#see y'all tomorrow hopefully. let's wrap this up this week

[a-b-riddle]

Part Five

Can't stop thinking about the attempt of reconciliation and reader ain't having it. Our girl is going to be wilddddd y'all. Also goodnight. See y'all tomorrow (maybe)

You call Meredith when you get home.

You. Are. Fuming. She's not sure she can ever remember a time you using so many swear words at one time.

How fucking dare them? Immature? You're the immature one? You were the one trying your best to salvage four failing relationship meanwhile none of those assholes could be bothered to try and keep one. They had one person to manage: you.

"I wanna go out this weekend." "Wear something tight and borderline risk indecent exposure."

"You know what I always say," Meredith begins. "The best way to get over someone-"

"is to get under someone else." You finish. You weren't exactly keen on the idea of bringing someone to your bed just yet, but a little attention would do you some good. "I don't want to fuck someone just yet." You admitted. "I'm more on the getting drunk and making out."

"I didn't know we resorted back secondary school heavy petting?" She teased.

"University, Dear." You corrected. "I didn't peak until after I graduated."

"No." She argued. "You didn't put your books down long enough to realize that boys actually wanted to fuck you." You were glad she couldn't see you roll your eyes. "Saturday work for you? I have a late night Friday and won't be up for it."

"That works."

"Sorry." She apologized. "I plan on getting you absolutely smashed so I need to be ready to play the nanny. I know how you love to get drunk and run off."

It was true. You had always found it hilarious when you were drunk to just run. Quite literally run away. It got to a point during university where Meredith would handcuff you to her so you didn't stray.

"I won't run." Your sober mind promised.

"Uh huh." Meredith's tone told you that she knew that was a load of shit. "I'll text Tabs. Let her know the plan."

The next day at the shop was pretty uneventful. No more unexpected visitors. You still had them all blocked. Not caring if now they decided to offer up some bullshit apology.

Months. This had been a steady decline for six months. A text or a simply sorry won't fix this. You weren't sure anything could.

But it didn't matter. You were done and they obviously were too.

You had picked up enough take out to feed a family, but you didn't plan on making your lunch before work or cooking when you got home. The rest of the week you planned on just going through the motions until you could go out Saturday and hopefully get everything out.

You weren't paying attention as you walked down the hallway to your flat. Fishing in your purse for keys. You were at almost at your door when you saw him.

Sitting next to your door was a familiar face. A face you felt you haven't seen in forever.

“What are you doing here, Kyle?" Your voice was flat as you continued to blindly try and find your keys with one hand. Fuck. You really need to clean out your purse...

“My key wouldn’t work.” He explained. "So I’m out here.”

"I'm aware why you're not in my apartment since I changed the locks," you said, trying to keep your irritation at bay. "What I am asking is why did you come here?"

"You won't return any of our messages."

"You're all blocked, so technically I didn't really get any messages." "Besides, you don't get to complain to me about not responding to texts, Kyle Garrick." Your fingers finally wraps around them. God bless. "If you're here for your things, it'll have to wait. I have to sort through everyone's shit and I don't know whose is whose."

"We need to talk." He explains as you put the key into the lock, opening the door.

"Nah," you say scrunching your nose in that way he used to adore. "I'm good. But you can swing by tomorrow and pick up your things if you'd like." You say before trying to shut the door on him. You were stupid in thinking you could be faster than him.

Dammit.

"I know things haven't been good and I've definitely could have been better,'' he admits. "But can you at least try and let us apologize? Let us try and work it out."

"No." You answered, trying to close the door. Not caring if you had to resort to kicking his shins to get him out.

"Why not?" He countered.

“Maybe because I've already tried, Kyle?” You gave up on trying to shut him out. You were strong, but he didn't have any issues in besting you. “Because I actually tried with you. With all of you. You didn’t need to come here giving me excuses about your life being hectic because I’ve made the excuses for you.” You didn't miss how he practically flinched. He had always blamed his busy life. Family. Work. You stopped caring about whatever excuse he gave you and realized it was just that. An excuse. “I’ve been telling myself for months that everything you guys didn’t do for me wasn’t because you didn’t care about me. It was because of the stress of your deployments is the reason none of you tell me when you get back from until it’s time to fuck. I tell myself it’s because of the fucked up situation of me being with all of you that makes it awkward to meet your families. Families you all have that I now know I’m not worthy of meeting.” He wanted to correct you. You were. You were worthy. He was an idiot. “It’s not that I need your excuses to make me feel like what you did was justified. No matter what it was, it was apparently to you because you did it.”

He took a step back, processing everything you had said. He had been selfish. You were the reliable constant in his life. Someone he believed he never disappointed. Someone he couldn't disappoint no matter how many times he fucked up.

You took the opportunity to slam the door. Quickly turning the lock before he had a chance to open it back up.

God...

That felt good.

You had spent that evening collecting their thing in case Kyle did show back up tomorrow. You wouldn't make their lives easier by sorting all their shit and organizing it. Everything. One box. Let them figure it out. You almost had a mind to add a shirt that you knew didn't belong to any of them just to have them argue over it. Or least make them think there was someone else...

You were almost tempted if not for the premise that you wanted them to realize this was their fault. Their fuck up. But now that you were officially all broken up, you were free game.

[rangerbarbz]

Mail Call

Here is my first Stan fluff because my mans deserves some love. Let me know what y'all think and thank you so much for all the support. I love you forever babes <3 (I didn't look over this so i apologize if there's any grammatical errors or typos)

“Mail Call”

You worked for the Post Office at Gravity Falls, Oregon, and you absolutely loved it. It was a relatively easy gig that had great benefits. Plus, you got to meet some “interesting” people to say the least. One of those people was the owner of the Mystery Shack himself, Stan Pines. 

You delivered mail to the Mystery Shack every day but Sunday, so you saw him quite a bit. The first time you met him, he happened to be outside with a young boy and girl who you assumed were his grandchildren. You parked your mail truck beside the mail box and reached behind you for a package addressed to 618 Gopher Road. 

Your presence caught the attention of the young girl who began running over to you. The older man was right behind her with an unhappy expression on his face. “Good afternoon! Is this for you, sweetie?” you asked the girl. She was beaming at you with a glimmer in her eyes. 

“Yup! Thank you mail lady!” She snatched the package excitedly from you and started to turn around, but was blocked by the older man who now had his arms crossed. 

“What is that and how did you pay for it?” he asked, scrunching his eyebrows together. You were surprised by the depth and raspiness of his voice. It was quite attractive, if you were being honest. 

“It’s pig shaped cookie cutters for my new baking show I’m filming with Waddles, and I paid for it with your credit card. Okay, bye!” she said all in one breath. Before he could even respond, she was bolting around him to get inside the house. The man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Is she your granddaughter?” you asked. He looked at you like he had forgotten you had been standing there. 

“Ah no. Mabel’s actually my grand niece” He chuckled. “Good kid when she’s not spending my money.” 

You laughed and glanced up at the broken sign above you two. “I’ve actually never been here before. You work here?” 

He scoffed. “Work here? I own this place, toots. I’m Mister Mystery himself.” He was grinning from ear to ear. You held your hands up in defense.

“Oh, I didn’t realize I was in the presence of a celebrity,” you replied jokingly. He laughed in return.

“Name’s Stan Pines.” He held out his hand towards you. You smiled and reached out towards him. The size difference between you two was made even more obvious when you wrapped your hand around his to shake it. You introduced yourself to him, but he raised an eyebrow and leaned in closer to you. You realized that he had not heard you and repeated yourself. 

“Huh. Pretty name,” Stan said, releasing his gentle grip. You let your hand fall to your side and began to play with a stray thread from the seaming of your work pants. Was he making you nervous?

“Thank you, Stan. Yours too.” He laughed once again and gazed down at his shoes. You suddenly heard a fire alarm blaring from an open window followed by black smoke.

Stan groaned. “I better go see what the hell that kid’s doing. I, uh. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Hopefully with no more packages that is.”

You giggled. “I cannot guarantee any more packages, but I will 100% be seeing you tomorrow.” 

He winked at you. “I’ll be looking forward to it.” You felt your cheeks grow hot as you gave him a little wave goodbye and entered your mail truck. He was giving you a toothy grin and waving back at you. What you didn’t see was him wiping the sweat from his brow and palms. Very few people made Stan Pines nervous, and you had become one of them. 

The next few weeks, you continued flirting back and forth with each other. It became the highlight of your day when you stopped at his mailbox to already see him standing there. He always asked you how your day was before telling you some outrageous story. Some days it was about a kooky visitor at the Mystery Shack while others it was You enjoyed listening to his gravelly voice and watching his borderline theatrical gestures as he spoke. 

He was undeniably sexy for a man his age. His glasses accentuated his strong jaw, and his thick ashy hair was to die for. You also found his blunt personality and his confidence to be alluring. You only ever saw him in his Mr. Mystery suit, but you weren’t complaining. It helped show off those muscles from his boxing days, and he always looked so sophisticated.

One day when you drove your usual route around Gravity Falls and stopped at the shack, he wasn’t there. You frowned and looked around to see if maybe he was walking up to you. Alas, you couldn’t find him. You put his electric bill in his mailbox and left wondering where he could be. 

You eventually returned to the post office after tapping anxiously on your steering wheel the entire time driving back. You stepped out of your mail truck and walked into the office to begin sorting packages. 

The bell above the door jingled meaning someone had walked in. “Hello, welcome to the Gravity Falls Post- Stan?” You had turned around to see him standing sheepishly in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. He was missing his fez and you got to see his thick gray hair. In his hands, he was holding an envelope decorated with shiny, brightly-colored stickers.

A slight blush started to spread across his face. “Hey, Doll. Sorry I didn’t see ya earlier today. I was working on this letter.” His eyes wouldn’t meet you. This wasn’t the suave man you usually spoke to. 

You grinned. “Stanley, you know you could’ve just put that in the mailbox, and then I would’ve come to get it, right?” He snorted and shook his head.

“Yes, smartass, I am aware.” He approached the counter that you were standing behind. “I came here because this letter is for you.” You could feel your face heat up as he handed you the sparkly envelope still not looking at you. 

“You… You wrote me a letter? Why?” you asked, running your fingers over the pink letters that spelled your name. Stan then turned his head to you and shoved his hands in his pockets. 

“Look, I, uh,” he paused, “I like you. Our talks make me… happy. And… Oh just read the damn letter! That’s why I wrote it anyway. I’m no good at these things.” He crossed arms in frustration. He scoffed. “If you don’t feel the same, that's fine. I mean who would? Especially-”

“Stan!” you interjected. His eyes met yours. You gave him a reassuring smile. “I like you, too. Like a lot. Between the looks and personality, it was impossible not to fall.” You couldn’t believe you just said that last part out loud. Hopefully you didn’t scare him off. 

Stan gave you a toothy smile and rubbed the back of his neck. His face was beet red. Frankly, it was very satisfying to see him so flustered. “Well, thank you, Doll. You’re a babe, too. Inside and out.” 

You giggled at his strange way of complimenting you. “Thank you, Stan. You’re a sweetheart. I can’t wait to read this letter on company time.” 

Stan laughed. “That’s my girl,” he said as he began walking out the door. He opened it and before he left he said, “You should come over after your shift is done. I know Mabel is dying to hear what you thought of her handiwork there.” 

“I’ll be there.” 

“Good. I’ll see you then, Doll.” He gave you a slight wave and shut the door behind him. You could hear the sound of him yelling “YES!” from the other side. As soon as he peeled off in his Diablo, you carefully opened the envelope to reveal a piece of notebook paper with just as many stickers. It said in the same pink ink your name was written:

Dear Y/N,

I hope you don’t think I’m some dork for writing you a letter instead of telling you face to face how I feel about you. I’m a little rusty in the romance department. I wanted to tell you that I always look forward to our talks. I never thought I would crush on someone who delivers me bills and tax forms. What are the odds?

You make me feel young again. I like how you cut up with me and how you don’t treat me like some old man. I like how kind you are to the kids and how you make my pacemaker work extra hard. I really hope you will come around more often. I also wanted to invite you on a date this Saturday night out of town. I’ll pick you up. You do enough driving. Plus, only tools don’t pick up their date. 

Love, 

Stanley Pines

P.S. I think you’re cute in your work uniform despite what you think. 

[enhastolemyheart]

JEALOUSY, JEALOUSY! — NISHIMURA RIKI

PAIRING | niki x gn!reader

GENRE | pure fluff, angst (but not really), est. relationship, uni au, mention of Jo from &team, its takes place in a party setting, but there's no content like drugs, alcohol etc. mentioned, i mean cmon i wouldn't do that to niki y'all so its a pg friendly party.

WARNINGS | mentions of food and drinks, Niki ignores the reader, summer au, reader is whipped (lol), niki is too, proofread but please do tell me if any mistakes

PROMPTS USED | 6- "can you stop ignoring me please" and 88- "wait a minute... are you jealous?"

WORD COUNT | 2.5k + (DAYUM, wasn't expecting that-)

A/N | this is my first ever oneshot! thank you @badmuni for requesting! hopefully it's up to your expectations :)) this took a while to write ngl, i was jus under the impression of getting it perfect and trying to rush into it but i realised that i shd write when I'm in a flow and that works best for me!! Enjoy!! I only made it into a uni au so it would fit my idea better so please don't come @ me— reblogs are feedback are very much appreciated!

09:13 pm.

It’s a Saturday night. And your lovely boyfriend took you to one of his friends’ Jay’s party he was hosting as a celebration to start off the summer. 

You honestly did not want to attend. No offence, his friends are great, and they treat you very nicely, but all you wanted to do was spend some time with your boyfriend at home, all cozy in pyjamas and a movie night, maybe even build a ‘lil blanket fort ‘cause why not? And you told him that. But all he did was pull out his signature puppy eyes and his ‘lil signature pout and beg you to go to the party with him. 

‘Please y/n, we rarely hang out outside, and it is summer! So, we should be outside having fun, partying.’ he tries to reason with you.

And of course, you, yes you, being very much whipped for him, lets him have his way.

—

You sit there idly, eyes scanning the crowd of people. And that's a lot of people. Half the universities’ student body is probably here. Your eyes land on your boyfriend, who seems to be dancing with Jay and Sunghoon and jake. They were all situated a few feet away from the table you're sitting in, Heeseung is off to the side dancing with a girl who he has been supposedly seeing for the past two weeks.

You huff not so loudly but it was somehow loud enough for your Niki to hear, and that leads to him making his way over to you, with a huge lovestruck grin on his face. He observed you as walked towards you, doe eyes scanning the crowd, your fingers playing with the brim of the glass you were holding on the table with the other hand. Your hair is neatly styled and flow-y and he loves that look on you, even if you look in everything, this is his favourite.

“Hello baby.”

Your attention from the crowd shifts to lad in a black button-up shirt, sleeves rolled up till it touches his elbows in front of you. You let out a big smile upon seeing his face. You turn towards him in the high stool you were sitting in, leaving the cup on the table, “hello.”

“Are you enjoying the party so far?” he asks as he puts his arms on either side of the stool, caging you in his arms in some sort of way. He leans in and gives a small peck on your cheek causing you to smile even more.

You slowly press your palms against his chest before dragging them upwards and wrapping them around your boyfriends’ neck, “it’s not bad. Just wanted some time with you is all.”

He chuckles lowly before leaning in, pressing a small kiss on your soft lips, “whatever my baby wants, is what my baby gets.” He put his hands in front of you, signaling you to take it. And so you do, and the next thing you know, he’s taking you to a corner of the dancefloor, the floor vibrating because of the bass of the song being played as well as the way the peoples’ bodies are moving like there is no tomorrow.

He gently places his hands on the sides of your waist firmly, yours going around his shoulders. You both sway to the beat together, huge smiles slapped across both of your faces. He even pulls away occasionally to take your palm in his and lightly twirl you around, this move makes you break out in laughter, which causes him to laugh as well, heart swelling. getting close to each other again, your side cheek pressed against his chest and his hands moving lower to your hips.

You bask in each others’ presence. You close your eyes to cherish this little moment you had together, making your night one of the best nights you’ve had. He takes you face in his hands, cradling it while looking into your eyes with the only feeling you both could explain right now.

Love.

His gaze lowers from your orbs to your soft and plump lips. The way they look so kissable right now. He couldn't resist the urge to not kiss you, so he leans in halfway, waiting patiently for you to catch on. You do catch on it the second he looks at your lips, so you lean in the rest of the way, lips finally touching. Both of you break out in grins as you kiss, his hands delicately holding your face and yours wrapping around his waist, squeezing the material of his shirt.

“I love you y/n.” he tucks a piece of your hair behind your ear before looking into your eyes.

You stand on your tippy toes and give him a peck, “and I love you.”

Niki hums as you call out to him, “my feet are getting tired.” he chuckles before taking your hand in his, before making way to the table where you were initially sitting at,  “okay let’s go sit down, I'll get you a drink.”

“Okay.”

You sit down at the table, and he kisses your hand while maintaining eye contact with you before he walks away. You rest your head on your palm as you wait for your Niki, you look at your nails, keeping a mental note to colour them your favourite shade now that you don’t have to worry about school and its rules for the next two months.

“y/n?”

You whip your head towards the direction where that sound came from and you couldn’t believe your eyes. You see your longtime childhood best friend, Jo. He was your partner in crime your whole life up until sophomore year of high school. He had to transfer because of his father’s job but nonetheless, tried to keep in touch but ultimately stopped because school was just getting busy, and now you're soon to be sophomore of college after this summer.

He gets closer to you and you jump out of your seat to greet him in a hug, “Jo? Oh my god how long has it been since I've seen you? How are you?” he lowly chuckles as he pulls away, taking in your features, saying that you didn't glow up would be an understatement. You have matured so much over the course of your last two years of school, features much more prominent and even earning yourself a pretty and amazing boyfriend.

“Yeah, I'm good. It was hard—” Jo gets cut off when he sees a figure approaching from behind you and wrapping their arms around your waist. You lightly jump at the sudden contact but melt into it knowing it is Niki. Niki gives a lip-tight smile to the boy before turning to you, placing a kiss on the crown of your head. He witnessed your ‘lil moment with the boy and did not like it.

“y/n, who is this guy?” Niki asks in a sweet but sarcastic tone, eyes shooting lasers at the poor boy.

“I’m Jo,” he answers before you could, taking a step forward, extending his hand out, “and you are?” 

“I’m Niki, their boyfriend.” your cheeks became hot at the way he introduced himself. More than six months into dating yet he always makes your heart race and cheeks burn. Jo awkwardly puts his hand back down to his side after he sees that the gesture wasn't returned.

“Ah I see,” your friend exclaimed before looking at you, “well it was nice seeing you again y/n, hopefully we can catch up properly.” Niki did not avert his gaze from the boy, he couldn't deny the fact that he was good looking. It made him all insecure.

You reciprocate the smile, “yeah for sure!”

“Bye y/n.”

“Bye bye.” you waved your hand as he walked away. You turn to your boyfriend beside who seems to be avoiding your eye contact, jaw clenched.

“Who was that?” he asked you while looking at you, annoyance (and jealousy) laced in his voice.

You play with the side bangs that are in his eyes, “he was my childhood friend, he moved to Busan after sophomore year of high school. Maybe he is back in town for summer.”

“Yeah you mentioned him.” he huffs, you know that whatever happened a few seconds ago dampened his mood, so you will do whatever to bring back your bubbly boyfriend. 

You were about to lean in to give him a kiss but were interrupted because of Jake who cleared his throat. “Sorry to ruin your guys’ moment, but Niki we need help with the music. Something is wrong.”

“Yeah I'll be there.'' Jake nods and walks away with that. He turns to before handing you your drink and giving you a peck on your lips, “I'll be back okay?”

You hum in acknowledgement and sit back in your stool, sighing.

—

09:56 pm

You didn’t think you’d be in the same position again.

Your head resting on your palm as you wait for your boyfriend. Jake said he just needed help with music, why the hell is it taking so long? You decide to wait for five more minutes but nothing changes. 

Where the hell did Niki go? You get off your beloved seat and start to search for your man. Considering the fact he is a big giant, it wasn’t that hard. You make your way to him, he spots you a few feet away and rolls his eyes looking away. That's weird, was everything okay? Niki doesn’t usually get annoyed with you, only uses the emotion to tease you in case you tease him in the first place and he just pretends to shrug it off when in reality he becomes a blushy mess.

You tap lightly on his shoulder but he ignores it. I pout before pursuing your lips, brows furrowing, trying to decipher why he was ignoring you all of a sudden. He was just giggly and happy and blushing and having fun with you a minute ago. You walk around him to face him and look up at him, he looks like he wants to be left alone, kind of grumpy too. 

“Do you wanna dance? my feet aren’t hurting anymore.” you ask as you take a hold of his wrist, he shrugs it off before looking at you in the eye, with a cold and hard stone face. Why is he acting like this? 

It looked like he was burning holes through your skin when he was staring at you, emotionless, he then turned to the boys, saying that he needed another sprite. Ignoring you once again, he leaves. You don’t hesitate to follow him, you need to know why your boyfriend was acting like that and you wanted to fix it.

You don’t necessarily like this Niki, whenever he acts like this, he gives you the cold shoulder, and you did nothing wrong, or at least you thought you did. He did this one time, he left you in the dark for about two days, but his excuse was because his friends bet him to do that because Niki wanted to prove to them that he isn’t a clingy person.

But you love clingy Niki. The way he shows you care, treats you with kindness and makes you feel divine and like you’re on the top of the world. And you know that he loves treating you like that too.

“Is everything okay Niki? Did I do something wrong?” you ask as you try to reach out to him, but escapes by the mere second, avoiding eye contact with you as he waits for the person before to take a drink and leave.

He tunes out your voice that's asking him so many random questions and just focuses on what’s in front of him.

You wave your hand in front of his face, getting frustrated, “hello?? I'm talking to you. Can you stop ignoring me please?” He doesn’t respond. Instead he just takes a can, pops it open and takes a big gulp of the carbonated liquid. He turned to walk away but you were faster than that. You stop in front of him and take his wrist dragging him to a corner.

“Okay, you are going to tell me why you aren’t talking to me right now. And we are not going anywhere until I get an answer, ” You huff as you cross your arms on your chest and look at him fire in your eyes. Your eyes soften as you sigh, seeing him not moving an inch, “please just tell me Niki, you are worrying me.”

“No one asked you to be so worried about me y/n, why don’t you just go hang out with Josh.”

You raised your head with brows furrowed, “what are you talking about?”

He gulps down the rest of the liquid before throwing it away, coincidentally, the can fell into a bin, “you know what I'm talking about,” he takes a step closer, “you were so touchy and smile-y with that shithead, why don’t you go hang out with him?”

“We were childhood friends, we saw each other after more than 3 years and I didn’t know he would be back in town, “ you as well take a step closer, now only millimetres apart, “I’m sorry I got caught up in the moment I guess, he is just very touchy with people Niki.”

“I still don’t like him.” the boy in front of you utters under his breath.

“Wait a minute. . . are you jealous?” the smirk on your face grew a small bit when he widened his eyes.

“What?! No, of course not!” your boyfriend doesn’t hesitate to scream to defend himself. 

“You were, weren't you?” you look at him with your eyes squinted. He turns red, cheeks heating up, fervently shaking his head to prove your statement wrong. As much as it is cute, you can never get your boy to admit the fact that he was jealous.

You just chuckle before bringing up a hand to his cheek, leaning in and kissing his lips, he kisses back instantly, one hand holding the side of your waist and the other on top your hand that is holding the side of his face. You pull away only to be met with his lips again, he turns his head to kiss you deeper. The both of you pull each other closer, smiling in your kiss before pulling away for real this time. 

“I'm sorry y/n and I love you.” Niki says as he cradles your face in his hands, looking at you with lovestruck eyes.

“It's okay Niki, and I love you too.” you peck his lips, never getting enough of him.

“Now let’s go dance? I wanna show to all the people how great of a s/o I have and how good of a dancer they are.” He says smugly, kissing your cheek. You blush hard and try to avoid his gaze that’s making your cheeks redden even more.

“Yeah. let’s go.”

A/N | Aannnnddddd it's done!! yayy!! less gaurr!! again thank you muni for requesting, hope you liked it ;)) this is my first ever original writing post on here so hoping y'all support me. I am a baby writer so I'm always open to tips and advice!! Thank youu !!

PEACE AND LOVE <33

© ENHASTOLEMYHEART ON TUMBLR, 2023 — do not translate, copy, modify, or repost any of my works as your own in any platform or form of use.

[mackenzielovee]

my girl - rafe cameron

a/n: I literally wrote this in 4 hours and did not proofread sorry but I really like it so hopefully y'all do too !! P.S.: this is literally so not what Rafe would actually be like in some of the scenes, but I think the story itself is cute okay (not my gif)

Summary: you're dating Rafe Cameron, who can't seem to keep his hands off of you and can't seem to not get jealous over every guy that even looks at you

Warnings: slight smut (nothing actual sexual), mentions of sex, swearing, mentions of fighting (no actual fighting), mad! rafe

Word Count: 6.6k

series masterlist

my writing

Rafe had always been a jealous boyfriend. Ever since the two of you had started dating, he seemed to be unable to allow any other guy to even look at you without it sending him into a fit of rage. It has caused many fights between the two of you, but over the now almost two year long relationship, you two had been working on it. He's gotten better, not causing as many fights and learning how to breathe through his anger instead of coming out fists first.

However, he had become even more handsy than he already was. If you wouldn't let him fight, he decided to just keep his hands all over you as a way of claiming you. Wherever you two were, his hand was holding yours, or around your waist, on your ass, he didn't care. Just as long as every soul on the island knew you were not to be talked to.

You spent the night at Rafe's last night and woke up tangled in his sheets and his scent. You always slept later than him, he seems to always be an early riser, and is not in the bed when you open your eyes. You grab his shirt off the floor and wrap it around your bare chest, then slide on shorts. Quickly checking in the mirror to make sure your hair doesn't look like you spent the entire night getting railed by the eldest Cameron boy, you open the door and head downstairs.

Approaching the kitchen, you can hear Ward and Rafe having a conversation. You debate going back upstairs and waiting for Rafe, but their words draw you in.

"I want those generators handled tonight, Rafe. I mean it," Ward tells him, his tone harsh.

"I can't do that tonight, Dad, I have-"

"Rafe, I swear to God. I asked you to get this done for me last fucking week and here I am with no goddamn generators! I mean, I just don't understand. I gave you money, right? Didn't I give you money?"

"Yes, sir," Rafe's voice sounds fragile. You take a deep breath, wanting to step in but knowing it will only make things worse for him.

"Yes, I did," Ward answers himself, ignoring Rafe, "So what the hell is the problem?"

"I'm going to handle it, Dad," Rafe says.

Apparently, that answer isn't good enough, because you hear Ward slam his hand down on the kitchen counter.

"You damn well better, son," Ward spits, "You have until tomorrow, and if I don't see any results, you can go sleep on the damn Cut."

Your eyes shut at his threat, knowing Rafe takes that to heart. He loves and adores his dad, would do absolutely anything for his dad, and this is what he gets. You listen to Ward go back into his office and slam the door, then almost immediately, you hear Rafe groan. All you want to do is rush in there, but you don't want him to know that you were listening. His dad is a soft subject and every time you start to tell him that his dad should treat him better, he shuts down. He doesn't like to talk about it.

After another minute, you walk in carefully and find your boyfriend leaning over the sink with his head down. His hair has clearly been messed with, telling you the stress is getting to him. He's shirtless, wearing only athletic shorts. You frown and walk a little closer, then speak.

"Morning," you chirp, putting a smile on your face. Rafe spins around and smiles when he sees you standing there in his shirt.

"Good morning, baby," he walks over and wraps his arms around you, pulling you close. You breathe in his familiar scent and hug him tightly, hoping to comfort him a bit.

"You doing okay?" you ask, smushed against his chest.

"Yes," he states, his voice even, "Sleep well?"

You could groan as he changes the subject, but instead, you plant a kiss on his chest and then rest your chin on his sternum as you look up at him. His eyes look tired, his hair messy, but he could not be more handsome to you.

"The best," you give him a cheesy grin. He smiles back and gives you a kiss on the forehead, then starts to pull away.

"I was thinking," he tells you as he steps toward the fridge, "About tonight-"

"You don't have to come," you cut him off, remembering his conversation with his dad, "It's okay. It's just some stupid dinner."

