#but am I to believe every word sung here and fitting so perfectly only happened by coincidence?😆

[batri-jopa]

And the waves

come in and...

...they're golden

But down in the deep,

the honey is sweeter

...

Ooh, it is sweeter, baby

song: Honey by Robyn movie: And Then We Danced (2019) dir. Levan Akin

[x0401x]

Chou Animedia Interview with ChouCho

“I made this song with care, so that it would not lose to the anime’s sensible portrayal.”

ChouCho is the one in charge of the ED theme of “Tsurune”. It was released in her single “Orange-iro”. An interview asking about the unknown story of its production was published in Animedia. Here, in Chou! Animedia, we are introducing the whole interview, including the parts that could not make into the article.

Raw || Index || My Ko-fi  ( ╹◡╹)っ’･*

Depicting the delicate and simplistic worldview that the anime has.

——“Tsurune —Kazemai Koukou Kyuudou-bu—”, of which the ending theme you are responsible for, has an archery club as its setting. ChouCho-san, it seems you were also part of an archery club in high school.

Yes. Which is why I was extremely happy to be the one singing this ending theme. The anime’s staff apparently did not know about it, so they were very surprised when I said, “I actually used to be in an archery club” (laughs).

——What was your impression from reading the original work?

The descriptions of Japanese archery were quite real, so the feelings from back when I myself was engrossed in it were revived. For example, while the atmosphere of the tournaments was stiff, there was something awe-inspiring to it, which I believe to be a peculiarity of Japanese archery, and I could feel even that air from the original novel. It was written that realistically, so it had me very touched.

——That sense of tension is surely a comfortable thing, right?

There is something I cannot describe with words at all about the nervousness and mood from the instant when you release an arrow after everyone silently goes dead-still, so I would like people to feel them from the novel and the anime.

——What was the cue for you to join the archery club, to begin with?

In a club introduction that happened soon after I enrolled into high school, I saw a demonstration of drawing a bow by an upperclassman dressed in hakama, and I joined the club because I looked up to that hakama look. Our school was not very strong, so we did not leave behind any particularly great records, but I have memories of it being extremely fun, including that peculiar sense of mental strain. While remembering myself from back then as I read the original novel, I felt like doing archery again for the first in a long time. After doing a research, I found that there were countless archery dojos in the metropolitan area and that experienced people can rent a space, so I want to try it when I have the time.

——“Tsurune” is about club activities and also a story about friendships of youth, so what did you feel sympathy for?

There are scenes where team competitions happen, and I was able to read them while overlapping with my own tournament experiences. The shooting of each person is very important in team competitions, so just one misstep ends up greatly affecting the team. But on the other hand, if your companions hit, you can take over that feeling and hit too. It is your own fight, but there is an aspect of it where you receive support from the core of the team. I read the novel while recalling this kind of teamwork so unique to Japanese archery.

——Does any character pique your interest amongst the ones that appear in it?

Takehaya Seiya-kun, I guess. He takes care of the protagonist, Narumiya Minato-kun, in an almost motherly way, and I thought that was delightful. In the anime, characters who had not yet been written about in detail in the original work show up in early stages, and I think that is also one of the highlights. There are three female club members as well, but there still has been no illustration of them in the novel, so I was looking forward to seeing their appearances, as well as more of their personalities and what kind of girls they are, in the anime.

——Additionally, it is also a hot topic that Fuuki Harumi-san, the person who composed the soundtrack of NHK’s Taiga Drama “Segodon”, was the one in charge of this anime’s soundtrack.

I also watched the drama “Segodon” every week and thought its music was wonderful. “Tsurune” is a series with a particular, warm mood to it that is similar to “Segodon”, so I was wondering just what kind of music it would turn out to have, and although the same goes for the animation, I was looking forward to the soundtrack too.

——I thought that the ending theme of “Tsurune”, “Orange-iro”, is a song where one can picture a scene with the five main boys walking back home from club activities side by side. How was your impression when you first listened to it?

The one who made the lyrics and musical composition was Fujii Mariko-san, and it was the first time I worked on a production with her. There is a tranquility to the composition that fits perfectly with the worldview of “Tsurune”, and you can feel warmth from the song. The tune is also easy to listen, and I thought it was a simple melody that can calm you down. Kyoto Animation-san’s works all have a characteristic sensibility to them, so I felt that I wanted to make this song with care, in order not to lose to the anime’s sensible portrayal.

——It is a very simple and idyllic song, right?

Right. That is the kind of melody it is, so rather than singing it clearly, I thought it was more suitable to value the simplicity that this song has. I sang it being conscious of its simplistic warmth, bearing an image that I was not singing it, but instead leaving the words there one by one while observing a distant view.

——But it is not as if the song is just simple; there is a feeling that the song structure strikes the rhythm, right?

Agreed. It was a tune with a pattern that I had never sung before until now. When I was only aware of the rhythm that has a melody to it, I would feel like singing it no matter what, so it took me a bit of time to be able to change my feelings so that I could speak the words without being conscious of the rhythm. As a result of myself fumbling around in order to correspond to what the song demanded with all my might like this, it became a song that bears an image of me purposely erasing the quirks of my usual way of singing.

——But ChouCho-san, it solidly expressed the sense of transparency and carefreeness in your voice that are so typical of you.

I am happy if that is the case.

——About the title, what do you think “Orange-iro” (“The Color Orange”) represents?

Orange is a color with an image of warmth rather than heat. I believe the orange hues of sunset represent the passion inside one’s heart and the radiance of youth. I think people imagine red when they talk about passion, but I believe that, rather than this primary color, having an unclear side to it is more youth-like. Shouldn’t it be a color that is neither red nor yellow, which burns while bearing complicated emotions?

——Lastly, this is something that will happen a little farther into the future, but next February, Tokyo Hakuju Hall will hold your fifth acoustic live, “ChouCho Acoustic Live ‘Naked Garden’ Vol.5”. “Orange-iro” seems like it would be a good match for an acoustic version.

I think it definitely is. I want to try this song out playing the acoustic guitar by all means, so I will do my best at practicing it.

——The last live was in June, and you uploaded a photo of yourself with your acoustic guitar on social media back then, right?

That guitar is something my father, who plays guitar as a hobby, passed down to me, and its model is called Gibson Hummingbird. It is a very good guitar, and I look like I am good at it thanks to its sense of presence, but the truth is that I do not play very well (laughs). The guests watch over me warmly, telling me, “Do your best!”. I will work hard at practice to be able to play more until the next live, so to the people who will have the time, please feel free to come have some fun.

[finleyjayne]

Break a Leg Chapter 2: Hope lost

Chapter Summary: The sickness is most definitely worse than the cure for you, and running away only makes life harder. Can you still be the knight in shining armor our are you going to be the one in need of rescuing?

A/N: This Chapter uses an altered prompt from @firefly-in-darkness​ ‘s Summer Challenge. My prompt was “Just ‘cause you fall on your ass doesn’t mean that you have to stay there” I kinda switched the phrasing but it is bolded.

If you haven’t read the first chapter and would like to here is a

Handy Dandy Link to Chapter 1

If you would like a tag, send me an ask! I’d love to add you so you don’t miss what happens next.

Warnings for this chapter include but are not limited to: Swearing, Angst, and lost hope...

LAST TIME ON BREAK A LEG

"No," Stark turns from the blond man and back to you. "No fucks given, Next, please."

  "Wrong, ALL THE FUCKS GIVEN," Amanda snarled, her polished heel coming down directly into your foot, causing you to sing out the zinging agony up your leg from the bruised puncture.

What was supposed to be a double entendre excusing yourself from the situation while still insulting Stark, ended up as a pure, clear note. Not sung really, but not really spoken or screamed. The sound resonated through everyone in the room, grabbing their hearts and holding fast. Amanda shot you a glare. You broke, mind reaching into words long since memorized, performed, and forgotten, perfectly fitting the anger and betrayal you felt from your best friend. Before your brain could make it out of the emotions to tell you how to react, your mouth opened, and you were singing.

You have shown me the sky, But what good is the sky To a creature who'll never Do better than crawl?

You turn to Amanda, your voice piercing through the eerie silence that had followed your outburst. Her eyes grew wide in shock as You glower at her. Your all-consuming hurt blatantly affecting her. Her soft, beautiful lips popped open as she watched the scene play out.

Your anger only grew as you see hope still shining in her eyes. You were a jealous green monster, there was no sense in denying it anymore since your one last shot went out the window. Why did she still have hope? Why did she have to share it with you? You were happy with how things were, and she made you believe that this time would be different. That this time you had a chance. Now you were dying from the rejection. You knew after your accident it would be harder to continue, it definitely didn't help you had lost 70% of the feeling in your leg, and gained 50 pounds as your activity levels changed so drastically. It was an actress' worst nightmare. You almost choked on the fury as you continued.

Of all the cruel bastards Who've badgered and battered me, You are the cruelest of all! Can't you see what your gentle Insanities do to me? Rob me of anger and give me despair! Blows and abuse I can take and give back again, Tenderness I cannot bear! So please torture me now With your "Sweet Dulcineas," no more! I am no one! I'm nothing! I'm only Aldonza, the whore.

As the last line leaves your lips, you shoved past Amanda and run as fast as your heeled feet can take you. Fueled by the rage and adrenaline that heats your heart and head. Using every instinct in your body to keep from running into some unsuspecting passerby.

You didn't stop running until your lungs were burning, and you could no longer see through the tears gathering in on your outrageously curled lashes. Not paying any attention to which direction you went, you continued to run following the flow of pedestrians until you turned into a lesser-used street. 

   As you turned the corner swiftly, two things happened consecutively; one, you broke the heels Amanda had stuffed onto your feet that morning and two, you ran into a hard surface. The combination was lethal to your balance. It would have been ridiculous to witness as you bounced off of the wall you had run into and landed with a sharp smack onto the filthy brown cobblestones that paved the grocery storefront. The pain was the last straw of your long sleepless morning as you broke into sobs, curling up into a ball where you landed crying.

   However, the wall wasn't a wall, wasn't that just your luck. "Bitch, Watch where you're going! Other people are walking here, ya know!" the grumpy young man growled at you as he kicked past you, not even really stopping in his powerful stride. All you could do was sob harder.

   The traffic flowing around your huddled form seemed to thin as a few minutes passed. Just like typical New York, no one seemed to notice you. All of them were busy rushing to and from there business. The stream seemed to be almost nonexistent before someone finally took notice of you.

   "Woah," A soothing tenor cut through the sounds of your sobs. "Hey, Hey, Hey, It's goin't' be okay, Are you hurt?" You shook your head, still hiding your face in your knees, barely catching a glimpse of his half-laced combat boots. "Okay, why don't we get you up outta the dirt. keep that pretty dress from gettin' all ruined."

   "n-no," you hiccupped. Your fingers fisted themselves into your dress, trying desperately to force yourself back together.

   "so you're just gonna sit there in the muck?"

   Your subsequent nod was met with a delightful sounding chuckle.

   "Ya can't really be expecting me to let ya do that, can ya?" The man squatted before you, his half-laced combat boots sending a spark of envy through your addled brain, shaking you back into more of a semblance of sanity.

   "Yeah," You answered him lamely. Flinching away as the man crouched down in front of you.

   "Hey now, just a'cause you end up on your ass, don't mean you have to stay there." He said, "Also, if you stay here, people are gunna step on you, and we don't want you getting' all hurt now do we?" Your shrug seems to pull a longsuffering sigh from the man. You could feel his eyes staring at your natural hair that sat pinned to your head in an intricate bun that lay somewhat skewed from all the action you had had before landing where you sat. His gaze moved, roving over the rest of your shaking, disheveled appearance.

   You scowl at the scuffed toes as the man talked, not sure what to do anymore. This man seemed nice, but your parent's warnings about 'men these days' kept ringing in your ears, keeping your internal hackles raised even through your uncontrollable sorrow. You really didn't want any company, you just wanted to rewind the whole terrible day and refuse Amanda's damned puppy dog eyes.

At the thought of Amanda, your anger came roaring back. Why did she have to be so hopeful and unaccepting of your new reasonable life? Couldn't she grasp the fact that you weren't what people wanted anymore? You weren't skinny; you weren't pretty; you weren't perfectly proportioned. You were never going to make it through a cattle call, and never getting through cattle call meant you were never going to make it anywhere near a stage again unless you went back home. Which wasn't going to happen. You couldn't imagine going back to playing the game of church is state, and if you swear, you are looked at as if you were outside fully nude. You didn't know it when you were there, but now you KNEW that it was literally hell on earth.

The man's overdone Brooklyn accent fell slightly as he watched you for a few more minutes. "Fine, if you won't stand up, I'll just have to sit here in the dirt with you. My ma would strangle me if I left a pretty girl like you crying in the middle of the sidewalk by herself." Showing his conviction, the man took a seat on the ground in front of you. You snapped your head up in surprise, meeting his intense blue-grey eyes. You couldn't help but stare into them. His eyes were beautiful, so kind, they held all of the gentleness of the most delicate mist. Unintentionally, you found your worry fading away. As your mind relaxed to the man's presence, his words finally registered.

"I'm not pretty," your thoughts escape on your traitorous tongue, "And seeing me crying probably doesn't help anything. Nobody likes a crybaby."

"Au Contraire dollface, you are putting Julia Roberts to shame. And I know for a fact that it's healthy to cry. Though most people choose someplace less dangerous to cry than the middle of the sidewalk. It has gotta be something pretty bad if you couldn't even make it to the bench over there before you stopped. Why don't you tell me what happened? It will make you feel better."

"Oh really?" you snap, his words leaving a nasty taste in your mouth. He was pitying you. You don't need pity, your feelings were valid, and pity makes them feel cheap. He could take his pity and stuff it right up his ass. "And pray tell, how would telling a complete stranger the pitiful tale of how life has brought me to my knees, only to serve a final blow and cleave my head from my shoulders, would make me feel better? I don't need you to pity me, all I need is to get home, sleep for more than an hour, or have a cup of coffee and a nap. Then maybe stab my best friend in the foot with these stupid heels that she made me wear. That will make me feel better."

"I don't want to pity you, I want to listen to you. There is a difference, and I can make it worth your while. I don't know about the sleep or the stabbing thing, but I know a café right around the corner that has the best cup of coffee this side of the Brooklyn Bridge. At least let me buy you a cup, and sit with me until you stop shaking. It will make me feel better."

Asshole, you think, he has just as bad of puppy dog eyes as Amanda, except his were so clear that they were a deep bottomless pit of emotion, clear as the sky after a good rain.  All he wants is coffee, worst-case scenario, I say something stupid hail a cab and leave, and never see this man again. Best case, I have coffee with a nice man, and never see him again. Either way, this will be fine. It's free coffee, in a public space, with someone who looks genuinely concerned. Honestly, all you wanted to do was to go home and sleep for the rest of the weekend, but how could you say no to those damned puppy eyes? Fuuuuuck.

"Fine, but if I feel like you are pitying me, I am going to leave," you grumble, unfolding yourself from your seat on the ground.

"Wouldn't expect anything less, doll." His smile, wow. His whole face lights up like taking you to coffee was the best thing to happen to him all day. Wasn't that just a confidence boost. He offered his hand after getting to his feet. You tentatively take it, but barely give him any weight as you rose to your feet. Smoothing your skirt down, you step on your broken heel and stumble slightly. A single warm leather-clad arm braces you, keeping you from being reacquainted with the pavement.

"Woah, I know I'm handsome and all, but I thought it would be a tad bit harder to get you to fall for me than that." He smirks. That added to the teasing tone and how easily he supported you, brought a blush to your cheeks.

"Ain't nobody falling for anybody," you growl, taking your eyes off of your rescuers face to look down at your shoes again, you notice just how built he is on top of having a handsome face. His plain white crew neck T-shirt, leather jacket and dark wash jeans hugged him just the right amount to accentuate his features without looking too small. His cologne made you dizzy but in that sweet intoxicated way. Or maybe that was your week and the crying session catching up to you. You caught yourself before you could yawn, looking back up at him, His hair was nicely cropped around his head, a dark chestnut brown that looked really soft to touch. His overly warm hand wrapped around you as he guided you to the bench.

Sighing, you look up to him again. "I'm sorry for being such a mess. I promise I'm usually the one rescuing the damsels in distress. But every knight has its day… And today has been an excruciatingly long day, and it's only-" You pat yourself down, looking for your phone to check the time but finding yourself without pockets, and therefore without any of your things. Since you hadn't thought of grabbing your purse when you had made your escape. "giornataccia!! Che Palle! People who don't put fucking pockets into their dress designs should be hunted." {Italian: really bad day!! $%>@!}

The man looks at you, a little shocked at your outburst. "Not that I don't agree, but…"

"I left my phone, wallet, purse, and extra pair of shoes back where I was..." You say, throwing yourself onto the bench and rubbing your eyes with your hands to hide the frustrated tears that were fighting to break loose.

"I see, what exactly could you have had happen to cause you to run away without anything? Should I be escorting you to a police station?"

"Ha!" The self-deprecating laugh popped out of your mouth, harsh, rough, and cracked. "No, I don't think the police are needed. Just had a drama queen moment, and now I can never show myself in a theater again. Talk about the worst audition of my life. That's saying something because I vomited on my BFA panel during my audition for them."

"It can't have been that bad." The man crouched in front of you, gently taking your hands away from your face, you avoided the trap of his gorgeous grey eyes by looking up into the sky.

"Oh, it was definitely that bad. I didn't even know about it until my best friend pushed me into the front doors. She then continued on her warpath, distracting Mr. Stark during cattle call, and then followed it up by an encore of stomping on my foot to get me to open my mouth. And in true MUSICAL THEATER FASHION. I just hAd To SiNg OuT mY FeElInGs. Talk about the most melodramatic thing that I could have done." You leaned lounged back on the bench, glaring at the sky.

"Okay, that does sound pretty bad. But how could you not know you were going to be auditioning? Especially if you were auditioning for Tony Stark. Those auditions are closed call."

"My best friend is the reincarnation of Puck. I'm pretty sure she worships gods of mischief. She has been secretly planning this for years. Ever since I stopped performing with her." At this point, you weren't sure your mind was awake enough to stop yourself from saying the first thing that came from your brain. "And why did you stop?"

"Accident. Left me lame for a while, and by the time I got myself back out there, I wasn't what people wanted to look at."

"Looks like you still have the function of both your legs. And even if you didn't, that doesn't mean shit, dollface, so what has really kept you away?"

"Fucking hell, it doesn't mean shit, and have you looked at me? I'm not what they want. I'm fat, and slow, and fucking ugly."

"Then do something about it."

"Yeah, whatever." You couldn't handle anymore of this man's bullshit. You had TRIED to do something about it. You had tried to do MULTIPLE somethings, and none of them worked. Your rekindled agitation put you back on edge. Sighing, you looked at him again. "I know you said you wanted coffee, but honestly I'm just tired, would you mind if I used your phone? I need to call someone to come get me since my wallet is wherever my friend is."

The man nodded, fishing his phone out of his pocket, handing it to you with a leather-covered hand. Nodding in appreciation as he walked a few paces from you to give you privacy, you quickly typed in Amanda's number hitting the call button.

The phone rings for way too many seconds for you to feel comfortable. When she answered, you didn't give her a chance to say anything. "I left my phone and purse there, I'm stranded on a bench at Cliff and Fulton. If you don't get here soon, I will have to retract your best friend privileges. You got me into this mess. You owe me big time. And you owe me a new pair of heels."

"I'm so so— "Before she can even finish her apology, you hang up. Turning to hand the man his phone back, surprised to find him conveniently absent. Looking around again, you see him across the street, walking towards you with two steaming McDonald's cups.

"I know you said you didn't want any, but I felt like you deserve a pick-me-up, It's not what I was planning on treating you to but, it will have to do." He gives you a smirk, handing you one of the cups.

"Thanks," you handed him the phone, introducing yourself casually, "my name is Y/N."

"My friends call me Bucky."

"Am I, your friend?" You ask, your eyebrow quirking upward.

"Who knows? I think we could be." He says, taking a seat on the bench beside you, splaying his legs so far apart you could probably sit pretty comfortably between his legs.

"Well, seeing as you are playing the role of knight in shining armor, why don't you tell me a story of your brave quest. You've heard my tale of woe, what's yours?"

His lights lit up at the request for a story. It wasn't until then that you realized how dark and sad his eyes really were.

|Next Chapter|

My own happy bubbles: @tossacoin2yourwitcher​ @buckys-broody-muffin​

and people I hope will share my work because Even though I am fierce I really am small fries: @cavillanche​ & @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan​.

Thank you four! You are each amazingly sweet and lovely humans that helped me push past my cognitive issues to get this out today! Thank you!

[apparitionism]

Hark

A merry early Gift Exchange to @kla1991​, whose not-so-secret Santa I am this year. This is the first part of a story set somewhat in-universe: there’s no season 5 (what could that even be?), and only the first ep of season 4—basically, time wound back to right before the Warehouse exploded in Stand, which aired on Oct. 3, so the Christmas during which this story is set is happening less than three months after that momentous occurrence. I’m postulating that Helena became an agent again, and there was no Artie/Father Data business. (Oh, and Steve didn’t die, so no metronome. I refuse to force Helena through witnessing anyone being brought back non-nefariously from the dead.) I’ll do my best to post the concluding part(s) by New Year’s Day—no promises on that, but I’ll finish as soon as apparitionally possible. Anyway, happy holidays to everyone. Continuing to participate with you all in this wondrous exercise in fandom is a blessing in every tradition, and I’m profoundly grateful.

Hark

“Your upstart nation stole ‘God Save the Queen’!” Helena seethed at Myka.

For whom “upstart nation” was really too much. “Nobody owns that melody!” she fumed, reciprocally, at Helena. “You can’t steal something nobody owns, our version is perfectly valid, and anyway I’m pretty sure other countries stole it too. Look it up!”

“I’m not in other countries. You look it up.”

“I’m driving! Since when are you such a fan of the monarchy anyway?”

“Stop questioning my patriotism!”

“I couldn’t care less about your patriotism!”

“You brought up citizenship!”

“Because you don’t have any!” Myka had genuinely thought they would be having an intellectual conversation, one about documentation and—

“I did at birth!” Helena raged, and then she scowl-sang, “God save our gra-cious Queen.”

This gave Myka pause. She reflected that she had actually never heard Helena sing before. She then concluded that she never wanted to hear Helena sing again... because Helena could not sing.

However: “My country ’tis of thee,” Myka sang back, frustrated. It was the only reason she herself would ever have sung, because—

“You can’t sing,” Helena informed her, in the tone of a doctor trying to conceal joy at having to report that the patient would not recover.

“Neither can you,” Myka informed back, aiming for straightforward “snide.”

“And I never want to hear you sing again,” Helena continued.

All Myka could come up with in response to that was an inadequate “Ditto.”

Helena sniffed. “You just wanted the last word.”

Myka pointedly let Helena have that last word. To make her stew in it. In the ensuing silence, she continued to drive. On this last leg home from a retrieval, late on Christmas Eve—their very first Christmas Eve—the air between them was frostier than the South Dakota winter outside the car could ever dream of matching.

