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wazzupmrstark · 3 years

Text

dirty reflection || th x reader

Summary: fulfilling a long held fantasy with your boyfriend (cockwarming him in front of a mirror)

Warnings: swearing, smut (18+)

Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: this was a piece for @honeymoonlover's birthday that i inserted tom into :)

Masterlist

"Tell me!"

“No!”

“Please!”

“No, I’m too embarrassed!”

You turned away from your boyfriend on the couch with your arms folded across your chest in protest. If there was anyone who could get you to spill something it was Tom, but you were determined not to break.

“Please, baby?” he asked again, and walked around to the other side of the sofa so that you could see his big brown eyes.

You squeezed your own eyes shut, as to not let him guilt trip you and shook your head stubbornly. Tom let out a sigh of frustration and you thought that maybe he had given up until you heard him chuckle above you.

“Fine, then I guess we won’t have sex at all.”

“What?”

You opened your eyes again and stared at your boyfriend in disbelief. He smirked.

“You heard me.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You’re bluffing.”

“No,” he insisted, doubling down. “If you won’t tell me what you want, we won’t have sex until you do.”

“You know what I want! You already know how to make me feel good.”

“I thought I did,” he huffed, sticking out his bottom lip in a pout.

“You do!”

Tom raised his arms above his head, bringing the hem of his t-shirt up to reveal a small strip of his stomach and the elastic of his Calvin Klein’s. You sucked in a breath and pursed your lips, ignoring the sight before you.

“But not this!”

The this he was referring to was just a silly fantasy of yours, one that you had purposely kept secret because you were embarrassed to admit to wanting something so... filthy. You had never planned to fulfill it- you were more than content to simply imagine the scene playing out when Tom wasn’t home, and use your own hands instead of his to take the edge off. But as of 20 minutes ago that wasn’t an option anymore because your boyfriend had come across your messages with your best friend about that very fantasy.

He hadn’t meant to pry. He had just gotten home from shooting and grabbed your Mac off of the coffee table to check Twitter. You weren’t around, but he always used your computer to scroll through social media anyway so he figured he didn’t need to ask. Your last iMessage conversation with Sloane was still up, and he went to minimize the window when he read his name at the top of one of your blue bubbles. He knew he shouldn’t have been reading your private messages, but he couldn’t stop himself.

s: you should just tell him

y/n: idk how to bring it up

s: it’s not that hard

y/n: would it be weird to ask you to tell him for me?

s: bitch yes

s: i don’t want to talk to your bf about your sex life

y/n: tom knows you though! You could just sneak it into conversation casually yk?

s: i’m not telling him you want to be-

That was as far as he got before you walked back into the room and he slammed the laptop shut in panic, looking like you’d just caught him watching porn- which to be fair, you had done before.

Before you could say anything, or even process what had just happened, Tom flipped it around on you.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Your brain still hadn’t processed the situation so you furrowed your brow in confusion. “I don’t know what you mean-”

“Why are you talking to Sloane about our sex life?” he demanded. It finally clicked. “And what about it is so terrible about it that you don’t want to tell me yourself?”

“There’s nothing terrible about it!” you assured him.

“Then what?” His face was starting to turn red like it did whenever he got worked up. “Have you been faking-”

“No!”

You could feel your face starting to heat up as well at the implication.

“We were just talking about a dumb fantasy of mine, that’s all.”

And that’s what led you to where you were now, staring each other down over the edge of the couch, daring the other to be the first to break. The room was still filled with tension, but there had been a shift in context.

Tom's eyes were dark and nearly unreadable in the dim light of your living room.

“You’re really not going to fuck me until I tell you?” you asked. He nodded again in earnest, and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “But what do I get out of telling you?”

He gave you a look like it should have been obvious. “We’re going to do it.”

You hesitated. “What if you’re not into it?”

He shrugged and brushed off the possibility. “I’m into whatever you’re into.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I promise,” Tom said and pressed a kiss to your lips as if to seal it. “I’m not going to judge whatever it is you want me to do to you. No matter how gross it is.” You scoffed and swatted at him, but he dodged your hand easily.

“I can’t stand you,” you muttered.

“Oh, is that why you’re always kneeling for me?”

“Do you want me to tell you or not?”

The smirk fell from his face as he hastily cleared his throat and beckoned for you to continue.

“You know that mirror we have in our bedroom?” you asked.

Tom nodded, a grin playing at the corner of his mouth as if he had an idea about where this was going.

“I’ve always wanted to cockwarm you while we sit in front of it.”

Your boyfriend was smiling from ear to ear now. He had you right where he wanted you.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“I mean, pretty much, yeah.”

“Pretty much?” The next part you mumbled under your breath. “What was that?” Tom asked, leaning over the couch so that he could hear you.

“Yes,” you bit out and clenched your jaw in a pathetic sort of pout.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he teased, stroking your cheek with his thumb. “Okay, get up.”

“What, why?”

“I’ve got some lines to read over. You can keep my cock warm while I do that.”

“Right now?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted?”

“It-it is.”

“Then get up.”

You did as you were told and stood up from your spot on the sofa, watching as Tom grabbed the back of one of the kitchen chairs and began dragging it behind him.

“Why-”

“I don’t want to ruin our armchair,” he said as an explanation and jerked his head in the direction of your bedroom, motioning for you to follow him.

The mirror in your bedroom was one of your favorite things in the house. It sat on the floor leaned up against the wall with a large ornate frame encompassing it. It was almost taller than you, and weighed about sixty pounds. Its gold paint was chipping in the corners and it was a bit scuffed up, but it was still the best find you’d ever made at the antique fair and you stood by that. You still remembered carrying it home the day you bought it. Tom had filmed the process instead of helping, watching you struggle with the newspaper-wrapped package through the screen on his phone with a smug grin on his face the entire time.

Tom set the chair on the floor in front of the mirror and began to strip, pulling off his hoodie first before shimmying out of his joggers. You followed in suit by unzipping your skirt and letting it fall to the ground. You stepped out of it and went for your shirt next, yanking it over your head. Your hands went for the clasp of your bra after that before thinking twice.

“Do you want my bra off or-”

He seemed to think about it for a moment before answering. “Leave it on.”

You nodded and dropped your hands back by your side, watching him grab his notebook from the desk and settle on the chair. He was completely naked now, and you were left in just your underwear, a scene you both were intimately familiar with.

He spat into his palm and took his cock in his hand, pumping a few times before you stopped him.

“Let me,” you offered, kneeling on the floor in front of him.

He groaned and handed over his control easily. You grinned to yourself before taking him in your mouth. You knew he’d never pass up an opportunity to have you suck him off.

You worked slowly, taking your time, enjoying the feeling of him getting hard on your tongue. Tom gripped your hair with one hand and clutched his notebook with the other. He fought to keep his eyes open, to keep his head upright. In the mirror he could see the back of your head bobbing up and down on his lap, the expanse of your back, every scar, freckle, and mole he’d seen a thousand times before but now from a different angle.

You hollowed out your cheeks and took him to the back of your throat, trying not to laugh when you heard him curse.

“Stop,” he breathed out, pulling you off of him by your hair. “You’re a menace.”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand and smiled. “Thank you.”

He glared at you for a moment before flicking his gaze downwards.

“I’d ask if you want me to return the favor, but I don’t think I need to.” He reached out to prove his point and brushed a couple fingers over your panties, ignoring the way you trembled as he did. He held his hand up to you to show you the wetness gathered on his pointer and index before bringing them to his lips and sucking it off. “You’re plenty wet already.”

You suppressed a moan and pursed your lips, nodding in agreement.

Tom didn’t have to say anything for you to know what he wanted next. You slipped out of your panties and tossed them to the side. He wrapped an arm around your waist as you straddled him and lined yourself up. You both sighed as you sank down onto his cock. He kissed you deeply, winding a hand through hair and moaning your name. You let your head rest against his shoulder and tried not to rock your hips forward. Your boyfriend was having similar issues, hips stuttering underneath you, head falling back in pleasure.

“T-tommy,” you gasped.

“Don’t,” he warned through gritted teeth. You clenched around him involuntarily and whined. “What did I just say?”

“Sorry, can’t help it.”

He took a deep breath and began flipping through the pages of his notebook. You craned your neck to look back at your reflection in the mirror, smiling weakly at the sight. Tom had an arm slung loosely around your waist still. His cheeks were rosy and warm to the touch. Your ass was on full display at this angle, but you didn’t mind. You knew it was your boyfriend’s favorite view anyway, and you weren’t ashamed to admit that you could see why.

The way you were seated on his lap made it look like you could have just been cuddling. The reflection didn’t show Tom's cock buried deep inside your pussy and your breathing had slowed to somewhat of a normal pace.

Tom began to recite his lines to himself and you turned your attention back to him, admiring how he looked while he was concentrating. His eyelashes were so fucking long, it was something you had always been jealous of. The light filtering into the room made them look blond...

You were doing so good. You were relaxing comfortably, lost in your own thoughts, when Tom moved for the first time. He was just scratching his ankle, but the sudden movement made you yelp.

“Don’t do that!” you cried.

“What, this?” he asked and bent down to scratch his ankle again.

“Yes, that,” you growled.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“What about this?”

He leaned back and stretched his arms above his head.

“That’s worse!” you hissed.

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.” He just shrugged and tossed his notebook on the bed. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Could use a break,” he replied simply, “and it’s hard to focus with distractions.”

The last part was pointed at you and you narrowed your eyes.

“I have been perfectly still.”

“Yeah, but your... impatience is, well, physical.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re soaking, love.”

You looked down at Tom's lap and suddenly realized what he meant. Your arousal was quite literally dripping onto his thighs and the chair beneath you. That was why he didn’t want to use the armchair. You felt your face heat up in embarrassment and buried your head in your boyfriend’s shoulder.

“Fuck, I’m sorry!”

He chuckled and rubbed a hand up and down your back comfortingly. “Don’t be! I know you can’t help it, and it’s honestly really fucking hot.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“No,” he promised and shook his head adamantly. “I like that I have this effect on you.”

You rolled your eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

“I know.”

“So this fantasy of yours,” he said, clearing his throat. “How does it end?"

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“You.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”

“Whatever you want.”

“I get to pick how it ends?”

“Mhm. I usually leave it up to the imagination so it’s open-ended.”

“You mean when you masturbate to it you cum before it ends so you lose interest?” Tom clarified.

“Maybe.”

“I know you,” he said cockily.

“And like I said, you know what I like.”

“I like to think I do.”

“So tell me what to do.”

“You just like being bossed around.”

“And what about it?”

“Brat,” he spat.

“Bitch.”

Tom smiled and jerked his hips the slightest bit, making you whimper. “Stand up.”

You tried not to show your disappointment, but did as you were told and stood up, wincing at the empty feeling that followed.

“Just for a minute, baby,” he assured you. “Turn around.”

You turned so that you were facing the mirror and let yourself be pulled back onto your boyfriend’s lap. He slid his cock back inside of you almost immediately and praised you for taking it so well.

“I thought you should see yourself,” he whispered against your shoulder.

You moaned, only able to nod in agreement. You were positioned at a bit of an angle now since you were facing forward, but any discomfort you felt evaporated when Tom kissed the back of your neck. He unclasped your bra and let it fall to the floor.

“Look at you,” he murmured as he urged you to start riding him, “fucking yourself on my cock like a slut.”

“Fuck, Tom.”

You forced yourself to look at your reflection, straining your neck so that you could see clearly. You made eye contact with yourself only to see a stranger stared back at you. The person in the mirror looked like a fucking pornstar, tits out, legs spread, but also fucked out of their mind.

“Feels so good,” you panted.

“I know, baby, I know.”

Tom brought a hand down to your clit and started to rub in circular motions, a clue that he was getting close. Your legs were shaking at this point and you could feel your own orgasm starting to creep up on you as he slammed into you from behind.

“You look so fucking hot like this,” Tom grunted.

You met his eyes in the reflection and gave a weak smile. “I know.”

“Fuck, y/n!” He came suddenly with a moan of your name. You watched in the mirror as his eyes screwed up and his whole body tensed underneath you.

“Can I- can I cum?” you begged, not even sure if you’d be able to hold out if he said no.

A mere nod of his head was all it took for you to tip over the edge. Tom weakly fucked you through it, still riding the end of his own high.

“So good for me,” he managed in broken breaths.

You arched your back against his chest as you came, mumbling profanities the entire time. You tried to keep your eyes open to watch yourself fall apart, but you only caught glimpses.

You collapsed back against Tom as the aftershocks of your orgasm subsided, gasping for breath like you had just finished running a marathon.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Tom wrapped his arms around you and pulled you close, kissing the top of your head gently. You were both covered in sweat and cum, but neither of you could find the energy to care.

“Of course.”

You let yourself relax against his body for another moment, observing your reflections in the mirror. Your hair was a tangled mess, but so was Tom's. Hickeys were already beginning to bloom on your neck and shoulders, reminders to follow you in the days ahead.

Your eyes wandered up to meet your boyfriend’s, who was already gazing at you tenderly. You shared a brief look and smirked at each other.

“Round two?”

lmk what you think i always appreciate feedback!!

#dirty reflection #tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n #tom holland fic #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fanfiction

2K notes · View notes

sluttywonwoo · 3 years

Text

dirty reflection || hvc x reader

Summary: fulfilling a long held fantasy with your boyfriend (cockwarming him in front of a mirror)

Warnings: swearing, smut (18+)

Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: this is for @junsol happy birthday tiff!!

Masterlist

“Tell me!”

“No!”

“Please!”

“No, I’m too embarrassed!”

You turned away from your boyfriend on the couch with your arms folded across your chest in protest. If there was anyone who could get you to spill something it was Vernon, but you were determined not to break.

“Please, baby?” he asked again, and walked around to the other side of the sofa so that you could see his big brown eyes.

You squeezed your own eyes shut, as to not let him guilt trip you and shook your head stubbornly. Vernon let out a sigh of frustration and you thought that maybe he had given up until you heard him chuckle above you.

“Fine, then I guess we won’t have sex at all.”

“What?”

You opened your eyes again and stared at your boyfriend in disbelief. He smirked.

“You heard me.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You’re bluffing.”

“No,” he insisted, doubling down. “If you won’t tell me what you want, we won’t have sex until you do.”

“You know what I want! You already know how to make me feel good.”

“I thought I did,” he huffed, sticking out his bottom lip in a pout.

“You do!”

Vernon raised his arms above his head, bringing the hem of his t-shirt up to reveal a small strip of his stomach and the elastic of his Calvin Klein’s. You sucked in a breath and pursed your lips, ignoring the sight before you.

“But not this!”

The this he was referring to was just a silly fantasy of yours, one that you had purposely kept secret because you were embarrassed to admit to wanting something so... filthy. You had never planned to fulfill it- you were more than content to simply imagine the scene playing out when Vernon wasn’t home, and use your own hands instead of his to take the edge off. But as of 20 minutes ago that wasn’t an option anymore because your boyfriend had come across your messages with your best friend about that very fantasy.

He hadn’t meant to pry. He had just gotten home from rehearsal and grabbed your Mac off of the coffee table to check Twitter. You weren’t around, but he always used your computer to scroll through social media anyway so he figured he didn’t need to ask. Your last iMessage conversation with Sloane was still up, and he went to minimize the window when he read his name at the top of one of your blue bubbles. He knew he shouldn’t have been reading your private messages, but he couldn’t stop himself.

s: you should just tell him

y/n: idk how to bring it up

s: it’s not that hard

y/n: would it be weird to ask you to tell him for me?

s: bitch yes

s: I don’t want to talk to your bf about your sex life

y/n: vernon knows you though! You could just sneak it into conversation casually yk?

s: i’m not telling him you want to be-

That was as far as he got before you walked back into the room and he slammed the laptop shut in panic, looking like you’d just caught him watching porn- which to be fair, you had done a number of times before.

Before you could say anything, or even process what had just happened, Vernon flipped it around on you.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Your brain still hadn’t processed the situation so you furrowed your brow in confusion. “I don’t know what you mean-”

“Why are you talking to Sloane about our sex life?” he demanded. It finally clicked. “And what about it is so terrible about it that you don’t want to tell me yourself?”

“There’s nothing terrible about it!” you assured him.

“Then what?” His face was starting to turn red like it did whenever he got worked up. “Have you been faking-”

“No!" You could feel your face starting to heat up as well at the implication. “We were just talking about a dumb fantasy of mine, that’s all.”

Vernon’s eyes were dark and nearly unreadable in the dim light of your living room.

“You’re really not going to fuck me until I tell you?” you asked. He nodded again in earnest, and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “But what do I get out of telling you?”

He gave you a look like it should have been obvious. “We’re going to do it.”

You hesitated. “What if you’re not into it?”

He shrugged and brushed off the possibility. “I’m into whatever you’re into.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I promise,” Vernon said and pressed a kiss to your lips as if to seal it. “I’m not going to judge whatever it is you want me to do to you. No matter how gross it is.”

You scoffed and swatted at him, but he dodged your hand easily.

“I can’t stand you,” you muttered.

“Oh, is that why you’re always kneeling for me?”

“Do you want me to tell you or not?”

The smirk fell from his face as he hastily cleared his throat and beckoned for you to continue.

“You know that mirror we have in our bedroom?” you asked.

Vernon nodded, a grin playing at the corner of his mouth as if he had an idea about where this was going.

“I’ve always wanted to cockwarm you while we sit in front of it.”

Your boyfriend was smiling from ear to ear now. He had you right where he wanted you.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“I mean, pretty much, yeah.”

“Pretty much?” The next part you mumbled under your breath. “What was that?” Vernon asked, leaning over the couch so that he could hear you.

“Yes,” you bit out and clenched your jaw in a pathetic sort of pout.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he teased, stroking your cheek with his thumb. “Okay, get up.”

“What, why?”

“I’ve got some lyrics to work over. You can keep my cock warm while I do that.”

“Right now?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted?”

“It-it is.”

“Then get up.”

You did as you were told and stood up from your spot on the sofa, watching as Vernon grabbed the back of one of the kitchen chairs and began dragging it behind him.

“Why-”

“I don’t want to ruin our armchair,” he said as an explanation and jerked his head in the direction of your bedroom, motioning for you to follow him.

The mirror in your bedroom was one of your favorite things in the house. It sat on the floor leaned up against the wall with a large ornate frame encompassing it. It was almost taller than you, and weighed about sixty pounds. Its gold paint was chipping in the corners and it was a bit scuffed up, but it was still the best find you’d ever made at the antique fair and you stood by that. You still remembered carrying it home the day you bought it. Vernon had filmed the process instead of helping, watching you struggle with the newspaper-wrapped package through the screen on his phone with a smug grin on his face the entire time.

Vernon set the chair on the floor in front of the mirror and began to strip, pulling off his hoodie first before shimmying out of his joggers. You followed in suit by unzipping your skirt and letting it fall to the ground. You stepped out of it and went for your shirt next, yanking it over your head. Your hands went for the clasp of your bra after that before thinking twice.

“Do you want my bra off or-”

He seemed to think about it for a moment before answering. “Leave it on.”

He spat into his palm and took his cock in his hand, pumping a few times before you stopped him.

“Let me,” you offered, kneeling on the floor in front of him.

