Thorn Wilde

Dave is pretty special. Every time I write him, I have to check myself and ask, could a 16-year-old really act like this? I've worked hard not to make a Gary-Stu out of him... In the end, though, I think Dave is just really down to Earth and likes taking care of people. He definitely has a bit of a hero complex going on, though. Nick's been through a lot in his short life, and there's more to come. That would make anyone timid. But I think if anyone's capable of getting him out of his shell, it's dependable Dave. Thanks for reviewing once again! <3

Poor Mel. She's sort of based on a couple of different friends of mine. I really like her. I think it's safe to reveal that Dave still has a long way to go. Self-insight is one thing, courage is quite another. Thank you for continuing to read and review!

Thank you! You can look forward to a few more slice of life type chapters before I start angsting this baby down to the bone. <3

Well, when he made that comment in the changing rooms, they weren't really in a relationship yet, they'd just decided to be friends. Dave may have a remarkable amount of self-insight, but he's still a 16-year-old boy, and he hasn't quite figured out how to balance keeping up appearances for his other friends with being friends with Nick yet. The first time I wrote the story, I wrote Mellie in for the scene where Nick runs away, wrote her into one more chapter, and then she just went away. I didn't want that. I wanted her to be important. As for too much of a coincidence, stranger things have happened. I discovered a while back that my cousin and I had a mutual friend on Facebook who lives in a different part of the world and whom we met online on completely separate occasions, under different circumstances, unbeknownst to each other. The Internet is a strange place.

Cheers, I'll check those links out.

No, no, no, you're wrong! All wrong! Far too slow. I've always tried my best to avoid clichés, but it occurred to me at some point while writing this story that when you're dealing with the love lives of sixteen-year-olds, avoiding them completely is impossible, because a sixteen-year-old is a walking cliché all on his own. I remember it well, I was so cheesy at fifteen-sixteen. You feel everything SO STRONGLY and everything is SO DRAMATIC! I feel like that needs to be acknowledged in stories like this. Which is why I've purposefully kept some in. Thanks for reviewing, and most of all for reading!

Thank you! I'll take it as a compliment. Glad you liked it!

CHAPTER NINE Scared of Girls Nick stared up at the canopy of yellow leaves stretching out across the roof of the bicycle shed. In truth, most of them had by now found their way down to the ground, where they turned brown and soggy, but there was still a layer of autumn yellow covering the trees. The sky was clear, pale blue and the air was crisp and cool as November came to a close. For the past couple of weeks, Nick had experienced an entirely new sensation. It had come in bri

I'm doing research for one of my stories, and my Google-fu just isn't strong enough. Backstory goes: A 'boy' named Anthony is diagnosed with gender dysphoria at a young age. Therapy has no effect, he remains convinced that he's supposed to be female, and when he's nine years old, his mother and his shrink decide that he should be allowed to express his chosen gender identity, and they move away from the town where they live and Anthony transitions into Tania. Several years later, Tania, who is now taking hormones and living as entirely female, returns to her old town, with nobody knowing who she used to be. So far, so good. I've been reading up on hormone therapy, reassignment surgery, consulted transgendered friends of mine and so on. I know how the process goes. But what I need to know is when, historically, did gender reassignment therapy, hormones and puberty blockers become legal for under-18s in the UK? This story, the part where Tania returns home, is supposed to be taking place sometime between the year 2000 and 2004, but I can't find any info regarding whether she could have received the kind of treatment she's meant to have had in the UK in that time frame. So that's my question. Does anybody know? And if she couldn't, are there other countries she could have moved to temporarily in order to get that treatment?

I'm definitely a laptop person. I can definitely get the appeal of a tablet, but in the end I like having a keyboard too much. My pretty little 11" MacBook Air is my best friend. It's light, I can bring it everywhere, and I can easily squeeze four to five hours of battery time out of it if I turn down the brightness and turn off the wifi (used to be longer, but I've had it for nearly two years), so it's absolutely perfect for taking with me to the library or a café and writing for a few hours without distractions.

Thank YOU for reading! I'm so glad you seem to be enjoying it!

Thank you! And thank you so much for reading and reviewing!

So very true. Well put! Thanks for reviewing.

All I can say to that is you'll find out very soon. Like, tomorrow, actually. Thanks for reading and reviewing! Always nice to meet someone who knows Placebo's music.

Maybe he'll finally get that Oscar...

Dave is a rich kid, remember? Things are disposable. Mostly, though, he was just very preoccupied. When he at last remembered what he'd done with his jacket, he found it easier to just count it as lost at the time. Then he actually did forget about it. Regarding the intimate scenes, thank you! I never thought I was any good at them. It's always been hard to find the balance between cutsie cliché and outright porn. Which is why I've ended up with some form of understated smut which would, I suppose, account for the Englishness. Cheers very much for reviewing once again! You're a star! <3

CHAPTER EIGHT Because I Want You Dave’s jeans were far too long at the leg, but only a little bit too wide for Nick. He had hung his wet clothes in the en suite bathroom to Dave’s bedroom to dry and looked around as he zipped up the jeans. Dave’s room was more than twice the size of his own. Nearly everything in the room was twice the size of the things he owned, too. Dave had a king size bed, a thirty inch computer screen and a walk-in closet that was, on its own, nearly as big as

Heard good things about the Death Note movies. Yeah, I didn't get the point of the no singing... I mean, if they couldn't find an actor with a heavenly enough singing voice, why didn't they just overdub? But I fell in love enough with the actors who play Ryusuke and Taira, and loved Chiba's rapping enough to almost forgive them for the epic fail of Koyuki. Anime is definitely better, yes.

My friend who studies Japanese tells me that's a brilliant book, but I haven't read it myself. Probably should.

Well, you know what they say about killing your darlings... Most of my novels have died somewhere along the way as well. Nemesis is the only one I've finished so far, and I've been writing since I knew how. Welcome! Everyone's been really nice to me, I hope they'll treat you as well as they have me!

Poor, closeted, homophobic Alan Bradford... Thanks for reading!

I totally do that when I've posted a new chapter... Terrible habit, I know. Hate it when people obsess over split infinitives. IMO, they're neither good nor bad in and of themselves. Sweet chapter! A lot to recognise oneself in, here. Glad Dan's got a little bit of hope. Looking forward to seeing what happens next! Could one truly be happy by themselves for the rest of their life? No. One could, however, truly be happy by oneself for the rest of one's life. Or a person could be happy by themselves for the rest of their life.

Dave thinks life is complex enough without complicating things further by being stubborn and refusing to accept his own thoughts and feelings. It's what I love about him as a character. And Alan is quite interesting, yes. There will be more about him, in time. Thank you for reviewing!

*whispers* Shh, Nick doesn't know yet! Thank you, as always!

I never really watched either of those... I may have caught a couple episodes of Gundam at some point, think they may have shown it at that anime club I used to attend in my teens, in the early days, can't quite remember. There's a live action Beck movie as well, btw. It's pretty good, actually. Lots of ridiculously pretty Japanese men in it and above average acting for a movie of its kind. It has a couple of aspects that really get on my nerves, but it's well worth a watch.