Sonny, slow and steady, letting him get used to the stretch. Sonny’s walls clenched around his cock, drawing a loud groan from him. He moved his hips faster and faster, rocking into Sonny.

His cock dragged along Sonny’s prostate, lightning shooting through his body. With every thrust, Sonny moved closer to the edge. It had been so long since he came like this, he wasn’t sure how much he could take.

Kat’s hand went to her clit, her core dripping at the two men fucking. She circled the bud, desire building in her abdomen. Rafael’s gaze shot to her then to her hand. He moved his hands from Sonny’s hips to his waist, hoisting him up, to the blonde’s shock. Sonny yelped at the change in position, Rafael’s cock hitting at a different angle.

“Get under him,” Rafael said to Kat through gritted teeth. 

Again, there was no room for arguing. Kat slid under Sonny’s body, spreading her legs. She grabbed his cock, red and angry looking, and guided it into her pussy. Rafael snapped his hips, pushing Sonny deep into Kat. The two lovers moaned in unison at the feeling.

Sonny thought he was going to pass out in pleasure. With a cock in his ass and his own in a pussy, he felt fireworks going off in his body. His eyes rolled back in his head at the push and pull. Every atom, every molecule, every cell of his body was screaming. He was going to die between the two people he adored most.

Rafael set the pace, fast and rough. He fucked Kat through Sonny, his eyes never leaving her face. Her mouth was open, small mewls spilling out. It wouldn’t be long for each of them to cum. Rafael bit his lip, trying to stave it off. He tried to think of something, anything to keep his body from giving in.

It was no surprise that Sonny came first, with an almost animalistic howl. He would have collapsed onto Kat if Rafael hadn’t caught him, holding him up as he spilled into his girlfriend.

Rafael was still fucking him, and it became too much for Sonny.

“Stop,” he gasped, trying to pull out of Kat. “I need…”

Rafael pulled himself out of Sonny’s ass, letting the younger man move out of their embrace. Sonny was barely out of the way before Rafael pushed into Kat in one swoop, Sonny’s cum making the transition easy.

Kat moaned at the switch. It felt deliciously dirty, two men right after the other. She met Rafael’s thrusts with her own, close to the edge. Her hands gripped the sheets, holding on for dear life. So close, so close…

Sonny saw the signs of her orgasm. He was exhausted, but he knew what to do. He put his mouth on Kat’s breast, sucking a nipple into his mouth.

His mouth mixed with Rafael’s thrusts made her pleasure peak, waves of ecstasy rolling through her. She screamed as it came, over and over again. The orgasm seemed never-ending.

The clutching of Kat’s walls sent Rafael over the edge as well, his cock spilling into her with a twitch. The pressure in his lower back ebbed, relief pouring into veins.

He stilled his movements, making sure Kat was done. When she shot him a shaky nod, he stepped away. Sonny and Rafael’s cum dripped out of her, making a mess on the sheets.

“Well,” Rafael said in between loud gulps of air. He looked between the couple, who were red faced and exhausted, curling into each other. “Maybe I should come to the city more often.” 

[mybiasisexo]

Target

Genre: Angst | Mafia!au

Pairing: None

Length: 3.5k

Warning: Language | Violence | Unfinished | OC | 1st Person

Summary: A year after her last mission, Dragen has a lot to prove to both her company and herself, but when she begins to grow closer to her next target, she realizes she might be a little too soft for her current career....

Author’s Note: Started this in like 2014 I believe and this is all I wrote, probably won’t ever finish it, but you know how it issss.

MASTERLIST

Work:

Chen and I are standing outside a deserted brick building in downtown next to an equally deserted train track.

“You think you’re so brave,” Chen chuckles, rolling his eyes.

“I am,” I say, smirking.

“Then prove it.”

Now I’m the one to roll my eyes, “you’re such a troll.” 

A knowing smile grows across my face as I pull out the sleek glock 22 from inside my jacket and cock the gun. When it is ready, I place the barrel in my mouth.

Chen starts laughing before growing serious as he grasps the grip, placing his index finger confidently onto the trigger.

“What are you going to do now, Dragen?” He asks me gravelly, but I spot a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

In reply, I pull my lips back, flashing him my pearly teeth, with a few gold teeth as well.

At that moment, a black van pulls up and a shorter dark haired man walks out of the driver’s side.

“Alright, guys. That’s enough,” he orders, and Chen laughs again as I pull away from the lethal weapon, wiping the saliva that had started to drip off my chin.

“I can’t leave you two alone without you fooling around. I’m surprised we ever get anything done,” the man, Kyungsoo, mutters.

“Oh please,” I say. “You know that this ‘business’ would crumble if not for us.”

“Not to mention your sense of humor,” Chen grins brightly. His lips stretch even further when Kyungsoo glares viciously at him.

After clearing his throat, Kyungsoo gets down to business, “the guy we are looking for is named Wu Yifan, but he goes by Kris. Rumor has it, he’s discovered some very…interesting information about our contractor that can ruin their business. We must capture him and figure out what he knows.”

“So are we going to get him today or…?” Chen asks.

Kyungsoo shakes his head, “no. Today, you two are just going to find and observe. Get a good feel of him so that we can figure out how to approach him.”

Chen and I nod once in unison. Kyungsoo reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small picture, holding it out for the two of us to see. The picture is in black and white and shows the side of a man’s face, he seems to be about the same age as us.

“This is our guy. Find him, study him, and report your findings back to me. Understood?”

“Affirmative,” I reply, sliding my glock back into its hiding place.

“Alright. Good luck.” Kyungsoo heads back into his van and peels out, causing dirt to waft around us.

We cough and choke on the dirt. Once it clears we glance at each other.

“I was really hoping we would kill someone today,” Chen pouts and sighs.

I take a deep breath and let it go harshly, placing my hands on my hips, “not today. Looks like we’re spying.”

“I feel so degraded. Isn’t this Sehun’s job?”

I smack his arm, “behave.”

Chen pouts again, rubbing his arm, “let’s go.”

~*~

Twenty minutes later, Chen and I find ourselves sitting at a park, watching a basketball game.

Our boy, Yifan, is attempting to play. He’s pretty good, at least, he’s very confident.

“He has literally missed every single shot he’s thrown,” Chen says, voice filled with mild disbelief.

I sigh, “How the hell did this guy uncover vital information about our contractor that can destroy them?”

“He had to stumble upon it. There’s no way….”

Yifan tosses the ball at the basket again, Chen and I tilt our heads to the side as the ball bounces off the backboard and soars back to Yifan, who ducks just in time.

“Pathetic,” Chen says. “Should we teach him a thing or two?”

I shake my head, “we must stay in shadow mode. We need to figure him out so that we can find a way to approach him.”

“You’re right. I just feel so bad for the man.”

“At least he looks hot while doing it.”

Chen is silent and I glance over at him. He is staring at me incredulously.

“What?” I pout.

“Your taste in men is quite appalling,”

“Yeah, especially since this one cannot stay.” I pull the sunglasses that are resting on the top of my head down to my eyes and stand. “Should we go?”

“Do you think we’ve gathered enough information?”

I shrug, “No. But I’m tired and he’s boring. Maybe they got the wrong guy.”

“We never make mistakes, Dragen, you know that.”

“Ilhoon will be worried. I promised him I’d be home early tonight.”

“What’s going on between you two anyway?”

“He’s my best friend,” I breathe.

“If he were your best friend, he’d know what you have been doing for the past five years. You’re lying to him.”

“You know that this profession calls for us to lie to everyone that matters, or else they’ll get hurt.”

Chen just shakes his head, “let’s wait one more hour. Hopefully he’ll go home, and you can peep on him taking a hot shower.”

I think about Chen’s offer. It is true that we haven’t gotten much on this Kris guy—except for the fact that he’s a terrible basketball player—and after my last assignment, I cannot afford to call it a day. “One more hour.”

Chen salutes and we get settled once again on the bench.

Yifan misses again.

~*~

“We’ve gathered that he likes to play sports, basketball in particular, though he isn’t very good.”

“Also, he enjoys eating jelly filled donuts and is quite clumsy, being that he got the jelly all over his shirt.”

“In a nutshell. This man is pathetic, and could possibly be molded like putty in Dragen’s hands,” Chen finishes with a smirk.

Kyungsoo’s wide eyes bounce back and forth between Chen and I. Finally he sighs and leans back in his chair, “alright. You two are dismissed. I’ll report your minuscule findings to the boss and he’ll let us know where to continue with this mission.”

Chen and I both rise to go but then Kyungsoo asks me to stay behind. Chen and I lock eyes and I can sense the worry in his gaze, but he leaves nonetheless, he has no choice.

I settle back down into my chair and wait for Kyungsoo to speak. He leans forward, folding his hands in front of him. His tan suit is a size too big for him and he looks like a son pretending to be his father at his office. 

“Suho is still worried about your well-being, Dragen,” he starts and I try not to roll my eyes. “He wants to make sure you won’t turn on us again. You haven’t killed anyone since Minho, and giving you such a big assignment after your near failure causes him to worry.”

I bite my lip. Just hearing his name rips me up inside, causes tears to form in my eyes. I take a deep breath and suck it back in, tape myself quickly back together so that I’m not exposed.

“So what do you suggest?” I question.

Kyungsoo opens a drawer and pulls out a manila folder, sliding it over to me.

“It’s a small mission. Just a man who was trading secrets of the South to the North. He’s on the run, right on the border, but they pinned him and have been watching him. His expiration date is tomorrow at noon, and then it’s a free for all. The government wants him disposed of before then.”

I skim through his profile. Kim Minseok, thirty years old, he was an officer in our military and apparently pretty high up. I wonder what caused him to betray the country in such a way.

“Do you think you can handle it?”

I allow myself this eye roll, “I can handle it.”

Kyungsoo nods and I see a hint of a smile pull at the side of his face, “good.”

I rise and walk quickly out of his office. Sometimes that man gives me the chills. It isn’t like I think he’d hurt me or anything, but I know that he can be ruthless and is completely deadly. He’s a killing machine.

At around two in the morning, I find myself on top of an old abandoned building. It’s an extremely windy night, and my curly hair flies violently behind me. Quickly, I wrap my hair into a ponytail and resume my position: kneeling on one knee with my rifle resting on the edge of the building. I peek through the scope, scanning the area for Minseok. Finally, after an hour and a half, I catch movement. There he is, running through the deserted open road covered in filth. You’d have thought he’d know better. I mean, the man’s on the run, why is he running out in the open? Oh well, I can’t care less for the reasons behind his actions. All I care about is proving Suho and Kyungsoo wrong. I can be just as heartless as them, and I am going to prove it in three, two, one…

Bang! 

The jolt from my rifle pushes me back and I stumble for a second as Minseok falls, out cold. Quickly, I snatch my weapon and run as fast as I can carrying the heavy equipment on my shoulder. Once I’m out the building, I yank out my glock and cautiously approach the man sprawled against the asphalt. I glance around me, all is clear. Minseok takes a quick breath and I jump.

“Please,” he whispers. I swallow hard as his eyes roll up to my face. “Please, I had to do it. I’m sorry. No one ever has a choice.”

“No,” I snap back at him. “There is always a choice, always a way out.”

“I guess you’ll find out soon….” He takes another breath, but doesn’t ever let it back out.

What was that?! No time to think about it. I have to leave the scene. I run over to my unmarked van and throw my rifle in the back, carefully maneuvering the vehicle so to not leave any marks. Once I am about forty miles out, I high sped it out of there. When I am at my safe spot—a dingy 24-hour gas station—I jump to the back and dismantle my weapon. Once it is put away, I drive back to the agency, switching the van for my own Dodge Neon and finally go home.

Pretenses:

He smiles and his front teeth shine against the darkness that surrounds us.

“You’re so beautiful when you’re shy,” he breathes, taking me all in.

I smirk, pretending to be brave, “your flattery isn’t really working, Minho.”

“Oh yeah?” He growls and presses himself closer to me, causing both my heart to race and a moan to escape. His smile widens with satisfaction.

“I love you,” he murmurs against the skin of my collarbone.

Don’t say that, I think. All the same, I smile and answer back to him, “I love you too, Minho.”

“Good,” he snaps, his voice serious and deep with lust. “Because you’re mine, Baby. For forever.”

I awake with tears in my eyes. I’m still dreaming of him, a whole year later. I don’t think I’ll ever not dream of him, of the man who showed me what real love felt like.

I check the time and jump up and run to my closet until I freeze. Today is Sunday, I have today off.

I sigh and lean against my closet doorframe filled with relief. Something unhinged me about my last mission, something about the way Minseok had just given up, about what he said to me. A sense of fear crawls up my throat like a premonition and I swallow it back fiercely. I’m overreacting. Maybe Suho and Kyungsoo are right about me, maybe I am becoming soft.

I step out of my room and bump into Ilhoon. His arms encircle me and he takes a step back, catching us.

“Whoa, there,” he murmurs, chuckling as we pull away. “Good morning to you too, Dray.”

I rub my forehead and sigh, “sorry.”

“Busy night?” He asks. He starts walking away and I follow him to the kitchen, plopping on a chair as he pulls out two bowls from the cabinet. “You didn’t get in until late…”

I wince, “I’m sorry, Ilhoonie. I know you want me to come home earlier, but my job is kicking my butt.”

“All you do is fix computers,” he scoffs and hands me a bowl filled with chocolate cereal—our favorite.

“You’d be surprised how complicated fixing a computer can be. First you have to find the problem, and then you have to check the entire database and make sure all of the files and other information won’t get lost and then—”

“Alright, alright. I believe you,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “You’re going to give me a headache with all that computer talk.”

“Sorry,” I mutter. I’m not feeling very well today, and Ilhoon can sense it.

“Well, you have today off, don’t you?” I nod. “Are you going up to your parents’ later?”

I nod again, “Zelo’s birthday is tomorrow so we’re celebrating it tonight. Are you going to come too?”

Ilhoon shrugs, “I am practically family. Plus, I haven’t seen Zelo in a while. How old is he turning?”

“Nineteen,” I gulp. My little brother is becoming a man today, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was terrified.

Ilhoon laughs, “remember us at nineteen? We went wild on our birthday!” Ilhoon and I share the same birthday, hence why we are so close.

I shudder, “that is exactly why I am nervous. I don’t want Yongguk anywhere near him after ten.”

Ilhoon’s eyes darken, but he doesn’t say anything. We finish our breakfast in silence and I help him wash the dishes.

“It’s almost twelve, get ready,” he orders as he heads to his room.

I sigh and roll my eyes. Ilhoon is very religious. If there is one thing he loves, it’s the lord. One of the requirements of living with him is that I have to accompany him to Sunday mass every week.

Once there, we sit in a pew near the middle and listen to the word. The father preaches about God’s love and undying devotion, but I don’t feel any reassurance.

I’m no angel. I’m the opposite, in fact. I’ve committed too many sins to be forgiven and I know there is nothing pleasant waiting for me on the other side.

God gave up on me a long time ago.

~*~

After mass, Ilhoon and I head over to my parents’ house. The place is packed with all of Zelo’s friends. Once my father sees me, he beams and wraps me in a hug. Since my life is so busy with work, I don’t see my family often. It has been a few weeks since Zelo and I have talked, and months since my parents’ and I have.

