#im applying to two schools this time which meant extra work

[elysianslove]

Hi! <3 I'm the roomate hc anon again (lol) and can I request best friends to lovers hc for iwaizumi, kuroo and oikawa? Also this blog is gonna blow up soon so remember me when you're famous bro 😌✊️❤️

OMG HI AGAIN! i’m so sorry this is late :( but oh my the excitement that flooded through me when i saw this request hsvhjsd. i really hope you enjoy this!! also vshdks i luv u bb THANK YOU.

iwaizumi hajime

im making these as detailed as fuck so i apologize in advance <3

becoming best friends with hajime was a very out of the blue thing 

the two of you shared a lot of classes together, and since you were always seeing each other, you’d choose each other as partners a lot 

you’d sit next to him in all the classes that you could

you’d meet up a lot during school breaks and just hang out 

you two clicked very well honestly, like you found that it was so easy to talk to him, and it was so easy to lose yourself in the conversation 

most of your convos are v mature and sophisticated too like

it’s nice when you can talk to someone on the same brain wavelength as you yk 😼

anyways overtime you’d come to his practice sessions, and even if they were long you’d just stay and watch bc why not

if you had hw to do and he noticed you were a lil stressed about it, he’d tell u to come study while he practiced as a change of scenery and all 

he’d walk you home almost every night at this point

oikawa noticing and being jealous <3 

“they’re stealing you from me!” “they’re not— what is wrong with you oikawa.” 

okay so this best friend stuff has been going on for a long time

long enough for you to realize you wanted more from him

but this is iwaizumi hajime and it’s almost impossible to know what he’s thinking 

like

ever 

so you just keep it to yourself, thinking it’s just a small crush and it’s not worth ruining what the two of you have at this rate 

so all this had happened first year, and when you’re nearing the end of your second year

that’s when you realize that

shit

it’s not just a crush

and when you have feelings for someone, every little thing they do expands a million times in your head

so a hug from him that you’d once never go over twice has you thinking about it as you go to sleep

the hoodies he’d lend you during practice while you stayed in the gym bc it was ungodly cold in there now send tingles down your spine at the lingering scent of him

the way he’d grab your hand to drag you somewhere now leave a heavy effect on your palm, forcing you to trace it once he’s gone 

his texts give you butterflies 

every time his name pops up on your phone screen you have a mini heart attack

and yeah

those are all symptoms of a crush

but is a crush meant to last this long? 

at the start of your third year, you greet him outside of the school gates after not seeing you all summer

he smiles so bright and hugs you so, so tightly 

you already are so hyperaware of how strong iwa is

but the feelings you have for him that won’t go away are so not helping your fixation on the feel of his biceps 

anyways before this becomes v nsfw 

you two catch up like u had met yesterday 

and then at the end of the day, after practice, which you stay for bc u missed ur vbc boys 🥺

he walks you home 

like always

and as he stands by your front door, in a burst of courage, he takes your hand in his and pulls you harshly towards him, pushing his body against yours and capturing your lips in a heated kiss

it’s so messy and harsh and you pretty much collided 

but holy shit

you were pretty sure fireworks erupted when you two kissed

years of pining and what had felt like unrequited love finally being resolved 

it’s the most satisfying feeling ever

you never want to stop kissing him

but alas </3 

when he pulls back, you’re both breathing so heavily 

you’re not sure if it’s the adrenaline or the kiss itself 

and he just looks at you and goes “did u tan while you’re away ur eyes look brighter” 

no sir i am in love with you

when you two officiate things 

he’s actually way shyer than he was as best friends??? 

like as best friends he wouldn’t feel slightly weird about hugging you in public or grabbing at your hand randomly or being seen alone with you

but now like

people know ??? and somehow that scares iwa 

or makes him uncomfortable 

idk he just feels iffy

but ur so understanding bless ur heart <3 

ur so careful with him and take it at his own pace 

zero pda at the start of the relationship 

like he won’t even wanna hug u in front of the seijoh team 

but slowly he warms up 

and he starts getting more comfortable with things like hand holding and occasional pecks on the cheek/lips 

your traditions as best friends don’t die as lovers 

if anything you believe in them even more 

now you watch more diligently during practice 

you proudly attend his games in his jersey, cheering the loudest for him (and for the rest of the boys bc they: best) 

walks home with you are so much more serene 

always gives you a kiss before he parts ways 

idk it’s like some sort of commemoration for your first kiss/confession 

unless you invite him inside 😏

this is so fucking long im so sorry i just love iwa 

anyways anybody want boyfriend!iwa headcanons i got a lot hehe 

to conclude, it was so gradual and inevitable with the two of you, and you’re forever glad it happened when it did and you hadn’t rushed anything <3333

oikawa tōru

unlike hajime, this wasn’t something that took one or two years

this bitch couldn’t admit he was in love with you for like 10 years okay 

you’ve known him for the majority of your life, because you’d always lived in close proximity to each other 

but you were never best friends yk? just acquaintances 

it was around the end of middle school when you two got close

cause you saw he was applying to aoba johsai for high school

and you were like !!! i’m going there too 

at first he was like stop copying me 😾 

you guys had a staring contest bc y’all are idiots and there were legit tears streaming down ur face but u were not about to lose to a pissbaby like him

he blinked 😁👍🏼

and he lost 

and then he decided “you’re my best friend now ” 

anyways aside iwa, he now had someone else he was going into high school with

like it’s a completely new environment but he had two people he very much liked going with him !!! 

when the time came around to like apply for/join clubs, you had been so clueless 

but toru stuck by you !! and he was so adamant on helping you !! 

he would sit with you after school as he practiced tossing with hajime and just brainstorm with you what you liked to do

it’s what brought you two closer together

cause you realized just how many things in common you had with him 

for a full week he tried to help you come up with something

for the sake of this hc let’s say u decide to join the newsletter club 

you’re very wary at first but then he’s like when ur part of it you’ll visit the vbc regularly so u can take pictures/observe to write essays 

the fact that toru would be there kinda set you at ease 

now you’ve never seen toru play properly 

he’s practiced in front of you before

plenty of times

but a proper match? or a practice one? 

never 

so it’s safe to say u were in awe when you got assigned to go watch a practice match against (idk pick a school) 

it’s embarrassing to admit but your eyes were on him the entire time 

thank god he became the captain later on else it’d be so sus 

you really tried to pay attention to anybody else lmfao 

it’s kinda what drew you to him more

you still didn’t really have feelings

you only realized just how passionate he is about everything 

at some point you had an essay to write for your newsletter about the volleyball club

but you were having a hard time like really getting into it

so you immediately just called toru and were like “help 😃” 

he came over and you asked him a bunch of questions, and he would go on deadass 20 min rants for each of them

you were just 

so amazed 

like how could someone have so much passion for something like this?

you realize how but that’s for later

overtime you two got closer bc of how much your work was associated with him

he’s incredible as a best friend 

he’s the first one with the school’s weekly newsletter as soon as it’s out

granted it’s to read the section about him but yk, the sentiment’s there 

also love, love, loves lazy days with you 

he doesnt even care if the boys know that he worships the chick flicks you two watch 

i feel like oikawa would be an avid anime watcher

idk why i just do 

so he’d be blasting anime theme songs on a speaker as you’re in the shower and he’s in your room waiting for you and you’re both just singing w the sound of water rushing down 

actually it’s not just anime songs it’s all songs 

a l l songs 

anyways

so you two get really close, and then he has a super important match coming up 

let’s say it’s the spring interhigh one against karasuno

the one they won

idk im just choosing at random 

and the night before he’s like begging you on text to wear his jersey

he’s like PLEASE NO ONE’S EVER DONE THAT FOR ME

you’re like bruh u have a cult following ????? 

but eventually u say yes

ur not really sure where it’s coming from but this is oikawa he’s an unpredictable as can be

when you show up in a jersey he so conveniently left at your house once

he’s so genuinely shocked even though he was the one that asked for this???

gives you the biggest hug like spins you around and just 

“you’re my lucky charm” 

when he wins 

after celebrating with his team

he runs over to you

and just

he kisses you

full on the mouth

it’s probably the rush and excitement of winning that gave him the courage to finally spill all his feelings out into this kiss

you’re in his jersey, in the stands and you genuinely feel like it’s only just the two of you

despite how sudden it was the kiss is so gentle, like he’d been planning it since forever 

“i told you you’re my lucky charm” he says as he rests his forehead against yours and kisses you gently again

oikawa had already been affectionate as your best friend

always displaying his love outwardly with like always calling out your name so loud whenever he sees you and giving you bone crushing hugs

deadass his 6’0 self will just jump on you 

but now it’s extra

makki always gags around the two of you but you just stick ur tongue out at him and go “ur just mad ur best friend’s getting some pussy/dick and ur not” 

makki then proceeds to shriek at you like a fucking banshee <3 

anyways 

yes 

oikawa best friends to lovers excellence is so cute eeeekkk

and now u always wear his jersey at games 

(u couldnt make it to the game against karasuno where they lost for whatever reason and he held it against u for the longest time)

(“maybe if a certain someone were there we wouldn’t have lost”)

what a big baby you love him

kuroo tetsurō

AH SEXY CHEMISTRY NERD 👅👅👅

kuroo as ur best friend 

im frothing 

i feel like you’d grow close after meeting at an event or something 

like you’re a friend of a friend of a friend 

i see kuroo as someone who’s so suave and cool and flirty with people he doesn’t have feelings for

but put the crush factor in and he’s a mess

like his brain just stops working

so when he first met you

he thought u were so fucking hot 

but that’s it

his lower body was doing all the thinking <3 

so he was so flirty 

and that’s essentially what your friendship is built off of 

and when friends are so flirty with each other, they generally grow close and trust each other really quickly 

ur not a nekoma student but ur in tokyo so you meet up often 

you just

it’s so nice to be around him

you find it so easy to just be yourself around him 

going out with him is super fun 

and a lot of the times you guys have study dates and you literally don’t talk except during the 10 min breaks you two take

it’s just hyper focus for the two of you which is great

he really channels the best student in you what a man ! 

