#i was so brain dry for this anniversary art at least i made this

[pantherloid]

Kagamine 16th

[just-call-me-the-intrusive-thot]

Soulmate September - Day 11

Day 11 - Pick your favorite Soulmate AU and write about it, it can be from this list or something completely different.  

(Balloon AU: you have a spirit-like balloon with the name of your soulmate written on it that only you can see. It will often drift towards your soulmate’s when they’re close by.)

Pairing(s): Romantic Logicality, Romantic Remile

TWs: Character Death (it’s loosely based on Disney’s UP, so y’all know whats going on), implied homophobia for a small section, unspecified heart condition mention

Author’s note: please forgive any inaccuracies in time periods and such, I did my best ;w; 

Also don’t let the tags throw you off, this story’s bittersweet but it’s really lovely, thank you if you do indeed keep reading, ily <3

–

They met when they were just children back in March of 1950. 

Logan Crofter had just come from the theatre after having seen the newest Walt Disney movie, Cinderella, when he overheard a commotion coming from the children’s park on his way home. He was always a cautious young lad but as he caught sight of his balloon begin to sway that way, Logan wasted no time in hurrying towards the sound of children arguing.

“Boys don’t wear dresses, stupid!!!”

“But it’s really pretty!!”

Logan arrived in time to see an older boy shove another boy about his age into a puddle, soaking the light blue dress he was wearing over a light t-shirt and dungarees. Upon realising the dress was likely ruined, the boy began crying. Logan wasted no time in getting between the two of them,

“Leave him alone, or I’ll inform the proper authorities!”

“.... You’ll what?”, the taller boy asked dumbfoundedly.

“It means I’ll tell your mom!!”

He was bluffing of course, Logan had no idea who the boy was, but the threat was enough to send him running. With a sigh of relief, he turned his attention to the boy in the puddle. Instead of crying anymore, he was gazing up at Logan in excited adoration,

“Wow!! You saved me!! Just like Prince Charming saved Cinderella!!!”

The boy wiped his face of tears and stood up to grasp Logan’s hands, “Thank you, thank you, thank youuuu!!”

Embarrassed by the overly sweet gesture, Logan cleared his throat, “You’re far too kind, I simply cannot tolerate bullying, I’m certainly no Prince Charming.”, he tried to assure the boy, “Truly, it was no trouble. Are you going to be alright, um-?”

“Patton!”, the boy, Patton, beamed.

A gasp left Logan, the name wasn’t that common, so perhaps….  “Patton Hart?”

The boy nodded, surprised, “That’s me-”, then realised, “A-Are you Logan Crofter!?”

Logan’s smile must’ve said it all as Patton threw his arms around him, “I can’t believe it! My soulmate saved me! I really am like Cinderella!”

“You are pretty like Cinderella as well.”, Logan offered shyly, shuffling his feet awkwardly. Patton giggled and took his hands. 

“Come on! I wanna introduce you to mama!! She’ll like you lots!!”

Patton was right, Logan adored Mrs Hart from the moment they were introduced. He loved the whole family with every member he was introduced to; it wasn’t hard to see where Patton got his shining personality from, happiness and warmth radiated from every one of them. Logan remembered the way Patton had introduced him to his parents and that summer he’d done the same for all his grandparents, his ‘tios and tias’ as he referred to them, and his many cousins who welcomed Logan with open arms.

He was grateful for such a loving family especially when his own disowned him. Logan had known from the day he finally brought Patton home to meet his parents - six years after they’d first met - that they would never accept his soulmate. Despite the majority of the world’s population accepting that the soulmate bond was a fixed infallible system, the Crofters had their minds made up that their son’s soulmate would be someone worthy of their expectations. Someone stoic and serious, not bubbly and energetic. Someone who was all work and no play, not someone who wanted to have fun and just enjoy life. Someone who was female, not another male. Logan hadn’t anticipated that extra twist of the knife but all the same, he wouldn’t trade Patton for anyone else.

It was hard being fourteen and having to turn his back on the family home he’d grown up in, but as Patton’s family helped him move his things into the room they’d painstakingly cleared out for him, Logan figured that feeling would soon pass.

--

Throughout high school, the two grew even more inseparable; Logan helped tutor Patton in math and science while Patton helped Logan with art and music. Logan joined Patton’s cooking club to support his cause while Patton would always attend Logan’s debates, captivated by his drive and dedication.

Another routine they’d started over the years was attending the latest screenings of each new Disney movie. In truth, Logan had lost his taste for “childish exploits” around the age of ten, but he would never admit out loud that seeing the way Patton would smile during their theatre dates made his heart race faster than any other sight on the entire planet. That was why for their 27th anniversary, Logan proposed to Patton during the double bill screening of The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh. He burned the moment Patton threw his arms around him in sheer glee into his brain forever. He would carry the joy of hearing his soulmate - no, his husband-to-be - cry out that wonderful “yes!” with him for eternity.

Sending out the invitations had been a nerve wracking affair for Logan, but Patton had assured him that everything would be okay in the end as he sent out his half of the invitations. He knew his parents wouldn’t show so he didn’t bother to invite them, but he wasn’t sure if his grandparents or distant aunts and uncles would. Aside from them, he’d never met much of his own family, most of them residing outside of the states. 

In the end, only his paternal grandparents and mother’s brother agreed to attend. Logan didn’t mind, he was just glad to have someone. Thankfully, his side of the church wouldn’t be too empty for the friends he made in his highschool years were more than happy to fill the pews.

Logan Crofter-Hart married his husband Patton Hart in the spring of 1981 after four years of planning and saving for their first home together. Logan’s endless studying and training to become a lecturer combined with Patton’s enthusiasm and drive to make money working at Foster’s Family Diner had all led up to this moment. As Logan placed the ring on Patton’s finger and promised to love and honour him - in sickness and in health, til death did they part - he couldn’t help but think himself the luckiest man alive. After the ceremony, his uncle and paternal grandparents had congratulated him, with the former asking what their next step would be.

Logan wasn’t sure about the far future, but at the time while he watched the love of his life dance and gesture for Logan to join him, all he could think to answer was “Simple, our Traditional Disney Movie Date.”, as he got up to indulge Patton’s request.

Said movie was The Fox And The Hound, and Patton, bless him, had cried for most of it. Logan draped his arm around his husband’s shoulders and softly wiped his tears with his other hand. While the scene where Todd’s owner sadly releases him into the wild played, Patton snuggled closer to Logan for comfort. Logan would deny that he teared up at that part too, though the memory of Patton humming the tune of Goodbye May Seem Forever would always stick with him even on his saddest days...

--

“Logan?”, Patton softly piped up as they lay in bed watching TV together one night.

Logan turned to face his husband, “Yes, starlight?”

“What do you think about...”, he hesitated, but continued at Logan’s nod of encouragement, “...us adopting?” 

The idea had indeed occurred to Logan. They’d been married only a year but he knew his husband would make a wonderful father. 

“.... Do you think I’d be ready, Patton?”, Logan offered unsurely. Patton softly removed his head from Logan’s shoulder and sat in his lap to properly apply one soothing hug directly to his darling husband.

“Only you’ll know for sure, but I think you’ll be an amazing father, Logie Bear.”

A soft kiss from his husband destroyed any doubt Logan had harboured. “Just imagine it, getting to watch our son or daughter grow up and get married someday! Ooh, or maybe they’ll become an astronaut! The second person to go into space!”

Logan chuckled, knowing Patton was playing on his fondness for space travel, “Perhaps, however, they would in fact be the fifth person to go into space-”

With a fond sigh, Patton brought Logan into a gentle kiss, one that Logan had no intentions of breaking to keep infodumping. He wrapped his arms around his husband’s waist, pulling him closer as if no amount of closeness would ever be enough. Another memory that would burn itself into his brain forever. Patton pulled back to his Logan with those puppy dog eyes that resulted in him getting what he wanted at least 80% of the time.

“So, does this mean you want to give adopting a try, Logie Bear?”

Feigning annoyance with a smiling eye roll and a forced huff of air, Logan replied, “Yeah. I guess-”

He spent the rest of the night returning Patton’s delighted kisses and listening to him ramble adorably about all the wonderful memories they’d make as a family.

--

The rejection hit the Hart couple hard; Patton even more so than Logan. 

Yes, he was just as crushed by the news, but Patton was distraught. 

They’d done all they could to be sure the adoption would be a success. Logan had been hired as part of the local university’s astrophysics division which did bring in enough money to allow the couple to renovate Logan’s old office room into a bedroom for their potential child. The day had been filled with laughter and, with some coercion from Patton, dancing along to the radio in between paint drying times. They’d been sure to go through all the steps, make sure their house was child friendly, even going as far as to secure references from friends and family in case they were needed.

Alas, some bad luck out of nowhere had been the first blow to the couple. After hanging on for a good decade or so, Foster’s Family Diner was bought over by a larger franchise and thus, Patton had been laid off with little warning to cut down the number of employees. The only comfort he found at the time was from his fellow staff who were devastated to see him go. The full weight of the situation really hit home when they realised it’d put enough of a dent in their income to make things a little less comfy for a while.

The second blow was the twins. Two young boys Patton had grown attached to during an Adoption Activity Day he and Logan had attended. Logan knew while he watched both boys painting his husband’s face with vastly different degrees of success, that they’d be the children Patton wanted to adopt. The boys seemed to love them too, going by their reluctance to let either of them leave at the end of the event. But the blow to their finances and the lack of a large enough room for twins had been a cause for concern with the agency, and try as the Harts might, they just weren’t able to get the room up to code in time.

Both boys were adopted that same week, and Patton further spiralled even further. Logan tried his best to try and cheer him up, but nothing seemed to work. As a last ditch attempt, Logan even requested to be able to be put in contact with the twins’ adoptive parents to ask for a visit but he was told, as anticipated, that the agency couldn’t allow it.

Logan refused to give up though. Using his university’s connections, he was able to find Patton a prospective new job; one of the researchers in the history department had a brother who worked for the local zoo. She assured Logan that with her brother’s approval, Patton would more than likely be offered the job opening they had going.

It wasn’t much, not really, but when he brought Patton to the zoo to surprise him with the offer of running the park’s souvenir shop, his husband’s glowing smile stole Logan’s breath away. For the first time in months, he heard Patton laugh with delight as he accepted the job.

--

With both of them working again, Logan put all of his effort into a new goal; helping Patton feel ready to adopt once more. It would be a slow venture; they cut out anything that wasn’t necessary and swapped the pricier items for store brands. The 80s rolled into the 90s and it felt like for a while the world would doom them to a life of endless saving, even having to eventually forgo their sacred cinema dates in favour of waiting for video and later DVD releases. 

But they were happy. 

Happy to have each other, and happily thinking of the day when they could try adopting again.

As the years went on, however, Logan began to worry. With he and his husband approaching their fifties, Patton’s hopes of adopting a young child to raise dwindled, knowing that they often gave other couples older children to look after. He knew Patton wanted to see them attend their first day of school, to teach them to ride a bike, to spend as much time as possible with them.

So Logan made a bold suggestion to Patton that night that they try again. 

Patton was quiet for a while causing Logan to fear it was still too soon, but his husband agreed that it had been long enough. They once more gave adoption a try.

--

The second time proved to be a charm and the Harts welcomed their son - six year old Emile - into the family in 1993.

He was an eccentric, curious young lad with a love of cartoons and biology; a perfect combination for the happy parents. Not that it would have mattered in the long run, they’d have loved their son no matter what.

Logan looked to the man asleep on his shoulder and their son who had also tuckered himself out watching The Nightmare Before Christmas with them. With a fond smile, Logan rested his head against the back of the sofa, catching sight of his soul balloon. It’d been years since he’d really paid much attention to it, but the name Patton Hart still glistened in wonderous golden letters set against the baby blue of the balloon. He glanced over to Patton, seeing that same cute sleepy face he always made. Logan wondered how, whenever he believed he had hit the maximum, he ended up falling more and more in love with Patton. 

The stronger the feeling grew, the more Logan felt like he could conquer anything, and he would do so in a heartbeat for his husband, and now his son too.. 

--

Love alone, however, couldn’t conquer all things. 

During Emile’s 14th birthday party, Patton collapsed. It was sudden and terrifying, but thankfully Logan was able to keep him out of harm's way until the paramedics arrived. Luckily, they were able to treat Patton at home, coming to the conclusion that heat exhaustion had been the culprit when they were informed that Patton had given himself little time to rest coupled with the unusually hot day.

Logan still wanted Patton to see a doctor as soon as possible, but Patton sweetly but stubbornly insisted he was fine. He didn’t want to cause more of a scene during Emile’s big day. Reluctantly, Logan let him make the final call, relief setting in as Patton went about the rest of the day as his usual cheerful self. Logan made sure to stay by his husband just in case, but the day passed without another hitch.

That couldn’t be said for the second time.

The call came for Logan during one of his lectures; Patton had been catching up with an old coworker from his diner days who’d come to the zoo with their granddaughter when he’d just crumpled to the floor without warning. Logan wasn’t sure what exactly happened, but the next thing he knew, he was parking his car outside the hospital and desperately asking the staff where his husband was being treated.

Fortunately, once again, Patton was more or less alright. When Logan saw him sitting upright in his hospital bed chattering away to a young girl in a hospital gown, he knew for sure his husband was alright. At least for now.

“Will you ever stop giving me a heart attack?”, Logan had sighed with fond exhaustion as he sat next to Patton with his hard carding through his soft umber hair. Patton chuckled and played with the blue tie Logan was so fond of, “Not if it means you’ll keep coming to my rescue like Prince Charming.”. 

Logan let out a huff of laughter, fondly recalling their first meeting. It felt like yesterday still…

“Does that mean you’re still my Cinderella?”

Patton tapped a finger to his chin and finally answered with a smile, “Maybe not. Glass slippers and fairy godmothers or not, I’d never leave your side for anything, Logie Bear.”

Logan wished Patton could have kept that promise.

--

The following years passed with a couple of stumbles along the way in regards to Patton’s health and still the doctor’s weren’t sure what caused his episodes. Logan was naturally worried; he and Patton were in their sixties, he knew that even though Patton kept bouncing back that one day statistically he wouldn’t be able to. That one day Patton would…

Logan didn’t allow himself to think about it. Instead he sat with his husband, enjoying the movie they’d put on; Disney’s UP. His attention wasn’t so much on the movie as it was on Patton. Every time he looked at his husband, Logan didn’t see the silver roots, eye wrinkles, and laughter lines; he saw the boy he’d moved in with at 14, the beautiful young man he went on regular cinema dates with like clockwork, the man whose excited tearful “yes!” still echoed in his brain no matter how many years had passed. 1979 felt both so long ago, yet like it was just yesterday. And now they were doing just what Logan had hoped; growing old together while their son was out in the world working as a therapist alongside his own husband. 

Logan had been skeptical of Remy the first time Emile had introduced them to his parents, but in spite of their sharp tongue and sassy attitude, Logan had easily grown fond of the person who would later become his child-in-law. Logan wasn’t sure if that was the term, but he did his best to keep up. He remembered the day Emile had come home from high school, excitedly babbling about his soulmate. Patton had been on cloud nine the whole time, and while Logan was just as delighted for their son, he was too wrapped up in admiring the happiness that radiated from his husband.

Goodness, when had Logan gotten this sentimental? He asked, knowing full well he’d always been that way when it came to Pat. He decided to tune back in to the movie only to realise he’d been lost in his memories for nearly the entire run time.

On screen, Carl Fredricksen had just discovered the rest of his late wife’s additions to her adventure book. The more stoic Logan of the past would never have been swayed by such a heart-string tugging moment, but well. The years had softened that stony exterior. At least, that's what he told himself while he felt tears roll down his cheeks silently. Patton’s gentle thumb wiping away his tears, drew his attention, noting that his husband was also tearing up. But my god, that smile. Logan could’ve stared at that sunshine grin til the end of time itself. Seizing the moment, Logan gently leant in to give Patton a kiss, which his husband returned in kind.

At that moment, Logan had an idea. It took a lot of string pulling to make it happen, granted, but he refused to allow anything to get in the way of his plans. 

January of 2010 saw Patton’s 66th’s birthday roll in, and Logan first surprised his husband by driving their old car, a blue 1955 Ford Thunderbird, into the driveway. It wasn’t in the greatest condition, having been kept in their garage for years, but Logan had secretly washed and maintained it leading up to today. It still had their cassette tape in the player; the Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice played just as it had back in the day.

The car was only one of the surprises Logan had in store; he’d found an old diner that, while it wasn’t much like Foster’s, was dedicated to capturing the 1980s vibe they were both familiar with. After a couple of milkshakes and Patton’s insistence that they dance together when the jukebox would play their favourite tunes, Logan parked outside of a familiar sight.

Their old theatre and origin of Patton’s nickname, The Starlight; it’d been renamed of course, but thankfully the former owner’s daughter remembered the couple from back in her father’s day, and so Logan had asked if the old sign could be replaced just this once. She’d done one better, adding a lovely “Happy Birthday Patton!” banner underneath. Logan wasn’t sure if hugs could be fatal, but the one Patton sent his way nearly crushed him with the weight of it’s love.

Once inside the foyer, Logan directed Patton to their private screening of Cinderella. He had wanted the same movie he’d proposed to Patton with initially, but alas, the owner couldn’t track it down in time, thus they went with the movie that had led Logan to his soulmate in the first place. The Harts sat in a comfortable silence throughout the film; they didn’t need to say anything, their intertwined hands and soft sighs of adoration were enough. When the movie ended, they began to drive home until Patton spoke up, “Logan, look!”, he gestured out the window towards a familiar sight; the park where they’d met.

The old equipment had been removed and changed  somewhat over the years, but the familiar landmarks were all still there. Logan didn’t need to be asked the question as he parked nearby and walked with his beloved towards the spot where they’d met. The small indent in the ground where the same puddle he’d helped Patton out of was still there in all it’s sentimental glory. Logan raised an eyebrow as Patton sat at the edge of the former puddle until he realised what he was up to,

“Oh no! I’ve fallen! And I can’t get up! Oh where is my Prince Charming who shall come to save me?!”

Logan had to stifle his laughter with his hand for a second before offering it to Patton, rolling his eyes fondly as he stated, “I’m here, I’m here, don’t worry, fair Cinderella.”

He helped Patton to his feet, stumbling a little but thankfully he caught his husband in his waiting arms. With a smile that shone like the gold of his soul balloon’s cursive, Patton met Logan’s eyes, whispering a soft, loving, “I love you, Logan.”

Logan gently brushed a strand of Patton’s hair away from his soulmate’s eyes, “I love you too, Patton.”

The two began to walk back to the car, hand in hand, while Patton explained to Logan where he’d gotten the blue dress he’d met him in when Patton stopped. 

“Patton? Is everything alright-?”

Patton’s breathing hastened, and before he could try and say he was okay, he curled in on himself, grasping his chest. Terrified for his husband, Logan called 911, doing his best to get Patton to the car to drive him to A&E.

--

Nothing was alright.

Logan stayed by Patton’s side in hospital when the doctors delivered the bad news. 

Heart failure. 

The doctor was apologetic the whole time - “I’m so sorry” “If only we’d caught it sooner” “Too late for a transplant” “Surgery would only prolong the inevitable” - but Logan couldn’t bear to hear it. The love of his life lay dying in a cold, sterile room when he should be at home; dancing around their living room, baking with him in their kitchen, laying next to him in bed as they held hands and regaled each other with happy memories and countless “I love you”s. 

The decision wasn’t difficult, not for Logan anyway. The doctors offered to let Logan take him home so he could pass in the comfort of his own home, and while Emile had tried to convince his parents to try for more time in hospital, his fathers both refused. Patton was stubborn when he wanted to be, and Logan even more so. They’d wasted three days with Logan having to stay in hospital with Patton, he wasn’t about to jeopardise any more time. 

Emile and Remy came to visit each day once Patton came home. Neither one would comment on just how tired he looked, but Logan could see the concern in their faces. They both knew as well as Logan that any day could be Patton’s last. Every time they left, both would hold Patton tightly, making sure to always leave with an “I love you, dad”, no matter how late it made them for an appointment or the like.

--

One night, Logan noticed Patton was sitting outside on the porch step in the early morning sunrise, in one hand was a pack of balloons, and in the other, some string and markers.

“What’re you up to, starlight?”, Logan questioned curiously, unable to stop himself smiling as Patton sent him a smile at the old nickname.

“Just wanted to try something, Logie Bear. Here, you can pick out your color.”

Ah. Logan understood, rifling through the pack for the right shade of baby blue to make his soul balloon. He and Patton had of course described their balloons to each other, “Mine’s this lovely dark blue with silver writing! Bold and smart, just like you, Logan!”, Patton had said. He watched Patton try to blow up the balloon, but upon giving himself a coughing fit, Logan went to get the helium pump he’d used for the balloons at Emile’s 14th birthday. 

Once both balloons were safely inflated and tied with some string, the Harts set about writing each other’s name in an imitation of their respective soul balloon. Patton wasn’t sure whether to write Logan’s married name or the one on the balloon, but Logan assured him he didn’t mind. With both balloons finished, the couple tied the ends of their strings together, Patton requesting Logan take some pictures with his phone to show Emile and Remy later. With the request indulged - along with some depicting the couple sat cuddled together with their respective balloons - the two held out the tied end of the balloons and let them go.

Bobbing in the wind, the balloons carried themselves into the sky, twirling in a dance as they soared towards the clouds. The Harts watched until they could no longer see the pair anymore; eventually just sitting side by side on the porch, their fingers locked together and their heads rested against one another. 

The morning was stunning; soft cloudy skies that let the sun peek through while a warm breeze drifted by. 

“Hey, Logie Bear?”, Patton quietly requested. His voice ghostly even in it’s happiness.

“Yes, starlight?”

Logan couldn’t explain how or why he knew that it’d be the last thing he heard Patton say, but he simply held his husband of thirty nine years, his soulmate since birth, even closer as Patton’s last words carved themselves into his memory;

“Thanks for the adventure.”, his stunning eyes met Logan’s one last time, “I love you, Logan.”

“You too, Patton,”, Logan couldn’t stop the tears that rolled down his cheeks, “I love you too.”

Even as Patton’s grip loosened, as his eyes closed, as his breathing shuddered to a halt, Logan stayed with his husband for hours. He knew he’d soon have to break the news to their son before the poor lad and his husband found them still sitting together like always. But Logan couldn’t bring himself to move an inch. 

“I’d never leave your side for anything, starlight...”

--------

I’m not crying I’m SOBBING

This one has me in tears just rereading it to make last minute corrections, god...

Day 12 will be back to much happier themes, I promise!

