#anyways I volunteer with a nonprofit and today I realized they have a year long position that pays slightly MORE than my current office job

[sleeplessinseattlee]

do I actually want to change careers or is it just another monday? Time will tell

[luxekook]

chapter two.

⇥ pairing: namjoon x reader; eventual bts/ot7 x reader

⇥ genre: college au with fluff, smut & angst

⇥ summary: a series in which the reader meets (and falls for) seven members of the Beta Tau Sigma (BTS) fraternity

⇥ word count: 2.3k

⇥ warnings: 18+, cursing, chaotic namjoon, power tools, hints of poly relationships, overall pretty smut free (who AM i???)

© luxekook. please do not repost, modify, edit or translate.

characters | prologue | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine

Chapter Two

Habitat for Humanity Worksite – 9:26am

When I signed up to volunteer Saturday morning of syllabus week, I should have known I would end up regretting it. I almost punted my alarm clock out of the apartment window this morning, but instead settled a slightly more civil action – punching the shit out of the ‘off’ button.

Don’t get me wrong: I love volunteering. It’s been part of my routine since sophomore year when I was recruited for the all-women’s service society on campus – the Alphites. As a society, us Alphites volunteer around campus and in our local community each week. There’s something about doing service together that really creates bonds, and the girls in the society have quickly become some of my closest friends.

We sign up to volunteer for a variety of different service projects each week, and Habitat is my current favorite project to sign up for. As a nonprofit organization, Habitat for Humanity helps families build and improve places to call home. Currently, our regional Habitat is working on building a house from the ground up for a local family in need.

Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, or form a very ‘handy’ person. Luckily for me, there are always a couple volunteers with construction or engineering backgrounds who are willing to teach other volunteers with less experience – or none, like me.

Since beginning to volunteer at the site last year, I have learned how to use a power saw, how to fasten siding, and how to mix, pour and level cement. It’s definitely empowering to learn new skills and also to see how my handiwork contributes to someone’s future home. I also feel lowkey badass when I get to use the power drill for anything.

Pulling up to the worksite, I clutch my cherished 24oz. Wawa coffee. I finally feel somewhat human as I park my beat-up Jeep Wrangler and hop out to meet the other volunteers for our task assignments.

The site leader Eddie – a burly retiree with a background in construction management – greets me with a huge grin, “(y/n)-doll, we missed you this summer! I can’t believe you abandoned us during the hottest months of the year.”

I roll my eyes, smiling at his teasing. Eddie’s like a teddy bear disguised as a grizzly – all rough edges and a heart of gold. “Missed you, too, Eddie.”

“Look at our progress now,” he continues, “Pretty impressive, yeah?” Nodding, I greet some regular volunteers I recognize as Eddie leads me around the house. He proceeds to show me what they had done over the summer in my absence – and they had done a lot. The house now had its full foundation and wooden framing with most of the doors and windows installed.

As we walk back to the front of the house to the main area, I sip my coffee and turn to Eddie, “So, what can I work on today, fearless leader?”

Letting out a patented ‘Eddie belly-laugh’, he replies, “I know you worked on the siding at our last site so I'm gonna have you work on where we started the siding on the right side of the house.”

Sweet, I could work with that. “Aye, aye, captain,” I respond with a lazy salute of my coffee cup. Before I can turn to start towards the scaffolding to begin, Eddie stops me.

“Oh, one more thing. I’m gonna need you to orient our new volunteer and let him shadow you today. Kid’s from the same school as you, I think… Mandatory service. Anyway, he should be here any minute.”

Shit, I know what ‘mandatory service’ means. It’s the first form of disciplinary action that the college issues and is usually the only form of disciplinary action for our athletes or for Greek life – a fact I actively resent. During my time in the Alphites, I have had to deal with some of these ‘mandatory service’ characters and they’ve never been much fun to be around.

“Ah, that’s probably him now,” Eddie startles me out of my thoughts of dread and doom as a black gleaming Tesla practically purrs down the block, swinging into the spot next to my Wrangler. Scowling, I cross my arms as I survey the stark contrast between this person’s shiny-ass luxury car and my dirty-ass well-loved Jeep.

The Tesla door opens. A Timberland booted foot emerges followed by a thick leg encased in light jeans, a tanned well-muscled arm…

No. Nope, it couldn’t be— Please, not today, Satan.

He stands with his back to us now, stretching out his large body. In only a cutoff t-shirt, his rippling back muscles might be enough to send me into an early grave.

I sigh in bitter defeat of the inevitable. Seriously, the fucking universe must have it out for me because I can’t seem to shake this stupid fucking fraternity.

As if the boy feels my eyes on him, he turns. His eyes immediately clash with mine as he slams his car door, clicking the lock over his shoulder. Those eyes – golden brown beneath dark brows and a wave of bleached blonde hair. Their focus is absolute – hard – as he strolls towards us. It’s almost as if he knows the maddening effect that he has on me.

I think Eddie is speaking, but my senses are on lockdown, his words muted. My thighs tighten as my pulse picks up. Get a fucking grip, (y/n). I can’t let him know that just one look from him has me thirsty and oxygen-deprived. I can’t look away – that would be succumbing to weakness.

Instead, I hold his heated gaze as best I can as his confident gait brings him closer. God, he’s got to be at least 6 foot...

The goddamn president of BTS Kim Namjoon is getting closer and I can’t help running my eyes over him.

His thighs flex and shift beneath his jeans with every calculated step. His abs are apparent under his tight cutoff shirt emblazoned with his fraternity letters.

Namjoon stops in front of us, hands stuffed into his back pockets, biceps flexing. “Nice to finally meet you, Eddie,” Namjoon takes his eyes off me long enough to greet Eddie and shake his hand, but then they’re right back on me, “Hi, (y/n).”

He drags out my name in a such a sinful way that even old Eddie does a slight doubletake. Clearing his throat unnecessarily loudly, Eddie booms, “You two know each other?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Our differing replies sound at the same time.

“Yes,” Namjoon repeats, lips turning up in an infuriating smile, “We have several mutual friends that she’s met a couple times now. Want me to jog your memory? I’d be more than happy to do so.”

Eddie takes one look at my face and hustles off, mumbling something about support beams. I guess my inner thoughts of ‘kill, maim, slaughter’ could easily be read from my facial expression.

Namjoon opens his mouth to speak again, but I’m faster, “Listen, Kim, I don’t know who you think you are, and, quite frankly, I don’t care. What I do care about is this house and these people working on it. Don’t fuck this up for me, okay? Let’s just get through today and then you can go back to ordering around your brothers and causing general mayhem.”

I’m feeling pretty proud of my little soliloquy until I realize he’s still smiling with those blasted dimples out in full display. No, his smile has grown even wider now as he simply answers, “The semester.”

My nose crinkles in confusion, “What?”

“The semester,” he repeats, “I’m assigned here every Saturday for the rest of the semester.”

I stare at him.

He smirks back.

I stare.

His smirk begins to fade, “Uh, did you hear me?”

I stare.

“Okay, you’re creeping me out now, (y/n),” Namjoon waves his giant paw of a hand in front of my face, “How many fingers?”

I break out of my trance of denial and hiss, “What did you do? Double homicide? Serial arson? Oh my god, you were the one who blew up the science lab!”

His hand covers my mouth – it’s rough and warm and entirely disarming.

“You have quite the imagination, jagi. I’ll keep that in mind,” Namjoon chuckles, “To answer your question, I did none of the above. Now, answer a couple questions of mine: what did you do to get here and – more importantly – why did you distract Jungkook from doing his fucking job on Monday?”

I glare in response, waiting for him to remove his hand from my mouth. He takes too long, and I lick his palm. It works. He removes his hand, but from the look on his face it seems like he liked my tongue on his skin entirely too much.

Thankfully, Eddie chooses the perfect moment to yell across the site, “What are you doing just standing there, (y/n)-doll? I don’t pay you to just loiter around all day!”

“You don’t pay me at all!” I yell back, already moving towards the trailer with all the supplies to get started. Namjoon follows.

“(y/n)-doll?” his eyebrows are raised as I hand him a pair of the biggest gloves I could find, “What’s up with that?”

Taking a pair of smaller gloves for myself, I turn to look for some hammers and nails as I respond, “I’ve been here a while. He’s like my honorary grandfather at this point.”

I spot the hammers and nails tucked away on the highest corner shelf and I huff. Namjoon follows my gaze, “Need a strong, intelligent, tall young man to grab those for you?”

He’s impossible, but for some reason it draws a small smile to my face, “Yes, that’d be great.”

The smile I receive in response is so bright I wonder if it could make flowers grow, “Okay, but only if answer my questions, (y/n).”

I shrug, trying not to notice how his cutoff shirt rises as he stretches to reach the upper shelf. I catch a sudden glimpse of his abs, and I praise every god out there that hot weather can be blamed for my sudden onset of sweat. 

Clearing my throat, I laugh lightly, “Fine, first of all, I didn’t ‘distract’ Jeon. I just had a temporary lapse in judgement. Besides, he came to me all on his own.” His back muscles tense up at my words, but I continue, “And second of all, there’s no juicy story of how I got here. I just volunteer here every Saturday for the Alphites.”

The sound of a hammer hitting the floor startles me as he whirls around, “You’re an Alphite?”

Namjoon’s tone is one of disbelief and it’s a tone I do not appreciate, “Yes, why is that so hard to believe?” My arms cross defensively, “I’ve been a sister since my sophomore year...”

I trail off. He’s still gawking at me ridiculously. Narrowing my eyes, I stride across the trailer and grab his chin, closing his mouth for him, “Watch out, Kim, you’re gonna catch flies.”

Spinning on my heels, I sashay out of the trailer, nose held high in the air and satisfaction held even higher. He’ll catch up. After all, he’s basically supposed to be my bitch today.

I climb up the scaffolding next to the house’s right side and assess the siding work that has already been started. It looks pretty solid and level. I should have no issue with continuing without having to make any initial corrections.

The sound of a bucket of nails hitting the top platform I’m sitting on alerts me of Namjoon’s impending presence. Saving the bucket from teetering over the edge – a safety hazard for sure – I watch amusedly as Namjoon struggles stay upright and climb up to where I am on the scaffolding. Finally, he plops down next to me – entirely too close. I can feel his stare on my skin as I steadfastly ignore him.

“Hey, jagi,” he pokes my arm, “(y/n), listen, you just caught me off guard. I mean, you don’t seem like the type to be an Alphite – that’s all.”

Fury curls up inside me for the umpteenth time that morning, as I turn to face Namjoon with a sickly-sweet smile that has him flinching back, “Then do tell, Namjoon, what type I seem to be?”

I pick up the hammer closest to me and dip a hand into the nail bucket. The sooner this siding got done, the sooner I could haul ass out of here.

“I feel like that’s a trick question,” Namjoon sighs, rubbing a hand over his chin, “I didn’t mean anything bad by it, okay? I guess I just have always thought that your society was a bunch of mom-types—”

I cut him off with a swing of my hammer in the air, “What’s wrong with mom-types, you uncultured swine? And is serving your community really such a ‘mom’ thing to do? I’m sorry. I must have missed that memo. Here I was thinking that it was public service but go off I guess.”

He blinks, “Did you just call me an ‘uncultured swine’?”

I sniff in indignation, “Get with the times, Kim. I just roasted your ass. Now hand me that piece of siding and make yourself useful.”

“You’re so weird,” Namjoon mutters, sliding my request over to me.

“So what?” I shrug, “All the best people are weird. Now, do me a solid and explain to me why you and your ‘brothers’ keep suspiciously popping up everywhere I go.”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he grins, “We’re interested.”

“What does that even mean? That you’re interested?” I wrack my brain, “As in all seven of you fuckers?”

“It means, jagi,” Namjoon pauses, leaning closer, “It means that we’re going to date the shit out of you.”

a/n: i love namjoon. that is all. 

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@catsandstrawberries @h5naaa @meowmeowyoongles @leftflowerprunedonut @rjsmochii @athletes-of-god @karissassirak @weallhavesecretsinthebestway @cvbachacbitch @bewitch3dforivar @honeyspillings @xxonyxpearlxx​  @valiantcollectorofsandwiches @fivesecondsofsarang 

[lovelylogans]

cocoa

part of the wyliwf verse.

the sideshire files | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: mention of puppy mills, dogs, secret-keeping, food mentions, recreational drinking (not to drunkenness) kissing, that’s about it. this one’s mostly fluff, folks.

pairings: moxiety, logince

words: 7,766

notes: bold of you to assume i wouldn’t take the canon dog in gilmore girls WHO WAS ORIGINALLY NAMED COCOA and directly transport it into this verse. picture of the inspiration behind wyliwf!cocoa here as a puppy and here as an adult, btw. she’s a mixed breed, definitely has some chow chow (hence the Fluffy, if u are acquainted w/ mash potato, he is a chow chow) and german shepherd (hence the coloring) along with some other Mystery Breeds in there, so!

thirty-five isn’t exactly a special birthday.

thirty-three, sure, maybe, repeated numbers. thirty? yeah, new decade! but thirty-five—well, it’s just a halfway point, isn’t it? patton doesn’t think there should be much going on in preparation for that. a dinner, a little party/get-together, and patton’d be happy, which he’s told both virgil and logan (and roman, when he wanted an excuse to throw a party.)

so virgil and logan being so evasive over the past couple weeks or so means that patton’s been getting as investigative as logan about what could be going on with the pair of them.

logan, at least, has an excuse—apparently, there was some random, weird deadline for the franklin that logan had run into and had to guide the rest of the staff through—but virgil has just been a little... well, a little strange.

he’s been intent on suddenly patching up the back fence, which he’d been on about when there were rumors of foxes and raccoons getting into trash, but that had been months ago. it seemed like a weird time for this desire to resurface, considering it’s january. there wasn’t really much of a chance of all that when the ground was basically frozen over—patton doesn’t know much about winter habits of foxes and raccoons, but he’s pretty sure they’ve gone for warmer climates, or at least might be sleeping it out.

he’s been reading some kind of articles that he keeps humming at thoughtfully and bookmarking on his phone, patton thinks, except virgil hastily turns off the phone’s screen and turns to smile at patton whenever he tries to peek.

he’s also been furtively ordering things—patton would think it’s birthday presents, except he caught a glance of one of the labels of the boxes and it’s from tiny company that, patton has searched, makes some specialty peanut butter cookies and the like. food is virgil’s thing, he wouldn’t just order it, so maybe patton got the company wrong?

and now...

patton knocks gently on the top of the coffee table, so he doesn’t startle virgil into hitting his head.

“um,” he says. “hey there, honey.”

“hey,” virgil says, forcefully casual.

“can i ask what you’re doing under the coffee table and half under the couch?”

“i, uh,” virgil says, and coughs. “thought i saw something under the couch. cleaning, you know.”

“yeah,” patton says, and settles on the ground. “except you’ve kind of been deep-cleaning the house for the past week.”

“um... yep.”

“i don’t think you could’ve missed something if you’d been trying,” patton says, amused, and reaches out to scratch a little at virgil’s back. the part he can reach, anyway. 

“i’m really deep-cleaning,” virgil says. 

“i kinda figured.”

“really,” virgil says, “really deep-cleaning.”

patton grins, scratches at virgil’s back again. “did you get whatever was under the couch, then?”

virgil withdraws from the couch, an old piece of paper crumpled up in his hands.

“we should really vacuum under the couches more,” virgil says, and patton leans over to kiss his cheek.

“whatever you say, darling.”

