#can only mention this to one flatmate too bc of the other two one is also not well off and super nice and keeps everything clean

[miamicommune]

always going 2 be doomed to being the financially worst off and lowest energy person in a flat whilst also having to buy everything for that flat and do most of the cleaning

[sherifftillman]

busy streets and busy lives • ralph penbury x reader

A strange day at work gets even stranger when you meet a man who claims he's from 1926. With no certainty as to when he can get back, you decide to take him in until that time arrives.

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Tags: Timewasters (series), modern!au, slow burn, mutual pining, idiots in love™, fluff, some angst, swearing and mentions of adult themes throughout, eventual adult content, alcohol content, penbury is a fanon surname

Word count: 9.3k

A/N: This thing's getting out of control at this rate! Not only do the chapters keep getting longer, I keep making more and more complicated assets to tell the story, too. I hope you like it!

Also, to all my patient angst queens (gn) out there - not sure how long it's gonna take me to write bc I'm sure it's going to RUIN ME but. Next chapter. Look out for it. :)

Also x2, big love to @steddiesandwich @joemazzmatazz and @heroeddiemunson especially for all the love and contributions they've given to this series. There's some special cameos from them especially somewhere in this chapter!

Another week goes by, another chance to check Ralph's social media numbers. Ever since he remained a trending topic on Twitter following his face reveal - along with the phrase “oh no he’s hot”, which your friends found hilarious but you found yourself feeling… Uncomfortable over. Every now and then you look up his name on social media sites, grateful that the name relatively died out to the point where he’s one of the most popular Ralphs these days, though it leaves you with a strange feeling in your stomach every time. 

There’s just something about the way people tend to objectify him - he’s your friend, and you know he’s so much more than the curls in his hair and the chain on his neck and his chocolate button eyes - a phrase becoming very common amongst his admirers. Arguably the worst part about that is that, either just because you’ve been seeing talk of nothing but those details, or maybe they’re all things you’d already appreciated about Ralph, but you find yourself more and more aware of them with every day that you live with him. And with still no word from Homeless Pete about whether the time machine is awake again. 

You even start to visit the building that Ralph had pointed out on that day 6 weeks ago for yourself, just to see if it really is taking that long to reboot, but it seems to be an ordinary lift every time you go to look at it. You’d be lying if you said you were anything other than relieved whenever the lift would work completely normally, even when you tried to replicate how Ralph had described Pete getting the two of them over here. 

If you were a stranger, looking in on Ralph every now and then, you’d have no reason to believe he wasn’t just your flatmate. He’s been getting more confident about his own role in the modern world, even going so far as to hold brunches for his girl gang, which you’d appreciate a lot more if he ever told you in advance when they’d happen. Though you can usually predict at this point that, if you’re having a rough day at work, you can guarantee you’ll be returning to a flat full of people that you can’t decompress around. 

Not that you didn’t like Ralph’s friends, of course you did - but you’ve been letting Ralph have this group to himself, so as not to make him fully co-dependent on you. You hope that, if anything, him having the confidence to keep up so many friends himself will translate once he’s back home and he can hopefully confront his sister. You know it’s a sore subject, and so you’ll never ask - and it’s not got anything to do with you, anyway - but you wonder whether he’ll seek Lauren out there as well. Whether the New Ralph will try to win her back, or realise that he deserves more than someone who even you know wouldn’t be compatible with him. But again, that’s none of your business. 

Today’s another day off, and you and Ralph are sat in your living space. With Ralph growing tentatively more aware of what social media is actually for, he’s accumulated many questions about it that you’d told him you’d have to dedicate a whole day to answering, and that day has finally arrived. 

“Okay, first things first,” Ralph starts, crossing his legs on the sofa cushion beneath him and opening a book he had bought a couple of weeks back. “Who is mister Stanley Loona and why do people insist on telling me his name all the time?” 

You promised yourself you wouldn’t laugh in his face, that just because internet lingo is second nature to you doesn’t mean that Ralph is silly for not understanding. But Mr Stanley Loona immediately cracked you. Once you calm down, you apologise profusely. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I really didn’t want to do that! But, stan in this sense isn’t a name, it’s a verb. To stan something is to be a really, really big fan of it. Loona spelled the way you see it, that’s a Korean pop group.” 

“That explains all the dancing ladies that accompany that name, then,” Ralph mutters under his breath as he scrawls on his notepad some more. You bite your knuckle so as not to laugh again. “So, if I were to express my gratitude to you, would I say that I stan you?”

You feel your face get warm. “Well - not exactly, stanning is more of a parasocial thing, between fan and celebrity, or character, or franchise. For example, you might call yourself an Audrey 2 stan,” you smirk as you jerk your head over to the TV screen, where Ralph has requested Little Shop of Horrors for the fifth time since he’s been here. 

He looks at the TV in awe for a moment, “That puppeteering work is just spectacular, isn’t it?!” You’d felt your emotions rise and then drop fleetingly. He’d once referred to something as being “wizard”, and you’d been dying to hear it again, but clearly it must have been a phrase reserved for the most truly special of things. He clears his throat as he reads down his list. “Anyway, next question. Why does everyone feel the need to tell me about their lack of headgear when I ask for clarification on something?” 

You rack your brain for a moment before it clicks, “Do you mean that they say the words “no cap”?” Ralph nods. “That’s just another way of saying “no lie”, it means they want you to know they’re telling the truth. Remember, we talked about fact checking the things you read for the first time before you believe them?” 

Ralph frowns, “Listen here, it would not be entirely uncommon for a Penbury to be loosely related to royalty, we’ve always had ties with high society for generations -” 

“Something tells me that maybe you’re probably not closely related enough to a Nigerian prince that they’d be genuinely emailing you to offer you a share in their fortune,” you reach out to pat his knee before smirking. “And the less said about your potential investment in enhancement pills, the better.” 

“Moving on,” Ralph quickly continues with deliberation, his ears growing pink again. “So, when you posted that photo of me, the one where I had been wearing a red scarf. It seemed to make a lot of people sad,” he frowns. “And they kept telling me I was in an era that I didn’t recognise, the one of Jake Geel- Guy- G-” He sighs in frustration as he flips his book around to show you the name he’s copied down perfectly, but you’ve already figured it out, and texted both Anna and Grace to let them know that the time has come to show Ralph the full video of All Too Well. 

Neither of them respond to your text, but they’re both at the flat within ten minutes, thankfully interrupting the second after Ralph deadpan asks you for the definition of the word “bussy”. 

The girls are a little taken aback at the sight of Ralph, which worries him, but they answer his concerned expression with, “Oh, sorry, there’s nothing wrong! Just so used to seeing you always looking smartly dressed. Strange seeing you in pyjamas.” 

Ralph frowns, “Well, yes, you must always look smart, even in your resting hours, that’s why I got these matching pyjama sets! They don’t quite seem to be what they used to be, but I’ve been getting rather used to sleeping in shirts without buttons!” 

“I’m not sure how Pokémon PJs could be considered “smart”, but you do you, bud,” Anna ruffles his hair, which he sits upright to lean into happily. Between that and his co-opting of Grace’s love of pet names, he’s become very comfortable amongst your friends’ presence. Even if you do have to find ways to make sure they don’t see you react every time Ralph calls anyone “darling”. 

“Poke them on? What am I supposed to poke?” Ralph asks, pressing the graphic of the yellow creature on his shirt. 

Anna smiles, “No, Ralph, those are Pokémon. That’s Pikachu.” 

“God bless you,” Ralph looks Anna in the eye immediately, straight faced as anything, before looking around for a box of tissues. 

“Oh my god,” you groan under your breath, hanging your head as your friends laugh. “You know, the Pokémon ones aren’t even his worst set.” 

“I got some that have a man named Rick on them who became a pickle, no less!” Ralph explains excitedly, his nose wrinkling as his head bobs back and forth. “The shop assistant assured me that it was quite hilarious when it happened.” 

“This isn’t even the worst thing he’s said this morning,” you look at the girls in despair. “I’ll never let Connor take him shopping alone again.” They promise not to, either, and you gesture for them to join you around the TV. Before you can reposition yourself to allow for them to sit between you and Ralph, Anna has sat herself on the other side of Ralph to you, and Grace is on the floor. 

Ralph’s brow furrows. “Grace, please, allow me to sit in your place and you up here, the floor is no place for a lady to be sitting -” 

Grace interrupts, in her classic way, “Women can do anything, Ralph!” 

He frowns, “I hardly think that sitting on the floor is something that anyone should aspire to, regardless of gender, but I suppose if you must.” Grace and Anna exchange similar expressions that you can’t quite get a read on as you set up the video to play. 

Ralph’s first thought as it starts is, “Well, that actress certainly looks far too young to be playing the part of this man’s partner believably!” 

“Keep watching,” Anna hushes, though it’s only Ralph that’s looking at the screen; the three of you anxiously await his reactions to the whole video. He pulls faces of disgust at every loved-up scene, and positively scowls when Dylan O’Brien drops Sadie Sink’s hand. 

“Now, why would she possibly return to him after that godawful apology?!” he exclaims. “He was clearly just telling her what she wanted to hear, there was no weight behind that at all!” 

“We were all young and stupid once, Ralphie babes,” Grace shakes her head. 

“But surely these men would want something far more enriching with someone their own -” Ralph falters as he remembers how he and his twin had found their father on the day he had passed away. He had always found it strange that they’d found him lying naked on top of a far younger woman, and his mother’s rushed explanation of them both performing a specific style of Chinese acrobatics never quite seemed to ring true. He shrinks down in the seat as he watches, quietly seething. 

He does seem to perk up ever so slightly when he sees the protagonist celebrating her birthday surrounded by her own friends. “I’m glad she saw what an awful man he was and left him,” he muses. 

“Oh no, he broke up with her,” you explain, and Ralph’s expression once again shifts to that of total horror. 

“What?!” he exclaims. “And she was just turning 21?! What an awful, awful man.” 

“Yeah, when it actually happened to the real couple, his PR team came out and said it was all because the two of them were in the limelight so much.” 

“Ridiculous,” Ralph spits, scowling as he folds his arms. 

“Yeah, so that’s why now she’s getting her side of the story out there.” 

“Good for her! As she should,” Ralph nods, earning himself another head pat from Anna. He gasps loudly, “Wait!” and rushes to the bedroom, soon emerging with the red scarf that prompted this whole situation, though he holds it as though it’s diseased. “Do you think she would like this one? Could we send it to her as a present?” 

A chorus of aww s comes from your friends as you shake your head, “It’s fine, mate, and you don’t even have to throw it away, really.” 

He looks at it, and then pulls a face. “No, I can’t. Red has never especially been my colour, anyway.” 

The girls continue teaching Ralph about Taylor Swift’s relationship history as you inform the boys enquiring in the group chat as to where everyone is. They’re talking about how she’s always written her own songs when Anna asks, “Do you play any instruments, Ralph?” 

His eyes light up, “Oh, yes! I must say, leaving home… The way that I did, I do miss my ukulele.” Your eyes dart quickly to see if the girls react to Ralph talking about leaving home, but thankfully that’s not the part that they focus on. 

They excitedly ask him about his craft as you text the one friend you know can help you give Ralph a little bit of his old life back: 

You also tell Scott that Connor is coming over, and he lets you know that he may as well complete the group. 

Connor does, however, groan when he and Scott walk through the door, “We did not come all this way to listen to Taylor Swift the whole time.” 

Ralph frowns at his new favourite artist being disrespected, but you pat his shoulder comfortingly. “Why don’t you play us a song?” Everyone else nods excitedly as Connor hands him the instrument, but Ralph looks unsure as he starts strumming.  

“Well, I don’t really know any actual songs, I just know the chords and then I write my own,” Ralph admits, his ears getting pink. 

Scott looks at him and gasps excitedly. “I beg, play one of your songs for us!” 

“Oh, codswallop, you don’t want to hear any of that!” You could fry something on the poor man’s ears, they were that red. 

Instead, in a bid to satiate everyone, you tell your Echo to play Queen, but it doesn’t recognise your voice, as you’d forgotten until this moment. Sighing in half-hearted frustration, you ask Ralph, “Can you ask it to just play Queen , please?” 

Ralph shuffles in his seat, shimmies his shoulders and grins proudly as he looks around all of your friends. “I’m the machine’s best friend, you know, it only wants to listen to me!” 

“He set it up to be locked on his voice?” Connor asks, amused. 

“And figured out he could use it to buy things,” you smile sarcastically, flicking your eyes over to a new pair of shoes sitting just by the door. 

“So it’s not you that’s suddenly into tap dancing, then? Shame,” Scott teases as you flip him off. 

“He did also order me those as an apology,” you gesture at the arrangement of a variety of flowers that sits on your coffee table. “Though off my account, so really it was a gift to and from myself.” 

“Do you all mind, please?” Ralph asks shortly, and you all fall silent. “Thank you.” He clears his throat. “Alexa, darling, be a gem and play some Queen music for my friends, won’t you, please?” 

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

He frowns, “My speech was quite clear, was it not?!” 

You squeeze your eyes shut as you pinch the bridge of your nose, to everyone else’s quiet titters. “Three words, mate. That’s all you need to say.” 

Ralph’s eyes widen with fear as he shakes his head. “That thing already knows how to do too much, once it gains full sentience, I want it to see me as an ally!” 

“Then just add a single please at the end,” you explain, resigned, which he does to his own chagrin. 

While Ralph doesn’t know any of the songs, obviously, he does seem to be enjoying listening out for how chord progressions go and trying to play along with them. He seems at peace with the instrument. It’s very sweet to watch. 

Connor pulls you out of your trance by loudly exclaiming from behind you, “Speaking of good old fashioned lover boys!” You cringe at your friend’s segue, terrified at what that could insinuate. “Hey Ralphie, have you managed to pull yet?" 

He looks at you, confused, and mouths, Pull?

You roll your eyes and shake your head before addressing your friend again. "Ralph's had enough to learn just being here, and besides, I am not laying out here while he goes at it with some stranger in my bed, thank you!" You can't even think about Ralph kissing anyone else, let alone… No. Absolutely not. 

When you look back over at Ralph, his ears resemble a pair of Polish flags. “Gadzooks, certainly not! I couldn’t - I would never - not even - that would take months of courting!” 

Your warning stares at your friends to not laugh at the word gadzooks doesn’t last through the mention of courting. “It’s… A bit different around here these days, Ralph. You know those things on your phone, the apps?” He nods. “And how there’s apps for everything?” Another nod. “Well, there are apps that help you connect with potential… Suitors,” even you have to bite your lip as you try to translate the likes of Tinder into Ralphspeak. “You make a profile with photos and a description of yourself, and you look at other peoples profiles to see if you like them. If you both like each other, you can talk to each other and arrange to see each other from there.” 

Ralph looks entirely perplexed, but he still hands his phone over to an excited Scott. “Right, do we use a photo from his Insta that’s already doing numbers? That way we know what’s gonna be the best received.” 

Grace shakes her head, “Nah, anyone who recognises him will just think it’s a catfish.” 

Ralph leans close to you to ask quietly, “Why would they -” 

“They’re not gonna think you’re a fish, Ralph,” you groan back in the same volume. “A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone else on the internet. So, what photo do we use?” You hope they don’t ask to look through your camera roll. You’re forever taking candids as potential shots for Ralph’s social media, but the ratio of photos you take versus ones you feel are good enough to post may give your friends ideas about just why you take so many photos of him. And you don’t need that to add even more complications to what is already the most bizarre two months of your life. 

“Definitely a brand new one, right off the bat,” Grace nods. 

“Could we not use one that already exists that nobody’s seen? Anyone got any of those?” Connor asks. You quickly shake your head, keeping your phone out of sight. He frowns, “All I’ve got is group photos.” 

“Oh, never have a group photo as your first one,” Anna shakes her head. “Why don’t we just let Ralph choose how to have his first photo, without our judgement? It’s his profile, after all.” 

Despite their complaints, the others agree to let Ralph decide what photo he should take, though you do suggest that perhaps he change out of his Pokémon pyjamas first. Your friends are quick to hurry him, reminding him that he only really needs to change his top half. 

The sight that befalls you within the next twenty minutes is arguably one of your most favourite Ralph moments. There he stands, against the back wall in your flat, wearing a smart polo shirt with bottoms that are adorned with Bulbasaurs, Squirtles and Charmanders; and after having plucked out a rose from the arrangement of flowers that he’d ordered for you and inspecting it for a while, Ralph had decided that the most charming way to pose with it would be to put it between his lips. You and your friends all look to each other to silently react without Ralph catching on, and everyone seems to silently agree that the best way to do so is to stare at Anna in a way that lets her know she’s entirely responsible for this, which she takes from everyone quite happily. It puts you at ease that all your friends are just accepting him as merely being a bit quirky, rather than anything suspicious. 

Scott takes the official photos, and you’re happily documenting the behind the scenes for it all to look back on someday. Or later that night. Who’s to say? After Scott deems that the perfect shot has been taken, you all crowd around to decide what else to include. Connor comes up with the idea of creating a slideshow presentation in which you all contribute to help “sell” Ralph. He agrees to it quite happily, putting faith in everyone else’s knowledge of the modern dating world over his own lack thereof. 

After much deliberation, and some creative brainstorming amongst the five of you, you create the perfect Tinder profile for him: 

Once it’s all uploaded, Connor and Anna teach Ralph how to use the app, showing him how to read bios, look through others’ photos and ultimately swipe either way on them. Ralph still finds it all unusual to judge people so superficially, but Grace assures him from a distance that it’ll come with time. 

While the idea of Ralph having a Tinder account did seem funny to you at the time, something doesn’t sit right in the bottom of your stomach. The idea of Ralph dating? Hilarious. The reality of it? Of him finding someone he’s attracted to, of him falling in love with someone els- someone, of him leaving you and the flat to start a life with them? How would you explain Ralph’s situation to them? What if they wanted to get married, have a family? The thought of Ralph becoming someone else’s husband just doesn’t compute. Maybe this was a bad idea after all, maybe once everyone’s gone home you can scare him away from it. But then, who are you to deny Ralph a little fun while he’s here? Surely, dating around might be a good experience for him, especially around the new friends he’s made. It’d be a good confidence booster for when he returns to his own time. It might even teach him not to fall as fast and hard for people as he did for Lauren. Or to be the kind of person that wins her back. Whatever he wants. The pros of him dating massively outweigh the cons, but there’s still something in your heart of hearts warning you against it. 

At the end of the day, you tell yourself, Ralph is a grown man. Only he can decide if he is ready to date someone. It’s your job, as his friend, to support him even with all his… Extra stuff. 

The gang suggests going out for a late lunch, but as you prove by gesturing to your own questionably mismatched outfit, you’d originally hoped you could take today as a laundry day. It's too late to start now, though; with the sheer amount you've got to get through, it's a full-day devotion, and now that you're all ramped up from the day's events, there's no possible way you could focus on something as mundane as washing your clothes. Instead, you all order in and pass time with some games while Ralph happily strums away in the background. 

