(lovely anon) i'm so happy to finally be answering this oh my goodness hi gorgeous human being i feel that it has been too long 🥲 SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST TIME I'VE WRITTEN ONE OF THESE HOW HAVE YOU BEEN
to answer the things you have said most recently- i'm so mad that spring break is over bc now i have to go back to life??? like dancing and school and shit that feels so unnessacry 😭 and like i can't just do nothing anymore? i was so used to it and now...... ugh. i STILL haven't played sims (i think it's because ✨depression✨ be hitting sometimes) lol but MWAHAH IM SO HAPPY FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR!AU AND THAT THEY HAD LITTLE BABY LEO!! i feel the name thing.. i just come up with something that sounds nice? i think leo is a nice name, it makes me think about lea michele and the fact that her son's name is Ever Leo but anyway. i don't name my sims after what i want to name my children irl either... idk why though. (i don't know why i'm telling you this but for boy names i love Liam🥰 and if i had twin boys i think i would do Liam and Peter though i am not married to the name Peter.... anywho)
LMAOOO the therpaist coming made me laugh thank you :)) i hope it's helpful? this may be tmi but i've only really had negative thoughts recently and not many healthy outlets so i'm hoping crossing one thing off this sad list will make me feel better :') i think during spring break my anxiety and my depression really spiked? idk, it comes in episodes but yeah THIS GOT REALLY SAD
i think a lot of things when i read your posts but i never say them hahaha so imma say it now: i googled what bon appetit meant ( i also just had to google how to spell it ) but ur right, i feel like bone apple tea makes more sense than bone apple teeth.. the "th" is throwing me off bc how i say it bone appa (like app-a) teet (like you're saying tit but teet lol) so bone apple tea makes more sense to me lol
i never know really know the time difference for anything lmao but est to germany (that's not gmt is it?) is like 6 hours wOAH so it's like 9pm while it’s 3pm here? wowee
i feel mega weird after watching this show called hollywood (darren criss is in it, so is laura harrier and a bunch of other people) but i don't like it💀 i feel really icky rn and idk why but reading your last response to my ask (?) always makes me feel better :')
i am doing what you said btw, i'm typing this on my computer first then gonna transfer it to my phone's tumblr lol but when you said a digital detox, it's interesting cuz i feel like i've been having one since tom's new project was announced? gOD i don't wanna get into it bc i get so triggered but i've been off of instagram since then bc instagram stans literally stand by tom through whatever even when something ain't right- i’m just gonna leave it there bc i’ll continue the rant, but yeah so i took a break lol
also heard abt your driving lesson thing (?) was it that bad? i can't find the old post but someone asked if you hooked up with your lesson person and i was sOOO CONFUSED LMAOO LIKE OK ARIA GET SOME BUT UHH HUH?
now to address the actual response HAHA the way you touch my heart :') by :') bringing :') up :') halle :') being ariel :') (i honest to God don't remember if i brought this up first, forgive me if i did, it's been a minute lmao) i'm always talking about it and i'm pretty sure my family is so tired of me talking about it lmao, but YEAH when i found out they weren't twins i was so surprised but idk why i always thought they were twins? but YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE WITH THE DISNEY TALK- everyone is always like "tiana is my favorite princess" and yea she's strong and stuff but...... she was a frog. for almost the whole time. it's about time we got another one!! i do agree with some people on the fact that disney should just make another black princess but halle is adorable and i was ariel on stage so it's already really special to me :')
yeah lol there are good times with my brothers but they make me mad for a good portion of the time (there's the 12yo vincent and the 7yo daniel but vincent??? psshhh he is a piece of work and i'm not sure how much longer i can put up with him HAJAH AND YES VINCENT IS THE ONE WHO WAS 👁👄👁WHEN I CRIED AND THE ONE WHO DOESN'T LISTEN TO MUSIC- writing this now makes it sound like vincent is awful. which he isn't... we're working on him ig. not to add to the awfulness but no, he listens to obnoxious loud VIDEO GAME MUSIC and won't stop when we ask him to stop... he gets beat up a lot) anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌
yeah let me know if you end up watching it (wandavision)! i think it's great but if you like it lmk!! tfatws is sooo good like PHEW i am honestly loving it. sidenote: j*hn w*lker makes me wanna jump through the screen and choke him to the ground. i was thinking right, and the falcon and the winter soldier (THATS SO MUCH EASIER FAJHKDAH) would techinally be like a 10 hour movie right? because every episode is an hour long and there'll be 10 episodes? like wow. i get what you mean though, abt the racism in the show etc, like looking forward to it but not like..... no i get what you mean i will not try and give another example lol but you make me wanna learn more languages like really badly (bc of what you said about the german to american translation) & if you end up watching hamilton PLEASE LMK ABT THAT TOO HAHAHA i love it so much, same thing with lion king lmaoo
speaking of germany, i was at lunch on saturday with my mom and her friend and we were talking about my schooling and like-- she planted this idea in my head lol like what if i just got my GED and went around the world (to england probably) to get a theatre experience??? and i think it sounds so cool but no where near practical lol, it's just..... the dream haha and i would then try and learn a language 😉
uh yes we absolutely should order basically a resturant meal at a cinema, how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?
also about cherry (which i still haven't watched yet lol) i got the timestamps from tumblr😌 i couldn't find them anywhere else, but i agree, i probably wouldn't even look twice at cherry if tom wasn't in it? like i liked tdatt a lot, but it's not a movie i would be itching to see ya know?
HAHAHAHA THE 24 HOUR NOTIFICATION- i think i have around 1030 hours on sims? but i've had it since 2019 lmao (reading the screenshots, yes u are 100% a genuis, i take screenshots too but on anon you can't upload them so i just read them and retype what i wrote lmao) i think the university experience in the game is fun, but time consuming and it's all work imo. idk why i do it so often tho 😭😭😭
and agreed!! when you're making good money in the game you have to find other ways to make it interesting. my cousins who play it just continously do "motherlode" and i'm like.... then what do you do in your game?? it just sounds boring to me... my current sims household, i had a famous comedian sim, her name was dylan, aND SORRY IM LAUGHING SO HARD WHILE WRITING THIS BC ITS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF THE UNI THING UNLESS IM JUST DUMB, she went to college for communications when i wanted her to be a comedian and when she graduated i realized that degree did nothing for the career 🥲 so yeah, i think i'm just dumb. but she had a kid in college, guy didn't stick around and she was pretty broke HA but then she got married to this (great) guy named steve, made good bank, had 5 more kids (two sets of twins and one more lol) but then she passed. uhm... yeah that's still an open wound . lol i'm kidding, but when you get rich like that, you have to find a way to make the game interesting and i chose a million kids.
(this was one giant paragraph until i broke it up uhh yeah) i seriously don't pay attention to the sims prices and just end up spending way too much money and not being able to finish the rest of the house😭 but then again, i'm so used to having sims live in apartments... if i end up building a house FIRST OF ALL it'll look like what you explained before lmao but i'll tell you if i actually end up building a house HAHA & planning out your sims game is so fun to me lol, did enisa and michael take in his daughter yet? i may be thinking too far ahead lol and i love that they fucked woohooed (i say woo woo lol) in celebration HAHA but when i was playing with this one couple i had them woo woo every night hoping the dude would have horrible pull out game and they would concieve, but one night they were too tired and i was like why? get back in there man. if i was in college and lived with my partner we would be fucking every night homie. be grateful. i have been talking a lot about sims, and like you said: enough 💀 i just love this game a lot 😭😭
SORRY LAST THING i think the sims romantic and sexual stuff is so nice bc its what i want?? LMAO IDK like the whole hot tub thing you're talking about- puh lease ITS JUST NICE TO SEE OKAY
i'm reading the german section over again and i said aloud "my german friend is so cool" lol (i was saying that to my brothers & i know they don't care LMAO) (& i'm glad the uni zoom call went well!!) so on a form, in german, it could possibily say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer because you would be a participant to an introductory event? i swear german sounds so cool 😌 but i love reading your german lessons!! it's really interesting, most of the time my brain can't comprehend it tho?? like that word makes sense to you, but i need a translation. like to be able to look at that and know what it says.... its just appealing and seems so cool lol i kinda wanna write something out in german but i feel that google translate will fail me. während googeln "google übersetzen" mein Computer war so verdammt langsam und es fühlte sich einfach wie etwas Gutes auf Deutsch zu sagen. ich bin nicht sicher, welches Wort ist "fucking", aber ich mag es lmao (did it fail me like i thought it would??)
LMAOOO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING UP JUSTIN BC WHILE AT THE RESTURANT THEY PLAYED A JUSTIN SONG AND I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT OF YOU AND THIS STORY😭 lol i was thinking it's depending on your age but not even that either... i really don't know.... but tom's fans are hollanders💀 i would consider myself one? he's the only person i'm really into like that (like a lot lol) so idk lmao (directioners 💔💔the pain is real)
LMAOOO (both of these paragraphs started off with “lmaooo” smh) "i like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death" PLEASE, i don't like pete's blonde hair... i just don't. i'm not sure if i wasn't watching the most recent snls but yea. my mom thinks he looks like trash, but i think he's okay? like he said staten island people just look like trash LMAO and I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN KING OF STATEN ISLAND GIRL I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT!! now i'm gonna make plans to watch it lmao, & yes agreed i find pete hot, don't ask why i really couldn't explain it to someone he's just .
my favorite songs from rex are from pony oh my goodness 🥺 anywho i'm gonna go eat cereal (i ended up eating bun and cheese instead) and listen to the Stormzy songs you recommended... aria. aria aria aria. i would like to thank you for introducing me to stormzy i- i don't have any words or any emojis to express HOW GOOD STORMZY IS. i hope he's popular in germany/the uk because i haven't heard of him but GURLLLL
one second - delicious i love it. it's really good. it’s not my favorite from the album, but its great.
superheroes - at first i played the non-explicit one (on accident) and wondered why the words weren't playing but i was reading them in the lyrics??? THIS ONE THOUGH??? IS THE BEST SONG I THINK I'VE EVER HEARD. i am so SO SO into black people empowering songs (like brown skin girl by beyonce) and this song???? PHEW I CRYYYYY ITS SO GOOD.... i was gonna quote some lyrics BUT THERS TOO MANY I LOVE, "i am young, black, beautiful, and brave" "black queen, you're immaculate, it's coming at the world, they ain't ready for your magic yet, and that was never your fault" THAT WAS NEVER YOUR FAULT- I ALMOST CRIED THIS SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL (i played it twice lol)
lessons is another beautiful one, like its slow and it feels intimate and nurturing and just OO chefs kiss, beautiful . like you can feel the apology and the regret... it’s so good
own it - OWN IT OWN IT OWN IT IS AMAZING!! swear you would catch me dancing to this song, this song is so fucking good i cannot comprehend like this one might be my favorite for real... "it's the way you wind up your waist, i'm so in awe, you never have to worry abt nothing, you know its yours, you know you own it" 🥲 i played it two or three times honestly
rachael's little brother - YES I DID LISTEN TO IT LMAO AND YES I LIKE IT, its a very complex song and it's very layered in terms of emotions i think and i really like that about it. i probably won't listen to it that often, but its really good. i would recommend this song to my "older brother" bc he would just absolutely love this
shut up - i was taking this song seriously (also very good) until i heard him say shu-T up LMAO, this one is good, i probably wouldn't listen to it 24/7 like rachael's little brother but honestly its still fire
before listening to blinded by your grace and vossi bop, i know you brought up the religion bit, i definitely don't mind that, especially because i'm Christian lol and i actually liked that he brought up God in some of his songs like idk i just like it🥰🥰
(i then went to bed after that lol but first thing in the morning i listened to superheroes and... that song is probably my favorite tbh, i was gonna write MORE quotes that i loved from it but, yeah no there's too many. if you want i'll tell you lmao but this is already so long i would just be quoting the whole friggin song)
VOSSI BOP IS A BOP (lol) I CANT EVEN LIE, i love a song that hypes up a dude's girl so the line- i love that my phone decided to fail to load the lyrics, lemme google it, okay the lyric "looking at my girl like what a goddess" i was like AYEEE its honestly just really good. and no one in america says "sauce" like "i've got the sauce" but now i do (thanks to love island and Nas from last season) and now stormzy so (also im gonna watch the music video for superheroes bc it looks great so 😛)
(because this is already so long i feel like i shouldn't finish the rest but . no i'm gonna do it)
now for blinded by your grace pt2 idk why i’m nervous lmaoo PAUSE I'M NOT EVEN DONE WITH THE SONG GIRL THIS SONG IS *chefs kiss* no words, speechless PHEW y'all gon make me start jumping around. why did i not know about stormzy before, he is amazing i- ok yeah i finished the song, all i have to say is that Stormzy is immaclucate. period. i am literally sending his music to all my friends he is..... amazing
you want my song recommendations 🥺🥺 hmm uh okay lol i listen to a lot of old music, whitney houston, marvin gaye, queen, celine dion, i love "more than words" by extreme uhmm okay, but for actual music i listen to on the daily? (this is a lot of different music like.... they do not go together lmao so be prepared) a song about being sad by rex orange county, betty by taylor swift and lover by taylor swift and... most of that album lol, treasure by bruno mars lmao, OOOO and versace on the floor by bruno as well, lazybaby by dove cameron, creep by tlc has been on repeat lol, deja vu by olivia rodrigo (i saw what you said about drivers license and AGREED LMAO but i like deja vu a lot more haha) and two albums that i listen to in general, rare by selena gomez and ungodly hour by chloe x halle 🥰 you don't have to listen to all of them or any of them lol but that's a sense of what i'm into :) so basically everything haha, i'm into literally every single kind of music really so i wasn't too surprised that i enjoyed stormzy :’)
HAHASBSJHAHA your h20 story cracked me up,, like "wow these actors are so dedicated, learning german just for us" 😭 the beauty of overdubbing
once again, math and maths, in my mind maths makes sense because its mathmatics, but saying maths doesn't feel right to me lol, like if i said maths i feel like everyone would look at me like ??? and yea i was taught it as math so its just more natural for me. but yes math/maths is disgusting, easily one of my least favorite subjects so .