(“how do you feel about dogs?”

virgil glances up from where he’s wiping down the counter—logan, in his chilton blue-and-navy, is sitting at his counter.

“uh, i have generally positive feelings toward dogs?” virgil says. “they’re cute. i’ve never had one. wait, aren’t you supposed to be working at the franklin right now, that random deadline, right?”

ever since logan was told he’d be editor-in-chief of the franklin at the end of his junior year, and now that he’s started his senior year and has been at the helm for over five months, he’s been spending lots long afternoons at the school, deep in the journalism lab, fussing over copy and photos and ap style and page design. virgil’d be worried about him overworking himself, but he knows that mel can, has, and will kick him out if he sticks around for too long, plus dee is there to antagonize him into getting distracted, along with some other chilton friends swinging in and out.

“i made it up,” logan says. “it’s going to be a cover story.”

“a cover story,” virgil repeats slowly. “right. okay. for what?”

logan hesitates, glances around, and says, in a lowered voice to avoid eavesdroppers, “dad’s birthday is in two weeks.”

“right,” virgil says slowly. 

“i think we should get him a dog.”

virgil pauses, before he sets aside the rag. “a dog,” he repeats.

“yes,” logan says. “a dog. a canine. canis lupus familiaris.”

“why a dog?” virgil says. “i mean, i know patton wanted one when he was a kid, but, well. your grandparents.”

logan hesitates, just for a moment, before he says, “i’m graduating in may.”

virgil knows this. virgil has had several crises about it. virgil has sat with patton through his various crises about it. virgil could not possibly be more aware that logan is, in fact, about to leave the nest.

“yeah,” he says.

“well,” logan says. “i’d have suggested a cat if he wasn’t allergic, but. he’s been used to taking care of someone or something for all this time. once i’m gone... it just. it might be a good way to cope, that’s all.”

“like the exact reversal of getting a dog to prepare for having kids,” virgil says, starting to get it. “getting a dog to deal with not having a kid around as much anymore.”

“yes. precisely.”

virgil considers this—he considers him and patton in the house, alone. and then he pictures a dog, big, small, medium, resting its head in patton’s lap, patton petting the dog, hugging it. taking the dog for walks and training it—well. it would be hard work. it would be a lot of energy. it’d be a commitment for however long the dog would be alive.

but it would be a comfort, too.

“all right, then. it’s time for me to start researching dogs, i guess.”

“oh, i’ve been researching breeds and training methods and house preparation and shelters in our area for a month now,” logan says briskly, and reaches into his backpack to take out a binder, and virgil really doesn’t know what he’d expected.)

...

(“hey,” virgil says, as logan slides into the passenger’s seat of his car. “how was school?”

“good,” logan says. “i had a pop quiz in latin, i think i did relatively well on it.”

“nice,” virgil says, and pulls out of the parking spot.

this is their second time visiting an animal shelter—they’d dropped by the sideshire one, but realized that they wouldn’t really be able to keep an adoption of an animal secret at home, especially considering that patton sometimes volunteered to walk the dogs there. this time, they were going to a place closer to the city that logan’s research assured them was humane, a nonprofit society, and took part in raids against illegal puppy mills and dog fighting rings—all in all, virgil thought it seemed like a pretty standup shelter.

“okay,” virgil says, as they’re pulling into a parking spot at the shelter. “and we do have a plan for if we find The Dog today, right?”

“they’ll hold a pet for you up to a certain point,” logan says. “i’ve asked mrs. prince and roman, and they said that if we had to bring the dog home earlier than anticipated, they’d be willing to house it.”

virgil nods, absorbing this, and gets out of the car.

“right, then,” virgil says. “let’s go see some dogs.”

they see some dogs. they see a lot of dogs.

they, eventually, see the dog. she’s tiny, and absurdly fluffy, and she eagerly attempts to institute herself in their laps the moment they sit down, demanding pets and treats and love, and she’s too cute for words. she snuffles at them eagerly and wags her tail so hard virgil kind of fears that she’ll fall over to the side, but she’s so energetic she’d probably bound up again immediately, wagging her tail even faster. she’s got big, clumsy paws, and big ears, and a too-long tail, and big, chocolate brown eyes that she’ll probably grow into. when she licks at his chin, he's basically sold immediately.

“virgil,” logan says, in the midst of petting the puppy, examining her temporary plastic collar. “look at her name.”

virgil leans enough to check the little paper sheet full of the information on the outside of the weird room-crate things this shelter’s got going on, and lets out a low whistle. 

“right, then,” virgil says. “that’s that.”

“we have a dog,” logan says, with a smile that he hasn’t quite tamped down—virgil realizes, belatedly, this is logan’s first pet outside of the occasional goldfish and smuggled-in-from-the-outdoors frog or turtle, and maybe all the face-licking and snuffling and puppy eyes had sold logan, too.

“we have a dog,” virgil agrees.)

“oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!!!!” patton hears roman squealing from where he’s in the kitchen, and patton leans his head out in time to see roman holding logan’s phone and cooing.

“what’s up?” patton says, toting the two bowls of popcorn he’d been in charge of preparing and settling back down on the couch next to virgil, and roman and logan both look up from the phone, roman grinning.

“oh—nothing,” roman says, and passes logan’s phone back to him. “just a cute, um, dance picture thing, s’all.”

“can i see?” patton asks.

“it was a snapchat,” roman says. “faded away after ten seconds.”

“oh, darn,” patton says. “what movie were we going to watch, again?”

“maybe we should watch lassie,” roman says, voice in that faux-innocent tone he’s been using when he’s up to mischief for years, and logan elbows him hard in the side. patton looks to virgil, confused.

“did i miss something?”

“maybe best if you don’t ask,” virgil advises him, and patton nods, taking a handful of popcorn.

...

patton’s decided to take a page from his son’s book and keep notes about things he’s noticed that are Weird, partially because he’s bored and partially because he’s now very interested in whatever’s going on here.

there’s the whole fence thing, as virgil had spent a good chunk of his saturday hauling out his and patton’s shared toolbox and grumbling irritably at the fence as he patches up holes and makes sure nothing can get into the backyard, sometimes retreating back into the house to stick his hands somewhere on patton’s person in order to warm up and drinking tea before he went back out there.

(“does this seem secure enough to hold a puppy?” virgil asks logan, when he comes out to the yard. “i mean, she’s really small, but she probably couldn’t fit through any of these holes, right? plus she’s growing.”

“she’ll be on a leash most of the time, anyway,” logan points out.

“i know, but—”

“virgil. the fence is fine.”)

he’s also hidden a variety of boxes away somewhere, labels that he’ll cover with his hands and say “don’t look don’t look birthday surprise!” which only makes patton want to look even more, and really, patton doesn’t think he’s a person that virgil needs to get several boxes of gifts for, so he’s dying to figure that one out when the time comes.

(“how does a dog require so much stuff?” logan says disbelievingly, sorting through the latest incoming purchase. “is this order just entirely collars?”

“harnesses, too, but she’ll grow out of them!” virgil says. “so we’ll have ones for when she does, i’m planning.”

“you’re going to spoil this dog,” logan says. “you’ve bought her bandanas.”

“look me in the eyes and tell me that patton wouldn’t love to accessorize his dog with bandanas,” virgil says, pointedly ignoring the suspiciously familiar black bandana with purple plaid stitched on with thick white thread that logan shakes at him accusingly.)

the whole deep-cleaning-the-house thing hasn’t stopped, and sure, it’s nice and tidy, but really, there’s only so much deep cleaning you can do before you can pronounce a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house with one bedroom he wouldn’t go into, considering it’s logan’s room, fully clean, right?

(“i know puppies chew on things, but virgil, this is getting ridiculous,” logan says. “you’ve puppy-proofed the entire house at least five times. if she chews on something at this point, she’s to be commended for her creativity.”

“i just want to be sure she doesn’t choke on anything,” virgil says.

“i am positive the puppy won’t chew on old paper,” logan says pointedly. “and even if she does, if it isn’t a huge thing of paper, she’ll be fine.”

“don’t come crying to me when she throws up in your room, then.”)

he keeps going to the town library? sure, virgil’s a reader—not as much as logan, but maybe no one could ever be as much of a reader as logan is—but usually he brings books home and sets them on the bedside table and reads them gradually, over the course of a few days, but a few people have mentioned to him that they’ve seen virgil in the library, he’s reading books there and not at home, though no one’s really seen exactly what he’s reading.

(“what... is that?”

“um. it—apparently, it’s—i read that if we give her a hot water bottle and a ticking clock near her sleeping area, it imitates the heat and heartbeat of her littermates and helps her get acclimated to her environment better, so—so it’s a clock. for her.”

“virgil. you went out and bought a clock. for the dog.”

“okay, look, whose idea was it to get a dog in the first place?!”

“i haven’t bought a clock for the dog!”)

and now—

“babe,” patton says, dragging his fist across his still-sleepy-bleary eyes and settling his glasses on his nose, and virgil jumps before he pivots.

“hey!” virgil says. “i—sorry, did i wake you up?”

“no, just woke up and saw the time and wondered where you were,” patton says. he’d like to be coordinated about his affection, but he is very sleepy, so he just plods over to virgil and, essentially, walks straight into him until virgil wraps his arms around him with a soft laugh.

“sorry,” virgil murmurs, and kisses his temple. “i’ll be right up, i promise.”

patton peeks around his shoulder, and says, “was filling up some kind of new cookie jar really a huge priority, this time of night?”

“i—no,” virgil admits. “i just kind of got into the swing of doing dishes and wiping down the table and i ended up—well. filling up a new cookie jar.”

“i didn’t even know we got a new cookie jar,” patton says.

“surprise,” virgil says. patton reaches forward, intending to steal one of these apparently-good-enough-to-stay-up-past-midnight-for cookies, and virgil quickly closes a hand over patton’s wrist.

“um, probably not a best idea at this time of night,” virgil says. “sugar’ll keep you up.”

“that is a blatant lie,” patton says, and virgil leans down to kiss him again—quick, almost chaste.

“then it’ll be too much of a fuss to brush your teeth again,” virgil says, and sets the lid on the top of the jar before physically turning patton around. “let’s get to bed, yeah?”

“you’re being weird,” patton says, then decides, “i’ll deal with it in the morning.”

except in the morning, like it’s some kind of strange fever dream, the new cookie jar’s gone.

(”why did you decide to fill up the jar with dog treats in the middle of the night,” logan hisses at virgil as virgil’s making breakfast, logan looking for somewhere to hide the jar before patton comes downstairs, and ends up cramming it in the cupboard under the sink.

“it just happened!” virgil says defensively.)

...

the thing about instituting house rules for birthdays is that they tend to get thrown back at you.

“but i can—“

“no,” virgil says, from where he’s double-checking that the streamers will stay up if someone leans against the wall. “house rules. it’s your house, you know them.”

“virgil,” patton grumbles. “you wouldn’t be ruining my birthday if i helped with my decorations—”

“nope,” virgil says. “if i wasn’t allowed to cook on my birthday, you’re not allowed to decorate.”

patton sinks back against the couch with a huff, crossing his arms.

it’s been a very nice birthday, generally speaking. virgil made a massive breakfast, eggs and hashbrowns and bacon and biscuits and chocolate croissants and donuts, and didn’t monitor his hot cocoa/coffee consumption, for once, and logan and roman had swung by for breakfast before swinging out again (“i’m under oath,” roman had said solemnly, when patton asked them what they were up to) and they still haven’t come back, even though the party’s due to start in ten minutes.

once virgil has triple-checked everything, and fetched patton a glass of wine, he tugs patton to his feet and wraps his arms around him, smiling down at him.

“hi,” patton says, not quite able to keep the grudging tone he’d been trying to go for.

“hey,” virgil says. “happy birthday.”

a smile breaks out on patton’s face, even when he’s very sure he’d tried not to let that happen. “you’ve told me that already.”

“and i’ll probably say it again,” virgil says, and he leans down to kiss patton, and kiss him, warm and soft and the best kind of overwhelming, and patton really regrets having to break the kiss in order to breathe, but he very much likes the small, needy, breathless sound that virgil makes when he does.

the doorbell rings, and patton groans, leaning his head against virgil’s chest.

“the timing of whoever’s at the door,” he informs virgil’s sternum, “is terrible.”

virgil snorts and drops a kiss to the top of patton’s head, and patton reluctantly disentangles himself from virgil in order to answer it.

he really should have expected who it is.

“patton,” his father says. “happy birthday.”

“thanks, dad, mom,” patton says, and steps aside so that they can file into his house.

“hi richard, emily,” virgil says. “do you want something to drink?”

“stoli on the rocks with a twist, if you can manage it,” emily says.

“richard? oh, patton, here’s your wine,” virgil adds, pushing the glass into his hands again.

richard requests scotch.

“i can—”

“absolutely not,” virgil says, and presses a kiss to his cheek. “stay out here in case anyone comes to the door, yeah?”

patton sighs, and does.

the party fills up in waves—isadora and emily are engaging in some kind of silent stare-off in the corner as richard has, once again, escaped from a party with a magazine in hand—and soon enough, patton’s busy entertaining people and making the rounds. it fills up so slowly that patton almost doesn’t notice until he ducks back into the kitchen to check on virgil, how chaotic it is, how it’s just a bit too noisy—he thinks that most of the inn’s employees have shown up, as well as his friends and neighbors from throughout sideshire. 

and when he gets into the kitchen, the quiet nearly overwhelms him. patton has to lean against a counter and let out a slow breath when it hits him.

virgil glances up from where he’s been topping off some snack bowls, and sets them aside.

“hey there,” he says, and drops a kiss on top of patton’s head—patton’s cheeks flush, feeling warmer than he already is, and he beams up at him.

“hi,” patton says.

“having fun?”

"mhm,” patton says, and winds his arms around virgil. “missing my fella, though.”

virgil smiles down at him, soft, and brushes a curl off his forehead. 

“i have had,” patton informs him, “some wine.”

virgil’s grin grows a bit more wry. “that so?”

“i haven’t caught anyone at it, but someone keeps filling up my glass and i suspect remy,” patton says. 

“yeah, he would,” virgil grumbles.

“i’ll understand what’s going on between you two someday,” patton says—the slightly-joking-but-not-really rivalry between them has bemused patton for years now.

virgil snorts, once. patton’s about to poke fun at him a bit more, but there’s the chime of a text message, and virgil digs his phone out of his pocket.

“it’s logan,” he says. “i’m just gonna make sure that he’s got your surprise all set.”

“it has to be brought into the house?” patton says, and blinks up at him. “but what about all those boxes?”

“you’ll see,” virgil says, and twines his fingers with patton’s, tugging him out into the living room. patton gets parked soundly on the couch. 

“wait here.”

“for my surprise?”

“for your surprise,” virgil confirms, and patton squeezes virgil’s hand tight before he lets him go. 

“a surprise?” dot, his neighbor, asks.

“in five or so minutes,” patton says. “or, whenever virgil and logan come back, i guess.”

“oh, the surprise,” babette says, and winks at morey—neither of them holding cinnamon, which is strange, considering their cat comes with them everywhere. “morey, the surprise is coming.”

“you know what it is?”

“know what what is?” sookie asks, looking up from the tray of canapés she’s brought and is still experimenting with. 

patton’s distantly aware that other people are disrupting their own conversations in order to turn attention to his, but he can’t really care right now.

“my birthday surprise,” patton tells sookie. “virgil’s been acting weird for the past couple weeks, and apparently all the investigative skills in the family went to logan, because i’ve been trying to figure it out and i’ve got zilch.”

