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snowdice · 4 years

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Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 22]

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

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 3-8 and what I have of Chapter 9 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

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

The hope is to work on this for quite a bit today. Please come keep me company with asks if you feel so inclined.

Chapter 6

“Really, Khalid,” Janus said, storming into his boss’s office. “A yellow?” It had been about a week since the 1920s incident, and his incident report had finally been cleared. Sure, it wasn’t a red or a black and he wasn’t facing any reprimand, but it should have been a green.

She looked up at him, clearly unconcerned. “There was an incident,” she said. “You handled it well, but there was one. Therefore, yellow.”

“It wasn’t a time travel incident! It was a rouge time traveler.”

“Janus, you helped me make these rules,” she said impatiently.

“Which is why I know this is bullshit,” he snapped.

She rolled her eyes. “If it was anyone else, you would agree with me. While you didn’t go against protocol and had no time related incidents, the fact of the matter is, you were still distracted by this ‘rouge time traveler,’ didn’t complete your mission, and were arrested.”

“He was good,” Janus said. “You can’t fault me for that. He also could be dangerous and you’re busy handing out yellows instead of working to track him down.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We are working on tracking him down,” she said. “We have done an analysis on the mask and found fibers dating to the 2010s and some DNA. Though it isn’t exactly a high priority.”

“We have no idea who he is or what he’s planning to do. Why is that not a high priority thing?”

“At the moment?” she asked. “Because we have reports of a time bomb being activated.”

“What?” Janus asked sitting up. “When?”

“New Years Eve going into the year 3,000 in Brazil,” she said. “Which you’d know about if you’d bothered to check your integration port this morning before storming into my office.”

“It’s my mission?” Janus asked.

“The incident investigation is over and your active again despite the dreaded yellow,” she said, clearly making fun of him a bit. “So, yes, and it’s a high priority mission, so I’ll be running it.”

“Who all is going?” he asked.

“Other than the two of us, Remus, Lena, and Fred,” she told him. “We leave in three hours, so, you might want to run off to Rhi before Fred gets to her and ties her up for an hour on details.”

Janus nodded and got to his feet. He turned back at the door. “I still don’t deserve the yellow,” he hissed.

She waved him off. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Picani.”

He ground his teeth a bit about the dismissal of his worries, but his resentment was slightly soothed by the fact that she’d assigned him to go on such a high priority mission and with only senior agents.

He took the advice and grabbed Remus from the office, noting Lena hadn’t been able to wrangle Fred yet as she was still at her desk, and they both headed off to see Rhi.

A few hours later, they were all in decontamination together, decked out in truly god-awful costumes. The turn of the third millennia had been a wild event, and the best way to fit in was to look like you’d grabbed something from every century in recorded human history, dyed it in neon paint, and rolled around in a vat of glitter.

Remus had opted to stick his head in a vat of thick glow in the dark green paint that costuming had offered them, and it wasn’t even going to be slightly disruptive to their covertness. It was so caked on that Janus couldn’t even recognize him.

In fact, costuming had frowned when Janus had insisted he not get his hair dyed and instead wore a bowler hat. They had required him to have flowers made out of glitter on it.

There were five people waiting for them when they landed 6 hours before the turn of the millennia. Three were touchdown agents, including Remy, and two were on location tech support. Usually it would be overkill to have that many people there just for support even with five agents in the field, but today the TPI needed to be cautious because they were planning on instituting a time lock.

Time bombs were dangerous things that would ripple through time if not contained. Even if it did end up going off (killing everyone in its reach), the time lock would serve to prevent most damage outside of the city and, more importantly, the year it was planted.

Janus had only been in two time locks before, and he was one of the most senior agents in the TPI, outranked only by the founder: Lia Khalid. Time locks were designed to keep all time linear in a certain fixed time and geographical area as well as prevent any time travel in and out. Once it was engaged, all forms of time travel would not work for the duration, bar the pin device. Khalid was already switching out her regular timepiece with the slightly bigger one that was designed to support the time lock.

There was a failsafe back at the TPI that could be engaged in an emergency, which was why tech support was here, but other than that, the only thing that could break the time lock was that timepiece, and it would break the moment the time lock ended.

As soon as it was on Khalid’s wrist, she looked up at them all. “Our information says the time bomb was planted in the costume of one of the ‘Millennium Birds’ who are the organizers of the different events,” she said. Janus had seen a photo of the identical costumes in the mission details. They were all robe like garments with giant fans of feathers coming from the neck that coalesced in a peak a foot above their head to hold a fake bird egg. At least they’d be easy to find. “There are 25 of them throughout the city. We need to find each of them. So, we don’t double count, you’ll need to subtly,” her eyes touched on Remus, “scan each one you find for the bomb and tag them with a tracker if it’s not on them. You can view the already tagged ones, as well as the rest of us on your timepiece even once the time lock is engaged. When you find the bomb, call it in.”

They all nodded, and Khalid looked over at one of the techies. She nodded at her and then the techie flipped a couple of switches. “Three, two, one,” the techie said. There was a slight shift in the air that most people would disregard, but Janus as a seasoned time traveler could feel the change even before his wrist buzzed. He glanced at his timepiece to see it had a big red ‘X’ across its display. He tapped it and was still able to bring up the map of the city with 10 green dots on it all clustered together in their current location.

After that, he tested the scanner on his timepiece that he would use to search for the bomb, just to make sure the time lock hadn’t messed anything up with his equipment. He glanced up to see everyone else was doing the same.

“Keep in contact,” Khalid said before everyone split up. Janus and Remus started by going North while Fredrick and Darlene were to go South. Khalid was a floater who would tag any Birds she saw but was mostly there for backup and orders.

Janus and Remus stepped into the chaos of New Years Eve before the turn of the third millennia. The streets were already swamped with people and it would only be getting worse the later it go.

“Where should we start?” Remus asked.

“Let’s go all the way North to the games area,” Janus said. “We can work our way back here.”

“Okay!” Remus said. “I wonder if they have those fun little genetically modified goldfish as prizes. I’ve always wanted to eat one and see if I end up getting whatever design was on the fish on my body.”

Janus gave him a disgusted look.

“What?! People eat fish all the time!”

Janus shook his head. “We’re not playing the games anyway. We have work to do. Important work.”

“Boo,” Remus replied. Janus chose to ignore him as he spotted one of the Millenia Birds letting people into the gaming area.

They walked over towards the entrance. Janus got in range first and moved to subtly scan the Millenia Bird, Remus doing the same the next moment. After a second, Janus’s timepiece buzzed and lit up red, meaning the bomb was within range. “Well, that was easy,” he said. “It was on the first one we found.”

“Uh…” Remus said. “Jan.” When Janus looked, he was holding up his wrist to show his green lit time piece.

“What?” Janus asked. He quickly moved to rescan the Millenia Bird, and his timepiece came up green as well. Which, meant the bomb was not in range, even though the Millenia Bird had not moved. “But…” He and Remus’s eyes met, and they quickly both started turning in a circle to look at the crowd around him. No one looked like they’d just stolen a time bomb off the Millennial Bird, but then Janus’s eyes caught on a man. He blended in perfectly to his surroundings. He was wearing the disgusting garb of the times, a large light blue piece that bubbled near his hips, and had most of his skin covered in rainbow neon paints. Yet, something about him, the curl of his hair or the way he moved, drew Janus’s eyes to him. He recognized the man immediately even in a completely different dressing style. Yet, what cinched it was the moment Janus’s eyes met his and they seemed to sparkle slightly in the afternoon sun. The next moment, the person Janus knew as Pat, turned to disappear into the crowd.

Chapter 7

“Him,” was the only thing Janus said before taking off after the figure who had just disappeared into the game area.

“What?” Remus’s voice followed after him. “Janus! What?!”

Janus did not pause, just continuing to run after Pat, hopping over two barricades as a shortcut. Janus cursed when he lost sight of the man for just a moment near the prize table filled with colorful goldfish, but he was able to spot him once again walking into one of the tents. Janus blasted into the tent. It was a game where they raced rats, and when Janus entered, Pat was cooing at one of them.

“Who’s a tiny little squishy precious baby?” he was asking one of them, wiggling his pointer finger at it.

“You,” Janus growled stepping up to him.

He turned and tilted his head at Janus with a frown. “Um, me?” he asked, pointing to his chest, all sorts of innocent, but Janus could see a spot of hidden amusement in his eyes.

“Where is it?”

His eyebrows drew together, but it was an act. It was clearly an act! “Where is what?”

“The…” he glanced around them at the people surrounding them. “Thing you just took.”

“I didn’t take anything,” Pat said with a frown.

“Oh, no,” Janus said. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fooling me twice is not an option.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Pat said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bull. Shit.”

Just then, Remus jogged into the tent. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s him,” Janus said pointing. “He took it. He has it.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patton said. He looked over to Remus with a confused frown.

Remus looked at Janus. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “It’s him. It has to be him. He’s the mask guy.”

Remus squinted at Pat. “He is?”

“Whoever you think I am, I’m not. I haven’t worn a mask all night. I just did the face paint,” he pointed to his cheeks.

Remus raised his wrist and his timepiece lit up green. He looked at Janus.

“I lost sight of him for five seconds. He must have stashed it somewhere,” Janus said. He turned on Pat. “Where did you put it?”

“…Are you,” Pat asked, his eyes going back and forth between Janus and Remus, “… the police?”

“We are, actually,” Khalid said as she stepped into the tent. Remus must have called her. She inserted herself between Janus and Pat. “Agent Khalid,” she said, offering a hand with a smile. Pat looked at it in surprise and then smiled back hesitantly as he took it. “Apologizes, one of the big game prizes was stolen by someone matching your description. Would you mind coming down to security for questioning? Just to clear it up.”

“Oh,” Patton said, hesitant. Janus expected him to refuse outright, but then he said. “Uh, sure.”

“Thank you very much, Mr…”

“Jonas,” Pat told her earnestly. “Do I need to be handcuffed?”

“No,” Khalid said. Janus frowned at her, but she ignored him. “It’s just a talk for now.” She gestured to the tent entrance. “Come with us.”

He did without argument, and Remus and Janus followed behind the both of them. Khalid did not lead them back to the base, but to a little spot that said “security” near the center of the event. Remy was already there waiting for them at a desk.

“Remy, would you please take Mr. Jonas to go sit down?” she asked.

“Sure, boss,” Remy said, standing up. He led Pat away.

Khalid turned to Janus and Remus once they were out of earshot. “What is going on?”

“It’s the mask man,” Janus said, “the one from 1923, and my scanner said the time bomb was on the Millenia Bird outside the games entrance, but then it was gone the next second, and I saw him, and then he ran away.”

“So, does he have it on him?”

“No. I lost sight of him, and he must have stored it somewhere, but I know he took it.”

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“He’s the man from 1923?” she asked.

“Yes! Remus, that’s him, right? You recognize him.”

“Well,” Remus said thoughtfully. “He was in a mask, and it was dark in the room with the necklace. Other than that, I only really saw his back, and he was wearing pants. Mr. Jonas is wearing a dress, so I can’t really tell if their asses match.”

“Okay, but I was with him for hours. I swear it’s him, and I swear he took it,” Janus just about shouted.

“We’ll question him,” Khalid placated, “and Fred and Lena will keep looking in the meantime.”

“He knows where it is,” Janus insisted. “I swear.”

“Okay,” Khalid said, before leaving to follow where Remy and Pat had gone. She stopped Janus with a hand on his shoulder. “I think Remus and I will do the interrogation.” He opened his mouth to argue. “You know the most about him, so observe from the sidelines and see if he makes any mistakes that indicate you’re right.”

“That’s just to placate me and you know it.”

“Observation’s over there,” she said pointing.

He got a thumbs up from Remus as he walked by, and Janus glared at his back before walking off to the indicated location.

He watched as Remus and Khalid entered the room, and Remy left it. Remy joined him in the observation room after leaving and leaned against the wall.

Pat was sitting at a table and watched Remus and Khalid with that same rubbish placid confusion that he had before. “So,” Khalid said, “Mr. Jonas.”

“You can call me Nick,” Pat interrupted.

“Lia,” Khalid replied. He smiled at her happily. “So, are you enjoying your day?” she asked.

“I am!” he replied. “It’s a big day. You only get to see the turn of a millennia once in your life.”

“Ah, yes,” Khalid said. “Doing anything special for it?”

“Um, not really,” he said. “Other than the party. I’m going to meet up with my roommates after dinner. Kevin doesn’t like this sort of thing, and Joe couldn’t come.”

“Your roommates,” Khalid said, considering him. “Do you live around here?”

“Uh huh,” Pat replied.

“Do you have any ID?”

“I do, want me to get it?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Pat unzipped one of the bubbles on his waist and handed her a chip. “Remus, would you mind going out and getting the ID scanner?” she asked, even though her timepiece would be able to read it.

“Ah, shit,” Remy said. “Props. What do those things even look like?”

As Remy scrambled to find something that would pass for an ID reader so “Nick” didn’t get suspicious of Khalid using her timepiece, Janus watched the two alone in the room like a hawk.

“I see you’re wearing a dress inspired by the 2770s,” Khalid noted, as Remus came to stand next to him.

“Yeah!” Pat replied. “Joe made it for me. He’s really good at fashion design!”

“Can I see?” she asked.

With a happy smile, he reached over the table to let her get a look of the sleeves. Janus saw her subtly scan the fabric, probably to make sure it was from the 2990s and not actually from the 2770s. Considering she didn’t mention it, Janus assumed it checked out.

Remy came back with some sort of device then and handed it to Remus who saluted and wandered back into the interrogation room. Khalid pretended to scan the ID in her hand. She handed it back to him without comment. “So, you said you live with your roommates: Joe and Kevin?” she asked.

“Yep!” he replied. “We’re practically like brothers.”

“Would you mind calling them?”

“Erm,” he titled his head like he was confused by the question. “Well, like I said, Joe is a bit busy, but I could definitely call Kevin.

“Here,” Khalid said, “use my phone.”

“I have my own,” he said with a frown.

“Humor me,” she requested.

“Uh, okay,” Pat agreed. He took the offered 2999 phone and dialed a number on it. Khalid reached over to put it on speaker.

“Hello?” a voice asked after a few seconds.

“Um, hey Kevin, it’s Nick.”

There was a sigh on the other end. “Hello Nick, is something wrong? Why are you calling me from someone else’s phone?”

“I’m fine, I think.” He looked up at Khalid. “Why am I calling him exactly?”

“Hello, I’m Officer Khalid,” Khalid said. “I just wanted to confirm that you are Nick Jonas’s roommate, and he does live in Manaus.”

“Yes, we live together with our other roommate,” the man replied flippantly. “Officer? Is something wrong?”

“I believe there was just a case of mistaken identity,” Khalid said.

“Bullshit there was!” Janus hissed, though she could not hear him.

“No need to worry,” Khalid continued.

“I’m good Kevin,” Pat said.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Kevin asked.

“Don’t be Paranoid, Kevin. I’ll see you Tonight for the New Years Celebration. You know I Live to Party.”

“I am hanging up now,” Kevin said.

“No! Comeback.” The line went dead. Pat handed the device back to Khalid.

She took it and smiled at him. “Give us just a couple of minutes,” she requested. He nodded easily, and she and Remus exited the interrogation room. “I… think we’re done here,” Khalid said.

“No, he’s lying,” Janus insisted, and got a dubious look in return. “I know he is! Remus!”

“The alibi is pretty solid…” Remus said, “and he doesn’t have the bomb on him.”

“Oh, come on,” Janus said. “You can’t say there is nothing fishy going on here.”

Khalid and Remus shared a look. “Janus,” Khalid said. “I respect your intuition. It is usually very good, but you have been a bit intense about the man from the 1920s, and I think that may be blinding you a bit...”

“I am not imagining this!” Janus said. “That’s him and he took it.”

“You only met him once while he was wearing a mask,” Khalid pointed out with a frown, “and you didn’t see him take the bomb, did you?”

“No, but he looked at me and I knew,” Janus argued. They both gave him a skeptical look. “Oh, come on!”

“You know that’s a little weak, Jan,” Remus said.

“Let me talk to him,” Janus requested. “Just give me five minutes to talk with him.”

Khalid raised one eyebrow. “Fine,” she agreed. “You have five minutes, but after that, you have to let it go. We can’t waste any more time.”

Chapter 8

Pat looked up as Janus stepped into the interrogation room. “Hi,” he said with an innocent smile that could cut steal.

Janus didn’t say a word as he took a seat; he just watched him intently. He leaned slightly over the table and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “So, your name is Nick this time?” Janus asked.

“Nicholas Jonas,” he said. “Always has been.”

“Stop it,” Janus said.

“Stop what?”

“Cut the crap. I know.”

Pat leaned forward, mirroring Janus as he leaned closer, interlocking his fingers and laying his chin on top of his knuckles. “What did you say your name was again?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Janus,” Janus replied.

“No, I’m Jonas,” he said, pointing to his chest.

“Not Jonas,” Janus spat. “Janus.”

“Um,” Pat said, eyes alight with amusement. The bastard. “Those are the same words.”

“No, they’re not. It’s Janus. J-A-N-U.-S.”

“Well, that’s confusing,” Pat said with a frown, but his nose was crinkling. “It’s close to my name. You should go by a nickname instead.”

“What?” Janus said. “No.”

Pat hummed. “How about Love Bug?”

“What! No!” Janus sputtered, almost flipping the table, as Pat winked at him.

“BB Good?”

“What does that even mean?!”

“Mandy.”

“No!”

“Okay, okay, how about Macy Misa.”

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Janus stared at him for a moment. “Fine. Whatever. What was I even talking about?”

“Hmm. I Believe we were talking about my name and how you think it’s not my name.”

“Right,” Janus said. “So, Nick. That was your roommate, Kevin on the phone, right? He seemed a bit unhappy with you. Any reason?”

“Nah, we’re Cool” said Pat. “That’s Just the Way We Roll.”

“Not because you’re messing up a mission right now?”

Pat’s eyes crinkled together. “A mission?” he parroted. “I’m not messing up a mission.”

“Oh, really?” Janus growled. “Because you’ve been captured by the TPI, and I know who you are and what you’ve been doing.”

“I have no idea what the TPI is,” he claimed.

“Yes, you do!” Janus said, standing up. “You obviously do! Or you wouldn’t be playing this game!”

“Game?” Pat asked. “Macy I ask you what you’re talking about.”

“This is all just a game to you isn’t it!” Janus said, slamming his hands down on the table in front of them.

“Whoa,” Pat said, putting his hands up. “Calm down. Your face is getting all red. You must be Burnin’ Up.”

“I’m not sure what, but something about what you just said pisses me off.”

“And that is five minutes,” Khalid said, bursting into the room. He felt a tug on the back of his shirt and glared back at Remus who was putting his own body between Janus and Pat.

“There was no way that was five minutes,” Janus growled.

“It was five minutes,” Khalid gritted out. “Remus, get him out of here.”

“Come on Jay,” Remus said, dragging him back towards the door.

