#like i thought it was a little strange there were 9 eps instead of 8 or 10

[change-the-rules]

I'm wondering if the shortness of the ep is also an indicative factor for the theory that that trial wasn't quite real

[hrts4wonu]

“이상한 왕국” : spoilers

translation: the strange kingdom

you grew up in a small village, in a kingdom ruled by an evil queen who's time will soon end which was being celebrated by your peers. but, little did they know, another kingdom has arrived not to celebrate along with you all, and instead end the innocent lives of the people who live in this kingdom. the large, thick concrete walls that circled the kingdom crashed to the floor and fires were spreading everywhere. nobody else had escaped in time, you think. for days, you ran and ran and ran. far away from the kingdom that you thought was safe forever. 'what was i thinking? there's no forever, just like what my mom said.' you say to yourself as you crash to your knees, tired and barely having enough energy to run anymore. your eyesight was getting blurry the more you ran, and you brushed it off like it was nothing. you finally found the energy to run again after resting. your stomach was grumbling and you were in pain; nobody else survived except you and you were just running away from all of it. just as you were about to stand up, you fall to the ground losing your consciousness. and before you knew it, a kind-hearted prince approaches your figure and yells something out loud to the people near him that you just couldn't find the energy to pay attention to. 'fate' you thought before completely closing your eyes and fading into the dark abyss. when you woke up the next day, you were in some sort of bed. you gathered everything inside of you to stand up and walk— which, you couldn't quite do because of your exhausted legs and the wounds on them. the same prince from yesterday approached you worryingly and places you back on the bed, “what happened? are you okay?” he utters in such a panicked yet loving voice. you shook your head no in response. “another kingdom.. attacked ours.” you add to your nod, looking away with a frown. and from then on, you and the prince had become great friends; you now lived in the so called ‘isanghan wang-gug’ or in english, ‘the strange kingdom’

tags. seventeen, royal au, ex ruler reader / yn, ot13, colonized village, kingdoms, fantasy, fairytale

warnings. violence (not quite), smut, slowburn, harem, seventeen x reader, arguments, swearing, sparring, unprotected sex (don't do this), overstimulation, tying up / bdsm, forced marriage, etc. (tell me if i missed anything!)

a/n: hey, starlings. kim here<3 this royal au is not inspired by anyone (i'm serious btw). this idea originated from the time where i used to play minecraft and i just all of a sudden went like 'oh my god, what if i make castles for seventeen? like an entire kingdom?' and i did. i wasn't able to technically finish it due to the fact that my minecraft wouldn't open anymore and yeeahh.. anyways, i made my own lore for it but instead of sending it to my friends i wanted to post it here on tumblr instead ^_^

-👑-

RELEASE DATE : January 1, 2024 - January 13, 2024 (between those dates)

UPDATES : every 2 weeks / 1 month

MASTERLIST ;

MEMBERS & INFORMATION:

#1:

#2:

SEASON 1: The Journey Begins

ep 1:

ep 2:

ep 3:

ep 4:

ep 5:

ep 6:

ep 7:

ep 8:

ep 9:

ep 10:

SEASON 2: Eye Of The Evil

ep 11:

ep 12:

ep 13:

ep 14:

ep 15:

ep 16:

ep 17:

ep 18:

ep 19:

ep 20:

SEASON 3: Equality's Dead

ep 21:

ep 22:

ep 23:

ep 24:

ep 25:

SEASON 4: The Hurricane

ep 26:

ep 27:

ep 28:

ep 29:

ep 30:

ep 31:

ep 32:

ep 33:

SEASON 5: Roses, Wine, & Assassin 8

ep 34:

ep 35:

SEASON 6: Hidden Secrets

ep 36:

ep 37:

ep 38:

ep 39:

ep 40:

ep 41:

ep 42:

ep 43:

ep 44:

ep 45:

SEASON 7: One Last Glimpse

ep 46:

ep 47:

ep 48:

ep 49:

ep 50:

a/n 2 : i might do more but for now, i will try continuing this and finishing all 7 seasons in 2024. i'm currently going to start with the first episodes now and might make the release date earlier than what i want it to be or maybe push it back to a later date.

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression Ep 40 - Appeal for buzzword of the year.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru with this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san, Tasai san, welcome. Oh, thats noisy! *Adjusting chair*

J: Haha

K: How noisy.

J: I feel like I've been seeing you every day.

K: Yeah, what could that be?

T: Yeah.

J: Yeah, its strange.

K: Yeh, I feel like I saw you yesterday.

J: Thats right.

T: Yeah.

K: Did something happen, I wonder?

J: Yeah, something might have...

K: Haha.

J: Anyhow, I drank too much last night, and I have quite a hangover today.

K: Oh really? Yeh, your face somehow looks a bit swollen.

J: Right?

K: Haha

J: *To Tasai* Have you been drinking? For the end of the year?

T: Not at all.

J: Oh, you havn't? How about you Kaoru?

K: Oh, I have.

J: Have you? Not too much though?

K: No, I've been ok.

Kami: *sneezes*

J: I just heard a sneeze!

K,T: Hahaha.

J: Kami sneezed like, 'Ahhchoo'. Haha, what great timing to sneeze.

K: Ok, so this week, its still a little early, but lets  go with this topic. Joe, could you..?

J: Yes. 'Early predictions for buzzword of the year. The most symbolic word of the year is...?' Well, there have already been 30 nominations released for the buzzword of the year. But, well, there are predictions, and most of the words for 2020 are corona related. At the moment the prediction for #1 is 'social distance', #2 is 'the Three C's', #3 is 'Stay Home', #4 is 'Covid crisis', #6 is 'Abe no mask', #9 is 'Amaebi'..

K: Its 'Amabie'. (*This is the name of a spirit which is believed to ward off plagues*)

J: Ah, Amabie, yes. What did I say?

K: Ama ebi (*sweet shrimp*).

T: Very delicious stuff will come.

J: That sounds odd.

K: haha

J: Uh, #10 is 'State of Emergency'. 8 out of the top 10 are corona related. There are also others such as 'Go To Campaign', 'PCR test', and 'Self-restraint police' etc within the nominations.

K: I see.

J: What do you two think about a buzzword for this year?

T: Was there something..?

J: In terms of this show?

K: Oh, on this show?

J: Yeh, something from this show.

K: Well, there should be something.

J: Haha, yeah.

K: A lot of things were said off the cuff.

T: Yeah, haha.

J: I've a feeling our buzzword of the year might be something that Kami has said, haha.

T: There must be so many things, but..

K: You somehow can't remember, right?

T: Yeah, I can't remember.

J: Yeh, I can't remember either.

T: Its strange.

J: Does this mean the stuff Kami has said has left no impression on me?

K: Haha

J: Even though he talks a lot..

T: Yeah.

K: There must be something..

T: Yeah, there must be.

Kami: I say a lot of good stuff.

J: Good stuff?

Kami: Yeah, I say good stuff.

J: Im sorry Kami, you havn't left much of an impression. 

Kami: I havn't?

J: Sorry.

K: He changes quite a lot doesn't he?

J: Yeah, he has no sense of consistency.

T: Haha, thats true.

J: ???*1

T: There is like '¥1000 p/h' with Kami.

J: '¥1000 p/h'!

T: One of Kami's words.

K: Or 'Night-shift'.

J: Oh, 'Night-shift', right.

T: He kinda has a 'Kani kōsen/The Crab Cannery Ship' feel to him. (*A 1929 proletarian novel by Kobayashi Takiji*)

J: Haha, he has a sense of Kobayashi Takiji, right?

T: Yeah, haha.

J: But as for this show, we did mention Hanshin quite a bit.

K: Hmmm, well...

J: Not enough to make it a buzzword of the year?

K: Sometimes.

J: Only sometimes? Does Tokyo Sports have anything, like articles that were a big hit, outside of corona?

T: Well, there was a surprising amount of negative news.

J: Right?

T: Things about all the suffering that took place this year.

J: Wasn't there any really silly Tokyo Sportsy stories that took off?

T: I don't think there was this year.

J: Wasn't there?

T: Because its always been about Tenryu.(*Former Pro-wrestler*)

K: Hahaha.

T: Sorry about that everyone, this new Reiwa era has been...

J: Is Tenryu still active?

T: Haha, no..

K: No, he's not.

T: The viewers might be ??? *2

J: By Tenryu, you mean Tenryu Genichiro, right?

T: Yes.

K: But he does appear on TV quite a bit.

T: For any one who doesn't know what we're taking about, we'll just say he's on tv sometimes.

K: Choshu san too, right? (*Former Pro-wrestler*)

T: Yeah.

J: Ah, Choshu san? Yeah. 

T: We run stories about the secret 'Tenryu metal bat' incident, and stuff.

K: But we want that kind of thing, right?

J: Yeh, everyone expects its to be corona corona corona, but on the other hand if you go with Tenryu..

K: Haha, Tenryu for buzzword of the year??

J: Yeah, haha. Wouldn't it be great if our buzzword for the year was 'Tenryu'?

T: I think it would be for Tokyo Sports...Tenryu, or..'Big boobs' or something like that.

J: Ahh. Well, we need something for this show, The Freedom of Expression. Like, 'Night shift'?

T: Hmm, 'night shift' or..I feel like you've said quite a few puns, Joe.

J: I probably have.

K: But actually, last time...Kami was saying 'small boobs' quite a lot.

J, T: Hahaha

J: He was! The buzzword of the year: Small boobs?

T: There's quite a lot of things 'lacking' about this show too though, isn't there? Haha.

K: Yeh, lacking good taste. It can't be helped.

J: Well, yeh, Kami is vulgar. We can't change that. Isn't there anything you can think of, Kaoru? Anything unforgettable..a symbol of 2020?

K: I feel like there should be.

T: Oh, but there was Hosojimaya too!

J: Hosojimaya, yeh. Carbohydrate + carbohydrate.

K: That was your..

T: Your favourite set meal right?

J: I always end up saying that...Carbs + carbs.

T: Oh, I remember one. When Kaoru was eating ramen at Hosojimaya, he said 'I'm collecting all the onions in one spoon'.

K: Hahaha

J: Collecting all the onions in one spoon?

T: It was that delicious.

J: When you were drinking the soup?

K: Yeah.

T: Yeh, he was like, 'The onions are so good, I can get them all into one spoon!'. That one stands out for me.

J: Haha 'Collecting the onions in one spoon', the buzzword for 2020?

K: But I do sit there eating that for a long time, the onions and stuff.

T: Yeh, you were saying, 'This is so good'.

J: Why is that? You are not remembering being poor as a kid?

K: I just like onions.

J: You like onions?

T: They are delicious.

J: I like them too. I still go to Hosojimaya sometimes.

K: Oh, do you?

J: Yeah.They said they've had a few customers who saw the restaurant on this show. So thank you for that.

K: It'd be nice to go to some other places lIke that. A Chinese restaurant or something.

J: Yeah, it would. I wanna go to Chinese restaurants so much that the buzzword for the show next year will be 'Chinese restaurants'!

T: Haha

K: Im not sure about that just yet...

J: Oh, is that a bit too much? haha. But, I don't know why I said 'Sweet prawn' (amaebi), instead of Amabie. When I shake my head, I can feel the alcohol sploshing around.

K: But when this came out at first, we didn't know anything about it, did we?

T: I still don't really. What is it?

K: Im not that sure..

J: Its like a spirit to protect against infectious disease. I don't know where this came from. Its like a strange looking character. Amabie..

T: But Joe-style is Ama ebi.

K: Was sweet prawn a thing this year? haha.

J: I messed up..

K: Its the first I've heard of it!

T: Haha, yeh.

J: Well, yeh, sweet prawn didn't really come up in our lives during 2020. But don't you wanna come up with something that is unrelated to corona?

T: Yeah.

K: Well, yeh.

J: Kami, do you have any ideas?

Kami: As for me? I kinda want this one to do well...'Ojikun' (*A trend of younger women falling for middle aged men*). Its not in the nominations, is it?

T: Oh, Ojikyun, yeah.

J: What is Ojikyun?

