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theskyeandsea · 4 years ago

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When You Get What You Want... || Cutler & Skylar

Timing: Late January 19th, shortly after this chatzy

Location: Clarke’s Convenience Store

Tagging: @clarkesconvenience & @theskyeandsea

Description: Skylar’s rampage around town continues; Cutler offers a helping hand.

Warnings: Drug use, addiction, body horror, memory loss, medical blood

Disoriented and covered in flour and blood, Skylar stumbled down the road away from the shop, a giddy smile still on her face as her feet began to skip across the pavement. She bounded down the road before turning abruptly, eyes caught by the displays in the window. Staggering forward, she pressed her fingers against the glass and the same sticking sensation filled her. The atoms and molecules and all the tiny parts of what made her a person shifted until she was crashing into the center of the convenience store. With a dazed grin on her face, Skylar began to push displays over. Blood trickled down the side of her face from her ear, a clean jagged section of her earlobe ripped free and stuck in the glass of the convenience store. She barely noticed as the liquid splattered across the clean floors while she shoved at the shelves. Cutler had been mentally preparing himself for a break-in since he had come home. It was bound to happen eventually, as it had for his parents several times over the course of his childhood. When it did, he would handle it the same way his parents had: with calm, slow movements and total compliance.

It didn’t go that way.

For one thing, he had expected it to happen while the shop was open and the money would still be in the register. Instead, the crashing sound of displays being toppled downstairs had awoken him in the early hours of the morning. The cool and collected man of his practiced break-in fantasies was quickly replaced with a groggy version of himself in a wrinkled t-shirt and boxers, squinting in the dim light.

Slowly, he took in the scene before him in pieces. Spidery crimson tracks spilling down pale skin and dripping onto waxed tile, collapsed shelving units spilling all manner of dried goods onto the floor, and a familiar, crazed look behind wide, dark pupils. He had dealt with this many times in the ER. Well, maybe not this, exactly, but he knew intoxication when he saw it. His hand hovered over the light switch to his right and he called out before clicking the buzzing fluorescents on above them, “You need some help.” A statement, not a question; carried with the arrogant weight of medical school behind it. “I can patch that up for you.”

Stepping on bags of spices, Skylar took particular joy in watching as the dried herbs crumbled under her shoes. She ran her hand along the shelves, knocking more and more of the goods onto the ground, blood dripping across the crinkly bags. And then, she realized she wasn’t alone. Someone had entered from the back of the shop. Skylar spun around to look at him, tilting her head at him quizzically. “Help? I don’t need help, I have all the help I need.” She said with a giddy smile on her face, her teeth bright and gleaming in the lowlight. “Don’t want patches, nope, I don’t need another patchwork skin, nuh uh.” She said to herself, rubbing the sores on her arms as she spoke. She could feel something leaking from the raw abscesses that dotted her legs, but the pain was like a distant memory, far far away from her right now.

Bright white light washed over the store, revealing the full extent of the damage. Product littered the floor under the shifting soles of his unsteady guest. Cutler dropped his hand from the light switch and walked forward, sidestepping the lentil spillage by his feet. “Uh huh.” The wheels in his mind ground against each other, desperately trying to wake up in time to process the finer details of the situation that wouldn’t come together. Sharpened teeth inside a lazy grin and his front door still locked and unbroken; pieces of a puzzle that refused to click. “Can I take a look?” The wounds on her body were various levels of depth and severity, ranging from dark and old to bright and fresh. The whip-sharp crack of a brown paper bag crinkling under his foot caused him to freeze in place. He stared, cautious and gentle, afraid she would startle like a wild animal. His hand extended slowly, pale pink underside raised to her in timid surrender. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You know it makes it worse when you scratch them.” His voice continued in a muted string of comforting sound, filling the space between them. “Nothing intensive. Just get something on that ear, stop the bleeding. Do a once over for breaks and fractures, maybe disinfect those sores. If it’s food you want, I can get you some of that, too.”

Skylar watched as the man continued to walk towards her, slow, so slow. She didn’t want to slow down, she didn’t want to pause to stop and think and let all the thoughts she’d left behind catch back up to her. She just wanted to ride this wild, cresting high as far as it would take her and this man? No, no, no, he seemed like he’d put a stop to it. When he asked to look at her, Skylar squinted at him. “Why?” She asked. He took another step and then froze for some reason that she wasn’t quite sure of. There was a muffled sound, but she couldn’t tell what it was. Running her finger tips around her ears, Skylar remembered why. “Oh, that makes sense.” She said, tapping the place where her hearing aids normally rested. Focusing back on the man, she laughed. “You can’t hurt me, even if you wanted to. Even if I wanted you to,” Skylar paused, staring down at the blood that covered her. Looking up at him abruptly, she asked, “Do you think I need help?” Cutler watched her fingers lower from her ears, slick with blood. There was no alarm in her face as they came away, only a laugh that felt discordant and wrong. Even if I wanted you to. When her eyes met his, he felt his heart clatter against his ribcage with deafening irregularity. Something distinctly inhuman looked back at him. Or maybe it was the lack of something. “I do.” He replied, hoping his honesty would cut through the frenetic, animalistic energy to the person behind it. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Accepting help.”

Another step toward her. She was almost within his reach now. He blinked slowly, a prayer running across the back of his eyelids: Please don’t fight me. “At the very least, let me get some gauze on that. You’re bleeding all over my floor.” His hand reached up and touched his own ear instinctively, brushing against his full intact earlobe. He ran his tongue across the flat backs of his own teeth, feeling the square edges. Hers were definitely unnatural. Modified, maybe. “I haven’t even asked your name. How rude of me.” A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, echoing the grin he might have worn in lighter circumstances. “I’m Cutler. And you are?”

He thought she needed help. But so had everyone else and that wasn’t what she’d wanted. Erin and Morgan and Leah and even Shiloh and Rio. They all said they wanted to help, but how could she know that? Skylar mulled over his words, tapping her fingers against her chin, ignoring the way the pads of her fingers stuck to her skin. All of them knew her, they all knew her and they knew what she was and who she was and even if they didn’t know why she was-- Skylar didn’t know why she was even though she could remember every pretty little pill she’d swallowed-- they knew what she should be. And this man didn’t. So maybe that made his help real. “Okay.” She said blithely, not realizing how much tension hung between the two of them. “Oh, but there is. Because people will help you and help you and help you and then one day, they leave. Because they’re too tired of putting up with all your shit and think it’s better to quit while they’re ahead.” She said earnestly.

At the mention of his floors, Skylar glanced down to the mess of crushed herbs and ruined inventory that were spattered with a thick trail of blood. “Oh. Whoops. I have a lot,” She said with a nod, before gesturing around at the mess. “Of blood. Lots of blood. This is… probably okay.” She said with a shrug. Squinting at him, Skylar repeated his name. “Cut-ler.” She let out a slight giggle, wondering where her knife had gone. Cutler. She could make that literal. “I’m Skylar.” She said, before looking expectantly at him. “So, are you going to help me not bleed all over your floors?”

Cutler listened intently. Someone had hurt this girl, and he didn't intend to be the next in the long line of grievances she had suffered. "If people desert you, that's their shame. Not yours." The contempt in his voice bled through and he swallowed it back down into his stomach. "I'm not going anywhere."

He followed her gaze down to the floor, and back up to her nonchalant shrug. "That's me. You ever go by Sky? I've gone by Cut to my friends." His mouth moved on it's own, giving his mind a chance to catch up with the unreality of the situation.

"It is a lot of blood, huh. Whooole lotta blood. Still limited supply, though." A deep sigh shot downward as his hands drifted to the resting spot on his hips where his apron drawstrings usually hung. He focused his gaze back on Skylar, unwilling to think about the cleanup he was going to have to do later. Alone, of course. No insurance company is gonna cover an illegal surgery. "Let's get something on that. I've got supplies back here. Gauze and tape and uh, all sorts of stuff. You need a hand?"

Shrugging, Skylar’s mind wandered to all the people she’d loved, who’d left this place, who’d left her behind because they had to go. Nic and Winston and Remmy, they’d left. They hadn’t abandoned her, not the way Ricky and her parents had, but they’d left this town and they’d left her too. “Sometimes people leave and that’s just what happens. And then you’re left trying to figure out who you were without them.” Skylar said with a nod.

“S-K-Y-E, yup. Just friends, though.” She said as she followed behind him, her footprints leaving thick smears against the linoleum flooring of the shop. At his question, she shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want a hand, nope, nope. Got two right here, don’t need more.” She said. “One of my friends kept losing their hands, but now they’re gone.” Skylar said, mostly to herself. “Gone, gone, gone.”

Cutler led the way to the back of the store, propping the EMPLOYEES ONLY door open with a coffee can of ice salt. “Alright, no hands. No problem.” Beyond the crack of the door, a grey cement room stared back at them, devoid of all the usual upholstery; no shelving, or paint, or tiling. The floor sloped ever so slightly downward, puckering at a large metal drain. Under the naked bulbs above him, he knelt to root through a box, pulling out various medical supplies and glancing over every so often to assess the damage.

“Skylar.” He called back, tendons in his neck jumping with the strain. “What hurts? Can you tell me if anything hurts inside?” As he ambled back toward her, his gaze shifted from sympathetic to critical, mind kicking into higher gear. Silicon gloves rolled down his wrists and his hand paused inches from her lesioned arm, waiting for permission. “Is there any point in me telling you to get rest after this?”

Skylar hadn’t been in the back rooms of many stores before, but she had a feeling that they didn’t look much like this. Staring around as he began to pull things out of a box, Skylar’s attention dropped back to the floor as she watched droplet after droplet of greyish red splash against the tile. They began to form a small trickle, flowing down, down, down the drain. At Cutler’s words, Skylar looked up and looked at him. “Nothing hurts. Nope, nope, can’t feel anything.” She said and, to prove it, she reached up with her fingers and grasped the chunk of her ear and pulled on it. Blood ran down her fingers, but she didn’t flinch because there wasn’t any pain to feel. It was all just light and bright and nothing at the same time. Holding out her arms, she shrugged. “I can rest. Sometimes I lie down in the woods for hours and hours.” She replied.

Cutler's lips parted in protest, too late to stop her from tugging on her ear. They came back together in a constricted wince. Crimson slick coated her hand and he redirected his attention from her unusual lesions to the fresh tear beside her face. "Okay. Alright. Let's clean this up." His voice was robotically measured, practiced bedside matter. Whether he was trying to steady her or himself, he wasn't entirely sure. "No pain is good. This still might sting, though. Let me know if you want me to stop."

The act of cleaning a wound is intimate by necessity. In close quarters, he could see the rise and fall of her chest below him and the heat of her skin under the sanitizing pad. He afforded her a gentle smile. It didn't say everything he wanted to say; that he too, had lain for hours in the forest while intoxicated. That he has, on more than one occasion, injured himself while drunk and mercifully felt no pain. Instead, he opted for a subtler approach. "Mhm. That sounds nice. Peaceful. Stay still for me if you can, Skylar." The skin of her neck started to become visible as he fastened a series of bandages to the area and wiped away the gore with soft, consistent movements. "Do you know what you took?"

Skylar was barely aware of the gauze pressed against her face. She could smell the sharp of the alcohol as it was used to clean her wounds, but the moment it touched her flesh, it felt like nothing at all. There was no pain, there was no pressure, there wasn’t even hot or cold. Her entire existence was just the manic thrum of excitement and giddy happiness that she had no control over. “Nope, it doesn’t hurt. You can keep doing your stuff.” She said and let Cutler wash away the blood. Sitting still was hard, but she managed it, even as her fingers felt like they wanted to sink into the nearest wall. She couldn’t do that, no, he wanted her to stay still. And he was helping her.

“Oh, it’s really nice. Really, really nice. Sometimes I’d just stay out there for days and days, because it was better than having to feel. But this, this is even better than that. Because I’m just so happy. So, so happy. I’ve never felt this happy before.” Skylar said breathily. At his question, Skylar grinned, remembering the way the pills had looked in the palm of her hand, the way the smoke had burned in her lungs, the soft burn of the Bliss as it ran through her veins. “Some pills, something in a cigarette, a mushroom or three and lots and lots of Bliss.” She said, her expression dreamy as she thought about the box of “supplies” she had stashed away back in her room.

Cutler concentrated on not letting his concern bleed through his expressions as he listened, resisting the downturn of his mouth and darkening of his brow. His hands moved from wound to wound, adept at giving them exactly the amount of attention they needed before moving on. When he had addressed everything in his view, he extended the white bundle of gauze toward her. “If there’s anywhere else. Underneath your-I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Of course he understood that sores don’t end at the boundaries of his patient’s clothing. It was more than likely that she had significant injuries that weren’t immediately visible. But she hadn’t come to him as a client, and he wasn’t about to start peeling clothing off a vulnerable woman, even to help her. “I need to make a quick call, anyhow. Do you mind?” His thumb was already swiping through a digital rolodex of old work contacts, distant friends, and exes. “I’ll be right over here, and you can call me if you need help. How does that sound?”

Skylar didn’t notice the way that Cutler’s expression shifted, she was more focused on the way her fingers were wrapped in gauze. Already, she could see the tips of white beginning to darken as blood soaked through the cloth. What started out as pinpricks of color blossomed into thick circles and Skylar pressed her fingers against the side of the wall, watching as the blood spread through the gauze. As he handed her another roll of gauze, Skylar looked at it blankly for a moment before realizing what he was saying. That’s right, she had the gash-- a gaping slash, a gash-- on her side. Mm, she should take care of it.

With clumsy hands, Skylar slid her hands under her shirt and pressed the pad of gauze against her bleeding side. It was hard wrapping the bandages around, but she managed it after a bit of effort. At Cutler’s words, Skylar tilted her head. “What are you doing?” She asked, standing back up, the world shifting around her as she did. Her head felt light, lighter than air, as her vision went black round the edges, but she didn’t care. Taking a step forward, Skylar shook her head. “Who are you calling?” Doctors? Hunters? People who’d poke her, prod her, hurt her, kill her? No, no, no.

Cutler’s eyes only flicked down to his hand for a moment, enough to dial but not enough time for his impromptu patient to injure herself further. He hoped. Next to his ear, the phone rang out. Once, twice. In his periphery, Skylar wrapped the gauze around her body. She looked strangely fragile in the unshaded bulbs; white fluorescents piercing sickly pale skin to sharp bone underneath. “I’m just making a call.” His chin tilted upward, speaking away from the still-ringing cell. Before he could come up with a lie that she would accept-not that he thought he had one ready-the soft click over the phone alerted him to the presence of someone on the other end.

He shifted away slightly, hoping the broad slopes of his shoulders would shield the storage room from the soft words he was speaking into the phone. “Hi, it’s Cut. Sorry about the hour. Yeah, yeah, long time. Listen, I need a favour. Do you still work at the Crisis Response Unit? I’ve got a young woman here who’s in distress. No cops, she just needs-” He was interrupted by scuffling behind him, turning just in time to see Skylar getting to her feet. She swayed so slowly that the room seemed to tilt with her. “Skylar-” His protest died in his throat as she lurched forward with surprising intensity, causing him to take a mirroring step backward. She was substantially smaller than him, but something in her eyes caused his heart to leap to his throat. It took another step forward for him to recognize it. Hatred. “It’s just an old friend. She might be able to help you. Better than I can.”

As the man turned his back on her, Skylar’s ears strained to pick up his hushed tones. She couldn’t pick up specifics, but her mind was already buzzing with possibilities of who was on the other line. Her eyes flicked around wildly, looking at the strange utensils that were laid out neatly on the table he’d taken her to. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered that this was… a store. A shop in the center of town. With packets of chips and gum but also scissors and scalpels and gauze and gloves. Lips curling into a feral grimace, Skylar reached out and grabbed one of the shiny silvery tools from the table and pointed it at Cutler.

“Put down the phone.” Skylar said clearly, glaring at him while blood pounded in her ears. She could stab at him, plunge the tip of the scalpel into his chest over and over and over. She could lunge at him and bury her teeth into the soft flesh of his throat. She could rip him to pieces, she could hurt him, hurt him the way that Hunters wanted to hurt her. A trap, was this all a trap? “I don’t want your friend’s help-- I don’t, I don’t even want your help.” She sneered, tempted to rip the cotton gauze from her hands just to prove it to him. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I could. I could want to hurt you.” She said with another laugh, shaking her head. “So just, just put down the phone.”

The voice on the other end of the line began to rise into a higher register, tinny treble crackling through the rectangular mic at the bottom of the screen. “I’m completely fine. No one’s gonna hurt anyone here. Let me call you back.” Cutler spoke the words loudly and clearly, hoping the slight shaking his hand didn’t translate to his voice. Light flashed off the thin reflective blade of the scalpel. It was a tiny little thing, almost dwarfed in her white knuckle grip, but it could do serious damage. He knew that better than anyone.

“I’m putting it down.” The phone clattered to the cement floor, sending a nervous jolt through his body. Nice, Cutler. “I don’t think-” His tongue felt heavy against his sticky-dry lips, struggling to form the words he wanted to say. “I don’t think you’re a bad person. And I don’t think you really want to hurt me. If you did, you would have done it by now, right? You’ve had plenty of chances.”

Skylar watched as the man spoke, her eyes trained on him. The lights were bright and sharp around the two of them and it made the scalpel in her fingers glimmer like quicksilver. Liquid in her fingers, she could let it flash out, once, twice, a hundred times, she thought. She could let it slither from her grasp and embed itself into the man’s body, she could watch the blood flow, so slow, down down down the drain. It would be so easy, so quick. A sliver of silver, a knife, a life. The dull thudding of the phone against the floor brought her back to her senses and Skylar nodded. “Yup, it’s down.” She said before kicking out a foot, sending the phone skittering away.

“I could, I could. Everyone could. Everyone wants to hurt people, everything’s only ever wanted to hurt me. Why shouldn’t I hurt someone else? Why shouldn’t I be just like them?” Skylar asked, though the scalpel was already lowering in her hand. She didn’t want to. She didn’t really want to do that. Her arms felt weary, heavier than they’d felt in… well, she couldn’t remember. But the weight of the sharp blade in her fingers felt as though it was dragging her to the floor, pulling her down. “I never wanted to be like this.” She said gesturing to herself with the scalpel, hands waving wildly. “I thought I was normal. I thought everyone was normal. But it’s not and I’m not and I’m just some… thing. Some kind of monster.” Skylar said before letting out a watery laugh. Swiping at her face with her free hand, Skylar wondered when she’d started crying-- why was she even crying? There was nothing to be sad about, nothing to feel. “I-- I…” She stammered, shaking her head as she backed away towards the door she’d come from. Tossing the scalpel away, she looked at the man, mind caught between the urge to charge at him and to run far, far away from him. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.” She said, shaking as she turned around and ran.

Cutler watched a thousand emotions pass over Skylar’s face in an instant. One well-placed slash with the scalpel in her hand and it could be over for him. The karmic balancing of the scales; a fitting end for him, maybe. But she wasn’t going to. He could see it even before her arm started to lower. She was at breaking point, tears overflowing their hitch-breath confines and words spilling out of her, stream-of-consciousness. “I know.” He said softly. And he did. He knew that she wouldn’t let him help. That she was leaving, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. “I know.”

For a moment, it appeared as if she had changed her mind and decided to tackle him anyway and he tensed, ready to parry or dodge whatever she threw at him, including herself. At the last second, she pivoted, running by him in close quarters. A quicker man might have blocked the door. A stronger man might have reached a hand out to stop her as she passed. Cutler was neither of these things. Instead, he just watched her go.

#p: wygwyw #tw drug use #tw addiction #tw: medical blood #tw memory loss #tw body horror #//as always if youd like a tw free recap just let me know!#//this was such a cool chatzy to write #p: cutler clarke

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 5 years ago

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But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 9: Follow The Rules]

Hi y’all, I hope you are all doing well 💜

Chapter summary: Veronica has some questions, Roger has a plan, John has a short temper.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, medical stuff, pregnancy.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation @bookandband @queen-crue @jennyggggrrr @madeinheavxn @whatgoeson-itslate @brianssixpence @simonedk @herewegoagainniall @stardust-killer-queen

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

At the wedding, Roger is wearing a cast on his right arm and a dazzling smile...and a white suit that he looks criminally good in.

John is in black, Brian in blue, Freddie in maroon-colored velvet and heavy eyeliner. Veronica’s dress is high-waisted and falls in huge, billowing, shapeless ruffles to hide her silhouette. Her family knows, of course—it’s written all over the tense, grim lines of their mouths and the blades their pale eyes hurl at John—but none of those strict Catholics are going to mention an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in God’s house, nor at the modest reception in the church basement that follows the ceremony.

Veronica’s mother and aunts and sisters are just like her, docile and milky-skinned and small-boned, and you’ve helped them deck the vast room with enough flowers, ribbons, candles, and balloons to make everyone forget this event was thrown together in five weeks and on a shoestring budget. There’s a simple buffet with pot roast and potatoes and vegetables, a live band (some of John’s old friends from high school), and a homemade Polish honey cake baked by Veronica’s grandmother situated regally on a china serving dish. Veronica and John cycle through the tables of guests, smiling and nodding and thanking them for coming, dutifully and yet also seemingly genuinely cheerful.

“The boning is bloody impaling me,” Chrissie murmurs as she tugs at the bodice of her gown. It’s satin and a muted pink, just like yours and Mary’s and Veronica’s sisters’. “If I happen die, wrap me in one of those nice tablecloths I paid for and throw me in a ditch somewhere, will you love?”

“You got it.” You stab a piece of potato with your fork. “This should inspire you to be especially compassionate towards your own bridesmaids! Maybe no horrid shiny green.”

Brian chuckles. “Good luck with that.”

“Are you comfortable?!” Chrissie asks Mary, exasperated, fanning herself with a wedding program.

“I am,” Mary admits cautiously. “But...well...at the moment, I think my dress is a bit...roomier.”

Chrissie moans, dropping her face into her hands. “I always gain when the students go home for summer. My routine is wrecked, all I want to do is read Glamour magazines and listen to records, it’s too damn hot to go walking...and I adore ice cream.”

“I like you just fine,” Brian reassures her.

Freddie snickers as he taps his cigarette against an ashtray. “Yes, we’re all well aware of your anatomical preferences, Bri.”

Chrissie rolls her eyes. “Please do not elaborate.” She’s not offended—she’s far too used to Freddie’s shenanigans to be offended—but she’ll be embarrassed if he makes a scene at a wedding.

“Darling, I don’t care what anyone tries to tell you, plenty of men love a little extra meat on the bones. Particularly the ass bones.”

“We’re in God’s house!” you scold him in a hiss. “You’re going to give Great Aunt Zofia over there an aneurysm if she hears you!”

Roger quips: “Great Aunt Zofia stole the last kielbasa right out of my disabled, ineffectual grasp, so fuck her.”

You all burst into shocked, uncontrollable laughter. Great Aunt Zofia squints judgmentally at the commotion from several tables away, gnawing on her kielbasa; she’s been glaring at John and Veronica—the Tetzlaffs’ very own fallen angel—since she first ambled into the church. Roger rocks back in his chair, smoking with his unbroken left arm, smirking cockily and basking in the distraction from the real world that the wedding has gifted you all tonight. He catches you watching him—marveling at him, truthfully—and winks.

John appears and rests his hands on the back of your chair. “What’s so amusing? I swear, I leave you people alone for two hours and you’re having all sorts of fun without me, I won’t stand for it!”

“It was a lovely ceremony,” you tell him. “I’d forgotten how beautiful Catholic weddings are, all the music and ambiance.”

“And from what I saw, you knew most of the words.”

“We have a lot of Irish people in Boston. Saint Patrick’s Day is bigger than Christmas.”

John points at Roger’s cast. “It’s not paining you too much, is it?”

Roger holds his Dark ‘n Stormy aloft, and ice clinks in the misted glass. “Enough of these, and I can’t feel anything. Numb to the world’s many disappointments. I highly recommend it.”

“Noted,” John replies. Roger has pills for his arm, but they only take the edge off. You don’t know that because he’s told you; Roger never tells you that he’s hurting, that he’s frustrated, that he’s afraid. He wears grins and flippant humor like a second skin, shrouding his wounds—both physical and disembodied, old and new—in darkness. Still...you can see all those words he doesn’t say swimming in the depths of his eyes. “I think I’ll hunt down a Manhattan myself.”

“Dad made an impression!” you tell John enthusiastically. “I’ll have to let him know, he’ll be overjoyed.”

“He mixes a good one, that’s for sure. I doubt Cousin Bartosz will be able to compare.” He casts a glance at a perplexed-looking, flame-haired teenager manning a tiny wet bar.

“Booze won’t help you heal,” Freddie informs Roger, checking his reflection in Mary’s makeup compact and fluffing his lustrous hair. “Eat your vegetables. Get more sleep. When do you start physical therapy, again?” Then, to you: “Darling, when does Roger start his therapy?”

Roger sighs. “I’ve got it handled, Fred.”

“Dear, don’t have a fit, I just want to make sure you’ll be ready—”

“I’ve got it handled,” Roger repeats, his tone a warning.

Brian breaks the tension with a toast, his Vesper jangling against Roger’s Dark ‘n Stormy. “I’m thrilled, honestly. Now I’m not the only one who’s ruined a tour.”

Roger grimaces. “Thanks, Bri.”

“Yes, let’s all have a turn,” Freddie mutters, sipping champagne. “Deaky can electrocute himself while fiddling with his amp, and then I’ll...what? Have my foot chewed off by an alligator in New Orleans? Get gored by a wild boar outside Atlanta? It just can’t be a boring maiming, that’s my only request.”

