#also questionable

[ya-what--ya-erster]

Mistake, Regret, or Something to that Level

PROOF-READ CREDIT TO: @waiting-makes-me-antsy Thank you!!

Albert/Davey UNREQUITED, prequel to Goodbye Don't Last Forever

kinda angsty, enjoy.

David was lost. Completely and totally lost. How was he supposed to carry on when the center of his world just up and left without a word to him?

He didn't really know how to cope long term, but he knew that a visit to his best friend's house might just help.

Ever since Francis left David (a year ago), David and Albert had become the closest of friends (except for Race and Albert, but Race was off in Australia being an impressive dancer). The two were almost inseparable. Seeing one or the other alone was a rare occurrence which was usually met by some sort of joke about how joint at the hip the two boys were.

So David was on his way to Albert's apartment in January, wearing flannel sweatpants and a sweatshirt with a cute snake drawing on the front (Albert gave it to him). It was cold, and snowy, and he regretted not putting on a coat or a hat or anything, but it wasn't far to Albert's place.

By the time David knocked on the door, he thought he was going to die of the cold, but Albert saw him and immediately pulled him into the apartment and handed him a blanket.

"Dave, are you alright?" Albert asked, taking a seat next to him on the couch.

"No." David leaned sideways onto Albert, burying his face in his shoulder.

"Oh, come here." Albert put an arm around David. "You need to get drunk."

"Yeah I do."

...

Several hours (they think) later, the two are flat-out wasted.

David got honest when he got drunk, and never remembered anything afterwards, and Albert just got crazy (and maybe a little more confident).

"What if she was the only one I was meant to be with?" David asked.

"She wasn't." Albert laughed like it was the silliest thing he'd ever heard.

"But nobody could love me like I thought she did."

"But I love you." Albert's smile spread across his face. "You're my best friend."

"But don't people in love kiss? And boys can't kiss boys."

"I've kissed boys."

"Oh."

The boys fell silent, and then Albert burst into laughter again.

"What's so funny?" David asked (but he was smiling).

"Would you kiss me if I was a girl?"

"I would kiss anything if it were Francis."

"So pretend I'm her, then. It'll make you feel better to kiss someone."

"But-"

Albert cut Davey off with a deep, drunk kiss on the mouth.

And Davey liked it.

Davey wanted more of that feeling.

So he kissed back.

He could do whatever he wanted, he decided. It wasn't like there was anyone to tell him no, except for Albert who had initiated the kiss.

Very quickly, the kiss turned into more. Shirts unbuttoned, hands in hair, and the possibility of several purple marks to appear in the morning.

"Should we keep going?" Albert asked.

Davey blamed it on the fact that he was drunk that he said yes.

...

David woke up not in his bed. Albert's bed, he knew, from the many times he'd slept over.

David immediately felt guilty wash over him. Had he seriously kicked Albert out of his own bet just to fuck some girl that was not even there anymore? He didn’t really know, he couldn’t really remember, but it was fairly obvious in his mind that he had fucked someone. And Albert didn't do well with change in routine, Davey knew that. He was feeling worse and worse about it the more he thought, so he made a move to get up and go apologize.

The headache was not good as he stood up out of the bed and headed into the kitchen area of the apartment.

“Sorry for taking up your bed last night Al.”

“Doesn’t bother me.” Albert smiled. He handed David a glass of water and two ibuprofen pills. “This might help a bit.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“So. Uhm. Happen to know the identity of the girl I slept with in your bed last night or…”

Something flashed across Alberts face. Hurt. But he picked up quickly with a laugh.

“You should be asking who the guy was.”

“The… A guy?”

“Yessir.”

“Okay so uh who was this potential guy that I-“

Albert pressed a quick kiss to the tip of David’s nose, quieting him.

“Hi there.” He said with a little smile.

(Albert was dying inside. He wasn't this forward. He wasn't this confident. He wasn't this person who was flirting shamelessly with his best friend.)

“Oh.”

“Is that… is that okay?”

“Al, I… I didn’t even know- But I don’t even remember it so how am I supposed to know what it felt like? I don’t-“

“I could kiss you again.”

“What?”

“I said I could kiss you again.”

David didn’t respond, so Albert just cupped his face in his hands and kissed him.

Pulling away after a moment, David blinked. “Is that what that’s supposed to feel like? I never- it was never like that with her.”

“Good way or bad way?”

“Good.”

“Well, Dave. It must be really confusing for ya, all this. But… I’d like to help you along the way, if you’ll accept?"

"I don't think... Al, I don't think I can. I don't think I love you like that and I'm sorry-"

"That's alright, Davey. It is what it is."

...

Albert kept a smile on his face for two more hours while Davey hung around in his apartment awkwardly, too tired to walk himself home yet.

Albert, who was majorly stressed out, would have offered to walk him home. But, he didn't want to seem rude, and he didn't want to face the outside world with its flashing lights and loud noises and people bumping into him every five seconds.

As soon as Davey left, though, everything came crashing down.

Albert was stupid. Stupid to have done what he did. Stupid to have hoped that it would work out.

Mostly, though, he was stupid for falling in love with his best friend.

It wasn't fair that Davey was that effortlessly pretty and glamorous and nice and smart and perfect. Albert never even stood a chance.

So who could blame him, really, for crying? He had wrecked his perfectly routine life and possibly his relationship with his best friend.

He called Race in a desperate attempt to feel better, but it didn’t help much because then he just missed Race too. Why couldn’t Race be in the United States? Why did he have to be so far away?

Albert closed his eyes as he sat down on the couch, trying to make the tears go away. Crying made his head hurt.

But, despite that, Albert cried himself to sleep that night.

[fairy-of-divorce]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[kimabutch]

One of my favourite questions for figuring out a character’s motivations is which qualities they most fear being assigned to them. Are they afraid (consciously or unconsciously) of being seen as stupid? Ungrateful? Weak? Incompetent? Lazy? Cowardly? Intimidating? Like they actually care? etc.

It’s such a fun way to explore into who they are, why they do what they do, what they don’t do out of fear, and how they might be affected by the events of the story. And I love when characters have negative motivations—trying to avoid something (in this case, being seen a particular way) as much as they’re trying to achieve a goal.

[bookwyrminspiration]

every time I think about my gender I get confused so I simply stopped thinking about it. it is not my problem

[buddieinmybeddie]

LGBTQ+ folk what was your gender/sexuality pipeline?

[atinystraykid]

“If you have time to be on social media, you also have time for…” “If you have time to watch Netflix, you also have time for…” Yeah, but do I have the energy for it? Do I have the emotional and mental capacity for it? Am I pain-free enough for it? Can I focus on it? Can I do it without leaving my bed? Can I safely do it without risk of (physically or emotionally) injuring myself by pushing past my boundaries?

[nicecrumbart]

Keep thinking about that one scene in secret life

[lazylittledragon]

at the friday panel andrew wincott said raphael and astarion should go on holiday together and i can’t stop thinking about it

[notbecauseofvictories]

I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.

Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.

[kenvamp]

Uhm. Hello hermit nation🫣

[a-cat-in-toffee]

expanding on my tags from this post

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[ciderjacks]

dwarven brew

+

[chloesimaginationthings]

How did Henry let William’s ideas pass in FNAF..