#i tried to make the songs sort of lead into one another but obvs it's a WIP | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 14: The Echoes

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Destiny tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

With Adrian and Kamilah’s fates unknown, Nadya finds unlikely allies in the Clanless. Learning how Lily is adjusting to vampire life would be a lot easier without terrifying dreams, though.

note: This chapter, like the previous, implies past Gaius/Kamilah through dream sequences lived through Nadya's eyes.

[READ IT ON AO3]

She hastily scrubs the stinging soap from her eyes. They’re still puffy; swollen from all the crying she’s done in the last day or so. Where she should be exhausted and ready to collapse while standing, though, Nadya only feels a burning itch to move; to run.

Though maybe that’s the borrowed homeless vampire boots she’s wearing.

“Here you go. I felt so bad when I found them in my stuff, but didn’t want to risk returning them and running into you.”

Nadya takes the folded pair of glasses Lily offers with something akin to reverence.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t.” She slides them on and gives an audible sigh of relief. “So much better.”

They leave the bathroom together — Nadya follows Lily’s lead to wherever they should be going without much question.

She’s doing well for herself. It took some coaxing for Lily to admit she still struggles with her hunger but that was a problem she had as a human, too, so Nadya isn’t that surprised. “I was already way more productive at night,” she explains cheerily, “so that wasn’t a big change either. The hardest part is probably just not knowing my own strength — and making sure to stay under the Council’s radar.”

That was something Lily was still working on forgiving her for: all the secrets. Adrian, Maricruz, the Council and the Clans… And she knows Lily has a right to be frustrated about it all but given the situation they’re currently in she’s one snarky quip away from asking Lil’ to cut her some slack.

“I was trying to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, well, that worked out so well, huh?”

Maricruz and Jax share a sort of ‘corner’ underground that they’ve made their own. Everyone has somewhere to rest their heads come dawn but due to space most of it ends up being communal living. The leaders of the Clanless, however, need a place where they can talk strategy without being overheard.

Well, the leader of the Clanless, his deputy, and the deputy’s girlfriend.

“Mari and I have been great honestly, better than ever,” Lily continues, “for a few weeks there all the secrets and rushing away before the sun was up was really frustrating, obvs, but now that I get it there’s no secrets between us at all. Don’t think I gotta tell you how refreshing that is.”

They come upon the others in the entryway-slash-kitchen-slash-den-slash-gym. In the corner Jax fusses with extension cords connecting to a small portable stovetop while muttering under his breath. At a small folding table in the middle of the room Mari and Brandon hold hands over the top; Greer rubs his partner’s back softly.

Lily abandons her — “he’ll shock himself again, dumbass,” — to help Jax but before Nadya can make herself useless by standing in a corner Greer smiles tiredly and beckons her over.

They’ve changed into surprisingly regular clothes — surprising only because Greer had been very vocal at the cellar party about his flashy wardrobe and the influence his eccentric fashion had had on Brandon over the years. But their jeans are worn and washed at the knees and the only bright thing outside of a tan trench coat is Greer’s hair.

She notices bags at their feet.

“I thought your flight wasn’t for a few days.”

“Mari got us a cargo plane,” Greer explains with a thankful smile the vampire’s way, “not my preferred way of travel but it’ll get us to Wales and we can take a train from there.”

Brandon rubs his eye tiredly. “Staying is just too hard.”

“I get it.”

“We know.” They each take Nadya’s hand and squeeze. “I hope your friends made it out okay.”

You and me both, Nadya thinks; doesn’t say it. She knows they’re only being optimistic for her sake — it feels wrong to take it with grace when they’ve lost someone so important to them.

“Thanks, guys. You’ll get in touch when you’re settled, right?”

“Once it’s safe.”

“‘Safe?’” she parrots. Brandon nods.

“It’s complicated — we won’t be staying in London is all. That’s a story for a different day.”

Behind them comes Lily’s victory cheer followed by the smell of something smoky. Jax turns the knob on low and together they join the crowd at the table with another chair and a rusty barstool that sets him a couple heads higher than the rest.

Jax surveys the three humans with narrowed eyes — now that she’s not wearing old contacts he’s in clearer focus now and every little flicker and blink makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Food will be ready soon,” he grunts, and finally fixates on Brandon, “so let’s get into what happened.”

Mari reaches around Lily to try and swat her companion. “Not now. They’re tired!”

“Yeah, we are,” agrees Greer grimly, “but I don’t want to risk whatever happened up there happening here.” He rubs Brandon’s arm — who stays silent.

“I — I didn’t see what happened before, but…” Nadya starts — falls quiet as Greer shakes his head.

“No, you didn’t. It’s all right, lass. I’ve got this one.”

After Nadya was swept from their revelry by Kamilah, Adrian had stayed for the remainder of the song before mentioning his thirst. Megan offered to accompany him by one of the select feeding parlors and that was the last Greer and Brandon saw of her for more than an hour. Upon spotting Adrian heading towards the upper castle Brandon had stopped him — asked him where Megan had run off to.

“She had her fill before I finished,” Adrian had said, “I think she mentioned something about meeting a friend in the Moon House.”

The Moon House would be called the Sun House in any other estate — one not catered to vampires. It was a conservatory on the farthest part of the East Wing and hosted Marcel’s collection of rare night-blooming flora; a hobby of his since moving overseas.

“She loved visiting the Royal Botanical Gardens at night…” Brandon’s wistful tone hangs heavy on them all. Greer gives his temple a kiss before carrying on.

When they found Megan she was the only one in the Moon House. She admitted to sneaking into some smaller enclave room even though the area was roped off — “It’s been nearly twenty years since I last saw these beauties, can you blame me?” — and since it seemed like no one was going to kick them out of the Ball for being there they all stayed to take in the display.

He pauses — collects himself with a steady breath. “That’s when we noticed a bite mark near her neck.”

They were drunk, maybe a little high — life was good and they didn’t want the party to end so soon. Megan didn’t remember how she had gotten it; vampires will be vampires, she had said, and laughed it off as something she didn’t have to worry about by virtue of being undead already.

“If she wasn’t gonna be worried about it then why would we?” He looks around the table as if genuinely seeking an answer. But it isn’t theirs to give. Judging by the haunted look in his eyes Brandon has already answered it for himself.

“We closed up the place behind us and went to head back to the ballroom,” Greer continues, “only Megan said she was hungry again and kept scratching the bite. We encouraged her, you know. She always feels better on a full stomach and… and feeding can heal you guys, you know?”

Lily shakes her head but judging by the reactions of the older vampires on either side of her yes, they’re very well aware of the benefits of a good feed.

“So we went back for drinks, Megan headed off, and the next time we saw her she was having a fuckin’ seizure in the middle of the party and no one tried to do a damn thing. Not one person. Whole room full of all those years and all that knowledge and… and…”

“Once you’ve been infected by a Feral there’s no going back.” Mari picks at an unseen part of Lily’s skirt underneath the table — can’t meet their eyes. “All you can do is run and hope to fuck you won’t Turn, too.”

“They didn’t even try.” Brandon glares at Nadya though it’s lacking in real malice. “That whole Council of yours, right there, and they just watched.”

“They had their Clans to think of.” She bites out in their defense. Jax scoffs.

“More like their status and power.”

“Okay guys, come on,” Lily looks ready to jump atop the table if it mediates, “there’s no fingers to point. Or, well, no one here deserves to be pointed at. Obviously this girl got bit by a Feral before you ran into her. If we can find out how that happened…”

“The last person she was with was Raines.” Nadya doesn’t miss the look Mari throws her way. It makes her blood boil.

“I know where you’re going and I’m gonna need you to not. Adrian’s been working his butt off to solve the Feral problem, not make it worse.”

“Working his ass off, huh?” Jax doesn’t try to hide his distaste, “if that’s his best then I’d hate to see his worst; the world might actually end.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No — I know what I see. And what I see is a problem that isn’t getting solved no matter how hard you say your owner is working!”

Jax leaps off the stool but is stopped by Lily throwing her arm over his front.

“Jax, man, I respect the hell out of you. But don’t talk to her like that — ever.” There’s a growl at the tip of Lily’s tongue that Nadya is grateful for even if it’s strange to see her behave that way. But it doesn’t do a thing to make Nadya feel better about what Jax says.

Nadya raises her chin and speaks with confidence. “Adrian told me a Feral isn’t like a vampire — it’s a creature that only cares about hunger and blood. If all it takes is one bite then even so much as one Feral at the Ball put everyone at risk; human and vampire. Adrian included.”

While the Clanless leader takes back up his stool Mari diverts the conversation back to Greer.

“What happened after that? Your text said there was a ‘massacre.’”

In the silence that follows everyone just sort of looks around at one another — trying to understand, trying to coax out answers. Nadya remembers — God, she remembers — but she sort of hopes they’ll keep telling the story so she doesn’t have to hear herself say it all out loud.

She gets lucky.

“They focused on the crowd instead,” Greer says; and if Nadya closes her eyes she can still see Lester, Adrian, Vega barking out orders to get the newly Turned and the humans out of the ballroom, “and it seemed like they could handle it, you know? Like they knew what to do. But then… then there was another scream.”

Through the tide of those trying to leave bodies pushed forward. Screaming of monsters, of Ferals coming out of nowhere like they’d been hiding in the suits of armor the whole night just waiting to strike. Suddenly it wasn’t just one Feral to deal with, it was the one Feral in the ballroom and even that didn’t last long.

Maybe Megan wasn’t even the first to Turn. Maybe Megan was just the poor soul who got an audience.

Jax tugs at loose strands of his hair. “How many, on estimate?”

“Maybe a couple dozen we could see?”

Nadya swallows down her heart to keep it from staining the tabletop. “Adrian — they, the Council — they tried to keep order. Tried to get everyone out fast and as safe as they could. But no one was listening. It was chaos.”

“Not gonna lie; it was hard to figure out friend from foe when everyone was in a stampede.”

Nadya agrees with a nod; fiddles with the pendant on her wrist until the metal is warm from her touch. Over and over the scene plays behind her eyelids; a videotape stuck in a loop. The Council shouting orders to one another, older vampires taking up arms and pushing away the vulnerable. The spray of gore when Valdas sent three attackers flying across the room in a dozen pieces.

“You pretty much know the rest from there.”

“We’re glad you got out alive.” Mari insists towards Brandon. He doesn’t respond — like he doesn’t know if he shares the sentiment. “She would be glad you got out alive.”

If Jax has more questions he’s grown a brain-to-mouth filter and chooses not to ask them. He and Lily grab cheap plastic trays from a cabinet and return with the stovetop spoils of hot dogs right on the verge of being better kindling than food. Eating doesn’t fill the void inside like it should but she’s never inhaled such mediocre food with such gusto.

When they finish Mari not-so-casually mentions their time limit. Greer and Brandon give her their sincerest thanks — Jax too though the tension behind their goodbye is obvious.

Finally Brandon turns to her and Nadya finds herself crushing Brandon in a hug that makes him hunch and hold his breath. They don’t have anything else to say to one another. Words never seem to be enough, anyway.

She makes Greer reaffirm his promise to reach out. Wants to go with them if only to make sure they make the journey home without falling to pieces together but judging by the look on Maricruz’s face the three of them need privacy to mourn in their own way.

Lily snakes her arm around Nadya’s middle when the door closes.

“How about a nap?” She asks; keeps her tone lighthearted but Nadya can tell she’s not making a suggestion. “Come on, girlie, you look like the walking dead. And that’s saying something coming from the literal walking dead.”

Nadya just nods and follows.

They curl up together like they used to; face-to-face with legs tangled together because they had the same favorite throw blanket but it wasn’t big enough to span the bed. The mattress is like a brick with sheets and Lily no longer exudes the same warmth she used to but if Nadya closes her eyes and pretends with all her might… it’s like nothing has changed at all.

She keeps her distance while Lily talks with the scantily-dressed woman near the stage. Not because she’s interrupting some sort of ‘moment’ but she refuses to take off the pendant — literally refuses and that makes Jax livid as all get out — on her wrist and anyone who so much has an inkling of who or what the Clans are would be ready to pick a fight at the mere sight of it.

Distance can be good though. It gives Nadya time to really look at Lily. To see how she’s doing.

Being a part of their generation means identity crises and existential episodes are pretty much a given. But she’s never seen her best friend look so comfortable in her own skin.

It helps ease the knot in her gut about not giving Lily the chance to decide her own fate.

Lily raises a small black remote in hand and on command a spotlight from above flickers to life. The other vampire, Liv, hops up and marvels in absolute delight as the light follows her around the stage in several paces.

“This is just — just the best! You’re the best!” Liv scoops Lily up standing to hug her and Nadya watches fondly as she returns the hug with her own.

“Give me some time and I can make you a mix that’s one whole track with the right fade in and intro tunes, too.”

“I don’t know what I’d so without you sugar. You’re a whiz at this stuff.”

“Hey, I don’t do anything for free.”

Liv pulls back and gives Lily a wry grin. The sudden flustered look under Lily’s thick specs doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Don’t I know it. How’s tomorrow afternoon sound?”

“Perfect.”

Liv kisses Lily’s cheeks and heads back behind thick red curtains. When Lily catches the look in Nadya’s eyes she tries not to look so utterly taken. Doesn’t mean Nadya isn’t going to tease her anyway.

“Wanna tell me what that was about, huh?” She nudges Lily repeatedly. “Huh huh huh?”

Together they leave the unofficial ‘Arts District’ of the Shadow Den; take their leave of Liv’s little clubhouse and head back towards the main plaza. Lily grins sheepishly.

“You’re so nosy! God, Liv just promised to… give me a few lessons in burlesque. See if she can cure my two left feet thing. That’s all.”

“Ah… yes, that’s all. Well I think Mari will love it.”

Lily huffs, almost lets it go before casting an embarrassed smile at Nadya. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Shut up.”

“No, you shut up.”

“No you shut up!”

They dissolve into light teasing shoves this way and that — their laughter mingling in with the Den’s normal chatter.

“Thanks for getting me away for a bit,” Nadya says as she loops her arm in with Lily’s, “from you-know-who. Talk about one-track mind.”

Her ‘nap’ had turned into a full on twelve hour coma. The moment she awoke the leader of the Clanless was on her; question after question that she still couldn’t remember fully from the haze of sleep. She could vaguely recall Lily’s raised voice and the sound of a door slamming — then being pulled along by her best friend’s newfound strength.

Beside her Lily shrugs; tries to play it off. “You looked like you didn’t sleep well, so I get it. I hate being bothered when I’m still tired.”

“Wait — what?”

“You were tossing and turning the whole time,” Lily grabs a dull yellow apple from a nearby cart and tosses it Nadya’s way. “I tried to wake you up from you’d just give me this weird, glassy stare and then go back to sleep. That a new thing? Or some freaky nightmare?”

If she thinks about it… no, Nadya can’t remember. The last dream she could recall with detail was the nightmare on the train from the Ball but it was like she’d turned her brain off those last hours.

She only knew that when she woke everything was foggy and thick — and her body had the weight of ages she didn’t quite understand holding her down.

“Anyway,” Lily shrugs, “his head’s in the right place.”

“Whose head?”

“Jax.”

Nadya blinks in surprise. “Wait — you’re defending him?”

“He’s a hard-ass but he has to be. We all have to be, Nadi’. That’s how we survive in hiding.”

We. Hearing Lily lump herself in with the rest of them fills her with unease.

“It’s not fair.”

“No,” she agrees, “it isn’t. But until the stupid Council pulls their heads out of their asses nothing’s gonna change.”

They round a corner and Nadya stops — has to wait for Lily to realize she’s not following and turn around before she feels like she can talk.

“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure I do. Just like I know what would have happened to me if Mari and Jax hadn’t gotten me out of Raines Corp. in time.” Lily backtracks and takes Nadya’s hand. Brushes her fingers over her knuckles. “I’m not mad at you — please don’t think that. But even if Turning me saved me then it wouldn’t have done me a whole lot of good if the Council decided to ax me.

“And judging from everything I’ve heard about them, they would have just to spite Adrian it sounds like. You just weren’t thinking about the long-term.”

Nadya pulls her hand back.

“Okay… now I know you don’t know what happened.” She tries — and fails — to keep the low-key insulted tone out of her voice. Lily’s nose scrunches up slightly.

“Tell me if I have it right then, because maybe I didn’t get the full story.” Nadya nods silently. “So something attacked me at our old place and left me to bleed out, right?”

“Right.”

“And you strong-armed Adrian into Turning me into a vampire, right? — Kudos, by the way. I wish I could’ve seen it because you’re scary when you get mad.”

Nadya ignores the compliment. “Right.”

The tension between them builds. “And he’s not only a member of some stupid Council that runs the vampires in the city, he’s a leader of one of their groups.”

“He’s the leader of Clan Raines. And he was working on getting you the next spot in his clan when Jax and Mari kidnapped you.”

Lily’s scoff brings a tick to Nadya’s brow.

“Okay so sure, he was ‘working on it,’ but what if whatever he tried to do failed? They would have killed me, right? Since I technically wouldn’t be part of one of their stupid Clans? No brand, no tether for my soul — all the chance and risk of becoming Feral and a danger to their stupid little quota? Right?”

What she’s saying isn’t wrong but it’s not right either.

“He wouldn’t have failed. I wouldn’t let him.”

“Yeah, like a bunch of rich vampire assholes would have listened to you?”

“You’re lumping Adrian in with one of ‘those assholes,’ you know.”

A beat. “Yeah, I know.”

It makes Nadya step back — disgusted. Why wouldn’t she be? It’s like this is Lily but also… not. “What have Maricruz and Jax been telling you?” What lies have they been feeding you?

“They just showed me how the world works here, Nadya. Not just for vampires but for the way they divide us. Liv — you know, Liv, that sweetheart? Yeah, some creep from the Baron’s Clan was obsessed with her. When she turned him down like the skeezebag he was he Turned her and left her to die or go Feral so no one else could have her! Now she can’t ever perform up top again.

“And Mari — my Mari — she was Turned so she would become Feral. That’s why she cares so freakin’ much about that stupid party! She was supposed to be some… some living weapon and when they were done with her they were gonna put her down like a rabid animal. But she was stronger than that — she’s still stronger than that. She’s worth more than any Clan vampire and then some.”