“Where’s Zelo?” I practically yell into my father’s ear. The music is so loud I can feel it more than hear it.

“In the living room, AKA the ‘dance floor’.” My father rolls his eyes and chuckles at my silly brother. I nod and snatch Ilhoon’s hand, dragging him with me to the living room.

In the middle of the room, surrounded by a semi-circle is the birthday boy. He’s busting all kinds of moves and I roll my eyes—I taught that kid practically everything he knows.

[fuckedurbias]

superhero!baejin

a/n; i love marvel, and i love baejin. because of this, my friend drew me a picture of baejin as spiderman for my birthday at the start of this year and im still OBSESSED!! ever since then i rlly wanted to write smth cute to do w this concept and so,, here we are hehe. i hope u can all enjoy as much as i do

just for context:

you and jinyoung were friends

not best friends but, you would consider him a pretty close friend

he was a part of your main friend group so, you saw each other and hung out quite often

you were interested in him romantically

but you didn’t have a crush unfortunately

only because you could never think he’d ever reciprocate the interest

you did flirt with him sometimes, though

just to see how he responded and get any hint of how he may feel

he flirted back

but in more of a banter way

so it didn’t help and only made you confused and sad

ANYWAYS TO THE SUPERHERO PART!!

supers were known and accepted, for the most part

your city only had a couple known ones, which was quite a few less than the other cities

like there were a few other ‘underground’ ones or supers that didn’t like being supers and chose to keep it to themselves and live normal lives rather than be heroes

even though they could choose to keep their identities hidden like some supers do

you in particular, always found supers fascinating

why were some people born with super powers?

why do some people develop powers after incidents like car crashes or bites or an injection gone wrong?

were they ‘chosen’? was there some reason behind it? was it genetics that made them more prone to developing these powers?

even if the power was something more “normal” like super intelligence that allowed them to create some kind of suit or mechanical machine or gadgets that allowed them to have things that are usually purely superpowers like flying and shooting beams

you wanted to know how and why

in your spare time

not even spare time, even on school time

you studied these supers, all the well known ones

and even some underground ones that you come across or hear of

not even in just your city, other cities, other states, other countries

you wanted to know more

you didn’t know why

you didn’t envy them or want to be them necessarily (but like, who doesn’t)

you were just, so curious and fascinated

anYWAYS

along with superheroes came supervillains

not every super decided to use their power for good, unfortunately

this is where you got confused

because if supers were ‘chosen’ for a reason

why would anyone use their powers for bad?

and unfortunately, your city only had two main supers who always fought crime

but, there were several villains and it got quite exhausting seeing the same two slave away and struggle constantly

but thankfully, there was a new rookie super who had been seen a few times now assisting the two experienced supers in fighting the pesky villains

and god did you love him

his powers were so peculiar

spider powers?! really?! out of everything that could be a super power?!

shooting webs and being able to climb walls and ceilings

sadly, it didn’t appear he had venomous spider powers

or maybe he did but, his suit made to hide his identity didn’t really allow him to bite his enemies

he seemed pretty young, too

rather young sounding voice and stature

this drew you in even more because, what if he went to your school? what if you knew him in some way?

… what if he was your friend?

probably wasn’t but, the thought of it excited you

but now - to recent times

you and your friends were all out on a cute picnic

exam period had just finished, all of you had completed your final subjects

and now you were having a nice day out in the sun, with great food and company to celebrate

jinyoung was the last one to show up, only just finishing his final exam an hour ago

he rushed up to you guys, holding his backpack straps as he ran over to you all

you were eyeing him, unintentionally of course

he was wearing a plain, loose-fitting black v neck t-shirt and loose basketball shorts

and he looked so good

you could see his collarbones and chest very well through his shirt

and it was driving you crazy

your heart did the thing

and you had to shake yourself back into reality

once he reached you guys, he quickly threw his hefty backpack down as he sat down

he fell back onto his hands and spread his legs out with an exhausted huff

he smiled and waved at everybody

… except for you??

he gave you his scrunchy-nosed eye smile

and pet you on the head

which made your heart jump and frick maybe you were developing a little crush on him

anyways fast forward to an hour and a half later

the picnic was going well

and you and jinyoung had been lowkey flirting for a lot of the time

almost all the snacks were eaten

you were reaching for a few more grapes

but you paused

as you heard and felt a weird vibration, almost like

an earthquake?

you and your friends all looked at each other in panic

then the screaming started

you stood up and ran out onto the street next to the park you and your friends were in

and you saw it

your cities most infamous villain

in a giant robot suit, destroying the roads as it walked

smashing cars, making buildings shake and shatter

they even purposely whacked a few taller buildings with the robots arm on purpose

it was heading right down the roads towards you

you could see their evil grin as they operated the controls from the robot’s see-through dome head

you sprinted back to your friends, fear very clear on your face

without a word they immediately grabbed their bags, forgetting about the blanket and snacks

you grabbed your bag along with them and you all sprinted onto the street ahead of you

but not to much effort, the robot was already close

it was hard to run as the ground shook underneath you

you screamed for your friends to follow you into an alleyway

you turned the corner in the alleyway, in between two buildings where you wouldn’t be seen at all

you and your friends all looked around at each other to make sure all of you were there and accounted for

but one person was missing

jinyoung

your heart fell and you panicked, all your friends tried looking for him

but as soon as you turned your head out into the open part of the alleyway

you saw the villain

and they saw you

you screamed and all your friends ran

in your panic, you ran out in the open street

you looked back to see the robot reeling its arm back, about to smash into the tall building that was above you right now

you screamed, running faster

but you tripped

you turned over to see what was happening

and just as the robots arm was about to smash into the building

he appeared

the spider boy

he swung out of nowhere and shot a web at the robots arm and pulled it down to the ground with him

damn, for a scrawny boy he was strong

the cities other two supers appeared at this moment

one smashing into the glass dome on the robots head

spider boy, dude, person, whatever his name was, was struggling at this point to hold the arm down

the villain started to control the robots other arm, making it backhand spider boy, sending him flying

he also hit the other super trying to hold him down

and literally just picking the other one up by their cape and throwing them across the street

you got up frantically, tripping over a few more times trying to run away, knowing perfectly well what was about to happen

the robots arm swung back and smashed into the building it tried to hit before

your life flashed before your eyes as you tried to run faster, away from the parts of the building that were crumpling down above you

thank god nobody was in it at the time

but bad for you

because whole slabs of concrete were about to crush you

you saw the shadow of a massive pipe falling from one end closing in on you, about to crush you

you were running fast, but not fast enough

your life started flashing before your eyes as it was about to hit you

but as you squeezed your eyes shut, you felt a rush of wind and what felt like you soaring through the air

is this what sudden death felt like?

you opened one eye nervously as you lifted your head

what you were greeted with you never would’ve expected

spider boys face… well, mask

right in front of you

he was carrying you

THROUGH THE AIR!!

he shot another web, as you screamed at the slight falling sensation

but it grabbed onto a building, sending you soaring again

all you could do was stare at him in shock

his free hand tightened around your waist as your legs wrapped tighter around his hips and your hands tighter on his shoulders

once he had taken you far enough from the villain

he shot one last web, gripping tightly onto the building it was hanging from once he reached it

you hid your face into his shoulder again, scared of the impact of crashing into a building like that

it was rather hard and sudden but

you didn’t die or get hurt

you lifted your head to look at him

he was just??? gripping onto the building

even with his body suit on??

you were really shook

you didn’t dare look down though, even feeling the wind and the sinking in your stomach from how high up you were was enough to make you want to scream and cry

he was looking up as he carefully scaled the building

but he looked down at you, feeling your eyes boring into him

you were just staring at him with confusion and shock, not able to believe what was happening right now

this is not how you ever thought you’d meet a super

you couldn’t even feel excited

just so shocked and panicked

he stopped for a second as he looked at you

your stomach flipped

you were sure he was smiling but, obviously you couldn’t see or tell

but you could’ve sworn you saw his nose scrunch up for a second

once you reached the top of the building he stood up, pulling you off him as he stood you in front of him

but your legs gave way

both from the horrid feeling of being up so high and from running so much, but probably also due to general shock and being overwhelmed

he kneeled down in front of you

“please don’t leave me up here by myself”

“i’ll be back in a second, i promise” he pointed in the distance where you could see the big robot and villain, and the two other supers successfully fighting them

his voice, it sent off a lightbulb somewhere deep in your head, but because it was rather muffled you couldn’t hear it clearly

he pet your head before shooting a web to a nearby building and swinging away

the head pat….

it made your heart jump

you smiled softly to yourself

he felt. so familiar

you didn’t want to assume but

surely, it couldn’t be

you carefully stood up, legs wobbling as you struggled to stand up straight

you watched as he fought

and it was like your heart just knew before your brain even pieced it together

it.. was him??

everything about him

his stature

his voice

his nose scrunch

his… head pats?

the way he held you, felt exactly like his hugs

you were in complete awe

as if you needed more of a reason to study supers religiously

you had to make yourself certain

[ohalemalia]

Daily Dose - Part 6 (S.M. Imagine)

Pairing: Scott x Reader

Warnings: accidental groping, slight jealousy, underage drinking brief mention

Word Count: 2838

A/N: this was the toughest chapter i’ve ever written? And it took a lot longer than i thought it would, so thanks for the patience.

Summary: It’s Y/N’s birthday! Y/N learns something new about a new friend that might make things weird with an older one.

Melissa and Scott were nice enough to let me stay at their home since my parents were out of town (and by “let me stay”, I meant they heavily insisted, basically forced me and would not let me out of their sight). Melissa was also talking about getting me back into public school even though Beacon Hills High was almost done with their first semester and I would be horribly behind. They had me doing classes in the hospital, but socially I would go in knowing no one.

Except maybe Scott.

Scott was quite possibly the nicest person I ever had the pleasure to meet and I don’t know what I did to deserve bumping into him. You know how there’s those people who do nice things because they think it’ll make them look better or that people will owe them? That wasn’t Scott. Scott was just selflessly a good person. He did things because he knew it would make others feel better and not the other way around. And it worked. Being with Scott made me feel a hell of a lot better.

Whatever girl ended up being with Scott would be extremely lucky.

Scott was the kind of guy that was in the books I read, a guy that I thought solely existed on paper sheets of fiction. Scott was (and don’t take this the wrong way) the kind of guy a girl dreamed about.

But there was nothing that was going to happen between us.

Even if by some weird circumstances, one of us fell in love with the other (which we wouldn’t), I would not let myself do that to Scott. Scott was too good to be poisoned by me. I would be in and out of hospitals, my health would be unpredictable and he didn’t deserve to get mixed up in my storm. But it’s not like I’m trying to be a martyr and it’s not as if I was expecting Scott to suddenly fall in love with me so there wasn’t anything to worry about.

Right?

While Scott was at school and Melissa was at work, I made a field trip home to pick up some clothes and my documents so that Melissa could register me for school. I returned back to the McCall residence with more than that.

“What’s that?”  Scott asked as he entered the front door. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, a package from my parents sitting on the coffee table in front of me.

“A birthday gift,” I replied, still staring at the package.

Scott squinted as he took his denim jacket off, “For who?”

“For me,” I told him, not taking my eyes off the package.

There was a moment of silence until Scott spoke again, “Wait, it's your birthday?”

“Yep,” I squinted at the box, trying to figure out what could be inside.

“And you didn't tell anyone?”

I shrugged, “I didn't think it was important.”

“What? Y/N, it’s your birthday, what do you mean it’s not important?”

“I mean,” With a sigh, I adjusted myself so that my legs were tucked underneath me, “Was I supposed to make this huge announcement, “Hey guys! It’s my birthday!””

“Well yeah,” Scott made his way over to the couch, “Don’t you want to do something exciting? Something nice to celebrate?”

“I think my body offers enough exciting twists and turns already, thanks,” I picked up the package and headed towards the stairs, “I think right now for me “something nice” would be just having a good day. That’s all.”

And so I headed up to the guest room intent on spending my birthday eating ice cream and binge watching shows on Netflix. Maybe Melissa would make us dinner, but honestly, what was the big deal? People have birthdays every year (if they’re lucky) and honestly, the fact I didn’t have any of my family or friends from home around made the prospect of having a party a little less appealing. There was always next year.

Hopefully.

SCOTT’S POV

“What do you mean she doesn’t want to do anything for her birthday?”

“Exactly what I said,” Scott smiled sheepishly as Lydia rolled her eyes on his phone screen. After he heard about Y/N not wanting to do anything for her birthday, he took matters into his own hands and called up the best party thrower he knew.

“But birthdays are super important,” Lydia stressed, “Especially for someone who isn't guaranteed another.”

“Well no one is really guaranteed another one when you think about it.”

The look Lydia shot him through the phone screen was enough to send a chill through his body, “You know what I meant, Scott.”

“Yeah I know,” Scott licked his lips, “So, what do you think?”

Lydia pursed her lips, “It's short notice, really short notice. But I think I can pull something together.”

Scott sighed with relief, “Thank you, Lydia. Thank you so much, I owe you.”

“I counted on that, which is why I need you to get Y/N out of the house for a couple hours. I'll call the others for backup and then I'll let you know when everything is ready,” Lydia had a wicked glint in her eye as she smiled at Scott, “You're really doing a lot for this girl. Almost like you're trying to impress her.”

“I'm just, doing something nice,” Scott couldn't see what Lydia was getting at.

“You go out of your way to do a lot of nice things for her,” Lydia pointed out.

“Yeah, because that's what friends are for,” Scott squinted, “What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” Lydia looked away from the camera, feigning innocence, “I mean, I guess whatever your relationship is is solely your business. But if there is a relationship there you would tell me? Right?”

Scott chuckled, “We're not in a relationship, Lydia.”

“Right, but do you want to be?”

Scott rolled his eyes but smiled, “Goodbye, Lydia.”

“Wait, Scott—”

Scott ended the call, never getting to hear what Lydia had to say. He liked Y/N. He liked being around her and wanted to make her happy. He didn’t feel the need to make it into something that it wasn’t. Besides, did he even want them to be a couple?

Well, it wasn’t the worst idea.

Y/N’s POV

“Scott, I can carry some of that.”

At the moment, Scott currently had six bags of groceries balanced in his arms and despite my efforts he would not let me hold any of them.

“No, I’ve got it, don’t worry,” He insisted.

“Scott, that’s easily sixty pounds you’ve got in your arms, I don’t want you to drop it.”

“And I don’t want you to drop it,” Scott shifted the bags in his arms, “Can you grab the keys out of my back pocket and open the door?”

“Yeah, sure,” I went around Scott and reached down to dig around in his pocket. I frowned as I didn’t feel keys, nor did I feel a pocket, just soft material.

“Y/N,” Scott’s voice was strained and I figured that the weight of the groceries was finally getting to him now that he cut the bravado act.

“I’m trying, but I can’t find the keys.”

“That’s because that’s not my pocket.”

I looked down and realized that I hadn’t stuck my hand in Scott’s pocket, oh no. Instead, I had bypassed his pocket entirely and slid my hand down the waistband of his jeans. For those of you following along, that means I was currently groping my friend’s ass thinking that I was looking for the keys.