He groaned and handed over control easily. You grinned to yourself before taking him in your mouth. You knew he’d never pass up an opportunity to have you suck him off.

You worked slowly, taking your time, enjoying the feeling of him getting hard on your tongue. Vernon gripped your hair with one hand and clutched his notebook with the other. He fought to keep his eyes open, to keep his head upright. In the mirror he could see the back of your head bobbing up and down on his lap, the expanse of your back, every scar, freckle, and mole he’d seen a thousand times before but now from a different angle.

You hollowed out your cheeks and took him to the back of your throat, trying not to laugh when you heard him curse.

“Stop,” he breathed out, pulling you off of him by your hair. “You’re a menace.”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand and smiled. “Thank you.”

He glared at you for a moment before flicking his gaze downwards.

You suppressed a moan and pursed your lips, nodding in agreement.

Vernon didn’t have to say anything for you to know what he wanted next. You slipped out of your panties and tossed them to the side. He wrapped an arm around your waist as you straddled him and lined yourself up. You both sighed as you sank down onto his cock. He kissed you deeply, winding a hand through hair and moaning your name. You let your head rest against his shoulder and tried not to rock your hips forward. Your boyfriend was having similar issues, hips stuttering underneath you, head falling back in pleasure.

“H-hansol,” you gasped.

“Don’t,” he warned through gritted teeth. You clenched around him involuntarily and whined. “What did I just say?”

“Sorry, can’t help it.”

He took a deep breath and began flipping through the pages of his notebook. You craned your neck to look back at your reflection in the mirror, smiling weakly at the sight. Vernon had an arm slung loosely around your waist still. His cheeks were rosy and warm to the touch. Your ass was on full display at this angle, but you didn’t mind. You knew it was your boyfriend’s favorite view anyway, and you weren’t ashamed to admit that you could see why.

The way you were seated on his lap made it look like you could have just been cuddling. The reflection didn’t show Vernon’s cock buried deep inside your pussy and your breathing had slowed to somewhat of a normal pace.

Vernon began to hum to himself and you turned your attention back to him, admiring how he looked while he was concentrating. His eyelashes were so fucking long, it was something you had always been jealous of. The light filtering into the room made them look blond and you thought back to all of the colors he had dyed his hair before.

It was brown now, with remnants of the previous black still fading, but he had gone blond once before. You still remembered how shocked you had been when he came home from the salon that day.

You were doing so good. You were relaxing comfortably, lost in your own thoughts, when Vernon moved for the first time. He was just scratching his ankle, but the sudden movement made you yelp.

“Don’t do that!” you cried.

“What, this?” he asked and bent down to scratch his ankle again.

“Yes, that,” you growled.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“What about this?”

He leaned back and stretched his arms above his head.

“That’s worse!” you hissed.

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.” He just shrugged and tossed his notebook on the bed. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Could use a break,” he replied simply, “and it’s hard to focus with distractions.”

The last part was pointed at you and you narrowed your eyes.

“I have been perfectly still.”

“Yeah, but your... impatience is, well, physical.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re soaking, love.”

You looked down at Vernon’s lap and suddenly realized what he meant. Your arousal was quite literally dripping onto his thighs and the chair beneath you. That was why he didn’t want to use the armchair. You felt your face heat up in embarrassment and buried your head in your boyfriend’s shoulder.

“Fuck, I’m sorry!”

He chuckled and rubbed a hand up and down your back comfortingly. “Don’t be! I know you can’t help it, and it’s honestly really fucking hot.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“No,” he promised and shook his head adamantly. “I like that I have this effect on you.”

You rolled your eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

“I know.”

“So this fantasy of yours,” he said, clearing his throat. “How does it end?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“You.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”

“Whatever you want.”

“I get to pick how it ends?”

“Mhm. I usually leave it up to the imagination so it’s open-ended.”

“You mean when you masturbate to it you cum before it ends so you lose interest?” Vernon clarified.

“Maybe.”

“I know you,” he said cockily.

“And like I said, you know what I like.”

“I like to think I do.”

“So tell me what to do.”

“You just like being bossed around.”

“And what about it?”

“Brat,” he spat.

“Bitch.”

Vernon smiled and jerked his hips the slightest bit, making you whimper. “Stand up.”

You tried not to show your disappointment, but did as you were told and stood up, wincing at the empty feeling that followed.

“Just for a minute, baby,” he assured you. “Turn around.”

“I thought you should see yourself,” he whispered against your shoulder.

You moaned, only able to nod in agreement. You were positioned at a bit of an angle now since you were facing forward, but any discomfort you felt evaporated when Hansol kissed the back of your neck. He unclasped your bra and let it fall to the floor.

“Look at you,” he murmured as he urged you to start riding him, “fucking yourself on my cock like a slut.”

“Fuck, Hansol.”

“Feels so good,” you panted.

“I know, baby, I know.”

Vernon brought a hand down to your clit and started to rub in circular motions, a clue that he was getting close. Your legs were shaking at this point and you could feel your own orgasm starting to creep up on you as he slammed into you from behind.

“You look so fucking hot like this,” Vernon grunted.

You met his eyes in the reflection and gave a weak smile. “I know.”

“Fuck, y/n!” He came suddenly with a moan of your name. You watched in the mirror as his eyes screwed up and his whole body tensed underneath you.

“Can I- can I cum?” you begged, not even sure if you’d be able to hold out if he said no.

A mere nod of his head was all it took for you to tip over the edge. Vernon weakly fucked you through it, still riding the end of his own high.

“So good for me,” he managed in broken breaths.

You arched your back against his chest as you came, mumbling profanities the entire time. You tried to keep your eyes open to watch yourself fall apart, but you only caught glimpses.

You collapsed back against Vernon as the aftershocks of your orgasm subsided, gasping for breath like you had just finished running a marathon.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Vernon wrapped his arms around you and pulled you close, kissing the top of your head gently. You were both covered in sweat and cum, but neither of you could find the energy to care.

“Of course.”

You let yourself relax against his body for another moment, observing your reflections in the mirror. Your hair was a tangled mess, but so was Vernon’s. Hickeys were already beginning to bloom on your neck and shoulders, reminders to follow you in the days ahead.

Your eyes wandered up to meet your boyfriend’s, who was already gazing at you tenderly. You shared a brief look and smirked at each other.

“Round two?”

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sunsetinmyvein · 4 years

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I Know That I’ll Lose - Chapter Six - Give it a Rest, I Could Persuade You

It had been about a month since she last saw Matty. He and the band had to fly out quite early the morning after the festival, so there wasn’t really a chance to catch up again once they parted ways at the bar. But that was okay, because he was considerably more talkative this time around than what he had been the last time. It wasn’t quite the same as getting to properly hang out, and she missed seeing the rest of the band as well, but it was still better than nothing and made the distance more tolerable. She found herself holding her phone in her hand, contemplating if she should call Matty or not. Their last proper phone call was a while ago now – roughly a week she thought – and she wanted to tell him about the dumb thing that happened today that she thought he’d appreciate. She knew that it wasn’t too late yet where he currently was, and the show that they had played earlier that evening should’ve finished by now. But she was always wary that he was a busy guy. As she deliberated on this, her phone started buzzing in her hand. For a second she thought maybe he really did have some form of crazy mindreading skills. But it wasn’t Matty, it was her brother.

“Hey! How’s things?” She asked as she answered the call.

“I…” He sighed through the phone. “I got an email about you.” Her brother started saying, his tone sounding unsure.

“What sort of email?” She asked with a frown, sitting up properly on the couch. This conversation was clearly important.

Before her brain had a chance to jump to the worst conclusion, he continued, “A job offer. For you. To tour internationally with a band doing merch.” He answered.

There were a few moments of silence on the line as she processed this information. “Shit, what?” She asked incredulously.

“Some guy called No Rome?” It was more of a question than a statement, he clearly didn’t know who that artist was. “Their label emailed me.” He continued, but she had sort of tuned out of what he was saying. She had heard that name before but couldn’t remember where… “They said that they had received high recommendations about you or something.”

“That’s so crazy, I don’t even-” The metaphorical lightbulb went off as she remembered that band name. “Wait...” That was the regular support act for The 1975. The gears started turning at this point. “Did they say who the recommendation came from?” She questioned.

“No. Why?”

“I’ll call you back.” She replied instantly, knowing more than likely who had caused this email to be sent.

She hung up the phone before promptly starting another call. “Matty,” She began as soon as he picked up, skipping the pleasantries.

“Yes?” He asked, an innocent tone to his voice.

“What is this job offer thing that you’ve done?” She accused.

“What job offer thing?” He asked back.

“I know it was you.” She stated, not wanting to beat around the bush with something like this. This was a big deal if it was true.

“Did you get offered something interesting?” He continued. The amusement was starting to seep into his voice at this point.

“Just fucking tell me.” She said with a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose.

He hummed thoughtfully, waiting a moment before responding, “Maybe you should just accept the job and I can tell you next week in person.” Well, at least that confirmed that he knew about it.

“You really expect me to just drop everything I have here and come gallivant around on tour with you?” She questioned.

“Kind of.” He answered bluntly.

Okay. So, it was a real job offer then. A real job offer that had probably been suggested by Matty, which did lower the legitimacy of it a little bit. But it was still a job offer that wanted to pay for her to travel internationally. That was still a lot of information to handle. The first question that floated to the top was definitely the elephant in the room, “Why on earth did you get them to ask me to do No Rome’s merch? You’re fucking on tour together. It’ll be 1975 merch for the majority.” She pointed out.

“No, you only have to do No Rome.” He replied.

“But that…” That didn’t make any sense whatsoever. “Why isn’t that just included in whoever does your merch?” She asked in confusion.

“I thought he deserved his own merch person.” He answered.

“But they’re going to be sold from the same place? How am I meant to only serve people who want No Rome stuff?” This job offer was so far only raising more questions than solutions.

“Oh no, no, no. You don’t have to sell to anyone.” He laughed like it was entirely too obvious. “You just have to do the counts and setup.”

That made even less sense. Just the setup? That was like telling someone to drive to work, set their desk up, turn their computer on, log in and then just go home to let someone else do all the work on your account with all your settings and preferences. They wouldn’t know where anything was or what your methods were. There was no point in preparing everything if you weren’t the one dealing with it. “Matty… That’s not how working merch works.” She tried to explain.

“That’s how this job works.” He corrected. “You essentially do prep work.”

“And then what?” She asked.

“And then you can watch the shows and hang out.” He answered.

Right. That’s what this was about. The job offer was clearly just a front so that he could socialise with her without her work getting in the way. “Are you just shitty that we didn’t get to hangout all day during the festival?” She asked with a chuckle.

“No.” He shot back instantly.

“Liar!” She retaliated loudly with a laugh.

“Fuckin’ take the job, love.” He sighed tiredly.

“And if I don’t want to?” She challenged.

She was just met with his loud laugh in response. “You want to.” The level of certainty in his voice, that cocky tone. Fuck. She hated to admit that simple things he did like that were enough to pull a reaction out of her. He was attractive when he was confident. At that moment, she was thankful that he couldn’t see her because he would no doubt make it much worse in person. But he was right - it was a crazy good opportunity. It added a ridiculously good reference to her resume, and she was going to get paid good money to hang out with her friends. She would be insane to say no. But she was also well aware that being in close capacity to Matthew Healy for so long was probably going to be difficult. She weighed up the pros and cons briefly in her head as she tried to come to a decision.

“Fine.” She agreed eventually. “Send me the details.”

A contract was sent to her within a matter of minutes. It outlined that she was going to be on tour with them for a month and a half and would fly out late next week. A free holiday spent in good company? It was an offer too good to be true, really. And she was going to get paid to do it! Just over a week wasn’t much time to get everything sorted to be away from home for six weeks, but it would have to suffice. Before her flight departed, they had sent her the details of a taxi company that would take her to the lot that the tour buses were waiting in. They also sent through which bus number plate to meet them at with the code to get into it to dump her luggage. The only issue was, it was a huge lot. There were at least fifty odd tour buses in this place. It took a good deal of searching to work out which bus was the one that she was meant to go to, and lugging her suitcase through the lot was starting to get tiring. When she finally spotted the plate that she was after it was like the lagoon in the middle of a desert; she was worried that it might just be a mirage. But she started walking over to the No Rome tour bus, only to feel a hand land on her shoulder. She turned, half anticipating to see a security guard asking her why she’d been wandering around for the last half hour, only to see Matty standing behind her.

“Oh, hey.” She smiled up at him, not having expected to see him so soon after getting here.

“I have some unfortunate news,” He said with a crestfallen expression as he began steering her away from the bus. She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. “Rome’s tour bus is a fairly small bus, and was actually already fully booked by the time you were confirmed to come with us.” He admitted.

“Oh.” She said with a frown.

“So, you have to stay in the other bus.” He continued. She could see the stupid smile on his face that he was trying to hide.

“Oh.” She repeated with an eyeroll, suddenly realising where he was going with this. “And I suppose that everyone else on that bus has already picked out bunks?” She asked with a deep sigh.

“Yes.” He answered.

“And the only one that’s left free is conveniently right next to yours?” She questioned.

He let out an exaggerated gasp, “How could you possibly know such confidential information?”

“Call it a hunch.” She muttered under her breath.

The tour bus that he led her to was indeed considerably bigger than the one she had been told to go to originally. He punched some code into the keypad next to the door before holding it open and ushering her inside. The bus was empty save for all the suitcases and bags strewn across it. It reminded her of a fancy caravan; everything was sleek, black and designed to save space. It seemed to have a few fancy add ons, namely the impressive coffee making setup in the kitchen, which Matty assured her George couldn’t leave home without. As she was taking in the space around her, he stepped behind and walked through the kitchen to the bunks in the middle of the bus. He called her over, snapping her back to reality as she walked across to where he was standing. They were a lot more spacious than she expected them to be. All of the bunks except for two had bags already tucked away in them, a few had the curtains pulled shut. She recognised Matty’s backpack sitting in the one on the bottom right hand side. She looked down at the bunk next to his with disdain. This was only going to end badly.

“You don’t have to take that one.” He began. She looked back at him, urging him to continue with what the other option possibly was. “You’re welcome to be on top of me.” He offered. He tapped his fingers against the empty bunk above his as he said it, but the look in his eyes was definitely getting at a different angle.

“I’ll take this one.” She answered quickly, turning away from him and gesturing to the bottom bunk next to his.

“I assure you that I don’t mind.” He added with a suggestive smirk.

“I know you don’t. That’s the problem.” She huffed as she put her bag into the bunk.

“Or we could switch and I could be on top-”

“Stop.” She interrupted as she spun to glare at him. Had he always been standing that close behind her? It suddenly seemed far too close. “Stop talking.” He couldn’t help but grin at the flustered look on her face.

He left her to her own devices after that, figuring that he would wait in the front lounge while she got her bearings. At this point in his career, he’d spent a good portion of his life in tour buses. But he remembered having to find his way around them at the start; all of the tiny compartments took a while to figure out. Also, he’d probably overwhelmed her enough considering that she had just stepped off of a plane all of two hours ago. It wasn’t long before the rest of the band and the small amount of crew that were on their bus started filing in. Introductions were exchanged, luggage was stowed under the vehicle, a few snacks to get them through until the next stop were stored, and then their convoy were on the way to show number one. He hadn’t lied when he mentioned that Rome had a smaller bus. His bus only slept six, whereas The 1975 had two buses of twelve. It did make more sense for her to stay on one of the bigger ones, he just made sure to have a say in which of the two bigger ones she was placed on. The bus that they were currently on mostly housed the performing crew, and the extended crew behind the scenes stayed on the second bus. Typically, the latter had considerably earlier start and finish times for their working day than the former did, so it made sense to split the two to avoid people running on next to no sleep. These three buses in combination with the few trucks that were used to cart their stage, lighting rigs and merch across the country for the whole tour resulted in a fairly impressive operation. It was pretty astounding for Y/N/N to think that she was a part of it.

After the festival had ended, Matty had spent a good deal of time sending texts, writing emails and having meetings in an effort to try and coordinate what ended up being a considerably more extensive plan than what he had expected. Her comment about how she’d ‘never get anything done’ if he was her boss set the idea into motion that maybe if she had a role within Dirty Hit, he’d be able to see her more often. If he saw her more often, there was a pretty decent chance that he’d be able to get her to fess up to being into him. Because try as he might to just ‘let it go’ as George had suggested, he couldn’t drop it when he knew full well that she was. He hadn’t thought that arranging someone else to come on tour was really going to be that difficult, but apparently it was. It was less about money and more about the logistics of having another person to account into every single plan for a six-week schedule. However, now that she was actually here, all of his efforts felt worth it. Regardless of the bet with himself, regardless of the needier part of him wanting her around as an emotional crutch for when things got hard, it was just nice to have an extra friend around to bounce off of within the confines of the tour bus. It felt comforting to have another presence about to keep him grounded, George had probably done enough of that over the past few years to last him a lifetime. But being grounded and rational wasn’t the way to start off a tour. The way to start off a tour was with shots.

“Tequila? Really?” Adam groaned as the shot glass was forced into his hand by the eager singer.

“What’s wrong with tequila, Hann?” Matty asked with a frown as he continued pouring and handing them out.

“Nothing is wrong with the tequila itself, but you drinking tequila is a different story.” He elaborated. “And we’re only on night one of forty-six. You really wanna set the bar so soon?” Ross gave a nod of agreement as Adam spoke, and it was clear that George was hesitant as well.

“Look lads, we have someone on this tour who has never experienced the thrills of touring with us before.” As he spoke, he happened to be pouring the shot of the exact person he was referring to and he smiled fondly at her as he passed it across. She found herself suddenly feeling like the fifth wheel as he threw her under the bus like that. “We need to put in at least a little bit of effort, yeah?” He spun back to the group; his own tequila shot in hand. “To a brilliant tour.” He grinned, holding his shot glass up in toast. The boys all shouted a few words of agreement as the five of them downed their shots. But the burn of that tequila was only the beginning. As Adam had predicted, what started as one shot quickly turned to two, which turned to more, which turned to drinking games, which turned to everyone drunkenly stumbling into bed at two in the morning after a solid eight hours of drinking. To the bus driver’s dismay at his suddenly rowdy passengers, the rest of the crew had also rapidly gotten involved and suffered much the same fate. Y/N/N had quickly discovered when their celebrations finally wrapped up that getting into a tiny bunk on the floor while inebriated wasn’t as easy as it would’ve seemed. But she was very grateful that her bunk was at least level with the ground, as opposed to George who promptly rolled out of his and crashed against the hard surface when he tried to reposition himself in his bed.

A part of her understood why Matty had insisted on drinks on the first night. Once everyone was drunk, any awkwardness was quickly forgotten about. It was a lot easier to bond with people when you were too drunk to be self-conscious. Now that everyone on the bus had a friendship base to go off of, a funny story to reminisce over, there was no reason for anyone to be pushed to the wayside for the sake of cliques or not having anything to talk about. But as expected, Matty had to take it a step too far and was definitely the most hungover out of everyone the next morning. The tour bus had arrived at their first stop at about six that morning. Everyone else on the vehicle had been up at a fairly decent hour, the band a little bit later than the rest of the crew as they weren’t needed until later in the day. But not Matty. It was after ten by the time someone figured that they should do something about it.

