#thirteen knows house is bi she totally fucking knows

[scintillatingshortgirl19]

VERY interesting that this moment took place in the "woman in house and wilson's building thinks they're gay/dating" episode

also. hugh laurie's little smirk here really adds a certain . . . dimension to this moment that would not be there if he'd responded to the joke in a different way

#thirteen knows house is bi she totally fucking knows #anyway yeah i cannot get over house's goddamn little Smirk #that was so unnecessary. christ #this is one of those moments where i'm like. #damn i guess this isn't *technically* canon confirmation of house's queerness but it sure comes pretty fucking close #it's just that there are a lot of alternate ways house could have responded to to thirteen's comment #an eyeroll perhaps #some sort of no homo statement #anything #but he didn't! he fucking SMIRKED #and not in a performative way #it was a subtle smirk #a smirk just for thirteen and himself #this whole moment feels SO fundamentally 'bisexual daughter telling her closeted father figure that she is fully aware they are The Same' #house season 6 #house md #house 6x11

[bisluthq]

i totally agree w the myspace posts being most likely homophobic jokes and 00s popular girls being girls~ but i always thought taylor was /that/ girl that enjoyed it a biiit too much and acted like making out with girls was only a joke for the boys attention. like until last year, i wasn't even a swiftie, pretty much never payed much attention to her, her music wasn't really up my alley but i did pay attention to pop culture and since like 2015? i've been saying taylor was gay just purely based on that vibe of closeted popular girl jsjfjsjdjdj like i Do get that you were saying we shouldn't take them as proof cause most definitely that wasn't the intention but i feel like taylor was always the one who took it a bit too far

Yeah look I mean I’ve shared my HS experiences before but I often get new followers so let’s go again. I was VERY gay and VERY closeted in high school. I was ~gayer~ in middle school because I didn’t know I was right so like I fully had a crush on a girl and was obsessed with her and I didn’t call it that in my head because I didn’t know I was gay and I had like a little love interest who was probably gay too who used to try hold my hand in school and I didn’t let her but I’d let her do it when we had sleepovers and we’d cuddle and stuff but she wasn’t allowed to tell my crush/“friend” we even had the sleepover because I was a weird kid and sometimes I start saying this stuff and I’m like maybe I *am* poly lol and maybe that’s something I need to figure out but ANYWAY.

Then Thirteen came out as bi on my TV and the penny dropped and I was like “fuckkkkkkkk” and I knew.

But I wasn’t about to like become a pariah, so I overcompensated to the point where I had Thirteen/Olivia as my desktop background and a friend laughed about it and I was like “lmfao I love House dude what’s wrong with u” and I then proceeded to pretend to have a crush on Hugh Laurie for THE REST OF FUCKING HIGH SCHOOL. My HS ex wasn’t sure about asking me out because he thought I was into old dudes. Like MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY WAS HUGH LAURIE (and SNL so that part was at least authentic).

No one in my school knew I was even vaguely gay. No one was surprised when they eventually found out but they fully thought I had daddy issues and was into old dudes and then I was in a power couple vibe with a boy so not much to think about there.

There were two girls in my grade who were the hot slutty messy bitches - I’d call them popular because I bitched about them as the popular bitches back then but I don’t know how many friends they actually had like mostly we whined about them and dudes fucked them - who were ALL OVER EACH OTHER. Like they made out at parties, they claimed to do other stuff with each other in front of boys or ask boys what they wanted to see them do, they used to be OBNOXIOUS. They were also - and are still - EXTREMELY homophobic like it was fully for dudes.

I Kissed A Girl was big at that point and their party trick was to make out and be all over each other for that song while dudes whooped.

Fun anecdote of being a baby gay: I remember one time we were at a party at this senior boy’s house and he asked me to dance and I was shy and insecure and awkward af at this stage and didn’t think I was even marginally pretty so it felt like a bad joke to me and THAT song came on and they started doing that and I got so caught up watching them and he was like “hey is everything fine” and I was like “I’m so sorry” and I like RAN outside and felt like a huge freak.

Now both those girls are… straight lol. They were just messy bitches. Anyway.

Then there was another girl in our grade who was a butch masc lesbian - and closeted af. Like we could see she was gay yk because of her gender presentation and vibe and just… besties this girl is like Kinsey 10… but she fully dated boys and made out with them especially very publicly and AFTER SCHOOL was briefly engaged to a guy and didn’t go through with it and came out as a lesbian and everyone was like “FUCKING FINALLY!!!” and good for her.

Then there were all my friends who made the regular MySpace type jokes.

And then we had one girl in our circle who was absolutely obsessed with boys but… a bit too into the jokes. The guys used to joke she should hook up with the two exhibitionists and she used to like giggle and be into it and be like “hahahaha AND WHAT IF I DID????” I’m still friendly with her and like AS AN ADULT - not in uni when the Kinsey 6 girl and I came out, like recently - she’s softly come out bi.

I would absolutely not be shocked if Tay has that type of thing going on. Like that girl is currently with a dude and will most likely endgame with a dude but no the girl stuff wasn’t for attention and she isn’t straight she’s just… a lil bit fruity and good for her.

#nat talks gay shit #nat talks nat #nat comes out lmao

[lovely-van]

beige - van mccann

You know you're beautiful But that ain't half the gold treasure in your soul that you got 'Cause I want it all With your fingers in my mouth, I fail to see your faults So please don't let me fall So please don't let me fall...  

- Beige by Yoke Lore

word count: 12k+ (yes i know but i’m not sorry)

notes: oh my god okay i love this story so much. based on a request where you and van are friends that fall in love but both don’t think the other feels the same way. not based technically on the song beige by yoke lore but i really love the song and it’s very cute and the meaning behind it is fucking amazing (definitely look it up on genius.com). anyway i really hope you like it and lmk what you think! enjoy :))

• • •

You met Van when you were nine. 

Of course, back then, he still went by Ryan. 

He was kicking a football around in his front lawn, right across the street from your own house. You were on the sidewalk in front of your house, scribbling designs on the concrete with chalk when you noticed him. 

You’d only moved in a few weeks earlier and hadn’t realized that you had a neighbor your own age. You giggled as he nearly tripped over the ball, trying to do some fancy trick. He huffed, trying to do the trick again and failing. “You’re not very good at that, y’know.”

His head shot up at the sound of your voice, looking around in confusion. His eyes locked on you and he shrugged. “I’m trying to learn!” he shouted from across the street.  

You stood up, wiping some chalk dust from your overalls and skipped across the street. “Here, it’s not that hard. I’ll help you.” He watched, his young face concentrated, as you showed him how to bounce the ball back and forth on your knees.

After a few minutes of trying it himself, he did it successfully. A grin spread across his face, cheeks flushed and dimples showing. “Wow, thanks,” he said. “My name’s Ryan. What’s yours?”

That was how it all started. 

You and Van soon became best friends. You spent everyday together, exploring your neighborhood, climbing trees, coming up with all kinds of games that stretched every part of your imagination. He attended a different school, public versus your private school that your mother insisted you go to. But you didn’t mind because as soon as he got home, he’d come running to your front door and knock on it, waiting there with the same cheesy grin every time. 

You made other friends throughout the years, some girls from school and he had friends from his own class but you were always each other’s closest friends. In the summer, you’d grab sleeping bags and flashlights and lay under the stars in his backyard. You’d talk for hours about what you wanted to be when you were older, how you couldn’t wait until you were big enough to drive a car or have your own house. 

•

You were eleven when you realized how special Van was. 

It was a sunny afternoon on a Saturday and you and Van were climbing trees in his backyard. It was late autumn, so the air was crisp and all the leaves had fully changed colors, ready to shrivel up and float down to the grass below at any moment. 

“Alright, just grab that branch right there,” he said, pointing to a tree branch a few inches above you. He was already much higher than you and guiding you to get to where he was. You dug your feet into the branch you were standing on to make sure it was sturdy, and you reached up, fingers just grasping the bark-

And then you were falling, falling and before you could even comprehend it, you hit the ground. You landed directly on your right leg and you screamed, the pain overwhelming you immediately.  

Van flew down the tree, jumping the last few feet. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

You shook your head quickly, biting your lip as hard as you could to try and hold back the tears that were stinging your eyes. 

“Okay, don’t worry I’m gonna go get someone. It’s gonna be okay,” he said quickly, rubbing your back and then sprinting toward his house.

Turns out you’d broken your leg in two places. You had to wear a cast for at least six weeks and you were extremely bummed that you couldn’t play the rest of your fall football season. You and Van were even on the same team, always carpooling to games together and messing around during tournaments. 

The day after you got your cast, you heard a knock on your bedroom door. You were lying in bed reading a book, feeling sorry for yourself when you saw Van peep his head in. “Hi,” he said with a small smile. 

“Oh, hi. What are you doing here? Don’t you have practice?” you asked as he sat down on the bed next to you. 

He shrugged. “I quit.”

“You quit? Why?” 

“I didn’t want to play without you.” 

•

You were thirteen when you shared your first kiss. 

You were both in your old treehouse, watching the sunset through the window. 

“Van?” you repeated, pondering it. He nodded, leaning his head back on the wood, a dreamy smile on his face. “How come?”

“Ryan’s so boring. I wanna be like Van Morrison, a rockstar and all that. So, Van, which is short for Evan - it totally works.” 

You nodded, your lips curling up into a smile. The sky was turning a purple-orange hazy color, your absolute favorite. You loved sunsets more than just about anything. If you were doing homework or watching TV or something, Van would toss rocks at your window, just like in the movies, to make sure you didn’t miss it. You’d always go outside and watch the sunset with him, usually from your backyard or even his roof if you were feeling brave enough.  

“Yeah, I like it. Very cool.” It fit the aesthetic that Van had been shaping for himself recently. Since becoming an official teenager, Van had taken it upon himself to descend fully into his ‘angsty’ phase. Well, as angsty as someone with the happy go-lucky demeanor that he held could be. 

He started wearing all black and jumpers with rips in them and buying only vinyls. He’d drag you to the local record store, sifting through them for hours and buying whatever he could with the money he’d earned from cutting lawns. You didn’t mind, though You loved the relaxed aura of the store, the faint noise of whatever Mr. Brown, the owner, was currently listening to in the background. You’d flip through records, listening to Van babble on about whatever new band he’d taken a liking to, fingers running over the worn cases. It was therapeutic, almost. 

“D’you think it’s weird that neither of us has had our first kiss yet?” He asked, turning and looking at you, eyebrows furrowed. 

You leaned forward, resting your crossed arms on your knees. “Um, I dunno. I hadn’t really thought about it. Do you think it’s weird?” 

Van shrugged, carving something into the wood floor with the pocketknife his father had given him for his last birthday. “Well, Joey and Simon both had theirs last year. And Henry Williams has kissed like, three girls. I feel like we’re the only ones who haven’t done it.”

His gaze was trained on whatever design he was making, bottom lip pulled between his teeth. You scanned over his face, the freckles dusting his cheeks, the scar in his eyebrow he’d gotten from a football match last year that was finally healing. He glanced up after a moment and locked eyes with you, waiting for your response. 

“I mean, I guess,” you replied. “A few of my friends have had theirs too, but they all had boyfriends. I don’t like any boys at my school,” you said, shaking your head, cringing at the thought. 

“Yeah, me either.”

“You don’t like any boys at your school?” you teased. 

Van laughed, kicking your foot lightly with his. “C’mon, you know what I mean. I don’t really like any girls right now and I feel lame without kissing anyone.” You paused, waiting to see what he was getting at it. “Sooo,” he said dramatically, dropping his pocket knife on the wood floor and mirroring your position, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his forearms on them. “Why don’t we just kiss?”

You wrinkled your nose. “What? Gross.”

He rolled his eyes, scooting closer to you so your knees were touching. “C’mon, let’s just do it to get it over with. We’re best friends so it doesn’t really matter.” His lips were curled up at the ends, hair wild as usual and you actually debated it. He was your best friend after all, and you figured it would be better than kissing some random boy during a game of spin the bottle or something. You were going to be in year nine soon, for God’s sake. 

“Okay, fine. But promise not to let things get weird between us after?” He nodded quickly, reaching his pinkie finger out.

“Promise,” he said, curling your finger around his. 

“Alright, then. What do we do?”

He shifted so he was cross legged and you did the same, both of your bare knees pressed up against each other. The sun was just barely above the horizon, only visible to you in the reflection of his eyes. “Uh... I think we just do it,” he said, not sounding too convincing. 

You swallowed as he wet his lips and leaned in, only a few inches away from you. You could see every detail of his face, every little scratch and imperfection of teenage skin. For the first time, you realized maybe he was kind of cute, like your mother always said. “It’s those little dimples he has,” she always said with a wide smile. This was coming from the woman who was convinced that you two would fall in love and get married someday. Yeah, right. 

