#it popped after a couple months so i bought the exact same model and it didnt even last a month before popping

[lazorsandparadox]

I love how people scaremonger that under socialism the quality of everything would get worse because no one would be incentivized to do a good job, something that already happens under capitalism right now

[kateneedscoffee]

Break My Heart

Synopsis: Falling in love with your best friend hurts even though they don’t feel the same way

Requested: No

Pairings: Any character you like x gn!reader

(y/c/n)= Your character name

words= thoughts

Warnings: Angst, unrequited love, and cussing (or if you’re sensitive about your height)

Author’s Note: This is my first ever fic, so please bear with me. 

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Today is the day that I tell them about my feelings, the feelings I've had for so long. Ever since the day met.....

This is nice. The atmosphere was peaceful, with some people sipping their morning coffee and reading the daily newspaper. And here I was reading my book. 

I was too busy reading my book and I didn’t even notice the figure in front on me. They knocked on the table, gaining my attention. 

“Hey”, they said “do you mind if I sit here? There’s some people that I don’t feel comfortable in here and there’s no more empty seats.”

“Sure”. I said. They pulled out the chair and sat down. I inspected them, a habit of mine as a child, they look friendly, and I didn’t sense any harm in them. But, one thing caught my eye, they were beautiful/handsome. They were dressed as a model. Their hair neatly combed and it looks fluffy to the touch. 

“Like what you see?” a small smirk on their perfect features. 

“S-s-sorry! I didn't mean to stare.” Feeling my face turn red. A laugh erupted from them. “You’re fine, hun. I get this a lot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, so many people will stare at me cause of how I'm dressed or ‘how beautiful I am.’ Mimicking the parentheses.

“Well, you are beautiful coming from a stranger that you just met.” you said. pointing a finger at your chest.

“I’m (y/c/n)” holding out their hand.

“I’m (y/n)” taking their hand.

And that’s how our friendship started...

They should be here by now. Sitting on one of the tables, looking for them. I’ve told them to come meet me at the new boba place, that’s just open up a few days ago. There weren’t that many people in the food court, some families here and there, some couples holding hands, or some people just want to walk around and do some shopping. Maybe I should text them. Sighing, I brought out my phone and tapped on their contact.

You: Hey, where are you? I’m near the place where we should have met up 10min ago.

Looking up from my phone, and seeing the crowd was twice the size as before.

Them: IMSORRY!!!!!! MY BOSS SAID HE NEEDED ME FOR A MINUTE AND IT TURNED OUT AN HOUR. IM COMING RIGHT NOW.

You: Please hurry. The crowd is getting bigger and I don’t think I could survive here😞

Them: STAY PUT. AND DON’T WONDER OFF SOMEWHERE. OR I HAVE TO GO TO THE FRONT DESK AND SAY IVE LOST MY CHILD.

You: Shut up

Them: I love teasing you😁

I smiled at the last text message from them. Deciding to play some games on your phone to pass some time. 

After a few rounds of winning and losing. You've felt a hand on your shoulder. Startling you, you give out a small screech. A loud laugh coming from the culprit that startled you. A few people turned their hands, wondering what’s happening.

“YOU SCARED ME!!!! I WAS THIS CLOSE FROM THROWING HANDS.”

“YEAH RIGHT. YOU CANT EVEN REACH MY HEIGHT.” Having to clutch their stomach from laughing too hard. Putting your head down the table, trying to hide the blush on your face.

“Okay, okay, okay, i’m sorry for making fun of your height. Can my friend please come out? Ill pay for the boba for running late and making fun of you” (y/c/n) says hoping to bring your spirits up.

By lifting your head up and agreeing to the offer. Getting up from your seat and walked to the boba station.There’s now a short line. You looked at (y/c/n) more closely, seeing them in their work outfit with sightly messed up hair, probably from running to get here, and some expensive sunglasses you’ve got them on their birthday.

When done ordering your drinks and (y/c/n) pays them. Walking away from the station. Sipping your drink and made a content noise. “That good, huh?” Nodding your head. They chuckled and took a sip from their drink. “Your right, it’s good” Taking another sip from their drink.

“Hey, do you want to go to the arcade? It should be downstairs, if I remember right.” Scratching behind their neck.

“Sure, but don’t you have work tomorrow? I don't want you to get yelled at your boss for being late.” Remembering from last month event.

“Nope,” popping the ‘p’. “I’m off tomorrow.” “Cool, that means you get to hang out with me.” “I sure do.” A smile adorning their features. 

Walking down the stairs and taking a few turns to arrive at the arcade. We’ve finished our drinks at the time and threw them down the trash before going inside and order some coins to play with the games.

“Hey, do you want to play some air hockey? I’ll give you 3 candy bars if you win” (y/c/n) smirked. Pride swelling up in their chest.

“And if you win?” “You’ll buy me some more boba” You thought it over, a small smile creeping up your face “deal”. 

When walking in and found a few kids were playing and decided to call out saying can we go next. They shooked their heads, “Nah, you old hags can wait after we’re done or decide to call winner?”, one of them piped up. “How about this, us vs. you?” (y/c/n) said. They've turned their head towards you, waiting for your response. Forgetting the deal, and agree to take on the group of children’s challenge.

“(Y/N), you go first and take these damn children down.” Giving you the striker and put some of our coins in the slot. The table was blowing up with air. 

“Ready to go down, midget?” placing the puck down and giving you a glare.

“Oh, you are on you demon” 

He hit the puck and it went inside my slot. Shocked over came you and it quickly disappear. “So, that's how you want to play, huh?” Getting the pluck out and hitting the exact force and speed to went inside his slot. “You’re going to wish that you never made a deal with us.” A evil smile that betrayed your innocence. 

After winning the match against the children and we've bought some ice cream for them as a ‘good game’. 

It was dark, when heading out of the mall due to the winter hours. 

“Those kids made a mistake by challenging us.” (y/c/n) says, by putting both of their arms behind their neck and giving out a stretch.

“yeah”, too busy thinking on how to properly say your confession. 

Noticing your odd behavior and stopped in front of you.”Is something wrong? Your not sick are you?” they said, voiced with concern. Putting a hand on your forehead to feel your temperature. 

“I’m fine, I need to tell you something first though.” Swatting their hand away lightly. Im going to do it. Right here. Right now.

“Sure, tell me what’s on your mind.” Their full attention on you.

Taking a deep breath, and to relax your mind from racing. You cleared your throat and looked up at them.

“I like you. I like because you always stick by my side. I like you teasing me, no matter if it’s about my height or not. I like you, no matter if you look like a hot mess in the morning or if have drool on your face. I like you because you’re so nice to me and you always take care of me when I'm sick. I like you-”

“STOP,” startling you out of your confession. “Just stop, it was very sweet of you to say that to me, but I don't feel the same way about you. Im sorry.” Looking at you, see your head bowed down. 

“(y/n), are you okay?”

Lifting your head up. A few tears streaming down your face. You quickly wiped them with your sleeve. “Yeah, yeah I’m okay.” Another tear fell down without you noticing, (y/c/n) tried to wiped it with their sleeve, but you quickly flinched from their touch.

“Please, don’t touch me. Or else i’m going to cry even more.” You whispered.

Quickly nodding at your words turning their back at you, you spoke up again. “Can you please do something for me, though?”, you said.

They've turned at you and nodded, and you grabbed their hand. Placing it on top of your heart. “Break my heart. Say that I’m just a friend to you, please”

“You’re just a friend to me. Like a little sister.” After those words, you released their arm and walked past them. Tears rolling down your face, quietly whispering, “Thank you, for being my friend.”

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A/N: Wahhh, this broke my heart and I was thinking about this before typing it down. Sorry, if there’s spelling or grammar errors. My English is not very good. I hope you guys liked it tho.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 10]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and what I have of Chapter 5 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

It’s going to be stop and go for most of the night because a lot of things will interrupt me, but I hope to do a good amount of this today.

Chapter 2

The morning was just as torturous as Janus had expected it would be. He chewed through another pop-tart, this time bothering to actually check and see that it was a cinnamon-sugar one and drank three cups of caffeinated orange juice. Then, he waved his hand through the air and selected the 1st saved location on his device. He popped up directly behind his desk where he’d been standing the night morning before.

Someone, probably Remus, had shut his integrator down. He swiped a finger across the power button, and it flickered back on, scrolling through its morning start up routine.

 The machine scanned through all of the data in the three main system it was connected to and sorted all information into things that concerned him, could concern him, and did not before then sorting the first two categories into order of importance. As it did, he set up his screen reader so he would hopefully not start the day with more of a migraine than he already had. It took about 3 seconds for everything to turn on and settle.

Sitting down in his desk, he dismissed the notification that Remus had finished and submitted the report from their mission the day before.

 A mission had been scheduled for him today, and the details were in his inbox. A piece time travel technology had been accidently dropped by an archology student in the 1890s during a trip. It was an earlier model of emergency time travel given to time travels that would dump them back into the Registration Office in the year they originated. It wasn’t extremely dangerous, but could pose some problems, especially if someone who didn’t know what it was activated it.

Surveillance agents had tracked it down and found that it had been picked up by a local and sold. Though no one from that time had known what it was, they had identified that it was made out of a precious metal and it had been crafted into an expensive necklace. Janus and Remus were supposed to retrieve it today. It had been pinpointed that the most opportune time for the extraction was 1923 during a masquerade ball held by those who had bought the necklace.

 It was a fairly low stakes mission. He wasn’t set to leave for another couple of hours, so he clicked through the rest of the important notifications and then set off to meet his missions coordinator, Rhi, in her office.

Rhi and Janus got along fairly well. She was a well put together woman who took her job incredibly seriously. It was fair as her job was to organize all information and materials from every other department and make sure the agents she was assigned to got and understood all of it. A mistake from her could lead to an agent’s death or something far worse.

 This, of course, made her relationship with Remus… interesting to say the least. Janus could never place whether they were nemesis, frenemies, or mortal enemies, and he doubted he would ever know.

“Okay, but it’s the 1920s America,” Remus was already in her office arguing when Janus arrived. “There were so many gangsters! I could be a gangster. I would make a fantastic gangster! Just give me a gun, a snazzy suit with a white hat, and a buttload of alcohol. I will be running Chicago with Al Capone in five minutes.”

“Al Capone didn’t become a crime boss until 1925 and you are going to 1923,” Rhi said, sounding bored, “you aren’t going to Chicago, and as I have already stated, your cover is already decided.”

 “But-”

“It is nonnegotiable, Agent Clockson,” she said firmly. Remus pouted, but seemingly accepted his fate.

“May I come in?” Janus asked.

“Please do,” Rhi said. “You have been to the 1920s before, correct?” she asked Janus.

“Yes ma’am.”

She tapped the screen on her desk in response. “In the last two years?”

“About two months ago,” he responded. She tapped something else.

“Any blacks, reds, or yellows?” she asked.

“All green.”

“Great. Do you need a refresher course on basic cultural or linguistic procedures?”

“No.”

She pushed one more thing and then swiped the check-in document over to him. He glanced at the report stating he’d had no incidents of any level the last time he visited the 1920s and had opted out of the optional refresher course, and then pressed his finger against the screen to sign it with his fingerprint.

 The document returned to her side of the desk automatically. “Okay,” she said swiping another document from her left over to be in front of her. She twisted her wrist to copy it and slide copies to Janus and Remus. “Here are exact details on the time, place, and event you are going to, as well as details about your cover.” Janus scrolled through his quickly. It wasn’t as detailed as some he’d had considering this was a brief in-and-out missing, but he still took care to memorize everything on the page.

As he and Remus read through their things, Rhi got to her feet and turned to the storage compartments behind her desk.

 She grabbed out two packages and when they’d both signed that they’d read and understood the paperwork, she slid them across the desk to them. “These have everything you need,” she said. “Clothes, money, and an invitation to the party you’re off to attend. You are to get changed now, have a last check in with costuming to make sure everything is in order, and then report to decontamination in 23 minutes. Your set to leave in 38 minutes. Any questions?”

“How much-?” Remus started.

“None, agent,” Rhi said.

“But-”

“No alcohol,” Rhi said. “It is the prohibition era in the United States anyway.”

“Like there’s not going to be alcohol at the rich people party,” Remus said sullenly.

She pressed her lips together. “It is an in-and-out mission,” she said to both of them, and then turned to glare at Remus. “Do not get arrested.”

 “I don’t know,” Remus said joyfully. “I think I still have room for a 1920s mug shot on my wall.”

“Behave,” she said, “or I’ll report you for the cat you smuggled in from the 1800s.”

“You’d never,” Remus said. “You enjoy the cute pictures of Diesel Fuel I send you every day too much, and you know it!”

“Just… don’t get arrested.” She turned to Janus. “Don’t let him get arrested.”

“I’ll do my best,” Janus promised, standing. “Now come on, Remus, we need to get changed.”

“You just want to see me naked,” Remus replied with a wink, but he did stand.

 “If I see you naked one more time in my life Remus, my eyeballs will fall out of their sockets,” Janus said, waving to Rhi as he pulled Remus out of the door.

“Kinky.”

Janus’s eyeballs almost did fall out right then and there with how hard he rolled them.

They got changed quickly, Remus complaining and saying if he couldn’t dress like a gangster, he should at least be allowed to wear a flapper dress. Janus had long ago learned to ignore his ramblings. He did seem enthused about the included mask for the masquerade. It was a silver fox shaped mask with green accents that reminded Janus of the Egyptian God Anubis.

 Janus’s own mask on the other hand, was only designed to take up the left half of his face. It was mostly golden with a black swirled design. Attached to the side there was a plume of golden tipped white feathers. He had to give it to the costuming department, they did have good taste.

Once they were both dressed, they were poked and prodded by one of the costumers to make sure everything was accurate, fit right, and had been put on correctly.

After that, they went to the decontamination area to have themselves and everything they were taking with them sterilized so they didn’t accidently take any pathogens to the 1920s. They also received an oral vaccination to be sure they didn’t pick up anything from the 1920s and bring it back.

Then they were ready to go. The correct time-space coordinates had already been sent to their timepieces. With a push of a button, they were off.

  Inciting Incident

Chapter 3

Janus and Remus both appeared at the same moment a couple of feet apart in what looked like the inside of a garden shed. There was already a man waiting for them a few feet away. “Sup babes,” Remy said, just like he always did. The T-Agent looked their costumes up and down and whistled. “Now that,” he said, “almost makes me want to be one of you time jockeys.”

“They wouldn’t let me have a gun or a canister of moonshine,” Remus pouted.

Remy snorted. “Sorry, babes, but that makes my job a lot easier. If I’ve gotta fish you outta the 1920s criminal justice system, I’d rather it not be because you shot someone on accident ‘cause you don’t know how to use the safety.”

 Remus groaned dramatically. “Everyone is lame.”

Remy just shook his head. “Meet back here when you’ve got the necklace,” he said. “Don’t make a move until after 11:05pm and before 11:17. That’s your window.”

“We know,” Janus said. “See you then.”

“Have fun at the party boys,” Remy said and then lowered his shades to look at Remus, “but not too much fun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Remus, already towing Janus out of the garden shed. The way had been specifically cleared for them, so they met no other people before they’d rounded the house the party was taking place and had gotten onto the driveway in front of the house.

 Without missing a beat, they strolled up to the front of the house, just as a car pulled into the end of the driveway. Janus rang the doorbell, and a few moments later, a man who was clearly the butler answered the door. They handed over their invitation, and the man immediately let them in.

The party had already started when they slipped into the medium sized ballroom that had been decked out in streamers and other decorations. Janus’s nose immediately wanted to scrunch as the smell of sweat from all the dancing already going on as well as the too strong perfume meant to cover that stench wafted over him. It was by far not the worst smelling time period, but he was pretty sure some people still weren’t aware deodorant had been recently invented.

 He checked his time piece which had been disguised as a fancy wristwatch for this trip. “Okay,” he said. “We have about two hours before we need to make our move. We should…”

Remus’s attention was already being dragged away by a young man who seemed to be providing guests with food. “I’m going to go ‘mingle’,” he said, winking.

“No!” Janus hissed. “Re- Richard! No!”

Yet, he was already disappearing into the horde of stinky bodies, likely to go scandalize a bunch of rich folks, and leaving Janus alone. Janus mumbled a curse under his breath that he was sure no one around him would understand even if they could make it out.

 Unsure what to do with himself, he wandered over towards where the live musicians were playing jazz music, being sure to keep out of the way of the dancers. He was edging around the makeshift dancefloor, when one of said dancers must have misstepped and knocked into another one. The second man stumbled right towards Janus, arms pinwheeling. Janus reached out on instinct to catch the man as he fell.

There was a moment where the two of them just stared at each other, surprise evident on the other man’s face. He was wearing a mask that just covered the area around his eyes and the top of his nose, revealing a smattering of freckles across his cheeks that Janus imagined extended to his nose.

 The mask was a light blue velvet with a flower stuck on the side near his right ear, and a trail of curled golden ribbon bobbed down around his chin. The party continued on around them, a blur of movement and sound.

“Are you alright?” Janus asked.

The man blinked up at him and then tilted his head slightly to the side as though confused, before a smile slowly grew on his face. “Oh, I’m fine Dove.”

“Dove?” Janus asked.

He giggled. “You have dove feathers on your mask,” he explained, reaching up a hand to touch one. His finger brushed the tip of Janus’s ear, “and I don’t know what else I am supposed to call you.”

 “My name is Lee,” he automatically lied.

“Is it?” he asked, sounding amused. “Doesn’t seem to fit you well. I like Dove better.”

“Oh?” asked Janus. “And what’s your name so I can not call you that?”

The man chuckled. “Call me Pat.”

“Hello Pat,” Janus said.

“I thought you didn’t want to call me by my name.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Hmmm,” Pat said, finger tracing idly across Janus’s forearm which was when Janus realized with a start that he was still holding the man in his arms. He quickly went to release him, which Pat allowed with clear amusement.

 Yet, instead of completely stepping away, Pat grabbed Janus’s arm. “What are you doing all the way over here by the way?” he asked. “Don’t you want to dance.”

“Oh,” Janus hesitated. “I don’t really dance.” Or at least not in the way the people around him were. He’d had basic training for this style, but it had been a while and he was a bit rusty.

“Everyone dances Dove,” Pat claimed. “At least if they know the steps and have the right partner.”

“But I don’t know the steps,” Janus said with an eyebrow raise.

He hummed. “Well, I know the dance pretty well by this point,” Pat said. “Why don’t I teach you how it goes.”

 He was agreeing with the soft beseeching tone before he even realized it. Pat pulled him into the middle of the throng of people. He seemed to think, bopping his head to the music playing for a moment, before looking back at Janus. “Heard of James Johnson?”

Janus inclined his head.

“Well, have you heard his new song? Because there’s a dance that goes with it.”

He took a few steps away from Janus and started to dance. Despite his claim to know the steps, he wasn’t particularly good, but he made up for any loss of rhythm with pure enthusiasm.

 Janus found himself smiling at the man, and after a few moments, joined in with the dance. Despite his lack of practice, he ended up having a better natural rhythm than Pat. Pat didn’t seem to mind that he was being outperformed, however. On the contrary, he giggled at himself the couple of times he stumbled.

When he fell into Janus’s arms for the second time that night, Janus decided he’d probably had enough dancing for the moment and pulled him off to the side to get something to drink and cool down a bit.

He watched the man take a snack and some punch from one of servers and thank him happily before turning back to Janus. Pat was easily able to keep Janus’s attention as they chatted. He was bubbly and soft, and Janus found himself enchanted as they talked.

