mastershakeme

He typed the text three times before he sent it. Saturday morning. The reception had been twelve hours ago and Eli had slept for maybe three of them, not because of the wine or the lateness but because his brain had spent the remaining hours replaying the evening in the specific, obsessive way it replayed anything that mattered: Miles’s speech, Kylie’s assessment, the sound of his own laugh when Adrien said the thing about the apple. He’d played that laugh back a dozen times, examining it f

He changed three times. This was not something Eli did. But tonight he stood in front of the narrow mirror on the back of his door and evaluated the difference between a gray sweater with a fraying collar and a black sweater with a small hole near the hem and decided that neither was acceptable and put on the Goodwill blazer over a white t-shirt and told himself he looked fine and did not believe it. The mirror gave him back what it always gave him: sandy hair that refused to stay where he

Yay!!!! I'm editing now! I do this for you guys, really. You're the best.

Eli Mercer never expected the Vesper Society to want him. But once they do, he finds something he’s never really had: friends, warmth, and a place where he feels chosen instead of useful. Then he discovers Lucien, a vampire imprisoned beneath the campus chapel and bled for generations to sustain the families behind Vesper’s power. The more Eli learns, the more impossible his new life becomes. Because freeing Lucien may mean destroying the first people who ever made Eli feel like he belonged.

The library basement smelled like dust and binding glue and the particular kind of silence that accumulated in places nobody visited. Eli liked it down here. He liked the metal shelving that ran in long rows from one cinder-block wall to the other, liked the fluorescent tubes that buzzed at a frequency just below hearing, liked the fact that in over a year of work-study he had never once encountered another person. Tuesday evening, mid-September. His sophomore year was entering its third we

Wow thank you 😍 I really wanted a happy/feel good story amongst all the other chaos. I might revisit the universe someday if the right idea comes along, but for now I’m happy to let them have their happily ever after ❤️

Back in July, Ben Coleman turned thirty, and nobody noticed. Tonight, on New Year's Eve, there were ten people in his apartment, and the noise was so loud he could feel it in his chest. Julian was at the stove making chicken marsala, their dish, the one they'd learned together in this kitchen with a twenty-two-dollar cast iron skillet and an argument about cheese. Ben was beside him grating parmesan with both hands gripping the block too hard, the way he always did, the way Julian had

i kind of love imagining this now 😭 ben getting older while julian stays physically the same, and their relationship just changing with it. ben’s hair going gray, moving a little slower, and julian eventually being the one reminding him to take his medicine and helping him with things ben used to do for everyone else. there’s something really sweet about ben spending his whole life taking care of people and finally growing old with someone who’s happy to take care of him. and by then sophie and grace would be grown, maybe with families of their own, so julian could become this weirdly permanent part of the family who remembers everybody when they were little 😂 i don’t think ben dying someday would mean julian’s life ends either. ben would have helped him build a whole life and family of his own by then. okay now i’ve made myself emotional over something that happens like fifty years after the book ends lol

lol i have thought about that too 😭 i don’t know if i want to answer it definitively because it’s way beyond the scope of this story, but julian potentially outliving ben does add a whole other layer to what “forever” means for them. for now i’m letting them enjoy the time they have ❤️

i really love the way you put this, especially julian “reprogramming” ben and the family 😂 that’s pretty much exactly what i was going for. ben didn’t need to stop loving or helping them, he needed to learn that they couldn’t run his life, and julian was the first person who really pushed him to see that. and i’m glad julian’s growth feels natural rather than performative. thank you for such a thoughtful comment ❤️

The retractions didn't stop the review. Tessa called Sunday evening, her voice careful, measured in the way it got when she was delivering news she wished she didn't have. "The family complaints have been noted as retracted. That's in the file. But the committee already pulled the raw data on Friday. The retractions weaken their case, but they don't close it. The data exists independently of the complaints." Julian sat on the couch and listened. Ben was beside him, phone on speaker, hi

Ben woke up on Saturday morning with Julian's arm across his chest and the knowledge that he had to leave. The bedroom was gray with early light. The window latch caught a thin line of sun, the same way it had every morning since Julian installed it, and Julian was beside him, still, warm, his face turned toward Ben's shoulder. Not sleeping. Resting. Being present in the particular way that Julian was present, with complete attention, even in the dark, even in the quiet, even when the world

I appreciate you reading even though you don't agree with the topic 😂 Next is gonna be vampires. I have no idea why I'm in this mood.

The apartment was dark, and Julian was afraid. Not the way humans were afraid, with adrenaline and the ancient machinery of fight or flight. His fear was architectural. It lived in the gap where data became feeling, where the numbers his system generated translated into something that had no number at all. The fear of subtraction. Of having pieces removed and not knowing they were missing. Ben's hand was in his. They were standing in the dark kitchen, and Julian could feel Ben's pulse

The second week was the best week of Ben's life, and he spent most of it waiting for it to end. Not because he wanted it to. Because he'd learned, over thirty years and one devastating breakup and a family that treated him like a utility, that good things came with expiration dates. The better something felt, the closer the end was. It was a law of his personal physics, as reliable as gravity, and the fact that he knew it was irrational didn't make it less true. But the week kept being