He stared back at you, blinking slowly and licked his lips again. You would’ve felt uncomfortable normally, if it had been anyone else this close to you but, well, it was Van. 

“Close your eyes,” he whispered, his breath fanning across your lips. 

You took one last look at him and shut your eyes, your stomach doing jumps like you were about to board a roller coaster. He cleared his throat and you felt him shift and then his lips were on yours. He just kind of kept them there, neither of you moving, unsure of what to do. It felt weird and different and you were a little surprised at how soft his lips were. Did everyone’s feel like this? This is what people in movies feel like when they have their big first kiss, right as the music swells? It didn’t seem right. 

After a few seconds, you both pulled away and opened your eyes, blinking the blurriness away. You looked at the sharpness of his nose and the curl of his eyelashes and realized he still looked like the same old Van to you. 

“Huh,” he said after a moment, scooching back to his original spot against the wall of the treehouse. By now, his face was bathed in deep red shadows that were sure to turn to blue any moment once the stubborn sun descended past the tree line. 

“Huh,” you repeated, bringing your fingers to your mouth, running them over your bottom lip. “That was...”

“Weird?” he finished.

You shrugged. “No, just like, kind of boring, I guess. I don’t really get the big deal.” 

Van scratched the back of his neck, eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe we did it wrong?”

You laughed softly at first and then started laughed even harder, stuck in a fit of giggles. “What?” he asked with a grin, which just made you laugh harder. He started laughing with you, warm and loud, just like always. You howled with laughter, both nearly rolling around on the floor of the treehouse. You laughed for so long that by the time you were done, you forgot why you started in the first place. 

•

Age fourteen came with the band. 

You weren’t really sure how it started or why even, but suddenly Van was playing with one of his friend’s older brothers in their basement. He invited you to come along most times, rambling on about how excited he was about a new song they were learning or how good he was getting with guitar. 

You’d taught him to play originally, lending him the few notes your dad had taught you when you were small. He was entranced immediately, making you guide his fingers to every note you knew on the guitar that he’d saved up for for a year. And then he ran with it, learning every variation of every chord possible and spending nearly every waking minute playing in the basement of the B&B - much to his parents dismay. They scolded him and told him it was driving customers away which is probably how he ended up jamming with Billy, slowly learning a few of The Strokes’ easier songs. 

You loved tagging along to watch him play, even though all he and Billy did was strum on their guitars and sing in the basement that had really, really shitty acoustics. You knew Van was a good singer - he always had been, even though he was in the midst of puberty and was experiencing the dreaded voice cracks and hormones that came along with it. And he absolutely loved music. Listening to him sing was your favorite part of the day. You’d lean back on the couch, listening to the way his accent slipped away a little as he sang, stumbling over words and combining bits and pieces of various songs together. You knew music and you knew that he was good. 

“You’ve got quite beautiful eyes, y’know,” Van said one night, hours after his voice had given out from singing the same song over and over again in Billy’s basement. 

You elbowed Van in the ribs, nearly knocking him over. “Shut up, would ya? Brown eyes are ugly and you know it.”

You stared up at the sky, entranced by the constellations and bright stars that were out. You were both sitting cross-legged on the grass in a field a few minutes outside of your neighborhood, far enough that the lights from the houses couldn’t reach it. 

“No, ‘m telling you, yours are all big and soft and… warm, like honey.” You turned to look at him slowly, at the crooked grin on his face. You rolled your eyes, turning your gaze back on the stars. You wondered how they all fit up there in that big sky. It didn’t even seem possible, like they could fall out of it at any second and come crashing down to Earth. 

“Says the one with blue eyes. I’ve always wanted blue eyes,” you said with a dreamy sigh.

Van shook his head and laughed softly, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. 

You looked at him, blinking, and joined in laughing with him. “What?” you asked in between giggles. 

Van shrugged, only laughing harder, which made you laugh harder, too.

“I think… I think I’m just high,” Van said with a wide smile on his face. You nodded, tilting your head back and laughing again, the air visible from your mouth in the cold.

“Me too,” You said after a moment with a giggle. “Guess it worked?”

You and Van started smoking fairly regularly after that, usually leeching off of Billy or trading him with stolen cigarettes that your father rolled himself. You’d usually settle for Billy’s basement, passing around a joint or a bowl and listening as they played the songs that Van had slowly started writing, your brain fuzzy and soaking in every bit of it. 

•

Age sixteen came with first loves. 

“Mate, you know Abby Newman?” Billy asked one night, smacking Van on the chest lightly. He blinked, eyes half shut and red around the edges. 

“Hm, she’s a year ‘bove me, I think, so year younger than you, yeah?”

Billy smirked, taking a long hit of the joint in his hands. “Heard that she fancies you.” 

You snorted and Van shot you a dirty look, shoving you lightly. “Fuck off, would ya?” he said with a laugh, then turned back to Billy. “Abby Newman, huh?”

This is what kickstarted Van’s girl crazed phase. Through his delightful charm (or so he said), he managed to score a date with Abby. Within a few weeks, they were real-life boyfriend and girlfriend, holding hands at the diner you always went to, Abby finding a spot on Billy’s couch to listen to them practice, Van telling you about how they’d gone to second base - gross. 

At first, you were a little annoyed with Abby, her extra fragrant floral perfume and thick eyeliner being just a bit much but you learned to like her. Just as you were starting to consider her one of your own close friends, she and Van broke up. He wrote a sad song about her of course, actually probably 20 songs, but within a few weeks, he had a new girl in his lyrics. 

He never dated girls for longer than a month, if that, and you were never really sure why they broke up but it made for good song content, Van pouring his emotions out into his at first cheesy but then actually decent songs. 

While Van was experiencing the whirlwind that was adolescent females, you were finding your own first love in Matt. 

Matt was a year above you, seventeen and had this smile that dove you nuts. You’d go to his football games, cheering him on from the stands, Van usually by your side scribbling in his notebook or underneath the bleachers smoking a cigarette. 

You adored Matt. He was just so cool, always working on this old car that he already knew how to drive even though he didn’t even have his license yet, and giving you mix CDs with sappy love songs that you’d fall asleep listening to every night. 

Van wasn’t a huge fan of him but you figured he was just being his usual over protective self. You forced him to put on a smile and play nice, which he did for the most part. 

Matt bought you popcorn and paid for your movie tickets, held your hand tightly during the scary parts, took you to the beach when it got a little warmer, gave you goodnight kisses at your door that left you dizzy. 

You were sixteen and in love. Or you thought you were, at least. 

“Van,” you whispered into the phone, hand covering your mouth as you walked down the street on shaky legs. 

“Hey, what is it, love? You okay?” he answered quickly, voice thick from smoking or drinking. It was the night of your school’s formal and although he didn’t attend it, Van was probably winding down from the afterparty that one of your classmates had thrown - the party you should’ve just gone to after the dance. 

Instead, you were walking down a road you didn’t even recognize, in the dress you’d been dreaming about wearing for months, tears streaming down your face. 

“Yeah, I-” your voice cracked and you let out a sob. You crouched down in the street, head on your knees and cried, snot dripping from your nose. 

“Love,” Van whispered, his heart breaking for you. “Where are you?” 

You ended up in Van’s bed, curled up under his covers, wearing a pair of his joggers and your favorite sweatshirt that you always tried to steal from him. He placed a cup of tea down for you on his bedside table with just a bit of milk, exactly how you liked it, and sat on the edge of the bed. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked softly. 

You wiped some tears with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and took a shaky breath. “Um... I guess.” He reached out and grabbed your hand, the familiar feeling of his calloused fingers against yours relaxing you a little. “So basically... Matt and I had been planning on, um, having sex for the first time tonight, after the dance. Cliche, I know,” you sniffled, glancing you at Van. You’d expected him to shake his head or at least give you a disappointed look but his soft expression hadn’t changed. “And well, his parents were gone for the weekend... so we went to his house after the dance. And we were, like kissing and stuff and I realized that I just wasn’t ready, y’know? Like I just didn’t wanna do it then. So I told him that and he got really mad, telling me that he’d been waiting for this for months and how could I just decide all of the sudden I didn’t want to?” 

Van’s hand tightened around yours and you glanced up to see his jaw clenched. You took another shaky breath. “So... then I felt really bad and ended up just doing it.” Vans eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. 

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” he muttered, shaking his head. 

You dropped your chin to your chest, closing your eyes. “There’s more,” you whispered. “After we were done, he, um, broke up with me and basically said he was just waiting for this so he could finally dump me.” Van pulled his hand away from you and you glanced up to see him pacing around his room. 

“Oh my god,” he mumbled to himself. “Oh my fucking God. What a piece of shit. Who the fuck does he think he is, doing that to you? To you of all people?” he voice cracked at the end of the sentence and he paused, running a hand down his face. “I’m gonna fucking murder him,” he said, reaching for his boots by the door. 

“Van, stop. Please,” you whispered, pulling your knees tighter to your chest. He paused immediately and looked down at you, face softening slightly. 

“But he can’t fucking do that. Do you know how messed up that is? I literally wanna go rip his fucking head off,” he hissed. You shook your head and when he saw your lip tremble, he dropped his boot and sat down on the bed next to you carefully. “Oh, Y/N,” he whispered, wrapping an arm around you. 

You bit your lip and leaned on his chest, a sob escaping your mouth when he pulled you close to him. You cried, full on, a waterfall of tears into his chest as he stroked your hair and rubbed your back gently, keeping you tucked into him. He shushed you softly, almost rocking you like a baby as you cried and cried on him.

After you had no tears left in you, you sniffled and cleared your throat. You were both lying down now, both of Vans arms around your waist and your head in his chest, arm across his stomach. “Uh, sorry about that,” you said with a soft laugh. 

He stroked his thumb across your arm. “Don’t ever apologize for that, yeah? I’m here for you, always. If you need to cry on me, I’ll gladly wipe your tears away,” he murmured in your ear. “But I still wanna fuckin’ kill him.”

You chuckled, burying your head into his chest. “I know. But please don’t, I don’t want you going to jail on my behalf.”

“I’ll do it. I’d do anything for you,” he whispered. You closed your eyes, breathing him in. He smelled a little different than usual, his cologne and cigarette smoke mixed with alcohol and weed from the party. But it comforted you nonetheless, because it was Van. “I love you,” he said, dropping a kiss on your forehead. 

“Love you too,” you replied softly, falling asleep as you thanked God for giving you Van as a best friend. 

•

You were seventeen when you started to get jealous. 

It was well known by you and your friends that Van was, well, a ladies man. He dated a lot of girls. He was always loyal to them of course, he’d never cheat, but his relationships were always short-lived and dramatic. He still paid more attention to you than any of his girlfriends, but one night when you texted him to come watch a movie, you were disappointed by his response.

To: vannn

heyyy come watch 500 days of summer w me plz i need a rom com and snuggles

To: my bestest friend

sorry love i got a date w sophie tonight her parents are gone for the weekend ;) tomorrow? xx

You looked at your phone for a moment, color rushing to your cheeks as you snapped it shut. It’s not like this was anything new - Van hadn’t done anything wrong, he was just spending time with his girlfriend. But it bothered you for some reason.  

The next day, when Van did actually come over to watch a movie as promised, you couldn’t help but roll your eyes when he started talking about Sophie. 

“Yeah, I dunno she’s nice and dead cute, honestly, but she is a little insane,” he said, shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth. 

Your skin was probably green with envy when he mentioned something about her being good in bed. “Van, I don’t wanna hear that,” you replied, tossing a piece of popcorn at him. 

He turned his head and stuck his bottom lip out in a pout, looking at you with raised eyebrows. “Aw, someone a little jealous that I’m spending time with another girl?” he teased, eating the popcorn that had landed in his lap. 

You scoffed, shaking your head. “No.” 

Van chuckled and leaned toward you, wrapping his arms around you in a tight hug. “It’s okay, babe, you’ll always be my number one.” 

•

You were eighteen when you realized you were in love with him. 

It was your birthday and you were at a small pub watching him perform. You were leaning against the back wall, a beer in your hand as you watched. Van and Billy had found a bassist a while back and recently had even found a decent drummer. And they were good. 

You smiled as he thrashed around on stage, nearly knocking his microphone over and putting on a hell of a good show for the small crowd of people. They’d grown a bit of a following over the years and you could tell something big was coming for them soon. 

“I just wanna give a shout to someone very special to me.” You looked up at Van who was staring right back at you, a huge grin spread across his face as he spoke into the microphone at the finality of their last song. “This girl’s been there for me since the beginning, through all my shit. She’s the best friend I could ever ask for and I dunno what I did to deserve her. So happy birthday, Y/N. And thanks for everything.” 