“Remus, I swear to god.”

“Just chill, Janus,” Remus said, slamming the door closed behind them.

Janus shrugged him off. “You chill!” he snapped. “He’s playing you all for the fool.”

“Wow, Macy,” Remy drawled like an asshole. “I’ve never seen you so fired up.”

“Oh, my gosh. No one is going to believe me, and he’s going to get away with this.”

“You’re not really helping your case, babe,” Remy said.

Remus grabbed him by the shoulders again. “Here, let’s go get some water.”

“I don’t want water,” he said even as he let Remus lead him to another room to get a glass of water.

“Look,” Remus said. “I know the Mask Guy thing really sucked, but you have to look at the facts.

“I am looking at the facts,” Janus insisted, “and the facts are, he’s fucking with me.”

“You don’t know what mask guy looks like,” Remus said. “You didn’t see Nick take the time bomb, he has an ID from this time period and a roommate in this time he called on the phone, and he legitimately seems to not know what any of us are talking about.”

“Did you even listen to our conversation?” Janus asked. “He was screwing with me the entire time!”

“Janus…” Remus said.

“What?” Janus said, narrowing his eyes at Remus’s tone.

“I know you recently had a bad experience, but not everyone who flirts with you is doing it out of evil.”

Janus’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. “That’s what you got out of our conversation?”

“He called you Love Bug.”

Janus felt his face heat a bit at the reminder. “That’s not… I. I’m stealing your cat and then never speaking to you again.”

Remus laughed. “Ah,” he said. “Young lust.”

Janus elbowed him roughly in the side. “No!”

“Yes!” he crooned, pleased.

“You are the worst partner,” Janus hissed. “When I’m right you owe me 10 loafs of your fresh bread.”

“Branching out from poptarts?” Remus asked.

Janus shook his head. He still wasn’t happy about the state of things, but he could feel himself cooling down a bit.

Khalid came out of the integration room after a few minutes, leaving Pat with Remy. “What was that?” she asked him.

“He got under my skin,” Janus said.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “For now, we’re letting him go and then going back to looking for the bomb like we’re meant to be.”

“Fine,” Janus relented. “Just do me the favor of tagging him before he leaves. Just that. I beg of you.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “If it will calm you down.”

He nodded.

“Then, let’s go,” she said. When they met back up with Remy and Pat, he saw Khalid make the subtle gesture that would tag Pat like they would have for the Millennium Birds. Pat sent him what could pass as a sweet smile if Janus didn’t know better. Then, they walked him outside, leaving Remy on clean-up duty for the make-shift security office.

“So, I’m free to go?” Pat asked. His bemused expression edged far too much on the side of amused verses confused for Janus’s taste.

“You are,” Khalid said. “Have fun at the festivities.”

His hands went flapping about. “Oh, you too!” he said. “Well, I guess you’re working, but you can have fun anyway, I’m sure.”

“We’ll do our best,” she said.

He gave her a blinding smile and reached forward to shake her hand enthusiastically. Janus rolled his eyes and looked up at the heavens. “It was nice to meet you!” he said, “and you too, Remus!” He turned to meet Janus’s eyes. “Macy Misa.”

Janus pressed his lips together.

Then, Pat turned and walked away.

“Well, now that we’re done with that,” Khalid said, turning to them. “We have only a few more hours before midnight and we really need to find the time bomb.

“Oh,” Pat called. He’d paused a few yards away and turned back to them. “Thanks for letting me go so easily by the way,” he said, “and just in the Nick,” he winked, “of time too.” Janus narrowed his eyes at him. He smiled back. “Wrist check,” he said holding up his arm to show off the timepiece there. Khalid immediately looked down at her own wrist just to see that the one timepiece that could move through the time lock was no longer there. Pat made a gesture and disappeared.

All three of them stared at the spot he’d been for a long moment.

Janus was the one to speak first. “I want. The yellow. To be erased. From my record.”

Chapter 9

Khalid immediately called everyone back to base.

“What happened?” asked Fred when he and Lena arrived. The tech people were already scrambling to get through to the TPI and get the time lock broken from the outside.

“Remus, Remy, and Khalid got played by Pat or whatever his name is. It certainly isn’t Nick. He was just setting up a joke,” Janus told him.

“Stop being smug,” Remy said. “It’s not a good look for you.”

“Pat is…?” Lena asked.

“They guy who fucked me over in 1923,” Janus said, “and is currently in the middle of fucking us all over because he stole the pin timepiece, and by extrapolation, probably the time bomb too.”

“It will be fine,” said Khalid, “because what he doesn’t know is that timepiece has a tracker on it. Wherever and whenever he went, we’ll have his coordinates.”

“Speaking of,” one of the techies said. “It’s about to break. You might want to hold onto something.” Janus grabbed for a support beam next to him as the techie put a device on the ground in the center of the base. It blinked once, twice, and on the third blink the ground rumbled. There were sounds of panicked yelps outside. The fail safe for the time lock was not nearly as gentle as ending it correctly.

Everything settled after a few moments, and they all straightened themselves out. Janus’s timepiece buzzed to indicate it was now functioning normally. Khalid had returned her usual timepiece to her wrist and now used it to open a display they could all see. “The pin timepiece’s closest time/space coordinates are…” she trailed off. “Right outside?” She frowned. “That’s strange. Why would he still be here?” She turned to march outside, following the coordinates to a trash can. She pulled the pin timepiece out and stared at it. “Fuck,” she said.

“What just happened?” Remy asked.

“He ticked us,” Janus said. “Again.”

“He was stuck in the time lock,” Khalid said. “That’s why he got our attention. He couldn’t leave with the time bomb unless he had the pin timepiece or we broke the time lock. Apparently, he’s smart enough to know that if he took the pin timepiece away from here, we’d probably be able to find him, but he knew we’d break the lock as soon as the pin went missing. So, he must have stashed his own timepiece and went back in time within the time lock to grab it while we were distracted with the past version of him. As soon as the time lock went down, I imagine he left.”

“Probably with the time bomb,” Janus said.

“Probably with the time bomb,” she confirmed.

And everyone knew the only thing worse than a time bomb was a time bomb you didn’t know the location of.

They evacuated after that, of course, and time locked the location once they were out just in case they were wrong, but midnight 3000 struck without thousands of people dying in Brazil, so the time bomb had defiantly been removed from then.

The, they initiated a time travel lockdown for all nonessentials, not willing to let random history students get caught up in an explosion if Pat decided to set the thing off somewhere.

Then, it was a matter of figuring out everything they could about ‘Pat.’ First, they checked the tracker data as Khalid had tagged him with one of the Millennium Bird trackers. It wouldn’t work outside of the zone they’d set up that day, but the record would show his behavior during the time lock after he’d escaped with the pin timepiece.

There had been many little green dots on the map that day as Fred and Lena had actually been doing the job they’d set out to do, but most of those were running around in the south. There had been one green dot, however, that appeared suddenly in the game area about 10 minutes before the time bomb had been stolen.

They could see Janus’s yellow dot almost brush his when he’d been chasing the earlier Pat down, around when he’d lost him briefly. The earlier Pat must have all but handed it off to his future self.

“He doubled back,” Remus commented when they watched the recorded data. It was a ballsy move and one that most people balked at, because there were inherent dangers any time you interacted with yourself from a different point in the timestream. It was ripe for paradoxes. It made everyone at the agency even more worried, because if he was willing to risk that, then what else was he willing to do?

Because of the lockdown of all nonessential time travel, people working for the TPI were not allowed to go home for the night. They were allowed to pick up anyone or anything dependent on them for care like kids and pets if there wasn’t someone in their home time to care for them, but other than that, they were unfortunately all sleeping in their offices for the foreseeable future.

“You are the only tolerable one,” Janus told the cat who upon being let loose in the office by Remus, immediately jumped on Janus’s lap.

“I have literally done nothing to you,” Lena said, but then added. “Yet.”

“You exist. In my space.”

“Can’t we just all get along?” asked Fred. “It’s only been an hour past when we’d usually go home. I went and grabbed milk and I have my giant thing of different flavored hot chocolate under my desk. We can try them all and vote on which is better.”

“Fuck your hot chocolate, Fred,” Janus growled, having been one of the three who had chipped in to buy it for him on his last birthday.

“Don’t go after Fred, jackass,” Lena spat.

“He’s just testy because his boyfriend escaped,” Remus contributed.

Janus’s lips turned down into a frown and he cupped Diesel Fuel’s face. “We agree we’re eating him first, right?” he asked her.

She purred her agreement.

“I’d have it no other way,” Remus replied.

“There is plenty of food,” Fred said, sounding stressed. “In fact, I was thinking we should all chip in on ordering take-out soon. “What does everyone like on pizza?”

“This is not a slumber party, Fred,” Janus pointed out.

“Shut it,” Lena snapped and turned to Fred. “I’m fine with almost everything, except…”

“Bananas and tuna salad!” Remus interrupted.

“…whatever Remus is about to say.”

Janus rolled his eyes as that started a debate about whether or not fruit and/or fish belonged on pizza. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, which was when there was a knock on the door.

He froze when he heard the familiar voice. “Hello, hello,” said Emile, cheerfully. Janus looked up to see Emile standing at the open office door. Shit. Apparently, the man had decided to give up on sending lackeys to come fetch him and had decided to track him down himself when Janus couldn’t even escape without breaking a time lockdown. They met eyes briefly and Janus could see irritation if not anger in his eyes despite his otherwise cheerful expression and tone.

“Janus,” he said when he’d gotten their attention. “I’d like to have dinner with you.” The word choice told Janus everything he needed to know. Usually Emile was careful with how he said things to make sure people knew they had a choice. Typically he’d say something like, “I was wondering if you’d have time to have dinner with me tonight,” or “I’m about to go get food, would you like to come?” Today, there was no choice in the statement.

Janus still dried to dodge anyway. “Uh,” he said. “We were actually about to order pizza.”

“Go ahead,” said Fred kindly. Janus wanted to strangle him. “We can order pizza with olives if you’re not here.”

“I…” said Janus. “Guess, I’ll be going with you.”

“Great!” Emile said. “Let’s go.”

“Oh,” Janus said. “Uh, now?”

“Now,” Emile said a bit of uncharacteristic steel to his tone.

Well, Janus was screwed. He swallowed his nervousness and got to his feet, taking Diesel Fuel with him. He turned to hand her off to Remus with a plea in his eye, but he just got an eyebrow raise in return. Traitor.

Then, he followed Emile out of the office door. “What would you like to eat?” asked Emile.

“Uh,” Janus said. “I don’t know. You asked me to eat, don’t you have any ideas?”

“I don’t actually,” Emile replied. Right.

“…Noddle Bar?” Janus threw out the nearest restaurant he knew.

“The one noodle restaurant? Sure,” Emile answered simply. They walked side by side out of the front doors of the TPI building. Janus actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken these stairs. He usually used his timepiece to get in and out.

The noodle bar was only moderately busy at this time. They were quickly able to find a table near the back and Emile pulled his menu up in front of him. Emile hummed as he flipped through the different displays. “What are you having?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said, only then pulling up the menu himself, but still not quite looking at it.

“What about the fortune noodles,” Emile suggested.

Janus shook his head. “I don’t like those,” he said.

Emile glanced at him through the menu displays. “You used to.” Fortune noodles were a bit cheekily named. They didn’t actually indicate anything about your future. They were just supposed to taste like what you wanted from your future. A grad student might experience a feeling like they’d just aced a paper. A child that they got to stay up an hour later that night. Janus had liked the experience when he was younger, but in recent years, he’d begun to taste the underlying chemicals in the dish until that’s all he could.

“Well,” Emile said lightly, eyes on his menu. “That makes me even more worried for your mental health than I already was because of the almost three years of you avoiding talking to me.”

“No small talk, huh?” Janus asked.

“Forgive me,” Emile said, eyes now focused on Janus, and tone much darker. “How has your life been since I last saw your face 5 months ago during a business meeting and you refused to look me in the eye? Anything interesting happen? Shave your head and let it all regrow? Develop an allergy to peanuts? Join a convent and take an oath of silence that you only just broke today?”

“No,” said Janus quietly into the table.

“Great,” Emile said clipped. “Small talk over. Order your food.” Janus reached up blindly to select the first thing that came up on the food and drink menu as Emile punched something into his own and both menu displays disappeared, meaning there was nothing between their faces anymore. “You know, I was willing to give you a year,” Emile said. “I was willing to let you deal with it on your own because I thought eventually, you’d come talk to me about it, but apparently I was mistaken. The next year, I thought maybe you thought I didn’t want to talk to you, so I subtly made myself available, and you never took me up on the offer. I thought maybe I was just not being clear, and I should make my desire to talk to you more explicit, but as you have been routinely, clearly avoiding me at every single turn, I’ve decided I’ve had enough. So, let’s lay it all on the table. Is it me or do you need help?”

Janus closed his eyes. “It’s not you.”

“Then you need help,” Emile concluded.

Janus shook his head.

“Yes,” Emile snapped. “Whatever this is has gone on far too long.”

Janus stood up and slammed his hand down on the table. “And it’s going to keep going on!” he said. The food popped up at that moment. It appeared Janus had ordered lasagna and bubble tea, and Emile had ordered something with spaghetti and a fizzy drink.

“So, you’re just planning to go on being miserable then?” Emile asked, and Janus wasn’t sure if it was worse or better that he didn’t sound angry anymore.

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Janus slapped his hand down on the “To Go” button and his dinner was insta-wrapped by the table. “Yes,” he said.

“What exactly do you think you’re paying penance for, Janus?” Emile asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Janus said, paying for both of their meals with his fingerprint.

“That’s a cop out and you know it,” Emile said. “All you’d have to do is talk to me. Or even just talk to someone else. Please.”

“Just…” Janus said, grabbing his bag of food to avoid looking at him. “Just, leave me be.” He walked out of the noodle shop without another word.

Chapter 10

“And I thought Remus was going to be the most disgusting roommate in this equation,” Lena grumbled. Janus and Lena were apparently the earlier risers in the group as Fred was still curled up around a pillow and Remus was sprawled out under his desk.

Janus flipped her off.

“Protein infused Poptarts and caffeinated orange juice for breakfast?” she asked. “Just eat an energy bar and have a cup of coffee like a normal person.”

He took another pointed bite of his Poptart.

“You’re a horrible roommate. This is why they gave us different partners.”

“Yeah, well you snore, asshole,” Janus said after finishing off his meal.

“I’d tell you to go eat shit, but you already did that once this morning.”

A pillow flew across the room and somehow managed to hit the both of them. “S’op fighting,” Fred mumbled. “It’s sleep time.”

“It’s morning Fred,” Lena said.

“No,” Fred mumbled.

Janus ignored them, turning back to his integration port to continue to keep plugging in phrases of interest, but he kept getting nothing.

“What are you doing?” Lena asked after a few moments of him huffing at his screen reader.

“Trying to do anything that may change our current living arrangements.”

She puffed out an amused breath. “Can I help?”

“Can you see any connection between these words and phrases?” he asked, pulling away his screen reader and tapping at the words he’d typed out.

“Paranoid, tonight, I live to party, comeback, love Bug, BB good, Mandy, Macy Misa, I believe, cool, that’s just the way we roll, burnin’ up,” she said. “What are these?”

“They’re things Pat said when we interrogated that struck me funny,” Janus explained. “I feel like he was saying something more than what he said.”

“Hmm,” she said. “PTI for the first three?”

“Maybe,” Janus agreed, “but what about the rest of it? I feel like I’m missing something.”

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“Millennia,” Remus mumbled from under his desk. Janus hadn’t been aware he was awake. “He said something something about it being the only time he could see the change of the millennia.” He turned his head to look at Janus. “Considering he’s a time traveler, that’s definitely a weird thing to say.”

“Millennia,” Janus contemplated. “A different turn of the millennia. Oh no.”

“What?” Lena asked.

Janus sighed, and rubbed his temple. “I know someone who studied the 1700-2200s.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“No,” Janus groaned, “because now I have to go talk to him.” He stood with a sigh and then paused. “How do I even get to Silver Mountains University without my timepiece?”

Luckily Sliver Mountains ended up only being about an hour away from the TPI by time adherent travel, but considering Janus was used to his travel being instantaneous, it was an aggravating trip. He had to show ID and be buzzed up to the fourth floor since it was usually locked to everyone not traveling by timepiece or who worked in the office.

The receptionist was the same man as before. “I’m here to speak to Professor Eran,” Janus said.

The receptionist nodded. “He mentioned you asked to meet him but didn’t know when you’d arrive. He’ll be done teaching his class in about 5 minutes. You can wait over there.”

Janus nodded and sat, waiting for time to slowly tick by. Virgil arrived after a few minutes, lugging a giant bag with him. He caught sight of Janus and wordlessly jerked his head towards the hallway. Janus followed him.

“What’s in the bag?” Janus asked.

“Early 21st century cell phones,” Virgil said, dropping it on his desk. “I let my students mess around with them for their lab.”

“I see,” Janus said.

“What did you need?” Virgil asked. “You said it was official business.”

“You’ve heard about the lockdown, I presume,” Janus said.

“Yeah, it really screws up my research schedule for the summer,” Virgil said.

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“Do you know why the lockdown was instituted?” Janus asked. Virgil shook his head, so Janus explained briefly that they had been trying to find a timebomb on the eve of the year 3000, but it had been swiped by a free agent time traveler. “Some of the things seemed to be references to things that I couldn’t place, and I was wondering if you would recognize any.”

“Shoot,” Virgil requested, seeming intrigued by the prospect.

“Okay,” Janus said. “First, the alias he was using was Nick Jonas.” A weird expression crossed Virgil’s face immediately and Janus paused.

“You said the year 3000?” Virgil asked.

“Er. Yes.”

“Nick Jonas. Year 3000,” Virgil repeated with a snort. “Were Joe and Kevin a part of this too?”

Janus blinked. “Yes, how did you know that?”

“Yo-you’re going to have,” his sentence was broken by a giggle, and actual full-fledged giggle, “have to give me a minute.” With that, he sort of listed to the side and seemed to purposefully fall off his chair onto the floor under his desk.

Janus blinked and when he didn’t surface after a moment, he stood up to lean over the desk and look down at him. Virgil had his arm thrown over his beat red face, as he shook from what Janus thought was suppressed laughter.

“What?” Janus asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Just…” Virgil said, sobbing through his laughter. “Just tell me the things he said.”

“Er, mostly he just had weird inflections on words and phrases. There was ‘paranoid, tonight, I live to party, comeback…’”

“Wait, stop,” Virgil said. “Let me guess a few. That’s Just the Way We Roll, Burnin’ Up, Sucker.”

“The first two were, but not the last one.”

Virgil laughed. “Maybe the last one was just implied.”

Janus frowned down. “What are you talking about? What does this all mean?”