She was under no illusion that Helena cared at all about anybody saving the Queen, and she herself, while reasonably patriotic on the American side of things, hadn’t sung her way through that song since her childhood. She knew this dispute was ridiculous, and she suspected Helena knew it too. She suspected also that they both understood they were developing a pattern: A period of calm—a deepening of accord—that would sooner or later, particularly in the adrenalin-ebb aftermath of a dangerous retrieval, dissipate into some minimally motivated squabble, the respective sides of which they entrenched themselves into with such commitment that it seemed there could never be an unentrenching.

*

An early instance: Myka had threatened to storm out of their shared hotel room because Helena had mulishly refused to concede that it had been foolish to open a bottle of mini-bar water for which they would be charged five dollars.

“Go right ahead,” Helena had “suggested,” so Myka did.

In the lobby, she’d run into Pete, who wasn’t storming anywhere, just looking for free snacks. “See?” Myka demanded of him. “Like a normal person.”

“If you were normal, you wouldn’t be out here with me. ’Cause you’ve got a hot girl in a hotel room, and I know things got a little uh-oh chasing that guy today, but you’re both still in one piece.”

“Maybe not for long.”

“You volunteered for this.”

“No I didn’t. Artie said ‘Pete, Myka, Helena, get on a plane for Montgomery, Alabama,’ and so we—”

“You know that isn’t the ‘this’ I meant.”

Myka did. But she hadn’t volunteered for that “this” either. Nothing about her response to Helena was voluntary. Nothing about it had ever been voluntary.

“Fights and all,” Pete added. “After the thing”—he always called the barely averted explosion of the Warehouse “the thing,” and so did Claudia—“you could’ve let her leave. You could’ve made her leave. She would have done anything you said.”

“Not anything,” Myka said, to be contrary.

“Maybe you don’t remember how she’d hardly even sit in a chair without your say-so. Oh, but wait, I think I know somebody who remembers everything, some tall lady with a lot of hair, name rhymes with Opelika... hey, that’s you!”

“Shut up. It wasn’t... that simple.”

“It is now.”

She crossed her arms at him.

He sighed. “Lemme show you: ‘Sorry, baby,’” he said in his “Myka” voice, which was terrible. “Me too, darling,” he then said in his “Helena” voice, which was even worse. As himself, he finished, “It’s like you’ve never been in a relationship.”

In a conversation in which Pete had said several annoyingly true things, that one was the most annoyingly true. But: “It’s like,” she conceded, and he slapped the side of her head, very gently.

“Hot girl hotel room,” he said.

When Myka went back to that hotel room, the hot girl said, “I’m sorry,” as if she’d received the same instructions from Pete. “I was precipitately thirsty.”

“I’m sorry too,” Myka told her. “I was precipitately miserly.”

Myka kissed the hot girl, the hot girl kissed back, and they fumbled their way to fine.

Until the next trivial-yet-entrenched tiff... because apparently, peace was for normal people.

*

Normal people. When Myka and Helena finally made it back to the B&B, Leena, Claudia, and Steve were doing reasonably convincing “normal” impressions: drinking hot chocolate, eating cookies, and playing board games. They seemed to be playing all the board games; Leena was replacing the lid on Monopoly, which she set aside, reaching for the next box in a towering stack. “Chef’s-kiss timing,” Claudia told them. “I just bankrupted these two pathetic poser slumlords, and we’re about to start Sorry. It’s funner with four, so siddown, and you two can be a team.”

“Or not,” Myka said, glancing at Helena, who glanced back and gave a definitely not yet inhale-exhale. “Why isn’t Pete playing?”

“We’re supposed to tell you it’s because he’s doing some last-minute Christmas shopping,” Steve said.

Myka was about to ask, “This late at night?” but Claudia supplied, “Except it’s really that he goofed off today and didn’t finish inventory and thought he’d get away with it but then Artie called and yelled at him.”

“And you left him alone to keep working on it? It’s the night before Christmas, and—”

Claudia waved her hands. “And all through the Warehouse, not a creature was stirring, I swear.”

“Besides,” Leena added, “he’s a grown man.”

“Who always ruins Christmas!” said Myka.

“Always almost ruins Christmas,” Claudia corrected.

Myka demanded, “Is there anything about me that says ‘I like a close call’?”

All eyes turned to Helena, then back to Myka.

*

Of course Helena had been part of the closest of calls, and Myka hadn’t liked it at all: nothing but the outcome. The Warehouse, the saving of it, yes, the thing—but the real outcome had been the aftermath at the B&B.

That outcome was real, but it was also a dream, one that Myka had dreamed more often than she would ever have confessed to pondering in her heart, this dream of being alone with a present Helena, no disastrous endpoint looming. The dream-logic of it: I can touch her? And Myka put a hand to Helena’s elbow. Reached and did that. Helena looked at the hand, the elbow. She looked in Myka’s eyes then and said, “Don’t spare my feelings.”

Feelings? Are you really you in your skin, Myka wanted to ask. Is this your elbow. Instead, because she needed to know, she murmured, “What do you want.”

Helena didn’t say words, but she made a noise that evolution had found fit to preserve from a deep, animal past, a guttural push of sound through the throat-column: it told Myka everything. Told Myka: “Everything.”

No speaking then but by bodies, a language of desperation and culmination. Helena had a mouth that could be met by Myka’s own, clothes that could be removed to reveal a palpable body, with every response of that body real under Myka’s hands. Myka held her eyes closed for much of that night, lest sight confuse her about presence and its proof, lest she fail to attend to what her eyes could never offer: The fleshy heaviness of a tongue in response to her own. The soft give of a thigh interior under her insistent thumb. The steady pressure of a body that pushed back. No empty air, no absence; only presence.

No question marks intruded on their immediate intimacy, their immeasurable, embodied relief. Two days prior, Helena had been a sacrificeable hologram, but all at once she was Myka’s living, breathing, at-last lover. All destined... like meeting at gunpoint.

That night precipitated a fast fall into full couplehood, with seemingly little conscious choice on either of their parts. As inevitable as the gunpoint meetings, the wrenching betrayals, even the miraculous redemption.

But nothing good can possibly be so simple, Myka told herself. Or so inevitable.

“Is that what you believe?” Myka imagined Helena asking this, Socratically. She’d had so many internal conversations with Helena that she found the habit—probably a bad one—difficult to break.

“I’m tired of belief,” Myka told her beautiful, imaginary Socrates. “Sometimes I want to go back to my regular non-Warehouse life, where belief didn’t matter.”

Helena said, still in Myka’s head, still Socratic, “Or did you merely act as if it didn’t matter? Artifacts were born. Religions carried on as they do. Your ignoring belief had no effect on any of it.”

“My not ignoring it has no effect on any of it.”

“So you yourself, regardless of attitude adopted, cannot affect belief.” Socrates paused. Smiled. “Or that which is inevitable.”

Myka did, in such moments, briefly wonder why she needed the real Helena around, if the one in her head was such a reasonable facsimile. A hologram could have done that job just as well.

But the answers, the “here’s why,” came fast and thick, and Myka rejoiced that they could. The real Helena could make Myka laugh an easy laugh, because circumstances were not as they had been with that hologram, when laughter was an impossibility. The real Helena could touch Myka’s neck—not wonderingly, as Myka had known that elbow—but instead quick and hot, in that way that said “we have been intimate recently and will soon again be.” The real Helena could fall asleep and in relaxation display a face so devastating in its symmetry that Myka was inclined to regret not being Michelangelo, so as to recreate it in appropriately tributary marble.

Strange, though, or probably just ridiculous, to feel that your romantic relationship had made more sense when one of you was a hologram.

Myka should have expected Christmas, also a fraught inevitability, to loom as an existential test—yet another existential test—of that relationship.

She should have expected also that when this new existential test was administered, Pete would be the one helping to shove answer sheets and no. 2 pencils into their hands.

*

“Might be a close call or two in Sorry. Sorry!” Claudia cackled. “Anyway, go put your stuff away so we can get our Sorry on. Also our merry. We might even sing.”

“Or not,” Myka said again, and this time she got an eyeroll in response rather than meaningful breathing. An improvement? Hard to tell.

“Nobody’s required to sing anyth—” Leena began, but then she sat up very straight and cocked her head. “Do you hear that sound? Or I guess I mean, do you feel that sound? It’s not singing.”

Helena moved her head too, and not in a way Myka recognized. “I do feel that sound. In fact I believe I know that sound.”

“I do too,” Leena said.

Steve squinted. “Feels like... a weird earthquake? Is it happening all over Univille?”

Claudia said, “This is the kind of thing they blame on us even when it isn’t us. It’s why they look at us weird at the supermarket.”

“I can’t feel anything,” Myka said. “What is it?” She looked first to Helena, who was shaking her head—not at Myka, not with anger, but as if she might be able to find the right shake to rid her ears of the sound, or the feeling, or whatever it was.

“Agitated artifacts,” Leena said, performing a very similar shake. “They... rumble.”

“Agitated artifacts,” Myka repeated. “Pete’s alone at the Warehouse, it’s Christmas, and artifacts are agitated. Okay.”

Naturally, Pete chose that moment to march in, proclaiming, “I hope everybody’s ready to apologize to me.”

Steve asked, “Why should we apologize?” Now he was shaking his head too.

“Because everybody always says I ruin Christmas.”

Helena said, “As I understand the situation, the salient fact is not that they say you ruin Christmas. The salient fact is that you do ruin Christmas.”

“Almost,” Claudia corrected again. She canted her head, righted it. Canted it again.

“But this time I saved it.”

“By agitating artifacts?” Myka said, but of course he would think that. Probably encouraged them to have a party...

“More so by the minute, from the sound of things,” Leena told him.

“What? No! That isn’t what I did!”

“The artifacts are telling a different story,” Helena noted.

Claudia offered, “It’s more that they’re humming it real low. Like some geologic event that worked its way into a Björk track. Or vice versa.”

Myka—very calmly, she believed, under the circumstances—said, “What. Did. You. Touch.”

“Nothing, Mom,” he said, and his tone caused Myka to spare some sympathy for Jane Lattimer. He then said, as if it were some magnanimous confession, “Okay. Fine. I did, but I gloved up.”

“What did you touch after you gloved up?” Leena asked. “And why?”

“It was like it tapped me on the shoulder...” he began.

Still canting her head, Claudia muttered, “Sallah flashback, Sallah flashback...”

“And said ‘hey big guy’...”

Steve said, “This is already a longer story than I feel like it should be.”

“And told me it had to go the Christmas aisle...”

Myka had had enough. “If you don’t spit it out right now, I personally will Heimlich it out of you. Joyfully. WHAT had to go to the Christmas aisle?”

He turned to her and gave a palms-up shrug. “You know I don’t know anything about classical music.”

She reached to the table for the nearest board game, to throw it at him, but Helena preempted that move by saying, “Judging from Myka’s face, now is not the time for non sequiturs.”

She probably couldn’t have done much damage with a travel-size Aggravation anyway, but travel and aggravation made her think, in Helena’s direction, Oh, now you can read my face. An hour ago in the car, not so much. Then she sighed internally. Or maybe, an hour ago in the car, too well.

Pete was continuing, “But the Messiah had strong feelings.”

“Oh no,” Leena said, and Myka knew that Leena saying “oh no” in that particular way meant she knew something, and the something she knew wasn’t good, but Pete kept on, still enthusiastically proud of himself: “So I gloved up, took it where it wanted to be, and then came home. Because it isn’t Christmas till I’ve won the Trivial Pursuit Star Wars Classic Trilogy Collectors’ Edition!”

“Do I seriously have to remind you I’m the reigning champ?” Claudia demanded. “What you’re saying is, it’s never gonna be Christmas.”

“Not for a while yet,” Leena said, “because we’re going back to the Warehouse. Because I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening.”

“Why do I have to go if I can’t hear whatever it is?” Pete whined.

Myka told him, “I can’t hear it either, and it’s your fault.”

“Your ears are your own problem.”

“I might Heimlich you just for the fun of it.”

Steve said, with concern, “I’ve heard that ribs tend to break.”

Myka nodded. “Exactly.”

“Santa would not approve of that attitude, young lady,” Pete chided.

“All I do is lug around stockings full of coal,” she said. “Do your worst, Santa.”

She made the mistake of glancing at Helena, whose face betrayed a responsive ripple of disquiet. Exactly the wrong sentiment for ending a fight, even a foolish one, Myka realized: imply that nothing you carry with you is what you want. “I didn’t mean...” she began, but Claudia was demanding of Leena, “How do you know what’s happening? And what is happening?”

“He put the Messiah sheet music in the Christmas aisle,” Leena said, with what Myka considered enviable patience.

“You say that like it means something!”

“It does mean something,” Leena said. “You’ll see. More importantly, you’ll hear.”

*

At the Warehouse, when they reached the floor, they were greeted by... “Curtains?” Steve tried, because that was what they were. Tall, cream-colored damask curtains with a green floral pattern. Freestanding, blocking their path. Insistently blocking their path.

“For all of us!” Pete tried back. “Dun-dun-DUN!”

“No...” Leena said. She regarded the curtains. “I know who you are,” she said, and Myka found herself unsurprised to see the curtains rustle at that, as if in appreciation. Leena then said, “And now I know exactly what’s happening.”

“A play is beginning?” Helena suggested.

“Not quite, but you’re in the neighborhood. Surely somebody other than me knows who these curtains are really for.”

Pete leaned close to the curtains, then jumped back like they’d bit him. “Oh my god. Now that I look close—the von Trapp kids!”

“Good boy,” Leena said.

“I thought we were calling him a grown man,” groused Myka.

“Leena is providing positive reinforcement,” Helena said. Pedantic, as if Myka had never heard of such a thing.

“I know she’s providing—” But she shut herself up, sighed in frustration instead.

Leena made sure everyone was wearing gloves, then said, “Claudia, keep your goo gun in your pocket; we might find more of them taking their frustrations for a walk.”

“So do we just put things back where they belong?” Steve asked. “And they calm down and the rumble-chatter stops?”

“Any that got themselves where they aren’t supposed to be, we take them back. But here’s what else we have to do.” She paused. “Sing.”

“No,” Myka said, and “no,” she repeated. She chanced a glance at Helena, but she had closed her eyes and seemed to be pre-massaging a headache out of her temples.

Leena appeared not to have heard Myka, for she went on, “We’ll deal with the curtains first. Next, the Messiah goes back where it’s supposed to be—because that’s what started it all. After that, I think Claudia should tell us what we need to do.”

“Oh god,” Claudia said, sounding just about as dread-filled as Myka felt. “This is Caretaker practice, isn’t it?”

“What if it is?” Leena asked.

“Ugh. Thanks, Pete.”

He said, “Maybe it tapped my shoulder because it thought you needed Caretaker practice.”

Myka snorted. “Maybe it tapped your shoulder because it could tell you’re an easy mark.”

“Hey!” he protested.

“Particularly at Christmas.”

“Hey!”

Leena said, “I think the Messiah might have sensed you’d be an easy mark... mostly because you want to make everybody happy. Particularly at Christmas.”

“See? Leena understands,” he taunted Myka.

Myka once again considered the Heimlich.

They escorted the curtains back to the musicals section, passing by Ginger Rogers’s dancing shoes, and Myka was unnervingly tempted to put them on and bleed her way backwards and in high heels out of the entire situation as Leena explained, “People repurpose ‘My Favorite Things’ as a Christmas song. The curtains find that... troubling.”

Pete scratched his head. “I guess I don’t really get that. Isn’t it kinda great?”

“Wait,” Claudia said, “and this might not even be practice: I think I do get it. How they feel. So let’s say you’re you.”

“I’m me,” he said. “Gotcha. Awesome. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Exactly. But what if some holiday thingy came along and made like it was changing you into something else? They’re afraid we’ll put ’em in the Christmas aisle, and they don’t want to be there. Unlike the Messiah, I guess. Am I wrong, Leena?”

“You’re not wrong,” Leena told her, smiling.

“I feel that too,” Steve agreed. “They’re... afraid? Afraid it’ll diminish them. They’ll be about Christmas and that’s all. That’s why they’re so agitated.”

And so the curtains were serenaded with words about raindrops, kittens, kettles, mittens, and all the rest.

“Are they happier now?” Pete asked. “Do they not feel so bad?”

Leena, Claudia, Steve, and Helena all nodded, if not entirely vigorously. Helena said, “Marginally happier. Not knowing the song, I of course couldn’t participate. I hope they aren’t offended.”

But she hadn’t seemed apologetic at all while the singing took place. In fact she’d smirked. So Myka murmured, “Thrilled, more likely.”

Helena pretended to ignore her but also bared her teeth, minimally, in Myka’s direction, as she said, “Popular culture, alas, remains a largely undiscovered country.”

“It’s just one song,” Claudia said. “You’re getting your head around more stuff all the time! Take the Muppets.”

“Last week’s Christmas special,” Helena said, and Claudia nodded. Myka knew they’d been going one per week, because that was as much as Helena could take, whereas Claudia would have set up a holly-jolly IV drip if she could. Helena continued, “The one you called a ‘crash course’ in several shows’ worth of puppets?”

Claudia nodded again, even more enthusiastically. “Muppet Family Christmas! And now you’re up to speed, so for example when I say ‘Oscar,’ you say...”

“I still fail to understand how the large bird, which seems more accurately a costume than a puppet, qualifies.”

“The answer we were looking for was ‘the Grouch,’ so maybe we’re not quite as far along as I thought. I’m not going to bother with when I say ‘Fraggle,’ you say.”

“Consumer of the structures built by the devoted little workers who wear hats.”

“Aaaand that’s why not. Although your essay answer isn’t wrong.”

“Thank you,” Helena said, performing her funny little bow that struck Myka anew, each time she saw it, as a Victorian tell.

*

In fact, Myka had come home from the Warehouse just as that “crash course” was ending: Helena, as always after such a lesson, looked bemused but relieved, while Claudia was fidgeting with post-lecture satisfaction and, most likely, disappointment that she’d have to wait an entire week till the next one. Myka had asked, “Why does Helena need to know about the Muppets?”

Claudia responded with a puzzled, “Why doesn’t she?”

“Bert, Ernie, and the distinctions therebetween,” Helena said to Myka. “Would that I were you and could retain it all.” She smiled a small “but here we are” smile, and Myka leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed that smile. Because she wanted to; because she could. The smile then widened, and Myka tried not to make the mistake of wondering why every moment wasn’t like this one.

“You two can be pretty soft when you want to be,” Claudia remarked.

Myka had thought, No, we’re not this way when we want to be. It was when they weren’t actively wanting it—or needing it—that this ease stole upon them. But here it was... so Myka kissed Helena again, then asked, “What’s for dinner?”

The asking of that question, in the softness of that moment, had seemed an ideal step forward, one not about destiny or fraught inevitability, but balance and consistency. And then Myka did make the mistake: Why couldn’t every moment be like that? What was it that disturbed all the other moments?

*

Now, as they all headed for the Christmas aisle, Pete pulled on Myka’s arm and held her back a bit from the rest. “You mouthed the words,” he accused, very quietly.

“So what if I did? You know I can’t sing.”

“Maybe it makes a difference. H.G. said the drapes were only marginally better.”

“She didn’t sing either, by the way,” Myka pointed out.

Apparently her feelings about that were clear, for Pete said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I meant you and H.G. Incidentally, you walk a little bit like Big Bird.”

“We’re fine. Incidentally, if you got a chicken bone stuck in your throat I wouldn’t be at all upset about what could happen while I was saving your stupid life.”

“I sort of feel like if she choked on a chicken bone, right now, you wouldn’t want to let anybody else do the rib-breaking.”

Myka almost said a dark “you bet I wouldn’t,” but then she realized: “I think that’s always going to be true.”

Pete nodded. “Kiss her, kill her. I get it.”

Unless he was talking about vibes, he didn’t get it, not fully—Myka herself didn’t get it fully, and in everybody’s defense there was a lot to be got—but it was Christmas-sweet that he got as much as he did. She said a mollified, “Look, just don’t make me sing, okay?” Because if there was anything Myka was sure she and Helena definitely did not need right now, it was a replay of “you can’t sing” and “neither can you.”

“No promises, partner. When Leena says ‘jump’ I say ‘my knees are shot.’ You, on the other hand, when she says ‘sing’? Better say ‘how high.’”

“This is kind of a ‘my knees are shot’ situation,” Myka observed.

“What’s the matter with your knees?”

“Never mind.”

And then they reached the Christmas aisle. About which Myka felt, and felt she had a right to feel, a certain amount of post-traumatic stress.

“If you touch anything,” she told Pete, “I will turn your ribs into chicken bones.”

“That makes no sense.”

“And yet you understand me perfectly.”

He took a step away from her. “In a very mobbed-up way, yes I do.”

Helena, Claudia, Leena, and Steve had ringed themselves around a shelf, and Myka peeked over Helena’s shoulder. Only in the Warehouse, she figured, could a piece of music manage to project the idea that it was pleased with itself.

“It’s gloating at me,” Pete complained.

“It did make you do what it wanted,” Steve pointed out.

Claudia said, “It’s like it knew we’d show up right at this moment.”

“I’m pretty sure it did,” Leena said.

Myka, still at Helena’s shoulder, felt a tension in the body that was not quite touching hers. She felt a tension, too, in words that were not quite meant for her to hear as Helena murmured at the music, “What else do you know...”

TBC

[thinkinggameasks]

Hello! Captain here! May I request a fic about a musically talented F/O being lovestruck for one of the stage crew (the reader!)? They just see all of the adoring audience as they sing and dance and perform but their heart is set on making you fall for them. (@captain-self-ships)

For @captain-self-ships

The Purpose Of The Tour

It was midway through the countrywide tour. When the idea had been proposed they had been happy about it, but as it was dragging on it was harder and harder to ignore the downsides to the constant movement.

Usually, it would become bearable once they were onstage, but until then, it was draining. Travelling across the country on the old tour bus, trying to catch enough sleep between States to be even remotely awake for the interviews.

The constant people.

Okay, the screams of adoration were nice, but eventually even that grew tiring and they longed to arrive anonymous into a city, to be unknown and undiscovered.

The price of fame, it seemed, could be a definite loss of oneself, however unintentional.

“Does everything look alright?” the stage manager called and they turned to look at him, trying not to yawn.

This was, what, the 25th State, the 30th? They were doing all of America, and were only just halfway through. Everything looked the same; the stage was the same, just fit into different buildings. At one time they’d longed to play these venues, now they just longed for the end, when they could return home and write once more.

“It looks good,” they replied, watching as the stage manager smiled.

“We’ll do the sound check in 10, if they want to get ready.”

“No problem,” they called, making their way to the stage.

It was as they were walking that their eye drifted into the shadows, and they caught a glimpse of one of the stage hands.

They’d seen that person before, but only ever as a distant figure. They were something to do with lighting, or was it sound? They weren’t sure, but they couldn’t help but pause in their travels, just watching silently as the person worked.

There was something about their movements, they were peaceful and serene. From A to B, no dawdling. You needed people like that on the tour, they kept everything moving, they kept it flowing, and they helped make you look good.

And they weren’t the only one today, who looked good. The artist smiled, about to make a move towards the stage hand, when the stage manager called once more, dragging them from their thoughts. Casting a final look, they walked to the stage, and began the sound check, their mind once again lost to the figure in the shadows, the one they yearned to learn more about.

For a second it felt like someone had been watching you, but when you looked up, there had been no one there.

Landing this gig had been a dream, and though the travelling was tough, you savoured every second. You loved this band, the singer especially, and though you were working in the shadows, you loved the fact you were able to catch a view of them that no one else ever saw. There had been a couple of moments you’d watched them rehearsing, adjusting the lighting, as they sung away.