“well, it is a surprise,” sookie says reasonably. 

“babs?”

“sorry, sugar,” babette says, and patton sighs. just a little.

“well, i’ll find out soon, i guess,” patton says.

...

“hey,” virgil says.

“hello,” logan says, holding tight to the leash; the puppy is teething at the leash, too, still attempting to walk forward even though logan’s come to a stop. 

“hi,” roman adds, holding the box that virgil had gotten specifically for this. 

there’s a bit of weight on virgil’s shoe—the puppy’s come forward, set her little paws on his boots, and is sniffing eagerly at his jeans.

“hi,” virgil says (he does not coo) and leans down to pet her, scratching behind her ears, before he glances up to see roman grinning at him.

virgil coughs, and says, gruff, “here, give me the leash, i can get her ready for the surprise.”

logan hands over the leash, and roman sets down the box, before he digs out—

“seriously?”

“if you’re getting a dog as a birthday present, you have to put a bow around her neck, it’s practically the law,” roman says. virgil sighs and snatches it away.

“fine, fine,” he says. “go inside, text me when everything’s all set.”

roman takes logan’s hand, and logan pulls him toward the house; there’s a swell of music as the front door opens, then closes.

“okay,” virgil tells the dog. “um. so, you’re about to meet patton.”

the puppy continues to chew at her leash, still looking at him with her chocolate brown eyes.

“patton’s the best,” he tells her. “and he’s gonna love you, and we’re—you know. we’re gonna take care of you, and—and we’ve never taken care of a dog before, but we managed to raise a kid okay, and you’ve never lived with humans before, so we’re both new at this. we’ll do the best we can. okay?”

the dog tilts her head.

“i’m talking to a puppy,” virgil mutters, and shakes his head. “right, then. let’s get you all set.”

he puts the puppy into the box—it’s got a lid and a box, both separately wrapped, it has a blanket in the bottom, and cut-out handles so that virgil can carry her, and so that she gets air—and carefully removes her leash.

“comfy?” he asks.

she sits.

“good girl,” he murmurs, because reinforcing praise is important, and pets her for a bit. he looks at the bow roman had given him—big and red, of course—before he carefully ties it to her collar. she attempts to nip at it, before virgil wiggles his fingers in front of her face, distracting her.

“okay,” virgil says. “we can just sit here and wait until logan or roman texts us, yeah? and i can just keep petting you.”

so he does—at once point, virgil’s practically in the box with her because it turns out the puppy very much likes belly rubs, but it also turns out that fingers are, potentially, the best teething tool of all time (virgil is familiar with this, but it’s been about sixteen or so years since logan’s needed to chew at his fingers) so she is very conflicted between letting virgil scratch her belly and chewing at virgil’s fingers. 

virgil’s phone buzzes, and virgil removes a hand in order to check—logan’s said He’s ready—and leans in to peek at the puppy.

“okay,” he says. “i’m gonna put the lid on, and i’m gonna carry you around for a little, but you’ll be out of the box soon, okay? and you’ll meet patton, who i’m sure will spoil you rotten and pet you until you’re sick of it.”

she wags her tail.

“cool,” virgil says, and carefully sets the lid on the box, and even more carefully picks up the box, making sure that the box stays level.

before he has to consider how he’s going to hold this (frankly kind of absurdly too big) box and open the door, roman opens the door for him, grinning. also, he’s holding his phone horizontally, which means he’s definitely recording this.

patton’s smiling, but there’s a curious glint in his eyes as virgil shuffles slowly forward, very conscious of the tiny little puppy in the box that he doesn’t want to jostle.

the people at the party have also ringed around the room—babette and morey, who have remembered not to bring cinnamon, since he doesn’t know how the puppy will react to a cat, dot and larry, sookie and michel, and emily has somehow managed to pull richard away from his magazine, among everyone else—watching as virgil carefully sets the box at patton’s feet.

"logan just told me that the deadline was a cover story,” patton tells virgil. “you’re in trouble.”

virgil grins. “all of this was logan’s idea in the first place, actually. i thought it was a real deadline too until he brought me in on it.”

patton huffs, put-upon. “well,” he says airily, and elbows logan jokingly, “this better be a good surprise, then.”

“open it and see,” virgil says.

patton leans forward, and begins to pry off the lid. virgil waits with bated breath. 

as soon as he gets the lid off and seems to catch a glimpse of what’s inside, patton squeals in shock, jerking away from the box, and for a second virgil thinks they’ve horribly miscalculated and patton’s actually afraid of dogs, but that’s before he leans right back forward again and reaches down to pet the puppy.

“hi,” patton croons, and then he starts to giggle—before he puts his hands over his face, before he peeks out again, like he was checking to be sure that the puppy wasn’t a hallucination and that she wouldn’t disappear as soon as he took his eyes off her. and then he looks at virgil, eyes bright and eager and excited, laughing the whole time.

“is this real?!” patton demands between giggles. 

“of course it’s real,” logan says, and patton puts his hands over his face for a second, before leaning back forward and reaching down to pet the dog.

“oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” patton repeats, and, with a jolt, virgil realizes that he’s crying, and patton meets eyes with him, beaming hugely, and virgil feels some kind of unnameable emotion swell up in his chest—the closest he can get to identifying it is joy.

“hello,” patton repeats to the puppy, then, to virgil, “can i hold it?”

“do whatever you want, she’s your dog,” virgil points out, unable to stop his own smile.

“she’s a girl?”

“she’s a girl,” logan confirms, “ten weeks old,” and patton carefully reaches in, still giggling all the while, and carefully hoists the dog into his lap, therefore bringing the dog into the view of the rest of the room, which makes a variety of gasping, cooing noises that are really exactly what a surprise puppy deserves.

“oh my gosh,” patton repeats, and giggles even louder when the puppy sniffs at his face, and licks the tears off his cheeks. “oh, my gosh, hi there, sweetheart!”

the puppy squirms, and patton adjusts his grip, staring.

“she’s so fluffy,” he says in awe. “oh, my gosh, she’s like a teddy bear, look at how fluffy she is!”

the puppy is, indeed, very fluffy, and very stuffed-animal-esque in her adorable-ness, and patton sniffles, burying his face in her fur, just for a moment. the puppy wiggles a little, in order to keep licking and sniffing at patton, so patton resurfaces after a few seconds, crying harder than ever.

patton’s grinning, so virgil’s pretty sure he’s crying because he’s happy, but he wants to be sure, so—

“do you like her?” virgil asks hesitantly.

“i love her,” patton sobs, and virgil climbs onto the couch, so that he can wrap an arm around patton’s shoulders and kiss him on the cheek.

“i can’t believe you got me a puppy,” patton chokes out, and sniffles noisily, before pressing a kiss to the puppy’s forehead and settling her on his lap. 

“logan, technically, campaigned for you to get a puppy, i was just the one who was legally able to adopt her,” virgil says, and patton turns to logan, smiling.

“you should check her collar,” logan suggests, before patton can get any more emotional than he already is.

“her collar?” patton says.

“her name,” virgil elaborates. “which the shelter gave her and you can change it, if you want to, but—”

“you won’t want to,” logan says. 

patton adjusts the bow, and takes hold of the little temporary tag virgil’s gotten her, before they can register her with the vet near sideshire and make sure that they’ve got record of all her shots and the fact that she’s been spayed and microchip her so on, and takes a moment to read it. his jaw drops.

“no way,” he says.

“way,” virgil says. 

“her name is cocoa?” patton gasps. “that’s perfect!”

“told you,” logan murmurs.

“hi, cocoa!” patton croons to the puppy, holding her up in a way that’s vaguely reminiscent of lion king, except it’s at face-level and looking toward him. “hi there, my sweet girl! are you cocoa? i think you are!”

cocoa wriggles in protest, attempting to lean forward and lick patton’s face, and patton holds her tight in his arms, face just glowing, and yeah, wow, this was an amazing idea, go logan.

“so you’re definitely okay with the surprise pet,” virgil checks, and patton laughs, leaning forward to kiss him, the puppy attempting to free herself from between them, and it’s one of those amazing, perfect moments that virgil will keep with him forever, not to sound sappy or anything.

the party’s basically permanently derailed, after that.

people approach the puppy in groups, which means that virgil learns a bit more about cocoa: she likes fetch, but only for one or two throws before she gets distracted by something else. she really likes it when you scratch her neck, under her collar, because her back leg starts doing that thumping thing that dogs do when you’ve hit the sweet spot. she likes to play tug of war, which is normal, but she grabs onto pant legs with her teeth and clings even as she gets dragged around the room, so they’ll have to train her out of that. 

he also hasn’t really been able to seen her walk around a room, but since she’s got stubby little puppy legs and too-big paws that she needs to grow into, she practically waddles, which is both hilarious and adorable, and virgil witnesses her trip over her paws a couple times, which is cute, even if his heart stops and he half-lunges toward her in the time that it takes for her to re-establish her balance, tail wagging, and continue happily toddling along her intended path.

patton’s attention to most of the rest of the party is lost, too, since he keeps sitting on the floor and playing with the puppy, following her from group to group and randomly bursting into giggles at the sight of her doing something even slightly adorable, which, considering she is a very cute dog, is very often. he occasionally leans down to scoop her up into her arms and kiss her, which, well, virgil remembers him doing something similar with logan when logan was first able to walk reliably enough but still stumbling every few steps, so he probably shouldn’t be surprised.

patton is also half the reason the puppy is getting introduced to everyone. case in point:

“this is your grand-dog,” patton tells emily cheerfully, holding cocoa out in a way that emily would be able to take him. “you can hold her, she’s very light and very soft and very fluffy.”

emily looks like she’s about to decline the offer, like she doesn’t want cocoa to shed all over her fancy skirtsuit, before she sees virgil mouthing hold the goddamn dog behind patton’s head. she sighs, but she holds the dog, in a way that clearly denotes that she has never held a dog before—hands under cocoa’s armpits, letting her legs dangle in the air.

she stares at cocoa. cocoa stares at her, legs paddling in the air.

“you can hold her like a baby,” patton says helpfully, “that’s okay too” and emily adjusts her grip accordingly. 

and then she just. holds the dog. she doesn’t pet cocoa or anything. she’s just holding cocoa like a baby.

“isn’t she cute?!” patton says happily.

“...certainly,” emily says stiffly.

“i love her,” patton says.

“hmph,” she says, “well,” and passes cocoa back to patton, before she swipes her hands across her jacket, attempting to discard the fur.

“i’m gonna introduce her to dad,” patton says happily, and goes off to find richard as emily continues to sweep her hands across her shirt.

virgil digs the lint roller out of his hoodie, and holds it out.

"ah,” she says.

she brushes it along, and, once she’s satisfied, she moves to hand it back, before she pauses.

“where did you get this dog?” she asks suspiciously, as if virgil has specifically gotten a flea-infested rabid dog for the sole purpose of getting her to hold it, so it can infect her.

“a shelter,” virgil says.

“which one?” she says. “is it reputable?”

“you were on their donor wall,” virgil says, non-chalant. “so i’d sure hope so.”

she pulls a face at him—well, the emily equivalent of pulling a face. so, virgil one, emily zip.

“what breed is she?”

“german shepherd, chow mix,” virgil says mildly. “there’s some other breeds in there too, we think, but—”

“you should have gone to a breeder.”

“she was a rescue from a puppy mill,” virgil says, even more mildly, “so—“

emily sighs, long and irritated, before she says doubtfully, “it was logan’s idea to get a dog.” 

“yep, it was,” virgil says.

“why would logan suggest a dog?” emily says, and virgil glances around—richard is holding the dog slightly better, and tilting his head at it with the same curiosity that he does at a headline about “the youths.” 

“he’s worried about patton empty-nesting in the fall,” virgil says. “he wanted to be sure that patton still had something to take care of, so. dog.”

“and that was logan’s idea,” she says. “not yours.”

“...yeah,” virgil says.

“you must have had some other idea for patton’s birthday,” she says, as if doubting that virgil has not masterminded the whole dog plot and cocoa will eventually be trained into a vicious attack dog that specifically goes for white people in the upper tax bracket, or something, as if she is not currently chasing a ball tossed by richard, and then she slides and wipes out in a hilarious fashion before scrambling back onto her paws, tail wagging, panting eagerly, looking like the clumsiest and least threatening dog that had ever lived.

and virgil thinks about the jewelry stores he’s got listed in his private notes, the inspiration rings he’s got saved in about seven randomly named, nested folders on his password-protected laptop that you can’t find without searching for it specifically, the budget that he’s already schemed out, the various ideas that he’ll probably ask logan to help fine-tune, and he shrugs.

“nothing that can’t wait.”

...

patton’s still kind of in shock, but, like, the best kind of shock.

because. he has a dog. he has a dog!!! the surprise is a puppy!

she’s adorable! patton loves her already! whenever he looks at her it feels like his heart is made of melty gooey marshmallows! 

“no cocoa baby don’t eat that,” patton says, gently removing a piece of wrapping paper from her mouth. she attempts to follow it, despite the fact that he puts it out of her reach, and he puts a dog toy (virgil has been pulling out absurd amounts of dog supplies from every hidden nook and cranny in the house since the party ended) in her line of sight instead, squeaking it. cocoa takes that instead, lying down with a little thump, gnawing it at it.

“so, the way i get you to follow your own house rules is to give you a puppy,” virgil says, amused, picking up the wrapping paper and putting it in the trash bag that he’s filling with trash from the party, “got it.”

patton grins up at him sheepishly. “i could help if you—”

“nope,” virgil says, “absolutely not,” and runs his fingers through patton’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp, before he goes to sweep the coffee table of discarded paper plates and napkins.

“god, she’s so cute,” roman gushes, from where he and logan are sitting across from patton, the three of them kind of boxing cocoa in, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “i love her floppy little ears, and her big ol’ eyes, and her fluffy perfect face—”

“she is an aesthetically pleasing dog,” logan agrees. 

she is. she’s varying shades of brown, fawn and chocolate and chestnut and coffee and taupe, with a splash of white on her chest. her ears are a gradient of the varying shades of brown, and her snout is the same dark color as the edges of her ears. her fluff levels are truly off the charts, and she has pink little beans for toes, and her eyes are so soulful that patton’s genuinely going to get beaten out in the “best-puppy-dog-eyes-in-the-house” competition, though he passively wonders if she still counts considering she is a puppy dog, but—

“jeez, logan, you don’t have to be so sentimental about it,” roman teases.

cocoa squeaks her toy in agreement. it’s shaped like a mallard, with a goofy, cartoonish grin on its bill. 

gradually, naturally, the conversation dies down, and they’re all left in a companionable silence, except for the occasional murmur of “you comfy?” between his son and his son’s boyfriend, and patton softly entreating cocoa with a variety of pet-centric nicknames that he can barely make sense of—sweet girl, fuzzyface, sugarbun, marshmallow, kissyface—and eventually, cocoa flops onto her side and snoozes with a variety of tiny puppy snoring noises, and patton’s heart’s so full it feels like it might burst.

and once the house is relatively clean (a bit impossible to be fully clean, with the clutter that’s so ingrained into the house it’s practically a piece of furniture, patton barely notices it anymore) virgil settles onto the ground with patton with a soft huff, and briefly leans his head against patton’s shoulder, before pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“good birthday?”