You occasionally pick up on him singing lyrics such as, “It’s easy to see yourself / through a negative lens / but it’s certainly harder / when surrounded by friends” and feel yourself welling up. As if the fact that he had changed into your favourite sweater of his, the blue mohair one that Connor had written that extra-cheesy joke about in Ralph’s profile, wasn’t enough to make your heart soar. He looks the very epitome of comfort right now. 

Then Ralph gets a notification. He’s got a match! He’s thrilled, bragging about how the app found his ideal match immediately, when Connor had been talking about being on it for several years by now. The rest of the group explain that Tinder is not a matchmaking service in the sense that he thinks, and that it simply means someone he’s swiped right on has done the same to him. Connor and Scott help him communicate in a succinct, non-Ralph way that allows him to quickly arrange a date for tomorrow. That knot in the depths of your stomach wrenches tighter, but you ignore it, for the sake of Ralph’s excitement. 

Connor encourages him to keep swiping still, in case he gets any more matches, and that way he can arrange even more dates! It takes Ralph a while to accustom to the modern world of dating, rather than just seeking out one person and “courting” them, as he would say, but he gets excited at the prospect of going out on dates. He doesn’t mention anything about any more matches, but he does lock himself in the bathroom for some time. You know that usually means he’s talking to his girl gang about important things; ever since that first night out, Ralph’s convinced himself that the only place to have a deep conversation with his new friends is anywhere that there’s a toilet, and quite frankly, the notion is too hilarious for you to correct him. Plus it gives him a little privacy, and you definitely don’t want him to keep relying on you for the entire duration of his stay in this era. 

That night, as you lay out on your sofa, wondering if your back will ever get used to a mattress again, you notice one particular notification buried amongst the others: 

Tinder Someone has Super Liked you! Find out who. 

You admittedly hadn’t been swiping for a hot minute, yourself - you’ve been somewhat preoccupied with a whole new flatmate to worry about - but since it was the topic of the day, you figure you’ll bite. A few ordinary profiles show up, but none of them take your fancy. Even the cute ones, their bios are just so… Dry . And then you see it. The profile that Super Liked you, the blue border perfectly coordinating with the artwork that hangs on the wall behind you. 

~~~ 

The following morning, Ralph awakens earlier than usual. He’s excited about his date tonight, and still conflicted about something else that had happened last night. He looks through the group chat app again to remind himself of his friends’ advice: 

If you don’t say anything about it, neither will Ralph, but if you do, then it’s time to sit down and discuss these feelings like the adults you both are. That’s what he tells himself. 

Ralph takes a deep breath before opening the door from the bedroom into the main part of the flat. You’re in the kitchen area, finishing off your breakfast with a duffel bag full of clothes resting on the counter. It appears that almost all of your clothes must be in there, since you’ve resorted to wearing one of Ralph’s most favourite T-shirts that he’d picked out himself. The way that it fits your form so differently to Ralph captivates him into silence, and the fact that it almost covers your pyjama shorts entirely feels so scandalous to him. He has to stop looking, or else his mind will wander to uncouth places, but he just can’t . 

Not until you catch his eyesight and groan as you roll your own eyes at him. “Morning, Ralph! Don’t worry, I’ll make myself “decent” now that you’re out, I think I’ve got some yoga pants shoved in the back of the wardrobe from that one New Year when I was convinced I would join the gym,” your voice disappears as you walk past him and shut the door behind you. 

Ralph makes himself some cereal, once again telling himself that he has to stop living in this secret. Especially if he’s to pursue other people. 

You re-emerge from the bedroom, now wearing bottoms that cover your entire legs, but they may as well not at all be, with how little they leave to the imagination. You ask, “Oh yeah, by the way, did you… Happen to find my profile on Tinder last night? Because I think you must have swiped up instead of left, and Super Liked me by accident.” 

“Accident!” Ralph exclaims hurriedly, squeezing his eyes shut and open again, and clenching and releasing his fist repeatedly, desperate to change his focus onto anything else. “Yes, that's entirely what that was, I’m so glad we cleared that up! Aha! I suppose I should get ready for my date now!” 

You frown, “That’s not for hours yet, and Scott said he’d take you to get ready while I - don't forget your cereal!” You call out after him as he rushes back into the bathroom but the door closes behind him before you can finish your sentence. You write on the whiteboard that you keep on your fridge that you’re going to be at the laundromat for most of the day doing your laundry, but that Scott is arriving at 12 o’clock to take him out clothes shopping and to help him get ready, as you’ll be busy. You leave him your bank card to take with him on his big date, and wish him well before heading out of the door. 

Ralph rests his phone against the bathroom wall, goes onto the only group he trusts himself to keep on WhatsApp and hits the video call button before immediately pacing the room. One by one, his friends pick up, all asking various questions. 

“What happened?”

“Did you talk about it?”

“Are you okay?”

“Did you have an argument?”

Ralph blinks harshly again, his arms gesticulating with a deliberate wildness to them. “You all remember that the plan was, say nothing unless I’m spoken to, and then tell the truth, no matter what?” 

“Yeah…”

“Well, I may have been… Distracted. And I may have shouted that it was an accident and ran into here.” 

“Oh, babe, you didn’t.”

“Ralph!”

“We had a plan, hun! We mapped it all out!”

“I know, I know!” Ralph holds his hands on top of his head. “I was so ready, I was telling myself the plan over and over, and then… Well, it’s so-called laundry day, and I’ve had more time to get mine done and so my clothes were the only clean ones and -” 

“Oof, god, yeah. Once you see your crush wearing your clothes, it is game over.”

“Oh, Ralphie, what are we gonna do with you?”

“Well, the damage has been done, now. It’s probably best to just… I guess, either try and get over how you’re feeling, or wait until another opportunity arises. If it does.”

“Yeah, honestly, babes, I’d say cut your losses for the day and focus on your big date tonight, that’s so exciting for you!”

“Oh my god, you’re gonna tell us everything, aren’t you?”

Ralph sighs, rubs his eyes and puts on a small smile. “Yes, of course I will. Thank you all for being my voices of reason, I do appreciate you.” 

“Anytime, my lovely. Now, tell us all about this date. Where is it you’re going?”

“Well, Scott knows the location, but apparently it’s some kind of cocktail bar that plays swing and jazz and all the music that I like! I do hope there’ll be dancing,” he places his elbow on the sink to rest his head wistfully onto his fist, to an adoring chorus from the girls. They all sign off, wishing Ralph the best, and he hangs up, too. Right, Penbury, he tells himself, there’s nothing more you can do. You’ve messed up one more avenue of your love life, let’s not let it ruin another. 

Instead, he focuses on his date tonight. He knows the exact look he wants to go for. And so, despite the comments he gets on how nice he looks, he just can’t justify having facial hair with such a smart outfit in mind. 

Scott almost doesn’t recognise him, and calls Ralph “baby face” all day. It’s not his favourite nickname, but he’s been called worse. Scott helps him to pick out a nice suit with a bow tie - Scott had had the audacity to suggest Ralph wear a neck tie, for crying out loud - that Ralph liked because it reminded him of a suit he had back at home. Light tan in colour, with pinstripes down it. Just like his everyday going out suit. Scott had turned his nose up at it, but had admitted that “vintage” isn’t his style, anyway. Ralph had wanted to get a straw boater to really complete the look, but Scott wouldn't let him wear it past taking a photo. 

Ralph gets ready at Scott’s apartment, a little more upscale than the flat, but he shares it with his partner. Ralph had only met him a few times, but he was always absolutely besotted with everything Ralph had to say, and Ralph couldn’t deny that he loved the attention. It was always Victoria that everyone wanted. But not here. People know the name Ralph here. Not The Penbury Boy, not Victoria’s Brother, or That Other One. Not Creepy Stalker. Just Ralph. 

Scott and his partner help preen Ralph for his big night out at Ralph’s request, but they both audibly groan when he teaches them the hairstyle his old staff would give him - though of course, he omitted the involvement of any “staff” from his explanation. 

“First the beard, and now you want me to gel down the curls? You’re killing me here, Ralphie. Literally taking years off my life,” Scott frowns as he pats down Ralph’s hair. 

“I shall remember you fondly,” Ralph jokes, making Scott’s partner laugh. 

“Rude!” Scott scoffs jokingly. “You’ve spent too much time with that flatmate of yours.” 

Ralph’s heart still sinks thinking about his blunder this morning. Instead, he goes back to teasing Scott by composing an obituary as he styles his hair for him. 

After a few final looks in the mirror, Ralph feels as though he’s gone back in time, as though the last 6 weeks had never happened. Another wave of sadness befalls him at that thought, but he pushes it aside. His nerves are a calling card for any negativity to overwhelm him, and he was determined to have a good time. 

Scott walks him to the bar and waits outside with him until someone recognises him. As an extra measure to protect him from any radical internet followers, Scott borrows Ralph's phone to corroborate that he's definitely meeting his date, returns the phone back to Ralph with the reminder to ring you first and him second if anything happens, and bids the pair adieu. 

Once he's gone, Ralph greets his companion for the evening by taking her hand and gently dusting her knuckles with his lips. She looks him up and down strangely, turning her nose up as she pulls back her hand slowly. Ralph could do the same, she certainly isn’t dressed for the occasion, but he won’t, because he’s a gentleman.

She does try to make the effort to get to know Ralph, at first. Making small talk about how he came to this part of London, he tells her he was simply looking to get away from his old life. She asks him what he does for a living, and seems to judge him again for saying that he was yet to find employment. 

She lets him buy her a martini, despite him having ordered that with the intention of drinking it. She seemed to already be judging him for potentially ordering that drink for himself, so he ordered one of the only other drinks he knows that he likes - a double whiskey and lemonade, courtesy of Scott himself. She doesn’t seem to disapprove, at least. 

Barely anybody in this place seems to be in the spirit of things. They’re all just standing. Talking. There’s a very sweet older couple in the corner who are dancing away, that Ralph watches wistfully. He gestures over to them, looking at his date. “Rather lovely,” he notes. “Do you dance, at all?” 

“Not like that,” she shakes her head. 

“Would you like me to show you?” He asks excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

She rubs her arm awkwardly. “I’m good, thanks. Nobody else is doing it, it’d be weird if we started.” 

“Right. Right, of… Of course it would,” Ralph falters, dejected. 

“I need to use the ladies’ room,” his date states plainly. 

Ralph nods, “Of course, I shall be waiting right here!” 

As she walks away from him, Ralph decides he can still smooth things over by buying her another drink. He buys himself another double whiskey lemonade, for liquid courage, and the lady another martini, and returns to the spot he promised he’d wait for her. 

And he waits. 

And he waits. 

He sips his drink. 

And he waits. 

When he finally turns around to ask a member of staff to check on her, he’s met with many a sympathetic look. Ralph may not know a lot about dating in the modern age, but he knows that look when he sees it a mile off. Downing both the whiskey mix and the martini, he finds a quiet corner and takes out his phone. 

~~~ 

You’d been a fool for going to the laundromat in October with just Ralph’s T-shirt and a light jacket on. Being in a heated building means nothing if the front door is being left open all the damn time. Checking the time on your machines, you deduce that you just about have enough time to drive back, very quickly grab an extra layer and drive back. 

Rushing into your flat, you look around for anything that you could throw on that’s within arm’s reach. Nothing in the living area. Nothing in the kitchen area. Nothing in the bathroom. Desperate, you burst into the bedroom and you see it.

You’ve loved that blue jumper of Ralph’s from the moment you’d first seen it on him. You’d called it his Cookie Monster jumper, though of course that went over his head. It’s always looked so soft, and he’s forever burying his face in his arms when he wears it. It’s sickeningly adorable to be around. You’ve always wished you could experience its comfort for yourself, but Ralph would never let it out of his sight, and you very rarely get the opportunity to offer Ralph a hug without it potentially causing any more confusion in the nature of your friendship with him; certainly never so while he has ever worn the jumper. 

And so you jump at the chance to finally experience it for yourself. Throwing it on, not only are you immediately comforted with the soft sensation against your skin, but a familiar smell wafts around you. The ultimate makeup of the olfactory cocktail that is Ralph Penbury’s signature smell. 

You wonder how he’s getting on as you rush back out to your car. Whether he’s picked his outfit or if Scott’s moulded him in his own image. Whether he’s excited, scared, confident. Whether he plans on kissing her at the end of the night. 

You hit the steering wheel with the heel of your hand. Why are you worrying about these things? You never do when Connor, Grace or Anna go out. Perhaps it’s because you’re so used to being on 24/7 Ralph alert that not having him around keeps you on edge. But he’s bound to go home soon. And then you’ll be in this Ralph-less void all the time. That’s far, far worse a fate. And yet, cruelly, it’s the inevitable one. 

You make it just in time for the washing machine to chime. Throwing your clothes into the industrial sized dryer, you sit and scroll through your phone. You check the numbers of Ralph’s last Instagram photo, and end up reading through the comments from all of his little fans. None of them know that he could disappear off of social media at a moment’s notice. 

Except, now he could never truly disappear. Whenever he goes back, whenever his fifteen minutes of internet fame are up, he’s left his permanent mark on the world. On you, your friends, even all these people. Though they only see Ralph superficially. They see his photos, and his twitter presence, and they think they know him, especially since he learned how to reply to people when they would ask him questions. Sure, they know that he prefers strawberry ice cream, and that his favourite Gilmore Girls character is Paris, but they don’t know that he ties his shoes with bunny ears. They don't get to see that no matter how wild his bed hair is in the morning, one curl always falls across his forehead. They don’t know that he smells like citrus with an extra whiff of cinnamon. 

You bury your face beneath the sweater you’re wearing and breathe in deeply. An elderly woman looks at you fondly, and you bring yourself back to reality, sitting upright and switching to a puzzle game on your phone instead. You're already fooling yourself with these delusions of imagining a life where Ralph's a more permanent fixture. You can't be letting the locals believe it, too. That's just for you. 

Once your laundry's dry, you quickly fold it as neat as you can back into the bag you'd brought with you and throw the bag into the back of your car. Once you’re home, you just can’t find the energy to unpack it all. And besides, putting it away in your bedroom furniture only means you have access to it whenever Ralph isn’t there. Perhaps it’s better to keep these clothes out here in the living room, anyway. 

You laugh to yourself as you go to the kitchen to find enough things to cook together to make a decent meal. If you’d have been told 3 months ago that in the very near future, you’d be living out of a bag, sleeping on your own sofa, all for the sake of a man that you’d just met, you’d have never believed them. And yet, here you are. 

Once your food is made, you settle on your sofa and find something new to watch - because heaven forbid you watch one of your ongoing series without Ralph, he’d be giving you the silent treatment for the rest of the night. 

You wonder how his evening is going. He should be at the bar by now. No word from Scott, though you wouldn’t exactly expect him to check in with you about Ralph’s date. Although perhaps a photo in the group chat wouldn’t have gone amiss. No word from Ralph, either. 

You’re rooting for the iguana on your screen to outrun the predators that chase it, despite David Attenborough commentating his lack of faith, and it’s just escaped a tight bind as your phone rings. A particular jarring photo of your flatmate smiling his animatronic-esque fake smile fills your screen, along with the word “rALPH”. 

You answer, “This better be an emergency, I’m on high alert right now.” 

“Alert? In what way?”

“I’ve got an iguana I’m trying to save from some killer snakes, it’s life or death here, Ralphie.” 

“Ah, right! You’re watching one of those programmes about nature again.”

“Everything alright? You sound… Sad.” 

“Yes, well…”

“How’s your date going?” 

“It, um… It rather isn’t.”

“What?!” 

“She - She told me she was going to the women’s room. Approximately forty minutes ago.”

“Oh, Ralph. You should have called sooner!" 

“And this place is nothing like I had thought it would be, nobody is giving it the respect it deserves, I’m the only one appropriately dressed and yet somehow I am the one who sticks out like a sore thumb!”

“Okay, okay, it’s alright, mate. Get to the toilet, get yourself all sorted out, I'm on my way. Make sure you’re in the right one this time, too!” 

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

“Oh, I know I am. I’ll be there as soon as I can, alright?” 

While you’re still not quite ready to say goodbye to the sweater just yet, you do fish out a far nicer lower half of an outfit to go with it, before heading out the door and following Google Maps’ directions to this bar. 

When you enter, you look around trying to find your friend. The first scan yields no results. Neither does the second. You’re about to take your phone out to call him again when you notice a very sad, very baby-faced Ralph talking to a bartender. He looks just like he did when you first met him - without the coffee you’d spilled over his back, of course. 

You speed your pace up as you head towards him, and he doesn’t even notice you approaching until you pat his arm. He looks close to tears when he makes eye contact with you, and you immediately pull him into a hug. That clean, citrusy scent of his gets stronger as he wraps himself around you. When you start to relent, he doesn’t. With a small chuckle of defeat, you return to hugging him tightly again. 

Eventually he lets go, and so you do as well, rubbing his arm comfortingly as you pull away. “You look dapper,” you comment, “really smart.” 

Ralph wrinkles his nose up as he waves you off, “It’s… Really not as appropriate here as I thought.” 

“Codswallop!” You grin, putting on your best Ralph voice, which makes him smile, too. “Best dressed one here, hands down.” 

“I do seem to be a style icon of yours,” he muses, poking at the sweater. “It’s very becoming on you.” 

“Thanks, Ralphie,” you smile, trying desperately not to blush. Instead, you pull the sleeves over your hands and ask, “You still got my card?” He nods and fumbles through his pockets to grab it and hand it to you. You lean over the bar to order two of your usual drink, and one martini for Ralph. 

The bartender hisses through their teeth. “You sure? He’s already had one along with the others, he doesn’t seem in a good place to be mixing his drinks too much tonight.” 

You frown, “Oh, then sure, whatever he’s been having, get him another one of those.” 

You smile at the impact Scott’s clearly had on Ralph with his change in drink choice. Clinking your glass with his, you finish both of your drinks in the time he finishes his one, to try and catch up with him. 

As he swills the remaining ice cubes around the bottom of his glass, a high-energy song starts to play. You grin as you outstretch your hand, “Wanna put our kitchen dance lessons to the test with me?” 

Ralph looks at you sceptically, but his excitement is palpable. “Oh, heavens, we’d be the only ones dancing!” 

You shrug, “So? We’d be the only ones doing it right, everyone else would be the weird ones.” 

Ralph nods, “Very well,” and takes your hand. You don’t see it as you’re leading him to the dance floor area, but he’s putting all his energy into not looking completely giddy with happiness. 

The two of you dance together for several songs, swinging and twirling and laughing away. You nudge Ralph to show him that you’d even inspired some other coupl- other pairs of people , you correct yourself, not wanting to slip up and accidentally refer to yourself and Ralph as a couple in front of him. Other pairs of people are now dancing just like you two were. Ralph looks around in awe just as the music slows considerably. 

He looks at you with uncertainty, squeezing his eyes and his hands as he does when he’s conflicted or trying to correct himself, though he’s yet to say anything to you. “May I - I mean, we - would you like to - we could stop now, if you like, or -” 

You cut Ralph off by placing your hands on his shoulders. He places his ever so tentatively on your hips as you sway from side to side together. “Thank you,” he mutters to you. 