“Alaska has grizzlies, huge ones,” Brian suggests.

“Darling, in what dimension would my luxurious self ever end up in fucking Alaska?”

You shake your head, frowning down into your wine glass. It’s June now, the dead center of a crestfallen year: the rest of the Sheer Heart Attack Tour is cancelled, the record company is furious, and the band is broker than ever. Queen is supposed to start recording their next album—their last album, the record company insists, unless it happens to be a runaway success—in July, but you don’t know if Roger’s arm will be healed in time. None of you know that. You wonder if this really is God’s house, or at least one of his homes, sanctified piles of bricks and glass scattered across the globe; maybe you could ask Him where Queen’s future lies.

Veronica swoops in and dusts an airy kiss onto Mary’s cheek, and then Chrissie’s, and then yours. “Thank you so much,” she gushes. Her high cheekbones are flushed, her watery eyes sparkling. She’s in heaven, sinner or not. Her massive white dress swishes with every step. “We couldn’t have done it without you. And you’re next, Chris! I can’t wait.”

Chrissie smiles. She and Brian are getting married just before Christmas. “Yes, well, time will tell if we’ll be serving Christmas ham or canned beans.”

“And then Mary...” Veronica’s gaze migrates across the table. Mary’s been wearing a ring on her wedding finger since Queen returned from Japan, a simple gold band that once belonged to Freddie’s mother. “What about you, Y/N? Any plans? Then we’d all be hitched!”

Red wine spurts from your lips and you fumble for a cloth napkin. Roger doesn’t believe in marriage, and neither do you; not after only four months together, anyway. And yet...is there some part of you that can’t help but think of papers and rings when you get lost in his eyes, of promises of forever, of some way to tie yourself to him like vessels to a heart? Sure; and that’s a little wonderful, that’s a little terrifying. “Uh, uh, oh, oh no, definitely no plans whatsoever.”

“What bollocks!” Rog sneers. “Really, what’s the point if you’re not religious? Who needs a bloody piece of paper to prove they love someone?! ‘I care for you so much I need the government to know we’re together and the hassle of divorce fees to make me stay,’ what the fuck. I mean, uh, no offense John, Bri, uh...this is all well and good for you, but...ah...”

“It’s just not your scene. That’s fine, Rog,” Freddie says with a tad too much empathy. Mary doesn’t seem to notice.

“But you’ll want children at some point, won’t you?” Veronica asks you, almost pained. She’s not trying to be cruel, you realize; she genuinely can’t fathom the pinnacle of a woman’s life as anything but being a wife and mother.

“Theoretically, sure. One day. Eventually.” You titter nervously. Roger’s good arm circles your shoulders, his cigarette lofting smoke. Oh, but wouldn’t he make beautiful children? You push that thought away. It’s too soon, it’s too much, it’s not in the cards for an impoverished maybe-drummer and his girlfriend; and a girlfriend—with all the intangibility and impermanence that title entails—is all I’ll ever be. “I think I need to travel the world a bit more first.”

John sighs and pats the back of Veronica’s hand. What is that weight in his voice...impatience? Annoyance? “Ronnie, please, don’t bother her.”

Veronica sulks, scraping the old scuffed linoleum floor with her pointy white heels. “I wasn’t trying to bother anyone...”

Mary comes to the rescue: “No, of course not. You didn’t, dear.” She likes Veronica more than Chrissie does. Isn’t she oppressively vapid? Chrissie has asked you more than once. Isn’t she so miserably naïve? Veronica is sweet, sure, but she has no fucking idea what she’s in for. “Babies are wonderful, but they do make things harder, don’t you think? Especially for the mother. You have to be ready to drop everything for them. All your other interests and aspirations.”

“I suppose,” Veronica mumbles. You can tell she’s thinking: What other aspirations?

“But you must be so excited!” You beam up at Veronica. It’s her wedding day, and John’s; it should be happy, it should be optimistic. And you’re learning to like Veronica—less than Mary, but more than Chris—because you know that’s the best thing for John.

She instinctively rests her hand on the swell of her belly; or, rather, where it must be somewhere beneath all those heaps of satin and tulle. Great Aunt Zofia’s glare intensifies. “I’m scared to death, to tell you the truth.”

“Why?!” Mary cries.

“I’m so afraid something will happen to him.” Veronica’s voice is soft, her blue eyes glassy. She’s certain the baby is a boy, claims she had some sort of dream about it. “There’s a lot of bad luck going around for us, isn’t there? And my mother lost four babies. Any time he stops moving, I worry constantly until my next appointment. I haven’t felt anything in days, and I just...I just...” She trails off, staring vacantly across the crowded church basement. She’s trying not to cry, you realize.

“I can try to check for you,” you offer. “If it would make you feel better.”

“Really?” Veronica sounds hopeful, but guardedly so.

“This is embarrassing, but I carry my nurse kit almost everywhere I go now. That’s why I brought my huge blue purse even though it doesn’t match the dress. You know, you can’t be too careful...”

“Yes, who knows when someone will try something idiotic like jogging backwards down the stairs?” Freddie muses. Roger lobs a pierogi at him. Great Aunt Zofia wheezes out a disgusted huff and crosses her veiny, wrinkled arms over her sagging chest.

“I have a stethoscope,” you continue. “I can’t guarantee I’ll find a heartbeat, but I’ll give it a try if that would help.”

“Would you, Y/N?” Veronica clutches for John’s hand, and he lets her take it without any resistance; but he doesn’t seem to know how to comfort her. He has the same dazed look on his face that he has a lot these days, the same look that Bri and Freddie sometimes get: like they’re on autopilot, like they’re actively filtering through brainwaves to fish out any that wander astray. Roger lands a kiss on your bare shoulder and pitches you a playful smirk, his I’m so proud of my too-fucking-smart girlfriend smirk.

You grab your purse from beneath the table. “Does God’s house have a cozy private spot somewhere?”

Veronica leads you, Mary, and Chrissie to a small unoccupied room that is used (how pertinently) as the church nursery. The pink wallpaper is dotted with waddling ducklings, cloud-shaped sheep leaping over fences, smiling suns and winged cartoonish angels. Veronica settles into a faded blue couch, and Mary and Chris help her shove aside the massive plumes of her wedding dress to reveal the plain shift she’s wearing underneath. She’s over five months along now, and her entirely unremarkable bump seems colossal on her delicate frame.

You pop the headset into your ears and press the chestpiece against Veronica’s unyielding belly, gliding it over the pearly shift as you try different positions.

“Anything?” Mary asks anxiously.

“It’s not bloody instant, Mary!” Chrissie snaps. “Be quiet so she can listen.”

“No need to be cranky—”

“You can’t find a heartbeat, can you?” Veronica says, her voice quivering. “Oh god...”

“Found it,” you announce. You hold the chestpiece in place as you yank the headset off and pass it to Veronica.

She gapes at you. “You’re just saying that so I’ll stop worrying, aren’t you?”

“Hear for yourself.”

Veronica takes the headset and listens, closing her eyes as the rapid-fire and rhythmic swishing of her child’s heartbeat floods through her ears. “Oh,” she breathes, beaming. “There he is.”

“That’s incredible!” Mary trills. “Can I hear too, Veronica? Whenever you’re finished...”

Mary listens, and Chrissie does too, and then you all help touch up Veronica’s hair and makeup before you head back to the reception. The cake is due to be cut in twelve minutes. As you smooth the short train on her dress, Veronica turns back to you.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asks timidly, hugging her belly. “You know...for this.”

“That’s something I’ve always liked about nursing. So many jobs require sorting out who’s right and wrong, casting judgment, assigning punishment. There’s no weighing of the moral scales in medicine. It doesn’t matter if a patient is trustworthy, deceitful, good, bad, worthy, undeserving, if they disappoint you, if they’re the ones who hurt themselves. You treat everyone, you heal everyone. And I would like to keep that part of myself for as long as I can.” You smile at Veronica. “But, for the record, no. I don’t think you’re a bad person at all.”

She sighs in relief, untethering an anchor she hadn’t even known she’d been dragging around by her throat. “Thank you,” she whispers, tears snaking down her powdered ivory cheeks.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on.”

“How do you feel about marble lion statues? You know, the ones at the end of long, winding driveways. Rich people’s driveways. Mansion driveways. Or do you prefer gargoyles?”

“Roger.”

He groans, grins, presses his right fist into your palm. You measure the force with your mind, with your muscle memory. He’s stronger than he was yesterday, the day before, last week. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Rog teases. “You’ve got a soft spot for damaged people. Helpless people. That’s why you warmed to Brian so quickly. He was lying there all gaunt and jaundiced and terrified, and you just couldn’t resist, you just had to make sure all his wildest dreams came true.”

“I have a soft spot for self-destructive musicians who end up in hospitals, evidently.” Your gaze cruises over the scar on Roger’s forearm where the surgeons popped his bones back into place, stabilized them, stitched the ragged gore closed. You hate looking at it; you hate reminders of how mortal Roger really is.

“I want lions,” Rog decides. “For the driveway of our eventual mansion. I like the Leo connection.”

“And the Queen crest connection.”

His grin widens, toothy and radiant. “See, I knew you were the love of my life.”

“Come on. Again.”

He winces this time. “Doesn’t hurt a bit.”

“Uh huh. I bet.” You’ve slathered his fresh blisters with numbing antiseptic ointment, iced his arm, administered pain medicine, allowed him the constant sips of alcohol necessary for him to work, to drum, to sleep. But he still hurts. You imagine he hurts all the fucking time.

It’s August now, and Queen is recording their fourth album at Rockfield Farm. You and Roger are sitting by the pool as Freddie splashes around in the clear chlorine-smelling water trying to get John’s attention. John, meanwhile, is lounging on an inflatable raft, wearing black sunglasses and most likely asleep. Brian circles the pool snapping photos with your Canon F-1.

“I have a plan,” Roger informs you as he starts his stretches without prompting. He knows the drill, even if he likes to be difficult about it.

“By all means, enlighten me.”

“Fred’s thing, the weird one. It has a name now.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“Oh, it’s perfect!” You try to stay out of the band’s business decisions as much as possible; it’s not your expertise, and it’s not your place, and there are already a few too many creative chefs in that kitchen. Still, you love when they share their magic with you. “Eccentric, whimsical, exhilarating. Just like the song. Just like Queen.”

“I’m so glad you approve. We’re going to make sure it’s the first single off the album. And I know exactly what song’s going to be on the B-side. Freddie and Bri don’t know yet, but I do.”

“Sounds like they’re going to murder you when they find out.”

“I’ll convince them.” His grin is crafty, daring. “Picture it: you’ve just finished the incomparable experience that is Bohemian Rhapsody. You’re a newly converted Queen enthusiast. What could possibly come next? You flip the record over. And the virile, screeching, pure rock and roll passion of I’m In Love With My Car is there to greet you.”

“Oh my god, Roger.” You shake your head in mock mourning. “They actually are going to murder you.”

“Listen, love, BoRhap is going to be a hit. I can feel it.”

“Sure,” you agree lukewarmly. You want to be supportive, you really do. But disappointment stings more than resignation.

“It will be,” Roger maintains, unmovable. “And it’ll sell mountains and mountains of singles...and with my song on the B-side, I’ll get half the royalties. Which means we’ll get half the royalties.”

“Which is how we end up with the hypothetical mansion.”

“I’m being serious.” Roger picks up his mini barbell weights from the water-splattered concrete and begins his bicep curls, flinching each time he lifts his right fist.

“Rog—”

“I’m fine,” he insists. “I’m going to make this happen. I’m going to get rich so I can provide for my family. You know about that, you know it’s on my list. And my family includes you now.”

“I don’t need a mansion, Roger.” I just need you. You stare at his right arm worriedly. “Are you sure—?”

“I’m fine!” he shouts, and you recoil. Brian peers over from where he’s taking pictures of blooming purple foxgloves. Instantly, Roger regrets it. “I’m sorry,” he says, setting down the barbells and cradling your face with his rough, bandaged hands. “I have to be fine, you know? I don’t have a choice. If I can’t play, I can’t be in the band. If I leave, John will leave too, and that’ll be the end of everything. Or worse, John will break the pact and stay and they’ll find a new drummer and forget all about me. Sail off into some blissful new future. And where will I be? Moping as I drag myself back to dental school? Becoming a freaking lab biologist? Resigning myself to being some excruciatingly ordinary bloke, someone who climbed just far enough out of Cornwall to know everything he’s missing out on?”

You try to imagine who Roger would be without the band, but you can’t. You’ve never known a pre-Queen Roger. “No,” you say, amused. “You’ll never be just some ordinary bloke. You’re too brilliant, too determined. Even if you do have a dodgy arm.”

He kisses you, and you can feel his lips curling into a smile beneath yours. “So you’ll let me buy you a mansion.”

“If you get I’m In Love With My Car on the B-side, and BoRhap is a hit, and Freddie and Bri don’t smother you with a pillow in your sleep...yes, you can buy me a mansion. Buy us a mansion.”

He winks, his sapphire eyes glinting in the late-summer sunlight. “Watch out, baby. I get everything I want eventually.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s done,” John tells the others as he passes out copies of his new song, the second he’s ever written. There are only four sheets of crisp white paper; as you watch from the studio couch, you wonder what the song is about, why he didn’t mention it to you.

“It’s done?!” Brian yelps. “What do you mean, it’s done?! Nothing’s ever done after the first pass! That’s how it works, that’s how it always works, someone suggests something and then we all dice it and slice it and flip it around and stitch it back together like the world’s most maniacal surgeons, and then, only then, maybe, it’s done.”

You glance up from where you’re sewing an eleventh patch onto Roger’s jeans. “Must we disparage the medical profession?”

“Sorry, love,” Roger tosses to you with a laugh.

“It’s done,” John repeats.

“Deaky, darling,” Freddie ventures gently. “We should endeavor to keep our minds open to collaboration—”

“Oh, should we, Fred?!” Bri exclaims. “How extraordinary, you never seem to encourage collaboration when it’s your song on the cutting floor!”

“Okay space boy, you listen here—”

“‘I’m happy at home’?!” Roger reads, revolted. “We’re not the bloody Bee Gees, Deaks!”

John explains measuredly and patiently, as if to a child: “That’s the way it goes. We record it as it is or not at all.”

“That’s not how we do things,” Brian mutters, deep frown lines chiseled through his face as he scans the lyrics.

“Then just fill the album with your and Fred’s songs like you always do, I’m sure that’ll keep me and Roger loyal.”

Brian glares at John. John stares back stoically, his eyes like steel. Brian looks to Roger for support; Roger lights a cigarette and pretends not to notice.

“Darling, please, you’re not being reasonable!” Freddie pleads.

“I need it.” John turns to Roger now. “I need it to stay the way it is.”

Rog just watches him for a while, exhales smoke, shrugs. “Okay,” he says at last.

“Okay?!” Brian howls. “What do you mean, okay?!”

“He said he needs it,” Roger replies simply.

Bri throws his hands into the air. “Bleeding christ! ‘He needs it.’ What rubbish! Do something, Fred!”

“Oh relax, darling.” Freddie sashays to the microphone and points to Brian’s Red Special. “Let’s try it out.”

“But—!”

Roger claps Brian on the back as he trots by him towards the drum kit. “Come on, Bri. Big smiles. Just picture the nice shiny pounds from all those album sales plinking into your bank account. You’ll have fifty Christmas hams at the wedding, one for every guest.”

You listen passively from the couch as they rehearse, trying not to let on that you’re paying attention, trying not to overstep. But you can’t help being struck by the lyrics, feeling the somberness of Freddie’s voice and John’s tentative notes on the electric piano slink into your bones; because it sounds so familiar, because it echoes so many things that John has told you.

When Queen takes a mid-afternoon break and John slips into the kitchen for a Coke, you follow him.

“Hey John?”

“Yeah.” He rests his hands on the dining room table. They’re sturdy and unmarred and completely unlike Roger’s; and you aren’t sure why you notice this, but you do.

“I completely understand if I’m being intrusive, and if I am please just tell me to shut up and I will.”

He chuckles. “You’re never intrusive. Go ahead.”

“I was just wondering...who is You’re My Best Friend about?”

Now his smile evaporates. “No one in particular,” he says briskly. “It’s just a song. Just something to put on the album. Maybe a single one day. A soulless royalties grab.”

That seems unlikely. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He takes a swig of Coke, peers down at the table, traces swirls of centuries-old oak with his fingertips.

“It’s just...you know...well...it kind of sounded like...maybe it was about me.”

He looks up. And for the first time, John levels some of his infamous, razored words at you: “Don’t be such a fucking narcissist.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Two days later, John doesn’t apologize. But he smiles at you over tea, offers to clean off the fingerprints of strawberry jelly that Roger left on the Canon, splashes you from the pool as you sunbathe beneath lapis August skies. And you agree, wordlessly and unconditionally, to forgive him. Because John is your best friend, whether or not you’re still his.

Nine weeks later, Bohemian Rhapsody is released as a single. (And, as promised, Roger ensures that I’m In Love With My Car is on the B-side.)

Twelve weeks later, Bohemian Rhapsody reaches the #1 spot on the UK Singles Chart, and remains there for over two months.

Fifteen weeks later, A Night At The Opera becomes the #1 album in the UK.

Fifteen weeks later, Queen’s future is suddenly crystal clear.

#queen fic #roger taylor fic

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lilyrachelcassidy · 4 years ago

Text

Summer Nights (1)

A/N: Welcome to the first chapter of my new and long time awaited series - Summer Nights. Please read every necessary information in the INDEX of the story (warnings, summary). Do not forget that the fic is quite mature and might contain some obscene stuff (i.a. alcohol and sexual items). I’ll try to post each chapter regularly (like one per week?) however as it sometimes turns out - I can be unreliable in that matter ( ;

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: coarseness, poverty problems, swearing, alcohol and sexual items (or rather mentions of them?), reference to arranged marriage

Tags: @okaydraco @idkatee @paradigmax @winnsmills @war-sword

You turned your gaze away from a computer screen and looked yearningly out of the window on the chaotic streets of Paris.

At that time of day, the city seemed to teem with life, especially in the summer season when many tourists came over to visit the town. You could notice a variety of cultures among crowds of people. They gathered and filled in restaurants, eating and laughing, and chatting with each other.

So how, for God’s sake, did you deserve to be at work today?

The thought of scrumptious spaghetti and a glass of red wine made you feel frustrated. And cloudless, wonderful weather waiting for you outside did not make it any better. You imagined yourself laying in a bikini on the sandy beach with ‘Vogue’ magazine on your laps and Pina Colada in your hands. Or bathing in warm ocean water with sun rays smoothly tanning your skin.

These visions caused a dreamy smile to appear on your face.

However, as soon as you scooted over in a fantasy world, the poke in your shoulder brought you back to reality. You turned your head to the side to see your co-worker and best friend, Chloe. She was crouching next to your chair with her piercing gaze studying your face attentively.

Chloe was a gorgeous woman, and you could easily say that she could break more than one heart. She had big, blue eyes and long, blonde curls falling on her slim shoulders. She had full, pink lips with a Greek-type nose and prominent cheekbones that highlighted her beauty. Her figure was feminine and slender with ample bosom, flat belly, and long legs.

There had been many situations when groups of passing-by boys stopped her in the middle of the pavement, scanning her body up and down with boisterous whistles and comments of a sexual nature. Although you had always tried to stand up in her defense, she never really cared to bother much, just shrugging it off.

“Are you alright?” She narrowed her eyes doubtfully. “You look like a walking dead.”

“Thanks,” you chuckled amused, bitting your cheek. “No, I’m actually fine. Just a little bit dizzy, but don’t worry about it. ”

“For sure? You know, if you take a nap at work, I might be the first person to know about it.” both of you chortled slightly, and you rested your elbows on the armrest. Chloe’s phone started to buzz in her purse. She took it out, muted it down, and eyed you again.

“Anyways. Why are you leaving so early? It’s just four o’clock, and I thought you were ending your shift at eight.” You peeked at the watch on your hand and arched your eyebrow suspiciously at her. Now it was your turn to interrogate her.

“Well, I took a day off,” she informed you. “I’m having a date with Louis today. We meet at six, and he takes me to some fancy restaurant. Of course, he didn’t want to tell me the exact location, mentioning something about ruining the surprise. You know him..” She rolled her eyeballs playfully with a meaningful sigh and an unambiguous smile plastered on her face.

Louis was Chloe’s boyfriend, but also one of your closest friends. You couldn’t say he was the easy-going type of person, and when you first met him, you had presumed his behavior to be a little bit too ‘self-centered’. However, after many years of acquaintance, you had learned that he was rather desperate to drag attention on himself and impress others, with you and Chloe included.

“Lucky. I’m stuck in here for a night shift,” you complained, leaning on the chair's backrest and letting a small groan out of your mouth. It was the third time this week you had to stay at your job for night time. And that wore you out.

“Again?” She frowned.

“Unfortunately...” You grimaced, glancing at your friend with a corner of your eye. “My father hasn’t paid the bills again. I’ve to earn some extra money…"

"Can I-"

"I know you want to help, but please, let's not think about it," you cut the conversation out. Your face started to get warmer, so you lowered your head as not to show your embarrassment. You trusted your friend with all of your soul but still more than felt awkward when it came up with family topics.

Chloe remained silent and smiled supportively, tightly gripping your palm. You appreciated her ability to understand people’s emotions and her tact of how to respond to them.

“I really have to go, Y/N. Call me if you needed any help.” Chloe stood up and went to the backroom of the reception. She put on her coat, wrapping her green bandana around her neck, and then slightly pecked your cheek. She walked over to the exit and, for the last time, turned towards you, waved in the bye, and left the hotel.

You gaped at the place where Chloe had just disappeared, slowly letting out your breath. After a while, you switched the laptop back on and decided to occupy yourself with reading. Clicking on the ‘iBooks’ application, you selected a book - ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’. Maybe, at least that could help you take your mind off things and spend some of your time while visitors weren’t around. You opened the first chapter of the novel, but soon after, you heard someone entering the room again.

Lifting your head, you beheld an elegant woman with a younger boy by her side. You assumed them to be a family, considering their striking similarity in appearance. Also, they distinguish themselves from their surroundings with their peculiarly sophisticated garments and unnaturally pale skin.

The woman smiled at you kindly and approached the reception desk. You got up from the chair and reciprocated the gesture.

“Bonjour madame. Comment puis-je vous aider?” you asked and saw a confused expression painting on the woman’s face. She furrowed her eyebrows for a short moment and cleared her throat.

“Mm… Hello. Do you speak English?” she asked hesitantly with a language accent that informed you instantly of her origin. Many guests of the hotel usually arrived from different parts of the world, which had let you acquire the skill of guessing their probable nationalities.

“You’re British I see,” you noted, grinning. “Of course I do. Welcome to Paris! How can I help you?”

“We have a reservation under the name Malfoys.”

Nodding in understanding, your fingers swiftly started to tap the keyboard of the computer. You entered in the search engine of hotel’s guests with surname ‘MALFOYS’ and found a booking for two people.

“Could I check your ID cards first, ma’am?” you asked and saw her rummaging in the bag. Meanwhile, you started to prepare every necessary paper for her to fill out.

“Here it is,” she finally stated, and you reached over for the documents. You noticed the woman’s foot nervously tapping on the floor but decided to ignore it.

“Thank you,” you said while surveying everything. “Okay, so - Narcissa Malfoy, apartment number 354 - Presidential Suite. It’s on the fourth floor.” You laid the keys with ID cards on a counter top. “And Dra- Dra…”

“Draco. It’s Draco Malfoy,” the boy spoke up for the first time, and - by the tone of his voice - you could already judge that he wasn’t the friendliest type of a person, to say at least. You moved your gaze on his figure, and your eyes met with his stern glare, which sent unpleasant shivers down your spine. He was sitting on one of the lounge chairs located in the room, twisting a carved stick in his fingers. Quickly realizing that you stared at the object, he hid it in his pocket.

You giggled nervously and shook your head.

“Yes. Draco Malfoy. I’m sorry for my oversight.” You blushed profusely and tried your best to pretend that your pre-momentary blunder did not affect you anyhow. You took a second key from a shelf and placed it next to the first one. “Room number 355 - Royal Apartment. Although, it on the fifth floor, which means not located nearby your mom's one, sir."

“No problem for me.” Huffing, he got up from the armchair and walked over, grabbing the keys. His expression still evinced the arrogance, but now you had a chance to examine his appearance more closely and perceive his unparalleled attractiveness. His platinum hair suitably contrasted with grey irises, and the sharp jawline with his muscular body made your knees weak.

Just great...

“If there is anything you needed, please let me know,” you proffered and forced a smile, wishing it didn’t look so fake as it felt. “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you,” said Narcissa, sauntering away with her son following shortly after. You took a last peek at Draco and saw him sending you an unpleasant look before leaving the lobby.

* * *

Narcissa with Draco entered her spacious hotel room. She began to look around the space, smacking her lips in delight. After that, she sat gingerly on her bed and discretely ran her fingers through the bedding set so as to verify its fabric. Draco knew and was accustomed to his mother’s atypical habit of checking the quality of things before using them.

She patted a place next to her, encouraging him to take a seat. He just pressed his lips into a straight line and only shook his head.