Virgil pulled himself out from under his desk and grabbed his bag of phones. He dug through it for a few seconds before pulling one out and handing it to Janus. “I have a lab for my students where they get preloaded phones from the early 21st century and are supposed to guess the demographics of the person who owns it. This one is an iPhone 3 meant to belong to a pre-teen to teenage girl from the year 2009. Look under music artists starting with the letter ‘J.’”

15810

Confused, Janus scrolled through the old style phone, finding the music app and opening it easily. Upon getting to the ‘J’s, he immediately paused on an artist called the ‘Jonas Brothers.’ He clicked on it and read a few of the song titles. They weren’t all there, but…

“That rat bastard,” Janus said.

“Scroll to the bottom,” Virgil said. Janus did and found a song titled ‘Year 3000.’

“You’re kidding me.”

“Click on it,” Virgil requested.

Janus did, listening to the fairly standard pop like intro from the time period. It wasn’t until he got to the lyrics saying, ‘He told me he built a time machine’ that he cursed, understanding exactly what Pat had been doing. When the singer a few lines latter proclaimed that his neighbor said ‘I’ve been to the year 3000’ he almost smashed the artifact to pieces right then and there.

“I have no idea who this guy is,” Virgil said, “but he’s a comedic genius.”

Chapter 11

Khalid caught him on his way back into the TPI building. “I heard you went to Silver Mountains to follow up on a lead,” she said.

“Yeah, but it was garbage,” he seethed. “All I learned was ‘Pat’ knows early 2000s popular culture and likes to fuck with us.”

She hummed. “I’d still like a report about whatever you found. Who knows what we might end up getting from seemingly inconsequential data.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I have a mission for you.”

“We’re on lockdown,” Janus pointed out with a frown.

“For nonessentials,” she said. “This is essential.”

“What happened?” Janus asked.

“We picked up a small time distortion in France 2027. At the moment, it is small enough not to cause any disruptions, but it is slowly growing, and we don’t know what caused it. Usually we’d just send surveillance agents at this stage, but considering what’s going on, I think it would be best to send a field agent. And it would just be you, because we don’t want to send too many people out at once.”

“Is this related to the time bomb?” Janus asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “At the very least, it’s not it being set off as it was in 2999, but if it’s been altered for some other purpose…”

“I’ll go,” Janus said.

“I’ll send over the mission directive to everyone who needs it. You’ll go in around 3 hours.”

He nodded. “I’ll be ready,” he agreed.

In less then 3 hours, he was dressed for 2027 France and in decontamination. “Well,” he said out loud when he was given the all clear sign, “I hope I don’t explode.” He selected the coordinates on the timepiece and the next moment he was in a small alleyway in the city of Montpellier, France in 2027.

It was a little bit warm, but not stifling even in the mid-afternoon and he could faintly smell the sea on the breeze.

After a moment to get his bearings, Janus made his way out of the alleyway and onto a small street. The street was lined with restaurants and shops as people went about their daily lives. He carefully integrated himself into the crowd and began weaving his way through them. He needed to find the source of the distortion but doing a quick scan with his timepiece told him there wasn’t any sign of it yet. He’d have to wait for it to act up.

For now, he decided to get slightly away from people by heading towards the river. He found a park that had benches along water.

As he walked towards the river, he noticed a man on the bench, angled slightly away from Janus and looking out at the water. He immediately recognized the man. “You!” he exclaimed.

Pat’s head shot around to look at him, and he gave a slight head tilt. Then, he smiled, amused. “You are not the person I’m here for,” he said.

“Well, I am now,” Janus snapped. “Where’s the time bomb?”

“Time bomb?” Pat asked, eyebrows drawing together, but amusement on his lips. “Oh sweetie, the time bomb happened a long time ago for me.”

“What?” Janus asked.

“Oh, you’re just a baby,” Pat laughed. “Don’t you get it yet? The two of us are out of sync timeline wise. You’ve been apparently running around with a much younger version of me, but all of that happened quite a while ago for me. Don’t worry though, it gets better.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The time bomb has been long deactivated. Here,” he reached into his pocket and tossed him something. Janus caught it on instinct. “Proof. Don’t worry, we took all of the dangerous bits out years ago from my perspective.” It was the core of a time bomb, the time bomb Pat had stolen if he was to be believed. “You can tell your people it’s safe to remove the lockdown.”

Janus curled his fingers around it. “I don’t get it.”

Something on Pat’s wrist beeped and he looked at it curiously before he stood from the bench, “and I don’t have time to explain it.”

Janus jerked forward to grab his wrist. “Don’t you dare.”

Pat reached up to pat his face. “Don’t worry honey, you’ll be seeing me later.” He twisted his wrist and a small electric current sparked between them. Janus jerked his hand away, and Patton smiled at him. “Or… earlier.” He winked, and then he was gone.

Janus cursed, but he didn’t have more than a moment to be angry because in the next second there was a yelp, and something landed on top of him. He was bowled over into a tangle of limbs and pained noises.

“Oh my god, we need to figure out the height thing,” a familiar voice groaned, just as Janus managed to pull himself away. Pat blinked up at him and his eyes narrowed. “You,” he hissed.

“…What?”

Pat jumped to his feet, leaving Janus on the ground in front of him. “What are you doing here?” he spat, his tone much different then the one he’d been using a moment earlier. His hair was longer than it had been before, and if Janus looked closely, he did seem like he was a couple of years younger suddenly. Out of sync timelines. I’ll see you earlier. Holy shit.

He was suddenly very glad he’d been forced to let the other Pat (the older Pat?) go, else they’d have a whole thing on their hands.

“What are you doing here?” was Janus’s retort as he stood up and dusted himself off.

“It’s none of your business,” Pat told him.

“It is my business,” Janus said, “because for all I know, you are the cause of the time distortions I’m after. Considering that I doubt you have a license for that,” he waved at the odd looking timepiece of Pat’s wrist, “it’s very possible.”

“What are you?” Pat asked, “the time police.”

“Yes.”

Pat dared to roll his eyes, but then he tilted his head slightly. “Time distortions?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.”

He still had a confused frown on his face. Did… did he not know what a time distortion was?

Just then there was a sudden flash of lightening through the sky despite the absolutely lack of clouds. He and Pat both looked up.

“Is that the time distortion?” Pat asked.

“It’s probably the beginning of it,” Janus said.

“That doesn’t look good,” Pat said as he squinted at the sky.

“Just wait,” Janus answered grimly. He looked at Pat. “Usually I’d arrest you on the spot,” he said, “but I’m alone for this one, and that is far more important at the moment. So, have a nice day doing whatever bullshit you are doing.” He glanced at his timepiece.

Janus turned to walk away from him.

“Wait!” Pat exclaimed, and Janus turned back to him to see that his eyes were wide. Janus raised an eyebrow. “So, this time distortion thing is dangerous, right?”

“Depending on the severity, it could cause time to fracture around this place and time, basically erasing it from existence and killing everyone in it.”

“Well, in that case, I should go with you. To help.”

Janus looked him up and down. “You… have no idea what’s happening, do you? You’re an amateur.”

“I’m not,” he claimed. “I just. Pooling resources. You know?”

Janus sighed. “Well, you going around mucking about this time period without knowing what you’re doing could just exasperate the situation, so fine, you can tag along.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he grumbled even as he rushed to Janus’s side at the permission.

“Sure,” Janus said with an eyeroll. He guessed he was a babysitter now. “I believe you.”

Chapter 12

There was something off about his readings. Clearly the time distortion was starting to pull at this place with the way the weather was flickering between storming and sunny, but he still couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact location of the source of it. He could, however, get that it must be somewhere on this side of the river more into the downtown area, so that’s the way he was walking, Pat close on his heels.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

Janus shot him a glare. “Elvis Presley,” he said.

Pat frowned, clearly knowing who that was. “There’s no reason to be mean.”

“You did it to me first.”

“…Introduced myself as a famous musician?” he asked. Janus didn’t respond, and after a moment, Pat laughed lightly. “You really don’t understand time travel, do you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Janus said. “Name the three types of time distortions.”

“Just because I don’t know the names of things doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.” He stuck out his tongue. Janus was dealing with an actual toddler. “Unlike you who has a bunch of fancy words, but just caused a time loop.”

Janus scoffed. “I did not just cause a time loop.”

“Maybe not a big one,” Patton agreed, “but you did.”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never introduced myself to you with a musician’s name, but now you’ve told me that I will. So, at some point in the future I will have to, thereby making you think to say that now. Time loop.”

“That’s not… that doesn’t count.”

“Does too,” Pat claimed. “Like I have said once before and you may or may not have heard me say before, anything you do to me to get back at me for something I haven’t done yet, just causes whatever that is to happen in the first place.”

“But you’re still going to do it.”

“Then take it up with future me. I haven’t done anything to you.” Then he paused and sighed. “…Which I guess means you’ve done nothing to me.” He seemed to mull this concept over for a long moment. “Well you were a bit crabby about me not knowing what a time distortion was, but I can forgive you for that.”

“And I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“Like I said,” Pat said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You also haven’t done anything to endear yourself to me either,” Janus grumbled.

“Hmm,” Pat said. “Fine.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “You’re obviously not having much luck finding whatever you’re looking for. Tell me what it is and I’ll help.”

Janus squinted at what was in his hand. “Is that… an iPhone 5?”

“No!” he said. “It’s super-secret time travel tech disguised as an iPhone 5!”

“We’re in 2027,” Janus said. “Not a great disguise. Those things have been obsolete for a decade.”

“Well I’ll keep in mind to have my tech disguised as phones from the right year next time,” Pat said, sticking out his tongue. “Now what are we looking for?”

“If my timepiece can’t find it, I’m certain yours can’t.”

Pat rolled his eyes and tapped on the device’s screen a couple of times. “I’m going to guess it’s that,” he said proudly.

Janus leaned over to look at the screen. “Are you using google maps?” he sputtered.

“It integrates time relevant data like traffic conditions and local weather warnings with time travel technology,” Pat explained. “Something seems to be going on in a museum a couple of blocks that way.”

“I…” Janus said. That was actually a really good idea, usually unnecessary with scouts observing that data beforehand, and Janus wasn’t sure how good the accuracy would be considering whatever was taking it into account was automated, but still a good idea. “Well, I guess since we have no other leads, we can check it out.”

Pat looked far too proud for having only used a piece of tech that hadn’t even been confirmed as accurate. “Then, let’s go,” he said right as a chilly wind started to pick up and a couple of snowflakes began to fall around them. “Before that gets worse…”

Janus let Pat lead with his iPhone. Janus’s timepiece still wasn’t picking up a clear signal for some reason, but it seemed to point in the same general direction as Pat’s. Strangely though, as they got closer to their destination, the signal started to get fuzzier. Pat’s tech seemed unaffected leading them closer to the museum.

When they got to the museum, Janus stopped. “What?” Pat asked. He was shivering slightly in the cold and holding his arms around himself.

“My timepiece stopped working completely,” he said.

“I’m assuming that’s weird?” Pat said.

“It is,” Janus confirmed, turning to squint at him suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not the one doing it?”

“If I was doing it, wouldn’t I have just knocked it out from the get go?” Pat questioned.

Janus pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “Would you have? Maybe it’s a trick.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed a bit on him. “Think what you want, but I’m freezing. Come in with me if you want.”

#study break stories #not writing

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paper-chain-queen · 4 years

Text

Cherry Lip Gloss

Hatsuharu Sohma X Reader

Rating: Teen with slightly suggestive themes

Word Count : 1600+

Summary: Reader is a beauty vlogger and has been tagged in a challenge.

This is my first time writing a one-shot, XReader thing and got a little inspiration while watching YouTube. Even though Hatsuharu and Isuzu are one of my favortite manga ships, I just felt he would be fun for this little one-shot.

You rushed around the room getting ready, which included setting up the camera on a tripod, checking the shot to make sure Haru was in focus, and that nothing odd was in the frame.

Soft brown eyes looked around the bedroom, taking in all the different decor as you set everything up. You even made the bed properly, flattening out the sheets and organizing the pillows as it was in the shot and Haru assumed you didn't want people thinking you were messy or anything.

The bed had been made when he had gotten there. Granted, that had been a few hours ago, and few 'activities' had happened since then.

"You've got dirty in your eyes." You teased as you fluffed a pillow and placed it neatly on the bed, moving to the squishy cow plushie that had fallen on the floor and putting it back on the bed.

" Can't help it, I'm a healthy teenage boy with hormones." He simply stated, and you were tempted to throw a pillow at him but resisted.

You could feel Haru's eyes burning holes in you as you adjusted the camera and lighting, checking everything for a second time to make sure it looked good. You usually wouldn't be filming to late in the day, but Haru had come over unannounced, so there was a change in plans.

Well, you had mentioned to him that your parents were out of town for the weekend, and Haru had possibly seen a rare opportunity to be alone with you. Not that you were complaining.

You took a breath and fluffed out your hair a bit as you sat down next to Haru, who was already fidgeting with a tube of mascara on the low-table.

"Hello my lovelies, welcome back to my channel, today we have a super special guest, Haru-Kun." You smiled at the camera and then presented the handsome boy who only gave the nod to the camera, greeting your audience with a simple and polite, 'hello and thank you for having me.'

You were already sure that you were going to get a hundred comments just about how hot Haru was. Not that you could blame them in the slightest.

Hastuharu had a 'bad boy' look, but despite his tattoos and piercings that could make him look a little intimidating, he was the sweetest boy you knew. Well... he was sweet and polite for the majority of the time. His dark side was a whole other story. But you found yourself loving both because whether he was light or dark, he was still Haru, and you loved him.

"Thank you for tagging me to do this challenge, I am so excited, alas... I am single, BUT Haru-Kun offered to help me out anyway." You explained to your audience, it was a lie, but you and Haru simply couldn't be public about your romantic relationship due to his family.

You looked to your white and black haired boyfriend, asking for what had to be the 7th time if he was really okay with doing this. Hatsuharu was so kind, and you didn't want to pressure him into doing anything he wasn't comfortable doing.

"Do you not trust me?" He asked, slightly lifting an eyebrow but still maintaining his somewhat placid face.

"Of course I do." You did trust him with your life... you, however, didn't fully trust him to be able to do your make-up, but it would be fun.

"I've laid out all of my daily make-up along with a few other fun stuff." As you spoke, Haru started to stretch as if he were getting ready for a fight, and you had to stop yourself from laughing from his dead-pan face as he did so.

"Are you going to tell me what to do?" Haru asked, already looking a little overwhelmed just by picking up your eyelash curler as if it were some device from outer space.

"Nope!" You chirped, popping the 'P.' He pouted, and you had to stop yourself from leaning over and placing a kiss on his lips. He was just way too cute for his own good.

The boy looked over all the products, picking up one and then placing it down before picking up another.

"What's this?" He asked

"Moisturizer." At that, he pumped the bottle and squirted a bit of creme into his hands, then proceeding to gently massage it into your face. Haru was very gentle with you, which didn't surprise you one bit.

"And this?" Now he was just being ridiculous.

"... lip gloss." You gave him a look that said 'seriously' as you tried to fight off a smile.

"Ah.. I like this one." He smirked as he stared blatantly at your lips.

"Haru!" You whined as your face blew up red, and he only laughed softly, clearly enjoying tormenting you. Haru really needed to be more discrete if we wanted to keep you guys a secret.

"I'll save this for last..." He mentions as he places the cherry lip gloss down and picks up a bottle of your foundation.

He was surprisingly confident as he just squirted the bottle onto your face multiple times, you finally had to stop him after the 4th pump, asking him not to waste anything.

No words could describe the way you cringed when he picked up a blush brush and started to spread your foundation all over your face.

"What? Am I doing it right?" He asked as he pulled away the brush that had already worked its 'magic' on half of your face.

"You do whatever you feel is right." You told him, even though you really wanted to turn his attention towards your regular foundation brush.

While he looked for the next thing to do, you tapped on the table, trying to gesture to the blending sponge without being completely obvious.

"That is cheating, miss." He playfully scolded as he 'booped' you the nose with your now slightly ruined blush brush.

"Sir, I do not know what you are referring to... now pick up the sponge and blend out my face, please," you begged as you forced him to take the sponge into his hand, and he only smiled as he then just started hitting you in the face with the sponge, gently bouncing it on your face.

"This works a lot better...." He muttered as he continued to blend out your foundation, making it look a lot less streaky.

"Yeah, good call." You teased, unable to hide your smirk, and at that comment, you earned a pinch to your thigh, making you squeal.

You made a mental note to edit that out later.

"Next is... oh this, this goes right here." Homeboy picked out the brightest blush he could find in your collection and went in hard.

"Oh..."

You bit the inside of your cheek as you caught your reflection in the mirror on the table.

"Haruuuu." You whined and started laughing as Haru went back to hit you in the face with the make-up sponge, trying to fix his mistake, making the bright blush a little less atrocious.

It was fun watching him concentrate so hard on the task, his face completely serious as he applied your make-up. As he worked, you just simply enjoyed his handsome features.

When it came time to do your eyes, you were thankful for the comically bright blush because Haru cradled your face to do your eyeliner, your heart was beating a million miles a minute.

"Okay, look up," Haru instructed, getting a little more confident the more he worked, you followed his orders and let him apply your mascara.

Haru backed away, holding your chin in his hands, admiring his handiwork. Last but not least, he reached for the cherry lip gloss he had picked up earlier and then instead of putting it on you, applied it to his own lips.

"What are-" Haru didn't let you finish your sentence as he leaned towards you and gave you a deep kiss, the cherry lip gloss transferring from his lips to yours.

"Haru! We're filming!" You squealed as he continued to give you small, delicate kisses along your jawline and down your neck.

"You -can edit -it out later." He said in between kisses.

"You love creating extra work for me!" You tried to get mad at him, but Haru was making it impossible for you to think straight.

"Well, since you're already going to have to cut it out anyway.... might as well take advantage." The handsome boy smirked, his darker side coming out to play as he placed kisses from your collarbone, sucking softly on your neck and then bringing you in for a long, heated kiss on your lips. Haru's fingers trailed up your waist to your chest, gently feeling you up, causing a moan to erupt from your mouth as his hand slid under your sweatshirt.

"No bra.. naughty girl... let's give them something worth watching," Haru smirked as he carefully pushed you onto the ground as he hovered over you, ravishing you as much as his curse would allow.

Later, when you posted the challenge video, only a few people commented on how Haru's clothes were slightly dishevelled compared to the beginning of the video. You were just glad no one noticed the bite mark the boy left on your neck.

Haru had also been begging for the full unedited video, but you were holding it hostage in case you needed him for another video challenge.

Maybe next time he would let you do his make-up.

#fanfiction #fruits basket fanfiction #hatsuharu sohma #haru x reader #fruits basket #hatsuharu x reader #fruits basket x reader

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crowwstudies · 4 years

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hello!! i’m selena and i’m back after years of not being active on this site. i still go here for inspiration but i reblog lately. rn and i’m in a slump because we have been in quarantine in almost a month and i haven’t left the house in a solid two weeks (so i’m making this post to try to cope). yes, we’re all in quarantine rn and i know y’all are looking for ways to cope/distract yourselves/be productive during this time. also, i’ll do my best to be realistic because i’m also trying to find ways to cope based on experience.

i will emphasize, NO ONE is going to pressure anyone into being productive during the quarantine because we all just want to get by.