“Well, you seemed close to having a stroke over getting your words out, figured I had a good shot at guessing what you wanted before I had to call for help!” 

He chuckles softly, “Not just for that. For… Everything, really. Over the last two months. I really haven’t shown you the proper gratitude.” 

“I’ve not been keeping you around for gratitude’s sake, Ralph,” you shake your head. “You’re not that bad to be around, you know,” you smirk. “I’m sorry that girl didn’t see that in you. But I’m proud of you for trying!” 

“I don’t think I want to try much more,” he tells you quietly. 

“Don’t blame you. I gave up a while ago, myself,” you admit. “But you did it! I bet the Ralph I first met wouldn’t have done this.” 

“I am quite the changed man, thanks to you,” he says with a small smile. 

“You sure don’t look it at the moment! I don’t know who this is, but I’m looking forward to getting Ralph back when we’re home.” 

He frowns, “But this is how I always looked before I met you!” 

“I know, but it just doesn’t… Suit you. Not like your new look. I mean, I guess if you go back in time looking like The New Ralph, everyone back there would think otherwise, but… I dunno,” you shrug your shoulders. “This doesn’t feel like the real Ralph.” Recalling a conversation you’d had with him a couple of weeks ago about how he was perceived back in his time, you add, “This is just That Penbury Boy.” 

“I like that you all see a side of me that you don’t mind having around,” Ralph admits bashfully. “And I like spending time with you - all.” 

“We love having you around too,” you grin. “But I am being serious, I’ll hold your head under the bathroom sink here if we don’t get that shit washed out of your hair soon.” 

Ralph laughs, stepping out of the hold to extend his arm out to you. You take it and walk out of the building with him. 

You laugh at the ooh! that comes out from him as you step out into the brisk air. “Yeah, all that whiskey finally kicking in?” You ask with amusement. 

Ralph shakes his head, blowing a raspberry sound out into the air. “Just a tad!” 

“I’m excited to see what Whiskey Ralph is like,” you muse, still keeping your arm around his as you lead him down the street. 

He frowns, “Are there different versions of me based on what I drink?!” 

“Different versions of Drunk Ralph, yeah,” you grin. “Martini Ralph is super sociable. Vodka Ralph, an emotional wreck. We stay away from vodka,” you warn, and he nods, remembering the shot he had taken weeks ago and shuddering again. “And from what you’ve told me, Champagne Ralph really loved to party.” 

“Oh, I do so wish you could have been there for a Penbury social!” Ralph muses. “They were always such a blast to plan. I just… Sometimes I wish that Victoria let me be the “main event” host rather than the “planning” one.” 

“Well, when you go back, you can down a couple of martinis, tell her to shove it, and then throw the greatest bash Penbury House will see before it gets filled with tote bag-carrying indie kids and grandmas hiding romance novels between murder mysteries,” you laugh, though it’s strained. You know it’s only fair to make sure you’re both still actively talking about him returning home, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. 

Ralph gives you a small smile, “I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s far more than a few drinks that make me the man that I am while I’m here.” The way he bites his lip back bashfully would have you holding him by the cheeks and kissing it back, were you a couple more drinks in. He quietens after that, and you simply allow him to stay in that moment rather than pressing him as to what exactly he means. 

Once you’re back home once again, you change back into comfortable pants while Ralph washes his hair under the shower. You also finally look at your phone’s notifications to see a lot of activity in the group chat: 

Ralph re-emerges wearing another jumper and some sweats, but instead of sitting at his usual spot on the other end of the sofa to you, he sits far nearer and leans himself onto you. “Hello,” he greets simply, a dopey grin smeared across his face. 

You cock your head as you smile softly at him. “Hello, cuddly-drunk Whiskey Ralph.” 

“Is that what it is?” He asks, his voice slurring a little. “Do you mind?” 

“Nah, just give me my arm back,” you tease as you move so that your arm is no longer trapped beneath him, instead draping it where it’s most comfortable - which just happens to be over his body. 

You show Ralph the things everyone has been saying in the group chat, and he smiles into your torso. "Can I expect this jumper back any time soon, by the way?"

You grin down at him, "Yeah, you can have it back when it stops smelling like you. It's too nice to give up."

His ears burn pink as he gently settles further down until his head rests in your lap. “Do you want to see if your iguana made it out safely?” 

“Oh, yeah! Here, I’ll restart the episode for you, I need you to care about this lizard as much as I do.” 

Commentating alongside the documentary with Ralph proves a far more entertaining watch than before, and you both cheer as you watch the iguana finally climb up some rocks to the safety of its friend. At some point, your fingers end up absent-mindedly stroking back and forth through his hair, and you notice his chest starting to heave up and down heavier than usual. Leaning over, you see his lower lip move in and out ever so slightly with each breath as he sleeps. He looks so peaceful, and you could honestly keep him here forever. But, realistically, you can’t feel your legs and your body will certainly be unforgiving over you sleeping while sat upright. 

You gently prod at Ralph all over until he wakes up. “Hmm, what?” 

“Eh, what, what,” you tease, once again putting on your ‘posh voice’ before returning to your usual cadence. “C’mon, if you’re gonna sleep, go do it in a bed, please.” 

“Of course,” he mumbles wearily. 

When he stands up, you realise something with a laugh. “Oh, no! Oh, I’ve done a real number on your hair, look at it!” 

Ralph reaches up and pats his wildly spread curls with a sleepy smile. He faces you, then turns to the bedroom door, then back to you. He repeats this a few times, and just before you can ask, he shakes his head. “Goodnight. Sleep well.” 

“You too, Ralphie,” you grin as you push yourself around by your fists to lay across the sofa for the night. 

When you wake up, Ralph is yet again trending on Twitter. Wondering what on earth he could have done, you’re horrified when you see paparazzi-ish photos of Ralph with you as you both danced last night. The original tweet with the photos going around has the caption, “Pack it up, girlies, Hot Ralph is taken” 

Making sure your current account is most definitely still set to private, you make a new one under the name @RalphsFlatmate. You tweet an old selfie of you and Ralph with the caption, “hi, ralph stans. just here to remind you that sometimes people can be just friends and that’s it. please don’t take my photo without my consent in future. kinda insane that i have to ask that but here we are. cheers x” 

Once Ralph is awake, you borrow his phone to retweet yourself onto his profile to make sure people see it and get ready for work, dreading what is now to come with also being perceived on the internet. 

next chapter

[dallonm-archive]

[image description: a cropped image of a pink sky. on the right hand side is a bunch of darker pink clouds. Just left of the centre is a full moon. In the centre, in a white serif font reads "writing update" /end id]

july writing update

Hi friends! This writing update is me pretending I did Camp Nano and didn't kinda give up a week in! I had a proper goal and everything, but a lot of things got in the way that I'm not gonna talk about here because I already ranted about it in another update I'm drafting rn. Lets just say it's Disability Pride Month and being not neurotypical or able bodied in writing communities and their inherent focus on productivity is Hard.

But I did get some writing done and wanted to do a little Camp wrap up post regardless. And I'm doing it now because I'm cancelling the last week of July for some rest/self care and I do not want to think about writing for that time and if I write a tumblr post about July Nano being over my brain will think it's actually over <3 I will probably do updates like these for most months tho! Depends on how much I write lol! This one is not too long (by my standards) and has some Revelations, Revelations, Life Cycle of Massive Stars, Nocturne for the Holy and a new wip idea 👁️

excerpts under the cut!

general taglist ; ask to be + or - ; i only have one! ; @childhoodlovers @svpphicwrites @abiandwriting @kowlazovdi @avi-why @ryns-ramblings @kitblogsthings @bijouxs @bookphobe @moonhungers @alicewestwater @bookpacking @shaelinwrites @onlyganymede @theelectricfactory @write-like-babs @oceancold @sidhewrites @wolf-oak @oasis-of-you @coffeeandcalligraphy @cecilsstorycorner @howdywrites @keira-is-writing @flip-phones @piyawrites @avakrahn @goose-books @finch-goes-write @ziyin @aphaimaniis @isherwoodj @laughtracksonata

I'm also editing this in to say I only just realised that July is my writeblr birthday month and that is very weird to me! A year and a couple days ago I impulsively turned an old blog into a place to document writing for me and ended up meeting people who now mean the world to me and my writing blossoming in a way I never thought it would. And the funny part is it doesn't feel like it's been a year, ever since I joined it's just felt like life has Always been this way and I cannot fathom that it hasn't. I'm sappy bc it's 4am lol but ultimately the friends I made (you know who you are) and the community I found is what retaught me the value of writing and helped me unlearn toxic ideas and whilst the last year was tough I wish I could tell July 2020 Dallon (who did not realise he was Dallon yet </3) what July 2021 would look like.

revelations, revelations ;

Oh the absolute state of affairs with this book rn. Nothing bad but I don't know when I'm gonna update y'all because sometimes I do not know where to start when talking about this wip lol! Currently on a break with it (but also my thesis work is on late 20th century queer lit/history rn so am ever really free of RR? <3) but had a lot of fun with it at the end of June/start of July. Anyway here's Dorothy finally revealing more of herself to me after a year. Dorothy as a character is like, I truly believe she is capable of killing a man but the story she is in just does not allow that so I am trying to grow her unhinged side a little bit in other ways bc I know she has it in her but I also really cannot deal with the plot repercussions of her actually killing a man! I'm sorry Dotty but this'll have to do!

(cw for groping/a man being creepy as hell, death/funeral mention, drug mention, drowning imagery kinda)

There’s too much to tell Felix. That his sister lives on the fringe of Castro and has attended three funerals since September; that it’s January 11th and she’s already attended one this year. That his sister drives through sunsets and imagines parties: the amber dusk, warm mosaic tiles, platters of Greek salad skewers and shrimp tostadas, and sometimes Jolie joins her and they share a blunt on the hill. That his sister bought an aquamarine body-length dress for six bucks in a thrift store sale bin, so when her and Jolie broke up for the second time, she waltzed into a sunset party, locked arms with a CEO’s son and gave him a fake number and plucked strawberries out of champagne and blended so well nobody noticed when she left. That during the summer of ’83, his sister walked a neighbour’s Golden Retriever on Wednesdays, and on the sixth Wednesday he gave her a wad of tens with one hand and palmed the back of her neck with the other, so she walked his dog to the beach and stole another hundred from his wallet. That his sister bombed an interview for a Nursing school and didn’t get home until night and missed their monthly call, and Jolie heard the phone ring and didn’t take a message, so his sister snuck into the CEO’s son’s villa and floated in the centre of their heated pool like a cloud. A pause, a breath, an Opheliean threat.

life cycle of massive stars ;

Switched to LCOMS this month because I was burnt out with RR and it made such the difference! I really love working on two novels at once because it keeps me consistently creative but also both of these books are so different so its always refreshing to bounce back into one from another. I have a whole update in the drafts rn for this so keeping this part brief but still love this book, still the best thing that has ever happened to me, me and this book will have a glorious summer wedding etc etc. These excerpts are from chapters that summarise the first semester of each character's first year and have to say it. has been Very Fun to get into the mindset of Freshers Melodrama. Here's Junie having a crisis and an unhealthy relationship with her hetero flatmate :( (alcohol cw for both excerpts)

In October you are drinking double espresso and trying to breathe normally in lectures and you are trying to figure out your favourite colour because Fleur asked and you stumbled out an answer (Purple, I think. Violet? Lavender? Indigo?) and it didn’t match hers (I like yellow. I like sunlight). You buy mugs from IKEA to paint you paint cats and fireworks and constellations and moon phases and daisies. You try to scratch paint stains off your desk. You do laundry at 2am. In October you colour code your notes with pastel highlighters. You go to the library at 3am. You paint your nails sunlight and hate it. You finish an essay that’s due in December. You knock on Fleur’s door at 8am so she makes her 9am. You wear off the shoulder tops and you let a girl dab glitter on your collarbones and you are watching Fleur kiss a boy from the neighbouring hall. You bite your sunlight nails. You break the handle off your IKEA constellation mug. You leave your keys in a lecture hall and stand at the reception for forty minutes waiting for them to realise that the keys on the desk have the moon chain you mentioned - or, you are waiting to say it yourself. You are watching the rain trail down your window. In October you get a halo headband tangled in your hair you are sipping a vampire themed cocktail that tastes like acetone you rip your heels off and you go home early and do laundry at 2am and you are waiting for the courage to tell Fleur you don’t like clubbing - or, you are waiting for her to ask where you are. In October you are many things / a good student a dancer a painter an angel a big sister an alarm clock you are nocturnal and a lucid dreamer and confused about your sexuality / and it’s still October but it’s not because it’s November now and you are still Junie but not because you don’t know who Junie is. It’s November, it’s September October November December. It’s 2016 2017 2018 2019. You are fragments and you don’t know if you are a kaleidoscope or shattered glass.

And here's first year Tomas being like I Moved Countries For University And All I Got Was Homesickness And A Crush On My Flatmate And Resurging Autistic Symptoms And This Lousy T Shirt (cw: vomit mention, injection mention, parental death mention)

Kristen is seven months younger and five inches taller than you. He’s the last flatmate you met and the only one you talk to beyond kitchen greetings and passive aggressive texts about dirty dishes. He is too quiet and too loud and not the type of person you befriend. The first night, he lost Ring of Fire and downed the concoction of Echo Falls, Dark Fruits, Jack Daniels and coke, vodka and lemonade alongside a cigarette and said he’d let God figure out the rest. He held your hair back when you threw up amaretto and held onto your knee when you first self-injected testosterone. He taught you Yorkshire dialect and you pretended to understand the Yorkshire dialect. He told you he got diagnosed at four and you told him you didn’t get past the first assessment but sometimes you flick the bathroom light on and it’s fire: the orange on the orange towel is louder, the white on the white tiles are louder, the colours and light and sink and showerhead are prickly and all you can do is blink and breathe until it fizzles out. You reminded him to take his meds and asked if you were weak for wanting to drop out and hop on the first Eurostar to Rotterdam. He reminded you to take off your binder and asked if he was robotic for not grieving his mother. You spent inky nights on the kitchen floor, counting the dead flies in the lights and scooping crumbly coconut ice cream out of a maker you got for half price in TK Maxx. You spent dusk-dusted afternoons at the global street food markets, at the vegan markets. Spent student loans on raspberry lemonade in recycled cups, veggie burgers in beetroot buns, got him hooked on poffertjes and advocaat and could’ve cried when the vendor spoke to you in Dutch. Sometimes you didn’t buy anything. Just liked hovering at stalls ambered with fairy lights, writing down Etsy stores on your notes app; just liked Kristen’s impulse to trek forty minutes into the city for a market he didn’t know existed until five minutes before; just liked how he always invited only you, cancelling your other plans last minute, the feeling of being ambushed; just liked how he stopped to take photos of dogs and the sunset; just liked how he looked haloed under lampposts waiting for Ubers, golden on golden.

This is also nearing creative nonfiction because Sheffield truly is a haven for just. vegan markets and cafes lol! I experimented with veganism there and never struggled to find something and at this point I call myself a fake vegan because it's too easy to be vegan in Sheffield and too difficult to be vegan in my actual hometown. And the global street food markets!!! SO GOOD! I miss pre pandemic days

nocturne for the holy ;

Giving her a little shout out because she does exist actually! I've figured out a really good system for working on two novels at a time, so my plan is maybe to start properly on this after I finish either RR or LCOMS. Idk I got 3 novels to pick from haha oops! I did do some free drafting back in April though and found it recently and I Like It! And I edited it so it counts as Something I Did This Month :) Also have decided that I loathe this working title <3 Okay see you with an update for this novel in like a year, sorry for the absolute zero context for this excerpt hehe

The morning I was due back, I hadn’t yet decided that this would be my last visit. I wandered between rooms like an overstayed guest, like I didn’t know which crockery lived in which cabinet and which bedroom had the best view of the overlapped hills. Dad would wake for his run in an hour, plastered to his twenty-year-old routine. Mum would pretend to be asleep until breakfast. Until then, it was myself and the house, hazed by sleepy sunrise. Downstairs. The peeling paisley wallpaper in the lounge, the lilies in the middle of the kitchen table, the vases of candy floss pink peonies wilting on every windowsill, the desolate double swing-set in the garden. The mist-clogged mornings. I stood outside in my dressing-gown until my fingertips felt numb. Upstairs. The sage coloured bathroom. The bathtub I’d laze in with my clothes on and no water because it was the quietest room in the house. The dusty dance trophies on the top of my wardrobe. Wine-flushed Jeanette in my teenage bedroom. The stale grey mum painted my teenage bedroom after I moved out. Minus their room, I stalked the layout of the house three times before settling back into bed - teenage Nora’s bed. Nora who cared for peonies and pushed her brother on the swing set and flung her ceramic ballerina at the wall and jogged with her father and collected wine bottles and acorns and kisses from girls who were supposed to visit for dance practice. Before I left, I’d have cycled each room another three times. And in every room he was there, hovered in the corner like black mould.

love this update bc it's like i've got my third person, my second person, my first person! collecting all the POVs like chaos emeralds :)

eulogy for our burnings ;

-looks away-

girl help I did it AGAIN!!!! Apparently Camp Nano is just the perfect time for me to get novel ideas. I made this post specifically to talk a bit about this because I have no idea when I'll draft it but it's certainly not soon. This is not me trying to doubt my own skill but I feel like I am not in the place I'd like to be as a writer to tackle this project with the zest it needs, however I am v excited by the prospect of it! Don't know how I feel about the working title bc I'm like "that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about this wip to dispute it" but the only purpose my working titles serve is to sound pretty lol! But here's the tea:

1991, UK.

2nd person present + past. Very flexible form. I can't decipher how yet but I'm feeling interviews, newspaper articles, receipts, grocery store lists weaved with actual narrative, that kinda vibe.

Best summary is we follow our nameless narrator, a stealth trans man, as he becomes unhealthily obsessed with a man who "hires" him to photograph the buildings he burns

Very,,, isolated? Minimal settings, minimal characters, minimal prose etc. Almost claustrophobic

There's basically only two characters and they are probably the most morally deplorable, indefensible characters I've created which just means most of you are gonna LOVE this /lh I do too I do too

Only comp title I can give is it has the vibes/tone of Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (just with none of the nsfw content lol if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) (also that book is great for morally deplorable women protagonists but omg look up the content warnings because it caught me off guard! enjoyed it tho gave it 4 stars)

The pinterest board is the best visualisation of the Vibes also follow me on pinterest lol

And that's all I've got today! A bigger Life Cycle of Massive Stars update coming in the next few weeks. Might do a proper intro post for Eulogy For Our Burnings but idk!!! It's a surprise :) Thank you for reading this far!