 He was explaining the steps of a different dance, a couples one. “Knowing how to perform the tango will entrance any girl you want,” Pat said, something mischievous sparkling in his eyes. “Assuming you’re that type of fella.”

“As opposed to what?” Janus asked.

Pat leaned in a bit closer. Not too much, but enough that he was definitely in Janus’s space. “A different type of fella,” he said simply, before smiling and leaning back.

Janus let out a shaky exhale and took a sip of punch. He glanced over at Pat. “Tell me about yourself, Pat,” he said.

Pat hummed in contemplation. “Well, I went to France recently.”

 “You did?”

“Oui, c'était amusant, mais j'ai eu des ennuis”

“What kind of trouble?” Janus asked curiously.

“Oh, the kind with a pretty boy and crepes that were way too sweet. Anyway,” he continued. “Other than that, I mostly help out my friend. He’s an inventor.”

“And how do you help him.”

He shrugged, “Running errands mostly, and making sure he gets enough sleep, because otherwise he gets distracted and forgets. And you?”

“I’m a banker,” he said, remembering his cover, but felt compelled to add, “but I like to travel as well.”

“You do look the type?”

“And how is that?”

   Pat shrugged. “I can always tell a wandering spirt from the masses, and you are easy to spot.” Pat looked at him then with a secret smile on his face, and Janus felt suddenly known, like the man in front of him had known him for years even though they’d only just met. Looking at him then, he wanted suddenly for that to be fact and not a flight of fancy.

He was brought firmly back to reality in the next moment. “Lee,” a pointed and familiar voice said. Janus’s head snapped up to see Remus, staring at him. He tapped his wrist. Janus glanced at his own wrist: 10:58pm. He just barely managed not to curse.

 “I,” he said looking up at Pat. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“That’s okay,” Pat said easily. “It is getting rather late.”

“Yes,” Janus agreed. “Well… goodbye.”

Pat, titled his head, a half smile on his face. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Janus nodded, and turned away from him towards Remus. He didn’t look back as they excited the ballroom. They snuck into a small side closet for coats that wasn’t being used as it was summer.

“So,” Remus said when the door closed behind them.

“Don’t,” warned Janus.

“I’m not one to judge,” Remus said.

“Shut up.” He glanced at his watch. It was 11:02. “We’ll go in 5.”

 “I have to give it to you. He was very cute.”

“We’re not talking about it.”

Remus just laughed joyfully, and Janus did his best to halt the blood rushing to his cheeks.

At 11:07, well into their window, they slipped back out of the closet, and towards the stairs as the party raged on.

Despite how Remus usually never shut up, he was able to be quiet when it counted. They snuck to the master bedroom of the home’s owners in silence. The door was already wide open by the time they got there, and Janus didn’t think anything of it. At least, he didn’t until they entered the bedroom, and there was someone already there.

 He turned from the dresser he’d been standing in front of to face them, sending Janus the same smile he had down in the ballroom. Janus and Remus both froze. “Sorry, sweetie,” Pat said. “Were you here for this too?” he held up the necklace they’d been sent for. He closed his fist around the charm made out of time travel tech.

“What?” Janus said.

Pat giggled and winked. “Unfortunately, I need it a bit more than you at the moment. So, I’m gonna have to go.” Janus stepped forward, not really sure what he was intending to do, but Pat just smiled. “See you some other time, my Turtle Dove.” With a snap of his fingers and loud crack, he disappeared. The mask he’d been wearing fluttered to the ground.

  Arc I: Finding Cinderella

Chapter 4

Janus was frozen in surprise for a few long moments after Pat disappeared. Which had been, admittedly, his mistake, because, while their window had technically been until 11:17pm and it was only 11:10, the loud crack that whatever Pat had been using for time travel made, garnered the attention of someone else.

“Uh oh,” Remus said, likely hearing footsteps. “Hide.”

That snapped Janus into action, but instead of hiding immediately like a sensible human being, he chose to go for the only link to the man who’d just stolen time travel tech and waltzed away, the mask.

Which was why he ended up getting arrested.

 Remy tsked the moment they were all alone in the police car having come to ‘transfer Lee to another facility.’ Remus was already waiting in the front seat, and flashed Janus a smug smile. If Janus wasn’t still handcuffed, he’d slap him.

“Well,” Remy said. “At least you didn’t shoot anybody like I asked. I was joking by the way. I didn’t really want to pick you up from a 1920s police station period.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Mmm, nah, ‘cause Remus managed to not get arrested this time, so you defiantly screwed something up.”

“Oh, he defiantly wanted to screw something all right,” Remus said joyfully.

 “Remus,” Janus hissed.

“What?” he asked. “I’m not the horny one for once. Well, no, that’s a lie, but it didn’t affect the job this time.”

Janus groaned and leaned his head back against the seat.

Remy pulled into a seemingly random garage around 20 minutes later. “Alright,” he said. “Here we are.” He got out of the car and then helped Janus out before uncuffing him. “Here’s your ‘watch,’” Remy handed him the timepiece that had been confiscated when he’d been arrested.

Janus put it on and activated it. “Shit,” he said.

“What?” Remus asked.

“An appointment with cultural outreach has already been downloaded to my calendar for once we get out of decon.”

 “Oof. Going to baby jail,” Remy laughed. Remus was cackling.

“This,” Janus said, “was not a cultural faux pas. I did nothing that indicated that I was not from this time. I am not some rookie.”

“Don’t forget cell phones don’t exist in the 1920s,” Remus sang.

“The real question is whether or not my foot exists in your…” Remus disappeared before he could finish, a smirk on his face. Janus growled. “By Remy,” he gritted out. He selected the decontamination chamber from his queue, ignoring the appointment that came after it for now.

He knew exactly where Remus would be standing when he landed, which was why he stepped forward on reentry to ram into him.

 He yelped in surprise. “Sorry,” Janus said pleasantly. “I must have also forgotten landing procedures.

Remus laughed good naturally. “Aw, come on Jay,” he said, bumping Janus back, albeit much gentler than Janus had been. “It’s not a big deal. You just go talk with some crusty old college professor who is far too interested in spoons and then everything’s fine.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he growled. “They’re treating me like I’m an idiot who accidently invented disco in the 1920s when I was conned by some free agent time traveler.”

“‘Conned,’ Remus said. Is that what they’re calling it now?”

 “I know where and when you live Remus,” Janus said.

Remus gave him a dopey smile as the decontamination cycle finished and the door unlocked. Janus’s wrist buzzed telling him that the coordinates to the cultural outreach office were now unlocked. Instead of pulling them up, Janus walked to the door.

“Um,” Remus said, following him. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to your appointment?” Janus just kept walking towards their office. “Uh… Jan?”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that I have to go to cultural outreach,” Janus said. “In fact, no one can make me. If they want me to go have a discussion about the definition of ‘bushwa,’ they’re going to have to have me dragged there.”

 “Mmm, I feel like The Boss won’t be too happy about that, and I have a feeling she’d be 100% down to dragging you there herself.”

“Well, then, let her,” Janus said, stalking through the door to his office. “I’m not going to…”

“Ah, Agent Picani,” the woman standing next to his desk, clearly waiting for him, said when he came through the door. “Dr. Picani was informed that there were complications with your last mission and wishes to have a conversation with you and asks that you meet him in his office at the AMO.”

“Oh, um,” Janus said, stumbling a bit before plastering on a regretful half smile. “Unfortunately, I actually have an appointment right now at Cultural Outreach. It’s mandatory and very important, and I have to go now. So, I’ll have to take a raincheck on that.”

��“But-” she started, frowning.

“Remus, work on the report!” Janus said quickly as he waved his hand to bring up his timepiece display and jammed his finger at the glowing appointment card in his queue. A few moments later, Janus was at Cultural Outreach.

Cultural Outreach was not part of the TPI, though it often worked very closely with them. It was a collaboration between the government and multiple universities to help government workers, politicians, and other citizens understand and bridge cultural gaps. It had existed before time travel was invented but had expanded to also teach people who needed to time travel how to behave in unfamiliar times and cultures.

 After it had to be expanded to provide for the TPI, it had been moved to Silver Mountains University. The building had once just been a museum, but it had been thoroughly renovated and there had been add-ons for office space and some classrooms. It was still a museum, however, its purpose had expanded greatly and there were many areas that were off limits to the general public.

One of these areas was the fourth floor, where Janus’s timepiece had dumped him. This was the floor that was almost exclusively for TPI agents and staff of Cultural Outreach who worked with them.

 He immediately turned away from the reception area, hoping that he could escape and go sit on the university’s quad or something of the like for the next hour or so in hopes the woman his brother sent to fetch him would give up and go back to the AMO. Yet, the receptionist apparently saw him.

“Janus Picani?” he asked.

Janus grimaced and turned back towards him. “Yes,” he said.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You’re 5 minutes late for your appointment and seem disoriented.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is your timepiece malfunctioning?”

“No.”

“Uh… okay. Well, if you sign in here, I can take you to your appointment.”

“…Fine.”

 He begrudgingly stepped forward and touched the screen he’d gestured to sign with his fingerprint, and then let the man lead him down the hall.

The door they stopped at was propped open slightly, but he still paused and knocked. “Professor Eran? Your 2:30 is here.”

Janus had just a moment upon hearing the name to think that maybe there was actually some sort of intelligent design of the universe and whatever being of ultimate power had crafted it was a dick.

The door opened and Virgil Eran’s eyes immediately narrowed on him. “Janus.”

“Virgil.”

“I see you’re still late for everything.”

“I see you’re still a bastard.”

 Janus saw the receptionist slowly back away in the direction they’d come.

“Why don’t you come in?” Virgil said faux pleasantly.

Janus did, because he really didn’t have much of a choice at this point unless he wanted to jump out of a window… or push someone out of a window.

Virgil turned back into his office and took a seat behind his desk. Janus unhappily followed him in and sat across from him.

He took his time pulling up whatever the TPI sent him and reading it over. “So, I see you failed your recovery mission and were arrested in 1923.”

 “It wasn’t like that,” Janus said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Virgil gave him that same suspicious look he used to give Janus whenever Janus claimed to have not eaten his hot pockets out of the freezer in the middle of the night. He’d only been lying 80% of the time. Virgil had a tendency to forget what he’d eaten in a half-conscious state at 3 o’clock in the morning.

“I shouldn’t,” Janus snapped defensively. “Nothing went wrong with anyone from the time period. An illegal time traveler screwed up the mission details.”

“Well, it is still protocol to make sure nothing slipped when agents go off script. You weren’t prepared to be in a jail cell, and it is possible that you screwed something up.”

 “I didn’t screw anything up,” Janus growled.

“Alright,” Virgil said pulling up a document on his desk. “The mission started on July 27th, 1923 at 9:58pm, correct?”

“Oh, god, we’re not really going to fill out a time sheet. I don’t have time for that today.”

“It is protocol and best that the information is documented when it is still fresh in your mind. Besides, your schedule has been cleared for the rest of the workday.” The bastard was enjoying this. He knew how much Janus hated this stuff.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Janus said, “it was the damned illicit time traveler.”

“And I will be the judge of that,” Virgil said. Janus should have just bit the bullet and had coffee with his brother. “If you truly did nothing wrong, your supervisor will see that when I send this to her.”

 Yet, despite the fact that Virgil clearly relished in his suffering, he was charitable enough to do most of the actual filling out of the forms. He’d read out the questions and write down what Janus said instead of making him do it himself. Janus really only had to do a quick quality check and sign it at the end.

He still was an asshole about the details, but really he’d been like that about stupid thing like the settings for the dish washer and how the pantry was organized during their college days before they’d had their falling out, so Janus wasn’t particularly surprised. When they were finally done, Virgil sent it off to get filed by the TPI.

 Then, they were left staring at each other with nothing between them but almost a decade of radio silence and a whole lot of awkwardness.

“I should go,” Janus finally said, standing up.

Virgil tilted his head slightly to the side and gave him a half smile. “Don’t lock the door behind you,” he said. “Not that I’d expect you too.”

Janus took it for the clear attempt at a joke it was intended to be and puffed out a breath of amusement with a head shake. “No risk of that,” he said. Then, he turned and walked out of the office.

 Chapter 5

Janus stepped back into the reception area and booted up his time piece. Instinct said to go back to the office despite the fact that it was late enough that most people had gone home, but he hesitated. Surely Emile had given up by now, but considering he’d sent someone to ambush him in his office, Janus wasn’t sure if he should trust that. He could just go home, but he already knew his mind was racing too much to sleep tonight so he’d probably just end up staring at the lake for the next 6 hours. So, he decided on the only other legitimate option he had. He pulled up Remus’s home coordinates and selected.

 The home that Remus had chosen (after his long line of rejected requests) managed to somehow make no and absolute sense simultaneously to anyone who knew him. It was a small farm in the United States just west of the Mississippi in 1842 in what would be ratified as the state of Iowa in a few years. When asked why he would choose that time and place, Remus always responded with “I thought it was funny,” whatever that meant.

Unlike most time agents who simply used the identities assigned to them by the AMO as a cover, Remus actually lived his part time.

 Janus was… fairly certain he was cheating a bit to get everything done, but he maintained his small farm all on his own, growing most of his own food. The neighbors he had lived very far away, but he still spoke with them far more than Janus did his own.

Janus appeared inside the small home, his eyes already shut. “Are you hear and dressed?” Janus called. Something bumped lightly into his legs.

“I’m in the kitchen!”

Janus peaked his eyes open and squatted to pet the cat at his feet. “That doesn’t answer my question!” he called back to Remus.

 “It’s a surprise!” Remus said.

“Remus.” Diesel Fuel the cat flopped to her side on the ground as Janus continued to pet her ears. He heard Remus’s footsteps, and saw cloth covering his legs, so risked looking up. He was currently not only dressed, but wearing an apron that Janus was fairly sure was not time appropriate judging by the fabric and cat pawprint design. He had a bit of flour on his hands, and it may have been a bit too white for the time and place, but Janus couldn’t be completely sure.

“What’re you doing here?” Remus asked.

 “My day has been an endless series of frustrations,” Janus said. “So, I have come to see the only tolerable being in the history of the universe.”

Remus snorted. “Since I know that isn’t me, I’ll assume you’re talking about the cat.”

“I still don’t understand why you tolerate this creature,” Janus addressed Diesel Fuel. She blinked slowly up at him. “To be fair, he was assigned as my partner. I didn’t have much of a choice in it. You could go always run away and become feral in the woods if you’d like.”

“So could you, technically,” Remus pointed out.

“I’m thinking about it after today.”

 “Would you like some bread?” Remus asked. “That’s all I’ve been making this afternoon. Some fresh should be coming out of the oven in a few minutes.”

“Do you have anything stronger made out of wheat?”

“Ew, no, but I do have vodka.”

“Vodka works.”

“Want me to mix it with something?”

“No.”

“One of those night then,” Remus said, easily. “Let me finish up the bread, so I don’t burn the kitchen down. You can go get the alcohol from the cellar while you wait if you want, or you can just flop down on the couch.”

He was going to just flop down on the couch.

[tabloidtoc]

National Enquirer, December 14

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince William’s secret cancer crisis

Page 2: Chris Martin is caught between girlfriend Dakota Johnson and ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow who are both hawking sex toys -- Gwyneth is accusing Dakota of copying her Goop brand and she’s letting Chris know it loud and clear -- Dakota signed on as co-creative director with the sexual wellness brand Maude to launch a line of hip sex products and Dakota’s gotten wind of Gwyn’s whining and thinks she’s being ridiculous -- Chris is proud of Dakota and he feels for Gwyneth but he really wants to be left out of this 

Page 3: Martha Stewart has whipped up a new recipe for romance which is red-hot dates with a string of men ordered up online and she may be 79 years old but she’s still cooking with gas in the dating department -- Martha’s getting more dates now than she ever has and she’s saying it makes her feel younger and hotter than ever but all the guys know the deal that there’s no pressure and no commitment and it’s just for the fun and the good company because Martha’s not looking for a relationship 

Page 4: Just weeks after Blake Shelton popped the question to longtime love Gwen Stefani they have something else to celebrate as Gwen is expecting a miracle baby at 51 -- after years of trying and failing to have a child together new photos show Gwen sporting what looks like a telltale baby bump -- after years of enduring grueling rounds of IVF treatment without any success Gwen had given up hope of being able to conceive again and she and Blake even looked into adopting but their baby dream has come true naturally 

* Reba McEntire’s romance with actor Rex Linn is less than a year old but she’s already driving him crazy -- it was wonderful for the first few months but Reba is so controlling Rex is begging her to give him some space -- Reba wants to be together 24/7 and while Rex loves being with her he’s starting to find her a bit suffocating -- Reba also sees red whenever Rex mentions his former fiancee Renee DeRese and she’s worried Rex is talking to his ex when he’s not around and he has a good relationship with his ex and believes that’s none of Reba’s business 

Page 5: Britney Spears lost her bid to have her father Jamie Spears removed from a controlling role in her conservatorship so she’s spending whatever money she can get her hands on to exact her revenge -- Britney is worth about $60 million and she gets a very healthy stipend from that so she’s going through it like water to thumb her nose at her dad and her recent no-holds-barred trip to Maui to celebrate her 39th birthday was more than a little payback because dropping $50,000 on a birthday trip to Hawaii was a satisfying slap in the face to her dad 

Page 6: Matthew McConaughey is taking his midlife crisis to an all-time high by planning to do a stand-up comedy tour -- after baring his soul in a memoir the 51-year-old star is totally gung-ho about the comedy thing and he’s cleared his schedule and hired a coach to work on his timing and punch up his jokes -- he’s written a lot of jokes and tried them out on his wife Camila and friends but they’re already tired of his cheesy one-liners and dad jokes and fart gags -- Camila wants to be supportive but she can’t fake it and friends wonder if Matthew’s lost the plot and others claim he might get more inspiration is he took up smoking weed again 

Page 7: Grieving Bobby Brown worries he’s cursed after the tragic death of his 28-year-old son Bobby Brown Jr. -- his son’s death follows the deaths of his ex-wife Whitney Houston in 2012 and the couple’s 22-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown in 2015 -- Bobby has suffered through so much pain in his life and it’s left him feeling like he’s cursed and he’s a loving father who always does the best he can and what’s right for his kids but there seems to be no escaping tragedy -- no foul play is expected in the death of Bobby Jr. but the coroner has yes to release the cause of death but Bobby Jr. seemed fit and healthy and had never been a drug user and was excited about a singing career after releasing his first single in September

* Donny Osmond is heading back to the Vegas strip to do a one-man show without his sister Marie Osmond and she’s fuming over the betrayal -- Marie is still smarting after getting dumped by The Talk and she thinks Donny could have been sensitive enough to at least invite her to join him -- Marie’s jealous co-stars on The Talk drove her off the daytime chat show because they couldn’t handle being overshadowed by her -- Donny will debut his new solo show at Harrah’s in August 

Page 8: Doting Dolly Parton swooped in to save goddaughter Miley Cyrus from a meltdown after Miley trashed her sobriety during a boozy bender -- Miley has been on the wagon for six months after years of indulging in weed and alcohol but the boredom of lockdown pushed her over the edge -- Dolly has been a source of inspiration and strength to Miley during this difficult time and she’s never lectured Miley about her lifestyle only shown her unconditional love and understanding and that’s what Miley’s responded to 