“but what if i’m doing well during this quarantine and i just what to let time pass by?”

then this post is for you !!

1. schedule what you can do for the day

maybe we all keep saying we’re bored, we have nothing to do, we feel so unproductive this and that; so i could suggest making a list of what you do during the day to fill up the time slots of your day. this all depends on what time you wake up and what time you go to sleep (my sleep schedule is wack lately lmao i just wanted to share)

once you feel that you still have nothing to do or you still have gaps in your schedule, then you could look for more ideas on what to do or just simply take a nap (because i swear to god naps are the best). maaaaaybe you could try a new hobby and finally commit to it (no pressure, though, after all we’re going through a pandemic)

if you want some printables on a daily schedule, i have some links

universi-tea moodyprintables

2. declutter your room, organize your desk, make everything prettier !!

okay so quarantine. we’re all stuck in our rooms, our houses, and whatever else you see. so why not make everything more pleasing to the eyes? maybe, through decluttering, you’ll find something that will remind you of something (i hope it isn’t something bad tho) and maybe you have some decors that you haven’t hung up like string lights. but please, before the string lights, consider the electricity bill, especially for families that don’t have a source of income rn.

you could also handcraft your own decorations, and speaking of that, i could transition to my next suggestion, which is...

3. try out crafting

of course, with the materials you have in your reach. you could make origami, perhaps a curtain of paper cranes, a wall of paper flowers, a string of paper decorations? these links below could suggest more

diy paper room decorations diy yarn room decorations easy wall art diy home accents fabric projects

there are more ideas on the internet, and maybe you have other materials you have stored in your house !! you can search up more diy projects based on that and you could put a twist to the ideas you see on the internet

4. have a try at journaling

based from my experience, self-isolation leads us into being stuck with our thoughts. so, journaling is one way to let out those thoughts. there are a lot of ways to journal, whether traditionally or digitally, and there are a lot of ideas on the internet. if you don’t know where to get started, here are a few useful posts out of the shitton of posts you can find on the internet

bullet journaling: a guide by bujowsofie 31 day journal challenge by coffeeandpoem journaling ideas/inspiration by gh0stylt 15 things to collect in your journal by improving-slowly 150 self-discovery and bullet journal prompts by undersoilanddirt masterpost of journal prompts by undersoilanddirt

5. learn a new language

have you ever attempted to learn a new language but was never able to commit to it? now is like... a perfect time since we have possibly months of quarantine so we’re gonna be stuck here doing nothing lol anyways you don’t have to commit either if you don’t absolutely feel like it. it’s really up to you if you want to do this for a long time since this is a way to pass time for the quarantine period. here are useful links and masterposts for people trying to learn a new language

how to learn a language when you don’t know where to start by escapetoluna 2+ months of language learning prompts by amillionlanguages language learning masterpost by languagessi tips for starting a langblr by join-the-dutch-clan

6. pick up a new hobby

there are lots of hobbies you can learn with the help of youtube (or online courses, if you can afford it; and as they say,, hope all..) here is a list of hobbies i could suggest

drawing/painting photography playing a musical instrument writing handcrafting cooking/baking sewing

7. start working out at home

there are a lot of ways to get fit (since diets and meal plans are a difficult option ngl especially where i live in), and working out does not require equipment. you could perhaps use applications (i personally use Home Workout), or you could do yoga by watching and imitating what instructors do on youtube. you could even try getting flexible during the quarantine period or even study your favorite dances (or even just a little bit of zumba!!)

8. do some advance studying in your academics

yes. i hate mentioning this. but if your online classes aren’t suspended (hello @ my school idk what you’re doing but it’s not effective at all for underprivileged students) then you better check your priorities LMAO. i do wish that whatever situation you are in is conducive for you to be able to learn, but if you’re done with your academics you could do some advance studying so that you can get a headstart once you go back to “normal”.

9. oooooor you could study an online course you are interested in

there are free courses offered by the ivy league rn, here is the link !!

10. and lastly, remember that this pandemic is a time for you to rest and be aware of what’s happening outside. multiple factors led us into this situation and we must make a change for these type of things to not happen again. as the youth, we must be socially aware because it’s our job to help our nation.

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borisbubbles · 4 years

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28. ITALY

Diodato - “Fai Rumore”

youtube

And we’re back to our usual disconnect, where everyone pretends to love Italy and I don’t. I cannot wait for all the Italian crazies to be OUTRAGED by this ranking (28/41 is fine for an entry I don’t care about...?) and reblog this all over the tumblrverse and inflate my reader stats. 😈 but first, let’s discuss what we have on our hands here.

Song Analysis

There’s no way this post *won’t* end up offensive to every Fai Rumore fan, so I will resort to brutal honesty. I never, ever, *ever* cared about “Fai rumore”. In fact, I’d even say it’s strongly overrated by the gross of the Eurovision fandom?

Okay so here’s the deal. I will not deny that “Fai Rumore” has several things going for it. The song has emotional gravitas, Diodato has a great voice and acts very well. It’s technically precise and well produced. It is very competent at what it sets out to be, which is a very standard HQ Sanremo Power Ballad.

But here’s where I feel like I deviate from the norm: You may think “wow Fai Rumore! How brilliant, meticulous and poised”, but I think “how expected, overtly earnest and unfun?”

The problem is, this is Boris’s Bubble and Boris doesn’t enjoy songs that feel like they belong inside a trophy cupboard, and “Fai rumore” is exactly one of those songs, don’t lie. So “meticulous, poised and brilliant” you say, well *I* say “how overtly earnest, unfun and aloof”? I have a Spotify - if I wanted to listen to good music, I’d just use that? Or one of my like 15 Youtube Playlists containing non-ESC entries? Why would I watch Eurovision, or Sanremo for that matter, for the good music when there are so many other (and easier) options available for me that align better to my tastes?

The fact that “Fai Rumore” is *too* perfect for me (and therefore very hard to empathize with imo) is one thing, which leads to other thing I need to point out. I’ll let my friend Matthew take over here, who wrote this paragraph on ESCUnited right after Diodato’s selection:

That final sentences is bone-chilling because it’s so, so true. “I AM A SOPHISTICATED MUSIC FAN BECAUSE I FOLLOW ~FESTIVALE DI SANREMO~” is such a common trope of elistism (like, replace “San Remo” with any quality newspaper, nobel prize winning author or classical music composer and you’ll find to be nearly universally applicable to snobs across the globe), but I find it specifically ugly in Eurovision.

You see, would the same courtesy be extended to a country of lower prestige if they got a Fai Rumore? Would the same courtesy be extended to a person of colour? or a woman? How about others songs that, like Fai Rumore, emulate their country’s musical traditions (Fai Rumore is SO italian you can smell the basil), except those traditions fall outside of the western European bubble? See, it doesn’t bother me that Italians like Fai Rumore and are proud of it. They’re Italians. Of course they are! I don’t judge them for it. I don’t rly care if the odd introvert finds solace in a song of this calibre. But as soon as Matthew made the aforementioned post, people who had previously rated Diodato as a 5/6 already started adjusting their scores to 10s and 12s and, well...

It bothers me that the same fanbase that DEMANDS cultural diversity (Diodato) and/or MOAR ETHNOBOPS (Efendi) refuse to accept a Solovey or an Origo -which are a thousandfold more layered, sophisticated and daring- as an equal.

It bothers *even more* me that people are willing to immediately give Italy a plethora of chances (especially when they choose men! fuck institutionalised sexism!), while not doing the same for a Belarus. Belarus HAS no clear musical scene or funds to really produce good music, yet produced a ridiculously good NF (with a VERY righteous winner - yes, Chakras, but also: Chakras) I’ve seen snobs SLAM VAL, mercilessly despite being an excellent left-field pick (god imagine if Yan had won Eurofest for a sec. What a nightmare). Italy, otoh, also delivered a sterling NF, have *a VERY* rich musical tradition, tons of talent and money and production value... and they still went the lowest common denominator available, and yet they receive praise, without so much as a whisper of protest from our so-called “value seekers”. This level of hypocrisy and double standard wielding, all in the name of wishing to be taken seriously delivers *such* a toxic undercurrent to Eurovision and has absolutely soured me on Diodato. This isn’t his fault, but sadly he’s become a weapon of mass misconstruction and well just because I hate the guy who pressed the big red button more doesn’t mean I automatically like ICBMs. As we come near the songs I actually give a damn’ about, I will start calling the shitpociries out. Brace yourself for it, when I rank Solovey and Da Vidna inside my top five.

Want some examples specifically pertaining to the Diodato fandom? Sure, I’ll give you some:

EJEMPLO UNO:

Diodato fanboys openly coddling him on social media post-lockdown all “PROTECT OUR POOR MUNCHKIN FROM THE CORONAVIRUS”. Like... he’s a *thirty-eight year old adult* he can take care of himself, BACK UP OFF HIM you freaks.

EJEMPLO DOS:

The relevant media having baptized Diodato as THE SAVING GRACE OF THE LOCKDOWN, ITALIANS SINGING ‘FAI RUMORE’ FROM THEIR BALCONIES IN DEFIANCE OF COVID-19, which is such a bullshit narrative it’s turned my hair from black to brown. Yes, the Italians sang “Fai Rumore”. What they don’t tell you is that they also sang many other Italian and non-Italian songs, including humanitarian anthem “Roar” by Kety Perr (cue to Katy Perry being like “OMG I’M SO HONORED TO INSPIRE SO MANY ITALIANS ::hungarianflagemoji::” on twitter.). CNN Like, Eurovision related media LOVE portraying it as a ~life-chaning confort anthem~ - the reality is that “Fai rumore”, while playing its part, was merely a tiny spoke in a giant wheel.

EJEMPLO QUATRO:

Well take a look at how many people will reblog this post and slam it for daring to point out, what I think are really obvious truths to anyone who doesn’t suffer from musical myopia.

In the end, the song is okay and it’s okay to love it. But if you ‘love’ it because you’ve convinced yourself that you must, and not because it genuinely means something to you, I don’t think you have grounds to criticise to criticise anyone but yourself.

NF Corner

As I said, I didn’t follow San Remo live (I never do! *gasp* blasphemy, I know), but I did plan to check it for this write-up except RAI deleted every live performance? And they won’t let me embed the few remaining vids either?

Anyway, this happened so right-click-open this a new tab and then return once you’ve finished it.

Backstage feuds being fought out LIVE on the stage in front of millions of viewers 😍 Apparently Morgan and Bugo were at loggerheads for a while, and had a massive row RIGHT before their performance on the second night, which caused Morgan to stray from the script and sing all the insulting things Bugo told him *to Bugo* instead of the actual lyrics of their duet. 😍 😍 😍 Bugo IMMEDIATELY stormed off the stage to the point where Amadeus had to like... literally tell the gobsmacked audience that Bugo had left the building 😍 😍 😍. This is some god-tier pettiness and I’m completely in awe of it. DEITIES. 😍

aside from Sincerogate, I would’ve embedded vidoes that contained the DRAMA (Rancore), CAMP (Achille) and UNABASHED WEIRDNESS (Levante) of this year’s line-up, but I guess RAI really doesn’t like for people to have fun. Oh well.

Italy 2020 vs Italy 2021

Diodato is male and Italian, so yeah, guaranteed top 10 in Rotterdam, no matter what happens. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Cynicism aside, televoters WOULD have flocked to it without thinking twice (for exactly those two reasons), passing over many better entries in the process and well... I’m tired and exhausted and I think you can guess I am not very impressed by this likely outcome.

Not sure what RAI’s strategy for 2021 is (lol it’s RAI - they don’t have a strategy. besides Italy have bigger fish to fry than the Eurovision Song Contest as you know), but I’m not very invested either way. I could imagine them internally selecting Diodato if he’s willing to do ESC in 2021, but if this was a one-off deal (which I think it was), they will probably select another plain white bloke for you to obsess over, so no worries :-) #TuttoVaPene

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’m sort of conflicted? On one hand, god Fai Ru*snore* is SO typical of “Italy in Eurovision”, not just from a musical perspective but from a point of reverence as well. On to the other hand, when are the fanbases *not* acting insane w/r/t Italy?

San Remo was really crazy this year, enough for me to award Italy a couple Senheads. However... if I wanted to see nice and inoffensive triumph over a bunch of deranged, gimmicky, ott masterpieces, I’d just rewatch #London1977? (offensive take #16: “people that like Marie Myriam the most in 1977 do not understand Eurovision”) Ehhhh whatevs.

Score: 2 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovison Song Contest #Italy #Diodato #Fai Rumore

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the-last-airbadger · 3 years

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My 2020

Hey y’all. So 2020 happened. That was a thing. Apparently. I know for a lot of people this year was uhm… pretty shit… but it was still a year that happened so it’s time for my annual reflection post (probably the only time I still post about myself on tumblr lol) and maybe we might even find some good things that happened this year!

The Beginning of 2020 vs Now

So, a lot has changed since the start of the year. A pandemic happened, for one. I can’t believe that a year ago I could still go to class every day and see my friends and now I’m pretty much stuck at home every day. The year started out pretty normal and then march happened and well, you all know what happened next. The worst part about the pandemic for me personally was probably the fact that I barely see my friends anymore and I can’t go to class every day. Some people may not think that not going to class is that bad, but I really enjoyed university more than I ever enjoyed school and I was really happy going there every day, and I was already sad I’d only have 4 to 5 years to spend there, so when that period got even shorter it made me kinda sad.

On the other hand, I do think that mentally I’m in a much better place than I was last year around this time. Being home this much really gave me time to reflect and work on my issues, and because my sister was stuck in our house for a couple of weeks I got to talk to her a lot which really helped me feel better. I think in general my entire family (my brother, sister and mom) have become a lot more open with each other which I think is great! I guess quarantine can have some benefits.

The Best Things about 2020

Okay, here’s is where we’re going to get even more positive and go over all the good things that happened (to me) this year! To be honest, most of the year was a bit of a blur so I probably will forget quite a bit, but I’m going to give this a try anyway. At the start of the year (when things were still normal) I was super excited to get into the next semester, as the one before had,,, kinda sucked, and those 6 weeks of class I had at the start of the year were really great. I remember me and my friends having a competition of who could get mentioned the most in our teacher’s powerpoint presentation so those classes were always interesting. I also finally got to dye my hair for the first time with the help of my friends. I’ve been wanting to do that for so long, and I’m so happy I finally got to do it! I even know how to do it myself now, and my hair hasn’t been brown since the start of march! Then, at the start of march, my dad and stepmother moved away and I permanently moved in with my mom. Before, I used to live with both my mom and my dad and I got really really sick of switching houses every week, so to finally live in one house and have all my stuff in one place was a bit of a relief to me, and I’m still really happy with it. After that, things become a bit blurry. I remember that at the start of quarantine in … April? I watched Sex Education or the first time, which is now not only one of my favourite shows ever, but also taught me a lot and helped me with some of the issues I was dealing with. We’ll skip over the subsequent sexuality crisis I had (I think I might actually be straight??), and skip straight to the summer, when I started watching I-Land. I watched every episode as it aired live, and because of this show my Fridays really became the highlight of the week. I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in a survival show XD. The rest of the year was mostly just me spending time with myself. It got a bit lonely sometimes, but I also don’t think I’ve ever written as much as I have this year, and my drawing has significantly improved (if I may say so myself)! Especially towards the end of the year, when I started making a planning every day to prevent myself from wasting away all my time on youtube, I got super productive, and I wrote a lot, and made a lot of art, and I really felt good. I even started (gasp) working out. Yeah I know. Shocking right.

There was also a lot of good music that was released this year, and, to close this section on a great note, through one of my classes I finally found a group of friends to play D&D with! We haven’t actually played yet, but we will, and I’m so excited to play the game and get to know these people more! They all seem really kind!

My Resolutions for 2020?

Now, here’s the part where we check whether I actually reached all the goals I set myself for 2020. As usual, I have no idea what my resolutions were, so I honestly have no idea how I did. Let’s see, shall we?

Express my feelings more (as in I get really awkward in any sappy or mushy situation but I would like to be able to tell people I appreciate them without cringing) – UHM way to attack me on the very first resolution jeez. I did get more open with my family but I still can’t tell people I care about them without cringing so this is a fail lol

Again, learn to depend less on other people’s opinion and trust my own – I’ve been working on it, I think I’ve gotten a bit better? So win?

Get my sleeping schedule back on track – did that! It’s a bit whacky again now because of the holidays, but October and November were a big success regarding this resolution

WRITE MORE. This time I’ll make some concrete goals: Either I’ll get my story’s first draft done, or I’ll write 100 pages on a single project – okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t think I did any of these particular things, however this time I am 100% sure I wrote a lot more than the past years. I cannot count all the files and pages and notes I have now, but I wrote a lot, so I’m counting this as a win

I want to try NaNoWriMo (not necessarily in November, but at some point) – yeah, didn’t do that oops

I want to read a lot again but maybe not as much as this year because I want to focus on writing too. 40 books? – 49 books babey

Read all my current unread books (Aru Shah 2, Skullduggery Pleasant 9, Gemina, The Mistborn Trilogy and Call Down The Hawk) and finish my reread of Heroes of Olympus and the Raven Cycle) – Did all of these except Skullduggery Pleasant 9 (the start was so boring I decided not to read it all) and The Mistborn Trilogy (I am about halfway through the first book I think?) so I’m counting this as half a win

Finally read a book by V.E. Schwab (I’ve been wanting to try one of her books for ages) – Did that! Read a whole trilogy. It was good but not as great as I expected them to be. I think my expectations were too high though

Finish Playing Twilight Princess (I promised my brother) – Did that! I’m really proud of myself and so is my brother

Go. Swimming. Seriously. It’s scandalous that I still haven’t done that after waiting so long to be able to – IT’S BEEN 5 YEARS SINCE I LAST WENT SWIMMING WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. I did buy new swimshorts but I still haven’t actually used them… shame on me

Try to worry less about school and not overwork myself – kinda?

Maybe try another drawing challenge somewhere this summer? I haven’t done any of those in a while and I feel like my art needs more attention – okay, so I didn’t do that, but I did at the start of the year make the resolution to make portrait/photoshoot-like drawings for my 8 main oc’s, and I did actually manage to finish that, and they are some of the best drawings I’ve ever made, so though I haven’t actually done a challenge specifically, I did do something

I want to try a 24 hour readathon – Yeah, didn’t do that oops

I kinda want to learn a piano piece as well, but I already have so many hobbies I want to focus on so I don’t know if I’ll have the time ☹ – yeah my dad sold our piano so… fail XD

Expectations for 2021

Now, after last year I think it’s safe to say we can never really know what to expect. But! I’m going to guess anyway because it’ll be really fun to see next year whether I got anything right.