mkay. i- the first time i read this i could not contain my laughter when you said the only pollen you know is sex pollen LMAOKOOSHBABJFAJF STOPPP I'M EVEN LAUGHING WRITING THIS,, anyway. wow! that's interesting, my dad (<<< mostly anything else) gets migraines from the sun and the heat and stuff, yesterday (sunday, i was outside for like hours watching my brothers play football, the american kind lol) i was in the sun for like ever and i got a headache😔
summer clothes🥲 i need to go shopping fr fr. for my birthday my mom and dad got me a giftcard like dedicated to a shopping spree and we've yet to go so..... i should bring it up to my mom lol, but!! i went bra shopping (ended up returning literally all of them cuz they honestly didn't work for day to day work? its a long story) and if i could i would walk around in this new "summer bra" i got, i would. it's so fricking cute and its really light fabric (which isn't perfect for my nipples but still) so i don't get hot in it, but that bra and some shorts would be perfect. its the closest thing to being naked so
IS THE BIRD STILL BOTHERING U ARIA, TELL ME NOW ISTG, i laughed really hard that the bird isn't stupid and is really trying to torture you LMAOO like i was rolling, it wants you to suffer, badly
when you said "mensus" it was still close to mens!!! latin speaking queen 😌😌
okay STORYTIME i was reading back your response and started (fake) crying bc i love you lol and my youngest brother (daniel) gon say "oh man, catherine's crying about something we don't care about, again" I--- i swear when i tell you about them they sound awful, but they aren't that bad, just the stuff i say about them is sounds really mean LMAO
but the thing you said about being kind, same, what i always say is: don't be the person that makes people say "i hate people" ya know? like there's no reason to be a jerk or anything.... but its true 🥺🥺🥺🥺 you are really kind and every time i talk to you i would like to personally fly to germany and give you a hug 💖💕💞💗💓💝💖💘
& i'm gonna show my stretch marks some love bc of you 🥺😭 i really hate how men have basically everyone conditioned that you can't love your own body </3 fuck them, y'all beautiful :')
also thanks for what you said :')) you literally are the kindest, sweetest person i think i've ever spoken to and i love you 🥰🥺🥲💓💗
READING YOUR TAGS HAHAHHAHA the spelling errors makes everything so much funnier. once again, i like your german lessons & yea!! i'm gonna play sims after writing this hahah
#catherine's tags are back #i don't think i've told you my name before?? #anyway it's catherine🥰🥰🥰 #i'm typing this on my computer (without emojis) and if i didn't edit this you would be reading shit shite like #heartface and pout and cry LMAO #yeah abt the tattoos #some stuff with my parents i'm like deal with it??? lol #my mom tells me "if there's something you enjoy or you like but i don't have the same opinion on it... why would my (my mom's) opinion matter? #and i love that #like i'm not gonna go and do whatever i want #but if my mom doesn't like that i swear (which isn't true just an example) #its like okay.... #but whatever #and your tattoo ideas sound really cute!! #and yeah @ your parents, i mean you aren't getting something wild #and the tattoo album>>> #i'm gonna look up ariana's butterfly tattoos just so i know what you mean lol #but i'm guessing you don't want something so incredibily simple, but not super like over the top? #correct me if i'm wrong lol #LMAO the tags were in order don't worry ! #and yeah lol ily2 <33 #and once again, again, sorry for this post JSHJS ITS A MESS AND LONG AS HELL #and you don't need to go in order of my post its literally longer than your german compound words #u're fine #also !!! while writing this the birds were chirping outside and i was like 😳 #and one of your fics (i’ve read all of them, i don’t remember lol) that valentine’s day one where y/n had lingerie on (the pancake one lol) #inspired me to buy lingerie #like when i look back on me “growing up” #that fic & basically you lol really helped with that #that made no sense and i don’t know how to make it make sense... but... yeah. like ily
hiiiiiiiiiii <3333
Dear catherine, 😌
(you have said your name before, but it wasn‘t like an introduction or anything i think you were talking about .... was it possibly the incident at the cinema??? And you said something like ‘calm down catherine‘ like you were telling yourself to calm down idkd dkdkkdkd anyway i didn‘t mention it cause i wasn‘t sure if it was an accident or not dkdjd but now i know 😌❤️ Catherine is such a cute and lovely name btw omg and so are your brothers‘s names 🥰
Sorry that I‘m answering this so late, it‘s been an emotional rollercoaster for me since last week but i‘ll get to that in a second lol
Sksklssk girl i haven‘t played sims in like 2 weeks now ekejdkdlldld ok that‘s not that long at all actually but i keep wanting to play but then i end up not playing for whatever reason, so no news about my sims game 😔 but i love the names Liam and Peter and for twins!!! That sounds really nice actually
okay i‘m trying to answer your ask in chronological answer even though i wanted to wait for the depressing stuff and write it at the end or something OKAY so. i thought that i‘d feel so good when i start uni and that i‘ll like... have a purpose in life again and just be happy (cause in the last year i didn‘t do much and i was depressed like half of the time lol).... anyway i kind of feel even worse now? 😭 i think it‘s because in my brain it‘s like: university!!! that means your life will change and it‘ll all be so exciting. and don‘t get me wrong it is exciting butttt..... idk the online thing is so weird cause you‘re not meeting any new people (i‘m introverted anyway but still lol) and it doesn‘t feel like you‘re listening to/talking to actual people cause it feels the same as just watching a video?
also i thought i‘d be busy again but i only have one lecture (90mins) a day and theres one day where i dont have any lectures at all and just one day where i have 3 hours but.... idk i mean i shouldn‘t complain about having so much free time but i just don‘t know what to do all day and in a pandemic there really is nothing to do but i also can‘t relax bc it‘s like during the week and i know i have uni the next day and .... yeah.
There‘s also this one assignment i had to do that took me AT LEAST SIX HOURS AND IM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING????? so that was the only thing i‘ve been doing besides “going to“ lectures. for this one course we have to read two (really really long) texts (like it literally took me 3 hours to read them) and we‘re supposed to post it on this website that all the professors in our uni use. So after 5 days of anxiety (✌🏼) i posted mine this morning bc last night i realised that i didn‘t even know why i was having anxiety so i just posted mine today. The deadline is tomorrow at 12 and no one except me has posted theirs yet........ so i have anxiety again 🥰 cause idk if i‘m the only one who did it or if i even did it correctly
Edit while i‘m rereading this: my anxiety about uni is a lot better and i‘m not as d*pressed anymore maybe it was just hormones? idk but i‘m better so that‘s good
(I started writing this like 5 hours ago and then i randomly completely forgot lol)
I‘m in a better mood now though so let‘s move on from that (oh wait also, i think i‘m gonna see if i can find a psychiatrist bc with my anxiety symptoms (long story) i need to go to a psychiatrist, and so far i‘ve only gone to like psycholgists and it didn‘t help but i think that‘s just bc i was meant to go to a psychiatrist and not a psychologist so dldjdjsj
n e ways but yes you‘re not alone, ily, things will get better and yes i love you (i‘m not good at this type of thing🥲 but i‘d hug you right now if i could <3)
Yess i think the time difference between est and me is 6hours but gmt is uk time i believe? i think mine is called.... cet? For central european time? I could be completely wrong though lmao
Oof i completely forgot about hollywood, i remember when laura kept posting about it on instagram but i never actually watched it and i definitely won‘t now lmaodkdksjsn
Okay my driving lesson LEBDJDKDK I DID NOT HOOK UP WITH ANYONE AKSJSKSMMLM especially not my 40 or 50 year old driving instructor lol i like her but NOT LIKE THAT, the lesson was really really really good actually and i think i‘ll have my driving test soon, but i don‘t even remember why the anon would have thought that??? Oh wait now i remember okay KEKSKDLDL so during the lesson my instructor was like do you mind if i turn on some music? AND THIS WOMAN TURNED ON ONE DIRECTION I LOVE HER so i made a post about it and i said something about the song up all night and i guess i phrased it in a .... idk in a dumb way 💀 so the anon made a joke that i stayed up with my driving instructor all night and NO. No.
Wait did i read that right? YOU WERE ARIEL ON STAGE? SIALDBDJDKSLMSBDKDMDMDKDJSLSMDJFJJEDMBFEKLEFBJDLDVSIDLESKSKWKDKDJDOWNYUEKWNDUWLNSUFLWVSUDLEHDOENSIDBEISBEHENJELBSIEMWUDNRIW KB WOBE JO ON SBEUU HIII S HWS LV W ICH US KB okay this keyboard smash is getting out of hand but uh please do elaborate on that 💘😌???? Like you can‘t just drop that information and not say more??? I forgot if you‘re in like your school‘s drama group (is that a thing? lol idk anything about acting) or in an independent group? Either way - ARIEL that is so fucking cool
Your brothers loooooool, no i get it though obviously you love them and stuff but esp at their age children are so annoying so good luck with them 😭😭😭lmao
Yeah “anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌“ yeah just me and my parents who constantly fight 🥰 lmao no i like being an only child, like i cannot imagine having siblings but i feel like if i had siblings i would be saying that i can‘t imagine being an only child so? but i do think it‘s quite different like i‘m trying to imagine having siblings and WHAT that‘s just so different omg i‘ve never really thought about it like properly ???
I saw a tik tok the other day that was like “sometimes i forget that my siblings have a life of their own. like i see them as side characters in my life“ and even though i can‘t relate obviously i felt that. lol, like i can really imagine how it feels idk what i‘m talking about like shut the fuck up, daria
(also my actual name is daria not aria but i dont like it, and also i wanted to be more anonymous on tumblr so now i‘m aria lmao. pls don‘t mention it though cause no one knows except for you and mel (peterbenjiparker) dkdkdkdnkdnd. but i‘m starting to identify with the name cause everyone keeps calling me that looool😭😭😭 (but i like the name, more than daria anyway? well it also depends on the accent, cause the way germans say daria is okay. the was Americans say it is also okay, but some of my family in England are from the north of england and i don‘t like how they say my name 💀 no offence to them(?) but yeah pls don‘t mention the name in your ask cause the chance of people seeing it is higher then (or if you want to say something about it just send a separate ask and i just won‘t post it (IDK what you‘d want to say about my name but yeah just in case slsldlldmsndnsns)
I‘m loving falcon and winter soldier so much but when i was watching an episode the week before last week (?) my laptop broke😭😭😭😭 during the scene where the dora milaje came at the end my laptop just shut down? And it had these lines all over the screen and i had to bring it to the shop where i bought it and they said it‘ll take 6-8 weeks to repair 💔💔💔 but at least it‘ll be for free, cause if i brought it back to apple it would cost like 400€ (i think that‘s nearly 500$) so yeah. but it sucks cause now i‘m “going to uni“ on a really old rusty laptop and on my phone which kinda sucks. oh yeah and also i can‘t watch anything on there 😭 i definitely want to watch wandavision but it‘ll have to wait🤧
Yessss you should def get your GED! I googled and I‘m still not entirely sure what it is dldks but from how you described it- YES!!!!!!