“Draco, let’s talk,” she started, grunting.“I think you should - at least - consider being tolerant of those muggles. I know it is a tough period of our lives, after the war...” Narcissa shuddered at the reference of that event and her eyes filmed over a little. “But it is time to move on. Wizarding World is not going to be this same for many years. That’s why for this vacation, I wanted us to come to the place that could let you dispose of redundant memories and experien-”

“Dispose of memories?” Draco cut her off and huffed, leaning flippantly against the wall. His voice was very tight and harsh.“How do you think I could possibly get rid of them? Maybe Dark Mark on my forearm would help me solve that issue? Or Obliviate spell would be a solution?”

At once, the blood was boiling in his veins. He didn’t blame his mother for decisions of the past, but he could not stop himself from snapping. A recollection of tortures he had had to perform on others, of tortures he had had to bear himself, of incurred deaths he had seen… and committed. That wasn’t a fleeting thing to forget.

Narcissa took a deep breath and ignored her son’s snarky comment. She decided not to give up with the plan of their conversation for this evening. So and so, he had to finally hear the truth, right?

“I and your father with Greengrass family established that by the end of this year, you are going to propose to one of their daughters.” She gazed at him, partly expecting the next outburst of emotions. Although Draco’s ears began dangerously reddening, she assumed the silence was a non-verbal acquiescence for her to continue. “You do not have to worry about arrangements for the nuptials, nor about other wedding cases. Everything is going to be organized. And I deeply believe that marring one of those beautiful girls might bring a state of contentment in your life.”

Draco gulped down his saliva and fixed his eyes on the floor, his face expressing wrath.

“I’m sorry mother, but I’ve no idea how marrying a person who I’ve hardly ever talked to could make me any happier.”

“Dear, me and Lucius did not fall in love at first sight either. Nevertheless, we accepted the unusual plight that we were put in, and then we got accustomed to leading our new, joint lifestyle,” she explained, carefully choosing her words. “And I am aware that it must be hard for you. So and it was for me. But now, I could not imagine it to be any different.”

“Well then, if you felt this same way as I do right now, please tell me why are you expecting this same from me by imposing the marriage? Why can’t I choose someone to fall in love with?”

Good point.

Narcissa seemed to be momentarily speechless by his question because there was an awkward, uncomfortable pause for a long moment. Draco sniggered loudly and turned away to leave, but before doing so, his mom’s voice echoed in the room again.

“Love is only a matte-“ she took her last try to argue, her tone rather desperate.

“I don’t care!” he yawped, turning the knob and slamming the door behind him with a violent bang.

Draco headed over to search for a bar where he could abreact the minute-ago conversation. The tension of his body was unbearably upsetting, and his heart was pounding aggressively in his rib cage. His fists clutched tightly, knuckles becoming white and teeth clenched.

Fuck his parents.

Fuck them with their shitty ideas.

When would be a time for him to be able to determine his own opinions about matters in his life? Or rather, the doubt is - would there ever be that time?

Before he knew it, he found himself in this same lobby where he had been an hour ago. As he walked over to the recently encountered receptionist, he spotted her writing something vigorously on an odd, square box. As to not arise any suspicion, he decided to act casually and hide his enticing interest in this particular... object.

Soon enough, you noticed the blond-haired boy and realized it was the man from earlier. A bump formed in your throat, and you fought a sudden urge to run away. Instead, you just set your phone aside and lifted yourself up, all your muscles refusing to do this same activity for the thousandth time this day (‘Is this some kind of aerobic or what?!’).

“Is there something I could help with, sir?” you asked with a smile, trying to remain calm, which was an exceptionally intractable task in this boy’s presence. Maybe as an effect of tiredness, it was hard for you to compose, but you did not like it a bit.

“Yes, actually.” At least he took his best effort to be polite. Although a horrible exasperation, as if something pained him, still convulsed his features. “I wondered if there was a place where I could have some Firewhisky or so?”

‘Firewhisky?’ you thought. ‘Is it some kind of British dainty?’

“Well, for sure I haven’t heard of heating up Whisky before,” you joked, attempting to lighten things up. However, his glare gave you a hint he was definitely not put in a mood for such things.“But there is a pub where you could have a drink, sir. It’s on the opposite street, so all you need to do is to cross over a road.”

Draco nodded. "Oh, and one more thing." He reached over to the inner pocket of his sable jacket and took out an ornamental envelope with an old-fashioned red seal on the top of it. "If the woman who I was with before starts looking after me, hand her over this letter, could you?"

You didn't know where an uninvited rush of interest hailed from, but the mystery-insatiate part of your brain screamed out at you to play along with his cards to winkle out more information. "What if she asks me questions? Shoul-"

"Bend the truth. I only ask you to do one thing for me. Don't reveal to her where or when I went. I gave you the envelope and disappeared out of your sight. Understood, muggle?"

You didn't grasp the last part of his sentence; the one concerning --mugel? meagul? megull? -- but you could bet it meant to be an insult. Swallowing your suspicious hunch, you put on a sympathetic smile. "Sure can do, sir. Hope you have a good night out."

"Thanks. Later." And without any other word, he strode away.

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bowieandqueen11 · 5 years ago

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Hold Your Nerve / Barry Berkman Imagine

Request: hello its me again here with another barry request lmao. i was thinking maybe a barry x reader where the reader is someone that helps to clean up the crime scene for hits so they know what barry does for a living. but they still accept him and know he's not just evil. maybe he goes to them when feeling down and yea cute stuff i love my boy xx

@super-who-dat sorry this took so long love (I also hope you don’t mind I added some stuff)! Lmao you have to tag me in your newest imagine I’m so hyped <3

Being a crime scene cleaner may not be the most uplifting job, but it certainly is one of the most interesting. You get to meet a lot of exciting people, and although it’s often messy and cruel, you get to find out a lot of strange secrets no one should ever know.

The biggest secret in your life was your friend, Barry Berkman. Or Barry Block, now that he’s trying to become an actor. Ever since you had seen that blurred outline in Detective Moss’ photo, you knew it was him. You knew who he was, because he always seems to be in, or around trouble. And although you didn’t agree with what he does, and although you managed to punch him in the face during your first official meeting where you thought he was around at your house to carry out a hit on you rather than bring flowers to apologise (and also scope you out to see if you were a danger), you knew that he wasn’t, deep down, an evil man. He just needed some help, some guidance, and a friend.

‘Barry, I know you don’t have your acting class today, and I know Fuches is away in Philadelphia for the week, so you are so coming out with me tonight.’

Your hands clamp down onto the wide oaken table Barry rests his elbows on, his eyes wide and far away as you glance at him, confusion lining your features as the muted colours of the beer bottles lining the wood and the glitter than finds every spark of light reflects the swirling golden flecks in his eyes. You wave your hand in front of Barry’s face, opting in the end to pat him lightly in the shoulder with your palm, his emerald green shirt coarse underneath your fingertips, but familiar. You had been worried about Barry the last few days, he seemed so distant and so troubled by something he refuses to clue you into. However, as the next song whirrs to a start, blending jovially into the background natter of the small and slightly humid bar, you patter your feet with excitement on the sticky ground and smile at Barry, his eyes finally landing on yours with an unexpected but welcome warmth.

‘Come on, Barry! Promise you’ll meet me tonight.’

‘Where-where are we going, y/n. You know, I have a really early audition tomorrow and I promised Sally I’d practice with her for her big scene next week-’

‘One night, Barry. One night is all I ask. Please, it will do you good. Come on, for your best friend.’

He nods his head gingerly, a small grin on his face as he finally mumbles out a light ‘okay’.

You tug desperately at Barry’s fingers, his thick ones running in between yours and clasping against your knuckles tightly like a desperate child, being dragged along. The contrast between the heat that radiates from your intertwined hands makes you painfully aware of how tight his palm is flushed against yours, his knuckles white from the effort, and the chilly autumn winds that shivers down your spine and into your bones like frost makes the goosebumps break over your skin just that much more.

Children scream as they fly overhead, the coaster wheels rattling along the white tracks that zooms into the night sky like a rocket, bright neon lights flashing wildly at the gated entrance to the ride as you drag Barry in laughing, the last few wisps of cotton candy littering the bottom edge of his plump lips. Stopping in the line suddenly, allowing the natter of excited couples, families and friends swirl around you comfortingly, the light airy magical music of the carousel floating on the wind and the slight cackling of witches and skeletons booming out of the speakers of the haunted house, your shoulders bump familiarly into Barry’s as he gazes down at you with a bright smile on his face. His cheeks are flushed red with fear and love, his shirt rattling slightly in the wind as he shivers, stepping forward and lightly onto your toes as he wraps his arms around your shoulders.

‘If i owe you big time, will you allow me not to go on Ferris wheel?’

‘Not a chance, Barry. Plus, you already do.’

You can see him swallow thickly as he glances up into the night sky, the red and blue sparkling neon lights that line the metal poles shimmering in his wide eyes. He pulls subconsciously on the bit of scarf that cover his neck. The swinging couples kick out their legs in joyous squeals above his head, and you elbow Barry lightly in the ribs as the beads of sweat begin to prickle his skin.

Turning to face you with a faltering smile, you whisper, ‘I promise I’ll hold your hand the whole time.’

He nods his head vigorously in reply, not daring to even try and speak.

As the seats rise with a squeaky creek, lifting you and Barry into the cool night air, surrounding the two of you only with the burning stars and the distant sounds of delighted children, Barry slowly turns to face you, concerned as his hand still grasps yours in a death lock, his knuckles white.

‘You know, for someone who does what you do for a living, you’re awfully afraid of heights.’ He only lets out a hoarse chuckle in reply, his hand reaching out to grab onto the bar around his waist in a tight grip as the seat lurches slightly, the wheel on the move again.

‘Well…’, he starts, ‘if you want to go on it, I go on it. Plus, I get to hold your hand.’

As you look into his eyes, bright and wild in contrast with the darkness behind him, properly looking and understanding the unspoken love that pours out with his gaze despite the feat he’s feeling, you grab him by the cheeks and pull him onto your lips, the soft and tender embrace conveying every feeling locked up inside you. As his hands curl into your hair and you separate to breathe, the airless, gasping laugh he gives against the side of your mouth before pulling onto your hands, his eyes widening in fear as the two of you reach the top only makes you laugh.

Kicking you lightly in the shins as he scrambles further up the white, rusty seat, he manages to mumble out a light, ‘I promise, I’ll get you one of those giant toys to make up for it.’

And Barry was true to his word.

‘One more, mister! One more and then you’ve won the grand prize!’

The children hop around his feet in delighted squeals as he looks down at them smiling, the fake, plastic air rifle twitching in his fingers as he glances back at you. You shoot him a confident thumbs up, making him sarcastically roll his eyes slightly, before he places one foot forward and aims the shot. The stall lights are blazing in his eyes as the carnival worker steps out of the way, the final stack of rusty old tins lining the slightly wooden shelf at the back of the oaken hut falling.

‘And we have a winner!’

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jacensolodjo · 5 years ago

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Will you love me in my darkness as I love you in yours I’m not afraid of your darkness i can only love you more Don’t be afraid of my darkness I’m not afraid of yours Just love me in my darkness as I love you in yours

————-

Pairing: Sheres/Mereel

Rating: T for war themes

Warning: PTSD and its symptoms, gore, cloneshipping

Summary: Because beneath the jokes, beneath the brush-offs, there are two men who have seen and done so many things that will forever weigh on their very soul. And those who have never done or seen those things will never understand on the same level as they understand each other.

Notes: Tagging @izzyovercoffee for reasons that should be obvious. It may be my birthday month but izzy gets the gift. I hope u enjoy it! I did my best to subvert the trope of ‘triggered person goes on rampage against people who don’t deserve it’ while also avoiding any kind of fight with a loved one. Please don’t feel obligated to read if your own mental state isn’t secure but neither is it TOO detailed.

************

An ARC was supposed to be fearless. That was what everyone said. But Jango had been very clear that a man must know fear. That any man who said he did not fear anything was a fool. Jango had been afraid of so many things. Afraid that the training wouldn’t be enough, afraid that they would all wind up dead, afraid they would blame everyone else but him for what was their life (especially that last one while also hoping they could forgive him in time).

Sheres hated whenever he could feel the slight up tick in pulse when a mission started to feel like the one he had lost Cyclo and Nas on. Luckily his hands always stayed steady. He had spent so long learning to put a cap on things, to work through everything outside of a mission instead. But he still could not stop the physiological symptoms. But he knew Jango wouldn’t be disappointed with him about it. So long as he knew the where and when for dealing with it.

He couldn’t really remember how he had arrived at the rendezvous point. All he could remember was the mission environment resembling the one he had lost his vode in. At least he knew he had gone after the right person. He was in civilian clothes so he didn’t have gloves to hide the cracked skin of his knuckles, his blood mingling with the blood of his target. His training had been thorough enough that even in a semi-blackout state his body had gotten him out of the vicinity and to friendly territory. A more ignorant person may have bandied about the explanation of the Force. But their training had made so many things second nature, augmented with good old fashioned experience in the field.

His head jerked up from his study of his bloodied and cracked hands when the door in front of him hissed open and he was met with a face that strongly resembled his own but bore different lines, different scars, slightly different shade of iris, and sometimes a different bulkhead stare. He was still too concerned about his own situation to be too thrown by the fact his counterpart had also decided on different hair.

“Hey, I was starting to wor–” the teasing smirk that had been forming fell away in an instant as he took in the sight before him. Sheres was slouched over, holding his hands limply in front of him as if unable to figure out where they should go. Within another fraction of a second, Mereel quickly yet gingerly pulled Sheres into the building by the lapel and upper torso of his shirt, a gently whispered ‘C’mere, I got you’ heard at the same time. Sheres didn’t struggle and mutely allowed himself to be led, his feet on autopilot to let Mereel guide him over to a couch that was barely holding together like a metaphor for Sheres’s own mental state.

Mereel couldn’t remember the last time Sheres had returned looking the way he was. Regardless, he didn’t bother asking what had happened, it was neither important nor unknown to him what the look and nonverbal state meant.

Instead he removed the shirt that was also covered in blood. He carefully checked over Sheres’s torso just to be sure he only needed to worry about the sniper’s hands. Once he was certain, he brought over a bowl of water, bacta spray, bandages, and a small length of cloth. With expert precision, Mereel wiped off all the blood starting to cake around Sheres’s knuckles and in the creases of his palms.

Mereel was extra careful drying the skin with the cloth, his own hands showing tiny scars from his own missions. He then carefully wrapped Sheres’s palms with the bandaging that was sprayed by bacta. Once finished, he offered a calming smile to Sheres who stared blankly back.

Another person may have been annoyed by Sheres not even saying thank you, but Mereel was experienced enough to know Sheres was incapable of saying it at the moment, not even a greeting would pass his lips for a while. All that mattered to Mereel was that Sheres had made it back relatively safely.

With another reassuring smile, Mereel got up and went about cleaning the area of the supplies and getting rid of the evidence that was the bloody shirt. He was far more used to their roles being reversed, but didn’t mind the chance of paying the Alpha back.

By the time the Null got back from tossing the shirt far away from both the safe house and the scene of the somewhat botched assassination, Sheres had managed to finally stand up but was still in a bit of a daze as he raided the conservator for something, anything, that his stomach wouldn’t disagree with. Mereel hovered by the door as it hissed closed behind him to give Sheres time to look over and not be startled too badly, which he did barely a second after the door closed.

Sheres was still silent but gave a nod of thanks. Mereel nodded back before walking closer. He gently touched Sheres’s lower back and dipped his head to lightly contact with Sheres’s temple. The side Keldabe kiss brought a smile to the Alpha’s face for the first time that standard day.

Even though only one of them was actually mute for the time being, Mereel didn’t say anything if only because this wasn’t the first time this had happened and so it was just easier to be together in silence rather than Mereel awkwardly filling the room with his voice. He lightly tapped a short rhythm on Sheres’s lower back and the Alpha stepped away from the conservator.

In no time, Mereel had gathered up some of the meager foodstuffs he had stocked for the duration of their mission. Not long after, the smell of food filled the small apartment. Sheres watched nearby; it was calming seeing Mereel practically dance through the kitchen like master chef.

Sheres was halfway through his meal when something of a trauma aftershock darted through his mind. Before Mereel could ask what was wrong, Sheres was almost all the way down the hallway to the tiny bedroom. The Null caught up with the Alpha quickly, though, but made sure to keep a respectful distance. Forcing Sheres to talk through it at this stage would have been a terrible idea. But he hated just watching.

The sniper paced restlessly, mouth moving but no words actually coming out. His hands opened and closed, but any pain the action caused was ignored. Eventually he sat on the foot of the bed, though it looked more like he collapsed on it.

Mereel waited a few aching heartbeats. He then stepped closer, slowly, watching Sheres for a sign that he didn’t want company. But instead Sheres just sat, staring at the floor and cradling his hands together.

The Null crouched down in front of Sheres and reached out with both hands to cup Sheres’s slightly larger ones. The touch startled Sheres slightly, but that in itself was a good thing.

They sat like that for what felt like hours but was actually minutes, but in a good way. The touch, the quiet, gave Sheres time to put his mind back in order.

Again, Sheres’s mouth moved but no words came out. Even so, Mereel whispered soothing words and insisted Sheres not force anything. Sheres gave a look of frustration. Now that he was out of danger, out of his violent visit down memory lane, he needed to debrief Mereel.

Mereel felt guilty, though. They both knew that regardless of the fact Sheres had the training for it, close quarters stuff was not in his wheelhouse. Mereel should have been the one to do it. But the Alpha had insisted since Mereel had just come back from another mission that had not involved Sheres. Missions together were sadly quite rare, despite the reasons being rather ridiculous.

“Blood,” Sheres rasped suddenly, the word automatically coming out in Mando'a rather than Basic. He had, after all, grown up with Mando'a first with Basic ironically second.

“Gone. No trace.” The response was in the same language. Mereel did not entirely mean the blood itself, but all that it had splattered on.

“Hands,” the word came out with an almost forlorn look.

“Will heal fine.”

The short phrases were often a hallmark of recovery from “episodes” as they were known. Neither was doing it to be condescending.

“Ambush,” Sheres finally ‘explained’ why he had come back in the state he had. Mereel could not hide his surprise at the word. They had been so sure the target was unaware of the so-called price on his head. “Seemed clear. Explosive. Distraction.”

“You don’t have to debrief me right this second, cyar,” Mereel reassured.

In response, Sheres lightly squeezed Mereel’s hands as if to say “I must”. It wasn’t the first time he had been ambushed, but too many variables had lined up to dredge up the memories of the worst one of his life. In fact, he was usually triggered by smells instead of action or sight.

Sheres was about to continue when a soft kind of chime interrupted him. His gaze turned to the datapad nearby that had been programmed to let them know whenever a news report mentioned certain words. Mereel begrudgingly untangled his hands from Sheres’s so he could get up and pick it up. He angled it so his partner couldn’t see the screen, making Sheres frown.

“–it will take some time to piece together the events here today. As you can see, barely any part of this room is bloodless. For some time it was assumed the victim had been ripped apart so badly there were no solid parts left to piece back together.”

Mereel almost muted the datapad until Sheres gave him a look that stopped him. He needed to know.

“And indeed, it seems he is one step away from being mere pulp. At this time there are no suspects and basically zero leads. Whoever did this knew what they were doing, even if they seem to have gone a little out of control. In this next room we found the very few remains of a weapons dealer that the Republic has been after for some time. We found traces of a second person but no indication that they were also brought to an almost pulp. While they may be the cause, the investigators will not be treating it as a manhunt but rather a rescue effort.”

Sheres looked away and down to his hands. While Alpha 17 was the most proficient of the Alphas in close quarters, Sheres was no slouch in rendering his opponent to being mush. The explosive had helped though, in ways the target had not expected.

Even though it was sanctioned, the two ARCs were quite used to their missions being swept under the rug, the paperwork filed under ‘highly classified until further notice’. So neither were surprised at the prospect that the local law enforcement would investigate. They knew that if the local LEOs got too close to figuring it out though, that Republic spook overseers would take the necessary action.

If only Sheres had managed to take the target out in the way they had planned it. They had leeway for mission success that many other clones didn’t but that also did not mean Sheres would shrug over how it had truly gone down.

“Sorry,” Sheres mumbled as Mereel turned the datapad off.

“No. Not your fault. You got the job done and came home. That is what matters.”

Sheres clenched his eyes shut before slowly burying his face into Mereel’s shoulder. I want to be better, echoed in his head. Mereel sighed and rested his cheek on Sheres’s head.

“Vor’e.”

“Always.”

#izzyovercoffee #sheres #shereshoy fett #mereel skirata #shereel #r: boot polish and blaster smoke #izzy #my writing #source for icon can be found by clicking the icon #ptsd tag #gore tag

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cruzrogue · 5 years ago

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Perfect Party

#Fictober19 @fictober-event

————————————————————————

for fanfiction:

Prompt number: 15 “That’s what I’m talking about!”

Fandom (AU if applicable): #arrow fanfiction #olicity

Rating:PG13

Warnings/Tags: AngstyFluff

Summary: Continuation from prompt 14 College kids: Oliver and Megan (Felicity) become a couple and this is when he finds out her real first name as he tells his kids the story.

Notes:(This became a monster… there was supposed be no angsty conversation but it happened anyway. I wrote to make another fluff piece but… Ah! Anyways here it is…)

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

Perfect Party on A03

Cracking open another book to read. Oliver just gazes at where his tutor is sitting reading her own book. She’s plopped down using a sofa as a backrest as her slender legs are over an interior designer’s weird conversational piece. Her heavy long kneed boots are off to the side. She’s reading her least favorite subject of U.S. history as he is taking side notes as he’s reading his textbook of macro-economics. They are both bored out of their minds but they’re under a timer. These minutes belong to these textbooks and they have been both honoring this kind of system of studying.

Oliver won’t argue that since he first took in seriously studying with the help of the Goth girl he met in South Boston by a sidewalk in the late evening hour his grades have steadily improved. To this day she still adheres that she saved him from that lame party. He’ll never know if it was truly lame but he deeply doesn’t care. It’s the party that brought them together thus to him he has no qualms of ever knowing.

The little ding in the background goes off and he lets out a content sigh. He can’t help but watch Megan stretch out like a cat and he inwardly groans because they’re not at that stage of their relationship. She looks so damn sexy all the time and he’s learned that cold showers don’t always work because she’s now always on his mind.

“I’m hungry!”

He’s learned that she has a very vast appetite. As long as tree nuts are not on the menu she can have it all. “What are you hungry for?”

She shrugs but says anyways, “You pick, I chose last time.”

“Greasy or no?”

“Does it matter? You have full control of the pick. Even that rabbit food you’ve successfully added to my diet.”

“Okay, okay! So, I feel like a cheeseburger and some fries.”

He can see the moment that her excitement for meat comes to the forefront as she does this cute gesture of raising her hand in a fist bump.

“That’s what I’m talking about!”

He just chuckles and it has her cozying up to him as her lips finds his. Mmm… this part of their relationship is gotta be the best. Every kiss they share is full of sizzling potential and they’ve never crossed any lines. For now, they are taking everything slow. She has this thing about slow burn and her explaining it to him was a doozy. Her words cycle around his mind as she’s making herself comfortable on his lap as the phrase refers to stories featuring characters who gradually and naturally fall in love or lust before beginning a romantic or sexual relationship. He won’t suggest to her again that their already in some sort of romantic relationship because it led to her thinking things through the first time and it landed him cursing himself as he lost out on more intimate moments. Yep, he shot his foot off with that mistake he learned not to do it again.

He holds her closer to him enjoying that her chest bumps against his and he knows she can feel how excited he is but she just doesn’t mention it ever. This is girl is becoming a staple in his world and the thought of him now graduating next year while she’ll still be working for her double major has made its presence in his psyche. She just too incredible and they’ve been together for over two semesters now.

The fact that he doesn’t even notice other females has been brought to his attention several times by his male buddies. Using his studies as an excuse he’s keeping more to himself and interacting on a down low with any college partying frat boys. Being honest with himself has been hard. It’s one of the things that has made his growth possible. It would put a lot of stress on his relationship with Megan if she were the sole reason for the changes. Because she doesn’t want to be his savior but he knows her well enough that she believes more in equality. Sharing burdens and stuff. Things he has learned about her through conversations over long noir films, studying moments, and these wonderful make out sessions.

Her perfect weight on his lap not only does things to him but feeling her beside him all the emotions he has deep inside have a way of coming out slowly and after all these long weeks together he wants to tell her that he’s in love with her. He thought about being cheesy a few times but she’d be so disappointed if he went that route. Not on the declaration of love but using time tested romcom samples that are overboard. He finds she has big tastes on technology but doesn’t fancy jewelry given by really anyone.

He landed up giving her signed poster of music groups she loves or that one actress she adores from her favorite show they watch. Buying her a convention ticket to see these people she can recite story lines was like he got down on one knee and proposed. It was amazing how excited she was.

One thing they’re both of aware of is their different social-economics and he is careful to not overwhelm her with family’s status. It would spook her away. It took a bit from him when she found he comes from a wealthy family not to lose her back then. Just lucky they share a close connection.

“Megan, you are such a nerd.”

“I am not apologizing for liking meat.”

He chuckles. “I meant the fist bump. That is such a geeky thing to do.”

She shrugs her shoulder she’s done a lot of other nerdy things she won’t apologize even if he’s just teasing. She shrugs her shoulders she’s done a lot of other nerdy things she won’t apologize even if he’s just teasing. “But you like the thought of me liking meat?” For the first time in their relationship she grinds against him and his eyes become so wide as he is flabbergasted at her forwardness.

“I… I”

“Is Mr. sexy pants mute?”