The first thing that I think will probably happen this year (if I don’t majorly mess anything up) is I’ll be writing my thesis next semester, and then in the summer I’ll get my bachelor’s degree. Honestly I can’t believe how fricking fast those 3 years went, but I guess I’ll just have to roll with it lol. Corona vaccinations will also probably start happening next year, and hopefully this will mean that going outside and seeing my friends will be possible again next year – at least a lot more than it was this year. I hope 2021 will be the year of hanging out with friends and getting to live a little again. Maybe even get to go to class. That would be great.

On to more minor – but no less exciting – things, 2021 will probably bring us a new season of Sex Education! I’m sooo excited for that holy shit. And, in a similar vein, I have high hopes for kpop releases now that SHINee is finally back, and it looks like Haseul is also returning to LOONA! 2021 will also be the year in which ENHYPEN makes their first comeback, and some of the other I-LAND contestants will also make their debut, and there might even be a new season of I-LAND as well in the summer? So there’s a lot of things to look forward to. Oh, and I almost forgot, Dan Howell’s book will be released in May, and there will be a new Grishaverse book, and the Shadow and Bone show will start airing, which I am really curious about. Again, lots of things to look forward to!

2021 Resolutions

I’m not feeling as ambitious as I was last year, but there are a couple of things I want to try and do, so let’s jump into the resolutions!

I just came up with this today, but I think I want to try and build a bit of a skincare routine? The skin on my nose is kinda flakey, and I think it couldn’t hurt to try and take better care of my skin

Keep up with my daily workouts. I want to work out every day, except when I’m at my dad’s or when it’s a special day, like Christmas or something.

Be able to do either 50 push-ups on my knees, 25 normal push-ups, or both

GO SWIMMING

Keep up with planning daily! It’s a really good way to balance all of my 3195 hobbies and it helps me to not get stressed about school

Write (almost) every day. I need to make it a habit

Draw at least once a week, every other day if possible

Go outside at least once a week. That doesn’t seem very hard but with corona I did not realise how little I go outside if I am not forced to. Sometimes I spend 3 weeks without going out and I don’t even notice it. That can’t be good for me lol

Try to make healthier food choices. Maybe follow the lunch meal plan of the guy whose workout videos I follow.

Get my bachelor’s degree

Grow a beard. I’m getting closer… I know I’m getting closer…

Meet with my frIENDS and give them the alBUMS I have for them

Be more careful with my money, maybe even save a bit of money

Spend less time on social media

Read more educational books

I think that’s it! I can’t think of anything else right now so these will have to do. I wish that 2021 will treat all of you much better than whatever mess 2020 was! Happy 2021!

Last year’s post: (x)

@the-official-pentacorn @asiandutchgirl

#personal #my 2020 #this year was a wild ride #here's to a better 2021

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1052

surveys by lets-make-surveys

1 - Who was the last person to knock on your door? Were they there to see you? Nina usually knocks briefly in the evening to let me know it’s time for dinner. Other than my ex in the past, I don’t let anyone stay in my room for long. Knocking and peeking into my room is enough.

2 - Have you left the house yet today? If not, do you have plans to leave the house later on? No, as it’s only 10 in the morning and I don’t really have a reason to be out somewhere this early. I might go out to buy presents for more relatives, but that’s only if I feel productive enough today. We’ll see.

3 - What’s your favourite brand of chocolate? What type of chocolate bar from that brand is your favourite? The older I get the more I feel like gagging from the idea of chocolate bars lol; they’re all just so sweet. These days my top three would be Hershey’s cookies and cream bar, Whittaker’s chocolate peanut butter bar, and Twix bars. I also love Reese’s, but they aren’t bars.

4 - Have you ever met someone in person who you first met on the internet? Do you have plans to do that anytime soon? Yes, I’ve done this before and I’ve recounted the stories on here multiple times. As for the second question, yeah I technically do? I’ve only met my workmates online so far, so I’m constantly looking forward to the opportunity to finally meet them all in real life.

5 - What was the last thing you used a blender for? I’ve never used a blender. We don’t even own a blender.

6 - Have you ever got into an argument with a stranger on social media? Do you remember what it was about? Yeah, but I don’t even remember what it was about anymore...I do know it was this year, and the person deleted the comment that I replied to not long after.

7 - When was the last time you cracked your joints? Is that something you do often? Now that you reminded me, I just did. I do it at least once a day, whenever my fingers start to feel tight and tense.

8 - What time is it right now? If you weren’t doing a survey, what else would you be doing right now? It is 1:52 PM. I’d be heading to the mall to buy more presents, but I don’t feel like getting out of bed yet. I’d also do embroidery, but my online orders are taking a while to arrive :( My online shopping app says I'll be getting them by Jan 3rd, but the shipping tracker says it’s already being shipped from China to here so I’m looking forward to receiving it this week. I hope that’s the case; otherwise it’ll miss the point of being my hobby this Christmas break.

9 - If you had ten minutes to run around an empty supermarket and fill your trolley for free, what’s the first aisle you’d go for? The fancy meat/fish section. Then I’d go to the condiments/spice section, then frozen food, then chips.

10 - Aside from Tumblr, what websites do you visit the most and why? YouTube, because I find videos a soothing distraction; Twitter to keep me updated on local and international news; Reddit for quirky posts; and Wikipedia so I can continue learning trivia I’ll never have to use but want to gain anyway.

11 - Has COVID had any impact on your Christmas plans this year? What’s going to change or be different to normal? My dad is home for Christmas this year, which is one silver lining from Covid. But my relatives living abroad who usually fly back to the Philippines for the holidays obviously won’t be able to this year, so we’re not gonna have a packed family reunion like we normally do. Everything else is the same, but I think the biggest thing about this whole thing is that I can barely feel Christmas coming this year. I think it’s going to feel like such a plain Friday this week; and that makes me a little sad.

12 - What’s your favourite flavour of cake? Are you any good at making that kind of cake? My favorite flavor is chocolate, but my favorite kind of cake (which I enjoy a lot more than general chocolate cake) is cheesecake. I cannot make either, nor can I bake at all.

13 - Do you prefer sweet or sour candy? Sweet. I hate any sour foods with a passion lol especially sour candy; it is my absolute least favorite taste. I don’t find anything enjoyable or fulfilling about it.

14 - What colour is your favourite fruit? Is this a fruit you eat often? Already made my feelings for fruit clear on this blog, haha.

15 - Is your favourite restaurant an independent place or a chain? What is it that you love about it so much? It’s a chain, like most popular restaurants here. Independent places are a little hard to come by, to be honest. They make the best katsu I’ve ever had; and I also like that despite being a chain restaurant, the ambience is still quite sophisticated and date-friendly so I always feel like I’m treating myself whenever I eat there.

16 - Are you genuinely a fan of Starbucks or do you think it’s all hype? I personally enjoy everything about Starbucks. I like their coffees, their Frappes, the ambience in their coffee shops, their playlists, and their line-up of mugs and tumblers. I’ve always felt right at home in their shops and out of all the cafés I’ve been to, it’s always their baristas that have been the nicest.

17 - Do you own a Christmas jumper? What design/pattern does it have on it? No, I don’t.

18 - What’s your favourite fit/style of jeans? I was obsessed with mom jeans throughout 2020.

19 - What was the last non-essential item you spent money on? Overpriced coffee and a sandwich.

20 - Are you currently under any COVID-related restrictions where you live? Are people generally following the rules? Public places are super strict with requiring everyone to wear a face shield and face mask; before entering any establishment, people’s temperatures are taken and everyone’s also required to take a contact tracing form. Anyone under the age of 21 still isn’t allowed to go out for the most part, though I think there are some exceptions now because I see kids younger than me already going on out-of-town trips again. Some places that are big on tourism like Sagada, Batanes, and Baguio are still closed off from the public; those that have since reopened, like Boracay, follow strict protocol and everyone going there is required to undergo a swab test. Everyday Filipinos follow the rules; it’s the politicians and police force who don’t, which feels disgusting to say.

21 - What did you last leave the room you’re in to do? A package arrived for me so I had to pay for it. It was the phone case I ordered for my cousin.

22 - Have you ever read any self-help books? Did you find them useful? No. I don’t really believe in that genre, so I never felt pulled to buy a book.

23 - What’s your favourite programme on the Food Network (if you watch it)? If you don’t get that channel, what’s your favourite food/cookery show in general? All things Gordon Ramsay, man. MasterChef, Hell’s Kitchen, and Kitchen Nightmares are all *chef’s kiss* The Great British Bake Off is also great and something I like watching when I want to wind down :)

24 - Do you still watch cartoons? From time to time.

25 - Who do you know with the most number of siblings? Would you ever want to live in a huge family? My grandpa was one of nine siblings, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not sure if I know a bigger set than that. Unless my family was filthy rich, I would not want to have such a big immediate family.

26 - Are you a fan of garlic bread? Sure. I tend to ask for others’ too, heh.

27 - Do you own any personalised clothing? What’s the reason for getting it? No, not a fan. Two years ago we had a huge family reunion on my dad’s side and we had to wear these cheesy shirts that said “[Last Name] Reunion” with some cheesy motto at the bottom. My parents hated it, which made me feel better about my own feelings about the shirt lol.

28 - Is anyone else in the same room as you right now? What is that person up to? No, it’s just me here.

29 - What colours are you wearing right now? Does your wardrobe contain a lot of those colours? White, maroon, and scarlet. I have a lot of white and maroon; not so much of scarlet as I find the color too bold.

30 - Do you like adding condiments to your food? If so, what are some of your favourites? Yes. My food always needs to have soup, condiments, or sauces; otherwise I tend to feel the dish is too dry. I like mayonnaise, banana ketchup, hot sauce, and lechon sauce.

1 - What have you been up to so far today? Is that a typical thing for you to do on this particular day of the week? I’ve taken a couple of surveys and started binge-watching segments of my newest Korean reality show discovery, 2 Days 1 Night. The breakout actor from Start-Up and the newest love of my life HAHAHA is a cast member on the current season of 2D1N so I’ve been all over the show today. It’s hilarious; I can hardly believe I’m only discovering the show this late.

2 - Did you get a decent night’s sleep last night? How many hour’s sleep do you consider a decent amount? It was around five hours, which isn’t a lot to me. I usually sleep 7-9 hours these days, but I might wreck my body clock during the holiday break because I want to keep being awake and do the things I haven’t been able to do because of work.

3 - What is one silly thing that really gets on your nerves? Seeing pickles in a burger.

4 - Who was the last person you saw who wasn’t family? What did you guys end up doing together? The friendly Starbucks barista from yesterday; her name was Princess. We didn’t do anything lol, she just took my order and was super friendly about it, and she also gave me the Starbucks planner that I chose to redeem.

5 - Do you prefer hot or cold drinks overall? Cold. I avoid hot drinks now haha. Ever since I had that incident with the takoyaki, I’ve been too scared to let any hot food or drink touch my mouth.

6 - Do you own a decent set of waterproofs? If so, what do you use them for the most? If not, do you think that would be something you’d find useful? I don’t know what this is referring to, and I’m too lazy to Google right now. I’ve only ever known this word as an adjective, whoops.

7 - Do you have any plans for the rest of the day? Take more surveys, and maybe have another cup of coffee. I’ll also have to get started on a daily report I submit for work every weekday morning so that my load will be lighter tomorrow. Our office is technically on shutdown until January 4th, but some clients require a daily report every day and I’ll have to shoulder that with another co-associate. It sucks, but at least it’s the only thing I’ll have to do for the next two weeks.

8 - How often do you get your hair cut? When hairdressers were closed due to COVID, did you try cutting it yourself at home? I only go to the salon once a year, and I already did it this 2020 when I chopped off my hair and got bangs. Yeah, whenever my bangs start to get too long I either ask my mom to trim them or I do so myself.

9 - What did you wear the last time you left the house? Is that different to what you’re wearing at the moment? I walked Cooper half an hour ago and I just stayed in the same clothes I’ve been in all day, which was a tank top underneath an oversized hoodie and a pair of shorts.

10 - Would you rather have a relaxing beach holiday or a more active holiday in the mountains? The beach would be perfect right now, but I think my answer changes every time this is asked and I’m pretty sure I picked mountains the last time HAHAHA. I just realized being in the mountains would give me the same cooped-up feeling I’ve been having from staying at home for such a long time, and it might not be the best and healthiest trip for me...the beach definitely sounds more freeing and therapeutic.

11 - Do you know how to tie a tie? Nah, never learned. I’ve never been good at tying anything up, period.

12 - How old were you when you first had a sleepover at someone’s house? Did you miss home? I was 15 or 16; I’m not entirely sure anymore. Not at all, I was so excited to have been allowed to go to my first sleepover.

13 - How often do you spend time with your extended family? Under normal circumstances, we’d visit my grandma and cousins on my mom’s side once every few months or so. It was pretty regular since they’re just a stone’s throw away. But obviously we’ve since had to drastically cut our get-togethers back, and I’ve only seen them around three times since the beginning of the year. My dad’s family lives pretty far south, so I only get to see them once or twice a year even in pre-Covid days; not much of a difference there.

14 - When you get up in the morning, do you have a set routine? No. I just wake up feeling dread and have no choice but to wait for the weight in my chest to subside.

15 - Do you remember the last time you cried? Were they sad or happy tears? Yesterday in my car, in the mall parking lot. Sad tears.

16 - What do you have planned once you finish this survey? Look for another one. I misseddddd taking surveys and I plan on taking a crap ton of them this Christmas break. I may also be called for dinner, so there’s that.

17 - What was the last thing you cooked? Did you cook from scratch or just heat something up? I dunno if it counts as cooking, but I just made the DIY ramen kit that I received as a Christmas gift from the branch I was originally an intern at. Everything was already prepared in the kit and all I needed to do was boil water for the noodles and prepare the broth. Turned out surprisingly good.

18 - Are you a fan of hot chocolate? Do you like it plain or do you prefer to add things like whipped cream or marshmallows? I love hot chocolate and will order it sometimes, but given my aforementioned fear of hot beverages I always wait for it to considerably cool down hahaha. I like my hot chocolate plain.

19 - What caused your last injury? Cooper’s nails.

20 - How many tattoos and piercings do you have? Do any of them have an interesting story behind them? Just a piercing on each of my earlobes. No interesting stories...yet.

21 - What kind of flowers do you like the best? When was the last time someone bought those for you? I like peonies, though I’m not sure if my ex ever gave me a bouquet that included those.

22 - What’s the smallest thing you’ve ended a relationship over? I’ve only been with one person and I dated her twice, but I was never the one who ended the relationship either time so can’t really answer this.

23 - Would you rather order a starter (appetiser) or a dessert? Or would you be able to manage a full three courses? Three-course meal, pls. I’ve only experienced it once, when my parents treated me to dinner during my cruise gift for my 18th birthday; it was great and every dish was made amazingly well.

24 - How do you get most of your news, if you pay attention to it at all? I catch the evening news every weeknight because we keep the telvision turned on during dinner. I also get to read articles on social media.

25 - Have you or a member of your family been diagnosed with COVID yet? None that I know of, thankfully. It’s always been someone that a relative knows, but so far none of us have gotten it.

26 - Are you a vegetarian? If so, what persuaded you to stop eating meat? If not, is it something you’d ever consider? No. I have been considering it for years, but I truthfully don’t know if I could give up meat.

27 - Do you prefer rice or pasta? Rice.

28 - Is anything you’re wearing a gift? Who bought it for you? No.

29 - What’s the dominant colour in the room you’re in at the moment? I guess white, since my walls are white and that’s the first thing you see when entering my room.

30 - Did you do laundry yet today? If not, do you need to do any before you go to bed? Not my chore to do, but it was already done a few days ago.

#survey #surveys #multiple surveysss

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dandanthemotorcycleman · 3 years

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Winterizing your bike, and yourself

So, I’m a mid-west boy born and raised. Which means riding year-round is not necessarily advised. Hell, I don’t run outside past about early November so safe to say, the bike will probably also not be making an appearance past All Hallows’ Eve. I purchased my bike in the fall since it’s considered off season and I wanted a deal. I got one, but what that meant was, my first task with the new bike was to winterize it before I even got to learn to ride it. Since I haven’t been able to ride it, all I’ve been able to do so far is go out to the garage, sit on the bike, and imagine. I fired it up a few times, and even once bravely tested out the clutch by riding it from one side of the garage to the other. Boldly go and such.

The end result of my experimentation was a dead battery. Turns out motorcycle batteries are a tad finicky and don’t like being used but not charged regularly. Who knew? On top of my misuse, I purchased a used bike so who knows how the battery was treated before I so carelessly wore it down to nothing.

Being the nerd that I am, I immediately jumped into some online research to determine if I was going to need a new battery in the spring and how much one would set me back. As it turn out, how much it’s going to set me back can vary quite a bit depending on what level of technology I want to embrace. I’ll save you the full breakdown of options, but I’ve decided on a gel. I believe they boast a decent cold weather start capability, mid-range pricing options, are less likely to leak than an old school battery, and the play nicely with battery tenders. Battery tenders by the way are another topic entirely but for now just know that you’re going to need one.

Anyway, I may be getting ahead of myself. I may or may not even need a new battery in the spring. Step one, for now, was to remove the current (pun intended) one and hook it up to a battery tender for the winter. If the battery is still usable, the tender will keep it fully charged and it should be ready to hook back up and go in the spring.

So, my friend who was kind enough to test ride the bike for me was also kind enough to let me know that I needed to pull the battery for the winter, or I may have just left it on. Complete beginner here after all. He assured me it was a fairly simple procedure and should, “take about five minutes”. I don’t doubt that this would be the case for anyone remotely familiar with what they are doing. Forty-five minutes and three YouTube videos later, I had the battery safely removed and the seat back on the bike.

I’ll give you just a brief breakdown of what it entailed here so you have a general idea of what you’ll be doing, but I would highly recommend YouTube for some audio-visual assistance. I started by popping open the battery cover on the left side of my 2011 Sportster. This was fairly straightforward and even I didn’t need a YouTube video to make it this far. It was at this point that I began scratching my head. Two wires appeared to be attached to the red terminal and the instructions on the inside of the battery cover clearly stated, remove the black connection first. At this point, I’m thinking that I need to remove this bracket thingy (technical term) and probably pull the battery out to access the black terminal. Feeling a little crowded by the seat being right in my face, and wondering if it may be possible to access the black terminal from underneath the seat, I figured I should proceed by taking the seat off so I could get a better look at what I was getting myself into. Seat removal the first time for me was five minutes and the first two of three YouTube videos. The learning curve is steep on this and popping the seat off takes about 30 seconds the second time you do it.

After getting the seat off, I was welcomed by a jumble of wires but still couldn’t get to the negative battery terminal. Fair enough, the goal was to remove the battery anyway, so I may as well focus my energies back on that goal. Big pro of seat removal is that even though I think the battery can be removed without taking the seat off, getting it out of the way really makes it easier to see and manipulate the bracket holding it in place. There was only one screw holding the bracket, so I popped that bad boy off and the bracket came off easily enough after that. I slid the battery out of its compartment and there it was. The vaunted black terminal. Thirty minutes into my five-minute job and I’d found it!