@tsshipmonth2020

Taglist: @somehow-i-got-an-account @cateye-glasses @fandomsofrandom

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Black Coffee (part four)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

If you like this, please please please consider reblogging, leaving a comment on Ao3 or even donating to my Ko-Fi

~~~~~~~~~~

Every single time, Vax told himself he was an idiot.

Every time he caught himself staring at Percy’s smile. Every time he’d replay his laughter over and over again in his head as he fell asleep because the sound soothed him so much. Every time he’d sleep over and find himself wearing one of Percy’s shirts in the confusion of gathering up their widely scattered clothes, only to curl up into it tighter, pulling it over the lower half of his face and inhaling deeply, feeling something inside himself unwind at the smell of Percy.

Each and every time, he’d think to himself afterwards: Vax’ildan, you are an idiot.

He told himself it was pointless. He told himself it was a ridiculous infatuation that was only going to get worse the more he indulged it. He cursed himself for a moony eyed teenager, he cursed his blind, ridiculous heart, he cursed his piss poor judgement in growing a silly crush on someone who saw him as a friend at best, a way to indulge a kink at worst and most likely.

But those moments didn’t stop coming. So he remained an idiot.

Another week, another email.

Percy tapped his fingers against the keys, enough to make an irritating noise but not enough to actually make words appear on the screen, as if the right thing to say would just come passively if he made the night motions.

The first part of the email had been easy, congratulating Cassandra on getting through her finals, encouraging her with her upcoming dissertation and exhibition, promising he’d fly out and come to opening night.

The second part was where he got stuck, as soon as he was required to talk about himself. He knew Cassandra would have absolutely no interest in the company, how the profit margins were doing, any reshuffling of the board. Percy was supposed to be the figurehead of all that and even he barely managed to care. He knew she’d at least feign polite interest in the new rotary motors he’d designed but there was only so much he could say about those without attaching blueprints to his response.

And he still felt a panic attack coming on whenever he thought about even trying to tell her about Vax.

At least he had Keyleth to talk to about that. He was getting better at being more open with her, probably thanks to Vax himself. Yet another thing he owed him.

Just yesterday she’d come over for dinner (a dinner that consisted of food from their respective favourite takeaways, he’d never learned how to cook) and Percy had found himself talking for hours about things Vax had said, date ideas that had been his that Percy never would even have dreamed of doing but had enjoyed immensely. Even Vax’s sister had gotten a mention and he’d grinned to see Keyleth’s ears quite literally pick up and her eyes brighten. He quietly resolved to find out if Vex’ahlia was single.

But there were things he couldn’t even tell his best friend or his sister. Things he was still struggling to admit to himself or even give form to inside his own head.

The idea that maybe he was starting to feel differently about Vax. That as fun and exhilarating as the sex and honeymoon dates were, things were changing below the surface.

Percy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fingers itching to take him back to the dog adoption websites he’d been obsessively browsing lately. But Cassandra had been waiting two days for a reply now and he’d be damned if she was going to beat him at correspondence.

He tapped out a brief reply, one sentence to say work was fine and he was building new stuff, as always then launched into more praise for her recent art pieces she’d put on Instagram. Much safer brotherly territory.

But then there was the last part of her email. The one his brain had desperately tried to slide right off of but had become embedded inside him like a bee sting.

So, I saw the anniversary is coming up next week. I hate calling it an anniversary but you know, there’s no good word for it. I know it’s hard so call me if you want to, okay? Or go to the charity gala, one of us probably should. Just don’t be alone. Promise, Percy.

Of course he’d forgotten, if there was such a thing as wilfully forgetting something. The gala was organised without any input from him, it was a company thing, the purview of their non-profit division. People at work had long ago learned not to bring anything even tangentially connected to the anniversary (Cassie was right, there really was no other word for it) to their boss’ attention.

No doubt the invitation would appear on his assistant’s desk in the next day or so, ready for its annual frosty ignoring before being consigned to the shredder the second the date inscribed on it had passed.

But if Percy was completely honest with himself, as rare as that occasion was, he really didn’t want to face that day alone. He didn’t want to bear it in his usual way. Not that he ever had wanted to get through it by finding a bar and drinking until he passed out but he’d always just sort of sunken into that.

And Cassandra knew it. Hell, she’d been the one who’d had to take a red eye flight to the city and sit by him in the hospital as he’d recovered from getting his stomach pumped last year.

The look on her face when he’d finally woken up and broken down into wracking sobs wasn’t something he ever wanted to see on his baby sister’s face ever again. He wasn’t going to be responsible for adding to her pain ever again.

He finished his email with a single sentence, no context, no other acknowledgement of the hot coals they were both trying to dance around.

I promise, Cassie.

“Holy fuck…I don’t think I have anything that fancy, Freddy,” Vax yelped but he was grinning, excitement already lighting up his face.

Percy smiles, reaching over and tucking Vax’s hair behind his ears, he remembered him saying it annoyed him when it was in his face, “I’ll take you shopping. But wait until you’ve actually been to one of these parties before you thank me for the invite, they’re painfully boring.”

“Probably to you!” Vax maintained his dreamy eyed excitement as he swept his shirt over his head, “I’m gonna drink fancy wine and admire fancy dresses and dance to fancy music. I’ll finally get to use the waltz moves I know.”

“I look forward to seeing them,” Percy let his jeans fall to the floor, “I’ll admit, it might actually be worth my time if you’re with me.”

Vax grins, wiggling out of his boxers, “Freddy, if you need someone to show you that getting drunk in the name of charity can be fun, I’m your man.”

“You are,” Percy’s demeanour became hungry, grinning crookedly as he pulled the now naked Vax against him, spinning him into the shower and under the warm spray of water. The half elf was giggling, legs anchoring around his hips, by the time Percy kissed him up against the tile wall.

It was so easy to smile and laugh and make jokes when he was kissing Vax. It was so easy to forget.

“The car will be here in half an hour,” Percy called out, walking into the living room as he fiddled with his cufflinks. He’d never gotten the hang of these things.

A memory rose up in the back of his mind, unasked for, unbidden. His own hands, awkward and spindly with youth, struggling with a set of cufflinks. Stronger hands, wearing the signet ring that Percy now saw on his own hand every morning, covering his own and guiding them.

Here, son, let me. It takes some getting used to.

Percy cursed as one slipped out of his fingers and hit the hardwood with a sharp crack that rang louder than it actually had been in his ears. The black stone in it fractured, a hairline break down the middle. It must have landed in just the wrong way.

“Whoops,” Vax was suddenly there, scooping up the little shining piece of silver, “Here we go.”

“It’s broken…” Percy frowned, half his brain still somewhere else.

“Not all that much,” Vax reassured him, taking his hand gently and fixing it into place, “It’s still good, see?”

Percy managed a thin smile. It was hard not to smile, seeing Vax all dressed up.

They hadn’t found anything that suited Vax at the place Percy went to get his suits, they’d both agreed everything there was a little too stuffy for his tastes. Instead, they’d turned to Mollymauk Tealeaf, who took the black dress Vax had worn to the ballet and an old suit of Percy’s and made something spectacular.

It was a little bit of both, a black, clinging suit of silken material that flowed down his body as a stunning waterfall of inky fabric, affixed at his wrists to make something not unlike wings. It rippled when he moved and caught the light in the most beautiful ways and made Percy’s mouth a little dry.

It was going to cause a stir, Percy knew with a satisfied smile. It was his name on the silverware, after all.

“You look beautiful,” Percy leaned in and kissed him, quickly so as not to pick up any of his black lipstick. There would be plenty of time to get it in all manner of scandalous places after the party.

“You’re a charmer,” Vax purred, straightening his jacket lapels, “Half an hour, you said?”

Percy could see where his mind was going and he dearly wanted to follow him down that train of thought but he knew letting Vax go into this blind would be a bad idea. So he sighed and gave a little shake of his head.

“Just so you know, love? This night…it’s for the charity that was set up in my parents’ name after they died. Like a memorial thing? So if people treat me weird tonight, that’s why.”

Vax blinked, understandably a little rattled by that, “Oh…right…”

“Sorry,” Percy winced, he couldn’t pretend to be surprised, “That’s a lot to take in at once…”

“Maybe a little,” Vax admitted, hands resting on Percy’s chest, “But…I get it’s a difficult thing to put into words. Thanks for letting me know though, I could see myself putting my foot right in it.”

Percy let himself relax a little into Vax’s contact, safe in the knowledge he’d keep him upright, “All I need from you tonight is to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is probably going to do and not treat me weird. Just…dance with me, let’s make a few people whisper and if you could remind me that I’ve got some pretty amazing sex waiting for me if I make it through tonight, I’d appreciate that.”

Vax smiled and kissed his cheek, “I can absolutely do that.”

“Oh,” Percy hesitates, another wince in his expression, “And don’t let me drink?”

Vax sensed a strong undercurrent of ‘do not ask’ under that so he just smiled and nodded, squeezing Percy’s arm.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay, Freddy. I’ll be with you.”

The party was held in a manor house a little ways out of the city, a place that seemed to have been built purely for ridiculously grand parties like this one. The whole exterior was illuminated by soft dancing lights, making the high stone walls, the flowers in the garden, the couples that filed in all look vaguely angelic and otherworldly.

Vax gawked and stared shamelessly as they moved into this other dimension of cream and silk and champagne. Flower garlands grew up the walls and spread curious fingers across the floor, actually growing if you looked for long enough, filling the room with a fresh, clean scent. Glasses were pressed on them as soon as they entered, full of a wine that actually changed as you sipped it, moving along a spectrum of fruit flavours.

Percy politely waved his on.

There was an upper mezzanine with tables, clearly where the food would be served, but the whole lower floor was kept free for dancing and mingling, what most of the guests were actually here to do. Already groups were forming and breaking up in smooth succession, like leaves borne on an unseen current, snagging and being swept on. The rhythm of it all was odd when seen from above, like a sort of dance.

“I do not belong here,” Vax laughed delightedly, leaning against the balcony.

“Count yourself lucky then,” Percy smirks, straightening his glasses, “Looks like I put on a pretty good party, huh?”

“And all without looking,” Vax chuckled, “Very well done, Mr de Rolo.”

Percy puts his hand on Vax’s, “Well, it’ll raise some money at least. Rich people get really generous when they drink.”

Vax took another drink, tasting tart plum this time. He let his eyes rove over the dance floor below, still finding interesting little finishes he hadn’t noticed yet. The way the candles hovered under some spell, somehow knowing where they were needed, following the larger knots of people. The troupe of musicians, sporting everything from sleek Marquetian guitars to elaborate stringed affairs from the Menagerie Coast, whose music could be turned up or down in any listener’s ears as they wished. There were bowls of iced fruit glistening on an array of tables, the perfect thing to snack on when you knew you had a banquet in an hour. No one was dancing yet, the party still being in its fledgling stages but Vax already had a mind of change that. The people here seemed older, the ones here to network rather than relax, but maybe even they could be convinced if they had a good enough example. Vax saw mostly humans though there were a few with the easy, self-confident air of the Aasimar and, of course, the only other race who could look even more self-possessed-

“Shit,” Vax choked out, suddenly drawing back as if he’d been sprayed with scalding water.

Percy turned, suddenly alert, “What? What’s wrong?”

Ashy with shock, eyes roving for the exits and well aware it was too late to pretend the answer was nothing, Vax mumbled, “I didn’t know Syldor Vessar would be here.”

Percy frowned, “I…yeah, he often comes to things like this…I think my father worked with him on a few projects in the past…Vax, what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” Vax insisted weakly, “Well, no. I mean. He’s my father.”

Percy’s eyes widened behind his glasses. Vax knew he was suddenly seeing matching features, commonalities, making sense of the distinct point to his ears.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you, how could you know?”

Vax was instinctively moving away, acting like a cornered animal, backing up in a secluded alcove. All of the delicately bouncing candles within a five meter radius fled in a heartbeat.

Percy followed, suddenly standing protectively, making himself a shield, “I can have a car here in five minutes, are you okay until then? Or we can just go, we’ll walk a little…”

“No, no…” Vax said quickly, biting his lip, “No, sorry. It was just a shock. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Though it was clear some of the pieces were already in place, Percy asked haltingly, “Was it not…”

Vax pulled a face, “He doesn’t like that I’m trans. He doesn’t like a lot about me, really. And I hate a lot about him. So me and Vex left.”

Anger flashed across Percy’s face, brief but intense, “He what?”

Vax gave a short sigh, “Freddy, three quarters of the people here would probably think he was right. Please don’t go punch him. It won’t win you any friends.”

The anger collapsed under the weight of discomfort, “Oh. I wasn’t going to…”

“Sorry,” Vax shook his head like he was shaking sense into himself, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Seriously, I’m fine. This is your night, I’m here for you.”

“Vax’ildan…”

Vax had his mind made up. It was clear since he’d admitted what this party was for that Percy had taken a long, long time to convince himself to go. He needed to be here, he needed to honour his parents in some small way, even if it was just for an hour. Vax wouldn’t be the reason he caved.

“Seriously, Freddy, it’s fine. The party’s big enough that we can avoid him and even if we do need to say a five second hello…well, fuck, it’s going to actually be fun for him to see me on the arm of someone whose twice as rich as he is. Just don’t tell him I’m technically on the job.”

Percy still looked like he would protest, for honour’s sake, but he let it go and gave a little smile, “You’re not on the job, Vax, not tonight. At least, it doesn’t feel like it. I’m glad you’re here just as my friend.”

Vax swallowed, a feeling he was irritatingly familiar with making its presence known.

Vax’ildan, you’re an idiot.

The party went smoothly for a while.

It was fun, Vax realised, like play acting. Like they’d all raided a parent’s closet for odds and ends, mismatched bits and pieces, makeup that they only had the vaguest idea of how to use but were all having enormous fun enacting scenes from an elaborately illustrated fairy story. They were all aware of the absurdity of it, underneath, but it paled in comparison to the entertainment value.

Vax was reminded of the times he and Molly had gleefully wasted hours in the costume storage rooms of the community theatre, trying on coats that didn’t fit them, hats that were ridiculously small, anything with an excessive amount of beads or sequins, laughing until it hurt.

Quickly and easily, Vax lost himself in the performance of it all. He perched happily on Percy’s arm, always making sure he had a glass at least half full in his hand with which to gesture, listening to the conversations they were pulled into like asteroids being snatched up in the orbits of various planets. They were like a foreign language, talking about places and people he’d never heard of and had to force himself not to laugh out loud at, they seemed so odd. Fortunately, though he hid it much better thanks to years of practise, Percy seemed just as bewildered as Vax did by most of it.

Every so often, he’d interject something, a sprightly little comment or joke, more often than not to save Percy when he’s clearly ran out of things to say. Each new group would look surprised the first time, like they’d assumed he couldn’t talk, like he’d been presumed to be Percy’s handbag or something. But then they’d laugh, either out of politeness or genuine amusement, Vax didn’t care. It was the relieved, grateful little glances from Percy that he cared about.

There were awkward moments, of course, whenever someone he recognised from his and Vex’s years of incarceration with Syldor appeared in that moment’s huddle of listeners. He could see the hesitation on their face every time, the shock, the clear attempt to guess whether the situation had changed, the rumours had been incorrect and he was back in his father’s good graces.

But if any of them had chanced to notice that, despite the undeniable pressure of natural social graces, Syldor and Vax’ildan never ended up in the same circles, they would have had their answer.

There was a moment, in the lull between songs where the chatter seemed to press in a little louder, where Vax had been admiring the flowers again, trying to see if their colours were magical or a feature of the plant itself. His eyes must have slid the wrong way at the wrong time because suddenly he was making direct eye contact with Syldor from across the room. And those eyes were filled with a stunned, scandalised anger.

The part of Vax that was and probably always would be the terrified young teenager who’d lived in fear of those eyes, that look, recoiled in panic. But there was more to him now, a stronger, surer part that simply smiled and squeezed Percy’s arm, prompting him to lean over and kiss his cheek softly. What Syldor’s face did after he saw that, Vax didn’t know.

He didn’t look back.

As if the night couldn’t be more full of surprises, Vax found that his shy, mechanically minded wallflower was a superb dancer.

“You’re a natural!” Vax laughed in delight as they moved in perfect time with the delicate waltz filling the space.

Percy blushed, as Vax knew he would, “I took lessons when I was younger, under threat of having my controllers taken away. All of my siblings did but I think they acquiesced much easier than I did.”

All of your siblings? Vax kept his face very deliberately unchanged.

“The world of dance doesn’t know what it’s lost,” he said confidently, moving through easy, rolling steps around the space. Not many other couples were dancing so they had practically the whole floor.

“Maybe I’m trying extra hard just to keep up with you,” Percy pointed out, tilting his head.

“Ballroom isn’t my thing,” Vax shook his head, “You’ve just got some serious natural talent.”

“Shut up,” Percy laughed coyly but at the very next turn he suddenly dipped Vax low, expertly, in perfect time with the music.

Vax would have kissed him fiercely if he hadn’t been worried any distraction would end with him in a heap on the floor.

Once righted, instead of moving back into hold, Percy paused, taking Vax’s hands in his own, “I...I didn’t think it was possible for me to actually enjoy this night. And I actually kind of have. Or at least, I’ve been able to distract myself enough to…” he flushed bright red, “Anyway. I’m rambling. Thank you, is what I’m trying to say.”

Vax smiled softly, “Don’t mention it, Percy. Seriously, don’t, it looks like you might pull a muscle if you keep trying to.”

Percy snorted at that, “See? This is why I love having you around.”

One of those odd moments followed, the ones where it really felt like someone should have been saying something. A cue had been missed, the progression had halted, empty space that wasn’t supposed to be empty suddenly hung between them.

Percy opened his mouth, looking like he was going to say something but part of him didn’t want to.

And that was when the music stopped, fading into silence in as classy a way as that could be done. Immediately, the people around them began moving back to the mezzanine, apparently all knowing that it was time for food and speeches. Vax felt like he’d missed a memo somewhere.

“Dare me to ask for tomato sauce with whatever fancy stuff they serve?” Vax turned back to Percy, grinning.

As soon as their eyes met, that grin died like a scrap of paper set alight, turned to nothing in half a heartbeat. Percy looked like he was about to throw up, paler even than he usually was, a rabbit suddenly caught in the headlights of a sixteen wheeler.

“Percy?” Vax was alarmed, squeezing his hand, “Percy, what’s wrong?”

There was a clear moment of hesitation, uncertainty, but something seemed to swerve to the left at the very last moment and he fixed a thin, unconvincing smile on his face, “Nothing. I’m hungry, let’s head up there.”

Vax frowned, not sure how he was being expected to believe that but then Percy was moving, taking his hand and leading him towards the stairs without another word. Hesitant to make a fuss, Vax sighed internally and didn’t resist. But he would definitely be bringing it up again on the ride home. Maybe Percy would be able to breathe a little better once it was just the two of them again.

They sat about as far back as they could physically manage without sitting on the floor. Vax was about to ask if they should move closer, surely if it was his company’s whole production, they’d want him visible? His surname was on the logo being projected up on the screen at the front, after all.

But he got the sense that hiding might be the whole point.

There was more fancy wine set out on the table, ones with names even longer than Percy’s. Vax eyed a glass thoughtfully but he had a pleasant, warm buzz going through his veins. Enough to make this party a damn sight more fun but not enough to risk him embarrassing himself. That was a comfortable place to be.

As he was looking, he saw Percy’s hand go out and draw a glass in, a quick, furtive gesture like he was hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.

Vax frowned. He was really getting his intelligence insulted tonight.

“Percy, you said you wouldn’t be drinking?”

Percy’s shoulders tensed, every inch the child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “Just one with dinner. I’ll barely feel it.”

Vax paused, a bad feeling opening up inside him, “You asked me not to let you drink, Percy. There must have been a reason for that. I...I’d feel better if you didn’t.”

That brought Percy’s hand back to his side, if a little reluctantly, accompanied by a defeated sigh, “You’re right…”

Vax bit his lip, that bad feeling growing, “Percy, we don’t have to stay if something’s making you feel uncomfortable.”

He couldn’t read the expression that shifted across Percy’s face in that moment and before he could make any greater effort, the lighting in the room changed and everyone’s attention was politely turned to the front of the dining area, to the lectern before the screen.

An older human man settled there, bringing a neat set of cards from his inside pocket and clearing his throat in the manner of someone who was very comfortable with having about a hundred people listening to his every word.

“Well, firstly, an enormous thank you to all of you. Through your attendance and generosity, we have managed to raise an incredible amount of money to go towards the de Rolo Foundation, even more than in previous years. This money will undoubtedly be instrumental in ensuring those who lose their families to violence have support and care. I am certain the entire de Rolo family would be immensely proud.”

Beside Vax, Percy seemed to sink down lower in his seat as the eyes of everyone who actually knew who he was turned to him in that moment.

“What happened to the de Rolo family was nothing short of a tragedy,” the man continued, voice turning grave rather than celebratory, “Many of you who knew them still feel a strong sense of grief and outrage at how they were taken. Hopefully there is some comfort to be found in the fact that, through our actions here tonight, fewer will suffer as they and their remaining heirs did.”

A picture suddenly took up the screen behind him, replacing the Whitestone logo. Vax felt his chest tighten.

The first of the family in the picture that he recognised was of course Percy. He stood as stiff and aloof as the rest of the people around him who shared his facial features, though he was off to the side somewhat, certainly not the focus, part of the background dressing. There were nine of them, all dressed similarly in what had to be the colours of their family. An older woman and man who were of course the mother and father. The much younger Percy seemed to fall into the middle range of ages. More central was an older young man, placed right between the mother and father. Then a sister. Though they all looked incredibly similar, same angular faces, same hair, most of them wearing glasses, there were two who were identical enough that they had to be twins. That gave Vax a start. A couple of younger siblings too, barely into childhood.

It took him a long time to realise what was wrong, why something wasn’t quite right. And then it clicked, with another unpleasant lurch.

They all had brown hair. Brown as chestnuts, brown as chocolate, brown as mahogany.

And Vax had been picking white hairs off his dark clothing for as long as he and Percy had been an item.

“The loss of nearly the entire de Rolo family was a shock to us all,” the man continued, though his voice seemed further away to Vax, as lost as he was in the picture, “And even worse the years of turmoil that followed before their killers could be brought to justice. Of course we remember and acknowledge the bravery of Percival in his years of ensuring the truth came out and the company could return to his and his sister’s hands. Many thanks to young Percival.”