Rafe looks over at you like you're crazy. You thought by giving him a way out, he'd take it and handle things for his dad. But by the looks of things, he seems to think he has it under control.

"Of course I'm coming," he frowns, "Unless you don't want me there."

You shake your head quickly, "No, I do. I just thought, you know, if you have other stuff you need to take care of, well, it's okay."

Rafe's eyes soften as he stares at you, and you see his chest relax as he exhales. He runs his hand through his hair once again, messing it up even more. You cross your arms over your chest as you stand there.

"You heard," Rafe states.

It's not a question, it's a fact. He knows you know. You don't know what to say, so you just nod, ignoring the 'fuck' he whispers under his breath as he closes the fridge.

"Baby, I'm going to this dinner tonight. I want to be with you. I'll take care of the stupid generators before dinner even starts. Don't worry about it."

He's almost convincing, but you know him better than that. He's worries, but trying to hide it for your sake. Your dad had informed you last week that his old friend from college would be on the island with his family and they were coming for dinner. Originally, when you told Rafe about it, his response had been 'yawn' and he had not cared about attending, but when you mentioned that they had a nineteen year old son attending college in South Carolina that would be with them, Rafe asked you what time he should arrive.

You want to laugh at his statement about wanting to be with you, when in reality, you know he just wants to mark his territory with this college kid. Frankly, you could care less about the whole dinner and would rather just get take-out and watch movies with Rafe all night.

"Okay," you say, the only response you can think of that won't start a fight.

He steps over to you and pulls your chin up, giving you a gentle kiss.

"I promise I will get this taken care of," he stares at you, meaning it.

You nod, swallowing as you do so. You really don't want him getting kicked out of the house because he is too busy being jealous.

"Now," he smiles, "What do you want to eat?"

Rafe cooks you breakfast and you two sit in the kitchen as you laugh and eat off each other's plates, completely forgetting that Ward's office is right off the kitchen and he can probably hear the two of you acting like idiots. You don't particularly give a fuck about what Ward thinks, but you know Rafe does. Once you're done, he helps you do the dishes, mainly just standing behind you, resting his chin on your shoulder and reaching around you to grab the dishes once you've washed them.

He keeps 'accidentally' touching your butt in between his drying duties, but you don't complain. You just remind him that any one of his family members could walk in at any point, to which he simply tells you he doesn't care.

After the dishes, you two head upstairs and shower in Rafe's bathroom. Of course, with Rafe, showering together is not simply showering. You two are in there for so long that the water runs cold, but neither of you care. When he finally sets you back down, he smirks at the look on your face.

"Can you walk?"

He's proud of his work, you can tell, but you roll your eyes at him. Your stomach is still twisting and turning - it's always fucking amazing with him. You just nod, and when he takes his hands out from around your waist and stops holding you up, you have to grab onto him. Your legs feel like absolute jello.

"Just a minute," you tell him, and he laughs.

He laughs so loud that it echoes, making you smile. You love him like this, when he isn't moody or high or worried about anything. Even though he has every right to be.

"Asshole," you mutter as he laughs at you.

"Aw, come on, now," he shakes his head, smiling but no longer laughing, "I've got you, baby."

He shuts the water off with his free hand and keeps the other wrapped tightly around you. He's holding your entire body weight up with one arm and it's enough to turn you on again, which makes you groan.

"What?" he grins down at you.

You shake your head at him as he grabs a towel and wraps it loosely around you, then picks you up bridal style and uses your legs to push open the shower door. You know you probably could do this yourself now, but you fucking love when he takes care of you like this.

He opens the door to his bathroom and brings you over to his bed, laying you down with the towel under you. It absolutely does not cover your whole body and you're afraid of getting his mattress wet when he jumps in right beside you. No towel, no drying off, just soaking wet and naked.

"Rafe, what the hell, you're going to ruin your mattress," you sit up, trying to get up from the bed.

He wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you back in with him, and you know he's too strong to fight.

"I don't care," he says, burying his face into your neck and breathing you in.

You take a deep breath, grinning as he hits the sweet spot on your neck. You can feel his lips working, and you know a bruise will form in that spot momentarily, but you cannot care about that now. It feels too damn good.

"We have dinner with my parents tonight," you tell him as he pulls his lips from that spot and moves to another, "I can't show up with hickeys all over me."

Rafe looks up at you innocently, then shrugs and gets back to work on our neck. He kisses it for a second, then stops.

"You'll just have to wear something that covers everything, then, because I'm planning on leaving quite a few."

You laugh as he starts again. You bring your hands up to his hair and start running your fingers through it, making him moan against your skin.

"Oh, so that's what this is about," you tease him.

"I don't know what you're referring to," he denies. You grin.

"You just want me to be covered head to toe at dinner, huh?"

You can feel him grin against your neck but he doesn't respond, just continues kissing you. You let him, because it just feels so good, even though you know you should be getting home soon to get ready.

"Rafe, I should probably-" you say after a few minutes, but he stops you.

"Probably stay," he mumbles, finally pulling his face out of our neck and kissing you on the lips instead.

You could kiss him forever, you swear you could, but it's getting later and you still have no idea what you're going to wear.

"Babe," you pull away and speak against his lips, "I should get home."

He groans and collapses off of you, laying now only on his side of the mattress. You sit up and put your feet out on the floor, making sure your legs are working now. You let the towel fall on the floor, not even bothering to turn around as you know Rafe has a huge smirk on his face watching you search for your own clothes.

You slide your shirt over your head once you find it, then pull your shorts on once again. You find your bra but don't feel like bothering with it.

"Don't worry about your underwear," Rafe smirks from the bed, watching you search for it. You glare at him.

"Rafe," you groan.

He gives you his best cheeky grin, making you smile as well. You shake your head at him and then grab your bag from the floor, stuffing your phone and bra inside. Then, you walk over to your naked boyfriend and lean down to give him a kiss.

He grabs the back of your neck and tries to get you to continue the kiss, but you pull back against him and he lets you go.

"Please get up and dry off, I'm not sleeping on a moldy mattress," you tell him.

He grins, "Does that mean you'll sleep over again tonight?"

You raise you eyebrow at him, teasing him, "Not if the mattress is wet."

You walk over to his bedroom door and then turn, watching as he quickly stands up and pulls boxers over his body. His hair is still soaking wet, but the rest of his body looks pretty dry now.

"I'll put my mattress out in the sun," he tells you.

You roll your eyes and blow him a kiss, then pull open the door.

"I love you!" Rafe yells the second you exit his room, so you pull back and peak your head in once again. He smiles as you do.

"I love you, too. Don't be late."

Rafe listens to you and shows up to your house forty-five minutes before you had told him to be there. You are in the middle of straightening your hair, still in your robe, when you hear his voice downstairs talking to your brother. Quickly, you set the straightener down and walk out of your room, hurrying down the stairs. It's only been two hours, but you can't wait to see him.

"Yes, dude, let's play. I'm sure your sister's still upstairs, yeah?" you hear him say, just as you enter the living room.

"Not quite," you smile as he turns around.

He looks so handsome, wearing his long sleeve blue button up. He fixed his hair up from the way it looked this morning, and although it looks really good, you can't wait to mess it up later. You, on the other hand, only have half of your hair straightened and still have a robe on. You're thankful at least your makeup is done.

"Hey, baby," he grins, tucking his arm around your waist and pulling you to him to kiss him.

"Gross," your little brother remarks, firing up his Xbox to play a game with your boyfriend.

Rafe hits him lightly on the back of his head.

"Dude, one day, you'll understand," Rafe tell him, not removing his arm from around you, "Want me to come keep you company while you get ready?"

You shake your head, then point to your brother to silently tell Rafe to hang out with him. He doesn't have a lot of friends in school, so you know that will mean a lot to him. Rafe nods, then leans over to whisper in your ear.

"Just... call me, when it's time for you to get dressed, yeah?"

You roll our eyes and watch him smirk, then push him away. You start up the stairs again, watching as Rafe sits down on the couch beside your brother.

"Have fun," you tell them.

Once you get back upstairs, you finish up your hair and then step to your closet to figure out what to wear. You make up your mind just as you hear your door open slightly.

"Baby?" Rafe calls out.

You exit your closet and find him peaking his head into your room. When he sees you, still in your robe, he opens the door wider and slips inside, then shuts it.

"Doorbell rang. They're here."

You nod and pull your outfit from the closet, untying your robe and then stepping to your dresser to pick out underwear and a bra.

"Isn't this my job?" he comes up behind you, his arms wrapping around you and his hands taking yours, guiding you to the underwear and bra he wants you wearing.

"Honey, these don't even match," you turn around, holding the combination up as proof.

"That's what I want you to wear," he asserts, "And we don't have time to argue. Now are you going to get dressed, or am I going to have to do it for you?"

This is the Rafe you love. You can tell he's getting ready to assert his dominance over you at this dinner with the way he's already starting to behave. Even though sometimes it can be annoying, it's his way of showing you he cares about you and wants him all to himself.

"You might have to do it for me," you tease, biting your lip just to get him riled up.

"Fuck, baby," he whispers, leaning down.

Just as he's an inch away from your lips, you pull back.

"I really have to get dressed now."

He swears again, then collapses on your bed to watch the show. He smirks once you put on the underwear and bra he picked out for you, never taking his eyes off of you once as you continue to dress.

You hear your dad yell for you from downstairs, so you walk over and hold out your hand for Rafe to take.

"Best behavior, yes?" you ask him as you pull him up.

He leans down and kisses you, wrapping an arm around your waist.

"We'll see," he teases you.

You roll your eyes and drag him out of your room with your hand in his. He allows it, mostly because he gets to look at your ass as you walk in front of him. You two head down the stairs quickly, hearing new voices in the living room.

"Ah, here she is," your dad exclaims as you and Rafe appear, "Honey, this is my buddy, Michael, his wife, Caroline, and their son, Will. Guys, this is my daughter, Y/N, and her boyfriend, Rafe."

"Lovely to meet you," Michael says to you, his smile warm and friendly. He then holds out his hand for Rafe to shake, which luckily is not the hand that he has tightly wrapped around your waist.

"You, too, thanks for coming," you say politely.

Will steps forward, and you hear Rafe scoff.

"Nice to meet you, Y/N," he says, holding his hand out for you to shake.

You can feel Rafe staring at his outstretched hand, but you reach out anyway. You ignore him when he tightens his grip around your waist. When Will doesn't immediately drop your hand, Rafe speaks up.

"I'm Rafe," your boyfriend informs him.

Will drops your hand and glances at him only for a second before he looks away.

"Good to meet you, man," Will nods, then extends his hand to Rafe as well. You can tell it's forced.

"Yeah," Rafe snaps back, squeezing Will's hand just a bit too hard as they shake. After a second, both boys drop hands.

"Relax," you whisper only to him, not loud enough that anyone else could hear. Will and his family turn back to your folks and your brother, leaving the two of you to bicker in peace.

"He looked at you like-" he starts, but you cut him off by stepping front of him and setting your hand on his chest.

"Baby," you warn him, "Relax."

You repeat yourself, feeling the tension in his body drop. He just nods his head, wanting so badly to pull you into him but knows he can't because it would draw attention. And more than anything, he doesn't want Will to know he feels threatened.

"Is everyone ready to eat?" your mom asks, pointing to the dining room just off the kitchen.

Rafe reaches down and takes your hand as everyone moves into the dining room. The two of you wind up entering last, so everyone watches as Rafe pulls your chair out for you, then pushes it in once you're seated. Rafe glares at Will as he continues to stare, which causes him to look away. Once Rafe is seated, he immediately rests his hand on your thigh.

Your dad starts rambling on with Michael at one end of the table about whether or not he's caught any of the games recently, so your mom and Caroline launch into conversation with the kids.

"So, Will, how do you like USC?" your mom asks him.

Your brother passes the chicken to Rafe, which he first places on your plate, then on his own. You thank him quietly, not being able to tell his mood anymore. He hands you the dish of chicken and points to your dad, telling you to pass it as he returns his hand to your leg under the table.

"It's great," Will speaks up, "Classes are hard, but nothing I can't handle."

Rafe snorts, but keeps his head down so as not to be too direct. You set your hand on his under the table and give it a squeeze, telling him to knock it off.

"That's great," your mom smiles, glancing only for a second at you and Rafe, "Y/N's been looking at schools."

Will glances at you as you look up and smile to your mom. Rafe hates talking about you going to college, because it means you might leave him. He had decided when he graduated that college wasn't his route, and you saw nothing wrong with that.

"What schools are you thinking about?" Will asks you.

"Um," you hesitate, glancing at Rafe only for a second before you start again, "Chapel Hill. It's close, you know."

You're trying your best to keep the college talk to a minimum for Rafe's sake, so you keep your answer brief. Will catches onto how uncomfortable Rafe is.

"Any particular reason you want to stay close?" Will asks, already knowing the answer full well.

Truth is, Will couldn't care less about you. But Rafe being so territorial earlier pissed him off, and he's doing whatever he can to get under his skin.

Rafe looks up at Will and glares at him for asking such a ridiculous question, while he squeezes your leg under the table again. You're fully aware of what Will is trying to do to your boyfriend, so you set your hand over his again to relax him.

"My family," you reply, keeping your tone light even though you could tell him off right here and now.

Will nods, not satisfied with your answer. You hope and pray that the conversation is over, until your mother speaks up again.

"Well, sweetheart, I hope you don't let us impact your decision on where you attend," she says, to which you shake your head.

"It's fine, Mom," you tell her, trying to get her to drop it.

"You need to go wherever you want. Nobody gets to make that decision for you," she glances at Rafe now, who is using his fork to pick at his food. He's only taken a few bites.

"I think," Rafe speaks up, still staring at his plate, "Y/N will be successful anywhere she goes and sitting at a table speculating will not help her make up her mind."

You held your breath when your boyfriend started to speak because you were unsure of what he would say, but when he finishes, you smile softly at him and reach over to stroke the back of his neck as a thank you. He looks to you as you touch him and smiles back.

"You know a lot about colleges, Rafe?" Will asks.

Rafe tears his eyes from you and looks to Will, a look in his eye that you've only seen a few times. It's the look he often gives when he's about to deck some dude in the face.

"I know a lot about my girlfriend," Rafe corrects him, not breaking his stare. You keep your hand stroking the back of his head as a way to try and keep  him calm.

"Ah, so you don't go to school, then?" Will knows he's stirring the pot now, so much so that both dads have stopped talking to one another and are listening to the boys.

"Rafe works for his father," you speak up, defending Rafe.

"Ward Cameron," your dad tells Will, "He's a very talented businessman."

"Oh," Will replies, and you hope he'll drop it, "So you just live off daddy's money, then."

Rafe slams his hand down on the table as you close your eyes, listening to the plates and silverware clatter. You move your hand down to his back now, rubbing up and down.

"That's enough, Will," Caroline says quietly to her son.

Will doesn't listen, just moves his glance over to you, watching as you stroke Rafe's back. He notices Rafe's hand is at an angle and can tell that it's on your leg, so he decides to push it even more.

"Why are you even dating this guy anyway?" he asks.

"That's it," Rafe stands up from the table quickly, "You got something to fucking say, why don't you say it to me outside?"

"Rafe," you say, your voice stern.

You look to your little brother, who is staring up at Rafe with a terrified expression. Your brother looks up to Rafe, and this is not the example you want him to follow. You look to your mother, who has her head down, Will's mother, who looks horrified, and Will's father, who looks concerned. Your father almost looks proud of Rafe. And Will, well, he looks scared, too.

"Nothing to say now?" Rafe scoffs, "You were such a big talker a second ago, now you're just gonna sit there like a little bitch?"

"Okay," you say as you stand up, setting both of your hands on Rafe's arms, "Excuse us, please."

You start to shove Rafe in the direction of the stairs, knowing the only place you won't be heard is up in your room. Rafe doesn't break his stare with Will until you reach the stairs.

"Go. Now," you demand, pushing him again. His chest is going up and down rapidly, the adrenaline rushing through his body not helping him to calm down.

He rushes up the stairs with you behind, then opens your bedroom door. He silently allows you to walk through first, then enters behind you and slams it shut.

"What a fucking prick," Rafe says the second the door is closed, "I'm gonna beat the shit out of that guy-"

"Rafe," you interrupt him, making him look up at you, "I asked you to be on your best behavior tonight. This night was about my dad, not you."

You're trying to keep your voice calm so he doesn't start screaming, or feel like you're completely against him.

"What did you expect me to do, babe? Sit there like a bitch while he talks all kinds of shit about me? You know that's not me," he scoffs. He runs his hands through his hair, messing it up.

"I expected you to act like an adult," you correct him, trying not to give in when you see the pained look in his eyes.

"I had it under control," he tells you, his voice quieter. You laugh and throw your hands up in the air.

"Just like you have the fucking generators under control, right?"

You speak before you think and when you finally look back at Rafe, you wish instantly you could take it back. You cover your mouth as you stare at him, watching as he closes his eyes and tries to swallow his emotions before the tears start to come up. The one person who is supposed to believe him when he says he will handle something, doesn't. And that hurts him.

You rush forward and put your hands on his chest, then speak, "Baby, I-"

"Don't," he tells you, reaching up and taking your hands off of his body, letting them fall to your sides. His voice is strained, like he really is holding back tears.

"Rafe, I didn't mean that," you tell him.

You want so badly to reach up and touch him, to brush away the water forming in his eyes. He looks so hurt, focusing his eyes on anywhere in the room except for you. He knows if he looks at you, he'll cry for sure.

After a second, he takes a deep breath and lets out a small cough, then steps toward your bedroom door.

"You're just gonna leave?" you say weakly, not turning around to face him.

You hear as he grabs the door handle, but he doesn't pull the door open yet. He inhales, then exhales, then speaks.

"I'm not leaving," he says quietly, so you turn around to look at him, "I'm going to go downstairs, apologize, and finish the dinner I committed to attending. Then, I'm leaving. I'll go take care of the goddamn generators to show you and Ward and everyone else that I can, in fact, handle my own shit."

You feel so guilty as you stare at him, wondering how it was only a few hours ago that the two fo you were giggling and naked in his bed.

"I know you can, baby," you tell him, tears starting to well up at the thought of him leaving like this, "I'm so sorry. I was just frustrated, that's not how I really feel. Please don't be angry with me."

You step forward and set your hands on his face, removing one to pull his hand off of the handle. Both of you have tears in your eyes as you stare at each other. Rafe can't take it, he brings one hand up to push hair out of your face.

"I could never be angry with you," he whispers, "You're my girl."

You smile as a tear falls from your eye, but he brushes it away with his thumb quickly.

"Forever," you confirm.

He pulls you into him and hugs you tightly, never wanting to let go. After a minute of breathing you in, he reaches down and takes your hand.

"Come on," he tells you.

The two of you exit your room and start down the stairs, both looking at each other as you notice the silence coming from downstairs. Once you reach the dining room, you see everyone sitting in complete and awkward silence, looking up at the two of you when you enter. Rafe releases your hand and sets it on the small of your back instead as he looks around the room.

"Please excuse my behavior, everyone. I'm sorry. I should not have acted that way," Rafe states, his voice even and emotionless. You know he doesn't mean it, but you don't mind. Will scoffs at his apology, earning a glare from you.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Rafe," your father speaks up, hands folded in front of him.

Both you and Rafe snap your heads over to look at your dad. He looks serious, and you take note of the expression on Michael's face. Embarrassed. You wonder now, what could've possibly been said while you two were gone.

"Yes, sir, I do-" Rafe starts, but your father holds his hand up to stop him.

"He does, he's a dick," Will mutters.

"Will!" Caroline raises her voice now.

Rafe opens his mouth to speak again, but you set your hand on his chest to stop him when you see your father start to speak.

"Michael, I think it's time you all left my home, now."

"I think you're right."

Both men's voices are stern and serious, not what they were an hour ago. Michael stands up and so does Caroline, much to your mother's protest. Michael then grabs onto the back of Will's shirt collar and drags him up from the table. Your mother shows them out, quietly apologizing to Caroline. You and Rafe just watch as they exit the house, not saying a word.

"Sir," Rafe looks over at your dad, who is now standing, "I'm so-"

"It's not your fault, Rafe," he shakes his head, "His son's a dick."

You and Rafe both laugh when your dad says that, and you feel Rafe relax as he pulls you into him and kisses your temple. You relax too, knowing it's all good. Will's gone and you and Rafe made up, so everything else is just fine.

Rafe turns around to talk to your little brother about his behavior, and you look over at your dad. He's smiling at you and when he catches your eye, he winks. And you know, just like that, that he will always have your back over anyone else's.

You free yourself from Rafe's grip and go to give your father a hug, grateful for him.

"He's a good man," your dad whispers to you.

You turn around to look at Rafe, watching as he talks to your little brother.

"Yeah, he is," you agree.

Rafe catches your eye and gives you a cheesy grin, then turns his attention back to your brother. You honestly believe that you could not be more in love with him than you are.

"Hey, Dad?" you ask, looking up at him.

He looks down with a raised eyebrow, as if to ask what you need.

"Do you know anyone who has any generators?"

Your father thinks for a moment, then says, "Yeah, I think Teddy might still have some up at the store. Why do you ask?"

"Rafe needs some for his dad. It's kinda urgent."

Your dad smiles down at you, then pats your shoulder.

"I'll go give Teddy a call."

He excuses himself just as Rafe walks up behind you and wraps his arms around you. You smile as he leans around and kisses your cheek.

"I love you," he whispers in your ear, leaving a little kiss underneath it.

"So much that you'll help me with the dishes?" you gasp, turning around in his arms and smiling.

He groans playfully and tightens his grip around you so neither one of you have to start doing dishes.

"Can't we just skip to the fun part where we go upstairs?" he whines.

You laugh, "We had sex, like, five hours ago."

"Exactly!" he exclaims, "Five hours ago! I'm drying out here, babe."

You laugh again, rolling your eyes at him.

"Rafe, Y/N, that table isn't going to clear itself!" your mother yells from the kitchen, where she and your brother are putting leftover food away.

"Yes ma'am," Rafe groans back at her, hearing a slight laugh from the kitchen.

You two start clearing dishes, which really means you and Rafe stack as many plates in his hands and see how many he can carry to the kitchen all at once. You've almost got all of them, you giggling at Rafe trying to act all manly.

"Don't drop them," you tease him. He rolls his eyes at you.

"If I can hold your naked body up in the shower this morning because someone fucked them too hard and you couldn't stand, let alone walk,  I think I can manage a few empty plates," he smirks, keeping his voice low in case of wandering ears.

"Rafe!" you exclaim, your cheeks starting to get red. He laughs loudly, which in turn makes you laugh.

"Alright, kids," your dad enters the dining room, "Good news. Teddy's got three generators. Says you could even go pick them up tonight."

You glance up at Rafe, holding your breath. You hadn't yet told him you asked your dad about generators, hoping your dad would tell you independently about them so you could tell Rafe.

Rafe sets the stack of plates down on the table and then looks over at you, being the only person who knew he needed generators.

"I just asked if he knew of anyone. I wanted to help you out," you defend yourself, "I know you can take care of your own shit, but that doesn't always mean you should have to."

Rafe stares at you, expressionless. You just know he's mad. You shouldn't have asked your dad, you think to yourself.

Which is why it surprises the shit out of you when Rafe steps over and wraps his arms around you. He pulls you close, exhaling a sigh a relief.

"Thank you, baby," he whispers to you.

After a second, he pulls away, keeping one arm around you, and looks at your dad.

"Thank you, sir," Rafe smiles, "I'll go pick them up here in a bit."

Your dad nods, stepping forward and patting Rafe on the back, then picks up the stack of plates you two were handling and takes them into the kitchen.

"Shit, babe, I can't believe it. This is awesome," he smiles.

"I'm really happy he found some," you agree. He leans down and kisses the top of your head.

"Go pack a bag," he demands, whispering against the top of your head, "We'll go get the generators and then you're staying the night with me. Just like we planned."

You're not sure what it is, but something about Rafe when he is assertive and demanding just turns you on. Anything he does, really, turns you on, but that one always gets you. You nod your head, standing on your tip-toes to give him a kiss. He makes it rougher than it usually is, letting you know he's ready to get you home and in bed.

"Go on, now," he says once he breaks away, smacking your ass to get you to go.

You nod and bite your lip, practically running up the stairs. Quickly, you throw random shit into a bag and grab a phone charger, then hurry back down the stairs. Rafe is waiting for you at the bottom, car keys in hand. He thanks both of your parents for dinner and promises your little brother he will beat him at Xbox again next time. Then, he takes your hand and leads you toward the front door as you wave to your parents.

When you get out to Rafe's truck, he opens the passenger door for you, then takes your bag and tosses it in the backseat. He climbs in the drivers seat but doesn't turn the car on, he just looks at you.

"What?" you grin at him. He licks his lips and then smirks.

"Get over here," he tells you. You look confused for a moment, so he pats his lap to tell you right where he wants you.

"Rafe, we're in my fucking driveway," you say, but you can't help the smile growing on your lips.

"Get your ass over here or I will make you come over here," he speaks.

You can feel his demanding words causing all kinds of shit to happen in your body, mainly in your underwear, and you climb over to sit in his lap, straddling him.

"This is where you belong, yeah?" he asks you, kissing the exposed skin just above your breasts.

"Yeah," you agree, tangling your hands in his hair.

"And you're my fucking girl, yeah?" he questions, moving up to the sweet spot on your neck once again.

"Oh, yeah," you grin. He smirks against your neck and then brings his lips up to meet yours.

"That's what I fucking thought."

[sillytaetime]

Seventeen Reaction to Watchung a failed proposal.

Vocal | hip hop | performance

Hoshi:

"Would you say no if I proposed to you?" He'd ask you that as soon as you guys finished the date. To his surprised, you actually said yes. You would say no. "So you don't love me?" And you responded explaining that you loved him, you just weren't ready for marraige, and one day, sure you'd marry him but not now.

Jun:

He looks at you and you shoot down his thoughts. "No im not leaving you, yes I love you." He let's out a content sigh wraps his arm around your waist to finish your date.

The8:

You cannot tell me this dude doesn't seen possessive. Like slightly and it almost goes unnoticed by everyone except you. Y'all are sitting on a park bench and when he hears her say no, he throws an arm around your shoulders, squeezing tightly. You have to remind him you love him for him to release you. If you don't say anything, he'd probably hold onto you for hours or days. The rest of his life is he had to.

Dino:

"Wpuld you marry me?" "In the future, chan, yes." He'd then get all cocky and he'd tell the boys the story saying "like, how could she say no. I'm perfect." Causing the boys in erupt into laughter and tease him.

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

Sorry it's taken along time to post I have PreACT prep on Monday and the Tuesday I took the test and this week has just been really busy with homecoming coming up. I probably won't post tomorrow because of homecoming, so expect to see another post tonight, hopefully. Love you guys!

Navigation

Svt masterlist

Requests are welcomed!!

[tomfreakinghollandneedsaoscar]

Pass the Time

Pairing: Drew Starkey x Reader.

Summary: You feel like you spend more time outside of you dorm and so does your neighbor. Why? Both of your roommates are hooking up.

Word Count: 1,548.

Note: It took me longer than it should've to write this since Tumblr was keep messing up so please don't let this flop ( I reached my breaking point with trying but I still like it) and tell me what you think :) I hope you love it! Thank you @snkkat for posting the photo and inspiring me to write this!

Hey," your roommate, Jazmyn, speaks softly from her side of the dorm to see if you are still awake or not. You hum in response, not looking away from the episode of your newest favorite Netflix original TV show- the reason why you are not studying right now- Outer Banks. Jazmyn moves to sit upright on her bunk bed and swings her feet back and forth and gives you puppy eyes, "Can I ask for a favor?"

Knowing what she will ask, for not the first nor late time, you say, "I'm not moving, Jaz."

She jumps off and walks over to you and must go on her tippy toes to learn against your mattress. It is a fail on her part when she tries to grab your throw blanket off of you since you're wrapped in it.

You sing, "told y'all" in a teasing tone and Jaz response is a weak, "shut up."

"Why can't you just go over? I'm comfortable right here in my dorm."

Ignoring your point of view, she easily lies as she says, "I swear it won't be long."

"Really? Two nights ago, Andrew said the same thing to Drew before you went over there for three fucking hours!" Before she can try to deny it, you hold up your hand to add, "I actually mean fucking for three hours."

You roll your eyes as she blushes and gets lost in dream land that is made of all the sex, she and your next-door dorm neighbor, Andrew, have.