Quick background interlude here. I served for a year overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spent a solid chunk of that year fixing radios and electrical systems in HMMWVs. That’s a Humvee for you civilian types. Point being, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with working on vehicular electrical systems. So I do have a healthy respect of what happens when someone shorts out a battery while trying to remove it. I managed not to do it, but apparently PFC Garrita dropped a wrench on one and it touched both terminals. Oh, and HMMWVs run two 12V batteries in series to provide 24V of output. From what I heard, the end result was spectacular, and sparks flew. The lesson here is, when you disconnect the black terminal, don’t let it make contact with the bike frame as it is often used as the ground. My college physics is a little rusty so I can’t go into too much detail anymore about exactly what would happen and why, but just make sure the black lead is tucked out of the way or even taped off if you’re the very cautious type. With a properly fused bike, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but best not to test the system.

Unscrew the bolt from the red, or positive, lead and disconnect the cable. There you have it. Battery removed. Screw the bolts back into the battery so you don’t misplace them, and your battery is ready to hook-up to that tender sitting in your basement workspace. Close up the battery cover, pop the seat back on and pour yourself a beer, all while patting yourself on the back for a job well done. Try not to pull a muscle. It can be an awkward angle.

So that’s your bike taken care of, but how do we make sure we’re taking care of our own internal battery during the long cold winters with short, sometimes dreary, days?

Lean on friends. Don’t be afraid to reach out to old acquaintances. Remember that relationships are a two-way street and it takes traffic flowing in both directions to keep them active. If you’re feeling lonely and down, ask yourself what you’ve done to reach out to someone else recently. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and make an effort. Last summer when people were really feeling stuck home alone with the Covid blues, I commented on an old high school acquaintance’s post about a local distillery that he’d checked in at the year before. It’s a local distillery that’s opened just outside of my hometown and I was completely unaware of it. I think my comment was something to the effect of, going to check this place out when this whole corona thing finally passes. Next thing I know, he’s calling me via the Facebook chat app, and we end up spending the next two hours catching up. We were by no means best friends in high school, but it was great to talk to him again and I’m really looking forward to checking out that distillery when society opens up again.

I will say, if there is one silver lining to the pandemic, it’s the fact that we all have learned how to Zoom, or Houseparty, or Google chat or whatever group video call app you use. Point is, use one. I have some close high school friends that historically I’ve been lucky to see once a year and we’ve actually had more virtual “face to face” interaction in the last year than actual face to face time in the previous three years combined. Technology is making our world smaller and our friends more accessible.

That brings me to the second self service of surviving winter with the double threat of a pandemic. Keep looking to the future. Usually this time of year I start planning a road trip or begin eyeing up upcoming musical festival dates. Covid obviously makes this additionally challenging due to the uncertainty factor but start doing some research on locations that may offer outdoor activities as the weather begins to warm. So, there are certain limitations to our current ability to foresee the future, but try to remind yourself that winter and Covid, as with all things, will pass.

Try to stay active. I’ll be honest, I don’t like outdoor activities once the temperature starts to drop below 30, let alone the teens. I’m trying to get better at enjoying the winter season here in the Midwest. I’ve found having and wearing proper gear helps. Even with that, I’ll just acknowledge that I’m definitely more of a summer guy when it comes to outdoor activities. This makes watching my diet and hitting the weights all the more important from November to March. The nights may be longer, but that isn’t going to guarantee a good night’s sleep by any means. I struggle with being tired already by 6pm but then being unable to sleep at midnight when I finally crawl into bed. Even getting just 5 or 6 rounds of short but high intensity lifting or cardio during the day gets blood flowing and helps my body prepare to shut down and recharge at night.

Finally, find and keep alive, your year-round hobbies. Aside from picking up the bike as a hobby, I home brew, play guitar, and write…which is what brought me here. If your hobby is a productive one that results in say, some mildly palatable beer, all the better. But there’s nothing wrong with having a hobby with no end goal or use other than enjoying loudly and poorly attempting to play and sing along with your favorite songs while no one else is around. The more varied our hobbies, the better the mental exercise and more importantly, the more interesting and fulfilled people we become.

Until next time, take care of your bike and take care of yourself.

#harleydavidsonsportster changeabattery

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shakalakadingdong · 3 years

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2021

So I wanted to make an official-y type post on just updates on what I’m doing on Mabi, the guild, & life stuff. I haven’t been very active on this blog for a while. I’d like to post more, but I’m not promising regular content or anything. If you’re an old friend that’s trying to get back in contact with me, hit me up on Discord or in-game, don’t try to message me on tumblr, lol.

So, first things first, i’m the realest my guild is recruiting again!! 🥳 Last month we had a couple of guild screenshot sessions so we could have pictures for the recruitment posts, and I was really surprised with how many people showed up! I’ve been trying to re-ignite guild activity since last October, and I’m happy to say we’ve been successful in rebuilding a healthy core for our guild, but even more people than who I was expecting showed up to that guild event, and it made me really happy!

The goal for our recruitment is to get our activity back to what it was around 2008~2012. I don’t want to be as big as we were around 2014~2015 ever again, my anxiety still hasn’t recovered enough for that. But I’ve been feeling really nostalgic as we started playing Vindictus and Minecraft again in addition to getting back to Mabinogi. We’re also playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign again, too! (and looking into starting a 2nd cmapaign when we get more new members) It’s really feeling like old times again, and I’m so glad that we’re rebuilding like this! 💖

For my own character, I’ve made a lot of progress after 2 master plan events!! I mastered 5 talents in 2020, got all my pets and partners to level 200, got a ton of levels for myself as well, actually started making progress on my spirit weapons, completed my Languhiris Chaser armor set, got 4 level 30 echostones, made the celtic howling chains, I now have 5 step 6 weapons, and I used the generation booster event to not only get caught up on gens, but I also got 2 level 30 erg weapons (with the help of my husbando and his alts lel). Sorry for the flex but I’m just really happy with my progress! I’m not completely useless in end game content anymore!! I’m still not good enough to DPS in the newest stuff, but I’m not a squishy mess that’s dying right and left anymore!!

For the next few months until 2021′s summer master plan starts, my goals now are to focus on my crusader subskills (getting all of them to level 15), to get my crusader level high enough to have 2 crusader skills with max points distributed into subskills at the same time, to work on grandmastering all the talents I have at master, to actually train my squires, and to turn all of my pets (that haven’t been sacrificed) into Fynn pets! 🎉

It’s really nice to actually be playing this game again, instead of only doing events for prizes and not much else. Focusing on all of this is helping me cope with where my mental health has been with the pandemic happening. It’s been a big struggle for me. I haven’t had the energy to really put time into things that are productive for me in the real world. But my online friends have kept me social, and setting goals for my character has given me something to look forward to every day, even though I rarely leave the house. It’s something that feels productive for me, and I’m able to still work towards these goals even when I’m having depressive lows.

But now I’m just being too mushy oop

So~ getting back to updates about the guild! The old guild website ( https://capumagu.webs.com/ ) is still not being maintained at this moment in time. Webs has been increasing the price of its service plans more and more every year (heck, I joined the site when it was still called freewebs.com, but they changed the name for obvious reasons). The site was free when I first made it. Then I started paying maybe $40 a year. Then they bumped it up to $60 a year, which was annoying but still do-able. Then it got bumped up to $80 a year for the same basic service, and that’s when I decided to stop paying for a website.

We don’t really need a website anymore, anyways. The days of only having a skype group are over. We have facebook, twitter, and youtube, and we have a nicely organized Discord server that ties everything together, which was what the website’s purpose was. So, there’s really no reason to keep paying for that. If I can figure out how to downgrade my account to a free website, then maybe it’ll come back, but that’ll probably take a lot of days just sitting through crappy customer service with employees that’ll try to convince me to just start paying for a site again. So for the time being, the Capulet Maguhzine is down.

I would like to get back to posting on our guild’s facebook and youtube again. This whole time I’ve been inactive, I’ve still recorded vids and taken pictures of the guild events we’ve had, but I just haven’t edited and posted them yet. So when I finally do start posting again it’s going to be a nostalgia trip. ♡ That’s a goal I’d like to set for myself once COVID is over. Once I’ve been able to recover my physical and mental health, I’ll hopefully be able to feel creative more often again. I’ve never made super great quality content, but I do put love & effort into these posts, and I need to be in a good mental space to do that.

I don’t really have much else to say. I guess I can link the guild’s social media. If anyone’s bothered to read this far, you might want it, maybe? Though, if no one reads this I don’t mind. It just feels good to post blarbs. It’s good for my sanity. 😂

https://www.facebook.com/capuletguild https://twitter.com/capuletguild https://www.youtube.com/user/TheCapuletGuild

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cfiesler · 5 years

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the tenure-track detective agency

I tweeted about a dream, then realized it should be a television show, so I tweeted the whole first season plot. Featuring an academic who has to solve a murder so she doesn’t have to teach another class, and her librarian sidekick who is very helpful because of the research she’s done while writing Sherlock and Veronica Mars fanfiction. The whole thread is on Twitter, but copied in plain text below the cut for your reading pleasure. #sixseasonsandamovie

The Tenure-Track Detective Agency: Season One

I recently dreamed that one of my colleagues was wrongfully accused of murder, and because of the trial, could not teach their fall class. I feel like an "oh god I have to solve a murder so I don't have to teach an extra class" anxiety dream is like next level #academiclife.

S1 opens in mid-summer when a tenured computer science prof is found in his lab surrounded by simple robots testing conversational agents, busily chatting about top-voted reddit posts while he dies from blunt force trauma. The murder weapon is a dusty teaching award.

Our hero, an overworked assistant prof, is updating the syllabus for her machine learning class that just doubled in size, when she receives news that she has to pick up a section of intro programming b/c the instructor was just arrested for murdering another faculty member.

Our hero has THREE WEEKS to exonerate her colleague so that he can teach the class as planned, instead of her. Her tenure case hangs in the balance. What follows is a montage of frantic syllabus writing and murder investigation.

She visits the scene of the crime. A PhD student is frantically deleting data from a hard drive, and claims the IRB made her do it. Our hero distracts her and pockets one of the prototype conversational robots in the hopes it might have been a witness to the murder.

Our hero has a conference call with the set of brand new PhD students who will be teaching assistants to the intro programming class and informs them that their jobs start now and they need to dig through Lexis Nexis for case law about chain of custody and robots.

She visits the library and finds the librarian who usually answers questions about copyright, because she must know the most about law. Cue enthusiastic quirky sidekick, who actually doe knows a lot about murder investigation because she writes Sherlock fanfiction.

She visits her colleague in prison. She should probably be investigating the murder he is wrongfully accused of, but instead has many questions about the syllabus for his class she is now forced to teach. She tries not to sound bitter as she asks him for his slide decks.

Her colleague, clad in his orange jumpsuit and holding a prison phone, is understandably very upset about having been wrongfully accused of murdering another professor. But as she stands to leave, he calls out, "Wait! Do... do you think this will hurt my tenure case?"

She visits the detective in charge of the case. He says that her colleague's alibi for a 3-hour time period surrounding the time of murder is damning. "Who spends 3 hours answering email?" he demands. "Besides, professors don't work in the summer!" She fears this may be hopeless.

With the help of her librarian sidekick who convincingly impersonates a lawyer, our hero gets her hands on the the transcripts from the police interview of her colleague after his arrest. She assigns a PhD student to conduct a rigorous grounded theory qualitative analysis.

Word has gotten out that she is investigating the murder. Someone pins a note to her office door: "FOLLOW THE GRANT MONEY." She pulls up the dead prof's CV on his website only to find that it was last updated in 2003.

She interviews his PhD students after (out of force of habit) having them sign consent forms that detail data storage practices. None of them had seen their murdered advisor in person in years except when he mysteriously appeared to add his name to their published papers.

The librarian sidekick uses a bobby pin to break into an admin's office to retrieve grant spending records. It appears that the murder victim has been funneling funding earmarked for students and travel into "equipment." Almost $1m of invoices from a mysterious tech company.

(In case you were wondering, the librarian sidekick also writes Veronica Mars fanfiction and ABSOLUTELY knows how to pick a lock because of important research. She also wrote House fanfiction so let's hope she gets to diagnose Lupus by the end of this tale.)

Meanwhile, the PhD student has finished her grounded theory analysis of the arrest interview, and concludes (with an appropriate limitations section) that the interrogation was conducted under duress. The police officer promised to write him a tenure letter if he confessed.

Our hero buys many pizzas and puts the qualitative analyst in a room with the teaching assistants doing legal research and tells them to work on a motion to get the confession thrown out. She has to promise them they can all be co-authors on a major journal publication.

Cut to a scene where our hero spends hours answering emails from students trying to enroll in THE CLASS SHE SHOULDN'T BE TEACHING b/c they're on the waitlist but they need this class to graduate & also will she be taking attendance. Between emails she studies 18 U.S. Code §3501.

She visits a clinical prof at the law school to ask for help. You remember that this is TV so wonder if he is the obligatory love interest. He suggests they discuss 18 U.S. Code §3501 over drinks. She laughs: DO YOU THINK I HAVE TIME FOR THAT. You write hero/librarian fanfiction.

She interviews more students. Admins. Faculty. They initially were shocked the murder victim got tenure, but he'd seriously stepped up his game in the last couple of years. Not just more productive research, but he spent time on his teaching! And service! And apparently... sleep!

This trend becomes more shocking when she finally visits the victim’s family. They too noticed a change. They’d seen him *more often* in the year leading up to his tenure review. Now our hero doesn’t just want to solve his murder, SHE NEEDS TO KNOW HIS SECRET.

Meanwhile, the librarian has tracked down shipments from Mysterious Tech Company not to the victim's office but to a Mysterious Storage Unit. This is a clue! They brose YouTube videos about breaking into storage units. (YT tries to show them flat earther videos but they resist.)

HOT ON THE TRAIL, our hero makes the mistake of checking her email. She has a nastygram from a journal editor who reminds her that her promised review of a paper is 1 week overdue. The murder investigation halts while she spends hours on labor for which she will not be paid.

Our hero reluctantly suggests "major revisions" even though she knows this means more unpaid labor in a few months, and then regroups with the librarian. They head to the storage unit; we discover that the librarian drives an impala convertible.

They are nearly there when our hero's phone dings with a calendar reminder; she has a committee meeting in fifteen minutes. She can't remember which committee it is, but they turn around anyway. After the meeting, she still isn't sure which committee it was.

Our hero gets a phone call from her colleague who is wasting away in prison while wrongfully accused of murder. He doesn't ask about the progress of her investigation. He's just called to ask her if she can take over some of his committee assignments.

FINALLY our hero & the librarian get to the storage unit, which with the help of YouTube videos they break into & discover... rows of gently humming servers, and also robot parts everywhere! It's very uncanny valley in there, y'all. You're like, woah is this show actually scifi.

Our hero sits down at a computer. Did you know that even CS profs can have terrible password practices? Our hero read @lorrietweet's papers so the first thing she tries is "monkey" and VOILA she is inside a private github repo. (She has an ethics-related twinge, but he IS dead.)

Our hero emails the students enrolled in her machine learning class, sends them the github repository, and offers them extra credit for a forensic analysis. This is the best service learning activity she's ever come up with.

Our hero checks her email again (WHY DOES SHE KEEP DOING THIS) and has a message from her department chair reminding her that murder investigation does not count as a service activity. ('We've already had discussions about tweeting as not a good use of your time' he reminds her.)

We're getting very close to the season finale, and there's another montage: meeting with student investigators, tinkering with robot parts, answering emails about course overloads, talking to the police, revising a journal article that is due soon, formatting a new syllabus...

Over a bottle of wine in her office, our hero and her librarian sidekick put together the final pieces by doing rigorous affinity diagramming on a whiteboard. There is one final thing to verify. They enlist one of the murdered prof's PhD students to help. This is very exciting!

She visits her wrongfully accused colleague one last time in jail to give him the good news about her findings. He doesn't listen, far more concerned with making sure that revisions on his latest journal article get in on time, so she helps him & then leaves to go exonerate him.

Our hero gathers the relevant parties: detectives, faculty, PhD students, a public defender who she forgot existed. They meet in a windowless conference room. She has prepared a powerpoint presentation. It shows a table of contents: Intro, Methods, Findings, Discussion.

She speeds through the beginning (stopping to answer a question from a prof about the sample size for the qualitative analysis) and finally gets to the point: "I have discovered that the murder victim had a dark secret. And in the process uncovered the REAL killer!"

(Her librarian sidekick cheers from the audience. She is wearing the deerstalker from her Sherlock cosplay, which our hero reluctantly refused, saying that she probably shouldn't cosplay at work until after tenure.)

Our hero continues: "Our analysis of his private github repo revealed the REAL source of increased productivity in the year leading up to his tenure case - particularly striking since he also managed to save a failing marriage. Impossible, you say? That's what I thought! But..."

"It turns out that he solved the problem of not enough hours in the day for assistant professor levels of research, teaching, and service with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!" The department chair nods. Artificial intelligence can indeed solve all problems.

Our hero reveals a beautiful powerpoint slide that details their analysis of the code and its conclusion: Prof. Murder Victim had programmed an AI to do all of his service and administrative work, most of his teaching, and a big chunk of his research collaboration.

From answering emails to grading assignments to delegating tasks to student collaborators to reviewing papers (ESPECIALLY reviewing papers), Prof. Murder Victim had managed to streamline his duties into the things that were most important for tenure & avoid everything else.

And he was able to do what can be so rare in some departments - have a lot of time for himself, which repaired his relationship with his family. "But then..." our hero began ominously, "he thought... why can't I create an AI for that too so I can spend more time on my research?"

Our hero gestures at the door, and in walks a PhD student with a humanoid robot in tow. It is a half-finished, uncanny valley nightmare of the murder victim. "He was murdered by his own creation!" our hero shouts, as she reveals her final slide with a list of collaborators.

There is a long, heavy pause in the room. The detective looks stunned. The librarian sidekick pulls out a flask and toasts our hero. Then suddenly, the department chair leaps to his feet and says, "HE WORKED FOR THE UNIVERSITY, WE OWN THE PATENT!"

The room erupts into a flurry of activity. PhD students start updating their CVs. The prof who teaches tech ethics immediately starts writing a paper. The department chair posthumously grants the murder victim full professor status in recognition of his contributions to robotics.

The detective quietly comes over and asks our hero for her evidence. She produces a full paper with 12 figures, 78 citations, and 17 authors. He says that it may take some time to sort this out. She says, the guy you arrested starts teaching in one week, better be sorted by then.

Our hero has approximately thirty seconds to bask in the glow of her triumph when her phone dings informing her she has a committee meeting in 10 minutes. She checks her email and 4 students are asking for copies of the syllabus for the class she's hopefully no longer teaching.

