#unfortunately we were supposed to pay the wifi with that money

[kingofdorkville]

1. I apologize for screaming on that reblog, I was stunned that there was more confirmation that the spam message was indeed spam

2. Here's some silly animals to hopefully help your day:

no worries! i wasn't upset by you

thanks for the animals!

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Canary, Part 6

First

Previous

Tim had been watching her out of the corner of his eyes for a long time. It wasn’t that he was trying to be creepy or anything, he just… didn’t know why she was there. It didn’t make sense. She was relatively low on funds according to what he and Oracle had dredged up, and even Tim in all his billionaire-ness recognized that this place was more expensive than average…

So, why had she come? It wasn’t even close to the motel she was staying at.

The vaguely paranoid -- cautious, he was cautious -- part of him worried that she had somehow known he was there, but there was no way she should have been able to know that. Hell, he hadn’t known he was going to this particular cafe until he’d gotten to work and realized that there were now cameras in the breakroom and his office to make sure he didn’t drink too much.

But, really, it seemed like she was just using the free wifi that the cafe provided to write up a resume.

He relaxed and sunk back in his chair with his laptop while he did his work.

… he didn’t get to work for long.

He picked up on the slight gravel of someone putting on a voice with ease. It was high and sweet, a voice he commonly heard from customer service workers. He chanced a look back at the barista and frowned when he saw her on her phone. Not her, then.

He looked around the tiny coffee shop and cringed a little when he realized what was going on. Shady guy approaches a woman who’s drinking coffee alone? Yeah, that’s never a good thing.

He pushed his laptop into his bag quickly, slung it over his shoulders, put the cap back on his coffee cup so the guy wouldn’t be able to tell that Tim had been there for a while, and rushed over.

He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Hey, bud, she said no.”

Tim watched both of them tense and their gazes were pulled to him in an instant.

Marinette glanced him up and down once. He watched her eyes lock onto his coffee cup for a second and he carefully turned his hand a little so she could see the name.

She smiled. “You’re late, Timmy. Don’t tell me you got caught up in another meeting?”

He shrugged innocently. “You know how it is.” Then, he split into a grin. “Maybe I should be the one that’s upset, though. Can’t believe you didn’t save me a spot.”

“I tried!” She whined. “He insisted!”

The man chuckled awkwardly. “I see. I’m sorry, I thought you were alone.”

She rolled her eyes. “I told you I wasn’t. Can you move, though?”

“Actually,” Tim said, because he didn’t want to sit in the window where Duke might happen to see him while on patrols. “There’s a free table back this way.”

Marinette tipped her head to the side a little before nodding. “Sure.”

She closed her laptop with a snap, gathered her things into her bag, and followed him back to his table.

That should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, the guy was still watching them. It looked like they weren’t going to be able to do work for a while if they wanted to keep up the pretense that they were friends.

She seemed to know it, too, because she sighed and rested her head on her hand with a small frown. “Guess we have to talk.”

He huffed. “Don’t have to sound so upset about it.”

“Alright. Fine.”

“Not sounding much more excited.”

She rolled her eyes and then brought a bright smile to her face. “Sure, Timmy, sounds great! Can’t wait to have a super fun conversation with you!”

“... nevermind. That’s weird. Why did that almost convince me? I knew it was fake.”

She let herself lean back in her chair, her face falling back to a slightly smug grin. “I’m Parisian,” she said simply.

Yeah. That made sense. Every Parisian Tim had had the (dis?)pleasure of meeting had had an almost unnerving amount of control over the way they presented their emotions.

He snickered. “Why the hell would you move here, then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Our psychopath was so boring. Like, dude, we get it, your wife died or whatever, that sounds like a you problem. Now, a guy deciding to become a jewel thief purely for the gimmick? Way more interesting.”

“Moral grayness is so twenty years ago,” Tim joked.

“Exactly! Give me dumbasses who are evil purely to be evil and good to be good!”

He grinned. “I can see why you like Harry Potter.”

She blinked.

He motioned to her cup. Scrawled across it in the barista’s messy handwriting was ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’.

She relaxed a little, grinning. “I just finished the books so I’m a bit obsessed. Also, every time I tell them that my name is Marinette they misspell it.”

“Don’t feel too bad, baristas are just like that. Heck, they’ve misspelled my name before.”

“... your name is Tim.”

“They spelled it with a y.”

“... why?”

“Yes. Exactly. A y.”

She giggled a little. “No, I mean why would they do that?”

“Oh. No clue. I hope they were just messing with me.”

~

The barista was wiping down the tables. It was nearing closing time and Marinette was feeling more and more sorry for the poor workers the longer they stayed. She knew that, when she had used to work at the bakery, she had always especially hated customers that were there around closing time.

Only two tables remained occupied.

She sighed when she glanced over and saw the guy was still there.

Oh well.

She looked over at Tim. “Care to walk me a few blocks in a random direction to see if we can get rid of him?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“‘Certainly’? I may not be super great with American customs yet but even I know that’s weird,” she teased.

He huffed a little. “Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

His nose scrunched. “No, wait, you weren’t supposed to call me out on the fact that I didn’t have an excuse.”

“Oh. Okay, we can try again.”

“Alright.” He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said again, this time in a tone that mocked the one he’d said it in the first time.

Convenient. She was intent on mocking him, too: “I’m listening.”

“You’re the worst,” he complained.

She laughed. “I am so not. Joker exists.”

“You’re worse than him,” he said in his most serious voice.

She laughed harder. “No one is worse than him.”

He grinned. “I thought you liked people that were evil purely for being evil.”

“But he’s not,” she argued. “The man just decided one day that he liked the weird guy who dressed like a bat and figured that the best way to get that guy’s attention was to murder people.”

“Gotta admit, it works,” said Tim.

She shrugged, grinning. “Yeah, it does. Makes me wonder what would happen if the Big Bad Bat didn’t come, though.”

He tipped his head to the side slightly and then shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. He usually stops it in time.”

“I think he’d freak out.”

“Absolutely.”

She grinned and stretched lazily, head tipping back.

“He’s still following us, isn’t he?” Asked Tim.

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’.

He groaned a little. “Great. Looks like we’re heading to the library.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You go to libraries? You could probably buy every ebook in existence and have a few billion left over.”

“One of my sisters works there, I can ask her to get rid of the guy,” he explained. “But I like libraries. There’s something quaint about them.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s nice to see how the common folk live sometimes.”

He returned her eye roll. “Not like that. I spend a lot of time staring at screens, I have a special appreciation for regular old books.”

“That’s nice. I wish I had time to sit down with a physical copy like that.”

“You see, I have this genius strategy for making time: not taking care of myself.”

“Go on, this is intriguing.”

“Well, eating and sleeping, right? Everyone thinks they’re totally necessary things otherwise you’d die or whatever. But, listen, that’s just a hoax made up by the government to perpetuate capitalism.”

She nodded eagerly. “Totally totally totally. What’s your solution?”

“Coffee communism.”

“Yes, you should use your rich boy money to lobby Congress.”

He grinned. “I totally should. But I can’t run it by my family.”

“No way! You never know who's capitalist anymore, they could be plants placed by the sleep industry to ensure that you don’t go through with it.”

He gasped. “No! You think? My own family?!”

She nodded grimly. “It’s always the ones closest to you that betray you.”

And then he broke character, snickering behind his hand. She beamed.

They reached the library and he smiled as he held the door open for her. He asked her to wait while he talked to his sister and she waved him off casually, telling him to take his time.

She pulled out her phone and pressed her lips together thinly as she made a note to head over later that night to give the man -- Henry -- his money. She’d give him a little tip because, for a moment there, she’d almost forgotten that they were just acting. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to purposely trigger herself for the sake of believability but, hey, if she was going to try and dupe one of the smartest businessmen alive into talking to her, she needed to go all out.

Speaking of Tim, she updated the file of Tim’s favorite cafes plus the probabilities of him visiting each one. It was for his oldest brother, Richie Wayne. She didn’t know why Richie was the one to ask for it seeing as he spent most of his time in Bludhaven and therefore likely wouldn’t find much use in it, but no one ever really knew why Richie Wayne did anything. The man famously had almost as much cotton between his ears as his father.

But, Richie Wayne was also just as rich as his father, so… she’d give him his file later that night after checking her math with her favorite graphing calculator.

A redhead in a wheelchair rolled past Marinette and she absently held the door open for her, only to be surprised when she cursed out Henry.

She watched as Henry held his hands up and started backing away from the woman in the wheelchair, and then he ran down the nearest alley.

(… she’d give Henry a bigger tip. The man had just wanted a tiny side job to help pay for his wife and kids that wasn’t being a henchman, he didn’t deserve this.)

She opened the door for the woman on her way back inside and mumbled her thanks. The woman nodded once and continued on her way.

Marinette leaned back against the wall again and scrolled through Twitter as she waited for Tim to reappear. Apparently, Poison Ivy was already back in Arkham. Something about an intern at the botanical gardens watering plants wrong. Wild.

Marinette felt someone sidle up beside her and, after a quick glance confirmed that it was Tim, pocketed her phone.

He smiled at her, a tote bag over his shoulder.

“Did you go grocery shopping while I wasn’t looking, somehow?”

He hesitated before holding it out to her. “It’s the French dubs of the Harry Potter movies.”

She blinked as the bag was thrust into her hands and looked down at it. Yep, that was Harry Potter in French. She also, vaguely, noted the tiny slip of paper his phone number scrawled across it.

She slung the bag over her shoulder.

“I’m never going to return these. You’re going to rack up so much debt.”

~~~

NightwingsAss9384: does anyone know why nightwing and canary hate each other?

ScareCrane: She stabbed Batman once on accident and somehow got away with blaming it on him

Daylightwing: She refuses to let B adopt her.

RiddleMeThis: They think it’s funny when their stans fight.

SignalOfficial: They said ‘I’m the only flippy bitch allowed in New Jersey’ and have been fighting ever since

Yummmmmm: He has to or else Robin will get jealous because he’s the only stabby sibling allowed

Oracle: They’re fighting over who gets to change their name to ‘The Dodo’ first.

DeadHood: Nightwing is jealous that Canary was the first one of us to think to have a full-on bird mask.

TheBetterCanary: every time i go into the batfam tag to try and avoid them all i see is his fancams

SpoilerAlert: they’re both convinced that they’re the hottest bachelor/bachelorette in gotham

NightwingsAss9384: im beginning to think no ones going to tell me.

BlackBat: :)

~~~~~

Next

Perma taglist: @nathleigh @peachmuses

Canary taglist: @jayjayspixiepop @unoriginalmess @miraculousfanfic127 @probably-a-hologram @iloontjeboontje

[benisasoftboi]

Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse. 

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’  

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.  

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.  

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned,  Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol 

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret. 

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect. 

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously 

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

[purplesurveys]

746

What are some of your favorite cities you've been to? Locally, I loved Sagada, Vigan, and Basco. Outside of the country, I really enjoyed Bali and Shanghai. Would you allow your children to date prior to 16? (assuming you want any) I wouldn’t stop them but I suppose I’d watch over them more and have more rules while they’re still under 16, like no overnights at their SO’s place or that they have to be home by a certain time. Did you ever go through a phase where you thought guys in bands were 'hot?' Hah yep. I grew up during the pop punk/alternative rock era man, where most prepubescent girls were gaga over people like Stephen Gomez from The Summer Set or Jack Barakat of All Time Low. What's something about adult life you were never warned of or prepared for? The extent of being independent, like the sheer amount of bills to pay, how to check if the gas in your kitchen is doing fine, etc. I panic ever so slightly more day by day because I still don’t know how to cook anything and that’s literally Basic Adult Life Skill #1. Did your parents teach you proper table manners when you were growing up? Yes. They both work in hospitality management so stuff like that has been taught to me from a very young age. I can still vividly remember my mom teaching me how to eat pasta and soup properly or when she told me what it means when a bunch of spoons and forks of different sizes are laid out in front of me.

What was the last thing you baked? Chocolate chip cookies, but that was nearly two years ago.  Do you live more than 5 hours away from the nearest international border? Yeah, if you swam all the way there lmao. Kidding but uhhh I don’t – at least I don’t think so. The countries nearest us are pretty...nearby and if you took a boat you’ll probably get there in a couple of hours. Does your town have a farmer's market? No. I think the ones in Cubao are the closest one. What's the westernmost point you've been to? I’m not so sure, I’ve only been around Southeast and East Asia. Strictly speaking I think it has to be Malaysia, but that’s nowhere near the west haha. What was the last restaurant you made a reservation at? Gab and I never really get to have dates as fancy as this. We tried to book a reservation at Barcino once for Valentine’s Day, but they told us no precisely because they weren’t taking reservations for that day. When did you last feel lonely? This afternoon. I always start feeling a tad bit lonely during the afternoons which a nap can often fix. Can you easily tell when others are masking their true emotions? Not always. Some people are good at masking. How often do you wash your car? I don’t. My mom is so particular about how every single item in the house must be cleaned a certain way, and no matter how hard I try to imitate her methods they’re almost always wrong in her eyes so I didn’t even try with my car anymore. I don’t think I wanna hear “you didn’t scrub right” “you missed a spot” “did you even clean the car?” especially after trying my best. When did you last lend money to a friend? It was years ago when I’d lend money to Gab so she can put gas in her car or book a Grab/Uber. Now it’s the other way around, hahaha. Which app on your phone do you tend to get the most notifications from? Facebook. Messenger is almost always active since it’s the most popular chat app where I live. Do you own a Dutch oven? If so, what was the last thing you cooked in it? We probably do but it’s most likely one of my mom’s prized kitchenware that’s always hidden away and never used unless we have important visitors lol. Do you find it easy to put yourself in somebody else's shoes? No, I don’t think you can truly understand what someone with difficulties is exactly going through. What I am prone to be though is feeling sensitive and when someone is having a tough time, I do usually feel sad for them. Sometimes I’ll simply cry thinking about what they’re going through. What is currently on your kitchen table? We have one main counter and on it are my parents’ coffee maker, the water dispenser, the rack for our plates and glasses, mug hanger, and utensil holder. What is your favorite time period in history to learn about? Ooooh I really like history though. I don’t think I’ve ever found myself bored reading about a certain era. How old were you when you met your current best friend? I was 7 when I met the first one, and 13 when I met the other. Have you ever kissed a smoker? Yep but I’ve never liked kissing her after smoking. What is the minimum age to obtain a driver's license in your state/country? 18. ^ Do you think this is an appropriate age, or should it be higher/lower? It’s appropriate. I got mine at 18 and it worked out fine, and the only reason I got into accidents early on is because I was always driving very carefully but was unfortunately surrounded by dumbass drivers who liked to bully my much smaller car around.   If you won the lottery, do you think any of your family members would ask you to give them some of your money? I honestly don’t think so but maybe I just don’t know their true colors just yet HAHAHA. What is the craziest thing you've seen happen at your workplace? Thankfully I didn’t see it happen in person as it would’ve broken me completely, but it was when the Shopping Center at campus burned down. That was the first place I went to after I officially enrolled in my school (I had lunch with my dad and bought a UP car sticker) and it was also the first place my block dropped by to hang out together when we all met each other for the first time, so a lot of memories were in that place and I’m sure this was the case for all students too. That was a really sad day and I almost didn’t want to go to class when I saw the videos of the fire. Do you own any home automation gadgets like wifi thermostats or wifi bulbs? My parents have a wifi bulb. What is something you gave up on after many failed attempts? Instagram. I’ve always tried hyping myself up to finally make an account but egh, it just screams fakeiness to me. How old were you when you started to seriously think about what career path you wanted to pursue? When I was 19 or 20 as that was the age when I started having friends who graduated college and went on to have Real Life Jobs. Have you ever disliked a book so much that you didn't finish it? Yeah I got a random book once when my mom let me pick out whatever book I felt like getting when I was like 11 or 12. I don’t even remember the title anymore hahah but it was such a bore. I don’t know if I threw it out or if it’s buried somewhere in my room. Would you rather read a book, or listen to the audiobook? Read the book. I’m bad at listening to accents and have always needed subtitles, but if I needed subtitles for an audiobook then I might as well have just picked the book hahaha. Do you think tomorrow will be a better day than today? I don’t know. All days are the same now.

[alittledizzy]

stray puppy appeal rating: pg word count: 2.5k Summary: There's a stranger sleeping in Dan's bed, and he's not sure how to feel about it. Notes: Written for @velvetnautilus for my thirty minute fics for charity fundraiser to benefit PhandomGives.

[read on ao3]

There's a stranger sleeping in Dan's bed, and he's not sure how to feel about it.