I ripped my hand away as fast a humanly possible, my face burning in embarrassment, “I-I’m so sorry!”

Scott tried to laugh it off, but I could see he was flustered, “It’s fine! It’s--”

“Oh god,” I had to take a couple steps away, “I’m so, I was totally not trying to cop a feel or something.”

“Y/N, it’s fine, just,” Scott tried to offer me a reassuring smile, “Can you grab the keys please, from my pocket this time?”

I pressed my lips together, suppressing the scream that I wanted to let out. This time I actually paid attention as I stuck my hand in Scott’s pocket and pulled the keys out. I kept my back to him as I unlocked the door. At this point, I just wanted to run up into my (but not really mine) room, hide under the covers and never come out.

I stepped inside and stepped out of the way so that Scott could come in.

“I can help with the groceries if you want,” I flipped the light switch on.

“Surprise!”

My heart shot up into my throat. I screamed and Scott’s keys went soaring and flying into the air. Standing around the living room were about fifty people and counting that I did not recognize. There were streamers hanging from the ceiling and rose gold balloons on the wall that said, “Happy Birthday!” There was balloons everywhere and confetti falling down on top of my head. This was all for me?”

“Oh my god,” I whispered, my hands going to my mouth.

Scott’s eyes traveled across the group of people, “Lydia, this is...a lot more than I expected.”

By now, the party goers in the back had gotten over the excitement of the birthday girl arriving and went back to drinking out of red solo cups and chatting.

A strawberry blonde girl approached us as she spoke, “Yeah, well, someone let it slip about the party.”

“Sorry!” A brunette boy with blue eyes cried out.

The girl rolled her eyes, “So now there’s about fifty trespassing freshman and sophomores. But hey, a party’s a party.”

The girl turned to me, her smile beautiful and bright, “You must be Y/N. Happy birthday!” She engulfed me in a hug, “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m--”

“Lydia? Right?” I guessed from the pictures and things Scott had told me, “Yeah I’ve heard a lot about you and from what I’ve heard this is all you.”

Lydia smiled and shrugged, “I’m kind of the best party thrower in Beacon Hills but, I can’t take all the credit. This was Scott’s idea. He really wanted to make this special for you.”

“Lydia,” Scott groaned, but Lydia kept on going.

“Speaking of which, you’re just as pretty as Scott described. Maybe even prettier.”

Scott made a noise that made us both look at him, “I never said--well, it’s not like I don’t think--”

He cleared his throat and gave up, “I’m gonna go put these in the kitchen.”

“I’ll keep Y/N company,” With a grin, Lydia linked arms with me and pulled me through the crowd, “I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

I looked back at Scott to see if this was okay, but he was making a beeline for the kitchen. But I figured I was in good hands. If Lydia was Scott’s friend, she had to be just as good as a person as him.

I found that this was true for all of his friends. I finally got to meet Stiles, Malia, Kira, Liam and Mason in person. Stiles was hilarious, Malia was...intense, Kira was sweet, Liam and Mason’s dynamic was just a riot. I found myself warming up to them instantly. 

I was really glad no one was like, “Hey, Y/N, so tell us what it’s like to have lupus.” It was completely and totally normal. You know what was completely and totally not normal? The fact that Scott had disappeared since we came in and I had yet to find him.

I tried not to think about it too much and just enjoy the moment. I had never had a surprise party before so the fact that Scott and his friends, who I had never met, would do this for me had me in awe. I danced with the girls in the middle of the living room and we obnoxiously shouted the lyrics to our favorite songs when we were too tired to dance. I watched as Liam and Mason dabbled in underage drinking, promptly spit out whatever liquor was in their red solo cups and swear off drinking for good. I laughed as Stiles...danced? If you could call it that. But Scott had yet to make an appearance.

In fact, I didn’t see Scott until everyone went home and it was me, Lydia, Malia, Kira and Stiles picking up red solo cups and beer cans off the floor.

“Y/N, you don’t have to do that,” Lydia gently took the crushed can out of my hand, “It’s your birthday, girl.”

“Yeah, only for about,” I checked the time on my phone, “Forty minutes.”

“That’s just enough time,” Scott came running down the stairs, looking at his phone.

“Where the hell have you been all night?” I asked.

Scott only grinned at me in response, “Working on a gift. Here, sit down.”

I did as he said, but I was totally confused, “Why? What’s going on?”

Scott tapped a few times on his screen and grinned. He handed the phone to me, “Here.”

I took his phone, “Scott, why do I need your--”

“Y/N? Y/N can you hear us?”

“You gotta bring the phone closer, honey.”

“This is as close as it goes.”

“Did you turn the sound up?”

“Yes, I turned the sound up, do I look like an idiot?”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

My eyes watered and my jaw popped open, “Mom? Dad?”

My parents grinned at me from the screen, “Hi honey! How are you?”

“I’m--” I wiped my face, “”I’m fine, I’m great, how are you guys?”

“We are amazing!” My dad said, “The excursion is amazing, we’re seeing a lot of new species that we weren’t even sure existed.”

“But this isn’t about us,” My mom gave my dad a pointed look, “Happy birthday, sweetie! We’re so sorry we couldn’t be there.”

I laughed with pure joy at seeing my parents again, “It’s okay, you’re here right now.”

“Scott reached out and told us about how he wanted us to be here for your special day,” My mom smiled, “He’s so thoughtful and cute too.”

My face burned. Scott leaned over my shoulder to smile into the camera, “Thank you, Mrs. L/N.”

“Yeah, thank you, for pointing that out,” My dad grumbled at her. He looked at me, “I hope you’re sleeping in separate beds, separate rooms, actually I think you can just sleep outside so you’re as far as possible.”

I smiled uncomfortably, “Yeah, dad you’re--that’s not going to happen and you’re on speaker.”

“Good, I want him to know that there’s no funny business.”

“Yeah,” I groaned, “Him and literally everyone else in the room.”

“Oh, your friends?” My mom angled the phone towards her and waved, “Hi everyone!”

There was a chorus of cheerful hellos from everyone back to my parents.

“Well, we’re so glad we got to see you and that you’re doing so well,” My mom smiled fondly at me, “We love you, honey, and we can’t wait to see you, okay? Stay strong and hang on in there until June!”

“I love you too,” There were hot tears streaming down my face at this point.

“‘Bye!”

“Bye,” My voice cracked as the call ended and the screen faded back to Scott’s lock screen. I handed the phone back to Scott.

“Are you--”

I didn’t let him finish his sentence before I launched myself towards him and wrapped my arms around his neck. I buried my face into his shoulder, trying to hide my face from all of his friends and muffle my sobs, “Th-thank you. So much. For everything. Thank you.”

I felt his arm wrap around my waist and put his chin on top of my head, “Of course, Y/N. Don’t--of course.”

I lifted my head, concerned that I was getting tears all over his shirt. I looked up and unexpectedly made eye contact with one of the girls I met today, Kira. While everyone else was smiling at my public display of emotion she looked...not pleased. There wasn’t an overblown hatred there but the way her eyes stared at Scott’s arms wrapped around me made me feel...uneasy. It was almost like there was longing in her eyes. Jealousy. Sadness. We made eye contact and she quickly looked away, shame blanketing over her features. I understood.

I pulled away from Scott, wiping my hands on my jeans and forcing a smile, “Who’s ready for cake?”

There were cheers as Lydia made her way to the kitchen to grab my birthday cake. Kira feigned excitement but I could tell she was still bothered.  Our eyes met again and she forced a small smile in my direction. She wasn’t going to say anything to me, I knew it, but she didn’t need to because it was spelled out loud and clear for me.

Kira was into Scott, and I was in the way.

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@pinkwinds

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[multipleservicelisting]

They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough

SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area struck a hard bargain with its tech workers.

Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees.

But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring.

That is, until the pandemic. Remote work offered a chance at residing for a few months in towns where life felt easier. Tech workers and their bosses realized they might not need all the perks and after-work schmooze events. But maybe they needed elbow room and a yard for the new puppy. A place to put the Peloton. A top public school.

They fled. They fled to tropical beach towns. They fled to more affordable places like Georgia. They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida.

That’s where the story of the Bay Area’s latest tech era is ending for a growing crowd of tech workers and their companies. They have suddenly movable jobs and money in the bank — money that will go plenty further somewhere else.

But where? The No. 1 pick for people leaving San Francisco is Austin, Texas, with other winners including Seattle, New York and Chicago, according to moveBuddha, a site that compiles data on moving. Some cities have even set up recruiting programs to lure them to new homes. Miami’s mayor has even been inviting tech people to move there in his Twitter posts.

I talked to more than two dozen tech executives and workers who have left San Francisco for other parts of the country over the last year, like a young entrepreneur who moved home to Georgia and another who has created a community in Puerto Rico. Here are some of their stories.

Ah, the normal life

“I miss San Francisco. I miss the life I had there,” said John Gardner, 35, the founder and chief executive of Kickoff, a remote personal training start-up, who packed his things into storage and left in a camper van to wander America. “But right now it’s just like: What else can God and the world and government come up with to make the place less livable?”

A couple of months later, Mr. Gardner wrote: “Greetings from sunny Miami Beach! This is about the 40th place I’ve set up a temporary headquarters for Kickoff.”

Remote personal training happens to coincide well with remote life, but he said his start-up’s growth this past year was also due to his leaving the tech bubble and immersing himself in more normal communities, a few days at a time.

The biggest tech companies aren’t going anywhere, and tech stocks are still soaring. Apple’s flying-saucer-shaped campus is not going to zoom away. Google is still absorbing ever more office space in San Jose and San Francisco. New founders are still coming to town.

But the migration from the Bay Area appears real. Residential rents in San Francisco are down 27 percent from a year ago, and the office vacancy rate has spiked to 16.7 percent, a number not seen in a decade.

Though prices had dropped only slightly, Zillow reported more homes for sale in San Francisco than a year ago. For more than month last year, 90 percent of the searches involving San Francisco on moveBuddha were for people moving out.

Twitter, Yelp, Airbnb and Dropbox have tried to sublease some of their San Francisco office space. Pinterest, which has one of the most iconic offices in town, paid $90 million to break a lease for a site where it planned to expand. And companies like Twitter and Facebook have announced “work from home forever” plans.

“Moving into a $1.3 million house that we saw only on video for 20 minutes and said yes,” wrote Mike Rothermel, a designer at Cisco who moved from the Bay Area to Boulder, Colo., with his wife last summer. “It’s a mansion compared to SF for the same money.”

The amount of room they have felt surreal after various Bay Area apartments. He told me they have so much counter space, they can keep appliances like the food processor in the kitchen itself.

And then the people around them — neighbors — started doing something strange. They brought cinnamons rolls and handwritten welcome notes.

Wait, no income tax?

“We’re selling our house and moving out of SF. Where should we go and why?” Justin Kan, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Twitch, asked on Twitter in August.

Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of the software company Palantir, which moved from Silicon Valley to Denver, wrote back: “Come to Austin with us. Growing tech ecosystem and Texas is the best place to make a stand together for a free society.”

Also: no state income taxes.

Austin, population one million and the Texas city most would say is closest in spirit to the Bay Area, has long had a healthy tech industry. The computer giant Dell is based nearby. The University of Texas is one of the top public colleges in the country. And the music scene is eclectic and creative.

Now the local tech industry is rapidly expanding. Apple is opening a $1 billion, 133-acre campus. Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook have all either expanded their footprints in Austin or have plans to. Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and one of the two richest men in the world, said he had moved to Texas. Start-up investor money is arriving, too: The investors at 8VC and Breyer Capital opened Austin offices last year.

Some of the favorite gurus of tech workers are already there, like Tim Ferriss, life-hacker, who left for Austin in 2017, and Ryan Holiday, whose writing about stoicism is influential among the start-up set.

Sahin Boydas, the founder of a remote-work start-up who had lived in San Francisco and its suburbs over the last decade, saw all of that. He looked at his wife and two young children, working and learning from home while crammed into a Cupertino rental that had seen better days. Much of the late summer, the air was full of smoke from wildfires. For days, electricity would go in and out at his house.

“You start to feel stupid,” said Mr. Boydas, who is 37. “I can understand the 1 percent rich people, the very top investors and entrepreneurs, they can be happy there.”

So he and his family moved to Austin. For the same price as their three-bedroom apartment in Cupertino, they have a five-bedroom home on an acre of land. For the first time, Mr. Boydas has outdoor space. He just acquired two rabbits for his children. Sure, it’s (very) hot, but he’s ready for it.

“We’re going to get a cat and a dog,” he said. “We could never do that before.”

And it’s not just the cost of rent that is lower — the water bill is lower; the trash bill is lower; the cost of a family dinner at a restaurant has fallen significantly. Mr. Boydas said he hadn’t even known about the taxes.

“I run payroll for myself, and when I saw zero, I called the accountant like there’s an error — there’s no tax line here,” he said. “And they were like, ‘Yeah there’s no tax.’”

“Ok guys hear me out, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami,” tweeted Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund, which invests in start-ups.

The mayor of Miami wrote back last month: “How can I help?”

Now there is a very vocal Miami faction, led by a few venture capital influencers, trying to tweet the city’s start-up world into existence.

The San Francisco exodus means the talent and money of newly remote tech workers are up for grabs. And it’s not just the mayor of Miami trying to lure them in.

Topeka, Kan., started Choose Topeka, which will reimburse new workers $10,000 for the first year of rent or $15,000 if they buy a home. Tulsa, Okla. will pay you $10,000 to move there. The nation of Estonia has a new residency program just for digital nomads.

A program in Savannah, Ga., will reimburse remote workers $2,000 for the move there, and the city has created various social activities to introduce the newcomers to one another and to locals.

“We try to make the transition easy,” said Jennifer Bonnett, vice president of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Savannah Economic Development Authority, whose program started in June.

Keyan Karimi, 29 and a start-up investor, took Savannah’s invitation to move there (though he didn’t ask for the reimbursement).

Seeing the inequality of billionaires in San Francisco’s wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood and the homeless camps down the hill ground on him. So Mr. Karimi went home to his parents house in Atlanta to ride out some of the pandemic. Then he detected something strange. The city he thought was boring had gotten pretty interesting. Or maybe he had just never noticed before.

“I had no idea how much was going on here. I was sort of myopic,” he said, pausing and correcting himself: “No, I was arrogant.”

Mr. Karimi started looking at Zillow and studying the Southern cities he had ignored. He likes old houses and wants to fix one up. Savannah has a lot of those. So just a few months after leaving his $4,000-a-month one-bedroom in San Francisco, he’s working with the local business development group to put together a maritime innovation center in Savannah to invest in and guide shipping and logistics start-ups. He bought one of those old houses.

Savannah has one of the largest ports in the country. “No one knows that,” Mr. Karimi said. “I figure we can do something with that.”

The only downside is mosquitoes, he said. “I get eaten alive.”

There are 33,000 members in the Facebook group Leaving California and 51,000 in its sister group, Life After California. People post pictures of moving trucks and links to Zillow listings in new cities.

The founder of both groups, Terry Gilliam, is planning to take members on a house-hunting road trip through eastern Tennessee this spring with stops in popular post-S.F. destinations. One tour will be Chattanooga, Knoxville and Johnson City.