The injustice of it all makes Nadya feel dirty and heavy — things she knew on the surface but didn’t understand the full horror of until she puts faces to the tales. But the real knife in her side is the way Lily spits her words in her direction. Like she’s just another awful anonymous commenter who needs to be reminded that people are still people even if they’re different.

Lily doesn’t give her time to muster up words. She’s on a roll.

“Say you’re right. Say Adrian Raines is one of the good guys. He’s still benefited and continues to benefit off of a broken system that his cohorts continue to manipulate and bastardize for their own selfish gains.”

“Lily you need to calm down.”

“No way!”

“Well… Well he knew the risks and Turned you anyway!” Fine, if she was going to be shouted at then she would shout, too.

“Even though I still would have died! And he wouldn’t have gotten more than a slap on the wrist!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Oh you bet your butt I do!”

They’re screaming at one another now. Nadya’s red in the face — rest and time replenishing the tears what well up at the corners of her eyes. Lily’s fists are balled at her sides and she’s not seen her this mad since possibly ever.

“When will you stop blindly trusting the people in power?! You’re better than that!”

“You’re comparing two issues that are way different!”

“Different?! I’m a queer black woman in America, girl! That’s the Clanless of humanity!”

Behind them comes the sound of hurried shoes on concrete. Lily shakes her fist, slams it into the wall and the structure fractures slightly under the pressure. Nadya can’t help but stare at it in horror. Is left to imagine the difference between the strong rock and her fragile bones.

The fight drains out of her like it leeches from the crack in the wall. Makes her take a hesitant step back because she’s not just fighting with her friend and roommate any more. She’s fighting with someone—some thing—much stronger than she.

“Lil’ — I-I’m sorry.”

“This is just another label to tack onto my chest! Just another thing that might get me killed! Again!”

“Lily —”

“I mean, for fucks’ sakes Nadi’, did you even think about what I was going through while you were sipping champagne and wearing stupid designer dresses?!”

Before she can say another word the footsteps grow louder and Maricruz whips around the corner. She looks ready for a fight — a baseball bat in hand — but lowers it when she sees Lily and Nadya alone. Her eyes fall on the cracked wall and she stiffens.

“What’s going on here?”

Nadya makes the mistake of blinking; lets a tear fall down her cheek. Lily seethes and flashes red eyes.

“Don’t even try to make me pity you right now. At least you still had our place. At least you knew what was going on! I woke up in a fucking coffin!”

Maricruz steps in while Nadya chokes on her words. Holds one hand out warily like she’s keeping a creature at bay and stretches the other out in offering.

“Lil’, mi amor, remember what I said about letting your emotions get the best of you? You’re doing it again. When was the last time you fed, baby?”

“I’m fine Mari! Jesus — you didn’t — you weren’t here when this started!”

“No baby; I wasn’t. But come on… you’re not acting like yourself.”

“W-What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?” Nadya hisses. The look Mari throws her isn’t sympathetic in the slightest.

“It’s a newborn thing. Aggression, sensitivity, violent outbursts… triggered by things that we held inside during our mortal lives.”

It makes Nadya’s heart break all over again.

She watches as Mari steps forward; inches her way through the divide until she can grasp Lily in a hug meant to both comfort and restrain. Lily heaves breaths she doesn’t need until they start to fade but when they lock eyes over the older vampire’s shoulder Nadya knows there’s no regret in the things Lily’s said. Or in how she said them.

“I didn’t know,” she begins — and Mari has to renew her hold when Lily looks ready to fight Nadya over her ignorance, “wait—wait! I didn’t know… and maybe I didn’t want to know. And that was my fault. Because even if I didn’t know that didn’t mean you weren’t still hurting.

“I’m so sorry, Lil’. That doesn’t make it better — or make it go away — but… I am.”

She can’t hear the whispers Mari kisses into Lily’s ear but whatever they are, coupled with the soft strokes of her hand on Lily’s cheek — it calms her down. Makes her eyes fade and when she bites her bottom lip it’s with blunted teeth.

“I don’t…” Lily struggles through her desire to shout and keeps her voice even, “I don’t know if I can forgive you just yet.” It’s against everything she said when they reunited but deep down Nadya gets it.

She wouldn’t forgive herself either.

Mari throws her a look; concern and exasperation. “How about you go find somewhere else to be, chica?”

“I — yeah.” Just before she takes the turn back to the plaza she looks back, though. Tortures herself with it — with the sight of Lily and Mari in a searing kiss.

She doesn’t look back a second time.

There’s an abandoned tunnel the Shadow Den doesn’t use for any big projects somewhere South of the whole complex. Lily made sure to include it in the tour because of their mutual love for internet docuseries that explore such places. And, admittedly, it is very cool.

It’s the place Nadya seeks out when she needs some alone time — the Lily incident now behind them both with a promise to be more open about how they were really feeling in the future — when she catches the date on Mari’s evening edition of the paper to find out it’s been three days since the Ball.

Only instead of the soothing calm of a gaping amount of nothing she runs into Jax.

Well not so much runs into him as catches sight of him and ducks back around a half-broken pillar. Debates turning back and just asking Lily if she could have the room they’re sharing to herself for a hot minute or two while she tries to deal with her feelings.

Tries to work out whether she should still have hope or carry some grief in her heart so soon.

“You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?” Jax calls out; doesn’t seem to mind if his voice distorts and warps with every echo in the chain along the stone.

She sighs and slips out of her hiding place.

At first she wants to get into it with him about being shirtless and likely cold this far below the surface but, lucky her, she remembers he’s a vampire before she says anything stupid.

His almost trademark sword rests on a sideways column to the far of the space. At his feet there’s a similar one; wood by the looks of it.

He wipes sweat from his brow with a rag that’s actually his shirt. “Do they need something back at the Den?”

“No?” Her brow crinkles, confused.

“Then why are you here?”

Nadya hops up on a pile of rocks just high enough that she can swing her legs. Feels her grip tighten on the rolled-up paper she accidentally took with her when she ran out.

She shrugs. “Same as you I guess.”

“Somehow exercise doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

While Jax looks her up and down with judgment clear in his eyes Nadya huffs and chucks the paper at him. He catches it swiftly — she tries not to make a comparison (even mental) to ninjas.

“You can exercise anywhere, can’t you,” she quips, “but you come here to do it alone.”

“That was the intention; sure.” Jax unfurls the paper and glances at the headline — something about the stock market, Nadya recalls, and watches him scan over the print for his answers.

Eventually she takes pity on him; gestures to the date up top. He nods. “Still no word about your masters, then. I see.”

By now Nadya knows he keeps calling them that to get a rise out of her. And with her heart in the sour place it is; somewhere in the murky waters at the bottom of a well, she just doesn’t have the energy to fall into it with him (yet again).

“Big-wigs can’t just vanish, not in New York of all places.”

He huffs; probably the closest thing to a chuckle he’s had since he was turned. Nadya’s surprised there isn’t dust lingering in his funny bone.

“On the contrary; they do all the time.”

“Not these. A mobster and a skeeze like Lester — maybe. But Adrian? Kamilah? Vega’s a senator.”

“This is what life is like for us. This is what happens when something needs covering up.”

Nadya glares at his back while Jax picks up his wooden sword. “All right Mister Has-All-the-Answers, tell me this. When the Council is the one who does all the covering up then who covers up the Council itself?”

He opens his mouth but falters; even in his stance — left foot sliding slightly out of place while he thinks it over.

It’s back just as quickly and the swing of the fake blade is near-perfect. Or — that’s what she assumes, knowing nothing about sword-fighting.

“Fair point.”

It’s a temporary victory but a victory regardless. Nadya’s not had enough of those lately so she takes it — holds on tight as something to remember. And her point is a good one.

If they’re the most powerful vampires in New York then who has the power enough to do something like this?

“Well good riddance I say,” Jax continues, “maybe now we can finally work towards dismantling the Clan system and coming out of the shadows.”

She swallows down her anger like bile. “Sure — until someone else steps in.”

The warrior stops in the middle of his sequence; halts the whistle of the wooden blade through the stale underground air and when he rounds on Nadya his eyes flash with intensity and passion. Not the color of his vampiric hunger but rather bright and bold. Ready to take on anything standing in his way.

“That sounds like a threat.”

Nadya snorts. “Yeah; that’s me. Tiny human Nadya stepping in to rule the Council with an iron fist and her coffee mug in a cozy.” When his stern stare doesn’t abate Nadya rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying that’s how it works in all the history books — films too. Ask Lily — that’s pretty much the arc of the first two Modern Combat games.”

“And who is to say we’re not the ones to ‘step in’ and make things better?”

“Because.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Nadya wrings her hands in her lap. He’s not backing down — so if he wants an answer she’ll give him one.

“Because… that kind of thinking implies something I can’t really accept right now.” I have to hope. If I don’t who will?

Whatever they talk about — the city, the vampires, Mari and Lily, probably even the weather — Nadya knows they’ll get into an argument over. Oh, she totally gives kudos to his passion. He’s the type who looks like he could make real change regardless of whether or not his asymmetrical eyebrows make her want to punch his nose.

But she knows the type. Knows that type doesn’t really brush well against the type she is.

So when he goes from impassioned stances to silent training Nadya doesn’t try to fill the empty space between them with more things for them to disagree on.

She came here for silence after all.

When the clouds part and reveal the light of the full moon her hands are soaked with blood.

Nadya stares numbly at them; wiggles them slightly and feels how they stick together as the blood begins to dry.

When she peels back her fear there’s joy — pride. The foreign desire — need — to relish her victory and the red fruit born from it. She doesn’t know what victory that is but it’s a heavy one. It weighs not just on her shoulders but inside her soul.

As her fingertips tremble in her own reverence Nadya brings them to her lips and tastes. Feels something like Persephone must have felt when tasting the fruit of Hell for the first time. The flavor of the blood washes along her tongue and the way it arouses her senses is nothing short of divine.

She closes her eyes to better explore the sensations — lips closed around her fingertips and sucking them clean; taking the sin within her without hesitation or fear.

Behind her arms heavy and cold wrap her in an embrace. A soft breath tickles the shell of her ear and the tongue that follows makes her shudder in a whole other kind of ecstasy.

With hazy eyes Nadya looks down — sees the smear of fresh blood along her naked body as those hands caress nonsensical paths along her curves. Long nails dripping the blood of their enemies thumb over her nipples, curl and tangle in the hair at the apex of her thighs. Seek solace lower, lower, lower until she throws her head back with a cry of delight that isn’t her voice at all.

Nadya turns to look into Kamilah’s bright red eyes and feels herself smile at the sight of blood brushed along her dark skin like an artist’s final work. An artist could very well have been one of their victims — she couldn’t care less.

When they kiss it’s not soft or kind. It’s primal; two forces meeting across the world where they should never touch and bringing reality down with it.

Together they fall upon the fur-lined mattress. The lumps displease her but Kamilah shushes her protests with another breath-stealing kiss. Lays her back down on woolen pillows so she can watch her lover with reverence.

And revere her she does — doesn’t even let herself blink for worry that she might miss one second of Kamilah’s glowing beauty and majesty. Majesty that her Queen showers upon her with adoration and devotion.

This is the way the world should always be. Never a lack of prey — the thrill of the hunt followed by all the things that make immortality worthwhile. And with Kamilah at her side they might just very well see it done.

“Come, my love.” Nadya purrs; reaches out and takes Kamilah’s hand in hers to pull the woman up to her lips. Scrapes her fangs along Kamilah’s lower lip and strokes bloody smears over the swell of her curved cheeks.

She sighs in contentment; the calm before the storm. “Together we will see it done.”

“See what done, my love?”

She brushes the hair out of her beloved’s face and this time her kiss is sweet; chaste. A promise of what will never be. — Of what only one woman was capable of ever taking from her.

No, not a woman. A goddess.

But for now… Kamilah will suffice.

“Our vision for a perfect world.”

Kamilah’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes then. But it’s a small gesture, could be caused by so many millions of little things that Nadya pays no mind to it; instead sets her Queen free to continue the worship of her body.

“With you by my side,” Nadya continues, “everything is not only possible… but attainable. Just within our grasp.” She rests back upon the bed properly; settles in for the coming dawn that will put an end to their fun only for a brief time. Lets her eyes close as she delights in her Queen’s affections.

Kamilah’s breath is a warm sigh against her inner thighs.

“Yes, my King.”

Nadya opens her eyes to the polished sheen of the looking glass mounted above them. Stares into her own blood-red eyes and the wicked, all-knowing curl of her fanged lips. Kamilah’s head bobs rhythmically between her legs and yet she takes a moment to admire her eternal beauty and power.

When she speaks again she watches her words on Gaius’ tongue. Strokes her fingers through Gaius’ hair down a path along Gaius’ blood-soaked nakedness. And she feels Gaius’ darkness bubbling inside; the storm unleashed.

“And nothing — nothing — will stop us.”

Snap. Snap snap.

“Hello? Ground control to Major Al Jamil, are you with me Al Jamil?”

Snap.

There’s nothing above Lily’s bed but shadowed concrete but Nadya can’t unsee it. Even when she blinks and rubs her eyes until there are little spots of colors without names flashing in her vision there, too, is Gaius.

He knows he’s there. He’s grinning at her. Teeth stained red and face stained red and body stained red and soul stained an utterly pitch dark black that she doesn’t think it counts as a color anymore.

Snap snap snap! “Nadya!”

The panic in Lily’s voice makes sense when Nadya realizes her heart is racing like she’s just run a marathon.

She looks at her friend slowly; has to blink away the bright spots until Lily’s concerned face comes into clarity.

“You were asleep when I left and when I came back you just…” Lily’s voice wavers, “It was like you were in a trance. You kept staring up but when I looked over you it was like you were looking through me, girl.” She looks on the edge of a joke but it fades fast when Nadya feels her stomach do a somersault.

She bursts out of the bed, trips over boots and a small stack of computer whats-its that sting her bare feet; rushes to the bathroom and just barely makes it to the shower floor drain before she vomits.

Lily’s there holding her hair back like any best friend would. Petting her shoulders and offering soothing nothings like “it’s okay” and “just let it out” like they’re coming back from a night out of fun or something.

Definitely not fun.

At some point there’s nothing but water and bile left in her stomach to hurl and her body knows it — stops making her feel that lurching pain of wanting to dispel a poison from her insides and leaves nothing but sore exhaustion.

Lily coaxes her onto the rusty workout bench that serves as a casual place to sit — probably taken from some garbage route or another. Offers her a lukewarm ginger ale that’s more about the intention than the action. But it’s better at nixing the taste than water would be.

All of Lily’s questions push themselves closer and closer to the tip of her tongue with every silent minute; repeatedly opening and closing her mouth when she thinks better of marring whatever Nadya needs to do to recover.

When she finishes the soda she stands, wants nothing more than just to crawl back into bed and hope for the sweet release of unconsciousness. Lily holds her back with a gentle grasp.

“I’ll talk about it later, Lil’. Please.” She mumbles wearily.

Lily nods. “Hey, you do what you gotta do — I’m not gonna push it. But this isn’t about, uh, that.” She gestures back to the bathroom with a grimace. “Jax was doing his walk of the plaza and caught two strangers — vampires he’d never seen before, a man and a woman — talking about that Ball.”

Nadya foolishly lets her heart skip a beat. Could it be them?

Lily continues, wary; “He cornered them about it, obvs. Then they, uh… they mentioned you by name, Nadi’.”

Judging by the look Lily gives her when their eyes meet that’s not a good thing. Makes her heart stink into her vacant stomach because no, it’s not them… why did you trick yourself into hoping?

But if it wasn’t Kamilah and Adrian then who was it?

She doesn’t waste time to dress; pulls on her hoodie from college that Lily accidentally stole and follows her out to the main room.

Only the table hasn’t been set out and the chairs are still stacked in the corner. Mari and Jax pause mid-word and look over the shoulders of the strange vampires to where she lingers with Lily in the doorway.

Whatever was left inside of her that could be considered hopeful withers and hardens into sour fear. Makes her watch, frozen against her will, as Valdas turns with Isseya on his arm and a grim-set frown.

“Miss Nadya,” Valdas greets, “a pleasure to see you unscathed. You have been ordered to make a testimonial at the trial of one Adrian Raines.”

#bloodbound #choices fanfiction #kamilah x mc #jax matsuo #lily spencer #bloodbound mc #mc: nadya al jamil #oc: maricruz espinoza #oblv: bound by destiny #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

3 notes · View notes

living-dead-parker · 6 years

Text

Costco and A Kiss - H.K

A/N: We’re switching it up around here, holy shit. So this is more of a platonic!Harley type of thing bc I don’t necessarily feel comfortable writing romantic stuff with him right now but gimme a couple months and we’ll see how I feel about things! (It’s mainly bc Ty Simpkins is 17 and I feel weird about it lmao) Also, there is WinterIron in this, it’s not the main focus but it is in focus so let’s see how that goes.

I also need to add that heroes and Avengers are not a thing in this universe, no superpowers or anything!

Summary: Harley has a crush, and there’s a Costco trip involved.

Warnings: cussing i think, winteriron,i just pulled this out of my ass, so I’m sorry if it’s not good. Also, this is lowkey dedicated to @1-800-gotjunk bc they wished for more Harley Keener fanfic and I like to please my audience (this may or may not be my way of saying I’ll gladly take requests), and I tried keeping it gender-neutral as possible, so lemme know if I slipped up on pronouns and stuff! Also, introduction of a new character!

Word Count: 2.5k

Gif not mine and this was the only recent Ty Simpkin gif I could find. The others were obvs JP gifs or IM3 so yuhh

"Y/N, Peter, Harley, Riri!" Tony yells as he finishes compiling a list of all the foods they'd need for sure. Bucky emerged from one side of the kitchen with a list of other housing items -toilet paper, cleaning supplies, the works- that the family needs, as well as some optional stuff. Bucky hands the list over to Tony while pressing a kiss onto the older man's cheek.

"Ew, please stop!" Harley comments as the four teens walk into the large kitchen. Tony rolls his eyes and hands the list to his eldest child, Y/N.

"We need you guys to go shopping for some items for tomorrow's get together and for household stuff," Tony says as he looks over at all the kids. You're quick to nod as you put the lists into your pocket.

