#I still have a filled note in my notes app of just stream of consciousness regarding this

[bleachbleachbleach]

4/1-4/29/2023

I think I said something about April shaping up to be very rough, which was indeed truer than even I projected. The number of things that got done outside of my true life (that is, my Tumblr life) is actually ridiculous, and I am presently living in a state of constant, nauseous exhaustion. But after every big project I’d collapse for a bit into my Notes app and I’d be like, “oh god, okay, I am alive, I am capable of feeling excited and of having thoughts my soul exists ONLY IN THIS NOTES APP but it’s here.” I’ve been trying to crawl my way back onto Tumblr this weekend, but it's very overwhelming. ;S

After my first big deadline I wrote a bunch more of Hinamori’s chapter. Working on her chapter is rough because it’s all vibes and nothing happens, so I have to settle into it, and this has not been a month for settling. But I really like what I wrote, and I think it came out exactly the way I wanted it to, which anyone familiar with the Creative Endeavor knows is usually not what happens. There’s really just one big interaction left for the chapter and a coda, but I’ve put it off because Hitsugaya is making that scene very hard.

Last Saturday/today I got very invested in Renji 2. Renji 2 is. A terrible decision. Like, I am pretty sure it is objectively bad, and my committing to the bit that is this chapter is less a reflection of me thinking it is a good idea and more a reflection of my having come to terms with it being a bad idea and being fine with that. It’s a bad idea because it’s the second chapter of a fic I very much want people to read, completely filled with reasons for most people to not want to do that. It doesn’t particularly move the plot forward, and there aren’t even that many character interactions because Renji spends most of it in his own head. Most of the interactions that do happen are half-scene half-summary in the past-perfect tense of memory, which is convoluted and distancing and for wHY. 

Renji spends fully 1000 words thinking about Junrinan’s calendar system--including a digression into Byakuya’s separate calendar habits--and that is after other introspective kaleidoscopes about weirdly-constructed Gotei fire towers and futsal. 1 0 0 0 w o r d s. About a nearly irrelevant calendar system *he has never used * and in fact *does not personally understand* for a district *he is not even from.*

But the reason I’m currently staying the course is because I think the guiding question here is “Why does all of this exposition belong to Renji?” and I actually do feel like it is answerable. Like, he’s narrating all this because he is the only person who would. If he is marching through Junrinan of course he’s going to toss up literally everything his bff Momo has ever told him about this place. And I feel like if Renji had nothing better to do but march and think, what would result really would be a disorganized explosion of all of the things. I think he’s just trying to get his bearings before they gallop into the unknown. 

“Why do we need to be privy to his process?” is a different question, but I’m enjoying it and I like thinking about Junrinan’s calendar system. I still think that Chapter 2 of anything is not the best place to go full send into the weeds of stream of consciousness ephemera, because that nonsense needs to be earned, but here we are. He is effectively the main POV in the second half of the fic, so maybe he can have this chapter as a treat. Since it’s not the only time we hear from him, maybe making it through Renji’s explanation about calendars is rewarded in the future by coming back to the POV that’s he’s set up here.

[realnoira]

No idea who’s reading this, but hello. Welcome to the random inner-workings of my mind.

I’m here, it’s 1:45 AM and I haven’t slept. I always get this jolt of energy and major FOMO past midnight. I created this blog a while ago and never used it. I didn’t have the chance to sit down and write something organized, so I kept putting it off. I do, however, have many random unfinished notes app thoughts that I may want to share someday. But right now, I just wanted to say hello and put some thoughts into words.

Is this blog for updates about myself? About things I’m obsessing over? a journal/dairy? A stream of consciousness? Or Is it just tweets on steroids? It’s all of the above.

I’ve said this a million times before and never really upheld it, but I genuinely want to minimize my consumption of social media, especially Twitter. I thankfully don’t use Instagram for obvious reasons. I wish to overall minimize my existence and emotional reliance on social media. That’s sad to say isn’t it? But it’s unfortunately true. Addictions sprout from voids, and the social and emotional void I -and many others- experience is jarring. The results are almost inevitable. It pisses me off when people criticize others for “seeking online validation”, completely disregarding the fact that validation is a human need. As a social species, lacking validation from the adults around us growing up literally threatens our survival. This leads to developing all kinds of mental complexes forcing us to obtain it elsewhere. Telling someone that validation comes from within is ignorant. Humans are a social species and need to feel a sense of belonging. This is a universal human experience, not just applicable to seeking validation online. It’s everywhere. People need something to belong to to fill that void that was stripped from them growing up.

Therefore, saying I want to minimize my existence and reliance on online socializing doesn’t mean I simply want to do that for the sake of it, because that’s pointless. I hope to fill my own void in a healthy and safe way in real life. Being chronically online is just sad and pathetic (Yes I can say that because I was once chronically online). Seriously… touch grass.

I still have a lot to say, hoping to get a chance to say some of it soon. It’s 2:14 AM now, GN.

[heartsywritesthethings]

Kageyama with Plants: The Plants

Okay. So. I do not have all the characters that I want to have plants, assigned to plants, yet. Now, I decided I wanted symbolism for what character's got which plant, but that's not necessarily how Kageyama picks them. So really this has zero plot basis and is wildly unnecessary. I just wanted it. Note: the symbolism listed is not always the entirety of the symbolism, but just the parts that apply. Some parts are well thought out, some are vibes, some are funny.

Spoilers for the manga through the time skip! (Not on match outcomes.)

But here's what I have so far:

Iwaizumi-senpai: rainbow pincushion cactus. Symbolizes protection, warmth, endurance, support. Iwa was a good senpai. Provided support and protection. And created him warmly. Vibes with the endurance and strength of a cactus. Also spiky and pretty.

Oikawa-senpai: venus flytrap. Symbolizes strength, persistence, eccentricities, and new opportunity. Oikawa is an incredibly strong player, a real threat. His persistence is a large part of who he is as a player, but has a tendency to lead into overworking. He's a bit eccentric. He is. Oikawa absolutely looks for new opportunity, he moves across the world to play for another country's team because it is an amazing opportunity for him. Also, when a Venus flytrap fails it tends to sulk for a bit before resetting. Dramatic. But always resets. Ready to try again.

Kindaichi-kun: lucky bamboo. Symbolizes renewal, strength, growth, facing conflicting forces, seeing past fear, peace and chaos bringing about change. Kindaichi and Kageyama have a complex interesting relationship throughout Haikyuu. There's a renewal to their friendship. Change from their fight. Facing conflict. Coming together stronger for it. They both have so much growth that brings them to renewal and peace.

Kunimi-kun: spider plant. Symbolizes mindfulness and renewal of connections. Kunimi is a very mindful player, keeps his stamina in mind and plays the long game. Then of course the renewal.

Daichi-san: weeping fig tree. Symbolizes leadership, unity, prosperity, knowledge, and the link between human and spirit. He's our captain, gotta rep those leadership skills! Unites the team. Helps them prosper! Daichi has been putting in effort from his first year to get the practice and time that his team needed even before he became captain. He led the crows to prosper with their unclipped wings. And having died, he really does connect the human and spirit. Tobe fly.

Suga-senpai: african violet. These symbolize loyalty, protection, admiration, connections. Kageyama absolutely 100% admires Suga. Suga is so loyal to this team that he told the coach to bench him if that's what he thought was best for the team. I love him. Anyway. Connections? Suga connects with his team and his spiker really well and helps teach that to Kageyama. Also, Suga would protect. Chaotically. But still.

Nishinoya-san: scarlet star. This symbolizes protection, success and passion. He's Karasuno's guardian. That just screams protection. Also. He gets the scarlet star cause he's the star. It's mostly green with one little upward spike of red that reminds me of his hair.

Ennoshita-san: baby rubber plant. This is a ficus, same as Daichi's plant. So has a lot of the same symbolism of leadership, unity, understanding. It's just the junior! Ennoshita definitely gets extra points on the understanding front with his understanding of Yamagucchi's feelings and standing in to relay that to Coach.

Hinata Boke: golden pothos. Fun fact, this is my favorite. I have a fake one. ...I think. Symbolizes determination, perseverance, a relentless attitude to chase one's dream. Try to tell me Shoyo doesn't complete embody those qualities. This plant is used to shield negative energies and this sunshine boy does the same. It climbs, which is perfect for how high this shorty can jump. Additionally, when this plant is in a hanging planter, it symbolizes reaching new heights. Pretty solid choice, I think.

Saltyshima: queen's tears. The name alone just makes it hilarious, okay? Also, please know it can be called the Friendship Plant. These two are absolutely friends, but still assholes to each other. This symbolizes respect, success, passion. It can grow alongside others. Also it's rather demanding with it's conditions. I think it nicely represents Tsukki's growth and how he found passion alongside the others. With a little bit of attitude.

Coach Ukai: fiddle leaf fig. Symbolizes understanding, unity, knowledge, leadership. All qualities of coach. A given really. A a bonus this plant has been used to roll cigars. So it fits.

Yacchan: maidenhair fern. This symbolizes hope for future generations, confidence, and fascination. The plant itself is rather delicate and small. Yachi is small and a bit delicate in that she's nervous and easily frightened at first. But she's fascinated by the game and how much everyone on the team works and gains confidence in herself in her place in the team. And as a first year manager? She is the hope for the volleyball team in future years.

Akaashi-san: monstera. Symbolizes respect, honoring elders, and suffocation. (Don't ask me how that ties in with the other two, I don't know.) Kageyama respects Akaashi. For sure. And he's one of his senpai. Also the suffocation bit is funny considering Akaashi helped Kageyama not choke and suffocate at the training camp.

Kuroo-san: kentai palm plant. Symbolizes honor, protection, truth, warmth, aspiration. He's pretty honorable in always helping his volleyball brethren. With defense being Nekoma's biggest strength, protection was a necessity. He is honest, perhaps to a fault. He told Tsukki point blank that he was going to fall behind if he kept dragging his feet. (He's also a sweetheart who wanted to apologize.) He's got aspirations for his own team and his friends' teams. Also this plant has a LOT of deficiencies of different elements that it then needs special soil for so it can get those necessary elements, but just seeing so many elements listed just made me think science. Lemme just break out the periodic table song.

Kenma-san: parlor plant. Symbolizes androgyny, vitality, protection, and means "on the ground." Kenma has vitality, not in the physical sense, but certainly in mental vigor. He's Nekoma's brain! Keeping the protection for Nekoma's defense, of course. With defense being their strength, Nekoma (and Kenma) tend to fight on the ground more than in the air. Also it reminds me of his gravity rant.

Hoshiumi-san: creeping fig. Literally means "good things come in small packages" and "little power house." That's our favorite seagull. Also symbolizes understanding and knowledge. Though he's a bit impulsive and with a quick temper, it's his perceptiveness that always sticks out to me. Being able to recognize that Hinata can likely truly see the whole court in that split second of spiking. Being conscious of how others view him and using it to his advantage. When to go for a hard spike versus a block-out. Also these plants can climb and BOY does he have hops.

Romero-senpai: corsage orchid. This symbolizes admiration and inspiration. Romero is a volleyball player they all watched and admired growing up. It fits. Also originates from South America, which works nicely as Romero's home country is Brazil.

Those still undecided: Kyotani, Asahi, Tanaka, Kinoshita, Narita, Yamaguchi, Takeda, Kiyoko, Ushijima, Tendou, Bokuto, Aone, Chiyaga (plant will be named Broccoli Jr), Atsumu, Sakusa, Komori, and the fan who gives him a plant.

I know he has not interacted with all of these characters, but the point is I want him to and so I will make it happen. I think they'd have fun dynamics.

[rapunzel-withthegoodhair]

when pete davidson was your boyfriend...

Love the way you love your mom Take on all your friends problems Still somehow stop the world for us Say, "I love you" under my breath More times than you can digest Don't wanna close my eyes, I'm scared I'll miss too much Don't wanna fall asleep, I'd rather fall in love When I can't feel you, I feel out of touch

(listen while reading) 

♥

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, you always stole his hoodies. Scooped them right off the bedroom floor after sex and felt his eyes on your bare back as you pulled them down over your figure. He's too tall so they always covered juuust enough. Always left just enough of you bare. He never, ever got tired of the way your scent and his (coconut shampoo and the pot you'd just smoked) floated together across the room when you'd push your hair out from the back. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, he always ordered extra fries because he knew you were going to steal some anyway. He teased you every single time. "Why is it you always seem to make up your mind about what you want right after I get my food?" But secretly, it always felt more like a privilege, that he was the guy who got to have his fries stolen by you. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, he loved listening to you sing more than almost anything else. He’d catch you riffing Disney songs in the shower. Dancing around to showtunes in the kitchen. Rapping along to MGK. You never caught a break when he found you singing country. But you’d only turn the music up louder and sing right to him in response. Guys like you, they don't even like couuuntry muuusic. And their feet stay glued to the pavement and those ciiity lights. Girls like me loose sleep at niiight... He loved that shit too. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, you'd help him bleach his hair in the sink. Comb it through so carefully. Washed it out gently and always made sure the water was cool but not freezing. You'd blow dry it fluffy and run your fingers through it all night on the couch, letting him lay back against your chest. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, you always kissed him in public. Deeply. Passionately. Hands in hair, tugging him closer, leaning back until he was pulling you under like a tidal wave. Mostly because you never wanted to stop kissing him. Because holding hands was never close enough. But also a little because fuck the haters. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, he always let you pick the music on your night drives through the city. Except when he was really excited to play something he'd just discovered that day. Something that lit him up inside almost like you did. You'd drive over the Verrazzano and take your time navigating Queens. Then the city lights would come into view over the Brooklyn Bridge and it would seem a crime to keep the windows rolled up. And the cold night air stole your breath away every time.  

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, he'd always ask you to come with him to work. If you're honest, the writer's floor was a little boring. But you loved him too much to say no. You'd try so hard to stay awake, wandering around taking pictures of the empty office floors with a disposable kodak camera. Stealing snacks out of the break room and filming Try Guys style taste test Snapchats for your friends. Eventually, the night always ended the same. You curled up on the couch of his office, passed out. Pete tugging his jacket off and covering you with it before heading back to smoke with his friends. 

When Pete Davidoson was your boyfriend, you'd read everything he'd let you. It took time. At first, he assumed you'd find his writing obnoxious. Chaotic. A mess, just like him. He assumed you'd never want to read any of it, convinced yours was so much better. Certainly not the scribbled-on airplane napkins. Not the quarter-filled notebooks. The notes app streams of consciousness. Sometimes it was rapid-fire dialogue. Sometimes just the screaming swarm of his mind and the pooling ache in his heart. Sometimes it was a full fucking script, sewed together as painstakingly careful as a hand stitched quilt, laying forgotten at the bottom of his sock drawer. But every bit of it was genius and you always made detailed notes to explain exactly what you loved and why. You knew if you didn’t, he’d never trust your platitudes. So you dissected and analyzed and broke his code. And you can still remember the surprise in his eyes when you would do that. It looked a lot like love. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend he always remembered your favorite orders at Taco Bell and Panda Express and McDonald’s and exactly how you took your coffee at Dunkin. He’d show up to your publisher’s office building unannounced with a frozen hazelnut french vanilla coffee made with almond milk like it was no big deal. You’d been going over the same chapter with your editor all day, scrapping whole pages and trying to salvage something decent from the ashes. You’d never needed to see him more and it was like somehow he’d just felt that across the city. Somehow he’d just known what you needed. Honestly, you were pretty sure it was that day you knew you were in love. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend he’d always sort of lose track of what he was saying when you’d pull your hair up into a ponytail and then loop it through the back of your Yankees cap. Admittedly, you did that shit on purpose more than once. In public. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, you always cleared your schedule in mid September to be with him. You were careful not to make a show of this where he could see it. You knew he’d feel so guilty if he knew. It became a point of negotiation before signing contracts. Anytime your editor pushed back you’d simply shrug your shoulders, the apathy for their counterarguments falling on deaf ears. There was nothing in this world you’d have chosen over him. Not when he needed you. He’d go quiet most of the week. And you’d lean into the quiet, standing right beside him on the front lines of his own private war, hand in his.

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend you’d always massage his hands first before painting his nails. You liked them best black or purple or green. But you’d both wear blue and orange to Knicks games. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend you were always the couple who went outside to smoke a blunt together at dinner parties. You always felt like you were getting away with something, standing on a fire escape on the Lower East Side, fingers messily intertwined. You’d watch the city lights and the night traffic and think how amazing it was that not even the New York City all lit up at night could compare to him. Inside, everyone watched you laugh together and kiss softly at first and eventually forget all about the blunt that had really only been an excuse to sneak off alone. You can still feel the heat in your flushed cheeks when he’d dragged you back inside only to announce that you were both headed home for the night. ‘So sorry, man. Wish we could hang longer. Gotta let the dog out.’ You friends had smirked as they’d hugged you goodbye. “Which dog were you talking about?” You’d teased him on the elevator ride downstairs and it had earned you a playful swat to the ass. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend you loved being the big spoon. Because you knew his size and the fact that he was a boy meant he’d probably never gotten to little spoon. You’d wrap one leg around his waist and nuzzle into the pocket of heat at the crook of his neck. And he’d squeeze your thigh as if to say thank you. Your fingers would comb gently through his hair and you’d just lay in bed together, keeping all the monsters out as best as you could. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, he’d always stay up late with you while you wrote. The glow of your laptop a soothing white over the room while he smoked beside you. His headphones stayed on. Yours too. But he always refused to lay down without you. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend, you always went on stand up circuits with him. He tried to apologize for the constant chaos of his life, assuming you’d be happier settled. But you’d loved it. Living out of airports and hotel rooms and Lyft rides and green rooms. In-between places, you’d called them, because humans had created all of these things to exist in-between other things. And somehow, tucking your life into those spaces had felt more real than a driveway and a picket fence ever could. 

When Pete Davidson was your boyfriend you spent your days off driving around Long Island. You push East as far as you can go. Pretend you’re Jay and Daisy. Stroll hand in hand right up to open houses for multi-million dollar beach ‘cottages’ in the Hamptons. You watched the realtors squirm as they assessed his tattoo collection and eclectic sense of fashion. Then wander through the house as if oblivious, pointing out that the upstairs guest bedroom would make a lovely nursery. He’d smile and gently grip your chin, stealing a kiss as he laid a hand on your stomach. The car ride home nearly killed you both from how hard you’d laughed. But when you’d finally arrived home, you’d kissed him in the kitchen and looked in his eyes. ‘For what it’s worth, I do know you’d make the best dad in the world someday.’ He’d cried so hard and you’d sat on the counter top, arms and legs wrapped around him, holding all his broken pieces together. 

[melyaliz]

Remember me pt 1

Fandom: My Hero Academia 

Summary: One moment Olive is just living her life in America the next it is 5 years in the future and this incredibly out of her league blonde is speaking to her in a langue she barely knows calling her his wife.

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x OC 

Notes: This idea came to me last week while I was supposed to be prepping to edit my novel. I was like “I should just write the idea out.” A week later and over 30k words... I now bring it to you. 

ALSO! I have a newsletter you guys! It’s where I will keep you updated on on novel (and other) related things. My website and short story should be up next Friday to stay tuned for that :) 

All Masterlists @melyalizarchive​

Connect with me! AO3 / Instagram / Pinterest

DONATE or REQUEST

-0-0-0--- Olive ---0-0-0-

Black eyes, rimmed with a thin blue line. Glowing in a way that was almost predatory like. It reminded her of a shark moving toward her. She felt like she was in water, or using her querk. Slowly trying to escape from something that was much faster in a black abyss. 

 Nothing but those glowing blue eyes were visible. 

 Olive’s lungs filled with hot dry air making her cough. The taste of ash and smoke filling her lungs as she tried to pull her consciousness awake. Blinking she saw a car on fire in front of her along with small fires spread across the parking lot of a large mall. One she did not recognize.   

 Taking a step back she looked around trying to get her bearings. Her eyes slowly adjusting to the world around her. It felt like a dream as if someone had just thrown her into this situation. No memories of how she got here or what was going on. 

Maybe she was dreaming? 

Touching her face she blinked a few times as she saw people screaming and running from the building. They were saying things but she couldn’t quite make out what. As if they were just making noises.

  What was going on? What happened? Where was she? Panic slowly rising in her chest with the thought that she had no idea what to do or where to go. Her breaths become shallow as panic began to wash over her. 

 “Olive! Olive!” the sound of her name being called broke her out of her stupor as a tall red-haired man ran up to her grabbing her arms. A stream of Japanese came flowing out of his mouth and she was lost. Only knowing a few phrases she blinked up at this stranger.

 “I don’t know…?” she said slowly hoping he would understand, “English.” she said “No Japanese?” 