That night she receives an email from the dept chair: (1) Remember this is not part of your tenure case; (2) Our colleague has been released from jail & will resume teaching his class; (3) The ethics instructor just got a grant with a course release so you'll need to teach that.

Before she can start sobbing, she opens an email from one of the students in her machine learning class, telling her that the work they'd done analyzing that code was the most amazing learning experience of his life and can they please do more stuff like that.

After a long moment, she opens up a new document so that she can start creating a syllabus for Computing Ethics & Responsibility. She adds a sentence: "You may be occasionally asked to participate in real-world problem-solving activities as part of your grade."

The season finale ends with the librarian joining our hero in her office and producing a sign to hang on the door: THE TENURE-TRACK DETECTIVE AGENCY. It is a joke, of course. ... or is it???

If you read to the end, I feel like I should mention how difficult it is to write a story linearly while not knowing the plot and without the ability to edit at all, and also that it would make my life to see hero/librarian fanfiction on AO3. :D

And if you’re a TV exec or literary agent:

(And if you’re someone who is going to write tenure letters for me: don’t worry, I also did a lot of research, teaching, and service today. ;) )

#academia #murder #fanfiction #mystery #sherlock #veronica mars #faculty life #archive of our own #twitter #fiction

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bluerosesburnblue · 5 years

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I just want to look at Pokémon stuff for five minutes without being bombarded by recommended YouTube videos/posts/comments about how SWORD AND SHIELD ARE GOING TO BE THE WORST GAMES EVER GAMEFREAK IS SO LAZY AND IF YOU BUY THESE GAMES THEN YOU'RE A TRAITOR TO THE FANDOM AND YOURE RUINING EVERYTHING

Not even gonna censor myself with the opinions below because this situation is so frustrating

Just shut the FUCK up already! You all sound like entitled children! If you think the game is going to be bad and you don’t want to buy it, then fine, don’t buy it! But STOP telling other people that they're not allowed to get it or even still just be excited for it because you're not. Because you don't like the changes they're making. I haven't been having a great year and I want to look forward to the cute cartoon monster game. So sue me

Half of the outrage is overblown anyway. There's still so much we just don't know about these games. There's so far nothing offensive about them beyond making changes to the series that a lot of people don’t like, and now you're all scrounging for any and every way to declare that these games will be the worst ever because they aren't catering to your standards. I get wanting the series to be better, really. But for fuck's sake, just wait for the game to come out and THEN get outraged

If you were expecting Breath of the Wild: Pokemon Edition, that’s your fucking problem. GameFreak never promised that. They never even hinted that a fully open-world Pokemon game was their plan. You are the one who raised your own expectations too high and disappointed yourself. That’s not their fault that you decided to compare their game to one that isn’t even in the same genre and got yourself excited over nothing. Learn to curb your own expectations, get off of hype culture because it’s never done anything good, and then reconcile reality with what you wanted and whether you still like what you’re getting

Also, I don’t like open-world! Making it open-world wouldn’t make it inherently better!

And before anyone starts trying to argue sales and how GameFreak needs to be punished somehow:

Lemme just... drag over this box and get out my megaphone here

*ahem*

You don't have to preorder a game or buy a game the day it releases. If the quality is questionable to you in pre-release materials, wait for the DAMN game to release and reviews to come out before buying. If you're that on the fence about buying: JUST WAIT. What do you think game reviews exist for?

Preorder culture is bullshit anyway

Like, really. Do you know what I see a lot that drives me absolutely insane? The fact that most of these arguments boil down to “we’re the ones paying for it, so we’re entitled to what we want!” And hey, hey. Hey. No, actually, you’re not. Because. And here’s the thing I don’t think some of you have realized yet

YOU HAVE NOT BOUGHT THE GAME YET AND NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO BUY IT

If the game looks bad to you? Don’t buy it! If you disagree with the executive decisions? Don’t BUY it! That’s the joy of being a consumer! You get to just... not buy things if you think it’s not worth the money! It’s not like GameFreak has hacked into your Amazon account and forced you to preorder the game and won’t let you cancel. It’s not even like you funded the game’s development. You are not. Entitled. To a better game. Stop acting like you already bought it and wanted more for what you spent. You haven’t spent anything and you can very easily just... not!

And the people who decide to factor in the cost of the Switch and Pokemon Home into their “Sword and Shield” calculations are full of shit. If you’re buying the console just for this game, that’s a you problem. It has nothing to do with GameFreak. And Home is an optional service. Should they have revealed the cut Pokemon closer to Home’s announcement? Yes. But no one’s forcing you to use it. I never used Bank and didn’t enjoy the 3DS games any less

And this wouldn’t even be an issue if people weren’t being so pushy about the game. I am totally fine with people not agreeing with the decisions that have been confirmed for the game and venting on their personals or something. It doesn’t effect me. But do NOT go on positivity posts about the game, or people’s posts about how they really don’t care about the changes and start writing argumentative comments about how they’re wrong and the game is going to be awful. Or about how they’re “excusing GameFreak’s laziness.” Or even just “Bad post OP.” Basically: stop being snide assholes because you’re pissy

WHO ARE YOU TO TRY TO KILL OTHERS’ HAPPINESS ABOUT SOMETHING BECAUSE YOU AREN’T?!

Criticize the game all you want. I, personally, think the criticisms are bullshit because the game isn’t out yet. We legitimately can’t judge the final product. We know a few things that were removed, and very few things that were added. Hell, at the time of writing we only have, like 10 new Pokemon revealed. I get why people are upset that there are some old Pokemon that they won’t be able to transfer over. But we also don’t know how GameFreak works internally. Just... stop being so damn judgy, and then attacking people who are actually still okay with the game

Like, Christ you know you people are toxic when I actually start to agree with the King of Clickbait and Notable Asshole Verlisify on something

#liz's shenanigans #also if anybody does any of the things i mentioned on this post you're getting blocked instantly!#because you clearly didn't read and aren't looking to start a discussion; just a fight #and if that's what you want you can fuck right off #i'm just so sick of being unable to block or ignore these people #because there's like thousands of them and a lot of them like forcing their own dissatisfaction on others

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mendespideys · 5 years

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the life of a youtuber // t.h.

pairing: reader x tom holland

prompt: “stop looking at me like that.”

summary: the reader, a youtuber, joins the ‘pregnant for twenty-four hours challenge’, and tom didn’t know he could fall for her even harder until he saw her.

a/n: this was supposed to be for @spiderboytotherescue’s 4k writing challenge. i ended up losing track of time but i figured i would post it anyways! congrats, amber 💞

side note: i absolutely hate how this turned out, and i kinda don’t want to post it but i haven’t posted anything in what feels like weeks so.. here you go

masterlist

“Hey, guys, welcome back to my channel! I’m doing a vlog style video because we’re doing something very interesting today,” you announce, your voice sounding exaggeratingly enthusiastic. Pointing the camera down at the box in front of you, you continue your introduction, “I decided to jump on the bandwagon, so we’re gonna be pregnant for twenty-four hours!”

Pushing the red button on your Canon, you place the camera down on the floor once it stops recording. You flip open the lid of the box, taking in the sight of the fake pregnant belly. Tessa scurries over, her claws scraping against the hardwood floor. Understanding what’s happening, you quickly pick up the camera and press the record button, focusing the lens on the Blue Staffy. She sniffs the prop curiously, bumping into it with her wet nose. You giggle, catching it all on film. Eventually, she loses interest and you pause the recording once again, putting the camera aside. You grunt, grabbing the skin-colored prop from the box, not expecting it to be as heavy as it is. Pushing yourself off of the floor, you bring it with you into the bedroom. The bed bounces slightly as you drop it down next to your three pre-selected outfits. After getting the camera from the living room, you press record, making sure the outfits are in frame.

You quickly film a clip explaining how you picked three outfits, hoping they would still fit you with a fake bump. The sounds of Tessa playing with one of her many squeaky toys fill the apartment, mixing with your own as you struggle to strap the belly on. Releasing a sigh of relief once it’s finally on, you throw your mustard yellow button-up maxi dress on, finding the whole ordeal a lot more difficult than it normally would have been. Picking up the PowerShot from your bed, you hit record once again, making sure the settings are all equally adjusted before turning around toward the mirror. A genuine gasp of surprise escapes you, seeing the dress wrap almost perfectly around the prop strapped to your body. You film yourself in the mirror, following the length of your frame from your feet to your head.

“It’s kinda freaky how real it looks, huh?” you ask your subscribers, turning to your side and wrapping your free arm underneath the protruding belly. “This is so crazy! I think I’m gonna with the dress for now because this belly is bigger than I expected, and I don’t think my shorts will fit.”

Continuing to film yourself in the mirror, you explain to your viewers how you’re going to meet up with Tom on set for lunch. You feel your nerves begin to bubble at the thought of showing Tom your dramatic change. He had been gone for hours at a time the past two weeks and you hadn’t been able to tell him you were planning on filming this video. Turning the camera off, you throw it into your black backpack along with your wallet and phone charger. You give yourself one last look in the mirror, still mesmerized by how real it looks. Although you probably wouldn’t admit it out loud, the fake look was beginning to grow on you. Closing the door to the bedroom, you step back into the living room, catching the attention of Tessa. Her large body snakes off the couch and she trots toward you, her tail wagging. You pet her head gently a couple of times, saying your goodbyes, before grabbing your car keys off the counter.

After parking at their filming location for the day, you rummage through your bag to make sure you have everything before exiting the car. Unlike the first time you had visited Tom on set, the security easily recognizes you this time without even having to show them your ID. The very first time you had visited Tom on set while filming for Captain America: Civil War, it took you ten minutes to try to convince the security guard that you were Tom’s girlfriend. Eventually, they had to call Tom over himself to verify your identity and once he did, the security guard wouldn’t stop apologizing. You chuckle quietly to yourself, remembering the memory vividly. Turning your camera back on, you press record, eager to catch the reactions of your friends.

After meeting Tom back in late 2014 at one of Harrison’s parties, the two of you quickly began dating. You were already growing quickly on YouTube at the time but kept your relationship out of the spotlight for months. You had been there through the entirety of his audition process for Spider-Man and you couldn’t be prouder of him. A few months ago, after a dinner filled with laughter, memories, and fairy lights, he had asked you to be his forever. The proposal was absolutely perfect and you could tell he had put a lot of planning into it, which made the gesture even more special. With both of you having busy schedules, you had decided to take it slow and plan whenever you had time. You had already been out dress shopping once but with no luck and Tom had asked Harrison to be his best man even before he asked you to marry him. Still, it felt surreal to be engaged to Tom. Just thinking about it made the butterflies in your stomach celebrate.

Remy is the first cast member you spot and as you get closer, you realize he’s chatting with Tony. You focus the camera on the two young men as you approach them, barely able to contain your excitement. You can tell they’re wearing their character clothes you glance around quickly, making sure they’re not about to start filming. Tony sees you first and as his facial expression changes, Remy turns around, too. Sending them a smile, you give them a small wave, waiting until you’re close enough to verbally greet them. Tony grins, wrapping his arm around you for a quick hug. He doesn’t say anything and you don’t either, wanting their genuine reactions. For a second, you wonder if it’s still as noticeable as when you left the house. Remy pulls you in next, the two of you greeting each other until he pauses mid-hug. He pulls away, gripping your upper arm gently as he looks down. His eyes double in size as a gasp escapes him.

“You’re- When? Tom never said anything. I swear-” Remy rambles and Tony joins in, their words mixing together.

“Guys! Guys, chill. It’s fake,” you giggle, giving the belly a few pats. “It’s for a video. See?”

You motion to the camera in your right hand and the two boys fall into silence. Still focusing the camera on them, you explain the video concept once again. They continue to gush about how real it looks and you feel a sense of accomplishment. After showing your friends and family the belly, you were planning on testing everyday activities and if people would treat you differently. If the belly looks real enough for them to believe it, multiple strangers probably would, too. The three of you catch up for a moment, talking about random things. Eventually, your patience thins out and you ask for Tom, itching to catch his reaction on camera.

They join you on your journey to find your fiancé, claiming he’s going to flip his shit and they don’t want to miss it. With determination in your step, you begin to walk over to where he’s supposed to be filming his next scene, recording the entire time. You hear him before you see him, his American accent is clear as day. A few seconds later, you hear Jacob and you assume they’re filming a scene with Peter and Ned. You watch from afar, making sure your camera is turned off, not wanting to get in trouble with Marvel. Tom’s lack of constraints is a well-known fact and the company and production crew always go to great lengths to make sure he doesn’t spill any valuable information, so you figure it’s best to keep the camera off for now. As you get closer, you notice Zendaya is standing off to the side, looking between the two men playing their characters. You realize she’s in the scene, too, and you watch intently as Peter, Ned, and Michelle bicker amongst each other.

Sensing the scene nearing its end, your nerves pick back up. You couldn’t quite put your finger on the exact reason behind your jitteriness but the suspense of waiting for Tom’s reaction made it twice as bad. Turning the camera back on as soon as Jon confirms the scene is over, you try your best to keep your composure. You don’t walk any closer just yet, explaining to the viewers that Tom still hasn’t seen you and that you’re currently on set to capture his reaction. Remy and Tony are chatting eagerly amongst themselves and you vaguely hear them placing a bet on Tom’s reaction, which makes the whole situation even more comical. Deciding it’s time, you head toward your fiancé and your two friends. Zendaya notices you first, Tom and Jacob facing the opposite direction, and you give her a small wave.

“Thomas,” she exclaims dramatically, making Tom jolt. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re having a baby?”

You can only imagine the look of confusion plastered on Tom’s face at Zendaya’s sudden outburst. The beautiful actress sends you grins toward you, returning the wave. You wonder briefly if she was just playing along or if she genuinely thought you were pregnant, but you before you could decide Tom’s surprised eyes met yours. He had seen you just last night before bed but the look of confusion is authentic. Coming to a halt in front of the small group, Tony and Remy in tow, you purse your lips together, barely able to contain your wide grin. Tom looks so genuinely confused that you find it incredibly difficult to muffle your laugh. A few moments pass and he notices the camera in hand, realization washing over his features. By now, seeing you with a camera in hand was second nature and it made sense that he didn’t question it.

“That looks so real,” Tom whispers in amazement, his eyes trained on the fake bump.

You rotate slowly, showcasing it from every possible angle, a string of giggles escaping you. “It does, doesn’t it? I’m doing a twenty-four-hour pregnant challenge for my channel.”

“Girl, you had me all excited!” Zendaya whines, grimacing in your direction. “I saw you walk in during the scene and I was about to stop right then and there, but then I noticed your camera.”

Tom inches forward, close enough for you to see the small freckles decorating his nose. Catching it all on film, you watch with admiration as he hesitantly reaches out to touch the pretend bump. The groups awe aloud and before you can stop it, the familiar heat spreads across your cheeks. You swear you hear the sound of someone’s camera, but you’re too preoccupied with looking at Tom to investigate. Although you physically can’t feel his hand, you can’t help but notice how perfectly it fits against the bump. The two of you had discussed marriage and babies multiple times, but it was more small comments here and there than an actual serious conversation. Tom always told you stories about him and his siblings, and you knew he wanted a lot of kids. You wanted kids, too, but you had never decided on a number, figuring you would want to experience motherhood first. Seeing Tom interact with the bump - fake or not - made your biological clock tick faster. Just by the look on his face, you knew you wanted him to be the father of your kids and the sooner, the better.

The others took turns feeling the huge jelly-like shape strapped to your body as well. It felt slightly odd, having them all put their hands where a potential real bump could be someday, and you made a mental note to explain that to the camera later. After all, this was meant as a test to see how it feels to be pregnant. The entire time, Tom’s gaze lingers on you; his dark orbs following your every move. You don’t know whether to find it slightly concerning or very adorable. The group continued to gush over the realness, but you were too caught up on Tom’s focus on you.

“Stop looking at me like that,” you state softly, but loud enough for him to hear over the continuous chatter.

“Like what?”

You can’t tell if he’s being serious or playing dumb, so with a sigh, you elaborate, “Like… I don’t know! You keep looking at me funny.”

“Sorry, darling,” he apologizes automatically. “I didn’t mean to- It’s just… It looks so real.”

“I know,” you shrug. “Is it weirding you out?”

Tom shakes his head immediately. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I can’t wait for you to be pregnant for real.”

“Aw, you guys are the cutest! This is so going on Instagram,” Zendaya gushes and once again, you feel your cheeks heat up.

If you weren’t sure before, you definitely are now. Tom is the one. He’s the one you want to be with; to marry, to have kids with, to grow old with. He’s the one you want to fall asleep on the couch with and the one you want to wake up to in the morning. You want to continue getting lost in his eyes until the skin around them wrinkles. It is almost silly, really, but his laugh is your favorite sound in the entire world. It’s just something about that melodic sound that makes all your worries melt away. His familiar scent is your favorite smell, and it instantly calms your nerves. You had always known you wanted Tom to be by your side in parenthood. From the moment you saw him with Paddy to all the kids he had the opportunity to meet through his role as Spider-Man, you knew he would be the perfect dad. Now, the day you could call him yours forever couldn’t come fast enough.

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47mel47 · 6 years

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47mel47 Fanvid Masterlist: Kurt and Blaine

Thanks to @jackabelle73 for suggesting this little project.

These range from my most recent work (which is not all that recent) to my earliest works (and these are actually links to YouTube, not links to Tumblr posts, which goes to show how old. And they are also cringe, but hey, let’s celebrate what we've created, right?)

Glee| The Final Countdown: Top Five Kisses

I really felt this video needed some editing. Here are my improvements and suggestions.

Fearlessly and Forever (Kurt and Blaine)

From beginning to proposal. Their hands were meant to hold each other…

This Old Coffee Shop (Kurt and Blaine)

Their story, through coffee.

Five Times (Kurt and Blaine)

Love, music, hurt, laughter and life

I’ll See You In The Future (Kurt and Blaine)

To have and to hold from this day forward… and from these moments we know our favourite boys will- fearlessly and forever.

With No Regrets (Kurt and Blaine)

Getting to celebrate the wedding of two incredible people is magical. Celebrating the years leading up to the union? Even better.

Marry Your Best Friend (Kurt and Blaine)

Marry your best friend. I do not say that lightly. Really, truly find the strongest, happiest friendship in the person you fall in love with.

You Look So Good (Kurt Hummel)

Created for spaceorphan18 as part of her birthday shenanigans. Yes, I know that you appreciate Kurt for much more than this aesthetic value, but let’s face it, that aesthetic value is pretty damn awesome.

I Wear Your Grandad’s Clothes (Blaine Anderson)

And he looks incredible.

I Will Find Any Way (Kurt and Blaine)

Season six has really hurt with our two boys, but it has been oh so good.

We Light Up the World (Kurt and Blaine)

A celebration of those days that were early Klaine. Inspired by @todaydreambelievers Weekly Challenge: Original Song

Captured Your Heart (Kurt and Blaine)

Just a little vid reliving and celebrating seasons two to five with our favourite boys

But We’re Still Standing Tall (Kurt and Blaine)

Created for the Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 58: Favourite ship

Anywhere You Take Me (Kurt and Blaine)

Created for Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 150: Most romantic moment

Give My All To You (Kurt and Blaine)

We all know what Blaine was thinking during ‘All Of Me’- I just wanted to try and show it.

