Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a blank page and he sits down to write. It’s different from writing a script for a video or the times he’s frantically scribbled in his dream journal right after waking up.

hold onto your horses, i’m breaking out all the clichés. actually, that saying is horrible for this scenario, as he’s told me he doesn’t quite trust horses – however i’m supposed to interpret that. 

he found his voice online and he discovered a band of people that he related to. he pushed me into he limelight as well and together we built a world. years later, here we are hundreds of videos, dozens of radio shows, a book and an international tour later. 

they joke that he’s like sunshine or an angel bean. they adore the way he refuses to curse on camera and the most you’ll get out of him is a “sh…”. it doesn’t go with his brand, i usually joke but it’s so true. 

and it’s the reason why i feel compelled to write this, just to prove my point. 

it’s not just that his smile is enough to light up the whole room and leave me mesmerised when he does that adorable thing where his tongue pokes out ever so slightly. it’s not how considerate he is as he attempts to make everyone feel at ease, even when he’s feeling awkward himself. it’s not even how he fights to always see the best in people and only spread positivity. it’s not just how his mind works in wonderful ways that makes him jump from topic to topic. it’s just him. 

people say you grow into yourself as you become older. i’m not sure if it’s true for him. it’s hopefully true for me – hell knows, i’ve questioned myself through the years but i’ve made it out stronger and happier on the other end, which he was a huge part of. but it’s different with him. 

his hair has changed a lot, sure and his accent slowly left him after we moved away from everything familiar. however, whatever it is at the heart of him that makes him so precious has not changed one bit. 

i mean the man’s first word was “light”, how much brighter does it get? 

i think about the irony when i wear my dark and demon themed clothing sometimes and i see edits of him as an angel. who would have thought that it would work? Surely, the demon would destroy the goodness in the angel. 

with us that were not the case, though you have to take into account that i’m not an actual demon nor is he an angel. but he’s probably the closet any human will ever be. sometimes I think of all the things he’s done for me, right down to the moment we started talking online to meeting in real life and I wonder if i’ve ever done anything for him. 

did i only bring trouble into his life? after all the times, he’s picked me off the floor and reassured me everything would be okay and supported my every struggle – what have i ever done for him?

i daren’t ask him. 

but of course, i didn’t need to. this guy.

as much as i joke about him being deaf or slow at catching obvious things, he’s quite the perceptive guy. he told me once that we’re the same and i knew he didn’t mean just because we had basically the same haircut. 

we found kinship in each other, though it does not make sense for something so naturally bright and good to match with something that has constantly battled darkness and oblivion. it shouldn’t work but it does.

i partly put it down for our shared love of video games and anime. we’ve built a life together and it’s nothing like i would ever have thought my life would turn out but i’m happy. my fears of never finding companionship or never having people treat me like i knew i deserved to be treated were squashed when i met him and everything that happened afterwards. 

if he knew i was writing this, he’d probably laugh and initiate some banter. he likes to laugh and smile and does it so often that it’s a miracle he’s face isn’t stuck that way. i’ve seen him after meeting hundreds of people, his smile never faltering and only when it’s entirely done, he pulls it from his face. everyone that meets him gets a unique experience and he always asks how they are. 

i get to see his down time when we talk in low husky voices and have just woken up. when we’re filming our video, we magnify our personalities, make them brighter and louder, more so me than him though. we both love our individual live shows, which is a different kind of being “on” than in a video. it’s an honest chat with people, who care about us. 

he’s the type of guy who gets excited playing with kinetic sand or by the fact that he somehow hatched a shrimp, instead of triops. history has a tendency to repeat itself. we may pray Albert has a longer lifespan than Simon. but as always, i’m glad to see him having fun with whatever activity takes his fancy. even if that is his growing population of houseplants that i refuse to take co-responsibility for. 

whether it’s his insomniac tendencies or my muttering to myself, we don’t even bat an eyelid over each other’s quirks anymore. i still have to go around closing cabinet doors after he’s finished in the kitchen or i have to pour out the coffee that he forgot he made or make sure to blow out the candles he’s lit all over our place. 

if anything, i’m protecting him from injuring himself. but even i can’t protect him from his poor spatial awareness. he’s smacked more hands and feet on random furniture than he’d care to admit. maybe he’d be safer if i wrapped him up in bubble wrap – actually make a note that. i might be able to find a suit that’ll make him look like Baymax from Big Hero 6. that would be cute. 