[artificialqueens]

Me and You Together, 1/? (Taywhora) - Ortega

fic summary: The cardinal rule of having flatmates is that you Do Not Catch Feelings For Your Flatmates, because everything inevitably goes to shit and gets made horrifically awkward. A’whora and Tayce both know this, but being in first year of uni and making good decisions have never really gone hand in hand.

a/n: i honestly have begun this wip with glitter and jesus. i have no idea how many chapters it’s going to have or what exactly the plot is going to be…all i know is that it’s fwb (flatmates with benefits) to lovers taywhora with a background love triangle involving Ellie bc she’s my fav. pls enjoy and pls leave me love because i am a keyworker so really one comment = one 6pm clap xo

P.S. the Friday mentioned in this fic is the one A’whora’s obsessed with and was dancing to on her insta…not the popular Rebecca Black song. also 100 points to anyone who knows the song Lawrence and Ellie get excited about in the club.

content note: they’re freshers at uni in the UK and this country has a binge drinking problem xo. please don’t expect any of these girls to be acting responsibly. if you think you might be influenced by a fic talking about alcohol, smoking, sex and drugs, this might not be for you luv xo

**

December- Fell in love with her in stages

A year ago if you had asked A’whora what she was doing on a Tuesday night, the answer would’ve been mundane.

Homework, maybe, if she could be bothered. She could always copy it from Mocha in registration, after all. Making tiny outfits for Barbie dolls out of fabric scraps, very probably; she hadn’t stopped doing that just because she was older, the only difference from when she was nine was that she didn’t make her Barbies talk anymore. Invariably she’d stay up til’ well past her bedtime, earphones plugged in to her laptop and trying not to sing along to the playlist of dance music she’d spent a year cultivating. She’d poked fun at her Mum for still giving her a bedtime at the big age of eighteen, but she’d maintained that while her girl was living under her roof it would be bed by eleven on a weeknight and out no later than three on a weekend.

These rules, however, were quickly disposed of as soon as she’d got the keys to her uni flat. As soon as she’d found out her other flatmates were just as riotous and chaotic as she was and loved a night out just as much, her weeks had been filled with nights she’d never forget in bars she couldn’t remember, heads against speakers and sore feet from heels and ridiculous pre-drinks with even more ridiculous cocktails.

One such cocktail is the one her flatmate’s making for her now. Ellie doesn’t have any of the professional equipment a usual bartender would, but that doesn’t seem to stop her- the messy countertops are a treasure trove of obscure liqueurs and alcopops, and Ellie twirls a yellow-blonde curl around her finger before giving a gasp of satisfaction as her hand settles on a sticky green bottle.    

“One shot of apple soors, half a can of blue Monster, top up the rest with vodka,” she explains as she works with the various bottles and cans quickly, pouring into the pint glass they’d stolen from one of the pubs on a bar crawl during Freshers Week. She hands it to A’whora with a cheeky, mischievous grin on her painted face.

A’whora sniffs her glass and feels her nose wrinkle up involuntarily at the concoction her flatmate’s poured for her. “Els, if I drink that I’ll die.”

Ellie, to her credit, simply gives a snort of disapproval in response. Her pink acrylics click against the quarter bottle of vodka as she tightens the lid and replaces it in their freezer, all shiny and slick with frost. “Well if you are gonna take three hours to get ready then you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences of playing catch-up, babe.”

“Bitch,” A’whora jokes, rolling her eyes before sipping from her glass. The mixture makes her screw her face up so she takes another sip, then another until the weird sour-sweet-burn in her throat becomes more like a cocktail than cough syrup.

“Good, right?” Ellie prompts her, leaning against their kitchen counter proudly.

“No,” A’whora deadpans, causing her friend to burst out laughing. Then, realising something, she cocks her head. “Wait a second. What the fuck did you call the green drink?”

Ellie frowns. “Soors.”

“…Sourz?” A’whora says back to her, already giggling at the difference in dialects.

“Don’t play the pronunciation game with me, bitch.”

“Oh, I absolutely will when you’re just saying it wrong.”

“Lawrence!” Ellie shouts through to their other flatmate, sitting on the sofa and frowning at the bluetooth speaker as if it’s personally committed some crime against her. Ellie holds up the bottle as Lawrence snaps her head round, dark curls flying over her shoulder. “What’s this?”

“Liquidised heartburn,” she says instantly. A’whora snorts as Ellie rolls her eyes.

“Fuck’s sake. What’s it called?”

“Soors,” Lawrence shrugs back at her, and Ellie gestures triumphantly at A’whora who can only pout in reply.

“Listen, I can get Tia, Bims and Tayce through here and they’d all outnumber you, so. Shut it.”

“Yeah bet you’d love to get Tayce through here, A’whora,” Ellie smirks, raising both her eyebrows at her in an infuriatingly smug expression.

A’whora is clamped for a couple of reasons, the first being the God-awful nickname all her flatmates use against her. She’d managed to acquire it the first time they’d all played Never Have I Ever together and A’whora had drank for pretty much every situation or scenario presented to her. Before she’d known it, her very lovely, very Disney Princess-esque first name had been replaced by a pun that Bimini had come up with in the midst of their third rum and coke, and thus Aurora was dead and A’whora was born.  

The second reason for her silence is a result of the mention of one of the girls she’s living with. A’whora had never really expected to develop a crush on any of her flatmates, which had been a ridiculous thing to assume- given the fact she’s attracted to girls and was going to be living with other girls, the odds would dictate that at least one of them would be her type. Luckily, though, she hasn’t developed any feelings for any of them. At least, that’s the lie she’s telling herself, as the cardinal rule of having flatmates is that you Do Not Catch Feelings For Your Flatmates because everything inevitably goes to shit and gets made horrifically awkward.

Tayce is different to Ellie, Lawrence, Tia and Bimini, though. None of the others get A’whora so flustered when they speak to her, none of the other others get her heart racing so fast it threatens to fly out her ribcage. She doesn’t feel the same sense of dizzy joy when she’s alone with any of the others: only when Tayce makes dinner with her, or when she comes to her room at ten at night for chats, or when they play Tayce’s stupid video games together and she beats her way-too-many-consecutive-times in a row to be considered fair. A’whora has tried to explain it away as just wanting to be liked, just wanting to be good friends, just just just until she can’t justify her own excuses any more and has instead resigned herself to repressing the feelings she has for her friend. The tension between them is building, though, and it’s only a matter of time until something happens.

“BITCH!”

A’whora jumps a little, flinching as she realises she’s gone too long without a comeback. Ellie’s expression is expectant and impatient as she clicks her fingers once, twice, three times in her face.

“Shut up, Ellie-phant,” A’whora manages to mumble almost incoherently as she turns on her heel, walking through to the living room area to sit with Lawrence and join her on her quest to making their speakers work.

Their flat is an odd one. The front door leads to a prison cell-style line of equally pokey rooms- Lawrence’s, Tayce’s, A’whora’s, Bimini’s, Ellie’s and Tia’s respectively- and two bathrooms. Then another door opens out onto two hobs, endless cupboards and grimy, cluttered countertops, and a scrub of shitty green carpet and three worn out red-purple sofas that look as tired as Bimini does when they come home from a random afterparty just as A’whora leaves for lectures. It doesn’t in any way look like a normal flat, but A’whora supposes they’re about as far away from normal as a sentient slice of cheese.

“Oh babe, you must be crushing crushing. I don’t think I’ve heard you come out with a comeback as shit as that in the whole four months we’ve lived together,” Ellie continues the conversation, buzzing behind her like an annoying fly.

“It wasn’t shit, it was good!”

“Lawrie, what’s a good comeback to me calling A’whora a whore?” Ellie appeals to her friend again.

“Rich of you to be calling anyone a whore. You come from a long line of whores. You’re a whore, your maw’s a whore, your maw’s maw was a whore. There’s cave paintings of your ancestors wi’ twelve dicks in their mouths. There’s tapestries of them gettin’ shagged left, right an’ centre. There’s clay sculptures of them being whores. Pipe the fuck doon,” Lawrence reels off, Ellie growing more and more breathless with hysterical laughter beside her and A’whora falling into giggles too.

“Well this was a weird time for me to enter the conversation.”

A’whora feels her heart lift and her face light up when she turns around and sees Tayce walking through to join them, the posture of a model with her fingers curled elegantly around the stem of a wine glass. She flicks her long, dark hair over her shoulder as she sits down on the small sofa beside A’whora, and she wonders how Tayce can sit in a way that makes the stained, battered, scratchy upholstery seem like the set of a high fashion photoshoot.

“Just talking about you,” A’whora sticks her tongue out at her, laughing at the way Tayce reels in fake horror and Lawrence explodes with laughter across from them.

“The valour, the bravery and the backbone,” Tayce grumbles, rolling her eyes. Her gaze rests upon something behind A’whora- the back of the sofa. Maybe there’s a new rip in it, God knows how that can have happened. She holds back a gasp, though, when Tayce reaches out and runs a gentle finger down her spine against her bare skin; an advantage of the sparkly backless cowl neck top she’s wearing that she hadn’t known existed until now. “Speaking of backbones, you’re such a skinny minnie.”

“Did you go to the school of backhanded compliments?” A’whora teases, deflecting from the way her heart’s still thrumming in her chest at the contact.

“Shush, you. You know you look bloody gorgeous,” Tayce says back to her, and even though there’s a laugh to her voice A’whora knows she means it. Her heart’s still going like a train but she can chalk that up to the half can of Monster Ellie’s dumped into her drink, so when she mutters out a thanks hun, same to you she hopes it doesn’t sound as insincere as it feels.

The thing is, she does look gorgeous. She’s dressed in a black lace bodysuit with straps that criss-cross up the back and a tight leather skirt that makes her legs look even longer than they already are. She’s opted for heels like A’whora has (unlike Ellie and Lawrence who have designated night-out trainers stained with spillages of drinks gone by) but hers have straps that are laced all the way round her calves and tied with a knot at the top. Everything about her outfit makes everything about her look outrageously good, and A’whora thinks it should be illegal for anyone to be this ethereal.

Tayce looks as if she’s about to fire something back at her judging by the little smile on her face but she’s interrupted by an outrageously loud boom from the speakers, as something that could be Lady Gaga but is too deafening to be deciphered screams through it. As the girls all flinch there’s a frantic diminuendo that comes from Lawrence mashing the volume button until the pitch is finally bearable and they can all take their hands off their ears.

“Lawrence, did you get the speakers working?” Ellie quips sarcastically, to which Tayce and A’whora burst out laughing and Lawrence almost elbows Ellie off the sofa opposite.

In the melee A’whora almost doesn’t notice Bimini and Tia come in, and they look ready to start the night if a little panicked.

“What the hell was that?” Tia asks quickly, opening the fridge and grabbing her bottle of premixed Malibu and pineapple before perching herself on the couch beside Ellie. “I thought part of the building had exploded.”

“Nah that was just my vagina, babes,” Lawrence says offhandedly, the others either screeching with laughter or groaning in anguish. Bimini crosses the room with their selection of drinks cradled in their arms and budges Tayce and A’whora up with an oi, oi!, A'whora’s pulse thudding at her wrist as a result of her close proximity to her crush.

No- her friend. Her friend who’s never going to be anything more than that.

With the six flatmates assembled, drinks poured, and tunes on, their pre drinks can begin. Pres at their flat often look like drinking games, yelling along to early 2010s pop, tipsily booking taxis and then touching up their makeup in the waiting time before they arrive. Tonight is no different; they bicker about where they want to go and eventually decide on the union because although it’s “too het” according to Ellie, it’s admittedly cheap and a good night out. A’whora chips into the conversation every five minutes with shady, catty jokes that Tayce howls at and leans into her side and clutches her arm or her hand or her thigh.

The contact is nice. They’ve reached that stage of their friendship where they’re touchy and close a lot of the time- A’whora’s constantly playing with Tayce’s hair and Tayce thinks nothing of just walking into A’whora’s room and getting under the duvet with her. They throw their arms around each other and bump shoulders as they walk and touch legs on the sofa, much like they’re doing now. A’whora has never been a cuddly type of friend- to be honest, she still isn’t- but there’s something about doing all this with Tayce that she doesn’t mind. It’s a comfortable kind of intimacy, a knitted blanket of sorts, but it’s a fragile space for Tayce to occupy too and A’whora knows it’s risky to let her rip a wall down she’s never been aware of til now.

The night rolls along and with every refill of A’whora’s glass the music gets turned up a little more, a little more, a little more until they’re all having to yell over each other as they play wiggly wiggly woo, who’s most likely to. It’s all fun and games until it gets to who’s most likely to sleep with a flatmate, and there’s a confusing mess of finger-pointing where Lawrence points to Ellie, Tayce points to Lawrence, and Bimini, Ellie and Tia point to A’whora.

“Fuck off, why’s it me?” she screeches in outrage, trying to cover up the fact her cheeks are burning and that Tayce seems suddenly all too close to her.

“Because! It’s you! It’s A’whora!” Bimini laughs, their accent making them seem all the more mischievous and shit-stirring.

“Well! If I’m sleeping with a flatmate that must mean one of you’s gonna be involved, doesn’t it?!”

“Right, sorry, yeah,” Bimini nods understandingly, before immediately switching to point to Tayce. There’s an arena-crowd roar that erupts from the others, one that makes A’whora laugh and blush scarlet at the same time. She sneaks a look at Tayce, who’s regarding her with much the same expression.

“I’m down if you are, hun,” A’whora jokes-but-not-really, shaking Tayce’s arm as if it’ll take away from the weak joke she’s trying to make. Tayce only shoots her a wink with her tongue trapped between her teeth.

“In your dreams, love.”

A’whora’s glad of the others laughing so she can pretend to join in, occupy herself with something other than the overwhelming urge to reply to Tayce with exactly.

The rest of pres fly by tipsily and incoherently. They get a noise complaint from the weird flat underneath them which seems solely comprised of six boys who never go outside, which prompts them to book taxis even though the union is only about a ten minute walk away. A’whora helps Tia re-glue on her eyelashes in a rush and Bimini spontaneously fills a hipflask with Ellie’s apple sourz, “for the road”. When the taxis roll up outside Lawrence hurries them all out the door with the urgency of a mother of five, and before long they’re standing in a queue around the block, Bimini and A’whora sharing Tia’s huge puffer jacket because neither of them thought to pick up coats in their haste to leave.

Tayce pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, flips the little cardboard lid of them open and offers them round to the others. A’whora takes one because Tayce is offering, and really Tayce could offer them grenades with the pins pulled out and A’whora would accept if only to get her smile flashed at her again or the chance that their hands might touch during the transfer. A’whora thinks Tayce is every public health campaign’s worst nightmare as she watches her hold the cigarette between her index and middle fingers, wrap her lips around the end and inhale. Her cheekbones are razor-sharp as she drags then lets the breath go, red lipstick on the paper and the smoke curling up into the sparkly, dark night sky.

She is beautiful.

It’s because she’s beautiful that A’whora shouldn’t be surprised by the events that begin to unfold as they enter the club. Ellie immediately makes her way over to a booth, picks up the little sign that says it’s reserved and chucks it onto the dancefloor to get trampled underfoot and covered in sticky cocktail spillages. Tayce’s round is first because she lost Ring of Fire back at the flat so she goes over to the bar for shots, promising she’ll be only a couple of minutes and the others believing her; the way she looks ensures she never has a long wait time at the bar.

So they wait. And they wait. At first they don’t even notice how long they’ve waited- the tunes are good and loud and so they all yell along happily. Until Lawrence turns to the others with narrowed eyes.

“Here. Where the fuck is Tayce? She’s been ages.”

They all scan the bar, and Ellie suddenly points dramatically over to the other end of it. “Oh!”

Because Tayce is standing at the bar with no drinks and no interest in any of the bartenders taking drinks orders. She’s talking to a tall blonde with a dazzling smile and a low-cut crop top, and something inside A’whora burns and sinks at the same time. Tayce is allowed to be talking to a pretty girl. She’s not not allowed to. But it doesn’t make her any less jealous of the attention she’s giving her.

It’s a horror movie she can’t look away from. She’s aware that Ellie has gone to get the drinks instead, but that’s all she can absorb from her surroundings. She tunes out of the conversation at the table as she continues to watch the two of them interact. The girl’s got muscles, and her hair falls in neat waves on her shoulders, and she’s smiley and charming and doesn’t talk much, preferring instead to listen to Tayce. A’whora is different. A’whora is constantly on transmit; loud and opinionated and gobby and, okay, sometimes a little bit judgemental. She can’t do charming and demure. She can’t be what Tayce is very clearly interested in.

A thud next to her causes A’whora to whip her head round, tearing herself away from the scene playing out in front of her and ripping the plaster off.

“Fuck’s sake. Jaegerbombs with Red Bull? Puh-rison!” Ellie half-whines, half-shouts.

“Red Bull is the standard, not everyone can have the same taste in energy drinks as a sixteen year old virgin gamer,” A’whora narrows her eyes, gratefully accepting the drink from her nonetheless and shotting it back as if it’ll help blind her, or perhaps forget what she’s seeing.

“God. Who pissed in your coco pops?” Ellie fires back, rolling her eyes dramatically.

“Bold of you to assume anything specific has happened to make her this bitter, mean and salty,” Tia jokes from A’whora’s side, and as the others scream and laugh A’whora in turn fixes her with a glare, wishing momentarily she had laser beams for pupils.

“Ooh, that’s made me want a tequila,” Lawrence cries enthusiastically, too loud even from the other side of the booth.

“Eh, excuse me! I just got you a Jaegerbomb, finish that first,” Ellie chastises her like a world-weary parent, pushing the glass towards her friend and sliding her hand over the table, sticky with the ghosts of questionable drinks’ past. A’whora has to snort at her tone.

“Yeah Lawrence, finish your Jaegerbomb or you won’t get any dessert. Listen to your responsible Mum whose eyelash is coming off.”

A big roar of laughter flies up from the others, and it’s Ellie’s turn to glare at A��whora this time. She looks as if she’s about to say something back when Bimini sniffs their glass and frowns.

“Is Jaegerbombs vegan?”

Everyone apparently wishes to ignore the lack of grammatical sense to their sentence, and it’s Lawrence who responds first. “They’re vegan in the same sense that bleach is vegan?”

Bewilderingly satisfied, Bimini raises their glass to the middle of the table and the girls join them, cheering as they all clink them together and chuck the drinks back. The fact A’whora can’t join in leaves her eyes to fall on Tayce and that girl again. Tayce is smiling and it’s the brightest thing in the club, laughing as the girl flips her hair and touches her hand and tells some joke that’s obviously not as funny as anything A’whora could say. She wonders if she’s ever made Tayce smile like that. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but she can’t remember.

“You know they used to use Jaeger as cough medicine? And for ages it was drunk by, like…old Tories who went on deer hunts,” Tia reels off excitably, and A’whora can’t help but roll her eyes affectionately at her friend’s bizarre general knowledge. “There’s this rumour that it’s got deer’s blood in it.”

Bimini splutters, coughs, and chokes all at once. As Lawrence slaps their back entirely too roughly in a way that’s about as helpful as a water gun at a house fire, A’whora can’t help but turn to face Tia incredulously.

“What the fuck did you say that for?!”

Tia shrugs, too tipsy to register A’whora’s disbelief. “Fun fact.”

“You didn’t think to pipe up with that when Bims was asking if it was vegan?”