Which is a lot.

You knew that going to a University there would be a huge chance to live crazy college stories that one day will blow your kids' minds whenever they accidentally find one out. Getting locked out of your dorm on a weekly basis so your roommate can hookup? That is not one of them, it is annoying as hell.

The first time you got locked out was just last month, three months in your freshman year. After taking two tests in one day, you just wanted to go in a nap coma for the rest of the year. Since the elevator in your building did not get fixed yet, you had to drag yourself up to the firth floor. You could not help to wish the sock on your dorm knob was just a part of your imagination. But it was not. From the noises you could hear from the other side of the locked door, Jazmyn had someone over. You jumped and cursed when the door next to you opened and an extremely attractive and tired boy smiled at you as he tried to fix his bed hair. He noticed the sock and grabbed it to throw it over his shoulder, inside of his dorm. "I was wondering where Andrew went." He holds out his hand and as you shake hands, he told you his name and you told him yours. You agreed that you did need coffee, so you two left the hallway to grab some.

“You know, it’s weird that we are finally meeting.”

You looked over your shoulder and silently wished Jazmyn would open the door so could lay down, “We’ll probably see each other more in the hallway if they keep this up.”

A week after you talked with Drew over two refills of coffee for who knows how many hours, he saw you walking up the stairs after your last class of the day. He kicked himself off the floor to learn against your door.

"Are they...?"

He nodded in response and told you that he does not know how long, or how much longer. He followed you into your dorm after you slightly pushed him away to unlock it.

"I was planning on doing something with Jaz tonight but since you're here instead... have you ever done a face mask?"

He wiggled his eyebrows and used a husky manly tone to ask, “Sexually?"

His laugh echoed after you throw one of your pillows at him.

The third time was a couple of hours later and Drew agreed to go as far away as possible. You two went through a drive through before going to a park to eat in comfortable silence until he tried to be sneaky to grab some of your food. A small food happened before you two acted like big children on the swings, trying to see who could go up the highest. Since he is so tall, it was easy for him to do the monkey bars.

Now what was supposed to be a relaxing and do-nothing day, you let out a fake cough. “You can’t let Andrew come in here, I’m sick.”

“I’m sure Drew would be willing to take care of you.”

“I hate you.” You mutter as you get up to put your shoes on. You try not to think about how he told you he wants to make you his famous homemade chicken casserole soon since you’re been stressed with all of your school work, working part time and being home sick.

“You love me! Have fun whenever you guys do this time to pass the time.” She winks at you as you slam the door closed behind you. You stop knocking on Drew’s door with your blanket still wrapped around you and carrying your laptop when his voice comes the end of the hall, “fancy seeing you here.”

He knows your smile is half fake so he nervously asks, "You can come over if you want? I can let you in before heading to the showers."

 Andrew comes from the end of the hall, looking like he ran up the stairs while holding a plastic bag from the nearest gas station. You can see Jazmyn’s favorite candy and a box of condoms. Classy. You do not think twice before reaching into Drews maroon gym shorts to grab his keys while they have silent conversation. You miss how much his eyes widen for leaving them both in the hallway.

“I swear to God I’ll give up on being your wingman and move out if you do not make your move.”

Drew pushes Andrew out of the doorway and glances over at you to make sure you are not listening. “You are not my wingman!”

“Yes, I am! I am giving you two alone time as I have sex! It’s a win-win for everyone!” Andrew pushes him inside, “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

From his bed, Drew hears the confusing in your voice when you say, “it’s only one am?”

“I stopped listening to what he says a long time ago.” Drew states as he can hear Andrew’s and his own voice in head saying, “she’s on your bed” repeating.

You mutter, “same” for trying to do the same thing with Jazmyn.

Over the trim of your laptop, you watch Drew stand in front of you and starts taking off his gray and black long sleeve hoodie in slow motion.

"Oh my god."

"What?" He asks, amused.

"What?" You ask, embarrassed.

“Take a picture, it would last longer.” He teases, sitting next to you. You shove your elbow in his ribcage, “Shut up!”

You should not be surprised when he teases, “make me.” But your skin gets covered with goosebumps.

“Okay, last time we hangout it was two, three nights ago?” You try to change the topic, “I just remember that I beat your ass at Family Feud. Wanna play that again?"

Drew lets out a breathless, “no” as he puts both of his arms around you, his hands resting against the wall. “Let’s play a new game.”

He grins ear to ear when he feels you take a big breath in, the air faming the side of his face. “Let’s see who can the be the loudest, them or us.”

You look at him like he grew a second head when he starts hitting the wall and making grunt noises.

“You want to make it seem like we are having fake sex?”

He laughs, mostly to himself, “It’s not like you are taking me out of my misery and-“

You cut him off by pulling his hands off the wall to put them on both sides of your waist as you to help you saddle his lap. As you trace the outline of his abs, you cannot help to lick the rest the way up until he puts one of his hands under your chin to pull your face upwards to his. Both of you do not know who kisses who first.

When you need to catch a breath, you mutter, “what?” since his smile makes you smile too. “I want to take you on a date and stop using our roommate sex lives as an excuse to hangout.”

“Okay.” You feel like you are on cloud nine when his smile becomes even bigger. “When?”

“We got time to figure that out. For now…” He gives you a quick kiss before setting you to lay on the bed so he can get up.

You watch him grab a sock before opening the door wide enough to put it on the doorknob. “I want to keep on doing what you started.”

He runs his way back to his bed to tackle you while you have your arms wide open.

─────

Tagging the people who reblogged or comment on the post about which college AU to write first:

@ilovejjmaybank @softstarkey @pixelated-pogues @everydayimfangirling @maaybanks @scandalousfemale @thelocalpogue @sunnypogue @sortagaysortahigh @tembo-ndoto @arthiriticcricket @jjsbxtch @thatsme-johnbookerroutledge @rudysrings @ptersparkers @obx-saltlife @ssjiara @drewsephsmiles @obbx-tings @jjmaybanksbaby @jjaybank @mahleeyuh @jjcultmain @tcmhollnd @teamnick 

The college AU for Rudy will hopefully be posted tomorrow!

[rainbowglittr]

Love and Marriage - Chapter 10 (Mature, Minors DNI)

Description:

After a loss in the family uncovers a family secret, Jaleia and her husband Jesse are forced to balance one family crisis after another along with their budding careers and their plans to expand their family. Will the pressure to keep everyone else together ruin their own relationship? Can ruined relationships be fixed before it’s too late?

Chapter 10:

Jesse's POV

I opened the door to our hotel room. I slept on the plane and I was still tired.

"Ooooooh." Diana said walking into the room behind me. We had a two room suite. I turned to Diana.

"Pick whatever room you want, shake out the blankets, and sleep. We got a busy day tomorrow. Or today." I rubbed my face. Diana slept on the plane and now was wide awake, touching everything in the room.

"Di, go to bed, I'm tired."

"Sorry, I'm just so excited. I can't even sleep! We haven't been here in so long. Thanks for bringing me. Oooh, let me take pictures by the window." She ran to the window.

"I'm going to bed, don't do anything crazy. Night." I said.

"Kay, night Jess!" She said

I found the bigger room and collapsed on the bed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"I miss you already, babe! I couldn't sleep." Jaleia said. I was face timing her before me and Diana left for the day. It was 5AM her time but 8AM in Cali.

"I miss you too, love. I haven't had to go away in a while. "

"I know. I hated it when you lived in L.A."

"Yeah, you kept telling me."

"So what's the schedule like?"

"Today me and Di are hanging out. This week and next I'm working with the new artists. The week after next is when I work with some famous people."

"Sounds fun. I'm going back to sleep. Love you."

"Alright baby, don't over sleep. Love you."

I hung up. I grabbed my wallet and keys and walked out the room. Our suite was nice, it had two rooms, a common area, a bathroom and a small kitchen area. It looked expensive as hell so I was glad that the studio was paying for it. I make decent money but sure as hell not enough to stay here for three weeks. Maybe not even 3 days.

I walked to Di's room and knocked on her door. After the "incident" we've all been more aware of knocking first.

"Di are you done? We gotta go!" I yelled through the door.

"Almost! I just gotta find the right shoes!"

"Well hurry up! We gotta pick up the rental car." I said. Because we were going to be here for a few weeks I got a rental to make it easier to get around. Having lived her before I knew the traffic was going to be shit.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Diana had not stopped talking since we left the hotel. It was making my head spin. We had just picked up the rental, and now we were now on our way to see the Hollywood Star Walk of Fame. Diana had been bugging me to take her. And as I predicted we were stuck in traffic.

"And hopefully we have time to go to Universal or Disneyland or world or whatever the one on cali is called. I can't wait to take selfies. What do you-"

"Di."

"I cannot wait so see L.A, like really see it.-"

"Diana."

"I'm just so Excited!!"

"DIANA!"

"What?"

"Just a second of silence, please." I said.

"Sorry." She said.

"Don't be, my head is killing me." I said which wasn't exactly a lie but I felt bad for killing her joy.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We got back to the hotel at midnight. Diana made me feel old. She dragged me everywhere on the Hollywood Stars to find her favorite stars. My feet and back hurt. I was done.

My phone rang and I groaned. I had spread out on the couch in the room while Di took a shower. I looked at the screen. Jaleia was face timing me. I answered.

"Hey Jess!" Jaleia said. She looked like she was in our bed.

"Hey bae." I said, trying to keep my eyes open.

"Awww, you look tired, how was your day? Diana drag you around?"

"Hell yeah! We went to the Hollywood Walk of fame. When I tell you I'm tired. I'm done! It was fun but damn."

"Aww, you're a good older bro. You look so tired. It's adorable."

"Woman, I am not adorable. I'm a man. I'm not adorable. "

"Yes you are! So cute when you're tired. I'll let you get some rest, make sure you call me. I love you."

"I promise I'll talk more tomorrow. I love you, bae. Bye."

"Bye."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The first few days in the studio were great. They knew what they wanted, what sound they were going for and they were already talented in music. There were three artists this week, Alana who was looking for a pop sound, Smoke R&B, Jazmyne soul. We worked on about three tracks in for each of them. When I'm in L.A it's a much bigger song writing and producing team. I got my man Dre, best friend since NYU, who produces, JD, Dre, Mandy all produce, and Mark, Green, and J.T and I all write. We do melodies and help produce as well but mostly we do the lyrics. I produce as well but my strength is in the lyrics. It's a lot of noise in the studio with more six people and usually it's hard to work like that but we've been doing it together for years and we're able to cut through all the nice to get the sound it words we need. We usually work in teams to produce an album.

Diana had been having a good time from what I could see hanging around the studio and watching us work. Anytime I could fit in I took her to different places around L.A, mostly places to eat because that's all we had time for. She couldn't get over the fact I used to live here before I got married. It was so hard to move but I had to, Jay couldn't since she was in her residency. But someday we're moving back. I had Diana on lunch duty, so she could get out from the studio for a moment. She picked up our lunch when it was within walking distance. She didn't mind because she once ran into Luke James and hasn't stopped talking about it since. So she volunteers to get lunch now.

On Wednesday, everyone decided to go out for lunch. I let Diana go with them since Dre was going and I knew he would look out after her like I would. He's known her since she was seven. I stayed behind to finish a track we were working. It was just me in the studio and I was so into working I didn't hear someone enter.

"Jess! How are you?" Imani Redd walked into the room. She was wearing a bra and those shorts girls wear where their whole ass is out. She hadn't changed much since I had last seen her in person except her hair was now blonde. She still looked good. I got up from my chair.

"Hey Imani." I said.

She laughed and said "You don't have to be so formal. We good. You looking hella nice. You didn't dress like that when we were together." She gave me a tight hug.

"What's up?" I said sitting down again.

"I heard I would be working with you and just wanted to swing by and say hello. I know we didn't leave on the best terms-"

"Fucking understatement of century there." I said, crossing my arms.

"But I wanted to make sure we were cool and that you knew how very sorry I am for doing that to you. You didn't deserve that. I loved you, I really did. I hate that I screwed it up, especially for a guy that wasn't even worth it. Are we good?" She said walking toward my chair. She bent down in front of my chair, putting her hands on the armrests of the chair. I leaned back to get her breasts out my face.

"Cause if we're not, I'm sure I can make it up to you." She whispered in my ear. I started to sweat.

"Um, we're good, what's in the past is in the past, there's no need to bring ANY of it back up. I'm actually glad what happened, happened, I wouldn't have met my WIFE if it hadn't." I said, rolling my chair back. She turned around and like I figured, almost her entire ass was out. As she bent down in front of me to pick some imaginary object off the floor, I stared at the ceiling.

"That's too bad," she said, now standing over my legs, putting her hand on my shoulder. "Cause I love to make a man happy and I've only gotten better. Congrats on getting married, Jess. I'll see you later. And please let me know if you need anything." She slid her hand down my chest slightly brushing my crotch. Her hips swayed as she walked out the room. I let out the breath I was holding in. I wasn't scheduled to work with her until the last week I was here but I could already tell she was going to be a problem.

>>>>>>>>

It was past 2AM in the morning as we sat and talked in the studio. Diana had passed out on the couch. All the artists had gone home and it was just Dre, Green, J.D and me left still trying to finish some tracks. Admittedly we stopped working a while ago.

"So you used to bag Imani?" Green said. Green was a 35 year old white guy who slept with any girl who would sleep with him. He's been divorced five times, all for the same reason - infidelity. He was a terrible partner but a great somgwriter.

"I used to date her, yes."

"How was she?" Green asked. Green was also a pothead, and had a few edibles earlier. He was still as vile sober as he was high. I wouldn't let him eat them anywhere near the studio, since I had Diana with me. Usually I didn't care but she was staring to get better and she wasn't going to pick up bad habit now.

"You know I don't talk about women like that. Especially since I'm married. " I said.

"Hmm. Yeah you let your wife whip you. But I would love to get that Imani in the sack. She got it all."

"I'm not whipped." They all gave me a look.

"Y'all think I'm whipped? Trippin."

"Nah, man I hate to say it, but she got you wrapped around her finger. Ain't nothing wrong, that's your girl. But hell yeah you whipped." Dre said.

"I'm not fucking whipped."

"I bet you had to beg her to come here. Especially once she found out about Imani. " J.D said.

"We talked about it but I ain't got to beg for shit!"

"Yeah, okay man." J.D said.

"I'm not whipped!"

"What happened between you and Imani anyway?" J.D asked.

"She did him dirty as hell. Played his ass." Dre said.

"We were engaged and she was cheating on me for months. I only found out because I walked in on her with another guy."

"Damn. She really had you going."

"He really acting like she wasn't shady before that though." Dre said.

"How was I supposed to know?"

"This nigga really gon ask that? She used to "go away" for the weekend and have "late night recording sessions" and never could show him a demo. You know that this nigga right here wrote like seven songs for her? Almost her whole first damn album. She played the hell out of you. I even told your stupid ass that she was doing you wrong. And you ain't want to hear it." Dre said.

"I was young and in love." I said. When he put it like that I did sound stupid for not knowing she was using me.

"More like young and dumb as hell!" J.D said. They all laughed.

"And you had the nerve to be all depressed afterwards, acting like you ain't know she was no good. I got sick of your Mopey ass. I guess the sex was that good. But I got to say you married well." Dre said.

"I did, didn't I? Well it's not like you had it together either. Remember that girl who tried to claim that you were her deadbeat baby daddy?" I said.

"Oooooohhhhh. She was a fucking nightmare. Almost ruined my relationship." Dre said. J.D's jaw dropped. We had met J.D after we got out of college.

"Followed him around campus everywhere. Dressed the kid just like him. You've dated some crazy ones, don't play me like that!" I said.

"Look, I would cheat on my girlfriend just to hit that ass. Imani got that ass." Green said.

"We know." We all said at once.

"I would never cheat. My girl would kill me if she ever found out." J.D said.

"I never want to lose my wife again. Not again. " Dre said.

"You cheated on Eva?"

"Before we got married, we were engaged. Wasn't worth it, it was the worst mistake I ever made. I would never do that again. And Jess is too whipped to even think about cheating. " Dre said.

"Fuck you... But you right about that." I said as they laughed.

"I know what it's like to be cheated on, so I would never do that her." I said.

"But you got to admit that Imani is fine. You would hit that again if you were single. "

"I'm happily married."

"He didn't say no."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"So what are you trying to say with the hook because it's really confusing. Is the relationship worth saying or not?" I said to Jazmyne. We were finishing up one of her songs and the chorus just didn't flow right.

"What I'm trying to say is I don't know what I want from the relationship. I guess I could make that more clear."

"Yeah, I really want that point driven home in the chorus. You're stuck between two feelings and you just want something worth fighting for."

"Oh my God, that's it!"

"Let's try it." I picked up my guitar and started to strum the melody.

Baby I'm stuck in the middle,

Of this one single issue

Don't know what I'm saying

And you seem to think I'm playing

Not sure if I don't want your love

Cause it feels like it's from above

I'm sick of being ignored

I just want a love worth fighting for

I just want a love worth fighting for

Jazmyne sang.

"I love that! I like the switched melody, and I love that new line. You are a freaking genius!"

"Nah, you did all the work. You ready to lay the vocals down for real?" I said.

"Yes!" She went into the recording booth, a couple of takes on the chorus and she was done.

"How does it feel to have all of the tracks to your first album ?"

"I'm so freaking excited! This shit was lit. So what happens next?"

"You're going to pick your favorites, and the ones you don't want on the album. You'll play it for some executives on the label and they'll give you feedback, you skim the tracklist and songs down more, hopefully get it approved. And then work on the cover art. They'll give you a date and some promo, and your album will be released. There's a bunch of other bull in between that but that's really it."

"I'm so excited. Wow that's a lot. But I'm so happy with everything, thanks for your help. Can I listen to them all?"

"Sure, they'll be unfinished of course."

"Yeah, it's fine. Thanks." I handed her some headphones.

Alana was almost done with her album. Jazmyne was done with hers. Smoke however, had a lot more to be done.

Usually writing an album takes several months and it did for them. We were just here to polish the songs they had, write any ones they were missing, and really curate the style they were trying to have and finish the demo album.

It was my second week in L.A and it had been great so far. Last weekend I took Diana to Disneyland and we had a great time. She was such a good sport about being cooped up in a studio for so long I really wanted to do something special. It was Friday night and it was going to be another night spent at the studio.

My phone started vibrating on the control panel. I put down my guitar and looked at screen. Jaleia's face lit up. I answered, propped my phone up nearby and started to strum my guitar lightly.

"Hey Jess!"

"Hey Love, what's up?"

"I miss you. I'm sorry I keep saying it and calling you and-"

"I never get tired of you. Call me anytime."

"How's Di?"

"She's having fun, I'm sure she'll tell you allllllllll about it when we get home."

"I feel kinda stupid."

"Why?"

"I cried cause I missed you so much. The house is a mess, I've been late so much lately. I can't wait for you to come back."

"Aww, I'm sorry baby. It's only one more week. I miss you too."

"I know."

"Did you see all the organization tips I left you? I know it's hard for you to adjust your schedule suddenly. "

"One of the worst parts of ADHD I guess. Your wife's a mess. What's new?"

"Jay, you're not a mess, don't talk like that. What you up to tonight? You look cute." She had a low cut silky night shirt on.

"Um, I am having a sleepover with the girls. I finally convinced everyone. A quiet girls night. Movies, wine, snacks and shit. Should be fun. I'm really lonely, please come home soon."

"I'll be home real soon, alright."

"Oh and Jess? I found your present. And it's beautiful. I'm wearing it now. I always wanted a tennis bracelet! Now I get to brag about how great you are. When you get home, you will get the biggest thank you ever. Whatever you want. Trust me."

"I knew you'd like it. And I'm looking forward to that thank you."

"I have a little sneak peak of something I bought for you." She said and pulled her shorts down a little so I could see the top of her lace panties.

"You like these?" She said pulling her shorts back up.

"Hell yeah, you look sexy. I'm still on the studio Jay, so I gotta call you back. I love you, Jay?"

"Yeah?"

"I really miss you too. You're amazing and I love you! Have fun tonight."

"Love you too Jess! I'll talk to you later!"

[fluffshisuga]

Hugs (Tsukishima x reader)

I had a dream last night that Tsukki got mad that i didn't hug him this morning i felt bad🥺

Warnings? Angst in the middle, the rest is just awkward fluff because Tsukki is a tsundere bitch honestly.

1) I SAUD ANGST IN THE MIDDLE BUT ITS REALLY ANGST UNTIL THE END?????? I'M CONFUSED

Jkjk i love him ~_~

Every day, since the beginning of Middle School, you'd walk with Tsukishima and Yamaguchi to school. And every morning, you'd give Tsukishima a light hug, showing your appreciation for the tall Boy walking with you and Yams, who was constantly bullied. You'd try on multiple occasions to stop the bullies, but because you were small as well they'd push you to the ground and leave you. Tsukishima helped stop the bullying, and the two of you were grateful for his help.

You knew Tsukishima had an older brother. He'd talk about how he'd be playing volleyball and how he was the ace. He was always excited to talk about his brother, and he was generally excited to play volleyball. That's when he and Yamaguchi joined the small volleyball team for the younger kids. You'd sit, watching the boys play. They enjoyed it immensely. One day, the boys got into a fight with another kid, who claimed his big brother was the ace of the same team and Tsukishima's brother. They quarreled for a few minutes before you were able to separate them. That day, Tsukishima decided to sneak to his brother's game and see him play.

Yamaguchi and yourself went with him. You wanted to meet his brother and see how the older kids played. During the game, Tsukishima never saw his brother in the court. Confused, he started to look around. You saw him look around, and thought you'd look for a boy that looked similar to Tsukishima, hopefully finding his brother. If he wasn't on the court playing the game, where was he? Was he injured, and couldn't play? Or did be oversleep? The thoughts ran through your head as your gaze met the other side of the room. Right across from you was an older boy who looked like your friend, and he seemed to be cheering for the same team Tsukishima's brother was part of. You turned to Tsukishima, about to point the older boy out when you saw the colour drain from his face.

Following his gaze you saw him looking at the other boy, the one you wanted to show Tsukishima. They both looked horrified. "Tsukki is that-" you were cut off by Tsukishima grabbing you and Yamaguchi and dragging you away. That's when you realized the unsettling truth. His brother wasn't actually the ace, he wasn't even playing the game. He had lied, and made it look like he was still playing when he actually wasn't. You knew it crushed Tsukishima, and you didn't know how to make him feel better.

When he finally stopped, he let go if both of your sleeves, Yamaguchi looking around confused. You stared back at the gym, the shock still resting in you. After a few moments, it hit you even harder. Tsukishima was lied to, and found out in the worst way possible. He was having the hardest time, you knew. You had to think of a way to help him.

Slowly walking towards the tall boy, you wrapped your arms around him in a tight hug. It was all you could do to hide the tears forming in your own eyes. He never hugged back. Not with your light hugs, and not with this hug. The hug that showed him you cared and wanted to help him.

After that day Tsukishima became cold and distant. You still gave him morning hugs, but they were even lighter than before. You were scared that he was getting tired of you, that your efforts were meaningless. You continued this tradition all the way to High School. The boys decided to join Karasuno, and you joined them.

You never knew why he kept playing. He didn't enjoy volleyball anymore, almost like he played it in spite of himself. You were worried for him. Every morning, you'd still give him a light hug, and the three of you would stop for breakfast before school. This was your routine. None of you were ever late and you always showed up together.

Until your parents went in a business trip, leaving you home alone. They had been gone for two months, and each call told you they would be later each time. At first, it didn't bother you. You could take care of yourself, and were still getting good grades in school. But you started lacking.

One Monday, you never showed up to the corner with the boys. They had waited for over half an hour, to which you never showed. They figured that you were already at the school and went ahead. They walked for 10 minutes when they heard hurried footsteps quickly approaching behind them. "Wait for me!" Your voice rang, breathless. The boys turned and watched as you ran to them, stopping to take many hurried breaths. Your uniform was messed up, along with your hair. You had one shoe on and the other in your hand. Your face was flushed red and sweat formed on your brow.

Taking a final deep breath, you stood to straight, and started walking towards the school. "What happened to you?" Yamaguchi asked, eyes filled with worry. Still taking breaths, you made a sentence. "I- uH, slept in late- just woke up- 5 minutes ago!" You were able to put your shoe on, and started trying to fix your skirt. You had just made it to the school, still breathing heavily while the two boys looked down at your figure with concern. Walking into your class, you found it empty.

"WE HAD A FREE PERIOD?" You yelled, pulling at your hair in frustration. The boys laughed at your frustration, and you spun around and smacked them both on the arm. "There's time for breakfast now, let's go get something," Yamaguchi suggested, looking at Tsukishima. He nodded and they started to walk out. "You guys go ahead, I'm not very hungry anyway." You said, plopping down into a seat. "Are you sure?" Yamaguchi asked. You nodded and waved them off, dropping your head onto the desk.

Yamaguchi and Tsukishima walked down the hall to where there was food. A weird look was in Tsukishima's eyes as they walked, a look Yamaguchi had never seen. "What's up?" He asked, looking up at his friend. Through his glasses, Tsukishima glanced at Yamaguchi. "Nothing," he stated plainly, fixing his glasses. You had always joined them for breakfast, and you were never late. You were actually strange today, not to mention you didn't give him your signature hug that morning. That was what drove him to confusion. You'd never forget to hug him, no matter his attitude or your situation.

That day, you didn't eat lunch either. You sat with them as they ate. Yamaguchi constantly offered you food, but you shook your head, claiming you weren't hungry. When classes finished, the three of you left the school and walked to the corner that you'd always meet up at. You said your goodbyes and started walking to your house. Closing the door, you placed your bag down and flopped onto the couch, sighing. You made yourself a small plate of dinner and ate, going upstairs to take a hot shower.

This process went on for a week. Each day, you'd sleep in, skip breakfast and lunch, eat a small dinner and take a shower. And each morning, you forgot the hugs. Once the weekend had hit, you found yourself staring at your ceiling. You got a call from your parents last night saying that they were going to come home even later than before, making them gone for almost a year.

Saturday, you lazed about. You studied, laid in bed, clean the house, then cook a small dinner and take a shower. You never checked your phone.

That night you were laying in bed, the lights on and light music playing from the radio sitting on your side table. You didn't hear the door open, or your name being called from downstairs. You didn't even notice your bedroom door open, a tall figure standing in the doorway. You were completely zoned out staring at the ceiling.

Something fell onto your face. Panicking, you sat up and looked around. "Glad i wasn't an intruder or anything," Tsukishima said, holding another pillow in his hand. "How'd you get in?" You asked, slowly getting out of bed. Tsukishima shrugged, "you left the door unlocked. I texted you to tell you i was on the way, but you haven't looked at it so you wouldn't know." He stated. You nodded your head slowly, sitting on the edge of your bed. He walked over and sat next to you.

"What's been bothering you?" He asked. You gasped lightly. "Nothing is wrong? I'm fine!" You said, laughing. He knew you were lying. "Did you eat today?" You nodded, looking at the discarded dinner plate on the ground. Tsukishima raised an eyebrow. "Dinner? Did you eat anything else?" You shook your head, looking down at your feet. Tsukishima sighed, scooting closer to you. "What's wrong then?" He asked again, closer to your face. You shook your head and avoided Eye contact. "I'm just not that hungry. Honest!"

Your tone told him to drip it, and he did. You sat in silence for a few minutes. "It's been a week since you hugged me you know," he stated coldly. A shiver went up your spine. He noticed. Has he always expected a hug from you every morning, and was being late messing it up? "I- i thought you didn't like me hugging you." You said, looking up at the tall boy. He shook his head, a smirk on his lips. "It's comforting." He said plainly, looking off at your things.

An object caught his eye. A medium sized statue of a dinosaur stood on your desk. He sat up and walked towards it, examining it. "What's this?" He asked, looking back at you. "It was going to be your birthday present." You said, standing up and walking towards him. He looked at the dinosaur again. "You can have it now if you want. It's not much of a surprise now that you've seen it. I'll buy another cool one for you." You said, gesturing to the dino. He kept holding it, "I'll take it now if you start eating more food and getting up on time." A light blush made its way to your cheeks. (Y'ALL here comes the fluff that we want) Nodding, he took the dinosaur and placed it into his bag. "I'll text you tomorrow, make sure you texted back this time, dummy."