“amazing birthday,” patton corrects. “fantastic birthday. really spectacular birthday.”

virgil smiles, just a little. “good.” a pause, and then, “late, though.”

patton stifles his smile—virgil fussing about food and caffeine intake and about his sleep schedule has really been happening for as long as they’ve known each other. “you’re right,” he agrees. “i—d’you think cocoa needs to go out?”

“probably,” virgil agrees. “i’ll go with you.”

patton nods, and reaches out to scoop cocoa into his arms—she stirs a little, before settling in his arms just like a slumbering baby, and okay, patton might cry a little, she’s so cute?!

“remember to sleep out in the living room,” patton reminds. “don’t stay up too late, kids.”

he gets “we won’ts” that he’s not sure how close they’ll stick to, and a “happy birthday” from roman and a hug from his son, as virgil trails him toward the backyard. patton descends the patio steps, before he carefully places cocoa, paw-first, onto the grass. she folds herself up and it seems like she’s content to continue sleeping in the grass.

“no,” patton scolds, in a half-laugh, putting her on her paws again. “c’mon, puppy, do your business, and then you can sleep for as long as you want.”

cocoa seems to sigh, before she toddles forward a few steps, nose firmly stuck to the grass to sniff and investigate, and arms come around patton’s waist. patton smiles, leaning back into the warmth of it—january birthdays meant sometimes white birthdays, which were cool, but the cold was just something else—tilting his chin a little, and virgil obligingly presses a kiss to his cheek.

“you’re seriously good with the surprise pet,” virgil checks, and patton huffs a laugh, leaning back against virgil’s chest and securing his grip on virgil’s wrists, to keep him there.

“i’m seriously good with the surprise pet,” patton promises, and he feels virgil’s warm breath of relief against his ear.

“okay, cool,” virgil says, and admits, “i figured you probably would be cool with a dog, generally, since you walk dogs at the shelter a lot, but—”

“i love her,” patton says, leaning a little to see virgil’s face. “thank you.”

virgil flushes, and patton doesn’t think it’s just because of the cold.

“it was logan’s idea,” he mumbles.

“i know,” patton says, and then, “did he tell you why?”

virgil hesitates, before he shrugs. “empty-nesting,” he says.

“ah,” patton says quietly.

the fact that his baby is going to college has been on his mind every single day, since logan first got back his test scores and started sketching out plans at the kitchen table. patton’s been with him to visit a few colleges, and he’s—well, kids grow up, right? that’s what they’re supposed to do.

it doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t make patton sad and anxious and really eager for some way to slow down time, too.

patton shakes himself, and says, “his idea, huh?”

“yep.”

patton starts to smile again, and he says, “i bet it wasn’t his idea to get her specialty peanut-butter treats, though.”

“...no.”

“or a ton of bandanas for her to wear. including a custom one that looks like your hoodie.”

“...well—”

“or the tons of harnesses and collars, or the big bed that we aren’t fully sure she’ll grow into, or all the toys, or—”

“i get it, i get it,” virgil grumbles. patton leans up to peck a quick kiss to his lips, turning more fully in his arms and wrapping his arms around virgil’s neck.

“i love that about you,” he says.

“what?” virgil says. 

“you’re a carer,” patton says. “you’re all gruff and grumbly on the outside, but if you see someone who needs help or needs to be taken care of, you’re all like, oh yes, of course, here’s this friends and family discount, what do you mean it’s brand new, this has always been here, or inviting them to your family’s christmas, or helping take care of their son, or offering couches to crash on and shoulders to cry on.”

patton pauses, and allows, smiling, “or cleaning up the house to make sure that they won’t find anything they’ll accidentally choke on, or patching up the fence so she can’t get out and nothing can get in, or doing secret research at the town library.”

and virgil’s flush definitely isn’t from the cold. virgil swallows, and says, in a voice that’s just a little bit shy and quiet, “it’s your birthday.”

“i know,” patton says simply. “i’m allowed to be sappy on my birthday.”

“course you are,” virgil says, and patton leans up to kiss him, before he turns back to squint out at the lawn. or at least, he means to.

because virgil’s fingers around his wrist prevent him from doing that, and before patton can ask, virgil’s bending just a little to press their lips together, cupping his face between both of his hands, and patton feels his heart do that happy little flutter it always seems to do around virgil. patton sighs, and if his eyes weren’t closed—when had he done that?—he’d be sure that it’d be a puff of steam in the cold air. virgil takes advantage of it, pressing in, so overwhelming but so gentle and patton can only wrap his arms around virgil’s neck and hang on tight.

when they part, patton blinks up at him, dizzy and dazed in the best kind of way.

“what was that for?”

“i’m allowed to kiss you on your birthday,” virgil teases him, smirking just a bit, and patton grins right back, hoping it looks as full of promise as he wants it to be. he leans in to kiss him again, but he’s interrupted by the sound of soft snuffling at their feet, and they both glance down.

cocoa’s staring up at them with an expression she could have gotten straight from logan—like, really, dads?

“okay, okay,” patton allows with a slight laugh, bending to pick her up again. “good girl, we get it, we can go back inside.”

virgil does lean in and give him a kiss over cocoa’s head, though, and patton beams at him with his arms full of fluffy, ten-week-old dog.

they climb the stairs, and virgil moves to the closet, and patton collapses onto the bed, letting cocoa down. she paces a few circles, before she curls up into a cozy-looking ball.

virgil glances back, and says, “patton.”

“what?” patton says innocently, sitting on the bed beside cocoa.

“if we want her to sleep in her actual bed, we have to start training her early,” virgil says.

“she’ll be lonely,” patton points out.

“i specifically bought her a hot water bottle and a clock to make sure that wouldn’t happen,” virgil says.

“um—?”

“hot water bottle to simulate warmth and clock to simulate the heartbeat of her littermates, to help her adjust,” he explains, and yeah, wow, patton adores him.

“virgil, i hate to point out the obvious,” patton says, grinning, “but i happen to know two people who get pretty warm in their sleep and who both happen to have heartbeats.”

virgil hesitates.

“just for tonight?” patton says, pouting just a little. “for my birthday.”

virgil sighs. “i know what you’re doing,” he grumbles.

“you can think about it,” patton says, and gets up to tug lightly at virgil’s hand. “we can do some other stuff, first.”

virgil’s eyes start to get that dark, familiar gleam that makes a secret, almost illicit-feeling thrill shoot down patton’s spine.

but later, when they both slide under the covers that night, freshly showered and fully intent on going straight to sleep this time, virgil makes no noises of protest about the cuddly ball of fluff that’s nuzzled her way between their bellies, and even when her tiny paws dig into their stomachs in her sleep, and she wakes them up when she adjusts, and they both have to contort into awkward positions rather than wake the dog and move her, virgil doesn’t make a noise of protest.

she never really ends up trained to sleep in her own bed at night, either.

[wonderingarmy]

Prince Jung Hoseok Part 3

Links - Part 1   Part 2 

Hoseok was having a good time during his birthday party, when you showed up. Everyone stared at you, so you ended up being stuck by the entrance.

“Care to tell me who invited her?” Hoseok asked Jimin, still surprised that he saw you.

“I have no idea.” Jimin replied, “But, you should at least say HI, you don’t want her to feel like an outcast.”

“You know that’s not going to happen right?” Hoseok said, leaving Jimin and going to get more drinks.

“I guess I’ll go and do that”, Jimin muttered to himself. Taehyung already headed to your way to invite you in.

“Does anybody know who invited her?” Hoseok asked one of the staff sitting in the bar

“Must be the new girl in the task team.”, One staff replied.

“Did nobody checked it before sending out the invitation?” Hoseok said, his voice raising. The staff just shook their head.

Before Hoseok could say something, you, Jimin, and Taehyung were behind you. Hoseok just look at you without saying anything.

“Happy Birthday Hoseok!” you said, trying to smile.

“Ah, thanks.” he replied, plainly.

“I am just here to hand you my gift. I am leaving anyway, so you don’t need to get mad.” you said, handing him the gift.

He grabbed the gift without looking at you. And when he didn’t say anything, you just nodded and tried to put on a smile and turned your back on him.

“Wow Hoseok. Just wow.” You heard Taehyung said

“Wait Y/N!” called Jimin running after you.

Hoseok just shook his head, sat your gift to where the rest are, and head to the restroom.

When he got there, he couldn’t help himself but cry. No matter how much he tries to forget you, he just can’t seem to get you off his mind. He still loves you, but when you broke up with him, his world shattered. It’s been over a year, and still nothing has changed. He still loves you and he is just trying to move forward in life. But how is he going to that when everything reminds him of you and on his birthday, you came after over a year of not seeing each other. No warning. No nothing.

Hoseok tried to compose himself, and when he was feeling calmed and better, he came out of the restroom to try to keep you off his mind.

The following day, Hoseok woke up early to go to an institution that helps people with depression to make a donation for his birthday. After he signed some documents, he and his manager were talking to the director of the facility when he saw you outside of the window talking to a teenager. He wondered why you’re there, but he realized that maybe you’re there because you’re still trying to make yourself better.

As he was looking at you from the inside, he realize that you look happier, and healthier. He also realized how much he missed that smile of yours, which doesn’t appear very often.

“Hoseok, are you listening?”, the manager asked

Hoseok didn’t realize that the director had asked him a question.

“I.. I am sorry?”, Hoseok replied, getting back in his senses.

“That’s Y/N, she is one of our volunteers here in the institution.” The director said, now also looking at you from the inside. “I am sorry, I noticed you were staring at her.”

“Ah. Yes, Y/N. I know her. I just didn’t know that she comes in here.” Hoseok replied.

“Real nice young lady. And although she’s been fighting depression for awhile now, she is one of our best volunteers and she’s been helping a lot of teens get through it, while getting through it herself.” The director explained smiling.

Hoseok just nodded. They discussed more about the donation and why Hoseok chose that institution to donate to.

“We are really thankful for this donation. As a nonprofit organization, this means a lot. It might not seem like it, but this will help us with better medication supplies and things that these teenagers need to put a smile on their faces.” The director said, leading them to the exit door.

“It’s my pleasure.” Hoseok answered. “It’s the least I can do.”

Hoseok and his manager said goodbye to the director. He tried to search for you when they were outside, but you were gone.

**

Two weeks later, Hoseok got invited back to the institution. The director explained that the teens have been bugging him that they invite Hoseok and the rest of the BTS as they have a surprise for him. He didn't want to disappoint anyone so he agreed to come, as well as the other members.

When they got to the institution, one of the volunteers led them to a small hall. He asked them to sit down on the chairs that were prepared for them and wait.

After a few minutes, Hoseok and the other members saw you come out of the stage. You took the microphone that was sitting on the center stage and started talking.

"Today, we want to thank you, especially you Mr Jung for the donation that you have made for the institution.", they can tell that you are nervous by the way you're talking. "This means a lot for the institution and for the kids that are suffering from depression and anxiety. We don't know your reason why you chose to help us instead of the other nonprofit organizations, but still, we are thankful. These kids prepared a surprise for you and they, we hope that you like it."

You walked out of the stage, though you didn't really look at him, you can tell that Hoseok is having a hard time listening. As soon as you're out of the stage, the teens started coming out from the backstage and dancing with BTS songs. You were in front of the stage, leading them and showing them the steps in case someone forget the choreo.

Hoseok couldn't help but look at you. And as he stared at you for a long time that he didn't realize he was smiling. He missed you and the way you dance.

After the dance, seven of the teens stayed on the stage while the rest left and started imitating all the members. This made all of them laugh at the whole part.

"That was really you though, hyung", Jungkook told Yoongi

"He does sound like me. But Taehyung's is more accurate!", Yoongi replied.

When the skit was over, there's another dance performance along with singing. Hoseok and the rest of the members are very proud of them. When they were done, one of the kids, around 15 years old, went to the center stage and said how she is so thankful for BTS and their music.

"Because of BTS, my life has more meaning. I feel like I can go through anything because of you guys. And I am so thankful for you. BTS makes me so happy." she said crying, her voice shaking.

Jimin started going up to her to give her a hug and the rest of the members followed. They also gave the other kids hugs and told them that they are very happy with their performance and that they will make more and better music for them. And that they are an inspiration to them.

Hoseok couldn't help but look at you looking at the kids. You look proud and happy for them. Before knew it, Hoseok is moving towards you.

"Did you teach them the choreography?", he asked from behind you

"Huh?" you startled. You turned and was surprised when you saw that it was Hoseok.

"Did you teach them the choreography?" he asked again

"Ah.. yes. Yes, I did." you said, kind of moving back a little from him

"It's good. You did a great job.", he said now looking at the kids and the other members talking to each other.

"Thank you." you replied

"So, where do you work now?" he asked, you were surprised with his question.

"Ah.. Uhmmn, well, ai am now working as a dance instructor now in a dance school

that is close here."

"Ah, why didn't you go back to Bighit?"

You stared at him, hesitated and finally, "You know why I didn't come back."

Hoseok was supposed to say something when one of the kids from the stage called you and asked if you can take a picture of her and Jimin. You bowed to Hoseok and left.

Hoseok spent the rest of the day just thinking about you. He thought of what could’ve been if you didn’t have depression. He was mad when you broke up with him but he cannot deny the fact that he still loves and cares for you.

“She looks really great Hoseok.. Y/N”, Jimin mentioned to Hoseok one time they were alone in the dorm.

“Huh?”

“Y/N! She looks much better. Like she’s really happy.”

“Yeah. Much better that your girl, who you keep making jealous every time you flirt with Jane.” Hoseok said leaving Jimin shaking his head.

Wearing a baseball cap, a mask., a too large for him hoody, though Hoseok doesn’t have any idea yet where he is going, he started his walk, hoping that it will lead him somewhere. After half an hour of not knowing where to go, he took the bus. The next thing you know, he was standing in front of the treatment institution for teens. He was staring at the building and when he realized where he’s at, he smiled, shook his head, and was ready to leave when somebody called his name.

“Hoseok!”, you called

Hoseok turned around, and he didn’t know what to say when he saw you.

“What are you doing here at 5pm?” he heard you asked

“What?”

“And where is your car?”

“Ahhh… Y/N”

“You know what. Don’t worry about it. I---”

“Y/N, I don’t know why I am here or how my feet took me here. But, it feels right seeing you.” Hoseok said still staring at you.

“Hoseok…”

“It doesn’t matter now. I am leaving anyway.”

Hoseok was about to leave, when you ran beside him. “You’re already here, so why don’t we just go for a walk. I am heading out anyway.”

Hoseok just looked at you and didn’t say anything. You both started walking, not really saying anything to each other.

“I am sorry.”, you finally said, breaking the ice.

“Me too.”, Hoseok replied.

“I just really didn’t want you to keep worrying about me and forgetting to take care of yourself because of me.”

“I just really really care about you Y/N. And I never wanna lose you. But the more I cared for you, the more you slipped away from me.”

“I am really sorry Ho----”

“I still love you Y/N”, he interrupted. He stopped walking and looked you in the eye..” I tried to be mad at you but I can’t. I tried to forget you so many times and yet here I am, finding myself to where you are. I can’t win a battle I know I already lost before it even began.”

“Hoseok”, you said, “I broke up with you that day because I worry about you. Because I don’t want you to carry me on your shoulders when you have all these priorities and dreams. I don’t want to be the reason why you forget about everything that makes you who you are and what took you to reach your dreams. When I left your dorm, I told myself I am going to get better for you. And here I am, not sure how long this is going to be, but I am better.”

Hoseok didn’t say anything and just stared at you. After awhile, he smiled and said, “Would you give it a chance to start again?”