Idk if you know this? Like no idea if I‘ve told you this already (hmmm wait i feel like we talked about it actually?) anyway i was originally gonna go study in England, but for loads of reasons I ended up staying in Germany and I‘m def happy with my decision, but I definitely want to go to England sometime even if it‘s just for six months or maybe for my masters or something? And (obviously everyone is different) but i think everyone should go abroad and live in a different country once in their life, no matter if it‘s for school or what, and even if it‘s just for a few weeks. But i think that‘s something that you‘d never ever forget! And combining that with your acting/theatre??? You really would be living the dream 💘💘😌
how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?— sounds good see you soon 🥰🥰🥰
i used to be one of the people who‘d just do motherlode motherlode motherlode and just... what did i do? Why did i do that??? But not anymore lol. Like I said i haven‘t played sims in a few weeks but i‘ve been watching a few legacy challenge let‘s plays and usually i play with the aging off. So my sims just don‘t age 💀 but i could (should) turn aging on so that it stays exciting and i have limited time and everything. and once i get bored with my current sims i can just make them have kids and continue playing as their children when they get older- like recently i remembered that i haven‘t played the acting career in ages? and i haven‘t had a shop in ages? and i think you can even become a vet right??? like those are definitely some things i want to do in the next weeks!!! Also yes sksksjs i have a few hundred hours on sims as well (if not thousands 😭) it was just that one household that i‘d been playing with for 24hrs
AND GIRL SSKSKJD THE UNIVERSITY THING HAPPENED TO ME TOO, it was a while ago so i don‘t remember what degree and what job it was about but i made my sim study something for aaaaaages so she‘d get a better job from the beginning (you know what i mean like get in at a higher level)...... and i apparently studied the wrong thing cause i didn‘t get any benefits from studying and still had to start at level 1 and shit 🥴🥲
Oh also (this was like 2 weeks ago) Enisa and Michael did take in Michael‘s daughter and i think Enisa currently even has a higher/better relationship with the daughter than Michael but um💀💀💀 also i was hoping (since michael and enisa married (in their back yard i think lol) that the daughter (i forget what her name is😭) would have enisa as her step mom? Like you know how you can see the relationship and it says daughter or son or sister.. and i was hoping that it would say step mom but it doesn‘t say anything 🥲 but in my mind (and if the sims had proper family relations) she is her step mom😌 also Leo is a teenager now???? I mean I aged him up lol dkdk he was being too annoying as a toddler but i don‘t like children so i aged him up twice in one day and now he‘s a teen, but that means he can look after his half sister when she becomes a toddler which is good (the game recognises them as siblings tho even if they‘re just half siblings? why can‘t they have step family members in the sims🥲) okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼
I‘ve been a bit sick these past few days and now i‘m getting a headache so i have to finish this response tomorrow 😭😭😭 </3
.
It‘s not tomorrow, it‘s 3 hours later but i‘m better lol
oooff when sims are ungrateful and won‘t woo woo (lol i like that) cause they‘re too tired like?? Be grateful that you‘re not living with your parents anymore 🙄 no okay dkdkdkdl idk if you play with mods (i don‘t) but i know there is a mod (or it‘s part of a mod idk maybe wicked whims?) where you can adjust the percentage of how risky a normal woo woo is, like you still click woo woo (3dksksks okay i‘ll say woohoo again— wait is that what’s it called? 😭) but there‘s like a 25% chance that your sim can still get pregnant just like in real life there‘s always a chance of getting pregnant even if you‘re using protection (just not 25% lmao) but yeah i personally don‘t play with mods sksk and you can always just click try for baby but it would be cool if you could add stuff like risky woohoo to the game without mods (i have no idea how to download mods and i play sims on a really really old laptop and sims is literally tje only thing that works on it anyway so—) i repeat my words from earlier: okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼
okay i‘m so sorry i‘m gonna watch fast & furious 1 now cause i need to watch f&f 1-5 until the 30th of april cause they‘re only on netflix til then (i mean i could watch them somewhere else but the quality is never as good) so i will finish this tomorrow after all😭
it is now 1 am, i finished the film, can feel a new obsession coming up again (i always have these f&f obsessions for six months before and after a new film comes out)
THE GOOGLE TRANSLATE wkekdjdj tbh it sounds like someone is speaking with some kind of foreign accent i guess that‘s probably because it just is a direct translation and so anyway slsjsj i don‘t know if you asked me what the word fucking is in german? like idk cause the translation is a bit weird but in case you asked lol sidjsjs theres not really a good translation like we just say fuck for fuck lmao, i don‘t know if you typed in fucking in google translate and it came out as verdammt? cause that means damn (or damned sksjjs) ummm yeah idek if/what you asked so imma move on🤧
I‘m not gonna comment on what you said about every stormzy song cause you already said all the important things but SKSKSJSJSKNSNDBDUDOENWBSLSKKHSULSLSKSBSJSKSK I WAS SMILING SO HARD WHEN I READ YOUR RESPONSE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH finally i know someone who loves him as much as i do 💘💘💘 also since you brought it up, i‘m pretty sure he‘s considered the most successful UK rapper or if not then at least top 3 so he‘s defffffffffinitely big in the uk, in germany more and more people are listening to uk rap too but not as much stormzy cause theyre dumb apparently 🙄 but anywY i‘m sooooo sooo happy that you like him. i think hith came out end of 2019 (i could be wrong but i think it came out on the 13th of december so (in a european way) you‘d write the date: 13.12 and obviously i don‘t KNOW this but i can definitely imagine that he chose that date because ACAB and yes, Michael. Yes. But he hasn‘t made too much music since then so i hope he‘s working on some new stuff 🤞🏼
Also i ordered the stormzy poster😌 also a nicki minaj one bc i decided i‘m gonna have one wall with red-ish posters (i already have two kinda red ones) and one with blue/green-ish posters (already have two) and i can add stormzy to the blue one and nicki to the red one, but i think that‘s it cause if my walls are tooo full it could look cluttered? I‘m not sure how that type of thing works lmao but my room is generally untidy so i don‘t want the walls to look unorganised too so i think that‘s it for now
I really want to finish this now but my brain is getting kinda slow and i need to sleep soon so this will have to wait till later after all 🥺🥴 (not that it makes and difference to you bc you‘ll see this whenever i post it buttttt i wanted you to know that i want to talk to you again but with my slow brain i‘m just taking too long to do it in one day😭😭😭 and i‘m so busy tomorrow hmm but i‘m sure i‘ll have 30 minutes to finish this then <3)
Okay wait I‘m so dumb I didn‘t realise I‘d nearly answered everything i could have posted this yesterday 😭😭
Oooohh that summer bra sounds so nice like if i was confident enough i literally would just wear a top that resembles a bra (or really is a bra lol) cause my tiddies always be looking amazing i‘m just insecure about my stomach sometimes 🙄🙄🙄 but recently i‘ve been loving myself more and more tbh 😌
also i hope you can go shopping for some nice clothes soon ✨😌
I‘ll be honest I haven‘t listened to your song recs YET but only because i wanna take my time with them and i‘ve been so busy and slso AJ tracey‘s album came out last week and I haven‘t listened to that one yet either so ekdkdj (he‘s also a uk rapper like quite popular and successful as well, but i feel like i‘m not gonna like his album cause whenever i‘m looking forward to an album it ends up being really bad and the albums where you weren‘t expecting it turn out to be bangers.... so yeah but i‘ll let you know when i listen to your songs!!!! :)
Omg i keep having to scroll up all the way to see the next thing you said so sorry if I completely miss some of the things you said😭😭
So when you sent this the bird was still bothering me oh my FUCK DKDLDMMDMDMD but now i‘ve been going to bed at like 1-2am so the bird is probably still asleep lool
Okay and for the rest of your ask my response is: 💘💖❣️💚❣️💛❣️💛💕💞❤️💓💟💞💕💕💖💘💝💟💟🧡❤️🧡💞💛💚💓💚💚💚❣️🧡💖💘🧡💝🧡💕💘🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥺🥺🥺🥰🥺🥺💘💘💘💘💘 (okay that looked cuter in my head i don‘t really like the green hearts dldkkdksndnd)
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The Boy on the Blue Moon Dreams of Sun
prompt: dan is a theatre kid who hasn't had his first kiss but has to kiss someone for a show. he doesn't want his first kiss to be wasted so he tries to get it done properly beforehand & he meets phil and w/e you can take it from there!!!
““Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.
Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what we’ve spent the past ten minutes doing?”
“Yeah,” Phil says. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”
-
GUESS WHICH BITCH IS BACK AND WRITING AGAIN (spoiler: IT ME)
I thought it was about time I branched out a bit and tried my hand at a theatre au. This was so much fun to write (albeit kinda hard as despite being a literature student my Romeo and Juliet knowledge is a little subpar lmao lets hope I at least sort of did it justice tho) and deffo has more than ur daily dosage of angsty teenage actor!dan so look forward to that. thank u to the lovely anon who prompted me with this! (also yes i’m still relying on ptv lyrics for my song titles after 3 years sh)
Also I’m sorry if the writing in this is a lil inconsistent. I started this fic literally over a year ago and abandoned it for ages before finding and continuing it again. The first half was written in literally like mid 2016 (from which point my writing has obv improved a lot) and since then I’ve been working on it sporadically so if it feels like halfway through my writing style suddenly changes then that’s why OOPS soz
This was not supposed to be this long im so sorry wtf 13k ??? fuks sake
It’s the first time Dan’s ever been pissed off with being cast a lead role in a play.
He usually loves it – he loves the attention, loves having a ripped up script full of highlighted lines and more soliloquies to memorise than he can even keep count of. He shines under the warmth of the spotlight, lapping up the attention like a hungry cat, and when the applause ripples throughout the audience at the end, he can’t get enough of the sound.
It’s just- well, there’s one problem with his part.
It’s nothing he has against Romeo, not necessarily, and the piece itself is okay – Dan’s copy of the popular play in question is already crumpled with annotations; small post-it notes spilling fluorescent colours out of every crease (studying English literature alongside Drama always comes in handy as far as Shakespeare is concerned) and Romeo has a decent amount to say.
The problem is, he’s going to have to kiss someone.
Dan Howell, the one who snaps up almost every single role he auditions for, the one with a clay personality that can be moulded perfectly into whatever role he’s going for next, the one who lives the stage and breathes the lights, who was once described as ‘the heart and soul’ of the local theatre, is going to have to kiss someone.
And believe it or not, Dan Howell, the same seventeen-year-old who breezes through auditions leaving a flutter of girls at his feet, the same guy who was once rumoured to have made out with three people at the Les Miserables afterparty and the same guy who once had to reject two people in one night, has never actually kissed anyone before. Not properly, anyway.
Granted, he’s been extremely close to it a fair few times – having been in and out of auditions and callbacks since the age of about five, he’s come into contact with a considerable number of roles that involve love interests; only last month was his character Eddie supposed to kiss the love of his life, Alexandra, in the back of a car at a drive-in cinema. It was a play that one of the drama students had written; set in the fifties, all red-and-white ice cream parlours and hand jives and high school dances and Marilyn Monroe posters. Dan had enjoyed playing his part, and not just because it was the only opportunity he’d get to sport a black leather jacket (though he did decide leather looked really quite hot on him after that play. It’s almost a shame he’s vegetarian), but because the minor obstacle could, like every single other time, be solved with a stage kiss. Just a few seconds of his back to the audience, being agonisingly close to someone else’s lips, before pulling away and raking though his mind to try and remember the next line. It’s always worked for him, every time.