Your eyes had met, but theirs hadn’t lingered, and you expected they hadn’t seen you at all. Why would they? You were just a stage hand, a lonely figure in the shadows. There was no reason for them; someone so famous and influential, to care about the little people. Plus, they seemed tired now, they needed to rest, not be hounded by your affections.

And so you kept yourself to yourself. You carried out your work. You ensured they looked good, always framed perfectly in the lightning, centre stage for their adoring fans, while, inside, you wondered: What if?

Then came the show itself. The hall became packed quickly, something they always marvelled about. Why was it so many people paid money to come and see them? It was baffling, but delightful all the same.

It didn’t matter how tired they were, how spent they were, the second they heard the venue fill with the noise of the spectators, all that fell away. This was the reason they wrote the songs, sung the songs, lived the songs. It was to help those people do the same, it was-

There they were again, up in the rafters, setting up a final light. Startled the Artist had little choice but to watch you for a moment, turning their head as the figure vanished backstage once more. The artist knew they were based close by, but they weren’t ever sure where, and turning away from the audience was discouraged. If only they could find a way to get through, if only.

Smiling, the artist moved towards the stage, picking up their discarded guitar and playing a few chords, their eyes back to the rafters. As expected, a head poked up, turning in their direction and the artist smiled; low chords to high chords, as they hummed the chorus of one of their many love songs.

The figure watching blushed, and vanished again, and the artist turned away. The crowd, oblivious, cheered and it wasn’t long before the curtain lifted, and the show began in earnest.

What had just happened? Your heart was pounding, and you pressed your hands hard against your chest, holding it in.

They’d looked directly at you, even though you were up in the ceiling, hidden by the tracks the lights moved on. They’d played their song to you, ‘I’ll love you forever, from afar’ you knew the words off by heart, and you couldn’t help but wonder, was that deliberate?

The show had been electrifying, and you noticed their eyes drifting, occasionally they even turned around, something you’d never seen them do before, and your heart caught on your throat, your cheeks blushing as your eyes met: “I will always love you, even if you don’t know me. I’ll love you from afar, even if you won’t own me. You have me. I’ll love you from afar.”

Crying now, you watched as they turned away again, encouraging the crowd to sing along, and sing along you did, shouting from the top of your lungs, daring to believe, just this once, they maybe they’d seen you. That maybe, they had sung those words for you. That maybe

It had finally happened.

They’d dared to turn around, and you’d caught their eyes, for once they’d seen you watching, and they’d manage to make that contact. The rest of the song, hell the rest of the time on stage was dominated by that moment, and it spurred them on.

Normally active anyway, the artist became even more active now. The critics would call this their best performance to date, and credit their amazing stamina and love of the fans.

But, it hadn’t been for the fans or the critics, it had been for you, and as the curtain fell and they vanished backstage for the final time, they couldn’t help but seek to locate the Stage Hand, to tell them the most important thing about this city: That song had been for them, and from now on, so would all the others, until you gave in and accepted their love.

You were dazzling, astonishing, and the Artist couldn’t help but long to make you theirs.

// I am not sure if this stayed on brief or not (or actually how to write it so I did it in two halves. The normal text is the Artist, the Bold is the Stage Hand. I kept both gender neural. There was a bit more interaction between them, which might not have been the brief? Anyway, we thank you for the request and hope you liked it. Sorry it took so long, work was being annoying *Hugs*

[marzipan-moon]

Dress Rehersal

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Ship: Lorenz / Dorothea, Dorothea / Ferdinand Summary:  Lorenz watches Dorothea on stage, captivated.

Did she ever really come down from it?

The music swells, the war ends.

And somewhere, it's raining. AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22723957

OVERTURE

Her voice carried up through the rafters as a bird finally released from its cage, wingbeats reverberating through these shattered, destitute halls. War had come to claim everything; the beauties of old ravaged with as much savagery as had the people of Fódlan. And yet, to see her still standing here - with lungs that channelled air into art, singing the story of a defiant girl rising from nothing… she made this opera house feel fuller than it ever had been.

After all, he thought, even in its glory it could not have let the moonlight shine through to catch on her delicate skin, to roll in waves through her thick hair, to reflect itself so eagerly in her tear-stained, gemstone eyes. And even in their days of peace, she could not have sung with such verbosity, could not have acted on that stage with such sincerity, could not have wept the true tears she was spilling now.

War had taught him many things. More things that it had stolen from him.

So why was it that, as her voice reached its very climax, the jade in her eyes turned liquid and spilling as her spurned lover let go of the knife he had struck between her ribs… why was it that, as she collapsed to the floor, the last echoes of her voice dimming out, why was it that he rose to his feet, panic in his face, a scream of ‘stop’ drowned out by the audience’s thickening applause?

He’d seen her nearly die on that battlefield countless times.

Hundreds of others joined him to stand, his breath so tight and uncontrolled, so unlike hers that even when she died she had kept so loose and free.

He covered his face in shame and remembered that this was all just an act.

ACT I - RECITATIVE I That night, he asked her to marry him.

“You have become a symbol of hope for all the people of Fódlan, and I can think of none so fitting that could be my bride. Just as you have restored music to this ruined opera house, so too will you restore honour to my house.”

She tilted her head, the moon still trapped in her eyes, her smile curling.   “So, you made up your mind.”  

“Am I too late? I see no ring to bind your finger.” “I’m still in costume, Lorenz,” she laughed. “And you’ve seen what happens to a woman who remains unmarried.”

“Then all the more reason for you to accept my proposal. If she had had the protection of marriage, no man would have harmed her.”

Dorothea laughed again, turned his back to him, her eyes hidden from view. “Is that right? I’m not sure you understood the story at all.” Her words caught in his throat, his face souring. “You are straying from the topic. I have not come to swap narrative interpretations, Dorothea.” She lifted her head higher, the waves of her lovely hair brushing her back. “The tragedy is not that she dies, Lorenz.” He scoffed, the sweat pitying his brow. This was not how he imagined this proposal going at all. This was supposed to be his moment - the time he had dreamed of, over and over again, where his goals would finally be fulfilled! And here she was, blathering on about something else entirely. “I have always admired your intelligence, your wit. You outclass even I in charm, that much was apparent tonight. Even now, you return a proposal with a gift of philosophical moralising,” he hummed, attempting to look satisfied. “If I answer you correctly… if I satisfy you with my interpretation of this opera, will you marry me then?”

“I’m not so sure… Maybe I’ll consider it.” He latched onto any shred of hope still nestled here, his eyes widening. Of all the women he could have chosen, why had he been attracted to the most difficult?

“Very well. I think that it was an allegorical examination - an exploration of proletarian life, immorality and lawlessness. We are meant to expect it from the commoners, but be shocked when that same spark of madness afflicts the nobleman who kills her in a jealous rage. The tragedy is that he will likely go unpunished, our society so unfairly favouring his prestige over an orphan’s life.”

She glanced over her shoulder, eyes narrowing expertly. “It’s that she died pursuing freedom, the one thing a woman cannot have in this world. Wartime, peacetime, it does not matter. Every man will try to snuff it out.”

He paused, red returning to his cheeks like she had slapped him. His mouth meandered for a while, twisting itself in shapes until he finally found the question he was looking for. “Then, are you saying you will choose freedom over me?” She turned to look at him now, her gaze somehow haunting, her wings now at rest. “No, silly.” His heart trembled, the colour in his face deepening. “You always look so cute when you’re embarrassed. Red is a colour that really flatters you. You wore such a brilliant shade of it when you rudely yelled at me from the audience. That wasn’t very noble of you, was it?”

He floundered, ‘well I’s’ mumbled in his mouth.

Her laughter filled it instead.

“Yes. I will marry you, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester.”

--

 ACT II - DUET I

He had never… copulated before, it was true. Though such things were always on offer for one his stature, it was also his role to reject such pleasures in pursuit of something far more noble. In fact, some would suggest that this performance must always be… purposeful, focused on siring an heir, and to stray from that was indeed ignoble.

Yet, with Dorothea, he could not imagine this act being one born only of purpose. Besides, building a family was not yet in either of their interests. She had glorious heights still to rise to, and he refused to be the one who placed such a yoke upon her shoulders. Somehow, seeing her fulfilled was… well, satisfying in a way that, for now, burned far brighter than his desire for children.

So when she kissed him, delicately and then with opened mouths, when she gasped and giggled at his every reaction, guided his hands across her body in ways that demanded so little work from himself… he felt embarrassed. Ashamed of how little he knew, despite his long evenings fantasising. Yet he could not help but be in awe of her, how, when she moved his hands to her waist and then up and - yes, he squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing - over her breasts, he forgot who he even was. She was like liquid pleasure, paralysing him in all ways but his breath. “I had no idea that the great head of House Gloucester had such a problem with his lungs,” she’d lilted in his ear, her perfect nails scratching gently at his chest.

“And I had no idea that you would dare use magic outside of battle,” he’d scowled, sparks of fire glowing in his belly, intensifying as she placed his hand over his and gently coaxed it to roll in circles.

“If this is all it takes to overwhelm you,” she whispered, pressing his awkwardly raised fingers against her nipple, “then I don’t think you’re quite ready for that.”

He groaned, forgetting his duties to be the one to please her, to follow the rules of all the men in all those operas she starred in. “How do you…” he gasped as another ripple of pleasure blossomed in him, her body pressing up against him. “Ahh, how, is it you maintain, such… such focus?” She was more experienced than he, he knew, but did not want to know. Such things he could barely condone in his fellow noblemen, but for a woman of any standing? He wanted to believe that this was as much her first experience as his, he wanted it so very much, and yet….

She slid her fingers down his chest, rushing over the outline of his arousal pushing against his white trousers. He almost went mad, then, a feeling as ecstatic as watching her voice climb to impossible heights, the swell of it pulling every soul to the edges of the body.

“It’s easy,” she said, her other hand losing itself in his long hair. She pulled herself into the nook of his neck, drowning herself in it. He didn’t much mind, the feel of her body perfectly aligned with his own, harmonising. “It’s all in the breath.”

He watched her through narrowed eyes, hardly aware of whatever earthly thing his lungs were doing. “What?” Oh. He should have been embarrassed at how inarticulate that was, but… “Just like in singing, you have to breathe from your diaphragm.”

She moved, fingers spreading, his breathing turning ragged. “Your chest shouldn’t be moving and,” she mumbled. “You want to tighten,” her fingers curled and gripped him through the fabric, “your stomach muscles.” From her instruction, he failed miserably. Whining helplessly into her hair, he forgot how to breathe at all.

When he felt himself returning into his body, he realised that she was laughing, warmth flooding into himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed to stop?” She squeezed her lips together, brows raised in faux-judgement. “Well, I, was… focussing on my breathing. Next time, it should be I who leads. This… this is exactly why a woman should not.”

His embarrassment sizzled, but not as brightly as the sudden look of anger that flashed hotly in her eyes, those green pools hardening.  

“And what should a woman do, Lorenz? Lie flat on her back for you, wait while you do nothing? Can’t you enjoy a little bit of teasing? You certainly seemed to only moments ago.”

“No, Dorothea, that’s -“ She decoupled himself from him, disappointment ghosting over his body as she left the room. — In Opera, all stories were ones of grand themes. War, love, death. And in every one she stared in, nearly always was she bathed in her own blood. Mezzo-Soprano, that was the colour of her voice, and the one that destined her to the role of villainess, of the rival, of tragedy.

Was that what they had seen in her when they plucked her from the streets? Heard the way she so perfectly embodied sorrow, as though her story and her style of singing were destinies perfectly entwined. If she had been born a noble girl, would her role be something entirely different? Would she had ever even been noticed? He thought such things as he watched her die countless deaths in the arms of countless lovers, torn between them and then torn apart. It was only an act, after all.

— Some nights, she would brush his hair. He was not entirely sure why, but she insisted on it. He rather enjoyed the attention, to be under her gaze in a way that was rather less dramatic than usual. “Do you remember that awful bowlcut you used to have?” She giggled, boar bristles sweeping gently through his hair. “What made you decide to grow it out?” “Awful?”

He narrowed his eyes, bending his head so he might catch a glimpse of her smirk. “Didn’t you think it cute?” “… As hard as I tried to see through your foul attitude to find something endearing in your personality, Lorenz, I really could not say the same about your hair.”

He guffawed to himself, frowning ever so slightly. “Well, I suppose I appreciate your honesty, but it is only a matter of taste. It makes sense that you prefer a more showy haircut, so normalised that has become to you with all your days spent in the opera. It is hardly a house for those with more… subtle tastes.” She gently and repeatedly went over the ends of his hair, pushing herself momentarily against his back. “That haircut,” she laughed, placing her head on his shoulder, “was anything but subtle.”

Before he could find some way to retort, she pulled her head away and began humming lightly to herself.

“It was such a shock, seeing how much you two had changed.”

He paused, turning to her. “Two?”

“You and Ferdie.”

Just as he saw the ghosts of all of her past lovers when she touched him, now he saw another figment rise up in her, clouding her eyes. “… Yes. Ferdinand and I were always similar in our tastes, from tea to mannerisms to… presentation. Long, supple hair is an apt symbol of nobility, is it not? To keep it so well maintained takes dedication and time.” She lowered her head, clamping her hands round that brush. “That wasn’t why he grew his out.”

The atmosphere in the room felt as though it darkened, somehow, her body crumpling like a snow edged leaf.  

“Did he tell yo-“ “He asked me to brush it, once. Well, no. That’s not true. His hair looked like a bird’s nest, and I insisted on fixing it. Then Ferdie kept coming back, asking me for style tips.”

She covered her face, eyes turned away from him, “He did everything with his all, didn’t he? I don’t think I ever fully understood why he was like that.”

He had to admit, he had never given much thought as to whether he ‘understood’ Ferdinand or not. He was simply not that sort of character. He had been a man who eschewed mystery, his heart as plainly visible as his sleeve. Right now, he was contemplating how well he understood his wife, never mind the machinations of a dead man. “Dorothea,” he said her name and enjoyed the way it played across his tongue, how it first wavered then arched, like a bird on the wind. “Please, what is the meaning of all this?”

The snow round her edges hardened. He reached to touch her face, fingers soft along her cheek in the hopes of thawing her. “Nothing, it’s… nothing,” her eyes crinkled, and he feared that he had accidentally crushed some piece of her into dust. Yet as her fingers played along his own, he realised that she was the one thawing him, the one crushing herself.

Her body uncurled and their gazes met, but she was looking without really looking, the remnants of a smile touching just the tips.

“Just memories, Lorenz, that’s all.”

— He found her singing, one day, by the lake… if memory served. It had been a foggy day, with beads of rain caught in the air. The water almost lapped up her voice, clouding it - but muffled though it was, he remembered it quite vividly. It had been nearing summer’s end, the weather unsettled and quite unusual. There are some memories that the body somehow knows to keep. Imprinted in finer inks, it felt like, as sharp and as ever-present as the crest that flowed through his family. Could they cut to his blood and find fragments of it, oozing there? Some days, he wished that they could, if only so he might experience that moment once more.

Her voice had flowed more smoothly than wine, its quality just as potent and intoxicating. At first, he had assumed it to be the haunting calls of a Loon - and, well, it was embarrassing to admit, but he had acquired a proclivity for studying nature. All the great artists… and poets, had. Those where the days where he yearned to emulate such things, as though one could simply mould oneself into a poet by adopting his personality and mannerisms.

So he had followed that calling, entranced. Yet it was only when he had begun to make out the outlines of words that pinpricked and then sizzled in his ears that he felt like he was going truly mad. This was not a voice that could belong to a human being. It had a way of… sinking into the body, of clutching the organs, of soaring; as though he too was flying with that conjured music that seemed to go only impossibly high and then higher still.

He could not stop himself following that voice, even if every part of him screamed out in fear. He supposed this was something akin to awe, though he could only have supposed such things in the retrospective - in the moment, there was no room left for words.

So when he finally saw her, her black school uniform the only thing that looked solid against the cold misted backdrop… he had gasped, giving up the last of his breath so that she might take it.

And just like that, the singing ended, and she’d whipped round to face him. Embarrassment was what first crossed her face, as though she had been caught disrobed and her magic discovered. Yet as soon as she registered who it was that caught her, that expression morphed into disgust.

He supposed, if he could have extracted that memory from his blood, he would prefer that it be snipped off here.

Yet, then he would have lost the passionate fire that still burned coal-hot in those verdant eyes. Those eyes that had not yet become haunted, eyes that could look at him with emotion in full bloom. Still, at the time, such a gaze had only evoked simple fear in him. She had not even said a word, and already he had been running. Ashamed of himself, afraid of what she might do, confused as to what exactly it had been that he was now feeling.

He had ran and ran and ran all the way back to his quarters, never telling another soul and recording only the silvers of it in the most abstract of writing.

He supposed it had to be found, one way or another. Magic like that can never be contained, no matter how desperately he tried to in the strained confines of words. Though, he had to admit, hearing Manuela sing her interpretation of a poem written about his youthful yearning for his now wife… It was a strange twist for the Goddess to ordain.  She had almost brought Dorothea’s innocence back into being, as though pulled straight from his memory. And to hear Dorothea herself remark upon it even though she herself would no longer be suitable to sing it, her fingers clutched within his hand, that disgust no longer present in her eyes… … It made him want to run, run and run all the way back to those old quarters.

-- ACT III - DUET II They tried that game with many euphemisms again, and by his insistence, he did indeed take the lead.

Needless to say, it was… not the most impressive of his accomplishments. In his defence, they had spent the last half-hour discussing the benefits of pomegranates and such-and-such herbs and their commitment to this decision… whatever the outcome. Why must all pleasure be tempered by duty? It was a question that Dorothea invoked in him more than any other woman, and he could not imagine taking such precautions if it were not for her.

Soon, someday, she would have to bear their heir. That, too, could be a pleasurable advent… but one that would bring an end to her life on the stage and usher in a new era for both of them. It was not one he wanted to charge into so recklessly, even if… even if he was aware of the rumours that would soon start to rise from forked tongues, and, worse still, the chastening within his own mind that would no doubt be roused to life. As delectable as she looked even as her soft lips sucked on the flesh of a pomegranate, he also knew such acts were deemed sinful and demanding of penance.

So, with those thoughts swirling in the back of his mind - he asked her to lie down.

“I trust you will tell me if I act improperly.” “You have behaved just as properly as I would have expected, Lorenz,” she said with a tinge of unkindness, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

“Yes, well. Just as this is an experience of firsts for both of us, I do not wish to cause you any undue harm,” he stated, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Psychologically or otherwise. I refuse to handle a rose as rare and stunning as yourself without the utmost delicacy.” “And if I were not a rose? You seem intimidated by my thorns. Is the truth that you are afraid of handling me in case it will cause your hands to bleed?” “No, no - that is not what I… Even if you were a common daffodil, I would still -”

She rolled at her eyes at his expression, her laughter cutting his mumbling thankfully short. “What I meant to say is… come here. You look petrified.”

Her fingers found their way to his cheek, her soft chest pressing against his arm, her wonderful mouth whispering something about him being ‘adorable’ as he finally willed his hands to her waist and requested, once again, that she lie down. In all honesty, just kissing her mouth felt overwhelming. She was demanding, and eager, and she had a way of hanging onto his lip for just a moment after the kiss had ended, drawing him back in again and again. He did not know how she knew to do such things, and did not dare to ask, even as her hands smoothed out and over the back of his nightrobe, loosening it without even touching the belt. Her fingers made gentle scratches down his back, across his scalp, losing themselves in his hair all while he was too focussed to do anything but kiss her.

Even as her bosom rose up against his chest (that she had, with some expertise and trick of the hand, already exposed) and that pleasant warmth began to sink through his skin and across his entire body… he could not help but notice how fixated she was on his hair. Tugging at it, letting it play over her fingers, and when she finally broke kiss, nestling her face within it, her teeth scraping the edges of his ear.

It wasn’t… it wasn’t that it was unpleasant - in fact, he welcomed the distraction. Having Dorothea, having all of her at once, this charming, incredible woman who had shaped her entire body into an instrument capable of producing music most holy (and, those soft sighing sounds that she now breathed into his ear - holy, holy too)… just the thought of caused an ache to erupt through him.

And he ached, and ached again, as he traced his hands down her skin, over the mole under her breast, the scars by her ribs that magic had not been able to heal. That this was her, that this was really, truly her, the woman whom he had denied himself for all those years and whom could so easily have denied him. “Dorothea,” he whispered, marvelling at how even saying her name left a man open-mouthed. “May I…?” His hand came to rest on her leg, toying with the edge of her robe. “I fear I may not be able to, ah. Concentrate much longer.” She laughed at that, the rumble causing her breasts to brush against him yet again, his face hot. Yet she did not pull her face away from the crook in his neck, her eyes hidden.

“Is that right? My. I thought the show might go on all night. It is a man who is leading, after all,” she dug her fingers into his scalp, pinching him. Even his yelp could not dim the sparks of euphoria that followed as her voice cooled, her laughter dying as her voice thickened dangerously, “But yes, you may.”

He’d dared not look at her. Did not think that he could look, as he pulled away that thin barrier between them. In his restless pursuits of a wife… of course he had considered what this might feel like, this ultimate act of consummation, of pleasure and love and union. But now that it was here, he ran at it like he was a young boy handling a spear for the first time, excitement coursing through him.

Finally undoing the knot in his robe, his soft cursing fading away, he held himself a chastely as he could. Her chest still pressed against him, their trim waists perfectly pressed together, her legs lifting and enfolding him like vines, her fingers twirling and pulling while she gently encouraged him…

“Ah, Dorothea, we truly are a natural fit, aren’t we?”

He was glad she had not answered.

For when he slid his hips forwards, imagining with his eyes half-shut and his breathing erratic what it might feel like to finally have an answer to all that aching, to quench this undying thirst that bled so many memories, to finally feel what it was to be one with her…

He found that he did not slip inside her at all, no smooth passageway, no yawning hole as eager and compliant as her mouth had been. No, he had to admit, when he brought himself forwards and felt only soft skin, he felt totally and utterly lost.

A coldness overcame him, and he tried to thrust in her direction once again, finding embarrassment as his only answer.

She uncoiled from his neck, finally deigning to fix him with a look, her expression making it clear that this had, well. This had been expected. That, he had to admit, embarrassed him far worse than the event itself. Not only was he a disappointment, but it had not even been surprising.

“Well, Lorenz. Would you like me to take the lead?”  

He was the one to decouple from her this time, cold washing over him as though a bucket had been spilled atop his head.

“This is not your first time, is it?”

He could hardly believe the venom that entered his voice, the heat on his face quite suddenly flaring on his tongue. “I do not believe you would have the capacity to mock me so, so… so ruthlessly if it was!”

