i'm overly attracted and terribly convinced (open)

[elijah jonathan black]

you make me happy!

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( w h e t h e r y o u k n o w i t o r n o t )

Eli stared up at the blotched ceiling, eyes glazed over, sadness apparent within them. He was lost in thought, of course. It was no surprise. When he wasn’t being his over-hyper self and absolutely nice and silly, when he was by himself, he usually could get lost in his own thoughts. There were a lot of them, really. Good ones, bad ones, sad ones, happy ones. All sorts of various thoughts, memories, ideas ran through his head. The boy hardly had any control of it. Only a smidgen of his thoughts were controlled by him. Really and truly controlled. It wasn’t his fault. It was just a natural human occurrence to have wandering thoughts. It wasn’t like he was sitting there, deliberately letting his mind wander. Maybe then he’d be even more crazy. Possibly. There were endless possibilities of what it would be like to control your every thought. It’d probably be very odd, especially for those people whose minds often wandered, like his own. He really didn’t want to know what it would be like, to be honest. He’d probably get rather freaked out. I mean, wouldn’t you? Not be able to think of new, interesting things by letting your mind wander?

At this particular moment, he was attempting to keep his mind on his family. He missed them. After middle school, when Eli expressed his interest in continuing his study in music and the fact that he might, in fact, be bisexual (he was admittedly bu-curious), his parents decided they didn’t want someone like him in their house. They didn’t think that being a musician was a set career, and he wouldn’t be successful. And, though not religious, they did not, in any way, approve of gays or lesbians. They found them to be abnormal, and didn’t accept it. So next thing he knew, they got him a shitty little house in Manhattan (where the school that he was attending was), and left him to pay the rest of the money for it. But they did put a couple hundred a week in his bank account for bills, living expenses, school, and left a little extra. He was lucky they were that nice, really.

Though they kicked him out and expressed their dislike for his new lifestyle, he missed them. Eli wanted them back in his life. He wanted his mother and his father. His little sister. His little brother. All of them. He wanted them back, wanted to live in the same house, be told to take care of his siblings while his parents were out. To even see them again would be amazing. He had zero contact with his family. Well, except his aunt, who was the one who got him into dogs (not having one when he was really little) and Australian Shepherds in particular. She was more carefree about the ordeal, and, thanks to her, he had an idea about what was going on in the family. Lucille (mostly known as Lucy), his little sister, had recently lost her first tooth. She was the youngest of the bunch, and just adorable. Peter had started to play rec league baseball, the middle child. He loved his little siblings, and he was sad that they would grow up now disliking him, or maybe even eventually forgetting about him. He wouldn’t be surprised, knowing his dramatic parents. Now the teenage boy was sad that he hadn’t any part of these growing up processes of his brother and sister. He couldn’t tell Lucy to put the tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, and he couldn’t help Pete out with playing baseball.

If you asked him, there was no really good reason for his parents to kick him out like they did. Sure, they didn’t like homosexuals, or the idea of it at all. Couldn’t even stand him being bisexual. But to straight out remove him from the house and allow no contact with his family? It was a tad extreme, if you asked the boy. At fourteen, he was left to fend for himself in the big scary world. Had to learn at an early age to take care of himself. It sucked bigtime, and he hated it. The teen couldn’t even tell anybody, because it was kinda wrong to do such a thing. Instead, he told his friends (well, all but his closest) that his parents worked long hours and he usually didn’t see them, and they didn’t come home until late, late at night, and left early, early in the morning. It worked. People bought it. Only his closest of friends knew the truth. And the school did too, but they were paid good money (thank goodness his family was well off) to keep that under wraps.

The boy was trying to change. Well, at least about what he felt. He couldn’t just sit there and change his decision to pursue his musical interests. But he was sure that his parents might be able to accept just that, so long as he was reformed, that he wasn’t in any way possible attracted to guys. That was the only way Eli could think of that would allow him to reconcile with his parents. But that was the hard part. Sure, he liked females as well, found them attractive, found them cute. But the boy couldn’t help but find himself attracted to other males, to people of the same sex. He tried not to, he honestly did, but the musician just couldn’t help it. The teenager just often found himself looking at other guys, finding them attractive, noticing particular attractive part of them (eyes, ass, that sort of thing.) He always caught himself and tried to rid himself of that, just to try and force himself to be straight again, at least to think straight again, but he always continued to do such a thing again.