"Yeah, please get everything on the list, and maybe some other optional things for yourselves," Bucky chimes in, once more earning a nod from you. Harley was too lost in looking at the beautiful h/c haired beauty. Unfortunately, he could never be with them, for many reasons. The current one being age.

Bucky and Tony met three years ago, both instantly making a connection. One thing that instantly connected them was that they each had a kid and a parasite. Harley is Bucky's adopted parasite, while Riri is his biological kid. People tend to not believe it for many obvious reasons, but neither of them cared about people's comments. Y/N is Tony's biological kid, and Peter was the blood-sucking best friend who felt like Tony was a dad to him. Admittedly, Tony does love Peter like a son. The two men had been introduced by Steve a few years ago, becoming sort of friends, until they eventually got some crushes on each other. They started dating, and a year later, they've moved in together into a new and improved Stark Tower. The millionaire could never give up the luxury of his own luxurious tower. He has the money, why not?

"Got it, fatherinos," you tell the two men as you grab your phone from the kitchen counter. Harley is quick to follow behind you, following like a lost puppy. Bucky and Tony were quick to notice the boy's crush on the eldest of the group.

They'd seen all the signs. He'd get nervous around you, he'd stare for a very long time, he would be at your every whim, and he'd always be so close to you. It's cute, really. However, the two parents wouldn't dare say a thing because they want to see how it ends. Surely, there wouldn't be bad blood. Especially not for Peter and Riri's sake. Y/N is the oldest of the group, being eighteen. Peter is the second oldest, being seventeen. Meanwhile, Riri and Harley are both sixteen.

You head down to the garage area, grabbing the keys to the G Wagon on the board holding all the keys to every car. It's a black matte color and it's bigger than most of the car, so its used more often for grocery store trips. Admittedly, it's your favorite car too. You lead the way to the car.

"I call shotgun!" Harley yells as he runs over to the car. Nobody really protests, because why would they? So Harley gladly takes the passenger seat as you unlock the car. When you get in, you notice Peter sitting behind you and Riri sitting behind Harley.

The car engine roars to life, followed by the sound of the Bluetooth connecting to your phone. You hand your phone to Harley and let him pick out the music as you check all your mirrors. Once everything is perfect, you begin backing out as the sound of 7 Rings by Ariana Grande comes on. Almost in sync, everyone in the car cheers as they begin singing along to the song. Peter and Riri roll their windows down and you do too. Harley is recording everyone and putting it on Snapchat and Instagram, which you don't mind.

The drive doesn't take too long. Five songs later, they're in the parking lot and getting out of the car. Riri runs to get a cart and Peter follows behind, getting another cart. With how big the bulks are and with how much you'll be buying, you might need four in total. So when you reach the entrance, you instruct Harley to get another cart as you grab one as well. The four of you walk side by side, annoying a lot of the fellow shoppers just trying to get through.

Four teens shopping at Costco on their own was never a good idea from the beginning. Harley can't seem to steer a cart right, occasionally running over the backs of your legs or crashing his cart into Peter's. It was especially bad that Riri was making pun after shitty pun. Sure, they were really funny, but they were pretty bad. Peter was trying too hard to show off how strong he was, and your competitive side was coming out. Now it's on to see who can lift the most. So far, you've managed to pick up three cases of 24 packs of water bottles in one go. Peter rolled his eyes and stacked a fourth one on to his stack.

"Peter, we only need six cases. Put one back," you instruct. Peter sighs while grabbing one of the cases and puts it back in the display area. Harley and Riri are talking amongst themselves, laughing at something.

You've all been at the store for about half an hour now and haven't even made a dent in the list. You're only a quarter of the way done, only one basket halfway filled because they all want to be so childish. You can't put all the blame on them though since you've been slacking too.

As you approach the refrigerated area, you grab the list and grab random vegetable packs, milk, and other items on the list. Harley joins you, and when he sees you shiver, he's quick to take his jacket off and hand it to you.

"Here, you seem cold," Harley says. You smile and take it from him, thanking him as you turn back to the items you need to get. Harley watches as you grab random items. He stares as you compare certain brands or read over the names and what the items are. He can't help but stare as you put more items into the basket.

He knows having a crush on you is sort of weird, especially because at this point there's no turning back for Tony and Bucky. They're in it till the end, going the long run. So, they'd be family. They are family, just not technically. However, Harley can't help but still indulge in his little crush. He knows Y/N doesn't like him like that. He knows that your eyes are set on someone else, but he still can't help it.

The two walk out with a basket full of frozen goods and meet back up with Peter and Riri, who this time around are laughing at memes on their phones. You approach the two laughing friends and gesture in a way telling them to get a move on.

You all stay in the store for another hour before you've gotten everything on the list and some. Now you're waiting in line, looking over at the cart that Harley stands behind. Everything that was on the list managed to fit into three carts, so the last one was filled with the things that you guys wanted. Or things you know Bucky and your father would appreciate. Chocolate cake, boxes of popcorn, jugs of juice, industrial jars of Nutella, and so much more. The entire time the four of you wait in line, Riri goes on to ask and beg to stop by at Starbucks. Harley spent the entire time staring.

You knew about his little crush on you. You'd even consulted Bucky about it, asking if the young man has a crush on you. Bucky didn't even try to hide it. It's so obvious. Neither of you are sure on how Peter and Riri haven't suspected a thing. You notice how he stares dreamily, he blushes when you look up at him. The way he texts back immediately, the hearts around your name in his phone. How happy he got when he saw the heart at the end of his name in your phone. You wouldn't dare crush him by admitting everyone you care about has a heart at the end. Harley's is yellow. Peter's is blue, Riri's is purple, Bucky's is green, and your father has a red and black heart at the end of it. Right by your best friend, Matt, you have a big red heart, but you wouldn't tell Harley that.

When everything has been loaded up into the car, you begin the drive to the nearest Starbucks. Upon pulling up to the window, everyone bombards you with their orders. You can only focus on so much, so you get their order one by one until every order has been taken. You pull up, pay, deflect every flirtatious comment from the girl behind the window, and take your drinks.

"Looks like someone got a number!" Peter says as he accidentally grabs the receipt. You roll your eyes and toss the now crumpled receipt somewhere in the back of the car. The drive back home is short but once you've pulled up, your phone begins to ring.

"It's dad," you say, seeing Tony's number pop up on screen. You grab your phone as you unbuckle yourself and answer the call. "Yes?"

"Hey kiddo, I need you to run to the nearest drug store and buy some Pepto and some anti-diarrheas. Maybe some Gatorade and some crackers."

"Is Bucky sick or is it you?" you ask as you hop out the car, noticing Riri and Peter begin taking things inside. Harley is missing, so he's most likely inside already.

"Buck, he ate some old takeout leftovers. Can you please go?" Tony asks.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna wait on Harley to come back down so I can take him with me, probably gonna talk to him."

"Time to let him down?" Tony asks softly. He was the first to suspect his crush.

"Yeah, can't let him go on with as much hope as he has. It's unfair."

"Well, good luck kid. Please hurry though. Buck is dying here. Surprised he doesn't have projectile coming from both end-"

"Ew dad!" you screech as Tony begins to giggle. You hang up when you see Harley coming back with Peter and Riri in tow.

"H, we're going to Walgreens or something, come on. Pete, Ri, can you guys take all the stuff back in? Don't forget we have the pallet jack, just pile things on it and take it."

The two teens nod and go over to the stationary items in the garage and pull out a pallet jack as you go to grab the keys to one of the many Audi's your father owns. You're not sure why he owns so many, but he does. Harley follows close behind, getting into the small but luxurious black car.

"H, can we talk?" you ask as you lower the music. You've decided that you'd wait until you were out of the garage and out of the gate to the tower.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I know you like me," you begin, deciding not to hold back. "Like like me."

"W-what? N-o I have n-no cl-"

"Harley, it's okay to have crushes. I find it flattering that you have a crush on me, but I need you to know that-"

"You don't like me. I know," Harley says sadly as he looks down at his hands.

"H, please don't be mad. You're a cool dude, and anybody would be lucky to be with you. I mean it, but I just don't see you that way. Plus, our dads are kind of dating, soon they'll be married. It would be weird," you tell him.

"I know but you're so cool and you're really attractive! Plus you're so nice and smart and I could go on and on! It sucks being in love-"

"Woah, woah, woah slow down buddy. You're not in love with me," you tell the young man. "Yeah you like me, but it's not love."

"How would you know what I feel?"

"Because you were the same about Ned, and about Ally."

The car goes silent for a few seconds. The sound of Shawn Mendes quietly plays in the background.

"I just never felt like this about someone, and I hate that it's you because I know it's wrong."

You frown and look briefly at Harley. You reach the store and the two of you are quick to get off and into the store. Harley winds up separating from you to go look around. You decide not to push it, so you go looking for what you need and head to the checkout desk. The whole thing only takes ten minutes, but soon the two of you are back in the car.

"If I kiss you, just this once, will it be enough to fulfill some dream of yours?"

"W-what?"

You sigh as you look down at the steering wheel before turning over to Harley.

"Look, obviously something about this is bugging you because I know you. You're not one to get mad at rejection. You respect people's decisions. But something is bugging you and I just want to know, if I kiss you, will it fix something within you? Enough to get you over this little crush? I mean, you're a month shy of seventeen, so it's technically not illegal or something, not like it's sex but still."

Harley looks you in the eyes, his showing confusion. Nothing but confusion.

"Y-you'll kiss me?"

"Let's make a deal. I'll kiss you, lips on lips, as long as you start getting over this silly little crush on me," you propose. Harley looks at you and you can see him begin to grin. You roll your eyes as his cheeks begin to blush.

"R-really?"

"Yes," you begin. "But that means no being shy around me, no staring at me doing the most mundane of things, and definitely no sadness that we won't ever be in love and get married and have fifty children and a farmhouse."

Harley nods eagerly. You can already feel yourself regretting this. Why would you propose this to him?

"I just wanna let you know that I've never kissed anyone and I'm scared that I'll be bad a-"

You cut him off by pressing your lips to his. If there's one way to get him to stop thinking about it, it's by doing it. He stills for a few seconds but not too long after, he's kissing back. Your hands rest on his cheeks and his move to your waist. Once he began to shift in his seat, you decide that that was enough. So you pull away with a soft smile. His cheeks are red and he seems very bashful.

"How was that?" you ask.

"For your sake, it was really bad," Harley says. You smirk, turning the car on and heading back home.

"Good, now you know you're not missing out on much."

"I hate you," Harley says. You continue smiling, happy that everything has been put out.

"I hate you too, H."

Please send feedback or requests! Come send me asks or just talk to me!!

#harley keener #harley keener x reader #platonic!reader #platonic!Harley #Harley Keener imagine #mentioned characters #tony stark #peter parker #riri williams #bucky barnes #winteriron #marvel imagine

243 notes · View notes

phanlight · 6 years

Text

The Boy on the Blue Moon Dreams of Sun

prompt: dan is a theatre kid who hasn't had his first kiss but has to kiss someone for a show. he doesn't want his first kiss to be wasted so he tries to get it done properly beforehand & he meets phil and w/e you can take it from there!!!

““Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.

Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what we’ve spent the past ten minutes doing?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”

GUESS WHICH BITCH IS BACK AND WRITING AGAIN (spoiler: IT ME)

I thought it was about time I branched out a bit and tried my hand at a theatre au. This was so much fun to write (albeit kinda hard as despite being a literature student my Romeo and Juliet knowledge is a little subpar lmao lets hope I at least sort of did it justice tho) and deffo has more than ur daily dosage of angsty teenage actor!dan so look forward to that. thank u to the lovely anon who prompted me with this! (also yes i’m still relying on ptv lyrics for my song titles after 3 years sh)

Also I’m sorry if the writing in this is a lil inconsistent. I started this fic literally over a year ago and abandoned it for ages before finding and continuing it again. The first half was written in literally like mid 2016 (from which point my writing has obv improved a lot) and since then I’ve been working on it sporadically so if it feels like halfway through my writing style suddenly changes then that’s why OOPS soz

This was not supposed to be this long im so sorry wtf 13k ??? fuks sake

It’s the first time Dan’s ever been pissed off with being cast a lead role in a play.

He usually loves it – he loves the attention, loves having a ripped up script full of highlighted lines and more soliloquies to memorise than he can even keep count of. He shines under the warmth of the spotlight, lapping up the attention like a hungry cat, and when the applause ripples throughout the audience at the end, he can’t get enough of the sound.

It’s just- well, there’s one problem with his part.

It’s nothing he has against Romeo, not necessarily, and the piece itself is okay – Dan’s copy of the popular play in question is already crumpled with annotations; small post-it notes spilling fluorescent colours out of every crease (studying English literature alongside Drama always comes in handy as far as Shakespeare is concerned) and Romeo has a decent amount to say.

The problem is, he’s going to have to kiss someone.

Dan Howell, the one who snaps up almost every single role he auditions for, the one with a clay personality that can be moulded perfectly into whatever role he’s going for next, the one who lives the stage and breathes the lights, who was once described as ‘the heart and soul’ of the local theatre, is going to have to kiss someone.

And believe it or not, Dan Howell, the same seventeen-year-old who breezes through auditions leaving a flutter of girls at his feet, the same guy who was once rumoured to have made out with three people at the Les Miserables afterparty and the same guy who once had to reject two people in one night, has never actually kissed anyone before. Not properly, anyway.

Granted, he’s been extremely close to it a fair few times – having been in and out of auditions and callbacks since the age of about five, he’s come into contact with a considerable number of roles that involve love interests; only last month was his character Eddie supposed to kiss the love of his life, Alexandra, in the back of a car at a drive-in cinema. It was a play that one of the drama students had written; set in the fifties, all red-and-white ice cream parlours and hand jives and high school dances and Marilyn Monroe posters. Dan had enjoyed playing his part, and not just because it was the only opportunity he’d get to sport a black leather jacket (though he did decide leather looked really quite hot on him after that play. It’s almost a shame he’s vegetarian), but because the minor obstacle could, like every single other time, be solved with a stage kiss. Just a few seconds of his back to the audience, being agonisingly close to someone else’s lips, before pulling away and raking though his mind to try and remember the next line. It’s always worked for him, every time.

Except for this. Because the director, a Lucy Howcroft with a loud voice and a bossy personality, has only gone and booked them the Round at the Old Vic theatre. Which would be fine, of course it would; it’s one of the most popular theatres in the city and the theatre group is going to get a huge reputation for this afterwards, but it’s not so handy as far as stage-kissing is concerned. When you’re being stared at from every angle three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around, there’s no way you can get away with only partially leaning in to kiss.

“Are you sure there’s no way around this?” Dan had insisted when he’d stolen a moment after rehearsal to talk to Lucy. She’d been clearing her desk – a papery mountain range, and had looked a bit too busy to talk, but Dan would rather discuss this with her one-on-one instead of having to voice his feelings with twenty other pairs of eyes staring at him.

“For someone who just bagged yet another lead role, I would’ve thought you’d be a little more gracious than this,” Lucy had muttered, snapping a file shut. “I didn’t have to cast you, y’know.”

“It’s not- I am grateful, you know I am, it’s just-“

“Is there a problem with the casting of Juliet?” she’d offered, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Dan had insisted. “She’s fine.”

“The costume, then?” she’d tried. “I’m not a bloody mind reader, Dan. Help me out a bit here.”

Dan had shut his eyes and taken a deep breath, trying to comb the tangle of words in his head into some kind of coherent sentence.

“I mean- I just- the venue,” he gulped. “It’s- there’s a bit of a problem.”

“What about it?” Lucy sighed, irritation tracing the edges of her tone. “I fail to see what’s so problematic about getting a slot at the Old Vic of all places, but if you have any objections, then do enlighten me.”

“It’s not that, it’s just-“ Dan gulped, not really too sure how far he’s going to get with this. The bitterness already in her tone didn’t sound at all promising. “I don’t know. Do we have to perform in the round?”

“Christ, is performing in one of the most popular theatres in London that much of a chore?”

“No, no, I just-“ he gulped, trying to work out how the hell he’d word this without sounding like a twat. “I’ve never really… you know. Performed in an environment like that before.”

“You’ve been acting for twelve years,” she said bluntly. “I’m sure you have enough experience to be able to deal with a round stage instead of a rectangular one.”

“But- like, isn’t the round meant for- like… you know, Greek plays and shit?”

“It used to be,” she’d said, taking care to apply extra emphasis on the past tense. “Since when were you so hung up on the traditions of theatre, anyway?” she’d added after a pause. “Only last week were you totally in favour of the idea of having a rap battle in the middle of Othello.”

Dan had frowned, because that wasn’t really fair – sure, a rap battle isn’t exactly a common feature of Shakespeare’s plays, but no one could deny that Louis, playing Iago, was pretty good at freestyling whenever a mic was thrown in his direction. Despite not adhering to the conventions of traditional English theatre, it certainly made the play more entertaining.

“It’s just gonna be- you know. It’s gonna take some getting used to,” he’d mumbled instead.

“You have three months to get used to it,” she’d pointed out. “I’m sure you and the rest of the cast will have familiarised yourself with it by the time the production comes around.”

“But- the round is traditionally meant for-“

“Look, if you’re going to get so archaic about it, I can always build a time machine, book the open-air Globe for, like, sometime four-hundred years ago, and you can spend the next three days picking rotten tomatoes out of your hair,” she said. “Does that sound better?”

“They only did that to bad actors,” Dan had pointed out. Lucy rolled her eyes.

“And you know what makes a good actor, Dan?” she retorted. “Flexibility. The willingness to branch out of your comfort zone.”

Dan had sighed. He’s not going to get anywhere with this, is he?

“You know what?” he’d finally shaken his head, defeated. “Forget it.”

She watched him turn on his heel with a raised eyebrow. “See you Tuesday, then? First read-through of the script is at eleven in the morning.”

“See you then,” Dan muttered, not even bothering to turn around.

He let the door slam behind him.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t want to kiss anyone – (quite the contrary, really. He loves the idea of it, loves the thought of someone’s lips pressed up against his, the world slowing down around them and his heart feeling like fire. He’s always tried to incorporate that feeling into his acting, letting his passion leak into every character he’s cast, but when the stage lights are off and the curtain is down, his attraction to his colleagues ends there) – it’s just- well, he doesn’t really think he’s found the right person to share the real experience with, yet. His fellow actors and actresses aren’t unattractive by any means, but he doesn’t look at any of them and find himself struck by the desire to taste their lips and whisper incoherence into their ears like Eddie was supposed to do in the back of that car.

