#someone in the ****** tag posting multiple times pissed off that someone else got the details of a city in the show wrong

[milfbrainrot]

man i rly do just hate like. most of my fandoms. lol. i'm glad i'm doing better sticking more to myself these days bc it is good perspective that [neopets voice] this place is a freakshow and i don't respect literally any of you people etc

[catintheruemorgue]

annoying things they do

summary: small things these guys do that just grinds your gears a bit.

characters: oda, dazai, kunikida, twain, akutagawa, atsushi, mori, poe, ranpo, fittzgerald, steinbeck, chuuya, yosano, gin, kouyou, higuchi, alcott and lucy

these are all based off things i do or have inconvenienced my life lmfao i’ll probs do a part two with everyone i missed this just got wayyy to long lol next im posting being friends with double black 

Oda:

If you're wearing shorts and have bruises he will poke them when you're resting your legs on him. He’s silent about it too and if you yell at him he pretends to act like he doesn't know what you're talking about.

Will smack your sunburn but this one is actually an accident. He just wanted to pat you on the back because you're amazing.

Will space out when you talk too long, sometimes certain objects are just so… mesmerizing

Dazai:

Loves to jumpscare you the only exception is if it was a trigger. In that case he will just call your name and whip something at you for you to catch at random.

When you're driving he likes to reach over and honk your horn. It's almost caused so many roadside fistfights.

If he sees a dog in public he will bark and growl at it.

Kunikida:

Won’t let you on the bed without socks on. You could be sick as a dog and he’ll still enforce this rule.

Cleaning is hard because he has a hard time throwing things away. You'll spend extra time as he holds two identical pens, trying to decide which one he wants to keep. He’s learned to plan certain days in his schedule for cleaning now.

Won't let you turn up the music in the car and will keep it at a level that's so low it's annoying.

Twain:

Walks around the house shirtless but then complains about how cold it is.

Blasts his music so loud when he wakes up in the morning and it's always early 2000’s hits. It's not rare for you to have Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield stuck in your head by 9 am.

Always has to climb something, this stems from his adventurous side. It's not really that annoying but when you’re in a crowded area and he runs off to go climb the tall statue, screaming at you to take a photo… Yes it is. Especially when children try and follow him and you're stuck receiving glares from the parents.

Akutagawa:

Will not let you throw any food products out. He tells you it's a perfectly good meal (even if it's not) and that he will eat it tomorrow. It’s sad because you know this stems from childhood but it’s still annoying.

Reuses the same gross, musty ziplock baggies. You keep buying new ones but he doesn't get it lol.  

Will tell you if your breath smells, hair is messy, outfit is ugly. He does not see an issue with this and it's nice knowing someone has your back but he doesn't have to be so rude about it..

Atsushi:

If he drinks he's one of those drinkers who will not let you take it from him. Keeps an iron grip on the cup. He finishes it no matter how drunk and always throws up. Thankfully he rarely drinks.

He stops to help everyone, literally even if they just look like they need help. You've been late to so many things.

Will eat anything. Once you made steak and somehow forgot about it. It was hard as a brick yet he still almost broke his teeth eating it. You think you saw some tears as he told you it was delicious.

Mori:

Listens to people's conversations in public and isn't afraid to comment, loudly, about it. You know it's loud because they either stop talking or try and confront you guys.

Comes up to stops fast and brakes so hard you feel like he does it on purpose.

Sometimes if he and Elise get into a “disagreement” he’ll try and rope you in to take his side and you always do, knowing it would probably give him more satisfaction if you chose to side with her.

Poe:

Asks for constructive criticism but will then argue with you about why you're wrong.

Always humming a song he heard Twain singing and then it gets stuck in your head too.

Will deny stupid things like why your favorite mug is in the trash or why he just let out rather loud scream in the bathroom. You know he's lying because he looks away and makes sure his bangs are covering his eyes.

Ranpo:

Will call you out on any lie even if you don't mean to lie you just forgot about some of the details.

Don't take him grocery shopping if you have a set amount you want to spend. He won't even sneak, he will just say he wants something and throw it in the cart.

Such a backseat driver even though he can't drive.

Fitzgerald:

Likes to act like he's still in his twenties and will somehow get the two of you invited to college parties where he will attempt to do a kegger in front of everyone. You end up being the one to hold him up and he always ends with a, “LETS FUCKING GO!”

Likes to ask for the senior discount even though he's not that old, he just likes to hear the women validate that he's not old.

It’s scary how he used to buy without looking and now will scream if the price on a price tag is too high.

Steinbeck:

Always looking at the grass for wheat to chew on. It's so cheesy when you walk into the city and he's got it sticking out of his mouth.

He gets weirdly intimate with nature and you feel like you're third wheeling.

Has the mentality that he has to provide for you because he is the man. He gets so shocked when he finds out you still want to work.

Chuuya:

Has a hard time making decisions you could ask him what he wants for dinner and his mind will just break.

Gets way too pissed at movies and will actually get up and walk away. Once you were kicked out of the theater because he wouldn't stop yelling at the screen. Another time he walked out you waited a whole ten minutes before you realized he wasn't coming back.

Sometimes activates his ability at night and it's so scary waking up to him floating halfway across the room.

WOMAN TIME!!!!!!!!!!

Yosano:

Will glare at you so intensely if you say something she disagrees with.

Always tries to rope you into drinking with her even if you’ve said no the past ten nights.

Will describe wounds or injuries in such detail and just won’t stop, almost like she’s trying to fuck with you, but she’s not.

Gin:

Claims to be nothing like her big brother but then will go on to make the same facial expressions and do some of the same mannerisms as him.

Will spend hours trying things on just to put it all back, leave the store and change her mind when you’re almost home. Then she’ll have you run back with her to buy it all.

Is used to sneaking around so scares you a lot. Also on the topic of being silent sometimes she just won’t respond, thinking you can just read her vibes / mind.

Kouyou:

Will judge what you eat, especially fast food but will try and steal a fry in private when you're not looking.

Will say things like, “Well that's just the way the world works.” If someone tries to share their baggage with her. You understand she’s had a pretty rough life but it's caused you to almost spit out your drink multiple times.

At functions forgets about you for about an hour while she mingles with everyone else, you could tap on her shoulder and she'll dismiss you like you're a subordinate. Until you clear your throat again you'll see the slight blush as she apologizes.

Higuchi:

She has no sense of privacy. If she hears a crash or loud noise she will bust down the door. It’s sweet but not when the noises are usually from you knocking all the shampoo bottles down again.

Horrible road rage actually puts you on edge to be in the car with her. She doesn't even have to be driving.

Likes to act like she's a professional at everything and people usually believe it because of her suit. It's so nerve wracking when she giggles when they walk away with false information.

Alcott:

Will agree to everything you suggest but you can only tell when she doesn’t want to do it when you’re currently doing it.

Yet she’s not afraid to grumble about how annoying it is when someone bumps into you and doesn’t apologize. It’s sweet but you’re left dealing with the situation if the person is aggressive enough to say something.

Always corrects your spelling or if you say something like “I could care less.”

Lucy:

Will fish for compliments in a very obvious way like, “Wow. Wish someone would call me pretty..” and then just stare right at you.

Kicks you so violently in her sleep but won't let go of you so you cant get away.

Constantly stealing from restaurants. You're banned from a couple restaurants because she got caught trying to steal a cup or salt shaker.

[deancas-fanfiction]

A Daydream Away

Chapter 1/?

Summary: After multiple couples go missing from a resort in northern Minnesota, Dean and Cas are forced to pose as a couple to investigate the mysterious entity. As Dean and Cas navigate their fake relationship, it leaves Dean questioning what's real and forces him to confront his feelings for Cas.

A story in which Cas is human, Dean is sometimes an idiot, and Sam acts as matchmaker.

Pairing: Castiel/Dean Winchester

Tags: fake relationship, case fic, sharing a bed, human!cas, Sam ships Dean and Cas, fluff, eventual smut

available on ao3 Read Ch. 2 Here

“I think I found us a case,” Sam announced, entering the Dean Cave with his nose buried in his laptop.

Dean sighed in irritation, pausing the movie he and Cas were in the middle of watching. “This better be good, if you’re interrupting our movie night. You know we’re in the middle of Half Blood Prince, and Cas hasn’t seen it.”

“Metatron did upload the movie content into my –” Cas argued, but stilled at Dean’s murderous glare.

“Being told what happens and actually experiencing it are two very different things, Cas. You have to experience it firsthand.”

Cas opened his mouth to argue but didn’t get the chance, as Sam interrupted him by loudly clearing his throat.

“Are you two done?” Sam looked at the two of them in irritation and Dean had to stifle a laugh at the almost stern expression on his face.

“Sorry, Sammy. The floor is yours. Tell us about your case.”

“Okay, so get this. There’s this resort called Grand View Lodge in Nisswa, Minnesota where couples have reportedly gone missing. In the past month, three couples have disappeared without a trace. No evidence of foul play and all of their personal belongings were left behind as were their vehicles. None of the other guests saw or heard anything.”

“That does sound suspicious,” Cas agreed. “Did the missing persons have anything in common?”

“All I can ascertain from the articles and social media posts is that the couples were very happily in love and were staying there on their honeymoon. But there isn’t a lot of information out there. I think we need to check it out, but we’ll need to pose as a couple if we want to gather information and attempt to lure whatever entity this is.”

“Go for it,” Dean shrugged. “When are you and Eileen leaving?” Dean noted the sudden look of discomfort on Sam’s face as he awkwardly shifted the laptop to his other hand.

“So that’s the thing…”

Dean groaned. “Of course.  It’s never that simple.”

“Eileen is on a hunt in Ohio right now. She just got there, so she won’t be back in time.”

“What about Jody? Or Donna?”

Sam shook his head. “Neither can get off work. Claire and Kaia are both out on a hunt, too. That leaves just the three of us.”

“So…?”

“So, that means you and Cas will need to pose as newlyweds, and I can come as backup. The resort is looking for temporary help for the holiday season so I can work at the front desk and interview the employees for information, while you guys can lure the entity and interview the guests.”

Dean choked on his beer and barely managed to sputter out a response. “You want me…and Cas… to pose as a couple? Are you serious?”

“Fine.” He shrugged.  “Me and Cas will pose as a couple then, and you can get a job there. I just thought you’d prefer not to work at a customer service desk.”

Dean felt a flash of irritation surge through him at Sam’s suggestion. The idea of Sam and Cas posing as a couple left a bitter taste in his mouth. Imagining them holding hands or having a romantic dinner just the two of them caused him to involuntarily clench his teeth and form a fist. He wasn’t jealous. No really, he wasn’t. It just – wasn’t right, okay? Sam and Cas probably wouldn’t be able to even pull off posing as a couple. So really, for the sake of the case, Dean should agree to pair up with Cas. All for the sake of the case. That’s all.

Suddenly Deans thoughts consisted of posing as a couple with Cas. Well, not just a couple, but Cas’ husband. Dean’s mouth went dry and oh. Okay. That scenario suddenly seemed a lot more pleasant. They’d have to hold hands, but really, that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe add a few lingering touches and cutesy nicknames into the mix. But that shouldn’t be too bad, he’s used to Cas being in his personal space. In fact, he’s sort of grown accustomed to it at this point. Cas has always gravitated towards Dean’s personal space. While it was a mild irritation at first, it evolved into a comfort as it was something so expected. Besides, since Cas became human with the help of Jack, they’ve spent much more time together. Movie nights were nearly a nightly occurrence at this point. Their thighs always pressed against each other as they fight over the shared bowl of popcorn. Or in the mornings, when Dean rests his hand on Cas’ lower back for balance so he can reach a mug from the top shelf. Or when Dean tries to teach Cas how to properly play pool by standing behind him, helping him aim the cue. Really, the list goes on. So, pretending to be married shouldn’t be that much different than their current dynamic.

Huh. That’s a new revelation. Before that thought can cause too much panic, he buries it deep inside and ignores the way it made his stomach swoop. “No, no. You’re right.” Dean cleared his throat in an attempt to hide the way his voice sounded borderline frantic. “I would be a terrible employee. I would probably be fired for flirting with the guests or yelling at my boss.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, great. So, you and Cas can pose as newlyweds, just as I suggested. I’ll book the cabin and we’ll head out early in the morning.” He stomped out of the room and Dean mirrored his brother, rolling his eyes in return.

Cas wordlessly grabbed the remote and pressed play, leaning back into Dean as the movie resumed.

---

The next morning, they were on the road much too early, in both Dean and Cas' opinion. They stayed up later than was probably wise to finish their movie. Then Cas had questions, to which Dean had to patiently answer and suddenly it was nearly two in the morning. Meanwhile, Sam was bright eyed and happily sipping his thermos of coffee as he lowered himself into the Impala.

"Dean, if you wanted to keep sleeping I could --"

"Don't you dare." Dean warned. "I'm driving, now shut your mouth." He heard Sam sigh in response and turned the key, feeling the car rumble beneath him. He pulled out of the garage and turned onto the road, getting a start on the nine-hour drive to Nisswa.

The first hour of the drive was nearly silent. The radio played quietly in the background as all three occupants took the time to fully wake up. Every now and then Cas would nudge Dean's arm from the backseat, his silent way of asking for Dean's coffee. Dean would roll his eyes, but nevertheless pass him the thermos with a smile tugging at his lips.

The silence wasn't broken until Cas complained that Dean finished the coffee. This, of course, prompted into an argument over who was entitled to the last sip of the coffee, only to be broken by Sam's frustrated interjection.

"Guys. Cut it out. You can get more coffee when we stop for gas."

"Gas station coffee is not the same as bunker coffee."

"Yeah, they don't have almond milk at gas stations, Sam."

"See? Not the same." Dean chirped, enjoying teaming up with Cas against Sam.

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother's antics and changed the subject. "We should probably discuss the case in more detail before we arrive."

"What's left to discuss? Couples went missing while banging on their honeymoon. Probably a routine salt and burn of some pissed off ghost."

"Delicately put, jackass." Sam scoffed. "I was thinking, we should discuss your relationship with Cas."

"My what?" Dean's pulse quickened and he internally cursed his body for betraying him.

"Your relationship with Cas. You know, for the case. We need to come up with a back story so that way if someone asks how you met, Cas won't say 'I gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.'"

"That is how we met, though." Cas insisted.

"Dude, you can't just tell people that!"

"We just need to think of a way to twist it, so it sounds normal." Sam explained. "So, for example, Dean could say he met Cas during a bad time in his life and Cas saved him."

"That's putting it lightly," Dean commented. "Cas? Does that work with you?"

"Fine."

"You're grumpy today." Dean observed, meeting Cas' eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I'm not grumpy. I'm tired. And I didn't get my full amount of coffee."

"You drank your whole thermos and half of mine. How much do you normally drink?"

"More than that."

"You have a caffeine addiction, you know that?"

"Well, at least you two already have the bickering of a married couple down." Sam half joked.

Dean rolled his eyes and focused back on the road; lips drawn into a straight line.

"What else do we need to cover?" Cas resigned, breaking the silence that once again settled over the car.

"Length of relationship."

"Ten years." Cas answered easily.

Sam pursed his lips. "Why don't we say you've been together for 5 years, and friends for the first 5. That will make you fit the same profile as the other missing couples a little more closely."

"Jesus, Sam. We'll be fine, we've been in situations like this before."

"I just don't want your cover blown. We have no one else to fill in. We need to discuss what your wedding was like, who proposed, how long you were engaged --"

Dean cut him off with a sharp look. "The wedding was small, just close family and friends. No one proposed, we both talked about it and together we agreed to get married. The engagement was short, less than a year. How's that for our cover?"

"That's great. Cas, did you get all that?"

"Yes. Can we stop and get more coffee now?"

"I thought gas station coffee wasn't good enough for you?"

"It's not. There's a Starbucks at this next exit. I saw a sign."

"Cas, we're not even halfway there yet. Dean's not going to stop yet."

But sure enough, Dean was already turning towards the exit, cataloguing the way Cas' lips turned up at the corner.

The remaining hours of the trip passed rather quickly. Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in tune to his Zeppelin tape, Sam read lore in preparation of the case, and Cas happily watched the passing snow-clad landscape while sipping on his venti coffee.

As they neared the town of Nisswa, the scenery gave way from a frozen landscape with nothing but bare trees and the occasional truck stop to boutique shops, rustic restaurants, and log-cabin-like structures that served as hotels and cafes. As they neared their turn off the highway, Sam requested to be dropped off in town so he could secure a car rental and check into his own hotel. Sam would be interviewing for the seasonal front desk position early the next morning, so he couldn't be seen arriving with Dean and Cas.

"Oh! Before I forget --" Sam paused after stepping out of the Impala and dug around in his bag. He retrieved two gold bands and handed one to Dean and Cas. "Your wedding rings."

Dean slipped his on and scowled at his brother. "Where did you get these?"

"A pawn shop," Sam said sheepishly. "I grabbed them when I went out on a supply run last night. Don't lose them - I'm pretty sure they're actually gold."

"It's probably a knock off and will turn our fingers green."

"No, Sam is right," Cas observed. He held the ring close to his face, carefully scrutinizing it. "It's 24k gold. It's actually quite good quality."

