#he was talking about literal open air markets where you sell to the customer their daily necessities

[ilgalantuomo]

All of this said, remember that economic metrics (including price of goods at market) often are bundles (aggregates) of all economics activity that fits certain criteria. So, in other words, a change in one area will affect a portion or sector of the economy. But also, it affects the whole (even if slight). And this is on multiple levels economically, due to multiple companies all trying to operate and dominate over each other in all industries. This is further amplified by tiered types of products (economy, value sized, premium, luxury, quick service vs fine dining, etc.)

Example: food prices have risen generally. Like @weshallbekind said, certain foods increase some don't. Gas and certain new cars have higher prices, some haven't. Of course something like gas, however, is an everyday good, as are many food items. These essential items having increased prices is a component of inflation (as are interest rates, unemployment, speculation booms, currency changes, etc. different rant though). Again, aggregates, so potentially many factors. But aggregates don't reflect capitalism's main goal. Instead these aggregates are used as tools to accomplish said goal.

Keep in mind, however, that this is why capitalism like ours inherently doesn't work. It seeks to minimize costs (see also: not paying for enough workers, vertical integration, flip flopping between self check out and cashiers, moving/outsourcing, and raising prices [despite having massive economies of scale and the ability to negotiate]) for the benefit of profit. Not progress and profit, not progress, not satisfying the customers needs and wants; profit.

What does this mean then? It means profit over everything, while also creating desires in you (via marketing) to buy things you don't really need (mostly) or into which you invest your personality, time, or data. But mostly your money. Now, of course, everyone needs food, shelter, miscellaneous tools and safeguards, etc. Now those things are regulated to some degree, but nonetheless goods sold and marketed to you to profit.

Therefore, anything to make profit and make you buy it regularly could at least be attempted. Pay undocumented citizens pennies on the dollar so you don't have to give them benefits, minimum wage, or rights, check. Purposefully not include the charger and cable needed to use the phone, check. Use surge pricing to maximize profit and stress the existing infrastructure (human or otherwise), check. Overcharge you for literally the same exact product by calling it something fancy and putting their label on it, check.

And sure, of course costs increase. Of course paying people more means higher costs, especially if "times are tough". You know what takes more priority, usually, though? Executive compensation ratios, cash reserves, market dominance, mergers and acquisitions, vertical integration, lobbying, tax benefits.

Once again, let me remind you: metrics are aggregates, statistics, and computations based on demand, supply, input costs, interest rates, taxes, preferences, laws, availability of resources, currency exchange rates, speculation booms, etc. All these metrics and their formulas, however, are used (by corporations) to find their way to massive profits. By using these metrics in manipulating the market and their business practices, they're working to profit; they're striving for greater capital than the next company. Always.

[ganymedesclock]

A random collection of Sonic headcanons since I’ve been stimulating that part of my brain lately:

Sonic is the absolute last person anyone who’s spent time around him expects to be a foodie considering he eats like absolute garbage and gets away with it because his metabolism will kill him if he doesn’t eat like five meals a day so odds are decent any time he’s not up and about he is probably either napping or snacking. In defiance of this, he actually has a surprisingly worldly palate, since he’s been just about everywhere and has a high natural curiosity about food; he’s tried and enjoyed a lot of stuff, including weird stuff. This is a guy who just knows offhand what haggis tastes like. This also gets to him sometimes because he’ll occasionally get a hankering for like, the authentic street food of a specific city in a country two continents over and he can’t just drop everything and go GET some because there’s an OCEAN in the way

Shadow’s body naturally produces and maintains a pretty potent charge of energy which he uses for his chaos attacks. His inhibitor rings basically work as heat vents to bleed off the majority of that power so he can’t build enough of a charge to fry himself just by not letting off a chaos blast every five minutes. This process is normally silent and extremely subtle- under high duress however they may hiss and release steam because his energy levels fluctuate with his mood and because of his PTSD and other problems his adrenaline levels can spike (and thus, spike his energy) when he’s actually not in a combat situation and has nothing to use all that for. This is not a problem at all as long as he checks his inhibitors in for regular maintenance / keeps the emergency coolant reserves in them topped off, but it tends to scare the crap out of people the first time it happens.

Silver has asthma. Silver does not know what asthma is. Really his health overall is not great but on account of growing up in an apocalypse he has an actually really concerning pain tolerance and has internalized some really bad attitudes about trucking through it so after several people take him aside for an intervention and explain certain important concepts like the use of a rescue inhaler he’s genuinely astonished to realize how many incidental parts of his life are actually serious medical conditions.

Amy is a hobbyist magician and really good at sleight of hand. This messes with at least half of the superpowered people in her life because they KNOW she’s not doing that with literal magic but how did she do that. She’s also great at figuring out those puzzles where you remove two tangled threads without untying them at either end.

Big’s largely hermetic existence does actually get boring sometimes although he’s loath to go into Station Square further than the regular shop he buys fishing tackle from or the open-air farmer’s market where he sells fish, and he’s actually quite well-read as a result, though the majority of his reading is nonfiction. As a result there are a large number of topics where, if incidentally prompted, he’ll be able to explain the minutiae of it in intense detail. These interest areas include:

fishing as a sport

laws about hunting and fishing

the ancient echidna civilization

the entire plot of an obscure period soap opera in a language Big doesn’t speak and the original novel it was based on

engines

woodcarving

almost any animal that can be found in the mystic ruin rainforest basin and surrounding area (he started with frogs and didn’t really stop) 

amphibians in general

the history of umbrellas

badniks (sometime after Final Egg was abandoned, Big started wandering around its perimeter and scavenging both for interesting bits to expand/repair his house and out of genuine curiosity)

Jet’s actually a pretty darn competent thief when he keeps his ego out of the way, something that continuously surprises the main targets of his competitive streak.

Charmy’s actually a really deep sleeper which works since he often gets tired on long stakeouts. This will semi-regularly result in either Vector or Espio carrying a sleeping Charmy around. Espio will go for a fairly dignified piggyback carry while Vector will go with whatever position is the most efficient without compromising Charmy’s health. At least once he’s walked around the majority of Westopolis with Charmy dangling halfway out of a normal shopping bag completely dead to the world.

Omega adamantly maintains that his exclusive purpose is to be an efficient engine of destruction but he actually really enjoys looking his best. After a while Rouge picks up on this and they have several discussions about custom paint jobs. Omega thinks it would be interesting to try blue but vetoes the idea because he’s fairly sure it would go straight to Sonic’s head.

Rouge is a regular gym rat, not just because she uses muscles for her work but she just doesn’t feel right without a proper workout. Afterwards she tends to soak it off, so it takes a while for people to realize that her idea of a spa day involves 30lb weights, which she’s just fine with.

Tails is actually scared of a lot of things besides lightning; he sleeps with a nightlight and has bouts of social anxiety. He tries not to let this on because he thinks it’s childish and stupid and he’s clearly so smart he should be acting like an adult already right- needless to say, his friends are a lot more supportive when he talks to them about this. Knuckles uses the master emerald to charge a shard of ordinary crystal to give Tails a battery-less unfailing flashlight for his birthday one year.

The absence of light pollution on most of Angel Island and its usual cruising altitude affords it a great view of the night sky, especially from the slopes of red mountain. Stargazing is one of Knuckles’ main pastimes, and he also uses this to track the Island’s position as it moves.

[starlightrows]

Something Sweet

Chapter 2 - Scoops and Scones

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Series Masterlist

Pairing: Modern!Paz Vizsla x fem!reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: None!

Summary: You are welcomed with open arms into the group Paz told you about, and feelings start to bloom as the spring turns to summer!

On Tuesday you make sure to wear something kind of cute that you can wear to meet everyone after work. You want to make a good first impression, but also not be overdressed. You’re excited and a little nervous all day, the steady stream of customers keeps you busy. Springtime is a great time of year for business because lots of people have birthdays and anniversaries, lots of weddings too!

Just after 7 pm the door to the shop opens, and the bell above the door chimes. Paz steps in and marvels at how you have the shop decorated.

“Did you do all of this yourself?” he asks

“Yeah!” you reply, delighted in his interest “I love a good project, and I’ve been planning how I wanted this to look my whole life”

“Well it looks incredible, you did a great job!” he says

You blush a little and smile “Thank you”

You finish closing out the register for the day, make sure all of the lights in the back room are turned out and the heating is turned down before stepping out with Paz and locking up. He walks beside you, leading you a ways down the street towards the bar his friend Boba owns. Paz pushes open the door for you, and you see a group of people laughing and chatting sitting at a big round table.

Everyone looks up from the conversation and enthusiastically welcomes you and Paz in. They all stand up coming to introduce themselves and shake your hand. Of course you’ve already met Din. Boba owns the bar and hosts these Tuesday night hang outs, he’s a slightly older man with a bald head and a firm handshake but he’s quite welcoming. His business partner Fennec, a pretty woman with sharp features and a kind smile. Cara, who owns the boxing studio on the opposite side of the street. And Peli, a short firecracker of a woman with curly brown hair, owns the auto parts and maintenance shop around the corner.

They already have a place set for you at their table and start filling you in on all of the goings on in this city and their little group. Boba gets you a beer, and insists friends don’t pay. They tell you about the locals who come around to their various businesses, events happening at the clubs and bars a little further into the downtown area, they recommend restaurants you have to try, and ask you all kinds of questions. Where you’re from? What brought you out here? How did you get into botanicals? You answer their questions, laugh with them, talk with them and have a great time.

Then the conversation takes a bit of a turn… “That guy came back?” Cara says with an annoyed tone. The group groans, and hums with disapproval.

“What guy?” you ask, not wanting to pry if it’s a sensitive topic but she also said it in front of everyone so you figured it would be a fair question.

“Gideon” Cara spits

“He’s a high and mighty investor with a silver spoon in his ass that’s been bothering everyone that works on this street and next couple blocks,” Fennec explained “He’s trying to convince everyone that lives and works around here that we should sell out our businesses to him,”

“Why?” you ask indignantly

“He’s got this idea of turning the whole downtown area into a high end shopping and restaurant district,” Paz says “Which would be fine if this was a really big city with people that could afford to go to places like that every weekend. But this isn’t that type of city, and not the right kind of community for that,”

“Hmm” you sip your beer “sounds to me like he wants to change the city itself. Push out the locals and turn this into a major city” you say

“That’s exactly what he wants” Boba comments “that and to make tons of money”

“But he hasn’t been able to convince a single business owner around here to budge” Peli tells you “All of us are here because we want to be here. We worked hard to get to where we are and maintain our businesses. We’re not about to sell out to a sleaze like him”

“He wasn’t happy when the people I inherited by storefront from sold to me instead of him” Paz admits “and he’s probably pissed you got yours on the open market before him”

“So that means he’ll probably come around at some point and try to talk me into selling” you conclude

“Probably” Paz says darkly. He doesn’t like the idea of Gideon hanging around your shop… talking to you… trying to intimidate or manipulate you into selling out your shop to him.

“Don’t worry you guys” you assure the group “I worked too long, and too hard to hand over my dream to an asshole like that”

“Atta girl!” Cara claps your back and the group gives you a cheer of approval.

The conversation turns back to casual chatter. The group splits up so some people can play a couple rounds of pool and others can still sit and chat. You have an amazing time, it’s been so long since you actually got to hang out and have fun. You could see yourself coming to these group hang outs every week and becoming close with everyone in the group.

Eventually the night does come to an end. Din has to get home to his son and his girlfriend. Paz needs to get home and go to bed so he can be up early to get the bread in the ovens in time so they’ll be ready for customers in the morning. And you need to be getting home as well, there’s a big delivery arriving tomorrow morning and you need to be at the shop earlier than usual to receive.

You bid everyone goodnight and promise them that you’ll be back next week to hang out again. Paz walks with you out to your car.

“Thanks for inviting me out tonight” you say

“Told you, you’d fit right in!” he grins

“Mind if I come by tomorrow morning for one of those amazing breakfast sandwiches?” you ask him, as you reach your car “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee”

“It’s a deal!” he says smiling at you

There is something in the air… you don’t want to leave… he’s so kind and so attractive… but no, you steal yourself and get into your car. Pulling out of the parking lot with a gentle wave. Paz felt it too… damn he wanted to kiss you. But he literally just met you a few days ago… no matter… he’d see you in the morning.

———

The next few weeks go by, spring turns into summer. You continue hanging out with the group on Tuesday nights, they teach you to play some card games you’ve never heard of and you try fun and interesting cocktails Fennec invents. No matter what you always land up laughing and having a wonderful time. Paz has been teaching you to shoot pool, and walks with you every week to join the group. Your little crush on him is growing, and people are starting to notice.

“You like him,” Cara points out. You’re sitting at the table with all of the girls playing cards while the guys are shooting pool.

“Who?” You try to sound nonchalant

“Paz” Fennec chimes in

“He’s my friend!” You try to defend yourself

“Yeah,” Peli says “but you like him”

“Okay…. so maybe I’m attracted to him, so what? He’s my friend and he brought me into the group, I don’t wanna mess that up” you explain

“He likes you too” Cara says, placing down her cards and effectively winning the round. Everyone around the table groans and slides over game chips to Cara.

Over at the pool table the guys are having a somewhat similar conversation.

“Sorry to hear about your diagnosis, pal” Din says while lining up his shot.

“What?” Paz looks over to Boba thinking their friend was actually sick. Boba is eyeing him with a quirked brow and a smirk.

“Lovesick” Boba shakes his head while Din takes his shot “incurable and terminal… damn shame”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Paz moves around the table to get a better view of the ball placements

“You” Din says with a laugh “swooning over Miss Flowers over there”

Paz gets distracted and completely misses his shot. His head whips around to look at you. Giggling and talking with the others. He looks back to his friends, and shakes his head.

Paz stands back up and rubs the back on his neck, Din’s not wrong, he’s got it bad for you. “You think she’d go for a guy like me?” Paz asked them

Boba and Din rolled their eyes, “You’ve lost your touch Vizsla” Din says “she hangs on your every word. Yes she would go for you”

Still at the end of the night Paz walks you to your car, just like always, and says goodnight without asking you to hang out one on one.

Another week or two passes just the same as always. Hanging out on Tuesday’s, stopping into the bakery to pick up some bread every now and then, seeing each other in passing with a smile and wave.

One Tuesday evening Paz is hanging out in your shop while you close, like usual when both of your phones ting with the sound of a text message. It’s Boba saying he had to close the bar for the night and he wouldn’t be able to host the group tonight. Apparently it’s not an emergency or anything, he just had to leave town to go “take care of something”

“Well that’s ominous” you joke

“Boba’s an odd guy” Paz laughs “he’s got a history, but he changes the story every time you ask him”

You shake your head and laugh, agreeing that Boba quite the character. “Well… I haven’t had a free Tuesday night in months” you joke

“Well since I know you’re free right now” Paz says, working up a bit of courage “wanna go get ice cream or something?”

“Oooh yes!” You say excitedly “Have you been to that place that makes the fancy rolled ice creams down on 10th?”

God he’s so relieved you said yes…. “Yeah, it’s really good”

The two of you chat and laugh as you walk from your storefront down a couple blocks to reach the ice cream place. You both order fun and pretty rolled ice creams and sit at one of the outdoor tables, enjoying the warm evening and each other’s company.

“See now that I’ve got everything up and running, I really want to start trying to make pastries to sell at the shop” he tells you

“Have you tried anything yet?” You ask

“Well I tried making chocolate croissants from scratch but apparently they are ridiculously hard to get right” he laughs “so I’m looking for simpler things to start with”

You laugh with him, and agree chocolate croissants are deceptively difficult to make correctly. “What about scones?” You ask

“Scone? Like those British cookies?” He asks

“Well sort of, they’re more like blank canvas bread” you explain “because the base is so simple and basic you can jazz them up anyway you want. Sweet, savory, fruity, chocolate… I even like doing meat and cheese scones”

“That’s actually not a bad idea” Paz says thoughtfully “You got any good recipes I can steal to work off of?”

“I do actually. Old family secret” you say mischievously “but lucky for you, the old family is not here to curse me for leaking the secret” He laughs and shakes his head.

“I could teach you sometime” you offer, having a moment of bravery “I mean, they’re not difficult to make or anything, but I… uh… I thought it could be fun”

“No no” he says quickly “that would be great if you could teach me. Are you free this weekend?”

Your cheeks heat up a bit and you smile “Yeah, I’m free this weekend”

“Come over on Saturday evening?” He asks “I’ll cook you dinner as a thank you?”

“Yeah, that'd be great”

———

Saturday can’t come soon enough… you flip back and forth in your head between this being a “real date” or not… you thought about texting the girls but decided against it.

On Saturday you wear something cute but comfortable, something you don’t mind getting dirty from baking but presentable in case this actually is a date. You pick up a nice bottle of wine on the way over to his apartment.

At the door he greets you with a hug and thanks you for the wine, welcoming you inside. His apartment is nice, well decorated and clean. Better most men’s apartments you’ve seen in your day. It looks like he’s got his shit together.

“Dinner is almost done,” he says. You look around to see that he doesn’t exactly have a dining table, the space isn’t quite set up for it. But he does have a peninsula that functions as a dining table. It’s already laid out with plates and cutlery, with a small sweet smelling candle in the middle.

“A baker and a chef” you laugh as both of you start in on the beautiful chicken parmesan he made.

“I wasn’t always” he says with bit of a bashful smile “Just a few years ago I was exclusively a boxed Mac n cheese and canned peas for dinner kinda guy”

“That’s a pretty drastic change, what prompted that?” you ask, enjoying your dinner just as much as the conversation.

“Moving out here actually,” he says “I used to live back east in the big city… had a shoe box of an apartment with no real kitchen and a dead end job… not a lot of motivation to cook. Coming out here, changed my life for the better”

You sip your wine and listen, as he describes what it was like living in the city and commuting for six hours every day, and his life changing trip out here to visit Din.

“It was actually my dream to move here when I was a kid” you tell him “I’m from a tiny little town way up north, and everyone used to talk about this place like it was the big city ya know”

“So what prompted your big move here?” He asks

“Well I’ve been saving up to open my shop for years, and working really hard to make this dream come true… but I woke up one morning and felt it in my bones that I needed to search the property website again…. and I am so glad I listened to my gut because I got my storefront pretty much the minute it got posted”

“Man.. luck was really on your side that day huh?” He finished his plate, and sips his wine

“Oh yeah, count my lucky stars every day!”

Paz wipes his mouth on his napkin, seeing you’re just about finished eating as well, and begins clearing the table. You help him wash up, despite his protests.

“Come on chef, if we’re gonna make scones we have to have a clean work station right?”

He agrees and the two of you get the workspace all cleaned up, just to mess it all up again with flour and butter and toppings!

They don’t actually take that long to bake, but you’re both a little flour dusted while you teach him to make a simple glaze for the citrus orange flavored batch.

When the scones come out of the oven the sweet batches get glazed or sugared, and the savory batches just need to cool. You ask to use his restroom to freshen up a bit so you wouldn’t get flour or butter on his nice couch, while you wait for the scones to cool to do a taste test.

To your delight, his bathroom is clean. And not just… cleaned up like there’s no clutter on the counter. Actual hand soap that’s appears to be regularly used, a liner in the trash can, more than just a five in one shampoo/body wash in the shower, and the mirror is clean! Either Paz deep cleaned in anticipation for your… not exactly a date?.... or he has his shit together… or, more likely both!

You spend the rest of the evening laughing, talking, sampling the scones, writing down flavor ideas together, and yeah definitely flirting. Somehow you get on the topic of music.

“Oh yeah, the city does free concerts in the park on Friday nights” he tells you “you bring a fold up chair and some snacks, and get to listen to free live music!”

“That sounds so fun! This city really knows how to do community events!” You put down your pen, having just finished writing down an idea.

“It’s amazing, you would love it” he says “would you want to go? With me?”

Your heart skips a beat “Yeah” you say softly with a smile “Yeah, that sounds like fun”

Featured Recipe: Simple Scones

Tag List: @gallowsjoker @simping-for-clones @mxndoscyarika @hayley-the-comet @blackmarketmummy

[marvel-and-mischief]

Safe Haven Part I

Title: Safe Haven. 

Words: 3200

Warnings: None

Synopsis: Pero x Reader. You are the owner of a tavern in England when a mysterious stranger asks to stay in your lodgings whilst he works for the Lord of the town you live in. Soft, awkward, grumpy Pero! Post TGW (no William). 

When you thought about the past eleven months, you couldn’t believe you had gotten this far. You had three wonderful, hard working women under your care. Gwen kept to herself in the kitchens, baking meat pies for your customers and keeping the tavern clean and tidy. Darcy could talk the back legs off a donkey if given the chance, but her charm kept the customers coming back and those passing through remembered to come back the next time they were near town. And Adelaide, or Addy as she was known, helped you with the business; counting money, keeping on top of the food and drink that was needed, finding new ways to attract guests to the lodgings out back. 

When your father had suddenly come down with a fever, you were certain it would pass. The cold, damp nights had started to settle in, so it wasn’t unusual to hear of the townspeople getting ill. You sat by his bedside in the day, feeding him soup and reassuring him that the tavern would be just as he left it when he returned to work. And at night you opened up as usual, serving the locals who had come in for the warm fire and mead. You only had Gwen back then, so you were rushed off your feet without your father as well. When not even a week later your father had taken a turn for the worse, you couldn’t deny that maybe this new way of running the tavern would be a more permanent way of life. 

The fever took your father five days after he fell ill. You worked harder than you ever thought you would have to. You not only had to quickly learn how to be a business owner, but being a woman you had to earn the respect of the townspeople. They all knew you, having grown up in the tavern as your father’s only child. The town healer helped your mother give birth to you, as a small child you brought bread from the baker, you courted the blacksmiths son as a teenager. But as a businesswoman, they were a little more concerned. The regulars that came into the tavern most nights had your back, but some of the older members of the town thought you couldn’t handle it. Some even suggested they would only support you if you found yourself a husband. 

After two months, you had found your newest employee. Darcy stumbled into the tavern just as you were closing up one night, mud caking her hands and most of her dress. You brought her inside, sitting her in front of the large fire on one side of the tavern. You asked Gwen to make up a tankard of warm milk and honey and handed it to this stranger. You convinced her that if she just trusted you, allowed you to keep her safe in the tavern, you would never ask where she came from or who she was running from, and she would always have a home here. She had nowhere else to go and she had had no better offers than yours and doubted anyone else would be so kind. She agreed to work for you. 

After a few weeks Darcy opened up a little more. She had travelled from Armagh in Ireland, looking for a new life away from a family that wished to marry her off to a brute of a man. She would rather have died journeying out of Ireland than be made to live the rest of her life with him. Her sweet Irish accent hypnotised anyone who heard her speak, so custom quickly picked up and so did her confidence. 

Soon after that was your last employee. Addy was mild tempered, still is, when you found her covered in blankets and huddled against a stone wall in the marketplace. Her large brown eyes were flitting back and forth, her hands shaking where they clung to her only bag of belongings. The first time you tried to walk up to her she hid under the blankets and started crying. You left her an apple and a chunk of bread, not wanting to spook her any more than you already had. 

The next day you went back to where you had last seen her but she was gone. She had moved to the opposite side of the marketplace and was trying to hold onto her bag which was being torn away from her by a boy no older than twelve. You had rushed over to her, yanking the bag from the boy and pulling yourself up to your full height to tower over him. With a gasp the boy ran off and you turned to see Addy with her eyes down, biting her bottom lip. After assuring her you only wanted to help, you handed her the bag and brought her back to the tavern. 

Once she was comfortable with you, you realised she was literate and could help with the day-to-day running of the tavern. She was born in France but spoke very good English. She has never told you why she ended up in England but it didn’t matter. She was kind and thoughtful and worked harder than any man you’d ever met. 

Once you had your team set up everything felt like it once had. People respected your position, they supported the tavern and your guest rooms were never empty. 

Your day dreaming was disturbed by Darcy slamming a tankard on the counter in front of you. You raised an eyebrow in her direction, silently asking why she did that.

“There’s a new man in town,” she stated matter-of-factly. It wasn’t unusual for travellers to pass through. The river that ran through the town lead a few miles east to the sea that separated England and France. Anyone travelling from Europe would most likely have to come through your town to reach the rest of the country. So why was Darcy making such a big deal about this one man?

“Does he practice sorcery or something just as interesting?” You asked with a smirk. Darcy came from a country steeped in superstition so you knew that would hit a particular spot.

Darcy made the sign of the cross against her chest and gave you a warning look. “Do not jest. Of course not. But everyone’s talking about him. He barely says a word to anyone. Has an accent apparently-“

“How do they know he has an accent if he doesn’t speak?”

Darcy seems to think this over. The difference between Darcy and Addy is, where Addy is educated, Darcy is smart when is comes to the realities of life. She knows to keep to the clear roads and not walk through the woods when travelling to market, but she doesn’t always understand irony. 

“Well… I’m not sure. He must have spoken at some point. You can’t just not speak!” She was getting flustered which made you giggle. Darcy realised what you were doing and grabbed the towel that had been hanging over her shoulder and whipped it in your direction, catching you on the elbow where your arms were folded. 

“Alright alright! I’m sorry. What is it they are saying about him?”

“Just that he’s a little strange. And he has a large scar over his eye.” She shrugged and began to use the towel to wipe dust off the counter. 

“A mercenary perhaps?” You had met mercenaries before. They weren’t common but they were all the same. Kept themselves to themselves and never stayed anywhere long enough to make friends. 

“Do you think he will cause trouble?” Darcy was purposefully not looking in your direction. She was worried. Trouble meant fighting and none of the girls were comfortable with dealing with that. 

“No,” you said sternly. You glanced down to the thick sharpened branch you hid behind the counter. You would nip it in the bud before any fighting started. You wouldn’t have the girls frightened to live here. This was supposed to be their safe space. “If I think he’s going to cause a problem I will kick him out. He may not even come in here Darcy.” You spoke softly, not wanting to spook her. 

She seemed satisfied with that answer when she walked away to clean the table tops. You watched as she began to hum a tune as though the previous conversation had never happened.

“I’m going to check that Gwen is ready to open up for the night,” and with that you left in the direction of the kitchen, putting this stranger to the back of your mind. 

-

You had opened up in the early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. The night had been busy but not chaotic. Gwen managed to sell all but one of her pies so the three women were sat around the kitchen table tucking in. The last of the drinkers were stumbling out of the front door. You bid them a safe journey home when you noticed a man walking towards you. The lights from the tavern weren’t strong enough to catch any details until he was right in front of you.

He wore a black cape, hood up against the bitter air, and the unmistakable line of a sheathed sword could be seen poking through the material. He carried a bag over his shoulder and nothing else. You looked up as he took a step closer and candlelight showed you the scar of the man Darcy had been talking about earlier that evening. 

You stood up straighter, head held high. You were not going to be intimidated by this man and the permanent scowl that seemed to be etched onto his features. His facial expression didn’t change even as he spoke.

“Do you have rooms?” Darcy was right, there was an accent. But it didn’t sound like Addy’s French accent. You had had men pass through from further afield, but some didn’t speak English at all so you couldn’t ask where they came from. 

“My rooms are full.” You didn’t mean to be blunt but that’s how it came out. You weren’t lying, your earliest vacancy was in two days time but you still felt bad. This man must have walked all the way from where his ship had docked, and he hadn’t brought a horse with him. He was about to turn away when you shouted out to him. 

“I have a stable.” It was the only solution you could think of. He didn’t turn to look at you but you heard him grumble something in his native tongue. You didn’t think you wanted to know what it translated to. “It’s enclosed. With the door shut it’s quite warm. Only one horse in there at the moment too.” 

He finally turned to look at you. He raised one eyebrow rather high, and you thought if he just stopped scowling he may be handsome. So you gave him a small smile. He hadn’t done anything to offend you, yet, so the least you could do was be polite. 

“Where can I find more rooms, camarera?” His voice was deep and his accent was strong, and you don’t know what he had called you but he sounded tired. And maybe you were too kind for your own good but you didn’t want him travelling longer than he had to when there were perfectly fine stacks of hay he could sleep on for a few hours.

“You would have to travel north into town. On foot, you could reach it by sunrise.” He seemed to be mulling it over. Was he serious? He’ll drop down in exhaustion before he’d even travelled halfway. “Come into the stable. I won’t charge you anything.” 

That seemed to make up his mind because he was walking back towards you. You stepped inside to let him in before locking the door. You took him through a side door, down the side of the building and into the stables. 

It wasn’t large. Could fit three horses in at a squeeze, but the current resident was lying against the large doors and on the other side against the stone wall of the guest rooms were stacks of hay. 

The horse raised his head and let out a huff of disapproval when you both walked past him, but soon became disinterested when neither of you paid him no attention. 

The stranger sat on a stack of hay, moving about to test how comfortable it was. He looked up and nodded when he was satisfied. There was an awkward silence for a moment before you remembered that this was your tavern and you shouldn’t be feeling nervous.

“Did you want a blanket?”

“No thank you.”

“Something to eat or drink?”

“No.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Thank you.”

You nodded and turned away to leave him alone. When you got to the door you had entered through you saw he was still sat exactly where he was. He hadn’t moved in the slightest. Was he not used to anyone being nice to him? Or was he just an awkward, angry man? 

Closing the door behind you, you let out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding. You began to walk along the corridor, taking a turn to arrive in the kitchen.

The women had devoured the pie that had been left. Gwen was nearly falling asleep at the table whilst Addy had taken over the washing up duties. Darcy was nowhere to be found. 

Addy saw you first, holding up a finger to the ceiling when she noticed you were looking around the kitchen.

“Darcy went to bed. Are you going up?”

For the first time that night you realised just how tired you were. You didn’t know whether to tell them about the man in the stables. Maybe it was for best that Darcy was already in bed. She would be none the wiser. 

“I just need to stub the candles out in the front. I’ve let a traveller stay in the stables. Don’t disturb him. I imagine he will be gone by morning.”