 He looked taken back for a moment “You go” he said in broken English, accent heavy, pointing at the street. “Police will help, wait there?” 

 Nodding she followed the crowd and stood with the others waiting for Red to come back. Not that it mattered since he wasn’t going to be able to talk to her. But also, as she was slowly realizing by overhearing people talking around her, that she wasn’t in America anymore and had NO idea where to go or what to do. So Red was her best option at this point. Maybe she could use a translator app? Her mind went into overdrive trying to think of what to do. And then, as it always did when she was panicking her thoughts turned to the only person who was her calm center. 

 Eliott.

 Where was he? Reaching around she realized she had a purse with her. One she didn’t recognize. It was way too nice. Was that a Chanel label? Holding up the bag she looked it over totally confused. Did she steal this? Ok, she was dreaming. There was no way this was real. 

 But it felt so real. 

 Frowning she rifled through the bag looking for her phone. She just wanted to call Eliott. Desperation filling her body, her heart pounding so hard in her chest it felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. She just wanted her husband. 

 There was a huge explosion and a few people cheered all of them speaking excitedly in Japanese to each other. The excitement getting louder and louder, people pointing. Turning Olive stood up with the crowd to see a blonde-haired man slowly walking toward the crowd dragging a horned man by the collar of his shirt. Behind him, the red-haired man from earlier held three others on his shoulders. 

 As he grew closer the blonde turned his eyes meeting Olive’s. His red eyes were so intense that something in her stomach dropped. A weird calm washing over her as he studied her. He felt like something from another life. Dejavu. A dream long forgotten. 

 “Olive,” his voice was gravely as he dropped the man he had been dragging walking toward her. Looking down at her he placed his arms on her shoulders “what the hell you baka?” he said leaning forward pulling the dazed woman into a strong hug. He smelled like smoke and something sweet, like sugar. It kind of reminded her of camping. However, why this man was hugging her she had NO idea. 

 And then he pulled back slightly, his eyes fluttering for a moment, leaning toward her face as if he was about to kiss her.  Olive, who was still trying to gain her bearings, felt her whole body tense in pure shock. 

 What.

 The.

 Actual. 

 Fuck? 

 “Dude I’m married,” she said swatting away his arms from her side before pushing him away. Her face flushed, eyes glassy as tears threatened to spill over from feeling so overwhelmed by it all.. 

 The blonde’s eyes grew wide studying her for a moment, then gently his hand moved from her shoulder to her forehead speaking in Japanese. The red-haired man had come up behind him and seemed to be responding to what he was saying back. A flush of anger spread over Olive, she had just told his guy she was married and he was still trying to come on to her. Her already very frayed emotions were so tight Olive couldn’t deal with this anymore. Jaw clenched she swatted away this way too friendly guy’s hand.

 “Look. No I’m...” she held up her hand and that’s when she saw it. 

 A ring, but it wasn’t hers.

 “What?” she looked down at her hand confused. Was she even in her own body? What was going on? Her hands looked like hers? Do people recognize their own hands? It felt like her body. But how could you tell? 

 It was too much for her. Her heart pounding in her ears and that campfire smell was all around her filling her lungs. Her breath became shallow as colored spots filled her vision. 

 And then everything went black. 

 -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

 You get one true love in your life. One person, you are meant to be with. Olive had always believed that. Especially after meeting Eliott. He had a killer sense of humor and was always so calm. For a girl who always seemed to deal with anxiety and self-doubt the dirty blonde haired man who would rather be enjoying life than dealing with the drama was everything, Olive had wanted and needed in her life. 

 It wasn’t some epic romance, it was just… normal. From the first time he brought her out for burgers and to watch fireworks. 

 They ended up in the wrong location missing the entire show. But it didn’t matter, they were too busy talking about their lives. They had ended up staying on the side of that grassy hill just laughing and joking around until 2 am. 

 He fit so easily into her life Olive had a hard time remembering what it was like without him. She wasn’t as happy that was for sure. 

 And then one day he was gone. 

 Like a flash from the cameras, he would use.

 As an action photographer, he was hired by both sports and hero agencies for promotional work. Olive had worried about him when he had gotten the job  but with his quirk of being able to walk on walls, he normally could stay out of the way enough to keep himself safe. 

 Until a month ago when he wasn’t. 

 A month ago when he was dead. 

 And Olive’s life wasn’t the same. 

 A month after a loss is such a weird time. It’s like a limbo between everyone expecting her to be better and her inability to stop crying. 

 Olive still woke up reaching out for him in the middle of the night only to find an empty bed. Still felt like she could see him around every corner. Still waited for him to come through that door making some snarky joke about some idiot who walked into his shot. 

 His presence had left such a huge hole in her life and a bigger one in her heart. 

 That morning she woke up rubbing her swollen eyes looking at herself in the mirror. She was tired of this. Tired of being sad. Tired of missing him. Just tired. Selfishly she just wanted to skip this part of the morning process and go back to being happy again. After all, there was no way she could be sad forever... right? They say time heals all wounds. (Whoever they were.) But she wanted that healing now. 

 But no one could do that but her. 

 So sitting down she opened her laptop. Emails from her boss, editor, and an older client of hers littered her email. Scrolling through she tried to decide which one she wanted. She didn’t have the creative energy to talk to her editor and her boss could wait until Monday. 

 But maybe ghostwriting would help distract her? The client she used to work with had a new story and he was desperate. And in a way she was too. 

 So clicking the email she started to read what he had to say. 

 And then she was here. 

 In the parking lot of a burning mall in Japan. 

 The hospital she woke up in was sterile white reminding her of the inside of an apple store. Soft lights filled the room as her eyes fluttered open. She looked around slowly sitting up. Her head was pounding and part of her just wanted to lay back down. But she also wanted some water, her throat feeling ashy crying out for moisture. And maybe an answer to what the hell was going on? 

 Slowly Olive pulled herself into a sitting position, her body ached from tension but she didn’t really see any other major injuries. Looking around the room praying for a glass of water her eyes instead found a phone sitting on the table next to her. A text on top of the slue of notifications caught her attention.

 Lilly Pond: Are you ok? Call me when you get up.

 Her best friend. Oh thank god, someone she recognized. This meant she could rule out getting teleported to a different dimension off her list of what the fuck was going on. 

 Her heart pounded in her chest as she quickly unlocked the phone. Thank god for smart technology and face recognition. (She wouldn’t have known what to do without it). Looking down at the phone there was a brief moment where she forgot why she had opened her phone. Distracted by the image of three young children who she didn’t recognize looked back up at her from her phone background. 

 Dear god, please don’t tell her she had kids along with a strange wedding ring. Her heart couldn’t handle a full-on Overboard situation. She felt sick and desperate to hear a familiar voice. Something she recognized. 

 Clicking the name she fumbled for a bit until she figured out how to call. 

 “Olive?” Lilly’s voice was desperate, “Olive are you ok? Katsuki told me…” 

 “What? Who?” Olive cut her friend off confused by this Katsuski, “Lilly I don’t know where I am… I… I think I’m in Japan.” 

 There was a long pause on the other end. “Yeah Olive… you…” Another long pause, Olive could tell her bestie was trying to remain calm for her sake, “What do you remember?” In the background, Olive heard a little voice say something. But Lilly didn’t have kids… right? 

 “I… Eliott’s funeral, uhhh going back to work. I think it’s been maybe a month since he died?” who was she kidding, she knew it was 4 weeks and 3 days. But she didn't want to sound like she was counting. 

 “Olive, it’s been over 5 years since Eliott died.” 

 Olive felt like she was going to throw up. Wait... what?

 “What?” she felt like there was a mound of sand in her throat. She wanted to gag at the feeling. Her heart raced so fast she couldn’t breathe. She was suffocating. “But, that’s not possible. Eliott.. I… Lilly why can’t I remember anything!?! Why the FUCK AM I IN JAPAN!?!” 

 “Olive you need to calm down...”

 Olive wanted Eliott, she wanted his stormy gray-blue eyes and calm voice to tell her to just breathe. ‘If you're breathing you're alive, just keep breathing.’ was what he would always say when she was working herself up over something that probably didn't matter. She missed him, she wanted him. 

 “No” Olive sobbed covering her mouth, “I...” 

 “Is Kasusuki there? Olive? Nate? call Kasushk she’s freaking out..” Lilly’s voice called off the phone to her fiance, well it would be husband at this point. Wait was that little voice? 

 The blonde from earlier came rushing in cutting off her millions of thoughts. He was holding his phone to his ear but quickly hung up as he saw her. Those red eyes wide as he walked up to her. “Olive…” he said softly as he approached. At the sound of her name, she shrunk back shaking her head slightly.

 “Lilly, I honestly don’t know what’s going on.” 

 “That’s your husband Olive.” Lilly’s voice said back, “You moved to Japan with him two and a half years ago.” 

 “I’m going to be sick.” she choked out. “This is a dream, I can't…” 

 “Oh Olive” Lilly’s voice sounded far away as Olive felt dizzy.

 “No, no no.” the blonde said -what did Lilly call him? Suki?- gently prying the phone out of her hand, “Calm down, focus. Don’t pass out.” 

 “I don’t know what’s going on,” Olive told him, trying to make him understand. Trying to make herself understand.

 “Yeah I can tell.” he said, “They don’t know why. They said you were fine.” 

 “They?” 

 “The Doctors.” 

 “Oh.” her voice trailed off for a moment as he picked up her phone Lilly still on the other end. 

 “I have her. She will call you back,” he said before hanging up. A flash of anger folded Olive. How dare he just hang up on her best friend.

 “Uhhh excuse me! I was talking to her.” 

 “You can call her back, I need you to talk to me,” he said brushing away her comment. A flicker of a smile flashed over his face for a moment and Olive had no idea why. This wasn’t funny. Why would he be laughing? 

 “Who are you?” Olive said studying him unsure about the man next to her. She trusted Lilly when she said she was married to him but also… she didn’t trust him. 

 She didn’t know him. 

 “I’m your husband,” his voice softened as his gaze roamed over her as if looking for injuries. Probably not believing the doctors. “What is the last thing you remember?” 

 “I… Eliott.” her voice was soft and she didn’t miss the way he flinched at the name. “He… He’s dead.” 

 “Yeah” he said nodded gently brushing away a strand of her dark hair away from her face.

 “And now I’m in Japan.” She was in shock, trying to make sense of it all. 

 “Yeah,” was his simple resonance.  

 “And I don’t know how,” she concluded unsure how to explain to this complete stranger that he was, in fact, a complete stranger to her.  

 He sighed looking down at her hands, his finger brushing over the large yellow diamond on her left hand. Olive looked down as well, it was much larger and impressive than her ring. But… it felt so wrong. Looking back up at him she felt like she was going to cry again.

 “Are you going to cry?” he asked, it sounded like a statement. She shook her head already feeling hot tears welling up in her eyes.

 “No” 

 He sighed, it sounded frustrated and made her heart pound with an anxiety she hadn’t felt in years. But he still hugged her, pulling her close enveloping her in that sweet warm scent she had smelled at the mall. However, this time in the calm of the hospital room it was confronting. Or as comforting as a stranger hugging you could be.  

 She felt his arms tightened around her as she let out a shaky sob. His grip was so strong as if he was scared she would run away.

 But where would she go if she tried?  

-GET TAGGED!-

Story Tag: @0hmydeku @inumorph @it-jinxed-us @myraticm

[imagining-in-the-margins]

1. What was the first fandom and/or pairing that you wrote fic for? 2. Do you participate in any writing events or challenges throughout the year? If so, what do you like about them? 3. Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around? 4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline? 5. What is the perfect environment for you to write in? 8. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, share a song that’s been inspiring you lately.

I don’t normally share asks that were sent to me off Anon, but this had so many fun questions I wanted to! I hope you all enjoy this peep into my life 😂

1. Oh god. Don’t judge me. It was Sailor Moon fanfic when I was... 9? I was obsessed with the weirdest pairing ever – Minako and Mamoru! I never shared it anywhere. The first real fanfiction was a Naruto fanfic with Sakura and Sasuke. I actually still have a ton of that. I wrote on MSN Groups for years, which doesn’t exist anymore.

2. I do not! I always want to, but I never have the time. I don’t like feeling pressured. It’s why I would never start to release a series to be published for real unless I already had most of it completed. 

3. (Stares at 17 partially completed WIPs for requests in my Notes app) Haha... Yeah... I don’t write start to finish. But I usually do write the scenes in order. Not always.

4. I answered this one before but essentially I do outline, but not like most people I see. I write out all the dialogue and stage commands, then fill it out. Sometimes, when I feel particularly inspired (like with Different Dialects), I write it stream of consciousness. It’s rare. I’d really rather just write dialogue.

5. By myself, at a desk, with music playing and the window open. It’d be nice if it was raining.

6. I do! I have SO many playlists for fics. I’ve been writing Protege, so I’ve been listening to my Smut playlist, lol. I watched that terrible film 365 Dni, which had a killer soundtrack. I’ve been listening to Prisoner by Raphael Lake on repeat.

[charmingpplincardigans]

Hokay! I am here to ramble more than anyone ever wanted in answer to @z-bot​, but like, I just love talking about poetry even though I have no idea what I’m doing, okay??? Okay! (Cut for your pleasure.)

Bonus Question I just made up: do you have any poems "in progress"? How do you usually approach poetry: do you write one and let it simmer, or does it all come out at once, or does it vary?

Yes! I do have poems in progress. I always have poems in progress. It’s very rare that any writing comes to me all at once. Sometimes this means that I’ll actively tinker with one over the course of several days or weeks. But also, sometimes it just means that I’m looking at something two years ago me thought was probably fine but which current me cannot abide. At this point it’s just like, as long as I’m a human in progress I will probably have poems in progress because, for better or worse, poetry is my pressure valve and the pillow I scream into when I don’t know how to pull a feeling out of myself any other way. (And when that fails I move on to the collaging.)

And it does vary but these days I mostly poem the way I collage, which is to say that I riffle through myself looking at all the different images or feelings or memories at my disposal and then mix and match them until I come away with something that more or less says what I’m trying to say. Poetry often feels like a puzzle to me in the way prose does not, because of how precise I feel I have to be about it.

Poetry does not give me the luxury of space, of corners to fill or walls to spill over. Poetry demands my attention and my patience. Poetry knows what it wants to be, even when I don’t know yet, and I just gotta keep chiseling at it until I hit angel, you know?

The first draft of any poem starts with a set of words or a tightness in my chest or a feeling of restlessness I can’t shake. I let that sit in me until I feel like I’m gonna choke. Then I get out my phone or my journal and go to work. The notes app on my phone is predominantly filled with poems in differing states of completion and lists of ideas for poems or chapbooks. In the beginning they are usually just stream of consciousness blocks of text that look like this: 

The game I’m playing with myself in draft one is called Oh God Oh God What Is This Feeling And How Do I Make It Make Sense? This works for both negative and positive feelings since I, a dummy, have been alive for more than three decades and still do not quite understand how it’s possible to feel things this intensely without passing out in self-preservation.

The trajectory of this one is pretty straight forward. More straightforward than usual tbh. The first bit of it is actually the bit that was playing in my brain on a loop for an hour before I sat up to tap it out, which is not always the case, but that night I was dealing with the very concrete fact of what it feels like to have yet another a panic attack and that thought spiral there is just the thought spiral I go on whenever that happens. Just curled up in bed obsessively thinking about how I’m gonna die.

at night in the quiet dark I can’t escape the beating of my heart, at night in the quiet dark I can’t escape the beating of my heart, at night in the quiet dark I can’t escape--

So it’s about a panic attack, fine, but there is very obviously more than one level of thing happening here and honestly, it wasn’t a thing I was going to admit to myself until I got to the end there. Because the not so subtle tilt of the poem idea is:

I am in pain -> the pain will end -> the pain will end or I will -> one day I will end -> oh god oh god there are so many things I have to get done before then -> oh hey there are things I meant to get done before she met her end -> oh.

And that last bit was the thing that, for me anyway, elevated my every day emotional vomit to something I could craft a sort of apology around, and it was that apology that felt important enough to me to find a way to properly say it. So I metaphorically popped my unpoppable knuckles and got to work. (I have never been able to crack my knuckles. I am both intrigued and horrified when other people do it.)

The second draft is a god awful mess. If I’m working longhand in a journal I will read through the brain dump to identify and underline any phrases or words that I think are particularly useful or pretty or precise. Then I rewrite those phrases on the next page in list form and go to work knitting them together into something that feels right. I can do this part ten or more times if I’m feeling particularly useless about it, but I find that if I do it more than three times then the whole thing starts to feel overwrought and I step away from it to think until I find a better way in to the feeling. That could happen the next day, or it could take a year.

There are just some things you don’t understand about yourself until you’ve done the work and earned the right to know them and that goes double for poems. Sometimes. It depends. But sometimes.

In this particular case the second draft was where I settled on a repetitive stanza opener because I realized that the repetition of the situation was integral to getting me to the epiphany at the end. Third middle of the night panic attack in two weeks and feeling like no not this again. The words themselves which I was thinking to myself like there was no difference between mindfulness and self-destruction. The fact that my own death has become a worn out thought to me because I think about it so very much. The person I’m never going to stop missing and the way I mentally flog myself over all of it.

There was also the feeling I wanted to capture of how all of this always makes me feel pulled and pulled until I’m translucent taffy, so:

Night stretches thin and all I am aware of...

Night stretches thin and all I can think...

Night stretches thin and all of this is to say...

The third draft (or the hundredth, I don’t know, we’ll pretend like this one was easy, it more or less was in this case) is where I get to play with form and function. I’ll have been flirting with stanzas and enjambment through every version I rewrite, but this is the stage where I can get serious about it because this is the stage where I’m familiar enough with the content to begin to know what it wants. The poem and I go from vous to tu, more or less.

For me this is the most fun part, just like it is in prose, because this is where I start letting myself really feel the possibility of the whole thing. There’s nothing I love more than a heady feeling of The Possible.

After that it’s just polishing the draft until I can read it while pretending someone else wrote it and try to discern whether I actually like it or if I’m just over-invested in the idea of it. I change a word here and there. I fiddle with commas. I decide whether I can live with it. This one I could live with, which you know because it’s been posted to the this blog. In my notes app it looks like this:

There are a great deal many more poems tucked about it my life that I can’t live with. Most of them will probably never see the light of computer screen or day. And I mean, anyone can look at what I do post or the ones that have been published and decide for themselves whether any of it is any good at all. It’s possible I’m just deluding myself or that I’m narcissistic and vain, but it’s also possible that sometimes I do alright. I’d like to believe the latter is true even if the former is also true.

This all...feels like a lot, which is something I think about all the time. I wonder if I’m just torturing it all for no reason. I wonder if anything I write will ever feel grounded to me in the way all of my favorite poems do. The work of my favorite poets often feels effortless in a way. Not like they’re effortless to create or enjoy, but like they belong effortlessly in the world. Then again, I don’t really feel like my physical existence belongs effortlessly in the world, so perhaps expecting that of my words is a tall ask for the time being.

I just have no idea what I’m doing, you know? I don’t feel like a poet, which is a literal argument I’ve had with friends. There was an intervention and everything. I feel like I’m doing this wrong, or doing it the hard way, and that nothing I can make this way will ever feel true in the way the words of other people feel true for me. All I know is that sometimes I just have to say this stuff “out loud” and most of the time all I want from my life is to have left something beautiful behind and sometimes I feel like I’ve said a thing that will become lovely under the eyes of a person who could see themselves in it.

So I just keep taking my feelings out of my chest and turning them over under better light in an effort to stumble my way into understanding what it means to be anything at all. And you all keep having to scroll past it and ignore the twinge of secondhand embarrassment. Lucky you!

[phantasticworks]

Don’t Ask Me How I’ve Been (Fake Happy) Chapter 2

This took forever to post bc of college and finals but I’m finished for the year so I finally had time to finish this! Thank you for reading!

read on ao3

Words: 10.3k

Description: Dan wakes up alone after his night with Phil.

Warnings: Swearing, drinking, some abusive relationship content (not between dnp)

There’s light streaming in through his bedroom window, and Dan groans into the pillow. He had no idea what time it was, but at the moment, he didn’t really care. There was a throbbing in his lower back, and as he gains consciousness, he slowly remembers the events of the night before.

With a start, he sits up, looking at the spot beside him where Phil should have been.

Except, the bed was empty.

Dan frowns, puzzled, as he rolls out of bed and glances around the room. He’s alone in his bedroom. A pit of anxiety begins growing in his stomach, but he forces himself to calm down. Phil probably just woke up early and went to the bathroom or something. Dan stumbles over to the en-suite, but he can already tell that’s a dead end, as the door is wide open, the light off.