He had never hated himself quite so much as he did in those handful of seconds, for just as he thought his fist tightening round a fistful of thorns, she crumbled.Her expression seemed to die.   No fire, no anger. Just… an emptiness wider than the whites of her eyes. Somehow, her lovely nakedness pushing through her disheveled nighty made her look more ghastly, as though somehow close to death, her exposure quite suddenly invoking nothing in him. “Dorothea, please, forgive me - I spoke out of tur-” “How do you think I got into the academy?” His mouth slackened, and he pulled his robe back up his back, too aware of his own nakedness as she seemed to care nothing for her own. “You heard the rumours, did you not? Of course you did. They were on every tongue, everywhere I turned. Like no one would let me forget. I suppose it was the penance I was due for cheating my way through life.” “You are wrong, Dorothea. You must be incorrect. You are a sublime talent, a beauty beyond the reach of any other…” “Oh, save it.” She drew her legs up to her chest, her head resting there. “After all this time, you don’t understand it at all, do you? The things we common girls had to do to have our talents recognised, to even be seen as something worthy of time, of care. Even then. I’m just a fleeting fancy, Lorenz. A pretty object to be remarked about, to entertain noble minds, to put the guilty at ease. To be used up and disposed of. It happened countless times.” “I spoke… I spoke thoughtlessly, yet, I… I had no idea you had experienced such pain…” “I did not enjoy it, if that makes you feel better,” she hissed, cutting him off. “I did not enjoy a single second of it. With any of them. Old and young, cruel and kind. The best I could hope for was… well, commiserating with the girls, afterwards. You begin to realise how common your experiences are, and that makes it a different pain, doesn’t it? Realising how much suffering there is. Realising that you aren’t anything special, no matter how much you have achieved.” “No, it does not make me 'feel better'… Was this really… Forgive me, please, forgive me for speaking of myself,” his face cracked, his eyes glittering as he began to take in the full weight of what she had been through, the burden of her secrecy, that bitterness that must have ate at every second of her day.

“But did you… When you agreed to marry me, had you thought me just another who would… use you, for the price of security?”

“Do you really wish to know the truth, Lorenz?” She peered at him through her own cracking eyes, the rest of her expression solemn. “It is not too late, you know. We have not consummated this marriage, after all. You could still find the virgin noble girl of your dreams.”

He looked away from her, watching his hands. “That is unfair, Dorothea. I did not marry you for mere fornication, nor to sire countless children, nor to fulfil some puritanical fancy. I am… I am helplessly smitten with you, that is all. With you, all of you, even when you humiliate me with your outstanding wit.” He dared not look to see if her expression changed, instead lowering his head and hiding behind a mess of hair. “But, yes, Please. Speak the truth, if you are ready.”

“I think…” he heard her voice crack, then come closer. Until she was right by his ear again, her breath controlled and slow. “I think you are a gentle man.”

He finally looked at her, at her sad expression, her soft little mouth lilting like it had so often during the war. “Gentle?” “And I am lucky for it,” she said, the edges of her eyes brightening. He could not say how happy hearing such a thing made him feel, for though the tension seemed to have evaporated and her pain pushed away… she had hardly given him the answer he was desperate to hear. That he was exceptional, that he had worked hard and overcome all those terrible beliefs that once mired his countenance, that he was one she was equally smitten by and that, with time, all sins would be forgiven.

Yet, as she took his hand in her own, and squeezed it ever so delicately… squeezed it as though it were both a chick fallen from the nest and a lifeline on which everything depended… He met her smile, and sat in easy silence with her, melting into her presence.

--

ACT IV - RECITATIVE II On stage, she could transform into anything asked of her. A witch, a nurse, a seductress - even a man, on command, for Opera so loved to play with themes that inspired shock in the masses. Yet she topped controversies with aplomb. How could she not? She was a heroine in her own right, and though he tried not to think often of that time, she had once worn the cowl of war as effortlessly as any of them.

Yet it seemed… when not on stage, it seemed that cowl was still wrapped tightly round her. In the years betwixt their school-days and their return to the monastery… he could have hardly believed the transformation in her. It was not that she had simply matured. It was that she had been worn down. She had never meant to be a solider.

Yet a solider she had been. Wild and brave, cutting through enemies with magic more effervescent and powerful than even he could hope to conjure. He should have been frustrated by this, infuriated, even. Yet he did not recall ever feeling that way when she summoned red earth from the sky that fell like a phoenix in its death spiral, slaughtering whatever helpless knave stood in their way. He distinctly remembered riding through flames she had conjured from miles away, wondering what part of the soul had to be pulled on to conjure something so raw. He supposed it must be the same part that she still pulled on now, wandering the halls of their manor late at night. She thought that he did not know - he was a lark, after all, to compliment her owl. He’d caught sight of her more than once, slipping from his embrace and into the black.  And he had let her go, each time assuming this was just some part of her artistic heritage, that those long nights at the opera still rung their clangour in her mind.

Yet after their second… attempt at love making, her words were what rang true in him all through the night. He was haunted by the thought of what she had endured, and by what she was casting herself into when she took those midnight strolls. Was she simmering in her misery? Alone, once again?

So he slipped from his bedchamber too, and followed after her.

Eventually, he caught sight of her in the gardens - down by the river. A score of red lit by the moon, back to the balcony from which he watched her. It was like his first memory of her singing, on that foggy day. Or perhaps it was more the memory of her in that destitute opera house, the moon curling in silky waves through her tresses. He took to the stairs, eventually finding himself by her side. She must have heard his footsteps, yet she did not turn to greet him with disgust. She did not turn to greet him at all, in fact. “… There’s no need for you to patrol the grounds, Dorothea. There is hardly going to be a raid anytime soon,” he laughed softly, but felt no levity. She sighed.

“I just can’t help but feel like… it isn’t over.”

“The war?”

“Yes. That war. I don’t know. It’s like… all I wanted was for it to be over, desperately believing that it would end this year or the next, that all this fighting would just. Stop someday. And now that it has?” She tilted her head up towards the sky, the river burbling and filling the silence. “I just… can’t believe it. Like the feeling hasn’t left me. Like there’s still so much to do.” “Ah, but, of course. That’s true. There is very much to be rebuilt, wounds that need salving, broken bonds that must be tied together again. You and I are in a key position to do just that,” he watched her, the night air somehow losing its chill.

“Doesn’t that all just feel… fake, somehow?” Moths fluttered by, a frog croaked somewhere in the distance. It was a peaceful scene, he thought.

“Whatever do you mean? Dorothea, is fighting injustice not the exact path you have always been following? Was it not you who challenged my every belief, changed me at my core? Think of the thousands you can inspire…!”

“It reminds me of when I first entered the opera troupe,” she said, finally lowering her head, playing with her hair. “When men began to shower me in compliments, gifts and advances. When all the bile they once spat at me turned to promises, and even then, false ones at that. It’s… Like I see through it all.” She turned to face him, then, and he could see that she had been crying. “How many people did we kill, Lorenz?”He took a step back, surprised as her voice lifted in such sudden rage, silencing the frogs. “I … I would not know the exact numbers, but Dor-” “Don’t tell me that it was fair just because we were at war! Don’t tell me that!” She pulled at her hair, eyes whirling. “How can we be such different people, wear such different skins?! We’re the same as those men, except… even worse. No doubt they were too busy cowering behind their knights, free from the blood that drips from our hands.”

She covered her face, her chest heaving.

“Come now, had we not fought, we would not be able to enjoy the freedoms we do now. The war was a tragedy, yes, but -” “How many, how many did we kill who were just like Ferdie?” In just one sentence, she opened up that man’s grave yet again, his red red hair spilling out. The smell of it, those rotting fields, the flashes of lightning and miasma and air turned to wailing. “And we took pleasure in it, I know we did. All that… drinking, and laughing, and dining. The thrill of still being alive… I saw that in you, and Claude, and all the rest.

Worst of all, Lorenz, I saw it in myself.” Touching her shoulder, he swallowed, guilt sizzling his gut as she effortless conjured those memories. How even Seteth would join them in toasts to one victory or another, that knot of hard-fought joy binding them all tightly together, their chanting and hymns and limericks brighter than the candles they lit around themselves. How she would dance with Hilda, barefoot and bellies full, their laughter lifting them all out of their shells. He still had a painting that Ignatz had somehow conjured of that scene, all of them just blurs of colours in the dining hall.

Was that before or after Ferdinand died?

“This is what has made this war so particularly tragic. People like myself, like Ferdinand… we were trained for this, Dorothea. We were trained to know the weight of what we were doing, sparring against men who shared in this equal philosophy. This was not a burden that should ever have been placed upon your shoulders.”

“How can you say something so horrible so easily?” She asked, both hands clasping the one upon her shoulder. “Is that all it takes? What I lack? Training?”

“He would have told you the same if it were he standing here and I lost in his stead,” he said, attempting to navigate his words carefully. “And he would have not wanted you to be standing outside in the dark, trying to catch pneumonia in his honour.” He began to walk her back to their home, hoping the darkness would not follow them inside. She seemed to be mulling over what he said, her steps uncertain.

“And… you know, I will not ask you to suppress your feelings. In fact, I think it an asset in ensuring that this war never occurs again.”

She looked at him then, in surprise.

“An asset? That is how you try to make light of this?” “Yes, please, hear me out,” he said as they reached the stairs. With one, wavering step after another, they made their way back up.

“The way you … you move, dance, sing, on stage… you bring the war to life. More so than any writing could ever hope to capture. In you, the raw despair of it all is captured so brightly. None can help but be moved, no matter the strength of their learned barriers. To see you die up there, a hundred times, a thousand… each time I picture it so vividly, and each time it shatters my heart.”

“Great, so that’s what I have to give to the world. Shattered hearts and endless grief,” she rolled her eyes, but he could sense that some part of her had been fished back out of the black.

“Yet I would never ask you to stop.” She glanced up at him as they reached the top of the stairs, the hallway beckoning them back inside. She stood there a while, as if unsure of something. “You could shatter the world’s heart, Dorothea. You teach us to remember our humanity. The true cost of these games we play as nobles in our selfish pursuits. There is value untold in that, a value only you possess. When you die, when you grieve, when you take character - none of it is false, to me. That is you at your most real.

So, that being the case, how can any of this be fake? I know none more sincere than you.”

As he watched her, she slowly found her smile, the mask that she’d been wearing so expertly weaving itself back into her skin.

It wasn’t a falsehood when she nodded, lifting herself onto her tip toes and brushing her lips to his own. Nor was it when she began to whisper how sweet he was, how kind, how gentle, how right. Not even when she said that she loved him, that she was glad that it was not him who had went in Ferdinand’s stead.

She was simply living, as all of them did, laughing barefooted on that stage.

--

 ACT V - ARIA I

It was… strange, standing here in this beautiful garden in the middle of the countryside. She was used to being surrounded by people, either to hide from or from those who celebrated the joy of her existence, given glares or gifts, but… Now she was alone. Truly alone.

At the monastery, she had occasionally found some quiet space to haunt - by the pier, the bridge, the rooftops. It was something she had noticed in Lorenz, in her… husband, too. She’d slip by him, discarding her yearning to gaze through stained glass or at what remained of the cathedral.

She supposed he craved these silent spaces for the same reasons that she did, for a chance to think. Still, she doubted their thoughts had ever crossed paths as much as their bodies had. That was alright. She was used to her own flow of narration having been shaped into something quite unique. Lorenz, on the other hand…. As a noble, as a man, as a nobleman, the trench had already been dug. All he had to do was allow himself to flow into it.

So why had he changed course so dramatically? Even now, when their thoughts flowed aloud together, it was clear their courses still clashed, no clear direction to this sea.

Maybe she enjoyed that, the drama of it.

Or maybe she simply enjoyed this estate, of its stillness, of its silence. When the hum and throb of the servants had ebbed away as they retired he basement kitchens, when their master had taken leave to go riding or entertaining or politicking in some other beautiful still green place, when she was the only one out on the grounds and all things settled into a chipping, wind whispered harmony…

It seemed… magic, somehow.

Today, in her wandering, she had ventured towards the stables. It hurt, in its own way, to stand here. Like ghosts could chase you from another time, another place, settle in the edges of your memory just because of a vague reminder of their imprint. Yes. Lorenz and she used to spend much time in the quiet, undisturbed spaces in the academy. Beautiful spaces. But Ferdie, this was where… he used to go, so very often. She never really understood it. It never suited his status. Knee deep in muck, our future prime minister? Wasting hours away in the hay, with the horses, smelling of… well, sweat and dirty work and a long, difficult day. It was one of things that had charmed her, back before she could accept being charmed by him. He treated those animals well. Weller than most treated people.

So being around the horses always brought out those memories, like taking a bath in them. It made her feel… sad, yes, but good, too. She supposed she would rather remember him like this than…

Well.

She reached a hand onto the stable door, clucking her tongue towards a dark shape that turned and, ever so slowly, made its way towards her. When finally he arrived, his snout touching air and the light catching on the edges of his glossy fur and great round glass eyes, she smiled at him. Patting his long, firm snout, she pulled a sugar cube from her pocket.

This had been Lorenz’s horse, during the war. Somehow, he had survived when so many of them had not. A huge beast for a tall master, she had been terrified of him on the battlefield, decorated in black plate and huffing steam, white teeth flashing whenever it had galloped past her. Despite the burden of all that armour, Lorenz had commanded it to move like black lightning, arching and curving impossibly as he slit the enemy straight through, thunderous hooves clacking down. How much blood had soiled this creature’s legs, deep black on deeper black? “Here you go, Holst. I have a little something for you.”

Bringing the sugar cube to his lips, he seemed confused awhile, searching her arm before finally finding it. The poor thing was nearing the end of its days, just as tired as she from all that fighting. War carried on in its bones that now rubbed angrily together, carried on in its dimming eyes that had once seen flames lick forth from its masters hands. Never could it have understood the horrors of what had gone on around it, and yet, it had obeyed. No matter how afraid, it had obeyed.

Embodied its masters calmness - Lorenz, a whirring flash of purple black and red, magnificent and awful, a slash of death blotting out the canvas.

Lorenz, whose only concern he spoke of regarding death centred around how well he would be remembered, honoured, exalted by it. Smiling down at her, saving her from some warring lance, tossing his hair as he leapt - wild and controlled all at once - over the corpse that moments ago and a twist in fate would have been herself.  

Lorenz, who had told her that his father was a coward for not laying down his life in some barren field and spilling his guts out in agony for something more noble, more aspirational than a quiet, easy death in his bedchamber.

And now, its reward, for all that energy spent, for saving her life, for saving his?

A quiet life in the countryside, feeding from her hand.

--

 ACT VI - DUET III

There were no pomegranates involved in their third attempt, nor herbs, nor discussions prior. It was an act of raw passion, in part (but only part) lubricated by the joys of wine. He professed his enjoyment of Sagrantino and waxed lyrical about the fullness of its body, dark and dry and robust in its alcoholic strength. She hadn’t said much about it at all. Perhaps all wines tasted similar to her. Never mind, a palate could soon be developed, and he was more than happy to assist. Such was what he had been rambling about until she took both sides of his face and drew him into a deep kiss. It was full bodied. Dark. Dry. Utterly intoxicating. So much so that he’d gasped in surprise and almost spilled his drink onto her dress.

“Perhaps it is my palate that will need expanding,” he’d muttered, and she’d laughed (in a way that he knew was mocking, but he took pride in it anyway). “Then, you’ll let me lead?” She’d tilted her head, the room spinning with her.

“Lead me anywhere,” he’d said, following her mouth. She’d obliged with the softest little bites along his bottom lip, each time evoking a gasp deeper than before.

“You’ll do whatever I ask?” She’d asked, songstress, seductress. “Anything, anything,” he’d mumbled as he let his hands wander across her waist, the fabric of her dress smooth and obedient to his touch.

Sherry, that which he had labelled so unfavourably as a ‘beginners wine’, filmed the edges of her tongue - it drove him insane, that was the only word he could use to describe it, this madness that only Dorothea had the power bring out. In that moment, he loved that tongue, worshiped it, could hardly believe that it was her mouth, her taste, so sweet, and he chased after it again and then again.

He felt like he might wish to kiss that mouth forever, every time she indicated that she might break from it bringing forth a mewling out of him that surprised himself most of all. It was embarrassing, it should have been, but every time she rewarded him with an answer of that sweet, warm mouth he lost all sense of himself within it.

All his life, he had been taught to exercise restraint. To take the only the smallest bites, to appreciate each moment in turn as though each second were like the beats in a play worthwhile of literary analysis. Yet with her, with Dorothea… Daring to slide his eyes open, he caught sight of her mid-kiss, the finery of her lashes of the waves in her gorgeous hair of her cheeks set alight with passion… he felt as though there could be no such a word, no such a thing as restraint, of enjoying her in just the smallest of ways.

When finally she insisted on their parting, kissing the edge of his nose in an attempt to sate his soft groaning, she laughed at him as his breathing slowed, ruffling his hair.

“Are my charms really so deadly, Lorenz?” She smoothed a thumb over his cheek, squeezing along the red. “Look at you. Red as a rose,” she giggled again, touching her face to his, lashes smiling against his cheek.

“Yes,” he hissed.“Yes, yes. It’s you, all you,” he mumbled into her mouth, stealing one kiss from her before she clamped her fingers over his jaw, still laughing. “There’s no one-” he failed to squeeze out any more words, her nails digging into his lip and she brought her mouth against her hand, eyes locking with his as she imitated kissing him through it.

“Then… why don’t we try something a little different,” she whispered, before kissing the back of her hand again, brows raised. He could not answer, so he arched his brows in response, nodding. “Something I’ve done with… no other man.”

His eyes flared open at that, though, still unable to speak, he squeezed the side of her impeccable waist as answer.

Her chest rose up against his, the shape of her body searing through him as he tried to memorise the feel of those curves, pushing his hips forwards, chasing that pleasure. Her mouth came to brush against his shoulder, turned to whisper in his ear as she described in no uncertain terms what she wanted from him.

It was a sinful thing to ask, a truly embarrassing thing to be told, an act he had not ever even contemplated - even as she spoke it, he sputtered against her hand, eyes widening.

Yet. She moved his hand from her waist to her hips to her thigh, her breathing shuddering just ever so slightly in his ear.

“It’s just a kiss, Lorenz.”  

A kiss where no one else had ventured, that, that singular thought blossomed in his mind over and over. An experience as new as all those she had given to him - this thought that, even if it were a lie, made him tremble.  

Letting her hand pull free from his mouth, she looked up at him through those long lashes, those eyes endless rings of green. “The brave Lorenz Hellman Gloucester isn’t afraid of something like that, is he?” She said, her hands tickling down his rib cage, each movement of her delicate fingers like tongues of fire. “Of course not,” he croaked out before clearing his throat. Holding his head high, he slipped himself above the well of pleasure, trying his damnedest to ignore the fact that she was making the slowest, subtlest, most maddening rolls of her hips against his clear arousal.

“Well, shall we retire to the bedroom?”

She hummed at that, shook her head. “Ah, but! Dorothea, the servants -“ “They’re all in bed,” she mused, almost certainly a lie but, “Besides, can you really wait that long? All those stairs… Why, they might just tire me out.”

The room felt like it spiralled, the walls beating in his ears as he realised exactly what she was saying. The thought of being embarrassed sizzled away into the realisation that what she said was clad in white hot wanting, wanting for him. She parted from him and lay back on the méridienne, her hands gripping the edge of its curved back as she leaned into it, legs still clasped together. Standing there quite uselessly, he gazed at the way she was spread across the chaise lounge, eyes sliding thin. She was… unbelievable, truly. Unconsciously, he brought his hand to his mouth, breath growing hot as he lapped up the mere sight of her. She’d adjusted before his gaze, growing lovelier by the second, slipping off her tights with ease. “Kneel, Sir Lorenz.”

He did so without thought, his head swimming with the motion. Not even for Lord Holst would he have lowered himself so quickly for, so lowly. Yet, Dorothea’s legs spread out before him, her lithe body waved like the curls in her hair, like a bird’s wingbeats. She gazed down at him from above, her lips slightly parted, her eyes slipping shut. He crawled towards her, her leg coupling with his back, drawing him to the edge of the lounge.

The flare of her red, red dress framing the scene so nearly, but with one fluid motion, she pulled her underskirt above her hips, folding it into a neat line. And, just like that, she was exposed to him.

It was an overwhelming sight. Curved and curled, that unbroken line slowly opening itself up to him, (to him and to only him, him, him.) The leg dropped across his back had been making circular motions, but now, she pulled on it, daring him to go forwards.

Finally, he jolted from his paralysis. Slipping his head towards her, he did as she asked. He kissed her. Soft, close lipped kisses across that line, pausing only as she felt her entire body shudder, then relax. Tentatively, he continued, each kiss wholly its own drawn out motion. Her leg continued to guide him, its motions bringing his long, thin back into consciousness, as though nothing existed unless she was touching it.

He could not help but lose himself in this, relaxing as he threw his hair over his shoulder, tilting his head into her bare thigh. He sighed to himself, reminded himself that it would be best if it took this slowly, if he tried to better appreciate this, like any act of training required. Yet as his kisses began to blur together, each more rapid than the last, he felt her body jerk and the most wonderful noise escape her mouth.

That noise alone was enough to make him feel as though he were on the edge, his eyes flickering open and darting towards her expression. She had her head tilted back, her eyes totally shut, her mouth frozen in the hungriest of circles.

That look, combined with those soft little noises he had never heard her make, drove him onwards. He tilted his mouth, opening it and nestling his tongue into that line. He could not stop watching her, the theatre of her face as he explored what he could, each slip of his tongue making her body sing. Yes, she was singing now, that’s all he could see in this, in her melodic little sighs, in the way her body shuddered like the strings on a violin. And he was the one playing, now, playing her, playing with her - oh, that thought forced his eyes to shut, his mouth frozen over her as he gasped.

She muttered something, but he could not hear it, his world slowly spinning back into view. Sliding his eyes back open, he gazed at what he had done, at her obvious arousal, her want for him. Her thighs, shaped so lovingly and so unlike his own, her entire body soft circles upon soft circles where he was only sharp, cutting lines… his gaze returned to meet her face, her eyes still shut, her mouth now curled into a cheeky smile.

“You haven’t… already, have you?” She laughed as he spat out an urgent ‘no’, swiftly resuming his work.

“It’s alright if you do, I can only imagine how hard it is to stay composed around me.” Her teasing, her arrogance, only made him want to perform that much better for her. The fact that she could speak without stuttering, where as if he tried to now he felt as though he would only break into a cold sweat. Still. He appreciated what she was saying, appreciated the sound of her voice as it vibrated through her body… he followed after it, those deep vibrations, each sweep of his tongue inching in deeper and deeper… ah.

He could not stop thinking about the fact that this was the place where he was supposed to have taken her, far wetter and far warmer than he could ever had imagined, her sweet noises resuming. In a sense, he was inside of her now, truly one with her —

Suddenly, he felt her rising up against him, bumping against his teeth as he realised her tiny moans were now rippling together into a laugh. Sensing some inadequacy, he pulled his mouth away, brows knitting together in worry. “Did I … tickle you?”

She shook her head, catching her breath a moment.

“No, I could just feel your nose.” Frowning, he dipped his head back between her legs, gently nipping at one of her folds. Her sharp gasp brought him only the tiniest bit of vindication. “Now is not the time for such frivolity, Dorothea.”

Her laughter began to subside, her mouth tightening as her fingers came to sweep across his scalp, scratching it lightly.

“You’re right, Lorenz. I shouldn’t tease when you are in the middle of such… delicate work.”

He hummed an agreement, enjoying the little ripples her fingers induced through his scalp and down his back. As she began to play with his hair, mindlessly pulling it this way and that, he returned to her sex, biting along its ridges as enjoying every single desperate gasp she made.