Seventeen, and still hasn’t had his first kiss. Still doesn’t want to waste it, at that.

Pathetic.

Technicians don’t get paid enough, Phil thinks.

He’s spent the day holed up in the trap room, devouring what was left in the back of the fridge (including a half-opened pack of Doritos that tasted like they expired about five years ago) and puzzling over this fucking broken light board that everyone had very kindly left him to take care of. It had already taken him over half an hour to get one of the chunky old Mac laptops up and running again (seriously, who in this day and age is still using an iBook?) and even then it only really half-functions – a handful of keys are missing, the trackpad only ever seems to work when it feels like it, and there’s a huge hairline crack right across the screen. Phil’s spent so long cursing through gritted teeth and smacking the table in frustration every time the damn thing freezes that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he ended up contributing to those cracks by the end of the day. Maybe that’s how they ended up there in the first place.

“You alright?” the door suddenly opens and a voice – Nick, Phil presumes, breaks the aching silence that the room has been blanketed in for the past four hours. Finally, Phil sighs, feeling a pinch of anger melt away. Human company.

“Been better,” Phil mumbles, popping a couple of grapes into his mouth. Been better, he scoffs to himself. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t been worse.

“Chuck me a coke, will you?” he pulls up a chair and puts his feet on it, perching on the edge of the table. Phil heaves out a sigh – that involves getting up – but musters up enough energy to lean over and yank the fridge open. He tosses him a can, and Nick catches it expertly.

“Nice of you to show up,” Phil rolls his eyes. “Only four hours late this time. That’s an hour and a half off your personal best.”

“They said they didn’t need me here ‘till three,” he protests, popping the can open and taking a few gulps. “They said you had it all under control.”

His sentence is punctuated by a burp. Phil grimaces.

“Under control,” Phil snorts. That’ll be the fucking day.

“What did they leave you here to do?” he frowns.

“Only fix this entire fucking thing,” Phil nods over to the stupid light board. God, he’s sick of the sight of it. “Beats me what’s wrong with it. I’ve only just managed to get this dinosaur up and running,” he gestures to the corpse of a laptop in front of him, “let alone look at that.”

“Fuck me, man,” Nick sighs out a heavy breath. “If I knew, I could have come in earlier to help you out a bit. You should have texted me.”

“It’s fine,” Phil sighs even though- well, it’s not, really. There’s only so many hours of broken technology and out-of-date food one can take. “It’s not your fault,” he adds truthfully.

“They’re twats sometimes, aren’t they?” Nick lowers his voice, despite the fact they’re literally underground here, beneath the earshot of everyone.

“I’ll say,” Phil widens his eyes, trying to click something and- nope, it’s fucking frozen again. “For fuck’s sake. They’re all bloody loaded, too. You would have thought with the money they have, they could fork out a little for equipment that at least half-functions, right?”

“Yup,” Nick sighs. “Guess bookings for overpriced fancy-ass theatres are higher up on their agenda, though.”

Phil can’t argue with that. Apparently they’re going to have to wire up something in the Old Vic, of all places, next week. Phil dreads to think how much hiring that place out for even a few hours is going to cost, let alone booking it for three nights.

Probably more than enough to buy a better fucking laptop.

“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.

Be not her maid since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but-“

“No- no,” Lucy holds up her hand. “Come on, Dan. More emotion than that. You’re telling the love of your life that even the moon is envious of her beauty. At least pretend to put some passion into it.”

Dan rolls his eyes – only the fourth time he’s had to repeat this fucking soliloquy in the past fifteen minutes. He’s pretty sure he’s only one “no, no, it’s too (insert adjective here)” away from giving up with this whole thing altogether. He’d rather have played Benvolio anyway.

“Come on,” Lucy continues. “We’ll take it from Be not her maid…”

Dan shuts his eyes, scrapes up the remaining traces of his sanity, and takes another breath.

“Be not her maid since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!

It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.

Oh, that she knew she were!

She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?

Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—

I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they retur-“

“No, no-“ she interrupts him again and for fuck’s sake, at this rate, Dan won’t even need to spend any time in his bedroom going over his lines. He’s pretty sure he’s memorised half of the monologues already just from recapping in rehearsals alone.

“Come on, really feel it,” she pleads. “You can’t say something as romantic as that with a face like yours – you’re literally saying that two stars in the sky have gone away and they’re asking Juliet’s eyes to shine in their place until they return.”

Dan balls his fists, ready to snap back that yes, he’s fully fucking aware of what’s going on in the play thank you very much, in case she hadn’t forgotten he did actually study it for three separate exams and subsequent exposure to the text in question has made him rather familiar with the occurrences currently taking place, but they’re all interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Lucy huffs, mildly irritated.

The door knob jitters, then twists.

“Hiya,” a black-haired boy nods tiredly, pushing through the crack in the door. Dan immediately recognises him – one of the tech guys, he thinks, but he isn’t entirely certain. He’s never really spoken to any of the crew before; they tend to keep well out of the limelight (they’d rather control it instead).

“Everything okay?” Lucy asks, before turning to Dan and Alexandra (his Juliet). “You two, take five. Be ready to take it from the top.”

They both relax and take a seat on one of the upturned wooden boxes. It isn’t until Dan takes the weight off of his legs he realises how much they’ve been aching – fuck, he really needs to get back to that gym.

“Any luck?” she says to Mr. Black-Hair. He’s holding a laptop that looks as if it’s seen better years, never mind days, and a long cord of wire that snakes around his fist.

“Nothing at all,” he sighs, flicking a strand of his fringe out of his eyes. His hair looks as if it hasn’t seen a hairbrush for days, but there’s something about the way it sits shaggily on his head that kind-of suits him (Dan wishes he could pull off messy hair – he only attempted ditching the straighteners once and spent the rest of the day wondering if any birds had mistaken his head for a nest).

He doesn’t realise he’s been staring until he catches the tail end of Alexandra’s sentence and realises he hasn’t actually been listening for the past minute or so.

“What was that, sorry?”

“I asked you how you were finding Romeo so far,” she repeats.

“Hm? Oh yeah, yeah- he’s fine,” Dan says, not taking his eyes off of Mr. Black-Hair. He’s lost the thread of their conversation (he’s no lip reader) but by the looks of it, it seems as if there’s a problem with one of the laptops.

“Are you sure?” Alexandra frowns. Dan looks at her, but his glance is soon pulled back to the technician.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She shrugs. “You don’t really- I don’t know, you just don’t seem to be… you know. That into it, y’know?”

“Wait-“ Dan shakes his head, trying to focus on their conversation instead of the one a few metres away from. “Hang on- what? What makes you say that?”

She raises her eyebrows, as if to say ‘really?’. Dan’s expression remains carefully blank.

“Come on, Dan. We wouldn’t have had to repeat this stupid scene like, five times if you were actually into it. I’ve seen you do way better than this.”

“Oh, not you as well,” Dan groans, deflating. He’s pretty sure that exact sentence had fallen from Lucy’s lips not so long ago. He’s sick of hearing it, sick of having to sit and listen to people tell him that he ‘can do way better’ and ask ‘is everything all right, Dan? Nothing bothering you, is there?’ because he’s just ‘not himself’ at the moment.

That’s the most ridiculous one, he thinks, because for Christ’s sake, he’s an actor. He’s never himself.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Alexandra says, backtracking. “You know I don’t. I just- I think I overheard Lucy say you had a problem with something or other last week?”

“Did you,” Dan mumbles, unable to keep the bitter sarcasm out of his town. Alexandra remains unfazed.

“What was that about, though?” she remains unfazed. “Nothing to do with the casting, is it?”

“You really think it’s to do with the casting?” Dan stares at her in disbelief, before scoffing. “Yeah, like, I’m gutted to have bagged the lead role alongside you at one of the best theatres in the country. How am I going to cope?”

Not entirely truthful, but not a complete lie either.

“Just making sure,” a grin tugs at her lips, and she flicks a curl of red hair behind her shoulders. “I don’t have much of a problem with it myself, to be honest.”

“That’s reassuring,” Dan smirks sarcastically, but his tone is fairly benign. There’s certainly no denying she’s fucking gorgeous and it’s really no wonder she’s Juliet – she has hair the colour of a sunset falling down her back in ruby curls, emerald eyes framed by a curl of long eyelashes and cherry red lips that stretch into a wide smile whenever Dan cracks a joke, giving way to a small dimple on the side of her cheek. Her skin is pale, the colour of moonlight, almost, and he idly thinks, just for a fleeting second, that the moon probably would be jealous of her. She’s beautiful.

“Certainly don’t have a problem with getting to snog you in front of a thousand people, I must be honest,” she adds, and Dan’s stomach drops and his grin vanishes. Shit.

He wrings out a laugh, internally wincing at how false it sounds. “Yeah, I- um-“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” someone mutters a few footsteps away from them. He snaps his head up, and Lucy plus Mr. Black-Hair are hunched over the desk, clearly getting nowhere with the absolute disaster they call an iBook.

“Wait- what’s the problem?” Dan suddenly gets up. He feels a little bad for leaving Alexandra so abruptly so he throws her a little apologetic ‘be right back’ glance, but he can’t help it – he might actually be able to help, here.

He shoves down the other voice in the back of his mind, the ‘or rather you’re just grabbing at any opportunity to avoid any potential conversation about the kiss you fucking wimp’

“It’s okay, Dan, sit back down. I’ll be with you both in a second,” Lucy calls over her shoulder.

“No, really,” Dan insists. “I know a thing or two about Macs. I have one myself, and-“ he catches Lucy drawing in a breath, ready to protest, and he regrets the spill of words almost as soon as they come out – fuck, why can’t he just keep his mouth shut? – but Mr. Black-Hair turns around, an eyebrow quirked upwards.

“Really?” his stare is the colour of ice, the sky on a December morning, but it’s weirdly warm at the same time.

“I- uh, yeah,” Dan stutters when he remembers how to talk again. “I’ve always had Macs. They’re great when they decide to work, but they can be a bitch when they begin to act up, and-“ he cuts himself off with an awkward shrug, “yeah.”

“Tell me about it,” the technician smirks. “This bastard-” he nods to the chunky white rectangle in his arms, “took me like, half an hour to boot up alone. And now it’s been frozen for like- twice as long as that. I’ve only had chance to type in my password so far.”

Lucy’s still standing in the middle of them and it’s getting a bit difficult to ignore the stony glare burning into Dan’s peripheral vision right now and even harder to avoid eye contact with her, but it doesn’t stop him from offering some help, albeit rather inappropriately timed.

“I- um, have my MacBook with me if that helps?” Dan offers, trying not to feel the heat of his blush when Mr. Black-Hair looks straight at him. “I mean- if you don’t need it that’s fine, but like- it’ll function a bit better than that thing,” he shrugs. “I dunno. It would probably save you a lot of time.”

“Really?” he raises an eyebrow. “Like, with you right now?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I mean – I haven’t got my charger on me, but it’s on, like, eighty percent. Should be fine.”

“I mean-“ he throws a permission-seeking glance, towards Lucy, who Dan is pretty sure would be having steam coming out of her ears would it be humanly possible. She fixes Dan with a hard stare, a real ‘go on; be my guest’ look that’s always comes across as more of a dare than permission, a challenge for his conscience, but he can’t help an apologetic smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s cool with you, right?” his lips say before his mind catches up.

Lucy rolls her eyes in defeat. “If you absolutely must. But only- only because I could do with the extra time to independently go over one of Alexandra’s soliloquy.”

His face breaks out into a grin, and he’s not that sure why. “Thanks, Luce. I owe you one.”

“Don’t you make a habit of this, though. Remember; this is your own rehearsal time you’re sacrificing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan calls over his shoulder, trailing off. Mr. Black-Hair holds the door open behind him, and suddenly they’re out of the rehearsal studio and walking in a weird mutual silence sitting in a strange middle ground between comfortable and uncomfortable, across the car park and over to the actual theatre.

“Are you alright to do this, yeah?” Mr. Black-Hair (Dan seriously needs to come up with more imaginative mental nicknames for people) breaks the silence on their walk down to the trap room.

“It’s no problem at all,” he smirks as another wooden step groans under his foot. “Anything to get out of rehearsal.”

Dan’s never really been here before, never touched the underground territory where the technicians lurked, but there’s something about the atmosphere of this place that grips him.

Half an hour passes, and Dan couldn’t really tell you why he’s still sitting down here, still sitting on a revolving chair with a rip in the upholstery, under half-broken beams, tables that look like they’re seconds away from collapsing, and a lot of weird technology that he’d never even attempt to get his head around (seriously – do they even need this many buttons?). He’d given his laptop to Black Hair to receive a very emphatic ‘thank you, like seriously you’re a fucking lifesaver if I spent a second longer with that piece of shit I really don’t know what I would have done’ and the job had been done in seconds. Since then, a casual conversation had been struck up and Dan finds he doesn’t actually want to go back upstairs just yet.

“You two sounded really good in there,” Black Hair comments. They’d been talking about the play. “From what I heard, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Dan says, trying to ignore the quiet blush that warms his cheeks. There’s nothing quite like someone complimenting his acting. “Clearly not good enough for Lucy, though.”

“Few things are, Dan,” he sighs, and Dan only finds it half-weird that this guy knows his name, but Dan doesn’t actually know his. It’s unnerving, sure, but nothing he’s a stranger to. “She’s been on at you all morning.”

“Yeah,” Dan pauses, before adding an apologetic “sorry, I- um, I don’t think I caught your name?”

“It’s fine. I’m Phil,” he grins, and Dan thanks his lucky stars there’s finally a name to put to the face.

Dan studies him briefly, and frowns. “You do look familiar, actually.”

“Yeah – I do all the donkey work downstairs,” he grins. “You may have seen me emerge from the cave every now and then.”

Dan chuckles, deciding there and then that he likes Phil.

“Doesn’t it get lonely?” Dan asks, studying the square lights looming above them, one of which he notices is stuttering slightly, flickering on and off every now and then.

Phil shrugs, not taking his eyes off of the screen. “Kinda. But I mean – I have my little crew down here, y’know? There’s five of us. We just like- keep each other company. Help each other whenever we need to,” he glances at Dan. “Oh, and sneak up to the theatre and watch you guys every now and then.”

Dan giggles. “Brilliant. Must be a nice little community, though.”

“Yeah, it is,” Phil hesitates. “Or perhaps ‘support group’ might be a more appropriate term. For the poor sods who have to put up with shitty laptops and gross food.”

Dan laughs, and helps himself to another Dorito.

“Okay, right- Dan, sorry if this sounds a bit weird because- like, we’ve pretty much only just met, but like- um- I was wondering if you wanted to-“

“Phil,” Dan cuts him off. As an actor, there’s something about hearing people stutter and ramble without really saying anything that tends to grate on him. “I’d love to.”

“Really? Well, I-“ Phil stops and frowns. “Hang on a second. How did you know I was gonna ask you to hang out?”

Dan shrugs like he hasn’t spent the last thirteen years mastering the sciences of body language and speech and how they can be applied to the acting world. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”

Phil smiles. “I mean- would you? Like, really?”

“Of course,” Dan says.

“Well yeah, like- I don’t have to be home for a while yet, and I have a car so we could just like- drive around for a bit? Go to town if you want?”

Dan smiles, and repeats what he said before he even knew what Phil was going to say.

“Yeah. I’d love to.”

It’s a bit of a weird result to come out of lending his laptop to a stranger for a while, but it’s how Dan finds himself spending the evening sat in the passenger seat on the top of a car park roof, blasting some weird indie song from the depth of Phil’s Spotify and watching the sun sink further behind the buildings, painting the sky warmer with every slow minute that passes on the dashboard clock.

They’d had a drive around the city together, sometimes talking, sometimes letting lulls in the conversation give way to thoughtful silences, both of them tapping away to Phil’s music taste, but Dan thinks it’s been about fifteen minutes since either of them last said anything.

“So,” Phil is the first to break the silence. He flicks the last of his cigarette out of the window (Dan had insisted on rolling down the windows before he did that – there’s no way he’s going home stinking of an ashtray). “Tell me about yourself.”

Dan looks up from his phone at that, his heart thudding.

“You what?”

“You know,” Phil’s gaze doesn’t move, his eyes fixed on the view in front of the windscreen. They’d picked a spot at the very top of a multi-storey car park overlooking everything, leaving the city a pool of lights and colours and life far beneath them. “I don’t really know you. So tell me about yourself.”

“I- um-“ Dan gulps. This wasn’t really a question he came prepared for. He shrugs. “I don’t really know what there is to tell, if I’m honest.”

“Oh, now come on,” Phil presses. “Just- anything. Your hobbies. Your life. Your dreams. What you want to be when you’re older.”

“I feel like I’m in a bloody job interview,” Dan chuckles. Phil’s lips quirk upwards in response.

“You are. I’m interviewing you to see if you’re fit for the job of being mates with me.”

“The ‘job’?” Dan frowns. “Like it’s a chore?”

“That’s for you to decide,” Phil grins. “Now, come on. I wanna hear about you.”

Dan gulps, silence falling for the first time in a while.

“I- um, well I think my hobby is probably pretty obvious, for a start,” Dan begins. Phil rolls his eyes. “And what I wanna be when I’m older, too. I’m gonna do a degree in Drama, I reckon.”

“What else are you into, then?”

Dan stops for a second. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on,” Phil presses, flicking his lighter and sparking up another cigarette. “You must have other interests besides acting. You got a girlfriend?”

Dan clams up. “Um- no.”

“Oh. Boyfriend, then?” he quirks his eyebrows, and Dan shakes his head miserably.

“Afraid not.”

“Glad we established that,” Phil smirks, but Dan doesn’t really smile back.

He chews on the inside of his lip, having a staring contest with a pair of headlights sliding across one of the roads beneath them.

“What music are you into, then?”

Dan swallows, trying to think. It’s like someone’s scraped over his mind with an eraser, rubbing out his interests and his life and his personality, all pencilled in with weak lines.