The nervous feeling in his stomach refuses to settle, but he tries not to freak out. It’s fine. Phil might’ve gone out to the lounge or something to wait for Dan to wake up.

The lounge is empty.

After a quick round through his flat, Dan realizes he’s actually alone. He wonders if maybe Phil had left a note, maybe he’d missed it in his panic. He slowly goes back to his bedroom and searches every surface. Nothing. The same result in the kitchen, and lounge. It’s as if… As if he was never here in the first place.

Dan is uncertain why that hurts as badly as it does, but before he can think too far into the why, the reality sets in, and tears start leaking from his eyes. There was no way he’d made up the whole thing… Right?

He manages to pull himself out of his thoughts long enough to remember he had a cell phone. Maybe Phil had texted him to explain where he’d gone!

It’s not until Dan’s sitting down on the sofa and unlocking his phone that he realizes two things. One, he’d definitely skipped the awards show last night, and all the missed calls, messages, and social media notifications that were waiting on his phone was proof of how much shit he’d be in the minute he got in contact with his manager. And secondly, he had never thought to get Phil’s phone number.

Shit.

He ignores all the messages to open the Uber app, swearing when he realizes the settings no longer allowed him to see Phil’s number. The only option he has is to contact him through the app, but he has no idea how desperate that will make him seem. Then he recalls that he never actually paid Phil, so without another thought, he clicks “Contact Driver” and begins typing.

Dan: Hi. You’re probably busy so I’m sorry for interrupting, but you left before I could pay you for the ride. Do you want to meet somewhere so I can pay you?

He contemplates the words for a moment before deciding to just go ahead and send it. It’s not going to make him feel any worse if he does, and maybe when Phil responds they can go out for coffee or something and actually talk. Besides the fact that he’d had a great night with him in bed, Phil seemed to share a lot of his interests, and he’d really like to get to know him better. Especially since things were over with Ben.

With the reminder, he realizes he’s still got a ton of unopened messages and many missed calls, most of them likely from his manager. Reluctantly, he goes to his missed calls, deciding to get the worst of it over with now. He clicks on Annette’s name, the number fourteen red beside her name. He cringes as he waits for her to pick up.

“Daniel James, I swear to god, if you ever-“ She doesn’t even say hello, just immediately starts yelling at him.

He can understand this, but at the same time, he’d already been having a shit morning, he didn’t want to deal with this too. “I know, Annette. I know. I’m sorry.” He heaves a sigh, leaning back on his sofa and rubbing a hand down his face. “You know why I didn’t want to be there,” he says softly.

She’s quiet for a moment before she finally sighs. She sounds almost exhausted as he feels. “I know, Dan.” And she does. Annette had known how in love Dan was with Ben from the moment he’d convinced her to sign Ben to the company. Dan had already been working with them for a little over two years, but when he’d met Ben, he just knew he had potential. He’d begged Annette and the rest of her team to sign him, and eventually, they caved, assuming it would be for the best.

Oh, how the tables turn.

“How’s he handling the win?” Dan asks, bitterness lacing his tone. “I’m sure he’s letting it go to his head, huh?”

There’s a pause, and Dan feels a little uneasy at her silence. Then, “Dan, he didn’t win.”

“Oh,” Dan says slowly. He hates himself for it, really, he does, but he can feel himself feeling sorry for Ben. He’d wanted this so badly. “So, who did?”

Now, Annette just sounds amused. “Have you checked literally any of your notifications?” She asks, rather than answer his question.

Dan’s confused. “Um, no. I haven’t been up long, and I figured I’d get my ass chewed out if I didn’t call you the minute I woke up.”

Annette laughs at this, and Dan’s relieved to hear the sound. So, he wouldn’t be in nearly as much trouble as he thought, especially if Annette is laughing. “Good call.”

“So… Who won?” He repeats his question, the curiosity eating at him.

“You did, love,” Annette says gently.

Dan feels as if all the breath in his lungs has been knocked out. “I… What?”

There’s another laugh. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised, dear. The film was a huge success, and you did wonderfully in it.”

He’s having a difficult time wrapping his head around the idea that he’s just won an award, an actual, proper award, for his acting. Then, guilt swarms in as he remembers he hadn’t been there to accept it. There’s a tightness in his throat as he wonders who accepted it on his behalf. “Oh… Did… um, who-“

Annette seems to know where his mind is, because she cuts him off. “I did. I didn’t think you’d want Ben to do it, and it wouldn’t have looked good for his current… narrative.” The word comes out strained, and Dan is pretty sure he knows why. Their manager wasn’t thrilled that Ben decided he wanted to be portrayed in a specific heteronormative way, and Dan thought that the reason probably had a lot to do with himself. Annette was somewhat of a mum to him, and she had told him many times that Ben was a right twat. Unfortunately, she’d been right.

“Oh. Thank you,” Dan says sincerely. He really would have the worst time if Annette wasn’t his manager. “I’m sorry I skipped it.”

“Not a problem, Daniel. We said you were sick. You weren’t out doing anything stupid, right? If it leaks that you were out and not actually sick, we’ll have a hell of a time explaining it.”

Dan shakes his head before he remembers she can’t see him. He sits up and moves to take the mugs, still full of tea from last night, to the sink, a thought striking him as he goes to stand. “Oh. I didn’t exactly go out and do anything stupid, but…” He trails off, uncertain how to tell her. He knew technically it wasn’t her business, but he knew that she’d want to know just in case the story of him sleeping with an Uber driver ended up in the press. Not that Phil would do that. But still, better safe than sorry.

“What did you do?” Annette says with a wary sigh.

“Um, well… I had a hookup-“

“Oh Jesus, Dan. Did they know who you were?”

“Well, yes, but-“

“Dan, you’ve really got to be careful about that kind of thing. What if he’d hurt you?” Annette asks, voice full of concern.

Dan sets the mugs in the sink, an uneasy feeling in his chest from her words. “Phil was harmless, he wouldn’t have done that.”

Annette is quiet for a long time, and Dan starts to wonder if maybe the connection had failed. Eventually, she speaks. “Is he still there?”

Now it’s Dan’s turn to be quiet. “No… He was gone when I woke up. But, he probably had other clients, it’s not like he-“

“Jesus Christ, Dan! You hired a hooker?” Annette is near screaming, and Dan’s face floods with heat.

“No!” He shouts, embarrassed that he’d made it sound that way. “He was the Uber driver, not- fuck, Annette. Obviously, I didn’t hire a hooker.”

“Okay,” Annette breathes, sounding relieved. “That’s definitely more manageable. Do you have his phone number?”

Dan shifts awkwardly. “No,” he admits.

Annette sighs, but doesn’t sound surprised. “Well, that makes things a little more complicated.”

“Why do you need it?” Dan asks, confused.

“In case he decides to go to the press, Dan. We need to be able to get in contact with him.”

Something swirls in his stomach, and Dan knows he’s not going to be able to keep his mouth shut this time. “Phil isn’t going to go tattle that he slept with me. I seriously doubt he’d even consider doing that.”

“But how do you know that?” She asks, gentle.

Dan huffs. He doesn’t want to admit how infatuated he was with Phil, not yet. And especially not to Annette, of all people. “I just don’t see why he would. Would that even be a story worth selling? I’m already out. There’s no secrets here. If anything, it would make Ben look less like a liar.”

Annette seems to consider this. “I suppose,” she says slowly. “But I’d still rather you try and get his information, so we have it, just in case.”

“I already messaged him,” he reassures her, moving over to his kettle to fill it up with water. He desperately needed a cup of coffee.

“Good. Well, congratulations on your win, Dan. You deserve it. Take it easy, okay? Oh, and call your mum. She’s already called me twice, she wants to congratulate you.”

Dan groans, but agrees. “Thanks, Ann.”

“Mhm,” is her response.

The phone call ends with a beep, and Dan sighs loudly. He can’t help but go check his Uber app, hoping to see a response from Phil. Nothing.

With an unsettled feeling in his chest and a heavy sigh, Dan goes about checking the rest of his notifications as the water in his kettle heats up, wondering about a man with black hair and blue eyes the whole time.

~

Three weeks.

Three weeks pass, and Dan doesn’t hear a single peep from Phil.

Twenty-four hours after his Uber ride had scheduled to end, he’s no longer given the option of contacting the driver, so his contact with him is thoroughly severed.

Dan can’t help but be mad, at himself for not getting Phil’s phone number, but also at Phil, because who the fuck has that kind of night with someone and then just fucks off to Neverland? Phil, apparently.

Over those three weeks, Dan has a lot of time to overthink everything that happened that night. He wonders what he did that made Phil decide to leave with no note or anything left behind, and eventually, he comes to the conclusion that it was his oversharing. Who does that? Who ruins a perfectly nice hookup with a perfectly nice man with all of that ridiculous emotional baggage? Dan, apparently.

Despite the fact that Dan’s thoughts feel consumed with worries about that night and where he went wrong, he still has a life to live outside of that. That life includes a celebratory party at his agency in honor of his first big award win, a party that, thankfully, Ben isn’t invited to. Dan had all but begged Annette to make sure he didn’t come, but in the end, she hadn’t had to make a single call. Ben informed the team that he and Sophia would be going on holiday to Edinburgh only a couple days after the awards show, the purpose of the trip apparently so he could meet her parents.

Dan tries not to let that hurt too much, but if he gets wine drunk and breaks the vinyl records Ben left at his flat after hearing the news, well, that’s his business.

He does slowly start to come to terms with the ending of that chapter in his life, even if some of his coping mechanisms aren’t exactly ideal. The only good thing about it all is the timing, because he’s not set to start filming his part in a new film for another month, so until then, he’s got all the downtime he needs to have his breakdown.

A breakdown that includes some nights of copious amount of alcohol, or sometimes just copious amounts of food. The breakdown may also include a few nights of wearing Ben’s old clothes and sobbing into the fabric, but when the worst of it is over, Dan washes the clothes and folds them neatly, placing them in a cardboard box to start the process of packing up Ben’s things.

The process is more taxing than he’d originally anticipated, though, so eventually he finds himself putting it off for another time. It had only been a week and a half at that point, and something about stuffing Ben’s belongings into a box made him almost sick. It almost seemed like he’d died, and while the rational part of Dan’s brain knew this wasn’t true, the panicked, nervous part just screamed at him to leave it for another day.

Along with the packing, Dan had also taken to spending more time at the agency, mainly just to stay away from his too-empty apartment and, admittedly, to distract him from the thoughts of Phil that still swarm in his brain. Logically, he was aware that it was essentially a fluke; he’d barely been in the other man’s company for four hours, there was virtually no reason for Dan to feel as attached to him as he did. And yet, there was just something about Phil that Dan felt inexplicably drawn to.

Whatever the reason was, Dan had essentially given up any hope of ever seeing the man again by the time three weeks had passed since that night.

On the three-week mark, he found himself out of his usual routine when he’s invited to a house party. Apparently, it was just going to be a few people from his agency and some other people in the business, no one of any real importance from what he could gather. Just an ensemble of up-and-coming artists who for some reason thought getting drunk and making embarrassing memories together would strengthen their work relationships. Or something like that, at least.

Dan had agreed to go only on the principle that he hadn’t been spending much time hanging out with any of his friends outside of work lately, and sometimes he did miss them. Well, some of them, at least. There was a couple, or namely just one, coworkers that he’d rather not see, but with the hope that a house party would seem far too childish to Ben, Dan agrees to go.

When he shows up at Christopher’s house, the party is already in full swing. It’s not as bad as college house parties; there weren’t gaggles of drunk people loitering around on the lawn, but Dan wasn’t so sure he could say the same for the inside. With a heaved sigh, he plasters on a fake smile and makes his way to the door.

He doesn’t bother knocking, Christopher never knocked when he went anywhere, and Dan could hear how loud the music was from here; no one would even notice if he knocked. When he steps inside, he’s almost immediately called over by the host of the party himself.

“Dan! Dan the man! Come on, mate, we’re doing shots!” Christopher’s obnoxious voice calls over to him from his spot in the lounge, a group of familiar faces surrounding him.

Dan tries not to grimace, but it’s hard. He doesn’t like getting drunk with a group nearly as much as he did back in his teenage years, as he’s got this awful tendency to spill his guts about every secret in his life. That tendency had gotten him into a lot of trouble with Ben over the years, so eventually he’d stopped drinking so much at parties.

“Good to see you, mate,” Dan says amicably when he reaches the group, patting Christopher on the back. And it was, Christopher was one of the only actors that were signed on at the agency that he actually liked. Some of them weren’t horrible, exactly, but Dan did have standards when it came to his friends.

“Here you go,” says a girl called April as she hands him a shot glass.

“Thanks,” Dan nods to her. He glances around the room to survey the attendees for anyone else that he was friends with, mainly so he’d have an excuse to escape Christopher before his drinking games began. “Nice party, mate, I-“ He begins, eyes still flitting around the room. He cuts himself off abruptly when he sees blonde hair and a leather jacket.

No. Please, no.

But yes, it’s unmistakably Ben, and standing next to him is a petite girl with platinum blonde hair, much lighter than Ben’s could ever hope to be without serious work. Sophia.

Dan can’t help but study Ben, checking to see any visible signs of discomfort or grief. He doesn’t find any, but as he watches him talking and laughing with the few people around him, Ben’s eyes suddenly flick up, meeting his own briefly. His face flaming, Dan quickly turns back to the group he’s with, downing his shot at once. Okay, so maybe he’d have a couple drinks tonight.

“You alright, Dan?” Comes a quiet voice to his left. Dan glances over and finds Erika, Annette’s assistant and one of his close friends. She’s holding a water bottle, and Dan knows from previous party experience that it’s just that- water. She doesn’t drink, and Dan thinks that at this moment he’d never been so grateful to see another human being.

“Erika! I haven’t seen you in ages,” Dan says brightly, avoiding her question as he leans down to hug her.

The brunette smiles up at him but bites her lip and flicks her eyes over somewhere behind Dan, and he knows that she’s seen Ben. It wasn’t like everyone at the agency knew that Dan and Ben had been a thing and weren’t anymore, but it certainly hadn’t left the attention of his PR agent and some of her staff. If he wasn’t so anxious after seeing Ben, he’d probably be embarrassed about how the sight of Ben made him react.

“How have you been, love?” Erika asks in a soft voice, only barely loud enough for Dan to hear her.

He glances over at the group, and realizing they aren’t paying any attention to them, he nods for her to follow him to a corner to talk quietly. “I’ve been better,” he says with a bitter laugh.

She levels him with a pitying smile, and he feels a tightening in his throat, which he hates. “I heard that Ben moved out,” she says quietly.

Dan clenches his fists, trying to remind himself that Erika didn’t mean anything by it. It’s not like she knew all the details; he hadn’t even told Annette the full story. The first day back at the agency after the awards ceremony, she’d asked what exactly happened, and he’d given her the shortest answer possible, just explaining that he would be moving Ben’s things out soon. He’d left it at that.

“We weren’t really living together in the first place,” Dan mutters under his breath, looking down at his shoes and half-wishing he had gotten a drink from someone before this conversation.

Erika sends him a disbelieving look. “Sure, but his things were living at your flat, right?” The thing about Erika was that while she was a sweetheart, she was not afraid to call him out on his shit. It looked like this would be one of those times.

“Well, they aren’t going to be for long. I’ve already started packing it up.” He wasn’t going to pretend that she was wrong; Erika knew more about his and Ben’s situation than even Annette did.

It’s quiet for a few moments before Erika speaks. “I’m sorry, love,” she says gently. “I can’t even imagine… You know you can come stay with me anytime you want, right? If you just need to a change of view or some company.”

He knows her offer is sincere, but he hated to be a burden. “Thanks, Erika. I’ll let you know if I need a shoulder to cry on, but for now I think I’m handling it okay.” He offers her a smile to soften the blow of his rejection.

If it bothers her that he didn’t accept the invitation, she doesn’t let it show. Instead, she points to a group of people by the fireplace. “Did you hear that James and Phoebe are sleeping together?” She asks in a conspiratorial voice.

Dan laughs at this, more than glad that the topic of their conversation has moved to something that isn’t his own life. “I hadn’t, but I can believe it. James is just making his way ‘round, huh?”

Erika’s eyes sparkle, and Dan can tell she’s glad that her distraction is a success. “I think the only people he hasn’t slept with are the guys at the agency and me, of course,” she giggles.

“Imagine that!” He replies, shaking his head with a fond smile. “He wouldn’t sleep with a lesbian?”

“Yeah, I think-“ she starts, turning to gesture to the fireplace again.

She’s interrupted by a voice Dan definitely didn’t want to hear. “Gossiping, are we, ladies?” Ben sneers.

Dan huffs, turning to face him. His breath gets caught when he sees him up-close for the first time in three weeks. He looks good, obviously, with his stupid blonde hair and his stupid leather jacket. He’s got a smirk on his face when Dan looks at him, and Dan can only imagine how much he’s enjoying the way Dan is obviously still very much attracted to him.

“Not about you, sadly. Do something interesting with your life and you might just make an appearance in our little chats,” Erika says in a sickly-sweet voice.

Her sarcastic comment breaks Dan out of his stupor, and he tries to hide his smile. Ben looks at her with distaste, much the way that he looked at everyone else he thought was beneath him. “Right, because I want to be the center of attention in your little gay fantasies.”

Dan scoffs at that. “As if, mate. You would want to be the center of attention in a room of serial killers, even if they were trying to kill you.”

Ben narrows his eyes at him. “At least I’m not scared of the attention I get,” he snaps.

Shrugging, Dan shifts to lean against the wall, trying to put some space between them. “Not scared, just don’t get off to it like you do.” Dan smirks as he says this, seeing the perfect opening for a remark he’ll probably regret. “And I would know about getting you off, huh, Ben?”

The blonde clenches his fist at his side, and Dan instinctively flinches away. He doesn’t even realize he’s done it until he hears Erika gasp softly beside him.

“You need to go. Right now.” She’s glaring at Ben, a look of pure hatred on her face. Dan had never seen her look so livid, but right now she looked absolutely disgusted.

Ben shifts his glare onto her, laughing loudly and crossing his arms. Dan’s eyes flit around the room, and he shifts awkwardly when he realizes that they’ve got quite a few eyes on them at the moment. “Erika…” he says lowly, trying to keep her voice down.

“So, Danny needs a bodyguard now? Poor bastard can’t defend himself, so he needs you to do it for him?” Although Dan knows he’s speaking to Erika, he knows the words are meant to hurt him.

“No-“ Erika starts, stepping closer to him and poking his chest harshly.

“Erika, stop, just-“

“Don’t act like you don’t get off to someone taking care of you, Daniel. We both know you’re just a little bitch who can’t take care of himself,” Ben taunts, a smirk on his lips.

Dan’s teeth grind together, and he gently tugs on Erika’s arm to pull her away from him. He appreciated the thought, but he knew Ben, and unfortunately, he knew that he was absolutely the kind of person to swing a punch, even if the person in front of him was a woman. “That’s enough, Ben. Wouldn’t want everyone in here to figure out all your little secrets, would we?” Dan raises a brow in challenge, knowing damn well that Ben doesn’t want anyone to know about their past.

Ben clenches his jaw, but steps back. He glances around the room, and it seems like everyone who was watching them suddenly realizes how rude that is, as almost every pair of eyes flit away. “We both know you wouldn’t say shit, faggot.” Ben spits the word out, and Dan can feel his blood boiling.

“You seem to forget that I’m not the one stuck in a fucking closet. I’d watch my fucking mouth, if I were you,” Dan replies snidely, his anger giving him the confidence to say something so bold to Ben.

With his eyes narrowed, Ben leans in closer, and it takes everything in Dan to not flinch away. “You can call it what you want, but we both know that at the end of the day, you’re just another hole to fuck,” he whispers, just loud enough so Dan can hear over the music and chatter.

Dan doesn’t even think before he does it. One moment he’s feeling the pain and anger of hearing the man he once loved say that to him, and the next he’s shoving him, hard.

Ben loses his balance and falls to the floor, effectively quieting the room. He looks almost as shocked as Dan feels, looking up at him with an expression Dan has never seen on his face. Dan can feel his hands shaking and he knows he’s about to have a breakdown if he doesn’t leave.

Before he can even consider it, he looks down at Ben, a frown on his face. “I feel sorry for you, Ben. I really, really do.” He glances around the room until he catches sight of Sophia, who looks shocked at the scene in front of her. “I just hope she’s not as stupid as I was.”

Sophia stares at him, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion at his words. He knows it’s not his concern, but he hopes that for her sake, she breaks up with Ben. She really was a sweet girl, she didn’t deserve the kind of shit life she’d have if she stayed with him.

