When Dan finds out he's getting adopted mere months before aging out of the system, he doesn't feel any sense of joy. The Lester family is a few years too late, considering he hasn't longed for the commitment and the love of a home for a long time now. He's been focused on other things, things he was told to grow out of but is only becoming more interested in as time goes on. See, without much of a notable future to look forward to, people tend to fixate on the past. Dan has nothing if not a colorful past to look back on. He doesn't want new parents, he wants answers about who (what) took his old ones away from him.

There in those city lights, there was no her and there was no him. There was just everything and nothing and the spaces in between, like flickering lights against a never-ending, black sky. There in those city lights, there was no love and there was no hate. There was just listening and talking and understanding every single thing, like the 'ready, stop, go' of car-chasers and dream-makers. There in those city lights, there was no sadness and there was no happiness. There was just candid smiles and wasted tears and bottom lips chewed off, like the overflowing boulevard of things unseen. There in those city lights, there was no lady and there was no man. There was just a boy and a girl, who promised to fall in love, not with each other, but in those city lights. [a blind collaboration by @hepburnettes & @cityscape]

Sometimes all you really need is a place to call home. * * * Being re-written completely as of May 14, 2021

Dan is different. He's learned to accept that. Well, as best he can anyway, considering he's never really had much of a choice. It's been this way for as long as he can remember, the constant runaround process of trying to feel normal. His life is built around it, trying to trick both himself and everyone he interacts with into seeing him as your average person. The isolation as he desperately tries to keep others from finding out, the bitterness that wells up inside of him each and every time he's reminded that he'll never be like everyone else, the fear that nothing will ever change. He's fated to be this way forever; a misfit from society. Isolation can only go so far though, so when he's struggling to make ends meet and he's faced with the option of looking into a serious job or taking on a roommate, he opts for what seems like the easier option at the time. It doesn't seem so easy ten failed roommates into the process, or when he sits down at a table to meet with prospect number eleven and ends up with a coffee spilled all over his lap. Potential roommate number eleven, Phil, turns out to be an insufferable optimistic ball of sunshine that Dan wants nothing to do with. His options are running out though, as are the savings he's been using to pay his rent, so he finds himself begrudgingly agreeing to let the other man move in. Neither of them have any way of knowing just what they've gotten themselves into as they shake on the matter, but time will tell.

What if you could hear them? The thoughts they deigned not reasonable enough to say out loud, the things not suitable for even a giggly teenage gossip conversation. Would it be a blessing or a curse? Troye, the unlucky teenager bestowed with this 'gift', thinks of it as a curse, with good reason. Do you know how hard it is to keep a relationship with someone when you know exactly what they think of you? Impossible. It's impossible. Or at least that's what Troye thinks, considering he's given up on even trying to make it work. He's different, people shun different. People hate different. And it's better to go under the radar, to be nothing, than to be hated. Right? Tyler, on the other hand, has taken a different approach to a similar problem. No, he can't 'read minds', but he does have a part of himself he doesn't want a soul to know about. He's quarterback, every girl's dream guy, an academic mastermind, and he's also gay. He's seen how different kids get treated, hell, he's been the one to treat them that way before. Why on Earth would he ever wish that on himself? No, it's easier to hide, to be someone you're not, than to be hated. Right?