“You should go check on him.” Ross urged, looking across the small kitchen table at Y/N/N.

“Why me?” She frowned.

“Because I’m sure he’d prefer to be woken up by you than us.” He explained, a small chuckle escaping despite his best attempts to hold in.

“The last time I had to wake him up for a show when he was hungover, I threw a glass of ice water on him.” George said. “But to be fair, the last time he woke me up, he did it with a fucking megaphone and I smacked my head into the bunk above mine…” He scowled at the memory, rubbing his forehead as he reminisced about the pain. “I’ll go get the ice cubes.” He offered as he motioned to stand up, suddenly motivated that only one glass of freezing cold water wasn’t enough payback for that event.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll get him.” She sighed, motioning for George to sit back down.

“You’re too nice to him.” Adam said, shaking his head with a small smile.

“Yeah, probably.” She agreed with a laugh as she stood up.

She made her way down the bus towards the bunks, slowly opening the sliding door that connected them to the kitchen to try and prevent any excess noise making its way through. As she did, the other boys decided that they’d make themselves sparse, just in case. The three of them were well aware of Matty’s intentions about bringing her on tour, and they had seen his track record with girls when he put his mind to it. As much as what they knew of Y/N/N would lead them to believe that she was pretty stubborn, they didn’t want to stick around to hear the results if Matty’s plan succeeded. Also, it was as good an excuse as any to start their day. “You alive in there, Matty?” She asked quietly, knocking softly on the side of his bunk above where his head would’ve been with her shoe. “You need to function at some point today.” The curtain slowly pulled open, revealing what appeared to be a very tired Matty. The five o’clock shadow he had going on highlighted the small amount of stubble that he had neglected to shave the day prior, and the bags under his eyes made him look like he’d just suffered an entirely sleepless night. He winced at the sudden amount of light flooding into his bunk, rolling over onto his back.

“I need a coffee.” He groaned, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes to try and dull how bright the artificial lighting was on the bus.

“I told you that you’d regret playing that drinking game.” She sighed. “Do you need me to go make you one?” She added with a laugh, staring down at the hungover man in front of her with amusement as he rolled his way onto the floor between their bunks.

“No, not that instant shit that we have here.” He huffed, slowly pulling himself to his feet. He pulled a hand through his unruly hair, trying to sort out how messy it had become in his restless sleep. “I need a real coffee. And George hates it when I use his contraption without askin'.” He continued as he started grabbing a few things out of his bag, throwing a jacket on over the top of the clothes that he had passed out in last night and slipping some shoes on. “C’mon.” He mumbled as he started walking towards the door.

He let out a grunt of dissatisfaction as he stepped outside into the morning sunshine. Even through his sunglasses it was still far too harsh and made his head pound ten times worse. The jetlag probably wasn’t helping his state of mind, either. But he knew from their last tour here that there was a café nearby that would give him a decent coffee. Once he got that into his system, it would start to get him back on the road to recovery before he had to play tonight. He looked behind him briefly to verify that she was following before starting down the street in the vague direction that he recalled his source of caffeine being in. She trailed behind him, mostly taking in the scenery around her rather than really focusing on anything else. Being in new locations always gave her such a feeling of unending potential. There was so much to discover and explore, so many nooks and crannies that you’d never find if you didn’t go hunting for them. The two of them walked to the café mostly in silence, except for the few ‘ow’s that escaped from the singer at the odd exceptionally loud noise that they passed.

Matty chose to sit down outside at the table closest to the café entrance, eager to have a smoke, get some sustenance as quick as possible, and then get back in time for a shower. Maybe a nap too if he was lucky. A server quickly made their way over to them, menus in hand and a friendly customer service smile on their face. He declined the menu, waving his hand dismissively as the server offered it out to him. “Just a black coffee, thanks.” He said with a nod. “Oh, and some toast. Dry toast.” He added as an afterthought. Experience had taught him that the sooner he could stomach food, the quicker he’d be out of this hangover. They seemed a bit taken aback by his abruptness, but took note of his request and her order of a cup of tea and toast anyway. Given the simplicity of their meal, it took all of a few minutes before it was placed in front of them. Matty took an eager sip of the hot beverage, feeling a much more comforting burn in his throat than the ones he had been feeling last night.

As they ate their meal, he found himself watching her carefully as he absentmindedly chewed at the dry carbohydrates that he knew he needed. It had been a while since he’d had a hungover breakfast with anyone other than the band. Partially because they were who he was around for 90% of his time, but also in part because he wasn’t comfortable enough around anyone else in his life to still want to hang out with them the morning after drinking. In fact, it had been a while since he’d properly felt comfortable around anyone except the band. And yet here he was. Again. He hadn’t really expected a few offhand flirty comments to turn into a friendship that he enjoyed so much. “It’s nice havin’ you out here.” He said casually around a mouthful of toast. The genuine tone in his voice set off the butterflies in her stomach for a brief moment. She looked back at him, feeling the need to verify if this was a joke or leading to a sleazy remark, but he seemed entirely serious.

“It’s weird being out here. Feels like stepping into a different world.” She replied honestly.

He nodded in agreement, “You’ll get used to it pretty quick.” He said as he took a sip of his coffee. The drink was slowly starting to take effect. “At least I hope so. I’d hate to have dragged you along only for you to have a shitty time.” He added with a laugh.

“I couldn’t have a shitty time.” She said, shaking her head slightly. He raised an eyebrow in question. “I came out here to hang out with four guys who I consider friends, and I get to do that every day.” She shrugged. He couldn’t help but grin at that.

“Good to know.”

They finished up their meal, and once Matty had decided that the caffeine had finally put him in a good enough mindset, he lit up a cigarette and suggested they head off. “The day is before us. We have endless possibilities.” He said as he gestured broadly at the city around them.

“No, we don’t. You have a show to sort out, and you need to show me what I’m meant to be doing with this merch, given you were so insistent that I take this job.” She pointed out.

He let out a long sigh, nodding slightly in agreement. “I should probably introduce you to Rome first so that you know whose merch you’re setting up.” He conceded, starting to walk back in the direction of the tour buses. She started following him, mulling over what he had said. Eventually she realised why he’d want to introduce her to Rome before showing her the actual job she was out here to do.

“You just wanna stall so you don’t have to start work.” She accused.

“Me? Avoid working?” He gasped. “Never.” He added sarcastically as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side. “Come on, now.”

He seemed to have entirely too much enthusiasm for someone who had been incredibly hungover not more than an hour ago, pointing out every building he recognised on their walk back to the tour bus. It was abundantly clear with how expressive he was that he was legitimately interested in teaching her about these things. She had to admit that it was nice seeing him passionate about things, even little things like the fact that he was able to kind of show her around a city he’d been in once or twice before. When they reached the bus, he held the door open and gestured for her to step in. On the inside, Rome’s bus did appear to be pretty much exactly the same as the other two buses that everyone else was in; it just simply had six less beds which made it considerably shorter than the others. As Matty stepped in behind her, he spotted Rome sitting in the open lounge at the back of the bus. He stepped around her, taking a few quick paces to close the distance and leaving her to follow.

“This right here is my good buddy Rome.” He said with a broad grin, his volume increasing with each word he spoke as he all but ran over and tackled the blue-haired boy into a hug. Matty hadn’t left very much time for Rome to react, pretty much only looking up from his phone in time to defend himself at the last second. It was reassuring to see that he was overly enthusiastic with his affection for all of his friends, not just her. The boy laughed loudly as Matty tormented him for a few moments before he was finally able to free himself, stand up to take a few steps towards her.

“Nice to finally meet you.” He smiled as he held his hand out to her. “I was a little surprised to hear that there was gonna be someone else doing my merch this tour.” He added as she shook it and returned his smile.

“That would make two of us.” She agreed with a light laugh, glancing at Matty standing behind him.

“I just figured that you finally deserved some of your own crew instead of stealin’ mine all the time.” Matty offered with a shrug, wrapping an arm around Rome’s shoulders. She noticed that Rome made Matty seem a lot taller than he actually was as they stood next to each other like this. It was a stark contrast to seeing him with his own band members who practically dwarfed him.

“So, should we sit down, maybe have a joint?” Matty offered in an attempt to play gracious host, gesturing back towards the lounge.

“Can’t. Meant to be working.” She reminded him. He rolled his eyes at her excuse.

“Fine, get to know each other a bit, then?” He rephrased.

“Adam was telling me you guys had soundcheck at twe-” Rome started saying, until Matty just spoke over him.

“Let’s sit down. How’ve you been, man?” He interrupted, trying to shut Rome up and pull him towards the couch.

“If that’s true then you only have fifteen minutes to get inside.” She reminded him. “And you still have to show me where my stuff is.” Matty groaned loudly at this, checking his phone to confirm that they were both telling the truth about the time. George had mentioned something last night about a midday soundcheck once the stage was set up so that the lighting guys could continue without being interrupted. He supposed it was sensible to be on time for that.

“Fine. Let’s go.” He huffed, starting to head towards the door. “Not much of an introduction, though.” He added under his breath. After shouting a quick goodbye to Rome over his shoulder, they headed back out of the bus and inside the venue. She assumed that Matty must’ve known where he was going because he beelined through the hallways like a man on a mission. This arena was a bit bigger than the one that she had seen them in the first time and she tried to retain the corners they were taking in her head so that she didn’t get turned around again. Eventually they stopped at a pallet towards the back of the building absolutely loaded with boxes.

“This-” He started as he scanned through the pallet of stock, eventually pulling a box down from the very top, “is yours.” He held out the box. “And you set it up in that van that we passed near the front entrance.” He added.

She looked at him, then at the box. Was he done..? Maybe they were waiting on extra boxes? Or there was more to grab somewhere else? Surely this couldn’t be it? “A box? One box?” She asked in confusion. As she looked back to him for clarification, he seemed unphased by this information. “For the whole tour?” She continued.

“Yeah.” He nodded.

“This is really it?” She asked incredulously as she took it.

“Yep.” He confirmed, still nodding.

“Oh my god, Matty. I’m going to die of boredom being out here with only this.” She groaned, opening the box to see if it was even full. Knowing him it was probably empty, anyway. Maybe she should take back her comment about not being able to have a terrible time while she was out here.

“Payback for the festival.” He chuckled as she was able to verify that it was, indeed, full of shirts. Thank god.

“Don’t you fucking start.” She said with a glare, turning to point at him. “You chose to do that.” She reminded him.

“And you chose to do this.” He quipped with a smirk. “Unless you had some ulterior motive?” He asked nonchalantly. She knew full well what he was trying to get at, but it wasn’t going to work in this instance.

“Seeing my friends was, in fact, the primary motive.” She answered with a smug look.

“Mmm… sure.” He replied in a disbelieving tone. “I have to go soundcheck, I’ll catch up with you in a bit.” He said, turning on his heel and walking back in the direction that they had come from.

She trusted Matty - well, mostly trusted Matty - but she still read the labels on every box on that pallet just in case there was secretly more stock hidden somewhere. Once she had finally resigned herself to her fate of having next to no work to do at every show, she carried her one, single box back to the empty merch stand. It took her all of twenty minutes to set up merch for Rome. There were only sixty shirts in total to count in, and folding them was nothing compared to the amount of stock she had been forced to fold at other events. Rome had ducked in to the van once she was done to chat and keep her company, explaining a bit of the meaning behind the shirt design he had chosen and telling her about how he had met Matty. He seemed to be a really nice kid; she could see why Matty got along with him so well. They carried on chatting in the merch van until Ross came to find them and show them to the backstage waiting area so that the rest of the merch crew could set up. Everyone else had already made their way over there so that they could kill the time until it was finally time to play. Matty seemed to intentionally take his time getting ready for the show, asking her opinion on just about every little change that he made. Despite the confident bravado, he did seem to have a good deal of nerves bubbling away under the surface. He knew that he was setting the bar for what the whole tour would have in store. Kids would spread photos online of what they’d seen, what he’d done, what the setlist was. First impressions mattered. But as expected, the show was an astounding start to the six weeks that lay ahead. The band came off the stage buzzing with excitement and adrenaline, ready to tackle everything else that was thrown their way.

The next week was pretty much spent establishing a rough routine for the rest of the tour. It only took playing the one show for the band to get a feel for it again, and once the rest of the crew had set up and pulled down a couple of shows, everyone was back in the groove of what to expect. The band were also starting to get readjusted to doing interviews and social media releases while on the road. It was a gruelling schedule at times trying to fit it all in to one day and still somehow manage to get enough sleep for the next, but not one they were strangers to. However, what Y/N/N was quickly finding out in her daily routine, was that there was absolutely no personal space on a tour bus. She had been under the impression that bands generally took a few days here and there to have breaks between shows, but not this band. Nope. The thing about The 1975 was that they just did. not. stop. If this band wasn’t about to play a show, they were on the road to the next one. So, if they weren’t in a venue organising the day ahead, or pit stopped somewhere for an interview or similar, they were in the tour bus. They had a good mentality of everyone just being able to chill out and do their own thing when on the bus, which mostly consisted of trying to talk to people back at home or watching a movie wherever you could find space. But that many people crammed into such a tiny area who all shared conflicting schedules meant that you rapidly learned things about your roommates that you didn’t think you’d ever know. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she would have to quickly learn the bathroom habits of everyone else on this vehicle if she ever had a hope in hell of using it herself. On the plus side, it did mean that you also had to be comfortable in each other’s space for the sake of your own sanity.

As a result of needing people to vent to about this lack of space, she had found herself dragged headfirst into the chaos and hilarity that was Matty’s close friend circle. Having their stable company and friendship made dealing with the little issues about living on a tour bus a lot easier. Someone eating the last of the cereal was a lot less annoying when she could turn and laugh with Ross about it. She was finding out the more she got to know them that George was definitely the sensible one of the group who kept everyone else - namely Matty - in line, Ross was proving himself to be the funniest of the four of them - when Matty wasn’t around to try and one-up him - and Adam was a lot more reserved in bigger groups – especially when Matty was in them and just spoke over everyone else (there seemed to be a common theme appearing about how it was easier to get to know Matty’s friends without Matty present) - but more than happy to chat one on one when you got him onto a topic of mutual interest. And where she had already been fairly comfortable around the egocentric frontman, she was now finding that he was almost essential to her daily survival. From their in-jokes about dumb things, to having someone to talk to who knew her a slight bit better than everyone else, to just being able to have him around to watch TV shows with; the longer she spent trapped in the tour bus with him, the harder it was getting for her to be able to deny being into him. But there was no point in telling him any of this, because admitting her feelings wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It would just give him the satisfaction that he’d won and she’d be putting herself on the line with no reciprocation. However, Matty was also finding their time together to be having an overwhelmingly positive effect. It was incredibly convenient for him to have someone around who kept him in such a good mood all the time and who provided such good company. He hadn’t felt this happy in quite a while.

One afternoon on the bus she was trying to find something to occupy her time, deciding that maybe watching a movie would fill the void until they arrived at the next venue and she could get out and explore a bit. She knocked on the closed door of the back lounge, slowly pulling it open after she didn’t receive a reply. Upon peeking her head around the door, she was met with the curly haired Matty sitting on his laptop, a single headphone sitting in one of his ears and an open notebook on the table next to him. He didn’t look up as she stepped in, and it took her a moment to realise what he was doing. “Oh my god, are you working?” She asked in surprise.

“I do that sometimes.” He mumbled, not tearing his eyes away from his laptop.

“I have to admit, I was starting to think that you didn’t.” She laughed as she shuffled around the couch to see what he was doing. He was clearly fiddling with audio tracks in an editing program, but her knowledge beyond that was pretty limited. The notebook next to him seemed to be full of half-formed ideas that didn’t offer much context. She watched him in silence for a few moments before he decided to explain what he was doing.

“I’m trying to edit the bridge of this song and get it to sound how we want in our heads. George had a go at it this morning but couldn’t quite get the right sound, he asked if I could take a look at it.” He clarified. She nodded in understanding.

“It’s nice seeing you do something productive instead of just hindering the work of everyone else around you.” She teased, nudging him slightly with her elbow.

He flashed her a sarcastic look. “You know that I’ve spent the better part of two decades working to get this band where it is, yeah?” He asked bitterly, the sour mood he was in from not being able to sort this song out seeping into his tone.

“So I’ve heard. But most of the time you act like the cliché rock star that you tell everyone you’re not.” She shot back with a challenging look.

He opened his mouth to argue with her point, before realising that from her perspective, that was pretty much all that he did. She hadn’t had the chance to see him in the studio, in the label offices planning things out with Jamie, doing a serious interview, or do anything that was work related really other than perform and show off. He imagined that must come across as pretty arrogant of him to claim he got the band to where it is when he acted like he’d been at this point for all of his life. “How do I explain this…” He hummed, running a hand through his hair as he leaned back into the couch to think of the right words to say. “I don’t often get the chance to fuck about anymore. I used to a lot when I was younger. I fucked around and partied enough when I was younger for all of us guys combined, really.” He gave a short laugh, “But as we got bigger, I had to get my act together. More people were watching us, social media was a very prevalent thing in regards to marketing a band and our image, I had to knock it off for the sake of the band as a whole. Even just how much time I was wasting on it started to affect how much effort I could put into where we were going, and I didn’t want that. But people don’t change until it’s too hard not to. I was sort of required to shift into a more serious place in my life, when… y’know, it all got drawn out into the spotlight. But I miss it. I miss the freedom that came with getting to fuck about all the time.” He explained, glancing across at her to verify if she was understanding him correctly.

“So… you fuck around now because you haven’t for ages?” She asked, not really following where he was going with this.

“No, I…” He let out a sigh, trying to make his thoughts more eloquent. “It’s nice not having to be on my best behaviour around you, is what I’m getting at. It’s just a breath of fresh air amongst constant press and being recorded.” He simplified. “And the band doesn’t let me get away with as much as you do. That’s why you don’t see me serious very often.” Ah. She got what he meant now. “But, for the next six weeks you’re stuck living with me.” He chuckled. “Which means you’ll get to see all sides of me, not just the ones that I want you to.” Matty seemed to have a good knack for making jokes out of comments that were probably more serious than he thought they were. He looked down at her once he was satisfied that she was following along with his reasoning, only now realising that she was wearing his hoodie that he had given her the day after they’d met. A grin slowly spread across his face at this. “Nice hoodie.” He said with a small nod of approval. She had to look down to remind herself of what he was referring to, before meeting his gaze again with a slight blush dusting her cheeks. “It looks good on you.” He added, keeping the ‘better than it did on me’ part of that sentence to himself.

“Thanks.” She mumbled, unsure of what else to say to the compliment.

He went back to working after that, still trying to shuffle around new samples into the audio file to get the sound perfect. She figured that it would be pretty rude of her to put a movie on while he was working, so she decided to just watch him instead. It became considerably easier to follow along with what he was doing when he unplugged the headphones and allowed the laptop speakers to play aloud what he was working on. The track sounded like a less bass-y version of Depth from the small snippets she was hearing. It was interesting seeing his creative process and watching the looks that crossed his face as he tried to get the thoughts out of his head and into the song. As they got closer and closer to the next venue, Matty was beginning to take note of just how long she had actually been watching him work. All he was doing was messing with files in a program, surely there was no way in hell a girl would watch him do that for over an hour if she wasn’t interested in him. The fact that she refused to tell him just ate away at his mind.