He nods still wondering what his temptress is doing. Her fingers softly messaging his scalp through the light cropped hair she seems to like. Gosh he’s even sporting scruff that has her kissing his neck since she told him to cut off the beard deep in December after he grew out his facial hair for no shave November. Keeping it trim to this day many months later. Anything that he notices or she out right tells him how much she likes or hates something has him keep to a beauty regimen. Not that he hasn’t had some little says in her own little routines. Like a certain fragrance he admiringly associates with her.

“We are on a break; I’m going to eat a juicy burger and what isn’t there to love?”

“Megan? That isn’t the reason I’m surprised.”

“Hmm… I need to confess something to you and I need you not to get upset.”

Just as quickly as he is aroused, he becomes paranoid that something is going to break this perfection that they have going on.

“As much as I love how you say Megan…”

“Baby I love your name.”

“It’s actually my middle name.” The frozen look on his face has her worried that he may think she’s lied about many other important things. “There is nothing else I’ve kept from you, I just liked using Megan and the way you’d say Meg or Maggie or any other variations just was so perfect but…”

He isn’t totally convinced. He doesn’t understand how she kept something as monumental from him. Everywhere they went he introduced her as Megan his girlfriend. She has yet to meet his parents but the name Megan has fallen from hips a million times conversing with family and friends.

“I mean in reality Megan is still my name.”

He pushes her off slightly and she moves so he can get up. “No!” He just walks to a window in his apartment. They always hang out here because she lives in a dorm. “To think some of your friends having to go along with this farce when they call you by your real name.”

“Oliver? That isn’t the case. I introduce myself to a lot of people as Megan.”

“Really? And how many of these people think about you? Truly care about you? Even dream of you? Simply as what your middle name is?”

She makes a joke of it, “My mother calls me by my whole name either when she’s really happy or annoyed with me.”

“That is supposed to make me feel better?” He is now really agitated. “You don’t get to make this into a joke. Here I am opening myself to you and I don’t even know your name.” He looks away from her. Not allowing her sorrow to change how angry he is becoming.

She knows she in deep trouble he is right and she played the whole name thing lightly not seeing it through his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I would have continued calling you Megan if you have this horrendous name you didn’t want to share at first. Though whatever it is I would love it. Just because it’s a part of you.”

“Wow! I guess I’m a stupid fool I never put much stock into it but I should have and I am really sorry.”

He finally slowly turns to look at his girlfriend and it strikes him he doesn’t even know her name. She can see the realization in his face as he just stares at her blankly.

“It’s Felicity, Felicity Megan Smoak.”

If she thought the frozen look on his face before was concerning whatever is going through her mind is really a shocker.

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

When Oliver pauses it has his kids on edge. He’s telling the story in a cleaner version of how he learned his wife’s first name. It seems telling his kids this as they wait for their mother to come home may have not been the wisest idea.

“Dad what happened?”

“Yes daddy, did you break up?”

The youngest being so innocent and not truly understanding relationships asks if they ever made up.

Oliver checks his phone and a text by Felicity telling him she’s running late. She finishing up from another conference meeting so he continues on with the story. She’ll be home soon.

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

“Felicity… Fe-li-ci-ty.” He just says her name one more time, “Felicity! I don’t get it. It’s actually a very beautiful name.”

“It’s a cheesy name. It means happiness, I’m a Goth girl.”

Oliver sighs he really doesn’t get it. She has been making him happy all these months. The name is perfect. Now that he knows the truth. As much as she’s been Megan from now on, he’ll always think of her has Felicity. What is the most important matter to him is how long he will get to know Felicity? It seems that maybe he had more emotional attachment to her than she has had of him. Maybe her tutoring him and having him mastering his academia is a thrill for her. She’s one of a kind who is he to really know what goes through that mind of hers? Only that he’d be devastated because along the way he gave her his heart even if he hasn’t said so its implied.

“I know your mad, I guess I really screwed up and I’m sorry.”

“It makes me wonder if I’m just an experiment. A fixer upper that you…”

Felicity looks horrified as she cuts him off, “Oh no. No! You’ve been nothing but the perfect dream. I’m always worried I’d wake up and you’d be over me. Falling in love with you was so easy.” She catches what she just said and her hand goes to her mouth. He is about to break up with her and she’s telling him she loves him. She can be such a fool.

“I couldn’t be over you even if I wanted to.” He doesn’t mention the whole falling in love that could just be faux pas said in haste.

Felicity aches now knowing that he doesn’t even think her declaration of falling for him is seen real to him. That stings. “I should go.”

“That is probably for the best.” Yet neither move. The air is thick with unsaid words as their emotions are crumbling with angst.

Felicity is a smart girl she knows if she walks out there won’t be a them any longer. The them that has been crafted over time. She sucks in a breath; she created this mess and she needs to fix it. “I can’t apologize enough for how my careless way of thinking of things in simplest of facts.” She won’t go without at least telling him how much she loves him. “It being a name.” She sighs as she glances at him and watching that he is listening gives her some hope. “I didn’t take to account the emotional side of all this.” Taking a small pause, “You mean the world to me. Oliver, I love you so much…” She tearing up. “That love is from all of me. Felicity Megan Smoak the daughter of Donna and also a father named Noah who I haven’t seen since I was seven.”

Talking about her parents is like pulling teeth. He knows it hard for her so this acknowledgement means something. She really is trying to amend the situation. It really is just a name. It’s not like he doesn’t know how clinical she can be in her thinking process.

“Noah is a fool of a man letting go of such a bright amazing girl.” He moves up to her just like when they met.

“Maybe I just wasn’t…”

“Shh.” He’s looking down to her, “His failure isn’t your own.” He wipes a few stray tears she has let go. “You mean the world to me too.”

“I do?”

“I love you.” He cups her face and finally kisses the one who has his heart.

Still having his hands on her face, she inquires, “Does that mean you forgive me?”

With a sigh his eyes searching hers, “Of course I’d forgive you. We’ll always see some things differently and there will always be fights that are bound to happen.”

“I don’t like fighting.”

He leans in to kiss her as he tells her the same thing.

She’s a little forward in rubbing her hands just under his shirt. “I heard making up is supposed to be…”

He stops her. They haven’t crossed that line yet and he’ll be damn if their first time is happening this way. “I love you Meg…” He closes his eyes this is going to take some getting used to. “Felicity Smoak but I’m still processing this whole name thing and when we take the next step it won’t be after an argument.”

She nods in agreement.

“So, what about some burgers?”

Felicity stops him from leaving her space as she now holds him to her as she raises on her tiptoes to kiss him.

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

As the door in the back where it leads to the mudroom opens and Oliver takes a pause as his kids are listening to a very clean version of when he found out Megan was indeed Felicity’s middle name. He looks to the newest addition sitting in the high chair just happily gnawing on a teeth ring. Oblivious to his siblings’ excitement until he hears his mother’s voice and all of a sudden his son a babbling genius. A pang of jealousy hit Oliver as his little munchkin doesn’t show him that kind of welcome.

“Mom’s home.”

Felicity welcomes her two youngest with open arms and gives them kisses than she hugs her eldest as she slowly walks into her husband’s embrace. It doesn’t take long for their youngest to disapprove and want his mother’s sole attention.

“Sorry, hi there handsome.” She’s kissing the baby as the other kids settle back down. She looks at the expecting faces and makes sure to look at her husband as she asks, “Did I miss something?”

“I was just telling them about when I learned Felicity was your first name.” She gives him a weary look. “Don’t worry it was the PG version.”

“Did mommy come off as a clown?” She regrets saying those words as her kids start to asking about clowns. She just meant if she came off sounding awful but now she’s denying any clowns were a part of the story their father told them. Oliver is just off to the side observing his wife having to explain herself ah yes those memories fill his mind as he has his lips puckered up. She sure can dig a hole for herself. As he recalls the true lustful events of that study session.

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

“So, what about some burgers?”

“Oliver? I am hungry!” She doesn’t wait for him to truly understand as she already hopping onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist as her lips find that particular spot that has him growl and that’s the purr of his she needs. He catches on quick as he has to keep them from falling as his girl is doing things to him. He unfailingly finds the perfect spot a few steps away to allow her to continue doing this most erogenous thing to his body as she certainly rubs herself on him.

He’s losing the ability to think because just a moment ago he was against this scenario and now his body pretty much told his mind to shut up. He sinking down deeper onto the sofa she used as a backrest earlier.

There is lips and teeth and the occasion tongue and oh those moans that have both of them panting as they seem to be so lost in each other. Succulent skin that deserves the devotion as hands seem to roam and sweet nips upon each other’s skin only raises the stakes to needing more. Sweet words spilled as some gasps of warm sweet air spurs stimuli onto their hair follicles making for the most enticing shivers.

Felicity has been ready for this for a while, the thought of Oliver’s palms caressing her without barriers of any kind. Even pondering wet dreams of the friction she mostly thirsts for that only he can quench.

At first she teased him. Their relationship wasn’t formed the bonds they have now wasn’t there and it was easy to promise things like promiscuity. Fortunately for them It didn’t work like that because they found that it wasn’t just an attraction that kept them coming to each other’s orbit. They truly sought one another just to discourse what was actually happening in their lives. Until they couldn’t fathom not having the intertwined lives they were leading. Good and bad shared, memories of past conversations, voices becoming lullabies at night and waking thoughts of the other person in mundane tasks. They were falling in love.

It took a stomach rumble which neither could tell if it was theirs but they pulled away laughing. They were good. Though they pulled away from the other knowing that it really wasn’t the right time to go further. There is no hurry.

~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~sp@ce~~~~~~****~~~~~~~~

“Come to find out your mommy was very hungry.” Oliver chuckles as his wife actually accidentally demonstrates his point. She is hungry.

The kids try to follow their parents story but there are so many vague points they have no idea what actually happened. They just know that their dad found out what their mom’s name was and that was the end. There was kissing. More kissing. As they watch their dad pull their mom into another hug they know another kiss will happen.

#fictober19 #olicity #oliver queen #felicity smoak #arrow

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grell-writes-stuff · 5 years ago

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I finished chapter 28 and I’m posting it here because I did so many bad things

Tag List: @fenfaerie @arieswriting

I spent the week avoiding my phone as much as possible, and immediately deleting any notifications that popped up from that group chat. To keep it all confined to that forbidden, digital space, I tried to distance myself from the guys at school. Kelley had a lot to say about that yesterday.

“Do I have to bribe you into doing stuff?”

“Using what?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet. Maybe I just need to start smacking you with a newspaper until you do the thing that I want you to do.”

“You said we’re not hitting people.”

“I said you aren’t hitting people. I have free rein to do whatever is best for your health, and, at this point, I’m thinking of getting a little spray bottle–”

“Seriously?”

“You’re like a misbehaving cat, and I’m training you to stay off the kitchen table.”

She let up when I told her what my plans were for today.

At around six, I receive the “Here” text from Cole as his Cherokee rolls into our driveway behind – avoidance – something that I decide not to think about. Not today. For the sake of getting through this jam session and keeping it a good day, I can’t let myself focus on anything except drumming. That’s it. Nothing else.

That’s also why I slip my headphones in before leaving the house. I don’t have any music playing, but it keeps the ride to West Hills quiet – with the exception of Cole’s screamo. I say a polite “hey” to him and Matt, but that’s about it.

In approximately fifteen minutes, we’re pulling into the Mechis’ driveway next to a sleek, black Lexus that I refuse to look at. I don’t notice it, or the person walking from it to the entrance to the garage. I wedge a broom through the handle, because I refuse to open that door in my mind and let the memory of the screaming match ruin this day. Frankly, I’m determined to block out her shrill voice in whatever way I can. I fight against the ever-present urge to give myself tinnitus.

The three of us get out of Cole’s car, and I hang back for a moment as they grab their guitars. Together, we enter the garage, and I tug out my earbuds.

I swallow back the lump in my throat, but that’s tough when my windpipe is constricted.

It’s such a familiar place. It used to be comforting, but now it feels tainted and hollow. The old, duct-taped couches that are falling apart seem like dusty relics of some long-forgotten past for which I am the sole historian. The boxes of Full Stop. merch lying around feel like clutter now instead of a celebration and achievement, like some ancient memorabilia that no one will ever purchase, not even the most dedicated collectors. The band binder is still just hanging on by a thread, but it feels like it’s already exploded and setlists and notes are paper shrapnel raining down from the sky. My drum kit feels like a foreign technology that I don’t understand. This room is infested with age. It’s an abandoned ghost town, and I feel haunted.

As we enter, Bryson greets me. Cole and Matt say hi back, but I’m still finding it hard to make words, so I just nod and try to put my attention elsewhere. I try to remember the workings of my setup. I’ve been visualizing the placement of cymbals, and toms, and the kickdrum while I’ve been recovering. I know where everything is. I can figure out how I’d once played music on this strange contraption again. Maybe someday it’ll feel the same.

I head to one of the sofas as Matt and Cole go about tuning their instruments.

And I ignore the screeches that she calls vocal warmups. In fact, I do everything within my power to forget her presence all together.

“Okay,” Bryson interrupts after a few minutes have passed. In that time, I’d listened to the twangs of the guitar and bass, and not her shrieks into the microphone. “I guess we can start.”

Since we don’t have a gig lined up, and this is just an unofficial jam session for something like fun, there’s a difference in his tone. It’s not as desperate. That’s probably a good thing. He’s not stressed, and there’s less pressure on us to be perfect. We’ll be far from it. The walking boot on my leg acts as a constant reminder of that fact as I rise and move over to my kit.

“We’ll probably be a bit rusty,” he elaborates. “But everyone just try your best. We don’t have to sound filled-out. Just let us know if you need a break, Scott.” He gestures to my leg, to the boot.

I nod. There was no hope of us sounding full anyway, and I haven’t tried drumming with a cast ever, but I doubt it will help my limb coordination and timing, and it probably won’t feel too great after a while, so I’ll definitely be off. And we’re painfully lacking in guitars, but I force that thought out of my mind.

I don’t purposefully bump into her shoulder as I pass. It’s easier to pretend she’s not there – that she’s not even furniture – rather than acknowledging her as an obstacle.

“All right. So, Scott?” Bryson says to grab my attention. Once I’m sat on my stool behind my setup, I look at him. It’s tough to define what’s in his expression, but his words are rather transparent. I didn’t text him back at all the past few days and he knows that was a deliberate choice. “We all picked songs this week that we want to run today, and, after that, we’ll focus on originals, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Cole wants to run Ocean Avenue – so we’ll start there – and Selena picked Told You So.”

Of course it’s a Paramore song. Of course it is.

“Matt chose You Think You Know It All by Red As Dusk. What’s your pick?”

It takes me a second longer than normal to peruse my mental music library because now it’s shrunk in size, and so many songs have been filed away and are now off-limits. Kelley’s suggestions are background noise as I search the stacks. Purge the excess negative energy. Purge the anger. Hitting my sticks against my drums will help, but only if I can find a way to throw everything that I possibly can into it. It’s a good thing that I’m battling rage because those tracks are the safe ones now, and anything rebellious will do.

“The Anthem – Good Charlotte.”

Bryson gives me a brief nod, but that’s ruined immediately. Every hair on my body seems to rise in defense.

“Um, I don’t know that one!” It’s her sharp voice speaking, and I shove my earplugs in to filter out some of the volume and annoyance. “I would have learned it if you’d picked sooner.”

“Sucks to be you!” It slips out of me, and I realize that means I’ve broken my vow for the day, and now Selena’s materialized in the garage, and my glare lands on her, which she matches with one of her own. In my peripheral, the rest of the guys look like they’re getting ready to break up the resulting physical fistfight that seems to be inevitable.

But that will get me in trouble in some way. I know it for a fact. I’ve already reacted, so retreating is tough, but I grapple for a way to deescalate.

“I’ll fucking sing it then. Why does it even need lyrics anyway? It just needs to be cynical and loud.” My fingers clamp around my sticks, the tools that will help me feel better and prevent me from punching her square in her contoured cheek.

“You just want Vikki to come in here and yell at us again, don’t you?” Bryson asks, deadpan, probably so Selena doesn’t have a chance to retaliate.

“Yes,” says Cole.

“Oh, my God,” he sighs. “Really, Cole?”

“Dude, I can’t be the only one who’s told you that your sister is hot.”

“She’s hot,” Matt agrees.

“See? Verdict’s in: she’s hot.”

“Why am I friends with you?” That knocks the desperation back into his tone, and it almost feels like a normal detour from practicing. Like we have a gig soon, but we’re all screwing around, and Bryson’s the only one with a sense of urgency and deadlines. I almost make myself savour it. “Can we just start the song? Please? Just play the fucking song?”

At that, Cole shrugs slightly, and his gaze sweeps over us to find confirmation. I signal back, my limbs still humming with everything I had to repress a second ago. They’re vibrating with the need to get it out, and I feel ready to drum to release it all before it boils my blood. She injected the steam into my veins and it wants out.

When everyone’s ready, Cole’s guitar plays the chugging, palm-muted intro to Ocean Avenue. Finally, my sticks hit and my foot stomps the kickdrum’s pedal. Matt’s bass fills it out a little bit, but we still sound empty. We’ve played this track before, but it doesn’t sound anything like it used to when it came out of our instruments. Selena’s unstable voice wails without a care, and I try to block it out and focus on my drumming so I don’t sound so off even though I totally am.

My limb coordination is flawed because the boot is throwing off my time-keeping and I haven’t put my formerly-sprained wrist to much work until now. I knew that I wouldn’t be perfect, but it’s bugging me nevertheless. My brain is telling me that it shouldn’t be like this. As a whole, we should sound better. My limbs shouldn’t feel so stiff as if I were a marble statue, as if I’m turning to stone. I hope for a second where I get the chance to shake it off, except–

Except my throat has a tight knot in it, and it hastily, heavily drops down into my chest. It’s so sudden and strange, but I feel something stirring and then curdling within me, rising up and bubbling through every artery before solidifying into a heavy, black mass that weighs down my arms. I remember a moment too late that I should be breathing, and I only accomplish that because I haven’t been taking in air and it already feels like my lungs have been set on fire after being filled with concrete, so it’s tough to shove into my subconscious. My eyes are stinging so bad that I can’t see my sticks where they rest in my shaking hands. The knot launches itself up from my chest and I feel like I have to gag. My pulmonary function fails and I become as empty as the music that falls silent.

Not all at once. It dies off in pieces, but I stop first, right at the start of the chorus. Then, everyone else cuts off too. The sticks slip through my loose fingers, but I barely hear them hit the hard floor with a soft clatter because a song is echoing in my mind now, and it’s not Ocean Avenue.

But it’s close. Too close. Ahead of me, I see blurs.

But also, an endless horizon of blue.

“Scott?”

Bryson’s voice penetrates my earplugs, but it still sounds twenty-thousand feet away from me. My mouth feels like it’s been filled with sand, and my stomach hurts, and everything is blocked by the firm, congealed sludge living inside of me. My hands are caught up in earthquakes, and I hear my hollow attempts to breathe as something between gasps and augmenting sobs.

I suddenly feel his hand on my shoulder and I don’t know how because his touch is light and everything is hot and numb.

“Are you okay?” he asks in a distorted voice.

No. I’m not. I’m not okay, but I can’t speak to lie and say that I’m fine, or to, for once, tell the truth. My mind is not a blank whiteboard. Instead, someone has written lyrics on it in permanent marker, and now the words are tormenting me along with dark chords, and a frantic, panicking drum beat that’s pounding against my skull.

“What’s wrong, Scott?” One of them questions me. I can’t even tell which one of them it is anymore. Matt, I think. Maybe.

I want to throw up. Or I need to. Or I just need to take in air. Any fucking air at all. Before everything finally shuts down, I have to get it out. Quavering. Quiet.

“Yellowcard.”

There’s some silence. Or it would be, but my ears are ringing, and my cheeks feel wet. After a few hundred, frenzied heartbeats, Bryson stiffens beside me, which I know because the hand that’s on my shoulder is attached to a body that I feel go rigid. His voice mingles with the deafening tone and my tears, and I hate how horrified and sorry it sounds. How lost and guilt-ridden it is.

“I was playing Lights And Sounds when they jumped…”

It’s not even the same fucking song! So what?! I’m just never going to be able to listen to Yellowcard again?! Because now they are tainted with tragedy and I’ll always remember in some crevice of my mind that that stupid song was playing, and I can almost feel our arms locked, and the salty breeze as it all rushes up ahead of us–

“Shit, man. I-I’m sorry.” I hear Cole say, and I hate the way that it sounds too because he shouldn’t have to apologize. “I didn’t know–”

I can’t even tell him to stop because I won’t be able to make any words, and I can’t breathe. Nothing’s going in and reaching my burning lungs even though I’m gasping for it. It’s not his fault, but those words stop on my tongue. It isn’t Cole’s fault. He doesn’t have to say sorry. He was in the water. He couldn’t have heard it. It’s not Cole’s fault. It’s not Matt’s fault. It’s not Bryson’s fault.

Because maybe it’s mine. We did it together, and one of us tripped, and what if it was me? Maybe if we hadn’t jumped at the same time, things would be different. He would be here, and this would be a practice for a gig instead of a failed jam session, and his guitar would have filled out Full Stop. and we would feel like Full Stop., and I wouldn’t be breaking down over a fucking Yellowcard song! But it’s too late now, and it’s all my fault.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Fuck it! Move!”

Such a loud voice that slices through my earplugs like a razor blade and splits the air with the shrill metal sound of an axe hammering down. If I wasn’t shaking so terribly, I’d flinch at it because it hurts, but it also makes every trembling muscle inside of me tense painfully.

It’s sudden, but Bryson’s hand withdraws quick, and my vision finally goes dark, and then talons dig into my flesh and sear it, and I’m yanked up violently to the sounds of muffled protests surrounding us. My own laboured, raspy, wailing gasps rise above the guys as I try to bring in anything at all, but it turns out to just be another futile attempt because there’s not enough air in the atmosphere to keep me alive.

My skin burns where fingernails dig in and inflict agony like they’re steel nails instead, and I don’t know how I stumble when my legs have turned to rubber, and my feet feel weighted down. I could crumble and snap and break at any moment like a building ready to topple. All the retentions are groaning, the supports failing, and I’m about to fall, and I can’t fucking breathe!

There are bewildered and demanding words coming from the dark blurs around me, and I try to blink the water away, but it’s coming too fast. Only one forceful voice has the volume to rise above, and it’s almost clear, and so close to me, and shoving me harshly as if the sound itself has become a physical entity, and it’s so damn annoying. It pushes and pulls me, and I’m running out of the strength to fight it because everything I have left is trying to suppress the bile gathering in my stomach and threatening my useless esophagus.

Then everything is bright, like the sun on that horrible, unsuspecting day. I’d say I feel blinded by it, but I didn’t see anything before anyway. There’s more forced stumbling and a muddling of voices and sounds. Another rises over them, so loud, and shrill, yet it can never hit the notes it sets out to despite always trying to rise at the end of every line.

“Get in,” it demands.

“Selena, what the fuck are you doing?!” Bryson. I think it’s Bryson. It sounds kind of like Bryson, but so far away.

I think there’s a response, but I’m trapped in a fishbowl and everything is half muted. I’m sitting, and all I hear before someone else speaks is a loud slam right beside me. Then there’s something that sounds like angry arguing, but I can’t make it out because my thundering heartbeat and broken lungs are trying to kill me. Another harsh slam, then a jingle, sputter, and hum, and then the whole world lurches forward.

And my gut lurches forward and upwards again, and that forces the blackness clouding my eyes to dissolve into dizzy, sparkling fragments. I barely have the air to heave, but I manage to start gagging, rocking forward in my leather seat, and then her voice shrieks:

“Don’t you fucking dare puke in my car!”

I’m in Selena Walton’s stupid, expensive Lexus. There’s that small, sane part of me clinging to the thought that blowing chunks inside of her Lexus is a bigger fuck you to her than smearing Vaseline on the door handle, but it’s microscopic because the acidic needles of the bile are pricking the base of my empty windpipe, and it’s so fucking hot in here, and no matter how much blinking I do everything is blurry, and those lyrics are stuck in my mind.

“But make it loud, cause nobody’s there.”

Nobody’s there.

He’s not there. He’s not here. One. I’m alone in the chapel with a monument to destruction, the end of an era. Two. Together, we jump. Three. My leg feels like it’s been severed. Four. My head has exploded. Five. I shatter into pieces. Six. I’m gripping the porcelain sides of a bathroom sink to keep from falling. Seven. In the nightmares, I’m falling. Falling, falling, falling. Eight. I’m suffocated by the emptiness of a black abyss and closed-in walls of my bedroom without him in it. Nine. The futon is in couch mode. And that’s not ever going to change again. Ten. There’s not enough air, but I can’t seem to drown. Eleven. We hit the ledge over half-way down a thirty-foot fall, and it was all my fault. He’s gone, and I should have gone with him, but I didn’t and he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone – You’re never going to get rid of me, Morgan – and why can’t I fucking breathe–

And then something unimaginable happens.

It’s fast, unpredictable, and unprompted, and my boiled blood becomes lava because the second I realize what’s going on, I am furious.

Her arm smacks into and lays across my chest and pushes me back harshly against the seat, pinning me. She’s leaned over the console in the middle with her other hand still stretched to hold the wheel, but I only notice that after the fact, and it’s still not the most terrifying thing. My tear-blinded eyes go wide, and probably vault out of my skull like a cartoon because this is a new kind of unwelcome proximity.

