Omegle Boy (Dan Howell/Danisnotonfire) Bk 2: Fantastic Foursome Series

I Love London

Chapter Three: I Love London

JASMINE

I Love London. That was an understatement, I loved the capital city and felt more at home here than anywhere else in England. There was just so much more to do on a daily basis than being stuck in the countryside. You could wander down a side street and stumble upon a new club or boutique shop which was freeing and inspired my photography. Yes, Londoners had a reputation for being rude, but to date, I hadn't had a bad experience. I never wanted to leave this city and was ecstatic when I got into university down here.

It was a brisk January day, a layer of frost sprinkled the floor and anything it could touch, turning trees and building alike into white statues. You could see your breath which I somehow managed to capture on camera as I strolled down the nearly empty street, I was wrapped up in a thick fluffy coat along with a beanie, scarf, and fingerless gloves to still give me access to the camera which hung around my neck.

Lessons didn't officially start for another three days and most students hadn't returned yet, which made the campus seem void of life. Lifelessness and decay were the themes of my portfolio this year, so anything dead like or falling apart took my interest. My peers thought it was a pretty morbid subject when I was actually a quite upbeat person when I wanted to be. But you could never judge a book by its cover, I liked the dark and supernatural world as much as I liked stereotypical white girl Starbucks drinks and teacup dogs.

After New Years, I expected Dan to forget about me, but he hadn't. In fact, the day after he texted me while I was in bed clutching a hot chocolate and watching Kerrang! on my tablet asking how I was feeling which was sweet. My parents hadn't even asked me that once they picked me up, they were more hungover than me and had gone straight to bed. I told him I was recovering and singing along to Plug In Baby by Muse which had just come on the tablet, his next few messages consisted of him typing out the lyrics because he might just be a bigger Muse fan than me.

Now I was back in London Dan wanted to meet face to face, but he had meetings to attend and my lectures were starting up soon so we were both rather busy. I really wanted to meet him face to face, I binge watched his videos and found myself cramping up from laughter. Hopefully, when the time came for us to meet face to face we got along as well as we did behind a phone and laptop screen.

I walk into Starbucks and order a hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows because I felt like treating myself, despite the fact I needed to use my student loan for things like food, rent, and equipment for my course. I claim a booth in the corner that gives me a view of the street outside and snap a couple of photos focusing on the bus stop on the other side of the road, there was a man sat slumped in the chair with a newspaper covering his face of all things. The moment intrigued me and I immediately started to create a backstory for what made him end up in his current state. I did that a lot with strangers, normal people would call me crazy but according to university, it made me creative.

I pull out my phone and open my social media apps, Instagram was my favourite because I had quite a large following of people who came back for my daily updates. I edit and put a filter on the picture before uploading it with the caption 'How did he end up here?' hoping my followers came up with creative suggestions. It didn't take more than a couple of minutes for a notification to pop up indicating that a certain Dan Howell had liked my picture and commented 'Poke him with a stick to make sure he's still alive!'. His comment made me laugh, and I could picture him typing it while planning on poking the man with a stick on my behalf because Dan was an adorable oddball like that.

After he commented I had to turn off my notifications, because his fans took over the comments asking for follows and for Dan to notice them which took away from my genuine followers who wanted to post meaningful comments. It was moments like this I didn't mind Dan following me across my social media and liking my tweets and posts, but the second he commented my fans were drowned out by danasuars and the phandom. I decided to voice my opinion to him via text, he could like my post and talk to me about it via text but I didn't want him commenting anymore because his fans spammed me.