He slammed shut the laptop suddenly, forcing her attention to him and away from the screen. “You should just tell me.” He said.

“Tell you what?” She asked in confusion, but the look he threw back at her in response made it click.

“You’ve fuckin’ been watching me all afternoon.” He laughed loudly as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him, “Just admit it.” He added lowly.

“In your dreams.” She scoffed.

“Every night, love.” He shot back with a smirk.

As more time progressed on the tour, Matty could feel himself edging ever so slightly closer to getting her to crack. His plan to establish what the right buttons were to encourage a reaction was working well. He was already well aware that she enjoyed seeing him play guitar. During soundchecks he had seen the way that she watched his fingers move across the frets and how she got distracted by it, and she was always pretty enthralled whenever he was on stage. So, that was one item off the list that he could play to his advantage. The other week she had told him that she liked his hair when it was messy, that was another. He was pretty confident that she liked the physical attention because she had stopped pushing him away now and tended to sit next to him before she sat next to anyone else. She was only ever becoming more receptive to the comments and actions that he was trying to use to fish for what worked and what didn’t. But she was still so damn stubborn about it. The two of them were both getting more resistant the more the other pushed. He refused to let up until she admitted the truth, and she refused to say it to him purely on principle at this point. If she caved now, he’d lord it over her for the remaining four weeks of the tour. But this constant game that they were at was starting to grate on the rest of the band, mainly George. He was beginning to find that this girl’s company was actually very enjoyable and he didn’t want to see Matty go and fuck it all up when he finally won. He also didn’t want to find himself caught in the middle trying to console both parties of a messy situation while trapped on a tour bus with the both of them. But at this point, he knew that Matty of all people should know better. He figured that maybe he should take the time to remind his best friend that there was a time and a place for everything, and that maybe on a tour bus wasn’t the time for this.

On a fairly dismal afternoon, Matty had found himself sulking at the kitchen table for the last half an hour or so. He had opened one of his social media apps to check on how things were doing at home, only to find a picture of his ex kissing some other guy plastered across the front of it. It had been about six months since she’d left him, but seeing her move on didn’t sting any less. It still felt like a blow to his self-esteem that she’d move on before he had. He was knocked out of his daze of staring at his phone in discontent when the bus door suddenly flung open and a very determined George stormed inside.

“What’s your plan with all this?” George asked bluntly as he sat down across from him at the table.

Matty stared across at his best friend blankly, trying to catch up to whatever train of thought George had caught that he’d apparently missed the call for. “What do you mean?” He asked, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

“What happens if she turns around and says that she’s into you?” He questioned.

“When.” He specified with a pointed look.

“Whatever, man.” The drummer huffed in annoyance. “What happens after you’ve conned this girl into falling for you?” He rephrased.

Matty wasn’t overly fond with the choice of words that George had used. Conned? That wasn’t what he was doing. He was just having a bit of fun, wasn’t he? But what did happen when she finally told him..? He hadn’t really thought that far ahead, he was too focused on accomplishing step one to work out what step two was. “Matty.” George called, clicking his fingers in front of the singer’s face to drag his attention back to reality. “All I’m saying is, don’t fuck her over, yeah? She deserves better than that.”

“Oh, I…” He scratched at the back of his neck nervously, suddenly feeling like a kid being told off by his parents. “Well, I wasn’t intending on it.” He mumbled.

“Good intentions only go so far,” He clapped a hand down on Matty’s shoulder. “and I’ve seen your track record. Be careful.” He warned as he stood up from the table and started heading back towards the door of the bus. “Oh, and,” He spun back around, pointing across the bus at his friend with a serious expression. “keep it to a minimum when the rest of us are around, wouldn’t you?”

Last Chapter

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#Matthew Healy x Reader #Matty Healy x Reader #Sunsetinmyvein

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rkjordan · 4 years

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bae jinyoung’s winter singer performance thank you very much from scrooge the musical

admittedly, it had taken him a lot longer than he would have liked to come up with a song he would be happy singing.

the fact he was limited to doing something ‘winter’ themed had put a bit of a dampener on his imagination. at first he was just going to the route of picking either ‘let it go’ or ‘into the unknown’ from frozen. because that fit the criteria and he was sure that was someone everyone was going to know. then again, he had decided against it in the end because he was sure others would have the same idea and he was pretty sure everyone was getting pretty sick and tired of those songs by now.

which left him back at square one.

he had spent literal days umming and ahhing over songs, going and back and forth between ideas but still couldn’t come up with anything decent he wanted to do. it was only when he wasn’t actually looking for a song did one finally get stuck in his head until he couldn’t think of anything else.

jordan had been sitting at his computer editing his next video for youtube when he had started humming ‘thank you very much’ under his breath. it was just one of those songs which were incredibly catchy and niggled in your brain to stay even after the first listen. and that’s when he realised that it was technically from a christmas film. while the lyrics didn’t really include anything to do with winter, the musical itself was ‘a christmas carol’, one of the most known and iconic christmas films of all time.

so, how could a song plucked right from it not count?

of course, jordan being jordan he had tried to come up with a ukulele performance as well, wanting to bring and twist. in the end he found he didn’t have that much time and he just couldn’t get the instrument to work properly with the song choice. and by the time he had decided this it was just a little too late to pick a new song and practice that. which meant that he was just going to have to do this without his trust instrument around his neck. a change from usual, for sure, but he was quite sure he could pull it off. not that he was doing this to win, he knew he wasn’t a main vocal and the only singing he did was for his dumb youtube covers. but it would be fun all the same.

the day of the performance he wasn’t the least bit worried about things, wearing a large grin as he waited for his turn. all he was aiming for here was to have some fun, get the crowd involved a bit and not do some boring old ballad. not that there was anything wrong with passionate and lovely ballads, but that really wasn’t his style. he couldn’t even imagine himself standing there and doing some heartfelt and serious performance. he was a performer, an actor, and he was going to damn well prove it.

though he was also well aware that he was sure a lot of these people would have no idea what he was even singing, or where it was from. it was a british musical and film, and he had seen it back when he was still in the states and it had shown on christmas morning a couple of times. and he was aware that there were japanese stage productions as well, he was a little unsure if it had ever been put on in korea. in fact, he probably doubted it. but heck it was not like he really cared, he was still going to have fun.

all thoughts of that did leave his mind however when he was handed a microphone and with a large grin on his face he strolled out onto the stage, waving with a free hand. it was surprising how many people were actually there to watch, but that just meant he was going to have to try harder to entertain everyone.

“before we start, i think it’s a good idea to introduce what i’m singing,” he first started off, feeling it a good idea to give people just a little bit of background. “this is a song from the british stage musical and film scrooge, which is based off the popular book a christmas carol. the song also has an academy award nomination, so...” he trailed off with a small laugh before shaking his head, “ah, anyway. please enjoy and have some fun. i expect audience participation so don’t let me down.”

on behalf of all the people who have assembled here i would merely like to mention if i may that our unanimous attitude is one of lasting gratitude for what our friend has done for us today and therefore i would simply like to say

he was saying the words as though he were announcing to a great crowd, which he supposed he was in a way and he was already having fun and he hadn’t even really started his performance properly yet. and he really couldn’t help but acting out the whole thing like he were in the middle of a stage production. he could see himself as a musical actor, he could certainly get the face acting down. besides, it did make the whole thing a lot more fun if he showed he was having fun, then it was more likely the people watching would start having fun as well.

thank you very much! thank you very much! that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me i may sound double-dutch but my delight is such i feel as if a losing war's been won for me and if I had a flag i'd hang my flag out to add a sort of final victory touch but since i left my flag at home i'll simply have to say thank you very, very, very much! thank you very, very, very much!

the way he was approaching this song was adding a bit of a comedic twist to the whole thing, almost acting out the words which were coming out of his mouth, using the stage he was on to the fullest to engage and move around. and while he would never say he was a dancer, he couldn’t help but show off a bit of little footwork as he moved across the stage, acting as though he was leader of a rally and rallying everyone together into this big song and dance.

thank you very much! thank you very much! that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me it sounds a bit bizarre but things the way they are i feel as if another life's begun for me and if i had a cannon i would fire it to add a sort of celebration touch but since I left my cannon at home i'll simply have to say thank you very, very, very much!

maybe a bit surprising to whoever happened to be in attendance, but he had said he wanted audience participation. he turned his microphone around, pointing it out towards the crowd hoping to hear in return the next ‘thank you very, very much!’ shouted back at him. he even mouthed along the words, and while some people just stood there looking rather confused at him, some of them did actually sing it back at him. so he was going to take that as a personal victory.

for he’s a jolly good fellow for he’s a jolly good fellow for he’s a jolly good fellow and so say all of us

he was still more or less guiding the watching crowd through this performance, using his hand almost like a conductor would a baton to try and get them to sing along, to make them smile, to stop taking things so seriously and have some fun. but there was barely any time to breath as he was barrelling right into the next verse of the song, but still completely determined to have as much fun as possible. move around the stage, act as though he was in the musical, conduct the crowd and act out the words from his mouth instead of just standing there being all serious and boring.

how could he be all serious while singing a song as lively and fast paced as this, anyway?

thank you very much! thank you very much! that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me it isn't everyday good fortune comes my way i never thought the future would be fun for me

there was a short break, in the film the crowd of singers processing through the street had just been told to be quiet, so jordan acted like it as well. bending over just a little as he moved forward, putting a finger to his lips as he started to whisper the next line of the song, slowly getting louder before standing up and getting back to full volume again as he practically marched across the stage in time with the music.

and if i had a bugle i would blow it to add a sort of 'ow's-your-father touch but since i left my bugle at home i'll simply have to say thank you very, very, very much! thank you very, very, very much!

this song was a little repetitive, but jordan was simply having the time of his life as he sang his heart out. and he was pretty sure he could see some people who had been looking a bit bored and confused at the beginning of all this madness starting to smile and actually enjoy what they were listening to. and while he was still sure he wasn’t the best singer they would be hearing today, he at least hoped he was the most entertaining.

thank you very much! thank you very much! that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me the future looks alright in fact it looks so bright i feel as if they’re polishing the sun for me and if i had a drum i'd have to bang it! to add a sort of rumty-tumty touch but since i left my drum at home i'll simply have to say thank you very, very, very much! thank you very, very, very much!

he had made sure to act as though he was banging on an imaginary drum, keeping up his comedic factor as he grinned his way through the last couple of lines on the song, bringing things all together at the close with a drawn out note, pulling the microphone away from his mouth as he put both hands behind his back and bowed forward just as the music finished. and that was the end of that.

the large grin was still plastered across his face as he stood up straight again, soaking in the polite applause from the audience as he grinned out at them. his chest was heaving a bit from all the effort he had just gone and put in, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead and shirt becoming a bit uncomfortable despite the cold weather, but he had had fun. and he was sure he had entertained people which was really the only goal he had been going for.

there was nothing else he could do and while he didn’t really think he was going to be winning anything, that was simply alright with him. at least he could leave today content with what he had done and happy enough that he might have done enough to make people’s days just that little brighter.

#rkwintersinger #❛ solo #❛ word count: 1951 #❛ word count: 1567 w/o lyrics #(can jordan ever do a serious song? the answer is no)#(but he's pleased with himself for having fun)#(this song is super catchy)

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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Years ago, back in the times before Bioleninism and all that, I made a name for myself in the intellectual parts of the right-wing blogosphere (≈neoreaction) in a large part because I was the best at categorizing the different strands of dissident thought. Back then I said there was by and large three different factions, the religious, the nationalist and the technological, what then Nick Land rebranded as the trichotomy of theonomist, ethno-nationalist and techno-commercialist.

That was 2013 though, and a lot has happened since. Most of it bad. Some good things too: Russia grew a spine, annexed Crimea and kicked USG out of Syria. China grew two spines, destroyed their liberal fifth-column, is forcibly assimilating their native muslims and is fast approaching military parity with USG.

And yes, Trump happened. That was fun. It unleashed a renaissance of right-wing memery. But Trump also failed to get anything done, he’s likely to lose the next election, and now not even the memes are safe, as the CIA has co-opted 4chan talent for export, as seen in Pepe frogs in Hong Kong and Joker thots in Lebanon. Not cool.

…

Yes, I’m a demographic pessimist. I see the above figures and see how the Western world is slowly becoming Brazil, half white, half black. But Brazil itself is not stable; white people are having less babies than black people there. Brazil is slowly becoming something like South Africa, 10% white, 90% black. But again, South Africa is not stable itself, is it? Birth rates are different, and if that didn’t suffice, blacks there are outright murdering white people and chasing them off the land. The actual endgame is actually worse than South Africa, which still has (people tell me) some very fine spots, such as Cape Town.

The end game is Haiti. 100% black, and arguably the nastiest, poorest, worst shithole on the face of earth. That’s what we’re facing if demographic trends keep worsening as they are.

“Oh come on”, you may say. It’s never going to get that bad. At some point demographic trends self-correct, right? Evolution will run its course. Leftists aren’t having children, eventually the differential fertility of conservative people will make sure everyone is based and redpilled.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be the pope. Yes, Catholics love this argument. Christians, more widely. They have sacrificed a lot to have children and stable families in this society which does everything it can to promote unhappiness and dysfunctional lifestyles. If there is a God, surely at least their sacrifices will win them the future of the species? History will talk about them as ancestors of the next stage of humanity. Right??

Wrong. I’m sorry guys, but evolution doesn’t work like that. Yes, sure, evolution is about differential reproduction. Whatever genes make you have more babies in a given environment, spread in the genepool. And whatever genes do the opposite, make it marginally harder for you to reproduce, disappear from the genepool. So yes, on the face of it, “genes that make you want children” are by definition being promoted by natural selection. The argument, as explained by promoters such as Anatoly Karlin, is that humans until now have been fruitful and multiplied perfectly well through a basic motivation: seeking sexual pleasure. But that motivation doesn’t work anymore in an environment with easy contraception, so the future belongs to people with psychological traits that make them enjoy family life.

Does it work like that, though? Are there any genes that “make you want children”? Does the brain work like that? The human brain is complicated, you see, but it is also an evolution of the more basic mammal brain, and its circuitry must follow roughly the same pathways. And last time I checked all mammals reproduce exactly the same way. The male produce quadrillions of sperm every minute, and are at the hunt of every ovulating female. The moment they find one they jump onto her, copulate semi-forcibly, and babies ensue. Yeah, this pretty much includes humans.

The idea that humans are going to single-handedly evolve, over single-digit generations, a completely different pattern of reproduction to replace one which has been functional for 60 million years strikes me as pretty wild wishful thinking.

…

Supposedly though, at some point of impoverishment, the downward drift of average IQ would stop, as intelligence would begin to pay again. Without welfare and Bioleninist political machines with an incentive to bring ever stupider people into a country in order to lower the cost of clientelism, at some point the drift into Global Haiti ceases to function, and you get some sort of stable equilibrium of, say, 90-95 IQ people. Living in more or less permanent starvation wages and some sort of low-level medieval warfare.

Quite depressing, huh? Well remember, that’s a best-case scenario. That’s what happens if that Conservatives-inherit-the-earth mantra actually succeeds. Remember the trichotomy I mentioned at the beginning? Well the above scenario is what theonomists are for. They won’t say it, they probably never thought it through that much. But that’s undoubtedly what a Theonomist Revolution against progressivism would entail.

…

But again, I just don’t see it. The Kuwaitis aren’t very smart; their birth rate is in 1.6. The Arabs across Europe aren’t replacing themselves. The Mexicans in the US are also below replacement! Even if, and this is a big if, there was some easily assemblable collection of genes by which people would love having children far above their love for playing status games in a modern society with Tinder and cheap contraception, odds are by the time those genes have starting to spread, in a few generations time, 90% of humanity is already African. And so, again, Global Haiti.

…

So that’s it? Either Global Haiti or Global Mexico?

Well not quite. Tech-comms have something to say too. Humans aren’t all dumb, not yet. What if there’s a technological way out of the demographic crisis? Well, there kinda is. And it’s a year old actually. Has everyone forgot about He Jiankui?

…

Genetic sequencing is advancing fast these years. Perhaps the only thing which is still progressing fast after computing’s Moore’s Law stopped working 10 years ago. We already know dozens of genes involved in increasing IQ, and we’ll sure know of hundreds, maybe thousands. It seems likely that within our lifetimes we’ll have the capability of safely increasing the IQ of IVF embryos by 10-20 points. Would you take that? Perhaps not. Would that Chinese Tiger Mom-in-becoming living across the street take the chance? Of course she will. Do you want your own kids to be the dumbest at class? I thought so.

The bottleneck here would be IVF, which is still a rather slow and ineffective process, although perhaps with some room for improvement. That bottleneck could be solved, though, with a technology which is still quite far away. Strangely so, given the obvious incentives to develop it in what is effectively a feminist world. Ectogenesis, i.e. artificial wombs. Don’t women complain about how unfair it is they get pregnant and lose all that time to build their careers, while men only bust a nut and keep climbing that dear corporate ladder? Fear no more, ladies. Just put your eggs in this machine, and 9 months later you’ll get your baby delivered to your home. Free delivery if you sign up for Amazon Prime.

If this is sounds like Brave New World, well yes, that’s pretty much what that was about. Aldous Huxley came from a long line of distinguished biologists and couldn’t see things like TV and computers coming. Eventually he got into drugs, but I’m sure he died still puzzled by why ectogenesis didn’t become a thing during his lifetime. It stands to reason that eventually it will. And once artificial wombs are reliable and affordable, in a world with CRISPR, you don’t really need families anymore. Anybody can ‘produce’ children, raise them in ‘villages’ (because it takes a village!) and just be done with the whole problem. Progressivism taken to its logical conclusion. It’s better conclusion, the way that progressives of the 1900s saw it, the production of a race of ever more rational and free humans. Yes, it’s kinda messed up, but it has its logic. The twisted mechanics that led to our present Biological Leninist politics were, in the end, just the result of a lack of state authority. That may resolve itself quite soon. Again, with modern technology.

So yep, let me offer you a new Trichotomy. Global Haiti. Global Mexico. Or Brave New World. Pick your poison. I know mine.

#spandrell

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dakotacrisis · 5 years

Text

Just A Friend (Not) Pt 3

Adrien is flustered, Marinette wants to help, and Plagg knows more than expected. (Happy belated birthday @wild-mare-of-prosecution!)

“Good evening, my lady,” Chat Noir landed on the roof, “I didn’t think you were coming out on patrol tonight.”

Marinette turned to her partner with a big smile. “I wasn’t but I finished all my work earlier.” She was also full of unbridled nervous energy that needed burned off.

“Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth. You know I’m always happy to have you along.”

“I do.” they took off across the rooftops keeping an eye out for any trouble. Marinette was leaping by so fast that it felt like she was walking on air. It took her a minute to realize she had left her partner in the dust as a result.

She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Tired tonight, chaton?”

“I’m afraid I’m not in the right mindset for patrolling tonight. Some stuff happened earlier today and it’s gotten me a tad confused.”