Her lips are on my lips. She kisses me with her greasy, scalding, obnoxious, red mouth and suddenly my trembling limbs freeze in place. The world pauses for a second – or it feels like it except she’s also fucking driving in West Hills, which is just as uneven and winding as Woodland Hills and Bryson’s street is no exception, and her fucking foot must be pressing the accelerator to the floor.

But I am less focused on fearing for my life and more focused on the fact that I have now kissed Selena fucking Walton.

“What the FUCK?!”

#interlude #wip: interlude #book: interlude #morgan scott #selena walton #bryson mechis #cole marshall #matt jordan #mental breakdown #writing #my writing

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fallynephemeron · 6 years ago

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I was tagged by @angrymagicgirlmarsette . Thank you for tagging me!

What genre(s) you write

Betwixt would be difficult to really pinpoint into a typical genre, and considering it’s not going to be printed in book format, I feel it’s not as necessary to try to conform to one.

Breaking new ground here with some combination of web series, episodic fiction, fantasy novel series, with a nod to the long-running format TV soap opera but in written form.

If we’re really talking genre though, I’m drawing heavily from Urban Fantasy, Gothic Romance, Supernatural Horror, with an adequate dose of High Fantasy Epic and Dystopian Adventure for good measure.

What’s on your reading wish list

One thing that’s caught my eye is the Raven Cycle. I’ve loved other things Maggie Stiefvater has written. I’ve read Lament probably 6 times, the imagery draws me in every single time.

Finding the Terry Pratchett Discworld series books I’m missing is kind of high on the list. I’ve read all of them, but some were read over 20 years ago and I want to revisit them. I used to be a voracious reader, but kids happened, trauma happened and my ADHD diagnosis showed me why I have to be really careful getting sucked into novel world because the real world stuff really truly suffers when I do. So unfortunately reading has taken a back burner for far too long.

Your favorite character from your current WIP

This is the hardest question, but it’s all about the character arcs, baby. I simply cannot choose between these four. (edit: i got really carried away, but I was on a roll, and ... well...) (edit 2: i use too many adjectives, i’m aware of the problem)

Rivet ... my brown force of nature with too many tattoos, vacillating between boundless rage and weary sarcasm, doing her best to keep the ones she swears she doesn’t give a shit about on the correct path with her fractured clairvoyance and haphazard approach to magic. She’s been more and more aware of some kind of upheaval on the outskirts of the mundane world. She’s had run-ins with the unpredictable Fae in the past, A rune covered baseball bat, a dog eared tarot deck, and an intimate knowledge of the secret paths of The Nowhere have been the tools that have kept her alive so far.... but will they be enough now that she’s somehow become responsible for the safety of one boy-crazy half faerie that just might be the answer to all the questions?

Xavier ... my precious one, batting his long lashes, swooning all over anyone he has half a hope might love him, if only for a night? He’s been abandoned, used and abused, pulled back from the brink of destruction. He wants to put all that behind him and move on, exploring the glittering, gritty, rainbow oil slicked nooks and crannies of the city he’s fallen in love with. But between the men that see him as nothing more than a plaything or a possession, the darkness in the surrounding woods that seems to want to devour him whole, the eerie figure he can’t quite see at the edges of his vision that seems to be spying on him, and the dark eyed, sharp tongued woman built like a cage fighter that definitely is spying on him “for his own fucking good”, what is this too pretty, pale, little, gay, shimmer goth, faerie halfling, supposed to do? Stay home? Not on your life

Wynter…my innocent, red cheeked, much too tall, awkward, nearly mute from anxiety, loyal to a fault, doormat. He should be a fully matured werewolf by now, so why hasn’t he had his first change? But that’s the furthest thing from his mind, if only for this moment. What’s the difference between childhood best friends and boyfriends and does love always have to hurt so much? And does it always have to include the awkward sex stuff that always makes him feel like he’s going to vomit? And now he has another problem. A terrifyingly alluring faerie problem with big green eyes that he keeps catching staring at him. What is he doing here and why is Rivet being so secretive about it?

Jaq ... my brilliantly talented fuck-up. How can someone be that innocently naive, and that criminally minded stupid at the same time? His lack of impulse control, a filter, any sense of self preservation, his messed up backwards sense of right and wrong... at what point do the people that love you say “enough” and refuse to be hurt by you anymore? But he’s lost in the battle between his realities, the shit he sees that isn’t real and the shit he sees that is real but no one else can see, it’s a wonder he’s survived this long in a world he can’t make sense of, filled with people that often can’t make sense of him. His art is his way of sorting out the mess inside his head. Wynter has always been by his side, like the welcome mat you wipe your feet on without thinking about it too hard, so why is he hanging out with her so much? He hasn’t been able to trust her, since.... the incident when they were children. Maybe he’s just paranoid, but he’s pretty sure they’re hiding something from him.

Some writing tropes you like

Pretty much anything involving two people that don’t know each other or don’t like each other, forced into the same space with no way out. Arranged marriages, elevator breakdowns, etc. etc.

The story behind your WIP’s name

Betwixt feels like magic and hexed and I like X’s. Hence why Xave’s full name is Xavier Alexander Maxwell. And it means between, and that is everything my work is exploring. What it means to be between. Between a rock and a hard place, having a grey morality, living on the edge of the mundane world, with a foot in the magical realm. It’s going to explore the vacuous chasm between wealth and poverty (not talking about the middle class suburbs lol, though that is a between) Right and wrong. And the thin line between salvation and destruction.

Are you a pantser or plotter?

Naturally? I’m a pantser. For Betwixt I’ve had to become a plotter. It’s too big and too complicated to just freewheel it.

Do you post your work somewhere?

I’m going to. The plan is to publish on WordPress on a regular release schedule. Hopefully weekly. But we’ll see how well that plan holds up as we get closer to publication.

Do you also read/write fanfic? If yes, for the same genres as what you write?

I’ve had a really hard time writing fanfic, but there are some I really enjoy reading.

Your favorite dessert. Because why not.

Also Pie! Pie is the best. Seriously.

Tagging @emdop cause you’re the only other writeblr I really have talked to besides the one that tagged me.

#writeblr #ask thing

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cinaea · 7 years ago

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I, M and Q for the fanfic ask meme? Sorry if thats too much or youve already answered one of those, btw, i absolutely adored trinity + volition, am super excited for the up coming part and hope youre having a lovely day!!

Hello, munchkin! Thank you for responding to the FanFic Meme!(This is a reminder to everyone else that they’re also welcome to send me anask!) I’m gonna take these out of order, to end on a fluffy note.

I: Do you have a guiltypleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

Let’s go with reading, ‘nony, because the next bit showcasesone of those guilty pleasures in my writing. Prepare for TMI, but hey, youasked. I browse the Tentacles tag on AO3 when I’m trying to get in the mood, ifyou know what I mean. Just about any fandom (no matter how obscure or badlywritten), I’ll read it as long as it’s short, complete, and explicit. I’m notlooking for thousands of words of character development—I want the raunchystuff up front. Bring me that sweet, dub-con xenophilia, baby.

In case you’re already sorry you asked, let’s move on toeven more disturbing pastures. Triggerwarning for dub-con in this one, folks, though if you’ve read Volition, I suspectyou’re comfortable rolling these dice.

Q: Do you have anydiscarded scenes/storylines/projects?

While writing Chapter 8 of Volition, I realized therehad been a pacing problem since Chapter 4, and that I was risking drawing out thedays of the interrogations too long to keep readers engaged. Also, man, commentershad turned against Steve hard, which hadn’t exactlybeen my intent—I’d hoped that general fanon love for Steve would help readerssee through that part of Bucky’s unreliable narrative.

Sidebar for an example: There’s amoment in Chapter 11 where Steve decides to stop kissing Bucky, and Bucky thinksto himself how self-righteous Steve’s being, thinking he knows anything abouttrauma. And I’m like: Surely people will see that this is a ridiculous thing to think about Steve;Steve has experienced plenty oftraumas and knows how they can fuckyou up. Fuck you, Bucky, you’re awful here.But no, commenters agreed with Bucky, and that was even after I’d sped up the outline to bring up some of Steve’s backstorysooner in Chapters 9 and 10.

So yes, I’d made a critical mistake and bogged down the 25-50%of the story with lots of incidents that essentially spun their wheels and didn’tbring Bucky and Steve any closer. I needed to get to the kissing and the disastrousbonding ASAP. I did some shuffling and condensed the planned Chapters 9-to-12into 9-to-11, sacrificing a few unsuccessful interactions and one big, momentousshowstopper that was planned but never written.

If you thought the failed D/s scene near the finale was high-stakes,just wait until you hear about the semi-disastrous blow job I had planned forwhat was originally Chapter 11, the day between the kiss in Tony’s lab and theirbonding! The goal was to introduce some sexuality into the story, as well asone more instance of all three of them fucking up. That meant putting Bucky ina desperate headspace where he’d be willing to do just about anything to securehis friends’ safety, while Tony and Steve were oblivious to Bucky’s skewedinterpretation of events.

Following the nerve-wrackinginterrogation that came dangerously close to revealing that Bucky had killedfor Mentallo willingly, Bucky stumbles to his doms’ bedroom in the middle ofthe night, anxious to convince them to bond, and finds them grinding againsteach other in bed. Bucky’s libido has been muted since assaulting Clint, but hecan’t help but watch from the doorway.

Tony spots him and coaxes him tojoin them. They all move to the edge of the bed, and they take turns kissing Bucky,who’s not sure if he’s into this, but he needs them to want him, and he feelslike he can’t risk saying ‘no,’ but they keep inviting him to greaterintimacies (because Tony’s problem in the first half is how much he assumes about Bucky), and he can’t seemto catch his breath or find his footing.

Steve ends up kneeling on the floorbetween Bucky’s legs, and Tony rubs Bucky’s arm and shoulder and kisses hisneck, urging Bucky to “Let him/he wants this so bad/etc.” Steve unzips Bucky'spants and pulls out his half-hard cock (it feels good but also weirdlysickening, he hasn't been even this hard in years), but Bucky's not sure hecan/should; this isn’t what he came for but doesn’t he owe it to his friends(uncomfortable echoes of the Ebersol mindset)? Tony puts Bucky's hand inSteve's hair and tells him he's in control, because of course that’s what Tony thinks Bucky needs. Bucky reflexivelytightens his hand in Steve's hair, and Steve takes that as a command and leansforward, maybe whispering "please." His dom is begging, and Bucky’s instincts and his brain both say he should lethim have what he wants, but.... Steve may possibly make skin contact, but Buckypanics and dashes out of the room. Or else Tony manages to talk Bucky throughthe entire blow job, but Bucky’s in a messed-up headspace the entire time, andcomes with a wave of guilt.

In looking for a way to condense the middle chapters, Iconfronted just how disturbingly dub-con the moment was, and ultimately I feltgood about cutting it. Aren’t we all glad I made that choice? The story didn’tneed any more train wrecks, and theirrelationship is healthier for not having included such a messed up sex scene.

Phew! That was dark. Let’s end on whimsy!

M: Got any premiseson the back burner that you'd care to share?

I’ve got this half-formed Bucky/Steve idea that I’d love tosomeday find the time to write, but I’ve got three more big stories to get outfirst (two in Trinity Universe, and one in GGundam). Who knows if I’ll ever find the time? It’s a ~fairytale mashupthat combines aspects of @astolat‘sfabulous The Crown of theSummer Court, the too-brilliant JonathanStrange and Mr. Norrell, a dash of the DresdenFiles novels, and a whole bunch of Fairy lore I’ve consumed over the years. Thepremise goes something like this:

Steve and Bucky are childhood friends in village on the edgeof a woods. One day Bucky wanders alone too far into the woods in search ofherbs to use as medicine for Steve, and ventures into a Fairy Ring. The Faesnatch Bucky away and replace him with a changeling that wastes away and dieswithin a week. Everyone believes the switch except Steve, who discovers thepiece of wood where Bucky’s body should be [something something the wood as stand-infor the metal arm? to be developed]. Steve studies everything he can about theFae over the years, and finally a passing sorcerer (Howard? Tony?) gives Stevethe potion that upgrades his sickly body to Cap body, and takes Steve along when he leaves town. Steve quests for years tofind Bucky, and [plot point to be determined] finds himself in the land of theFae, where he’s to serve as the champion for a Fairy Lord. Unbeknownst toSteve, the champion of the rival Fairy Lord is the Winter Soldier, a practicallymute human foundling who has spent more than a decade in Faerie and has beenspelled to forget his human past. The Winter Soldier is tasked with seducingSteve into violating some rule of hospitality before their scheduled match.Steve resists manfully even as he realizes it’s Bucky, and he makes it a termof his continued service to his sponsoring Lord to restore Bucky’s memory andfreedom if Steve wins. There’s a tournament, plenty of canoodling that Steve’shard pressed to deny, and an eventual happy ending.

…That’s about all I’ve figured out so far. Lots of pining, Faerierules lawyering, dueling, manly yearning,etc. I haven’t yet planned how to work in Peggy and/or Sam. T’Challa wouldlikely be the Fae Lord sponsoring Steve. Did I mention rules lawyering? Becauseyeah, I was going to have to come up with that twist, too. Difficult.

This has been fun, peeps! Let’s do more asks! And hey, ifyou like these Ask responses? Like my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee sometime. After all, Iwrote this post from a Starbucks. Mama has an expensive habit.

#asked and answered #cinaea is a writer!#Volition #Trinity Universe #Fanfic meme #TW: dub-con #tentacles!#faerie rules lawyering #Anonymous

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adorkablephil · 7 years ago

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Fic: Listen (chapter 4)

Title: Listen Rating: PG Word Count: 2K (this chapter) Summary: Phil is a successful YouTuber, and Dan is a fan desperate for attention. Sounds like 2009, right? Except Phil is Deaf. Tags: AU, Deaf!Phil, Mute!Dan, Both YouTubers, Strangers to Friends to Lovers Author’s Note: Strangely enough, Phil’s traditional wave of the hand when he says, “Hi guys,” at the start of his videos irl is pretty much the British Sign Language sign for “hello.” Fic also available on AO3 here

[Masterlist of all “Listen” chapters on Tumblr]

Chapter 4: Show Me

People rushed all around Phil, sometimes bumping into him, probably muttering unheard politely British words of apology. Phil ignored them, keeping his eyes on Dan’s train as it pulled into the station and the doors opened, emitting more hurried people. Phil watched for a tall, dark head and a familiar face, scanning the crowd eagerly.

When he didn’t see Dan right away, he pulled out his phone to give it a quick look, wondering if he should text something. They weren’t going to be able to talk, after all, so they’d almost certainly rely on texting as they had on Skype. Writing on paper and white boards had been dismal failures, since Dan’s handwriting was not only nearly illegible but inevitably smeared by his left-handedness. So they’d fallen into the habit of hanging out on Skype and texting each other, looking up to see each other’s reactions. Now they’d finally be able to do the same thing in person.

He fiddled with his phone a second, then decided that he didn’t need to text quite yet. He was tall enough that Dan should be able to spot him pretty easily. So he put his phone back in his pocket for the moment.

When he looked up, Dan had appeared in front of him as if by magic, looking young and beautiful and nervous. Phil smiled, and Dan waved his left hand in an exaggerated gesture, almost as if he was mocking Phil’s intro to his videos. Phil felt his smile slip a bit. But then Dan bit his lip shyly and gestured with his hands what looked a lot like BSL for “Not right?”

Phil’s eyes widened and his smiled broadened with excited surprise. Phil’s intro to his videos was the BSL sign for “hello,” after all, and that was what Dan had been doing, not mocking him.

Phil signed in awe, “You learned BSL for me?”

Dan ducked his head, scuffing his sneaker against the concrete of the platform, then looked up to meet Phil’s eyes again. He smiled and shrugged awkwardly, then signed, “A little. Not good.” His blush was adorable.

Phil swooped in and wrapped his arms around Dan’s waist, laughing aloud and swinging him around in a circle. Dan grabbed his shoulders tightly at the unexpected sensation of leaving the ground, but grinned broadly when Phil planted him back on his feet.

Their eyes met and Phil desperately wanted to lean forward and finally kiss the lips he’d been fantasizing about for years, but he remembered how hesitant Dan had been when admitting his degree of inexperience, how Dan had texted him during one of their Skype calls that “nobody ever wanted to date a dummy.” He’d looked so vulnerable there on Phil’s computer screen, gazing down into his own lap so that he wouldn’t have to see Phil’s reaction.

Phil might have had a supportive social network and understanding friends at the Deaf school in Manchester, but Dan had always been alone in his muteness, surrounded by a world that didn’t accept or understand him, a world that instead mocked and belittled and judged. So Phil tried to keep in mind that this would all be very new to Dan, having someone really listening to him in person and not just over the Internet.

Dan might not speak orally, but—like Phil—he still spoke to thousands of YouTube viewers on a regular basis. Unlike Phil, though, he wasn’t used to speaking to someone in real life who understood him … especially not someone who had been pretty clear about his romantic and sexual attraction. From what little Dan had said, Phil figured he’d had probably never even flirted with anyone in person.

So Phil restrained himself from even reaching for Dan’s hand and instead just signed, “I’m so happy to see you!”

Dan nodded, his eyes roaming Phil’s face eagerly. Then he signed, “Coffee?”

Phil signed the letters to spell “Starbucks” and raised his eyebrows questioningly. When Dan nodded again, Phil picked up Dan’s bag and slung it over his own shoulder and gestured to Dan to follow.

Dan went to find them a table while Phil placed their orders. As usual, he just typed the order into his phone, then held it up for the cashier to read. He always set the font to be nice and large so he didn’t actually have to hand his phone over to strangers. The cashier smiled at him and he smiled back, then he turned to look for Dan.

He’d found a table near the large windows, and Phil went to join him. He pointed at his ear, then at Dan, then toward the counter, hoping that Dan would understand that he should listen for their names to be called when their drinks were ready, and Dan nodded.

The thick condensation on the windows made the world outside hazy and indistinct. Dan lifted a finger and drew a happy face in the moisture, then turned to beam at Phil. Phil lifted his own finger and drew a heart, making Dan blush and look away. But then a foot hooked around his ankle under the table and Phil knew that he hadn’t overstepped.

Suddenly the foot was gone and Dan jumped up to walk to the counter. He came back with their drinks and sat down again, looking into his coffee and stirring it in an obviously nervous manner. Phil reached out to touch his wrist to get his attention, and Dan looked up. “How was your trip?” Phil signed.

Dan frowned slightly, his brows drawing together in apparent confusion. He reddened and looked down again, then pulled out his phone. Phil watched him, puzzled, but then his own phone buzzed.

Dan: i didn’t actually learn that much sign language. just what I could find on youtube and from watching you

Phil looked up, but Dan still wasn’t meeting his eyes.

Phil: I think it’s incredible that you learned any at all! Now would you please at least look at me????

Dan looked up, and they smiled at each other. They sipped from their mugs and just looked at each other for a while. Phil nudged Dan’s foot under the table and they both grinned. Phil picked up his phone again.

Phil: So what signs do you know?

Dan shrugged, looking embarrassed. Then he was typing.

Dan: i’m not very good with sentences, mostly just words you say a lot in your videos

Phil raised his eyebrows, suddenly curious. Dan smirked mischievously, then signed, “Sweets.” Phil giggled. “Lion.” They both laughed. “Christmas. Anyway. Hugs. Adventure Time. Oh my god. To be honest. Best thing ever.” They were both snickering uncontrollably now. Then, with a flourish, Dan signed, “Today’s draw Phil naked is…” and they both laughed so loud that several people turned to look. Phil didn’t care a bit. Dan had watched his videos enough to learn some signs! He’d actually watched Phil’s hands and read the subtitles and purposely taught himself some BSL … just to surprise Phil when they met.

It was probably the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for him.

He looked at Dan’s lips and thought again about what it would be like to kiss him. When he raised his eyes to meet Dan’s gaze, he’d clearly been caught, because Dan was blushing again. He hooked his foot around Dan’s ankle and Dan’s smile brightened.

Phil: THANK YOU!!!! :)))))

He didn’t type, “I love you,” even though he wanted to, because suddenly that felt awkward, now that they were together in person, even though they’d been saying it for ages online. Telling someone you love them when you’ve just met felt kind of weird. Even though his heart was nearly bursting with it.

His phone buzzed in his hand.

Dan: if i text you some stuff can you show me how to sign it?

Phil nodded eagerly. Here he’d expected that they would have to communicate exclusively through texts during the whole visit, and instead Dan wanted to learn more BSL? This was better than anything he’d even dared imagine.

Dan: the train ride was really boring

Phil signed the sentence, and Dan copied him carefully, if a bit awkwardly.

Dan: i kept thinking about you

Phil’s smile grew while he signed that one. Then he signed, “I was thinking about you, too,” before typing the same sentence into a text.

Dan: dan is going to learn sign language

Dan frowned slightly in apparent confusion when Phil signed the statement, then clarified what had confused him in a text.

Dan: what was that sign you used?

Phil: which sign?

Dan held the letterspelling sign for “D” to his heart, head cocked with curiosity.

Phil: That’s my sign for your name.

Dan’s smile somehow became even sweeter as he glanced shyly down at the table, dimples clearly visible, then picked up his phone again.

Dan: then my sign for your name is

and he held the letterspelling sign for “P” to his own heart. His eyes met Phil’s and they didn’t look away. Phil still didn’t sign or text, “I love you,” but he felt like they both said it with their eyes. His friends and family had other signs for his name, but this would always be his favorite one now. He looked at Dan’s hand, still held to his heart, and then looked back into Dan’s eyes. After a moment, his phone buzzed.

Dan: you’re my favorite person

Phil: You’re mine, too.

Dan: no, show me how to sign it doofus!

They both chuckled, and Phil signed, “You’re my favorite person.” Dan mimicked him, signing the same thing back at him. Then Dan barraged him with a series of requests for signs, and Phil complied, modeling how to say each of the requested words and sentences in BSL, then watching Dan sign the same things back to him.

Dan: this is the best day of my life

Dan: i feel like the luckiest person ever

Dan: boyfriend

Dan: kiss

Dan: i want to kiss you

Surprised, almost shocked, Phil decided to make a joke to lighten the atmosphere, not wanting to risk Dan getting uncomfortable with how quickly things were moving.

Phil: Right here in the Starbucks?

But Dan’s face was serious. He glanced at Phil’s lips, then down at his phone.

Dan: just show me how to sign it. i want to see you sign it

Phil bit his lip, his heart pounding, then decided that he could be as brave as Dan was being. Dan was watching him again as Phil texted his reply.

Phil: Sure. It’s true, anyway.

When Dan looked up from his phone, Phil signed, “I want to kiss you.” Dan looked him directly in the eyes as he copied the signs in return.

Dan: phil has his own flat

Raising his eyebrows, Phil signed it, using Dan’s sign for his name.

Dan: we could be there right now

Phil signed the sentence, then shook his head in admiration. He’d expected Dan to be hesitant, but instead the boy was displaying an openness and honesty and courage that only made Phil fall even harder than he had already. “I love you,” he signed, not holding himself back anymore. Dan’s eyes widened, so apparently he had seen that one somewhere on YouTube, or maybe Phil had signed it to his viewers in one of his videos? In any case, Dan obviously understood what Phil had signed. After a slight hesitation, he signed the same in return, the movements of his hands and fingers slow and deliberate as he held Phil’s gaze.

They both stilled, just breathing in the private moment that surrounded them despite the busy strangers bustling around them in the coffee shop.

“I love you, Phil,” Dan signed again, adding on the sign he’d created for Phil’s name.

“I love you, too, Dan,” Phil signed, and then he reached his hand across the table, relieved when Dan took it and squeezed his fingers. They stayed that way until Phil couldn’t stand it anymore. He pulled his hand away and signed slowly, “Phil has his own flat. We could be there right now. Kissing.” And Dan smiled.

Dan: i’m pretty sure i understood that. let’s go

He stood up, smiling the loveliest smile Phil had ever seen, and pocketed his phone.

This time Phil was the one who copied him.

[Continue to Chapter 5]

#phanfiction #phanfic #phan #au phanfic #au phanfiction #phan deaf au #phanfic au #phanfiction au #dan and phil #deaf phil #mute dan #myphanfic

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niallsexyback · 7 years ago

Text

Iced Coffee and Interruptions

Heyy! Can you do a one shot where y/n is working in s cafe over summer while she's not at uni and some of Niall's fans recognise her and are asking for pictures and maybe her manager tells her that she is a distraction and wants her to leave and she goes home to Niall really upset and hurt? You can make it up from there. Thank you 😊

My first day! My first day at my new job, and I couldn’t be more excited. Even if it was just part time at a coffee shop near campus for the summer, I was elated. It would give me a little cash that I could use for school in the fall.

Checking myself in the mirror one last time to make sure my outfit was right, grabbing my work apron, and I was out the door. Last night I had spent almost an hour getting my name tag just right. It was only a ten minute drive and since my shift was from two to eight, traffic wasn’t even that bad. This day couldn’t get any better.

When I arrived, I walked to the person running the till and informed them who I was and what I was doing there. She showed me around the counter and down to the manager’s office. She was a pleasant looking lady maybe in her early fifties, but gray hairs already cover a good portion of her head. “Welcome to your first day. We will have you just watch for today, learning as much as you can. And during your next shift we’ll have you start doing some things supervised. Once you have that covered you can start to do things on your own.”

“Okay thank you.”

“There is a staff locker room you can put your things in. Find a locker that is open for you stuff. Then go find Matthew, he’ll be showing you around today.” I nodded.