"Thank you, Cas." Sam said pointedly. "You two better get going and check in. I made your reservation under "Smith." I'll be at the resort tomorrow morning for my interview. I made a very persuasive resume so I should be hired no problem. Just keep your phones on you and check in with me occasionally, yeah?"

"I know how to do my job, Sam. Cas and I will get settled in then we'll talk to some of the guests at breakfast tomorrow morning. Don't worry about us. Worry about your interview," Dean said with a wink. "Cas, you've been upgraded to shotgun, let's go."

With that, Sam stepped away from the car, making room for Cas to climb in. "Be careful, guys."

"Yeah, you too," Dean replied. Cas then shut the door and Dean pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the highway. "You ready for this?"

Cas nodded, fidgeting with the gold band on his finger. "We met 10 years ago and started dating 5 years ago. A few months ago, we decided to get married and we had a small wedding with our closest family and friends. Now we're on our honeymoon."

"Yeah, that - that's good."

Dean cautiously glanced over at Cas. His hair was tousled from leaning against the window, with the left side matted down and the right side sticking straight out. He had an air of contentment radiating from him, no doubt from the dangerously high levels of caffeine racing through him. Since becoming human, Cas formed a very dependent relationship with both coffee and sleep. Sleeping became his favorite pastime as he was finally able to experience dreams. However, that meant he would often sleep for the better part of the morning, only begrudgingly getting out of bed when Dean would pound on his door to inform him breakfast, and more importantly coffee, was ready. Even then, Cas would be grumpy until he was halfway through his second cup of coffee.

Dean would never admit it to anyone, but he always enjoyed his morning routine with Cas. Cas would silently sit at the table, watching Dean dish up breakfast. Dean would slide a fully loaded plate of eggs and bacon towards him and watch as he took his first bite. Cas would always groan in appreciation (which okay, maybe Dean enjoyed that part a little too much, but he would never admit to that either) and then Dean would refill Cas's mug. At that point Sam would enter the kitchen, just back from his run and openly making a disgusted face at the heaping pile of bacon on Dean's plate. Ignoring him, Dean would sit next to Cas, and Cas would scoot closer to Dean, soaking in his body heat due to the endless cold draft in the bunker. That's the only reason Dean would lean back into him. No other reason, whatsoever, regardless of the knowing look on Sam's face.

Dean ended his train of thought there and signaled for the coming turn which featured a large stone sign with "Grand View Lodge" neatly printed on it. The road was illuminated by string lights and lanterns along it and Dean could see cabins in the trees along the road, with warm yellow lights illuminating the darkness around them. The Impala's headlights shone on a sign directing them towards the main lodge for check-in. The resort grounds seemed beautiful and very quiet. Dean could understand why it was a popular destination for newlyweds. The cold winter air made the glowing cabins seem all the cozier. He could imagine the resort in the summer, filled with families and children running towards the lake with sunscreen and beach towels in tow. It would be quite the opposite than it is now, in mid-December with below zero temps and not a single person in sight.

The first sign of life they saw was the dozen cars parked outside of the main lodge for check in, otherwise no one was out of their cabins. "It's going to be hard to talk to the guests when it's this cold. No one will want to leave their cabin." Dean frowned.

"Sam said there's an optional itinerary over the weekend for all of the guests. We'll have to sign up for some activities so we can interview them."

Dean sighed. "As long as it involves free food, I'm in." He put the car in park and traded the warmth for the frigid cold. It was a sharp cold that hurts your lungs as you breathe it in. It was the kind of cold that you don't spend time in unless you have to. Dean pulled the jacket tight against him and motioned for Cas to follow him inside.

The main lodge was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it. The interior was covered in dark wood, with large leather couches set in front of a roaring stone fireplace. A small gift shop was off to the side and there were large rustic chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Dean could hear silverware clattering and subdued conversation which hinted to the presence of a restaurant down the hall. The front desk was near the doors and they quickly approached to check in.

"Good evening," The receptionist beamed. Her name tag identified her as Brenda. "Welcome to Grand View Lodge. Have either of you stayed with us before?"

"No, Ma'am," Dean responded, leaning against the desk.

"Well, welcome!" She said cheerfully. Dean could already anticipate that she and Sam will get along perfectly once he’s hired. "Here's a map of the resort grounds for your reference. It shows all of our cabins and the four restaurants we have on site. You can dine in or order room service. All of that information is on the back of the map. Now, can I get the name your reservation is under?"

"Dean Smith."

Brenda typed in the name and clicked a few times then looked up at Dean and Cas grinning. "You should have mentioned you were on your Honeymoon! Congratulations, love birds!" Dean felt his face heat up and avoided eye contact with Cas. 'Minnesota Nice' was very real and it was making Dean very uncomfortable.

"Thank you," Dean choked out. "Could we get our keys now? We just had a really long drive and we're tired."

"Oh, of course! I don't want to delay your honeymoon activities," she stated not-so-subtly. She opened a drawer and handed Dean two key cards. Then she grabbed their resort map and circled their cabin number.

"Do you have a list of activities you offer?" Cas questioned.

"Oh! Yes! This weekend we offer both wine and bourbon tasting, depending on your preferences. We also offer couples' cooking classes, and our spa is open for couples' massages. I see you’re staying for a week so here's a pamphlet of all the activities we're offering this month," She explained as she handed over a brochure. "We also have an ice rink which is open until 8pm and free to all guests."

Cas opened his mouth to assumingely ask a question that would only drag out the check-in process, so Dean interrupted him.

"Great, thank you. We appreciate your help," He then grabbed Cas by the hand and pulled him back into the cold.

"She seemed nice," Cas observed.

"Too chipper. Sam will love her."

Cas laughed at that. It was the kind of laugh that shows his perfectly white teeth and makes his eyes slightly crinkle. It was the kind of laugh that was Dean's absolute favorite.

Dean glanced at the map, noting where to drive to get to their cabin. It appeared to be a short drive from the main lodge. He started the car and turned back onto the gravel road they entered on. Following the signs, they were led along a winding road towards the south end of the grounds, where the now frozen lake is located. The trees were dense, and the cabins were growing sparser as they continued along the road. At last, they pulled up to a quaint log cabin that matched the number on their keys. The cabin had large windows and a wrap-around porch that would be perfect to utilize in the summer and fall. The porch light was on, illuminating the front yard which was littered with large pine trees.

He put the Impala in park, and they grabbed their bags out of the backseat. The night was still and silent. There were no lights except for those on the porch. A large expanse of stars and sky nearly took Dean’s breath away. Growing up, Dean would always take solace in the night sky littered with millions of stars. With the ever-constant change of living on the road, the stars were always there. When John would drink too much or be gone too long on a hunt thereby forcing Dean to parent Sam, he would step outside of their usual run-down motel and take a deep breath, taking in the stars. As they got older and Sam’s nerd tendencies began to develop, he would tell Dean all about the constellation. They’d sit on the sidewalk with their backs against the brick motel and Sam would just talk. He’d point out the shapes in the stars and talk about the history and the namesakes behind each one. It was a most welcoming distraction from the constant shit in Dean’s life.

Even now, as he looks up at the brilliant set of stars unhindered by city lights, Dean can’t help but feel grateful for where his life is. Sure, his kid is basically God. And he’s helplessly in love with his best friend who was an angel but is now a human and probably doesn’t feel the same way about him and now he has to pretend to be his husband at a romantic resort, which can only go poorly. Then there’s the fact that his mom was dead, then she was alive, and then she was dead again. Really, just piles and piles of trauma that he’s had to deal with. But God, Dean still feels lucky. Because he has a family. He has Sam, Cas, Jack, Eileen, Jody and the girls. During those years growing up he always assumed he’d be dead before living a life like this.

A gust of wind whips across the yard, stinging all exposed skin which pulls Dean out of his spiraling thoughts. Cas is mirroring Dean from moments ago, also gazing up at the night sky. “I’ve been alive for so long yet the beauty and wonders of this life will never cease to amaze me.” Cas simply states, as if that wasn’t the most poetic shit to ever come out of someone’s mouth.

At a loss for words, Dean clasps Cas’ shoulder and leads him through the snow and into the cabin. He unlocks the door and welcomes the immediate warmth radiating from inside the cabin. The cabin is incredibly cozy. The walls are a dark wood, with leather sofas next to a large electric fireplace and a big fluffy rug. The kitchen is off of the living room, which on a normal occasion would be perfect to cook some proper meals. Then there is a beautiful wooden table in the dining room with dim lighting that would be perfect for a romantic meal. Dean cut off that dangerous train of thought before it went anywhere that made this situation even more complicated.

Speaking of complicated, Cas was no longer by Dean’s side. Frowning, he walked down the hallway that led towards the bathroom and bedroom. It was in the bedroom that he found Cas hovering in the doorway and oh.

Oh.

There was a king size bed in the center of the room with rose petals scattered over it. An ice bucket with a bottle of champagne rested in the center of the bed with a box of chocolate next to it.

“I’m going to kill him.”

Cas looked at Dean questioningly. “Who?”

“Sam. He told them it was our honeymoon! Then this happened.” He gestured at the array of items in the room.

“I see no problem with this behavior. They needed to know we were on our honeymoon for the sake of the case. And we got free champagne and sweets. Usually, you’re all about the free stuff.”

Dean sighed. “No, you’re right. It’s just – never mind. It’s late and I’ve been driving all day. Guess I’m tired.” Cas just nodded and set his bag down. “So, uh –” Dean started, rubbing his hand over his face. “Want me to take the couch tonight? We can switch off every night or something.”

“Dean,” He sighed. ”You said yourself that you’re getting too old to be sleeping on couches and pull outs. Hence, the memory foam in the bunker. Besides, we’re playing the role of a newlywed couple this weekend. We should probably keep up with appearances and not make it seem like we’re already sleeping in separate beds like unhappy middle-aged couples who are too stubborn to admit they need a divorce.”

Dean barked out a surprised laugh. He loves when Cas goes on his weird tangents. “Yeah, okay Cas. That bed is huge, so it shouldn’t be a problem anyway.”

Cas just nodded and began digging around in his duffel bag. Meanwhile, Dean removed the ice bucket with champagne from the bed and set it on the dresser. Then he brushed off as many rose petals as he could, determined to clear the bed of any romantic connotation. When he was satisfied, he began stripping out of his jeans and flannel. It was a long day of driving and his body was no longer accustomed to sitting for so long, so he was ready for bed at this point.

Dean stopped mid-action, catching sight of Cas doing the same. Cas removed his jeans and then lifted his shirt over his head. Dean swallowed, trying to

tear his eyes away from his best friend’s body but holy shit – Cas is toned. As he bent over to put his discarded clothes back in his bag, the muscles in his back and legs jumped out. His golden skin was completely on display and as a result Dean’s brain was short circuiting. Panicking, he grabbed his toothbrush and locked himself in the bathroom as an attempt to get his breathing and body back under control.

So much for uncomplicated.

[prorevenge]

You sent me a picture of me sleeping, so I'll send the 'accidental dick pic' you sent to your sister

So, before I start this, I just wanted to say that the guy's behavior in this story isn't that bad, but I was a seventh grader at the time, so I was still pretty spooked. Also, I don't promote sending a guy's sister a dick pic he sent you 'accidentally', lol.

Here we go, this is be a long one. TL;DR is at the bottom.

When I was in seventh grade, I went a Lutheran school. This one weirdo that went to my school actually was a really good friend of mine. I'm gonna call him CF (childhood friend) because I don't want to call him out and ruin his nice guy rep.

CF and I were good friends from preschool to 1st grade. The only thing we really had in common (he's a year older than me) was that we both liked music. CF was a percussionist and I played flute. I continued to play flute and around my sixth year of playing flute, I was in the band at the Lutheran school. Since I had played for so long and was pretty damn good (still am, nine years strong), the band director put me into the advanced band where CF was.

At first, he kinda just followed me around the school. I thought that he was being polite since I was new to the school and all, but it turned out to become way worse than that. He'd talk about my crushes all day long, who I was interested in and even tried to start small-talk with me about periods. Remember, I was one year younger than CF, so it started to creep me out when he actually tried to get into detail about since he had a sister, he knew all about periods and could 'help me out'. And then finally, the annual band trip came around. We were going to San Diego that year for a competition. CF was clingier than ever and I was starting to lose it. The ride there was peaceful, I sat with my friends in the back and he sat all the way up front, but when we got off at the center and after changing into my dress, that's when it started to get even weirder. He kept complementing my dress, staring at my chest and every time I had to go to the bathroom because of nerves, he opened the door to the ladies room for me. I still was too shy to say anything, so I shut up about it.

After, we got on the bus and started driving back to the city. We stopped at a shopping center where a certain restaurant named after a black and white bear's express was. I had never eaten there, so me, my best friend at the time and her bf went to eat. CF decided that he wasn't around long enough, so he tagged along. I was super fucking annoyed at this point but I again didn't say anything. And then he grabs my thigh. I stood up, threw out my noodles and walked out of the restaurant and onto the bus. I made the mistake of sitting up at the front and fell asleep for the trip back.

A few weeks pass and CF avoided me a lot. I didn't really care that he went away, I was finally free, but then I got a DM on a certain purple 'gram'. It was a dick pic, and it was really disgusting. Two hours later, he sends me this.

CF: Hey [my name], sorry I made the trip back a bit awkward. Also, sorry for the dick pic, that was for someone else. You guys have the same name.

We were on the gram app, and we all know you don't have contact names. And then he sends it. It's a picture of me, and it's obvious he turned around to take it. He had taken a picture of me sleeping. On the bus. And then he sends:

CF: Also, just wanted to let you know that you look beautiful even when your sleeping.

I had e-fucking-nough. I took a screenshot of the dick pic and the convo and sent it to his twin sister (TS). She was super pissed, since I was like a little sister to her. A few days later, TS messages me and sends me a post from an account. I looked closer and basically the whole account posted pics of the convo I sent, tagging him in all of them. TS and her friends created multiple accounts and gained at least 30 followers per account and posted the pictures. CF hasn't talked to me since and deleted his account, and I'm glad.

The accounts are deleted now, you can't search for them anymore.

​

TL;DR: Childhood friend keeps stalking me and won't leave me alone. Sends me a dick pic and a picture of me sleeping, captioned "You look beautiful even when your sleeping." I send a ss of convo to his twin sister, who makes different accounts posting the dick pic and tagging him, leading him to delete his account and leave me alone.

​

Edit: I do still have the conversation for giggles and shit with my friends, but I'm not sure if I want to share just yet.

(source) story by (/u/deathplants)

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

Love Yourself (Chapter 14)

title: Love Yourself summary: A lot of things about Dan’s life are pretty great. He gets to make the music he wants, he’s got a great fanbase, and his manager is his best friend. A few things about his life suck a bit more. He’s currently lacking inspiration, he’s rather lonely, and he’s stuck in a rut. Dan’s been going to the same coffee shop for years. It’s quiet, it’s quaint, it’s near his home. Most importantly: none of the employees give a shit that’s he a world-famous singer. Things change when he meets the new barista. chapter words: 17k story words: 105.3k (so far) chapter: 14/? rating: m warnings: language, alcohol, sex mentions, some bi/homophobia genre: singer!dan, coffee shop au, barista!phil, slow burn [[ao3]] [[first chapter]] [[previous chapter]]

a/n: can you believe i’m posting a 17k chapter? because i can’t. a massive thank you to @auroraphilealis​ for reading this mammoth of a chapter MULTIPLE TIMES for me and helping make it better.

also: before you send me an ask about using a read more, i did, they just don’t always work on mobile and there is nothing i can do about it :( take it up with tumblr lol

Dan didn’t entirely trust Isabella to not chase after him. The second Dan was out the door, he was desperate to put as much distance between himself and Isabella as possible. As much as he truly hated exercise, Dan practically sprinted away, paranoidly glancing over his shoulder every couple of feet to make sure that Isabella’s signature clack clack clack wasn’t trailing behind him.

Instead, he waited until he was five blocks away from Isabella’s building before he slowed to a fast paced walk and pulled out his phone. Dan was ready — he was ready to be fucking done with Isabella in his life, and he was ready to move fucking forward with Phil. When he opened his phone, he was determined to do just that.

Jesus, he had six missed calls from Adaline. For a moment, Dan had forgotten about Adaline’s emergency phone call. Just as he swiped away the notification, another call came through. Dan pressed the decline button — he’d call her back in just a minute.

He had something else to do first.

Riding the adrenaline high of finally, finally doing what he wanted to do, Dan opened twitter and — fuck. He’d left the app open on the picture of Isabella. Knowing that she’d fucked that model, that the mark on her neck was from another man, didn’t hurt as much as Dan had thought it would. It fucking sucked, of course.

After all, cheating was the one place where Dan drew a firm line of what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Honestly, he was more upset about the fact that he’d been cheated on, than about the fact that Isabella had been the one doing the cheating. He hated her, he hated her for a lot of reasons. He hated her for the way that she used him, for the way that she manipulated him, for the way that she cheated on him.

But above everything else, he was just glad to be done with her.