i think during your third year of high school you two got insanely close

because you were highly unsure if you were gonna leave japan or stay 

so you wanted to make the most out of everything 

so you’d go out with him more often

he’d stay during the weekends and you two would like bake christmas goods all night even if it’s literally september lmfao

cuddling is so natural 

like you’re both so touchy with each other but not in a weird way just a super comfortable kind of way

like if you’re shorter than him, he’s always leaning his arm on you like you’re his arm rest 

it’s a win win bc he gets to touch you and tease you

wow the horny really jumped out in that one

anyways

you go to every single one of his games !!

cheer him on so!! fucking!! loud!!

you probably make a provocative sign and stand a chair and just wave it around and kuroo’s so heart eyes lmfao

the climb up to becoming lovers is so

natural? 

i think kuroo first realizes that maybe, yk, he wants those flirtatious comments to mean something and those random touches to hold more romantic value to them, when you two are out together

it’s a completely chill day and it’s not really warm not really chilly. you’re just comfortable 

he takes you to a park after buying the both of you ice cream from the stand across the street and sits down at a bench with you

just people watching 

and then it kinda goes really silent

but 

it’s not awkward??? like at all???

he’s not looking to fill the silence with any random words

he’s just

enjoying simply being with you

and he glances at you momentarily and it hits him like so hard just how pretty you are 

his eyes slightly widen like

holy fuck

what the f u ck

remember when i said he’s all cool until feelings come into play

yeah 😼

he literally freezes up and blurts out, without even meaning to, “i think i have feelings for you.” 

he really didnt even process he said that

you kinda

pause for a second

and then you realize what you said and you just smile and lean over towards him, lifting your thumb up to the corner of his lips and brushing away some ice cream

“you think?” you tease, and then at the spot where the ice cream was misplaced, you placed a gentle kiss

he kinda relaxes and then eyes you as he says, “i know.” 

it is just. heaven after that

i think the two of you would be less flirty around each other once becoming official 

like yeah he definitely comments once or twice every now and then and don’t get me wrong, so do you

but it’s just less frequent 

like a blanket has been lifted to uncover the true, hidden meanings behind the comments and you can now just breathe easier 

you two end up in the same uni on accident hevejsk

like you had a long ass talk about how it’s okay if you didn’t end up in the same uni you’d still make it work

and it would’ve worked tbh

fate just ships you two too much

when you told each other you were literally that spiderman meme of the two spidermen pointing at each other lmao

power couple of the uni

power couple of tokyo

power couple of japan

you’re literally so happy with him you wouldn’t trade him for the world 

and maybe you saw it coming 

but it still remains a shock whenever you wake up and he’s there laying next to you, smiling lazily at you before reaching over to give you a gentle kiss 

anyways happy early birthday king i love you kuroo hehe

end note; i really had a lotta fun w this one omg!! thank you again for requesting, anon, and i hope everybody else enjoyed!! feel free to request, mwah <3

[neverdoingmuch]

Wait cql lawyer/law school AU

i got you my pal dont worry!!

law school, im gonna be honest and say i know like nothing about law or law school so pls ignore any inconsistencies or inaccuracies

lwj goes to law school and he is definitely the top student in his class. they’ve been there for like a month and everyone already knows he’s gonna be the best

his one and only competition is this dude called wei wuxian but lwj isn’t particularly worried about him

so far they’re still in the stage of the course where they do the fun things to sucker people into doing the class for the semester so there’s been some practise debates and arguments and stuff in their tutorial classes

wei wuxian has that Charisma and like yeah all of his arguments are perfect but also he has an amazing smile and people are like yes i can trust him 

(he’s definitely the sort to be like hm, the easy way to argue this case would be to quote some laws and use precedence to justify this but that’s boring)

lwj is also good at that sort of stuff because his arguments are perfect and everything is so perfectly researched that there should be no ground at all for someone to lodge a counterargument

(wei wuxian manages somehow and it makes lwj so mad)

but that’s whatever lwj thinks,, a lot of people join law thinking it’s gonna be like the tv shows and books and then get completely blindsided when it comes to the rote learning part or like the actual laws 

and for all of wwx’s confidence, lwj hasn’t actually seen wwx so much as touch the textbook/s and he always studies in the law library so he knows that wwx has probably never even been there bc he hasn’t seen him even once (why’s he looking? bc he needs to see which books wwx uses to study,, bc there has to be something going on there,, obviously)

then they do their first like proper written assignment and lwj and wwx tie for the highest scores and now lwj has a Rival and he refuses to lose to someone who thinks that putting a ‘-us’ sound at the end of a word makes it latin (did wwx say habeas corpus and then point at a soft drink and go  sprite-us can-us,,, maybe,,,,)

anyway! lwj and wwx are kinda rivals for the top spot and it’s one of those situations where one test lwj wins by a point but then the next test wwx gets full marks and they just keep exchanging the top spot in class

and this whole time wwx is like The Worst to have in class. he’s always interrupting to ask questions or just straight up not listening and spends the class doodling pictures of rabbits (they’re cute but wwx is terrible and he’s not allowed to make cute drawings)

so after a few months the most horrible thing happens.... they get put together in a project and lwj is like ugh. internally of course but his face is also saying ugh

the first time wwx and lwj get together to work on the project, lwj is prepared with a proper list of tasks to do all nicely split up between the two of them and a schedule for when they should get certain parts done by. 

needless to say, lwj does not expect wwx to be ready, but wwx is definitely on top of things

he rocks up and is like yeah let’s do this, this and this and have them done by this time - basically proposing to do everything that lwj has already written down

and lwj is pleasantly surprised and is like hm maybe i misjudged wwx and decides to like re-evaluate his opinion on him

in doing so he realises that when he’d never seen wwx studying, it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. he’s never seen wwx so much as touch a textbook or spend more than a minute on a laptop doing something that wasn’t minesweeper or solitaire

but wwx is also making all of their deadlines and even adds extra information and resources to their document that could be useful elsewhere and sometimes he shows up to their study sessions and he looks absolutely exhausted

eventually lwj manages to get the truth out and wwx is just like yeah it’s easier to get worse grades than a genius but if you both study and you still get lower grades, it’s not easy,, for jc or for me

so wwx usually studies at night when his brother is asleep and lwj is like that’s bad, you can’t keep that up and just when wwx is about to go off at him lwj is like you can come study at my place

and thus begins the wonderful time where everything is alright and lwj falls in love with wwx

they work really well together and wwx is strangely considerate and nice? when he finds out lwj likes rabbits, he goes out and buys bunny post-it notes for lwj and starts to always bring him a doodle of bunnies every time he comes over. he always gets his work done on time, early even, and his work is always so brilliant and every time wwx smiles at him, lwj feels warm inside etc etc

for a long while lwj is like yes (: this is friendship (: bc he’s never had a crush before but then on the day they submit their project wwx is like hey,, the two of us make a great team,, we should always work together,, now and next year and even when we graduate,, i want to help the innocent people who need our help and i think i’d like it a lot if you joined me and lwj has his oh moment

they get a perfect score on the project of course and even after it finishes, wwx keeps coming over to lwj’s place to study or just hang out and lwj is just falling more and more for wwx each day

they’re best friends now and everyone gets used to seeing them work together on projects and then turn around to try and decimate each other when they’re working one on one and lwj thinks that he might just be the happiest he’s ever been

but then one day wwx doesn’t show up to class. it shouldn’t be strange but wwx has never missed class even once and he ends up hearing from lxc who heard from jgy that wwx was caught sabotaging some other student’s work (the other student was jzxun, who had a fondness for playing devil’s advocate and other than wwx once telling him that his argument was shit, wwx never spoke to him or seemed to know who he was but lwj is a bit too angry to remember that)

he manages to find wwx outside of his dorms as he’s moving out and he’s just like why did you do that? and wwx is like oh y’know,, bc he’s not really sure what’s happening himself,, one second he was at the top of his class and the next he was being brought before a board and being told that he was being expelled but he’s not going to tell lwj that bc lwj would definitely try and stand up for him and then they’d both get expelled

but lwj is furious and just spits out well if our dreams meant so little to you then maybe it’s a good thing you failed now,, bc his mother was a lawyer who took all these little jobs that helped people who actually needed the help and lwj was looking forward to doing that with wwx and he doesn’t even seem to care that now they can’t do that 

wwx flinches and then smiles at him and just cheerily says, that’s me and leaves. he doesn’t look back and lwj doesn’t chase after him.

lwj doesn’t see him again for years (you can do 13 or 5 or however long you feel like)

lwj is a fully licensed lawyer and he’s working for the family company and he spends half of his time working on cases and uses the rest of his time to do like outreach programs where he goes and visits schools and runs sessions on what it’s like to be a lawyer, how to apply, and to provide assistance to any students who decide to study law at uni

and then at one of these programs he meets this kid, wen yuan, who is ridiculously bright and enthusiastic and has a smile that seems oddly familiar

at the end of the second session he comes up to lwj and is like mr. lan, is your name lan wangji? and lwj just says yes, expecting the kid to be a fan of one of his cases or something but then wen yuan is like oh wow! i thought i recognised you from my dad’s photo!

and lwj isn’t expecting much but he asks what the photo looks like and wen yuan pulls out this photo from his pocket and lwj immediately recognises it,, it’s the only photo he has of him and wwx

your father is wei ying? lwj asks him and wen yuan is like yes, hesitates, and then asks, would you like to see him?

and that’s how lwj finds himself following wen yuan to some dinky little office that has a plaque outside that reads wen and wei

(wen ning is the nicest and sweetest person ever and lots of people underestimate him but then he’s an absolute monster on court. he gets up and completely decimates the opponent and then at the end is like (: it was so nice to meet you!! i am baby!! and all that,, you know our boy)

anyway they walk in and wwx turns to greet wen yuan but then he sees lwj and is like woah! you! and he’s not sure whether to hide or go and hug lwj so he just gives him a fist bump,, like a bro,, and immediately wants to shrivel up and die

anyway they get the reunion stuff out of the way, swelling music, tender wrist holding, lots of staring, lwj silently declaring his wholehearted love for wwx and refusing to believe rumours about him again even though he doesn’t actually know what happened, you know how it goes

from wwx’s side of things,, after he got kicked out he went to some small uni. good in its own right but not known for their law program and ended up specialising in family law

the first case he ever won was for the wens to have the right to keep custody of a-yuan and the first case wen ning ever won was to let wwx adopt a-yuan bc i’m soft like that

so wwx has just been kinda vibing,, being a single dad, living with the wens and helping to make that difference he always promised he would

now this isn’t gonna be some au where lwj goes oh my! i must give up my high salary job and work with wwx! bc lwj has been doing good stuff at his current job and for all of his family’s stuffiness, they run a fair and just company 

but! he does end up helping wwx when wwx gets a letter with a bunch of information about the jins and how they’re actually super corrupt and evil (big surprise,,) and how wwx was maybe definitely framed bc he was doing some casual work on the side and stumbled across some bad shit on the jins back in uni

lwj ends up being the one to take the case officially but wwx is definitely the guy leading it and so lwj ends up spending most of his time at the wen-wei office

lwj definitely bonds with wen yuan, who also wants to go into law, and writes him recommendation letters and helps him edit his applications and stuff