After stowing my things in a locker, I went to find Matthew. He was probably six foot with dirty blonde hair in a bun. He was very friend and had obviously worked there for quite some time because many of the customs knew his name and treated him like a friend, and he knew most of their orders by heart. He was very helpful and patient with all my probably stupid questions as well. He made any of my nerves I had, vanish.

When my first shift was finally over and I was ready for a well-deserved night at home. My keys dropped on the bench by the door, shoes kicked off. “How was your first day baby? To celebrate I made your favorite for supper,” I heard my boyfriend yell as I walked into the apartment. He was off for a couple of weeks from tour and was staying with me.

“Good, how was your day at home?” I asked.

“Boring without you here. But I did have some things around the house to do, then worked a little on a new song.”

“Sounds great Niall but when’s supper finished, I’m starving?”

“About ten minutes. Why don’t you change out of your work clothes and by then it’ll be about ready. Because honestly you smell as if you bathed in coffee.”

“I feel like I did.”

Every day I became more comfortable with my job. Slowly I was given more responsibilities and more complex jobs. Also getting to know some of the regular costumers was one of my favorite parts. Roger had just gotten a cat. Phillip and his wife were expecting their first baby. Tina had just bought a house. I loved hearing their stories and even sharing some of my own. That was until the day I was recognized. And by being recognized, I don’t mean a costumer knowing my name. What I mean is when they knew me for being Niall’s girlfriend.

It was a group of three girls a little younger than myself, probably students at my university as well. They had come in and ordered, and when I went to hand them their drinks they saw me. That was when this whole fiasco started. They wanted pictures and to talk about Niall but I kindly told them I was working and so they left.

“Babe how was work today?” Niall asked as I came into the living room. He was placed on the couch with his feet up watching golf.

“Okay I guess,” I replied.

“That doesn’t sound very convincing, something happen?” He muted the television to look at me. He stared while I leaned against the back of the couch. “Babe what is it?”

I was hesitant. “Well today a couple of girls saw me at work.”

“Like some girls from your classes or what? That doesn’t sound bad.”

“No like a couple of fans.”

“Oh, how was that?” He asked concern.

“They were fine. Just wanted some pictures and asked some questions. But when I told them I was working they were nice enough to leave.”

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Guess not.”

After the next day, the previous day wasn’t so bad. That was because the next day there were close to a dozen people coming in wanting to meet me. On the third day it was even more people. So much so my boss called me into her office.

“We’ve notice there has been some extra activity around you recently,” She stated.

I stared at my feet. “I’m very sorry about that,” I answered. “Unfortunately it is because of my boyfriend. He’s rather famous and they are just some of his fans.”

“Well they need to stop. They are disrupting our normal customers. Otherwise we will have to end your employment with us.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Now back to work.”

As quickly as I could, I left her office. What was I supposed to do? I had asked them several times to leave but they just kept coming and more every day. There was no way to stop them.

Thankfully there was little over an hour left in my shift because the last thing I wanted to do was be here longer and have more fans show up.

In a flash I was out the back entrance and in my car. Speeding from the parking lot, I made my way home. Finally being alone made me think about the day.

I hadn’t realized it until I was almost home that tears had begun to escape, rolling down my cheeks. After pulling into a parking place, I quickly wiped them away, trying my best to hide any trace of emotion. Even going as far as applying some makeup to hide the redness. Grabbing my things, I made my way into the house.

“Hey babe, how was work? Thought we could get some take out for supper.” Niall mentioned from his place on the couch. He looked so relaxed and comfortable.

“Sounds great. I’m going to change quick.”

I found myself sitting at the end of the bed still in my work uniform. “I was thinking either Chinese or sushi, what do you think?” Niall asked as he walked into our room. “Hey is something wrong?”

“No I’m fine.”

“You’ve been up here nearly twenty minutes and by the looks of it, haven’t moved from this spot.” He stared at me. “Babe it’s me you can tell me.” Still I was unable to answer. “Is it me, did I do something wrong?”

“No it’s nothing you did,” I was finally able to tell him.

He let out a sigh of relief. “I can’t guess so you might as well tell me. You know I’m not good at figuring stuff like this out. And I promise not to be upset, no matter what it is.”

“It’s work,” I answered defeated.

“I thought you liked your job and were doing well?”

“It’s not me that’s the problem.”

“Do you need me to come kick someone’s ass?” He joked.

“Even if I believed you could kick someone’s ass, no that wouldn’t help.”

“Then what’s wrong? Babe you have to talk to me.” His hands slipping into mine.

Finally I was able to lock eyes with him. “It’s your fans.”

“My fans? How are my fans affecting your work?”

“They keep showing up at my work.”

“What do you mean?”

“After those few met me the first day, it’s been none stop since. And every day it’s more. I’m sure telling everyone on their social media they saw me. And now it’s snowballed and every day more keep showing up. Now they’re disturbing the customers and my boss said if it doesn’t stop she’ll have to let me go.” When I finished I realized I was crying again.

“Oh baby I’m so sorry. I never wanted something like this to happen to you.” He took me into his arms. “I was hoping I could shield you from stuff like this. Why I wanted to keep you just mine for as long as I could.”

“I knew stuff like this would happen but I just thought it would be while I was out shopping, not possibly costing me a job.”

“And it’s not.”

“How am I going to stop it? They just keep showing up and I’ve asked them to stop.”

“I could just sit outside and then they’d never make it inside,” he teased.

A smile found its way across my face. “Although that would be great, I can’t have you waiting outside either. Then we’d have a huge crowd in the parking lot blocking the drive thru.”

“Just tell them you are at work and if they would like to meet you they can wait outside until you finish your shift. You may have to get blunt with them and tell them they are being disruptive and need to leave.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can and if they can’t respect that, they have no business meeting you anyway. And I’m going to ask them if they can leave you alone as well. It’s me they should be following, not you.”

“Thank you Niall.”

“It’s my job as a loving and caring boyfriend, of which I am to make sure what I do doesn’t hurt you. I care about you baby and I know how much this job means to you.”

“I love you.”

“I know you do.” He smirked. “Love you too.”

Its a bit rough, I know. Hope you enjoy anyway.

#Niall Horan #niall fanfic #one direction #one direction fanfiction #one direction fanfic #1d

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yastaghr · 8 years ago

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Our Skeleton: Chapter 6

Our Skeleton

Characters: Asgore, Undyne, Alphys, Toriel, Papyrus, Frisk, Sans,

Pairings: Sans/Toriel/Asgore, Sansgoriel, Toriel/Asgore, Togore, Asgore/Sans, Sansgore, Sans/Toriel, Soriel, Alphyne, Alphys/Undyne

Warnings: If you see something you want a warning for, let me know.

Story Summary: The people who love him come to realise Sans may be hiding something from them. (not the best of summaries, sorry)

<–Previous || First || Next–>

Ao3

“red one. also blue. there's a really old white one - or maybe it's tan. a green one just pulling into the lot, too.”

Asgore absently rubbed at his arm while the sound of off-key singing washed over him. He stared out the window at the cars anxiously awaiting the change of the light. The remnants of rain dried out drop by drop on the car’s windows. The mottling they left behind had an interesting effect on the muted colors coming in.

“Sans, I don’t believe that they count if they’re still at the dealership. At the very least they must have tags, if not license plates.”

“don’t remember frisk ever mentioning a rule like that.”

“I think that is because they did not expect any of us to move so close to the road of car salesmen. It is much to specialized a rule for them to remember off the top of their head.”

“you’re just jealous that i remembered the rules before you did.”

He sighed, and turned around. Sans’ grin was genuine. Clearly designed to annoy him, but genuine. At least the small skeleton was enjoying his little game enough to for his mood to have picked back up from the day before. Asgore smiled contentedly at the glint in those sockets, happily losing himself in the swirling darkness within those eyes.

The singing came to a glorious, abrupt halt. Toriel, eyes still working the road around them, didn’t see Asgore and Sans’ shared sigh. Her voice had a tint of mirth, “You could say he was green with envy, could you not?”

Sans chuckled, “yup. being outdone is absolutely driving him up the wall.”

Asgore sighed, coating over his happiness with a layer of annoyance, “Quite. I’m just a stuffy old goat who deserves to be in a museum.”

“Dreemur!” Belatedly, he remembered that their destination was supposed to be a surprised. Too late.

Sans’ sockets crinkled in mirth, “ah, so that’s it. i was beginning to wonder. we passed grillby’s like ten minutes ago, and i was sure we were heading over for the sunday special. you really threw me for a loop there.”

Toriel’s guffaw overwhelmed her annoyance as the arrow finally went green and they turned left into the Large Park’s traffic loop. Asgore smiled too, wondering how much longer his wife had expected their small skeleton to remain ignorant. After all, there were only a handful of places the three of them could go from this street, and the city zoo was closed that week while a new sewage system was put in place.

“We would not dream of keeping you uninformed for long, Sans. You were certain to learn eventually, were you not? After all, this is an institute of learning.”

“heh, yup. so, which wing is it today? not the scifi exhibit, please. going with frisk’s class two weeks ago was more than enough for me. they mixed up the names of the homeworlds of skywalker, atreides, and spock. such a crime can never be forgiven.”

The two of them chuckled, having heard this rant before. Sans had been livid that this organizers of this exhibit, which was currently traveling around the world, had not had the decency to double check their signage before sending it on its way.

“No, Sans. We would not make you suffer that again. We had thought perhaps the history wing, if you are interested, and then perhaps one of the IMAX shows later on.”

Sans’ gaze immediately went to one of the enormous banners draped across the front of the building. Galaxies, planets, and stars by the millions decorated its surface.

“really?”

“We would not tell you a fibula, Sans.”

The quiet hum of Sans’ magic brightened. It was funny. Asgore had lived over a thousand years, and in that time had met hundreds of monsters. When he had met Sans in person for the first time, he had almost not realised the skeleton was there. Sans had either the quietest or the most well-hidden magic the king had ever seen.

Over the years he had learned to tune into Sans’ power, and since they had come to the surface it had become easier and easier to do. Now, he rarely lost the thread, and hearing the subdued emotions pick up like that always made him smile.

The fact that the skeleton’s big reaction was to the idea of seeing a show about the stars, and that that reaction had just won him a little bet with Toriel, obviously did not come into it.

She and Asgore meandered their way out of their first stop of the day. As much as Asgore and Toriel had heard in their negotiations about the past 1030 odd years of human history, the picture they had received was contradictory and haphazard. The overview they had just seen, at the very least, gave them a place to start to investigate further.

“I must say, humans seem to have come quite a long way since the war. A winding, faltering way, yes, but the progress they’ve made is very impressive. No wonder they produced a child like Frisk.”

Sans ambled out of the doorway behind them with an expression of mild shock, “i know frisk told me there were parts of human history where they weren’t even nice to each other, but some of that stuff is down-right unbelievable. did they really use to prevent non-male people from even getting a degree?”

Toriel sighed, “Unfortunately, yes. It was rather a surprise to hear that had changed. At the time of the war, female humans had hardly any official rights at all. In addition, the very concept that other genders even existed was utter blasphemy.”

“which god?”

Another sigh, because as simple of a question as that would be to any monster, the politics of the answer were rather depressing, “Most of them, I fear.”

Sans drooped. Asgore eyes moved between his face and her own, then drifted off in a desperate search of the museum’s signs. His gaze lit on something. He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left, nudging Sans gently in the direction of the stairs.

“Look over there! Toriel, it seems they have an exhibit on the plants of the Mt. Ebott subregion. what do you say to a bit of nostalgia?”

She and her longtime partner shared a look. Eventually, she gave in, “Very well, Dreemur. We shall go look at the plants.”

The way his cheeks pulled back into a delighted grin almost made up for the unending stream of plant facts she knew was about to endure. After Asgore had turned, she saw Sans’ right hand move in a blur that any monster alive would recognize as coming from Frisk.

-patella the truth, i haven’t had a chance to root through some of my plant puns in more years than the snowdin trees have rings. what’d’ya say to a pun off? i won’t tell gori if you don’t.-

,Her face broke into a grin, and she responded in kind.

-Stem-thing tells me you have quite the garden to pull from.-

At a tug from Asgore, Sans moved on, but tossed the next set of signs at her from behind his back.

-plant puns are where i got my seed, tori. it’ll be nice to get back to my roots.- Cheeky boy. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into.

“Oh my, Sans. I am sorry. I assure you, I had no idea they had such things here.”

Toriel tried politely to avert her eyes. Fluffybuns appeared to be somewhat hypnotized by the things, his eyes practically bulging.

Sans, despite the posted signs, had once again pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had yet look up at the exhibit in this particular room.

“what, did we run into yet another mislabeled sign? they should put up a warning label at this rate: ‘accurate signage not guarenteed.”

The short skeleton finally looked up from his phone. His expression didn’t flicker, “oh, is that it? they’re just skeletons tori. nothing new here, unless someone lost count and rounded up.”

Gori’s mouth, working in much the same manner as a fish, managed to find words before she herself had recovered from the shock. Perhaps not the most helpful, but still.

“Aren’t you...Sans, I...isn’t this...they don’t have any clothes.”

He ended with a note in his voice she remembered from quite a long time ago.

It had been the first time they had taken young Asriel to meet his kingdom. Of course, the first thing the toddler had done was spill sea tea all over his new robes. Then, for some reason unfathomable to his parents, he had decided to strip bare and run around flailing the soggy cloth like a flag.

Gerson had been amused, and, after Asriel had been rounded up, proceeded to educate Asgore as to the ways of toddlers by sharing an almost identical story about the first time he had babysat for Asgore himself. The then-queen had reacted in much the same manner as Asgore did, and had it not been for his father, he might have had an earlier introduction to her famous sense of justice than he in fact did.

Sans, in the present, blinked, “well yeah. makes it easier to see the vertebrae.”

Finally, Toriel found her voice, “Still, Sans. This is rather...lewd, is it not?”

He tilted his skull at her, “um, no? they’re not alive, tori. anyway, they’re human. if some dead human wants to spend their time going bare bones in a dusty display case, i ain’t gonna judge.”

The two royal goatnesses wallowed in mutual confusion, “But…”

Sans sighed, tucking his phone back into his pocket. His right hand found the edge of the bandage on his left and fiddled with it as he spoke.

“look, guys. it’s...weird, yeah, but not gross or anything. you saw those paintings a few rooms back, right? if humans can put up with seeing pictures of their own, flesh-wrapped species like that in here, i can put up with a few naked pelvic regions. and, again, it’s not like they’re monster skeletons. there’s enough of a difference that it ain’t too bad.”

His sockets had swiveled slowly over and now faced the glass-encased display directly. His tone grew more thoughtful.

“they’re not that ugly, either. not like me, anyway. they’re tall. got proper, straight spinal columns. the ribs are nicely spread. good ratios of leg to torso, too. i can get admiring skeletons like these.”

As the speech tapered off, Toriel heard the note of envy and dismay enter his voice. Her mind instantly derailed from its ‘This is insensitive, I must fix this’ train of thought and switched over to another. Her eyes gleamed red, and she could not help but feel a certain amount of pride at the speed with which Asgore pulled himself up.

“That is a blatant lie, Sans.”

Their skeleton gave her a look of weary dissent, so she pressed on, “While I admit that your analysis of their place in this museum is kinder, and less biased, than mine might be, I must disagree with you about the aesthetics. Their heights are almost strained, are they not? One feels that there is not nearly enough bone to justify that amount of verticality.”

Sans’ eye lights had shrunk. Asgore, contemplating the exhibit with a more critical eye, pondered aloud, “The spines are too straight to be healthy. They would not give an inch, I think. The poor soul would be stuck at permanent attention. The ribs are too gapy, too. I would worry about something poking through, like a door handle or a spear. That spine wouldn’t let them dodge at all. They would have no option but to stand there and wait until help could arrive.”

Sans turned to the inanimate skeletons with an air of great distrust. His focus shifted around, stopping at every joint and section of cartilage.

Toriel hummed thoughtfully, “In truth, the shapes of their skulls are rather lackluster, wouldn’t you agree, Gori?”

“Why, yes. They haven’t much emotion or animation, do they? Even if they could move. And those sockets are so small, too. I wonder how they would be able to see?” Sans’ hand had moved to rub at the rounded curves of his own skull. She padded over, Asgore mirroring her movements. She pulled Sans into a hug.

Asgore knelt down and whispered against Sans’ skull, “We could very well go on for days, you adorable monster. None of those skeletons hold so much as a spark to the supernova that is you.”

She felt their skeleton start shaking in her arms and went to move away. A tight grip on her dress held her back, and she surrendered. The three of them stayed there with her and Gori forming an almost perfect shield around the trembling skeleton until the tremors abated and Sans spoke.

“i, um...guess i was being a bit of a bonehead there, huh?”

She hummed and held him tighter, “No, my dearest skeleton. You were merely being you.”

She nuzzled down on the top of his head and did not let him go until Gori pointed out to her that if they did not leave soon, they would miss their show.

“-and did you see that third shot of ngc 1952? that had to have been a hydrogen-alpha filter, but the detail on it - i can’t believe it! getting a shot like that they had to have used an observatory. no way a backyard telescope would have picked up the shading on the lower right dust clouds, least ways not that well. wonder who shot it? d’ya think they might have someone who would know?”

Asgore planted a kiss atop the skeleton’s skull as they made their way up the stairs.

“It would not hurt to ask.”

Sans stopped so suddenly asgore nearly knocked him over, “heh. you’re right. why- i can - i-”

The lack of motion ended without any warning. Sans went from worryingly still to bounding up the stairs two at a time. He hollered back at them, “i’ll be right back. meet you by the m-k-raptor skeleton, kay? bye!”

The two Boss Monsters watched his retreating form vanish around the curve of the stairs with glowing cheeks.

“Do you think he is aware that his eye lights are currently shaped into glowing blue stars?”

Asgore chuckled, “No, I don’t believe he is. I’ve never seen him this excited before in his life.”

Toriel’s smile slowly faded into a frown. His mind caught up with his mouth, and the implication of that sentence hit him like a train.

“Asgore-”

“Tori-”

Their nostrils flared, then softened. Their intentions synced beautifully, the separate fields of their magics intersecting and merging, every wave amplifying the next.

“Do you think it would be too much of a bother for you to pamper our newest partner for the next few days? I believe I have a bit of research to do.”

He saw her lips pull back in something closely resembling a smile, but without any of the warmth.

“Of course, my dear. Only as long as you promise to let me have a turn, supposing what we suspect to be true is indeed so.”

He knew his expression matched her own.

“I would not dream of doing it any other way.”

#sansgoriel #our skeleton fanfic #sans the skeleton #toriel #asgore #museum #undertale fanfiction #naked skeletons #display ones though #bad signage #astronomy #plant puns #chapter 6 #yastaghr

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beyondvapepage · 5 years ago

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 285 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Live. Cool. Hey everybody, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 285 All right, we’re getting there. We’re getting close to 300 that’s pretty awesome. I bet we’re gonna blink our eyes It’s gonna be 400 and then 500 after that, who knows? Hump Day hangouts forever and ever when we reach Episode 1000 I’ll probably be in my Walker but maybe we’ll still be doing it because uh, Alright, moving past that back into reality gonna say hi to the guys real quick we got some announcements the Battle Plan version 4.0 came out today so if you haven’t yet go pick that up Battle Plan dot semantic mastery.com we also got some really good deals. We got some awesome bonuses in there I’m not going to read them out to you. You guys can find them at Battle Plan dot semantic mastery.com. With that said, let’s start here on my left I see Bradley first. So Bradley, you’re up man. How you doing?

I’m good. I’m happy bear. Uh, you know, happy that the Battle Plan for is out. It’s much more condensed and simplified shear than the previous versions, I think, I think it makes it a lot easier for people because basically just walk through the bundles and why it’s important and how it applies for pretty much any sort of project now, which makes it a lot easier because I mentioned this in one of the Facebook live videos I’ve done but to, you know, announce that it was coming out that the problem before was that we had, you know, talked about all the different components and things that you would we suggest or recommend to get results, but the problem was that, you know, most of the time, people would skip steps and not implement everything. And then they’d say, Oh, this didn’t work.

And upon further investigation, we’d find out that they didn’t do everything. And so when we set out to update Battle Plan for 2020, we decided that well, first of all, we had the product bundles and MGB but, and we did that on purpose. But that’s what we really wanted to kind of promote is why those bundles are the way that you know why we have them set up so that you don’t miss anything. It just makes it so much easier. And so the Battle Plan is a hell of a lot more simplified and simple is good. It doesn’t mean that it’s not effective. It just means it’s easy to implement based upon the Battle Plan. So certainly recommend anybody to go pick that up if you haven’t yet. Definitely. And I think what you said about being simple I think I’ll pass it off to Marco next because Marco, what do you want to say about stuff is easy and simple? I think, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not simple, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Yeah.

It’s not easy. Because a lot of hours work. Blood, sweat, and tears went into this thing. It’s not as if we just one day out of the blue said, oh, let’s do an SEO Battle Plan. A lot of thought into that, although it’s whittled down so so that even a person who’s not in it in the industry can understand it. It’s not easy, but the way that we’ve simplified it makes it so much better for you guys to just go in order.

I mean, if you guys don’t have the time to go through all of our training, you should still be a member of one of our groups. I mean, without question, because then you can come in and tag us personally in the Facebook group and ask the question directly, one of us will jump in and help you answer the question. Right at that moment, you don’t have to wait once a week to maybe get into a hump day hangout and get into a question. And maybe we have time to answer the question. No, we focus on our people, our paying members, that’s the way it has to be I mean, with Marco Baby got to eat man. And so, dude, that’s the way it’s got to be. But let me go back to the Battle Plan. It’s simplified. It’s whittled down. It’s going there and take action. And let me tell each one of you guys and I’m going to do it myself. Pat yourself on the back. No, no, because I had my mastermind meeting yesterday, my mini mastermind.

And what we did was just go over, I guess as an encouragement, because it’s accountability is an encouragement to one another, and people started showing their results and I’m like, holy crap.

These guys are ranking in a metropolitan area for like 1012 million people. Number one, number one for the market level keyword. I’m not talking about long tails, because long tails I think are unbelievably easy to rank for. But we’re talking about the market level keyword where the money is guys. So not only was he showing that then that I get, you know, Ed gal, Bradley.

Yeah, I think you know him personally, I know him personally also, but he’s ranking for the market level keyword in his area. And then another one of our mastermind members, who’s killing it for an attorney, Attorney Seo we all know how difficult that is correct.

Truck accidents, wrongful death, you name it, it criminal law, and the guy has his clients. Number one. I got another guy showing he’s getting massive results from whatever he’s doing. He’s in Colorado, by the way. I know you love coffee. You guys all love Colorado.

But he’s getting unbelievable results. Okay, how are they doing this shit? How? Okay Yeah, I’m the master of subtlety Guess how the fuck did doing? Take a guess

I’ll leave it at that.

Well, Marco you know we left out one very important thing. How’s the weather down there? Can you tell it’s actually cloudy now? This overwhelming with brightness today this is what passes in Costa Rica for cloudy and we are in the middle of the rainy season it was beautiful this morning in the array. It’s a little cold, right? Cold for me it’s 72 degrees. So but you guys in the sky outside the US like 2022 it’s chilly. Can you feel it feeling your balls when you get older? That’s tough. Well, I’m glad you suffer through that for the rest of us.

Hernan, how you doing man?

Good man, I’m muted. And now humbly says that you need to go get the Battle Plan because better plan 4.0 it’s out. So you need to go get it. So I’m really excited about that man really excited about you know, the fourth version of the Battle Plan and it’s been getting better and better and better as we go by. So really excited about that really excited to be here. Did you call that thing? humpy happy man. Yeah.

Wow. That’s awesome. All right, Chris. How about yourself, man? How you doing? Yeah, I’m actually proud and happy that it’s warmer than in Costa Rica here.

That’s a new one. And regarding the Battle Plan,

I also have bad news for some people. I’m not sure if they’re gonna be sad or like upset or so. But

I mean, like, rarely actually mentioned it already. And I’m gonna hit that. It’s like, I usually do. The question is like,

Do you mean that I have to spend more money after I purchased the Battle Plan to actually execute it?

And the quick answer is, Yes, you will. If you want to execute all the steps, you will have to spend more money to actually get the results. But as Marco said, it’s gonna be like the really good results and not some longtail bullshit keywords where you actually don’t need our Battle Plan for that stuff. So, yeah, blowing it out here. Good stuff, good stuff. Yeah. And also always come back to you know, you got time or money and hopefully start leaning towards bringing in more money reinvest that start doing that stuff. That’s what we’ve done. That’s where we see the fastest growth and you know, sometimes if you don’t, then you roll up your sleeves and you can do it yourself. But as soon as you can, you know, you bring on the team to do it, you automate it and you do what you can. So I think Chris has a really good point. Well, it’s mindset, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay.

So guys, how much money do I have to spend? No, you’re already starting off on the wrong foot. That’s the powerful mindset. The powerful mindset says that you’re making an investment in your future into what it is that you’re going to do into being successful. And yes, of course, there are failures along the road to success, use those as a stepping stone. As I mentioned, in our portfolio, I’ve 29 in my portfolio 2019 presentation. So you take that as a stepping stone, but the whole, the whole thing is, invest on yourself, because the only way that you’re going to grow your agency, the only way that you’re gonna make money online, is if you actually learn how to implement methods that are already successful. Not because somebody is telling you that they’re successful, because you can come into our mastermind, of course, you have to be a paid member and talk to the people in there who are killing it and say, Well, you know who here is successful, I bring you into my mini mastermind, and let you see who’s successful. I’ll show you case studies that that show success.