Except for this. Because the director, a Lucy Howcroft with a loud voice and a bossy personality, has only gone and booked them the Round at the Old Vic theatre. Which would be fine, of course it would; it’s one of the most popular theatres in the city and the theatre group is going to get a huge reputation for this afterwards, but it’s not so handy as far as stage-kissing is concerned. When you’re being stared at from every angle three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around, there’s no way you can get away with only partially leaning in to kiss.
“Are you sure there’s no way around this?” Dan had insisted when he’d stolen a moment after rehearsal to talk to Lucy. She’d been clearing her desk – a papery mountain range, and had looked a bit too busy to talk, but Dan would rather discuss this with her one-on-one instead of having to voice his feelings with twenty other pairs of eyes staring at him.
“For someone who just bagged yet another lead role, I would’ve thought you’d be a little more gracious than this,” Lucy had muttered, snapping a file shut. “I didn’t have to cast you, y’know.”
“It’s not- I am grateful, you know I am, it’s just-“
“Is there a problem with the casting of Juliet?” she’d offered, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” Dan had insisted. “She’s fine.”
“The costume, then?” she’d tried. “I’m not a bloody mind reader, Dan. Help me out a bit here.”
Dan had shut his eyes and taken a deep breath, trying to comb the tangle of words in his head into some kind of coherent sentence.
“I mean- I just- the venue,” he gulped. “It’s- there’s a bit of a problem.”
“What about it?” Lucy sighed, irritation tracing the edges of her tone. “I fail to see what’s so problematic about getting a slot at the Old Vic of all places, but if you have any objections, then do enlighten me.”
“It’s not that, it’s just-“ Dan gulped, not really too sure how far he’s going to get with this. The bitterness already in her tone didn’t sound at all promising. “I don’t know. Do we have to perform in the round?”
“Christ, is performing in one of the most popular theatres in London that much of a chore?”
“No, no, I just-“ he gulped, trying to work out how the hell he’d word this without sounding like a twat. “I’ve never really… you know. Performed in an environment like that before.”
“You’ve been acting for twelve years,” she said bluntly. “I’m sure you have enough experience to be able to deal with a round stage instead of a rectangular one.”
“But- like, isn’t the round meant for- like… you know, Greek plays and shit?”
“It used to be,” she’d said, taking care to apply extra emphasis on the past tense. “Since when were you so hung up on the traditions of theatre, anyway?” she’d added after a pause. “Only last week were you totally in favour of the idea of having a rap battle in the middle of Othello.”
Dan had frowned, because that wasn’t really fair – sure, a rap battle isn’t exactly a common feature of Shakespeare’s plays, but no one could deny that Louis, playing Iago, was pretty good at freestyling whenever a mic was thrown in his direction. Despite not adhering to the conventions of traditional English theatre, it certainly made the play more entertaining.
“It’s just gonna be- you know. It’s gonna take some getting used to,” he’d mumbled instead.
“You have three months to get used to it,” she’d pointed out. “I’m sure you and the rest of the cast will have familiarised yourself with it by the time the production comes around.”
“But- the round is traditionally meant for-“
“Look, if you’re going to get so archaic about it, I can always build a time machine, book the open-air Globe for, like, sometime four-hundred years ago, and you can spend the next three days picking rotten tomatoes out of your hair,” she said. “Does that sound better?”
“They only did that to bad actors,” Dan had pointed out. Lucy rolled her eyes.
“And you know what makes a good actor, Dan?” she retorted. “Flexibility. The willingness to branch out of your comfort zone.”
Dan had sighed. He’s not going to get anywhere with this, is he?
“You know what?” he’d finally shaken his head, defeated. “Forget it.”
She watched him turn on his heel with a raised eyebrow. “See you Tuesday, then? First read-through of the script is at eleven in the morning.”
“See you then,” Dan muttered, not even bothering to turn around.
He let the door slam behind him.
It’s not that Dan doesn’t want to kiss anyone – (quite the contrary, really. He loves the idea of it, loves the thought of someone’s lips pressed up against his, the world slowing down around them and his heart feeling like fire. He’s always tried to incorporate that feeling into his acting, letting his passion leak into every character he’s cast, but when the stage lights are off and the curtain is down, his attraction to his colleagues ends there) – it’s just- well, he doesn’t really think he’s found the right person to share the real experience with, yet. His fellow actors and actresses aren’t unattractive by any means, but he doesn’t look at any of them and find himself struck by the desire to taste their lips and whisper incoherence into their ears like Eddie was supposed to do in the back of that car.
Seventeen, and still hasn’t had his first kiss. Still doesn’t want to waste it, at that.
Pathetic.
-
Technicians don’t get paid enough, Phil thinks.
He’s spent the day holed up in the trap room, devouring what was left in the back of the fridge (including a half-opened pack of Doritos that tasted like they expired about five years ago) and puzzling over this fucking broken light board that everyone had very kindly left him to take care of. It had already taken him over half an hour to get one of the chunky old Mac laptops up and running again (seriously, who in this day and age is still using an iBook?) and even then it only really half-functions – a handful of keys are missing, the trackpad only ever seems to work when it feels like it, and there’s a huge hairline crack right across the screen. Phil’s spent so long cursing through gritted teeth and smacking the table in frustration every time the damn thing freezes that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he ended up contributing to those cracks by the end of the day. Maybe that’s how they ended up there in the first place.
“You alright?” the door suddenly opens and a voice – Nick, Phil presumes, breaks the aching silence that the room has been blanketed in for the past four hours. Finally, Phil sighs, feeling a pinch of anger melt away. Human company.
“Been better,” Phil mumbles, popping a couple of grapes into his mouth. Been better, he scoffs to himself. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t been worse.
“Chuck me a coke, will you?” he pulls up a chair and puts his feet on it, perching on the edge of the table. Phil heaves out a sigh – that involves getting up – but musters up enough energy to lean over and yank the fridge open. He tosses him a can, and Nick catches it expertly.
“Nice of you to show up,” Phil rolls his eyes. “Only four hours late this time. That’s an hour and a half off your personal best.”
“They said they didn’t need me here ‘till three,” he protests, popping the can open and taking a few gulps. “They said you had it all under control.”
His sentence is punctuated by a burp. Phil grimaces.
“Under control,” Phil snorts. That’ll be the fucking day.
“What did they leave you here to do?” he frowns.
“Only fix this entire fucking thing,” Phil nods over to the stupid light board. God, he’s sick of the sight of it. “Beats me what’s wrong with it. I’ve only just managed to get this dinosaur up and running,” he gestures to the corpse of a laptop in front of him, “let alone look at that.”
“Fuck me, man,” Nick sighs out a heavy breath. “If I knew, I could have come in earlier to help you out a bit. You should have texted me.”
“It’s fine,” Phil sighs even though- well, it’s not, really. There’s only so many hours of broken technology and out-of-date food one can take. “It’s not your fault,” he adds truthfully.
“They’re twats sometimes, aren’t they?” Nick lowers his voice, despite the fact they’re literally underground here, beneath the earshot of everyone.
“I’ll say,” Phil widens his eyes, trying to click something and- nope, it’s fucking frozen again. “For fuck’s sake. They’re all bloody loaded, too. You would have thought with the money they have, they could fork out a little for equipment that at least half-functions, right?”
“Yup,” Nick sighs. “Guess bookings for overpriced fancy-ass theatres are higher up on their agenda, though.”
Phil can’t argue with that. Apparently they’re going to have to wire up something in the Old Vic, of all places, next week. Phil dreads to think how much hiring that place out for even a few hours is going to cost, let alone booking it for three nights.
Probably more than enough to buy a better fucking laptop.
-
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but-“
“No- no,” Lucy holds up her hand. “Come on, Dan. More emotion than that. You’re telling the love of your life that even the moon is envious of her beauty. At least pretend to put some passion into it.”
Dan rolls his eyes – only the fourth time he’s had to repeat this fucking soliloquy in the past fifteen minutes. He’s pretty sure he’s only one “no, no, it’s too (insert adjective here)” away from giving up with this whole thing altogether. He’d rather have played Benvolio anyway.
“Come on,” Lucy continues. “We’ll take it from Be not her maid…”
Dan shuts his eyes, scrapes up the remaining traces of his sanity, and takes another breath.
“Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.
Oh, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—
I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they retur-“
“No, no-“ she interrupts him again and for fuck’s sake, at this rate, Dan won’t even need to spend any time in his bedroom going over his lines. He’s pretty sure he’s memorised half of the monologues already just from recapping in rehearsals alone.
“Come on, really feel it,” she pleads. “You can’t say something as romantic as that with a face like yours – you’re literally saying that two stars in the sky have gone away and they’re asking Juliet’s eyes to shine in their place until they return.”
Dan balls his fists, ready to snap back that yes, he’s fully fucking aware of what’s going on in the play thank you very much, in case she hadn’t forgotten he did actually study it for three separate exams and subsequent exposure to the text in question has made him rather familiar with the occurrences currently taking place, but they’re all interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Lucy huffs, mildly irritated.
The door knob jitters, then twists.
“Hiya,” a black-haired boy nods tiredly, pushing through the crack in the door. Dan immediately recognises him – one of the tech guys, he thinks, but he isn’t entirely certain. He’s never really spoken to any of the crew before; they tend to keep well out of the limelight (they’d rather control it instead).
“Everything okay?” Lucy asks, before turning to Dan and Alexandra (his Juliet). “You two, take five. Be ready to take it from the top.”
They both relax and take a seat on one of the upturned wooden boxes. It isn’t until Dan takes the weight off of his legs he realises how much they’ve been aching – fuck, he really needs to get back to that gym.
“Any luck?” she says to Mr. Black-Hair. He’s holding a laptop that looks as if it’s seen better years, never mind days, and a long cord of wire that snakes around his fist.
“Nothing at all,” he sighs, flicking a strand of his fringe out of his eyes. His hair looks as if it hasn’t seen a hairbrush for days, but there’s something about the way it sits shaggily on his head that kind-of suits him (Dan wishes he could pull off messy hair – he only attempted ditching the straighteners once and spent the rest of the day wondering if any birds had mistaken his head for a nest).
He doesn’t realise he’s been staring until he catches the tail end of Alexandra’s sentence and realises he hasn’t actually been listening for the past minute or so.
“What was that, sorry?”
“I asked you how you were finding Romeo so far,” she repeats.
“Hm? Oh yeah, yeah- he’s fine,” Dan says, not taking his eyes off of Mr. Black-Hair. He’s lost the thread of their conversation (he’s no lip reader) but by the looks of it, it seems as if there’s a problem with one of the laptops.
“Are you sure?” Alexandra frowns. Dan looks at her, but his glance is soon pulled back to the technician.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She shrugs. “You don’t really- I don’t know, you just don’t seem to be… you know. That into it, y’know?”
“Wait-“ Dan shakes his head, trying to focus on their conversation instead of the one a few metres away from. “Hang on- what? What makes you say that?”
She raises her eyebrows, as if to say ‘really?’. Dan’s expression remains carefully blank.
“Come on, Dan. We wouldn’t have had to repeat this stupid scene like, five times if you were actually into it. I’ve seen you do way better than this.”
“Oh, not you as well,” Dan groans, deflating. He’s pretty sure that exact sentence had fallen from Lucy’s lips not so long ago. He’s sick of hearing it, sick of having to sit and listen to people tell him that he ‘can do way better’ and ask ‘is everything all right, Dan? Nothing bothering you, is there?’ because he’s just ‘not himself’ at the moment.
That’s the most ridiculous one, he thinks, because for Christ’s sake, he’s an actor. He’s never himself.
“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Alexandra says, backtracking. “You know I don’t. I just- I think I overheard Lucy say you had a problem with something or other last week?”
“Did you,” Dan mumbles, unable to keep the bitter sarcasm out of his town. Alexandra remains unfazed.
“What was that about, though?” she remains unfazed. “Nothing to do with the casting, is it?”
“You really think it’s to do with the casting?” Dan stares at her in disbelief, before scoffing. “Yeah, like, I’m gutted to have bagged the lead role alongside you at one of the best theatres in the country. How am I going to cope?”
Not entirely truthful, but not a complete lie either.
“Just making sure,” a grin tugs at her lips, and she flicks a curl of red hair behind her shoulders. “I don’t have much of a problem with it myself, to be honest.”