Sighing, Eli jumped off his bed, rubbing his face. He hated this, hated this life that he led, without his parents always there, without him helping to watch over his siblings. All he had was his Australian Shepherd, Happy, and his aunt telling him about what was happening within the family. And that wasn’t much. He wanted more than that. He wanted to actually be with his family. To live with them and see everything that happened within it firsthand. But because of his stupid mistake, to admit to his parents his sexuality, which he wasn’t even completely sure of, to be honest. He was admittedly bi-curious, but he hadn’t really done anything. Maybe it was just a phase where he found interest in the same sex. He just didn’t know, and he hated it. The teenager wanted to know for sure. And he wanted to be straight, he wanted to be back with his parents, his siblings. But he also couldn’t get one person out of his head. Aaron Blaylock. A senior model that he had met the other day in Central Park. A guy that he found attractive, and now couldn’t even think of him without feeling a weird twinge around his heart area.

Eli stretched out his limbs and yawned, tired from just sitting there. But what to do, what to do. There were many places he could go, he was sure of, but he just needed to get out of his room. Running a hand through his hair, light eyes searched around the room, looking for his shoes. That’s all he needed. He had come back here after classes, and just lied on his bed, fully clothed. He just needed his shoes and he’d be good. He could leave, and go do something. Well, as long as he had his phone and keys with him. Because without those, he’d be totally lost. And an iPod might be a good thing to have as well, really. Being that he had no idea where he was going, and he just simply loved music. iPods were a great invention, let me tell you. Slipping into his rainbow colored converse, grabbing his keys and his phone, he was ready. Making sure he didn’t have any more messages waiting on his phone, he slipped it into the pocket of his skinny jeans. But at the same time he was ready to go, he felt as if he needed something else. He didn’t know why, but he had such strange urgings before. Maybe whatever he felt like taking along with him would give him a destination.

Walking through his small, rundown little house, he stumbled upon his music room. Yeah, he was lucky enough to still have the instruments his parents had bought for him before he had been kicked out. So he had two guitars, one acoustic and one electric, a keyboard, and a ukulele. Yeah, he could play a few other instruments, but he just didn’t have them. Mostly because he didn’t like them as much, and he didn’t learn from ones he owned. He learned from borrowed ones, and after finding an instrument he liked, such as piano, guitar, and ukulele, he bought one. It was just how he worked. And today, Eli just felt like taking his ukulele with him. It was an odd instrument, and mostly forgotten by people. Who would think of a ukulele when naming instruments? It was a simple string instrument, sort of like a mini-guitar, and mostly associated with Hawaii and Hawaiian music. But for some reason, he had wanted to learn it, so he did. Lucky him. And now, of course, he had one. Currently, it was sitting on a stand made for it, but not for long, as Eli soon grabbed it and carefully put it in the case. Which made it a hell of a lot easier to carry around.

With ukulele in hand, he now felt ready to go out and do something. And now, he even had a destination in mind; the music room. Eli didn’t know why, but now, for some reason or another, he felt like the music room was the right place to be. So, after making sure, once again, that he had his keys and phone, he headed out the door, made sure it was locked, and headed back towards the school. Sure, normally he hung around the place anyways, but his mind had started to wander more back towards his family more and more, and so, today, he just had to go home, and just think. But now he was bored of thinking, so he just decided to head back anyways. The campus was nice, and most people, even if they thought school was the bane of human existence, hung around the place anyways. It wasn’t like a normal high school, it was the elite, and had huge, amazing grounds to just hang around on with friends. Not to mention the specialty rooms were always open, just in case some student had a burst of inspiration and needed to do it at the school.