“When people decide to leave San Francisco, they usually don’t know where they want to go, they just want to go,” Mr. Gilliam said.

Mr. Gilliam, who met his wife when they worked at a Bay Area Chili’s restaurant, said she wouldn’t let the family move yet. And so the Pied Piper of the California-bashing Facebook community is still in Fremont, on the eastern end of Silicon Valley.

The gang’s all … here now

“People always get pissed at me when they hear birds in my Zoom,” said Ed Zaydelman, a longtime leader in San Francisco’s Burning Man community (and former New York City club promoter), who is forming an entrepreneur community in Costa Rica. “And I say, ‘Come join.’”

If San Francisco of the 2010s proved anything, it’s the power of proximity. Entrepreneurs could find a dozen start-up pitch competitions every week within walking distance. If they left a big tech company, there were start-ups eager to hire, and if a start-up failed, there was always another.

They could live jammed into a rambling Victorian with fellow nerds who — thanks to the popularity of polyamory — were having a lot of sex. More money was made faster in the Bay Area by fewer people than at any other time in American history.

No one leaving the city is arguing that a culture of innovation is going to spring up over Zoom. So some are trying to recreate it. They are getting into property development, building luxury tiny-home compounds and taking over big, funky houses in old resort towns.

“All these people want to do is this live-on-the-land stuff, but it’s not as easy as people think,” Mr. Zaydelman said.

He calls his new development company Nookleo, and he is building five tiny-home communities for remote workers. The little houses cost between $30,000 and 40,000. Each compound has four to six homes, a small organic farm, a yoga deck, a swimming pool and a kitchen clubhouse. Two clusters are already underway in Costa Rica, with Mexico and Portugal next.

In Puerto Rico, Gillian Morris, the founder of the travel app Hitlist, is also recruiting. Her San Francisco breaking point came after her roommate was attacked on their street, and she did a sort of gut check of herself over whether the street scenes and feeling of danger were worth the high rent. She moved to San Juan in 2019, even though it also has a crime problem. But now she lives in a huge house in the middle of the city.

“I have 12 people leaving San Francisco over the next three months to join a co-living community I set up,” she said. “It’s amazing here.”

And for the Baja-leaning, there is Bear Kittay, a co-founder of Good Money, an online banking platform. Now Mr. Kittay, another longtime fixture of the Burning Man festival turned developer, is building a property for the new digital nomads.

“The things that make this city ill are not within my control to change,” he said of San Francisco. “A lot of people are choosing to go to places where there’s opportunity, and maybe it’s a place that is more conservative and there can be an integration of dialogue. Or a place where they can live closer to nature. That’s what we’re doing.”

Nikil Viswanathan, who co-founded the blockchain start-up Alchemy, recently fled San Francisco. He said that there was no reason anymore for him or his colleagues to be there, and that he had always wanted to live on the beach. So now he does, in San Diego.

But the expats still find one another. Not long ago, he stumbled on a cluster at a party.

“I knew it was an S.F. crew because when I walked in because they had the full dual monitor with the ergonomic keyboard on a standing desk,” Mr. Viswanathan said, adding that conversation revolved around the lower cost of living. “One of the S.F. guys was like: ‘I just had a burrito for $6. It was amazing.’”

The last burrito he had in San Francisco cost $15.

They won’t necessarily be missed

Longtime Bay Area residents may well say good riddance to people like Mr. Viswanathan. People who distrusted the young newcomers from the start will say this change is a good thing. Hasn’t this steep growth in wealth and population in a tiny geography always seemed unsustainable?

These tech workers came like a whirlwind. Virtually every community from San Jose in the south to Marin County in the north has fought the rise of new housing for the arrivals of the last decade. Maybe spreading the tech talent around America is smart.

Locals have also seen this play before. Moving trucks come to take a generation of tech ambition away, and a few years later moving trucks return with new dreamers and new ambitions.

After the dot-com bust in 2001, there were fallow years before the latest, long-lasting boom — just as there were fallow years after the PC industry consolidated a decade earlier. That led to the dot-com boom. It is the circle of life in the Bay Area.

And those who are staying are digging in. “When 12 friends left, it felt like powerlessness,” said Diana Helmuth, a 32-year-old writer and marketer in Oakland. “Like these forces were too big. The forces of the world felt too big.”

Now, though, she is hardening toward those who say life is better somewhere else and were in town only for a job. “I say, ‘Great, goodbye, have a great time somewhere else.’”

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[fanfic-shiz]

Always You- Kili (Part One)

Pairing: Kili/OC

Prompt: sango-hentaitenshi asked: Can I request a Kili x Reader where Kili thinks she's into Fili and it takes someone pointing it out to him that it's KILI the reader is really crazy for? Bonus points if Fili knows this and uses it to wind Kili up and flirts hella hard with Reader. Thank you!

Warnings: None!

A/N: Okay, this turned into sort of a project lol meaning that it got really, really long. I feel bad for leaving you guys hanging, so I decided to break it into parts until I can finish it. Here’s Part One...Look for the next tomorrow!

Part Two

Nori was poking at the small campfire with a stick, trying to keep the flames alive, while Ori sloshed stew into another bowl. I felt some of my anxiety deflate, just a little. It was quiet nights, like this one, I looked forward to. Even though I knew they would be even fewer and farther between as we grew closer to the Lonely Mountain.

A few of the dwarves had already settled down for the night, curled up on old burlap sacks and snoring softly. I could see Bofur lying on his back, hat covering his eyes. Nearby Gandalf sat smoking a pipe, looking every bit the thoughtful, wizened wizard I knew him to be. As usual, Thorin sat further away from the others. Alone with his eyes turned in the direction of the home he had sworn to take back.

I had grown fond of all of them, enjoying each of their unique personalities. Even Thorin, though it had taken him time to accept me as a member of their company.

There was one dwarf, though, who I had found myself gravitating toward more than the others. One dwarf, who simply magnetized me. At the thought of him, my eyes found Kili. He and his brother were a short ways from the small camp, tending to the ponies. I watched as he smiled at one of the small horses and scratched it behind the ears. I had been witness to the destruction Kili could cause with a bow and arrow, or the swing of a sword. Yet his spirit was gentle, often even a little mischievous. I closed my eyes at night and his smile was often the first thing I thought of. That crooked grin that seemed to light up his entire face, crinkling his eyes at the corners. It was foolish. I was foolish.

Falling for anyone now would only lead to trouble. 

“You sure are looking at something awfully hard.”

I felt heat creeping up my neck, hurriedly tearing my eyes away from the dark haired dwarf. Bilbo had appeared next to me, silent as a mouse. He was wearing a small, knowing smile.

“I’m hopeless, aren’t I?” I murmured, shaking my head. “I came on this quest for adventure, Bilbo. Not to fall head over heels for a dwarf. And an utterly oblivious dwarf at that.”

Bilbo clucked his tongue, and I noticed he was carrying two wooden bowls of steaming stew. “Yes, but you can only control what the heart wants so much, can’t you? And I know I’m not expert on…well, on romance, or love, or anything of that nature…of course I’m not…” he trailed off into a mumble and a smile twitched at my lips. “But maybe it wouldn’t be such a horrible thing? To let yourself love him. And to tell him, of course.”

My stomach tightened unpleasantly at the thought of revealing to Kili just how I felt. I would have almost preferred to face a pack of goblins then speak the truth to him. Even if there were days when I was so sure he felt the same. It was in his eyes when he looked at me, although perhaps that was just the overactive imagination of a daydreamer.

“Oh, I don’t know…I’m not so sure Thorin would approve of me longing after his nephew.” I sighed, allowing my eyes to flicker toward Kili once again. “Besides, there’s no guarantee Kili even returns my feelings.”

“Don’t worry about, Thorin.” Bilbo scoffed. Then he clamped his mouth shut tightly and threw a look over his shoulder, as if expecting the dwarf king to be right there listening. “What I mean is, um, you shouldn’t let that deter you.”

I smiled appreciatively at him, but his words hadn’t entirely convinced me. “Thank you, Bilbo.”

He nodded, standing a little straighter as if pleased he had been able to help me. “In fact,” he handed me both the bowls. “I was just about to take these to Fili and Kili. Why don’t you instead? It’ll be the perfect excuse to speak with him, and maybe..you know, tell him. Or not. Whatever you’d like.”

I looked down at the bowls in my hands and back at Bilbo. He merely smiled at me and traipsed away, hands in his pockets. I was left with butterflies in my stomach, staring at the broad-shouldered dwarf I’d grown so enamored of. 

I sucked in a deep breath and carried the bowls across the short distance, where Kili was sitting on a boulder with his back to the small campfire. He had a pipe in his hand, forearms braced across his thighs. He looked up when he heard me coming, glancing over his shoulder. The corners of his mouth lifted into a grin, and my heart soared a little.

“There you are. Was wondering if you’d checked out for the night already.” He said, scooting over to make room for me.

“Not yet. Though to be honest, I’m not sure I could sleep right now if I tried.” I admitted, handing him one of the bowls. “Is Fili around?” I asked, looking around for his blonde haired brother. Secretly, I was glad for a moment with him and him only. It wasn’t often we found ourselves alone, not with a company of fifteen. And I especially didn’t want his brother around to tease me if I did manage to get the words that were in my heart out into the open.

I sat next to Kili, our shoulders brushing. His smile had turned into a frown as he looked away from his bowl and back toward the vast, sprawling field. “I’m sure he’ll return in just a moment. Did you want me to go search for him?”

I furrowed my eyebrows together, confused by his offer. “No, that’s alright. He’ll just have to eat a cold dinner.”

Some of the tension that had suddenly appeared in his shoulders left, and he relaxed. A peaceful silence blanketed us as he ate his dinner, both of us content to admire the view. Of course, I was entirely too aware of him to relax entirely. His presence seemed to fill me with a nervous energy, my heart too fast and my breathing too shallow. Not enough to be noticed by anyone but myself but there all the same. I snuck a look at him, admiring his profile. He was a collection of strong lines and angles, but it was the warmness and his eyes and his easy smile that drew me to him. Despite all that he had been through, he still had so much light in him.

“I don’t imagine we’ll have many more quiet nights like this one.” He said, breaking the silence as he set his now empty bowl down next to him. “Although with Bombur’s snoring, I suppose we don’t have any quiet nights at all.”

I laughed. “So easy for you to tease when you’ve no idea I’ve been kept awake by your snores as well.”

Kili turned to me, eyebrows raised in mock offense. “You don’t mean it. Your ears must be deceiving you.” His voice had taken on a teasing tone, eyes dancing with mirth. “You must be thinking of Ori, or Bofur.”

I shook my head, grinning. “No, I know what I’m hearing. You, my dwarf prince, are a snorer.”

He bumped his shoulder playfully with mine, making my stomach tumble. “Believe what you must. I know, with absolute certainty, I have never snored a day in my life.”

I laughed, feeling a sense of contentment fall over me. One I hadn’t felt for many years. I had been worried I would regret my decision to join the dwarves. Gandalf turning up on my doorstep had been the last I’d been expecting. While the journey had been long and hard, I found myself grateful I stepped out beyond my front gate. While there was so much evil and ugliness, it was easy to forget that the world could also be a beautiful place.

“I can not wait to see the mountains.” I said after a moment, imagining the high peaks dusted with snow. Like the pictures in my books but grander.

“You will not be letdown.” Kili answered, giving me a sideways smile. “Some find the mountains crude and an eyesore. For me, they are home.”

A wistful tone appeared in his voice, his eyes far away. I knew he was thinking of the Lonely Mountain, the way Thorin did each night. I smiled softly and let my body lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder.

“You’ll have your home again soon.”

He let his cheek rest against the top of my head, making my smile grow. I remembered Bilbo’s words. If there ever was a time, this was it. While we were alone, and while the moment was so calm.

“Kili, there’s something I need to tell you.” I began, hesitating a moment as I worked to gather the rest of my courage. My stomach was tying itself into knots.

“Hm? What’s that?” He asked, his voice mellow, unsuspecting.

I took in a deep breath and let it out.

“I see how it is, leave me to chase after the stray pony while you lounge about with this beauty!” A familiar voice called.

Just like that, the moment was cracked and my courage with it. Yet as I caught sight of Fili coming out of the tall grass to my right, his wide grin made it hard to be angry with him. Disappointed maybe, but it was hard to be bitter with either of the brothers.

“You’re the one who offered, if I remember correctly.” Kili shot back, giving his brother a smirk.

Fili waved his hand at him, shrugging him off, as he dropped down next to me. He slung an arm around my shoulder, pulling me into his side in one of his tight, friendly squeezes. I felt Kili stiffen next to me.

“Thought you’d be sound asleep by now.”

“Maybe I would be, but I’ve been sitting here waiting to give you your dinner.” I told him, pointing to the wooden bowl resting on shelf of rock next to me. Fili brightened, his arm leaving my shoulder as he reached down and grabbed the bowl. “It’ll be cold now.”

“Hot, cold. Doesn’t matter. Food is food. Especially when brought to you by a beautiful maiden.” Fili winked and I rolled my eyes, laughing.

“Don’t get used to it.” I warned him jokingly.

Kili suddenly stood, brushing the dirt from the back of his pants. The smile had vanished, and his eyes looked troubled. He met my gaze for a fleeting second, before he looked at his brother and back at the ground. “I’ll go check on the ponies.”

“But I just did that!” Fili protested around a mouthful of stew, but Kili was already stalking away with his head down.

I stared after his retreating back with a pain in my chest, his broad shoulders squared. His entire demeanor had changed so suddenly, and I could think of nothing that could’ve done it. Aside from the arrival of Fili, but why would his own brother cause such a shift in mood? They were close, the best of friends.

“Was it something I said?” I murmured, more to myself than Fili.

The blonde dwarf gave me a small smile, eyes twinkling. “Not at all, love. He thinks you fancy me is all.”

My eyes went wide. “He what?”

Fili finished off another spoonful of stew, looking mildly amused at my response. He swallowed then shrugged his shoulders. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Kili is crazy about you, but for somer reason has it in his head that you prefer me.”

My cheeks grew hot. “He can’t be…can he? About me?”

Fili’s eyes softened as he set down his bowl and looked at me. “I know my brother, Talia. The way he looks at you, he’s never looked at anyone the same.”

I ducked my head, suppressing a smile. My heart was trilling happily inside my chest, though the joy dimmed a bit as the surprise faded and reality reappeared. “Do I…Do I really act like I fancy you instead of him?” I asked.

Fili let out a laugh. “Of course not. Anyone with two working eyes can see you’re just as struck with him as he is with you.” He pointed out. I felt his fingers on my chin as he gently lifted my face to look at him. His smile was kind. “My brother is many things, but observant apparently isn’t one of them. I’m afraid you may have to just tell him plainly.”

My shoulders heaved as I let out a sigh. Fili dropped his hand and resumed his dinner. “I know. Bilbo said the same. That’s actually what I was trying to get to before you showed up…” I admitted, toying with a loose thread on my shirt.

Fili looked at me with a wide grin. “I know…I should also be honest and tell you that I plan on tormenting to living hell out of Kili over this. So the sooner you tell him, the better.” He winked and I let out a groan, smacking his chest with my hand.