“That’s reassuring,” Dan smirks sarcastically, but his tone is fairly benign. There’s certainly no denying she’s fucking gorgeous and it’s really no wonder she’s Juliet – she has hair the colour of a sunset falling down her back in ruby curls, emerald eyes framed by a curl of long eyelashes and cherry red lips that stretch into a wide smile whenever Dan cracks a joke, giving way to a small dimple on the side of her cheek. Her skin is pale, the colour of moonlight, almost, and he idly thinks, just for a fleeting second, that the moon probably would be jealous of her. She’s beautiful.
“Certainly don’t have a problem with getting to snog you in front of a thousand people, I must be honest,” she adds, and Dan’s stomach drops and his grin vanishes. Shit.
He wrings out a laugh, internally wincing at how false it sounds. “Yeah, I- um-“
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” someone mutters a few footsteps away from them. He snaps his head up, and Lucy plus Mr. Black-Hair are hunched over the desk, clearly getting nowhere with the absolute disaster they call an iBook.
“Wait- what’s the problem?” Dan suddenly gets up. He feels a little bad for leaving Alexandra so abruptly so he throws her a little apologetic ‘be right back’ glance, but he can’t help it – he might actually be able to help, here.
He shoves down the other voice in the back of his mind, the ‘or rather you’re just grabbing at any opportunity to avoid any potential conversation about the kiss you fucking wimp’
“It’s okay, Dan, sit back down. I’ll be with you both in a second,” Lucy calls over her shoulder.
“No, really,” Dan insists. “I know a thing or two about Macs. I have one myself, and-“ he catches Lucy drawing in a breath, ready to protest, and he regrets the spill of words almost as soon as they come out – fuck, why can’t he just keep his mouth shut? – but Mr. Black-Hair turns around, an eyebrow quirked upwards.
“Really?” his stare is the colour of ice, the sky on a December morning, but it’s weirdly warm at the same time.
“I- uh, yeah,” Dan stutters when he remembers how to talk again. “I’ve always had Macs. They’re great when they decide to work, but they can be a bitch when they begin to act up, and-“ he cuts himself off with an awkward shrug, “yeah.”
“Tell me about it,” the technician smirks. “This bastard-” he nods to the chunky white rectangle in his arms, “took me like, half an hour to boot up alone. And now it’s been frozen for like- twice as long as that. I’ve only had chance to type in my password so far.”
Lucy’s still standing in the middle of them and it’s getting a bit difficult to ignore the stony glare burning into Dan’s peripheral vision right now and even harder to avoid eye contact with her, but it doesn’t stop him from offering some help, albeit rather inappropriately timed.
“I- um, have my MacBook with me if that helps?” Dan offers, trying not to feel the heat of his blush when Mr. Black-Hair looks straight at him. “I mean- if you don’t need it that’s fine, but like- it’ll function a bit better than that thing,” he shrugs. “I dunno. It would probably save you a lot of time.”
“Really?” he raises an eyebrow. “Like, with you right now?”
“Yeah,” Dan says. “I mean – I haven’t got my charger on me, but it’s on, like, eighty percent. Should be fine.”
“I mean-“ he throws a permission-seeking glance, towards Lucy, who Dan is pretty sure would be having steam coming out of her ears would it be humanly possible. She fixes Dan with a hard stare, a real ‘go on; be my guest’ look that’s always comes across as more of a dare than permission, a challenge for his conscience, but he can’t help an apologetic smile tugging at his lips.
“It’s cool with you, right?” his lips say before his mind catches up.
Lucy rolls her eyes in defeat. “If you absolutely must. But only- only because I could do with the extra time to independently go over one of Alexandra’s soliloquy.”
His face breaks out into a grin, and he’s not that sure why. “Thanks, Luce. I owe you one.”
“Don’t you make a habit of this, though. Remember; this is your own rehearsal time you’re sacrificing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan calls over his shoulder, trailing off. Mr. Black-Hair holds the door open behind him, and suddenly they’re out of the rehearsal studio and walking in a weird mutual silence sitting in a strange middle ground between comfortable and uncomfortable, across the car park and over to the actual theatre.
“Are you alright to do this, yeah?” Mr. Black-Hair (Dan seriously needs to come up with more imaginative mental nicknames for people) breaks the silence on their walk down to the trap room.
“It’s no problem at all,” he smirks as another wooden step groans under his foot. “Anything to get out of rehearsal.”
Dan’s never really been here before, never touched the underground territory where the technicians lurked, but there’s something about the atmosphere of this place that grips him.
-
Half an hour passes, and Dan couldn’t really tell you why he’s still sitting down here, still sitting on a revolving chair with a rip in the upholstery, under half-broken beams, tables that look like they’re seconds away from collapsing, and a lot of weird technology that he’d never even attempt to get his head around (seriously – do they even need this many buttons?). He’d given his laptop to Black Hair to receive a very emphatic ‘thank you, like seriously you’re a fucking lifesaver if I spent a second longer with that piece of shit I really don’t know what I would have done’ and the job had been done in seconds. Since then, a casual conversation had been struck up and Dan finds he doesn’t actually want to go back upstairs just yet.
“You two sounded really good in there,” Black Hair comments. They’d been talking about the play. “From what I heard, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Dan says, trying to ignore the quiet blush that warms his cheeks. There’s nothing quite like someone complimenting his acting. “Clearly not good enough for Lucy, though.”
“Few things are, Dan,” he sighs, and Dan only finds it half-weird that this guy knows his name, but Dan doesn’t actually know his. It’s unnerving, sure, but nothing he’s a stranger to. “She’s been on at you all morning.”
“Yeah,” Dan pauses, before adding an apologetic “sorry, I- um, I don’t think I caught your name?”
“It’s fine. I’m Phil,” he grins, and Dan thanks his lucky stars there’s finally a name to put to the face.
Dan studies him briefly, and frowns. “You do look familiar, actually.”
“Yeah – I do all the donkey work downstairs,” he grins. “You may have seen me emerge from the cave every now and then.”
Dan chuckles, deciding there and then that he likes Phil.
“Doesn’t it get lonely?” Dan asks, studying the square lights looming above them, one of which he notices is stuttering slightly, flickering on and off every now and then.
Phil shrugs, not taking his eyes off of the screen. “Kinda. But I mean – I have my little crew down here, y’know? There’s five of us. We just like- keep each other company. Help each other whenever we need to,” he glances at Dan. “Oh, and sneak up to the theatre and watch you guys every now and then.”
Dan giggles. “Brilliant. Must be a nice little community, though.”
“Yeah, it is,” Phil hesitates. “Or perhaps ‘support group’ might be a more appropriate term. For the poor sods who have to put up with shitty laptops and gross food.”
Dan laughs, and helps himself to another Dorito.
-
“Okay, right- Dan, sorry if this sounds a bit weird because- like, we’ve pretty much only just met, but like- um- I was wondering if you wanted to-“
“Phil,” Dan cuts him off. As an actor, there’s something about hearing people stutter and ramble without really saying anything that tends to grate on him. “I’d love to.”
“Really? Well, I-“ Phil stops and frowns. “Hang on a second. How did you know I was gonna ask you to hang out?”
Dan shrugs like he hasn’t spent the last thirteen years mastering the sciences of body language and speech and how they can be applied to the acting world. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”
Phil smiles. “I mean- would you? Like, really?”
“Of course,” Dan says.
“Well yeah, like- I don’t have to be home for a while yet, and I have a car so we could just like- drive around for a bit? Go to town if you want?”
Dan smiles, and repeats what he said before he even knew what Phil was going to say.
“Yeah. I’d love to.”
-
It’s a bit of a weird result to come out of lending his laptop to a stranger for a while, but it’s how Dan finds himself spending the evening sat in the passenger seat on the top of a car park roof, blasting some weird indie song from the depth of Phil’s Spotify and watching the sun sink further behind the buildings, painting the sky warmer with every slow minute that passes on the dashboard clock.
They’d had a drive around the city together, sometimes talking, sometimes letting lulls in the conversation give way to thoughtful silences, both of them tapping away to Phil’s music taste, but Dan thinks it’s been about fifteen minutes since either of them last said anything.
“So,” Phil is the first to break the silence. He flicks the last of his cigarette out of the window (Dan had insisted on rolling down the windows before he did that – there’s no way he’s going home stinking of an ashtray). “Tell me about yourself.”
Dan looks up from his phone at that, his heart thudding.
“You what?”
“You know,” Phil’s gaze doesn’t move, his eyes fixed on the view in front of the windscreen. They’d picked a spot at the very top of a multi-storey car park overlooking everything, leaving the city a pool of lights and colours and life far beneath them. “I don’t really know you. So tell me about yourself.”
“I- um-“ Dan gulps. This wasn’t really a question he came prepared for. He shrugs. “I don’t really know what there is to tell, if I’m honest.”
“Oh, now come on,” Phil presses. “Just- anything. Your hobbies. Your life. Your dreams. What you want to be when you’re older.”
“I feel like I’m in a bloody job interview,” Dan chuckles. Phil’s lips quirk upwards in response.
“You are. I’m interviewing you to see if you’re fit for the job of being mates with me.”
“The ‘job’?” Dan frowns. “Like it’s a chore?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Phil grins. “Now, come on. I wanna hear about you.”
Dan gulps, silence falling for the first time in a while.
“I- um, well I think my hobby is probably pretty obvious, for a start,” Dan begins. Phil rolls his eyes. “And what I wanna be when I’m older, too. I’m gonna do a degree in Drama, I reckon.”
“What else are you into, then?”
Dan stops for a second. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on,” Phil presses, flicking his lighter and sparking up another cigarette. “You must have other interests besides acting. You got a girlfriend?”
Dan clams up. “Um- no.”
“Oh. Boyfriend, then?” he quirks his eyebrows, and Dan shakes his head miserably.
“Afraid not.”
“Glad we established that,” Phil smirks, but Dan doesn’t really smile back.
He chews on the inside of his lip, having a staring contest with a pair of headlights sliding across one of the roads beneath them.
“What music are you into, then?”
Dan swallows, trying to think. It’s like someone’s scraped over his mind with an eraser, rubbing out his interests and his life and his personality, all pencilled in with weak lines.
“Oh, you know,” he shrugs. “This and that. I like whatever this is,” he nods to the Spotify track on Phil’s phone. “Bit of Indie, it’s good. Oh, and I love- what are they called? Pink Floyd?”
“Floyd’s good,” Phil agrees. “And Nirvana.”
“Yeah,” Dan gulps, feeling another silence probe the conversation.
“You into the Smashing Pumpkins?”
Dan shakes his head.
“Oh, okay. Slaves?”
Dan shakes his head again.
“Genesis?”
“Never even heard of them.”
“Cobalt Night?”
Dan shakes his head again
Phil cackles. “Oh Christ. You do realise I made that last band up?”
“Oh god,” Dan can feel his cheeks burn peony. “I’m not doing myself any favours here, am I?”
“Don’t worry, I’m only messing with you,” Phil says. “I think it would be more embarrassing if you said yes, to be honest.”
“True,” Dan shrugs, feeling Phil’s stare burn into his side profile. He sits back further in his seat, keeping his stare.
“You’re not really into much, are you?
Dan shrugs.
“I’m more into Musical Theatre, really. Ever since we did a production of Hamilton I haven’t really been able to get that rap out of my head,” he chuckles.
“Right,” Phil sits up a little bit and clears his throat. “Well we’ve established your music taste and your hobby. Who are your favourite actors, then?”
It’s like someone’s flicked a switch inside Dan. His eyes light up.
“-and Leonardo DiCaprio, oh my God, don’t even get me started on him. I mean- who wouldn’t fuck young Leo? Have you even seen him in Titanic? And Romeo and Juliet too, Jesus Christ he’s gorgeous. He’s so fucking gorgeous. I’m not gonna do Romeo’s role any justice when he’s my competition, am I?”
Phil just nods and says the odd ‘hm’, listening to Dan’s stream of consciousness.
“-and Helena Bonham-Carter, what a fucking legend, man. She’s just- her character is just so versatile, you know? I mean- there’s a good reason she’s in literally everything, and that’s because she’s fucking amazing- have you seen Fight Club? You must have seen it, it’s incredible. She’s incredible. It’s a bit of a mind fuck if I’m honest, what with the split personality thing and everything, but- oh God, Brad Pitt is so good in it too. And he’s pretty hot, I’m not gonna lie. Well, until he grew out his hair and looked a bit like a farmer. But- where was I? Oh yeah, Helena Bonham Carter-”
“She was good in Sweeney Todd, too,” Phil comments, and he’s off again.