On Sunday, he texted you, and consistently texted you throughout the day making sure you were taking care of yourself. He sent you a picture of your gift, standing among the other dinosaurs he had collected. Most of them came from you. Monday morning, he called you to make sure you got up. He stayed on the phone until you were in view speed walking towards the corner. You put your phone away and started to run, jumping as you did.

You gave Tsukishima a tight hug, the same hug you'd given him all those years ago. This time, he returned it. And he returned every hug from then on out. He made sure you took care of yourself, and always talked to you.

Eventually, he asked you out, and you dated for years. You still gave him a hug every morning, and on your wedding day, you gave each other the tightest hug you could muster.

[angelbabyszn]

First Love (Oscar X Reader) - Part One

Requested!

Imagine Based On: I LOVE YOUR IMAGINES!!!!!Can you do an imagine about how spooky has a thing like friends with Benefits with the reader and the reader falls in love with him but as soon as she tells him he tells her that she isn't his type of girlfriend. So after that she has something going on with another gang member and oscar get all jealous and beats the guy up and claims her but its too late for here

OMB Masterlist

*Made readers age closer to Oscar*

You woke up still on top of Spooky’s chest with your arms wrapped around him and his body in between your thighs. His hands were wrapped around your lower part of your body. 

You reached to grab your phone that was on the charger on the bed table. You unlock your phone and check the time. 11:30 pm.

"Oh no!" You shouted scared and quickly got off of Spooky. You started to put back on your clothes that were on the floor.

Spooky slowly gets up and sees you putting back on your clothes. He looked at his phone for the time and quickly put on his clothes. .

Both of you quickly ran out of his house and into his signature red car. He immediately starts driving as soon he gets in.

You went through your purse and pulled out your phone. You read 11:40 pm as the time. You sighed and felt relaxed that you were going to make it back to your house before your curfew.

"Thanks for taking me home." you said with a smile.

"You're welcome, hyna." said Spooky with a grin on his face and then puts his right hand on your thigh.

"Spooky, no. You already have me tonight. Now, let's talk about my birthday coming up. Are you coming?" you asked as you looked at him while he was driving.

"I don't know. I may have some gang stuff to do." said Spooky.

"Yeah, I know. It's nothing new. I just thought you want to come right before I leave again for my junior year of college." you said kinda sad and looked out the window. You moved his hand off of your thigh.

"Let me see what I can do. Till then goodnight." said Spooky as he pulls up at your house.

You thanked him and got out of his car. You quickly shut the door and jog up the stairs to your front door. 

He watched you getting into your house and then left when your front door shut. You sighed and then groaned once you dropped on your bed in your bedroom.

"Hello Y/N."

You quickly got up and saw your sister, Monse looking at you leaning against your door.

"Monse. Don't scare me like that. I thought it was dad." you said. Monse chuckled a bit and walked over to sit on your bed with you.

"How was your time with Spooky?" asked Monse.

"How did you-"

"I know my ways." said Monse, making you groan again and put your hands on your head in regret. 

"I won't tell Dad but, still. Why are you doing this with him? It seems like he's just using you for his pleasure." said Monse upset.

"It's not like that. We have been friends for a long time. But just recently we became like this." you say as you start putting your hair up in a ponytail and start changing into your pj's.

"Well okay. I just hope you're not-"

"I think I'm falling for him." you confessed and Monse turned and gave you a crazy look.

"Are you serious right now?!" shouted Monse with her eyes widened.

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's just, I don't think Oscar sees you like that." said Monse sadly.

"You don't think so?" you asked sadly.

"Yes! Even though I'm your younger sister and in my sophomore year of high school, I know how this is going to end." said Monse and she walked up to your door and stopped.

"Just be careful okay? I love you." said Monse looking back at you and she left while closing your door.

You moved to the middle of your bed laying down and looking up at the ceiling. You start to go into deep thought until you grab your phone from your bed.

You go to your photos and look at a picture of you and Spooky having fun together. After looking at the photo for a few minutes, you decided to text him.

You: Can we talk tomorrow?

spooky: Yeah, oh course mami.

You: Okay, see you tomorrow 😊

You plugged your phone into the charger, got underneath the covers and went to sleep.

-

You arrived at Spooky's house to talk about your relationship with each other. You were wearing a neon orange romper with a biker jacket and your favorite brand of shoes.

You saw Spooky lifting weights on the outside couch in the front of his house with his gang all around the front lawn of the house either talking, prepping, or lifting weights.

You walked up to him and Spooky looked at the ground knowing that it was you by your shoes and looked up at you. 

"Hey Spooky." you said kinda shyly.

"Hey Y/N. You want to go inside and talk?" asked Spooky and you nodded resulting in both of you walking into his house. 

 Both of you sat on the black couch that was in the living room and turned to each other.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" asked Spooky and he put his right hand on your left thigh.

"Oscar...I think I'm falling for you." you confessed and Spooky processed in his mind what you said, resulting in him moving his hand off of your thigh.

"I know we've been friends for years but recently I've been catching feelings and I don't know if I can stop." you said and Spooky looks down to the floor avoiding you looking at him.

"Oscar...please answer." you said quietly as you felt tears coming down your eyes.

"Y/N..." started Spooky and he looked back up with you. He starts to stare into your eyes.

He felt bad for what he is about to say because he doesn't want to hurt you but it has to be said. 

"You're just...not my type. Hopefully we can still be friends...right?" asked Spooky, making you start to regret this whole decision with him.

It was true. This truly ruined your friendship and you can't ever go back because you fell and he just regretted you. Monse was right.

"Yeah. Oh course. Let's just forget I never say that." you said looking down on the floor and not looking at him.

You quickly got up with your purse that you brought and quickly ran all the way back home to avoid seeing his face. 

Spooky is still sitting on the couch and rubs his chin with his right hand while sitting back in regret. What has he done? 

-

"Come out Y/N!" shouted Monse from outside your door a month later.

You walked outside from your room to your living room. You were wearing a gold mini dress with your hair down straight and high heels.

"You look so pretty." said Monse and she walked up to you and held your hands.

"Thanks little sis." you said happily and both of you smiled at each other until you saw a flash go off in your eyes.

You and Monse both turned your head to the flash and saw your dad holding his phone up to his face.

"I can't believe my baby is 21." said your dad and you walked up and hugged him.

"The limo is outside." said Monse while looking out from the window in the living room.

Your dad kissed your forehead and all three of you walked out of the house and into the limo.

Today was your birthday. The day where you fully become a grown adult. You were nervous but yet excited. You got about two more weeks till you go back for your last year of college.

You and Spooky haven't talked to each other ever since you confessed to him. On the same day, a guy friend of yours named James called you and it just leads on from there.

James has been really sweet to you and makes you feel like you're his whole world. You started kinda falling for him once y'all started hanging out during July.

You were excited to enter your party with him by your side. You're hoping that he will ask you to be his girlfriend tonight.

The limo stopped and you got out. You entered the party building in the back to make an entrance. Monse and your father entered through the front like everybody else.

You entered an elevator and went up floor after floor to where you were being taken.

You walked out of the elevator and you saw James standing in front of two golden doors where the party was on the other side.

"Hi James." you said kinda shyly. Since you started falling for him, it's been kinda hard for you to talk to him.

"Hey Y/N. What did I tell you about being shy around me. You know I'll love you in any way." said James and he hugs you.

"Love me?" you thought and let out a deep breath as you hug him back. 

James ends the hug and gives you a kiss. You were surprised at first but you kissed him back. 

You smiled in the kiss and James ended it with a smile that made you more happier than before.

James holds his right hand out and you grab it with your left hand to lead you to the door to the party.

Everybody stopped and turned to the door and said happy birthday to you as you and James walked into the party.

People start coming up to you with gifts and saying happy birthday to you personally.

"Thanks everyone." you said with a smile and walked over to the food table after letting go of James's hand.

You grab a plate and start to grab your favorite foods until a certain somebody calls out your name.

You kinda jumped a bit and turned your body to see the last person you never expect to see at your party: Spooky.

"Oh um...hi Spooky um...what are you doing h-here?" you said, stuttering and afraid.

"Well, I came to say happy birthday. You haven't changed a bit." said Spooky while having his arms crossed against his chest and looking at you with a smirk. It honestly made you uncomfortable.  

"Thank you?" you said unsure and you look down at the floor trying to avoid looking at him.

Spooky walked closer to you which made you look up at him and saw his eyes looking deep into your soul.

"Y/N...Have you been hanging out with somebody that isn't me?" asked Spooky.

"Why do you care? It’s none of your business. Nunya!" you said with a little sass to your voice.

"Because Y/N, I-"

"Y/N. Why ain't you dancing?" asked James while he was going over to you and he looked at Spooky.

"Wait! Is this the dude?!" shouted Spooky pointing at James which made the music stopped and everybody looked to see what was going on.

"Wait, you know him?" you asked him with shocked eyes and pointing at James with your left thumb.

"H*ll yeah! He's a traitor! Left the Santos for the Prophets!" shouted Spooky making everybody gasped.

"I don't do gangs any more. I won’t snoop that low again" said James talking back to Oscar in a deep tone.

"You really want to be like that, boy?" asked Spooky in a deep voice back with a straight face and got close up to James’s face. .

"H*ll yeah. Why need to go after money and sell drugs when I can work a very high paid job and live in a place I can hopefully share with my future wife." said James and puts his right arm around your waist. 

Spooky starts to breathe heavily furiously for a few moments and looks back at you.

"You really want him?" asked Oscar with a serious face and glancing at you.

"Yes." you said proudly and you walked up to him.

"I told you I love you and you didn't even want me. HOW COME I WASN'T YOUR TYPE WHEN YOU SLEPT WITH ME!" you yelled the last part to Spooky which makes tears start to flow down your eyes.

Spooky starts to wipe your tears from your face with his hands but you quickly take them off.

"Y/N. I wanted you this whole time. Before our benefits. I want to be with you." said Spooky looking deep into his eyes.

You looked at him and slapped him hard which made everybody gasp.

"You should have claimed me once I told you I love you. Now leave!” you shouted with a force voice and Spooky took one last glance at you before  walking out of the party.

You stared at the door he left out of as you started to cry real hard. James walked over and hugged you tight as you cried. You never thought you were kicking him out of your life. Your first love.

Part Two is here ➡️ Part Two

[writerchicken]

Born for this - Ch 4

The smell of Ichirakus ramen wafted across the street and I my stomach growled

Ino laughed "someones hungry"

"What? no way" I laughed

I pulled back the curtain to enter, sitting there was Kiba, Naruto, and to my disappointment Sakura. Now don't get me wrong Sakura can be nice and shes pretty smart, shes helped me study for quite a few tests but she can be pretty annoying too.

"HEY YOU GUYS" Naruto basically shouts

I like him, he lost both his parents and everyone treated him meanly. When I was younger I would always try to be nice to him, we both did not have anyone to pick us up from the playground (well I did but Asuma was busy a lot) so we bonded over that, some days we would go and throw kunai knives or just eat some ramen. He is a pretty positive person and he doesn't give up, I like to learn from his character.

"Hey Naruto" I greet " excited for the Chunin exams?"

"You know it!" he laughs and goes back to his Ramen

"Isnt Asuma Sensai supposed to be helping with those? Isnt he still on a mission?" asked Sakura

I take off my shawl and sit down on a seat in between Kiba and Naruto

"yeah he is supposed to, I'm sure he will be back soon" Turning to order "one large miso ramen with extra pork please!" they nod

"so wait," I ask, making everyone turn and look at me "how many of the rookies from here are going? I know my team and Ino's and Naruto, Kiba are you going?"

he nods "Kurenai waited till the last minute to sign us up, she wanted to make sure Hinata perfected her new move before then"

Ino leans forward to grab a pair of chopsticks "Team Guy is going too, what new move was she working on?"

My ramen slides in front of me and I give thanks for it

"It's an awesome move for sure but I wont say more then that, I'm sure you guys will see it soon" kiba lifts his chopsticks to blow on his noodles

I break off my chopsticks "I've been doing some medical training but I haven't gotten very far with my shields" I huff, Ino laughs, shes been helping me train with Ronin these past few weeks

////////A/N did I forget to mention her Jutsu? It's where she can throw up small shields of chakra to stop attacks and if she trys they can expand or blend in with her surrounding for hiding/////

"I think Sayuri has had more medical training to practice on herself during our shield training then she does during her medical training" she laughs, winking so I know she's not being mean but just stating a fact

rolling my eyes I answer "Ronin threw those Kunai pretty fast and I only saw the ones with paper bombs on them" i huff before adding "And I thought we were practicing with my shields from the waist up so when two Kunai ended up in my legs of course I was surprised"

"His face was so funny" Ino laugh reenacting his face "he was like 'oh my goodness Sayuri I'm so sorry I didn't mean too are you ok?' then my girl is over there pulling knives out of her leg and her hands are glowing and she's like 'yea yea I'm ok nothing to worry about here'"

I shake my head 'she made me sound so tough where in reality I was yelling curses at Ronin while he gently pulled the knives out and then I healed them'

"I'm just gonna rely on mainly weapons, it would be sooooo embarrassing if I did that and got hurt in front of everyone" I laugh taking a bite of my Ramen

"oh Sayuri" kiba laughs "are you just gonna start throwing shurikans at someones attack and have that protect you?"

I nod "chances are it'll take them out too then problem solved" i laugh and he shakes his head, smiling

I finish my Ramen and push the empty bowl back

"I should go, I haven't packed yet" I stand up

Ino yelps "me either! and I heard it lasts for days!" she waves a goodbye and takes off towards her home

I laugh "its unlike her to forget" I wrap my shawl loosely around my shoulders

"I'll walk with you" Kiba said, jumping up "I live pretty close to you"

I nod "see y'all" to Naruto and Sakura

once we go past the curtains it seems to get a billion degrees colder, I suck in a breath and clutch my shawl tighter around me

something warm slips on over my shoulders "here take this," Kiba said softly "you look cold"

'he's given me his coat! it's warm, and smells good...'

"thank you Kiba" I say moving the collar of the coat closer to my face to hide my blush

he nods, shoving his hands in his pockets "I don't want you to be cold"

'what do I say now???' I internally panic

"How's Akamaru doing? I haven't seen him today?" I question

Kiba's eyes light up "oh he's doing great, he's resting right now we have been working on a new attack and it's sorta worn him out but he will be fully recovered before tomorrow" he stops, thinking "hopefully"

Before I could ask what was wrong he goes "he's a big dog I would hate to have to carry him to the Chunin exams, also he's started eating more so I have to carry more Ninjadog food"

I laugh but start to feel very awkward as the time goes on and he doesn't say anything

'should I say something? what should I say?' no sooner had I thought that then we stopped right in front of my house

I turn to him and look up "Thanks for walking me home Kiba"

"my pleasure, see you tomorrow don't forget to pack" he winks and walks away

i laugh and roll my eyes there was one time when I misunderstood what Sensei said and had to turn back home and pack quickly 'Ronin or Norio must've said something'

I open the door to see Asuma sitting at the small dining room table, his eyes focused on the papers in front of him

I shut the door, "How'd the mission go?"

he nods "pretty good" he takes a sip of his tea "ready for tomorrow?"

"nope" I said popping the 'P'

he chuckles rolling his eyes "let me guess, you haven't packed?"

"nope, you know me" I lean my arms on the chair across from him

I was just about to ask him if he would like a refill on his tea when he asks "whos jacket is that?"

I look down 'oh no I'm still wearing Kiba's jacket, I meant to give it back, I hope hes not cold'

"oh its Kibas, he uh walked me home from Ichirakus, it's sorta cold out" I sort of stumble out

"that was nice of him" and from the way he said it I couldn't help but wonder what he meant

"sit down" he gestured to the chair in front of me "I've been putting this off"

I sit down "putting what off?" I ask

"talking to you about boys" I look at him quizzingly he sighs, rubbing his face with one hand and continues "there comes a time in everyone's life when they start to take an interest in people and they umm" he pauses "they like these people better then friends and ummm" he breathes in "this is weird" he says

I nod "I think you are talking about crushes" I say "I had one of those a few year ago"

"I knew about that" he sighs again "man I am bad at this, what I meant to say is there is gonna came a time when you want to start dating"

I fiddle with the hem of the jacket 'whats he getting at?'

"and you have to be careful who you date and who you let into your heart, that Kiba kid seems like a pretty ok guy-"

I interrupt him "Oh it's not like that at all, no no no we are friends he was just being friendly I don't think he likes me like that"

Asuma raises his eyebrows but doesn't continue and I have another thought

"thank you Asuma for trying to talk to me about this, I know you are trying to be a good father figure for me and I just want you to know I appreciate it" I get up and go behind his chair to give him a hug

"Youre welcome, just know I'm here for you ok?"

I nod "now I gotta go pack before a forget"

I throw the coat on my bed before throwing myself on the bed 'Does Kiba like me like that?'

////// A/N

hey yall!!! another chapter up! and just a few hours after the last one. Next up, THE CHUNIN EXAMS

[chungledown-bimothy]

Music and the Mirror (and the chance to dance with you)

Hey look! I actually finished something! :D

AO3     Masterlist

Summary: It had been five years, and Virgil was finally ready to dance again. The last thing he expected was Roman and that goddamn tongue piercing.

Warnings: some swearing, sympathetic deceit, accidental misgendering, dysphoria. lmk if i missed anything!

Pairing(s): prinxiety, background remceit and logicality

Word Count: 4,739

Tag List:  @ren-allen​ @ccecode​ @emo-sanders-sides-loving-unicorn​ @ilovemygaydad​ @bloodropsblog​ @funsizedgremlin​ @raygelkitty​ @roxiefox23​ @thomasthesandersengine​

If I don't do this now, I never will, and I'll regret it for the rest of my life. Virgil took a deep breath, staring at the cursor blinking in the empty search bar. After a few minutes and a significant amount of emotional effort, he searched for 'adult dance classes'. Almost immediately, the screen was full of dance studios offering classes, and he had to breathe through the knot of anxiety that formed from the sheer number of options. He scrolled past ballet (I couldn't do ballet back when I was in shape), hip hop (I'm not nearly confident enough for that), and tango (No way I'm getting that close to a stranger), but none of them felt right. It had been so long; if he made the wrong choice, it would destroy what little confidence he had, potentially stopping him from ever dancing again. That's a bit dramatic, the small, logical part of his brain insisted. Dancing is part of you; it's in your blood. You could never give it up forever. You're here now, after everything that happened. That voice, however, was drowned out by his anxiety. Until he saw it.

Beginner West Coast Swing! No experience or partner needed. 8-9pm Tuesdays. $18 drop-in, $45 all 3 weeks.

West Coast Swing. Perfect. Upbeat and energetic, but not too technically demanding at first, and half the fun is in the tension held in the space between partners. And it starts tomorrow, so there's no time to chicken out. He followed the website's registration process, signing up for all four weeks. It's only four hours over the course of the month, he figured. Even if it went horribly, he'd gotten through worse.

After registering, he quickly shut his laptop and went to dig out his old dance shoes. Hopefully they still fit; a lot has changed over the last five years. They did, just barely.

-

Tuesday

Virgil walked into the studio at 7:55, his heart pounding. Immediately, he was greeted by a very tall man, likely in his early thirties, with a clipboard in one hand.

"Hello, and welcome! I am Logan Sanders; I own the studio. Are you here for west coast swing?" Logan stuck his hand out.

"Uh, hi, nice to meet you. My name's Virgil." Virgil shook his hand. "Yeah, I registered online yesterday." Logan checked the clipboard, and looked back up at Virgil.

"Wonderful, I have you right here. Follow me, your class is going to be held in the Blue Room." Virgil followed him through a huge room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and through a door off to the side. Silently, he thanked whatever deities that might be listening that the class wasn't in that room and prayed that the Blue Room would have fewer mirrors. Fortunately, it only had a few mirrors on the far wall; it was clear that they would rarely, if ever, use them. "Alright, here we are. Have fun, and please do not hesitate to let me know if there are any issues." Logan gave him a small smile and adjusted his glasses before practically gliding out of the room. That man did decades of ballet; I'd bet my life on it.

Virgil slunk around the fifteen or so people who were milling about on the dance floor waiting for the class to start. Once he got to a bench in the corner, he changed into his dance shoes and reluctantly took off his hoodie. Instead of joining his classmates on the floor; he took this opportunity to observe them. They were largely what he expected, most of them looked to be between twenty-five and thirty, with the exceptions of himself, at twenty-two, and a couple who were probably around sixty.

"Good evening! My name is Patton Sanders, and I'm your west coast swing teacher! Alright, let's line up; leads to my left, and follows to my right."

Virgil froze. He hadn't considered if he'd rather lead or follow. He felt the teacher's eyes on him, however, and had to make a decision. Something in his gut told him to follow, so he fell in line to Patton's right. He immediately noticed that there were more follows than leads, and briefly chastised himself for choosing wrong. Fortunately, Patton's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"I see a bunch of familiar faces tonight; thank you so much for coming back! Your focus this month should be on moving beyond the basics. Focus on your posture, your technique, and your styling." Patton looked at all of his students, giving them all a blinding smile. "New students, thank you for joining us! West Coast Swing is incredibly unique. Unlike most other ballroom dances, what really matters is the energy and elasticity between partners, and each partner is given far more independence than in other styles. But listen to me, getting ahead of myself," Patton giggled. "None of that matters if you don't know how to move your feet! Okay, let's start with the leads." Patton walked them through the basic step, giving Virgil a chance to assess his future partners. The dance snob he used to be scoffed; he was not impressed with anything that he was seeing, but some of them seemed to have potential. Reminding himself that he won't be good at this at first either, he focused on the leads' basic step and constructing the most likely follows' counterpart.

"Fantastic, now ladies, your basic is very similar," Virgil flinched. In the excitement of starting to dance again, he'd forgotten about his wide hips, and he didn't have a binder in the right size to exercise without potentially causing a lot of damage. Just dance, Virgil. Remember how it all fades away. Focus on the steps, so you can build a foundation strong enough that you will be able to leave everything but the music behind. Virgil did just that, quickly picking up the step.

"Awesome! Okay, let's partner up; I'll put on the music and come dance with y'all who don't have partners." Virgil was one of the two follows without a partner, and he stifled a laugh when "Madness" by Muse started playing through the speakers. It probably does seem kind of mad, doing this alone. Patton called out "5, 6, 7, 8!" and they all started moving. Virgil did his best alone, but it wasn't long until Patton took his hand and started leading. Virgil only then realized that his posture had been terrible. He straightened up and looked Patton in the eye, and he thought he saw approval there. They danced for a little bit longer before Patton gave him a thumbs-up and went to turn off the music.

"That looked really great, you guys. That's officially all the time we have, but I'll put some music on for a bit longer if any of you want to hang around and keep dancing!" Virgil wanted to stay for a while longer. It felt so good to be dancing again, to feel that powerful and confident, but he saw himself in the mirror and practically ran to put his hoodie back on and change his shoes so he could leave. When he got to the door, he hesitated and looked back, but he quickly turned back around and went home, deciding to not risk getting misgendered again and ruining his post-dance elation.

--

The next week, Virgil approached Patton after class, heart hammering in his chest.

"Uh, Patton? Can we talk for a minute?"

"Of course! Virgil, right? What's up?"

Virgil looked down, afraid of what he might see in his teacher's eyes. "My pronouns are he/him. I know I don't look it, but…." Virgil hesitated, not sure how to finish the thought, "yeah. He/him."

"Oh, my! Thanks for letting me know! I won't misgender you again." Surprised, Virgil looked up to see a smile on Patton's face. "By the way, what's your dance history, if you don't mind me asking? You clearly have a whole bunch." Virgil hoped his blush wasn't as strong as it felt.

"Um, it was pretty much all in high school. Dance classes for PE credit, danced in all of the musicals, and I took some jazz classes outside of school. Haven't danced since graduating, though." Clearly Patton read between the lines; his face softened, but it was with understanding, not pity, as Virgil had feared.

"Well, whatever happened back then, welcome back. You've got a lot of talent, and I'm excited to see where it takes you, if you choose to stick with it. See you next week, kiddo!" Virgil thanked him and left, head held high.

-

The following class passed without incident. Virgil learned and grew as a dancer immensely, and, when given the opportunity, he signed up for the next cycle, excited to learn more. Nothing could have prepared him for that next class.

--------

The class started completely normally. Virgil arrived, put on his new dance shoes, and waited for Patton to start the class. He was so wrapped up in mentally reviewing the patterns from the previous weeks, he didn't notice that there were new students until Patton had them partner up and someone took his hand.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Virgil Raine is very, very gay. He had had his fair share of Gay Panic moments, but none of them compared to what happened in Virgil's head when he made eye contact with the stranger holding his hand. He was shorter than Virgil, with curly black hair and eyes like brown enstatite that sparkled with confidence.

The stranger gave him a blinding smile. "Pleasure to meet you; I'm Roman."

"V- Virgil." He was amazed that his voice worked, and he thanked every deity he could think of that Patton cut him off, giving the class a pattern and counting them off.

Virgil stood tall, more confident in his abilities to dance than to talk to Roman, and then they started moving. Virgil's biggest struggle in west coast swing was the concept of connection, of creating and maintaining the elasticity that is a fundamental part of the dance. With Roman, however, the connection was instant and perfect. As Roman led him through a left-side pass into a whip, he felt alive in ways he hadn't in years, especially since Patton hadn't said anything about doing a whip. He knew it was cliche as hell, but he could have sworn that the rest of the world stopped existing- for those short minutes, all that existed was him, Roman, and the music.

All too soon, however, the music stopped, and the spell was broken. Virgil stepped back, painfully aware of how much he was blushing.

"Looking good, y'all! Leads, rotate, and let's do it again!"

Roman winked. "Thanks for the dance, stormcloud," he said before turning and walking down the line, not giving Virgil a chance to respond. Stunned, Virgil took his new partner's hand and went through the pattern by rote, too distracted to pay attention to connection or styling.

The rest of the class passed in a similar fashion- Virgil trying to keep his cool and not look at Roman too much. They were partnered once more before class ended. Neither of them said anything, but the connection and energy was even more intense, if anything, and Roman's flamboyant styling left Virgil reeling. As soon as class ended, he put his headphones on, turned his music up, changed his shoes, and left. He felt a pair of eyes on him as he left the studio. He wasn't sure whether or not he wanted that feeling to be correct.

Once he was safely out of the building, he texted his best friend, Declan.

[Emo]: askfkaldjsl there's a really cute guy in my west coast swing class, and he can Dance. By far the best dancer in the class who isn't the teacher. Extra as hell, based on two interactions. I'm literally too gay to function help

[Snek]: Gay panic is so pure

[Snek]: Fuck YEAH dude

[Emo]: Helpful as always, D.

[Snek]: You know I just call it like it is. So are you gonna make a move, or just write another fanfic that basically is just a self-insert about what could have been if you weren't a coward?

[Emo]: Hey, I only did that ONCE, and I didn't even finish it, let alone post it.

[Snek]: *raises an eyebrow* are you sure about that?

[Emo]: Okay, twice, and yeah I posted that second one. But it wasn't even really a fic, just a list of ideas that developed something like a plot.

[Snek]: So….? What are you gonna do about this unnamed hottie?

[Emo]: Play it by ear. Two more weeks of class gives me two more weeks to gather information.

[Snek]: No comment on not knowing his name?

[Emo]: Damn i was hoping that'd slide by. It's Roman.

[Snek]: Good strong name. Maybe I'll show up and take a shot at him

[Emo]: *hiss* Fuck off he's mine. Besides, you have someone. Someone you still refUSE TO TELL ME ABOUT, BITCH

[Snek]: Love you too <3

Virgil closed his phone and drove home, in desperate need of a shower and a good night's sleep.

--

Virgil walked into the studio, head low with his hood up and headphones playing louder than was safe for him or the electronics, but he didn't care. What mattered was quieting the voice in his head that had been saying 'Why would he look twice at you? You're a mediocre dancer at best, and you know he's misgendering you in his head. You know from experience how few people want to date trans guys. Wrong parts for gay guys, wrong gender for straight guys. Putting yourself out there would be a disaster' for the last week. I'm here to dance, he reminded himself, not to flirt.

He quickly got to the Blue Room and changed his shoes, not bothering to take off his hoodie or headphones until the last possible minute- nothing calmed his nerves like Gerard Way not being okay either. When the time came, he reluctantly shed his armor and took his place in the line of follows.

