The real world skins you alive. It's a hazard of growing up in rural Suffolk... or possibly, it's a hazard of growing up. Either way, the Dorian Andrade and Isaiah Matalon who reunite at a party in Oxford have become equally disenchanted imitations of the boys who used to spend summers eating apples on the riverbank. A lot has changed in the six years since they saw each other. One thing is still the same: the longing for each other's company. But aren't the objects of our yearning so much easier to encounter in the imagination than when they're standing in front of us? GENRE: literary fiction, queer romance TROPES: second chance romance, friends to lovers, mutual pining COMP TITLES: A Little Life, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Call Me By Your Name, basically Wolfstar Muggle AU featured in Ambassador Reads featured in Ambassador Recommendations: Living Beyond Labels Dec 24 featured in Ambassadors: Slice of life featured in ContemporaryLit: Ambassadors' Picks featured in ContemporaryLit: LGBTQ+ Contemporary featured in ContemporaryLit: Literary Fiction featured in lgbtq: ManxMan (NA/Adult Fiction) featured in FreeTheLGBT: Diverse Literature featured in WattpadLitFic: Novels featured in WattpadMulticultural: September 2023 Reads of the Month

Let's get one thing straight: satin is NOT silk. Don't be fooled by its flimsy ability to reflect light, so glossy that it's blinding and migraine inducing. If there's one thing Alex Han knows, it's that satin is made up of 100% polyester, lies, and betrayal. It's his eighteenth birthday and all he wanted was to enjoy the pleasures of being adorned in a dainty silk ball gown. You could imagine the anger he felt when his mandatory tailcoat and pleated pants for the night were made purely of the dreaded devil's cloth. But hey, maybe this was the world's cruel way of telling him that he truly was what he wore. started | 12.29.19

in which fate threatens to be the undoing of a star-crossed pair who dare to defy the rules of life and death

with blood on their hands, they're all villains

virtues are for fools, darling.