“It’s just a rumour!” Tia says defensively, then turns to Bimini to check they’re okay. A’whora huffs in exasperation, folding her arms and throwing her back against the supposedly cushioned walls of the booth. As she stares straight ahead and ignores the fuss her friends are making, her eyes fall on Tayce again and her heart hurts more than it should to see her with her phone out and the girl beside her doing the same. They’re so clearly swapping numbers. They’re allowed to swap numbers. It’s not like A’whora’s got dibs on Tayce, it’s not like she’s got any right to feel a burn in her stomach and a flame in her heart and a feeling of something slipping away.

“Right!” Lawrence all but yells, forcing A’whora to tear her eyes away. “I’ve finished my Jaegerbomb, Mum, can we get tequila now?”

Ellie sighs. “Fine! But you’re buying me this one, bitch.”

“I’ll come with,” A’whora says, thinking she’ll need at least ten more units of alcohol to stop feeling feelings.  

“We’re going for a boogie, catch us up,” Bimini decides, as Rhythm is a Dancer blasts on the overhead speakers and Tia lets out a whooo! that’s way too white for a mixed-race girl.

So they move, A’whora bum-shuffling her way out of the booth and following Lawrence and Ellie, her feet sore in her heels. She purposefully blocks Tayce out of her peripheral vision as she leans against the bar, but she’s only separated from her by about six people also waiting and if she tilted her head forward she could definitely catch her eye if she wanted.

“Rhythm is a dancer, two for one at Asda,” Ellie sings along, bopping her head enthusiastically. A’whora laughs weakly, her proximity to Tayce and that bitch she’s talking to entirely too distracting.

“Shut your hole and tell me what you’re wanting,” Lawrence orders her. Ellie drums the palms of her hands against the bar as she semi-shouts sambucaaaaa, and A’whora asks for a vodka. She’s aware she’s mixing entirely too many spirits and her hangover tomorrow will be potentially life-threatening, but she doesn’t care.

“Tayce is still there. Should we shout her over and see what she wants?” Ellie suggests, craning her neck. A’whora firmly shakes her head.

“She’s wanting that baby Hulk she’s been talking to all night, apparently,” she all but spits, shocking herself at her venom. It’s clear she shocks the girls as well, and Lawrence turns around and simply raises her eyebrows at her.

“Men’s dress trousers in a hotel.”

A’whora can only blink. “What?”

Lawrence pauses for dramatic effect (or perhaps that’s just the Jaegerbomb making its alcohol content known). She points a finger at A’whora, then finishes whatever point she’s making. “Pressed.”

“Purrr!” Ellie laughs in agreement, grabbing A’whora’s shoulder and shaking it in an action that’s probably meant to be gentle but almost shakes her bone out of its socket. “Oh my God, that totally explains why you’ve been such a bitch all night.”

“This wee cow’s been a bitch her whole life,” Lawrence joins in. A’whora knows she’s got a proper face on by now, Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle, but she can’t help it. She hates being wound up and she makes this perfectly clear to her friends via her furious silence.

“Nah, but tonight she’s a jealous bitch,” Ellie sticks her tongue out at her, and A’whora huffs.

“I’m not jealous!” she lies. “I’m just pissed off that she comes on a night out with us and she spends it talking to some random bitch she barely knows instead of her friends.”

“Wait. Oh my God, do you fancy Tayce?” Lawrence asks, a bull in a china shop on cocaine. Before A’whora can defend herself Ellie barks a laugh.

“Aw Lauzza, come on to fuck! Have you ever walked in when it’s been just the two of them? They’re so fucking flirty it’s disgusting.”

“DISGUSTEN!” Lawrence shouts, and it goes about ten percent of the way to drawing A’whora out of her mood.

“I don’t flirt with Tayce! I don’t fancy her either!” A’whora cries, exasperated. She realises too-late that her volume may have been too loud, but when she looks over at the topic of conversation again she’s both disappointed and relieved to see that she hasn’t registered a thing. “Anyway, you know you can’t shag your flatmate. It’s like the first rule of having flatmates. It would just make everything awkward.”  

“That the only thing stopping you?” Lawrence looks at her pointedly.  

“The bartender’s free,” A’whora glances just over Lawrence’s shoulder, and she turns around so fast it almost makes her feel dizzy. While Lawrence orders it leaves Ellie to turn to A’whora and pat her hand sympathetically.

“Why don’t you just go up to her?” she suggests. “I mean would it be so bad if you did just shag and get the pent-up tension released and then you can both just move on? I mean it’s not like you want to be her girlfriend or anything.”

A’whora presses her lips together and doesn’t reply. Her silence seems to communicate too much as Ellie’s mouth drops open a little and she fixes her with a pointed stare. “Oh, A’whora.”

“Look, I don’t know,” A’whora rushes to defend herself, her words spilling out over themselves in the way they sometimes do when she’s tipsy. “Like obviously she’s gorgeous but also, like…I do like her as a person as well, and I like being around her and just enjoying her company-”

Ellie splutters a giggle. “Enjoying her company, are you eighty years old in a care home?”

“I’m gonna slap you in a minute, shut up!” A’whora laughs incredulously. “But, like, I just…I don’t know if she likes me back like that, you know?

Ellie frowns. “I think, then, my advice would be…don’t shag her if you don’t think you can keep it to just that. ‘Cause obviously you don’t want to end up getting hurt.”

“Right, yeah,” A’whora replies, nodding.

If she’s honest, she’s disappointed. Obviously she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want to sleep with Tayce- because fucking look at her- but just like Ellie said, she knows she would end up getting hurt if anything happened between them. Tayce would probably consider it a one-time thing and A’whora would be let down, or it would turn into some long, drawn-out friends with benefits scenario that would probably make everything worse.

The thing is she can only repress her feelings so much and tonight she’s feeling like one of Ellie’s cans of Monster that Tia shook up as a joke and ended up spurting out its contents so violently that there’s still a green-blue stain on their kitchen wall. A’whora’s way too close to telling the girls about every time she’s pictured her and Tayce falling asleep together and waking up together, every time she’s imagined them planning actual dates, every time she’s wanted to kiss her on the sofa- not necessarily even a kiss kiss but just a peck on the cheek, a soft one pressed to the crown of her head, a little one against their knuckles as they hold hands.

It all sounds ridiculous and silly and way too high school. Nothing seems to work the same at uni. Everyone just seems to shag, hook up, kiss strangers they’ll never see again in the shadows of grimy clubs. Everything seems to happen when everyone’s drunk. Everything’s done out of lust rather than love. Everything is so short-term because you can’t plan for the long term if you wake up and don’t remember the night before.

A’whora loves uni, but she doesn’t like that.

Besides, she’s already done all that in high school anyway. Sixth form had been like a crash course in freshers’ week; if she wasn’t drinking in parks or going to house parties she was sneaking into nightclubs using a fake ID that even Stevie Wonder could’ve seen right through. She’d half-heartedly slept with boys and figured out she liked girls when a sleepover after a party took a turn. She’d tried smoking and she came to the conclusion that she didn’t like it enough to buy her own cigarettes, she’d tried mandy once and that was once too much for her. All of that has prepared her well for uni- she’s street smart and has her head screwed on (for the most part- she’s still testing her limits as far as alcohol’s concerned). But feeling like she’s feeling for Tayce is uncharted territory, and out of everything she’s already done and experienced A’whora finds it hard to believe there’s not an age limit on this sort of thing because it all feels more risky and dangerous than smoking roll-ups in a children’s playpark at one in the morning ever did.

A wayheyyy! from Lawrence cuts through her thoughts and she accepts the shot she’s holding out to her, wordlessly clinking it together with Lawrence’s and Ellie’s and slamming it back as if it’s some form of medicine she desperately needs.

“It’s so weird that you don’t do the whole lime and salt thing,” Ellie wrinkles her nose at her friend, who in turn punches one of her own tits with what seems to be pride.

“‘Cause I’m made of strong stuff, babes. Right, what’s the conclusion on this one? Does she fancy Tayce or no?”

“Surely this is a bathroom stall conversation?” A’whora pouts, annoyed that her feelings for Tayce have been brought back up.

As Ellie relays to Lawrence what she’d said to A’whora, A’whora momentarily wonders if she’s in control of anything in her life any more.

Lawrence nods when Ellie’s done. “Smart advice. ‘Cause it would make things awkward for the flat. ‘Magine trying to make a Pot Noodle in the middle of a live-action episode of Eastenders.”

A’whora screws her face up in confusion. “All episodes of Eastenders are live action?”

“Y’know what the fuck I mean,” Lawrence rolls her eyes in exasperation. “Well we’ve given you our blessing and basically we represent the whole country, so. Go for it.”

“Thanks, Nicola Sturgeon, good to know I have your approval,” A’whora smirks at her, amused. When some Becky Hill song comes on over the speakers she takes it as her cue to smooth down her skirt, flip her hair over her shoulder and rest her little shot glass back on the bar. “Right, we going to have a dance or what?”

As she takes her friends’ hands they all but strut over to the dancefloor, and A’whora can see Bimini and Tia pulling shapes that they probably think make them look mysterious and sexy but actually just make them look as drunk as they no doubt are. Before A’whora can push through the crowd, Lawrence tugs her and Ellie back a bit.

“Here, I think I’ve remembered something Tayce told me once, if this is of any use to you?” she begins.

All of A’whora’s nerve endings light up like one of those colourful optical fiber lamps she had when she was small. Her eyes have clearly flown open and her mouth’s dropped slack without her even having to try, so desperate is she for what Lawrence is about to tell her. Ellie’s beside her equally expectant and anticipative, and Lawrence laughs at the pair of them before she continues.

“It was the pair of us and Tia…Christ, when was it…cannae mind. Think you’d gone home for the weekend and Ellie was doing something wi’ Bims…anyway, coupla’ bottles of wine in and we start playing wee stupid games. We’re doing snog, marry, avoid and Tia gives her…fuck, cannae even remember. Let’s say it was Ellie, Bimini and you. Now I can’t remember what she said for the other two but…” Lawrence pauses dramatically, and A’whora is a hair’s breadth away from practically begging her for the information she’s taking so long to impart. “…she said she would marry you because then she’d get to shag you more than just once.”

A’whora doesn’t think her eyes can go any wider but she somehow manages it. She doesn’t really know how to react but Ellie’s doing enough screaming to suffice for the two of them.

“When the fuck were you gonna tell us that?! Fuck, I can’t believe you never told me that! When did this happen?!” Ellie practically screeches in her face.

“Telt you I cannae mind! Maybe like…a month ago? I don’t know,” Lawrence supplies unhelpfully. Usually A’whora would try to rip the piss out of the way her accent’s gone ten times more Braveheart than usual after her series of drinks, but all she can think about is what she’s been told and, well…she can’t help the butterflies in her heart and the way a satisfied, triumphant grin spreads slowly onto her face.

Ellie’s equally as excited beside her. She whacks A’whora on the arm as she squeals with enthusiasm. “See! Now we know she likes you too!”

A’whora feels as if she’s made of glitter and confetti as she spins around in the direction of the bar. Her heart gives a dip on its rollercoaster of emotions as she sees that Tayce has somehow caught the attention of a different girl- long, dark hair and a blue and orange outfit and a mouth that’s moving at about a mile a minute.

There’s a second before A’whora makes to turn away in disappointment when Tayce’s pupils suddenly flick over to rest on her. Tayce’s self-assured expression and body language seem to falter when she catches A’whora’s eye, and she shoots her a little smile that- if A’whora didn’t know the girl better- she’d say was shy.

“Now the challenge is actually getting a chance to talk to her,” A’whora pouts. Chatting up Tayce and maybe getting to fall into bed with her really isn’t a time-sensitive issue; it doesn’t need to happen tonight, but A’whora’s had a chaotic combination of alcohol that makes her think there’s really no time like the present and hey, maybe this is her one and only chance.

“Well, we can keep an eye on her and when she’s free, then that’s your chance,” Ellie smiles, supportive and excited.

“What chat-up line are you gonnae use? I’ve got a cracker you can have if you want,” Lawrence insists, and A’whora and Ellie share a doubtful look.

“Go on.”

“What did one haggis say to the other haggis?” Lawrence begins. Without giving the other girls a chance to interject, she finishes. “…’Gonnae shaggis?’ ”

“And on that note,” Ellie shakes her head and rolls her eyes, taking both of them by the hand and pulling them into the crowd to join their other friends.

It’s amazing how easy it is to forget about the object of her affection chatting to random girls on the other side of the room when Bimini’s grabbing her and almost launching her across the dancefloor with their euphoric pogo-ing along to each and every song that gets played. The five of them drunkenly bum-ba-ba, bum-ba-ba along to Head & Heart and cheer for Tia when she does Nicki’s rap in Swalla without even stopping for breath. A’whora laughs in confusion with the other girls as Lawrence and Ellie get way too excited, squealing and clutching each others’ hands when some clubland tune that’s apparently much bigger in Scotland than it is in the other three corners of the UK gets put on, the lyrics of which seem to consist solely of the words up-up-up and awayyy. Bimini and Lawrence collect more drinks from the bar and A’whora very nearly knocks Ellie’s out of her hand when Friday comes on and she punches the air.

And then Tayce is on her own.

A’whora’s heart almost siezes up with how fast it jolts into full-blown palpitations because this is the moment she can finally go over and talk to her, the chance to turn their friendship into maybe something more even if that something more is only a random hookup after a night out, but it only takes the time for her to shake Ellie’s arm and point in Tayce’s direction for her to see that, yet again, she’s been approached by someone tall and confident and stunning and everything that A’whora wishes Tayce thought about her.

Her face falls and Ellie snaps her fingers in her line of vision, forcing her to look at her and the motherly expression of tough love she’s wearing.

“Hey. When has anyone ever stopped you getting your own way?” she yells at her over the music, and A’whora laughs half in amusement and half in agreement. As she falls silent, Ellie jerks her head towards the bar. “Go get her, bitch.”

It might be the alcohol, but it hits A’whora with a ironically sobering clarity that Ellie’s right.

So she takes a breath in and struts confidently over to the bar, practically able to feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins (although that could well be the caffeine from the second Jaegerbomb she’s downed this evening with Bimini’s encouragement). She smooths down her skirt so the split runs up the front of her thigh and not the side, adjusts the neck of her top so it’s framing her chest the way she wants it to. She could be nervous but the combined alcohol she’s drunk so far this evening pushes that feeling to the back of her head, replacing it with all-consuming confidence that she can feel from the inside out. She looks good, better than good, and she knows she can flirt even though she’s never really tried to flirt with Tayce. Well, never intentionally.

Okay, that’s maybe a lie.

The realisation that she’s actually going through with this is enough to make her want to freeze to the spot but by some miracle she’s still walking forward until she’s three, two, one steps away from her flatmate and the girl at the bar with too much plastic surgery and hair the shade of a vomit-coloured highlighter pen. A’whora wedges her shoulder in between the pair of them, hears the girl give a little tut/sigh hybrid from behind her but A’whora’s not really interested in bickering with her, not when Tayce’s eyes have fallen on her and she’s looking at her, really looking at her with a little playful smile on her painted lips.

“Hey baby boo,” Tayce says by way of a greeting, and A’whora feels her heart melt just a little. She’s being adorable, but she’s not going to let that damage her confident, composed exterior. Until Tayce follows up by running a hand down her arm and lacing their fingers together. “I haven’t seen you all night, I missed you.”

With that, A’whora feels the little cocky smirk she’s wearing break out into a shy grin, one that she hopes doesn’t look as ridiculously goofy as it feels. “Well. Maybe you would’ve seen more of me if you hadn’t been playing Take Me Out with half the bloody girls in here.”

“Who, me?” Tayce gasps, clutching the gold chain around her neck and pretending to be affronted. A’whora doesn’t mean to roll her eyes but she clearly does, and the small giggle she draws out of Tayce as a result makes it almost worth it. The squeeze Tayce gives her hand turns that almost into a definitely, as does what Tayce follows up with. “You’re cute when you’re jealous, you know.”

“You’re cute…all the time,” A’whora claps back, wishing she had some sort of drink in her hand to press against her face as she feels her blush start to bloom across her cheeks.

“I know, babe, that’s why I’ve been getting my drinks bought for me all night,” Tayce winks.

If Awhora uses that as a signal to pull her bank card from her bra, that’s nobody’s business but her own. The way Tayce’s gaze flicks to her chest lights a match in her heart. “Well…let me buy you one and then you won’t have to miss me so much.”

Tayce’s awed smile spreads slowly onto her face and they agree on tequila shots, the phase of the evening where they were nursing their drinks left firmly in the dust as the bartender hands them a salt shaker, two little shot glasses and two wedges of lime. The way Tayce’s tongue slides over the side of her hand before she sprinkles the salt and the way their eyes meet as she licks it up makes A’whora’s mouth dry, so the tequila’s welcome for a split second before she remembers why she hates it, the flavour and sheer strength of the alcohol akin to being hit by a truck.  

As she grabs desperately for the lime like it’s an oxygen mask on a crash-landing plane, Tayce laughs and shakes her head pityingly. “You always end up ordering tequila and you always, always hate it.”

A’whora blinks as she composes herself, gives a little shiver of recovery. She cocks her head at Tayce inquisitively. “I didn’t know you remembered that.”

Tayce looks to the ground as she smiles, tucks a piece of her long hair behind her ear. It’s endearing and soft and it makes A’whora panic, so she presses her lips together and raises an eyebrow at Tayce questioningly. “So, how’d your little episode of Blind Date go anyway?“

"Gosh, you’re really pressed about this, aren’t you?” Tayce’s eyes are narrow as she smirks at her, and now it’s A'whora’s turn to look embarrassed. The soft laugh Tayce gives is reassuring so A'whora’s gaze drifts back up again and their eyes meet as she speaks again. “Well, there was, uh…blonde lady. Blonde lady with the muscles and the eyeliner. God, what was her name?”

“This is off to a flying start.”

“Kameron!” Tayce yells in her face as she remembers. It makes A’whora snort with laughter, something that’s probably wildly unattractive but she knows Tayce has seen her do it before. “And then there was, uh, Priyanka. I remember her name because she kept telling me every two minutes. That was a wild conversation.”

“Uh-huh. Who was the bitch I elbowed out the way?”

Tayce smirks at her, wobbles a little in her heels and steadies herself against the bar. “That was…Detox.”

“Radox?”

Tayce splutters. “Detox!”

“Should’ve called herself Botox, would’ve been nearer to the mark,” A’whora turns up her top lip. Tayce explodes in an outraged laugh beside her, clutches her wrist in a way that makes A’whora hope she won’t be able to feel her rapid pulse.

“Says Aurora Georgia Boyle, who asked for lip fillers for her eighteenth and was actually allowed to get them!”

“Don’t full name me, piece of shit!” A’whora gasps in mock-offence, shakes herself away from Tayce’s grip but finds her inexplicably nearer to her than she was before. She’s not necessarily complaining, though, because her whole left side is against Tayce’s right and there’s some form of other-worldly magnetism that seems to keep them pressed together. It makes her heart flutter so she tucks a section of hair behind her ear before she frowns. “I never told you that. How come you know that?”