Page 9: Lady Gaga hopes to tango with Brad Pitt and they’re close to making a love connection -- the two have been in deep talks about working on a big-screen thriller and the conversations have turned up close and personal because the two have more in common than people realize -- Brad has always been a huge music nerd and Gaga wants to throw herself into movies in a big way after the success of A Star Is Born -- Gaga is ready to cash out of her latest relationship with businessman Michael Polansky because they quarantined together and things got a little too close for her tastes and she’s now set her sights on Brad who recently became unattached after giving the brush-off to German model Nicole Poturalski -- Gaga’s interest in Brad has not gone unreciprocated because Brad is fascinated by Gaga saying she’s cool and talented beyond words and he’s made it clear she’s his number one choice to star alongside him in next movie and as a result the new duo is set to spend months together in Japan filming the racy thriller Bullet Train and they both think that this will be a great opportunity to see if the chemistry they’ve shared in conversations is real 

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Julia Garner filmed her role as a phony heiress in Inventing Anna in NYC, Gary Busey picked up a copy of the National Enquirer at a Malibu newsstand, Jay-Z tossed around a football with pals during a Hawaiian getaway, Heidi Klum shot Germany’s Next Top Model in Berlin 

Page 11: In the latest tragedy to strike the Getty dynasty 52-year-old John Gilbert Getty was found dead in a Texas hotel room -- he was a descendant of J. Paul Getty the oil tycoon who was once the world’s richest man -- the Getty fortune is worth an estimated $5 billion but the family has been rocked by a string of tragedies 

* Gutsy Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman kept his colon cancer diagnosis secret from his own brothers Derrick L. Boseman who is a pastor in Murfreesboro in Tennessee -- but when Derrick called Chadwick to congratulate him on his career the actor broke the tragic news -- Chadwick’s last words to him still echo in his heart: Chadwick said, “I’m in the fourth quarter and I need you to get me out of the game,” which Derrick understood to mean it was time for him to go -- Chadwick died on August 28 

Page 12: Straight Shuter -- the scrawny look of the holiday tree at Rockefeller Center revealed something that happens every year -- the tree is always filled with faux branches because that’s the only way the tree can sustain 50,000 LED lights

* Marie Osmond hasn’t spoken to Sharon Osbourne since she left The Talk because Marie and Sharon were professional but never friends

* Scarlett Johansson is worth $165 million while her new husband Colin Jost tops out a $6 million but despite the difference Colin bought both wedding rings -- some men may be intimidated by a wife who’s rich and famous but not Colin and paying the bills is something the two have worked out together

* Woody Harrelson chats with police after a day filming The Man from Toronto in Ontario (picture) 

Page 13: Conan O’Brien is putting on a happy face on his retirement from late-night TV but he was forced out -- after nearly three decades hosting a daily show Conan announced he’s leaving his TBS talker for a weekly variety series on HBO Max but he knew he had to go even before he was asked because he was made aware months ago that his show would not be renewed because the ratings weren’t great and the network was looking to replace him so he started looking for other opportunities 

* Lizzo wailing about the pitfalls of fame in an emotional TikTok post has sent out the alarm among her friends who fear she is days away from a full-on meltdown -- she seems to be hanging by a thread and is trying to numb the pain with endless cycles of comfort eating and she already weighs 350 pounds -- Lizzo’s unhappy with her weight and hates the sight of herself when she looks in the mirror but she’s unable to stick to a diet and ends up binge eating through the night 

Page 14: Crime 

Page 15: Emboldened by his legal victories last year accused sexual abuser Kevin Spacey is denying all the allegations in a 2020 lawsuit in New York against him and demanding the case be brought to trial so he can clear his name -- Kevin is feeling pretty confident after two sexual harassment cases against him in Los Angeles and Massachusetts were dismissed last year and he wants his day in court to prove he is not the monster these charges paint him to be -- in the September suit two male accusers charged Spacey sexually assaulted them when they were 14 and the first accuser alleged Spacey assaulted him on multiple occasions after they met in an acting class in the ‘80s -- in the same suit actor Anthony Rapp charged Spacey invited him to a party at his home and grabbed his buttocks and lifted him onto a bed and lay on top of him

* Serial killer Ted Bundy relived the details of one of his horrific killings in his final conversation before he was fried in the electric chair in 1989 -- Bundy who was convicted of killing 30 women and suspected of doing the same to many more across four states in the 1970s and ‘80s spilled his guts to a psychologist just hours before his execution death and it can be heard in its frightening entirety on the Crimedoor app -- Bundy details the murder of Georgann Hawkins 

Page 16: Accused Jeffrey Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell is under quarantine in a federal pen after being exposed to a guard with COVID-19 and now sources fear she could die before facing justice on child sex trafficking charges next year 

Page 17: Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton’s kids are devastated after their best friend Lupo the family dog passed away -- the beloved dog had become a fixture in family photos but sadly died at age nine leaving Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte and especially Prince George enormously upset -- for George especially this is a tremendous upset as Lupo was his best friend and he has been there his entire life and this is his first experience with loss and he’s been crying nonstop and asking where Lupo is now 

Page 18: American Life 

Page 19: Russia is using a brain-frying microwave weapon to target American envoys in the U.S. and around the world -- a team of doctors and scientists at CIA headquarters determined the mysterious illness that’s plagued embassy workers in recent years was the handiwork of a weapon that can send a mind-scrambling sonic beam through windows and walls from two miles away -- since 2018 the weapon has zapped 26 diplomats in Cuba who reported suffering from migraines and ringing in the ears and dizziness and vertigo -- Some has longer-term effects such as fatigue and loss of vision and difficulty sleeping symptoms dubbed the Havana Syndrome 

* Elon Musk is already designing posh planetary digs for residents of his future city on Mars and he said the first million Earthlings to arrive will live in glass domes -- Musk’s outer-space enterprise is still a little sketchy on details of how to ship a million people to Mars by 2050 and change the atmosphere by terraforming or planting the right stuff to create oxygen 

Page 21: American Pie singer Don McLean’s daughter has blasted him as a verbally abusive tyrant who left her with deep psychological scars -- Jackie McLean claimed her father insulted and degraded her and forbade her from following in his musical footsteps and even threatened to exclude her from his $50 million fortune if she spoke out against him -- despite her dad’s warning Jackie has embarked on a musical career with her husband Shawn Strack forming the group Roan Yellowthorpe

Page 22: Hey, Big Spender! Hollywood’s tippers and tightwads -- Jessica Simpson, Mick Jagger, Rachael Ray, Taylor Swift 

Page 23: Russell Crowe, Donnie Wahlberg, Jeremy Piven, Johnny Depp, Bill Cosby 

Page 25: Justin Bieber is questioning his future in the scandal-scarred Hillsong church after his former pal and pastor Carl Lentz was booted out in disgrace -- the singer has long relied on Hillsong which some have branded a cult and Lentz to help him navigate fame -- Justin’s at a crossroads right now because he definitely felt betrayed by Carl and now he and his wife Hailey Bieber are deciding whether to stay with the church 

Page 26: Viola Davis has revealed how growing up poor in Rhode Island affected her self-worth saying what comes with poverty is invisibility and we just want to be somebody desperately -- Viola says her feeling of I’m Important helped drive her career which has led to an Oscar and two Tonys and an Emmy 

* Hollywood Hookups -- Vanessa Hudgens is dating Cole Tucker of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Jordan Fisher and Ellie Woods married, Luann De Lesseps dating Garth Wakeford 

Page 27: Nicole Kidman has revealed there is only one cure for her desperate struggles with loneliness which is in the arms of husband Keith Urban -- Nicole said she practices psychological discipline to keep her career and home life separate but isolation still plagues her 

* Dallas star Linda Gray is mourning the death of her son Jeff Thrasher at the age of 56 -- she’s heard from some former Dallas colleagues who have rallied around her and expressed their condolences -- no cause of death for Jeff has been revealed 

Page 28: Cover Story -- Prince William is trapped in a cancer nightmare after medical tests have led doctors to suspect the heir to Britain’s throne may be fighting a slow-moving form of the deadly disease and now the 38-year-old royal and his family are terrified he is in severe danger and medical experts are monitoring his health for any symptoms of the illness -- there’s talk around the palace the prince’s decision to reveal he tested positive for COVID-19 during the spring is really an attempt to explain away his condition because doctors found something funky when they checked for the virus -- if William’s health takes a turn for the worse it could further erode confidence in the monarchy which has already endured Prince Andrew’s sex scandal and the defection of Prince Harry -- when William’s doctors dropped their cancer bombshell his wife Duchess Kate Middleton locked herself away with just their kids for five days and she’s practically had a breakdown but she’s learned to be a royal and is now coping very bravely and confronting the future with steely resolve but she is urging William to mend fences with his estranged brother Harry

Page 32: Health Watch 

Page 36: Jessica Simpson is preparing her windpipes for a post-pandemic musical comeback -- she hasn’t released an album since Happy Christmas a decade ago but wants to storm the pop charts once again and recruit some of her wider family to give her a disco edge because Jessica has always looked up to Diana Ross who is sister Ashlee Simpson’s mother-in-law and Jessica has been bugging Ashlee to hook her up with Diana and she thinks they could do an incredible duet 

Page 38: Paul McCartney has taken a seething jab at a two-faced gold-digging mystery woman in his new song Lavatory Lil but insisted it’s not about his ex-wife Heather Mills 

* Lil Wayne’s ex-girlfriend fears he will go insane behind bars -- the rapper is a convicted felon banned from possessing a weapon and now faces up to 10 years in jail after federal agents in Miami caught him with heroin and cocaine and ecstasy and marijuana and a gold-plated gun -- former girlfriend Melissa Howe says he won’t cope and it took him years to get his life back to normal after his last trip inside so for it to happen again for him to be put behind bars it would really get to him mentally 

Page 42: Red Carpet -- American Music Awards -- Kristin Cavallari, Christian Serratos, Paris Hilton, Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha, Megan Fox 

Page 45: Spot the Differences -- LeAnn Rimes holding a dog on Hallmark Channel’s Home and Family 

Page 47: Odd List 

[mpregwrites]

Pop That Lock

rated: g/soft t for swearing words: 2302

@soukokuweek​ day one: “trial and error”

--

***

The only thing that kept Chuuya from launching his phone full-force against the nearest wall was the fact that he was a reasonable person who could control his temper when dealing with shithead Dazai and all of his stupid ass shit. Definitely not because he did that exact thing last week and had to make a very embarrassing trip to the service provider with the barely-recognizable smashed remains of an iPhone X that probably deserved better. He refused to go back for at least the next month or they were going to start worrying about him and his tendency to go through thousand dollar phones every couple of months at best.

There was still a pressing matter at hand: Kouyou’s birthday party. He had already requested leave for the rest of the day starting at noon but that didn’t do anything to mitigate the issue of Dazai most definitely showing up just to ruin it, and Kouyou deserved better. In the past year or so he had installed seven more deadbolts on his apartment door and started locking them at random in the vain hopes that it might deter Dazai from just breaking in whenever the hell he felt like it, but Dazai’s lockpicking abilities were second to none in the worst way. He could put up with having his furniture moved two inches to the left but he drew the line at crashing Kouyou’s birthday party.

He tapped his foot quickly on the ground, arms crossed over his chest. There had to be some way to keep Dazai from showing up uninvited and eating all the crab. It was rude to keep excusing himself from the festivities to re-lock the door every couple of minutes, not to mention how fucking annoying that would be. Sometimes it felt like Dazai hadn’t really outgrown all of his 16-year-old mischief.

Regrettably, though, Chuuya was far too mature these days to match all of Dazai’s nonsense blow-for-blow, and he was fresh out of teenagers to ask for tips and tricks. Maybe he could hire one for the night—

He smacked himself in the forehead. The answer was staring him in the face the whole time.

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he opened his contact list and pressed ‘call’ on Mori’s contact info, not even bothering to hide the mania of the grin cracking across his face as it rang. Gin only raised an eyebrow at him before going back to sharpening her knife with extreme prejudice, because Gin only knew how to do things with extreme prejudice and Chuuya appreciated such an honest and straightforward approach to life.

Finally, Mori answered the phone. “Hello, Chuuya-kun. Did you need something?”

“Apologies for bothering you, Boss,” he replied, bowing slightly even though Mori couldn’t see it. “I have a, uh… peculiar request to make of you pertaining to the festivities tonight.”

“Oh? I’m intrigued.”

Chuuya shifted the phone from one ear to the other so he could grab his wallet out of his pocket and rifle through the bills in the fold. “In the interests of keeping unscrupulous characters from disturbing said festivities, I was wondering if it would be okay for me to borrow a certain asset for the night.”

Mori chuckled, amused. “They’ve been in a bit of a mood lately, you know. Are you sure you can handle that?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright, then. I leave them in your capable hands.” And with that, Mori hung up, leaving Chuuya with a rising giddiness under his skin that thrummed warmly. Kouyou was going to have a fantastic birthday party because he was finally, finally going to be able to outsmart Dazai after ten years of knowing each other and a lot of mortifying losses taken.

Everything was going perfectly.

***

Q removed one earbud from their ear and looked Chuuya up and down from where they were perched on their bed. “I don’t want to, though.”

So things maybe weren’t going perfectly, but Chuuya wasn’t going to admit defeat to a fucking teenager. He ground his teeth together tightly and counted backwards from ten in Japanese, then French, then Russian, Italian, Spanish, and eventually English before he felt like he could open his mouth without screaming obscenities. “You will notice that it wasn’t a request and I specifically phrased it as such to avoid confusion, Kyuusaku.”

They rolled their eyes and a vein started throbbing in Chuuya’s forehead. After the heavy traumatization they received during the entire Guild bullshit three years prior it had been decided that maybe locking them up like an animal wasn’t exactly welcoming to the development of a healthy mental state, so Chuuya and Kouyou both lobbied for at least humane treatment. They were given their own room and the periodic ability to head out into the dregs of normal society, provided they behaved and were accompanied by several mafiosi.

Unfortunately, this also meant that they had the chance to develop a personality, and mixed in with the dangerous cocktail of hormones running through their pubescent veins, it meant they were kind of a snarky shithead. God, he hated dealing with teenagers.

“What do I even get out of this?” Q asked, reclining back onto their elbows and crossing their legs at their ankles. “It sounds boring with no payoff. No thanks! I’ll just read manga here instead.”

More than he hated dealing with teenagers, he hated dealing with mouthy teenagers with zero work ethic, and—holy fuck, 16-year-old Q was just a repackaged version of Dazai at 15. Chuuya wanted to scream.

“Look,” Chuuya said, trying to level with Q as best as he knew how. “I’ll give you $500 and a PS Vita with three games of your choice if you just sit by the front door and flip locks all night. A monkey could do this.”

“Then hire a monkey to do it.”

“I’m trying.”

Q frowned. “I said it sounds boring and I don’t want to do it. It’s not worth the effort.”

“I’ll give you an extra $100 for every time Dazai gets frustrated and swears.”

They sat up straight, pulling their legs in to sit cross-legged on the bed. “I guess… it doesn’t sound that bad when you put it like that.” Q tapped a finger on their chin thoughtfully, humming a long tone that only got longer the more Chuuya’s foot started involuntarily tapping out of irritation. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it. But I want one of the new Vita models. None of the crappy older ones. And let me use your Amazon Prime account to order figures.”

Chuuya sighed. “Deal.”

***

Dazai whistled a happy little tune to himself as he walked by the doorman and the person manning the front desk of Chuuya’s apartment building, waving at them. They waved back. All was right in the world.

The elevator ride was the longest part of the job every single time he came here, and he was running fashionably late to his already fashionably late lockpicking session. His lockpick set bounced against his leg in his jacket pocket as he shifted from side to side to stretch out his back for the crouching hell he was about to endure. Soon enough, the elevator slowed to a stop, dinged, and the doors opened.

Chuuya’s apartment was more than one apartment. The hat rack decided years ago that one apartment wasn’t enough for him, so he bought half a floor’s worth of apartments and had it remodeled into one massive living space, complete with multiple bedrooms for guests, an entertainment center, a full library, two different kitchens, more bathrooms than any person with one ass could ever need, and several other luxuries he definitely didn’t need. He liked to throw his fancy executive paycheck around as much as he could, and it was kind of cute.

He also refused to give Dazai a spare key to it, not that it ever stopped him. Eating all of his crackers and leaving crumbs on the couch was part of the experience of their relationship, after all.

The party was clearly a rager from what he could hear from behind the closed door. Surveying the eight deadbolts between him and Chuuya’s home cooking and absurdly expensive alcohol collection, he whipped out his lockpicking set and got to work.

The first bolt gave easily, and the next two weren’t locked. The third was, as was the fourth, but the fifth wasn’t set. The sixth and eighth were, the seventh not. It was easy enough to fiddle with the picks to get them open, and all in all it took less than ten minutes to get through all eight. He stood up, brushed himself off, and then grabbed the handle and turned it.

Or, well, he tried turning it. It didn’t budge.

He stared at his hand, still around the doorknob, and said, “What the fuck.”

***

Senbonzakura faded out and Fukagyaku Replace started up, but Q had their other ear trained on the door. Every time they heard a lock click out of place, they would either lock it back up or lock one of the ones that hadn’t been locked. It was mindless work, but at least they were going to get free food out of it once the party was over on top of the other agreed-upon spoils.

They heard Dazai swear again outside the door and added another tally to their list.

***

Three hours of hosting later, Kouyou was pleasantly tipsy and ready to go home. The consensus among the rest of the guests was much the same, and they all thanked Chuuya in turn as he escorted them to the door, undoing all the locks in one swift motion and letting them out. When the last of them had left, he stood in the threshold and looked down.

On the floor outside the apartment, Dazai sat with his knees to his chest and a pout on his face. It was equal parts hilarious and adorable. Chuuya kicked him with the toe of his house slipper. “Get up, asshole. There’s leftovers.”

“I think I’ll just sit out here until I die of starvation instead,” Dazai replied, the pout infecting even his voice. “Since you clearly don’t want me around. This is a pretty cruel method of torture, even for you.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you were the torture specialist, Demon Prodigy,” Chuuya said back flatly, kicking Dazai again. “Stop pouting and get in here already and fucking eat something. I’ve gotta get Cinderella back before midnight.”

“I don’t want to now. McDonald’s wouldn’t treat me like this.”

Chuuya snorted, leaning back into the apartment to address Q from where they were still sitting on the stool they had been provided at the start of the party, one earbud in as they played Snake on the shitty Nokia flip phone Mori allowed them to have. “Honor system, but how much do I owe you for this one?”

Q pursed their lips and did some quick mental math. “Well, you said $100 every time he swore, so with the $500 you started with… $2000?”

“I’ll make it $3000 because he’s pouting like a goddamn child.” He pulled out his wallet and selected the appropriate amount of cash before handing it to Q. “Go ahead and grab some food before I take you back to headquarters. You’ve earned it.”

Almost immediately after the words came out of Chuuya’s mouth, Q vacated their seat with enviable speed and scurried over to the spread of leftovers on the dining room table, loading a plate up with everything they could see. With that problem out of the way, it was time to get his stupid manchild of an ex-partner to stop throwing a silent fit on the floor outside his apartment.

He put his hand on the top of Dazai’s hair and gave it an affectionate ruffle he would deny until his last breath. “I made crab. Just the way you like it.”

Dazai looked up at Chuuya, the angle accentuating the way his bottom lip was dramatically sticking out. He sniffed. “I guess if you make it up to me with a romantic dinner I can get over the pain you’ve caused my poor heart.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get in here, stupid.”

***

Q stuffed another bread roll into their mouth, glancing back and forth between Chuuya—his mouth so impressively turned down into a frown it was a wonder his lips hadn’t fallen off yet—and Dazai—currently holding his fork so tight it was threatening to bend in his hand��while chewing. They swallowed. “Are you guys gonna eat?”