“-like, that was the first time I ever saw Johnny Depp act, and by Christ that film creeped me out. I mean- I was only like, seven when I watched it so of course it was gross, like, what seven year old watches people do- you know, that, to paying customers? I feel sorry for the poor sods who just went in there wanting to give their beards a trim. But- yeah, they were both really good in Sweeney Todd. I had a bit of a crush on Helena- and Johnny too, for that matter, I mean come on, who didn’t? But then I found out Johnny Depp is a bit of a dick in real life so I went off him after that. But Helena’s still cool, obviously.”
“She’s good, yeah,” Phil nibbles at a protruding hangnail on his thumb.
“And- oh god, who’s another good actor? Oh, don’t even get me started on Morgan Freeman. Absolute fucking legend. Like, oh my god. Him and that other one- god, what’s his name? The guy from Donnie Darko?”
Dan’s brain is moving far too quickly for Phil to keep up and he has no idea what the correlation between Morgan Freeman and Donnie Darko is, but he gives it a shot anyway.
“Jake Gyllenhaal?”
“Yes. Yes, oh my god, that’s the one,” Dan’s face breaks out into a grin. “Fuck, Donnie Darko. What a film, man. My friend has a tattoo of it, and-“
It continues like this, Dan chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen and Phil counting the glitters of passion in his eyes, before they’re both interrupted by a buzzing on Dan’s lap.
“Oh shit,” he grabs his phone. “It’s my mum.”
Phil doesn’t know what she’s saying on the other end of the line, but judging by Dan’s apologies it sounds like he’s stayed out here for a little too long.
“Sorry,” Dan mumbles, tugging on his seatbelt. “Lost track of time a bit, there.”
“Clearly,” Phil grins.
“This was good, though,” Dan says. “Like, really good. Thanks for, you know. Suggesting this.”
“Tell you what,” Phil leans into him, and Dan can smell his cologne. “We’re gonna come back up here again soon, okay? And you’re gonna tell me about yourself. Properly, this time.
Dan frowns. “Isn’t that what I’ve spent the past like- hour doing?” he glances at the clock and shit, has it really been that long? It’s pitch black outside, the only light coming from the glitter of the city beneath them (shit, it really is beautiful from up here) and he was supposed to be home forty-five minutes ago.
“Yeah,” Phil says, starting up the engine. “The only difference being next time we do this, I’m going to ban you from saying the word ‘acting’. So I can hear about you, the real you, and not whoever you pretend to be for a living.”
-
The next few days pass in a blur of line-learning, enduring Lucy’s lectures about how he just ‘isn’t putting enough ‘oomph’ into it, come on now, we’ll take it from the top one more time’ and Dan has to act like he actually gives more of a shit about what Romeo’s saying right now than what Phil had said in that car a few days ago. He has to act like it isn’t what he’d been reciting over and over in his mind, the words digging grooves into the back of his mind and making themselves at home.
He has to act like there’s more to his fucking life than acting.
-
The next time Dan sees Phil, they’re both cooped up in a control room eating lunch in a companionable silence; Dan going over his lines and Phil puzzling over these two wires that are, according to him, sly bastards that won’t fucking go in these holes Jesus Christ, to which Dan had shut his eyes and prayed to god no-one outside the room had caught that out of context. There’s a huge control panel, rows and rows of buttons and sound mixers and, as Dan had very accurately christened them, “slidey-things” in front of them. He has no idea what any of this stuff is, no idea what a “cross-fader” is or what the hell a “submaster” is supposed to do, but every now and then Phil will casually lean over and flick a switch or press a button and a stage light beneath them will change.
“What’s up?”
Dan looks up from his script. He’s been poring over his lines for so long he’s pretty sure stripes of yellow highlighter are now permanently inked into the back of his mind, now.
“What? Nothing.”
Phil swings his legs off of the bar they’d been resting against. They’re halfway through sharing a KitKat (Dan had taken a trip down to the Co-op at the beginning of the lunch break and returned with a bag so heavy with food it had left a dent in his hand, insisting Phil can’t be living on stale crisps his entire life) and watching a rehearsal, one Dan doesn’t have to be in for once, through a pane of glass.
“You’re going to have to do better if you want to convince me, Mr. Theatre Kid,” Phil reaches over to the bowl in front of them and plucks a grape from the stem. “I thought you were good at acting.”
“What do you want me to do; leap up and perform a jig?” Dan turns a page, the paper rustling a bit too loudly. “I’m fine, Phil. Stop reading into things too much.”
Phil stares at him. “You’re sat there with a face as long as my leg, and I’m reading into things?” he quirks an eyebrow. “Be careful. If you stare at that page any longer it’ll probably burst into flames.”
“Shut up,” Dan mutters, the edge in his voice a little too sharp for it to slip by as a joke.
Phil does.
Dan sighs. “Sorry, I just-“
“Rehearsals getting to you?” he suggests softly. Dan doesn’t plan on letting the real problem slip; Christ, he can only imagine the havoc that would ensue if it got around that as well as obsessing over acting he’s also never actually kissed anyone, so he quickly takes Phil up on that.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I mean- Romeo’s a good character to play, I guess, but he does have an awful lot to say.”
“You’ll be okay,” Phil reassures him. “You still have months of time left to memorise your lines. When’s the play?”
“Seventh of February,” Dan says. Two months from now.
“There we go,” Phil says. “You have plenty of time yet.”
“I guess so,” Dan shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve done this millions of times before,” Phil says. “You’ll be fine; I know you will. You’re a natural.”
Dan wishes he knew the half, he really does, but there’s just something about Phil’s smile that makes him almost want to believe him.
-
Dan manages to tell Phil a little bit more about himself next time they’re on the roof together, and in return, he learns a bit about Phil too.
“Well, when I was acti-“
“Nuh-uh,” Phil interrupts him. “No acting talk, remember?”
Dan rolls his eyes. “It’s relevant to what I was gonna say. It’s an important part of the story.”
“Wherever the hell you can fit acting into a story about you and your friends getting drunk and stealing a supermarket trolley because you couldn’t afford a taxi, I’d be very impressed.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dan grins, and that was the only time acting came into conversation that night.
-
Dan learns Phil is eighteen, that he’d failed his driving test three times before passing because he was driving on the wrong side of the dual carriageway, and swears he’s going to give up smoking next year, he promises. He learns that his favourite colour is blue because he likes the way the colour skates across the ocean water in the summer, and that he used to be scared of dogs before his parents got him a puppy for Christmas, a bouncy Labrador called Daisy with a love for the sun and walks down to the beach.
“I fucking love dogs,” Dan beams.
“So do I, now. Took me long enough,” Phil agrees, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Daisy’s so cute, oh my god. You will love her.”
Dan doesn’t say anything, but there’s something about the definite use of ‘you will’ that he likes.
He, in turn, finds that he does have some thoughts and feelings and dreams hidden away in there, beneath the façade of scripts and stage lights and acting. He finds he does have stuff to say, stuff that isn’t always attached to a web stringing back to the theatre. He tells Phil all about his cat, Ozzy (a little shit who takes great pleasure in knocking all his belongings off of his desk and sleeping on his laptop, but he loves him anyway) his annoying next-door neighbours who don’t seem to see any problem with blasting ABBA at three in the morning, and they manage to find common bands they both like. Oasis is playing when the sun sinks, the sky darkens, and the city lights up beneath them.
“God, I love this one,” Phil mumbles, his speech obscured by the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Don’t Look Back In Anger. It’s one of their best.”
“Oh god, yeah,” Dan agrees, tapping along to the chorus. “That and Stand By Me. Oh god, and Champagne Supernova, too.”
Phil grins at that, and leans forward, picking his phone up from the dashboard. Before Dan has a chance to question him, the chorus stops dead in its tracks, and an acoustic softness follows the sudden silence, a series of guitar chords that are just that bit too familiar. He grins.
“I always think the intro sounds a bit like Wonderwall,” Phil comments, putting his phone down and leaning back in the seat.
“Yeah,” Dan sighs, leaning back in his own seat and turning his gaze to the city beneath them, staring at lights and roads and buildings until they pool into a hazy amber blur in his vision.
How many special people change,
How many lives are living strange,
Where were you while we were getting high?
Slowly walking down the hall,
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?
Someday you will find me,
Caught beneath the landslide,
In a champagne supernova in the sky.
Someday you will find me,
Caught beneath the landslide,
In a champagne supernova;
A champagne supernova in the sky.
They don’t say anything, instead letting Liam Gallagher do the talking, but sly glances are exchanged from under brown fringes and black eyelashes.
-
“Nice up here, isn’t it?”
It’s only until Phil breaks the silence they’ve lapsed into that Dan realises the song has drawn to a close. He slides his gaze from the city and over to Phil, over to his thoughtful stare skating along the skyline, the ruffled sweep of black hair coating his fringe, and the orange glow of a cigarette tip poking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes flicker over to Dan’s.
Dan looks back over to the city.
“Yeah.”
“I always come up here.”
“I can see why.”
“Yeah, well. Sometimes a little look over the city is just what you need to clear your head. It just puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Dan swallows. “It really does.”
There’s a litter of thoughts and worries in his mind, buried deep and multiplying with every day that drags past, every day that pulls him closer and closer to the production, to the hundreds of burning stares in the audience seats, to his colleague’s lips. He’s been longing for a break from it. Just a few hours of silence, a few quiet moments that don’t have to be spent combing over every single thought in his head, thinking and thinking until it inflates into anxiety, spilling into the pit of his stomach and clawing at the edges as it goes.
And the more he counts the city lights, the more he feels the cold night air stroke his cheeks and the engines reverberating around the car park levels beneath them, the more he reckons a more few nights up here. It’s the remedy he needs; just him, Phil and the lights.
Their eyes meet seconds after, and Dan can feel the question he’s vowed to ask Phil before the end of the night already beginning to rest on his lips, on the cusp of speech.
“When can we do this again?”
-
The late nights begin to pass more frequently in a spinning blur of city nights, passenger seats and conversations, all whispers and cold air and stolen glances. Dan can feel himself unravelling like a threadbare blanket, his carefully constructed personas and characters fraying at the edges with every hour spent up on the top of the city with a boy whose lips spill truths like water, and it isn’t long until Dan finds cracks in his paper personalities and begins to feel more and more honesty begin to seep through. He finds that no, he doesn’t have to spin false anecdotes like cotton and lie about his interests and find a way of linking everything back to acting, hooking every little quirk and element to his personality back to the stage. He doesn’t have to impress Phil with his knowledge of Hollywood throughout the years and he doesn’t have to act like he loves things he’s never actually heard of and he doesn’t have to lock his feelings away and throw away the key.
He doesn’t have to pretend.
-
It’s all okay until they fall onto the topic of previous relationships.
It’s been a good night. They’d visited the car park again, but this time without the car (it was warm enough to leave it in the driveway and make their own way up the concrete staircases, glass bottles in plastic bags clinking around their legs). They’d situated themselves in the very same parking space, the one second to the right and next to a beacon, but they’d traded car seats for a picnic blanket, headlights for phone torches and gear sticks for bottle openers.
“Yeah, like- fuck, she wasn’t a good kisser at all, was Mary. I mean- we were in year nine and she tried, bless her, and God knows so did I. But you know, with that as my first impression of kissing, when it was over I was like ‘what the fuck is all the fuss about?’” Phil chuckles, and Dan pretends to grin.
“Yeah, I mean-“ he shrugs, staring down at his lap. “I’ve had my fair share of bad kisses in my time.”
The ease with which the lie rolls off of his tongue almost takes him by surprise. It’s been a while since he’s lied about himself to Phil, and it feels strange.
“I can imagine,” Phil says, before frowning. “But you’re an actor. So you must be an excellent kisser, right? What with all the practice you guys have.”
Dan frowns, looking up from his bottle. “You what?”
“Oh come on. I saw what went on in the back of that car last term. Eddie and Alexandra. That play involved more lip-on-lip action than the fucking Notebook.”
