(Author's Note:) I haven't written a fanfiction in like, 10 thousand years. IchBinJayne_BVB on Twitter gave me this idea. To put it in her words, "We all love a bit of caged Jake." …Black Veil Brides fans who are all scary dedicated, please don't shoot me. Just try to be nice. We ALL love a bit of caged Jake, deep down inside us. :D Let's all sit back and enjoy a future onslaught of awkward love triangles and battles to cover nightlives, and of course, Jake getting naked. Thank you and goodbye.

~Livi Luxury

Chapter One: What's Right, What's Wrong, and What He Loves

"Hey baby, where ya going, sweet thing?" Jake started to walk a little faster. Small raindrops started to speckle his arms and the back of his neck. Bloody hell. Footsteps were coming up on his left. He glanced over his shoulder to find the man trying to follow him was right behind him. Jake sucked in a breath, hitched up his backpack, and broke into a slight run. He didn't dare look back, ignoring the man's voice calling him. As he blindly went to jaywalk to safety across a street well out of his way home from work, there was a bright light and a blaring horn. He jumped backwards and narrowly missed getting splattered all over the road by the city bus speeding down the empty street. "Holy Jesus," he breathed, but the last bit of exhale caught in his throat when two hands grabbed his shoulders from behind.

Before Jake knew what was happening, he was against the wall across the sidewalk, held there by a nauseating weasel-faced man in a pinstriped suit. "What's the matter, sexy? Scared to take what I wanna give you?" he hissed in Jake's face. Jake could clearly smell his last expensive cigar lingering on his breath. "Let me go!"

"Quite a show you put on there," his captor drawled, ignoring him. Jake bared his teeth. "You have ten seconds to let me go, or I'm gonna scream at the top of my lungs, and the woman in that apartment building behind you with her window open on the fifteenth floor will hear, and she'll call the police." The expensive-looking man laughed, then made a horribly macabre mock-pouting face. "What's the matter, sweetheart? Don't you wanna go back to my place, have a scotch or two, show me some more of those moves?"

Jake thought quickly. If I can just get this guy to take a step to his left, and turn his head just a little bit to the right… He waited patiently, shuffling his feet nervously. The man started sneering more rotten things about Jake's potential "talent". After a few well-bided moments of time, Jake's captor took the desired motion of emphasis Jake was waiting for. He acted quickly and clocked the creeper in the face. "Eugh!" the man cried as he reeled backwards. Jake took the opportunity and made a break for it, sprinting around half a mile before he dared rest, bent over wheezing.

"I'm gonna be sick," Jake breathed, kneeling on the curb breathlessly. After a minute or two of focusing on regulating his heartbeat, he didn't puke, and got up to keep walking. The raindrops gently hitting him started to become larger. Shit. "Just what I need," he snarled, trudging onward. As he wandered on, the rain got heavier. Less than a block later, Jake was getting drenched and pummeled by fast, large, cold raindrops. "What else could go wrong today…" As if in response to his rhetorical half-question, lightning suddenly slashed the sky apart and thunder crashed overhead. Jake kept walking, biting back his rage. It took a few minutes for him to realize he was crying. Sighing in frustration, he agitatedly rubbed his eyes and walked faster. "Get ahold of yourself, Jake, you're being a wuss…" His own words didn't encourage him; rather, they made him start sobbing.

When Jake finally reached his apartment building, he dashed inside, covering himself with his backpack and running to the elevator before anyone saw him in his work clothes.

Jake looked in the mirror in disgust. His exotic "stage makeup"—honestly more of a mask to hide his day identity—was streaming down his soaked face. His hair had fallen down around his eyeliner-stained pathetic face, giving him all the physical appeal of a drowned whore. The skimpy studded leather outfit he was wearing was still intact and very flattering, however. He stripped off his clothes, sighing with relief as the leather straps and metal chains no longer constricted him. "I'm disgusting," he said softly to himself as he stared at the skanky getup discarded on his bathroom floor, "but…y'know what? I like it." Jake turned back to the mirror and smiled as he put on a T-shirt and boxers. A brief washing of his face and a tousle of his hair, and Jake was once again Jake Pitts of Black Veil Brides, and not Tiger Cage, his nighttime alter-ego who worked the cages at Tomcat, a strip club for naughty ladies and for naughty boy-loving boys willing to pay a little extra.

"What do you want?" CC's voice muttered sleepily on the other line.

Jake coughed slightly. "CC, can I talk to you?"

There was a pause. "…Jake, it's 5:30am. Go to sleep."

Jake briefly clutched his forehead. "CC… Please."

Another pause went by. "…Fine. Five minutes."

"Okay… CC, have you ever… Do you ever wonder if what you love might not be what's right?"

"Nah, man. Everything you love is right to you, ya dig?"

"…No, CC, I… I actually don't."

"Look, bro. Do what you like. That's, like, the meaning of life, or…something."

"Or something?"

Pause. "Kay, look… It's either the meaning of life, or something a midget rabbi told me in a prophetic dream about me breaking into your house and feeding your hypothetical cat pistachios."

Jake had nothing to say to this.

"…WAIT. Oh my god, Jake. What if it was BOTH? …I gotta find your cat, dude! That could've been Jesus, y'know?"

"No… No I don't."

" THE PISTACHIOS WERE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!"

"…Are you on drugs?"

"Haha, nah man, I'm just crazy."

"CC?"

"Jake?"

"…Go back to sleep."

Jake hung up, frustrated. Why had he called CC of all people for advice? CC wasn't helpful… He was just confusing. Or is that confusion reality, and I was just un-confusing myself by talking to CC? What if CC is, like…the prophet of reality? Heck, what if CC is the messiah of reality? If CC is the messiah of reality, saving me…does that mean I am a sinner convicted with the unholy act of confusion? Forgive me, CC, for I have confused myself… Wait. WHAT?

He stopped thinking and massaged his temple. Jake had just given himself a pounding headache. "Ugh, CC, you're rubbing off on me…" he groaned. "…I should really go to bed before I kill myself."

Two Advil and a glass of water later, Jake finally retired to his bed. When the lights were out, however, all thoughts of sleep escaped him. He stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours, head still throbbing, ceiling spinning as he stared dizzily at the light fixture, CC's words swimming through his liquefied mind hauntingly.

Everything you love is right to you, ya dig?

Jake really hoped it was…