It soon became unbearable. As much as he wanted to slide himself forward and take her like this, he… truthfully, he did not want to starve her of those noises. He was afraid of a repeat performance of last time that would sag into disappointment and anger, and, well. Tasting her like this, Goddess be damned, was rather more an enjoyable experience than he could ever have hoped for.

Sliding his hand down his chest, he wriggled in place - desperately trying to concentrate on keeping her satisfied while also moving himself out of his trousers. The angle failed him, so he made do through the fabric, his hand eventually finding a rhythm with his mouth, her own hand keeping time with each stroke through his hair.

Then, rather suddenly, he felt her fingers on his chin. Widening his eyes, he wondered if he’d hurt her in some way until she drew it forcibly upwards, her throat sounding like it might crack as she hissed, “there, right there.”

He embarrassed himself with the noises he began to make on her command, the thought of herself as his mentor somehow impossibly arousing. He leaned into his hand, his mouth following where she had led him, tongue sloppy but eventually finding what she had been searching for - her voice heightening immediately.

That noise, mixed with murmurs of ‘yes’ on repeat, rippled throughout her whole body and into his, making both feel whole. He began to moan in tandem with her, shedding any sense of self-consciousness as he gave into pleasure’s brilliant, hot glow. This was Dorothea he was making sing like this, his wife, the woman who had said yes, the woman who had overcome hardship after hardship, hatred after hatred, scorn after scorn and still - in the end - walked down that aisle in a white petal dress that turned had turned red before their very eyes. Even in ceremony, she would not leave the audience wanting.

For how many had she performed for? For how many had she brought pleasure to, spread her legs for, laid down in the hopes that their enjoyment might be a salve for her suffering? No, he soothed himself, listening to the wavering in her breath, feeling the desperate curving of her stomach, tasting her unconscious rolling of her hips as she completely and utterly lost control of herself… No, tonight, she was the centre of enjoyment, he the performer, and for once, he was determined, she would not be the one left wanting. And as soon as that thought entered his mind, she tugged on his hair, her face an utter, crazed mess. Her eyes still shut, but her neck craned back, her chest fluttering wildly. It was too much, it was simply too much - choking out a garbled whine, he pressed down hard with his fingers and rolled his hips against the lounge, frustration ebbing out into bliss as he turned his head and buried it into her thigh to suppress a cry.

Slowly blinking back into reality, he could still feel her body lifting up towards him, her thighs trembling against his cheek. She was… plainly requesting that he continue, and though by all accounts he should have been finished, he could not deny her.

Following her command, her fingers had spread herself apart, one nail pointing to where he now brought his mouth, her back arching delightfully as he followed through. “Dorothea,” he ached out, once, then twice, then again and again. Until he lost himself again in the edges of her name, in and out up and down and then ending, every single time, with an open mouth. He had hoped she would say his name in return, scream it, even - but she seemed incapable of saying anything, her cries first deepening, then lightening, then lifting to unbearable heights.

He did not stop, but he felt her tighten underneath him, pulsing in a steady rhythm as she undid herself with one singular, arching cry.

After a while, her breathing returned to normal, her body spent. Simply looking up at her for the longest time, he felt… utterly relaxed, despite the uncomfortable warmth in his trousers, the unnatural positioning, the fact that her eyes had not opened once during their entire encounter… but

“So, I trust that I impressed?”

She laughed, and he blushed, pulling himself up from the floor as she finally  opened her eyes, staring blearily at the ceiling.

“You certainly left an impression.” Smiling to himself, he took her hand, bowing his head onto her chest. She played idly with his hair, and both listened to their steading breaths. She thanked him, then. A soft, breathy little thing.

And that blossomed in him a feeling so much deeper, so much more intense than orgasm, all in that one lilting, gentle little thank you.

--

 ACT VII - CADENZA

Dorothea had been thanked many, many times before. Cordial thank yous, applause for a wonderful performance, a swell of glee because she brought treats backstage for a hoard of hungry singers. It hadn’t always been that way. Even now… it surprised her, that gratitude. How could anyone be truly grateful for what she brought into their lives?

She was a spectacle, a moment in time, a sparkling dress for a special night out, she wasn’t… she wasn’t the one who changed lives, who completed all the domestic chores every day, the silent figure who moulded students on their path to greatness. When she thought about the people she was truly thankful for… they all fit into those brackets. Mentors. Stage-crew. Saviours.  

It was terrible of her, wasn’t it? To not believe those people when they thanked her.

Yet…

She remembered the glow of his brown eyes, so bright that they were almost amber, his tentative, nervous little smile.

She remembered…

The White Heron cup, only… not. They didn’t have a name for it the second time they hosted it. Winter had come in full force, that bleak feeling that sank into everything since the war began only thickening as the daylight trickled down to just a handful of hours. This time of year… Enbarr used to be covered in lights, as though the city itself could become the sun. The opera house had always been so busy. What else was there to do in the chill and the rain, when travels were so often cut short?

Yet, since the war began… Well. The sparkle had left. People became colder. More distant. More keenly aware that time was running out, for them or for… something else, society as they knew it. Maybe there wasn’t any time left for frivolities like going to watch people pretend to die on stage, maybe it felt just a little too real while the world was falling in around them.

Yet… Garreg Mach kept that sparkle. No. Reignited it.

She felt ashamed of some of those memories now. Ashamed but… happy, too. Those were probably some of the most joyful times of her life, as terrible as it seemed. Back together again with Manuela, relived that they had made it through one battle and into the next, singing and eating and praying even when it made no sense at all. She’d grown closer to those people in that ruined monastery than she ever would with anyone ever again. To imagine marrying anyone, anyone, who had not experienced that total heartache, that surreal joy, would have been impossible.

Who else would understand why they’d chosen to host the White Heron Cup when there was no one but themselves to judge it? No prizes, no music, no atmosphere at all, really… Yet Claude had let them dig into the rations, pull out the wine, and lose themselves in the illusion that maybe there really was somewhere in this world that hadn’t been ruined forever.

Manuela had long passed out and Seteth had taken her to her room. Leonie and Raphael had lost interest and kept themselves to the dining hall, chattering about the fresh taste of wild game. Marianne wasn't saying much at all. Ignatz was busying himself away in his corner, colours bleeding from his brush as Lysithea and Claude argued about how well she was handling her drink.

So, the White Heron Cup was largely forgotten about, just an excuse, really. Yet she remembered leaning into Hilda’s shoulder, their shoes kicked off while they cheered the boys on. Lorenz and Ferdie, their peacock tails in full display, a whole night of one attempting to out-noble the other.

It should have been annoying. Infuriating, even. Spending time with three of the most privileged people in the world, listening to Hilda whine about how she couldn’t be bothered dancing right now despite her years of training, the static that droned everything else out as Lorenz and Ferdie seemed to act on script with one another. Honestly, though? It was … just. Fun. “Come now, Hilda, it is unbecoming that a noblewoman of your stature would decline such a prestigious invitation. Why, it was your very brother who, while he was a student at the academy, swept himself to victory at every Cup, was it not?” Lorenz had been staring at them both, though… Even then, Dorothea noticed how his gaze would linger.

“Well yeah, and that’s exactly why I’m not doing it this year,” she’d wriggled her legs, turning her toes inward. “It’s just not fair! Let someone else have a turn. Besides. I don’t see why you even need a woman part. Just, I don’t know, dance with the chairs or something.”

“Well,” Dorothea interrupted, half tempted to go up to Manuela’s room and drag down that awful mannequin - though, she supposed she didn’t exactly trust herself with the knife firmly lodged in its head while she was this inebriated. “I have an idea…”   Lorenz shifted on the spot, “Ah, of course. Lovely Dorothea, your talents were not all spent on singing, were they not? Why, the opera has some of the most complex choreography of all… Will you be volunteering tonight?”   “No,” she smirked, tilting her head. “I’ve never been a fan of these noble dances. They’re too prescriptive for my style. I’d worry about… stepping on your toes.”

Before Lorenz could protest any further, she raised her voice, “I think… Ferdie should play the woman’s role.” Lorenz’s eyes snapped open, his hand waving, “That’s absurd -!” “I don’t see why not. It happens all the time at the opera house, which you are a fan of, after all.” “Yes, well, this is not theatre! Ferdinand is a man of grand stature, stripped though he may be of his titles, and he would not… debase himself so egregiously, particularly not at such an important event!” “Um,” Hilda laughed, eyes only half-opened. “We’re in the reception hall. And we’re the only one’s here. Who cares!”

“Even so -” “Enough!” Ferdie finally spoke, stepping forwards decisively. Well… alright. There had been a little waver in his step, but he saved himself from stumbling, his confidence far more effective than his drunkenness. “I will not allow this debacle in my name to go on any longer. If there are but two to compete in this year’s cup, and if none will bend, then I will be the one to volunteer.”

Turning to Lorenz, he offered his hand towards him and bowed in a curtsey that was more than half elegant. “… Come now, Ferdinand. This is simply unfair. You cannot possibly know the correct movements. You are an able dancer, I admit, perhaps my most admirable competitor - yet that is precisely why I will not allow you to forfeit to me on purpose.” “Oh? Where did you hear it said that I would forfeit? You underestimate me, Lorenz. A true dancer learns not only the role of his own, but his partner’s also. Through this experience, and this alone, I have learned to anticipate my partner’s every move, timing my own movements precisely. This, my friend, is the spirit of the dance. If you can not understand this, then you have no hope of besting me!”

And so, it was this way, that Lorenz and Ferdie swept each other off their feet. Well. More accurately - locked into one another hands with awkwardly tangled limbs, their stiffness not faded on their first nor second dance, but yielding in the third. Those sweeps of long hair, one so straight and to the point, the other glorious but wavering. Their steps in time to music that Hilda and she drummed out with their hands and with their heels, laughter rising as their drunken faces contorted with such intense concentration.

They were beautiful.

They were all so… so beautiful.

She could not remember who they declared the victor that night - if any. That wasn’t in the spirit of the dance, after all. Not in the spirit of the night. Not in the spirit of this monastery, still surviving despite the gaping hole that pierced its heart.

What she did remember was walking with all three of them back to their rooms, up those endless, winding stairs, the gulf that separated them all. She recalled Lorenz drunkenly offering to guide her back down the stairs, lest she get lost, lest she miss his company, lest she wished to speak more words into that pitch black night. She refused, that night, though she found his persistent desire to impress her rather… endearing. He truly had changed, in those five years.

Yet it was Ferdie whose drunken offer she agreed to. Who invited her back to his room. Who had looked so dashing being bent over Lorenz’s arms, whose hair she fantasised about holding onto almost touching the ground as they’d leaned into one another. Ferdie who, that night, she knew might ask her for something that they could not take back, something she was… ready enough to follow him into his bed.

Yet that question never came.

Instead… He asked her to brush his hair. To do his makeup.

To borrow one of her dresses.

He told her… he always liked when she called him ‘Ferdie’.

He asked her… exhausted and trembling, his amber eyes fixing her with a look so vulnerable she felt that her heart might break that night, he asked her if he looked good. If she still liked him this way.

If she…

If she thought, after the war… That, maybe… He could be called Ferdie forever.

He’d seen her at her most vulnerable, nakedness so tantalising and so awe inspiring that he had run away. He knew the Dorothea before the stage, the Dorothea after it was crumbled and gone. He’d seen her anger, her spite, her ugliness that now, to this day, stung her with regret.

Yet, here he was. Naked in his own way, in… in her own way. Asking her for her approval.

“Thank you, Dorothea, for everything you have shown me.”

That gorgeous smile. Those insatiable eyes.

“Thank you for showing me myself.”

She remembered…

The tangle of vines that erupted from Ferdie’s stomach, sharp and thorned, laying still across her belly.

She remembered…

Every petal being shorn from her at once, red red red streaking across her vision as, in that moment, all she was left with were thorns.  

She remembered…

Lorenz dragging her by the hand, her screaming still echoing across the battlefield, every needle point of hers driving into him as she scratched his arm to ribbons. His face still in full bloom, his stalk artificially trimmed.

There had been no rain that day, just like there was no rain this day. The day they buried Lorenz’s horse in the rose garden, its body sitting wet beneath the vines. The clatter of war still echoed out in this quiet place, even if you had to strain your ears to hear it, even if they were putting yet another piece of it to rest.

The sun had been so bright, that day. Golden. Almost amber. “We say rest in peace. As though to live is to struggle, A war beneath the Eternal Moon. As though when is all said and done, All we can hope for, Is to rest.” Lorenz’s eulogy to his horse was… touching, in his own way. Yet. It was seeing the tremble begin in his arms, up through his shoulders, a trembling that opened up as wide as the wound in Ferdie’s stomach, a trench from which those thorn covered vines had never stopped spilling.

It was then, she realised, watching him weep for the first time that she had ever witnessed, that that trench lived on in him. She wondered if those scratches on his arms had scarred. She wondered if they veined out and came alive some nights, strangling him.

He choked out a wretched sob, covering his eyes.

He’d used to think that… anything truly beautiful could never be destroyed, that people would fight to preserve such beauty - even at the cost of themselves. He’d styled herself under that same rule. Something magnificent was almost something immortal.

A ravaged opera house. A dead war steed. A dear… dear friend. “I… I miss…” She reached for him, tangled him into her embrace, felt out whatever piece of softness she still had left in her, the petals that he had so diligently helped regrow.  

“I know, Lorenz. I know.” So quietly she barely heard it, the wind picking up and rushing through the endless green around them, he thanked her. A soft, breathy little thing.

She pulled him tighter into her embrace, the world melting through. “I know.”

--

ACT VIII - COLORATURA - CURTAIN CALL The opera house was in full bloom, bright lights and gilded smiles all around. Freshly painted decor was made all the more decadent by the hundreds of donations that had been poured into this place, rich azures and splendid reds that were as much a spectacle as those on stage. Ah, it was as though the war had never taken place at all. That was the point, was it not?

Still, he could not help but feel… for its artisanal beauty, like a fetching young lady newly jewelled and furred, he could not help but miss those impassioned days. Where Dorothea was the only focal point in a sea of dusty browns and greys, where the chill of the outside world was quelled by the warmth of her rich voice. It was unlike him to appreciate such aesthetics, never mind pine for them. Yet, regardless, just like that night, she stepped onto that stage and into a halo of light.

The music dimming, the calm tension as the sound began to swell within her throat, but not quite set free.

He leaned forwards in his seat, her eyes cast above him, her face a picture of mourning.

—

The roar of the rain outside, drops long and thin sticking to the window panes, the smell of wet earth and bodies spent. Her rolling curls of hair, her beautiful smile, her insatiable eyes.  

Her hands cutting through the black, cupping his face, the sound of rain growing ever louder.

—

The feel of her body pressed underneath him and into the grass, her nightgown soaked through, her mouth an elegant little bud that burst into the widest grin he had ever witnessed. “Now, Lorenz, do it now.”

—

After all that waiting, heaven finally spilled from her mouth. One endless, echoing note that ran on and on before it wavered, trembled, shuddered in time to the orchestra that could only hope to follow her lead.

— Daylight, mid-summer, the rose garden. She’s laughing, he’s trying to catch her. He can’t remember why, all he can remember is when she peels a rose from its stalk and hurls its petals at him. How he does the same. His precious, prized roses - and they’re throwing them over one another. She’s laughing, he remembers, she’s laughing because the petal’s stuck to his eyelashes. He looks an impossible spectacle, like a bird, like a butterfly.

—

She shudders underneath him, his fingers brushing over her and then inside her, and he’s gasping some mangled cry - her name, the goddess, it did not matter because all he can think about is the sound of her voice as it lifts and lifts and lifts the deeper his fingers go.

—

The rain grows heavier, and she nestles herself in the crook of his neck, her voice so soft and so tired as she says,“I was thirteen when I first had sex.”

—

The petals all come falling down. She’s ripped another rose’s head off, but she doesn’t tear its petals free, not this time. She stands by that horse’s grave, glancing up at him through her lashes, her smile melting the world away.

Between her fingers, she presents the rose to him. Nails brush along its edges, gently feeling their way across the inner petals before turning hard and stiff, crushing into the rose’s centre.

She looks up at him, and laughs.

— “He was… kind to me, even if I didn’t think so at the time.”

He stares out into the blearing rain, wondering if that whole garden might drown, wondering if there’s any roses left. — He forgot himself in that garden, her thighs squeezing against his waist, her mouth open and singing. There’s no such thing as anything else as he pushes his hips forwards and touches her - hungry, alive, wet enough to take him in one long, soft, wavering moan.

She wraps her entire being around him, the rain ravaging both their bodies, his hair bleeding into hers as it waves itself into violent, violet curls. He presses his forehead to hers, and lays still awhile, a protracted gasp as he fully takes in that he is tasting her without tasting.  

He gently, so so gently, drifts his hips forwards.

—

She plays a Countess in an opera that would prove to be her most controversial yet. All her sparkling wears and finery mask the wild thing that rests beneath. A woman in love, a woman mad with it, a woman set to destroy the world without it.

Her lover dies. Torn apart by a crazed murderer. She knows that he will soon take her too.

She sings, she sings, she sings.

—

She sings, she sings, she sings.

He clutches her hand, clutches her hair, clutches anything as he desperately tries to find air. He can feel her breathing beneath him, he can feel her every motion, he can be inside of her without really knowing her at all

Yet it’s an illusion, is it not? The grandest illusion of them all.

—

“I thought that he loved me,” she said, her chest so still. “On some level… it’s silly, isn’t it, but on some level, I still believe that he did.”

“It hurt, a lot. Physically, emotionally, all of it. I thought he… was going to save me. Take me away from all this - even though he was married, even though his daughter sang up on that stage right beside me, just a few years older.”

The pages spiralling open, her fingers in the rose, his body lost in hers, the lights on the stage dimming.

“He was the one… actually, who let me sing centre stage. Picked me over his daughter, just like I thought he would keep on picking me over his wife.”

She’s laughing at him, drunk and full of life, Sherry toed as she dances in their living room - crawling over the méridienne, kissing him on the nose, on the mouth, on the chest, on and on until he’s losing herself into her bliss again, his eyes never shutting, never once leaving her.

She’s glorious on that stage, wailing, howling in a rage that seemed beyond human. This opera… it should have been like any other opera, but there was but one fundamental difference.

The murderer comes for her, her voice growing higher and higher, defiant on defiant, as though challenging him to kill her, as though she is ready for anything. After all, this one link to earth has been severed.

Her lover, a woman.

They were going to cross the ocean, disappear somewhere, no church, no Crests, no memories.

The rain begins to fade away, and he strokes his hands through her hair, he holds her while she tells him, “I thought my only worth was in what could be done to me, not by what I could do, I… really, really did believe that, for the longest time. I’m not good for much. Half-decent in a war, I suppose.”

She’s wrong.

Of course she’s wrong.

Yet the knife goes in all the same, her voice lilting and howling, impossibly powerful. How could she not even be aware of that power? How can she simply stand there as he stabs her, again and then again, her body crumbling, her voice still ringing out across the stage. He asks her, over and over, if this is alright, if she is alright, if he is alright. He trembles with pleasure so intense he is brought to the point of weeping, made worse by the opening of her eyes, her gaze so wonderful and sweeping. She tells him,

“You have a petal on your lash, Sir Lorenz.”

And he laughs.

She never stops being able to make him laugh.

She disappears into the earth, the stage lights go out, yer her voice keeps going.

On and on and on into that night. As though that pulsing, ethereal cry could pierce the veil.

As though it were searching for her lover, still. She holds his face, looks him in the eyes while their bodies meet, infinite pools of emerald green, holds his gaze until he cannot hold on any longer, he

If there’s anything he’s learned it’s that…

He can’t hold onto this moment forever.

Pockets of bliss so bright it blinds him. Sadness so cruel and all consuming it swallows him.

Anger at this cruel and unjust world, at spectres that no longer exist, so potent it feels poisonous.

There’s nothing that he can hold onto. Nothing. He lets go while scrambling to hold onto the image of those green green eyes, and the world curls out with it.

—

The performance ends and he is the first to his feet. He’s the only one there, after all. It’s only a practice, just a trial run.

The curtains raise, and Dorothea’s chatting among the girls, Manuela’s fingers ruffle her hair, their faces lit up red with the effort and the fading adrenaline.

Lorenz waits until she turns to him, until the corners of her smile shallowed, until her sparkle faded.

The stage falls away. Silence echoes. She meets his gaze, the warmth in her eyes that had been there just moments ago now dried and cold.

The rain’s still falling, somewhere.  

Rose petals drifting in the wind.

Her voice reverberating, on and on, forever.

Which mirror was the truth?

He decided, then, that it did not matter.

He raises his hands and Applauds.

[kim-taelicious]

URL Playlist

I was tagged by the lovely @gijitae💕 Thank you girl!

🅚 Kill This Love - Blackpink ( This is one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head & you’re singing it for the rest of the day with/o ever really realizing it.)

🅘 Intro:Boy Meets Evil- BTS (Just watch the video💁🏾‍♀️. If you don’t click out the link as a new J-Hope Stan, then you’re just missing out on greatness🤷🏾‍♀️.)

🅜 Manitto - Villain (Boy I was sleep😩! No one told me how hard Villain went on his Bank Robber EP. If y’all have never listened to him like that. Go listen to his EP. Every.Single.Song.Is.A.Bop. I only speak truth🤷🏾‍♀️.)

🅣 Tear - BTS (This song....nothing can top this song for me. This song is Thanos Level. Every part of her is amazing. Do yourself a favor & go watch them perform this bad boy live. She will leave you a mess I swear. She is one of those songs that hurt you in the best way possible. You feel her with every lyric that is spoken. Especially when it comes to J-Hope. He owns this song. He is the perfect ending to a perfect song😔.)

🅐 All Night- BTS & Juice WRLD (BOY THE OPENING OF THIS SONG!🔥 I was hooked the second I heard it. The melody for this track is amazing! They did the damn thing when they wrote this beauty. The collab with Juice WRLD just fit perfectly into place! Yoongi’s verse is hands down my favorite part of the song though! The way he delivers it just does something to me!😩 I get hyped as hell listening to this in my car😂.)

🅔 Egotistic - Mamamoo (If y’all don’t listen to Mamamoo, stop depraving yourselves of greatness. They are vocal queens & this song slaps! If y’all don’t start dancing immediately when you hear this song then we can’t be friends😤. I’m sorry.🤷🏾‍♀️ Listen to their Red Moon EP. She’s worth the entire 20 minutes it takes to listen to her full out. You won’t regret it!🤗)

🅛 Lost in a Dream - Monsta X (Watching this song live really hits differently. You can feel Hyungwon’s & Wonho’s anger like it is your own. Kihyun’s high note just crashes into your chest so hard it almost makes you want to cry! This song is right up there with Tear for me. Heartbreaking, but so beautifully delivered & written that you just keep listening to it over & over again.😔)

🅘 Illusion - Ateez (Now the video that I tagged for this song is not the entire song, but I really like the colors & how you really get to see their dancing in it if you have never listened to them before. Ateez gets my rookie of the year vote hands down! They have released three albums in the span of a year & every single one of them slaps!😤 Not one bad song for me.)

🅒 Cactus - A.C.E (Another group I was sleep on!😩 Their song Undercover was so good to me, that I had it as my ringtone for a full month before I even gave a thought about changing it. I love all their past singles & to me they are the kings of relay dances. This one is my absolute favorite! The outfits are sick & the breakdown of their dancing at the end is so so good! Stan A.C.E! You won’t regret it!)