“You know, Chuuya,” Dazai said, icicles forming on the words, “when I say ‘romantic dinner,’ it usually means just the two of us.”

“I don’t think they could pick up a hint if you dropped it right at their feet and literally fucking pointed at it, Dazai.”

They took another bite of the roll and chewed slower this time, more deliberately. They were pretty sure there was some kind of tension in the room over something, but knowing Dazai and Chuuya it could easily have been over just about anything under the sun. It wasn’t worth worrying about it, not when there was so much food ready to be eaten. And why would they eat in the living room when there was a perfectly good table begging to be dined on?

Chuuya put his face in his hands and sighed deeply. Dazai’s top lip twitched violently.

After about five minutes of that, Q swallowed, drank half a glass of water, and pointed at Dazai’s plate before saying, “Do you want that or not?”

The fork finally gave out.

[reekierevelator]

The Woman with Green Eyes

A Short Story by Brian Bourner

It was after lunch and I was on my own supposedly minding the shop. On my return Stephanie had left for her own lunch hour. Actually, it was a warm summer’s day in Glasgow and my lunch had been of the liquid variety.  I was slumped over my desk.  It wasn’t just the alcohol. I had a wife, three kids in High School and money worries. Finding cash for the kids’ upcoming summer school trips was getting on top of me.

Fortunately, it had been quiet in Murphy’s Estate Agency on the Great Western Road in recent days. It helped prevent me taking my worries and irritability out on the customers.

Then in walks this woman, maybe mid-forties, dressed up to the nines. She wore a fancy low-cut summer dress, straw hat over dyed blonde hair, and more make-up on her face than really seemed possible:  rouged cheeks, cherry red lipstick, and black eye-shadow with black eye-lash extensions. There was so much that it was almost like she was wearing a mask or disguise. But for all that her outstanding feature was the sparkle of her flashing green eyes. Only the earthy reality of those shining emeralds prevented the perception of an ageing Barbie doll.  

I sat up so quickly I banged my knees on the underside of the desk. Being six foot two these desks were always too low.

“Good Morning madam, can I help you?”

She squinted at the name badge on the lapel of my cheap blue suit.

“Good Afternoon, er,  Eugene. I’m looking for a property.” She had a vaguely North American accent and her eyes bored through me.

“Something quite big in a good area, stone built, five bedrooms – of course at least two of them ensuite, - two bathrooms, lounge, dining room, sunroom, decent sized garden.”

“Ah yes, of course.  Please take a seat. Let me check what we have available.”

I hit a key on the desk computer and it sprang to life. I nervously scrolled through photos of properties then decided a search would be faster. I entered the data in the filter options: post code area, numbers of public rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms.  There were no filter options for sunrooms or gardens.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the results screen returned a property. Only one, but it fitted her exacting requirements.  I sensed a chance to earn some sales commission.

I swivelled the screen round towards her.

“This one seems to fit your criteria? On Ralston Road, Bearsden.”

She squinted at the screen, the sunlight pouring through the shop’s picture windows creating dazzling reflections.

“You can’t tell much from a photograph. Looks like the one.”

“It does have the number of rooms you specified – although details of the sunroom are perhaps a bit minimal, - and I’m not too sure about the garden.”

Her face twisted into a sneer.

“That’s not very helpful.”

“We’re converting to a 3D visualiser program – let’s you take a virtual walk through the property.  Not for a few months yet though.”

“And that helps me how? Would I remember?”

“Ah, well, just to reassure you that we’re a sound, forward-thinking company.”

“What price?”

“The house is vacant at the moment. Unfurnished. The owner is expecting offers around seven hundred thousand pounds.”

“That’s not a problem. But I need to see the property. This afternoon suits.”

“I can post a note of interest on the computer.  What name should I register?”

“Mrs Grayson, Marlene Grayson.”

“And address?”

“Minneapolis, Minnesota – West 36th Street, the Grayson Building.  

Just then the door opened again and Stephanie, my colleague, well boss really although there are only two of us, returned from lunch.  She sailed in looking younger than her thirty-two years, her red hair cropped to a short pageboy. She was well-turned out as ever: expensive dress, delicate gold watch, and Louis Vuitton handbag slung over her shoulder.  

Mrs Grayson took a brief squint at her.

Stephanie didn’t talk much about her private life.  But I understood there had to be money somewhere.  You certainly don’t get Versace trouser suits and Gucci heels working for Murphy’s. The rumour was that she’d once been pretty hard up but had hitched up with an older, richer man several years ago. So now she tended to look down her nose at people like me.

As she strode past she gazed at me sternly before parking herself at the desk on the opposite side of the room.  She could see I  looked a little confused.”

“Well, to be honest, we normally arrange visits in advance,” I said

“I’m leaving for Geneva tomorrow, then Rome and Istanbul. Business. I’ll be away some time. I want to settle this quickly.”

I looked rather helplessly over towards Stephanie. She shrugged, then nodded.

I turned back to face the client.

Forcing a bright smile I said, “Alright, Mrs Grayson, let’s do it today,”  

I opened the small key safe on the wall and took out the keys to 71 Ralston Road. I printed out the property details from the computer and folded the sheets into my jacket pocket.

“We can go right away. Let’s take my car.”

She seemed mollified, the corners of her cherry lips turning faintly upwards.

As I opened the door for Mrs Grayson Stephanie stole up behind me and whispered in my ear.

“She looks vaguely familiar Gene. Those sparkling eyes. Keep your eye on her.”

“Could be she just wants to see how the superior people live in this city. A bit of envious window-shopping.”  

I drove the company Ford Focus out to Ralston Road, hoping against hope that I wasn’t still over the limit.  A fine was all I needed in my parlous financial condition.  She sat beside me simply staring out the window, as if she’d previously known the town and was observing the changes that had taken place over recent years.

Once at the property I let us in.  It was a large house, but bare of furniture and fittings and very echoy.

As I led her round the house, pointing out cupboards, electrical points, boilers and bathrooms she replied with brief, knowing comments, her voice sounding much louder with the echo, and the North American accent less convincing.  In fact I began to detect Glaswegian inflections.

After we’d discovered the large conservatory she’d desired did indeed exist I turned towards her, looked into her dazzling green eyes and suggested, “Maybe we should look at the garden now?”

She followed me slowly out the back door. Tall fences enclosed a large green area. First there was an overgrown flower bed and a couple of trees. I was reaching the expansive lawn when I turned and saw her standing stock still. Her painted face was pale and she had reached out an arm to steady herself against a silver birch.

“Is there something wrong? Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

She didn’t reply. Her expression turned cold and stern.

Eventually she spoke, in a flat angry tone. “This is garden was where he beat me, away from prying eyes. Where he tried to force me to sign papers.”

I froze, stopped in my tracks, not sure I’d heard her correctly.  

“Someone beat you? Here? In this house?”

“Nathaniel Stones.” She spoke the name like a synonym for Satan.

I pulled the property sheets of paper from my pocket.  Sure enough the seller was a Mr Nat Stones.

“So you knew we were coming here?”

“Of course.”

“What happened?”

“Same old story.  Fell for a handsome man.  Married. Lived together ten years. Seven years ago a younger woman, a bitch called Stephanie, stole him. When I asked for a divorce he started beating me.  Wanted the younger woman but didn’t want to pay out anything in a divorce settlement. Tried to make me sign away any financial entitlement I might have – but I fled instead.  Back to Minneapolis.  Ran into Fred Grayson, my old High School boyfriend; now a hotshot lawyer handling corporate real estate all over the world.  He’d made it really big.  After a few years I changed my name to his.  Avoiding explanations made cocktail evenings and dinners with business colleagues much easier.”

“But, but you were still married to Nathaniel?”

“Yes.  Life’s short. These things happen.”

“The Stephanie woman?”

“Some kind of office worker.  Just once we nearly met.  I’d gone to Argyle Street to buy Nat a birthday present. I saw his blue Honda parked at the roadside and I was walking towards it when this woman in dowdy old clothes emerged from a shop with several bags printed with the ‘Yves St Laurent’ logo in huge lettering.  With her long red hair waving behind her she flounced into Nat’s car and I watched them kissing for a couple of minutes.”

“It must have been a shock.”

“Yes, but I’m not full of hate and envy any more. Secretly, I followed Nat around and saw them together many more times.  Once I think Stephanie noticed me watching.  But she wouldn’t recognise me now. And actually Nat wasn’t such a great catch. He worked as a used car salesman, not so very affluent, not rich enough for a gold-digger like that woman. She clearly liked a man with money. Maybe he’d shown her his big house. Keeping her happy is probably why he’s having to sell the house now.  But I’ll be damned if that woman sees any benefit from money raised on the sale of my house.

“If he wasn’t wealthy how could he afford such a big house?”

“Oh, a stroke of luck. A big legacy from an old aunt. And of course my savings too. I was working as a model at the time, earning good money.  He put it all into the property.  Best form of investment, he said.  Bought it in his name.”

“The house; that’s why you came back?”

“No, not only that.  Fred knew my story, my old life in Glasgow. Part of his work is acquiring properties for executives working abroad. When Ralston Road, Bearsden popped up he mentioned it to me. Of course, I work for him now, F. Grayson Inc., Attorneys at Law.  As I said I’m in Europe on business.  I have a small team of support workers travel with me.  This house interests us on a business level.  But as far as I’m concerned it’s my house, it’s my family home. The hell with Stones selling it to buy more expensive clothes and jewellery for that red-headed banshee.

“He wants his share he can keep his pension.  If he doesn’t like it we can drag it through the divorce courts. I won’t hold back on reporting the physical attacks. There are people who would testify in my favour. It’s my house, the matrimonial home.  F. Grayson Inc. won’t be paying any money for it.”

“Look, I’m going to have to check the legal side.”

“Check all you want Eugene.  I’ll have a couple of my people moving in here in an hour.”

“But you don’t have keys.”

“Give me the keys Eugene.”

“But I can’t.”

“A thousand pounds says you accidentally dropped the keys and haven’t been able to find them Eugene.”

“Oh, but…”

“Five thousand.”

“Cash?” My voice was hoarse.

Marlene opened her handbag and took out a thick wallet.  She counted notes quickly and, my mouth gaping, she handed me hundred pound notes, fifty of them.  

I nervously pulled a tissue from my trouser pocket. Something jangling seemed to come out with it. The keys might have fallen on the floor.  I didn’t pay them any attention.

It took me a while to get back to the office.  I told Stephanie the instant sale that I’d been hoping for wasn’t on the horizon after all.  No bid had materialised.  In fact I might have been right about Mrs Grayson just wanting to see how the other half lived.

At five-thirty, as we were locking up, I made a little scene about searching for lost keys. I sighed and said I must have dropped the keys in the house.

“You’re always so cack-handed,” Stephanie scolded.  “Never mind, leave it to me. I can quickly obtain a duplicate set.”

I thought about Nat turning up at the house and being met by two heavies already inside.

“Stephanie, I’m due some leave. I think I’ll very soon be booking a fortnight to take the wife and kids on holiday.”

“Blackpool again?”

“I was thinking maybe somewhere warmer. Any ideas?”

“Cancune, Las Vegas, Acapulco, Mauritius?  But maybe not your style, eh?” she sneered.

“Stephanie, how would you feel if you had to shop for clothes in Peacocks, H&M, or Asda, the way my family does?”

She pushed her nose in the air and looked at me coldly, with obvious distaste, as if I had said something shocking, absurd.  

And as I stared back into her eyes I noticed for the first time her irises were actually a very dark shade of green.

[the90dayfianceblog-blog]

season 7, episode 3

Michael and Juliana

Michael’s back from Brazil. We see him with his immigration lawyer, who seems to be one of the better lawyers we’ve seen on this show. The age gap and the South American country are triggers, she explains, and it isn’t an exact science. Anyway, enough of that – we completely drop the prostitute storyline and skip right over the results of the police report to the big news: Juliana got the visa. Michael prepares for her arrival. He orders a Hummer limo (what machismo bullshit) and gets a $10 bouquet of flowers that changes into a different bouquet of flowers when he gets to the airport. Cue airport reunion. She’s crying and happy. She loves the limo. “Do you want to do a limousine porno?” he asks. He smirks at his own joke and she is, understandably, horrified. “No,” she replies, eyes glued to her phone. He pivots quickly and pulls out champagne – 1996, the year she was born. She slugs it while ogling the New York skyline. Look there’s the Empire State Building, he says, one of the tallest buildings in the world. (It’s 47th, but okay.) She’s proud of herself for making it here. She talks more about her rags-to-riches story. Well, rags-to-middle-class, anyway. He brings out the ugly five-color necklace, which she hates. If she liked it, she would have probably put it on immediately. That is what we have seen before in this show. He points out the meaning of the five colors, and she mumbles “mm-hmm,” eyes glued to her phone.

We’re in Greenwich now, he says, and you can tell because look, there’s a Bentley. This guy’s entire identity is about money. Michael calls Max, and she becomes visibly nervous. He unconvincingly reassures her when asked if his kids will like her. They pull up to a very unflashy apartment, and they walk in to find a scene straight out of Hoarders. “The house is a disaster,” she says, and it is. “We’re moving, right?” she asks and he looks sheepish and doesn’t answer. Max and Cece are charmed by her. She’s intimidated by Max and how smart he is – a reminder of just how young and immature she is. Max and Cece made an adorable spread of gummy-worm cake, eggs, fruit, cinnamon rolls, and avocados. I’ve heard on the internet that avocados are dessert in Brazil, says Max, while Cece stands there proudly. They are TOO MUCH. Cece designates seats and outs Max for helping very little with the meal. I was the taste tester, he says. Again: TOO. MUCH. Juliana is good with the kids, and her conversation with them is natural. By contrast, Michael doesn’t interact with his kids much at all, and is even kind of condescending. I wonder whether the ice cream talk was staged and what kind of relationship he really has with them. Michael tees us up the meeting between Juliana and Sarah, which is apparently happening next week. He doesn’t think they’ll get along. We see the same sound bite again with Sarah saying “I don’t want you to parent,” so I’m dubious that the talk actually goes poorly.

Alyssa predicts: again, they will totally get married. Juliana is going to live off of Michael as she jumpstarts a modeling career in the US. Work is always mentioned first for her. I don't think it will last. Laura predicts: 100% getting married. Again, the quid pro quo is still going on (money for arm candy). Wait, am I even allowed to say quid pro quo now?

New couple: Mike and Natalie

We finally meet our new couple. Mike, 34, is from….Phlegm, Washington? Oh, Sequim. In any case it’s in the middle of nowhere. We see him riding an ATV with no helmet, so we already know he has a penchant for excellent life choices. He’s 6’7” and “likes attention,” so the height thing clearly makes up a large part of his identity. His town has 7,000 people, and his family has owned a tree farm there for 100+ years. He just bought said farm from his dad, which was expensive and put him in some significant debt. Why his dad sold the farm is unclear, and we don’t hear any more about it. Work on the farm is never done, he laments, but fortunately, he has a trusty ranch hand in the form of his Uncle Beau, who has approximately two teeth and lives in the barn. I’m a young chicken, says Beau, and I live off the land. He has as many screws loose as he has missing teeth, but he is precious. Mike has always wanted to be married, and was married before. She left him for another woman. Big yikes. He used to weigh 340 pounds but then lost 80 pounds in two years. That’s objectively impressive to do on your own. He’s got some work ethic. His best friend Matt met a Ukranian girl, Svitlana (presumably on one of the sites that produces many of these couples), and Svitlana’s best friend is Natalie.  Svitlana wants all her friends to have the plush US life that she has (we assume), so Matt gets her number. Matt texts Natalie one day, one thing leads to another, and he eventually goes out to Ukraine to see her. He likes that she’s outdoorsy and full of life. She’s very pretty, blonde, and thin. He’s average-looking, but tall – and she looks pretty tall too, so that probably earns him considerable extra points. Three months later they go to Paris together, where he proposes.

We see him video-call her. He mentions how boring it is there, that all the restaurants close at 10. She looks not enthused at the possibility of this. I for one am surprised to learn that there are restaurants there at all. She’s nervous about leaving her mom, but she says her mom will feel better knowing that she’ll have grandkids soon. Mike is uncomfortable. We’ll take that one step at a time, he says. We learn that he hasn’t told her about all of his debt.

She is at her visa interview, and Mike and Beau are getting the property ready. They are putting blue paint in the pond. “Why are we doing this?” asks Beau, and I am not really sure either. She calls him looking all sad, and evidently there is a delay with the visa. About six months until I can come “home,” she says (ok, cute), and we hear nothing more. He presses her, but she says all her documents are fine. He takes this at face value. We do not. My-kull can get a visa but she can’t? They mention she has two college degrees. No way her documents are fine. Come see me in the meantime, she says, I need you. Obviously he doesn’t have the money, but it takes about 10 seconds of puppy dog eyes for him to change his mind. We see in the preview for next week that her MO for this Ukraine trip is to make a baby. Yeeeeeesh.

Alyssa predicts: I think they will eventually get married. I kind of like them... Though there needs to be more honesty in his finances.

Laura predicts: They’re definitely getting married. They seem to genuinely care about each other and seem level-headed enough to work through this big secret he’s keeping from her. But it’s early...

Tania and Syngin

They wake up at the hotel and she – and I can barely even type this – plays with his armpit hair. Violent cringe.

The four of them (yes, the friends are STILL there) go out for vegan sushi, which makes perfect sense given all the excellent restaurant choices in New York. Tania says, to his face, that her friends come before him. “Not what I wanted to hear,” he mumbles, the poor guy. Are you sick of us, one of the friends asks, and he’s quick to say no, but he admits he would really like to spend some time alone with Tania. This is ignored. The friends grill him about work. He has a few ideas – bartender, fireman, Hollywood actor – and these insufferable bitches tell him to “pick a lane.” He points out that he wants to leave his options open because he doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do. “Does Tania’s ambition make you nervous or scared?” the friend replies – are we talking about the same bartender who lives in her mom’s shed? – and he says no, it’s why he loves her. The friend comes to the kids question, and he says he’d like kids three years from now. He’s lying, says Tania, he wants them in 7 to 10 years. The friends make a judgy face for the thousandth time. Tania declares she is “popping his sperm back in her” after the first kid. He’s not thrilled withthis conversation. He didn’t even know she wanted two kids. Tania isn’t worried, though, because she “always gets her way.” Why this conversation needs to occur in front of her horrible friends is beyond me.

Later, another dinner at a nice steakhouse (where’s she getting the money for all this?), just the two of them. He’s happy to finally have some time alone with her. She declares they need a white board and a corkboard to figure all their shit out in 90 days. They proceed to argue about kids again. He declares he won’t be pressured into it, and that there’s so much that she wants to do (travel, namely) that would be far more difficult with kids.  This, as with most things he’s contributed on this topic, is fair and sensible. Tania quickly gets mad and turns it into a feminist issue – “do you think women don’t do things when they have kids? Don’t ask me that question. You wouldn’t ask a man that question.” Sorry, what? Yes, you would. “Your problem,” she continues, “is that you don’t know what it’s like to plan for anything. How many jobs have you quit?” She says I’m having kids with or without you, and I’m literally putting off having kids for you because I was going to find a sperm donor before I turned 30. We get to hear the much-awaited response from him, “It’s almost like you wrote the story and I’m just a character in it.” She starts off affronted, but it doesn’t take long for her to admit he’s right – that she has this vision of her life and he’s either in or he’s out. “Can we talk about something happy?” she says, and he looks decidedly unhappy. He doesn’t believe in scheduling life, he says, and he’s sad. Even his floppy hair looks less floppy.