Dan smiles at that, remembering the play adaptation they actually did of that when he was in year ten. He doesn’t quite know whether to laugh or cry over the sheer amount of starring roles he’s had that are heavily eloped in some kind of romantic storyline.
“Us actors have our techniques,” he says carefully.
Phil’s eyes widen at that. “You do? Like what?”
Dan shrugs, taking another sip of beer. “Oh, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Phil shuffles closer, a flicker of eagerness in his cerulean stare and shit, Dan’s beginning to regret opening his mouth now. “Come on. What techniques do you have? I could use a few tips myself.”
Dan raises an eyebrow, his eyes firmly locked onto the spread of amber lights in front of them.
“I doubt you’d ever want to use these kinds of techniques on anyone,” he says, a hint of humour drying his speech. “I imagine stage-kissing on a real date would be quite a deal-breaker.”
“Stage kissing, huh?” Phil widens his eyes. “How does that differentiate from a real kiss, then?”
“Well,” Dan takes another sip of his drink, his vision beginning to slow down. “First of all, it’s not really a kiss at all.”
“Huh?” Phil frowns.
“I mean- not usually. There are different kinds of stage-kisses, but most of them don’t involve, you know,” he smirks, reusing Phil’s rather vulgar term of “lip-on-lip action”.
“So you guys don’t actually kiss?” Phil asks.
Dan shakes his head. “Nope.”
“But-… how does that work?”
Alcoholic courage swims through Dan’s veins at that. He glances at Phil.
The words are a whisper, a dare almost, and it isn’t until Phil nods that Dan realises he’s actually said it out loud.
“Want me to show you?”
“Yeah, go on,” Phil’s tone is casual, soft almost, but his eyes are glittering.
“Okay, well- come over here,” he beckons.
Phil does as he’s told, shuffling up on his knees until he’s facing Dan.
“One of the actors needs to have their back to the audience,” Dan says. “So, let’s say the wall over there is the audience,” he nods over Phil’s shoulder to the stretch of concrete watching them.
“Alright. The wall’s the audience. Now what?”
“Now,” Dan gulps, feeling his heart begin to pick up the pace because shit, this is really happening now. “So, what you do is, like, just lean in normally for a kiss, but stop just as your lips are about to touch.”
Phil scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Look, do you want me to show you or not?”
“Nah, nah, I’m kidding,” Phil says. “C’mon, then. Show me how it’s done in Hollywood.”
“You dick,” Dan mumbles, but he’s leaning in.
Phil gets closer, his face begins to crawl up to Dan’s until their noses are brushing and his fringe is a tickle on Dan’s cheek and his breath mixes with Dan’s own, warm and languid through parted lips and fuck, Dan’s heart is really thudding now. His legs feel like jelly and his lungs feel like fire and there’s something warm and fiery swirling in the pit of his stomach, something alien, something that he’s certainly never felt before with any other colleague he’s come this agonisingly close to kissing.
They stay there for what feels like minutes, lips hovering, warmth tingling and the city still thundering beneath them, and it’s Phil who pulls away first.
“Impressive,” he smiles, eyes glittering with nonchalance. “Frustrating, but impressive. Is that your go-to one, then?”
It takes three swigs of beer to calm Dan down before he can speak again.
“I mean- um, yeah. Though sometimes if you’re, like, sitting really far over to the side in the audience you might be able to tell that they’re not actually kissing, so,” he shrugs. “It just depends on the stage, I guess.”
“Right,” Phil nods, swigging from his own bottle. “You, er- you mentioned a few other types, right?”
The thought of coming that close to Phil’s lips again sends the strange flame of warmth flooding back into Dan’s stomach. He all but chokes on his mouthful of drink.
“Er- yeah,” he stutters. “There are a few others,” he gulps again and shit, what’s up with him?
Dan doesn’t really know what’s happening, doesn’t know why being within a metre radius of this guy is already making him feel far more than he’d ever felt with any colleague, kissing or not, but it doesn’t stop him from beckoning the older boy over and showing him kiss number two, their lips locked together with nothing except Dan’s thumb in between them. He can feel the warmth of Phil’s mouth against his skin, the hot movement of Phil’s breath through his nose and the tickle of his hair against his cheek again. When he parts his mouth, Dan feels the tiniest touch of lip against his. It’s only the very corner and can’t have lasted for longer than a millisecond, but the feeling comes back like a spark to a flame and he’s beginning to find it difficult to balance and oh, shit.
They break apart, eyes searching each other’s, and it’s the first time Dan’s feeling like this post-‘kiss’ without having to throw on a character like an old shirt. He doesn’t have to follow anything up with someone else’s speech, with a fake accent and a stupid costume and a mannerism that doesn’t quite fit.
For once, he doesn’t feel like he has to act.
Phil narrows his eyes after a few silent seconds, fighting back a smirk.
Dan frowns, the post-stage kiss high beginning to melt away.
“What?”
“Is that seriously it?” Phil says.
“Yeah,” Dan moves away, trying to ignore the surge of electricity he had felt upon edging within a few millimetres of the other boy’s lips, the city a roar beneath them.
“I don’t know why I feel so disappointed,” Phil smirks. “From where I sit, looking at you lot doing all your stuff down on the stage, it looks a whole sight more realistic than that.”
Dan looks back out to the city.
“Yeah, well,” he says, feeling his heart slow down. “Acting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
-
“So. You and Alexandra, eh?”
Dan glares at him. Dawn is beginning to throw pastel colours into the blackness of the sky. It’s still dark enough to see the stars, fainter twinkles against the sweep of indigo above them, but it’s light enough for them to see each other, to make out feint outlines of faces in the low pre-sunrise light, eyes half-lidded and shadowed from the sleepless hours. It must be pushing four in the morning, and they’ve been here since eleven o’clock, leaving their parents with promises that they’re spending the night round each other’s houses to make a few preparations for the play.
(If reciting Romeo’s Balcony Scene soliloquy through giggles and slightly drunken slurs counts as preparation, then at least half of that promise is true).
“We’re not an item,” Dan mumbles, taking a drag from his cigarette. It tastes strange, kind-of like dirt and ash and tar and he’s not a smoker and probably never will be, but Phil had offered him one and- well, fuck it.
“I know,” Phil says. “But you guys are performing in the round, aren’t you?” Phil narrows his eyes, and Dan swears he leans an inch or two closer before whispering, “your stage kisses won’t work from that angle, I’m telling you.”
“Don’t remind me,” Dan shuts his eyes. So far he’d been doing quite a grand job of pushing that worry to the back of his mind, burying it deep into his consciousness. The whole reason he’s up here altogether is to escape it.
Phil hesitates.
“What?” he asks. “Don’t you want to kiss Alexandra?”
Dan gulps, the taste of alcohol souring on his tongue a little.
“It’s not that,” he says. “I mean- a kiss is a kiss, right? It’s all part of the job, and-“
“But you don’t fancy her,” Phil says.
Dan frowns. “Well- no, of course not. She’s a colleague.”
“I know,” Phil says. “It makes a difference though, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“Kissing someone you don’t fancy. It’s weird.”
“Tell me about it,” Dan mumbles. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain this lie. “I- er, yeah. I usually stick to stage-kissing on the job, to be honest,” he shrugs. “It’s just easier than kissing someone you don’t really have feelings for.”
“Have you never, you know, properly kissed anyone before, then?”
Dan takes a deep breath. Lies can flow like water when he wants them to; he’s a master at concealing the truth behind a blanket of fabrication and deception, but there’s something about talking to Phil that makes falsehood sour on his tongue.
He lets it out in a deep sigh, feeling his chest deflate and his heart thud. Fuck it.
“You know what?,” he begins. “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if you can tell, but- yeah. I dunno, I guess that’s why I’m so stressed about this shit with Alexandra. And like- I know that probably makes me a fucking loser for never having kissed anyone at the age I am now, and probably even more of a loser that I want my first one to be with someone special, but- fuck, I don’t know,” he swallows, feeling the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen a little. “No. I haven’t. Okay?”
Phil doesn’t say anything. He bites his lip and averts his eyes down to the neck of his bottle. He fiddles with the loose cap, letting it fall through the spaces between his fingers with a sharp clink.
Dan doesn’t like that, doesn’t like the silence. The knot returns.
“What?”
“I- er- that wasn’t really what I meant,” Phil finally says.
The knot tightens.
“What do you mean it’s not what you meant?”
“I meant have you properly kissed anyone on stage before,” Phil glances up. “Not in general.”
Dan’s stomach drops. Oh fuck.
He open his mouth, but no speech follows. No amount of words can haul himself out of his hole now. Shit.
“I mean-“ he finally speaks again after a silence, and there’s a tremor in his voice that he desperately tries to smooth over. “Oh, shit,” he deflates, feeling the pit of his stomach begin to churn due to the abundance of the night’s alcohol. There’s no point trying to clamber out of the hole he’s just dug himself. He’ll only deepen it.
“Have you really never kissed anyone?” Phil asks in a quieter voice, but he doesn’t sound surprised. Or humoured. Or any other emotion Dan had feared. Just… curious. “Like, at all?”
Dan gulps, the beer a sour swirl in the pit of his stomach. Maybe the sixth bottle was a mistake.
“Well there’s no point denying it now, is there?” Dan finally mumbles, his eyes fixed on a dent in the concrete not far from where they’re sitting. “No. I haven’t.”
The gentle thrum of city engines fills the silence between them, and the three seconds Phil doesn’t say anything for might as well have been days.
“Yep,” Dan breaks the quietness once it borders on unbearable. “There you go. You think I’m a fucking weirdo now, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” Phil replies, and his voice is unusually calm. Dan looks up, his eyes meeting a soft expression, and for some reason he really didn’t expect Phil to react like this.
“So-“ Dan shakes his head. “What? You’re not gonna take the piss? Laugh at me? Say I’m a fucking weirdo that only lied to you to try and look cool?”
The truth scratches his heart, but it needs to be said.
“Why the fuck would I laugh at you?” Phil frowns, and there’s something about the sincerity in his voice that, beneath the turmoil, Dan finds weirdly comforting.
“I mean,” Phil begins. “I’m surprised, don’t get me wrong. Only because you’re an actor and- well, let’s face it, you’re fucking gorgeous too, but-“ he shakes his head. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m the first to say I’d much rather make sure my first kiss means something. If anything, I agree with you on that.”
“You’re not pissed off that I lied to you?” Dan gulps down another mouthful of lukewarm alcohol.
“Of course not, you twat,” Phil says. “I mean, I get why you did, but there was no need to. Really.”
“I know,” Dan sighs, picking at the label on his glass bottle until the paper frays at the edges.
“Wanna know something?” Phil says, his eyes not moving from the soft sweep of stars above them, dimmed by the early morning light.
Dan takes his eyes away from the sky. “What?”
“If you’re a liar, then so am I,” Phil tells the stars.
Dan frowns. “You what?”
Phil’s eyes flick back down to earth, meeting Dan’s gaze. “I lied too.”
Dan gulps, his heart thudding. “About what?”
Phil forces a chuckle, but it’s drained of humour. “Do I have to spell it out to you? I haven’t kissed anyone either.”
The words ring in Dan’s ears moments after, Phil’s voice an echo above the roar of the city below.
“Wait-…” is the only word that passes Dan’s lips in the next passing minute or so. “But-…”
“Yeah,” Phil shrugs. “Turns out you’re not the only one, are you?”
“But-…” Dan shakes his head. “Why did you lie about it too?”
Phil just shrugs and says, “same reasons you did.”
Dan tries, he really tries, to comb through the tangle of confusion in his mind right now, but the best response he can come up with after a moment or two of silence isn’t the most articulate.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Phil agrees, and they descend into quietness again.
“Shame, isn’t it?” Phil is the first to break the silence. “That we feel the need to lie about that.”
“It’s society’s fault for making us feel as if being over the age of about fifteen without having shoved a tongue down anyone’s throat is a failure.”
Phil grimaces. “I’ve never understood the attraction of that, you know. Like, I get making out and stuff, but why would you want to literally devour the person next to you? When I saw kissing scenes as a kid I thought they were actually trying to eat each other.”
“I know,” Dan takes a sip of beer, the alcohol slipping down with a little more ease now. “It sounds grim. I don’t know how people do it. At least with acting on stage you don’t have that problem.”