“You are mean, Fili.” I chided him.

“We’re brothers, Talia. It’s what I’m meant to do.”

[numberonetrashcollectorus-blog]

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"Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

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Two years ago a girl rode her bike into my car as I pulled into my driveway. There was no damage to my car but she fell as a result of it and called her mother who asked for my insurance information. The police came and after the girl and her mother filed a police report, deemed that it was her fault for a) riding on the sidewalk and b) for not stopping when she saw the car because i was already mostly in and witnesses could prove that. Anyways, today I was shopping around for a new insurance quote when I was told they couldn't offer me coverage as I made a claim in 2010. This is the only incident that happened that year. Now, my insurance provider never informed me that a claim had been made. My premium went up but when I asked all I was told was that they had yearly increases. Is it their legal obligation to inform me if a claim has been made. If so, what are my next steps to a) clear this up and b) take action against my insurance company?""

Do insurance companies insure a boat for its value or insure it for what you paid for it?

Do insurance companies insure a boat for its value or insure it for what you paid for it?

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

Car insurance help?

Around how much is car insurance? Am I looking at like 50 bucks a month? 500 bucks a month? I really have no idea. Any help is appreciated.

Car insurance want my ssn for quote?

Im trying to get car insurance quotes and it seems that every website asks for my ssn. I just want to get a rough quote and don't want them to have my name, info, and ssn in their database. Why are they all asking for the ssn all of a sudden? Plus if I don't go with them or check different places for different quotes then my credit report is being hit with numerous inquires. Ahhhhhh! fustrating! Any suggestions? or is this just one of those things that Im going to have to just deal with and that's it?""

Has anyone bought car insurance that deals with people who have points?

I am 20 years old turnin 21 next year march. And I got 6 points in january. Now its impossible for me to get car insurance on my ford fiesta 1.3 2002 plate, they are askin me to pay 6000 pound for insurance. I was woundering if there are any car insurance companys that deal with people that have points?""

Cheapest Car Insurance Deal For A 17Year Old In The UK?

Cheapest Car Insurance Deal For A 17Year Old In The UK?

Car insurance cancelled on financed car..?

So I've been looking for a way out of my car loan lately because the payments are really too much for me right now...I know I shouldn't have got into it but I was young and VERY gullible. I just got a letter in the mail from my insurance company asking for me to verify the address I have on file with them ( where I park my car at night) or else they will cancel my coverage. So if they cancel my coverage, will I still be held accountable for the car loan? Or will I have to pay the balance off? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. :-)""

File auto insurance claim or pay out-of-pocket in NJ?

My 17yo daughter just got her graduated NJ license, skidded on wet corner, causing $1300 in damage to wheel & susp. We have $500 deductible. Can we ask our insurance co. how much our rates will go up if we file a claim, or will that automatically flag her for additional points?""

Democrats: So will there be fine for not having health insurance or not?

When I asked this question just yesterday, Democrats assured me there wouldn't be ANY fine for not having health insurance - it was an OPTION.""

My car insurance rate is ridicules. why?

Im currently insured with Geico. I got my plan back last year when i had a beater car (2001 nissan maxima). My premium was only 260 or so for the whole year, whiche came out to 40 bucks or so a month. ive since bought a new car (2013 nissan versa) and switched it with my old car. my monthly payment only went up 4 or 5 bucks as a result. This rate is fricking great and i have no problems. however, when i go to refinance (for lack of a better word) my insurance or simply shop around, for some reason the quotes they give me skyrockets my payments to 260+ a month!! the same is for other insurance providers aswell, even the insurance offered by my bank! what gives? why the huge leap? i have a clean record (no accidents ever, last speeding ticket was 4+ years ago), what was at the time, a brand new car, aswell as a better job (was working in a restaurant, now at a lawfirm). Sure, ive moved since i first got the policy, into a poorer neighboor hood, but does it really warrant a 200 dollar increase? Someone please help me wrap my head around this. im 21 and am still pretty clueless when it comes to this sort of thing""

""If someone wrecks another person's car, whose insurance pays for it, the owner of the car or the driver?""

If someone borrowed another person's car and they wrecked it, who would end up paying for the damage? Would it be the owner of the car or the person driving the car? This is knowing that the driver is over 18 and has a license. Thanks, 10 points best answer!!""

Range rover sport supercharged car insurance...?

I am in the process of buying my range rover sport supercharged (im 18) and i have found some really good quotes, i was wondering if it is posible to insure with a insurance company (mabey arabic car insurance company) because they might be able to do it much cheaper.... please help.....""

I'm 17 - Insurance on a 1985 Corvette? - Please help!?!?!?

Hey all - i have a quick question.. I want to know how much insurance would be if i get a 1985 Corvette - - i am 17 years old - i am a male - i live in New York - i have VERY good grades (i heard you can get discounts if so) And just to get everyone off my back now (lol) -.... I AM going to be paying for the CAR as WELL as the insurance.. i just worked my butt off this year and managed to save up around 10k for a car / insurance - so please dont state how i am just spoiled using my parents money and etc. I am responsible and i DONT need to read about how its a fast car and what not. This has been my favorite car for years now and i want to have it not to race, show off, impress others.. but just to collect it as a goal that i have had and use it as a daily car to get to school and work! I dont need sites where i can get quotes, because i already know all that gibberish (lol) - i just want a close estimate of how much it can be for full insurance on a 1985 corvette if i am 17, male, in NY, with very good grades. Thanks so MUCH in advance!""

How much is motorcycle insurance ?

How much is it if your 18 and have no accidents or tickets. Any cheap insurance companies? And it's not a sport bike or anything, just a normal starter bike that only goes about 100mph.""

Provide proof of insurance online for Florida?

My previous insurance got canceled and i need to provide my new insurance to the state of Florida so my license doesn't get expired... can i do this online?

Is it true that in America there are people who get jobs they may hate simply for affordable health insurance?

I am planning on emigrating to the United States within the next three years if I can get a visa for educators or an actual Green card. The thing is that people on this forum have been telling me that health insurance comes primarily from your employer in the States, and that if you have a pre-existing condition, you may end up not able to change to the job you want as you might not be able to get coverage or, if you do get covered, be charged more than your salary. Is this correct? Someone a few weeks ago was writing about how she was angry because she has Crohn's Disease and works a part-time job with full benefits in kind (insurance) and her husband teaches five adult education classes at a community college and a state university without benefits. She said that they have no kids (no intention of having any), but she was extremely cross with her husband as he loves teaching and doesn't want to leave it for a full-time office job with benefits even though he is putting aside $1,500 per month for any possible emergencies. Is it really like that in the States. I love America, love its literature, its people, its values and so many other things, but this sounds like a big deterrent if one doesn't have total job mobility. Would a husband end up quitting a job he loves doing and taking on something he might not like simply because the less appealing job offers affordable health insurance for someone with a pre-existing condition.""

""I am 15 and will be 16 in early October, today i got my national insurance number. Does this mean i can work?

I was just wondering now i have my national insurance number if i could start applying for some Saturday jobs?

How to become an insurance agent in california?

How long does it take and where to go in ca central valley area or bay area anything about this would be greatly appreciated thanks!

""Which car would be a better buy. altogether thinking about fuel costs, insurance, & maintenance.?""

I'm thinking of buying a european sports car which one; thinking of all around costs. 2006 BMW 330i Sedan - 31,000 Miles - V6 $26,000 2000 BMW 323i Coupe - 80,000 Miles $6,500 2003 Mercedes E320 - 60,000 Miles $16,000 2001 BMW 740Li - 83,000 Miles $11,000""

Are there deals in car insurance if someone parents are divorced?

and he/she technically only lives with one parent?

Price Would Car Insurance?

I have like no idea how everything works.. what would be a good starting car to just start driving in? im 17 soon and ill be going for my driving lessons soon.. and i want to know what the sort of insurance prices would be for an 18 year old..thanks x Sorry if i talk too much lol.

""Hi there, Any one can tell me ``how can I get cheap car insurance in london?``?

I`m 28 years old. I got uk full licence in 11/2012 I have Toyota starlet 1.3 car It`s 1999. plz any one can tell me how can i get cheapest insurance. cheers.

Need affordable home owners insurance in Massachusetts?

We are relocating to Massachusetts and are buying a home there. I have to get a home owners insurance quote for the lender and tried going through my current provider that I have multiple vehicles with hoping to get a discount for bundling the house into it. (I have Geico) They told me they will not insure our house because we own horses. Does anyone know a good company not too expensive that will insure a home with horses in Massachusetts?

Cheap insurance companies for 17 year olds?

cheap companies that offer cheap insurance for males

What insurance company in bc offer out of province insurance?

Just asking for cheap insurance!

How Much is Insurance For a 16 Year Old Girl?

16 year old girl Good school attendance record.Grades could be better. Dallas,Texas. Hispanic(If that matters) Mom and Stepdad have Allstate insurance What is the general price range? And for these cars,can you estimate(I'm NOT getting these cars just curious)I am getting a used Dodge avenger though!(: 2008 Dodge Charger 2010 Chevy Camaro 2008/2009 Dodge Avenger I already asked this in the insurance section but I want more opinions/answers""

Car leasing and insurance?

Hi All, My partner is 24 years old and has 6 points on his license for driving uninsured with a provisional license. He now has a license but is obviously having major troubles with insurance prices. We are looking into purchasing a lease car with insurance in the cost, can anyone recommend? We want something identical to the NHS fleet service until we can clear the points but no friends or family work there so unfortunately we are not legible to apply for this. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Emma""

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

My car insurance company have doubled my quote after claiming they made a mistake. Can they do this?

I changed my address about 6 months ago and was pleased to see that, although there was an increase, the increase on my insurance wasn't massive. I recently called to get a quote on putting my girlfriend on the insurance as a learner driver and they have now said that as they didn't process the change of address form properly before they are doubling my insurance quote. I am confused by this as I live in an incredibly secure, gated property and I am wondering if, as they have admitted the mistake, they are able to do this out of the blue like this?""

What will my insurance cost for the new house?

Hi there, Lets say i would like to invest a house in a new subdivision cost $300 000. Located outskirt of Birmingham, AL. The Subdivision/community even built an Elementary School in the community. The community is divided from house prices ranging $150 000 to $500 000. When completed, the community will have 3,000 homes in a variety of distinctive neighborhoods within 5 to 10 years or more from now. How much will the insurance cost? Don't need a specific answer but just an idea how much it would cost average for the insurance etc etc I'm pretty sure certain factors changes each individual owner and the property area but from the basic description of the area, how much do you think? Of course i can always ask the insurer the question but i would like to know the homes owners in the house. Thanks for your input""

How will the insurances work out with 95 car accidents at one scene?

Just wonder because of news yesterday at California highway. I don't know about law in that state but what if it's like this in new york where I live. Ya know whoever fault will pay by their own insurance for repairs and injury for victims and a vehciles. Same for most state. How would 95 different insurance handle it? It might will have several lawsuits. With 95 cars, hard to say who started the accident and whatever if it's one person cause 95 altogther or all 95 is fault on it own. Some may not even have insurance. There would be 95 different drivers so it will be 95 different verison or story of what happening.""

What are california's car insurance laws?

Im a new driver and was wondering if its a type of insurance i need. I only have Liability on my car nothing else am i ok if i get pulled over and asked for proof of insurance??

Where to get the best auto insurance rates in Midwest.?

Just moved to the Midwest, besides the insurance giants are there any other good insurance companies out there that will save me a little money?""

Differences in car insurance quotes?

Out of curiosity I went on a comparison website for car insurance. I compared the insurance of a: 200 ford fiesta 1998reg 5000 mini cooper S 2005reg 19500 mini cooper S 2012reg The quotes that i received were all around the same price!! about 2200. how does this work out? how can a 200 fiesta come to the same price as a 19500 mini cooper S? not to mention that the cooper S would be 10x more powerful than the little fiesta. im 22 years old and male, with no driving experience at all. im just curious as to how these quotes are calculated.""

""Does anyone know where to get cheap car insurance (Ontario,Canada)?

My husband and I just bought a car today and we have not applied for our insurance yet we are planning on applying tomorrow(if there not open) then Monday. Does anyone know of a good insurance company we just had a baby 2 months ago so we are really trying to save money if anyone knows a good place would you please let us know. Thank you very much.

""Can you suggest a good,affordable health insurance plan?""

I am an adjunct instructor at two colleges in Michigan. Neither institution offers health insurance for adjunct instructors. For the last three years I have been getting health Insurance through a postdoctoral fellowship. Now this fellowship has come to an end, and I am in desperate straits. I have heart problems and I need specials medicationss for depression and attention deficit disorder.What do I do?""

How much auto insurance do I need?

How much auto insurance should I get for a 1999 Ford Escort that is already paid for. I have insurance now but it is 660 dollars a year and that sounds like way too much for an 11-year-old car.

Do you need insurance for a driver's permit?

I'm hearing different things from all different places and rather than sifting through all of the crap at the dmvedu website I thought I'd ask you guys and get a straight answer. Do I need insurance to get my permit, or just for my liscense? I live in California, by the way, if that makes any difference with the law.""

Do you have health insurance?

if so, how much is it per month? how old are you? what kind of deductable do you have? feel free to answer also if you do not have insurance?""

Insurance companys that drop for nonpayment?

Specifically in the state of Florida...how long does it take for your insurance company to report you to the state if you are dropped for non-payment? Also, does this suspend your license automatically once it is reported?""

Car insurance Q??????????

Im 16 years old and Ill be geting my car In June that I paid $3,000 dlrs for Can I get the car title in my own name or do my parents half to also be on my title and when i get my car insurance will my parents be on that? im paying for every thing with my own money... And I live in the state of WI.""

How can i get someones car insurance info if they wont give it to me? They wouldnt give it to the cops either.

The cops wouldnt let me speak with the other driver and he would not show them proof of insurance. His guardian said he had insurance but she would not give it to me. She wouldnt even give me her name. I have the license plate number but I cant find out who they are insured under. The police report stated that the other driver was at fault for the accident but the police say that they can't make them give upt hat information. I know that by law they have to give me that info. please help i have no idea how to get this information

What number do you call to file an insurance claim with Verizon?

I flushed my phone down the toilet. sounds ridiculous but i managed to do it. i have insurance, what number do i call to file a claim?""

If I own a business will I be forced to pay health insurance on my employees?

If I own a business will I be forced to pay health insurance on my employees?

Who s liable for car insurance in the state of MN?

Here's the deal...My bf took my car for the weekend out of town. While he was gone, someone hit my car in a parking lot and drove off....smashed my driver's side door in. It's a new car so I want it fixed ASAP. My thought is that his insurance should be covering it because he was in posession of my car...even if the person hit it and left. He is saying that my insurance should cover it....who is right? And why?""

Cheapest car insurance companies??? help?

Me and my bf r trying to move in but his insurance rate is up the roof, he had a terrible car accident in nov. 2 speeding, 2 reckless, 1 failure to stop a light. I know its a lot but ...show more""

How much a month for loan and insurance for a 350z?