Before you could say anything back, he said “And no, it’s never going to be easy. There’s no relationship that’s perfect. But, I promise, this time will be better.”

“Hoseok…”

“Don’t you think ‘us’ deserve a another chance?” Hoseok asked

“You deserve the world Hoseok.” you replied

“And so do you. But right now, you’re my world.” he said smiling.

You didn’t say anything. You both continue walking. You know in your heart that that ‘another chance’ already started. You want to keep getting better for him because you don’t ever want to lose him again.

“How ‘bout you beat me on a dance battle for that ‘other chance’”, you asked, smiling

“What? You know I one of the main dancers of BTS right? You don’t want to battle me!”, he whined, smiling.

“And I used to be BTS choreographer. Battle or no chance?” you teased.

“Ah, Y/N, you can’t do this to me!”

You started running away from him and he tried to catch up on you. You paused, turned to face him and said “Dance Battle!!!”

He caught up with you and before you could run away again, he wrapped his arms around you and you surrendered.

“I missed you.”, you whispered in his ear. And he smiled his widest smile.

[lavidaatravezdeunavion]

Week 3

June 30 

We had to be up and ready to go at 7:40am because today we were going to be driving to the Jesuit Missionaries about 3 hours away. Before the missionaries, we went to an amethyst mine. It was cool to hear about it and they said that they don't export the gems so the only way to get it is by buying directly. The gems were breathtaking! 

After another two hour drive we finally arrived at the San Ignacio's missionaries and ate at the comedor right in front. I got a pollo milanesa and a salad. I crushed the salad but the pollo was average so I didn't finish it. 

After lunch we toured the missionary. Our tour guide explained to us that these missionaries were sent to spread the word of God to the Guarani People. They had built multiple communities in the surrounding area including brazil and paraguay. Later they were taken out and some of the guarani people went back to living in the jungle. San Ignacio was abandoned and destroyed, so the restoration is only partial. It was cool to be able to walk through their common spaces and know that a couple hundred years ago there were indigenous people walking on the same grounds. 

The tour finished and we loaded up on the bus for the three hour ride back home. We ate dinner at the hotel and I got a pumpkin soup as a starter and let me tell you I was a little on edge because I’ve never had pumpkin soup but it was sooooo delicious. Since it was a starter they only gave me a little but I would’ve been happy eating a whole bowl of it, 9/10. For my main course I got the fish of the day which was “pacu” with a side of mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes didn’t disappoint but the fish could’ve been better. Not my cup of tea. And for dessert I got a flan. 

After dinner we all went to bed since we had to get up even earlier to head to the waterfalls.

July 1

We left the hotel at about 7:30am and headed to the waterfalls that was only 30min from our hotel. We were trying to get on the first train up to the waterfalls so that it wouldn’t be as crowded on the lookout. It was perfect timing because as we wrapped up taking all of our pictures a crowd of people were walking up. If you are able to get on the first or second train in Iguazú falls it honestly will make taking pictures a lot easier. 

After we saw “la garganta del diablo” we went to the little store they had and I got an empanadas de espinaca y queso (spinach and cheese). When I paid for it the guy told me to be careful with the animals. But I realized that the birds here are VERY vicious. I stayed inside to eat my empanada but my professor went out to drink her coffee and eat her empanada and got attacked by some birds! This is why they have cages specifically made for people to eat in LOL. 

We did another trail to see the falls from a different angle and it was just mind blowing. 

After the trails we had little time for lunch. I didn’t want to eat too much because we were going to be taking a boat tour right after. From one of the comedores I got some chicken and rice. While on this trip there are two things that I really miss: rice and beans. They have rice here but they usually eat potatoes and beans are not very popular here so my Salvadoran blood has been a little sad.

Anyway we got on the boat and I definitely recommend doing it if you are able. They give you a waterproof bag to put your stuff in and I also recommend taking your shoes off and putting them in the bag. I was also wearing a poncho which helped protect me, but regardless you will get wet. They take you really close to the falls and you can take some pictures in front but then they tell you to put your phones away because they take you sooooooo close to the falls and get soaked!! 

Once the ride was over we got back on our tour bus and headed back to the hotel.

For dinner, we ate at the hotel and I got the pumpkin soup, salad and the chicken milanesa with a side of mashed potatoes. Pretty good meal, favorite of course was the soup.

After dinner some friends and I went to the store to get something to drink. I got a white boxed wine that was only 55 pesos! (~$1.30). If you were wondering, no I did not finish it. 

July 2

We were able to sleep this morning till about 9am since we had to leave the hotel at 10am. We got on the plane and headed back to Buenos Aires.

 After we got off the plane and back to the resi (which I sort of missed) we dropped off laundry and got a little snack.

Later that night we went to “Caracas bar” to watch the Brazil vs Argentina game. I got this drunk called guarapanita which was rum and fruit juice. I also got some tostones de carne which really hit. The bar was a really cool and had a big screen to watch the game on but unfortunately the energy in the bar was really off. If you don’t know Argentina lost and it was really sad :(.

July 3

I was so excited to wake up today because my sister was going to be coming to Buenos Aires! I got up at around 10:30 and went to brunch with some girls at this cafe called adobo. We ended up walking but then couldn’t find it and then google maps said it was twenty min away so we got a taxi but what we didn’t realize that there were two locations #whoops. Anyway the food was bomb. The bagel sandwich just hit differently and Nutella and banana French toast was to die for! 

After breakfast I went back to the resi and picked my things for our trip to Uruguay later that evening. I picked up my laundry and waited for my sister to arrive. Once my sister got there we went to exchange some money. I thought that Uruguay was going to be cheaper than Argentina for some reason but I was wrong. The exchange rate right now is about .55 Uruguayan peso for 1 Argentine peso. 

We went to a cafe near Plaza Serrano called “La Panera Rosa” and I got a Chicken Rigatti Pasta. It was honestly one of the best meals ive had. It really had a lot of sauce and contrary to what Future says you can really never have too much sauce.

After lunch we got in a taxi and headed to the port and got on a Buquebus. Which is a ferry and then a charter bus to Montevideo,Uruguay. 

We checked into our hostel and then I messaged a friend I had met back in 2016 through Amigos de las Americas a nonprofit organization that I volunteered for. When my friend said he'd love to meet up I was ecstatic! We went to a random cafe near by and got a Chivito, which is a typical Uruguayan sandwhich and of course some wine.

 After my friend Miqueas gave us a little tour of the city and we headed to a bar to get a night cap. 

July 4

Happy fourth of July!!

This morning we got up and checked out of our hostel since we would be traveling to Colonia later. We walked to a restaurant to get some “breakfast” even though it was 11:30 am. My sister and I shared a milanesa that came with two fried eggs and some fries and potato salad. No need to mention the restaurants' name there are probably better ones out there. 

After lunch, we headed to Montevideo Shopping because my friend works around there so he said he would meet us up after he got out. Sooo in the meantime, we got to walk around and window shop. 

Once my friend got out of work my friend took us to the coast to get a good view and he knew I had a blog so he wanted to make sure I got good pictures! ( Gracias Miqueas!!! <3) 

After the photo session, we headed to the bus terminal and got our tickets for the bus ride to Colonia. We decided to get a quick bite to eat in the terminal to this restaurant called “La Mostaza”. My sister and I shared Ravioli, which was pretty bomb. The filling for the ravioli was like spinach and it was different but definitely tasty.

Once we finished we headed back to the hostel to pick up our luggage and then got a taxi back to the terminal and then got on the bus for Colonia. Once we arrived to Colonia I was a bit nervous because I did not see too many taxis but luckily once we walked outside there was a stand and then headed to our hostel and went to bed.

July 5

Today we got to sleep in again and then got ready to go get some breakfast. We went to this cute coffee shop called “Colonia Sandwich and coffee shop”. I got a roast beef sandwich and some tea. The place was really cute and since its winter time here they had blankets for everyone who sat outside which definitely helped. 

There were a bunch of birds surrounding us it was a little scary but more cute lol.

After lunch we just walked around the town which is really small so it wasn’t too long. We saw a lighthouse and some cool views on the coast. 

Later we did some more walking and found the drawbridge that we couldn’t find earlier. We also gained a new friend along the way lol. 

We decided to get a little snack to hold us over so we could try and eat dinner at a “normal” time. (Dinner in Argentina and Uruguay is usually eaten around 9 or 10pm so its been something difficult to adjust too) We walked into this restaurant that was right in the center, I wish I could tell you the name but the sign outside literally just said “Restaurant”. Anyway my sister and I shared a Rice with seafood dish and some wine. I loveeeee seafood so this was a perfect combination for me.

 After we decided to walk and get some ice cream at Freddo which is a pretty popular chain here. We got a Dulce de Leche cone.

Much later we went to go get some dinner at a pizza place called “Napo” it was really delicious. You could even see them making your pizza. My sister noticed that the guy making the pizza had a hat on and said that's probably a health code violation but im still here so I guess it's not that big of an issue. My sister and I got a salad and a pepperoni pizza and some red wine. (forgot to take a picture of the pizza sorry!)

After we headed back to the hostel and went to bed.

July 6

Today we woke up and checked out of our hostel and then headed to go get some breakfast. We went to this cute cafe called “Picnic”. I got an orange juice and a caprese empanada and then my sister and I shared a donut which was nothing like ive ever had before 10/10.

Since we had basically seen all the important landmarks we walked around and went window shopping. After we decided to go do a wine tasting at a place called “Buen Suspiro”. We had tried to go there the night before but it was closed. We got some charcuterie and tasted four different wines: Rose, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Tempranillo. My favorite was the Tempranillo and a close second was the Sauvignon blanc. 

After the taste testing, we went back to collect our belongings and headed to the port to get on the ferry back to Buenos Aires.

Once we got back I helped my sister check into her hostel and then headed back to our resi to work on this blog because it was long overdue!

After I finally caught up we went to dinner at “La Robla”. I got myself a Milanesa with a salad and my sister got a Steak with some mashed potatoes and we shared half a liter of sangria. I didn’t know sangria is literally just wine and fruits lol, the more you know.

For dessert we got a banana split!

After dinner, we walked my sister home and then went to bed.

This week we’ve done a lot of traveling so im excited to be back in BA!

Hasta luego,

T.L.

[bettydgunter90]

067: Let’s Get The Truth About Jaren Barnes

  Have you ever wondered about Jaren Barnes? What’s his story? Where does he come from? Why does he do what he does?

In this episode, I sit down with Jaren for a one-on-one conversation about his history and story. We’ll learn about how his career developed, where he gets his motivation and you might even learn a few new things he’s never shared on the podcast before.

Links and Resources

010: How Jaren Barnes Changed His Life With One Land Deal

024: An Introduction to Jaren Barnes

REtipster Terms Library

What’s the Difference Between a Realtor, Real Estate Agent, and Real Estate Broker?

Baker Book House

Cap Rate Calculator by Brian Davis

Al Williamson of LeadingLandlord.com

Lucas Hall of Landlordology.com

Coaching with Jaren

Jordan Peterson

The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard

Thou Shall Prosper by Daniel Lapin

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

Bethel Church in Redding, California

Share Your Thoughts

Leave a note in the comments section below!

Share this episode on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn (social sharing buttons below!)

Help out the show:

Leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts Your ratings and reviews really help (and I read each one).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

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Thanks again for joining me this week. Until next time!

Right-click here and “Save As” to download this episode to your computer.

Episode 67 Transcription

Seth: Hey everybody, how’s it going? This is Seth Williams and Jaren Barnes of the REtipster podcast. And today we’re going to do something a little bit different. I’m going to stand back and we’re going to interview Jaren for no other reason than to simply help our audience know more about Jaren. If you ever happened to catch episode 10 and I think it was episode 24, we kind of have little bits and pieces of Jaren’s backstory to kind of learn a little bit more about how he operates and what his experience has been and how he’s gotten to his current stage in life.

But we’ve never like actually dedicated a full episode just to hearing all about Jaren. We’ve got a handful of questions here we’re going to run through and just got a pretty cool story. I think you guys are going to enjoy it and I’m going to enjoy it too. So, Jared, what’s up?

Jaren: What’s up guys? This is kind of weird to be on the side of the conversation today, but it’s exciting. I’m excited too because then I think next week, we’re going to be interviewing you, right, Seth?

Seth: Yup. Actually, I don’t know which one’s going to air first, but chances are you’ve either already heard Jaren interview me or if you haven’t yet, that’s going to come next time.

Jaren: Yeah. So, I’m excited to get into your back story as well.

Seth: I guess to kick this off, let’s just answer the high-level question of how did you get into real estate, Jaren?

Jaren: Not that question. Geez. Really what happened was I got married and I needed to figure out a way to make money. My background was I started pursuing a nonprofit work, right out of high school and I dropped out of college to go work full time in a volunteer non-paid position as a superintendent over a homeless shelter in Great Bend, Kansas in the middle of nowhere. And then I helped a friend start a ministry where he was traveling and I was traveling with him. And one of the trips that we ended up going on was to the UK. And I met my wife there and I was really young. My wife is actually, I think three and a half years older than me, almost four years older than me. And I was 19 when I met her and she was 23. And I kind of just, long story short knew that she was my wife. We knew each other for two months and then I moved to the UK to spend the summer with her to get eloped with parent permission. So, I went out there and I turned 20 on July 5th and we were married on July 7th.

Seth: You needed to parent permission. You were 19 though, right?

Jaren: Yeah, I didn’t need it, but I got it because out of honor for her parents.

Seth: It’s not like illegal thing and you just didn’t want to alienate.

Jaren: I just didn’t want to be like a jerk and be like, “Hey, I got married without talking to her parents”. But here’s a really funny story. My wife’s family, they prank each other a lot. We found out after the fact, after we were married when my wife called my mother in law and asked her, “Hey, I met this guy, I really want to marry him. I feel like it’s right. Can I have your blessing?” She was like, “Yeah, yeah, sure” thinking it was a joke. And then she found out it wasn’t a joke but it’s too late. And I obviously couldn’t be a non-paid volunteer for a homeless shelter anymore because I was a husband and needed to provide for a family. So, I moved back from the UK. We were staying in Albany in Scotland and we didn’t know anything about the immigration process because we were young and dumb. And so, I was like, before you moved to America, you should go see your family one more time in Kazakhstan and then you could fly out after. And she said, yeah, that’s a good idea. So, I flew to California to stay with my mom and try to get a job and figure things out. And she went to Kazakhstan and then we found out about this thing called the immigration process. And we were separated for a year and a half and had to go through all that.

Seth: And why is that?

Jaren: Because we didn’t have an American marriage license. We had a British marriage license and neither of us were UK citizens. It looked very suspicious.

Seth: Oh, I see.

Jaren: They needed us to prove that this is a legitimate marriage and not just me getting paid off to help somebody immigrate to the United States.

Seth: Yeah, man, that immigration process is uh. I mean, I’m sure there are reasons for it, but holy cow, what a hassle. When I was working in banking, I remember working with a few people that were going with immigration and it was just like a nightmare. Funny thing is I had heard the back in the 70s or probably 70s and prior to that it was like super easy to get into the U.S. It was like, you just can say, “Well, I’m coming in now” and you’re all good. It didn’t matter if you were coming from Iraq or where. It’s just like, “Hey, just free for all”.

Jaren: Yeah, man. I don’t know why they make it so difficult. The reality is I understand why so many people do it illegally because it’s easier. It’s way easier to do it illegally than to do it the right way. It’s almost a lot of the laws and restrictions in place, they hurt people that are trying to do it the right way. Yeah, so, it’s unfortunate. I really think we need a complete overhaul of the immigration system, but that’s for another podcast.