Alyssa predicts: They won't get married. At least I hope they don't, for both of their sakes. They obviously have not talked about very important things. Tania lacks maturity and Syngin lacks some direction.

Laura predicts: No way they get married. Do they even know each other? Signs increasingly point to no.

Robert and Anny

We learn that they had sex in the living room while Bryson was asleep. Could have done without that info. He agrees to take her shopping when she says she doesn’t have enough clothes. He takes her to a secondhand store, which ends up being the theme of their entire segment this episode. It’s actually a really nice-looking secondhand store – not your run-of-the-mill Goodwill. But she’s pissed. She hates everything. “Lots of ugly rags,” she proclaims. She wants Chanel and Versace…names she’s heard of, I guess. She likes “elegant clothes.” A hipster sales clerk with an edgy buzz cut comes over to assist. I didn’t know there were hipsters in Florida. Anyway, she makes things worse by informing Anny that everything in the store is used. Anny is incredulous. She bought a lot of nice clothes in the DR, she says. I guess she left those all behind in anticipation of her new Chanel wardrobe. The sales clerk is still standing there for some reason making awkward faces. Anny eventually storms out. Robert is pissed in response to her attitude, and he still won’t just say what the real problem is, which is that he has no money to buy her shit. The man shares a bed with his kid, for fuck’s sake.

Later, they go to dinner. She is wearing an electric blue plastic club dres, two sizes too small, with her black bra featuring prominently. I recall the comment about “elegant clothes.” She’s still talking about the thrift store. We didn’t have these kinds of disagreements over the phone, he admits, as though that were remotely surprising. They get to the restaurant, and they start talking wedding. She wants a ceremony on the beach in Miami with a full menu full of seafood. She’d even like to move to Miami. He reacts with anger. He’s not going to give her a “boo-coo wedding,” whatever that is. “What the fuck is up with you?” he asks, and she offers to throw her glass of wine in his face in response. She points out that he promised to buy her all these things and now he’s not following through. She refuses to eat. She storms out, her wine untouched. In the car, she asks him to apologize. “I’m sorry you’re inconsiderate and a big ass crybaby,” he offers.

They get home. They begin arguing about who is going to sleep on the couch. She gets in the bed with her dress and makeup on and pulls the covers over her, pouting. They both agree they do not like this side that they’re seeing of each other. I got Bryson a babysitter, he says, so this should be a special evening. He pulls out the lingerie he bought. The mood shifts instantly and dramatically. She loves it. He admits he’s seeing a lot of red flags (yeah, a 36-hour relationship will do that), but he’s an eager participant in the sex that is implied by the ceremonial closing of the bedroom door. Gross.  

Alyssa predicts: They are not going to get married. I'm not even sure what they have told each other (again, everyone needs to be more honest about their financial situations!) and their argument was mostly degrading each other. I no longer like either of them.

Laura predicts: I have the least faith in them of any couple, even less than Mursel and Anna. Not getting married. 

Mursel and Anna

Mursel and Anna go to a park, holding hands. We see a misleading sign: “Nebraska: The Good Life.” I realize how much taller and bigger she is than he is. I also realize he carries a man purse. They pull out the translator app for a Serious Conversation. It is tedious and painful. Think Paul and Karine, but worse because they’re actually trying to have an intelligent conversation about something other than cheating and divorce. Dinner with Anna’s mom was “very sad,” Mursel admits. She presses him on the family issue. She’s afraid he’ll leave. He responds that he doesn’t think his family will find out. He explains to the camera that in Turkey, people would shame him if they knew. He says to Anna he’ll tell his family in ten years. He says to the camera he’ll tell his parents on their deathbed, because then they’ll have to forgive him. It’s not possible, she says, to keep a secret for that long. “Where do we go from here?” she asks, and he doesn’t know. “This is our destiny,” he says, and she doesn’t know what that means. “It’s your destiny, not mine,” she offers anyway. It’s not much in the way of an ultimatum, and he needs one.

Later, we see a group heart-to-heart with the boys. He tells them the truth at Anna’s insistence. He tells the boys his family wouldn’t talk to him if they knew about them. I want you to be understanding about this, he says. Joey, the oldest, is not having it. It’s Mursel’s own problem not theirs, Joey figures, since it was his choice to come to America. The six year old asks, heartbreakingly straightforward, “so you don’t care about us?” No, I want to make you happy, Mursel says unhelpfully. He’d really like to bring Anna to his precious, beautiful Turkey, and if not for the kids he would have. The boys all look really sad. Anna wonders whether she’ll have to end up choosing, and is emphatic that she would choose her kids. But she says this to the camera, not the kids, and they need to hear it.

Alyssa predicts: again, they are not going to get married. There are rumors that Mursel is like Sumit (i.e., has a wife in Turkey) but I don't necessarily believe that. There are major cultural and familial issues between these two that cannot be resolved through a phone translating app.

Laura predicts: They’re not getting married. She is realizing, albeit way too slowly, that she cannot reconcile her relationship with him and her relationship with her kids.

Sasha and Emily

Emily is in labor. The hospital looks like a horror movie. It’s dark and cramped and old. It’s a step or two above the South African hospital. She does get some painkillers, though. Sasha says he’s never been in the hospital when he had children, and that it is unusual for Russian men to do so. When his last kid was born, he was working or something, he doesn’t really remember (boy, you just heard a collective “hell no” around the globe--as quoted by one of our SOs). But he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart because she can’t speak Russian. He texts her family some updates. Emily is glad he’s there by her side. Well, if sitting in the corner far away from her counts as “there by her side.” There’s a complication, and they end up doing a C-section. It’s incredibly graphic and I do not watch most of it. When they pull the baby out, he is limp and silent, which is horrifying. But then he’s fine and they’re happy. He has lots of hair and they keep calling him “Dave,” which is not a baby name. Sasha finally shows some emotion, and Emily is strangely unemotional. I don’t understand them separately or together.

Alyssa predicts: they'll get married because I think they deserve each other. I am glad both Emily and Baby Dave are okay. I have also never met someone who didn't know where they were as their child was being born.

Laura predicts: I think they’ll get married still, but he’ll leave for the next shiny objects - or, he’ll fly with the wind blowing, or whatever. Damn it, I forgot that awesome metaphor already.

[technicoloured-butterflies-blog]

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[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 8]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 2, 3, and what I have of Chapter 4 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

My stomach decided to be mean to me for no reason, but I still want to try to get some stuff done. Might get suddenly distracted though so fair warning if I randomly stop posting/answering asks.

Chapter 2

The morning was just as torturous as Janus had expected it would be. He chewed through another pop-tart, this time bothering to actually check and see that it was a cinnamon-sugar one and drank three cups of caffeinated orange juice. Then, he waved his hand through the air and selected the 1st saved location on his device. He popped up directly behind his desk where he’d been standing the night morning before.

Someone, probably Remus, had shut his integrator down. He swiped a finger across the power button, and it flickered back on, scrolling through its morning start up routine.

 The machine scanned through all of the data in the three main system it was connected to and sorted all information into things that concerned him, could concern him, and did not before then sorting the first two categories into order of importance. As it did, he set up his screen reader so he would hopefully not start the day with more of a migraine than he already had. It took about 3 seconds for everything to turn on and settle.

Sitting down in his desk, he dismissed the notification that Remus had finished and submitted the report from their mission the day before.

 A mission had been scheduled for him today, and the details were in his inbox. A piece time travel technology had been accidently dropped by an archology student in the 1890s during a trip. It was an earlier model of emergency time travel given to time travels that would dump them back into the Registration Office in the year they originated. It wasn’t extremely dangerous, but could pose some problems, especially if someone who didn’t know what it was activated it.

Surveillance agents had tracked it down and found that it had been picked up by a local and sold. Though no one from that time had known what it was, they had identified that it was made out of a precious metal and it had been crafted into an expensive necklace. Janus and Remus were supposed to retrieve it today. It had been pinpointed that the most opportune time for the extraction was 1923 during a masquerade ball held by those who had bought the necklace.

 It was a fairly low stakes mission. He wasn’t set to leave for another couple of hours, so he clicked through the rest of the important notifications and then set off to meet his missions coordinator, Rhi, in her office.

Rhi and Janus got along fairly well. She was a well put together woman who took her job incredibly seriously. It was fair as her job was to organize all information and materials from every other department and make sure the agents she was assigned to got and understood all of it. A mistake from her could lead to an agent’s death or something far worse.

 This, of course, made her relationship with Remus… interesting to say the least. Janus could never place whether they were nemesis, frenemies, or mortal enemies, and he doubted he would ever know.

“Okay, but it’s the 1920s America,” Remus was already in her office arguing when Janus arrived. “There were so many gangsters! I could be a gangster. I would make a fantastic gangster! Just give me a gun, a snazzy suit with a white hat, and a buttload of alcohol. I will be running Chicago with Al Capone in five minutes.”

“Al Capone didn’t become a crime boss until 1925 and you are going to 1923,” Rhi said, sounding bored, “you aren’t going to Chicago, and as I have already stated, your cover is already decided.”

 “But-”

“It is nonnegotiable, Agent Clockson,” she said firmly. Remus pouted, but seemingly accepted his fate.

“May I come in?” Janus asked.

“Please do,” Rhi said. “You have been to the 1920s before, correct?” she asked Janus.

“Yes ma’am.”

She tapped the screen on her desk in response. “In the last two years?”

“About two months ago,” he responded. She tapped something else.

“Any blacks, reds, or yellows?” she asked.

“All green.”

“Great. Do you need a refresher course on basic cultural or linguistic procedures?”

“No.”

She pushed one more thing and then swiped the check-in document over to him. He glanced at the report stating he’d had no incidents of any level the last time he visited the 1920s and had opted out of the optional refresher course, and then pressed his finger against the screen to sign it with his fingerprint.

 The document returned to her side of the desk automatically. “Okay,” she said swiping another document from her left over to be in front of her. She twisted her wrist to copy it and slide copies to Janus and Remus. “Here are exact details on the time, place, and event you are going to, as well as details about your cover.” Janus scrolled through his quickly. It wasn’t as detailed as some he’d had considering this was a brief in-and-out missing, but he still took care to memorize everything on the page.

As he and Remus read through their things, Rhi got to her feet and turned to the storage compartments behind her desk.

 She grabbed out two packages and when they’d both signed that they’d read and understood the paperwork, she slid them across the desk to them. “These have everything you need,” she said. “Clothes, money, and an invitation to the party you’re off to attend. You are to get changed now, have a last check in with costuming to make sure everything is in order, and then report to decontamination in 23 minutes. Your set to leave in 38 minutes. Any questions?”

“How much-?” Remus started.

“None, agent,” Rhi said.

“But-”

“No alcohol,” Rhi said. “It is the prohibition era in the United States anyway.”

“Like there’s not going to be alcohol at the rich people party,” Remus said sullenly.

She pressed her lips together. “It is an in-and-out mission,” she said to both of them, and then turned to glare at Remus. “Do not get arrested.”

 “I don’t know,” Remus said joyfully. “I think I still have room for a 1920s mug shot on my wall.”

“Behave,” she said, “or I’ll report you for the cat you smuggled in from the 1800s.”

“You’d never,” Remus said. “You enjoy the cute pictures of Diesel Fuel I send you every day too much, and you know it!”

“Just… don’t get arrested.” She turned to Janus. “Don’t let him get arrested.”

“I’ll do my best,” Janus promised, standing. “Now come on, Remus, we need to get changed.”

“You just want to see me naked,” Remus replied with a wink, but he did stand.

 “If I see you naked one more time in my life Remus, my eyeballs will fall out of their sockets,” Janus said, waving to Rhi as he pulled Remus out of the door.

“Kinky.”

Janus’s eyeballs almost did fall out right then and there with how hard he rolled them.

They got changed quickly, Remus complaining and saying if he couldn’t dress like a gangster, he should at least be allowed to wear a flapper dress. Janus had long ago learned to ignore his ramblings. He did seem enthused about the included mask for the masquerade. It was a silver fox shaped mask with green accents that reminded Janus of the Egyptian God Anubis.

 Janus’s own mask on the other hand, was only designed to take up the left half of his face. It was mostly golden with a black swirled design. Attached to the side there was a plume of golden tipped white feathers. He had to give it to the costuming department, they did have good taste.

Once they were both dressed, they were poked and prodded by one of the costumers to make sure everything was accurate, fit right, and had been put on correctly.

After that, they went to the decontamination area to have themselves and everything they were taking with them sterilized so they didn’t accidently take any pathogens to the 1920s. They also received an oral vaccination to be sure they didn’t pick up anything from the 1920s and bring it back.

Then they were ready to go. The correct time-space coordinates had already been sent to their timepieces. With a push of a button, they were off.

  Inciting Incident

Chapter 3

Janus and Remus both appeared at the same moment a couple of feet apart in what looked like the inside of a garden shed. There was already a man waiting for them a few feet away. “Sup babes,” Remy said, just like he always did. The T-Agent looked their costumes up and down and whistled. “Now that,” he said, “almost makes me want to be one of you time jockeys.”

“They wouldn’t let me have a gun or a canister of moonshine,” Remus pouted.

Remy snorted. “Sorry, babes, but that makes my job a lot easier. If I’ve gotta fish you outta the 1920s criminal justice system, I’d rather it not be because you shot someone on accident ‘cause you don’t know how to use the safety.”

 Remus groaned dramatically. “Everyone is lame.”

Remy just shook his head. “Meet back here when you’ve got the necklace,” he said. “Don’t make a move until after 11:05pm and before 11:17. That’s your window.”

“We know,” Janus said. “See you then.”

“Have fun at the party boys,” Remy said and then lowered his shades to look at Remus, “but not too much fun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Remus, already towing Janus out of the garden shed. The way had been specifically cleared for them, so they met no other people before they’d rounded the house the party was taking place and had gotten onto the driveway in front of the house.

 Without missing a beat, they strolled up to the front of the house, just as a car pulled into the end of the driveway. Janus rang the doorbell, and a few moments later, a man who was clearly the butler answered the door. They handed over their invitation, and the man immediately let them in.

The party had already started when they slipped into the medium sized ballroom that had been decked out in streamers and other decorations. Janus’s nose immediately wanted to scrunch as the smell of sweat from all the dancing already going on as well as the too strong perfume meant to cover that stench wafted over him. It was by far not the worst smelling time period, but he was pretty sure some people still weren’t aware deodorant had been recently invented.

 He checked his time piece which had been disguised as a fancy wristwatch for this trip. “Okay,” he said. “We have about two hours before we need to make our move. We should…”

Remus’s attention was already being dragged away by a young man who seemed to be providing guests with food. “I’m going to go ‘mingle’,” he said, winking.

“No!” Janus hissed. “Re- Richard! No!”

Yet, he was already disappearing into the horde of stinky bodies, likely to go scandalize a bunch of rich folks, and leaving Janus alone. Janus mumbled a curse under his breath that he was sure no one around him would understand even if they could make it out.

 Unsure what to do with himself, he wandered over towards where the live musicians were playing jazz music, being sure to keep out of the way of the dancers. He was edging around the makeshift dancefloor, when one of said dancers must have misstepped and knocked into another one. The second man stumbled right towards Janus, arms pinwheeling. Janus reached out on instinct to catch the man as he fell.

There was a moment where the two of them just stared at each other, surprise evident on the other man’s face. He was wearing a mask that just covered the area around his eyes and the top of his nose, revealing a smattering of freckles across his cheeks that Janus imagined extended to his nose.

 The mask was a light blue velvet with a flower stuck on the side near his right ear, and a trail of curled golden ribbon bobbed down around his chin. The party continued on around them, a blur of movement and sound.

“Are you alright?” Janus asked.

The man blinked up at him and then tilted his head slightly to the side as though confused, before a smile slowly grew on his face. “Oh, I’m fine Dove.”

“Dove?” Janus asked.

He giggled. “You have dove feathers on your mask,” he explained, reaching up a hand to touch one. His finger brushed the tip of Janus’s ear, “and I don’t know what else I am supposed to call you.”

 “My name is Lee,” he automatically lied.

“Is it?” he asked, sounding amused. “Doesn’t seem to fit you well. I like Dove better.”

“Oh?” asked Janus. “And what’s your name so I can not call you that?”

The man chuckled. “Call me Pat.”

“Hello Pat,” Janus said.

“I thought you didn’t want to call me by my name.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Hmmm,” Pat said, finger tracing idly across Janus’s forearm which was when Janus realized with a start that he was still holding the man in his arms. He quickly went to release him, which Pat allowed with clear amusement.

 Yet, instead of completely stepping away, Pat grabbed Janus’s arm. “What are you doing all the way over here by the way?” he asked. “Don’t you want to dance.”

“Oh,” Janus hesitated. “I don’t really dance.” Or at least not in the way the people around him were. He’d had basic training for this style, but it had been a while and he was a bit rusty.

“Everyone dances Dove,” Pat claimed. “At least if they know the steps and have the right partner.”

“But I don’t know the steps,” Janus said with an eyebrow raise.

He hummed. “Well, I know the dance pretty well by this point,” Pat said. “Why don’t I teach you how it goes.”

 He was agreeing with the soft beseeching tone before he even realized it. Pat pulled him into the middle of the throng of people. He seemed to think, bopping his head to the music playing for a moment, before looking back at Janus. “Heard of James Johnson?”

Janus inclined his head.

“Well, have you heard his new song? Because there’s a dance that goes with it.”

He took a few steps away from Janus and started to dance. Despite his claim to know the steps, he wasn’t particularly good, but he made up for any loss of rhythm with pure enthusiasm.

 Janus found himself smiling at the man, and after a few moments, joined in with the dance. Despite his lack of practice, he ended up having a better natural rhythm than Pat. Pat didn’t seem to mind that he was being outperformed, however. On the contrary, he giggled at himself the couple of times he stumbled.

When he fell into Janus’s arms for the second time that night, Janus decided he’d probably had enough dancing for the moment and pulled him off to the side to get something to drink and cool down a bit.

He watched the man take a snack and some punch from one of servers and thank him happily before turning back to Janus. Pat was easily able to keep Janus’s attention as they chatted. He was bubbly and soft, and Janus found himself enchanted as they talked.

 He was explaining the steps of a different dance, a couples one. “Knowing how to perform the tango will entrance any girl you want,” Pat said, something mischievous sparkling in his eyes. “Assuming you’re that type of fella.”

“As opposed to what?” Janus asked.

Pat leaned in a bit closer. Not too much, but enough that he was definitely in Janus’s space. “A different type of fella,” he said simply, before smiling and leaning back.

Janus let out a shaky exhale and took a sip of punch. He glanced over at Pat. “Tell me about yourself, Pat,” he said.

Pat hummed in contemplation. “Well, I went to France recently.”

 “You did?”

“Oui, c'était amusant, mais j'ai eu des ennuis”

“What kind of trouble?” Janus asked curiously.

“Oh, the kind with a pretty boy and crepes that were way too sweet. Anyway,” he continued. “Other than that, I mostly help out my friend. He’s an inventor.”

“And how do you help him.”

He shrugged, “Running errands mostly, and making sure he gets enough sleep, because otherwise he gets distracted and forgets. And you?”

“I’m a banker,” he said, remembering his cover, but felt compelled to add, “but I like to travel as well.”

“You do look the type?”

“And how is that?”

   Pat shrugged. “I can always tell a wandering spirt from the masses, and you are easy to spot.” Pat looked at him then with a secret smile on his face, and Janus felt suddenly known, like the man in front of him had known him for years even though they’d only just met. Looking at him then, he wanted suddenly for that to be fact and not a flight of fancy.