Replies were rolling in, most of them tagging both him and Isabella, and, weirdly enough, a few tagging Phil as well. Deciding his mission could wait a moment, Dan clicked on Isabella’s name, his finger hovering over the unfollow button.

If he clicked that, if he actually unfollowed Isabella, people would surely notice. People would undoubtedly piece together the scandalous picture with the fact that he’d unfollowed his bloody girlfriend and know.

Know that they’d broken up.

Dan didn’t give a fuck. He’d meant what he’d said to Isabella. He was done. The fallout of breaking up with Isabella didn’t phase him, fans could think whatever the hell they wanted to — most of it would probably be right, anyway. With a surge of defiance, Dan smashed the unfollow button.

That felt good.

But not good enough.

Fuck Isabella, fuck her being in his life and having even an inkling of control over him.

This time, he didn’t hesitate. He clicked the gear next to her name, pressing Block @IsabellaDeLaRenta before he could change his mind.

That felt really good.

At least now he wouldn’t have to see whatever bullshit she pulled and would be relatively sheltered from the inevitable drama.

But that wasn’t what he’d come on the app to do.

Dan tabbed over to his DMs. Phil’s name was right at the top of the list.

Dan could do this. He was on a roll of doing rash and brazen things tonight, he might as well fully commit. He’d been holding back from this, because it felt like a definite step across a line, a line that he wasn’t willing to cross. But now, the line was gone. He was free to do whatever the fuck he wanted.

He didn’t let himself overthink the message. It didn’t matter how it came out. It could be flirty or blunt or a little bit aggressive, it didn’t matter. So he wasn’t about to spend thirty minutes crafting it.

Daniel Howell: text me about drinks tomorrow 07712345678

Well, it probably could have stood to be a little less abrupt, but whatever. Dan’s point was made. Isabella was gone and there was no longer anything stopping him from texting Phil, from having Phil as an actual contact in his phone.

Okay, next thing.

Deciding it was time to call Adaline back, Dan switched back to the phone app, but quickly got distracted once again. The third person down on his missed calls list was Izzy D.L.R <3.

Fuck that. Dan tapped on her name, pulling up the contact page.

Should he edit the name, or just delete her entirely?

It seemed stupid to keep her number in his phone just for the sake of it potentially, someday being useful. What did Dan care? He couldn’t imagine a single situation that was worth the emotional weight of keeping her number in his phone. So instead of just deleting the heart, Dan scrolled all the way to the bottom and smashed the delete contact button, quickly accepting the annoying are you sure?

Yes. Dan was very, very sure.

Fuck, that felt heavenly. Having that last little bit of Isabella completely gone from his life — knowing that he didn’t have her number anymore, knowing that if he wanted to talk to her at all that he would have to unblock her on twitter… it all felt like this very definitive wall between them.

He liked that wall.

Okay, now Dan could focus on calling Adaline back. Dan tapped back to his call log, happy to see Isabella’s name gone, and clicked on Adaline’s name. The phone didn’t even make it through a full ring before a sharp voice answered.

“Daniel. James. Howell. I’ve been calling you nonstop for forty-five minutes,” Adaline greeted him sternly.

“I know, sorry, I couldn’t answer.”

“Wasn’t the whole point that you needed to answer so you had an escape? I was beginning to think you died.” Adaline sounded annoyed, but Dan could hear the concern laced in her voice as well.

“Chill out, Mum, I’m alive,” Dan joked, high off the fact that he was finished with Isabella. No amount of irritation from Adaline could phase him now — not while he was this happy.

“Fuck off,” Adaline grumbled, never pleased to be compared to their mother (even if she was one of the sweetest women alive). “What the hell was happening?”

“Well, see, I was out to dinner with Isabella originally. And then I ended up back at Isabella’s—” Dan just about gagged on the name, which, judging by Adaline’s giggle, didn’t escape her notice. “I didn’t want to, um, you know.” Dan coughed awkwardly.

“So you thought faking an emergency would be better than just saying no, like an adult?”

“Look, I didn’t want to dig myself into an even deeper a hole. I had these grand plans to take her to breakfast tomorrow and dump her, but I knew if I pissed her off too much tonight, she wouldn’t agree to see me before she went back off to wherever the fuck she’s planning to go tomorrow.”

And thank god that Dan had successfully broken up with her before she jetted off to Vancouver, or Switzerland, or Melbourne — or wherever the fuck she’d said. He wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to end things over the phone — or worse, text — and he couldn’t imagine suffering through that relationship for another second.

Adaline was quiet for a moment.

“What do you mean had plans? Please don’t tell me you changed your mind,” she begged.

“Er, well, sort of,” Dan stumbled, a little charigned.

“Are you fucking serious? Don’t make me get on a bus and come smack sense into you,” Adaline threatened. “God, I thought you’d finally figured out that you were dating a total bitch.”

“No!” Dan interrupted fiercely. “I mean — I did! She’s a bitch! I get it, loud and clear. Everything’s fine.” Dan did his best to console his sister. Everything was fine — it was more than fine at the moment, all things considered.

Dan stopped at a crosswalk, pushing the walk button repeatedly. He could feel his excitement, his energy, his complete exasperation with the entire situation itching beneath his skin. “I broke up with her tonight,” he continued. “That’s why I didn’t answer.”

“Wait, on Valentine’s Day?” Adaline screeched, utterly scandalized. “What the fuck, bro?”

Dan took a breath, ready to defend his actions, but Adaline cut him off.

“Look, I wanted you to break up with her as much as anyone else, obvi, but I thought you were determined to be the good guy or whatever. Which, you know, would mean waiting until it’s not the day of love?!”

“It’s a long story, and I don’t want to get into the details. But if you go on twitter, you’ll get the gist of it.”

“Okayyy, should I go look now or…?” Adaline trailed off. Dan could hear the faint do do do doooo of her computer starting up in the background.

He didn’t particularly want to deal with Adaline’s reaction to everything on twitter at this moment in time though.

“Later’s fine.” Dan rubbed his hand down his face. “I actually have a different favor to ask you.”

“Someone’s needy tonight.”

“Shut up, you act like I do nothing for you.” Dan pulled his coat tighter around his body — jesus it was cold tonight.

“Fair enough, what’s up?” Adaline asked more nonchalantly than Dan had anticipated, given the drama of the evening.

“Do you have any plans this weekend?” Dan asked tentatively as he stalled at another street corner, looking back and forth for cars before he carried onward, carried himself towards home, towards the comfort of his own bed.

“Um, I might have a date tomorrow night, but I don’t know.” Adaline sounded just uncertain enough of her plans for Dan to interject his own life into them.

“How attached are you to going on it?” he asked bluntly.

“Not. Why?”

Thank fuck, Dan thought. “Well, you know Phil, the one from —”

“Twitter and the coffee shop, yeah, I know Phil.”

“Oh. Right.” Dan felt himself blushing and was glad that it was dark and no one was around. Of course Addie knew about Phil, Dan talked about him constantly. “Well, I like him,” Dan blurted out. He held his breath, waiting for Adaline’s reaction. It wasn’t normal for him to have actual feelings for someone new so soon after a breakup. Having grown up in the same house as Dan, Adaline probably knew that better than anyone.

But her response didn’t come.

“I mean, like him like him,” he added when Adaline still didn’t say anything.

“No shit,” Addie shot back. “ Are you going to say anything new or…?”

“You knew?” Dan asked in surprise as he pulled open the door to his building. The warm air of the lobby felt heavenly against his cheeks, and Dan almost felt guilty for the wave of frigid cold he must have let in.

Almost. But right now, he was feeling too high off all of his decisions to feel too bad about anything.

“Dan, I’ve watched you date how many people? I’m not an idiot,” Adaline said, interrupting Dan’s thoughts. Dan jottled a little, trying to think back to what Adaline was talking about, and blushed when he realized.

“Oh,” he muttered dumbly. He gave a short two-fingered wave to the doorman as he power walked to the lift, eager to be in the comfortable safety of his own flat.

Dan was silent the entire lift ride, trying to process what it could mean if Adaline realized that Dan properly liked Phil. If Adaline knew all the way from Wokingham, had Phil caught on, too?

Although, Adaline had watched him cycle through relationship after relationship, fuckbuddy after fuckbuddy. She wasn’t that young while Dan was living at home, and he’d never been particularly subtle about it. Somewhere along the way, Adaline had developed a knack for picking up on when Dan was interested in, well, fucking someone.

Maybe there was hope that Dan’s interest wasn’t quite that obvious to Phil.

“So what about Phil, this boy you like like?” Adaline prompted teasingly when Dan was silent too long for her liking. Even though Dan had brought the subject up, he had no idea where to begin talking when it came to the topic of Phil.

Or, at least, he had no idea how to talk about it without just gushing.

“Hang on,” Dan murmured when the lift doors opened. He sat his phone down on the table so he had both hands free to shrug out of his coat, letting it fall somewhere in the foyer. There were more important things to deal with right now that being tidy.

Dan picked his phone back up, finally having decided what he needed to say first. “Well, objectively,” Dan explained, with just a hint of annoyance at his own conclusion shining through, “I know I need a bit of a break from dating before I just go for it with Phil.”

“I’m sorry, did I hear that right?”

“Before I date Phil, I know I should take a break from dating,” Dan repeated a little bit louder, in case the connection was weak.

“That’s what I thought you said.” Adaline sounded stunned.

“Yeah…”Dan tugged roughly at his tie on his way to the bedroom, trying to get out of this damn suit, this damn night as quickly as possible. “You’re being weird.”

“I’m being weird? You’re the one that’s being weird. I can’t believe that Dan Howell is going to take a break from dating?”

“Fuck off, it’s not that big of a deal,” he grumbled, his free hand trying to undo his belt.

“It’s a huge deal.” Adaline corrected. “I literally can’t remember a time when you weren’t at least sleeping with someone.”

So maybe she was right. Maybe Dan had never gone a full week after a breakup without sleeping with someone new. And maybe Dan had always made an effort to have someone in his life, whether it was a relationship or a… fuckbuddy.

Dan sighed, not able to be really annoyed since Adaline was technically right. “I know, okay. But that’s the thing. I don’t want Phil to be just sex and I’m afraid that if I try to date him right now I’ll fuck it up.” Adaline made a sympathetic sound. “It matters, okay? I want to do this right.”

“Okay, so how is all of this rolling around to needing a favor?” Dan could tell by the amusement in her tone he was already probably going to win.

“I kind of asked him to get drinks tomorrow. And it’s not, like, a date, I’m sure. I asked him before Izzy and I broke up. But now that I’m not with Isabella anymore, I’m not sure I trust drunk, horny me to not drag him back to my place and fuck him.” He put Adaline on speaker and set the phone on his dresser.

“Y-you’re fucking rid-ic-iculous,” Adaline managed to say through loud laughter. Her laughter was contagious, and Dan found himself unable to control his own giggles as he realized just how bloody absurd it was that he was asking his little sister — who he used to babysit all the time — to essentially babysit him.

“You’re not wrong.” Dan agreed, once he’d gotten his own laughter under control. “But — ugh this is so childish. I want a chaperone to make sure I don’t do anything dumb.”

“Get Louise to go with you.”

“I don’t actually trust her to stop me. I think she’s rooting too much for me and Phil that drunk-Louise would probably actually try to whore me out to him.” Dan glanced down at his hands as they unbuttoned his shirt and, for a split second, he imagined they were softer, paler hands.

Fuck. No he really couldn’t be trusted to be drinking around Phil alone.

“So you want me to trek all the way into the city, just to have drinks with you and your crush in order to stop you from doing anything stupid,” Adaline deadpanned, not bothering to hide just how ludicrous she thought Dan was being.

“Not just to have drinks. You can stay over, obviously, and we’ll do something on Saturday.”

“Hmmm, tempting.” Adaline considered it for a moment. “Wait, a second.” She sounded suspicious.

“What?” Dan asked warily.

“Last time I checked, you’d sworn that you weren’t going to introduce us to anyone that wasn’t serious.”

“One, I said I wasn’t bringing anyone who wasn’t serious home and I’m not bringing Phil home, and two, we aren’t dating — yet,” Dan retorted, throwing himself onto his bed with a content sigh. It felt so good to be back home, especially knowing that tomorrow, he’d wake up and not have to pretend to care about Isabella anymore.

“I see how it is, you’re playing the technicality card.” Adaline’s smug teasing was beginning to make Dan worried that she wouldn’t actually agree.

“Look, will you do it or not?” Dan snapped impatiently.

“A chance to watch you drunkenly embarrass yourself in front of someone you like? Obviously I’m coming.”

“I resent that,” Dan muttered, but Adaline kept talking over him.

“But you get to figure out what we’re telling Mum and Dad. And Phil, for that matter, because I assume you don’t want to tell him that you made your little sister travel an hour just to come babysit you.”

“You’re the best Adaline. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll book you a ticket and forward you the confirmation when I hang up.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow you fucking idiot.”

You’re a fucking idiot, Dan thought back at her bitterly, because Adaline had already hung up.

*****************************

It was half past ten, and while Phil didn’t usually sleep until closer to three, he was already getting ready for bed. He figured if he was going to feel somewhat sorry and pathetic for himself, he might as well do it while wrapped up in his green and blue check duvet.

He’d never been the type to really buy into Valentine’s Day — normally he didn’t care if he was single or not on the holiday. But this year, the date had felt a little like a slap in the face.

Dan’s visit to Beans and Grind, had been lovely — for the most part. No matter what day it was, Phil would always savor any time he got with Dan, but he had been particularly grateful to get a few hours of Dan’s undivided attention today.

It was just that, well, it had left him wanting more.

To be fair, Phil knew that there was no amount of time that he could have with Dan that wouldn’t leave Phil wanting more. Looking back, Phil couldn’t identify when he’d gone from simply enjoying spending time with Dan to craving it and dreading its end.

Phil, could, however pick out the exact moment that he’d realized that his feelings for Dan were so much stronger than a normal crush.

It had been a cold day filled with snow flurries and gusts of wind. Phil honestly hadn’t expected Dan to come into the coffee shop — if Phil hadn’t have had to work, he certainly wouldn’t have left his flat. But just an hour into Phil’s shift, when the snow flurries had been at their heaviest, Dan had waltzed in, wearing a fluffy hat and an oversized coat. He’d brought his laptop with him, but he’d never got around to opening it. Instead, he’d ordered a hot chocolate, demanding that Phil drink one with him. It had taken a few sips of the hot beverage before Dan had finally felt warm enough to shed his massive coat, and when he had —

When Dan had taken off his coat, Phil had seen what Dan was wearing.

Phil’s jumper.

Out of all of the that clothes Dan owned, for some unfathomable reason, Dan had chosen to wear Phil’s pugs not drugs jumper — a jumper that was so unbelievably different from Dan’s normal aesthetic that Phil had originally worried Dan wouldn’t even wear it as an alternative to his own soaked shirt.

And yet there Dan was, wearing it for no apparent reason other than because he’d wanted to.

Dan had curled up on his chair, somehow, and gotten lost in conversation with Phil. He’d looked impossibly young and cuddly and comfortable, and Phil had known right then that not only did he want to see this version of Dan again, he wanted to see every version of Dan.

God, Phil was so fucked.

Valentine’s Day just sucked this year. The things that he had done — work, see Dan — hadn’t sucked, sure. But the whole day left a rotten taste in his mouth. Left him bitter about the fact that he’d gone and fallen for someone who wasn’t available.

Trying to minimize the agony of the day, Phil had completely avoided the internet all day, other than his brief DMs with Dan that morning. He just hadn’t been in the mood to deal with the constant love love love that was sure to be everywhere, and figured it was safest to hold off until tomorrow.

But at quarter to midnight, when his laptop had died and Phil was too lazy to go across the room to find the television remote, he gave into the temptation. How bad could it be?

The first thing he noticed when he opened up twitter was that he had a new DM from Dan that he’d somehow missed — he must have cleared the notification on accident. The second thing he noticed was that he had approximately a thousand mentions. Which wasn’t a crazy amount for him — not by a long shot. But usually, any significant amount of mentions was preceded by something from him, and he had been completely silent today.

Maybe some of his followers were just wishing him a Happy Valentine’s Day? In the past, his followers had started hashtags on his birthday or a holiday — maybe they had done that again?

The temptation of knowing what the hell was going on somehow overrided Phil’s perpetual desire to talk to Dan. Hesitantly, Phil clicked on his notifications, and scrolled through his mentions.

@AmazingKendra: @danielhowell i get that @IsabellaDeLaRenta is pretty but have you seen @AmazingPhil

@DanIsTheMan64: @danielhowell tbh your smile looked more genuine in that picture with @AmazingPhil last week

@DieDanellaDie: @danielhowell fuck #danella. i’m fucking disgusted with @IsabellaDeLaRenta and you can do better. i only ship #phan now @AmazingPhil

There had to be some kind of context to these tweets. Phil kept scanning, trying to find someone who included something more helpful in their messages. Finally, he found one that tagged someone other than him, Dan, or Isabella.

@iHowellForDan: @danielhowell did you see the @Tatler picture? Just move on already (preferably to @AmazingPhil)

Phil knew about Tatler. They were a gossip website that he’d been featured on one too many times to have any respect for, but he was desperate to figure out what the hell was going on.