🅘 Intro:Persona - BTS (PERSONA! WHO THE HELL AM I? I JUST WANNA GO! I JUST WANNA FLY! I JUST WANNA GIVE YOU ALL THE VOICES TIL I DIE! I JUST WANNA GIVE ALL THE SHOULDERS WHEN YOU CRY! This song gives me Intro: What Am I To You feels so much😩! Namjoon really grabs me when he raps. He just has this super power of pulling me into whatever story it is that he is telling. Boy be having me hanging on his every word😩! Nothing but respect for our leader & president Kim Namjoon!😤)

🅞 Oasis - EXO (Yet another beautiful song. The first time I listened to this song I could not wait to learn it. Just a beautiful song to remind you to always chase your dreams & to never settle until you find that thing that makes you the most happiest. Stay on that path that leads to the goals you want to accomplish in life for you & no one else no matter how hard it may be. Stay thirsty & chase that sun.🌞)

🅤 Uhgood - RM (Oh Namjoon this is just yet another reason why I love you so much. Thank you for taking the time to make MONO for us. Thank you for letting us in on your journey of becoming closer to yourself. Thank you for letting us know that we are not alone in doing the same thing. Thank you for making a mixtape that really makes you feel like you are having one of those really good late night conversation with your best friend that ends up with you having one of those much needed cries that makes you feel so much better afterwards & that much more accepting of your feelings & journey ahead. Again! Nothing but respect for our leader & president Kim Namjoon!😤)

🅢 Singularity - BTS (WHERE DO I START!😩 First & Foremost! I just wanna thank you Kim Taehyung for singing a song that calms my two year old nephew right down into a two hour nap!👏🏾😩 For that I will forever be grateful!😔 When I first heard this song I hadn’t really listened to anything BTS related other than Agust D & Fake Love. When Tae’s voice hit my ears my toes curled!😭 I had no idea what the lyrics of this song was, but his voice was telling me his feelings ran deep. When I looked up the man who sung this song, I had ABSOLUTELY NO UNDERSTANDING!😩 Here was this cutie with the sweetest looking face & an innocent like look to him & his thoughts. I couldn’t believe that he was singing a song that made my toes curls😂! So I looked into him a little more & ended up coming across the m/v for the song. Then I understood! Kim Taehyung is the cutest boy whom I want to put in my pocket & protect from every bad thing that ever happens around/to him. BUT V!😤 V, is a soul snatching demon who owns my heart & I will always go between thirsting for his ass & wanting to fight him for making me thirst over his ass!😩 He owns me & there really is no use in me trying to fight it anymore. Forever weak for him.🙈

I tag: @mykindofkpop @zerolover66 @burntnugget-tae @mintchockookie @aheartofsteelisstartingtogrow @sunnyboicontent @mikroko5sos & anyone else who sees this & wants to do it!💗

[putschki1969]

Wakana in Concert with the Roma Italia Symphony Orchestra – Live Report

Okay, here’s my report. This time I didn’t want to wait too long since I was scared I would forget all about the details. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

First of all I wanna say one thing: WOW! Just WOW! This was a PERFECT live. I will be honest, I had my doubts when I first heard that this concert wasn’t just about Wakana. When they announced that Ryu Masaki would be joining I was quite bummed and felt a little cheated. Then Wakana announced in her latest blogpost that Mana Ogawa would be joining the live too and I was like “eh?? Why are you doing this to me? I thought this was a Wakana concert and not an ensemble live!!“ Turns out I needn’t have worried. While Ryu Masaki got to sing a handful of songs this was most definitely Wakana’s show (I actually feel kind abad for Ryu Masaki fans who attended the live). And Mana Ogawa was more of a backup singer to be honest (and she only appeared during two songs).

Overall thoughts on Wakana’s vocals: Flawless. For me she was honestly flawless. Yes, her breathing was still there and quite noticeable at that but that’s just part of her charm I think. Fans love her breathing and I think YK likes it too or she wouldn’t keep it in the studio recordings. But aside from that Wakana really slayed. She has never sounded better in my opinion. The arrangments were slowed down quite a bit so she never was out of breath and she got the chance to really hold her notes. Her voice was so strong and pure and perfect and she hit pretty much each and every note (even during believe which has never happened as far as I can remember!). She didn’t use her airy/flimsy/breathy voice once. At times she was a bit quiet compared to the orchestra but I only really noticed it in one song and even there it wasn't too bad (Jupiter). Not sure if the orcestra was just super loud here or if Wakana wasn’t feeling confident with a new song but at any rate, she got used to it suoe quickly and then she slayed. Wakana was BORN to sing like this, with dramatic orchestral arrangements. She didn’t strain her voice once and even though she sang quite a lot of songs in a row she didn’t seem to sweat at all. She obviously had a lot of fun and you could tell that she was well-rested. I am so glad she got to take a break. It was such a pleasure to see her this refreshed and happy. Now let’s start with the live itself

First Half

01. Nuovo Cinema Paradiso Theme This was an instrumental piece and it perfectly showcased the skills of the orchestra. I had never heard of this piece before (apparently it’s from an Italian movie by famous composer Ennio Morricone) but I immediately fell in love with it. Check out this version on youtube, it’s pretty much the same arrangement that was played during the concert with the violin in the lead). Very lovely and the orchestra already conveyed an epic feeling. I couldn’t wait to hear it in combination with Wakana’s voice. After this overture Wakana came on stage. She looked absolutely gorgeous wearing a white strapless dress with black glittery details in the waist area. The material and cut were more or less the same as the second dress which she changed into in the second half of the live (the white one had a tighter/sexier fit though). The picture below doesn’t do justice to Wakana’s actual dress. Wakana’s dress had a bigger bustier part and made her boobs look huge XD The black details didn't span such a big area on Wakana’s dress, it really was mostly concentrated on the waist area. While this looks like lace, it was definitely not lacey on Wakana’s dress, it was beaded. Sorry, I can’t explain it better.

02. Oblivious They changed the arrangement a lot for this one. They left out the ahhhhhh parts (why?? that would have sounded awesome and Wakana would have ruled!) and they slowed the song down quite a bit. Wakana had three (or was it four?) chorus singers supporting her during certain parts to make the song feel more epic (and to replace Keiko’s parts). On this note I wanna say that the back-up singers did an amazing job, they didn’t intervene too much (the focus was 100% on Wakana’s voice) but they definitely elevated the performance. I think out of all songs this might have been my least favourite performance. Simply because it didn’t feel like the new arrangement made the song any better. The oomph factor was missing and it seemed like the orchestra didn't have much to do. But still, Wakana rocked the stage! Overall, one of my least favourite performances that night.

03. Kimi ga Hikari ni Kaete Iku My dreams have come true. I have been to heaven and come back. This was perfection. UTTER PERFECTION. I have honestly no words to describe it. All I know is that I can die happy now. There were no supporting singers for this one here. Just Wakana and the orchestra. It was more or less the acoustic arrangement from the re/oblivious single but better. I never liked the first half of that song because the chorus felt anti-climactic (do I make sense?) but here she sang the first half just like the second half. The strings in this one killed me. So utterly gorgeous (comparable to the Christmas Live version but so much more epic and grande! Just check out the X-Mas version and fast forward to the “mezameta asa...” line and you will know what I am talking about) And Wakana’s voice was just so rich and beautiful, I couldn’t stop crying the entire time. THANK YOU SO MUCH WAKANA FOR SINGING THIS SONG!

04. Kizuato I have never been a huge fan of this song but the orchestral arrangement made it so much better in my opinion. Especially towards the end I had goosepumps because the song just kept building up. Here Wakana was supported by back-up singers again. It’s funny how they used a male singer to replace some of Keiko’s parts XD. Also, I don’t know how to explain it. The back-up singers didn’t sing all the Hikaru/Keiko parts, they just added a bit of flare here and there. For the most part, the arrangement was changed so that Wakana was able to sing all the parts. Oh, I forgot to mention, poor Wakana forgot her lines during the second verse, there was an awkward silence for two seconds or something but then she caught on quickly and dealt with it professionally. I think it must have been one of Keiko’s lines.

Ryu Masaki Part I will say that she really amazed me. I listened to a couple of her songs before the live so I kinda knew what to expect but still, she is an amazing singer! My Heart will Go on and I don’t Wanna Miss a Thing are two of my all time favourite movie tracks and she sang them so freaking well. And then there was Shadowland from the Lion King musical. So beautiful! I didn’t know the other songs but she pretty much gained a new fan this night. Great performer!!

Second Half

05. Jupiter After Ryu Masaki had sung six songs in total there was a 20 minute break. Then Wakana appeared on stage again wearing the blue dress we have all seen on the pictures. And along with her came Mana Ogawa in the cutest pink dress ever. Together they performed one of my most loved non-Kalafina songs. Jupiter! This is originally a classical piece by Gustav Holst but Ayaka Hirahara made a song out of it. Wakana and Mana’s version wasn’t quite as epic as Ayaka’s but it is SUPER hard to reach that level of epicness. Also, I felt like in this song the voices got a bit drowned by the orchestra but only at certain times. It wasn’t bad or anything but it wasn’t perfect either. Wakana slayed throughout the entire song though. It’s HARD to sing an Ayaka Hirahara song but she nailed it. She kinda adapted Ayaka’s singing style (in a similar fashion that Keiko adapted Ayaka’s style during their performance of Kawaii Hana). I can’t really explain what’s so special about Ayaka’s singing style, she has that way of belting her lines and making her voice vibrate (ughhh, I wish had better words for it). Anyways, Wakana did a great job at using certain elements of that style and incorporated them in her own style. The result: a pretty epic sounding Wakana.  On a side note, OMG, Mana was so good too. I had no idea she was so skilled. Her voice went together so well with Wakana’s. They complemented each other in a great way.

06. Mizu no Akashi YESSSSSSS!!!!!! This is THE Wakana song! I am so freaking glad she decided to sing it. Mana joined her for this one too but she mostly did back-up singing (so nice!!) and sang a few lines. Mana harmonises so well with Wakana, it was a lovely combination. I don’t know what else to say about it. They stayed true to the original arrangment but of course they added a little oomph here and there. More strings can never hurt, right? Once again, tears everywhere. I feel like Wakana got a bit teary-eyed too for a moment but I could be wrong. I was sitting quite far away from the stage.

07. Hokage Ahhhhhhh! You probably know that I LOVE LOVE LOVE this song. I know most people don’t care for it but it is actually my favourite song on the far on the water album. And wow, they used the chorus singers in a nice way here. In the beginning, they were chanting and creating the melody with their voices. So pretty!! This song already has a gorgeous strings arrangement but once again, the added instruments made everything SO MUCH BETTER.

08. Natsu no Asa Out of all Kalafina summer songs I didn’t expect Wakana to sing this particular song but wow, I am glad she did. The first part was sung completely acaplla. Once again the back-up singers did an amazing job creating the melody. Kinda reminiscent of FictionJunction’s silent moon. In the second half of the song, the orchestra joined in and this honestly became one of the most beautiful songs of the evening. The atmosphere was perfect and the song really fits the current season. So lovely!!

09. Ashita no Keshiki Obviously I already knew this was going to be performed so it wasn’t really a surprise like all the other songs. But hey, that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the performance one bit. Wakana sounded solid in the 9+ONE version but here she was just flawless. The kajiurago part was sung beautifully by the chorus people and all the whle Wakana was making eye-contact with as many people in the audience as possible. Her smile was blinding. This was probably one of the more reserved performances of the night where the orchestra didn’t get so much to do but still, very lovely

10. I Have a Dream If you loved their Blue Day performance then you would have loved this version even more. The strings were just so gorgeous. The Blue Day version already has a very lovely and elaborate strings arrangement that’s different to the original version but here they added a lot more grandness to it. One of my faves from this night. Utterly perfect! In the MC before the song Wakana talked about how this song is very reminiscent of a refreshing summer wind.

11. Believe I have never understood the hate that this song gets. Quite frankly I really like it and I have always been a fan of the strings in this one. I am such a sucker for the strings in the beginning and at the end. And boy, let me tell you, they really upped the ante, the strings in this version were SOOO EPIC (especially at the end)!!! It was like listening to a majestic symphonic piece. Probably my favourite orchestral arrangement of the evening. And Wakana didn’t struggle at all even though she sang literally all the parts by herself. I feel like she always struggles during this song, she also struggled quite a bit during the 9+ONE version even though that also had an acoustic arrangment (which is the reason I couldn’t enjoy it 100%) but here she knocked it out of the park. Absolutely stunning. One of my favourite performance of the night

12. Hikari no Yukue Like Mizu no Akashi I had hoped this song would make it into the setlist and YES, here it was!! I mean, if there is one song that needs to be performed by an orchestra then it is THIS ONE! And boy, this definitely didn’t disappoint. No words for the epicness of this performance.

13. Yume no Daichi While it is not my favourite RHH song, I think it was perfect for Wakana’s concert tonight. And once again, the new arrangement added so much to the song. From now on all Kalafina songs should be performed by an orchestra :P This is probably the song where I missed Keiko the most (don’t know why).

14. Musunde Hiraku She thanked the fans for always supporting her and having her back. Without us she couldn't have made it this far. This song was meant to convey her gratitude for us. Probably the most upbeat and lighthearted performance of the night. Wakana is so obviously in love with this song (check out my translation of the fotw Special Final MCs to find out her thoughts about it). Her love was strongly conveyed in this performance. She was walking back and forth on stage, waving to everyone in the audiece, showing us her radiant smile. Perfection!!

This was the last song and everyone began clapping for an encore but instead of Wakana, Ryu Masaki came back on stage to perform her final song (another solid performance!). And THEN it was time for Wakana to return! (((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o))) She thanked everyone for coming and then she announced her very first solo tour. She was all like, “you probably all wonder when it is gonna take place. Maybe next year? Nope, next MONTH actually! XD“ Then she said that her FINAL song was written by herself. She came up with the lyrics and she admitted that it was very hard. The song is called Toki wo Koeru Yoru ni which loosely translates to On a Night that Transcends Time. By the way, this also relates to the title of her upcoming tour -Toki wo Koeru/Transcending Time-

15. Toki wo Koeru Yoru ni A GORGEOUS ballad if there ever was one. My memory is already fading but I definitely loved it. I suck at understanding lyrics so I can’t tell you what the song was actually about but believe me when I say it was beautiful. It felt like an old-school ballad, something from the 90s maybe. I wish I knew how to explain it better but I can’t. Wakana actually got a standing ovation afterwards (although there were some people who refused to stand up *grumbles*).

Okay, that’s a wrap for me tonight. I can’t think straight any longer. Too tired. All in all I will say that this concert was worth EVERY penny I spent on this trip. Along with the Hikaru Birthday Event and all my trips to different places this was the BEST holiday ever. I didn’t see any cameras so I doubt there will be a DVD/BD release for this but maybe, just maybe they recorded the audio of this live. I would buy that CD in a heartbeat. Personally I think they did a great job arranging the songs in a way they are suited for a solo performer. I wonder who actually did the orchestral arrangements because damn, they were SO GOOD!!! In some cases the back-up singers provided the necessary support and in other cases the orchestra provided the different melodies that are usually sung by Hikaru/Keiko. All songs felt wholesome, I didn’t feel like anything was missing and Wakana slayed throughout the concert. She shone brigther than a star and while she was a bit awkward during the MCs she was incredibly strong and confident during her live performances.

[ajw720]

Since discovering the joys of CC I have been adding my voice to the fandom through fanfics. This afternoon I shed tears while edited my way through the latest chapter. To get in the mood I listened to selected songs from Glee. Considering what I was editing at the time, this song hit a cord.

Face to face and heart to heart We’re so close yet so far apart I close my eyes I look away That’s just because I’m not okay But I hold on, I stay strong Wondering if we still belong

Will we ever say the words we’re feeling Reach down underneath and tear down all the walls Will we ever have our happy ending? Or will we forever only be pretending? Will we always, always, always be pretending How long do I fantasize Make believe that it’s still alive Imagine that I am good enough And we can choose the ones we love But I hold on, I stay strong Wondering if we still belong, Will we ever say the words we’re feeling Reach down underneath and tear down all the walls Will we ever have our happy ending? Or will we forever only be pretending? Will we always, always, always be Keeping secrets safe Every move we make Seems like no ones letting go And it’s such a shame Cause if you feel the same How am I supposed to know? Will we ever say the words we’re feeling Reach down underneath and tear down all the walls Will we ever have our happy ending? Or will we forever only be pretending? Will we always, always, always be Will we always, always, always be WIll we always, always, always be pretending?

Half way through third repeat the truth of why Glee had became what it did hit me—honest emotion. In this scene LC sang not just because they were being paid but for their love. You could see it in their faces and their little flirtations. (It was no secret they dated.) The cast poured themselves into their music because of what they truly felt for one another. The revealing of genuine emotions through song made the series more than just a TV show. It touched our heart in ways most sitcoms do not. We, the viewers, fell in love with the characters and by extension the truth of their emotions.

RM admitted to all sorts of things going on in the background including hookups. If the producer admitted this, doesn’t give some validation to CC.

To get to my point, like LC, the same can be said for CC. Only true emotion could have resulted in their scenes having such power. The words sung by LC easily fit CC. CC sang with such depth for one another. When their handlers started to get concerned about the reality of what was happening it became obvious they tried push them apart. Physically making them sit three feet apart in their scenes does not remove emotion. In fact, in my opinion, it made it stronger as they learned to work around the system imposed on them.

Seeing D&C in pictures during the Glee era, revealed the fact they were completely comfortable with one another. Why can’t they just be left alone to become the people and couple they are meant to be?

Yes, I will admit to having an agenda in this. In fighting is cutting into the CC movement. We need to remember we are here to support D&C. People are playing hurtful games with the hearts and souls of others. It’s disgraceful and I am proud to be part of a movement which is not blinded by the smoke screen.  

*************************************************************************

When ever i get something like this, I always feel the need to add, But I don’t think I have to add anything when it comes to what you say about C&D. You said it perfectly.  Sometimes those background moments of Klaine are the most telling.  C&D are both brilliant actors, but no matter how brilliant, when there is true love there as well, it always shines through.

And you write fic?  Be sure to send me links!!!!!!!!!  Fantastic contribution to the fandom.

[jennycalendar]

adapting

ao3

He should place some sort of advertisement in the paper. Wanted: Childcare for Potential Vampire Slayer; Emotional Support for Watcher.

(in which giles and buffy adjust to living on a hellmouth. well. mostly just giles)

lmao remember when i was talking about how this fic was going to be angsty? that fell tf apart. it has angsty parts but it’s a short fluff piece; one more of these & then i think we might get to some Actual Plot Things!

tagging @theforestlesbian as always <3

Giles had been in Sunnydale for two days when he nearly got jumped by a vampire on his way back from the grocery store, and it was then that he started considering that he'd made a pretty serious mistake coming to an active Hellmouth just to get away from the Council monitor. Keeping Buffy in his care was definitely not as important as keeping Buffy alive, and living here alone with no one to take care of Buffy if anything happened to him was most certainly a bad idea, which was why Giles was panicking at two in the morning and couldn't go to sleep.

Buffy was awake, but not because she'd been crying. Giles, wanting to remind himself of the one certainty in his life, had picked her up and out of her crib while he paced around her bedroom. She seemed somewhat upset by his anxiety, and kept on making concerned little whimpering noises that didn't really alleviate Giles's stress. He should place some sort of advertisement in the paper. Wanted: Childcare for Potential Vampire Slayer; Emotional Support for Watcher.

"You," he said to Buffy with some exhaustion, "need some sort of reliable care that isn’t me, because sooner or later I'll probably get murdered by some sun-resistant vampire. It's California, after all. I expect these people can withstand five thousand bloody degrees of heat even after they’re dead." He bounced Buffy in his arms, trying to distract himself. "I'd give you back to the Council if they weren't likely to just lock you in a room and set up a few magical wards to make sure you don't die before you get Called—"

Buffy began to cry.

Giles felt more than just a little bit horrible for passing his worry to Buffy. Part of him wished he'd just stayed at his desk job in the Council, never mind the shame he'd have brought on his family for not accepting a Potential when offered one. Maybe then Buffy would at least be with someone who could keep her safe, if not happy.

But Giles hated the thought of Buffy being alone—that was why he wanted her to have the chance to meet other children. She was such a social butterfly, always smiling and laughing at complete strangers, and Giles knew that the Council didn't approve of Potentials as mischievous and charismatic as Buffy, and who better to take care of her than someone who had dealt with mischievous, charismatic people on a daily basis back in college—lord, was that only seven years ago? It felt like so much longer.

"Shh," Giles murmured, bouncing Buffy in his arms. "Hush now, dear, everything's all right."

It wasn't, really, but he certainly shouldn't be worrying Buffy. Giles did wish there was a manual for rogue Watchers trying to secretly raise a child instead of prepare a Potential, something with affordable resources and self-help tips. It would be a niche sort of book, certainly, but it'd be better than whatever the hell seemed to be going on with him right now.

Buffy had stopped crying, but she still looked upset. Giles took her tightly curled fist in his hand and hummed an old song his mother might have sung to him, once.

 There were two daycares within Sunnydale city limits, and both were absolutely out of the question when it came to finding safe and affordable care for Buffy. One was two blocks away from a location where new vampires seemed to enjoy going to spend time, and the other had a two-hundred-dollar entrance fee and was located in the distastefully wealthy section of Sunnydale that Giles was trying his hardest to avoid.

Putting an advertisement in the paper did next to nothing except make Giles panic even more about the possibility of the Council finding it and asking questions he wouldn't be able to answer without incriminating himself and losing Buffy. Adding to Giles's panic was his worry that he was creating a negative home environment for Buffy anyway with all this worrying. He couldn't believe he was even thinking this, but he very much missed Los Angeles.

Growing more and more desperate, Giles decided to check out the two-hundred-dollar daycare. He could always dip into his emergency funds, if need be. Perhaps just a little time, enough for him to figure out something more permanent and definite.

"Hgb," said Buffy from her car seat. She'd started to vocalize a bit more precisely as of late, though nothing amounted to an actual word just yet. Currently, she was chewing on the arm of the small cloth doll Giles had bought her back in Los Angeles. She had grown incredibly attached to that doll, even more so than her old baby blanket.

"Right," said Giles with nervous determination, and pulled into the parking lot of Bright Smiles Daycare. In Giles's opinion, that name better suited a dentist's office, not some ridiculously overpriced daycare full of tiny children with extremely wealthy parents.

After getting out of the car, unbuckling Buffy from her car seat, and picking her (and the doll) up, Giles locked the car and surveyed the daycare from outside. It looked quite nice, it was in the part of town that seemed to have quite a lot of mansions, and it was well protected by a solid brick wall with a mural featuring many eerily smiling children painted near the gate. Giles wondered how desperate for childcare parents had to be in order to walk their children past these small painted goblins every day.

Then again, he thought, I seem to be rather desperate myself at this juncture.

"Welcome to Bright Smiles Daycare!" gushed a young woman standing at the door. She was holding a small child in her arms that looked perhaps Buffy's age, if a bit smaller. "You must be Rupert Giles! It's always a pleasure to meet a new member of the Bright Smiles family!"