Ok so I'm gonna be 20 in a couple months and I'm tired of driving my crappy integra. I've been saving up and I'm set on getting a 350z. My price range is about 12,000 tops. If I put a down payment of about 5 or 6 grand how much would I pay per month for the loan. And how much would I pay a month for the loan along with the insurance. I'm on my parents plan. I don't know much about interest rates. Can you give me estimates on different lengths of loans and interest rates Thanks ily""

Were is the best place to get cheap car insurance- new driver!?

please dont say money supermarket! The cheapest i found is 900, third party fire and theft. I'm a 24 year old femaile just passed my test!""

How much is a used car and how much is car insurances ?

i am going to be 16 soon and i want to buy a used car and car insurances so how much is it i live in canada if that helps nova scotia to so umm yeah and btw i can't go on my ...show more

How come health insurance is so cheap ?

Im 18 and need health insurance. I just got a quote from kiaser for a 5K deductible with 6K out of pocket maximum. So basiccly 6 K yearly. And then after the deductible im fully covered. The quite was 80 bucks monthly

Resolved Question Show me another  In what ways does buying a car affect auto insurance premiums?

I'm looking at buying or leasing a new car and am wondering how that'll affect my auto insurance premium. Also, which features in a new car affect the premium. I've heard about red paint and sports cars causing higher premiums, but are there any other factors?""

What is a fairly average car insurance rate when a you add a new driver in the family?

A family member is getting ready to get their license, and I wanted to know if car insurance rates would go up, and what a likely rate would be.""

Is it a legal requirement to have caravan insurance?

Is it a legal requirement to have caravan insurance like it is car insurance? Thanks for your help!

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

Macon Georgia Cheap car insurance quotes zip 31295

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/medibank-private-health-insurance-quote-randy-chavez/"

[jesusvasser]

Dreamscape: Running Supercars Up Switzerland’s Gotthard Pass

The rain has stopped, but headlights still glimmer on the road’s slick surface, and fog swirls over the mountainside like lace curtains whipping in the breeze. Immediately ahead, there’s a Ferrari 812 Superfast and a Dodge Viper ACR. Beyond them, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and Porsche 911 GT1 road cars queue side by side, homologation specials from 25-unit production runs. In the rearview mirror, a Ferrari FZ93 and Aston Martin Zagato Shooting Brake stand out in the line of exotics that coils down the Tarmac, coach-built rarities normally found in museums. Soon we’ll run with this incredible pack up the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, closed specially for the occasion. No oncoming traffic, no speed limit.

The event’s organizers claim that the Gotthard Pass has never before been closed for fun, nor has any other street in Switzerland. The road climbs to 6,909 feet over the Saint-Gotthard Massif in the Alps, tying German-speaking Andermatt in the north to Italian-speaking Airolo in the south, a vital link that just so happens to be awesome to drive.

In fact, there are three ways of making it from Andermatt to Airolo. You can drive the original cobblestone route or take the Gotthard Strassentunnel, constructed in 1980 to bypass the altitude and the wiggly bits in an arrow-straight line. The third option is the newer mountain road, built alongside the original cobblestones. What this road lacks in history, it makes up for in driver appeal, geography you’d normally require a parachute to appreciate, and the majestic engineering of its vast tunnels and precipice-spanning bridges. Guess which road we’re taking?

For $3,400, two guests get a night at the Chedi hotel, an evening meal, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Florian Lemberger, a lawyer specializing in finance, regularly organizes driving events with the Supercar Owners Circle, and he somehow convinced the Swiss authorities to close the Gotthard Pass. In total, 72 supercars are here, the rules dictating that only one example of each may attend, though there’s been some inevitable flex—it’s hard to begrudge a trio of McLaren P1s. There’s definitely only one Maro Engel driving a  race car, though. “It’s a chance to drive the SLS but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive the Gotthard Pass,” the DTM driver says. “I couldn’t miss that.”

For a pretty reasonable €2,800 (approximately $3,400), two guests get a night at the high-end Chedi hotel in Andermatt (Lemberger’s real estate fund bought the place), an evening meal and presentation, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Our ride is somewhat modest in this company, but it holds its own: the latest Porsche 911 GT3 with 4.0 liters, 500 horsepower, and a six-speed manual transmission. You’ll pay $144,650, if you can get one. That’s the same as a PDK model, but you get a mechanical—not electronically controlled—locking rear differential and lose 37 pounds, and the 3.8-second 0-60 time is 0.6 second slower.

A day earlier, we collected the car from Stuttgart and were soon driving in pouring rain in one stretch through Germany, touching 160 mph once it dried and traffic thinned on unrestricted autobahns, slowing over the border into Switzerland with its colossal speeding fines, then skirting past Zurich on toward the Alps.

There are detail changes throughout this 991.2-generation GT3: revisions to springs and dampers, a new operating logic for the rear-wheel steering, and a new engine cover and rear wing that sits three-quarters of an inch higher. The latter sounds insignificant, but you notice how much more it impedes rear vision than before. Together with a revised rear diffuser, though, the payback is 20 percent more downforce, Porsche says.

Supercar spotters mobbed the event (left), presumably really hoping we didn’t crash. Or perhaps hoping we would.

Most crucial of all, a new 4.0-liter naturally aspirated flat-six, the one shared with the GT3 Cup, RSR, and GT3 R race cars, replaces the 3.8. Along with that 500 horsepower, it produces 339 lb-ft of torque, increases of 25 hp and 15 lb-ft over the 3.8. And you of course also get to choose manual or dual-clutch auto.

The 4.0-liter in the previous GT3 RS and R is mind-blowing, but there’s even more energy to how this new GT3 revs, an extra kick to a power delivery that feels entirely free of inertia. Push past 5,000 rpm, and the howl gets even wilder, and when you’re screaming to an outrageous 9,000 rpm, it consumes the cabin. This is easily the best-sounding 911 of the present lineup, a hair-raising soundtrack rivaled by few modern performance cars.

As we arrive in Andermatt, teenagers with $3,000 cameras spill into the road like some hybrid of Hollywood paparazzi and 1980s Group B rally fans. They move in zombielike packs, stirred by the growl of an approaching V-8 or V-12. They know the GT3 is worthy of a picture, but it’s understandable when the hotel valet asks us to park around the back.

A young guy, Johan Jakobsson, seeks us out. He runs what must be an inordinately successful wholesale coffee business (“and a few other companies”) and will drive his Ferrari 458 Speciale over the Gotthard Pass. “The manual?” he asks, eyeing the GT3. “May I sit inside?” He sets the perfect driving position, grips the wheel, and slices the gear lever back and forth with a satisfied grin. “I’ve ordered one,” he says. “I know someone at Porsche. They got me on the list.”

Beneath the hotel, the parking lot is filled with the most remarkable cars you’ll ever see. There’s a Ferrari FXX K, the track-only version of Maranello’s already insane LaFerrari hypercar. The owner fires up the V-12, the almost painful yelp of every throttle stab intensified by the concrete walls.

The car park of the Chedi hotel in Andermatt, Switzerland, (right) had never seen anything like it. No valet parking today.

Nearby there’s a Ferrari F12 TRS (one of two), its body inspired by the 1957 250 Testa Rossa and its silvery gold paint apparently inspired by C-3PO. The hood leaves the V-12 partly visible, its blood-red plenum covers exposed like a beating heart, and its chopped wraparound glasshouse is more speedboat than supercar. The driver turns out to be a minder because the real owner can’t be here. He also owns the red one.

There’s an Aston Martin One-77, one of the new-old Jaguar E-type Lightweights, a Maserati MC12, a beautiful Ferrari 250 SWB that’ll be voted car of the meet, and a lovely Porsche 930 Turbo with a RUF CTR conversion.

That evening, I attempt to mingle convincingly with the super-rich. There’s the guy who loaned his McLaren P1 to Ferrari for benchmarking ahead of LaFerrari’s launch; an Italian property developer, he would’ve been in his late 20s back then. Elliot Ross looks even younger, and he owns the 911 GT1. He’s from Scotland, says the GT1’s clutch is heavy; you can’t see out of the cockpit, but he loves it. Oh, he’s also got a Ferrari Enzo and an F50.

The Ferrari FXX K made much noise in the underground car park, but it didn’t run up the Gotthard Pass because of the FXXing weather.

Eugenio Amos, 32, owns the CLK GTR, a V-12-powered homologation special made so Mercedes could contest the FIA GT championship of the late 1990s. He says he made money in real estate, has raced in the Blancpain endurance series, and is enjoying the car. “There’s plenty of traction, and even on cold tires or if you drift it, it’s not so bad,” he says. Gah.

More than ever it seems like everyone is building a low-volume sports car. Paolo Garella is here in a Glickenhaus SCG 003 mule; Ameerh Naran runs a private-jet business and has secured an engine deal with BMW for his sports car; the CLK GTR owner plans a “kind of Singer version of a Lancia Delta Integrale” and has created a full-size clay model of the project. There’s even a presentation for the Aston Martin AM37 powerboat.

The next morning, this most extraordinary gathering of supercars fires to life outside the hotel, the constant volleys of revs sounding as though a SWAT team is storming the lobby. With the poor weather, some cars, like the FXX K and TRS, are heading straight to the airfield. The rest roll through Andermatt’s narrow main street, ready to run the Gotthard Pass in small packs at timed intervals. I can hear the first cars leaving, our group edging closer all the time, nerves jangling, the road still disappearing into fog above.

As a flag waves, a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale leads us away. There’s the gruff growl of its flat-plane-crank V-8, the yell of the 812 Superfast’s V-12 immediately in front, and the induction suck from the GT3’s flat-six as I release the clutch and get back on the gas after each gear change; that’s a markedly different signature from a GT3 with a PDK. As the rock faces close in to our right, the rush of mechanical noise combines into one swirling din, soaring on the straights, rumbling through the corners.

The GT3 feels sensational. There’s no doubt the PDK shifts faster, but the physicality of the manual definitely adds another dimension of interactivity: The short little shift lever demands you work a bit to pull it home, and the clutch is delectable with its midweighted heft and oily consistency. Some might find the brake is higher than ideal for heel-and-toe downshifts; you might have to roll your foot over excessively to blip the throttle during downchanges. At least the blips come automatically in Sport mode.

The new Gotthard Pass isn’t as twisty as the old cobblestone, but it’s faster, smoother, and a better drive

But the precision of the GT3’s steering—there’s more definition at its top-dead-center, perhaps a side effect of the chassis tweaks—the violent stopping power of its carbon-ceramic brakes, the car’s perfect balance, and the way its feral speed never feels like it’ll overload the chassis unless you demand it are unreal. It is difficult to imagine feeling more at ease in anything else here.

 “What an unbelievable event,” he says as we pull to a stop. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The road flows so smoothly as it rises from the valley that there’s little need to brake hard initially, but the wet, high-speed kinks get me wobbling at the wheel, praying the Porsche’s cold front tires bite. They always do. We climb quickly, and the route becomes more technical, ascending aggressively through hairpins, those kids stepping out into the road again, digging for YouTube gold and—you’ve got to assume—desperate for us to crash.

Someone tries. As we approach the summit, the road enters a tunnel that hugs the mountainside, protecting the road from rock falls and avalanches. I hear the 812 accelerate, presumably the better to hear its raucous V-12 melody. We’re doing probably 80 mph, and as the revs flick up, I watch the Ferrari’s back end snap out of line, the wiggle quickly slapped down by electronics. It’s probably no bad thing that the fog becomes much thicker as we reach the top of the Pass, forcing the pack to slow ahead of the checkered flag.

I park, unable to see more than the road around me, and wait for photographer Richard Pardon to get a ride to meet me as one extraordinary car after another punches like a phantom from the gloom. No one, it seems, balled themselves up.

Writer and photographer reunited, we run with a Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster with Monaco plates toward Airolo, and as the fog lifts, its V-12 battle cry rises, slamming gear changes giving a throaty punctuation to the soundtrack. The GT3 never loses touch.

At the airfield, suddenly it’s a summer day, and we watch as McLaren P1s duel against Porsche 918 Spyders in hypercar drag races. They accelerate off the line like marbles fired from stretched elastic bands, a sonic blur of screeching tires and hybrid-powered fury, the crowd peering into the distance, unable to see whether England or Germany actually won, just two hypercars on fast-forward vanishing in the haze.

[jonathanbelloblog]

Dreamscape: Running Supercars Up Switzerland’s Gotthard Pass

The rain has stopped, but headlights still glimmer on the road’s slick surface, and fog swirls over the mountainside like lace curtains whipping in the breeze. Immediately ahead, there’s a Ferrari 812 Superfast and a Dodge Viper ACR. Beyond them, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and Porsche 911 GT1 road cars queue side by side, homologation specials from 25-unit production runs. In the rearview mirror, a Ferrari FZ93 and Aston Martin Zagato Shooting Brake stand out in the line of exotics that coils down the Tarmac, coach-built rarities normally found in museums. Soon we’ll run with this incredible pack up the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, closed specially for the occasion. No oncoming traffic, no speed limit.

The event’s organizers claim that the Gotthard Pass has never before been closed for fun, nor has any other street in Switzerland. The road climbs to 6,909 feet over the Saint-Gotthard Massif in the Alps, tying German-speaking Andermatt in the north to Italian-speaking Airolo in the south, a vital link that just so happens to be awesome to drive.

In fact, there are three ways of making it from Andermatt to Airolo. You can drive the original cobblestone route or take the Gotthard Strassentunnel, constructed in 1980 to bypass the altitude and the wiggly bits in an arrow-straight line. The third option is the newer mountain road, built alongside the original cobblestones. What this road lacks in history, it makes up for in driver appeal, geography you’d normally require a parachute to appreciate, and the majestic engineering of its vast tunnels and precipice-spanning bridges. Guess which road we’re taking?

For $3,400, two guests get a night at the Chedi hotel, an evening meal, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Florian Lemberger, a lawyer specializing in finance, regularly organizes driving events with the Supercar Owners Circle, and he somehow convinced the Swiss authorities to close the Gotthard Pass. In total, 72 supercars are here, the rules dictating that only one example of each may attend, though there’s been some inevitable flex—it’s hard to begrudge a trio of McLaren P1s. There’s definitely only one Maro Engel driving a  race car, though. “It’s a chance to drive the SLS but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive the Gotthard Pass,” the DTM driver says. “I couldn’t miss that.”

For a pretty reasonable €2,800 (approximately $3,400), two guests get a night at the high-end Chedi hotel in Andermatt (Lemberger’s real estate fund bought the place), an evening meal and presentation, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Our ride is somewhat modest in this company, but it holds its own: the latest Porsche 911 GT3 with 4.0 liters, 500 horsepower, and a six-speed manual transmission. You’ll pay $144,650, if you can get one. That’s the same as a PDK model, but you get a mechanical—not electronically controlled—locking rear differential and lose 37 pounds, and the 3.8-second 0-60 time is 0.6 second slower.

A day earlier, we collected the car from Stuttgart and were soon driving in pouring rain in one stretch through Germany, touching 160 mph once it dried and traffic thinned on unrestricted autobahns, slowing over the border into Switzerland with its colossal speeding fines, then skirting past Zurich on toward the Alps.

There are detail changes throughout this 991.2-generation GT3: revisions to springs and dampers, a new operating logic for the rear-wheel steering, and a new engine cover and rear wing that sits three-quarters of an inch higher. The latter sounds insignificant, but you notice how much more it impedes rear vision than before. Together with a revised rear diffuser, though, the payback is 20 percent more downforce, Porsche says.