Color sprung to your cheeks as everyone turned and looked at you, clapping and shouting happy birthday wishes. One of Van’s guy friends who you’d gotten to know pretty well, elbowed you in the side and shot you a wide smile. “Didn’t know it was your birthday. How old are you, then?”

But you didn’t respond because you hadn’t even picked up on what he was saying. You were still staring at Van, watching as he started packing things up on stage. 

Everything around you went quiet. You watched as he tilted his head back and laughed loudly at something Bob said and it sounded like goddamn angels singing to you. 

Holy shit. I’m in love with him, you thought. I’m fucking in love with him. How did I not realize this earlier?

It was like everything else in the background faded to black and white but he was in color, his blue eyes shining brightly as he approached you, brown hair darkened with sweat. He said something to you and you had to blink a few times, bringing your focus back.

“Sorry, what?” 

He laughed, shaking his head at you. “I asked if you wanted to get out of here, go for a drive, or somethin’. I gotta give you your birthday present,” he said with a mischievous smile. 

So there you were in the passenger seat of his dad’s car, windows rolled down, arm hanging out and cutting through the wind as you drove over a bridge, music blaring, and fuck, you were in love with Van. 

The lights from the city were bright and shining in the rear view mirror as the two of you sped away, leaving everything behind you. You stuck your head out of the window, feeling the wind on your face, a little buzzed from the beer you had been drinking earlier and a little high from the joint you’d smoked a few minutes prior and you threw your head back and whooped, unable to hold in your joy. 

Van was looking over at you, one hand on the steering wheel and a wide smile on his face. “What?” he questioned you with a laugh. 

You shook your head, unable to explain how you were feeling at that moment. You felt so full and warm and just downright fucking happy. Happier than you’d felt in a while. “I’m just… happy,” you said back, sticking your arm back out the window and letting your hair whip around in the wind. 

Van laughed, rolling his own window down and screaming along to the music with you.

He pulled over eventually, onto a side road in the middle of nowhere but left the car running. He turned the music down a little and cleared his throat. You watched as he rubbed his hands down his jeans, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile. “What’s up?” you asked, rolling the window up and tilting your head towards him. “Ooh, do I get my present now?”

A laugh escaped him as he nodded. “Yeah, guess so. Or I could make you wait even longer.” 

You frowned, crossing your arms dramatically. “But Vaaan,” you whined, “it’s almost midnight. Then my birthday’s gonna be over.” 

His eyes shone in the darkness of the car, the moonlight washing over his features gently. “Alright, alright, quit your whining. Give me a second.” Van slipped out of the car and went around to the trunk and came back with a small box wrapped in newspaper. He held it in his hands for a moment as he sat in the driver’s seat, the windows around you fogging up just a bit from your breath. 

You waited patiently, heart beating a little faster. He licked his lips before he spoke, turning his head to look at you. “So I’ve been, uh… pretty bummed lately because you’re leaving soon. I was trying to think of a way to convince you to stay here with me and just become a roadie or something but I realized that there was no way I’d let you do that,” he said with a soft laugh. “You’re so fucking smart and I just… I know you’re gonna do big things at Oxford and after, too. It sucks that we’re gonna be apart but I’m hoping I can come visit.” He looked at you expectantly, eyes wide as if you were going to object to this. 

You nodded quickly. “Of course, yeah.” 

He smiled and looked out the window for a second, turning the present around in his hands. “Good, yeah. God, this is fucking awful,” he said after a moment, eyes going to his lap. “‘M gonna miss you so much. I mean… my best friend isn’t gonna be 10 steps from my front door anymore.” You bit your lip hard, blinking fast. You weren’t one to cry over just anything but you could feel tears stinging your eyes. And you weren’t ready to leave Van in a few days at all.

You’d applied to Oxford on a whim, fully expecting to end up at one of the smaller universities near your hometown that would be within driving distance so you could still live at home.

When you got your acceptance letter, you were shocked. Van hadn’t been surprised at all, saying he knew all along that you’d get in. It took you up until the last day possible to make the decision. Ultimately, you knew you’d hate yourself if you didn’t pick Oxford. And Van would probably resent you for life if you stayed living at home. Plus, he’d dropped out of school a while ago anyway and who knew what he’d be doing once Catfish got signed. 

He laughed softly, clearing his throat. “But anyway, I’m so happy for ya. I’m not happy about us being three and a half hours away from each other... but I’ll live. And I guess I should finally give this to you, yeah?”

He handed the present over across the console, your fingers brushing as you took it from him. “I can see you wrapped it yourself,” you said with a chuckle, inspecting the newspaper. 

Van rolled his eyes playfully. “Alright, shut up and open it.”

You tore the paper carefully, holding your breath as you pulled the paper back to reveal a small box. You lifted the top off and peered inside to see a CD case. You pulled it out and examined the front to see a handwritten tracklist - Van’s messy script, specifically, but there were no artists listed. “Oh, you made me a mix?” you asked softly, beaming at him. 

He shook his head slightly. “Well, not exactly. Um, they’re all my songs.” You gasped, looking back at the tracks. 

“That’s amazing,” you murmured. 

“And uh, well, they’re all songs about you.” You paused, making sure you heard him correctly, and turned back to look at him. He was staring right back at you, bottom lip tugged between his teeth.

“Songs about me?” you whispered. “I didn’t know you wrote about me.”

He laughed softly, pointing at the top of the list of songs. “Of course I do. How could I not? They’re kind of… in chronological order too, like from when I first met you to now.” You pulled the CD case to your chest, leaning over and wrapping your free arm around Van’s neck. 

“Oh my God, thank you,” you mumbled as he tucked his arm around your waist, his chin on top of your head. 

“There’s more, y’know,” he said as you pulled away, pointing at the box. You lifted some tissue paper to reveal a thick stack of notebook paper that was folded together carefully in a square. When you pulled it out, something fell out of the paper. 

“Shit,” you muttered as you lifted your legs off the seat, trying to find it. You switched a light on inside the car and spread your fingers across the fabric of the seat until you felt something cold. You grabbed it carefully, placing it in your palm and you gasped upon realization. “Van,” you whispered. 

It was his father’s necklace, the one he’d worn ever since you were both small. He’d started wearing it when he was only about seven or eight, he told you. You’d never seen him without it. 

You looked over at him and sure enough, the small chain that usually adorned his neck was gone. He licked his lips, eyes scanning your face. “I… I can’t take this from you,” you said, reaching for his hand to give the necklace back to him. 

He held his hands up in defense and shook his head. “I want you to have it. So you don’t forget about me,” he said quietly. 

Your chest tightened. Forget about Van? That would be impossible. You’d spent your life watching him grow up, been there for each other through every heartbreak, every family problem, every low moment. You were in love with him, for God’s sake. How could you not be? He was the funniest, most thoughtful, kindest person you’d ever met. And he thought you’d forget about him?

“I could never forget about you,” you whispered, voice cracking. Your eyes started watering again and you looked at your lap, turning over the delicate gold chain in your hands. 

“Let me put it on you.” You nodded, swallowing the lump in your throat as you handed it to him carefully and turned to face your window. He leaned over the console and brushed your hair to the side, his hands against your neck eliciting goosebumps from your skin. He unclasped it and wrapped it around your neck slowly, his fingertips nearly leaving burn marks wherever they touched. He ran a hand down your hair, smoothing it carefully and hovering there for a moment before leaning back in his seat. “Looks better on you,” he said with a small smile.

The feeling in the pit of your stomach had not dissipated. You felt incredibly nervous but also still at ease and you were trying to figure out how that was even possible. But it was because you were alone in a car in the middle of nowhere with Van, your best friend of almost a decade who you were also utterly in love with, staring at him with only the soft hum of The Shins in the background. “Also, that’s um, a letter I wrote you,” he said softly, looking at the folded up paper in your hands. You started to unfold the paper until he interrupted you. “No, no, could you just wait to read it? Like, until you get to Oxford?”

You felt dizzy at this point, only moments away from having to press your forehead against the car window and catch your breath. What was in the letter?

“Uh, yeah, sure,” you whispered, tucking the note into the pocket of your jacket. “Van, I… thank you so much. You don’t know how much all of this means to me,” you said. He was pleased by your reaction, a small smile stuck on his lips as he stared at you. 

“Of course. You deserve it,” Van responded softly. “Come ‘ere.”

You leaned forward again and wrapped both of your arms around his middle tightly, tucking your head into his chest. He slid both his arms around your neck, one going to the back of your head and holding you tightly. You sat there like that for a while, feeling how warm he was against you, breathing in his scent that never seemed to change, the cologne he’d stolen from his father when he was younger with the addition of cigarette smoke in the last couple of years. He felt so solid and safe and at that moment, you realized that leaving for Oxford was probably going to be the hardest thing you’d done so far in your life. Van stroked your hair gently, holding you so tight to him, not caring about the awkward position you were in over the center console or that The Shins CD was starting over for the third time. 

You pulled away after a few minutes, forehead pressed to his. It was so dark you couldn’t see anything but the lightness of his eyes. I’m in love with you, you wanted to say. I’m so fucking in love with you it hurts. I want to wake up to you in my bed every morning and I want to dance around the kitchen with you in the middle of the night and I want to have babies with you and grow old together. 

You couldn’t bring yourself to say any of these things. You were leaving in less than a week and then you’d be across the country from him. You didn’t want to risk losing him or fucking things up before you left. You’d just realized how you felt about him and you were pretty sure that he didn’t feel the same way about you but you’d rather just live not knowing for sure - it was less painful that way. You wanted to remember him exactly this way - warm and happy and just Van. 

“I love you,” you whispered, “and I’m gonna miss you so fucking much. But you’ll always be my best friend, y’know?” 

•

It was near the end of your first term when Van finally came to visit you. 

It was a Friday afternoon and you had your nose in a book, studying for an exam you had coming up when your phone rang. 

You flipped it open and grinned. “Van!” you yelled excitedly, slamming your book shut and jumping out of your desk chair. 

He chuckled through the phone at your excitement. “Hi, love. I think I’m here but ‘m not quite sure where to go, honestly. Can ya come find me?”

There he was, a backpack slung over one shoulder, sunglasses on his face, wearing a huge smile. You sprinted toward him and nearly knocked him over with a hug, wrapping your arms around him tightly. 

“Hi,” you said when you pulled away, beaming. 

“Hi,” he replied, giving you that infamous crooked grin. 

“So this is my friend Hallie’s room and my other friend Olivia’s room is right there and, oh that’s Charlie’s at the end of the hall,” you said, speeding down the hallway, Van trailing behind you. He seemed to be in awe of everything, mouth hung open and staring at every room you passed. “And this is my room.” You shut the door behind you and leaned against the wall, watching as he inspected the small room. “Like it?” you asked nervously.

He turned and looked at you, a smile spread across his face. “This is amazing,” he said. “This whole place is so fuckin’ cool and all of your pictures in here and your records, wow,” he murmured, scanning over the hundreds of pictures you’d taped to your walls. Of course, he was in most of them. You beamed at him, plopping down on your bed as he looked out your window, admiring the view of the city outside. 

“So did ya miss me?” he asked, sitting down next to you, bumping your shoulder with his. 

“No, I’ve been just great without you,” you said with a laugh. “Yes, of course I missed you! It’s been, like…”

“Three months?” he finished for you. 

You sighed, scanning over his face. It had been only three months but it felt like so much longer. He looked older to you, his hair a little longer and some stubble growing in. His eyes still had the same twinkle and you couldn’t help but lean forward and hug him again tightly. 

“Three months too long,” you mumbled into his chest as he chuckled, hugging you back and rubbing his hand down your back.

“I know, darlin’. But what do you have planned for me this weekend? Gotta get the whole university experience, yeah?”

Naturally, you took him to a party later that night. It wasn’t overly huge or anything, just a casual thing that your friend Hallie’s older sister was throwing at her house a few blocks away from where you lived. 

Van was thriving in the party atmosphere, of course. Girls were eyeing him up left and right, offering him drinks and touching his shoulder. He was eating it up, not used to so much attention. He was telling a group of people about the band and how they’d recently won a music competition and they were all close to drooling. 

“Your boyfriend’s so cool,” someone next to you said. You turned and looked, seeing it was a girl who lived down the hall from you but whose name you could never remember. Van looked at you through the crowd of people, shooting you a wink as you shook your head and laughed at him. 

“I know right?” you replied, not even bothering to correct her. 

“I love college. I love it!” Van shouted to no one in particular a few hours later as the two of you stumbled down the street, his arm slung around your shoulder and yours around his waist. 

You giggled, holding him tightly to make sure you didn’t trip over anything. “Van, be quiet,” you shushed as you guided him up the stairs and down the hall to your room. You rolled your eyes, laughing as he said ‘hello’ to a few people in your hall and pushed him into your room. He collapsed on your bed, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. “I’m serious. I love this place. I could never leave,” he said, eyes wide. 

You sat down on the edge of the bed next to him, patting his chest. “I know. I love it, too.” 

Soon you were curled up in your tiny bed, limbs tangled together and fighting over blankets like you were sixteen again. His arm was around you, thumb stroking over your shoulder. “So you got a boyfriend?” he asked teasingly. 

“Ha no, no time for that yet. I’ve been so busy with school I can’t even think about finding a boyfriend,” you replied with a laugh. “What about you? How’s the girl situation?”

Van shrugged gently. “Eh, dunno. I’ve been seeing this girl Lily for a bit but I don’t really think it’ll go anywhere. She’s a bit full on.”

You’d become pretty good at hiding your jealousy, pushing it down inside of you and putting on a smile. You knew that his relationships never lasted and you really had no right to be jealous anyway but the thought of him doing anything with another girl made you sick to your stomach. 

You chatted for a while, voices hushed and words getting more drawn out until you could tell he was asleep. You laid there, head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat and listening to him breathe and you were just so fucking thankful that he was real and he was alive and here in your room. 

As you laid pressed up against him, not ready to fall asleep just yet, you thought of the letter he’d written you before you left for school. 

It took you until your third night at Oxford to read it, as you’d been so busy with unpacking and making new friends you didn’t have time. 

You’d flipped the lamp on next to your bed and unfolded the paper carefully. You read it slowly, taking in every word, every metaphor, every long description and then read it again. He really did have a way with words. You cried, of course, because it was fucking beautiful. He wrote about what your friendship meant to him and how he was so thankful he’d gotten to watch you grow over the years into the person you were now. He mentioned little details about you that you’d never even noticed and wrote about some of the bigger things you’d experienced together and what it was like from his perspective. 

The final paragraph is what really sent you over the edge. 

And now, you’re going off to do such fucking wonderful things. I can’t believe I’ve been lucky enough to know you. Just the other day I was talking to Larry about you, and how I was going to miss you and everything and he said to me “Mate, she’s special. People like that don’t come around in life twice.” And he was right. I might end up traveling around the world with the band, visiting different countries and meeting thousands of people. But none of them will compare to you. To your heart, your kindness, your passion to change the world. So I guess, I just want to thank you for being you and thank God for putting you in my life. I don’t know what I did to deserve you. 

You’re the best friend I ever could’ve asked for. I love you and I always will. 

Love, Van xx

•

You were twenty when you met Ethan. 

It was the beginning of your third year at Oxford and he was in your Calculus class. He introduced himself on the first day and whispered jokes to you about the lecturer throughout the whole class, making you burst out laughing at one point and get scolded by the girl sitting next to you. 

He followed you out of the lecture hall, asking you to coffee right away. While you were drinking coffee, he asked you to come to a party with him later that night. At the party, he asked you to dinner the next night. 

Within weeks you were inseparable. Ethan was witty and bright and kept you on your toes at all times. You studied together almost every night and it especially helped that he was a genius when it came to math. 

“So you’re just using Green’s Theorem to set up a double integral to find the area of this region,” he’d say. 

“I have to use whose what to find where?” 

He’d roll his eyes and laugh, then explain the whole thing to you again. 

You went to parties together and out to clubs sometimes, spending all night laughing and dancing together. You called your mother, giddy about your new romance and you could tell she was uncertain about Ethan. “Sweetie, are you sure about him? I mean he sounds nice and all, but… what about a certain someone back home?” 

You’d never officially told your mother about your secret love for Van but of course she knew. Ever since you were little, she constantly told you that you and Van would be perfect together and would end up married with kids someday. And when she started to pick up on your real feelings for him, that maybe you did want to be more than friends, you could tell your mother really, really wanted something to finally happen between you and Van. “Mum,” you’d scolded her over the phone, “you need to drop that, okay? I like Ethan. He’s gonna be good for me.”

When first term was over, Ethan invited you to come to his family’s house for the holidays and spend Christmas with him. You declined politely, as you hadn’t seen your parents in ages and desperately wanted to go home for a bit, enjoy the cold weather from the comfort of your childhood home. In the last few weeks, Ethan had become a little full on, as well, so you were glad to get some space from him. And maybe there were other reasons, too. 

As you rode the train home, looking out at the snow falling through the frozen window, you thought about Van. 

You hadn’t seen him in months. Catfish had recently gotten signed and they were busy recording their first EP so you rarely saw him last summer before you had to return to Oxford. You talked on the phone occasionally, but you were both so busy that you had little time to call each other. 

And fuck, did you miss him. 

Your heart ached for him when you arrived home, his house looking the exact same. You pictured him running across the street to beg you to come play hide and seek in the woods nearby or to convince you to go swimming in the lake a few blocks away. When your parents took you out to dinner, all you could see was him. Him sitting at the booth you always used to share when you had late night munchies, him waiting for the bus down the road before school, him knocking over that stop sign when he was first learning to drive. 

You thought about calling him but every time you clicked on his contact name, you couldn’t bring yourself to go through with it. What if things had changed between you? What if he was too busy with the band? 

You’d been home for three days when you heard a noise at your window. You paused, trying to figure out if you imagined it and shrugged, turning back to the book you were reading. After a moment, you heard the noise again. You folded over the corner of the page you were on and set the book down on your bedside table. You shuffled over to your window and jumped when you heard the tap again, then pulled your shades back. Through the frost, you could make out the figure of a person on the ground below. You carefully slid the window open and stuck your head out, rubbing your arms from the cold. 

“Hey!” 

It was Van, throwing rocks at your window, a smile on his face, just like when you were young.

Your heart swelled. “You wanna let me in? It’s cold as fuck out here!”

Van rubbed his hands together and blew on them, trying to warm himself up as you set a cup of tea next to him on your nightstand. “Thanks, love,” he said with a warm smile. 

“So how’ve you been? Can’t believe you guys finally have a record deal and everything. I mean you’ve been working for this for so long,” you said, pulling a blanket over both of you.

“Fuck, I know right? It’s been insane, just absolutely mad. I mean to hear my own songs actually recorded, not just on the shitty mic I have in my room? It’s fucking amazing,” Van replied, shaking his head in amazement. 

He shot into stories about their manager and the stress over which songs would go on the B side and you could tell he fucking loved it. His eyes were shining so bright, hands waving around as he spoke, a wide smile never leaving his face. Van was absolutely in love - in love with music and his band, and you realized you were in love, too. 

But not with music - you were in love with him still. 

“You glad to be home? It’s not quite as exciting as Oxford, eh?” he asked, taking a sip of his tea. 

You laughed softly, shrugging. “Maybe not as exciting but I like coming back here, especially since it’s almost Christmas. I love seeing mum and dad and it makes me… nostalgic you know. Reminds me of being little and running around with you,” you said, bumping his shoulder with yours. 

He nodded in agreement, lips curling up in a smile. “Can you believe we’re twenty now? Christ, I feel so fucking old,” he said with a laugh. 

“Oh, I know right. I feel like school is just flying by and I dunno, I have no fucking clue what I want to do when it’s over,” you replied, sighing. 

“You’ll figure it out. You always do. You’re dead smart and so passionate about so many things that I can’t imagine you’ll have any trouble finding a job after you graduate,” Van said softly. 

You looked over at him, biting your lip and wanting to cry a little. He always knew what to say. You’d been so stressed over the last year about your grades and about potentially going to medical school but you weren’t even sure if you wanted to, that Van saying this made you feel infinitely better. 

“Thanks, Van. I’ve missed you so much, y’know.”

He wrapped an arm around you, bringing you close to him and dropping a kiss on your forehead. “I missed you, too, love. It’s been hard without you.” 

You took a little satisfaction in knowing that he missed you as much as you missed him. You had your doubts of course, him being a big rock star now and you feared that maybe things had changed since you’d last seen him. 

“I was worried you’d forget about me,” you said softly, looking up at him. He blinked a few times, eyebrows furrowed. 

He shook his head and whispered, “I could never forget about you.” His flickered down to your neck and the gold chain you hadn’t taken off in years. 

You bit your lip, unable to contain the smile on your face. 

“You wanna go for a walk?” he asked after a moment. 

So though it was freezing and flurries were coming down, you found yourself walking the same streets you’d biked around on when you were young. 

You had your face buried in a scarf, hands shoved in your pockets because of course you’d forgotten your mittens, as you walked down the street with Van. 

It was dark out now, so the sky was hazy and everything was quiet from the snow. You were shivering and looked over at Van to see if he was the same, but he looked fine, no scarf, no mittens, no hat and just a light jacket on. “Aren’t you cold?” you asked, teeth chattering. 

He turned and looked at you with an eyebrow raised. “Not really. You?” You turned off the road you’d been walking on and wordlessly entered a park that you’d played at countless times. Visions of young Van sliding down the slide or swinging as high as he could flashed through your head. 

You nodded quickly, pulling your hands out of your pockets to rub them together. Van led you to a bench and sat. “Here,” he said, reaching out for your hands. You sat next to him, pressed up against each other, and he took your hands in his much larger ones, rubbing some warmth into them. He brought your hands to his mouth, blowing hot air on them. Your heart started to race and you felt like a teenager again. 

“Better?” he asked, pulling your hands away from his mouth but not letting go, resting them on his lap. 

You nodded, lips curled up in a smile. The tip of his nose was a little red and he looked adorable. 

“So your mum told me the other day that you’ve got a new boyfriend.” Oh, fuck. Since being home and especially being with Van, you’d kind of forgotten about Ethan. 

“Oh, yeah, Ethan. We’ve been together for just a couple months,” you said with a small smile. Van nodded but didn’t return your smile, turning and looking across the park, snowflakes falling and nestling onto his hair. He looked older, circles visible under his eyes probably from long nights spent perfecting songs and early mornings at the recording studio. You were positive he’d grown since you last saw him - he’d seemed like a giant when you’d been walking together. “But I dunno, I don’t really know if he’s the one, y’know?” 

When Van turned back to you, he looked nine years old again. Small and vulnerable and clueless about the world. 

He looked down at his lap, at your intertwined fingers, and licked his lips before his eyes flicked back up to yours. “Y/N… Can I tell you something?”

Your breath hitched in your throat before you nodded slowly. Van cleared his throat and turned your hand over, running his thumb along all the lines. He scratched your palm gently, just like he knew you liked, before intertwining your fingers again. “Uh, wow, I have no idea where to even start. I’ve had this planned in my head for fucking years and now it’s real and I… I don’t even know what to say,” he muttered, eyes wide as they stared into yours. 

“What do you mean?”

He laughed softly, his thumb stroking over the back of your hand. He brought your hand up to his mouth again and kissed your knuckles gently. 

“I’m in love with you.” Your ears were ringing and you blinked slowly, wanting to pinch yourself in the leg to make sure you weren’t dreaming. “I’m so fucking in love with you. And I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to say it because God, I’ve known it since I was fifteen and you fell asleep on my shoulder in Bobby’s basement one time but I was always too scared to tell you. Scared because I knew you didn’t feel the same way and I was worried you’d get weird around me which is fucking dumb because, well, you’re you and you’re the best person I know so it would’ve been fine,” he said with a soft laugh. “I wanted to tell you before you went off to Oxford, too, but I knew it was a bad idea because we were gonna be so far apart and I didn’t want it to ruin our friendship or anything, y’know? But now I hear that you have a boyfriend and I probably shouldn’t even be telling you because that’s kind of a shitty thing to do, but I dunno. I couldn’t keep it in anymore,” he finished, shrugging like he’d just said something completely minuscule to you. 

He reached up and rubbed his thumb under your eye and you didn’t even realize you’d started crying. 

Van was in love with you. He was in love with you and had been for years. All those years that you thought he didn’t feel the same, that he was just a really good friend. After you’d read his letter when you first started at Oxford, feeling a little crushed that he hadn’t confessed his love for you, you were positive that you’d never be more than friends. 

Van, your best friend of eleven years, the boy who’d grown into a man in front of your very eyes, was in love with you too. 

You couldn’t believe it. 

“Oh my God,” you mumbled. “Oh my God. This is real?” He nodded, his face full of confusion. 

You’d spent years dreaming of this. Lying on your bed at Oxford, staring at the ceiling, willing there to be some way the universe could work its magic and make Van love you back. Apparently, the universe listens. 

“Van... I’m in love with you, too.” He sighed gently, eyes locked on yours. “I have been forever. And I didn’t wanna tell you either because I thought you didn’t feel the same way,” you said with a small laugh of disbelief. “Fuck, I can’t believe this is actually happening. I spent so much time wishing you’d feel the same way as me but I honestly thought you never would. And God, I wanted to tell you so bad but I was just so scared. You’re really in love with me?” you whispered, biting your lip. 

He nodded, bringing his finger to your chin and tilting your face to look up at him. You could see every detail of his face in the soft lighting, the freckles that dusted across his nose, the ever so faint scar from that football match so long ago, the curl of his eyelashes. You thought of when you were thirteen and you had stared at him before having your first ever kiss, how much he looked like that young boy right now.

“Of course I’m in love with you. It’s always been you,” he whispered, his thumb stroking across your cheek. Your heart was beating so fast you were worried it would pop out of your chest. 

You sighed softly, scanning over Van’s face, the snowflakes that had accumulated on his hair, the sparkle in his eyes, the redness of his cheeks. He was in love with you. 

“Think we can try that whole kissing thing again?” he asked after a moment, with a small smile. “Might be better now than it was when we were kids.” 

You laughed, nodding as he leaned forward and rested his forehead on yours. You reached up and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him close to you to make sure he was real and that this was actually happening. 

“I love you,” Van whispered, his breath ghosting across your lips, the edges of his eyes crinkled because of how hard he was smiling. 

And yeah, it was safe to say this kiss was better than the one you’d shared at age thirteen. 

•

You were twenty four when you got married. 

It was a nice autumn day, a slight chill in the air but the sun was still shining bright. 

As you waited for your cue to walk down the aisle, your heart beating faster than you knew possible, you thought of the last time you’d seen Van. It was yesterday morning, when you woke up to him pressing soft kisses on your cheeks, your nose, your forehead. 

“Van, what are you doing?” you’d groaned, not wanting to wake up. 

He scattered a few more kisses down your face and then giggled - giggled - against your neck as he brought his fingers to your sides, tickling you gently. “Van!” you squealed, opening your eyes to see him hovering above you with that crooked grin. 

“I needed to wake you up,” he said. 

You looked up at him, blinking the blurriness away, at his messy hair and sleepy eyes. It had to have been early still, dawn lighting streaming in through your window onto his face. “Why?” you asked with another groan. 

“Because I looove you and we have so much shit going on today and then we don’t get to be together tonight so I wanna enjoy the time we have this morning,” he replied softly. 

You brought your hand up to his cheek, stroking your thumb across a dimple and pulled his mouth to yours. He smiled even wider into the kiss, morning breath and teeth clinking together and all. 

You loved Van a little extra in the mornings. He was even more affectionate than usual, running his hands over every part of your body, wanting to be the little spoon, begging you to stay in bed for just a little longer. 

He snuggled on top of you, arms around your waist and head nuzzled into your neck as you scratched his scalp gently. “We’re getting married tomorrow,” he mumbled. 

You sighed softly, lips curling up in a smile. “I know. God, I’m so excited.” 

He pulled away slightly, resting his forehead on yours. You couldn’t see anything but the lightness of his eyes. “Me too,” he whispered. “Been waiting for this for a long fuckin’ time.” He kissed you gently, then rested his head on your chest, your hands going back up to tangle through his hair. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you, so fucking much.” 

As you rounded the corner, you took one last deep breath and looked up. Everyone was standing, staring at you with wide smiles and hands pressed to their hearts. The music was playing softly in the background, white twinkling lights everywhere, the flowers absolutely perfect. You were thankful your father was leading you, his arm tightly around yours because otherwise, you probably would have stopped dead in your tracks while walking down the aisle when you saw Van. 

He was waiting at the altar, looking fucking amazing in his black suit, and he was crying. Tears were streaming down his face and his hand was covering his mouth as he shook his head in awe. 

Your dad kissed your cheek and whispered that he loved you and took his seat next to your mum in the crowd.

When you reached Van, you grabbed his hands tightly, grinning at him as his eyes looked you up and down and then straight into your own eyes. His face was wet with tears and his lip was nearly bleeding from biting it so hard. 

“Hi,” you whispered, tears stinging at your own eyes. 

He laughed softly, shaking his head again in disbelief. “Hi. God, you look fucking beautiful.” 

•

You were twenty seven when you had your first child. 

You’d woken up in the middle of the night, eyes widening immediately as you shook Van awake. He had just gotten back from a short tour the night before, and he’d been absolutely exhausted. But he knew you were due soon and there was no way he was missing the birth of his first kid. 

“Hm?” he mumbled, not waking up. 

“Van,” you hissed, shaking his shoulder again. “It’s happening.” 

He opened his eyes and blinked, looking up at you. You nodded quickly, trying hard not to freak out too much. “Oh my God,” he said, shooting up and stumbling out of bed to find the bag you’d packed a while ago. “Oh my God, fuck, oh my God.”

The whole drive to the hospital, Van checked in on you constantly, making sure you weren’t in too much pain, driving as fast as possible, squeezing your hand tight. He had a playlist on his phone for this very moment - because honestly, he had a playlist for everything - and he put it on, trying to keep you relaxed as it played softly in the background. “We’re gonna have a fucking baby,” he muttered, glancing over at you in the passenger seat and laughing softly. “Christ.” You laughed too and then started to cry of course, because your hormones were a fucking disaster. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay, love. You can do this, yeah? Never been anything you can’t do.”

“She’s fucking beautiful,” Van whispered, tears running down his face as you laid in the hospital bed together later, both of you holding your new baby girl. You were exhausted and in a lot of pain, your face sticky with sweat but you didn’t care. You nodded, resting your head on Van’s shoulder as you started crying with him. “Looks just like you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. 

“We’re parents, Van,” you said after a moment. “Holy fuck, are we ready for this?”

Van snorted, shrugging gently. “Probably not but we’ll figure it out, yeah? We always figure it out.” You sighed happily, leaning up and pressing a kiss on his lips. 

“God, I love you,” you whispered, dropping your head back to his shoulder. “Now, what are we gonna name her?”

•

You were thirty-three when you realized your mother had been right all along. 

It was a cold, snowy day in the middle of December. You were cozy in bed, still half asleep, Van’s arm tight around you as you laid on his chest, blankets pulled up over you. 

You were about to fall fully back asleep when you heard your door swing open. You heard some whispering and soft giggles and suddenly, you and Van were being attacked. 

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” Van groaned loudly as you opened your eyes, seeing your two children jumping up and down on your bed. They giggled, launching themselves on top of you and hugging you. “Wake up, please!” they begged, Mary sitting on Van’s chest and Leo bouncing up and down on top of you. 

You rubbed your eyes, laughing softly at them. “What are you two doing?” you groaned, pulling Leo down into a hug. 

Leo laughed as he hugged you back, burying his face in your neck. “We wanna go play in the snow, please, please?” he begged in his small voice. 

Van mumbled something incoherent as Mary poked his cheek. “Daddy, wake up,” she said with a giggle. You glanced over to see Van with his arms covering his face, clearly not ready to be awake. 

“I don’t think Daddy is ready to wake up,” you said with a laugh, reaching up to press a kiss to Leo’s nose. Leo squirmed off of you and joined in the assault on Van, pulling his hands off his face and pressing his forehead to Van’s. 

“Daddy, pleeease,” he whined, giggling. Van groaned loudly again, before opening his eyes and immediately wrapping his arms around Mary and Leo, pulling them both onto his chest. 

“You’re killing me,” he mumbled, voice scratchy. “Daddy needs to sleep.” 

You laughed, squeezing up tight to your family and resting your head on Van’s shoulder. “Daddy does need his sleep. Especially after last night,” you said with a smirk. Van chuckled as Mary started tugging on his hair and Leo wiggled to get out of his grip. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Van started to tickle both of them, making them scream with laughter as they squirmed around your bed, limbs flying everywhere as they tried to escape him. 

“Okay, okay, we’ll have breakfast and then we can go outside. You can go watch some TV while I get your Daddy up,” you said with a laugh as Mary and Leo jumped off the bed, racing into the living room. 

Van chuckled, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you onto his chest. “They’re mad,” he said, shaking his head.

“They are, yeah,” you replied with a soft laugh. “But I love ‘em.”

“Love ‘em to pieces.” Van ran his hand down your arm slowly, before reaching his hand down to your jaw and tilting your face up to look at him. His eyes were sleepy still, his hair a mess. “And I love you, Mrs. McCann,” he whispered. 

You smiled back up at him, feeling giddy as ever as he leaned down and kissed you slowly, smiling against your lips. You pulled away after a moment and stared into his eyes, wondering how the hell you got this lucky. “I love you more.” 

Turns out your mother was right all along about the whole marrying Van and having babies with him. 

You never would’ve imagined this at nine when you met him for the first time or at thirteen when you had your first kiss or even when you were eighteen and you realized you were in love with him. It seemed too good to be true.

But it was real. Van was real and you loved him more and more every day, still asking yourself how someone as perfect as him could exist. Van, who had become the best father in the world, crying to you at night sometimes because he loved his children so much and was worried about what the world would do to them. Van, who dedicated every album to you and had to call you every night while he was on tour because he couldn’t sleep without hearing your voice. Van, who made sure to send you flowers at work once a month, who you got to spend the rest of your life with, who left a note on your bedside table with a different reason why he loved you every single morning. 

And God, did you love him too.  

• • •  

#vanfic #van mccann #catb fanfic #van mccann fanfic #catb fanfiction #my fic #van x reader #catb #fanfic #!!!! #i love this story omg #it's 2 am but it's fine

[lilnasxvevo]

the house md moment that i still think about all the time is when like....i think there was a dude who cheated on his wife, who was the patient of the week or whatever, and they were standing around being judgmental (and that’s fine, judge cheaters all you want), and somehow Thirteen got dragged into it and they were talking about how she obviously has to have sex with both men and women all the time and how is that any different and she said

“it’s way easier to skip dessert than to pretend you don’t eat.”

that was the metaphor the writers chose.

and ever since the moment i watched that episode i’ve been like. is that what straight people...think bisexuality is? like there’s two kinds of incredibly different sex and it’s Sex With Men and Sex With Women respectively and bi people can only ever be satisfied with a life where they’re experiencing both those things always??? it. i mean it defies logic completely. i can’t even offer a counter-argument because it’s such a stupid thing to say that i can’t even try to trace the logic there.

but like 1) sex is not eating; most people will have periods of months or years in their adult lives during which they don’t have sex or very rarely have sex and they do not die because sex is not eating and you CAN, in fact, live without it. 2) just like, the idea that ??? there’s Sex With Wamen and Sex With Mens and they’re such totally different beasts that you constantly crave whatever one you’re not having. look. all people are covered in skin and all sex is just you touching someone else’s skin and someone else touching your skin. the accessories don’t really make that much of a difference if you’re attracted to all genders anyway. like i promise. 3) i don’t know, man, like for them to just out and say yeah i’m pretty sure it’s impossible for bi people to be monogamous but the poor dears it’s not their fault like...it felt bad! to watch! i’m pretty sure i was in like 7-8 grade and already had an idea that i was bi and i was kind of like. wow feels bad! 4) i don’t know i think i had a fourth point but it’s just so fucking stupid. i hope to god this is not somehow a mainstream heterosexual belief but i’m not about to interview all the straight people i know about what they think goes through a bi person’s head during sex.

[gingercullenboy]

Movie Commentary Monday: Episode 1

Hello everyone and welcome to the very first episode of Movie Commentary Monday (or as i call MCM, which sounds ridiculous by the way) where I express my thoughts on a movie while desperately trying to be funny (and usually fail).

There will be dozens of side comments in brackets because I talk too much, sorry in advance.

This week’s movie is:

Isn’t It Romantic (2019)

Directed by: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Writing Credits: Erin Cardillo (screenplay&story), Dana Fox (screenplay) & Katie Silberman (screenplay)

Stars: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra, Betty Gilpin, Brandon Scott Jones

Summary: A young woman disenchanted with love mysteriously finds herself trapped inside a romantic comedy.

(thanks IMDb)

Now, buckle up folks, it’s gonna be a loooooong ride. Let’s get down to business!

(this isn’t a Mulan reference)

Why is the Mom so bitter about happy endings? I bet she has seen things...

They don’t make movies for girls like us. 

THIS!!! LINE!!! IS!!! SO!!! IMPORTANT!!! 

That single sentence just basically summarized the entire history of Hollywood and you can’t argue with me on this. The evidence is there (sorry i’m bitter like mom) (i’m full of rage like younger john mulaney)

Natalie’s (Rebel Wilson) apartment is a mess and is so tiny, it’s like screaming YOUR FUTURE HOUSE at me, it’s unbelievable

Fucking finally, a realistic view of New York; smelly, crowded, and filth everywhere (not that i could ever know, i don’t live there but i’ve seen metropolitans before)

“STOP THE CART WITH YOUR BODY” WTFFF I’M CRYING THAT’S SO RUDE

Ok, Natalie’s a nobody at the workplace, even though she’s a fricking architect. UNREALISTIC TO ME

That co-worker and office manager can choke, that’s all I’m gonna say

Ohmygod, Whitney (Betty Gilpin) is so cute, I’ve seen her 10 secs in and I already love her (lovey dovey characters are always my faves)

JOSH (Adam Devine) IS AMAZING, ADORABLE DORK, PROTECT HIM AT ALL COSTS

LIAM HEMSWORTH’S AMERICAN ACCENT GOT ME SH00K!!! He just said “Goddamn it” and I am already hooked

Who puts whipped cream in a coffee? ME, BITCH

I PUT WHIPPED CREAM IN MY COFFEE BECAUSE BLACK COFFEE TASTES LIKE SHIT, SORRY THAT I’M NOT TOUGH AS YOU

Natalie says nice guy with a nice life and it... kinda bothers me. It’s a reaaaally generic expression and a bit insulting if you think about it bc if you don’t fit that person’s standards of being nice with having a nice life, it discourages you (in this case, you=man). So when Josh said “I’m a nice guy with a nice life” I thought ‘Of course you are’ bc he is in my standards. What I’m trying to say is that rom-coms have stereotypes on not only women but also men. Yes, it is sad.

Awwww Josh has a crush on Natalie *wipes happy tears* but she thinks he’s looking at the model billboard LMAO SAME, NAT

I’m so done (but it’s also so relatable, bc i’m like Nat but with less cynicism)

WHITNEY’S DESKTOP OMG

PAWSITIVE VIBES???? I WANNA MARRY HER SO WE CAN WATCH ROM-COMS WITH CATS ON OUR LAPS ALL DAY TOGETHER

Natalie was on the subway and a stranger waved at her. Then he tried to mug her. Then she knocked herself over. My mom always says don’t talk to strangers and I see why. I’m 22, if you’re wondering *clears throat* Moving on...

OH MY GOD SHE WOKE UP WITH THE MAKE-UP ON AND A NICELY DONE HAIR WITH FLOWERS AND STRAWBERRY DRINK ON THE SIDE, I CAN’T-

Oh, hello Mr. Morningstar... *wiggles eyebrows* (quick note, i don’t actually watch Lucifer but i really like Tom Ellis)

She just ripped her IV and blood didn’t spill everywhere, yeah this is a rom-com alright 

She’s dressed from lost and found and she looks like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman-

NO WAIT, THE ENTIRE SETTING HAS CHANGED

HOLY SHIT ‘A THOUSAND MILES’ BY VANESSA CARLTON IS STARTED TO BE PLAYED BY A RANDOM GUY ON A BIKE AND HE PLAYS IT FROM THE STEREO ON HIS BIKE I’M CACKLING

ENTER LIAM, HE LOOKS SO GOOD I CAN’T EVEN DESCRIBE (i’m a thirsty hoe, your suspicions are correct)

What the fuck does beguiling mean? *checks dictionary* oh, okay *is weirded out now*

HE’S AUSSIE NOW, THEY’VE DONE IT, HE’S KEEPING THE ACCENT, AND I’M HAPPY AGAIN

...Birds form a heart while flying... Uhhh... Strawberries and champagne in the limo... Rich as fuck, my poor ass can’t relate

NATALIE’S STREET HAS CHANGED, TOO

He’s giving her flowers already? Ok- NO WAIT

HE JUST WROTE HIS NUMBER ON MULTIPLE FLOWER PETALS AND HANDED TO HER, IS HE FOR REAL LMAO

“But there’s only one of you, so...” Well, this doesn’t change the fact that there are millions of ways to order the numbers, you dumbass (why is he like this)

Her apartment... Every Millenials’ dream

And... A gay neighbor/best friend who acts like an over-feminine gay (which is also a stereotype)

So, I’ll count every rom-com trope I’ve seen in 22 mins *counts her fingers* So far, I have seven tropes

The Big Presentation (eight)

Unconventional workplace which looks like a Google office (nine)

Nat is the star architect now (ten)

Rival bitchy colleague (eleven) (WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE WHITNEY, THOUGH) (SHE’S MY SENSITIVE WIFE) (oh, she looks hot)

They gave like, four other tropes in two mins and it doesn’t feel like rushed at all *salutes respectively*

The setting change is so... Like, you cannot miss it, it’s sweet and makes you feel all giddy inside, it’s so lovely, so rom-com like (does that make sense to you?)

OH PRIYANKA, SHE JUST TURNED AND I’M LIKE “Oh I’m fucked”

“Josssssssh”

Natalie keeps falling (twelve)

“MY LIFE IS A ... ... ROMANTIC COMEDY!” “AND IT’S ... PG-13!″ EVERYONE STARTED DANCING BEHIND HER I’M HOLLERING 

The subway map behind her is shaped in a heart, lovey dovey couples everywhere... And shE’S GONNA JUMP ONTO A TRAIN??? THIS GOT DARK ALL OF A SUDDEN

Officer Hansom *facepalms*

She threw the flower petals and guess what? THE NUMBERS FELL DOWN IN THE CORRECT ORDER, WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN HAHAHA (thirteen)

Y’ello

Y’ELLO

Y’E LL O

IS THIS HOW AUSSIES ANSWER THE PHONE, AUSSIE MUTUALS PLEASE RESPOND

BLAKE (Liam Hemsworth) IS SO ADORABLE I’M ROOTING FOR EVERYONE IN THIS MOVIE 

Dress up montage... Yeah- Oh wait, they cut it out what the hell fvygbuhnj I WANT MY DRESS UP MONTAGE, GIVE IT TO MEEE

This is some fancy first date though... Also leaving 100 bucks tip doesn’t justify breaking in to a store I guess??? Seems like the law has no function in rom-coms lmao (fourteen)

BUTTER PECAN??? HOW OLD ARE YOU, 200 OR SOMETHING??? WHAT THE FUCK, MAN

The rain... You know what’s coming after- Ah, and they kissed *giggles uncontrollably* YES!!! (fifteen)

THEY CAN’T HAVE SEX BC IT’S PG-13 (liam’s abs, though) *bi scream*

Her apartment makes me cry, it’s so beautiful (ok i’ll stop counting from now on bc i cannot keep up anymore)

Also the romantic tension between Natalie and Josh................ I have no words

Isabella (Priyanka Chopra) calls Josh ‘Mush’ and it’s so f-king cringey, I swear to God sxrdctfvygu

STOP OVERSELLING NEW YORK, WE KNOW IT’S NOT THAT GOOD

I can talk about Blake for five hours, he’s so fucking funny lmao

Donny (Brandon Scott Jones) is such a gay sidekick, he comes out of nowhere and talks weirdly but he makes me laugh so I’ll give him a pass

NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE, NATALIE’S GONNA STOP ISABELLA&JOSH’S WEDDING

That musical scene is everything, and Natalie hits that high note H AR D

GET IT, GIRL

Blake............ no-

I ROOTED FOR YOU, WE ALL ROOTED FOR YOU, HOW COULD YOU DO THAT-

Oh my, he’s a certified douchebag, I should’ve guessed, I’m so disappointed in myself 

Unexpected wisdom coming from Donny who had no function to the story other than appearing beside Natalie at random times (again, rom-com trope) 

BUT at least he made her realised who matters to her the most

Slow motion running!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Her boobs are like sxrdctfvyg SHAKING AS SHE’S RUNNING ESXRDCTFVYB (as someone who has big breasts, i relate to that so hard) 

“Yoga Ambassador. Yoga. Ambassador.” “Ambassadors are for countries, not for streching.” Dang, Nat!!!

She finally realised she loves herself! Awww, that’s so sweet and empowering and I can’t get enough of this!!!! Yes, to love someone else first you should love yourself!

Oh she crashed the car and went back to reality

Another hot doctor???? Wait, I’m confused- No, false alarm, she’s back and her real doctor is tired, is also swimming through lawsuits LMFAO

She pulled her IV and blood SPILLED EVERYWHERE AS IT SHOULD BE, THANK GOD

I’m glad that she’s happy with what she’s got and she didn’t decide to keep what she’s been doing but instead, tried to take care of herself, it’s such a good message to young girls and I cannot praise this enough

PLOT TWIST, DONNY IS ACTUALLY REALLY GAY AND HAS A BOYFRIEND AND IS ALSO A WEED DEALER OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE THE TWIST SO MUCH 

Natalie!!! Is!!! Confident!!! Now!!! I’m literally living for this *throws hearts to the screen*

OH MY WIFE IS BACK, HI WHITNEY I LOVE YOU MY SWEET SUMMER WIFE I MISSED YOU

Nat stormed into that meeting and she’s. on. fireeee

Real Blake is as jerk as ever, no surprise

Using parking lots as metaphors would never cross my mind but ok I guess???

Fuck, he said “What does beguiling mean?” I’M LOST FOR WORDS, THIS MOVIE SXDCTFVYGU

JOSH HAS BEEN LOOKING AT NATALIE FOR THE WHOLE TIME, NOT THE SWIMSUIT MODEL, WHO COULD HAVE THOUGHT???

ps. me and probably everyone else except Nat lol

EVERYONE SINGS

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

I REPEAT, EVERYONE SINGS AND IT’S SO GOOD

LIAM PLAYS THE SAX HOLY SHIT HE’S SO HOT I’M GONNA FAINT

Priyanka with that rose.......... Consider me dead, thank you

“It’s hot as fuck” tcfyvgubh probably true

Overall, I would give this movie 7/10 because of the message. Plot is nicely done and I got see basically every single rom-com tropes. At total, I counted 23 tropes I guess? If I could look every minor detail, I would count more but I won’t get into it that much for now. (i’m running late to a meeting with friends so i have to cut short)

I loved the production design, setting felt like I’m in a classic rom-com movie and characters were written accordingly. Every actor in the movie has fit perfect to me. I especially loved Priyanka and Liam because 1) I’ve never seen any of her movies and 2) It’s been a long time since I watched a Liam Hemsworth movie (i only watched hunger games, so you think about it lmao)

I guess that’s about it! I have a list for the next weeks’ movies but if you have a request then tell me so, I will watch your recommendations first! I appreciate comments; if you have something to add, please do. I will read every single one of them.

See you next week!

#movie commentary #movie commentary monday #isn't it romantic #rebel wilson #liam hemsworth #adam devine #priyanka chopra #betty gilpin #brandon scott jones #todd strauss-schulson

[everyoneisgay]

An Honest Mixtape: I’ve Got Stripes, Too by Kristin Russo, co-founder of Everyone Is Gay

Welcome to November’s “An Honest Mixtape”! Every month we will feature a new writer who will tackle one of your advice questions with words *and* music!

“Hi, I'm thirteen and I've been questioning whether I am bi or not. I am a girl and I identify as one, but what I am not sure of is if I'm straight and just making illusions for myself, or bi, or just lesbian and denying it, or something else I don't know of. Uugh, it's all so weird. How could I find out what I am?”

Kristin Says:

It is confusing, isn’t it? We are given these letter-shaped symbols to mush together in ways that will explain our millions of feelings to ourselves and to other people, and they don’t always just “fit.” Now, I do like letters and words, and I think that they can help us work through our feelings in incredible ways. For example, it is helpful for me to be able to say “My name is Kristin and Demi Lovato has come out as not straight and that makes me feel SIMPLY DELIGHTED.”

Now, I know you didn’t ask me about my feelings regarding Demi Lovato, but I do think they are relevant. Hear me out. Right now, in the year 2017, I call myself bisexual because I know I have the capacity to be attracted to more than one gender. I also call myself queer because I love the word and all of its infinite possibilities. In years past I identified as a lesbian, because I didn’t yet fully understand all of my attractions (do we ever?), but I knew that I felt at home in the “lesbian culture” of the early 2000s (think The L Word, fedoras, pin stripes, and lip gloss). I have used a lot of words over the years to help me move through my various understandings of myself, but one thing has remained true: when I think a girl is pretty (and especially if that girl is into kissing other girls), I am SIMPLY DELIGHTED.

There isn’t really a word for that feeling, and it’s one I have had for as long as I can remember. It’s a feeling that I had before I even knew I had it, but it is also one that took me a lot of time to understand.

When I was thirteen, my best friend’s name was Katie. She was hilarious and loud and strong and her hair was always shiny and smelled like this one deliciously incredible conditioner, the name of which I cannot remember, but that came in a blue plastic bottle. I never thought about kissing Katie, ever. I thought about the idea of dating boys (seemed interesting) and the asshole teacher who made me spit out my gum even when it wasn’t disturbing anyone (the worst) and how much I loved music (it made me feel like I could do anything) and how I wanted to dye my hair using Manic Panic (blocked by parental bullshit, of course). Looking back on my friendship with Katie, I can now draw connections between the way I felt about her and her hair, and my reasons for going out of my way to get the same conditioner so I could smell that amazing smell all the time… but that is because I am now 36 years old, and I have a wife and a cat and a long history of crushing and dating and wondering and questioning – which is what you are doing now!

*blasts ‘The Circle of Life’*

Here is one promise that I can make to you: You are not making illusions for yourself. If you have feelings that are confusing when it comes to people of many genders, that is real: you have confusing feelings about people of many genders! I will go out on a limb here and say that prooooobably means you aren’t 100000000% straight, and that it will also likely shift and change as you grow. And I am not trying to pull some “you’re 13 and shit will change because you are young now” crap on you, I am literally saying that your attractions and desires will shift and change forever.

Part of our identity is the wondering. Do you want to kiss the girl in your science class? Rad! I’ve been there. Do you want to hold hands with the boy who lives three houses down? Makes total sense. Do you want to spoon with the nonbinary barista at your local coffeeshop? Hooboy, I totally get that. For now, maybe that means you choose to call yourself bisexual. Even if you kiss that girl in your science class and it isn’t fireworks, you can still call yourself bisexual! And, if you do suddenly realize that, hey, you aren’t attracted to more than one gender after all? THAT IS OKAY! It doesn’t mean you were just lying to yourself about your feelings before, it just means that you have a mind that is open to the many possibilities that exist out here in this crazy world.

Before I go and leave you with all of life’s confusing feelings, let me do two more things to try to help you walk this maze (we all walk it! I promise!). First, let’s break your question into three concise lil bits:

How do you know what to *call* yourself? I think most of us just choose a word that seems kind-of-correct and then change it down the line if we find something that fits even better. It’s okay to do that, and it isn’t “attention seeking” or “lying” to yourself or anyone else to try on identity words and see how they feel.

How do you know you aren’t lying to yourself? Well, you wrote into an advice site anonymously to figure out more about feelings you are having. That isn’t the typical behavior of a person who is lying about their feelings… it is the typical behavior of a person who has very real feelings that they are trying to sort through. Trust your feelings. The world out here will try to tell you not to trust them, especially when you are a girl, and that is a giant pile of bulllllllshittttt. Your feelings are real. Confusing as all hell, sure, but real.

How do you know what you are? You’re you. I know, I know, my part-time job is probably writing cards for Hallmark… BUT IT IS TRUE. You are you and right now that you has confusing feelings about attraction and sexuality and identity. Some of that will always be confusing, and some of it will solidify over time. For now, explore those feelings. Write them down. Remember to trust yourself, and remember that you can be more than one thing (at the same time! at different times! ahhhh!).

Second, some music. I mentioned earlier that music made me feel like I could do anything when I was thirteen. It still makes me feel like that, and it also helps me stand up to a world that tells me to doubt myself and my feelings. Music helps me face those confusing feelings and say “fuck off, world, I can be something different than what you expect. I can change. I can be a million things all at once, and I don’t have to pick one and I don’t have to apologize.”

Last week I asked all of my internet pals to tell me about songs made them feel like they could be whatever the fuck they wanted to be, and so together we created this mixtape for you. When you are feeling that creeping doubt, pop your headphones in and remember that you are who you say you are even if that is *not knowing exactly who you are*, and anyone who challenges that can SCREW.

Kristin runs Everyone Is Gay, My Kid Is Gay, and OUR Restroom, co-authored This is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids, and worked as host & producer of PBS Digital’s LGBTQ series First Person. Additionally, she co-hosts a weekly Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast called Buffering the Vampire Slayer with her wife, Jenny Owen Youngs. You can follow her on twitter @kristinnoeline​

Cover Art designed by the incredible Isabella Rotman!

#kristin russo #everyone is gay #honest mixtape #lgbt advice

[bibliosexxual]

the valentine’s day showdown

Alternately titled: “A Mistake of Epic Proportions (With a Happy Ending)”

Sterek high school Valentine’s Day AU, a little over 4k words, rated T. :)   

So Stiles and Erica have this competitive flirting/wooing thing going. This totally-mutually-agreed-upon-to-be-platonic competitive flirting/wooing thing. Every Valentine’s Day Eve, Erica gets him good, and every Valentine’s Day, Stiles gets her back, thoroughly.

It started out pretty tame back in middle school, but with every passing year it's gotten gradually more explicit and cheesy as they try to out-embarrass each other. It's kind of like gay chicken, except hetero and strictly no-touching, and without any of the UST...

Okay, so maybe it's not that much like gay chicken, but it's definitely something. Something Stiles always relishes.

He's pretty sure he and Erica have a better time every Valentine's Day than a lot of the actual couples at their school.

It probably only works as well as it does because he and Erica have known each other since they were little kids, so they've grown up pranking and teasing each other at every opportunity and seeing each other in a bunch of decidedly unsexy moments. Like that time they were kicking around a soccer ball in Erica’s backyard and Stiles face-planted in the mud and chipped a tooth. Or that memorable afternoon when Erica's pyromaniac phase after watching Avatar: The Last Airbender culminated in her accidentally setting her hair on fire. (She had to get a buzz cut shorter than Stiles'.)

It also works out pretty well because at this point they really have no boundaries and no shame.

Oh, and because Erica is very, very gay.

(Stiles, meanwhile, is bi. However, he's never even for a moment thought of Erica romantically, which is fortunate because he's pretty sure that would be extremely awkward, not to mention unreciprocated.)

They got the idea for the competition around the hundredth time someone around town asked them, in all seriousness, if they were dating and when the wedding was going to be. (They were thirteen years old. Thirteen. Stiles wasn't thinking about romance at all at thirteen. He was thinking about Star Wars, and curly fries, and whether his and Scott's latest unintentionally disastrous science experiment was going to get them grounded and, if so, how to get out of it.)

He and Erica still get asked if they're dating on a regular basis, by the way, even though Erica has been very publicly out ever since she kissed Heather on the playground back in elementary school.

In short, the temptation to play off people's heteronormative assumptions is overwhelming.

This year, Stiles opens his locker the morning of February 13th with absolute wariness. It's a good instinct to have, because when he does, a cloud of pink and red glitter explodes outward all over him as a singing card buried deep within his locker starts belting out "Careless Whisper" by George Michael. All down the hallway, everyone bursts into mingled laughing and clapping and cheering.

Covered head-to-sneakers in glitter and probably being recorded by several phones, Stiles turns to face his audience and grandly takes a bow.

Mentally, he promises Erica that he's going to get her back so hard for this tomorrow.

That's not the end of it, though. Of course not.

He opens his pencil case in Econ and a generous handful of XXL condoms spills out all over his desk. There's a chorus of whoops and wolf-whistles from around the room, and Stiles is never, ever going to be able to look any of these people in the eye again.

He goes out to his Jeep that afternoon to find it practically buried under red streamers and balloons and heart-shaped graffiti in pink paint. It's completely garish, and if Stiles were actually dating someone who pulled something like this, he'd probably be scrambling for a restraining order.

Stiles loves it.

After Stiles cleans off the windshield (gathering a bit of an audience of curious students in the process), he heads straight to the Hallmark aisle of the drugstore, where he spends close to half an hour reading every single Valentine's card in stock. Let it never be said that Stiles is not thorough.

The one he settles on is museum-worthy levels of terrible, in Stiles' opinion.

"You've been on my mind a lot lately," the outside reads, innocent enough. The inside finishes, "And you wouldn't believe what you've been doing up there. ;)"

Stiles buys it on the spot.

Back at his house, he puts on some Stevie Wonder and smooth jazz for inspiration and gets down to work, filling in practically every blank space in the card with flower doodles and cartoon hearts and the kind of lurid, overflowing love letter that would make poets weep.

(In horror, that is.)

He makes sure to mention the XXL condoms, too.

On the back, just under the card-maker's logo, he leaves a generous square of blank space, then goes back and fills it in with the pièce de résistance: huge bubble letters in pink highlighter that spell out: "PROM?"

At the bottom, he signs it in shaky cursive with, "Lots of <3 from your not-so-secret admirer, Stiles."

Then he texts Scott, Kira, Boyd, and Isaac: dudes, I will literally pay you if you serenade Erica tomorrow at lunch for me. I'll bring the boombox.

He specifies “at lunch” because he figures that's when there'll be the biggest audience. Public humiliation, or at least public lighthearted embarrassment, is after all a cornerstone of this tradition.

Extra money if you dress up as cupids, he adds on impulse. Extra EXTRA money if your costumes are so ugly/cheesy that people can barely stand to look at you with a straight face.

There's a bit of haggling, but it turns out all of them except Boyd can be bought. (Boyd was a long shot anyway, but he had to try. That would have been comedy gold.)

As for the song, Stiles picks Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On."

What can he say, he likes the classics.

Okay, so he was sorely tempted to choose Boyz 2 Men's "I'll Make Love to You," which in his opinion is one of the most cringeworthy love songs ever recorded in the history of time and therefore perfect for this, but he didn't want to run the risk of any teachers cutting his singing troupe off mid-serenade for inappropriate lyrics. Erica isn't going to get out of this that easily.

So Marvin Gaye it is.

No rehearsal necessary, he makes sure to specify. The more off-key the better!

You're so weird, Isaac texts back.

Stiles elects to take it as a compliment.

*

Valentine's Day dawns bright and full of promise. Stiles gets to school a whole thirty minutes early (it's a personal best), hands off the boombox to an amused Kira, and then heads straight for Erica's locker.

The thing is, Stiles knows in general where Erica's locker is: down the hall from Mr. Harris' classroom on the second floor. But he always relies on the "Save the Wolves" magnet on the locker to the left of Erica's to guide him to the exact spot, and today that magnet is gone. Probably stolen. Or maybe Erica temporarily stole it to throw him off his game? If so, it's definitely working. Erica's locker is lost in a sea of bland sameness. He knows it's somewhere towards the middle of the row, but... Crap.

Stiles closes his eyes. Think.

The number was definitely in the late teens; Stiles would bet his Jeep on it. He thinks a little more. He's getting an 8 kind of vibe from his subconscious. Boom. 118. Yeah. 118 it is. Totally. Crisis averted.

He shoves the card through the vent in the locker and heads off to his first period class, whistling.

*

Stiles waits and waits through one class after another for Erica to text him about the card. There's nothing. Either she hasn't been by her locker yet or she's been rendered speechless by the card's sheer perfection. That would be a historic moment. Usually Stiles hears about it at length the instant a prank goes off. Stiles is getting kind of antsy, to be honest.

Stiles means to tease her about it in Chem, which they have together right before lunch (and, his brain adds gleefully, right before the serenade). Before he's even fully sat down, though, and definitely before he's had time to say anything, she's smirking at him and saying, "What, did my public displays of affection yesterday leave you speechless? I thought for sure you'd retaliate."

"Uh, but I did." That's about when the foreboding really kicks in. "Haven't you been by your locker today?"

"Yeah, several times. Nothing amiss," Erica says, with apparent total sincerity. “I was kind of disappointed in you, to be honest.”

"But..."

There's a panicked moment of silence just as Harris is starting class, and then Stiles hisses, "What is your locker number?"

Erica says, "117," and Stiles feels all the blood in his body turn to ice in an instant. Oh god.

"Who the fuck has 118, then?"

Instead of answering, Erica doubles up laughing so obnoxiously that Harris kicks her out of class.

Not good.

***

“I swear people get ten times more predatory than usual on Valentine’s Day,” Derek mutters to Cora as they near a group of freshmen girls in the hallway.

A hush falls over the group, and every single head turns in their direction. Most of them seem to be watching Derek, but he suspects a few of them are eyeing Cora, too. They’re like piranhas, Derek thinks uncharitably.

“Tell me about it,” Cora agrees. She shoots a withering glare at the freshmen, and they hastily scatter and regroup and move away as a pack down the hallway. “It makes me just want to punch something, you know?”

Cora is the only person Derek knows who hates Valentine’s Day as much as Derek does. (She subtly protests it every year by wearing her PIZZA IS MY VALENTINE t-shirt.) But they hate it for admittedly very different reasons.

Derek hates it primarily because it stirs up all his usually-repressed hopeless romantic feelings. Especially his hopeless romantic feelings about Stiles. That’s inevitably a bad idea.

Every single year, Derek gets assigned the locker next to Erica Reyes’. That means that practically every day of Derek’s high school life, he’s had to endure watching his crush hang around in Derek’s general vicinity while completely failing to notice Derek’s existence. It stings. Derek gets asked out all the time, so he knows it’s not like there’s something inherently uninteresting or unappealing about him, but it doesn’t do any good when the one person he wants to be asked by just... doesn’t care.

Derek has mostly accepted that Stiles isn’t into him, or at least he’s trying very hard to accept it, but every Valentine’s Day he can’t help the little flutter of hope that follows him around all day until it’s inevitably crushed for another year. Fuck any holiday that makes him feel like that.

Cora, on the other hand, does not have a Stiles of her own, at least not that Derek knows of. She hates Valentine’s Day for the simple reason that she’s exasperated by everything to do with romance. She can’t even watch people kissing in movies without rolling her eyes and making barfing noises.

(Her favorite holiday is Halloween because it’s “the least touchy-feely” and it centers around scaring the bejeezus out of the neighborhood kids.)

They stop off at Derek’s locker, and Derek sighs because someone has stolen his magnet again. The people at this school have no boundaries.

Speaking of no boundaries... There's an unmarked red envelope sitting atop his pile of textbooks when he finally jimmies his locker open. Did someone break into his locker? Do people not understand the concept of locks existing on lockers to keep people out?

“Ooh,” Cora says, filled with apparent schadenfreude. “Looks like somebody got a valentine.”

“Shut up,” Derek grumbles, tearing it open. A shimmery cloud of pink and gold glitter falls out of the envelope and all over his hands. Great. He yanks the card out, ignoring Cora’s amused snort.

It’s a Hallmark card. Derek reads aloud incredulously, “You've been on my mind a lot lately, and you wouldn't believe what you've been doing up there… winky face.”

Behind him, Cora laughs so hard it sounds like she’s in danger of spraining something. “Oh my god,” she wheezes, “that’s so awful.”

Derek skims the rest of the card. It’s covered from top to bottom in tiny scrawl bordered by meticulously hand-drawn hearts and roses, and on the back the word “PROM?” stretches boldly across the page in an eyesore of vivid pink.

It’s signed… it’s signed from Stiles, holy shit.

“Stiles? Who is Stiles?” Cora asks, hooking her chin over his shoulder. “Is that a girl or a boy?”

“Boy. I thought maybe you would know him. He’s in your grade.”

“Nope. How do you know him?”

“I don’t,” Derek answers absently, because now he’s actually gone back and started reading what Stiles wrote, and “holy shit” doesn’t even come close.

It’s kind of rambling. There’s a lot about the unparalleled beauty of Derek’s eyes and his “stunning physique” and how many years Stiles has longed to kiss him, which is kind of mindblowing considering that Derek has never so much as seen Stiles glance at him before. There’s also a flattering little limerick about Derek’s intellect and good humor to balance out the physical stuff. Under the part where Stiles asks him to prom, the note ends with a detailed list of all the places they could make out around school and—Derek blushes—then there’s a “P.S.” mentioning that Stiles will “bring the XXL condoms” if Derek will “bring the love.”

“Ew,” Cora says. “Whose dick are those condoms supposed to be for, anyway? Yours or his? No, wait, I don’t want to know. Please tell me he’s just making some kind of joke.”

“Probably,” Derek says. He finally manages to tear his eyes away and shut the card. “I mean, it’s probably some kind of pop culture reference. Stiles is always making pop culture references.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know him?”

Derek winces. “I, uh,” he fumbles. “I don’t? But I see him around a lot. I overhear him talking to Erica.” He opens the card again, just to confirm to himself that this really exists. It’s almost too over-the-top to believe.

Maybe that’s because it’s both a valentine and a prom invitation? Derek knows prom invites can be pretty elaborate sometimes. Still… “Do you think this is a prank? I mean, who writes this kind of stuff to someone they’ve never even talked to?”

Cora looks doubtful. “Why bother pranking someone you don’t even know? Half the fun is seeing your friend’s reaction to being pranked.”

That sounds reasonable enough. There’s no reason for Stiles to target him specifically for this kind of prank, if it is a prank. Unless, that is, he’s somehow found out about Derek’s crush. But Derek can’t see how he would. Derek’s been careful. He hasn’t told anybody about it or written anything down. He’s just pondered it in private. Extensively.

“Besides,” Cora goes on, “if it is a prank, then it’s a little mean, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” If it is a prank, Derek is probably going to spend all weekend in bed, morosely eating peanut butter cups and rewatching the entire Star Wars series, even the prequels, from within a blanket burrito.

If it’s not a prank, though…

As a declaration, it’s definitely more than a little weird, but he’ll take it. Fuck, some of the things Stiles says about him, and says to him, in this letter… It’s so outrageous it almost comes back around to charming. It’s like Stiles is flirting with him through the words.

The more Derek thinks about it, the more sense it makes. As far as Derek has seen, Stiles is playful and never does anything by half measures. This note just represents the kind of person Stiles is—attentive to detail, funny, sweet, unique, creative, the kind of guy who goes all out for someone he likes…

Maybe someone else would be turned off by a card like this, but it just makes Derek like him that much more. Most people, in Derek’s experience, would never have the guts to do something like this to ask Derek out. They’d never take the risk. They’d never try to make Derek blush or laugh like this.

The bell for first period rings, interrupting his thoughts. Cora shoulders her bag and says, “Gotta go, but tell me how this works out. I’m intrigued now.”

“Okay,” Derek says, and focuses on carefully stowing away Stiles’ card in his homework folder so it won’t get bent before he heads off to Spanish class.

***

So Locker 118 is Derek.

And not Derek Greenberg, either. That might’ve been survivable. Derek Greenberg is the lacrosse team waterboy as well as one of the stupidest and most irritating, but also least threatening, people Stiles has ever met. Stiles could probably just stride up to him, snatch the card right out of his slack, sweaty grip, and walk off with his head still attached to his body, no sweat.

But nooo, it had to go and be Derek Hale’s locker.

Derek Hale as in, one of the gorgeous yet aloof Hale siblings who all give off practically identical back-off-or-I’ll-eat-you vibes.

In the past, Stiles has adopted an avoidance strategy with the Hales, and it’s worked out pretty well for him; his high school experience so far has been happily free of any maiming or marring or good old-fashioned terror. That’s all going to end today. The worst part is that Stiles has no one but himself to blame.

Stiles can’t even fully appreciate the gloriousness of Erica’s serenade at lunch, or the fact that the cafeteria ladies have scattered handfuls of Valentine’s candy over the lunchroom tables in an attempt to be festive. He’s too busy scouring his brain for every shred of knowledge he has about the Hales and about Derek in particular.

It’s not much.

He knows Derek is on the lacrosse team, and by lacrosse standards (which Stiles knows very little about), he’s really good.

He’s pretty sure Derek is a senior.

He knows Derek is a whole other level of attractive and owns a lot of leather jackets.

He’s seen him and his sisters driving around in a black Camaro that looks like it would be a better fit in an action hero movie than in a high school parking lot.

And according to Erica, Derek has a bit of a reputation for turning down every girl who asks him out, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. In fact, in a bizarre twist of logic, it seems to encourage them to keep trying.

That’s about where Stiles’ knowledge runs out. He doesn’t know, for example, if Derek is into guys. That suddenly seems like a very important thing to find out. Giving a horrendous romantic declaration—a horrendous, signed romantic declaration—to one of the scariest-looking people at Beacon Hills High is bad enough; Stiles is willing to bet it’ll be even worse if it turns out he’s given it to a straight guy.

*

Stiles doesn't manage to catch up to Derek. Instead, Derek catches up to him.

It happens like this: Stiles is headed to his Jeep after a truly harrowing day of quietly freaking out when Derek suddenly appears in front of him from between two cars and corners him against his Jeep. It's pretty terrifying.

"Derek!" Stiles squeaks, flailing and whacking his hand on the side mirror of his Jeep. It's not his most dignified moment.

Derek takes a step closer, looming right up into Stiles' space, and softly (dangerously softly, Stiles thinks) says, "Hey, Stiles. I got your card. Happy Valentine's Day to you, too."

Stiles whimpers.

He'd kind of been hoping that if he didn't manage to get the card back from Derek, then Derek at least wouldn't know who "Stiles" was and wouldn't be curious enough to find out. A lot of people don't know who Stiles is. It's great. But of course Stiles isn't that lucky.

Derek is actually smiling now, which is a facial expression Stiles didn't know Derek was even capable of. It's admittedly a small smile, but it's there. He smiles at Stiles and says, "My answer is yes."

"Your answer... to..."

"Prom?" Derek prompts, raising an expectant eyebrow. "My answer is yes. I'll go with you." He ducks his head, then glances up at Stiles through his eyelashes almost shyly, which is the weirdest thing yet. "You know, I thought your card was really bold and creative..."

As Derek talks, Stiles tries to subtly glance around to see if he's being punk'd, but he can't see any cameras or even any onlookers anywhere. There's just the occasional student hurrying past while shooting them a confused look—probably wondering why Derek Hale, Lacrosse God and Gorgeous Human Being, is talking to some nerd nobody.

As far as Stiles can tell, Derek is serious.

Which doesn't explain anything, really. Why the hell would Derek say yes? That's, like, social suicide.

"Okay, look," Stiles interrupts, "I think you might've gotten the wrong idea here. I wasn't actually, you know, um..."

He expects Derek to look relieved, maybe. Instead, Derek's face goes startlingly blank, and his whole body visibly tenses up. He suddenly looks a lot more like the familiar, menacing version of Derek that Stiles sees in the hallways, complete with the signature Derek Hale Death Glare(TM). Crap.

"It was a prank, then," Derek says flatly.

"Yes!" Stiles says, glad Derek gets it. "It was a prank. But not for you. For my friend Erica. I made a slight mistake. She has the locker next to yours? Blonde hair, brown eyes, wears a lot of corsets and lipstick—"

"I know who Erica is," Derek snaps.

"Oh. Okay. Cool. Very cool."

Derek turns away, scowling. "I should've known it was too good to be true," he mutters, so low Stiles barely catches it, and oh. Wait. What?

"You wanted it to be from me to you?" Stiles blurts, incredulous. "You wanted me to say all that creepy stuff and ask you to prom? Seriously?"

Derek doesn't say anything, but his jaw clenches and his Death Glare(TM), which is currently aimed at the asphalt by Stiles' feet, intensifies.

"But—but why?"

Derek rolls his eyes with his entire head. It's pretty impressively sassy. "Why do you think?"

"Wait." Stiles holds up a hand, trying extremely hard not to burst into shocked, inappropriate laughter. He feels like that wouldn't go over too well. "You're saying you—you, Derek Hale—have a crush on me."

Derek hunches his shoulders. "Why are you acting like that's so funny?"

"How about, because people like you don't get crushes on people like me."

"Says who?"

"Uh, the laws of the universe? The laws of society? The laws of the high school pecking order? Take your pick."

"That's stupid."

"Did you even know my name before today?"

"Yes," Derek says.

"Oh."

Derek looks uncertain, and maybe a little hurt. "Did you... did you not know my name?"

That's the moment it really sinks in. Derek likes him. Derek has feelings for him. Derek Hale like-likes Stiles Stilinski and wants to take him to prom. And, against all odds, it actually matters to Derek whether Stiles of all people knew who he was.

Wow.

This has never happened to Stiles before.

"Of course I knew who you were," Stiles says, and Derek's shoulders relax minutely.

"Oh," he says. "Okay."

They just look at each other for a minute then. It's kind of awkward but also kind of... not, somehow. Stiles has never really looked at Derek up close before. He has beautiful hazel-green-blue eyes and beautiful cheekbones and beautiful everything, really, but he also has kind of cutely small stick-out ears and a cowlick and kind of adorably buckish front teeth, and he's blushing harder than Stiles has ever seen outside of cartoons. He's gripping the straps of his backpack so hard it looks painful, like it might be cutting off the circulation to his fingers. He looks nervous, and unsure, and out of nowhere Stiles gets hit with a wave of... something. Tentative affection, maybe. Derek suddenly doesn't seem so unapproachable.

"Do you want to go on a date with me?" Stiles blurts.

Derek eyes him warily. "I thought this was all just a prank for Erica?"

"Well, yeah, it was, but... Listen, I don't know you that well, but I'd like to try. I mean, I'm game if you are." And he's pretty sure Derek is.

"When would this date be?"

"Well," Stiles grins, "are you doing anything right now? It is Valentine's Day. Perfect time for a date. I know for a fact the diner has a special on strawberry milkshakes."

"That sounds good," Derek says cautiously. He relaxes his grip on the straps of his backpack. He smiles.

Something fluttery starts up in Stiles' stomach at the sight, and, well. That's new. "Okay, then. Let's go."

"One thing first," Derek says, stopping him with a hand on his chest. "I think we need to clarify a certain claim you made in your letter."

Oh no.

Derek grins evilly. "Do you really need to wear XXL-sized condoms?"

"Oh god."

"Because I'm going to be very disappointed if that part wasn't true, Stiles."

Stiles groans and hides his face in his hands. Derek is never going to let him live that down, Stiles can already tell.

*

The day after Valentine's Day, Derek's wolf magnet mysteriously reappears on his locker.

(end)

#valentines day #sterek fic #pining #stiles/erica brotp #high school au #switching pov #my fic #fluff