Vax couldn’t help it, he turned to Percy, confusion and shock on his face.

He wasn’t there. Both he and the bottle of wine from the centre of the table had disappeared.

Suddenly Vax realised everyone was looking at their table, expecting to see Percy as much as he had been, equally as surprised to be staring at an empty seat. There was a long, awkward silence where no one seemed quite sure of what to do.

After a moments carefully considered thought, Vax decided to get up and make a very swift exit.

Night had fallen when none of them had been looking, blissfully ignorant in the shrouds of both magically and mechanically generated lighting. But outside was fully within its arms; the air was chilly, too chilly for evening gowns, the sky was blacker than usual given they were a little outside the city and pierced through with starry pinpoints. The gardens that surrounded the manor had turned to silver and stone, what had been grown looking more like it had been carved or sculpted.

As anxious as he was to find Percy, Vax couldn’t help but feel some relief. He much preferred it out here to in there. In fact, it was only now that he realised he’d practically been holding his breath the entire evening.

He hitched up his skirts with one hand and hurried past flowerbeds and underneath overhead carpets of vine, listening for anything underneath the gentle but ever present trickle of water running somewhere unseen.

The water only seemed to grow louder as he went, naturally pulled into the epicentre of the garden. But underneath it, he managed to pick out a noise that could only be crying, acting as a perfect counterpoint to the rushing and babbling that already filled the space.

It made sense all in the same moment. An enormous fountain sat proudly in the little hidden courtyard that was revealed behind the shrubbery. It’s flow arched into the night sky where it came close to becoming pure moonlight before falling back down into the basin, ready to trace the path again like blood in an ornate, black iron body.

And slumped on the edge of it, sobbing softly with his tears hitting the gravel below like a tiny rainfall, was Percy.

As Vax watched, he groped for the bottle of wine that was resting haphazardly against his legs and drank deeply, an errant trickle running from the side of his lips though he didn’t seem to care. Only when the need for breath forced him to stop did the bottle return to it’s perfectly circular divot in the gravel, not half drained.

Vax lurched forward, forgetting that he’d wanted to make a more gentle entrance, “Percy, no…”

Percy jumped so badly it was a miracle he didn’t pitch backwards into the fountain. That probably would have soured things even more.

“Vax’ildan…”

Wanting desperately to hold him, touch him, fix this somehow but having no clue of how to go about it or if it would even be welcome, Vax just sat beside him on the cold, wet rim of the fountain, eyes wide and sad, “I’m here, Percy, it’s okay…”

“Vax, go back,” Percy croaked, turning his head as if it wasn’t too late to hide the tears, “You don’t have to...go back inside, enjoy yourself.”

“How could I enjoy myself without you?” Vax asked softly, reaching over and taking his hands.

Percy was quiet for a moment before the tears flooded back in with renewed strength, leaving him choking. Vax didn’t hesitate, taking him into his arms, letting him cling on as tight as he needed to. It was hard not to cry himself, listening to the agony that came pouring out like poison from a wound. It was so clear that years and years worth of pain had been locked inside him and were leaving him in one rush.

All he’d been missing had been someone to hold him, someone to tell him it was okay, someone who would say here, hold on to me, it will end.

How long had Percy been living without the reassurance that if he cried, someone would hear him?  

It could have been a lifetime before the tears finally ran their course, Vax didn’t care. But eventually Percy was left choking on air rather than salt water, chest heaving as his body dragged in deep breaths to replace what he’d lost.

“Easy, nice and easy,” Vax encouraged, placing a hand on his back, “You’re okay.”

Percy seemed to be calming down for a few moments until his eyes bulged suddenly and he threw himself to the side, vomiting copiously into the fountain.

Vax winced, reaching over quickly to save his glasses that were about to slip off, “Yeah, we’re never getting invited back…”

“Good,” Percy panted weakly, managing to right himself, “This whole night was a mistake. I don’t know why I keep trying to make this day anything other than a fucking disaster.”

“Well...I think that might be reasonable,” Vax said placatingly, “Given what I’ve come to understand about this day…”

Percy hunched in on himself, guilt clear as day on his face, “I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry. It’s just...it’s so hard to say the words out loud…” This voice grew dangerously thick and fragile.

“Darling, I understand,” Vax murmured, hand making slow, comforting circles across his back, “I’ve been there.”

That caught his attention. Vax hesitated, ready to see the same pity and condolence he’d been seeing in everyone’s eyes for years, the kind that made him feel vaguely ill.

But it didn’t come. The two men looked at each other the way two people who had been blindly fighting their way through a storm would, when they suddenly reached the eye at the very centre and, in the silence, realised they hadn’t been as alone as they thought.

“Who?” Percy asked softly.

“Our mother.”

And just like that he could see her face again, he could hear her voice, feel her fingers combing through his hair. Vax’ildan had a strong, deep resentment of every single piece of his DNA that had come from Syldor bar one. Whichever piece had given him an elf’s exceedingly good memory. Otherwise, who knew how much of his mother he might have lost.

Percy’s hand took Vax’s, fingers threading together, holding on tight. Vax managed to smile, even if it was a little shaky.

Nothing else came of that but both knew it was okay.

“I...I just didn’t expect all that,” Percy finally admitted, sighing deeply, “I didn’t expect the speech about them, actually talking about what happened...but it was, um, the picture. I couldn’t take that.”

Vax nodded slowly, “Have you not…”

Percy shook his head quickly, “No. Even looking at my sister is hard. It must be the same for her, I guess that’s why she ran to the opposite end of the country.”

Vax gently leant his head against Percy’s shoulder, “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

There was a long pause before he could find the right words. Having to open up something you’d hidden away for years wasn’t a simple task, not when every nerve in your body is screaming at you to do the exact opposite.

“I don’t really know what exactly my family did to piss them off,” Percy eventually began, “I don’t want to know either. I don’t care how it started, I care that it’s finished.”

“Who’s them?”

Percy swallowed hard, “The Briarwoods.”

Then it all came out, disjointed and rambling and disconnected but Vax edited it in his own mind after the fact. How one night at dinner after the family had welcomed two guests, a married couple of wealthy socialites, into their home Percy had begun to hear screaming.

He couldn’t remember a lot of the details, which was understandable and probably merciful. What he did remember was the sound of gunfire, muffled barks of exploding muzzles echoing through the hallways of the family home. He remembered blood pooling on the hardwood floors. He remembered pleading. He remembered laughter.

The only thing he could then say for certain was that he ended up outside, running for as long as his body could physically manage before collapsing at Keyleth’s door, his friend from school the only person his fevered mind could think to turn to.

When the sun rose the next day, every paper and news anchor in the city was reporting that his entire family had been killed in a robbery gone wrong. Everyone save himself, who was missing, and his youngest sister Cassandra, who was saved by the intercession of those same guests, the Briarwoods. He recalled a tearful Delilah Briarwood on the news, saying she only wished they could have done more.

In the exact same voice Percy had heard laughing in the blood spattered hallway.

Percy wasn’t fit to leave Keyleth’s sofa for the next few months, nearly broken clean in two by grief. So everything just happened around him, the grateful Cassandra signing over the family’s entire holdings to the Briarwoods in the absence of her brother, the whole company being seized, the locks on every property the de Rolo’s had owned being changed, barring Percy from any kind of financial help.

When he was finally well enough to open his eyes, to face the world around him, he found that he was completely and utterly abandoned by it.

Vax tried to absorb all that, heart hammering in his chest, “So...what did you do?”

“Kiki was happy for me to stay with her but…” Percy pulled a face, “I wasn’t fit to be around anyone. I wasn’t well, I was...drinking a lot. She kept trying to get me to go to therapy but that would mean people knowing I was alive and, with the Briarwoods still out there, with all of the money and protection I’d lost, I didn’t that that was such a good idea…”

“How did no one know?” Vax felt anger in the back of his throat, “Didn’t they investigate? Work out that the people who were pretty much strangers that had come to the house might have had something to do with the murders that happened that very night?”

Percy shrugged, “They had magic and money on their side. Delilah was a powerful magic user but...well, I doubt it was ever really needed. You’d be surprised how much suspicion and supposed authority can be turned aside by putting coin in the right pockets.”

Vax scowled down at the stones, feeling the injustice but also the truth of that burn in his chest. He’d seen Syldor do it enough times.

“So...I got a job as a mechanic. My father had always told me my tinkering would be nothing but a distraction but it was what got me through those years. That and not caring that the cars I was fixing were obviously stolen and I was being paid off the books.”

“Seriously?” Vax couldn’t help being a little impressed by that.

Percy gave a wayn smile, “If any police officer had looked in my workshop, they’d have found enough to put me in jail for a very long time. But bribery is not just the purview of the rich, thank the gods…” he looked back at his hands, “So I spent a long time not being Percival de Rolo. I just made as much money as I could, tried desperately to keep myself alive and spent years thinking of how to rescue my sister and make the Briarwoods suffer.”

The tone of Percy’s voice in that moment worried Vax, his smile falling into a concerned frown, “Understandable…”

Percy didn’t seem to pick up on it, “I was going to do something stupid. Very stupid. But fortunately, despite my being a shitty friend and all round terrible person, Keyleth stuck by me. She convinced me to hire a lawyer instead, do it through the courts. Gods, it was a nightmare. It took years longer than I wanted it to, I was on the verge of tearing my hair out or just finally drinking enough that I’d never wake up again.”

Vax’s stomach dropped.

“But then I’d think of Cassie,” Percy’s voice quietened, “How she must have felt as alone as I did. How I couldn’t let her down. Gods only know what they put her through while they had her, she won’t talk to me about it. Every second I was wasting feeling sorry for myself and falling asleep in gutters was another second she was under their power. And if I died then...then her hope died too.”

“But you did it,” Vax said quietly, squeezing his hand, “I’m not a big news watcher but I remember it a little now, I just never connected it to you. How you got the Briarwoods convicted, got custody of your sister back, everyone saw them for what they were. I remember everyone talking about how you were a hero, Percy.”

Percy grunted, nudging the wine bottle over with his toe so it’s contents spilled across the stones, “Maybe. But there’s still days I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier just building myself a gun and shooting them both in the heart.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vax said firmly, turning him a little so they were facing each other, “And you didn’t. And that makes you better than them, Percy. That’s what makes you a hero.”

Percy managed to meet his eyes, though he still looked so young and so scared, “Then why does it hurt so much?”

“Because what happened to you was awful,” Vax said without hesitation, touching his face with a gentle hand, “It was unimaginably awful, most people couldn’t have survived it. And you’re allowed to feel that hurt. You’re allowed to cry. But I promise, one day, this pain will be manageable. You’ll be able to carry it.”

“How?” Percy whispered brokenly, desperation in his eyes, “I...I just can’t see how. I’m not strong enough.”

“I’ll help you be,” he murmured, stroking his thumb back and forth across his cheekbone, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Percy swallowed hard, resting his forehead against Vax’s for a long moment. Sometimes words just weren’t enough.

Eventually he mumbled, like a child tired after a long day, “I’d like to go home now.”

“That sounds good to me, darling,” Vax smiled, “Let’s go brush your teeth, huh? Cos your breath is really...interesting right now.”

Percy laughed weakly, letting the half elf pull him to his feet, “Wine and vomit. Sorry your sugar daddy turned out to be a huge mess.”

“Ah, I’m sure there’s way worse than you out there,” Vax put his arm around the taller man, glad then he was wearing heels or the effect would be a little ruined, “And you have better reason than most.”

It took a few moments for their car to be brought around to the front of the house. A few moments to sit in a stronger breeze and catch their breath, to let the tears dry on Percy’s cheeks and for them both to realise that they’d had nothing to eat all evening and would definitely be stopping for a McDonalds on the way home, if they could convince their chauffeur to go through the drive through.

Feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his life, feeling like he might be on the way towards some kind of healing, Percy murmured, “You know...sometimes I think Percy de Rolo died that day too. Like I haven’t been myself since.”

Vax looked over at him, through his rapidly unravelling hairdo, strands of black hair falling into his eyes. The party behind them, faint with distance, had become just a soft background to their soft little moment.

Vax’ildan you poor fucking fool.

“I like who you are now, Percy.”

[pardontheglueman]

The Lost Genius of The Go-Betweens

The next time you’re down the local boozer with your mates and there’s an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, consider striking up a discussion based on the following question - which is the best band never to have had a top forty hit?  Now, obviously, this is a version of the hoary old chestnut that’s passed many a drunken hour for the sports fan down the ages - who is the best footballer never to have played at a World Cup? The answer to that is a rather obvious one, of course, George Best. The musical variation of this question may be more stimulating.

Whilst Robert Lloyd and the various re-incarnations of his Brummie post-punk combo, The Nightingales, would make any respectable critics’ short list, his guttural, sub-Beefheart squeal was aimed more squarely at the underground than at the mainstream. The same uncompromising mindset also undermines the case for New York’s Suicide and David Thomas’ experimental avant-garage group, Pere Ubu.

Soon enough, however, somebody will alight upon the only truly acceptable answer, at least the only answer acceptable to me, and a good number of other men and women of a certain age, who are each the proud possessors of a pair of rose-tinted glasses. It simply has to be those doyens of guitar pop, the Go-Betweens. The inexplicable absence from the singles chart of these Australian Indie-pop pioneers remains a mystery to this day. Not once, during their illustrious lifetime, 1978-2006 (allowing for a hiatus from 1989 to 2000) did their melodic epistles ever threaten to deliver them pop stardom here, or in America. Incredibly, they even failed to secure a top 40 hit in their native Australia. This, surely, constitutes the greatest miscarriage in the history of popular music since the time Al Jolson blacked up for The Jazz Singer, declared brazenly “you ain’t heard nothing yet” and shamefacedly went on to make his fortune.

Just how the Brisbane based guitar heroes, led by singer/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan failed to achieve even one solitary week in the top 75, despite crafting a plethora of heavenly pop songs that should have made them household names on both sides of the Atlantic, is a mystery that genuinely scrambles the brain. Indeed, it prompts the group’s longtime fans to ask the age-old question, the one that escapes from our lips every time we drunkenly stumble upon a recording of Barry Manilow’s ‘Bermuda Triangle blaring out of a pub jukebox; ‘why did you let this happen, dear Lord, why?’

Consider some of the flotsam and jetsam that has (dis)graced the charts since the advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In no particular order, I give you Vanilla Ice, The Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Milli Vanilli, Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker, Black Lace, MC Hammer and Sting. And, that’s just the tip of a very embarrassing iceberg!

Even more puzzling was the regular presence on the chart of bands that might best be described as second-rate Go-Betweens. The very ordinary Deacon Blue springs to mind here, as well as the Trashcan Sinatras. And, how on earth do you explain the continued presence in the charts, throughout the eighties, of bands that made comparable music, both in terms of substance and style to the Go-Betweens themselves. Aztec Camera, for example, chalked up 12 hits and 74 weeks on the chart while Lloyd Cole, with or without his Commotions recorded 15 hits spread over 62 weeks.

After the band split up in 1989 Forster and McLennan each took a stab at solo stardom, in theory doubling their chances of a hit, but still, the record buying public remained unpersuaded. McLennan in particular, penned a succession of gorgeous ballads throughout the nineties, the best of which, ‘Black Mule’ (1991) and ‘Hot Water’ (1994) are arguably the finest of all his compositions.

Even the French, not exactly renowned for having their finger on the pop pulse, have made the Go-Betweens something of a cause celebre. A 1996 issue of leading rock magazine Les Inrockuptibles pictured the band on its front cover with the strap-line ‘Le groupe le plus sous-estime de l’histoire du rock?’ Which, broadly translates as -  The Go-Betweens the most underrated band in the history of rock? The magazine also ranked ‘16 Lovers Lane’ in its list of the best albums of the period from 1986-1996.        

           Publié en novembre 1996.

The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead

Pixies: Doolittle

The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses

The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane

Portishead: Dummy

PJ Harvey: Dry

Tricky: Maxinquaye

Morrissey: Vauxhall & I

Massive Attack: Blue Lines

Beck: Mellow Gold

The Feelies: The Good Earth

REM: Automatic For The People

James: Stutter

The Divine Comedy: Liberation

The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come

My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

The La’s: The La’s

De La Soul : 3 Feet High And Rising

Bjork: Debut

Jeff Buckley: Grace

This re-appraisal of the band’s standing, together with an invitation to play at the magazine’s 10th Anniversary bash prompted Forster and McLennan to reform the group.

For a brief moment, true devotees of the group allowed themselves to believe that a great wrong might be righted. Perhaps the band might strike lucky and have a song included on the soundtrack of some mega Hollywood Rom-Com. There was a precedent of sorts. The Triffids, their compatriots from Perth and themselves a seminal indie band of the eighties, nearly managed to fluke a hit when their classic song, ‘Bury Me Deep In Love’, was chosen to play over the cheesy wedding scenes of Harold and Marge on the popular daytime soap, Neighbours. The band, profile duly raised, punched home their advantage; they’re follow up single, “Trick Of The Light”, spent a glorious week in the charts, at no 73, in early 1988.

Sadly, despite recording a batch of very fine comeback albums, particularly 2005’s  ‘Oceans Apart’, with its standout tracks ‘Here Comes A City’, ‘Born To A Family’ and ‘Darlinghurst Nights’,  a familiar pattern soon re-emerged - critical acclaim on the one hand and commercial indifference on the other. The Australian media wasn’t averse to chastising the band for their perceived failure either. ABC’S current affairs show The 7:30 Report announced their return to the stage in the following manner -

“The Go-Betweens have been described as the quintessential critics’ band. They made an art form of commercial failure. But as Bernard Brown reports, they’re happy to have earned the industry’s respect, even if the dollars didn’t follow.”

Good old Bernard concluded his report with “But the band’s influence far outweighed its record sales and they wear the tag of commercial failures”.

Any hope that the Go-Betweens could somehow turn the tide disappeared once and for all with the unexpected passing of McLennan in May 2006 at the age of 48.

Any discussion of great songwriting partnerships in popular music would rightly begin with the likes of Lennon and McCartney, Bacharach and David, Leiber and Stoller, or Jagger and Richards. You shouldn’t, though, have to look too far down the list before coming across the names of Forster and McLennan, probably bracketed right alongside Difford and Tilbrook or Morrissey and Marr.

McLennan and Forster, back in harness

Both were capable of writing supremely catchy songs and both had the propensity to pen an eye-catching lyric. Grant McLennan’s ‘River Of Money’, from the ‘Spring Hill Fair’ album (Beggars Banquet, 1984) whilst rather atypical of his output (it’s more of a prose-poem than a pop song) is such a unique lyric that it demands to be quoted in full.

                        River Of Money

It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect sadness to confine itself to its causes. Like a river in flood, when it subsides and the drowned bodies of animals have been deposited in the treetops, there is another kind of damage that takes place beyond the torrent. At first, it seemed as though she had only left the room to go into the garden and had been delayed by stray chickens in the corn. Then he had thought she might have eloped with the rodeo-boy from the neighbouring property but it wasn’t till one afternoon, when he had heard guitar playing coming from her room and had rushed upstairs to confront her and had seen that it was only the wind in the curtains brushing against the open strings, that he finally knew she wasn’t coming back. He had dealt with the deluge alright but the watermark of her leaving was still quite visible. He had resorted to the compass then, thinking that geography might rescue him but after one week in the Victorian Alps he came back north, realising that snow which he had never seen before, was only frozen water. I’ll take you to Hollywood I’ll take you to Mexico I’ll take you anywhere the River of Money flows. I’ll take you to Hollywood I’ll take you to Mexico I’ll take you anywhere the River of Money flows. But was it really possible for him to cope with the magnitude of her absence? The snow had failed him. Bottles had almost emptied themselves without effect. The television, a Samaritan during other tribulations, had been repossessed. She had left her traveling clock though thinking it incapable of functioning in another time-zone; so the long-vacant days of expensive sunlight were filled with the sound of her minutes, with the measuring of her hours.

Not the stuff of the three-minute hero, I appreciate, but the pair were equally comfortable writing the standard verse, chorus, verse pop song that chimed in at a radio-friendly 2.56 and wouldn’t have frightened the horses. From ‘Spring Hill Fair’ they released a trio of pristine singles. McLennan’s pop-by-numbers opener ‘Bachelor Kisses’ was the first to hit the shops (and stay there, in the bargain bin) followed by Forster’s heart-achingly sad confessional, ‘Part Company’;

“That’s her handwriting, that’s the way she writes

From the first letter, I got to this her Bill of Rights”

‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’, the final single from the album, found Forster in a more self- assured frame of mind;

“Feel so sure of our love

I’ll write a song about us breaking up”.

This sequence of starry-eyed singles should have seen the Go-Betweens clasped lovingly to the bosom of the pop establishment. Instead, they remained exiled in the wilderness, otherwise known as the John Peel show.

Still, at the time it seemed to be only a matter of time, before their streak of bad luck would break and the Brisbane boys would be basking in the sun-kissed glow of chart success. Two robust albums followed, ‘Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express’, (Beggars Banquet, 1986) and ‘Tallulah’, (Beggars Banquet, 1987) each spawned excellent singles in Forster’s ‘Spring Rain’, and ‘Head Full Of Pride’, as well as McLennans’ ‘Right Here’ and ‘Bye Bye Pride’.

The great British public, though, remained sceptical. Peel sessions, stadium tours in support of the band’s longtime admirers, R.E.M, contractual tie-in’s with a host of high profile record companies including Rough Trade, Postcard and Capitol, made not the slightest difference to the band’s outsider status. If a pop group can be described as persona non grata, then they were it! The frustration was beginning to tell, driving McLennan to comment that he’d;

“given up on the commercial success thing, which is very good for my state of mind”.

Forster, Morrison, Willsteed, McLennan, Brown - the line-up at the time of 16 Lovers Lane

The reality was, though, that their most “commercial” album, indeed their masterpiece, was still to come but in attempting to break into the charts the band would succeed only in breaking itself apart. The omens were not good from the outset. First off, bass guitarist Robert Vickers, who had been with the group since 1983, handed in his notice. His successor, John Willsteed, seemed the perfect replacement though, and his playing certainly brought a clarity and polish to the band’s sound, in keeping with their new direction of travel. He is credited by some insiders as having played a number of the more intricate guitar parts on ‘16 Lovers Lane’. Unfortunately, Willsteed was a somewhat disruptive personality who seemed to relish making enemies within the band.

Furthermore, Amanda Brown, recruited after contributing violin to the Servants sublime second single ‘The Sun, A Small Star’ began a relationship with McLennan. Suddenly, word leaked out that Forster and Morrison had been in a relationship of sorts for years. Battle lines had been drawn.