Well, that seemed as good of a place to start as any.

Phil’s stomach was clenched in a tight knot as he clicked on @Tatler. He had no idea what to expect.

Fuck they tweeted a lot. How many people ran this account? It couldn’t possibly be just one. The gossip website was far too massive for its own good. Each tweet felt like a shot in the dark in the hopes that something would land them some hits.

It look a moment of scrolling to find anything that might be relevant and then — shit. That was it. That explained at least some part of what was going on.

There was a very risque picture of Isabella on a beach in some random dude’s arms. According to the magazine, the picture was taken just two days ago.

The nerves in Phil’s stomach turned to guilt. He’d been hoping, praying for Dan and Isabella to break up. But he’d never wanted it to be because of something as serious or cruel as Isabella cheating on Dan, and, well, that’s exactly what this picture looked like.

Wait, shit.

Dan.

Was Dan okay?

Phil couldn’t even begin to imagine how Dan might be feeling right now, if that picture had any truth to it, if Dan had seen it.

Phil abandoned his quest to figure out what the hell was going on in favor of opening the DM from Dan. If Dan was upset and had messaged Phil about everything that was happening — whatever that may be — Phil wanted to be there for him.

The message wasn’t Dan freaking out, though. In fact, it didn’t seem to have any connection to what was happening on twitter at all.

Daniel Howell: text me about drinks tomorrow 020 2436 8532

It was short and simple, but it made Phil’s heart soar. Actual Dan Howell’s phone number was sitting in Phil’s twitter inbox. He hadn’t even had to ask for it.

Part of Phil wanted to continue stalking twitter, to read through all of the available tweets to figure out what the hell was going on. But if Phil had learned anything through being in the public eye, it was that more often than not, whatever the public was assuming to be true on twitter was either wildly off base, or a gross oversimplification of things.

Besides, he’d rather hear about whatever was happening in Dan’s life from Dan himself. And now, Phil had a much more efficient way to get a hold of him.

Maybe it would come across as eager, perhaps even too desperate, since the message had only came in an hour and a half ago, but Phil didn’t care. He copy and pasted the number into a new text message, only to stare blankly at the screen.

What the fuck was he supposed to say?

Did he mention the shitshow that was happening on twitter? Did he ask about how Dan’s Valentine’s Day was? Should he ask if there was any truth to the picture of Isabella?

Phil opted to ignore all of the questions he had — at least for now — and send something more casual, allowing Dan to take charge of the conversation and say… whatever he wanted Phil to know.

Phil: This already seems like a more efficient method of communication than twitter -Phil

Even though Phil knew Dan was a night owl, he didn’t expect Dan to text back instantly. It was, of course, still Valentine’s Day, and just because Dan had a moment free on his phone earlier, didn’t mean he still did. Plus, even if Dan was home, he probably wasn’t attached to his phone like Phil was.

Boy, was Phil wrong.

It took less than a minute for Dan to reply. And reply. And reply.

Dan: hey there stranger

Dan: i agree. it’s too easy to miss messages on twitter

Dan: now i can just shout at you. much easier.

Phil chuckled. And to think that he had been worried about coming across as too eager. Meanwhile, Dan was sitting somewhere triple texting Phil.

Not that Phil was complaining.

No, Phil was sat in bed at midnight, staring down at his phone, smiling like a complete idiot because of a boy. How was it that Dan was able to make Phil this flustered, this happy from halfway across town?

He felt like a lovesick teenager — and was half tempted to call up his best friend to help him draft a text message like he was fifteen again.

That was ridiculous, Phil realized. He was twenty-goddamn-seven years old. He could message back a cute boy on his own for fucks sake.

He wasn’t sure what to say though. He started typing, trying to figure out the best response.

I know, twitter was a pain — delete.

How was tonight? — delete.

So you want to —

Phil’s third attempt to write a message was interrupted by another text from Dan.

Dan: you still up for drinks tomorrow?

That message wasn’t hard to respond to, at least. A smile snuck its way onto Phil’s face. He felt more like a teenager getting asked to a school dance than he cared to admit.

I am if you am

That made it sound like Phil was being dragged out to drinks with Dan — which was definitely not the case.

Delete.

Absolutely

That sounded a bit too eager, right?

Delete.

Phil tried again, and ended up settling on something that probably still counted as too eager in most people’s books, but, well, a lot of Phil’s actions so far could probably be considered as too eager.

Phil: Of course! What time are you free?

Dan: anytime after 7 works for me

Dan: one small thing though

Oh god, Phil’s heart dropped into his stomach.

A million possibilities rushed through Phil’s head. Had Isabella put her foot down about Dan spending time with Phil? Had Dan realized how flirty their relationship was and gotten uncomfortable? Was Dan going to want to bring Isabella along for drinks?

This was it, Dan was going to find some way to force a line between them. He was going to invite Isabella or remind Phil that he was a man in a committed relationship or tell Phil that he was one hundred percent straight.

Phil took a deep breath and forced himself to respond as naturally as he could.

Phil: What’s up?

The three typing dots seemed to flash in time with Phil’s far-too-fast heart. Dot, dot, dot, thump, thump, thump. What the fuck was Dan typing? Why was it taking so long? What did—

Dan: i just found out today that my sister is coming into london tomorrow. do you mind if she tags along?

His sister. It was just his sister.

Phil let out the breath he was holding, relief coursing through his body. Dan wasn’t trying to build some wall between them, Phil wasn’t being pushed away. Dan just wanted to bring his sister to drinks with them.

A sister that it took Isabella almost a year to meet, a self-satisfied piece of Phil’s mind added without his consent.

Phil: Sounds great! Where do you want to meet?

Dan: do you know harolds? it’s like a block over from b&g

Phil: Yeah! Emmalee and I have gone there a few times. Sounds good! Meet there at 7?

Dan: great xx

****************************

The next day went by far, far slower than Phil wanted it to. He was anxious to get through his meetings with the BBC and his manager, Marianne, so that he could finally get to the part of the day where he got to see Dan.

Dan, who a whole mass of people on twitter were speculating might be single now. Dan, who had given Phil his number right after a risque picture of his girlfriend had leaked. Dan, this boy that Phil was more than a little enamoured with and who might, just might, like Phil back.

And Phil wasn’t just getting to see Dan, he was getting to have drinks with Dan.

But the day seemed to absolutely drag on.

The day’s meetings at the BBC had been longer and more frustrating than normal. Overall, Phil was incredibly lucky. He was one of the first internet creators that the BBC had taken a risk on, and the success of his weekly radio show had not only opened the doors for dozens of other internet creators to work with the BBC, but had also allowed him to be granted a frankly ridiculous amount of creative freedom.

However, his shows producers had recently been pushing for Phil to do a special one-time show with a guest co-host — preferably someone with a strong musical background. They’d said it was to broaden the audience that listens to BBC Radio shows and, for some absurd reason, they’d thought Phil’s show would be the best place to start. They were really pleased with the younger demographic Phil’s show had reached, but were hoping to introduce new listeners — who were supposedly more interested in music than the internet — to his show.

Phil understood their point; the radio station was first and foremost about music, and his show (as well as several that had started after the success of Phil’s) focused much more heavily on other things. It made sense that they would want to have a special episode (or maybe even two, as they had hinted at) with someone who knew more about music than Phil did, someone that appealed to a different demographic. It would attract new listeners to the show who were interested in the special host — listeners who would potentially turn into more devoted listeners of BBC Radio.

The producers weren’t particularly picky about who Phil invited onto his show— in fact, they had thrown several big, exciting names at Phil. They seemed fairly confident that they could secure a one-time appearance from anyone performing in the Live Lounge in the upcoming weeks. The producers had also offered to reach out to people from other parts of the music industry, if Phil preferred. As he walked back to his apartment, his mind was still reeling at some of the names they had suggested.

And it was great. Phil knew he should be ecstatic about this kind of opportunity, flattered that the BBC had thought that his measly little radio show was the right place to start gaining a new demographic. But the fact of the matter was, Phil was too fucking awkward to have a co-host he barely knew — especially a famous one. When it came to interacting with people, Phil was a mess. At least when he did collabs, he was able to edit out all of his awkward social interactions. But live? Live, he would be forced to endure his viewers mocking his social ineptitude for weeks.

He just wasn’t very good at interacting with people he didn’t know, and he didn’t need the whole world to see that.

So Phil had tried his best to fight them, to lay out why that might be a horrific idea. At the end of the meeting, though, they had made him promise to think about it, and if he came up with anyone he would collaborate with — anyone at all — to email his producers as soon as possible, and they would try to set it up.

Unlikely, Phil scoffed. He was fairly certain that there was no way he was going to feel comfortable hosting some bigshot that he barely knew on his show.

Because of all of the conflict, Phil’s meetings took longer than he anticipated. By the time he got home, he barely had time to change and have a quick bite to eat before he had to head out the door to meet Dan.

************************

Phil, who always did his best to be on time, showed up to Harold’s at 6:58, knowing that there was absolutely no chance that Dan was there yet. If Phil had learned one thing while getting to know Dan, it was that Dan was basically incapable of being on time.

Surely, it had to annoy a lot of people in his life, but Phil found it to kind of be an endearing quality. The more he got to know Dan, the more he realized that Dan was always late because he had a tendency to get wholeheartedly wrapped up in whatever he was doing, which usually caused him to misjudge how long he needed to get ready, or how much time he needed to allot for travel. That was just how Dan was, Phil had discovered — an unbelievably passionate person.

So when Phil walked into Harold’s two minutes early, only to be greeted with, “Hey, Phil! Over here!” he understandably had a moment of panic. For a moment, Phil was convinced that a fan just happened to be in the same bar where Phil was about to have drinks with Dan Howell.

But then his eyes found the person shouting at him, landing on none other than Dan himself, who was seated with his back to the door. He was peeking out over the edge of a tall booth he was tucked into — a small, four-person booth in the back corner.The bar, with its dim lighting and slightly dodgy atmosphere, already lent itself to anonymity, but the far back booth, with the flickering light and high walls, practically screamed leave us alone.

It was exactly the booth Phil would have picked out, and not just because he was hoping to avoid the scrutiny of his viewers for the evening.

Fuck, Phil shouldn’t be thinking about that. He had no actual evidence that Dan was single — twitter was notorious for getting facts wrong. And even if Dan turned out to be single now, this wasn’t a date. When Dan had originally asked Phil to get drinks, he was literally on his way to a Valentine’s Day date with this girlfriend. Plus, Dan’s sister was getting drinks with them. If that didn’t scream this isn’t a date, Phil wasn’t sure what did.

But still, Phil felt a spark of happiness that he couldn’t quite squash when he thought about the fact that Dan had selected the most intimate booth in the bar.

Phil made his way over to Dan’s side, dodging around all of the empty tables. “You’re here,” he said in lieu of a proper greeting when he got to the booth.

“Yeah, you spoon. Of course I’m here.” Dan had a smirk on his face, but his eyes reflected genuine happiness. Whatever Tatler was insinuating about Isabella must not be true, not if Dan currently looked this happy. Phil tried not to feel too disappointed. Above everything else, Dan had become one of Phil’s best friends, and Phil shouldn’t be rooting for his heart to get broken.

“I just meant, you’re early,” Phil teased.

At the end of the booth, Dan’s coat was hanging on a hook — it was the one that Dan claimed made him look like a wraith, but Phil would argue just made him look kissable.

Phil pulled off his much brighter coat and hung it over top of Dan’s.

Assuming the second drink sat next to Dan belonged to Adaline, Phil started to move around to the other side of the table, prepared to sit across from Dan, but Dan caught him off guard when he grabbed onto Phil’s sleeve and pulled him into the booth next to him. The full, fruity looking drink was pushed towards him.

Dan nodded his head and raised his own drink in a quick cheers motion.

Phil wrapped his hands around the cold drink, pulling it in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.” He tipped his drink towards Dan, mimicking the cheers, but way less smoothly. Unlike Dan, Phil nearly sloshed a bit of the drink out. Smooth.

Dan sent him an unimpressed look, but Phil could see the humor dancing in his eyes. “I’m capable of being early, Philip.”

“Really?” Phil cocked an eyebrow. “Because I’ve never seen it.”

“Shut up,” Dan swatted his arm, twisting around a bit in the booth so he could look at Phil properly. Dan’s leg came up to rest on the booth between them, his ankle tucking under his opposite knee so that his shin was pressing against Phil’s thigh. “You don’t know everything about me.”

“No, but I’d like to.”

Phil’s face flamed up, heat burning his cheeks when he realized what he’d just said. Shit, something about being around Dan made Phil confess all of his desires — even the ones he probably shouldn’t tell Dan about. The only salvation was the fact that Dan’s cheeks turned equally red, and his gaze suddenly dropped to his knee, which nudged Phil’s hip softly.

Phil thought he heard Dan mumble same under his breath, but he wasn’t sure. He was never sure of anything when it came to Dan.

Except for the minor detail that Phil was very, very sure he was head over heels for this boy.

“So,” Phil cleared his throat, trying to restore some sense of normality to their conversation. “I thought you said Adeline was joining us?”

“She is. Um,” Dan’s eyes flitted to his phone, which was resting face up on the table. “Her train was delayed, actually. That’s part of why I’m early. I realized she was going to be late like fifteen minutes ago and I figured you were probably on your way, so I just told her to drop her bag off at my place and come down and meet us.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have minded waiting if you wanted to pick her up,” Phil insisted.

“No!” Dan almost shouted, before widening his eyes bashfully at Phil. “I — she’s a big girl. She’s capable of getting a cab from the train station to my flat and walking one block. It’s fine.”

Phil took another sip of his drink. “Okay, then. I’m excited to meet her, but I’m not heartbroken to get a little bit of time alone with you.”

Dan’s eyes widened, and for a moment Phil was worried that he’d said the wrong thing, that he’d finally found the imaginary line between them and leaped over it. But his worries were assuaged when Dan let out a tiny whine before collapsing forward, his forehead falling onto Phil’s shoulder. Trying his best not to disturb Dan, to not make him feel like he needed to move, Phil twisted his head a bit so he could look at Dan. From what Phil could see of his face, Dan was smiling bashfully, his dimples and red patch on full display.

This time, Phil was confident that he heard Dan mumble me either — he could feel the vibrations of Dan’s voice against his arm. Phil could get used to having Dan’s head on his shoulder, maybe even tucked in more securely, his breath wafting over Phil’s neck instead of his arm. Dan rested there for a moment, before leaning back up. The red spot on his cheek had subsided some, but the dimples were still prominent. Phil was glad for that, he hadn’t seen those dimples nearly enough lately.

“So, um,” Phil fumbled, still not quite composed after having Dan so close. “How late is Adaline?”

Dan sat up a hair straighter, as if the reminder of his sister had pulled him out of something. The way his leg was pushed against Phil’s, and how close his drink was to Phil’s, still left Dan very much in Phil’s personal space, though.

“She’ll be here within the half hour, she wasn’t delayed that much.” Dan took a long drink out of his glass, and the topic of his sister seemed to melt away. “So,” Dan poked Phil in the ribcage, “Tell me about your day.”

Shrugging, Phil took another sip of the fruity concoction. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he liked it a lot. Dan normally drank bitter things — who the heck drinks a triple espresso with only one sugar? — but Phil prefered his drinks sweet. He was glad that Dan hadn’t ordered him whatever dark liquid was in his own short, round glass.

“It wasn’t particularly exciting, I worked most of it.” Phil couldn’t keep the frustrated edge out of his voice. He wasn’t quite over how much he’d clashed with the show’s producers today — it was rare, so Phil didn’t feel particularly equipped to deal with creative differences.

Dan looked unconvinced, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. “Your work is exciting though,” he pouted. “What did you do?”

“Not Fridays,” Phil grimaced. “I always have loads of meetings,” he explained. “I have my weekly radio show planning meetings with the BBC today, which was…” Phil rolled his eyes and took sip of the drink as he searched for the right word. “Stressful.”

Dan’s glass — and the fingers wrapped tightly around it — pushed against Phil’s arm as Dan’s other arm slid across the table, his head coming to rest in the palm of his hand, his eyes staring widely up at Phil. “Why’s that?”

“Just, you know,” Phil waved vaguely, “Pressure from the bosses about things.”

Dan groaned, straightening up a bit so that he could take a sip of his drink. “I know what you mean. What are they giving you pressure about?” His eyes narrowed, a smile threatening to break out on his mock-angry face. “Do I need to go kick someone’s ass?”

“No, no,” Phil laughed, blushing a bit at Dan’s overprotective attitude, even if he was joking. Phil busied himself with another drink while he figured out what he wanted to say to Dan. “It’s just, you know, publicity type stuff?” His voice ended like it was a question, and Phil lowkey hated himself for that. He had no reason to feel weird talking to Dan about fame-related things, which usually made him feel insufferably pretentious. But if there was anyone in Phil’s life who would truly get it, it was Dan.

Dan stared back at him with raised eyebrows — not disbelieving, just curious — prompting Phil to continue. “I have the radio show, right?”