“Oh, you know,” he shrugs. “This and that. I like whatever this is,” he nods to the Spotify track on Phil’s phone. “Bit of Indie, it’s good. Oh, and I love- what are they called? Pink Floyd?”

“Floyd’s good,” Phil agrees. “And Nirvana.”

“Yeah,” Dan gulps, feeling another silence probe the conversation.

“You into the Smashing Pumpkins?”

Dan shakes his head.

“Oh, okay. Slaves?”

Dan shakes his head again.

“Genesis?”

“Never even heard of them.”

“Cobalt Night?”

Dan shakes his head again

Phil cackles. “Oh Christ. You do realise I made that last band up?”

“Oh god,” Dan can feel his cheeks burn peony. “I’m not doing myself any favours here, am I?”

“Don’t worry, I’m only messing with you,” Phil says. “I think it would be more embarrassing if you said yes, to be honest.”

“True,” Dan shrugs, feeling Phil’s stare burn into his side profile. He sits back further in his seat, keeping his stare.

“You’re not really into much, are you?

Dan shrugs.

“I’m more into Musical Theatre, really. Ever since we did a production of Hamilton I haven’t really been able to get that rap out of my head,” he chuckles.

“Right,” Phil sits up a little bit and clears his throat. “Well we’ve established your music taste and your hobby. Who are your favourite actors, then?”

It’s like someone’s flicked a switch inside Dan. His eyes light up.

“-and Leonardo DiCaprio, oh my God, don’t even get me started on him. I mean- who wouldn’t fuck young Leo? Have you even seen him in Titanic? And Romeo and Juliet too, Jesus Christ he’s gorgeous. He’s so fucking gorgeous. I’m not gonna do Romeo’s role any justice when he’s my competition, am I?”

Phil just nods and says the odd ‘hm’, listening to Dan’s stream of consciousness.

“-and Helena Bonham-Carter, what a fucking legend, man. She’s just- her character is just so versatile, you know? I mean- there’s a good reason she’s in literally everything, and that’s because she’s fucking amazing- have you seen Fight Club? You must have seen it, it’s incredible. She’s incredible. It’s a bit of a mind fuck if I’m honest, what with the split personality thing and everything, but- oh God, Brad Pitt is so good in it too. And he’s pretty hot, I’m not gonna lie. Well, until he grew out his hair and looked a bit like a farmer. But- where was I? Oh yeah, Helena Bonham Carter-”

“She was good in Sweeney Todd, too,” Phil comments, and he’s off again.

“-like, that was the first time I ever saw Johnny Depp act, and by Christ that film creeped me out. I mean- I was only like, seven when I watched it so of course it was gross, like, what seven year old watches people do- you know, that, to paying customers? I feel sorry for the poor sods who just went in there wanting to give their beards a trim. But- yeah, they were both really good in Sweeney Todd. I had a bit of a crush on Helena- and Johnny too, for that matter, I mean come on, who didn’t? But then I found out Johnny Depp is a bit of a dick in real life so I went off him after that. But Helena’s still cool, obviously.”

“She’s good, yeah,” Phil nibbles at a protruding hangnail on his thumb.

“And- oh god, who’s another good actor? Oh, don’t even get me started on Morgan Freeman. Absolute fucking legend. Like, oh my god. Him and that other one- god, what’s his name? The guy from Donnie Darko?”

Dan’s brain is moving far too quickly for Phil to keep up and he has no idea what the correlation between Morgan Freeman and Donnie Darko is, but he gives it a shot anyway.

“Jake Gyllenhaal?”

“Yes. Yes, oh my god, that’s the one,” Dan’s face breaks out into a grin. “Fuck, Donnie Darko. What a film, man. My friend has a tattoo of it, and-“

It continues like this, Dan chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen and Phil counting the glitters of passion in his eyes, before they’re both interrupted by a buzzing on Dan’s lap.

“Oh shit,” he grabs his phone. “It’s my mum.”

Phil doesn’t know what she’s saying on the other end of the line, but judging by Dan’s apologies it sounds like he’s stayed out here for a little too long.

“Sorry,” Dan mumbles, tugging on his seatbelt. “Lost track of time a bit, there.”

“Clearly,” Phil grins.

“This was good, though,” Dan says. “Like, really good. Thanks for, you know. Suggesting this.”

“Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again soon, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.

Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what I’ve spent the past like- hour doing?” he glances at the clock and shit, has it really been that long? It’s pitch black outside, the only light coming from the glitter of the city beneath them (shit, it really is beautiful from up here) and he was supposed to be home forty-five minutes ago.

“Yeah,” Phil says, starting up the engine. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”

The next few days pass in a blur of line-learning, enduring Lucy’s lectures about how he just ‘isn’t putting enough ‘oomph’ into it, come on now, we’ll take it from the top one more time’ and Dan has to act like he actually gives more of a shit about what Romeo’s saying right now than what Phil had said in that car a few days ago. He has to act like it isn’t what he’d been reciting over and over in his mind, the words digging grooves into the back of his mind and making themselves at home.

He has to act like there’s more to his fucking life than acting.

The next time Dan sees Phil, they’re both cooped up in a control room eating lunch in a companionable silence; Dan going over his lines and Phil puzzling over these two wires that are, according to him, sly bastards that won’t fucking go in these holes Jesus Christ, to which Dan had shut his eyes and prayed to god no-one outside the room had caught that out of context. There’s a huge control panel, rows and rows of buttons and sound mixers and, as Dan had very accurately christened them, “slidey-things” in front of them. He has no idea what any of this stuff is, no idea what a “cross-fader” is or what the hell a “submaster” is supposed to do, but every now and then Phil will casually lean over and flick a switch or press a button and a stage light beneath them will change.

“What’s up?”

Dan looks up from his script. He’s been poring over his lines for so long he’s pretty sure stripes of yellow highlighter are now permanently inked into the back of his mind, now.

“What? Nothing.”

Phil swings his legs off of the bar they’d been resting against. They’re halfway through sharing a KitKat (Dan had taken a trip down to the Co-op at the beginning of the lunch break and returned with a bag so heavy with food it had left a dent in his hand, insisting Phil can’t be living on stale crisps his entire life) and watching a rehearsal, one Dan doesn’t have to be in for once, through a pane of glass.

“You’re going to have to do better if you want to convince me, Mr. Theatre Kid,” Phil reaches over to the bowl in front of them and plucks a grape from the stem. “I thought you were good at acting.”

“What do you want me to do; leap up and perform a jig?” Dan turns a page, the paper rustling a bit too loudly. “I’m fine, Phil. Stop reading into things too much.”

Phil stares at him. “You’re sat there with a face as long as my leg, and I’m reading into things?” he quirks an eyebrow. “Be careful. If you stare at that page any longer it’ll probably burst into flames.”

“Shut up,” Dan mutters, the edge in his voice a little too sharp for it to slip by as a joke.

Phil does.

Dan sighs. “Sorry, I just-“

“Rehearsals getting to you?” he suggests softly. Dan doesn’t plan on letting the real problem slip; Christ, he can only imagine the havoc that would ensue if it got around that as well as obsessing over acting he’s also never actually kissed anyone, so he quickly takes Phil up on that.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I mean- Romeo’s a good character to play, I guess, but he does have an awful lot to say.”

“You’ll be okay,” Phil reassures him. “You still have months of time left to memorise your lines. When’s the play?”

“Seventh of February,” Dan says. Two months from now.

“There we go,” Phil says. “You have plenty of time yet.”

“I guess so,” Dan shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve done this millions of times before,” Phil says. “You’ll be fine; I know you will. You’re a natural.”

Dan wishes he knew the half, he really does, but there’s just something about Phil’s smile that makes him almost want to believe him.

Dan manages to tell Phil a little bit more about himself next time they’re on the roof together, and in return, he learns a bit about Phil too.

“Well, when I was acti-“

“Nuh-uh,” Phil interrupts him. “No acting talk, remember?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “It’s relevant to what I was gonna say. It’s an important part of the story.”

“Wherever the hell you can fit acting into a story about you and your friends getting drunk and stealing a supermarket trolley because you couldn’t afford a taxi, I’d be very impressed.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dan grins, and that was the only time acting came into conversation that night.

Dan learns Phil is eighteen, that he’d failed his driving test three times before passing because he was driving on the wrong side of the dual carriageway, and swears he’s going to give up smoking next year, he promises. He learns that his favourite colour is blue because he likes the way the colour skates across the ocean water in the summer, and that he used to be scared of dogs before his parents got him a puppy for Christmas, a bouncy Labrador called Daisy with a love for the sun and walks down to the beach.

“I fucking love dogs,” Dan beams.

“So do I, now. Took me long enough,” Phil agrees, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Daisy’s so cute, oh my god. You will love her.”

Dan doesn’t say anything, but there’s something about the definite use of ‘you will’ that he likes.

He, in turn, finds that he does have some thoughts and feelings and dreams hidden away in there, beneath the façade of scripts and stage lights and acting. He finds he does have stuff to say, stuff that isn’t always attached to a web stringing back to the theatre. He tells Phil all about his cat, Ozzy (a little shit who takes great pleasure in knocking all his belongings off of his desk and sleeping on his laptop, but he loves him anyway) his annoying next-door neighbours who don’t seem to see any problem with blasting ABBA at three in the morning, and they manage to find common bands they both like. Oasis is playing when the sun sinks, the sky darkens, and the city lights up beneath them.

“God, I love this one,” Phil mumbles, his speech obscured by the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Don’t Look Back In Anger. It’s one of their best.”

“Oh god, yeah,” Dan agrees, tapping along to the chorus. “That and Stand By Me. Oh god, and Champagne Supernova, too.”

Phil grins at that, and leans forward, picking his phone up from the dashboard. Before Dan has a chance to question him, the chorus stops dead in its tracks, and an acoustic softness follows the sudden silence, a series of guitar chords that are just that bit too familiar. He grins.

“I always think the intro sounds a bit like Wonderwall,” Phil comments, putting his phone down and leaning back in the seat.

“Yeah,” Dan sighs, leaning back in his own seat and turning his gaze to the city beneath them, staring at lights and roads and buildings until they pool into a hazy amber blur in his vision.

How many special people change,

How many lives are living strange,

Where were you while we were getting high?

Slowly walking down the hall,

Faster than a cannonball

Where were you while we were getting high?

Someday you will find me,

Caught beneath the landslide,

In a champagne supernova in the sky.

Someday you will find me,

Caught beneath the landslide,

In a champagne supernova;

A champagne supernova in the sky.

They don’t say anything, instead letting Liam Gallagher do the talking, but sly glances are exchanged from under brown fringes and black eyelashes.

“Nice up here, isn’t it?”

It’s only until Phil breaks the silence they’ve lapsed into that Dan realises the song has drawn to a close. He slides his gaze from the city and over to Phil, over to his thoughtful stare skating along the skyline, the ruffled sweep of black hair coating his fringe, and the orange glow of a cigarette tip poking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes flicker over to Dan’s.

Dan looks back over to the city.

“Yeah.”

“I always come up here.”

“I can see why.”

“Yeah, well. Sometimes a little look over the city is just what you need to clear your head. It just puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Dan swallows. “It really does.”

There’s a litter of thoughts and worries in his mind, buried deep and multiplying with every day that drags past, every day that pulls him closer and closer to the production, to the hundreds of burning stares in the audience seats, to his colleague’s lips. He’s been longing for a break from it. Just a few hours of silence, a few quiet moments that don’t have to be spent combing over every single thought in his head, thinking and thinking until it inflates into anxiety, spilling into the pit of his stomach and clawing at the edges as it goes.

And the more he counts the city lights, the more he feels the cold night air stroke his cheeks and the engines reverberating around the car park levels beneath them, the more he reckons a more few nights up here. It’s the remedy he needs; just him, Phil and the lights.

Their eyes meet seconds after, and Dan can feel the question he’s vowed to ask Phil before the end of the night already beginning to rest on his lips, on the cusp of speech.

“When can we do this again?”

The late nights begin to pass more frequently in a spinning blur of city nights, passenger seats and conversations, all whispers and cold air and stolen glances. Dan can feel himself unravelling like a threadbare blanket, his carefully constructed personas and characters fraying at the edges with every hour spent up on the top of the city with a boy whose lips spill truths like water, and it isn’t long until Dan finds cracks in his paper personalities and begins to feel more and more honesty begin to seep through. He finds that no, he doesn’t have to spin false anecdotes like cotton and lie about his interests and find a way of linking everything back to acting, hooking every little quirk and element to his personality back to the stage. He doesn’t have to impress Phil with his knowledge of Hollywood throughout the years and he doesn’t have to act like he loves things he’s never actually heard of and he doesn’t have to lock his feelings away and throw away the key.

He doesn’t have to pretend.

It’s all okay until they fall onto the topic of previous relationships.

It’s been a good night. They’d visited the car park again, but this time without the car (it was warm enough to leave it in the driveway and make their own way up the concrete staircases, glass bottles in plastic bags clinking around their legs). They’d situated themselves in the very same parking space, the one second to the right and next to a beacon, but they’d traded car seats for a picnic blanket, headlights for phone torches and gear sticks for bottle openers.

“Yeah, like- fuck, she wasn’t a good kisser at all, was Mary. I mean- we were in year nine and she tried, bless her, and God knows so did I. But you know, with that as my first impression of kissing, when it was over I was like ‘what the fuck is all the fuss about?’” Phil chuckles, and Dan pretends to grin.

“Yeah, I mean-“ he shrugs, staring down at his lap. “I’ve had my fair share of bad kisses in my time.”

The ease with which the lie rolls off of his tongue almost takes him by surprise. It’s been a while since he’s lied about himself to Phil, and it feels strange.

“I can imagine,” Phil says, before frowning. “But you’re an actor. So you must be an excellent kisser, right? What with all the practice you guys have.”

Dan frowns, looking up from his bottle. “You what?”

“Oh come on. I saw what went on in the back of that car last term. Eddie and Alexandra. That play involved more lip-on-lip action than the fucking Notebook.”

Dan smiles at that, remembering the play adaptation they actually did of that when he was in year ten. He doesn’t quite know whether to laugh or cry over the sheer amount of starring roles he’s had that are heavily eloped in some kind of romantic storyline.

“Us actors have our techniques,” he says carefully.

Phil’s eyes widen at that. “You do? Like what?”

Dan shrugs, taking another sip of beer. “Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Phil shuffles closer, a flicker of eagerness in his cerulean stare and shit, Dan’s beginning to regret opening his mouth now. “Come on. What techniques do you have? I could use a few tips myself.”

Dan raises an eyebrow, his eyes firmly locked onto the spread of amber lights in front of them.

“I doubt you’d ever want to use these kinds of techniques on anyone,” he says, a hint of humour drying his speech. “I imagine stage-kissing on a real date would be quite a deal-breaker.”

“Stage kissing, huh?” Phil widens his eyes. “How does that differentiate from a real kiss, then?”

“Well,” Dan takes another sip of his drink, his vision beginning to slow down. “First of all, it’s not really a kiss at all.”

“Huh?” Phil frowns.

“I mean- not usually. There are different kinds of stage-kisses, but most of them don’t involve, you know,” he smirks, reusing Phil’s rather vulgar term of “lip-on-lip action”.

“So you guys don’t actually kiss?” Phil asks.

Dan shakes his head. “Nope.”

“But-… how does that work?”

Alcoholic courage swims through Dan’s veins at that. He glances at Phil.

The words are a whisper, a dare almost, and it isn’t until Phil nods that Dan realises he’s actually said it out loud.

“Want me to show you?”

“Yeah, go on,” Phil’s tone is casual, soft almost, but his eyes are glittering.

“Okay, well- come over here,” he beckons.

Phil does as he’s told, shuffling up on his knees until he’s facing Dan.

“One of the actors needs to have their back to the audience,” Dan says. “So, let’s say the wall over there is the audience,” he nods over Phil’s shoulder to the stretch of concrete watching them.

“Alright. The wall’s the audience. Now what?”

“Now,” Dan gulps, feeling his heart begin to pick up the pace because shit, this is really happening now. “So, what you do is, like, just lean in normally for a kiss, but stop just as your lips are about to touch.”

Phil scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Look, do you want me to show you or not?”

“Nah, nah, I’m kidding,” Phil says. “C’mon, then. Show me how it’s done in Hollywood.”

“You dick,” Dan mumbles, but he’s leaning in.

Phil gets closer, his face begins to crawl up to Dan’s until their noses are brushing and his fringe is a tickle on Dan’s cheek and his breath mixes with Dan’s own, warm and languid through parted lips and fuck, Dan’s heart is really thudding now. His legs feel like jelly and his lungs feel like fire and there’s something warm and fiery swirling in the pit of his stomach, something alien, something that he’s certainly never felt before with any other colleague he’s come this agonisingly close to kissing.

They stay there for what feels like minutes, lips hovering, warmth tingling and the city still thundering beneath them, and it’s Phil who pulls away first.

“Impressive,” he smiles, eyes glittering with nonchalance. “Frustrating, but impressive. Is that your go-to one, then?”

It takes three swigs of beer to calm Dan down before he can speak again.

“I mean- um, yeah. Though sometimes if you’re, like, sitting really far over to the side in the audience you might be able to tell that they’re not actually kissing, so,” he shrugs. “It just depends on the stage, I guess.”

“Right,” Phil nods, swigging from his own bottle. “You, er- you mentioned a few other types, right?”

The thought of coming that close to Phil’s lips again sends the strange flame of warmth flooding back into Dan’s stomach. He all but chokes on his mouthful of drink.

“Er- yeah,” he stutters. “There are a few others,” he gulps again and shit, what’s up with him?

Dan doesn’t really know what’s happening, doesn’t know why being within a metre radius of this guy is already making him feel far more than he’d ever felt with any colleague, kissing or not, but it doesn’t stop him from beckoning the older boy over and showing him kiss number two, their lips locked together with nothing except Dan’s thumb in between them. He can feel the warmth of Phil’s mouth against his skin, the hot movement of Phil’s breath through his nose and the tickle of his hair against his cheek again. When he parts his mouth, Dan feels the tiniest touch of lip against his. It’s only the very corner and can’t have lasted for longer than a millisecond, but the feeling comes back like a spark to a flame and he’s beginning to find it difficult to balance and oh, shit.