*

Most of the time people checking into the hotel during Dan's ten pm to four am shift aren't really looking for conversation. They're looking for a bed to sleep in or a bed to fuck in and either way they're not going to stand around making small talk with the guy behind the counter who is doing his level best to project a disinterest in any interaction outside the structure of doing his job. He finds reservations, activates key cards, and sends them on their way.

But Dan's got a sixth sense about people who are going to need something from him, and because he's the only one working the front desk during the graveyard shift he's got no way to avoid it.

That sense starts to tingle the minute the door opens and a man walks in wearing a very respectable suit and tie with a stain on the front and no luggage at all. The man looks around with a slightly wild expression that means he's either drunk or exhausted. If he's drunk, at least Dan can ring security.

"Can I help you, mate?" Dan asks. His voice carries across the small lobby.

The man looks at him like he's only just realized someone else was there. "I think my driver stole my wallet," he says. "And my mobile's dead, and the airline lost my luggage."

Okay. Not drunk. Damn. And it's so close to his shift ending.

"Do you have a reservation here?" Dan asks.

"I'm with the conference," Phil says.

"... conference?" Dan repeats.

There is no conference.

"Yeah," Phil says again. "The conference. We're supposed to have rooms booked out."

"There's no conference here," Dan says. "Are you sure you're at the right hotel?"

The man looks slightly queasy now. "No," he admits. "Is this the City Centre hotel?"

"... mate." Dan barely manages not to laugh. "No. It is not. You're about thirty minutes in the wrong direction."

The man rubs his forehead and lets out a very quiet, passionate. "Fuck."

*

It’s painful watching Phil sit in the straight back chair in the lobby. It’s not comfortable. Dan knows that, because he knows the furniture was chosen with the intent of keeping people from wanting to linger too long using the free lobby wifi.

He’s only got ten minutes left until shift change. He knows who comes in after him, and he knows Phil won’t be allowed to loiter without a reservation and looking as he does. He’ll be told politely but firmly to leave, and Dan has a vivid mental image of Phil Lester walking down the street helpless and lost and broke.

There’s a chance of rain, too.

Dan sighs. He had plans. Those plans involved going home, eating something horrible for him in front of the television, playing Guild Wars for a couple hours, then crashing until time for the routine to start again.

“Hey,” Dan says, voice cutting through the quiet of the small lobby. “If you need somewhere to crash for a few hours, you can come home with me.”

Phil looks startled. “I can’t do that.”

Dan shrugs. “Fine.” Thirty seconds later. “Not like I’m trying to rob you or anything, though. Doesn’t sound like the last guy left much anyway.”

Phil almost appears affronted, but the expression fades into something more miserable almost right away. “I’ve still got organs. You could harvest those.”

“If I were in the organ harvesting trade, you think I’d still be working this shit job?” Dan asks. “I could probably pay my rent on one good spleen. Unfortunately I’m chronically undermotivated, so your spleen is safe.”

“Good,” Phil says. “I’ve only got the one. I think. Do humans have two spleens?”

“Just one,” Dan says. He sounds confident even though he’s not sure. He’ll google it later.

“But I really can’t.” Phil has polite-voice on.

“Suit yourself.” Dan goes back to looking at his phone. Eight more minutes, and he’s free.

*

There are a lot of things Dan would list about himself under the column of personality flaws. He's sullen and quiet, anxious, prone to depressive spells, lacks the ability to follow through on commitments, and frequently isolates himself from the people in his life that care about him.

But he's not a bad person. So when his shift ends at four in the morning he looks at Phil and says, “Come on.” and leaves work with a stray following close on his heels.

Phil a consultant for an editing software firm, and he's clearly having a worse day than Dan is but that doesn’t stop him from being chatty.

"I'll just charge my phone for a bit," Phil promises. "Then I'll be able to ring someone and figure out money.”

Dan doesn't really have money to give him. All of his meager paycheck goes towards rent for an overpriced one bedroom flat in one of the shittier London neighborhoods.

"Figure it out tomorrow," Dan says, waving a hand. If nothing else he'll be a nice person and put Phil into a car.

"It's already tomorrow, isn't it?" Phil says. "I'm all messed up with times. I flew here from California."

"Yeah?" Dan asks. He’s knows he sounds disinterested, but he’s really just… tired. He’s always tired.

"I'm actually from Manchester. But they flew me out to California to train me on the software, and I'm supposed to present it at this conference. At least it doesn't start until tomorrow, right?" Phil laughs a tepid laugh. He seems aware that he's mostly talking to himself. "Right. Where are we going?"

Dan gives him an amused look. "Would you know even if I told you? It's only five more minutes."

Walking to and from work is the only exercise Dan gets most of the time. There are days when he'd probably skive off work altogether if not for how much he enjoys his early morning walks.

"Right," Phil says a third time. "Okay."

*

In the bright light of Dan's kitchen, Phil looks even worse for wear.

"When's the last time you slept?" Dan asks. He'd really just planned on making some coffee while Phil's phone charged enough to make do and then sending him on his way, but now safe within his own territory Dan feels a strange stirring to do something more.

It's not often he's the one that can help other people. It's not often he feels like he can offer something that makes a difference to someone else.

Phil shrugs. "I can't sleep on planes, and the flight was twelve hours. And the night before they took me out for dinner and kept buying me drinks and then I had to go back to the hotel room and pack..."

"So, it's been a while." Dan abandons the coffee idea and heads into his bedroom.

Phil follows after him, but stops in the doorway. "What-"

Dan looks over his shoulder. "You want something more comfortable to wear? Maybe a shower?"

Phil looks surprised. "You're not going to harvest my organs, are you?"

"No," Dan says. "Can't be bothered cleaning up after that kind of mess today. But you look like shit, mate."

Phil looks down. "I spilled coffee on myself at the airport. I thought that would end up being the worst part of my morning. Before the airline losing my luggage, and the car driver taking my wallet."

He's already rung his bank and credit card company to cancel the cards, taking care of that from the hotel phone behind the reception desk.

Dan tosses him a t-shirt and a pair of joggers. "The shampoo in my bathroom is for curly hair, but have at it."

"Thanks," Phil says, holding the bundle of clothes. Dan looks up again when he doesn't move. "Where's the bathroom?"

*

Phil's shower is fast. Dan's not sure if he's always quick at it, or if he's just uncomfortable in Dan's space. His hair is wet and falls limply over his forehead and somehow the five o'clock shadow on his face seems a touch darker.

"Thanks," he says. "I feel more human now."

"You don't look it," Dan says bluntly.

Phil shrugs. He's at his phone already. "I'm at forty percent now. If you need me to go..."

"Didn't say I did, did I?" Dan asks. "Are you sure you're even safe to go out there? Why don't you just, I don't know, have a nap."

Dan's tired himself now, or beginning to be. He usually falls asleep around sunrise and wakes late afternoon. But Phil looks ten times worse.

"I couldn't-" Phil starts to say. "I couldn't impose."

"Fine." Dan shrugs. "I'm still offering, though."

Phil looks back down at his phone. "I could just... ring someone. To get me."

"You know people in London?" Dan asks.

Phil shakes his head. "But I could call the convention organizers..."

"At-" He looks at the time. "Five seventeen in the morning."

Phil winces. "I guess not."

"Just sleep," Dan says. "I still won't harvest your organs."

Phil gives him a grateful look. "Thank you."

*

Dan's a nice guy, but also a bit of a creep sometimes.

He definitely watches Phil sleep. He stands in the doorway of his bedroom and stares, because now that the buzz of a weird new situation has faded a bit he's able to recognize that Phil is quite fit.

There haven't been any fit guys in Dan's bed in a while. No fit girls, either. No one at all, except Dan and his laptop and his left hand.

Not that he's thinking of having sex with a random businessman that wandered into his workplace. He's not that hard up. Sex isn't even the first thing on his mind most of the time. He's got too much other shit to get together.

Dan stares just a bit longer, then turns and walks away. He'll nap on the sofa for a while.

*

He doesn't really sleep, but awareness fades in and out in stretches of five and ten minutes at a time until the sun is beaming down too directly on his face. He squints and rubs a hand over his eyes. He's tired, bone deep weary, and there's a stranger in his bed.

He opens the fridge and there's not much there. He takes his lunch around two am most days, and doesn't eat again until late afternoon. There's a lot of takeaway in his life, a lot of freezer meals.

Can't feed a freezer meal to a stranger. His nana would drive all the way from Reading just to slap him for it.

He doesn't even know what Phil likes to eat. Is he vegetarian? Vegan? Gluten free? Does he watch his carbs?

Indecision is paralyzing, but Dan's hungry and he needs something to do. He orders a pizza, but he orders what he'd normally get for himself. It's not a date, he tells himself. No need to try all that hard.

*

Tall, dark, and handsome-if-you-like-that-type stumbles bleary eyed from the depths of Dan's sleep cave at half two.

"Oh my god," he says, sounding mildly horrified. "I can't believe I slept so long."

Dan's on his laptop. He barely glances up. "Must have needed it."

"My phone's charged," Phil says. "If you need me to go."

Dan ignores the comment and says, "There's pizza."

"Pizza?" Phil's interest is definitely piqued.

"You must be hungry, right?" Dan asks.

"Starved," Phil says. He opens the box. The pizza's gone cold by now but he doesn't seem to mind. He takes a bite and moans slightly. "This is amazing."

"It's Dominoes," Dan says, "But it's good to know that's where your taste level is at."

"Nothing wrong with a Dominoes," Phil says.

Dan does happen to agree.

Phil eats his pizza standing. Dan pretends to be doing work on his laptop, when in reality he's refreshing twitter and watching Phil out of the corner of his eye.

When Phil's done eating, he wipes his hands on his (Dan's) joggers and then walks back into the bedroom.

Dan has a sinking feeling in his gut, and he's not sure what put it there. All he knows is that this day stands out from every other day already, and he's reluctant to let that go.

But then there's Phil, this person Dan barely knows, with whom Dan has barely even had a real conversation, and he's walking out of Dan's bedroom dressed again and regret for that unknown reason blooms even brighter.

"Guess you'll be going then?" Dan asks.

He can tell his voice sounds clipped. Phil can too, apparently. "If that's alright? Or did you change your mind on the organ harvesting?"

"Still can't be bothered," Dan says, shutting the laptop. Phil's wearing his own trousers and a button up.

"I need to get to my hotel," Phil says. "And then ring the airport about my luggage, and have someone wire me some money."

Dan can see the discarded tie making an unsightly lump in his trouser pocket, and he's got his jacket over one shoulder. The coffee stain looks even worse in the light of day. He's got Dan's hoodie clutched in his other hand.

"You can take that if you want to."

Dan's not sure where the offer comes from. He likes that hoodie.

Phil looks down at it. "Really?" He asks. "We could... we could meet up. For me to give it back to you. And pay you back."

"Pay me back?" Dan asks.

"For the money I'm about to ask to borrow so I can get the tube to where I need to be." Phil says meekly.

"Oh," Dan says. "Yeah, right."

"But I want to make it up to you." Phil takes a breath and then looks at Dan almost imploringly. "Dinner? When's your night off work?"

"Don't worry about it," Dan says. He grabs his wallet and pulls out the only cash he has. He doesn't even count it. "You don't need to pay me back. If you want to return the hoodie, drop it by the hotel."

Phil looks down at where Dan's offering it out to him. He's frowning, and Dan's starting to wonder exactly what's wrong when Phil says, "What if I just want to take you out?"

"What?" Dan stares at him.

"You're - am I wrong?" Phil asks. "I just.. I saw your quilt. And the sticker on your mirror.”

The warm, heavy quilt his friend made him in the colors of a rainbow flag. The equality sticker. "Are you asking me out? Are you even gay?"

The moment feels like a step beyond surreal.

Phil lifts up his trouser leg. His socks have little rainbows on them. Phil shrugs. "A bit?"

"You're a bit gay, or you're a bit asking me out?"

"Both?" Phil says.

"Okay I get how you can be a bit gay, but - how do you just ask someone out a bit?" Dan asks.

Phil begins to look uncomfortable. "If you don't want to, that's fine. I'll have your hoodie sent-"

"I don't work Sunday night," Dan interrupts him.

"Sunday," Phil repeats, smiling. "Alright. I'll bring the hoodie then. And buy you dinner."

*

Sunday comes, and Sunday goes. Dinner turns into a drink after and then a slow stumble through Dan's doorway with hands and mouths exploring. Monday morning dawns bright and early.

There's a stranger in Dan's bed again, and this time he knows exactly how to feel about it.

[hoyoungy]

blocked.zip | soonyoung (i)

genre: comedy, “fbi agent” au | fbi agent!soonyoung x reader summary: you’ve gotten away with downloading a lot of copyrighted content in the past, but now the fbi agent assigned to you has had enough of it word count: 1738 a/n: you know that fbi agent joke thing going around? i thought it was funny and soonyoung’s funny so i mean it fits. this is a word vomit. warnings include swearing

part ii

“Ugh,” you groaned as you tried to ‘legally’ download a youtube file as a .mp3 format for the third time. Each time you tried, the unusually usual mysterious and invisible window would pop up on the screen for a second and disappear the next, with you stuck on the same website and the file failing to download.

“Can’t you just buy the song?” your roommate asked as she sat across from you at the dining table.

“And throw away like, $2.00? No, thanks.”

“Pirating files is super dangerous these days! Haven’t you seen the news? There are like, FBI agents that are watching you through your webcam. Or-or how your phone and Google can detect your voice, hear what you’re saying while you’re just having a casual conversation, and show you ads that are similar? Watch, let’s test it out,” she said, clearing her throat. “Oh, no! Looks like we ran out of coffee. I really wish we had some coffee right now! I love light roast and blond coffee blends -”

“Shut up, you really believe in that stuff?” you scoffed as you properly categorized your newly downloaded song file in your library.

“Of course I do! Didn’t you see that one video where that girl bought a laptop online and the camera was always on, but she ignored it and went about her day, but a couple of months later, some creep broke into her house and murdered her!?”

“Well, yeah, that was scary… but I taped over the webcam! That has nothing to do with me trying to enjoy my favorite band’s music for free. Appreciating art shouldn’t cost so much money. And besides, this isn’t some post-Y2K paranoia era anymore. Remember when we were so scared as kids when we pirated songs off of Limewire? The FBI has become way more lenient these days ~”

“Whatever you say, _____, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when some weirdo American gets access to your webcam and watches you changing ~”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you muttered. “Ok, on to their next album…”

“Soonyoung, what the hell!” Jihoon scolded him in his office. A slumped and embarrassed Soonyoung sat in front of Jihoon’s desk as he listened to yet another lecture about not keeping a close eye on your internet activity. But it wasn’t his fault you bent the law so often! “Are you not paying attention to your person again? How many times do I have to tell you to not watch Naruto on the second monitor!?”

“I’m not, I swear! And I am paying attention to her! She’s downloaded like, five albums of different artists in the past twelve hours, how am I supposed to keep up with that!?”

“That’s what the ads are for!”

“I’ve tried, Jihoon! She has an ad-blocker for the ad-blocker! She always finds a way to stop me! You know how there isn’t a cure for the common cold because it adapts and evolves so often? She’s exactly like that!”

“Try harder. You’re a FBI agent, for Christ’s sake. You have access to basically their entire internet history and activity! There’s always a way around it, trust me. Start by sending her a threatening message, or something, to slow down the downloading.”

“Just message them? Can we do that…?”

“Of course we can. It’s just like an email. Just be like, ‘hey, we’ve noticed some suspicious activity on your laptop, please refrain from blah blah blah,’ and that’s it.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Just say you’re in the FBI or something, that usually scares them.”

“I mean, I am in the FBI…”

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem. Hurry and watch her activity before she pirates all of Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo. Your report says that was her latest search.”

“Fuck,” Soonyoung cursed before running out of Jihoon’s office.

When he got back to his desk, it was already too late. On the screen that monitored your internet activity on your laptop, the screen showed that you were already in the middle of downloading episode three.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Soonyoung practically keyboard-smashed a bunch of codes onto the screen that paused your downloading process.

“What the hell!” he heard you screech into his headset. “Are you kidding me!?”

“Now’s my chance.”

On the other side of the screen, you quit your browser and tried to redownload the third episode for the third time, but the download kept failing. That was it, you were going to take your laptop to a Genius bar, or something -

“You have (1) Unread Message,” your laptop chimed.

With hesitation, you opened the suspiciously red message. “Hello, _____,” you muttered aloud. “We have noticed some suspicious activity on your computer. Remember to please refrain from downloading any copyrighted… blah blah blah… Oh shit, hey, take a look at this!” you called your roommate.

“What’s up?”

“The FBI’s watching me!” you snorted.

“Why is she laughing!?” Soonyoung asked his lonely cubicle.