He was brought firmly back to reality in the next moment. “Lee,” a pointed and familiar voice said. Janus’s head snapped up to see Remus, staring at him. He tapped his wrist. Janus glanced at his own wrist: 10:58pm. He just barely managed not to curse.

 “I,” he said looking up at Pat. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“That’s okay,” Pat said easily. “It is getting rather late.”

“Yes,” Janus agreed. “Well… goodbye.”

Pat, titled his head, a half smile on his face. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Janus nodded, and turned away from him towards Remus. He didn’t look back as they excited the ballroom. They snuck into a small side closet for coats that wasn’t being used as it was summer.

“So,” Remus said when the door closed behind them.

“Don’t,” warned Janus.

“I’m not one to judge,” Remus said.

“Shut up.” He glanced at his watch. It was 11:02. “We’ll go in 5.”

 “I have to give it to you. He was very cute.”

“We’re not talking about it.”

Remus just laughed joyfully, and Janus did his best to halt the blood rushing to his cheeks.

At 11:07, well into their window, they slipped back out of the closet, and towards the stairs as the party raged on.

Despite how Remus usually never shut up, he was able to be quiet when it counted. They snuck to the master bedroom of the home’s owners in silence. The door was already wide open by the time they got there, and Janus didn’t think anything of it. At least, he didn’t until they entered the bedroom, and there was someone already there.

 He turned from the dresser he’d been standing in front of to face them, sending Janus the same smile he had down in the ballroom. Janus and Remus both froze. “Sorry, sweetie,” Pat said. “Were you here for this too?” he held up the necklace they’d been sent for. He closed his fist around the charm made out of time travel tech.

“What?” Janus said.

Pat giggled and winked. “Unfortunately, I need it a bit more than you at the moment. So, I’m gonna have to go.” Janus stepped forward, not really sure what he was intending to do, but Pat just smiled. “See you some other time, my Turtle Dove.” With a snap of his fingers and loud crack, he disappeared. The mask he’d been wearing fluttered to the ground.

  Arc I: Finding Cinderella

Chapter 4

Janus was frozen in surprise for a few long moments after Pat disappeared. Which had been, admittedly, his mistake, because, while their window had technically been until 11:17pm and it was only 11:10, the loud crack that whatever Pat had been using for time travel made, garnered the attention of someone else.

“Uh oh,” Remus said, likely hearing footsteps. “Hide.”

That snapped Janus into action, but instead of hiding immediately like a sensible human being, he chose to go for the only link to the man who’d just stolen time travel tech and waltzed away, the mask.

Which was why he ended up getting arrested.

 Remy tsked the moment they were all alone in the police car having come to ‘transfer Lee to another facility.’ Remus was already waiting in the front seat, and flashed Janus a smug smile. If Janus wasn’t still handcuffed, he’d slap him.

“Well,” Remy said. “At least you didn’t shoot anybody like I asked. I was joking by the way. I didn’t really want to pick you up from a 1920s police station period.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Mmm, nah, ‘cause Remus managed to not get arrested this time, so you defiantly screwed something up.”

“Oh, he defiantly wanted to screw something all right,” Remus said joyfully.

 “Remus,” Janus hissed.

“What?” he asked. “I’m not the horny one for once. Well, no, that’s a lie, but it didn’t affect the job this time.”

Janus groaned and leaned his head back against the seat.

Remy pulled into a seemingly random garage around 20 minutes later. “Alright,” he said. “Here we are.” He got out of the car and then helped Janus out before uncuffing him. “Here’s your ‘watch,’” Remy handed him the timepiece that had been confiscated when he’d been arrested.

Janus put it on and activated it. “Shit,” he said.

“What?” Remus asked.

“An appointment with cultural outreach has already been downloaded to my calendar for once we get out of decon.”

 “Oof. Going to baby jail,” Remy laughed. Remus was cackling.

“This,” Janus said, “was not a cultural faux pas. I did nothing that indicated that I was not from this time. I am not some rookie.”

“Don’t forget cell phones don’t exist in the 1920s,” Remus sang.

“The real question is whether or not my foot exists in your…” Remus disappeared before he could finish, a smirk on his face. Janus growled. “By Remy,” he gritted out. He selected the decontamination chamber from his queue, ignoring the appointment that came after it for now.

He knew exactly where Remus would be standing when he landed, which was why he stepped forward on reentry to ram into him.

 He yelped in surprise. “Sorry,” Janus said pleasantly. “I must have also forgotten landing procedures.

Remus laughed good naturally. “Aw, come on Jay,” he said, bumping Janus back, albeit much gentler than Janus had been. “It’s not a big deal. You just go talk with some crusty old college professor who is far too interested in spoons and then everything’s fine.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he growled. “They’re treating me like I’m an idiot who accidently invented disco in the 1920s when I was conned by some free agent time traveler.”

“‘Conned,’ Remus said. Is that what they’re calling it now?”

5238

“I know where and when you live Remus,” Janus said.

Remus gave him a dopey smile as the decontamination cycle finished and the door unlocked. Janus’s wrist buzzed telling him that the coordinates to the cultural outreach office were now unlocked. Instead of pulling them up, Janus walked to the door.

“Um,” Remus said, following him. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to your appointment?” Janus just kept walking towards their office. “Uh… Jan?”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that I have to go to cultural outreach,” Janus said. “In fact, no one can make me. If they want me to go have a discussion about the definition of ‘bushwa,’ they’re going to have to have me dragged there.”

5356

“Mmm, I feel like The Boss won’t be too happy about that, and I have a feeling she’d be 100% down to dragging you there herself.”

“Well, then, let her,” Janus said, stalking through the door to his office. “I’m not going to…”

“Ah, Agent Picani,” the woman standing next to his desk, clearly waiting for him, said when he came through the door. “Dr. Picani was informed that there were complications with your last mission and wishes to have a conversation with you and asks that you meet him in his office at the AMO.”

“Oh, um,” Janus said, stumbling a bit before plastering on a regretful half smile. “Unfortunately, I actually have an appointment right now at Cultural Outreach. It’s mandatory and very important, and I have to go now. So, I’ll have to take a raincheck on that.”

 “But-” she started, frowning.

“Remus, work on the report!” Janus said quickly as he waved his hand to bring up his timepiece display and jammed his finger at the glowing appointment card in his queue. A few moments later, Janus was at Cultural Outreach.

Cultural Outreach was not part of the TPI, though it often worked very closely with them. It was a collaboration between the government and multiple universities to help government workers, politicians, and other citizens understand and bridge cultural gaps. It had existed before time travel was invented but had expanded to also teach people who needed to time travel how to behave in unfamiliar times and cultures.

 After it had to be expanded to provide for the TPI, it had been moved to Silver Mountains University. The building had once just been a museum, but it had been thoroughly renovated and there had been add-ons for office space and some classrooms. It was still a museum, however, its purpose had expanded greatly and there were many areas that were off limits to the general public.

One of these areas was the fourth floor, where Janus’s timepiece had dumped him. This was the floor that was almost exclusively for TPI agents and staff of Cultural Outreach who worked with them.

 He immediately turned away from the reception area, hoping that he could escape and go sit on the university’s quad or something of the like for the next hour or so in hopes the woman his brother sent to fetch him would give up and go back to the AMO. Yet, the receptionist apparently saw him.

“Janus Picani?” he asked.

Janus grimaced and turned back towards him. “Yes,” he said.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You’re 5 minutes late for your appointment and seem disoriented.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is your timepiece malfunctioning?”

“No.”

“Uh… okay. Well, if you sign in here, I can take you to your appointment.”

“…Fine.”

 He begrudgingly stepped forward and touched the screen he’d gestured to sign with his fingerprint, and then let the man lead him down the hall.

The door they stopped at was propped open slightly, but he still paused and knocked. “Professor Eran? Your 2:30 is here.”

Janus had just a moment upon hearing the name to think that maybe there was actually some sort of intelligent design of the universe and whatever being of ultimate power had crafted it was a dick.

The door opened and Virgil Eran’s eyes immediately narrowed on him. “Janus.”

“Virgil.”

“I see you’re still late for everything.”

“I see you’re still a bastard.”

 Janus saw the receptionist slowly back away in the direction they’d come.

“Why don’t you come in?” Virgil said faux pleasantly.

Janus did, because he really didn’t have much of a choice at this point unless he wanted to jump out of a window… or push someone out of a window.

Virgil turned back into his office and took a seat behind his desk. Janus unhappily followed him in and sat across from him.

He took his time pulling up whatever the TPI sent him and reading it over. “So, I see you failed your recovery mission and were arrested in 1923.”

 “It wasn’t like that,” Janus said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Virgil gave him that same suspicious look he used to give Janus whenever Janus claimed to have not eaten his hot pockets out of the freezer in the middle of the night. He’d only been lying 80% of the time. Virgil had a tendency to forget what he’d eaten in a half-conscious state at 3 o’clock in the morning.

“I shouldn’t,” Janus snapped defensively. “Nothing went wrong with anyone from the time period. An illegal time traveler screwed up the mission details.”

“Well, it is still protocol to make sure nothing slipped when agents go off script. You weren’t prepared to be in a jail cell, and it is possible that you screwed something up.”

6168

“I didn’t screw anything up,” Janus growled.

“Alright,” Virgil said pulling up a document on his desk. “The mission started on July 27th, 1923 at 9:58pm, correct?”

“Oh, god, we’re not really going to fill out a time sheet. I don’t have time for that today.”

“It is protocol and best that the information is documented when it is still fresh in your mind. Besides, your schedule has been cleared for the rest of the workday.” The bastard was enjoying this. He knew how much Janus hated this stuff.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Janus said, “it was the damned illicit time traveler.”

“And I will be the judge of that,” Virgil said. Janus should have just bit the bullet and had coffee with his brother. “If you truly did nothing wrong, your supervisor will see that when I send this to her.”

[coolchiefpeanutdetective-blog]

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[oldnintendonerd]

Pickup Post #5 - Sony Weeks II

Alright, I apologize to any hardcore Nintendo fans that are reading, if you follow me specifically for Nintendo content. However, this is ultimately a Game Hunting blog, and sometimes you do have to take the deals that come along. As you may have guessed from the title, this is another Sony find. Playstation 2 to be exact. Couldn’t pass it up. You’ll see why as we go through it. I’ll tell you how the deal transpired.

I peruse Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and LetGo regularly. I have been doing several searches every other day or so. Including but not limited to “GameCube”, “SNES”, “Super Nintendo”, “Wii”, and “Nintendo 64″. Of course just “Nintendo” as well. With the latest pickup of Gran Turismo and Hotshots Golf 3 I’ve thrown in “Playstation 2″ as well. I just wanted to get a feel for what they cost, and I have come to see that people, on average, want somewhere in the neighborhood of about $30 for the Fat model, and around $40 to $50 for the slims. This is generally with no games, and one controller. If you add games, memory cards or extra controllers, the prices go up from there.

A Yard Sale ad appeared in my search results for “Playstation 2″ on Facebook Marketplace the other day. I thought, that is odd, I didn’t search for yard sales, they must have a Playstation 2 listed in the listing for it to match. I read the description, and sure enough there it was. I was looking at this on a Tuesday, and the listing said “3 Days Ago”, which would have put it about the morning of the Sunday in the weekend before. So I figured the listing had to be for the upcoming weekend. Which means the swap meet reseller vultures hadn’t gotten a crack at it yet, I need to see what there is, let’s check pictures to see if they included any of the video games. You have no idea how many listings for Yard Sales will list video games, and then include 30 pictures of the stuff they are selling, but not even show the games. The one thing I want to see to gauge what they have, and they overlook it completely. This one though, had the pictures, so I could see a lot of what they had.

There’s the first one. Right off the bat my jaw hit the floor, TWO PS2 systems. The fat model, but still, two of them! The fact that they have two leads me to believe one of them might not work. Why else would they have two? What do you do when one breaks? You buy another one.

I see controllers sitting there too, three of them, and just from the pic I can tell it is two Dual Shock 2′s and one Dual Shock. They only want a buck a piece for the controllers too, which is a good sign. That is already a solid yard sale price for the controllers. At this point I laugh to myself for getting that Dual Shock from Goodwill last week for $4 by itself.

The pic is too small to read the price on the PS2s. I need to ask them how much those are to ascertain if I should try and get to this sale when they open.

Popped off a quick message asking what they were looking to get out of the PS2s. Half not expecting to even get a response. But, to my surprise, she replied pretty quickly. She said one PS2 had no power cord so they were looking for $8, and the other had the expansion on the back, and had all cords, so they had it at $10.

$18 for both?

That is less than most people are asking for just one, with no games and like, one controller. Throw in the controllers here and it’s $21. At this point I figure I might as well try to get both, to improve the odds of getting a working one. Just in case. Even the cost of both is less than most people are asking for even one. By almost half. So, no brainer.

Flipped back to the pictures to look at them further, maybe they have games for it too.

Looks like a stack of 10 or so on the back right hand side of that table. Just from this pic though I can’t really see titles, hmmm, let me zoom in, maybe...

Nope. Still just too grainy/blurry, I can’t see what they are. No matter, let me see if she would be willing to meet me before the sale and be willing to sell them before it starts this weekend. This is kind of a long shot, I’m sure she was not expecting to get a message about this, let alone be asked to sell something before the sale even starts.

I pop off another message: “Would you be opposed to selling them before the sale? Or at least one? I’m kind of starting a PS2 collection and this would be a perfect little jump start without breaking the bank. I will be too busy to come to the sale on Saturday.” She comes right back with “Well, our garage sale was last weekend so I have no problem selling them now.”

Wait. What?

Garage sale was last weekend?! They didn’t sell?! In this town where swap meet and flea market resellers are out in front of people’s houses an hour before the sale starts for video games? Even when the listing says no early birds?! Well, maybe that makes sense, if she only listed it on Facebook, and not on Craigslist, and listed it basically day of, since it was Sunday when she put it up...

No one saw it.

Good for me.

So she’s on board to sell them. I let her know I’m available to meet that same day around the lunch hour. She agrees, and asks if I want the games too. I said sure, depending on price and titles. Within 15 minutes she goes “Here are the games. We were looking for $1 each” and I had this on my screen:

Wow! a nice, high resolution picture where I can read all titles. I’m really liking this seller! So I start looking them up immediately on eBay to see what kind of value we have here. I am completely unfamiliar with the PS2 library of games. Not only is it HUGE, I know nothing about values. I start with the Kingdom Hearts games, since I recognize the title, and while not one I care to play, they go for about $20 as a pair shipped.

So about $15 in value there already. Good start. What else?

Dawn of Mana looked to be going anywhere from $13 shipped, to $20 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Lets keep going...

Innocent Life, after looking this up it appears to be a Harvest Moon title, and is going for between $8 and $15 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Already we are up to $35 in value and I still haven’t checked all the games. One more...

Steambot Chronicles. Never heard of this in my life.

Wait.

WHAT!?

FIFTY SIX DOLLARS?

Granted this is one of the highest ones, but this was a SHOCK. Some are $35 to $40 average. Pricecharting shows this one at $50 CIB. This auction was CIB and in great condition so it clearly went for more than the others, but at this point there was no way I wasn’t getting this deal. I immediately asked where I should be headed. Either an address, or a location if she would rather me not come to her house. She just gave me her address. I told her thank you and about when I would be there. I said I would take both systems, and all the games, $10 + $8 + $9 = $27, I asked if twenty five even would cover it. She said yes. I hit the road.

On the way she asks if I want the controllers too? No extra charge. I said sure.

This deal keeps getting better. I just bought a Dual Shock at Goodwill for $4 and thought it was a good deal and you want to give me THREE for free? Let me think about that one for about 0.0382 seconds. Yep, I’ll take them.

So I arrive, we exchange greetings, I give the stuff a quick once over, and check a couple of the more valuable games (Kingdom Hearts II, Steambot Chronicles and Innocent Life), yep all in there, complete and in good shape. I didn’t want to linger, she had everything stacked up neatly, and she said she was on maternity leave, so there was probably a sleeping baby somewhere. I gave her the $25 and she helped me out to the car with everything. I did inquire how it was they didn’t sell at the sale, and she said they only had two people show up. TWO. Ouch. As I guessed earlier, probably not advertised well. If she was on Craigslist I guarantee someone would have cleaned this out in four point two seconds.

So here it is now that I’ve picked it up and brought it home.

Now, after doing this for a couple three months, and getting a few finds, especially the one where Monkey ball 2 wouldn’t boot up, I’m used to there being bad news. I’ve come to expect something to be off with alost every deal, that’s why I look for prices this cheap. Buying like this gets you good deals, but you are also doing all the work, travelling to the seller, taking all the risk if something isn’t right. This one was only slightly disappointing, but probably because it was not unexpected. The PS2 on the left, the $10 one, doesn’t read discs. Not a single game would boot in it, even the absolutely flawless Gran Turismo 4 I got in the last post. It does turn on, controller works, I can manipulate the files on the memory card, just no disc action. This is not a huge surprise, I said that I suspected going in that there was a chance at least one didn’t work if they had two. The $8 one reads discs and plays fine, though I noticed a bit of a video issue, if I would wiggle or move the video cable, the picture would scramble and jump on the TV screen. I tried the second cable and it did the same thing. So I tried the other PS2. Same issue. I find it highly unlikely that both PS2s have the same issue, but it also seems just as unlikely that both cables have the same issue. I do hope it is just the cables.

I will probably order a component cable for one of them since I do intend to keep one, and try it again. It is only about $6 or $7. Hopefully the problem will go away with a new cable. I’ll update on that later when I have a chance to try it.

One of the Dual Shock 2 controllers has a little chunk of the rubber missing from the start button. Minor issue.

Finally, ATV Offroad Fury, is actually a Rugrats game instead. The funny thing is, Rugrats is worth more disc only, than ATV Offroad Fury complete. HA! Battlefront II and Dawn of Mana are also not complete, they are missing manuals. That devalues Dawn of Mana slightly, yes, but at least Steambot is complete, and boy is it ever complete. It is near mint condition. I’m hoping this one will fetch near $50 or more like the other very good condition one did.

In any case, I’m still very happy with the find, down to $25 from the asking price of $30, and there is a lot more value than that in this find. Especially with just one game at $40+ on eBay right now. I estimate this find at

$30 for PS2 Fat model with cables and one controller, another $10 each for the two additional controllers. Another $3 or so for the Memory Card. Add in a conservative $35 for Steambot, and another $25 total for Kingdom Hearts and Innocent Life. That comes to $103. I’ll throw $5 on the non working PS2 and maybe $10 total for the rest of the games as a lot. Grand total $118 for $25.

Winning. 

As I mentioned before, I do plan on keeping at least one of the PS2s. Probably with a component cable. I dug up an old PATA hard drive that’s 200GB, and will see if I can hack one of these things to load ISO files. Would be cool to have a permanent PS2 in the collection that can store my games without needing to keep swapping them out over and over.

I do plan on looking at the one that won’t read, it could be fixable, who knows.

Official business:

$54.36 - $25 = $29.36

$29.36 game hunting money remaining. I will be selling something soon, probably my old copy of PaRappa the Rapper.

I was never a big fan, and now that I have a PS2 and it tested good, I can sell it as working, instead of untested.

I will be posting the results of the tinkering on the non-working one as soon as I know whats up with it and if it can be resurrected.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. Talk to you all soon.

2017.06.18

[fesahaawit]

Thoughts on Owning a Lexus After 9 Months

Ever wondered what type of cars us financial bloggers drive? If so, you’re in for a treat today :)

My man MP from MustachianPost.com just collected data from over 20 different bloggers on what they’re riding these days, and why, and was kind enough to let us debut it on Rockstar Finance yesterday. Check it out when you get a chance!