Addy frowned. It wasn’t unusual to let the odd person stay in the stables. Usually poor travellers looking for work, or like tonight when you were feeling especially kind. But maybe your tone inflicted that it was unusual with this man because she looked like she was waiting for you to explain.

You refused. You grabbed some pie crumbs off the plate and shoved them into your mouth.

“Alright. I’ll stub the candles out if you wanted to go on up? I’ve nearly finished here.” She grabbed the empty plate you had just eaten off of and dumped it in the bowl of water. 

You made your way towards your room, hopefully to get some sleep and forget about the man in the stables. You don’t know why he was bothering you so much. You were acting like he was a dirty little secret. He’ll be gone in the morning and you will never see him again.

You sort of hoped you were wrong.

-

The morning started as it always did. The birds singing and the Winter sun shone through my window. 

Your room was modest. The bigger of the three bedrooms upstairs (it was formerly your fathers room). You had it all to yourself, whereas Addy and Darcy shared a room and Gwen had the smallest room furthest from yours. You had a small wooden table next to your bed which sat a candle and a ribbon for your long hair. 

Across from your bed, underneath the window, was a box to store your clothes in and along the wall on the left of the room was a tin bath, the only one upstairs. 

You were lucky, you knew that. Working in a tavern brought in more money than the average business in town. But with four mouths to feed you didn’t have a lot of money for long.

You were rubbing the sleep from your eyes when the memories of the previous night came rushing back to you. you remembered the strange man with the scar that intrigued you. The deep, husky voice, the grumpy look on his face, his curt responses. 

You should be hoping that he’s long gone but as you jumped out of bed, quickly throwing your outer dress over your underdress and slipping on your boots you realised you were hoping for the exact opposite. You ran down the stairs, rushed through the hallway and arrived at the kitchen to see Gwen at the stove.

You couldn’t help but notice the smell of warm milk and honey in the air. You grabbed a tankard off the side and dipped it into the pan that Gwen was mixing. 

“Sorry Gwen,” you muttered. You knew she’d be annoyed for the rest of the day but you’d find a way to make it up to her. You always did. 

The short walk to the stables had your heart pumping. You suddenly felt stupid. He probably wasn’t in there anymore. And what if he didn’t like honey? And why did you care so much? 

When you opened the door you almost bumped into him. You gasped as he jumped back, hand immediately reaching the hilt of his sword. 

The hood of his cape wasn’t up so you could see his face much more clearly this morning. He had a peculiarly large nose which you found yourself wanting to run your finger along, and an unusual moustache that you never saw on Englishmen. He was staring at you, mouth slightly parted when you realised you had also been staring at him for longer than was acceptable. 

You caught your breath and decided to show him the contents of the tankard.

“Warm milk with honey. Thought you might want something before you left?” You said hopefully. He was inspecting the contents as though he had never been presented with something before. It was as though he didn’t know how to respond. “You don’t have to. Just thought after a cold night, something warm would be welcome,” you shrugged and started to take it back. But he stopped you with a gloved hand over yours.

He took the drink off of you and began to sip at it. He didn’t make a face of disgust so you assumed he liked it. You were desperate to know where he was going but you didn’t want to intrude. Luckily you didn’t have to.

“Thank you, that is nice. I have to go. Work in town.” His words were to the point. Not like yours were when you rambled like a mad woman. You nodded and took back the drink he was handing back to you. 

“Good luck. I hope everything goes well for you.” You smiled, and it looked like he was going to smile back but he nodded instead.

“Thank you. For the bed.” And with that he brushed past you. You knew Addy would be at the front of the tavern to let him out so you didn’t follow. You also didn’t want to make more of a fool of yourself than you already had. 

You sighed and trudged back towards the kitchen. You had some making up to do.

[chimilkie]

highest of highs

pairing; jeongguk x reader

genre; angst + fluff

summary; after he almost kills your ass after you leave work over a piece of chicken, you decide taking him home is a good idea.

warnings; strong language ?? does there need to be a warning for that?? aggressive, like rlly aggressive guk in the beginning

an:// fuckkkkk this gif ;)) also, i feel like it’s safe to point out that sometimes i spell his name jungkook and sometimes i spell it jeongguk,, i haven’t decided which one i like best yet (and probably never will, considering i’m already three years into this bangtan shithole :0 )

life wasn’t the best for you at the moment. but really was it ever good for anyone? you had began college a mere two years ago and were currently diving in a pool of debts on your apartment and your insurance. you had classes in the mornings, were working through the afternoon and then into the nights, and you spent most of the hours after midnight working on all the ridiculous assignments that needed to be completed even though they had nothing to do with your major. sleep was a rare case, but it was helpful when you finally managed to get some.

work hadn't been kind to you today, with angry customers yelling at you over a mistake the chef had made and drinks "accidentally" being spilled on you more than a few times by the one coworker who seemed to hate you more than anything. you just wanted to get home and maybe make yourself a quick meal of cup noodles before falling asleep.

it wasn’t till another ten minutes later that you realized you didn’t HAVE cup noodles at the apartment. or anything else for that matter. with that thought in mind and a roll of your eyes, you turned around and made your way back towards the market a few blocks down.

you didn’t have much money to spend, as your last paycheck went towards rent and the water bill. the market was practically empty when you made it there and the doors were held open with shopping carts, letting the winter air sweep into the front of the building.

you quickly made your way to the produce in the back and grabbed the freshest looking chicken you saw. you ushered out of the building after paying for your meal, not even bothering with small talk as the women at the cash register didn’t seem all that interested either.

you wrapped the bag around your wrist, stuffing your hands into your coat pockets to prevent yourself from getting frostbite and practically dying at the thought of the 15 minute walk ahead of you.

there was a rather large crack in the sidewalk ahead of you so you cut around it, resulting in you walking closer to a dark alley than you would have originally wanted. the closer your feet came to the edge of the large shadow, the more weary you began to feel.

and the sudden bone-chilling growl that echoed into the cold night didn’t necessarily help. you froze, turning to stare into the darkness with eyes as wide as saucers. you frowned, beginning to shuffle backwards before something lunged out and grabbed you roughly, slamming you back against the wall of the alley. you yelped as your head hit the brick and you instinctively raised your hands to push against the strangers chest. your eyes quickly adjusted and you were immediately able to make out the floppy black dog ears atop his head.

"p-please, i didn’t mean to intrude... i was just trying to-" you managed to stutter out before he growled and his gaze shifted quickly down to your dinner around your wrist. he immediately went to grab it from you but you snatched it back towards yourself and lifted your hands once more to his shoulders to try and shove him away. you managed to shove him back a few feet so that you could stumble back into the light on the sidewalk.

he glared at you, not daring to step out from the alley where you could potentially scream to gain the attention of a nearby hybrid catcher, who would probably illegally sell him to a rich man who would only want the dog for his body. you began to walk back preparing to turn and run when you took a good look at the boy in front of you. he looked quite strong, but he obviously hadn't eaten in awhile.

he huffed and seemed to visibly give up, turning away from you and beginning to walk back deeper into the alley. you frowned before scurrying a little closer and placing the bag of chicken on the ground. he stopped, turning to you with a glare before it slightly softened when he saw the chicken being offered to him. you didn't wait to see if he'd take it, you just turned to jog in the opposite direction.

when you finally made it back home, you slammed the door shut behind you before leaning back against it and holding your hand to your chest. you no longer had a dinner, but you were more focused on the fact that a hybrid almost just ripped your throat out over a bag of goddamn chicken.

the next day work and classes went by quicker than they ever had before. you could barely focus on anything other than the stray you had come across the night before. how long had he been there? had he eaten the chicken you left for him? you frowned, shaking your head to think about things that actually needed to get done the next few days.

you didn’t get paid till after the weekend and you were already running way too low on money. your friendly coworker was nice enough to give you a ride how after both of your shifts ended considering it had started to snow heavily. "thank you wooyoung." you smiled him, wrapping him in a quick hug before shutting the car door and jogging up the front steps of your apartment building. you turned to him and waved after scanning your keycard, before turning and making your way through the lobby. you smiled politely at the young security guard and he grinned back.

"evening miss y/n. i’m hoping you had a ride here? it’s getting pretty bad out there." he commented tossing you one of the lollipops from the glass bowl on the front desk.

"ah, yes. wooyoung-ah was kind enough to drive me here from work." you caught the pop and pocketed it.

he nodded. "very well, then. have a good night miss."

you laughed softly and threw up your hand in a quick wave. "you as well, jiwon-oppa."

once you had changed into some cute christmas pajama pants, you microwaved yourself some quick cup noodles that you had found in the back of your cabinet. while you waited for it to heat up you moved towards your small living room. you gripped the red fabric of your curtains before tugging them open and physically feeling your heart drop.

it was practically a blizzard out there in only a matter of minutes and the first thing your mind went to was the hybrid from the night before. was he still out in this? you didn’t stand there any longer to think about it. you turned, slipping on the slippers next to your couch and grabbing the coat from the rack next to you door.

you yanked it over your shoulders and bolted down the stairs, not even bothering to wait for the elevator to reach your floor. once you reached the ground floor, you shoved the staircase door open and ran across the lobby. "miss y/n! where are you going?" you heard jiwon yell out from behind you. you turned to face the young man after reaching the front door.

"i’ll be back soon jiwon-oppa! i just have to run a quick errand!" you called, not waiting for the reply before pushing the door open and racing towards the alleyway where you had the altercation with the hybrid the night before.

you hadn't realized how truly cold it was outside until you were running down the inches of snow on the sidewalk in only your bunny slippers - which had turned out to be a horrible idea now that your feet were already freezing and wet.

you had made it to the alleyway in no time sliding to a stop in front of the entrance. you didn’t waste any time, as you knew the longer you stayed out here with barely enough layers on the sicker you would end up. "hello?" you called, tentatively stepping into the darkness. you glanced around a dumpster that was blocking most of the alley only to see nothing behind it.

you were on the verge of turning and quickly making your way back home when you heard something crash and fall farther down the alley. you froze, before slipping around the dumpster and making your way towards a bunch of garbage cans pushed together to make a wall of some sorts. you moved around the cans and stilled when you noticed the hybrid curled into a ball and leaning back against the brick wall.

his eyes locked with yours and a loud growl left his lips. he stood, leaving the safety of the cans and stalking towards you. the closer he got, the more he came into focus. his cheeks and nose were stained a flushed pink and there was snow piling up on his dark black hair.

he grabbed your forearm and shoved you back against the stack of cardboard. another growl left his throat and his glare hardened. "what the hell are you doing here?" he demanded baring what looked like bunny teeth with two sharp canines shining threateningly.

"i-" you got choked up, eyes flicking around the alley trying to find words to say. what had you planned to do? take him home with you? what would you even do then? you didn’t know how to care for a hybrid, much less one who literally wanted to rip your throat out the first chance he got. "it’s really cold out here. and i-it’s snowing really bad. and i was home and thought about you i guess... and i wanted to know if you were still out here i guess."

he scoffed and snapped his jaw at you in defense. "well i’m still out here, girl. you can head home now."

you shook your head and stood you ground. you tried to push him back but failed, only resulting in him tilting his head at you as if requesting you to challenge him. "no, i... i want you to come with me."

he barked out a humorless laugh and threw his head back. "i’m sorry?"

you clenched your hands into fists, and tried to ignore how cold your feet and ankles were. "you can’t stay out here on your own, you need to be inside during the storm. at least take my bed for the night and i’ll take couch. i can’t let you freeze out here, which won’t take long considering what you’re wearing."

the hybrid only had on a pair of black hospital sweatpants and a wet hoodie that he must've stolen from a street shop. he rolled his eyes and turned away from you with a chuckle. "go home, human. i don’t need help from your kind. get out of here before i realize how hungry i am and rip your goddamn throat out."

you stopped, debating your options here. you could continue to pester him and possibly risk him murdering you or you could leave and have him weighing on your conscious. "no!" you cried, you stomped forward and grabbing his shoulder attempting to yank him to fake you. "please. please come with me, you’re going to get hypothermia and that’s if pneumonia and frostbite don’t get to you first. you’re going to freeze just come with me." you begged, grabbing his hand with the one that wasn’t holding his forearm.

he glared, his eyes remaining hard as he eyed you up and down. "you try to turn me in, you call any authority, and you won’t live to tell them about me."

you nodded, releasing a shaky sigh before pulling him behind you. "okay, i won’t. i promise. but come on please, my toes feel like they’re about to fall off."

it took you awhile to get there, trying to navigate your way through the literal snowstorm you were stuck in and also trying to keep more snow for compacting into your slippers. you pushed the door to the lobby open, pulling the hybrid in behind you.

"y/n, thank god i was so worried-" jiwon began but then froze when he saw the growling boy behind you. the man wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you into him tightly keeping his hard eyes on the security guard. "uh... you want to... explain?"

"um..." you faked a yawn, throwing your arms in the air dramatically before grabbing the hybrid's wrist and pulling him after you. "i would love to but i am just SO tired and i’ll have to get back to you on that." you rushed to slip you and the young man into the elevator before hurriedly pressing the seven button repeatedly.

you let out a breath of relief and leaned back against the wall as you watched the numbers tick up as you passed certain floors. you led him out once the doors opened and made your way to the front door of your apartment, slipping your keycard into the slot next to the handle.

once you opened the front door, you were smacked in the face with the hot air from your heater. you listened to the hybrid behind you let out a long breath of relief. "okay, um. i’ll get you a towel and show you to the bathroom so you can shower if you want. you like cup noodles right?" you rushed out, turning to face him once you locked your door and slipped off your slippers and coat.

he glared and backed up once he realized how close you both were. "i’ve never had them." he huffed out.

"oh... well while you take a shower i’ll heat some up for you and set up my bed." you turned to the hallway closet to get a towel for him when you heard him grunt.

"i’ll take the couch."

"no. no, no, no, no, no." you shook your head not even bothering to face him. "i’m not letting you take the couch. besides, i rather like to sleep on the couch. that way i can fall asleep to the television."

he didn’t say anything else after that and you were rather happy about that. after you showed him how to work the shower and what products were for what, you made your way to the kitchen to reheat the noodles for him. it wasn’t long before he made his way into the kitchen with only a towel around his waist. you squeaked when you noticed, quickly rushing out of the kitchen.

"eat those noodles!" you called over your shoulder. "i’ll get you something to wear while you do."

you rushed into your room, looking for the clothes that your best friend's hybrid had left here the last time he slept over. you were glad namjoon had decided to leave a pair of sweats and a shirt - as you were sure the man in your kitchen wouldn’t enjoy joon's usual matching silk pajamas that seokjin insisted on spoiling him with.

rushing back to the kitchen, you watched as he shoveled down the last of the noodles with a content sigh. "hey." he jumped slightly and whipped around to face you, his usual glare settling on his face. "sorry, uhm, here i found you some stuff to wear."

he stood and made his way to you. he leaned down, pressing his nose into the crook of your neck and rubbing gently. he pulled back after a few seconds and grabbed the clothes from your hands before turning towards the direction of your bathroom to change into the set of clothes.

once the bathroom door closed, you rushed to your phone at the counter and quickly dialed seokjin's number.

"hello?" a groggy voice broke through. namjoon.

"hey, joonie! is jin there?" you asked, clutching the phone with both hands.

"not yet, he got snowed into the studio with hobi and yoongi-hyung." he answered. "what did you need?"

"um... well, hypothetically, let’s say a hybrid presses it’s nose to your neck and like rubs? i guess? what does... what does that mean?" you questioned, shuffling your socked feet back and forth against the tiled floor.

namjoon chuckled mischievously on the other side of the line. "it’s called scenting, y/n. it’s like claiming something as yours without voicing it."

"o-oh." you blushed before hearing the bathroom door open. "i have to go, goodnight joonie!"

"have fun!" you faintly heard him cry before you hung up.

"who was that?" you heard him snap roughly from behind you.

you jumped and shrieked before whipping around to face him with a hand on your chest. "oh my god, you scared me. it was my friend, joon. the hybrid that those pajamas belong to. i was asking him if seokjin had arrived home yet."

he nodded before dumping the broth from the noodles into the sink and throwing the empty cup into the trash can. "what's... what’s your name?" you asked him quietly, looking down at your fingers. when he didn’t reply for a good minute you spoke again. "mine is y/n."

it was silent for another few moments before he began to walk down the hall again. "jeongguk." he called quietly over his shoulder before walking into your bedroom and closing the door.

you grinned to yourself. "jeongguk." you repeated just to see how it would roll off your tongue.

the next morning you woke on the couch with the television still on and the curtains pulled closed. you stood up with a yawn while stretching your arms above your head in a stretch. you reached out and shut the tv off before pulling the curtains open with a quick yank. the sky was dark with grey clouds yet the world was covered in a beautiful blanket of snow.

"your bed is really comfortable." you jumped and whipped around to face the young man leaning against the frame of the kitchen doorway.

you smiled and clasped your hands together awkwardly in front of you. "thanks, i guess."

"i’ll be out in a little bit. just let me change into my clothes and i’ll head out." he announced before turning away from you.

"wait." you blanked, rushing forward to grab his hand once more. "where will you stay?"

he shrugged. "i don’t know. but it’s not snowing anymore, i should be fine."

"stay here." you immediately suggested. you told yourself it was because you couldn’t let it weigh on you that you just let him leave. but you were lonely. and you liked him, and wanted to break through his shell and get to know what he was really like. "jeongguk, please."

"why are you begging me? i don’t need your help and i don’t need to be owned by some chick with a hybrid kink." he growled ripping his hand from your grip and walking hurriedly towards your room.

"what? no!" you cried in frustration and threw your hands up in annoyance. "jeongguk, listen. i’m begging because you can’t live out there. if you don’t freeze, you’ll starve. and if you don’t freeze or starve, you’ll be caught and sold. i wouldn’t own you, we'd be equals. this would be your house just as much as it is mine. you’d be free to do as you wanted, just without the threat of everything outdoors."

"deciding when i eat?" he confirmed, raising an eyebrow at you.

"deciding when you eat."

"deciding when i shower?"

"deciding when you shower."

"deciding what i wear around the house?" he smirked, reaching for the hem of his shirt to begin to pull it upwards.

"oh my god!" you rushed to grab the hem of the shirt and hold it down. "within reason, of course!"

he raised his eyebrows before nodding and turning. "okay well, i get the bed."

"what?" you cried, not ready to permanently give up your bed for the couch.

he suddenly turned around once more and walked towards you in a few long strides. "unless, of course..." he leaned in, pressing his nose to your neck once more and gently rubbing. "you want to share the bed with me."

"w-what are you doing?" you stuttered out, face pink with the blush fighting to stain your cheeks.

"nothing." he pulled back suddenly with a smirk, canines poking out from behind his lips. "just making a suggestion."

weeks passed on like that. you took the couch, not wanting to push your boundaries and actually sleep in your own bed with the hybrid that threatened multiple times to end your life. eventually, he opened up to you more.

he no longer growled when you sat next to him on the couch unannounced and he wasn’t jumpy anymore. you could even go as far to say that you both trusted each other quite a lot. one afternoon you walked into your room to see him curled up under your blanket with your phone clutched in his hand. "gukkie?"

"hmm?" he hummed as you laid down next to him, on top of the covers.

"what breed of dog are you?"

"rottweiler." your mouth dropped in realization. now you understood the broad shoulders and how he was still strong when you first met him despite being starved almost half to death.

you nodded and rested your head back against your pillow, curling your legs upwards and getting comfortable. classes had been cancelled thanks to yet another snow storm, but you still had work that night. "gukkie, can you set an alarm for 4 so i wake up when it’s time for work?"

"course." you heard him mumble before he fumbled with your phone so more. you didn’t try to listen much more after that, you just closed your eyes and let sleep slowly overtake you once more.

when you woke up again it was dark and way later than 4 o'clock. your phone was on the night stand, lighting up repeatedly and letting out multiple dings at a time.

you went to sit up and check it, only to realize you couldn’t move. jeongguk was now laying on top of the covers as well but on his back. one arm was thrown over you as if to hold you down and the other one who bent up and tucked under his head.

you frowned, before grabbing his wrist and lifting the arm off of your body. you rushed to grab the phone only to realize it was 7 at night and you had multiple texts from wooyoung and a single voicemail from your boss.

you listened to the voicemail before anything else only to feel your heart drop to the pit of your stomach. you were fired. this couldn’t be happening.

"oh my god." you mumbled, standing and rushing out of the room.

you rushed to dial yoongi's number, hoping he hadn't muted it during his studio session. much to your surprise, he answered on the third ring. "what’s up, y/n?"

"yoongi." you cried into the speaker, already feeling the first few tears leaking down your face.

"what’s wrong princess?" he demanded, seeming much more alert to the situation now.

"i-i fell asleep earlier, me and jeongguk both overslept and i missed work. and my boss called and said my work hasn't been satisfactory lately and that it was unacceptable to skip work without calling out. a-and i don’t know what to do yoongi-oppa! i couldn't even pay bills with the job, what am i going to do now?" you sobbed, covering your mouth with the palm of your hand so you wouldn’t wake gukkie in the room over.

"calm down babe, it’s alright. we'll figure things out. maybe you can help out at hobi and jiminie's dance studio. maybe eve seokjin-hyung can get you a job at his office. we'll figure it out y/n." his soothing voice filled your ears and you nodded, attempting to wipe the endless stream of tears from your cheeks.

"i’m sorry, i’m sorry i panicked. i just don’t know what to do and this is just so overwhelming."

"i know, but it’s okay. you know the boys and i will help if it goes too downhill. and taehyung will always be happy to take jeongguk off your hands until everything is better." you whined slightly at the idea of letting taehyung and jimin take jeongguk from you while you attempted to stand back on your own two feet. "yeah, i know. let’s not separate you two, yeah?"

"yeah." you laughed softly, brightening up a little at the thought of the hybrid currently sleeping in your room.

"i’ll talk to seokjin-hyung and taehyung in the morning, okay? for now, why don't you and guk get some sleep okay?"

"okay. love you yoongi." you whispered.

"love you too, kid. talk to you soon." and with that, you both hung up. you weren’t alone for long however, within moments jeongguk's arms were wrapped around your waist to hold you back against him.

"i’m sorry." he mumbled, rubbing his nose gently against your neck. "i fell asleep before i could set the alarm. i didn’t mean to."

you leaned back into him and tilted your head to the side to allow him to continue to scent you. "it’s okay, gukkie. you didn’t mean to."

he turned you around quickly so that you were still pressed against him. he frowned as he scanned your face for any anger or disappointment. his eyes landed on your lips, and they didn’t move after that. "can i... can i kiss you?" he whispered finally flicking his gaze up to meet yours.

"yeah..." you nodded, grabbing the sides of his neck to pull him down to meet you. his lips were soft against yours and you let out a soft sigh as you felt his arms wrap tightly around your waist.

when you pulled back his eyes had glazed over and he was looking at you in a kind of daze. "thank you. for taking me in that night, i mean. and for letting me stay now."

you rolled your eyes and grinned up at him. "thanks for threatening to rip out my throat, tough guy."

he scoffed before lowering his nose to your neck once more and continuing to scent you once more.

"what’s the point of that anyway?" you knew, of course you knew. but you wanted to hear him admit that he had been doing it since the very beginning.

he smiled against the skin of your neck, leaning closer to press a few kisses around the area where he always scents you. "i’m scenting you. it’s like claiming something."

"you’re claiming me?" you asked, not really expecting him to have been that blunt about it.

"of course. how else do i make sure jimin and hoseok know to back off?" he muttered with a roll of his eyes.

"jimin's mated!" you laughed, holding on to his shoulders for good effect. "so is hoseok!"

"really?" he questioned with a confused tilt of his head. "to who?"

"jiminie and taehyungie have been mated since taehyung parents adopted jimin when they were 16. and yoongi and hoseok mated around two years ago when yoongi saved hobi from a fighting ring." you tilted your head at him, with a small smile.

"oh... i didn’t know they already had mates." he admitted sheepishly.

you giggled, shoving his shoulder lightly before turning to walk down the hall towards your room. "let’s go to bed. tomorrow i have to figure out what to do about the job situation."

he followed after you, seemingly deep in thought. "you know... i want you to be my mate."

you practically choked on your own tongue, turning to face him almost as soon as he said it. "really?"

he nodded and shot you a shy smile before walking around the bed towards the right side. he lifted the covers and slipped underneath, patting the spot next to him. "you coming?"

you grinned and flipped the switch to shut the lights off before making your way to the bed. you slipped underneath the heavy covers and immediately scooted as close to the man as possible. "we'll figure it all out in the morning, i promise." he mumbled into your hair.

you nodded and intertwined your fingers with his. you reached up gently played with one of his floppy ears. you ignored the way he smiled up at you and continued running your fingers through his hair. "okay, sleep well gukkie."

he chuckled and rubbed his thumb against your own before lifting your hand to his lips so that he could press a gentle kiss to your knuckles. "you too babydoll."

[anotherhystericalqueen]

As Easy As Breathing

Modern AU!Brian May x OC

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: None

Moodboard and Summary

A/N: Hey guys! I have been working on starting this new story for a while and I am so excited to finally be posting it. Please let me know what you guys think and I hope you all like it!

What do you think of this one Darlings?” Freddie spun in the store mirror, admiring his reflection as he modeled an old off-white leather jacket. 

“Fred, it’s falling apart at the seams,” Roger stared at his roommate in disbelief. “There’s no way we can sell that as it is and there’s no way you can wear that onstage without it literally falling off. Where did you even find that thing?” 

Freddie Bulsara huffed and turned around to face the two other owners of the Rag Trade, Roger Taylor and Josie Crowley, still modeling the falling apart jacket that he dubbed as ‘vintage’. “I have my ways Rog.” 

Josie perched herself up on the counter, letting her legs hang over the side. ‘Let me guess, Kash?”

Freddie shrugged off the jacket and handed it to the redhead. “It doesn’t matter how it was discovered, it just needs a little bit of Josie Crowley magic. I’ve seen you bring garments in worse shape than this one back to life, maybe we have another miracle on our hands.” 

Josie sighed and took a closer look at the jacket, running her fingers over the cream colored fake leather to assess the damage. There were some holes on the front and the arms and the zipper was falling off at the bottom, but those could be taken care of with some patchwork and embroidery. The seams were also close to falling apart in some places, but there wasn’t anything that could deem the jacket completely unsalvageable. In fact, it was the right amount of beat up that she could use it for another design she had already been planning out for Freddie.

“I don’t think we need a miracle here,” She shrugged, hopping off the counter and digging out her sketchbook from her bag. “Gimme a few days and I can give you a brand new jacket. I already have some ideas in mind.” 

Before Freddie or Roger could give either of their input on the jacket, Roger’s phone went off over the stall’s speaker and cut off the music that was playing from Roger’s YouTube app. The blonde leapt up from his place on the couch and disappeared into Josie’s workshop in the back of the stall. The other two shop owners shrugged it off and went back to comparing the design Josie had been sketching, to the jacket’s current worn out state. They started going over details that Freddie wanted when Roger popped out from the back. 

“Fred, can you come back here? It’s about the band.” He called back. Freddie got up from his place on the couch next to Josie and disappeared into the tiny backroom where Roger was. 

Josie manned the register while her roommates hid in the back to take what she guessed to be a very important phone call. It was a slow day all around in Kensington Market, so the Rag Trade didn’t get as much foot traffic as it usually did.  Josie managed to keep herself busy by getting to work with when she heard a wooden clacking noise coming from the stall’s entrance. She pulled her attention away from her work to find that she had a new customer, but instead of browsing around the racks of new and old clothes he looked like he was looking for something specific.

Josie Crowley wasn’t a girl to get easily flustered by a boy, but this guy was about to make an exception. He was tall, really tall for starters. His bright blue NASA jacket was too short for his arms, leaving his wrists exposed to the cold. Loose deep brown framed his long face and brought out the different shades of hazel in his eyes. She studied the details of his face, from how his lips were slightly parted to how the tip of his nose was a rush of pink from the cool fall air, to how his hair fell in front of his eyes. 

“Hey,” She regained her composure to greet her potential client. “How can I help you?” 

“Yea.” The stranger pulled out a light denim jacket, running his thumb on the worn out seams. “I think you may be just the girl I’m looking for.” 

Josie studied the jacket in his hands. It wasn’t in as bad shape as Freddie’s but it looked like it could use some love and care. “Ye-yeah sure, I think?” She reached out for the jacket, which the stranger handed to her. She analyzed the denim and found that it was in better condition than she first thought. “Nice jacket, a little worn but overall in good condition. What do you need done with it?” 

“Well I found it in my parent’s attic and my dad said I could take it.” As he explained how he found the jacket, Josie noticed that his cheeks were turning from a light pink to a flushed red. “It fits for the most part but the sleeves are too short. One of my friends suggested that I come to you to get them lengthened.”

Josie examined the sleeves, “Yea I can totally do that. I would have to get some measurements really quick to make sure they don’t end up too long or too short. Do you mind?” Josie gestured towards the stranger before fishing around in her bag to find her measuring tape. 

The stranger nodded and put down his bag. Josie placed the measuring tape at the top of his shoulders and took his measurements for both arms, making notes on a blank sheet in her notebook for later. 

They tried to make some small talk as she finished up the measurements. “So is there anything else you want done to the jacket besides getting the sleeves lengthened? Maybe even put some of your own customization into it instead of just being a repair?”

“Yea that would be nice.” He laughed. “What do you do for that?” 

“Mostly embroidery and patches for denim jackets, but I can do whatever you would like.” She replied, her mind already spinning with ideas. 

“Embroidery and patches sound really interesting.” The stranger smiled at her. 

“Yea! I can put on anything you want on it.” She continued making notes. 

“If you’d like, I can give you my number so if there’s anything else you want done you can just let me know?” She suggested before quickly backtracking. “Unless you think that’s too forward.”

Space boy laughed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “No of course we should swap numbers. I’d love to stay in touch.” He handed his phone over for her to add her number to his contacts. 

“I’ll text you later when I get home.” He offered. “It was really nice to meet you today….”

“Josie.” She reached out her hand. “Josie Crowley.” 