“You did tell me! Back in freshers week! You just don’t remember,” Tayce giggles, poking her cheek with one acrylic nail. It should hurt more than it does. Maybe it does hurt and A’whora can’t feel it. She’s had a lot to drink.

It’s the alcohol she blames when she hooks an arm around Tayce’s waist, tilts her head and drops her volume to a murmur. “You seem to remember a lot of things about me.”

Tayce’s eyes widen just that little bit. “Well you’re a bit of an unforgettable person, really.”

Her words make A’whora’s heart light up so much that she can feel herself glowing from the inside out. She brings her other arm around Tayce in a tight hug, her hands joining at the small of her back, and Tayce mirrors her so they’re both anchoring each other. It’s hard for her to remember whether they’ve ever shared a hug like this before. It seems too intimate for friends, but A’whora doesn’t mind.

“Tayce.”

“Rory,” Tayce replies, mimicking her whine and the way she draws her name out. A’whora likes the nickname she gives her probably more than she should; she supposes it’s because only Tayce uses it and because it’s rooted in her actual given name.

A’whora pouts, squeezes Tayce’s waist. “I missed you tonight, you know.”

“Missed you too. Missed you so much,” Tayce murmurs back.

She’s already said it, A’whora knows she’s already said it, but with the way they’re both gazing at each other it seems to mean something more, something different. It’s ridiculous- they’re both drunk, and famously no good decisions have ever happened when two people have had this many assorted shots, but somehow it feels like all of this is just right.  

A’whora drops her head to rest it on Tayce’s shoulder and she feels her arms tighten around her in response. Her lips graze her neck as she murmurs against it. “Not leaving me again.”

There’s a pause where she can’t really see Tayce’s expression or how she’s reacted. Her heart freezes, and the terror and reality of having crossed the line between friendship and whatever the hell this is suddenly consumes her whole body. She’s relieved, then, when Tayce eventually mutters against the crown of her head.

“All yours, baby.”

And she presses a kiss to her hair. Just like A’whora’s been dreaming about for so long.

She feels giddy and dizzy with absolute euphoria, so it’s that she blames when she puts her lips against Tayce’s neck again and plants one, two, three little kisses there in quick succession.

“Tayce,” she whispers again. She doesn’t really know what she wants to say or how to say it, but she knows she doesn’t want to go back to the dancefloor, and she doesn’t want to be with their other friends. She just wants her and Tayce together for however long she’ll let it be that way, and she doesn’t even care about the busy bar or the drunk students that bump into them every so often or the stares from the rowdy group of rugby lads that would usually make her feel intimidated, but not when she’s with Tayce.

When she’s with Tayce everything seems a little bit better somehow, just by her being there.

So maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s the tequila, or maybe it’s the feeling of having Tayce’s arms around her that makes A’whora tilt her head back up again and meet Tayce’s waiting lips with her own. There’s none of the usual hesitation or awkward pause that comes with kissing someone new because really the amount of times A’whora’s imagined this, dreamt about it, thought about it in daydreams that completely unhook her from reality, it’s as if it’s happened before.

Nothing has prepared her for the real thing though. How Tayce brings a hand up to rest at her jaw and how the other stays placed against the bare skin of her back, warm and supportive. How the both of them sway a little, unsteady in their heels as if they’ve been knocked for six. How Tayce’s body is close against hers and A’whora pushes a hand in her hair in an attempt to somehow bring her even closer. How kissing Tayce leaves her breathtaken and satisfied yet somehow amplifies her feeling of longing, because the more she gives to her the more A’whora wants and with every second that Tayce’s lips are on hers she can only feel the heat that’s pooling in her stomach growing more and more intense.

When Tayce pulls away and A’whora can only catch her breath, she fixes her with a lazy, half-lidded smile that makes her insides turn to melted honey.

“That was nice,” she blinks, and she’s a second away from kicking herself- because, really?- when Tayce giggles softly under her breath. She brushes a little piece of A’whora’s hair off her face, and the gentleness of the action throws her a little. A’whora brings her arms up to loop around her neck, and she leans in close again. “I wanna do it again.”

“I want to do…a lot of things. With you,” Tayce says, casual and chill as if her words haven’t just sent A’whora up in flames.

“Like…?”

“Like…maybe come back to mine and I’ll show you, baby.”

The whole moment’s perfect enough for A’whora to almost overlook the blunder Tayce has just made, but her nature dictates that she can’t let her get away with it. “We…we live together.”

Tayce lets out a snort, bumps her forehead against A’whora’s as she despairs of herself. “Right. Well…we gonna go home, then?”

A’whora doesn’t need to be asked twice. She laces her fingers in Tayce’s, resolves to text the others to tell them they’ve left, and stumbles towards the exit with her heart thumping wildly in her chest.

When she blinks, she’s tired, she’s in bed, it’s bright, and she’s confused as all hell.

The headache hits her like a sledgehammer to the face and she blinks slowly and heavily, adjusting herself to her surroundings. She’s in her own room, she can tell that much from the photos of her and her friends from back home on the cupboard and the fairy lights on her desk that aren’t switched on. Her mouth feels like a badger’s shat in it and her eyes are all achey, and as she throws an arm up to rub at them she’s surprised when she doesn’t see any leftover eye makeup on the back of her hand.

“The kraken awakes.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” A’whora flinches, her head whipping over to the foot of her bed to find Tayce sitting cross-legged leaning against the wall, her phone in her hand. She’s wearing her old leggings with the bleach stains and the hole at the calf, and a purple tie-dye sweatshirt that’s a size too big for her. Her hair’s loose and framing her face and the only makeup she has on is the little scattering of eyeliner that’s hanging tight to her lash line and has managed to escape the makeup wipe.

She looks disarmed and shy. There’s something comforting about it, because A’whora feels confused and completely on the back foot and she has no idea what’s going on. But there’s a warm smile on her face and it meets her eyes, so despite her disorientation A’whora feels safe.

“How long’ve you been there? Were you just watching me sleep like some…creepy Twilight vampire?” A’whora groans, sitting up and leaning forward and taking a deep breath as if it’ll make her headache go away.

Tayce laughs in a way that makes A’whora think the question’s flustered her, but she’s not sure. “The others went to get breakfast. I said I’d stay with you. Didn’t want you to be on your own feeling like shit and maybe having the fear.”

“I am having the fear. I don’t even know how we got home.”

The way Tayce’s face drops in what looks like abject panic makes her wonder what did happen last night. “Wait. What do you actually remember?”

A’whora’s heart is racing as she scans her mind for memories. Pres, club, drinks, booth. Tayce talking to some girl. Dancefloor. Tayce. Talking to Tayce. Kissing Tayce-

Kissing Tayce.

“Oh, no,” A’whora blurts out involuntarily. Her eyes are wide as she looks at Tayce. “We…did we? We did?”

Tayce’s face seems to relax as she bursts out laughing, and it all comes flooding back to A’whora and hits her like a train. Everything that had seemed like such a good idea last night now seems like the most awkward situation in the world now that Tayce is here, on her bed, and they’re both sober.

“Tayce, no,” A’whora whines, putting her head in her hands as her friend keeps laughing. “No! That’s so awkward. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it was a good kiss,” Tayce smiles back, somehow both coy and self-assured at once. It’s her reaction that causes a new wave of cold horror to crash against A’whora, a wave on a rock.

“Oh, Jesus. Did anything else happen?”

Tayce grows animated. “God, yeah, we had the best sex ever. Sixty-nines, scissoring, we got the vibrators involved. It was bloody lush.”

A’whora’s too hungover to realise that Tayce is winding her up until she screeches with laughter right in her horrified face. “Oh my God, Rory, your face! No I’m joking, ‘course I’m joking.”

“Thank fuck,” A’whora sighs a world-weary sigh of relief, throwing herself back down against her pillows and immediately regretting it for the way her brain ricochets against her skull and makes her headache ten times worse. “So what did happen?”

“Well, you wanted to walk back because you wanted to look at the stars, so when we got to the square we lay down and looked at the stars for a bit. And then I wanted to go get chips and cheese but you were dragging me back home because you were so horny,” Tayce looks at her pointedly, and A’whora groans with embarrassment, grabbing her pillow and shoving it over her face. “But then after we got up the stairs and in through the door you said you felt sick, so I then had to hold your hair back while you threw up last night’s pasta bake and what looked to be about fifty different kinds of alcohol into the toilet bowl. Then I had to put you to bed and stay up half the night making sure you didn’t choke on your own tongue while you were asleep. Best one night stand I’ve ever had.”

When A’whora takes the pillow away, Tayce winks at her. She feels like putting the pillow back.

“I’m honestly so sorry,” she pouts. She is sorry. Part of her wishes she could at least properly remember what it had felt like to kiss Tayce. All the memories of the moment are much too paper-thin and flimsy, butterfly wings that’re all too rapidly flying away. Tayce isn’t giving her any cause to be embarrassed, but A’whora is anyway.

So she’s not sure what Tayce is going to say when she leans forward, takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. “Go brush your teeth.”

A’whora thinks she might be the first person in history to have cause of death: cringe written on her birth certificate. “You’re really adding insult to injury, aren’t you? Telling me all the embarrassing shit I did while I was off my face and then basically telling me my breath smells like dog shite.”

Tayce laughs as she shakes her head. “Just go do it, idiot.”

She’s never been one to say no to Tayce so A’whora drags herself out from under her duvet towards the little sink tucked away in the corner of her room, the cold chill of the freezing air hitting her bare arms and her feet and rendering her even more miserable. It’s only when she’s halfway through scrubbing at her teeth when it registers that she’s even got pyjamas on.

“Did you have to put my pyjamas on for me?” A’whora asks around her toothbrush, realising all too late that trying to talk through a mouthful of toothpaste is probably as unattractive as vomiting into the toilet bowl.

(The toilet bowl is definitely worse, but she’s just thinking this to help herself feel better.)

Tayce looks up from her phone and raises an eyebrow. “Nah, you managed to do it yourself. You did make me watch you put your stick-on bra on your forehead, though. Apparently it was the funniest thing in the world.”

A’whora just groans as she turns back to the sink, spitting out the toothpaste and following it with mouthwash just to completely clean her mouth of the various alcoholic sins of the night before. She crawls back into bed with a wearied sigh, and she’s surprised when Tayce falls on her side and scoots up beside her, laying on her side and facing her so their noses are almost touching. A’whora feels her heart lift and her pulse speed up, and it’s not helped by the way Tayce reaches out and tucks a little piece of hair behind her ear.  

Tayce trails her fingers across to cup A’whora’s cheek, and she’s almost whispering when she speaks. “Thank God. Just wanted to do this again.”

When she leans in A’whora shuts her eyes, meets her halfway, and feels every cell in her body electrify when their lips touch. If kissing Tayce in a club when they were both drunk was good, then kissing her hungover in bed is somehow even better, and A’whora’s mystified at the way her headache seems to completely disappear with every second she spends with her lips on Tayce’s, kissing her gently and softly as if they’ve got all the time in the world. Tayce smells of everything comforting- Tresemme shampoo, snow fairy shower gel, the fabric softener she uses that’s way too expensive for a student budget. Fresh and clean and somehow new. It’s the simplest heaven A’whora has ever experienced.

Tayce pulls away and they both giggle, embarrassment and awkwardness gone now that the elephant in the room’s been addressed. A’whora only realises Tayce has taken her hand when she lets it go, pushes herself off the mattress and crosses the room towards the door.

“We should do that again some time,” she smiles wickedly by way of a goodbye, and A’whora can only nod bashfully in reply and agreement. Tayce has given her hope to hold on to, and she knows she’s going to cling to it ridiculously until whatever this is happens again.

She can’t wait.

Just as Tayce opens her door and A’whora resigns herself to her leaving, she lifts her head off the pillow when she hears her flatmate’s voice again as she disappears into the hallway.

“And go have a shower. You smell like tequila.”

[toenialls]

hi ! here’s a fic rec i made bc what better time to read fics than a quarantine. i’ve ordered them below from longest to shortest. :) 

these are all the fics i’ve read/re-read this quarantine

hiding place by alivingfire  @alivingfire (365k)

louis never wanted a soulmate, didn’t really care for the whole Bonding thing at all, really. enter harry styles, who’s wanted to be Bonded for as long as he could remember. with one fateful meeting in a x factor bathroom, louis gets a dagger on his arm and the realization that just because harry is his soulmate doesn’t mean it’s mutual.

from the x factor house to madison square garden, from the fountain studios stage to stadiums across the world, louis has to learn to love without losing himself completely, because someday his best friend will Bond to someone and replace louis as the center of his universe. meanwhile, harry begins to think that maybe fate doesn’t actually know what it’s doing after all, because his other half has clearly been right in front of him the whole time. all he has to do now is convince louis to give them a chance.

or, the canon compliant harry and louis love story from the very beginning, where the only difference is that the love between them is literally written on their skin, and there’s only so much they can hide.

relief next to me  by dolce_piccante @haydolce (333k)

au- what happens when a baker and a graphic designer meet via a very specific craigslist post? fate, friendship, food, and maybe more. 

young & beautiful by velvetoscar @mizzwilde (227k)

louis, to his horror, attends an elitist university in which the name zayn malik means something, niall horan doesn’t stop talking, there are pianos everywhere, and harry styles, only son o a drug-addled, clinically insane ex-rocker, has a perfect smile and empty eyes 

now in a minute by thealmightyavocado @avocadolouie​ (150k)

13 feels like yesterday for many people, but for louis it actually was.more than anything in the world, louis tomlinson dreams of growing up. simply skipping over all the awkward embarrassing years of teenage existence and getting on with life, real life.

so when thirteen-year-old louis wakes up in the body of his thirty-year-old self, he expected his adult life to be picture perfect. and maybe it is. he has it all…or so it seems. 

except his favorite person and lifelong best mate, harry styles, is totally missing from the equation and louis doesn’t understand why. he has a lot of catching up to do and as adult life turns out to be more than what he bargained for, louis can’t help wondering why a life that seemed so perfect, feel so empty.

or, the 13 going on 30 au that should have been done years ago.

walk that mile by purpledaisy (149k)

harry stares at him, the line of his jaw standing out scarily. “i wanted to get the most out of this trip so i planned it carefully.” his voice is low and steady and somehow that’s worse than when he was yelling. “so far, you’ve put your sticky fingers on everything i’ve tried to do.”

"sticky fingers?“ louis repeats. offended. “are you saying it’s my fault you got stung by a bee? had you been alone you would have gotten halfway to the dotty diner and ran the car off the road because of an allergic reaction, so don’t go blaming me.”

"polk-a-dot drive in,“ harry spits before getting out of the car. he slams the door shut with a deafening reverb and louis rolls his eyes.

or, a route 66 au where falling in love was never part of the plan.

own the scars by crinkle-eyed-boo @crinkle-eyed-boo​ (144k)

“but i don’t belong here,” louis insists.

"why do you say that?“ james asks.

"these people are all drug addicts and alcoholics,” louis shrugs. something sparks in james’ eyes. “and you’re not?”

louis has never felt like he was good enough: for his stepdad, for his life-long best friends, for the life he’s supposed to want. after an accident that nearly costs him his life, louis’ parents send him to rehab where he’s forced to make his own decisions. on the long and difficult road to recovery, louis must confront the truths he;s been avoiding about his future, his relationships, and his sense of self-worth. because before he can love anyone else, he’s got to learn how to love himself first.

wear it like a crown by zarah5 @zarahdetand​ (141k)

au- as a part of a team of fixers hired to handle a gay scandal in buckingham palace, louis expects prince harry to be a lot of things –  most notable a royally spoilt brat. never mind that the very same prince harry used to star in quite a number of louis’ teenage fantasies.

unbelievers by isthatyoularry @isthatyoularry​ (136k)

it’s louis’ senior year, and he’s dead set on doing it right. however, along with his pair of cleats, a healthy dose of sarcasm and his ridiculous best friend, he’s also got a complicated family, a terrifying uncertain future, and a mortal enemy making his life that much worse. mortal enemies “with benefits” was not exactly the plan.

or, the one where louis and harry definitely aren’t friends, and football is everything

empty skies by green_feelings (134k)

for three years, harry has been running from his past. now, he is moving to london and pledges to fulfill only his dream – making it big in the music industry. not everyone has a place, though, and the competition is tough. as is his past catching up to him.

louis is part of the biggest boy band of the world, and getting there meant a lo to hard work, as well as sacrificing parts of his heart and soul. he’s still happy. maybe not as happy as he could be, but who is he to complain?

featuring perrie as harry’s adorable flatmate, niall as his manager, and liam and zayn as louis’ bandmates.

love is a rebellious bird by 100precentsassy @100percentsassy​ gloria_andrews @gloriaandrews​ (134k)

au. in which the boys still make music. louis is the concertmaster of the london symphony orchestra, harry is the new! and exciting! interim conductor / ex-cello prodigy who “has made mozart cool again” according to esquire magazine (louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and niall is the best. zayn and liam are around too.

don’t hum Bolero

wild love by  purpledaisy (130k)

“good,” julia says, clearly pleased to have them both uncomfortable and unable to look at each other. “now, i only have one more question before you can go. what are you planning to do when this experiment ruins your friendship?“

 "we said we’d stay friends no matter what,” harry says smoothly his chin lifting in defense.