T: There was this tv drama with a bunch of middle aged men, and the younger women thought they were cute. Like they fell for them.

K: Oh, I remember something like that.

T: Yeah, it was a manga too.

J: Ojikyun...that sounds good.

K: *points at Joe* You think you are old enough for Ojikyun?

J: I really want that to happen.

K: Well, that makes us all Ojikyun.

J: Haha, no no, thats totally me.

T: Joe, you are still young!

J: No no, really. Lets go with 'Ojikyun'.

K: You keep saying we should go with everything, haha.

J: Well, you see, the alcohol is affecting me today, it really is.

K: Ok, lets appeal for suggestions...

J: Oh, yeah.

K:...for this show's buzzword of the year.

T: Ah, I see.

K: Lets see which things have left an impression on the viewers.

T: Well, for me its Kaoru collecting all those onions. So, we want to know what other things have stood out to the viewers.

J: Yeah. I liked the hoodie.

T: Oh, the Tokyo Sports hoodie?

J: Yes.

T: Oh, thank you.

J: Tokyo Sports hoodie. Is it a buzzword, or maybe a trending item?

T: Oh, that makes me so happy.

K:  Is it selling?

T: Well, thanks to this show, and Joe modelling it..

J: No no no.

T: Joe, the fashion leader.

J: Im not a fashion leader at all. I only ever wear black.

K: Hahaha

T: Is it Kyary pamyu pamyu or Joe Yokomizu? haha

J: What are you talking about? haha. Okay, I'll go with 'Tokyo Sports Hoodie' for the buzzword.

T: Thank you. ??? *3

J: Haha. Thank you ???

T: Yeah.

J: So, lets ask the viewers for thier suggestions.

K: Yeah, lets.

J: Which was the best word on the show this year, or the most symbolic.

T: Sounds good.

K: So, should we choose the one with the most votes as the winner?

J: I guess thats how it would go.

T: Well, we can't forget about what Kami wants..

K: So, like we can choose one, and if we remember it...We won't just go by which had the most suggestions.

T, J: Yeh, yeh, yeh.

K: And we can give one of the radio stickers as a present to that person.

J: Oh, those stickers! Thats a good idea.

Kami: Um, this might be a bit different from a buzzword, but Dir en grey did that online live show, right?

T, K, J: Yes.

Kami: Not the online live, I mean the streamed setlist chosen by members.

T, K, J: Oh yes

Kami: When the new song 'World of Mercy' was played, everyone said, 'Its Tashiro!'. (*Controvesial former tv star Tashiro Masashi, nicknamed 'Marcy', prosecuted for filming up womens' skirts and drug use. Marcy/マーシー and Mercy/マーシー have the same pronunciation in Japanese.*)

T: Ah, I see, haha.

K: Oh, that. Marcy..

Kami: Yes, Marcy/Mercy, its Tashiro. Could that be a buzzword?

T: I mean, what can we say about that?

J: I guess it is...

K: Well, it is, but if a regular person saw it, they would think of that Marcy (*as opposed to Dir's Mercy).

J: Haha, 'that Marcy'? Should we include 'Tashiro'?

T: I mean, it is a thing amongst the fans.

Kami: Within this show...Tashiro.

T: Online slang is pretty interesting, right?

J: Yeah.

K: Lets just put this Mercy/Marcy talk to one side, shall we? Haha.

J: Really. We ended up talking about this kind of thing before we even realised it.

K: But yeah, Id like to decide on a buzzword for the year for the Freedom of Expression, so please send us your suggestions.

J: Where should they send them to?

K: Er, in the comments for this vid, or on my twitter. I'll write a tweet about this, so people can reply to that. Ok, well, lets finish here this week. Please subscribe. Thank you very much.

*1,2,3 - Either couldn't hear, or couldn't figure out.

[ladyc0312]

A Jikook Guide to RunBTS: 30-39

One general trend to point out that’s true pretty much all series long, but was particularly noticeable to me starting around these episodes - JK and JM end up next to each other an unusually high percentage of the time when the guys choose where they're standing / sitting. Like, I initially thought I was only noticing it because I was primed to notice KM stuff, so I started tracking some other random pairs for comparison, and there’s no contest. 

Also, this is when the show started really hitting its groove. I’d seen nearly all the Run episodes before going back and rewatching for this guide. There were some I rewatched at 1.5x speed and others I happily rewatched normally. There are many more of the later starting around here.

As usual, let me know if I’ve missed anything or should take another look at something!

Ep 30 "The Variety Show of Memories Part 1" 

(Ep: 4 / KM: 1)

The ones with dancing, games, sleepy Kookie, and the tomato song that will embed itself in your brain 

20:00 - JK picks Jimin for the quiz challenge without using honorifics. Jimin calls him out for it and JK jokes back, then actually apologizes.

BEHIND 5:47 - JK is the only one to clap when Jimin does a funny dance 

Ep 31 "The Variety Show of Memories Part 2" (Ep: 5 / KM: 0)

None. But seriously, guys, this episode is a must-watch regardless. 

Ep 32 "Take Care of Santa" (Ep: 3 / KM: 1)

The one where everyone runs around like crazy in Santa hats with pig balloons as J-Hope not-so-secretly tries to steal them

9:08 - Jimin spots JK hiding in a tunnel and crawls in to talk to him despite suspecting that he's the thief 

27:50 - Jimin asks JK for the balloon he opened up to make his voice high with helium gas. JK gives it to him and they both say goodbyes in high-pitched voices at 28:14

Ep 33 "BTS and Manito Part 1" (Ep: 5 / KM: 3)

The ones where the guys jump for pictures, cheat at puzzles, and give each other gifts

1:59 - Jimin laughs a little when he sees that he's chosen JK as his Manito 3:56 - Jimin asks "Jungkook, why are you so cute?" and for some reason the on-screen text emphasizes this by popping up under Jimin's face saying "Jimin finding Jungkook very cute" 10:01 - Jimin comments on how high JK jumped and the on-screen text continues to call him out by tagging him as "amazed by Jungkook's jumping skills" 11:06 - Jimin singles out JK for praise for another good photo (on-screen text: "so hilarious") 12:00 - Jimin tells JK that he wants to give him a point for his acting, but his shoulders didn't make it into the shot 14:10 - Jimin AGAIN compliments JK (maybe he felt bad because he judged him as not properly in the picture the prev round) and the on-screen text wants to make sure we know Jimin is "amazed" I really can't tell if whoever writes this stuff is onto Jimin or is just also in love with JK, but I find the constant commentary hilarious either way 16:06 - Jimin gets JK to try to coordinate photo-bombing RM's pic BEHIND 5:05 - When JK is taking pictures of the posed photos he finds funny, takes two of Jimin (and you can see he's zoomed in on Jimin's face in both) while laughing adorably

Ep 34 "BTS and Manito Part 2" (Ep: 5, KM: 3)

8:46 - JM & JK decide to work together as a team to solve the puzzle

11:54 and 14:46 - JK and JM playfully grab and shove each other a bit to get to the mic first

15:41 - After Jimin and JK get bingo at the same time, they high five and Jimin comments "there's something about us"

15:55 - Jimin has moved his chair so he's sitting super close to JK and has seems to have his hand on his back for an extended period of time

23:27 - When they say Jimin failed his manito mission to make finger hearts with JK, they do it together and pose cutely here. Then, JK reminds JM that he actually did it successfully when the main cameras weren't on them by talking with JK about how different people make finger hearts. Jimin shakes JK's hand in thanks for the validation. 

24:17 - It's quick, but you can see Jimin tapping JK to make a comment to him while the focus is on Jin.

25:53 - Jimin makes a comment about being a calico cat after JK has opened Jimin's manito gift and seen that it's a cat lamp. I mention it because I've seen some people connect that to "Serendipity" being a jikook thing, which I buy generally but, in this particular instance, Jimin had no way of knowing which member his present would end up going to.  BEHIND 2:38 - JK does a joking imitation of acting out a food and Jimin playfully slaps him on the arm 3:41 - The same thing happens again when JK makes another funny face

Ep 35 "Kimchi Battle" (Ep: 3, KM: 3)

The one where, as you’d expect from the title, BTS makes kimchi

1:12 - JK taps Jimin on the chest when they say he can call his mom for help 1:23 - JM has his arm around JK's shoulders for a while and then moves his hand down to his lower back at 1:38 11:24 - JM has JK smell something gross and is impressed when JK has no reaction 16:38 - JK goes over to taste and compliment JM's kimchi and gets scolded by Suga for having his back to the camera 18:03 - JM watches closely as JK mixes the kimchi and the others compliment his arms 18:21 - Jimin continues staring at said arms 19:21 - Still staring 20:19 - More staring as the others all compliment JK's arms again 21:16 - Guess who's still watching JK? This time JM looks particularly impressed when JK lifts a heavy container 21:38 - Even the on-screen text has noticed the staring at this point and captions this "looking sweetly at Jungkook" 23:23 - Jimin tells JK the kimchi won't taste good yet because it's too fresh and looks at him affectionately, then compliments how good it looks.  24:38 - JM compliment's JK's kimchi again. He really seems much more invested in JK's work than his own this ep BEHIND 0:44 - JK claps for the slate and JM hits himself over his heart right after, making JK (and no one else) laugh 5:52 - Jimin wipes the sweat off JK's neck as he works on mixing the kimchi. When Jin does the same for JK's forehead right after, Jimin says that they look like two brothers and it looks like Jin's hating what he's doing.

Ep 36 "Kimchi Wars" (Ep: 3, KM: 1)

The one where the above kimchi is used in a cooking competition 

None. JM and JK cooking together on the same team is cute, but everyone is cooking together, so there’s nothing uniquely jikook in the episode itself. BEHIND 5:10 - JK starts clapping a beat and JM joins in with his tongs and dances 6:35 - As JK films some of the food, someone (not quite sure who) comments that they've never seen any of JK's work except for when he went on vacation with Jimin

Ep 37 "BTS Marble Returns" (Ep: 1?, KM: 1)

The one in this set that I have absolutely no memory of 

5:41 - When JK loses and rolls around in annoyance, Jimin comments twice how cute he is

Ep 38 "Spin BTS" (Ep: 3 / KM: 3)

The one where they play a bunch of strange games while Suga is dressed as Chimmy  

2:33 - JK smiles at and compliments JM's penalty suggestion

4:47 - Before starting this game, JM said that he wasn’t good at games requiring strength. Here, JK points out twice that Jimin isn't being moved by the ropes 

5:42 - JK compliments Jimin at the game again, saying he's like a bull 

7:05 - Despite being on Jin's team, JM goes over to watch JK complete his puzzle

10:02 - After JHope identifies a sound as Jimin sneezing, JK says he was going to say that too and grabs Jimin's arm to ask him if he knew

11:33 - One second clip of an interaction that starts with JM putting his hand near JK's face, but it's cut off

21:30 - When other members are practicing imitating people, JK tells them to do Jimin next

BEHIND 5:50 - When asked to guess why Jimin made an upset noise, both Jimin and Jin guess (wrongly) that it had something to do with JK

Ep 39 "BTS Golden Bell Part 1" (Ep: 3, KM: 3)

The one in which JK learns that he far prefers being a competitor than an MC

1:14 - After JK announces that he's offering up his computer as the prize, Jimin turns around and gives him a quick side hug

1:29 - After they decide JK will be the MC and it's clear JK is nervous about it, Jimin starts fixing something on JK’s uniform and pats him on the shoulder while advising him how to deliver some of the words. He also seems to remind him to ring the bell at 2:24

2:52 - JK and JM stand super close when he asks him questions, to the point where the on-screen text asks "Must you stand so close?" at 3:05

3:50 - This may be reading too much into things, but Jimin's body language and the way he's not smiling like the rest of them made me wonder if he was annoyed about them taking the MC role away from JK...