The stranger reached out and took her hand. “Brian May. It was very nice to meet you Josie.” 

“It was nice to meet you too, Brian” Josie felt heat was over her face as she watched Brian walk out of the stall, She kept running her thumbs up and down the worn seams of Brian’s 

Unknown Number: Hey, thanks for your help today! I hope this will be an easier way to keep in touch. -Bri

Josie grinned at her screen but was suddenly interrupted by both Roger and Freddie bursting out of the back room, their faces lit up with excitement. 

“Jo! You’ll never guess what just happened!” Roger called out, making the redhead jolt up and juggle her phone in her hands.

“Fucking hell Roger,” She gasped, clutching her phone to her chest. “What? You scared the daylights out of me.” 

“Oh don’t be so dramatic darling.” Freddie rolled his eyes. “We have incredible news.” 

Josie put her phone down on the counter, “What’s up?”

“We got a gig!” Roger exclaimed before Freddie could even open his mouth. 

There was a long pause between the three of them. Freddie and Roger’s band, Queen, had been doing gigs around the London pub scene for the past couple months so it wasn’t huge news anymore whenever they got a gig somewhere. So Josie stood staring at her roommates with a confused look on her face. 

“What kind of gig?” She broke the silence. “You usually don’t get this excited over one Rog.”

Freddie laughed. “Jo this isn’t any old pub show. This is a legitimate performance! We just heard that we are going to be part of a rising musicians showcase at Royal Albert Hall next month. I sent them our demo last week and they want us to perform!” Josie could tell that Freddie was really excited about this, so she had no choice but to join in on the excitement. 

“That’s awesome!” She knew how hard they have been working to take their band to a more serious level, even if she hadn’t been able to make it to one of their shows yet or have even met the other members of the band. “Have you told the other’s yet? Or did they get a call too?” 

Roger shook his head. “Not yet, we want to ask you something before we tell them.”

Josie cocked her head to the side out of confusion, she wasn’t part of the band so what would they have to ask her before talking to their bandmates? 

“We want you as our band stylist.” Freddie asked. Josie felt her eyes widen and her heart started to pound. She knew that they wouldn’t be able to pay her much or at all since they were barely making it by at Rag Trade as it is, but she knew this would be a huge next step for both them and herself if the band took off. 

“I know you hang out with us enough so if you don’t want to we get it.” Roger chirped in, pulling Josie out of her thought process, “But you’re really talented with clothes and we need to look our best for this show so-”

“I’ll do it.” Josie cut him off. “I’m in. I don’t care about money or anything like that. If you want me and the others are cool with it, I’m in.”

Both Freddie and Roger immediately lit up in excitement.

“But I do have one question though,” She added on. “How do you guys exactly expect me to style two guys I haven’t met yet? I can’t style someone that I don’t know, let alone have ever even seen.”

Freddie waived her off. “Don’t worry about that darling. I already alerted them of you joining our team as it was a given that you would say yes. They’ll be meeting with you in a few days since both of them have such busy lives.”

“You can use clothes from Rag Trade!” Roger piped up. “We got some clothes in the back we haven’t put out on the floor yet. We can set aside whatever you pick out to keep for the band.”

Josie blushed from Roger’s offer. “That is very thoughtful of you Rog. I swear that you guys get total input into whatever you wear. The last thing I want is for you to go onstage in something you aren’t comfortable wearing.” 

“You don’t have to worry about that Jo,” Roger reassured her. “We know whatever you do is going to be amazing.” 

Josie smiled at Roger’s comment. “Thanks guys, I promise I won’t let you down.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the Rag Trade closed down for the night, Josie and the guys made their way back to the small flat the three of them shared a few blocks over. They were immediately greeted by Freddie’s two cats, Miko and Delilah and Josie’s cat, Chip. Freddie and Roger hung out in the flat’s common area while Josie retreated to her room for the night. She changed out of her street clothes into a comfortable oversized t-shirt and shorts before scrubbing off her makeup for the day and climbing into her bed. 

Josie pulled out her laptop and started scrolling through Pinterest for ideas not only for Freddie and Brian’s tasks for her, but to also get some tips and inspiration for Queen’s new stagewear, primarily focusing on what she would pick for Freddie and Roger. She was meeting the other members of the band tomorrow to get their measurements and start planning their stagewear for some upcoming shows.

 She was soon distracted by Freddie’s newest kitten, Miko, jumping on top of her sketch and demanding attention. He paced around her legs and meowing insistently at the designer until she gave in and replaced the jacket in her lap with the tortoise-shell colored kitten, scratching right behind his ears. 

“You’re just like your Daddy, aren’t you?” She laughed. “You know just how to get my attention.” 

The kitten purred in content, kneading on her blanket covered legs. Watching Miko knead her lap, Josie reached for her phone and sent a photo to her roommates in the next room. 

TO: Oh My God They Were Roommates👀👀

Josie: I have been graced with Miko’s presence, If you need me I will be in my room the rest of the night with him 

Freddie: Give back my son

Josie: Never. He’s mine now

Freddie: Traitors, both of you. If you’re taking Miko then I’m taking Chip in return

Josie: Leave Chip out of this, he’s innocent!

Roggie: You two are weird

Freddie: Says the one who’s obsessed with his car

Before Josie could respond to her roommates, she saw a notification from her newest client- Brian. 

“Hey it’s Brian. Thank you so much for helping me out today on such a short notice!”

She grinned and immediately switched over to his messages, ignoring the budding argument between her roommates that was going on over text. 

Josie: Hey! You’re totally welcome. I should have your jacket all fixed up in the next week or so, feel free to swing by next week and it should be done!

Brian: Thanks! Please let me know whenever you finish it, but there’s no rush! My band just got called about a huge gig so I’ve been a bit preoccupied. 

Josie: Oooooooh you’re in a band? What do you play?

Brian: Yea, I play guitar. What about you, do you play any instruments?

Josie: That’s so cool! Unfortunately my talents are more in the design world than the musical world. I do want to learn how to play the guitar someday though

Brian: Well maybe I can teach you sometime

Josie: I would like that. Are you busy this week?

Brian: Not too busy, my band does have a gig next week so I have been held up with rehearsals whenever I’m not busy with my work. It’s nothing big, just a pub by Imperial College. What about you?

Josie: I just got a new long term project to work on so I’m still in the early stages of working on that. And I’m looking at your jacket too for what to do for embroidery or customization besides lengthening the sleeves. Do you have any interests or hobbies that could help?

Brian: Well outside of playing the guitar, I’ve actually been interested in space and astrophysics. I have been actually working part time on getting my PhD in Astrophysics. 

Josie mentally exited out of the conversation for a moment and turned back to her . She immediately went to her profile and made a new board that she named “Ideas for Brian”, noting that he really likes space and to look for space themed embroidery prints. She had a few ideas in mind now that she knew for sure that he had a strong interest in space. Josie also made a mental note to see if there was any way that she could combine both space and music into one design to make it special just for him. 

“Note: see if Bri has photos of guitar he would like used.” She muttered under her breath as she typed out the note before jumping back into the conversation with Brian. 

Josie: Oh wow that’s so cool! I had a feeling that you were into space from your jacket you wore today. And that has to be rough working and finishing a PhD AND being in a band

Brian: Yea I guess it was kinda obvious. Luckily we are on a short holiday right now so I can catch my breath and focus on my music. 

Josie: I know how that feels, my last year at uni I thought I was going to break down from burnout by the end. 

Brian: What did you study?

Josie: I double majored in apparel design and finance. 

Brian: That’s cool, how did you get into two completely different subjects like that?

Josie: It’s a long story, remind me and I’ll tell you about it sometime. I have an early shift at Rag Trade tomorrow and need to get to bed soon. 

Brian: Yea, I’m about to head to bed too. Goodnight Josie

Josie: Goodnight Brian, talk tomorrow?

Brian: I look forward to it :)

Josie shifted on her bed in a way that disturbed Miko from his nap in her lap. The kitten meowed at Josie before leaping off her bed and made his way out of her room. She noticed that the light in the common room was now out, so she guessed that Freddie and Roger were both asleep, or at least in their own rooms. She placed her phone on the nightstand right next and plugged it in to charge for the night. As she drifted off to sleep, her mind kept drifting towards the curly haired guitarist she had only met a few hours before. 

~~~~~~~~~

Josie spent the next couple days working on Brian’s jacket and focusing on what she was going to do with Freddie and Roger’s band as their new stylist. Unfortunately, she had been so busy with her roommates and her own work that she hadn’t been able to meet the rest of the band. Today, she was finally able to meet the remaining members of Queen. 

John, their bassist, was the first of the two to arrive. They were holed up in Josie’s back corner of the store that she used as her spot to meet up with clients. In the first few minutes of their meeting, Josie dubbed John as her favorite member. He was a lot more calm and subdued than Freddie and Roger, which was a relieving change. She learned he was still a student, which is why they haven’t met yet since John was busy with his classes whenever he wasn’t rehearsing or performing with Queen. Josie could barely juggle working here with being in school before she graduated, so she gave him props for going after both the band and an honors electrical engineering degree. 

She had her tape measure slung over her shoulder as she leafed through a rack of clothes she picked out for the bassist.  “What do you think of this?” She asked, holding up a black silky button down shirt. The chest was covered in small white pearl-like stars to add detail. “Freddie picked this one out, though it would look good for one of your upcoming shows.” 

John shrugged, holding the material in his hands. “I don’t know. Are you sure it isn’t too flashy for the band?”

The designer laughed. “You’re in a band with Freddie. He would go onstage in red and white booty shorts and suspenders and nothing else if he could so I wouldn’t worry about you looking too flashy.”

Her comment warranted a small laugh from John. “Yea, I don’t really put that past him. But I really do like that shirt.”

Josie smiled and put it on the rack closest to her that she had labeled “Queen Wardrobe.” She was happy that John was warming up to her and her abilities as a stylist. She had heard from Freddie that the kid would go up on stage in plain jeans and a t-shirt if the frontman would let him. Unfortunately a band that had both Freddie Bulsara and Roger Taylor would never allow such a thing so they always had the bassist borrow clothes from one of the two.  She made it her goal to find anything that would help John come out of his shell and stop having to borrow appropriate stagewear from his bandmates, but she still wanted him to be comfortable and have a say in what he wore. 

Josie and John ended up deciding on three shirts, a pair of black flare jeans, and a pair of white skinny jeans that were also suggested by Freddie. Josie’s favorite thing that they found was a pair of tan platform boots that John was immediately drawn towards when she first pulled them out. She wrapped the clothes hangers together with a rubber band and tagged them “Deaky” to keep with the nickname Freddie had given him and so she would know they were picked for John. She already did the same for Freddie and Roger and was planning to do the same for their guitarist. 

As Josie was setting up for her next client, she heard a familiar clacking enter the shop. She turned to see who it was as Freddie greeted them and she immediately froze in place. 

It was Brian.

“Brian! I am so glad you were able to make it darling.” The singer exclaimed, abandoning his post at the counter. Brian still hadn’t noticed Josie yet, even though the Rag Trade wasn’t that big of a shop she was still in the back semi-hidden behind the varying racks of clothes. 

“You told me to meet you here for the band.” He answered. “Something about us bri new stage clothes?” 

Josie watched as Freddie led him back to her station, she saw the gears turning in Brian’s head as they made their way to the back of the shop. When Brian’s eyes finally laid eyes on the new stylist, he froze in place and his eyes went wide in surprise. 

“Brian, I would like to introduce you to Queen’s official stylist, the one and only Josephine Crowley.” 

[le-lex]

I love you in the morning when the blood runs to your cheeks

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Keith/Lance Words: 15k

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

*

In which Keith and Lance fall in love over a farmers market season the same way they do everything else: a little bit backward and a whole lot stupid.

AO3: (x)

Keith has to keep actively reminding himself to stop clenching his teeth so hard by opening his mouth and moving his jaw from side to side like an actual idiot. Each time he does it, he casts a quick glance to the booths on either side of him to make sure their occupants aren’t witnessing his stressed out dumbassery in real time. What the fuck is he doing here, truly.

He’s currently sitting in his stupid, slightly rickety camping chair a cool hour after initially getting to the market and unpacking all of his things. He’d been awake for hours before he psyched himself up enough to actually drive to the market and he’d sat in his gently rumbling truck for ten minutes in the parking lot before he crow barred himself out of the cab into the fresh morning air to set up his market table and tools.

Hunching a little in his work jacket to brace himself against the early morning breeze, he looks down at his set up and has to physically prevent himself from sighing melodramatically. The table cloth he’s using to cover his folding table is an old red plaid one of his dad’s that Shiro always brutally makes fun of whenever he sees it. His toolbox is propped up and open with everything he needs handy and his two grinders are set up at an appropriately reachable distance from his shitty, unbalanced chair.

Just to be clear, he’s nervous as fuck. And he doesn’t really want to be here.

It’s his first day at this farmers market, his first day at a farmers market in general truly and he has essentially…zero idea what to expect. Obviously, he’s been at a farmers market before in his life, he doesn’t live under a fucking rock, but he’s never had his own booth at one and he thinks it may just be easier to climb back into his truck and fuck off into the sunrise and abandon this idea in its final hour.

But as he’s thinking this and as his hands are twitching to toss all of his utensils into his toolbox and haul ass out of here, he catches Shiro’s smile and wave from across the circular rotunda type structure the market is housed in and resolves himself to a morning of what is likely to be socially motivated torture. He’s not able to make a timely and quick escape if Shiro has already seen him, unfortunately.

Keith begrudgingly waves back to him and watches as Shiro hefts a pallet of cucumbers out of the farm truck he’s currently unpacking.

Shiro is dressed like every middle-aged white mother’s wet dream, wearing a flannel rolled up past his elbows over a t-shirt with his aunt’s farm’s logo on it and dark jeans tucked into his scuffed-up work boots. He’s such a beautiful, buff motherfucker that it makes Keith’s eyes roll into the back of his head, because honestly, who even looks like that. Who looks like that and works at a farmers market and hauls vegetables out of the bed of a truck with such a look of tranquility and contentment that it makes all the waiting regulars sigh a little watching him. Shiro, that’s fucking who, he supposes.

He catches the eye of Shiro’s tiny little aunt standing behind her table and setting up literal pyramids of vegetables and gives her a small smile as she waves across to him.

Shiro helps his elderly aunt out with her vegetable farm during the on season because he just truly is that good of a person. Thinking about it makes Keith a little ill.

Ignoring the sweatiness of his palms, he leans back in his chair and glances up at the sign that’s swinging lazily in the breeze where it’s attached to the front of his tent. It makes him laugh a little every time he sees it, even though it’s nicely made. That’s what patronage at the town UPS Store will get you. A quality sign with your bullshit name on it. It mostly makes him laugh because the name he decided on for his market booth is “Keith’s Knife Hut” solely because it causes Shiro to make a face that’s split between disbelief and actual pain every time he looks at it. Motivation, y’all.

Despite the growing dread over being present in this current situation, the knowledge that Shiro is going to be in his line of sight for most of the day and that he’ll likely wander over later is comforting enough.

The market hasn’t officially opened yet which Keith is grateful as fuck for, but early regulars mill about and later arrivals to the market are efficiently setting up their booths just in time for the sunrise.

He has his pricing spiel all planned out in his head and he turns it around and around in his mind as he sits there. He’s said it enough times to his commercial clients that he isn’t particularly worried, but this is a whole different setting than the back of a restaurant kitchen where he usually works and that’s enough to make him stumble over his words. Five dollars per knife, seven dollars for anything else. Including multitools, yard tools, and lawn mower blades.

Forcibly unclenching his teeth yet again, he chants his prices in his head and triumphantly thinks that even if he can’t always connect to the customers he has, he can sharpen anything. Let’s go, middle upper-class patrons of this bougie farmers market, give me your bladed tools to sharpen.

With a glance to his phone showing that it’s officially seven am and a final straighten of his sandpaper loops, he shoots a pleading request to whatever deity may be out there for today to go well and thinks, here goes nothing.

*

Three hours later and Keith is able to actually sit back in his chair and finally glance around the rest of the market.

It’s been…a day, surely. And it hadn’t gone as bad as Keith had been expecting, which is generally the way things play out. Being at the market was surprisingly fun and after the first few clipped conversations with inquiring customers where he had no idea what the tempo of the interactions was supposed to be, he was able to fluently and efficiently roll out his pricing bullshit for the next, like, fifteen people who stopped at his booth to chat.

Granted, he didn’t really sharpen anything aside from a few pocket knives and a multitool here and there, but mostly because people don’t carry around full sets of kitchen knives on them without a valid reason. A valid reason being…well, getting your kitchen knives sharpened.

He’d given his business card out to a lot of interested people and he figures that that’ll be enough to get him some real business when he’s back the following Tuesday. Just the thought has him feeling a little bit cheerful.

Truthfully, he really likes doing this in a way he doesn’t like doing a lot of things. Working with his hands and fixing something and making it more efficient and useful in a very tangible way. It feels purposeful, gives him a very clear outcome with just a little bit of action.

Plus, it’s not like sharpening knives is hard, if he’s going to be totally honest. Anyone could do it with the right equipment and knowledge, but, he supposes, that most people don’t really want to.

With his extensive background in tools and knives, he was able to cultivate a pretty solid customer base in the form of restaurants and specialty food stores when he first started, and he keeps up with a lot of those regulars on a pretty consistent basis. He can, however grudgingly, admit that Shiro was definitely right in the farmers market being a good side gig on the weekends and a few days during the week.

It’s not like he’s going to tell Shiro that. A thanks for the connection to the market manager for the booth space might be in order, though.

Keith struggles a little bit when shrugging out of his jacket and knocks a few of his own tools off his table before he’s able to really look around.

The way the market is set up is kind of odd, in his own humble architectural opinion. Which means absolutely fuck all nothing, but still. It’s a giant concentric circle with a lot of open space in the middle where the plant people congregate and sell giant potted flowers. All of the booths are set up inside the circular roofing at the outer edge of the biggest circle, so you can enter the market and walk all the way around in one direction until you end up right back where you started. He guesses it’s a pretty good business model, a trap that doesn’t really feel like one when you’re looking at artisanal cheeses and bird houses made out of refurbished cabinets or whatever the hell people sell here.

His booth is right next to the entrance, so he’s one of the first stalls that market patrons see upon arrival. Beside him to the left is another vegetable stand with a kindly middle-aged woman who runs it and across the way from him is a weird sounding combination goat cheese and mushroom stall that he doesn’t really understand at first inspection.

There’s a bakery next to that, and a honey and bee paraphernalia stall down the way a little bit the opposite way.

He could, potentially, make attempts to talk to these people, but also, he could literally do anything aside from that. For a bit this morning, he made polite small talk with the other vegetable woman before he began to feel like he was betraying Auntie Shirogane’s farm by fraternizing with the enemy. She was nice though, and she gave him a bag of snap peas that he has absolutely no idea what to do with, so he supposes that they can be market friends.

That was a big component of the market that Shiro had ranted on and on about when he was convincing Keith to “join the market family.” That right there was enough to make Keith think that it sounded a bit like a cult, but Shiro had adamantly championed that the younger market workers were “good friends” who “looked out for each other” and “gave each other a lot of free shit.”

When Keith had pointed out that he doesn’t really have a lot of free shit to give aside from free knife sharpenings and what millennial is going to want that, Shiro had cheerily told him to piss off and to submit his application for a market booth as soon as possible.

Which Keith did. Thus, explaining why he’s here.

But whatever.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a lidded coffee cup being briskly set on his plaid tablecloth and sends a pair of pliers toppling to the floor with his full body flinch.

“What in the ever-loving fuck,” Keith hisses up at a very amused looking Shiro as he dips under his folding table for the rogue pliers.

“I brought you coffee. Stop swearing in this wholesome, family environment.”

“You literally told me when I got here that I had to try “the dope ass baklava” from that stall next to yours, so I don’t have to take orders from the likes of you.” He takes the coffee though, he’s not a dumbass.

Shiro’s eyes crinkle up in a smile that Keith knows is his I’m Proud of Keith for Doing Something That Really Wasn’t That Hard Smile, which only serves to make him grumble under his breath and adamantly avoid Shiro’s gaze.

“So, how’s it going so far?”

Keith actively evades his meaningful eye contact by staring at the bakery stall across from him and a little to the right, where two tall, vaguely attractive people flutter around behind the table and slide pastries and bread into little plastic bags. “It’s going. I’ve talked to a lot of people who seemed interested and wanted to know if I’d be here on Tuesday.”

One of the tall, fluttery people behind the bakery table is flapping his hands around as he talks to the customer he’s serving, his grin split wide across his face and so bright that it actually makes Keith squint a little.

“That’s awesome. I’m really glad to hear it. Auntie was worried about you earlier, she said you were scowling and that it mars your handsome face.”

Shiro is…definitely still talking, but all Keith can focus on is the frenetic movement of the bakery boy’s long fingered hands. He’s talking so fast that Keith can’t even make out any of the words from his spot about twenty feet away. He smiles wide again as the customer leaves, and Keith quite literally feels like he’s staring into the sun. What the fuck.

He cuts a quick glance back at Shiro, who is now involved in a conversation with the Other Vegetable Woman and makes a noncommittal noise that he knows Shiro will deem as an appropriate response simply from long term Keith exposure.

Keith picks up his pretentious farmers market coffee to take an experimental sip and his gaze slides back over to the butterfly-handed boy, who chooses that exact split second to raise his own face up to meet Keith’s eyes.

It takes a few seconds for Keith’s heart to restart after being caught staring across the market at this deadass stranger who is now looking back at him, and when it does, it’s basically a lost cause anyway.

Bakery boy meets his eyes and smiles that stupid solar powered smile back at Keith, lifting up his hand to waggle his stupid long fingers at him in a quick, little wave.

Keith forcibly resists the urge to look around to see if that wave is for him and clenches his teeth to stop from audibly groaning in socially fueled distress, he lifts up his coffee cup in an odd kind of salute before resolutely looking absolutely anywhere but the bakery stall.

Shiro is still talking about vegetable shelf life or something dumb like that when Keith returns to both Earth and the conversation they’re having. It’s like the sound of the market immediately floods back into his awareness and he has to ball up one of his hands against his thigh to reign himself back in.

What in the fuck.

For the next hour, Keith looks only straight ahead at inquiring customers, down at his table, or to the left of the circle.

*

This avoidance tactic only works for so long. Keith makes eye contact with the tall bakery boy across from his stall three more times before the afternoon comes to a lazy close. His heart essentially stops each time, usually because said bakery boy is looking back whenever Keith glances over at him.

He’s able to catch glimpses of the boy across the way a few times without making any reciprocal eye contact. He’s tall and lithe in a way that is annoying to Keith simply due to his own more compact build. What can Keith say, he’s got a low center of gravity.

Details of said boy, or more likely said man, are not able to be gleaned from his position at his own booth, but Keith can tell that he’s fairly good looking even from far away. Tall and dark skinned and in a constant state of motion. He’s also wearing fucking overalls. Not coveralls like Shiro sometimes wears out in the fields when it gets cold in the later part of the season, but actual jean overalls over a bright yellow tie-dye shirt with what Keith assumes is his bakery’s logo.

It’s all he’s able to take note of when he’s constantly glancing there and back under absolute duress.

The last time it happened, Keith had to physically clamp his own mouth shut to prevent any untoward exclamations because Tall Bakery Man smiled so widely at him that his eyes were practically closed. It was most enchanting thing Keith had ever seen. It can absolutely not happen again or it will put Keith straight into his grave.

At around one o’clock, Keith starts to pack up all of his shit. He sharpened around six pocket knives and a few multitools and has given out about thirty of his Keith’s Knife Hut business cards. He feels good. Satisfied in a way that he usually doesn’t after social interaction.

He figures that because he’s talking about something he’s more or less dedicated his life to is why it’s easier to talk to strangers about it. Hyper focusing is something that tends to happen to him and he’s got a lot of material in terms of talking about and around kitchen knives and gardening tools. It’s comfortable and comforting all at once, which is a very novel feeling after being exposed to upwards of hundreds of people for six hours.

Just as he’s finished taking the sandpaper loops off his grinders, he glances up to possibly catch Shiro’s eye to wave goodbye to him when he spots Bakery Boy behind his own table. He’s relatively still and not actually doing anything aside from smiling but it makes Keith’s breath stop. How the hell did this happen? Why is Keith acting this way in the face of one singular person looking at him a few times throughout the day? The guy is wearing overalls, for fuck’s sake.

From across the way, the bakery worker smiles even bigger and gives him another jaunty finger wiggle. Only this time, he gives Keith a thumbs up with one hand and winks at the same time. It’s charming in an annoyingly effortless way and it forces a truly pained noise through Keith’s teeth and has him aggressively tossing the few tools he has left into his toolbox. He has got to get the fuck out of here.

He packs up his table and tool box and grinders as quick as possible without spilling all of his shit all over the cement floor of the market. His truck rumbles to life after a few rushed attempts to jam his keys into the ignition, mostly because he’s still flustered as fuck.

Trying to take a step back from the experience and the staccato beating of his own heart, he carefully considers how his first attempt at being a farmers market vendor went. It was a good first day, in all honesty. He’s happy to be here. He may even like it here.

But Keith isn’t going to think about this interaction with the Tall Bakery Man ever again. He’s going to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this shit. He’s all good.

It’s fine.

*

He thinks about almost nothing but that five second interaction all weekend. It’s not fine.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Keith’s business kicks up now that people know that he’s at the market and he finds himself sharpening upwards of 25-30 kitchen knives a day along with his usual pocket knives. He also sometimes gets scissors, a few handheld axes, and once a comically large pair of hedge shears.

Honestly, Keith would be lying if he said it wasn’t fun. It’s a good, friendly atmosphere and being out in the open air for most of the day a few times a week is probably good for him. He’s met the market manager, Coran, a few times now and quietly chats with the Vegetable Lady next to him most days. She’s still hooking him up with peas.

Coran is fascinating because he rules the market with an iron fist and a slightly unhinged sense of responsibility. His bright orange t-shirt says “Market Master” on the back and he spends a lot of his time chasing after dog owners who bring their pets under the covered portion of the market despite the copious signage stating otherwise.

It’s nice, even if he has to see Coran’s white ass thighs at seven am three days a week because the motherfucker refuses to wear anything aside from jean cutoffs and ridiculous white dad tennis shoes.

Shiro floats by most days and brings him coffee and makes small talk about the TV shows they’re both watching and Keith makes a few tentative attempts to talk to one of the goat cheese mushroom women about their stall and their goats, which don’t go totally horrible.

He likes it here, he supposes, at this slightly pretentious outdoor farmers market. Plus, he’s making a good chunk of cash on top of his commercial clients, so he’s absolutely not complaining.

Okay, well…actually, he’s complaining a little bit. Mostly just about the Bakery Boy and the weird eye contact impasse that they’ve cultivated from across the aisleway of their part of the market.

Tall Bakery Man has not let up in terms of his cheeky little waves and plentiful amounts of winking and Keith is pretty sure it’s made his blood pressure rise to dangerous levels.

He’s worried that it’s going to make him pass out one of these days.

But, it’s fine. It’s totally cool. It feels like camaraderie without speaking and that’s one of Keith’s sweet spots. They just smile and wave at each other a lot. Sometimes, when they both first get to the market to set up, the Bakery Man will send him a thumbs up as a sort of little check in and Keith will return it without hesitation.

It’s noncommittal and sweet and it makes Keith want to bang his head against the brick pillar his stall is next to until he falls unconscious amidst the market patrons because he’s a little attached to it now. To the interactions and to the knowledge that Tall Bakery Man will probably already be looking at him if Keith looks over that way throughout the day.

He wears those overalls a lot, Bakery Guy does. Keith doesn’t really see him out behind the tables that his bread and pastries are on, but he’s caught him walking to other vendors’ stalls and lingering at the mushroom goat cheese combo stall a few times.

When he does that, Keith looks resolutely at his feet as he weaves between patrons and tables and absolutely nowhere else, to appear like the exact opposite of the kind of weird creeper that he might be. The shoes Bakery Guy wears are usually some dumb kitschy patterned plimsoll shoes with no socks, his overalls cuffed up past his ankles. Last week they had little sunbathers on them, this week they’re covered in little Dachshunds and hot dogs. It makes Keith want to scream.

He feels like some fucking Victorian woman in ye olden times, in love with this boy’s ankles and getting light headed over it like it’s some big scandal. He’s legitimately stupid.

But yeah, it’s going well.

*

To say that the rest of the market noticed the Knife Guy on his first day would be an understatement.

They absolutely noticed. They all talked about it incessantly after Coran had mentioned a new vendor would be there the Thursday of the week previous.

Shiro had offhandedly mentioned that he was a friend of his and that he was a little quiet, but that they would all like him. Hunk and Lance had made meaningful eye contact and left it at that. Shiro liked everyone, so that didn’t mean shit. They weren’t going to accept a weird interloper into their fold without appropriate information.

But now, oh but now. Knife Guy is leaned back in a folding chair with one leg crossed and one heavy boot resting on his knee, looking for all the world like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.

Lance silently berates himself for being totally into that as he unloads his pastries from the van and heaves them into a tall stack just behind their stall.

Allura has already started setting up their tables and getting their cash register and display stands ready. He catches her eye and smiles at her a little as he heads back for yet another round of unloading. Even though they’re both morning people, they’ve been awake for a few hours already and aren’t fully into speaking territory yet.

Coran and Shiro both failed to mention that the new guy sharpens knives. Because that is some pertinent info. Who the hell sharpens knives at a farmers market?

As Lance thinks it around in circles, he guesses it makes some kind of sense. He’s just never seen it before and he’s worked at markets in the surrounding area for years. Someone who actually knows what they’re doing and has the tools to make your shit sharp, sure. It’s still weird though.

Plus, the dude looks intense. Long dark hair and heavy eyebrows combined with knives and all that plaid? He’s cultivating a very specific look. And now okay, Lance didn’t say it was a bad look, but it’s a look nonetheless. It’s going to scare the shit out of all the old women.

It takes a bit of time for he and Allura to get all of their shit set up, but they manage to before the market opens which in itself is a win for them. They always have bullshit old people regulars who show up at like 6:55 and demand their favorite loaves of bread before the market has even really opened. Lance rants on and on about entitlement and appreciating market hours to both Allura and his ma frequently, but they just roll their eyes and tell him to help the elderly out.

Whatever. It’s fine. He’s fine. He goes about his market day.

He just can’t stop glancing over at the Knife Guy.

From where their stall is situated, he can’t really see the sign that hangs from Knife Guy’s tent to tell what his stall is called. Even if he pitches over to one side like a dumbass, the brick pillar that his tent is pressed up against blocks it.

He’s cute, though. Real cute. And now that Lance has been watching him for a hot minute, he can see that Knife Guy looks a little bit nervous. He’s staring straight off into space and keeps rubbing his thumb against his pointer finger in a kind of repetitious, comforting sort of way.

Lance should probably go over and say hi, right? It’s been a few hours since they all got here. That’s what normal people would do. Miss Kelly from the vegetable stand next to Knife Guy’s has already talked to him a little earlier. It’s probably weird and hard to start at a market a few weeks into the season and not know anyone aside from fucken Shiro.

And speak of the devil. Lance glances up from putting raspberry danishes into a pleasing arrangement after they sold about half of them earlier to see Shiro slinking across the middle of the market where the plant people are to cut across the aisle way and sidle right up to Knife Guy’s table.

He smacks a coffee cup down against the cheesy plaid tablecloth and Knife Guy, on god, literally flails all of his limbs. Shit falls on the ground and he glares up at Shiro, and Lance…has the good sense to feel a little winded by that glare. It’s not even aimed at him. This dude is good looking, what the fuck.

Lance is still shuffling pastries and cookies around to appeal the most to market patrons, that shit is his life blood and what he’s best at, when he looks back up to see Shiro and Knife Guy chatting a little. He takes a break from organizing raisin croissants and just watches the easy way they both interact with each other.

They’re definitely friends. Of course Shiro would have good looking friends. They’re both wearing plaid too, must be some sort of good-looking dude wavelength they’re both on. Lance only looks good in very certain colors of plaid and he likes wearing his overalls to avoid dressing himself at four am in the dark and getting to the market looking like an actual dumbass. Plus, yellow tie-dye is kind of hard to accessorize. He’ll stick with his denim and zip up hoodies, thank you very much.

He keeps watching them and notices the specific moment where Knife Guy zones out again and then they’re making eye contact. It takes a little bit for Knife Guy to even realize they’re looking at one another and by then Lance is already waving at him a little bit and smiling what he can totally feel is a huge, dorky smile.

Knife Guy…straight up turns pink. Blushes so bright that Lance can see it from across the way. It’s the cutest fucking thing. He can feel warmth curling in his stomach and he laughs a little as Knife Guy is startled into giving him a salute with his coffee cup.

It should look stupid. It doesn’t.

Knife Guy is now resolutely looking anywhere aside from Lance, which makes the warmth in his stomach rock back and forth like he’s on a boat out at sea. He keeps pushing his hands into his dark hair and messing it all up and it serves to makes Lance smile softly down at his pastries.

He should probably leave well enough alone and not embarrass the guy from across the aisle. He should probably go over there and actually speak to him. Introduce himself and Hunk and maybe Pidge and ask him what his name is, find out why in the hell he sharpens knives. How he knows Shiro and where he’s from and what he likes to do in his spare time. Maybe find out what his favorite pastry is.

He should probably do a lot of things.

And yet, he spends the rest of the day sweetly waving at Knife Guy and making his entire face turn red each time. Because this is who he is, not being able to leave well enough alone. He winks at him once right before he leaves and he’s pretty sure Knife Guy chokes as he lurches towards his weird pickup truck and tosses all of his supplies in.

Lance is absolutely not going to let this go.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Lance mans his ma’s farmers market stall. He interacts with his regulars and gives them good deals because they’re nice to him. He chats with Hunk and Pidge and Coran. He makes Knife Guy blush.

They still haven’t spoken, but it’s become a thing. A capital T thing. Lance’s favorite kind of Thing.

It becomes a routine. A few times a day Lance will glance over to Knife Guy’s stall and smile at him, especially big if Knife Guy is already looking. He peppers these ten second interactions with a few thumbs ups, maybe a wink here or a finger guns there. Knife Guy never stops blushing. Lance might be a little bit in love with some random dude in a brown Carhartt jacket that he’s never spoken to.

It’s chill.

He and Hunk make a whole lot of jokes about the Murder Pickup Truck. Knife Guy drives a beat up cream and brown pickup that makes horrible noises when he starts it up and has a lot of weird shit in the back. Hunk is absolutely convinced that he’s a serial killer from the pickup alone, so the working with sharp bladed objects really doesn’t help.

It makes Lance laugh because he’s pretty sure Knife Guy is just a normal dude and once he and Hunk actually speak to him, it’ll be chill. But their jokes give him a hell of an excuse to look at Knife Guy a lot. Not that he wouldn’t anyway, but still.

Over the last few weeks, Lance has subtly watched Knife Guy get more comfortable at the market. Not a lot of people talk to him, usually just Shiro and Miss Kelly and occasionally Coran. But the difference in the way he holds himself in his folding chair a few weeks in compared to his first day is noticeable. It’s sweet, almost. He has a few regulars who bring him their knives and their tools and seems to be able to connect with them a lot more. Lance doesn’t even know him, but he’s proud of him anyway.

Lance had been watching covertly from behind a pyramid of their French bread when Knife Guy had made his first customer laugh. It was revelatory. Knife Guy had seemed surprised but then so, so pleased, smiling shyly from where he sat, and it had made that stirring warmth in Lance’s stomach spread out and fill his entire body.

He might be in trouble. He doesn’t really mind.

Talking to Knife Guy soon might be in the cards, though.

*

Hunk leans against the outside of the table that all of their bread is piled on and gestures vaguely towards the Knife Guy with the leftover half of his croissant, “I don’t know, man…I just think he’s weird. He puts off a vibe. A very specific vibe. Vibe with a capital V. And also, he may be an actual murderer? Who sharpens knives as a job?”

Reaching over the cash register to pick up fifty cents in change that the woman with the Can I Speak to the Manager Haircut didn’t deem appropriate enough to put in his hand instead of on the table, Lance considers this.

“Hm, okay, duly noted. But his hair is actually pretty nice?” With a cursory glance to be sure that Knife Guy’s head is ducked down focusing on whatever it is that he’s sharpening, Lance takes thorough note of his thick head of dark hair that he’s been appreciating three days every week for the last few weeks.

“It looks even better when it’s pulled back though, he’s done that a few times since he’s started.” Lance decides on after careful deliberation, turning his body back towards Hunk just in time to catch his mouth drop open.

“I- what, we were literally just talking about how he might be a serial killer? Not talking about how nice his hair looks! Do you care at all for our potential safety?”

“Hunk, please, you know I don’t want you to get mur-“ before Lance can even finish, Hunk is straightening up and frantically slapping Lance’s arm, motioning back toward Knife Guy’s stall.

“Look! He’s sharpening an axe right now! Is that not the perfect weapon for horror movie style decapitation?”

“Okay, valid, but it’s not his axe…I saw Mrs. Fitzsimmons drop it off at his stall when she got to the market.” Lance clearly had been keeping a very close eye on his neighbor across the way. So what? Sue him.

Hunk makes a noise of pure disbelief and finishes off his croissant before wandering back to his moms’ stall.

Even though Hunk isn’t looking his way anymore, Lance shrugs. Knife Guy is cute and gets very obviously worked up when Lance winks at him. Plus, he’s got a soft spot for guys in work jackets and plaid, what can he say?

*

It all comes to a head about a month after Keith first started at the market. Things have been going surprisingly well. He likes being at the market and likes the few friends he’s made. It’s something to look forward to every few days because it’s easy and chill and non-committal.

Shiro is very smug about it. Keith ignores the stupid faces he makes.

It’s a Thursday market day, so there weren’t as many people as there is on Saturdays, but Keith still did pretty well. He had a lot of bigger things to sharpen today, a few lawn mower blades and an actual deadass scythe that a tiny old woman brought him earlier.

It’s about one, so he’s packing up all of his stuff and looking forward to going home and melting into his couch and watching whatever show Adam and Shiro deem good enough to put on when they come over later.

As he’s tucking his finer grade sandpaper loop into his toolbox, he’s startled by what sounds like someone hissing. He whips around only to see Bakery Guy hunched over his front table and beckoning him over. He’s wearing an actually giant sun hat with his usual overall ensemble.

Keith wants to hate it. He, yet again, doesn’t.

“Psssst, Knife Guy, over here!” Bakery Guy makes pointed eye contact with him and waves him over in a flurry of hands.

Keith looks around to either side of him, but Vegetable Lady is gone and the soap booth on the other side of the entrance is just about packed up.

He glances back and makes eye contact with Bakery Guy, pointing at himself with what he knows is a stupid, bewildered look on his face.

Bakery Guy rolls his eyes with practically his whole body and points directly at him, “Uh, yes you, you’re the only knife guy around. Get over here.”

His voice is really nice, musical and fun. It wasn’t what Keith was expecting but absolutely should have been. This is the first time he’s heard it and absolutely the first time it’s been directed anywhere near him. He snaps his toolbox shut and edges around his table to make his way across the aisle.

“What’s…up?” Jesus Christ, is Keith an actual dumbass?

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

Oh, okay. Yeah, Keith wants something. He’s been inadvertently staring at all of this stuff for the last month.

“Yes, please.” Has he never spoken to another human being in his entire life? Clearly not.

“Oh sweet, awesome. Cool cool cool. Take whatever! Do you like really sweet things? You don’t really seem like you do, but obviously that’s a totally unfounded assumption, so some of the less sweet stuff would be our pain au raisin, maybe a muffin, or a cream cheese danish!” Bakery Guy’s eyes are so fucking blue up close that Keith is pretty sure he’s going to close his own eyes tonight and see this color reflected on his eyelids when he goes to sleep.

“Um, a cream cheese danish…sounds good?”

Before he’s even finished, Bakery Guy is darting forward and closing Keith’s hands around an already plastic packaged danish. His hands are soft as fuck and Keith is going to drop dead.

“I’ll keep that in mind! I almost always try and go around before everybody leaves, but I don’t always get to it. Plus, you seem to leave pretty early and I’ve never been able to catch you before you’ve packed up.” The look Bakery Guy sends him makes his heart stop, because it’s sweet and a little flirty and an admission that he’s been watching Keith. Admitted like a secret that they both share.

His eyes scrunch up when he smiles, and Keith is composing sonnets in his head as he stares at this freckled son of bitch who’s wearing the biggest sun hat that Keith has literally ever seen. How is this his life?

“Well, thank you? I, uh, really appreciate a good danish. Also, what’s your name?” Keith has to struggle to get the words out of his mouth because he and this guy are still making really intense eye contact and his big ass hands are still curled around Keith’s, the danish sandwiched in the middle in a weird cradle.

Bakery Guy smiles even bigger and Keith literally has to shut his eyes in the face of that solar power.

“Oh shit, I totally forgot we’ve never been introduced! The name’s Lance! And you are?”

Does he have a name? Is he anything but an entity-less soul bouncing around in the ether? What the hell is going on here? Why are they still holding hands?

“Keith.” It’s literally the only thing he can say. At least he remembered his own name.

Lance is opening his mouth to start speaking again when someone reappears back beneath the tent of their stall.

“Are you done packing up yet?” comes from the other tall beautiful person that Keith has seen behind the table of the bakery stall. She’s tall and posh-sounding and also probably the third most good-looking person Keith has ever had the misfortune of standing next to, behind both Shiro and Lance.

She touches Lance on his shoulder lightly as she says it and in a way that suggests familiarity before she turns around to do something or other with the plastic wrapped brownies.

Lance and Keith both jump, and their hands immediately fall to their sides. Keith has to flex both of his hands to rid the sensation of Lance cradling them from his skin.

Great. Back on his Mr. Darcy bullshit. He has got to protest harder when Adam and Shiro binge watch period dramas.

Keith’s jams his hands into his pockets and Lance’s fall to rest on the assorted jumble of pastries.

“Almost done, ‘Lura.” He sends a little smile back her way and it’s so sweet and small that Keith can hear his own heartbeat echoing in his head.

Well, fuck. Maybe this incredibly good-looking tall person is dating the other incredibly good-looking tall person in front of him?

The thought almost strikes him dead. He knows next to nothing about Lance or this other ethereal person whose platinum hair seems to be reflecting the sunlight and fucking blinding him. What if they’re dating, oh god, or worse, what if they’re married? And Keith has been pining away uselessly from his Knife Hut for the last month over a married man?

Jesus H. Christ. They probably have kids. Beautiful brown children running around that are adorable and perfect in every way. They probably own the bakery together. Hell, and here Keith was mentally preparing to be a homewrecker.

Holy shit, death is the only option here. He may be getting ahead of himself, but the ball is already rolling and there’s no going back.

They’re all just kind of standing there looking at each other and the Kill Bill sirens are sounding in Keith’s head, but he doesn’t move to do anything.

Thankfully, Lance smiles his way again and snags another danish from his pile, handing it to Keith delicately.

“Here’s another for the road. I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah?”

All Keith can do is nod like a fucking bobble head and return the little wave Lance gives him before he about faces. As he’s hopping into his truck, he glances in his rear-view mirror to see the two bakery workers packing up all their things and laughing together. Probably talking about something cute that their two-year-old did last night. Dear lord.

Yep, the only solution here is death.

*

Friday night, Lance is so keyed up to get to the market that he’s practically vibrating. He succeeded in actually speaking to Knife Guy on Thursday, who he now knows is named Keith. Which is cute. Kind of dweeby and not entirely fitting, but still cute.

He also now knows that Keith is a little socially awkward but not in an unbearable way. In a way that Lance knows how to navigate, usually by asking specific questions and kind of talking a lot like he does anyway.

So, moral of the story, he’s hype to get back to the market to maybe actually talk to Keith a little bit more rather than just making fucking googly eyes at each other from across the aisle like they’ve been doing for the last four weeks.

But when Saturday morning arrives, he’s forgotten that Allura took the day off and is dismayed to realize that he’ll be running the entire stall by himself.

Packaging everything, packing everything into the van, unpacking everything, and then dealing with the weird old dudes and condescending soccer moms all day. By himself. He’s sufficiently less hype by the time he actually gets to the market at quarter to six.

Keith is in his Knife Hut, which makes Lance laugh a little every time he thinks about it, already unpacked and set up for the day. He’s fucking around with something on his phone and rubbing a chunk of his long hair between his thumb and pointer finger.

Lance kind of desperately wants to run his fingers through that hair. But first, he has to get through the day. Then he has to actually talk to Keith again. Then they have to fall in love. There’s a process to these things, you see.

And with that, he begins the arduous exercise of unpacking the van. Usually it’s not that big of a struggle, they’ve got about fifteen plastic pallets with all of their product in with weird little handles that he’s able to stack behind their tables but it’s a lot more work without Allura here to toss things around with her stupid buff arms.

He’s going to be late setting up, which flusters him, because then all the fucking early ass old people will bitch about how he’s not set up, which will prevent him even farther from being set up. Endless cycle of not being set up until like an hour in when he’s all good.

The days that Allura’s gone are the worst, but his ma is right to give her them off. She deserves a break once in a while. She’s a great general manager and helps out a whole lot when she doesn’t even really have to, so Lance doesn’t begrudge her her days off.

He might die today though.

Hefting huge trays of bread and pastries out of the van is kind of a bitch and he’s hyper focused on doing it as fast as he can without hurting himself, which is why he’s truly startled when someone clears their throat behind him.

It’s Knife Guy. Er, Keith. And he’s standing there in his brown work jacket layered over a maroon and gold plaid flannel that really brings out the grey of his eyes. He looks kind of...off balance and Lance sort of wants to kiss his face a little.

“Do you, uh, need some help?” Lance has been pleasantly surprised when he hears the raspy quality to Keith’s voice all like, four times he’s heard Keith speak.

Lance casts a quick look toward the empty Knife Hut, but nobody is really around yet and it’s safe to assume that Keith had been watching him flap around frantically for the last thirty minutes.

“If you’re offering? Absolutely.”

He gives Keith a few pointers on the easiest way to maneuver the unwieldy bakery trays and they make quick work of stacking them all up behind the tables. When he tosses the table cloths to Keith, they make even quicker work spreading them over the tables, making beautifully uncomfortable eye contact, so Lance can start placing all of the stuff he has today out.

They work in silence for a while, Keith handing him things and Lance setting them all up in the specific way he likes. After he gets everything set up, he’ll have to put all the little labels and signs out, but he’s feeling way better now that everything is at least out of the van. Thank god for Keith.

“So, uh...where’s your wife?”

When Lance glances over at him to see if it was really, truly Lance he was speaking to, Keith won’t look at him. Just keeps making laser eyes at a loaf of wheat bread he’s fondling.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Keith shifts uncomfortably, and Lance tracks his movements.

“Your, uh, wife?”

“Who?”

“The lady from Thursday? The one that’s normally here with you. The white-haired good looking one?”

Lance can feel his eyes practically bug out of his head as Keith trails off quietly. He glances around the market to make sure he’s not like...being Punk’d or something. What in the fuck.

“You mean Allura? British accent? Built like an actual goddess? Able to handle the most passive aggressive of patrons with a sense of poise and rationality?” Lance cannot fucking believe this. He wants to laugh in disbelief, but doubts that would go over well with Keith.

The group chat is going to blow up when he relays this information.

When Keith finally chances a quick look up at him, he looks brutally uncomfortable. Red dusts the tops of his cheeks and ears and he’s twisting the wrapper of yet another loaf of bread around his fingers so tightly that it’s turning his fingertips purple.

Lance reaches out to grab the loaf from him and their fingers touch. He smiles at the jolt it sends through them both.

“She’s not my wife, dude. She’s a lesbian, first of all. And she’s the general manager of my mom’s bakery. I wouldn’t even be allowed to look at her if my mom thought I was trying to get with her.”

He can visibly see the distress disappear from Keith, the tight way he was holding his shoulders all but melts out of him and the only thing Lance can do is smile like a dumbass until they make eye contact again.

“Was that a Panic! at The Disco lyric?” is the only thing Keith says back to him, his mouth curving up into a crooked smile.

“Shut up. Let’s finish setting up so I can set you free to sharpen knives, you little weirdo.”

*

After that morning and the wildly uncomfortable clarification that followed, Keith comes over to the bakery stall to help set up most days. Even if Allura is there.

Lance is a just and fair motherfucker, so he makes Allura, Hunk, and Pidge promise to not bring up the wife thing until Keith is actually like, cool with them. As to not embarrass him and ruin Lance’s chances of kissing his stupid face, mostly.

He gets along well with Allura, which is nice because Lance doesn’t fuck with people who don’t get along with Allura. They talk about shit that Lance doesn’t really care about, like, old books and Downton Abbey and Jane Austen or whatever the fuck and they have pointless, winding arguments about the architecture of the market.

Keith is a little quiet, like Shiro had said, but still funny and easy to get along with. He makes a lot of small pointed comments that have Allura and Lance cracking up, especially when they’re about some of the patrons they have.

He spends fifteen minutes one day ranting about a woman who wanted her blender blades sharpened. Which, Keith maintains, would have been fine, if the blender blades actually detached from her shitty old ass blender. He’d had to explicitly detail why he couldn’t sharpen the blades in the blender if the blades were still in the blender to this woman for upwards of twenty minutes and he’d come over to the bakery stall after she’d left red in the face.

At the end of market days, Lance usually moseys on over with leftover pastries and bread for him, now that he knows that Keith has a secret spot in his heart for the energy bars that the bakery makes. The smiles he gives Lance are enough to make the entire day and all the bullshit that comes with it worth it.

It takes a little bit of persuasion on Lance’s end to get Hunk to agree to actually talk to Keith. He spends a lot of time at his moms’ stall but always seems to vanish whenever Keith shows up in the morning to help Lance and Allura unpack. Probably because he still thought Keith was going to mcmurder them all.

“Did you really think I was a serial killer?” Keith is pouting a little at Hunk, who looks horribly offended that Lance just threw him under the bus like that.

They cluster in little groups at one person’s stall depending on the time and the day and right now Lance and Hunk are loitering in front of Keith’s Knife Hut while Allura mans the bakery stall. There aren’t that many people here yet so nobody feels that bad about abandoning work to troll the other vendors’ stalls.

Hunk is weak in the face of Keith’s naturally occurring puppy dog eyes and is actively trying to backtrack, “No, dude, no, of course not. I didn’t really think that. I was just, well, ya know…concerned.”

“You don’t think that now though, right?”

Lance can’t help it when he taps the knife that Keith has just sharpened and set down beside one of his grinders, “You better not think that still, because if Keith knew that you convinced everyone he was a serial killer when he first started here, that could be a pretty good motivator for him to actually start killing.”

This causes Hunk to flap his arms a little bit and whine, “It was just the truck, alright? It gives off really intense murder vibes.”

Keith is starting to look actually affronted, pressing his hand to his chest like one of the Victorian women he and Allura always go on about. It makes Lance outwardly laugh, he can’t help it.

“What’s wrong with my truck? I love that truck.”

“Dude, are you fucking me? It’s weird and old and makes creepy noises and is not one, but two, horrible colors.”

“So what? I’ve had it forever and I love it. It’s not weird.”

“Whatever man, it’s weird.”

It’s fun, being friends with Keith, even if had taken a while. He drifts between them like a satellite, coming to talk with Lance and Allura and then down to Hunk’s moms’ stall to talk in depth about foraging for mushrooms, and over to Pidge’s parents’ stall to talk about bees and honey.

They tease him a lot, especially Hunk and Pidge, because he gets along really well with their moms. Shiro eventually gets wind of it and gives him mad shit for befriending all the older women at the market, including Miss Kelly and Auntie Shirogane. Apparently, it’s always been kind of a thing. Shiro’s mom loves Keith too.

For two market days, everyone makes wildly pointed jokes about Keith attracting cougars and being into older women until he loses his shit and practically shouts “I’m gay!” in the middle of yet another conversation about it, making a few of the market patrons stop and look at him.

He looks embarrassed for a few seconds after until he powers through and continues with, “So, no, I’m not a cougar hunter. Excuse me for getting along really well with older women. It’s more than I can say for the rest of you.”

And that’s that.

Except that it isn’t.

Because hearing that proclamation makes the warmth swirl around low in Lance’s stomach again and he’s reminded just how strongly he wants to kiss Keith’s stupid, red face.

*

Lance and Hunk hang out a decent amount when they aren’t at the market, perks of being best bros obviously, and occasionally Pidge will come out as well. A lot of the time they just hang out at one of the bars downtown but sometimes they go out and do fun things, like movies and apple orchards and seasonal shit like that.

They’ve been trying to get Shiro to come for literal seasons to no avail, but Keith may be their in.

It’s Hunk who actually verbally suggests they invite Keith to go out with them after the market the upcoming Saturday, but Lance has been thinking about it for, well, weeks.

Lance doesn’t even have to Hunk to get behind the bakery table and keep things running before he’s already doing it, he heads over towards Keith’s stall with a skip in his step.

Before he even gets there, he’s smiling like a dumbass bastard, because Keith is wearing the ridiculous magnifying headset type thing that he sometimes wears. It has a light in it to help him see better and it also serves as one of the best things Lance has ever seen in his dumb life.

“Good looks out here, Knife Guy.”

Keith starts and bats the magnifying headband up from his line of vision and is starting to blush before he even realizes that it’s Lance who’s giving him shit.

“Oh, get fucked.” His words sound dismissive but he’s setting the pocket knife he was working on aside and turning off his grinders, smirking up at Lance from the chair that he now knows is horribly off balance.

Keith lets him sit in it sometimes, while he quietly explains the intricacies of knife sharpening to Lance from over his shoulder. He lets Lance sharpen things occasionally, hand over handing him along so he doesn’t do anything stupid. Lance…truly doesn’t give a shit about knives, but he gives a shit about Keith and what Keith gives a shit about, so he shuts up and listens and presses close when he’s allowed.

“I’d sure like to get fucked, but only if you come with me.” He’s saying it before he really has a chance to think it through and then he’s just committing, leaning into it. Full speed ahead, boys.

It’s stupidly obvious that he and Keith have a bit of a thing going on. They don’t talk about it or confront it, but it’s very obviously there. He’s just waiting to see which one of them breaks first and makes the initial move.

He’s pretty sure the rest of them have bets on when it’ll happen but he doesn’t want to know any of proposals for fear of swaying a certain way. He wants this to happen naturally.

Keith is bright red and rolling his eyes so far back into his head that Lance is concerned that it hurts, but that’s all he does.

They watch each other for a few seconds before Keith uses the pocket knife to kind of make a “well, what do you want?” type of gesture at Lance. It’s kind of hot.

“Come out with us tonight.” It comes out softer than he intends, more of a request than the command he means for it to be and he leans up against the brick pillar to look down at Keith. It doesn’t feel like a power move, things feel perfectly balanced and Lance is caught in the intensity of Keith’s half lidded gaze.

“Where ya goin’?” The more comfortable Lance gets against the pillar, the farther down Keith slouches in his chair. His legs are spread wide and he looks comfortable and relaxed and just a little bit challenging and Lance wants to crawl in his fucking lap and cuddle up. This is absolute bullshit.

“Probably just Ryner’s. We usually go after the market and she lets us chill because we bring her free shit.” Please say yes, Lance is viciously wishing, chanting over and over in his head. Come hang out with us, you big idiot. Let me buy you a beer, let me see what you’re like when you aren’t at the market.

“Alright, I’ll be there.” Keith’s smiling up at him and Lance feels like his knees are going to give out and he’s going to collapse on the cement floor in a gooey, love struck pile.

It becomes a thing. Because of course it does.

They go every weekend. Lance buys Keith a whole lot of beers.

*

As the season progresses and the weather gets colder at the end of September, Lance starts to bitch more about his wardrobe.

It makes Keith laugh, mostly because of the overalls and the fact that Lance refuses to stop wearing them and also refuses to wear anything resembling socks. The big sun hat goes away for the season, unfortunately enough.

The plimsolls and the bare ankles stay, and Keith still can feel himself get pink when he thinks about how every part of Lance is nice. He’s a dumbass.

Their mornings stay dark and cold and Keith always brings as many layers as he can because he can’t sharpen knives if his fingers don’t work.

It’s six am one morning when Keith wanders over to the bakery stall after setting up all of his own stuff to see Lance shivering aggressively in only a zip up. He says nothing at first, but he takes note that Lance still seems cold after all of the manual labor of unpacking the van.

“I hate this stupid state. Why don’t we live somewhere where it’s eternally warm?”

Hunk rolls his eyes at Lance saying the same thing he says every morning of the market at six am and snags an old-fashioned donut from the display.

“I can’t feel my fucking hands. Weather below 60 degrees is cancelled. Fall, whomst? I don’t know her.” As Lance continues loudly damning the weather, he sneaks up beside Keith and under his arm to snuggle into his body heat.

It’s not the first time they’ve touched this close, but it still feels like the first time. Keith can actively feel the heat rushing up his face as he lets Lance tuck his taller self up against him.

He’s about ready to offer Lance the work jacket off his back and just suffer through the chill in the air when his mind flashes a picture of yet another jacket tucked in the backseat of his pickup. He ducks out from Lance’s octopus limbs and throws a quick “I’ll be right back.” to Allura, Hunk, and Lance.

As he’s shuffling past his own stall, he can hear Hunk crow “Look what you did!” and Lance squawk in offense. He smiles and ignores it, jogging to the parking lot to rummage around in his truck.

By the time he’s back, Lance and Hunk appear to be trying to put each other in headlocks and barely notice when Keith sticks his arm out and taps Lance with the hand the jacket is in.

“Here. Wear this.”

Lance is big eyed and silent as he glances over at Keith and it makes him resolutely look the other way to prevent a full-bodied blush from taking over. He doesn’t have time for this.

He doesn’t glance back over at Lance and Hunk until Lance has pushed his arms into both sleeves of the leather jacket and tugged it on. It looks kind of dumb, because Lance’s limbs are a lot longer than Keith’s, but his hoodie is long enough to cover his wrists and it’s warmer than nothing.

It causes something warm to unfurl in his chest and he can’t help but smile at Lance’s slightly reddened cheeks. He wants to do shit like this always.

Allura is looking on with an absolutely unimpressed expression and she turns to Hunk with an elbow to his solar plexus.

“Hunk, I’m cold as well. Where is your convenient leather jacket that you can give to me for the day?”

“Damn Allura, I can’t control the weather. Get off me.”

They’re so clearly making fun of Keith, but he barely even feels it, he’s too busy watching Lance’s dumbstruck face.

He feels tingly and alive and he’s so glad that he works at this stupid farmers market and that these are his stupid friends. He pushes his shoulder up against Lance’s and they spend a few seconds suspended in each other’s smiles and it’s, on god, one of the dumbest things that’s ever happened to him and Keith loves it.

*

Weeks pass like this, the four or five or six of them, depending on Shiro’s level of bullshittery that day, fucking around on market days and giving Coran grey hair and exchanging their wares for promises of beer on the weekends.

Keith learns that he actually really likes Pidge and that she actually really likes bees. Her parents are apiarists who do weird, complicated scientific research with bees which resulted in a farmers market stand and copious amounts of different flavored honey.

He goes over to her house one afternoon after the market closes to see her parents’ colonies and it’s one of the coolest things he’s ever witnessed. It feels like some sort of weird fantasy movie where he’s able to talk to bees and they don’t sting him, because the honey bees as Pidge says, are docile and sweet and only sting as the last resort.

Hunk’s moms take him out to forage for mushrooms with their special Italian mushroom dogs and Keith gets dirty and grimy and laughs more in one afternoon than he has in ages. He comes home with a little brown paper sack of some of the best mushrooms he’s ever had.

The five of them spend slow and lazy autumn evenings tucked into a copse of trees on the Shirogane farm and it feels good. Good in a way that Keith didn’t even know he was missing before this.

They meet Allura’s new girlfriend, a soft-spoken blonde named Romelle, who turns around and gives Lance a run for his money in terms of drinking him under the table. They love her.

He’s so pleased with how this random choice in his life turned out. He really does owe Shiro a thank you.

He’ll get around to it.

One crisp afternoon in the beginning of October, Lance invites him, just him, over to the bakery for a cookie making demonstration from Lance’s very own mother.

She’s sweet and shorter than Keith but takes up a perfectly appropriate amount of space in every room and Keith might be a little bit in love with her too. He’s forced into a dorky apron with the bakery logo on it and it makes Lance laugh so hard that he sprays flour everywhere with the force of it and Keith feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

His ma, Lance explains to him after she heads to the front to work the register, started the bakery ten years ago on a whim. She didn’t know if it would work but it was something she had thought about for years and her culinary and baking background was sufficient enough to get it up off the ground.

“I love it here, and I love her, and I love that this is what she loves to do,” Lance is telling him as he frosts little cookies with a pastry bag with such concentration that it takes Keith’s breath away.

“Do you see yourself doing anything else?” Keith is hesitant to ask, but he’s also genuinely curious. His eyes keep catching on the flour that’s dusting over Lance’s freckles. He wants to reach out and brush it off, mostly for an excuse to feel Lance’s face, but he focuses back on poorly decorating his own cookie.

“I can see myself doing a lot of other things, but I’m not sure if I’d like anything as much as this, ya know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Ma will get, I don’t know, probably fifteen more years out of the bakery if she chooses to, and I think after that she’ll pass it along to me. I hope so, at least. My other siblings have all either moved out of town or aren’t interested in the bakery.” Lance glances up at him as he says it, a sweet little smile on his lips.

“Plus, the market part is one of my favorite things in the entire world. I like being there and I like the vibe and Coran giving me shit. I more or less run that entire part of the bakery and it’s a responsibility that I didn’t even know I was going to like so much.”

Keith is diligently trying to pipe icing out in the way that Lance’s mom showed him earlier when Lance bumps his hip into Keith’s to get him out of the way. He takes over and Keith just lets him, watching his long-fingered hands.

“Like, having regulars is one of the coolest things to me. I know these people and I know what they like and I can have their orders ready before they even tell me what they want. It’s rewarding in a way a lot of other things aren’t, ya know?” Lance is so close to him now and looking at him while piping at the same time and the knowledge that he’s choosing to share this with Keith, here, in this space, makes him warm from the crown of his head down to his toes in his boots.

“Mm, I get that. It’s not quite the same for me, but I definitely understand the familial ties to a specific craft.” Keith doesn’t really say much more than that, doesn’t want to bring the mood down out of his own volition.

“Yeah?” And Lance stops what he’s doing entirely, focuses his huge luminescent anime eyes on Keith and he just crumbles. Whatever normally stops him from talking about this part of his life kind of gives way in the face of how interested and genuine Lance seems to be.

So, Keith talks.

“My dad, he, uh, passed a way a few years ago. Around five or so now? I was young when it happened, about eighteen. So, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happen, I could have been younger, but it wasn’t easy either.” He searches about for something to do with his hands so he’s not just standing here monologuing to a boy he likes about his dead father.

Finally, he spots a dish rag and sets about cleaning the gleaming chrome countertops of Lance’s mother’s kitchen.

“I don’t know how the hell he even got started sharpening things, but he’d done it for as long as I’d been alive. He had all of the tools and stuff, everything I have now is actually his. And when he died, I just had a surplus of what felt like useless knowledge about knives and tools and shit. And basically all the paraphernalia.”

Lance is still watching him as he turns lazy circles around the island that they’re working at. It doesn’t feel heavy or like Lance is making him speak, he just keeps looking.

“I had dropped out of college about a year after he died because I’d lost essentially the only structure I’d ever had and just kind of floated for a bit. I realized, eventually and only because one of my dad’s old restaurant contacts called looking to set him up with a new client, that everyone my dad had been working for had nobody taking care of their stuff. So I figured, okay, might as well take up the mantle. Be the knife sharpener I wanted to see in the world.”

He looks up from sweeping flour into his hands to toss in the trash to see Lance smiling at him. It’s soft and sweet and makes Keith want to kiss it off him.

“I like it a lot, though. More than I ever thought I would. It’s nice being able to do something with my hands. And now I’m here. Well, not physically here, but like…at the market. So, I figure it was worth it.” Keith should be legally required not to speak anymore.

“Thanks for sharing that with me, Keith.”

Normally something like that feels weird and forced and clichéd, but yet again, Lance just seems truly genuine to the point where Keith can’t look at him anymore.

“Uh, yeah, of course. Thanks for making me feel like I could.”

*

The market feels comfortable to Keith in a way that he never thought that it would.

He knows most of the vendors, by sight if not by name. He’s, by law, allowed to give Coran mad shit about just about anything.

When his grinders make horrific squealing noises during a particularly tricky knife sharpening, all of the other vendors ignore it while the patrons all act like he’s murdering someone in real time. At first Keith adamantly apologized to anyone who was around when it happened, now he just lets it go.

Sometimes people hover behind him and watch him sharpen like they’ve never seen a dude with a knife before. At first it made him tense, made him feel like he was being judged. But he realized after a while that people are just interested in something that doesn’t get done often enough.

And kids love to watch. They’ll stand beside him for the entire time it takes their parents to make a round of the market. Sometimes he lets them sit next to him and watch, answers their poorly phrased questions and let’s them look at his tools. He loves that it makes Lance blush from across the aisle.

He talks more in the last few months than he’s talked in the last six years. Mostly explanations for what he’s doing and why. He gets to talk about something he’s really passionate about to people who are occasionally equally as passionate three days a week.

If he looks up, about three quarters of the time he’ll catch Lance’s eye and they’ll smile at each other in a way that Pidge says should precede the chorus of a boyband’s Top 40 single.

It’s around this time in late October that Keith realizes that the season is ending soon. The market won’t be open after the first weekend in November.

He, predictably, freaks the fuck out.

How is he going to see Lance? And Hunk and Allura and Pidge? The main reason he sees them so much now is work and the odds that they’ll want to hang out with him when they don’t see him three times a week is slim.

What in the hell is he going to do?

A full two days between Tuesday and Thursday are spent going balls to the wall crazy with anxiety, but Keith can’t help it. He doesn’t want to lose this new-found friend group and go back to only watching Downton Abbey with Shiro and Adam on the weekends. He may not survive.

He can feel how weird he’s being when he gets to the market on Saturday and Lance picks up on it almost immediately.

Keith is so freaked out that he dumps the entirety of his toolbox on the floor when Lance pops into existence next to his table about half an hour before the market opens.

“Keith, dude, are you alright?” Lance’s eyebrows are well up his forehead and it makes Keith’s face flush so red he feels fluorescent.

“What. Yep, totally fine. So good. Just great. Thank you for asking.”

“That was like, five different responses. What’s going on?” Before Keith can come up with another evasion, Lance is reaching out and lightly touching his shoulder and it stops Keith in his anxiety driven tracks.

He must see the look on Keith’s face because before he really registers what’s happening, Lance is tugging him up out of his folding chair and ushering him into the weird little overhang that the market bathrooms are in.

“Keith, did something happen? Do you need help with something?” Lance’s brows are furrowed and his mouth is turned down in a frown and Keith wants to kiss him so badly he can barely think straight.

Both of his big hands are pressed firmly to Keith’s shoulders, which shouldn’t be as comforting as it is. They’re so warm that it feels like palm prints of sun. One leaves his shoulder to nudge Keith’s chin up so Lance can meaningfully meet his eyes.

Before Lance can start up again, Keith is blurting, “Does the bakery have knives I can sharpen? Like, when the market season ends?”

He feels like an actual dumbass as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. It’s a fabulous summation of every thought he’s had over the last two days, purely distilled anxious worry.

Lance tilts his head to one side in a way that’s so reminiscent of a Golden Retriever that Keith has to stop breathing in order to not kiss him. They’re so close that all Keith would have to do is lean in just a little bit. But that’s an entirely different thing to panic and obsess over than what’s happening right now.

“I mean, yeah. I guess. Why does that matter right now, though?” Lance is so clearly trying to think through the connection of his weird knives question and why he seems so weird and anxious about the market ending.

“Are you guys still going to hang out with me when the market ends?”

In between this thought and the next, Lance is lunging forward and wrapping his arms around Keith so tight that he can barely breathe. He’s a couple inches taller than Keith, so his head fits perfectly in the crook of Lance’s neck. It’s so comforting that it has him reeling, especially when Lance’s hands rub up and down the expanse of his back.

“Dude, are you kidding me? You aren’t going anywhere.” It’s said into Keith’s hair, so it’s kind of muffled.

“We aren’t going anywhere either. You’re in our group chat. This is a solid and unbreakable market bond, Keith. We’re ride or die now.”

It settles something that was swirling inside Keith almost instantly, hearing it from Lance’s mouth.

Lance pulls back to look at him and reaches out to tuck a piece of Keith’s unruly hair back behind his ear. It makes his breath catch in a way that he’s almost immediately annoyed by.

“Seriously, don’t worry. We aren’t letting you go.” It’s so soft, the way Lance says it, that Keith has to surge back up onto his toes and hug him again. He lets Lance press him back into the brick wall and relishes the feeling of the soft hair at the back of Lance’s neck and the uneven press of their chests when they breathe.

Instead of acknowledging this comfort like a regular person, all Keith can think about is when he’s going to see Lance like this next.

“Do you, uh, want to come over later? Like…to my apartment?”

Lance pulls back and smiles bright, it’s teasing and stupid and Keith has to thunk his head back against the brick wall in the face of it.

“Aw Keith, you just want to get me alone, don't ya? Get me to your creepy murder house so you can kill me?”

Keith shoves past him with a reluctant smile and heads back to his stall, ignoring Lance’s shout of “See you later tonight so you can kill me in the privacy of your own home, bud!”

*

Lance, admittedly, is a little worried about what Keith’s apartment is going to look like. Mostly curious, but a little worried.

From what he knows about Keith, there’s a lot of plaid and leather and knives and not much else on the wardrobe front. Keith acts like nobody can see the literal knife sheath that he has strapped to his belt, but everybody knows it’s there.

He follows behind Keith’s rumbly truck after the market closes to a sweet little brick apartment building above a pharmacy on a not-so-busy street downtown.

Keith is out and heading towards the door before Lance even has a chance to park, so he’s frantically catching up as Keith unlocks the door, running into his back and looping his arms around his waist in a way he’s trying to convince himself is friendly but ultimately misses the mark just a bit.

He’s led up a few flights of stairs into a brightly lit and open living room and it’s safe to say he’s pleasantly surprised.

There’s a lot of exposed brick and a few big windows and a decent amount of slightly weird but homey touches. Keith has an entire row of plants lined up along the top of a jam-packed bookshelf, which Lance inherently knows is filled with a weird mix of sci-fi, romance, and Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Keith bumbles into the kitchen after dropping off his market supplies in a chair by his dining room table, mumbling something about tea and giving Lance free reign of his living room.

Another book shelf has a line of knick-knacks and tchotchkes, mostly small animal figurines and little bowls filled with miscellaneous items like mismatching buttons and single screws. On his coffee table rests a few good smelling candles and a red lighthouse miniature that flickers with warm light when Lance clicks the switch. It’s sweet and so unassumingly Keith that Lance almost can’t breathe around it.

He puts his hands on his hips and stands in the middle of the room, turning so he can get a good feel for it and also so he can catch all of the paintings and posters on the wall in one go.

There’s an artisanal lunar calendar that looks like it may have been made by one of the artists at the market on one wall and vintage Star Trek posters that make Lance smile.

“Is this a Pride and Prejudice movie poster?”

Keith pokes his head around the entryway of the kitchen and glowers at him.

“Fuck off, it’s the 2005 version and it holds a very special place in my heart. Don’t talk shit or Allura will know and kill you.”

Lance has to stifle a snicker and throws himself back on the couch, ghosting his fingers along a throw blanket that he can tell has been hand knit.

“Hey,” he calls out in the vague direction of the kitchen, “who made this blanket?”

With two mugs of tea in hand, Keith emerges from his kitchen and takes a seat next to Lance. He folds his legs beneath him and hands one mug off to Lance.

“Oh, my mom did? A long time ago. I think when she was pregnant with me.” Lance leans into him a little bit, because they’re alone and just because he can. The mug he has is a reproduction of a summery looking landscape from the National Gallery of Art. He wants to know everything about Keith ever.

A vaguely committal noise is all it takes for Keith to keep talking.

“She’s traveling abroad right now for a few months. Her and my dad were like, stupidly in love even though she didn’t always live with us and she spent a few years feeling like she had to be here for me until I convinced her that she just…needed to go somewhere else for a while. I think she’s in Germany right now?”

“That’s cool as hell.” Lance chances a light brush of his fingertips against the back of Keith’s hand and is unmeasurably pleased when Keith twists his palm around and twines their fingers together. He doesn’t even have to look at Keith to know that he’s flushed red as hell.

“Yeah. Uh, you wanna watch something? I have the old BBC Pride and Prejudice on Amazon Prime. I know your uncultured ass hasn’t seen it.”

“Probably because it’s fucking old, dude.”

Lance begrudgingly agrees simply because he knows that Keith will mouth along to the proposal scene. He’s rewarded pleasantly when Keith doesn’t let his hand go for the entirety of the first few episodes.

*

It’s a different night later in the week but Lance and Keith are in the same position on the same couch. This time, they get Indian take out and burrito themselves in blankets and drink probably just a little bit too much of the mulled wine they got at one of the stalls before they left the market.

The twilight settles over them like another blanket and no one bothers to turn on a light after the sun slips under the horizon.

They’re both leaned back against the couch, looking at each other and not really moving. It’s soft and comforting and sweet in a way Lance isn’t always sure he deserves.

The last day of the market is next week and he’s pleased to say that Keith only seems sad in the expected way, not the I’m Going to Lose All My Friends kind of way that he was earlier in the week. They already have plans to go to the Shirogane farm next weekend to pick and carve pumpkins and have Auntie Shirogane make them too much pie.

“My dad and I used to live in this apartment when I was younger.” They’re talking slow, sharing bittersweet things between them in the same way they keep passing the mulled wine bottle back and forth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We moved to a different house a few years before he died but he kept this apartment. I think because he knew I liked it so much.”

“It’s a good place. It feels like you.” Lance barely knows what that means, but he knows it’s true as soon as he says it.

“I forgot about it for a while but once I left school, I came back here. It feels like his, but in an echoey kind of way, where sometimes I see something that was so clearly belonged to him that I have to stop and breathe. But It feels like mine, too. So much of my shit is here, stuff that he wasn’t ever around to see but I’m pretty sure he’d like. It’s nice.” Keith’s voice is soft and quiet, like he’s just a few more minutes off from falling asleep.

The vulnerability of it makes Lance ache. He drags his fingers through Keith’s thick hair and leans over to press a quick kiss to the crown of his head.

“I’m glad you’re here to see it.” Keith says it quietly, but Lance still hears.

“I am too. Thanks for letting me be here with you.”

They sit there like that for a while and time passes strangely, thick and syrupy and good.

Lance is just about to drift off to sleep when Keith sits up slow and tangles their fingers together.

“Come to bed with me.”

He goes.

They fall asleep curled around each other like parentheses in Keith’s bed with his handmade quilts and in the morning, Lance wakes up to the sweetest blush on Keith’s face.

It feels like the best thing in a long time.

*

As expected, they’re too loud and stupid and rowdy at the Shirogane farm the next weekend. They’re not even drunk yet and Lance is atop Hunk’s shoulders and commanding him around the pumpkin patch like he’s a horse. He doesn't know why Hunk puts up with it.

It makes Keith roll his eyes but he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t love it. Adam and Shiro keep pointing out the ugliest pumpkins and loudly declaring “that’s you” like middle schoolers.

Auntie Shirogane is sitting on the back porch watching them all wild out and it feels right in a way that pulses out of Keith’s chest.

Romelle, Pidge, and Allura are taking the quest of finding the perfect pumpkin way too seriously and he’s pretty sure Pidge is incessantly chattering about the mathematical way to find the perfect pumpkin that doesn’t seem like it’s a real thing.

They carve pumpkins on the back porch and get the slimy innards everywhere and Auntie Shirogane serves them blisteringly hot apple and pumpkin pie. Hunk forces everyone to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown even though Halloween was last week.

It’s good, it’s so good and Keith gets to sit on the couch sardined in between all of these people that he loves and just radiate with how good it feels.

During what Keith now knows from Lance is "golden hour," he feels a light tap on his shoulder and a hand thread through his. He glances to the side and predictably, it’s Lance, a grin cut across his face that’s so bright Keith has to shut his eyes a little bit. He wonders if it will always be like this. He’d like to think that it will.

“Come with me, I have to show you something,” Lance all but whispers to him, excited and tugging him up from the couch. Everybody is doing their own thing, so no one really notices when they slip out of the living room onto the back porch.

“Come on, pick up the pace, Lil Knifey, let’s go.”

“Do not under any circumstances call me that ever again.”

He drags Keith bodily up the hill that bumps against the back of the pumpkin patch. He’s drenched in gold and it makes his hair shine coppery and his eyes look almost see through when he glances back to make sure that Keith is still attached to him.

“What are we even up here for?” Keith finally asks when they crest the hill. There’s a little red barn on the top of the hill that he casts a glance at before Lance is pulling them behind it, facing the setting sun.

“Look,” is all Lance says as he sweeps his hand over the vegetable fields that the Shirogane house is nested between. There’s a thick forest that surrounds the far ends of the fields and the setting sun makes the fall colors of the trees look like flames.

It’s beautiful in a very quotidian way and Keith belatedly thinks that he loves it, thinks that he may love Lance too, for bringing him up here.

Lance turns towards him and his eyes are shining and he’s smiling just as bright as the fiery trees, “I just wanted you to see this. It’s my favorite part of fall and I wanted you to know.” Keith is so fucking stupid for him.

He can only nod and reach out to tangle their fingers together, tugging Lance closer to him by the arm.

With a slight shuffle, Lance disengages from Keith’s clinging and wraps his arm around Keith’s shoulders, bringing him close. He presses a light kiss to Keith’s temple and all Keith wants to do is seal his mouth to Lance’s.

They stand there while the sun begins to drop below the horizon until Lance gets restless. He abruptly pulls away from Keith and turns his whole body toward him.

“Okay, well, really quick, before we go back inside, I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do pretty much since I met you. If you’re not down for it, just let me know, that’s totally fine. Totally good. Cool cool cool.”

“Just, here we go.”

And he presses his fingers so delicately to the side of Keith’s jaw and kisses him so sweetly that Keith is pretty sure that this is a vivid day dream that he fucking made up.

But it’s absolutely not, because Lance pulls back and gets a good look at Keith’s face and smiles so brightly that Keith just has to…kiss it off of him. It’s what he deserves, after five months of looking at his dumb happy face all the fucking time.

Lance backs him up against the rough wood of the little red barn and Keith belated sends a little thanks to whatever deity hooked him the fuck up when Lance presses his entire body against Keith’s.

Soft little open-mouthed kisses are being dropped along the side of his neck and his jawline and the only thing Keith can see is the very edge of the sun finally dropping below the horizon and he makes a noise that he is absolutely going to be embarrassed about later.

Lance’s mouth is so fucking soft and his big warm palms feel like brands against Keith’s slightly chilled skin and this is absolutely the best thing to have ever happened.

Between kisses pressed all over his face, Lance breathes out, “I’m so gone over you,” and Keith is pretty sure that all of the light from that sunset and the fiery trees is welling up inside of him and threatening to spill over.

He loops an arm around Lance’s neck and pulls him down to whisper “Me fucking too,” against his lips.

Things go wildly downhill from there, or uphill depending on which way you look at it. In a truly stunning turn of events, Lance is the one to reluctantly suggest they go back inside because it’s well and truly dark now. Keith has to unwrap his legs from around Lance’s waist after he’d been hoisted up and pressed back into the barn again. He’s fairly sure he has bits of wood all over the back of his jacket and a pretty vivid hickey on the soft spot just below his ear, but the look on Lance’s face and the wild state of his curly brown hair leaves him mostly unconcerned.

There’s a pointed chill in the air when they finally amble inside. Keith is normally a bit apprehensive about the winter, but he has a good feeling that he’ll be very warm this season.

*

When they get back inside and pointedly ignore all of the jeers from their friends and the money changing hands, Auntie Shirogane corners him in the kitchen.

She’s a slight woman, tiny but intense. She’s been in Keith’s life just as long as Shiro has and he has a fierce love for her that he doesn’t think will ever go away.

But it’s tested pretty thoroughly when she looks at him and smirks, “Glad whatever that boy did stopped your scowling. Your face is too handsome, I don’t want you to get wrinkles.”

*

Keith lets Lance drive him home and lead him up into his own apartment. Lets him press Keith up against the doorjamb of his bedroom, because, apparently, they’ve both got a thing for that. Lets him spoon up behind him when they finally get into bed and lets him steal all the covers, but only for a little bit until he kicks Lance awake and they kiss gently in the two am darkness.

And when he wakes up the next morning to see Lance looking at him through sleepy eyes, he blushes and doesn’t even feel bad, because Lance descends on him and kisses all over his face like an idiot.

And it’s good. It’s so good.

Thank god for Keith’s Knife Hut. He’s got to tell Shiro that.

He’ll do it tomorrow, for sure.

[spacebrick3]

The Malformation AU: Part 2

Chapter 1 |

Return for the second part of the Malformation AU with @writerofwriting‘s cool character of the Malformation, where...things are already getting interesting on Mars. Unfortunately, Anechoi’s not in the best position (and she needs to sleep) so this chapter will be turned over to Talya:

Chapter 2 (Talya):

Talya Lewis yawns, stumbling out of bed and slamming a hand down about two feet to the right of her flashing alarm. She proceeds to insult said alarm in various inventive and creative ways until she finally finds the off button, tapping out the code to stop the blaring sound that fills the room. A bleary hand rubs at an eye, brushing long strands of black hair out of the way. Six Cities, why did I set that alarm so fucking EARLY?

It’s a few minutes later, hair pushed back into something approximating where it should go and a little bit more alertness in her green eyes, that she makes it out of her room and into their common living area. The two of them - Talya and Anechoi - share it, a three-room apartment where the central area functions as a combination desk/workspace/living room/kitchen/whatever the hell else they decide to use it for that day. Even on the outskirts of Sapphire, it’s expensive, and it runs that line between ‘large enough to run the Designer black market from’ and ‘small enough that the authorities aren’t gonna wonder how two people with no listed income live there’.

Anechoi is already there, slumped against the edge of one of their couches with her mouth hanging open. She would let her sleep, but she’s still feeling a little bitter about being woken up last night and so she kicks the edge of the couch. “Hey, idiot,” she says, even though of course she can’t hear her. “Get up. It’s morning. Time to do things.”

She jumps, rolling over and falling off the couch in a heap and a shout. Talya snickers, patting her on the back as she gets up - Anechoi seems less happy, glaring at her with eyes that are only half-awake. “Really?” she signs, and even those movements are barely lucid. “Really? You just had to wake me up?”

“It’s morning!” she signs cheerfully, even though she herself is only marginally more awake. It’s the clearheadedness of being the most coherent person in the room, no matter the scale of that ‘most’. “The whole day is ahead of us.”

Anechoi is unconvinced. “Like hell it is.” She pulls away and heads for their tiny kitchen, grabbing the last bottle of some greenish drink from the cabinet. “I’ve got a goddamn awful headache and it’s literally splitting my head open-“ she makes sure to emphasize that point, slashing her hand through the air- “so just leave me alone.”

“Alright, alright,” she signs, trying to discharge the mood. It’s too early in the morning for such hostility. She has a headache, she’s not feeling her best, Talya tells herself. That’s what headaches do. She starts another sign, then flicks it away with a shake of her head. No, no no. Um…

Oh. Right. There is one thing to take care of, some personal business before she can leave Anechoi alone. She waves a hand to get her attention back, earning another glare but brushing it off. “Hey. So, a couple days ago it was your birthday. Winter solstice, right?”

She nods, eyes narrowing. She puts down the bottle of soda - since it’s just the two of them, she hasn’t bothered to get a cup. No matter that Talya likes that drink as well and now she can’t have it since if Anechoi has a headache she certainly doesn’t want to catch whatever it is. “Yeah. What about it?”

“Well, Syrus sent a message. He says you didn’t check in with him.”

“What?” she signs, gestures sharpening in anger.

Talya takes a step backwards, confused. “Syrus sent a message. He says you normally check in with him on your birthday. Every year.”

“No, how do you know that?” she demands.

“You…told me? What the fuck are you so angry about?”

Anechoi starts forwards, then stops, glancing around the room. She shakes her head, pressing a hand to her head and hoping some of the cold from the metal will bleed into it. “I…don’t know. Sorry. I’m just gonna-“ she gestures to the couch- “sit down…”

“You should call him,” she signs, unwilling to drop it quite so easily. See, Anechoi wasn’t always Anechoi. Unlike her, unlike the Talya Lewis with no familial connections to speak of, Anechoi still has a family - she just hates them. The feeling is largely mutual, except for her brother Syrus, the only member of her family who apparently showed any kind of affection for her. So she tries to talk to him at least once a year, just to stop him worrying. They’re a thousand kilometers away from one another, and anything could happen on Sapphire.

Except this year. Anechoi flops down on the couch, settling back into the dark fabric. She rolls her eyes. “I don’t care. You can message him and say I’m fine, because, look-“ she indicates herself- “I’m fine.”

She sighs, walking the few steps over to her desk. If Anechoi doesn’t want to be nice today, that’s fine. Talya has her own business to attend to. Her two displays on one side of the desk click on, already filled with text that should have been dealt with two days ago. Contracts and commissions, mostly, people who want her to create Designer circuits for them. It’s how the market works, but it’s a fucking nuisance for the one running it.

A good 80% of the requests can be dismissed or sent back with a form letter, because they simply don’t match the requirements she needs to create such a Design. Or they’re asking her to make it for free. “Hey, Anechoi,” she signs, spinning around in her chair. Anechoi is not looking in her direction, so she grabs one of the candies from the bowl on her desk and lobs it at her, the small yellow sphere bouncing off her forehead.

She reaches down and plucks the candy from the floor, crunching it pensively between her fingers. “What. Do you want?” she asks, with the implication that it better be fucking good.

“This- this-“ She falters under the steady glare. “This guy says I should make something for him, for free, because I’ll get, and I quote, ‘free exposure for investors’”. She pauses, but Anechoi doesn’t even fucking blink. “It’s a black market. It’s illegal to sell this stuff. I don’t want exposure!” 

Somehow it was funnier when she read it. Anechoi regards her with a flat look before turning away again, tapping at something on her personal tablet. Talya can see nothing of it besides the odd glimmer of light, flashing onto her face. Great. Just great. This day is just going fucking fantastic already.

She turns back to her work, examining the diagram of the first legitimate request. It’s a strange design, built with triangles and circles rather than the usual rectangles and for fluid transfer rather than electricity. Oh well. There’s a decent fee for this sort of work, and she’s pleased to see that it’s even through a semi-official channel. It’s a burner email, but the schematics that the design needs to fit with is clearly for Aquamarine. They haven’t even taken the official markings from the diagram.

Satisfied that the buyer will pay, she starts the soldering iron heating and spins to the other side of her desk - the workspace. It’s not a proper workshop, not really, but it’s enough. Designer magic is mostly internal design - the only true physical part is engraving that same Design into a tangible piece of metal, and that’s small-scale.

The best comparison is probably that Designs function a lot like circuits, where the magic acts as electricity that flows through the carved sigil. That’s how the combination of magic and technology - on such a level, not like what IPD was trying to accomplish - works, where the carved sigil actually contains the same wires. Electricity runs through it on the surface, providing basic functions, but below it is the layer of magic.

A pair of lenses slide down over her eyes, darkening the room except for the lines of dazzling blue that suddenly appear in front of her, the paths of magic as she painstakingly engraves the sigil into the metal. She adjusts the focus, grabbing the now-burning iron and pressing it into a piece of copper, tracing the lines experimentally and watching as they fill with molten sapphire.

The soft ping of an alert on her computer distracts her. She moves to dismiss it, except…Lifting the lenses onto her forehead, she peers at the listed address for the incoming transmission. What the hell? What is this? she wonders. Because it’s not an address, not in any meaningful sense. It’s just - a string of numbers, incomprehensible. 

Why not, she decides. Her computers are all backed up and virus-protected a thousand times over, and if it’s a threat, well, it’s always better to know that said threat is coming. She grabs her custom, handmade headphones from where they hang over the monitor and put them on.

The voice that speaks is computerized. “Talya! Talya! Are you there? Come on, don’t-“

“VAL?” She recognizes the voice, because she’s the one that programmed it. “What the hell? What are you-“

“Shut up!” A hiss of static accompanies her words. “There’s no time!”

“Time for what?”

Her utterly exasperated sigh is mixed with the crackle of white noise. Talya frowns, because Designer circuits don’t have static. There’s no way for them to degrade, not like ordinary wires, so there’s no way for static to form. “Listen. Listen to me. I don’t think I have a lot of time, because-“ The transmission cuts off, then clicks back on with an awful grating sound. 

“VAL, what the hell is going on?” she asks in complete confusion. “And why can’t I - can’t you talk to Anechoi?”

“Because-“ she starts, before the signal goes dead again. Talya is frozen, listening for anything she can pick up. There was an edge of her voice, an edge that she never put in there. The edge of fear. “Something...” Her voice manages to break through once again, but it’s quieter now, and the words fall prey to the crackling static. “Don’t kn…IPD…something broke…magic…no…just look,” she manages to plead. 

Then it’s gone. The error message on her screen reports that the signal simply stopped, that whatever it had been receiving was just not there to receive any more. She tries to reconnect, to send her own broadcast, but the address file itself has become corrupted. For a second, she simply stares at the small display, uncomprehending.

She said ‘look’, Talya tells herself, snapping out of the reverie. She said ‘magic’, so…She pulls the lenses back down over her eyes, the molten lines appearing in her vision again. But that is not what she is looking for. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, and it takes a deep breath to strengthen her resolve. But whatever it is, she can’t do anything about it without knowing what it is. 

She turns, and it is so much worse than she could have imagined. 

The lines are fractured. That’s the first thing she notices. The magic isn’t right, because the lines that make it up are fractured, broken and splintered into hundreds of pieces. Each shard driven like a knife into her skull. They shimmer, but it’s wrong, because the shards are the wrong color, are somehow both every color and no color at once, are just a hole from this universe to the next or the most solid thing in existence. They warp and twist, a strange light flaring even through her lenses.

There is a malevolence behind it, a pattern and shifting in the way the broken and twisted strands move, wrapping and tightening around Anechoi’s head. Somehow, the complex and shifting shards form a brain, the flickering, pulsing chaos at its center in possession of a murderous intelligence. She stares at it and it, impossibly, stares back at her. It has no eyes, nothing to even show which direction it is facing, and yet she knows it is looking at her.

She wants to scream, to grab Anechoi and shake her by the shoulders because that thing is inside her head, is digging in deeper with every passing second. But she can’t. She knows, because scattered around the - around it - are the faintly glowing remains of her own Designs, snapped and tossed aside to go dark. They were the sigils of VALENTINA, the Designs that lifted her from a particularly useful computer into a person, gave her life. Were, until the…creature tore into them, ripping apart the lines with what must have been gleeful savagery, hacking and shredding the intricate patterns.

A flick of a shaking hand lifts the lenses, and there is Anechoi, sitting sedate as ever. No sign of the parasite that even now is cutting and clawing at her head crosses her face, idly swiping through some menu on her tablet. She yawns, such a normal action, so at odds with what Talya knows is happening and yet is powerless to stop.

She can’t stay here. Throwing off the lenses, she stumbles out to the door and out into the air of the city, staring up towards the faded blue of the city. Lights blink and gleam, life continuing as normal as she gaps for air, pressing her palms together to slow her trembling hands. It does no good.

But out here, looking up at the impossibly tall skyscrapers, somehow it seems more manageable. Looking up at the Union building, the pyramid that sloughs off even the skin of the dome to reach for the sky, the tiny shred of magic that’s broken into Anechoi’s brain is microscopic in comparison.

And Talya? She runs the black market for the whole goddamn city. She’s the lifeblood of half the technology that’s currently running around out there. 

So what’s a little broken magic to her?

That’s right, tune in next time for more Talya Lewis VS. the Malformation. Excitement! Action! The abomination that is the sentient and chaotic shattered magic running around out there!

Tag list (if you want to be added or removed, just let me know!):

@lady-redshield-writes, @no-url-ideas-tho, @ratracechronicler, @ken-kenwrites, @ravenpuffwriter, @cirianne, @lonelylibrary @maxbeewriting, @endlesshourglass, @thebloodstainedquill,  @anip-ocs, @dreamwishing, @incandescent-creativity, @fatal-blow, @danafaithwriting, @wri-tten, @thewitchthetimeladythehuntress

[cryptoevent]

Twitter, GameStop… enough! The world needs true decentralization

GameStop and Twitter are both a mirage and an iceberg, but don’t try to tweet about it. Not because you won’t own a tweet (because you won’t), but because the only completely truthful expression Twitter can offer as a platform is to expose the ugly truth about the Internet itself. Or as Elon Musk recently tweeted:

In retrospect, it was inevitable

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2021

Let me explain.

As Robinhood stops doing business for its so-called users, Jack Dorsey talked about the decentralization of Twitter and social media in general. But aside from a few enthusiasts, the word “decentralization” is the equivalent of a syntactic vote. But don’t fall asleep right away. I’m not promising to tell you to buy Bitcoins (BTC), but I will tell you why you should be able to own a piece of the next Twitter and Robin Hood. Let’s start by saying what we all clearly feel.

It seems: The GameStop saga shows that legacy funding is rigged, and DeFi is the answer.

Decentralization has begun

There’s something… in the air. There is a palpable electricity. A tax is about to burst – not a literal tax, but a symbolic tax that has blocked the flow of progress and equality in many parts of our world. Power has always been in the hands of the few, and in all these areas it is about equality of power.

People are beginning to shift from centralized to decentralized models of power, away from the few who possess all the power to share it with the many. When that dam breaks, there will be a huge shift where everyone will become more powerful, while the most powerful among us will begin to become less powerful. The flight has already begun. This is the dawn of a new power.

Jeremy Heymans and Henry Timms, authors of the bestseller New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How to Make It Work for You, describe the situation in a 2014 article :

“The old power works like a currency. It is held by a few. Once acquired, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial reserve to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and controlled by a leader. It downloads and captures. The new power works differently, like a stream. It is created by many. It is open, participatory and driven by like-minded people. It downloads and spreads. Like water or electricity, it is more powerful when it spreads. The purpose of new energy is not to accumulate it, but to channel it.”

A new force for the 21st century

Although the classic model of top-down power, the model of the tree or pyramid, has been around since at least Aristotle, the 21st century is moving toward something very different. We have seen it with the invention of the Internet, with political movements like the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter, with the Me Too movement, with free software, with collective knowledge projects like Wikipedia, and of course with the invention of Bitcoin (BTC) and the blockchain. But perhaps most interestingly, the universe itself, the human brain, art, and our natural ecosystems all resemble decentralized networks. Moreover, they do not resemble top-down energy models.

Heymans and Timms continue in their book:

“Those who build and operate huge platforms, in the service of the new power, have become our new elites. These leaders often use the language of the crowd – “share,” “open,” “connect” – but their actions may tell a different story. Consider Facebook, the new power platform most of us know best. Facebook’s two billion users have no stake in the enormous economic value created by the platform. No word on how it is managed. And no insight into the algorithm that appears to determine our moods, our self-esteem and even some of our decisions. Far from the free-spirited organic paradise that the early Internet pioneers imagined, there is a growing sense that we live in a world of participatory farms, where a few large platforms are fenced in and harvest the daily activities of billions of people for their own gain.”

Robinhood and Twitter – and, more importantly, the Internet design that made their business models possible – are centralized and unfolding. They are promoting the old power while bragging about it. This is where the mirage meets the iceberg. But after a tumultuous 2020, it seems people have had enough. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

Cultural and technological changes

What was once a theory has now become a reality. The network model really exists and, ironically, it needs a new home because it currently operates at the top of the pyramid.

The Internet is controlled by central servers of central entities. All our human data is controlled, manipulated, studied, sold and used to influence our behavior and obtain the greatest possible value for a small group of people. That’s the way it is, whether the technology giants want to admit it or not. Users are products, not customers. In the case of Robinhood, which has stopped trading GameStop and other stocks, the free service now shows that users’ commercial data is the real bread and butter by selling it to hedge funds. In the case of social media platforms, they sell our data to advertisers and sometimes to political campaigns – or worse.

So where are we now?

Millions of people today are desperate for new platforms where they can control their digital identity, manage their own data, and even enjoy and manage the platform. This new power proposition, where democracy meets libertarianism, fortunately already exists.

From the Bitcoin model created for peer-to-peer value transfer, to decentralized exchanges of digital goods only in code form, to decentralized financial stacking platforms that allow users to literally set the rules of the platform-all without a central governing body-the future looks bright.

But that’s not enough.

The everyday applications we use on our phones still run on the old electrical infrastructure. They all use central servers and corporate identities (about 70 people on average), and they all have companies that own all the data generated by their products/customers. This needs to change.

The new Internet, or Web 3.0, is creating a new infrastructure and new ways to move and store data. By removing centralized servers, giving Internet identities to public rather than corporate blockchains, and giving users the choice of how they store their data, applications are part of a new power movement. With a decentralized Internet, the popular phrase “if it’s free, you’re a product” can finally be refuted. How can this be done? Because Web 3.0 is a global movement, not a corporation.

It has always been thought that the Internet was a vast decentralized and intelligent network that no one controlled, like our universe, our brains, our oceans, and now our cultural movements. Decentralized social networks are already in development, with decentralized versions of Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp in the works.

The year 2021 marks the beginning of the end of the old power of the Internet. In my opinion, this cannot happen soon enough.

This article does not contain investment advice. There are risks associated with every investment and trading transaction, and readers should do their own research before making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this document are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Cointelegraph.

Donald Bullers has worked in the technology industry for over 10 years, from Vice President of Digital Marketing to founder of Tuum Technologies. He is interested in digital identity and Web 3.0 and leads several teams developing software for a fully decentralized Internet using Elastos technology.

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[travelwithannmoses]

Network Marketing Business | 3 Proven Ways using the Internet to Grow Your Business

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Friends of mine, who have earned tens-of-millions of dollars in network marketing, are FINALLY starting to publicly concede that Internet-based recruiting works!

In fact, despite being “hush, hush” in most circles, it’s one of the most effective network marketing strategies ever.

Now, I’m not just talking about prospecting via social media, but actual marketing strategies as well.

“Internet marketing” simply means using online branding strategies: advertising, Facebook Pages, video blogging, email blasts, etc.

It always perplexed me that many leaders have this belief that Internet recruiting strategies are a “distraction,” especially given the fact that many top earners have gone on to build their online brands using… well… Internet marketing!

Specifically, a type of Internet marketing we call…

“Attraction Marketing,” which focuses on building a loyal following and a trusted brand online

…where people will literally buy anything you recommend because they know, like, and trust you.

Over the years, I have seen many people build successful network marketing businesses using the Internet, but since the majority of the industry still doesn’t subscribe to these Internet marketing strategies, most leaders maintain the belief that it can’t be done and refer to it often as a “distraction.”

Recently, however, I attended a private gathering of about 200 top earners (some of whom you’d know doubt recognize), were many people who had built their organizations partially or even entirely online using pretty diverse Internet strategies.

These top earners were being recognized for their success and demonstrating that network marketing can be done successfully using the Internet through a diverse number of online network marketing strategies.

And believe me, I was paying close attention to these leaders when they stood up and shared, as did everyone else.

So, in the spirit of full transparency and disclosure, I’m gonna share with you the top 3 Internet-based recruiting strategies that are being successfully used by top earners to build network marketing businesses today!

This strategy is an approach which will seem pretty familiar in network marketing. It’s prospecting but with an online twist.

Now prospecting on social media is NOT “Internet marketing,” however it still beats camping out at Walmart.

But that’s just the start.

This is the process my client Jason, who is a 7-figure producer in network marketing, teaches to his team after their warm market runs out…

1.) SEARCH

Use Facebook Search to find “Friends of Friends” who live locally (at least to start with).

There are a few reasons for doing it this way…

First of all, Facebook allows you to directly message “Friends of Friends” so that your message goes into their main inbox instead of the “Other” inbox that most people don’t even know exists.

Secondly, you start with local because it will allow you to eventually meet face-to-face with them to form a more powerful personal connection.

Given that you have no prior relationship, it’s important to meet.

2.) QUALIFY

Next, you take a minute to look at their profile and identify key interests that might resonate with you personally, your business, or your products.

You are also looking for more subtle things:

Are they smiling in their pictures?

Are they outgoing?

Do they seem to be a positive person?

Bear in mind, you are prospecting, but you are also qualifying them.

For example, an interest in Robert Kiyosaki might indicate an interest in entrepreneurship or diversified income streams.

An interest in CrossFit indicates an interest in health and wellness, and that might resonate with your company’s products.

3.) MESSAGE

Then you craft your first message to them, which believe it or not, follows a somewhat standard prospecting approach.

You can come up with a template, but each message will be tailored to them specifically. This message will mention the friends you have in common.

You mention that you’re a recruiter for a “health & wellness company” or whatever the niche is, you’re “expanding in the area,” and you ask if they are “open to earning extra money?”

As Jason described it, “You throw the ball in the air and see if they swing back at it.”

You DO NOT want to be posting copy & paste messages with links to sign up for your opportunity.

Not only is that not effective, it’s considered SPAM by Facebook and can get your account shut down and get your company in trouble too.

In this initial message, you aren’t giving them any info or links. You are simply trying to get them to express an interest.

4.) BOOK

If they “swing back,” book a face-to-face meeting, if local, or at least get them on the phone.

You just let them know that details are better explained in person and…

If we were to work together, it’s a good opportunity to see if we would like each other!

At this point, if they meet with you, hopefully, your company or upline have provided a solid process for you to follow here.

According to Jason, he and his team experience about a 30% positive response rate.

If they don’t answer back, there are some different approaches here.

Some play it safe and leave the 70% that didn’t answer back alone.

Jason is an advocate of following up with a 2nd message 4-5 days later if they don’t answer back.

The 2nd message will usually double his overall results vs only sending 1 message.

Sending a 3rd follow-up message is not recommended.

At this point, you assume a “NO” and move on. Being pushy is a sign of a bad network marketing strategy and will not fly in the online world.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg…

This process is pretty simple and depending on your personality, may or may not be great for you.

This pretty much involves posting your results on social media (i.e. setting the “mouse trap”) and waiting for people to express an interest via the comments or private message. (i.e “SNAP!!!”)

Additionally, to boost results, you can add a CALL TO ACTION to message you if they want more info.

From a ‘leading with the opportunity’ angle…

This would involve posting pictures and announcements about your ‘rags to riches’ story, income results, and the impact it’s made on your lifestyle. (Obviously, you can only do this if you’ve gotten results.)

I’ve seen people, who I know personally, deploy this strategy with great success, but I’m a person that is very wary of this approach as I can see you running into compliance or even legal problems if lots of people in your company are doing this.

I personally don’t like this angle because it can piss off your real life friends & family, but I know it can work well too because, let’s face it, most people have a desire for more income.

Alternatively, with a ‘leading with the product’ angle…

The mouse trap approach could be very powerful and usually more friend & company safe, especially if the results you are posting have to do with a personal or customer case study.

This angle will help you generate more customers and a few of those customers may express an interest in the business after they fall in love with the product.

We’ve seen this angle run rampant with weight loss challenges & case studies, which still work amazingly well, but can also work with other products if there is a clear and visible result that was produced from product use.

For example, I’ve seen people in travel businesses post pictures of their luxury vacation/trips and reveal how little they paid for that experience.

Or you can post pictures of yourself running a marathon, triathlon, or whatever that would not have been possible without certain supplements.

Essentially, show everyone connected to you on social media a desirable change in your life that was achieved in part or as a direct result of your product.

Once they express an interest, you follow whatever process you’ve been taught for closing people.

For closing offline after using strategy #1 or #2 for getting the prospect, I would recommend training by Tim Sales on presenting, closing, and enrolling new reps.

But if “closing” people is not your thing, then there’s my favorite Internet strategy for network marketing that I’ve employed in my business for the past 9 years…

This might FINALLY be the year we look at as the tipping point for when Internet marketing (i.e. passive online selling & recruiting) was finally legitimized as the powerful strategy it deserves to be recognized as in network marketing.

Remember the private gathering of 200 top earners I mentioned above?

Well, person after person stood up at the event saying they had built their businesses primarily using the Internet.

Now, if these folks were “only” 6-figure earners, the “old-schoolers” would dismiss their successes as “flukes” or “non-duplicatable.”

However, when 7-figure earners were asked to identify themselves a woman two seat from me stood up and openly said that she built online and described her strategy. (I later interviewed her to get a detailed account on what she did.)

What she outlined as the blueprint for her business was exactly a method we’ve been teaching at Elite Marketing Pro for over 10 years, which we call “attraction marketing,” taught in our FREE 10-Day Online Recruiting Bootcamp available here and published in our flagship product, Attraction Marketing Formula.

Others also stood up and shared similar approaches.

These folks didn’t message strangers templated messages online like in Strategy #1. They didn’t fill their friend’s News Feeds with promotions for an opportunity or product as in Strategy #2.

What they did was they created a truly PASSIVE way of making sure that when they woke up each morning…

They would have an inbox full of notifications letting them know that there were 10, 20, 50, or even hundreds of new prospects interested in learning more about their opportunity or product or mentorship.

Or, they would also have an inbox full of notifications of 5-10 new CUSTOMERS waiting to receive their product and excited about the possibility it holds for them.

Or, they would also have an inbox full of notifications of 5-10 new DISTRIBUTORS ready to get signed up (or possibly already signed up while you slept), waiting to be led in their new, exciting venture.

You see, just about every other type of business in the world is now using proven network marketing strategies, passive and scalable online marketing & advertising methods, in ADDITION to prospecting and referral based methods.

Why NOT your network marketing or direct sales business?

The only reason would be if it wasn’t a REAL business.

But you and I know better.

So, if you want to learn a strategy that is a proven way to build a real business online, you can learn more about it here via my bootcamp.

There, I’ll show you exactly what to do and how to position yourself, so you’ll never have to chase, annoy, pester, or beg anybody, ever, to take a look at your products, services, and business.

These methods allow you to build your business automatically—where prospects reach out to you (instead of you having to reach out to them) and all online!

The bottom line is that, in today’s age, you don’t need to be pushy, obnoxious, or overly-aggressive to build a successful business.

So if you’re ready to get started…

Just click this link to get immediate access to my FREE 10-Day Online Recruiting Bootcamp and start generating leads this week!

Just like anything else in business, this will take work and study.

But ultimately, you can enhance your skill set by moving your business into the 21st century, the online century!

Let’s do this together!

Much success!

Ann Moses

source http://travelwithannmoses.info/network-marketing-business-3-proven-ways-using-the-internet-to-grow-your-business/

[megabadbunny]

No Place Like Hohm (2/8)

She didn’t want to give in to the Doctor’s manipulative tactics.

All the same, she had to admit she was curious about why he might be trying to manipulate her.

**

(Aka the obligatory post-GitF fic, for anyone else who ever wondered what might have taken place between a trip to France and an adventure in a parallel universe. Ten/Rose, all ages, full of angst, fluff, a pinch of romantic bickering, a dash of mutual pining, and a dollop of swashbuckling adventure!)

***

Ch 1 | Chapter 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8

Rose stared.

This was not home.

The landscape outside the TARDIS was utterly unfamiliar. Instead of the usual cracked asphalt and grey estate buildings and rubbish bins pushed up against graffitied walls, Rose found herself staring out at a colorful cobblestoned street, surrounded by the walls of a huge, sprawling ivory-white city. Its willowy tall structures sat stark against a jewel-blue morning sky, spires reaching and twisting into cotton clouds up above. Strung across ramparts and between walls, paper streamers and lanterns swayed gently in the breeze. Three moons glistened overhead, only just visible in the sunlight.

“What’s this?” Rose asked, turning to the Doctor. “This isn’t home.”

“Of course it is, what are you talking about?” the Doctor replied, leaning back against the TARDIS.

“What are you talking about?” Rose shot back.

“This is the planet Hohm.”

Rose blinked. “The planet?”

“Aww, yes, an alien planet!” said Mickey, stepping out of the TARDIS with a great grin on his face. His eyes grew huge, drinking in the sights all around them. “This is an actual alien planet, right? Tell me it’s an alien planet!”

“This, my incredibly perceptive Mr. Smith, is an alien planet!” the Doctor said happily, clapping Mickey on the back. “Or alien to you, anyway. I’m sure it’s rather domestic to everyone who calls it home. But don’t worry, we’ll blend right in. In addition to the native Hohmish (horse people, can’t miss ‘em), they’ve got a healthy blend of humans and humanoids here—you lot, really, you end up everywhere—even if a couple generations of species-mixing has given half the lot a bunch of tails and nictating membranes.”

“Nic-whatting what-what’s?” Mickey asked.

“The planet Hohm!” the Doctor continued, one hand sweeping wide in a gesture that encapsulated the city before them. “Seventh-largest planet in the Uraael cluster, about four-thousand years in your future.”

“Excellent,” Mickey breathed, his grin stretching impossibly wide.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Rose told the Doctor. “You said you’d take me home!”

“No, I said I would take you to Hohm,” the Doctor replied.

Rose glared at him.

“No place like it,” the Doctor said with a wink.

“Doctor,” Rose said through gritted teeth, “Take me back home. To my actual home. On Earth. In the Milky Way galaxy. Please.”

“Oh, come on. Where’s the fun in that?” the Doctor asked, looping an arm around Mickey. “Just look at Mr. Mickety-Mick here. It’s his first alien planet. We haven’t even done anything yet and already he’s having the time of his life! You don’t want to deprive him of that, do you?”

“So bring him back after you drop me off!”

“Yeah, but it’s never really the same, is it?” the Doctor argued, pulling his ear. “You know how it is, Rose. You step out of the TARDIS on a new planet for the first time, it’s sort of magical, isn’t it?”

He jostled Mickey, who was still drinking everything in with a face full of awe. “Isn’t it, Mickey?”

“Uh-huh,” Mickey said absentmindedly, because—as if on cue—people were starting to emerge from their homes in the city, venturing out to begin their day. And Rose had to admit, the scene was pretty spectacular: while many of the people looked human (or near enough, anyway), at least half of the crowd sported four legs, not two, and their bottom halves were, as the Doctor had said, decidedly horse-like.

“Holy hell, they’re centaurs,” Mickey said, gaping at the thickening crowd. “They’re real-life, honest-to-god centaurs!”

“Magic, indeed!” the Doctor said with a laugh.

Dozens of people filtered around them, and soon the streets were full of Hohmish people and humans alike, feet and hooves clattering over the cobblestones. The city-dwellers opened stores and set up streetside booths, tugged their children along in droves, trucked worktools and fruit and goods through the streets on rickety wooden carts. Soon, the sound of metal clanging on metal could be heard through the open doorways of blacksmiths’ shops, and vendors started extolling the virtues of their wares, waving flowers or bolts of cloth or joints of glistening meat in an effort to entice passersby. Greeting each other, haggling over prices, and generally hustling and bustling about, the people and their city reminded Rose very strongly of their recent trip to ancient Rome.

Rose felt the Doctor’s gaze on her, but he glanced away as soon as their eyes met, absorbing himself in the sights and sounds all around them.