The Cars of Personal Finance Bloggers

Some of the bloggers featured are Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist, Brandon from Mad Fientist, Justin from Root of Good, Jesse from YNAB (his car was my favorite surprise, especially considering he founded a budgeting company! ;)), the Financial Samurai, Mr 1500 Days, Paula from Afford Anything, The Frugalwoods, Physician on Fire, and Jason Fieber from Free At 33 – formerly Dividend Mantra.

You may be surprised what frugal people rock ;)

And if you haven’t been reading this blog for more than 9 months, you may be surprised what I drive too. In a nutshell, I went from this:

(1993 “Frankencaddy” – 90,000 miles, fully paid off, side hustle king!)

To this:

[2008 Lexus RX-350, 80,000 miles, car loan]

All in a span of a couple of weeks and totally unplanned, haha… I wrote about the whole thing in depth here (Bye Bye Frankencaddy, Hello Car Payments!), but the short version is that I needed a bigger, more reliable, car as I was taking over responsibility of driving my little nuggets around every day, and out of all the cars we looked at this was the only one that *excited me* enough to want to spend any money. I don’t really care about labels or how fancy/expensive things are, but stuff I consume DOES need to make me happy. And as long as I can afford it, it’s fair game.

The beauty of personal finance, eh?

Anyways, it came down to picking up a used minivan or a used luxury car (both around the same price, interestingly enough) and, well, for once I splurged and picked up the fancier one. I did wish I had more time to search for a cheaper and privately owned model vs snatching it from Carmax, but outside of that I’ve surprisingly had little regrets. In fact, I’m actually MORE in love with it than the day I took it home!

It’s been about 9 months now since owning it, so today I thought I’d share my thoughts so far. While hopefully not losing any more of you in the process :)

(The day I blogged about this purchase broke the record for the most unsubscribes ever here! HAH!)

We’ll start with the items that shocked me the most…

#1. A luxury car feels damn good to be in!

I know everyone (including myself) likes to say “a car is just a car and it gets me from point a to point b”, but the truth of the matter is that some just feel nicer to be in! You may not need or want a luxurious ride, but they’re definitely not all made the same. And never again will I assume people are buying them simply for “status.” I know many are, but there’s something to be said about the quality too. I’m just hoping I haven’t screwed myself from ever owning a hoopty again, haha…

#2. I’ve got more swagger than usual.

I don’t know if this will shock you as much as it did me, but I actually feel more confident riding around in this thing. I don’t know why that is, and I know I probably shouldn’t, but in all honestly I do. I just feel GOOD driving it around town, and even more so when I step into it for the first time of the day! Now granted, I also felt pretty pimp’ish rolling out in my Caddy too, but there’s a nuanced difference in the type of swaggership going on here, haha… How do you put a cost on that when factoring stuff in? ;)

#3. My charitable giving has skyrocketed

Tell me the truth: if you see a fancy car rolling up to a street corner and a homeless man is there asking for money and the driver turns a blinds eye, what’s the first thought that goes through your mind? Be honest! Mine? “What an a-hole!” “You can afford that car but can’t afford to dish out a few dollars? Come on now….”  Haha… Now what if this same car that rolled up was a beater? ;)

Obviously there are a TON of factors as to why someone does or doesn’t give out money, and I’m clearly in no position to judge, but for me personally, I just find it MUCH harder to *not* give when I’m sitting in a car that’s not at all a necessity. And if I had to guess, I’d say my charitable given has at least tripled since buying this car. Whether on the street corners or in life in general. Who would have guessed that??

In fact, this same period of ownership has also seen me finally get our philanthropy project up and running too after all these years!! Which has already helped give out over $5,000! Now perhaps it’s purely coincidental, but then again who knows… All I do know is that I’ve become much more charitable since picking up this ride and it’s nice.

#4. Expensive $hit still breaks :)

Going down to the not-so-shocking list, no matter what car you drive – old, new, expensive, cheap, fancy, boring – all cars require maintenance. Now some are more quality made and will last longer than others, but at the end of the day no car stays alive without some good ol’ TLC.  And not surprisingly, TLC costs a lot more on luxury cars vs standard ones.

I’ve already had to do oil changes, regular scheduled maintenance, and lately all new tires due to some bare threads I knew about when first picking it up, as well as a nice tire popping when some asshat left razor blades in the middle of the road, ugh. All things that come with the territory of car ownership, but all things that cost more typically with a luxury car than not. This area I don’t like so much ;)

(Also – as VIP as they treat you at the Lexus dealerships, and they def. treat you well!, it’s definitely not worth the mark up as I found trying to experience it for the first time… yikes)

#5. Expensive $hit has too many fancy buttons!

If I gave you a dollar for how many times my dang tire pressure light comes on, you’d have $15 already. I’m all for smart technology and keeping me in the loop, but my goodness does it seem a bit too much at times. Anytime the temperature changes drastically that tire gauge goes bananas over here… It even goes off when my *spare* tire needs air! Haha…

I miss the days where I just chalked it up to the car “being old” and carrying about my business ;) Though that’s probably not the smartest route to take either, and leads us to the next thought…

#6. I’m taking MUCH better care of this car than any others.

I’ve only owned one newish car before – a new-to-me Toyota Highlander back in the day, with chrome rims and all! – but even then I only did the bare minimum and was stressed any dang time new car repairs needed to be done. Which actually tells you something good right there – if you can’t afford the repairs, you can’t afford the car!!

But in this more-mature phase of mine, over 8 years since owning that car, I’m quick to act like an adult now and actually face the music anytime something needs attention. I still cringe every time and don’t enjoy it, but these days the precious cargo I drive around are much more important than the cash. So I suck it up and get stuff taken care of in a more timely manner. I’ve also since learned that I require a mechanic who I can ask a billion and one dumb questions too and not get laughed at! ;) I hate not knowing if I’m getting ripped off or not!

#7. Lots of you reading this right now also have a Lexus RX :)

The last thing I’ve learned was that, despite oodles of people hating me for this and leaving my site,  many others shared that they HAVE THE EXACT SAME CAR!! Which is fantastic! And I appreciate all of you who reached out to tell me so during the apocalypse too. (Though more of you emailed me on the side vs publicly stating it ;))

I started a tally so I could share the total numbers, but it seems I lost it all and could only find one of the messages I saved which coincidentally also came from a $$ blogger! Per Grant from Millennial Money:

“I have a 2007 and I love it. Best car ever. I bought mine off someones lease and it only has 61,200 miles on it. I live in the city and only drive like 1,200 miles a year, so I plan on driving it for at least the next 20+ years! One of my life goes is to never get rid of that car”

BOOM! So frugal or not, it always feels good knowing you’re not alone, haha…

And that’s where we stand at least now with the Lexus experience :) Will I regret it later and come back singing a different tune? Perhaps. But so far so good, and I look forward to seeing how many miles I can rack up on this thing before it runs into the ground…

I’m going for 218,000 so I can bet out the attendees of Camp Mustache! (Nice find, Gwen!)

What car you rollin’ in these days?

********* PS: Here’s that list of bloggers’ cars again if I haven’t scared you away yet: What 21 financial bloggers drive. They’re def. more in line with what you could expect, haha…

Thoughts on Owning a Lexus After 9 Months posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[heliosfinance]

Thoughts on Owning a Lexus After 9 Months

Ever wondered what type of cars us financial bloggers drive? If so, you’re in for a treat today :)

My man MP from MustachianPost.com just collected data from over 20 different bloggers on what they’re riding these days, and why, and was kind enough to let us debut it on Rockstar Finance yesterday. Check it out when you get a chance!

The Cars of Personal Finance Bloggers

Some of the bloggers featured are Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist, Brandon from Mad Fientist, Justin from Root of Good, Jesse from YNAB (his car was my favorite surprise, especially considering he founded a budgeting company! ;)), the Financial Samurai, Mr 1500 Days, Paula from Afford Anything, The Frugalwoods, Physician on Fire, and Jason Fieber from Free At 33 – formerly Dividend Mantra.

You may be surprised what frugal people rock ;)

And if you haven’t been reading this blog for more than 9 months, you may be surprised what I drive too. In a nutshell, I went from this:

(1993 “Frankencaddy” – 90,000 miles, fully paid off, side hustle king!)

To this:

[2008 Lexus RX-350, 80,000 miles, car loan]

All in a span of a couple of weeks and totally unplanned, haha… I wrote about the whole thing in depth here (Bye Bye Frankencaddy, Hello Car Payments!), but the short version is that I needed a bigger, more reliable, car as I was taking over responsibility of driving my little nuggets around every day, and out of all the cars we looked at this was the only one that *excited me* enough to want to spend any money. I don’t really care about labels or how fancy/expensive things are, but stuff I consume DOES need to make me happy. And as long as I can afford it, it’s fair game.

The beauty of personal finance, eh?

Anyways, it came down to picking up a used minivan or a used luxury car (both around the same price, interestingly enough) and, well, for once I splurged and picked up the fancier one. I did wish I had more time to search for a cheaper and privately owned model vs snatching it from Carmax, but outside of that I’ve surprisingly had little regrets. In fact, I’m actually MORE in love with it than the day I took it home!

It’s been about 9 months now since owning it, so today I thought I’d share my thoughts so far. While hopefully not losing any more of you in the process :)

(The day I blogged about this purchase broke the record for the most unsubscribes ever here! HAH!)

We’ll start with the items that shocked me the most…

#1. A luxury car feels damn good to be in!

I know everyone (including myself) likes to say “a car is just a car and it gets me from point a to point b”, but the truth of the matter is that some just feel nicer to be in! You may not need or want a luxurious ride, but they’re definitely not all made the same. And never again will I assume people are buying them simply for “status.” I know many are, but there’s something to be said about the quality too. I’m just hoping I haven’t screwed myself from ever owning a hoopty again, haha…

#2. I’ve got more swagger than usual.

I don’t know if this will shock you as much as it did me, but I actually feel more confident riding around in this thing. I don’t know why that is, and I know I probably shouldn’t, but in all honestly I do. I just feel GOOD driving it around town, and even more so when I step into it for the first time of the day! Now granted, I also felt pretty pimp’ish rolling out in my Caddy too, but there’s a nuanced difference in the type of swaggership going on here, haha… How do you put a cost on that when factoring stuff in? ;)

#3. My charitable giving has skyrocketed

Tell me the truth: if you see a fancy car rolling up to a street corner and a homeless man is there asking for money and the driver turns a blinds eye, what’s the first thought that goes through your mind? Be honest! Mine? “What an a-hole!” “You can afford that car but can’t afford to dish out a few dollars? Come on now….”  Haha… Now what if this same car that rolled up was a beater? ;)

Obviously there are a TON of factors as to why someone does or doesn’t give out money, and I’m clearly in no position to judge, but for me personally, I just find it MUCH harder to *not* give when I’m sitting in a car that’s not at all a necessity. And if I had to guess, I’d say my charitable given has at least tripled since buying this car. Whether on the street corners or in life in general. Who would have guessed that??

In fact, this same period of ownership has also seen me finally get our philanthropy project up and running too after all these years!! Which has already helped give out over $5,000! Now perhaps it’s purely coincidental, but then again who knows… All I do know is that I’ve become much more charitable since picking up this ride and it’s nice.

#4. Expensive $hit still breaks :)

Going down to the not-so-shocking list, no matter what car you drive – old, new, expensive, cheap, fancy, boring – all cars require maintenance. Now some are more quality made and will last longer than others, but at the end of the day no car stays alive without some good ol’ TLC.  And not surprisingly, TLC costs a lot more on luxury cars vs standard ones.

I’ve already had to do oil changes, regular scheduled maintenance, and lately all new tires due to some bare threads I knew about when first picking it up, as well as a nice tire popping when some asshat left razor blades in the middle of the road, ugh. All things that come with the territory of car ownership, but all things that cost more typically with a luxury car than not. This area I don’t like so much ;)

(Also – as VIP as they treat you at the Lexus dealerships, and they def. treat you well!, it’s definitely not worth the mark up as I found trying to experience it for the first time… yikes)

#5. Expensive $hit has too many fancy buttons!

If I gave you a dollar for how many times my dang tire pressure light comes on, you’d have $15 already. I’m all for smart technology and keeping me in the loop, but my goodness does it seem a bit too much at times. Anytime the temperature changes drastically that tire gauge goes bananas over here… It even goes off when my *spare* tire needs air! Haha…

I miss the days where I just chalked it up to the car “being old” and carrying about my business ;) Though that’s probably not the smartest route to take either, and leads us to the next thought…

#6. I’m taking MUCH better care of this car than any others.

I’ve only owned one newish car before – a new-to-me Toyota Highlander back in the day, with chrome rims and all! – but even then I only did the bare minimum and was stressed any dang time new car repairs needed to be done. Which actually tells you something good right there – if you can’t afford the repairs, you can’t afford the car!!

But in this more-mature phase of mine, over 8 years since owning that car, I’m quick to act like an adult now and actually face the music anytime something needs attention. I still cringe every time and don’t enjoy it, but these days the precious cargo I drive around are much more important than the cash. So I suck it up and get stuff taken care of in a more timely manner. I’ve also since learned that I require a mechanic who I can ask a billion and one dumb questions too and not get laughed at! ;) I hate not knowing if I’m getting ripped off or not!

#7. Lots of you reading this right now also have a Lexus RX :)

The last thing I’ve learned was that, despite oodles of people hating me for this and leaving my site,  many others shared that they HAVE THE EXACT SAME CAR!! Which is fantastic! And I appreciate all of you who reached out to tell me so during the apocalypse too. (Though more of you emailed me on the side vs publicly stating it ;))

I started a tally so I could share the total numbers, but it seems I lost it all and could only find one of the messages I saved which coincidentally also came from a $$ blogger! Per Grant from Millennial Money:

“I have a 2007 and I love it. Best car ever. I bought mine off someones lease and it only has 61,200 miles on it. I live in the city and only drive like 1,200 miles a year, so I plan on driving it for at least the next 20+ years! One of my life goes is to never get rid of that car”

BOOM! So frugal or not, it always feels good knowing you’re not alone, haha…

And that’s where we stand at least now with the Lexus experience :) Will I regret it later and come back singing a different tune? Perhaps. But so far so good, and I look forward to seeing how many miles I can rack up on this thing before it runs into the ground…

I’m going for 218,000 so I can bet out the attendees of Camp Mustache! (Nice find, Gwen!)

What car you rollin’ in these days?

********* PS: Here’s that list of bloggers’ cars again if I haven’t scared you away yet: What 21 financial bloggers drive. They’re def. more in line with what you could expect, haha…

Thoughts on Owning a Lexus After 9 Months published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 9]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and what I have of Chapter 5 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright, let’s try this again!

Chapter 2

The morning was just as torturous as Janus had expected it would be. He chewed through another pop-tart, this time bothering to actually check and see that it was a cinnamon-sugar one and drank three cups of caffeinated orange juice. Then, he waved his hand through the air and selected the 1st saved location on his device. He popped up directly behind his desk where he’d been standing the night morning before.

Someone, probably Remus, had shut his integrator down. He swiped a finger across the power button, and it flickered back on, scrolling through its morning start up routine.

 The machine scanned through all of the data in the three main system it was connected to and sorted all information into things that concerned him, could concern him, and did not before then sorting the first two categories into order of importance. As it did, he set up his screen reader so he would hopefully not start the day with more of a migraine than he already had. It took about 3 seconds for everything to turn on and settle.

Sitting down in his desk, he dismissed the notification that Remus had finished and submitted the report from their mission the day before.

 A mission had been scheduled for him today, and the details were in his inbox. A piece time travel technology had been accidently dropped by an archology student in the 1890s during a trip. It was an earlier model of emergency time travel given to time travels that would dump them back into the Registration Office in the year they originated. It wasn’t extremely dangerous, but could pose some problems, especially if someone who didn’t know what it was activated it.

Surveillance agents had tracked it down and found that it had been picked up by a local and sold. Though no one from that time had known what it was, they had identified that it was made out of a precious metal and it had been crafted into an expensive necklace. Janus and Remus were supposed to retrieve it today. It had been pinpointed that the most opportune time for the extraction was 1923 during a masquerade ball held by those who had bought the necklace.

 It was a fairly low stakes mission. He wasn’t set to leave for another couple of hours, so he clicked through the rest of the important notifications and then set off to meet his missions coordinator, Rhi, in her office.

Rhi and Janus got along fairly well. She was a well put together woman who took her job incredibly seriously. It was fair as her job was to organize all information and materials from every other department and make sure the agents she was assigned to got and understood all of it. A mistake from her could lead to an agent’s death or something far worse.

 This, of course, made her relationship with Remus… interesting to say the least. Janus could never place whether they were nemesis, frenemies, or mortal enemies, and he doubted he would ever know.

“Okay, but it’s the 1920s America,” Remus was already in her office arguing when Janus arrived. “There were so many gangsters! I could be a gangster. I would make a fantastic gangster! Just give me a gun, a snazzy suit with a white hat, and a buttload of alcohol. I will be running Chicago with Al Capone in five minutes.”

“Al Capone didn’t become a crime boss until 1925 and you are going to 1923,” Rhi said, sounding bored, “you aren’t going to Chicago, and as I have already stated, your cover is already decided.”

 “But-”

“It is nonnegotiable, Agent Clockson,” she said firmly. Remus pouted, but seemingly accepted his fate.

“May I come in?” Janus asked.

“Please do,” Rhi said. “You have been to the 1920s before, correct?” she asked Janus.

“Yes ma’am.”

She tapped the screen on her desk in response. “In the last two years?”

“About two months ago,” he responded. She tapped something else.

“Any blacks, reds, or yellows?” she asked.

“All green.”

“Great. Do you need a refresher course on basic cultural or linguistic procedures?”

“No.”

She pushed one more thing and then swiped the check-in document over to him. He glanced at the report stating he’d had no incidents of any level the last time he visited the 1920s and had opted out of the optional refresher course, and then pressed his finger against the screen to sign it with his fingerprint.

 The document returned to her side of the desk automatically. “Okay,” she said swiping another document from her left over to be in front of her. She twisted her wrist to copy it and slide copies to Janus and Remus. “Here are exact details on the time, place, and event you are going to, as well as details about your cover.” Janus scrolled through his quickly. It wasn’t as detailed as some he’d had considering this was a brief in-and-out missing, but he still took care to memorize everything on the page.

As he and Remus read through their things, Rhi got to her feet and turned to the storage compartments behind her desk.

 She grabbed out two packages and when they’d both signed that they’d read and understood the paperwork, she slid them across the desk to them. “These have everything you need,” she said. “Clothes, money, and an invitation to the party you’re off to attend. You are to get changed now, have a last check in with costuming to make sure everything is in order, and then report to decontamination in 23 minutes. Your set to leave in 38 minutes. Any questions?”

“How much-?” Remus started.

“None, agent,” Rhi said.

“But-”

“No alcohol,” Rhi said. “It is the prohibition era in the United States anyway.”

“Like there’s not going to be alcohol at the rich people party,” Remus said sullenly.

She pressed her lips together. “It is an in-and-out mission,” she said to both of them, and then turned to glare at Remus. “Do not get arrested.”

 “I don’t know,” Remus said joyfully. “I think I still have room for a 1920s mug shot on my wall.”

“Behave,” she said, “or I’ll report you for the cat you smuggled in from the 1800s.”

“You’d never,” Remus said. “You enjoy the cute pictures of Diesel Fuel I send you every day too much, and you know it!”