7:55 - While celebrating his team's win, JK dances over to Jimin, who smiles and gives him a high-five even though the other members of Jimin's team are unhappy about losing

16:36 - When JK accidentally calls out his own name instead of someone to challenge, Jimin walks over and hugs him while laughing

BEHIND 0:56 - JK and JM joke around together 5:40 - Slightly different angle of the 16:36 moment above

[idio-cies]

Jatp- Perfect Harmony Dissection

Holy Moly this show has taken me by surprise in the best possible way.

I forgot how good Kenny Ortega is... and omg the dynamics in this show are just *chefs kiss* anyway that’s for another post

All of these songs left an impression with me, but Perfect Harmony just got the cogs working in my brain so I wanted to dissect it because I can’t stop thinking about it.

This will be long but I hope people will bear with me.

I found out that Madison and Charlie wrote this one together for the show, so that’s cool. So, even if this is Julie’s fantasy/daydream, it objectively also has “Luke’s” input as well, considering Madison and Charlie were writing with the characters in mind.

The lead up to this song is Julie realising she is falling for Luke, and has Luke on the brain, so she slips up with calling Nick, Luke yadayada significant to say her crush has changed as well blah blah blah.

I first thought it was strange that they are all in black? They weren’t performing for anyone other than for merit. However Black is of course associated with death, mystery etc, but in this context ,with them being “fancy” it deems them as more elegant than anything. I like using this site for colour reference. Please make of it what you will, but I’m sticking with classy and mysterious with this performance.

Then I noticed how Julie and Nick are the centre of attention, plus Nick and Julie seem to improvise? They aren’t doing as the others are. Whether they are meant to or not. I think this is meant to draw parallels, with Nick sliding on the floor and Luke tumbling, then also the lift, how here it’s short and sweet, yet with Julie and Luke there are two and the second is drawn out and more meaningful etc.

I think she must be dancing normally in reality throughout this, but I’ll come back to that later.

So let’s get into this song.

“Step into my world”- I find this interesting because Luke is the one stepping over into hers, but also this is like some “in-between” that they're in;  significant of the Limbo that the guys are currently stuck in and also the fact that Julie is the bridge. The world is probably metaphorical for music as Luke helps re-establish it in Julie and is also the guy where music is his whole world, as he lets all of his emotions out and connects with people. It’s a running theme being called up again. However, you cannot deny the possible connotation of Julie potentially stepping over with them. It’s also ironic as Luke “steps” into Julie’s world “I’m sorry we came into your life” - Luke, ep 1, and literally steps over here.

“Bittersweet love story about a girl”- undeniable. Their story is bittersweet. Impossible to be together; yet have a connection that runs so deep.

But now we see the scenery, and it’s all monochrome and the candles just scream romance, but also to me, of serenity.

I mean even the dancefloor reflects to make it look as if they are dancing on water or in an in between world. The reason why I point out monochrome gives the intention of “black and white” there is a lack of complexity, it is clear about how true their bond is, and to them it isn’t complex. Also I can’t help but think of yin and yang which can also be included here as they balance each other out. Julie yin, Luke yang. This is ironic considering Julie is always symbolised with light and Luke the contrast with a dark and being, you know, dead.

I also came across a gifset of the parallels to dirty dancing that Perfect Harmony dance had, and again, the colours are flipped with the pair which is just... interesting in this instance.

“Shook me to the core  “Voice like an angel, never heard before”- pretty simple, Luke has always been amazed with Julie’s talent, plus a metaphor commonly attached to Julie, being called an angel. He is also calling her unique. Passage of touch.

But then we get the touch. So I think this whole hand passage thing is reflected in the time they tried to hold hands, then the last time and they could then touch. In this instance though it’s like Julie is the one being resurrected. Again, this could be another metaphor of his hand in helping her find her music again, but you cannot overlook the other implications.

So here is where they dance. I am no dance expert, but dance does have it’s own language that I think everyone can interpret, but I will try my best to explain. I also think “harmony” can be a way to express dance partners as well.

“Here in front of me”- I do think this is in reference being able to touch them, but the drawing up to her hands is so interesting because of the eye contact and draw. It’s more intimate.

Then they go into something similar to what the routine is meant to be in reality, but instead they make it like a pulse on the line “they’re shining so much brighter”

I point out a pulse because it’s “living” and it just juxtaposes with who Julie is talking about; the guys.

A twirl and lift on “than I have ever seen”- This is Julie talking about the guys. Ray calls them angels and then at the end of season they literally freaking glow so... (also pronoun change to collective when Julie starts singing)

“Life can be so mean”- ep 8, after Luke told him their demise would be one of three ways, Julie was going to be hurt all over again. Julie and Flynn had an understanding that the world was being cruel when they were discussing it. Also I just feel their dance here is like they are interpreting a rough ride/rollercoaster. They swing arms then tuck and twist.

“But when he goes, I know he doesn’t leave”- Luke will be in her heart, like she found with her Mum. She did let them go, and she understands she will have to do that, but they will live on in her heart.

Also hand over heart, as she “falls” into him and he doesn’t let her fall. That’s just cute.

“The truth is finally breaking through”- either their feelings or just what will be revealed to us. Though they are parted and Luke does the spinning on the ground so I expect a pitfall somewhere along the way (probs Caleb)

But he rolls right back to her

“Two worlds collide when I’m with you”- Well, the fact that they are the living and the dead.. so. Plus in-between. Don’t know how to interpret the dance here, I just like the swishy steps

“A voice is rising so, so high”- how Julie comes out of her shell. Also can’t help but link to the angel motif. Plus, Julie is lifted up, she is the catalyst, she is rising up in fame really. Luke is one of the people who helps her soar as well.

“We come to life, when we’re in perfect harmony”- Julie always being told she looks “alive again” when she’s doing music again.  Music and playing with Julie is what makes Luke and the guys feel alive. I gotta say, Charlie and Madison do exhibit some good harmonising.

The lift that happened is like the improv that Nick and Julie do, but then Luke and Julie here make eye contact as she comes down again, but goes back to similar to the dance she is meant to be doing. Until she reaches up on the line “We say we’re friends”, he also helps lift them up.

“We play pretend”. I mean, they kinda do. Luke tries to pass off his feelings with the guys, but that boy is WHIPPED.

“You’re more to me”- right off the bat, I like it. Arms out and a hug. YES. Also just look at that bliss on her face, bless her.

“We create” well yes they create “the perfect harmony”

The cut off is abrupt as Julie snaps back to reality. Then she looks in the mirror and realises Luke isn’t there and that she must’ve gone insane. This is what gets me. I think this is the moment that she realises that her feelings for Luke are deeper than she realised and I think she truly thought that they may have been dancing together in the end.

Is this just an extremely vivid daydream, because she had one of these when she mentally performed “I got the Music” and she must’ve done something during that time as she took someone’s drumsticks during her little renaissance. So what happened in real life? Did she just dance around a little, humming a bop? I just... I imagine that this is just a very lucid daydream, which is fair enough, relatable, but it just interacts so much with real life rather than actually just being all in her head. I just find it interesting.

The full version has some lines that I also want to point out. In the second verse there are these lines:

”You set me free”- Luke sings this line which can mean that she will set his soul free- she is a part of his “unfinished business”

“You and me together is more than chemistry”- Julie sings this line. We know that chemistry was pointed out by Alex and Reggie to Luke, and I believe Flynn also says about them being an appealing pair when performing. But they are more than chemistry. I mean they do work well together and they care about each other deeply, but I also can’t help but think of the “signs” her mother was giving her, and believing that the guys were sent to her.

“Love me as I am, I’ll hold your music here inside of my hands”- This is sung by both of them. They already do this, but holding their music in each other’s hand is interesting. I guess this is saying about trust and that they will do it together. I also think this relates to being able to finally hold hands. It’s like the saying “Whatever’s mine is yours”. They share pain, they share lyrics, their passion for music etc.

Then in the bridge we have the lines “I feel your rhythm in my heart”- I have a feeling that they are in sync with each other, they can immediately click and tune in with a melody. It’s also ironic as Luke doesn’t have a heart.

“You are my brightest burning star”- Luke sings this line. It makes sense. As I have said previously, Julie is this beacon of light, Luke clearly is in awe of her and inspires him. He also straight up calls her a star in ep 9 as well

“I never knew a love so real”- oh man, the irony. Their connection is pure and true, it’s just so annoying that he’s a ghost

“We’re heaven on earth, melody and words”- again with the metaphor of the middle ground where I suppose Julie sits. I understand the idiom and the bliss that they feel, and the connection they have and share with people. It’s just interesting as at the moment earth is currently Luke and the guys’ afterlife.

Anyway, that has been my dissection of Perfect Harmony. Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far 😅

PS. the lack of visual aids is because Tumblr hates me, I apologise

[anonil88]

Generation hbo ep. 8 liveblog; midseason finale

Let's get into this episode before I loose my train of thought:

He dressed like an entire funeral. Of course he's listening to Bad Religion by Frank Ocean. I do love that the song is in the catalog.

As Sam should. Accept the consequences Chester you were in the wrong and you're lucky no one knows besides administration what you did.

Wow no need to be rude Chester, Riley is just trying to be nice. This isn't about him setting boundaries, this is about how he brushed her concern off.

Oh he really disregarded this entire kid and has now found himself a new talking buddy. Of course now that he doesn't have his head in the improbable clouds, he can sees around himelf. He still should talk to his friends though and his new counselor. The person you date isn't the solution to your self fabricated drama.

So he did get suspended, good.

Ay Legends of Zelda and DND. Whoever did that chaotic good chart placed Chester pretty correctly haha.

Get his number. Yo Chester you need to get his number or his IG.

These kids are kind of dicks but I'm glad everyone including his teammates are like we love you something is wrong and we can tell. It just feels a little heres our token gay entertainment moment.

This is so stupid but they did make him smile and laugh again because he can't stay in this rutt forever. Kind of wild how when you are the loudest person in the room just being yourself and you are off people notice.

The joy was good for some time but it doesn't last because he needs to face the root of his loneliness. Alone in a room full of people.

That doesn't mean he likes you so you need to slow down. But, also he needs to get the rejection so he's not stuck on the crush.

This message is awful and awkward start, but its become long and awkward.

I guess there was no pregnancy intro because we are going to the mall. This mall day seems so fun minus the pregnancy.

Some solid people and the fire station is the best location to go to.

Its been 4/5 days and you haven't talked to her, come on now the two of you. Euphoria and this show remind me of how much I hate teenage communication issues. The number 1 reason you could not pay me to go back and redo my teen years.

Tiktok dances to make the baby go yo sleep lmfao how gen z.

Why is Chester being kind of an asshole to Nathan all of a sudden?

Oh fuck that kiss was uploaded oh fuck. No Chester now is not the time.

I would of hung tf up if that woman was my mother, because you're not gonna be a homophobe to me and then ask me to come home. It's coded but she's really just upset her son does actually like women AND men, and probably anyone under the realm of nonbinary that he deems attractive.

Just say thankyou. Sisters ? When did y'all get that close?

Girl its not funny to tell your adoptive parents, who treat you like gold, that you'd rather they didn't adopt you. It is fucking cruel especially to two gay parents who likely had to fight to get her. They just let her get away with it in the name of teenage angst.

Delilah is setting this baby up to be so conscious. Aw his beanie.

They are really all gifting the baby charms and tokens. A proper sending off. Maybe not so much the cbd oil lmfao but everything else is so sweet. Those things will stay in the babies possessions too.

I really don't like Ariana, that was not the time to talk about the hot firefighter. She is used as the inappropriate comic relief character and it grinds me up for multiple reasons.

What us Riley? 🤨 There was no "us" established, yall didn't even share a kiss kiss. How the heck is a quick couple of pecks turning into saxophone time, but also how do those quick peck without talking about anything constitute a relationship or even situationship. Mutual feelings exist but they aren't even in a relationship. Also, Greta needs to apologize to Riley for how she spoke to her. Theres a correct way to say, "I'm not comfortable instead of you sleep around I'm not like you." Greta barely spoke in this episode and didn't even look at Riley or utter an apology. That's real strange.

Chester is gonna find someone his own age, awesome, and break Nathan's heart in the process. Oh the drama.