They break apart, eyes searching each other’s, and it’s the first time Dan’s feeling like this post-‘kiss’ without having to throw on a character like an old shirt. He doesn’t have to follow anything up with someone else’s speech, with a fake accent and a stupid costume and a mannerism that doesn’t quite fit.

For once, he doesn’t feel like he has to act.

Phil narrows his eyes after a few silent seconds, fighting back a smirk.

Dan frowns, the post-stage kiss high beginning to melt away.

“What?”

“Is that seriously it?” Phil says.

“Yeah,” Dan moves away, trying to ignore the surge of electricity he had felt upon edging within a few millimetres of the other boy’s lips, the city a roar beneath them.

“I don’t know why I feel so disappointed,” Phil smirks. “From where I sit, looking at you lot doing all your stuff down on the stage, it looks a whole sight more realistic than that.”

Dan looks back out to the city.

“Yeah, well,” he says, feeling his heart slow down. “Acting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“So. You and Alexandra, eh?”

Dan glares at him. Dawn is beginning to throw pastel colours into the blackness of the sky. It’s still dark enough to see the stars, fainter twinkles against the sweep of indigo above them, but it’s light enough for them to see each other, to make out feint outlines of faces in the low pre-sunrise light, eyes half-lidded and shadowed from the sleepless hours. It must be pushing four in the morning, and they’ve been here since eleven o’clock, leaving their parents with promises that they’re spending the night round each other’s houses to make a few preparations for the play.

(If reciting Romeo’s Balcony Scene soliloquy through giggles and slightly drunken slurs counts as preparation, then at least half of that promise is true).

“We’re not an item,” Dan mumbles, taking a drag from his cigarette. It tastes strange, kind-of like dirt and ash and tar and he’s not a smoker and probably never will be, but Phil had offered him one and- well, fuck it.

“I know,” Phil says. “But you guys are performing in the round, aren’t you?” Phil narrows his eyes, and Dan swears he leans an inch or two closer before whispering, “your stage kisses won’t work from that angle, I’m telling you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dan shuts his eyes. So far he’d been doing quite a grand job of pushing that worry to the back of his mind, burying it deep into his consciousness. The whole reason he’s up here altogether is to escape it.

Phil hesitates.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t you want to kiss Alexandra?”

Dan gulps, the taste of alcohol souring on his tongue a little.

“It’s not that,” he says. “I mean- a kiss is a kiss, right? It’s all part of the job, and-“

“But you don’t fancy her,” Phil says.

Dan frowns. “Well- no, of course not. She’s a colleague.”

“I know,” Phil says. “It makes a difference though, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“Kissing someone you don’t fancy. It’s weird.”

“Tell me about it,” Dan mumbles. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain this lie. “I- er, yeah. I usually stick to stage-kissing on the job, to be honest,” he shrugs. “It’s just easier than kissing someone you don’t really have feelings for.”

“Have you never, you know, properly kissed anyone before, then?”

Dan takes a deep breath. Lies can flow like water when he wants them to; he’s a master at concealing the truth behind a blanket of fabrication and deception, but there’s something about talking to Phil that makes falsehood sour on his tongue.

He lets it out in a deep sigh, feeling his chest deflate and his heart thud. Fuck it.

“You know what?,” he begins. “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if you can tell, but- yeah. I dunno, I guess that’s why I’m so stressed about this shit with Alexandra. And like- I know that probably makes me a fucking loser for never having kissed anyone at the age I am now, and probably even more of a loser that I want my first one to be with someone special, but- fuck, I don’t know,” he swallows, feeling the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen a little. “No. I haven’t. Okay?”

Phil doesn’t say anything. He bites his lip and averts his eyes down to the neck of his bottle. He fiddles with the loose cap, letting it fall through the spaces between his fingers with a sharp clink.

Dan doesn’t like that, doesn’t like the silence. The knot returns.

“What?”

“I- er- that wasn’t really what I meant,” Phil finally says.

The knot tightens.

“What do you mean it’s not what you meant?”

“I meant have you properly kissed anyone on stage before,” Phil glances up. “Not in general.”

Dan’s stomach drops. Oh fuck.

He open his mouth, but no speech follows. No amount of words can haul himself out of his hole now. Shit.

“I mean-“ he finally speaks again after a silence, and there’s a tremor in his voice that he desperately tries to smooth over. “Oh, shit,” he deflates, feeling the pit of his stomach begin to churn due to the abundance of the night’s alcohol. There’s no point trying to clamber out of the hole he’s just dug himself. He’ll only deepen it.

“Have you really never kissed anyone?” Phil asks in a quieter voice, but he doesn’t sound surprised. Or humoured. Or any other emotion Dan had feared. Just… curious. “Like, at all?”

Dan gulps, the beer a sour swirl in the pit of his stomach. Maybe the sixth bottle was a mistake.

“Well there’s no point denying it now, is there?” Dan finally mumbles, his eyes fixed on a dent in the concrete not far from where they’re sitting. “No. I haven’t.”

The gentle thrum of city engines fills the silence between them, and the three seconds Phil doesn’t say anything for might as well have been days.

“Yep,” Dan breaks the quietness once it borders on unbearable. “There you go. You think I’m a fucking weirdo now, don’t you?”

“Not at all,” Phil replies, and his voice is unusually calm. Dan looks up, his eyes meeting a soft expression, and for some reason he really didn’t expect Phil to react like this.

“So-“ Dan shakes his head. “What? You’re not gonna take the piss? Laugh at me? Say I’m a fucking weirdo that only lied to you to try and look cool?”

The truth scratches his heart, but it needs to be said.

“Why the fuck would I laugh at you?” Phil frowns, and there’s something about the sincerity in his voice that, beneath the turmoil, Dan finds weirdly comforting.

“I mean,” Phil begins. “I’m surprised, don’t get me wrong. Only because you’re an actor and- well, let’s face it, you’re fucking gorgeous too, but-“ he shakes his head. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m the first to say I’d much rather make sure my first kiss means something. If anything, I agree with you on that.”

“You’re not pissed off that I lied to you?” Dan gulps down another mouthful of lukewarm alcohol.

“Of course not, you twat,” Phil says. “I mean, I get why you did, but there was no need to. Really.”

“I know,” Dan sighs, picking at the label on his glass bottle until the paper frays at the edges.

“Wanna know something?” Phil says, his eyes not moving from the soft sweep of stars above them, dimmed by the early morning light.

Dan takes his eyes away from the sky. “What?”

“If you’re a liar, then so am I,” Phil tells the stars.

Dan frowns. “You what?”

Phil’s eyes flick back down to earth, meeting Dan’s gaze. “I lied too.”

Dan gulps, his heart thudding. “About what?”

Phil forces a chuckle, but it’s drained of humour. “Do I have to spell it out to you? I haven’t kissed anyone either.”

The words ring in Dan’s ears moments after, Phil’s voice an echo above the roar of the city below.

“Wait-…” is the only word that passes Dan’s lips in the next passing minute or so. “But-…”

“Yeah,” Phil shrugs. “Turns out you’re not the only one, are you?”

“But-…” Dan shakes his head. “Why did you lie about it too?”

Phil just shrugs and says, “same reasons you did.”

Dan tries, he really tries, to comb through the tangle of confusion in his mind right now, but the best response he can come up with after a moment or two of silence isn’t the most articulate.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees, and they descend into quietness again.

“Shame, isn’t it?” Phil is the first to break the silence. “That we feel the need to lie about that.”

“It’s society’s fault for making us feel as if being over the age of about fifteen without having shoved a tongue down anyone’s throat is a failure.”

Phil grimaces. “I’ve never understood the attraction of that, you know. Like, I get making out and stuff, but why would you want to literally devour the person next to you? When I saw kissing scenes as a kid I thought they were actually trying to eat each other.”

“I know,” Dan takes a sip of beer, the alcohol slipping down with a little more ease now. “It sounds grim. I don’t know how people do it. At least with acting on stage you don’t have that problem.”

“True,” Phil mirrors his actions, pulling his drink away from his lips and tracing the rim of the bottle with the tip of his thumb, staring down the tube-shaped glass into the remains of the flat beer, swimming lukewarm and flat at the bottom of the bottle. Only when he glances up a few seconds later does Dan realise he’s been staring.

Dan smirks.

“What are you grinning at?”

“Just-…” he shakes his head and shit, he’s definitely had enough to drink tonight. He can feel the alcohol-induced honesty begin leaking through his parted lips and he knows he’ll probably end up saying something he’ll regret tomorrow morning but- oh, fuck it. “The thought of you having never kissed anyone. It just- doesn’t make sense to me like- look at you. How?”

He’s not really sure where the line between a compliment and a very sorry attempt at flirting is drawn but he’s pretty sure he’s fallen somewhere in the middle.

Phil’s gaze lingers a few seconds too long. “I could ask you the same thing. I mean- come on, look at you. A guy like you must have been drowned in opportunities.”

They’re both a bit too drunk, a bit too cold and there’s something about the atmosphere of an empty car park at fuck-knows-o’clock that warps reality just a little. Dan blinks and the city lights don’t unblur and he feels a bit like he’s in a dream.

“Yeah, I-…” he shrugs. “I’ve had my fair share of offers, I won’t lie.”

“I’ll bet,” Phil interjects, and Dan rolls his eyes.

“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t either,” Dan rolls his eyes, but he’s smirking. “I just-… yeah, I dunno. I didn’t really wanna waste it, but I never really found someone I liked enough.”

“That’s nice, that is,” Phil says, and though Dan scours his tone of voice for a trace of sarcasm or mockery, but Phil’s eyes glitter earnestly. “No, like, really. Most teenagers just, you know, dive straight into it. Slam their face against anything with a pulse that crosses their path. But the fact you care enough to wait,” he glances up, eyeing the boy beside him carefully. “That’s rare. Kinda admirable in a way.”

“Were you the same, then?”

Phil nods without any hesitation. “A hundred percent.”

Dan nods understandingly, taking another sip of beer, and the two of them watch the town sleep for a quiet moment before Phil speaks up again.

“Oh, come here,” he stretches out his arms. “You look like you’re seconds away from hypothermia, for Christ’s sake.”

Dan leans into his chest, closing his eyes and snuggling into the Topman denim of Phil’s jacket. “I don’t really think a car park roof is the most suitable drinking spot,” he mumbles, his speech slightly obscured by his rattling jaw.

“Not at five a.m. in December at least,” Phil says. “It’s a lot nicer in summer, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Dan says, and the indirect promise that they’ll come out here and do this again makes Phil smile.

It’s quiet, serene and blue, and Dan loses count of the minutes that drip by until he hears Phil’s voice again, shattering his trance dancing on the fragile edge of drunken consciousness.

“Dan?” it’s only a half-whisper, but it still makes him jump.

The younger boy turns his head, his brown hair tousling against Phil’s denim chest until they’re eye-to-eye.

Phil lowers his gaze, but this time his eyes don’t flicker back up to Dan’s. Dan parts his mouth in response, but before he can say anything, there’s a surge forward and a soft pair of lips on his.

A jolt of adrenaline, shock, and a general ‘holy-fucking-shit-this-can’t-be-happening’ feeling shimmers through his body as he kisses back, and despite his embarrassing inexperience when it comes to anything remotely romantic, his lips move perfectly in time with Phil’s, their mouths melting together in flawless harmony.

Phil’s the one to break away, and Dan misses his lips the second the cold morning air touches his mouth. He frowns, studying Phil’s expression half-hidden by his mop of black hair, but the older boy refuses eye contact.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came ov-“

“Don’t apologise,” Dan cuts him off immediately, his hand hovering over Phil’s arm in quiet protest. “Just-…” he gulps. “Do it again,”

Phil’s head snaps up, his eyes boring into the brown stare in mild confusion.

“Please,” Dan mouths, and Phil doesn’t need to be told twice.

They kiss for longer, deeper, slightly parted lips and slow breathing and the teal glow of 5am light and shit, this was certainly worth a seventeen year wait. Phil’s lips feel like warmth and taste like tobacco and he feels a gentle comb of shy fingertips through his hair and yep, he can definitely see what all the fuss is about now.

When they break apart for the second time, all blushes and broken breaths, they’re both grinning. Phil drops his gaze with a bashful chuckle.

“Well,” Dan breathes. He’s still sitting close, their upper arms touching but neither of them really wanting to move away.

“Well,” Phil says, almost in agreement. They’re bathed in silence once again, but this time it’s comfortable.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Dan begins, looking out over the city. “That was definitely worth the wait.”

Phil tilts his head down, their noses almost touching. “Yeah?”

“For sure,” Dan cranes his neck up a little and pecks Phil’s lips again. The other boy grins, pulling his jacket further over Dan’s shoulders.

“We’ll have to do this again sometime then, won’t we?” Phil’s eyes glitter.

Dan grins, glancing at the view spread in front of them. The sun is beginning to awaken and there are fewer streetlights illuminating the land below and it’s cold and wow, they should really think about heading home soon. Dan hasn’t checked his phone in hours and he’s sure it can’t be running on anything much more than a measly four percent.

“Definitely,” he says, then hesitates. “Although, well.”

“Well what?”

Dan flicks his eyes up at the boy above him, tired brown against weary blue.

“Perhaps next time we should choose somewhere a little warmer than a car park,” he says in a soft voice, before adding, “I can barely feel my arse right now.”

Phil bursts out laughing, and then a pair of lips are on his for the third time.

The next couple of weeks rush by in a flurry of rehearsals, meetings, crumpled scripts and weird costumes that itch around the collar. Dan and Phil spend most of their time three storeys apart, meaning secret rendezvous up in the control room or down in the trap room are often necessary. The closer the big day creeps, the hotter the atmosphere becomes with stress, so it’s nice to leave the tension with the stage and the equally tense co-workers and escape for a bit.

“For fear of that, I still will stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart aga- oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not even listening.”

Phil looks up from his phone, a giggling smirk still lingering on his face. “Huh?”

“Come on, Phil. You said you’d go through this with me and you’re sat there playing around with bloody Snapchat filters.”

“Sorry, sorry – I am listening, it’s just-“ his eyes flicker back down to the screen in front of him. “That’s hideous. Who even makes these filters? I look like a toe.”

“Can unflattering photos of you not wait five minutes until I’ve finished this? We’re literally nearly done anyway. We only have, like, one more paragraph to g-” Phil interrupts him by flipping the phone around to face the other boy. A bald, rather unsightly version of Phil with weird eyes stares back. Dan’s eyes widen in horror. “Fuck, that really is hideous.”

“I know,” Phil shudders. “I didn’t even know my face could do that,” he glances back at the screen and pulls a couple of experimental faces. “Would you still be with me if I looked like that?”

“Nope,” Dan replies semi-seriously, rolling his eyes when Phil pouts.

“What about if I looked like this?” Phil turns the phone around. He looks a lot better this time, but a little bit too much like an animal. Dan’s never really understood the national attraction towards ‘dog filters’.

“Probably. The ears might get in the way a bit, though,” he chuckles, before urging, “now come on. We haven’t got long left now.”

Phil agrees, albeit reluctantly. He swings his legs off the table, grabs Dan’s battered highlighted mess of a script sitting in front of him and they pick up from where they left off, something about ‘worms that are thy chamber maids’, ‘everlasting rest’ and ‘inauspicious stars’ (whatever the fuck that adjective means). They last a grand total of fifteen seconds before Dan’s voice is interrupted by a shriek of laughter.

“Oh, fucking hell that’s bad!” Phil cackles. Dan groans, wondering for a fleeting second where the best place to launch Phil’s phone might be.

“That’s it,” he loses it, suddenly leaping across the table and swiping the irritating rectangle of interest straight from Phil’s hand. His smile vanishes in seconds.

“Aw, what?!”

“You have five seconds to put this stupid fucking thing away, or else it’s going out there,” he points to the window behind them. Phil follows his gaze, his eyes widening. They can see the majority of the town from up here. That’s a long drop.

He turns his head back around. They’re nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye.

“Fine,” Phil smiles, the tips of their noses brushing together. “But just so you know, seeing you angry just makes me want to kiss you more.”

Dan rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his smirk. “Are you still gonna want to kiss me when your phone ends up on the ground?”

“What do you mean ‘when’? I’ve put it away now,” he points to the bulge in his back pocket.

Dan fixes him with a glare.

“Come on,” Phil leans forward as Dan leans back. “Just one?” he pleads, his eyes big and blue.

He shakes his head and pulls away, a grin curling at his lips. His eyes flicker back to Phil, a brown gaze that lingers too long.

“Afterwards,” he says in a voice like velvet.

Phil rolls his eyes, flopping back onto the chair. “Fine. Bloody hell, it’s like being back at school.”

Dan pretends not to hear that last comment. “Come on, we’ll take it from “world-wearied flesh…”

Phil’s phone doesn’t move once from his pocket after that. The promise of Dan’s lips after rehearsal is more tempting than any filter some dumb app has to offer.

“How do I look?”

Phil eyes him up and down, a smirk playing at his lips. “Hot.”

The comment receives a soft punch to his upper arm.

“Behave,” Dan turns back to the mirror, twining a lock of perfectly sprayed hair that he was specifically instructed not to touch around his fingers. “Are you sure? I feel like I look like a-“

He’s interrupted by a pair of soft lips for a few seconds.

“That’s really not helping the nerves,” Dan breathes once they break away.

Phil grins. “You look fine. You know you do. Now quit playing with your hair before Alexa sees.”

Dan doesn’t think Alexa, the make-up artist, is capable of seeing anything that isn’t within a thirty-centimetre radius of her own face right now. She’s been hurrying around backstage all evening; powdering this, curling that, flitting from actor-to-actor so quickly it makes Dan out of breath to even watch her. She certainly hasn’t done a bad job though, he thinks, as he inspects his reflection. A slightly dishevelled, 15th-century version of himself stares back, all weird leather and burgundy velvet and wow, perhaps he should sport an Elizabethan tunic more often.

“Suits you,” Phil smiles as if he’d read his mind. Dan adjusts the collar accordingly.

“D’you reckon?”

“Yeah,” Phil eyes him up and down again. “Most people here kinda look like twats in their costume, but you really actually pull that off.”