It didn’t take too long to get to the school, even if he lived in the poor houses. It was a short walk, not too long. Maybe about five to ten minutes. So in no time, he was walking through the gate of the school and heading up a path to go inside. And, of course, it didn’t take too long to get up to the music room. And, finally, he was there. The first thing he did was drag a mic stand over to a stool, the one he favored over the others, grabbed a mic, and set all of that up before the wooden stool. Then, setting the case on the ground, Eli pulled out the ukulele and sat on the stool. The musician tapped on the mic, making sure it was working, before playing a few notes and chords on the string instrument, tuning it slightly.

And then, he began to sing. It was a song that he himself had written, not to long ago, really. It described how he felt now, though speaking of a girl. And he wasn’t really. But to everyone else, his sexuality was a secret. He hadn’t told anybody, and he was determined to keep it that way, while he was trying to hide it. The teen had originally written the song on guitar, but, of course, being a multi-instrumental kind of guy, had parts for all the instruments. And he was just working on the ukulele part. ”Jane Doe, I don’t really know you, but I know, fo sho, that you are beautiful so baby, let me know your name. Damn what’s your name? ‘Cause I’m overly attracted and terribly convinced that she could be my princess and I could be her prince. And I felt that way since...since I saw Jane Doe.” The first part. Perfectly. Smooth. Now was the ukulele solo, the part he had the hardest time mastering. The boy was almost finished with the solo when he, of course, messed it up.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. He had done it before. He knew he could do it, so what was wrong? Chewing his lip, he just moved his fingers along the frets, the ones that he had to play. But he always messed up. Well, not always, but he did often enough, and it frustrated him. Eli just hated messing up. Especially something that he wanted to be perfect, especially something that was his, something that he made. Running his hand through his hair again (how many times was that...four? five?), he stared down at the instrument, trying to figure things out. He needed to nail this. Or he would be screwed. Well, he thought so, in any case.

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``tagged!
oppeennn! (:

``music!
a lot of shiizzz xD

``word count!
2,287 (not counting coding)

``outift!
clickhurrr!

``notes!
wow. yeah, i know it's huge. i've also been working on it for days. idk how long next post will be. hopefully not like this. responses may be slow as i can only write in the afternoon/evenings. <33

lyrics by nevershoutnever!

[daniel grey]

Today, Danny really hadn't wanted to get up. It was one of those days where you wake up and feel like committing suicide before actually getting out of bed. His body felt as heavy as lead and his eyes drooped. It was one of the rare nights where he had actually gotten sleep (about five hours).. And them his alarm had gone off. That made things worse. He considered just giving up on sleep altogether. How long would he be able to last without it before he fell asleep? Most likely he'd fall asleep in the most embarassing place possible. Knowing him, he'd just sort of drop to the ground whilst walking down a busy street, or whilst crossing the road in front of a bus. Yeah. That would be smoooooth.

He thought about this whilst he got showered, eventually giving up his musings. Danny hardly ever took any of this thoughts seriously; most of the time they were random as hell. He would spend hours on end thinking about random, pointless topics, then once he had them 'solved' he would dismiss them. And then promptly move onto another pointless wondering.

Standing before his wardrobe, he attempted to pick something to wear. Living on his own.. Yeah, it was safe to say he wasn't used to it. In his wardrobe there was one pair of jeans and three t-shirts. One hoodie. On the floor was a pile of five dirty pairs of jeans, two pairs of shorts, two hoodies and about twelve t-shirts. He groaned and slapped a hand to his forehead. Soon he would run out. He called that day 'doomsday'. Washing was a terrible, terrible thing. Something he'd never be able to get along with. Washing machines were evil creatures, and if you weren't careful they would ruin your colours, cover clothes in mysterious bits of tissue, eat socks and leave powdery soap all over them. Danny growled and narrowed his eyes at the thought of doomsday, which looked like it might be approaching pretty rapidly.

Annoyed, he grabbed the first t-shirt he laid his hands on, pulled on his jeans and slipped his feet into the trainers he always wore. On the way out of his house, he grabbed his hoodie and slipped it on, shoved his keys, mobile phone and iPod into his jeans pocket and picked up his skateboard. Going outside, he closed and locked the door. Then he unlocked the door again, went inside and did a beeline straigh to the kitchen. Yanking open the fridge, he pulled over a bottle of vodka and took a gulp of it. For the nerves. For an awful second he was tempted to put it in his backpack and take it with him, but he drew the line at that.
'I'm turning into a damn alcoholic,' he cursed, firmly putting it back on the fridge shelf and exiting the house; relocking it behind him.