At the exact same time as the Forster/McLennan friendship, begun long ago in the Drama department of the University of Queensland, was starting to disintegrate, the power-brokers at the group’s management company were trying to push McLennan into the limelight at the expense of Forster. Author David Nichols, in his book The Go-Betweens, is clear about the re-alignment that took place “every promotional video from ‘Right Here’ onwards shows Forster completely back-grounded”. Seen today the video for ‘Was There Anything I Could do’ makes a toe-curling Exhibit A, with McLennan and Brown cavorting centre stage while Forster is stationed well to the rear. Morrison was deeply unhappy, particularly about the decision to draft in producer Craig Leon. In an interview with Sydney’s ‘On The Street’ she was scathing about the shift in emphasis;

“He was chosen to make this single accessible to people, to get us to crawl out of our cult corner.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGUxZvuRe9k  (Exhibit A)

Despite the recriminations that would inevitably follow, the next five Go-Betweens singles would all be McLennan compositions.

On a more positive note, Forster and McLennan were working on the songs for ‘16 Lovers Lane’ together, rather than working individually. The spirit of collaboration instead of competition at least extended as far as the song-writing! Released in August 1988 (Beggars Banquet /Capitol) and produced by Mark Wallis, who’d worked with the likes of Marianne Faithful, Tom Jones and R.E.M, ‘16 Lovers Lane’ was a sublime collection of glimmering guitar ballads and sugar-spun indie anthems so glossy and sun-kissed that you had to wear dark glasses just to listen to it.

On the release of their debut single ‘Lee Remick’ back in 1978, Forster and McLennan had talked about capturing “that striped sunlight sound” which Forster later defined as being;

“A romantic phrase, but it is abstract. It could be the sun coming through blinds as you play a record. It’s the shimmer of a Fender guitar. It’s harmonies and tough-minded pop songs. It’s lying on a bed beside a window reading a book in the afternoon. It’s the sun on a girl’s shoulder-length hair. It’s Buddy Holly in the desert the day they recorded ‘Maybe Baby’. It’s t-shirts and jeans. It’s Creedence. It’s Bob. It’s Chuck Berry.”

On ‘16 Lovers Lane’, made twenty years after they first articulated the concept, they came closest to perfecting its meaning.

Opening with the McLennan’s unashamedly summery ‘Love Goes On’;

“There’s a cat in the alleyway

Dreaming of birds that are blue

Sometimes girl when I’m lonely

This is how I think about you”

and ending with Forster’s majestically romantic ‘Dive For Your Memory’

“I’d dive for you

Like a bird I’d descend

Deep down I’m lonely

And I miss my friend

So when I hear you saying

That we stood no chance

I’ll dive for your memory

We stood that chance,”

‘16 Lovers Lane’ (once voted 24th greatest album of the eighties, by none other than Rolling Stone magazine) could also boast another pair of McLennan classics in the ‘Streets Of Your Town’ - a song that should have occupied a place in the nation’s pop consciousness in the same way that The La’s ‘There She Goes’ or The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ have done, and the wistful, heart-breaking lament,’ Quiet Heart’.

“I tried to tell you

I can only say it when we’re apart

About this storm inside of me

And how I miss your quiet, quiet heart”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJfP6G0LSEA

‘Streets Of Your Town’ was such an obvious choice for a single that they had two cracks with it, releasing it first in October 1988 and then, refusing to accept defeat, the following summer. Sandwiched in between the twin versions of this neglected classic were two more ‘easy on the ear’ contenders, ‘Was There Anything I Could Do’ (McLennan) and ‘Love Goes On’. Both met the same miserable fate – they were steadfastly ignored.

The failure to impact on the charts, with such an obviously radio-friendly song as ‘Streets Of Your Town’, must have come as a crushing blow to Forster and McLennan and was probably the final nail in the Go-Betweens’ coffin. Broke and broken-hearted they went their separate ways.

That the Go-Betweens had swallowed their pride and danced to the tune of their paymasters, there could be no doubt. They’d flattened out the kinks in their song structures, planed off the angular edges and streamlined their sound until, with each passing record, they began to sound less and less like The Velvet Underground and more and more like Abba. Not that there is anything wrong with Abba or ‘16 Lovers Lane’ itself, indeed in parts it’s a breathtakingly beautiful record. It’s just that 3/5ths of the band didn’t really want to make that type of record anymore. The Go-Betweens sold their soul, but they still didn’t sell any records!

To make matters worse there wasn’t even the consolation of making their mark in the album charts, where more mature bands could be expected to have their egos massaged by a loyal fan base, successfully built up over a lengthy career. All the Go-Betweens could muster, though, was a week at no. 91 in June 1987 with ‘Tallulah’, and one week at no. 81 for ‘16 Lovers Lane’ in September 1988.

The Go-Betweens, however, did make minor inroads upon the UK Independent Charts. Before signing for Beggars Banquet the band had recorded for Rough Trade and Situation 2, qualifying them for inclusion in the Indie charts. Between 83 and 86 they had three entries in the top 40. ‘Cattle and Cane’, an autobiographical McLennan song voted by the Australasian Performing Rights Association in 2001 as one of the country’s 30 greatest songs of all time, reached no. 4 in March 1983, while ‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’ charted at no. 24 toward the end of the same year. A 12 inch only release of ‘Lee Remick’ peaked at no. 7 in November 1986. And there the trail runs cold.

To speculate, now, on the spectacular failure of the Go-Betweens is to set oneself an impossible task. Maybe, it was simply because they never really established a British fan base, maybe Australians appeared less cool than Americans or the dynamic duo just lacked sex appeal. It could be argued that both Forster and McLennan were not distinctive enough as singers, even that they sounded too erudite at times, for daytime radio. Maybe it was Forster’s controversial decision to play a Capitol Records promotional launch of ‘16 Lovers Lane’ in an olive green dress (the company scaled down the record’s promotional budget the very next day). Or, perhaps, it was just that fate was against them all along.

In September 1985 the band had signed with Elektra, hoping for better promotion and distribution of their work. Forster was in optimistic mood “We’ve gone with Elektra – start our LP in just over a week. Without any doubt the songs are our best, we are playing our best, and with ourselves producing this unknown masterpiece, it might be great.” Within weeks Elektra had gone belly up and the band was back to square one again, much to Forster’s chagrin;

“I do think we have a sense of anger – no one’s ever been able to present us to the British public in any sort of cohesive or intelligent way.”

One thing is for sure, they had a fistful of great songs and in Forster, they had someone who gave the band personality. His art-rock background led him to pay particular attention to his stage performance, although we can only presume his tongue was firmly in his cheek with this analysis of his ‘dancing’;

“Bobby Womack himself once told me that I am a soul man and that as far as modern music is concerned there are only three soul men left: himself, me and Prince. Prince came to Brisbane and took the colours, the moves, his whole act from me. It’s true! He’s seen my moves!”

Perhaps The Go-Betweens’ drummer Lindy Morrison, speaking in 1992 was nearer the truth than I, and others, would care to admit when she offered this overview;

“We might have been one of the most lauded bands in the country, but we sold bugger all records. That’s a shame. So let’s not go on about it being one of the most lauded bands in the country, cause who cares? We didn’t sell records, we weren’t a popular band, and I’m sick of hearing about the fact that we were so fabulous – because if we were so fabulous, why didn’t anyone buy our records?”

Forster managed a slightly more laconic response;

“It was quite freeing to realise, our group is so good, and we’re getting nowhere. After a while, the lack of recognition was so absurd it was funny”.

Following their initial break up, the compilation album ‘1978-1990’ was released and allowed the music press to pass their verdict on the life and times of the Go-Betweens. Melody Maker’s Dave Jennings could barely contain his anger; “The fact that the Go-Betweens never became massive is a disgusting injustice…..take the Go-Betweens to your heart, where they belong.” In 1996, writing for Select magazine Andrew Male wrote that “The only problem with listening to the Go-Betweens now is that they can’t help remind you of how crap the eighties were. The Go-Betweens produced records of quiet brilliance and got nowhere. Sting sang about a sodding turtle and became a millionaire.”  

Even now, though, there isn’t exactly a critical consensus. Simon Reynolds in his definitive account of the post-punk years 1978-1984, “Rip It Up And Start Again”, devotes only one sentence to our Antipodean protagonists; “The Go-Betweens, who hailed from Australia but had a spare, plangent sound similarly rooted in Television and early Talking Heads”. It should be noted, of course, that at this stage The Go-Betweens only had ‘Send Me A Lullaby’ and ‘Before Hollywood’ under their belt. Bob Stanley in his widely acclaimed book “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop” (2013) omits them entirely from his 800-page anthology.

Any discussion of Literate Pop, though, if you are inclined to concede that the genre actually exists, if you believe great pop can be thought through, rather than instinctively felt, be cerebral rather than corporeal, would have to take into account the Go-Betweens’ collective body of work. Their singular form of romanticism, their shimmering chorus’s, their quirky, idiosyncratic lyrics and their wry pop sensibility all combined to make them one of the great post-punk pop groups. They made two albums, ‘Spring Hill Fair’ and ‘16 Lovers Lane’ that would lose nothing in comparison with Costello’s ‘King Of America’, Lloyd Cole’s ‘Rattlesnakes’, Scritti Politti’s ‘Songs To Remember’, Mickey Newbury’s ‘Look’s Like Rain’ or the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Everything Must Go’. In this context, their work will be remembered long after their more commercially successful contemporaries have disappeared from the recorded history of popular music.

To end, though, at the beginning. In 1978, after the local success of their debut single, ‘Lee Remick’, Forster dreamt of setting sail for England. Given the torturous fate that awaited them on these shores, his words seem remarkably poignant now.

“England, I think, has the greatest acceptance of new music, they’re more open-minded. They write it in the NME and people buy your records. Any country that can accept Jilted John, X-Ray Spex and the Only Ones……there’s a place for the Go-Betweens.”

http://www.go-betweens.org.uk/

[breeeliss]

[Miraculous Ladybug]: Misdial

now that authors have been revealed i can finally post my spring exchange fic!

this is a chlonette story that i wrote for @megatraven ​ based on her chlonette bullet point fic (which you should totally read btw). i always love and excuse to write chlonette, so i hope you all enjoy it :)

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Link to Archive of Our Own: [AO3]

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Title: Misdial

Summary: When Chloe wakes up in the middle of the night, she desperately tries to call Sabrina to help her get back to sleep.

She misdials and calls Marinette instead.

Misdial

Chloe needs to hear Sabrina’s voice.

Her eyes feel heavy with the pressure of tears she’s forcing herself to swallow back, and she can hear herself pulling lungfuls of air into her chest while she yanks her phone off the charger. Her fingers are shaking so terribly it takes her four tries to correctly type her pass code, but she sees Sabrina’s name on her recent calls list and her thumb mashes down on the screen.

She presses the phone tightly to her ear and rocks back and forth on the bed as it rings once, twice, three times. Chloe thinks it must be at least two in the morning, and she knows that Sabrina isn’t ever up this late. She tends to sleep through phone calls in the middle of the night, and Chloe is prepared for the sound of her voicemail and the crippling resignation that’ll come when she’ll have to get through this alone. Chloe bites down on her lip and nods to herself. That’s okay. Sabrina needs her sleep. She understands.

Chloe’s about to give up when the sixth ring is cut off and the line picks up on the other end. She doesn’t waste time with greetings or apologies. The words are already tripping out of her mouth.

“I-I had it again,” she chokes out, her voice thick with tears. “It was the same dream again but a hundred times worse, and I woke up with my heart in my throat and there was no one around and I panicked. I-It felt really real this time, Sabrina, and I was all alone and I couldn’t hear anyone or see anyone and I feel like I’m about to throw up a-and I just…..I just, I don’t know what to do and I’m too scared to go back to sleep, please , I can’t calm down and everything feels so wrong!”

The panic in her voice is starting to make her hyperventilate, so she stops and places a hand over her mouth so she can breathe in through her nose, just like Sabrina taught her the first time she called her in the middle of the night. Chloe’s heart is still racing, as if her body still thinks she’s in danger, and she’s patiently waiting for Sabrina to respond so that she can finally relax.

She hears a voice on the other end — one filled with worry, words slurring together out of exhaustion — but Chloe freezes up in horror when she realizes that it isn’t Sabrina’s.

“Um….wha’s wrong now?”

Chloe rips the phone away from her ear and lets out a hushed curse when she realizes she hadn’t called Sabrina. She called Marinette Dupain-Cheng, phone number still saved in her contacts because of the French assignment they were paired for last week.

She hears Marinette yawning over the phone, and suddenly waves of sick humiliation are shocking Chloe out of her previous meltdown, making her throat close up and her tears run dry. The worst part is that neither of them are hanging up and the severity of everything that had just come pouring out of Chloe’s mouth is just hanging between them, heavy, shameful, and inescapable.

Chloe’s phone shakes in her hands and she doesn’t know how to work back from this. Because the parts of herself that she compartmentalizes and reserves for school don’t include weakness, don’t include nightmares, don’t include pleading for someone to listen. She’s put far too much effort towards keeping all of that exclusive only to freely hand it over to someone who’d sooner rather give her a hands on lesson in karma than bear the burden of understanding.

“Forget I ever called you!” she shouts into the phone, the crack in her voice taking away from its bite. “Forget I said anything! This never happened, and we’re both hanging up. Got it?”

She waits for an affirmative so that she can hang up, hold herself in the dark, and hope she can stop her thoughts long enough to get even a couple of hours before school in the morning. But she hears Marinette shifting and the sound of a lamp being clicked on.

“Wait wait, hold on, don’t hang up,” Marinette rushes out, her voice sounding alert and urgent. “Chloe, I don’t. I mean I dunno what’s going on really but I’ll….I’ll listen ‘til you can fall back asleep. And I guess.” She pauses to stop a yawn. “I guess I could talk to you, if you need it. I can tell you some stories or something.”

Chloe notices how smooth and calming Marinette’s voice is when she’s tired, and it’s exactly what she needs this late at night when her brain still replaying bits of her nightmare and making her want to curl up into a ball again. But Marinette sounds almost too sympathetic, and it’s odd to be at the receiving end of such treatment. It’s a pull that she’s not sure she wants to indulge in. “I-I don’t know about that.”

“I don’t mind, I promise,” Marinette told her. “It’s okay, you know. To call me.”

It’s tempting to just say no and hang up — this is Marinette, after all, and the one thing that Chloe knows about her relationship with Marinette is that they only barely tolerate each other on their best days. But Chloe doesn’t think she can fall asleep when she’s this riled up, and more than anything, she doesn’t want to be left alone in her huge bedroom with nothing to keep her company other than the sound of her own breathing. She’s reluctant to speak the words, but she clutches the phone tightly in her hands, and nods to herself to work up the courage.

“Okay.” 

Chloe tells her about empty classrooms, white voids of endless space, and long lines of familiar faces — some smiling, some stoic, most sad, angry, and disappointed. She says that when they speak, no sound comes out, and when she runs to touch them, they move further and further away until they’re specks in a distance she can’t reach. When she calls for help, her throat strains and becomes sore, but even her voice is rendered silent and no help comes. So she sinks to the floor, hopeless, lost, and confused, somehow feeling more isolated than she’s felt in her life, and also no different than she feels everyday.

When she finishes, she’s crying and breathing much too quickly again. So Marinette tells her to breathe in through her nose for a count of five, breathe out through her mouth for a count of three, and starts telling her stories so that Chloe can focus on something simple.

Marinette tells her about the time she stuffed a stray puppy into her jacket when she was six and kept it in her room for two weeks before she was caught. She tells her about the six tiered cake she made her parents for their anniversary last year. She describes all of the designs she wants to finish sewing before the year is done. She even admits to the time she almost burned down the kitchen in the bakery trying to bake a baguette for the first time without supervision.

“I shoved the paddleboard in the oven to take the bread out and it comes out charred and on fire,” Marinette laughs. “So I start screaming and dump it into the sink so I can douse it with water, except the smoke alarms start going off and my parents catch me standing on the counters, waving a wet towel in front of the detector to try and clear the smoke away. Then they just stare at me for a long while before they burst into laughter right there in the middle of the kitchen.”

Chloe chuckles tiredly, and Marinette feels a small swell of pride for being able to make her laugh. “You must’ve looked like an idiot.”

Marinette grins. “I’m sure I looked like a crazy person when they found me. I was probably covered in flour, yeast, and burnt pieces of bread.”

By the time Marinette tells her about the half hour fire safety lecture that her father made her sit through after the baguette debacle, she hears Chloe’s breathing finally even out into gentle snores. She lays the phone on the pillow by her ear, and for a moment it feels like Chloe is right next to her, calmly sleeping. Marinette isn’t used to a Chloe so subdued and quiet, and she finds the sounds of Chloe’s gentle breathing incredibly relaxing.

Her exhaustion catches up to her quicker than she realizes, and Marinette closing her eyes for just a few seconds turns into her falling asleep as well.

Chloe’s alarm goes off at seven in the morning, she realizes that she’s successfully slept through the rest of the night without any troubles.

Her phone is still laying on her mattress next to her head, and she notices she’s still in a call with Marinette.

Chloe picks up the phone and can just barely hear her breathing on the other end. She wonders if she’s going to be able to get to class on time today.

She smiles, whispers a “thanks” into the receiver, and hangs up.

The energy between them is considerably subdued in class the next morning, and everyone notices.

Marinette bumps foreheads with Chloe as they try to enter the classroom at the same time, and everyone inside noticeably tenses up in preparation for the impending explosion. But Marinette merely bows her head and gestures for Chloe to go first. Chloe nods, holds her bag close to her side, and heads straight for her seat. There are no biting comments made for the entire morning — not even when Chloe comes up with a poor excuse for her missing homework, not even when Marinette’s foot hooks into the strap of her bag and leaves her half-stumbling down the stairs.

They sit next to each other during visual arts, and normally they can’t last through the period without causing at least one fight. It’s when they go through the period without even staring at each other that Alya notices something wrong.

“Did the two of you sign onto some silent pact that I don’t know about?” she asks Marinette in their next class. “Seriously, you two are normally at each other’s throat right now.”

Marinette shrugs and starts copying the day’s assignment from the board. “Just a little tired. Not in the mood.”

“That’s it?” Alya asks incredulously. “You’re a little tired…”

“Mmhm,” Marinette replies absently, and Alya knows that a satisfying answer isn’t within her reach.

Marinette darts her eyes across the aisle to see Chloe shrugging off Sabrina’s questions and Sabrina patiently nodding and settling back into her seat. Chloe looks up at Marinette’s desk and their eyes meet briefly before they both bunch up their shoulders and force their gazes away. What happened last night wasn’t trivial, and its power and importance are bleeding into their normal interactions, leaving them without the vocabulary to put a name to what this new energy is. They sprinted over a line that they silently agreed during their rivalry to never cross, and now that they’re sitting on the other side of it, Marinette finds herself feeling confused and thoughtful — perhaps even longing for something that might take a bit of courage to ask for.

When the lunch pause arrives, Chloe grabs Marinette’s wrist and pulls her aside into an empty hallway, eyeing both directions to make sure that no one has followed them, that no one can hear.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her gaze resolutely focused on the ground by her feet. “What happened last night was a mistake and it won’t happen again. I won’t call you again.”

Marinette isn’t meant to respond, because Chloe doesn’t give her room to give one. Instead, Chloe looks up to search for any sign of protest in Marinette’s eyes, finds none, and turns to leave without waiting for any sort of answer.

She can tell that Chloe’s forced a wall between them that didn’t need to be erected, and Marinette wastes no time breaking it back down, Chloe’s ulterior motives be damned.

“I didn’t mind!” she calls down the hall, and this has Chloe pausing and looking at her over her shoulder.

“I didn’t mind,” Marinette repeats. “I meant what I said, you know. You can call me anytime.”

Chloe frowns at her — as if her kindness is a foreign taste on her tongue that she’s still deciding if she wants to swallow or spit out. Perhaps she’s decided to accept it, or perhaps a fight isn’t something she can pull out of her belt today, because she simply nods, continues on her way, and leaves Marinette standing in the hallway alone.

It isn’t until a few more nights pass that Chloe calls Marinette again.

She’s hiding under her comforter, hugging a pillow to her chest, and cursing loudly when Sabrina doesn’t pick up the phone. Chloe wants to be able to swallow her pride and not seek out any further help, but she knows that she’ll be too scared to go to sleep without someone to talk her down, so she ignores the shame creeping into her chest and dials Marinette.

She answers on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”

Chloe laughs breathlessly — both out of relief and out of a lack of knowing where to start. “Everything….I don’t know. I feel sick to my stomach.”

“Another nightmare?”

“Mmhm” Chloe hums, feeling her tears hit the fabric of her nightgown.

“It’s okay,” Marinette soothes. “You can tell me about it.”

The impulse inside of her telling her to not share anything personal with someone like Marinette is much easier to ignore tonight, and she only hesitates for a few seconds before she’s telling her about her nightmare.

She was four years old again, sitting in the vestibule of their hotel suite with her birthday dress pooled around her. Her mother was standing by the door with her back to Chloe, holding two suitcases in either hand. Chloe kept asking her to come back and open her presents with her, but her mother didn’t answer. Instead she kept her back turned and her grip tight on the handles of her bags. Chloe crawled over and yanked on her mother’s long, scarlet coat, begging her to turn around and say something to her, to at least say goodbye. But her mother simply pried her little hands off of her coat and left without saying a word. Time passes differently in dreams, but it felt as if Chloe had been banging on that door and screaming after her mother for hours, terrified that she’d finally been left alone, and that no one cared to come back and find her.

It takes Marinette almost a whole minute to respond after Chloe finishes. “What happened to your mother?”

“She and my father got divorced when I was really young,” Chloe mumbles. “They fought a lot, that’s all I remember. She moved out on my fourth birthday, and gave custody to my father.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t hear from her, really, and my father never told me why she didn’t want to stay with me. She just….left.” Chloe laughs mirthlessly and scrubs a hand down her face. “I mean, that’s so fucked, right? What mother just willingly leaves her kid and doesn’t tell them why?”

Chloe leaves the question hanging, but the insecure, lonely, and confused parts of herself — tinier and younger than all the rest — already fill in the answers without her prompting. There must have been something wrong with her, something that her mother could detect even when she was too small to notice it, and it must have been enough to make her mother not want to put in the effort. It’s the same something that makes it hard to make friends at school, that made Adrien drift away from her in favor of other people, that makes the thought of losing what little she has absolutely terrifying. So terrifying that it wakes her up at night, makes her want to retch into her sink, and makes her feel so cripplingly lonely that even comfort from someone she can’t stand is better than trying to trudge through it alone.

Maybe she’s just tired and disoriented, but it’s hard to find motive for that hatred and dislike when Marinette’s voice is smooth, sweet, and easy to match her breaths to. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you until you fall asleep?”