"that was our one thing going into it,“ louis agrees. “stay friends no matter what.”

julia raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow, “that’s all fine and good. but i hope you realize your emotions aren’t going to realize this is an experiment in the end. if one of you falls for the other and finds out those feelings are not reciprocated you’re not going to be able to laugh it off as a social experiment. i’m not saying you shouldn’t do this, i’m just hoping you’ve considered all of the possible outcomes.”

or, two friends try to date each other for forty days. it’s supposed to be fun until emotions make it complicated

got the sunshine on my shoulders by hattalove @hattalove​ (124k)

five years ago, harry styles left his tiny home town to make it big as a recording artist, he didn’t have much regard for what he left behind– a life, a family, a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone.

now, harry has everything he could possibly want. he’s rich, famous, and adored by everyone he meets, including his boyfriend. but when said boyfriend proposes to him, he’s forced to face the uncomfortable facts of his past– and louis, who’s spent the last five years returning every set of divorce papers harry sent him.

or, au based on the movie sweet home alabama.

california sold by isthatyoularry (123k)

notoriously closeted boyband member harry styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile louis, as his best friend, is back home in manchester living the typical life of a 24 year old. when harry needs louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

or, a fake-relationship au between two lifelong best friends.

the finish line (is a good place for us to start) by loadedgunn @loaded-gunn (122k)

louis tomlinson, one-time formula i world champion, is looking forward to the 2013 season, he’s got zayn in his garage and liam in his ear, he’s got cowell racing backing him despite former indiscretions, he’s got experience and the best race car out there. not to mention he’s the only racer they have, after oliver dropped out late last year.

it hasn’t occured to him that oliver would have to be replaced by february. that is, until he finds himself at a party celebrating harry styles leaving ferarri for cowell. harry hotshot styles, who broke a record last year and is probably looking to make a big splash. harry styles, who is talented and somewhat intimidating. harry styles, who left ferarri for reasons unknown and seems kind of lonely and harmless in person. lonely, harmless, hot as fuck. whatever.

the first thing louis does is take him under his wing. from there it’s nine months of slow-burning romance, the past catching up to them, turning into the human puppy pile that is ot5 and a lot of feelings until, of course, reaching the finish line.  

tired tired sea by mediawhore @mediawhorefics​ (113k)

as a b&b owner on the most remote of all the british isles, louis tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sol companions. until one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

here in the afterglow by fondleeds @fondleeds​ (88k)

"if you hadn’t noticed, i don’t have many friends,” louis whispers, the blossom of insecurity in his stomach unfurling and clawing his way into his throat.

harry is silent for a long time, and then he speaks; a soft, slow uncurl that makes louis’ stomach shake. “i’ll be your friend.”

or, 1970’s au. in a tiny town in idaho, louis’ life changed forever by the arrival of a curious stranger.

chasing empty spaces by domesticharry @domestic-harry​ (79k)

the year is 1934 and harry styles was to inherit the largest tobacco firm in the south. his parents have picked out the “perfect” girl for him to marry and he has the privilege of receiving the highest education possible. the problem was, harry hadn’t realized that he didn’t want nay part of the future until he met a mechanic named, louis tomlinson.

don’t want shelter by kingsofeverything @kingsofeverything​ (76k)

louis and harry have known each other all their lives. friends as children, they danced around each other as teenagers, and have spent the last twenty-five years either screaming at each other or not speaking at all. except for that one time ten years ago...

when hurricane nicole threatens the coast, they end up stuck together in their families' old vacation home that they begrudgingly co-own.

during the storm, and in the months after, they’re both forced to reevaluate their history and what they mean to each other

money moves by mmaree @zqua1d​ (74k)

"i’ll cut straight to the chase,“ liam announces. he leans forward, and zayn is met with steely eyes and steepled fingers. "i’m willing to offer you fifty grand if you’ll enter into a small…partnership with me. this would be in addition to your salary at payne innovations, of course. think of it as a bonus.”

zayn narrow his eyes. “what kind of partnership?”

"a fake engagement.“

"oh,” zayn says, relived it’s nothing illegal. “wait–what?”

“a fake engagement,” his boss repeats slowly, as if he’s convinced zayn’s comprehension skills are significantly lacking. “for six months. maybe less if i can pull it off sooner but don’t worry– you’ll be paid the full sum regardless of how long it takes.”

zayn’s suspicious, and he doesn’t even know why. there’s nothing to be suspicious of because, clearly, liam’s lost the plot. zayn’s having a conversation with a complete nutter. there’s no other reasonable explanation.

he clears his throat, searches liam’s eyes for a sign he’s taking the piss. “how long what takes?”

a smile plays at liam’s lips. “for me to be hired as the cto at titan technologies.”

to the ends of the earth by stylinsoncity @aliensingucci​ (68k)

during a yearlong hiatus, louis visits harry at his cabin in idaho, where long-buried feelings ignite like the fire keeping them warm.

lend me your hand by quickedween (63k)

society has long since decided that the soulmarks everyone is born with are entirely unfashionable. they’re just another way for people of a lower class to scam their way into marrying above their station.

lord louis tomlinson viscount loring, on the other hand, has always believed that he will find his soulmate one day. despite preparing for a match his whole life, he is entirely unprepared for the arrival of gemma styles’ younger brother.

harry styles has been travelling and away from society for over a year. coming back, he intends to spend time with his sister, and slowly reacquaint himself with life in town. he doesn’t need to wait around for a soulmark to determine how his life will play out.

small doses (loving you it’s explosive) by quickedween (40k)

louis tomlinson finds himself at vitality fitness to try and turn his life around after having left his cheating boyfriends of four years. the gym’s owner, liam, quickly becomes a good friend but his right hand man is rude and dismissive from the get-go.

louis and harry continue to clash all while harry is trying to move his way up the ranks in manchester’s amateur boxing circuit, but they can’t seem to stay away from each other.

learning to eat by photo41 (28k)

celebrity chef louis tomlinson has a problem, he’s opening his first restaurant in 9 week . and he has yet to hire a pastry chef- apparently people think he’s “standoffish” and “rude” and “quick to temper” . whatever. he ends u saddled with an annoying, happy-go-lucky rookie who also happens to be obnoxiously good looking. his tv presenter and pop star friends only add to the drama, and for fucks sake would everyone please stop quoting julia child?!

these roads we stumble down  by onewasturning @onewasturning​ (18k)

he’s completely drenched, not one milimetre of him covered in rain, and the old sheepskin cover over the seat is probably going to stink afterwards from the damp. but even with what seems to be a constant tremor shaking his body, brown hair plastered to his forehead, and a blue tinge to his skin, he’s still probably the most gorgeous person that harry has ever seen.

or, harry picks up a hitchhiker in oxford, and it’s a long ride to glasgow.

[change-the-world-someday]

A Comprehensive List

Okok, provided The Eye from TMA actually existed, here’s a list of all the shit it’s probably seen me do. ⚠️TW - Depression, anxiety, sh, drugged⚠️ All bullet points with TW will be marked with ⚠️.

Sing my heart out to Panic! At The Disco.

Laugh at Merlin’s shit CGI with my buddy Aran.

Eat a whole duck chow mien, twenty dumplings, 1/4 aromatic duck with pancakes and salad, and a bag of chips (fries) to myself.

Cry trying to write my contract law essay.

Cry trying to write my constitutional law essay.

Actively lie to my flatmates about who called security because they had friends round in the lockdown.

⚠️Have two panic attacks one after the other due to uni work⚠️.

Stutter my way through a presentation, only to be told it’s the best one my lecturer’s heard (thanks John).

Watch all three seasons of Hannibal over two days in bed.

Get so drunk with my friends on zoom that I fall off my chair.

Give the following presentation - Men that could get it but the age gap gets increasingly concerning.

Play and 100% complete Assassin’s Creed Black Flag in a week.

⚠️Seen John the lecturer take me to hospital after I was drugged by one of my flatmates the night before⚠️.

Draw the moon at four in the morning because that’s the only time it was clear for my Solar System module.

Fall over at karate because my legs didn’t catch me (after being assured they would) after completing a high jump kick.

Cry watching Mamma Mia with the girls next door because I couldn’t draw a graph. 

Have no control over what I say with a bad bout of tics and tell my friend that the hand sanitiser ‘smelt like her nan’s fanny’.

Eat two tubs of ice cream by myself.

Be sick into a half-full Doritos bag.

⚠️Cry trying to get out of bed and Aran bringing me food when I didn’t have the energy to look after myself⚠️

Fall asleep on a sofa in college after accidentally taking too much paracetamol.

Cry after hearing my therapist tell me he cares about me.

Did I mention crying? Bc I cry a lot. 

Call multiple fictional characters bastards.

Dance along to the Good Omens ringtone instead of answering my phone.

Read two books in a day.

Not read a book in three months.

⚠️My friend helping me patch myself up after a bad night⚠️

Freak out after a friend and I were followed by a cult around campus.

Exclusively sing ‘big boy man’ for about an hour bc it was the only sound in my brain.

Updates when I can think of them. 

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

Well... All Right PT. 2

anonymous said: I know you said you didn’t know much about the Beatles but, I was wondering if you could write a Younger John Lennon imagine where the reader visits him wherever and she’s completely smashed and talking nonsense but is super sweet and he just takes care of her and it’s fluffy? Please and thank you!!

Read PT. 1 here

(a/n: i decided to make this a continuation of the last John Lennon imagine I wrote bc it works w the timeline and it’s kinda cute IDK anyways here u go here’s drunk reader and sweet caring john enjoy)

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” John called out as he pulled one of his wrinkled, dirty button ups on, trying his best to look at least not completely asleep as he stormed towards the door. Someone was ringing the doorbell incessantly. His flatmate was out, but he was sure the paper thin walls did nothing to hide the shrieking ring of the bell as it was pressed over, and over, and over. “Ever heard of knocking, or fucking off-“

He swung open the door to find you standing there, looking positively trashed but undeniably cute wrapped up in his jacket that you’d ended up with after your first date a few nights ago. He’d left your dorm later that night, once you’d dried off completely, and had conveniently left both his hat and his jacket near the door. He’d secretly done it to see if you would show up to class in the duo, but hadn’t seen a thing out of you until just now. And damn it, you looked adorable in his green jacket and black hat. If he didn’t end up asking you out properly, he wondered if he should even ask for them back, knowing you looked so good in them.

Now, you’d gone out and partied with a few friends down the street in his jacket and hat, knowing they were a bit too big for you but also not caring too much. When you remembered that John had mentioned he lived in this small flat complex, you’d managed to pull his exact address out of one of his friends at the party and promptly ditched it, taking a bottle of gin with you that was now alarmingly empty and clutched in your hand tightly.

At the sight of his obvious bedhead and tired eyes, you sprang to life, eyes glossy but bright and smile beaming as you lurched forward, wrapping your arms around John and clinging to the poor man for dear life. “Johnny Boy!” you slurred, giggling to yourself and pressing your already warm cheek to his chest, appreciating the intermingling of your body heats.

“Y/N? What’s gotten into you?” he questioned, laughing a bit before hesitantly wrapping an arm around you, pulling you inside with him and closing the door. The chilly cap of the gin bottle pressed into his back as you pulled him closer, and he shivered a bit at the sharp twang of cold it brought to his skin. “So that’s what got into you.”

“I was bored at the party, and then I saw some of your friends that I see you on campus with, and they told me you live here, and so I decided-“ you paused, hiccupping and giggling a bit at how deliriously drunk you were before continuing- “I decided to come see you and bring you your hat, but I think I’ll keep the jacket because it’s nice and smells like you and-“

“You are plastered,” John interrupted, stating the obvious, and you snickered at his amused tone of voice before letting go of him to stumble into his flat, immediately going for the bedrooms. “Hey, hey, my bedroom is my fortress!” he called after you, failing to stop you before you burst into his roommate’s bedroom. “This is not my fortress, though,” he muttered, wrapping an arm around your waist and quickly pulling you out of the room before shutting the door again. “Privacy, little one.”

When his hand went to pat the top of your head, you swung your own at it and smacked him away, giving him as mean of a look as you could muster before you noticed a partially open door just across the hallway – John’s room. Ducking out of his arms, you started crawling to his room, the gin bottle thankfully closed as it clattered to the floor. Picking it up, John resigned to letting you do what you wished and just following instead, shaking his head and sighing.

“At least take off your shoes before you crawl into bed- nevermind,” he sighed when you were already under the covers, probably muddying his sheets beyond repair. “Just take them off anyways, I guess.” Smiling drunkenly up at him, you pulled your shoes off clumsily before dropping them to the floor next to the bed, giggling when John sent you a playfully dismayed look. “Can I get you a glass of water, miss?”

“Ohh, you’re so sweet,” you whined as you pulled the covers up to your chin, grinning out at him. “Please and thank you with a cherry on top… or something. And pizza! Boy, I’m hungry.” And you were off again, throwing the covers to the floor and revealing that you’d actually managed to avoid making much of a mess as you stumbled to your feet, holding onto his arm to steady yourself before smiling bashfully. “I’m a bit drunk, I think.”

“You think?” he teased, tucking a stray hair behind your ear and grinning down at you before nodding towards the kitchen. “C’mon, let’s get you something to eat so you’re not regretting it in the morning.”

“You’re such a good person,” you gushed as you leaned fully against him, letting him half-lead, half-carry you to the kitchen, where you sat down on the floor cross-legged and smiled toothily up at him, hiccupping once again. “Everyone at college thinks you’re a big goof with no common sense, but I see the real you, man. I see how nice you are. Goofs don’t make drunk witches food at…. What time is it?”

“You’re far from a witch. And it’s 2 am, love,” he reminded you, starting to pull out some peanut butter and jelly to make you a few sandwiches. He didn’t have much to eat, so he made a mental note to go grocery shopping tomorrow if he was going to have you over here like this more often. Not that he minded. “Strawberry or grape jam?”

“Grape, are you kidding me?” you scoffed loudly, acting appalled that he’d even suggest strawberry jam in your presence. “What kind of a man are you, after all? Maybe I’m at the wrong guy’s apartment, I thought I was with this cute, smart brunette guy who had a good head on his shoulders, not this- this…. strawberry jam lover’s house!” After crawling to your feet, you sighed and let your head loll back, deciding against walking to the door in indignation. “Too far. M’drunk.”

“Sit back down,” he commanded gently, and you obliged as you slid back down to your cross-legged position, closing your eyes so the room would stop spinning. John’s voice was the only thing grounding you, and you latched onto it as he began speaking again, hanging on to his every word. “We have class tomorrow at 8 but I’m assuming you’re skipping now too?”

“Yup,” you replied loudly, popping the p and grinning when you heard John’s laugh, so pure, rising from a throaty chuckle to a higher-register laugh. He then crouched down next to you with a sandwich and a glass of water, raising an eyebrow when your eyes fluttered open and met his gaze. “You’re so wonderful,” you murmured, suddenly overwhelmed with so much emotion that a tear came to your eye as you gratefully took the sandwich and water, sniffling a bit.

“Aw, no, why are you crying, sweetheart?” he worried, speaking gently as he reached out to brush your hair back and make you look at him. “Don’t cry, you’ll make me cry too.” He then pulled a funny face, pretending to cry with you and pouting his lips in an attempt to make you laugh.

That only made you cry harder, taking a bite of the sandwich as tears began to roll down your face, sobbing in the midst of eating probably one of the best PB&Js you’d ever had – or maybe it was the alcohol talking. As he sat down next to you, he let you rest your head on his shoulder and you bawled your eyes out as you ate the sandwich, such a mess that you’d probably regret it thoroughly in the morning if you remembered. But again, he didn’t mind, only amused at how genuinely emotionally open you were with a bit of gin in you.

Also, he couldn’t help but be a bit partial towards you. He was quite fond of you, so your antics were less annoying than they’d be with someone who he didn’t fancy. He’d decided he liked you quite a bit after you had the best conversation he’d had, well, ever, the other night, talking about everything under the moon, on the moon, and past the moon. You were intelligent, astoundingly so, and had quite an interesting take on religion and politics that made him want to get more active than he currently was in his relatively sheltered middle-class life. He could be ignorant if he wanted to, but what good did that do when he had the most passionate, intellectual girl on his mind, and, well, on his shoulder, crying her eyes out about him?

When you were done with the sandwich, you did your best to stave off the tears as you sipped at the water, still sniveling and whimpering ever so often and keeping your head on his shoulder. “You going to be alright, love?” he mumbled, resting his head on yours and chuckling a bit when you shook your head. “How about we get one more glass of water in you and then we can sail off to dreamland, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you mumbled, sounding immensely sad, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud at how pitiful you sounded. You were going to be quite sore in the morning, he could already tell. But at least the water would help with the dehydration that would set in around the time class started without you two. “John, I’m so sad about Buddy.”

“Buddy?” he asked, lifting his head so he could look down at you in confusion. Was that a friend, a pet of sorts? A boyfriend he’d not known about? “Who’s Buddy?”

“Buddy Holly, you bloody git,” you moaned unhappily, sitting up to finish off your water before sighing and clumsily handing the cup over to him. “M’sorry. I didn’t mean it. You’re not daft, you’re so wonderful. I don’t deserve your help right now. I think I’ll just go.” Using the counter to pull yourself to your feet, you stood still and leaned on the counter to steady yourself, biting your lip before starting to stumble for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, following and sitting the cup on the counter as he blocked you from leaving the kitchen. “You’re not walking anywhere like this, sweets, you’ll catch your death or get kidnapped, one of the two.” Wrapping his arm around your waist, he managed to toss you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, where you hung like dead weight as he got another glass of water with his free hand.

“Let them take me. I’ll cry so much they’ll get annoyed and kick me out anyways,” you protested weakly, already falling asleep at the intoxicatingly relaxing smell of John’s cologne on his shirt. “M’damn tired, Lenny. Can I sleep in your bed with you? I promise I won’t try to cuddle – unless you want to. You’re really warm. And smell good.”

Chuckling at the last part, he carried you down the hallway, sitting down the glass of water on his nightstand once he reached his room and helping you sit down on the bed. “Can’t sleep in that dress, s’not made for sleeping.”

“Heh. Snot,” you laughed sleepily, your eyes fluttering dangerously as you fell back on the bed, resting an arm over your eyes. “That’s funny.”             Shaking his head as he grabbed you some pajamas, he managed to slide some sweatpants on you as you lay there like a limp ragdoll and let him dress you. However, he refused to take your dress off, letting you do the honors and promising to look only if you needed help changing into the shirt. “Thank you for the shirt, Lenny. You can look now.”

You’d surprisingly managed to pull your dress off and make your way into the shirt, and now you were reaching out for him, sprawled out across the bed. “Drink your water first,” he chastised gently, and you shot him an annoyed look under rapidly heavying eyelids before chugging half of the glass, sitting the rest back on the stand noisily. “Good girl.”

“I’m not a pet,” you mumbled, falling back to the bed and grumbling incoherently between hiccups. John managed to squeeze in next to you, pulling the covers over the both of you, and for a moment, he had no clue what to do with his hands. As much as he wanted to wrap his arms around you and drift off to sleep, he had no idea whether drunk you would be elated to cuddle with him, or slap him because of the strawberry jam thing. “Why aren’t we cuddling?” you asked aloud, John immediately snapping out of his thoughts and laughing as he realized you’d already made the decision for him.

“Give a man a moment to breathe,” he teased, reaching out and wrapping his arms around your waist as you cuddled back into him, quickly getting comfortable. Already feeling the effects of sleep quickly threatening to take him out, he gave your arm a quick rub before kissing the back of your head. “Goodnight.”

But you were already out cold, snoring softly and garnering an amused chuckle out of him before he, too, dozed off. That left him practically alone once again, so he did the only thing he could do with your body weighing down on his arm, making it fall asleep and tingle – he fell asleep too.

And he slept good. So good, that he nearly didn’t feel you crawling out of bed, scrambling to find the bathroom at 7:55. Nearly.

As you left, he slowly pulled out of his groggy state, groaning softly and trying to put two and two together. Nothing really clicked until he saw the half-drank water on his nightstand, and it all shifted into place once his bleary gaze came to rest on your shoes laying haphazardly next to the bed. “Aw, shit, poor thing,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes as he threw his legs over the side of the bed to the sound of you emptying the contents of your stomach in the next room. Grabbing the water, he padded out into the hallway and down to the toilet, slowly pushing open the door to find you crouched over the toilet, miserable and embarrassed and disoriented.

“Oh my God, it’s you,” you mumbled when you peeked through your hair to see him, immediately casting your eyes downward again as the room began to spin. “I wondered whose apartment I was in.” Sniffling, you mumbled a thank you as he wordlessly sat the water down on the chilly tile next to you, his hand grazing over your wrist and snatching one of the hair ties there before using it to pull your hair back up out of your face. He’d done it before for a few girlfriends and friends alike, so it was like second nature to him as he successfully gathered your hair into a bun, then sat behind you and rested against the wall.