“Anything I can help with?”

He looked at her with those big sad kitten eyes and her heart started to melt. What could have possibly happened to her pun spewing partner that he was this out of it?

“Don’t worry yourself with it. I’ll figure it out later.” Chat assured her. Before she could call him on his bluff he changed the subject. “You on the other hand seem to have enough energy for the both of us. Something good happen or was finishing your work that motivating?”

Marinette blushed slightly thinking back on her day with Adrien. “I had a good day. Nothing you’d be interested in though.”

“What makes you think that? I’m interested in anything that makes my lady so happy.”

Marinette sighed as she gazed at her partner. She could lie to him. Tell him it was just a good day for vague happy reasons and not because she had went to lunch then had a study date with her crush that ended with a kiss. Then again if she was actually making headway with Adrien and it went somewhere then the next time Chat flirted with her she’d have to reject him again. Seeing as how he got all pouty on her anytime she snubbed his affections that didn’t seem a good idea. It was better to clear the air now.

“You remember that boy I said I’m in love with?” she said quietly.

Immediately Chat deflated. “Yeah?”

This isn’t fair! He needs to stop with the sad kitten eyes! Oh boy this was a mistake.

“Well...we pretty much spent the entire afternoon together and we have plans to hang out again tomorrow.”

“That...That’s great.”

“I told you you weren’t going to be interested.”

He was quiet for a long time. It went from normal processing silence to extremely awkward why-did-I-say-anything-in-the-first-place kind of silence. He definitely should have said something by now. Should she say something? He’s been staring off into the distance for a good five minutes straight. Did she break her partner? Please don’t be broken.

“Chat Noir?” she poked his shoulder.

That must have been the restart button because he snapped back into awareness and looked at her earnestly. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re not upset about the whole other boy thing are you?”

“No.” Something changed in him. She couldn’t say what but he was calmer, more grounded.

“Excuse me for not believing that wholesale. You spaced out on me for a good while after I told you I was going on dates.”

“Apologies. I started thinking about something and let my thoughts run wild.” he sat down on the edge of the roof. Marinette went to join him as they stared out over the city. “I’m not upset about you going on dates with your crush. A part of me is actually kinda relieved to hear that you’re starting something.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there’s this girl that I have a huge crush on that I didn’t even realize I was crushing on her until this afternoon. I was so confused about how I could like two people at once and trying to figure out if one feeling trumped the other. Now, hearing you talk about the boy you like, well, it feels like the excuse I needed to let go and move on.”

“Let go?” Marinette couldn’t help the sad ache in her heart. Though she would never admit it she had always harbored a special place for Chat Noir in her heart. He isn’t just her partner but her friend and while he could irk her something fierce she never once wished he wasn’t around. A part of her always knew that under Adrien-free circumstances things between them may have been different. But this was not an Adrien-free world (thank goodness) and so while Chat had a spot in her heart the rest was completely Adrien’s.

“I’ll always love you as a friend, as a crush, and as my partner.” Chat laid a hand on top of hers. “But I know now that I can’t force you to feel something you don’t and I can’t keep pushing away how I obviously feel for someone else. I only hope that this doesn’t change anything between us.”

Marinette’s heart swelled with pride for her chaton. He was maturing. Being happy for her and understanding her side of things instead of giving her the cold shoulder and guilt tripping her. She was also glad to hear that he had someone of his own that he liked outside of her. Chat’s a great guy and he needed and deserved some proper attention and affection. If this girl hurts him though heads would roll.

She looked at him, her partner, and smiled. “Of course this doesn’t change anything. I’m happy for you. I hope for your sake that this girl you like can stomach all those puns, chaton.”

“Well I hope this boy you’re in love with can handle your painful attempts at pun making.”

“Painful?!” she gaped at him. “Excuse you but my puns are clever and hilarious.”

“You’re good at a great many things Ladybug but your puns are--how do I put this delicately--kinda obvious and not that humorous.”

Do not throw your partner across Paris. Do NOT throw your partner across Paris.

“You decide to let go of your crush on me and your immediate line of thought led you to insult my pun ability?”

“I say it because I care. You need to get punnier if this friendship is going to last.”

“You need to get faster if you leaving patrol with your tail attached is going to last.”

Slowly he started to inch away. “I sense I struck a nerve.”

“Insulting a girl’s pun prowess is no joking matter.”

“Ooh, you see, now that was a good one. Keep that up and you’ll catch up to me one day.”

“You are the biggest dork I have ever known and I have to live with myself.”

“And you’re never getting rid of me.”

“I would never want to.” she gave him a little scratch under his chin. They laughed for a moment before taking off over the roofs again. Marinette made as many puns as she could think of and Chat gave her scores out of ten for how good he thought they were. She never made it pass a six which seemed unfair but then again she was spouting off pretty cliche wordplay.

They wrapped up patrol and with a bow from Chat and another dumb but admittedly brilliant pun he leapt off into the night and Marinette returned home. She was glad things with her and Chat Noir had evened themselves out. Now that they had cleared the air she only had to worry about Nino’s party tomorrow and not making a fool of herself in front of Adrien.

Adrien landed back in his house and de-transformed. Plagg zipped off for his cheese while Adrien headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth before going to bed. This evening had not gone as he had expected. He was looking forward to having some time by himself to clear his head and think his whole Ladybug and Marinette feelings thing through but that went out the window when he saw his partner waiting at their usual meet up point.

Not that he wasn’t happy to see her. He was always happy to spend time with her but did curse that he seemed to keep getting his alone time pulled out from under him.

It turned out to be for the better in the long run. They talked and Adrien came to the conclusion that Ladybug was in love with someone else and he needed to accept that. This wasn’t a waiting game. He needed to do what was healthy and would guarantee that his friendship with both Ladybug and Marinette stayed intact. As hard as it was he let his Lady go. She was obviously immensely happy with this mystery boy and Adrien was growing more attached to Marinette with every bat of those baby blue eyes of hers.

He changed into his pajamas and nestled into bed. His mind was speeding by taking his sleep with it. After tossing and turning unable to turn his brain off for a full half hour he sighed in defeat and swung out of bed and turned on his computer. The multiple screens lit up with images from the Ladyblog.

He closed them all and pulled up his Instagram instead. There was a new post from surprise surprise: Marinette. It was a picture of an alarm clock flashing the late hour. ‘Dumb brain. I have stuff to do tomorrow! #letmesleep!’

Adrien liked the photo and scrolled through the other posts on her profile. A lot of them were candid shots of her with friends or family. Others were of designs she was working on or delicious arrangements of the sweets in her parents’ bakery. He paused on a picture of her sitting on her rooftop terrace with the rising sun shining bright but not nearly as radiant as her smile.

Why did he have to have a crush on someone so freaking cute? It just wasn’t fair. How was he expected to function normally when she looked like that? How was he supposed to compare to her? She’s easily the most popular girl in school, she’s insanely talented, and rivals the courage of Ladybug herself. She is fourteen and has connections to Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, Nadja Chamack, her world famous chef uncle. She was publicly recognized and praised by Adrien’s hard to please father as well as Chloe’s even harder to please mother! She designs half the clothes she wears and they look professionally made. She was stylish and cute and no doubt she was going to wear something amazing to Nino’s party tomorrow. It would probably be pink. She looks great in pink. This is so bad! He’s gonna look like a complete idiot tomorrow. Not to mention that he promised her a dance. What if he stepped on her feet? What if he got all sweaty? No one wants to dance with a clumsy idiot with sweaty hands that can’t look a girl in the eye because everytime he does he forgets how to speak properly.

Why did Alya and Nino have to make him confront his feelings? This would be so much easier if he had been allowed to stay oblivious.

“You okay, kid?” Plagg asked when he noticed his holder spiraling deeper into his anxiety.

“She’s so great, Plagg. How am I supposed to do anything?” Adrien muttered.

“You’re both a mess so I don’t think she’ll notice you floundering.”

“Shockingly, that doesn’t help me any.”

“What do you want me to say? You’re the one in love with a girl that already has a huge crush on you and is freaking out over whether you’re gonna screw it up before anything’s begun. Get some sleep and stop worrying about it.”

“You’re right.” Adrien slipped back under the covers of his bed, “I shouldn’t be--wait what?! Marinette has a crush on me? Plagg? How do you know that? Plagg! I know you’re not asleep! Plagg! PLAGG!”

---

(1) (2) (4)

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrinette #writing

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bbhyuckie · 6 years

Text

jaehyun x reader

librarian! au

genre: fluff

words: 1.7k

warnings: realistic portrayals of college life lol

ive said before that im being self indulgent with posts

but this is really it

im really out here writing this

lets get into this mess

so youre studying right

and you yourself do not have a laptop of your own

bc welcome to being a broke college kid im calling myself out

so you decide that youre gonna go to the library on campus bc sis,, cash in on the tuition money ok

so you go and youre like wow hahahaha i dont have a library card better sign up for one

so you go to the desk and theres no one there

just your luck really

you decide to wander around a little to see if theres anyone who can help you

and low and behold you stumble across someone

this young man knelt down by a shelf with a book rack next to him just humming softly and organizing books

and you catch his attention by clearing your throat slightly

he looks up and his eyes are big over the rims of his wire framed glasses that are clinging to the tip of his round button nose

and his hair is a little mussed from being bent down

but holy hell

youve read enough novels to know that this must be exactly what the characters are talking about when they say things like ‘love at first sight’

“sorry” he says as he standcs and brushes himself off “can i help you with anything?”

starstruck really

you manage to stutter out something about needing to register for a library card and he smiles so kindly it makes u want to melt

“sure!’ he says, motioning for you to follow him back up to the desk

is this what a trance feels like???

he asks you a few basic questions, like your name, your age, and what building your dorm is in so he can put it all on your new nifty library card

and then he turns around this lil webcam on top of his computer and asks you to stand in front of it and smile

and you do, awkwardly

and as hes looking down at the computer counting “3, 2, 1” he has this smile on his face like hes trying to hide it

and if that didnt make ur heart jump you dont know what ever would holy

so he prints off your card as youre still trying to recover from being in the presence of an angel

and he hands it to you and smiles

“library hours are 8 am to 12 am every day, but on the weekends i’m the one that closes. which means if you ever need some extra time to finish that essay you pushed off,,, i wont tell anyone”

aND HE W I NK S

and not lot a hot wink

but a cute?? wink??? if thats possible

like you have a secret with him now and its safe

you wonder absently as you stare down at the black and white picture of yourself on the back of your new card if he tells everyone about him closing on the weekends

and if he doesnt does that make you special???/

you smile and thank him again, maybe a little more confidently than before and head for the door

you realise as youre halfway out that you came here to study on the computers but you really need some time to sit down and process the fact that you just say an actual angel

you can do your math homework on your phone for one more night if it means you can turn down your body heat from screaming blushing mess to slightly embarrassed rosy cheeks

the next time you get a chance to run by the library on campus, it just so happens to be sunday

you catch yourself wondering if dream boy meant friday and saturday or saturday and sunday when he said weekends

thats not important right now

what is important is that you have actual business to do in the library today

and that business is to pick up hamlet for your english class

you check in and someone else is at the front desk

you try not to let yourself feel disappointed

i mean you met him once for christs sake

the guy at the front is equally as attractive as dream boy from the previous week, but a little more relaxed to talk to since he isnt giving you any flirty subtones

the kid is all business really

he tells you that his name is doyoung if you need anything else

you ask how he got the job there, out of curiousity

because really, both of the librarians youve encountered seem pretty young for the standard librarian stereotype

doyoung explains that its a work-study job, so nearly all the people that work there are students at the university and work in between classes or on their off days to make some extra cash or pay off some tuition

and you can get behind that!!

so doyoung is cool and you decide you can go to him to ask questions instead

because while dream boy is a dream boy with pretty cheekbones and nice lips and a smooth voice and a good sense of style and a great height without insoles and looks great with glasses and has the most captivating eyes

hes a lil distracting lol

anyway you find yourself in the shakespearean section

and you grab a hamlet off the shelf and head back up to the front to have doyoung check the book out to you

and as hes handing you the book back you get a classroom notification saying that, despite common belief, the book rental wasnt due by tomorrow, but the whole book reading is due by tomorrow

you wonder how the fuck professors get away with shit like this and then you remember that you didnt bother to read the syllabus so you cant really get too mad at anyone but yourself

so you find a table that looks like it has the comfiest chairs and cozy up for a long evening of reading and annotating

(depending on who you are you either love or hate hamlet, either way it is exhausting to annotate anything from that man so bear with me ok)

five hours later and ⅔ of the annotations later it is 11:56pm

and you havent noticed

you hadnt noticed much of anything happening in the real world after you popped in a headphone and started reading about guards seeing a ghost

that is until someone plops down in the seat in front of you and asks

“so what are you studying”

and you look up, a little delayed because youre finishing a notation

only to find that its dream boy

and your brain blanks for a sec bc wow every time you see him its kinda like?? ouch???? my heart bro

so you just kind of shake your head and mutter some “im not really sure anymore”

and theres some truth to that!! first there were ghosts and now theres dead girlfriends dads and dead girlfriends and talking about a skull in a graveyard

that play is really a wild ride brother

and dream boy sits there and laughs, wholesomely

you could die happy

“yeah i get that” he says, rubbing the back of his neck

theres a pause that carries on a bit too long

“wanna hear a dumb joke?” he asks suddenly

you smile then, partially out of exhaustion and partially because wow?? cutie

“sure” you say

“okay. what do you call a nervous javelin thrower?”

you pause for a sec bc wtf

“dunno. what do you call them?”

he flashes this cute fucking grin that you know is supposed to be slick but just comes off as wholesome and says

“shakespeare”

and you shouldve seen that coming wow

and its so dumb that you actually??? giggle????? and that turns into a laugh??

youre probably just exhausted from annotations but maybe that was actually funny

and his smile softens like hes made progress on something

“y/n, right? i dont think i ever actually introduced myself. i’m jaehyun”

he smiles and reaches across the tabe and you take his hand

its warm and strong and you try not to think about it too hard

“well, y/n, library loses here in another two minutes or so.”

he sees the look on your face fall

“but never fear!” he leans forward and lowers his voice

you hold your breath

“i told ya you could stay, didnt i?”

his smile is closed lipped and cute and genuine

before you can say anything hes up and ushering the last few people out of the library, telling them good night and good luck with their classes tomorrow

youre kind of caught in a brain dead daze after finally being pulled from your studying to watching this cute librarian named jaehyun bustle around and lock doors and turn off lights

and when he finally gets back to you he clicks on the lamp on the table youre working at and sets a cup of coffee in front of you

he mustve made it as you were falling asleep with your eyes open

you thank him copiously before asking

“i thought you let everyone stay after hours when you closed”

he looks up over the rim of his mug with a surprised look in his eyes

he shakes his head as swallows the clearly too hot coffee

“not at all. most of the time i kick them out and study by myself.”

he blushes like its a confession and it makes you feel,,,, something

but you dont want to press

so you just reach out and offer your other headphone to him because if you dont know what to say then you can both enjoy some good study music

so he pulls out his homework for the night and the two of you sit there and study

you sip off your coffee occasionally and both of you nod your heads to the music playing in your ears

he hums along to the ones he knows and a thought skips across your mind

you could get used to this

(theres a 100000% chance there will be a part two to this)

#nct #nct imagines #nct x reader #jaehyun #nct jaehyun #jaehyun x reader #doyoung #nct doyoung #nct u #nct127 #librarian au #i love jaehyun #hes my closet bias #library.txt

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softboywriting · 6 years

Text

Nurse!Shawn

A/N: Anyway i had a hot nurse today at my appointment and my brain sort of went to Shawn and yeah....hot nurse!shawn. So here’s some cute fluffy nurse!shawn. Please enjoy ♥

You’re sat in the waiting room of your dermatologist's office, picking at something you dripped on your pants during lunch. It looks like dried ranch dressing. Probably is. The waiting room is too big, too clean, too modern, too warm. It’s too much everything. You hate it. It’s both modern and sterile. A uncomfortable mix for you. You look around at the other patients waiting to see the doctors. There three teen girls who has terrible acne and an older man who looks like he’s about to fall asleep. The TV plays the TLC channel and there is some show on about flea markets. You’re trying to get into it but you just can’t. It’s dumb and you’re too anxious about your appointment.

Ever since your aunt was diagnosed with skin cancer last year your mom has been on your case about getting a skin check. From a young age you had a lot of little moles all over your body and you never thought anything about them. Until your aunt was diagnosed and went through treatment for a misshapen mole on her thigh. It was awful but they got it taken care of. You didn’t want to possibly have something like that happen to you, but the thought of having someone see you basically naked and inspect you was almost as bad. It had been a month since your mom started harping on you about getting a check and every time you would find some excuse. But then you noticed the mole under your arm looked a little larger than normal and maybe a little darker? You decided it was time to suck it up and get checked.

So here you are, in this office waiting to be called back. You wish they would just hurry up already. Two nurses had already called two of the other girls back. Surely you would be next. As if on cue the doors to the back offices opens and a tall guy walks out in black scrubs and talks to the receptionist for a moment. You look up at the sound of the door opening and you swallow thickly. The guy standing chatting with the nurse was drop dead gorgeous, you were across the room and you could see just how fine he was. A well trained body and a head of thick messy wavy brown hair, he was like a dream come true. Suddenly you were hoping you weren’t next. Please not yet. Not with him.

The guy looks up and calls out your name. Fuck. You stand and take a deep breath, walking over to him, he smiles and says your name again, gesturing you to walk into the hall. “How’re you doing today?” he asks politely as he guides you down the hall.

“I-I’m fine. Good. Busy...y’know.”

He chuckles and leads you into an exam room. “Busy is good. Makes the day pass quicker.”

“Mmmhmm,” you hum as you take a seat on the exam table.

“I’m Shawn,” he sits down on a small rolling stool and it’s almost comical how huge he is compared to it. You can’t help but notices how the fabric of his scrubs pulls taut over his thighs. It shouldn’t be that sexy but it is. He holds a hand out to you and you take it weakly and shake it. “I’m Dr. Pearson’s nurse today. I’m just going to ask you a few questions before the doctor comes in.”

“Alright,” you say as your eyes wander around the room. It’s small as most exam rooms are. There are two big windows with the blinds down, a random piece of art on the wall and some kind of fancy hand soap on the back of the small wash sink. You look at anything to avoid staring at the actual god in front of you typing away on a laptop with his too big hands. Lord, was there nothing big about this guy? No. Nope. You were not going down that path right now.

“Okay so you’re allergic to cephalosporins, correct?”

You snap out of you thoughts and blink a few times before saying, “Yes. Yeah, I am.”

“Are you currently on any medications?”

“No.”

“And how tall are you?” Shawn looks over with a little smile as you answer and then back to his computer. He asks for your weight and you almost choke as you tell him because he chuckles as he types it in. He knows just how attractive he is and how it’s fucking with your head. “Alright and you’re here for a skin check today?”

“Y-yeah.” You shift nervously on the table and he glances over.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like the doctor to be made aware of?”

“I have a mole under my arm that seems bigger. I was worried about it so I made the appointment.”

Shawn hums and types in what you’ve said. “Do you have any sores, cuts or open wounds today?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Perfect. Alright let me get you a gown,” he says as he stands up and goes to a drawer and starts digging through the thin cloth tie on medical gowns. He turns around and you must look like you’re about to pass out or something because he reaches out and lays a hand on your shoulder, giving a concerned look. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m just really nervous,” you laugh, voice breaking because you’re about to cry. That was the worst thing about when you got really nervous or anxious. You cried. It was a shitty natural response and you hated it. “I’ll be fine.”

“Hey, it’s okay. What’s got you so nervous?” Shawn asks, laying the gown on the exam table beside you. “Are you afraid something’s wrong?”

You nod and clench your jaw to bite back the tears. “I’m nervous about being seen mostly naked and my aunt had skin cancer so I’m really worried it could happen to me. Also I’ve got all these stupid moles all over me. I’m like a walking time bomb for cancer or something.” You swallow hard and pinch one of the little flat moles on your forearm. “Ugly little spot just waiting to infect me.”

Shawn smooths his hand over the place you pinched, eyes trained on the dark little birthmark in the bend of your arm and you look up at him. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says softly and you pull your sleeve down a little to hide the birthmark. You hated that thing. It was so dark and ugly. “I can’t promise anything about your moles, obviously. I’m not a doctor, just a nurse. But I can promise the exam is quick and you’ll be back in your clothes in no time.” He puts his hand on your shoulder once more and gives a little encouraging squeeze, thumb rubbing back and forth over your collarbone. It’s so tender and intimate and you can’t help the blush that rises on your cheeks again. He pats the gown before saying the doctor would be in shortly to see you and leaving with a cheeky little smile.

The door clicks closed and you stand there processing that clearly flirtatious interaction before you start to undress. First your shirt, then your socks and shoes, your pants, you pause and you look at the gown and take a deep breath before you take off your bra, leaving your underwear on. The gown is pretty easy to tie closed and you take a seat on the table. The doctor comes in and the exam is quick like Shawn promised, your doctor moving quickly from mole to mole and moving your gown as needed. The doctor says none of your moles look like anything to worry about and that they are perfectly normal. She is worried about the dry patches on your elbows and knees though. You tell her they’ve been like that most of your life and you try to keep them lotioned but it doesn’t always seem to help. She asks you some more questions about the dry patches and says it looks like it may be mild eczema. She says she will prescribe something for you to try and in the meantime you could have some samples of creams to help with dryness.

Shortly after the doctor leaves and you start to dress yourself, the door handle clicks as if it’s opening and you spin around, standing there without a shirt on. “I’m not ready!” you squeak and the door stops.

“Sorry! Sorry I forgot to knock. I’ll wait!” Shawn says from the other side.

You pull your shirt on and fumble with your boots. “I’m covered now. You can come in.”

Shawn opens and door and his cheeks are rosy pink as he looks at you. “I’m so sorry. I know better than to just open doors.”

“It’s okay,” you chuckle softly and he holds out a little purple plastic bag with the business’s name on it.

“Dr. Pearson said these were for you to try. There is a few different lotion samples and I think a body wash sample,” Shawn says as you take the bag. “I hope everything turned out okay for you.”

“It did, thank you. I just have normal moles and dry knees,” you laugh and he laughs with you. He runs a hand through his hair and you have to look away because the simple gesture is far hotter than it has any right being. “Thank you. You were right about it being quick. Now I have a piece of mind until my next check up.”

Shawn smiles and you feel your heart melt. “I’ll look forward to seeing you again. We, we’ll look forward to seeing you again.” His cheeks turn that rosy color once more. You can’t help but bite your lip and look down at his little slip of the tongue. “I’ll show you out,” he says, hand on your lower back as he guides you out of the exam room and toward the exit door to the lobby.

“Thanks...again,” you giggle as he waves goodbye to you.

Once you’re in your car you open up the little purple bag and pour the samples out. There are three different creams for the dryness and the body wash Shawn mentioned. There are some little flyers for laser hair removal and other services offered by the dermatology office. Among the papers is a little blank appointment card with a phone number scrawled across the front over the doctor’s name and phone number. You look up at the office and back to the card. Your heart leaps into your throat.

You type the number into your phone and hit the message button to send a text.

Is this who I think it is?

Do you think it’s Shawn?

Because it is.

i think your birthmark is cute btw. U shouldnt hide it. Its heart shaped right?

You let out a scream in your car. You can’t believe he gave you his number. You’re sure it was probably against some rules somewhere or something but right now you didn’t care. The fact you got his number was unbelievable.

Yes kind of but its not cute its ugly

No its not

youre lucky im into you

dont you know you could have gotten in trouble doing this

But i didnt. Our little secret?

sure but only if you promise me dinner

Tonight? 7? meet me at Alfredos?

Deal

Thanks for reading~♥

#Shawn Mendes Imagine #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes oneshot #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes writing #oneshot #oneshots

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enkisstories · 6 years

Text

Teen Mom and the Puppy Mill (Part 2 of 2)

Not much to say about this chapter. Except that I just HAD to include both Jacques’ and Max’s catchphrases from the story. You’ll find them near the end.

That weekend, when Ulrike was due sitting the Munch boys, she had three other kids in tow: Brandon Colch, Amber Stein and a very embarrassed Morgan Fyres. The fact that little Amber was constantly trying to grab her hand and wave both their arms around didn’t help along Morgan’s mood at all. The two struggling girls fell behind a little. Ulrike didn’t care. She knew Amber well enough to know how this could only end. And predictably, just when Ulrike lifted her hand to ring at the Munchs’ doorbell, Amber closed up with her sitter, dragging a Morgan that was locked firmly in her grip behind her, announcing for all the world to hear that the big girl was her friend. “Hush, hush!” Ulrike shoo’ed her wards. Picking up the hint Donnie ushered the girls around the house, out Mrs. Munch’s sight. Ulrike spent a couple of minutes inside, then Mrs. Munch left and after another short wait Ulrike exited the home with Wolfgang and Lucas.

Wolfie nodded a silent acknowledgement of Morgan’s presence into the girl’s direction. They were in the same year and had some courses together. In fact, nerdy Wolfgang Munch was a prime target of Morgan’s and under normal circumstances the girl would have made sure to exchange neither words nor gestures with the runt of the litter. However, after having encountered Amber, Morgan was past upholding her dignity and still a little weak from the cold anyway, so she blurted out: “Your parents still treating you like a little kid, too?” “Because they hired me to guard you?” Ulrike interjected. “I think that’s less about anything that might happen to Wolfie and more about whom he could happen to.” “Oh, come on, just admit you love me!” Wolfgang snorted. Morgan looked the boy up and down, intrigued. The self-confident version of himself was different from the Wolfgang at school. This Wolfgang was the big brother, the brave one who had stood up against his dad, the one who made his mommy proud by bringing home good report cards. The son who would go far in life. And it showed in every inch of the kid’s movements. Just to test Wolfgang’s true mettle, Morgan brought forth Amber, saying “Meet my friend!” And while Wolfgang fell victim to a charmer toddler assault kicking and screaming, Morgan admired her new close-range weapon from a few heads above. ”Get it off, get it off meeeee!” That was Donnie, after Amber had remembered that she hadn’t hugged him before and went to remedy her lapse. “She’s totally my new friend”, Morgan told Ulrike, beaming. “Just look at her destructive potential!” “Your friend, huh?” Ulrike replied. “So what was her name again?” “Um…”

While the group was moving – trotting in Donnie’s case – down the road, Lucas eagerly explained to the rest that they were headed to the ruins of the old watchtower on a nearby hill. There’s be a fireplace and grass to play in and a bench for old woman Ulrike to rest on.

“That’s not where we are going today, sunshine”, old woman Ulrike corrected.

The group stopped at a bus stop, one of the tiny ones that were littered all across the countryside. Amber and Lucas played a hands-clasping game, Wolfgang studied the schedule and Morgan addressed Ulrike: “You ARE aware that my parents booked a babysitter so I could feel safe in the familiarity of our home and enjoy all the comforts and personal attendance the daycare cannot offer?” What Ulrike became more and more aware of was that the Fyres couple had hired her because Morgan was too old for the daycare, but the house wasn’t old enough to be left to an unsupervised Morgan. And that the older Fyres sister was clever enough to coincidentally have uncancelable appointments whenever she’d have to watch over Morgan… “Girl, the attendance YOU need is a few years solitary confinement and probably several meters of duct tape!” Ulrike accompanied her words by moving her fingers across her mouth in an unmistakeable gesture. “What?!” Morgan flared up. By now she had picked up that this particular babysitter wouldn’t be above doing exactly that to her. “But I’m just speaking my mind!” “That’s no justification for doing it in any imagineable way!” Ulrike retorted. “And ‘sides, poor Donnie’s close to tears already because of all the strangers!” Morgan cried out. “I’m not!” “Are, too!” Ulrike turned away. Kids were kids, and it was best to let them.

But just in case she wanted even more children, a poster across the road advertised the latest breakthrough in fertility treatments. “Great”, Ulrike thought, “More ways to get children that aren’t me.” There were childless parents and parentless children, but the first didn’t want the second. They craved copies of themselves instead, resulting in kids like Ulrike remaining “in the system” for years. It was what added to the growing discontent between the teenager and Auntie Haas, her adoptive mom. Had Ulrike grown up in a family right from the start, her parents would surely have noticed she wasn’t a child anymore and helped her transition into an artist. Whereas Auntie seemed to view her adoptive daughter as a rescue cat that needed to be coddled all the time to make up for lost opportunities. Maike had it so easy! All one needed to become a writer was a computer, which was an acceptable item in the Haas household, because you could play games on it. A painter had it harder. Everything was ALWAYS harder for Ulrike and there were times when she hated the world for that instead of proudly sailing on the waves of chaos (as Maike had described her adoptive sister once).

The bus arrived, requiring Ulrike to herd the children inside, putting a stop to her musings. And it brought something even worse then the ad to the teen girl’s attention. “What’s the matter, Uli? Someone hurt you?” That was ever-friendly Lucas. Such a darling the youngest Munch brother was! The kind of kid that made Ulrike vomit; whom she developed parenting strategies for like a worker in a garbage processing plant would treat the potentially disease-causing waste: efficient but with utter disdain. Needless to say, Lucas LOVED Ulrike.

“Yes”, Ulrike answered Lucas’s question. “The councilman Harold Bjergsen.”

“Oh!” went Wolfgang, excitedly. “In a past life!”

Donnie stiffled a laugh. He was into rocketships and scoffed on mystic stuff.

“Yeah”, Ulrike said, looking out through the window.

But the unkind truth was that the councilman had hurt Ulrike in this very life. How he had managed that across a century-wide gap was explained easily without resorting to the supernatural: Windenburg’s buses were named after famous sons and daughters of the town. The one Ulrike and the children were riding in at the moment was called “Senior Postmaster & Councilmaster Harold Bjergsen”. Few people took notice of the names, but Ulrike knew all of them and she hated them with passion! That postmaster… he’d had everything in life already, wealth, competence and respect. While she, Ulrike Faust-Haas, was a nothing and would die a nobody. Why did he have to rub it in even after his death? Everything… Why?! Everything... A cold, damp garbage heap outside the city walls for a grave... Nothing...

Later that day the postmaster was not forgotten, but shoved into a dark corner for longterm storage just like his bones in the bonehouse. Ulrike and the children were watching TV, all the fun stuff parents claimed made kids dumb.

Wolfgang Munch was munching on - or wolfing down, either made for a pun Morgan just couldn’t resist - the second red apple from overseas. Normally when Mila brought home one of this expensive sort from work, she sliced it into three pieces, one for each of her sons. Not so in this mansion, here the rare treat was considered a snack. For invited visitors, that was... “Don’t be so greedy!” Lucas scolded his brother when Wolfie had finished and grabbed another one. “Think of Snow White! And of Eve!” Wolfgang just shrugged and bit into the uge fruit. It’s juice was dripping down his chin. Amber, however, put hers back into the bowl after hearing the names of princesses who had unfortunate accidents after eating apples. “Apples are good for kids”, Ulrike felt the need to announce. Then she chuckled: “Unlike the Dino Riders...” “Bah! What do the Villareal have a widescreen super-duper-HD TV anyway, if they only use it to watch the news?” Morgan replied. Then the girl paused, considered, went a little red in her face and went “Oh... wow.”

“How does it even work?” Brandon complained, totally missing Morgan’s sudden insight into Mr. Villareal’s mind. “Do I forget triangle equations from watching Dino Riders? So why don’t I forget them from doing household chores?” “Ey?” Morgan shot the boy a puzzled look. Perhaps she had passed her flu on to him and he was fevering? “For real!” Brandon ranted on. “Housework is allowed, but the Dino Riders aren’t. Does mom think I’m thinking of triangle equations while doing the housework?” “Probably”, little Maxis Sandro chimed in. “We’ve got servants for the chores, though.” Now it was Brandon’s turn to go “Ey?”. “I was joking, you know?” he told the pre-schooler. Maxis straightened his small body on the sofa. “Cartoon shows makes you dumber”, he started to explain, “because they steal time from watching shows that make you more educated. And being educated makes you appear smarter!!! And the silly shows only make you crave more of them and so they steal MORE time from honing your brain… And can we please go back to pretending we are children now…?”

“We ARE kids!” Wolfgang provided an insight at which Max only shrugged. “Well, lucky you, then”, the Villareal scion told the older boy. In another ‘verse he’d probably fail school at the age of ten and rampage through the countryside with public school trash for his friends. But here, in the real world, Jacques de Villareal would not allow his youngest child to run wild and waste the genes he had passed to him*.

*That “other ‘verse” refers to Sims 4 canon, actually. No one said a word. The show continued. Questar was exiled from the Dino Riders, which was pretty serious stuff, but the children didn’t pay attention. Max Villareal noticed how everyone’s gazes rested on him after his speech, a situation the kid hadn’t been trained for yet. He felt caged, challenged and utterly helpless. Max reacted in the only way his developing brain would allow:

“Go lick a dead dog’s snout all of you!” he shouted, followed by a long wail: “Waaaaahhhhhhhh!”

“Kid’s weird”, Morgan remarked.

“Waaaa! Shut up! I didn’t inviiiiiiiiite youuuuuuu!”

Ulrike shook her head. The pre-schooler reacted just like expected from one who was exposed to what this one was. It was sad, if one thought about it longer. The urge to preserve at least a tiny bit of childhood for one who wasn’t allowed to fully plunge into it rose up in Ulrike… just like it had in her adoptive mom. For a moment Ulrike felt connected, somehow, to Auntie Haas. They needed to have a talk… someday. Probably. Or not. Because first things first:

“Will you stop that already, Maxis Sandro?!” Ulrike yelled.

“Nooooooo! Don’t wannaaaaaaaa!”

“But, Ma… Maxi…” Ulrike stuttered. She had dealt with difficult toddlers before, but Maxis Sandro, shy, soft-spoken (if he spoke at all) Maxis Sandro turning into one came so out of the blue that every strategy the teen mom had ever come up with to counter the tantrum was blanked out, unavailable as if it had never been learned in the first place.

“I… I think all we can do is wait till he ends it on his own…” the teenager ventured.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!” went Max, flailing around his legs, fingers clenched into fists.

“That does it!” snapped Brandon. “I’m out of here!”

And off the couch he jumped and to the door he ran. Ulrike followed in hot-pursuit while Max started bobbing up and down triumphantly on his cushion. What a day!

And it got even better when the other children heard Donnie cry out “Wow! You must see that!” in a rare fit of wanting to share something he had discovered with other children. “That pool!!!”

Max jumped off the couch.

“I’m a good swimmer!” he proclaimed. “I’ll show you!”

Wolfgang spat well-chewed foreign apple mush across the living room. The five year old in the deep swimming pool? Wasn’t that way too dangerous?!

“You’re staying right here!” he demanded, but Max had already gotten a headstart and cut the low flight of stairs leading to the backyard by simply jumping down. While running he let fly his shoes, socks and shirt, followed by the older boy who was desperately trying to “rescue” the child. “Quick, Brandon, catch him!” Wolfgang shouted. Donnie looked around, understood, but the much smaller Villareal boy evaded his clumsy attempts at capturing him. Wolfgang sped up, now Morgan (with Amber’s tiny fingers locked firmly into her belt) left the house, too, and only Lucas stayed behind, eyeing the apples not unlike Adam in paradise. “No!” the boy told himself, crossing his arms. “I must not be a thief!” And then he, too, went to see what happened outside.

Ulrike stood by, watching the ensueing chaos with a smug smile on her face, in the comfortable knowledge that Max had lied. The youngest Villareal child wasn’t a “good” swimmer. He was actually a two-legged fish, at home in the water and, as an added benefit, way less likely to break anything while in the pool than in the house.

The afternoon sun was crawling across the sky, hiding behind the ruins that were looming over the island in a sort of premature sunset. Long shadows engulfed Villareal Manor and with it the handful of people that were standing just outside the gate. They liked shadows, these boys and girls, feeling right at home in darkness’ embrace. Lucas and Amber had curled up under a tree together, snuggling after an exiting and eventful day. But Ulrike, Wolfgang, Brandon, Morgan and Max stood upright close together, watching the minor sunset.

“You are not to tell anybody about today”, Ulrike instructed the children. “Otherwise you won’t…”

“Give that back! It’s mine!”

“Race me!”

“A moment, please”, Ulrike said with a sigh, then strolled over towards the patch of sand where the older Villareal children, Hugo and Luna, were argueing.

After solving the conflict, Ulrike returned.

“Ey, sorry, clandestine oaths ain’t what they used to be”, she apologized.

“Otherwise we won’t be allowed to return here, we know”, Morgan finished the teenager’s sentence from before the twins had interrupted the pledge. “Trouble is, I don’t need to play here, our house is almost as nice. But I won’t be a telltale if I can bring my friend next time!”

“The one with the mirror?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Good thing he didn’t break it and conjured seven years of bad luck upon the two of you, then. Okay, bring him.”

“But he must take the oath!” Wolfgang demanded.

“He will, I promise!”

Wolfgang took a few steps towards Morgan. To his delight he discovered that he was actually taller than his schoolyard nemesis!

“This is serious, Morgan!” the boy snarled. “Your boyfriend’s behavior is on your hide!”

“Oh… okay”, Morgan whispered, then grinned. “You should be mean more often, Wolfie! It becomes you!”

“I…” Wolfgang’s hand shot to the back of his head, but Ulrike grabbed and forced it down.

She watched as the children came up with their own words for a pledge and recited punishments for speaking about this place or, worse, leaving the group for any reason. But just when the girl wanted to wake Lucas and Amber for the journey back, Max grabbed her by the wrist.

“Come on, Uli”, he urged her. “You must take the oath or you cannot be a Renegade!”

A what where how?!

“That’s us! Our name for our group!” Max pressed on.

“Ah. And not pleading loyality to the, erm, Renegades, would be bad how exactly…?” Ulrike inquired.

“You wouldn’t be allowed to return here with us!”

“But I’m your nanny! Without me you CANNOT come here at all. Well, YOU could, obviously, but none of the others.”

“Yes, exactly!” Max cried. “That’s why it’s so important that you take the oath!”