Stepping into the perfectly symmetrical hallway and neatly organized artwork, Giles was very vividly reminded of the cult he'd had to join as part of an intelligence-gathering mission for the Council. He held Buffy protectively to his chest (Buffy, of course, was at this point very involved with babbling to her doll and didn't really notice) and stepped closer to the woman, inquiring, “Do you, um, have anything to eat?”

“Oh, of course!” said the woman warmly. "We have snacks for you, applesauce for your daughter—"

"Oh, she's not my—" Giles began reflexively, before remembering that he was trying to seem relatively normal to this perfectly nice young woman. "allergic to applesauce," he finished awkwardly. "Which is perhaps very good if that is what you have."

Buffy, taking advantage of her close proximity to the first child her age she’d ever met, threw the cloth doll at the other baby as hard as she could.

"Buffy," said Giles, mortified.

The doll bounced off the other baby’s face, and the other baby began to cry. The woman, whose expression had suddenly changed, said awkwardly, “Cordelia’s parents make very generous donations that help finance most of this daycare. I’m terribly sorry, but if your Buffy doesn’t get along with her, Bright Smiles might not be the best fit for you.”

“No, this is just her way of saying hello,” said Giles helplessly. “I think.”

Buffy was watching Cordelia with a sort of scientific interest. Cordelia seemed wholly unaware of the fact that she was being observed, too focused on crying as loudly as possible.

“I’m so sorry,” said the woman again, “but Bright Smiles can only afford to take on well-behaved and well-mannered children.”

Giles had accounted for the fact that he might not be all that good at finding Buffy a daycare. He hadn’t considered that Buffy might not be all that good at daycare in the first place, and it was very difficult to understand, particularly after spending so much time with Buffy. Buffy was excitable and sweet and, well, perhaps a bit rambunctious, but she was most certainly a lovely young girl that any daycare would be lucky to have, and—and he was still just standing here, not saying anything. “Well,” he said finally. “I’ll just search elsewhere, then. Good day to you.”

“Mr. Giles, we can perhaps discuss—” the woman began, but Giles was already turning and hurrying out of the daycare.

As soon as they were outside of Bright Smiles, Buffy began to wail. Giles turned and saw the woman, struggling with a still-sobbing Cordelia in her arms and Buffy’s doll in one hand. “I really am sorry,” she said apologetically. “We’re just a very exclusive place. We can’t afford—”

“Yes, thank you,” said Giles exhaustedly, and took the doll, handing it to Buffy. Buffy sniffled and stopped crying, going back to her usual pastime of chewing on the doll’s arm. “I expect we’ll need to look elsewhere, at any rate.” Turning, he hurried to the car, unlocking the door and placing Buffy into her car seat before climbing into the backseat himself.

“You’ve made my life very complicated, you know that?” he said softly to Buffy. “It’s rather impressive. You’re quite small, and yet you’ve caused nearly as much upheaval as Eyghon.” This was quite a exaggeration, but Giles just liked talking to Buffy. As of late, she rarely ever paid any attention to him while he talked, and it was strangely endearing. She lived in her own very happy little world.

Giles leaned back into the seat, thinking. It wasn’t just that Buffy had made a bad first impression, it was that he didn’t want Buffy to be in a place where he constantly felt like he was walking on eggshells. He didn’t want Buffy’s daycare to be dependent on how much money he could shell out to cover any misbehaviors, and he got the distinct sense that this was the sort of place that catered to the rich part of Sunnydale. All the parents who wanted an exclusive experience with only the most well-behaved children.

“I feel a bit bad for that Cordelia girl you threw your doll at,” he said to Buffy. “That sort of place seems as though it might not be the kindest.”

“Pshhh,” said Buffy happily.

Really, Giles thought, he needed some guidance, and there was only one resource in which he’d nearly always found consistently good advice.

 Buffy, sitting on the sofa with her beloved cloth doll, watched Giles with a large smile as he entered the room with the third box of books. Giles smiled back, feeling more than a bit reassured by the fact that someone seemed to have steadfast faith in him, even if that someone was a six-month-old who wasn’t well-behaved enough for daycare. “Daycare is rubbish anyway,” he informed her. “I didn’t go to daycare, and look how well I turned out.” He considered this, then winced. “Well. There are plenty of other people who didn’t go to daycare and turned out just fine.”

Buffy held out the cloth doll to Giles.

“Oh—” Giles placed down the box, crossing the room to take the doll from Buffy. “Thank you,” he said very seriously. He knew it was a bit early to start on good manners, but there was a parenting book he’d read recently that said encouragement was extremely beneficial to a growing child. Besides which, he did appreciate the gesture; Buffy didn’t give her doll to just anyone. Buffy did throw her doll at just about anyone, but giving her doll willingly was reserved for only Giles.

Tucking the doll into his front pocket where Buffy could still see it and know it was being taken care of, Giles turned back to the books. He’d brought along a few copies of Watcher journals that the Council had gifted to him, as infant Potentials weren’t generally all that common and the Council seemed to think Giles could use some frames of reference. Giles had been mostly ignoring them out of spite, but quite frankly, he was getting desperate. Perhaps among one of these books he might find some kind of a solution, some Watcher who softened to their Potential and wanted a better life for them.

But after a good two hours spent researching (or, more accurately, one hour spent researching, half an hour spent playing with Buffy—she was such a sweet child, and Giles didn’t want her to feel neglected—and half an hour preparing dinner for the both of them), Giles really hadn’t found anything of use. The Watchers’ diaries were dispassionate and disinterested in their charges, and Giles had the strong sense that these had been specifically selected to encourage a similar mindset for him.

It did make him very aware of one thing, though. These Watchers never really seemed to mention any sort of community or resources, instead putting a specific emphasis on how solitary their lives had become. One Watcher boasted that his Potential’s first encounter with another child didn’t take place until she was eight years old, and even then it was under incredibly controlled circumstances.

“The system is broken,” Giles informed Buffy, and was unexpectedly reminded of Ethan, both of them sprawled in the grass talking lazily about burning the world down. Giles had been frightened, he realized, by what had happened with Eyghon, stumbling to distance himself from rebellion so that no one would ever get hurt again. Choosing to raise Buffy the way he thought would be best was a sideways way of rebelling against the Council without really rebelling against the Council, and it still didn’t really address the actual problems he was creating with his careful approach. He had no real way to make sure Buffy wouldn’t go to another Council operative in the event of his death, no contacts he trusted, no community to fall back on, and he still felt as though impulsive, rebellious behavior was the absolute wrong way to go.

Buffy made a small whining noise and stretched a tiny hand toward the doll in Giles’s pocket. Turning, he absently handed it back to her, but she grabbed plaintively at his hand instead.

“Hello,” said Giles tiredly, managing a smile. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.” He sat down next to her on the couch, thinking. He couldn’t at all handle the idea of hosting some neighborhood get-together to meet people; pretending to be a single father for a long period of time would be difficult when faced with cheerful Americans eating his food. All he really wanted was someone he could reliably count on to take care of Buffy if anything happened to him—

The solution to his problems occurred to him quite abruptly. “Idiot,” said Giles to himself, picking up Buffy and making sure to add for her benefit, “Not you, dear, you’re very smart and let no one tell you otherwise.” Carrying Buffy down the hall to her bedroom, he placed her gently down in her crib before hurrying back to the living room to find a pen and paper.

 “You’re not serious.”

“I assume you received my letter?” said Giles cheerfully.

“We did. We’re calling to inquire what on earth would make you think legally adopting the Potential would be a good idea.” Travers’s voice was clipped and irritable. “That sort of thing makes placing her with another Watcher extremely difficult in the event of your demise. It would be significantly different were she British, but there is only so much we can do in regards to the American legal system.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” said Giles, who was feeling thoroughly proud of himself at the moment. “I simply feel that—well,” here he dropped his voice a bit dramatically, “I’m of the mind that it also makes things more difficult for any family member to step in. You don’t want just anyone swooping in and claiming guardianship of a Potential, Travers, do you?”

On the other side of the room, Buffy noticed a dog outside and started shrieking with delight.

“What on earth is that racket on your end?” Travers demanded.

“Television,” lied Giles, making a shh motion to Buffy (who, as usual, happily ignored him and pressed her hands up against the window while she stared at the dog). “Listen, Travers, I’ve been doing a bit of digging,” this part actually wasn’t a lie, “and this particular Potential has quite a few relatives in this area. I’d move, but I’m taking my research responsibilities quite seriously.”

“Mr. Giles,” said Travers, “tread carefully.”

Giles winced. That didn’t bode well. “I’m sorry?”

“These constant changes in your approach to training your Potential are giving me doubts,” said Travers. “I will support your request to adopt the child and pull a few legal strings, but only because you claim that there is danger of a relative ‘swooping in.’ I hope you understand that you make any more requests and we will conduct a very thorough investigation.”

Giles felt almost dizzy with delight. He did feel awful about using Buffy’s relatives as though they were pieces in some horrible game of chess. But he’d be able to make legal arrangements that would keep Buffy out of the hands of the Council in the event of his death, and that was truly comforting to him.

Buffy, meanwhile, was still very distracted by the dog, which was chasing a squirrel. “Go!” she shouted suddenly, and Giles nearly dropped the phone. “Go go go!”

“Mr. Giles?”

“Go!” Buffy crowed, and hit the window as though watching a high-speed chase.

Giles stared, eyes wide, and a slow, proud smile spread across his face. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Good day, Travers.”

“Good day.”

Giles waited for the click of the receiver before crossing the room to scoop Buffy up. She uttered a whine of protest, peering over his shoulder at the dog and the squirrel. “Go,” she informed Giles sulkily, which did make it a bit unclear as to whether she knew what she was saying was an actual word.

Giles chose to believe that she was just trying to be mysterious. “Yes, it did go,” he agreed. “But you can’t hit the window.”

 To celebrate their small victory, Giles decided to take Buffy on a walk to the nearby park. She’d been mostly cooped up since the daycare incident a few days ago, and he thought they could both do with a bit of fresh air. Besides which, he was more than a little bit proud of the high-quality stroller he’d gotten for Buffy, and he wanted to see if it worked as well as advertised.

Buffy was always very happy about getting dressed and going outside; she was a very sweetly cheerful little thing. Carefully buttoning Buffy’s tiny sweater, Giles lifted her up and into the stroller, tucking her doll in with her. “Now, if we meet any new children, kindly try not to throw things,” he instructed her.

Buffy smiled. It was very clear that she had no qualms about throwing things.

They lived in a refreshingly shady part of Sunnydale. Giles was not at all fond of the sun that the town’s name advertised, and very much missed the chill of England. Buffy very clearly loved the sun, but was willing to settle for the breeze and shade that the many trees in their neighborhood allowed. It was pleasant, Giles had to admit, and very lovely to walk with an excitable Buffy in her stroller (who had just seen a pigeon and was babbling happily in its direction) without all that many plans for the day. It felt like the sort of break he needed after the panic of their first week in Sunnydale.

“Do you suppose things will settle down?” Giles asked Buffy, stopping the stroller to peer down at her.

Buffy gave him a very irritated look, crossed her arms, and said, “Go.”

“You’re quite a demanding little girl, aren’t you,” said Giles affectionately, and went back to pushing the stroller.

[54kg]

Jongin - Come Home (M)

Jongin x (Y/N) scenario

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Oral sex, vanilla sex

Word count: 4552

Saturday mornings always bring tired eyes and lazy Netflix binges tangled in a blanket on the sofa. At least, they have for the past month. I don't have anything better to do anyway. My roommate won't be back from her home-stay for another 6 months. I've nearly forgotten the scent of her floral perfume wafting through the apartment as she scurries around getting ready for work. She hates her job, but keeps a smile on her face regardless. Despite frequently working overtime and off-duty business calls, not to mention lowkey harassment from a coworker (something she doesn't trust will be properly dealt with if she notifies her lackadaisical boss), she remains optimistic. She's like a ticking bomb. Though she doesn't like to admit it, I know that she has a limit. It's only so long until she explodes, and I'm not ready to see such a mess sprawled out before me.

 But honestly, as I sit flipping through an endless scroll of B-movies I can't be bothered to waste brain cells sitting through, all I can think about is one person, and it certainly isn't my optimistic roommate. Letting the remote go limp in my hand for a moment, I grab at my phone lazily perched on my hip. No new messages. Damn. How long has it been anyway? 3 days? He could at least drop a text to say "Good morning" or "Sweet dreams" or "I love you~". Even a "Thinking of you" would do. But he's been completely silent for far too long (3 days can seem like a long time when you're completely and utterly in love with someone who isn't near you). It's not like we promised to talk everyday, but considering that he's 92093842347 miles away from where I am, I would be willing to hear even just a small peep from him at least once a day. He must be busy, I tell myself, setting my phone aside again as I begin to harass the remote buttons. "God damn it, there has to be something to watch on here!" And yet there isn't. Either I've watched everything already or there's nothing interesting left. So I pull up YouTube instead. Perhaps a few random tutorials and Story Times down the road, I'll actually find something to binge on. As soon as I open the screen, however, one thumbnail catches my eye and I feel a pang in my chest. '170425 EXO’rDIUM in NY - Acoustic Medley'. I try to hide my frown, if not only to trick my spirits into staying light. My fingers move on their own, and I'm sucked into the melodic harmony of all the members singing Call My Baby and Love, Love, Love, and other songs he's sung to me while I fall asleep nestled in his warm embrace. He looks so content, sitting there among his near brothers, lifting the mic to his lips when it's his turn to sing, gazing out at all the fans who adore him so passionately. And it's almost the same look he gives me when he comes home sometimes after work and holds me in his arms, something we aren't able to do as much as we'd like. I know that I'm the only one who gets that extra special look, that look of "this is the most beautiful person I've ever met in my life". I give him the same one.

 Kim Jongin is warm-hearted to a fault. Literally anyone who meets him could tell you that he's always a gentleman, and he's always polite, but he also knows how to joke around. He's the epitome of the perfect sweetheart. It's no wonder he has young girls worshiping him around the world. But, of course, what they see on the screen, even what they are sometimes lucky enough to see in person, is only a part of the man we know as Kim Jongin. Behind closed doors he's so much more. He shows me aspects of his personality that he'd never show anyone else. There's so much to know about Jongin. There's so much to understand, and adore, and protect. Although he's undoubtedly tough, he also has a certain fragility about him, which only makes me care for him more deeply.

 I just want him to come home. A month is a long time to be deprived of seeing the one person you love above all else. He's been really good about replying to my texts of encouragement and also the ones that say things like "Oh my god, when the fuck are you getting home, I'm about to die!!!" Although I know he's busy and probably isn't supposed to be on his phone. I get his messages and have to remind myself that it's not, in fact, 4am where he is when he sends them. I can only imagine how the time difference affects him. Poor baby works too hard anyway. We'd tried calling each other once only to have to keep it short because he was getting ready to go to rehearsal at 8am while it was 9pm in Korea. Before we'd even had a chance to talk heart-to-heart, his manager called him away. He promised he'd call another time or maybe even Facetime, but his schedule got more detailed as the days went by. Even before the tour, they were so preoccupied with preparations that he decided it was best to just stay at the company for the time being until after their return. Hence why we haven't seen each other for a month. EXO's schedules get especially rigorous during comebacks and tours. I feverishly worry for him, for all of them.

 The video ends and I scold myself when I realize a tear has trickled from my eye. "Come home..." I murmur, my voice cracking. My phone buzzes and my hand has never flown so fast to pick it up. A big smile graces my lips when I look at the screen.

 'Sorry, we got really busy. It's times like these when I really, really miss you... xoxo, Nini <3'

 -

 The tour comes to an end. EXO is finally coming home. I've spent the entire day preparing dinner, creating a nice romantic atmosphere. The dining room has been expertly transformed into a more fancy setting with a table for two all dressed up with a brand new tablecloth and candle, and a little vase of lavender. I'm thoroughly impressed with myself, though I don't like to brag. I collapse onto the couch when everything is ready, dinner only needing to be put into the oven. Holding my phone above my face, I open my texts, reading over the last message Jongin sent me. 'Omg omg omg can you believe I'm coming home to you today?!' which was a more giddy response than usual. This is the longest we've gone without seeing each other in at least a year. We've grown accustomed to being able to be together at least twice a week. Sometimes we get lucky and EXO's manager will secretly let me come to practice on the condition that Jongin won't get too distracted.

 'When does your plane land?' I type, looking at the time to see that it reads 1:23pm (I got too excited and prepared everything way too early in advance, but oh well). I would go to the airport, but I've been warned that because somehow no one has figured out about mine and Jongin's relationship yet during the two years we've been together, it's risky to show up and have people suspect anything. We aren't ready to reveal anything just yet, partly because I'm not famous or anything, so both of us want to protect my privacy for as long as we can. There's no way I want to touch the surface of sasaeng territory.

 My phone buzzes almost immediately. '6 more hours... >.<' I giggle at the cute little emoji. Even when he's not with me, he still manages to make my heart flutter just as much. I send back a crying emoji and tell him to get some sleep (if the boys will let him). And then I go to take a shower. Dinner and ambiance aren't the only surprises I've conjured up. A cute little pink parcel with a silk bow tied around the handles sits waiting at the end of my bed. I'll slip that new gem on later tonight after dinner when he least expects it...

 6 hours pass by agonizingly slow. Even Netflix isn't helping to make time fly quicker. Every now and then I'll get a cute little text from Jongin saying he wants to call, but the guys won't shut up so hearing each other would be difficult. I tell him it's fine. We talked on the phone just yesterday anyway, and we got a good hour in. He says he wants to hear my voice. I reply that he will soon~

 We text for a little while and then he says he'll get some shut eye so he'll have energy when he gets home to me. His manager has generously arranged for him to be allowed to see me first thing when they arrive. The clock ticks mockingly above the mantel piece. It's only 4 now... 3 hours to go. It's never felt so long. If time keeps acting like this, I'm never going to let Jongin go on tour again... But that would be selfish and how would I even be able to pull off something like that? Still, Jongin has me missing him like there's no tomorrow.

 Finally, the clock reads 8pm. 'We're landing!' he texts and sends an excited gif to go along with it. I chuckle to myself and jump up from the couch where I've been wasting time on nothing in particular.

 I push the braised chicken into the oven and turn on the timer. After quickly checking to make sure that everything is in place, I go to the bedroom to make sure everything looks neat and the lingerie I bought is out of sight in case he happens to go into the bedroom for some reason. It's a strapless black and red lace piece with garters and stockings and everything. There are even tiny pink bows down the bodice. Best of all, it fits me perfectly in all the right places~ I've only ever gotten one set of lingerie in the past, but after using it twice, I figured it was time for something fresh that Jongin has never seen me in before. This certainly was a contrast to the rather plain white one I had before. I was much shier then and I'd never worn anything so scandalous in my entire life. Jongin had told me then that he didn't care if it was the plainest one in the whole world. "You look stunning in anything~" I blush remembering those words, just imagining our night steadily approaching.

 I slip into a cute little dress and finished up dinner just as I get a text from him. 'On my way over~ ;)' My stomach does flips in anticipation. Seeing his face in person for the first time in what seems like forever, hearing that voice that sounds like melted caramel, feeling his arms tightly wrapped around my figure as if our bodies are perfectly molded together, breathing in his familiar scent, kissing him with all the passion I've saved up while he's been gone, these are the things that have me practically sprinting around the apartment in excitement. He's minutes away and yet those minutes feel like 6 hours all over again.

 Suddenly, a soft knock comes at my door. Without even meaning to, I hold my breath. Taking one last look in the mirror to make sure I appeared just right, I speed over to the door and collect myself before turning the knob and opening it to see him standing there, smiling bright with a bouquet of lilies in his hand. I stare at him, starry-eyed. He stares right back, his smile never faltering as we both drink in each other's presence. He hands me the bouquet, a bashful look on his face, and my heart skips as I breath in their sweet aroma. Where did he find the time...? Breathlessly, I speak first. "Jongin...you're home..." And then he suddenly rushes forward and scoops me into his arms, twirling me around in the air as I hold on, giggling with pure joy. He kicks the door shut and immediately attaches his lips to mine. I wrap my arms around his neck as he massages my waist with his thumbs.

 "God, I missed you so fucking much..." he says in almost a whisper, his forehead pressed against mine. I smiled blissfully and caress his cheek with my hand.

 "Honey, you can't even imagine know how much I missed you." He smirks, pecking my nose.

 "I think I can guess~"

 He practically gapes at the setup I've prepared. "Woah, you actually cooked for once?" I playfully shove him and tell him to "just sit and enjoy it because now might be the only time you get something like this from me." He laughs and we sit, and over dinner, he tells me all about the tour and how the boys drove him nuts, but it was okay because being with them was always worth it. He tells me the story about how Sehun, Junmyeon and Jongdae got lost on their first day in New York and they had to pretend that they totally meant to be in some shoe store when really it was the only familiar thing to them in the vicinity. And he tells me about how after one show, he a few others got drinks in their rooms and he had a little too much. "The guys told me the next morning that I had been crying and acting like a total baby, rambling on about how I didn't deserve you and how you were probably going to find somebody else way better than me and then what was I going to do because you're my world and..." He trails off, seeing the look on my face. "Babe, what's wrong?" I reach across the table for his hand and give it a tight squeeze. I want to hold him when I hear him say those things. What you say when you're drunk is often what you're actually thinking in the back of your mind, even if you don't realize it.

 "You deserve me more than anyone, love. I'm not going to find anybody else. Why would I need to find anybody else? I love you, Jongin. I can't imagine loving another person quite like how I'm in love with you..." I gaze into those gorgeous chocolate pools, a serious yet soft expression on my face. He gets all shy then and grins like a little boy. I love the small moments like these. They're never awkward, although when we do stuff like this in front of the members, most of their reactions go something like "gEt a rOom!" and "jUNMYEON JONGIN AND (Y/N) ARE DOING THAT MUSHY THING AGAIN-" or "help! the cheesiness in slowly killing me!" (of course Junmyeon and Yixing are in the corner, cooing at us like doting parents).

 After I've put the dishes away, I tell Jongin to wait in the living room while I change into something a little more comfortable. Unlike the last time, I feel not a tinge of embarrassment while putting on my lingerie because I know Jongin genuinely loves this kind of surprise and would never want me to be ashamed of showing him my body. And the hungry look he gets in his eyes when we do these things is honestly the hottest look in the universe, way more so than what he displays on the stage. Once everything is in place, I sneak back out into the living room. He sits on the sofa with his back towards me. 'The perfect opportunity' I think, tiptoeing over to him. I lean down and cover his eyes with my hands, getting close to his ear and murmuring in a husky tone, "Guess who~" I can feel his entire body tense. I remove my hands and make my way around the sofa to stand in front of him, letting my hair fall loosely around my shoulders. His jaw hangs as he looks me over.

 "Is that new?" he asks, and I can hear a tinge of excitement in his voice. I nod, swiveling my hips a little. He smiles. "Do a little turn so I can see it better." I do this, and when I'm facing him again and I can see that he's swallowing hard, starting to imagine things.

 "Do you like it?" He stands up and stalks over to me, pressing his body against mine with his hands squeezing my hips.

 "Do I like it?..." His lips come dangerously close to my ear as his breath tickles the sensitive skin around it. "I love it..." I lean into him as his hand travels a little farther and grabs my ass, pulling me closer. Our lips collide and his tongue soon slithers out to fight with mine. This. This is what I had desperately waited for during those 2 months. After not having it for so long, I never knew it could already feel this good.