“Yes, which I finally got the chance to listen to and it’s wonderful,” Dan interjected with a playful smile. “I think your voice was made for radio, it’s hot. Although, the fact that you livestream your face doesn’t hurt either.”

What in the fucking —

Phil took a large gulp of his drink, unsure of what the hell Dan was getting at. Sure, Dan was flirty sometimes, but he seemed far more forward than usual today. Phil glanced at Dan’s drink, which was nearly empty. Was it possible that Dan was tipsy already? Tipsy Dan had been flitier than usual, after all. But Phil didn’t remember Dan being a light-weight. Surely three quarters of a drink wouldn’t push Dan to the point it had taken three drinks to get him to last time, right?

Maybe Dan had drank something else sometime before Phil had arrived?

“I — uh, thanks,” Phil stuttered, very flustered, completely incapable of saying anything more intelligent.

“So what about it?” Dan prompted, knocking the knuckles of his fingers against Phil’s when Phil didn’t carry on with his story.

“We’re having a bit of a… creative difference,” Phil offered in way of explanation. He didn’t want to bore Dan with the details of his story. Dan looked interested now, but Phil wasn’t sure if Dan genuinely wanted to know every intricacy of Phil’s life (like the way Phil wanted to know the intricacies of Dan’s).

Dan shook his head, bringing the amber liquid to his lips for another swallow. “That’s the fucking worst. What happened?”

Apparently, Phil had underestimated Dan’s interest. The question didn’t sound insincere. It sounded like Dan actually wanted to know about Phil’s problem, that Dan actually wanted to support Phil.

“They’re pushing for me to do a special show with a guest host — preferably someone who knows more about music than me — so that they can, quote, draw in a new listener demographic or something.”

Eyebrows furrowed, Dan cocked his head. “So you’re against this idea…?”

“A little,” Phil confirmed with a shrug and another drink. “I don’t want to see disingenuine — and maybe more importantly, I don’t want to make an ass of out myself on live air by being awkward because I barely know my co-host.”

Dan hummed as he drank the last swallow of his drink. “Would you feel differently if it was someone you knew?” he contemplated.

“I guess,” Phil shrugged. “It would at least feel less fake, and I’d probably feel less uncomfortable.”

Dan waved his hand in a gesture that seemed to say so what? “What’s the hold up, then?”

“I’m a vloggy youtuber, it’s not like I really have any work connections I can try to force into collabing on me with this.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Dan looked at Phil blankly, a slightly annoyed tint to his eye.

“What?” Phil asked, confused, after a few beats.

In explanation, Dan circled his hand around his face wildly, looking at Phil like he was an idiot.

“You’re going to have to be more explicit, Daniel.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Gee, if only one of your non-work friends just happened to be in the music industry,” he said, resting his chin primly in the palm of his hand.

It took Phil a second, but he finally caught on. “Oh — oohhh! Would you — like — do you think you’d want to —”

Dan stared back with raised eyebrows and an expecting expression. “Yeah, dumbshit,” he said, finally. “I mean, I highly doubt that radio is my undiscovered talent, but I’d try it for you.”

“You’d — for me —?” Phil stuttered ineloquently.

“Of course, you spoon. I’d love first row tickets to AmazingPhil, even if that means embarrassing myself on live radio.”

“I’d feel bad,” Phil waffled. “It’s a huge professional favor, and I’d want to give something back. I’m absolutely rubbish at all things music, though, so it’s not like I could repay you at all.”

“Trust me, Phil, you do plenty for me. Both personally and professionally. If anything, I owe you a favor.”

Phil blinked blankly at Dan. What the fuck does that mean? Phil wracked his brain, trying to think of a single time where anything he had done had even remotely helped Dan professionally.

Phil was so concentrated on trying to figure out what Dan was implying that he almost forgot to respond.

“Um, if you’re serious,” Phil spun his glass awkwardly in his hands, “I’ll speak to them. They seemed pretty open about who I had on the show.”

With the hand that wasn’t cupped around his short glass, Dan reached up and ruffled Phil’s hair. “Of course I’m serious, anything to help you silly goose. Talk to them, and let me know what they say.”

“Thanks, Dan!” Phil smiled back, suddenly far more excited about the prospect of a guest-host than he had been that morning. “So how was your day?” Phil asked.

“Uneventful,” Dan shrugged. “I slept in, which felt great, and then I was surprisingly social for a bit, before managing to work some this afternoon.

The conversation that Phil had overheard between Dan and Louise had made it sound like Dan had big breakfast plans — plans that were big enough to require some sort of debriefing with Louise. But if Dan slept in before socializing, did that mean breakfast — whatever that was supposed to be — didn’t happen?

“I feel like I’m actually making progress on this album.” Dan continued, obvious to Phil’s confusion. He was smiling, though,, and Phil could see the passion building as he started talking about his music. “When Louise set a deadline of half the album before Germany, I thought she was insane. But at this rate, I think I’ll be okay.”

Phil managed to control his surprise at Dan’s lack of mentioning anything more exciting, but only just. Was work only thing Dan had done today — or was that all that he was willing to share with Phil? Phil wasn’t sure if Dan’s dramatic sounding breakfast plans potentially falling through was a good thing or not.

Phil sighed, trying to shake off his confused thoughts, and turned to his drink again, quickly finishing it. When he’d regained his composure, he turned back to Dan, “So you actually went outside and socialized today?”

“Meh, nothing big,” Dan said indifferently — he certainly didn’t make it sound like whatever social activity he’d done was noteworthy enough to mention. “I knew we were meeting for drinks and Adaline was coming, so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to hole up in my house and work.”

There was no way Phil could continue pushing about Dan’s morning — not after Dan had turned the subject to work a second time. At least not without it being painfully obvious that Phil was fishing for details. He took Dan’s lead and switched topics to Dan’s music, genuinely curious about how his work was going.

“Were you writing again today?” Phil asked, trying to show that he was just as interested in Dan’s work as Dan was in his.

“Yeah, the song I was working on the other night, you know, the one from skype? I think it’s coming together. Up until today I just had snippets of lyrics but I’m pretty sure I made it into something coherent, something that flows and actually matches the melody.”

“That’s awesome, Dan!” Phil beamed, proud of Dan’s accomplishment. “How are you feeling about the album so far?”

“Amazing, actually.” Dan’s fingers tapped excitedly against his empty glass. “It’s not what I set out to do, but I’m somehow actually writing a concept album.”

“Wow! What’s the concept?” Phil blurted out before he realized that Dan might not want to — or might not be able to answer that. “Or is that top secret?” he added, giving Dan an easy way out of the question.

“It not top secret, per say,” Dan started before his attention suddenly snapped away from Phil, turning towards his phone. Confused, Phil’s eyebrows shot up, his gaze following Dan’s.

Adaline: did I miss you and loverboy at home bc i’m here and i don’t see you

If Adaline was here, and she knew she was meeting Dan and Phil — which presumably she did — loverboy had to refer to Phil… right? The rational part of Phil’s brain tried, really tried, to keep his hopes in check, to not think too wishfully, but the part of Phil that was completely infatuated with Dan was positively screaming.

With a message like that staring Phil in the face, it was almost impossible not to get his hopes up.

Quickly, Phil averted his gaze. He may not know what that message meant, but he did know that he was definitely not meant to see it. Fortunately for him, Dan was too preoccupied by the text and popping his head over the back of their booth, peeking back towards the door, to realize that Phil had seen it.

Phil ducked around their booth as well, looking towards the entrance and trying to who Dan was looking for. A younger girl was standing near the entrance, her eyes scanning through the crowd.

Dan’s knee nudged insistently against Phil a few times. “Budge over and let me out, will you?” Dan asked.

Phil nodded numbly, not fully processing anything that was happening, his attention still focused on loverboy. Eyes and mind glazed over, Phil slid out of the booth, letting Dan slip out behind him. Phil watched as Dan strode over to the door and enthusiastically enveloped the young brunette in his arms. When Dan leaned out of the embrace, he didn’t pull all the way back, instead wrapping his arm around her shoulders and guiding her over to the table.

“I missed you, you know,” Phil heard Dan say as they came within earshot.

“It’s been like a month, Dan,” the girl responded, elbowing Dan in the ribs.

Dan shrugged, not looking embarrassed at being called out on his feelings. It was cute, seeing Dan so happy to see his sister. It reminded Phil of how he felt when he saw his brother after a long separation. Phil knew that Dan hadn’t been as close with Adaline as Phil had been with Martyn while they were growing up, but he also knew that Dan was determined to build a better relationship with his sister now that she was older. It looked like he was doing a good job.

Dan led her to the other side of the booth before hovering at the table’s end between them.

“Yeah, well,” Dan sighed, rocking back and forth on his feet, “It’s been a long month.”

“So it would seem.” Dan’s sister, Adaline’s, eyes flickered between their empty glasses, and Phil wondered if she was thinking about the fact that they had both already been on the same side of the table when she arrived. Lord knows it was on Phil’s mind.

With a look of intent, Adaline’s attention switched to Phil, her eyes quickly flickering back to Dan with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, right, sorry. I’m being rude,” Dan apologized, nervously arranging the mop of curls on his head. “Phil, meet my sister, Adaline. Addie, this is my — um, Phil.”

The tips of Dan’s ears turned red, a matching spot coloring his cheek. A wide, cheeky smirk took over Adaline’s face. It was a smirk he’d seen before; Dan had flashed him that same expression countless times.

My what? Phil wondered, his cheeks flushing to match Dan’s. Surely Dan wouldn’t have cut himself off from saying friend. So what had he been about to say?

“Good to meet you, Phil,” Adaline was saying. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The red spot on Dan’s cheek deepened, and Phil could feel his own cheeks heating up to match it. “I — yeah. I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”

“Awww, are you bragging about me, big brother?” Adaline teased.

“Fuck off, I can’t help talking about people I care about, okay?” Dan took a small step back from the table.

Shit, the both of them really needed to stop saying things that made Phil’s heart skip. At this point, he wasn’t sure if there was blood left anywhere in his body other than his face.

“So,” Dan broke the silence in what he probably hoped was a smooth interruption (it wasn’t). “Who wants what to drink?”

Phil pointed to his glass. “I liked whatever this was.”

“Okay, another Dark ‘n Stormy.” Dan snapped his fingers, making a lame finger gun at Phil. “Sis?”

“Whatever you’re having?” She suggested tentatively, her order coming out more like a question than a request.

“Right—” Another awkward finger gun. “I’ll be back in a moment, lads. Behave.”

Phil felt an internal moment of panic at being left completely alone with Dan’s sister after such a brief introduction. Apparently, his wariness wasn’t unfounded.

“So you’re Phil?” Adaline questioned the moment Dan was out of earshot, an impish look on her face.

“Y-yes?” Phil stuttered back insecurely, spinning his empty glass in his hand for lack of something better to do. Everything Phil knew about Dan was telling him not to trust the mischievous expression Adaline was fixing him with.

“Dan somehow forgot to mention that his lovely new friend Phil from the coffee shop was AmazingPhil.” A wide smirk took over Adaline’s face — a smirk Phil had seen before, on Dan.

Phil wasn’t sure just how worried he should be about the fact that Dan’s sister apparently knew who he was. Phil had told Dan countless things he had no desire for his viewers to know, and he had no idea how much of that information Dan had shared with his sister. Phil wholeheartedly trusted Dan, and recognized that if Adaline came from the same family, she was probably trustworthy too. But the fact remained that he didn’t know her. “I —”

He had no idea what to say.

“It’s fine, I saw through twitter beforehand, so it’s not like it’s a surprise. Don’t worry, I’m not a crazy fan or anything.” Adaline was much more nonchalant than Dan had been when he’d found out about Phil’s channel. Did that mean Adaline didn’t care, or had she just been exposed enough that it just wasn’t shocking anymore?

“Oh… have you, like, watched my videos?” Phil fished, trying to get a read on how potentially dangerous this situation might be.

“A few. I found your channel through PJ’s a few months ago and happened to see a few. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were the guy that was suddenly tweeting at my brother.”

“Er — yeah. Dan about had a heart attack when he found out,” Phil chuckled.

“I know,” Adaline laughed mercilessly at her brother. “He called me up in a fit the next day.”

“What a nerd,” Phil said with a roll of his eyes and a soft chuckle. He was pretty sure that his fondness for Dan was seeping into his voice, but he was well past the point in their friendship where he had any hopes of controlling it.

Luckily, Dan saved Phil from the embarrassment of Adaline potentially calling him out on his soft spot for Dan by Dan coming back, precariously balancing three drinks in his hands. He sat the fruity drink in front of Phil, pushed something clear and bubbly towards Adaline, and slid a half-full cup of amber liquid back towards his original seat.

“Let me in, Philly,” Dan smiled, tapping much more rapidly at Phil’s shoulder than was necessary.

“I’m moving, I’m moving!” Phil insisted. “You impatient little brat,” he added under his breath.

Unfortunately, his jab seemed to be heard by everyone at the table. Dan smacked him playfully upside the head.

“Oh look, he knows you already,” Adaline teased.

“Fuck off, Addie,” Dan said as he slid across the bench, stopping halfway to the wall so that he was still very much in Phil’s space when Phil sat back down. Absolutely nothing Dan and Phil did seemed to escape Adaline’s notice; her gaze was concentrated on the space — or rather, lack thereof — between them. Phil shifted nervously under Adaline’s scrutiny. He wasn’t sure what to make of how closely she was watching them.

“I thought I asked for the same thing as you?” Adaline questioned, letting her attention drift from the minute distance between them to just Dan.

“Yeah, but I’m drinking Jameson neat and I figured one of us needed to keep their head on straight,” Dan answered with a pointed look.

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled back, taking a sip of whatever Dan had passed her.

“Don’t worry, loser,” Dan quipped. “It still has alcohol in it. Plus, I figured you might like that better, seeing as you’re like Phil here and don’t care for bitter drinks.”

“Right, I’m sure giving me a weaker drink was a totally selfless, caring choice.” Adaline looked skeptically at Dan, who anxiously passed his glass back and forth between his hands.

Phil took pity on Dan and decided to change the topic, taking the focus off him for a moment. “So, what are you doing in London?” he turned with a smile to Adaline.

“Err…” Adaline mumbled shiftily, her eyes darting to Dan.

“We’re doing a uni tour tomorrow,” Dan supplied. Really smoothly.

“That’s awesome! Which uni?” Phil knew that Adaline was important to Dan and he wanted to show that he was interested, that he could get along with Dan’s family.

“Imperial,” Dan said at the same time that Adaline answered, “Middlesex.”

“Um…” Phil uncertainly looked between the two of them. Had one of them gotten confused? Did they suck at communicating? What the hell was happening here?

“We’re touring two!” Dan said abruptly, looking a bit like a deer caught in headlights. “Middlesex in the morning and Imperial in the afternoon!”

Adaline nodded along quickly. “Yeah, yeah. I’m, um, trying to decide which I like more!” Something about the way Adaline said it sounded fake, like she’d decided that on the spot. But why?

Regardless, Phil decided it was probably best to drop that conversation, since it seemed to have sparked a weird vibe between the siblings. “I’m going to run to the loo,” Phil said, hoping that the tension would dissipate before he got back, and that maybe, just maybe, he could have a moment to think rationally without Dan touching him and causing Phil’s thoughts to scramble.

Dan tugged on Phil’s sleeve, catching his attention. “Will you get me a water while you’re up, Philly?”

“No problem. Adaline?”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“Be right back,” Phil grinned before he turned away.

He only got a few feet from the table before he froze, realizing that he had no idea where the loo was here. He glanced around, searching the walls for a sign.

“Adaline!” Phil hear Dan hiss. “Since when are you interested in bloody Middlesex?”

“I’m not!” she whispered back. “I panicked and said the first school that came to mind!”

Phil spotted the bathroom sign and slinked away, hoping to not draw any attention to how close he still was to the table.

So he’d been right — there had been some weirdness when they were talking about why Adaline was in London.

But if it wasn’t for touring a uni, what was she here for?

**************************

By the fourth drink, Phil could feel the rum loosening his tongue — something he should probably be concerned about, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about. In his tipsy state, he turned to Dan and finally asked a question that had been plaguing him since yesterday.

“So, how was breakfast this morning?” Phil drawled, looking curiously at Dan.

Okay, it wasn’t the exact question he’d wanted to ask, but it would hopefully still get him the answer he was seeking.

It wasn’t until Dan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously that Phil remembered that he wasn’t supposed to know about breakfast. All Dan had said was that he’d “socialized” this morning.

“I didn’t realize I’d told you I had breakfast plans,” Dan said in a tone that made it clear he definitely knew he hadn’t told Phil about his plans.

Well, fuck.

“I — um, so.” Out of the corner of his eye, Phil could see Adaline’s eyes bouncing back and forth, back and forth between him and Dan. Phil scrambled for a moment, trying to find something he could say to cover his arse. But his tipsy mind couldn’t land on a good excuse before his tipsy tongue took over. “Look, cards on the table. I might have overheard you and Louise talking yesterday.”

Phil wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Dan — maybe him to be angry that Phil had been eavesdropping, maybe a chiding remark. He definitely wasn’t expecting Dan’s eyes to widen all the way and a look of panic to cross his face. But that’s what he got.