“Why are you laughing!? Oh, my God, see I told you this was going to happen! Look at what you did, now I bet they’ve hacked into my laptop, too! We are so screwed! We’re going to get arrested!” your roommate panicked. “I bet they’re listening to us right now! _____, shut down your laptop - no, burn it -”

“Relax, will you! It’s just a prank, or something! Or another pop-up ad!”

“I’ll show you a pop-up ad…” Soonyoung scoffed. On his end, he coded another message onto your laptop screen. He was probably getting a little carried away with a second message, but clearly you weren’t listening, and Jihoon did tell him to get more serious with this job. He’s not hurting anyone, anyways.

The next message popped up on your laptop screen for you and your roommate to see.

“‘This isn’t a prank’…” your roommate whispered. “This isn’t a prank… This isn’t a prank! Oh, shit, they really are listening to us!”

“No fucking way,” you cursed. “Ok, Mr. FBI agent, if this isn’t a prank, then… what’s our Wifi network?”

“‘PrettyFlyforAWiFi.’ Holy shit, this is real, this is happening right now,” your roommate panicked.

“Shut up! What was my most recent search?”

After scrolling through your history for several minutes, Soonyoung replied with, ‘How to clean wine stains.’

“Do you know our cat’s name…?”

‘Truffle.’

“Holy shit.” You began to laugh quite hysterically, still unable to believe that you had a real FBI agent assigned to you and was currently chatting it up with you and your terrified roommate. Your mind began to flash back to all the embarrassing and, um, not so appropriate searches you’ve done in the past. Everything you’ve ever searched, downloaded, basically have seen on the internet, this person has seen you do it.

“Burn it,” your roommate threatened. “Or I’m gonna do it.”

“No, I can’t afford another laptop right now! Besides, I bet you have an FBI agent assigned to you, too.”

“Yeah, but at least I won’t go to jail for downloading illegal content.”

“That’s true…”

“You won’t go to jail, dumbass.”

Both you and your roommate stopped moving when your laptop began to speak. Now this was really starting to get scary.

On Soonyoung’s end, who was tired of typing out all of his proof and explainations that have been ignored as you and roommate bickered, he decided to finally turn on his microphone on his headset and do the absolute unspeakable - talk to his assigned citizen. Soonyoung was already in deep shit with Jihoon and the entire agency anyways, so he might as well dig deeper.

“You won’t go to jail now, but if you keep downloading and torrenting so much stuff, you will.”

“It’s a boy,” you stated. “My FBI agent’s a dude. Ok, that, in some form or another, has to be illegal, too, like that’s just not safe or fair!”

“Life isn’t safe or fair.”

“Are you my mother now? My FBI agent mother?”

“I can’t believe you’re arguing with your laptop,” your roommate said as she walked away from you. “Don’t bring that thing near me until you figure out your legal problems!”

You sighed dramatically so that Soonyoung could hear you from the other side. It was just the two of you now, face to face - sort of - waiting for the other person to break the ice.

“So I’m not going to jail, right?”

“No, but I’m assigned to watch over your internet activity still. If your excessive illegal downloading continues, I’ll have to have you arrested.”

“Then how long until I’m in the clear?”

“Either until you get a new laptop and a new agent assigned to you or as long as I deem necessary.”

“So we’re basically stuck with each other, huh?” you asked.

“Unfortunately.”

“Cool… Well, since we’ll be working together for quite some time, I’ll intoduce myself first. Hi, my name is _____.”

“I know.”

“… Of course you do,” you dead panned. “And you are…?”

“Soonyoung.”

“What a nice name for a scary FBI agent man. Do you know what I look like…?”

“I can only see you when you turn on your webcam.”

“That’s so weird!” You felt the strong shivers creep up your spine at the thought of some strange man looking at you while you webcammed with your friends or classmates. The corners of Soonyoung’s lips twitched slightly at your strange, scared noises. “Please tell me you’re not some old man with a tub of lotion by your desk.”

“We’re the same age.”

“Damn, you know my birthday, too! But somehow knowing we’re the same age makes this all less creepy.”

“That’s… good?”

“I’m not too sure, either. Now that we got formalities out of the way, I’m going to continue downloading this episode if that’s ok with you.”

“What!?” Soonyoung screeched into his mic. “No, that’s not ok! I just told you that you could get arrested!”

“Yeah, but you seem cool!”

“There are dozens of free streaming websites for that show, why do you have to download each episode!?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Oh, my God,” Soonyoung sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose harshly.

You were going to have a lot of fun messing with Soonyoung.

[pandjseetheworld]

Protests in the Street

It was time for us to head to Rio Dulce so we were up and packed ready for our 6am shuttle. We arrived ready to go only to find out that there are scheduled protests in the streets and our travels are not going to happen. This was unfortunate but it could have been worse. The transportation company said the protests are scheduled for today and tomorrow from 6am-5pm so they may have a shuttle going at 6pm. We said we want on that shuttle and had the day to chill. We went back to our hotel and let the front desk gentleman about the protests and he said we could get back into our room. Thankfully we could cozy back up into our bed and rest for a few more hours.

With the day open we figured we would get some errands done. I have been talking about getting a new tattoo for a while now and have been tinkering around with ideas and had the design ready. Since it was Monday there was an open tattoo shop in town I wanted to check out. If the shop looked professional and the artist was available, why not get it! So we walked to town and found the shop and it was great. The artist didn’t speak much English but since I had the design on paper all he had to do was recreate it on his iPad and tweek little odds and ends to my liking. When I was satisfied with the design, he disinfected the work station, and prepared for me to lay down. I made sure the needle was new and he took it out of the packaging in front of me to make me feel even more comfortable. With my little Spanish we were able to have a little conversation and Louis, the artist, was very professional. When it was done I was very satisfied and that was that! After paying our US 35$ for my newest tattoo he asked, how are my prices. In my head I thought, shoooot for how professional and clean everything was it was a steal of a deal but it would probably be expensive for a local. It’s hard to judge the price but I was extremely satisfied with the experience!

What is the tattoo… well that’s more for me but since most of you reading this are family I will let you in on my secret!! ;) The tattoo is a mix of different things for me. Firstly, there is our wedding coordinates. I had Pearce figure out the exact location on the beach where we got married, a symbol of our union. Next there is an old school compass. Clearly we like to travel but on a deeper level, life is now our journey together and the world really is our oyster (cliche but true). We have the choice to go in any direction we want and now we get to go together!! Lastly, there are some small celestial icons; a moon and a sun/star. You will notice that the sun is on the West side of the compass because when we got married the sun was setting in the west and that was our special moment. ANDDD I think it’s a cool simple tattoo! So there ya have it fam!

When we finished we walked to the local mall so we could get a cell phone. Before leaving the states Pearce bought an expensive hotspot that was supposed to sync off any cell tower buuuuuut it doesn’t work. He’s worked his magic with the company and they said he’ll get a full refund when he returns the device…… in a year! SO yeah, he hasn’t been to thrilled about that waste of money and lack of service. We have chatted with a lot of other people about how they get service and what they are using and we decided to buy a cheap unlocked phone. Since the phone is unlocked we are able to add different SIM cards in and this particular phone has 2 SIM slots. This way when we get to a new country we can buy a SIM that works locally and we should be able to get WiFi to use as a hotspot for our phones. The whole thing is a little wack but it’s not that expensive and it’s good to be able to have WiFi in “emergency” situations (lost somewhere, need to book a hotel, unexpected protests, etc…). I think the whole purchasing a phone took longer than my tattoo but we had nothing else to do and killing time was a must.

After our two little errands and popping into a few other shops to buy things we headed back to our hotel. The hotel was holding our bags so we didn’t have to carry them around all day which I am so thankful for because it’s become rainy season here. They said it ends in November but it’s been raining on and off daily so not having our bags was very nice! Back at the hotel we did some work/reading and then headed towards the shuttle. Our shuttle left promptly at 6pm and we were on our way to Rio Dulce!

[xxredwineandambiencexx]

Sooo I missed out on Klarolineauweek because I was in the process of moving house and unfortunately my new house didn’t have wifi yet :( Anyway I did promise some Klaroline, so here’s what would have been my contribution for day 1- Crossovers and Fusions. I recently reread the Luxe Series by Anna Godberson and was inspired!

“I’m not entirely sure that you should be doing that inside.” She directs towards the dark haired beauty reclining elegantly on one of the chaise chairs, a lacquered ebony cigarette holder perched between perfectly manicured fingers.

Katerina Petrova lolls her head lazily to the side, dark gaze fixing upon her in that intense way of hers that made her feel out of step.

Katerina was the oldest daughter of the wealthy Petrova family, an old European name that had been around for hundreds of years. They were ennobled aristocracy back in Bulgaria, but it had been Katerina’s great grandfather that had secured the family fortune with a rather large success with shipping.

Katerina was never afraid of displaying her wealth, nor flaunting the rules if it served her. Smoking- a vulgar habit for young ladies of their breeding and upbringing, was only done in secret places, not in the parlour of a well established mansion on Park Avenue.

“Relax a little Forbes. God you can be so uptight sometimes.” Katerina drawls in the odd accent that is part American part Bulgarian. The other girl returned to Bulgaria at least once a year, and usually acquired a somewhat stronger accent while she was there. It took her some weeks to lose it. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

Katerina offers her the embossed tin, the Petrova family crest evident on the expensive metal.

She shakes her head in refusal, because honestly her mother would murder her.

“I think my mother would dig my grave for me if she smelt the smoke on me.” She replies lightly with a quick smile for Katerina, pink lined lips quirking just slightly as she scrunches her nose.

It’s with languid movements that Katerina stands, the folds of her waist skirt draping elegantly towards her feet as she moves towards the window, already cracked open to offer some reprieve from the Indian Summer they’d been experiencing recently.

She just fans herself with the ivory handled fan her father had brought back from Paris for her. Bill Forbes might not always be around to spend time with her and her mother, but he was there when it counted, and he brought the most exquisite gifts.

Katerina leans out the window, shoulders and neck exposed to the sun as she takes another lazy puff of her cigarette.

If she’s being honest with herself, she’s still not quite sure why Katerina had chosen her of all people to be friends with. Her family were new money, having only just recently made their fortune with oil, and she knew that them moving into Park Avenue into the obscenely big mansion had caused an absolute scandal.

Perhaps that was what had attracted Katerina. The other girl, older than her by only a year, had always seemed to have a wildness in her that was alluring and alarming all at once. There was no end to the suitors knocking on Katerina’s door, except she only seemed to have eyes for one man- Elijah Mikaelson.

He was the eldest son of the Mikaelson family, set to take over the family business when his father was ready to step aside. The Mikaelson’s were from England originally, but had very quickly established their places in the New York power set.

They threw the best parties, had the most expensive clothes, and the biggest house. She’d met Elijah only once, and Rebekah a few times, although she knew that the blonde Mikaelson absolutely loathed her for some reason that she still couldn’t quite figure out.

“God this weather is horrendous.” Katerina comments with a sigh, pressing her hand to a flushed cheek as she stubs the cigarette out on the window sill, sweeping the ashes out into the air and wiping any residue away. “I do hope it cools down a little later.”

“You’re eating into your preparation time.” She points out teasingly as Katerina rolls her lined eyes towards her.

“I’m well aware of that Caroline darling. But how else was I supposed to spend time with you? You’ve hardly had a moment to spare lately. What on Earth has that mother of yours roped you into?”

She stands, smoothing down the front of her own skirt.

“Finding me an eligible husband it would seem. At 21 I’m practically a spinster in her eyes.”

Katherine just sighs, slipping her cigarette holder and tin into the purse she carries around her wrist.

“You are absolutely not a spinster, and there is a dashing young gentlemen out there for you somewhere. Perhaps you’ll meet your match tonight, at the ball.”

She had been surprised to receive that invitation in the mail. The Mikaelson’s parties had been legendary in the past, but a slight altercation with an intoxicated Rebekah at the previous one had led her to believe that she’d be barred from the guest list forever more.

It had only been Kol’s intervention that had saved her from a rather embarrassing scene, steering his sister away with an apologetic smile.

She snorts, a rather unladylike gesture all things considered.

“Yes I’m sure a handsome Prince Charming will come and sweep me off my feet.” She pretends to swoon as Katerina catches her, a familiar routine for both of them whenever they make a mockery of the society that they’re forced to be a part of. “What was the reason for this particular party anyway?”

“The prodigal son returns.” Katerina drawls. “Niklaus. He finished his schooling last year and was doing a world tour. Now he’s in New York doing god only knows what.”

“Do we know anything about him?” She asks curiously, because she had no idea that there was another Mikaelson running around.

“Tall, blonde, a bit of a bad boy if any of the rumours are true, which they usually are.” Katerina leads the way towards the front door to where carriage would be no doubt waiting to spirit her away to her own mansion.

“Are they?” She arches an eyebrow, well aware of the rumours that seem to follow around Katerina Petrova like a grey raincloud.

Katerina just turns and gives her a slow, smouldering wink.

The party is in full swing when she and her mother arrive, her father choosing to stay in for the night to get some more work done.

Her mother, looking resplendent in a gown of grey, sticks to her side like glue, hissing at her to stand up straight and put her chest out so as to display her best assets.

“No one is going to marry you if you slouch like a serving maid.” Her mother had admonished her on more than one occasion.

She can't help but roll her kohl lined eyes to the ceiling silently, moving forward into the party silently, skirt fishtailing dramatically behind her.

The cerulean colour she’d chosen for her gown was in stark contrast to the muted pastels that the other young ladies of her set chose to wear, Elena Gilbert among them.

The girl had recently celebrated her engagement to Stefan Salvatore, who everyone agreed was much more amiable than his older brother, Damon.

Even Katerina, so resplendent tonight in her scarlet red gown, had harboured a brief period of affection for the youngest Salvatore, before discovering what a complete and utter bore he was.

“I’m going to pay a visit to Mrs Lockwood.” Her mother admits grudgingly, gathering her skirts in one gloved hand before moving off to greet the woman in question, the matriarch of the formidable Lockwood family.

Blessedly alone, she makes a beeline for Katerina, who gives her an approving once over accompanied by a wink.

“Ms Forbes you look lovely as always. A new gown?” Katerina asks knowingly, fan fluttering elegantly next to her face to ward off the sticky heat.

“Direct from Paris. A gift from my father.”

Katerina fingers the material of her skirt between gloved fingers.

“Exquisite. And no sign of the mysterious Niklaus I’m afraid. I must admit I am rather curious to see if the handsome features run in the family.”

“Elijah not here tonight?” She asks innocently of Katerina, who just gives her a smirk.

“I saw him earlier. So much easier to slip away unnoticed when everyone’s attention is focused on darling Elena and her oblivious fiance. Honestly he’ll die of boredom before he dies of old age.” Katerina drawls, gaze landing on the lady in question, who was beaming with happiness across the room, Stefan on her arm.

“Don’t be unkind Kat.” She admonishes her friend gently, with a soft rap of her fan on the other girl’s wrist. “As long as she’s happy. He certainly seems to be.”

She and Elena had been friends once, before Elena had been sent away to France for finishing school and had become obsessed with becoming a lady and being good mannered.

They’d lost touch while she’d been in France, and Elena had been somewhat wary of her friendship with Katerina since she’d returned.

Katerina just rolls her eyes with a teasing smile.

As the night wears on, she finds herself caught up in the arms of many of the young men who made up their set, the young and the rich, one of whom her mother would expect her to make a match with.

Tyler Lockwood with his handsome features was charming as always, if not a little insincere with his compliments as they waltzed together. Matthew Donovan, heir to the Donovan fortune, was kind if not a little shy as he offered her a drink.

Katerina commanded most of the attention in the room, Elijah at her side. They certainly painted a handsome picture, and she expected an engagement announcement would be imminent, if the satisfied smile on her best friend’s face was anything to go by.

“May I have this dance?” An unfamiliar voice at her side causes her to turn, and then look up into the face of the tall, sandy blonde haired man who was looking at her expectantly.

“Of course.” She replies, placing her gloved hand into his waiting one. “I must admit however, that I don’t think we’ve been previously acquainted.”

He just smiles to himself as they take their place on the floor, his hand on her waist, the other squeezing her hand tightly.

“Niklaus Mikaelson at your service, my lady. And you are?” He replies, a single eyebrow raised as they begin to move together.

“Caroline Forbes.” She replies after a beat or two. “So you’re the reason why this party is taking place. I suppose a welcome home is in order.”

“Had I known that there were such beautiful ladies waiting, I would have hastened to return sooner.”

It’s a line, and an obvious one. She can’t help but let out a short burst of laughter.

Niklaus wrinkles his nose at her outburst.

“Too obvious?” He asks innocently, even though he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Maybe just a little.” She replies as he twirls her suddenly. She allows the movement, enjoying the feel of her skirt fanning out around her legs. “How was your tour?”