Supercar spotters mobbed the event (left), presumably really hoping we didn’t crash. Or perhaps hoping we would.

Most crucial of all, a new 4.0-liter naturally aspirated flat-six, the one shared with the GT3 Cup, RSR, and GT3 R race cars, replaces the 3.8. Along with that 500 horsepower, it produces 339 lb-ft of torque, increases of 25 hp and 15 lb-ft over the 3.8. And you of course also get to choose manual or dual-clutch auto.

The 4.0-liter in the previous GT3 RS and R is mind-blowing, but there’s even more energy to how this new GT3 revs, an extra kick to a power delivery that feels entirely free of inertia. Push past 5,000 rpm, and the howl gets even wilder, and when you’re screaming to an outrageous 9,000 rpm, it consumes the cabin. This is easily the best-sounding 911 of the present lineup, a hair-raising soundtrack rivaled by few modern performance cars.

As we arrive in Andermatt, teenagers with $3,000 cameras spill into the road like some hybrid of Hollywood paparazzi and 1980s Group B rally fans. They move in zombielike packs, stirred by the growl of an approaching V-8 or V-12. They know the GT3 is worthy of a picture, but it’s understandable when the hotel valet asks us to park around the back.

A young guy, Johan Jakobsson, seeks us out. He runs what must be an inordinately successful wholesale coffee business (“and a few other companies”) and will drive his Ferrari 458 Speciale over the Gotthard Pass. “The manual?” he asks, eyeing the GT3. “May I sit inside?” He sets the perfect driving position, grips the wheel, and slices the gear lever back and forth with a satisfied grin. “I’ve ordered one,” he says. “I know someone at Porsche. They got me on the list.”

Beneath the hotel, the parking lot is filled with the most remarkable cars you’ll ever see. There’s a Ferrari FXX K, the track-only version of Maranello’s already insane LaFerrari hypercar. The owner fires up the V-12, the almost painful yelp of every throttle stab intensified by the concrete walls.

The car park of the Chedi hotel in Andermatt, Switzerland, (right) had never seen anything like it. No valet parking today.

Nearby there’s a Ferrari F12 TRS (one of two), its body inspired by the 1957 250 Testa Rossa and its silvery gold paint apparently inspired by C-3PO. The hood leaves the V-12 partly visible, its blood-red plenum covers exposed like a beating heart, and its chopped wraparound glasshouse is more speedboat than supercar. The driver turns out to be a minder because the real owner can’t be here. He also owns the red one.

There’s an Aston Martin One-77, one of the new-old Jaguar E-type Lightweights, a Maserati MC12, a beautiful Ferrari 250 SWB that’ll be voted car of the meet, and a lovely Porsche 930 Turbo with a RUF CTR conversion.

That evening, I attempt to mingle convincingly with the super-rich. There’s the guy who loaned his McLaren P1 to Ferrari for benchmarking ahead of LaFerrari’s launch; an Italian property developer, he would’ve been in his late 20s back then. Elliot Ross looks even younger, and he owns the 911 GT1. He’s from Scotland, says the GT1’s clutch is heavy; you can’t see out of the cockpit, but he loves it. Oh, he’s also got a Ferrari Enzo and an F50.

The Ferrari FXX K made much noise in the underground car park, but it didn’t run up the Gotthard Pass because of the FXXing weather.

Eugenio Amos, 32, owns the CLK GTR, a V-12-powered homologation special made so Mercedes could contest the FIA GT championship of the late 1990s. He says he made money in real estate, has raced in the Blancpain endurance series, and is enjoying the car. “There’s plenty of traction, and even on cold tires or if you drift it, it’s not so bad,” he says. Gah.

More than ever it seems like everyone is building a low-volume sports car. Paolo Garella is here in a Glickenhaus SCG 003 mule; Ameerh Naran runs a private-jet business and has secured an engine deal with BMW for his sports car; the CLK GTR owner plans a “kind of Singer version of a Lancia Delta Integrale” and has created a full-size clay model of the project. There’s even a presentation for the Aston Martin AM37 powerboat.

The next morning, this most extraordinary gathering of supercars fires to life outside the hotel, the constant volleys of revs sounding as though a SWAT team is storming the lobby. With the poor weather, some cars, like the FXX K and TRS, are heading straight to the airfield. The rest roll through Andermatt’s narrow main street, ready to run the Gotthard Pass in small packs at timed intervals. I can hear the first cars leaving, our group edging closer all the time, nerves jangling, the road still disappearing into fog above.

As a flag waves, a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale leads us away. There’s the gruff growl of its flat-plane-crank V-8, the yell of the 812 Superfast’s V-12 immediately in front, and the induction suck from the GT3’s flat-six as I release the clutch and get back on the gas after each gear change; that’s a markedly different signature from a GT3 with a PDK. As the rock faces close in to our right, the rush of mechanical noise combines into one swirling din, soaring on the straights, rumbling through the corners.

The GT3 feels sensational. There’s no doubt the PDK shifts faster, but the physicality of the manual definitely adds another dimension of interactivity: The short little shift lever demands you work a bit to pull it home, and the clutch is delectable with its midweighted heft and oily consistency. Some might find the brake is higher than ideal for heel-and-toe downshifts; you might have to roll your foot over excessively to blip the throttle during downchanges. At least the blips come automatically in Sport mode.

The new Gotthard Pass isn’t as twisty as the old cobblestone, but it’s faster, smoother, and a better drive

But the precision of the GT3’s steering—there’s more definition at its top-dead-center, perhaps a side effect of the chassis tweaks—the violent stopping power of its carbon-ceramic brakes, the car’s perfect balance, and the way its feral speed never feels like it’ll overload the chassis unless you demand it are unreal. It is difficult to imagine feeling more at ease in anything else here.

 “What an unbelievable event,” he says as we pull to a stop. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The road flows so smoothly as it rises from the valley that there’s little need to brake hard initially, but the wet, high-speed kinks get me wobbling at the wheel, praying the Porsche’s cold front tires bite. They always do. We climb quickly, and the route becomes more technical, ascending aggressively through hairpins, those kids stepping out into the road again, digging for YouTube gold and—you’ve got to assume—desperate for us to crash.

Someone tries. As we approach the summit, the road enters a tunnel that hugs the mountainside, protecting the road from rock falls and avalanches. I hear the 812 accelerate, presumably the better to hear its raucous V-12 melody. We’re doing probably 80 mph, and as the revs flick up, I watch the Ferrari’s back end snap out of line, the wiggle quickly slapped down by electronics. It’s probably no bad thing that the fog becomes much thicker as we reach the top of the Pass, forcing the pack to slow ahead of the checkered flag.

I park, unable to see more than the road around me, and wait for photographer Richard Pardon to get a ride to meet me as one extraordinary car after another punches like a phantom from the gloom. No one, it seems, balled themselves up.

Writer and photographer reunited, we run with a Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster with Monaco plates toward Airolo, and as the fog lifts, its V-12 battle cry rises, slamming gear changes giving a throaty punctuation to the soundtrack. The GT3 never loses touch.

At the airfield, suddenly it’s a summer day, and we watch as McLaren P1s duel against Porsche 918 Spyders in hypercar drag races. They accelerate off the line like marbles fired from stretched elastic bands, a sonic blur of screeching tires and hybrid-powered fury, the crowd peering into the distance, unable to see whether England or Germany actually won, just two hypercars on fast-forward vanishing in the haze.

[momscookingthebooks]

Chapter Reveal

Title: Carnival

Series: Traveling #4

Author: Jane Harvey Berrick

Publication Date: December 26, 2017

Add to Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2A4pgPm

#ChapterReveal #Carnival #JaneHarveyBerrick #TravellingManSeries #ComingSoon

Synopsis:

Empty inside, cold in his heart, Zef turned to whisky and drugs to fill the void. Instead, he ended up with a prison sentence and a new determination to get clean and make something of his life. Since his release, Zef has been on the road, finding his spiritual home with a traveling carnival and working as a motorcycle stunt rider. Live fast, live hard, keep moving. He doesn’t want to be tied down to anyone or anything. Fiercely loyal, the only people he cares about are his brother and his carnie family. Until a crazy girl who’s run away to join the circus crashes into his world. But now his old life is catching up with him, and Zef has to choose a new road. A standalone story, and the last one in the TRAVELING SERIES.

Pre-Order Now!