that’s another thing about him; he always looks cute. even with fake piercings, stick-on tattoos and coloured hair, he was the most adorable thing. i blame the striking blue eyes – which yes is not merely blue but a mix of three colours – blue, green and yellow. trust me, i’ve looked into them enough times to know. 

i’m coming to the end of this odd note, which is trying to describe how much he means to me and how well i know him. i know i’d love his personality in whatever physical vessel it would be in, though it’s pretty nice that we’re both so tall so we match and don’t feel like giants when we stand besides each other. 

will I ever let him read this? probably not. 

if someone found this on my computer randomly, would they know whom i was talking about? i’m sure the people who watch our videos would know. they’d probably know by the very first line of this even without context. 

but if this somehow reaches a stranger, firstly, did you hack my computer – FUCK OFF, i’m calling the police! secondly, this is a note descripting the most wonderful, precious and genius man i know and you better feel privileged to have been given an insight into his life. 

i know i am and forever will be. 

He gets up from his desk and shuts the small Mac. He makes his way to the kitchen, feeling emotionally drained after pouring so many feelings into his keyboards – it’s not his style to be so direct. In the kitchen, he finds the man of his affection sneakily eating dry cereal out of the box. Normally, he would scold him and yell his name in that very particular disgruntled way that’s been captured on video many times.

Today he doesn’t but leans his tall frame against the door and waits for him to become aware of the company. Eventually, he turns around and guilt grazes his features for a moment only to be abolished as a bright smile breaks out on his face. 

It’s the smile, which started it all and somehow shows that this man is literal sunshine.

This tweet is the reference for the title:

Chapter Text

It’s way past midnight and thanks to the accidental nap earlier he can’t sleep. It might be another sleepless night but in a jolt of inspiration he sits down with his computer. He’s been meaning to write something for a while and why not now?

I have not written a diary for years and upon looking back at my short and odd entries, maybe that’s a good thing. It was a way to document my day and dot down whatever I was experiencing. Looking back on it, a lot of it seems trivial and silly or cringe-worthy, as he would say. 

Still, I’m happy I kept it. It’s important to hold onto memories, you know. It’s a reminder of the person I was at that time and having a physical object is sometimes all you need to travel back in time.

That’s part of the reason why we wanted to write a book filled to the brim with stories and memories of our friendship. He can never shut up about how he prefers the tactile feeling of having a book in his hand. I think it’s a result of having so much of our lives online. 

He’s worried one day it’ll all be deleted and gone forever. It’s not very likely, knowing the people who watch us even have saved old and deleted videos but I get where he’s coming from. It feels intangible but holding a physical book in your hands feels like it won’t go away. 

I mean you could accidentally set it on fire, though that would be ironic considering the title. 

We saved the paper with the questions for our very first video together. It’s been over six years and we still have it. Now a photocopy of it lives on in every copy of our book but I know we’ll always keep the original. 

It’s a crumbled mess of a single piece of paper with things crossed over and questions merging together. It wasn’t supposed to be pretty. We had no idea that it would essentially be the start of this crazy life we begun together. 

That’s why I’m sitting down to write this. I want to remember how happy I’m feeling right now and reminisce about old times. Maybe, I’m turning old before my time. He would surely tease me if he knew I was getting so sentimental.

So much of our lives are broadcasted on the Internet and that’s what I initially signed up for on a gloomy and cold day in 2006 when I started my channel. The website’s slogan was Broadcast Yourself after all. 

I never thought anyone would be interested in watching me talk about nothing. I’ve never had many friends and the people I did get to know couldn’t relate to me. I’d scare them off slowly because I was too weird or too awkward. My mind jumps from topic to topic quite easily and not everyone seems to get it. 

He did. Before I even knew he existed, he watched me and instantly got me. 

The small portion of my life I shared online was enough for him to know. If you were to ask him now, he’d probably just say that he found we shared a similar taste in music and video games. It’s true that’s how his comments started. 

He kept expressing interests in the same things as me, and leaving me lovely comments. Of course, I was interested in talking to the guy. 

