mitchelll

I really enjoyed this story and hope to read more installments of Coop and Wiley in the future.

I swear the next chapter is coming soon and will answer your questions. And for the record, everything is moving toward soap opera levels of melodrama, and it's intentional. I always did mean for this story to feel like one of the more fun made for Lifetime movies.

while Viktor has not made an appearance on the scene yet, he does konw. Paul called him, and Viktor had Ramon use the GPS they had (without informing Shane or Jason) to determine the location of Jason's car and phone. And as far as Denise and Thomas....Denise is not thinking straight and Thomas's knowledge of Viktor and his influence on Shane is not extensive. On the other hand....rememeber, Viktor is Shane's protector, not Jason's.

All shall be revealed

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had found them all, but I haven't. And yes, as we near the end, things are going to get interesting.

Mr. Brightside Chapter 22 A sneaky shaft of sunlight managed to creep through a slit in the blinds and strike Jason directly in the eyes. Grunting, he gradually woke; as he did so, he became aware of a numbness in his arm. Finally conscious, Jason realized his arm was asleep because of the weight of Shane’s head. Jason smiled through his increasing discomfort as he slowly and carefully slid the now tingling limb from underneath his companion. Shane shifted and made a small sound of

Mr. Brightside Chapter 21 Jason and Shane stayed on the sofa for a while, Shane leaning into Jason. Finally, Jason’s back began aching in discomfort, and the arm Shane was lying on fell asleep. But still, he was prepared to suffer any physical pain necessary in order to prolong this contact with Shane. But an involuntary groan from Jason as he discreetly tried to move into a more comfortable position alerted Shane. “I’m sorry,” Shane said, sitting up and pulling away. “Your poor arm must

I knew nothing about Australian football other than the players all seem to be extremely good looking (I very much enjoyed watching the one match I viewed), but I have thoroughly enjoyed this series. Thanks so much for sharing these stories.

I was inspired by Rebecca to have Nikolai not be the Prince Charming Jason assumed. I struggled with "telling" not "showing" Shane's story, but I didn't want to stop the story's momentum (there's only a few chapters left) with a lengthy multi-chapter flashback. Glad I was still able to make the angst work okay second hand.

Mr. Brightside Chapter 20 The doorbell sounded, startling both Jason and Shane. The two exchanged puzzled looks. “Are you expecting anybody?” Jason asked, getting up and heading to the living room. “No.” “Just a minute,” Jason called out as he hurried to the front door. He paused to check the security screen; their visitor was Detective Venturi. “Hi,” Jason said uncertainly as he opened the door. “Hello,” said the detective. “Can I come in, I’d like to talk to Mr. O’Neil if that’s ok

Addiction can lead people to do horrible things. There will be more revelations in Chapter 20.

Note: Descriptions of sexual assault occur in this chapter. Mr. Brightside Chapter 19 Jason looked at the thumb drive in confusion. He had definitely wondered about its contents and why Shane had hidden it so carefully, but he couldn’t image what could be on it that Shane thought would make Jason think less of him. Jason, holding the drive like it was a bomb that could explode with the slightest jostle, went to his bedroom and booted up his laptop. He quickly determined that the device

Go Your Own Way Chapter 5 The morning after Kelly and my mutual breakdowns, I was …….you know what I’ll admit it. I was afraid. I was afraid about what my feelings about the physical attraction meant, I was afraid what would happen to a friendship that meant so much to me. I was afraid of what would happen to my emotions after letting what I had kept bottled in so long, and I was afraid of betrayal from the people that I had let in. After all, two of the handful people I had trusted befor

Joseph's story is based on two things. Years ago, I read a story on another site with a major part of the plot line involving a guy B, whose boyfriend, N, slept with B's sister who got pregnant. Eventually everybody pressures B to forgive and forget and by the end it's one big happy Jerry Springer family. I remember thinking, wow, I don't think I could do that. At the same time, I read a letter to an advice columnist about a woman suffering from infertility whose husband had left her for her own sister; that couple was still together, and the parents, for the sake of the grandchildren, were in close contact. The letter writer moved away and found contact too painful, though she did see her parents. Now, the mother was pressuring the letter writer to start coming back home for holidays. I thought, "what and awful situation." These two stories stuck with me and eventually became this one. And for Kelly and Del. I think people can be clueless, and as it would never occur to Kelly to cheat, he never thought about Del. And, for practical purposes, Del as a professor with an irregual schedule would have lots of opportunity.