Amazon - smarturl.it/CarnivalJHB

Barnes & Noble - http://bit.ly/2zCx37W

Chapter One

Heredity I watched the flames leap and dance, sending a shower of sparks into the sky as one of the logs caught light. Even though the daytime temperatures had soared into the nineties, it was considerably cooler now and everyone gathered around the circle of fire. It was a carnie tradition that went way back, signaling the end of another day. Tonight was special because it was the penultimate night at this pitch, and our last chance to take it easy for a few days. The final night was always crazy busy because it was a jump day—which meant that all the roustabouts were taking down the carnival rides and packing everything back into the rigs, then driving through the night to get to the next town by morning, to set up for the following afternoon, when the whole cycle started over again. In fact, the 24-Hour Man had already left. He was the guy who went ahead, signposting the way for the rest of us to follow. It may not sound important, but you don’t want fifteen eight-wheelers getting stuck or ending up driving down a one lane road to the wrong field. So tonight was our night—our time to kick back, relax, and visit with other carnies. “Bro, you look like someone just kicked your dog. What’s up with you? You’ve been a pain in my ass all week.” Tucker left the others by the fire and squatted down beside me, ignoring the fuck-off vibes I’d been giving everyone else. “What’s eating you, man? Tell Uncle Tucker all about it.” Tucker was a year younger than me, but sometimes he acted like a teenager and spoke like a California surfer, if you ignored his Tennessee accent. We were all like that in the carnival—mongrels who didn’t call any place home, but everywhere was our kingdom and the road was our right. He sighed when I didn’t reply and threw an arm around my shoulder. “I know about Mirelle. Tough break, brother.” I shot him an angry glance and he pulled a face. “Mirelle called Aimee, Aimee told Kes, and well … you know how it goes.” Yeah. I knew. Kes and Tucker were my family, my blood brothers—cut one, we all bleed. We didn’t keep secrets. And since Mirelle was Aimee’s best friend, I’d expected the news to circulate faster than it had. Perhaps she’d thought I’d tell them myself. I should have, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want their pity. “She wasn’t right for you,” Tucker said softly. “I like Mirelle, but she wasn’t going to make it as a carnie. She has roots and that big ole Puerto Rican family back on the East Coast.” I knew he was right, but the sharp cut of disillusionment was hard to take. Aimee had lived out East and she’d followed Kes to the carnival; Tucker’s woman flew out to see him every couple of weeks. Why couldn’t that work for me? I shrugged off his arm and stood up. I was ready to walk away when a thought stopped me in my tracks. “Did she tell Aimee who the father is?” “Yeah.” He stared down at the dirt, idly pushing his fingers through the tough, brown grass. “Some dude who teaches at the same school.” Figured. Suddenly Kes rose to his feet. Everyone stopped talking and we all turned to face him. He stood with the fire at his back, the flames dancing behind as he faced us. His people, his family. “I’ve got some news I want to share with you,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better say that we’ve got some news to share with you.” He smiled at Aimee as she walked to his side, her eyes glowing with love as she looked at him, and he slid his arm around her waist. “We’re going to be parents. By January, there’ll be a new little carnie joining the family.” Yells and cheers rose from the carnies around the fire, then Tucker called out, “Oh my God! Does that mean you’ve been having sex?” “No, it’s an immaculate conception, dufus,” I muttered, slapping him around the back of the head. Aimee shot Tucker a look that said he’d be paying for his dumb joke later. Everyone crowded around offering congratulations. “A new little stunt rider for the family business?” asked one of the carnies. Kes shrugged, his whole body lit with happiness as men slapped him on the back or shook hands, and women kissed him on the cheek. Aimee was surrounded with her own admirers, smiling and laughing, glowing with joy as she turned to look at Kes to hear his answer. “Our kid can be whatever he wants.” “So, it’s a boy?” “Maybe. We don’t know yet.” When the crowd around them thinned, I walked over to give Aimee a kiss on the cheek. Then I turned to Kes. “Congratulations, man. That’s great news.” “Thanks, Zef. I appreciate it. And I wanted to ask you—Aimee wants the baby to be Christened, something old school, you know? So I was wondering if you’d be Godfather.” That was the last thing I’d been expecting. I wasn’t the kind of guy that a kid could look up to. Kes read the doubt on my face and laughed. “I’m going to ask Tucker, too. So the kid will need at least one Godfather who’s not completely crazy.” I grinned at him. “Well, when you put it that way … I’m the lesser of two evils?” “Something like that.” His voice sobered. “So, will you do it? If anything happened to me and Aimee…” he swallowed, a flicker of fear on his face, “if anything happened, I’d want to know that I could count on you.” “Fuck, man, nothing’s gonna happen to you!” “Yeah, but it could. We both know … we know it could and … I need to you to say it, man. I need to know that you’d be there. If I hadn’t had Dono to take care of me and Con, I’d have been in a fucking foster home. ” I rubbed my hand across of my face. “Of course. Of course I’d do it—anything.” I stuck out my hand and he shook it before pulling me into a swift hug. “Thanks, Zef.” I nodded, then asked the question that had been burning me since he’d made his announcement. “Are you scared … about being a father? Kes cocked his head to one side, thinking about it.” “Nah, I couldn’t fuck it up as bad as Mom the alcoholic or dear ole dad who barely knew I existed, or cared. Anyway, I’ve got Aimee to keep me straight.” He grinned and turned to accept more congratulations from other carnies. I walked away, surprised by the emotions I was feeling. Kes, a father! That was some pretty serious shit. Coming on top of Mirelle’s news, I was feeling off kilter. I tried not to picture her with a guy who wore a collared shirt to work, some nice, safe townie who’d give her security. But she deserved that. She deserved more than a tatted up wiseass who jumped motorcycles for a living—a man with a criminal record who’d served time in prison. Someone walked over my grave and a shiver ran down my spine. I’d cleaned up my act since then and I wasn’t ever going back. And I meant what I’d said to Kes: if anything happened to him and Aimee, I’d take care of their kid. Fuck knows what kind of parent I’d be, but he’d asked me and I’d sure as hell try. The breeze had picked up since sunset and I could see the tops of the distant trees swaying blackly against the rising moon. The Ferris wheel was still and silent, a towering monument to man’s desire for mindless pleasure. It didn’t go anywhere, it didn’t do anything—except give the illusion of movement. And wasn’t that what the carnival was all about? Cheap thrills for a few bucks before moving on to the next small town. And yet, even with the existence of Netflix, tablets and smartphones, people still came, searching for a little of that stardust, that elusive magic, the freewheeling world of the carnies. Maybe that was what made it so unreal: we’d arrive in the half-light of dawn, and by the evening a world of bright neon and music erupted from an empty field. A few days of eating cotton candy and corn dogs, a few moments of adrenaline as you were whirled around the Tilt-A-Whirl or rode the bumper cars, and then we’d vanish in the night, leaving patches of flattened grass and an empty field. I pushed my hands into my jean pockets and stared up at the moon as if it had called my name. How many years did I have before my body broke down, before my knees or ankles or spine couldn’t take it anymore, when throwing myself through the air on 200 pounds of metal no longer seemed like a good idea? Then what? What would my life be then? “The Cheyenne tell a story that the moon was held by a warring tribe, so a pair of antelope tried to rescue the moon and take it to a good village. But Coyote, the trickster, decides to make trouble and the antelope chase him. Coyote tosses the moon into a river each night, just out of reach of the antelope.” I didn’t turn around as Ollo spoke. “Is that supposed to mean something to me, old man?” I heard his soft chuckle behind me, a wheezing hiccupping laugh. “Nope, it’s just a story about the moon.” “Great, thanks for that. Very educational.” He sat down behind me, ignoring the obvious message that I didn’t want company. I felt a soft tug on my pants leg as Bo started to climb me like a jungle gym, nestling into me and throwing his thin arms around my neck, chattering in my ear. “Damn monkey doesn’t know when he’s not wanted,” I grumbled, supporting Bo’s tiny furry body as he snuggled into my chest. Ollo laughed again. “I’d say he knows exactly when he’s wanted. Capuchins are smart critters—smarter than most damn humans.” I sighed, knowing I wasn’t getting any alone time tonight. I sat down on the bone-dry dirt next to Ollo, smiling as Bo took his chance to go scampering off into the darkness. For a moment, I listened to him rustling in the tall grasses at the side of the swing-boats and I leaned against the canvas backdrop of the Ghost Train. When I was a kid back in Georgia, I used to try and sneak in under the canvas without paying when the carnival came to town. Sometimes I made it, and sometimes I got dragged out by a hard-faced carnie and sent packing with a smack to the back of the head. It didn’t matter how many times that happened, I always snuck back. I was fascinated by the mechanics, all of those big machines whipping you into the air or speeding around in circles. I hadn’t heard of hydraulics or knew anything about the physics of gravity, but I loved the dirt and grease behind the scenes, and the rides that made people laugh and scream. Now, I could take a ghost ride anytime I wanted, but I never did. I sighed, wondering if the carnival would ever feel magical to me again. “Good news about Kes and Aimee—new life. A child will keep the carnival alive.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure that Ollo was right. It was a hard life, the traveling carnival, and many of the smaller outfits had shut down or gone out of business. I knew as well as anyone that there were no guarantees in life, but I hoped Ollo was right. “Yeah, I’m happy for them.” I watched a shooting star shimmer across the sky, wondering what the world had in store for me, wondering if fate was planning some new torture. “She wasn’t right for you, Zef.” Ollo’s voice broke and squeaked like a twelve year-old boy, although his body was no taller than the average seven year-old. Ollo was a dwarf and had lived his whole life in a traveling carnival. He’d done every job from clowning to tumbling, fire-eating and fire-breathing to knife-thrower and rodeo rider, fairground barker to roustabout, and everything in between. He was old now; no one knew how old, probably not even Ollo, but he’d been with Kes’s family since the second world war, so he must be at least eighty. He probably weighed no more than ninety pounds. I could have picked him up and tossed him over my shoulder without a problem, but I had too much respect for him to do something like that. So I sat back and listened to what he had to tell me. “You’re the second person tonight to say that Mirelle wasn’t right for me,” I said, my voice wry. Ollo spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the hard-packed soil, aiming at one of the iron tent pegs. “Are you surprised? Her family has uprooted once—she wasn’t going to do it again. Not for you.” “Feel free to sugarcoat it!” “Aw, is the big, tough stunt rider feelin’ sorry for hisself?” I shook my head. “Nah. Just pissed that she was seeing someone else and didn’t tell me.” There was a long silence and in the distance I could hear the sound of Luke’s guitar playing. “I had a woman once,” Ollo said softly. “Long time ago.” His voice was quiet and it sounded like a confession. “She wasn’t like me,” he said. “She was a townie, a petite lil’ thing. Delicate all over, tiny waist. Taller than me, of course. We were in Boise for the summer and it was the swinging sixties. She had long straight hair, golden brown, the color of corn. I was a rodeo clown in those days, and she’d come to see the ponies. We got talking and became friends. I’d wait for her to come for me at night. We’d hold hands and sit watching the stars from the top of the Ferris wheel. We fell in love.” “Sounds … nice?” “Yeah, it was. She was going to come with me at the end of the summer,” he chuckled quietly. “Run away and join the circus.” “But she changed her mind?” Ollo shook his head. “I don’t know. One night, she didn’t come. I waited every night, knowing that soon we’d be moving on. I went to look for her. In the town.” I stared up at Ollo’s stars, knowing that this story didn’t have a happy ending. I imagined how brave he’d have to be, leaving the carnies—his people—to go look for this girl among strangers, among townies. “I didn’t find her, but her father found me. Gave me what they used to call a damn good beat-down, and told me he wouldn’t let a deformed freak like me near his daughter. I don’t know if she’d been sent away or whether she was locked in her room, listening to her father whip me with his belt as I kicked and screamed and tried everything to fight him off. I always wondered about that.” “Jesus, Ollo!” My voice was quiet, shocked, and he was silent for a moment. “You never saw her again?” “Ah, but I did. Ten years later, we were in Boise again doing the northern circuit. By then, the music was louder and angrier. We were all trying to forget about Vietnam, and everything seemed a little wilder. Borders were breaking down, and even the townie boys were starting to wear their hair long. That’s when I saw her. She was with a rube and they had two kids—a boy and a girl, maybe seven or eight years old. They had her eyes, I remember that. She saw me watching her and she stared back. She smiled at me, then she turned and walked away.” His voice disappeared, lost in memories. “That was the last time I saw her. I never tried anything with a townie again.” “What was her name?” “Jeanie. Jeanie with the light brown hair.” I heard the soft patter of Bo’s footsteps, and he appeared out of the darkness, his tiny body curling into Ollo’s arms as he chirruped quietly. I watched Ollo stroke the soft gray-and-white fur. “Am I supposed to take some deep meaning from that story?” I asked, hoping to lighten the mood. Ollo coughed out a laugh. “Nope, just a story about a boy and a girl under the stars.” And then, as silently as he’d arrived, he stood up and walked away, Bo still cradled in his arms. I leaned back against the canvas, thinking about everything he’d said. If I was honest with myself, I’d known from the start that me and Mirelle wouldn’t last, but it still stung that she’d obviously been with this other guy for a while. And that she’d picked someone who was the complete opposite of me. I didn’t have any trouble hooking up with women who wanted a one-night stand with a biker carnie, but even I had to admit that had gotten old. And now Kes was married and about to become a father, and Tucker lived half the year with his woman in LA. Everything was changing. I’d had a family once—Mom, Dad, and a little brother. I still had my brother, but he was a man full grown now, successful and living his own life. He didn’t need me anymore, and he definitely didn’t need the shit I’d brought to his door. It was better that I kept moving, kept those wheels rolling. The other Daredevils were my brothers too, but now they all had partners and I was on the outside again.

Sometimes it felt so damn lonely.

About the Author:

Writing is my passion and my obsession. I write every day and I love it. My head is full of stories and characters. I'll never keep up with all my ideas! I live in a small village by the ocean and walk my little dog, Pip, every day. It’s on those beachside walks that I have all my best ideas. Writing has become a way of life – and one that I love to share.

Author Links:

Web: http://janeharveyberrick.co.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JHBWrites/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jharveyberrick

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jharveyberrick/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Harvey-Berrick/e/B00A6RIMUC

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6458246.Jane_Harvey_Berrick

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The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Sunday 28th  May 2017

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you…. A very humid night with just a little cloudy this morning, although I don’t think it will rain.. Stars peeking through the gaps and the occasional glimpse of the moon, light the way for Bella and I as we walk the streets and alleys of Estepona.. like all Spanish towns, there are more cars and motorcycles than parking places, cars with wheels on the sidewalk, cars backed into unbelievably tight spaces… but by 7:00am the cars will magically disappear, until about 10:00pm when the fight for parking starts all over again….

OBAN TEEN INTERNET PIPING SENSATION LANDS OBAN LIVE SLOT …. 13-year-old who became an online hit after performing live on a transatlantic flight to New York is to be a special guest artist to open Oban Live, Argyll’s biggest music event. Gregor MacDonald was en-route to take part in New York’s Tartan Week with his school’s pipe band when he performed a couple of solo piping tunes to passengers. A recording of the event was later posted by the school on social media and the video was a hit, achieving over 150,000 hits. Gregor will take to the stage for a solo piping performance which will open Oban Live on 2 June. He will also return on the second day of Oban Live alongside his band mates in Oban High School’s Novice Juvenile A Pipe Band to play with headliners and Celtic rock band Skerryvore. Gregor said: “I knew I would be playing with Oban High School Pipe Band but to be asked to play solo is quite a privilege. Teenage piper Gregor MacDonald. Picture: Kevin McGlynn/Contributed “I am looking forward to it. I’ve never played at anything like Oban Live before so it will be a great experience. “I’ve still not decided what I’m playing yet but I am practicing a bit more than usual in preparation for the event. “My family and friends will all be coming to watch. It’s a great local event and we have all been to it in the past.”

ABERDEEN SHOPS GEAR UP FOR ELITE CYCLING EVENT CYCLING EVENT… A major cycling event kicking off in Aberdeen today has seen city centre shops playing their part to turn the streets into a cycling hub for the elite competition. The Tour Series window dressing competition, organised by Aberdeen City Council, invited businesses to take part by dressing their windows in a cycling theme, to promote the arrival of the cycling showcase in Aberdeen for the first time. The winners were O’Caykx, followed by Mr Dun and Kirkview Cafe. Prizes on offer were £2,000 advertising package on local radio, a three-month tier to an Aberdeen City Council roundabout worth £1,500 and a Union Street banner during Offshore Europe valued at £1,000. Aberdeen Lord Provost Barney Crockett said “A fantastic effort has gone into the numerous display and some of the entries were incredibly creative. “Congratulations to all the nominated businesses who got into the spirit of the event and took part in the competition. “Their participation has added a vibrant element to the route and shopping precincts, and will also encourage customers to enjoy the spirit”. The Tour Series is being brought to the city as part of the wider Aberdeen 365 Events Strategy, a City Centre Masterplan initiative. The 1.2-kilometre circuit around the compact city centre will provide a stunning backdrop to a fast and furious night of racing, with the beautiful architecture and vocal Scottish crowds setting the perfect scene as the race is broadcast around the world. The elite athletes will tackle an hour-long race as they weave around a challenging combination of cobbled streets and tight turns, racing to the finishing line at Union Street, battling it out to be crowned Britain’s top team.

PERTHSHIRE’S FAMOUS ENCHANTED FOREST SET TO MAKE A RETURN…. Scotland’s premier sound and light event is set amidst the Autumn woodland of Forestry Commission Scotland’s Faskally Wood. The spectacular event is to return to this year, with tens of thousands expected to attend. The Enchanted Forest is current winner of UK’s Best Cultural Event, as well as Best Large Event and the Chairman’s Award and three times winner of Best Cultural Event at the Scottish Event Awards. The Enchanted Forest was also recently crowned winner of the Rural Tourism & Hospitality Award at the 2016 Scottish Rural Awards. Their 2017 dates have just been announced. They are 28 September to 29 October and tickets will go on sale to the public on 16 June. Woodland Experiences has again joined forces with Allan Associates, the producers and creative directors of the Enchanted Forest for the last several years, to put on another visually-stunning display at North Ballochruin Farm, Balfron. The award-winning event attracted over 70,000 visitors last year and could top 100,000 this year. The Enchanted Forest started life as a three-night attraction for 1500 people. It is believed to be worth more than £3 million for the Perthshire economy. Organisers say around half the event’s visitors choose to stay overnight in the Perthshire area. Ian Sim, chairman of The Enchanted Forest Community Trust. which runs the event, said: “People travel from all over the world for the show and it generates lots of positive press for Highland Perthshire. “We’re delighted to be attracting so many visitors to the area at what has traditionally been a quiet time of year.” Malcolm Roughead, chief executive of national tourism agency VisitScotland said: “As a former winner of our prestigious Thistle Award for Best Event, The Enchanted Forest continues to go from strength to strength and is a truly worthy winner of this award. “The creative team has an exceptional way of refreshing their approach every year to create a unique event that showcases Scotland’s natural landscape at its very best. It is a must-see event for people of all ages.

SALMON RETURN TO THE CLYDE AS WATER QUALITY IMPROVES…. Glasgow’s River Clyde is now far less polluted than it used to be, with water quality improving and fish returning to areas that they have been unable to access for decades, according to monitoring work carried out by Scotland’s environmental regulator. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) said the Clyde was in “significantly better health” than expected thanks to high levels of investment. Some parts of the river are now graded as “excellent” after recovering from years of pollution. The river’s overall quality was previously ranked as “bad”, the worst possible category, but improved to “moderate” in 2015 and some stretches have now improved again. Around 62 miles of waterways have been opened up by removing barriers to fish, with salmon reintroduced in higher parts of the river that they were previously unable to access. Pollution had driven the species to extinction in the river’s catchment area. Sepa, which monitors the water quality in Scotland’s lochs and rivers, said the Clyde had also experienced fewer overflows from sewers and less pollution from agricultural sources. The Scottish Government hailed what it described as a “lasting change in the Clyde’s fortunes” and said further efforts were under way to make more improvements. Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said: “The Clyde flows through the very heart of Glasgow and for centuries the river has provided our largest city with a gateway to the world and a source of prosperity. “However, since industrialisation in the early 1800s, we’ve abused this river, tipping our waste into it without a ¬second thought for the impact it has on the communities ¬living along the banks, water quality or the wider environment.”

SCOTLAND’S WEATHER: EDINBURGH HOTTER THAN CANARY ISLANDS…. SKYROCKETING temperatures in the capital are set to make Edinburgh warmer than Cape Town and Lanzarote over the bank holiday weekend, as Scotland prepares for its hottest May temperatures in five years. The city was bathed in warm sunshine as the mercury soared to as much as 23C, with predictions it could rise to as high as 31C across the country. And with temperatures expected to remain high heading into the weekend, beer gardens are expected to be packed as revellers bask in the balmy weather. A spokesperson for the Met Office said: “We could see temperatures go as high as 25C or 26C on Friday, perfect for the weekend just coming in.” “Temperatures should remain warm across the marathon weekend, but there is a chance of a few sporadic downpours on Saturday afternoon. “It will be bright and sunny across the rest of the bank holiday weekend, although we can expect it to get cooler on Sunday and Monday.”

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is a little bit of history…. The Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the coast of Angus, Scotland, is the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse. It was built between 1807 and 1810 by Robert Stevenson on the Bell Rock (also known as Inchcape) in the North Sea, 11 miles (18 km) east of the Firth of Tay. Standing 35 metres (115 ft) tall, its light is visible from 35 statute miles (56 km) inland. The masonry work on which the lighthouse rests was constructed to such a high standard that it has not been replaced or adapted in 200 years.[5] The lamps and reflectors were replaced in 1843 and used in the lighthouse at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, where they are currently on display. The working of the lighthouse has been automated since 1988

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Sunday 28th  May 2017 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus