#With enough air- it is possible to play a note on a trumpet so loud- and so brash- that it will splatter brain matter against skull wall.

[alittlebitofrainbyyourside]

feeling extremely emo about the incredibly emo poetry I used to write.

[47crayons]

so, you want to write a musician?

about me: i play viola and have experience in symphony orchestras, string orchestras, string quartets (+ a few other small ensembles), and solo performances. i've done some light composition, and have friends/family who play other instruments. while my musical history is extensive, by no means do i know everything or speak for everyone.

this guide will focus on classical music/how to portray classical musicians and things that aren't as easily researched.

quick overview of instruments in a typical symphony orchestra

upper strings (violin, viola), lower strings (cello, (double) bass; i've seen viola included here too, but it's more commonly classified as upper strings)

strings also technically includes harp and piano

woodwinds (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon)

depending on instrumentation, they may also have piccolo, english horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon

saxophones are not traditionally in symphony orchestras due to it being a relative newer instrument! but this is changing because more contemporary composes are including sax parts

brass (trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, tuba, euphonium)

percussion (depends heavily on instrumentation, but common instruments are bass drum, timpani, snare, crash cymbal, xylophone, marimba)

some things you should research

where the hands are supposed to go!! i'd recommend you look at pictures of professionals in orchestra settings (ny phil, cso, berlin phil are all top tier). some musicians *coughs at yoyo ma* have less than perfect posture when they're performing solos (for the same reasons famous authors can break "rules")

necessary equipment including reeds, rockstops, different kinds of sticks/mallets, rosin, mouth pieces for whatever instrument you're writing

common misconceptions

loose/photocopied sheet music is not aesthetic—it's annoying and impossible to keep organized. folders and binders are fairly common especially when managing multiple ensembles.

original copies are often expensive and required to perform a piece (legally) for profit or otherwise (though i know a few people who have bent this rule)

not all performers are good composers (i myself have very little formal music theory training), but many composers have performance histories.

not all musicians can sing.

perfect pitch is both a blessing and a curse. notes can be slightly lower/higher but in tune with the context of the piece, which drives people with perfect pitch insane.

having perfect pitch does not guarantee someone will be a prodigy, and people don't need perfect pitch to be a talented musician.

drama in ensembles does exist, but it rarely gets in the way of rehearsal. same thing goes for good friends: if your characters have even a shred of common sense, they aren't going to be talking/messing around during rehearsal.

instruments (especially good ones) are extremely expensive. people very rarely store instruments on the wall or other displays for fear of falling.

instruments are very picky and require tuning every time. every time! it doesn't take long anyway. temperature and humidity can and will make instruments go out of tune or damage your instrument if not properly stored.

some people listen exclusively to classical music, but in my experience, that's definitely not the majority

like with anything, most musicians struggle with self doubt at one point or another.

musician culture

getting excited when we hear a piece we recognize

getting frustrated because we can't remember the name of the piece (after all, no lyrics to search)

being horrified when a non-musician actor is playing a musician. yes, we notice. yes, it's obvious.

if people are joking, it's likely to be about: violas (a quick search for "viola jokes" will tell you all you need to know) or trumpets (a reputation for being overly loud, playing and not)

putting stickers (places they toured, their orchestra, or just purely decorative) on cases is common, but not for everyone. same goes for pictures (of family, past concerts, or anything) on the inside.

scrambling for a pencil when the conductor says to mark something. pencils are a musicians best friend :D

asking (and forgetting) how to split double stops/two parts at the same time. sometimes one stand partner will play the top while the other plays the bottom, and sometimes this is split stand by stand.

this has NEVER resulted in a sexual top/bottom joke. please just. don't. also no g string jokes. it's just unrealistic.

awaiting the obligatory "it's one week before our concert, and you sound like this?!" lecture

not talking about music 100% of the time!!! they have lives outside of music (most of them, at least /j). especially to close friends, music is probably not going to be a conversation topic unless something is out of the ordinary (high stress, something funny from rehearsal, etc.)

bragging/talking about how often they practice is generally not welcomed. great, but other people don't need to hear it!

stages are hot and bright. there's no way a performer can see someone in the audience with the possible exception of the first row.

practicing

three words for you: love. hate. relationship.

slow practice (like really slow lots of people recommend half speed; good for focusing on the right notes, tone, phrasing, smooth transitions)

metronome practice (while playing, it's not annoying at all! it's helpful and requires a lot of focus; when NOT playing, it's annoying and loud because it needs to be heard over the playing)

drone practice (having a machine/website/another person play one note in the background; good for tuning and scales)

and too many more for me to detail

auditions

ensembles may have entrance auditions to determine who gets in and seating auditions to determine placement within the section.

adrenaline does not make us play better; it just makes us make mistakes. and then thinking about those mistakes causes more mistakes.

some instruments, especially those with less repertoire, have common excerpts that come up frequently (i can think of one in particular that i've played for three separate auditions this year).

stopping/starting over is not recommended ever, but if you do, it has to be 10x better. most audition judges aren't looking for perfection!! they want to see how your character can keep going after messing up.

sight reading (being given new music, having ~30 seconds to look at it, being asked to play) is never perfect. i don't care how talented your character is; if they think they nailed it, they aren't experienced enough to see all the phrasing/dynamics that they didn't incorporate. no one gets sight reading perfect!!!

perhaps most importantly, musicians are not all the same! they enjoy it for a number of different reasons and have diverse and interesting lives outside of music!!! more information about specific instrument groups under the cut :)

strings

callouses. with the exception of pianists, most string players (and especially professional ones) have callouses where they press down/pluck the strings. i also have one on my right thumb where i hold my bow. cellists and bassists might have them on their left thumb from playing higher notes in thumb position.

hickeys are also fairly common, though only some people get them. upper strings will get these by under their left jaw. cellists may have one from the wooden body resting on their sternum. some people (including hilary hahn and many many others) use a cloth for comfort and to prevent hickeys.

few people want a hickey, but it might suit a character who is constantly trying to prove themselves.

our fingers do not "glide" anywhere. you can get cuts/"string-burns" from pressing down too hard when shifting. cuts like those are the only reason someone's fingers will bleed, and it's rarer than you think.

upper strings are more prone to back/neck problems from the way they hold their instruments on one side. see also: shoulder pain.

finger cramps happen. they aren't too common, but most if not all strings have experienced at least one.

pianos require tuning every few years or else the chords will be out of tune. few pianists can tune their own instrument because of how complicated it is.

piano parts/accompaniments will have so. many. pages. a page turner may sit on the right of the pianist to turn the page.

woodwinds & brass

spit. so much spit. some instruments clean afterwards with a cloth; others have a spit valve which is as gross as it sounds.

proper embouchure, or how a musician uses the muscles in their face/lips, is tiring, and people actually get strong cheek muscles. they can also easily turn red, but it varies based on a person's facial complexion. see also: good lung capacity.

flute and piccolo are not dainty. piccolo requires as much air as a tuba. an old teacher of mine almost passed out playing piccolo when she was in college.

flutes and piccolos are high, but often not shrill depending on the level of the ensemble.

reeds last a few weeks (less if your character plays for hours a day) and can be expensive to buy.

keys and valves can get sticky especially on older instruments which can result in the wrong note or bad tone.

saxes, clarinets, flutes are more likely to "honk" on low notes.

oboes are more likely to feel "wispy" on high notes.

articulation comes from the tongue, especially for brass instruments, and conductors may ask for "tah" "pah" or "wah" sounds depending on the style of the piece.

percussion

callouses from the friction between hands and sticks/mallets.

there are so many types of sticks and mallets!!! make sure to take a look at what materials are good for what instruments/sounds.

cymbals, triangle, and bass drum are not easy to play, even though they look simple.

percussionists with the exception of timpani may play more than one instrument during a piece, and they're constantly moving around in the back during their rests.

percussion instruments are too expensive for most people to have everything they ever play. practice pads are very common in place of these instruments.

ability to play one instrument doesn't translate to different instruments. for example, many percussionists don't have experience playing set/drum set.

some of the things detailed here are heavily glossed over, so if you have any questions, i'd always be happy to talk about it with you; i may not have answers, but i will try to help as best i can!!!

since you read this far, have my favorite viola joke.

what's the difference between a violist and a large pizza?

a large pizza can feed a family of four :)

tagging some people who showed interest: @writing-is-a-martial-art @ashen-crest @kg-willie @owilder

[butchhamlet]

OKAY SO I GOT TO SEE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK ANDRE DE SHIELDS KING LEAR YESTERDAY AND IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING SO HERE’S A POST ABOUT THAT

first off here’s the shitty picture i took of the set! the entire thing was set in “a north african nation” (words theirs; in quotes because i don’t want to seem like they named a real one and i just didn’t bother to remember askdfhdskhfds) & the entire cast was people of color! i am staring at this picture thinking about how blurry it is but trust me that it was SO fucking cool... it was visibly gorgeous but also visibly crumbling which. like. foams at the mouth about the symbolism yknow

ALSO the winged thing is the throne! during intermission (which was after 3.6), some crew members took the wings off and laid them down at the back of the set like the whole thing had come apart, and when edmund entered in 5.1 he had a moment of staring out at the audience with his foot up on the top wing

the entire production went hard on drums; there was a note in the program about how the director wanted to center the african setting & also the rhythm; the trumpet herald at the end was replaced by drumming, and during the storm scenes, the drums represented the thunder! (complete with flashing lights for lightning; it was cool as fuck)

& now i’m gonna describe my beat-by-beat staging notes that i scribbled down from where i was sitting in the grass. no attempts to make this coherent bc the show was so fucking good and i just feel insane <3

 edmund came out in literal jade-colored glasses which felt like a WONDERFUL character bit

everyone in this cast was so well cast btw and not to be a lesbian but like. the lear sisters. 😳

they cut the cordelia asides in 1.1, which made it slightly harder to get a read on her but also made it slightly more startling when she said “nothing, my lord” (goneril and regan both got up to take a literal microphone from lear, while cordelia didn’t take it when he held it out and literally turned away to face the audience instead)

there were three little stools laid out for each sister to sit on & lear was so infuriated by what cordelia said that he started throwing them around (not at her but close)

and lear never looked particularly Legitimately Threatening (he looked very small, actually; idk how tall andre de shields is lmfao but he definitely looked like an old man), but cordelia flinched near-instinctively when he threw the stools, like this wasn’t the first time

WHEN LEAR LEFT NEAR THE END OF 1.1 GONERIL GOT UP AND SAT IN THE THRONE WHERE HE’D BEEN SITTING AND STAYED THERE WHILE SEEING CORDELIA OFF

she was also the only lear sister in a pantsuit 😳

on that note they were color-coded! goneril was dressed all in purple, regan was orange, and cordelia was pink; all of their households followed this (eg cornwall was orange, oswald was purple), but when cordelia came back in act four, it was in soldiers’ clothes without any pink on her

andre de shields lear was fucking incredible and is anyone surprised about that like he was so good

he did SO much yelling. man has some lungs on him. not even yelling words all the time but a lot of just flat-out yelling (which was alternately funny and distressing depending on the moment)

like in 1.4 he stumbled back in to deliver “50 of my followers at a clap?” heralded by his own flat-out scream which made everyone laugh a little. grandpappy off the shits

EDGAR CAME IN ON A SKATEBOARD WITH HEADPHONES ON AND WHEN HE STOPPED AND LIFTED UP HIS SKATEBOARD SHAKESPEARE’S FACE WAS ON THE BOTTOM

this edgar was so fucking perfect btw like. everything about him. i think he was my favorite part of the show

lear and his knights busted in playing loud music, waving guns, and drinking from beer cans (white claw? idk what it was i’m a weenie). lear was wearing the brightest orange shirt ive ever seen. kent received entry to the group by busting some sick moves to the music despite being an oldass man

the fool was SO fucking funny he interacted w the audience constantly and the entire time (even during the storm scene) he was lugging around a suitcase and a little folding stool

after “have more than thou showest” the audience started clapping and he looked at us and said “not yet”

and then proceeded to deliver the sweet and bitter fool speech as a full-on rap with the audience clapping the beats in after each line

at the end of which he said to us “good job! give yourselves a hand. the king’s mad at y’all now though” and then he turned around and lear had his gun aimed at him and AUDIBLY clicked the safety off and there was a tense second where the fool had to talk him down

GONERIL SLAPPED LEAR AFTER THE BARRENNESS CURSE

1.5 hurt because the fool was VERY clearly trying his best to cheer lear up, like, he kept glancing around for ideas and trying to joke while lear sat pathetically on his folding stool

the stage was outdoors (duh) and there were ramps on either side for the actors to come on and off into the crowd, and when edgar ran off, he sprinted down the ramp, then turned, sprinted BACK, hugged edmund HARD, and then ran off again and around the back of the stage

this was after edmund FULLY punched him in the face on “pardon me” :(

at the end of 2.1 edmund was the last one to file off stage and he turned and gave the audience the cheekiest shrug

edgar tripped and ate shit while he was absolutely tearing around the side of the stage for 2.3 and idk if it was on purpose but it felt in character AKHSDFKHDSSFH

he delivered “poor turlygod! poor tom!” like he was acting, and then looked up and went “that’s something” kind of like he’d just realized

the fool delivered his merlin speech like he was making it up on the fucking spot. “and then the realm of albion...” [PAUSE.] “will come... to great... con-fu-si-on” emphasizing the non-rhyme. same with the non-rhyme of “see’t” / “fee-eet.” then he looked at us and said, “i didn’t write it. ask the author” and scrambled offstage

in 3.3 gloucester hugged edmund! ...and edmund picked his pocket for his key

“nay, he reserved some white flowers in the crook of his elbow, half a pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap, else we’d all been shamed” (im filling in the wording i forgot but that’s near verbatim and i cackled out loud)

(he was, indeed, wearing nothing but some white flowers, a ragged pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap. and a lot of dirt/paint)

when gloucester entered during the hovel scene edgar was skittering across the floor and looked up and the whole set paused as they made EXTENDED eye contact and it hurt INTENSELY

and then edgar snatched gloucester’s flashlight and hurried to the opposite end of the stage to focus entirely and intently on warming his hands over it like a fire and he did not look in gloucester’s direction at all but he got VERY still when gloucester mentioned him

i made an AUDIBLE noise when lear stabbed the fool. like. i knew it was a possible staging but it happened so fast and so viciously that it caught me totally off guard

and edgar got the “i’ll go to bed at noon” line :(

genuinely it is hard to emphasize how perfect this edgar was. how do i kin a character but just one specific version of that character that i saw one time

(intermission happened here!)

while interrogating gloucester, cornwall was very deliberately putting on medical gloves and then he picked up a power drill and my friend and i in the audience looked at each other exactly like the fucking monkey puppet image

however. only one eye went out with the power drill. because regan took the other one out WITH HER NAILS in a fit of rage when her husband was injured. full on stuck her hand into his eye socket

goneril and edmund kissed for a LONG long moment in 4.2. long enough that oswald coughed pointedly. which did not stop or affect them

gloucester tried to pay edgar and edgar immediately turned around and chucked the payment off stage

gloucester used a cane the whole show and he dropped it off the “cliff” before he fell, and edgar swooped down and silently caught it and held it for a moment before he let it clatter to the floor

at this point he was also wearing leggings and like. three mismatched layers of flannels and jackets

lear came out in act four in a tropical dress, white face/chest paint, and a flower/fruit hat

he threw money into the crowd multiple times during his speech, including one point where he specifically leaned over the edge of the stage, motioned at the closest audience member, said, “come here,” and then threw money at them

he also mooned the guards who came to get him

and nearly hugged someone in the crowd while the guards tried to drag his half-tranquilized body away

oswald was so fucking funny for the entire play. so funny. in 1.4 he came in with goneril and pointed at lear with the air of a small child tattling to the teacher; when kent attacked him he fell on the ground whimpering;  he came in to kill gloucester a moment before lear left and ducked back into the wings FAST before creeping out again

when the guards brought lear and cordelia in, someone set out the fool’s little folding chair, and cordelia ended up sitting on it during lear’s speech :( felt very my-poor-fool-is-hanged y’know

curan from 2.1 was the captain in 5.1! so he & edmund already had a bit of a relationship established

REGAN THREW HER WINE IN GONERIL’S FACE WHILE THEY FOUGHT OVER EDMUND

edgar and edmund dueled with two swords each

AND WHEN HE WAS INJURED AND ALBANY CALLED THEM BOTH OUT. GONERIL TOOK EDMUND’S SWORD AND WENT AT ALBANY WITH IT AND NEARLY GOT HIM BEFORE RUNNING OFFSTAGE

they cut “yet edmund is beloved” which is always a cardinal sin HOWEVER when he got the news about regan and goneril edmund stabbed himself which. pain and suffering!

much like albany himself, i literally forgot about lear and cordelia because i was so enthralled by gloucester brothers duel like. i was so caught up in the agony of edgar killing edmund that i forgot the other fucking bomb that had to drop and it was like getting bricked in the face

my last note literally reads “cannot believe i forgot abt the other bomb to drop jesus christ i hate this shit ass bitch ass play it really just fucking ends like that huh fuck off”

it was the first time i’ve ever seen live shakespearean theater and it literally could not have been better and i am terminally insane now.

[booksforevermore13]

I know now

Summary: Harry heaved in a breath, and looked at her, this time seeing her for herself, and not the little girl he had gotten used to in his mind.

"I know now," he said.

And Lily smiled.

Read it on AO3 if you prefer.

...

"I learnt about fishes today." Harry heard Lily's voice and turned to look at her.

A smile tugged at his lips as he saw the small, though hazy figure of his daughter by the edge of the bed, red hair bundled on her head in an angry halo as she tugged her dress further down her knees.

One hand reached out beside him to find his glasses, flailing around when he felt a pair being gently put over his eyes. Harry kissed Lily's hands, brushing his beard against her palm and smiling as she giggled.

"Now, about the fishes," he started as Lily climbed up on the bed and crawled onto his stomach, Harry holding her by her side to keep her steady.

"I saw a movie today," she said, "about Dory. And Nemo. But I liked Dory the best," and Harry nodded, though he hadn't the slightest idea what she was saying. "Dory is blue in colour and she has yellow fins, like the yellow of the sun and she can breathe in water and make whale sounds, like this." She oohed and Harry laughed as she oohed until she lost her breath.

"Dory sounds good," he said seriously, lips set in a half-smile.

"I think she's really pretty. Even prettier than Mummy."

"Then I bet she's good."

"Mummy said so too. She said I was right."

Lily smiled triumphantly, and Harry smiled back, gently stroking her hair out of her bun. Lily hated her hair like that, but at three, it had grown past her shoulders, and Ginny had resorted to tying it every morning before school.

Lily didn't like that either.

"Daddy," she called now and Harry's eyes left her hair and settled on her.

"Hmm?"

"Can you make me Dory?"

"Make you - wait, what?"

Lily looked expectantly at him and he stared blankly back at her as he fumbled with what she said.

"Dory's a fish, Lils," he said after a while. "I don't think anyone can be Dory."

"But you can do anything," she protested. "And Mummy always says anyone can be anything they want."

And that was what Lily asked. Never an extra side of ice-cream or a piece of fudge in the middle of the night. A few months back, she'd asked him to turn her into a tiger. The month after, she'd wanted to be a princess. He'd agreed gladly to that, before she'd proposed he turn into a frog so that she could kiss him and he'd turn into a prince.

Now, it was Dory, the blue fish.

It seemed as if she took Ginny's advice most literally.

He was tempted to turn her down, at least the logical part of him did, but then he looked at her and saw the way she was staring at him, with that hopeful glint in her eyes and almost immediately knew she'd won.

She always did.

It wasn't a surprise when an hour later, when they looked into the mirror, they met with a disgruntled orange dad carrying his elated blue daughter, yet, both of them happy.

Dory and Nemo indeed.

...

"Think you can catch up, old man?" Lily said as she took off after the Snitch, her hair flying behind her, like her mother's had, years before. Harry watched with a smile as she flipped her broom in the air, hands steady as she shot off again in typical Weasley fashion. He had to warn her about that, but part of him — the part that defended his children from his wife after a poorly executed prank — knew she had it handled.

It was only after James had hollered at him to get moving, did he realize that he had to catch the Snitch too. "Sorry," he yelled as he took off behind Lily, searching for that familiar golden glint of light he'd gotten used to over the years before realising there wasn't any to follow.

He slowed down. A Wronski Feint, she'd been attempting and almost succeeded in pulling off.

She'd almost got him.

Almost.

"Why are you slowing down?" James yelled from his Keeper post as he dashed to block a Quaffle. Instead of kicking it away from him, he caught it, turned around and put it through the hoop.

Cheating it was, him playing Keeper and Chaser at the same time, but there were only four players, and his children were set on making it as realistic as possible.

Harry only smiled knowingly at James, the Dad-smile, the one that his children hated, before he heard Lily yell and took a sharp turn to face her.

She was holding something, something small and grinning widely and as Harry squinted, he saw a golden object in her fist, wings folded as it struggled against her grasp, a futile attempt to get out, as every Seeker knew.

"Wha—"

"Yes, Lily!" Albus yelled, before he even had a second to register his disbelief. He whooped and stuck out his tongue at James. "Take that, you oaf!"

"Oh, shut up," James muttered as his glare turned to Harry. "I swear Dad, if you took it easy on her—"

"I didn't!" Harry defended. "There - I thought - there wasn't any Snitch when I followed her!"

"What's she holding now, a trumpet?"

"Yeah I transfigured it into a Snitch," Lily said sarcastically from behind Harry and he could hear the distinct flutter of a Snitch caught. "Look around, you'll probably see the real one behind your shoulder.

Albus was laughing hysterically on his broom while they fought and Harry had a distinct feeling that there was something else going on between them three. He watched them for a few seconds, before turning to Lily.

"How did you do that?" he asked her, glancing yet again at the Snitch in her hand.

Lily shrugged, an arrogant smirk plastered on her face as her eyes gleamed with what he knew was glee. A smile made his way on his face as he took in her stance, one he'd seen many times before.

James yelled behind him, breaking through his reverie and Harry turned around, just barely catching him pass over a coin to his brother.

"You had bets?" he asked incredulously and Albus slipped the coin in his pocket with a sheepish grin.

"I thought that was obvious," Lily said flippantly from behind him and Harry frowned.

"What were you betting on?"

"Which of you'd catch the snitch first," James said, "thanks Dad. Really appreciate it."

"Your welcome," Lily piped in again and James glared at her. "What?" she defended, "everyone here knows I'm the only one here who can beat him."

"Bollocks."

"Yeah?" Lily mocked and Harry chuckled as he watched James rise up to the challenge, not long before they were yelling at each other, mostly led by James and Lily with the occasional comment from Albus that fuelled their entire brawl.

It'd take their mother to make them stop.

He laughed out loud when he saw Ginny walk outside with a chocolate covered spatula and brandish it at the three of them as she yelled something he couldn't hear.

He had been right.

Harry flew towards the ground, landing on his feet a few metres away from his wife. He smiled as he saw her turn to face him.

"Lily caught it," he announced, entirely unaware of himself and watched as Ginny smiled in amusement and turned away from him.

"Didn't expect that, did you?"

"Absolutely not."

They walked into the house, Ginny heading towards the kitchen and Harry following her. He watched her for a while as she bustled about, taking out the eggs from the fridge and flour from the cabinet, attempting to open the sugar with one hand before Harry did it for her.

"Where are they?" he asked after a second, noting the absence of his children hovering around the kitchen.

"The boys are upstairs," Ginny stated, "Lils said she'll be at Luna's. Said she had some work."

"Work?"

"Yes, well, we both know what work she actually has."

Ginny looked up at him, grinning. First year off at Hogwarts and Lily had stepped out the train with her three newly indicted friends, two of them being her cousins. The Marauders, they called themselves. The two years that had followed, they'd only grown closer, choosing to spend all their time together, Luna's house being their place.

Mostly because she never interfered.

Harry had only grown to notice the striking similarity they had to the original four.

"It's an acquired name, but I don't think they'll mind," Ginny said softly and Harry laughed, recognizing the words Lily had said the day she'd come back from Hogwarts.

"They won't," he agreed. "They'd be proud, actually."

He dipped one finger in the batter, laughing as Ginny swatted it off.

"Are you upset?" she teased as she continued mixing the batter with her spatula.

"About what?"

"Third time this week you couldn't catch the snitch" she pointed out and Harry laughed.

Five years ago, he'd been the one teaching Lily how to catch a snitch. How the roles had reversed.

"She's clever, I'll give you that," Harry said. "Though I can't fathom how she managed to hide the Snitch from me."

"She didn't," Ginny said with a smile. "I thought you of all people wouldn't fall for that."

"What do you mean?"

Harry waited for her answer but then frowned as he saw her smile fall.

"Nothing," she replied finally and sighed. "One day you'll realise she's more like you than you'll ever know."

He didn't know what Ginny was hinting at. It had become obvious over the months that he was struggling, reaching out to Lily. At fourteen, it seemed whatever he said, it wasn't enough to understand her. His own daughter was a mystery to him, and sometimes he envied Ron for the easy understanding he had with Rose.

"I don't get it," Harry muttered as he slipped her hands around Ginny's waist, bringing her back closer to his chest. He bent forward, pressing his lips below her ear and Ginny smiled sadly.

"I hope you don't mind getting flour on that shirt."

Harry didn't answer, and Ginny arched her neck to look at him. "You're going to tell me what you're thinking?" she asked, and he smiled down at her as he saw her eyes shrouded with concern. Even after all these years, she knew exactly what he was feeling, every time.

He shook his head and Ginny turned around, Harry's arms still around her.

"I don't know her anymore," he admitted. "Not like-not like I did back then." He sighed. "I don't think I even know what her favourite colour is now," he said, looking down at his wife.

"It's still green, I can tell you. Green like the forest—"

"After the rain," Harry finished and laughed.

He remembered when Lily had said that for the first time. She was three, her biggest fascination then, being his eyes. He remembered how she had begged him one day to change her brown eyes to his green, and he'd wondered why. Her eyes were the most exquisite ones he'd seen, exactly like her mother's, but apparently, the three year old thought differently. He'd taken her to the forest the next day and told her to choose a leaf, any leaf so that he could transfigure it to something she'd be able to keep with her always. He'd not expected her to choose the entire forest, and Harry had simply smiled then at the innocence with which she'd looked at him.

"She's going to be seventeen soon," he said finally. "She's not… my little girl anymore."

"Yet she still looks at you like she's three."

"And I hope that never changes."

...

Ginny was outside. He knew she could listen to each and every word he said. He looked across him at Lily, and then back at the ground again.

This was not for Lily.

She was not made for the Ministry. She was not supposed to be an Auror.

How was Ginny not seeing this?

How had she accepted it so easily?

Twenty-five years ago, when he'd walked into the Ministry, he'd vowed that things would change. They had to at that time.

Fifteen years later, he'd found himself vowing he'd not let his children suffer the same fate he had had. That he'd not let them become a pawn of the Ministry.

To his credit, he'd succeeded.

Three years ago, when James decided to become a Curse Breaker, he'd felt the relief that one felt after a hard job well done. One year later, when Albus claimed his dreams of becoming a Healer, he'd been satisfied. He had been so sure he'd saved them from a miserable future.

Harry had never expected his youngest to say those words.

"Dad," Lily urged now. "Dad."

Harry looked up from the floor, and met with his daughter's eyes, carrying a look he'd seen many times before. It was the look she had before she caught the Snitch, the one she'd had when she'd asked him to turn her into Dory so many years ago.

It was when she was unstoppable.

"How'd it come to this, Lils?" Harry asked. "Why an Auror? I always thought you wanted to play Quidditch. Like your mum."

What had gone wrong?

"That was when I was eleven, Dad," Lily said, and he had that unworldly feeling that he had let her down. "I'm seventeen now. I know what I want to do."

"No you don't, Lils," he said. "The Ministry isn't what it was before. It isn't—"

"You don't think I know that?" Lily said quietly, and he could see the anger flashing in her eyes.

She knew that. She'd known that for years now.

She'd been on the receiving side of it.

Four years back, when she'd needed help, the Ministry hadn't given it.

Four years back, when she'd been cornered by Dementors in broad daylight, the Ministry hadn't come to her rescue.

He remembered the muffled cries he'd heard from her room that night, cries she'd tried hard to suppress, but hadn't been able to. She'd been the witness to the work of a Dementor. An innocent Muggle being a victim. He knew she blamed herself. For not being able to produce a Patronus. For not being able to save a person who'd only ever tried to help.

He'd failed in protecting her.

And she'd paid the price.

Eleven years back and it had happened again.

She had a friend. Julian. He remembered him. When they were seven, they liked to play in the pond at the back of their house, pretending to be frogs turned into princes. He remembered how the cookies vanished when they were together, how the swing he'd tied to the poplar tree in their garden was reserved only for them.

That day Ginny had had to go out, so Lily had gone over to play with him.

Harry had always known his work would one day catch up with him.

Just never like this.

When he'd got that message from Ginny, her horse prancing around the room in a panicked gallop, he knew it had happened. When he Apparated into their house, Julian's parents were the first thing he saw. Lying on the floor, victims of the killing curse.

But nothing could have prepared him from what he saw upstairs.

Julian's body. His eyes gazing into the ceiling, his hands which had never stayed still before, lying limp on the ground. It was very much unlike the sandy-haired boy he'd grown accustomed to see during the weekends, sitting opposite to him in the kitchen as he helped himself to Ginny's pancakes.

Beside him, Lily lay on her mother's lap, sobbing into her shirt, but refusing to leave Julian's side. He could hear her incoherent cries, her mumbles as she repeated a phrase over and over again.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

And his heart broke, because his little girl had seen something no child should ever have to see.

Because she'd watched her friend die.

Because he'd failed again.

And she'd paid the price.

Lily knew the Ministry — better than even he did — how they chose whom to save, how they chose whom they forgot, their cases never to be heard of again. How the Ministry had slowly lost sight of what they were fighting for. How it was just a crumbling shell in the place of what it had once been.

And even though it was the most daunting thing he'd ever admitted to himself, deep down, he knew that Lily was wired to this. Just like he'd been at her age, this was what she knew she wanted to do.

But unlike him, he knew she'd succeed in what he failed.

And even though he didn't understand, he knew he didn't have a choice.

"I always thought you wanted to be a Quidditch player," he said, and Lily smiled, her eyes tired. As if she was tired of fighting for herself.

But he knew she still had fight left.

"I think you lost me there on the way," she replied finally and Harry smiled.

"Yeah. Yeah, I probably did."

"One day you'll realise she's more like you than you'll ever know."

He'd never understand, but he'd try.

He'd vowed he'd never let his children do the same mistakes he had, but perhaps, that vow had been more for him than it was for them. And in the end, he knew that him being an Auror had only fueled the fire he'd begun to see in his daughter.

Perhaps, him being an Auror hadn't been a mistake at all.

If that's what she wanted to be.

"You know, Dad," Lily said, and Harry, for a second there, saw a hint of fear in her eyes but didn't know what it was for. "I don't exactly need your permission."

"I know you don't."

"I'd just really like you to know."

Harry nodded, his green eyes glinting with unshed tears. Green like the forest a rainy day, she'd said. Green like his.

Because if there was one thing he'd always known about his daughter, it was that she knew him. That even when he'd lacked in being a father to her at times, she'd never lost sight of him.

Even when he hadn't listened to her present.

But he'd listen to her now. He'd do for her what he should have done years back.

Listen.

So he smiled because he'd lost her there, but never completely. Because she was his daughter. Because she was his to protect and let go.

Because she was more like him than he'd ever know.

Harry heaved in a breath, and looked at her, this time seeing her for herself, and not the little girl he had gotten used to in his mind.

"I know now," he said.

And Lily smiled.

...

Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition

Huge, huge thanks to my teammates for beta-ing!!

[hufflepuffhermione]

43 for the prompts? Thanks :)

Prompt: “I feel like I can’t breathe.”

Am I overly emotion about the parallels between Rosslyn and Gaza? Absolutely. So what can I do but make everyone else partake in my suffering?

You never really realize the things you take for granted until suddenly they’re stolen from you.

Breath, for one.

Josh wonders if he’d ever given his breathing a second thought before all of this. Maybe during all those meetings with Hoynes jogging along the Potomac, but even his gasps for air were unconsciously displaced by his mind going a million miles a minute on policy or strategy. Maybe, further back, when he had played the trumpet in his high school band for all of three weeks, until he realized that it reminded him too much of Joanie and quit without a word in hopes that he might remember less. They had told him to be consciously aware of his breathing back then, in the hot, windowless band room filled with kids who didn’t appreciate the music the way Joanie did. Maybe the last time he consciously considered his breathing was even before then, when he had been all of eight and his lungs had been filled with smoke and he hadn’t been able to stop coughing. But even then, it hadn’t been something he thought about; he had been too consumed with watching everything he knew in life go down in flames and trying to find Joanie within the chaos. He had failed her, but he could still breathe, so how could he complain about his own shortness of breath when there was no longer air in Joanie’s lungs?

But now? Breathing is about all he can think about.

His pain medication has worn off just enough to allow him to drift into consciousness, so the pain is not awful, at least not compared to how it was when he drifted off however many hours ago. The medication, however, is not at all effective in disgusting the tightness in his chest, or the shallowness of his breath, or the lightheadedness he feels because he’s definitely not getting enough oxygen.

It takes him a minute to realize why everything feels so off, but when he focuses enough to realize just how difficult it is to breathe, he begins to panic. His breaths grow even faster and shallower, and one of the many monitors begins to beep incessantly, and his mind is too addled by drugs to notice Donna until she comes to stand over him and clutches the hand that doesn’t have IV tubes coming out of it. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

He blinks back tears. Where did those come from? In the two days since he woke up from his surgery, he hasn’t cried at all. If he had the capacity to be embarrassed or frustrated, he would have been, but he can’t think about anything else than his struggle to get air into his lungs.

“I feel like I can’t breathe,” he whispers. His voice is still raspy from the ventilator that he was on during surgery; this is probably the longest sentence he’s spoken since he woke up.

“I know,” Donna says. “Your lung collapsed and they had to repair it, that’s why.” She squeezes his hand.

He looks up at her with panicked desperation.

“I called the nurse,” Donna continues. Josh is reassured by the sounds of her voice; if she keeps talking, maybe the panic of breathlessness will go away. “They said they might need to switch you to an oxygen mask for a little while. But that’s okay, it’ll help you breathe better. Just breathe with me if you can.”

Josh still can’t do anything but stare at her. He’s not sure that she’s gone home since he was shot; his memory is still fuzzy, but he thinks the clothes she is wearing are the same that he saw when he first woke. He wonders how long it’s been. She has bags under her eyes and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, a tell-tale sign that she hasn’t washed it in a while, but in his drugged mind, she’s never been more beautiful. Her chest rises and falls steadily, and unconsciously, he tries to match her breathing. He can’t exactly, since something in his chest keeps hitching and he keeps beginning to hyperventilate, but as long as he keeps focused on watching her breathe, it suddenly doesn’t seem so hard to get air into his lungs.

A nurse comes in and checks his oxygen levels, frowning as she moves around her bed. “Mr. Lyman, are you having trouble breathing?”

Josh summons all the energy he can to nod.

“He woke up and started to panic and I think that’s making it worse,” Donna explains, still not letting go of Josh’s hand.

The nurse nods and moves around the bed. “Your O2 levels are low, so I’m going to switch you to an oxygen mask, okay?”

He feels like he’s about to drift off again, too tired to fight against his breathlessness, when the removal of his cannula suddenly makes it even harder to fight for oxygen. The difficulty is relieved quickly after by the placement of an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth, but this induces a sense of claustrophobia that seems to increase the panic rather than relieve it.

“Josh,” he hears, and he thinks it’s coming from Donna but his brain is so fuzzy he can’t quite be sure. “I know it’s hard, but can you keep breathing with me?” She takes in a loud, deep breath and exhales slowly. “Just try to breathe with me.”

It’s a little easier now that he has more oxygen, and as he focuses on matching Donna’s breathing, he can begin to feel the panic melt away.

She reaches out to stroke his sweat-beaded forehead. “It’s going to get easier,” she says. “I promise. We’re just going to breathe through it.”

-

Donna blinks against the light steaming in through the blinds. God, she aches everywhere, although her leg throbs with a vengeance unmatched by the rest of her body. But worse than any of that is the tightness in her chest, the difficulty of getting air into her lungs.

She reaches for the morphine clicker and presses the button; she’s not sure how long she’s been out, but surely it’s been long enough for her to have another dose.

That won’t help with the breathing, though.

She looks to the figure in the chair by her bed. He’s asleep in a position which cannot possibly be comfortable, but he’s here. How is he here, all the way in Germany? He shouldn’t be here, he should be in DC. Surely the President needs him.

But Josh is here.

It takes a minute for her to remember that he had been here before, too, the minute she had first woken up. How had he managed that? Why did he bother?

She tries to take in another breath, but starts coughing instead, a painful, sharp cough that seems to tear at her insides.

Josh is up in an instant, on his feet, his eyes meeting hers. “Donna,” he says, and she’s certain she’s never heard her name spoken so softly, so reverently. “Donna, do you need something?”

“I feel…” she stars, and it strikes her just how difficult it is to get the words out when she doesn’t have enough breath, “I feel like I can’t breathe.”

Josh’s face falls, but he tries to disguise it as best he can. “Yeah. They said you’ve got a collapsed lung, that’s why it’s so hard to breathe,” he said. “It’s not too bad, though; you didn’t need surgery for it and it’ll reinflate in the next few days.” He cracks a smile at her, although she can tell it’s taking everything in him. “If your goal was to outdo me, Donnatella, I think I’ve got you beat since they had to go in and patch up my lung when it collapsed.”

Donna manages a ghost of a smile, but it disappears when she tries to take in another breath and feels like she can’t get any air.

Noting the distress on her face, Josh takes her hand. “Hey, it’s going to be okay, alright? I know better than anyone how much this sucks. It’ll suck for a few days or weeks, and it might even feel worse when they bring in a respiratory therapist to torture you, but I’m not going to let you slack off on your breathing exercises because you never let me.”

Josh settles himself on the side of the bed, deciding the chair is not nearly close enough. He still hasn’t shaved and his pallor might best be described as ‘gray’, and Donna wonders if she looked that bad after spending days without leaving the hospital when their roles were reversed. Her thoughts are interrupted again by the panic rising up in her when she tries to take a deep breath.

“Hey, I know you don’t think I remember this,” Josh continues, “but when I woke up and couldn’t breathe, you did it for me. Not literally, but you told me to breathe with you and that kept me calm enough to avoid completely panicking. So I’m going to breathe in and out slowly, and try your best to do it with me. It might hurt and you might not be able to do it, and that’s okay, but here.” He takes a sharp, loud inhale, and follows it with a slow exhale. “Breathe through it, Donna. It’s going to be okay.”

-

Having a private office to change in is really quite a step up from changing in the dingy West Wing bathrooms. She’s wearing a new dress, one Josh gave her at Christmas (although she suspects he might have asked CJ for some help picking it out). She notices, with a tug of her heart, that the slit goes up the left side of the dress, and it is otherwise not short enough to reveal her scars. That, she’s sure, was something that Josh thought of.

The first state dinner of the Santos administration is upon them, with the Prime Minister of Germany as the guest of honor. She knows Josh is a little nervous about the event—he had a run-in with the Prime Minister back when he was Deputy Chief of Staff that did not go so well—but he’s matured and she hopes that all will be forgotten.

She pulls on her heels, takes a minute to steady herself, and heads towards Josh’s office. One of these days, she’ll make him come over to her office so she doesn’t have to make this trek in heels, but she knows that he’s barely got time to breathe, let alone walk across the building.

Donna knocks on the door to his office and enters, grinning as she does.

He holds up a finger without even looking up to see who it is. “Sorry, just gotta finish reading this,” he mutters.

She rolls her eyes, but allows an indulgent smile that he won’t see. He works so hard, but he really is trying to make time for her. He’s already dressed in his tuxedo, although his jacket is lying on the couch in the corner, and his bowtie is, unsurprisingly, hanging undone around his neck.

Finally, he stands up from his desk and really begins to take her in. “Donna, you look…” He shakes his head, and clutches his hands to his chest dramatically, collapsing back into the chair. “God, Donna, I feel like I can’t breathe?”

“What? What’s wrong?” Donna asks immediately, her mind running through all of the horrific possibilities before she can manage to notice that he has a smile on his face. “Is it your lungs? Your heart? Josh…” She realizes she’s standing right next to him, clutching his hand, and he’s grinning up at her.

“I was going to say, I feel like I can’t breathe because you take my breath away, but you didn’t let me get that far,” Josh replies, chuckling.

Donna frowns. “You were so dramatic about it, I thought…”

“What can I say? I enjoy being a little dramatic from time to time.”

“It’s just… Josh, don’t do that to me again. You scared me?”

His face softens. “I scared you?”

“I don’t know, it’s just… the last time you said that was after you’d been shot, and I thought…” she shakes her head as if the memory will dissipate. “And then you were clutching your chest…” She doesn’t want to think about it anymore, but there’s a part of her that will never not be worried about him.

Josh stands up and wraps his arms around her. “I’m sorry, I really wasn’t trying to scare you.”

“I know,” Donna says.

“The compliment still stands, though. You look incredible in that dress,” he says. “I mean, I think you’d look even better out of it, but I’m not sure the Prime Minister of Germany would agree with me.”

Donna reaches to his shoulders and takes the ends of his bowtie in her hands. “Need me to do this?”

“Always,” Josh replies.

She steps back and takes a look at her handiwork. “You know, once in a while, you look good enough to take my breath away too. In the best way possible.”

“I can think of another way to take your breath away,” Josh says, reaching forward to take her face in his hands and kiss her until they both have to come up for air. “Was that good?”

“All of a sudden, I think I like feeling like I can’t breathe,” Donna teases, before going back for more.

[sergeant-donny-donowitz]

Notes through Cigarette Smoke (DonnyxReader)

Inspired by @dogwoodphoenixil‘s  post

@owba-chan @inglourious-imagines @war-obsessed

Let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist! :)

You walked home from work that day... The war was over... Every single day, from the moment Donny left, you ran home, hoping to find a letter. Every once in a blue moon, you'd get one. Obviously, being part of an elite squad deep undercover behind enemy lines limited what he could write, and how often. But when he did, you treasured those letters, and held them so close to your heart... You'd read over them so often, you knew them word for word. But, that letter... very last letter...That last letter was the reason you walked home when everyone else ran to the docks, the streets, the airports, the phones, celebrating and waiting. You weren't sure what to expect. Though, you braced yourself for the worst. That last letter came about a week before the war's end. Donny made it clear he was going to end the war. He promised. And when Donny Donowitz made a promise, you better believe he was gonna keep it. But... He also said it was a dangerous mission. Maybe the most dangerous he’d ever been on. He said even if the war ended, he couldn't promise he'd come home. All he could promise was that it would be over soon, that he loved you, and that  he’d give anything to see you again... You sighed, and set your keys on the kitchen counter. You unrolled your sleeves, and opened the top button of your work shirt. You were covered in sweat and soot, just like every other day after work. You'd been working in the factories, making ammunitions and parts for guns and machines boys like Donny had to use. You mechanically went through the motions, day in and day out, sunrise to sunset, year after year...waiting for it to end some day. Waiting for Donny... And he promised it would end... And it turned out, he kept his promise. All anyone could talk about was the end of the war. You couldn't blame them. You couldn't blame anyone. But what you wouldn't give to be with them, on the streets, waiting for Donny to come home. You didn't know whether he was or wasn't. You sighed,  poured yourself a shot of bourbon, and leaned over the sink, not knowing what to believe... It had been so long...what would you say? What would you do?! And if...if that day never came, what would you do? He'd been your best friend since the two of you could talk. He'd been the love of your life since you were running around... You couldn't remember a time in your life without Donny before the war. And it had just been so hard. But you always had that hope that he'd come home some day. Now you didn't even have that... Your tears dripped into the sink, and you flung the glass of bourbon against the wall. You stared down at the running water, sobbing, but no sound came out. You didn't know what to think anymore. Where would you be without him? Who were you without Donny? How could he do this to you... At least... You looked down at the clear water... At least, you sighed softly, he did what he always needed and wanted to do. He took down Hitler. You splashed some of the water on your face... You could hear him now. "Don't cry for me, doll..." It wasn't what he would have wanted... You wandered aimlessly into your living room. Pictures of you and Donny going back over twenty years were hung around the room. There were pictures of you, laughing as toddlers, back in preschool, barely able to say each others names, but able to show how much you meant to each other with a hug. Pictures of you, at each other's games. He always did love baseball... You grew out of it.  There was a picture of you in high school, where he'd dragged you to a Red Sox game. The only reason you didn't regret going was because that was where you had your first kiss... There was a picture of him dropping you off for your first day of college.... and then one of him picking you up a week later. Literally picking you up, and swinging you around. You used to come home every weekend, but the days you were gone were just so boring without you... There were a few pictures of you together in the summer of 1942... You'd just graduated by then. And Donny had been drafted.  You spent as much time together as possible. And some snippets of that unforgettable summer were immortalized in black and white. The last two pictures you’d put up were taken during the last twenty four hours you spent together... The night before Donny shipped out to bootcamp, he took you out on a date. A nice, proper date. You two didn't do that often. Usually you went out to the docks, or the beach, or downtown. But he took you out... He dressed up, you dressed up. It was nice... You talked, and talked, and talked that last night, until you fell asleep in his arms, and he slept safe and warm one last time... The final picture... You slowly picked that frame off the wall, looked at it with a sigh and smiled softly, as a tear streamed down your cheek. You couldn't help it... It had been your very first day working in the factory. You ran home. You hoped, and cried, thinking you wouldn't catch Donny before he left... He was just locking the door when you ran up the steps, and tripped. He caught you... Just barely...as you caught him one last time. You were in your jumpsuit, work boots, and still wearing your work apron. He smiled softly as he picked you up, "You ok, baby?" You weren't sure... On the one hand, you were proud of him. Especially as you eyed that baseball bat he just got everyone to write names on... Words could never be enough to tell him just how much he meant to you, and everyone who’d written on the bat. On the other hand...you weren't ready to say goodbye. But you realized he meant if you were ok after tripping. You looked up at him, and sighed with a smile... It would do no good to either of you to cry, to beg for him to stay... So you nodded, 'Better than ever, Don...' Only you could ever have gotten away with calling him that. He kissed you, one last time that day. Because he didn't know if or when he'd ever get to do it again... You set the picture down on the coffee table, and walked over to the radio. You switched it on, hoping to hear something that might be able to ease your soul. Instead, all you heard was an announcer saying, "We have very few details on the military operative that killed Hitler, and a majority of his high command. Tune in tomorrow night, same time and station for more details!" You turned the dial incessantly, hoping some faceless voice would be able to give you some sort of closure. You didn't get any... You flipped to a random station, and heard a beautiful set of trumpets playing... The song had been playing often lately. You always thought it was a lovely song, but it never hit you as hard as it did in that moment.... It really had been a long, long time... You opened a drawer, and pulled out Donny's final letter, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. You had the radio just loud enough to hear the song play as you sat on the porch. All you knew was the war was over, Donny was sure he'd kill HItler... And if you knew Donny, he was like Icarus... You sat there, reading, and re-reading the lines you'd memorized over sleepless nights, as you puffed on a cigarette. You took a breath of fresh air, and glanced ahead. The porch of your house faced east. Just a few blocks away, there was the ocean. And just beyond the ocean, soldiers were lining up, waiting to be home. Flyboys would be zooming over the Atlantic. Sailors would be navigating their way back... Not all of them were so lucky... And you were worrying ceaselessly. What if Donny was one of Boston’s unfortunate sons? You lit another cigarette, your eyes resting on the words, though you weren't reading them. Your mind repeated them over and over, in Donny's voice... You could still hear It's Been A Long, Long Time playing... Each word was becoming heavier and heavier in your heart... You breathed smoke out...looking down at the letter through the haze, and the music echoing through the smoke... It was then that the distant ode to homeward soldiers, and the song of lonesome crickets were joined by a third melody. "You ok, baby?" Your heart stopped... You dropped the letter. You dropped your cigarette. Half of you couldn't believe it... The other half of you begged for it to be more than a love-sick delusion. You managed to get to your knees, tears streaming down your face. Donny dropped his bat... The thump sounded distant, almost like an echo... Everything seemed so surreal in that moment... Donny held you in his arms... There you stood under the stars, just like you did all those years ago. Both of you in your uniforms... Both of you holding onto each other, eyes promising everyhing would be ok. And it was...

Donny held the sides of your face in his hands, and he kissed you. The world was full of light, the sky full of stars, the music was as clear as day... 'Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again, it's been a long, long time...'

[jjkfire]

jungkook x reader // athlete!jungkook, marchingband!oc // 6.8k words 

don’t read further if you hate unfinished fics.

Band is lame

Is what everyone had told you in high school but here you are, front row and centre at your university’s football game and for free at that too. Who’s the loser now? You laugh to yourself, looking towards the crowd, sure that at least one or two of your high school mates were somewhere in there too, probably a little upset that they had to pay for an extremely overpriced ticket to get seats to the game.

Of course, being in the band comes with its downsides because you have to be up at 5am for practice on game day, and you would have to stay way past the final whistle too. The band are the first ones to walk on the field and the last ones to leave the field but honestly, it’s worth it because nothing beats marching out of the tunnel on a game day, the roaring cheers from the fans near deafening for when the band takes the field, it means that it’s go time, that game day has officially begun. The cherry on top though, is that you get to be as close as anyone possibly could get to the football team, standing next to them, playing the school’s fight song at the end of the game as the players stay back to thank the fans for coming.

It’s bit of a change for you, getting a reaction that’s somewhere between awe & jealousy instead of disinterest whenever the fact that you’re in the school’s marching band comes up. Along with that reaction though, comes a question that nobody fails to ask and that would be:

What’s Jungkook like in person?

Ah, Jungkook. It’s no doubt that the freshman Jeon Jungkook had taken the university and even nation by storm. He’s the newly inducted running back for your university’s football team and boy does he live up to his position’s name. In all the games he has played, he’s managed to gain an unfathomable amount of yardage, sometimes taking the ball all the way to the end zone himself. His ability to break tackles, to burst down the field with an insane amount of speed made him an undeniable asset to the team. He’s the best freshman player in the conference, voted rightfully so 5 times in a row now so you don’t blame anyone for asking you about him because heck, even you were curious about him.  

Well, anyway, the answer to the ever-popular question would be that you had absolutely no idea because you’ve seen him in person, yeah, mere inches away from you but it wasn’t like you had time to stop to talk to him, to ask him what his favourite colour was or anything of the sort. But for conversation sake, your answer would always be the same and you’d smile before you shrug, saying:

He’s pretty cool, I guess.

Because, that he is… and nobody knows it but you’re just as star struck as everyone whenever you see him, even if you do see him just about every other week. You let people think he knows you, a harmless little white lie for a few brownie points, but the fact of the matter is, he doesn’t know your name and probably never will because there are more than 100 students on the band and you were merely just one out of the thousands of faces he’d see every home game… right?

Wrong.

So very wrong.

Game 6 of the season is one that’s highly anticipated, a match against the defending champions of the national playoffs. You can feel the excitement in the air as you march out onto the field, the stadium packed to the brim, the fullest you’ve ever seen it, the cheers the loudest you’ve ever heard.

It’s a tight game and along with the crowd, you’re biting your nails as the score is at a tie. With only a few minutes to go and the ball in the opponent’s possession, everyone’s holding their breath, hoping to take it to overtime or to turn things around somehow.

Perhaps you wished hard enough because there’s a slip up and a player in your university’s defensive line is able to steal the ball, running towards the opposite side of the field but he only gets so far before he’s taken down. The team switches out for the offensive team, Jungkook stepping up to the plate, and you can feel the stadium as a collective begin to silently hope that he’d be able to bring the ball close to the end of the field but that would be an enormous feat, way too much to ask of the young boy, isn’t it?

There’s the sound of a whistle before a few vague words are being shouted out on the field and you watch as the players scuffle amongst each other, the ball miraculously finding its way into Jungkook’s hands amidst the commotion. Everyone squints, trying to make out what’s happening on the field and then they see it, a player breaking out from the makeshift initial line of players, hurtling down towards the end. The team jumps into action, taking down any opponents attempting to stop him and even with that, there’s still 2, 3 players who go after him, trying to bring him down with a tackle but he remains standing, breaking all their attempts with ease.

It’s Jungkook with the carry. Can he take it the distance???

With only one player chasing after him, the stadium rises to their feet watching nervously as his opponent catches up, closing in on him.

A loose grab on the ankle, a light stumble but it’s not enough to stop him because he powers on, running clear into the end zone painted in bright yellow.

He can!!! It’s touchdown for the Hawks! Jeon Jungkook proving time and time again just why he’s freshman of the week, every week.

The band breaks out into the school’s fight song, the cheers from the crowd ringing around the stadium as the team celebrates at the end zone. With a final kick, the ball goes between the posts and the whistle sounds, the team running out onto the field to celebrate another victory. The elation in the air is unbeatable and much of what happens next is a blur but all you know is that this is why you love game day so much.

Somehow at the end of the game, you end up on top of one of your band mate’s shoulder, playing song after song that’s part of the band’s repertoire, the football players joining in on the fun as they dance alongside the band while the crowd enjoys it all from the bleachers. The fans in the stands sing along to the familiar sound of the trumpets, flutes and trombones. This is definitely one for the books is what you find yourself thinking because this right here, was why you loved being in the band.

Game no.6 of the season would be a game that many would speak about for the rest of the season. The fierce competition, the tension in the air as overtime loomed above the players’ head and all the unusual touchdowns, those are only a few of the many reasons that made this match sensational. It’s an unforgettable day for everyone in the stadium but it couldn’t be any truer for both you and Jungkook, except for all the wrong reasons.

Disaster.

That’s the only way you can describe it and if you could relive this day, you’d make sure to stay as far away as possible from Jungkook because this is it… the end of your college career when it hasn’t even begun.

You’re not sure how it happened because one second you’re belting out the notes on your trumpet as you stay seated on your friend’s shoulder and the next second, you’re falling off, your elbow hitting Jungkook in the temple, hard. You can hear the screams of horror as you see the prized boy crumpling to the ground with you, him making a feeble attempt to catch you even in his daze.

Everyone rushes to push you off of him and when you finally realize what has happened, you panic, hoping he’s okay because fuck, he’s the goddamn golden boy of the school. Your head is throbbing with pain, radiating from the spot where your skull had hit the ground but you manage to get up anyway. Much to your horror, Jungkook is in a daze, his eyes struggling to open and you’re fighting your way amongst the crowd that has gathered around him just to beg him to wake up, to stand up.

“Oh god, Jungkook, I’m so sorry,” You cry, caressing the spot you had hit him. “Are you okay? You have to be okay.”

He blinks up at you for a moment before his eyes flutter shut and before you can apologize again, you’re being pulled away to make way for the medics. You retreat into the distance, feeling horrible as the people around you shoot you dirty looks, shaking their heads at you. Guilt washes over you like a tsunami as you watch Jungkook being lifted up onto a stretcher, disappearing down the tunnel.

“Way to go, Y/N,” The boy laughs. “I know you said you wanted to make a splash your freshman year but I don’t think this was the best way to do it.”

“Oh fuck off,” You groan.

“Now, now, is that how you should be talking to someone elder to you?”

“I’m so screwed, Tae,” You mumble, eyes downcast, the beginnings of a tear forming at the corner of your eyes.

“Crap, don’t— Look I was just teasing. It’s going to be fine,” He smiles before hugging you and you sigh, shutting your eyes as you return the gesture. “Come on, let’s go get your head checked out.”

Kim Taehyung. He’s insufferable, loud, annoying and a plethora of all things that makes you feel like punching him in the gut half of the time but he’s also your childhood friend so even if you wanted to get rid of him, you can’t… he knows far too many embarrassing facts about you for you to let him roam freely, out of your sight. You had grown up alongside him and Jimin in a small town an hour or two from campus and boy was it an experience. The three of you grew up on the same street, riding bikes around the neighbourhood, wreaking havoc at the local playground and trekking through the small forest to the lake hidden up in the hills. When Jimin received his athletic scholarship for basketball at the university and Taehyung earned his spot as a Kinesiology major, it was only right for you to work towards applying to the same school and that you did… as a kinesiology major too. Why do you have to copy everything I do? Taehyung whined but you all knew that he was more than happy to have you in his department because that meant he could continue his lifelong mission of making your life miserable.

Working for the school’s athletics department meant that Taehyung was part of the team that worked with athletes for injuries and pre-treatment. Like you, he had to be at every home game, except instead of playing the trumpet, he was in charge of attending to on-field injuries, like the one you have, the bruise on your head now almost the size of his palm.

You’re sat on the bed on the other side of the room, watching as the medics fuss over the now knocked out Jungkook and you can’t help but feel like evaporating into thin air as his concerned coach and teammates whisper and stare at you. Taehyung implores you to ignore them as he does a preliminary check-up and he let’s you know you’re in the clear, no damage done, he confirms, aside from the huge bump protruding from your scalp. You quickly try to rush out of the infirmary when he’s finally done but he doesn’t let you, insisting you stay for just a bit, for medical reasons he murmurs but really, he knows if he lets you go alone, there’s no telling what the angry mob waiting outside would do to you.

In the time that you lay in the bed opposite Jungkook, he’s been wheeled in and out of the room twice already, thankfully, completely awake though still looking rather dazed. A numerous amount of people have come knocking on the door just to see how he was doing but they’re all turned away in order for the boy to get some rest. You’re glad that though many have thrown some mean glares at you through the curtain that Taehyung had drawn, nobody has made their way over to give you a piece of their mind yet.

It’s when everyone leaves and only the three of you remain in the room is when you see Jungkook try to peer through the slit in the curtain and you pray he can’t see you.

“Is, uhh… anyone there?”

You freeze up in horror and glance over at Taehyung in fear. He tells you not to worry before stepping out behind the curtains.

“Hey buddy, how’s your head feeling?”

“Tae,” He smiles. “Hurts like a bitch but it’s all good.”

“That’s good to hear,” Tae laughs.

“How’s the uhh girl that fell over with me?” He murmurs, vaguely remembering that he’d only been able to break a part of your fall before everything went black.

“You mean the girl your fan club outside wants to lynch?” Tae questions in return and Jungkook laughs, shaking his head.

“It wasn’t really her fault though,” He sighs. “I tried to catch her too but I just… she’s okay, right?”

“Yeah Y/N— I mean… the girl, the girl… she’s fine,” Taehyung corrects as he smiles, hoping that Jungkook hadn’t caught your name and Taehyung knows you’re probably going to slam his head into a wall later for letting it slip.

There’s a rustling from the other side of the room, the pitter patter of your feet and Taehyung realizes too belatedly that it was you making a run for it.

“Y/N, wait!— Fuck,” Taehyung huffs just as the door slams. “I’ll be right back,” He offers a curt smile to a confused Jungkook before grabbing your shoes and chasing after you.

“Y/N,” He screams into the hallway, running after you. “Stop! I have your shoes!”

You halt, letting Taehyung catch up, only to tug violently at his ear when he stands in front of you.

“You piece of— Why did you tell him my name?” You groan while Taehyung drops your shoes, howling in pain as you continue to hold onto his earlobe. “Do you know what you just did? You just sent me straight to death row. All his friends and fans are going to come after me now. That’s it. Goodbye my social career.”

“To be fair, you didn’t really have one to begin with,” Taehyung laughs to himself before yelping as you tug at his ear again.

“Look, Jungkook isn’t going to do that,” He sighs, pinching you in the arm to force you to release his earlobe. “He’s not like that.”

“I just ruined his career,” You grumble. “There’s no telling what he will or won’t do.”

“He just has a mild concussion alright? Take it down a notch, won’t you? Drama queen,” He scoffs.

“It’s not just that… I mean, you heard what the staff said,” You murmur. “Talking about pursuing legal action against me…”

“None of that’s going to happen, okay?” Taehyung sighs. “It was just an accident. I know it, Jungkook knows it. I doubt he wants to press charges or whatever.”

You shuffle in your spot guiltily, still wishing you could just turn back time and prevent this nightmare from happening.

“Just put on your shoes, go home, take a long shower and ice that head, alright?”

You nod, slipping your feet into your shoes.

“And take the other exit… you know… just in case.”

You let out a quiet yes before giving him a small hug, a form of thanks for all that he’s done today and his words of comfort. Text me! He shouts as you walk away. The boy worries too much, you shake your head.

“So, Y/N? That’s her name?” Jungkook questions when Taehyung finally returns.

“Yeah,” Taehyung nods, as a few more workers shuffle in, getting ready to wheel Jungkook over to the main hospital building.

“Where are we going?”

“To the main wing,” Taehyung answers, catching a glimpse of fear on Jungkook’s face. “Don’t worry. They just want to keep an eye on you for tonight just in case… also, I want to go home and I can’t do that if you’re still in here,” He laughs.

“Wait, why didn’t Y/N have to stay? I think she hit her head pretty hard too.”

“Because she didn’t black out for a good 3 minutes.”

“That’s how long I was out?”

“Yup,” He exhales. “You had all of us worrying. Especially, Y/N… She’s still beating herself up over it.”

“Please tell her I’m doing fine,” He laughs. “Is… is that why she ran out?”

“Mmhmm, she wants my head on the chopping board for giving out her name. Thinks you’re going to come after her for, in her words, ‘ruining your career’,” Taehyung rolls his eyes and Jungkook chortles, shaking his head.

“Tell her it’s going to take a lot more than that to stop me from playing football.”

Y/N, Jungkook sighs. His little accident definitely isn’t the way he had imagined first meeting you but it’s good to finally be able to put a name to a face. You have a nickname amongst the football players, the trumpet girl, is what they call you because they’re not too creative you see. There were dozens of trumpet players on the band, many of them female but you are the trumpet girl because one of the players had spotted you before, his arm slung around your shoulder at the end of the game singing along to the alma mater song. He didn’t think too much of it but then he kept seeing you again and again… it was like you were everywhere. It’s that trumpet girl again! He had exclaimed to the team when he spotted you at the sports dining facility and so the name just stuck.

You truly were everywhere that they went and was it coincidence? The team thinks not because no matter the day, when they gather on the field at 7 am, they’d find you sitting at the patio that looked out over the practice field, occasionally looking up from your laptop to watch the boys play. They have a theory that you’re never really studying, that there’s a certain player on the team you’re in love with and that’s why you’re always there. There’s a bet going around on who could score you first. So far, all of them are doing poorly, considering they don’t even know your name… Well, except Jungkook of course after today’s encounter.

But, back to the topic at hand. If seeing you at every practice wasn’t enough, then they’d see you at every home game too, playing the trumpet loud and proud. They have a theory you’re only in band just to get close to the players… isn’t that why anyone was in band at all?

And if somehow, someone had managed to miss seeing you at all the practices and home games, they’d see you roaming around the physio centre where the players often visited for scheduled physiotherapy sessions, though Jungkook has noticed, you always seem to duck into the area reserved for the basketball team.

“Is Y/N a kinese major too?” Jungkook questions, peering up at Taehyung.

“She is,” He nods. “Sucker followed in my footsteps, always trying to copy me,” He shakes his head.

Jungkook had meant to ask what that meant but when he arrives at his assigned room, there’s so much commotion that he doesn’t even notice that Taehyung had long left. He lets out a deep sigh as he’s finally left alone for the evening, running his hand along the bandage wrapped across his head. He wonders if your head hurts just as bad as his did. He wonders if you’re alright.

You approach the band director early in the week, requesting for a switch out from the band that played for the football team, requesting instead to be put on the team that played for the hockey or basketball team. The director looks at you in shock, not understanding your wish to be pulled off the most coveted team but he lets you switch anyway, placing you into the basketball team band, a fact Jimin would probably be very happy to hear.

Though Jungkook has come out to say that the whole event was a misfortunate accident, you can’t help but feel it was entirely your fault. For the first time in the season, he is forced to miss the upcoming game under the advice of the team’s doctor and you don’t have to scroll through the announcement post to know that the entire student body hates you right now. For some reason, Jungkook and everyone involved decides to keep your name out of the incident report, the only knowledge made privy to the public is that someone from the band had been involved in the accident with their golden boy.

The band comes under heavy scrutiny, many asking for your identity to be released but the band community as a whole, stays silent… though that doesn’t mean they don’t hate you.

Quietly, you agree to all your seniors’ demands, that included running errands, cleaning their instruments for them and just about anything to make them hate you any less. You’re tired, upset and still feeling guilty but you carry on with your days, clocking into the physio centre when you’re finally done with all the band errands and all of your classes.

You power walk down the hallways, trying your best to avoid any of the football players or staff, before sliding into the room you’d usually find Taehyung in.

“Y/N, you’re looking chipper,” He comments, taking in your disheveled appearance and you only hold up a single finger as a warning.

“Let’s not go there,” You sigh, before you lift a small gift bag towards him. “Listen, can you pass this to Jungkook for me?”

“And here I thought you had brought me a gift for taking care of you that day.”

“I already bought you dinner yesterday to say thank you,” You grumble.

“Yeah, but I didn’t get a nice handwritten note,” He frowns, flipping it open to read it and you snatch it from him, placing it back into the bag. “Anyway, I’m heading over for his session now. You can give it to him yourself.”

You look at Taehyung incredulously, as if what he had just suggested was simply crazy, and to you it was.

“Just hand it to him for me, please,” You whine, passing the gift bag to him. “I have work to do too. See, Jimin’s already on my ass for being late,” You grumble shoving your phone in Tae’s face before you jog off towards the room Jimin was waiting in.

“Think fast!” Taehyung shouts as he barges into the room filled with football players, most laying atop table beds. Jungkook quickly sits up, catching the bag when it’s just inches away from his face.

“More gifts for the injured boy?” One of his teammates scoff as Jungkook looks through the bag, pulling out the letter. “Wow and fanmail! Cute. Did she attach a picture and leave a number? If yes, hand it over. You never call them up anyway.”

Jungkook unfolds the letter, ignoring his teammate, the smallest smile gracing his lips as he begins reading it.

Dear Jungkook,

I’m so so so sorry. I never meant to injure you, or hurt you and contrary to the comments going around, I didn’t do this to get your attention or any of the sort. I hope you’re feeling better despite the huge bruise on your head that was caused by me (sorry). I’m also really sorry that you have to miss the upcoming game. It’s my fault that you’re going to lose your freshman of the week streak but I mean, not to worry, everyone knows you would’ve been freshman of the week again if you were to play.

I know sorry can’t fix what I did but… sorry… again. Also, thank you for leaving my name out of the report. I totally appreciate it and I hope you and the team are resting well, knowing that I will no longer be on the field for any of the games for the remainder of the season. I hope Tae and the rest of the physio team treats you well and that you’ll be back on the field soon.

p.s: Tae tells me peanut butter cups are your favourite… so I bought you some… If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, I’m trying to buy your forgiveness with food. Please rest well and eat all of them (and forgive me).

Go Hawks!

(Also, one last time: I’m sorry!)

“What does she mean by she will no longer be on the field for any of the games for the season?” Jungkook questions as Taehyung begins to write down notes on behalf of the physiotherapist in the room.

“She withdrew from the football band team.”

“Who?” The player on the table bed behind Jungkook turns to ask.

“Our number one fan, the trumpet girl.”

“No! Why?” Asks the player sitting on the bench on Jungkook’s right.

“She thought it was for the best,” Taehyung shrugs. “She’s on the band for the basketball team now.”

“The ultimate betrayal,” The player gasps jokingly, referring to the friendly rivalry between the school’s football and basketball team. Both always in competition in who can bring more glory to the university’s name.

“Go get her back. We might lose without her.”

It’s some silly tradition the football team has but every year, they pick a freshman on the band to be their good luck charm and since they saw you everywhere anyway, they picked you. Their reasoning for that was that they knew you weren’t going to leave, that you’d be at every home game come rain or shine. So far, they seemed to be doing just fine, winning 3 out of 3 of their home games. Now whether that had to do with you or the mere fact that they had a solid team this year, nobody knows but, they didn’t want to have to find out either. They don’t want the next home game to come around and play knowing that their good luck charm wasn’t there, playing the trumpet from the stands.

“Huh?” Taehyung questions, unsure with what you had to do with them winning or losing the game but nobody answers him. “Why would you lose without her?”

Again, he’s met with silence and Taehyung simply brushes it off, chalking it up to weird football antics that he’s unaware about. Maybe they could hear the difference in the band if one trumpet player was missing and that affected their performance? Who knows?

“If you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it,” A player offers, a smirk on his lips.

���Yeah, no. I’ll do it, thank you very much.”

What the heck. No way would Jungkook turn down the first legit reason for him to go up and talk to you. I mean it’s not like he was dying to get to know you or anything… okay, maybe a little. Perhaps he wanted to win the stupid bet going on within the team too. Maybe he wanted to be the reason you watched them every practice. Maybe he wanted to be your favourite player like you were his favourite person in the band though he’ll admit he doesn’t know the slightest thing about band.

He remembers the first time he met you, it was a few weeks before school had officially started. The only people on campus at the time were athletes and band members, all called to campus early for training and in the band’s case, for tryouts as well. What you were doing that day in the athletic dining facility, he still hasn’t figured out till today but there you were standing in front of him taking the last available chocolate chip cookie and he lets out a low groan. It had been an exceptionally tough day for him, not performing as well in the benchmark tests as he had hoped. So there he was, standing in the dining facility drenched in sweat after having to run out in the hot sun for hours only to find that the only thing that could possibly make him feel better was in the hands of a complete stranger standing in front of him. With a huff, He moves forward to the cashier with his tray, hoping that his lunch could at least dull the disappointment he felt in himself. That’ll be $6, the cashier smiles and Jungkook reaches for his wallet only to find his student card missing and he groans, almost wanting to just scream at this point.

“Hey just put it on my card,” You call from behind him.

“What? No it’s fine…”

“Too late,” You smile as the cashier swipes the card you hand to her.

“T-thanks,” He looks to the cashier’s screen to find the name Park Jimin printed. “Jimin?”

Huh that didn’t seem right. Why would you have the same name as the school’s star basketball player.

“Yeah, you should be thanking Jimin,” You laugh. “Oh and have this… You seem like you need it more than I do,” You smile placing the cookie on his tray.

Before he can stop you, you’re scurrying off somewhere and his teammates are dragging him off somewhere else.

“You didn’t get a cookie? I thought you said that’s all you wanted,” Jungkook hears someone say.

“Ehh, didn’t feel like it anymore.”

He almost feels bad for letting you give him the cookie but as he takes a bite, he doesn’t really feel any of that regret anymore. Perhaps it was a mere gesture of kindness to you, paying for his meal and giving him that cookie but to him, it made his day, maybe even week and he remembers leaving the dining facility, phone in hand, scouring through the women’s basketball team to see if you were in there but to no avail. He didn’t see you for weeks, the picture of you smiling as you handed him the cookie was seared to the back of his mind, as if taunting him for not stopping to ask you what your name was so he could repay you. But then his teammate pointed you out, trumpet girl, that’s what they called you. Then he saw you everywhere which he wasn’t really sure was better because he always seemed to forget how to speak whenever he saw you on the field at the end of every home game.

Jungkook peers up every minute or so towards the patio during practice, hoping to catch a glimpse of you but for the first time ever, you’re nowhere to be found. He runs straight up there after practice ends to search for you but there’s no sign of you, not even crumbs of the pretzel pieces you always seem to munch on when you were watching the team play.

Luckily, the upcoming match is an away game, so they won’t be needing your luck but that doesn’t mean the team is any less anxious about the home game next week, one where at the moment, you’re not going to be attending. Jungkook tries to reassure the team that he indeed is actively looking for you but for the girl that used to be everywhere, this week you surely have made yourself scarce.

Taehyung refuses to tell Jungkook where he can find you, won’t even give him your number because you had warned Taehyung that if he gave anything away you’d make sure he’ll come home to a broken computer system. Your threats were usually empty but when it came to his computer, he wasn’t about to take any risks.

Since Jungkook won’t be playing the game on the weekend, he dedicates the rest of his week to trying to look for you. At this point he’s scoured every inch of the music building, the kinesiology building and the physio building. He even made the trip out to the band practice field at goddamn 6am to see you but apparently you weren’t at practice, instead off elsewhere running some errands.

“Do you know where I can find her? I just need to talk to her.” He mumbles. “It’s nothing bad I promise.”

The seniors in the band shuffle their feet around, not sure how to say yeah Y/N? She’s in the basement of the music building, cleaning up all of our gear as punishment for elbowing you in the head, for tainting the name of the band so, they simply shrug their shoulders. Jungkook finds the whole ordeal weird and unnerving because everyone was staring at him peculiarly, as if to say why are you actively trying to look for the person who assaulted you?

“You’re sure you don’t know where I can find her?” He asks again just to make sure and they simply shrug their shoulders, unwilling to tell him. Maybe it’s because they’re jealous he was looking for you. That the first time the star player graces their practice with his presence, he’s looking for the one band member that the band collectively hates at the very moment.