(and one day wen yuan is like leaving you was the hardest thing dad ever did and i dont think you appreciated how much he cared about you. he really did think that he annoyed you ‘til the end and lwj is like no! he didn’t! and wen yuan is like yeah i know but you gotta tell him and lwj really does mean to but the time is never right or something like that but also wen yuan is all but calling lwj dad at this point)

anyway they end up going to court, side by side, working as a team just as they promised to do and just as they finish their final day on the case, ended with the jury ruling jgy guilty and wwx’s reputation all but saved, wwx turns around and flings himself at lwj

is he crying? is he laughing? a bit of both tbh but wwx ends up confessing right then and there, still on record and everything (is that how that works??? idk! let’s say it does)

and what can lwj do but make out with him?

did a news crew come in to film the results of this massive court case just to end up with five minutes of wangxian kissing?? maybe! but when it played on tv it meant wwx and lwj didnt have to actually tell anyone they got together

(and does lwj eventually pop the question using wwx’s bad latinification? yes and wwx is too busy laughing to accept at first but he does and they end up being the worst possible tutors for wen yuan as he goes through law school bc they keep being all gross and lovey-dovey and acting like law school is the most romantic place in the world)

[born2battle]

First Innings as IG @ Deolali ( Aug 1977 to May 1980  )

         On completion of LGSC, we were sanctioned casual leave for one week, during which I shifted to my new accommodation in the IG Block in the premises of B Mess. I availed the well deserved break at Aurangabad & assisted my parents in shifting from Army house to a civil rented house, since my father had retired recently after 35 years of service. On return to Deolali, I was selected to be in the IG Team for teaching the new Course, LGSC Fd 778, which had just reported. It was a privilege to be given this responsibility which was a tough challenge in view of the expectations. 

        It was an unforgettable moment, when I gave my first lecture, to my first batch of students, as they recorded their first impressions about me. As the Basic Leg progressed, I realised the magnitude of the task of teaching three most difficult subjects ( Ballistics, Equipment & Ammunition ) in the easiest possible manner. It was achieved only after extensive study and preparation of lesson plans & OHP slides, on every week end. The often quoted statement ---” You learn only when you teach” was indeed true. It was equally exciting to set and correct Exam papers and evaluate the Teaching Practices of students. On the whole, it was an exhilarating feeling of repeating the Basic Leg, in the new role as an IG , wearing the prestigious Red Band !!

         Simultaneously, all the Instructional staff had to qualify in the BPET     ( Battle Physical Efficiency Tests ) and PPT ( Physical Proficiency Tests ) during the Annual Adm Inspection. The thrust towards” Fitness First” was emphasised by holding Volleyball & Basketball competitions as well as encouraging individual sports. These activities contributed towards physical fitness as well as team bonding. Gunnery Leg began with the usual tempo, specially for the new IsG who had to evolve new concepts & procedures for provision of fire support. Any such ideas had to be validated during Course Shootings. We learnt a lot and gained confidence while engaging targets firing variety of Guns & ammunition. We understood in detail about the most important aspect of planning & implementation of safety measures during firing practices. Gunnery Leg also proved to be an enriching experience --- not only at the Gun end but equally at the OP end.  

         In the first week of Dec, we proceeded for the Educational Tour, where I had to shoulder the responsibility of coordinating all the visits as well as the administrative arrangements. It was a valuable learning experience. On return, the new IsG had to give their choice for  assessing the Practice Camps of Units, in various Field Firing Ranges. I volunteered to go to Binnaguri, whenever scheduled. Meanwhile, we were detailed for planning & conduct of Ex TOPCHI, which was the annual Fire Power Demonstration. It would showcase the capabilities of all weapon systems in the Regiment of Artillery besides surveillance assets & the Air OP capabilities. We rehearsed for one week with the participation of all the Guns/ Mortars/ Rocket Launchers held by the Units of Deolali & Nasik. The deployment of 120 mm Mortar using the Mules was very impressive. In addition, the Cheetah helicopter of Air OP Squadron displayed its capability of ferrying the 120 mm Mortar as an underslung load. It was a thrilling experience to apply our knowledge and skills towards enhancing the accuracy and consistency of fire support of a variety of weapons.

           There was a rehearsal which was attended by all Courses at School of Artillery, all recruits of Artillery Centre, Nasik & the civil population of Deolali Cantonment. The final event was on the Army Day ( 15 Jan 1978 ). It was witnessed by the Officers attending the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, who were on their educational tour to all training establishments. It was a spectacular display of fire power which ended with a salvo fired by a total of 70 Guns/ Mortars/ Rockets, destroying all the targets on Bahula ridgeline. The grand finale was the salvo by GRAD BM 21 MBRL, when each launcher fired 40 rockets in 20 seconds. It was indeed a dazzling display which reinforced the statement ----” Artillery is the God of War”, as propounded by Joseph Stalin. 

           In Apr 78, there was a change of command in the Field Wing.Col T P Singh took over as the Chief Instructor and was well known for his professional acumen. All instructors looked forward to the opportunity to seek his guidance for solving any difficulty. He adopted a strategy of paying surprise visits to all the training areas and the Course Shootings. These gave a boost to the standard of training besides motivating all the instructors & the students to attain greater proficiency. I was lucky to be nominated by him to be part of the Study Group of six IsG, for an analysis of the combat potential of our Artillery vis-a-vis Pakistan & China. The entire Study Group had to slog for the next one week and give him a  Presentation , which as expected, had to be refined, since Col T P Singh contributed his expert suggestions. Really, I learnt so much as a result of this first direct professional interaction with this erudite Gunner. 

          In Oct 78, myself with two AIsG proceeded to Binnaguri for assessment of practice camps of all the Regiments of Artillery Brigade. It was so exciting to be back to meet the Jat Balwans again, while Lt Col M S Choudhary had taken over as the TIGER 98. We moved to Buxaduar Ranges and assessed the performance of all the Regiments as per the parameters laid down by the School of Artillery. It was a unique privilege for me to assess my own Unit, while wearing the prestigious” Red Band” outside Deolali, for the first time. I observed that the professional standards had distinctly improved in the last two years, due to the dedication by the Jat Balwans, under a new Team of officers& JCOs, guided by an ebullient CO. I was given an emotional gift at the Unit Mandir and presented the holy Bhagvad Gita, wishing me further success & glory while performing my duty. The philosophy “ Karmanye vadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachan” has always been my beacon of strength, ever since I wore the Olive Green uniform!!

          I was sent on one month annual leave in Nov, which was in accordance with the leave plan, an important facet of man management while ensuring the training commitments. On return, I was detailed in the IG Team for the next Course ---- LGSC Fd 809. It meant hard work once again but the appreciation by the students always encouraged me to put in that extra effort. I accepted it as an opportunity to constantly improve as a Teacher since teaching and learning have a symbiotic relationship. Simultaneously, I volunteered to be in the IG Team for Ex TOPCHI which was in the last week of Jan 1979. We suggested that battlefield illumination could be shown as a separate part in the night, just after the standard fire power demonstration during day time. The proposal was approved by the Commandant and we started the rehearsals at night as well. The overall impact on the Final Day was phenomenal, not only as a result of an excellent demo during day time but also an amazing demo of illumination  of Deolali Ranges by night, on the eve of the Republic Day. It proved to be a novel idea and the meticulous display of fire power, specially the salvo by GRAD BM 21 MBRL ( 40 rockets in 20 seconds ) convinced the spectators of Defence Services Staff College that” Power grows out of the barrel of a Gun”. (Video illustration at the end of the Blog)

         In the first week of May, I went to Aurangabad on casual leave for ten days.It was probably destined that during this short break, I would have my first pleasant interaction with Ms Sanjivani Bhogale, from the reputed business family of NIRLEP,  who would eventually be my life partner. It was a typical example of “ First impression is the last impression”. Both of us instantly approved each other and decided to build an innings of lifetime partnership, in a Fauji environment. Our parents also gave their concurrence &  we were thrilled after the customary Engagement Ceremony within two days. It was also finalised that the marriage would be conducted in Dadar ( date, time & venue to be confirmed later). Both of us were on Cloud Nine, as we departed for Deolali & Dadar respectively, while I looked forward to meeting Sanjivani at Dadar on each of the weekends. I reached Deolali bubbling with the “Breaking News”.  

         Soon the muhurat for the wedding was finalised as 9.57 AM on 26 Jun 1979. Obviously, there was shortage of time for all the preparations by both the families. I applied for 45 days annual leave ( keeping the remaining 15 days as reserve for Diwali festival ). My leave was sanctioned, as requested, for the most important event in my life. The waiting period upto the  auspicious day was spent in a state of stargazing by both of us. Finally, the marriage was solemnised after traditional rituals on 26 Jun 1979. The most emotional moment was the “Saptapadi” ritual when we sought the blessings of the Almighty by taking the traditional vows. 

        We returned to Deolali, with all the bag & baggage, as a young couple for the first time. My friends, who were also young couples, organised a grand welcome for us, into the Home of the Gunners. Initially, we stayed in the Guest Room in B Mess itself but shifted to our temporary accommodation in 48 OG Lines, within three days. Thus began the process of converting our House into a Home!! At this juncture, I feel that Sanjivani should narrate her impressions as she stepped into the Fauji environment.

         Musings as a Fauji bride - “DADAR to DEOLALI”

        Every girl thinks about the person she will marry and the family she will belong to. I had the same feelings. I vividly remember that when I was 19 years of age, my Mama got married to a girl from the Fauji family.During this wedding, I observed lot of Army officers in their special uniform for the first time. They looked very courteous and smart.  I was thoroughly impressed with the grandeur of the Army. I was a complete civilian and thought to myself about the special quality of life of a Fauji family. Later, my parents asked  me if I had any particular choice for marriage. I told them that if possible, I would like to marry an Army officer ( not knowing the realty of being a Fauji wife, it has several pros & cons ).