The far off locales beyond the shores of America had always held a certain sense of mystique for her. While she’d been to Paris once with her father, she’d not ventured beyond that.

She’s surprised at how easy it is to fall into conversation with him as they dance, the rest of the room seeming to melt away around them.

He’s not what she expected. He seems genuine and charming, a warm smile in his face and a somewhat mischevious twinkle in his eye as he steals her for the next dance, and then the next. She can practically feel the disapproving gaze of her mother burning into the back of her neck as he continues to twirl her under the brightly lit chandelier.

Perhaps realising the impropriety of his behaviour, he steps away from her after the music fades away, sweeping her a low bow before melting into the crowd.

It’s only when she disappears that she realises just how much her heart is racing.

“Well, it seems like you and Niklaus got along swimmingly last night.” Katerina hits her over the head with a pillow as she groans and pulls the duvet over her head.

Katerina had always been an early riser, herself less so. She’d come to accept that she was never going to be a morning person, and since society deemed it perfectly acceptable for her to lay in bed for hours the day after a big party then she wasn’t going to fight it.

“Go away Kat.” She swats at her best friend, who remains frustratingly persistent, ripping the duvet away from her face and exposing her to the weak daylight filtering through the still shut curtains.

Her maid would be here any moment with chocolate and iced water, but she can’t bring herself to even want either of them at this point.

Katerina wrestles her to a sitting position, a newspaper tucked under her arm.

“Don’t you want to see what the papers are saying?” Katerina begins, shaking out the paper with a dramatic gesture.

“Not particulary.” She replies bluntly.

She’d been subject to a few mentions in the newspaper, most positive, some less than favorable.

Katerina clears her throat, glancing down at the paper.

“Last night saw the return of Niklaus Mikaelson to New York City after a period abroad. Welcomed back into the fold of New York’s elite, he seemed particularly enamoured with a certain blonde beauty  who is favourite here at the Times…”

“Ugh.” Is all she says in reply as Katerina raises a perfectly arched brow.

“Please, he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, at a marrying age, and obviously attracted to you, if the way that he was devouring you with his eyes last night was anything to go off.” Katerina remarks knowingly.

A gentle tap on the door announces the presence of her maid, who moves almost silently into the room, depositing her water and chocolate onto her night stand with a shy smile.

“Thankyou Claire.” She murmurs with a nod of her head, the other girl blushing under the attention of her mistress.

“I’ve been instructed to give you this Miss Caroline.” Claire replies, bobbing her a short curtsey before reaching into the pocket of her apron, producing an envelope with her name scrawled on it in elegant cursive.

“Thank you.” She repeats once more, taking the envelope.

Claire beats a hasty retreat as Katerina snuggles in next to her.

“Go on then.” The other girl jabs her in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

She opens the envelope, taking out the two pieces of paper folded within.

The first is a rather impressive likeness of her, her head thrown back in laughter, her profile sharp and clearly defined.

The second is just  a sentence or two of elegant writing, but it’s enough to make her heart beat faster in her chest.

Caroline,

It was enchanting to meet you last night. I hope we have reason to cross paths again very soon.

Yours,

Niklaus

[avengerofyourheart]

Air B&E (reader x Bucky)

Characters: reader, Bucky, Natasha, Clint, unnamed Male Target, OFC Jeff. 

Summary: When a mission requires close proximity with your least favorite teammate, you try to make the best of it, but a change in plans adds new challenges and possibly a new opportunity. ( basically Bed Sharing Trope meets Enemies to Lovers Trope. Kinda.  :D )

Warnings: sexual situations? pretty vague.  

Word Count: 2.8k

Tags are at the bottom

A/N: Hey, ya’ll !! I’m back from vacation and the idea for this fic was sparked by my sleeping accommodations. heh. I kinda fell in love with it and even made time to write in the evenings after being super tired from traveling. I hope you enjoy this and any feedback is appreciated! Love you guys!! :)

Masterlist

___________________________________________________

“Alright! So here are the keys, the WiFi password is posted on the fridge and let me know if there’s anything you need, anything at all. Okay?” said the overly enthusiastic young man before you.

You accepted the keys with a smile, “Absolutely! Thank you so much, Jeff. It’s even better than the pictures.”  

“I’m so glad,” he grinned. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. It was so nice to meet you both.”

Your eyes flickered to the man beside you, tight smile upon his face. “You, too, man,” he coolly responded.

Resisting the urge to roll your eyes, you clasped the hand of the heavy left arm draped over your shoulders. Technology allowed the metal plates to be shielded with a holographic flesh arm, but it still weighed a ton.

“Bye, Jeff.”

He nodded before stepping out into the hall. The moment the front door lock engaged, you shoved the arm off and put as much space between you two as possible.

“This plan is stupid,” Bucky said with contempt as he collapsed heavily onto the couch.

“My plan is brilliant. You’re just too much of an idiot to appreciate it,” you smirked, unzipping your luggage to pull out a piece of equipment, then sweeping all the rooms for listening or video devices. Thankfully, it came up clean.

“What the hell is an ‘Air BnB’ anyway? Why can’t we stay in the hotel across the street?” your unfortunate partner on this mission whined loudly from the living room while you unpacked in the bedroom.

“B and B? As in bed and breakfast? Get with the times, old man. All the young people prefer Air BnB’s over stuffy hotel rooms. Instead, this is individuals renting out rooms in a house or whole apartments for much cheaper and it’s a lot more personal,” you finished saying as you stepped out into the living room toward the window. “But most of all….this place gives us the best possible view of our target. See?”

Bucky stood and walked up beside you, then observing the window you pointed out across the street and down a floor from where you were staying. It was perfect.

“Yeah, well, I still think it’s shady that some 22-year-old can rent out an apartment that his daddy pays for so he can then use the money to party in Cabo for two weeks or whatever,” he mumbled, begrudgingly starting to unpack equipment.

You clicked your tongue in disapproval. “Such a cynic, Barnes. For all we know, Jeff is a poor college student who crashes with a friend on weekends while he offers this place out so he can barely make his rent. I choose to think the best in people.”

He scoffed at your optimism. “And I’m the idiot?”

“Whatever,” you brushed him off. “Let’s just get to work.”

________

You spent the next few hours setting up surveillance equipment and getting settled. This could be a long one. After securing a listening device to the lower left corner of your target’s window (expertly shot like a dart by you), Bucky and yourself took turns being eyes and ears. It was much more efficient to do only one or the other.

Luckily, you had the headphones on during dinner so you could avoid Bucky’s incessantly loud chewing, which drove you insane at every meal. Evening was uneventful with little conversation, only observations about the target. Around 10:30pm, the lights across the street went out and audio was silent the next 20 minutes except for soft snoring sounds.

“Looks like he’s gone to sleep. I’m calling it,” you declared before removing the headphones and standing to stretch. “I’m gonna head to bed.”

“Me, too,” Bucky replied, following you down the hall until you paused in the doorway and he bumped into you.

“Uh…where do you think you’re going?” you asked accusingly.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Bed?”

You let out a burst of laughter. “Not a chance. You’re not sleeping in here.”

“What?” he asked in disbelief. “W-where am I supposed to sleep?”

Walking past him into the hallway, you opened the closet and pulled out a folded rolling bed, then gesturing to it for Bucky’s benefit.

Bucky snorted. “You’re joking. That thing won’t even hold me, let alone allow me to sleep. Why don’t you sleep on that and I’ll take the bed?”

“Not a chance in hell! I paid for this place, I get the bed,” you demanded.

“Hardly! Your alias paid for the room, not you, genius,” he mocked as he shoved his way into the bedroom.

Failing to have a witty retort, you launched yourself onto the bed and sprawled across the entire surface. “I am NOT sharing a bed with you.”

“Are you insane?” he laughed at your ridiculous behavior. “It’s a king-sized bed. Plenty of room for us both. Look, we both need our rest. Let’s just be professional about this, okay?”

You huffed out a sigh in resignation. “Fine. But if any part of you touches me, I’m removing it from my body AND yours,” you threatened from your kneeling position on the bed, pointed finger in his face.

Hands raised in surrender, he agreed. “Fine with me. I’ll stay on my side, you stay on yours.”

______________

The constant beeping of your 5am alarm roused you from sleep. You tried to reach the phone on the bedside table, but you were surprisingly stuck. As the drowsy fog lifted from your mind, you realized that a strong arm held you from behind like a vice. You struggled in vain, but then you felt something.

“Barnes,” you croaked in your morning voice, then elbowing the man behind you in the ribs when he didn’t respond. “Barnes!”

“Ow! What?” he whined, loosening his grip.

“You better have a gun pointed at my spine because the alternative is too horrifying to even mention.”

“Um…”

“Ugh! You’re disgusting!” you cried out, scrambling off the bed.

Bucky let out a throaty chuckle. “Don’t take it personally, doll. Trust me. This…was not about you.”

“Well, thank heavens for that. And do NOT call me ‘doll’”, you demanded before escaping to the bathroom.

Once you were both ready for the day and returned to surveillance, the uncomfortable moment from that morning was forgotten. Mostly.

Morning passed and then time flowed into the afternoon. Interactions between you and Bucky were kept professional, sharing intel you each had received and taking breaks when needed. From what you could tell, your target hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. He hadn’t even left his hotel room, content to watch pay-per-view and order room service.

Evening fell and Bucky had had enough. Setting down his binoculars, he stood up to stretch with a frustrated sigh.

“This guy is unbelievably boring. How do you even know he has what we need? How long do we have to wait for something to happen?” he threw his hands up, then running fingers through his long chestnut strands.

You stood up as well, removing one side of the headphones so you could hear. “He has it. I know it. My source is reliable. Have you no patience, Barnes? This is part of the package, cupcake,” you added mockingly.  

He rolled his eyes. “I’m so bored I feel like my brain is melting. Let’s switch again. At least with audio I can look at something else interesting…”

“Wait…” you paused a moment. “I have an idea.”

A wide smile spread across your face, much to Bucky’s confusion. You handed him the headphones and binoculars before stepping into the bedroom to make a phone call. Once you returned to the living room, you commandeered the binoculars and returned to your vantage point.

“What was that all about?” Bucky inquired as he snacked loudly, much to your chagrin.

“You’ll see. Right about….now,” you checked the time on your watch before watching the man across the street closely.

Red lights began to flash in the building opposite, causing Bucky to shout and throw off the headphones.

“Ow! What the hell, Y/N?”

You then realized that there was a loud blaring sound coming from the headset.

“Oops. Fire alarm. Sorry about that,” you offered a guilty smile, shrugging.

“Yeah, I’m sure…” he glared at you.

“Shh! It worked,” you quieted him, eyes pealed on your target.

Through the binoculars, you watched the man head straight for the closet when the alarm first sounded. There was a small safe inside the sliding doors and through further magnification, you were able to decipher the code he punched in.

“Got it!” you celebrated with a punch in the air, all smiles.

You disappeared into the bedroom while Bucky peered across the way, still trying to figure out what you knew. Minutes later you reemerged wearing your stealth cat suit with your hair pulled back, a few light weapons in their holsters. This wasn’t battle, so you didn’t need much.

“Uh…where are you going in that?” Bucky asked.

“I’m gonna go get our intel, what does it look like?” you answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

He scoffed. “Didn’t he just take it with him during evacuation?”

“Nope. False alarm. Which you would know if you had your headphones on like you should, Mr. Audio,” you walked past, patting him on the cheek.

Bucky looked out the window and saw you were right. The fire alarm was off and guests had returned to their rooms. You had arranged for the false alarm through one of your teammates. A stroke of genius, if you did say so yourself.

“I knew he would go straight for the most important item in the room when fire was a threat. Kinda like how parents head for their children and photo albums. Look, he’s put it back in the safe and is getting ready to leave for dinner at the hotel restaurant,” you nodded toward the window.

“How did you know he’d go out instead of ordering room service again?”

You smirked. “I had someone slip a coupon into his check-in paperwork. People do love a good discount.”

Bucky nodded in agreement, almost impressed. “But wait, why do you get to go and not me?”

“Cause this is B&E. Breaking and entering is my specialty, Barnes. It takes stealth, not brute force. If I need someone to put a metal fist through a wall, I’ll call you.”

“Hey!” he called out, offended, as he watched you repel out the window and dropped to the ground before slipping across the street, unseen.

Within minutes, you had scaled the hotel’s wall like a rock climber and jimmied the window open before slipping inside. You crossed into the bedroom and toward the closet, entering the safe’s code with a gloved finger. As you hit the last number, you heard the card key being used outside the hotel suite followed by the target entering the room.

You cursed under your breath and considered your options. There was not enough room to slip under the bed, the closet had translucent doors so you’d be seen, and the bathroom was off the living room. Stupid hotel room design. So you did the next thing that popped into your mind. You grabbed the intel, locked the safe and then started stripping.

The male target opened the door to the bedroom, clearly looking for something, but instead found you posed on the bed suggestively in your bra and underwear.

“Hey, baby,” you cooed just before he turned on the light.

“Who the—“

You screamed. “I’m so sorry, I thought…I was trying to surprise my boyfriend, he….I guess he gave me the wrong room number or the front desk gave me the wrong key, I’m so sorry, sir. “

Gathering your rolled up catsuit with the intel inside and your boots, you hoped he was too distracted by your state of undress to notice your clothing.

“It’s, uh…it’s fine…” the man stuttered, still in shock.

“I’m so sorry, again, I’ll just go, can I borrow this? Thanks,” you asked without needing an answer, taking the bathrobe on the back of the door.

Outside in the hallway, you could finally breathe. You took the stairs and then slipped out the rear door of the hotel and back across the street. Dreading this moment, you knocked on the door to see a smirking Bucky on the other side. You brushed past him and headed for the bedroom.

“Well, that was quite the show,” he chuckled. “Did ‘the plan’ not go as well as you had hoped? He went back for his wallet, by the way, but you’d know that if you were wearing your ear piece.”

You huffed out an annoyed sigh. “Okay, fine, ‘the plan’ wasn’t entirely perfect. But I improvised and it’s fine. We got what we needed.”

You dropped your clothing on the floor and retrieved the small black case containing sensitive files and other intel you had been seeking. Setting the case inside your luggage, you shrugged off the robe and threw it on the bed.

“Oh, um…sorry…” You turned around to see Bucky trying to avert his eyes.

“Oh, please. Like you didn’t get an eyeful through binoculars, you perv. Besides, you’ve seen me in a bikini,” you replied, rummaging for your pajamas.

“Yeah, well, it’s different when there’s lace involved. And in person…” you heard him behind you, much closer than before.

You turned around, noticing Bucky trying to keep his gaze at eye level.

“So?”

“So…maybe you should have taken this morning a little personally…” he said with a smirk.

You let out a burst of laughter. “Is that supposed to be flattering?” you cocked an eyebrow, not at all insecure about your current state of dress.

Bucky shrugged noncommittally.

“Whatever, Barnes,” you snarled, stepping towards him, then placing both hands on his chest and giving him a hard shove. He found himself stumbling until the back of his knees hit the bed and he fell onto the mattress.

“What was that for?” he asked with a puzzled expression.

You climbed onto the bed, placing a knee on each side of his hips.

“I thought we could have hot, angry, hate sex before we check out tomorrow. Got a problem with that?”

Eyes wide, Bucky shook his head. “Uh…nope. No problem.”

“Good,” you responded, then crashing your lips onto his as you worked to get his shirt off.

He took the hint and sat up to remove his shirt before he flipped you over onto your back with him on top. The kiss was aggressive and searingly hot. As much as you disliked Bucky, you couldn’t deny he was attractive. Clothing was quickly removed and things heated up, but as Bucky nibbled and licked his way down your body, he chose that moment to speak.

“Just for the record, you were on my side of the bed this morning, Y/N,” he clarified.

You rolled your eyes with a groan, “Ugh, shut up, Barnes. You’re ruining it. No more talking and put that tongue to better use.”

“Got it. Shutting up now,” he muttered against your skin.

_________________

You woke to muttered voices, followed by a scream.

“My eyes! My eyes!”

Sitting up in bed in shock and gathering the sheet around yourself, you squinted at the sudden light.

“What the…Clint? Nat? What’re you doing here?” you asked in a gravelly voice.

“Being permanently scarred for life, apparently. You guys didn’t report last night so we thought we’d see how things were going. Which is…well? I guess?” Clint replied with hands over his eyes.

“Sorry. We’ll be right out,” you told him, then eyeing the man beside you.

Your teammates waited in the living room while you dressed and packed. Neither you nor Bucky said a word the whole time.

Coming out with suitcase in hand, you saw that they had already packed up your surveillance equipment while they waited. Bucky was right behind you, but then left to put all the bags by the door. Natasha gave you an amused look as you gathered the rest of your things.

“What?” you asked the redhead as you handed her the black case of intel. 