Chloe needs Sabrina on nights like this because she needs to know that, even in the dead of night with no one else around, someone wants to put time into her. It’s a high standard to hold anyone to. Being there for someone so fiercely is close to impossible, and Chloe loves Sabrina for being willing to try, even though she’d never say it aloud.

It’s because of a stupid accident, but suddenly Marinette’s tapped in to help lift the burden. She’ll want the reasons later, but for now it’s a delightful relief to know that Marinette is here, Marinette is staying, and Marinette isn’t going to leave.

“Yes please.”

Marinette suspects that Chloe’s mother was a rubber stopper keeping in years worth of pent up insecurities. The moment she came up, everything else came spilling out.

These aren’t like the polished, rehearsed stories Chloe tells in between classes where she is staying in beachside resorts in Sicily, going on shopping trips along the Champs-Élysées, dining with celebrities that come to meet her father. Here on the phone, Chloe is tripping over details she can’t quite remember, stuttering through memories she’s reluctant to reveal, and desperately waiting for Marinette’s hums to let her know that she’s still listening and that’s it’s still alright to continue. They sound like stories that have never seen the light, and Marinette wonders just how long Chloe’s been holding onto them.

“She sent me a porcelain doll with blonde hair for Christmas when I was five,” Chloe rambles. “A silver jewelry box when I was six. A velvet New Years’ dress when I was seven. And a gift card when I was eight. After that, she’d just keep sending cards of money until I was eleven….and then she didn’t send anything at all. It was the same week my father was away for his campaign. So my butler sat with me on Christmas Eve, and we ate alone. He cut me just one slice on my favorite cake, and I went to bed early. And I never opened my presents the next morning.”

Marinette hears the tremble in her voice. “I’m so sorry,” she breathes. “That must’ve been awful.”

“You ever see someone hit their child?” Chloe asks. “And you sort of feel your stomach turn? You feel gross and sick and you know that what you’re looking at is just wrong? That happens when I see a mom hugging their kid. Adrien understood. We used to call each other when we were younger when we had nightmares about our parents. But Adrien stopped having them a while ago, and I….I guess I felt bad for calling him.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” Marinette says. “Adrien loves you.”

“I don’t want to bring up awful memories for him,” Chloe explains. “That’s why I call Sabrina. She doesn’t ask questions much. She just listens.”

“And me?”

Chloe stays silent and Marinette can hear her shifting around in her bed. “You offered to let me call.”

Chloe’s stories are so horribly sad — full of loneliness, longing, and bitterness — and she wonders if it matters more to her that people offer to do things for her as opposed to simply doing what she says she needs.

Marinette smiles softly. “I did.”

Eventually, they talk themselves out and the two of them lay in silence without bothering to end the call.

Chloe can hear Marinette’s breaths getting longer and deeper and knows she’s about to fall asleep. It’s horribly late, and Chloe’s own exhaustion is starting to pull her under as well, but there’s a question mulling around in her head that she knows she’ll hate herself later for not asking. “Marinette?”

Marinette suddenly breathes in sharply, as if she were pulled out of the doze she was falling into. “Hmm?”

She thinks she has the question ready on the tip of her tongue, but she pulls it back and reworks it at the last minute, afraid of the answer she’ll receive. Nights like this feel surreal and separated from the reality that Marinette and she build up during school where everyone is privy to their interactions. It almost feels wrong to try and attach rationality to it, but Chloe needs to feel like this isn’t some cruel joke or elaborate fluke that’s going to fall out from underneath her when it’s finished playing out. It feels strange that Chloe would actually be worried about Marinette hurting her for once, but she realizes how much she’s given Marinette in just two evenings, and it’s important that she knows what all this baggage is being shouldered for.

She swallows. “Why are you doing this for me?”

But her answer doesn’t come. Marinette stays silent, and after a few minutes pass, Chloe realizes that she must have already passed out on the other end. “Guess I should’ve asked before you were falling asleep,” she jokes to no one.

Chloe cards her fingers through her hair, the anticipation built up in her loosening and releasing into a mix of relief and disappointment. “Whatever,” she sighs. “I guess it doesn’t really matter now.”

She checks the clock and calculates that she’ll get in about three good hours of sleep before school in the morning, and immediately dreads the news. She knows Marinette can’t hear her, but she whispers to her over the phone anyway. “Thanks, though. Night.”

She drops the phone on the pillow next to her and stares at the molding on her ceiling. Her body is already begging for rest, and it doesn’t take long before she’s falling into a dreamless sleep.

Marinette waits for the line to disconnect before she locks her phone and places it on the night table behind her. She flips onto her back and stares at the few stars she can see through her skylight, knowing that being able to stay awake in class tomorrow morning was going to be close to impossible.

She chews on her bottom lip — Chloe’s question still echoing in her head — and wonders herself what the answer to it could possibly be.

They’re both still silent the next day at school, but when their eyes catch in the middle of class, they don’t rip their stares away.

It’s as if Chloe’s trying to attach the voice to the face — to convince herself that the same Marinette who sits in that seat in class everyday is the same Marinette who is patient in the late hours of the evening and is willing to lull Chloe with silly tales and comforting words that she’s not obligated to give. It’s a looming enigma that she craves a resolution for, and she knows without having to see it for herself that her eyes are imploring, almost as if she’s silently asking the question again and begging for a response.

But Marinette gives none, and instead stares back at her looking unabashedly apologetic. Despite her lack of answers, Marinette doesn’t attempt to shy away from Chloe’s prodding. Chloe hopes that it’s a sign she’s just as confused as Chloe is — perhaps wishing she had something to give but is reluctantly coming up short — but she realizes that the one shortcoming in all this is that, despite two nights of talking, they don’t really know each other very well. So all Chloe can do is hope she’s reading Marinette correctly and isn’t setting herself up to be disappointed, or worse, humiliated.

They’re eyeing each other long enough for Sabrina, Alya, and even Adrien to notice. It isn’t until their teacher snaps at both of them to keep their eyes up front at the demonstration that they both square their shoulders and leave the uncertainty dangling.

Chloe doesn’t have a nightmare that night. Instead, she finds herself unable to fall asleep, and she just needs noise to fill up the room. She calls Marinette and puts her on speaker phone.

She doesn’t have the time to open up with a lame excuse for her call when Marinette interrupts her and says, “I do it because I want to do it.”

It sounds rushed and breathless, like Marinette had to force all the words out for fear of bottling them up again. Chloe sits up and puts the phone closer to her lips. “...what?”

“Me, talking to you?” Marinette explains. “I do it because I want to. I mean. Does there have to be some other, more complex reason for that? I want to help you if you’re feeling so bad. I want to be there if you need someone to talk to. So as long as you keep calling, I’ll….I’ll keep answering.”

Chloe clutches the fabric of her pants. “You care that I’m feeling bad and that I need someone to talk to?”

Marinette makes a shocked noise. “Of course I do. Why would you think I’d never care about your pain?”

“Because we don’t care for each other in general,” Chloe replies. “I just assumed it all carried over.”

“This has nothing to do with school. It has everything to do with making sure that you have someone to support you when you need it. Everyone deserves that. You deserve that.”

In the past, Chloe has always resented that do-gooder, selfless, and morally upstanding personality that Marinette touted about so often. It’s always felt like a demand for attention, and Chloe resents anyone who would try to make her feel invisible and ignored. It’s never appeared like a sacrifice until now, never appeared like a sincere and effortful desire to want to make a difference that has nothing to do with herself. That’s the sort of thing Chloe admires Ladybug for — for helping people because it’s what should be done and not for any other reason.

But Ladybug is a superhero. Marinette isn’t. Somehow, that makes the admission feel much heavier.

“Oh….” she mumbles. “Um. Thanks.”

Marinette chuckles. “No problem.” She clears her throat. “Ah, I’m sorry, I cut you off. Did you have another dream?”

“No,” Chloe says. “I just….felt like calling.”

“Do you still want to talk?”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Marinette rolls onto her stomach and covers her mouth to smother her laughter. “Wait, how long were you wearing that around the house?”

“At least until I was ten,” Chloe admits with a chuckle. “I really liked bees. They were selling these stupid bee antennae headbands in front of a craft store and I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. I slept in them.”

Marinette wishes she had pictures to show, because the imagery alone is enough to shave off most of the threatening and cruel front that Chloe loves to put up in front of her. “And your father let you do that?”

“He didn’t want to see me cry,” Chloe shrugs. “I sort of think he was out of his element raising me so he just gave me anything I asked for because he didn’t know how to shop for me. One time I asked him for this really specific makeup kit for my birthday, and he just bought all fifteen of them because he didn’t know which one I’d like better.”

“Well, he’s….trying.”

“I mean, I can’t even complain. Talk about having perks.”

“Yeah, I imagine being filthy rich helps.”

“Oh come on, your parents never spoiled you on holidays?”

“Not until recently, actually,” Marinette thinks back. “And by recently, I mean we’ve only really splurged the last three Christmases or so. My parents started the bakery up when I was around two I think? So money was tight until we were in the black, and we kinda just kept up the whole frugality thing for a while. One Christmas present, one birthday present, no extraneous expenses, shopping off season, things like that.”

Chloe pauses. “Oh….um….I didn’t — ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marinette assures. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. That’s why I started babysitting. Gave me a ton of extra spending money.”

“How’d your parents start the bakery?”

“They pooled together all their savings for a lease and one oven. After that it was just a matter of getting in customers to make up the difference. My father was always sure it was going to work out, but my mother was a lot more intense about it if that makes sense.”

“Like she took it more seriously?”

Marinette hums. “Not more seriously, per se. My father was plenty serious, he was just more easy going and optimistic about it. My mom’s like me — she’s a major perfectionist. She was spending nights staying up late getting recipes just right so that people would buy our stuff. She didn’t want to make a mistake, and she wanted everything to be just right so that we wouldn’t lose any money. She was a lot more paranoid about losing what they had.”

Chloe snorts. “And that’s like you? You don’t strike me as the paranoid type.”

“I try to keep my cool about it, but no, I freak out about everything,” Marinette sighs. “I have to keep a color coded calendar to make sure I’m on top of Class Rep stuff, I start designs over if one stitch is crooked, I study until I fully understand everything and get all the practice problems right, and….I dunno, I get really annoyed with low grades. Makes me feel like I didn’t try hard enough.”

“Jesus….” Chloe comments. “You do fine in school though.”

“I do fine because I study my ass off. And I’m not really a natural at designing. I’m good at it because I worked hard at it.”

“See, I’m not like that.”

Marinette frowns. “Yeah, Sabrina does all your homework.”

“Yeah, but you don’t get it, I can’t force myself to do stuff like projects and homework and studying. It’s just so pointless, you know? Like I don’t get wasting my time doing homework assignments and projects if I understand everything already. Sabrina offers to do it, and I don’t say no because she likes it. But I could be doing something that doesn’t make me want to shoot my brains out. Plus I do fine on tests anyway, so I don’t know why teachers complain about me so much.”

“I always thought you get high scores because you cheated off Sabrina.”

Chloe scoffs. “Give me some credit. I’ve only ever done that twice, and it was because I forgot to study or studied the wrong thing or something. I do fine on tests.”

“So you getting like the top three scores in the class is just you being a secret prodigy?” Marinette smirks.

“What do you mean secret? I’m freakin’ brilliant, that’s not a secret.”

Marinette laughs again and smiles brightly when Chloe joins her over the phone. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard Chloe laugh in a way that wasn’t derisive or mocking. It’s a nice, relaxed sound and Marinette finds herself wishing she could hear it more often. “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“I dunno,” Marinette mumbles. “I feel like I had you pegged all wrong this whole time. Like with school. I sorta just thought you were being lazy and conceited. Didn’t think you studied to be honest.”

“My father would kill me if I flunked out of school, Marinette,” Chloe says. “But….I guess I can say the same for you. I just thought you were a natural at everything and loved to show off about it. Didn’t think you were the type of person to kill yourself to get everything done.”

“Well, that’s what happens when two people don’t talk to each other, I guess.”

“Yeah….”

Marinette remembers Nino telling her that he and Chloe were in école together, and she was pretty normal. It wasn’t until they all started coll ège — right around the time Chloe’s mother stopped sending cards, Marinette realizes — that she started being so nasty to everyone, especially Marinette. Although, considering Chloe’s admission just now, Marinette thinks that suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. It’s not enough for her to excuse all the horrible behavior, but being able to just talk to each other like this and learn more about the other makes their rivalry, which had before been so positively perplexing, deceptively simple to comprehend.

Along the same vein, Chloe wasn’t as simple a person as Marinette thought.

It’s hard to force someone like her into a box when Marinette takes the time to realize that Sabrina is her only real friend and she frequently has nightmares about being alone and abandoned. It’s impossible to scrounge up the energy to continue such a ridiculous rivalry when Marinette now has all these pieces of Chloe to carry with her.

At that moment — exactly two weeks after their first call — Marinette feels something shift between them.

“Marinette?”

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “Spaced out for a second.”

“Are you falling asleep? I can hang up.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Marinette assures. “I don’t want to stop talking yet. Unless you do.”

“No,” Chloe grins. “I’m good.”

It feels so silly to ignore Marinette in school now.

Chloe knows and understands too much about her for there to be any heart behind the antagonizing act that used to be so much fun to keep up. Plus, if she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t want to keep it up anymore. It’s on par with publicly embarrassing Sabrina and putting her down for everyone to witness. Despite what others in class may think about her, Chloe is loyal, and she does her best to keep those who matter in a higher regard than everyone else. Marinette has slowly and carefully slotted herself into a category with two other people who matter to her greatly.

“Can I run something by you?” Chloe mutters to Marinette as they sit next to each other in visual arts.

“No, I’m not changing my mind, Erin didn’t deserve to win Project Runway.”

“We are not talking about that again. Plus, her line was amazing and you’re really just being immature right now.”

Marinette lifts her head from her work to smirk at her. “What is it?”

Chloe stares down at her sketch and shrugs her shoulders, trying to seem nonchalant. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird we don’t really talk to each other in school?”

“We’re talking to each other now.”

“Yeah, because we’re doing a project and we have to. That’s not what I meant.”

“Wait….you mean like….like just in general?”

Chloe can feel her face getting warm and she shifts her hair over one shoulder so that Marinette can’t see her ears getting red. “Forget it. It’s stupid.”

“No, I wanna hear,” Marinette asks, moving her chair a few centimeters closer. “You want us to talk more?”

“Yes and no,” Chloe sighs. “I just….I dunno, I’ve been thinking and it’s kind of obvious that our whole ‘make each other’s lives miserable’ shtick got old already.”

Marinette sucks on her bottom lip. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

“So,” Chloe continues, “I just figured that we might as well make it an official truce.”

Chloe isn’t sure what she was expecting as an answer, but it certainly wasn’t Marinette beaming at her with all of her teeth showing and bouncing excitedly in her seat. “Oh my gosh,” she whispers, “you wanna be friends!”

“Shut up!” Chloe snaps. “Stop making it sound so sentimental.”

“But that’s what it is, right? You wanna be friends! Like say hi to each other in the mornings, make small talk in between classes, study during library blocks, and cute stuff like that.”

“Oh my God , forget I asked.”

“No, no, no!” Marinette laughs, placing a quick hand on Chloe’s arm that feels very foreign but not at all unpleasant. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease too hard. But I’d like that!”

Chloe nervously twirls her pen in her hands. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Marinette agrees. “I feel like it makes sense at this point. We already talk so much over the phone, it wouldn’t feel weird or sudden at all. Besides, I like talking to you if that wasn’t already obvious.”

It’s strange being at the receiving end of Marinette’s kindness when it’s in the form of touches and smiles. It’s much different than her words said over a phone when Chloe can’t see or be near her, and it feels intimate in a way she hadn’t expected it to feel. She hadn’t bothered to notice before but Marinette with a smile on her face — apples of her cheeks high and blushing — is simply pretty, and it warms Chloe’s entire chest to know that Marinette is reserving such a pretty smile for her because she actually enjoys talking to her. Chloe has always envisioned the two of them hating each other for eternity, and all of this pleasantness is a development she never would’ve expected and certainly doesn’t know how to handle yet.

All she knows is that she wants to keep Marinette smiling at her like this. She doesn’t want to lose something that feels this nice.

“Perfect,” Chloe grins back. She holds out her hand. “So truce?”

Marinette smirks and shakes it in agreement. “Truce. Although I hope this doesn’t mean we have to stop bickering. Bickering with you is quite fun.”

“Oh please,” Chloe chuckles, leaning in closer to whisper conspiratorially so that no one else can hear. “Don’t think this means I’m just gonna hand you my good graces on a silver platter. I will still work to kick your ass and everybody else’s asses when I have to.”

Marinette cups her chin in her hand, looking positively smug. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from a person as competitive as you.”

Chloe sticks her tongue out. “Winky face emoji.”

Marinette suddenly looks taken aback and stares back in amusement. “What?”

Chloe frowns. “What?”

“Are you being cheeky with me?” Marinette gasps in delight.

“Shut up .”

Marinette pouts and hangs her head to the side like a kicked puppy. “Frowny face emoji.”

“See, now you’re just being childish.”

Marinette winks. “You get a kick out of it, admit it.”

“I can already feel it. You’re just going to start being a completely different brand of annoying, aren’t you?”

“Hey, I never said you were getting any silver platters from me, either.”

Marinette ignores the incredulous stares from her classmates as she walks towards Chloe’s desk the next morning and gently squeezes her arm. “Hey, Chloe.”

“Morning, Marinette,” Chloe smirks. She turns in her seat and catches Marinette’s hand. “Oh! Before I forget. I found that old maths study sheet my tutor gave me a couple of weeks ago for the next unit. I have it photocopied if you want it.”

“Oh seriously? That’d be amazing thank you. I’ll have your croissant payment tomorrow in exchange, I promise.”

Chloe pouts. “Ooh, put a chocolate one in there for me?”

Marinette rolls her eyes affectionately. “I’ll remember.”

“Thank you!” Chloe grins and lets Marinette go so that she can sit in her own seat.

There’s a hilariously long silence that permeates through the classroom while the two of them start to get their books out for the next lesson. It lasts about twenty seconds before Alya cracks and breaks the silence.

“What in the holy fucking hell was that!?”

About a month later, Chloe notices that she can’t remember the last time she’s had a nightmare. But calling Marinette every few nights to talk themselves to sleep has become a habit that Chloe still hasn’t broken.

It never occurs to Marinette that Chloe’s cease fire would ever extend to the rest of their classmates until Chloe is leaning across their study table, tapping Rose on the arm, and complimenting her new haircut.

Rose reaches behind her to rub at the back of her head. “Really? Oh, I’m so glad to hear, I’m still getting used to it.”

“It’s nice,” Chloe shrugs, as if she doesn’t realize the weight of what she’s done. “Looks better when you keep it short in the back.”

Rose giggles and thanks Chloe before smiling down at her assignment and humming to herself while she works. Marinette shoves her elbow into Chloe’s side and raises an amused brow at her, but Chloe merely sticks out her tongue, rolls her eyes, and turns back to the geography assignment that Marinette spent close to an hour over the phone last night convincing Chloe to attempt.

Sabrina, on the other hand, leans over from the other side of Chloe and mouths a surreptitious “oh my God” before darting her eyes towards Chloe and covering her mouth in shock. Marinette’s shoulders shake as she laughs silently in return, trying to not make a bigger deal out of it so as to avoid Chloe’s annoyance.

She plays a small game with herself where she tries to count the amount of times Chloe picks a fight, throws an insult, or mocks someone in their class over the course of the day. With the exception of a brief tantrum over their upcoming maths test and a snappy insult aimed at Alix when she told Chloe that her makeup was clashing with her clothes, Chloe is on her best behavior. Marinette can’t even attribute it to a lack of opportunities. Nathanael clipped shoulders with her in the hallway that morning, but she merely rolled her eyes and said nothing. When Nino gently teases her for the late slip she gets after coming back from their lunch pause too late, she merely gives him a quick bras d’honneur without the teacher seeing and hurries to her seat without any words spoken.

It certainly isn’t perfect, but Marinette knows Chloe enough to discern containment and control when she sees it, especially coming from someone who usually bursts from the seams with contempt and desperately begs to be seen. The timing of all this is not lost on her either.

She thinks that it shouldn’t be easy for Chloe and Marinette to be huddling together in the hallway, shoulders pressed together, gushing over the Fall makeup line that Chloe had been praising last night on the phone. But the gigantic rift that’s separated them for years has suddenly been filled in one fell swoop, and Marinette is still sitting in awe at how something so incredible could have happened. It feels like a slate that was never meant to be filled in the first place has finally been cleared and everything is as it should be.

It sounds narcissistic, but Marinette can’t help but wonder if their new friendship is pivotal in some way — central in a way that Chloe’s friendships with Adrien and Sabrina haven’t been. All of that hatred that Chloe had thrown her way for so long suddenly feels like a veneer covering something deeper that she never planned for Marinette to see.

A veneer for dreams, fears and thoughts — maybe even something far more precious that Marinette hasn’t even gotten the chance to see yet.

Things start to shift when Marinette drapes her arm over Chloe’s shoulder for the first time.

They’re sitting on the steps in the courtyard crouched over Chloe’s phone while she scrolls through all of the new Ladyblog footage posted last night. She’s tapping her screen in frustration, trying to get the next video to load, when Marinette slides her arm around Chloe’s shoulders, leans in close, and swipes her fingers across Chloe’s screen to try and get the video to buffer more quickly.

It makes Chloe raise a brow, but she doesn’t bother to say anything about it. She sees how clingy and affectionate Marinette and Alya can be, and it’s easy to chalk it up as lingering muscle memory bleeding into her interactions with Chloe. Besides, it’s not a bad thing and something as innocuous as an arm over her shoulder doesn’t seem like something worth getting worked up over.

But when they’re staying after school to study off the detentions they both got for that day, Marinette dozes off in the middle of her French reading and drops her head on Chloe’s shoulder. Chloe’s suddenly aware of their thighs pressing together under the table, of her hand just barely brushing against Marinette’s, and of the feel of Marinette’s warm cheek against her bare shoulder. She doesn’t know why a head on the shoulder feels more intimate than an arm around the shoulder, but it simply does. It makes her smile, brush Marinette’s hair out of her eyes, and lean her head against hers as she keeps reading and annotating her book. It’s so different from a friendship that exists in words and thoughts — this feels unmistakable, something that no one looking from the outside in can possibly deny.

Sitting like this feels so clean and simple. There is nothing to decode and no ulterior motives to sift through because somewhere along the way Marinette has started to look at her with pure, honest sincerity. Marinette’s already told her that she does things because she wants to, and not because she’s trying to achieve an end or intrude where she isn’t welcome. Their friendship isn’t heavy with uncertainties — it simply is, just like Marinette snoring on her shoulder simply is.