But it’s taking that first step is okay, let me It’s 17 bucks. That’s all it is. And you can spend more depends on how far you go down the funnel. But that’s all it is initially. From there, yes, you do have to spend because we spent a whole lot of money creating the bundles, the ID page, the SEO PowerShell I’m not gonna go into detail. Guys, if you don’t know what it is going to mg y b dot CEO, look it up. It’s all explained in there. But it’s an investment. So who isn’t willing to like if you know, Okay, I’m gonna get it to at least a two to 213 to one four to one return on my investment. If If I go and take action because the key here is it’s such as getting the Battle Plan and reading it and saying, Okay, let me see what I can do. No, no, it’s going and do it. Do the do that we do.

That successes right there. Give you the keys to the kingdom give you the keys to the kingdom guide.

Whether you take the key, and you have to go put it in the fucking login, turn the key man, please. I don’t know what else to say, man. I’m done. All right. Good follow up, Marco. I think this is interesting. And maybe we could do this with mastermind members, I might talk on my next one on my next mastermind webinar, or we could potentially maybe for 2xyouragency as well, but it’s getting with people. I think we’ve all been there at one point in our life, I’ll only speak for myself. And I know I’ve heard Bradley talk about this, though, is taking on projects, you know, and learning the hard way where, you know, the price didn’t make sense. Like, Hey, I got this client, they’re bringing in, they’re paying me 500 bucks a month. But you didn’t do the math to say is this worth my time? And so getting into the details that that is important, and you can learn, you know, the tough way. But you know, sometimes going through that beforehand, and then saying, Hey, does this project even make sense for me to try to do some SEO for this person? And then realizing too late, like, No, it isn’t, or it’s your own project and you realize, I’ve invested 200 hours of my own time and this is gonna make me 50 bucks a month. What the hell am I doing?

Are that an important skill to have with any of this?

Yeah, also, like on the affiliate case study that I did, like, I don’t know, one and a half years on the old Battle Plan, not the new one.

I think within like the first three weeks, I doubled my investment, and like by now I think at 22, as you hire, I don’t have the exact numbers in mind. But like, it definitely pays off if you actually if you sit down and actually executed step by step and doodle. Cool. Well, with that said, we do have some questions. So if you guys want to find out about worry list SEO, if you want to get faster results, you don’t want to worry about updates or algorithms go grab the Battle Plan and battleplan.semanticmastery.com. So with that, you guys, should we get other questions. Let’s do it. Grab the screen.

Confirm that you guys are seeing it. Roger.

Okay, let’s see. There we go.

All right. It looks like a reset.

What Would You Do Differently In Your Digital Marketing Agency Once The Economy Starts Back Up After The Pandemic?

Looks like we’re going to start with one of the questions from Wayne. Okay, yeah, this was posted in the free Facebook group. And it’s a great question. So thank you for this way. And he says, In light of what has happened to business confidence due to the pandemic, what would you do differently in your agency business once the economy starts back up, and consumer confidence goes back to normal?

This can almost be viewed as a sort of reset to clarify, maybe it’s not buyers confidence in agencies per se, but buyers confidence in themselves and their ability to make good buying decisions. And I think that’s a great question.

I know something that I’ve thought a lot about recently, over the past month or so, is how to like how I’m going to do that how I’m going to start prospecting again for in my case Tree Service contractors. Once this, although there’s a lot of Tree Service contractors still working right now let me explain what I’m about to say.

One of the things I want to do is reduce my rates, at least initially. So perhaps, and the reason I say that is because a lot of business owners are a bit gun shy right now or hesitant to spend money and at least from business owners that I’ve talked to, because they’re hurting for money, now their revenue has either completely disappeared or significantly dropped. And so when the economy gets back to normal, it’s going to be some quite some time before we ever get back to fully normal. But when it starts to open back up and Revit, you know, business strategy, business transactions start to pick up in volume picks up and everything else. I think they’re gonna I think, at least my opinion is that people are going to be a lot more hesitant to spend money, or if they do, they’re going to want some sort of assurances and that kind of stuff. Now, again, this is speculation, my assumption of what’s going to happen so forth. For me personally, one of the things that I’ve been doing for the last about six weeks. I started to get started on it about six weeks ago, but I’m actually talking about this in the mastermind. For the last several mastermind webinars that I’ve hosted, that I’m trying to process, you know, systematize, much of the complex work that I have always done myself so that I can outsource that or delegate that to somebody that’s paid four or $5 an hour versus my own time. So in other words, whenever I take on a new client. I’ve always done the onboarding in most of the setup myself. So because of that, I charge a very high setup rate or setup fee for new clients, typically in the neighborhood of $3,000 on the front end, and then you know, anywhere between 1000 to 1500 dollars a month for like Tree Service contractors, for example. But that’s the reason I base my setup fee is because I know how much work I put into the actual setup setting up a new website or restructuring an existing site, optimizing GMB, setting up all the entity assets, the SEO shield, essentially syndication network, all that stuff, getting the content marketing schedule or plan developed for my blogger, I do all of that myself or have been throughout my entire career. And so I charge a lot for that because it takes me in a lot of time to do all that setup work. And the reason I’ve never delegated that before was that it is so complex, the amount of work that goes into all the setup that I do that I’ve never wanted to take the time to develop processes for all of that well, because of the 2xyouragency training, the Double Your Agency training.

I talk about setting up systems and I have for much of my business, but that portion of it, the onboarding and the setup for new clients, I’ve always done myself and so I always charged accordingly because it’s my time that I’m investing into it, and it gets done well and it works for the client like it produces results. But again, it’s a lot of my time. And so I want to be compensated for that. And so I charge that sort of a fee. So one of the things that I’ve been striving to do and again, it was I, I was prompted to do this because of the 2xyouragency training was I wanted to systematize even that we talked about it in the training guys. And I got this from Adam. And it’s, it’s been ingrained into my head now. But automate, delegate or eliminate, right, so if I can’t automate the setup, I want to delegate it or eliminate it entirely. In this case, I want to learn I want to delegate it. So I’ve been working for the last month really started about six weeks ago, but for the last month, I’ve been working on trying to systematize my onboarding and setup processes, and it’s an enormous amount of work. In fact, when I first learned how to develop standard operating procedures or SLPs, that the first time I learned the first thing that I systematized was building syndication networks that later became Syndication Academy.

So it took me three months to develop those processes. Now I’m better at developing processes. But this is an enormous amount of work as well. And so I’ve spent a month and more anywhere between 10 to 15 hours a week, for the last month developing these processes. And the reason I’m doing that is so that I can remove myself from that process. And I can delegate that to a virtual assistant that I pay in the Philippines, for example, for $5 an hour good wage. So now I can take an onboarding fee that I would set up for you that I would typically charge roughly $3,000 for and I may be able to reduce that in half, and still produce a really good return or revenue for my agency, but at the same time, I’m only paying, you know, a fraction of that out to have it done. And I have all of my time still. Does that make sense? So I can actually And not only that but because I have slps I can also bring on more people to delegate to so I can increase volume. In other words, I can take on more clients because it’s not a finite amount of time that I have to invest in setup and onboarding because I can just bring on more personnel to delegate additional work to because of the SOPs, standard operating procedures are there.

So for me what I’ve been striving to do that so that I can reduce my onboarding rate or my setup fee, number one, number two, I probably am going to be reducing my retainer, my monthly retainer fee as well. And I mentioned this in the Facebook group is my comment. There’s a couple of things I’ve been kicking around one would bring them on at a reduced initial rate, but get a pay like a results-based pay increase or retainer increase based upon the type of results that I can, that I know that I’ll be able to produce for them. So for example, it might be the first three months or once we heard it, you know, first three months or at a certain rate, because that’s typically about how long it takes for me to get significant results anyways, or some sort of threshold or milestone that gets hit a number of leads generated traffic, you know, number of traffic, whatever, traffic level or whatever. And then the rates go up from there, or something that I just took on for the case study that I’m conducting in the mastermind for my mastermind webinars, I recently brought on a new Tree Service contractor who’s buying leads for me on a pay per lead basis at a discounted rate for my typical rates. But it’s interesting because he does, he’s not paying me a monthly retainer. He’s just paying me for leads but I’m actually working on building his assets up, well, his brand through my assets, but I’m building his brand up. And it’s working really well.

In fact, I’m turning really good revenue over from this new Tree Service contractor right now, because of that, what just so you guys understand what I’m saying? Meaning I’m building up his brand, through my assets through the domain, everything else that I purchased for his company, right. So in other words, I own the asset with his branding on it, and I’m building it up and he’s paying for the leads that are coming out on a pay per lead basis. So there’s that or there’s another type of arrangement could be a revenue share something like that. So that they’re, they understand that you’re, you’re going to your revenue is tied to their success. Does that make sense? So in that’s kind of how I’m going to be approaching it first being able to reduce my rates initially, by removing myself from the process entirely, which will make my agency more efficient and more scalable to begin with. But then also, you know, giving them some sort of incentive to sign up with me so that I can start to show results, and then increase my monthly retainer as a result of, you know, either certain milestones that are hit or a certain timeframe, or whatever the arrangement is, or like I said, the pay per lead model, where they’re buying leads from me even though I’m building their brand instead of like, going out and creating my own generic pseudo brands that are lead generation assets or do some sort of revenue share model that makes sense.

So that’s personally how I’m going to be handling it. And again, I’ll be talking a lot about this in the mastermind. That’s specifically why I’m trying to systematize my agency processes right now, so that, you know, I can scale and I can share it with the rest of the mastermind members as well. So, Max, just hears what some of you guys are doing Hernan and I really like that approach Bradley because kind of it takes the burden out of the business owner right? When it comes to you know, paying you a monthly retainer for your services. And some of these guys might be coming out pretty beat up after this, you know, this situation, this economy, whatever, some of them might be right on top, but some of them might be coming up pretty beaten up. So I think that having some sort of either revenue share or success model embedded in your retainer, maybe charge a little bit less, but then you have some sort of either revenue share or profit share.

In my case, I run ads. So it makes sense, it makes sense to have some sort of profit share after ad spend. And that makes sense because it helps business owners like understand that they can, you know, they can actually pay you while the business is going back to where it was before. So having some sort of success, and then it sets you up for success as well. Because if you really hit a home run, then you will end up getting paid a lot more than just your retainer, right, which is the whole point. So I really, I really like that idea of the kind of, you know, making it like a no brainer, taking out all of the risks from the table, and then it helps you getting creative with the way you’re structuring your deals. And, and also, you know, I would definitely consider hiring somebody to do most of the grunt work while you are effectively focused on, you know, the high-level stuff or the creative stuff, right? But then the rest, you can systematize that you can do processes and all of that. So, I really agree with it. I really love what you’re doing there.

Chris’s young mind, I would probably spend a little bit of time having a discussion usually doesn’t take longer than 30 minutes. Last Word of bottlenecks was like, for example, if it’s just a physical store, and they didn’t have like an econ store or something online set up.

They could have made sales that way. So like, in the best case, I can refer them to somebody and get a cup out of that as well a little bit and help them to get set up. So in case something else happens that is similar to that or a second or third wave might happen. I hope it’s not but like, you never know.

They are prepared, you know, and they don’t have to shut down completely, but they can still get sales and stuff.

The rest I pretty much agree with what has been said already.

Marco.

This is really interesting. I mean, I really like this question. Like how do you restore back

Unknown Speaker 24:00 In Scott buyers confidence in themselves, I thought that’s a difficult one because you’re talking about how do you get into that person’s head and talk to them about their ability to make good buying decisions. All you can do is establish confidence and good rapport between you and the client. I mean, that’s what will take care of this having that, that that confidence in you, that you can produce the results that you say you’re going to get guys gonna drop a bundle on you. Whether it’s 500, if it’s a bundle, to a lot of people, or 50,000, that’s a bundle to other people. It’s all relative, that that ton of money that that bundle of money is relative to the person that spending the money. If that person if you can show that person that they can have confidence that you because you’re going to produce results. Either you’ve gotten results before and you can just show it you can just go in. I talked to a prominent attorney last week with a couple of others guys that I’m working on a project and I talked to a guy who’s dropping a bunch of money, we’re talking millions of dollars in Google ads and wants to turn his focus elsewhere. And so what I’m going to charge these two people, this attorney, and this guy who’s doing the Google ads and wants to go after the niche, another way, is what Well, you’re going to have to pay me like it doesn’t matter. At this point, if it’s a local client who’s having a hard time because he hasn’t done a Tree Service job, let’s say in four or five, six months, I understand that.

The way that I’m doing is I’m already dropping prices. For example, I have a couple of attorneys I’m already helping, Whose call volume dropped. And so I did drop the fee. While this goes on, as soon as it opens up, I know it’s gonna be a train wreck. People are gonna go crazy. accidents are gonna start to happen again, cause you’re gonna come back so the fees go back up. And they Oh, they go back up not only to where they formerly work, but they will also increase by a percentage to make up for the break that I gave them, it’s gonna they’re gonna make, again a bundle of money. The same thing with with with the new attorney that I’m taking on, we might bring him in at a reduced fee initially. But then as things, they gain traction and people like I hate to say, but people start having massive accidents. Again, it’s a bunch of money. And so this, this is all to me, right, the weight and the way that I’m looking at this. It’s whether you can instill that confidence in your ability to produce the results that these people are going to need moving forward. And that’s the conversation that you need to have with that person. Whether it’s a phone call, whether it’s that one on one once that this thing clears up and letting that person know that I’m the person that can get you the results that you want. I mean all of us have had that conversation with a client.

Yeah, I know that you’ve been screwed by other SEO agencies. I’m not that SEO is in here call these people. They can vouch for me or you came to me because someone referred you to me because I got the results. So you already know that there’s a pre-conference that’s called already established to some extent. Now you can either screw that up or work with it and close the deal. How you close that deal? Well, Bradley, Bradley, Hernan, and Chris, have given you guys some really good ideas. I don’t generally take local clients at that price. But if I mean, if that’s what it took, if it took bringing somebody in at a reduced rate, and as volume increases, your monthly fee is totally tied to that percentage increase that I’m totally for that it’s not the way that I’m doing because I don’t really do it at that hyperlocal level. I don’t focus on that. But I can totally see your point of view.

And how you would do it. And at the same time, I can also see it just totally going in there and convincing that person that you’re the person to be trusted with their livelihood because that’s what it is.

Adam, you’re the last one yet. One more thing, prices will go up anyways, like just seeing about, like all the money that has been given out and like they break the business set. So you can definitely expect like after things are working again, that there will be a price increase. Yeah. Because the purchasing power is less on the money.

So when Yeah, I agree. Good question. And I’m going to talk more about the consulting agency side of things, not the buyer competent side directly. For that, I think, you know, I’m not an economist, maybe an armchair one. And all I can say is, you know, I know myself and I know people have different sides or different feelings about this. My gut feeling is you know, I can only speak to what I’m going to do and I know I’m not going to be spending more money than usual in the near future right to me that goes against what I believe is safe and good for me and my loved ones. And I think a lot of people think that but again, that’s just me I’m not that’s not Adams verified theory or anything. So what I’ll do is lean back I think something that we talked a lot about it POFU Live, Herna talking about it a lot Bradley has or branding yourself more than ever. That’s something I’m focusing on. And I got this started slowly over the last few months. And now it’s really built up steam in the sense that like, it’s something I’m focusing more on. And I see that there are several reasons why for myself, it’s one you know, you’re helping yourself, while at the same time you get to help others and you can do this in any niche in the industry at any level. I don’t do local generally. But I mean, of course, you can help others locally, right. You know, if you’re doing local marketing, you could be doing local marketing meetups on Zoom. You could be helping the local builders as they begin, you know, needing to start prospecting. Again, if they’ve been on restrictions, I mean, there’s all sorts of stuff you can do, I’m not going to beat a dead horse there.

Obviously, videos right now are really important. And again, if you can, once things are safe again in person or doing zoom calls, and I also look at this as a good time to find out what you and I really like doing. You know, if you enjoy teaching others about it, maybe that’s something you could move more into. And like who you really like, start, start building up that prospecting engine, even if it’s already in place. Just kind of, you know, streamlining and doing whatever you can and looking at what you really want to focus on moving forward. So that’s something that I’m taking very seriously and I want to get that going because that it can be at times it feels like a heavy flywheel to get moving. But once you start that moving, you just keep doing it a little bit from time to time consistently, and that really starts paying off.

Secondly, Bradley talked about this, so did Hernan but streamlining your operations and as Bradley said just once per week, I really do. You know, I think everyone should do this once per week, ask yourself what you can automate delegate or delete. Just set a time and do it write it down on a scrap of paper. It doesn’t have to be rocket science, right? But you’ve got to set that time aside. And if it works, like I think it will then keep doing it. If not, you know, this isn’t some set and stone rule. It’s not working for you don’t do it. But you know, for 99% of the people out there, I guarantee you, this is going to be a potential game-changer for you. And then last but not least, I love this quote, I did an interview with a guy named Matt Barnett. He’s the founder of bon giorno, which is an app that Bradley introduced me to and he said, you know, automate the process, not the relationship. And I think we’re seeing that even more now that people are having to work remotely. You know, automating as much of the process as you can, but then really building those relationships as business owners as consultants as agency owners. That’s, that’s been important and I mean, bonds euro is a tool, and if there’s another tool use it, but I just use this as the example that has been a game-changer for me down to like the tactical level, like it’s fun because it helps build the relationship. But a great example is earlier this morning, I had approved a call. And when that happens, I get the phone journal notification pops up, hey, Adam, send the video to so and so. I recorded it. I had seen what they said I approved their message and I was like, you know, hey, it’s Adam. I’m looking forward to talking tomorrow. If you got any other background information on your project, let me know, you know, I’d really like to make the most of our call. It sounds like you got something interesting here. And they have given me a real short description like most people do when they fill out forms. I send that off, I get back a four-page email from this guy and he’s got just this mine, you know, really interesting project. All of the juicy details. He told me what he liked about his vendors. He told me what he fucking hated about his vendors. He’s telling me, you know, just under the hood, you know, all the details. And you know, all that took me was literally 20 seconds. So, I think that again, going back to that automating the process, not the relationship so I can put that 20 seconds in, it’s real. And the rest is taken care of for me, which nobody cares about anyways, nobody cares that there’s a program that sent the email they just care that I cared enough to, you know, say hi and ask them what’s really going on. So you mean to tell me that video emails work to wow your prospects and then ultimately your clients as well. It’s true and it has a very high engagement rate.

That’s funny.

Yeah, I’m telling you guys that’s how I primarily communicate with all of my clients. I mean, I do jump on the phone with them occasionally and we chat back and forth via email but almost every month I’m sending a video email to my clients just going over their monthly reports and again, I say the same product we sell guys it’s the same method you know, we practice what we preach video lead gen system, that’s how I do all my prospecting and it works really well and that starts the whole like, it builds rapport without us even conversing, right that makes sense on video, email, you can literally build rapport with the prospect before you ever communicated with them and like in real-time,

And so again, I also use video emails for communicating with prospects after like four clients once they become clients, and they love it. I’ve gotten so many comments over the years now from clients that say that they love that. Because they, you know, they know what’s going on at all times. And it’s like Adam said, I’m building that relationship, even if we’re not literally talking back and forth, it’s still building that rapport because they’re, it’s like they get to know me and all that other kind of stuff. It works really well. And the other.

You know, the other part of that is that, you know, I talked about this into your agency, what Adam just said is, when you’re also prospecting, it’s, you got to think about it guys like so much of the sales training out there is sales training about how to sell a product or a service and it’s almost like a one and done like, that’s why there’s hard closing, like hard closing techniques that people try to teach you in sales programs and all this other shit and I found that that is it usually pushes people away.

For the type of services that we sell as digital marketers, we’re selling a relationship, not a product or a service. Yes, there’s a product or a service attached to the relationship but the thing is we’re going to be intimately involved with their business. And we have to develop that relationship and that rapport with the business owner or our point of contact at the business in order for us to create that relationship that’s going to be long-lasting, if that makes sense because we’re going to be communicating with them on a regular basis and we are tied to the success of their business it’s really important to develop that relationship strong upfront that strong rapport upfront and also to maintain that relationship so I totally agree with it without him just said

alright, so we can go jump on the next question was a fantastic question. Wayne, thank you for that. Let me get to the next one.

Difference Between Battle Plan 4.0 And 2XYourAgency

Okay, this one is from the free Facebook group as well from Cliff he says what’s the difference between the Battle Plan 4.0 and 2xyouragency? Well, the Battle Plan 4.0 is like how to get results with building up an entity and how to get results with a search google search primarily. It’s basically a step by step plan for how to get results with any type of web project that makes sense to your agency about how to build your agency and how to grow your agency, and how to, you know, again, scale it, prospecting and sales as part one. Part two is how to get reliable, consistent, repeatable results without you have to do all the work. And part three of 2xyouragency training is all about how to scale your operation. And that’s so there’s a big difference between Battle Plan 2xyouragency Battle Plan is about how to get results with a particular online or web project to extra agencies how to build, grow and scale your agency, your agency without doing all the work yourself. So anybody wants to comment on that?

Oh, it’s perfect.

Are There Are Any SEO Practices You Need To Keep In Mind Before A Domain Goes Live To The Public?

Okay, Muhammad’s up what’s up Muhammad? He says, Hey, guys, a car dealer client of mine has been getting a new website built and they’re just about to live to the domain. And your guys’ advice. I made sure they would perform proper redirects from the old links beyond that, is there anything I should do once a new website goes live? I have a power shield in place for this client and I just bought a few mg y v link building and embed orders aimed at the ID page our way as a GMB, do I keep going, as usual, seeing as the domain is the same.

Yes, far as I know, the only other thing I might do would be to do a site, you know, a domain change, or whatever. And, you know, you can in Search Console, you can tell Google that the new site is over here, if that’s what is the same domain or push it live. Now it looks like it’s the same. It’s on the same domain. So yeah, I don’t I can’t see anything else. Marco, do you have anything else more? No, I don’t see anything else other than once this is all done and once the link building has cycled through that first time, you’ll take a look at the data, see where the money is gonna be. You’ve been at this long enough Mohammed not to understand where the money is in that niche and

You might have to isolate the top market level keyword for that category in the niche. And then that is just adding an error page to the G site inner drive stack, of course, with a corresponding inner site, money site page, excuse me, and then pushing power to that to rank everything in the niche. And yes, it’s that simple, but it’s not easy.

Should You Assign The ID Page As @ID Designation In A Local Business Organization Schema?

So next question from Muhamed and says, regarding local business organization schema, the @ID page, with the @ID designation should always be the ID page, right? Yes. And actually, it’s not supposed to change it’s supposed to be like, in other words, where do you point to should remain consistent Now, don’t get me wrong when I’m starting a new project as I’m waiting for the ID page to be built. For example, I might use this domain website URL as the ID page so that I can get the main site up and the structured data and stuff like that, but typically once you have the asset and place the ID page, you can change the elements on the ID page. But you should always point to the same UI, right?

At least that’s my understanding of it. Do I have that right, Marco? Yeah, that’s what Google says. But it’s not necessarily so because you can have multiple @ID. And no, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the @ID paid doesn’t have to be the s3. It could be an organization page on your website. That’s the @ID. Mohammed, again, it’s simply an identifier of where your company’s information is right where this organization is and everything related to the organization and then the entity loops. What it simply does is it catches the bot in everything related to the organization which is your syndication network, your drive stack, G site GMB. Now, anything related to you can even include citations in there. But no, it doesn’t have to be it should it be like no. Once you set it Bradley is right, Google’s recommendation is you leave it. But you can have multiple @IDs, you can identify multiple nodes. That’s all you’re doing. Let’s call them places so people don’t like misinterpret what a node is different places that are being identified as places where you can find information about this organization or this local business.

Yeah, I know that my screen is paused because I’m trying to dig into something for it in Google ads for a minute to show. One of the upcoming questions guys just stands by one minute. I it’s a question coming up on Google ads that I want to share something with.

Standby, just a minute, guys. I typically don’t do this on all day Hangouts. But it’s a great question and I want to show this

standby one minute, I promise.

Okay,

Yeah. All right, let me start the screen share again.

Get rid of that. All right.

All right, sorry about that. We’ll come back to that one when we get to it. Alright, so this one, maybe What’s up, baby? He’s here every week now asking multiple questions.

That’s funny. All right.

Is It Okay To Publish A Post On Two Different Silos?

So he says, hey guys, can I post on two different silos? Don’t it should be in one silo it, you should really, if your keyword research is done right, and you structure your silos properly, a post should only go on one silo, right? Whatever is the most appropriate silo, keyword set. Does that make sense? Now, if there’s some reason or another that you want to direct a reader, a visitor, you know somebody that’s looking at the content to, you know, a, another silo or another post within a silo, another page within another silo. You can do that with just an internal link, just nofollow the link but you don’t want to put the same post in two different silos, that’s two different categories. Right? And it just, it doesn’t really make sense to do so. And it also causes some funky things in WordPress when you do that. So I don’t recommend it. Does anybody else have anything else to say about that? No, no, it’s a no. Okay.

Should You Assign SameAs Attribute To The Branded Properties?