“Oh, come on. I thought you hated Barnes!” she grinned at you, desperately wanting details.

“I still do. It was nothing, this was…stress relief. Trust me, he’s still as annoying and idiotic as ever, but…he’s a decent partner.” You winked at Natasha before walking toward the kitchen, leaving her gawking in frustration.

Grabbing paper and pen, you scrawled a note:

Hi, Jeff!

Thanks so much for letting us stay. We had a wonderful time! I’ll leave the keys in the lock box and put up a lovely review once we’re home. My husband and I agree, AirBnB is the best way to go!

Best Wishes.

You finished writing, signing with your alias. Being the last to leave you allowed yourself a look back into the quaint apartment. It may not have gone according to plan, but as far as missions went, this one was surprisingly not bad. Even if your partner was a loud eater.

____________________________________________________

Okay that was pretty fun. I stayed at two AirBnB’s while on vacation so I had this plot pop into my head. Jeff was actually the name of one of the hosts, so there’s a little tidbit. ;)  I hope you enjoyed it! Personally, I kinda like that they still hate each other at the end. haha. Also, any Supernatural fans might recognize the “hot, angry hate sex” line from when Bella sees Dean in a tux. “Don’t objectify me!” :D I was paraphrasing, though. Anywho! I’m back to my crazy normal life tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve missed you guys! I’d love to hear any feedback. I appreciate every word. :)

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[the-grumpiest-of-faeries]

don’t reblog

this is just the ramblings of tired me, eyes stinging from makeup and tears

Like… what the fuck just happened. This past week has been a wild storm of emotions and things happening. Like, first I had to pull three all-nighters? Two of them in a row? During Saturday- Tuesday I got maybe between four hours of sleep total. TOTAL. I’ve never done anything like that before. Like, my professors just HAD to assign two presentations, two essays, an essay proposal,,, like? On top of that I had to do this FUCKING COSTUME for the school that was like a MASCOT COSTUME? I’ve never done anything like that before. I don’t do furry shit. I do ball gowns and dresses, that’s it. But they offered to pay me, so I said yes because I need the money. Little do my friends know but I’ve been very paycheck-to-paycheck the past few months. It’s been hard for my family and my dad is supposed to get a raise but the university is taking forever? I might have to go down there myself and scream at someone because my dad took over his old boss’ job like FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO and hasn’t had his salary raised to that of his former boss’ salary…. Like wtf. So anyway, this week has been tough. Then I find out Thursday night that this girl I go to school with was hit by a car at an intersection I walk through several times a day. It’s an intersection I worry about, my family worries about, and sure enough, something awful happened. She was walking across a SIX LANE ROAD and a car comes speeding through, most likely plowing a red light and on their phone, and books it and disappears. Luckily a bystander saw the license plate but like WHAT THE FUCK. Last I heard Thursday night was that she was in surgery and that she was going to lose an arm. The next morning she had passed away. Like. This is a girl I knew. We weren’t friends but does it matter? No. She was kind, though, and always smiled at me as we passed each other. She was a kind spirit and a good person. In every class I had with her she brought light to the class and joy to those around her. She is gone too soon. Too fucking soon. The school is hosting a grief session on Monday and I want to go with Kellen but also like… we don’t want to intrude on her close friends who are obviously grieving more than we are. But we still have emotions we need to work through. We’re still affected by her passing. I had a class during the session but my teacher said we’ll start late so people can go without missing class…. I’ll probably end up going and sitting near the back. I don’t know. I just know that I’m hurt.So, as for today. My school did this drag show and as anyone who knows me knows, I love costumes. Naturally I decided to use my Ursula costume from Halloween and sing Poor Unfortunate Souls. All was well. Rehearsal went okay, I was ready. My AMAZING friend Anna did my makeup, as she’s done twice before, and I looked flawless. Easily the most makeup on anyone there, the best makeup job too, like…. And my costume took over $400+ to make, TWO MONTHS, about 80 total man hours, during school mind you,,,, this costume was amazing. I got up there on stage……. And they DIDN’T FUCKING DOWNLOAD MY SONG. THEY WANTED TO STREAM IT ON THIS SHITTY ASS SCHOOL WIFI. I HAD TWO FALSE STARTS BEFORE THE SONG FULLY LOADED…… LIKE WHAT KIND OF UNPROFESSIONALISM. So anyway, I swallow it with grace, do my little number, sing my heart out and almost murder my larynx, and I go sit down. I wait until the end and of course I’m one of the two finalists. The other finalist is this girl, Alex? I think? But my friends and I call her Anime because she always wears anime wigs to school….. like literally she’s such a joke. Anyway, for her show she did like a fucking strip-tease dance? Where she takes off articles of her clothes and throws them around? Like none of us consented to watching that, I know I wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable during her performance. Like I don’t like seeing anything like that unless I’ve consented, which I obviously did not because it just made me feel gross and ALSO THEY DIDN’T EVEN ASK IF PEOPLE WERE OKAY WITH SEEING THAT. Like someone could have gone into shock for all I know. Anyway, so we’re the finalists and we have to lip-sync (which I DON’T DO. LIKE I CANNOT LIP SYNC AND I KNOW IT SO I DON’T????) but anyway I go up there, and wardrobe malfunction. My gloves slip down, so I fling them off. Applause and cheering. My wig flies off. SCREAMING. People are shook. Anyway, it comes time for the winner to be chosen and they do the fucking “cheer the loudest for who you want to win.” It should have been chosen by judges. The two finalists were chosen by judges, the winner should have been chosen by judges. You can probably tell from my salty tone but she one. I knew if I stayed there I would either attack that bitch, tear her apart, I don’t know… but something was gonna go down… so I just left. I went outside and walked around in the rain for a bit. It calmed me down. But fuck. FUCKING FUCK. This next week is going to be hell. And then I just have that week of finals and I’ll leave. I only have to make it like 13 days and I can leave. 

An open letter to Camille:

How dare you use Kellen as your messenger. If you knew her at all you would know how uncomfortable that would make her. It is incredibly disrespectful not only to her, but to me. As Luca and Moth said at the start of the show, Kelcie’s death has touched everyone at MCA, regardless of how well they knew her. I stayed it bed nearly all of Friday. Don’t think her passing is something I can just fling aside- it carries weight and affects all of us. It may have slipped your eyes up on that high horse of yours, but I recently made a costume for the school and was paid for it. Money is no object to me right now. Both I and my father have donated to the go fund me page for Kelcie’s funeral, but did you even think to consider that I was planning on donating the Moth scholarship to Kelcie’s funeral fund? Probably not, since you obviously think so poorly of me. I should have seen it as a red flag when you still were friends with Meredith even after I told her how she had emotionally and verbally abused me, how she had been such a horrible person towards me, yet for whatever reason I tried to see the good in you. Obviously there is no good in you. You’re too blinded by your own emotions to even consider that other people are hurting and OBVIOUSLY you think the worst of me, probably other people, despite the fact that we have never treated you badly or given you cause to think we are bad people. I’ve never performed before, this took a lot out of me considering my social anxiety. I’m not using that as an excuse for this day being hard for me, but it definitely took a lot of me coming out of my shell to put myself out there like I did. I was hurt, as ANYONE WOULD BE, when someone who basically did a strip tease on stage won. No one consented to that, it was vulgar and in poor taste, as is everything anime does (wig girl? What is her name anyway?). I am deeply hurt Camille. Hurt, and I’m done with you. Obviously you don’t care about my feelings or anyone else’s so I’m done putting up with you. Don’t ever speak to me again, don’t talk to me, just disregard my presence. Obviously you disregard my emotions and feelings, so you might as well disregard all of me. BYE.

[bee-whistler]

Ranting about the Wild West Steam Fest

I wasn’t expecting it to be spectacular. It’s a small event. I thought maybe they might have improved over last year, at least. It did not. Full rant under the cut.

They didn’t learn from last year and provide better food options... we dodged that bullet by eating on the way there, but one vendor said she waited in line for 1 1/2 hours for lunch! All I actually saw myself was a single food truck. Last year, there was a single food truck for lunch, and a waffle truck before dinner time. And the waffle truck ran out of waffles! I can only guess that they did the same this year, considering the wait time.

There was no programming schedule for a measly single day event (how hard is it to type out the events of one day?), not even at the entrance. One member of my party had to work part of the day and we were late, which meant we may have missed something that was actually fun. Of course that wasn’t their fault... but I had no way to check or to find out what was still going on, since no one bothered to write it down.

But since we came later, it gave them more time to get good at handing out will-call tickets... and they were not. They were confused, chaotic, and fairly rude. They gave you the feeling that they thought you were trying to steal something or get something you had no right to have if you happened to inconvenience them in the slightest.

The first thing that happened was that we were ordered back to the car to get my daughter’s I.D. for her will call ticket. Not politely told. Ordered. “It’s in the car,” my daughter said. “Go on! Go get it!” the lady said back, gesturing toward the parking lot.

When we got it, they shuffled through the mess on the table looking for a will call list. A woman they called over eventually told me they weren’t supposed to have a will call list, I was supposed to have a printout of the tickets and it was clear that I was once again expecting special treatment for not having that on me. I pulled it up on my phone, thank goodness, though why I needed I.D. if I had the email on my phone... and sure enough, they really didn’t look at I.D.

They managed to get the wifi to play nice and scan the tickets (totally not their fault, that one I understand). In the process, my daughter and her friend had moved off to the side maybe 6 feet. I pointed at them as they were scanning to say that they were the others listed, yet somehow in that time the staff no longer seemed to understand that the tickets they had just scanned were for four effing people (though one of our party had to stay home sick) and were quoting ticket prices for the two of them.

I hastily said they were with me, and the woman was huffy and said I should have told her that, and once again I was given the impression that I was being an entitled troublemaker in not having told her they were with me. (um...) 

They huffily put wristbands on them and gave me some extra sew on patches for my trouble (I didn’t even want one). The VIP’s got a plastic tumbler like they give kids at Lil Caesar’s and a plastic coin for what I swore they said was a free Icee... I never actually found out what foods were available.

I’m glad to say that everyone after that was nice, even the poor vendor who had to wait for lunch. But we missed a lot (our fault) and had no reference to give us an idea what we could still do and see (their fault).

I didn’t buy VIP tickets because I’m a big spender. I bought them because they were relatively cheap for VIP tickets and included actual chairs at the concert (for my boneless daughter who gets tired easily), which was cancelled. I didn’t expect butt-kissing, but I’ve worked a similar role at another con and I personally think every paying customer merits a certain amount of schmoozing even while you check lists and I.D. (more so because things like that can rub some people the wrong way). So yeah, I expected anyone to be treated better than that.

And I felt the sting of wasted money, sure, though I didn’t even try to get my money back after SPG was cancelled (since it would only be a partial refund because we were going to the event anyway)

...unlike some who tried, and were denied. That in itself is scandalous, imho. These are people who paid for a thing and that thing was no longer as described, some of them going ONLY because of that concert. Maybe there was some fine print that upheld the event’s decision but that doesn’t make it clean, just legal. Unfortunately, those aren’t always the same thing.

Steampunks are mostly pretty nice folks. It’s like a lot of groups and their gatherings... mostly people want to have fun and mix with others of similar interests, and with a little time the majority works out what makes things more fun and what will kill the fun, and you get a lot of openness and tolerance and friendly compliments all around. So once inside, there were nice people and lovely costumes and friendly vendors.

But not enough was going on besides that to justify even the standard event price they asked for, and these people had charged still more for a cancelled concert and still more for chairs at said concert, and yet they couldn’t even provide a schedule and some good manners, making even their VIPs feel like they’d been pulled over by a cop instead of coming to a “fun” event.

And though I’ve been to a number of these, I won’t be coming back to Wild West Steam Fest. The only thing that could tempt me is a good band at this point, and I wouldn’t believe them even if they said they’d booked one. We’ve been down that road already.

[verbballetstaipei-blog]

Day 10-our first day in the theater!!

*note* sorry this didn't post sooner! Wifi gets spotty here sometimes. Day 11 coming soon! Hiya! I'm currently writing while backstage at the National Theatre of Taiwan....ahhhh! So so cool! All dancers grow up with a profound respect for theaters and this is the biggest theatre I've performed in. We are dancing on what's called the experimental stage. The National Theatre houses several stages so multiple productions can happen simultaneously. I could hardly believe it when they gave me my backstage pass at the stage door today--I'm going to be performing professionally in Taiwan in just 2 short days! I spent the morning before the theatre bopping around Taipei. After my full night of sleep I was in a great mood so I was more chatty than normal (sorry Kelly, Christina, and Michael) and despite my hyperactive tendencies they let me come along with them on their outing to the dance store. The ladies found cute leos and Michael got a pair of rockin sweatpants. Yay Taiwanese dance clothes!💃🏽 Still filled with lots of energy, I split off from the group to do a couple of Taipei things that I wanted to squeeze in before being in the theatre for the rest of the trip. First, I took the MRT to city hall and tried lots of yummy samples in the schmancy underground food court. One bakery had this wine quinoa walnut bread that was ahhhhmazing (it also had squid ink bread which I didn't try due to my vegetarianness but it certainly piqued my interest!). Next I went to the Discover Taipei exhibit on the 3rd and 4th floors of city hall to learn a bit more about the region's history. This island has been through so much! The Sino-Japanese war of 1894, declaring itself the Republic of Formosa, Japanese colonization, and many years of complicated relationships with China. Since it was just around the corner, I walked to the famous Taipei 101 building and checked that off the must-do tourist list. I didn't want to pay to go the top of the 8th tallest building in the world (I already got a pretty killer view of Taipei from elephant mountain) but I did want to learn more about it! It is shaped like a tower with 8 sections, and every section is supposed to look like a traditional Chinese money box to bring prosperity to the city. The money boxes are stacked up to look like a bamboo shoot, which represents growth and learning. How cool to make a skyscraper that's so meaningful! I walked around the Taipei 101 mall for a bit (more samples yusss) then I walked over to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. On my way, I passed a block filled with small stores and food trucks. One store was entirely dedicated to toilet paper that smelled of different flavors--they kept giving me samples even as I was trying to walk away! I love the idea, but unfortunately I'm not at financial level where I'm able to budget for nice smelling toilet paper. Haha maybe one day! Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall had a surprising amount to do! I was expecting a nice walk around a park, but in addition to pleasant greenery I experienced multiple art galleries, a musical performance, a mini museum, a calligraphy lesson, and a cow themed cafe. What's not to love?! My favorite art gallery was made by adults who had had disabilities from birth or had developed them later in life. The docents spoke to me about the program, which in works to make beauty from potentially ugly situations. How smart! Ugh I love it!The pieces were incredible and the artists' quotes were inspiring. We can all work to make the best situation with the hand we're dealt! I MRTed back to the hotel to meet up with the company and we all walked to the National Theater. After getting our swanky backstage passes (still can believe it😸) we set up in our dressing rooms and took company class onstage. We didn't have barres so we had to use chairs that were a little too short...time to get on your leg! Getting on your leg is what dancers refer to when talking about finding your center of balance. Richard, our rehearsal director, gave a tough but good class. I love that we get to continue working on technique even as professionals. Then it was time for a long night of rehearsal. The experimental theatre has some of the most technologically advanced production capabilities I've ever seen (or danced in). It's equipped with every type of lighting you can imagine. Strokes of light shoot through the air, waves of color glimmer across the stage with a 3D quality, fog bends light in all directions...the possibilities are limitless. These production qualities make for a very ambient stage but also for some disoriented dancers on tech night...oof again. My stamina felt better today but there were several occasions where I had no idea which way the front was (the audience, the back wall, and all 4 corners of the stage all appear to be pitch black from an on-stage perspective) so I was frequently turned around and consequently not on my leg😑 The main purpose of a tech rehearsal is for the light and sound people to coordinate with dancer cues, but it is also a chance for us dancers to learn where to anticipate particularly disorienting parts so we can find a visual anchor for the next run (i.e. a piece of glow type or light fixture). I have some serious anchoring to do! I am writing this while watching rehearsal for the last piece, "Arrival from Departure" which Ming (BodyEDT's director) set on Verb last season. It's 9:30pm so almost time to head home for the night and get some rest for another theatre day tomorrow! Update: I wrote my last post from the theatre, but I had one more adventure on my way home. As Michael and I were passing the main entranceway to the theatre (imagine a grand stairwell and vast roof over a terrace), I heard some funky music playing from above. The stairs are so high that we couldn't see what was happening from below, so we ran up to check it out. OhMyGosh!! Jackpot! We found a street dance crew practicing their moves in three rings--one circle for practicing flying, one for popping, and one for breaking. When you're a dancer, it's practically irresistible to withhold from dancing when there's a sick beat and bunches of other people dancing around you, so I went over to the popping group and introduced myself. They were super excited to have michael and I join! They explained that they were experimenting with slow movement accented with popping on counts 1 and 5, so we played along and improved with them. I love how dance can build relationships among people of all backgrounds and languages, ultimately people want to move together! One woman named Cynthia was especially good at English. She offered to introduce us to the dance captain so he could teach us some of his moves. Before we knew it, Michael and I were on the stone ground learning how to swing our legs around our body for a breakdance move. I was terrible, but it was super fun to learn! Their dance captain was a great teacher and very accommodating to our balletness. He kept reminding us not to point our feet...Haha. Street dancing with the "90s breakers" was definitely one of my favorite moments from this trip! Now bedtime time for meeee! 😴Kate☺️

[taeguboi]

‘The Closet’ -- J Hope x Reader

Requested - I know everything lately is coming in parts but I just wanna stay active with my writing, so this is going to be a 2 part thing, even though it’s technically a one shot type thing

Masterlist // “Godammit Hoseok!” (My other J Hope x Reader one-shot)

The music industry is definitely not always as glamorous or exciting as one might think; four sleep-deprived individuals with a coffee supply to accommodate the entire college stare blankly at a computer screen with the same word on their minds --

Deadline.