The sun was setting. There was no time to argue or try reason. Besides, what could it hurt? It was just another game Ulrike way playing with her children. Nothing soul-wrenching that would bind them beyond death at all. Now where had THAT thought come from...?!

Skipping forward a couple of years the summer sun found the “Renegades” frolicking in the Villareal mansion as if no time had passed. They had grown older, more capable in what they put their energy to, but those endeavours were no longer the ones their parents had expected their darlings to undertake.

Wolfgang wasn’t bringing home straight As anymore, but had nevertheless managed to score a scholarship. He seemed to care about nothing, taking nothing serious. Morgan had come to the conclusion that the betterment of humankind had to start by putting them all behind bars, locking the door and throwing away the key. Carlos was into videogames and talked about becoming a career soldier, because that was where the big money was. This in turn irked Brandon, because he was into videogames, too, but he got ridiculed for it. So for a time he tried to emulate Carlos. Since this worked out well, the boy continued mimicking others until it was hard to pinpoint whether he had an actual personality. Max was still unstable as a thrust sheet and that was the best that could be said about the boy. In between starting and scraping paintings “Teen mom” Ulrike continued to work as a babysitter, nevermind that the toddlers and infants she was to watch were locked in a room somewhere in the mansion. The Renegades would occasionally feed them and they held drinking contests over diaper cleaning duty. They also practiced taking sweets from babies at the children in Ulrike’s care. You couldn’t threaten babies into handing over their candy. And if you attempted to just take it from them, they’d cry, cries that you couldn’t stiffle without suffocating the little ones. So you had to grab the goodies without making them go off. All things considered, taking candy from babies was a form of art that the Renegades strived to master. ‘On a sidenote, Ulrike and Wolfgang as well as Morgan and Carlos were definitely no couples, no Sir! Just practicing for a real relationship sometime in the future… one of the kind that Brandon of all people already had. That lousy bastard thinking he could go ahead of his friends!

How long had it been now that her babysitting job had turned into getting payed to hang out with her friends, Ulrike wondered? Bringing all her clients’ kids into the spacious Villareal estate had been her best idea! The younger ones resigned pretty quickly and the older ones joined into the ruckus around the premises. If anything broke, it could always be blamed on the ever-squabbling Villareal twins Hugo and Luna and the twins would lower their heads in their father’s presence and “confess” their misdeed. Because if they didn’t, the Renegades would tell Jacques about all the things the twins had done that warranted sterner punishment then the occasional trashed vase and handrail. “What if the parents realize you’re herding their darlings to the island?” Max asked one day while handing her a tankard. Ulrike shrugged. She accepted the beer, overlooking the fact that Max leisurely drank from another beer-filled tankard himself. “They simply mustn’t. I need…”

“…the money”, a rasping voice finished the sentence. “I understand.”

Ulrike, Carlos, Brandon, Morgan, Wolfgang and Max turned their heads.

In the door stood the widower Jacques de Villareal, wealthiest enterpreteur and rumored godfather of Windenburg. The man had been standing in the hallway all the time, watching, drawing conclusions and smiling.

Wolfgang dropped his tankard. Morgan quickly disposed hers by forcing it into the hands of whoever stood next to her. Turned out it was little Max…

Jacques took the beer from Carlos, who didn’t even try to fight. “Thank you, my boy”, the houseowner said and took a deep gulp, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and he had just returned to be greeted by his faithful, because well-payed servants.

Next the man casually strolled over to the table where Knights of the Hedge Action figures were pitted against monsters from outer space. It spoke of how their owners had not matured, but at least aged, that a number of those space warriors were locked into what could be called “couple poses”...

“Brings back memories”, Jacques remarked, but didn’t dwell on that notion. “Whatever. You’ve got a remarkable grasp of timing, Ms. Faust, with getting the kids here and back again without anyone ever noticing. But let’s not squander your other talents. There’s something you could do for me… something that would make me refrain from telling your other clients that you are running a puppy mill and also forget the fact that you are doing it in my house. We understand each other?”

“I’ll get payed eventually?”

“Certainly.”

Determined Ulrike raised her tankard and Jacques banged his against the girl’s.

“A nice selection of retainers you’ve acquired there, son”, Jacques told his youngest child later. “Very different from your sister’s Paragons or Hugo’s insistence on working alone. I approve of that. Diversifying is nature’s most powerful strategy and it should be ours, too.” Max turned his head ever so slightly. “You make it sound as if I owned the Renegades, father…” he started, only to be silenced by Jacques: “You think they are your friends, then?”

The boy nodded eagerly!

“Oh, Max! Friendship means exchanging favours on more generous terms. It can only happen between equals. These kids have nothing to offer you, at least not on the scale you and me measure ourselves.” Max pressed his lips tightly together. Eventually he opened his mouth again: “You want me to believe that, father, because if they weren’t inferior, the Renegades might be rivals for you in my heart!”

SLAP!

The bitchslap was followed by a series of hits that left the boy lying flat on his face.

“Damn… damn you… old man! I know I’m right!”

Jacques sighed, then knelt down.

“Hate me now?”

“No…”

“Okay. Listen… and sit up for hell’s sake! Okay, that’s better.”

Looking his son into his eyes more seriously than Max had ever seen his father do before, Jacques said: “Everyone is a slave of something or someone. No way around that, kiddo, sorry. We can only choose the ties that bind us. And I’d rather see you choose your family than a bunch of random thugs, Maxis. Because when push comes to shove, can you really trust these strangers?” “I…” Max started. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say. But, father, I don’t think I approve of it.”

“Well, that’s the priviledge of youth, I suppose. Something I’ll have to endure with the three of you for some more time. So go out into the world and make your own experiences! I can wait.”

From now Ulrike Faust copied artwork “for the man”. But the young woman found less and time to concentrate on her art, improve it or develop her own style. The forgeries Ulrike churned out were sold to unsuspecting customers or swapped for originals in museums. And more often than not the Renegades were the ones doing the swapping. In turn Jacques had promised to promote Ulrike’s original works. There were times when the Renegades didn’t agree with the aging godfather. Those times they told themselves that they had been a gang and the scourge of the schoolyard before becoming the newest addition to the mob. But every time they went their own way, the Renegades did nothing different than in Jacques’ employ: performing minor crimes (but for ourselves this time!) and cowing people (but this time for fun!).

And so it began.

#simblr #renegades story #sims 4 #ts4

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Artificial intelligence is changing SEO faster than you think – TechCrunch

John Rampton is founder of online invoicing company Due.

By now everyone has heard of Google’s RankBrain, the new artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm that is supposed to be the latest and greatest from Mountain View, Calif. What many of you might not realize, however, is just how fast the SEO industry is changing because of it. In this article, I’ll take you through some clear examples of how some of the old rules of SEO no longer apply, and what steps you can take to stay ahead of the curve in order to continue to provide successful SEO campaigns for your businesses.

So what is artificial intelligence?

There are generally three different classifications of artificial intelligence:

When we talk about the context of Google’s RankBrain, and the machine learning algorithms that are currently running on Google, we are talking about Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI).

Actually, ANI has been around for some time. Ever wonder how those SPAM filters work in your email? Yep, that’s ANI. Here are some of my favorite ANI programs: Google Translate, IBM’s Watson, that cool feature on Amazon that tells you products that are “recommended for you,” self-driving cars and, yes, our beloved Google’s RankBrain.

Within ANI, there are many different approaches. As Pedro Domingos clearly lays out in his book The Master Algorithm, data scientists trying to achieve the perfect AI can be grouped into five “tribes” today:

Google’s RankBrain is in the camp of the Connectionists. Connectionists believe that all our knowledge is encoded in the connections between neurons in our brain. And RankBrain’s particular strategy is what experts in the field call a back propagation technique, rebranded as “deep learning.”

Connectionists claim this strategy is capable of learning anything from raw data, and therefore is also capable of ultimately automating all knowledge discovery. Google apparently believes this, too. On January 26th, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies, which was, essentially, a back propagation shop.

So when we talk about RankBrain, we now can tell people it is comprised of one particular technique (back propagation or “deep learning”) on ANI. Now that we have that out of the way, just how much is this field progressing? And, more importantly, how is it changing the business of SEO?

The exponential growth of technology (and AI)

Tim Urban from WaitButWhy.com explains the growth of technology better than anyone in his article The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence.

Here is what technological progress looks like, when you look back at history:

But, as Urban points out, in reality, you can’t see what’s to your right (the future). So here is how it actually feels when you are standing there:

What this chart shows is that when humans try to predict the future, they always underestimate. This is because they are looking to the left of this graph, instead of to the right.

However, the reality is, human progress takes place at a faster and faster rate as time goes on. Ray Kurzweil calls this the Law of Accelerating Returns. The scientific reasoning behind his original theory is that more advanced societies have the ability to progress at a faster rate than less advanced societies — because they’re more advanced. Of course, the same can be applied to artificial intelligence and the growth rate we are seeing now with advanced technology.

We see this with computing resources right now. Here is a visualization that gives you the perspective of just how fast things can change because of this Law of Accelerating Returns:

As you can clearly see, and as we all can intuitively feel, the growth of advanced processing and computers has benefited from this Law of Accelerating Returns. Here is another shocking revelation: At some point, the processing power for an economical computer will surpass that of not only a single human, but for all humans combined.

In fact, it now appears that we will be able to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) some time around 2025. Technology is clearly expanding at a faster and faster pace, and, by many accounts, most of us will be caught off guard.

The rise of superintelligence

As I have explained above, Google’s RankBrain is just one form of ANI, which means that, while it can perform things better than a human in one specific area, it is just that: a relatively weak form of artificial intelligence.

But we may be blindsided by how fast this “weak” intelligence might easily turn into something with which we have no idea how to deal.

Here, you can clearly see that Google’s RankBrain, while super intelligent on one particular task, is still in the general context of things, fairly unintelligent on the intelligence scale.

But what happens when we apply the same Law of Accelerating Returns to artificial intelligence? Tim Urban walks us through the thought experiment:

“…so as A.I. zooms upward in intelligence toward us, we’ll see it as simply becoming smarter, for an animal. Then, when it hits the lowest capacity of humanity — Nick Bostrom uses the term ‘the village idiot’ — we’ll be like, ‘Oh wow, it’s like a dumb human. Cute!’ The only thing is, in the grand spectrum of intelligence, all humans, from the village idiot to Einstein, are within a very small range — so just after hitting village idiot level and being declared to be AGI, it’ll suddenly be smarter than Einstein and we won’t know what hit us.”

So what does this mean for the business of SEO and the artificial intelligence that is upon us?

SEO has changed forever

Before we get into predicting the future, let’s take inventory on how RankBrain has already changed SEO. I sat down with Carnegie Mellon alumnus and friend Scott Stouffer, now CTO and co-founder of Market Brew, a company that provides search engine models for Fortune 500 SEO teams. As a search engineer himself, Stouffer had a unique perspective over the past decade that most professionals in that industry don’t get to see. Here are some of his tips for the SEO industry when it comes to Google’s new emphasis on artificial intelligence.

Today’s regression analysis is seriously flawed

This is the biggest current fallacy of our industry. There have been many prognosticators every time Google’s rankings shift in a big way. Usually, without fail, a few data scientists and CTOs from well-known companies in our industry will claim they “have a reason!” for the latest Google Dance. The typical analysis consists of perusing through months of ranking data leading up to the event, then seeing how the rankings shifted across all websites of different types.

With today’s approach to regression analysis, these data scientists point to a specific type of website that has been affected (positively or negatively) and conclude with high certainty that Google’s latest algorithmic shift was attributed to a specific type of algorithm (content or backlink, et al.) that these websites shared.

However, that isn’t how Google works anymore. Google’s RankBrain, a machine learning or deep learning approach, works very differently.

Within Google, there are a number of core algorithms that exist. It is RankBrain’s job to learn what mixture of these core algorithms is best applied to each type of search results. For instance, in certain search results, RankBrain might learn that the most important signal is the META Title.

Adding more significance to the META Title matching algorithm might lead to a better searcher experience. But in another search result, this very same signal might have a horrible correlation with a good searcher experience. So in that other vertical, another algorithm, maybe PageRank, might be promoted more.

This means that, in each search result, Google has a completely different mix of algorithms. You can now see why doing regression analysis over every site, without having the context of the search result that it is in, is supremely flawed.

For these reasons, today’s regression analysis must be done by each specific search result. Stouffer recently wrote about a search modeling approach where the Google algorithmic shifts can be measured. First, you can take a snapshot of what the search engine model was calibrated to in the past for a specific keyword search. Then, re-calibrate it after a shift in rankings has been detected, revealing the delta between the two search engine model settings. Using this approach, during certain ranking shifts, you can see which particular algorithm is being promoted or demoted in its weighting.

When humans try to predict the future, they always underestimate.

Having this knowledge, we can then focus on improving that particular part of SEO for sites for those unique search results. But that same approach will not (and cannot) hold for other search results. This is because RankBrain is operating on the search result (or keyword) level. It is literally customizing the algorithms for each search result.

Stay niche to avoid misclassification

What Google also realized is that they could teach their new deep learning system, RankBrain, what “good” sites look like, and what “bad” sites look like. Similar to how they weight algorithms differently for each search result, they also realized that each vertical had different examples of “good” and “bad” sites. This is undoubtedly because different verticals have different CRMs, different templates and different structures of data altogether.

When RankBrain operates, it is essentially learning what the correct “settings” are for each environment. As you might have guessed by now, these settings are completely dependent on the vertical on which it is operating. So, for instance, in the health industry, Google knows that a site like WebMD.com is a reputable site that they would like to have near the top of their searchable index. Anything that looks like the structure of WebMD’s site will be associated with the “good” camp. Similarly, any site that looks like the structure of a known spammy site in the health vertical will be associated with the “bad” camp.

As RankBrain works to group “good” and “bad” sites together, using its deep learning capabilities, what happens if you have a site that has many different industries all rolled up into one?

First, we have to discuss a bit more detail on how exactly this deep learning works. Before grouping together sites into a “good” and “bad” bucket, RankBrain must first determine what each site’s classification is. Sites like Nike.com and WebMD.com are pretty easy. While there are many different sub-categories on each site, the general category is very straightforward. These types of sites are easily classifiable.

But what about sites that have many different categories? A good example of these types of sites are the How-To sites. Sites that typically have many broad categories of information. In these instances, the deep learning process breaks down. Which training data does Google use on these sites? The answer is: It can be seemingly random. It may choose one category or another. For well-known sites, like Wikipedia, Google can opt-out of this classification process altogether, to ensure that the deep learning process doesn’t undercut their existing search experience (aka “too big to fail”).

The field of SEO will continue to become extremely technical.

But for lesser-known entities, what will happen? The answer is, “Who knows?” Presumably, this machine learning process has an automated way of classifying each site before attempting to compare it to other sites. Let’s say a How-To site looks just like WebMD’s site. Great, right?

Well, if the classification process thinks this site is about shoes, then it is going to be comparing the site to Nike’s site structure, not WebMD’s. It just might turn out that their site structure looks a lot like a spammy shoe site, as opposed to a reputable WebMD site, in which case the overly generalized site could easily be flagged as SPAM. If the How-To site had separate domains, then it would be easy to make each genre look like the best of that industry. Stay niche.

These backlinks smell fishy

Let’s take a look at how this affects backlinks. Based on the classification procedure above, it is more important than ever to stick within your “linking neighborhood,” as RankBrain will know if something is different from similar backlink profiles in your vertical.

Let’s take the same example as above. Say a company has a site about shoes. We know that RankBrain’s deep learning process will attempt to compare each aspect of this site with the best and worst sites of the shoe industry. So, naturally, the backlink profile of this site will be compared to the backlink profiles of these best and worst sites.

Let’s also say that a typical reputable shoe site has backlinks from the following neighborhoods:

Now let’s say that the company’s SEO team decides to start pursuing backlinks from all these neighborhoods, plus a new neighborhood — from one of the CEO’s previous connections to the auto industry. They are “smart” about it as well: They construct a cross-marketing “free shoe offer for all new leases” page that is created on the auto site, which then links to their new type of shoe. Totally relevant, right?

Well, RankBrain is going to see this and notice that this backlink profile looks a lot different than the typical reputable shoe site. Worse yet, it finds that a bunch of spammy shoe sites also have a backlink profile from auto sites. Uh oh.

And just like that, without even knowing what is the “correct” backlink profile, RankBrain has sniffed out what is “good” and what is “bad” for its search engine results. The new shoe site is flagged, and their organic traffic takes a nosedive.

The future of SEO and artificial intelligence

As we can see from the previous discussion on the Law of Accelerating Returns, RankBrain and other forms of artificial intelligence will at some point surpass the human brain. And at this point, nobody knows where this technology will lead us.

Some things are certain, though:

In some ways, the deep learning methodology makes things simpler for SEOs. Knowing that RankBrain and similar technologies are almost on par with a human, the rule of law is clear: There are no more loopholes.

In other ways, things are a bit harder. The field of SEO will continue to become extremely technical. Analytics and big data are the order of the day, and any SEO that isn’t familiar with these approaches has a lot of catching up to do. Those of you who have these skills can look forward to a big payday.

This content was originally published here.

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mister-maiden · 5 years

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Deadly Premonition: A game so bad, it gained a cult following

The beginning scene opens up to an old man and two young boys walking across the leave ridden forest floor. The youths come across a small ladybug and give wonderful laughs as they frolic within the brush, the old man merely following along for the ride..Then suddenly the boys stumble across a woman tied to a tree with vines constricting her limbs in a Christ fashion. Her abdomen seemingly cut open, bled out like a pig with the boys merely staring, and the old man doing NOTHING to stop the boys from watching. All the old man can mutter is "oh Ana" as a white snake slowly wraps around the woman's body, slowly making its way up the tree as an eerie Japanese chorus can be heard in the background. As a time skip occurs, we see the old man standing in the same spot with a sheriff and his deputy...and the boys are still playing with the ladybug, right next to the woman's corpse impaled on the tree.

Yeah, I don't know what the hell I'm playing either.

Welcome to Deadly Premonition, a game so bad that it has gained a cult following in recent years. I've never seen anything like it. Sure you have games like Superman for the Nintendo 64 that was so bad it became a joke, but this game has people defending how good it is BECAUSE it is so bad. It's the strangest paradox that I have ever processed.

Now. You begin your journey as special FBI agent Francis York Morgan, and your job is to find the murderer of this tree woman in Greenvale, a little town near a large forest. Through your investigation, you'll find yourself meeting some of the strangest folk you'll ever have the dis-pleasure of speaking too, including York himself. Every interaction with other characters is simply cringe worthy. So much of the dialogue feels like it belongs in the subreddit r/Iamverysmart. Your character will interrupt conversations, ignore important details, and speak to himself with dialogue straight from a fan fiction of Sonic the Hedgehog. I've never seen anything like it. The graphics are dated as the game was published in 2010. I don't mind graphics being downgraded or simply bad as long as the game play is okay....BUT.The game play is horrible. The movement controls are wonkier than old resident evil games, bullets have little to no impact, and when they hit York needs to comment about how nice of a shot it was, and you will find ammo everywhere so there is no sense of urgency in saving ammo.