Time is still ticking and Jungkook has spent the good remainder of his week looking for you. He sighs, looking at his calendar only to find the words basketball neatly printed above the words football on the box reserved for the coming Saturday. Ah, that’s right. The first few games of the basketball season are to be played for the following weekends and to his knowledge… that’s just where you’re going to be, playing your trumpet for the men be considered to be his rivals on campus. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little hurt.

Jungkook manages to score last minute tickets to the game, attending it with a few others from his dorm. In some ways, he’s glad he’s got the weekend off, that he’s able to do what most other normal students would be doing with their Saturday. It’s a little odd to be participating in the cheering and chanting himself when most of the time he hears it from the field.

The squeaks on the wooden floorboards and the sound of the horn each time someone scores fills everyone with excitement. You could just smell the school spirit in the arena and of course it isn’t as grand as the football stadium but the excitement is all the same. Jimin takes the time to wave at you during the breaks and you shoo him away, not wishing to draw any attention to yourself, especially not when your band mates already dislike you… you didn’t want to give them anymore reason to hate you considering that you heard Jungkook had come looking for you just the other day and for some reason that had upset quite a few members of the band. You focus on doing your job and that was to play the trumpet (and silently cheer Jimin on). Though you feel even if you had been cheering for Jimin out loud, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He had fans aplenty and it’s no surprise because he’s been scoring three pointers all night, putting the team way in the lead.

The basketball game moves much faster than a football one and before you know it, it’s the end of the game and you’re playing the school song as one last hurrah before everyone leaves the arena. Perhaps it’s better after all being on the basketball band team… it left you with a lot more time on your hands anyway.

“How’d I play?” Jimin questions with a smile, slinging his hand across your shoulder as you grab your case, putting away your trumpet.

You shrug his hand off, glancing over at the remaining band members who were glaring at you.

“What? Why are you all looking at her like that?” Jimin growls out, making all of them look away, busying themselves with their equipment.

“Jimin,” You scold, quickly tugging him towards the exit. “You’re going to make things worse for me.”

“I just don’t understand why they all have their panties in a bunch over some stupid accident. Some of these band kids take all of this way too seriously,” He sighs, before he turns around to look back at them. “You think you’re all being slick with all that whispering but I can hear you!” Jimin shouts in the direction of the few remaining band members that were discussing you over hushed voices and you groan out aloud, wishing you could just swing your trumpet case at Jimin’s head.

“Jimin, seriously leave it,” You grumble. “You’re only going to make them hate me even more.”

“Are they actually still giving you shit about that stupid accident? Jungkook already—”

“Hey, uhh… Y/N?”

You jump in your spot when you feel someone tap you on the shoulder, whipping around to find Jungkook himself standing before you. You let out a worried whine, knowing for sure that rumours will be flying around come next band practice.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Jimin smiles. “Go on and tell her band mates that they’re being assholes for bullying Y/N over the incident between you and her last week.”

“They’re bullying you?”

“No, they’re not. Jimin is just—”

“They are! They’re working you like a dog and you’re just taking all of it for no reason,” He grumbles.

“It’s not—”

“Hey assholes look!” He shouts at them. “Jungkook has no problem with Y/N so stop being such fuc—” You slap your hand over Jimin’s mouth, muffling the rest of his sentence.

“Okay we’re leaving now before you completely destroy band life for me.” You exhale, pulling Jimin away as he continues to shout profanities once you pull your hand away from his mouth.

“Wait, Y/N!” Jungkook exclaims, chasing after the both of you. Jimin scurries into the locker room, leaving you alone and lost, completely defenseless. Son of a b—

Jungkook stops right in front of you, panting slightly and you really wish you were anywhere but here at the moment.

“Look, Jungkook” You begin. “I’m sorry for elbowing you in the head. I really am and I don’t know what everyone’s been telling you but really I’m trying my best to just lay low and if you could just pretend that I don’t exist, I would really —”

“I’m here to say thank you for the letter and the peanut butter cups,” He interrupts with a smile.

“Right… uhh that’s um no big deal. I mean I did knock you out so…”

“About that… How’s your head doing? Okay? I tried to break your fall but I don’t think I was much help,” He laughs.

“My head’s okay,” You smile. “The swelling has finally subsided but uh how’s your head? I’m sorry you know about—”

“I know,” He laughs. “You mentioned it about a 100 times in your letter. Really… it’s fine and you shouldn’t be apologizing anyway. It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” You frown.

“It isn’t. You were falling and I just jumped behind to try and catch you but it didn’t go down too well… obviously,” He laughs.

“I heard you quit the football band team.”

“Yeah…”

“Why?” He questions and your face scrunched up in confusion.

“Because you know I hit you in the head? And everyone hates me for it?”

“But it was just an accident.”

“Well, maybe… but you know you’re Jeon Jungkook, right?”

“And?” He asks, unsure what that was supposed to mean. “Anyway, just come back. I’d hate for you to have to leave over something so stupid.”

“It’s already done,” You shrug.

“Well reapply!”

“It doesn’t work like that,” You laugh.

“Look, you have to come back.”

“I can’t… and I don’t understand why this is so important to you,” You laugh.

“The band sounds horrible without you, that’s why. I heard them when I jogged by the band practice field. Out of tune,” He frowns, shaking his head.

“I doubt that’s true,” You snort.

“It is! You have to come to the game next week and hear it for yourself.”

“As much as I’d love to… I uhh have other band duties that I— Jimin!” You shout, as you see him duck out of the locker room. “All the best at the home game next week!” You smile before running after Jimin.

“Y/N— Wait!”

But you’ve already disappeared down one of the numerous hallways.

(this is a part of my unfinished fics collection! click here for more)

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

If Link, Zelda, and the champions were in marching band, what instruments do you think they’d play?

For instruments I’m just going off the ones we had a my school in our regular band since I stopped playing before high school 😂

Zelda: Flute, definitely. She’s the one I see best representing the delicate, soft notes of the flute. She can be subtle or she can be the show-stopper. Either way, she’s a vital part of the group and always supports the other groups (instruments).

Link: Okay, the first instrument I thought of was the accordion (because of that one fan piece with him and Kass playing the accordion). But that’s a no-go. Tbh Link would probably mess up with every instrument you gave him. Blowing too hard with the flute and clarinet, not being able to properly pucker his lips for the trumpet or tuba, and break the reed in some instruments.!The one thing Link CAN do, is play the xylophone. I’ve always imagined he can play a piano, so the next best thing is the percussion group, specifically the xylophone. He can play the snare drum particularly well, which is his go to for marching band but in regular concert band, he’s a xylophone guy.

Part of me wants to give him the piccolo tbh but this Link wouldn’t be able to. Probably Time and Twilight could learn, but not Wild. He’s a bit reckless to handle such a delicate instrument.

Daruk: I know Daruk is a rock, but does he breathe air? Can he blow air out of his mouth? If he can, then I would go with the trumpet or tuba, something with a deep tone that can be overpowering or a gentle support for the other groups. If not, then he would be back in the percussions, banging on those drums and chillin in the back with Link.

Mipha: This precious girl gives me clarinet vibes. For the most part, she’s soft and gentle, but can be sharp if need be. There is a specific talent to play the clarinet imo, and I feel like Mipha would be the only one patient enough to learn how to properly play it. She’s a gentle soul who wouldn’t break the reed or ever sound a sharp pitch that makes everyone cover their ears.

Urbosa: Like Daruk, she’s a strong presence. So, the instrument she would play should reflect that. Something loud and can be recognized by anyone within earshot. The Alto Saxophone is what I can imagine Urbosa playing. I thought about a lot of the brass instruments until I came to the conclusion that she would be a part of the woodwinds, actually. She needs precision but also an instrument to showcase her voice. The sax does exactly that.

Revali: Ngl, I saved him for last because I’m still trying to decipher the instrument he would play. I think it’s actually a trick question when it comes to him. He would want something aesthetic and light, so most of the brass and reed instruments are out. Leaving woodwinds such as the flute and piccolo there. However, I think Revali would possibly try either of these and then quit the band and instead train to be in the color guard. He would want to be a bit flashier and waving and throwing up a flag would do exactly that. He’d love the attention too, especially since it’s easier to remember one color guard person than someone amidst dozens of metal instruments.

[poeticsandaliens]

Old Classics

Pairing: MSR

Rating: Explicit. Porn

Timeline: Season 11, in between episodes but before Plus One

Summary: Part 3 of the Attractions of Youth smut collection that was intended to only be one fic. Oops. This one is for @kateyes224​, who posted about “Can’t Fight This Feeling” coming on the radio while Mulder and Scully are on some dusty, two-lane highway, and how they might combat the ensuing awkwardness. I can’t decide whether to thank you or blame you. I got carried away on emotional wings, and this turned out way longer than I expected. Prepare for the feels.

Attractions of Youth  Part 1 and Part 2

Tagging @today-in-fic​.

She always thought of Idaho as a flyover state. A endless expanse of hay bails and silver-bearded men wearing flannel, more cows than people and more deer than cows. The perfect ambience for a UFO abduction.

Their destination is somewhere on a horizon that vanished with the Idaho sun. It blazed like a tangerine in the rearview mirror, then cast them into darkness between the Sawtooth mountains and the fields of Asphodel.

Now, they’re half way to dawn.

Scully drives through starlight with her brights on, the silence thickening as time goes on. They’re two hours out of the mountains, rolling past rotted fences and trading places in the driver’s seat to catch some semblance of a good night’s sleep. When Mulder drives, Scully dozes off, but now that she’s at the wheel, Mulder stares out his window as if he’s expecting Sasquatch to leap in front of their car. Twenty-five years and he still has trouble sleeping on the road.

She yawns loudly and drums her fingers on the wheel. She used to be able to drive all night, hundreds of miles down foggy interstates running solely on coffee. She’s older now; by midnight, exhaustion seeps into her bones, and her eyelids begin to sag.

“Do you want me to drive?” Mulder mumbles from the passenger seat.

“No, I’ll be fine. Maybe we should put on the radio, though,” she admits. She presses a button on the speakers that she thinks might (possibly) be a power button.

“Doesn’t this car have a phone-cord or something?” asks Mulder when the speaker scratches to life, white noise intermixed with the occasional piano note.

“Probably, but I can’t find it.” Even if she could, she doubts he’d be too thrilled to listen to her collection of NPR podcasts, and Mulder’s taste in music isn’t especially appealing on late night drives.

So she flicks through the radio channels until she finds something tolerable. “Knock Three Times” reverberates inappropriately through the shadows. The pitch of fake trumpets fills the car, and Mulder chuckles quietly.

“This was one of those songs you loved until you hated,” he informs her with a smile. He runs his hand over his salt and pepper stubble and looks up at her with eyes like little planets, lit warmly from a million miles away.

Scully snorts. “I feel like they played this song at my high school homecoming.” It’s bad, but it’s the fun kind of bad. Finally distant enough to be nostalgic, reminders of high school make her sigh rather than cringe.

As the unforgettable chorus fades into silence, a radio host with a coarser voice than CGB Spender hacks gutterally into the microphone. Folks, this is channel 91.5, Old Classics. We’ll be right back after these brief advertisements.

“Old Classics,” she repeats aloud. That’s what they are—old, sure, but they’re still kicking. And maybe, she hopes, they’re en route to a comeback.

Mulder sits up and stretches as much as he can in the Taurus’s passenger seat. He is all rumples and loose limbs after six hours in the car. “Sounds about right,” he concedes with a grunt.

The Honda ad dies out, and a cheerful keyboard riff startles her back to reality. It’s the electric-disco kind of riff, and the song is on the tip of her tongue, ringing like the soundtrack of a too-emotional porno. It’s only as the lyrics ring out, and the Taurus starts to feel thick and stuffy, that she recognizes it:

I can’t fight this feeling anymoooooooore, the stereo belts like a punch in the gut. Scully stiffens, gripping the wheel for dear life, and sneaks a glance at Mulder in her peripheral. He looks as uncomfortable as she feels, squirming in his seat and staring resolutely out the window.

It’s time to bring this ship into the shoooooooore.

Shit, she’s not prepared for this. She is reminded, completely out of left field (maybe not completely if she’s being honest), of the first time they had sex. They took a sledgehammer to six years of sexual tension in a car not unlike this one. A rental car, putting its way through fields of juniper. They topped off the encounter with even better sex in their shittiest motel to date.

“Do you remember—” she stops herself, but it’s too late. The words are out of her mouth. “Do you remember that Mexican restaurant, the one in Scipio Utah where I ordered a margarita, and then we…” she can’t finish. Fucked in the backseat because they just couldn’t stand it anymore, because it was a hundred and two degrees, and they were in their thirties and still had the stamina for wild, shirt-ripping sex.

“Eduardo’s,” says Mulder, sitting up straight again.

“What?”

“Eduardo’s Authentic Mexican Drive-in. That’s where we stopped to eat. There was a petting zoo next door. What a day, am I right Scully?” he jokes awkwardly. “I guess we just couldn’t fight that feeling.”

She pretend-laughs to cut the tension. Inside, she’s all butterflies and wooden limbs. She’s not sure what it says about their relationship that Mulder remembers the name of Eduardo’s. She’s not sure what it says that she’s forgotten. She remembers that margarita, though—an alien green concoction of ice chips and cheap cocktail mix, and she definitely remembers the way Mulder’s eyes grazed her entire body as he sipped it with a plastic straw.

The radio croons again. I can’t fight this feeling anymore….

She ignores the heat between her legs and the blush creeping up her cheeks. She ignores the way Mulder’s stare bores into the side of her head, waiting for her to say something.

“We were so young back then,” she sighs. It’s a cop-out line, but that doesn’t make it untrue. They’re aging with the car radio—loud and relevant, but only in the middle of clusterfuck nowhere. They dance expertly in the cobwebby corners of life, where people still don’t have cell service. Where fairy tales thrive, and landline gossip births monsters, and the basement is an appropriate place to make love.

She watches Mulder’s lips twitch. When was the last time they had sex? It must have been six years ago, that awkward limbo after she’d left him but was still listed as his attending physician. She checked his physical health, cried in the master bathroom at the sight of him, then polished off his wine and let him fuck her on the decrepit couch he’d owned since 1994. The one stained with his cum and her beer and their son’s spit-up.

They fucked like orgasms were a currency, and somehow it was rough and underwhelming at the same time. They panted into the musty air, not daring to speak each other’s name. They came silently, and when the transaction was finished she left just the same, tearing half-dressed out of their—his—driveway. It felt like a one-night stand in undergrad, the thought of it more enticing than the execution. She found him a new physician by the end of that week.

“Scully?”

“What?” Scully snips, and her features soften when he recoils like hurt puppy. “Sorry,” she says, “I’m just stressed.” The exhausted drag of her own voice alarms her. She sighs again. That damned song is still playing, relentlessly goading them with their youth.

“In the old days car trips relaxed you.”

“In the good old days, Mulder, I didn’t tell you how much I hated night driving. In the good old days you probably wouldn’t have asked.”

“In the good old days, we would have pulled over here,” Mulder murmurs under his breath.

In the good old days, her hips wouldn’t have ached after sex; she was wetter and softer more pliable. Still, she taps her finger on the wheel. Still, she squeezes her thighs together and feels her sex tingle. Still, she wants him. Not like six years ago, just trying to pound out the pain. No, she wants him with the wrinkles he has aquired in her absence and the back-aches they’ll undoubtedly suffer in the morning. She’s not seeking in him the ghost of Mulder in 1998, but loving the flesh-and-blood Mulder of 2018. Falling in love with him, all over again.

I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for.

“Do you want to have sex?” If not now, when? The universe grants these moments sparingly. They wasted one already, thanks to a goddamn bee, and it was another year before they talked about it like honest adults.

Mulder’s eyebrows shoot up, and he eyes her skeptically. Speedwagon wails obnoxiously; he adjusts his tie and tries to discern if she’s just messing with him. “Aren’t we a little old for that?”

“Yes,” she says simply. She licks her lips, lets her voice go husky. “But Mulder…” she croons. It rolls off her tongue in a lilt she hasn’t used since they called themselves ‘platonic.’ Back when they fucked with words, and she could get him hard just by saying his name because she didn’t dare go further than that.

The ensuing silence might be suspenseful, were it not for the building chorus of can’t fight this feelin’ anymore that she’s afraid to turn off. Once the song ends, she’ll have to fill the quiet and acknowledge how badly she needs him. Not just here, now, but tomorrow in the hotel room and at home when the case is finished and over and over until they die.

“I’ll pull over,” she whispers before he can respond. She stops in a dirt pullout, basking in the utter darkness as her headlights go out. She turns off the car, and that stupid song cuts off before it can hit the final note. When it’s quiet— “I mean it, Mulder.”

“The last time we—”

“This isn’t like that time,” Scully interrupts. “I’m not talking about a one night stand. I’m saying, let’s have sex in the car and then… go from there.”

She can see the hurt in his eyes as he recalls their lackluster final tryst in the unremarkable house, and tries not to be offended. It hurt her too, fishing around the living room carpet for her underwear and then leaving him again. It was the only time she ever regretted sleeping with him, and it took her months of hindsight to realize the damage it had done to them both.

“I hope you know how much I love you, Scully.” His voice cracks.

She gazes at him with earnest owl’s eyes, skillfully fighting the urge to cry. “I’m working on it.”

Mulder reaches over to turn off the car. His hand skims hers, fingers interlacing. “Are you sure, Scully?” he asks, stroking her palm with this callused thumb. “We’re not exactly the young handsome spitfires we were the first time.”

Scully leans over until her forehead rests against his, twisted awkwardly against her seatbelt. Inhaling the smell of chocolate on his breath, she says solemnly, “that’s the point.”

When he kisses her, it’s sweet and ponderous, a weirdly new sensation. His lips stand out like a refurbished antique. They are Mulder and Scully, but they’ve replaced every skin cell since the last time they kissed like this; they have rearranged their atoms into new molds. She likes it.

She pushes the lever on the passenger seat and chuckles as it slides backward, leaving them an open space in the front. She crawls recklessly over the emergency break to kneel over him, still fighting to keep his lips on hers and his tongue on her teeth. She cups his cheek, lets her fingers drift across the old scar on his temple where she once stitched him up in her kitchen. She moves to kiss the smile lines around his cheeks, the wrinkles in his forehead, studying the his skin like it’s a well-worn paperback. Gone with the Wind or Pride and Prejudice, or some other intersection of the tender and the passionate.

That’s the real difference, she thinks as Mulder lifts her t-shirt and unclasps her bra. Before, they flickered between frantic fucking and fragile lovemaking. Sticky and transgressive, or moving together like their bed was made of fine China. Now is something in between.

Mulder’s lips expertly trace the peak of her nipple, and she arches her back against him. She lets him brush feather-light over her breasts with well-trained hands, cupping them like holy water and memorizing the face that 2018, fifty-four and fighting Scully makes when she loses herself in arousal.

She adjusts her position on Mulder’s lap and bumps his nose out of the way to kiss him again. He grunts as she kneels on either side of his legs, his erection grazing the crotch of her slacks. Just to tease, she grinds against him fully clothed, and he groans into her lips. He reaches for his belt buckle, but she stops him.

“Not yet,” she whispers. “It’s not about that, not yet.”

It is her way of demanding, make love to me Mulder, rather than fuck me, because she’s not ready to say it outright, not just yet. She didn’t just stop the car to slice their sexual tension and have a quick, desperate romp in the back. She could’ve waited hours for him, and they could have fucked on clean hotel sheets after a bottle of Merlot. But it’s not about that.

Mulder’s lips linger on her, marking her breast scarlet and moving on to her collarbone. She rests her head on his shoulder, hiding the pleasure on her face and giving him access to the soft skin of her neck. Mulder leaves hickeys as spectacular as Scully did in high school, when the concept of making out was groundbreaking.

He holds her tenderly; even his cock— restricted in slacks, grinding against her, is subdued, languid. They cannot move as frantically as they did when they were young. They won’t even move to the back seat; she’ll make love to him here. She has planned this already, if she’s being honest.

She pulls a lever on the seat. The back and headrest slowly lower, until the Taurus’s passenger seat offers them ample space. Mulder lays back on it, tie undone, shirt untucked. Pants tight. His erection strains against the zipper.

Scully fumbles to remove her slacks, curled up between Mulder’s outstretched legs as she struggles with the black, pinstriped beast. Her boots are strewn God knows where, and the pants are sticking to her thigh like latex, and wasn’t she wearing a skirt last time? She mentally applauds 1999 Dana Scully for having the foresight to wear a pencil skirt that fateful day in the desert.

Finally stripping off her pants, she tugs open Mulder’s fly with trembling fingers and draws him out, sliding her hand along the length of him and savoring the groan that escapes his lips. She strokes him slowly, doesn’t spring any surprises. It’s the softest handjob she’s ever given, but she doesn’t expect him to come before the main event.

“Scully,” he murmurs, “You need to stop soon…. if you want me…. to last.”

She releases him with a wry smirk. “Fair enough.”

Then Mulder’s mouth is on hers again, searching her lips for 1999. But Dana Scully doesn’t taste like cigarettes and strawberry chapstick anymore; she tastes like Green tea and spearmint gum. And if Mulder once tasted like black coffee with Altoids, now he tastes like coffee with too much sugar. He has softened; she has hardened. Scully doesn’t mind the change, but it takes Mulder a few seconds to adjust to the woman he’s kissing now, whose cotton-smooth skin has weathered elegantly. Whose once-cheeky profile has turned stern and dangerous.

The way Mulder looks at her when he pulls away… she feels the years. But if the sexuality of her youth has vanished, in its place has grown something brazen, mature. She finagles her way out of the soft scarlet thing between Mulder and her pussy. There’s smoke in his eyes, and her body bares itself before him like hot steel. Sure, they’re not humping raggedly in the backseat, but she’ll ride him slow and heavy and press her forehead to his when he comes in her, and what it lacks in vigor it makes up for in devotion.

She kneels over him, hovering on the tip of his cock, gripping fistfuls of his shirt to keep from quivering. For a second, he picks at his buttons and tries to rid himself of the only article of clothing not rumpled about the car, but she gently guides his hand back to her hip. It sits on the sharp knob of her pelvic bone, his other hand curled around her neck. He laces his fingers through her ruffled hair. She takes him inside her with frustrating patience. In their years apart, she forgot the feeling of him moving within her, the unique sensation of Fox Mulder. It floods back to her now, as she hits bottom with the smack of her ass against his thighs and her thighs against his hips.

“Mulderrrrr…” she keens, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and using his shoulders to push herself up. She raises her hips and rocks, before allowing him to thrust fully into her once more. He moans, and she can feel his chest rumble like the purr of a lion. The more she moves, the stickier they become, melding together and peeling apart. Two clay creatures, carved from the same mold and animated vibrantly.

As he falls into their rhythm, leisurely thrusting in and out of her, she reacquaints herself  with his body. Her tongue dips between his pectorals and up to the hollow of his clavicle. She sucks the tender skin and winds her fingers into his hair. A cry escapes her as he presses against her clit, and a wave of sensation courses through her. She runs appreciative hands down his abdominals, dances down them like a piano exercise and drags two fingers down his V to feel it bow and flex with every thrust of his hips.

As she picks up the pace, she disentangles herself from his body and reaches between them to press against her clit. Her partner is all pent-up sexual frustration, and he won’t last. She can already feel Mulder’s arms tighten around her. His fists clench and dig into the muscles rippling along her spine. She lets out a high-pitched whimper when Mulder follows her lead and cups her hand in his own. He traces quick circles over her clit with his thumb, and she can see the grin on his face as her breaths turn to shallow pants. His fingers are relentless, his rhythm constant. She mewls a yearning, erotic thing, a sound her vocal chords haven’t been able to form in decades. Her knees bore lasting dents in the Taurus’s seat.

Mulder shudders beneath her weight with a husky moan, his shoulders falling against the backrest. To his credit, he pumps her with this hands while his cock stills and she continues to tighten around him. He drags across her swollen labia, pulses her clit for a few seconds until she seizes. He coaxes every second of sensation out of her, rocking his hips to side to side to keep the friction going. She opens her lips, tosses her head back like a wolf to the full moon and breathes. And breathes, and breathes, in rapturous little gasps. Her chest heaves, fresh freckles and crucifix bared before Mulder’s awestruck eyes. She bites her lip so hard she can taste blood.

“That’s my girl,” he murmurs into her hair, “that’s my Scully. Fuck, you’re so beautiful when you come, Scully.” He says her name like he can’t believe it’s on his tongue.

Finally, she settles. She doesn’t climb off of him, not just yet. He plays with the cross around her neck and then her loose hair and then her nipple. He entertains them both while they catch their breath. She observes him, expectant, until he’s ready to talk.

“That was really something, Scully.”

She nods slowly. “Yeah. I missed you more than I care to admit.”

His eyebrows shoot up. That’s her patented look, excuse him. “Big Spooky or Little Spooky?”

She giggles. It’s been too long since she’s done that, too. “Both of you.” Little Spooky isn’t all that little, but Mulder’s ego certainly doesn’t need her to reaffirm how well endowed he is.

“In all seriousness though, Scully, I missed you too. I missed this, but most of all I missed having you by my side.”

It’s ‘by my side’ that almost makes her cry. He wants her next to him, not hanging back in a morgue or ditched on a whim for some half-baked lead. She would march to the Underworld with Fox Mulder if the alternative was to sit by the ferry and wait for his return.

“You have me now,” she promises softly, brushing a strand of her own hair off his cheeks. “Do I have you?”

“I can’t remember a time you didn’t.” He offers her a radiant smile. Scully welcomes it.

She kisses him chastely and extracts herself from his lap, back into the driver’s seat. Mulder passes her her button-up, panties, and a scratchy blanket he snatched from the backseat. She finagles the underwear over her legs and buttons up her shirt. She wraps herself in the blanket as Mulder dresses.

“All these years,” he muses, zipping up his fly, “and we finally have a song.”

“Mulder, “Can’t Fight this Feeling” is not our song.”

“It is,” he insists. “This song inspired a romantic escapade.”

“Maybe it did, but Speedwagon is eighties rock. It’s metallic and objectively bad.” She rolls her eyes and steps on the gas. The car roars to life, the radio once again blasting static. They’ll have to pull into the next rest stop, so Scully can pee. Theoretically, she could wait until sunrise, the comforting privacy of their hotel room. She’d waited that long before. But she shouldn’t have to.

“Scully… where do we go from here?”

She asked him that once, in a post-coital haze, curled up in a dingy Utah motel. It’s possible she has something to prove when she makes love to him for the time in years on the side of the road. Like the first time, it’s a fresh start. It’s not the same as when they were young; they can’t stomach shit margaritas or bear the desert heat. We’ll figure it out, he promised back then. It’s what they always do at a crossroads, after their foundations quake and their lives shift irreversibly.

She watches him lazily, tries for nonchalant but can’t choke back the emotion. “We’re figuring it out.”

Mulder accepts this answer. Laying his head against the windowsill, he sleepily hums “Can’t Fight this Feeling” under his breath. Scully drives. She drives until the pitch darkness of Idaho swallows them and drives until it spits them back up.

[coffee-for-himchan]

if i never knew you | himchan

Word count: 2.9 k+

Genre/warnings: 1920s AU, slice-of-life, romance, fluff

Summary: It was the golden age of jazz, and seated at the piano was no other than the young and ambitious performer Kim Himchan, who’s talent and all the hard work he’s put into his music exceeds anyone else’s. What made it even better was how sweet of a person he was to converse with.

Jazz.

Jazz had recently become the call of the soul of many, and even though the world was just a few decades down the line of the 1900's, it was safe to assume that jazz would be the thing to envelop the whole century and keep it safe in it's embrace, uniting not only generations, but whole nations. It was a genre so new to the world yet so prominent and bright even in it's stages of development that it was more than clear it had been made to become legendary and unstoppable in it's way to success.

The shapes and sizes of it varied. Recently, big bands had become a craze, and more than just often men could be seen lounging around bars and hotel lounges with their instrument cases swiftly tucked underneath their arms. Young boys peaking through doors of practice spaces, their eyes wide and mouths open in amazement as they watched self-proclaimed musicians jamming to new tunes, instruments getting assembled and cases getting stacked one upon the other because of lack of space... That was the new look, the new rule to live by. Working long hours and shifts just to get unappreciated and underpaid, and stopping by the local music bars or lounges on the way home to let loose of reality and dive right into the world of refreshing, new tunes. Listening to scruffy, cracking recordings on vinyl and thinking that it couldn't possibly get any better than this - humanity has finally found a way to capture sound, at a time when masterpieces were born one after one, to add to it. And everyone could play or sing if they had the skill and wanted to, no matter their race, their status and their job, because as long as it came from the heart, it was appreciated. As long as you were living solely for the music, you wouldn't be shoved outside this inner circle of the new trend that had traveled it's long way form New Orleans and has spanned all across the globe now. Jazz offered a warm welcome to every hard-working and creative musician that tried to embrace it.

Kim Himchan was no exception, and you found it hard to take your eyes off of him for various reasons.

No, he didn't hold onto a shiny trumpet and raise it up into the air while playing in the third octave. He didn't sing addictive, raspy melodies into the worn out microphone hanging loosely from the stand either, and no, he didn't pour out rhythms on cymbals and toms and didn't dance his nights away among the audience. His hands rather worked magic on something more classic and delicate than all these previously mentioned things, his heart and soul jumping in on the bandwagon to help him shape every one of his performances to have just enough edge to it, just enough bliss, passion and ecstasy in every note he gifted his audience with to make his presence well known and unforgettable.

He was a piano player, having comfortably settled from playing classics to playing this absurd new trendy music everyone was so sold for. And he was by far the best at what he was doing, no matter his classical education on his art and all the people who had once doubted him on his ability to adapt.

He was mesmerizing without even needing to be studied closer. Known to be a pleasant, social man, he always opened doors for ladies and greeted every person in the room politely. His face was beautifully sculpted, having made him the talk among many of the younger women of this part of town quite often, and his skill was just as widely discussed as his personality and face. His eyes always bore a spark that showed his passion for the life he was leading, and it undeniably made him so attractive that it hurt.

But anyone who would've spent a good amount of their time studying him from afar while he played would know exactly what the real thing about him was that could make hearts race. It wasn't his gorgeous profile, or the way he smiled when off stage and roaming the lounge of the bar he usually played in to find conversation and stress relief in the form of a few drinks. It was the way he treated his music, the way he made it of first importance to him, putting it before anyone and anything else in this world. It was the way he lived for being up on this same stage of this local bar that's already seen it's best years decades ago every night, and loving what he did just as often.

He was meant to be in the supporting band for the singers and the brass and woodwinds that stole the show every night with their vivid improvisations, melodies and themes, but somehow, he never quite stayed a supporting act for long. His fingers slid over the black and white keys with extra precision, with care, and every time he pressed down on a set of keys beautiful harmonies left the instrument. They were too prominent to be secondary, containing too much feeling to just be considered "support". In the big mix of all the instruments that played on stage at the same time, they could easily get lost, but once everyone else got tired and took a short break between songs, he never did. Those were his moments, in which he whipped out his own little, amusing tunes, and those were beyond charming and adorable.

Your glance continued lingering on him throughout the whole night of performance. A few hours of being out down the line, you had originally come to spend an evening with your fellow friends who considered themselves too precious to be caught up in commitment and household chores, yet once again had stayed for the performance rather than their company. Only this time, you did not want to walk away with just a head full of daydreams about the charming musician from the bar down the road. You wanted to once again come up and talk to him, because he too, was one of your less formal friends. Maybe rather a good acquaintance, but still.. To some extent, he was your something, which gave you the right to want to talk to him. 

"Hello, maestro."

Himchan's head turned at the polite call upon him, and you looked up to his face with pleasure written all across yours. Up close he sure was even more mesmerizing than from afar, and the smile he gifted you with displayed his gratitude for this pleasant call upon him.

"I'm glad to have once again witnessed your performance, it was mesmerizing as always," was all you were able to get out before a new wave of loud music swallowed the room whole as the next performer of the night took upon the stage. Himchan seemed to not like it more than you did, throwing a disapproving glance back at the stage. Forgive him, but he was trying to have a conversation over here.

His glance scanned the room to analyze the masses of people present, and soon, his arm was offered to you and he smiled, stating a quiet offer.

"Would you like to go someplace quieter?"

You wanted to, of course. There was suddenly a lump in your throat as you realized that it was just the two of you this time around, for now, at least. Usually there were other people around too - his co-performers and their admirers or your acquaintances, but this time around, you were all on your own. Had all your personal spaces for only each other to lend, all your words for only each other to tell.

Your grip on his arm was feather light, and so were his tugs as you quietly walked across the room and to a place further away from the stage. On his way, many threw him glances or hellos, and he took them all with a Hollywood smile and a few grateful "thank you's" and "hellos" in return. Being charming as always.

His attention turned back to you the moment you arrived at a table for two, and not hesitating or thinking twice, he tapped on the arm of a bypassing waitress and asked her if he could get an order taken, to which she shouted over the music that she’d get right back to him in a minute or so.

Himchan's eyes fell upon you, and sitting back in his chair, he loosened his tie more than just casually and asked innocently.

"How have you been, dear?"

You were fine, really, but nothing ever changed. Waking up in the morning and making sure you were looking "presentable" for walking into modern society. Working shifts in the sewing fabric and searching for bargains in nearby shops afterwards to somehow fuse the desire to get pretty things and the never-expanding budget. Coming home and being considered something among the lines of a rebel for not being a housewife - of course, doing the cleaning up and the cooking, but for only yourself, and leaving with your friends to go and have fun in lounges and take part in dance events during evenings right after, being free and acting upon your own will just because you could. Trying to live life with suppressed opportunities and increasing, but still slim rights regarding many things. There was nothing interesting about it.

"I’ve been doing alright."

"You always give me the same plain answer," he chuckled, looking back up at the waitress as she hurried back to your table from her previous position at the bar. Two drinks - he threw you a glance while ordering them to make sure you weren’t opposed to his choice of beverage. You looked pleased with it though and only nodded in reply.

"Well... What did you want me to respond with instead?"

"I don't know," he grinned sheepishly, fiddling with the sleeve of his dress shirt, "Something more.. Personal, I guess. I know there's usually a lot of people around, but it's just me sitting across of you tonight. You and me, we.. We talk often. But we don’t talk for real. And I think that’s a shame."

Talking for real.. It sounded inviting. A little scary, but pleasant, and as the waitress made a comeback to your table with her signature hip-swinging walk and the said two drinks on her round tray, you realized you were leaning on your elbows against the table and looking at Himchan in an amused manner. Being.. Open, for once.

The air around was still filled to the brim with jazz, but now, there was a tint of something else in there as well.

“What makes you so eager about talking with me “for real”?”

“Hmm.. The intrigue, perhaps,” he thanked the waitress and waited until you had your glass in your hand before continuing, “I know you, and at the same time, I don’t. And I want to be aware of what I am missing out on.”

People had started throwing glances into your direction. They were subtle and barely there, and still, they made your cheeks heat up. Himchan was a free man, after all, and the fact he was sitting across of you like this made questions arise. It was supposed to be commitment, but you knew it wasn’t. It was a friendly little get-together. You looked back at his shiny eyes and asked.

"But what if I don’t have anything interesting enough to tell you?" you took a sip from your drink, seeing him raising a brow while mirroring your actions, "My life is like anybody else's. Not everyone can have such interesting days like you, maestro. Not everything has interesting stories to tell."

His eyes lit up - a little bit with deep pride and a little bit with thankfulness for the compliment - and he pursed his lips as he removed them from the glass, about to break something to you.

"Tell me about the usual then, and in return, I promise I’ll show you how ordinary and usual my own supposedly unusual can get."

“And what if I am not in the mood for long talks?”

“Then we would have to move to the dance floor, but pardon me, I am not much of a dancer and that will probably only lead to your devastation and my embarrassment,” he chuckled, seeing how you bit your lip in response to suppress a chuckle, “So tell me instead.”

“You've convinced me.”

He had convinced you for real this time around, as once the conversation started flowing, it never really stopped. It was absurd, how much you actually had in common with a simple acquaintance, but even more absurd was the fact that you would've never even known if you wouldn't have put all of your fears away tonight and wouldn't have come up to talk to him. He himself was talkative too, and didn't hesitate to catch onto every little detail of what you told him - on a polite and interested rather than obsessive level - making it easy to converse with him. Making it a pleasant exchange for both of you.

People still were looking your way every now and then, but somehow, you felt much braver and freer in your actions than before. Ways of living had recently been changing, and this was an informal environment. Himchan’s hand had brushed against yours a few times during the evening already, and you thought it was completely fine. The way he spoke provoked certain thoughts and emotions too, and that was also fine. You were letting it happen.

At some point during the evening, he was called from all across the room back over on stage, and you sat there and smiled as you watched him leaving with an apology yet a bright smile on his face in order to to join the current band for a few collaborative songs to end the evening with. And as those had come to an end and he was completely freed form duty, he made his way back to where he had left you at and offered you his hand.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave to go home soon,” you told him, unsure if you should accept his hand in case he had planned on doing something else, “And I apologize for that, but I want you to know that I had a great time tonight. I really enjoyed it.”

“Let me drive you home, in that case,” he offered completely out of the blue, as if it was a casual thing to do.

“You really don’t have to.. It’s not a long walk from here,” you tried to speak him out of it for some reason, but his hand remained stretched out towards you and he looked persistent in his idea.

“And still, I believe it would be safer if you would let me do it.”

Within another moment of consideration, you hesitantly took his hand along with his offer.

It was the first time that a man offered you a ride home. Cars weren’t owned by just anyone, and as you made your way out of the building and into the streets, a new wave of unusual feelings made their way inside your chest. You had to be somewhat important for him to drive you home, right?

But it was still so unusual, as you had just started getting to know each other.

The car ride was silent. You quietly watched buildings and people passing by, inspected the interior of the car, and threw quiet glances at Himchan as well. He was kind, you knew that already. He was hard working, talented and everything.. But he wasn’t like some other men from around here. He didn’t live for following standards - he lived for his passions. His conversation wasn’t about sneakily peaking into your family or financial status to compare it to his own or to make an initial judgement, but he was eager to know about other things that defined you, such as your hobbies, your favorite flowers and the things you did on weekends. He took your thoughts into objection, made your opinions seem important and necessary. He loved how open you were, loved to express his own talkative nature. He wasn’t a typical man, really.

No one had ever caught your eye to such an extent, and it was unusual to actually consider something such as “feelings”. Not for someone you had to be with, not someone who was specifically assigned to you, but someone whom you’ve stumbled upon a while ago rather accidentally. Free from supervision and standards.

Did he think in a similar way, perhaps?

His car stopped not far from your home, and creaking the door open, you bid him a silent farewell and set your foot onto the pavement. You were hesitant though, not quite wanting to leave. At least not without a promise that this wasn’t the last of your meetings.

“(Y/N)?”

You looked back at Himchan to see him smiling up at you, charming as always. 

“I hope to see you at the bar sometime soon again. You know.. I do play every night. And some of those nights I want to play for you.”

That last sentence triggered surprise, but a pleasant one. He had just offered you something dear to him, and you looked back at him gratefully and happily.

“Thank you for your kind invitation.. I will consider.”

He knew you’d come back by the tone of your voice, and he quietly watched as you vanished into the night, starting the engine back up and making his way back onto the road right after.

You know.. Lately he’d been having trouble finding his motivation and reasons to play. But now that he’s been seeing you in his audience recently and would continue doing so, he was sure he’d be fine. Maybe more than just that.

[chokeholdwrite]

surprise

This is piece from a multichap i’m currently writing it. This part seems a little HC to me so, yeah.

Sarada is diving between boxes from her old house.

Mama didn’t pull everything in order and there is still a bunch of dusty boxes with kami-knows-what in them. When they move in to this apartment, she was working full time on her clinic (and at the hospital too), so she did try to clean and order when she wasn’t utterly exhausted, something it oddly happen once or twice at month.

Sarada knows she did pull out the most significance pieces from the boxes, those they cannot live without: Her old photographs, her plants, the kitchen utensils, a kunai collection from her father (the uchiha fan engrave on it, a decorative piece on the living room).

She isn’t looking for that. She is looking for something even older: old photographs (hopefully some from her genin days), her old medical text books, her old ninja clothes – everything at this point can work to alleviate her mind.

And is when she is searching in a box labeled ‘old stuff’ that she found a trumpet.

That is really – really – something she never thought of found it in her house. No one in her clan is a musician (mama sings truly horrible, papa doesn’t sing at all, - even he dislike music that is too loud - and she defently can’t hit a single note right)

So why is this trumpet here?

She cleans the instrument with the fabric of her gloves, putting special attention in the mouthpiece, blowing the dust it has accumulate over the years. When it shines, she touches the mouth piece with her lips and with hesitation, she blows some air. No sound comes out.

“What are you doing”

The trumpet falls in a crash sound.

Kami, his papa is really silent and really good at mascaring his chakra.

She still can feel her heart beatting against her chest.

Adjusting her glasses over her nose (to hide her blush) she takes the trumpet again, showing it to his dad “I found this, but It has to be to someone else” She looks up at him, her eyes curious like a cat “None of us is a player”

Her papa sighs “That’s mine”

The eyes of Sarada can’t be any bigger. Say what?

“Is yours?” She asks, heading the instrument to her papa “You are not kidding, right?”

Sasuke takes it “No” He examine it, cleaning it against his ropes “It was an idea of your mom, thought”

Well, that would explain something. Papa doesn’t look like a jazz guy at all “Why? Why mama would buy something like this for you?”

Sarada narrows her eyes, imagine the possible scenarios. One part of her mind wants to believe this was a gift from where they were dating or something. It’s strange the idea of her parents dating at all, mostly because they don’t seem the kind of pair to show affection in public, especially her father. Then again, they really have a badass combination on the field, and they were teammates long before she even was born. Their bound it always has be a mystery she is profound to resolve, and this trumpet is a piece of her chess of questions about their bound.

She looks at her papa, knowing he is struggling to the idea of telling about this.

“When I decide I didn’t want another arm, she noticed how I have to use only one hand to do the same seals I did for my jutsus” He begins, to the surprise of Sarada “Your mama gave me a list of hands exercises she develop on her own, teaching me each of them… but at the time it didn’t work for me, I wasn’t focus enough, my mind was elsewhere…” His eyes look out of focus, his mind remembering those times “Then…one day…she came to my house with this” His features soften, Sarada smiles at him “She told me this would be a great exercise to my fingers, and actually, it would increase my respiratory capacity for my fire jutsus, too”

Sarada imagine a young mama, blushes cheeks, smiling at his handsome papa, with a trumpet on her hands, telling all of this with a playful tone, both standing at the frame of his door. The face of papa has to be really hilarious.

“You know how to play the trumpet, then?”

“Hardly” He place the trumpet between his body and his left arm, his right hand separating the valves part from the instrument itself “This isn’t really a trumpet, it was a joke from your mother…” He shakes his head very softly, smiling “In reality, she wanted to give me this” He throws the part he just take from the trumpet, Sarada catching at the air.

“What is this?”

“A finger exerciser” He puts the fake trumpet in one of the boxes “Usually is used from musician who wants to improve their speed and technique. It helps me a lot at the time, is a good exercise for hands muscles. It gives me idea of combination for my seals, too”

Sarada plays with the valves, noticing is really complicated to do a combination of sorts. Frowning, she throws to her papa, who catches in a fly movement, touching the valves and doing some odd combinations, she even didn’t think a human could do.

“Wow” Sarada exclaims “What a great idea. I never heard of using this kind of artefact for exercises the speed of jutsus. She really is  ingenious”

“She is” Sasuke stops playing with the valves, throwing again to Sarada “You should exercise with this, it would help you”

He turns around, ready to leave.

“Thank you, papa” She smiles.

Sasuke nods at her, a little smile on his face, closing the door behind him.

[birdsofchristmas]

Chapter 2: Mrs. Barber’s Annual Mennonite Christmas Pageant

At best a Christmas pageant is an inspirational, memorable highlight to any great holiday season. At worse it can be a sappy, uninteresting, pitiable series of off key songs and heartless dance numbers. Now I’m not pretentious when it comes to seeing pageants, but I’ve seen enough in my day to know what I like and what I don’t like.

When it comes to seeing my two nieces and nephew performing in a christmas play however they can do no wrong. This year will be their third performance as an acting ensemble, a now annual tradition of mine that gets better with each performance. Their It’s a Wonderful Life was magnificent, Their Christmas Carol brought me to tears, their Charlie Brown Christmas was nothing short of Tony-worthy. This year’s traditional interpretation of the Nativity Story was already receiving buzz among the local church going community, enough so that they were doing two performances, both of which I had reserved front row seats for.

“Oh well sir, we don’t reserve seats for our Christmas plays”, the pastor of the church had informed me when I phoned him in August inquiring about the performance, “we do have a section for attendees who have mobility issues, but it’s really more of a priority seating area”. “Ah ok, well that should be fine,” I replied, picturing in my mind the red wheelchair stored in my parent’s garage, which I’d used after recovering from surgery 3 years ago.

I imagined myself rolling down the aisle past all the crowded pews, right into the VIP section reserved for differently abled folks and recent retirees, enjoying the grand spectacle with the best possible view one could hope for. But then I imagined myself at the pearly gates having to explain to our good lord my reasoning for feigning being immobile for a good seat at a children’s Christmas play, and decided it might be best to take my chances in terms of seating at the event. Nonetheless I would arrive early, very early.

The night of the dress rehearsal had come. In preparation for the event I booked off 3 days from work to travel out to the Fraser Valley where the plays took place. My aunt and uncle had driven in from Calgary, camping out in their converted camping van, which they let borrow to rally the troops- first to my sister’s house to pick up my youngest niece, then to my younger of two brothers to pick up my other niece and my nephew.

I pulled into the Church parking lot which looked to be the size of 3 CFL football fields, and proudly lead my acting crew through the gleaming glass doors towards the auditorium.

The kids ran down the center aisle stomping and laughing with excitement, then disappearing behind tall blue and pink banners on the stage into the “green room”, which was just the youth pastor’s office repurposed with mirrors and standing closet hangers.

Mrs. Barber rolled her eyes and said “Oh hi Adam, I received the email you sent me with the 3 pages of set notes… thanks for that.” And she should be thankful, I for one was quite proud of my contribution. Just imagine how shabby and unprofessional these plays would be without my astute, well placed insights on the fine art of stage acting. I was from the city after all, I should know, I’ve been to the fringe festival at least 3 times.

One niece and my nephew had the part of Mary and Joseph, obviously. My other neice was playing a shepherd, a role I insisted she be cast for in to create a fair gender-balanced performance including having female cast members take on the position of traditionally masculine roles. “Oh trust me Adam,” Mrs. Barber had replied earlier, “I grew up in Kitsalano in the 70’s, I know all about balanced gender roles”.

Mrs. Barber, bless her heart, did agree to let me help out with the costumes and makeup design as long as I promised not to throw roses onto the stage and shout “bravo”, and so in the weeks leading up to the play I was busy at work helping to dress the ensemble.

When it comes to costume design I prided myself on my keen ability to upcycle even the most irredeemable articles of sad discarded clothing, performing great miracles on a shoestring budget. Their robes were my dad’s old cardigans repurposed as desert travel wear, with head scarfs made of terry cloth towels brought together in color sequence with sashes made from curtains I found discarded in the laundry room of my apartment.

What unfolded was a splendid practice run. The actors remembered their lines, the touching moments were indeed touching, the funny moments were laugh out loud, best of all the costumes looked amazing. The play had a few minor missteps with dialogue which is what is to be expected with a dress rehearsal. Young Sarah Friesen the angel forgetting one of her lines for instance or Ryan Klassen the front half of the camel seeming terribly uncoordinated. The back half of the camel however was without flaw, marching with as handsome a strut I’d ever seen coming from a camel.

“Now, why don’t they give him a better part? I said to my sister, “they really should give him a better part next year”. The back half of the camel was played by young Jimmy Froese who I thought darn near stole the show last year playing the ringing bell at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life.

Finally the night of the performance came. It was snowing lightly just after 5pm, the streets were almost silent and peaceful. We’d gathered at my younger brother’s house for a light sandwich dinner after which we assigned transportation to the church. The stage was set, the seats were filling up, and there was a friendly hum of conversations in the air as the congregation shook hands, sipped coffee and ate shortbread cookies shaped like angels, stars, and Christmas trees.

The lights in the foyer blinked once, twice, and the crowd made their way to their seats. The curtains were drawn, and the performance began with an opening overture of strings leading the choir into the emotive and heart touching first lines  “Mary, Did You Know”, complete with choreographed panning lights and a smoke machine.

Overseeing the play in the corner on a single hardwood pew seat was a kid with a long, pointed grey beard, a simple blue head covering and a faded red cloak. My sister leaned over and asked “is that supposed to be Santa, or Gandalf?” I whispered back, “Actually I think that’s Menno Simmons”.

It seemed Ms. Barber was going for more of a historical slant this year, starting with the first Christmas, jumping ahead to Christmas in the 1700s, then landing at Christmas in 1993, finally arriving in the present day as evidenced by the fact that the 3 wise men were being played by an all-female cast. A beaming sign next to the manger that proclaimed “#SmashThePatriarchy” wouldn’t have seemed at all out of place.

Indeed Mrs. Barber had outdone herself this year, but not entirely in a good way. The content of the play was very well thought out and artfully presented, it was the length of the play that seemed to be the weak point. By the 63rd straight minute of dialogue and character development the large cast of kids on the stage were starting to get restless.

By minute 74 there was murmuring in the audience as some of the more bored kids started improvising their lines, veering madly away from what seemed to be the script. No-one could really tell the difference at the point. The dialogue would not have seemed out of place in a David Lynch movie, but I don’t think that’s what the play was going for. For the audience of mostly rural conservative Mennonites it was too baffling to the handle.

The other actors had to sway too to keep up with the detractors. Minute by as the proverbial pageant ship was being tossed by the waves your started to fear maybe this story was going to end as a shipwreck.

The further into their new routine the cast continued in the more uncomfortable the feeling in the church became. Improv turned to shouting, acting turned to hooting and hollering, subtle movement turned to running and jumping! The shepherds were stick-fighting with their staffs, the angel had fallen off the back of the stage and Mary was laughing so hard she dropped the baby Jesus.

The audience was shuffling around in their seats and some adults had started standing up and making their way to the back doors. One of the pastors had the genius idea to walk huddled over to the brass band- perhaps if they start playing, he must have thought, it will drown out the chaos. The crowd seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief as the kids quieted down for the final singing portion of the evening, heralding a much anticipated and hoped for end to the cheery holiday travesty.

The choir and audience started equally pitifully, with off key notes and staggered time signatures, mumbling most of the lyrics. But as the voices rose into a glowing chorus of Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright I could sense something was different. There in the midst of the passable melodies a sweet, soulful, mournfully beautiful sounding voice rose up like Rudolph’s nose in a snowstorm.

The audience, the cast, even the live donkey brought in from the Graham Family farm looked around to see where the voice was coming from. For a second I expected to see Roma Downey from touched by an angel walk out glowingly from one corner of the stage and say in her culturally indistinguishable accent “I’m an angel, sent from God to save this trainwreck of a Christmas play”.

Then emerging from the back of the stage through the artificial smoke, there was a boy wearing an odd costume of a furry pair of hooved legs that came up to his shoulders. I looked closely and sure enough, it was Jimmy Froese, the back half of the two-person camel costume! He had loosened himself from the front half of the costume and stood there in the light of the nativity scene like a fawn balancing on his two hooves.  

As purposefully as a sunrise the brass band began to play, first the baritones and tuba, then the trumpets, and finally the trombones. The audience joined in at the second verse, the whole congregation singing with gusto. As the final notes echoed throughout the church Jimmy sang the refrain one last time, lingering on every line with a pure, warbling falsetto, and by the end there wasn’t a single dry eye in the entire audience. The whole auditorium rose in rapturous applause, standing to their feet in a spontaneous ovation cheering loudly for Jimmy Froese, the saviour of the Christmas pageant!

Mrs. Barber appeared carrying a microphone, beaming as if she’d planned the whole thing saying “Thank you, oh thank you, my now wasn’t that a charming show, and my what a voice, who would have thought,” patting Jimmy on the head.

Jimmy smiled and his proud parents in the third row wiped away tears of joy. “Now see,” I said to my sister, “I told you they should have given him a better part, that kid has promise!”

[meyerlansky]

Yes, please! I would love a daemon explanation, explanations and Boardwalk babbles are the best.

…is this for all of them

i’m gonna do all of them

because this is who i am as a person

FAIR WARNING LONG POST AHEAD and it’s even longer under the cut. also general disclaimer that this is all personal thoughts and rationale and i tried to make my reasoning as easy to follow as possible, but in a lot of cases there’s a not-insubstantial amount of symbolism/superficiality/whatever, and some choices have less biological rationale than others. second disclaimer that i TRIED to keep my reasons for picking daemons within the same taxonomic group consistent [i.e. all the people with canid daemons are canids for the same or similar reasons, all the bird daemons are bird-daemons for similar reasons, etc] but it’s not always the case. also not every set i’ve made has been posted yet, and not every set i’m planning has been finished, so if anyone wants to know rationale behind later daemons feel free to ask again :D OKAY SO HERE WE GO:

nucky — white-tailed eagle

from the start nucky’s pretty solidly been some kind of predatory sea bird in my head, for what are probably fairly obvious reasons: a predator because, like most of the characters i’ve continued to give predator/carnivore daemons [and there are a LOT of carnivore daemons], he makes his living off the desires—and suffering—of other people, a bird because he thinks of himself as more above the dirty work of street-level gangstering, and a sea bird because of how intrinsically his goals are tied to Atlantic City as a whole. originally i had an osprey for nucky, for a few reasons. one element of my reasoning for the osprey was their flashy coloring, to parallel his predilection for loud clothes a la his salmon suit in the early seasons, and the fact that ospreys are not technically considered “sea eagles,” which i thought fit with his position as more of a politician than a gangster. changing his daemon to a white-tailed eagle was actually kind of a snap decision on sunday night before i posted the first photoset, and… honestly i based the change on the fact that ospreys prefer to take their prey live, whereas the true sea eagles [including bald eagles, as a note] are far more open to scavenging after other predators have done the heavy lifting for them. so that kind of covers the “not a real gangster” angle as well as the more biological metaphor with the osprey. the flashiness analogue was lost a little bit, since ospreys are definitely a bit more exciting to look at, but nucky’s look sobers up after s1 and definitely after s2, so i figure it’s a worthwhile loss. white-tailed eagles also get a bonus in that they’re native to ireland and have been successfully reintroduced there, whereas ospreys apparently died out in ireland in the 19thc. there’s a few instances where i tried to match animal ranges to ethnicities, but i gave up on that when it became too limiting, but i still like to note it where it matches up :P

the other seven i’ve posted so far are under the cut!

eli — black bear

the fact that black bears are the most common and smallest of the north american bears drawing a parallel to eli’s inferiority complex is a minor reason, but really i picked a black bear literally so i could make the mama-bear joke, considering daemons are the “opposite” gender of their person. that’s literally it. he’s big, burly, and scary when you go after his kids, but pretty non-confrontational otherwise.

margaret — sand cat

OKAY SO margaret is another one who went through some changes, although hers aren’t as recent as “the sunday before i started posting the sets.” initially i had her as some kind of deer, specifically a fallow deer, back when i was sticking to the range-ethnicity parallel. deer also get scarily protective of their offspring, and they’re quiet but can be dangerous when backed into a corner, so it felt like… an okay fit, if not a perfect one. and then i thought about it some more, and let’s be real: margaret is as much a carnivore as the bulk of the cast, though not necessarily an APEX PREDATOR the same way a lot of the gangster daemons shook out to be. i toyed with giving her some kind of mustelid, but at the moment meyer’s the only one with one of those and she’s not QUITE coldly-ruthless enough to be in the same class as martens :P she got something that looks cute and pettable on the outside, but is actually extremely well-adapted to fill a carnivorous niche in harsh environments, which is a deliberate metaphor for her ability to survive no matter what she’s facing, while using other people’s perceptions to slide under the radar if need be. despite their cute appearance, sand cats also pack a bite force quotient of 136, which means that, relative to their body size, they deliver more force per bite than MANY other predators, including wolves, hyenas, and tigers. fitting, considering margaret is one of the only characters who can definitively be said to come out on top by the end of season five. a final tidbit for mags: she’s one of the few characters whose daemon i thought up a name for. his name is properly “gallchobhair” but once they get to the states it pretty quickly gets americanized to “gallagher” and they give up trying to correct people after a few months.

owen — yellow mongoose

owen gave me SO MUCH TROUBLE, you would not BELIEVE. for the same reasons i eventually settled on a sand cat for margeret, owen got a mongoose: cute to look at, but can fuck up anything that needs fucking up if they get in their way. initially i gave owen a river otter, because of their density in ireland, the aforementioned mustelid reputation of fucking shit up, and the connection between an aquatic mammal and his position as nucky’s bodyguard and bootlegging shipment protector. an otter for owen [haaa] never sat 100% perfectly with me, though, in no small part because the aquaticness of his job is really tangential to what he does and who he is as a character. also otters are mustelids, but they… aren’t exactly intimidating. mongooses, on the other hand, have the deserved reputation as cobra-killers, which is a bit more appropriate for a dude who sliced through a man’s fingers to choke him to death. that said, yellow mongooses don’t live off snakes and are pretty social creatures, which i thought was a decent parallel to owen wanting out of the gangster lifestyle and wanting to settle down with margaret, all interpretation as to whether he would’ve stuck with that aside. this is one of the choices i’m not completely confident with, so hopefully it doesn’t seem too horribly out-there to people with more of an investment in owen than i’ve got.

jimmy — ethiopian wolf

a lot of the gangster types have wild canids. it’s kind of unavoidable as a parallel, because gangsters tend to stick together in a way that cats don’t, but the apex predator position can’t go unacknowleged. i went with an ethiopian wolf for jimmy in particular because it’s not an especially well-known species, so i couldn’t get super slammed for being unoriginal by picking a grey wolf or something. they’re further down the evolutionary chain than jackals [who will make an appearance IN LATER PHOTOSETS] but not so far down as to be right next to or within the sphere of domesticated dogs; for the canids i interpreted relative-distance-from-domestication as commentary on how independent the character[s] in question operated throughout the show. jimmy is fairly reliant on his social connections, not willing to make moves on nucky until he has support from the other younger gangsters, but not totally unable to strike out on his own–even if he’s not running with a full-fledged “pack” of other younger gangsters, he’s always got at least one compatriot at his side in pretty much any endeavor. ethiopian wolves are also less physically intimidating than other larger wolf species, which fits jimmy’s tendency to think things through rather than rushing in and relying on brute force to win. and… alright, this is a reason decided upon in bad taste because i’m a bad person, and i debated whether i should cop to it or not, but i highly doubt anyone’s gonna even bother reading this, so: ethiopian wolves also have some of the highest rates of incidental inbreeding due to their tendency to not disperse offspring very far. there you go, i'm officially The Worst.

gillian — trumpeter swan

gillian as a swan is also probably a fairly obvious choice, between the water motif, the graceful beauty swans are known for, and the way they’ll peck your eyes out if you get too close to their roost—especially if they’ve got babies. again, the sees-self-as-above-dirty-work played into the choice of a bird daemon, and i’m also not opposed to the idea that gillian would be a witch the way many bird-daemon-havers are in the HDM canon. nucky probably isn’t a witch, but gillian totally could be. anyway, i went with a trumpeter swan specifically because they’re the biggest of the north american swans, and gillian runs with some pretty big players, so i thought it fit. they also are somewhat pleasant to listen to compared to other swans, their calls do sound a bit like trumpets as the name implies, which fits with gillian’s preference to talk her way out of situations by telling other people things they don’t mind hearing. they were also on the brink of extinction in the early 20th century, which would add to the air of exceptionality and desirability gillian cultivates for herself. i know rose definitely helped out with this one so a lot of the credit goes to her on what gillian got.

angela— desert cottontail

i’ll accept flak for giving angela one of the only purely-herbivorous daemons among the whole cast, but really nothing else i tried out for her fit as well. rabbits are small, quiet, and as one of the few characters who’s essentially a noncombatant through the show, she got a noncombative species. since angela is hardly antisocial the more solitary rabbit species didn’t quite fit, but for me one of her defining characteristics is her disinterest in traditional domesticity, so the european rabbit with its extensive social burrows was out too. desert cottontails strike a happy medium, as they’re more comfortable with shared or overlapping territories than many hares and larger rabbits, but don’t nest communally. rabbits also give birth to young that can’t fend for itself immediately after birth, which felt fitting since angela rejects domesticity but wholly embraces motherhood. also credit to rose on this one because i’m pretty sure we talked about hedgehogs for angela which put me on the path of small herbivores; i think i was still in “daemons should either be new world animals or range match character ethnicity” mode and went for rabbit instead because of that BUT CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE ANYWAY FOR TRAIN OF THOUGHT

richard — rhodesian ridgeback

probably there’s disagreement out there on this one, especially given where i stand on what a domesticated animal as your daemon means about your strength of will, but from what i remember of HDM canon, soldiers tend to have loyal fall-in-line types of animals like canines, so career-soldier richard got a domestic dog. as for the breed, rhodesian ridgebacks are visually-intimidating dogs with a protective streak but generally calm in adulthood. they tend to be good with kids, especially when the dogs themselves are older and their energy level isn’t puppyish anymore. not super invested in this one, you might be able to tell :P

[terassaras]

The Disorder Ensemble [1/?]

A Joker Game fanfic.

Synopsis: A modern AU in which everybody plays music in the D-Ensemble, which is always in perfect harmony on stage but hopelessly dysfunctional off stage.

Read here or on AO3. Do NOT repost on any other platforms.

Genre: Life musings, humor, light (some mild swearing possible)

Word Count: 2K

Nobody gets more excited than Odagiri about climbing four flights of stairs on a Saturday morning. Even if he has to carry a case big enough for a dead body and weighs about the same. Even if his lungs burn and his neck is on the line for unstable turn he makes on the steps. Even if it costs him every Thursday and Saturday and possibly every holiday he has for the rest of life. There is something thrillingly familiar at the top of the stairs, something which Odagiri can just hear through the cracked doors, and it gets his heart pumping more than the exercise already has.

There is one thing—and only one thing—which can bring this much color into his life, the one thing that had anchored him through the drifting, hazy years of his growing up, and the one thing he can never give up.

It is music.

Straightening his back, Odagiri somehow manages to regain a more regular tempo of breathing before the door. He picks up his bass case from the floor, taking one deep breath before swinging open the door—

And narrowly missing getting beheaded by a flying cymbal.

“Disorder is the order of the floor!”

The cymbal hits the wall behind Odagiri, tumbling down the steps in an earsplitting crash.

“Hell yeah, baby!”

Kaminaga’s loud shout echoes Hatano’s wild words. The latter, despite the fact that he is standing tall, seems to be drowning behind an assortment of drums, xylophones, marimba, and various other percussions, as well as a cymbal set missing one. At the other side, the former is waving a guitar above his head like a pom-pom—and given the guitar is covered in a rainbow of eye-catching stickers, it might as well be a pom-pom.

“Your ridiculous rock band practice is over half an hour ago. Settle down, will you?” Miyoshi suggests with an air of condescension. He is sitting in perfect posture on the front, farthest to the left, rubbing rosin against his bow as his violin rests on the empty chairs beside him.

“Not until Yuuki gets here!” Giggles Kaminaga.

“Yep, no chance!” Hatano confirms as he props the door open and goes to retrieve the poor cymbal, flashing a grin at the poor newcomer. “’Sup, Odagiri.”

“Uh. Hi.” Odagiri mumbles back.

Odagiri is never sure what the correct response to “What’s up” is, just as he’s never sure if Kaminaga and/or Hatano are running high on cannabis, caffeine, or crazy adrenaline alone. He goes to the front chair, farthest to the right, and unpacks his double bass.

“A cymbal.”

Odagiri pauses, noting the voice.

“There. Is. A. Cymbal. On the floor.” A stricken voice surfaces from the stairs. “What is precious ensemble property doing on the floor?”

“Just two idiots playing around as usual, Sakuma-san.” Miyoshi coyly responds.

“Have you any idea how expensive this—all of these—are!?”

“Chill man, I always hit this thing harder than I throw it.” Hatano smirks, picking up the cymbal.

“For God’s sake, when will you learn to take good care of our instruments!? They are NOT your toys! And they cost a lot more than what we make in a single event!”

“Awww, what’s wrong with having a little fun? Isn’t that the whole point of music?”

“You think treating musical instruments like this is fun!?”

Odagiri can’t see Sakuma somewhere down on the steps but he notices Sakuma’s own cello lying sideways beside him. That means Sakuma’s hands are free. Not to mention Sakuma’s appreciation of musical instruments has been nearing a dangerous level of worship, a contrast to Hatano’s more casual treatment (or rather, disregard). But whether Sakuma is fast enough to sock Hatano on the diaphragm is a crucial question.

“Oooh, a bodybuilder and a black belt fighting!?” Kaminaga says, perking up. “I’m here for that!”

“Idiots.” Mutters Miyoshi.

“Place your bets while you can, Miyoshi! Odagiri!”

Fortunately, before Odagiri can either bet or break up the argument—neither of which would end well for him—another person comes along and up the stairs.

“Good morning,” Jitsui smiles at Hatano and Sakuma, clearly in a cheerful mood, swinging his hard violin case with a sure grip like he would with a blunt weapon. “Please step aside, gentlemen, or I’ll turn you to bugs on a windshield.”

Hatano grins, Sakuma grumbles, and the two follow Jitsui back into the ensemble room. Soon enough the conversation rerouted itself among Hatano, Kaminaga, and Jitsui.

Odagiri sighs. He thought he’d come early like always and enjoy a peaceful practice by himself before the actual group practice, maybe even consult the usual early comers like Miyoshi and Sakuma about improving his play, but fate has it that the trouble trio arrives early today—the trouble trio of Kaminaga, Hatano, and any third person caught in their mischief.

Hence, it is a good thing that the next person to arrive in the ensemble room is a quiet one. Fukumoto walks in, cool as a cucumber, until he trips over his own foot and nearly crashes into Odagiri.

Unfortunately, Fukumoto does knock over a half-dozen music stands in the process.

“Sorry.” He apologizes without an ounce of panic, despite the others’ erupting laughter.

“Well, somebody’s tripping!” Someone shouts.

“He’s fainting cause he didn’t have enough breakfast! Somebody feed him!”

“It’s all right. Are you okay?” Odagiri asks, getting up to help Fukumoto fix the music stands.

“Yeah.” Fukumoto responds coolly with the slightest smile. He manages to align the music stands once again before he takes his place at the back of the string section and proceeds to set up his trombone. Odagiri has gone back into his seat.

“Good morning, fellas.” Gamou saunters in with a bright smile and a phone in hand. He looks around, checks his phone, then eases into small talk as he pulls out his viola. Though he looks relaxed, it takes him a while to actually start playing as he continues to check his phone repeatedly, slipping it in and out of his pocket. In time, however, he starts tuning his instrument under Jitsui’s strict supervision.

The next person signals his entrance by a lilting whistling. Tazaki gets to keep his breath and whistle all the way up the stairs because he carries the lightest instrument of all—the flute. Odagiri feels a little envious.

Tazaki pauses his whistling briefly and smiles. “Good morning, everyone.”

Likewise, Odagiri can’t help but be envious of Tazaki’s vast knowledge of music history and theory, things which Odagiri has only recently grasped. At the same time, Odagiri is aware that Tazaki’s knowledge has been accumulated over many years of class and reading and experience, something that he cannot gain that quickly.

 “You can’t do things at someone else’s pace—you have to do it at your own time. Find your rhythm, your own place. That’s the best way to learn.”

Find your rhythm.

Odagiri smiles. The words of his mentor rings true in his mind. He’s certainly not a natural like Kaminaga, experienced like Miyoshi, or quick at learning like Fukumoto, but agonizing over his own current deficiencies would not get him very far. He can’t let insecurities stop with his playing music or getting along with people, no—not anymore.

“What are you whistling, Tazaki? It sounds very familiar.” Odagiri asks as Tazaki settles next to Fukumoto to open his flute case.

“It’s ‘Morning Mood’ by Edvard Grieg,” Tazaki replies, smiling at him. “It’s famous by itself but there are actually two whole suites from which it’s taken. They are written for a play called Peer Gynt written by another Norwegian named Henrik Ibsen back in the late 1800s. Now Grieg himself was actually—“

“Sorry for being rude, Tazaki, but you need to get ready now.” Sakuma interjects, knowing that they have only five minutes till the supposed arrival of their conductor.

“Heh, you just don’t wanna hear another one of Tazaki lectures, don’t you!” Kaminaga laughs.

“That’s what you get from a music teacher.”

“You mean nerd!”

“You’re right, Sakuma,” Tazaki nods calmly. “I apologize.”

“No, I should be the one apologizing!” Odagiri argues. “I’m the one who stopped you and bothered you with a question!”

Tazaki smiles kindly. “Oh, not at all. I’m too happy to oblige. Or rather—I can’t resist to oblige.”

“Ah, I see.” Odagiri says with a clumsy chuckle. “Um. Thanks.”

“You’re most welcome.”

In his awkwardness, Odagiri’s hand starts fidgeting, randomly plucking at his bass strings. A musical instrument is good to way to occupy nervous hands—and nervous minds.

Suddenly, the door opens with an unceremonious bang.

“Morning! I’m sorry I’m late! Or am I?”

Amari rushes in, hair in a messy ponytail and shirt in a half-ironed state, catching his breath. He is holding a trumpet case in one hand and a perfectly dressed Emma on the other.

“Finally, the band leader is here!”

“Yes, hello! Sorry I’m late, guys! I just got up and had to feed and dress Emma and stuff—“

“Papa forgot where he put his car keys again,” Emma said matter-of-factly as she wiggles in Amari’s arms.

“Hey, Emma, you’re not supposed to tell them that!”

“But Papa, you say we have to be honest!” Emma pouts. “This morning I already have my pink shirt on and I turned off the TV and then I put cookies in my bag, so I said we have to go now Papa now, but you didn’t come out. And you didn’t come out because you forgot your car keys.”

Amari sighs and smiles.

“…Emma darling, you just made a very good point, and I regret being a good father.”

The room breaks into another fit laughter. Emma, who doesn’t quite understand the humor, giggles along as Amari pats her hair lovingly.

“Emma is too smart for you, Amari!”

“Take it easy, man!

“We’re still waiting for Yuuki to arrive.”

“Thanks, guys.” Amari laughs. “I walk in and you’re already playing nice like this. I should come late more often!”

Emma jumps down from Amari’s arms and makes herself at home on the corner with coloring book and crayons. Amari has taught her to not bother the musicians and Emma is fully capable of being sweet and quiet when the ensemble plays. Besides, Emma knows perfectly well that when practice is over she could turn everybody into her playmate.

Meanwhile, Amari doesn’t bother with his instrument. He sets up his trumpet and sheet music and put them down. Instead, he makes rounds and asks everybody how they are doing, responding appropriately to each person’s answer. Whatever tension was in the room before he came, it has all but dissipated in his gentle presence. Amari even knows how to persuade the reluctant Odagiri to open up. This ability to connect with and warm up with so many people—Odagiri is pleasantly surprised.

The ensemble members--they are people separated by age, profession, and background. They are different but equally strong personalities and individualities—which often leads to clashes, fist-less fights, and bad humor. But whenever they play music together, which they do often, they easily fall into the same friendly frequencies. The outside world, their worries, their woes—nothing matters but the time that they spend together creating music. Odagiri knows no better experience of living and being in the present than in that moment. It is a time he cherishes most.

Soon, the practice room at the fifth floor becomes filled with the dissonant sounds of voices and overlapping instruments. Despite the lack of heating in the large space, the chatter feels warm. Conversations are all over the place. Some of the men wear fashionable outfits, some prefer loose sweatshirts. Some play music as professionals, others only as a hobby. Some are relatively new to music, others claim to be veterans. Some are quieter, focused on playing and listening, and some are gregarious, eager to share their energy. Some are busy with tuning or polishing their instruments, some are busy socializing, teasing, or laughing at each other. Every practice is different and every practice is unpredictably fun.

There is absolutely no order on this floor—and that, Odagiri observes, is the perfect order of things.

Author Notes:

FIrstly, shout outs to D-Ensemble patrons! @dollofdeath​ @alitheia-to-yonde�� @alifiadjuhana​ !!!

Now,

1. It seems I like to use a lot of words even if not a lot happened. 2. I wrote this on a whim and with no plan whatsoever - all in under six hours. 3. Based on a Modern Musician AU drawing I did for Kai @dollofdeath which led to Kai’s drawing, and then some headcanons, and  then some more, and then this. Will update with new chapters...at some unspecified point in time.

Disclaimer: I have approximately zero hours of musical training so I don't know why I'm even writing a Modern Musician AU. But even so I hope you enjoyed the story!

Critics, comments, and suggestions are welcome.