Without a second glance at the man on the floor, Dan murmurs a quick goodbye to Erika before heading to the front door. Christopher yells out to him, probably to try and get some sort of explanation, but Dan waves him off, pulling his phone out as he steps outside. He’d taken an Uber here, but he hadn’t asked the driver to hang around, considering he thought he’d be there for several hours, instead of less than one.

He quickly goes through the app and orders a car, walking out to sit on the side of the road until it arrived. A message popped up saying there was a driver less than ten minutes away, and he was more than relieved to see that he wouldn’t be stuck out here long. He’d hate for anyone to come out here to check on him, or try and ask him what had happened, which was honestly the more likely outcome.

Barely ten minutes later, a car is pulling up close to the house. Dan stands and tucks his phone into his pocket, slowly making his way over to the car. Something about the color is familiar to him, but it doesn’t full set in until he’s almost to the car. He stops dead in his tracks, staring in silence as the driver’s side window rolls down, revealing a face that’s been keeping him up at night.

“Um… Hi,” Phil says softly, scratching the back of his head in an awkward fashion.

Dan doesn’t speak. It’s almost as if he’s seeing a ghost, but he can tell that Phil is definitely there, and he is very much about to be alone in a car with him.

“Uh, you can… Um, you can sit in the passenger if you want,” Phil stutters out awkwardly, gesturing to the seat beside him.

Silently, Dan moves around to the passenger side of the car, his mind stuck on the fact that after three weeks, he’s actually seeing Phil again. He puts his seatbelt on slowly, staring at his hands as he does so and trying hard not to look over at the driver. As soon as he’s buckled up, however, he’s got nothing else to distract himself with.

“Do you need my address?” He asks flatly, staring straight out the windshield instead of looking at Phil.

He can feel the other man’s gaze on him, but he refuses to meet it. After a quiet sigh, Phil speaks. “No, I remember how to get there.”

“Okay.”

It’s silent in the car for a few moments, and Dan doesn’t know if that’s worse than talking about the obvious elephant in the room. He doesn’t know if Phil even wants to talk about it, but he knows that he’s biting his tongue to keep his thoughts to himself.

Eventually, Phil seems unable to handle the silence. “How have you been?” He asks softly.

Dan can’t help it. He glances over at him, an incredulous look on his face. “I’m sorry?” He asks, as if he hadn’t heard him right.

Phil clears his throat, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “How have you been? It’s been… about three weeks, right?”

With a bitter laugh, Dan shifts to lean his head back. “Yeah. Three weeks. I’ve been doing just lovely, thanks for asking.”

There’s a beat of silence before Phil says, “I don’t think you’re being honest.”

Dan whips his head to the side to stare at Phil. “Well spotted,” he snaps.

Phil lets out a deep breath, and Dan can tell he’s becoming agitated. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

This time, Dan really doesn’t think he’s heard him right. “What?” He asks, his eyebrows furrowing together.

“I’m sorry. For… well, for not answering your message, for one. And…” He glances over at Dan then, swallowing hard, and Dan’s eyes flit down to take in the movement. “And for leaving without telling you.”

Dan can only stare at him in silence for what feels like a long time. He’d wanted that apology, but now that he’s got it, he doesn’t feel any better. If anything, it only manages to make him feel worse. “Right,” Dan says, clearing his throat. He glances out the window, relieved to see that they’re already almost to his flat. Luckily it was a short drive this time, because although he’d spent the majority of the past three weeks thinking about Phil, he’s finding that he really doesn’t want to be around him right now.

“I get why you’re upset with me, Dan, really, I do, but please say something.” Phil’s voice is almost begging, and Dan knows it won’t take long for him to cave.

Dan laughs once, without humor. “I don’t have anything to say, Phil. We fucked, and you disappeared right after. There’s really not much to comment on there, if you ask me.” He shrugs, trying to sound as nonchalant as he can.

“Dan…” Phil says softly, clearly upset.

They’ve pulled up to his building, and Dan knows he’s got to ask. It’s eating away at him, and he knows he’s got to have an answer. “Can you just tell me why?” He asks, finally turning to properly face Phil once he’s brought the car to a stop. “Was it… Was it not good for you? Or was it the fact that I told you all that shit about Ben? Because you literally told me I could talk to you about it, and I…” He trails off, his throat slowly closing up. He shuts his eyes tightly, trying to stop the tears. “I really wanted to be friends. Like I didn’t want to just fuck you, you know.”

“It’s not that! It wasn’t any of that, Dan, I swear. I just… I can’t…” Phil’s voice cracks, and Dan’s eyes flutter open to find him staring at him helplessly, his eyes watery. Some sick, hurt part of Dan is glad to see that Phil is upset. It made him feel slightly better about his own pain, in a weird way.

“Is there… is it someone else?” Dan whispers, almost not wanting an answer. He’d be sick, actually sick, if Phil told him he’d cheated on someone else with him that night.

“What?” Phil sounds shocked. “No, Dan. God, no. I don’t do that.” He’s shaking his head adamantly, and Dan believes him. The relief he feels at the reassurance is immeasurable.

“Then?” He questions, raising his eyebrows. “What the fuck?”

Phil takes in a deep breath, leaning back in his seat and letting his gaze flit away from Dan and onto the building they’re parked in front of. Dan doesn’t think he’s going to answer at first, but after a few moments, he begins speaking quietly. “I’m not good enough for you,” he breathes. “I’m not an actor or anyone special, okay? I wish I was, but I’m not. I’m just me. I work at a video store and drive for Uber to make ends meet, and I just-“

Dan cuts him off with a harsh laugh, pulling out his wallet and counting out enough money for this ride and the last one, since he’d never gotten to pay him. “That’s ridiculous, you know.” He can’t help the way his voice cracks. “Pulling the whole “it’s not you, it’s me,” thing. It’s good, but I really expected something a little more impressive.” He places the cash on the console between them before stepping out of the car.

“Dan, please-“ Phil starts, looking stricken.

“You know, I really thought that we just clicked, you know? Like the whole time we were together that night, I felt like we had a lot in common, and it was such a relief to be around someone who wasn’t a total dick, but I guess I’ve never been great at character judgement.” Dan shakes his head, a grimace on his face. He slams the car door shut, ignoring how badly he wants to turn around and apologize for what he’d just said.

“That’s not fair,” Phil calls to him. Dan turns around to find Phil stepping out of the car.

“No, what’s not fair is you acting like you gave a damn about me and then leaving without saying shit. Do you know how that feels? Like, honestly?” He swallows hard. He hadn’t given a name to what he’d felt since seeing Phil again, but he felt like he finally had some clarity. He felt used. As if Phil had only wanted to sleep with him because he’s “famous,” not because he actually liked him.

“I’m sorry, Dan. Please, I didn’t-“ he steps closer, holding his hand out as if he wants to touch Dan.

On instinct, Dan flinches away. The look of hurt on Phil’s face then almost breaks his heart, but he refuses to act as if it did. “It felt like being used, Phil. That’s how it felt.”

Phil’s shoulders sag then, as if he’s just deflated. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Dan. I just… I’m not like you. I don’t have money, or a ton of friends, or some amazing career. And, you… You deserve whatever you want, Dan.”

Dan shakes his head slowly. “What I wanted was you,” he mutters before turning to go inside his flat.

“Dan, please, I just-“

Without so much as a glance back, Dan walks into his building, shutting the door behind him with a firm click.

~

A heavy cardboard box sits at the end of Dan’s sofa, haphazardly closed with some scotch tape. He hadn’t bothered labeling it; when he dropped them off at Annette’s office, he’d make sure she called Ben in to come retrieve them. Dan had no desire to see the man himself, and he knew his manager would take care of it for him. With a heavy sigh, Dan allows his gaze to sweep over the lounge, making sure for the last time that he’d collected all of Ben’s belongings.

After finding nothing that didn’t belong to him, Dan moves to the kitchen. He was almost certain that he had already gotten everything of Ben’s from the cupboards, but he planned on double checking just to make sure. He opens the cupboard where he kept the coffee mugs, and his gaze catches on one in particular. He pulls the stupid Mario Kart mug out and without a second glance, tosses it straight in the bin. It was a shitty mug anyway, he reasons with himself as he turns back to the cupboard.

With nothing else left in the kitchen to remove, Dan makes his way to his bedroom. He’d left the final box in there, and after a quick check he would be done with packing everything up. He specifically avoids looking at the items already filling the box, instead turning to riffle through his dresser. He’d left one empty for Ben, and although he’d already emptied it out, he knew that Ben had a tendency to stuff his clothes and things in the other drawers, too. After finding nothing but an old Napoleon Dynamite t-shirt, he slams the drawers shut.

It was weirdly therapeutic, closing the box full of Ben’s things and closing it with crappy tape. It felt like the ending of a chapter, and even though it sort of felt like everything else in his life had gone to shit, Dan feels slightly better knowing that at least this part was over.

He drops the last box onto the top of the other one in his lounge, dropping his hands to his waist as he surveys his day’s work. “Well. That’s that, I suppose,” he says aloud. He’s well aware of how weird it makes him look to just talk to himself in an otherwise empty flat, but he’d declined Erika’s offer to help him pack. Maybe he slightly regretted that now, but he felt that he needed to be alone to do this. Now that he was done, however, we was feeling drained and exhausted and in desperate need of a shower and some human interaction.

Dan’s just picked up his phone and started typing out a message to Erika when he hears a knock at his door. He wants to groan, because he knew of only two people who knew the code to get into his building, and right now he wasn’t in the mood to talk to Annette or, god forbid, Ben. With a groan that’s more overdramatic than the situation warrants, he makes his way to the door and flings it open without a second thought.

“Hi, I- oh.” His standard welcome is cut short when he realizes the person on the other side of his door is neither party he expected.

Phil gives him a shy smile. “Hey, um, someone was leaving when I came in, and they held the door for me. I’m not sure if they just assumed I lived here, or they just didn’t care, but I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a serial murderer.”

It takes Dan several moments to find his voice. After their argument the other night, he hadn’t expected to see Phil ever again, and despite the fact that it annoyed him deeply, he’d managed to push it to the back of his mind, considering it wasn’t like he really had a lot to tie himself to the man. And yet, here he is, rambling at his door.

“Why are you here?” Is the first thing that falls from Dan’s mouth. He almost winces at himself with how rude it sounds, but then he remembers why they left things the way they did, and decides he’s earned the right to be rude.

Phil’s face drops into an expression of guilt. “I know you probably want me to leave, but I needed to come by and apologize. I know I made you upset the other day, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said, and for leaving without telling you, and for not answering your messages. I was a twat, and I know that.” His words come out in a rush, and Dan is left staring at him in mute surprise.

It’s then that he notices that Phil isn’t empty-handed; in his right hand, his fingers grip a small gift bag, messily stuffed with tissue paper. “What’s in the bag?” He asks rather than addressing Phil’s apology. It was almost exactly what Dan wanted to hear, but Phil didn’t have to know that right now, and Dan didn’t have to forgive him so soon.

At Dan’s words, Phil seems to remember he’s holding something, and he quickly holds it out. “Oh. Um, here. It’s for you.”

Dan frowns, his brows knitting together uncertainly. “Is it, like, a bomb or something?” He asks, only partially joking. He’d never been actually seriously threatened before, but he still barely knew Phil, he wasn’t going to just blindly assume that he wouldn’t try it.

Phil’s lips curve up into a small smile, and he shakes his head. “No, it’s not. It’s… well, just look and see.”

With a strong sense of uncertainty and more curious than he’d like to admit, Dan tugs the tissue paper out of the bag. Phil holds a hand out for it, and Dan is careful not to allow their hands to touch as he hands it over. He’s left staring into the bag, his eyebrows knitting together yet again as he tugs the object out. “A coffee mug?” He asks flatly. He wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but a plain black coffee mug wasn’t exactly it.

Phil smiles, clearly excited. “It changes when you pour hot water in it. Like,” he reaches a hand out for it then, and unthinkingly, Dan flinches away. Phil’s smile drops, and he studies Dan with an almost sad look in his eyes. “May I?” He asks, softly. Dan slowly nods, holding the cup out to him. Phil takes it from him gently, turning it over to show Dan one side of it. “The cup will turn white, and this part right here will show the heart from Undertale,” he explains, glancing up at Dan with a sheepish smile. “I thought, um… I figured it would match your other one.”

Dan settles into a stunned silence at the thoughtful gift, staring down at the ceramic as he tries to process it. Phil didn’t have to apologize to him, obviously, but he certainly didn’t have to do so with a gift. Dan wasn’t sure anyone, especially Ben, had ever done something like that for him, so now he wasn’t so sure that he could fathom Phil’s reasoning for it. “Um, thank you,” he says softly, taking the mug back when Phil holds it out to him.

Nodding, Phil steps back, his hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck in what is probably a nervous habit. “You’re welcome. Um… I guess I’ll go, I just wanted to bring that by, and… I just wanted to say I was sorry, for messing everything up. I really didn’t intend for things to go the way they did.”

Still trying to gather his thoughts, Dan watches as Phil turns around, tucking his hands into his pockets as he moves to disappear from Dan’s life. Without much thought to the consequences of doing so, Dan steps out and calls his name.

Phil turns around with an eyebrow raised, looking more surprised than Dan feels he has the right to. “Yeah?”

Dan chews his lip for a moment, glancing back down at the mug in his hands. With a sigh, he closes his eyes and speaks. “Are you busy right now?”

There’s a beat of silence, and Dan slowly opens his eyes to take a peek at Phil’s reaction. He’s expecting more silence or even an awkward excuse, but Phil has a soft smile on his face. “I’m not, no.”

Nodding, as if he’d expected this, Dan runs his hand through his curls before gesturing to his flat. “Would you like to come play Mario Kart with me?”

Phil’s smile shifts into something even softer, if it’s possible, and Dan swallows hard. He’s inviting him in as a friend this time, nothing more. He can do that, and they can be friends. He’s afraid if he doesn’t convince himself of this, he’ll mess things up. “I’d love to,” Phil responds easily.

Dan steps back and holds the door for him, closing it with a gentle push once Phil is making his way to the lounge. “You can take your coat off and put it wherever,” he says off-handedly as he goes to set the mug in the kitchen.

When he makes his way back to the lounge, Phil’s left his coat on the back of the armchair Dan rarely used, and the man himself is stood staring at the boxes at the end of Dan’s sofa, an almost-grimace on his face. Before Dan has the chance to say anything, Phil turns to look at him, a strange look on his face. “Are you moving?” He asks. If Dan didn’t know better, he’d think that Phil actually sounded upset about it.

Dan smiles at this but shakes his head. “No, I’m just clearing out some junk I don’t need anymore.” He moves to the television and begins setting up the game, glancing over at Phil as he does so. “You can sit, you know. I’m not going to make you stand the entire time you’re here.”

Phil smiles briefly at this, but he’s got a panicked look on his face, like he really wants to say something else. Dan quirks an eyebrow at him, and apparently that’s all the permission he needed, because then he’s speaking quickly, barely giving Dan a chance to catch his words. “Not that I don’t want to spend time with you, because obviously I do, but I really think we should talk about what happened. You’ve barely said anything to me since I got here, and I want to know what you’re thinking. Please, just say something so I know you don’t hate me.”

Seemingly done with his rant, Phil drops to sit on the sofa, looking up at Dan with an almost pleading look in his eyes.

Dan blinks. He certainly wasn’t expecting all that, but he supposed it was good that Phil brought it up, so he didn’t have to. Grabbing his switch from the bookcase where he kept it, he carefully took each end off so that he and Phil could play in multi-player mode, all the while carefully gathering his thoughts for the conversation they were about to have.

“I was upset after you dropped me off the other night,” he admits quietly, handing Phil a controller as he sits beside him on the sofa. “I was confused, mostly, I think, but I was definitely upset.” He sighs then, turning to share a small smile with Phil. “But, like all things, I had to get over it, right?”

Phil looks upset, with himself or Dan is unclear. He shakes his head slowly, his eyes never leaving Dan’s face as his fingers trail over the tiny controller in his hand. “No, you had a right to be upset, Dan. And… I hate to sound cliché, god, but you’re allowed to hold onto that, you know? Your anger wasn’t misplaced, and you’re allowed to hold onto that if you aren’t ready to get over it. I…” he trails off then, finally dropping his eyes to his lap. “I know that I messed up by treating you the way I did, but I swear I didn’t do it with the intentions of hurting you.”

Dan takes a moment to process this, swallowing a few times to try and get rid of the dry feeling in his mouth. It doesn’t work. Eventually, he finds a response. “I don’t want to be that person that holds onto things like that. You fucked up, but you know you did, and you’ve already apologized. I’m not… I’d like a fresh start, I guess.” He rolls his eyes as he says this, sending Phil a bemused smile. “Look at me, being the real cliché here.”

A small smile quirks at Phil’s lips, finally. “I think a fresh start would be good.” There’s a tremor of nervousness in his voice, as if he’s afraid Dan will suddenly want to change his mind.

“Yeah?” Dan asks, chewing his lips as he watches Phil push his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Phil nods, taking the same hand through his hair, messing his quiff up. It looks good that way, though, so Dan doesn’t say a word. “I’d really like the chance to show you that I’m not a total dick, even though I definitely acted like it before.”

Dan grins at this, nudging Phil gently with his elbow as he finally turns to the TV. He felt the serious part of their conversation was over, and he was ready for some friendly competition. “I don’t mind dicks, believe it or not,” he teases lewdly, sending a smirk to the man beside him.

His lips pursed as if he’s holding a laugh in, Phil levels him with an unimpressed look. “At least take me to dinner before trying to get in my pants, Howell.”

The joke is funny, and Dan snorts, but something about the usage of his surname reminds him of something important. “I don’t know anything about you,” he says suddenly, completely disregarding what Phil’s just said.

Phil glances away from the screen, where Dan had been going through the motions of setting up the game, frowning at Dan. “Don’t you?” He asks, sounding confused.

Dan shakes his head adamantly. “I don’t even know your last name,” he informs Phil, his eyes scanning over the screen to pick a course. “What course is your favorite?”

“I’m good at the Electrodrome.” There’s a beat of silence then, before he speaks quietly. “Lester.”

Glancing over at him with his eyebrows drawn, Dan asks, “Pardon?”

Phil gestures to him with the hand not holding his little controller. “My last name. It’s Lester.”

A little surprised that’d he’d actually told him, Dan pauses. “Oh.” Then, “Thank you for telling me.”

Shrugging, Phil moves to lean back on the sofa. “My middle name is Michael. If you were wondering.” He’s got a small smile on his face, and Dan wonders if this is turning into twenty questions.

With a little smile, Dan selects the Electrodrome course on the game before speaking again. “Mine’s James.” He shifts so that he’s sitting with his legs criss-crossed, tugging a decorative pillow onto his lap for arm support. “I suppose you could just google anything you wanted to know about me,” he muses, almost as an afterthought.

“I couldn’t google what you look like when you’ve just woken up.” Phil’s voice is soft, and although the race has already started, Dan can’t help but look over at him, swallowing hard when he sees the hopeful, almost pleading look on Phil’s face.

Dan’s eyes shift back to the screen to focus on not losing, but his mind is swirling with what Phil’s just said. The implication was obvious, but he wasn’t positive how exactly he should interpret it. He goes with the obvious way. “I guess that’s something you’d have to find out for yourself,” he breathes, trying not to show how nervously excited the prospect of Phil spending the night, like actually spending the night, makes him.

“Could I? Find out for myself, that is?” Phil murmurs. Dan feels the sofa shift and he feels rather than sees the way that Phil has turned to be almost facing Dan, his knee pressing against Dan’s thigh gently.

Dan swallows, and nods, barely glancing over at the man beside him. Bright blue eyes meet his gaze, and he almost says fuck the game right then and there. “I’d like that.”

Phil smiles then, an adorable sight that has Dan’s character on screen running into a wall with how distracted he is. Shaking himself slightly, Dan shifts his gaze back to the screen. Phil chuckles softly, and Dan almost flushes at the fact that Phil knows how he’s affected him.

“Are you hungry?” Dan asks sometime later, once they’ve started a new race. He glances over at Phil and finds him concentrating on the screen intently. His gaze meets Dan’s when he realizes that the brunette’s stare is on him. “If you’re staying anyway, we can order pizza, or something. If you want?” Dan’s a little uncertain if Phil was serious about the earlier implication, but now he’s basically asked him for an answer.

“Pizza sounds great,” Phil smiles at him.

Dan nods, and they finish the round they’re on with banter and some light shoves. Dan wins, but Phil promises to redeem himself later. When they’re done, Dan tosses the remote onto the coffee table before standing to go search for his laptop. “Domino’s?” He asks.