“The whole conversation?” Dan looked well worried about something.

Oh, you know, just the part where Louise was demanding to meet some guy in your life and you wouldn’t let her into the coffee shop. And the small part where you both were freaking out about whatever the hell your breakfast plans are. But no, no...

“No, why?” Phil said instead. If the look on Dan’s face was anything to go by, Phil should definitely not confess to how much he’d overheard. Which was… interesting, given the content of it.

A wave of tension appeared to wash out of Dan’s body, his shoulders untensing and his fingers unclenching from his glass. “N-no reason.”

Phil didn’t believe that for a moment. He’d let it slide though, for now at least.

“Breakfast didn’t happen though,” Dan said cryptically, not elaborating oh why breakfast didn’t happen or what breakfast was supposed to have been.

Adaline, for her part, was starting at Dan just as studiously as Phil was, which led Phil to believe that not only was breakfast something Adaline knew about, but he was right in his suspicions that it was supposed to have been something.

Phil knew he probably shouldn’t, but he decided to push his luck. “Oh, why not?” He hoped he sounded nonchalant, and not like he had an underlying motive for trying to figure out more information.

Dan breathed out a long sigh and knocked back half of his drink.

For a moment, Phil was worried that Dan wasn’t going to answer — or worse, that Dan was going to tell Phil to fuck off and that Phil shouldn’t be pestering him with questions about something he’d overheard.

Dan pleasantly surprised Phil, though, when he confessed the truth. “Well, the whole point of breakfast was to dump Isabella.” His voice was quiet, his words slightly slurred, and his eyes concentrated on his glass, but the meaning of what Dan had said rang loud and clear.

Breaking up with Isabella. As in, Dan making himself single and available. But —

Shit. Dan hadn’t gone to breakfast. Phil latched onto that fact, trying to make his brain wrap around what that meant — that Dan probably hadn’t gone through with his plans to break up with her.

Why? Why was the world being so cruel to Phil?

“Did you change your mind, then?” Phil asked, aiming to maintain his casual demeanor, but there was a wobble to his voice that was surely betraying his true feelings: panic and disappointment.

“What?” Dan’s head snapped up from his glass, looking at Phil in alarm. “No!” he corrected hastily. “I ended up breaking up with her last night.”

Oh.

Oh my god.

A million emotions rushed through Phil, and he wasn’t sure which one he should be paying the most attention to. He was relieved, so fucking relieved that Dan was single. That Isabella was out of the picture. He was worried, worried that Dan was upset or heartbroken about it — or worse, that there might have been some truth to the picture Phil saw on twitter last night.

But above it all, Phil felt a wave a clarity. If Dan had broken up with Isabella last night, that casted his actions in the last twenty four hours into a whole new light — Dan giving Phil his phone number seemingly out of the blue, Dan being much more forward tonight, Dan’s thigh currently pressing into Phil’s.

Were all of those things connected to the fact that Dan was now single?

Dan’s eyes bored into Phil’s, looking like they were trying to stare into his soul, like they were trying to communicate something.

Looking like they were confirming everything that Phil was thinking.

Against his better judgment, Phil’s heart soared. He should wait until he’d heard verbal confirmation from Dan, he should wait until Dan was single for more than a mere day.

He should wait.

But he couldn’t.

“Mum said to pass on her congratulations, by the way,” Adaline said with a smirk. The tension — the sexual tension, Phil was pretty sure — broke between Dan and Phil as they boy whipped their heads around to face Adaline. From the surprised long on Dan’s face, Phil wagered Dan had forgotten that Adaline was there just as much as Phil had.

Dan shook his head, seemingly pulling himself out of whatever thoughts he was having. “Mum is congratulating me for getting cheated on?” He sounded somehow both bitter and humored.

“So it’s true, then?” Adaline asked softly, the smile draining from her face.

Dan’s gaze fell and he fiddled with his napkin. “Yeah, it’s true.” There was no emotion left, he just sounded defeated.

“I’m sorry, bear. That sucks,” Adaline murmured, rubbing her hand against his forearm.

“It’s fine,” Dan said with a forced smile, fake positivity in his voice. His efforts to seem fine about that aspect of it were painfully transparent. “I was going to end it anyway. That just made it — you know, easier to do.”

“Still,” Phil chimed in, “That sucks. I’m sorry it had to end like that.”

“I mean, yeah, me too.” Dan took another long sip of his drink, almost draining it. “But, hey, the outcome is the same, right? And it made me feel justified in doing it on Valentine’s Day, so at least there’s that.”

“Oh god, how far did you get in your date before things went awry?” Phil asked, horrified.

“Ugh,” Dan groaned. “All the way to the end. I actually DMed you right after I left her apartment.”

“Uh!” Adaline interjected indignantly. “Excuse me, did you really DM him before calling me back, Daniel?”

The ashamed look on Dan’s face was enough of an answer. “Um, maybe. It’s not like it took long!” he defended.

“Excuse you,” Adaline crossed her arms defiantly, but in her tipsy state, she misestimated her movements and ended up smacking herself lightly in the shoulder, which seriously reduced the effectiveness of the action. “I”ll have you know that you’d given me a right scare after demanding I call you with a fake emergency and then ignoring my calls for nearly an hour.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Phil interrupted before Dan could further defend himself. “Did you really make your sister call you with a fake emergency so you could leave? Are you fourteen?”

“See!” Adaline cheered too loudly. “Phil agrees with me, you were being a baby.”

“Look,” Dan tried to explain, his hands waving around a little more wildly than normal. “You guys don’t know Izzy like I do. She doesn’t take very kindly to having her… sexual advances turned down—” Oh god, Phil thought, the alcohol had clearly loosened Dan’s tongue as well. “— and by that point I’d used up every excuse in the book.”

“Oh,” Adaline’s brows furrowed. “Was she just really not taking no for an answer last night?”

“Er, not quite,” Dan mumbled sketchily.

“Dish. What are you getting at?” Adaline demanded, banging her hands noisily on the table in earnest.

Phil was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear this. Whatever details of his sex life that Tispy Dan decided were appropriate to share were probably things that would only make Phil feel like shit. Briefly, Phil considered excusing himself to the bar to buy another round, or maybe even to go to the loo for the third time that night. Anything to avoid having to listen to Dan talk about sex with Isabella.

But Dan answered before Phil could do any of those things.

“More like over the past month. I’ve kind of been avoiding that for a while now.”

“I’m sorry, you wh-what?” Adaline choked a little on the liquid she was trying to swallow.

A month. Dan had been avoiding having sex with Isabella for a month. Out of all the things Dan could have said about his sex life, that had to be the most surprising one. He was dating a model for god’s sake, why hadn’t he to have sex with her for a month?

Nevertheless, Phil was glad. He had no claim to Dan, but knowing that he hadn’t been sleeping with Isabella for a while now… well, it was a relief.

“It’s not that big of a deal, okay.” Dan gave her a sharp look. “It just… hasn’t felt right—” His eyes flickered over to Phil, lingering for a moment, before returning to Adaline. “—for a while now. So I, you know, haven’t.”

Shit. Phil froze, staring at Dan long after Dan had returned his attention to Adaline. The way he looked at Phil, the heat that was in his eyes, made Phil feel like maybe he was the reason Dan didn’t feel right sleeping with Isabella.

“Oh my god,” Adaline gasped. “I —”

“Drop it, Addie,” Dan said tersely. “Enough about the demise of my shitty relationship.” His voiced lightened up some, turning almost teasing. “Now tell us about this date that you may or may not have had tonight that you were so easily persuaded to bail on.”

Well that certainly made it sound like whatever Adaline was in London for was because Dan had asked her to be. That explained why they were so weird about the uni tour thing, at least. It was odd that they felt the need to lie about why Adaline was there to Phil, but his alcohol hazed mind couldn’t come up with any possible explanations for it.

And clearly, Dan was too far gone to keep up pretenses about why Adaline was here.

“I just wasn’t that interested in the bloke, that’s all.”

“You not have a great Valentine’s Day either, then?” Dan asked.

“Huh?” Adaline looked perplexed for a moment before recognition dawned on her face. “Oh, no. Not that. Um, don’t judge me and go all big-brother.”

Dan raised his eyebrows expectantly. Phil had flashes of what Dan might be like in full big-brother mode, and hoped that he might get to see a glimpse of it.

“The bloke from last night was good. We’re going out Sunday. Tonight was going to be a, uh, different guy.”

“Adaline!” Dan admonished. “Are you really dating around? I thought we’d already talked about the dangers of sleeping with more than one person at a time! What if one of them has something? You need to be a bit more careful!”

Evidently Phil was getting to see big-brother Dan after all. He found it funny that they were apparently so open about sex, but yet Dan was still being protective.

“I’m being safe! Chill, bro.” Adaline chugged the rest of her drink. “Oh looky there, I’m all out of beverage. Dan?”

“You’re a piece of work,” he mumbled to Adaline, before swallowing the rest of his own drink. “I get us another round then, eh?” Dan poked Phil again, forcing him to let Dan out. Dan poked lower than he had last time, missing his ribs and hitting the soft, ticklish bit of Phil’s stomach.

On instinct, Phil spun towards Dan, catching Dan’s hand in his own, a giggle tumbling out of his lips. “Dan!”

“Oh dear, is Philly ticklish?” Dan’s other hand came around, poking Phil in the same spot, causing him to squirm. Phil’s free hand flew out, snagging Dan’s other hand. “Oh dear, he is!”

Dan wrestled with Phil a little, trying to wiggle his hands free so that he could poke Phil again. He succeeded in loosening Phil’s grasp enough that he was able to launch forward and poke Phil again, his chest crashing into Phil’s arm. Phil folded in on himself, trying to protect his sides from Dan’s attack, causing Dan’s chest to slip from Phil’s arm to his back.

“I give, I give!” Phil managed to say through his giggles.

“You’re no fun,” Dan said, the laughter in his voice contradicting his words. The hand he’d broken free from Phil’s wrapped around the front of Phil’s waist, pulling him into a hug. Dan rocked him back and forth lightly. “You’re silly, you spoon.”

Phil leaned back into Dan, feeling so warm in Dan’s arms, but was startled by an obnoxiously fake coughing attack from Adaline.

“I’m still here boys. And parched.”

Dan’s face heated up. “Sorry, sis. I’ll be right back.”

Phil started to slide out of the booth to let Dan out, but Dan’s grip on his hips tightened, holding him firmly in place. For a moment, Phil was baffled at what Dan was trying to do, unable to make sense of how the heck Dan was planning to get out of the booth if Phil didn’t move.

But then, it became very, very clear how Dan was planning to get up.

Still pressing Phil into the booth, Dan’s opposite leg swung across Phil, and, suddenly, Dan was straddling him.

Time froze.

Phil’s vision, which had previously been slightly blurred from the alcohol, focused sharply on Dan. Dan, who was properly in Phil’s lap, his head towering above Phil’s, his eyes gazing down at him. Phil stared back up, forgetting that the rest of the world still existed. Instinctively, Phil’s eyes dropped down to Dan’s lips, and he thought about it. He thought about saying fuck it, about closing the distance between them and pressing his lips to Dan’s. When Phil dragged his eyes back up Dan’s, he found that they were looking downward — like Dan was looking at Phil’s lips, like Dan was thinking about the same things.

“Fucking hell, Dan,” Adaline cried, sounding outraged. Her voice broke the trance between them, pulling Dan and Phil out of their own little world and back into the crowded, noisy bar.

“Right, sorry,” Dan murmured, far too quietly for Adaline to hear. His eyes searched Phil’s face one last time before he gave Phil’s hips a quick squeeze and climbed off his lap, abruptly heading for the bar.

Phil shifted in his seat. He had just enough inhibitions left to be embarrassed to face Adaline after that blatant display of flirting.

“So,” Adaline pounced on Phil the moment Dan was out of earshot.

“So…” Phil trailed off, unsure of why Adaline was looking so eager — and hesitant to find out.

Adaline crossed her arms, leaning forward on the table to inspect Phil. “You’re cuter than he normally goes for,” she said with a waggle of her eyebrows and a knowing smirk tugging at her lips.

Phil just about spat the ice cube he was chewing on out of his mouth. I’m what now? He tried to make his brain focus and think through all of the rum that was currently clouding his sense of rationality.

Did she mean that Phil was cuter than the girls Dan had brought home in the past? Because last time Phil checked, he hardly thought he compared to a damn supermodel. But, also, it was weird to compare the attractiveness of guys and girls, right? Did that mean — ?

Did that mean Dan had brought home guys before?

“Sorry?” Phil eventually spat out unintelligently. He was completely lost for more complex thoughts.

Adaline snickered — she knew exactly what she was doing to Phil. She clearly had information about Dan, his dating life, his history with boys that Phil didn’t know. And she was taking full advantage of her position of power.

Goddamn, her and Dan were too much alike.

“When it comes to guys, I mean. They’re normally, well, less cute. Don’t tell him I told you that though.” She winked furtively at him. “I doubt he’d take kindly to me drunkenly spilling his secrets. That’s definitely not why he invited me here.”

Phil’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t completely sure what to make of what Adaline was saying, but his heart was already skipping a beat, and his stomach was turning over. What Adaline had just said — it made it sound like Dan had definitely dated boys before.

“Oops!” Adaline covered her mouth dramatically, her voice dripping with feigned innocence. “Gee, whiz, did you not know that Dan’s bi?”

Phil’s heart had skipped a few beats before, but now it was downright pounding. The shock of what Adaline was implying — basically saying, at this point — was slowly starting to sink in.

So Dan had. Dan had definitely dated boys before — something Adaline had very intentionally just told him. That had to mean something for Phil, right? All of the things Phil had thought might be flirting, the way Dan had skirted around Isabella… That must mean something, then, right?

“I, um, no. Obviously,” Phil said when he was able to muddle through his drunken shock. He tried to organize his thoughts, tried to swallow his utter shock at having it confirmed that Dan was single, that Dan liked boys, to ask if all of that together meant that Dan liked him. “What did Dan invite you here for, then?”

Phil had to resist smacking himself in the forehead. That was an odd question to ask, given everything Phil had just learned, but okay.

To his surprise, Adaline cackled. “Actually, he wanted a babysitter.”

Phil rubbed his hands down his face, trying to get the drunk part of his brain to calm down so he could fucking process whatever the heck this was. What grown adult wanted a babysitter, and why? “Isn’t he, like, twenty three?”

Again, the wrong question to ask. Phil mentally kicked himself in the arse. Why was he completely botching this one moment he had with Drunk Adaline to learn more about Dan’s life?

“And asking to be babysat by an eighteen year old?” Adaline chucked. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Phil’s brows furrowed as he tried to make sense of that. Adaline seemed to find the situation as funny as Phil did. “Uh, why?”

Well, it lacked sophistication, but at least he was finally asking a worthwhile question.

“Apparently he didn’t want to drunkenly drag you back to his place to fuck.”

What in the —

If Phil was shocked by everything Adaline had said so far, he was completely floored by that.

A hot rush of arousal shot through Phil at the very mention of that, and he forced himself to shake it away as best as he could. Those weren’t thoughts he should let his mind drift to while he was sitting across from Dan’s sister.

Okay, fine, Adaline had said that Dan liked guys — that was great. And she’d implied that Dan liked Phil, which, okay, fantastic. But to explicitly say that Dan wanted to fuck Phil — that was a whole new level that Phil wasn’t prepared to hear.

He did his best to swallow his shock and respond to Adaline. “I — he what?”

Adaline narrowed her eyes, evaluating Phil, the slight upward turn of her lips a pale ghost of the raucous smirk it had been a moment before. She nodded slowly. “Listen up, though.” Her voice was sharp this time.

Phil’s eyes widened at the fast change in her attitude. “What?” So far, Adaline had been nothing but chipper and easy-going, so the quick shift to reprimanding took Phil by surprise.

“That kid,” she nodded to the bar where Dan was waiting in line for the bartender, “I’m not sure who that kid is.”

Phil opened his mouth to defend Dan. Dan was so insistent on getting to know his younger sister better, and hearing her say that she didn’t know Dan made Phil want to launch into a diatribe about how hard Dan was trying. But Adaline cut Phil off before he could start.

“I know Dan, well,” Adaline rushed on to say. “And I like this new version of him,” she clarified, sensing Phil’s desire to stand up for Dan. “But I’ve never seen him like this before.”

Phil cocked his head, trying to make sense of what Adaline was saying. The Dan that was here tonight didn’t seem that different from the Dan that Phil was used to. Sure, this Dan was a bit more forward, a bit more flirty than the Dan that Phil had previously gotten to know, but that could be easily accounted for by the fact that this Dan was single. That didn’t seem to explain why Adaline found the boy at the bar nearly unrecognizable.

“What do you mean this kid?” Phil forced out, hoping to figure out what the heck Adaline meant.

“The guy who doesn’t want to sleep with someone immediately after breaking up with someone else?” Adaline pointed out incredulously. “The guy who’s saying that he doesn’t want to fuck up a relationship by moving too fast and jumping into sex before he’s ready? I’ve never heard him say those things before you.”