Their fighting was always something Chloe wanted the whole class to witness, so that no one could possibly misunderstand where they stood. She wants to do the same thing again.

So when she sees Marinette in the morning, talking to Alya near the entrance to their classroom, it’s so easy and so lovely to just wrap her arms around her waist, rest a chin on her shoulder, and compliment her on the fishtail braids she’s decided to wear to class. The best part is that Marinette doesn’t even bat a lash despite the incredulous and amused look that Alya gives them. “You told me I’d look good in them,” Marinette says as she gently knocks her head against Chloe’s. “I thought I’d try them out for a couple of days.”

Chloe hasn’t gotten the chance to experience something this fresh in a long time. She loves being able to give her a peck on the cheek as they say goodbye for the day and know that Marinette is only going to smile back. She loves seeing Marinette come towards her and warm in anticipation for the feeling of their arms linking as they walk to class. It’s still such a beautiful thrill to be able to just touch her and know that it isn’t strange or wrong.

It’s such a sweet relief to know that Marinette is always there.

“Okay, if I outlined Chapter 10, Sabrina outlined Chapter 11, and Marinette photocopied all of the practice problems from the past month, what the hell are you contributing?”

Chloe looks up from filing her nails. “I’m your calculator, sweetheart.”

“I know this is a bit of a learning curve for you,” Marinette explains, “but Chloe’s actually really good at maths. Like. Really good.”

Alya shakes her head. “No, I call bullshit. Because you don’t do a scrap of homework. And you’re always getting marked down for not submitting corrections.”

Sabrina starts shuffling through all of their notes and pulls out a worksheet covered in eraser marks and cross outs. “This was the homework problem you were having trouble with, right Alya?”

“Yeah….”

Sabrina slides the sheet over to Chloe and pulls out a timer on her phone. “Ready, Chlo?”

“Yup, I’ll tell you when.”

“Alright. Start!”

Chloe immediately picks up a pencil and starts writing out equations in the margins of the sheet while Sabrina leans back in her seat and waits. “Her maths tutor used to reward her with shopping trips. Worked wonders.”

Alya turns to Marinette. “Are we serious right now?”

Marinette snorts. “I’m telling you, just wait for it.”

It only takes forty five seconds for Chloe to announce she’s finished and hand the completed solution back to Sabrina. Sabrina thumbs through her binder for the answer sheet and hands them both to Alya with a flourish.

Alya lines up both sheets, darts her eyes between both of them, rubs her eyes, and stares up at Chloe in horror. “How in the fresh hell did you do that?”

Chloe shrugs. “By doing it?”

“You two totally suck!” Alya exclaims, throwing a pencil at Marinette and glaring at Sabrina. “You’ve been sitting on a gold mine this entire time? All I had to do was be friends with Chloe for me to do well in maths?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Chloe says, holding up a hand. “Who said I was going to help you do well? I’m not that nice.”

Alya smirks. “Oh please, ever since you and Mari have been hanging out you’re like a broken in house cat. Only scratches when her tail is stepped on.”

“I resent that comparison.”

“ C ome on,” Marinette adds, poking Chloe in the cheek. “We all agreed to help each other study. You taught me this stuff last night. You can teach Alya.”

“Um, Sabrina pays me in homework and you pay me in coffee and baked goods,” Chloe explains. “I expect payment from Alya as well.”

Alya clicks her tongue against her teeth and nods. “Alright, I’m game. You teach me all this crap….and I will let you interview Ladybug this Saturday.”

Chloe’s eyes blow wide and she sits straight up in her seat. “Shut up! The one about the akuma at the Notre Dame last week?”

“That’s the one!”

“Oh my God, deal!!”

Marinette frowns. “You pay attention to the Ladyblog?”

Chloe turns to Marinette and stares at her flatly. “Honey….don’t insult me.”

“I’ll text you details but remember you will be representing my brand and my livelihood,” Alya warns. “And you have to attend a mandatory interview question screening and pass before you get to sit in front of her.”

“Holy shit, fine,” Chloe groans.

Sabrina gets up from her seat and stares at the clock near the entrance of the library. “Alright, I’m losing steam. Someone wanna help me sneak coffee inside?”

“I’ll go,” Marinette offers. “I have to stretch my legs. Black for you Alya, right?”

“You got it, babe.”

Chloe reaches out for both of Marinette’s hands. “Wait, get me a large latte. But put two extra shots in it.”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “You had two extra shots in the last one. I’ll put in one.”

Chloe whines, pulls Marinette towards her, and links their hands together. “Noooo, this’ll be the last cup I promise.”

“Actually promise?”

“I’ll….do my best.”

“Ugh, fine. Large latte, two extra shots.”

Chloe kisses the backs of Marinette’s hands. “Thank you!”

Marinette pinches Chloe’s cheek and laughs when she bats the hand away. “Yeah, yeah. See you guys in a bit.”

Chloe blows a kiss at the both of them and turns back to shaving off one of her hangnails until Alya slaps her on the arm and stares at her smugly. “What?” she asks.

“What do you mean what? ” Alya counters. “I saw that.”

“Saw what?”

“The kissing and the hand holding and the hugging and the whole ‘ please get me a coffee’ thing.”

Chloe sniffs and raises a delicate brow. “If you’re trying to make fun of me, it’s not working.”

“No, no,” Alya laughs. “That’s not what I mean at all. I guess I’m just….still getting used to this. You guys got close awfully quick and Marinette’s been so tight lipped about it. Which is fine, but I didn’t expect for this to become so serious.”

“Serious?” Chloe questions. “Is a friendship serious to you?”

“Oh is that what you’re calling it?”

“Is there any other word for it?” Chloe turns to Alya and leans in closer to her so that they can’t be overheard in the library. “You’re getting at something. What is it?”

“Nothing!” Alya chuckles. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I’m just observing. You two are really close and I’m sort of in awe about it.”

“You and Marinette are just as close if not more so,” Chloe counters.

“Yeah, but Marinette and I are just friends.”

“So are we!”

“I’m not denying that,” Alya says, cupping her elbows. “But I’m a reporter, and I also have eyes. So I can tell when things are a little more than that.”

Chloe bites her lip and starts fumbling around with her nail file. “I don’t know about that…”

“Why not?”

Anticipating more than what they have — whatever form that may take — isn’t something Chloe is interested in. For once, she has no desire to be greedy and ask for more. Marinette isn’t easily replaced, and there is still the paranoid, terrified feeling in her chest that wonders if she’s still capable of scaring her off somehow. Marinette tells her often that her mother leaving and Adrien growing closer to Nino instead of her isn’t due to an inherent fault of hers, and Chloe does her best to try and make her body believe it. But the fear has been dwelling there for years, and it’s a hard one to shake, especially when Marinette’s companionship still seems like an almost godly stroke of luck that Chloe doesn’t want to lose.

“Don’t break what isn’t broken,” Chloe finally responds. “Especially when it’s one of a kind.”

“What makes you think you’re gonna break something?” Alya frowns. “Feelings like that aren’t destructive, they can’t break anything. Marinette would agree, I know it.”

“We haven’t been friends for that long and I don’t want to start putting pressure where it doesn’t have to be,” Chloe sighs. “Besides, we both hated each other for almost three years before this, it’s kind of hard to expect so much to change in that short a time.”

Alya tilts her head and stares at Chloe strangely. “Marinette never hated you.”

Chloe scoffs. “Are you senile? Of course she did. We both did. That was kind of our thing.”

“She may not have liked how rude and mean you were, and she may have thought you were stuck up and entitled,” Alya explains, “but she never hated you. If anything, she was always trying to figure you out.”

“Figure me out?”

“I’ll admit,” Alya begins, “Marinette is a huge reason why I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt right now. I admittedly never liked you much until recently, but I’m sure that feeling was mutual. But Marinette wasn’t like me. She always had these theories about why you did and said the things you did. I swear, after your worst fights, once she got all the angry tears out, she’d feel sorry for you. Because she always thought there had to be some horrible thing that explained why you treated her that way.”

Chloe lets out a breath she doesn’t realize she’s holding. “She….never told me that.”

“Eh, not surprised,” Alya laughs. “She’s notoriously horrible at articulating herself when it comes to how she feels. She shows it better than she tells it.”

“She wasn’t showing me that,” Chloe insists. “I swore she hated me.”

“That’s because you seemed to legitimately hate her back and I think that blinded you. And hey! I get it! Things are different now. But, that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

“Well, then what’s your point?”

Alya leans over and places a comforting hand over Chloe’s. “I mean that Marinette’s a very honest person. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and even though she’s not good at articulating her feelings, she isn’t subtle about them in the least. Getting good at reading her is the best way to understand her. So if you’re feeling something from her, it’s not your imagination.”

Chloe never really took the time to wonder about what she’s been feeling, only that what she’s feeling has been warm and inviting and she doesn’t want to lose it. They’ve been calling it a friendship because that’s what the two of them proposed when they were sitting together in class and deciding that they could not lie to themselves about what they have now become. But Chloe isn’t close with many people and isn’t used to this complicated process of decoding what things mean. Differentiating friendship from other more powerful things seems like an advanced skillset that Chloe will privately admit she lacks. The advice is appreciated, but now it just leaves her whirling.

Alya sees the confusion on Chloe’s face because she squeezes her hand and waits for Chloe to meet her eyes. “Look, I get it,” she tells her softly. “I do. Just don’t hold yourself back because you think you’re picking up the wrong signals or because you’re afraid you’re going to ruin something. If you see something, or if you feel something, I think you should pursue it. For both of your sakes.”

One weekend, Chloe’s father is away on business and Sabrina is having dinner with her parents. So she calls Marinette and asks her if she wants to come over, simply because it’s depressing to be in the hotel suite all by herself.

Marinette hesitates only because of the novelty of the invitation, but she has nothing better to do this weekend, so she packs an overnight bag and tells her mother she’ll be home tomorrow afternoon.

Chloe opens the door to her bedroom sans makeup, hair down, and in a fluffy, yellow robe that seems like the perfect thing to wear when you want to spend a day laying about. It’s a charming image that Marinette allows herself a few seconds to burn into her brain so that she’ll never forget it and always be able to think back fondly on. She kisses her cheek and offers her a box of macarons and a small stack of romantic comedies as payment for her entry.

They spend most of the day curled up in blankets and lying on the mounds of pillows on Chloe’s bed while they cackle through movies and gorge on sweets, ignoring the guilt gnawing away at their stomachs the more they indulge. They sing loudly along to musical numbers, attempt to quote entire scenes from memory, and play silly little Rock, Paper, Scissors games to choose the next movie.

Eventually, they decide to stream a season of an old sitcom they haven’t seen in years. At some point, Chloe’s head ends up in Marinette’s lap, and Marinette is massaging the tips of her fingers into Chloe’s scalp while idly twirling the ends of her hair in her other hand. During boring episodes, they simply sit there with each other and talk as the sun slowly dips below the horizon outside and makes Chloe’s room darker and lit only by the illumination of the television on the wall. By the time it’s midnight, Chloe is dozing off in Marinette’s lap. Their hands are interlocked, and Marinette keeps rubbing her thumb along the inside of Chloe’s palm to lull her into a calm sleep, free of awful dreams and intrusive thoughts.

She lets the last episode end and nudges Chloe awake, suggesting they should probably turn in for the night.

“Um,” Chloe mumbles tiredly. “I guess you can take my bed. And I’ll just take the chaise.”

“Why the chaise?” Marinette frowns.

“You’re the guest,” Chloe shrugs. “Plus you’ll have more room.”

Marinette shuffles her bare feet against the carpet and tugs at the hem of her t-shirt. “I-I don’t….I mean, if you’re okay with it I don’t mind….sharing the bed. It’s big enough for us both.”

Chloe stares at her with wide eyes and then slowly turns towards her bed. “Y-Yeah. That’s fine.”

They crawl into Chloe’s bed and curl up on their sides to that they’re facing each other. This is usually the time of night where one of them initiates a nighttime call, but this is the first time that they can do it in person. It feels just as private with the added pleasure of being able to see Chloe’s cheek smushed against her pillow and watching her eyes grow soft as they search for something to say. Marinette quite likes being able to lay here with her like this. It shaves away all of the harsh, defensive edges that still sometimes crop up while she’s around others in school and leaves the two of them suspended in a small, private little moment that only ever has to make sense to them.

Chloe pulls the comforter under her chin. “This isn’t weird, right?”

“No,” Marinette whispers. “Why would it be weird?”

“I dunno,” she admits. “I’m sort of still waiting for us to hit a point where we just stop clicking. Or hit another snag. And go right back to where we started.”

“Why? Did I make you think that?”

“No. Opposite actually. I think it’s just a force of habit. It happened with Adrien a little. Not that I mind, he deserves to make friends but….”

Marinette shimmies closer to her and grabs Chloe’s hand in her own. “You’re afraid I’m gonna leave you.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Chloe protests weakly. “You’re here, and you don’t flinch away, and I like it. It feels nice. But I don’t want to do anything to push you off. I have a habit of doing that.”

Her vulnerability seems so untapped when it’s laid out in front of Marinette like this, and it’s so easy to stop living in a past full of ugly moments and simply hold what’s in front of her in her hands and promise to keep it safe and unmarred. She understands the insecurity. She doesn’t want to lose this either. Marinette takes the hand she’s holding and holds Chloe’s knuckles to her lips. “I don’t put effort into things that aren’t worth it,” she explains. “Remember what I said when you asked why I let you call me?”

Chloe nods. “Because you wanted to. You wanted to help.”

“That hasn’t changed. I want to be here. I want to do this. I want to do things like this with you. I wouldn’t be doing any of it if I didn’t like you.”

She realizes in that moment she’s never really vocalized this in a manner so straightforward, and it feels almost silly that they’ve skirted around the words. She smiles and says it again. “I like you, Chloe.”

There’s a long moment where Chloe doesn’t say anything — just stares at Marinette with her mouth pulled into a small ‘o’ and her fingers clutching even tighter onto Marinette’s. Her head shifts against her pillow as she moves closer to Marinette until their knees are knocking together under the covers and Marinette can feel Chloe’s exhales against their hands. “Doesn’t that feel strange on the tongue?”

Marinette grins. “Not strange. Just different. Good different.”

Chloe bites her lips and pulls Marinette’s hand back so that Chloe’s lips are pressed against the tips of her fingers. “I like you too,” she mumbles, so softly Marinette almost doesn’t hear. “And your company. And your talking, and just….being not as terrible as I always thought you were.”

She feels her chest fill and suddenly she’s too excited to fall asleep. “That means a lot.”

They talk until the gaps in between Chloe’s curtains starts to turn from black to blue and the occupants of the hotel below them are only just beginning to stir to life. At some point Marinette’s hand moved to rest on Chloe’s hip, and one of Chloe’s legs had slipped in between her own. They’re both blinking against the desire to fall asleep, and Marinette knows that they’ll inevitably sleep well into the afternoon, skipping breakfast and staying wrapped in their blankets like they usually do when they talk late on the weekends. The covers are warm, and Chloe is warm, and Marinette dreads the moment when she’ll have to move.

She’s almost asleep when she hears Chloe sleepily say, “I’m sorry, by the way. For everything. For the past three years. For just….all of it.”

Marinette squeezes Chloe’s hip. “I know.”

Lately, Chloe’s thoughts have been drifting to Ladybug.

Chloe has never genuinely admired someone before. There have always been people she liked, people she respected, and people she loved, but not anyone who represents everything that Chloe wishes she could be. Because Ladybug is willing to risk her life to save people because it’s the right thing to do and for no other reason. She’s such a young girl under that mask, and Chloe knows that she must be scared and daunted sometimes. Any normal person would. But Ladybug cares fiercely for her city, cares fiercely for the people in it, and stands up to forces and evils that she can’t even comprehend and swears to rid them for the safety of those she’s sworn to protect.

Seeing Ladybug face up against Hawkmoth on the very first day of her appearance took Chloe’s breath away, and the only thing that rang through her head that day was how wonderful and beautiful Ladybug was.

It was the closest thing to love at first sight that Chloe ever had, and she wanted it desperately.

She’s always known it was a long shot, but it’s the first time that Chloe was ever willing to work for something. She wanted Ladybug to like her back, to see her appreciation, to see her adoration, and to see how much she cared for her. In the very deep, private parts of her head, Chloe always hoped that if she worked hard enough, Ladybug would feel all those things back.

But recently, Chloe’s come to admit that Ladybug’s aloofness is not only necessary but inevitable. She watches the newscasts and Ladyblog interviews where Ladybug and Chat Noir explain how pertinent their secret identities are to their safety. Silly things like love don’t fit into such a strong sense of duty, so Chloe’s slowly been realizing that her admiration will always be platonic, and from afar. Ladybug is a civilian who deserves to find love without hiding behind a mask, and Chloe knows that someone will come to her that is more within her reach.

Then, Chloe remembers a thought that she had early on in her nighttime calls to Marinette. That Marinette, just like Ladybug, was a person who cared about doing the right thing over anything else — who cared more about bringing down a frightened girl over the phone than dwelling on a rivalry.

Marinette is loud. Marinette believes strongly. Marinette has convictions that she defends with a ferocity that Chloe fears even rivals her own. Marinette tries so hard to be good, and admits that over the phone with her some nights when she worries about making sure that everyone is happy, everyone is cared for, and no one is disappointed. It’s a burden, just like being a hero is a burden, and Marinette takes it all on with a grace that Chloe’s come to find is so reminiscent of Ladybug.

So some days, when she’s watching Marinette out of the corner of her eye, she feels the stirrings of what she felt for Ladybug start to crop up whenever Marinette laughs hard enough for tears to come to her eyes. She feels it, the very thing that Alya told her to reach out and take.

But when Adrien innocently asks her in the middle of maths class whether or not she and Marinette are dating, all of those wonderful feelings suddenly paralyze her and leave her uncertain as to how to answer his question.

It was never something the two of them had discussed because there was never really a need to. Things between them formed and grew and stretched so easily and naturally that there was never any need for them to stop and question why or how. Naming things wasn’t as important as learning each other from the ground up, and pinpointing what their behavior meant wasn’t as important as simply doing and being .

But Chloe can see the the benefit of having just a small touch of clarity. She knows that, if she lets herself, she’ll start reaching for something in the distance that she’ll realize only too late isn’t even within her grasp. She doesn’t want that to happen again. She wants to be able to want something that won’t slip away when she least expects it.

Late that night, after they’ve both been silent for almost an hour and when Chloe feels herself about to slip off into sleep, she asks, “Mari, are we dating?”

There isn’t an answer, and Chloe doesn’t expect for there to be. She always had a bad habit of asking serious questions when Marinette was already asleep. She tries to tell herself that she didn’t just do it this late at night because she was scared — because she almost didn’t want to hear the answer for fear that it would be one that she didn’t like — but she’s too tired to bother convincing herself of that. One day, she’ll get up the courage. She promises herself, right before she goes to sleep, that she’ll start taking chances, doing things that are hard, doing things that may seem scary because that’s the kind of person she wants to be. That’s the kind of person that Marinette has made her want to be.

Chloe isn’t as vapid as people like to think and isn’t as flawless as she says. If there is anything she’s learned from growing up, it’s that everyone is flawed and everyone has gaps to fill. Chloe has much to prove and much more to fix. Chloe still finds herself struggling with how to be brave for other people and not just for herself. But her misdial all those months ago feels like a sign — a second chance to make things right and surround herself with people she cares for and who care for her back. Marinette makes her want to do it. Marinette makes her feel like she can do it.

The next day, Chloe is walking to class and looks up to see Marinette dropping her bag at Alya’s feet and sprinting in Chloe’s directly. She barely has the time to lift her arms before Marinette is throwing her arms around her, burying her face in her neck, and laughing more sweetly than Chloe has ever heard her laugh before.

“Yes,” Marinette nods. “Yes, yes, of course, yes.”

Chloe doesn’t have to ask what Marinette means by the answer. She already knows.

[choiminhovevo]

hehe

who’s messier? Paige, unfortunately. Artists are always messy, but once they gets a cleaning bug she can be neat as Minho

do they fight often? If an argument between the two gets out of hand Paige says “let’s settle this argument with Mortal Kombat” and Minho agrees. They’ve only argued maybe twice.

who’s the funnier drunk? Paige probably. Minho controls his alcohol well and Paige is a social drinker- one wine cooler and we’re done, but two wine coolers and they’re talking about electric forks and putting salt grains on spoons for shits and giggles and everything sounds stupid.

who’s uncomfortable with PDA and who loves it? Both hate pda don’t hold hands it makes you gay.

who texts more often? Minho texts a lot. Paige writes letters.

big spoon/little spoon? Minho wants to spoon Paige but Paige hates being touched, especially when they’re sleeping. They’d rather jetpack their tall princeling.

who made the 1st move? Minho, surprisingly. Paige didn’t hide their affections for Minho, but they were just affections, nothing more, did not want to act on them because rejection = instakill. When Minho reciprocated said feelings Paige freaked like any sensible shoujo manga protagonist would and it took two volumes for them to be like “okay my shortcomings compared to your flawlessness isn’t so bad so I guess we could date.”

any nicknames? Paige calls Minho “my sun and stars,” in Dothraki. It took Minho a good six months and three watches of Game of Thrones for him to realize that oh shit they’ve been calling me this all this time?!! And the boy heart-eyes at the thought. He calls them dearest and it takes all their willpower not to roll around on the floor and squeal.

the most embarrassing music on their phone? Minho has Top 40 on his phone and Paige has an amalgam of broadway hits, Asian pop, Bengali music and Techno music. Putting their music on shuffle during long road trips is a hoot. Minho can’t deal.

what’s “their song”? In their circle of friends Paige will insist “Amerikkaz Most Wanted” by Tupac and Snoop Dogg is their song, but truthfully it’s BoA’s “Romance”.

who reads more? Minho reads just as much as Paige, but Paige has the extensive book collection and always reads the longer, “difficult” books just for the hell of it.

who remembers anniversaries? They both do; Minho is sentimental and so is Paige (but they won’t admit it). Paige has a photographic memory and remembers everything.

who is better with kids? Minho; Paige is terrified of kids, but they like them for some reason so they are patient with them as they teach them languages and useless facts. (“hey did you know that kangaroos can’t jump backwards?”)

who tops/bottoms? Paige called bottom bunk (“but I gotta pee more at night!” Minho whines. “You get top bunk,” Paige growls, booting up Mortal Kombat X on the PS4)

what’s their favorite activity? Playing games together, traveling, playing soccer, swimming, having eating contests...

weirdest hobbies? Minho watches Ron Perlman montages on YouTube sometimes...

who would make a blanket fort? would the other help? Paige makes blanket forts (“I am a fearsome dragon and I am required a cave of my choosing.” “Paige there are no caves in Seoul.” “So this blanket fort will suffice, homie.”) Minho asks if he can come in and Paige cheerfully says yes you may, and thereby declares their dragon hoard as cute soccer boys named Minho.

who cooks? Paige. Minho can cook, but he’s busier than Paige and Paige is honestly better because if it were up to Minho it would be kimchi jjigae and ramyun mostly. Should Paige cook they don’t have the same recipe every week; sometimes they’ll do themed weeks. Just no Mexican (“but I like Mexican food!” Minho whines. “I’m sick of it, plus it gives you the Hershey squirts.” “Lies and slander!”)

how do they eat ice cream? what’s their favorite flavors? They put the ice cream in their mouth and they eat it…? Paige is allergic to ice cream and eats lime sorbet while Minho likes strawberry and vanilla.