Phil nods, excitement in his eyes. “The superior pizza place, honestly,” he comments as Dan moves over to his armchair where his MacBook is laying.

“Right? It’s the only food worth consuming.” He drops back onto the sofa and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, opening the laptop and hoping that he’d closed any weird tabs he’d had open. Luckily there’s only a couple Wikipedia articles and a tab with a funny YouTube video pulled up. He quickly opens a new tab and finds Domino’s website, going to the build a pizza option. “What do you like on your pizza?”

Phil is looking at the options, and it’s not until Dan glances over that he realizes how close they are on the sofa. He wants to close the distance and press his lips to Phil’s, but he holds himself back. “I like their sizzler, but I’m really not picky. Just don’t like, add a bunch of extra cheese, and I’ll be fine.”

Dan raises an eyebrow. “What did cheese do to you?” He teases before clicking the options to build a half and half pizza with the option Phil had suggested, as well as what he normally got.

“I don’t like cheese.” Phil shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but Dan’s head whips around to stare at him in shock.

“You’re kidding,” he gasps. “On second thought, I don’t know if this is going to work out.”

Phil rolls his eyes and gently elbows Dan in the ribs. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he whines. “I just can’t eat cheese. It makes me sick.” He flushes as if he’s embarrassed to admit this, but the knowledge that he doesn’t hate cheese and cheese just hates him settles Dan’s attitude.

“Oh, well that’s different. You can’t eat cheese, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to,” he says with a shrug. Phil opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak, but Dan is quick to bring a hand up to cover his mouth. “Nope. Don’t speak, you’ll ruin it.”

Phil’s eyes crinkle like he’s smiling, and Dan is so focused on how the different shades of blue swirl in his eyes that he jumps when he feels a little nip at the palm of his hand. When he pulls his hand away, Phil giggles, likely at his expression.

“Did you just- you bit me!” Dan accuses, staring at his hand as if he’s been infected.

“I did,” Phil agrees gleefully. He leans closer, dropping his head to press his mouth to Dan’s shoulder. Their eyes are locked when Phil gently nips at the skin covered by Dan’s t-shirt.

Something about the look in Phil’s eyes and seeing him mouthing at his shoulder like that makes Dan’s stomach swoop with arousal, and he can’t stop the shiver that wracks through his body. “You’re not…” He lets out a breath before glancing back at Phil, finding the other man looking up at him with a mischievous smile. “You’re not like a cannibal or something, right?”

Phil laughs then but shakes his head and leans away from Dan’s shoulder. “No. You do look good enough to eat though.” Dan feels his skin flush then, and Phil seems to misunderstand the reasoning for this. “I’m sorry, am I being too forward? I just- I don’t know, I’m not great at like flirting, but-“

Dan interrupts him then. “No, I promise you’re doing just fine. I just- ah, I’m not really used to that kind of attention unless it’s followed pretty directly by… well, you know,” he stammers, feeling embarrassed at admitting yet another fault in his and Ben’s… arrangement.

Instead of being bothered by this, Phil only smiles, shaking his head. “That’s a shame. If you’ll allow it, I fully plan on showering you with horrible attempts at flirting and compliments.”

With a snort, Dan finalizes their order and closes his laptop, setting it on the coffee table. He tries his best to act unaffected by Phil’s words, but he can feel his heart racing at the idea of being pampered like that. He’d gotten so comfortable with hiding any feelings he had for Ben, so this sounded like some kind of heaven to him. “I guess, if there’s no way to stop you, I’ll probably just have to deal with it,” he sighs, as if it’s the biggest inconvenience in the world. He remembers then that he wanted to go shower, so he stands to do just that.

Before he can make it past the coffee table, Phil sticks his feet up, trapping him in. “You know we have like fifteen minutes before the pizza gets here,” he says, his eyes holding a suggestion Dan really doesn’t want to turn down, but he knows that he needs a shower more than he needs to mess around with Phil. Besides, if he was actually staying the night, they’d have time for that, if they still wanted it.

“I know, but I need a shower, and you probably need some time to make sure you’re not making a mistake by staying.” He means it as a joke, but as he looks down at Phil, he realizes it might not be. He feels his heart clench at the idea that even after all this Phil might still leave, but he pushes that away.

Phil frowns at him and leans forward suddenly, dropping his feet in favor of reaching a hand up, tugging Dan down by his shirt. Dan barely has a moment to catch himself on Phil’s shoulder before their lips are meeting, his eyes slipping closed at the contact. Phil doesn’t linger long, but as soon as he lets go of Dan’s shirt, he leans back and levels him with a serious look. “I’ve had plenty of time, Dan.”

Swallowing hard, Dan tugs at his shirt and chews his bottom lip. “You’ll still be here when I come back?” He asks, just to make sure.

A pained look crosses Phil’s face, and he nods. “I swear. I’m not going anywhere.”

Dan nods, and he knows he’ll just have to trust him this time. “Okay. I’ll be right back, then.”

He can feel Phil’s gaze following him as he walks out of the lounge and makes his way to his bathroom. Although Phil had just promised he wouldn’t leave, Dan rushes to shower and wash his hair, finishing in less than ten minutes in his rush to make sure that Phil kept his promise. As soon as he’s finished, he throws a towel around his waist and makes his way to his bedroom to put on some pajamas.

After pulling on a stripey t-shirt and a pair of pants, Dan pauses, pondering the pros and cons of bothering with any actual pajama bottoms. If the evening was going where he thought it was, he wouldn’t really want the extra layer later, but if it wasn’t… well, it might be a bit awkward.

Rather than sit and dwell on it for too long, he trades his underwear for a pair that is slightly looser, as well as a baggier t-shirt with ugly cats on it. It could pass for everyday pajamas, he hoped. As an afterthought, he tugs out a second pair of pants and another t-shirt for Phil, just in case he really did plan to stay.

Once he’s finished and he’s certain he isn’t going to lose his nerve to wear what he has on, Dan makes his way back to the lounge.

And for the second time, his world feels like it’s crashing down, as he’s met with an empty lounge.

[ranjxtul]

Fire and Reign-  Chapter One: Vitalum Vitalis

Witches AU Chapter One. Word Count: 7895 TW for violence. https://archiveofourown.org/works/19249039

The incident in the bar had fogged over in Katherine’s mind. She only remembered his face and his name: Henry. She remembered the beer glass flying across the room of its own accord, and nailing him in the side of the head, just as she’d willed it to happen. In the moment, the sheer oddity of the situation hadn’t registered due to the menacing, coercive man who hadn’t taken no for an answer.

Next, she remembered being kicked out of the bar along with the man for making a disturbance. That’s where things got far too vivid. Instead of leaving, the man had grabbed her from behind. Katherine fought, kicking against him and elbowing him, but Henry didn’t let go. He won the fight the minute his hand made its way to her neck and pressed down. Wherever he pressed sent Katherine’s body into shock at first then straight into a state of unconsciousness.

When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the parking lot of the pub. Fear coursed through her veins as the smell of nature hit her nostrils and she could hear no cars. She could also recognize the figure as the man in the pub lot. A rag was tied around her head and in her mouth, inhibiting speech. Grass scratched at her arms as Henry dragged her, her hands restrained by a rope. The rough ground tore scratches in Katherine’s legs and her arms ached from being dragged. He paused for a second and that was her chance. With as much strength as she could manage in her current position, Katherine writhed in her ties, and an unsuspecting Henry dropped her wrists. As a result, her back and head smacked the cold earth and a groan of pain left her lips. As she attempted to recover and get up, Henry got his bearings.

Ultimately, an injured, frightened, and confused nineteen year old was no match for an energized, large forty year old man. “Witch bitch is awake,” he mused aloud, bending down to grab Katherine’s wrists again, stopping her struggles effectively.

Witch? Had she heard correctly? What? She wasn’t a witch, right? Henry simply ignored the girl’s attempts at fighting and jerked her a bit harder than necessary to subdue her. A squeek of pain left Katherine’s lips. Her arms burned and her shoulder joints were on fire. Not to mention her legs and lower back stung from being dragged.

“Here’s good a place as any.” He stopped. It was so abrupt it shocked Katherine. Henry was smart enough not to leave her be now that she was awake. In his other hand he held a canvas bag. From within it, he pulled a length of rope. With an indistinguishable grumble, he knelt near her feet letting one knee rest its full weight on hers. Katherine bit down harshly on her lip in response to this new pain. The blunt pressure of his full weight made her knee burn like ice and fire simultaneously and somewhere behind the knee cap, something pulled and snapped.

This blinding pain distracted from his tying her feet together. Once he was satisfied with the knot he moved away momentarily to nail a small wooden stake in the ground. As the sounds of the hammer hitting the wood filled her ears, Katherine became aware of the tears streaming down her face. She didn’t know when they’d begun to fall initially, but now they streamed down her face without abandon. She wanted to scream, she wanted to fight, but she couldn’t as the physical pain began to set in and her limbs were incapacitated.

All too soon, rough hands took hold of her arms and dragged her back a few feet. Next she was flipped over onto her stomach and he put her arms around the stake he’d nailed into the ground. His calloused hands moved her ponytail out of the way and with no way to see what was happening the fear intensified.

For the longest moment in her life, time moved ahead sluggishly leaving the girl in a painful limbo. Icy, blinding terror pumped through her veins and her mind whirled. Why her? What had he meant by what he said, witch? She had no more time to contemplate these questions though, as for a moment a striking mind numbing pain bore down on her neck. Then, blackness.

The next time Katherine opened her eyes, she didn’t think she’d be back in that field with gentle sun beating down on her back. She’d been unsure in a belief of the afterlife, but she was sure the afterlife wouldn’t begin with her tied up in the same field. When she tested her joints and range of motion, she found that she could swing her arms over and off the stake and roll over to face the sky. None of the injuries from Henry remained. Hazily she sat up and took note of her bonds. The knots were rather simple, which she hadn’t noticed in the dark and blinding terror.

First things first, she had to get free. With some effort, she managed to loosen the knot on the rope that tied her wrists together using her teeth, so she was able to slip her wrists out. Raised scars circled them, presumably from the rope cutting into her skin, but why were they healed? Pushing that out of her mind, she began to untie her bound feet.

With each move and each sound from the nature near her, she glanced up, frightened that Henry would show up again. Now that she was free, Katherine tested the waters, pushing herself up slowly. So far so good, but she felt weak. Checking for any injuries, she ran her hands over her face and down to her neck. She stopped once her fingers brushed an angry raised patch. Her breath caught in her throat and she followed the line around her neck. No. How was she alive? Why was she alive?

It wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t be possible. What if he was still here watching her or came back and saw that she somehow wasn't dead? He'd probably kill her again As these thoughts swirled in her head, less and less oxygen found its way into her lungs and she found herself less grounded. He’d said something about witches, her being a witch. She knew they existed, her cousin Anne happened to be one.

She wasn’t really supposed to know, but Anne let it slip once and she’d sworn her younger cousin to secrecy. Katherine hadn’t believed it at first, but once Anne had set a glass on fire with her mind, she believed it. How though? It was a bloodline thing Anne had said. Nobody in her immediate family (other than Anne) was a witch to her knowledge. As chaos and the nagging paranoia that Henry could once again show his face whirled in Katherine’s mind, a certain fatigue took over. Later she’d learn it was from the magic she’d exerted in bringing herself back to life.

This fatigue forced Katherine’s brain out of overdrive and panic mode. Shakily and heaving for breath, she found the ground once more. She almost lay down, then the fear of somebody happening upon her told her not to. Instead she sat there, fighting losing consciousness.

It could have been hours before Katherine was able to steel herself and bring herself out of her haze again. She had no concept of time anyway. How long had she, or well, her body, been out in the field? Did she have any of the possessions she’d had or did Henry take them? She patted down the pockets of her shorts and the lump of a phone drew a sigh of relief from her mouth. He'd been careless or arrogant enough to leave it on her.

Perhaps she had enough battery left, but then again, did she have any service wherever she was? All she knew was that she wanted to get out of there. Her throat was practically sandpaper and she was unsafe so much in the open.

Scrambling up to a standing position again, Katherine strained her eyes to see anything familiar. With a frown, she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Its cracked screen was dark and with a silent wish, she pressed down on the power button, hoping for a miracle. Much to her surprise, the screen lit up.

Once she was able to view her home screen she could see just how low the battery was and that she indeed did not have service. Rashly, she started walking, hoping it was the right direction. How had no one tracked her phone yet? Then it dawned on her. Her location services were probably off, and she never set up her ‘Find my iPhone’ app like she was supposed to, an unfortunate mistake.

Time passed all too slowly and too quickly simultaneously. Once she made it to the edge of the road and had a bar of service she called the one person who might have answers: Anne Boleyn.

When Anne saw her phone light up with Katherine’s contact flashing across the screen her face lit up. “Jane! Aragon!” she screamed, hoping to get the pair’s attention from across the house. “You were right! She’s alive! She’s calling!” Instead of waiting for the blonde to respond, Anne picked up her phone. “Kat!”

“Annie!” To Anne, the usage of her old nickname made Katherine sound even more frightened.

“It’s me. I’m here. Are you okay?” She knew the answer to that. Her divination session with Jane and Aragon had been enough to prove that. The empath had been unable to clearly locate Katherine, only describing a field, but she had described the terror and panic. Aragon had then been able to hear a jumble of thoughts about a scar muddled with the word 'witch'.

“No! I have so many questions but I’ll spare you because my phone’s about to die and get to the point. He killed me, and now I’m alive again. He said I was a witch and that plus the fact that I’m alive again makes me think that maybe he was right,” the girl explained her speech coming in rapid succession, both fear and relief completely palpable.

Anne sucked in a breath. If what Katherine said was true, and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t, then she’d performed Vitalum Vitalis to bring herself back without knowing it. “Stay where you are! We’re going to try and find you and then we’ll sort out the situation," she said her voice betraying a sense of urgency.

“We? Who’s we?” Her cousin’s wary voice came through the phone speaker.

“Just- You’ll see. I promise, but please trust me. I won't let you down Kitty.” Anne held her breath, hoping desperately that Katherine wouldn’t question it. The sooner she could get off the phone and relay this information, the sooner they could find Katherine.

After a painful pause Katherine’s voice filled her ear again, “Fine… hurry though. I don’t like this, what if something happens? I want to get out of here but I'm not sure where I am”

“I can’t promise something won’t, but just lay low. We’re hurrying, I promise. We'll figure out where you are.” Anne couldn’t assauge a hypothetical worry, especially considering Katherine was probably alone on the side of a road, but she could promise that they'd find her. God, she hoped Jane could find her after she'd said that.

“Okay, I’ll try, Annie… bye. Hurry,” she added her unsure voice filling the silence again.

Anne let out a sigh of relief she didn’t know she’d been holding in, “Okay, great. Bye, see you soon.” With that, she hung up and practically shot into Aragon’s office, where she’d last seen the Supreme and Jane. “She’s alive. Jane you have to try and divine her location again. She needs us. She said that somebody killed her and then she woke up alive again.”

Instead of Jane responding first Aragon spoke up, “Was she alone When she woke back up?” Anne’s eyes darted to Catherine’s face, giving an exasperated eye roll.

“No,” she deadpanned, “she had a witch with her in the middle of a fucking field to bring her back to life.” In situations like these, Anne’s patience diminished greatly and she tended to filterself even less.

Aragon shot her a warning glare, “Watch it Boleyn. I had to ask. If that’s the case then she’s not just your cousin. She’s one of us.”

Anne had to hold back a sarcastic remark somewhere along the lines of, ‘No shit, but we could focus on that when my cousin's safe instead of wasting time’ which in hindsight was just as bad as saying it. If Aragon had been paying attention to her thoughts she would have heard it anyway. The blonde who’d been sitting adjacent to Aragon spoke up then, “So we should try to divine her location again. Do you happen to have anything else she’s touched? Something different than last time that she had a stronger connection to?” Jane asked.

Anne furrowed her brow for a moment, mentally going through her possessions until she came across an apt one. “Oh! I have a handwritten Christmas card she gave me? It’s not hers obviously, but she wrote it and put a lot of thought into it. Would that be better?”

Jane shrugged, “It’s worth a shot.” Anne nodded and all but bolted up the stairs to dig through her room and find the card. On the way up, she nearly knocked Catherine Parr over as the girl trekked down the stairs.

“Sorry,” Anne apologized, offering a smile as restitution before stepping around Parr, too set on her task to care for conversation.

Catherine studied Anne for a second, “It’s fine... You’re in a hurry,” she commented, “what’s the reason?”

Anne paused to glance back at Parr, “Kat, my cousin, she’s alive. She somehow called me. Jane’s gonna try to locate her again.” Before Parr could properly form a response, Anne had disappeared down the hall. Given the news though, Parr sped up on her way down and made her way into the living room where Jane was setting up what she needed and Aragon and Cleves sat in discussion on the sofa.

“You think it’s going to work this time, Jane?” Parr asked tilting her head.

The empath glanced up, “I hope so.” She didn’t sound too confident, but Parr didn’t comment on it.

She simply nodded and took a seat in one of the armchairs, "Me too."

At that point, Aragon and Cleves had noticed the curly headed witch’s arrival. “She’s one of us, Cathy. She brought herself back to life. At least that’s what Anne said,” Cleves informed Parr.

Her eyes widened, “Did she not know before that? Being naturally gifted with Vitalum Vitalis is uncommon. If she was though, she’s powerful. She has potential.”

Cleves shrugged, “Apparently not. We didn’t speak with her obviously, but Anne mentioned before she’d never shown any sign of being a witch.”

Aragon spoke next, “Regardless, when she’s feeling better I’d like to test her abilities and see if we can get a bit more of an understanding about them and of course work from there.”

Parr nodded, “That’d be good. You say she was killed... are we dealing with Henry again?” she asked just as Anne entered the room, holding the Christmas card from Katherine. She stopped at the name of the man they’d all unfortunately had too many run-ins with. The thought had occurred to her yes, but she didn’t want to believe it.

“Do you really think it’s him?” She asked. Parr turned her head toward the sound of Anne’s voice in the doorway.

“I don’t know. It’s very possible though,” she shrugged. “Especially considering his patterns.”

“We’ll have to see more about how she died first, but I do believe it’s likely. He’s the most active hunter in this area. We know he’s been picking off girls who didn’t know they were witches lately. We can only assume that’s an in-between project. People like him don’t get satisfaction of the little kills, so to speak,” Aragon said with a short nod in Anne’s direction.

“And what do we think his main project is then, and my cousin was not a ‘little kill,’” she asked bristling a bit at Catherine’s phrasing.

“We don’t know, but presumably a coven, ours if our pasts are any indication. He’s backed off for a minute like I said though. And you know I wasn’t trying to demean the deed, that’s how he sees it though,” she replied arching a brow.

Anne shook her head, choosing to focus on the task at hand: diving Katherine’s location. “Here,” she handed Jane the card. The blonde took it with a hum of appreciation before she set to work, letting her hands run across the card and her eyes fall shut. The group watched in anticipation. Several agonizing moments of silence passed with no answers and Boleyn found herself losing hope. What if Jane couldn’t figure out where Katherine was? Then her promise would have been in vain.

After what seemed like an eternity, Jane’s eyes shot open. “I know where she is.” The other four in the room all sat up straighter. “She’s in the outskirts of London.”

Once Jane had given a more concise address and it was decided the Boleyn, Parr and Cleves would go get Katherine while Jane and Catherine stayed back at the house, the group split, hoping to get to Howard quickly.

Aragon watched Parr pull the car out of the driveway before she turned to head upstairs with a sigh. She stopped when she saw Jane carrying Eddie down the stairs. Admittedly, she had a soft spot for the child, regardless of who his father was. “He’s sleeping better now?” she asked her friend with a small smile.

“Yeah, thankfully. It seems like whatever virus he had has run its course... Do you think that Henry was responsible for Katherine, really?” She asked knowing it was likely Catherine had understated her opinion in front of the rest of the girls.

Catherine nodded with a sigh, “I do. He’s tried so desperately to get to us for years and by killing those who didn’t know I believe he’s not only taking witches out, but baiting us. He knew eventually there’d be a familial connection or something. I told Anna, and she agrees.”

“So is it dangerous to bring Katherine in?”

“Maybe, but she’s one of us. We have to help her, and he still doesn’t know the location of this house. We’ll have to debrief her on everything including our experiences with him,” Aragon mused aloud.

“Poor girl. It’s got to be rough, waking up after being killed and now she’s going to be thrown into this feud or whatever this even is,” Jane frowned lightly glancing down at Eddie as he shifted in his sleep before looking back up at the other woman.