Class began as normal; a brief review of previous lessons and a few warm-up patterns. Virgil kept his attention on Patton or his current partner. While this strategy kept his eyes and mind (mostly) off of Roman, it meant that he was entirely unprepared when it was their turn to dance together.

"Virgil, right?" Roman asked, eyes still infuriatingly bright.

"Yep. What's up, Roman?" Virgil smirked, surprising even himself. Patton counted them off, but that didn't stop Roman from responding as they went through the series.

"Ah, you can speak! I'm doing fabulously. And you?"

"Fine. Just trying to learn, princey." To Virgil's surprise, Roman was silent for the rest of the dance, and didn't say anything before moving to his next partner, either. Shit. Good job, Virgil. Why did you even call him that? Figuring there wasn't really anything he could do about it, Virgil tried to put it out of his mind and keep focusing on Patton's lesson.

As in the previous class, he danced with Roman one more time, right at the end. The pattern was complex, and the music was fast, so there wasn't any opportunity to talk until after the music stopped and Patton dismissed the class.

"Thanks for the dances, Roman. You're a great dancer." He turned to leave, not wanting to stick around for small talk.

"Wait, Virgil!" He turned around to see a look on Roman's face that he couldn't quite figure out. "Why'd you call me 'princey'? How did you know?"

Virgil furrowed his brow, confused. "Know what? Dunno where the nickname came from, you just kinda carry yourself like you think you're royalty or something."

"You really didn't know that my last name is Prince?" Roman looked up at him, incredulous.

"I swear I didn't. While we're on the topic of nicknames, why did you call me 'stormcloud' last week?" Virgil was surprised to see Roman look down and fidget with the hem of his shirt.

"Your hoodie. It has that purple stormcloud on it. And your energy isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows."

Virgil chucked. "I didn't think you were that observant. See you next week, princey." Virgil smirked.

"Looking forward to it," Roman responded. Well, Virgil thought that's what he said. His brain short-circuited when Roman said 'looking' and revealed a silver stud in the middle of his tongue.

Completely unable to speak, Virgil turned and hurried to his stuff, shoving his headphones in his ears and changing his shoes as fast as possible. He didn't even take the time to put his hoodie back on before practically running out of the studio to his car.

[Emo]: 911 HE HAS A FUCKING TONGUE PIERCING I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I WAS INTO THAT

[Snek]: Who, roman? Oh shit. I distinctly remember you telling me once that you definitely *aren't* into tongue piercings. Damn you are SO WHIPPED. This guy must be a fuckin Adonis

[Emo]: I'm not whipped. He just really is that hot. And sassy. And observant. And funny.

[Snek]: …

[Emo]: ah, fuck. I really am whipped. But I think it might not be one-sided. You know how terrible I am at flirting?

[Snek]: Whatever could you possibly mean? Being a sarcastic ass is peak flirting. *Everyone* knows that.

[Emo]: No need to be a bitch about it. Anyway, I unintentionally did a whole bunch of it, and he gave it right back. Maybe even better than I did?

[Snek]: Boy that's your fuckin soulmate. If you really pulled a You as a first conversation and didn't scare him off, hold the fuck on to him

[Emo]: you know I hate it when you do that. And yeah, I don't plan on letting him go. Next week is the last week of the class. I'll ask him out after. That way, if he rejects me, we never see each other again. No harm, no foul.

[Snek]: Solid plan. I gotta go- date night. Talk later?

[Emo]: You gotta tell me who this mystery person is. It's been *months*, and I still don't know anything about them.

[Snek]: About whomst? Significant other? I don't know her.

Rolling his eyes at his enigmatic friend, Virgil drove home.

----

The next week, unlike previous weeks, he walked into the studio, head held high, not wearing headphones. He had a plan and the confidence of a man with nothing to lose.

Virgil danced through the class better than he ever had before. As usual, he was partnered with Roman a few times, but aside from a brief greeting, neither of them said anything, but Virgil thought he felt a silent conversation between them as they danced- a meeting of two souls consumed by a love of dance.

Before he knew it, class was over. He took a moment to collect his thoughts under the guise of changing his shoes before looking around to find Roman. When he did, his heart stopped. Roman was in the middle of the dance floor, gliding effortlessly through what appeared to be an argentine tango. His partner was about Virgil's height, with sharp, high cheekbones and a flawless jawline. He couldn't see their eyes; they were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. What really made Virgil's stomach knot was the fact that their styling was likely in violation of public indecency laws- the two of them clearly knew each other intimately. Blinking away tears, Virgil grabbed his things and ran to his car. He went to text Declan and saw that he already had a message from him.

[Snek]: So how'd it go, loverboy? When's the date?

[Emo]: There won't be a date. He's with someone. A gorgeous someone. I didn't know an argentine tango could look *that* much like sex on the dance floor.

[Snek]: Oh shit, Virge, I'm so sorry. Do you want me to kill that guy for you? Because it sounds like he sucks, and I will totally kill him for you.

[Emo]: thanks, but no. I can't fucking breathe, D. Why the fuck do I always do this? Why can't I feel things a normal amount? Why do I let my heart run away like this?

[Snek]: I could give you a smartass answer about your childhood traumas, but the bottom line is that it's because you are a deeply good and caring person. The fact that you choose to see the best in people despite everything you've been through is incredible, Virgil. Now, get your cute butt home. I'll meet you there with ice cream, and we're gonna watch Nightmare Before Christmas and talk it out, okay?

[Emo]: Give me half an hour to get home and showered. Love you <3

Ten minutes later, Virgil unlocked his front door and turned on the light.

"Well helloooo, Virgil," a familiar voice drawled.

Virgil let out a scream that neither man knew he was capable of. "Declan you sack of shit I'm going to fucking murder you. My internal organs have had enough stress today, thank you very fucking much. I said half an hour."

"I know you did, but I also know you. Right now, you're spiraling into self-loathing, and the easiest outlet for that is dysphoria. I would be a terrible friend if I let you suffer through that alone."

"I thought we agreed that you weren't gonna psychoanalyze me." Virgil cocked an eyebrow, his heart rate returning to almost normal. "Are you offering to shower with me?"

"It's not psychoanalysis. It's just knowing my best friend and his self-destructive tendencies. And no, I'm not. I'm just here for emotional support. We both know that that smart brain of yours likes to tell you all sorts of lies, and-"

"And you're a human polygraph. I got it. Thanks, Dec. I'll be back out as soon as possible. Make yourself at home- you know where everything is." Virgil turned and walked towards the bathroom.

"Easy on the hair product- it your hair is full of goop, it'll fuck my eczema up, so I won't cuddle you!" Declan called out after him. Virgil flipped him off, but they both knew that he would not only eschew hair products but also use the eczema-friendly body wash they both pretended he hadn't bought just so they could cuddle more comfortably for Declan.

Fifteen minutes later, Virgil returned to the living room. He expected Declan to make him talk through the storm that was going on in his head, but instead they watched movies and joked around all night. The only talk of dancing that night was Virgil confirming that he would not give it up for anything, let alone some guy, no matter how cute.

--

Virgil had been so wrapped up in thoughts of Roman, he missed why the following week's class was a one-day workshop instead of a new cycle, but he figured it didn't really matter. He was there to dance, logistical semantics be damned.

His resolution to stick with the classes no matter what was immediately tested when he entered the ballroom and saw Roman on the floor dancing with the same man from the previous week. At least it's west coast swing this time, Virgil mused as he changed his shoes and tried not to stare. Fortunately, it wasn't long before Patton started the class.

Unfortunately, it also wasn't long before Virgil and Roman were partners.

"Hello again, stormcloud!" Roman said as he began leading Virgil through the pattern.

Virgil nodded curtly. "Roman."

"What's with the attitude, Edgar Allen Woe?" Virgil told himself he was imagining the hurt in Roman's voice.

"We're here to dance, not chit-chat." Roman tried to lead Virgil through a turn, but he tripped over his own feet. Because Virgil was in the middle of that turn, he was thrown off balance as well. In an instant, both men were on the floor, Roman on top of Virgil.

"Well hello there," Roman laughed.

"Get. Off. Now." Virgil shoved Roman off of him and scrambled back to his feet, praying that his blush wasn't as scarlet as it felt. The blush was, of course, completely from the embarrassment of falling in front of the class and had nothing to do with being underneath Roman.

Patton, fully aware of the tension between the two dancers as well as Virgil's shyness, quickly grabbed the class' attention and moved on with the lesson. Patton showed mercy on Virgil and prolonged the time between partner rotations to keep him from having to dance with Roman again. I hope those kiddos work out whatever's going on between them, but they can't do it during my class time.

For the rest of the hour, Virgil kept his head down unless absolutely necessary and tried to learn as much as possible, but he just couldn't focus. Remembering how close Roman was with flecks of gold in his eyes and clearly as muscular as Virgil had imagined had him grateful for the first and only time that he wasn't assigned male at birth- the situation would have been far more awkward than it already was if there was even the slightest possibility of a boner to deal with.

Eventually, the class ended, and Virgil hurried out of the studio as per usual. This time, however, he was followed. He was barely out of the studio when Roman called after him.

"Virgil! Wait! Please!"

Virgil turned to face him, anxiety about this conversation manifesting in anger. "What do you want, Roman?"

"A date with you." Roman's shoulders dropped, and he suddenly seemed very interested in his shoes.

"W- what?" Roman stood tall and looked Virgil in the eye.

"Will you go out with me? I know you felt what I did when we danced. Before tonight, I mean. Please, go out with me, let's give that energy a shot off of the dance floor." Virgil's eyes flashed with hope, want, and caution.

"What about your boyfriend?" Virgil spat.

"What are you talking about? What boyfriend?"

"I'm not an idiot, Roman. Tall, sunglasses, dances with you with a chemistry I've never seen before? WHAT?" Virgil snapped, when Roman started laughing.

"That, Virgil, is Remy. My best friend. My best friend who agreed to pick me up last time and come with me today to help me show off for you. We've been dancing together since we were eight; of course we have damn good chemistry. But that connection is nothing to what I felt when we danced that first time. We have something special, Virgil. Please, tell me you felt it too." Virgil stepped forward, closing the gap between them.

"I- I'm not good with words," he whispered, gently tilting Roman's head up and leaning down so that their lips were almost touching. "Yes, I felt it too." Virgil searched his face, looking for discomfort. "Can I kiss you, Roman?"

Instead of responding, Roman lifted onto the balls of his feet and pressed his lips to Virgil's. After a split second of shock, Virgil deepened the kiss, wrapping his arms around Roman's torso and lifted him to his height. He quickly put him down, however, when they heard a wolf-whistle and a "WHOOP!".

Embarrassed, Virgil and Roman looked to see Remy and Declan standing at the door of the studio, smiling and laughing.

"I told you not to sweat it, girl. I couldn't tell you how bad my boy has it for yours, because he made me promise not to tell anyone, but look at that." Remy winked at Declan.

"Yes, and this totally wouldn't have been easier if we just told them how the other felt, like I definitely didn't suggest weeks ago." Declan rolled his eyes.

Virgil looked at the two of them suspiciously. "You two know each other?"

"Obviously, babe. Who do you think D's been seeing all these months?"

Virgil turned to Roman. "Did you know about this?"

"I mean, I knew Remy was seeing Declan, but I had no idea he was your friend. You know what this means though, right?"

"What does it mean?" Virgil asked, apprehensive.

"The most epic double dates of all time!" Roman punctuated his proclamation with a flourish. Virgil, Declan, and Remy all let out a groan.

The four men swapped numbers as needed and parted ways with promises to see each other again soon.

[rambleonwithrosie]

150 Followers. Feel free to take this and use it yourself.

Okay so if you've been following me you know that at every milestone of 50 I go and answer 50 questions. So this time they're all gonna be Queen/Classic Rock specific and y'all are all welcome to take these and make asks out of them or reblog/copy with your own answers.

Favorite Queen member's solo album? Strange Frontier by Roger Taylor

Who of the band would you call to help you fix a flat tire? John, he's a dad and a diy guy, as much as I wanna say Rog I just don't want to deal with a drama queen when I'm having my own drama but I've seen him under the hood of a car so I've no doubt he probably knows how

What do you think Brian May smells like on am average day? Very woodsy, like pine needles and some light but expensive cologne

How would you kiss Freddie? On the cheek like a good friend I just can't get into his looks enough to think about kissing him any other way

How would you kiss John? Well if we're talking long haired fluffy John I'd probably psst at him to come around the corner and then give him a kiss and see what he does

How would you kiss Brian? Very carefully otherwise @squeezemylemon is gonna kill me so probably the sweet quick chaste type kiss

How would you kiss Roger? (My moment has come) I would walk up to him and grab ahold of one of the necklaces he wears and just pull his lips down to mine and crash mine onto his wrapping my arms around his neck kissing him for all I'm worth or less dramatically if we were just sitting on a couch or something I'd just lean my head up off his shoulder and press a gentler sort of kiss to his lips and see where he takes it after that

If you were going to date one of their kids who would it be? Felix, I'm partial to brunettes usually (Roger and Luke Skywalker are my exceptions) and he seems pretty cool and has done a lot of different things which would be interesting to talk about

Favorite gif of your least favorite band member?

10. Most recent Queen photo on your phone

11. Favorite piece of fanart?

I can't pick just one. I also don't remember where I found these and if you know the artist I'll happily tag them in the most. The artbis most definitely NOT mine

This is mine

12. Queen song that makes you want to cry? Love of My Life

13. Which band member would you pick to keep an eye on you at a party so you don't get too crazy and make it home safe? Brian probably, I would say John but I feel if he's drinking he'd be less than no help

14. Who's flat would you ask to crash at? I have reasons to want to say Roger's but banging aside I'd probably pick Freddie he was generous and funny and would probably do his beat to cheer me up from whatever circumstance had made me not have a place of my own to stay

15. Who would you want to teach you to play an instrument they play? Well I genuinely feel I'm best suited for drums so I'm not just saying Roger because he's my dude. Plus he could teach me the most instruments anyways considering as he knows drums, bass, electric, and keyboard.

16. If you could spend a day with Freddie what would you do? I'd just want to sit and have tea and talk and maybe go shopping later hear his advice and crack some jokes

17. Favorite solo song by a Queen band member? As far as written by goes, it's probably Let's Get Crazy or Happiness by Rog bit overall it's gotta be Rog's version of Racing in the Street *chills*

18. Favorite live performance?

19. Whose singing voice do you like best? Roger Taylor (nothing against Fresh he's amazing)

20. Whose speaking voice do you like best? Again Roger Meddows Taylor for the win

21. Write a snippet where you're holding hands with your least favorite band member.

Freddie had never been to an amusement park before, hadn't wanted to go really, but John had begged him to come along and then left him with Aston to babysit while he dealt with his actual children. It wasn't that she had anything against Fred it's just him tagging along on her elbow was keeping her away from the drummer whose attention she wanted. They got onto one of the rides and she saw how pale Freddie was looking and felt sorry for him. It wasn't his fault that he was being a third wheel or that the drummer was off on one of the more dangerous rides that Freddie was not about to get on.

"You can hold my hand if you want" Aston joked looking over at Fred.

"Really?" He asked a little relieved. The two of them chuckled and to Aston's surprise Freddie's black nail polished fingertips interlaced through hers and he looked a little more at ease for the comfort of human contact.

"It'll be fine" she grinned and then the ride took off and the black fingernails damn near dug into her hand in panic.

22. Write a snippet where you're fighting with your favorite band member.

They had been living together for just over two months and despite not knowing how to boil an egg Roger somehow found a way to get into the kitchen and put things in the wrong spot. He came home from the stall.

"Where is the paprika?" She leveled at him before he had scarcely shut the door.

"The what?"

"Paprika, Rog, the spice that I was going to use for the supper I was cooking us, but I can't ever find anything in this kitchen" Aston said muttering as an afterthought "thanks to you."

"What was that?" Rog said coming over to her and looking darkly with his blue eyes.

"Just tell me where you put the paprika and we'll be fine" she sighed.

"I didn't fucking touch anything in your stupid kitchen" he glowered going to the liquor cabinet.

"Well I still can't find it" she huffed.

"Not my problem" he said swigging straight from the bottle.

"Well if you want dinner it kind of is" she retorted.

"I'll get something out" Rog said dispassionately.

"Fuck you" she muttered and went back to banging through the cabinets in search of the missing spice. She was on her knees with half her body in a lower shelf looking in the back and growing hotter for Roger showing no signs of caring or helping. She smelt the dish starting to burn on the stove and tried to crawl out, raising her head up and whacking it on the shelf above. She let out a round of oaths.

She went over to the stove and moved it off the heat halfway between tears and screaming.

"I'll order something" Roger said standing up.

"I can fucking cook!" She shouted "if only I could find the things I need when I need them."

"Well don't yell at me about it" Roger said and brushed past and out the door.

Aston collapsed onto the floor sitting with her back to the cabinets and started crying. She sobbed into the kitchen towel. So much for her cosy dinner at home with Rog. She was so distraught that she didn't hear the door open and close. She felt her fingers clutching the towel pried open and looked to see a bottle of paprika put into them. She turned her teary red eyes up to Roger's face. He pulled her to her feet and held her in his arms. Softly stroking her hair and planting a gentle kiss to her cheeks.

"Come on, I got us reservations, you can cook your thing tomorrow if you still want to" he looked down at her smiling and put a kiss to her nose and grinned at her in his arms.

23. Favorite picture of Brian

24. Favorite picture Roger

(Well it's one of many favs)

25. Favorite picture of Freddie

26. Favorite picture of John

27. Best song to slow dance to? One Year of Love

28. Best song to make out to? I'm In Love with My Car

29. Best song to drive to? Breakthru or Don't Stop Me Now

30. Best song to strip to? Tear It Up

31. What era of the band would you like to hang out with most? I wanna say mid to late 70s. I'd rather not have to hang out with them during Hot Space 😂

32. Favorite song on your favorite album? Rock It (Prime Jive)

33. Least liked song on your favorite album? Probably Play the Game

34. Who would you want to take care of you if you were sick? I feel Brian would be the most knowledgeable but I'd probably prefer Fred just cutting up and maybe grabbing the aspirins and whatever else was needed. I just don't feel Brian would be funny enough to cheer me up. And Rog I just don't know how good he'd be at taking care of someone

35. Who would you want to go driving with? Roger. Duh! So many reasons!

36. Who would you pick to spend a lazy (non-sexual) afternoon with? Well not that I'm just into Rog for the sex, he'd still be my first pick because laughs. But second would be Brian.

37. Rate how thirsty you are for each band member? Freddie 0/10. John variable between 0/10-6/10. Brian 2/10-4/10(red special is factored into Brian). Roger 1000/10 (cars aren't factored into Rog otherwise I'd break my phone adding zeros to that 1000)

38. Least favorite Roger song? Sheer Heart Attack

39. Favorite Brian song? Sail Away Sweet Sister or Dragon Attack

40. Least favorite Freddie song? Body Language and Get Down Make Love

41. Favorite John song? One Year of Love or If You Can't Beat Them

42. Are you excited for the Bohemian Rhapsody movie? Yes. Not insanely. But moderately excited yes

43. Is Queen your favorite band of all time? No. They're in my top 3 but The Moody Blues were my childhood and are so unique and very special to me

44. If you married your crush from the band where would you go on your honeymoon? The beach. Hopefully the Pacific Ocean. Probably some nice private beach just to have space with each other and I love water and he loves boating and stuff.

45. Who has the nicest butt? While I prefer Rog's ass I must admit John possesses the superior booty

46. Who has the best smile? Roger. Hands down and not just because he's my main man all around it's literally made of sunshine

47. Who would you go to if you were scared? Roger. I don't get scared so if I did I'd want someone around to make me laugh my fears away

48. If you were going to be in a crime fighting/super hero duo with one of the band, who would it be? John. He's sound and sensible and so long as he can handle my forceful personality and not write any DISpatches raking my bad behavior and rash decisions we'll get along

49. Do you listen to Queen daily, or at least multiple times a week? Yes especially if you include their solo works

50. Have you written any Queen fanfiction or made any fanart? Yes. Fanfiction galore. Some has yet to be posted but when I do it will be on @drummerinthecupboard

[sweetpeaslover]

Return To Riverdale Part 1

*Hey y'all! I'm finally writing this fanfic that I promised @aserpentsslut. This is my first time writing about a character other than Sweet Pea so hopefully it goes well. This will be a multi part fanfic and I will do more installments in the future. I don't know how to insert links to other chapters but I will in the future once I learn(y'all are welcome to message me and tell me how lol). Hope this doesn't suck!*

The last box was finally carried out of your room by the movers and loaded into the moving van. You and your mom were moving back to Riverdale from Greendale, where you had been leaving when she was dating this guy that lived there. Now, they had split and you were finally moving back to the town you called home. You missed your friends from the Southside terribly: Toni, Fangs, Sweet Pea, and Jughead. You had basically lost contact with them when you moved and you were worried that they had moved on and completely forgotten about you, after all, it had been about five years. Enough time to move on and make new friends. Also, they had all joined the Serpents probably, so that would be another strain on your relationship with them. You wished your mom had never moved the two of you to Greendale just to be near her boyfriend, Beaux. He should have been the one to move, not allow your family to be uprooted because he couldn't be bothered. Now you would never know where that kiss you shared with Fangs might have gone. The night before you left Riverdale, you and Fangs snuck out to hang out at the quarry, where you two ended up sharing your first kiss. It was sloppy and awkward, but it still sent chills down your spine. Even years later, you longed to see him again, you longed to know if he still felt that way about you.

You got in the car with your mom and began the journey to Riverdale. It wasn't far, probably about half an hour. In the car, your mom asked you if you were looking forward to seeing your friends again. You said you hoped they still considered themselves your friends after five years. You knew your mom felt bad about the huge disruption that the move had caused in your life. When you finally got to your old house, you immediately felt at home. Your house was fairly small, it only had two bedrooms, but it was enough for the two of you. Best part was that it was right next to the trailer park where your friends lived. You lived about five minutes away from the Jones's trailer, which was where you decided to go first. You had heard that FP had recently been released from prison and he would be happy to see you back in Riverdale, you used to play around the trailer with Jughead all the time when you were in elementary school. You knocked on the door, crossing your fingers that they would be home. The door opened and Jughead stood in the doorway. He looked so different, yet the same as the last time you saw him in sixth grade. He still wore his beanie, and his hair was still wavy and messy. However, he had still changed quite a bit. For one, he was at least a foot taller and he was no longer a scrawny little kid. He had muscles now! He had pretty defined biceps as well as washboard abs. When he saw you, the widest smile spread across his face and he immediately enveloped you in a bone-crushing hug.

"Oh my god y/n, I have missed you so much, it's been so long!!!" he exclaimed. "Dad!!! It's y/n!!!". FP's head popped out from behind a corner.

"Y/n, so nice to see you!" he said. "Come on in, I want to hear all about Greendale,".

You came in and sat down in their cramped living room with FP and Jughead sitting on either side of you. One at a time, they eagerly asked you questions about how lame Greendale was, and about Beaux. You had mostly bad things to say about Greendale, a lot of drugs and gangs, it was about ten times worse than the Southside, and none of the gangs were like the Serpents. Eventually, FP wandered into the kitchen to make (read:order) dinner, leaving you and Jughead alone. Jug seemed to be elated that you were back. You were relieved that your childhood playmate had not completely moved on and forgotten about you. You hoped that the same went for the rest, especially Fangs. You glanced furtively at the kitchen to make sure FP wasn't listening before scooting a little closer to Jughead.

"So, have the others forgotten about me?" you asked in a low voice.

"What do you mean y/n?" he said. "We haven't forgotten about you, I mean sure things have changed a little and we have a million other things on our minds, but we still remember you. In fact, we were all sharing a memory just the other day about when you got that new Barbie castle and you wanted us to all play with you and we didn't want to because Barbie is stupid and you started crying".

"And then Sweet Pea was making fun of me because everything in my room was pink and girly and he thought it was gross," you smiled at the memory, Sweet Pea had really hurt your feelings and you didn't forgive him for a whole week. It was only when he came to your house with these hideously decorated cupcakes that looked like a pink unicorn threw up on them. He had made them himself, his first and only attempt at baking. You had to give him credit, the kid was seven.He brought you the cupcakes and offered to play Barbies with you.

"For the record," Jughead said. "I think it's a cute memory, you getting all mad because nobody liked your pink dollhouse,".

"Speaking of the group.." you began. "Does Fangs ever talk about me?".

"Well, not more than anyone else does, why? Jughead asked.

"Do you promise not to laugh?" you ask.

"Okay, fine. Now tell me!" he begged.

"So, the night before I left, Fangs and I snuck out to the quarry to hang out...and we kissed," you said ducking your head in embarrassment. Jughead's face fell, but you didn't notice and continued.

"It was probably nothing. It's just that I've been thinking about this for years and I can't help but wonder if he still does too. I wonder if he still has those feelings for me," you say wistfully.

"If he does have those feelings still, would you be happy about it?" asked Jughead. A chill ran through your spine. You had never kissed anyone except Fangs and you cringed at how awkward it was, you wanted to do it again, properly this time.

"Yes, I do want him to like me, I guess," you told Jughead, relieved that you were finally able to confide in someone about this. "Jug, what's he like nowadays?".

"Well he has gotten really buff, and he wears his Serpent jacket all the time. He and Sweet Pea never take them off," he said.

"That's just like them, they were always fiercely loyal," you say admiringly. "Is he handsome?" you ask giggling. Jughead blushes a deep crimson and laughs awkwardly.

"Well, I've never looked at him like that, but I suppose I could see the appeal," Jughead says. "He and Sweets get lots of attention, total ladies men,".

"Oh, then maybe he has forgotten me then if he goes through that many girls," you say, discouraged.

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that, I really think you might have a chance with him," Jughead said, feeling guilty that he made you upset.

"No, really, I shouldn't have assumed he still liked me. I'm the one who needs to let it go, it's been five years," you say, wiping away a tear. Jughead wrapped his arm around you and pulled you close, letting your head rest on his chest. It felt nice, it reminded you of when you were kids and you all used to huddle together and watch movies. Or the times when you guys made a fort in your living room and it was a tight fit to get all five of you in. You hadn't felt this close to any of your friends in a long time. You just wanted to be eight again, playing tag with Jughead outside his trailer, sneaking candy from the kitchen with Fangs, experimenting with hideous purple eyeshadow with Toni, arguing with Sweet Pea over who got the last cherry popsicle...those were the simple days. You wished for than anything to go back and savor them. Heck, you would rather eat a thousand grape popsicles with Sweet Pea if it meant you could run away from your problems. What if your friends weren't your friends anymore? How would you fit in at school? Would your mom ever move you again? These were big kid problems that you didn't have to worry about when it was just the five of you.

"You could go visit him if you want," Jughead offered.

"What?" you asked, snapping out of your trance.

"Fangs, I mean. I know he'll be so happy to see you, even if it isn't romantic. No matter what, you still have your friends, you still have me, you will always have me," he promised. You looked up at him and met his gaze. He had the same kind eyes that he always had, and you were so grateful that he hadn't moved on without you. Hopefully the others would feel the same. Tomorrow, you would reunite with the rest of the group and hopefully be able to clear things up with Fangs about that kiss. You so desperately hoped that he still liked you, but for now you just lay on your best friend's chest, totally unaware that with each passing minute, Jughead Jones was falling deeper and deeper in love with you.

*Okay so that didn't suck as much as I thought, I'm just winging it here😂. I know it doesn't seem focused on a relationship with Jughead but it's going to be a bit of a slow burn. I'll write the next installment as soon as I can*

[kee-writestrashh]

Guns for Hire

Ramsay Bolton x Reader

ao3

Summary:  You are the wife to the Heir of the Red Kings, Ramsay Bolton. living the undercover life of a mob wife has its perks, and you love your husband. But you find out something that seems to unfold a series of unwanted events… 

Chapter 47: March Madness

"So, you're not nervous about tomorrow?" You asked, watching your father closely, determined to detect the fear.

He gave a small shrug, "It's out of my hands. The Lord will see me through it."

Ramsay dropped his head to stare at his lap, biting the malicious grin back.

You pinched his hip with your nails, but his smirk only grew.

"Well, I will be there when you wake up. Besides, you have a grandson to teach bad habits to." You said, giving a smile to your father.

"You say that like your grandfather taught you bad habits." Your father chuckled.

"Of course not." You grinned, "only how to spit, cuss, and shotgun a beer can."

"Dad was always good at that." Your mother laughed.