 Suddenly, he hoists me up and I wrap my legs around his waist, our lips never parting for more than a second so that he can adjust my position to be more comfortable. He then makes his way towards the bedroom. My heart pounds with excitement. I can barely contain myself and I know he can tell. My fingers become tangled in his hair as he pushes the door shut with his foot and sets me on the bed, immediately crawling over me. I let my hands wander up his shirt to feel his toned stomach as he attacks my jaw and neck and collar bones with his kisses, leaving a few marks in their wake. He's already got me sighing, wanting as much as I can get. As he moves to my shoulders, he pulls one of my legs to his hip with the hand that isn't propping him up. His fingers tease down my thigh over and over and my entire body begins to tingle. Jongin pulls away for a moment to that I can assist in discarding his shirt. "Thank you, that was really in the way," I breathe, my fingers returning to his exposed skin right away. He places a hand over mine and guides it against his stomach. His eyes bear into mine all the while, as if daring me to go further. Not just yet...

 With my other hand, I reach up to grab his shoulder, pulling him down and rolling on top of him. I straddle his hips, carefully dragging my lips from his chest to his neck where I leave my own marks. They'll fade before he needs to be seen in public again. The boys will have a couple of days off anyway. A small groan leaves Jongin's throat and I chuckle. "Already?" As I scatter his collarbones with small but noticeable love bites, he writhes underneath my touch as my hands inch closer and closer to his growing erection hidden behind the fabric of his skinny jeans. I pull myself up to admire my work and that's when he turns the tables and again I'm beneath him. His eyes are full of beastly hunger. I can see it dripping through his skin almost and it immediately ignites something within me. He scours my laced intimate and cocks his head, rolling his tongue against the inside of his cheek in thought. He traces his thumb over a bit of the delicate material just above my breast. "As much as I could drunk on seeing you in this," he says in a deep voice that's already getting me heated. "I'm afraid it's going to have to come off right this minute." My tongue darts out over my lips as I reach up and gently drag my finger across his jaw.

 "Well, what are you waiting for?" I say, my voice laced with honey. "Take it off of me~"

 He wastes no time in doing so. He promptly rips the lingerie from me and absorbs my body in all it's naked glory. "Fuck, you're so gorgeous~" he coos, kissing my breasts, and then my stomach, and then my hips. "How is that a person can be this beautiful no matter what?" I gently grab a fistful of his hair as he props up my legs and teases my inner thighs with his butterfly kisses. "I'm the one who gets all of this," he murmurs, getting dangerously near to my gradually aching womanhood. "Tell me how you want me to make you feel good, baby~" His lips press against my thigh again. "Here?"

 "Yes..." I breathe. He kisses a little closer to my core.

 "Here?" The heat within me only grows. I nod.

 "Yes~" His lips inch closer.

 "How about here?" A soft whimper emerges from my mouth. I need him already! He finally kisses my womanhood, which is becoming wetter by the moment. "And what about this spot...right here?" His tongue flicks out and I slightly arch my back, squeezing the fistful of his hair a little tighter.

 "Yes, Jongin!" I moan. He laughs breathlessly.

 "So that's the spot, hmm?" His tongue teases it again. My lips purse. "Should I keep doing it like this for a bit?" He gives a long lick right up to the tip of my folds. I nod enthusiastically. I hear him do that smug grin he always does when he's about to do something really "good". All of a sudden, his tongue begins to swirl around my core, pumping in and out, swirling, in and out, more spirals. I'm a writhing mess, but his hands on my waist keep me grounded. I can tell he enjoys seeing me so vulnerable under his touch. As I'm approaching my high, he incorporates his fingers and I whine a bit at the sudden contact. One finger, then two, then three. I'm almost there. I can feel a knot twisting in my stomach, slowly growing more intense. My back arches off the mattress and that's when he ceases his actions. I give a little noise of discomfort at the suddenly cold air hitting my womanhood. "Don't worry, baby, you won't be upset for long." He crawls up over top of me again and takes me hand in his, leading it to the button on his pants. He gives a small smile, a mischievous one. My whole body is throbbing with want. I quickly unbutton his pants and he kicks them off of the bed. He's getting impatient, too, just like I am. Now he's just in his boxers. I eye them for a moment and then look back up at him, my hand moving to the bulge pressed against the fabric. As I start to palm him, his brows furrow with pleasure and his eyes shut momentarily.

 "Look at me, Jongin," I command sweetly, going a bit fast. He kisses me roughly and then he can't stand it anymore. I grabs my hand and pins it above my head, tearing his boxers off and letting his member spring free. My mouth opens silently as I anticipate what's going to happen next. "Don't go easy on me, hmm?" I say, letting my free hand slowly travel up his tones bicep.

 "Oh, I won't, so get ready." He positions his cock at my entrance. Before I can even prepare myself, he's pushing into me. I squeeze my eyes shut. It's been a little while since we've done this, but luckily I'm wet enough so that it's not all that painful. "Are you okay?" he asks, his tone suddenly laced with concern. I tighten my grip on his arm and nod.

 "I'm fine, keep going..." He slows his pace when inserting and finally I've taken all of him. He pauses to let me adjust. "Okay," I signal. Jongin starts thrusting at a leisurely pace, making sure I'm not uncomfortable. He's such a sweetheart, no matter what. I look at him with an arched eyebrow. "I thought you weren't going to go easy,"

 "Yeah, but if you-"

 "Jongin..." He knows what that means. I nod as one final reassurance that I can handle him. He inhales and all of a sudden his pace picks up. I hold back my moans for a bit, but soon he's pounding into me and I can't help out. I let out a loud whine and the smug grin returns as he starts to pant. My hand wanders over every inch of his body that I can reach, but he teases and places it with my other hand so that I'm completely pinned underneath him. My torso twists with pleasure as he abuses my womanhood in only the best of ways. Low grunts and groans simmer in his throat. A few moans of "(y/n)" lathered in sex emerge from his lips. The noises coming from me become more frequent, too, more needy. His name slips out every so often in the form of a cry whenever he hits a particular spot.

 The room is filled with the sounds of skin slapping against skin and feverish breathing and whines and pleasureful moans of ecstasy. In that moment, I'm so thankful that the walls have been somewhat soundproofed so the people in the apartment next door won't be able to hear as much. Jongin buries his face in the crook of my neck, his steamy breath trickling over my skin. I'm getting close and so is he. "Cum on my stomach, baby," I tell him, hardly any strength left to speak. He groans in response, picking up the speed a bit. My back arches to meet his chest as his thrusts become uncontrollable and lose their rhythm. My orgasm explodes within me and I swear I've never felt anything so beautiful in my life. White strings of release flow out onto him as Jongin rides out my high. His breathing get more staggered. He inhales sharply and pulls out quickly before his release quirts out onto my exposed stomach. He lets out a loud groan as he strokes himself off, leaning his head back in pure paradise as he calls out my name. Once he's finished, he collapses on his side next to me, both of us completely out of winded.

 "I should have come home sooner," he pants, turning my head to face him. He plants a passionate kiss on my lips, taking my bottom lip between his teeth.

 "That's what I'm saying."

 Once we've composed ourselves, he sits up and goes into the bathroom. I hear the bathtub running and a smile comes to my face. He appears again with a towel in his hand and gently helps me to wipe away the excess on my stomach. I give him a look and confirms my thoughts with the same one. 'We've never done it in the bath before,' I think to myself. Oh well, there's a first time for everything~

[musicmixtapes]

December 5, 2018 Mix

Hello! Hope you're having a great week so far, hopefully this will make it even better. I love this mix and would love for everyone to enjoy it equally as much.  Spotify Playlist 1. I Was Young When I Left Home by Antony & Bryce Dessner - So on the last mix I believe I included a wonderful song by Antony and had mentioned how infatuated I was with the unique tone of his voice. Now, we get to enjoy it once more in coordination with a member from The National on guitar, which is always awesome. This song is a cover of one originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan from his Love and Theft album, which I highly recommend listening to if you like this version of it! Like most songs penned by the Nobel Prize winning lyricist, this piece tells a thoughtful narrative story about a traveling man trying to find his way back to something that isn't quite there anymore. The sense of traveling back tone of the song is carried out in the music as well because the guitar moves around with finger picking a lot, but always returns to the original dominant chord which resonates quite beautifully with the equivalent lyrical meaning. There's nothing quite like laying on your back at night and letting this lull you to sleep 2. Manhattan by Kings of Leon - So, the title of the song seems pretty self explanatory, but in fact, I think it's a great contrast to the actual meaning of the piece we get to hear by one of my all time favorites. Caleb of KOL said about this piece, "Yeah, Manhattan, I think it means the hilly island, or something like that. As soon as my friend … I was playing it and I said, ‘Man, I think I’m going to call this song “Manhattan,” and I hadn’t even written the lyrics yet, and he said, 'Yeah, man. That’s a Native American word.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ And I already had the first line, “I like to dance all night and some of the day.” And it worked out." So there you have it; most songs glorify and bask in what we know as the city we have today, but very few know the true history behind it and the cruel way the land was stripped from its original owners. I think it is a really outside the box way to create an alt rock song, I mean we don't see artists going around describing horrors of American history all the time. This goes to show that some of the worst topics about the worst cruelties can be taken and learned from and told in a way that speaks to people on a personal level. 3. we fell in love in october by girl in red - Wait... you're probably thinking I'm making some huge mistake by including a song with the word 'october' in the title when we are already well into December, right? I would disagree if you thought this, and here's why. I do not like songs that talk about falling in love at the exact moment that it is happening, like "hey, i'm looking at you right this second and i can tell i'm falling in love." First of all, this is super unrealistic because no one always first person narrates songs in their head while their falling in love. Second of all, people usually don't notice that they are falling in love until after they have done so. This song is great because it shows the realization of exactly when the falling has happened and coincidentally it is also when the leaves of autumn usually begin to fall, so it has happened very perfectly timed (or at least for the sake of this song it has). This bedroom pop artist always makes me feel like I am in the scenario she is describing, on a roof top or watching stars or smoking cigarettes with a girlfriend... so lovely. 4. Looking Out for You by Joy Again - This is so typical "nerdy indie man singing about a girl who probably doesn't know he exists, but then hears the song and falls in love with him because oh he's so cute and shy and look he sung about me" type of song... and I entirely fell for it in every type of way. This just reminds me of a less angry and angsty and stripped down Front Bottoms style of song with a little STRFKR and MGMT electronic dreamy type of vibes added into it as well. But in another sense, I think this song is pretty genderless in the way that a person can get the feeling that they have a huge, huge, huge crush on someone who literally does not think about them at all (if you are my friend in the city you definitely have heard me reference this happening to me with people a lot of times). Also details the way that two friends could have one sided love tension that the other is oblivious of, which is very Harry Met Sally-esque (if you are my friend at all you definitely hear me reference this movie as my favorite). 5. Lottery by Jade Bird - All credits for discovery of this song go solely to my mother, if this was someone else I might forget to put a disclaimer but my mom literally reads every one of my blogs which is so amazing and heartfelt, so shoutout! This song centers all around the idea of numbers, logistical thinking and winning a lottery in terms of a relationship, which is pretty ridiculous because that just sounds like solving a word problem in math class. But, I was so genuinely surprised by my pure joy listening to this song because of it's ever so accurate portrayal of the way some people treat the aspect of "feeling so lucky" to have met someone and that it had to have been a stroke of luck, or that certain things just added up. I am a nonbeliever in this respect, not because I'm a cynic or not romantic, but just because I don't believe things happen because of luck, I think they happen because of partially just chance and partially work that is put into a relationship. I believe Bird's beliefs fall more in line with mine because she's disagreeing with the man who told her love was "a lottery.... a game". 6. Touch by Ghostly Kisses - As a child of the early 2000s, I was very influenced by certain music like the styles of artists such as Evanescence, so when I heard this song I was thinking oh my god, it finally happened, Evanescence and Enya finally came together and had a baby. I am very pleased with the outcome of this song because it is so emo and questioning, but at the same time keeps the same tempo and strength throughout the whole track, which is surprisingly a very hard thing to do in music. Usually, I find that when songs have dramatic swells, it all becomes like something I have heard hundreds of times in music, so I am more impressed when the levels are balanced throughout without being altered too much or impregnated with unnecessary sounds. Also, I tend to write about touching and spirits and ghosts a lot in my own writing so this was very much catered to my personal style of music and writing but I think the universality of the unknown and ephemeral presence is very nice to see in music. 7. 1980s Horror Film by Wallows - Oh my god, this is great for numerous reasons. I literally was not expecting the lowkey acoustic song at all looking at the title and was pleasantly surprised by what followed. At first we totally go in thinking it's going to be a typical song about a guy and girl falling in love or going on a cheesy date together to see a movie or whatever, which is perfectly fine if you want to listen to that, I have no qualms with such songs. And for awhile, it totally fits that line of thinking... then it totally doesn't. The twist ending, which is SO fitting with the 80s horror film vibe, is that the girl "is not that into guys" which I loved so much, I just replayed that section like five times before adding it to the mix. We always hear people getting upset about not being liked back, but never getting a reason why; this is the opposite because the guy just can't get mad at the girl for not reciprocating, which is so fantastic and a-typical of music we listen to all the time. More twist endings in songs, more storytelling in songs, more friendships in songs please! 8. Say, Can You Hear by Men I Trust - The throbbing bass in the beginning of this song sends out the immediate vibe that the message sent to our minds is going to be succinct and probably pretty serious, and this remains true. This song's lyrics hit really hard because it details a person asking someone they are close to about their grief and sadness and the way they go about making other people miserable with it. The 'self absorbed, cryptic ways' she sings about concerning the subject of the song is so relatable on both ends because I think that at one point or another we have been both on the giving and receiving end of this notion. At some time, we have caused someone pain by being self obsessed and emotional about small things and on the other hand, we have probably also experienced someone not giving us a second thought because they were so wrapped up in their own issues. We can always trust Men I Trust to be the most real about issues and tell us how we are feeling. 9. Riverside by Agnes Obel - This song works in just about any background of any film or TV show in some contemplative/dramatic/sad/tragic scene, thus also working on any of my morning, afternoon or nighttime walks in the city or at home in Jersey. Honestly, I truly could not decide if I like the dynamic piano or the simple melodic and harmonic pairings of the vocals in this piece because together, it is so strong and deeply striking. This song, not only in lyrics, but the musical aspect, is so transformative because it starts very simplistic with just a few notes being struck back and forth, and the same chords throughout the song are extended and arpeggiated in such a modernized classical piano type of way. The singer/songwriter genre is something that is not recognized as much nowadays, but I think that Agnes Obel is someone who never fails to remind us of this ever present thriving solo artist type of person. 10. Pills by Joji - I was just listening to the beginning of this song again and realized that the beginning chords of it with just the guitar are so similar to the song 'I Was Young When I Left Home' which is literally the first song featured on this week's mix. It's so funny the way your brain has certain neural pathways that are created when listening to certain songs and they definitely overlap with certain pieces and create this wonderful shared quality with one another. Joji, as I have mentioned before, is a great artist who takes the hip hop experimental genre to a fresh perspective and without being vulgar and cliched with his music, is able to have sincerity and honesty in every line. In this specifically he talks about not feeling mentally well and needing to get away from this problem, while missing someone a lot at the same time (possibly the cause of his depression that is outlined in this piece). I just love him as an artist in general because he proves that you don't have to adhere to the rules of 'genred music' and you can just be a musician in whatever way you see fit. 11. Fear of Intimacy by zack villere - Finding a song that correctly represents and identifies what falling in love with someone whilst struggling with really terrible anxiety is very hard to do. Sure, some songs talk about getting generally nervous around a crush or feeling uneasy, but true anxiety based songs are very hard to come by probably because it's difficult to explain in a candid way. The sound of the click clopping throughout this song reminds me of a really fast heartbeat happening because of a panicked state, which I think was surely the intention of the artist. The artist actually has talked in various platforms about what this song means and what it means to him, which is a rare thing in the musician world. In one of his tweets, villere said, "takes me a while to warm up/be comfortable around new people & that shit is so frustrating dude especially here meeting new ppl all the time/but i guess ill get better w time or people are just gnna have to get used to me being quiet at first." I really like this sentiment of coming to a realisation that if someone cares about you truly, they will have to accept the anxiety and shyness of a person. 12. Movement by Hozier - I will never forget the moment that my best friend Shivani and I were at the Hozier concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York earlier this fall, watching the majestic and godly Andrew Hozier Byrne perform. As if the night could have gotten any better than it was already, he told us he was going to play a song that had not yet been released to see if we enjoyed it... this is that song. Ever since hearing it (I took a video of course too) I have been waiting for such song to be released to the public so I could literally talk about how I already heard it live two months beforehand, and here I am now doing exactly that. Also, we need not forget the huge shift of sound and rise of instrumentals in the last quarter of this song, where organs, a choir and several more background noises are added in so magnificently. The title is so evocative of exactly what you will hear for four minutes, a song that moves you, changes your hearing and most of all, makes you feel like you can sing as well as Hozier for a few minutes of your life. 13. Alligator Girl by Langhorne Slim - Deeply regretting not being more appreciative of having the ability to have seen LS perform live with Lumineers a couple of years ago at an outdoor venue in the height of the summer. I don't remember much about them from that performance, but I do remember thinking that they had a folk sound that was unmatched by few artists in the present day company that they have. Interestingly enough, I have gotten really into them this year because I love the narrative storyline they give with their songs, again in a very folk Bob Dylan style... just going back to the first song again, I think my brain is having a big renaissance of Dylan and his musical influence, just because of how expansive and powerful he is as a musical influence and probably will be forever. For this song, I really love the soulful jazzy, New Orleans style of piano played because it so matches the meaning of the song which rambles about meeting a woman in that area of the country. 14. Snake Song by Jess Williamson - I originally found out about Williamson from a book of poetry as lyrics that I've mentioned here before; to sum it up, there are a bunch of songs that are especially poetic in the book, written as poetry instead as songs. This gave me so much material to listen to, and she was one of the singer/songwriters featured in the book, thankfully. There are no descriptions of this song that helped or guided me in the determination of what it was about, so bear with me here. I see it as a maturation of a woman in the sense where she understands the intentions of someone's actions and motivations towards her. Instantly, the image of the snake evokes biblical metaphors of Eve in the garden being coerced and tricked by a snake, offering her something that was not his to give and the woman being painted out as a villain mistakenly. I'm not sure if this is at all what she intended while penning this strange but lovely song, but I think musical meanings are always subjective to the listener. 15. All I Want by Joni Mitchell - I have a long standing love affair with Mitchell's music, due in part to my father and in other part to my grandpa (who is a huge Joni fan and also reader of this blog, Hi Pops!). The thing about this song specifically that I enjoy is that there is not one shred of negativity towards the subject from the speaker of the song. This is a very difficult hard facet of a track to find in modern music, so sometimes I must turn to the older indie classics to hear a really pure intentioned song. And the second best part of this song is that Mitchell fully knows the cliched tone of the song and instead of denying it, leans into it in the lyrics, categorizing each 'cliche' that she wants to do with the subject of the song, which I think is just such smart songwriting. Also I love to analyze titles in correlation with the song because the "all i want" phrase is often used to list the ONE thing that someone wants from another person. But this piece is ironic in the way that she is listing a ton of things she wants to do with that person, not just one thing. Good job Joni. 16. Quarter Past the Hour by Jack and Eliza - Quick brag before we continue with an anaylsis of this song: Jack Staffen, the Jack of Jack and Eliza, went to NYU literally four years ago and is now absolutely thriving so shoutout to an artist hailing from my very artistic, very success driven university. OK, continuing. This piece is so evocative of a relationship where the two people have known each other for a long time, but things are starting to get lonely and the people are drifting apart subconsciously. I think sometimes without knowing I choose songs that could narrate my past experiences because I literally heard the lyrics of this and was like, Wow this exact thing happened to me and _____ and I can't believe some else wrote about it so perfectly. The idea of getting called 'past the hour' signifies that the person is late to show up, is trying but not hard enough, they just don't have the time to be in the relationship anymore... sad but true. 17. Eyes Like The Rest by Matthew E White - A swell of dramatic strings and then a smooth baritone with a cool bass line in the back --- it seems like I could be describing a song from one of the Beatles' later albums when they start to tap into their grass roots style (late 60s!) but alas, I am not. Let's talk about this super bluesy alternative track by the completely underrate artist that is Matthew White. The uncomfortable chords given when the words pause are quite similar to the intended meaning of the words. I think this is mostly about trying to have an honest conversation with someone about a difficult topic and it feeling very eerie and complex to get through, especially when the speaker has a little bit of a temper - his repeating of the line "I ain't gonna lose my shit" makes me think he has lost his shit in the past- and he needs a little bit of help to get through said conversation. The phrase that someone has eyes just like the rest of pluralized "you" signifies that there is common ground amongst people and perhaps some good could come out of a conversation between the two. I like the slight hopeful tone in the speaker's voice, despite deep hesitation that we can explicitly hear. 18. Into the Ether by Leif Vollebekk - Sometimes, songs have very convoluted meanings that could be analyzed for decades and perhaps never have a clear meaning on; other times, songs slap you in the face with a blunt story and that is great too. In this case, this song does not fall into either one of these categories. In an email sent to The FADER, Vollebekk said, "Into the Ether was the first song we tried to record but it didn’t come out right. It was only when I went swimming one day that this very simple drum groove came into my mind and I knew what had been missing. […] This song is the kind of song you might sing to yourself in a dream or perhaps in someone else’s. I was thinking a lot about Freddie Mercury when we did this one." The funniest thing is, I thought for sure I could have been the most insightful on this song over all the other ones on this playlist, but sometimes, isn't it better to not think about the meaning? I mean, for this one at least, just sit back and put some headphones in and let it wash over you completely. 19. We Walked Downtown by Flatsound - I'm 99% sure that the writer of this song must travel with me on my walks in the Village on any given day because this is very close to how I feel on a cold end of autumn day when I am all alone, thinking of perhaps having had walked the same route with a person I don't talk to anymore. Flatsound isn't really a popular artist, even in the indie or low-fi world, mostly because their music does generally consist of the same type of sound running through a lot of the songs. But, I actually enjoy when an artist is comfortable with writing music that flows together beautifully, especially when the lyricism is so wax poetic, like this artist has done with much of their discography. The title of the album that contains this song is, 'I Stayed Up Until Sunrise But Got To Fall Asleep To The Sounds Of Birds Singing', which I think just shows the experimentation and creativity that words can contribute to a musician or a group, and in turn tell a cohesive story. 20. Used to Be by Beach House - We all know that ending a mix with a song by BH is always the right way to go. Something about the peaceful, melodic quality of their pieces while saying the truest statements ever is very comforting for a person who overthinks pretty much everything all the time. This piece actually made me think about the music of Fleet Foxes a lot because of the chords used along with the echoic harmonies splayed throughout the track and the backing tracks as well (and the awesome tambourine thrown in for depth). This song is definitely a bit different than some other work by BH because it's more folky and less space cadet vibes which is what I usually get from them; this could also be because it's one of their earlier tracks where they were still finding their sound and influences fully. More than anything, though, this puts me in the location of the end of some coming of age film (perhaps my own) where summer is winding down and the protagonist has to realize that they must become single and independent.