“Yes, but we can’t leave her in the dark or she could make a mistake without knowing it.”

Meanwhile, the other three girls had arrived and pulled the car over to look for Katherine. Within a short walking, they noticed a figure on the ground, clearly a female. She lay on her side, curled tightly into herself. As the trio got closer, Anne’s eyes lit up in recognition. Though they were matted and dirty, Katherine’s distinct pink locks shone through. Without a word, she sped up to a jog, only stopping once she’d reached Katherine. “Kitty?” She questioned kneeling to gently shake her cousin.

Even asleep, the girl was on overdrive so even the gentlest touch roused her. Instinctually, she jerked up and away from the touch. When she saw the person who’d touched her, the defensive shell cracked. Before her knelt Anne Boleyn, and without a word, Katherine threw herself at Anne, searching for any comfort. Now that she was safe, she let the fear that had been fighting with defense and survival anxiety for control, overtake her. “Annie,” she mumbled into her cousin’s shoulder. Anne immediately embraced Katherine and once she heard her name escape again, she tightened her arms around Katherine.

At least when Henry had killed her, she’d been aware of what she was. She could only partially conceptualize what emotions must have been coursing through Katherine’s mind in that moment. “It’s okay, I’m here. You’re safe,” she mumbled back, refusing to let go just yet.

By then, Parr and Cleves had caught up to Anne and Katherine. The two shared a look when they saw Katherine. They knew she was a teenager, but right then she looked so young, probably younger than she actually was. Parr cleared her throat after giving the cousins a few moments, “Hey, we probably need to get headed back.”

At the unfamiliar voice, Katherine pulled back from Anne’s hug to regard whomever the voice belonged. The two women’s postures were as relaxed as possible. The shorter of the two had curly black hair and warm brown skin. The taller had short hair and deeper brown skin. “Who are you?” Katherine asked eyeing the two. Presumably, they were part of the ‘we’ Anne had mentioned.

“Oh, these are two members of my coven, uh that’s-” Anne started nodding toward Parr.

“Catherine Parr,” the shorter introduced with a warm smile.

“Anna of Cleves,” the other woman nodded next.

Katherine nodded warily, “I’m Katherine.” She glanced at Anne again, her brows furrowing for a moment before she spoke again, “When you say coven you mean like other witches right?”

Anne gave a nod in affirmation as she stood offering a hand to Katherine. Parr and Cleves were probably right. They needed to get back and sort this out, and if this was Henry or any hunter’s new kill spot then staying longer than necessary could end badly. “Yes, there’s a couple more of us at home. We want to take you with us so we can protect you.”

Katherine took Anne’s hand after eyeing it for a moment and used it to pull herself up from the ground. “So… you do think I am one of you, that he was right?”

Parr nodded hesitantly, “We do We believe you brought yourself back to life.” Katherine’s eyes widened as those words left Parr’s mouth as she momentarily forgot the fear and exhaustion. Had she really been able to do that? In the moment of silence and still, Anne, Parr, and Cleves took a moment to observe Katherine’s physical state.

Much to their dismay a thick band of scar tissue circled her neck, a sight Boleyn had grown used to seeing on herself when she’d first wake up. She covered it with a choker now, for the bad memories just seeing it brought up. That aside though, it was Henry’s mark. Each hunter had a specific way of killing and Henry’s happened to be beheading. Finally, Howard’s voice broke the silence, “That’s… insane. I mean, I don’t know how or why I could be here otherwise, but still that’s just…” she trailed off unable to fully articulate her thoughts.

“We know babes, but we can talk more once we’re back at home and you’ve been able to shower and eat,” Cleves said arching a brow kindly. Not having the will to argue back or stall anymore, Katherine just nodded and Anne took her hand leading her back toward the car. The walk was silent as Katherine ruminated on how quickly her life had changed. She stuck close by her cousin though and at every little noise, she couldn't help but search for the source, fearing the worst. “How long was I missing?” She hesitantly asked, directing her question to Anne.

The brunette tilted her head to look at Katherine, “About three days. Your family was no help. In fact they were rather apathetic it seemed, said you’d come back home if you wanted. So, I took it into my own hands,” she explained.

“Well I’m glad you did for the record. It was terrifying to go through that and wake up and there and all of this… it’s a lot,” she frowned making a face that borderlined both terror and a general sense of being overwhelmed.

“I understand, and hopefully once we explain everything it’ll be a bit easier,” Anne said offering a sympathetic nod. She gave Katherine's hand a squeeze, wishing she could ease some of her cousin's pain and anxieties just a bit.

Once the now quartet of witches was in the car, the safe feeling that came from being in an enclosed space allowed Katherine’s exhaustion to once again override residual fear and confusion. Clinging to Anne’s arm and leaning against her, Katherine’s eyes fell shut again and quickly her breathing evened signifying sleep.

Cleves glanced back at the girl, checking that was actually asleep before she spoke. “I don’t have any doubts that it was Henry. That’s his mark, beheading.”

Anne sighed, “Neither do I. I just wish she’d realized what she was before. She would have told me and we could have protected her. Her life’s always been a bit.. rough,” she frowned. “Obviously that stuff isn’t my place to tell and it’s not that I’d ever wish murder on anyone, I just wish it hadn’t been her.”

Parr observed Anne from the rearview mirror with a certain fascination. Seldom did the feisty brunette ever display a particularly soft side and now that she was (at least to a certain degree) it clarified in Parr’s mind just how much Anne did care for her cousin.

“Well, at least she’s safe with us now,” Cleves said allowing her statement implicitly wrap up the conversation and leave the girls each to their own thoughts and Katherine to her sleep.

When they arrived back at the house, Anne shook Katherine awake, “Hey, we’re here.” A bleary eyed Katherine forced her eyes open partially, wishing more than anything she could just go back to sleep. Slowly, she took in her surroundings and the familiar sight of her cousin and pushed herself off Anne’s shoulder with a mumbled acknowledgment. She unbuckled her seatbelt and slid out of the car, making her way over to the other side so she could walk in with her cousin.

“What time is it even?” She asked finally taking note of the fading pink and orange hues that melded into purples further away in the sky.

Parr glanced at her watch, “Nearly 18:00,” she answered. Katherine nodded, piecing together time and the number of days Anne said she’d been missing. She was still attempting to right herself so to speak, and at least get a basic sense of things.

Cleves made it to the door first and pulled out her key to unlock it before pushing it open for the other girls to walk through. The first thing Katherine took note of in the house was the pure beauty. It had to have been an old house. Its high ceilings and spacious staircase screamed antiquity. Enraptured by the pure spectacle of the house and small pictures and trinkets she noticed along the way, she paid little attention to where Anne led her. It was only when two women entered her field of vision did she focus once more. There was a blonde perched on the couch and a tall, composed woman with warm brown skin and curly hair tipped in blonde that stopped at about her shoulders.

The composed one spoke first, “Hello, Katherine. I’m Catherine of Aragon. This,” she paused gesturing at the blonde, “is Jane Seymour.”

Jane offered a warm smile, “It’s lovely to meet you.” Katherine found herself shyly smiling back and giving a short nod in the newly named Aragon and Jane’s way. Something about the pair exuded calm, warm energy.

“You need to have some food and a shower so I’ll keep introductions short for now. You’ve already met Parr and Cleves. Jane and Anna are part of my council and I’m the supreme, the head of our coven. You’re welcome here with us and safe, I promise,” she added a small smile crossing her face.

“It’s nice to meet you all… thank you, really. Could I shower though and eat? I’m kind of,” Katherine trailed off vaguely gesturing to her person. She didn’t mention fatigued, but she assumed it read on her face, obviously. She didn’t want to be rude but the idea of cleaning up a bit was appealing.

“Of course. Could we speak over dinner though?” Katherine nodded in affirmation before Aragon continued. “Anna, can you show her to her room? Boleyn, I want to speak to you,” Aragon said.

Anne gave Katherine’s arm a reassuring squeeze before she nodded toward Aragon in acquiescence. Cleves shrugged, “Sure thing.” She held her arm out to Katherine with a playful smile. She hoped she could help Katherine feel a bit more at ease, “Come on, I’ll lead the way.”

“Thanks,” Katherine replied taking her arm after a second.

“No problem babes.”

Once the pair had left the living room and started on the stairs, Katherine found herself ruminating on what Aragon had said. “What’s a supreme?” She asked curiously.

“A supreme is a witch who’s able to perform the Seven Wonders. The Seven Wonders are the seven most ‘basic’ powers, meaning its possible for a witch to manifest them all. They’re pyrokinesis, telekinesis, transmutation or teleportation, vitalum vitalis or bringing something back from the dead, divination, concilium, which is basically mind control, and descensum which is descending to hell and being able to return. The Supreme can do all seven of these, plus whatever gifts she may have, like Aragon is also a clairvoyant. In short though, the Supreme is the most powerful in a coven. There’s usually one per every generation or two,” Anna explained.

“Wow… that’s really impressive. So what’s a basic witch like then?” Katherine asked as Anna opened a door to reveal a relatively barren room. The basics were in there like a dresser, a bed, a comfortable looking arm chair, and a night table, but other than that it was free of personal touches or possessions.

“Well, it all depends. Usually she manifests two or three strong powers or in some cases almost all of the seven wonders plus she can have gifts too. This is your room by the way. For now, let me get you some clothes you can wear and some other stuff you’ll need to shower,” Anna said giving Katherine a smile before letting go of her arm to retrieve said items.

Katherine sat on the edge of the bed contemplating the information Anna had just explained and since she’d brought herself back, apparently, that was one of her strong suits. She couldn’t help but wonder what else she could do or if she’d be good at anything else. Anna returned moments later with a pale pink hoodie and a pair of grey exercise leggings along with a bottle of shampoo and a hair brush. “Thanks,” Katherine smiled softly, standing to meet Anna to get the things she’d been brought.

“It’s no problem at all. Let me or anyone else know if you need anything. I mean it,” she added after a pause. Promptly, she turned to duck out and leave Katherine to shower and sort things out but stopped when the girl spoke up again.

“Thanks, I know I already said that, but I mean it too. I appreciate it.” Anna glanced back a smile on her face. Pleasantly, the smile Katherine wore seemed to have a hint of sincerity.

“Of course.” Katherine gave her another nod and Anna took her leave making her way back to her room for the time being.

In the kitchen, Jane and Aragon cooked while Anne sat at the island. “You saw her neck. That’s his mark, Aragon,” Anne insisted.

“I know, and I believe it was him. We just have to figure out how to proceed from here. She’ll need to learn basic glamours for protection if she were to see him ever again first and foremost.”

“I can teach her if you’d like,” Jane spoke up. “I know really anyone could but I wouldn’t mind it.” Aragon tilted her head in consideration. Jane was the most gentle of the group, (even if she had her moments) and Katherine was exceptionally new to all of this.

“That might be a good idea,” she finally nodded in approval. “Then you or Parr could also help her learn more about resurrection.”

“Okay, magic aside,” Anne piped up, “what about her actual life? She’s a uni student and dealing with her family isn’t a big deal, but are we really going to ask her to drop her life?” She asked unable to keep a touch of petulance out of her voice. Despite the fact that Boleyn respected Aragon, she still found herself resenting her on certain matters, her cousin's future being one of them.

That came partially from when Aragon beat her (by a long shot) in the Seven Wonders a couple years ago and also from their animosity over Henry. If she was honest, she hated that she and Aragon still found themselves frustrated with each other over fallout from dating a literal witch hunter. She supposed it came from the things Anne had said to her when Catherine was upset Henry cheated on her with Anne, and from her thoughts. It was difficult to hide things from a telepath when they were searching. It also came from how fiercely protective Boleyn was over her cousin.

“No. Of course not. I’d like her to do school online though, so she can focus on training here. Henry and his brethren are killing so many of us and whether we like it or not, he’ll find us eventually and we have to be prepared. That means she has to be confident in her abilities,” Aragon replied making eye contact with Boleyn. “I know she’s your cousin, and I know you care about her a lot. I promise I’m not going to force her to do anything she doesn’t want to.”

Anne blinked a few times, realizing Catherine had been digging around in her thoughts. She didn’t very often unless she told them she was going to or had to, but in some situations with Anne it was easier than pulling the truth verbally. “One of us should go with her and help her get some of her things from her flat,” Jane suggested wanting to glaze over the slightly awkward moment of silence.

Anne nodded, “We could go tomorrow maybe.” Aragon gave a hum of approval as she moved to pull a pan out of the oven.

By the time Katherine had finished her shower and trekked back down the food was mostly ready. The pink hoodie Anna had lent her hung off her frame but she was thankful for the clean clothes regardless. “Just in time, Katherine,” Aragon commented as the pink haired girl made her way into the kitchen.

A variety of fresh smells hit the girl’s nose. “What are we eating?” She asked curiously. She was unsure how long it had been since she’d had a freshly cooked meal. Usually she ate out or microwave dinners.

“Poppy Seed chicken and some carrots. What do you want to drink?” Jane asked looking over her shoulder as she pulled glasses down from a cabinet.

“Water’s fine I guess. Thank you, and that sounds really good,” she nodded taking a seat beside Anne at the kitchen island. “Can I ask a question? Like a magic related question?” She asked directing her inquiry toward the Supreme.

“Of course,” Aragon nodded pausing in setting the table to look at Katherine.

“Parr, that’s her name right?” she paused looking at Anne who gave a quick confirming nod, “she said I brought myself back. How is that possible? I get the existence of magic, I think. I just don’t understand how that happened or really why I even had to do that,” Katherine inquired.

“I’m not sure I have an exact answer for you, admittedly, but sometimes when a witch whose primary gift is vitalum vitalis, it only manifests in an extreme situation like that,” Aragon said, explaining to the best of her ability.

“Your soul still exists even after your body is dead, so somehow you’re able to conjure enough magic to heal your body while your soul is still tethered to it so to speak,” Jane added.

“Is that why everything scarred over then?” Katherine asked, beginning to understand in basic terms.

“Indeed,” Aragon affirmed.

“Anna! Cathy! Food’s ready!” Jane called from the edge of the kitchen, her call interrupting Katherine's flow of questions and train of thought momentarily. Seconds later, the sounds of Anna descending the stairs filled the air and Catherine Parr who’d been sitting in the living room entered the kitchen.

“That still doesn’t answer everything though… why did I have to bring myself back? Why was that man, what was his name… Henry, yeah that’s it. Why was he trying to kill me?” Katherine asked tilting her head.

All of the witches in the kitchen froze for a second once Katherine said his name. She’d just confirmed it for sure. “Let’s all sit down for dinner first. Then I’ll explain,” Aragon nodded, attempting to keep things moving along. She wanted everyone seated to tell the story.

Once all six had made it down to sit at the table and began eating, Katherine couldn’t help but glance expectantly at Aragon until she spoke again. When she finally did, Katherine perked up a bit, curiously. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to begin explaining it all. The man who tried to kill you, you said his name was Henry, yes? Was he tall, blonde, middle aged?” Katherine nodded before she continued. “That’s Henry Tudor. He’s a witch hunter. We know he’s operating under someone, we just don’t know who yet. He’s been killing witches actively in the London area for about three years now. That’s why there are so few of us. So many witches don’t know what they are and he can detect us unless we’ve warded against that sort of thing, so he’s been killing us.”

“ We save who we can, and we’ve even lost a few members of this house under our last Supreme. I don’t blame her, but we did. There’s also a second house across the city where some of us live. They rallied together unaware of the central coven’s existence so that’s why they don’t live here. We weren’t going to force them to move. Anyway, Henry has specifically had contact with all six of us.”

“I was the first. He dated me before I became the Supreme, so three years ago. He was great at first, but looking back it should have been obvious he was angling for a way in. We didn’t know what he was then though. He cheated on me with Boleyn though and broke up with me eventually we can only assume he thought she was more powerful and would rise in the coven.”

Anne picked up the story next, “I’ll leave out extraneous details but when we started dating I didn’t budge. I wasn’t even part of the coven yet, but he didn’t know that because he was unaware of who exactly was a part of it or not. When he realized I was useless, at least for his goals, he tried to dispose of me. He killed me. Luckily, he made the mistake of doing it too close to here and Jane picked up on my terror as it was happening. She found me and brought me back to life. That’s when I first joined.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there,” Jane sighed. “I met him next and he was charming, exceptionally charming. I didn’t really take into account Catherine or Anne’s experiences. I didn’t want to believe he was the same person so I just kept him away from meeting them. Eventually though, he got me pregnant and somewhere in that space, Boleyn saw his face and identified him. After he found out I was pregnant, he pushed to meet all of my friends in an unhealthy way. It was like was obsessed with it and long story short that involved Aragon’s telepathy and some convincing, I ended up coming to the realization that he was the same Henry we’d dealt with before. I broke it off with him,” she finished her story, internally cringing at the twisted, competitive part of her that had wanted to be right in the situation and prove that her friends were paranoid.

“Did you keep the pregnancy?” Howard asked curiously from her spot across the table.

“Yes. My son lives here with us. You’ll meet him sometime soon I suppose. His name’s Eddie, well Edward,” Jane nodded.

Katherine nodded, “So how did he meet you two?” She asked nodding toward Parr and Anna. Normally, she would’ve come up with some comment regarding Jane’s son, but her mind was too busy at work piecing the story together to bother with social conventions.

“Uh, well he met me before I found the coven. I had a ward on so he didn’t realize I was even a witch but he harassed me for not wanting to go home with him. That’s not quite the same thing as everyone else, but I can attest to the fact that he’s a dick,” Anna laughed awkwardly. Cleves glanced down at her food, wishing she hadn’t spoken next. She often wondered if her experiences with Henry were even relevant. They had nothing to do with his malicious profession but rather his unsavory personality. In a way they were she told herself, but in others they weren’t.

Luckily, Parr’s voice filled the awkward silence: “He stalked me essentially, in the exact creeper way you’d imagine. He figured out where the house was somehow, but I’m still not quite sure how he figured out any connections I had to the coven I’d never seen him before. Fortunately though, I was able to erase that chunk of his memory. I would’ve gone for the whole thing if it weren’t for the wards.”

“Wards? Those are magic, right? If he hates witches so much why does he use their magic?” Katherine asked furrowing her brow.

“That’s anyone’s guess,” Parr replied. “He’s got strong ones though and we’ve yet to figure out the source. We’re working on it though, and once we know what type of wards he uses exactly, we’ll be able to dispel them and break them.”

“I know that’s quite a bit of information to take in, but you needed to understand the situation,” Aragon said hoping to wrap up the explanation phase of the conversation and move toward action.

“Yeah… so he killed me because he could sense somehow that I was a witch, and he’s been murdering us?” She asked a note of anger apparent in her voice. the five others nodded, allowing Katherine to process the information. The question remained unanswered as she mumbled, “That’s fucked up.”

“Will you stay here with us? We want to help you learn about your powers and help protect you from him. The grim reality is, he’s not going away anytime soon and we need to stay together. Anne’s already mentioned your university and maybe you could take online classes? You’re also free to move some of your stuff from home here,” Aragon spoke raising an eyebrow in Howard’s direction.

“I… Yes. I’m new to this and this a lot, like, really a lot, but I want to learn and if I stay we can survive better. Plus, I’m just pissed at Henry as much as I’m scared of him.” she said a determined expression briefly ghosting across her face.

A small smile of relief broke out across Aragon’s face, “Lovely. As soon as you’re feeling up to it. We’d like to assess your abilities as they are. You also need to learn the wards we use in public on ourselves for protection. Jane’s offered to teach you, and we’ll go from there.”

“I want to do that as soon as possible. Also I remembered this while I was showering about the incident. I think it could be relevant. When he cornered me in the pub because that’s how it all started, I was wishing and willing for something to hit him in the head so he’d be distracted and I could slip away. I was really focused on one of the glasses left on the bar and then before I knew it that glass flew into his head. We got kicked out after that and then he attacked me” she scrunched up her face in a frown. “That’s besides the point though. Could that have been telekinesis?”

Cleves piped up, “Sounds about like it.” She nodded in approval.

Katherine nodded to herself digesting the copious amounts of information as best as she could. “Okay next thing on a similar note. I asked Cleves earlier what a Supreme was and in that she mentioned the basic powers people could manifest. What all can everyone do here?”

“I’ve never tried descensum, but I can transmute, albeit a bit poorly, bring people back to life, I’m pyro and telekinetic and good with plants,” Parr answered first.

“You know I’m pyrokinetic. I’m also pretty good with telekinesis,’ Anne shrugged.

“I’m an empath and like you, I manifested vitalum vitalis first so obviously I can do that. I’m also one hell of a diviner,” Jane said with a light laugh, happy to answer the girl’s question.