“Just… don’t get arrested.” She turned to Janus. “Don’t let him get arrested.”

“I’ll do my best,” Janus promised, standing. “Now come on, Remus, we need to get changed.”

“You just want to see me naked,” Remus replied with a wink, but he did stand.

 “If I see you naked one more time in my life Remus, my eyeballs will fall out of their sockets,” Janus said, waving to Rhi as he pulled Remus out of the door.

“Kinky.”

Janus’s eyeballs almost did fall out right then and there with how hard he rolled them.

They got changed quickly, Remus complaining and saying if he couldn’t dress like a gangster, he should at least be allowed to wear a flapper dress. Janus had long ago learned to ignore his ramblings. He did seem enthused about the included mask for the masquerade. It was a silver fox shaped mask with green accents that reminded Janus of the Egyptian God Anubis.

 Janus’s own mask on the other hand, was only designed to take up the left half of his face. It was mostly golden with a black swirled design. Attached to the side there was a plume of golden tipped white feathers. He had to give it to the costuming department, they did have good taste.

Once they were both dressed, they were poked and prodded by one of the costumers to make sure everything was accurate, fit right, and had been put on correctly.

After that, they went to the decontamination area to have themselves and everything they were taking with them sterilized so they didn’t accidently take any pathogens to the 1920s. They also received an oral vaccination to be sure they didn’t pick up anything from the 1920s and bring it back.

Then they were ready to go. The correct time-space coordinates had already been sent to their timepieces. With a push of a button, they were off.

  Inciting Incident

Chapter 3

Janus and Remus both appeared at the same moment a couple of feet apart in what looked like the inside of a garden shed. There was already a man waiting for them a few feet away. “Sup babes,” Remy said, just like he always did. The T-Agent looked their costumes up and down and whistled. “Now that,” he said, “almost makes me want to be one of you time jockeys.”

“They wouldn’t let me have a gun or a canister of moonshine,” Remus pouted.

Remy snorted. “Sorry, babes, but that makes my job a lot easier. If I’ve gotta fish you outta the 1920s criminal justice system, I’d rather it not be because you shot someone on accident ‘cause you don’t know how to use the safety.”

 Remus groaned dramatically. “Everyone is lame.”

Remy just shook his head. “Meet back here when you’ve got the necklace,” he said. “Don’t make a move until after 11:05pm and before 11:17. That’s your window.”

“We know,” Janus said. “See you then.”

“Have fun at the party boys,” Remy said and then lowered his shades to look at Remus, “but not too much fun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Remus, already towing Janus out of the garden shed. The way had been specifically cleared for them, so they met no other people before they’d rounded the house the party was taking place and had gotten onto the driveway in front of the house.

 Without missing a beat, they strolled up to the front of the house, just as a car pulled into the end of the driveway. Janus rang the doorbell, and a few moments later, a man who was clearly the butler answered the door. They handed over their invitation, and the man immediately let them in.

The party had already started when they slipped into the medium sized ballroom that had been decked out in streamers and other decorations. Janus’s nose immediately wanted to scrunch as the smell of sweat from all the dancing already going on as well as the too strong perfume meant to cover that stench wafted over him. It was by far not the worst smelling time period, but he was pretty sure some people still weren’t aware deodorant had been recently invented.

 He checked his time piece which had been disguised as a fancy wristwatch for this trip. “Okay,” he said. “We have about two hours before we need to make our move. We should…”

Remus’s attention was already being dragged away by a young man who seemed to be providing guests with food. “I’m going to go ‘mingle’,” he said, winking.

“No!” Janus hissed. “Re- Richard! No!”

Yet, he was already disappearing into the horde of stinky bodies, likely to go scandalize a bunch of rich folks, and leaving Janus alone. Janus mumbled a curse under his breath that he was sure no one around him would understand even if they could make it out.

 Unsure what to do with himself, he wandered over towards where the live musicians were playing jazz music, being sure to keep out of the way of the dancers. He was edging around the makeshift dancefloor, when one of said dancers must have misstepped and knocked into another one. The second man stumbled right towards Janus, arms pinwheeling. Janus reached out on instinct to catch the man as he fell.

There was a moment where the two of them just stared at each other, surprise evident on the other man’s face. He was wearing a mask that just covered the area around his eyes and the top of his nose, revealing a smattering of freckles across his cheeks that Janus imagined extended to his nose.

 The mask was a light blue velvet with a flower stuck on the side near his right ear, and a trail of curled golden ribbon bobbed down around his chin. The party continued on around them, a blur of movement and sound.

“Are you alright?” Janus asked.

The man blinked up at him and then tilted his head slightly to the side as though confused, before a smile slowly grew on his face. “Oh, I’m fine Dove.”

“Dove?” Janus asked.

He giggled. “You have dove feathers on your mask,” he explained, reaching up a hand to touch one. His finger brushed the tip of Janus’s ear, “and I don’t know what else I am supposed to call you.”

 “My name is Lee,” he automatically lied.

“Is it?” he asked, sounding amused. “Doesn’t seem to fit you well. I like Dove better.”

“Oh?” asked Janus. “And what’s your name so I can not call you that?”

The man chuckled. “Call me Pat.”

“Hello Pat,” Janus said.

“I thought you didn’t want to call me by my name.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Hmmm,” Pat said, finger tracing idly across Janus’s forearm which was when Janus realized with a start that he was still holding the man in his arms. He quickly went to release him, which Pat allowed with clear amusement.

 Yet, instead of completely stepping away, Pat grabbed Janus’s arm. “What are you doing all the way over here by the way?” he asked. “Don’t you want to dance.”

“Oh,” Janus hesitated. “I don’t really dance.” Or at least not in the way the people around him were. He’d had basic training for this style, but it had been a while and he was a bit rusty.

“Everyone dances Dove,” Pat claimed. “At least if they know the steps and have the right partner.”

“But I don’t know the steps,” Janus said with an eyebrow raise.

He hummed. “Well, I know the dance pretty well by this point,” Pat said. “Why don’t I teach you how it goes.”

 He was agreeing with the soft beseeching tone before he even realized it. Pat pulled him into the middle of the throng of people. He seemed to think, bopping his head to the music playing for a moment, before looking back at Janus. “Heard of James Johnson?”

Janus inclined his head.

“Well, have you heard his new song? Because there’s a dance that goes with it.”

He took a few steps away from Janus and started to dance. Despite his claim to know the steps, he wasn’t particularly good, but he made up for any loss of rhythm with pure enthusiasm.

 Janus found himself smiling at the man, and after a few moments, joined in with the dance. Despite his lack of practice, he ended up having a better natural rhythm than Pat. Pat didn’t seem to mind that he was being outperformed, however. On the contrary, he giggled at himself the couple of times he stumbled.

When he fell into Janus’s arms for the second time that night, Janus decided he’d probably had enough dancing for the moment and pulled him off to the side to get something to drink and cool down a bit.

He watched the man take a snack and some punch from one of servers and thank him happily before turning back to Janus. Pat was easily able to keep Janus’s attention as they chatted. He was bubbly and soft, and Janus found himself enchanted as they talked.

 He was explaining the steps of a different dance, a couples one. “Knowing how to perform the tango will entrance any girl you want,” Pat said, something mischievous sparkling in his eyes. “Assuming you’re that type of fella.”

“As opposed to what?” Janus asked.

Pat leaned in a bit closer. Not too much, but enough that he was definitely in Janus’s space. “A different type of fella,” he said simply, before smiling and leaning back.

Janus let out a shaky exhale and took a sip of punch. He glanced over at Pat. “Tell me about yourself, Pat,” he said.

Pat hummed in contemplation. “Well, I went to France recently.”

 “You did?”

“Oui, c'était amusant, mais j'ai eu des ennuis”

“What kind of trouble?” Janus asked curiously.

“Oh, the kind with a pretty boy and crepes that were way too sweet. Anyway,” he continued. “Other than that, I mostly help out my friend. He’s an inventor.”

“And how do you help him.”

He shrugged, “Running errands mostly, and making sure he gets enough sleep, because otherwise he gets distracted and forgets. And you?”

“I’m a banker,” he said, remembering his cover, but felt compelled to add, “but I like to travel as well.”

“You do look the type?”

“And how is that?”

   Pat shrugged. “I can always tell a wandering spirt from the masses, and you are easy to spot.” Pat looked at him then with a secret smile on his face, and Janus felt suddenly known, like the man in front of him had known him for years even though they’d only just met. Looking at him then, he wanted suddenly for that to be fact and not a flight of fancy.

He was brought firmly back to reality in the next moment. “Lee,” a pointed and familiar voice said. Janus’s head snapped up to see Remus, staring at him. He tapped his wrist. Janus glanced at his own wrist: 10:58pm. He just barely managed not to curse.

 “I,” he said looking up at Pat. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“That’s okay,” Pat said easily. “It is getting rather late.”

“Yes,” Janus agreed. “Well… goodbye.”

Pat, titled his head, a half smile on his face. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Janus nodded, and turned away from him towards Remus. He didn’t look back as they excited the ballroom. They snuck into a small side closet for coats that wasn’t being used as it was summer.

“So,” Remus said when the door closed behind them.

“Don’t,” warned Janus.

“I’m not one to judge,” Remus said.

“Shut up.” He glanced at his watch. It was 11:02. “We’ll go in 5.”

 “I have to give it to you. He was very cute.”

“We’re not talking about it.”

Remus just laughed joyfully, and Janus did his best to halt the blood rushing to his cheeks.

At 11:07, well into their window, they slipped back out of the closet, and towards the stairs as the party raged on.

Despite how Remus usually never shut up, he was able to be quiet when it counted. They snuck to the master bedroom of the home’s owners in silence. The door was already wide open by the time they got there, and Janus didn’t think anything of it. At least, he didn’t until they entered the bedroom, and there was someone already there.

 He turned from the dresser he’d been standing in front of to face them, sending Janus the same smile he had down in the ballroom. Janus and Remus both froze. “Sorry, sweetie,” Pat said. “Were you here for this too?” he held up the necklace they’d been sent for. He closed his fist around the charm made out of time travel tech.

“What?” Janus said.

Pat giggled and winked. “Unfortunately, I need it a bit more than you at the moment. So, I’m gonna have to go.” Janus stepped forward, not really sure what he was intending to do, but Pat just smiled. “See you some other time, my Turtle Dove.” With a snap of his fingers and loud crack, he disappeared. The mask he’d been wearing fluttered to the ground.

  Arc I: Finding Cinderella

Chapter 4

Janus was frozen in surprise for a few long moments after Pat disappeared. Which had been, admittedly, his mistake, because, while their window had technically been until 11:17pm and it was only 11:10, the loud crack that whatever Pat had been using for time travel made, garnered the attention of someone else.

“Uh oh,” Remus said, likely hearing footsteps. “Hide.”

That snapped Janus into action, but instead of hiding immediately like a sensible human being, he chose to go for the only link to the man who’d just stolen time travel tech and waltzed away, the mask.

Which was why he ended up getting arrested.

 Remy tsked the moment they were all alone in the police car having come to ‘transfer Lee to another facility.’ Remus was already waiting in the front seat, and flashed Janus a smug smile. If Janus wasn’t still handcuffed, he’d slap him.

“Well,” Remy said. “At least you didn’t shoot anybody like I asked. I was joking by the way. I didn’t really want to pick you up from a 1920s police station period.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Mmm, nah, ‘cause Remus managed to not get arrested this time, so you defiantly screwed something up.”

“Oh, he defiantly wanted to screw something all right,” Remus said joyfully.

 “Remus,” Janus hissed.

“What?” he asked. “I’m not the horny one for once. Well, no, that’s a lie, but it didn’t affect the job this time.”

Janus groaned and leaned his head back against the seat.

Remy pulled into a seemingly random garage around 20 minutes later. “Alright,” he said. “Here we are.” He got out of the car and then helped Janus out before uncuffing him. “Here’s your ‘watch,’” Remy handed him the timepiece that had been confiscated when he’d been arrested.

Janus put it on and activated it. “Shit,” he said.

“What?” Remus asked.

“An appointment with cultural outreach has already been downloaded to my calendar for once we get out of decon.”

 “Oof. Going to baby jail,” Remy laughed. Remus was cackling.

“This,” Janus said, “was not a cultural faux pas. I did nothing that indicated that I was not from this time. I am not some rookie.”

“Don’t forget cell phones don’t exist in the 1920s,” Remus sang.

“The real question is whether or not my foot exists in your…” Remus disappeared before he could finish, a smirk on his face. Janus growled. “By Remy,” he gritted out. He selected the decontamination chamber from his queue, ignoring the appointment that came after it for now.

He knew exactly where Remus would be standing when he landed, which was why he stepped forward on reentry to ram into him.

 He yelped in surprise. “Sorry,” Janus said pleasantly. “I must have also forgotten landing procedures.

Remus laughed good naturally. “Aw, come on Jay,” he said, bumping Janus back, albeit much gentler than Janus had been. “It’s not a big deal. You just go talk with some crusty old college professor who is far too interested in spoons and then everything’s fine.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he growled. “They’re treating me like I’m an idiot who accidently invented disco in the 1920s when I was conned by some free agent time traveler.”

“‘Conned,’ Remus said. Is that what they’re calling it now?”

 “I know where and when you live Remus,” Janus said.

Remus gave him a dopey smile as the decontamination cycle finished and the door unlocked. Janus’s wrist buzzed telling him that the coordinates to the cultural outreach office were now unlocked. Instead of pulling them up, Janus walked to the door.

“Um,” Remus said, following him. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to your appointment?” Janus just kept walking towards their office. “Uh… Jan?”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that I have to go to cultural outreach,” Janus said. “In fact, no one can make me. If they want me to go have a discussion about the definition of ‘bushwa,’ they’re going to have to have me dragged there.”

 “Mmm, I feel like The Boss won’t be too happy about that, and I have a feeling she’d be 100% down to dragging you there herself.”

“Well, then, let her,” Janus said, stalking through the door to his office. “I’m not going to…”

“Ah, Agent Picani,” the woman standing next to his desk, clearly waiting for him, said when he came through the door. “Dr. Picani was informed that there were complications with your last mission and wishes to have a conversation with you and asks that you meet him in his office at the AMO.”

“Oh, um,” Janus said, stumbling a bit before plastering on a regretful half smile. “Unfortunately, I actually have an appointment right now at Cultural Outreach. It’s mandatory and very important, and I have to go now. So, I’ll have to take a raincheck on that.”

 “But-” she started, frowning.

“Remus, work on the report!” Janus said quickly as he waved his hand to bring up his timepiece display and jammed his finger at the glowing appointment card in his queue. A few moments later, Janus was at Cultural Outreach.

Cultural Outreach was not part of the TPI, though it often worked very closely with them. It was a collaboration between the government and multiple universities to help government workers, politicians, and other citizens understand and bridge cultural gaps. It had existed before time travel was invented but had expanded to also teach people who needed to time travel how to behave in unfamiliar times and cultures.

 After it had to be expanded to provide for the TPI, it had been moved to Silver Mountains University. The building had once just been a museum, but it had been thoroughly renovated and there had been add-ons for office space and some classrooms. It was still a museum, however, its purpose had expanded greatly and there were many areas that were off limits to the general public.

One of these areas was the fourth floor, where Janus’s timepiece had dumped him. This was the floor that was almost exclusively for TPI agents and staff of Cultural Outreach who worked with them.

 He immediately turned away from the reception area, hoping that he could escape and go sit on the university’s quad or something of the like for the next hour or so in hopes the woman his brother sent to fetch him would give up and go back to the AMO. Yet, the receptionist apparently saw him.

“Janus Picani?” he asked.

Janus grimaced and turned back towards him. “Yes,” he said.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You’re 5 minutes late for your appointment and seem disoriented.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is your timepiece malfunctioning?”

“No.”

“Uh… okay. Well, if you sign in here, I can take you to your appointment.”

“…Fine.”

 He begrudgingly stepped forward and touched the screen he’d gestured to sign with his fingerprint, and then let the man lead him down the hall.

The door they stopped at was propped open slightly, but he still paused and knocked. “Professor Eran? Your 2:30 is here.”

Janus had just a moment upon hearing the name to think that maybe there was actually some sort of intelligent design of the universe and whatever being of ultimate power had crafted it was a dick.

The door opened and Virgil Eran’s eyes immediately narrowed on him. “Janus.”

“Virgil.”

“I see you’re still late for everything.”

“I see you’re still a bastard.”

 Janus saw the receptionist slowly back away in the direction they’d come.

“Why don’t you come in?” Virgil said faux pleasantly.

Janus did, because he really didn’t have much of a choice at this point unless he wanted to jump out of a window… or push someone out of a window.

Virgil turned back into his office and took a seat behind his desk. Janus unhappily followed him in and sat across from him.

He took his time pulling up whatever the TPI sent him and reading it over. “So, I see you failed your recovery mission and were arrested in 1923.”

 “It wasn’t like that,” Janus said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Virgil gave him that same suspicious look he used to give Janus whenever Janus claimed to have not eaten his hot pockets out of the freezer in the middle of the night. He’d only been lying 80% of the time. Virgil had a tendency to forget what he’d eaten in a half-conscious state at 3 o’clock in the morning.

“I shouldn’t,” Janus snapped defensively. “Nothing went wrong with anyone from the time period. An illegal time traveler screwed up the mission details.”

“Well, it is still protocol to make sure nothing slipped when agents go off script. You weren’t prepared to be in a jail cell, and it is possible that you screwed something up.”

 “I didn’t screw anything up,” Janus growled.

“Alright,” Virgil said pulling up a document on his desk. “The mission started on July 27th, 1923 at 9:58pm, correct?”

“Oh, god, we’re not really going to fill out a time sheet. I don’t have time for that today.”

“It is protocol and best that the information is documented when it is still fresh in your mind. Besides, your schedule has been cleared for the rest of the workday.” The bastard was enjoying this. He knew how much Janus hated this stuff.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Janus said, “it was the damned illicit time traveler.”

“And I will be the judge of that,” Virgil said. Janus should have just bit the bullet and had coffee with his brother. “If you truly did nothing wrong, your supervisor will see that when I send this to her.”

 Yet, despite the fact that Virgil clearly relished in his suffering, he was charitable enough to do most of the actual filling out of the forms. He’d read out the questions and write down what Janus said instead of making him do it himself. Janus really only had to do a quick quality check and sign it at the end.

He still was an asshole about the details, but really he’d been like that about stupid thing like the settings for the dish washer and how the pantry was organized during their college days before they’d had their falling out, so Janus wasn’t particularly surprised. When they were finally done, Virgil sent it off to get filed by the TPI.

 Then, they were left staring at each other with nothing between them but almost a decade of radio silence and a whole lot of awkwardness.

“I should go,” Janus finally said, standing up.

Virgil tilted his head slightly to the side and gave him a half smile. “Don’t lock the door behind you,” he said. “Not that I’d expect you too.”

Janus took it for the clear attempt at a joke it was intended to be and puffed out a breath of amusement with a head shake. “No risk of that,” he said. Then, he turned and walked out of the office.

 Chapter 5

Janus stepped back into the reception area and booted up his time piece. Instinct said to go back to the office despite the fact that it was late enough that most people had gone home, but he hesitated. Surely Emile had given up by now, but considering he’d sent someone to ambush him in his office, Janus wasn’t sure if he should trust that. He could just go home, but he already knew his mind was racing too much to sleep tonight so he’d probably just end up staring at the lake for the next 6 hours. So, he decided on the only other legitimate option he had. He pulled up Remus’s home coordinates and selected.