The story of how we became friends has changed through the years, at least if you asked him. I usually refrained from commenting on the subject. Back in the day it was very obvious that he “stalked” me, though I don’t mean it in a literal way. We even made a joke about it in one of his earliest videos.

Then he changed the story to us having a mutual friend in Manchester, which wasn’t an outward lie so to speak but it was not how we met. I didn’t care that he wanted to change the story, finding the whole pestering me online a bit embarrassing now that we were so close. 

Lately though, he’s drifted back to the truth and proudly declared himself my number one trash. His comment carried sarcasm but he knew exactly what he was doing and how it would be perceived. He simply stopped caring what people thought about our initial meeting.

We were just ourselves. 

He just kept commenting and tweeting at me and I kept replying and eventually it turned into DMs, Facebook friends and Skype calls. However, it was very much a mutual connection as soon as I became aware of him. 

I can’t thank him enough for stumbling across my videos and reaching out to me. It was a brave move and I was not sure I would have been as persistent as he had. They say you don’t know what you want until someone shows you. I didn’t know that I needed him in my life but as soon as I got to know him, I realised it. 

After university, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I enjoyed making videos but it seemed scary to bet on that full time, even with our growing audiences. Back then you couldn’t really have that as a job. I considered aiming towards a more safe and structured path but when I saw how he struggled in university, I knew I couldn’t do that.

The day he broke down in front of me, saying how he was tired of everything and couldn’t go on with his studies, I reacted instantly. The vulnerability was almost endearing though it hurt so much to see him breaking. 

That’s what taught me to never let someone else, whether that be friends, parents or society, decide what you need to do. You’ve got to figure that out for yourself.

He picked himself up, though extremely shaken, and spiralling into an existential crisis. 

We made a plan, a risky bet, and moved to the capital into a place we could hardly afford. Now four years later, we’re still here and it’s our home. 

Our walls and shelves are filled with trinkets and memories. Every scratch or mark is a proof of the life we’ve led here. I fill the house with candles, stickers and houseplants. The plants, though I sometimes forget to water them and accidentally kill them, brings life to our home. The candles fill the house with a wonderful scent, though our place is definitely not big enough to take the smell of a three-wick candle. As for the stickers, I like to see them as my personality seeping out into the very core of our home. 

I know he says that he’s annoyed to find stickers all over our shared possessions but secretly he loves it. I catch a shy smile sometimes when he sees a sticker.

He likes things more organised and clean than I do, though you should not look at his floor, which seems to hold most of his wardrobe. He’s not bright colours but rather you’ll see him wearing black 90 % of the time. 

I don’t mind the black clothes, or aesthetic if you will, because his apparent dark look fades away as soon as he smiles. People joke that I’m like sunshine but I’m not sure they’ve looked closely enough at him. Yes, he may have a sad resting face but once he smiles he’s so beautiful. 

He’d not approve of me calling him beautiful. He’d probably prefer I called him something like cool. He seems to have reserved all the nice, fluffy adjectives for me and he won’t have it any other way. 

When he smiles, his dimples come out and I’ve developed a habit of poking them. I mean, how can you not? 

He thinks that he carries so much darkness with him but it’s not true. He covers himself in black but I can see light shining through the seams. I always have and always will.

I read a tarot card once way back in a very old video. It was just a bit of fun but the card for the future talked of a guy, who would have a big impact. The so-called Knight of Wands. I do pride myself on being vaguely psychic, so it does make sense I’d somehow predict him, though I never made the connection to that video until someone else told me. 

He taught me the whole complicated spectrum of his emotions and showed me that someone could understand me. He is my Knight of Wands. 

He steps away from the computer and stretches his arms. It actually made him feel sleepy. He should probably embrace it while it lasts and head straight to bed, so he won’t have to sleep all day tomorrow. 

Shutting off the lights in the living room, he heads towards the bedrooms and pause in the doorway to look at him. He’s sleeping soundly and there’s something so disarming about his body at rest and how the hobbit hair is already starting to form. 

It’s might be considered creepy watching him sleep but he can’t help it. He was a boy when they met; young and native and unsure. Now he’s a man with a passion and a purpose and some of the most eloquent opinions. He can grasp almost any concept.

The sleeping man somehow knew to seek out an odd guy, who uploaded videos to the Internet and inevitably became the Knight of Wands in his life and he could not be more thankful for it.

The ending of this video is the reference for the title.