Unwritten

Task One: ☀Entries☀

☀Brendan James Johnson☀

Meet-cute: the moment when two lovers' path first cross, and, whether they know it or not, their lives change directions altogether.

His foot taps against the carpet to Hozier's beat as he struggles not to hum the tune along with his phone. Brendan knows every lyric by now, every note; it may as well be the soundtrack to his life, but he doesn't believe in that sort of thing. People are much too simple to be summarized in a song, or a mood board, or any one thing, really. If there's one thing he's learned when writing, it's that.

But it helps, sometimes. It can create the right vibe, the right mood, and make things flow onto the page so much faster. The right soundtrack can make any emotion potent in his heart, and then from on the page. Stories run from the former to the ladder after all, taking only a brief pit stop at the brain, which forms them together before sending them on their way.

It's a beautiful day out, the type that makes it feel as though everything has to go right – or at least it was, though he can't quite be sure now. It's only been ten minutes since he got on the Tube, but that's all it takes for London weather to go from sunshine to thunderstorm without so much as a warning. Still, when He gets on the bus, He's perfectly dry, and so it's safe to assume it's not bad at the least. And really, watching Him walk on, it's impossible to imagine anything could possibly be wrong in the world.

Brendan doesn't know His name. Maybe that'd be too easy, he often tells himself, though he knows the real reason is that he's much too scared to ask. In his books, the protagonists never just meet. There's always another circumstance involved, some sort of meet-cute; those are half the battle, after all. Nobody cares about the love plot if they don't care about the initial meeting, and without the love plot than his books are nothing but smut. That's not a problem, exactly – Brendan has nothing against smut, except maybe a little underlying jealousy – but his stories are about more than that. They're about true love, and fighting the odds, and having great sex along the way.

In the meantime, Brendan has taken to calling Him Tube Boy. He thinks his name might be Jensen, or Kaden, or maybe even something exotic and French like Guillaume or Henri – just about anything, really, so long as it sounds like it belongs to the stunning love interest in a book, the type a reader would fall in love in the first paragraph. A name that would cause his audience to pine for him throughout the book, finding their satisfaction as the hero and him kiss for the last time on the page and they live vicariously through that one kiss, where everything feels so magical and finite and good. A rose by some other name might smell as sweet, but Brendan doubts it would taste as good in the mouth, bring the same sense of pleasure, were it called a trashner or a prifdup or some other atrocious collection of harsh letters and sounds. Sometimes, names make a difference, whether we like it or not.

Tube Boy sits down, finally, right in front of Brendan, who buries his face in Giovanni's Room to avoid showing the blush that burns half his face. His scent lingers in the air for a moment, and Brendan can't help but wonder how something can smell so good. It's sweet and woodsy at the same time, like maple almost, but even more intoxicating, more overwhelming. He can practically taste it on his tongue, but it disappears as quickly as it came and Brendan is left staring at his book, trying desperately to focus on the words on the page, but to no avail. From behind his book, he spies on the man across from him, taking in every detail of his face. Brendan knows them, of course, from his high cheekbones to the tiny cleft in his chin to the stubble that covers his cheeks to his hazel eyes masked by dark lashes, so long they might as well be curtains that brush against his skin when he closes his eyes. And his back – from here he can only see the shoulders, but Brendan knows that best of all. He's pictured it many a time, in the middle of the night, broad and defined and perfect for burying his nails into it in the throes of