Anyway, while I was trying to figure out how to make money, some friends started to get into business and entrepreneurship at least from an ideological standpoint. I started reading a lot of books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” or as one of the books that were really instrumental for me was a book by a guy named Brendon Burchard called the “Millionaire Messenger” and that he literally blueprints a step by step process to make a million dollars a year. He breaks down all the numbers and stuff and it’s really good. And so, I started hanging out with those guys and then one of my friends in the group bought into a Real Estate Guru Program and wanted to start flipping houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. At this time, it was a little bit fast forward. My wife had finally joined me in the United States and we were together and I had just crushed through getting my insurance license and I had convinced a guy to hire me. Even though he wanted somebody who had college experience. I had landed this job and I was working there for about a month and a half and I was the number one salesperson there. I was making more sales for that month than anybody else. I just had to hustle.

And I realized that my friend was telling me that in one deal I could make a hundred thousand dollars. And I was like, man, if I work my entire job in insurance, I can’t make that. Even if I’m sustaining the number of sales that I’m doing now, I can’t make a hundred thousand dollars a year with where I’m at. I was making somewhere around 65-ish thousand or something like that. And I said, man if all I have to do is one sale and I can make a hundred thousand dollars in a year, it’s worth it.

So, I quit my job and then literally left my office after talking to my boss and then went directly to the real estate office in Milpitas. And I started a door-knocking that day and I started door knocking pre-foreclosures. Long story short, it was a crazy ride because again, I was really good at sales from door-knocking. I got 10 properties under contract in six months, which at the time with the climate that was really, really hard to do. It was just coming off of the 2008 recession and it’s a tough market.

I was doing really well, but the people that we were kind of partnered with weren’t the most ethical at all. I wasn’t getting paid and they were kind of kicking their feet about closing on these properties and they had a really unethical way to actually turn foreclosures into a deal or short sales into a deal. But at the time I didn’t realize. But now knowing what I know being licensed and everything, they all could have gone to prison for what they were doing and I’m glad that I stopped doing business with them. But from there I kind of got bit by the real estate bug and I was like, “All right, I really like real estate. There’s something here I want to go after it”.

I started a blog called realestatecatalyst.org and I made a post about a bunch of really awesome blogs out there, Bigger Pockets being one of them. I think REtipster was one of them too, right? And that’s how I got on Seth’s radar.

Yeah. So, from there, Biggerpockets, Josh and Brandon reached out to me like, thank you so much for the review that dah, dah, dah. Which is crazy to think. It must have been the Wild Wild West because I’m sure people write blog posts about Bigger Pockets all day long now and they don’t get reached out to by these guys. But this is back in 2013/2014. And so, long story short, they ended up wanting to come or they were going to do a presentation for Google. I was really involved in the Bigger Pockets meetups there in the Bay Area. And so, I connected Brandon and Josh to the guy that runs the Bigger Pockets meetups for the San Francisco Bay Area. And then they came and kind of did like a special meet and greet or whatever. And that’s how I got on their radar. And I noticed that Josh put out a job listing on social media saying that they needed some extra help. It was just Josh and Brandon at the time and some 1099 contractors and few VA’s. And so long story short, I reached out, I said, “Hey, I would be interested. I have blogging experience. I started my own thing and I think I would be a good fit. I’d love to work with you guys”. And he said, “Well, it has to be temporary because we want to build the team in Denver. I don’t want any more virtual employees outside of Brandon. So, would you be okay with it?” And I said, yeah, a hundred percent.

So, I worked there for I think five months and I did a lot of stuff there. I learned a ton. I edited all of the blog posts that were contributed there. There were 35 blog contributors at the time. I did forum monitoring. I wrote the show notes for the podcast. I wrote the outlines for the podcast. I got guests for the podcast. I did a lot. I did pretty much anything that they would throw at me, I would do it. And it was a really great experience. And from there I was kind of in transition for a little bit and ultimately decided to move to Indianapolis because things are cheaper there. If I wanted to afford a house and I wanted to continue to pursue real estate, that would have been much more advantageous.

So, I moved there and I was kind of feeling like I needed to pick between content marketing and real estate. And I ultimately chose real estate. I got my real estate license and then got hired by a guy named Brett Snodgrass to do content marketing. He was a real estate wholesaler. I’ve always kind of been in this bubble of content marketing and in real estate. This is kind of my whole career. And halfway through my time at Simple Wholesaling while I was building a brand for Simple Wholesaling, I switched to doing the deal side of the business. And I was the head of this position. So, it was my responsibility to make sure that the properties got sold. At the height, I was selling between 25 and 35 properties a month. We had 35 properties and those were like killer months, best months ever. But on average, the bare minimum we were hitting over 25 properties a month.

I learned a ton there and starting a podcast and continuing the branding efforts. We interviewed Seth about the land business and I was really intrigued about the land business because it was very similar to wholesaling but had just a lot more perks. Properties were cheaper, marketing was cheaper, less competition. The major difference between the wholesaling houses, if you actually take down your inventory and you don’t do assignments with land is that it takes a little bit longer to move property. My typical turnaround time in my land business is three to six months. Whereas if you’re wholesaling and you’re working with investor buyers, you can move property within a few days of having it. A lot of guys do double closes and that kind of stuff.

So, I wanted to utilize the skill sets that I had without being direct competition to my boss at Simple Wholesaling because I’m a pretty loyal guy and I thought that I was going to be there for a while, maybe in the long haul, but I wanted to still have my own ability to make wealth and generate wealth that wasn’t in direct competition to Simple Wholesaling. And so, I reached out to Seth and he said, “Hey, how about you moonlight the land course? I’ll give you access to it for free. And you just give me feedback on what your experience was like”. I was like, “Yeah, heck yeah, I’ll do that”. And so, I went through it, took action, and then kind of took off doing land in Indiana. Simple Wholesaling had some transitions and a long story short, it turned out that it wasn’t going to be the best fit for me to be there long-term.

So, I was kind of, again in transition, still working in my land business, but I was in the beginning stages. So cashflow is a real problem. And me and Seth were actually in a mastermind group together with a couple of other guys like Lucas Hall and Al Williamson. Al Williamson is leading landlord.com and then Lucas Hall is from cozy.com. He found in landlordology.com. We’ll put those in the show notes. Those guys are great. We were in a mastermind group, that we met over Zoom. We met every other week. I was complaining about my cashflow problems. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do because the land business is awesome and it’s working and we’re okay, but we’re not getting ahead. We’re just kind of treading water. And Seth said, “Well, how about you come work for REtipster?” And I was like, “That’s a great idea. That might be awesome”.

Yeah, I ended up joining the team in July of 2018 if I remember correctly. And it’s been history ever since I’ve been growing my land business. I moved from Indiana to Florida. Well, I didn’t move. I’m in Indiana still, but I moved my land operation from Indiana to Florida. And ever since I did that, things took off like a rocket and it’s been really, really good. I got to be honest, man, working at REtipster it’s my dream job. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to do with helping people, making videos, writing articles that are tutorial base and very action-oriented and podcasting and videos and all this man.

Right now, as we’re recording this, we’re in the thick of the coronavirus nonsense mess pandemic and it’s easy to forget. But man, I can’t believe I get to do what I do every day because it’s literally everything I’ve ever wanted to do.

Seth: Yeah man, likewise. I remember that moment when you were telling me and I had that light bulb moment of “Hey, maybe Jaren could work for REtipster” and it was usually I’m too dense and slow to recognize those opportunities when they’re right in front of me. But I think God was just telling me like, “Hey stupid, here you go. Perfect opportunity right here”. And it’s true man. That’s the thing. It’s surprisingly difficult to find people out there because there’s like a lot of different things they have to be in order to excel in the role that you are in. You’ve got to have relevant experience. You have to know what you’re talking about. You have to be somebody who knows how to talk and actually explain things in a way that people can understand.

I can’t tell you how many super successful real estate investors there are out there, but they either have no interest in helping other people understand or are just terrible at it. They don’t have the mind or the heart of a teacher. And then also somebody who enjoys the video thing. I think a lot of people hate being on video. The podcasting thing and knows how to write and just convey ideas and you’re just a really good blend of everything that a person would ever need to be. So, I’m really glad we are where we at.

Jaren: Yeah, man, a hundred percent. I got to just take my hat off to you. I hope that this doesn’t turn into some like a gushy love fest or something.

Seth: Oh, I’m okay with that.

Jaren: I’m just really thankful for how much you’ve helped me hone my skills in that. Like I think I was okay. Like, I definitely could start a podcast and do some stuff. But now it’s like I really have some skills and I only have you to thank for that. I mean, I really just appreciate the opportunity man.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely.

Jaren: That’s awesome man.

Seth: I’m glad I could play any role in helping you along. That’s really cool man. Thanks for saying. So, we’ve kind of heard about from college-age until now. So when you were a kid, did you have any interest in being an entrepreneur, running businesses or making money or any of that stuff? Or did the light bulb sort of go off when you discovered real estate back in the Bay Area those years ago?

Jaren: I was not entrepreneurial at all when I was a kid. I was actually kind of like, I don’t know like I was a troubled kid I guess I would say to put it lightly. I just didn’t have much of a direction at all. Before I had my “Come to Jesus” moment when I was 15. I was really into like drugs and the party scene. I remember in my freshman year of high school because I went back and forth between my mom and my dad’s house. My mom lives in California, my dad lives in Georgia. I graduated in Georgia, but in my freshman year, I was in California. And I remember telling my teachers like, “What do you want to do when you get older?” I was like, “I want to just be like a nomad. Just kind of be a traveling nomad”. Because they beat the system. They don’t have any cares in the world. They don’t have to worry about bills or anything. They just go wherever they want to go and do whatever they want to do.

So that was where I was at, man. I was kind of like coming off of a kind of hippy-dippy, like nonsense stuff that doesn’t really work in the real world. But I had my “Come to Jesus” moment when I was 15 and that really kind of just gave me a whole new sense of direction. But the entrepreneurial bug bit me kind of out of necessity because I don’t have a college degree or a career to fall back on. I don’t have those kinds of skillsets. So, I had to figure out something and figure it out fast. Because my wife who’s older wants kids and has family obligations and I was a young kid really having to figure it out quickly, like really fast. So, real estate was the best path for me.

Seth: Yeah. That’s always weird for me to even think of you as being somebody who is a troubled kid or having no direction because you just seem so the opposite of that now. The only Jaren I’ve ever known as somebody who’s super driven and does have direction and is not a total misfit.

Jaren: Yeah. That’s my wife man. That’s all on my wife. Because my wife grew up in real poverty. She was born under the Soviet Union. So, the Soviet Union fell in 1991. She was born in 1987 and she grew up toilets in the backyard and a village kind of poor. Her story, they could write a whole book about it, but just kind of like curiously through her struggles I realized, I guess I got a little bit of that immigrant hustle from her. I realized, “Oh, wait, there’s an ungodly amount of opportunity just being in America.” I almost have a responsibility or an obligation to capitalize on that opportunity because so many people would literally kill to be like literally killed to be here and it’s a big deal. So, I can only attribute my drive and who I am today to my faith in my wife.

Seth: When I think of the people I’ve known in my life who were sort of like troublemakers or I don’t know, sort of what you were describing of yourself as a young person. I wonder if that’s the main issue at stake is that they simply have no direction or they don’t have a meaning to life. They don’t know what they’re doing or why they’re even here. And it’s almost like I don’t know if boredom is the right word, but just like when you have no a mission or you don’t understand the importance of life and what you’ve put here to do, it’s really easy to flounder and just go nowhere. And that’s probably where a lot of troubles in the world come from. It’s people who just don’t understand what they’ve been given and the opportunities that are sitting right in front of them.

Jaren: I would a hundred percent agree with that. I used to even tell people like, I don’t understand, I mean this is going to sound crazy to probably all of our audience, but when I was like 13-14 doing crazy stuff, I used to tell people like, I don’t understand the point of being sober. It’s boring. Why would you do it? I think people, everybody to thrive, they need a purpose, they need a mission and I just didn’t have one for a long time. And so, I had my “Come to Jesus” moment.

Seth: Sometimes I wonder if that purpose is born out of struggle. People have a life where they can just kind of sit in front of the TV, they can just sort of do whatever they want. They don’t have to do anything that day. It’s just whatever. I’ve known people like that in my life and the people that I know that are like super productive or really like push it really far and get far in life. I don’t know that they would be that way if they weren’t well acquainted with struggle. It’s almost like you sort of have to hurt a little bit to realize the importance of pushing for something better.

Jaren: Here I speak in my life’s ideals, man. Like my core values. Especially in recent years with things that we’ve gone through some family stuff and whatever. Like I used to be anti-suffering, adamantly anti-suffering, but I’m not so much anymore. I think that controlled suffering is the only way that you can grow. You think about working out at the gym. All you’re doing is you’re putting yourself in a position to have controlled suffering. That’s all it is. Repetitive controlled suffering is what grows muscles. It’s the same thing that grows character and it’s the same thing that teaches you how to speak a different language or learn a new skill. It’s getting through the pain and the struggle of not knowing something or fill in the blank. And that’s the only path to growth. You can’t grow without suffering.

Seth: Amen. That’s good stuff. We’ve heard your whole backstory or at least all the highlights. Is there anything else you do in terms of real estate investing outside of land? Or do you have much experience in other realms?

Jaren: I have a lot of experience because I sold a lot of “buy and hold” property and flip the property to buyers. I had to understand what they were looking for, how they run their numbers, all that stuff. I am very interested in a “buy and hold” long-term. I don’t think that two to four units are the route that I would want to go. I’ve been looking into syndications pretty heavily over the last six months and I would probably still be very interested in pursuing that. Right now, the climate’s very different than it was, but I keep coming back to it depending on who you talk to. If you talk to a syndicator, they’re small multifamily. You talk to somebody who buys residential multifamily, like two to four units, they call them big. So, it’s all relative. But anything from 5 to like 50-unit range, I feel like in the syndication world, there’s a lot of guys shy away from those because they require more hands-on management. You can’t get the good high-level property managers for those kinds of properties like you would for a 100-unit or whatever.

But being in Northwest Indiana and seeing the opportunities that are here, there’s a house literally five-minute walk from where I’m at right now. That’s a six-unit that is selling for like $550,000. There was another 10-unit, 30 minutes north of me in a really nice area called Whiting, Indiana for $500,000. It was a 10 unit.

Seth: Oh, man. Does it make good money? Are the 10 garbage units or are nice ones?

Jaren: No, I mean Whiting is kind of an Oasis in the ghetto. There’s East Chicago and then there’s Hammond is kind of up and coming. I would buy in Hammond. Purdue has a college campus there. And then there’s Gary to the East. And Gary is pretty rough. But Whiting is a really quaint little town and we would totally get renter’s there because it’s safe. It’s right by Lake Michigan. It’s literally the most Northern part of Indiana before you’re in Illinois and in Chicago. Looking at the opportunities here, if I’m going to be settled here, I don’t know, I keep circling back to that. I don’t know a hundred percent if that’s the route that I’m going to go. I’m like not committing to anything but larger “buy and hold” anywhere from 5 to doing full on syndications of like a hundred and plus units.

That’s something that’s intriguing to me, but I also like kind of the obscure creative weird stuff in real estate that’s just unusual. Like billboards have been on my radar quite a bit. I got a property that is right off of the highway in Jacksonville right now. It’s a land deal that’s vacant and it’d be perfect for a billboard and so that’s been intriguing to me. And then also all these guys that invest overseas like in Belize or in the Azores that we’ve been talking to over the last year that I like short term rentals, vacation rentals. I really like that as a strategy. I think that it sounds like it’s fun. It makes really good money, but to me, honestly, the appeal is it just sounds like it’s cool to be able to be like, “Yeah, I got a property in Hawaii, I got a property in Belize, I got property in the Azores and it makes me all this money and it’s awesome. If you ever want to go, we could always just go and book a weekend. We could go for free”.

That just seems very appealing to me. And I like the fact that there are all these obscure vacation destinations like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, nobody really talks about that. But you can get really, really cheap property there and then you can Airbnb it in the on-season and probably make a crazy amount of money. I don’t know, that’s the stuff that’s on my radar. But currently, the only stuff that I’ve actually taken action on is I live in a house situation, I live in the side of a duplex and then I flip land. But other things are very much on my radar for the future.

Seth: And you’re really very, very familiar with the whole house wholesaling business model too. I mean, it may not have been like your money tied up in those properties, but you actually played a hand in doing many, many transactions that way. There’s a ton of stuff to learn just from that right there.

Jaren: I’ve probably had my hands involved in over 250 transactions. Confidently.

Seth: Yeah, that’s huge, man. And you were a real estate agent for a while as well, right?

Jaren: Yeah. I’m still technically licensed. I haven’t let it lapse or expire. I’m not a part of the local MLS association, the GNIAR is what it’s called for Northwest Indiana. I’m kind of just biding my time, but since I went through the headaches and the two years’ experience to get a broker’s license, like a managing broker’s license in Indiana, so I don’t have to hang in with anybody. It’s just hard for me to let go of that. I’ve just been keeping it inactive for now.

Seth: If you did let go of that, how hard is it to get it back? The managing broker’s license?

Jaren: I’d have to start from the beginning.

Seth: Man, that stinks.

Jaren: Yeah, so I’d have to have two years of active real estate experience again and do the whole thing and pass the broker’s test again.

Seth: By the way, Jaren put together a couple of really good articles about explaining the difference between a realtor, real estate agent, real estate broker and how the terms and names for those roles kind of differ from state to state. I never fully even understood it myself until I saw his writeup. I’m going to link to both of those in the show notes as well in case you’ve ever been curious about that. A lot of times people call somebody a real estate agent and they use that term interchangeably with something that isn’t necessarily that. Anyway, I just thought I mentioned that since we’re on the subject.

Jaren: Yeah, I worked hard on those. It’s funny, with some of these articles we’ve been working on recently with recent projects, it’s like one term can turn into a nightmare. Like real estate agent can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Seth: Yeah. For all the listeners out there, if you guys didn’t know this, I’ve mentioned it in a few different places, but just in case you weren’t aware, a big initiative we’ve been working on, on REtipster is creating a terms library. The idea is to just take a lot of words that are very commonly thrown around in the real estate world. Like 1031 exchange or absentee owner or real estate agent for example. Words that the typical real estate investor who’s been doing this for a while, they’re probably very familiar with it or maybe they think they know because they use the word, but they don’t actually understand all the intricate details behind it. We’ve been trying to very clearly explain these things like writing a full article about each one of them. Not just defining it but like a lot of other tidbits that people ought to know about those particular terms.

This is a new terms library on the site. I think both of us have just been blown away at how much harder this has been than we thought it would be. Part of what makes it hard is because if we want to really make ground and define a lot of these things, more than like 10 in a two- or three-month period, we have to get other writers involved, other people who understand them and can write well. That has been really hard to find good writers. And then even when we do find a good writer, it’s a ton of work to edit them and make sure all the statements were correct.

Jaren: The crosschecking on editing is a nightmare because they can legitimately show you, this article says straight up XYZ, but then you might know because you have experience in the industry. Yeah, but that’s only half the picture and that’s only under certain circumstances that that term is used for that. So, it’s really hard to figure it out.

Seth: For the ones that I’ve been writing, I’ve got legit textbooks here that I used in college. I’ve seen that same kind of thing where it explains the term in one context and it’s right in that one context. But there are also other situations where that same word is used and it means something slightly different or even very different. I’ve found plenty of other articles on like big reputable websites that have done the same thing where it’s like they are either not fully correct or they’re wrong. It’s one of those things like on the surface when you just think, “Oh yeah, let’s write a bunch of terms articles”. It seems really easy. But like, holy cow, if you want to do it right and do it well, it is insane how much work it takes. For both of us, editing is probably my least favorite thing to do. I’ve been kind of crabby every day that I have to edit articles. Jaren can attest to that. It just totally wears me out. So, it’ll be interesting to see if people get anything out of this. Like is this something we ought to spend our time on or should we do something else?

Jaren: Oh, and by the way, this is an incredible opportunity. If any of the listeners out there have real estate experience and professional editing experience, please reach out to us.

Seth: Yes, please.

Jaren: We are in a desperate situation.

Seth: Yeah, we have tapped a couple of people who have been very helpful, but a friend of mine works for a book publisher called Baker Book House and he is an editor. Like that’s what he does. He was explaining to me that every time they publish a book, it goes through four different editors. At first, I was like, man, that seems like overkill, but I’m realizing that’s actually very appropriate. There’s a lot of stuff that one editor by themselves will not catch. Because it’s not just about grammar and spelling, it’s about doing this sentence structure is right, should it be moved to a different place? Are the statements even correct? There is so much stuff involved in editing. It’s kind of mind-boggling when you think about it.

Jaren: Yeah man. Hey, can we link in the show notes my favorite terms article that I’ve read so far is been that article that Brian Davis wrote on cap rates. For whatever reason, I think that was the best writeup I’ve ever read on cap rates. He really made it super simple to not only understand but also to stick in my mind.

Seth: Yeah, Brian’s a great writer. Everything he puts together, it’s just awesome. So yeah, I’ll link to that. We have not just an amazing article on it, but also a calculator you can use on that same article. So, let’s move on here. The next question I’ve got for you, Jaren is, what is your craziest story about a real estate deal you were involved with? What’s just a bizarre experience you had for better or worse?

Jaren: One of the craziest things that have ever happened in my life is when I first started working for Simple Wholesaling, Brett had me go get trained on how to take down a boarded-up house or how to get access to a boarded-up house or to board up a house or something. He gives me this address and this is probably the most ghetto place I’ve ever been in my life. It’s like straight up from a movie kind of ghetto, like drug addicts walking around on the streets. I don’t know, it was scary. It was weird. I walk up to this house, people, all the neighbors are looking at me weird. Half of mine, it feels like I’m about to get attacked. I go up and then I see Gary, who’s this super small town, really kind of a gullible, sweet guy. And he’s like, “Hey, Jared” and la-la-la. And we were like, go in this house. He’s showing me all chirpy and nice.

Seth: And who is Gary?

Jaren: Gary was our property manager for the tenant owned properties and he also was our transaction coordinator at Simple Wholesaling.

Seth: I gotcha.

Jaren: He’s training me and we walk into this house and he is showing me around and all of a sudden, I started noticing all these Brown things everywhere. And I’m like, “Hey, do they have dogs?” He said, “Oh no man, this was a crack house and this is all human feces everywhere”. And I’m like, “What?” And like literally everywhere, there’s just spots of like just poop everywhere. And then we go upstairs and I have noticed that the bathroom, there’s no poop, there’s no anything nasty really. It’s like the nicest room in the house. And so, me and Gary were talking about it. I’m like, “What the heck? Why is it poop everywhere else except in the bathroom?”

And then while we’re putting up the boards or doing whatever we were doing, some guy approaches us and says, “Hey man, my friend was squatting here and he has my bike and my backpack in the back yard”. And obviously, this guy was the guy that was squatting there. And it was his stuff. He was fine moving on. He just wanted to get his stuff. And so, we’re like, “Yeah man, you can get your stuff. Go for it”. He said, “Aw, thanks, man. Thanks, man”. Gary actually couldn’t help himself and he asked the guy, he’s like, “Hey man, I’m just curious. You said, your friend lived here and we noticed there’s poop everywhere but there’s no poop in the bathroom. Why is there no poop in the bathroom? I’m just curious”. And the guy says, “Oh, man, that’s where we smoke our crack. We can’t poop in there. It will smell on everything”. So, they would rather poop everywhere else in the house but the bathroom. It was super weird, man. That was one of the “Welcome to real estate” moments.

Seth: Man, was that early on in your civil wholesaler career or had you been there for a while?

Jaren: I think it was like the first or second day.

Seth: Yeah man, that’s nuts. Isn’t it crazy? Maybe I and the average person listening to this is just kind of sheltered. We just have certain standards that are normal, but it is crazy how some people live. Can you imagine being that guy and being like, “This is okay? This is normal for me to live like this”.

Jaren: I mean I’ve seen so many other houses like that too. There was a house in Fountain Square Indianapolis, which Fountain Square is a really nice up and coming area and they had a back room. There was a tenant occupied and it had a backroom that was blocked off. And then I went back there and there’s just poop everywhere. And I’m like, “Hey, what’s up with this?” And they’re like, “Oh, we just let the dogs go poop and pee in that back room during the winter so that they don’t get cold”.

Seth: That’s unbelievable. Yeah, man. I mean drugs must be involved with that. I mean, can you think of a reason why a normal mentally coherent person would just do that? I mean, I don’t know.

Jaren: I think it’s when you grow up in a hoarder type situation and filth, you’re just accustomed to it. You just don’t know what cleanliness feels like.

Seth: Actually, I had a college roommate who I don’t know if his parents were hoarders necessarily, but very, very messy people. I had been to his house a few times and it was just like, “Holy cow, there’s so much junk everywhere”. But he was not like that. It’s almost like he saw the problem and he’s like, “This isn’t okay. I’m going to be clean in my life”. So, I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows? But it is kind of crazy how some people live.

Jaren: Human psychology is very, very complicated. Trying to figure out why people do what they do, it’s really, really complicated.

Seth: It’s very true. Now that we’ve heard that horror story, what was your best deal to date and what made it so good?

Jaren: Yeah, it was the one that I talked about on the previous interview. At first, we did it on YouTube and then you started the podcast and I think you used it for the podcast.

Seth: Was that episode 10? I think that was episode 10.

Jaren: I think so. Yeah. And that one was the best deal ever. It was just the stars aligned and Brett had some land property that he had acquired. And then he and I had a deal in total that we had one buyer that wanted to buy everything. And on our properties that we had gotten, I think it was like over 200 acres and the details are starting to get fuzzy now. I’m sure I said what they were in the episode. But what happened was this timber company decided to do a double close on this, like crazy huge property. So, Brett says to date that was the most he ever made in one single transaction and I made $38,000.

Seth: Yeah. And that was part of the deal, right?

Jaren: Yeah. That was just a part of the deal. Yeah. It was just insane. That changed my life and gave me seed money for really growing the business. You get deals in land that just don’t happen in other types of real estate investing strategies.

Seth: I can attest to that.

Jaren: It’s crazy. Like the home runs are really home runs in land.

Seth: Were you guys looking for land when you do the deal or did it just happen to come up as you were looking for houses?

Jaren: The property that he bought, another wholesaler brought to him and he’s like, “All right, Jared has been talking about this land thing. Let me see if I can take a crack at it”. And I had just started marketing for my property. So, I think I had done three deals before that one, something like that. Two or three deals. And at the time, again, because of my loyalty to Simple Wholesaling and all that, like I was completely fine exclusively partnering with Brett on all the deals that I brought in. And that’s what I was planning on doing. So, I think we had done about two or three deals before that one. It completely changed my life, man.

Seth: Yeah, man, that’s awesome. That’s really cool that you were able to have such a big win early on. For me, it took me like a few years to find one like that and it’s not necessarily normal, but it’s pretty awesome that you could see it right at the outset. So, what was the worst deal you’ve ever done? Did you lose money and how did that all happen?

Jaren: So probably the worst deal that I ever did was one that was also with Brett, unfortunately. We bought it. It was landlocked with easement access. I think it was like 24 acres or something. The front parcel that we had easement access on was another 6 acres. So overall it was about 30 acres or 32 acres I think total. And that was just a tough situation because we had bought it right but the easement problem, it was just hard to get over. And I didn’t know how to get good land as a specialized real estate agent at the time and I didn’t know how to move the property quickly. I was just really green to take on a project like that. And what we ended up doing was we bought the front parcel that was 6 acres for the same price that we bought the back. And so, we just had way too much money in the deal and it just took forever in a day to sell. I just walked out of the deal and gave it to Brett and let Brett recoup his losses on that as much as possible. But that was probably the toughest deal. I learned I’m pretty gun shy when it comes to landlocked properties, I think because of that. But you know what you’re doing. I think landlocked properties are the source of some of the best deals in land.

Seth:  It’s all about getting it cheap man.

Jaren: Yeah, it’s just getting it super, super cheap. And another one too. I always sell coaching clients because people ask me on discovery calls right before they become coaching clients with REtipster. They say, “What are the areas that I really have to watch out? What’s the secret sauce to making this business work?” And I say it’s two things. It’s due diligence and it’s direct mail. If you can wrap your head around doing marketing and you can wrap your head around due diligence, you’re good. That’s the 80/20 of it. Because due diligence is what has always bit me in the butt. By not understanding like, Oh, this road that’s right next to my property is a private road. So, I bought it and I can’t do anything with the property because without an easement access, I’m kind of screwed. Or I bought a property early on in Indiana that I thought was a great deal based on the comps. I bought it for $2,500 and then all of a sudden, literally the County told me you can barely have a hammock on this property. Like, there’s nothing you can do with it. That one I just had to let go to the tax foreclosure because there was nothing, I could do with it. And I tried to sell it to the neighbor and yeah, long-short, there are bumps and bruises along the way, but you got to take your losses and learn from them. But the biggest thing for me is due diligence.

Seth: Yeah. That whole thing about losing money on deals and having the ones that basically aren’t home runs or don’t pan out the way you want. On one hand, you could sort of look at it the way I always have, which I don’t necessarily think is healthy, but look at it in such a way of like, “Hey, I’m only going to go after home runs and it needs to do really well or I really screwed something up”. But on the same coin, it’s like, and I heard this a lot in the banking industry too, it’s some people will brag about, “Yeah, I’ve never done a loan that’s lost money. I’ve always had a perfect track record”. But if that’s true, that means you’ve missed a ton of opportunities. You’ve never taken a risk. You’ve never stuck your neck out and dared to be great. You look at the batting average of the best home run hitters in major league baseball. It’s like they strike out way more than they ever get on base. It’s not like having a bad deal is a sign of failure. It just means hey you’re really pushing the envelope and trying to do good deals and that’s going to happen eventually.

Jaren: Obviously if you can avoid it, avoid it. But there’s something about struggle again man, when you taste failure, there’s no better teacher.

Seth: Yeah. And I think that is one different thing about the land business. Because if we were talking about flipping houses where on every deal you got to take out, either put tons of cash down or take out a loan, then failing one time is a massive hit. That’s a huge problem. With a land deal, if you lose a few hundred bucks or a few thousand bucks, it’s like, yeah, that’s a bummer. But it’s not the end of the world.

Jaren: Yeah, again, it’s one of the major benefits to land because you’re buying it so cheap and so much undervalued. Even if the economy were to turn, you should be able to get what you bought the property for out of it, if you’re buying right.