Mid season thoughts: This show isnt bad it just needs some refinement and work. The issues I had throughout the season did not get cleared up in this episode at all. I really like some of these characters and others are not for me at all. Some of the other characters could use more solidification of their interactions. These characters just felt very different in this episode specifically that we've seen them previously. Ariana was still consistent as were Riley and Nathan in comparison to the others. This is only the mid season there are 8/9 episodes coming soon, the cast is currently still in production. Sigh if only we could get a Euphoria cross over in one of the eps they are filming right now. I say this since Euphoria starts filming this upcoming week. How cool would it be to see Chester, Riley, and Greta coming out of a corner store and Chester holds open the door for Jules and Rue. Then in the foreground Riley and Greta awkwardly talk and in the background Chester says I like your hair or outfit before running up behind his friends like "Stop bring weird let's go."

Anyways I'll be here to watch when the series does come back.

[starbuck]

I don’t know who Armitage is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask

(Hi there! I tried to type out a normal answer to this ask but it accidentally turned into a giant essay so honestly, anon, you should be afraid and I apologize in advance. If this is really Too Much, here’s an Armitage outfit-rating post I made a bit ago that covers a lot of the same content and also has additional screenshots of him for identification purposes.)

I didn’t know who he was either until about seven months ago... Well, that’s not entirely true, but it was around that time that I realized all his different appearances throughout the show were the same person and that person was the infamous Mr. Armitage. You may recognize his name by the fact that he’s being shittalked pretty much every time he’s brought up but he did some shitty things so about 75% of the time, he deserves it. 

But who is Armitage? Despite often being seen with a gun and hanging out with the marines, he’s not a marine himself, which is a common fandom misconception. Instead, he’s Terror’s gunroom steward which, despite its name, has nothing to do with guns (although he’s implied on several occasions to have the keys to the armory but whether this is a regular part of his job or a duty he just happened to be assigned, I do not know).

this was the shot that first made me notice him way back in October of last year and I had no clue who he was or why we were looking at him during the lashing

But what is his actual canonical significance? Although he is not a marine, he’s almost always seen by Tozer’s side. I like to think of myself (and the wonderful @rhavewellyarnbag) as the head archaeologists of what has been lovingly dubbed “the secret Armitage/Tozer subplot,” found only by closely studying the hidden depths beneath the surface of the show. I’ve actually been meaning to gather up all of my old meta and rewrite it to suit my current thoughts on the matter but, I’ll give it a somewhat abbreviated try here, under the cut.

The first time we properly see Armitage, he’s standing in armed defense of Tozer, immediately after Heather has been attacked by the Tuunbaq. Right off the bat, it’s a bit strange for a steward, who by any ordinary measure should be a nobody on the ship, to be protecting a Sergeant of the Royal Marines so that alone makes him stand out and I would argue that protecting Tozer becomes the cornerstone of his character.

In ep 6, while doing some of the aforementioned shittalking, Hickey says that Armitage had always wanted to be a marine, but was disqualified due to his disability, implying that he’s now somewhat of a wannabe or a fan but I think it goes deeper than that. In the very same episode, at Carnivale, we see Armitage assisting Tozer in feeding the comatose Heather, something he apparently knows how to do by this point and looks perfectly comfortable doing, which implies to me that he had been assisting in Heather’s care ever since his attack, in a similar fashion to how we see Tozer at his bedside in ep 5. And then, when all goes to shit at the end of ep 6, Armitage not only tries desperately to help Tozer save Heather from the fire but, failing that, drags Tozer out of the tent against his will, saving him from being crushed or burned to death for what was, by that point, a lost cause. Whatever Armitage’s original reasoning was for socializing with the marines, this is more than him playing out a fantasy of becoming one himself; his relationship with them, and with Tozer in particular, is personal. 

Enter: The Mutiny. Armitage was already connected to Hickey’s whole situation via participating in Silna’s kidnapping in ep 4 and then not owning up to it (remember how I said he deserves to be shittalked?) but Hickey didn’t even need blackmail to get him involved in the mutiny, all he needed was Tozer. With Tozer on board for his own reasons, Armitage’s eventual participation in the mutiny was a given. Also unhelpful to any hope of staying neutral was Armitage’s involvement in the murder of Koveyook and his family based on Hickey’s lies, as we hear about in ep 8, after which Hickey implies within his earshot that he’d like to see the armory opened. One can interpret this situation in multiple ways depending on whether Armitage had figured by that point that Hickey was the real murderer of Irving and Farr and was now in fear for his own life or whether he was still convinced of the family’s guilt and was acting purely out of racism but, regardless, it’s no surprise that, when Tozer asked him to open the armory without orders, he complied (although he was, tellingly, unable to defend this action to Little when pressed).

And so, ep 8 plays out, Tozer’s nearly hanged (much to Armitage’s dismay if you watch for him in the crowd around the gallows), the Tuunbaq interrupts, and the mutiny is on its way. But wait! Let’s not brush over Armitage saving Tozer’s life for the second time by thwacking Little, who had Tozer held at gunpoint, over the head. RIP Little’s skull but also this is the second time he was bamboozled by Tozer and Armitage within one day so… “Fool me once,” and all that…

(Also, try to tell me that appearing out of the fog in the nick of time to save the life of the person you love isn’t the most romantic thing ever? You can’t.)

But now the mutineers are their own offshoot group and things are getting serious(ly bad). At the end of ep 9 we have the scene where Armitage tries to convince Tozer to leave Hickey, which I think of as an attempt to, once again, save Tozer’s life. Although there was no way for Armitage to know the extent of Hickey’s agenda, he did know that he was being asked to assist in kidnapping Crozier, a reckless move wholly unrelated to their survival, not to mention that Hickey was clearly going nuts overall. So, to me, their conversation rings not only of Armitage grasping at their best chance of survival, but also of him trying to get Tozer out of a potentially dangerous and abusive situation. But, of course, Tozer says no and, despite his fear, Armitage stays as well, and things end how they end. 

in case it’s not clear, Armitage is the one who leans forward and reaches his hand out after Tozer is knocked out by Hickey :(

To summarize a bit more succinctly, Armitage’s narrative life is a tragedy marked by repeated failures and unrequited love with no solace or fulfillment and it sounds pretty damn depressing when I say it Like That but also, this is The Terror, so it’s really just par for the course. 

His being motivated by something as wonderful as love, and love for someone as worthy of it as Tozer is incredibly appealing to me. Not everything done in the service of love is good but I am naturally more sympathetic to it than I am to the actions of those who I believe were only in it for themselves. Harvey once said (paraphrasing here, apologies!) that Armitage might regret some of the things that happened, but he doesn’t regret why they happened, and I fully agree with that assessment. That is to say, I don’t think he set out to do bad things or was indifferent to the negative effects of the actions he ultimately took, but I also think that he loved Tozer and would have done anything to keep him safe and I really can’t hate him for that.

In fact (if this ridiculously long answer didn’t tell you already) for all his faults, I love him quite a lot! So thank you for asking and, if you made it this far, have a smiling and happy Armitage for your trouble!

[mae-gi-writes]

Deobi Playlist (EP 5) | The Boyz Imagine

Ep 5: in which Kevin says it’s okay to be different 

The Boyz x Hospital Playlist inspired drabble series.

Main Characters: Hyunjae, Juyeon, Kevin and OC (Mae)

Sides: the rest of The Boyz.

Genre: fluff, slice of life, comedy, BROMANCE BRUH

EP 1 | EP 2 | EP 3 | EP 4 | EP 5 | EP 6 | EP 7 | EP 8 | EP 9 | EP 10 | EP 11

----------

“I managed to take out his tumour, but I’ll need him to stay for a few days just so that he can recover fully. He’s under anesthesia for now but he should be up soon,” Kevin flips through his newest patient’s medical file and scans the page for his details. His name is Yeon Hanjo, eight years old, who had suddenly collapsed to the ground a week ago with no indication of an illness whatsoever. An MRI scan of his head and body had shown that the small child had been keeping a tumour hidden within the side of his skull for some time and after some thorough deliberating and research about the best methods to go about the operation, Kevin had managed to successfully draw the tumour out without any mishaps or complications. 

Mrs. Yeon bows before Kevin once more with barely restrained tears coating her eyes. She holds a tissue in her hand, which seems already wet and crumpled into a ball, and Kevin reaches out with another tissue that she takes gratefully. 

Mr. Yeon is at her side, one hand on his wife’s shoulder to provide her comfort, “Thank you, thank you so much Dr. Moon. We--We don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”

Kevin lets out a small, genuine smile, “it’s my duty. Hanjo’s life is just as important as anybody else’s, if not more.”

A few hours after the parents have left and Kevin has done his rounds as he is supposed to, he makes way to Hanjo’s room with a box of chocolate in hand. 

Hanjo is already awake, blinking at the night sky from his hospital bed. The child turns his attention towards the door when Kevin pokes his head in with a smile, “hello Hanjo. How are you feeling?” 

The child shrugs, and looks away. 

Being familiar with the way children react when they are forced into an unfamiliar setting where strangers prevail, Kevin steps in, closes the door behind him and takes a seat at Hanjo’s bed. The child is still not looking at him, chin adamantly pointed towards the outside world. 

“I bought something for you,” Kevin opens up his box of chocolates and offers him the box. Hanjo peeks into it for a few seconds of silence, looks up at his face, then pushes the box away.

While Kevin isn’t used to children not wanting any chocolate, that doesn’t dissuade him from trying. He closes the box and sets it on Hanjo’s bedside table. 

“In a few days, you can go back home. Aren’t you glad?” Kevin chats on despite the reluctance in Hanjo’s body behaviour, “what’s the first thing you want to do when you go back, Hanjo?” 

Still, the child stays silent. Kevin sees his lower lip tremble but decides it is better off not to mention it. He takes it as a fact that Hanjo might be shy, unwilling to converse because he’s a stranger. The only solution to that though is for Kevin to keep trying, which he does day after day. Every time he’d bring something different -- a different candy, or toy that boys his age would’ve liked -- but Hanjo refuses every single item without delay. 

When the date of Hanjo’s discharge looms closer and closer, Kevin can’t help himself but urge him to speak by prompting the child with good news, “you must be excited, only three days left!” he grins at the child in hopes of getting a smile back, at least. 

Hanjo, on the other hand, merely blinks. Then, a fat tear rolls down his cheek before he bursts into tears.

“Hanjo,” Kevin’s demeanor softens then, gently tugging the said child in his arms and scooping him close against his chest. The child keeps on crying, his face now red and tears cascading down his cheeks, staining Kevin’s white coat. His parents, having heard the commotion from outside, quickly slip in with mirroring expressions of worry and take the child from Kevin’s arms, who is left confused and slightly concerned at the child’s suddenly sad countenance. He cannot, for the life of him, understand how Hanjo’s mind works. Kids like him shouldn’t be crying like their world is tearing apart, shouldn’t be subdued and silent and just afraid of everything. 

No, there’s something that’s bothering Hanjo. And Kevin finds his answer a few hours later. 

“Hanjo spent most of his life in Florida, where he was born,” Mrs. Yeon says to him. After Hanjo had fallen asleep, she had ushered to buy Kevin a coffee at the cafeteria. She now sits opposite him, coffee cup clasped between frail fingers with skin wrinkled and saggy from years of work, eyes rimmed with blue aprons and mouth tugged down in a tense, awkward line, smeared with a pale chalky lipstick.

“We moved here just a few months ago. He hasn’t told me anything, but his teacher tells me that he hasn’t been very...interactive with the other kids,” she purses her lips as if in discontentment, “he barely talks, not because he doesn't understand. We talk to him in Korean all the time at home. Somehow though, he barely says a word here. It’s like he doesn’t want to make even the slightest bit of effort.”

“Have you tried talking to him about it?” Kevin asks with furrowed eyebrows. 

She shakes her head, “no, well. We’ve tried asking him about school and stuff, maybe mentioned his teacher’s comments once or twice but that was it. We don’t want to push him either.”

He can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the said young boy, knowing all too well how strange it is to move oneself to another country altogether, a country where the language is different, the people are different, and how it feels like your entire life has just turned upside down because of that mere fact. 

