#sowritingvalter

[so-writing]

Digital Get Down - Valter Skarsgard

Terrible title, ridiculously good NSYNC song. 

I’m feeling a little weird about posting this because it’s totally possible he’ll see it, but fuck it, we’re all anonymous here! 

This is the first request for another brother and I didn’t plan to write multiple parts but it really got away from me. Not sure how I feel about it so far, you guys be the judge. 

-

“Someone made you famous, Paige.”

“What?”

I looked up from my book and over at my roommate sitting on the couch scrolling through her phone. 

“That thing you tweeted this morning about having the weekend off work had one other like when I first saw it, it now has 307.”

“Excuse me? I don’t even have 307 followers. Show me.”

Closing my book, I hopped off the chair and joined her on the couch. The tweet had 307 likes and 8 retweets. I had gained a few new followers as well. 

“You went a little viral, can I come when you move out to LA and start selling skinny tea on Instagram?” 

Several hours and six or seven shots of vodka later, I was laying in bed after a night out with friends. Randomly remembering the tweet, I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and opened the Twitter app. 

Who had interacted with my tweet that it got that much attention? I normally got little to no action on Twitter, so this was different. 

A lot of the likes were just random people, there were a few verified checks but most of them were joke accounts. Nothing really stuck out. 

Valter Skarsgård liked your Tweet

Except that.

Throwing the blankets from my body, I stumbled out of bed and clumsily ran to wake my roommate. 

“Anna!” I pounded my fists on the door, “Anna it was fuckin a Skarsgard!” 

“Jesus Paige, you are drunk,” she shouted through the door, “go to bed!” 

Ignoring her, I started jiggling the knob until she grew irritated enough to open the door to tell me to fuck off.

“Wait!” I put my hand up before she could say anything and shoved my phone at her. “Look at this! Look at this!”

“Well damn, he retweeted it too, that’s probably where all the likes came from. He has a decent sized following. I wonder how he found it in the first place?” 

“You should send him a message.”

“I think the fuck not. He’d probably ignore it, I’m sure he gets a ton of messages from random girls.” 

“No, you should definitely send him a message because he followed you too. You have your Instagram posted on Twitter right? I’m checking that too.” 

We had moved into her room and were sitting on her bed. I panicked as she combed through my social media. 

I had been following Valter on both Instagram and Twitter for over a year. I watched his streams when I could but never commented in his chat. I liked his tweets and photos on Instagram but never attempted to interact with him. 

He’s a Swedish celebrity and I’m a random girl that lives on the other side of the world. I always assumed we’d never have any contact, just like all of the other famous people I follow on social media. 

“You have a new follow request. You should decide whether you want to accept or not.” 

The devious look on her face made me tense as I looked to see who the request was from. 

When I saw, I instantly hit confirm.

“Fuck, maybe I should send him a message.” 

“I mean, I’ll be pissed if you don’t. Don’t do it tonight though, you’re still drunk and will send something stupid. Wait until tomorrow morning.”

Sleep came easily and to my surprise, I didn’t wake up feeling as hungover as expected. I went about my usual morning routine and cleaned up the apartment a little bit, purposely avoiding all social media for fear of… I’m not sure what exactly. 

It was still very much a surprise that Valter Skarsgard knew I even existed. 

Anna had left for work, which meant I would have to find the courage to actually send the message that I would probably write and then erase at least ten times. She was right though, if I didn’t at least try to contact him, I’d be regretting it later. 

“Here we go, you think I can do this Giz?” 

Gizmo, my cat, rubbed against my legs and meowed loudly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” 

Upon opening the instagram app, I saw a notification for a message. I thought nothing of it, Anna and I were always sending stuff to each other through direct messaging. 

The message was not from Anna.

“Funny tweet. Cute cat.” 

Holy shit. Valter had messaged me first and he had looked at my photos, because instagram was the only place Gizmo was posted. 

“Thanks. Yours are cute too. I’ve seen them on your stream a few times.” 

His reply was instant.

“You watch my streams? I hope you enjoy them.” 

“I do, you’re very entertaining.”

“Thanks, I’d hope so, it is how I make my money after all.” 

I wasn’t sure how to continue the conversation. If I started asking him about acting, he might get the wrong idea. I decided to go with what I had been thinking since last night.

“So, not to be rude or anything, but I’m curious… Why did you reach out to me?” 

Usually when you start a sentence with ‘not to be rude’ you’re about to be rude as fuck and I had forgotten that until a second after I sent the message. 

This time, his response wasn’t as quick. Seven minutes passed and I started to get nervous that I’d ruined it and he’d never get back to me. 

Refusing to let myself get worked up over something so stupid and small, I didn’t even fucking know the guy, I put my phone in my purse and decided to grab some lunch.

The taco place I wanted to get food from was a short walk away and I forced myself to only think of what kind of tacos I was going to order. 

It was once I had already placed, received and was seated a in a small corner booth with the tacos in front of me that my hands began to sweat. I needed to check my phone. He might have just been busy and unable to get to his phone.

“I stumbled across your Twitter and liked what you were posting. I’m not really sure, I just felt social I guess. I can fuck off if you want?” 

“No, I don’t want that at all. It was just completely unexpected. I’m glad you did though.”

“Weirdly, me too. I never do this kind of thing. Do you mind if we talk in a different way, though? I get so many bullshit messages that I lose track of actual conversations on here.”

We talked through iMessage for the rest of the day about mostly surface level stuff. He’d given me an email instead of a phone number, insisting that he was sure I didn’t have bad intentions but he still had to look out for himself.

Anna and I were sitting in the living room watching TV while I texted with Valter. 

“You’ve really been talking to baby Skarsgard all day? This isn’t some kind of alternate universe?”

“I cannot confirm or deny anything, but as far as I know, I’m pretty sure all of this actually happened.”

“You know he reached out because he thinks you’re hot, right?” 

“I’m not sure about that.”

“Paige, really?! Your location is on both your instagram and Twitter. He didn’t message a random girl halfway around the world because he liked her tweets and thought she had a sparkling personality.”

“He’s famous in his country! I think he’d have no trouble finding a hookup on his side of the Atlantic.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t like what you posted, I’m sure he did. I’m saying that he looked at your profile picture and probably thought you were attractive so he requested you on instagram and confirmed his thought that you were attractive so he messaged you. I’m also not saying he’s trying to hook up with you or anything, but I am saying that he messaged you because you’re hot. Ask him.” 

“I’m not doing that.”

“I will then.” 

Anna lunged across the couch and snatched my phone before I could react. 

“Anna please don’t!” 

She was quick and made it to the bathroom, locking the door behind her, before I could catch her. 

“Seriously, please don’t, I don’t want to him to stop talking to me.”

“Why do you care so much? You said yourself the conversation has been pretty basic and that it would probably just drop off in a day or two.” 

I didn’t have a good response. I didn’t want him to stop talking to me because I liked the attention but ultimately it wouldn’t matter because we would eventually, probably sooner than later, lose touch.

“Fine, I don’t care. Ask him whatever you want.” 

Giving up, I went back into the living room, dropped onto the couch and waited for her to return from embarrassing me.

Several minutes passed. I muted the TV and listened to what should have been silence. Anna was in the bathroom still, but she was talking to someone.

The door opened a moment later and she held my phone above her. 

“Ok, I’m going to sit down with Paige and you tell me what you think.” 

A shiver ran down my spine and my eyes went wide when she sat and I finally saw the screen. 

If it hadn’t been clear to me before, it was now. I was looking at FaceTime between Anna, myself and Valter Skarsgard. 

“So what do you think? Is Paige pretty?” 

He must have been sitting at his computer, because the background of the chat was what you saw when you watched his livestream.

He ran the hand that wasn’t holding the phone through his blonde hair and then across his face, a smile visible on his lips.

“Yeah, she’s pretty.”