The Manhattan School of Arts wasn't a great distance from his house, and it only took him ten minutes on his skateboard. He skateboarded because he didn't own a car yet, for the slight exercise (not much, but hey) and because... Well, he enjoyed it. The wind whipped his hair around as he skidded around the corner, well prepared for the flight of steps that were approaching. He jumped and managed to clear them, unlike last week when he totally hadn't seen them coming and fallen, ending up with his ankle in a plaster for a week.

Coming to a halt in front of the school entrance, he jumped off his skateboard and stamped on the edge so that it flipped upwards. He caught it in a smooth action with his hand (he'd spent so long perfecting that after hundreds of skateboards to the face and stomach) and ran up the steps into the main hallway.

Danny didn't really know where the heck he was supposed to be. He had lost his timetable on the first day and so he usually just wandered around the corridors until a teacher yelled at him to 'hurry the hell up and get in the classroom'. Today he was late, which he always was (he did it on purpose to avoid the massive crushes of students in the hallways) by about ten minutes. Ten minutes didn't make a big difference timewise, but hallway-wise it definitely did.

He wandered down the corridor, stopping off at his locker to shove in his skateboard and grab a few books to stuff in his bag. He was bored, and for a split second wished he'd brought the vodka after all. He mentally cursed at himself and shook his head, checking his phone for texts (it was something to distract him - no one ever texted him anyway) and then pulling out his iPod.

The damn earphones were tangled. As always. Danny swore that whoever designed them had initially thought 'Great, now how can we make them tangle in the most irrititatingly way possible?'. He continued walking down the hallway, lost in his own thoughts and not paying attention. His fingers absently picked at the knotted wires in his hands, but his face had a vacant 'brain not here leave message' expression in position. His mind always wandered. This time he was thinking about the troubling topic of 'life'. What was the point of anything? Did anything really exist, or is everyone in some kind of matrix? Why bother?

Thankfully, music coming from the room he was passing axed him out of those thoughts. It was a dangerous train of thought to follow - it was the one that had sent him crazy in the first place. Appreciative of the music that had jolted him out of those depressing thoughts, he tilted his head closer to the door to listen to whoever it was that was playing.

They were good, he'd give them that. It was times like this that he wished he could play a cool instrument like that. But nooo. Danny could only play the piano. Stupid thing. He listened with a slight smile on his face as the guy inside played and started singing. He had a nice voice. A great voice.

Suddenly he had the urge to go in and see who it was that was playing, and to at least compliment them on it. But.. Wasn't this a recording room? He didn't want to interrupt anything important. Danny frowned. Plus, he sucked at meeting new people. It made him pretty god damn nervous.

Eh. He decided not to go in. Most likely he'd interrupt something that was critically important and make the guy fail his course. Or something like that. His bad timing was always unbelievable. Shrugging to himself, he leaned on the door so that he could shove his iPod back in his pocket. Whilst doing so, the door opened and he kind of.. Fell in.

Danny thanked the gods that he hadn't completely faceplanted the floor right in front of this guy. Luckily, it was only a kind of sideways stumble. He was also extremely grateful that the guy had stopped playing and was inspecting his... Ukelele when he made his grand entrance. Damn, this was awkward.

"Err... Hi," he grinned brightly, rubbing the back of his neck with his palm nervously.
'Ohgodwhatshouldisaywhatshouldido?!' he panicked mentally.
"You're really good at playing that. And singing," he quirked an eyebrow at his own words. Compliments were always good, right?

The guy before him looked pretty cute in a little-kid kind of way. He reminded Danny of a puppy for some reason. And his t-shirt said 'man eater' on it. Was this kid gay? Or was he just really slow, and believed that the t-shirt was referring only to the cute little tiger printed on it?

Danny decided not to ask. That would definitely be a bad thing to start off a conversation with.
"Umm. Were you busy? I can go if you like," he said awkwardly, jerking his thumb at the door behind him unnecessarily. He probably shouldn't even be in here anyway.

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