Crowd Me With Love (Kurt Hummel){created for Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 24: Favourite Season 4 Male Solo}

This performance was perfection. Chris Colfer and Kurt Hummel at their truly magnificent best. And while I have nothing to fault from the actual performance, I thought that the audience shots could use some tweaking.

After all, you cannot tell me that he did not cross his mind at least once during this song.

This Feels Like Falling In Love (Kurt and Blaine)

Created for Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 101: Favourite kiss

Throw Your Arms Around Me (Kurt and Blaine)

Created for Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 100: Favourite hug

All You Need (Kurt and Blaine)

Created for Glee Hiatus Challenge Day 74: Happiest moment

“So Kurt Hummel, my amazing friend, my one true love…will you marry me?”

“Yeah…yeah.”

Rhymed With My Body (Kurt and Blaine)

Because the touch of the fingertips is as sexy as it gets… and sometimes it’s more.

Then and Now (Kurt and Blaine)

Befores and afters, highs and lows, comparison and contrast …” I wanna grow old with you”…

Miles From Where You Are (Kurt and Blaine)

No great love ever came without great struggle. No distance could ever completely come between these two.

I Am Not My Own (Kurt and Blaine)

An old video of mine that I never uploaded to YouTube, but given that it has been 3 years since ‘Original Song’, I thought I should celebrate.

Just Like When Harry Met Sally (Kurt and Blaine)

“It’s not easy putting your heart on the line, and baring your soul to someone you care about.” (Unknown)

You’re Still My Best Friend (Kurt and Blaine)

The phone call that told us everything was going to be ok. The point at which we moved from the dark to the light. The moment in which we knew we’d see them together again…soon.

A Moment of Affection (Kurt and Blaine)

“I wanna go to your house…”

The Light The Heat (Kurt and Blaine)

The way these two look at each other is so damn beautiful- I love that they can say so much, without a single word.

For Another Day (Kurt and Blaine)

There is hope for our boys. It has been dark and angsty and downright horrible, but now we are at the point where, I believe, we can just enjoy the ride these two are going to take on their journey back to each other.

We Could Have Had It All (Kurt and Blaine)

Let’s just call this…part of my catharsis? I just had to get this out. Focusing on eps 3x03 and 3x04.

You Were My Original (Kurt and Blaine)

This much history, this many memories- there is no way any of it can be forgotten or swept aside. They are endgame. That is all.

Where My Demons Hide (Blaine Anderson)

To me, there are so many things that have been left undeveloped with Blaine. We were introduced to this strong and confident characters, and then little by little we were hit with these tiny clues. The unsupportive father, victim of a hate crime etc. And then, of course, there was what went down in ‘The Break Up’. There is a darker side to this character, he has his demons, and I can only hope that in the aftermath of the last episode, we get to explore and understand this character a lot more.

You’re Like A Party (Kurt and Blaine)

Happy, sweet and beautiful moments- it is what we all need at the moment…

Such A Long Way To Go {2x06} (Kurt and Blaine)

So, with all the feels that we are certainly experiencing at the moment, I wanted to take it back and remember when it all began. *Sigh*…

You Made Me Believe (Kurt and Blaine)

So, after seeing the latest episode (Makeover), and the previews for the next, I just needed to focus on some happy memories…

I Will Wait For You (Kurt and Blaine)

Just playing with the whole NYADA, New York storyline…

Throw Me A Line (Kurt Hummel)

A video exploring the early episodes of season two. Our boy really copped it, however, there were moments that I believed shoed that he was not as alone as he might have thought…

I Don’t Know Just Where You Came From (Kurt and Blaine)

These two are born performers- I could watch them sing and dance all day…

Make Me Happy (Kurt and Blaine)

So, many, many rumours are flying about season 4, but I hold complete faith that these two are endgame. This vid shows that- that no matter what, these two do make each other happy and will continue to do so.

Story Through Song (Kurt and Blaine)

So, I had this plan to tell the story of these two, through snippets of the songs they perform on the show. The way it played out in my head was completely different to the final product, but I still think it worked out- I will just have to wait and see what any viewers think.

You Will Find Me (Kurt and Blaine)

A collection of Klaine, from seasons 2 and 3. The dialogue plays out chronologically, while the visuals are a mish-mash of moments.

Hear Your Heart (Kurt and Blaine)

The early days. While I love watching these two together, there is still something so sweet about the time we were all waiting anxiously for it to happen.

The Reason Why You’re Around (Kurt and Blaine)

These boys make me laugh. Just a little vid revisiting some of the giggle and laugh out loud moments. Pure joy.

Do That Brand New Thing (Blaine Anderson)

The boy is adorable, and I just want to celebrate that.

The World Belongs To You and I (Kurt and Blaine)

Klaine moments- from the kiss in 2.16, up to episode 3.18. A bit of a companion piece for my ‘I Keep Waiting’ vid.

What Is Love? (Kurt and Blaine)

Klaine-every relationship had it’s ups and downs. It’s those tough moments that make the great ones all the much more sweeter.

I Keep Waiting (Kurt and Blaine)

All the wonderful, amazing and somewhat angsty Klaine moments- from episode 2.06 to 2.16.

Bedroom Hymns {3x05} (Kurt and Blaine)

A video exploring all the Klaine moments from the amazing episode that was ‘The First Time’.

Move Your Feet (Blaine Anderson)

Just a fun little vid, focusing on our favourite moves from the one and only Blaine Anderson- from the smooth to the downright dorky.

Space They Cannot Touch (Kurt and Blaine)

So, I am addicted to these two, and am having a good time experimenting with making these fanvids. The used comes from the amazing Kate Miller-Heidke. I remember hearing it for the first time, and falling absolutely in love with it- the lyrics are so incredibly beautiful. To make it even better, the first time I saw her in concert, she informed the crowd that it was actually her husband who wrote it. Luckiest woman alive…

Anyway, I just felt the lyrics were so perfect to showcase the Klaine relationship and could not resist.

#fanvid #my fanvids #masterlist #masterlist: klaine vids #glee #klaine

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buckyscrystalqueen · 6 years

Text

Still On The Road: Part 3

Pairings: Jason Momoa x Reader (AU/ SOA crossover)

Warnings: Swearing, angst, fluff,

Word Count: 2,796

A/n: This is a continuation of the ‘Life On The Road’ series, which was a Chibs x Reader story I wrote a few months back.

Part 1 / Part 2

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

You didn’t sleep very well that night; fearing every single sound outside to be Chibs’ coming to take your little girl. At quarter to five, you finally just gave up and got up to get a head start on editing the footage you got on your GoPro’s for that weeks vlog. You threw on a maxi dress, not wanting to bother with much more so you didn’t wake up Avery and grabbed your bags on the way out the door. You hesitated for a second on the stairs and smiled weakly down at Jason, who was leaning his chair casually against the side of your RV, watching the truckers milling around the truck stop.

“Have you been out here all night?” You whispered as you closed the RV door softly behind you.

“Couldn’t sleep.” He said with a shrug.

“Shoulda texted me.” You said as you sat down on the steps and put your bags down on the ground. “I kept hearin’ imaginary motorcycles all night long.” He nodded his head in agreement as you ran your fingers through your hair.

“About that.” He said as he let the front legs of his chair hit the ground so he could lean forward to see your face. “I gotta ask… how valid a threat could it really be if he made one?” You sighed loudly and leaned forward on your knees.

“He’s in a biker gang.” You said quietly as you looked over at him. “If he really wanted to, I’m sure he has reach all over this damn country. But the Filip I knew wouldn’t sink to that level. Some of his brothers? Maybe, but not Filip. On the other hand, Avery’s his second daughter. The second daughter that he doesn’t have in his life because of his actions with the MC. Could that drive a man to desperation? I don’t know.”

“OK.” Jason said with a nod as he pushed his hair back with his palms. “When I was in college, my buddy’s sister dealt with a stalker and it got ugly, fast and she didn’t have a kid with the guy. So after you went to bed, I talked to the guys. If you don’t mind it, we wanna travel with you for a while as a group because you shouldn’t be out on the road by yourself when you’re working out the kinks of a custody case. It’s also kinda more efficient for us anyways since you probably know all the best spots to go and see. Because bikers or not, you can bet your ass that if your ex pulls up to your RV and my ass walks out the door, someone other than me is taking a step back. Especially if I don’t have a shirt on.” A small smile pulled at the corner of your lips as you glanced over at him from the corner of your eye.

“I mean… you make me stumble a bit, ain’t gunna lie.” He smirked and searched your eyes as a slight brush crept across your face. You bit your bottom lip and looked away for a moment to collect your thoughts. “Y’all have to know…” You said after a moment as you looked back over at him. “… while I don’t think they’ll do anything, a lot of these guys have killed before.”

“So, then we’ll head east away from California for a while.” He said with a nod. “We’ll be mindful of staying in one place too long and posting locations on social media. It’s simple fixes, sweetheart.”

“Yea, but it’s so much to ask of someone that doesn’t even know me, you know.” You said as you sat up and leaned back against the door of your RV. “Y’all are taking on a major responsibility of dealin’ with a kid which, while I may make it seem easy in, what, the week that you’ve known me. It ain’t all peaches and cream with this one. She’ll go a couple weeks being a complete angel and then she’s a monster for a week straight just because she can be. And I can already tell y’all are wantin’ ta be adventurous and shit but right now, my adventure consists of short morning hikes and stopping at like the worlds biggest ball’a twine and shit.”

“That’s real?” He asked as he looked over at you. Your face deadpanned the slightest bit and you nodded.

“It’s in Kansas and we’ve been twice.”

“Oh, man.” He laughed with a slight shake of his head. “Alright, so our lives on the road is a little tamed down for a couple months. Big deal. If the guys wanna be a little more adventurous, we can work it out. And, bonus, at the end of the day, we get to see what it’s like to maybe raise a kid on the road. Kinda gives us a slight peek to what our lives may or may not look like, you know.”

“Alright.” You said with a nod. “But, like I said last night, I don’t know y’all, so I’ll be lockin’ y’all out of my RV at night. And just remember, I do run a business out of my truck that is slightly time consuming in my week and y’all will be on YouTube… a lot.”

“I expect nothing less.” He agreed as he pushed his chair back against your RV to watch the sunrise.

“But that comes with it’s perks.” You said as you crossed your legs and fixed the material of your dress. “Like have you noticed most of the shit in my RV and my truck is Mossy Oak Camo? They are one of my biggest sponsors, shockingly. Between you and me, I fucking hate camo. Shit is so damn tacky. But, they pay me for product placement, which pays for Avery and my health insurance. GoPro pays for gas for Sully and the Palace’s generator.”

“Jesus.” He said as he looked over at you with his eyebrow raised. “How the hell…?”

“Eight years.” You interrupted with a slow nod as you looked out across the parking lot. “Eight long years of promoting companies and kissin’ a whole bunch of cooperate ass.”

“Well at least it pays, hun.” He said as he gestured to his truck, which he had parked right behind the back of your RV. “That’s what I can afford until my house in Hawaii sells.”

“Trust me when I tell you this.” You said as you grabbed your bags and got up to get coffee started for you and the guys. “That’s your starter RV. One day, you’ll find yourself in an RV as big as mine and you won’t know what to fucking do with the space.”

“Guess only time will tell.” He agreed as he stole a glimpse of your ass when you went into the RV.

——

“Alright, so let’s make a game plan.” Dave said after breakfast as the five of you sat at the dining room table that turned into Avery’s bed in the back of your RV. You glanced up at him with your eyebrow raised at even the general idea of a plan on the road as he laid a map down on the table.

“Um…” You said as you picked up your coffee mug to get it out of the way and exchanged a look with Avery, who knew how you felt about plans.

“God’s gunna laugh at you.” She said as she crossed her arms over her chest. “You make plans, and God just laughs.”

“Yea, well we need to know where we are temporarily avoiding.” Ben said. You nodded slowly as you looked back down at the map.

“Alright.” You said with a nod as you tilted your head to the side. You sighed and set your coffee back down on the corner. “So the Sons are mainly based in California but I know there are other charters in Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and New Mexico. They have some overseas and a couple in the northeast, too but they also have a Nomads charter that doesn’t have a home base. They stay toward the west coast as far as I know but that’s not to say they won’t travel.”

“So the West coast is completely off limits.” Jason said as he reached out and folded that section of the map back. “So we stay East of the Rockies. Simple.”

“Alright.” You said with a nod. “So we’re in Colorado now…”

“Mama, we still go to Disney?” You looked over at Avery as she stood up on the bench to look at the map with you.

“Um… well…” You said as you looked up the guys.

“Well… I haven't been to Disney since I was little.” Jason said with a glance at his friends.

“Actually, me neither.” Matt said.

“This is the first time I’ve left Minnesota.” Dave said with a shrug as he leaned back on the booth like chair. “So I guess I’m down.”

“Well, looks like you’re going to Disney, Princess.” Ben said with a smile as he picked up Avery and put her on his lap.

“But you still have to wait for your birthday.” You said before she could even cheer. Her face fell into a pout and you shrugged your shoulders. “Look, mama’s got bills to pay and crystals to sell to take you to Disney first, you gotta give me some time, OK?”

“OK.” She pouted.

“And that means, we have to swing through Arizona.” You sighed. “Because I have to stock up my shop for a while and that’s where most of my contacts are.”

“Alright.” Jason said as he moved your coffee and folded up the map. “So let’s see what kinda adventure we can find between here and Arizona.”

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

“This is safe, right?” You asked as you zipped Avery into a life vest to take her on her first ever white water rafting trip.

“It’s safe.” Your guide, Brooke, said with a nod. “Trust me. I bring my two year old on this river all the time. It’s only a class two so it’s as tame as you can get.”

“You ready?” Jason asked as he came over and dropped a helmet on your head with a smile.

“Not at all.” You said as Avery jumped up and down while cheering ‘yea’.

“Stop worrying.” He laughed as he put his arm over your shoulder. “It’s gunna be fine.”

“You say that now.” You said as you grabbed the sunscreen off the table to put some on Avery’s face and exposed limbs. “But then the next thing you know, we’re going over a rapid in the water…”

“Relax.” Jason said with a smile as he took the sunscreen from your hands. “You’re sitting in the bottom of the raft with her. She’s a good swimmer and she has a life vest. Trust me, OK?” You groaned as he turned you around to put sunscreen across your back. You glanced down at Avery, who was talking to Max about a mile a minute in her excitement, and sighed.

“I hate you for talking me into this.” You huffed.

“Here you go.” Dave said as he held out a life vest for you.

“Does it have a mouth piece or something?” Jason joked as he tossed the sunscreen in your river bag. “Shut her up for a minute?”

“Haha.” You sassed as the tour guide gave the all call to get on the busses so you grabbed the GoPro you were bringing on the rafting trip. “Come on, Avery. Let’s get on the bus.” With another cheer, she ran back over to you and practically dragged you toward the crowd surrounding the bus.

The bus ride was only about forty-five minutes long and the whole time, you sat beside Jason with Avery in your lap, trying not to over think the decision of putting your daughter in a dangerous yet completely safe situation. Sure, the company you chose specifically catered to families that had younger kids and yea, you were choosing to sit with her and not paddle the boat to guarantee that you had a better chance of making sure she didn’t hit a rock or get trapped if the raft did flip but that still didn’t settle your nerves.

“Hey.” Jason said softly as the bus pulled up to the put it. “You can take her back if you’re really not comfortable with this.”

“It’s alright.” You sighed with a small shake of your head. “I’m just overthinking it.”

“You sure?” He asked as he grabbed his paddle and helmet.

“No.” You laughed as you put Avery down and stood up behind her. “But I’m gunna do it anyways.”

“That’s my girl.” He chuckled as he stood up with his head ducked and followed you out of the bus.

“Avery Lynn.” You called out when she tried to run down to the water in her cute, pink water shoes and her blue Moana bathing suit. “We gotta wait our turn.” You triple checked the tightness of her bright orange life vest and helmet and took ahold of her hand to keep her close as the boys grabbed your raft and helped Brooke carry it to the line to get into water.

“(Y/N), you gotta get in.” Max called out as your boat was pushed into the water.

“Come on, Ave’s.” You said as you took Avery’s hand and lead her down to the water line. You got into the middle of the two tubes and sat down so that Jason could pass you Avery. “You ready?” You asked her as you situated her on your crossed legs so her butt was touching the rubber bottom.

“Ready!” She cheered as she grabbed the handle in front of her. You nodded to yourself as Ben and Dave took the front two spots and Jason and Max sat on either side of you and Avery.

“Alright, guys. Let’s do some rafting!” Brooke, with your GoPro clipped onto her helmet for you, cheered as she and another guy pushed the raft the rest of the way into the water. You nervously wrapped your arms around Avery’s middle as you approached the first rapid that was only a few dozen feet away and it took only a few moments for your daughter’s fear to really kick in.

“Mommy…” She said when the roar of the water going over the rocks got even louder with each second. “No, mommy, no!”

“It’s OK, baby.” You said as she clung to your arms and started to cry. Regret instantly filled your stomach and you knew there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop this from happening. As the boat hit the first rock, Avery screamed your name in sheer terror, and you cursed the boys in your head for making you agree to this.

Time seemed to stand still as Brooke shouted simple commands to paddle forward and ice cold water spilled into the boat, soaking you from head to toe in seconds. You couldn’t do anything but hold your daughter tight and pray that she wouldn’t hold this against you for the rest of her life because you actually loved the adrenaline rush this was giving you. But, nearly just as quickly as it started, the short, class 1 rapid was over. Your head whipped to the side to look at your daughter’s face as she wiped the water from her eyes.

“Avery?” You asked hesitantly as you studied her face.

“It’s over, mommy?” She asked as she sat up a little more to look over the front of the boat.

“Yea baby. That one’s over.” You said with a nod, causing her to instantly pout.

“Aw, man. I wanna do it again.” A huffed laugh escaped your lips as you sat up straight behind her and gave her a tight hug.

“We got a bunch more. Don’t worry, baby.”

“And you were worried she was gunna hate you.” Jason teased as he bumped your shoulder with his knee while paddling toward the next rapid under Brooke’s direction.

“Shut up, Jay.” You laughed as Avery bounced against your legs in preparation for the next rapid. “Put your hands up, Avery. I got you.” You said as you lifted her hands off the handle so they were up on either side of your face. She screamed excitedly as the raft was taken through the dip between two big rocks, spraying everyone with water.

“I think she likes it.” Dave called out with a laugh as the four guys paddled like a well oiled machine through the rapid.

“Little bit.” You yelled back as you held your daughter to your chest, finally glad that you let the boys talk you into this experience.

Part 4

#Jason Momoa x Reader #Still On The Road #Life on the Road series #life on the road

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