Phil was dumbfounded. It didn’t seem possible that Dan was doing all of these things for the first time solely because of Phil. “You mean, he’s acting different… because of me?” Phil asked stupidly.

“Yes, you idiot, because of you.” Adaline rolled her eyes, just like Dan. “Apparently he’s determined to do whatever this—” she waved her hand vaguely towards Phil, “—is right.”

“Oh,” Phil breathed, unable to keep the wide, beaming smile off of his face. Dan had just ended a rather long relationship — it was downright dickish of Phil to be happy at this moment.

And yet, his heart felt like it was racing faster than a plane about to take off, his body was tingling more than if every single limb had gone numb at once, his stomach was turning over like he was strapped into a never ending roller coaster.

“No, don’t smile yet,” Adaline reprimanded. “I’m not done talking to you.”

Phil’s eyes widened in fear, but he couldn’t make the smile completely go away.

“Like I said, this is new. I’ve never known him to not be sleeping with someone.”

Phil’s eyes flickered away briefly, more uncomfortable with the idea of Dan sleeping with someone — anyone — than he’d like to admit.

“But that being said,” Adaline continued without any respect for Phil’s feelings, “He’s Mr. Fucking Monogamy — in case you couldn’t tell by his reaction to me seeing two guys at once.” Adaline shook her head in exasperation. “I know he’s happy to be done with Isabella — as are the rest of us, frankly — but if I know him at all, I’m willing to wager that getting cheating on is probably hurting him more than he’s letting on.”

“Of course!” Phil rushed to assure her. “I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I got cheated on, even if it was in world’s worst relationship.”

“Exactly.” Adaline stared at him pointedly. “Which is why you need to need to back the fuck up here.”

Phil was startled — whatever he’d been expecting the point of Adaline’s lecture to be, that wasn’t quite it. He worried at his inner lip, drawing it between his teeth and biting harshly. Did that mean Adaline thought Phil wasn’t good enough? Was Adaline saying that any possibility of a relationship with Dan was off the table?

“What do you mean?” Phil asked worriedly, trying to conceal just how deep his anxieties were running.

“I mean that I can’t drop everything and come to London every damn time you two hang out, so I’m going to need you to be respectful of the fact that at least sober Dan wants a little bit of recovery time before—” she waved at Phil again, “—this. Do you think you can do that?”

“I, yeah, of course. I just…” Phil searched for a way to articulate everything he was thinking, “Want him to be happy,” he finished lamely.

“Then wait a bit,” Adaline implored. “Let him come to you — sober, I might add.”

Wait.

Not fuck off entirely.

Just, wait.

Phil could wait. For Dan, Phil would wait until the damn sun burnt out if that’s what it took.

“I can do that,” Phil smiled.

“You smug git,” Adaline teased. “You’re too happy about the fact that he definitely likes you to give a fuck about waiting, aren’t you?”

“Basic—” Phil was cut off by Dan’s return.

“Here we go, lads.” He set the drinks he was carrying down on the table, sliding each one to the right spot. “I forgot how busy this place gets on Friday nights.”

“Mmm,” Phil hummed as he took a sip of his fresh drink, hoping to avoid having to say anything for a moment so that he could process everything Adaline had just told him. And maybe to hide the stupidly big smile currently sat on his face.

Luckily, Dan took control of the conversation, as he was often want to do. And, like always, Dan proposed something that threw Phil for a loop.

“I want to tweet,” Dan bursted out abruptly. “Can I tweet?” He turned first to Phil, then to Adaline.

“Hey,” Adaline raised her hands in surrender, “I’m not here to police your public life.” She sent a wink at Phil that Dan was, in all probability, too drunk to notice.

“What do you want to tweet, Danny?” Phil asked. In general, Phil had no opposition to tweeting — but also, Dan could probably ask for the moon and Phil would start knitting a big enough lasso, so maybe he wasn’t the best judge.

“Ughhh,” he whined. “Please never call me Danny again. She called me that all the time, and if I ever have to hear that nickname again, I’ll fucking die.”

“Sorry,” Phil apologized. “Dear.”

Phil received a swift kick in the shin from Adaline for that, but it was well worth it when he watched Dan blush and mumble, “I like that a lot better.”

A burst of warmth rushed through Phil’s chest at the genuinely content, flattered look Dan had on his face.

Phil cleared his throat. “So, dear—” another kick to the shin — that was definitely going to bruise, not that Phil really cared that much. “What do want to tweet?”

“Us! And our drinks!” Dan exclaimed, looking more like an overjoyed child than he had any right to at this moment in time. Phil picked up Dan’s phone off the table, grabbing Dan’s hand without asking and pressing his thumb to the home button to unlock it. Once it was unlocked, he opened the camera and slid the phone across the table to Adaline.

He turned his attention back to Dan. “What are we doing in this tweet?”

In response, Dan pushed Phil’s Dark ‘N Stormy into his hand, picking up his own drink. “Hold it and look at the camera,” Dan ordered.

Obediently, Phil raised his glass to his mouth, dramatically taking a sip for the camera. Dan held his up at the same level as Phil’s, giving the camera a knowing look. The camera clicked loudly half a dozen times while Adaline took several version of the same picture so that they had some to pick from.

When Dan deemed there to be enough options, he made grabby hands for his phone, taking it back from Adaline.

“Help me decide which to tweet, Philly.” Dan pulled Phil in by his sleeve. Even though Phil could feel Adaline’s drunken watch on him, Phil let himself lean in ever-so-slightly to Dan. Not enough to warrant another kick in the shin from Adaline, but enough so he could smell Dan’s cologne better, enough so he could feel the warm heat radiating off of Dan’s body, enough so that he felt a little bit all consumed by Dan.

“I like that one,” Phil murmured near Dan’s ear when Dan swiped over one that was a good balance of silly and cute.

“Perfect,” Dan smiled, sharing it to a tweet. He gnawed at his lip for a moment before typing your fave lads are at it again, tagging Phil, and hitting tweet without taking any time to look it over.

***********************

Four hours and five (strong) drinks later, both Phil and Dan had surpassed tipsy and were properly drunk. Adaline, who’d showed up late and was a drink behind, had a bit more sense intact — but not by much.

“What do you think, lads, one last round?” Dan proposed.

Phil looked at Dan, his eyes struggling to focus clearly. “Okay,” he found himself agreeing anyway. Phil moved to push himself out of the booth.

“No, no, no, no. I think you’ve both had enough for tonight,” Adaline interrupted, catching the sleeve of Phil’s jumper and pulling him back down.

“But Adddieeeeee,” Dan whined.

“But Daaaannn,” Adaline whined back, teasing.

Dan raised his hand to the side of his head nearest Phil, only sort of successfully blocking Phil’s view of his face.

“Addie,” Dan whispered loudly, doing a piss-poor job of not letting Phil hear what he was saying. “I don’t wanna leave Phil yet, though.”

Phil’s heart melted. He didn’t particularly want to leave Dan either.

“Too bad,” Adaline mocked Dan, whispering back equally loudly and not even attempting to keep Phil from overhearing their conversation. “I didn’t drag my ass to London just for you to go home with him.”

Dan petulantly crossed his arms, huffing out an annoyed sigh, but didn’t fight her any further.

“And on that note,” Adaline giggled, “I think it’s bedtime, eh?”

“Probably for the best,” Phil agreed. As much as he adored getting to see this drunken version of Dan, as much as he definitely wanted Dan to come home with him, there was just enough left of Phil’s rational brain to know that tonight was not the night for that. Not tonight, not tomorrow night, maybe not even any night soon. Phil knew Dan needed time.

Time that Phil was willing to give him.

Adaline stood up, offering a hand to Phil. Phil gratefully accepted the help, letting her pull him to his feet. It had been a while since he’d stood up and — wow. The world rocked for a moment. Not having another round was the right decision.

Phil turned around to face Dan, who was staring helplessly up at him.

“Come on,” Phil said, grabbing Dan’s hand in his and tugging gently as Dan got up. The combined momentum sent Dan crashing into Phil, the two of them swaying precariously. In sync, their hands reached out to steady each other, Phil’s landing on Dan’s hips and Dan’s grasping Phil’s shoulders.

The rocking world faded away. All Phil could see was chocolate curls, and espresso eyes, and strawberry lips.

“Philip!” A voice behind him said sharply. Phil whirled around, knocking one of Dan’s hands from his shoulder. Adaline was stood close by, her hands on her hips and a reprimanding look on her face. “Behave!”

“Oops!” Phil ripped his hands from Dan’s hips, stepping backwards, his embarrassment practically radiating off of him.

“And to think, I’m the teenager,” Adaline mumbled.

“Sorry…” Phil apologized half-heartedly. His eyes drifted away from Dan, from Addie, and to the far corner of their booth, where the three of them had hung up their coats.

“Coats!” Phil exclaimed, smiling brightly at his own helpfulness.

Phil handed Adaline her coat before slipping his own on. He plucked Dan’s off the hook, spinning Dan around by the hips so his back was to Phil. Taking much more time and care than necessary, Phil helped Dan into his coat, slowly sliding each arm into the hole and slipping the jacket up his shoulders. When the jacket was on, Phil twisted Dan back to face him, and took Dan’s zipper between his hands.

The alcohol made Phil’s fingers clumsy and sluggish. It took three tries for Phil to successfully thread the zipper into the pull, his eyes focusing on Dan’s once it latched. Unwilling to let go of Dan just yet, Phil tugged the zipper up as slowly as he could, savoring every second of being close to Dan that he got.

Everytime Phil saw Dan, he could his stomach flipping over, his heart racing, his face threatening to break into a smile for no reason other than Dan’s presence. Tonight had been no exception, and now, holding Dan in place so closely to him, every single one of Phil’s feelings was amplified. He never wanted to move away.

But nonetheless, he had to eventually. Phil closed the zipper the final few centimeters, tugging slightly at Dan’s collar, just for something to do.

When Dan was tucked securely into his coat, Phil turned around to see Adaline watching them in amusement, shaking her head at their antics.

“Let’s get out of here, lads,” she said fondly.

“Phil needs an uber!” Dan exclaimed.

Oh yeah, Phil lived a lot further away than Dan did. Phil moved to fish his phone out of his coat pocket, but Dan already had his own in his hand, calling an uber for Phil.

“Here, Philly, put your address in,” Dan ordered, passing Phil his phone with unsteady fingers. Phil took the phone from Dan, taking four attempts to correctly type his address in the destination box. Two minutes, the app warned when he hit confirm.

“Thanks,” Phil handed back Dan’s phone, turning towards the exit. Dan’s hands came to rest on Phil’s lower back, pushing softly, guiding him towards the door. Adaline trailed behind them, following them outside.

Phil stopped by the curb to wait for his car. To his surprise, Dan stopped next to him — right next to him. Just a few small centimeters away.

“It’s cold,” Dan mumbled, maybe in explanation for why he was hovering so close to Phil.

“I know,” Phil agreed, wrapping his arm around Dan under the guise of providing warmth. And he did feel warmer. Maybe not physically, but there was an internal warmth washing over Phil that he’d never felt before. Phil grinned down at Dan, who’d tucked his head into the crook of Dan’s neck, and pulled him impossibly closer.

They stood like that until Phil’s car came. Phil half expected Adaline to interfere, to tell Phil to take a fucking step back, but when Phil glanced over Dan’s shoulder at her, she was smiling fondly at them.

When Phil’s car pulled up next to them, Dan drew back, but not quite all the way.

“I had a good night, Philly,” he whispered sweetly, eyes searching Phil’s face. Dan’s tongue darted out, licking his lips. Phil’s eyes followed the movement closely.

He should step back, he should give Dan the space that Adaline insisted that he needed.

But before Phil could make himself do it, before Phil could force a bit of space between them, Dan was leaning in slowly, swaying the slightest bit. Phil was rooted in his spot, unable to even move his head.

Dan closed the distance between them, pressing a sloppy, wet kiss to Phil’s cheek. His lips lingered a moment, his hand finding Phil’s and squeezing briefly.

Phil squeezed back. It was the only way he could manage to show his appreciation for the moment. Dan pulled back, finally stepping all the way out of Phil’s embrace.

A hot blush spread over Phil’s face, and, not for the first time that night, Phil felt like a teenager with his first crush.

“Me too, Dan,” Phil smiled softly, climbing into the back of his uber, his hand coming up to touch his cheek as he felt the ghost of Dan’s lips on him.

Me too.

a/n: i can’t WAIT to hear y’alls thoughts xoxo

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day One! (6/18)

Welcome to the first day of my LGBTQ visual novel recommendation week, in honor of Pride Month 2018! Every day from today (June 18th) to Sunday (June 24th), I’ll be talking about four visual novels with LGBTQ themes, characters, and/or creators that have stood out to me and explaining a little bit about why I like them! I also reached out to a handful of those VNs’ developers and talked with them about their work, so you’ll be seeing a casual interview tagged onto the end of every post, too. ✨

To kick things off today, I’m highlighting four visual novels that are practically bursting at the seams with personality, all in their own ways — Saturn’s WORST DATING SIM, Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top, Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, and Madeleine’s Inverness Nights! 

Hit the jump to read about watching Animal Planet with punks, beta-testing hookup apps, Mario fire alarms, and why it is that so many visual novels seem to use character archetypes.

One note before we get started! This list isn't meant to be reflective of "the objectively best LGBTQ visual novels" or anything like that, which I want to be ultra-clear about upfront. It's not a list of all the ones I've ever played, either. There are plenty of visual novels with LGBTQ characters/themes that have been recommended to me frequently — while I was working on this list and over the past couple years — that didn't make it onto this list because I couldn't afford to buy them, or because they just weren't for me when I did buy them, or because of a million other reasons.

To give an example of this in action: I barely have any originally-Japanese language visual novels on here, because the number of M/M ones that get translated is already so low and already nearly 100% commercial, and I'm way more inclined to pay for M/M than anything else. (Reason: I'm gay and I like looking at hot guys.) For the purposes of this list specifically, I've also cut out a fair few BL-marketed VNs — from both Western and Eastern developers — that skirt around the issue of whether or not the protagonist is gay/bi/etc awkwardly.

I also tried to limit myself to one VN per team, picking the ones I thought were best representative of their output and leaving space to mention other works of theirs that I'd liked, with the aim of keeping this list from being totally dominated by studios who'd put out a lot over a long period of time. And then personal taste for other genre and content details comes into play, so it cuts out even more from what's left! In the originally-Japanese BL category alone, that left me with a single nominee, which was... Well, you'll see!

Basically, I went over a lot of different options to settle onto a list that's ultimately only supposed to be things that I, personally, would recommend! And I don't want to recommend things I didn't enjoy, one way or another. Nobody wants to sit through multiple paragraphs of a slog where I'm trying to talk about a game I didn't actually like (or, in plenty of cases, a game I couldn't afford) without acknowledging that I didn't like it. To be totally honest, that sounds like it would suck to try and write.

So if your favorite LGBTQ visual novels aren't on here, but you want to give people an excuse to play them, I'd love to read anyone else's personal recommendation lists! I'm not a journalist or a reviewer and this isn't anything close to a formalized games review blog that I'm planning to update ever again; I'm just a VN dev who felt like sitting down and making a list of other LGBTQ VNs I liked one day, so I went and I did it. And I felt like giving those other devs a platform if I was going to talk about their work, so I took my own Patreon earnings to pay for as many as I could, then I went and did some interviews, too.

Thanks for sitting through (or skimming, as the case may be) that wall of text! Without further ado, let's talk WORST DATING SIM!

WORST DATING SIM (SATURN)

Itchio Tagline: “MRGRGR.” Genre(s): Slice of life, shitpost. Release Date: January 22nd, 2018. Content Warnings: Brief depiction of blood; violence.

Out of all the visual novels I’ll be covering over the next week, WORST DATING SIM is the only one I haven’t seen nearly all the content for, and not for a lack of trying! Saturn’s debut visual novel, a challenging conversational simulator where a punk named Etsuji decides to follow you home and hang out with you purely because he can, features a grand total of 69 ways you can get a GAME OVER. By and large, these endings come at the hands of your newfound friend (?), who’s got a temper and a sensitive streak a mile wide. If Etsuji doesn’t like what you’re saying, he’ll knock your lights out, and you’ll get booted back to the title screen.

The way WORST DATING SIM doubles down on this challenge is by intentionally removing Ren’Py’s default save feature — if you piss Etsuji off, you’re back at square one, period. You have to either somehow retain the information yourself or turn to someone else’s successful run for help, because it’s deliberately designed to be done in a single playthrough without reloading. Even a fair few jokes in the script, like “I’m sure in several alternate universes he’s punched my lights out, but so far I’m safe,” are dropped in to acknowledge the fact that beating WORST DATING SIM is more akin to powering through a run of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. (But don’t worry, the Skip Text function is still there to help you out!)

As someone who does turn to guides frequently to find out what I’m missing on my third or fourth playthroughs of visual novels, I assumed from the start that at some point that I’d want to find a walkthrough in order to see any real endings. But the sheer charm of Etsuji’s responses and, to be completely frank, how much fun I was having just trying to scale Etsuji’s emotional mountain meant that I never really hit that point while playing. WORST DATING SIM’s distinct personality struck exactly the right chord in my brain that made me want to keep playing by myself, tunneling away at it persistently, and it made the ending(s!) feel all that much more rewarding.

WORST DATING SIM is available now for free on Itchio, and you can follow Saturn on his Itch.io or Twitter (NSFW) for updates on more potential WDS content or his other upcoming visual novels.

COMING OUT ON TOP (OBSCURASOFT)

Itchio Tagline: “The erotic comedy gay dating game that'll make [you] laugh, cry, and get a little boned up! Hot dudes included.” Genre(s): Comedy, romance. Release Date: December 10th, 2014. Content Warnings: Nudity; mentions of homophobia; sexual content; seriously there’s a lot of sex in this.

If you’ve played M/M dating sims in the English language sphere any time in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top — drawing more from the Western tradition of porn by and for gay men than anything else, it tells the story of newly-out college senior Mark Matthews and his run-ins with hot guy after hot guy (after hot guy, after... you get the picture). With the help of his roommate Penny, he also takes on the hookup app scene and delves into a sea of bonus dates funded by Kickstarter backers, which were released steadily from January 2015 to December 2016.

Coming Out On Top’s steady stream of humor never goes so far as to be totally derailing from its focus on sexuality and Mark’s genuinely sincere approach to relationships, casual or otherwise; Obscurasoft manages to infuse the numerous sex scenes with enough awkwardness, humor, and personality that actually playing through them back-to-back feels less like a string of pinups and more like scenes Mark is actively involved in or growing from. As a character, especially one whose archetype has gotten a lot of mileage in gay porn since the dawn of mankind, it’d be narratively easy to let Mark remain a generally undefined slate for players to project themselves onto.

And while there is a degree of personalization, especially when it comes to how blatantly horned-up some of the dialogue is compared to other options the player can choose, Coming Out On Top is still very distinctly Mark’s story. His specific insecurities from years of being closeted don’t vanish as soon as he comes out, and hookups don’t always work out for him the way they might in ten minute long “first time” AVs. His grades still matter, and his friends still exist, and he’s still got his own sense of priorities the player can disregard (at their own fish-related peril) or see through on the slow climb to the end of his senior year.

Coming Out On Top is available now for $14.99 on Itch.io, and Obscurasoft’s website; to get early updates about what they’re working on next, you can follow their News & Updates blog or their Twitter.

BUTTERFLY SOUP (BRIANNA LEI)

Itchio Tagline: “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life. Release Date: September 16th, 2017. Content Warnings: Parental abuse; violence; racist language; homophobic language; ableist abuse and slurs.

The strength of Butterfly Soup’s personality, from beginning to end, is founded in its four point-of-view characters — kindhearted Diya, reckless Min, sharp Noelle, and carefree (?) Akarsha. As a group of ninth grade friends with different priorities and different reasons for joining their shared baseball team, which are as obvious as the hugely-varied color schemes of each girl’s clothes, they play off of one another easily. Lei uses her fair share of actual memes, but never ones that feel like the speaking character — usually Akarsha — wouldn’t say them, which holds true to the rest of Lei’s dialogue writing. It feels distinctly ninth grade without ever being mocking or trivializing the way everything is so extremely important all the time when you’re a ninth grader.

Part of that strength definitely comes from Lei’s willingness to lean on each character’s archetype and unpack it at the same time; Diya’s physical strength and sheer skill, combined with her reluctance to talk to strangers, could have easily seen her shoehorned into a much more detached character than she’s written as. Instead, she’s thoughtful, expressive, and deeply concerned with the people she cares about, even if she can’t always necessarily communicate that to them very well through her ever-present anxiety. Exactly how their own differences manifest and each of the three other girls’ reasons for being that way are slightly trending into spoiler territory, but I think Diya’s fellow main characters also each have their own similarly-smart tweaks on familiar archetypes that make their joke-filled banter all that much more personalized and memorable.

Although there’s a lot to love about the positive, hilarious moments in the protagonists’ everyday lives, one of the things that I think worked just as well narratively were the scenes that required all those content warnings up there. They're very much going to be a YMMV situation for different players, especially with my own caveat that my relationship to dysfunctional families is coming from white Irish ex-Catholicism rather than those two specific Asian cultures’ values — trying not to give any spoilers about which characters I’m referring to, here! — but in-text, they’re never situations without any future, because we can see that future where the group has each other, and they always have room in the moment to be angry, or upset, or hurt without the narrative itself punishing them for failing to be perfect. Instead, they get to play baseball and fall in love and set off fire alarms, and they do pretty okay.

Butterfly Soup is available now for free, and you can follow Brianna Lei on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to learn more about her upcoming work.

INVERNESS NIGHTS (MADELEINE)

Itchio Tagline: “Every relationship ends.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy, drama. Release Date: June 30th, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

There are a lot of things about Inverness Nights that worked for me in a way I don’t know that they would have in another visual novel — in particular, Tristram’s character is difficult in ways that pretty directly pertain to some of the content warnings linked above, and I was personally interested in seeing the text unpack that bit by bit. The eventual turn the story takes further on in your playtime, to try and phrase that in a way that isn’t super spoilery, was something I personally didn’t mind taking a little longer to get to.

Curious to hear what its developer Madeleine had to say about the story, their thoughts on character design, and what they’re up to next, I reached out to them for an interview!

IVAN: Thanks for having me, Madeleine! To get this conversation started, how would you sum up Inverness Nights to everyone reading this?

MADELEINE: Inverness Nights is a game about queer isolation and the importance of queer community outside of romantic relationships. Set in 18th c Scotland you play as Tristram Rose, an immortal gay man who has just broken up with his mortal boyfriend, and decide how he’ll cope with the loss as someone unable to tell the world around him that he’s magical and queer.

Sounds spot-on! And definitely a great summary of all the things that made it super appealing — to me, at least, haha. Before anything else, I want to note that it's been just about a year since you released Inverness Nights! Congratulations! How's the experience been, and what particular highlights or lowlights over the past year stand out to you?

It was good actually releasing a game, I enjoyed that part a lot! Aside from that, I really appreciated a couple of thoughtful reviews it got where people connected with it as a game where being queer is difficult, but not bleak. I think that because AAA games love tragic gay stories indie games can sometimes feel they need to be ultra-positive to balance that in the other direction, which is cool, but as someone who likes stories that’re more in-the-middle it was a gap I wanted to fill. There was a good reaction to that, albeit a quiet reaction. It’s a very ‘first game, niche game’ complaint but the lowlight would probably be that not many people played it — however, there are a lot of understandable reasons why it worked out that way so I’m not too hurt overall.

Haha, getting something finished and released is definitely a great feeling; I'm personally really glad you stepped in to fill that niche, as someone who likes things that are honest about their characters' pain without feeling exploitative or endlessly hopeless! In the fantastic (but spoiler-filled) Medium postmortem you wrote on your process, you say that "an important part of marketing visual novels is selling your characters"; the postmortem goes into that in fairly great detail, especially as it pertains to ensemble casts, but would you care to expand upon that observation in the scope of the visual novel genre (and how you're keeping it in mind for future projects) a little bit here?

People make fun of visual novels sometimes for their reliance on archetypes — you know, look up the average dating sim and you can probably tell in an instant who the bad boy is, who the smart girl is, so on — but when you’re selling a character driven game to people, you can’t give away the cast’s backstories and quirks up front or there’s nothing to play for, so you’ve got to find some sort of shorthand to suggest what an audience wants will be there, and that usually comes back to telling them which archetypes you’ve got. When I started Inverness Nights I kind of laughed at that reliance on archetypes and tried to do something different but I learnt the hard way why it’s important. At the moment I’m finishing a game called Catacomb Prince with my didn’t-quite-finish-it-for-a-jam group Skeleteam, and when our character artist Roxy was doing the designs I gave her very broad notes on who the cast were so they’d be more archetypical. Consequently we have a very recognisable cool girl/frat boy/petite NB slate of romance options that people’ve connected with waaay more easily and way faster than anyone did with the IN cast, which I think speaks to why it’s a sound approach.

I definitely agree in the importance of finding a good balance with archetypes; I've had people who've instantly bonded when I invoked "shy genius" or "lovestruck best friend", which ironically has given me a bit more of that freedom in telling their stories more uniquely! Could you shed a little light on what Catacomb Prince is, without too many spoilers, and what your storytelling influences for a visual novel like that have been?

Catacomb Prince is a Gothic comedy; you are Prince Vitali, trashy heir to a fantasy Renaissance kingdom, and you have woken up dead five years after a raging party. Your parents still expect you to inherit the throne despite your new skeletal appearance, but your kingdom’s laws require the King to be married. Find love, find your killer — or die again trying.

It’s mostly inspired by Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, which is an old kitschy BL VN about a guy named Georik taking up alchemy to make a new body for his decapitated (still living) sister while hiding his hobby from his friends. Animamundi has some very gloomy stuff happening but it’s so over-the-top about it that it loops around to being a very funny game, and I wanted more experiences like that in the world, so here we are. There’re also some aspects of other goofy Gothic stories in there, like Hammer Horror movies and EC Comics, though the romance aspect of it means it’s not all rib-ticklers all the time. We took care to make the love interests more than just fodder for jokes and/or horror. They’re complete, kissable people, with flesh and everything.

I am not doing a good job of easing up on the skeleton jokes but please believe me on that last point.

Glad to hear the love interests have skin! Not super fussed about that, personally, but I'm sure some players would have logistical concerns about things like skeleton-on-skeleton kissing. (I'd like to go on the record and say I'm pro-skeleton and extremely pro-skeleton puns, so I'm waiting with bated breath to get to play as your not-breathing protagonist.) Other than what we'll be seeing in Catacomb Prince, what kind of genres and themes are you interested in exploring more of in the future?

After Catacomb Prince I’m going to work on finishing an IF game I started last year called Captain Dracula, about being the last survivor on a submarine after your Captain reveals he’s Dracula. That’s also a comedy. I spent three years making Inverness Nights so taking a breather to make funny games for a while seemed like a good plan, and I’m really into classic horror, so I’ve gravitated in that direction with it. I’ve also got a regular no-pictures no-choices fantasy novel I’m several drafts through at the moment which I’ll hopefully be releasing later this year. Once those’re off my plate, I’m keen to try making either an 80 Days-style narrative travel game or a Clock Tower-style point-and-click horror for a change of pace. I want to do something that’s more about exploring a place; I do academic stuff as well as indie development and all my academic work has been on how we explore places in games, so it feels weird that I haven’t made anything that utilises my research.

It sounds like you've got a lot coming up! I'm looking forward to seeing how you can combine your academic studies with your fiction work, which already have such strong settings of place from the get-go. And last but not least, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers would you like to recommend?

It's IF rather than a VN but I love Heart of the House by Nissa Campbell, which is a Gothic game about an exorcist trying to remove an evil presence from a Victorian manor house, and maybe also wooing some of its residents. It’s very atmospheric and you can be NB, two things I like a lot. With caveats I’m also really keen on Animamundi (like I mentioned earlier — fun, funny MLM but warning for violent horror elements and sexual abuse), and The House in Fata Morgana (a dark romance about a trans man trying to rescue his girlfriend from a cursed manor, there’s an extensive content warning list on its website). Lastly, on the lighter side, Butterfly Soup and The Duenkhy are both good VNs about queer people making friends :) probably play them when you need to smile after all the grimmer suggestions I’ve made.

Awesome — and thanks again for your time, Madeleine! It was a pleasure.

Inverness Nights is available now for $12 USD, and you can follow Madeleine on Twitter or Itch.io to keep up with all the skeleton romances and Dracula adventures they're setting their sights on next!

Thanks to everyone who read this far! Keep an eye on the Twitter thread or this blog for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll be talking about four more visual novels that I think do some crafty things with their creative design!

[therightprometheanfire]

valkyriesuits answered your ask “I saw your tags on the post you reblogged from me and I would LOVE to...”

Sorry I didn’t answer this sooner, I have a bunch of deadlines right now, but I currently need to not think about it and love bitching about this movie with people, SO.

I haven’t seen this since the theaters either, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and oh boy. There’s so much, man.

First of all, you can’t do Civil War when that’s the third movie where you see almost all the Avengers (minus Thor and Bruce who have fucked off for plot reasons and I can’t help but feel that they’re super lucky) interacting with each other. Especially when you’ve added a couple new characters the last time round and won’t focus on them very much for again bullshit plot related reasons, and therefore have not seen how they work with the team as a whole. Also, trying to frame it as this heartbreaking thing that is Steve and Tony fighting doesn’t work, because all they’ve done in the past two movies is argue. They bicker, they clash. In the comics, Steve and Tony’s relationship can be combative, but there is a lot of mutual respect and love (friendship or romance, whether you ship them or not, however you take it, it is incontrovertible that there’s a lot of love there) there. In the comics, they genuinely like being each other’s friend and teammate. In the movies, they don’t seem to be friends at all, being teammates seeming like more of a chore than anything else. Steve and Tony fighting isn’t that sad at all, because that’s all they’ve done, and Tony says he was Steve’s friend, but we haven’t seen a lot of evidence of that.

And good god, you’d think that someone at Marvel would know that you can’t make Civil War into a Captain America movie. Because at the end of the day, Cap’s the hero of the movie. He’s got to be. This is Steve Rogers’s movie, and just like how the protagonists are the heroes in the Iron Man movies or the Thor ones or any of the others, Cap has to be the hero. So he’ll be shown to be in the right, or doing something heroic. And yes, he beats the shit out of Tony at the end, but he’s still portrayed as solid morally. Him breaking the others out of the Raft, taking Bucky with him after his arm gets ripped off, these are all framed in a vaguely noble light. Which for Civil War, you cannot fucking do, because it doesn’t end with a hero. Everyone loses in the comics Civil War, which is just plain not how they did it in these movies.

I don’t mind Steve and Sharon in the comics (I don’t know enough to have very strong feelings either way), but good god, they mishandled the Steve/Sharon thing in the movies so badly. He hits on her right after Peggy’s funeral? Seriously? And when they kiss (which was so awkward to watch that it got to the point where you felt kind of uncomfortable), one of them says something about how it was a long time coming, and no??? It wasn’t??? Steve didn’t trust her in the last movie and in this one he didn’t even know her well enough to know she was related to Peggy. It’s a relationship so painfully forced that I had serious secondhand embarrassment and couldn’t watch the scene when we were in the theater.

Additionally, I may not know much about Steve/Sharon, but I know enough about Sharon herself to know that she is a goddamn badass, and she was so underdeveloped in this movie it was frustrating.

I have many things to bitch about in the MCU’s portrayal of Clint Barton, but this movie ranks high, because it proves that he has no character consistency. I hate Age of Ultron, and especially how they depicted Clint, but that movie set up a very specific character. He is so devoted to his family that he’s taken their farm and very existence so far off the grid that even SHIELD doesn’t seem to really know where they are. He retires for them. And then Steve calls him and Clint joins his side. Even though he has no stake in it, because he’s retired. The Accords will not affect him whatsoever. By fighting, he puts himself and his family at risk. But he still fights, because apparently fuck his kids and wife.

And you’re right, what’s the goddamn deal with those multiple Winter Soldiers? Because I was so sure that was setting up for future movies, it had that feel to it, and it was a concept I actually really enjoyed. And then they were like “nah” and killed them all. I understand they needed a lure for the trap, but the Winter Soldiers being killed like that is a waste of a good idea.

(and I’m forever going to be pissed that we have everyone’s tragic backstory with details except for Natasha’s, who has barely been fleshed out, I wonder why)

I’m also inclined to give Spidey and Ant-Man a pass.

I hate the “choose your side” marketing campaign not just because it seems like kind of a lame way to promote your movie, but it’s also divided the fandom and it is exhausting. Die-hard stans of either side refused to acknowledge the possibility that their fave did something wrong, when in reality, this entire movie was people fucking up and making bad decisions.

For example, yes, Tony shouldn’t have enlisted Peter in this fight. But the teammates on Cap’s side would have heard his voice and known that this guy was pretty young, and they still fought him. Hell, Steve even calls him “kid” at one point. Tony shouldn’t have essentially blackmailed a teenager into this, but the people on Cap’s side, including Steve, should have figured out something to do where they weren’t fighting this child.

Each Avenger in this movie made, at one point, a terrible decision. To act like whatever side you’re on did nothing wrong is ridiculous, because everyone did something wrong in this movie. I’ve seen people say that Tony is a son of a bitch and terrible human being for trying to kill Bucky after seeing that footage of his parents dying. The man just found out that the death of his parents wasn’t an accident! And the man who did it is right there next to him! I would probably try and kill him, too, cut Tony some slack.

If this movie was a little further down the line, after we saw the team dynamics properly, this movie might be better. If we’d had more time to get to know these people not just as characters but as a team, so that them fighting each other would actually sting. But Marvel Studios knows that Civil War is a big name in comic books and that fans of that arc everywhere would flock to theaters to see it. Per usual, they saw the cash and not the quality and importance of the story, and so we get this.

TL;DR, fuck this movie, it’s nonsense bullshit.

And also fuck Age of Ultron, I didn’t talk about that very much here but I still hate it.