"You're awfully quiet, Ramsay." Eli said across the table, finally turning away from Jeyne.

Ramsay brought his eyes up to give a sweeping glance around the table and shrugged. "Just tired. Been sick."

"My daughter has been good to you? She was always rather mean to Eli when he was sick." Your mother said, giving you a wink.

You gave a derisive snort, "oh whatever. You just babied him too much. Someone had to be mean to him."

"(Y/n), you would threaten to take him around the back of the barn with the twenty two and put him out of his misery." Your mother cried.

"Yeah. I think buckshot would of been more effective." You laughed, beaming at Eli who rolled his eyes at you.

"Well..." Ramsay said slowly, giving you a smirk, "she didn't offer me that option. I might have taken her up on it."

"Anyways, mom, Jeyne and I have set a date. April seventh." Eli said, ears a brilliant shade of red.

"I will be sure to let everyone know. Ruth text me today asking, actually." Your mother said excitedly. "Now, only one more date to set up." She looked between you and Ramsay, "Baby shower."

You gave a small groan, "mom, I don't know! I have too much going on. I'll let you know after I get the bar up and going. But until then, I have no time to worry about anything else."

"Does that include eating?" She asked sternly.

Slightly taken aback you frowned, looking down at your belly, "What are you talking about? I eat all the damn time."

"You're looking a bit underweight for as far along as you are."

"My doctor hasn't told me other wise." You said, getting defensive.

"And when did you see her last?" She asked with a steely glare.

"Well, it's been a couple weeks." You said, trying to remember. "I have an appointment Wednesday afternoon."

"You need to start taking it easy, or you'll end up on bed rest. Your bar can't be more important than your health, or your child's health."

You gave a heated glare at your mother. You knew she meant well, but her words were not what you needed to hear right now. Regardless of how true they were.

"Yes ma'am." You finally said, dropping your eyes.

You hugged your family as you walked with them to the parking lot. Catching your father twice.

"Better not give the doctors shit." You whispered, hugging him tight.

"I won't baby. It'll all be okay." He whispered back, giving you a tight squeeze before letting you go.

"I'll call you when I get to the hospital, so I can sit with mom. Love you guys." You smiled, turning back to Ramsay who stood rigid beside you, gazing at two men who were waiting at your jeep.

You grabbed Eli's hand, keeping him in place until your parents disappeared in their truck. Finally you dropped your brother's hand and grabbed Ramsay's.

Eli fell in step with you, Jeyne on your heels.

"Don't guess you have a gun?" Ramsay muttered to Eli.

"No." Eli responded as the four of you neared the men.

"Where's yours, baby doll?"

"Floorboard. In my purse." You said in a small voice as the smaller man pushed off your hood and walked out to meet your group.

"Bastard." The man said, sneering at Ramsay. You realized it was Locke. The psychic's words making your chest tight and heart drop.

"Very witty." Ramsay said acidly, dropping your hand. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Your father wants a cut of what you hauled in today." Locke said, rubbing his hands together expectantly.

"Then tell my father he is more than welcome to come collect it from me, on his own. But I don't take orders from the likes of you." Ramsay growled.

You felt a hand grab your wrist and give a tug. You gave a small glance to see it was Eli. You pulled your hand away.

Locke gave a nasty laugh, revealing his yellow teeth, "You don't know the position in which you have found yourself. The Mad Dog, the Dog's bitch, and a little pup on the way." He ran his eyes longingly over your chest.

"Get the fuck out of here, Locke. I know you aren't here on father's orders. I've already spoken to him today. And if you ever look at my wife like that again, you will no longer have eyes. I will make you eat them." Ramsay hissed, pulling his gun.

Locke ran his tongue over his top teeth and held his hands up in surrender "alright, Bastard. But, you've been warned."

"The fuck?" Eli asked as Locke and the second man stalked away.

"Don't worry about it. They must be bored." Ramsay frowned, putting gun away again and turning to Eli, "This really goes against my better judgement, but I need a ride."

"Bit late." Damon smirked, opening the front door.

"Shut it. I'm crashing here tonight. Some things came up. I will explain later." Ramsay snapped, shoving past Damon.

You turned to Eli and Jeyne, "sorry to drag you into being a chauffeur. Thank you, bro. Jeyne, we need to chill sometime. I'd like to get to know my soon to be sister in law. Maybe this weekend or next?"

"I'm sure I can manage that." Jeyne smiled, lacing her hand in Eli's.

"Y'all be safe. Let me know when you get back on post." You called after them with a wave as they climbed back in the car.

You turned and entered the house. Ramsay was sitting on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, and typing away furiously on his phone. Face strained and cigarette hanging from his lips.

You sat beside him, running your hand across his shoulders.

"I'm sorry." You whispered.

"Why?" He asked, looking up from his phone.

"Because that douche is so full of himself he thinks he can call you a bastard and get away with it. I have added him to my list." You said gently.

Ramsay huffed, "soon, baby girl."

Hopefully Ramsay struck quicker than this Locke guy. He had some fucking nerve.

"How'd he know about the robbery?" You asked, sliding your shoes off with a yawn.

"Word travels fast in our community." Ramsay shrugged, rising from the couch and walking into the kitchen.

You glanced over at Damon and Charlotte who had both gone back to their show.

You followed him, watching him pour a glass of whiskey. He took a long drink and pulled a face as he set the glass down on the counter.

You stepped into him, wrapping your arms around him tightly.

"Remember the first time you asked me to dance?" You asked with a fond grin.

He gave a small chuckle, "that I do. It took me a good day to plan it out. Had to go through that damn playlist and time everything just right."

You rested your cheek on his chest and closed your eyes with a big smile.

"I love you, Ramsay."

"I love you too, doll." He hummed, wrapping his arms around you, and swaying with you slowly.

"Why?" You asked, holding onto him tighter.

"I've told you." He replied, resting his chin on the crown of your head. "You need to go to bed."

You held back the yawn with great difficulty.

"Only if you tuck me in and come to bed soon." You finally said.

"I can't promise that. I need to talk with Dame."  He said, glancing at the kitchen door.

"I can hang. And someone needs to go by the house and let Moose out. And feed him." You said, rubbing your eye and then groaning as you remembered you were wearing makeup.

"I'll send the kid. I'm sure he's out driving around anyways." Ramsay said, grabbing his glass, and nudging you to return to the living room.

"So, what happened?" Damon asked, rising from his seat to grab his gaming remote.

"Locke showed up after dinner. He knew which vehicle was ours. So I figured he placed a tracker on it. And if he was watching, I didn't want to risk the safe house. So came here. What's he supposed to be doing? Pull his shit up." Ramsay said, laying out on the couch and resting his head in your lap.

You stroked his hair, and toyed with his ear.

Damon pulled his laptop from under the couch, and opened it up.

"What he say?" Damon asked, lighting a cigarette.

"Said that father wanted a cut of what we got today. Fucking cunt. Made eyes at my wife." Ramsay said bitterly, pushing his head further in your lap.

"Hm... feeling froggy was he?" Damon hummed.

"Yeah, 'bout to knock his ass off that fucking high horse he thinks he's on. Given me shit for the last ten years. My patience is wearing thin."

You said nothing for a long time, but simply sat there watching Damon and Ramsay play games.

"Baby, I need my purse. It's got my gun and my phone. I need my phone. Mom is supposed to call in the morning when dad goes back for surgery." You said, feeling slightly panicky for some reason.

"Okay, doll. I'll send someone to get it." Ramsay said, setting his controller on the ground and closing his eyes.

You continued to stroke his hair until you felt his breathing coming deep and peaceful. His body was feeling warm again.

"Sorry to burden y'all tonight." You said quietly, looking up at Damon and Charlotte.

"No worries, (y/n). I have some clothes that will fit, if you want." Charlotte said with a warm smile.

"It's okay. I'll just steal Ramsay's shirt for the night." You yawned.

"Sure? It's no big deal."

You nodded, drawing in a sharp gasp.

"Rams." You whispered, nudging him.

He didn't move.

"Ramsay wake up. Hurry!" You said urgently.

"What's up?" He grunted, shifting his head slightly.

"Place your hand on my belly! Hurry!"

He pressed his cheek against your belly instead. After a couple moments he opened his eyes, pressing his cheek further into your stomach and sitting as still as he could to feel his son moving.

"Fuck." He whispered, looking up at you.

"Isn't it amazing?!" You whispered excitedly taking in the small sparkle behind his tired eyes.

×××

"Dude, that's your mom?" Alyn asked, watching the redhead walk out the door with a giggly, stoned Tyene.

"Yeah, what of it?" Matt said, giving Alyn a hard look.

"I'm totally gonna bang her. Might even make you call me dad." He chuckled.

Matt went red in the face, and without warning flung himself on Alyn.

You nudged Ramsay, who sat there watching Matt lay into Alyn with a gleeful smirk.

"Stop it." You hissed at your husband. He gave you a look, rolled his eyes, set his glass down, and pulled Matt off Alyn.

Alyn remained on the floor, pinching his bleeding nose and laughed.

"Does the carpet match the drapes? I mean I'm fucking her either way, but I love when they're natural."

"You're a piece of shit!" Matt raged, struggling against Ramsay, who shoved him in a chair.

"Got some quick hands there kid. You should come spar with me at the gym." Ramsay chuckled, sitting on Matt.

"Get off, man!" Matt hissed, pushing on Ramsay.

"Calm down kid and I'll get up. But don't get upset. So what if Alyn fucks your mom? It's not like he's some fucking stranger. I'll make him be good to her. He's not really a freak. He a heart throbbing romantic."

Matt heaved a sigh, but quit struggling. Ramsay got up and resumed his seat beside you. He pulled you into him and buried his face in your hair.

You watched Matt stand up and hold his hand out to Alyn. Alyn took Matt's hand and let him pull him up. Alyn clapped him on the shoulder and gave a grin.

"No hard feelings, kid."

The saying that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb was holding true this year. One week into the month and thunderstorms had raked the city. But, it was nice. The weather was warming nicely and the opening day for your bar was drawing ever closer.

Your father's surgery went without problems and your mother said he was recovering fine. He was just restless and irritable because he had to be still for longer than ten seconds. It was driving him crazy.

It was as if your mother had seen you getting sick, because your doctor had fussed about your drop in weight, but you really weren't sure what to do, you ate all day it seemed. Ramsay had apparently given you his cold, but it was much harder on your pregnant body than it had been on him.

You sniffed, frowning at the empty tissue box on the coffee table in front if you. You pulled the blanket tighter around you with a small groan.

"Hey, lil' mama." Tyene's voice said brightly from the kitchen.

You groaned, pulling the blanket up over your head.

"Matt and I are here with some pick-me-ups." Tyene said, her voice quieter now that she was near you.

You heard a plastic bag set on the coffee table, and slowly pulled the blanket down from your eyes.

"Mama made some chicken noodle soup for you, and we picked up more Kleenex, and Matt nicked some meds from the pharmacy to help with your nausea. Don't worry, I made sure they are safe for pregnancy. And more Tylenol." Tyene said, taking a seat beside you. You pulled your legs up to give her more room. "Oh, and Ramsay gave me your favorite ice cream combination, if you feel up to eating ice cream. Matt out it up when we came in."

You gave a weak smile, "You guys are the best."

"So you're not feeling any better?" She asked giving you a sympathetic smile. "Matt! Get a spoon!"

Matt entered a few moments later with a spoon and Moose. You sat up, taking the spoon and pulling the container of chicken noodle soup. You opened it and gave a sniff.

"Oh my god. This smells wonderful. But, no... I feel like shit. Everything hurts, and the baby keeps playing acrobat. I can't get comfortable, or sleep very long when I do." You sighed, taking a bite of the soup. It was like it warmed your soul. "Any idea where Rams is?"

Matt shook his head, "Said something about Theon, but that was it."

"Of course. I'm about ready to go and just kill him. I'm tired of Ramsay cheating on me with him."

Tyene snorted, flipping on the TV and pulling her phone out.

There was silence for awhile, as Tyene played on her phone, you ate your soup, and Matt played with Moose.

Moose had grown by leaps and bounds. You were afraid he would knock you over in his puppy excitement. He already reached your chest with his front paws when he would jump up on you. But he was a sweetheart, much to Ramsay's disappointment. You were glad, he didn't make you worry about how he would act once your son was born. He liked to rest his massive head on your belly when Baby B was being active inside you.

Tyene pulled a bottle of soda from the bag and was taking a sip when she gasped and choked.

"What?" You asked, feeling a bit afraid.

"Mkay, so check it. Lannister murder trial. Don't know if you've been keeping up. Anyways, papa is very interested in it. Even took the stand to vouch for the mini one. Well apparently, sometime last night Tyrion was released from his cell and... killed Tywin! Tywin Lannister is dead!" Tyene said, eyes running back and forth over her phone screen as she read and reread the article.

"Well that trial was shit. I know Tyrion didn't do it. We all do. But I hope he was the one who killed his bitch ass father. What a blow to them. The whole organization is going to crumble without his iron fist. There's about to be chaos in the streets. We need to be careful. I wonder if Ramsay knows?" You said, sipping the soup juice slowly, pondering the information.

"Maybe it's the break we have all been needing. I need to go. Matt, take me home?" Tyene said, standing quickly and pocketing her phone.

"Yeah, sure." Matt said, standing too. He gave you a glance, "Need anything?"

"No, thank you. You both have done so much already. I'll be good until Rams gets home. Y'all be safe." You smiled. Matt nodded, took Tyene's hand, and they both left.

You finished your soup in silence, blindly watching whatever the hell this was on TV. Moose sat, staring at you, waiting on you to give him the okay to get up on the couch. You grinned at him. You set the bowl down and adjusted your blanket.

"Well come on, you monster." You coaxed.

Moose crawled up on the couch with you and buried his head in your blanket.

You stroked his back, closing your eyes, "I think Kira woulda liked you...."

"Baby girl, how are you feeling?" Ramsay asked gently.

You opened your eyes a bit to find Ramsay kneeling down beside you. He placed his cold hand to your hot cheek. It was almost painful as the two temperatures met.

"I'm okay." You muttered through a dry mouth, closing your tired eyes again.

"I'm going to give the mutt a bath and then I'll make you dinner."

"I'm not hungry, baby." You sighed.

"I didn't ask." He said sternly.

"Yes sir." You mumbled, rolling over away from him.

You were drifting back off into sleep when suddenly you were back in the graveyard. This time it was pouring rain. You stood there staring at a headstone, the soft earth of freshly packed dirt, thick and muddy on your shoes...

No! It's just a dream. Wake up, (y/n)!

You sat up with a yelp, looking around quickly.

"What's wrong?" Ramsay asked, standing in the kitchen doorway.

You gave a relieved sigh, and placed your hand on your belly, "nothing. Just a bad dream. Sorry to scare you."

"Well, get up. Dinner is ready. And after I'll help you bathe." Ramsay replied, disappearing back into the kitchen.

With blankets still pulled tight around you, you slowly made your way to the kitchen, pushing the muscle aches away.

You picked at your dinner with a frown.

"Might as well just eat. You aren't leaving until I'm satisfied." Ramsay finally said, popping the top if his beer can.

"Did you see about the Lannister's?" You asked, glancing up at your husband.

"Mhm. Damon told me, earlier. Waiting to hear what my father says on the matter."

"Why?" You asked before you could stop yourself.

"Why what?" He asked, crinkling his brow.

"Nothing." You said, busying yourself with your food.

"You know,  I'm not always impulsive. I'm not an idiot. I wait and watch before I make my move. Most of the time." Ramsay said, rising from his seat and stretching deeply.

"I know baby, just wondered why your father's opinion mattered?" You said slowly.

"Oh, it doesn't. Just curious." He shrugged, "Aren't you supposed to be setting up interviews?"

"Yeah, Oly has done a few. If I feel better tomorrow I'll go help. All of our furniture and appliances will be here in a few days. Ah, I'm so excited, baby!"

"Well, don't overdo it. Lemme help you get clean and get you in bed."

You followed Ramsay down the hall to the bathroom.

He took your blanket, "Get undressed."

You pulled your shirt off as Ramsay left the room with the blanket.

"I know they say you shouldn't have a bath while pregnant. But you look like you need one. I'm sure one bath won't hurt you." Ramsay said, rolling his sleeves up and running his warm hands over your chill bumps.

You gave a nod.

"Why are you sweet like this sometimes?" You asked, as Ramsay helped dry your skin. Finally, feeling better and not fevered for the first time in three days.

"Because I love you." Ramsay smirked, kissing your forehead.

"I feel like there has to be a catch that will someday bite me in the ass." You said with a small grin.

"And why would I mistreat the mother of my son?" He chuckled.

"And what is your son's name?" Hoping to catch him unawares so he would tell you.

"Due time, doll." He whispered in your ear as he led you to the bedroom.

"Please tell me. It's killing me. I want to start calling him by his name." You pouted.

"Due time." He chuckled as he pulled the blankets back from the bed and helped you climb in, "I'll be right back."

He came back with your blanket and piled it on you. Fresh out of the dryer.

"You are the best." You hummed appreciatively, pulling the warm blanket in closer.

"Well I'm about to get a whole lot better." He smirked, stripping off his shirt and crawling under your blankets.

You pushed your head back into your pillow and closed your eyes tight as he kissed up your thigh with warm, gentle kisses.

"This is definitely going to come back and bite me in the ass." You giggled, as he ran his scruffy jaw over your skin.

"Really though, why do you think that?" He asked, biting at your skin.

"Because that's what you do, baby. You let me fall into this false security that you're a gentle, loving husband, and then..." You began, losing your words as he shoved his tongue inside you.

"You hurt my feelings, baby girl. You are the world to me." He hummed, running his tongue over your folds.

"Will you love me?" You asked, tangling your hands in his hair.

"I can't." He whispered, pushing his tongue in you again.

"You can. Please baby." You panted, desire and warm comfort beginning to form.

"Just hush and let me do my thing or I may cause pain." He growled.

You moaned, arching your back as he fucked you slowly with his tongue. You clawed at his shoulder as your high began to mount quickly.

It was going to happen a lot quicker than you wanted. But it just felt so good, after being sick for days.

You dug your nails into his shoulder, "Baby. I'm... oh god." You sighed in a strangled voice as he lapped atg your wetness, pushing his face further between your legs.

The air left your chest as you tried to swallow the moan and felt your body tense and relax as you buzzing high hit you. You gave a violent shiver and let out a small laugh.

Ramsay pulled away from you with a small squelching sound as he smacked his lips.

"Hurry up and get better so you can repay the favor." He chuckled, untangling himself from the blankets.

He laid beside you, staring up at the ceiling. You stared at him. Watching him lick what was left of you off of his mouth.

"Do you believe in psychics?" You asked, remembering your nightmare.

He snorted in amusement, "No. Just a bunch of weird, lucky guess work. I believe in nothing."

You sighed, "Yeah, I guess."

×××

"Well, that's it. That's all of them." Olyvar said, checking off the last application.

"I think our staff will be awesome." You said, beaming at Tyene and Olyvar, standing from your seat. The two Kings men Roose had sent to be employed at your bar left through the front doors without a word to you. You saw them milling around under the awning, smoking, and exchanging words.

"Oh my God! This is so exciting!" You practically squealed, hugging Olyvar tight. "Two and a half weeks!"

You heard your phone ring across the room. You slowly made your way across the freshly polished floors with a wide smile, fingering the new stools and tables.

Your new bar was perfect in every sense. your phone rang again. You picked it up.

Rams.

"Hey baby." you said with a smile.

"(y/n)! where are you?!" he shouted on the other end.

Your smile dropped, "the bar, we..."

"Who is there?" he cut across you.

"Me, Oly, Tyene, and a couple of your fathers men."

"Fucking christ. Baby girl, listen to me. Get out of there. Now. Don't let the kings see you. I am sending you an address, get to it, asap. You have twenty minutes."

There was a click.

Panic bit at your throat as you swallowed. You had never heard Ramsay sound panicked at anything before. A message popped up bringing you back to the world as your phone dinged and vibrated in your hand.

"Oly, Ty, we need to leave. Now." you whispered, glancing around, pulling your gun from your purse.

"What's wrong?" Olyvar asked, as they hurried to your side.

"I don't know, but Rams said not to let the kings see us. through the side. come on." you said, seeing the two men out the front window.

Tyene helped you into your jeep and you turned the motor over.

"Put this address in your phone." you said, shoving your phone at Olyvar, setting your gun in your lap, as Tyene closed her door behind you.

Ramsay rushed you when you walked in. He tangled his hands in your hair and pulled you close.

"Any problems? Were you followed?" he whispered, kissing your forehead.

You shook your head as he pulled away from you, his body shaking slightly against you.

You took him in. Covered in blood. Realizing he had been shot in the leg.

"Oh baby!" You cried, quickly running your eyes over the rest of him.

"It's fine. I'll have it taken care of." He said dismissively, but a deep grimace on his face.

"Baby, what's going on?" You asked looking around.

"Matt!" Tyene cried, running over to Matt who was half laying on a couch, groaning in pain, clutching his arm.

"I don't know yet. But shit just went fucking stupid." Ramsay said, pulling you into him again.

Ben walked in, looking exhausted and upset. He gave Ramsay a small nod, "We recovered him before anyone else could get to him." His voice was strained and sounded as if he were battling tears as he cleared his throat and looked away from Ramsay, crossing over to Matt and Tyene.

"Where's Alyn?" you asked.

"Having bullets dug out of him." Ramsay replied in a small voice that did not sound like him at all.

You heard screaming from another room.

"Damon?"

Ramsay said nothing, dropping his head slightly.

You gasped, grabbing his face and forcing him to look at you, "Baby, where is Damon?"

You felt his jaw lock under your hands, as he brought his eyes to yours. Still, he said nothing.

[cryinggameff]

Sixty Four

Cayden

When she saw me she immediately got teary eyed and looked like she wanted to cry which was highly unusual. Not her crying, she did that a lot, but doing so at the sight of me. She ain’t even say nothing, she just stood there.

“Damn you that unhappy to see me,” I teased, wrapping my arms around her waist and picking her up slightly off the ground. She brought her hands to my shoulders, looking down at me. She shook her head.

“No,” she laughed through the tears. I knew something had gone on while i was away and I intended to find out what it was but now wasn’t the time when there was all these people in our house. I was glad that they had kept her company though. “I just missed you,” she said. I put her down.

“I missed you too,” I said, leaning down to peck her lips. I kept her close to my side as we walked into the house.

“Hey everybody,” I said, looking at the small gathering at the kitchen island. “Hi Mom,” I said to Randi’s Mom who was at the stove.

“Hi baby. How was your trip?”

“It was good. Missed my beautiful wife though,” I said, looking at Randi who was quiet under my arm.

“We all know she was missing you like crazy. All of us had to hear about it,” she smiled looking at us. “I’m sure y'all want some time together. I was just heading out, gotta take dad for his monthly check up,” She got up.

“Bye Mom, I’ll talk to you soon, tell dad I love him,” Randi said.

“We were heading out too,” Jada said, catching the clue and nudging China who was grubbing. They got up.

“Yeah. We’ll see you Monday Randi,” China said.

After a few minutes the house was clear and it was just us.

“No love for your husband who’s been gone for a week?” I frowned. She leaned up to hug me around the neck and kiss me.

“There you go” she said.

“I gotta shower real quick but I’ll be back then we can talk,” i said. She nodded.

“I gotta clean this up so I’ll do that while you’re gone,” she said, looking at the kitchen. So we separated ways as I went upstairs to get cleaned up.

Randi had just finished with the kitchen when I got down and she was putting dishes away.

“How was the trip? The deal go ok?” She asked.

“It was smooth,” I shrugged. “The guy hinted he knew I offed Red which as wild but, he’s crazy so no surprise.”

“He said he knew?” She said, looking over her shoulder in shock.

“He was like a shame what happened to him then laughed. So he knows. I know people know, that’s cool it makes people scared. But most niggas would never say so to my face.”

“He sounds crazy. Hopefully you can trust the guy. Sean said so?”

“Yeah,” I said, with a shrug. “Imma keep a close eye on it for now,” I assured her.

“I would,” she agreed, putting some plates away in the cupboard. She was on her toes reaching to put them on the top so I went behind her to grab the plates and put them away. I stayed with my hands on either side of her watching what she was doing. Once she was done she turned around and now we were face to face.

“So what’s going on with you?” I asked while I had her trapped. She gripped the bottom of my shirt, fiddling with it.

“What do you mean?” She asked. I gripped her chin in my fingers.

“I can tell when something’s wrong with you Randi.”

“A lot went on while you were away,” she said. I nodded.

“Tell me bout it,” I said. She sighed, gripping my shirt tighter. I couldn’t imagine what she could be so nervous to tell me about.

“Ok. So, the day you left,” she said, “remember I wasn’t ready when you came to pick me up, I was upstairs and you were yelling at me?”

“Yeah,” I smirked, “sorry about that by the way.” She smiled a little. That wasn’t my best moment.

“It’s ok,” she said immediately.

“So you weren’t ready,” I said, picking up where she left off.

“I was upstairs in the bathroom, then I came with the shattered phone,” I nodded, “well I was in the bathroom hiding from you. I was taking a pregnancy test,” she said, looking up at me briefly. My brows came together now because the story had gone some where unexpected. “And the test didn’t say anything. Then you called me and I jumped and dropped my phone,” she was talking fast now.

“Ok…” I said, standing still, waiting to see where this was going.

“But then when we came back from the bank and you were getting ready to leave I went to go throw out the test….” she trailed off. I kind of understood where the story was going now but it didn’t sink in until she said “it was positive. I-I’m pregnant,” looking up to see my reaction. That was out of nowhere, I thought. I stood there processing for a moment. It all made sense now. My face softened, that’s why she wanted me to come home so fast.

The first thing I felt was ridiculously happy but then I took in the fearful look on her face and I felt a sense of guilt because obviously this had been my doing. Well both of us,but…you know.

“Randi…” I said, putting a hand up to the side of her face. She leaned into my hand reflexively. She looked so fragile at the moment. “Are you ok?” I asked first, because that was most important.

“I’m ok,” she said. I felt like a bigger ass then.

“You had to deal with that alone? I’m so sorry I left you” I frowned, thinking about all the nights I’d called her and she had been down. Also that I had been fighting with her that day she found out. Yup, complete ass. She touched my face now.

“You didn’t know,” she said. I looked down at her stomach imagining what was going on in there. A person was growing as we stood here. I pulled her into me and nuzzled her into my chest.

This was crazy because we had just gotten out of an argument about kids that almost broke us up. She had made it pretty clear kids weren’t on her mind and I was pushing her to agree to it. We had made peace but she never really said yes to it, and now there was a baby just like that, pushing the argument out the window by force. I felt bad for my baby though. Randi, not the actual baby. Because that was a thing now…

“I know you scared. It’s gonna be alright, ok?” I said. I understood her on a deep level now and already knew all the crazy thoughts going through her mind. She was scared to love anything too much because it made her vulnerable. She nodded against my chest. “I got you,” I kissed her head. I knew it was gonna take her a while to get excited about the idea of a baby but she’d get there.  "So this why you were jumping people in the club?“I said remembering the night a few weeks ago. She giggled against my chest and I smiled.

"That’s what I said. Everything is adding up now. The tiredness, being hungry all the time,” she said, holding on to my arms.

“Is that why you were sleeping every time I called you?” She nodded. “I knew something was up from the moment I heard your voice.”

“I can’t hide a secret for shit. Especially from you. But I was scared to tell you…” she looked up at me.

“Why?” I said, confused. She blushed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re pretty calm though for someone who’s getting what they wanted. Are you not happy?”

“I’m hype believe me. Im only calm because I don’t know what you need from me right now,” I ran my thumb over her mouth.

“Honestly I need you to be excited. Maybe it will rub off or something,” she made a face.

“You sure you want me to really let out how excited i am?” I raised my brows. She nodded. I shrugged. “Okay if you say so.” I picked her up and spun her around in a circle. She giggled, holding on to my shoulders. I put her down, carefully, and brought my hand to her belly. “Hi little person. It’s your dad.”

“I don’t think he can hear you yet,” she said.

“He?” I said. She blushed.

“Well I feel bad saying it,” she looked down at my hand. I laughed.

“Okay, he then,” I moved my hand.

“I feel like this will be happening a lot” She meant me feeling her stomach.

“Hell yeah. Better get used to it, you got my kid in there.” After a minute I realized how intense that was and how small Randi’s 5 foot nothing ass was. “Shouldn’t you be sitting or something?” I said.