“Um- thanks? I think?” Dan smirks, frowning at his reflection. He doesn’t mention it has anything to do with his long-standing ability to morph into literally anyone he likes (he’d often been described by many make-up artists as having a “chameleon face” which he hopes is a reference to his adaptability to blend into multiple characters as opposed to resembling a lizard), and instead accepts the ever-so-slightly backhanded compliment.

“What are you doing down here?” someone with an updo the size of Jupiter asks Phil, sauntering past in something that really rather resembles a cupcake. Phil was right, Dan thinks. They do look a bit ridiculous. “They need you upstairs in five minutes.”

“Oh shit,” Phil glances at his watch. “Okay. Gotta go before Nick kills me.”

“Alright,” Dan smiles, pulling him in for a quick hug.

“Good luck,” he whispers into his shoulder. “You’ll fucking kill it.”

Dan tightens his grip around his arms. “Thank you.”

The word has multiple other meanings, and judging by the glitter in Phil’s eye when he pulls away, he thinks he understands every single one.

That night, Dan lavishes in warm spotlights and painted wooden sets resembling palaces and balconies, and he feels alive.

That night, the finest Elizabethan literature spills from his lips, flowing as easily as water, his voice shaping every monologue, soliloquy and duologue perfectly.

That night, there are another pair of lips on his; only this time painted red and totally professional. It feels strange, alien, and not a single trace of the spark in his heart that Phil’s lips ignite can be found, but it’s work. It’s courage.

And that night, someone up in the control booth watches through the pane of glass over all the light boards and buttons and wires, and smiles.

As if it’s been almost a year since my last oneshot??? Wtf this must CHANGE I’m getting back into writing (properly this time I swear) so there’s a lot more where this came from. Feedback is always appreciated whether it be good or bad so pls let me know how you found this! Feels so good to be doing this again u have nooo idea holy shit <3

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #phan au #danisnotonfire #amazingphil #dan and phil #i really hope this is ok i'm so nervous about posting lol #pls pls pls let me know what you think #it's been a while since i've written fic properly i rllly wanna get back into it

282 notes · View notes

swearronchanel · 7 years

Text

Finally got around to 7.02

Back at it again with more of my commentaries that no one asked for, I just have a lot to say watching Call The Midwife ok!

Better late tha never, let’s get this started

Skipping the credits bc I’m impatient

Val serving a look! even tho it’s all blue

Shelagh’s perfect 60s kitchen is a dream 😍 looks just like the blue of the Petries’ in the Dick Van Dyke Show

Shelagh Turner is so adorable

New hairstyle for Val coming soon?

Trixie looking like a BABE

Her extensions on point! I’m jealous

“Mine looks terribly realistic” LMAO I LOVE WINNIE

Love the 60s salon decor lol

Poor Sister Winnifred needs a car😂

Ugh choke on that whistle Woolfe

“Iced buns” Run away boobs, look out 😂

GTFO! “Looking like she just got off the boat” BITCHHH!!!

People still love to tell me to straighten my hair and that’s my natural hair is too frizzy and messy, fuck you. *”beyonce!?” video voice* Lucille sweetie I’m sorry an ugly b*tch would even say that

This shit already pissing me off ugh, I know I’m white passing and it gives me privilege but my dad and lot of my family doesn’t and I get upsetttt thinking that they prob hear shit like this or have before(as SO many people do),, like I will throw hands

That goes for anyone tbh, 0 tolerance for racism. It angers me everyday

Val’s still in rollos loll, ugh I wanna get my hair done soon

am I immature or are Sister W’s sock puppets are funny as hell?😂😂

I love Sister Winnie tho she deserves more

Yass gal being your man he needs to be involved

Aww baby

BEATRIX !!! 😍 THIS IS A L O O K

I LOVE IT SM

ALSO Christopher is still a babe and he has a new car?? Sugar daddyyy 🤑

“My parents tried their best but domestic science wasn’t really on the syllabus at casa mia” LMFAO I AM TRIXIE

if only I was that gorgeous and fabulous

I love Val & Trixie’s banter 😂😘

“Not so long ago I thought I’d never be happy again and yet here I am. The human heart is really most resilient.” Oh Trixie I need to hear that.

Yes Lucille knock some sense into them

Sister Monica Joan, an 80-odd nun in the 60s is legit more open minded than an entire population in this country *cough cough Tr*mp & his disgusting supporters*

WHO PICKED THIS UGLY OUTFIT FOR SHELAGH? I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU

“She grew up in a communist country I doubt that’s conducive to a cheerful disposition.” LMAO

Lol my baby cousin is named Magdalena

“Her type” YOU MEAN A HUMAN. SHE’S A HUMAN. FROM THE CARIBBEAN.

THANK YOU VAL FOR THE DEFENSE IMA FLIP

O m f g I WANT TO FIGHTTTTT THIS MOTHER

Oh shit a stroke!!??

Lucille grabbing Val’s hand 😭

Sister MJ’s eyes😭😭

I forget you could smoke even in hospitals and planes back then

How is Teddy this big already?

SHELAGH’S FACE LMAOO intimidated by Magda

She’s a Catfish but for the better

Trixie again 😍 love that dress too!

I want her hair ugh

LMAO BURNT ASS GRAEPFRUIT

Yass Magda you’ve been living your best life, I need to get like you

“Everyone knows English coffee is very bad” LMAOO I LOVE HER ALREADY??

but also we know the best coffee is from the Caribbean & Columbia

“Better than what I’m used too” LMAO PATRICK YOU GONNA GET IT BOY

Shelagh’s faces I’m so ded

Time to step up your wardrobe tho Shelagh, Magda can’t upstage you in your own home

“Life really can change in the blink of an eye.” You’re telling me Phyllis

WINNIE LMAO putting her hand to her heart is me at every little thing

What happened to the cute nightgowns you owned Shelagh? cancel the moo moos

“You might want to put on a cardigan. You’re not on the continent now.” LMAO WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?

like shoulders aren’t scandalous tf 😂 or is it bc it’s chilly? Either way Shelagh is so pressed, I die😂

don’t worry bby she don’t want your man lmao, no need to be worried

Damn calling her an invalid right in front of her Dr T? kinda fucked up

aw this poor husband 😭

guess who still hates Mrs Stanton? yo

she’s pregnant and dropped a pound and I go to the gym and cannot? what the hell

The bonchinche (gossip) at the salon is so realistic lol, it’s usually the hairdressers spilling the tea here when you go to people you know😂👏🏼

Shelagh in another dowdy outfit why!?

The costume designers doing Laura Main so dirty this series, she deserves better

I know she is not Trixie or Val but she can wear cute outfits too!

Like the grey dress from 6.2! The Jackie Kennedy-esque suit! She had some looks and now she’s in these dull avena colors

Don’t @ me bc of this either^ I appreciate fashion and just looking nice, let me rock and complain

“Filthy hands” Mrs Stanton boutta MEET MY TWO FISTS REAL SOON OMFG

“Proper English nurse”IM FUMINGGGGG

IDGAF she’s upset and wants to blame YOU DON’T GET TO JUSTIFY BEING RACIST

the black woman waiting just gave Lucille the most sad but understanding look my fucking heart

“It’s not up to you or Nurse Crane to decide how much unpleasantness I can bear.” FUCK YES LUCILLE BABE STICK UP FOR YOURSELF !!! TAKE NO SHIT

I L O V E H E R

Is their last name Romaine like the lettuce?

The track suit tho lolll

“The fears we have in the present often lie in the experiences of the past”😭yes

Can we call her Lucy? I love her

I feel you Val bb! I’m embarrassed that my country put literal evil garbage in the White House!!

Aw Val sorry bb

“I’ve had patients who won’t let me touch them bc they thought the blackness would rub off on their skin” set in 1963 and there’s still fucking disgusting people who act like this in 2018

🙌🏻👏🏼 LUCILLE ANDERSON

I’m glad ofc but ugh I hate when they resolve major/serious problems so quickly tbh

Omg I remember my hair was too short for braids so my mom would make me get “twisties” GOD THE PAIN I CAN STILL FEEL IT! AND THE RUBBER BANDS BREAKING AGAINST YOUR HEAD AHHH

Teddy omg the cutest

LMAO okay Tim, chill

A ROBERTS RADIO UGH I WANT ONEEE

Lmaoo Tim is tragic😂 he doesn’t get out much

Angela aw! An angel!

Magda serving a look aye

Where’s Shelagh to sing the toothbrush song?

The husband reminds me of a “who from whoville” loll

Occupational therapy clinic! Mika !! @nurse-franklin

Coq au vin? Chef Magda

“If you like that sort of thing” LMAO SALTYY AF

“Do I detect a tone?” LMAO OBVIOUSLY PATRICK, REASSURE YOUR WIFE SHE’S PRESSED

I’m laughing but really it’s not funny enough to drag it out lol, I hope Shelagh get’s over it quick

Lmaoo Shelagh a dress with her shoulders out and knees showing is not half dressed, calamate

Lol love her still

I do love her facial expressions too

But fr can she not wear all brown & whoever gave her the M’Lynn from Steel Magonlias hair? It gotta go

SISTER MJ AND LUCILLE MI CORAZÓN

“I could read to you”😭😭

Wait they play basketball?

Violet Buckle is under-appreciated and the Buckle family is too

Aw I’m proud of Marjorie’s husband

obvs hand in front of stomach placement ha

LMAO WINNIE STEALING THE CAR WHAT A THUG! GTA OUT HERE 😂

LMAO THIS DAD AW HE’S COACHING

PHYLLIS IN HER SKIRT BLESS, SHE’S GONNA BE PISSED THO LOLLL

He’s about to throw up I’m ded

Phyllis brought to tears about her, I feel 😂😭

Except my Bitch ass doesn’t have a car or license yet

“Wedding”😭

CAUGHT Lmaoo sorry Sis

“The longest paths lead into sunlight, when they are paved with love”😭😭

THESE DARLINGS BROUGHT FOOD I LOVEEE

Omfg do I see rellenos de papa?👀👀

That food looks so good ugh I wish I had some home cooked food rn

Ahh man that’s it?

Till next week😭..

#call the midwife #let's get it 1963 #my commentaries™#waiting every week is stress ahh

33 notes · View notes

dreamyoonjh · 7 years

Text

Jeonghan Soulmate! AU

Anonymous asked: Hello!! Are you Jeonghan biased too? Can I please request a soulmate AU for him? And the rest of svt too if it's not too much? I just love the idea of soulmates ahh. Thank you so much ;-;

Thank you so much for requesting, Anon!! I hope you enjoy reading this!! I don’t really like this tbh but this is my first ever bullet-point imagine so please be understanding 💖

People have different soulmate-identifying marks

Your parents have a red string connecting them

Your best friend has a stopwatch counting down to the day they'll meet their soulmate

Your cousin sees them through their dreams

Some has it easy, a name imprinted on their wrists.

Some has it harder, with only the last words their soulmates say to them as the only way to confirm if their s/o was their soulmate.

Thank god yours is pretty common.. The first words your soulmate will say to you is imprinted in a suave cursive around your wrist.

"Thank you?"

The phrase thank you is thrown a lot,, but what makes you curious is what you could have possibly done to get a question mark at the end of the statement

You tried not to worry about it. But you still do.

So now you're a writer alright

You specialized in poetry

Because there's nothing that gives you more pleasure than mere words being stringed together and broken down to create one of the most beautiful things ever.

You're in your first year of college when you discovered the multitalented beautiful boys that were no other than Seventeen

It was thanks to your roommate really

Seventeen is holding a concert + a fanmeet in your city!!

And your roommate happens to have an extra ticket bc her friend suddenly couldn’t go

She showed you the Mansae MV

You can’t help but to notice the beautiful boy with a silver long hair

“Who is he??????”

“That’s Jeonghan :DDDD”

She showed you 12345678 videos of them and honestly?? You were falling in love already

These boys?? Are so talented?? And have incredible personalities?? That sealed the deal for you.

Even though you’re relatively new to the fandom, you love them so much, especially Jeonghan

He’s your bias obv

Within a couple months you’re already a huge Carat and you can’t wait for the day when you’ll meet them to come

Jeonghan has always known his soulmate would be the sweetest

Why?

Because he has the sweetest first words imprinted on his wrist

It’s always covered in foundations and concealers on stage, of course.

But in the times it isn’t… Looking at it alone gets him smiling from ear to ear

"You look like.. The kind of person I'd write poetry about."

To any other people, the phrase would seem cheesy

Hell, even Seungcheol teased him mercilessly about it

But Jeonghan?? This boy loves it

He knows people with the most basic first words ever (i.e. “Sorry” “Nice to meet you”) and honestly? He’s proud to know that his is different, unique

He’s willing to bet no one else in this world has the same exact first words as him, and that says a lot about the kind of person his soulmate is

He's always thinking about the response he'd give

Because how can you respond to anything of that sort? How can you return such a sweet statement with anything sweeter, but not superficial?

No matter what, Jeonghan knows how much he'll love his soulmate already

Today's the day of the concert, and the fansign afterwards

You and your roommate came early to the venue and made so many new carat friends

When it’s showtime..

You held back tears the entire team, excitedly screaming along with thousands other fans

Jeonghan was!! So beautiful!! Even from a distance!!

You made your own cheering banner and a few of the members had noticed it!!

When the last song came on, you were already in tears

You just love these boys so much.. Seeing them happy made you 1004x happier

While the concert was phenomenal, it was the fansign you looked forward to the most

You can’t wait to interact with Seventeen, even if it’s only briefly

You’re one of the last ones to go, so you got to see SVT interacting w/ other Carats first

They were so sweet!! Trying on headbands and accepting gifts.. You can really see how much they love their fans

Finally, the time came for you to interact with them!

Your heart is beating!! SO!! FAST!!

When you finally reached Jeonghan, you had to do a double take

You’re actually seeing him, right in front of your eyes, and he’s looking at you

He was beautiful on your screen

He was beautiful on stage too

But up close?

Absolutely stunning

So you thought, "You look like.. The kind of person I'd write poetry about"

You didn't realize you said it out loud until you see the change in his expression

A shocked face.. And something else you couldn’t quite place

"Thank you?"

You froze

aAAAHHHHH

aaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHh

???????????????? cOULD HE BE????????

Jeonghan is lowkey freaking out inside too bc that’s it?? “tHANK yOU??” that’s all he could say?? yIkes

You continued the fansign like normal, cheeks blushing furiously

You struck up a conversation as he signed your posters

You told him your name, and that he's your bias, such and such

It's such a normal convo between an idol and a fan but Jeonghan’s already falling for you??

He's convinced already that you're his soulmate

Because honestly no one else knew about his soulmate’s first words except for his family, fellow members, and Pledis

Idols’ soulmate marks have always been hidden if it’s anything physical (whether it be through long-sleeves, makeup, etc.)

Jeonghan can feel his soulmate mark heating up, it’s probably turning blood red by now

A sign that one has met their soulmate

You could feel your mark burning up too

Both of you were blushing profusely tbh

The normally confident Jeonghan is a blushy mess when he meets you

So at the end, when you're about to move on to Jisoo..

"Hey (Y/N), I don't mean to be so forward but, can I please see your wrist?"

Your face lit up at that (he referred to you by name oMG)

“Yes!! Of course!!”

You tried to stay casual lol but who are you kidding?

When he saw the "Thank you?" on your wrist, he grinned so wIDE

He found her. He found her. He found her. He found his soulmate.

He rolled up his sleeves, showing the delicate words you had said to him just a few moments before

"We're soulmates, after all", he said, beaming.

Honestly by this point everyone's attention is on the both of you

You can feel other fans staring daggers at you

Before you could respond, a staff member leads you to the backstage where you waited for another hour until the boys finished meeting their precious carats

The first one to show up is Joshua (who you didn’t get to properly meet in the fansign ;-;)

Who tackled you immediately into a hug

He’s embarrassed af but he’s all like please take care of Jeonghan!! You won’t believe how much he talks about you.. Long before you both actually met...

Your blush deepens even more rip

The other members start to fill up the room, and your heart stopped for the second time that day when you see Jeonghan making his way towards you

“Hello, soulmate”

And you both indeed make the sweetest couple :’)

#seventeen #seventeen imagines #jeonghan #jeonghan x reader #seventeen reactions #seventeen fluff #yoon jeonghan #jeonghan imagines #kpop imagines #kpop reactions #kpop scenarios #seventeen scenarios #svtcreations

532 notes · View notes

3one3 · 7 years

Text

The Sequel - 855

Day(bed) Dreams

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“This is the first time I’ve actually sat in here.”

“It’s very nice with the fan.”

“The puppies certainly seem to enjoy napping here. I wonder why they waited for humans to use it before trying it themselves.”

“They like to be near you.”

“I wish Lukas were here.”

“Why did you schedule a playdate for him last night then?”

“Because dumb.”

In honor of Juan’s visit, and because it was really too hot out anyway, Christina postponed her Thursday riding and penciled “lay by the pool” into her schedule in its place. She and Juan made use of the little cabana on the front of the pool shed. There was a huge and comfortable wicker daybed in there with thick canvas cushions, and a ceiling fan that offered even more respite from the temperature than the shading from the sun obviously provided. The side curtains were decorative and remained tied to their posts for maximum fresh air anyway. Both humans and both Toy Fox Terriers had soft baby blue towels to relax on, and the latter snoozed stretched out on their sides for maximum cooling. The humans were right next to each other, with some pillows to recline on.

“I think I’m getting dumber, actually. A side effect of doing nothing but showing and vacationing is developing a serious deficit of other things to even talk about. I have nothing to say that isn’t about horses, horse shows, the Olympics, bikinis, food, or children’s toys. I can’t even read interesting books because I just fall asleep.” Christina inhaled deeply through her nose and let the air out slowly. The first part pushed her chest into the player’s left arm and the second drew it away again, but did blow warm breath on him. She could see it move some hair around. The short sleeve of his adidas logo tee was a little caught up on the towel, so it exposed more bicep than it should. The rider leaned forward just enough to smooch him there.