          I was very lucky that the first proposal itself was from Capt Vivek Toley, who was the most eligible bachelor in Deolali. As marriages are made in heaven, before I could realise, we were married. Thus began my roller coaster ride from Dadar to Deolali. It was going to be a 360 degree transformation from the life I was leading till then. I was astonished when I saw a black steel trunk marked with the name of Capt Toley. The journey from suitcases to trunks thus began. My mother in law had packed few utensils and other necessities for us before we moved to Deolali. I started my Fauji life in 48 OG Lines, which was temporary accommodation for married officers.  

             I belonged to a typical Maharashtrian family & was conversant only in Marathi. My neighbours were from different parts of India. So, I had to make do somehow with my Bambaiya Hindi. Still, i learnt a lot from these conversations.My urge to talk in Marathi was fulfilled by talking to the local vendors and the maids. Social adjustment was another big challenge for which I was not prepared at all. I remained generally shy and silent while interacting with the officers & their wives. Huge cultural differences made me feel out of place. However, my Fauji family went out of their way to make me comfortable. I must mention that my husband stood beside me like a strong pillar , taught me, guided me and encouraged me at every moment.

           It is a norm in any Army station to be on the waiting list for allotment of temporary/ permanent accommodation. In Deolali,we shifted into 10 houses in 10 months. It is a common practice in Deolali to shift into the house of any officer going on leave for a month or two. This was so difficult for me to digest.Thanks to the Regimental association & NDA Coursemates, we were always given the house for use on “as is, where is basis”. This was a great show of faith and trust. My heartfelt thanks to all of them for making us so comfortable in the very first year of our married life. It assured me that the Armed Forces constitute a big family, with each one playing a small role. 

            Finally, we were allotted our permanent accommodation in P4 Block in Depot Battery Road colony. We moved into our own home and settled down fully. I was really happy but was surprised when my husband informed me about receipt of his posting order to NDA, Khadakwasla. Our first year in Deolali  will always have a special place in our album of memories!! 

           Consequent to settling down in my new status, I reverted to my duties as part of the IG Team for LGSC Course Fd 810, for the third time, thus completing a hat -trick. In Jan 1980, I was fortunate to complete another hat- trick with the responsibility of Ex TOPCHI , which was again a dazzling display of fire power. Thereafter, I was deputed to the Faculty of Studies where I learnt about the latest developments & trials of new weapon systems including ammunition. It involved regular interaction with the Trials Wing. In the first week of May, I was pleasantly surprised with the receipt of my posting order to the prestigious National Defence Academy. The resultant ecstasy of being selected as an Instructor at NDA from where I had passed out exactly 10 years ago, was the pinnacle of my professional achievements so far. I looked forward to moving within a month from the” Home of the Gunners” to the” Cradle of Leadership” --- along with my life partner!! 

[ianbrunner]

Opinions and Thoughts on Elizabeth’s Warren’s Plan for Student Loan Forgiveness and Cancellation of Student Debt

As a graduate student who is on track to finish their program in two weeks I’d say I have a vested interest in Elizabeth Warren’s program to make college free (or at least affordable), and especially in the loan forgiveness program. Now, I don’t owe a ton of money. If I worked really hard and budgeted to an extreme extent I’d probably be able to pay off my loans in a relatively short amount of time, but as someone struggling with mental health concerns this isn’t really an option. I’ve had friends do this, and while it must feel great to be young, have no debt, and a well paying job due to your education, it also takes a severe mental toll on a person. The people I know who have done this avoided going out to movies, or buying books, or doing things in general because they couldn’t afford it. They lived in small apartments in which they were cramped and became isolated because while their friends were off doing something that cost money they were trying to pay off their loans before they hit age forty. On the flipside, one could make small payments over a long period of time, however, having that weight, having the shadow of debt looming over you is terrifying and something I would never wish on anyone.

Warren writes that student loan debt is “...acting as an anchor on our economy,” that it’s “...reducing home ownership rates. It’s leading fewer people to start businesses. It’s forcing students to drop out (sic) of school before getting a degree. It’s a problem for all of us” (“I’m calling”, 2019). Warren’s plan aims to “...cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income under $100,000”, and to continue to provide relief for people making more than that by lowering the amount of relief by “...1 for every $3 in income above $100,000, so, for example, a person with household income of $130,000 gets $40,000 in cancellation, while a person with household income of $160,000 gets $30,000 in cancellation” (I’m calling, 2019).

Warren also claims that:

An economic analysis from leading experts on student loan debt finds that my plan would provide at least some debt cancellation for 95% of people with student loan debt (and complete and total student debt cancellation for more than 75%), provide targeted cancellation for the families that need it most, substantially increase Black and Latinx wealth, and help close the racial wealth gap” (I’m calling, 2019).

And that, it would “...likely provide a boost to the economy through ‘consumer-driven economic stimulus, improved credit scores, greater home-buying rates and housing stability, higher college completion rates, and greater business formation’” (I’m calling, 2019). When I think about this, it almost seems too good to be true, and while I’m not a economist or a politician I have no choice but trust what Warren claims and hey, we’ve got to start somewhere.

Now I’ve never seen a professional therapist for my anxiety (gee, who’d have thought a college student couldn’t afford therapy?), and while my university provides resources for students like me I also couldn’t find a timeslot that fit my availability due to classes and field experience. Because of this, I found myself in a position where my best option was to let my grades slip as my mental health suffered. Now that I’m graduating and can see the light at the end of the tunnel my biggest fear is my loans. The cost of living in a major metropolitan area paired with loan repayment is enough to make a healthy person anxious let alone those who are already struggling. I’m not afraid of hard work. Going from from my Bachelors degree in English to my Masters in Education meant that not a lot of my credits transferred. My advisor thought that I would have to do an extra semester to graduate. Instead, I took six classes every semester for three semesters including the summer break. I worked my ass off to be in a position to graduate on time and even now I’m considering applying for a PhD in English. But you know what makes me most hesitant to pursue this? You guessed it, my debt.

In July I’ll be moving to Atlanta to live with my girlfriend. Between the two of us we owe around $80,000. I’d like to take a moment to let anyone who doesn’t owe money like that (there aren’t many in our age group) to step back and remember what it was like to be in their twenties with the world ahead of them. Now add the fear of crushing financial burden to that. We’ve all seen the memes that Millennials are killing off businesses, but I very rarely see someone point out that Millennials just don’t have the finances to do what people our age did a decade or two ago. To us, life is school, and then work to pay off the loans, work to pay off the car, work to pay for the apartment, work to get a little ahead in case the worst happens and an unplanned medical bill pops up or the car breaks down. It’s no wonder that my peers are stressed out, tired. It’s no wonder that some of us eat junk food every day, or fall asleep watching Netflix five days a week instead of reading a book, it’s no wonder we don’t get enough exercise. Simply put, we can’t. We cannot pursue our hobbies or dreams because we’re wearing the shackles placed on us by our educational system and capitalism. Education should be a thing that frees you. That allows you to experience the world more fully and drives you to be a participant instead of an observer, but here we are looking forward to the prime of our life, and instead of seeing a garden to go out and play in, we’re seeing the oncoming shadow of debt. I’m not necessarily saying education should be free, after all, educators are providing a service to their students, but something needs to be done about the costs of education and whether or not Warren’s plan is the way to go, right now it’s the best thing I see.  

References

I’m calling for something truly transformational: Universal free public college and cancellation of student loan debt. (2019). Retrieved from https://medium.com/@teamwarren/im-calling-for-something-truly-transformational-universal-free-public-college-and-cancellation-of-a246cd0f910f

[jujywrites]

WIP Challenge

I got tagged by @kikithedeceiver to do this!

Challenge: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

Here’s the thing. I don’t have many separate WIP files; most of them are in one huge doc. and most of the separate wip files are... pretty dead? but ok whatevs. under a read more since it’s long...... and my ego won’t let me skip snippets hjkhkhk thanks for the idea Kiki

From my main miscellaneous folder:

50 Grades of Steele. 1 and a half chaps of a role-flipped 50 Shades of Grey rewrite (i haven’t read the books so I extra don’t care about the characters lol). why do i still have it i’ve lost interest.... *side eyes her entire wip ecosystem* ...Then I see my interview subject, seated at her desk.

"Mr. Grey. I'm pleased to meet you."

And I stop breathing. [end CH1]

[open CH2) I forgot to mention something: I exaggerate occasionally. But I'm not now. I literally stop breathing for a few seconds. A thousand thoughts are racing through my mind, which doesn't help my chest stop seizing, but the main problem here is that Anastasia Steele is quite possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Fanfic idea masterlist. my most active file and where I keep most of my WIPS, unless they get too “large”. Organized by fandom. lotta stuff i keep passing by & may as well be dead but don’t wanna delete. here’s a zero-draft snippet of probably the next chapter of my G-rated yukyoru fic collection

He grabbed a pillow and placed it to his chest, grabbed her arm, and yanked her to him, praying his idea would work.

Seconds passed and he didn't transform. He put his arms around her gingerly. Should he try to immobilize her or would that make it worse?

She made the decision for him. "Mom," she sobbed, clutching him with an iron grip. "N-Need to help...!"

His stomach dropped to his shoes.

Thudding footsteps announced Yuki's arrival. "What's wrong?! Honda-san--"

He didn't say "What did you do?" The thought raced by and Kyo said, "Grab a pillow and help me!"

As Yuki positioned the pillow and himself without having to ask, Kyo said, "She won't wake up. I don't know what to do!"

"Night terror," Yuki said tightly. He was too close but it almost didn't matter. "Not much you can do besides wait."

MayxWard BDSM fic agents of SHIELD. mix of notes and actual writing. kind of a half AU. Melinda climbed into the driver's side and buckled in, then started up the car. "If you've not ridden on the left before you might have motion sickness. It's normal. Just close your eyes until—" She paused as she looked at him; his hands shook so much he couldn't manage the seatbelt. "Here, let me."

"Thanks," he muttered with a sigh, looking rueful.

Modern AU Zelink. What it says on the tin~ Teenage-ish Zelink, with a mash of supporting characters from other games. another mix of notes and fic. Link wasn't sleeping tonight. Tonight was the night he'd been planning for and awaiting for weeks. He was going on a quest: the quest to meet Princess Zelda. 