“Guys, there are literally no takes I can say I’m pleased with… can we try again?” you question.

“We’ve only been able to book til 7… It’s like 20 to now…” Namjoon states.

“This set of assignments are the most stressful yet, I swear…” Hoseok groans, throwing his head into his hands.

You had been sat in the studio today with Namjoon, Yoongi and Hoseok for most of the day now, since early morning. To the outsider, this was just a course in which all you need to strive for is to achieve a decent final grade, but to you and your hard working friends, this was something so much more. This is a chance to prove your talents, your abilities, create something special that might one day reach out to people.

“Maybe if we just like fall asleep in here, the caretaker will take mercy upon us and leave us here and we can continue throughout the night” Yoongi jokes, stretching his arms out to behind his head and leaning back in his chair.

“Nah, that'd never happen Yoongs; we'd have to like hideout in that cupboard over there…” Namjoon chuckles, pointing over at the unaccounted for closet.

You get up out your chair and walk over to the closet door “What's this even used for anyways?” you enquire with a giggle, trying at the door handle, only to discover it locked.

“I don't know, extra mic stands or something?” Yoongi shrugs.

“Nah, they're kept in the corridor I think… I bet it's something weird like… a shower room!” Hoseok suggests.

“What would a fricking shower be doing in a studio Hobi, huh?” Namjoon asks.

“Yeah Hobes, that would be breaking like so many health and safety rules, man!” you continue, joking.

“Ah, I really don't get how we find the will to live and joke at times like this….” Yoongi states, changing the subject, or so you think. “... And it's probably like washed up students who didn't pass….” Yoongi jokes “oooooh!” he dramatically whoos as though he is successfully scaremongering a child.

“Oh give up guys! What are we gonna do?” Namjoon groans with genuine concern about the project at hand, nodding towards the screen with an incomplete project displayed.

“There's only one thing for it; we come in as and when, even if not all of us. Whenever this place is free, we're get in here and work our asses off.” Yoongi responds expectantly.

Again, to an outsider, the response would be something along the lines of “hell no!” but why turn down the chance to work towards your dreams? Of course, everyone agrees, beginning to pack their bags and the equipment away, ready to get home and crash in their beds to catch up on some much needed sleep.

***

The very next morning, as expected, before any scheduled lesson times, everyone has piled into the studio to continue working, yourself taking plenty of drinks to lubricate your vocal chords and the boys having bought out a whole coffee shop to ensure everyone can stay alert during this unusual schedule.

“Right, one more time y/n to try another take and then me and Joon are gonna have to leave for our lesson” sighs Yoongi, finger ready at the mouse to click that ‘record’ button.

“Okay” you exhale deeply, the nerves trembling through you, forever being victim of red-light syndrome… Honestly, at times, you could practice countlessly and absolutely nail the song, but the minute that red button is pressed, something just ends up feeling… off.

Another take is attempted, and although it's probably your best yet, you can't help but still feel dissatisfied with the outcome.

“Right, you guys get going to class, I'm gonna keep practising, sorry” you apologise.

“Don't worry about it y/n; we all agreed we wanted to make this good” Yoongi reassures you as he and Namjoon make their way to exit. “Hobi can practice lines with you while we're gone.”

“But he's recorded everything” you reply, starting to feel annoyed that you don't possess the confidence that the rapper has when it comes to recording.

You can't help but feel that you're the one hindering the process of completing the track; the song is genius, penned, mixed and all the rest by the boys; the boys are reliable and so talented that you just couldn't wait to start collaborating with them when they requested that you give their song a female vocal… You were now just at the point of getting stressed out at yourself in your mind for your own incompetence.

“I'll stay with you though, so we can work on those nerves” Hoseok kindly tells you as Namjoon and Yoongi exit. His words threw you though; you'd never actually told a single one of the lads about your red light syndrome, so how did he know?

“I...I never said I was nervous” you stutter, evidently trying to tell yourself this more than him.

“Look, I used to get it all the time; recording, it's scary right? Like once that button gets hit, whatever you do has the potential to exist forever. It's natural to worry about messing up or not doing a good enough job.”

Well this feels a bit embarrassing now.

“Ah, n-n-n-n-no” you stutter “it's not that” you nervously chuckle, over exaggerating your gestures. “Yoongi was right; I just need more practice” you lie, not wanting to look like a fool in front of your class mate, though you're pretty sure you've failed to keep up a calm and collected persona now.

“Hmm” he mumbles uncertainly “Okay…”

You're rather sure he can tell just how hard you have been practicing and how you know this piece like the back of your hand; you could sleep sing this; if you woke up tomorrow, remembering only one thing, it'd be this.

And you know he knows.

“At least relax and have a coffee first, yeah?” he suggests.

“Fine” you sigh in defeat. “I swear you lot have an unhealthy obsession.”

“It's what keeps us going!” he defends dramatically, eliciting an awkward giggle from you as you feel slightly more awake from just Hoseok’s bright smile.

“Okay okay, I won't send you off to coffee-holics anonymous just yet…” you jest, grabbing a tepid cup for yourself.

“Hmm” you mumble with the same uncertainty as the boy in front of you previously had. “It's too cold for my vocal chords; I'm gonna have to nip out for a new one”

“Alright. I'll join you actually… in fact….” he continues, scrambling through his jacket pocket “...I'll pay!”

“Oh no! I can't possibly take money from someone who's time I've already wasted plenty of…” you argue.

“Who said anyone has taken or wasted anything?” he smiles. “What's wrong with ordering two lots of coffee for myself and happening to change my mind about the second?” he questions.

“You are daft Hobi.”

*

Entering the coffee shop, you wonder if the blonde haired boy who is strangely eager to order and buy your usual is trying to sweeten you up for some reason. Maybe he thinks you're purposely making bad takes as an excuse to stay away from other problems or something? A long shot,perhaps, but more likely the this stupid little fantasy that crops up in your in for just one naive moment before you tell yourself that you're certain it's the former.

Seating yourself at a quiet booth by the window, you pull out your laptop from your bag and connect to the cafe wifi for assignment work, and for a solid five minutes, you are able to write a couple of paragraphs for some evaluation.

“For you!” Hoseok chirps, carefully placing down both cups of caffeine rush. He observes your current typing urgently and sighs as he takes a seat opposite you.

“Y/n, we're supposed to be taking a breather: now put that laptop away and let's… talk” he smiles genuinely, though you're still uncertain whether your slight crush is making you blind to any sarcasm or insincerity.

You've always tried to brush Hoseok off, trying to just see him like a stain on your shirt - not noticeable always straight away, and when you do notice it, it doesn't completely ruin your day. Which is perhaps why you had subconsciously thought of the latest assignment deadline the moment opportunity knocked to chill out in his company.

“Ugh, I'm sorry Hoseok, I just tend tend to prefer evenings and weekends of freedom…” you excuse.

“Ah, freedom… what is that?” he questions with a sigh, placing his cheeks in his hands, attempting remain with a serious expression. You have to try your best not to break out in a stupid grin at the sight.

“I don't know… maybe it's in the closet” you jest, referring to yesterday's conversation about the mysterious door, and you figure you are now safe to smile a little excessively.

As though Hoseok is sat in daydream, he stares somewhat longingly out of the window, looking onto the busy city passing by. “Man, that'd be neat, to find whatever it is you need all behind one door…”

“Unfortunately, we all have to open several of them just to get even part of something we want nowadays” you bluntly reply, snapping him out of his romanticized thoughts.

*

Back in the studio, something catches your attention the minute you walk in -- well, not something specific, like a coat disappearing, but you can sense a change in the room since you left. Had someone been in here during your short break?

Seating yourself at the chair behind the microphone, you let out a huge sigh of frustration, still feeling unprepared to record a decent take, and you half expect Hoseok to give you some bullshit lecture again about how everything will be okay, but instead, you notice his attention is elsewhere.

Reaching out to the closet, Hoseok catches his fingers through the now existing gap between the door and the frame and the door effortlessly brushes open. The look of dopey excitement on his face is adorable, you mentally note as you get out of your seat to investigate just what Hoseok is up to…

“Well, I guess now, we can find out what’s behind this bloody door” he states, walking into the dark miniature room.

“Hoseok? What are you doing?” you question.

“Woooaahh!” he exclaims, clearly making an overreaction at what is probably a pile of textbooks on a shelf.

“Hobi, get out of there!” you instruct.

“No, y/n, you have to come check it out! It’s amazing!” he cries out, clearly trying to persuade you to go along with some pointless, insignificant clause.

But of course, you comply.

“Fine” you exhale, following behind the boy.

Entering the ‘mysterious’ room, you are slightly disappointed that the room is in fact empty.

“I don’t get it” you say with confusion. “All the times they moan about not having enough room for storage, yet here’s a perfectly good room just collecting dust and sorting nothing but fusty air…”

“Eh, I don’t know… I kind of like it” replies Hoseok. “It’s concealed from the world; it’s almost… cosy. It makes a pretty good hide out if you’re having some sort of panic attack I reckon.”

“Perhaps… but other than that?” you challenge.

“I have my ideas, but…” he begins, reaching for the handle and slowly pulling the door inwards to close it “...it depends.”

“Depends on what? What are you doing Hobi?” you ask, feeling as though you should be worried right now that some college guy is shutting the two of you in a closet that could potentially lock itself up.

“Depends if you’re claustrophobic for one thing…”

“I’m not.”

“In that case…” he continues, now definitely closing the gap. “Other than that, I could help you with those nerves…”

“Is that not the same thing as hiding out from the rest of the college?”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t” he states, taking a step towards you and closing the space between you.

“Hobi, what are you playing at?” you enquire, quite conscious of how close you are to Hoseok now.

I feel like something is about to escalate super fast you think to yourself, and this thought is only heightened as Hoseok moves his gentle hand up to your dumb founded cheek.

You can’t help but feel drawn into him like a magnet.

Part 2 here

[canaryatlaw]

ok, long but good day. woke up to my alarm at 7:45, got up and got dressed, stuck the last of my toiletries in my suitcase and got an uber to the airport. Got there about 8:45, which was my goal time, so I was happy about that. got through security no problem, something I was like low key nervous about because I had originally thought the Real ID law going into effect meant I needed an enhanced driver’s license to use as ID, but I did a bunch of online research and knew that wasn’t the case, but was still a little worried about lol. I walk to my gate, which is allllll the way at the very end of the terminal. there’s a starbucks there, so I order a breakfast sandwich and a drink. I keep making the mistake of thinking that if a drink is on the app’s mobile ordering menu the barista will know how to make it, when that is clearly not the case. I asked for a “violet drink” which is the equivalent of “pink drink” but made with the berry hibiscus refresher instead of the strawberry acai refresher. but the cashier didn’t know what I was talking about so I just ended up with a normal berry hibiscus refresher 🤷🏻‍♀️ oh well. I sat for a while and used the free wifi while charging my phone on the conveniently located outlets, and in not too long they were boarding. My zone gets called, I swipe my boarding pass on my phone, and the lady is like “you’re good- oh wait no you’re not” because the machine was saying there was something wrong with my boarding pass and she was like “are you on standby?” and I was like....no....I bought this ticket a month ago I’m not on fucking standby. so she has me come around to the front of the desk and wait while she gets other people on the plane, where there are apparently other people waiting who also had boarding pass issues. At this point I’m fairly ticked off, and if I somehow don’t get on that plane I’m mentally planning what I can threaten to sue them over (clearly breach of contract, they made false promises that I relied upon to my detriment and I should be able to collect damages for the ticket prices and waste of my time), but then she types some things into the computer and gives me a paper boarding pass with a different seat number (which was exactly 5 rows in front of my original one). So I’m just like hey whatever, I don’t really care, just let me get on the plane, and if I don’t have to threaten to sue anybody than that’s good. So I boarded and got settled, opened the in flight magazine to see what sudoku they had going, they had easy and hard kenken puzzles, both of which I completed before the plane even pulled away from the gate 😂 (hashtag expert status) and I made pretty fast work of the easy sudoku puzzle before pulling out my phone and reading some fanfic I put on there forever, and then I was gonna start the stuff I loaded on it last night, but ended up wanting to reread one of Jess’ longer fics, and that pretty much took the rest of the time of the flight, lol. We landed at 1:30 NY time, I get off the plane and get my bag just fine, I’m texting my mom about where to meet her and I literally walk out of the airport just to see my mom driving by and I’m like, waving furiously trying to get her attention but NOPE she just keeps driving and I’m just like DAMMIT because if you’re familiar with laguardia airport you know they’re currently doing a massive construction project that has been making everyone’s life hell, so she had to do another full loop around to get back to where I was, which took another like, 15 minutes. So I finally get in the car and we start the drive home, my mom randomly pulls off the highway to this little town in search of somewhere she can get a green tea latte (which is apparently her thing now) and we end up in this adorable little place that’s billed as a coffee and ice cream shop but has a whole lot of interesting food options like fancy grilled cheeses and an assortment of belgian waffle flavors. And if you know me you know I’m obsessed with well-made belgian waffles, so I got a “churro” flavored one which was made with cinnamon in the batter, then topped with cinnamon sugar and vanilla ice cream, and damn I was pretty much in heaven. so we go back to the car and finish the drive home, pretty soon after we get there my mom has to take my sister to her therapy appointment (apparently she’s doing much better now than earlier in the year and my parents are very happy about it) so I was mostly alone and just did stuff on my computer for a while. eventually people returned and we decided to order pizza for dinner because my mom hadn’t been to the store and didn’t have anything to bake, so I called that in and the delivery guy came, and there was a very awkward exchange during which I was just standing there with the door open holding the collar of our golden retriever so he didn’t go run and jump on the delivery guy (he’s totally harmless, but he’s rather big and I know some people would not appreciate being jumped on) while my mom went upstairs to get money out of the sock (where my parents stash their cash) to pay for the pizza lol. But we got the pizza and paid for it successfully, and I put my piece under the broiler for a few minutes so the cheese gets nice and crispy and I’m in pizza heaven. dad comes home pretty soon and my mom pulls out some anchovies she was apparently saving for him (my favorite topping combo is pepperoni and anchovies, but I can’t really have pepperoni now so it just ends up being anchovies) so I had my second piece with them and it was very enjoyable. After dinner we just kind of chilled, me still on my laptop and the parents watching HGTV or whatever while the other siblings kind of milled about, and that ended up being out it for the night. we figured out train schedules to get me to the city tomorrow, the interview is at 11 and it’s about a 20 minute subway ride from penn station, so I’m gonna take the 8:30 train that gets in at 9:56 so I’ll surely have enough time to get there, even if everything goes haywire and I end up having to just hop in a cab or an uber (I’ve successfully navigated New York’s subway system before, once you’ve mastered one you can really figure out all of them, so I don’t expect anything to go wrong). the interview is supposed to last a little over an hour, and then I can take the train back home. It’s still been on my mind all day about whether it’s a job I want to take or not (assuming I get offered the job of course) and as much as it pains me to admit it because I’ve really, really liked my life in Chicago lately, I know this is the best opportunity for me and it’d be foolish not to take it when I don’t have any other possible offers or even interviews for any other job period, much less any job that actually deals with children. and like, I could make a job in a similar field like domestic violence work for a few years, but my heart wouldn't be in it (I mean, for DV in particular it is a cause I’m very much invested in so I would have my heart in it, but not the same way it’d be when it comes to kids where I really want to be) and it’d just be passing time until I can get hired at a job with kids. Right now I’m not crazy about the idea of being close to my family, even though they obviously REALLY want me back, and at one point in the past year I was convinced that it’s what I wanted to do and I probably accidentally got their hopes up on it, something has shifted, I don’t know what, but I’m not quite in that frame of mind anymore. I guess part of it is realizing that if I took this job in the city I don’t really have a group of friends there and I’m scared about being lonely, especially when my friend situation has been so great lately. So I don’t know. I think if it gets offered I’ll probably feel obliged to take it, but then I just have this overwhelming sense of foreboding of my time in Illinois and my time living this awesome life I’ve been living is going to be over, and like, that really sucks. But that’s about all I gotta say on that subject. Another thing worth noting that happened today though was I convinced my parents to pay, as my birthday gift, for me and Jess to go to Collective Con in Florida the weekend right before my birthday, because Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford are going to be there and we *obviously* need to take advantage of this and be able to experience seeing them as a couple outside of the show. I was pretty sure I could get my dad to go for it if I framed it right, so I looked up flights to make sure I got the absolute best prices (which were unfortunately still like $500 a pop, but there were ones that were much worse) and identified an airbnb and convention passes to give him a final number because I know that he’s more likely to approve stuff like that if I frame it the right way. So that’s gonna be coming up at the end of the month and I am SUPER psyched about that, we’re gonna fly out Friday morning and come back Monday morning, which is my birthday, and also the night “I, Ava” airs, then in two weeks we have C2E2 and HVFF Chicago, so it’s basically gonna be the best time ever and hopefully I won’t start flunking all of my classes because of it. But yeah, that was mostly my day. Hopefully tomorrow will go well. I’m always trying to think of questions to ask them because I know in job interviews they want you to have questions, but I always end up defaulting to like “what’s your favorite part about working here?” which I feel is kinda lame, so if any of you have ideas on that front, please hit me up with them by tomorrow morning lol. It’s almost 1:30 am now though and I have to be up at 7, so it is definitely time for me to go to bed. Goodnight my lovelies. Happy Friday.