“I’m not crippled Cayden,"she pointed out. I picked her up and walked her over to the living room, putting her down on the couch.

"There,” I said, setting her up with some pillows.

“You’re gonna do this the whole time aren’t you?” She groaned.

“Yup,” I nodded. She sighed in surrender and sat back into the couch folding her legs. “I’ll go get you something to eat,” I said.

“Ok,” she said confused, and watched me turn and go.

Randi 

I wasn’t even hungry. I watched Cayden go around the kitchen with my head on my knees. He had taken the news well, cool calm and collected as usual. I should have known. I felt a bit bad though that he felt the need to conceal his excitement for me because I was a mess when he was so clearly happy. That’s why i had told him to go ahead and be excited.

Cayden came back and gave me a plate of fruit which I took because i got the idea it wasn’t a choice. I didn’t really get why I was being forced to eat but I did so anyways. I knew Cay, and I was sure on top of all that excitement, he was just as worried. Not in the way I was but because this was new territory. Being pregnant, a baby, we’d never done this before. He would also be worried about me, because he always was. I didn’t want him to worry.

“You’re staring Cay,” I said, putting a strawberry in my mouth. He chuckled and wiped my chin.

“I’m watching to see what you’re thinking,” he said.

“I’m okay. I’ve had a few days to sit with it now. How are you feeling? Really?”

“I’m happy. I don’t know about this whole pregnancy thing but imma try. You just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said.

“Thank you baby,” I said.

“You go to the doctor or something?”

“I have an appointment tomorrow,” I said.

“When we going?”

“11am,” I said. He nodded.

“Aight ill just stay home tomorrow,” he said.

“You don’t have to be here the whole day.”

“I want to,” he ran his hand up and down my thigh. I gave up because I knew I wouldn’t win that one. He’d want to stay with me for a while and make sure I didn’t loose my mind. I moved in, closer to his face.

“I missed you,” I said, playing with his chin hair. “A lot.”

“You was so strong going through it alone. I bet you were panicking,” he looked apologetic. I nodded.

“Had a small panic but nothing bad. I just really wanted you here, I was scared to tell you but I just wanted you near me,” I tried to explain.

“Were you crying when you saw me cause you was scared?” He asked. I shook my head.

“No,” I said quickly, “I was relieved Cay. It was like finally breathing after so long. I always miss you but, now it’s deeper…” I trailed off, putting a hand to my stomach, touching his face with the other. Knowing Cayden’s baby was in me was…world changing. My mind was everywhere right now and I hadn’t fully come to terms with it, but I thought to myself, wasn’t that a beautiful thing?

“How am I ever gonna leave you again?” He said more to himself. Then he turned to me, looking at the hand on my belly. “Both of you,” he said with a smile so  bright it could blind you. I blushed and a smile slid to my lips.

“You better stay then,” I said simply.

“Ok,” he said. I wasn’t sure how serious he was but I’d take it.

The next morning I woke up feeling groggy as ever. Mornings were tougher now. I turned over to look at the clock on the night stand. That’s when I saw the flowers and the card. I couldn’t hold back the smile. I opened the card.

‘Good morning beautiful. I’m downstairs making you breakfast, stay in bed and relax. Let a real nigga take care of you,’

I laughed at the end but relaxed back into the pillows. It felt strange that he knew now, and that things were business as usual pretty much. I don’t know why I expected this to really turn things upside down. I turned on the TV to see the weather and a bit of news.

The door opened a few minutes later and Cay walked in with a giant platter of food. My mouth watered like an animal. I think I actually drooled.

“Hi,” he said. I giggled.

“Hi,” I said, sitting up and taming my hair enough so it wasn’t in my face.

“I made you everything you like. Blueberry pancakes and all. Bacon too,” he said.

“God,yes” I said in a near sexual tone. He chuckled and put the food down in the bed beside me.

“Eat,” he said, sitting beside me. I lifted the cover excitedly. My heart was over flowing when I saw his struggling pancakes and I wanted to cry. I saw the bacon and went to go dig in. My stomach had other plans though. As soon as I brought the bacon to my lips and caught a whiff of it I gagged.

“That bad?” Cayden said. I put the plate down quickly.

“No, I love it,” I said, getting up. He gave me a confused look. “Give me a minute.” I went into the bathroom and leaned over the toilet to throw up. He quickly came over and rubbed my back.

“Baby, are you ok?”  He pulled my hair up. I nodded, holding myself up on the toilet seat.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, taking a shaky breath. I flushed the toilet and went to the sink. “Its real hot,” I said, fanning myself. Cayden grabbed a towel and wet it with some cold water. He put it on my forehead which felt absolutely amazing.

“That better?” He asked. I nodded. “Want me to carry you to the bed?” I nodded again. My feet were quickly off the floor and he sat on the bed still holding me in his lap.

We sat like that for a while and I actually drifted off for a bit.

“We gotta go mama, you got the doctors appointment.” My eyes opened.

“Cancel,” I mumbled groggily. He shook his head.

“Hell no,” he said, “I wanna see my kid in there. Better get yo fine ass up.” Ah yes, the ultra sound. I looked up at him and all his excitement. I hadn’t seen him this cheery in a while actually as he’d been having frequent moods. So I got up to try and get ready. “Want me to find you clothes?” I nodded, going to the bathroom.

I washed my face and quickly got put together, just brushing my hair and lipgloss really. I put on the clothes Cay had picked out and looked in the mirror quickly before exiting the bathroom.

“Wow, you look beautiful,” he said, getting up from the bed. I blushed.

“Seriously?” I said. He came over and caressed my cheek in an intimate way.

“Seriously,” he said, looking over my face. I went redder and looked away.

“Can you get my bag?” I asked.

“Mhm” he dropped his hand and went to the closet, returning with my purse.

We left pretty late but traffic wasn’t too bad.

“Tell me more about your trip,” I said, looking down at his hand that held mine.

“It wasn’t that exciting, but that’s a good thing” he said. I nodded agreeing.

“You really trust Sean,” I said.

“I do,” he said, looking ahead, “Trey trusted him so I do.” I knew that was the reason already, he idolized his brother and would take his word over anybody’s. I hadn’t met Sean yet, he just seemed really interested in helping Cay and I wasn’t sure I believed it was only because he was Treys’s brother. “You don’t trust him?“ He turned to me then, serious face.

"I need to see him face to face to decide,” I said simply.

“Soon,” he said. “He been helping me. Imma need all that help especially now,” he looked over at our intertwined hands for a moment. “I’m thinking about getting a new assistant too, help things out a bit.”

"I know you miss kassie,” I looked over at him. “I liked her, how’s her school going anyway?”

"She’s doing her thing, she hella smart, I ain’t worried about her. Only other person I know that book smart is you,” he said. I laughed. The girl was a doctor in training.

“I’m not Med school smart Cayden,”

“You could if you wanted to. I know it,” he smirked.

“Do you need my help finding someone?” I asked.

“I have someone in mind. Unless you’re willing to fill the position, you’re my first choice,” he grinned.

“Hell no,” i said immediately. He gave me a dirty look at my immediate no. “I’m sure whoever you picked is good,” I said nicely. He focused back on the road and I silently laughed to myself. I went back to watching outside my window.

Cayden turned  into the complex where the doctors office was.   He pulled into a spot and turned off the engine. I grabbed my bag and fumbled with my seat belt. Cayden unbuckled it for me. “Nervous?” He smirked. I rolled my eyes.

“No,” I lied. “Let’s go, I’ve been holding my Pee for this test a long time,” I opened the door. They’d told me on the phone I’d have to give a urine sample so I really drank water on the way.

“Ew,” he said, locking the car once we were both out. He wrapped his arm around my waist.

We only sat in the waiting room like 5 minutes then we were called in. I gave my sample then waited for a bit on the bed before the doctor came in. Cayden sat in the chair in the corner.

“Hello Randi, I’m doctor Richards, I’ll be doing your first examination and ultra sound today. This is Dad?” He looked at Cayden. God, that sounded weird

“Hi. I hope he is,” i blurted out of nervousness. It was a joke obviously but Cayden mean mugged me.

“No Maury drama I hope,” Dr Richards said, sitting down in the rolling chair. He was an older guy who actually reminded me of my dad.

“She just plays too much,” Cayden said.

“Hopefully that lasts. It will be a long 9 months, for both of you,” he said, clicking buttons on the computer. Cayden and I shared a glance at that. “Let’s get you to lay down and roll your shirt up so we can see what’s going on.”

I leaned back into the plastic bed and rolled my shirt up to under my bra. I looked up at the ceiling waiting, then suddenly  I was looking at Cayden. He stood beside my head holding my hand. It was not normal the way I could be calmed by just his presence, he had complete control over me since I met him, nothing had changed. I looked away from him to my stomach when I felt the cold jelly hit it.

“Let’s find baby shall we,” the doctor said. I nodded and he put the probe on my stomach. I pushed down here and there, moving around. He was at it for a while actually. He moved further down, pressing harder. Was there nothing in there, I thought. “Ah there you are, a hider,” he said, pulling the computer screen so that it was facing me. He pointed to a light grey spot in a dark back ground.

“That’s him?” I asked. He nodded. My hands were sweating. He pressed more buttons and the image zoomed in.

“A head, body,” he said, pointing to various places. “You’re about 4 weeks along,” he said. “It’s a bit early but we can try and locate a heart beat,” he looked at me. I just nodded. A heart sounded like an important thing to have. He pressed a button then started to move again. Up, down, left, right, nothing. He added more jelly and pressed on my lower abdomen again. He moved to the side, then the other side. Cayden brushed a hand over my hair and I looked at him, realizing I was crushing his hand. The quick heart beat filled the room and I looked at Cay first for some reason. His mouth was open like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing or hearing.

“Yoooo,” he said in the most awestruck voice. I let out a broken laugh around the tears that were forming. The heart beat was clear and strong. Relief washed over me and I didn’t realize I had tears going down my face until he looked down at me and wiped my cheek with his thumb. He was radiating pure happiness that made me feel warm inside around all the fear. It briefly made me feel like everything was okay and things weren’t falling apart around me. I felt emotionally drained though. The doctor pressed more buttons then wiped my stomach of jelly.

“I’ll go print out the pictures and give you a moment,” he said, getting up and walking out the door.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said. I saw the flash of fear on his face. “I don’t mean having the baby,” his face relaxed a little. “My emotions I mean. I just almost passed out because I thought he’d have no heart, he’s not even here yet. We don’t even know it’s a he yet, and I’m already worried and paranoid. I think this means I’m not ready Cayden,” I sat up. Cayden shook his head and put his hand on my thigh.

“That all just means you love him Ran,” he smirked, gripping my chin with his other hand. The way he was looking at me, I wanted to slap him. But I thought about what he had said. I knew if I already loved the baby like this now, i was fucked. Little thing already had me loosing my mind questioning my sanity. But one good thing came out of this visit. It made me realize that this wasn’t something bad to happen because it was something me and Cayden did together. Looking into his beautiful eyes and all over his caramel, sun kissed skin, I also thought How could something that was part Cay ever be bad? I decided that I would try to be happier, if not for me, for them, Cayden and our baby.

[daynamartinez22]

Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 315

Click on the video above to watch Episode 315 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

Announcement

What’s up everybody, and welcome to your reason to like Wednesdays. As always, my partners and I are here to bring you what’s working in SEO and mark to market to answer your question, what’s working online, whatever it is that’s working. That’s what we’re going to ask your questions on. Whatever is not working for you. Hopefully, we’ll work it out.

And as you can see, probably if you’re watching this live, we have a new new in the show watching it on replay, we have a new person joining us today. It’s my pleasure to introduce se, to all of you She is the person who has been working with Bradley and me behind the scenes. So we can bring you the new and improved syndication Academy, so se, say hello to the world, tell them who you are, where you’re from all that good stuff, let them know who you are. Okay, hello, everyone, I’m a bit excited. So I will need to apologize for any type of that I make type I can call it so while I speak. I’m not an English native speaker. I’ve been working with the syndication Academy three Oh, it will be released, hopefully soon, actually, later than we thought it would in the beginning, but it is taking a bit longer however it will be soon available. Um, Marco says I’m going to replace Bradley, but I’m ofcourse only replaced him as a number, I cannot possibly replace Bradley as a character. So to introduce myself a little bit, I am 28 year old obedient girl. But 28 in two days, actually. And I’m really new in this whole SEO thing. My name is se but I don’t know much about it. I’m starting to I’m learning I’ve been learning the, for the couple, three months, I’ve been working with it. And in a way, it will probably be relatable to you since what I’m learning is new for me as well. So I will try to explain it in the way that I understand it. So you will be able to understand it even better than you would from a professional person like Bradley, because he knows all the terminology. While for a beginner, it might be a bit difficult. So I really hope you guys will enjoy the final result results.

Well, Happy birthday. Thank you. In today’s Actually, yeah. Happy early birthday. And thank you, thank you for all your hard work. I know you’ve been hard at work, people don’t see what you’re doing. But you know, we keep track. We see what you’re doing. We’re trying to help you out. And I’m glad you mentioned that because the reason why we went and got you is because you had no idea what SEO was, you know, listen, if you can go through the training, apply it and show people how it works and make it work, then there’s no reason why anyone else can take the same training and do exactly what you did. So thank you, and just hang out in case anybody has had any questions or whatever, or just hang out with us for the rest of the year. Welcome to stay. And as I see you on my screen from left to right, I’m gonna go through the rest of my partners. Let them say hello, Chris. What’s up, man? Hey, doing good here.

Yeah, excited for all the Black Friday stuff that is upcoming, but I’m pretty sure we’ll talk about it in a bit. So yeah.

Thanks, man. Bradley. Man. I see you next What’s up? Uh, yeah, I’m good. You know, thanksgiving tomorrow, I’m looking forward to that. It’s like my favorite holiday because the food is amazing.

I’ve got we always kind of get together with family. I’m a big my, my sister and her in laws, or my in laws, I should say. We always go out to their house and they have some huge spread. And it’s it’s amazing. So I’m really looking forward to that. But just a quick note, SEO SEO. I could see that being a brand se SEO name now that I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. It just kind of worked out that way. So anyways, glad to have you. Welcome to our Hump Day Hangouts and look forward to seeing what the syndication Academy update. version three looks like when it comes out. So you know, I’ll be working closely with you over the next several weeks or a couple of months really, or whatever to get it. Get it finalized. But um, so far it’s been good thing for someone.

And then I see that somebody let her Nan back in. Yeah, man. The guy should end you guys shouldn’t. What’s happening, everybody. Thank you, Marco, for seeing. Thank you se for being here. It’s excited to have you on the team. Thank you, everybody that’s watching this live and everyone that’s watching the recording as well. And yeah, excited for what’s coming up for Black Friday. So really excited to see how that comes out. So that’s I mean, I’m glad you mentioned that because anyone who’s on our list, it already has Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday available, and so they got an early start on the holidays.

So guys, if you’re on our list, check for that mail, check your spam, make sure it didn’t go in and make sure you got whitelisted in case you got another email coming, because we’re gonna have goodies all through the weekend and on Monday May be extended a little bit more. It depends, you know, you know how we do the due guys. And as you can see, I’m still Groundhog Day.

I can’t help it, man. I like it’s a no, it’s the price I pay for the life I live. What can I say man? Yeah, somebody. Somebody’s got to do it. And so with that, guys, let’s go to the questions. Bradley. Okay, cool. Let me grab the screen.

Standby. One moment. We got all right. Y'all are see my screen, correct? Yep, we’re good. All right.

Not a whole lot of questions, but it is the day before Thanksgiving. So I’m not surprised. If we get done with questions early guys. We’ll just wrap it up early. I’m sure everybody’s looking forward to apparently the night before Thanksgiving is one of the biggest drinking days in the US.

Is There Such Thing As Too Many Links When Creating MYGB Short Links, GSite, PR, And Citation Pages?

So I can imagine a bunch of people are gonna go get hammered anyways. So anyway, starting with Ivan, he says hi SM crew when it comes to boosting properties, like the mgib shortlinks, along with the G site, organization, PR page, and other citations and assets. Is there such a thing as too many links? My thought was that if everyone is building tiered links, it will devalue the sites over time. A Marco I think that’s a great one for you. What do you think is there’s so such a thing as too many links. We’re about to find out as I’ve built software. And I just broke it today at creating one, one plus 300 and 316 zeros links.

That was the limit, I ran into the 64 bit limit on a PC. And so I’ll have to rework that. But we’re about to find out what Google’s limit is as far as links and when we can come back and talk about it from what I’m seeing. And we’ve done of course, you know, but the million link tests on DC plumber, and the you know how keep Melanson earlier this year came in and he mentioned his test his million link test, then I ran another million link test. And then Rob came in with it with 10 million, like, and we’re talking pure spam, right? Yeah, it’s any type of link building that you do is a spam because you’re not supposed to be building links. And it just seems that the more you give Google the merrier. here’s, here’s what I found. When Google tells you not to do something, you have to go find out why. They tell you don’t don’t do this. So you got to go. Why are they telling me not to spam, and then you come to find out because it works really well. Now the whole point is don’t get caught. Because if you get caught, you get mad Smackdown. So if link building works, then it stands to reason, by logic, if we do more of those links that work, then it’s going to work even better. What the threshold is, would be, for example, if you start out ranking a website like Amazon, for the keyword, Amazon, they’re going to come and bitch and moan then they’re going to come and look at why you’re out ranking amazon for the keyword Amazon.

And then that’s your problem. But as far as I know, and as far as I understand how it all works, building links is alive and well. tiered link building works. Even better, it’s it works phenomenally well; iframes plus link building is killing it. So the key word in all of that is link building. Now, Ivan, take that with a grain of salt. I’m not saying for you to go out and order 100 million GSA links from Fiverr. Because if you aim those straight at us that you’re gonna kill yourself, you’re gonna choke yourself off. It’s just totally unnatural for your website to receive those. What we do is we filter them. And we don’t worry, like, people get really anal about about indexing. Like we don’t care. If we want if we do 10 million links, we know that a portion of those are going to index naturally. Another portion of those are going to get indexed by dedhia. And another portion will just end up in in whatever digital space things end up in. We don’t care. We know what the effect is going to be. Not only of those, but the ones that we build up behind those over time. I here’s his my thought, yes, everyone is building tiered things for a reason. And they’re working for a reason. What we’re doing is we build PageRank into the ranking score algorithm. And then it’s the art of art that takes over activity, relevance, trust and authority. That makes everything work, absent any of these things. And you could have problems if you incur a manual. But when you look at your little dinky website, in the website, and I say thank you could be making a couple of million, which is nothing on the web. And nobody’s going to pay attention to you. Unless, you know, just, it’s just one of those random things where it pops up. And you get on the list of people to be looked at manually. But think of the millions of websites that are on that list for manuals to get a look at by a person

so that they can tell what it is that you’re doing. If you’re good enough at hiding it. If you’re good enough at filtering, it won’t go past that. It won’t go oh, I don’t see anything wrong here. The guy just did what he’s supposed to be doing. more power to you.

Bradley, in all honesty, I don’t see any issues with link building right now. Unless she get caught LinkedIn. Yeah. Which by the way, I just have to give you a shout out Marco because I started watching the most recent heavy hitter club webinar last evening, I got to about 46 minutes before I ended up pausing it and I’ve got to finish watching it, but was damn good. So anyways, a very, very good webinar talking about, you know, what you talked about in it. And so I would encourage people that are looking to get the best kind of results from what we talked about, like the heavy hitter club is insane. Marco and Robert, just, it’s just crazy what you guys give away in there. It’s insane. So just want to give a shout out for that.

What’s The Best Way To Build Links To Pass The Most Value Across The Entire Domain?

All right, next question is from Christian says question for Marco, another one, what’s the best way to build links to pass the most value across the entire domain? I read somewhere about link building to the XML sitemap, but this seems unnatural. Yeah, and I wouldn’t recommend that either. Because link building, the XML sitemap is directly linking to your domain. I mean, if you’re I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t recommend that. I know I wouldn’t.

But this seems a natural would love any opinions on this thing. So Morgan, what do you say on that? It can have great effect, because you’re building links directly to all of the links on your website. The problem is that you’re building links directly to your website and through all of the links on your website. What we would do is we would take that XML sitemap and iframe it on a G site, of course, and link built to the G site.

You know, that’s not my problem. So I’ve never done that iframe to a sitemap. Yeah, I’ll be damned. Can’t believe I’m not giving much away. Huh?

I didn’t say that.

We have to test that. I even thought to do that, man. Nevermind. But yeah, dude, we do everything through the power shield. Everything that we do is done through the SEO power shield. And so why wouldn’t we go and put that on the shield? Right? So now we’re shielding ourselves off from incurring a penalty cuz he’s an iframe iframes don’t pass penalties.

And then you bang.

You know, get a that is set up, set a bunch of thoughts off in my head.

This category Sitemaps post Sitemaps tag Sitemaps. There’s video Sitemaps image image sitemap. There’s all kinds of stuff you could do with those if you can iframe Sitemaps. And I never even thought about that. That’s insane. That is not it.

Keep it a secret.

Don’t tell anyone publicly.

What Are Some Good Tips On How A Starting SEO Agency Get Consistent Leads?

Abdul’s Up next, for those starting an SEO agency. What are some good tips to get consistent leads dried LinkedIn and some video audits was zero success. So far along with Upwork.

I would recommend video email, video lead gen system, there’s a few different ways that like our product called video lead gen system is a method that I’ve used to land clients I started, I really developed the first version of it that I used for many years, way back in 2012.

That was very time intensive, it was very effective. I was getting consistently a 35% response rate on cold emails. But it was very slow. So in other words, like I would, I would always do a video emails in batches of 10. And I would get on every single time I would do a prospecting campaign with a batch of 10 video emails that were customized for each recipient, I would get either three or four responses, right And out of those three or four, I would typically close at least one but sometimes to two of those responses into some sort of retainer model or lead generation. You know, they would become lead buyers or whatever it was that I was I was approaching them for. So that’s why I say 35% because every time I did 10 it would either be three or four responses.

About two years ago, I updated video Legion system to make it more to basically add in another module that talks about how to streamline the process a lot better, to make it way more efficient and you can use a VA for a lot of it.

To where you can just record, you know, what’s called a common. A common section or common video, like like there’s going to be a big portion of the video is going to be common to all of the recipients. And it’s just the intro that is unique to each recipient. So the intro can be very short, like 90 seconds or less so that therefore you can literally record a whole bunch of intros to unique to each recipient, in very, very short period of time and then have a VA do all the other work the splicing of the intro to the common video, and then even do the emailing and everything else. And all of that process is taught in video lead gen system. More recently, the PO foo live 2020 art. So our live event kofu live 2020. So our live event from this year, I did another prospecting training on setting up what I call a prospecting machine. It’s using the high level platform, it’s freaking fabulous. I’ve been able to use cold emails, not even video emails, but just straight cold emails and get a 30% response rate, which is insane for cold prospecting. And it works really, really well. And I taught that specific method, including all the process Doc’s on how to build that out in high level. And everything is part of my POFU Live presentation, which is available in the POFU Live 2020 recordings. So those are the two products that I would recommend that you check out because that’s exactly how I prospect and I do a lot of prospecting. I’ve more recently, it’s been for lead buyers for my lead gen assets, you know, I’ve got a bunch of leads coming in that I needed to monetize. So I’ve been doing it for lead generation, but in about probably right after the first of the year, I’m going to be going really heavy on prospecting for some activity based services for Tree Service contact, contractors not doing like full on SEO and everything else. But like doing like GMB posts and video ads, I’m getting really heavy into YouTube ads for local right now. And that’s a service that I want to provide. So it’ll be kind of like a lesser expensive service. So I’m going to be doing a ton of prospecting and I’m going to kind of repurpose the high level prospecting machine for that. And that will be updated and added to the POFU Live recordings. And again, that’s probably gonna wait till January to start really prospecting heavy for that. But I’m just telling you that because both of those products have been very successful, like those methods, excuse me have been very successful for my own business, my own agency, my own lead generation business. So I would highly recommend that you check those out, and know that it’s going to be updated once again in January the POFU live recordings anyways, and maybe video lead gen system as well, with the, with my results from my new prospecting campaign that I’m going to commence with on in January. So anybody else want to talk about? Yeah, I tried LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and I’m surprised that he had zero success. But was it free? Or was it Abdul I need to know if he tried the paid or the free? LinkedIn? Cuz cuz through the through the paid? Like, you’ll get notified when there are leads available in the air you choose? And profinder? Yeah, LinkedIn profile profile. Yeah, but here’s the interesting part. But you can change the areas, you can change that, like, I was doing Virginia, because we had a I had a phone number. Then I went and got a phone number in New York. And I changed it and I changed the area. And I got leads from New York. And it was really interesting, because you’re supposed to submit a bid but I but I would do is a you know, let’s set up a call. Let’s let’s do call so I can properly go over what your needs are. So I would get them on the call. And and once you get them on the call, and they see who you are what you do. And you can you show them it, here’s the the most important part of anything that you’re doing is you have to be able to show that you can do what you say you’re going to do. Yeah, you can’t just tell them, this is what I’m going to do for you. And then you have nothing backing up what you’re saying, like I could take them to clients and all of these different things that I have to show, this is what I can do for you give me 90 days. And at the end of those 90 days, then we’ll discuss what my fee is going to be because it’s never it’s never going to be as low as those first 90 days. Right. I’m really surprised seeing that the 06. So maybe we should do something with that LinkedIn profinder.

I don’t know. So something to think about. I don’t have time to do it. But when I tried it, I did have success. So that’s just a couple other things came to mind as Marco was talking and you know, there’s the old tried and true method of going to like local meetups, lead share groups, that kind of stuff. You can go to meetup.com And I mean, I’m assuming if you’re in the US, you can go to meetup.com and you can probably find a local lead sharing groups, your chamber of commerce, Local Chamber of Commerce like that, that in person networking, it works you can get local clients that way I prefer to stick with within a particular industry now which is the tree service industry or or tangent industries like you know, land clearing, perhaps landscaping, you know some other things like that, but primarily Tree Service stuff. And so because of that I can’t stick to just local areas. So you know, I’ve developed my own method which I talked about the video lead gen systems that works really really well. But something else would be like using you know, inbound marketing from you know, ads you set up your own and I thought we talked about this in two x your agency as well.

The fool the first part 2xyouragency.com if you go there, you can, you can check out our training for two x your agency. But we talked about there’s three parts to that there’s the pipeline, there’s the results, and then in growth or scaling. So in other words, that whole training is divided up into three sections. The first section being completely about filling your pipeline, as an agency, that’s the most important thing. You know, if what we hear a too many times with people coming into like Semantic Mastery mastermind, for example, is they come in and they say, you know, we get this often to that client getting landing new clients is the hardest thing for their agency that or the the biggest obstacle to growth. And whenever we get on our, you know, mastermind new member, our new mastermind member calls, because we always do you know, a 30 minute call with new members. One of the questions that I often ask is, you know, well, what are you doing for prospecting? You know, are you filling your pipeline with prospects, and it’s, it’s very poor, most of the results are like, most people just aren’t prospecting, consistently, they prospect when they need some clients, they go through a week or two of heavy prospecting, they get some leads coming in, then they work those leads, and they stopped prospecting while they work those leads, and then hopefully, they get a client out of it. And then they got to start that process all over again, a lot of times, once they get a client instead of prospecting throughout, you know, while they’re working the leads, they stopped prospecting. And then once they land, the client, they go through the onboarding process with the client. And so they they don’t prospect during that time, either. So once they finally get the client up to a part where they, their time is freed up a little bit to where they can go back to prospecting, and it started against, it’s always peaks and valleys, right peaks and valleys. And that’s really not the way to do it prospect consistently. So that you always have a pipeline full of prospects, so that whenever you you know, that that’s one, a couple things happens when you have a pipeline full of prospects. Number one, you don’t, it’s not as critical to close every prospect that you’re talking to. and desperation comes through guys, like people can smell desperation from, you know, across the globe. And what I’m saying is, if you are desperate to close a sale with a prospect that you’re talking to, because it’s the only prospect you have, that comes through, and people can detect that or, or pick up on that. And so, and I think that kills conversion rates. And I know because I’ve been there something else is when you have a, you know, a pipeline full of prospects, you can cherry pick, and only work with those that seem to be the best fit, the ones that you’re most comfortable with through communication and everything else. Whereas when you only have a handful of prospects, again, you cling to those prospects and try to make the deal happen, even if you know, it’s not a good fit. Once again, how do I know this, because I’ve been there. And every time that I’ve done that, and I’ve taken on a client for money sake, but I felt like in my gut, you know, I had this gut feeling that it wasn’t a good fit, it turned out to be that turned out to be the case, like it’s a nightmare engagement. It’s a pain in the ass to deal with, it causes a lot of stress and it’s the money’s just not worth it. And so again, having a pipeline full of prospects is incredibly important. So when I say inbound marketing, again, go check out 2xyouragency, very inexpensive. But there’s a ton of training in there on how to fill your pipeline. One thing I recommend is branding yourself, you know, or your agency however you want to do it. I think a personal brand is a little bit better than a corporate brand. It gets better results and from from my experience, but do things like YouTube ads, guys like YouTube ads are so incredibly inexpensive right now especially it’s insane, you can get a ton of reach targeting options have gotten incredibly good, you can create custom audiences now. So you can literally create a bucket of people that are interested in you know, bucket of prospects, essentially that you can market to on YouTube and display network. Those are all inexpensive ways to get to be Brent to brand yourself and bring create exposure to your ideal prospect. So I would highly recommend that and Hernan I know you’ve got a ton of really good prospecting advice to what can What can you give?

for non stop? I was talking to a mute mic.