She wasn't really a princess, of course. That was just her nickname. Zelda Nohansen was Hyrule's sweetheart, the most sought-after young actress in the movie business. And Link had fallen in love with her the first time he'd seen her, two years ago in a tiny theater in Kakariko.

PMMMfic homumado. Madoka Magica. AU, been around since about an hour after I finished the series (5 years yikes, still gotta watch Rebellion). Homura's time power still somewhat involved, but Mami's an adult, everyone's at a boarding school (I think?) where ~things aren't as they first seem~ and Madoka has mysterious powers and night terrors. just notes at the moment.

SoubixHitomi.  Loveless. 3 unfinished/dead first-person Shinonome-senseixSoubi snippets, all of ‘em spicy.

yvy abo. Yuri On Ice. Yuri (Katsuki!!)/Victor/Yuko(!!?!), my attempt at. well. omegaverse(!!!!!!!). orignally started as part of a “bad YOI fic” bigbang and now I’m taking it seriously dgdgfg. Alpha Yuko. “Please, please stop,” she whispered, like saying it aloud would make any difference. But the pressure in her head kept building. Her limbs had begun to itch restlessly.

And Victor wouldn’t let go of her hand.

With the last scrap of her control, she straddled him quickly and kissed him awake.

Even in half-sleep he arched to meet her, and when he opened his eyes sapphire blue had already turned stormy with lust.

yvy canonfuturefic. Yuko-focused following of canon, or: how canon can I keep YOI while still rareship OT3ing it. She and Yuri fall in and out of love, in between falling for Victor. Victuri is still my life I swear   

“You have got to watch this,” she tells Yuri. She watches Yuri’s face instead of the video, having seen it at least forty times by now.

Yuri’s eyes transform into beacons of awe, and Yuko swallows around her rapid heartbeat, breaths coming too short. She sees everything she’s feeling and more on his face. She remembers that she loves him, that he’s real and here and more important than the beautiful boy on her phone who’s trying to pull her under to a scary new world.

ZnT ot3 bdsm AU. Zankyou no Terror, 9/12/Lisa. mix of notes and fic, not just PWP. in heavy need of editing bc a lot was inspired by a non-spicy book.

“But it’s not just me. It’s everyone. You need everyone because you have no idea how to need yourself. Or even how to be yourself.”

“You’re wrong.” The force and volume of her voice shocked her and pushed her onward. “You and Touji. I don’t need anyone except you and Touji! Because you both taught me how to be myself-- no, how to find that on my own. I know exactly who I am, and that me isn’t complete without both of you!” She could feel the tears streaming down her face, yet somehow her voice didn’t waver. She felt so full of conviction she could burst into flames. “Don’t you understand, Arata? We’re all meant to be together.”

From my SnK folder:

Cave of the Crystal Maiden (working title). Aruani. Modern AU. MMORPG shenanigans with a dollop of magical realism/supernatural. Just notes. @portraitofa-girl suggested “meeting online” and it’s been there literally for years oh lord im sorry. no fic yet, just notes.

Falling Anthem (working title) Modern AU Levihan, art student Hange and young professor Levi. just notes. fic one in a planned series. also has been years ;_;

Raindrops and Soft Steps. Jearmin. unsurprisingly, modern AU. One morning, when Jean looks out of his bedroom window, he sees a boy dancing across the street. In the street, to be exact. There wouldn't be anything unusual about that, Jean supposes, except it's raining cats and dogs outside.

In my IAMXfic folder (fff i almost skipped this):

2ndPOVCalberto (DO NOT CORRUPT WITH HET) ChrisxAlberto? not much to say?? yes i know they’re real people??? which applies to everything after this oh my god *crawls under desk* Of course she knows; she is annoyingly perceptive when it comes to romance. The only thing preventing you from asking her (like a fucking lovestruck teenager) if Alberto likes you back is emptying that beer bottle. By then the only thing on your mind is ordering another.

CalbertImmi. i can’t even keep my poly shit outta RPF ahaha omhg Imogen has a conversation with her lover's lover. (AlbertImmi, sequel to...) Imogen finds herself in an unenviable position. (emerging CalbertImmi)

Alternate summaries (CC POV, first fic?): Chris loves two people. He doesn't want to choose. Chris has fallen in love a few times in his life. But he's never fallen for two people at once. (Chris also isn't good at choosing.)

ChrisxJ. several self-insert fics bc CC is just that powerful, apparently. haven’t looked at the file in a long time,,,,,

He started calling people to the stage with him, and one by one, my row emptied.

"Come on, yeah, come on," he was saying, waving his hand in an inviting gesture and grinning like a little kid. "Hey, you want to?" I did a double take.

"Me?" I mouthed, pointing at myself just to be sure. He nodded, smiling wider.

So it was that I walked unsteadily down the ramp and waited in line, feeling like I didn’t belong there. Soon I was next in line. What would I say? What would I do? I was sure if I opened my mouth I’d either burst into tears or faint.

Genderswapped IAMX sci-fi. The sci-fi was inspired by a word prompt, genderswapping by my own brain. (play spot the Immi lmao) Across the aisle, Sam rolled his eyes. “Leave Chris alone; she’s nervous.”

“And put on your own seatbelt, Johann,” shouted Jess, two seats back and in Sam’s aisle.

Patrick turned  to look at Chris. “Subspace travel is a bitch,” he said simply, and turned back to his book.

“Oh, I feel much less nervous now,” Chris said with a sardonic grin. “How do you know that, anyway?”

"I'm not exactly what I seem to be." He didn’t look up.

Chriimmi (While I Was Gone inspired). Chris/Imogen, inspired by scenes from Sue Miller’s While I Was Gone.

"You really ought not to do that, you know," he said softly.

"Do what?"

"Sneak up on me."

My eyes slid from his face. "I didn't mean to. It just... happened."

"Mm." I glanced back at him; he wore a lopsided smile. "Not that I minded." The tension was so strong the air nearly vibrated with it, yet I held my tongue, terrified that I was the only one feeling it. He took a breath, deep, nearly rising on his toes. "No. I didn't mind at all." He took my hand, circled his thumb over the back. My breath caught as I felt it, as I watched him looking down at our hands.

Chriimmi bathtub dream. dream inspired Chris/Immi smut.

Chriimmi twitter. twitfic plus some, inspired from an actual tweet iamx made that i’m still not over. 

@ imogenheap Come sing your lovely lyrics with us in London. @ IAMX misses you. CCx

ChrisxImmi main. grab bag of Chriimmi I was too lazy to put into separate docs.

“What do you think?” She grinned, twirling.

He cleared his throat. “Ah, I-Imogen, what are you wearing?”

“Well, I didn’t want to clash with your theme…  Janine helped me. Does it work?”

Scandalously short skirt, midriff-baring top, knee-high boots.

“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? You’re trying to fucking kill me.”

Her grin only widened, even though a blush had started.

Fic edit chriimmi ver. yeah. editing someone else’s original fic to be chrimmi. either never posting or editing the frick out of. ~_~

He kissed her neck, whispered into it, “I love you.”

Imogen laughed. “Bollocks,” she said lazily.

”I do!” Chris protested. She looked down at him, nestled on her shoulder. He looked back, open, a little adoring. “I fell in love with you halfway through the show; I sang every note just for you.”

”Oh, please. You couldn’t have seen me.”

”No,” he said. “But I knew you were out there… I knew it had been you the minute I saw you backstage.”

Hospital Chriimmi. In which my guilty feeling over RPF are even worse bc of the inspiration ^_^U “Ms. Heap. What a pleasant surprise.” It’s surprising, how well she remembers his voice.

“Mr. Corner, what have you got yourself into?”

“Oh, just a bit of lingering insomnia. You know how it is.”

She takes a seat in the chair near his bed, crossing her legs. “Well, I’ve certainly had a sleepless night here and there, but I’ve never ended up in hospital from it. So no, I don’t suppose I do know.” Her tone is light, but her smile has begun to crack.

ImmixChris genderbend smut. the my secret friend video is... fertile material. have not actually written the smut yet.

...he saw us as characters– we put on those clothes and become separate from ourselves, removed. Whereas I simply felt like myself in men’s clothes, and instead of feeling what He felt for Her, I just kept right on feeling what I felt for Chris, amplified to a distracting level.

ReluctantdommeImmixSubCC. ...shrug emoji? notes and uh. visualizing.

Vampire Chriimmi. based on a dream. smutty. inspired by True Blood so wow that’s old.

From my Markipairings folder:

demon dream. markiplier self insert...... ughhhhhhhh o///o

"You can have me," I tell the creature. "But this one," I jerk my head toward Mark, "comes with me. He's mine, you see." A bold proclamation to make, but in the moment I know that the truth in those words surpasses everything I've ever said. He is mine, and saying the thought out loud fills me with courage. He squeezes my hand, two short and a long one so strong I think he might break it.

I know we’ll win.

DommeJujY. same as above, same as the next four. smutty.

Fight team AU. i forget where i got this one from. vaguely inspired by loveless i guess.  The first clear thought I had was, He shouldn't have gone ahead of me. The second one was, I should have been able to protect him. But these came later, after the rage went away, after I hugged him and apologized, after I bandaged him…

Gaming meetcute. i win some contest or whatever to secretly tagteam w/ Mark. stuff happens and yeah......

The adrenaline surges through my veins as I take in the scene. Mark's avatar is flailing around, backed into a corner by some Eldritch Abomination and holy shit, the graphics in this game are amazing.

"This is not good, I can't move, I can't move…"

There's a voice in the back of my head screaming to shut the game down, to get that horrible thing off the screen. I ignore it.

Markinpanties. .......smut.

shifter-slight sci-fi AU. shrug emoji.

I looked up from the ground and saw I was heading straight for a brick wall. There was no time to slow down. I braced for impact...

It didn't happen. I opened my eyes and found myself in a café.

What.

Looking behind me, I saw a door. On impulse I walked over and opened it; the tree-lined street I could see through the glass was indeed there. No brick wall to smack my face into. Bewildered, I turned around and looked for a seat, choosing one near a window.

Gouldiplier~. master doc of ficbits of my cracky mccrackship, MarkiplierxEllie Goulding.