[coconutseaways]

Aug 25 - 2017 -- The countdown to leave is on

Aug 15 We have a couple days before our next guests check in, a couple from Holland, on the 17th in Horta. We decided to save a couple euros and head to Madalena for 2 days. I was tired and for a little while I didn't really want to go, but the cheap side of me said go, go, go. So we got the boat ready, let off of our mooring and sailed out of Horta in the early evening. We anchored in our spot near the fishing piers in order to avoid some of the swell that was surging into the harbour. We only used one anchor this time but had a good circle of space for swinging. The wind was fairly constant so we didn't move around too much. We had a good sleep and the next morning the ferry horn blowing and the construction guys working had us up around 8. We went ashore, and did some souvenir shopping for the first time. Mike got a few things for his kids and a couple more postcards. I bought a t shirt, but am going to pick up some more stuff to send home. I was hesitant to mail anything, to save on postage. But when Mike mailed a package to South Africa and it only cost €7 - well I figured we could spare a couple bucks. Postage in Canada is so much more expensive, and I just assumed it would be similar here. Definitely not. So I am picking up more postcards and will be hitting the post office in a couple days. Our two dollarama solar lights have died on us...too much salt spray I think. The wires have rusted out and now we do not have an anchor light. Well we do, at the top of the mast of course, but the bulb up there is an old halogen and it sucks power out of the battery like no tomorrow, so we were avoiding using it. And since the rule is "an all around white light" for an anchor light, the garden solar lights are an easy replacement. But now we need to do something else, so we went to the Chinese Store - pretty much a glorified dollar store and Mike picked up a whole bunch of different LED's for us to switch out our old bulbs with. The draw on the battery is ridiculously lower with LED's compared to the old ones. It's just awesome. We put some money on our phone here, which I can't believe how much Canadian cell phone bills are ripping people off. We have spent maybe €30 for the SIM card and all of our data since we got here which is 2.5 months already. We've even had to make 2 international calls and it's still less than one month of my MTS bill. Plus because it's EU, any phone plans work through all the countries of EU with no roaming or long distance or anything like that. Canadian cell phone plans are a joke. We hit the grocery store and unfortunately they were looking seriously low on stock. Probably awaiting a shipment, there was little fruit and veggies to choose from (no cucumbers 🥒 at all!). We picked up some rolls, a chicken and some beer. Haha. Then Mike cooked us a wonderful curry and salsa chicken dish. We had it with rice and it was delicious! We enjoyed a nice evening in Madalena and the next morning headed back to Horta relatively early (around 9 AM). The Horta office boys must be tired of seeing me. We have come and gone so many times. But I'm glad that we are still spending our days sailing. So many boats arrive and then just park...for however long...and then leave on another long voyage. I think I would start to dread sailing if the only time we went out was for a long trip. You don't get to enjoy the sunny days of going out for a few hours and then coming back for the evening. Have a beer and some lunch, swim and snorkel outside of a harbour, and then come back for a good rest. So many boats haven't moved, and there really isn't that much to see in Horta. Anyways that's just my thought. Aug 17 Our next guests checked in around 3 PM and they spent the evening going to the beach and checking out some of the cafes and places in Horta. They came back to the boat for dinner, which we made kebabs!! Ohhh they turned out delicious. Mike marinated a beef shank and we put red and green peppers and onion on the skewers. Then fired up the BBQ. I love that we can grill on the back of the boat! Such a luxury! Plus it's August and the Azores are HOT and HUMID! The mugginess was especially bad today, so we were glad we didn't have to cook down below. At least when we get too hot, we can just fall over the side of the boat and cool down. Our guests were only there for that evening and the next day, so they spent the whole next day on the island. They rented scooters and checked out about half the island, went to a museum and enjoyed dinner. Mike and I had a productive day on the boat while they were gone. I sewed a small patch closed on our genoa. This is the sail that I spent hours, pulling out stitches in the winter to get the old ripped sun covers off. After I had removed the sun covers, we had the sailmaker restitch the leech line, which I had to take apart in order to get the sun cover off. It needed some new thread anyways. But there was one triangle patch that on one side the stitches were off and never got resewn. So when we were sailing with it, we noticed it was cupping air and causing drag. We had taken this sail down and put up the working jib for our trip to Graciosa on Aug 7. But now that we were in for lighter winds, we wanted to put the big genny back up. So I spent the afternoon sewing it up in the cockpit. The sail is thick so it was a little tough to get the needle through each time and by the time I was done, my hands were feeling cramped. Oh well. It's done and it should hold well. It's nice to do work on the boat yourself, instead of shelling out a ton of money to someone else. It's one thing if you can't fix it yourself, or it is clearly a better idea to get an expert to do it (like sewing the entire leech line - the sailmakers definitely got that job). But you get a nice sense of gratification when you see the things you've done on your own boat. We headed over to the wifi area, which I was dreading because I needed to try and call my bank and get them to unlock my account. It got locked because we were trying to make our final payment on our self steering windvane (yes still dealing with this) through an app that does international transfers. Well my bank stopped it before it went through and I was informed that I needed to call and do the whole rigamaroll to get it unlocked. I explained through email that I was in Portugal and calling would cost me a fortune. I asked if there was anyway to make a call over wifi (what's app, Skype, FaceTime...anything) and skype was the answer. What a pain in the ass though. First you call a 1 800 number, then the number you are calling, then they have to accept the charges and then you can talk. Well the first couple times I got no answer. Then I got through and the woman told me I had to call the fraud department directly. I explained the Portugal, phoning situation again and she said I could go through Skype the same way and they would accept the charges. Well...they didn't. And wouldn't. I tried probably about 10 times and they kept declining the call. So I tried calling the international call collect number again, and then they were declining the charges too. After an hour and a half or so, I was so fed up with it all. Mike handed me his cell phone and said just make the call and we will pay for it. So I called the fraud centre, explained quickly that this was costing a lot and the man said he would go as quickly as possible understanding my predicament. Then I got disconnected! I was losing my mind. So then I called again, told a different woman the same story. She powered through the security questions and asked about my tried transaction. I explained what is was and that we ended up using my credit card instead and she said ok, I will unlock your account. The entire call took 4 minutes which was awesome!!!! I thanked her very much for her timely help and finally had access to my account again. Good thing we weren't hurting for cash because it had been locked for almost a week. So the self steering. The unit we were supposed to have in March, waited as long as we could into June to get and still don't have. We have made some progress finally. First Mike and the owner of the business were negotiating the final price for a couple weeks or so. We ordered in advance and every month in advance equalled a 3% discount. But the shipping from Argentina to Canada was much cheaper than the shipping to the Azores so that had to be discussed and negotiated. Then there was talk about VAT and all these other figures. Finally we settled on the final bill and received it as an email attachment. Then we went to pay, but ran into issues due to the amount being over $1000 CAD, and Canadian regulations requiring a current bank statement. Well my bank account had just gotten locked so I couldn't get one. Mike's bank statements are in Gimli haha. Plus all this time we still had guests on and off and limited access to wifi. Finally, we were able to get back to wifi, not needing to worry about having guests, get Mike's sister to send us a picture of his statement, and the app we were using put the payment through and we received confirmation!!! Hallelujah! Now we wait for the actual shipment. I can't believe how long and drawn out this process has been. But we will finally have a self steering unit, that works on wind, no power and can really get into the cruising way of sailing. Back to our guests (Aug 18): They didn't come back to the boat until after 10PM. I was already drifting asleep, but Mike was awake and went and picked them up. We talked for a few minutes and then we called it a night. They were taking the 7AM ferry which meant a 6AM wake up. I heard them start packing their stuff around 5:30 and then at 6 I rowed them ashore. We said goodbyes and they said goodnight because they knew I was going back to sleep. Mike happily stayed sleeping in bed and didn't even notice they had left. I crawled back into bed and whispered to him...no getting up before 8. I think I ended up sleeping until almost 10 which was so lovely. Mike was sweet enough to make minimal noise until then. While I was sleeping, Mike ended up talking to the other Canadian boat anchored right beside us. She is from Montreal and we suspected she solo sailed here since we have only seen her onboard. Sure enough, she did. And, she only started sailing about 5 years ago. She's brave! She just had a sister here visiting and in a week or so she will be headed for Madeira and then the Canaries. We exchanged email addresses to keep in touch and I'm sure we will see her in the Canaries, since we are most likely going to go there now. We talked to customs about me getting an extension and he explained that it would be very easy and should be no problem since I'm Canadian. So now the Canaries are back on and Cape Verde will be a quick stop instead of a month long stay. When we were in Graciosa, we met a young 19 year old solo sailor from Germany and he said he absolutely loved the Canaries. And that La Gomera was absolutely beautiful and we should go there. So that's the plan!! It was another hot and muggy day. I enjoyed a swim to cool off and then spent a good chunk of the day reading and relaxing. Before going ashore, Mike and I decided to have another swim/snorkel since we were both feeling the sticky humidity. We rowed the dinghy over to another mooring, because the water beside our boat had some oil on top from the nearby fishing boats (ugh). We went in and right away I found a good sized purple octopus 🐙 hanging out in his home. I showed Mike where he was and when Mike went down, the octopus decided to make a run for it. He swam away shooting ink 3 times. I can't believe how thick the ink is. It made a thick black cloud that you couldn't see anything through. Then we saw the octopus go back to his home. Poor guy. We were just looking but he thought we were a threat. We left him alone and then headed back for the boat. It being Saturday I went and called mom at a more respectable hour - 10:30 AM for her, 3:30 PM for me. We chatted for 40 minutes and she told me she needed to get some yard work done. One of my old jobs. I miss being able to do those things around the house. I actually enjoyed doing the yard work and looking at the yard and hedge after it was looking all nice and trimmed. I headed to the bakery and the butcher, but the butcher was closed. No meat for tonight, oh well. Then sent a few voice messages to my dad, my sister and to Corey (best friend). If I had more time, I would have stayed to try to make calls to them but we were checking out and leaving for Madalena again. I love the voice messages you can send. It's a little more personal then just a text. I checked out with the office boys, paid our 12 euros and we set sail to Pico. We didn't use the engine at all, which I love doing, sailing out and drifting into Madalena. We had a great sail across, drinking a beer and reading a new Ian Rankin book I picked up from the book exchange in Horta. There are not many English books so when I saw this one, I grabbed it right away. My mom has read a lot of his stuff and really likes him, so I figured it would probably be a decent read. I read it aloud, so Mike and I can both get through the book together. Plus it makes it more of an activity for the both of us. Instead of me just sitting quietly reading. Before I knew it we were almost into harbour. We did our double anchor trick to keep us in the middle of the two piers, since there's a couple more big fishing boats that might need a bit more space to maneuver. Aug 20 It's Sunday so we are taking it easy. Today Mike and I got all of our trips around the Azores written down. When and where and who was onboard. I also added up all of our marina fees that we've paid and so far we are at about €200. Not terrible at all compared to the amount some of the other boats will be paying since they never go anywhere. We can cover that with one good full day of paid sailing so I think we are sitting pretty good. That also includes some showers and all the "free" water we have gotten since we arrived. It's been a good day of relaxing and paperwork so I'm content. Tomorrow we have a Belgian family of 4 checking in for one night. They have two young kids (4 and 6) so we will see how that goes. The youngest kids we've had so far were 10 and 11. So this is quite a bit different. Then we have two more bookings in Horta and we are done. So...3:15 right now on Aug 20, I suggested that I would go to the grocery store a couple hours ago. Mike was on the chart plotter getting distances for all the cities so we can add up all our mileage. He said he would come too. I thought for a second, it's really windy, we are double anchored, but maybe one of us should stay back. I didn't say it though. So we went ashore and I set the pace at a fast walk. I hate leaving the boat at anchor. So we got our groceries, and thank goodness the shipment had just come in because there was all kinds of fruit and veggies (including cucumber 🥒). We got back to the boat and she was just where we left her...all good. While I'm lying in bed and Mike is starting to get supper ready when I feel a knock. I said to Mike, it feels like we just tapped something, even though we didn't. Then we started swinging. Being doubled anchored means we don't swing...we got up on deck and our bow was swinging around. Mike grabbed the bow anchor rope and she came up with nothing on it. Chafed through. Shit. So I fired up the engine and put her in reverse to keep us away from any fishing boats. Mike pulled the other anchor up and we tied up to a concrete wall. There's a lot of surge here, so we don't normally try to tie up. We then went in the dinghy and Mike dived down for our lost anchor. He found it immediately and we hauled her back up. Geez! She chafed out on a rock...right after it turns to rope from chain, so at least we still have most of our line. Thank god we were in the boat when this happened. If we hadn't been....there would be damage for sure. And only to our boat...these big steel fishing boats wouldn't even feel us swinging into them. Anyways. Now we will re anchor and this time dive on it to make sure she isn't rubbing against a sharp rock. Moral of the story...always dive on your anchor to make sure she is set properly and your line is good...oh and more chain! We are definitely putting more chain on. We decided not to anchor near the fishing boats and head over near the swimming area. There's more room to anchor...but also a lot more rocks to go into if the wind swings and the anchor drags. But for tonight we would be fine. It's a nice sandy bottom and the wind isn't supposed to swing until tomorrow morning. Mike swam down to check on it and it was digging in nicely but still dragging a very small amount. While he was looking...he saw a rope down there. He pulled on it and sure enough he found a mooring! Awesome luck! So now we are tied onto a mooring with an anchor out just in case. It might be a little rocky, but we will endure and hopefully won't be moving around anymore. Aug 25 Our Belgian family was awesome. Super friendly, easy going family with two absolutely adorable kids. They loved the boat and even though we had bad weather almost the entire time, everyone still had a really good time. The little girl became my new best friend and it was nice to have kids around again. I miss working with all the kids back in Winnipeg so it was nice to tap into my younger self haha. The little boy, wanted to catch fish so bad, so his dad took him ashore and he caught 4 super tiny fish, like 4-5 cm long. They brought them back to the boat and his dad cleaned them and we cooked them up and the little boy was so happy he could eat the fish he caught. The next morning Mike and the dad went for a snorkel around the boat and Mike was able to find an octopus. He brought it up and put it on the boat for the kids to look at and they were so excited. The octopus made his way back to the water very quickly and the kids were loving it. Then we came back to Horta for the 23rd. Which was my moms birthday - Happy Birthday Mom! We had a Spanish couple spend two nights with us. We enjoyed LOTS of food together, BBQ and cooking away. The next day we sailed to a little anchorage on Faial, we snorkelled for an hour or so and I finally saw my first sting rays! Two or three of them. They are so cool, and when they find a spot they flip their fins and bury themselves under the sand. It was awesome. Then cooked up some big fat hamburgers with bacon 🥓, Canadian style haha. Just missing the cheddar cheese. We had a great lunch and another short swim before sailing back to Horta. We played cards and drank wine and brandy all evening and then this morning, they were off to catch their flight back home. Now we have one more booking, just one night and then we are done for the season here. It's been great! We've met some amazing people and had some awesome experiences. I have posted the Caribbean listing on Airbnb. I think I figured out why it kept disappearing - calendar settings - and now it should be there and easy to find. We are based out of St Maarten - and the title is S/V Athena - Caribbean Dream. We will mainly focus on sailing to Anguilla and St Bart's from St Maarten. *Airbnb has changed their rules and regulations and they now say that the boat must remain anchored/moored during the reservation. So we are still advertising accommodations on Airbnb but would prefer to take sailing charter bookings through Facebook in order to comply. We have paypal as a form of payment and although this change is a bit of a pain, we plan to keep doing what we're doing, just using 2 different platforms now. I'm sure the change is due to charter companies complaining to Airbnb or something like that. So in short, airbnb is for accommodation only - sleeping on an anchored boat and sail charters will go through Facebook/PayPal. Anyways that's it for now! Love and miss all of you. Come stay with us in the Caribbean. It's gonna be a blast I guarantee it!!! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @ Coconut Seaways (#coconut_seaways).