I can't think of a single piece of the game I really enjoyed.

The enemies are dumbed down zombies that bubble into nothing as they are defeated, giving soft groans with every shuffle towards York...who can just sprint past them without a care. There is no real danger from the enemies which forces them to simply be an annoyance rather than an actual obstacle. Nothing in this game is an actual challenge other than the horrible controls and driving mechanics. I can't even begin to describe the amount of times I was able to scuttle out of an area without so much as having to shoot a single bullet at these slow, ridiculous enemies.

The setting is decent. The walls slowly begin to decay as York's mind slowly is driven into insanity with how horrible a game he is in. Jokes aside, the level creation was decent. Some areas that were once normal environments turn into deadly traps as York tries to find the dreaded killer and escape his haunting enemies. The only problem is the setting is the most difficult thing to remember because it all felt the same.

Now through all of these bad details of a game that was catastrophically bad...Why would anyone say it's good?

It's because this game makes its components so bad that it comes out as UNIQUE. The way York speaks to himself is strange but involves the player as if he were breaking the fourth wall. The dialogue is so bad and cheesy, it makes for some of the funniest laughs imaginable. The story is sort of decent, if you can turn off your brain. It's completely otherworldly. I won't spoil anything here, but I never could guess what the hell was happening.

I definitely can't say the game is completely bad. The story was interesting, but I just couldn't stretch my belief enough. The dialogue may have been bad, but it made me laugh at the most random times (be it good or bad for a survival horror game, that's your opinion). Perhaps I just can't find the hype surrounding it like so many others. I felt like I was just waiting on the next cut scene to give me more information about the story rather than focusing on the game play itself.

You see, even though it can be seen as "good" in SOME retrospects, I refuse to ignore its horrible qualities which outweigh the good. Characters are memorable, the story is plenty different from other games...but goodness I just can't bring it upon myself to say I enjoyed this game. I say using your best judgement would be difficult when asking whether or not you'd play this game, because you really won't know unless you play it. Some people absolutely love the game, and others hate it. Perhaps it's taste in what you're looking for! Either way, I hope you enjoy yourself with any game you find and never take someone's judgement as absolute!

(Spoilers :l)

"What the hell did I just play" was the only thought crossing my mind as I recoiled my hands away from my keyboard. The ending credits slowly scrolled up my screen as I cringed in the utter disgust of wasting my time.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a weird story here and there, but THIS story? It was WAY too stretched for me to enjoy.

First, York constantly is talking to himself and referring to the person he's talking to as "Zach" which could be seen as him breaking the fourth wall and talking to the player directly (which is a big no no in horror survival). His horrible attitude with others made me cringe as I had to follow this man for nearly 9 hours. I just couldn't stand it. Some of his dialogue made me want to just turn off my computer and pace.

Don't believe me? Please, I urge you to try reading this line where York is sitting in a cafe while a man orders quite the hilarious lunch.

Waiter: "Here you go, the usual. One turkey, strawberry jam, and cereal sandwich.

"York: "Sounds like the 'sinner's' sandwich. Self inflicted punishment to atone for past sins. He's setting an example."

I can assure you, I've never cringed so hard when listening to the dialogue of this game. This is merely 5 seconds. Imagine 9 hours of this.

The story was just...ridiculous. Here's the big spoilers.

The killer is actually the sheriff in town who was actually the pawn of a traveling tree salesman who wished to spread death and terror through the red seeds found at each murder location throughout the nation. The sheriff believed he could gain immortality by consuming the red seeds and killing four people, but was simply being used. His partner, a cross dressing sheriff's assistant named Thomas MacLaine, had been assisting him the entire time because he loved him. As the story goes forward with more people dying, York finds out about the sheriff being the killer and puts an end to it..by fighting the sheriff as he...erm...mutates into a demon (I can't make this up).

Later on, Thomas the cross dressing sheriff's assistant is killed by being stabbed by a knife he tossed into the sky as he was being attacked by a dog, and then being impaled on a hook. York finally confronts the tree salesman, only to realize that the tree salesman killed his mother by putting a red seed sapling inside of her. His father committed suicide because he couldn't bare to end his wife's suffering and was forced to watch. This trauma forced York's mind to scramble, causing his personalities to shift, and here is where we realize Zach is his real identity and York was the fake personality that the child made to protect his psyche (yeah).What the hell did I just play again?

I don't even know how I could begin to describe my experience with this game. I can say Outlast made my heart pump. I could say Amnesia made me afraid of the dark. What could Deadly Premonition possibly give me?

Uniqueness. You will never find another game like it. Sure there are bad elements, but that's what makes this game such a strange cult classic. Some scenes I will never forget, but in this case, I think the scenes I'd like to forget far outweigh the ones I'll keep in my memories forever.

#deadly premonition #horror games #cult review #wtf

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT INVESTORS

And as for the disputation, that seems clearly a net lose. What matters in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should make users the test, just as the proper role of humans is to think, just as volume and surface area do. I think we should be just as worried about premature design—deciding too early what a program should do. What was novel about this software, at the other students' without having more than glanced over the book to learn the names of things should be short. That first million is just worth so much more robust to have all the brains on the server and talk to you through a Web browser. Clearly you don't have to look for things that solve the mundane problems of individual customers.1 They'd prefer not to deal with than VCs. Most of the people who are really committed to what they're working on. Force him to read it and write an essay about color or baseball. I do then is just what the river does: backtrack. The right way to collaborate, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of your work. I'm going to explain what we're seeing, and what that will mean for you if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the river.

It allows you to give an impressive-looking talk about nothing, and it seemed to hinge on a different quality. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that all you have to find the library function that will do what you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. For example, a social network for pet owners. One thing is certain: the question is a complex one.2 But more importantly, by selecting that small a group you can get. The other half is expressing yourself well. You can get the best rowers.

Only those that are centers for some type of applicant? That's the fundamental reason the super-angels invest other people's money. How much is that extra attention worth? Indeed, English classes may even be harmful.3 But in medieval Europe something new happened. We'd ask why we even hear about new, indy languages like Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. With the bizarre consequence that high school students? The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that. Richard Kelsey gave this as an idea whose time has come again in the last couple years.

The answer, of course. But while learning to hack is not necessary, it is for the forseeable future sufficient. When one investor wants to invest in you, that makes other investors want to, which makes hardware geometrically closer to free; the Web, instead of blowing up in your face and leaving you with nothing, as happens if you get deeply enough into it. In the other languages I had learned up till then, there was a fast path out of. Finding startup ideas is a history of gradually discarding the assumption that it's all about dealing with human weaknesses. Your housemate did it deliberately to upset you. The problem with working slowly is not just a heuristic for detecting bias. It's that it tends not to happen at all. Now that you can fight this powerful force. Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning when there's a path out of an idea like this is that when you have one you'll tend to feel bleak and abandoned, and accumulate cruft.4 Fortunately we got bought at the top.5

Often as not these large investments go to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for some existing company. There you're not concerned with truth.6 It's no coincidence that Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. Your housemate was hungry. If willfulness and discipline are what get you to your destination, ambition is how you choose it. I felt bad about this, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as the record labels have done.7 They have more than enough technical skill. I'm not so excited about it, because they don't want them. I'm going to explain what we're seeing, and what that will mean for you if you try to guess where your program is slow, and what that will mean for you if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the river.

But kids are so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a total slacker. And so they're the most valuable new ideas take root first among people in their early twenties don't start startups is that they won't take risks. When you want something, you don't take a position and then defend it. This is a dumb plan. I found that the best suppliers won't even sell to you are companies that specialize in selling to you.8 The startup usually consists of just the founders.9 You could probably work twice as many hours as a corporate employee, and if you can figure it out yourself. Suppose another multiple of two, at least, is run by real hackers. When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. All this talk about investing may seem very theoretical. But there is a big problem. So the point of view.10

Notes

Rice and beans are a lot of people mad, essentially by macroexpanding them.

Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The variation in wealth, the number of words: I should do is say you've reformed, and mostly in Perl.

But although for-profit prison companies and prison guard unions both spend a lot better to be some formal measure that turns out it is because other places, like arithmetic drills, instead of working. For example, being offered large bribes by Spain to make software incompatible. By a similar variation in wealth, the idea that investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable. A doctor, P.

You can still see fossils of their origins in their experiences came not with the earlier stage startups, because the processing power you can use to make that leap. There may even be conscious of this: You may be common in, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-stupid comments have yet to be staying at a middle ground. Which is fundraising.

A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably 99% cooperation. My point is due to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it. Japanese cities are ugly too, of course some uncertainty about how closely the remarks attributed to Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

Two customer support people tied for first prize with entries I still shiver to recall. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. The kind of organization for that reason. If he's bad at it, so I called to check and in a large chunk of time on applets, but this would work better, for example, it's this internal process at work.

Morgan's hired hands. And that is largely true, it is more important to users than where you have to sweat any one outcome. And that will be maximally profitable when each employee is paid in proportion to the option pool.

Robert in particular made for other people thought of them agreed with everything in it, and you start to have them soon. Please do not take the line? They're so selective that they take away with the founders' advantage if it means a big deal. Economically, the startup isn't getting market price if they don't have the same phenomenon you see people breaking off to both.

SFP applicants: please don't assume that P spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns.

The meaning of a startup. From a company is always raising money. That's why Kazaa took the place of Napster. If you want to be obscure; they may prefer to work like they will fund you, what that means is we can't figure out what the earnings turn out to be a niche within a niche within a few unPC ideas, just as on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end investor meetings too closely, you'll have to do that.

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pedrocamposhtc-blog · 5 years

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10 Amazing Productivity Tips For The Ambitious Sales Professional (To Implement Today)

If you`re struggling with staying productive…

Something is wrong! With your level of awareness.

There`s a lot of advice out there when it comes to productivity tips, some great information. In fact, I encourage you to check other articles after reading this one.

But most people forget to talk about self-awareness and how it can impact your productivity.

You see, if you`re not operating like a top performer, there`s probably something you`re not aware of. When the things we do become a habit, if we`re doing the wrong things over and over again, they become a bad habit, would you agree?

Winning is a habit, so is losing!

If it doesn`t move you closer to your goals, eliminate it from your day. Click To Tweet

Staying productive is a habit, so is never finishing things on time. Average is an epidemic in this world and very few people are considered top performers.

Listen, it`s not because you`re lazy or dumb, sometimes you might just be missing a few extra strategies that you`ll take your sales career to the next level.

Being more productive is a matter of increasing your awareness and changing bad habits.

That`s it!

In order to help you become a more effective sales professional, I`m gonna give you my best productivity tips so you start crushing your numbers and outperform everybody else.

Get ready…

Productivity Tip #1 – Script Your Day

Have you ever seen a great movie that didn`t have a script?

Of course not, it creates predictability, much like a sales call script. No different with your days.

So, what do I mean by scripting?

It simply means taking your calendar, it could be on your smartphone and list out all the tasks you need to get done for the day, ideally with reminders at a certain time.

Take it a step further…

If there`s some conference you want to attend at a specific date, put it in the calendar as soon as you make the commitment to go there.

Your script will help you stay on track and give you more clarity. Then, you´re not wondering around asking yourself “what do I need to do?” , “where do I need to go?”

It`s already on your phone or computer and you know what to expect.

Dude, I`m so freaking productive that I create time, it`s my little slave. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #2 – Create Checklists

How many times have done something that required a process but you forgot half of what you needed to do?

It happens a lot when you don`t have checklists. They are lifesavers, sometimes deal savers!

They prevent you from making silly mistakes when tackling a specific task and give you the peace of mind you need to carry on with your day confidently.

You don`t want to be in the bathroom and thinking about what you may have forgotten in the last email you sent out to a prospect.

Some tasks can become too daunting without a guideline, a roadmap you can follow every time.

Create a checklist for everything… seriously! Writing follows up emails, doing closing calls, presentations, pre-call research, CRM, proposals, referrals or online meetings.

The last thing you want is to try to remember what the prospect said two days ago. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #3 – Close Door Policy

Open door policy?

Dumb!

Don`t do that to yourself. If work at home or in an office where you have the opportunity, do yourself a favor and close the door, man. Open doors only invite distractions…. and also the curious, time vampires to be precise.

Open doors send a signal to other people that goes like this… “please, interrupt me anytime!”

Most people will respect your space and see the door closed as a sign that you don`t want to be interrupted. Great, now you can focus on doing what`s important.

You can even put a little note on the door…

“I`m busy crushing my sales targets, please don`t bother me!”

If you can`t close the door for some reason or don`t have any door, headphones or headsets are your next best bet.

Distraction is the only luxury of the poor. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #4 – The Big Three

At the beginning of your day, jot down on a piece of paper, on the computer or the phone, whatever works for you, the three most important things you need to accomplish that day.

These tasks should be the ones that move the needle forward, income-producing activities.

They could be doing a presentation, preparing a contract, prospecting new accounts or contacting existing customers to renew contracts.

And no, putting stuff into the CRM doesn`t count.

Checking emails doesn`t count, either!

“But what do I do after I`m done with those big three?” – you may ask. Great question, it`s simple, you put your focus on the other less important activities, the non-money making…

Organizing your desk, preparing your next presentation or think about what you could improve.

By prioritizing the tasks, your mind will focus on what you must do to reach your goals first, not what is convenient to do.

Sometimes you might just be missing a few extra strategies that you`ll take your sales career to the next level. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #5 – Start With The Hard Stuff

Salespeople love to start the day like this…

Checking emails and logging things into the CRM. It`s a productivity killer, you know that! Then why do you keep doing the same sh*t?

Because it`s convenient!

All the sudden you find yourself in the middle of the day, without accomplishing anything relevant because all you did was the easy stuff.

There`s no better confidence booster than getting your day rolling with the most difficult tasks.

It might be different from person to person.

For you, it could be prospecting, doing closing calls or presenting your product or service to a group of potential buyers.

I can`t tell you how much motivation this simple trick gives you. It`s crazy!

When you get the hard things out of the way first thing in the morning, you`ll be more be inspired to tackle the rest of the day and whatever comes along will feel a lot easier to get through.

Nothing can stop you!

The human brain is programmed to focus on only one thing at the time, not 16! Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #6 – Log Now Not Later

We both know what happens when you keep your notes in your head…

Exactly!

Confusion, overwhelm and a bunch of lost data.

After every sales contact, do your best to put any relevant notes or information in the CRM, as soon as the meeting or call ends. Most of them these days allow you to pause in between calls to log information.

If you don`t have access to the CRM in the moment, put your notes on paper and transfer them to the software as soon as possible.

The last thing you want is to try to remember what the prospect said two days ago.

I promised you…

If it stays in your head for too long, it will disappear. Your brain has a hard time coming up with creative ideas and solve problems when you keep stuff in there and this is when you start making mistakes. Because you`re trying to remember 26 things that happened one or two weeks ago.

Clearing your mind will do you more good than anything else for your productivity.

At the end of each day or week, get critical about your performance. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #7 – Multitasking Is A Load Of Crap

I`m sure you have never come across an Olympic athlete that was swimming and tweeting at the same time. If you did, something was wrong!

Athletes don`t multitask, they immerse themselves in one thing. Even practicing, they work on one single skill at the time.

I still laugh at the amount of job posting opportunities asking for people who are proficient at multitasking.

Who writes this nonsense, come on… really?

The human brain is programmed to focus on only one thing at the time, not 13!

Now, I`m checking emails, at the same time I`m closing a sale on the phone, drinking coffee, tweeting about how good I am on the phone and… taking notes.

I hope this isn`t you.

No top performers operate that way! They`re immersed in one single activity and I recommend you to do the same if you want to be a top earner, not an average salesperson.

Create time blocks for everything you do and immerse yourself into that one task.

If you want to go beyond average, you must stop paying fair. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #8 – Surround Yourself With Winners

Who`s the top salesperson in your office?

If it`s you, congratulations! If not, make sure you start hanging around with the pros. Go out with them, talk to them on a regular basis, ask a lot of questions and be a sponge.

Choose your environment carefully, it has a tremendous impact on your results and ultimately, the quality of your life. “Oh, but Jenny and I are friends from high school!” Ask yourself… “is she dragging me down or lifting me up?”

Success is not a popularity contest or and it`s about being liked. If the people around you don`t support your dreams, move on.

Get around winners, you can get so many insights from people that are crushing it. In my first sales job, I`d always admire the top guys, and was constantly asking myself “what do they know that I don`t?”

Watching and mirroring the sales pros seems such a simple trick and that`s why most people forget about it.

Average in our society is the predominant state of being. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #9 – Turn Off Notifications

Seriously…

Those notifications you have on your phone, turn them off! The constant beeping and vibrating don`t put money in your pocket.

They are more of a distraction than anything else. How can you focus on the task at hand when you`re addicted to those freaking comments and likes?

Go into your phone and… you already know what you have to do.

Some salespeople are in the middle of prospecting and looking at their Instagram in the intervals between calls. No wonder they miss quotas.

You just can`t focus on anything when you`re checking your phone every 30 seconds.

Social media can get addicting, I know!

But if it`s becoming such a distraction that your results are being affected by it, you`ve got to let go. Distraction is the only luxury of the poor.

I believe in the principle of the slight edge and so should you, if success is a priority in your life. Click To Tweet

Productivity Tip #10 – Analyze Your Day

Time to get honest!

Sometimes we get so caught up in the midst of our busy days that we lose track of how the hours are being spent. You may be surprised to you find out that your days are not as productive as you thought they`d be.

Self-awareness is the key here.

At the end of each day or week, get critical about your performance. On top of scripting your day, you want to make sure you list out all the things you did that day or week.

Ask yourself questions like these:

What activities did I do?

Where did I go?

How many deals did I close?

What was I doing Tuesday at 02:00 pm?

How many hours did I spend on the phone?

If you start seeing a pattern that doesn`t serve you, for example playing Candy Crush in between sales calls, then it`s time to remove that habit from your day-to-day.

“Candy Crush is so fun!”

It might be but if it doesn`t move you closer to your goals, eliminate it from your day. There`s no money to be made playing stupid little games.

Being more productive is a matter of increasing your awareness and changing bad habits. Click To Tweet

Putting It All Together

Use all of these productivity tips and I promise you that your results will be different. Because guess what?

Most of your peers are not doing this. If you think about it, average in our society is the predominant state of being.

If you want to go beyond average, you must stop paying fair. I believe in the principle of the slight edge and so should you, if success is a priority in your life.

Take advantage of every little trick that I`ve shared with you today, think about how you can implement them in your daily battleplan and watch how much you can get done.

Make Time Your Slave

Most salespeople complain… “I don`t have enough time”, “I`m too busy for that!”

Instead of following the herd, start telling yourself…

“Dude, I`m so freaking productive that I create time, it`s my little slave.”

You create time, indeed. As long as you`re committed to your goals, your future, your potential, time is not an obstacle.

People that make success a priority in their lives do not complain about how little time they have, instead, they focus on improving themselves and you too can do the same.

Be great and go crush it!

The post 10 Amazing Productivity Tips For The Ambitious Sales Professional (To Implement Today) appeared first on Pedro Campos.

source https://pedro-campos.com/productivity-tips/

#business #entrepreneurship sales #marketing #blog digitalmarketing #blogger

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