“Oh that’s just like little Kevin when he just moved here,” Hyunjae can’t help but snigger, prompting Mae to whack him across the back of his head.

“Ouch!” Hyunjae throws her a scowl, “why are you even a doctor? You should just become part of the mafia. Seriously! That hurt--”

She proceeds to shove a piece of lettuce in his mouth to muffle his protests. Juyeon and Kevin exchange knowing glances, before shrugging. 

“You should talk to him,” Mae suggests, and though she’s trying very hard to act normal, Kevin can feel the unease rolling off her, how she’s not looking at him and permanently fixating her gaze on her platter of food. He makes a mental note to ask Juyeon about it later.

For now, he replies, “yeah I should. It’s just a saddening thought. Children shouldn’t have so much trouble earlier on in their lives.” 

“Hey touff, we all haff prwabems,” Hyunjae attempts to say with his mouth still full. He swallows before gulping down some water. Slamming his cup down, he jabs a finger in Mae’s direction, “you and I have a problem.” 

“The only problem that I’ll have with you is killing you by asphyxiation, and before you ask, there is food involved,” Mae cooes. 

Hyunjae shivers, “psychopath.” 

“Nu-uh, Sociopath? Probably. But psychopath?” she scrunches her face up as though contemplating the thought, “nah, I’m too kind.” 

“You flatter yourself too much,” Juyeon rolls his eyes.

“Can we focus on the problem at hand?” Kevin waves his chopsticks around dramatically, ignoring Hyunjae stealing his piece of chicken and replacing it with some ginger instead. 

“Kevin, we all know that you’re the wondrous child talker here,” Hyunjae says, “we’re all counting on you to babysit our kids one day.” 

“Excuse me? Is there kindergarten written on my forehead?” 

“You mean, there isn’t kindergarten written on your forehead?” Hyunjae gasps dramatically, “here, let me--” 

“Don’t you dare, Lee Jaehyun.” 

Kevin waits until Hanjo’s parents leave with promises that they’ll be here to watch over him tomorrow morning, before slithering inside the children’s ward. Hanjo spots him, but doesn’t say anything as the said doctor sidles up to his bed and takes a seat on the abandoned chair next to him.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Kevin murmurs. The child watches as he pulls out a box of pocky sticks. His mother had stated that Pocky is the only asian snack he eats. Surely enough, Hanjo doesn’t hesitate to grab it with his little chubby fingers and Kevin gazes down at him with a fond sympathy gripping his chest.

But then, Hanjo glances up at him uncertainly. Kevin puts a finger to his mouth, “can you keep a secret?” 

Hanjo pauses, contemplates him for a moment. Then, he nods. 

“Cool, because I can’t actually sneak in any outside snacks,” Kevin whispers with a soft chuckle at the alarm washing over Hanjo’s face, “it’s okay, don’t worry. This is between you and me, alright?” 

It takes a few seconds for the child to decide that Kevin’s intentions aren’t all that bad, before he slowly pries open the packet and digs into the snack with barely restrained excitement. Kevin just watches him with fondness, glad that for once it seems like he’s done something for Hanjo, when the child suddenly sticks out the packet, urging him to take some. 

“Oh,” Kevin blinks in surprise, before drawing a pocky stick, “thanks, Hanjo. That’s so nice of you.”

Hanjo just nods, before returning his attention to the said chocolate covered sticks. As his mother had stated, it is indeed his favourite snack. 

“Do you often eat pocky, Hanjo?” Kevin asks. 

The child shrugs, urging Kevin to ask, “do any of your friends eat pocky?” 

At this, Hanjo’s mouth pauses as if in contemplation and Kevin knows that he has hit a nerve. Not just any, but a sensitive one. He hurries to continue talking for fear that he might lose momentum, “you know, I never really had any friends when I first moved here. I used to eat pocky because it reminded me of the snacks my mom used to buy for me, back when we were still in Canada.” 

He can practically see the cogs turning inside Hanjo’s brain as he mulls over the newly acquired information. 

“I was shy back then. I didn’t know how to approach people. They all spoke Korean, I understood them. But I was so scared that they couldn’t understand me for some reason. After all, I never spoke Korean back when I was in Canada, just with my parents.” 

Kevin let the information sink in for the child who was now gazing up at him with newfound interest alight in his big brown eyes and it takes everything inside the said doctor not to squeal at how adorable he looks. Instead, he pauses and waits, waits with the hope that Hanjo will react to this, however he wants. 

“How?”

Kevin blinks. Hanjo’s mouth is open, curiosity filling his features as he continues hesitantly, “how...did you...make friends?” 

While Kevin wants nothing more than to punch the air in success, he decides that this is not the right moment to be celebrating that fact. Instead, he clears his throat and allows his arm to rest on the side of the child’s bed. 

“Actually, the pocky sticks helped me. The kids at my school always brought the same type of pocky sticks and then one day, when one of the girls in my class didn’t have any snacks, I offered her one,” Kevin smiles at the memory flashing before his eyes, “I thought she’d laugh at me when she started talking to me because of my accent. I wasn’t completely fluent. Surprisingly though, she was very interested to know what I had to say, despite the fact that I was so scared she’d just turn away from me.” 

“What was her name?” Hanjo asks.

“Her name?” Kevin tilts his head, “actually, she works here too. Her name’s Mae, she’s a doctor from the Cancer department.” 

Hanjo pauses for a few seconds, before he looks down at the box of pocky in his hand, “I don’t like talking in Korean,” his voice is small, barely a whisper, “I don’t like it here. Everything is different. Everyone is different.” 

“You know, Korean is one of the hardest languages to learn. And you know English. Do you know how amazing that is?” Kevin smiles down, one of his hands going to pat his head, “I know how it feels. It doesn’t feel like home, because home is far far away. But it will get better, Hanjo. It’s okay that you’re not fluent in Korean. You’ll get there, eventually. Look at doctor Kevin, see?” he motions towards his own chest, “I was in the exact same position as you were, once. But it really gets better, trust me.” 

Hanjo is frowning at the snack in his hands now, as though there are different thoughts flying about in his brain, thoughts too complicated for him to explain. But he surprises Kevin when he suddenly looks up and holds out his pinky. 

“Promise?” Hanjo asks, “promise it gets better?” 

“I promise,” Kevin hooks his finger with the child’s, “and you know what? You made your first friend right here,” and he pats his own chest with an amused smile. Hanjo’s lips tilt up in a mirroring expression, albeit hesitant, and Kevin’s heart melted right then and there in a puddle of Hanjo goo.

-----------

Knock knock. 

Kevin blinks away the drowsiness as he raises his head from his desk where he’d been napping just a few seconds ago. Rubbing the sleep away from his eyes, he spots Hyunjae and lets out a groan at the mischievous smirk on the latter’s lips. 

Whenever Hyunjae’s in a mood, he’ll have some kind of face that warns people about it. 

“Get lost, Hyunjae. Not in the mood,” Kevin groans while his friend saunters in as though he hasn’t been straight out rejected. Kevin buries his face back into his arms and Hyunjae quickly lays his head just beside him. 

“What?” Kevin asks with his eyes still closed.

Hyunjae merely giggles, before blowing softly on his face. 

Kevin whips his head around, “you’re so annoying. Get lost.” 

“But Kebiiin,” the taller man whines and nestles his face even closer so that Kevin’s soft hair tickles the bridge of his nose, “I have important news!” 

“What news?” comes Kevin’s mumble.

“I’m getting married.”

“To who?” 

“To you.” 

“No you’re not.”

“Okay fine, to Juyeon.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“Okay fine, to Mae then.” 

“Do you know,” Kevin asks slowly, “why is she acting so weird?” 

“Weird?” Hyunjae snuggles even closer, breathes in Kevin’s soft vanilla scent, “like usual Mae kind of weird or weirder than weird?” 

“No, she hasn’t been talking to herself. But she has been avoiding me.” “Oh.” 

“Oh?” Kevin whips around to look at him in alarm. 

Hyunjae draws back to stand, leaning against the opposite doctor’s empty chair as Kevin straightens to look at him with growing concern, “what do you mean by ‘oh’?” 

“She did ask me something weird the other day.” 

“About?” 

“About who you were crushing on.” 

“WHAT?” Kevin’s eyes grow wide, “what did you tell her?!” 

“That I had no clue.” 

“Oh thank god,” Kevin visibly slouches in relief. Then, his eyes grow wide, “wait--Does she know then?! That I--” All it takes is for Hyunjae’s face to take on a suspicious air for Kevin to realize that he is not out of dangerous waters yet.  He scrambles up and holds onto Hyunjae’s sleeve, “what?” Kevin demands like it’s a life or death situation. Which it is to him, “why do have that look on your face?” 

“Look Kev, mate, I definitely did not do anything.” 

“But?” 

“I never said there was a but.” 

“You implied it!” 

“Okay fine,” Hyunjae huffs, “but, someone seems to have leaked this information to her, like it or not--” 

“What?!” 

“--and we all suspect that it’s the Neurosurgery resident, the one that comes from Toronto--”

Kevin sucks in a sharp breath, “Jacob Bae?” 

“If anyone asks, this did not come out of my mouth,” Hyunjae is quick to defend while raising his arms in the air in mock surrender, but Kevin is too preoccupied at the thought that his secret is now out in the open for everyone to dissect and digest. How in the world does Jacob know about this? He barely even talks to him! 

Unless...unless it’s that obvious? 

His head snaps up so suddenly, eyes dark and so vividly intense on Hyunjae’s that the latter can’t help but yelp in return, “Hyunjae,” Kevin says slowly, “you’re sure...you’re sure you didn’t say anything?” 

“Are you implying that I lied to you?!” Hyunjae gasps mockingly, “Kevin, I’m--”

“Shut up and be serious for one second.” 

“Of course I didn’t! Who do you take me for?!” 

“Shit,” is the only thing that Kevin has to say, “Shit. Shit.” 

[curiosity-killed]

a bow for the bad decisions

canon-divergent AU from ep. 24 (on ao3)

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12 | part 13 | part 14 | part 15 | part 16 | part 17 | part 18

He’s getting used to the throne these days. It still feels too big, too cold, polished wood unyielding to his new title — but he’s getting there. Sort of. He doesn’t flinch when people call him ‘sect leader’ anymore, even if it took a war and a few extra months to get used to it. There are still too few disciples, but they’ve started to build again. He’d recalled all the disciples out on night hunts or assisting villages back at the start of the war, and the survivors are still retained in Lotus Pier, training newcomers and repairing the damage that couldn’t be fixed while they were on the frontlines. In a few months, after the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, it’ll be time for the new round of juniors to join the ranks here. He’s already read through the letters from parents seeking admission — not many, not nearly what it used to be back when he was young and still stumbling through sword forms with the earliest classes — but it’s something. It’s a start to the future he always held in his mind. There’ll be fresh juniors and he’ll stand where his father once stood on the deck before Sword Hall while Wei Wuxian directs them through their forms. It won’t be perfect, won’t be exactly the way he always imagined, but it’s — it’s enough. He’ll have his sect and a-jie and Wei Wuxian, and he’ll finally get Wei Wuxian out of his weird funk and wielding Suibian again and it’ll be — right. They can finally push aside the shades of the war and figure out this future together. Or, he thinks bitterly as familiar steps approach, they can if his idiot brother ever gets his shit together.

Wei Wuxian saunters in, posture loose with wine and steps easy and swaying. Irritation flares up his spine first at his absentness and then at the wine he offers, as if that’s any consolation for his brother abandoning him all day. They’re supposed to be working together, rebuilding together. How’s Wei Wuxian supposed to be his right hand if he can’t even stick around?