I check my phone during break time again. My selfie has been liked and retweeted thousands of times, and I shake my head in disbelief; I don't think that will ever stop surprising me, deep down. To make things even better, Mark's liked it! I'm in the middle of a happy jig when I realize there's a text from him and a squeak of joy slips from me.

hellooo gorgeous

looks like you're having fun. Hope the shoot's going great! <3

I quickly send a reply. it has been. Be glad when it's done tho. Missin u lots xo

Markipicbunnies. fanart of Mark for Gouldiplier insipration. photographer au. 

"Ms. Goulding, I'm really not sure about this…"

"I produce pictures that are intimate because I'm an intimate being, Mark." Ellie looked at him directly, a hint of a smile shaping her lips. "Deep down, I think you are too. We just need to draw you out a bit."

showersexgouldiplier. WELP. IT’S SMUT.

Also I have folders for my 2010/11 nanowrimo novel that are kinda still WIPs but also kinda not

i’m gonna tag.... @kippielovesyou @kiridork and @mistergrass and anyone else who wants to do this can too :3

[phanlight]

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

[moodymurda]

think i lost my best friend

as a small child my first first best friend was a boy named omar. we met in daycare when we were two. we were the smallest in the class but had the biggest mouths. we ended up going to the same schools until 4th grade. at our elementary school anytime someone claimed me as a best friend, he would explain that we went way back to diapers and they weren’t my best friend lmao. 

in pre-k i met a boy named hakeem. (our mom’s ended up being friends, they still talk occasionally and sometimes my mom will tell me how hakeem and his siblings are doing. because she know my weird ass cares about that sort of thing). hakeem brought these lemon cookies everyday for snack. i liked them too but in strawberry, so he would have his mom get me some and he brought me those cookies everyday until we changed schools in first grade. we always sat together, did our work together, played together. we had other friends but we mostly did everything together. 

in first grade i had 2 best friends. a boy named franklyn and a girl named melody. melody moved away like 4 months into the school year but to this day i’ve never forgotten her. franklyn, i thought he was so cool. he was a really great artist.. for a 6 year old lol. he was real funny too. he had the funniest facial expressions. and he was real serious which i was entertained by because i’ve always been “silly”. 

in 4th grade i met a girl named shanelle. we were the shortest girls in the class and the smartest. we were really similar in general and we instantly clicked. it was a whole lil group of girls that i’d known since first grade. but shanelle and i ended up in the same class in 4th grade and we clicked idk. that was my mf girl. when i first moved to florida we talked on the phone every saturday for hours. i also met a boy named anias that year. he was one of my best friends too. he was also my first crush lol. unrelated but it’s interesting to look back at how i handled the fact that i liked him, because i still handle liking people that same way.

fifth grade was my first year in florida. it was real hard for me to make friends. the other day, my mom said to me she realized that in new york i never had to make friends. i have bout 5011 cousins, so that's built in friends right there. and they were my friends back then, they're my friends now. then most of the kids i went to daycare with, they went to my elementary school. so again i never had to make a friend really. i knew everyone in my life since i was a literal infant. 

but yea i did end up making friends eventually. got my first white friends ever lol. (one of their dad’s called me a nigger which is still hands down one of the weirdest things i’ve ever experienced.) i started to befriend more girls which was cool because before then i always had way more guy friends than girls. 

in middle school i went to one school for 6th grade, then another for 7th & 8th. in 6th i met my friend nijah. and she was my best friend then. she treated me like i was her little sister and i’m still grateful. she really looked out for my little ass and defended me no matter what. she was present after i got into my first fight lol. and even though i held my own, the girl had scratched my face. that shit set nijah off and she proceeded to beat homegirl’s ass even though i just did.

i struggled to make friends in 7th again. in 6th grade i went to the same school that most of my elementary friends went to, so again i didn’t have to make friends for real. i did make new friends but it was different because it was a group thing. not me alone trying to fit in somewhere. in 7th grade i finally got into a school i applied to in 5th grade but was wait-listed. i was and am very reluctant to speak to those i don’t know for a list of reasons. so i didn’t. i would just observe the people in my class. eventually these two girls named janae and keely who were best friends, kinda let me stick my ass in there with them. then i met bart and this girl dani. i remember marcus and i had ended up befriending one another bc our history teacher sat us next to each other when he was reassigning seats. (i remember every mf thing but marcus was also my second crush so naturally i remember every detail of that shit). so yea those were my friends. at the time janae was my best friend tho. she was the only other black girl in the class that would talk to me and didn’t think i was weird. it was because her ass was weird too lol. i didn’t act like the rest of the black girls and they really only spoke to me to make fun of me. which i knew, but i’ve never been one to entertain shit unless “you got beat my ass about it”. 

in 8th grade janae and i met this group of girls. morgan, dejahnna, atlantis, and jarvayssia. some shit shifted that year and morgan and dejahanna became my best friends. they were the first friends i ever hang out with outside of school. it made me feel so good to be invited to shit and to feel included. to feel like a normal ass 13 yr old felt amazing. 

so in high school there were two schools all the magnet school kids would usually apply to. stanton and paxon. with the exception of keely, bart, and a few other people i didn't mention here. every single person i was close with in middle school, went to paxon. what's crazy is most of my friends were going for stanton because in jax it’s the “better” school as far as ranking goes. i don't even remember why but when i toured paxon, i liked it more than stanton and i wanted to go there. it’s still funny to me that my ass didn’t want to go to stanton but was one of the only ones in my close friend group to get in. 

so yea at stanton is struggled. a lot. personally but also in the friend department. to put it plainly i had none. people didn't really talk to me or acknowledge me really. at first i didn’t mind it. but then having a fucked up home situation and having no friends just made me feel real shitty. there was that thing again, with people talking to me only to make fun of me. some of those same people would turn around senior year and try to be my friend senior year which was hilarious to me at the time. it was like they forgot how they treated my extra depressed ass back then. i met this girl chelsey in 10th grade and she was hella sweet. she basically forced me on her friends and they became my friends.

okay so anyway, in 11th grade i met a girl named ahmani. she was in my chorus class. i remember our first encounter, it was towards the beginning of the school year. stanton was playing paxon and it was the game everyone went to ya know. i wanted to go but my mom couldn't take me. so everyone is talking about it and someone asked if i was coming. i said no and why, ahmani ended up asking me what side of town i lived on. we realized we dead lived like 7 minutes away from each other. she offered to pick me up and bring me to the game w her. i was amazed that she was willing to, i know that dont sound like a big deal but to me it was. people weren’t nice to me bro. like ever. so for her to do that it meant a lot. she ended up being my ride every mf where. she is dead the reason i hung out w people outside of school w my friends. she took me everywhere with her. sometimes we would just sit in the car and talk or listen to music. we had a group of friends, it was 5 of us. but i was the closest with her. 

i admired her. i thought she was so strong and resilient. she's hella awkward but she owns it. she's low-key/highkey anxious sometimes but she works through it. no one i’ve ever met works harder to achieve shit than she is. she sings so beautifully. she is beautiful. she's a caretaker of basically anyone she knows. she is a light, she was my light for so long when i needed it. we’re pretty different but also a lot alike. we just worked. i always told her where i fall short she picks up my slack and vice versa. we might be a bit of a mess separately but our heads working together is unstoppable. we’re kinda a mess together too honestly but it’s us.

in college we didn't spend as much time together. we both stayed home for two years and went to a community college. we would hang out like weekly i think. i’m pretty sure we saw each other once a week at the very least. but then she went to orlando for university and i went to UNF which in jax. we didn’t talk all that much and i understood. i wasn't necessarily too busy, but thats because i just never am that fucking busy lmfao. idk the way i go through life is weird. i only make time for the shit and people i want to make time for. i refuse to do anything i dont want to. and that isn’t necessarily my best trait but I'm working on it. but yea i guess she was busier than i? idk when i don’t speak to people for a while i dont make a big deal. i tell myself it isn’t on purpose and i move on. i often tell myself not to apply more importance to my life than what is necessary. especially when others are involved. again, not my best trait but i’m working on it. 

so yea though our communication got limited i still considered her my best friend. when she would come to the city, if she had time we hung out. i always have time lmfao, always. again i know other people’s lives are more full than mine. well i assume so. anyway. we spoke on the phone. we were there when the other needed i think. i try hard not to need people. like not to call them or burden them with my issues. i try real hard. but when she needed me i was there. not to say i’ve ever needed her and she wasn’t there. because that isn’t the case at all. 

recently we planned to move to chicago together. a whole chain of events happened and now we aren’t. i’m still moving and i’m pretty sure she is too. just not together. the way it happened is really fucking with me. i don’t wanna get into it bc of privacy and shit. but i will say that i am hurt. im really hurt and im confused and im beating myself up over some shit that everyone keeps telling me isn't my fault. feels like my fault though. that feels like the only explanation. i dont know.

i’ve been thiniking a lot. about friends and how i never really had any. i just spoke to people so i wasn't alone or sometimes i just spoke to no one and made myself be okay with it. and now i have this group of friends and we’re like family. everyone that is my friend currently is my family. all of my friends i have currently i made over the internet. and i was bothered by that im not even gonna lie. it felt good to still have ahmani bc i would see her more than i see my other friends. i still have some i didn't meet yet. idk i just.. im the only person in my like personal life with internet friends. like in my family. and i felt like i just fed the fact that my family thinks im not even the least bit “normal”. then i started to feel bad. because it felt like that meant i was ashamed of my friends.and i’m not. i love them. i dont wanna lose any of them any time soon. and i’m realizing i dont need anyone’s approval to make those friendships “real” or valid. because they are real and valid to me. 

but yea i dont think ahmani and i will be friends anymore. or if we do end up being friends again, we probably won't speak for a while. i don’t know what that means. but losing a friend sucks a whole lot and i wouldn’t wish it on anyone. 

[tiloz]

oh, we live ?! word ok. what’s up, y’all i’m princess aurora but call me rory lmao . that was corny lmao @ myself delete it. i’m from the gmt timezone and i use she/her pronouns. anyways i’m currently operating on an hour of sleep so if this doesn’t make sense, my uh ... bad ? hfjshlk im rushing through this so i can go to bed asap. i have discord but i don’t remember my pass so hit me up in the ims or smaSH this like and ill im you ig if you wanna plot some stuff ... perhaps i’ll force myself to remember if we do a gc or smthn hdfsldjkh. anyways under the cut is a lil about my boy, cody ! 