Seth: Yeah, totally. So, I’m curious, if you did not invest in real estate, say you never discovered the real estate business at all, say you never worked for Biggerpockets or Simple Wholesaling or REtipster. Where do you think your life would have taken you? What would you be doing today?

Jaren: I don’t know man. My knee gut reaction says some kind of ministry or some kind of teacher, coach or something, a theology professor or something like that. I admire Jordan Peterson’s life and his work. And I find what he gets to do every day, at least, being from the outside looking in really exciting and really fulfilling. I really love coaching. I think the thing that I get to do at REtipster that I enjoy the most is working with people and having them become successful. When I talk to people like Sean Callahan who’s doing a crazy amount of deals and it’s like really taken off, I don’t know, that gives me a sense of fulfillment, it gives me a sense of purpose and like, “Wow, I’m actually making a difference with my life”. I think that it would be something related to teaching or coaching or pastoring or something like that.

Seth: Cool. And you’re clearly wired to work with people. I mean you’re a social person, you know how to have great conversations and help people think through problems and it’s really cool to see you being able to really put that to good use. So, what’s one of the more influential books you’ve read in your life?

Jaren: Man, there is a lot. Can I give three? Probably the first one that comes to mind is “Thou Shall Prosper” by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. That completely changed the way I look at money and the way I look at economics and the way that I relate to business because rabbi Daniel Lapin emphatically proves that business is 100% spiritual in nature. And that shift really helped me kind of reconcile this. Like, “Hey, I thought I was going to be doing ministry stuff but I’m doing business stuff. Where’s my life calling in the midst of all that?” And that was a foundational life-changing book for me.

“Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins. Anything from David Goggins, man. It’s just his material has just really, really given me language and a context to teach some life lessons that I have learned with personal tragedies and stuff that we’ve gone through as a family. And I really, really liked that book.

And probably another one that was really impactful was “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl who is a psychologist who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp and studied because he couldn’t help himself. He essentially just observed both his experience and the experience of torture victims and actually designed a new therapy for trauma victims, I guess. And I forget the name of it, but

Seth: Interesting. essentially the premise is that anybody who’s gone through pain and trauma, if you can help them find purpose in it and a mission in it, you find meaning in the suffering, then that brings healing and that brings closure. It’s not really about being happy. People don’t really even want to be happy because happy is boring. People want to be on a mission.

Jaren: They want to have something to fight for. They want to have something to strive for and sacrifice for. So that book was really instrumental.

Seth: That is interesting. I never actually thought about that. So, I know what you mean. I feel like happiness is the thing that everybody is going after in life. But when I think about times in my life when I have been happy, I couldn’t point to hardly anything that wasn’t going right. There is something, I hate saying this, but there’s something kind of boring about that. It’s like now what? Okay, what now? I don’t know. I feel awful saying that. I feel like that’s a really spoiled snotty thing for me to say.

Jaren: But it’s true.

Seth: But yeah, I think you’re honest on that. It’s like it needs to be a greater purpose or another person or something that you’re living for. It’s not just about being happy so to speak.

Jaren: Would you rather be in a spot where you had a mansion and a pool and anything you could ever want that money could buy? Or would you rather be Gandhi or Martin Luther King? For most people, I think that they would rather have their life be a person of significance. And that can look like providing for your family. A large portion of what it looks like for me is fighting and providing for my family. But I think that mission man and being mission-oriented and figuring out why you’re here and why you’re going the way you’re doing is crucial for success.

Seth: Yes. I think anybody who’s honest and who has achieved financial success and then have been able to buy things and stuff like that, you get like a really nice car and that’s exciting for like…

Jaren: A day.

Seth: For a while. But at the end of the day, like it’s just a car. You don’t really need it. It’s not like it’s going to be your legacy or anything. It’s just a nice thing. But there’s a lot more depth to a mission and yeah, that’s interesting man.

So, we have sort of done this before on various other episodes where both Jaren and I answered the famous final three questions that we always ask people at the end of every show. But now we’re going to hit Jaren with those. So, Jaren, first question, what is your biggest fear?

Jaren: My personality is very much achievement-oriented. Fear of failure or fear of not living up to my potential. I think in times past I said the fear of death, but I’ve been reciting that. I’ve been doing a practice every morning. When I remember, it’s not perfect, but I have like a daily confession that I read out. And the first thing that it says is, “You’re going to die, so make your life count”. I’ve been getting more acclimated to death. But my biggest thing is I’m afraid that despite my effort to be the fullness of what I’m capable of being, I’m going to miss out on my potential or fail at it. Or no matter the effort that I put in, it’s not going to yield anything substantial or significant.

Seth: Yeah. I think people who meet their potential and actually live up to what they can really be is actually an incredibly rare thing. I think most people don’t get there. Do you think this is any grant type three thing?

Jaren: A hundred percent. No, a hundred percent. I’m just hardwired for achievement, man. That’s my personality. There are pros and cons to it. I could judge myself for it or I could just embrace the fact that this is how I’m wired, that I am to a fault the only way that I get any sense of personal satisfaction out of life or happiness or any of that is if I’m getting results and the things that I care about. And sometimes that’s financially, but a lot of it is personal disciplines like working out or running or like calming my mind or growing. I put a ton of pressure on myself. I think it’s my biggest strength and I think it’s my biggest weakness. I think it’s my Achilles heel, but it’s also my superpower. I am obsessed with being the best that I can be.

Seth: Yeah. That’s always a tough thing when you see somebody who has attributes, like, that everybody has them, they’re just different for each person. But when somebody has that kind of double-edged sword where it’s like there’s something that makes them great, but it’s also their downfall. Part of me wants to be like, “Hey, maybe you want to change that”. But the other part of me is like, “No, don’t change that at all. That’s what makes you amazing”. But it makes me wonder is there a point at which a good thing becomes bad. It makes me hesitant to ever look at anybody’s attribute and say that’s not a good thing because it’s sort of is a good thing at the same time. It’s just about whether it’s a healthy version of that thing.

Jaren: I hundred percent agree, man. I think that people should double down on their strengths and then set up protection against their weaknesses. But don’t reject them or judge yourself for them because that’s stupid. It’s unfruitful. It’s unproductive. I mean sure you could through a lot of effort maybe move like with my achievement thing. I could definitely do better at self-acceptance or having mercy for myself or grace for myself or whatever. But I could put all my effort and attention on trying to move the needle one step in that direction or I could just be like, “Whatever, this is who I am”. I understand that there are some drawbacks to this, but when the drawbacks come up, I can just recognize them for what they are and say, “Okay, it’s unproductive. I get it. I need to put my efforts on having me thrive based on the way that I’m wired and tick”.

I think from our education standpoint, we base our education on the college model is to kind of have you be a jack of all trades. They want you to be a well-rounded human being and expose you to several different disciplines. I don’t think that is the most productive way to educate somebody. I think that you should on the beginning of education, identify their strengths and then help them make their strengths a superpower. If somebody is really good at music or somebody is really good at math, they should double down on that and then get exceptional like world-class at it and don’t worry English. Like you got software that can help you spell correctly.

Seth: Yeah. I think that’s sort of the spirit behind like a liberal arts education. It’s sort of known for doing a lot of different stuff. A lot of stuff that you don’t necessarily need. But at the same time, it’s like how do you know what you’re going to be good at if you don’t try a bunch of stuff? It’s sort of the question of “When do you cut that off?” How much do you make somebody jump through these hoops before we just settle and be like, “Okay we’re going to pick something now”?

Jaren: And that’s where I think personality tests and the Enneagram test for whatever reason, that thing is probably the most impactful personality test I’ve ever taken.

Seth: Yeah, me too. And you can say that about anything too. Like sometimes I think about that with sports. There are so many different sports out there, tons of them, a lot of them are like obscure. You don’t even really hear about them because they’re so… Water polo or lacrosse or something like that. It’s just not as big of a mainstream thing. But there could be somebody who would be the best lacrosse player ever, but because it’s not a mainstream sport and they never had a chance to try it, we’ll never know that. They’re never going to reach their full potential. And that kind of stuff. If I think too much about that, it’ll drive me crazy because I feel like, that’s kind of what I mean when I talk about it’s a rare thing for somebody to reach their full potential. Because it’s a rare thing for somebody to get exposed to the right thing at the right time and actually latch onto that. Oh, well, that’s what we give living in an imperfect world, I guess.

Jaren: Yeah, man. A hundred percent.

Seth: Okay. So the next question. What are you most proud of?

Jaren: My son. A hundred percent. For people who might not know, we had a stillbirth for our first-born daughter. She was born at 36 weeks and she is fully developed and it’s really tragic and it was really hard for us to get pregnant after that. We had a real hard time with infertility and a crazy journey. But, my wife, man, it’s one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever been a part of. I saw her fight for my son’s life and fight and fight and fight and fight every month, negative pregnancy tests, crying and tears and pain. I saw her just straight up come to this point where she’s like, “I’m never going to stop trying. I’m going to go to this thing”. And a year and three days to the day that we lost our daughter, our son was born. And he just turned one year old and hands down, dude, the way we responded with our faith and losing our daughter and that whole journey, man, like, that’s a hundred percent without question the thing I’m most proud of.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah, man, that’s something worth being proud of. I can’t really imagine the worst thing for somebody to have to go through, honestly, then what you did.

Jaren: It was intense.

Seth: I don’t even want to know what that’s like. That’s just the thought of it is overwhelming, let alone having to go through that and then deal with it for months and months afterward. It’s a very hard thing. I commend you guys for getting through it and figuring out, finding your way after that.

Jaren: And my wife is the champ man. I can only take partial credit because it’s a whole lot easier to fight when you have a comrade or a partner who’s in the fight with you.

Seth: Yeah. Do you think the birth of your son was a good healing agent for all of that?

Jaren: A hundred percent. You know how you are named after a child in the Bible who is a replacement for someone who died? I almost wanted to name my son Seth actually.

Seth: Oh, cool.

Jaren: It was very much like what the devil stole God restored tenfold. Kind of a thing. I just look at him and I’m just in awe and wonder.

Seth: That’s an appropriate sense of on wonder for sure. I get the same thing. It’s a great part of the human experience I think for anybody who gets to go through that.

Jaren: I think it’s the closest thing we get to experiencing unconditional love as humans.

Seth: I think so, except when they throw their food all over the floor, that’s when the love it goes by the wayside.

Jaren: Even then man, it’s like, “Ah, you stinker”. I know other people are broken and maybe, I know there are parents that have really failed expectations and stuff like that, as expectations of their kids and they haven’t been there and stuff. But for me, it’s almost like my son can do no wrong. The thing I’m most worried about is that he’s going to grow up super spoiled because I just straight up tell him you’re perfect. No, no, no, no, no, no. You’re perfect.

Seth: Yeah. Actually, I heard that on a radio interview a while back. I don’t even know why I was listening to this. This was like years before I had kids, but they were interviewing this author who wrote a book about parenting. And she was saying that a lot of parents, they push their kids really, really hard to always excel, always do better. And as a result, the message always comes across like not good enough, not good enough, try harder, do better. Like the love isn’t there. It’s not that they don’t love their kids, they do, but the message is always just coming down on them. And she was saying it’s really important to at some occasion sit down and just tell your kid, “You know what? You are good enough”. Just get that message across. Even if it’s like, I know I come down on you, I yell at you, I want you to do better. Still, you’re good enough. You don’t need to be something else in order for me to love you. That’s there. And some kids never hear that and it’s kind of tragic.

Jaren: Yeah. There’s the stream of Christianity that I subscribe to, there’s this church called Bethel Church in Redding, California. And one of the pastors there wrote a book called “Loving Your Kids on Purpose”. And the whole premise of that book was really helpful. He says the most important thing that you can do as a parent is to maintain a heart to heart connection with your kids. There’s a lot of grace for making terrible mistakes as a parent, as long as your kid knows emphatically that you love them. And as long as you can sustain that, I think everything else kind of figures itself out.

Seth: Yeah. Alrighty. So, third and final question, what is the most important lesson you have ever learned?

Jaren: We touched on it earlier that we shouldn’t shy away from suffering. We should pursue suffering because when suffering is thrown on you and you’ve never experienced it before, that’s when it can break you. But if you volunteer to suffer every day and it’s like borrow from David Goggins, you commit to doing something that sucks every day, whether it’s working out or fasting on a regular basis or taking cold showers or doing something where you can fight against that part of you that cries constantly for comfort and for safety and the easy route and you can combat that thing. That is the biggest thing that will help you become unbreakable and unbeatable. That’s really the thesis of my life man, is that don’t shy away from suffering.

Seth: Do you think there’s ever a time where suffering serves no greater purpose? Like it’s just useless pain?

Jaren: Yeah. I think if you’re like tormented or rape happens or something tragic happens to you, but you can turn the suffering you don’t have control of into fuel if you know how to use it. And committing to a daily practice or a lifestyle practice of controlled suffering will help you prepare for that. Because there’s a lot of suffering and chaos and tragedy that happens to us in this world that especially here in America, we don’t really like. Like we don’t have a culture about mourning. When somebody dies, we don’t know how to process it. They take off the body and try to cover it up really quickly and move on and we don’t know how to deal with the tough, hard things in life emotionally. And I think that there’s tons of suffering that serves no purpose except the purpose that it’s there for you to overcome it.

Seth: So, it sounds like I feel like I’m hearing “yes” and “no”. There is suffering that serves no purpose, but you can turn it into fuel for something. Like, can you literally turn any suffering into good?

Jaren: I think so, yeah. But that’s not to say that sometimes you have to kind of find it in yourself to overcome it. And sometimes literally the only reason why suffering is there, it’s just so that you can beat it so that you can overcome and grow as a person. There’s a lot of evil in the world that just happens. And I’m not making a justification for evil at all. Evil is evil. Sometimes things happen that are just wrong, a hundred percent. But you can choose how to respond to that wrong. A passion project of me and my wife that is on the shelf right now is called “Live to inspire”. And the thesis, we want to write a book about it and stuff like that one day. And the whole thesis is that when faced with suffering in our tragedy, you have a choice to make. You can become a victim or you can become an inspiration. And those are really the only two choices you have. So, it is true that there’s random chaos of evil in the world, but how you respond to it determines whether it has a purpose or not.

Seth: Yeah.

Jaren: Heavy stuff, man. Why all my interviews always come out so heavy?

Seth: I don’t know, man. Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions or something.

Jaren: I should just be like, “What’s your greatest life purpose? – Work for Seth Williams and you’ll be happy”. I think part of it is this kind of heavy stuff like that’s just real life and a lot of people don’t like talking about it. It’s not comfortable. It’s not socially acceptable. And I’m not somebody who’s going to steer you away from that. If you want to talk about that stuff, I’m all here. I think it’s a sign of our healthy dialogue here. The fact that we can go there and that’s okay.

Jaren: Yeah, I guess I’m just ruined to fakery or trying to put a mask on. I value authenticity.

Seth: I feel like there’s a lot of fakery on most podcasts out there. So hopefully listener, you aren’t too depressed or anything like that from this conversation.

Jaren: No, you should be inspired, man. Like, go run a marathon.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. Alrighty, folks. Well, thanks for listening. I hope you guys enjoyed hearing more about Jaren’s story. If you guys haven’t already, in case you weren’t aware, you can text to join our email list in case you want to stay up to date on the latest podcast episodes and other happenings at retipster.com. You can join that by texting the word “FREE”. F-R-E-E to the number 33777. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode. Thanks again for joining us and we will talk to you guys next time.

Jaren: Thanks, guys.

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