“And I’m telekinetic and pretty decent at concilium. Being a human voodoo doll is just a plus,” Cleves grinned.

“A what now?” Katherine asked raising a brow.

“Watch this,” Cleves winked and reached up to her temple and jerked on a piece of her hair.

“Ow!” Boleyn mumbled beside Cleves as her head jerked in the direction Cleves had pulled her own hair. Once she’d recovered from the minor inconvenience of pain she elbowed Anna who only chuckled in response. Katherine couldn't help but laugh in response also.

A part of her was completely amazed by the powers these women had. They all seemed so sure of it to, and so in sync. Katherine supposed she'd grow with what she could do, but she wondered if she'd ever be assured in it as these witches were.

Once dinner wrapped up, Katherine excused herself: “I think I’m gonna head up to sleep now. This has been… exhausting.”

The witches nodded in understanding, “Sleep well!” Anne called as her cousin ascended the stairs. Katherine mumbled back a response, a bit out of ear shot for the five gathered in the living room.

“Well, she took all of that better than I would’ve in her situation,” Cleves commented glancing at the four women sitting near her.

Aragon nodded, “Thankfully. That could have gone a lot worse. I’m just glad she’s onboard. I’m not sure what we would’ve done had she not been. One things for sure, Henry could have easily found her again and he could have found us.”

[faultystart]

sam’s guide to college apps

note: all of this is based on my experiences! i’m a soon-to-be college freshman who just went through the application process--i’m not an expert or anything! that being said, if you have questions for me about my application process or anything related, feel free to ask! also, this is super long, but i hope you find the advice in it very helpful :)

step one: figuring out which colleges to apply to

perhaps one of the most time consuming steps in the college application process is figuring out what schools you want to apply to! here are my tips from narrowing your potential college list from a few thousand to less than twenty (though i suggest you compile a list of around 7-10 schools to begin with)

- figure out what you want in a college! if you have absolutely no idea what you want in a college, i suggest you visit some close to your home. first compile a list of what objective things you like about a school (location, size, majors offered, etc). also make sure that you could afford the school (use net price calculators to get a rough estimate of how much financial aid a school may give you).

-hopefully, now you’ve narrowed your college list down to a more manageable list of schools! now that you have a list of schools that look good to you on the surface, it’s time to delve deeper. if your school has naviance or something similar, take a look at the stats for applicants. if your school doesn’t (or if you want another source for data), look up common data sets for the range to stats of accepted students. take note of the test scores and other numbers for accepted applicants.

-now it’s time to narrow your list further! ideally, you want to have a few schools you’re likely to get into, a bunch of schools you may or may not get into (around 50/50 chances), and some schools where you could possibly get into (but it’s a long shot). 

-so now you have a list! i suggest you double/triple check the schools to make sure they offer your major, are financially feasible, etc. 

step two: filling out the common app/applications, and other stuff

-for the most part, the common app (which you’ll probably be using), is easy to fill out. the common app website has answers to some frequently asked questions, so you can look there for clarification and help.

-something that i struggled with while filling the common app were the extracurricular descriptions. my advice: describe what you did! if you were club head, what tasks did you do as club head? what did you achieve? space is limited, so don’t be afraid to use choppy sentences, and a little wonky grammar (i omitted subjects and articles when i thought the meaning was clear).

-also: don’t feel obligated to fill up all the extracurricular spots. put the stuff that really matters to you. you can also put things that may not be traditionally considered extracurriculars (like some hobbies--training for a 5k, for example. you could also put down babysitting your siblings or something).

-there will be room in an additional information section where you can explain things! don’t use it as an additional essay space though! for example, you can use the additional info section to explain extenuating circumstances, elaborate on extracurriculars, explain an award, etc. i used the additional information section to clarify that i dropped an extracurricular halfway through the year.

-if you haven’t asked teachers for recommendations, ask them NOW!!! If you don’t know who to ask for recommendations, asking a humanities/social studies teacher and a stem teacher should be pretty good. but it’s ok if you don’t! you can ask two stem teachers or two humanities teachers--just check the requirements of the schools you’re applying to and double check there are no requirements on recommendations. (i learned that the hard way with georgetown when i needed to ask my spanish teacher for a last-minute teacher recommendation)

step three: essays

-in my honest opinion, essays (especially when your stats are slightly sub-par for a school, or when you’re applying to a top school) are much more important than you think! 

-some of you can crank out essays in a flash, and some of you take a while to write an essay. that’s ok! college essays are very different than the essays you’re used to writing in school. you may have heard this before, but show, don’t tell! that doesn’t mean use purple prose, but don’t just say that something happened or you felt a certain way.

-generally, when you write a college essay, you want to start with an anecdote of sorts, something that is interesting enough you don’t lose the reader’s attention, yet still relevant to the topic. for example, i started an essay with “music is my time machine”, it was an essay about music and memory, and how listening to a certain song brings me back to when i was nine and listening to that song for the first time. (hope you guys didn’t mind me using my essays as examples)

-after your little anecdote, you want to get into the meat of the essay: answering the question. personally, i prefer to use one or two anecdotes to answer a personal essay question, but for ‘why school/major’ essays, it’s easier just to explain. 

-after answering the question, if i have some word space left over, i’ll try to come back to the anecdote again! keep in mind though, you do not need to follow this structure i suggested here! college essays are a place to show who you are--don’t let someone else’s suggestions dictate what you say.

-that being said, you do want some other people to look over your essays. they may catch some funky grammar or weird sentences that you don’t see. i found i got the best feedback when my friends looked over my essays! as the college app season gets closer and people start writing essays, i may be willing to look over some people’s if they’d like me to ;)

-speaking of essays, the common app essay is a bit special. it’s super important, since it is sent to all your essays. since the prompts are so open ended, finding the topic/what you’ll write about can be really tricky. I suggest you think of one of two qualities you really want to shine through in your essay, and think of some anecdotes that showcase these character traits. (this is also good advice on brainstorming what to write about in general)

-sam’s special tip for writing a good essay that’s ‘you’: write out an essay without really thinking hard about what you say. i found the essays that best conveyed a passion or were the most ‘me’ were the essays that were almost a stream-of-consciousness. don’t worry about word count or grammar or word choice--first, just get your ideas on the page.

part 5: miscellaneous

-while websites like collegeconfidential and r/applyingtocollege can be kinda toxic and nasty (and make you feel insecure about your accomplishments--avoid the collegeconfidential ‘chance me’ forums), they are also great resources. on r/applyingtocollege, you can find bits of advice from admissions officers and people much more experienced on college admissions/applications than i am

-in the whirlwind of first semester senior year and college applications, take some time to relax!

-don’t procrastinate. don’t do it, please. you will regret it when it’s winter break and you’re scrambling to finish 5 essays in two days.

-know your deadlines!!! some people find it handy to keep all information in a google spreadsheet or something, but i preferred to keep dates in a physical one.

-send in test scores asap!!! check each college’s website to find out their act/sat code, make use of the free score reports you get after the sat, and triple check if that college requires you to send in all scores or not.

part 6: some last notes

-a bit about me, for reference: i’ll be attending nyu, but i was accepted to a total of 7 schools (accepted off the waitlist at one of them--a top 20 university). i was waitlisted then rejected at two other top 20 universities, and rejected at a lot of colleges (so i have a bunch of experience dealing with that). 

-if you made it all the way through this overly long, somewhat rambling post, thank you so much for reading this!! like i mentioned up above, feel free to shoot me any questions you have about my college app experiences, applying to college, etc! i love to give advice to others :”)

[bloggust]

Everyday myosa #1 (and stream of consciousness musings)

Everyday myosa #1 (and stream of consciousness musings)

묘사(描寫) [묘ː사]: description, portrayal, portrait, depiction; delineation, describe, portray, depict; delineate

 I transferred onto the subway line 3 from line 6. Despite it being lunchtime, the train was more packed than I anticipated, and I got squeezed next to two Japanese women. I didn’t know they were Japanese at first though. They were facing away from me (although not intentionally, at least I hope). I only found out that they were Japanese because they started speaking to one another. I looked over to one of the girl’s iPhone. Perhaps I have a bad habit of looking at stranger’s phones on the subway, but I do it anyways. I tend not to look at my own screen, and in turn somehow end up looking at others’ screens… whether it be messages, facebook, mobile games, etc.

           Tangents aside, I looked at the woman’s screen. (I said tangents aside but here arises another aside from my stream of consciousness: whether to call this person a woman or a girl. She was probably of my age. Is it sex related? That is, would I say guy or man? I would probably say guy. Are the binary opposites guy and girl? Definitely wouldn’t call them a boy if it was a person of my age. But boy and girl are used as binary opposites. Does this mean that the more grown-up version of the word, “girl,” is a diminutive and sexist term in some kind of notion?) She was looking at what I assumed to be an app showing her the subway times. I couldn’t read anything, surprisingly, though; usually I know the station names in Chinese and I thought they would use the same characters in Japanese but perhaps they simplify it. In any case I couldn’t read it, although maybe I was just too far away. But the orange color on the screen matched that of the orange of the line 3 color. She flipped through some other apps, one of which was Line – the predominant messenger app for the Japanese. She flipped through another app that I didn’t recognize.

           As I write this, I wonder if this is too stream of consciousness or pointless to the degree that it is hard for people to understand. This kind of writing lacks any organization. And it has no point. I am just writing about everyday things, pinpointing a very mundane and nearly useless tidbit that I saw and write it here. Why am I writing this? I’m not sure. I told somebody that I had nothing interesting in my life, and they replied that I should just say mundane things. Somehow I thought that was a good idea, and I’ve been doing it. Selfishly, practicing writing out very specific details will probably make me a better creative writer.

Still, these micro-observations I still consider for the most part just “noise.” It actually reminds me of Baroque music, like Bach. Musical instruments like the harpsichord of the time could not sustain notes for a long time; they just “plucked.” So, in order to “fill the sound,” composers often included many ornaments and trills. I wonder if these everyday mundane details are something that could fill the sound amongst the rather long silences between any blogs I write, not that I should write any to begin with or that I should have them on a regular pace. It’s an entertaining prospect at least.

However, somehow at the same time feel wrong writing this at all and posting this at all at a time where shit is going down in the world and people are suffering and people I know are suffering and instead of trying to help more I’m just cozy in my room just writing about two random Japanese women and one of their phones I saw in the subway. I know I’m privileged, and I feel like I’m not doing anything with it. Just enjoying it and being comfortable and worrying about my own old musings.

[noirmornings-blog]

Kanye West: Inside His Creative Agency DONDA

The brand the everyone wants to create but no one really knows what it is...

Kanye West’s first creative agency, DONDA, still remains as a mystery to most of us. They continue to crank out album covers and projects, but no one really knows who is exactly behind the work. Obviously, Virgil Abloh is down, but who else? VIBE discovered that a former Mercer Kitchen waitress by name of Hanna Christian was one of the first employees and helped hire others. However, she is no longer on-board. So who else is down? VIBE investigates…

The rest of the DONDA stable is virtually anonymous. And West has a tradition of cobbling together a rotating cast of collaborators, which makes it tough to distinguish who’s actually part of the core clique. Liner notes on Yeezus list Joe Perez as DONDA graphic designer and Justin Saunders as art director. Those who are believed to have worked with the company consistently include West’s longtime barber and style consultant Ibn Jasper, art directors Matthew Williams and Guido Callarelli and graphic designers Nathaniel Brown and Alex Milsom. Perez declined to be interviewed, and the others did not respond to requests. Before Abloh could even be contacted, he sent a pre-emptive refusal: “We appreciate the interest, but our staff is not doing interviews at the moment. If our stance changes, we will be in touch.”

BEFORE HANNA CHRISTIAN started working for Kanye West, she was a waitress at The Mercer Kitchen. The exclusive restaurant serves as the cornerstone of New York City’s Mercer Hotel, where West and Jay Z camped out in early 2011 to record their album, Watch the Throne. When West returned in October of that same year to take a series of meetings, Christian, then a 21-year-old college dropout and aspiring visual artist, struck up a conversation. For a week, West picked her brain about everything from architecture to fashion to art. He invited her to a Watch the Throne tour stop in New Jersey. She came back to work the next day raving about the elaborate stage design. Noted visual artist Es Devlin (a frequent West collaborator who’s also worked with Lady Gaga and Rihanna) projected video of sharks and Rottweilers onto enormous cubes that doubled as podiums for West and Jay Z during the show. After gushing about the design elements, Christian went for broke. “I love The Mercer,” she blurted out to Kanye. “But I want to work with you!”

Christian was hired on the spot as West’s personal assistant. And within 24 hours, she was attending the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show at the Lexington Avenue Armory in NYC. Three months later, he announced his latest venture, DONDA, an experimental design agency named for his late mother. Christian transitioned to office manager, interviewing applicants and helping to build the company’s early infrastructure.

She’s bubbly and effusive when she talks about her big break into the entertainment industry. But when asked something seemingly as innocuous as where the DONDA offices are located, Christian shuts down. “I can’t talk about it,” she says firmly. “It’s in my confidentiality agreement.” A confidentiality agreement with a clause about office headquarters? Sounds ludicrous. But no one does private and mysterious like Kanye West. And for a potential entity born out of one of his legendary Twitter rants, it almost makes sense. Almost.

In January 2012, West laid out a series of tweets, highlighting his plan to create a firm with more than 22 departments staffed by a bevy of experts in divergent fields. He name-checked everything from architects, video game developers and nutritionists to doctors, lawyers and what he called “app guys,” plotting to house them under DONDA.

His master plan reads like a stream-of-consciousness riff that becomes an epically ambitious screed (think Jerry Maguire’s infamous manifesto). There will be summer school programs with filmmaker Spike Jonze! An overhaul of the prison system! Nutritional consultation on achieving energy balance! Amusement parks! West tweeted: “We want to create, advertise and produce products driven equally by emotional want and utilitarian need.”

The kicker was that he intends to not just turn a profit or join the billionaire’s club. He wants to change the world through design and fill the void of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. A bit extreme, sure. But Kanye’s bombastic statements are expected. And for a man who secretes naked ambition and pretentious overtones from his very pores, it almost makes sense. Almost.

DONDA may sound slightly absurd, but the idea wasn’t completely random. Even before his Twitter proposal, he fantasized about launching a creative clique to those in his inner circle. In 2008, during a New Zealand press conference promoting 808s & Heartbreak he talked about building art installations. Four years later, he aimed even higher. “I want to work on cities [and] amusement parks,” he said while premiering his short film, Cruel Summer, at Cannes Film Festival. “I want to change what entertainment experiences are like.”

Kanye’s fight for creative control is long-standing. Collaborators describe him as a hypercritical presence on photo shoots and film edits. So it’s no surprise that with DONDA, he was looking to circumvent middlemen who might dilute his vision. “They wanted to eliminate the person who has to interpret the idea to the brand,” says Marc Moran, who cofounded the Chicago-based RSVP Gallery with West’s longtime right-hand man Virgil Abloh.

Post-rant, West moved quickly. Just a day after the online proclamation, his attorney Brad Rose filed the first trademark papers for DONDA. The list of goods and services sounds more profit-based than the good works and lofty world improvement goals in his mission statement. Expect to see the DONDA name on “toys and playthings, plush toys, teddy bears… home furnishings, bedding and linens…”

He also tweeted an e-mail, contactdonda@gmail.com, for like-minded aspiring trailblazers to pledge DONDA. Thousands of applicants poured in, according to Christian, who left the company in May 2012 and now works as a creative assistant for actor Jason Sudeikis. “We moved forward with quite a few people who submitted portfolios,” she says, refusing to reveal who made the cut.

Essentially a future funnel for West’s obsession with his legacy, DONDA is poised to be the ultimate vanity project. And yet, he barely references it by name. Rather than a string of credits on an official Web site, DONDA projects are denoted by album liner notes, cryptic tweets, hashtags and Instagram photos (“NUMBERS ON THE BOARDS. NO ARTWORK. DONDA,” @virgilabloh) from his inner circle. Will this mysticism carry on to a true vision with results? Some experts are doubtful.

“When [Kanye] talks about Apple and those other companies, [he] has a very clear mission or statement in mind,” says Andres Nicholls, a partner in the brand and marketing consultancy Prophet, which lists GM, BMW and Visa as clients. “I tried to find a Web site. I couldn’t find any. He needs to formalize the vision of the company if he wants to expand to a broader consumer.” In addition to no website, DONDA no longer has a brick-and-mortar presence. Christian followed up her interview several weeks later to give an update on the DONDA office in New York: it no longer exists. “When I was there, we were just starting to set up shop, so I’m not surprised that so much has changed since I left.”

Expanding to a broader consumer may prove difficult for West, considering his desire to keep everything he does under tight wraps. During a June listening session for his newest album, Yeezus, at New York’s Milk Studios, a black van was parked outside, projecting a video of Kanye (shot by his go-to director Nick Knight) rapping the lyrics to his single “New Slaves” onto the side of a building. The screenings were part of a larger, international guerilla-marketing scheme— Kanye’s idea—that initially took place in 66 cities. When pressed for info on the installation, a woman operating the video offered a non-committal smirk and riddled responses:

Are you a member of DONDA? “We don’t have any input in the content. We’re just hired to project it,” she said.

What’s the name of the projection company? “I’d rather not say.”

Did Def Jam or DONDA hire you? “I’d rather not say.”

Following West’s lead, the DONDA collective hasn’t done interviews regarding their affiliation. LinkedIn profiles and liner notes help piece together a rough masthead, but there’s no clear consensus on who’s involved. One source suggested finding Virgil Abloh because “he is DONDA.”

Abloh’s credited title has varied from head creative director to art director for DONDA. It’s easy to see why the Chicago native and former architect would be Kanye’s right-hand man when it comes to DONDA. Abloh has the holier-than-thou hipster vibe down cold. He’s a Birkin-bag-carrying dude who owns a clothing boutique that sells $200 T-shirts. He drops obscure style references, like waxing poetic about the genius of German industrial designer Dieter Rams.

The rest of the DONDA stable is virtually anonymous. And West has a tradition of cobbling together a rotating cast of collaborators, which makes it tough to distinguish who’s actually part of the core clique. Liner notes on Yeezus list Joe Perez as DONDA graphic designer and Justin Saunders as art director. Those who are believed to have worked with the company consistently include West’s longtime barber and style consultant Ibn Jasper, art directors Matthew Williams and Guido Callarelli and graphic designers Nathaniel Brown and Alex Milsom. Perez declined to be interviewed, and the others did not respond to requests. Before Abloh could even be contacted, he sent a pre-emptive refusal: “We appreciate the interest, but our staff is not doing interviews at the moment. If our stance changes, we will be in touch.”

Whoever’s pulling the strings, the overall theme seems to be minimalism. And so far, DONDA’s work still falls in the domain of hip-hop: album artwork stage sets (West’s Atlantic City Revel Resort shows); promotional apparel; and visuals for Ye’s G.O.O.D Music compilation, Cruel Summer. With the interactive video for West’s “Black Skinheads,” DONDA has been focusing on multimedia projects. They were also hired to re-edit the trailer for The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan.

The DONDA-designed cover for I Am Not a Human Being 2 spotlights a lone butterfly on a black background. And instead of a cliché mean-mug close-up, 2 Chainz’s Based on a T.R.U. Story features two chains draped over a black backdrop. Some say the DONDA design style currently on display is a brilliant respite from hip-hop’s often-aggressive literalism. Some say it’s basic. “Because hip-hop has been so literal, esoteric things excite people. But it doesn’t mean that it’s good,” says Joseph Buckingham, aka Joe Buck, a graphic designer whose album artwork includes the classic De La Soul Is Dead cover. “That seems to be the trend now, to just be beyond hip-hop. Kanye plays that game well.”

The abstract approach can be vexing for the executives who write the checks. “The label wants to go with what’s obvious and marketable,” says Courtney Walter, a creative director who’s designed packaging for Chris Brown (Fortune) and Miguel (Kaleidoscope Dream). “If it’s conceptual, sometimes you’re pushing boundaries that make more of a statement than you need to.”

West is already barreling full steam ahead with his own music. Yeezus is the musical equivalent of a splash painting. From the anti-packaging to the loony American Psycho–inspired commercial starring two Kardashian family affiliates. He does what he wants (and more importantly, corporate bigwigs allow him to do what he wants) because it’s profitable. Kanye’s audience is built-in and primed to respond to whatever he’s pumping out, even if it’s a pair of $245 Nike Air Yeezy’s, which once sold for $90,000 on eBay.