I think that went into it’s your agency. We actually have a full module, which is, which was one of my presentations for pool for like 2018. And I kind of expand that last year, but it was about the eagle method, right. And on that method like, which is explained, by the way into it’s your agency, a walk you through step by step on how to create a personal brand and how to create content that people come in and consume, so that you don’t have to go out there and do any pretty much any of the heavy lifting, because you’re putting together those systems so that people will reach out to you. Right, so you’re not depending that much on referrals. referrals are great, but they’re not consistent. So if you put a system like that, where you’re putting out content, and you’re advertising content, that helps you, you know, getting features and experts. So choose your agency, it’s everything, you know, everything is explained step by step. So you know, Bradley has a more like outbound approach, I have a more like inbound approach. And if you combine the two of them, you can grow up an agency pretty quickly. So that’s what I would say.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Unknown Speaker 26:12 Somebody posting questions and doesn’t realize, I guess, maybe they came to the page before the video up updated. So I don’t know she’s even gonna sit or egg is even going to hear our responses. But we’ll get to that in a moment. All right. So the next question is, where am I lost it?

Should You Delete A Person Schema If There’s An Existing Organization Schema?

Okay, BB. BB is up. What’s up baby? He says, should I delete the person’s schema? When there is organization schema? It depends on like, what, and it depends on where like, how the schema is being used on what type of in which situation? Like, what is what are you marking up, for example, if it’s like blog blog, you know, Article markup for a blog post, or a news release or whatever. You know, it depends like, there’s there’s a section for the author, and then a section for the publisher. And if the author if you want to designate a person, and you have your schema connected, properly writes called nested schema or connected data items, or there’s enough number of terms for but if you haven’t connected correctly, then you would list the author, which would have person schema for the author, if you want to do it that way. And then the publisher as the organization, which is organization schema, and all of that is nested correctly. And again, it’s just, it depends on what you’re doing most of the time for the articles that I mark up, I’m using the organization as the publisher and the author. So I don’t use person schema. But it depends, again, if you’re if you’re branding a person, a professional, for example, then you might want to use their person schema. So it the standard SEO question without more content, or the standard SEO answer, excuse me, without more context, as always, it depends, it depends on the situation, what you’re marking up.

I know BB from your question last week, if you’re not connecting the schema correctly, then you can ambiguous the main entity of the page to begin with. So you got to be real careful about you know, if you’re using schema, and you’re marking things up that you do it in a proper way, having different you know, sex, different schema types on a page, but not nested correctly or connected properly, can actually create issues, right? So it can confuse the bot. And that’s what you don’t want to do. And I was doing that wrong for quite some time. I’m not gonna lie. I just recently started learning about how to do it correctly, thanks to rob, and the pope who live training. So but I would say yeah, it’s just really going to depend mark, do you want to comment on that parent child, you’re always going to have an organization that’s full of people. And these people are each going to have some kind of whatever it is you want to call it, or whatever the job is, whatever the position is, inside the organization. And if that’s the case, and if you want to go go into that much detail, you can so you should have person schema within the organization schema, what is their job, what is their function within the organization schema that you’re building. And if there is no place for a person to be used within that organization schema, then don’t try to push that in just because you want person schema within the organization schema. So as Bradley said, it depends on what function that person has within the organization. Or I’ll say again, the parent child relationship. And then if it’s on a page, what that person’s relationship to that page is within also the organization.

How To Convince Someone That Does Google Paid Ads, Content Marketing, And Link Building Campaigns To Get Leads From A New Source?

That question number two is how to convince someone that does paid ads, Gmail, YouTube search, ads, and little content marketing and backlinks to add new source of some site and get the leads through a new source. Yeah, I get the question. Okay. What he’s saying, Can you interpret it? Yeah. All right. So he knows how is doing ads. He wants to tell this person Hey, look, there’s another way for you to get leads other than what you’re doing. This new source is this online marketing thing where you can go get organic, you get into maps, you can get leads that way. He wants to know, how do I convince this person who only does ads to try something else?

Yeah, it looks like he’s also talking about if you provide, if you have leads that you can sell to somebody that’s already doing ads to I think that’s the way I’m interpreting it as well. Um, hey, that’s a great, you know, maybe you should go watch the lead simplify webinar that we did. I think it’s semanticmastery.com/leadsimplify, but anyways, you should go watch that webinar, because Mike Martin talks about the hybrid lead generation model. And, you know, I’ve got clients that I’ve do that are retainer based clients, so traditional clients, right, you know, they pay me a monthly retainer, and I optimize their assets. But if I happen to have lead generation assets that you know, provide in their area that’s within their service area that I, you know, generate leads for, sometimes clients will even ask, like, Hey, you know, I’ll buy leads from you, too. So it’s not that you need to convince anybody, remember, if you’re trying to convince somebody that they need your service, you’re talking to the wrong damn person, like you, that’s the thing, because then you’re trying to do to sales, right, you’re trying to sell them, the idea that they need what you have, and then you have to sell them, that you’re the one that provide that service, right, so you got to sell them twice. And that’s, that’s, that’s very, very difficult. And I don’t recommend it. And that’s, again, going back to the question we had earlier about filling your pipeline full of prospects. If you have a pipeline full of prospects, and you talk to 10 of them, and six of them, you’re trying to sell them on the need for what it is that you provide like that, they you have to sell them that they need that to be first before you can sell them on you providing that, then, like those are six people that you can disqualify very quickly, right, because you’re saying you know what, you’re not the best fit for me, not not that I’m not the best fit for you, you’re not the best fit for me, because you’re not already, you don’t already know that this is good for your business. And I’m not saying don’t try to educate people. But when you start to catch resistance from that, again, you have to sell them twice, in my opinion, is the wrong type of prospect. And that’s where, again, having a pipeline full of prospects is good doing inbound marketing, inbound marketing is great, because people have been exposed to you or your service, or what you can provide the results you can provide before they contact you.

So remember, an inbound lead, somebody already is aware of what it is that you do, and they’re interested in you giving them a proposal, or at least having a conversation with them. Right. So you only got to make the sale one time as opposed to twice. So again, it comes back to you know, who you’re talking to. So when it comes to like, for example, I’ve got a, you know, recently got a newer client in Fort Lauderdale, area of Florida. And in our initial conversation when we were, you know, during the proposal process, right, when I was prospect when they were just a prospect, and we were, you know, I was talking with them, we did the discovery call, like I always do all this is covered into x ray, to x your agency. But I did a discovery call with them. And during that discovery call, I mentioned them by the way, I also do Tree Service lead generation, if you’re interested, I while I’m working on developing your assets and your brand, building your presence online, I could also build some lead gen assets in your area that will be generically branded. But the leads that come in, I can sell to you. And they said Yeah, that would be great. So they were interested in both a retainer and a lead generation business model, like a hybrid of the two. And so that’s why I’m saying, you know, again, it, some people are going to be really open to that, or some business owners are gonna be really open to that, and some aren’t. And the ones that aren’t, just don’t bother. Don’t waste your time. Go find some that are. Does that make sense? Yeah, I see two things here. And I always like like to talk about, like my personal experience on on things like this. Because I talked to someone not not too long ago, who was doing about 50 million a year on ads, ad spend, right? So it’s a little bit of a 4 million a month. And the guy was convinced that there was no other way to make money online than to do ads, because he was getting a three to one return on fit. You can imagine how much he’s doing a year, right? If he’s getting a three to one, return on what he’s doing. So he’s making about 100 million.

And so when you get a person like that, and they want to talk to you, but they’re convinced that they’re already doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Probably does it, I have to come if I talk to him, I have to convince him that there that there’s another way So first, I have to convince him that there’s another way then I have to convince him or show him

My way works. And I have to be able to show him how my work. So you get into a multiple step thing where every step of the way, you’re going to run into a whole bunch of objects if the conversation gets heavy, and it doesn’t make sense, because at the end, he’s still going to be convinced that he’s doing it the right way. And that your way might not work, no matter how much you show him.

That you have to find someone who’s open to the idea, first and foremost, who is an already convinced that they’re doing it and that there’s no other way. And then this goes back to what I was saying before, it all depends on whether you’re able to show the results that you can get you look that you get if you get me in front of anyone, any I mean anyone, and nine out of 10, I’m gonna close that person, because I can take them through a whole lot of shit that I’ve done.

And it’s and I’m going to give them a 90 day out. So there’s really no reason to say no, unless they were already looking to say no, because they’re at least going to take that 90 day out, look 90 days, at the end of those 90 days, you will see. Because then they come six months, and every six months, I look it over because I always want to leave an opening to fire the client. No matter how much money we’re making, I always want that opening, because I get tired of people. But this whole comes from you being able to show this person, this is what I can do. These are the types of types of results that I can get. This is what I can do for you. Now when you’re speaking, when you’re speaking results, you’re speaking money. And if this person is any type of business person, they’re absolutely going to see the numbers, man. And it doesn’t even get to a heart close. Because there were by the time you get to, when do we start? It’s already Yeah, like, just build me. invoices, send me the invoice or I got cut you the check. If it’s person to person, like it’s sometimes they just cut you the check, it gets really good. But you have to get to the point where the presence open first and foremost, and where you can deliver the goods. Because if you guys can’t, they have to start figuring out how maybe your own leads and like I see maybe bV bV is doing and show those Look, I want to get these over to you person should be able to say, the person should be able to see profit in your conversation, you have to get them into that mindset rather than you trying to convince them that you can do what you say you can do.

Yeah, if you’ve got leads already for that particular industry, for that business owner, you mentioned baby, then, you know, why not send them, you know, a couple of leads, I do five I do a tree leads trial is what I call it, it’s a tree leads trial for Tree Service contractors, and I allow them, I make them get on the phone with me, it’s a brief conversation, it takes literally five minutes. But it’s just so that I can have a quick conversation with them to make sure that they can speak English, you know, we’re speak clearly I should say, communicate well, if they’re, you know, if they’re really terrible, I don’t want to send them to leads that were just, you know, to go, you know, to customers homes for leads that I generated anyway, so I require a phone call. But it only takes a couple minutes. And I add them to my lead simplify system, which does the lead distribution for me. And I give them five leads for free. And then I tell I tell them look, once the fifth lead has been delivered, I’m going to call you again to discuss continuing the service. And that’s that’s how I do it. Because a lot of the times people say, you know, like the guys, the contractors that I talked to will say, you know, I bought leads before and they were shit. You know, I’m not sure that and I just tell them, Look, I’m gonna give you five, no harm, no foul, you don’t want them after that it’s not going to hurt, why not take five free jobs. And the reason I do that is because I tell them Look, my my goal is that you get you close at least one job out of the five leads that I send you. And if you’re any good at all, at closing, you ought to be able to close at least one job right out of the five leads that I sell you, that means you’re going to make some money. And once you’ve made some money from the free lead that I sent you, you can reinvest that money in purchasing leads from me going, you know, I hope that you spend that money purchasing leads from me. So it’s it’s my way of like earning their trust. And so I you know, for me, that works really, really well. So instead of trying to convince them, I just tell them flat out Look, I’m not here to convince you or sell you on anything right now. I just want to get your verify your information so I can send you five leads, what you do with those leads is up to you. At the end of those I’m going to give you a call back and see if you want to continue the service at which point I’m going to ask for money. Is that fair? That’s what I say. And it’s a very short, brief conversation and it tends to work well. So

What Are Your Thoughts On Local Viking And How It Keeps EXIF Data On Images?

Okay, moving on. Next question is from Blake SEO. He says, Hey guys question about local Viking. They claim that this tool keeps EXIF data on the images and it doesn’t get stripped because they use the Google API. Is this possible or do you think it gets stripped anyways? I don’t know. I can’t speak for local biking or really what Google does.

You know people say that it scripts the exit data when you upload a video or a word an image or a video to Google My Business anyway.

But you know, when, when you if you upload an image with EXIF data to Google My Business and then you once it’s uploaded you go download it from Google. Yes, the EXIF data has been stripped. But does that mean that Google didn’t see that EXIF data when you uploaded the video? Does that? Does that make sense? So I don’t I don’t know whether the Google API strips in or not, maybe Marco does. But in my opinion, doesn’t really matter. If if when you upload the video that data gets, you know, Google sees that data when the image gets uploaded originally. What do you say Marco? Well, first and foremost, what I recommend is local images.

Forget the spoofing. I mean, don’t forget it. Let me just say this, nothing works better than when you take the image, at the location around the location, around the geographical area around the centroid of the business extending out about 10 miles 1020 and extended 20 local images, local images, Google gets so much information, guys, they even get the like, the attitude that you’re the wind speed is sometimes on on those images. Google gets all that information. And they have the satellite info, right. But they’re tracking you they know where the fuck you are. Put it on airplane mode, it doesn’t matter. They track you. Yeah, Google knows with a QR man. So you’re giving them all that information and you’re making relevant to the location. Next Best is trying to spoof the information but make sure that they’re locally relevant image and not just any image, but locally relevant, which I showed how to do. In local GMB Pro. That was done a couple of years ago, it might be time for an update for local GMB Pro. Yeah, it’s working really well anyway, like I hate update, updating something that works. Just to say I just updated and sell it more expensive. At any rate, if you have to spoof it, the idea is getting the info into the Google database. What Google don’t does with that image after it doesn’t matter, because we’re giving them the information. And you’re making it relevant because you’re placing it in your GMB. And hopefully, you’re doing it right, because you’re doing it multiple ways, not only one way, because there’s no GMB, that’s legit. That only gets images one way. Yeah, so so you have to take all of these things into account when you’re spoofing images, instead of trying to talk to clients into uploading images. And whoever comes to the client’s business, or wherever the client goes to a job to take, take pictures and upload video upload image, oh, all of these different things that are natural looking, and natural looking GMB should, how it should look how it should behave, the things that it should get, right. So when you get that anal about it, whether exit data is there or not, we can show whether it is I’m not gonna do it here. But we can show whether it is you can go take a look and see if the exit data is there or not. But once again, it doesn’t matter. And if you’re spoofing the data and and you can upload local images, then you’re doing yourself and or your clients a disservice by not taking local images not hiring someone to do it. Because it works so much better. I can’t tell you how much better I am. I mean, I could show you how to do it here. But I mean, when I get results in GMP light light, like it’s the simplest thing is because it’s done right. And, and you can hire somebody on Craigslist just to take images for very inexpensive I know because in my real estate business, one of the areas that I was flipping a property in a piece of vacant land and required in order to be in the MLS it required actual photos from the property not like aerial photos, like most everywhere else that I sell properties, I can just use Google satellite images as the property photos and that’s fine. But there’s one particular property this county, the MLS in that area required that there was photos taken of the property and from the property. And so I just posted an ad on Craigslist in that area and said I’ll pay $30 for somebody to go out and snap half a dozen photos from their camera, their their phone, they don’t even need it, you know, don’t you don’t need to be a photographer, just anybody snap from their phone, six images, I’ll pay 30 bucks. And I had like 18 people reply to me in a matter of an hour. It was insane. And so and I hired this one, this one girl, it was all done via email, you know from the Craigslist ad and within 45 minutes I had my six photos and I ended up paying her like I gave her $10 tip via PayPal so I paid her 40 bucks because I had it so quickly and so again you guys it’s very inexpensive you can get people to do that for you. I think Marco used a bite Korea at one time.

So and that’s somebody can make money on you know, additional income doing their their job, you know what I mean? So again, there’s a lot of ways that you can get those local images if you can’t get the business owner

To contribute, so, courier, Uber, people, people going back and forth from more people. commuting back. Have I used it all? It all works? Yeah.

Okay, on By the way, I see I think you’re you’ve got some job security in the future because it sounds like local GMB pro might be the next thing on the block a bit updated. So you might have to learn local GMB pro to come on ready for everything now. One at a time, though. There you go.

Is There A Limit To The Amount Of Power A Link Can Have?

Alright, so the next question is from my love, Gabe says, Hello, everyone. My question is, is there a limit to the amount of power a link can have? Is it capped? Or can we send an infinite amount of GSA spam to a G site, for instance, and get more and more link juice? That was kind of like what you already answered? Marco, you want to kind of revisit, I link, the both power that a link can have is from an infinite PageRank 10. website, and the only infinite PageRank 10 websites that I know, is Google. It’s capped at PageRank 10. Of course, because it’s in the algorithm it’s in it’s in the the What do you call it the PageRank patent that was incorporated into the ranking score path, right? So we know that’s the cap. Now, can you say can you send an infinite amount of GSA spam to a G site? and get more? Yes, of course you can. But why?

What’s the point? I’d say when people ask this? And this is this is I love bV for them because he has this type of question. My question is always, why would you do that? We know that tiered link building, the way that Dahlia does it at mygb.co.

The way that he does, it works perfectly well with what we do, because we worked it in conjunction in conjunction with him. He and I have and Bradley and everyone in the crew, we’ve sat down with Dahlia, and talk to him about the link below. This is how we want it and and then he has come up with his own flavor on how it should be done to the point where it just goes hand in hand, you’re supposed to get the SEO shield and get videos link building.

So that you see what the results are from that. So now what you do is you look at your analytics, you look at your search console, and you should know where your money is where the money is, in your niche, and what the money keywords are in your niche. So you start tracking those, and then you start targeting those, but you’re never going to send an infinite amount of links at those, because that’s easy to spot. If that link building the way that the way that you’re talking about, you never want to do that you want to do a tiered, you want to have link building cycles to different properties. So that everything so that your entire entity or your entire thing on the web is constantly getting juice, it’s constantly getting powered up. And so you’re constantly ranking for new keywords in your niche, because of all the power that you’re accruing, which is really PageRank and ranking score, what you’re accruing. And of course, it’s all powered up. Alright. So once you’ve done all this, if you have no people coming to your website, which I don’t see how you could have no people. But if you’ve got no people coming to your website, or if the people that are coming to your website and not taking action, meaning that they’re not closing the deal, whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, then you’ve got a big problem, because you will not sustain the rankings that you have. This is all attended upon you getting a real person into your website and that person doing whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, whether it’s filling out a form, watching a video, downloading a PDF, download, whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, so that Google can see the final piece of the puzzle, which is that person trusting you enough to click on whatever you have to give you their information to give you the money, whatever it is, I mean, you could build links, infinite links, that if if people don’t eventually come and take action, you’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble because Google is going to get signals other than what you’re sending you sending them great signals, because you’re getting all of this PageRank and ranking score. But then there’s no one taking action. And you don’t want to do that. There’s no validation to create. That’s That’s it. There’s no entity validation. Yeah. No validation. Yep. I totally agree.

All right, so the wall of text here from org. Typically, we asked not to post this much because it’s difficult to read through but since we don’t have a lot left, we’ll go ahead and run through it. Question is, by the way, and there’s a comment that says fantastic approach using se for the rework. Good move all of you. So as he got some fans already.

Thank you. Awesome.

Have You Encountered Problems Reinstating GMB Listings In The Towing Industry?

So it says hello, I have a couple of GMB listings for towing services. They are spammy listings within a county. Lately I have been creating listings and as soon as I verify the listings, they are automatically getting suspended when I contact Google to reinstate the listings they want proof of business license or utility bills showing my business name and address. Is anyone else having this problem when creating listings or is it just the towing industry? Well, first of all, I do know that the towing industry is one of the spammy or niches and it has been for years when it comes to GMB’s. So that was already a sensitive industry for GMB suspensions.

That as well as there’s a number of them overhead garage doors or overhead doors, they call them you know, there’s a number of them that have been that are like payday loans would be another one, right? Those are really spammy type listing things, the locksmith, the locksmith things a locksmith as well. So I know towing is one of those that are particularly sensitive to suspensions.

But that said also just right now period, it’s difficult to spam GMB listings to create spammed GMB listings period. It’s just across the board in any industry doesn’t mean it can’t still be done. But they are very sensitive right now I know because I just had a couple of them delivered that I ordered way back in June. And they were just finally delivered a couple of weeks ago, I went in and cleared the physical address because it was a service area business. I cleared the service the physical address as per Google’s terms, right? Because it was a service area business and it was showing the physical address in the verified GMB. So I went in to clear the physical address to remove it from the street address from being published. And as soon as I did that, and click Save it instantly suspended it. So and it was in the tree service industry. So again, you know, it’s it is a problem right now, which is why a lot of people aren’t offering verified GM B’s right now where you can purchase verified, you know, spammed GMB listings. because of that reason. And remember, Google is trying to combat spam, GMB listings. And one of the things one of the ways are doing it is they’re just like algorithmically automatically suspending things that are making edits, or that it determines is like, again, with towing industries, that being one of the more sensitive ones, the moment you verify it, or make a change, or an edit, boom, it gets suspended. And then they require you to go through that process of providing documentation that that a, that business physically resides in the location that you tried to verify. And that’s just their way of reducing spam. And so in my opinion, I would you know, I wouldn’t bother trying to reinstate those if you know, it’s a spam listing and it gets suspended, start over try again. And then towing. I don’t know that you’re going to have any success right now. So any comments on that? Nah, Google’s trigger happy right now, man, they they’re killing everything. Yeah, everything, they can just stick your head out, you’re liable to get shot. I always tell people, right, someone’s got an ak 47. And they’re firing. The thing to do is never let’s look and see who’s shooting? Yeah, you’re gonna get shot. The thing duck, duck, duck, and don’t stick your head. It doesn’t matter who’s shooting somebody shooting man. That’s, that’s the important thing. Oh, let me see who’s gonna boom, right. between the eyes. That’s what’s happening right now. You go change stuff. And sometimes it’s just posting versus not posting for a while, that’ll get you and then making changes and not making changes, and then adding images, not adding images. It’s going really crazy right now. And of course, their idea is, anyone who doesn’t have a real business isn’t going to call us or if they do, they can’t provide the paperwork, right? to reinstate their business. So fuck it, we just kill them. And then we’ll worry about whether they can they can get their suspension lifted some some other way. But right now, I mean that that’s just the way it is. I know that there’s some ways to create these spammy lessons, but if you have if it’s your towing business, or if it’s a client’s towing business, and get a legitimate listing there.

So the follow up question is also with towing services. Do you think I should build up every listing? Or should I focus on having a lot of listings in the county and hope their proximity does its thing, okay. I know from experience that having too many GM bees, in close proximity to each other will, they’ll filter themselves out, they won’t even appear in maps, it’s not that they’re they get d indexed or suspended. They just won’t show in maps. So there’s there really isn’t, there can be too many too close to each other that where they start to cancel each other out. Literally, Google will filter those out. So I don’t recommend that. If you’re going to do multiple GM B’s, you have to have an it varies. It could vary by industry, I don’t know but I know it varies like the the how close they can be together varies before they start getting filtered out. What I would recommend is a minimum of 10 miles between each but it depends on what type of with the towing business. The service area is generally fairly large for a towing business, at least from what I understand, and so therefore, it wouldn’t makes sense to have two that are only 10 miles apart, right? It would be it would, it would probably be more natural to have two that were, you know, 30 miles apart or something like that right or 40 miles apart, because towing businesses, by their nature, our service area businesses that typically have a fairly large service area, right. So I would recommend that if you were going to do multiple GM bees, that they would be spread out in a strategic way, but far enough apart to where they don’t cause any filtering issues. But that said, because of the fact that GM bees are so sensitive right now, to suspension, you’re better off having what you do have that’s verified and valid or that you know, has some age to it right. Building that up, which is what local GMB pro teaches we teach exactly how to how to really get the most exposure and expand your maps footprint, so to speak with local GMB pro methods. And that’s the better way to go. Because there’s more longevity, in my opinion with those than having multiple GM B’s that, especially when they’re brand, you know, newly registered GM B’s that are very trigger happy or suspension happy, right? very prone to suspension. So I would recommend that you take some of that made might have some tenure, so to speak, right? that have been around for a bit that have some age to them some authority, they’re less likely to be suspended. And you can do more with those, in my opinion, I think that’s the smarter long term route to go. That’s my opinion marketing, I would say, absolutely. Especially if these are if this is my business, my tow truck, my drivers, man, you can do so much damage with that. You can have all of Oh, fuck, you could have all of those people extending your centroid left and right.

I mean, I’m serious. And then you you hook up those posts the right way. And then you do your press releases, again the right way, and then hit it with link building. And it’s, it’s stupid, simple. And it’s the results that you’re gonna get nobody else can because nobody else will be doing what you’re doing.

Do You Think Google Will Suspend Listings From The Same IP In The Future?

So the last question, and then we’re gonna wrap it up, because we’re four minutes away from the end of the show anyways, says one more question. I had been using ghost browser to log in, to log into all of my listings and work on them in different browsers without having to log in and out and use VPNs and such things like that. I know. And one of your videos, you said Google doesn’t mind all the listings coming from one IP anymore? Do you think Google can one day change their mind and suspend all listings coming from the same IP? For example, if there was too many listings created from one IP? You know that? I don’t know. I don’t work for Google. And I don’t know what that threshold may be. I mean, it’s likely that if you’re doing, you know, dozens and dozens of GMB verifications from the same IP, even if it’s different browsing sessions, like unique Google profiles with different browsing sessions and browsing histories, and all of that, that’s what goes browser does, right? It keeps all of that intact. But if it’s all coming from the same IP, that could that could be a flag that triggers suspension of all of them. I don’t know. I don’t work for Google. I can’t answer that question. It’s logical that that could happen. But I will I will bring se in for this last, this last question. Because I’m going to ask her, we went through this, we went through whether to use browser to whether to use ghost browser or whether to use a Firefox, Chrome Firefox session. Ha, how did you solve it? I mean, don’t give away what you did, but or exactly how you did it, but solve it?

Well, I’m not sure first about the how much it can be triggering to Google. If you’re doing all this listings, with what is actually the limit of listings, I don’t think it will have any impact in the end. And Firefox works in a similar way as ghost browser with its private profiles. So what it does, it keeps all of your information separated from one browsing session to the other one login to the other. So um, but of course, they are all connected to one IP. We’re not using proxies anymore, which means that if it’s going to trigger some negative impacts on Google, it will do it anyway. So on the terms of deciding if it’s going to be Firefox or ghost browser, in my opinion, it will end up being almost the same thing.

For his question on in the end, though, I wouldn’t actually be sure. I think you guys would be able to give a more certain answer on that, of course, but But my question is, what was more you work with Firefox, but you’re not using proxies, although you could use.

I’m not using, yes, I’m not using proxies. I’ve been using Firefox and the option that it offers with Firefox profiles. And it works. Basically the same way that grows browser works with itself.

The sections and different keeping everything separated for from one another. So if we’re going to compare those two, I would say they work in the same way. Now we are going to determine if this way is going to cause Google to, I don’t know, suspended listings in the end, this is something that I cannot say for, for sure. All right. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I see.

So there you go. And remember, like, you know, goes browser, I think just add some convenience makes a little bit easier than doing like separate Firefox profiles or sessions. But you know, it can be done manually to without the monthly expense. So, there you go. And that will be covered in syndication Academy, version three. Thanks, Jesse. So yep. Thanks, everybody for being here. Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it. Thanks, guys for sticking around by everyone. And thanks for showing up se we appreciate that. Thank you. Bye.

  Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 315 published first on your-t1-blog-url