[ncmagroup]

By Maggie Aland

  Event planning has a lot of moving parts, and you need to know when different tasks need to be completed by in order to keep everything on schedule. Trust me, I know how quickly things can become unmanageable, which is why I created this checklist based off of my experience in planning events.

Follow along with our event planning checklist here as I go through and explain each item on the list. If you plan ahead, you’ll be able to reduce the stress of planning your event and ensure it’s a success.

Did you know you can advertise locally via Bing? Click here to advertise your event to a targeted audience and boost event signups & attendance.

Note: The amount of time needed to plan an event is based on my experience planning a luncheon for 300 people. However, this can vary based on the size and type of event.

6 Months Before: Big Picture Planning

Determine Your Budget

The first thing you should do after you decide to hold an event determines your budget. Things can get expensive quickly, so keep a spreadsheet of all costs so you know when you’ve reached your spending limit.

For any business event, you will most likely need the following things:

Venue

Food and beverages

Entertainment and speakers

Marketing

Insurance (to cover A/V equipment and event workers)

Consider budgeting for the items below if you want to delegate tasks or have money to spend on added features:

Production company (ensures everything runs smoothly the day of the event)

A/V Equipment

Photographer

Alcohol

Decorations (balloons, pipe, and draping, flowers)

Miscellaneous items (promotional items, signs, badges)

These costs vary greatly depending on the type and size of your event. If you want to hire celebrity entertainment or have a three-course meal, you can expect to pay much more. However, you can decrease costs by finding entertainment that’s willing to perform for free or little cost. My event was an awards ceremony and we did not have to spend money on speakers since the award recipients were the ones who gave speeches.

You can also decrease costs by only serving coffee, tea, and bagels (or beverages and hors-d’oeuvres) over a full sit down meal. Consider having one of your staff members bartend at no additional cost. However, sometimes a venue will require you to use their staff for the event, such as their bartender if you want to have alcohol at your event.

You might want to find a venue that has amenities, such as tables, chairs, tablecloths, and wifi included in the price. This could decrease cost and make things easier for you if everything is included and you don’t have to worry about transportation of these items.

Have Concrete Goals and Objectives

The next important step is to determine your goals and objectives.

You need to decide what you want your business, your attendees, and your sponsors/partners to get out of the event.

For example, I used to work for Association TRENDS, a magazine that’s geared towards non-profit and association executives (such as the CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers or the CFO of NPR). Since traditional print media is declining, we decided to try an event in order to diversify our revenue sources. Here are the goals we came up with:

Build our brand as the authority on association news and trends in the association space

Create an enjoyable atmosphere for our audience to network and form business relationships

Get sponsors that we can connect with high-quality leads

Now that we know what we want to get out of the event, we can get more specific about our audience.

Decide on Your Target Audience

You may think your target audience is as simple as whoever wants to come to the event. However, it could be in your best interest to have a more exclusive event. This is because you want to keep your attendees and potential sponsors happy.

Look back at your goals to help you decide who the audience for your event should be. For example, when I was planning the event at my previous company, we wanted association executives to attend the event because we wanted to build our brand among this group. We also thought this group would enjoy networking and building business relationships with each other and therefore get more out of attending the event. Finally, we knew that this group would attract the sponsors that we wanted to target.

We did not invite people working at corporations because we only wanted corporations to attend if they were paying thousands to sponsor the event.

Choose an Event Type

Once you have your budget, goals, and audience, it’s time to think about the type of event you want. Is your event going to be educational? Then you probably don’t want to do anything outside of work hours. Do you want to do something celebratory? Consider a cocktail hour or a lunch event.

Choosing the right time and date is critical to your event’s success. Think about your target audience and what their typical schedule looks like.

Possible events include:

Seminars

Trade shows

Golf events

Networking events

Product launches

Award ceremonies

Deciding which one is right for your needs really depends on what you want to get out of the event.

4-6 Months Before Logistics

Pick a Venue

Once you know the type of event you want to hold, it’s time to choose your venue.

“When choosing a venue for your event you should first consider what type of event you are hosting and create a list of needs your venue should meet. In a metropolitan location such as DC, venues that are metro accessible are ideal for great attendee turnout. To lower your rental charges, seek out a venue that comes with amenities such as tables, chairs, free WiFi, and lighting packages included in the rental fee.

Lastly, seek out venues that give guests a different feel. Hotels are great, but there are plenty of special event venues that break up what attendees are accustomed to. The look, feel, and experience your guests receive from a perfectly chosen venue will leave them waiting for the next event and new hot location.” -Kimberly Blackburn, Eastern Foundry

Here are some alternatives to hotels that will make more of an impact with your guests:

Art gallery

Boat cruise

Science museum

Zoo or amusement park

If you’re looking for a venue that won’t break the bank, try one of the following:

Office space

Park/ outdoor space

Restaurant

Before landing on a venue, you will want to get cost estimates from a few different spots. Then you can compare pricing and determine a fair price. You can almost always negotiate, so don’t accept the first price the venue comes back with.

When negotiating prices with vendors, Brian Kelly & Sean Koski from Ticket2Events share the following tip:

Hit vendors with a price that is 20% lower than the budget you set aside for this product. Typically your vendor will come back with a yes or no. If yes, the price is right under budget anyway. If no, you have some room to negotiate.

If you have already received a pricing proposal from a vendor, we suggest telling the vendor that there is a budget you neglected to mention, and you really want to stay within that range. If the vendor doesn’t want to adjust their price, we suggest moving on to a new vendor but keeping the proposal the old vendor has. We suggest “shopping around” and keeping all proposals on file.

It also doesn’t hurt to let the vendor know that if a negotiation can happen for this event, you’ll be more ready to re-use them and deliver repeat business!

Choose a Date and Time

The date of your event is largely dependent on when your venue has availability, so try to keep an open mind about the date. However, take these things into account before you commit:

Make sure there are no competing events

You don’t want your guests to have to choose between your event and a similar event in your industry. When planning our event for association professionals, we made sure it was nowhere near the annual event that draws thousands of association executives every year.

Check the date with people involved

If you’re working with partners or sponsors, make sure to clear the date with them. You also need to make sure that everyone staffing the event has an open schedule that day.

Choose a time that works for your type of event and your audience

If you are holding an educational event, you want to have it earlier in the day when people are more focused. If it’s a celebratory event with an audience that works full time, hold something in the evening.

For our event, we decided to do an awards ceremony during lunch on a Friday. Association executives are typically middle-aged men and women. We decided to do the event during work hours since most have families they need to get back to after work. We wanted the event to be fun, so we chose a Friday when people are typically in better moods than at the beginning of the week.

Have a Back-Up Plan

Unfortunately, since there are so many variables when planning an event, it’s possible that everything will not go your way. If you do have to switch to plan B or plan C, “remember that no one attending your event actually knows how it was ‘supposed’ to be or how your high expectations are/were, so don’t stress,” advises Blaine Ashley of NYC Champagne Week.

Also be prepared for the worst case scenario, having to cancel the event.

Should the unexpected happen and you must pull the plug, be it due to weather, low RSVPs, or other contingency, you have to know how to handle it, and quickly. David Jacobson, the founder of TrivWorks, recommends following the three steps to ensure canceling doesn’t result in angry customers and/or negative online reviews:

Tell invitees immediately – use any and all means at your disposal: phone, email, text, publish an alert on your website/social platforms.

Hang up signage – people who decide to come at the last minute don’t want to arrive to an empty venue with no notices as to why the event isn’t happening.

Reschedule quickly – preferably for a similar time/day of the week as the originally scheduled date, so as to minimize conflicts for attendees.

Create a Website/Landing Page and Marketing Plan

Once you have your venue, date, and time nailed down, you want to create your event website as soon as possible. It’s easy and cheap to make a website, and we have a guide that walks you through how to set everything up for $3.45 or less per month.

The website is important because it is where people can go to learn more about your event and register if they are interested. Depending on the size and scope of your event, you can create a dedicated website for it, or just make a landing page on your existing website.

If you want people to be able to find your event organically through Google search, it’s a good idea to create a website with a domain name that is dedicated to the event (ex: http://www.yourevent.com). You can check the availability of your domain name in the domain search tool below:

You will want to include the following elements on the page:

Benefits of attending the event

Speakers/entertainment with pictures and bios

Schedule of events

How to register and cost to attend (if applicable)

Sponsor logos

It’s also time to create your marketing plan. This is an important step to make sure you stay on track since marketing is key to getting people to attend your event. View our guide on event marketing ideas the pros use to get tips for the best ways to market an event.

Get Speakers/Entertainment and Lock Down Sponsors/Partners

Whether you are looking for informative speakers to educate your audience, or you want performers to entertain, you need to confirm this well before the date of your event. Having the right speaker or entertainment selection can make or break your event. If your attendees don’t enjoy your event, it won’t look good for your business, and it will make it harder to get them to come back next year.

Getting sponsors can help you defray some of the costs of your event. If you want to have sponsors or partners for your event, get them to commit well before the event date. Set a deadline so they have an incentive to confirm by a certain time. You need to know how much money will be coming in from them so you know how much you can afford to spend.

2-4 Months Ahead: Get People Excited

Create Buzz Around your Event

Now that you have the logistics worked out, it’s time to get people talking about your event. Here are a few ideas:

Send press releases about your event

A press release is a great way to get media attention for your event, but make sure to focus the release on something interesting. For example, when I worked to plan an awards ceremony, we sent out a press release when the winners were announced. This works great because the person receiving the award probably has a large network that will want to share the news. View our press release template, examples, and distribution tips to learn more.

Promote your event on Facebook

You can create a page for your event for free on Facebook. Then, you can pay as little as $5/day to promote the page to the exact demographic that you want to attend the event. For example, if you’re hosting a networking event for women in business, you can show your ad only to women ages 25-45 in your area who are interested in business. View our guide on Facebook advertising to learn more.

Create teaser videos

A fun way to get people excited about your event is to promote a clip of your speakers or record the CEO of your business speaking about why you are holding the event. Videos tend to get more attention than pictures or text, so by posting videos on your social media sites, you are more likely to engage people.

Meet with All Third Party Vendors

Since so many people are involved with the planning of the event, it is vital that everyone is on the same page. By meeting with all of the event vendors months before the date of the event, you can rest easy knowing that everyone knows what their responsibilities are. This will lower the chance of confusion when the event day arrives.

Finalize Design of Event Signs and Program

You want your event to have a cohesive look when it comes to all signs and printed materials. You may even want to create a separate logo specifically for the event, especially if it’s one you want to hold multiple years in a row. If you don’t have a design team in-house, you can hire someone on Fiverr to do this for you for as little as $5.

If you have sponsors, you will want to ask each of them for high-resolution logos to include on all marketing materials for the event.

Order Promotional Items to Leave a Lasting Impression.

Giving away gift bags at an event with promotional items is a great way to keep your business top of mind even after the event is over. Ask your sponsors if they would like to include a small gift as well. Chances are, they will jump at the chance to give away swag to their target audience.

Here’s a list of some good promotional item ideas with longevity:

Blankets

Portable phone charger

Coffee mugs/ water bottles

You can also do a themed gift that relates to your event:

Fun in the sun kit (sunscreen, sunglasses, koozie)

Stress-free (stress ball, scented candle, eye mask)

Many companies are tempted to give away marketing brochures about their business. However, no one wants a gift bag full of paper, and chances are only a small percentage will actually read it.

Jamie Herring, Association TRENDS, said, “Last year at my event, one of the sponsors brought selfie sticks. The event was full of high-level association executives and they loved them! We took it a step farther by creating posters that encouraged people to upload their selfie on Twitter with the event’s hashtag.”

Hand out a fun promotional item such as a selfie stick to get people involved

The Week Before: Final Countdown

Have All Signs/Pamphlets/Brochures Printed

By now, registrations should have given you a good idea of the final number of attendees that will be at your event so you can have your signs/pamphlets/brochures printed. The pamphlet or brochure should include sponsor logos and a schedule of events, and you can possibly sell advertising space within the pamphlet or brochure to increase revenue. View our in-depth guide to brochure printing, price, and design to learn more.

For any event, you will definitely need plenty of signs advertising your event at the venue. It will be frustrating for your guests if they show up at the hotel when the event is supposed to be, and they don’t know where to go, or once they get to your event, don’t know if they’re at the right place. You can order these signs at your local FedEx, and turnaround time is really quick (typically same day).

Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts

It’s the last week to market your event, and you want to make sure that you convince everyone who is on the fence that they must attend your event. One creative way to do this is to promote how much time left the potential customer has to register for the event (ex: 5 days left) plus a reason why they should attend. People often need frequent marketing to get them to pull the trigger and register for an event.

Print the Badges

If you are hosting a networking event or if you have assigned tables for seating, it’s a good idea to have badges for your attendees. Having a name badge makes it easier for people to network, and having assigned tables helps larger events run more smoothly. Plus, with assigned tables, you can strategically place high-quality leads at your sponsor’s tables.

Run Through the Roles of All Staff

The week before the event, you should get everyone together from your company that is helping out and let them know what they will be doing the day of the event. You may think you will have time to do this the day of the event, or that people will naturally know what to do, but this is not the case most of the time. By informing everyone what is expected of them, you are maximizing your resources. Also, let everyone know what time they should arrive the day of the event.

According to Kimberly Blackburn of Eastern Foundry, “When deciding how early to show up to an event, think about how much time you’ll need to set up, then add 1-2 hours to that, and that is when you should show up. Nothing adds more stress than not having enough time before an event.”

1 Day Before: Last Minute Details

Set Up at the Venue

You will need to set up the day before or the day of the event, depending on the time of the event and when the venue will allow you access to space. During this time, you should put your gift bags together, put up any decorations that the venue is not providing, and make sure everything is in place for your event.

Run Through Script

It’s important to get anyone speaking at the event to meet the day before to go over the script. Everyone’s speeches should be reviewed, so you can make sure they don’t run too long or short, and to give the speakers themselves time to practice the final version of the speeches. Print out a copy of everyone’s speech just in case something happens with the electronic copy.

Confirm Number of Attendees

Even if you had a projected number for the event, you should now have the final count (from registrations). Share that with the caterer, and make sure you have the right number of tables if it’s a seated event. Having too few tables is obviously not a good idea, as people will be standing and not get a meal. On the other hand, having too many tables will make your event look empty and not well attended.

If you have sponsors, you will also want to send them the list of attendees so they will know who will be attending and who they will want to make sure they meet.

After the Event: Follow-up

After your event is over, your job isn’t done! A lot of people drop the ball when it comes to following up after the event, but it’s an important part of the process. This is especially true if you plan on working with the same people in the future or want to run the same event next year.

Ask for Feedback

The easiest way to know what worked and what didn’t at your event is to ask your guests for feedback. This is important if you want to hold an event for your business in the future. You could have a feedback box at the event, or you could send a follow-up thank you and survey by email to attendees.

Post-Event Publicity

Now that you’ve had your event, you want to keep the momentum going. Post pictures and videos of your event on your website and social media. If one of your event speakers had a great speech, post it on your website. You want to keep people talking about it so that they will be excited about your next event.

Send Thank You Notes

Let people who participated in making the event a success know that you appreciate their help. This includes sponsors, speakers, and anyone who helped out during the event. This helps forge a relationship between you and the person you’re sending the note in case you need their help at a future event.

Bottom Line

Event planning can be extremely stressful, especially if you don’t have much experience with planning. By keeping everything organized and following our event planning checklist, you can ensure that everything stays on track. The most important thing is to give yourself plenty of time to complete all of the steps involved in creating an amazing event.

Have a question or comment? Let us know below…

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

Event Planning Checklist & How-To Guide By Maggie Aland Event planning has a lot of moving parts, and you need to know when different tasks need to be completed by in order to keep everything on schedule.