“True,” Phil mirrors his actions, pulling his drink away from his lips and tracing the rim of the bottle with the tip of his thumb, staring down the tube-shaped glass into the remains of the flat beer, swimming lukewarm and flat at the bottom of the bottle. Only when he glances up a few seconds later does Dan realise he’s been staring.
Dan smirks.
“What are you grinning at?”
“Just-…” he shakes his head and shit, he’s definitely had enough to drink tonight. He can feel the alcohol-induced honesty begin leaking through his parted lips and he knows he’ll probably end up saying something he’ll regret tomorrow morning but- oh, fuck it. “The thought of you having never kissed anyone. It just- doesn’t make sense to me like- look at you. How?”
He’s not really sure where the line between a compliment and a very sorry attempt at flirting is drawn but he’s pretty sure he’s fallen somewhere in the middle.
Phil’s gaze lingers a few seconds too long. “I could ask you the same thing. I mean- come on, look at you. A guy like you must have been drowned in opportunities.”
They’re both a bit too drunk, a bit too cold and there’s something about the atmosphere of an empty car park at fuck-knows-o’clock that warps reality just a little. Dan blinks and the city lights don’t unblur and he feels a bit like he’s in a dream.
“Yeah, I-…” he shrugs. “I’ve had my fair share of offers, I won’t lie.”
“I’ll bet,” Phil interjects, and Dan rolls his eyes.
“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t either,” Dan rolls his eyes, but he’s smirking. “I just-… yeah, I dunno. I didn’t really wanna waste it, but I never really found someone I liked enough.”
“That’s nice, that is,” Phil says, and though Dan scours his tone of voice for a trace of sarcasm or mockery, but Phil’s eyes glitter earnestly. “No, like, really. Most teenagers just, you know, dive straight into it. Slam their face against anything with a pulse that crosses their path. But the fact you care enough to wait,” he glances up, eyeing the boy beside him carefully. “That’s rare. Kinda admirable in a way.”
“Were you the same, then?”
Phil nods without any hesitation. “A hundred percent.”
Dan nods understandingly, taking another sip of beer, and the two of them watch the town sleep for a quiet moment before Phil speaks up again.
“Oh, come here,” he stretches out his arms. “You look like you’re seconds away from hypothermia, for Christ’s sake.”
Dan leans into his chest, closing his eyes and snuggling into the Topman denim of Phil’s jacket. “I don’t really think a car park roof is the most suitable drinking spot,” he mumbles, his speech slightly obscured by his rattling jaw.
“Not at five a.m. in December at least,” Phil says. “It’s a lot nicer in summer, I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Dan says, and the indirect promise that they’ll come out here and do this again makes Phil smile.
It’s quiet, serene and blue, and Dan loses count of the minutes that drip by until he hears Phil’s voice again, shattering his trance dancing on the fragile edge of drunken consciousness.
“Dan?” it’s only a half-whisper, but it still makes him jump.
The younger boy turns his head, his brown hair tousling against Phil’s denim chest until they’re eye-to-eye.
Phil lowers his gaze, but this time his eyes don’t flicker back up to Dan’s. Dan parts his mouth in response, but before he can say anything, there’s a surge forward and a soft pair of lips on his.
A jolt of adrenaline, shock, and a general ‘holy-fucking-shit-this-can’t-be-happening’ feeling shimmers through his body as he kisses back, and despite his embarrassing inexperience when it comes to anything remotely romantic, his lips move perfectly in time with Phil’s, their mouths melting together in flawless harmony.
Phil’s the one to break away, and Dan misses his lips the second the cold morning air touches his mouth. He frowns, studying Phil’s expression half-hidden by his mop of black hair, but the older boy refuses eye contact.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came ov-“
“Don’t apologise,” Dan cuts him off immediately, his hand hovering over Phil’s arm in quiet protest. “Just-…” he gulps. “Do it again,”
Phil’s head snaps up, his eyes boring into the brown stare in mild confusion.
“Please,” Dan mouths, and Phil doesn’t need to be told twice.
They kiss for longer, deeper, slightly parted lips and slow breathing and the teal glow of 5am light and shit, this was certainly worth a seventeen year wait. Phil’s lips feel like warmth and taste like tobacco and he feels a gentle comb of shy fingertips through his hair and yep, he can definitely see what all the fuss is about now.
When they break apart for the second time, all blushes and broken breaths, they’re both grinning. Phil drops his gaze with a bashful chuckle.
“Well,” Dan breathes. He’s still sitting close, their upper arms touching but neither of them really wanting to move away.
“Well,” Phil says, almost in agreement. They’re bathed in silence once again, but this time it’s comfortable.
“I’m not gonna lie,” Dan begins, looking out over the city. “That was definitely worth the wait.”
Phil tilts his head down, their noses almost touching. “Yeah?”
“For sure,” Dan cranes his neck up a little and pecks Phil’s lips again. The other boy grins, pulling his jacket further over Dan’s shoulders.
“We’ll have to do this again sometime then, won’t we?” Phil’s eyes glitter.
Dan grins, glancing at the view spread in front of them. The sun is beginning to awaken and there are fewer streetlights illuminating the land below and it’s cold and wow, they should really think about heading home soon. Dan hasn’t checked his phone in hours and he’s sure it can’t be running on anything much more than a measly four percent.
“Definitely,” he says, then hesitates. “Although, well.”
“Well what?”
Dan flicks his eyes up at the boy above him, tired brown against weary blue.
“Perhaps next time we should choose somewhere a little warmer than a car park,” he says in a soft voice, before adding, “I can barely feel my arse right now.”
Phil bursts out laughing, and then a pair of lips are on his for the third time.
-
The next couple of weeks rush by in a flurry of rehearsals, meetings, crumpled scripts and weird costumes that itch around the collar. Dan and Phil spend most of their time three storeys apart, meaning secret rendezvous up in the control room or down in the trap room are often necessary. The closer the big day creeps, the hotter the atmosphere becomes with stress, so it’s nice to leave the tension with the stage and the equally tense co-workers and escape for a bit.
“For fear of that, I still will stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart aga- oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not even listening.”
Phil looks up from his phone, a giggling smirk still lingering on his face. “Huh?”
“Come on, Phil. You said you’d go through this with me and you’re sat there playing around with bloody Snapchat filters.”
“Sorry, sorry – I am listening, it’s just-“ his eyes flicker back down to the screen in front of him. “That’s hideous. Who even makes these filters? I look like a toe.”
“Can unflattering photos of you not wait five minutes until I’ve finished this? We’re literally nearly done anyway. We only have, like, one more paragraph to g-” Phil interrupts him by flipping the phone around to face the other boy. A bald, rather unsightly version of Phil with weird eyes stares back. Dan’s eyes widen in horror. “Fuck, that really is hideous.”
“I know,” Phil shudders. “I didn’t even know my face could do that,” he glances back at the screen and pulls a couple of experimental faces. “Would you still be with me if I looked like that?”
“Nope,” Dan replies semi-seriously, rolling his eyes when Phil pouts.
“What about if I looked like this?” Phil turns the phone around. He looks a lot better this time, but a little bit too much like an animal. Dan’s never really understood the national attraction towards ‘dog filters’.
“Probably. The ears might get in the way a bit, though,” he chuckles, before urging, “now come on. We haven’t got long left now.”
Phil agrees, albeit reluctantly. He swings his legs off the table, grabs Dan’s battered highlighted mess of a script sitting in front of him and they pick up from where they left off, something about ‘worms that are thy chamber maids’, ‘everlasting rest’ and ‘inauspicious stars’ (whatever the fuck that adjective means). They last a grand total of fifteen seconds before Dan’s voice is interrupted by a shriek of laughter.
“Oh, fucking hell that’s bad!” Phil cackles. Dan groans, wondering for a fleeting second where the best place to launch Phil’s phone might be.
“That’s it,” he loses it, suddenly leaping across the table and swiping the irritating rectangle of interest straight from Phil’s hand. His smile vanishes in seconds.
“Aw, what?!”
“You have five seconds to put this stupid fucking thing away, or else it’s going out there,” he points to the window behind them. Phil follows his gaze, his eyes widening. They can see the majority of the town from up here. That’s a long drop.
He turns his head back around. They’re nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye.
“Fine,” Phil smiles, the tips of their noses brushing together. “But just so you know, seeing you angry just makes me want to kiss you more.”
Dan rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his smirk. “Are you still gonna want to kiss me when your phone ends up on the ground?”
“What do you mean ‘when’? I’ve put it away now,” he points to the bulge in his back pocket.
Dan fixes him with a glare.
“Come on,” Phil leans forward as Dan leans back. “Just one?” he pleads, his eyes big and blue.
He shakes his head and pulls away, a grin curling at his lips. His eyes flicker back to Phil, a brown gaze that lingers too long.
“Afterwards,” he says in a voice like velvet.
Phil rolls his eyes, flopping back onto the chair. “Fine. Bloody hell, it’s like being back at school.”
Dan pretends not to hear that last comment. “Come on, we’ll take it from “world-wearied flesh…”
Phil’s phone doesn’t move once from his pocket after that. The promise of Dan’s lips after rehearsal is more tempting than any filter some dumb app has to offer.
-
“How do I look?”
Phil eyes him up and down, a smirk playing at his lips. “Hot.”
The comment receives a soft punch to his upper arm.
“Behave,” Dan turns back to the mirror, twining a lock of perfectly sprayed hair that he was specifically instructed not to touch around his fingers. “Are you sure? I feel like I look like a-“
He’s interrupted by a pair of soft lips for a few seconds.
“That’s really not helping the nerves,” Dan breathes once they break away.
Phil grins. “You look fine. You know you do. Now quit playing with your hair before Alexa sees.”
Dan doesn’t think Alexa, the make-up artist, is capable of seeing anything that isn’t within a thirty-centimetre radius of her own face right now. She’s been hurrying around backstage all evening; powdering this, curling that, flitting from actor-to-actor so quickly it makes Dan out of breath to even watch her. She certainly hasn’t done a bad job though, he thinks, as he inspects his reflection. A slightly dishevelled, 15th-century version of himself stares back, all weird leather and burgundy velvet and wow, perhaps he should sport an Elizabethan tunic more often.
“Suits you,” Phil smiles as if he’d read his mind. Dan adjusts the collar accordingly.
“D’you reckon?”
“Yeah,” Phil eyes him up and down again. “Most people here kinda look like twats in their costume, but you really actually pull that off.”
“Um- thanks? I think?” Dan smirks, frowning at his reflection. He doesn’t mention it has anything to do with his long-standing ability to morph into literally anyone he likes (he’d often been described by many make-up artists as having a “chameleon face” which he hopes is a reference to his adaptability to blend into multiple characters as opposed to resembling a lizard), and instead accepts the ever-so-slightly backhanded compliment.
“What are you doing down here?” someone with an updo the size of Jupiter asks Phil, sauntering past in something that really rather resembles a cupcake. Phil was right, Dan thinks. They do look a bit ridiculous. “They need you upstairs in five minutes.”
“Oh shit,” Phil glances at his watch. “Okay. Gotta go before Nick kills me.”
“Alright,” Dan smiles, pulling him in for a quick hug.
“Good luck,” he whispers into his shoulder. “You’ll fucking kill it.”
Dan tightens his grip around his arms. “Thank you.”
The word has multiple other meanings, and judging by the glitter in Phil’s eye when he pulls away, he thinks he understands every single one.
-
That night, Dan lavishes in warm spotlights and painted wooden sets resembling palaces and balconies, and he feels alive.
That night, the finest Elizabethan literature spills from his lips, flowing as easily as water, his voice shaping every monologue, soliloquy and duologue perfectly.
That night, there are another pair of lips on his; only this time painted red and totally professional. It feels strange, alien, and not a single trace of the spark in his heart that Phil’s lips ignite can be found, but it’s work. It’s courage.
And that night, someone up in the control booth watches through the pane of glass over all the light boards and buttons and wires, and smiles.
As if it’s been almost a year since my last oneshot??? Wtf this must CHANGE I’m getting back into writing (properly this time I swear) so there’s a lot more where this came from. Feedback is always appreciated whether it be good or bad so pls let me know how you found this! Feels so good to be doing this again u have nooo idea holy shit <3
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