“Why are you scrubbing your sword all day? How many times a day do you need to clean it?” Wei Wuxian teases, settling on the steps with that damned flute. “Where’s yours?” Jiang Cheng snaps. He found Suibian for him, carried it around for months for him and now? Now it’s like Wei Wuxian couldn’t care less for the sword he carried for years. “How long ago did you clean it?” Wei Wuxian drinks instead of answering immediately, and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes, sheathing Sandu. Of course he’ll become reticent now, when he’s neglecting his own duties. “I left it in my room,” he says. “Once a month should do.” It wouldn’t be so bad if Jiang Cheng just understood. If he just knew why Wei Wuxian’s been acting so strangely, he could move on. But there’s no explanation except Wei Wuxian’s careless whims, and it grates against Jiang Cheng’s nerves like the fractured end of a bone. He still remembers how awed Wei Wuxian was when they first received their swords, how he clung to Suibian like it was the greatest treasure he’d ever see. He’d thrown himself into training, into outpacing their seniors, with Jiang Cheng chasing after him. Where’s that love now? Where’s that dedication?

“Not carrying a sword in public. Drinking in a tavern all day,” he snaps. “You must think Lotus Pier is the inn where you can rest when you’ve drunk enough.” He wants to leave. He wants to go to bed and wake up to a clear morning with his brother back at his side, ready to take up his responsibilities again. Instead, Wei Wuxian jogs forward and loops his arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. “Ah! Jiang Cheng, don’t be so mad,” he says.

It’s an instinctive thing, the kind of reflexive jab they’ve been giving each other since Wei Wuxian came to Lotus Pier. It’s not like it ever hurts Wei Wuxian; even with a spark of Jiang Cheng’s qi behind it, Wei Wuxian has more than enough to flick the force off like a gnat. He falls. His brother falls from that absent jab, and Jiang Cheng stops short, staring. Surely he’s not that drunk. Even in Cloud Recesses, he’d managed to wrangle Lan Wangji himself after drinking all night. A spark of worry flickers in his chest. “Are you fine?” he asks. “Too drunk to manage your spiritual power? Look at yourself. Talking about reviving the Jiang clan with me.” Wei Wuxian doesn’t answer, stays on the floor where Jiang Cheng put him. Annoyed, Jiang Cheng steps forward to pull him up by the wrist. “Stay there,” Wei Wuxian snaps, arm thrust out with Chenqing in his fist. He doesn’t meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes, still braced with his hand pressed into the hall floor. “Wei Wuxian?” he asks and can’t spare a thought to hate how scared and small it comes out. He swallows, hand clenched so tight on Chenqing held like a bar between them, and doesn’t meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes. His face is ashy and drawn, the way it always is these days, but now Jiang Cheng’s seized with sudden, fierce fear. He’s accepted the ghostly edges to Wei Wuxian lately without question. He’d been missing and there was the war and who walked away without a few new shadows and nightmares nipping at their heels? But Wei Wuxian — Wei Wuxian looks like death has scrolled frostwork in lace curls over his bones. All Lan Wangji’s terse reprimands from the campaign now clamor in his ears: it will damage your body and temperament, your mind—

He leans down, grabbing Wei Wuxian’s wrist. “Wei Wuxian, come on,” he says. “Don’t—” Wei Wuxian says, jerking away too late. A whip of resentful energy lashes out, smacks Jiang Cheng hard enough to break his hold and knock him on his ass. The impact jars him, rattles up through his skull. Wei Wuxian stares at him, wide-eyed with horror. Jiang Cheng stares back. “Your core,” he blurts out. “Your core — what the fuck, Wei Wuxian?” His jaw tightens, eyes too-bright like an animal caught in a snare. Jiang Cheng stares at him, palms still flat on the wooden floor from breaking his fall. It’s impossible. How— When— He said he was caught by Wen Chao back in Yiling, before he disappeared. Understanding, horrible and toothed, digs out of his chest. “Wen Zhulio,” he snarls. “He died too quickly.” Jiang Cheng knows he’s not a good man. He’s too proud and too selfish and he would do horrible, unforgivable things for the people he loves. He wants, viciously, to summon Wen Zhulio’s spirit and break it. “But— Baoshan Sanren,” he starts, hope surging before memory — this is your one chance, Jiang Cheng — snaps its neck. “Wei Wuxian, you idiot. Why did you give me your favor? You could have gone to her, you didn’t—” “I don’t regret it,” Wei Wuxian interjects, strangely vehement. “Jiang Cheng, I won’t regret it.” “You don’t— Are you stupid, Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng half-yells. “You—your core is gone! You fought— Gods, you fought a war with—” “I don’t need coddled, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian snarls. “I’m the one who took Nightless City, aren’t I? I’m not fragile—”

Anger surges, crackling, up through his grief, charging it like lightning through water. “I didn’t say— You could have died!” he shouts. “You could have died and you never told us? Were you ever going to tell us?” That silences Wei Wuxian, and he looks away sharply. A muscle jumps in the back of his jaw. Jiang Cheng’s lips part, shock and hurt trembling through him. “You weren’t,” he breathes. The realization hurts like a kick to the chest, a heel to the soft, unprotected spot right below his breastbone. “You were never going to tell us. Fuck you, Wei Wuxian. How fucking dare you. We’re your family. You’re supposed to talk to us. Don’t you trust us anymore?” Wei Wuxian’s gaze snaps to him, eyes wide. “No, Jiang Cheng,” he protests. “Of course I trust you and shijie. Of course, I— I just didn’t want you to worry.” He can feel his disbelief turn scathing even as he drags himself up to grab Wei Wuxian by the collar. This time, he goes without resistance, no flute or energy between them. “You didn’t want us to worry? What, did you think we weren’t worried when you showed up acting weird as hell and commanding corpses?” he spits. “Did you think we weren’t worried when you refused to carry Suibian or when you keep snapping at everyone within ten li?” His brother shakes in his hands, limp and too-light. Tears drip from his cheeks to break on the knuckles of Jiang Cheng’s thumbs. He’s not sure when he started crying, but they burn down his cheeks and choke in his throat, making it hard to breathe. “Why?” he sobs out. His hands are still fisted in Wei Wuxian’s collar, but he’s just clinging now, holding on. “I can’t be your right hand,” Wei Wuxian says, little more than a broken murmur. “I can’t — I can’t wield Suibian or train the disciples or — or do anything. I’m— Useless. I’m useless.” As he speaks, his voice shivers down into a whisper, into a horrified confession. Fear is no longer a flicker but a hand around Jiang Cheng’s throat. None of this can be happening. His brother has always been the one cheerful in the face of suffocating night, the one who has a plan, who sees impossibilities as a dare. It’s why Jiang Cheng distracted the Wen guards, why he gave up his core and life; as long as Wei Wuxian lived, he would be able to figure out a way to keep a-jie safe, to rebuild the sect, to avenge their parents. Jiang Cheng clings to him and doesn’t have any answer at all.

[damienthepious]

[spoilers re: the new ep redacted]

Scattered On My Shore (Chapter 11)

[Ch 1] [Ch 2] [Ch 3] [Ch 4] [Ch 5] [Ch 6] [Ch 7] [Ch 8] [Ch 9] [Ch 10] [ao3] [Ch 12] [Ch 13] [Ch 14] [Ch 15] [Ch 16] [Ch 17] [Ch 18] [Ch 19]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla, Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Sir Damien

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, Pre-Relationship, (for the three of them. it’s established r/d), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Injury, Injury Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, (this will also be), Enemies to Lovers, (for damien and arum eventually lol)

Fic Summary: Strange things wash up out of the lake near Rilla’s hut, on occasion. But this monster… this monster is certainly the strangest.

Chapter Summary: It is just the three of them, for a while. Until that begins to feel almost normal.

Chapter Notes: Psst. Happy Lizard Kissin' Tuesday! I am tired and have ceased to be creative. Chapter specific warnings for... hm. Some fraught arguments, I'll say. Not much more than that, this time.

~

Damien prefers to stay in the room, if Rilla and Arum are sharing space. Paranoid, Rilla thinks, but she can usually keep the frustration of it from biting at her. He's mostly harmless, anyway, and if she can get him talking enough to where he seems to forget Arum is there, it's almost pleasant. Arum pretends not to care one way or the other, but Rilla knows his body language well enough to tell when he's either nervous about Damien's scrutiny, or alternatively when he's just as drawn in to Damien's stories as she is.

"Amaryllis… explain the muttering to me," he asks, some afternoon when Damien has left to report back to the Citadel.

"The muttering?"

"Incessantly," Arum growls. "The muttering of your little knight. He is a poet, that much I understand, and the constant spinning of tales is not entirely disagreeable, but even leaving that aside, must he be always chanting to himself?"

"Yeah," Rilla says. "He actually does kind of must."

Arum frowns. "What do you mean?"

"It's important to him. Praying to Saint Damien."

"Saint," Arum hisses darkly, rolling his eyes.

"It helps him think, helps him keep himself calm."

"Tranquility," Arum mutters, his frown deepening. "Hm. That does not bother you, then? His chattering?"

"It's important to him," Rilla repeats. "Saints know I have my own irritating habits, anyway." She pauses as Arum scoffs, and then she shrugs. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said I never got annoyed with him, but I love him. Talking to himself- talking to his Saint doesn't hurt anything. If it makes him happy, I wanna do my best to support that."

"How magnanimous of you," Arum drawls, his teeth bared in a vaguely malicious smirk.

Rilla frowns. "Don't."

He blinks. "Don't- what?"

"I know that look," she says. "I know you like pushing his buttons, and I know he's cute when he's flustered, but this- it wouldn't be the same, Arum."

"I- cute? I don't have the first idea what you are talking about, takatakataka."

"It's fine if you tease him," Rilla continues, "but I'd really appreciate it if you made an effort not to make fun of him for that."

Arum opens his mouth, then snaps it shut, and then he flinches and looks away from her for a long rattling moment. "I… I do not intend to do the knight any favors, Amaryllis, but I am perfectly capable of verbal sparring without taking a cheap shot," he mutters, and she buries a smile because of course he wouldn't agree because she asked, but if it's about his own pride-

"Thank you," she says anyway, and then she changes the subject before his growling gets too out of hand.

~

Rilla leans in the doorway of her hut in the morning, coffee steaming in her hand, slowly rounding out to awake as she watches Damien go through his routine with a lazy sort of hunger curling in her stomach.

She hears Arum behind her, limping slowly from his room on the crutch, and she tries not to feel irritated that he's pushing himself instead of asking for help. He is getting stronger, she reminds herself, and she buries the little flash of nerves that comes with the thought.

"Morning, Arum," she murmurs over her shoulder, and instead of going towards the table she hears him pause, and then approach, the crutch thumping rhythmically against the wood of her floor.

"What are you doing, little doctor? Why have a door at all if you intend to leave it hanging in the… wind…"

She doesn't turn towards him, tilting her head to better watch the way Damien is stretching instead. "Morning routine," she mumbles, her voice catching on a yawn at the end. "His, and mine too."

"A-ah," Arum says, and she hears him whir out a strange sort of exhale. "Routine?" he echoes. "He does this… regularly, then?"

"Almost every morning." She takes a slow sip of coffee, and then tilts her head the other way, watching the light gleam off of Damien's skin as he rolls his shoulders before he moves into his next set of forms. "Mm."

"And the- his- clothing-"

Rilla hums again, sighing a light laugh. "No point in getting his shirt all sweaty if he can avoid it," she says, making no effort to disguise the pleasure in her voice. "You won't hear any complaints from me," she murmurs, and then she takes another sip. "Anyway. You sleep alright, Arum?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, and Rilla glances over her shoulder. Arum's head is tilted as hers had been, his lips just barely parted, his tongue is flicking lightly, and his eyes are very obviously fixed on Damien.

Huh.

"Enjoying the view?"

"Hmm…" Arum trails off, then he blinks quickly as he seems to realize what she actually said. He flinches, the crutch skidding a step against the wood, and Rilla reaches automatically to stabilize him as he hisses in alarm. "Ah-"

"Whoa, easy- I've got you-"

He shakes his head, readjusting and then taking a large and decisive step back from her, back from the door.

"I-" his frill flutters, but he clenches his teeth and it settles before it can flare entirely. "Certainly you will forgive me for being distracted by the sight of the outdoors, Amaryllis. I have been cooped up in this hut for- for entirely too long. I am unused to prolonged captivity, I am sure you understand," he hisses, looking very deliberately away from both herself and the door, and then he hobbles over to sit at the table, growling low as he goes.