“Good morning. Fancy some breakfast?” Groaning softly, your stomach thoroughly disagreed with the thought and he grimaced as you continued to empty what was left of your stomach, thankful that he’d gotten your hair out of the mix when you finally gave up, using the water to gargle and rinse your mouth before taking a drink and sitting back. You found his chest behind you, weakly slumping between his legs and resting the side of your face against his torso as you felt absolutely drained. “No more gin for you, eh?”

“Jesus, no,” you muttered, wrapping your arms around his torso and whining softly as you recalled approximately how much you’d drank. “Did I…. smack you? I’m so sorry.”

“Just my hand. Hurt like hell, though,” he chuckled, reaching up to rub your arm and doing his best to soothe you as he looked at his watch. 7:59. “Oh my, if we don’t hurry, we’re going to be late! Wouldn’t professor love that, his favorite pupil and the bane of his existence skipping together?”

Holding up his watch for you to see, you watched it change to 8 and let out a weak laugh, shaking your head. “Oh, he can fuck off. Hope it eats him alive.” Your eyes closed again and you huffed softly, almost dozing off at the relaxing feeling of John’s touch on your arm, rubbing methodically and making you feel not as shitty, surprisingly. “Thanks for not kicking me out, Lenny.”

“Me? Thanks for not kicking me out when you found out I like strawberry jam.”

“Ew! I’ve changed my mind, maybe I should have smacked you.”

tagging @strawberryfields-forever bc it’s technically a continuation of the request they sent in hehe but otherwise -

message me/reply to this if you want to be added to the beatles taglist! REQUESTS CLOSED

[golden-barnes]

And they’re roommates (3): Moving forward

Pairing: New Girl AU! Bucky x F! Reader

Summary: Fighting to get your shit back from your ex with the help of your new roommates. You also get closer to bucky, who asks you for a favor. {wc: 1.8k }

Warning: Cursing lots of it, a small fight bc Brock is an ass, suggestive comments. Clint is a douche like Schmidt. Alcohol and drunk behavior. True American has arrived.

A/N: I love writing this story so much and thank you all for the support, it has been overwhelming. That being said, I want to remind people that there will be smut in later chapters, so minors beware and be safe. I am planning on separating that from the main story so everyone can enjoy it but idk, you guys send me an ask or comment on what I should do.

Previous chapter Series masterlist

Reblogs and comments are welcomed!

You had told Brock you were going to pick up your stuff on Friday, without mentioning the guys were going too. At first, it was only going to be Steve and Bucky, because they are the only ones that didn’t work on Friday. But Sam and Clint jumped at the chance to miss work.

“It’s Friday. No student wants to see the guidance counselor. I’ll literally be bored the entire day, texting Steve.” Sam argued.

“And I just don’t want to go. Danvers sounded mad and there’s a higher-up meeting. I will not be there for that civil war to break out.” Clint whined. You didn’t mind all the guys going, the more the merrier.

“Clint, shut up” “ Seriously dude, not the time.” “Read the room, dipshit.” The guys started to chastise Clint while you just stared at the house you used to live in, where you thought you would be for a long time.

“I am just sayinnnggg. If I was living here, I wouldn’t care to be cheated on. This is way better than our- ouch fuck you, Rogers.” Clint was interrupted by Steve, who punched his forearm.

Sam stifled a laugh. You were stuck where you stood, thinking everyone was focusing on Steve and Clint’s fight.

“Hey, you okay?” Bucky asked you, putting his hand on your shoulder. You shrugged.

“I just want my shit man. I’ve been wearing the same two shirts for a week.” You answered. Bucky let out a chuckle. All of you heading to the front door.

Brock opened the door, shirtless with his sweatpants hanging low. Probably expecting you to be alone and trying to win you back with his sex appeal. The only noise that was heard was the chirp of the birds. The silence was deafening.

Suddenly, you could hear Clint and Bucky snickering. Sam let out a loud laugh and Steve was trying to hold his composure. You joined in laughing, which seemed to make Brock mad.

“Oh fuck, I wasn’t expecting that.” Sam said, wiping the tears away. Steve was clutching his stomach, leaning against Bucky who was trying to catch his breath.

“Uhm, who are these men?” Brock asked in a hushed tone. You rolled your eyes at the shirtless idiot in front of you.

“These are my roommates. Now can you move so I can get my stuff?” You remarked, crossing your arms. Brock’s eyes widened.

“Roommates?!” You could feel Bucky roll his eyes. Which was confirmed by Sam snickering.“ What do you mean? I thought you were staying with Nat.” Brock questioned.

“Brock, I don’t have time. Let me get my clothes.” Brock shook his head.

“Not until you explain. What do you mean these are your roommates?” Clint poked his head out to look at Brock, who seemed more stressed about the fact that you were living with 4 men than that this was the end of your relationship. The last time he will see you.

“Well, roommates usually mean that we are all living in the same common space. Although we are more like flatmates, which would be a better way to say it.” Clint explained.

“We have gone over this. We aren’t calling each other flatmates. We aren’t even British.” Sam rolled his eyes. Clint opened his mouth to complain but was interrupted by you.

“Guys, please. Focus.” You snapped at them, then turned your attention to the brooding man standing before you. “Now, may you please move the fuck out of the way?” Smiling “sweetly” at the man.

“No.” All of you groaned.

“Fuck you, Brock.” You exclaimed, trying to push him out of the way, but he didn’t budge.

“Dude, just let the lady get her stuff.” Sam groaned. Bucky moved to stand next to you. Rolling the sleeves of his red henley.

“I’m getting really tired of this bitch. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The point is, let Y/N get her stuff.” Bucky threatens. Brock, in his ever insecure mega machoness, puffed his chest and let out a grumble.

“I told you to come here alone.” Brock seethe. You were about to make a remark but Steve stepped forward.

“We can go back and forward with this. You want to get back with Y/N, even though she has said no multiple times and you can’t seem to get the no to register in your head. And she just wants her stuff. How about we do what grown folk do and be reasonable?” Steve tried to reason with him. What Steve hasn't gotten is that Brock is the most unreasonable person in the world.

Brock started to laugh. Like cackling maniacally. You looked at Bucky and Sam, who were staring at the laughing man weirdly. Steve looked almost worried, while Clint was swiping his phone, probably on tinder.

“Oh, I get what’s going on. You are all fucking.” Brock said, with a smug smile. As if he had just discovered a giant secret.

“What?!” All of you screamed at him. You almost walked up to him and slapped him.

“It’s the only explanation on why you guys are here. She is fucking all of you, isn’t she? I knew she got over me too quickly.” You knew he was trying to provoke you. Trying to get you to fuck up, and call his dear father to maybe ruin your job opportunities.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Just try not to punch him, Y/N. This will all be a funny story for your memoir later. You told yourself.

Opening your eyes, you saw Bucky’s fist colliding with Brock’s jaw. It was like he fell in slow motion. There was a loud sound when Brock hit the floor. Bucky was rubbing his fist, wincing.

“Well, that was quick.” Sam joked, looking at the knocked-out idiot. Clint tiptoed around the body and entered the house.

“C’mon, let’s get Y/N stuff before he wakes up. I got a date tonight.” Clint announced, throwing Sam one of the boxes you brought to pack your stuff.

“Stevie, Guard dog. Please move the body indoors. We don’t want the neighbors to call the cops.” Sam told the guys, going upstairs with you. Bucky grumbled something under his breath along the lines of “I'm not a guard dog.”

-

“Where did you guys get that beer?” Steve asked the two men who were sitting on the couch.

You have gotten most of your stuff out of the bedroom and Sam was helping you get all your books into boxes. Brock had woken up, angry but there was nothing he could do. You had already packed most of your stuff, he just grumbled, cleaned his face, and left. Something about fucking assholes. But nobody listened to him.

“Oh, the fridge,” Bucky said, opening another beer. Clint gave one to Sam, Steve, and you.

“So we are stealing his alcohol now?” Sam joked. Which made you think….

“I mean that’s just his cheap beer. If you want, I can show you his good liquor collection.” You shrugged, taking a gulp. Bucky gasped exaggeratedly.

“Is the lawyer convincing us to steal from her ex?” Clint asked dramatically. Steve rolled his eyes.

“It’s the least you can do is take something.” Bucky noted. “He cheats and you steal his good alcohol. It is a fair bargain.” Clint nodded excitedly at Bucky’s words.

“Uu! We can play true American.” Sam suggested. You frowned.

“What’s true American?” Famous last words from you.

-

“True American is a drinking game we made in college. We were revising for an American history class and voilà. We created this monstrosity.” Steve explained while the guys were pushing the furniture and setting up the beers and whisky bottles. Clint came out of his room with colonial-style hats.

“I refuse to wear that,” Bucky said and Sam and you agreed.

“You guys never do anything fun.” Clint pouted.

“When you come up with a good idea, we will listen.” Steve reprimanded, handing you a beer.

And that was the last thing you remembered before starting the game.

“Ronald Regan is in hell!” Bucky screamed, leaning against the chair next to him. He took a sip of the whisky bottle he had taken. You giggled at him. You really didn’t know how much you have drunk, but you knew the hangover tomorrow will be out of this world. Worst than the ones in law school.

“Nooo Bucknassstyyy, the answer is the Declaration of Independence, so take a shot dummy. You aren’t wrong though. ” Sam slurred, Steve, holding him up. Steve wasn’t so sober either. His shirt was almost completely undone and his hair was so messy.

Clint was inside of a cardboard box, snoring. He had passed out when you guys played the Colony section of the game.

You looked at Bucky. You don’t know if it’s the alcohol in your body, but Bucky looked incredibly hot. His hair was messy and he had unbuttoned his shirt a bit. He was a bit sweaty and his cheeks were rosy, probably because of the alcohol.

You didn’t notice Steve and Sam had already headed to their room. Bucky plopped down on the couch next to you. He has so closed, you can feel his warmth. Did someone turn off the A.C? You thought.

“Fuck, I needed this.” Bucky mumbled. You nodded

“Same honestly.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“I don’t know if Steve told you but next weekend we are going to our hometown. A friend of ours is getting married.” You were confused about why he was telling you this. You have heard that they were going to be out then, and you were planning on inviting Nat to stay with you.

“Well, I just found out my ex is also going to be there. Not looking forward to that shit.” He shuddered.

“What do you want to do?” Bucky shrugged, raising the bottle up to his lips.

“Was gonna ask Sam’s sister to come with me but I think Sam might kill me if I do and Dot knows her. She is gonna know we aren’t dating.” In the days you’ve meet Buck, you didn’t know he had more emotions that weren’t sarcasm and annoyance. But he actually looked sad right now.

After taking another sip, he opened his eyes, almost jumping up. He turned to you, with a devilish smile. A smile that said that he was planning something, and you were going to be caught in it.

“But she doesn’t know you…” He smirked.

“Where are you going with this Buck?” It’s probably the alcohol, but the closeness and his expression were making your stomach go crazy. Like wasps buzzing around.

“Come with me to the wedding and pretend to be my girlfriend. I will do all your laundry for a week.” He pleaded. His blue eyes pulling you in, almost pulling the yes out of your mouth. Is this man putting a spell on you? Or was he just that magnetic?

“Fine.” He whooped and handed you the bottle to take a shot. You smiled at his burst of happiness.

You might regret it in the morning but for some reason, you felt things were finally looking up for you.

[wanna1things]

Soulmate!Kang Daniel

i want daniel to be MY soulmate i LOVE him with all of my heart <3

Genre;; fluff and a whole ass soulmates au;; i might do this sort of au for every member,, like a different soulmate au for each one but?? Idk also university!au

Warnings;; nothing really

Pairing;; Kang Daniel x reader

Requested;; nope another thing kind of from my backlog kinda

Soulmate AU Type;; You dream some of the treasured memories of your soulmate up until when you touch for the first time. The soulmate’s face is censored in the dreams, but their name isn’t.

Summary;; You’ve been searching for your soulmate for longer than you can remember. All you know about him is that he loves dancing and... jelly bears…? That is until you dream of your own university… and your own room...

Style;; bullet point

Word Count;; 1595

Also in this series;; Woojin | Jihoon  | Jinyoung | Minhyun

THIS au has been in my brain for the longest time and Daniel fits the storyline the best so enjoy!! its kind of short for this kind of au but it’s because its quite fast paced once you get past the initial bit lol

the first time you had one of the so-called ‘soulmate dreams’ you knew straight away what it was

your parents had told you about it frequently and how they started having their dreams when they were around 4

you were a bit of a late bloomer

it was the week after your 12th birthday, and by that point all of your friends had had some dreams, and some had even met their soulmate

but you’d never had anything, which made everyone worried that you were a loveless - a person without a soulmate

you and your parents were so pleased when your first dream finally happened lol

but your dream was a little different than other people’s

mainly because whoever your soulmate was…

they were performing?? on a stage??

most people had normal dreams, like a first day of school, making friends, getting a good grade on a test, doing a nice piece of work something like that

this sort of thing was rare, especially as a first dream

at first you thought like wow okay guess my soulmate is a celebrity i guess that's cool

and you knew his name, kang euigeon, because they announced it before he performed lol

I mean that was until he changed it to daniel

all the dreams seemed to be related to performing and dancing and stuff, but there were also some;; sad dreams

there was one dream that really stood out, and it appeared to be him meeting his best friend

it started off with him being bullied for looking ‘different’, when the person who became his best friend stepped in and shut them all up

it was a sweet memory but it made you worried because ?? my soulmate is being bullied?? gotta help!!!

it continued on like this for ages, with odd treasured memories popping up every couple of months

one that you found hilarious was his best friend buying him a massive jelly bear for his 16th birthday

when i say massive i mean massive like it was the size of the table

it was gone in 0.5 seconds (realistically it took him and his friends more like 30 minutes)

you often felt sad as your friends were finding and meeting their soulmates, or gradually finding out more about them

but the places you saw in the memories never seemed like they were anywhere near you

in fact you couldn’t even work out if he was even in the same country as you

your friends kept encouraging you to go on holidays, just in case you’d bump into him somewhere there but,, nothing seemed to work?

it was like you were cursed to never meet him which would suck

and you’d heard the stories of people like that, who ended up forming ‘fake’ relationships with people without soulmates and then every night dreaming of their soulmate again

sounded like a depressing life

and a life that seemed to be coming ever closer

in an attempt to salvage what may be the only hope in your life, you poured yourself into your studies

and by poured i mean hello 24/7 365 honor roll student

you managed to score a place in one of the top universities in the country to study international relations with a minor in dance

mainly because you love it, but also because you feel like…. It might bring you closer to your soulmate, you can’t really explain why lol

but on the night after you go and visit the university you have a dream that almost scares the living daylights out of you

it started off with him boarding a plane on his own and coming to what seemed to be your country but then it skipped time a bit

and he was at the university you were set to attend, at the same open day as you

you began to think back about who you saw today, was he one of them? you had no idea

you pushed it to the back of your mind as you prepared for the start of the semester

you’d decided to live off campus with a couple of your friends and some friends of friends

there was mention of the last room being advertised online because they couldn’t find anybody to take the spot but you didn’t really take notice

when it came to moving in day, you spent so much time saying goodbye to your various friends (and their soulmates) and of course your family

you ended up not actually getting there to move in until 4

when you got there you greeted what seemed to be all of your flatmates for the year and they seemed really nice but the numbers didn’t add up

there was an extra room next to yours?

when you looked inside, someone had unpacked in there already and their stuff was strewn all over the floor (someone’s messy)

so you decided to ask your roommate about;;; whose room is it

‘the room next to yours? it’s daniel’s! he’s a business major with a minor in dance like you so you might see him around!! he’s out tonight though,, i think his friends are over or something’

your heart almost skipped a beat when you heard daniels name

but then you quickly realised that yeah,, that’s actually a super common name what are the chances

that was until you dreamed your own flat that night

and the room next door to you

IT WAS SO HARD TO NOT FREAK OUT THE NEXT DAY

especially when you saw someone you didn’t recognise in the kitchen the next day

by someone i mean you’re pretty sure it was daniel

I mean you took one look at him, realised that it wasn’t one of your flatmates that you’d met (so it basically had to be daniel) theN YOU REALISED OKAY YEAH YOU HAVE AN ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS SOULMATE

and he was cooking pancakes shirtless uMDJSHSF

it’s just…

you weren’t expecting to THEN see him in literally the first class you ever had at uni

he smiled brightly at you and waved you over to the seat next to him, quickly introducing himself

‘hello y/n!! i’m kang daniel and i’m your roommate that you didn’t meet yesterday! sorry i was out it’s just that i had to see some friends and that but the others told me who you were and that lol’;; i heard you’re a dance minor too so i guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other

yeah you tuned out for half of that because fhsdfghf not only is he the most beautiful human but he also has the most ADORABLE SMILE

you shift a bit away from him in your seat because okay you’ve heard stories about what happens when you touch your soulmate for the first time and you do NOT want this happening in the middle of when you’re meant to have a lecture

your friends had told you that basically the part of your body which touches glows bright white and you have like a quick 1 minute recap of all of the dreams

yeah not ideal for a lecture

but daniel, being daniel, does not know this because a) too hyped about meeting his soulmate finally and b) does he look like the type to know what’s going to happen? No

your heart drops when he taps your shoulder to ask you for a pencil sharpener right when the lecturer says ‘this is something you need to remember - it’s important!’

REALLY DANIEL GREAT JOB

as your shoulder begins to glow softly, you look up at him and roll your eyes as he looks at you in complete shock

yep he has no idea whats going on

before you know it the dream recaps started and you’re watching him eat the damn jelly bear again

but what your friends never told you is the dream finishes with an image of your first kiss together

UHHHHH when you saw yourself and daniel in a beautiful garden, sharing a soft kiss, you FREAKED THE HELL OUT

but daniel being daniel knew exactly what to go

cue being dragged out of the lecture theatre by daniel, protesting wildly as your lecturer looks at you two comPLETELY BEWILDERED

he leads you to the gardens nearby the university campus and sits down on a bench by the roses, motioning for you to sit next to him

its silent for a bit until out of nowhere he’s like

‘god that was a long time coming’

you can’t help but laugh because ;; yeah it really did take a lONG TIME

its silent again but… its not awkward

it feels like you two have known each other since forever and tbh you are just basking in each other’s presence

suddenly daniel stands up and plucks a rose from the bush behind him

thank god theres no thorns lol

you’re about to protest about how you’re pretty sure you cant go around picking flowers like that before he kneels down in front of you

and you’re a little shook o

‘y/n!! i’m so glad we met today!! i have been trying to find you ever since i had that first dream!! i hope we can make some precious memories together now!!’

he holds out the rose for you to take it so of course you do

he stands up quickly and presses his lips against yours in a soft kiss

and you swear from that moment onwards

you know for a fact that everything will be okay, because you have him

the end is cheesy bc i didn’t know how to end it lmao anyway;;; yeah i uh;;; hope this wasn’t terrible to read lol;; ok im off to bed goodnightt