What on earth was running through his head, Rose wondered?

The question dissipated into the ether the moment a pretty young woman approached them, shyly holding a flame-orange flower out in front of her. She extended the flower out to Mickey with a smile. Confused and delighted alike, Mickey reached out to accept the gift. “Thanks,” he said, and even if she hadn’t been staring right at him, Rose could tell from the warmth of his tone that a blush was creeping up his neck to his ears. The young woman merely ducked her head and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.

Mickey turned back to Rose and the Doctor with a triumphant grin. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

“It’s definitely your color,” Rose teased him, despite herself.

Nodding, Mickey tucked the flower into his jacket-pocket, where it peered out proudly just under his lapel. “Yeah, it is!” he said, beaming.

“The Hohmish are well-known for their generosity and welcoming nature,” the Doctor said. “You sure you don’t want to stay for just a little bit, Rose? Sample some of that famous hospitality for yourself?”

“And maybe some of that beer, while we’re at it,” Mickey added, pointing at a tavern just down the street, where patrons drank tankards of something fizzy and blue. “Come on, Rose. It’s my first alien planet!”

“Yeah, Rose,” the Doctor echoed. “It’s his first alien planet!”

Rose hesitated. She wanted to go home. She really did. She needed some space, and a breath of fresh air, and a chance to really think about things; she wanted to see her mum, catch up with Shareen, snuggle into her old bed in her old room. And she didn’t want to give in to the Doctor’s manipulative tactics.

All the same, she had to admit she was curious about why he might be trying to manipulate her.

“One day,” she said grudgingly. “One day, and then I go back to the estate, for as long as I want. Okay?”

“Okay!” Mickey blurted before darting into the crowd.

“Okay?” Rose prompted the Doctor.

He nodded, a small but knowing smile playing across his face. “Okay.”

 ***

 He could get used to this traveling-through-time-and-space stuff, Mickey thought.

He wandered through the market along with Rose, the two of them listening to the Doctor as he babbled about this and that, listing off local history and customs and traditions and commerce and trade routes and the value and many uses of Uraalean ore and it was all rather quaint, wasn’t it, that the locals seemed so pleased with their modest lifestyles given the literal goldmine just beneath their feet? Whether or not the Doctor noticed the extent to which Mickey and Rose’s eyes had glazed over was anyone’s guess, but he perked up Mickey’s attention right away by pointing out a booth selling tiny white “concentration chips”—fantastic for defeating the final boss in a video game, the Doctor explained under his breath.

“Do they work?” Mickey asked, holding one of the chips up to the light of the sun.

“Indeed they do,” replied the Doctor, “if you don’t mind an aftertaste of spoiled cabbage.”

Mickey wrinkled his nose, and traded in his watch for a handful.

Strolling amongst the food stalls, Rose drew from her well of experience in otherworldly markets and helped Mickey pick and choose exotic treats to try. Mickey looked over baskets of golden-yellow berries and strings of brown and white bulbs and skewers of meat, sampled Hohmish candies and meat-pies and spiny green fruit and some kind of tuber slathered in gravy. Mickey and Rose shared a frothy beverage served out of a bumpy mottled husk, and all three companions tried some of the blue fizzy beer; Mickey was pleased to discover that it tasted vaguely of strawberries and mangoes.

“Like they had a delicious liquid baby together,” Mickey decided.

“Infinitely preferable to most other beers,” the Doctor agreed. “Especially what they served in ancient Egypt. Nasty stuff, you should try it sometime.”

After that, they stopped and watched a street performance, a mini-circus replete with jugglers and dancers and acrobats, all of them jumping and whirling, prancing and singing, their voices and faces young and beautiful and rich. The Doctor somehow procured some coins for Mickey to toss their way, and when he dropped the coins at their feet, more than one of the performers sent a flirtatious smile or wink in his direction, along with a smattering of orange flowers.

So the Hohmish people had good taste. Good to know.

“What do you know about this?” Mickey asked the Doctor, brandishing a poster at him. He pointed to the spear-wielding figures on the front, to the dragonlike creature hovering menacingly over them.

Eyebrow piqued, the Doctor slipped on his spectacles, examining the poster. “It’s a championship,” he explained. “Sort of like Hohm’s version of the Olympics, but anyone can participate. It’s essentially an excuse for a bunch of people to beat each other over the head with sticks and swords.”

“So like a tournament.”

“Exactly like a tournament,” the Doctor replied, pocketing his spectacles. “Why do you ask?”

“Why do you think? We should go to it!” Mickey said excitedly.

“Whatever for?”

Mickey pointed to the poster again. “Dragon. Do I need to say anything else?”

“Eh,” the Doctor said. “After your first half-dozen encounters with dragons, the novelty sort of wears off. Besides, they haven’t got dragons here. That’s just an illustrative hyperbole designed to sucker people into going.”

Grumping under his breath, Mickey stuck the poster back on the wall where he’d found it. “Bet there is so a dragon,” he mumbled, but Rose and the Doctor had already moved on.

Soon they stopped in a games-parlor, where dice rolled freely and smoke hung thick in the air. The room echoed with the sounds of whoops and cheers and stomping feet and hooves, a small crowd of onlookers clustered at the back to bet on two centaurs grappling each other by the shoulders and flanks. Mickey quickly grew bored of the wrestling match and opted to play cards instead, listening intently as the Doctor explained the rules of the local game. Neither Mickey nor Rose lasted very long—Mickey lost half of his concentration chips, to his dismay—but the Doctor fared quite well. He did so well, in fact, that he claimed much of the locals’ petty cash and any baubles they had in their pockets besides, and the three of them were chased out of the parlor amidst insults and shouts. Mickey and the Doctor laughed the whole time.

Rose didn’t laugh. She smiled, but it was less than genuine, her eyes a little duller than usual, and the longer the day wore on, the more she seemed to trail behind Mickey and the Doctor. Mickey was almost surprised that the Doctor didn’t say anything, but it was starting to feel like he and Rose were engaged in some strange silent battle to see who could ignore each other the longest, and Mickey wasn’t about to disrupt it. He only wished he’d brought along some popcorn for the show.

Still, Mickey couldn’t help but notice that just after he caught sight of Rose yawning, the Doctor was quick to arrange some transportation for them.

“They’re called ‘Herdbeasts.’ The Hohmish aren’t terribly clever with their nomenclature, are they?” said the Doctor, and the vendor shot him a dirty look.

The two Herdbeasts were huge, covered in coarse shaggy fur and adorned with giant horns curling around their ears. Riding the massive animals through town, Mickey, Rose, and the Doctor easily sat head and shoulders above everyone else. And, Mickey noted with huge satisfaction, Rose had chosen to ride with him, not the Doctor.

Oh, maybe Mickey Smith wasn’t as impressive as Mr. High-and-Mighty-Time-Lord over there, but he certainly wasn’t as big of an ass, either. He would never leave his friends behind just to snog some bird back in the bloody blooming Renaissance, no matter how rich or pretty she was. No, sir, he would not.

Leaning back, Mickey reveled in the warmth of the sun on his face. He loved this, the strange newness of everything, the tingling anticipation and excitement of it all. He drank in the headiness of scents unfamiliar and utterly alien, the smells of people and animals mingling with spices and perfumes and roasting meat, and he closed his eyes in satisfaction. Everything was going splendidly. He was on a fascinating planet, many pretty people continued to make eyes at him, and the Doctor was no better than anyone else, just as Mickey had been saying all along.

His I told you so dance was getting longer and longer by the minute.

 ***

 The Doctor protested that it wasn’t dancing in the strictest terms—at least, not in the way that Rose and Mickey were thinking—but Rose brightened when she saw the Temple of Dance, and besides, the Doctor was never one to refuse a new cultural experience for his companions. But he drew the line at being pulled onto the dance floor himself, and that was how he found himself bored out of his mind in a Hohmish temple booth, stuck in a room full of people, and yet, somehow, still utterly alone.

No, wait. He wasn’t alone. He was sitting opposite Mickey Smith, Idiot at Large, whose head and neck were adorned with wreaths of orange flowers, his person surrounded by several laughing young ladies, each of them latched onto his every word. It was far, far worse than being alone.

The Doctor ignored Mickey’s terrible jokes and even worse pick-up lines and watched the supplicants on the dance floor instead. Their bodies moved like flames, twist-jump-flickering about the place, hair and skin flashing gold in the lamplight. The dance was purely for tradition’s sake, hearkening back to the days when such things would have been offered in earnest to a local deity in exchange for favors, but it was pretty nonetheless, and if such gods had ever existed, they would surely be pleased. The Doctor turned to Rose to explain the meaning of the offering to her, but of course she wasn’t sitting next to him, she was dancing up there with the rest of them, picking up dance moves and accepting flowers from friendly locals.

Her eyes crinkled with laughter when she bumped into a centaur fellow and his human friend. They both returned the laugh and the three of them chatted as they danced.

“Uh-oh,” Mickey laughed from across the table. “Looks like someone’s moving in on your territory!”

“Sorry?” the Doctor asked.

“I said, looks like someone’s making a move on your girl!”

“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about,” the Doctor said, sparing Mickey a glance before turning back to Rose and her new friends.

“Right, so I guess it’s not working, then?” Mickey asked. He took a swig of ale from his tankard before passing it off to one of his admirers, who handed him a flower in return.

The Doctor arched an eyebrow at him in confusion. “Is what working?”

“Her plan. Is it working, or what? You gonna tell me Time Lords don’t get that way?”

The Doctor’s eyebrow arched even higher. “What way?”

“Oh, come on,” Mickey said, rolling his eyes. “You can’t honestly be that thick. You abandon her to go shag Frenchie, she goes dirty dancing with some alien pretty boys—it’s classic. Now you go after her, and the two of you make nice.”

He grew stern. “You do want to make nice, don’t you?”

“Good grief, but you’re just uttering a bunch of nonsense right now,” the Doctor laughed. He turned back to the dance floor to see Rose accepting a goblet of libations from her new centaur friend. Harmless stuff, he was sure.

“I’m serious, Doctor,” Mickey told him, looping an arm around one of his companions. “I know you think you’re all magnificent and a genius and The Best Thing That Ever Happened in the History of Ever, but even you won’t be able to keep Rose on the TARDIS if you don’t go over there and apologize to her.”

“Sorry, Mickey, but I still haven’t got the faintest clue what you’re on about.”

Mickey laughed. “You,” he said, his speech punctuated with a hearty guffaw, “are quite possibly the stupidest bloke I’ve ever met.”

The Doctor didn’t respond; he was too absorbed in watching Rose interact with her new friends. He didn’t see anything wrong with it. Yes, she seemed more animated and engaged than she had all day, and yes, she was smiling broadly, and yes, it did appear to be the smile she normally reserved for the Doctor, with her tongue poking out playfully between her teeth. But all of that was fine, nothing to worry about. It certainly didn’t concern him when the human fellow tucked a flower behind Rose’s ear, and it didn’t bother him at all when Rose placed the centaur’s hands on her hips. And when the centaur pecked a kiss on her cheek, the Doctor definitely did not glare.

“Now you’re getting it,” said Mickey, nodding.

“There’s no ‘it’ to get,” the Doctor replied, downing the last of his ale before he pushed up from the booth. “All the same,” he said, straightening his coat, “Probably best to go retrieve her, make it back to the TARDIS before nightfall.”

“Uh-huh,” Mickey’s voice drifted after him, heavy with sarcasm, but the Doctor ignored it. He pushed through the teeming mass of bodies, leaving apologies and excuses in his wake. He watched as a priestess handed Rose another pair of drinks; when Rose passed one over to the centaur bloke, his fingers briefly closed around hers on the cup.

Not that the Doctor cared. Because he didn’t.

“Rose,” he shouted over the noise, tapping her arm. She was laughing again, giggling at something the centaur had said, again, and she greeted the Doctor with a smile.

“Come dance with me!” she said, draping her hands over the Doctor’s shoulders.

He shook his head. “I was thinking we should head out, actually.”

“Why?”

“It’s getting late. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“You’ve got a time machine,” Rose pointed out, her hips swaying to the music. “We’ll be fine!”

When the Doctor didn’t immediately respond, Rose’s fingers wandered down his chest, flitting to his necktie. The Doctor froze, suddenly strangely warm and unable to move as Rose pulled herself closer.

“Dance with me,” she said again, softer this time.

The Doctor swallowed. Standing this close, he could count her eyelashes, see her pupils dilating in the low light, smell the sweet scent of wine on her lips. He could practically taste it.

(A little bold of her, wasn’t it? But maybe after their last few adventures…)

He cleared his throat. “I think Mickey’s ready to leave.”

“I think he’ll be all right,” Rose laughed.

Sighing, the Doctor slipped Rose’s hands off his necktie, wrapped his fingers around hers instead. “Come on,” he said, pulling. “Let’s just go.”

“Whoa there,” Rose’s centaur friend said, stepping in. “Getting a bit hands-on, are we?”

“No, sorry Geoffrynn, he’s all right—”

“I’m no more hands-on than anyone else in here,” the Doctor interrupted smoothly. “Only I generally don’t make a display of it for everyone to see.”

Rose’s brow furrowed. “You got a problem?” she half-laughed, half-challenged.

“Nope,” the Doctor replied, his voice easy and calm. “Just saying that you’ve made your point, and now it’s time to go.”

He started to walk away, pulling Rose after him, but she did not move.

“If he’s giving you trouble…” Geoffrynn started to say.

“Thanks, but I’m okay,” Rose told him with a winning smile; Geoffrynn shrugged and trotted away. When Rose turned back to the Doctor, the smile vanished from her face as if it had never been there. “What do you mean, I’ve made my point?”

“I understand that you’ve been experiencing some feelings of jealousy,” the Doctor explained patiently.

Rose’s eyes widened at that and her mouth fell open. Her cheeks and chest, already flushed from all of her dancing and laughing and drinking, flushed just a little bit more, growing pink all over. The Doctor decided to keep going, since this seemed to be a good indication that he was on the right track.

“This isn’t a criticism. Jealousy is a perfectly natural feeling. Two people, traveling together for a long time—it only makes sense that feelings of a certain nature would start to develop in one direction or another,” he continued. “And you can hardly be blamed; I’m rather fit this time around, after all. And my hair is quite magnificent, and I don’t half look good in a tight pair of trousers.”

“I don’t…” Rose said, but whatever it was she didn’t, her mouth couldn’t seem to elaborate.

“But you should know that you and your wellbeing are very important to me,” the Doctor assured her kindly. “As is always the case with my companions. So you don’t need to make an exhibit of yourself to get my attention.”

Rose’s mouth snapped shut and something flashed in her eyes.

“Now,” the Doctor said, pleased with himself for a situation well-handled. “Shall we?”

He tugged her hand again, only to feel her fingers go limp between his. Frowning, he looked down to see that she had let go of his hand, and was withdrawing hers entirely, curling it back to the safety of her own body. When he looked up again, the expression on Rose’s face startled him.

Ah. Anger. That was definitely anger. And a lot of it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Rose snapped. “God, you really are an alien!”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing! This—” Rose shouted as she gestured, causing several nearby dancers to jump in surprise, “—has got nothing to do with you. I just wanted to have a little fun, maybe have a drink!”

“Perhaps, but Mickey said—”

“Mickey, as you are always so eager to point out, is kind of an idiot sometimes,” Rose snapped. “The universe doesn’t always revolve around you, all right? And neither do I. Get over yourself!”

The Doctor tossed up both of his palms in an expression of surrender. “Clearly I misunderstood. I apologize.” He stepped away, shaking his head, uncertain of where he’d gone wrong.

“Unbelievable git,” he heard Rose mutter behind his back.

He stopped in his tracks. “Beg your pardon?” he asked, turning around.

Rose threw her hands in the air. “You can apologize for making a stupid assumption, but you can’t say you’re sorry for abandoning Mickey and me?”

“Abandoning? What are you talking about?”

Laughing, Rose shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing! Let’s just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. Just like we do with everything else!”

“All right,” the Doctor said, his temper rising. His hands clenched into fists, working to shut things down before he could erupt. “That’s fine with me.”

“All right, then!” Rose replied.

“Fine!” the Doctor said loudly.

“Great!” Rose added.

“Bloody marvelous!” the Doctor shouted.

The temple fell silent all around them. Even Mickey and his entourage had gone quiet, the women staring at them with open mouths and curious eyes, Mickey watching with a look of absolute glee. The Doctor fidgeted uncomfortably when he realized that they weren’t the only ones watching—all eyes had turned their way. He chanced a glance at Rose. She crossed her arms, suddenly very interested in something on the ground.

Eventually, blessedly, background noise began trickling back in, the temple refilling with the sounds of chatter and singing. Rose and the Doctor very carefully did not look at each other.

“Head on back to the TARDIS if you like,” Rose said after a moment. “I’m going to stay out for a bit.”

“Yes, I think I will. And you and Mickey are welcome to join me…” the Doctor said, gesturing halfheartedly, “…just whenever you want.”

“We will.” Rose looked up at him, fixing him with a hard stare. “And then you’re taking me home tomorrow.”

The Doctor drew in a deep breath. “If that’s what you want.”

“Seems like it’s what you want.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue—no, that wasn’t what he wanted, what in the galaxy would make her think that, surely she couldn’t be that stupid, surely she could see that he’d planned this whole thing just to—

He stopped himself. A petty little spark of pride had snuck up and seized his tongue, stealing his words from him.

“All right,” he said, and he started to walk away.

“Fine,” Rose replied, and she took a step too.

“Great,” the Doctor turned around to counter.

Rose whirled back around and marched right up to him. “Bloody marvelous,” she hissed in his face.

The two of them glared at each other. Both pairs of eyes narrowed.

Surprising. They could never usually hold each other’s gaze this long. But she wasn’t backing down, so neither would he.

After a moment, the Doctor was tempted to declare himself the winner of this unofficial little staring contest, because although Rose Tyler was a stubborn thing, she had developed quite the promising twitch in her cheek. But then, quite by accident, the Doctor blinked.

Rose smirked. The Doctor cursed his superior biology.

Each of them turned on their heel and stomped away.

***

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Top 10 Business Books for Kids

One of the first things you notice when you start researching business books for kids is that most of these books are about lemonade stands. As any business owner knows, there is so much more to running a business than a lemonade stand can teach.

This is especially the case in today’s digital ecosystem. This technology has made it possible for pre-teens and teens to actually become millionaires. And although not many teens achieve this level of access, the ecosystem provides many opportunities.

And it is these opportunities kids can grab a hold on to and start early to make money and achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Business books provide inspiration and lessons to lay the foundations early in life.

These are the best books on entrepreneurship for kids that, taken together, are like a mini-MBA for your budding entrepreneur kids.

1. Lunch Money

by Andrew Clements (Author), Brian Selznick (Illustrator)

The book looks at all of the obstacles an entrepreneur might go through. From finding a market through the hurdles of school regulations to how money changes you, personal relationships and even philanthropy. Add the illustrations from Brian Selznick and you have a great way to capture the attention of your kids while they learn about business.

Your little entrepreneur will be inspired to look for obvious opportunities as they follow the entrepreneurial adventures of Greg who discovers that almost every kid has at least a quarter left over from lunch. 

Read Lunch Money along with your kids and watch their eyes as the light-bulb goes on when they see what else he discovers. Whether you’ve got a little entrepreneur on your hands or you’d like to inspire a little entrepreneurial thinking, this book will help.  Ideal for elementary school age

2. Kid Start-Up: How YOU Can Become an Entrepreneur

by Mark Cuban, Shaan Patel, Ian McCue

With this book kids will learn how to spot opportunities, calculate demand, and do the work to launch their business.  While it does include the obvious “lemonade stand”, this business book also explores online businesses such as starting an Etsy store. Read this along with your kids and you just might discover your next family business.

Celebrity “Shark” Mark Cuban is well known for being a dad, so it makes sense that he’s partnered up to write a kidpreneur book. Written for elementary school-age kids Kid Start-Up: How YOU Can Become an Entrepreneur, teaches valuable lessons such as working hard, never giving up and collaborating.

3. Ethan’s BIG Business Plan

by Yu-Ting Hung, Ethan Hsu

The biggest lesson is to control your destiny, followed by lessons in how to spot opportunities, sell products and manage money. With the lessons from this book, your little one can apply real-world concepts from the book for their first business. And continue to grow with each experience whether they are a 10-year-old, younger or older.

The next time your kid throws a tantrum at the supermarket because you said “No!” — grab this book! Ethan’s BIG Business Plan is aimed at kids to make their own plans in order to reach their spending goals. A fun, well-structured way to help kids think through the finances and strategies to make it all work.

4. How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest!

by James McKenna, Jeannine Glista, Matt Fontaine

Best quote — EVER! “Millionaires are people who MAKE a million dollars, not spend a million dollars! Most businesses fail because of poor money management. Not everyone is meant for entrepreneurship, but everyone can be a savvy investor.

So whether your kid wants to start his or her own business or not, learning to manage their finances early is one of the best lessons they can learn. This is one of the books that will teach them how to invest and manage their finances.

Financial skills are not a part of traditional academia, so books like this can literally be worth their weight in gold. How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest! provides opportunities for conversation. It does so with respect to financial rules, philosophies, and habits that have generated interest and information that will last a lifetime.

5. Money Ninja: A Children’s Book About Saving, Investing, and Donating (Ninja Life Hacks 10)

by Mary Nhin, Jelena Stupar

Money Ninja offers a great way to teach kids the benefits of being sensible and generous with their finances from a young age, rather than instantly spending any money they earn or receive. As with the other books on this list, this book looks to instill responsibility early on. The book is geared for three-year-old kids going all the way to 11 years old.

This book is part of the Ninja Life Hack series in which Ninja characters teach children important life lessons. In this volume, Money Ninja: A Children’s Book About Saving, Investing, and Donating shows readers how he makes money with his candy machine, lemonade stand and social media posts.

6. What Do You Do With an Idea?

by Kobi Yamada

The author recognizes that ideas are living things. If nurtured and fostered can grow into something much bigger. The language and illustration will touch your heart so much, you’ll read it for yourself as much as your kids, 

This award-winning New York Times national bestseller book is full life lessons including perseverance, confidence, believing in yourself and ideas even when no one else does.

Every great business starts with an idea. But ideas can be fragile. Ignore them and they die, share them with the wrong people, and you can be talked out of them. What Do You Do With an Idea?  is the story about a little child, his anthropomorphized idea and how he brings it into the world.

7. Payback on Poplar Lane

by Margaret Mincks

Starting a business isn’t just about having an idea and making money. When a pair of sixth-grade entrepreneurs compete to become top mogul on their block, they encounter the ugly side of business and have to learn to deal with it.

Payback on Poplar Lane offers up lessons far beyond entrepreneurship.  It will take your kids on an emotional journey where they begin to understand what motivates and drives people. Fantastic lessons on friendship, collaboration and how to work with others.  However, it doesn’t stop there because there are even bigger lessons on what happens when you take big missteps.

8. Starting Your Own Business: Become an Entrepreneur!

by Adam Toren, Matthew Toren

The focus on completing projects step by step is a great way for a child to learn about the business world. And each project is an opportunity to further explore their ideas. Throughout the book, there are engaging icons, eye-catching images and even spaces for the reader to write their answers to open-ended questions.It finishes with some words of encouragement and a glossary.

This is part of the “Dummies” series of books written by young entrepreneur brother Matthew and Adam Torren. Ideal for the budding kid entrepreneur in your family who has an idea and needs practical steps to turn it into a business. Starting Your Own Business: Become an Entrepreneur! covers: the basics of entrepreneurial success, how to find your big idea, how to make a plan (and what to do with it once you’ve created it), budgets, marketing, product or service delivery and customer service.

9. Rufus the Writer

by Elizabeth Bram

This book takes a look at other business opportunities for your kid. A kids business doesn’t have to sell products, which is what Rufus the Writer shows. For all the creative kids who wonder how they can earn a living with their talent, this is a great book. It will show them they don’t have to give up on their dreams of becoming a writer, artist or other creative careers.

What if you don’t have a typical child on your hands? In this book, Rufus decides to open a “story stand” instead of a lemonade stand. Rufus the Writer is a celebration of creativity as an entrepreneurial avenue that is especially valuable in the digital age. One interesting aspect of the book is the focus of trading. So many entrepreneurial books for young people are focused on the hard skills of starting a business, however, this one teaches the lessons of trading one talent for another. 

10. Kid Millionaire: Over 50 Exciting Business Ideas

by Matthew Eliot

Like the title says, there are business ideas — and so much more. You’ll find personal stories, templates, how-to’s on everything from opening a bank account to building your own apps and websites. These aren’t just ideas pulled out of the air, they come from real kid entrepreneurs.

By highlighting examples from real kids, Kid Millionaire: Over 50 Exciting Business Ideas shows readers they can go after their dreams and make it happen. It makes it much relatable for a kid to see someone their own age going after .

More Business Information for Kids

If your young business person has read all the business books on the list or is looking for more resources, we have more suggestions.  After all, there’s more advice than books.  Check out the following free resources for budding entrepreneurs and kid businesses:

Kidpreneur Magazine — This is our digital magazine for young entrepreneurs. It’s a collection of our articles with advice and guidance for children and high school students — and their parents. From preparing your child to be an entrepreneur to encouraging their ideas, you will find practical help and inspiration. Read: Kidpreneur Magazine.

Business Ideas for Teens – Ready to jump right into starting a business? Or perhaps you want to research business startup concepts along with reading a good business book or two. If you need ideas, we have plenty! High school students can easily start a business at home and we’ve collected a number of options to consider. These suggestions do not require a lot of money, and none are very complex.  Read: 50 Business Ideas for Teens.

Teaching Children the Value of Commitment – The foundation of starting a business is commitment. Children have to understand the value of committing to an idea, principle and goals early in life. With plenty of examples of many successful entrepreneurs who stuck to their commitment, it is easy to why it is so important. Read: Parenting a Child Entrepreneur.

National Lemonade Day – Did you know there’s a holiday just for encouraging young entrepreneurs?  Called National Lemonade Day, it occurs on the first Sunday of May annually and the next one is on Sunday, May 2, 2021. This event is a great way to show community support, and make children feel like entrepreneurship is valued.

Saving for a startup fund – Any young person will be more committed to success if he or she has skin in the game.  Teach young people how to forgo spending their allowance on discretionary items, and instead save it up to start a business.  See our savings calculator to get started. 

Early Lesson

The early lessons these business books provide for kids will last a lifetime. As budding entrepreneurs, the business principles they learn now will serve them well in the future.

This article, “Top 10 Business Books for Kids” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

The post Top 10 Business Books for Kids appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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[businessreviewguidenow]

Top 10 Business Books for Kids

One of the first things you notice when you start researching business books for kids is that most of these books are about lemonade stands. As any business owner knows, there is so much more to running a business than a lemonade stand can teach.

This is especially the case in today’s digital ecosystem. This technology has made it possible for pre-teens and teens to actually become millionaires. And although not many teens achieve this level of access, the ecosystem provides many opportunities.

And it is these opportunities kids can grab a hold on to and start early to make money and achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Business books provide inspiration and lessons to lay the foundations early in life.

These are the best books on entrepreneurship for kids that, taken together, are like a mini-MBA for your budding entrepreneur kids.

1. Lunch Money

by Andrew Clements (Author), Brian Selznick (Illustrator)

The book looks at all of the obstacles an entrepreneur might go through. From finding a market through the hurdles of school regulations to how money changes you, personal relationships and even philanthropy. Add the illustrations from Brian Selznick and you have a great way to capture the attention of your kids while they learn about business.

Your little entrepreneur will be inspired to look for obvious opportunities as they follow the entrepreneurial adventures of Greg who discovers that almost every kid has at least a quarter left over from lunch. 

Read Lunch Money along with your kids and watch their eyes as the light-bulb goes on when they see what else he discovers. Whether you’ve got a little entrepreneur on your hands or you’d like to inspire a little entrepreneurial thinking, this book will help.  Ideal for elementary school age

2. Kid Start-Up: How YOU Can Become an Entrepreneur

by Mark Cuban, Shaan Patel, Ian McCue

With this book kids will learn how to spot opportunities, calculate demand, and do the work to launch their business.  While it does include the obvious “lemonade stand”, this business book also explores online businesses such as starting an Etsy store. Read this along with your kids and you just might discover your next family business.

Celebrity “Shark” Mark Cuban is well known for being a dad, so it makes sense that he’s partnered up to write a kidpreneur book. Written for elementary school-age kids Kid Start-Up: How YOU Can Become an Entrepreneur, teaches valuable lessons such as working hard, never giving up and collaborating.

3. Ethan’s BIG Business Plan

by Yu-Ting Hung, Ethan Hsu

The biggest lesson is to control your destiny, followed by lessons in how to spot opportunities, sell products and manage money. With the lessons from this book, your little one can apply real-world concepts from the book for their first business. And continue to grow with each experience whether they are a 10-year-old, younger or older.

The next time your kid throws a tantrum at the supermarket because you said “No!” — grab this book! Ethan’s BIG Business Plan is aimed at kids to make their own plans in order to reach their spending goals. A fun, well-structured way to help kids think through the finances and strategies to make it all work.

4. How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest!

by James McKenna, Jeannine Glista, Matt Fontaine

Best quote — EVER! “Millionaires are people who MAKE a million dollars, not spend a million dollars! Most businesses fail because of poor money management. Not everyone is meant for entrepreneurship, but everyone can be a savvy investor.

So whether your kid wants to start his or her own business or not, learning to manage their finances early is one of the best lessons they can learn. This is one of the books that will teach them how to invest and manage their finances.

Financial skills are not a part of traditional academia, so books like this can literally be worth their weight in gold. How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest! provides opportunities for conversation. It does so with respect to financial rules, philosophies, and habits that have generated interest and information that will last a lifetime.

5. Money Ninja: A Children’s Book About Saving, Investing, and Donating (Ninja Life Hacks 10)

by Mary Nhin, Jelena Stupar

Money Ninja offers a great way to teach kids the benefits of being sensible and generous with their finances from a young age, rather than instantly spending any money they earn or receive. As with the other books on this list, this book looks to instill responsibility early on. The book is geared for three-year-old kids going all the way to 11 years old.

This book is part of the Ninja Life Hack series in which Ninja characters teach children important life lessons. In this volume, Money Ninja: A Children’s Book About Saving, Investing, and Donating shows readers how he makes money with his candy machine, lemonade stand and social media posts.

6. What Do You Do With an Idea?

by Kobi Yamada

The author recognizes that ideas are living things. If nurtured and fostered can grow into something much bigger. The language and illustration will touch your heart so much, you’ll read it for yourself as much as your kids, 

This award-winning New York Times national bestseller book is full life lessons including perseverance, confidence, believing in yourself and ideas even when no one else does.

Every great business starts with an idea. But ideas can be fragile. Ignore them and they die, share them with the wrong people, and you can be talked out of them. What Do You Do With an Idea?  is the story about a little child, his anthropomorphized idea and how he brings it into the world.

7. Payback on Poplar Lane

by Margaret Mincks

Starting a business isn’t just about having an idea and making money. When a pair of sixth-grade entrepreneurs compete to become top mogul on their block, they encounter the ugly side of business and have to learn to deal with it.

Payback on Poplar Lane offers up lessons far beyond entrepreneurship.  It will take your kids on an emotional journey where they begin to understand what motivates and drives people. Fantastic lessons on friendship, collaboration and how to work with others.  However, it doesn’t stop there because there are even bigger lessons on what happens when you take big missteps.

8. Starting Your Own Business: Become an Entrepreneur!

by Adam Toren, Matthew Toren

The focus on completing projects step by step is a great way for a child to learn about the business world. And each project is an opportunity to further explore their ideas. Throughout the book, there are engaging icons, eye-catching images and even spaces for the reader to write their answers to open-ended questions.It finishes with some words of encouragement and a glossary.

This is part of the “Dummies” series of books written by young entrepreneur brother Matthew and Adam Torren. Ideal for the budding kid entrepreneur in your family who has an idea and needs practical steps to turn it into a business. Starting Your Own Business: Become an Entrepreneur! covers: the basics of entrepreneurial success, how to find your big idea, how to make a plan (and what to do with it once you’ve created it), budgets, marketing, product or service delivery and customer service.

9. Rufus the Writer

by Elizabeth Bram

This book takes a look at other business opportunities for your kid. A kids business doesn’t have to sell products, which is what Rufus the Writer shows. For all the creative kids who wonder how they can earn a living with their talent, this is a great book. It will show them they don’t have to give up on their dreams of becoming a writer, artist or other creative careers.

What if you don’t have a typical child on your hands? In this book, Rufus decides to open a “story stand” instead of a lemonade stand. Rufus the Writer is a celebration of creativity as an entrepreneurial avenue that is especially valuable in the digital age. One interesting aspect of the book is the focus of trading. So many entrepreneurial books for young people are focused on the hard skills of starting a business, however, this one teaches the lessons of trading one talent for another. 

10. Kid Millionaire: Over 50 Exciting Business Ideas

by Matthew Eliot

Like the title says, there are business ideas — and so much more. You’ll find personal stories, templates, how-to’s on everything from opening a bank account to building your own apps and websites. These aren’t just ideas pulled out of the air, they come from real kid entrepreneurs.

By highlighting examples from real kids, Kid Millionaire: Over 50 Exciting Business Ideas shows readers they can go after their dreams and make it happen. It makes it much relatable for a kid to see someone their own age going after .

More Business Information for Kids

If your young business person has read all the business books on the list or is looking for more resources, we have more suggestions.  After all, there’s more advice than books.  Check out the following free resources for budding entrepreneurs and kid businesses:

Kidpreneur Magazine — This is our digital magazine for young entrepreneurs. It’s a collection of our articles with advice and guidance for children and high school students — and their parents. From preparing your child to be an entrepreneur to encouraging their ideas, you will find practical help and inspiration. Read: Kidpreneur Magazine.

Business Ideas for Teens – Ready to jump right into starting a business? Or perhaps you want to research business startup concepts along with reading a good business book or two. If you need ideas, we have plenty! High school students can easily start a business at home and we’ve collected a number of options to consider. These suggestions do not require a lot of money, and none are very complex.  Read: 50 Business Ideas for Teens.

Teaching Children the Value of Commitment – The foundation of starting a business is commitment. Children have to understand the value of committing to an idea, principle and goals early in life. With plenty of examples of many successful entrepreneurs who stuck to their commitment, it is easy to why it is so important. Read: Parenting a Child Entrepreneur.

National Lemonade Day – Did you know there’s a holiday just for encouraging young entrepreneurs?  Called National Lemonade Day, it occurs on the first Sunday of May annually and the next one is on Sunday, May 2, 2021. This event is a great way to show community support, and make children feel like entrepreneurship is valued.

Saving for a startup fund – Any young person will be more committed to success if he or she has skin in the game.  Teach young people how to forgo spending their allowance on discretionary items, and instead save it up to start a business.  See our savings calculator to get started. 

Early Lesson