Rilla watches him go, too stunned to really respond to that. After a moment, the monster still refusing to look her way, she bites her tongue, and then she closes the door.

~

When Rilla comes into his room Arum is sitting on the edge of his cot, shoulders stiff, and he has her recorder in his claws. He stares up at her, eyes narrowed to vivid violet slits, hard and flat and angry, and Rilla feels a little pang of confused dread drop through her.

“Arum?” she says, and the monster’s lip curls into a sneer as he presses the button down on the device.

“Subject is severely injured,” says Rilla-in-the-past, her voice crackling through the recording and noticeably detached. “Wounds consistent with… attack by another monster. Likely, multiple.” The version of herself on the recording sighs. “Injuries will likely prove fatal. I’ve done what I can to stabilize the subject, but it hasn't regained consciousness, and it's unlikely that it will. Honestly, I would be surprised if it survives the night. Which is unfortunate, since this seems like it might actually be some sort of new and undocumented ashdragon variant, or possibly something even less documented than that, which would make it utterly unique. I guess I’ll see if it regenerates when this particular body dies, and then I’ll have that answer, at least.” Another sigh, some shifting noises. Rilla imagines herself moving some papers aside, possibly a bestiary being closed. “Well, either way I’ll get some interesting data out of it. Even if it doesn’t regenerate when it dies, I’m sure I’ll be able to learn something useful in dissection.”

Arum stops the playback. He drums his claws off of the recorder in a rapid-fire staccato, still staring up at her in silence.

“Arum,” she tries again after a moment.

“I hope, human, that I have provided enough useful data in my convalescence that I have made up for the inconvenience of not dying and presenting you the option of weighing my internal organs.”

“That's not-”

“I knew it was all a lie, I knew there was no possibility that your precious little I am a doctor nonsense was genuine.”

“It was, Arum, I didn’t lie-”

“You kept me alive to gather data. You’ve been spoon-feeding me so as to get a better picture of how your knights might take me and my kin to pieces. None of this was because you-” he cuts off. “How long were you planning to maintain this little play-act? How long until your pet knight was meant to slit my throat? Did you simply want to get in sight of my nest before you destroyed me? How much data were you going to gather before you decided you had properly wrung me dry, Amaryllis?”

“That wasn’t what I-”

“Don’t lie to me, human! I have had enough of this farce.”

Rilla presses her lips together, her throat feeling tight. He’s not going to listen, right now. Not to her, not to-

He won’t listen to her now. But…

“Skip ahead on the recorder,” she says.

“What?”

“Skip to entry four two one one. Should be… eighteen to twenty after the one you just played, I think.”

“Why?” he snarls, ducking his head and clutching the recorder close against the bandages on his midsection.

“Because there’s something else you should hear, too. You heard what I said when I first found you. You should hear what I said after. If you really think that I’ve been using you for some sort of spy work, then the rest of it should interest you too, right?”

He hesitates, his expression tightening. “Perhaps I have no interest in hearing myself cataloged, doctor.”

“Please. Just- listen to it. And then you can decide if you want to- I don’t know. How you want to proceed. But before you make any sort of decision, please- please just listen, Arum.”

Arum stares at her for another long moment, suspicious with a growl in his throat, and then he moves his thumb, sending the recording forward with a thin squeal of sound. He overshoots the start of the entry a little, and it cuts in just in the middle of a word.

“-ter than that, and it seems like his frill is really starting to knit together properly. Finally. It’s been tricky since it’s only a half-conscious thing, the flaring, but- I mean, it’s hard to complain about. It’s always so funny when he gets indignant and it just- fwoops out like that and-”

She laughs on the recording, breathless, and Rilla remembers this moment with exact clarity. The door to his room had been cracked, she could just see half his face through the gap as he rested, the gentle light of early morning on his scales and his expression untroubled in sleep-

“He’s beautiful,” she says, and she still feels the little stunned swoop that realization had made her feel. “He’s… I didn’t know a monster could be so beautiful. I didn’t know they could be funny either, honestly, or- or-”

There is a pause.

“Saints…”

Another pause. Quite long.

“He… um. He’s improving by leaps and bounds, now,” she says, her voice a little clipped, a little muted. “He can almost stand on his own, though it tires him out. He’s… soon he’ll be well enough to travel, I think. Which means we’re going to have to have another conversation, soon, about- about exactly how we're gonna get him back home. And that shouldn’t… it shouldn’t hurt to think about that, should it? It’s good. It’s a good thing that he’s… soon he’ll be well enough to go home, to be free again, to go back where he belongs and rest and recover where he’ll be comfortable and safe, but-”

A little half-laugh.

“I’m gonna miss him, is the only thing. I’ve gotten so used to having him around, and- and even if he’s always arguing about the methodology he’s been so- it’s been nice to have him around when I’m doing my experiments, I mean- it would have taken me ages to think of modifying my bandages with machracnid silk, and the improvement to the elasticity is- but that isn’t even the point, you know? He’s just- he’s-”

Less of a laugh.

“It's almost time for him to go home. It’s the only way to keep him safe. The longer he stays here- I know Damien won't hurt him, not anymore. I think he’s seen it too, he’s seen how- how much- he’s seen Arum, really seen him. I know he has. But every day Arum stays here is another risk, is another chance that he’ll be seen or- and if that happens, then what? I don’t care what they do to me, I’m not afraid of them, but Arum- he’s still not strong enough to defend himself, and even if he was, what would he do against an armed squadron of knights? I wouldn’t be able to do anything to protect him, and- he- I can’t let that happen. I won’t. I won’t let the Citadel hurt him. So- so… so he has to go home. It doesn’t matter that I- it doesn’t matter how I feel. I have to get him home. He deserves- he-”

“Amaryllis?”

Arum’s voice, distant and a little distorted on the recorder, and Rilla-in-the-past gasps lightly. Rilla remembers pressing a hand to her mouth. Remembers plastering on a smile.

“I’m here, Arum. Just a second.” A rustle, and then, quieter, “I’m gonna make him well again. And then I’m gonna get him home. I’ll miss him… I’ll miss him so badly. But I’ll get him home. End of log.”

Arum stares at the device in his hand, his frill flaring around his head in a way that Rilla would otherwise think is appropriately comical. Now, it just makes her want to do something foolish.

The next entry starts a little too loud and they both jump, Arum pressing his thumb decisively down on the button to stop the playback. When he finally looks up at her again, his eyes are still guarded, but no longer furious.

“What… what was the point of that, then?” he asks, voice thick and low.

“To show you how I think about you now. That first day- I didn’t know you, Arum. And that’s not an excuse. Monsters aren’t- you aren’t what I thought you were, and I had no idea- I was cruel. I was callous and clinical in a way that I hate, and I’m sorry you had to hear that. But I was never, never doing any of this to get information on monsters for the knights. Never. And I would do anything to keep them from hurting you now.”

“You… why?”

“I care about you.”

“You do not. I heard- what you said, you wouldn’t simply turn-”

“I don’t agree with how I dealt with the situation, Arum. I- I don’t see you in the same way. Not anymore, and- honestly? I stopped seeing you that way the first time you woke up and I saw- I saw that look in your eyes. And then it got more and more obvious the longer I was around you, the more I talked to you. You… Arum, the luckiest moment of my entire life was when I happened to look at the lake at just the right time to see you. If I hadn’t- if-” she has to stop, to press a hand to her mouth. “I hate the thought that if I just hadn’t looked, you would have died out there. Died alone, in that much pain, out in the wilds. That- Arum, you’re- you deserve- you’re special to me, and I had no idea how special you would be when I first found you.”

“So why keep those notes, then?” he asks after a pause, his tone carefully blank.

“Because,” she says, frowning. “Because of this. Not you finding them, I mean, but because you don’t learn from mistakes if you try to bury them. I’m not going to try to make something go away because it’s inconvenient. I was horrible, the way I talked about you, the way I thought about you, about all monsters. There’s- there so much more out there than I ever knew, and I can’t believe I let myself be so ignorant of it for so long.” She shakes her head, then after a half second of hesitation she steps towards him. She reaches a hand out and- he misinterprets, lifting out the recorder for her to take. She moves her hand aside, instead, slipping her palm along the back of his hand and wrapping her fingers around his wrist. He inhales, sharp, his eyes widening as he looks up at her. “I’m sorry, Arum. Sorry that I talked about you like that, and sorry that you had to hear it after I- after I finally convinced you to trust me, even a little. I’m sorry, and I hope I haven’t- I hope I haven’t broken anything that can’t still be fixed.”

“Amaryllis,” he says, and then he drops his eyes. He does not move his hand, his grip on the recorder flexing awkwardly. “You- you’ve broken nothing, Amaryllis. We- you-”

His voice scatters off, unsure and lost, and after a moment he raises two more hands, one to grip the hem of his cape, and the other reaching by slow inches to brush his palm down her forearm until he can loosely wrap his fingers around her wrist, an echo of the way she is holding him. Her skin tingles at the touch, the gentleness and the cool strange texture both.

“You’ve broken nothing,” he repeats in a low murmur, and then he finally looks up at her again, that gentle violet pinning her in place. “You… you are meant for mending, Amaryllis.”

Her dark cheeks darken further, her lips parting in wordless surprise, and their arms are still clasped as they stare- they are simply staring at each other, now, and-

“Your…” Arum swallows, his thumb on her wrist moving just barely, just gently, tickling the skin at the heel of her palm. “Your heart is beating quite quickly, Amaryllis.”

“You know what a- a quick pulse feels like, in a human?” She asks, raising an eyebrow despite the slight breathlessness in her tone.

“I know what your pulse sounds like. I know when it is…” he trails off, possibly at the way she blinks, startled.

“You can- hear my heart?” She gives the smallest breath of laughter. “Your hearing is ridiculous, huh?”

“Vastly superior to you mammals, anyway,” he mutters, and he barely makes an effort to act as if he means it.

“Your heart is beating pretty fast too, you know,” She says quietly, and his hand flexes against her skin.

“Y-yes, well,” he glances aside, then he sits up a little straighter without pulling away before he meets her eye again. “I apologize, also. For- for ambushing you with this.”

“You don’t have to,” Rilla shakes her head. “I know that what I said was-”

“I have been searching for things to distrust. Digging for proof of deception, for anything that would indicate that your intentions were false, so that I could have some fuel for my anger. I wanted to be angry with you. It is not… easy for me, to accept help, or to- to indulge in hope.” His mouth presses into an uncomfortable line, his frill pressing tight against his neck. “Always you are harping on evidence and proof, and I know- I have seen-” he exhales sharply, not quite a sigh. “I know that you are… genuine, in… caring for me. I do not understand it, but I know. And if- if you- if you are willing to show me such so readily, I should be able to…”

“Arum, it’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” Rilla says, and he shakes his head.

“If I ever-" he pauses. "When. When I return home, at last, I will… I will miss you as well, Amaryllis.”

Their eyes are fixed, each with a hand still gently clasped around the other’s wrist, and Rilla finds that she doesn't quite know how to breathe, with him looking at her like that. Not a great response, Rilla, keep it together-

“In fact,” Arum says very quietly, and his thumb brushes against her skin again and she shivers with gooseflesh instantly. “In fact, Amaryllis, I would say-”

“Rilla?”

Rilla only glances over her shoulder at the suddenness of Damien’s voice in the front room, but Arum pulls his hands away as if burned, his expression going shuttered and distant again. She can’t help the sting of frustration, at that. It’s not fair, of course. Damien is still… well, it’s difficult, anyway. But Rilla is stuck with her mind five seconds ago when Arum’s thumb was gentle on her wrist and he had started to say something. Something Rilla gets the feeling she’s not going to get the chance to know, now, like it’s been chased away. She feels like a glass that got struck on the edge of a table, still ringing. She wants to know where that moment was supposed to go, but now-

She sighs, smiling despite herself. “One sec, Damien,” she calls lightly. “Probably good that he reminded me,” she says, more casual than she feels as Arum looks up at her uncertainly. “I just got done making lunch. It should still be warm. Did you- do you want to join us? I promise I’ll make Damien behave, and if he doesn’t wanna he can just go eat on the stump outside again.”