“Marketing is usually so much about ‘reach,’” says Patrick Ehrlund, creative director of B-Reel, the company that produced West’s 2012 commercial for the Cruel Summeralbum. “Because Kanye West is such a strong brand, you don’t necessarily have to worry about reach, because it will always reach people. So it’s about how you affect people. Visuals have become a much more permanent and visible part of hip-hop. I think it’s amazing that artists are exposing people that might not be exposed to these kinds of artistic things.”

It may be unrealistic to expect DONDA to run like a traditional business and actually attempt to attract media attention. Especially since Kanye has become more paranoid about his message being misinterpreted. The true test will be marrying his laissez-faire approach with the eventual need to gain investors if he’s serious about turning DONDA into a conglomerate.

“From a funding point of view, it can be a challenge when you have people who aren’t used to thinking outside the box,” says Jessica Irish, director of academic affairs at Parsons’ School of Art, Media and Technology.

West’s ambition to succeed Apple is clearly a stretch. But he may have the ultimate business consultant in Steve Wozniak, who cofounded the iconic tech brand with Jobs. They met this year and discussed Kanye’s top-secret plans. When contacted for comment on DONDA, Wozniak stated via e-mail: “I have opinions about it, but they would be personal between myself and Mr. West.”

West isn’t alone in his determination to push the margins of the entertainment industry. From Nicki Minaj and Drake to Jay Z and Pharrell, rappers are expanding their résumés beyond endorsements and fragrances. Ten years ago, vanity labels and clothing lines were compulsory. Now, it’s about creative direction for major brands. West can certainly transform DONDA into a lucrative movement. He’s defied odds before.

In February 2012, four months after the lukewarm reception to his women’s collection, West started work on the first official DONDA endeavor—the Cruel Summer short. He commissioned three design firms and a post-production company and scored funding from the Doha Film Institute in the Gulf state of Qatar, where the film was shot. The team spent four months constructing an unprecedented seven-screen display and a white tented pyramid to contain it.

That May, his 30-minute movie about a car thief and an Arabian princess (He even consulted with a local Arab woman on wardrobe) screened at the Cannes Film Festival. The verdict from most media outlets: flawed, but ambitious. The movie has yet to be released on DVD or screened anywhere outside of Cannes. It hardly matters. Kanye pulled it off, and his first step to achieving what he wants with DONDA was complete.

Whether DONDA becomes another told-you-so moment or a pipe dream remains to be seen. Limitations exist in the corporate world, but from the looks of it (the ambiguous anti-business business plan), West wants to see just how much he can break the rules. As DONDA progresses, he’ll have disciples and cynics, either blindly following or silently skeptical, but never counting him out.

Story By Clover Hope

[thewonderfulthingaboutfish]

i just opened up an old post it note app on my laptop and it’s filled with terrible lyrics and poems and old lists and stream-of-consciousness from like 2 years ago and.

 oh god i was so sad. i was in such a terrible place. it’s so full of self-deprecation and loneliness and suicide idealization and terrible eating habits and depression and sad love for a long-distance friend who i’ve now grown apart from.  god.  like this is some heavy depressing bullshit. i’m so surprised i actually lived through that. like if i showed this to a counselor they’d freak. of course i’m not perfect now, i still dont have a lot of friends and i’m away from my family and have barely any mental health support but it’s not really the same soul-crushing depression i was feeling back then. getting rid of the eating disorder probably helped. i was such a fucking sad kid then. i wish i could have known then that i’d be lucky enough to survive it and get better and get work and keep doing what i loved and my sister would get better and my family would be okay. i’ve been so fucking lucky in the past year or so, good god. holy shit. i was in such an awful headspace a year ago. 

[uncocktail]

Uncocktail Uncorked: Pop Wine

I was reading my “wine” tab on Google News the other night and was struck by the opening paragraph of one of the articles (more than the article, which I can’t find anymore). The author brazenly stated that 20 grapes make up the majority of American wine consumption. Much like Claudette’s notorious “I definitely have breast cancer” line from The Room, the assertion didn’t have much to do with the rest of the article and wasn’t brought up again.

I frantically got to work on my phone’s Notes app trying to see if I could list the twenty most popular grapes from memory and experience. The order they came into my head is how they’re listed below.

There are some omissions that might be controversial. I left a few of my favorite grapes intentionally out of my initial twenty because I knew the demand wasn’t quite there for them except among hardcore oenophiles (sorry, Chenin Blanc). However, keeping with the stream-of-consciousness nature of the list, I’ve decided to elaborate on the initial varietals I came up with using my initial reaction to each grape. If I have fun, maybe I’ll do the same with the runners up and extra credit grapes.

Sauvignon Blanc - So you graduated from Cloudy Bay to mediocre Sancerre but you think asking for Pinot Grigio will make you look like a real housewife. This grape is currently synonymous with the bitter, mass-produced expression from New Zealand that tastes like grass and grapefruit. Its popularity in this form hinges on its predictability. An average customer knows exactly what to expect from a $13 bottle of Marlborough Sauv Blanc because they all taste exactly the same. Uniformity at its finest. Sancerre is for the hoity-toity crowd but only because of the price tag that comes with it. Nobody asks for Bordeaux Blanc, which is often dirt cheap and conveys a more amped-up expression of SB’s signature aromatics.

Merlot - This grape is all over the place. Velvety and spicy in some expressions, reeking with pyrizines and tasting more like Cabernet Franc in others. Despite its unpredictability, the demand is still there, but usually only in Yellow Tail or hidden in Bordeaux blends. Ask a wine seller about the “Sideways effect” if you want a 20-minute lecture on the rise of California Pinot Noir.

Cabernet Sauvignon - The king grape of the world’s two most famous wine regions: Bordeaux and Napa Valley. Fun notes of juicy cherries and blackcurrant at its cheapest and most basic makes it an easy gamble for producing a crowd pleaser. The better expressions shed more and more of the sweet cherry notes with every extra $5 you throw at a bottle. A frequent victim of over-oaking, cheaper California expressions risk overdoing it on the vanilla. Thanks to global warming, the grape is growing out of favor with Bordeaux producers whose crops are growing overripe from the extra heat. This would make CS-based Bordeauxs fruity and jammy in a way that the French simply can’t abide by.

Malbec - Look at this trendy little slut. Everyone seems to love you these days, Malbec. Cheers to you, Malbec. Sure, everybody thinks you’re native to Argentina (lol) and sure, you’re only exciting when you’re expensive, but at least you’re not Torrontes. There is something fundamentally wrong with Torrontes and nobody will acknowledge it but Argentina needs to cut it the hell out. Like from the ground. Rip up those vines. They can keep the Malbec. Let’s hope for Argentina’s sake that nobody finds out about Uruguayan Tannat.

Chardonnay - Fruity and bright, bland and mineral, buttery and viscous; there are so many expressions of the noblest of grapes, perhaps the most legendary white of all. The basis of some of the finest wines in the world, most Americans’ first exposure to Chardonnay was through Kendall Jackson (vigilant crusaders for #whitewineemoji justice) and that’s probably why most people think they hate Chardonnay. Sure, exciting unoaked counterpoints to Kendall Jackson’s supremacy do exist, but they’re outnumbered by humdrum Chablis knockoffs.

Pinot Grigio/Gris - If Pinot Grigio were put on a Dungeons and Dragons moral alignment chart, it would be Lawful Neutral. People looking for the cheap Italian stuff just want water-flavored wine. People looking for more potent and complex expressions are still looking for something completely inoffensive and easy-drinking. Sometimes you’ll get funky, weird-ass orange versions from Eastern Europe that defy logic by exhibiting infinite depth.

Pinot Noir - Ohhh yeah, baby. You’re a hot, sexy one Pinot Noir. Someone decided you go good with fish one day and your profile skyrocketed. No grape, however, has a more direct price-to-quality correlation. Even then, while there may be a Pinot for everyone, no singular Pinot style can fill the role entirely. The austere, cold-climate Pinots of Burgundy, Oregon and New York’s Finger Lakes are great food wines, but the riper, concentrated styles of California and New Zealand are more fun and approachable. Cheap Pinots that hide their warm climate origins are often so fruity that they no longer taste expressive of the varietal. If not a total fruit bomb, cheap Pinot can be bitter and bland.

Gamay - Most Americans experience Beaujolais in its “nouveau” variant at Thanksgiving thanks to a bizarre tradition that confounds me. Maybe this is all a lie, since I’ve never seen anybody consume a bottle of the stuff, which amounts to dark, shitty rosé. Entry level and premium expressions alike adhere to the signature “carbonically macerated” style that gets progressively less spicy and more supple with each increase in price point. Some of the most high-quality Gamays out there are still dirt cheap compared to their Cab Sauv and Pinot Noir counterparts. Fun, fruity, easy--it’s basically what people expect Pinot Noir to taste like before they discover the reality.

Gruner Vetliner - I’m biased to include Gruner in my list because I work in Brooklyn where I routinely see the stuff outsell Sauvignon Blanc. Gruner’s popularity comes from three things: its Pinot-Gris-rivaling neutrality, relatively low cost and the packaging (most popular in liter bottles, German and Austrian Gruners give New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc drinkers an extra third of a bottle at the same price). Best served cold, like the German temperament.

Sangiovese - The most ubiquitous Italian red, far better known in the states as “Chianti” Maybe you know it as “house wine” or “table wine” in its Super-Tuscan form at your nicest local pizzeria. Sangiovese is an easy sell to anyone asking for something to pair with a tomato-based Italian dish. Or most other Italian dishes for that matter. The trinity of premium tuscan Sangioveses (Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile de Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino) are renowned the world over--but are consistently overshadowed by the premiums of Piedmont to the North.

Tempranillo - Tempranillo is synonymous with Rioja, and Spanish wine in general. It comes in many forms, but retains its inherent character regardless. Most other grapes have unique and anomalous expressions that defy the varietals and taste like something else altogether. Tempranillo, on the other hand, is surprisingly consistent, and only has three things you need to look for: concentration, age and oak. Spaniards have a weird, almost German approach to the production of the stuff, inadvertently making it one of the most accessible wines for beginners. The classifications of Rioja and Ribera del Duero have oak and bottle aging standards that add distinctive characteristics which are easy to decipher for novices. Knowing which style of Tempranillo is for you is an easy segue into other red wines of the world.

Grenache/Garnacha - Grenache is pretty much the perfect grape. Few other varietals have as drastic an array of expressions. Light and ethereal, robust and structured, fun and fruity; The grape is the backbone of two of the world’s bougiest wine regions: Priorat and Chateauneuf du Pape. A temperamental grape for sure, the beauty of Grenache lies in its vast possibilities. A delicate lavender-colored expression from Oregon for Pinot Noir drinkers that don’t like tannins? A hearty Rhone expression to give your Barolo-glugging dad for Father’s Day? An approachable $9 Spanish value wine? Grenache can do it all.

Syrah - Best known in the States in the overripe form of “Shiraz,” Syrah may not have the same versatility as its Rhone cousin Grenache, but what it lacks in that it makes up for in depth. Where Grenache can be ethereal or robust, Syrah is by its nature a big wine. Granted, it’s a tough sell when merely labeled by the name of the grape. Warm climate stuff can reach 16% alcohol and taste like drinking fruit juice in contrast to the legendary, overwhelmingly structured and almost fruit-deficient expressions of Syrah’s most famous regions: Côte-Rôtie, St. Joseph, Cornas and Crozes-Hermitage. None of these are ever fun or cheap, but they’re always “good” by expert standards. Syrah finds a happy medium with California expressions that more resemble the jammy fruit of South Africa and Australia, but with enough structure to give them depth, just nowhere near as much depth or structure as the Northern Rhone (Washington Syrah, on the other hand, straddles the line between the two styles effectively).

Zinfandel - It’s fascinating. Walk into any basic-bitch liquor store and somewhere close to the Dekuyper and Veuve Cliquot, you’ll find the Zinfandel section. It won’t be labeled that way. In fact, it’s probably just the store’s California Domestic section. But make no mistake, 80% of those flashy-labeled, $20 Cali red blends are made mostly of Zinfandel and Mega Purple. And then we have White Zinfandel, the sugary sweet “most popular rosé in America” which doesn’t merit much discussion. Cheap red Zinfandel is almost cloyingly fruity, making it a great pairing for food slathered in barbecue sauce or just about anything else that combines sweet and savory. High-end $50 expressions from centenarian vines produce some of the deepest, most rewarding reds out there, but the hypothetical customer for these Zins would rather drop their dollars on an inferior Cab Sauv.

Moscato - Sure, there are bone-dry, hyper-floral expressions of moscato out there (usually from France or Spain and going by “Muscat”), but the average Moscato drinker only cares about one thing: that their wine is sweeter than drinking juice. Oenophiles will regularly pooh-pooh the most famous expression, Moscato d’Asti, as too sweet for their palates, but there’s still a lot of flavor to be had from this delicate and easy-drinking “wine soda.” The alcohol content is comparable to beer, so you risk diabetes if you try to get drunk off the stuff.

Riesling - Riesling is “that bitch.” She bridges the divide between the experts and the novices. She can be dry, she can be sweet, she is a true hooker that can be whatever you want her to be. Wine critics are inherently addicted to good acidity that isn’t “vinegar-y.” Dry Rieslings have it in spades, as do the sweeter, over-sulphured, age-worthy expressions that eventually develop enough to balance out their sugar altogether. Riesling stands alone in this regard, making it the favorite grape of about half the experts you’ll talk to. Bartenura Moscato may have dethroned Riesling as the sweet white wine du jour, but any sweet white drinkers over the age of 50 are probably still Rheinhessen Auslese devotees and clever product placement on urban radio has kept certain sweet Riesling brands relevant in the age of Moscato.

Nebbiolo - More bitter and tannic than its Barbera counterpart, yet not as tannic or heavy as Dolcetto. The “middle ground” grape of Italy’s Piedmont region, Nebbiolo is good for one thing: food-pairing wines. Since Italian wine is all about food, that effectively makes Nebbiolo the king of Italian grapes. Sure, Chianti Classico and Amarone de Valpolicella have their place, but nothing gives a wine boner to an Italian vino bro quite like a Barolo or Barbaresco.

Barbera - Barbera is the Michelle Williams of Italian red grapes, perhaps with Sangiovese as Kelly Rowland and Nebbiolo as Beyonce. There’s so much potential there, but it’s consistently overlooked and rarely taken as seriously. Ironically, Barbera works in a more vast array of climates and soils than its counterparts.

Montepulciano - Sorry, am I getting lazy with the Italian grapes? Maybe that’s because of boring predictable stuff like Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Synonymous with inherently inoffensive red Italian table wine, people love ordering this juice at restaurants because it’s easier to pronounce than “Sangiovese” (San-jo-vay-zee? San-geo-vay-zay?). Also, people associate Chianti with Hannibal Lecter, it’s just out there in the zeitgeist.

Glera/Prosecco - It has bubbles in it. More than half of Americans will believe what they are drinking bears some resemblance to Champagne. Many of those Americans will buy a bottle at a liquor store after asking where the Champagne is. Prosecco is not Champagne and you don’t know to ask for Franciacorta or Cava. Go home, Prosecco, you’re drunk.

Runners up: Viognier, Albariño, Gewurtztraminer, Verdejo, Chenin Blanc, Pinotage, Mourvedre, Cabernet Franc, Touriga Nacional, Picpoul, Melon de Bourgogne, Pinot Blanc, Nero d'Avola, Cinsault,  Dolcetto, Carignan, Malvasia

Extra Credit: Pinot Meunier, Semillon, Marsanne/Rousanne, Lambrusco, Garganega, Corvina, Ugni Blanc/Trebbiano, Bobal, Aligoté, Airen, Viura, Xarel Lo, Parellada, Pedro Ximenez, Palomino Fino, Godello, Mencia, Petite Sirah

Photo by John Jennings on Unsplash

[ber39james]

9 Workflow Strategies That Will Make You a Faster Writer

Whether writing is your livelihood or your side hustle, being able to produce content quickly is a skill you’ll never regret developing. And not only will a solid process help you write faster, it will ease editing frustrations by making your draft more organized from the start.

I write all day, every day, and although I’ll never be the fastest writer in the world, I’ve had to make some serious adjustments to my own process in order to get things done and meet my deadlines. Using the process of drafting this article as an example, I’ve laid out my strategies. May they have you writing with speed and clarity in no time flat!

Before You Begin

1Do some reconnaissance.

No matter how well you know your topic, odds are good you’d benefit from a little inspiration. When I set out to write this article, I knew that I’d talk about my own workflow. But I also wanted to have a look at how other writers have approached the topic.

I did a Google search on my topic, and then scanned some of the top resulting articles. As I scanned, I took notes. My recon reading often helps me remember things I want to talk about. It also gives me a good idea of how other writers have covered this angle. Can I bring something new to the conversation that will help my post stand out?

2Decide what you want to say.

As I read for inspiration, I begin to formulate a plan for my article in my head. I want what I offer to be unique somehow, and I want to add my own personal touch to whatever I write. That means I have to decide how I want to cover this topic.

With this article, I decided to present a few tips for solidifying an idea, writing about that idea, and editing a draft. I thought about my process and decided which of my writing habits were most conducive to writing quickly and easily. (Hint: Taking a break to look at cute animals on Instagram is not, as it turns out, very helpful. But still, aaawww!)

Keep your topic focus narrow. In this article, I focused on strategies for writing faster, honing in on a specific skill (fast writing) rather than a broad angle (writing in general.)

3Create a quick outline.

Say it with me: Outlines are our friends!

When I was a managing editor, one of the biggest problems my writers had was organization. They tended to write as the ideas flowed into their heads, and often that made for a disjointed, rambling article.

If you’ve ever grown impatient while listening to someone tell a story, wanting them to just get to the point, then you know what it’s like to read an article that lacks organization. My dear content creators, no one wants to try to fish a few salient points out of your stream of consciousness. Let the stream flow as you outline so you can organize your article and create SEO-friendly headings.

And the bonus? Your article will be easier to write because you’ve gathered and organized your thoughts in advance.

When You’re Writing

4Write when you’re groggy.

When I stumble out of bed, pre-coffee, writing is the last thing on my mind. And yet, once I’ve got my good friend joe (as in cuppa) by my side, I dig in. And my writing always flows a lot better than I think it will. I’m regularly surprised by this fact, but science tells me I shouldn’t be.

According to Research Digest:

Insight-based problem-solving requires a broad, unfocused approach. You’re more likely to achieve that Aha! revelatory moment when your inhibitory brain processes are at their weakest and your thoughts are meandering.

5Get it down first.

Once you’ve got your outline created, you’re ready to put meat on the bones. Now is the time to get out of your own way and just write. Don’t retrace your steps, don’t edit as you go, and don’t stop for research.

If you’ve done some reconnaissance reading, you likely have enough information to start writing. I like to fill in my research blanks after my article is finished. Simply write everything off the cuff, and leave a placeholder where you want to add some research later. Journalists use the letters TK, which is journo lingo for “to come.” But I tend to just type “RESEARCH” and keep rolling.

6Write in chunks.

I find that certain parts of my story spring to mind earlier than others. I may have something I want to say immediately about a certain topic, so I’ll get that down first, lest I lose the momentum. It’s perfectly okay to skip to different segments of your article as you’re inspired to write about them. In fact, as I’m writing this paragraph, my intro paragraph is still unwritten. I’ll get back to it.

When You’re Editing

7Fill in your research holes and link to relevant posts.

Now that you’ve finished writing your draft, it’s time to connect the dots with research and add links. You may still have a little writing left to do to flesh out the research you’ve done, but it shouldn’t take much time since you’ll be working from reference material. Don’t forget to add links to relevant posts from your own site whenever you can.

I added the research from Research Digest and the Editorial Freelancers Association (below) to this article after I finished the draft. All I had to do was add the links and flesh out some text explaining the research. (Oh, and I also added this paragraph to explain the process.)

Here’s a tip: Organization tools like Evernote are great for jotting down quick research references. See our list of apps for writers for more suggestions.

8Do a developmental edit.

According to the Editorial Freelancers Association, “a developmental editor helps an author develop ideas—or develop a manuscript if it already exists—into a coherent, readable work.”

Congratulations! You’ve just become your own developmental editor. Now’s when you’re going to ensure that your article is indeed well organized (your outline should’ve helped with that.) Make sure you edit for clarity, and don’t forget to clean up any wordiness.

Here’s a tip: I recommend reading your article aloud. Run-on sentences and other syntax problems become glaringly obvious when you read them out loud, helping you identify what needs fixing.

9Proofread, proofread, proofread.

And finally, proofread. You’ve put all this effort into your article, so make sure you give it a thorough going-over to check for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. If you need a little help, there’s an app for that.

Do you have some handy tips for speed writing? Share them in the comments below.

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from Grammarly Blog https://www.grammarly.com/blog/faster-writer/