I really did envision Joseph as sexually fluid, but repressed and clueless more than straight. I know I managed to convince myself I was just confused until I finally kissed a guy, and realized...."oh, that's what it's supposed to be like."

Mr. Brightside is kind of dark, so I needed to work on something lighter. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Chapter 19 will deal with Shane's life from leaving school to meeting Jason again.

Thanks so much for reading.

I promise you that I will reveal the contents of the thumb drive in Chapter 19

thanks. the end is near, so the revelations will start coming swiftly.

If you haven't spent a lot of time in the rural South, it's hard to understand how much a certain level of evangelicalism permeates everything. Despite legal rulings etc., at every public school event I attended from elementary school to college, there where Christian prayers and sometimes the equivalent of sermons disquised as graduation speechs, etc. So, it's so common, most people just go with the flow; even if you yourself don't really believe, it's just easier to go to Church, zone out during the service, and head out to lunch afterwards. That's the thing with Jason. After graduating high school and leaving he's mother's house, he stopped go to church every Sunday, but didn't mind going during vacations home or on weekend spent with Denise. And, as he was going through the motions, he really just blocked out most of the actual sermons. His reaction to religion and finding out how worked up about the gay thing Denise gets is kind of like what I experienced living in North LA. I mean, I went to church faily often because it's just kind of expected, but I never really bought in to it; I honestly thought most people felt like that. Then, something would come up, and a friend or co-worker who I thought of as only mildly religious would start spouting this hardcore super right wing fire and brimstone stuff, and I'd be seriously taken back. So yes, Jason has just basically ignored Denise's belief system since, until this all happened, it never inconvienced him. And as far as the mother....there's a couple of things. One, I just needed some dramatic spice. Two, she's based (somewhat) on my own mother, who was a control freak. As long as I was a "good" boy doing everything she wanted and expected and conforming to our small town society, she was as sweet and gentle as could be. But anytime, I stood up to her or made choices that went against the norm, she basically lost her shit. Because she lived and died by what other people thought. So if I wore a wrinkled shirt to school, someone might think she was a sloppy and careless mother, so she would take my wearing the wrinkled shirt as a deliberate personal insult, and the screaming would begin. So in Barbara's case, it's not so much that she has moral issues with Jason's being gay, it's that she feels like others in her small conserative town sill think she's somehow caused this by being a bad mother. His actions are upsetting her perfect family now and her future plans of being a doting grandmother. The rush for Barbara to the preacher is two fold. One, in these rural communitites, the preacher is often the goto person when you have problems. Two, while it's not conscious, she's selected him because she knows he will offer an echo chamber telling her what she wants to hear. She would never talk to her friends about this because she would never want them to know Jason is gay.

I"m glad you like the chapter and the conversation. Since I posted this story as I wrote, I ended up with some excess as I tried to wrestle the plot into submission, but I hate stories were the resolutions and revelations drag on pointlessly.

Shane's past, including his relationships with Nikolai and Viktor will be explored in the next couple of chapters. The story is starting to wrap up, and I swear the answers are coming.

Mr. Brightside Chapter 18 The next few days were spent getting settled down into living together. Since Jason’s job still had several weeks until it began and Shane’s doctors’ appointments were irregularly scheduled, they didn’t have a certain routine. Some things were set. Jason, more of a morning person than Shane, got up first to get the coffee on and breakfast started. Then he would help Shane get up and dress in a tee and apair of track pants that snapped up the sides or shorts, alwa

Go Your Own Way Chapter 4 My parents’ visit went well. We ate at great restaurants, rode the streetcar up St. Charles, visited the WWII museum, had beignets at Cafe DuMonde, the works. We hadn’t seen much of Kelly; between work and the Decadence festivities, he was gone most of the weekend, but he did come over for dinner on Labor Day. My mother had insisted on cooking for her baby boy. Dad and Kelly had recognized fellow film buffs in each other and were in an intense debate about the