“You did at least an hour on Donald Trump this morning,” the Spaniard countered. Preseason was hard work for him and he relished the day off to relax with his feet up. His girlfriend’s yard was a pretty nice place to do that. The water pumps in the pool moved the surface water just enough to make a little ambient noise with the whoosh of the fan to back up the music playing over on the patio at low volume. Christina chose an alt-rock radio station on Apple Music, which was as inoffensive as it was uninteresting. Occasionally a song she knew and liked came on and she hummed along with it. More than occasionally a song she knew and didn’t like came on, and she hummed those too. Juan talking to her about the summer tour, in the kind of voice dictated by their proximity to one another, was all she really cared to hear. Sometimes Lucky’s snoring surpassed the collective volume of all of those things, and the player rubbed his head with his toes to interrupt the funny sound without ruining the puppy nap.

“So those things and Donald Trump. That’s it.”

“What do you want to have on your mind? You’re living your big dream in a few days. Better to think about it as much as you can before it’s over and you can’t get this time back,” Juan suggested.

“I don’t know. I just want to feel like an interesting person,” the new Olympian chuckled.

“Have you started reading the zoo book yet?”

“No. You said I should take it to Tokyo, so I’m saving it for Tokyo.”

“Have you talked to Aidan lately?”

“Yes. He’s happy for me about Tokyo. He has a girlfriend. He can’t come to visit because school starts soon.”

“That’s too bad.”

“What are we going to do when football starts for real and you can’t come visit either?”

“You can still visit me.”

“I watched an MLS game the other night at the airport.”

“Why? You hate American soccer.”

“David Villa was on fire.”

“He’s loving it there.”

“He sounds exactly like you. I stopped paying attention when the match was over but I still had my laptop open and my earbuds in and he did the man of the match interview and I thought it was you for a second.”

“We grew up in the same place. This is normal, I think.”

“I looked at the nearest TV screen with departures on it to see if there was a flight to London. I wanted to see you. So bad. It was such a crazy weekend and I heard your voice, or what I thought was your voice, and I wished I was going home to you in London instead of coming back here.”

“You have the power any time you want to make “home” with me in London instead of here with him.”

“Don’t.”

“Why do you tell me this if you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I tried to nap a little yesterday before you got here. I was flip-flopping between putting music on for white noise or a podcast, and I picked neither. I fell asleep just thinking about you instead.”

“What about?”

“I had this vignette in my head about us in bed, having like really romantic sex with the instrumental version of this Damien Rice song I love. I do that a lot.”

“Which?”

“Fall asleep imagining scenarios with you, or with Schü. They’re always affectionate, or passionate, or...I don’t know. The other day I was like, “What does this mean? What does it say about me? Am I feeling starved for that kind of connection?” I couldn’t really decide. I probably fell asleep.”

“I don’t know what it means,” the Spanish midfielder replied somewhat absently as he lifted his arm to use it as a headrest. Christina didn’t read that gesture as one meant to make more space between then. On the contrary, she inched closer to him and moved her knee to his thigh and her hand to his stomach. There were lots of times when his ability to listen to her situation and then interpret it differently could really, really agitate and annoy her, like the night before. Most of the time she wanted the service. She wanted him to tell her why her imagination struggled as of late to embrace any genre but softcore porn and romantic comedies. All it wanted to do was think up sex scenes, and cuddling scenarios, and it provided the staging, the soundtrack, the dialogue, and the plot, but never the prior scene or the one that would come next- never the context. Sometimes her imagination directed the scenes in her dreams and sometimes when she was awake. “Maybe it’s your conscience trying to protect you from thinking too much about the Olympics? If you weren’t having romantic fantasies all the time, maybe you’d be having medal ceremony ones, or scary ones where you hit all the jumps.”

“Maybe, but my conscience has never shown signs of self-awareness or a desire for self-preservation. It’s usually totally suicidal,” the rider giggled.

“You’ve grown a lot. You could be done with the self-destructive instincts,” Juan said back teasingly. She could see and hear his smile. “What are the other vignettes? Is that what you called them?”

“Yes, like a tableau, or scene. There was one where I desperately wanted you to fuck me standing up, like from behind, and you were like, “No, you’re too short”, and I was like “hello, Schü is half a foot taller than you and he manages,” and you were like, “Kneel on the bed”. So you were standing up and I was sitting up on my knees, and it was amazing. You kept kissing my neck or resting your chin on my shoulder here.” Christina patted the front of her left shoulder and then left her hand there, sort of tucked inside the neck of her shirt so she could touch her collarbone. “And obvs you had great access to boobs and clit so I was in over-stimulated heaven.”

“What’s happening in the ones that aren’t about sex?”

“When I got on that plane I passed out thinking about us going to a beautiful library from one of those Buzzfeed lists of beautiful libraries, and you walking around picking out all the books with quotes you know by heart that make you think of me,” she explained, able to see the scene in her head as if it were a memory. “I used to have things like that in my head when I had crushes on people, or when I first met Schü. And when we were first together. Usually my daydreams and fall-asleep-dreams are like...the stuff we put into the Dirk videos. Training montages with great songs. Victory gallops.”

“I know I’ve said it before and I know you’ve said no before, but I bet you could learn more about why you fantasize about different things if you spoke with a therapist.”

“Still no.” Christina shook her head and then pressed it into the Chelsea man’s ribs. He sighed dramatically like her cause was hopeless, and moved his left arm around her. His thumb tucked into the back of her cotton shorts near her hip.

“What are the ones you have with André?”

“Same type things.”

“I have had a thousand of these scenes come to me over the years where you leave him and tell me you’re ready to be together. I used to imagine how it would play out when you gave in and wanted to sleep together. It freaked me out a little bit when it actually happened in such a dramatic way, because I never expected that it would really happen like that. All the ways I pictured it were like laughably over the top, either porn-fantasy-dirty or so epic. Then that night actually was like a great story. Once in a while I think maybe the over the top scenes I imagine you telling me you want to be with me could actually happen like that too.” Juan was wistful in his sharing, but also self-deprecating. He must think it’s not cool for guys to think about stuff like that- to plan it out, his girl concluded while listening. I think it’s okay. If they can picture every second of the play leading up to when they score the Champions League winner then why not when they get the girl they want?

“So in what over the top ways has this gone down?” she asked with a big smile he couldn’t see but could probably sense. “How have I come to you and told you it’s time for us?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to recreate any of them when it happens.”

“Why?”

“I want it to be better than anything I could have imagined.”

Fuck, this is one of those moments. This is one of those exchanges you can “fantasize” about but know it never happens in real life. Like meet-cutes in movies. Nobody actually meets their soulmate that way except me and Schü. It’s one of those moments. It’s exactly what he’s talking about, the German girl realized, her heart beating steady but extra loudly in her chest and ears. She thought Juan’s couple of lines were too good. They weren’t even cheesy. They were just exquisite. He timed and executed the setup exactly the way he would have done if she plotted it out in one of her idle daydreams. She wanted to know if he plotted his as well, or if they were silly or ridiculous. Perhaps she said witty things in his vignettes but did so dressed as a French maid or something- some thing indicative of male authorship- some thing she couldn’t even fathom because she was a girl and she was Christina and only had Christina’s experiences and knowledge to draw from to make up her plot. Her internal screenwriter shouted that in her script, Juan would be lovingly kissed for what he said, and that she needed to get on top of him to do it so that after, she could fold her arms on him as a chin rest and spend a while smiling and listening right up close to his face while he told her about his imaginary interactions. Far be it from her to defy the writer.

“Are you about to do it right now?” the player teased after he got his kiss and while she arranged herself atop his body.

“No. That was just an adorable thing to say. Now give me some examples.”

“I think of one scene over and over for a long time,” he smiled, reaching out to poke at the large and disorganized knot of hair on her head. He must be fond of it then, Christina thought about the reoccurring daydream, attributing the frequency to satisfaction rather than some kind of plague or lack of imagination. “We’re at my place, and you drop a gold lipstick on the floor and ask me to pick it up for you. I bend down to get it and I try to hand it to you before standing up straight again, so your hand is right in my face when I go to give it back. You have a different ring on from this one.” Juan pointed at her diamond and aquamarine engagement ring since it happened to be right in front of his face, not unlike the story. “You had your diamond- the one I gave you, on the necklace- put back into a ring just like the one I got for you originally. You said you were ready to wear it a new way. Since I was already down there, I went to my knee and asked you if you wanted to wear it as my wife.”

“Awwww! That’s so adorable. How am I supposed to beat that?”

“I don’t know!” He continued to smile, and delighted in her melting heart. She had no intention of giving any sort of comment that might color his thinking or belief on the likelihood or nearness of her opting to choose the unique 5-carat Asscher cut rock over the 1.5-carat princess cut. That wasn’t the point of the conversation. Christina wasn’t thinking about it either. The feeling of imminent or eventual end of her marriage that she carried around with her for the better part of a year had dissipated enough to be a less urgent weight on her, or it was simply overshadowed by everyday life.

André didn’t follow through with the wedding band idea for their anniversary. They celebrated the special occasion when she got home from Aachen Sunday night, by drinking champagne and making s’mores over the fire pit. As anniversaries go, it was pretty low key. That was perfect though. Christina loved that her partner made a casual plan like that and researched how to pair different types of chocolate with different kinds of bubbly. He had a whole smorgasbord of chocolates with special extras, like lavender or orange peel, her favorite. Her idea for the occasion was to pack a picnic and take it to Signal Iduna Park. She wanted to con someone from the club into letting her spread a blanket and eat a lovely lunch in the center circle, so that she and André could reflect on and celebrate their journey together but also talk about all the ways they looked forward to the future. Football was the best outline by which she could think of to navigate the past and the future, and a lot of the future happiness was intrinsically linked to how he’d perform on that pitch. She didn’t know about his campfire plan ahead of time, and ended up being really glad that they did that instead. When she thought over whether or not to tell him her idea and try to make it happen as a sort of second celebration of their anniversary, she feared that it would seem almost threatening to the player- as if she were trying to tell him that he had better get his act together in that stadium or they’d never be happily ever after.

“What are your non-romantic vignettes about?” she inquired of the midfielder who still played at Stamford Bridge. “Fucking my butt?”

“Yes.” He winked at her and she stuck her tongue out. So did Spencer. He licked at her bare foot since it ended up in his face. His little tongue tickled and caused wriggling and squirming, which caused confusion for Juan, who had no idea why the girl on him was having some kind of attack.

“Pupppppy, stahhhhhp,” she moan-laughed. She didn’t want to just kick her foot or yank it away and accidentally hurt him. It took a few seconds for her to be sure of where he was and then cross her leg over the other ankle, out of range of any terriers.

“What was he doing?”

“Licking my baby toe.”

“Are you going to be lying on me for long?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I want more of this.” Her friend reached for his glass sitting on the little ledge behind his head. It had melting ice in it. Christina made iced coffee with fancy cold brew from the gourmet market. It was delicious. “If you’re just visiting, I can wait until you get up. If you plan to be here for a while, let me go get more and then you can come back.”

“You can go get a refill if you bring me one too. Thanks.” She stretched forward to smooch the unsuspecting player on the lips, and then carefully removed herself from his person. She sat Indian-style by the dogs so that she could pet them and remind them how spoiled they were, and how lucky they were not to have to go to “work” at the barn yet.

Also on her mind was how lucky she was not to have to be working at almost noon either, and how surprising it was that she could feel pretty relaxed about that. Christina was being incredibly “good” about her training, both in and out of the tack. She was back to working diligently but intelligently, the way she was able to do before André’s transfer set off a bomb in her routine. It was so much easier to feel prepared and calm about her riding and her horses when she knew she was doing everything right for them and for herself. Her heart kept trying to spiral out of control with anticipation and anxiety about the Olympics, but her brain kept telling it to calm down and be reasonable, reminding her that she was doing everything she possibly could, and that if she went to Tokyo and totally blew it, it wouldn’t be because of something she did in the build-up. Recognizing how good a place she was in was somewhat bittersweet, however, because it meant that it took an entire year to get back to “right” and “good”, and to her that was a year wasted. The horses especially had limited time and jumps to waste, but so did she. Christina couldn’t see herself extending her prime riding into her 40’s or even later like some of her colleagues.

“As it turns out,” she told Spencer, mostly, since Lucky was reluctant to open his eyes and acknowledge her attention. “All I really need in life is special ponies and a nice place to ride them, special boys and nice environments in which to cuddle with them, and enough free time to do stuff with Lulu Schü, because he deserves his Mom and because he makes me wanna die from laughter, and happy-cry at how cute he is, and- Yes, and you guys too.” The rider rolled her eyes at the tricolor terrier, who reached out with a paw to tap her hand when she got caught up in her explanation and stopped petting his little head. “Don’t tell him I told you, but Juanin said he misses you guys sometimes. Everyone loves you.” The rider bent down to kiss her puppy, and then looked around for her phone. There were a lot of pillows on the daybed, and displaced towels bunched up or folded from her moving about.

I need to know when Stef wants to do her lesson so I know how much time I have to do nothing, in case Juanin wants to do an actual thing. I’m fine not riding until like 7, and if she wants to ride late too then we can go into the city and...whatever. I dunno what he wants to see. Ooo, there it is. Her phone, setting a new record for single case usage, was close to falling off the side of the cushion, partially concealed by a towel.

“No response from Stef but Schü says his back is fucked up again,” Christina reported to her canine kids with a frown.

“Fucked up how? I hope it doesn’t hurt too much :(“ Way to make me immediately feel guilty about relaxing and reveling in how great everything is, she snorted inside.

“Here, for you, carina,” Juan said when he handed over a hard plastic cup with her coffee, milk, and ice. It was already sweating in the heat. He wiped his glass, sans milk, with one of the towels once he’d climbed over the dogs to get back to his spot.

“Did you want to see anything or go anywhere? Or is being a bum around the house all afternoon okay?” An extremely tan, sun-bleached, well-caffeinated and small sized human approached him much the way the dogs approached when they knew they were going to lay down and stay a while but didn’t yet know exactly where or in what fashion. Christina was debating in her head about how she could resume lying on him on her stomach and still be able to sip from her straw. “I didn’t really plan any activities because I was going to ride now and then maybe go out later. Later activities are different than midday activities.”

“Show me your favorite place to eat lunch- late lunch,” the Spaniard clarified. “In a few hours. For now, bum.”

“I like that you like being a bum.”

“I like your bum.” He sat up to swat her butt while she lingered on two knees and one hand, trying to figure out how to get comfortable.

“Can you sit up more actually and I sit between your legs? I promise not to sit on your balls.”

“You always end up sitting on my balls.”

“Well hold them out of the way then and it won’t happen.” The rider rolled her eyes and then quickly climbed over his left thigh to settle in front of him and use him like a backrest. This isn’t as good as staring at his handsome face, she rued. But at least I can drink my drink and operate my phone, and he can rub my tummy, she smiled to herself when she felt a familiar hand settle on her stomach.

“You have become very skilled at relaxing, baby girl,” the hand’s owner yawned.

“Uhhuh. You sound like you need a nap.”

“I always need a nap.”

“You’re an old man.”

“Thanks.”

“I was with Lukas in the store the other day and an old man like you thought I was his babysitter, like I didn’t look old enough to be his mom. I love that old man.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you falling asleep?”

“No.”

“What would you be thinking about if you were?”

“Reaching into your shorts.”

“Honestly, babe, how are you surviving celibacy between visits, or are you not still doing that?” By “that” I mean not sleeping with other people. I assume that’s still true, Christina thought with only a very small measure of certainty. I didn’t have sex on the brain right now, but I can see why he would if he’s really not having any with anyone else. Especially since we didn’t even do that last night.

“Pass.”

“What?”

“Pass. Next question.”

“Does that mean you’re not?” She instinctively went to turn around to see his face, but Juan saw that coming and distracted her by slipping his palm into her loose shorts and gently sliding his fingertips down between her legs. Still, he could probably feel that she was tense because of his words rather than his actions.

“It means I don’t want to talk about it,” he informed her with finality. She couldn’t read it though, so she persisted.

“But-“

“No, it doesn’t mean that,” he assured. The rider could feel him move around behind her and assumed it was to put his glass back on the ledge, as she soon found herself in the middle of both of his arms, not just his legs. His left hand replaced the right where it rested on her stomach before. She relaxed back against him a little, letting her head fall to one side. The Spanish player very quickly acknowledged that by pushing a small kiss into her neck. Christina closed her eyes.

“It would be okay if you weren’t,” she told him, hoping to sound ambivalent despite actually feeling the opposite. I would hate it, but it would be fair. It’s not like I’m faithful to him. “Do you want to?”

“Sleep with other girls?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“You know what sucks about this whole Olympic thing?”

“Figuring out how to find food in Japan that isn’t fish?”

“I never know if people are telling the truth or they’re just trying to protect my feelings until after, because they’re afraid the truth will upset me and ruin everything.”

“I’m not lying to you, baby girl.” Juan’s vow came with another distraction measure- he started moving his fingers back and forth across the narrowing fabric of her ultra-soft cotton underwear, slowly and delicate. His wrist was holding the waistband of the shorts out of the way and that other hand dragged the bottom of her shirt up some, so she could feel a breeze from the fan above.

“But how can you stand it?” His actions reminded her just how difficult it would be for her to live without regular sex. It was hard enough to live without those special fingers of his when he wasn’t around, despite frequent access to another player’s fingers.

“You can’t seem to go more than two weeks without seeing me, and then you use me like a sex toy so-“ The one who played in West London got an elbow to the gut. “Ow. Bad angel!” Christina sipped her coffee and then emitted a refreshed “ahhh”.

“But seriously, how do you stand it?”

“I don’t know. I was away anyway. I did miss being with you though...” Juan put his chin on her head and moved his hand back and forth over her navel. She had every intention of making up for any sex deficit, particularly oral sex, but wanted at least the time it would take to finish leisurely drinking her second coffee first. So she rotated her head and leaned all the way to the right so she could see him and offer a real kiss to hold him over.

“I always miss being with you,” she said quietly after that kiss and before a second, unplanned one. Both were sort of on the side of his mouth because it was hard to turn enough for a more conventional smooch. The player removed his hand from between her underwear and her shorts, and helped to hold her head where he could give her a kiss of his own, with soft, slightly sugar-sweetened lips and a bitter coffee tongue.

“Obviously, or you wouldn’t be picturing so many different ways you want me to fuck you.” He grinned a mischievous little smile at close range when he was finished checking to see if her mouth tasted any different thanks to the cream in her iced coffee.

0 notes