who said “i love you” first? Believe it or not, Paige did. And Minho’s brain rebooted and he stumbled over the words as he said “hey I love you too champ.” and Paige’s brain is still short-circuiting to this day.

do they go on dates? what are they like? When Minho has free time and doesn’t want to play video games with Paige they go out to dinner, go to the aquarium, go book shopping to add to their burgeoning collection (“I just can’t help myself I need books!” Paige cries. “In a few short years we’re gonna be on Hoarders, aren’t we?”) They’re very quiet and don’t draw attention to themselves because there are fans about

Christmas traditions? They wear ugly Christmas sweaters and Paige speaks a lot of German, and they bake a lot of goodies from America that Minho hasn’t heard of.

do they go trick or treating? who stays home and hands out the candy? No one trick or treats in Seoul; kids don’t go wandering in the city like that, but they do go to costume parties. Paige brings in Halloween-themed treats and they engage in spooky tomfoolery with the other members of SHINee.

do they stargaze? Expand. Stargazing is difficult in Seoul, so when they go on their rare Jeju trip, they go to the most remote part of the island, where the only light is from the fishing boats. Paige didn’t major in astronomy and Minho isn’t familiar with constellations but they like to look up at the night sky and love the atmosphere. Almost always, Paige will start to sing the Discovery Channel’s “The World is Awesome” song and Minho always has to shut them up. Do they listen? Fuck no.

who’s the laziest? Paige! Shamelessly! Minho doesn’t complain because they pull their own weight and knows that their job requires that they do a lot and when they wants to do nothing, they will do nothing, Lord willing.

who complains more? Paige doesn’t like to complain; they internalizes their strife. Minho rarely complains.

who wakes up earlier? Paige naturally gets up at 6 am and hates it. If it were up to them they’d sleep in with Minho. Minho has to get up early for flights to other countries but he wants to sleep in with Paige.

who’s more protective? Minho is the feudal lord and Paige is the handmaiden.

who gets jealous easily? Minho. His middle name is Jealousy. Paige finds it amusing, but doesn’t purposefully get into situations where his jealousy may spike. Sometimes they call him “Eifersuchtig Honeypot” and he scowls at them.

how do they cuddle? when and where? They cuddle on the couch, under a snuggie, after a long day of dance practice and translation work and art and Minho is nursing a beer and Paige is watching Funhaus.

how did they meet? Christianmingles.com Paige was wandering around the restaurants by Konkuk and stumbled into a dumpling and ramyun shop. They were eating alone and Minho was there with Jinki and some friends from TV. Minho was lamenting about how he missed the food in America and how he would like to visit the other states (“I like Texas, it’s a shame I’m never there for more than 48 hours”) and Paige is like Texas? I’m from there! And them can’t help themselves and butts into the conversation, telling them about their family in Texas and all the pros and cons of America. Normally idols are tired and don’t want to engage in public, and Paige felt bad about that, but Minho and Jinki noticed that they didn’t act like a fan and didn’t invade their space like a fan, but as a person just casually overhearing their conversation. So they talk, and are happy that they know Korean. They both try to converse in English and Paige freaks and starts speaking in German (“I have no clue what you’re saying now????”) Jinki is flummoxed but Minho is intrigued and asks the ol’ “hey do you know kpop?” question and Paige deadpans “oh boy I do.” their dry and abrasive wit is enough to make Minho laugh and open up to them easily and offers to show them around Konkuk, since they are a teacher at the Konkuk middle school. And the rest is history.

what do they smell when they smell amorentia? The fuck is this.

what lockscreens do they have? Minho has a group selca of SHINee celebrating Paige’s birthday, and Paige has a photo of Minho napping and they put a bow on his head.

how many emojis do they use and which ones? Paige keeps forgetting that emojis are a thing and Minho uses emoticons like it’s 2011.

who throws ill-advised parties? Should Taemin visit Paige’s apartment for nefarious reasons he ropes them into throwing parties where it’s nothing but Achievement Hunter playing in the background and nonstop Cards Against Humanity and Million Dollars, But… and that they get to make snacks and regales the party in their wild stories of their travels. Also it devolves into a Minho roasting session. Paige is always down for it.

who sets the other’s ringtone to something loud and obnoxious behind their back? Minho because Paige never locks their phone. What he doesn’t know is that Paige always has their phone on vibrate. The joke backfires. (note: the phone is Ouran High School Host Club’s opening theme and when Paige finds out they’re pissed and go to put their phone on sound)

lick-claiming. who does it? is the other deterred? Minho, believe it or not. (“Choi we have kissed at least five times your cooties are now my cooties.” Paige takes the cookie, stares into Minho’s eyes, and bites into it with passion. Minho fumes)

who glitterizes everything? Paige! Loves glitter and would have it in every inch of the apartment if they could.

who is obsessed with HSM? Minho and Paige is like “love is dead”

who draws sharpie dicks on the other when they get blackout drunk? Minho was blackout drunk once and Paige didn’t put dicks on his face (“his face is perfect I’m not gonna mar it”) but they do take his phone and put the meatspin on all his phone tabs. Minho was displeased.

who uses chopsticks/can either of them use chopsticks? Both use chopsticks, but Paige is left-handed and holds chopsticks funny and Minho calls them out on it. (“How the fuck you expect me to eat these noodles, son?!”)

when they can’t sleep what do they do? Paige takes heavy amounts of melatonin to sleep, but it rarely works so they lie there talking about their desires to travel and what they’re gonna eat the next day.

what order do they wash themselves in the shower? They both wash anywhere and everywhere; showers are for cleaning you heathen.

who impulse buys? Paige, but mainly impulse buys food and snacks.

who’s clumsier? Paige is the Lad of Stubbed Toes and who the fuck put this banana peel here? Gotta step on it? Step on it? Why? You gotta.

what are their coffee orders? Minho likes Americano with a pump of vanilla syrup, Paige likes earl grey tea with inordinate amounts of sugar.

what apps do they have? Minho has the same apps as Paige except for Pinterest, Google Docs, Netflix, and Twitter. He has sports apps and an English vocabulary app for him to practice. Paige has translator apps and Google Docs.

what are their favorite TV shows? Both like watching old school anime and nature documentaries. Paige watches travel programs and Minho watches sports

[timclymer]

The Go-Betweens

The next time you’re down the local boozer with your mates and there’s an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, consider striking up a discussion based on the following question – which is the best band never to have had a top forty hit? Now, obviously, this is a version of the hoary old chestnut that’s passed many a drunken hour for the sports fan down the ages – who is the best footballer never to have played in the World Cup? The answer to that is a rather obvious one, of course, George Best. The musical variation of this question may be more stimulating.

Whilst Robert Lloyd and the various re-incarnations of his Brummie post-punk combo, The Nightingales, would make any respectable critics’ short list, his guttural, sub-Beefheart squeal was aimed more squarely at the underground than at the mainstream. The same uncompromising mindset also rules out the likes of New York’s Suicide and David Thomas’ experimental avant-garage group, Pere Ubu.

Soon enough, however, somebody will alight upon the only truly acceptable answer, at least the only answer acceptable to me, and a good number of other men and women of a certain age, who are each the proud possessors of a pair of rose-tinted glasses. It simply has to be those doyens of guitar pop, The Go-Betweens. The inexplicable absence from the singles chart of these Australian Indie-pop pioneers remains a mystery to this day. Not once, during their illustrious lifetime 1978-2006 (allowing for a hiatus from 1989 to 2000) did their melodic epistles ever threaten to deliver them pop stardom here, or in America. Incredibly, they even failed to secure a top 40 hit in their native Australia. This, surely, constitutes the greatest miscarriage in the history of popular music since the time Al Jolson blacked up for The Jazz Singer, declared brazenly “you ain’t heard nothing yet” and shamefacedly went on to make his fortune.

Just how the Brisbane based guitar heroes, led by singer/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan failed to achieve even one solitary week in the top 75, despite crafting a plethora of heavenly pop songs that should have made them household names on both sides of the Atlantic, is a mystery that genuinely scrambles the brain. Indeed, it prompts the group’s long time fans to ask the age old question, the one that escapes our lips every time we drunkenly stumble upon a recording of Barry Manilow’s ‘Bermuda Triangle blaring out of a pub jukebox; ‘how could you let this happen, dear Lord, how?’

Consider some of the flotsam and jetsam that has (dis)graced the charts since the advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In no particular order, I give you Vanilla Ice, The Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Milli Vanilli, Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker, Black Lace, MC Hammer and Sting. And, that’s just the tip of a very embarrassing iceberg!

Even more puzzling was the regular presence on the chart of bands that might best be described as second rate Go-Betweens. The very ordinary Deacon Blue springs to mind here, as well as the Trashcan Sinatras. And, how on earth do you explain the continued presence in the charts, throughout the eighties, of bands that made comparable music, both in terms of substance and style to The Go-Betweens themselves. Aztec Camera, for example, chalked up 12 hits and 74 weeks on the chart while Lloyd Cole, with or without his Commotions recorded 15 hits spread over 62 weeks.

After the band split up in 1989 Forster and McLennan each took a stab at solo stardom, in theory doubling their chances of a hit, but still the record buying public remained un-persuaded. McLennan in particular, penned a succession of gorgeous ballads throughout the nineties, the best of which, ‘Black Mule’ (1991) and ‘Hot Water’ (1994) are arguably the finest of all his compositions.

Even the French, not exactly renowned for having their finger on the pop pulse, have made The Go-Betweens something of a cause celebre. A 1996 issue of leading rock magazine Les Inrockuptibles pictured the band on its front cover with the strap-line ‘Le groupe le plus sous-estime de l’histoire du rock?’ Which, broadly translated as – The Go-Betweens the most underrated band in the history of rock? The magazine also ranked ’16 Lovers Lane’ in its list of the best albums of the period from 1976-1996.

Publié en novembre 1996.

1. The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead

2. Pixies: Doolittle

3. The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses

4. The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane

5. Portishead: Dummy

6. PJ Harvey: Dry

7. Tricky: Maxinquaye

8. Morrissey: Vauxhall & I

9. Massive Attack: Blue Lines

10. Beck: Mellow Gold

11. The Feelies: The Good Earth

12. REM: Automatic For The People

13. James: Stutter

14. The Divine Comedy: Liberation

15. The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come

16. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

17. The La’s: The La’s

18. De La Soul: 3 Feet High And Rising

19. Bjork: Debut

20. Jeff Buckley: Grace

This re-appraisal of the band’s standing, together with an invitation to play at the magazine’s 10th Anniversary bash prompted Forster and McLennan to reform the group.

For a brief moment true devotees of the group allowed themselves to believe that a great wrong might be righted. Perhaps the band might strike lucky and have a song included on the soundtrack of some mega Hollywood Rom-Com. There was a precedent of sorts. The Triffids, their compatriots from Perth and themselves a seminal indie band of the eighties, nearly managed to fluke a hit when their classic song, ‘Bury Me Deep In Love’, was chosen to play over the cheesy wedding scenes of Harold and Marge on the popular daytime soap, Neighbours. The band, profile duly raised, punched home their advantage; their follow up single, “Trick Of The Light”, spent a glorious week in the charts, at no 73, in early 1988.

Sadly, despite recording a batch of very fine comeback albums, particularly 2005’s ‘Oceans Apart’, with its standout tracks ‘Here Comes A City’, ‘Born To A Family’ and ‘Darlinghurst Nights’, a familiar pattern soon re-emerged – critical acclaim on the one hand and commercial indifference on the other. The Australian media wasn’t averse to chastising the band for their perceived failure either. ABC’S current affairs show The 7:30 Report announced their return to the stage in the following manner –

“The Go-Betweens have been described as the quintessential critics’ band. They made an art form of commercial failure. But as Bernard Brown reports, they’re happy to have earned the industry’s respect, even if the dollars didn’t follow.”

Good old Bernard concluded his report with “But the band’s influence far outweighed its record sales and they wear the tag of commercial failures”.

Any hope that The Go-Betweens could somehow turn the tide disappeared once and for all with the unexpected passing of McLennan in May 2006 at the age of 48.

Any discussion of great song-writing partnerships in popular music would rightly begin with the likes of Lennon and McCartney, Bacharach and David, Leiber and Stoller, or Jagger and Richards. You shouldn’t, though, have to look too far down the list before coming across the names of Forster and McLennan, probably bracketed right alongside Difford and Tilbrook or Morrissey and Marr.

Both were capable of writing supremely catchy songs and both had the propensity to pen an eye-catching lyric. Grant McLennan’s ‘River Of Money’, from the ‘Springhill Fair’ album (Beggars Banquet, 1984) whilst rather atypical of his output (it’s more of a prose-poem than a pop song) is such a unique lyric that it demands to be quoted in full.

River Of Money

It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect sadness

to confine itself to its causes. Like a river in flood,

when it subsides and the drowned bodies of

animals have been deposited in the treetops, there is

another kind of damage that takes place beyond the torrent.

At first, it seemed as though she had only left

the room to go into the garden and had been delayed by stray

chickens in the corn. Then he had thought she might

have eloped with the rodeo-boy from the neighbouring

property but it wasn’t till one afternoon, when he

had heard guitar playing coming from her room and

had rushed upstairs to confront her and had seen

that it was only the wind in the curtains brushing

against the open strings, that he finally knew she

wasn’t coming back. He had dealt with the deluge alright

but the watermark of her leaving was still quite visible.

He had resorted to the compass then, thinking that

geography might rescue him but after one week in the

Victorian Alps he came back north, realising that snow which

he had never seen before, was only frozen water.

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows.

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows.

But was it really possible for him to cope with the

magnitude of her absence? The snow had failed him.

Bottles had almost emptied themselves without effect.

The television, a Samaritan during other tribulations, had

been repossessed. She had left her travelling clock

though thinking it incapable of functioning in

another time-zone; so the long vacant days of expensive sunlight

were filled with the sound of her minutes, with the measuring of

her hours.

Not the stuff of the three minute hero, I appreciate, but the pair were equally comfortable writing the standard verse, chorus, verse pop song that chimed in at a radio friendly 2.56 and wouldn’t have frightened the horses. From ‘Springhill Fair’ they released a trio of pristine singles. McLennan’s pop-by-numbers opener ‘Bachelor Kisses’ was the first to hit the shops (and stay there, in the bargain bin) followed by Forster’s heart-achingly sad confessional, ‘Part Company’;

“That’s her handwriting, that’s the way she writes

From the first letter I got to this her Bill of Rights”

‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’, the final single from the album, found Forster in a more self- assured frame of mind;

“Feel so sure of our love

I’ll write a song about us breaking up”.

This sequence of starry-eyed singles should have seen The Go-Betweens clasped lovingly to the bosom of the pop establishment. Instead, they remained exiled in the wilderness, otherwise known as the John Peel show.

Still, at the time it seemed only to be a matter of time, before their streak of bad luck would break and the Brisbane boys would be basking in the sun kissed glow of chart success. Two robust albums followed, ‘Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express’, (Beggars Banquet, 1986) and ‘Tallulah’, (Beggars Banquet, 1987) each spawned excellent singles in Forster’s ‘Spring Rain’, and ‘Head Full Of Pride’, as well as McLennan’s ‘Right Here’ and ‘Bye Bye Pride’.

The great British public, though, remained sceptical. Peel sessions, stadium tours in support of the band’s long time admirers, R.E.M, contractual tie-ins with a host of high profile record companies including Rough Trade, Postcard and Capitol, made not the slightest difference to the band’s outsider status. If a pop group can be described as persona non grata, then they were it! The frustration was beginning to tell, driving McLennan to comment that he’d;

“given up on the commercial success thing, which is very good for my state of mind”.

The reality was, though, that their most “commercial” album, indeed their masterpiece, was still to come but in attempting to break into the charts the band would succeed only in breaking itself apart. The omens were not good from the outset. First off, bass guitarist Robert Vickers, who had been with the group since 1983, handed in his notice. His replacement, John Willsteed, seemed an upgrade, though, and his playing certainly brought a clarity and polish to the band’s sound, in keeping with their new direction of travel. He is credited by some insiders as having played a number of the more intricate guitar parts on ’16 Lovers Lane’.

Unfortunately, Willsteed was also battling a massive drink problem and it didn’t take him long to make enemies of the rest of the band.

Furthermore, Amanda Brown, recruited after contributing violin to The Servants sublime second single ‘The Sun, A Small Star’ began a relationship with McLennan. Suddenly, word leaked out that Forster and Morrison had been in a relationship of sorts for years. Battle lines had been drawn.

At the exact same time as the Forster/McLennan friendship, begun long ago in the Drama department of the University of Queensland, was starting to disintegrate, the power-brokers at the group’s management company were trying to push McLennan into the limelight at the expense of Forster. Author David Nichols, in his book The Go-Betweens, is clear about the re-alignment that took place “every promotional video from ‘Right Here’ onwards shows Forster completely back-grounded”. Seen today the video for ‘Was There Anything I Could do’ makes a toe-curling Exhibit A, with McLennan and Brown cavorting centre stage while Forster is stationed well to the rear. Morrison was deeply unhappy, particularly about the decision to draft in producer Craig Leon. In an interview with Sydney’s ‘On The Street’ she was scathing about the shift in emphasis;

“He was chosen to make this single accessible to people, to get us to crawl out of our cult corner.”

Despite the recriminations that would inevitably follow, the next five Go-Betweens singles would all be McLennan compositions.

On a more positive note, Forster and McLennan were working on the songs for ’16 Lovers Lane’ together, rather than working individually. The spirit of collaboration instead of competition at least extended to the song-writing! Released in August 1988 (Beggars Banquet /Capitol) and produced by Mark Wallis, who’d worked with the likes of Marianne Faithful, Tom Jones and R.E.M, ’16 Lovers Lane’ was a sublime collection of glimmering guitar ballads and sugar-spun indie anthems so glossy and sun kissed that you had to wear dark glasses just to listen to it.

On the release of their debut single ‘Lee Remick’ back in 1978, Forster and McLennan had talked about capturing “that striped sunlight sound” which Forster later defined as being;

“A romantic phrase, but it is abstract. It could be the sun coming through blinds as you play a record. It’s the shimmer of a fender guitar. It’s harmonies and tough-minded pop songs. It’s lying on a bed beside a window reading a book in the afternoon. It’s the sun on a girl’s shoulder length hair. It’s Buddy Holly in the desert the day they recorded ‘Maybe Baby’. It’s t-shirts and jeans. It’s Creedence. It’s Bob. It’s Chuck Berry.”

On ’16 Lovers Lane’, made twenty years after they first articulated the concept, they came closest to perfecting its meaning.

Opening with the McLennan’s unashamedly summery ‘Love Goes On’;

“There’s a cat in the alleyway

Dreaming of birds that are blue

Sometimes girl when I’m lonely

This is how I think about you”

and ending with Forster’s majestically romantic ‘Dive For Your Memory’

“I’d dive for you

Like a bird I’d descend

Deep down I’m lonely

And I miss my friend

So when I hear you saying

That we stood no chance

I’ll dive for your memory

We stood that chance,”

’16 Lovers Lane’ (once voted 24th greatest album of the eighties, by none other than Rolling Stone magazine) could also boast another pair of McLennan classics in the ‘Streets Of Your Town’ – a song that should have occupied a place in the nation’s pop consciousness in the same way that The La’s ‘There She Goes’ or The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ have done, and the wistful, heart-breaking lament,’ Quiet Heart’.

“I tried to tell you

I can only say it when we’re apart

About this storm inside of me

And how I miss your quiet, quiet heart”

‘Streets Of Your Town’ was such an obvious choice for a single that they had two cracks with it, releasing it first in October 1988 and then, refusing to accept defeat, the following summer. Sandwiched in between the twin versions of this neglected classic were two more ‘easy on the ear’ contenders, ‘Was There Anything I Could Do’ (McLennan) and ‘Love Goes On’. Both met the same miserable fate – they were steadfastly ignored.

The failure to impact on the charts, with such an obviously radio-friendly song as ‘Streets Of Your Town’, must have come as a crushing blow to Forster and McLennan and was probably the final nail in The Go-Betweens’ coffin. Broke and broken-hearted they went their separate ways.

That The Go-Betweens had swallowed their pride and danced to the tune of their paymasters, there could be no doubt. They’d flattened out the kinks in their song structures, planed off the angular edges and streamlined their sound until, with each passing record, they began to sound less and less like The Velvet Underground and more and more like Abba. Not that there is anything wrong with Abba or ’16 Lovers Lane’ itself, indeed in parts it’s a breathtakingly beautiful record. It’s just that 3/5ths of the band didn’t really want to make that type of record anymore. The Go-Betweens sold their soul, but they still didn’t sell any records!

To make matters worse there wasn’t even the consolation of making their mark in the album charts, where more mature bands could be expected to have their egos massaged by a loyal fan base, successfully built up over a lengthy career. All The Go-Betweens could muster, though, was a week at no. 91 in June 1987 with ‘Tallulah’, and one week at no. 81 for ’16 Lovers Lane’ in September 1988.

The Go-Betweens, however, did make minor inroads upon the UK Independent Charts. Before signing for Beggars Banquet the band had recorded for Rough Trade and Situation 2, qualifying them for inclusion in the Indie charts. Between 83 and 86 they had three entries in the top 40. ‘Cattle and Cane’, an autobiographical McLennan song voted by the Australasian Performing Rights Association in 2001 as one of the country’s 30 greatest songs of all time, reached no. 4 in March 1983, while ‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’ charted at no. 24 toward the end of the same year. A 12 inch only release of ‘Lee Remick’ peaked at no. 7 in November 1986. And there the trail runs cold.

To speculate, now, on the spectacular failure of The Go-Betweens is to set oneself an impossible task. Maybe, it was simply because they never really established a British fan base, maybe Australians appeared less cool than Americans or the dynamic duo just lacked sex appeal. It could be argued that both Forster and McLennan were not distinctive enough as singers, even that they sounded too erudite at times, for daytime radio. Maybe it was Forster’s controversial decision to play a Capitol Records promotional launch of ’16 Lovers Lane’ in an olive green dress (the company scaled down the record’s promotional budget the very next day). Or, perhaps, it was just that fate was against them all along.

In September 1985 the band had signed with Elektra, hoping for better promotion and distribution of their work. Forster was in optimistic mood “We’ve gone with Elektra – start our LP in just over a week. Without any doubt the songs are our best, we are playing our best, and with ourselves producing this unknown masterpiece, it might be great.” Within weeks Elektra had gone belly up and the band was back to square one again, much to Forster’s chagrin;

“I do think we have a sense of anger – no one’s ever been able to present us to the British public in any sort of cohesive or intelligent way.”

One thing is for sure, they had a fistful of great songs and in Forster they had someone who gave the band personality. His art-rock background led him to pay particular attention to his stage performance, although we can only presume his tongue was firmly in his cheek with this analysis of his ‘dancing’;

“Bobby Womack himself once told me that I am a soul man, and that as far as modern music is concerned there are only three soul men left: himself, me and Prince. Prince came to Brisbane and took the colours, the moves, his whole act from me. It’s true! He’s seen my moves!”

Perhaps The Go-Betweens’ drummer Lindy Morrison, speaking in 1992 was nearer the truth than I, and others, would care to admit when she offered this overview;