( kj apa, cis male ) did you hear how CODY TILO is applying to columbia university as a FORENSIC SCIENCE major ?! the TWENTY ONE year old is living in the EAST CAMPUS. i heard that they got in because they are +CONSCIENTIOUS and +EBULLIENT, but honestly i think HE can be -RECALCITRANT and -FACETIOUS. they’re a real INSURGENT. oh well, only time will tell if the JUNIOR will make it til the end.  

+ empty water bottles, messy sheets, text messages left unread, ripped acid wash jeans, scuffed up converse, bed hair all day, cologne collections, too many open tabs.

cody was born to two money hungry and fame seeking parents: james tilo & sofia ellis-tilo.

they’re both high rated attorneys and in the early nineties even opened a law firm in los angeles and due to being incredibly popular with celebrities, they became like loaded and rly well known. 

for a good few years, things were going well for mr and mrs tilo… until competition arose and their firm wasn’t in the media as much, which meant less clients and less money. they were still terribly rich, but they wanted more. they needed to get their name out there again and what better way to do that then to have a child? 

july 4th 1997, baby cody was born. just as his parents predicted, the tabloids lapped it up.  “CELEBRITY LAWYERS: JAMES & SOFIA TILO WELCOME BABY BOY TO THE WORLD. More on page. 3.” 

their competition was being forgotten about and the tilo’s were rising once again. however, they needed a calm place for their son to grow up, they didn’t want the craziness of hollywood to intervene with his upbringing but their jobs were also important so they moved to the upper east side of ny and bought the largest house, of course they needed the whole of nyc to know how rich they were.

unfortunately, they had no plans to stay and look after their son as being a lawyer and running their own firm is a 24 hour business. they hired some of the best house staff to take care of their home and most importantly, just not to james & sofia themselves, baby cody.

cody tilo was raised by strangers her parents hired, who eventually became more like family than his real parents. he saw them once a month, if that and every time his parents had an important event to attend - they can’t leave the person who put them back on the map at home. soon enough, james & sofia’s guilt kicked in. on cody’s eighth birthday, his parents not only bought him his first car (despite not being able to drive yet) but also set up his own bank account – with a starting amount of $500,000 and an extra $100,000 being transferred bi weekly. 

anyways bc his parents were like never around, he used to act up a lot in school and became a lil rebel, skipping, not doing homework, refusing to cooperate and he rly only did it so they’d contact his parents n they’d come home but uh they didn’t . his house staff had to deal w him.

when he got to high school, he changed his tune a lil bit, he was still a dumb lil rebel but he started listening in class. he watched these dramatic ass crime shows n decided that’s what he wanted to do. and he properly worked hard n studied so he could study forensic science at columbia ( and hey lmao he got there ) 

his parents were not impressed bc they wanted him to follow in their footsteps n obvs cody didn’t want to . but like he was scared that they were gonna complete ignore him, like move away n focus on their career n just leave him :(

so ( and he’s still doing this now ) he still wants to advance in forensic science but whenever his parents need him for some sort of celeb event or magazine family photoshoot / interview he’ll drop everything to be there for them , even tho he’d rather stay out of the limelight his parents have created for him. 

but yk he’s a lil baby n doesn’t wanna lose his parents so he’s gonna do it. 

anyways this got long for someone who is tired as hell lmao so im gonna end this here n just say hit me up n we can plot connections n shit !

@ the people whom im’d me bc i liked their intros last night, i love u already and ill get to yall after ive slept xoxo.

[k-bloggs]

Have an embarrassing read at something i tried to write a couple years ago. back when i was happy lol

My First Blog. – 20/11/16

Okay, so here goes. This is my first ever attempt at anything like this really. I have written before in many different formats and styles but I don’t know what’s come over me lately but I feel inspired to write again and I know as well as anyone else this isn’t a typical feeling that comes along every so often so by fuck I am gonna’ grab it and take a chance and see where I end up.  I literally just unlocked and locked my phone again there because I’m trying to have a proper focused dedicated mind to attempting this. I’m not even too sure what I’m supposed to do in a blog, what even is a blog? I don’t know but I know that I’ve wanted to start making a journal of things that are going on in my life but due the fact I am extremely lazy this may be very seldom so the next update could be quite a while so don’t expect anything too frequent.

Like I said I’m not even too sure what I am meant to be doing or how I am even meant to go about it, I am a firm believer in the fact that writing doesn’t have to be performed or practised in any particular way. That there is essentially no wrong or right way in how it is carried out or laid out, but I feel like I just want to do something a bit more productive with my life from now on. A long childhood friend has recently started doing animations and making his own videos and uploading them to YouTube and to be quite honest they are great, its so great to see something like that, the thing about Ryan Is that our friendship took a bit of a standstill when we were kids must have been between the ages of 8 and 10 at least. Ryan and his family were emigrating to New Zealand and as a kid yeah you see this as a big thing but you don’t realise the likelihood of seeing them as often is completely and utterly abolished due to the fact you have no idea how much it would cost to fly out there. Ryan must be around 18 or 19 now and I just turned 20 there this year, and its great to see we still have so much in common, to just spit it out and be clear after seeing that this is what he into it kind of inspired me to get back to what I love doing. I love writing. I’m not so much of a reader which is the weird thing, again all down to my laziness, if a book doesn’t get my attention within the first paragraph or so I find it very hard to stick with it or even go back to it if I do manage to finish a chapter. The same applies for the likes of articles and campaigns and any form of literature really. But I thought hey you know what it’s about time I started doing what I love and even more its about time I start love what im doing.

Just to be clear, this year has probably been one of the biggest milestones of my life. I finally did it, I finally got a girlfriend. Fuck. It’s still weird even saying that, so yeah I will leave the ultimate love story of the century to maybe the next blog or edition whatever the fuck you want to call this. This is mainly just for me to get to grips with the style that im going to write in, if I do choose to carry on with this (Which I feel like I will). If anyone reads this yeah, awesome im happy someone out there is reading my stuff but to be honest this if for me as much as it is for anyone else out there. I want to see what I can do and if this really is the best time to get back into writing, basically one side of me is saying yeah what the hell go for it you need something like this but at the same time as there always is, the polar opposite emotion of just fear I guess? Not wanting to pick something up again only to go off my track record and drop this 5 minutes later like I do with everything else? But hey its 7.15pm on a frosty Sunday night in November, what else am I going to do? Sit, procrastinate and wish I had of done something useful.

Not that im going off track because essentially there isn’t much to this article its just me spamming a lot of stuff down so who ever reads this can kind of of get a grip of where I am right now in life and basically why I’m doing this. So here goes, I dropped out of college for last week. For the second time…

Yeah im officially a two time college dropout, nothing t be proud of I assure you, but im just waiting for the opening credits to roll ad realise im in the first scene of a really shitty coming of age movie where im the older brother your parents don’t want you to turn out like.

But yeah, I left school at 16 and went to a technical college, basically an establishment which offers a-levels to people who didn’t get back into school or else didn’t want to go back to school. I studied a 2 year course in creative media production and honestly it was awesome, it was so fucking cool and the course didn’t have that many uninteresting or boring areas, but yeah you guessed it I was lazy didn’t do any of the work and just took advantage of the whole independent learning aspect of it and never bother showing up for class plus a whole pile of other steamy shit went on that year that we are just not gonna discuss at this moment in time. But coming towards the end of the second year when the course was gonna finish and In a couple months after that I would figure out if I got the grades to get into the uni of my choice I asked my teachers if they would be wiling to let me come back and repeat the second year of the course. They were more than happy to, they gave me exactly what I needed, a fresh slate and a chance to correct myself, and you know what happened? Yeah your right I totally blew it and fucked up again just hated the thought of working or studing in media for any longer. Like I loved making short films and writing screenplays and everything I even liked some of the assignments but basically I had it in my head I didn’t want a career from this anymore due to the fact it was something I loved so much and it was basically kicking my ass all day, all fucking week long. The only thing that got me through that repeated year of college was the girl of my dreams and we weren’t even going out yet. But as said before there is more to come with her, she deserves the whole word so the least I can do is dedicate one sole piece of writing to me and her and our story, truth is there are not enough words in the world to even begin to describe who she is and how she thinks and works and even jus to describe how she came into my life, yes a combination of letters on a page or screen may work for some people but no, not for her. This girl is a queen from another realm, she is a princess from a faraway kingdom, she is an angel from heavens further and beyond the highest clouds. She is the love of my life and that is the only way to explain her and who she is. But getting back to the educational fuck ups In my life, here goes the explanation to how I arrived here, 5 days after dropping out of another course. This time I was studying IT, you know trying to go down that route of career, thinking of my future and what not? Yeah that didn’t go to plan either, I basically rejected a full time promotion on good money and I hadn’t regretted anything as much in my life. Basically college was another fuck up and let’s just say I managed to get out and finished a bit earlier this time rather than waste my own time and anyone else’s. Plus, if I carried on with these next two years that would 5 years of studying A-levels just for me to be a whining little bitch about how I didn’t want to go to university. I am just at the stage of my life now, not where I am considering moving out and settling down but some things don’t appeal to me the same as they used to. Going to uni and living and experiencing that independence in life and finding a career path and devoting the rest of my life to something I may not even be happy at? Na, no thanks not for me. Not at this moment in time anyway. For right now I’m happy enough to keep my eyes and ears open for what all jobs are available for me and what foot to put next in front of me. Get a couple extra pounds in my pay check each fortnight and you know that might do for year or so. Maybe get back on the studying boat in a year or two and carry on with the IT. That is, you know if I don’t become like a stereotypical copy of a character you would expect to see in a ‘Community’ reboot.