The early lessons these business books provide for kids will last a lifetime. As budding entrepreneurs, the business principles they learn now will serve them well in the future.

This article, “Top 10 Business Books for Kids” was first published on Small Business Trends

source https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/08/business-books-for-kids.html

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Persona examples from around the web, and why they work

Understanding your customers is an obvious cornerstone of business. After all, how can you be sure your brand is up to the task without a deep understanding of what it is that your audience is looking for?

Here’s the tricky part, though – unless you work to drill down and focus on the type of individuals you’re selling to, your customers can quickly become a sea of faces without the benefit of common threads or any defining characteristics among them.

This is where your buyer personas come in, helping you and your marketing team better understand the motivations behind purchasing decisions and the type of messaging that will appeal to your audience.

Why use personas?

I know what you’re thinking: “I already know who my ideal customer is.” But do you really? Do you have an in-depth understanding of the things that make your customers tick, or the characteristics that identify your ideal customer? Do you know which of your customers has the highest commercial value, or which customers are influencers and which have decision-making power?

These – and a range of other aspects, which we’ll take a look at shortly – are all things that your personas can tell you, and these critical insights should be used to shape the ways in which you speak to different clients at certain points in their customer journey. Your messaging is important, and you must be able to speak to your customers in a way that directly lines up with their needs and the pain points they’re looking to have solved.

This is where your personas come in – they help you and your marketing team have the best understanding of the actual users of your merchandise or services, the key interests they have and what appeals to them.

As Marcia Riefer Johnston pointed out for the Content Marketing Institute, some teams have the bad habit of skipping over persona creation in order to get to the meat of a project. Others may have personas available to them, but choose to – GASP! – ignore them.

Once created, personas are an incredibly effective resource that will be consulted time and time again, and businesses that don’t establish their personas or ignore them do so at their own peril – Johnston noted that many of these organisations quite literally go out of business.

What’s in a buyer persona template?

Building buyer personas or user personas doesn’t just mean outlining a bunch of typical customer needs that map to the services you provide. Sure, this can be helpful, but your buyer personas should go much further than that, and outline the makeup of your ideal customer, putting a name and other key details to the sea of faces that is your target audience.

That way, when you’re creating your buyer personas, you’re actually building out fictional characters that represent real market segments of your current and potential customer audience. It’s beneficial to start by creating a persona template that outlines all the different areas of information you and your team will need to know about your target audience customer personas. In this way, once this template is built, you can reuse it again and again to better define market segmentations and drill down into additional audience personas.

Some of the information that your buyer persona template should include:

Name, age, location, interests and other personal, background information.

Business background information, including job title, whether or not they are a decision-maker or the type of influence they might have on decision-makers.

Target audience segment that each persona fits into. Be as specific as possible – for instance, if the brand has defined its individual market segmentations, this is good information to include here as well.

Day-in-the-life, with a first-person description from the persona themselves. This is important, as readers should begin to glean a full understanding of the persona from this perspective.

Specific objectives. It’s important to be as focused and targeted here as possible. In other words, don’t just say, “Grow profits.” Say “Remove the inefficiencies that prevent a speedy time-to-market.”

Main problems. Again, it’s important to be specific. Drill down – what frustrates this buyer persona? What stands in the way of his or her goals?

Orientation toward the job. This part of the customer persona can be incredibly telling. For instance, a persona who’s new to the job will require more work for awareness and education. A persona who’s been in her career for 15 years and is a confident mentor and leader, on the other hand, will require more of an authoritative tone that doesn’t talk down to her.

Open-ended questions, including those that the persona will ask at different points in the customer journey, and how they relate to his or her personality and position.

Content preferences. Given what we know about the customer persona, how does he or she like to consume content? This includes preferred channels, the tone, style and voice that will most resonate, content formats and more.

Keywords, including those that align with the persona’s position within the business and the obstacles they’re trying to solve.

Once you have these basics covered, you and your team can flesh out your personas even further by asking open-ended questions about each audience persona and the types of strategies that best connect with their interests. This practice can shine a light on the other elements and ideas to include in your buyer persona template, creating a more detailed document for you to work from. The more detailed your template, the better!

Don’t forget to include a place for photo or avatar within your persona template. Taking the time to include a visual is an incredibly helpful extra step that will enable your team to visualise the person they want to connect with.

Buyer persona examples

Let’s take a look at a few real-life personas, and examine the things that work, as well as the items that could use a little improvement:

Good old Facilities Manager Fred. In this B2B persona from Buffer, we can get a good idea of who Fred is. For instance, we know he falls into the facility/operations management target audience, is married and has an undergraduate degree. We can see the kind of role Fred has within his business, as well as details about the company itself.

This persona also does a good job of outlining the goals and values Fred has, as well as the obstacles that stand in his way. However, these could be more specific and well defined – instead of just stating that Fred has difficulty “keeping all balls in the air”, the persona could go further to describe the elements associated with this struggle. Is it that Fred struggles with time management? Or that specific inefficiencies make it difficult for him to get everything done?

The same goes with the listed objections: We understand that Fred doesn’t want to look dumb – nobody does! But what types of concepts worry him the most? Is he looking to be more educated about certain things? Or is it that he doesn’t like the use of industry jargon? These are all questions worth asking and answering, which can help you further drill down your messaging and overall appeal.

Here we have Director Diane, another Buffer persona. Compared to Fred, Diane is much more well-rounded – we can see what a day is like for her, the problems she runs into, her goals and aspirations, the experience she’s seeking when looking for products and services and more.

It’s interesting here that we also have a mix of bulleted statements, as well as quotes from Diane herself within the PROBLEMS section. It’s very beneficial to let your personas speak for themselves. This little touch goes a long way toward showing the individual’s personality and can provide cues to the type of language the persona uses and what messaging might resonate with him or her. Definitely take the time to create first-person statements from your personas, but ensure that these are carefully thought out and incorporate his or her experience, pain points and motivations.

This B2C persona from Munro provides a good example of the power of the persona design process. Our previous Diane example is very detailed, but the amount of information, bullet points and boxes can become overwhelming, especially for internal teams that tend to glean more value from short blurbs. Brandi, on the other hand, shows the important work that designers can bring to the table with persona creation.

In addition to its layout and design, this persona provides another interesting aspect – not only do we have a first-person quote from Brandi herself, but we can also read over quotes from this company’s actual customers. It’s important, though, that should you choose to include statements from your real buyers, that they align and bring value to the persona. There must be some type of strong connection and reason for including these quotes – otherwise you’re just splashing reviews on a page where they don’t belong.

This persona also helps show the importance of ensuring your personas are well defined – the more detail, the better. Although, don’t be fooled – we can understand A LOT about Brandi from her persona here, including her experiences with shoe shopping and the channels she prefers. As Brandi shows, personas can be information-packed without being overly wordy.

Tobi Day provides us with another example of the impact of persona design. The ways in which you convey persona information is incredibly important. What’s particularly interesting with Tobi is the use of scales and bars to better illustrate her personality and how she associates with technology. This gives readers a very good idea of where Tobi stands and what’s important to her.

Another key takeaway here is the use of Tier and Archetype information, followed by related traits (ambitious, admired, focused). This provides us with an even deeper understanding of the type of person Tobi is, and the ways in which she might make her purchasing decisions.

Who knew that a coffee shop customer could be so well defined? Clearly Iron Springs Design did, as their Sarah Student persona provides a great case of digging deep in order to fully understand your customers. Not only do we get a glimpse into Sarah’s life, background and needs, we can also get to know her in terms of her worries and fears, hopes and dreams and what would make her life easier. Her influences and brand affinities are an important inclusion as well, as these can provide critical cues for messaging and interactions.

Sarah also provides an ideal example of the ways in which personas can inform a brand’s use of social media. As we can see from the “Make her life easier” section, Sarah appreciates discount incentives delivered via social media. This can be a valuable way to connect with and convert Sarah (as well as other customers like her) using her own channel preferences.

Using your buyer personas: Walking through marketing scenarios

Once you’ve framed your personas and fully built them out with personality details, it’s time to take things a step further. It’s important that you and your marketing team are able to use the information you know about your personas to walk them through different scenarios, and apply the resulting lessons to improve your connection with customers.

A good place to start is within your current marketing campaigns. Examine your personas and the ways in which they would react to your existing marketing efforts – you might be surprised by what you learn, and it could provide the perfect opportunity to shift and improve your activities to better suit your audience segments.

Once you’ve used your audience personas to make any necessary adjustments or improvements to your current campaigns, it’s time to inform your team’s work on upcoming content. Your personas can tell you a lot about the types of content that will resonate well with each market segment, and can help you come up with topic ideas that will capture your readers’ attention and provide them with relevant insights.

In addition to leveraging your personas to inform your written content, personas are also incredibly beneficial for the design process. Designers can use the details tied to each persona to create visually appealing collateral that maps to the preferences of your specific buyers.

Another best practice is to use your personas to build out and support your customer journey maps. These user maps help visualise the connection between your brand and your target customer audience. Pairing these maps with your personas can show you the different touch points each persona will prefer. This way, you and your marketing team can envision the path of least resistance to get particular personas from “I’m just looking”, to “I’m ready to buy”.

Your personas are a critical resource that you’ll use again and again to shape the strategies your brand uses to speak to your ideal customers.

Create your own!

We’ve found success with a 6-step persona process that includes:

Discovery

Review

Interview

Research

Development

Presentation

This helps us create in-depth personas that paint a true and accurate picture of specific buyer personas for our clients.

from http://bit.ly/2TShYYU

[increflections-blog]

Ask the late tycoon John Gokonwei how he built his empire and this is what we’ll hear –

“John Gokongwei Jr was born wealthy, but he had to start from scratch after his family lost what they had. Here’s a look back on his journey to becoming one of the most beloved tycoons in the Philippines. Born of a wealthy Filipino-Chinese clan, one would think that John Gokongwei Jr had it easy growing up and effortlessly built one of the biggest conglomerates in the Philippines.

John was indeed born with a silver spoon, but it took great lengths to have it all back. Before dying at 93, he left the family with a multibillion-peso empire spanning food and real estate to banking and aviation.

The clan had all the wealth they could ask for, until the impact of the Great Depression in the 1920s hit the empire hard. Even before World War II reached Cebu, the family’s debt had already ballooned. Around this time Gokongwei Sr, unexpectedly died after receiving the wrong blood type during a blood transfusion. The impoverished John was split from his 5 other siblings and mother when they moved back to China. His father, known as the Cinema King of Cebu then, apparently left the family deep in debt. John’s family had all their properties taken away from them by banks.

From living in a stylish home, 15-year-old John became a market vendor. He sold peanuts and just whatever he could make money out of. Even with little cash, he allotted some to send to his family in China. He was eventually able to buy a bicycle which enabled him to sell goods in nearby towns. Hard work led to his capital growing. The end of the war and the subsequent rebuilding presented opportunities to Gokongwei and his once-rich relatives. John later went on to produce cornstarch, a basic raw material for beer, noodles, and paper. San Miguel Corporation, one of the oldest and largest corporations in the Philippines, was one of Gokongwei’s biggest customers. Over 3 decades, John and his siblings built Universal Robina Corporation (URC), named after his eldest daughter Robina.

URC would become the flagship company of the Gokongwei group. The company produces some of the most popular snacks today, like Chippy, Chiz Curls, Magic Flakes, and Taquitos.

To date, its total assets amount to a whopping P151.9 billion.”

[https://www.rappler.com/business/244577-how-john-gokongwei-jr-built-empire-selling-peanuts]

And how about the richest man in the Philippines Mr. Henry Sy?

“Henry Sy was born in the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen, in Fujian province. He immigrated to the Philippines at the age of 12 and started selling rice, sardines and soap at his father’s neighbourhood store in Manila in 1936.

The store was burned and looted during World War II so Sy was called on to sell goods to help the family survive, according to Sy-Coson, the eldest of his six children.

Following World War II, he sold shoes imported by US soldiers and set up a footwear store, providing him with the platform to later found ShoeMart, the nation’s largest chain and the first air-conditioned shop to sell shoes in the Philippines, in 1958.

After opening six shoe stores, he diversified the business into clothing and soft goods because shoe manufacturers couldn’t meet his demands for higher volumes.

In 1972, Sy opened his first department store, two months after President Ferdinand Marcos placed the country under martial law. Marcos was ousted by a military and civilian uprising in 1986.

Sy first expanded into real-estate development in 1974 with the founding of Multi-Realty Development Corp, formed to develop high-rise condominiums and townhouse units in prime parts of Makati, a city in metropolitan Manila.

In 1976, he bought Acme Savings Bank, which had originally been set up as a thrift bank, and renamed it Banco de Oro Savings & Mortgage Bank. Initially, it provided services mainly to suppliers of ShoeMart. It was renamed Banco de Oro Universal Bank in 1996 when the Philippine central bank gave it the authority to operate as a commercial lender.

Sy had a net worth of US$7.2 billion (S$9.78 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the richest person in the Philippines.

[https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/philippines-richest-man-henry-sy-dies-at-94]

Now let’s see how their children were raised. On Gokonwei this is what we hear –

“Lance Gokongwei, president and chief operating officer of JG Summit Holdings Corp., the holding company of the vast Gokongwei group, was groomed from childhood to take over the family business, which is among the biggest in the country.

Dad started from the bottom and he made sure we all did, too. My eldest sister, Robina, started as a receiving clerk at the bodega of Robinsons Department Store. Dad told her, “How will you be able to do your job at the top later on if you don’t know what people down there are doing? Today, Robina runs our whole retail business.

Marcia, on the other hand, scooped ice cream and made waffle cones at a Tivoli kiosk when she was in high school. Today, she is one of the top executives in our food manufacturing business.

In my case, my first job was putting price tags on women’s bras. I guess that makes me an expert on women.

Stay humble. Dad always made sure that we did not think we were better than other people. He told us to hire people who are smarter than us, who are better than us, so that we can improve the business. There is a Chinese phrase that our parents use with us—“gong kia,” which is a term of endearment, but which literally means “stupid child.” It keeps us humble and makes us feel that we are the same as the people who work with us. It’s okay to make mistakes. Even if Dad gave me a lot of opportunities at an early age, he never hovered over my shoulder. He allowed me to make mistakes as long as I didn’t lose too much money. He knew I would learn a lot from them—and I did.”

[https://business.inquirer.net/223293/lance-y-gokongwei-talks-father-john-taught]

“MANILA — The late tycoon John Gokongwei’s eldest daughter recalled how her kidnappers complained that he was willing to give her away because he has 6 other children, one of many stories in a eulogy for her “mentor-father.”

Gokongwei, of course, was following the advice of then-police colonel Panfilo Lacson who led her rescue without a ransom payoff. Robina Gokongwei-Pe was a senior at the University of the Philippines in 1981 when she was kidnapped with her cousin, Celina Chua.

“Anim pala kayong magkakapatid! Akala ko nag-iisa ka. Sabi ng tatay mo, pwede ka na ipamigay kasi mayroon pa siyang limang anak. Ano ba ‘yan!” Gokongwei-Pe said.

(There’s 6 of you. I thought you are an only child. Your father said he can give you away because he has 5 other children. What’s up with that?)

The eulogy was published in full by Esquire Philippines’ website, part of the Gokongweis’ publishing arm, Summit Media.

Gokongwei, whose JG Summit Holdings controls Robinsons Retail, Universal Robina and Cebu Pacific, “was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll hear,” Gokongwei-Pe said.

Bedridden for 6 weeks and unable to speak due to a feeding tube, Gokongwei insisted on reading financial reports, Gokongwei-Pe said. He also told his 24-year-old grandson: “You have to play around!”

Gokongwei-Pe said her father made sure she started in the storage rooms of Robinsons Department Store, without air-condition and with no set time in and time out to teach her the value of hard work.

The same was true for her brother, Lance Gokongwei, she said.

“The thing is, when Lance was on summer vacation, he also put Lance in the Robinsons Department Store bodega, where he learned how to tag bras and where he learned how to read the alphabet in bra sizes, which came in handy later in life,” she said.

Frustrated that she was a bench-sitter or “bangko” of the UP swimming team, Gokongwei-Pe said her father told her to “never give up.”

“He said that I should be happy that I even qualified for the team. He also said that he lost his father when he was 13—what could be worse than that?” she said.

Gokongwei-Pe said her dad was so happy to give her away that during her wedding, the then 67-year-old patriarch walked too fast as she walked her down the aisle, angering her mother.

“Please wait for the bride!” Gokongwei-Pe recalled her mother as saying.

Her wedding was also one of the rare times Gokongwei got a tuxedo, a rented one, only because he heard that a wedding sponsor, Lopez family patriarch Eugenio “Geny” Lopez Jr., was going to wear one.

“My dad was always known to be a sloppy dresser and cheap when it comes to dressing up. His tie always had a stain from ice cream or coffee,” she said.

When he retired at 90, Gokongwei-Pe recalled fellow shopping mall tycoon Henry Sy telling her father: “John, you are going to face three problems when you retire. One is what you are going to do after working for 50 years. Two is who is going to succeed you. Three is the worst problem of all—how to deal with five sons-in-law.”

Gokongwei-Pe said her father congratulated her most recently for her work with the UP Fighting Maroons men’s basketball team, which made the final 4 for the second straight year.

“He knew what his daughter really loved the most. That’s why I loved him for that,” she said.

Ending her eulogy, Gokongwei-Pe said: “By the way, we did not rent his outfit for today. Somewhere along the way, he decided to buy himself an expensive suit, and we made sure that the tie did not have a stain.”

[https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/11/12/19/gokongwei-daughter-in-playful-eulogy-says-dad-taunted-her-kidnappers]

One thing you’ll notice, is that riches didn’t come overnight. It had to be worked out. It had to be planned. Perseverance and the right attitude. The children were never spoiled or pampered.

Why is EVM included? Well, he is now considered to be number one in the list of “Richest Pastor In Philippines:Top 10 Influencial Pastors/Priest Of 2019.”

“Philippines as one with the highest population in the world ranked at number #13 in the world. Philippines includes with the fastest growing population in asia with more than 107.5 million population in 2019 according to worldometers.info. And Philippines consist of different religions most Filipinos are Catholic with highest percentage 2nd are muslim and the rest are protestant and other denominations.

Here are the religious groups and denominations names of well known personality and most influencial religious leaders in the country with their respective churches and organizations. There names were included in the top 10 most wealthiest and richest churches or persons in the Philippines. [Let’s just jump into number one, you can read the whole article on the link provided 🙂 ]

1 – Eduardo “Eddieboy” Manalo

On top of the list as the richest pastor in philippines is Eduardo Manalo the third successor of I.N.C the most influencial religious personality in Philippines. That every electoral candidates want to get his endorsement. Because of the bloc voting doctrine of their church. Since from Felix Manalo the one founded the I.N.C in philippines then turn it over into his son Eranio Manalo the father of Eduardo Manalo. Eduardo Manalo Asset and net worth is around 1billion peso he owns New Era college and Philippine Arena in Bocaue Bulacan. [https://www.rank1one.com/top-10-richest-pastors-philippines-2019/]

The executive minister of the highly-politicized Iglesia Ni Cristo is arguably the wealthiest Filipino religious leader. Iglesia Ni Cristo is more than two times wealthier that the Roman Catholic Church because the former is centralized and the latter is not. Iglesia Ni Cristo is estimated to be worth nearly a trillion pesos including all of its properties, and Manalo as the CEO is surely worth billions of pesos.

[https://www.opinionstage.com/silveraden/ten-wealthiest-religious-leaders-in-the-philippines]

An argument may  be raised (as was in the comments section of the above articles] that all properties are registered under the name of the Church and not under any individual or person. BUT and that’s a big BUT, the organization is registered as “corporation sole” and the Executive Minister as Administrator of all assets of the orgnization.  In short, he “owns” the organization as “Chief Executive Officer“.  We are discussing here hard undeniable facts, not spiritual such as Christ is the owner and so forth. We are pointing fingers as to who can mortgage, sell, and distribute any and all of the assets of the organization and this includes control of cold cash of the church. None other than EVM being the Executive Minister (and of course JS because he has a Power of Attorney to that effect).

Now there are many anecdotes of the late Felix Manalo and his successor Erano Manalo, but unfortunately I can’t think of even one that describes the  current Executive Minister aside from the praises to high heavens by his so called sasardotes or whatever.

So instead, let us witness a discussion between a Minister and a lay member of the church on attainment of material wealth based on the “inspirational” teaching of the Executive Minister –

Miyembro: Ka Delfin (ministro), papaano natin matatamo ang pagpapala (riches) dito sa mundo?

Ministro: Kapatid, dapat maging masagana ka sa paghahandog (offerings). Tulad rin ng  pagtatanim, kung marami kang itinanim, marami kayong aanihin. Nakalagay rin sa biblia na sinabi ng Diyos, subukan ninyo ako kung hindi ko kayo pagpalain na walang silid na paglalagyan sa mga pagpapalang ibibigay ko sa inyo.

Miyembro: Linggo-linggo, naghahandog ako, kasama na rito ang mga tanging-tanging handugan, bakit hanggang ngayon mahirap pa rin kalagayan ko?

Ministro: Huwag kang maiinip kapatid, walang matuwid na anak ng Diyos na nagpapalimos ng tinapay ayon sa biblia. Baka nag-aalinlangan ka pa sa magagawa ng Diyos?

Miyembro: Papaano ako mag-aalinlangan, 20 taon na ako sa Iglesia, 20 taon akong naghahandog, bakit hanggang ngayon, kubo-kubo pa rin bahay ko, wala pa rin akong matatag na hanap buhay?

Ministro: Kapatid, ang pagpapala ay hindi lamang sa material na bagay. Pasalamat ka at hanggang ngayon buhay ka pa at nasa kahalalan na matatamo mo ang kaligtasan pagdating ni Cristo.

Miyembro: Alam ko po yon. Ang tanong ko lang, bakit ang tagasanglibutan tila madaling umangat ang buhay pero ako parang hindi?

Ministro: Alam mo Kapatid, ang Diyos tunay kang mahal. Alam ng Diyos ang nakaraan, alam rin niya ang kasalukuyan, at higit sa lahat alam niya ang darating. Alam niya na baka kung payamanin ka makalimot ka sa kaniya!

Wow! And to think this line of thinking works among its members. But I’m having my doubts. Many are not that naive on giving so called offerings to “God”. The real give-away  proof is – napaka bilis na ang pagbibilang ng mga Pananalapi sa lokal. 30 minuto lang tapos na! Mabilis na sila nakakauwi ngayo hindi tulad noon 😀 😀 😀

Hindi lang yon, every building from the Arena, to the Garden, and the Museum were  built by the offerings of the members BUT UNLESS YOU PUT UP A HEFTY 500 PESOS (more or less), you’ll never gain entrance. Simply put, you are the owner of a house being refused entry by a mere Caretaker which you hired with your own money!

Ooops, forgot its almost midnight. Got carried away. Seniors have a way of doing that as if you didn’t know. Good night friends, and regards to the family. By the way Christmas is just around the corner. Let’s do the “pagan” and greet ourselves a very Merry, Merry Christmas and a Ho! Ho! Ho!

    “Difference between the wealths of John Gokongwei, Henry Sy and EVM …” Ask the late tycoon John Gokonwei how he built his empire and this is what we'll hear -

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Billy westbrook of Scrubblade Inc., a brand that makes innovative wiper bladesSome stats:Product: Innovative wiper bladesRevenue/mo: $178,000Started: February 2007Location: TemeculaFounders: 1Employees: 6Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Billy Westbrook and I reinvented the wiper blade making it more useful for the consumer. My company is called Scrubblade and our wiper blades clean your windshield beyond the rain, to remove bugs, dirt and road grime from impairing your vision.Currently, we are the #1 blade sold at retail in the H.D. trucking industry and slowly growing in the off-road, online and automotive market.Scrubblade Heavy Duty and Scrubblade Platinum are our two models available today. We believe in keeping our product models available to a minimum to not confuse the customer with too many options. We landed on the INC 5000 and awarded wiper blade of the year by Frost & Sullivan in 2018. That was a big accomplishment for Scrubblade and me personally.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I thought of the Scrubblade idea when I was driving home late one night. A large bug hit my windshield and being the clean freak I am, I tried wiping it off with the wiper blades and washer fluid but all that happened was a massive smear directly in my line of sight.Oncoming lights at night would enhance the smear causing bad vision. I thought, “why can’t wiper blades remove more than just water from the windshield?.” That’s when the idea of Scrubblade was born. In the morning I sketched out the first design that still hangs in our offices today.imageMy background was racing BMX, I literally had zero experience in the wiper blade world. I mean who does? I always liked customizing cars and trucks but had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew there had to be a way to solve the problem I dealt with that night.Years later I started an automotive detailing company while the idea of Scrubblade was on the back burner. I had to pay the bills and deal with a divorce and raising my son at the same time. It was a tough season of life. Pretty sure I was sleeping on an air mattress in a friend's house at this time.I finally got a prototype made and while still detailing cars I was able to start testing the prototype. Driving all over southern California to work, I was able to compare the Scrubblade on my driver's side to a standard wiper on the passenger side as I ran through bugs and other debris.It worked really well at removing bugs and gunk from the windshield compared to my passenger (non-Scrubblade) side. At that point, I knew I was onto something.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.When trying to get a prototype made I found an invention company on TV and decided to give that a swing.I borrowed $7k to have this company find a manufacturer, design a brochure and look into the patent process. Big waste of time and money. That was my first lesson learned and definitely not the last. During my detailing business I met a gentleman that was currently getting products made overseas. After months of washing his cars, I asked what he was doing with all these products in his garage. ( I thought he was an eBay seller.) He mentioned to me that if I had any ideas for products (that are good) he could get his broker to find a factory to work with me. I automatically told him about Scrubblade.Once we landed in a factory, I sent the first drawings over. We went back and forth refining the design until we landed on something I thought would work. I then borrowed $2,500 for a temporary mold to produce a physical prototype. Lots of borrowing money in the early stages. Talk about adding stress to something already stressful, haha.After I got the prototype and tested it for a while, I found out about a TV show called “American Inventor” - the original shark tank. I went through the process and got approved to be on the show. I needed packaging and some signage so I started working with a friend of a friend on the artwork design. Literally every part of Scrubblade started with building a personal network. The first packaging was a competitor packaging wrapped in our artwork. Hey, you do what you gotta do. I ended up placing in the top 25 out of 4,000 entries in American Inventor. Pretty cool but nothing came from it in regards to business or funding. It did create a fire in me to keep pushing forward.imageA couple of months after the show, I had a weekly wash program with a client and over a few months we ended up becoming good friends. One day he dropped his vehicle off at my house to get it washed. He noticed Scrubblade stuff in my hallway and inquired about it. I explained and right away he asked if I needed an investor. I replied with an astonishing, yes! Around 30 days later he pulled his 401k and we started the business. Talk about being committed!This guy wasn’t rich by any means, he took his retirement, got penalized for it and trusted me to do what I said I would do. I will forever be humbled and thankful for his commitment. From that point on I have never looked back. I made it my life's mission to succeed at turning Scrubblade into a household brand ensuring my friend and first investor didn’t waste his retirement on something for nothing. I never would be where I am today if it wasn’t for the relationships, trust from others and confidence in my abilities to accomplish what I set out to do.Describe the process of launching the business.Once the funds came through from the initial investment, we started with a simple eCommerce website and just started calling anyone and everyone we thought needed wiper blades.I remember the first time we had an online order. It was really validating that someone we didn’t know purchased something that started from thin air. Sales were very slow the first year. I think maybe $28k.Once we decided to focus on a certain industry instead of the whole market is when things started to take shape. I mean, everyone is a customer if you drive a vehicle. I thought “who could really use a scrubbing wiper blade?” The H.D. trucking industry popped in my head. These people drive over 100k miles a year and their windshield is literally their office window.Plus, for them to clean their windshield is like a 20 minutes deal. So through that process, we found our target customer. That was the best decision I have ever made since starting Scrubblade. I contacted a buyer at Love’s truck stops and sent him samples. We spoke a few times and he said he liked the product but we had to sell a distributor in order for him to buy Scrubblade.I found out who the distributor was and contacted them. This distributor was having a customer trade show and invited us to come. The cost was $5,500 which after a year of burning cash was more than we had to spend. Man those were tough days.Once again, we borrowed the money from the family and went to the sow. All our cards were on the table. The distributor's customers liked what we had to offer and from that show we started selling Love’s truck stops through the distributor.It was a major turning point! We are now the #1 sold blade in the trucking market and that business has allowed us to expand and grow our market share tremendously. If you have a goal you need to figure out any way to accomplish it. If we would have seen the cost and decided it was too much, I really don’t know if we would still be in business.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?We offer something unique in the market, are affordable and easy to work with. We always do what we say we will do and never say no to a customer's request, unless it’s just not realistic. If a customer wants 500 displays that are going to cost you $10k to put your products on, you do it. Find a way, there are plenty of avenues to fund a deal. It will cost you money but what’s the old saying “it takes money to make money.” yeah keep that in mind.We have mostly been in brick & mortar but in the past 18 - 24 months since we stopped selling Amazon, (I’ll get to that in a sec) we have been pushing our online business more. We utilize social media, ads, blogs, industry sponsorships, trade shows, and motorsports to get our brand seen. Over 40% of our web traffic comes from Instagram. It’s been a really good tool to grow our brand and show people what our company is all about. Everyone needs wiper blades so why not ours! We rarely post sales stuff on our social, it’s mostly lifestyle, reposts from our customers and motorsports stuff. Instagram or other social channels are an escape for people. They don’t want to be sold all the time.imageAmazonBack to the Amazon deal… Amazon was our first account opened. They purchased bulk directly from us and sold to their customers. It really started out great.Over the years it started to become harder and harder to manage with 3rd party sellers, some bad reviews sticking with us from the original design and false reviews from competitors. Yes, corporate espionage is real…We decided to stop selling the giant about the same time we started to push or own site. We put a little over $30k into our own site to have a seamless shopping experience. That included a whole new look, a bunch of integrations like a review app, shopping rewards for buying, sharing and posting about us, etc.We wanted control over who was buying our products and to make sure the reviews coming in were from real customers good or bad. We have a 4.8 star average on our site from customers that have actually purchased Scrubblade. This was the only way to see how we were really doing with the end-user. We are not perfect but dang if we try to be.We do not miss selling Amazon and have actually had some praise from other customers once they find out we do not. Our online business has grown over 123% since implementing these changes.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Our business today is so much different than it was in our early days. We have been growing nicely over the past 5 years. A standout year for us was in 2018, we landed on the Inc 5000 list for our 221% YOY growth. That was a huge accomplishment.Our goal is to get into the automotive retail world but until that happens we will continue to grow online and in other niche markets. We also implemented a subscription service through our site. Wiper blades are really a safety item and most people don’t think about them until you get caught in the first rainstorm of the season. That’s not only dangerous but frustrating. The value of our subscription model is on the convenience side. If you can make purchasing something convenient I believe you will sell more products.Everything we do is different than our competitors. New technologies in the wiper world, new packaging, online expansion, subscription service and social media is where we are focused. It’s not easy to pioneer a product category but the reward is well worth the time, money and effort. We want to be a household name and that’s the journey we are on.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Some big lessons learned early on was to not trust people blindly. I am a trusting person and think the best of everyone, sadly sometimes that can bite you in the booty. Read every single agreement or contract in detail with anyone you’re doing business with, before signing anything.After that take it to an attorney and spend a little bit of money to get a second set of eyes on it. That way everything is agreed to in black and white and you can always go back to that and keep the partnership on track when things come up.Find your #1 customer and focus all of your efforts into that channel. Once you establish a presence there and become profitable is when you should start to look into other sellable channels.What platform/tools do you use for your business?For our online business we use Shopify and everything integrated with Shopify. We have found it’s more seamless if you can keep everything under one roof.We use Shipstation to transfer data from our store and to prepopulate orders and shipping rates. That has helped our front office in processing order more efficiently.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?This is probably going to go against every entrepreneur article or success story you have ever read but I don’t read any “self help” books or “how-to” books for the business. I do however read quick articles on business, finances, success stories, new technologies, and products so that’s been helpful.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Get a mentor and ask questions. Don’t act like you're the smartest person in the room. Be teachable and receptive of any information others are willing to tell you.Let their mistakes not be yours. Time, is the most valuable commodity so respect others time and give them your full attention. Be appreciative and honest in your dealings. Always acknowledge others in your success.Be driven and don’t give up when things get tough. Overnight success usually goes away overnight.Sometimes there are little things you need to do that seem insignificant at the time, do them. Every little effort lays the foundation towards the path to your bigger goals.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?The more we utilize social and the content needed to be relevant we are thinking of adding an in house designer. That and also a west coast sales associate. Luckily our business models affords us to not need a heavy staff.Where can we go to learn more?www.scrubblade.comscrubbladewipersHere is a cool video Dun & Bradstreet did a while back giving a little glimpse into the entrepreneur journey.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmCxn5BILYoIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM