Chapter Text
“Alright people, I see we’ve all made it back here in one piece. And I see we’ve even got some newcomers! We’re really excited to meet you, and I promise the ‘University of York: Newspaper’ club is much more exciting than it sounds.”
For Dan’s taste the guy leading the meeting, Ben if he remembered correctly, was way too enthusiastic considering it was a Monday night. He briefly considered if anyone would notice if he left right now, before the inevitable awkward introduction round. The door wasn’t that far away.
But this was the only club he’d found on campus that was looking for a photographer and didn’t require any professional experience, so he stayed. He figured most of these people were writers anyway, so maybe he wouldn’t have to attend these meetings in the future and could instead just send all his photos per email.
Predictably, shortly after Ben gave a little more information about the club, how often they met (weekly), how often they printed (twice a semester), everyone started introducing themselves.
Most of them seemed okay. Writers, editors, almost exclusively English majors. At least he wouldn’t run into anyone from his courses here. The girl next to him, Maja, introduced herself as a newcomer as well, explaining how she had been part of the newspaper team at her high school and hoped to continue her work here.
He hated how his pulse went up when it was his turn. “Ahem, I’m Dan. I’m not actually a writer or hoping to be one,” Ben gave him a slightly confused look, “But I saw you guys are looking for a new photographer. I’d be interested in that,” he added hastily.
“Ah,” Ben answered looking pleased, “that’s great, actually. Our photographer graduated last year. The bastard left us all alone without a replacement. It’d be great if you could stay behind later than we can discuss the details.”
Dan nodded. That had gone smoother than he expected.
“What’s your major?” Maja asked, before immediately turning bright red. At least he wasn’t the only one nervous in this new group.
“Oh, I’m doing law.”
“Law. Wow. I don’t think we’ve ever had one of you. Maybe you can help us if we get sued for plagiarism or something,” Ben commented and a chuckle went through the whole room.
“Yeah, maybe,” but the idea of it alone made him cringe. He was never going to be able to do that.
Luckily, he made it through the rest of the meeting without having to speak up again.
“Dan, right?”
“Yes.” Everyone except for him and Ben had already left the small seminar room they used for meetings.
“Okay, the photography work for the newspaper is pretty standard, which is why we don’t require any prior experience, but it would of course be great if you had any,” Ben started.
“I don’t have any professional experience, but I have been taking photos since high school.” Photography had always been his safe space. Ever since his grandma had given him his first proper camera for his twelfth birthday. He’d mostly done nature and animal motives so far. In the forest, far away from judging eyes.
He’d have loved to take courses or go to a summer camp, but his father hadn’t allowed it. Apparently, it wasn’t manly enough. And he hadn’t even tried to join the newspaper at his high school, he had had enough of a target on his back as it was.
But here, two-hundred miles away from his shitty hometown, equipped with the new camera his grandma had gifted him for his eighteenth birthday, he decided he finally wanted to try. Also, he had promised his grandma and he hated disappointing her.
“Ah, I’m sure you’ll do great. For the newspaper, we’ll probably need some shoots of campus. Something pretty we can put on the cover and on any free spaces. We’ll inform you about the piece we’ll write, and then you can take some more specific photos. Sometimes we’ll also need portraits.”
Dan nodded. It all sounded simple enough. The idea of taking photos that would actually be used for something and not just collect dust on his desk excited him more than he expected.
“Is it okay if I use my own camera?” He really hoped it was. He’d kind of fallen in love with the thing over the last couple of months.
“Of course. The one the university provided us is shitty anyway.”
“Nice.”
“Awesome, maybe you could take some general shots of the campus over the week and bring them in next Monday? Everyone else will start working on their individual articles soon, but until then I can’t really give you any more instructions, sorry.”
“Oh. That’s okay. I’m just glad to do any photography work really.”
Ben just gave him a warm smile as a response.
As much as he would have liked to work on his photography right away, university took up all of his free time during his first week in York. It didn’t help that he had virtually no interest in any of his course and could barely focus during any of the lecture.
That was if he managed to find the lecture hall in the first place. The campus was a maze, not to mention, he sometimes got less than ten minutes between classes for what was normally a thirty-minute walk to the other side of campus. Maybe it would have been easier if he tried to befriend any of his fellow students. But they all seemed to be much more eager than him. Excited to be starting the course. Interested in law.
He had tried to summon some of that excitement for himself but came up empty-handed. So, it was safe to say by the time the weekend rolled around he was exhausted, overwhelmed and neither willing nor able to complete any of his coursework.
Therefore, he decided, it was finally time to give photography a try. He had, after all, promised Ben that he would bring some exemplary photos to the meeting on Monday. He left the dorm at around two and found the campus emptier than usually. Most students were probably using the day to explore the city outside of campus or to actually catch up on their work.
Dan didn’t mind. He more used to photographing nature anyway, so the lack of people didn’t bother them. Plus, it lowered the chance that he would have to explain himself to someone
He started by taking some shots of the more impressive buildings the campus had to offer. Some capturing the details around the doors and windows, others showing of the size and age of the buildings.
Most of the landscape on campus was boring, consisting of nothing but trees and potted plants, but he had years of experience capturing the beauty of nature. He was just about to photograph an old tree standing in a small square surrounded behind the arts center when a boy walked into the picture and sat down next to the tree.
The guy didn’t seem to notice him, probably because he was crouching behind a potted plant to get the full tree in shot. Unfortunately, he had taken the picture just as the guy sat down so it was blurry. Dan quickly took a couple more pictures to ensure at least one of them would be usable.
He had intended to just get his photos and leave, but something about the guy interested him. He could still see him through the view finder, leaning against the tree and basking in the sun.
He had pitch-black hair styled in a perfect looking emo fringe that obscured part of his face. However, using the zoom function, he was pretty sure he could make out a pair of beautiful blue eyes. He clicked the photos almost by accident. The guy looked to be tall if his legs, wrapped in black skinny jeans, were anything to go by. His upper body was almost entirely wrapped in a dark jacket, but if he zoomed in as close as possible, he was almost sure he could make out a Muse t-shirt underneath.
Zoomed in this close, he could even make out a few moles on the guy’s neck. His skin was pale and combined with the black hair, he almost reminded Dan of a vampire. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was aware that he should probably stop staring at the guy, but something about him didn’t let him.
He felt unable to look away, as if he would disappear forever if Dan dared to ever cast his eyes elsewhere.
Suddenly, a large hand appeared in the viewfinder. Dan had been so enamoured by the guy; the sudden interruption made him lose balance and fall backwards. He just so managed not to make a noise and alert the guy and the intruder, of his presence. When he got back up, he just so caught the guy and the other person walking away from the tree, thankfully in the direction opposite to him.
His heart wouldn’t stop hammering all the way back to his dorm. He was entirely sure the guy he had just photographed was the most perfect person he had ever seen.
When he finally made it back to his dorm, Dan wasted no time plugging the camera into his computer and transferring all the photos he’d just taken. The shots he’d taken of the campus and its nature had turned out nice for the most part. Although, those weren’t the photos he was interested in right now. He’d go through them later.
Instead, he scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the pages, anxiously waiting for the photos to load. The first one, of course, was blurred, but the next one, showing the boy leaning against the tree, was perfectly in focus. Having time to actually study the guy, Dan noticed that he looked slightly anxious. His arm and back were clearly tense, and he was staring down at his fingers.
The next pictures were close-ups of the guy’s face. Now, that he was free to study the guy’s face up close without fear of being interrupted, Dan noticed that his eyes weren’t just blue but had sprinkles of yellow and green in them too.
He was forced to look away from the beautiful guy for a second time today, when someone loudly knocked on his door.
Dan turned off his computer as fast as possible, suddenly feeling incredibly ashamed, like his mother had just caught him watching porn or something.
“Yeah,” he answered, trying to sound as chill as possible.
The door opened and a guy he’d never seen before stuck his head inside. He looked around, confused before shaking his head “Wrong room, sorry dude.”
Before he could even answer him, the guy left.
However, when he turned the computer on again and the spell was broken. As beautiful as the guy was, he suddenly realized how weird it was that he had just taken a bunch of photos of a stranger without their permission. Creepy, even.
What the hell was he doing?
The logical, the right thing to do would have been to delete the picture and he would. Soon. The soonest.
Dan sighed, who was he kidding?
Instead, he marked all the pictures with him in it and put them in a new folder. Unsure what to name it, considering ‘creepy stalker pics’ probably would go over well if he ever wanted to use his computer in the company of another person again, he looked at the pictures again.
The last one showed the guys torso, in what he could properly identify now, was a Muse t-shirt. Oh well. Close enough. It would do.
[Muse 910KB]
[Campus Photos 1.0 3MB]
“Wow. These are amazing, Dan. You really undersold your talent last week.” He had stayed behind again, after the meeting on Monday, to show Ben the photos he had taken on the weekend. Well, some of them anyway.
“Ah. That’s nothing, really, I just got lucky because the lighting was good.” But he could feel his face heat up nonetheless. He had spent most of his Sunday going through the photos and editing them, it was nice that someone was appreciating his work.
“Hey, whatever you say. But I’m really glad to have you aboard. We can definitely use those.”
Unfortunately, the rest of his week didn’t go over as well. While he was finally starting to understand the campus layout, his classes weren’t getting any easier or interesting. It probably didn’t help that he had spent his entire weekend playing video games and photographing instead of doing his homework.
While the professors didn’t check their work like schoolteachers, he understood even less this time around. Not to mention that eight am was a truly inhumane time, so really who could blame him for skipping a lecture here and there. He’d catch up on the weekend. Surely.
Furthermore, much to Dan’s dismay, he hadn’t seen the guy from Saturday again. Well, in real life at least, while it still felt a bit creepy, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at the photos he had taken.
There was something mesmerizing about the guy. No matter how long he looked at him, he never got bored, he always found something new to examine. The freckles on his face and neck, or the way his hair had barely moved in the wind.
But the pictures were just that, pictures, and he found himself starved, wanting, needing to see him again in the flesh.
On his way back from the shops (buying another supply of instant ramen) he had gone past the tree again, but yet again no luck. The doors to his dorm’s lift were just about to close when another person slipped in.
The girl looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her. She was probably in one of his classes. He was just about to turn away and ignore her, like he had done with almost everyone so far, when she tapped his arm.
Begrudgingly, he pulled out his headphones and faced her. “Dan?” she asked.
Oh, fuck. So they had met. The confusion must be visible on his face because she laughed and followed it up with “Maja. From the newspaper club? We sat next to each other during the first meeting.”
“Oh. God, I’m sorry. I’m no good with faces.” He tried to save it.
“Ah, don’t worry about it. Is this your building too? I haven’t seen you around before.”
“Yeah. I haven’t been going out much, I guess. First week of classes has been… a lot.” He usually liked his room on the top floor, but right now he really wished he could just get off on the second floor
and flee this conversation.
“Tell me about it. I mean, I love all of my courses, but it’s so much work. I really wasn’t prepared. Hey, are you going to that beginning of the semester party on Friday?” She was practically beaming at him, and while he had no intention of actually going, he just nodded. Otherwise, she’d probably think he was a total loser.
“Neat, anyway, this is my floor. See you then.”
When the lift door finally closed behind her, he just sighed and slumped against the lift walls, before popping his headphones back in and letting Hayley Williams wash the world away.
By the time Friday night came around, he still wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of going to the party. However, he had procrastinated so much over the last couple of weeks that he really couldn’t justify putting off his uni work any more. Unless, of course, he had an actual event to go to.
Which is how he found himself re-arranging his fringe for x-time today before slipping out of his dorm. And if another part of his reason for going included a cute emo boy with a perfect black fringe, well that really wasn’t anyone’s business but his. Not that he could be sure he would be there, but (sadly) it was at least more realistic than the idea that he would just appear in his dorm room.
The party was hosted in one of the dorms, a couple houses down from his. Not that you would have needed directions. It was only ten pm by the time he arrived, but he could already hear the music and chattering before he even saw the house.
Inside, it was hot and crammed, he shortly considered trying to find Maja, but it would be virtually impossible to find anyone in this crowd. Besides, if he didn’t get some alcohol in him within the next couple of minutes, he would probably leave anyway.
Therefore, he made his way through to the kitchen and ended up grabbing one of the beers on the table. He’d never particularly liked beer, but it was all they had. Some terrible pop song was playing over the stereo system set up in the ground floor living area.
Standing there, beer in one hand, the other awkwardly stuffed in his pocket, he suddenly felt very out of place. As much as he had hated the people in his hometown, at least he had known who he was dealing with then. The few ‘parties’ he’d gone to during high school had consisted of a couple dozen teenagers getting drunk in a car park. Usually paired with a lot of awful jokes he pretended not to care about and the occasional couple sneaking off into the woods.
This was nothing like that. For once, he was at an actual house, but more importantly, he didn’t know anyone here. Well, maybe Maja, but even that was a long shot. Not even downing half his beer in one go made the situation better. Why had he even come? What was he going to do? Randomly go up to a group of strangers and introduce himself? Yeah, good one.
For the first time since moving here, he regretted not trying to get to know the other people in his dorm or hell even classes more. Maybe then he’d have at least a few familiar faces he could go up to.
Well, whatever he did, he definitely had to get out of the kitchen. The more people arrived, the more crowded it got, and he really didn’t fancy standing in front of the refrigerator all night being asked to hand out beers or to move.
He briefly considered moving to the ‘dance floor’ but it looked even more overcrowded than before and the music was still terrible. Desperate to escape the mass of people, he instead opted for the stairs leading up.
The first floor was much emptier than the ground floor had been, some people were chatting in the hallway while others had opened up their bedroom doors. Curiosity overcame him, and he couldn’t help but sneak a look inside while he was walking down the corridor. He saw a balcony at the end of it that didn’t seem overfilled yet.
Most of the rooms were filled with girls getting ready and groups of people standing in awkward circles. He briefly remembered being told that mostly first years lived in the dorms so they probably didn’t know each other that well yet. Would he be standing in one of these rooms, making awkward small talk, if he’d bothered to leave his rooms once in a while? Maybe, but he couldn’t really find it in
him to care.
The room closest to the balcony was open as well. At first, the room wasn’t any more interesting than the other ones. A group of slightly older looking guys and girls were sitting on the floor and spinning a bottle. They were all laughing, and it was obvious most of them already had a couple beers or more.
None of them seemed familiar to Dan, and he was just about to continue walking when he saw him.
He was partially obscured by one of the guys sitting closer to the door, but Dan would recognize that fringe everywhere.
It was him.
It had to be.
His brain short-circuited at the sight of him. So much so that he stopped walking and just stood there, staring into the room. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he noticed someone walking in to him, but he didn’t care. The guy looked just as beautiful as he had before.
He wasn’t wearing a jacket this time, but a long-sleeve plaid shirt paired with the same skinny jeans as before. Even sitting down, he appeared to be slightly taller than the rest of his friends? Acquittances? Luckily, so far no one seemed to have noticed him. Everyone was focused on the bottle in front of them.
He hadn’t even seen it at first, but now the bottle had stopped directly in front of the guy. Immediately, the guy’s cheeks turned pink. He looked adorable, and Dan suddenly wished he had brought his camera so he could capture the moment.
The rest of the group was still laughing and one of the guys yelled, “Eh, it’s Phil’s turn now. Come on. Spin the bottle.”
Phil. God, he finally had a name. It suited him too.
Phil gave the bottle a half-hearted spin. He was drumming his fingers on his legs like he had done before. But before he could think more of it, the bottle stopped.
Right in front of him.
Or well. In front of the guy that was sitting in his direct eye line. The people around Phil, especially the guys, started cheering and laughing. Phil himself still looked nervous but also determined. He took a sip out of his drink (that was not a beer, Dan noted) and then suddenly started crawling forward.
In hindsight, Dan should have probably guessed what game the group was playing, but he had been too preoccupied with staring at Phil to even think about it.
The kiss Phil pressed on the other guy’s lips wasn’t anything spectacular. Nothing more than a peck really, but it was enough to set Dan’s insides on fire. At this point, he had been standing in the open door for an unreasonable amount of time. The only reason why no one had complained yet was probably the alcohol and their lack of awareness of their surroundings.
Dan probably would have stood there forever, unable to look away, if Phil hadn’t chosen to look up while crawling backwards to his seat.
Their eyes met for less than a second, but it was enough to finally free Dan from his trance. He stumbled back right into a girl that had apparently stood behind him and almost spilled the rest of his beer. “Shit, sorry, I,” he turned around, but the girl just scoffed at him before getting back to her conversation.
He risked didn’t want to risk looking back into the room and see everyone in there laughing at him. Instead, he speed-walked back down the hallway and left the house through the back entrance.
His breathing didn’t calm down until he was already back in his room. After not even being able to get a glimpse of the guy, Phil, for the since last Saturday he’d just got so much it made his head spin, together with the embarrassment of almost falling over his own feet in front of him.
He laid down on his bed, waiting for his heartbeat to even out again, before mentally going through everything he knew about him now.
His name was Phil. He was almost definitely a student here (he had briefly considered that Phil had simple been visiting someone that time he saw him). And he wasn’t opposed to kissing another guy, his mind supplied.
Dan’s stomach twisted at the thought, his head replaying the moment that Phil had looked up at him again. He wasn’t stupid. He clearly wanted something here. Something, well, just something. Even the thought made him want to run and hide.
So, he didn’t, instead he focused on Phil. On his eyes, the slight blush on his face and the way his body had moved crawling towards him. For the second time today, he really wished he’d have got some of it on camera.
He fell asleep like that in his party clothes and with a smile on his lips.
It was Sunday afternoon, and he really couldn’t ignore his homework any more. He stared at the mountain of books in front of him, trying to will himself to look at any of them. Truth be told, at this point, he wasn’t even really sure what he needed to do.
He probably should have written it down in his notebook. However, inside he found more badly drawn Pokémon than actual notes. Dan sighed and turned on his computer. Maybe he could find the syllabus online. Otherwise, he’d had to ask the other people in his course. Ugh.
The blank google search bar was staring back at as he found himself unable to type in any of the necessary keywords. Instead, his mind drifted back to last night and an idea formed in his head.
Of course, he had a thought about googling the Phil before. Trying to find out who he was, what he studied, possibly what places he liked to frequent. However, he hadn’t had nearly enough information before.
Now, however, he at least had a name.
Unfortunately, phil university of york only showed him the university’s philosophy department. He raked his brain for any other information he could type in. It wasn’t like he could just search of hot tall emo phil goes to university of york .
Except.
The third link behind two articles about some comedian named Emo Phillips showed him. Phil. It was a link to a YouTube video called INTERACTIVE SPACE ADVENTURE – START HERE. He clicked on the link and the video opened in his web browser.
The video was only forty-two seconds long, but it was enough for Dan to realize that he was absolutely fucked.