Number two, should the branded property properties have sameAs attribute like the money site? If you can inject structured data into them? Yeah, you can. Because remember, you can use the same schema type, whether it’s local business, organization, Corporation, whatever it is, you can use the same schema type in your web tools as well. So for example, you know, just like Mohammed was asking in the previous question, your ID page could, you know, if you’re using local business structured data, for example, the ID designation could be pointing to wherever you placed your ID page, and that would be the same no matter what local business structured data or schema was on any one of your web twos for the ones that you can add that to not all of them, you can do most

Then you can’t actually, unless Marco knows how to wait for a way to hack it in that I’m unaware of, for the most web tools, you’re not able to actually add structured data. But when you can, yes, you can, you can add that in as well. But you have to have access to the HTML, right to be able to do that the HTML header mainly too, right? Yeah. And be careful, because you want to create a parent-child relationship. But you don’t want to do it the opposite way. You don’t want your tier one branded, to in any way be taken as the parent and something else to be the child. Because then you could now create a lot of confusion. And you don’t want to do that not at the code level. Guys, don’t mess with the quote unless you know what you’re doing.

Example Of A Complex Silo

Number three, can you show an example when it’s necessary to use a complex silo? Well, yeah, I mean, you know, for example, is a great one. One of our mastermind members was talking I’m not gonna name any names, but was talking about a glass repair company. And they were asking about, you know, how to structure silos on a glass repair company.

For a glass repair company website, and they had an auto glass, residential glass, commercial glass, but then underneath, so that would be a top-level category. So that would be you know, if it was a simple silo structure, it would be posted directly underneath each one of those categories, right. So that would be the category slash post structure, which is a simple silo structure, meaning it only goes two levels deep in the silo itself, but for example, under you know, I don’t know, residential glass repair, being one silo, the top-level silo so that if you’re going to do is for various subcategories underneath that silo. So for example, residential glass repair could have window repair, a sliding glass door inst or door installation, glass door installation, right. So those could each be subcategories of residential glass repair. Does that make sense? So each one of those now for example, like glass window repair, it could have that could be a subcategory. And then you could add posts underneath that, right. So you could add depth to the window repair subcategory, which is ultimately part of the residential glass repair, primary category, or top-level category, excuse me. So that makes sense. So for example, and then like maybe glass installation, residential glass installation, and then you could have as posts right to add depth to that which glass installation residential glass installation could be a subcategory of residential glass repair, I’m just using that as an example. I don’t know that niche so I’m kind of pulling this out of the air. But you know, you could have window installation and or door and glass door installation, sliding door installation, French door installations, that makes sense. Each one of those could be individual posts to add depth to that particular subcategory. Okay, so that’s just an example. It doesn’t matter refresh redirect.

Does A Meta Refresh/Redirect Be Considered A Backlink?

does meta refresh/redirect is considered a backlink? Yes. From the original source. Yes. So if you redirect a URL through a redirect to whatever your target is it will pick up as a backlink. Is that correct? Does anybody want to know that? It’s a response code, all 300-330-1302 308 400 500. It’s a response code. It’s interaction in HTTP now, but the way that I understood anything linking to that page that’s being 301 would be considered the length, but the meta refresh and the 301 and three or two, those are simply response codes. They’re not backlinks. Right now and right, I get that, but I thought I thought he was asking if you redirect something to it, does the redirect become a backlink? So the original URL that is redirected does become a backlink? Yes, that’s what I was at was answering. But yes, you’re right. A reader. A meta refresh or a redirect is not a backlink. It’s just a redirect to wherever HTTP header code. Tom says if this isn’t the right forum for this question, please write in the appropriate place. Okay. This is the question I was going to show you.

Advice On Running Ads For Lawyer Lead Gen Videos

Tom says I purchased your YouTube ads training being a complete novice to ads. Fantastic course, by the way. Thank you, Tom. He says, any advice on running ads for lawyer lead gen videos? For example, how would you go about putting ads in front of people who need a divorce attorney? Okay. Well, Tom, if you go through the entire training, you should know that you can use in-market audiences, which is what I highly recommend or custom intent audiences. So what I did was I pulled up in one of my Google Ads account here just to show you for example, if you come into let’s go to browse and if you look at in-market life event and custom intent audiences now I’m looking at a display campaign display in YouTube ads, very similar audiences in-market audiences. There are some slight differences, but there are there they’re very very similar.

Okay, so I have the display campaign right now. But if we could take a look at in-market life events and custom intent, you can go into in-market audiences and you can look for Business Services, maybe look for legal. I don’t know if they have a separate one for legal. But you could look for Business Services maybe. And see if there’s something in there for legal. My point is to go through the different in-market audiences, preferably I’d start there and see, and again, there’s a lot of them. So you just have to start clicking through the different categories, and then clicking down are the dropdowns to expand them and see if you can find one for lawyers. I don’t do anything for lawyers. I was just hoping to find an in-market audience for lawyers, and they’re very well maybe, but I’m not going to click through all of these. I just wanted to point out that this is where you would start, look, try to find an in-market audience because then you can set your geographic targeting, and you can select an in-market audience to were that only the people that are going to see your ad are only going to be people that are specified in a geographic area that you set your targeted locations, as well as Google, has determined that they’re in the market for lawyer services, or for you know, Attorney services, whatever. So I would start there, if you can’t find one, create a custom intent audience. So again, all that all the custom intent audiences, and I can’t go too deep into it, but as go develop a really robust keyword list of all of the types of keywords that somebody that it would be cert would be in need of that type of attorney would be searching for. And that that becomes the keyword list that you add to a custom intent audience, then you can also Well, for YouTube, you can’t do use URLs. But for the Display Network, you can also go out and grab like competitor URLs, and like legal type advice, you know, websites where they talk about, you know, the process of personal injury law or something like that. You can grab things URLs like that even YouTube video URLs that talk about

These things and put them in the custom intent audience list as well, because that’s the criteria that Google uses. Essentially, when you create a custom intent audience, what you’re doing is you’re creating a bucket that you want Google to fill with people that meet the criteria that you set up with your targeting criteria through the custom intent audience. So if you grab a bunch of keywords that people would be searching for. And then you know, engaging with content that satisfies or answers those types of queries. You put those types of search queries or keywords, essentially phrases into the custom intent audience, and then Google says, Okay, this person in your case, what was your name? Tom?

Yeah, Tom wants a bucket of people that are actively or recently engaging with content around these types of keywords or this type of content, right. And so it will automatically start to fill that bucket, so to speak with people that meet that criteria within a specific geographic if it’s for local within a specific target geographic area, and they are known to Google as having a recent interest, right in that, in that particular you know that that type of content, which means they’re likely in-market for that, and that’s their custom intent. Does that make sense? So and it works well, but it’s not if you’re going to use a custom intent audience, unlike life events or in-market audiences, where Google already knows that they’re in the market. For those with a custom intent, it takes a little while for the ad campaign to learn, right? It uses machine learning AI and such that, when you first set it up, you’re probably going to have some shitty results. Don’t worry about it, let the ads run and the machine learning will take over and we’ll start to refine the targeting to where it gets better and better if that makes sense. So just again, Custom intent audiences work really, really well. I’ve been testing them a lot over the last few months, and they work really well but they take a little

But it’s time for them to mature for the machine learning to kind of really learn through what you said is the criteria is a good question. Anybody else? comment on that? How about you Hernan, you do a lot of stuff with ads?

He might be busy.

Okay, I’m gonna keep moving.

Any advice? Okay, wait a minute. For example, how would you go about putting ads in front? Yeah, I already answered that. Since Google doesn’t allow negative life event targeting, I couldn’t see an obvious way to target their audience as you did in the training. Okay, yeah. Again, use custom intent audiences, then that’s the best way to do it. And with YouTube, you can only add keywords, at least for now, which is fine. And more equals better, in other words, but more as long as irrelevant. So don’t use more general or broad keywords that would add that aren’t specifically relevant to the type of project you’re trying to, you know, the people that you’re trying to target because that will skew your results and give you less, your ads won’t perform as well in other words, so you want to build a really robust keyword list for YouTube ads that are specifically around that particular like and remember put yourself in the like in the shoes of somebody that would be in need of you say it was personal injury attorney or whatever and divorce attorney excuse me, put yourself in the shoes of somebody going through a divorce is looking for an attorney and try to think of it that way and develop a keyword list based around that. Does that make sense? that it works really well.

Is It Okay To Use The Description In The IFTTT Recipe For The Branded Network In YouTube Syndication?

Okay, next BB is up again. On YouTube syndication for the branded network. Is it okay to use the description in the recipe?

No, I don’t recommend that. YouTube an RSS of money site gets syndicated there. So you mean the description in the recipe? I’m not you mean? Take the YouTube video description and syndicate that out. Ah, you know, it depends on how you Okay, the blanket statement I’m going to say no, because

As soon as I say, yeah, it’s okay to do that people are going to go out. And I’ve seen a lot of people’s YouTube descriptions that are absolutely spammy as can be because they put a big block of keywords or they put a shit ton of External links and all of that kind of stuff in their video description. That’s fine. If you want to spam your video description and on YouTube. It’s okay, it’s perfectly fine. But when you start to syndicate your description out to the networks, if it’s it’s a real spammy description, then it’s likely that those accounts the web two accounts that you’re syndicating to get terminated. How do I know that? Because I’ve had it happen many, many times, which is specifically why we developed the recipes or the applets and IFTTT the way that we did. Because when you’re just syndicating the video itself, and perhaps a link back to the video, or to a playlist or to a channel or a combination of those, then it’s fine. It’s very rare that I’ve ever had a web two terminated from that type of a syndicated description or from the applet. In other words, the description that the applet publishes, but when I in the past when I’ve done full YouTube Video Description syndication along with the video, I’ve had many, many times web two dot o account shut down. And it’s mainly because the video description was a bit spammy. So just be careful if you’re going to syndicate the YouTube description, just be sure that the video description is not spammy doesn’t contain a shit ton of External links and all that kind of stuff. Okay.

Is There A Faster Way To Write A Press Release For A New Post?

See, number two, is there a faster way to write a press release for a new post?

Yeah, have us do it. I mean, I don’t know what you’re asking there. You know, I, whenever my bloggers created published a post that’s going to be also promoted through a press release. They just go submit the press release or the details for the blog post to the through MGYB. Basically, for the end press Release writers write the press release. We don’t any of us write our own press releases. And I don’t encourage any of you to do that. So I don’t know what else to tell you on that one. Can someone use Fiverr gigs? Can we just copy 500? From the words for the new posts? And that’s it? No, you can’t do that. I don’t know, if any, well, you can probably find some PR distribution services that would allow you to do that, but we won’t. In fact, we won’t even take a press release from self-written press releases, they have to be written by the press release writers at press advantage. And we do that intentionally because they know how to get the best results from the content that syndicates through their distribution network. Okay, so I would highly encourage you to allow the press release whatever press release distribution service you’re using, probably as a press release writing service. Most all of them do now, let those writers do the writing for you. Okay.

Can Someone Use Fiverr Gigs Or SEO Clerks For Building Links To RYS And IFTTT Properties?

Can someone use Fiverr gigs or SEO clerks for building links to the RYS and IFTTT properties? Again, you can. We don’t recommend it. But you can. So he says he’s needing non-English spam links. Marco, what do you say about that?

Yeah, like, I haven’t done it. And so, uh, yeah, we’ve used Fiverr gigs before, but that’s just the test drive sites and key sites. They take it like a champ. I wouldn’t throw it at my tier one branded. I’m not doing that. Because it just, it’s not gonna look, well, you. It’s your brand. Why would you want to spend your brand I know that we say we call the drive second g site part of tier one branded, but it’s not really. That’s tier two, tier two links coming into everything that you’re doing everything else. And then we filter everything through that tier two, which brings in traffic, it brings in a whole lot of activity, relevance, trust, and authority, which makes it de facto, tier one. It’s just it’s not really by rule. It’s not a tier one. It’s just the fact that he went right by facts.

Because of the use, and so understanding that why would you want to spam your tier one branded properly? If you’re going to try to test do it with the drive second t site in them in between everything, and you should be okay.

There you go.

Can We Use A Press Release In English Sites With English Posts To A Non-English Site?

Okay, maybe we’re gonna move on because we only got two more minutes. And those were many too many questions again, but I do want to answer can we develop or is it in the pipeline of packages and MGYB to non-English sites? No, it’s not and we will not we don’t plan on doing that. That’s not even for future plans. Isn’t Marco, know that the man has to be there and we see we see these one-offs every once in a while. If we saw them often. Then we’d say okay, there’s a demand for it. We need to meet the demand, or we need to find a way. But it’s not even at that stage where we’re considering finding a way.

Does Semantic Mastery Trainings Have Step By Step SOPs?

Okay, Rob’s up says besides the Battle Plan, do any of your items or training contains step by step SLPs. Uh, yeah, the mastermind is where I share slps all the time. But to be clear, guys, I share my standard operating procedures, but they’re specific to my agency. I mean, there are some things that can be that are generic enough that they can be applied to, you know, your own business as well. And I share those in the mastermind all the time because I get requests like that in the mastermind. That’s what the masterminds for, by the way, for that kind of stuff.

But for example, all the agency processes that I’ve been working diligently on for the last month, really about six weeks, but for the last month, I’ve really put a lot of effort into it in time and such.

You know, I’m sharing those with the mastermind members, but again, they’re specific to my processes, and it’s more or less to share so that you guys have mastermind members, I mean, have a template or a, you know, a guide, essentially something that they can use to build their own processes. I don’t expect my processes for my agency to work for your business.

But I do share them so that other people have like kind of a template that they can go out and develop their own processes. The problem is, even when I share the processes I know, you know, eight, eight out of 10 people that I share them with in the, you know, even in the mastermind, they look at them, they’re like, Oh, this is awesome, but they never actually, you know, use them or build their own processes, or at least my understanding is, it’s very rare. There are only a few people that I know that actually really developed, fully developed sfps. And that’s where the bottleneck is, for the most part, guys. It’s a lot of work developing SLPs. It really is. It’s a ton of work. And that’s why most people don’t do it. But once it’s done, especially if you do them very detailed, and I love the process. In fact, I’ve got an open right here in my tab because I was working on that earlier today again, but you can once you develop really intricate processes, you can delegate even the most complex subtasks. In other words, you can outsource it because as long as your processes your SOPs are detailed enough, you can take anything that you think, Well, no, I don’t want to say anything. Because some things do require judgment analysis, you know, that kind of stuff that only comes with experience. But for the most part, even things that are really complex can be delegated with a proper SAP. Right? And so again, I share mine in the mastermind often, when people request things, I will often create them, but they’re specific to my business. And I always want to disclaim that right up front, just to say, look, you know, I’ll give you an example. But you’re gonna have to obviously, customize it specifically for your own business. Okay. All right. So last question. Oh, yeah, in a second. But because we’re missing something that really big here. Our training is step by step over the shoulder video. And then you should be developing your own processes, from those videos to apply to whatever it is that you’re doing. Some of the training is as simple as, get a VA in there, to reproduce whatever’s being done, and that’s it.

RYS Academy and RYS Academy Reloaded the VAs, that’s their training, go watch the videos, build me a drive stack, then we’ll discuss the drive stack to see where it is that you went off where it is that maybe you improve it, because that happens also. So that and then that goes into the training that goes into there into the videos. So there’s always an improvement process. But it all starts with that over the shoulder training so that you don’t have to go through all these intricacies that you often have to go through by building an SLP. Should you build Yes, by all means, but start with over the shoulder training so that you can do your own.

What SEO Items Provide Biggest Boasts That Should Be Done On Every Site?

All right, the last question, because we’re actually a little bit over but we’ll answer this and we’ll wrap it up. He says if my focus is local SEO there are so many items known to contribute to local SEO such as citations, map embeds, driving directions, geotag images, press releases, Google stacks, etc. Can anyone prioritize what items provide the biggest boost that should be done on every site as opposed to items that can be left off and only completed for today?

Competition. Yeah, and I would say and I’m curious to hear what Marco’s responses. But I would say on page entity, build the entity which the SEO shield is all about. So make sure you’re on pages tight SEO shield, so all the entity assets, right connect all your entity assets the way that we teach. And then it’s the ongoing external stuff or off-page stuff like link building, embed, embeds, and embeds and link building mainly, content marketing is what I consider part of on-page but it’s also part of off-page because of syndication. And also, with press releases, I consider that content marketing, but that’s really an external source that’s building links back to the entity or entity assets. So again, for me, it’s on-page SEO, the SEO shield. So that’s essentially establishing and building up the entity. And then it’s a matter of link building embed gigs and consistent content marketing. That’s and a lot of my local projects. We don’t build citations. It depends on how the GMB was created if it was spam, GMB listing, we don’t do citations and we still get ranked. So citations aren’t absolutely critical. If it’s a valid GMB location, you can absolutely and should build citations. But if it’s not, I omit that. So what do you say Marco, at the local level, you have to have a schema, you have to get that schema and that’s part of your homepage. If you’re not doing that, then you’re just like the rest of the competition, which most people will ignore. That’s how to get a leg up if you do it right. So that’s part of your if your SEO is right, and your entity site then everything else comes on off-page. And part of your entity, of course, is built off paid, @ID drive stack g site, and the companion syndication that was well that’s all bundled free. The only thing that’s necessary after that would be press releases and make building embeds and link building. Which then did that I mean, that’s, that’s what works, the magic that’s what brings everything all of the power into whatever it is that you’re trying to do and you pop it into the three-pack.

Sweet. Well, thanks, everybody for being here. See you guys next week. Don’t forget to go pick up Battle Plan for Dotto.

See everyone. Bye everyone, guys.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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daynamartinez22 · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 285 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

And what we did was just go over, I guess as an encouragement, because it’s accountability is an encouragement to one another, and people started showing their results and I’m like, holy crap.

But he’s getting unbelievable results. Okay, how are they doing this shit? How? Okay Yeah, I’m the master of subtlety Guess how the fuck did doing? Take a guess

I’ll leave it at that.

Hernan, how you doing man?

Wow. That’s awesome. All right, Chris. How about yourself, man? How you doing? Yeah, I’m actually proud and happy that it’s warmer than in Costa Rica here.

That’s a new one. And regarding the Battle Plan,

I also have bad news for some people. I’m not sure if they’re gonna be sad or like upset or so. But

I mean, like, rarely actually mentioned it already. And I’m gonna hit that. It’s like, I usually do. The question is like,

Do you mean that I have to spend more money after I purchased the Battle Plan to actually execute it?

That successes right there. Give you the keys to the kingdom give you the keys to the kingdom guide.

Are that an important skill to have with any of this?

Yeah, also, like on the affiliate case study that I did, like, I don’t know, one and a half years on the old Battle Plan, not the new one.

Confirm that you guys are seeing it. Roger.

Okay, let’s see. There we go.

All right. It looks like a reset.

What Would You Do Differently In Your Digital Marketing Agency Once The Economy Starts Back Up After The Pandemic?

They are prepared, you know, and they don’t have to shut down completely, but they can still get sales and stuff.

The rest I pretty much agree with what has been said already.

Marco.

This is really interesting. I mean, I really like this question. Like how do you restore back

That’s funny.

alright, so we can go jump on the next question was a fantastic question. Wayne, thank you for that. Let me get to the next one.

Difference Between Battle Plan 4.0 And 2XYourAgency

Oh, it’s perfect.

Are There Are Any SEO Practices You Need To Keep In Mind Before A Domain Goes Live To The Public?

Should You Assign The ID Page As @ID Designation In A Local Business Organization Schema?

Standby, just a minute, guys. I typically don’t do this on all day Hangouts. But it’s a great question and I want to show this

standby one minute, I promise.

Okay,

Yeah. All right, let me start the screen share again.

Get rid of that. All right.

All right, sorry about that. We’ll come back to that one when we get to it. Alright, so this one, maybe What’s up, baby? He’s here every week now asking multiple questions.

That’s funny. All right.

Is It Okay To Publish A Post On Two Different Silos?

Should You Assign SameAs Attribute To The Branded Properties?

Example Of A Complex Silo

Does A Meta Refresh/Redirect Be Considered A Backlink?

Advice On Running Ads For Lawyer Lead Gen Videos

He might be busy.

Okay, I’m gonna keep moving.

Is It Okay To Use The Description In The IFTTT Recipe For The Branded Network In YouTube Syndication?

Okay, next BB is up again. On YouTube syndication for the branded network. Is it okay to use the description in the recipe?

As soon as I say, yeah, it’s okay to do that people are going to go out. And I’ve seen a lot of people��s YouTube descriptions that are absolutely spammy as can be because they put a big block of keywords or they put a shit ton of External links and all of that kind of stuff in their video description. That’s fine. If you want to spam your video description and on YouTube. It’s okay, it’s perfectly fine. But when you start to syndicate your description out to the networks, if it’s it’s a real spammy description, then it’s likely that those accounts the web two accounts that you’re syndicating to get terminated. How do I know that? Because I’ve had it happen many, many times, which is specifically why we developed the recipes or the applets and IFTTT the way that we did. Because when you’re just syndicating the video itself, and perhaps a link back to the video, or to a playlist or to a channel or a combination of those, then it’s fine. It’s very rare that I’ve ever had a web two terminated from that type of a syndicated description or from the applet. In other words, the description that the applet publishes, but when I in the past when I’ve done full YouTube Video Description syndication along with the video, I’ve had many, many times web two dot o account shut down. And it’s mainly because the video description was a bit spammy. So just be careful if you’re going to syndicate the YouTube description, just be sure that the video description is not spammy doesn’t contain a shit ton of External links and all that kind of stuff. Okay.

Is There A Faster Way To Write A Press Release For A New Post?

See, number two, is there a faster way to write a press release for a new post?

Can Someone Use Fiverr Gigs Or SEO Clerks For Building Links To RYS And IFTTT Properties?

There you go.

Can We Use A Press Release In English Sites With English Posts To A Non-English Site?

Does Semantic Mastery Trainings Have Step By Step SOPs?

What SEO Items Provide Biggest Boasts That Should Be Done On Every Site?

Sweet. Well, thanks, everybody for being here. See you guys next week. Don’t forget to go pick up Battle Plan for Dotto.

See everyone. Bye everyone, guys.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

angelagiles18 · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 285 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

And what we did was just go over, I guess as an encouragement, because it’s accountability is an encouragement to one another, and people started showing their results and I’m like, holy crap.

But he’s getting unbelievable results. Okay, how are they doing this shit? How? Okay Yeah, I’m the master of subtlety Guess how the fuck did doing? Take a guess

I’ll leave it at that.

Hernan, how you doing man?

Wow. That’s awesome. All right, Chris. How about yourself, man? How you doing? Yeah, I’m actually proud and happy that it’s warmer than in Costa Rica here.

That’s a new one. And regarding the Battle Plan,

I also have bad news for some people. I’m not sure if they’re gonna be sad or like upset or so. But

I mean, like, rarely actually mentioned it already. And I’m gonna hit that. It’s like, I usually do. The question is like,

Do you mean that I have to spend more money after I purchased the Battle Plan to actually execute it?

That successes right there. Give you the keys to the kingdom give you the keys to the kingdom guide.

Are that an important skill to have with any of this?

Yeah, also, like on the affiliate case study that I did, like, I don’t know, one and a half years on the old Battle Plan, not the new one.

Confirm that you guys are seeing it. Roger.

Okay, let’s see. There we go.

All right. It looks like a reset.

What Would You Do Differently In Your Digital Marketing Agency Once The Economy Starts Back Up After The Pandemic?

They are prepared, you know, and they don’t have to shut down completely, but they can still get sales and stuff.

The rest I pretty much agree with what has been said already.

Marco.

This is really interesting. I mean, I really like this question. Like how do you restore back

That’s funny.

alright, so we can go jump on the next question was a fantastic question. Wayne, thank you for that. Let me get to the next one.

Difference Between Battle Plan 4.0 And 2XYourAgency

Oh, it’s perfect.

Are There Are Any SEO Practices You Need To Keep In Mind Before A Domain Goes Live To The Public?

Should You Assign The ID Page As @ID Designation In A Local Business Organization Schema?

Standby, just a minute, guys. I typically don’t do this on all day Hangouts. But it’s a great question and I want to show this

standby one minute, I promise.

Okay,

Yeah. All right, let me start the screen share again.

Get rid of that. All right.

All right, sorry about that. We’ll come back to that one when we get to it. Alright, so this one, maybe What’s up, baby? He’s here every week now asking multiple questions.

That’s funny. All right.

Is It Okay To Publish A Post On Two Different Silos?

Should You Assign SameAs Attribute To The Branded Properties?

Example Of A Complex Silo

Does A Meta Refresh/Redirect Be Considered A Backlink?

Advice On Running Ads For Lawyer Lead Gen Videos

He might be busy.

Okay, I’m gonna keep moving.

Is It Okay To Use The Description In The IFTTT Recipe For The Branded Network In YouTube Syndication?

Okay, next BB is up again. On YouTube syndication for the branded network. Is it okay to use the description in the recipe?

Is There A Faster Way To Write A Press Release For A New Post?

See, number two, is there a faster way to write a press release for a new post?

Can Someone Use Fiverr Gigs Or SEO Clerks For Building Links To RYS And IFTTT Properties?

There you go.

Can We Use A Press Release In English Sites With English Posts To A Non-English Site?

Does Semantic Mastery Trainings Have Step By Step SOPs?

What SEO Items Provide Biggest Boasts That Should Be Done On Every Site?

Sweet. Well, thanks, everybody for being here. See you guys next week. Don’t forget to go pick up Battle Plan for Dotto.

See everyone. Bye everyone, guys.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 285 published first on your-t1-blog-url https://ift.tt/1WMpNvB May 01, 2020 at 02:07PM Semantic Mastery https://ift.tt/2YeHIxM

0 notes