“We might have been one of the most lauded bands in the country, but we sold bugger all records. That’s a shame. So let’s not go on about it being one of the most lauded bands in the country, cause who cares? We didn’t sell records, we weren’t a popular band, and I’m sick of hearing about the fact that we were so fabulous – because if we were so fabulous, why didn’t anyone buy our records?”

Forster managed a slightly more laconic response;

“It was quite freeing to realise, our group is so good, and we’re getting nowhere. After a while, the lack of recognition was so absurd it was funny”.

Following their initial break up, the compilation album ‘1978-1990’ was released and allowed the music press to pass their verdict on the life and times of The Go-Betweens. Melody Maker’s Dave Jennings could barely contain his anger; “The fact that The Go-Betweens never became massive is a disgusting injustice… take The Go-Betweens to your heart, where they belong.” In 1996, writing for Select magazine Andrew Male wrote that “The only problem with listening to The Go-Betweens now is that they can’t help remind you of how crap the eighties were. The Go-Betweens produced records of quiet brilliance and got nowhere. Sting sang about a sodding turtle and became a millionaire.”

Even now, though, there isn’t exactly a critical consensus. Simon Reynolds in his definitive account of the post-punk years 1978-1984, “Rip It Up And Start Again”, devotes only one sentence to our Antipodean protagonists; “The Go-Betweens, who hailed from Australia but had a spare, plangent sound similarly rooted in Television and early Talking Heads”. It should be noted, of course, that at this stage The Go- Betweens only had ‘Send Me A Lullaby’ and ‘Before Hollywood’ under their belt. Bob Stanley in his widely acclaimed book “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop” (2013) omits them entirely from his 800 page anthology.

Any discussion of Literate Pop, though, if you are inclined to concede that the genre actually exists, if you believe great pop can be thought through, rather than instinctively felt, be cerebral rather than corporeal, would have to take into account The Go-Betweens’ collective body of work. Their singular form of romanticism, their shimmering chorus’s, their quirky, idiosyncratic lyrics and their wry pop sensibility all combined to make them one of the great post-punk pop groups. They made two albums, ‘Springhill Fair’ and ’16 Lovers Lane’ that would lose nothing in comparison with Costello’s ‘King Of America’, Lloyd Cole’s ‘Rattlesnakes’, Scritti Politti’s ‘Songs To Remember’, Mickey Newbury’s ‘Look’s Like Rain’ or The Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Everything Must Go’. In this context, their work will be remembered long after their more commercially successful contemporaries have disappeared from the recorded history of popular music.

To end, though, at the beginning. In 1978, after the local success of their debut single, ‘Lee Remick’, Forster dreamt of setting sail for England. Given the tortuous fate that awaited them on these shores, his words seem remarkably poignant now.

“England, I think, has the greatest acceptance of new music, they’re more open-minded. They write it in the NME and people buy your records. Any country that can accept Jilted John, X-Ray Spex and The Only Ones… there’s a place for The Go-Betweens.”

Source by Kevin McGrath

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/the-go-betweens/ via Home Solutions on WordPress from Home Solutions FOREV https://homesolutionsforev.tumblr.com/post/188064333480 via Tim Clymer on Wordpress

[homesolutionsforev]

The Go-Betweens

The next time you’re down the local boozer with your mates and there’s an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, consider striking up a discussion based on the following question – which is the best band never to have had a top forty hit? Now, obviously, this is a version of the hoary old chestnut that’s passed many a drunken hour for the sports fan down the ages – who is the best footballer never to have played in the World Cup? The answer to that is a rather obvious one, of course, George Best. The musical variation of this question may be more stimulating.

Whilst Robert Lloyd and the various re-incarnations of his Brummie post-punk combo, The Nightingales, would make any respectable critics’ short list, his guttural, sub-Beefheart squeal was aimed more squarely at the underground than at the mainstream. The same uncompromising mindset also rules out the likes of New York’s Suicide and David Thomas’ experimental avant-garage group, Pere Ubu.

Soon enough, however, somebody will alight upon the only truly acceptable answer, at least the only answer acceptable to me, and a good number of other men and women of a certain age, who are each the proud possessors of a pair of rose-tinted glasses. It simply has to be those doyens of guitar pop, The Go-Betweens. The inexplicable absence from the singles chart of these Australian Indie-pop pioneers remains a mystery to this day. Not once, during their illustrious lifetime 1978-2006 (allowing for a hiatus from 1989 to 2000) did their melodic epistles ever threaten to deliver them pop stardom here, or in America. Incredibly, they even failed to secure a top 40 hit in their native Australia. This, surely, constitutes the greatest miscarriage in the history of popular music since the time Al Jolson blacked up for The Jazz Singer, declared brazenly “you ain’t heard nothing yet” and shamefacedly went on to make his fortune.

Just how the Brisbane based guitar heroes, led by singer/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan failed to achieve even one solitary week in the top 75, despite crafting a plethora of heavenly pop songs that should have made them household names on both sides of the Atlantic, is a mystery that genuinely scrambles the brain. Indeed, it prompts the group’s long time fans to ask the age old question, the one that escapes our lips every time we drunkenly stumble upon a recording of Barry Manilow’s ‘Bermuda Triangle blaring out of a pub jukebox; ‘how could you let this happen, dear Lord, how?’

Consider some of the flotsam and jetsam that has (dis)graced the charts since the advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In no particular order, I give you Vanilla Ice, The Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Milli Vanilli, Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker, Black Lace, MC Hammer and Sting. And, that’s just the tip of a very embarrassing iceberg!

Even more puzzling was the regular presence on the chart of bands that might best be described as second rate Go-Betweens. The very ordinary Deacon Blue springs to mind here, as well as the Trashcan Sinatras. And, how on earth do you explain the continued presence in the charts, throughout the eighties, of bands that made comparable music, both in terms of substance and style to The Go-Betweens themselves. Aztec Camera, for example, chalked up 12 hits and 74 weeks on the chart while Lloyd Cole, with or without his Commotions recorded 15 hits spread over 62 weeks.

After the band split up in 1989 Forster and McLennan each took a stab at solo stardom, in theory doubling their chances of a hit, but still the record buying public remained un-persuaded. McLennan in particular, penned a succession of gorgeous ballads throughout the nineties, the best of which, ‘Black Mule’ (1991) and ‘Hot Water’ (1994) are arguably the finest of all his compositions.

Even the French, not exactly renowned for having their finger on the pop pulse, have made The Go-Betweens something of a cause celebre. A 1996 issue of leading rock magazine Les Inrockuptibles pictured the band on its front cover with the strap-line ‘Le groupe le plus sous-estime de l’histoire du rock?’ Which, broadly translated as – The Go-Betweens the most underrated band in the history of rock? The magazine also ranked ’16 Lovers Lane’ in its list of the best albums of the period from 1976-1996.

Publié en novembre 1996.

1. The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead

2. Pixies: Doolittle

3. The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses

4. The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane

5. Portishead: Dummy

6. PJ Harvey: Dry

7. Tricky: Maxinquaye

8. Morrissey: Vauxhall & I

9. Massive Attack: Blue Lines

10. Beck: Mellow Gold

11. The Feelies: The Good Earth

12. REM: Automatic For The People

13. James: Stutter

14. The Divine Comedy: Liberation

15. The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come

16. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

17. The La’s: The La’s

18. De La Soul: 3 Feet High And Rising

19. Bjork: Debut

20. Jeff Buckley: Grace

This re-appraisal of the band’s standing, together with an invitation to play at the magazine’s 10th Anniversary bash prompted Forster and McLennan to reform the group.

For a brief moment true devotees of the group allowed themselves to believe that a great wrong might be righted. Perhaps the band might strike lucky and have a song included on the soundtrack of some mega Hollywood Rom-Com. There was a precedent of sorts. The Triffids, their compatriots from Perth and themselves a seminal indie band of the eighties, nearly managed to fluke a hit when their classic song, ‘Bury Me Deep In Love’, was chosen to play over the cheesy wedding scenes of Harold and Marge on the popular daytime soap, Neighbours. The band, profile duly raised, punched home their advantage; their follow up single, “Trick Of The Light”, spent a glorious week in the charts, at no 73, in early 1988.

Sadly, despite recording a batch of very fine comeback albums, particularly 2005’s ‘Oceans Apart’, with its standout tracks ‘Here Comes A City’, ‘Born To A Family’ and ‘Darlinghurst Nights’, a familiar pattern soon re-emerged – critical acclaim on the one hand and commercial indifference on the other. The Australian media wasn’t averse to chastising the band for their perceived failure either. ABC’S current affairs show The 7:30 Report announced their return to the stage in the following manner –

“The Go-Betweens have been described as the quintessential critics’ band. They made an art form of commercial failure. But as Bernard Brown reports, they’re happy to have earned the industry’s respect, even if the dollars didn’t follow.”

Good old Bernard concluded his report with “But the band’s influence far outweighed its record sales and they wear the tag of commercial failures”.

Any hope that The Go-Betweens could somehow turn the tide disappeared once and for all with the unexpected passing of McLennan in May 2006 at the age of 48.

Any discussion of great song-writing partnerships in popular music would rightly begin with the likes of Lennon and McCartney, Bacharach and David, Leiber and Stoller, or Jagger and Richards. You shouldn’t, though, have to look too far down the list before coming across the names of Forster and McLennan, probably bracketed right alongside Difford and Tilbrook or Morrissey and Marr.

Both were capable of writing supremely catchy songs and both had the propensity to pen an eye-catching lyric. Grant McLennan’s ‘River Of Money’, from the ‘Springhill Fair’ album (Beggars Banquet, 1984) whilst rather atypical of his output (it’s more of a prose-poem than a pop song) is such a unique lyric that it demands to be quoted in full.

River Of Money

It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect sadness

to confine itself to its causes. Like a river in flood,

when it subsides and the drowned bodies of

animals have been deposited in the treetops, there is

another kind of damage that takes place beyond the torrent.

At first, it seemed as though she had only left

the room to go into the garden and had been delayed by stray

chickens in the corn. Then he had thought she might

have eloped with the rodeo-boy from the neighbouring

property but it wasn’t till one afternoon, when he

had heard guitar playing coming from her room and

had rushed upstairs to confront her and had seen

that it was only the wind in the curtains brushing

against the open strings, that he finally knew she

wasn’t coming back. He had dealt with the deluge alright

but the watermark of her leaving was still quite visible.

He had resorted to the compass then, thinking that

geography might rescue him but after one week in the

Victorian Alps he came back north, realising that snow which

he had never seen before, was only frozen water.

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows.

I’ll take you to Hollywood

I’ll take you to Mexico

I’ll take you anywhere the

River of Money flows.

But was it really possible for him to cope with the

magnitude of her absence? The snow had failed him.

Bottles had almost emptied themselves without effect.

The television, a Samaritan during other tribulations, had

been repossessed. She had left her travelling clock

though thinking it incapable of functioning in

another time-zone; so the long vacant days of expensive sunlight

were filled with the sound of her minutes, with the measuring of

her hours.

Not the stuff of the three minute hero, I appreciate, but the pair were equally comfortable writing the standard verse, chorus, verse pop song that chimed in at a radio friendly 2.56 and wouldn’t have frightened the horses. From ‘Springhill Fair’ they released a trio of pristine singles. McLennan’s pop-by-numbers opener ‘Bachelor Kisses’ was the first to hit the shops (and stay there, in the bargain bin) followed by Forster’s heart-achingly sad confessional, ‘Part Company’;

“That’s her handwriting, that’s the way she writes

From the first letter I got to this her Bill of Rights”

‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’, the final single from the album, found Forster in a more self- assured frame of mind;

“Feel so sure of our love

I’ll write a song about us breaking up”.

This sequence of starry-eyed singles should have seen The Go-Betweens clasped lovingly to the bosom of the pop establishment. Instead, they remained exiled in the wilderness, otherwise known as the John Peel show.

Still, at the time it seemed only to be a matter of time, before their streak of bad luck would break and the Brisbane boys would be basking in the sun kissed glow of chart success. Two robust albums followed, ‘Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express’, (Beggars Banquet, 1986) and ‘Tallulah’, (Beggars Banquet, 1987) each spawned excellent singles in Forster’s ‘Spring Rain’, and ‘Head Full Of Pride’, as well as McLennan’s ‘Right Here’ and ‘Bye Bye Pride’.

The great British public, though, remained sceptical. Peel sessions, stadium tours in support of the band’s long time admirers, R.E.M, contractual tie-ins with a host of high profile record companies including Rough Trade, Postcard and Capitol, made not the slightest difference to the band’s outsider status. If a pop group can be described as persona non grata, then they were it! The frustration was beginning to tell, driving McLennan to comment that he’d;

“given up on the commercial success thing, which is very good for my state of mind”.

The reality was, though, that their most “commercial” album, indeed their masterpiece, was still to come but in attempting to break into the charts the band would succeed only in breaking itself apart. The omens were not good from the outset. First off, bass guitarist Robert Vickers, who had been with the group since 1983, handed in his notice. His replacement, John Willsteed, seemed an upgrade, though, and his playing certainly brought a clarity and polish to the band’s sound, in keeping with their new direction of travel. He is credited by some insiders as having played a number of the more intricate guitar parts on ’16 Lovers Lane’.

Unfortunately, Willsteed was also battling a massive drink problem and it didn’t take him long to make enemies of the rest of the band.

Furthermore, Amanda Brown, recruited after contributing violin to The Servants sublime second single ‘The Sun, A Small Star’ began a relationship with McLennan. Suddenly, word leaked out that Forster and Morrison had been in a relationship of sorts for years. Battle lines had been drawn.

At the exact same time as the Forster/McLennan friendship, begun long ago in the Drama department of the University of Queensland, was starting to disintegrate, the power-brokers at the group’s management company were trying to push McLennan into the limelight at the expense of Forster. Author David Nichols, in his book The Go-Betweens, is clear about the re-alignment that took place “every promotional video from ‘Right Here’ onwards shows Forster completely back-grounded”. Seen today the video for ‘Was There Anything I Could do’ makes a toe-curling Exhibit A, with McLennan and Brown cavorting centre stage while Forster is stationed well to the rear. Morrison was deeply unhappy, particularly about the decision to draft in producer Craig Leon. In an interview with Sydney’s ‘On The Street’ she was scathing about the shift in emphasis;

“He was chosen to make this single accessible to people, to get us to crawl out of our cult corner.”

Despite the recriminations that would inevitably follow, the next five Go-Betweens singles would all be McLennan compositions.

On a more positive note, Forster and McLennan were working on the songs for ’16 Lovers Lane’ together, rather than working individually. The spirit of collaboration instead of competition at least extended to the song-writing! Released in August 1988 (Beggars Banquet /Capitol) and produced by Mark Wallis, who’d worked with the likes of Marianne Faithful, Tom Jones and R.E.M, ’16 Lovers Lane’ was a sublime collection of glimmering guitar ballads and sugar-spun indie anthems so glossy and sun kissed that you had to wear dark glasses just to listen to it.

On the release of their debut single ‘Lee Remick’ back in 1978, Forster and McLennan had talked about capturing “that striped sunlight sound” which Forster later defined as being;

“A romantic phrase, but it is abstract. It could be the sun coming through blinds as you play a record. It’s the shimmer of a fender guitar. It’s harmonies and tough-minded pop songs. It’s lying on a bed beside a window reading a book in the afternoon. It’s the sun on a girl’s shoulder length hair. It’s Buddy Holly in the desert the day they recorded ‘Maybe Baby’. It’s t-shirts and jeans. It’s Creedence. It’s Bob. It’s Chuck Berry.”

On ’16 Lovers Lane’, made twenty years after they first articulated the concept, they came closest to perfecting its meaning.

Opening with the McLennan’s unashamedly summery ‘Love Goes On’;

“There’s a cat in the alleyway

Dreaming of birds that are blue

Sometimes girl when I’m lonely

This is how I think about you”

and ending with Forster’s majestically romantic ‘Dive For Your Memory’

“I’d dive for you

Like a bird I’d descend

Deep down I’m lonely

And I miss my friend

So when I hear you saying

That we stood no chance

I’ll dive for your memory

We stood that chance,”

’16 Lovers Lane’ (once voted 24th greatest album of the eighties, by none other than Rolling Stone magazine) could also boast another pair of McLennan classics in the ‘Streets Of Your Town’ – a song that should have occupied a place in the nation’s pop consciousness in the same way that The La’s ‘There She Goes’ or The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ have done, and the wistful, heart-breaking lament,’ Quiet Heart’.

“I tried to tell you

I can only say it when we’re apart

About this storm inside of me

And how I miss your quiet, quiet heart”

‘Streets Of Your Town’ was such an obvious choice for a single that they had two cracks with it, releasing it first in October 1988 and then, refusing to accept defeat, the following summer. Sandwiched in between the twin versions of this neglected classic were two more ‘easy on the ear’ contenders, ‘Was There Anything I Could Do’ (McLennan) and ‘Love Goes On’. Both met the same miserable fate – they were steadfastly ignored.

The failure to impact on the charts, with such an obviously radio-friendly song as ‘Streets Of Your Town’, must have come as a crushing blow to Forster and McLennan and was probably the final nail in The Go-Betweens’ coffin. Broke and broken-hearted they went their separate ways.

That The Go-Betweens had swallowed their pride and danced to the tune of their paymasters, there could be no doubt. They’d flattened out the kinks in their song structures, planed off the angular edges and streamlined their sound until, with each passing record, they began to sound less and less like The Velvet Underground and more and more like Abba. Not that there is anything wrong with Abba or ’16 Lovers Lane’ itself, indeed in parts it’s a breathtakingly beautiful record. It’s just that 3/5ths of the band didn’t really want to make that type of record anymore. The Go-Betweens sold their soul, but they still didn’t sell any records!

To make matters worse there wasn’t even the consolation of making their mark in the album charts, where more mature bands could be expected to have their egos massaged by a loyal fan base, successfully built up over a lengthy career. All The Go-Betweens could muster, though, was a week at no. 91 in June 1987 with ‘Tallulah’, and one week at no. 81 for ’16 Lovers Lane’ in September 1988.

The Go-Betweens, however, did make minor inroads upon the UK Independent Charts. Before signing for Beggars Banquet the band had recorded for Rough Trade and Situation 2, qualifying them for inclusion in the Indie charts. Between 83 and 86 they had three entries in the top 40. ‘Cattle and Cane’, an autobiographical McLennan song voted by the Australasian Performing Rights Association in 2001 as one of the country’s 30 greatest songs of all time, reached no. 4 in March 1983, while ‘Man O Sand To Girl O Sea’ charted at no. 24 toward the end of the same year. A 12 inch only release of ‘Lee Remick’ peaked at no. 7 in November 1986. And there the trail runs cold.

To speculate, now, on the spectacular failure of The Go-Betweens is to set oneself an impossible task. Maybe, it was simply because they never really established a British fan base, maybe Australians appeared less cool than Americans or the dynamic duo just lacked sex appeal. It could be argued that both Forster and McLennan were not distinctive enough as singers, even that they sounded too erudite at times, for daytime radio. Maybe it was Forster’s controversial decision to play a Capitol Records promotional launch of ’16 Lovers Lane’ in an olive green dress (the company scaled down the record’s promotional budget the very next day). Or, perhaps, it was just that fate was against them all along.

In September 1985 the band had signed with Elektra, hoping for better promotion and distribution of their work. Forster was in optimistic mood “We’ve gone with Elektra – start our LP in just over a week. Without any doubt the songs are our best, we are playing our best, and with ourselves producing this unknown masterpiece, it might be great.” Within weeks Elektra had gone belly up and the band was back to square one again, much to Forster’s chagrin;

“I do think we have a sense of anger – no one’s ever been able to present us to the British public in any sort of cohesive or intelligent way.”

One thing is for sure, they had a fistful of great songs and in Forster they had someone who gave the band personality. His art-rock background led him to pay particular attention to his stage performance, although we can only presume his tongue was firmly in his cheek with this analysis of his ‘dancing’;

“Bobby Womack himself once told me that I am a soul man, and that as far as modern music is concerned there are only three soul men left: himself, me and Prince. Prince came to Brisbane and took the colours, the moves, his whole act from me. It’s true! He’s seen my moves!”

Perhaps The Go-Betweens’ drummer Lindy Morrison, speaking in 1992 was nearer the truth than I, and others, would care to admit when she offered this overview;

“We might have been one of the most lauded bands in the country, but we sold bugger all records. That’s a shame. So let’s not go on about it being one of the most lauded bands in the country, cause who cares? We didn’t sell records, we weren’t a popular band, and I’m sick of hearing about the fact that we were so fabulous – because if we were so fabulous, why didn’t anyone buy our records?”

Forster managed a slightly more laconic response;

“It was quite freeing to realise, our group is so good, and we’re getting nowhere. After a while, the lack of recognition was so absurd it was funny”.

Following their initial break up, the compilation album ‘1978-1990’ was released and allowed the music press to pass their verdict on the life and times of The Go-Betweens. Melody Maker’s Dave Jennings could barely contain his anger; “The fact that The Go-Betweens never became massive is a disgusting injustice… take The Go-Betweens to your heart, where they belong.” In 1996, writing for Select magazine Andrew Male wrote that “The only problem with listening to The Go-Betweens now is that they can’t help remind you of how crap the eighties were. The Go-Betweens produced records of quiet brilliance and got nowhere. Sting sang about a sodding turtle and became a millionaire.”

Even now, though, there isn’t exactly a critical consensus. Simon Reynolds in his definitive account of the post-punk years 1978-1984, “Rip It Up And Start Again”, devotes only one sentence to our Antipodean protagonists; “The Go-Betweens, who hailed from Australia but had a spare, plangent sound similarly rooted in Television and early Talking Heads”. It should be noted, of course, that at this stage The Go- Betweens only had ‘Send Me A Lullaby’ and ‘Before Hollywood’ under their belt. Bob Stanley in his widely acclaimed book “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop” (2013) omits them entirely from his 800 page anthology.

Any discussion of Literate Pop, though, if you are inclined to concede that the genre actually exists, if you believe great pop can be thought through, rather than instinctively felt, be cerebral rather than corporeal, would have to take into account The Go-Betweens’ collective body of work. Their singular form of romanticism, their shimmering chorus’s, their quirky, idiosyncratic lyrics and their wry pop sensibility all combined to make them one of the great post-punk pop groups. They made two albums, ‘Springhill Fair’ and ’16 Lovers Lane’ that would lose nothing in comparison with Costello’s ‘King Of America’, Lloyd Cole’s ‘Rattlesnakes’, Scritti Politti’s ‘Songs To Remember’, Mickey Newbury’s ‘Look’s Like Rain’ or The Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Everything Must Go’. In this context, their work will be remembered long after their more commercially successful contemporaries have disappeared from the recorded history of popular music.

To end, though, at the beginning. In 1978, after the local success of their debut single, ‘Lee Remick’, Forster dreamt of setting sail for England. Given the tortuous fate that awaited them on these shores, his words seem remarkably poignant now.

“England, I think, has the greatest acceptance of new music, they’re more open-minded. They write it in the NME and people buy your records. Any country that can accept Jilted John, X-Ray Spex and The Only Ones… there’s a place for The Go-Betweens.”

Source by Kevin McGrath

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/the-go-betweens/ via Home Solutions on WordPress