I was watching a clip of Jim Carey giving a speech a couple of days ago and basically what I got from it was that he had returned to his old school or college or university or whatever in order to give a commencement speech or he was receiving his award or something anyway not really vitally important. What is important is what he said in his speech, basically his message he was getting across as in most motivational speeches, is the reinforcement of using fear to help you rather than to put you off, accepting fear and accepting that no matter what you will fail, but that’s okay and if it wasn’t for the fact that accepting it you wouldn’t have the drive to reach for greatness like so many greats have done before you, whether they have made it to great fame and fortune or if it was just the regular girl from a small town who made a life and career for herself because it’s what she wanted to do. Anyway, Carey says, “You will only ever have two choices, love or fear. Choose love and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.” Basically what Carrey is telling us here is to embrace fear, don’t avoid it, stare down the barrel of its gun charge at it and conquer it, but never let it conquer you, never let fear become the objective always make sure it rises no more than an obstacle in your course, a mountain you must climb or a hurdle you must leap over. Defeating fear is never the final piece of the puzzle. Like walking in a straight line, you put your left leg forward and then do exactly the same with your right, repeat until you arrive where you need to be? Well, fear is that first big step. The first big step into a new world and a new environment and mind set and who knows what it’s going to throw at you. But you need to remember that it’s there to make sure you don’t triumph in whatever you set out to do, but you can’t move forward without taking that step. Then comes the next step, failure. And as stated before yeah, your gonna fail, your gonna fail and you’re going to fuck up and mess up and trip up, over and over and over again, this is the repetitive steps the same as walking that we take to go in a straight line, the same works with this. Without taking the same repetitive bullshit same old story steps in life, we will never reach the finish line that is success.

[noctomania]

I know i complain a lot about this & i know i may not know everything but what i do know has just continued to piss me off.

I used to use this tumblr partially just to rb stuff but also to dump shit that was on my mind kinda like a livejournal (i used to have one). I liked having it out in the open so that if ppl out there were going through something similar they could see they weren't alone in experience or in having no idea of what to do. For the past few years every time i wanted to do that i had to second guess myself bc my stepmom thought it was ok to find my blog & creep on it without letting me know until she came across something she wasn't happy with. After she told me that, i tried to change as much in my privacy settings, short of deleting my blog entirely, to prevent her from snooping if she wasn't going to respect me. I still don't know if any of it worked. For all i know she could still be.

My mind is often plagued by the time I was reaching out to my parents when i was facing homelessness, like serious homelessness. Not the summer homelessness i had already been enduring for the 5yrs prior. I'm talking i couldn't get a full time job & was barely surviving on part time work at Marshall's for minimum wage & no benefits. Im talking i was lucky i had any savings left over after college bc most got ate up - literally. Im talking i worked through college to feed myself, PLUS was an RA to cover housing fees, plus a full time student. My first apartment i was living in a large closet. As a sublet. Paying twice as much rent as i should have been. And got robbed a half a months rent.

When i was already reaching out to social services i also reached out to my parents for advice. I said nothing about money nothing about moving onto their couch. Just guidance. They came back at me with "we can't help you". They made it seem like i was asking them to carry me. I felt at that point the only option i had with what experience i had was to run away back to school. Which meant literally doubling the debt i already had. The only reason i wasn't paying into the debt at the time was i was literally too poor to.

Going back to school was great i terms of i had money finally & got to move back to salem & afford living alone. But if you're running away TO school...you don't want to go to school you want to run away. I wasn't ready, i was just desperate. So the plan failed, i failed, i ran away again. I was exceptionally "lucky" this place had jobs open.

But what im on about tonight is the info i found about my parents & their money. Now mind you when i say my parents i mean my dad & his wife. My real mom been dead long time. SHE was poor. SHE raised my sister & i primarily alone. We had food bank & food stamps & free/reduced breakfast lunch & hand-me-downs from neighbors. That's how I grew up. So when my stepmom tried to deny that we grew up poor I cut her out of my life. Haven't spoken to her in years & only just spoke to my dad for first time in years my last birthday. I sadly regret taking the call bc it was just "when you gonna move your stuff out". After years of not talking. All he could think about was that. My stuff which mind you they stuffed into a corner of a mouse-infested garage so inevitably a lot of my stuff is now rat-nestings. They couldn't spare a single one of their several fuckin rooms IN THE HOUSE.

Tonight i was bored & thought what if i can look up info on how much they couldn't help me when i was broke. Turns out they make over 220k a yr, with AT MOST one employee besides themselves to pay (didn't even pay them enough imo) & pay thousands in property taxes for property they do literally nothing with & for a house with FIVE FUCKIN BEDROOMS AND THREE BATHROOMS FOR JUST THE TWO OF THEM TO LIVE THERE & NEVER INVITE ANYONE OVER BC THEY HATE COMPANY. That is their SECOND house mind you (last i checked with my dad they are looking at buying their third jfc). But they couldn't help their own child. And yes I understand running a private business costs money. I also understand that they don't get weekly checks, it's all depending on what cases they can get/win. They always acted like they had less money than they do though. Many years they worked out of the house so there was no extra rent to pay. I've been working in my current job for over 5yrs & I am just now finally making 35k/yr after many union fights.

I can't find it in my heart to forgive them. Had mom still been alive she would have stripped their small intestines right out of their ass for turning a cold shoulder. They didn't offer any advice or help when I asked except dad tell me to sign up for the military. Which goes to show how much they actually thought about me considering I am not allowed to join the military even if I wanted to bc I am transgender. I know for a fact bc i did still have to sign up for selective service when I applied for a loan for grad school & they sent a letter back rejecting me. But I still got to sign up for the debt 🥴 It was further disturbing considering my parents have always been very anti-military. It felt like a real "go fuck yourself" response & I've never been able to shake that or been able to properly explain to them how that felt. They don't get it & they don't care bc they think it's"good for me" or "builds character". I don't think either of them have ever faced the experience my sister & esp I have. Their standards seemed to revolve only around what they wanted me to do & not at all around what I need. But had the audacity to criticize politicians doing the same thing.

The work they do is great, & I'm proud of that. They've fought to provide social security & disability support to those who need it. But what sense does it make that you're more willing to help strangers than you are your own family?

They never even visited me up here. Not once.

I hate this country i hate my family i hate money i hate bullshit. All that i care about are cats/nature, food, & weed. Everything else is a waste of my patience. And i know there are ppl out there doing good things doing right by those they love, but that shit doesn't "heal" me like it does everyone else. Basic kindness shouldn't be such a commodity.

I've spent every year ive been working here saving as much money as I can without completely neglecting myself. I've had set backs primarily due to my health. But as far as i see it I am the only safety net i have at this point. I have no life. I don't even know how to have a life anymore. Quarantine didn't even phase me bc I already had no life to give up & still had to show up to work like regular.

It's no fuckin wonder ive had so much suicidal ideation over the years, I've nowhere I feel I can turn where i feel 100% trust.

AND I'M PRIVILEGED AF. I am white, I have a steady job & a union, I am making more money more consistently than I ever have before. Getting here has been hell & terrifying. Being shown that my parents really aren't there for me, finding out that I'm actually terribly alone in the world, & literally just having to double down on being my own best friend. It definitely ices the heart & cuts the elasticity of the tolerance.

Part of me really wants to just lay into them for this bullshit. But other part of me is like what for? If they would feel bad they should already. But they don't & won't. So I just gotta move on & ignore their calls.

[invasato]

Gelfling biology, huh? One thing I always wondered is about their reproduction, such as gestation period. According to the books, Naia and Gurjin's next sister is about one trine younger than them, so do you think they're meant to be 9 unum like a human pregnancy? I'm assuming they give live birth of course, since the last page of the comic series showed that Mayrin was already expecting Seladon. Sorry for rambling, I'm excited to talk biology lol

dont apologize!! i have a minor interest in human development (in specific conception to childhood) and i very rarely talk about it because i get embarrassed for no good reason so 😭 im happy to have an excuse!! as a disclaimer im by no means an expert or involved in any academics (i do read academic articles, but im not involved in any schooling), this is all from research ive done over the years. id be happy to learn more/hear different inputs! its just speculation based on science for fun.

so, given were using humans as a springboard here, id definitely put it in the 5-9 unum/month range (shortest time survivable for a human infant vs standard human pregnancy). part of why we cook so long is because our brains really need that time to develop, but even then we spend a huge amount of time developing once born because our heads can only get so big before theres no way for a baby to get out lol. its still being studied in a million ways and theres so much we dont know but basically a LOT of human reproduction/development (in and out of utero) is dedicated to our brains and putting the brain and body together to give us our human level “”intelligence”” (a loaded/weaponized word that im not fully comfortable with but for the sake of discussion and separating “intelligent life” from animals ((which is a whole other discussion)) its what ill be using. lack of a better word, basically)

to summarize my absolute word mash there-- humans brains need to be awesome and also big in order for us to have the complex thinking we do. we invest a lot of time and resources into our infants while theyre in the womb, and then a lot of time and resources to finish their brain development once born (these are good and fulfilling investments! dont take my somewhat clinical language to mean its bad). our babies are larger and more developed than other baby animals at birth (usually primates are compared), and technically should have more time in utero, but if they stayed in longer we would have even more difficulties with births. 

so when taking these ideas and figuring out how to apply them to gelflings, we need to consider two things: limitations of gelfling bodies, and how much resources were evolutionarily advantageous to put into their offspring before and after birth to achieve “intelligence”.

we dont need to hunt too hard for these answers, thankfully. gelflings are described as being slender/lithe, so we can assume that varying muscle/fat aside their bone structures are generally pretty thin/small/close/etc. this would probably mean smaller babies, which likely means shorter pregnancies (and possibly a lower childbirth mortality rate for parent and infant), and then that would mean gelfling babies would likely take more time/resources to raise. i have no doubt, seeing how social a species gelfling are, that it was advantageous for them to put the work into raising offspring the way humans do.

with that in mind, lets clock pregnancy in at about 6 unums/months, or 2/3rds of a human pregnancy (id say enough time for laesid to properly recover and have gurjin and naias sister a year later. in terms of humans, pregnancies a year apart happen and the parent is usually fine, but in cases like irish twins there starts to be risks involved). we can maybe guess that infants have an extra stage when compared to typical human development (newborn, 1-3m, 4-6m, etc). think maybe like a human preemie, or less extreme marsupial joey for a better comparison. this would obviously be an intentional stage on evolutions part, meaning that gelfling are well equipped in knowledge/biology to care for their infants. like eating certain things at certain stages to alter breast milk for brain/body growth, having evolved social structures specifically revolving around infant care (which could be supported by canon modern gelfling matriarchal structures, but those were influenced by skeksis so Hm), possibly having some way on their bodies to carry their young (maybe like a psuedo pouch? similar to a kangaroo for example, but theyre usually temporary. they can be found in animals such as echidnas), etc. 

theres a lot to think about and this is by no means an amazing speculation on my part but i hope you enjoyed! i definitely had fun working on this and ill probably continue to tweak and smooth things out 😄 ty for yr ask!!