She’s only half kidding, and the mild mischief in Arum’s eyes at that possibility manages to creep past his guarded veneer.

“I suppose that sounds… agreeable enough. I shall be interested to see if the little knight will stoop to share a table with a monster, today.”

“He’ll deal,” Rilla says. She takes the recorder back from him, and then lifts her hands out again. “Steady enough to stand, Arum?”

He frowns, but he looks aside and reaches an arm to allow her to help pull him up to standing. It’s still a little odd, looking up at him after spending so long with him in that bed, where he has to peer up at her. He still leans on her, just a little, though. Just a very little. Just enough that he could deny it, if asked. His body beside her own is heavy, slightly cool, fascinatingly textured, as always. She does her best not to think about that.

Damien watches them exit Arum's room with guarded eyes, but he does not mention their proximity, nor does he comment on it when Rilla helps Arum settle himself on one of the cushions around the table. After a quiet moment, while Rilla takes her own seat between them, Damien takes the pitcher of water, and he fills three glasses.

~

"What…" Arum pushes a small stack of books aside after dinner, pulling one thin volume out from beneath the rest, and his eyes are narrowed and confused when Rilla glances his way. "What is this?"

Ah. Damn. Rilla absolutely hadn't meant to leave that out- she must have slipped it in with the wrong pile before she put her dads' books back under the floorboards. "Oh," she says, trying to sound casual. Damien is looking at the book too, now, which isn't exactly great. "Uh. I'm not sure. I haven't been able to translate it properly, so I only kind of have an idea what's in there."

Arum frowns, something that isn't quite suspicion crossing his face. "… is this why you asked me about monster languages, before?"

Rilla blinks. "What? No, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't gonna bring you a stack of books you couldn't even read."

Arum seems satisfied enough with that answer, but still he turns the slim book in his hands, eying the cover. "Hm. This is simply a coincidental curiosity, then?"

"It- I couldn't find you in my bestiaries, so I wound up pulling out… well-"

"You kept your fathers' books?" Damien asks softly, and she doesn't look at him, trying hard not to wince. "I thought their more…" he coughs, "questionable possessions were- were confiscated."

"Most of them were," Rilla says, her tone going bitter. "Not all. I kept what I could."

"You were looking for me?" Arum says, an eyebrow raising.

"Well-" Rilla glances between the pair of them. "Yeah. I figured that if I could find out exactly what you were it would help me figure out how to treat you more effectively. No such luck, by the way."

Oddly, Arum smiles at that, something smug in the expression as he flips through the pages, his scales making a whispery noise against the paper. "It seems you managed my treatment quite skillfully, regardless, Amaryllis."

Damien narrows his eyes, as if he's trying to find a way to make that sentence fit as a dig instead of a compliment, and then he shakes his head and refocuses on Rilla.

"Why did you not tell me?"

"It- I mean, when we started seeing each other it wasn't like-" her eyes flick around the hut, noting uncomfortably the way that Arum is watching her too. "You're a knight, Damien, I didn't know when I met you that you wouldn't get me in worse trouble for-"

"Oh, my darling flower-"

"It wasn't like I lied, Damien, I just- I didn't know how to bring it up. I-" she pauses, and tries a vague sort of smile. "It just kind of got to the point where I hadn't talked about it for so long, you know? Got to a point where it seemed- like it'd been too long already, and I couldn't change my mind about it."

Damien sighs deeply, reaching a hand out to cup her cheek. "Oh, Rilla… I am sorry you felt that there was anything you could not share wi-"

"I could translate this for you," Arum interrupts, and the both of them turn towards him. He isn't looking at them in return, his eyes firmly on the book as his tail coils tightly around an ankle. "The dialect is somewhat more eastern than I am entirely used to, but the bones of the language seem familiar enough. I suppose you already inferred from the illustrations and the size that it is a rather limited botanical census."

"Yeah," Rilla says, her voice bright with surprise. "Yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping." She pauses. "You'd really be willing to do that?"

"It's a book of herbs, Amaryllis. You can hardly do any harm with it." He glances towards her, his eyes guarded, and then he looks to the book again. "Seems a small sort of service I can easily provide. It shall not even begin to edge the scales between us towards even, I should think," he mutters, and then before she can respond to that, he points to one of the entries in the middle. "We can start here. I do not suppose you are familiar with this herb at all. It grows in a rather small range, quite a ways to the East."

Rilla doesn't want to let him deflect from the fact that he apparently sees her treatment of him as transactional, but she doesn't want to have that sort of conversation with Damien a foot away, either. She's already had one awkward conversation in front of someone who probably didn't want to be there, tonight. "Yeah, that would be- incredible, actually. Just let me grab the notes I already made, and-" she stands, and she tries not to look too uncomfortable or too eager as she goes to pull up the false floorboard in her bedroom to fetch the right journal. "Okay," she says as she returns, shuffling through the pages, "so I managed to work out the numeral system, I think, if you want to just check my work there before we dig into the conte-"

"Knock knock. "

The voice comes simultaneous with an accompanying actual knock, on the doorframe and not the actual door from the sound of it, and Rilla flinches hard enough that she drops the book in her hand to thwump to the floor. Damien rolls from his seated position to snatch it before she can, his own expression openly concerned, and Arum's frill is pressed tightly to his neck as he eyes the door in alarm, his tail coiling and then curling around his own ankle.

Rilla pats a hand in the air, a gesture for quiet, and no one moves for a long moment as she waits for whoever the hell to take the hint. It's late, even on a day when she was open she'd be unlikely to come to the door at this hour.

"Knock, uh, knock?" the voice comes again. "C'mon, Rilla, your favorite guest is here! I know you're home, there's smoke coming from the chimney-"

"Marc. Shit," Rilla scrambles, reaching to help Arum pull himself to his feet as she calls, "we're closed, come back- come back later. Tomorrow! Come back tomorrow!"

"Marc," Damien mutters, clutching the book to his chest with a scowl.

"C'mon, Rilla. I know you've got a minute for your best friend," Marc calls through the door. "Can you open up?"

"Dammit," Rilla hisses, and Arum chokes down a very nervous sort of laugh as Rilla presses a hand against his shoulder, making sure he's standing stable. "Marc, I really can't hang out with you right now! I'm- I'm right in the middle of-"

"I, uh, really, really can't, Rilla. Can you-" he pauses, and she can hear Dampierre's hooves shifting against the dirt. "Can you please open up? I… uh…"

Rilla stiffens, grits her teeth, and sighs. "You're… out of medicine."

There is a pause.

"I'm out of medicine," Marc confirms in a quick mutter. "But! But only just barely, Rilla, like, less than five minutes ago barely!"

"Marc!" Rilla complains, and then she stops herself to take a deep breath. She can handle this. She just- has to make up enough for the day, and then- then she can get him out of her hair for long enough to make a proper batch he can pick up tomorrow. She frowns at Arum, and then at Damien, and then she calls out, "Two minutes, Marc. Give me two minutes, alright?"

Marc gives some sort of relieved confirmation, but Rilla isn't really paying attention anymore as she walks Arum partway across the room, and then she passes the monster into Damien's arms as the knight splutters, his cheeks going dark as Arum hisses in alarm.

"Shush," she says with a scowl. "Damien, just walk him to his bed. Please? He can't be in here, we can't risk him being seen and I just- have to get Marc out of here."

"But," Damien squeaks, "but Rilla, I-"

Damien doesn't strain under Arum's weight, he's perfectly capable of supporting the monster, but he leans away awkwardly, leaving Arum to grit his teeth and sway in a way that makes Rilla instantly nervous. Her scowl deepens and she steps closer again to push Arum more securely into Damien's grip as each of them makes another quiet, indignant noise. "Into Arum's room, Damien, now. If you drop him I will be furious with you. No time to argue. Just do it."

Damien swallows, then meets Arum's eyes for only a moment before his cheeks darken further and he looks sharply away. He nods, though, and shuffles Arum into his room, the both of them wincing through the movement as Rilla marches in the other direction to throw the front door open and glower up at Marc as he raises an eyebrow at her.

"Is there- uh. D'you have company over, Rilla? Because you could have just said- "

"Marc? Please shut up," she says, already turning back and marching to start throwing together ingredients, her hands moving quickly over bottles and jars. "You know I'm busy, and if you and Tal want to stop by with no warning then you don't get to complain that I'm not ready to jump up and help!"

"Well I mean- it's just me, this time."

He sounds sheepish, and Rilla glances over her shoulder in surprise. "Wh- huh. Where's Tal, then?"

"Doing something dumb somewhere dumber," Marc scowls.

"Marc." Rilla turns away again, snatching up ingredients as she goes. "Come on."

"He stayed behind to take a job, and- if he just stayed with me we wouldn't have gotten lost and we definitely would have gotten here a lot sooner!"

"Sure," she says. "Whatever." Rilla can't actually decide if it would have been better or worse if the pair of them had visited a week or so ago. Might have been awkward for the boys to come knocking when Arum was collapsed by her front door, at the very least. Her lip pulls into a frown and she refocuses, rattling off the list of components as she mixes them together, but when she reaches for the last of the bunch-

She pulls down an empty jar. And then a second empty jar.

"Oh, come on. Really?"

"Uh, what's up?"

"The Numb-Cap. I'm out," Rilla groans, dropping her head to thunk off of the cabinet in front of her. "I used all of it because I had to make up so many batches of painkiller for-"

She pauses.

"For?" Marc calls warily, and Rilla grits her teeth.

"Another patient, Marc, because you're not the only person relying on me!"

"Well, I mean, uh. If you made up so much of it-"

"I made so much because I needed it, Marc! And even if I hadn't used it up, it's not even the same recipe as your pills. Which means- " she cuts off into an exasperated exhale, smacking her palms on the counter.

"Which means- what?"

"I need to go get more Numb-Cap. Now . And leave-"

She cuts herself off again.

"Well- I mean, if you're too busy to leave I can run off and collect the dumb mushrooms myself, right? I'll just grab a few and come back and-"

"There is no way I would trust mushroom identification to any untrained non-mycologist in the middle of the night, let alone you, Marc," she growls, marching towards the door and grabbing her boots. "You wanna have actual effective medicine, or d'you wanna wake up in a week with no clothes and no idea where you've been? Or, more likely, just choke to death on some fun magic poison?"

"Well, that first one doesn't sound so bad-"

"Marc." Rilla grips the doorframe tight. "This is, and I need you to understand this, wildly inconvenient for me right now, but I'm going to go out into the jungle with you, collect some stupid mushrooms in the dark, and come back to make more medicine for you. But first you gotta just- chill out here for a minute while I t- while I grab my stuff. Okay?"

"Yeah," Marc says, sounding just barely chastised enough as Dampierre whickers and stamps beneath him. "Uh. Yeah, Rilla, okay."

She sighs, then presses the door firmly closed so she can gather herself for a moment before she darts to the exam room. Arum is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the door as she enters, and Damien is carefully placed at the opposite end of the room leaning against a counter until he sees her enter, at which point he straightens up again.

"You're leaving? " Arum asks before she can say a word, and Damien stumbles as he crosses the room.

"What?!"

"That is what she just told the loud one at the door," he growls, gesturing towards her with narrowed eyes.

"Rilla you can't possibly-"

"I really can possibly, Damien," she says, grabbing a pair of work gloves from the counter and then coming close enough to grab Damien's hands tight. "Marc needs that medicine and it won't work without the ingredient I'm missing. It'll probably only be a few hours, I know where they usually grow, but it's a bit of a walk."

"But Rilla, surely- if you are venturing into the jungle then I must accompany-"

"I'll be fine, Damien, Marc and I can handle anything that happens. And I-" she squeezes his hands, winces. "I need you here a lot more."

"Here? But-" he looks towards Arum, and then they both look away.

"You realize that I do not require moment-by-moment babysitting, Amaryllis," Arum snarls.

"Precisely, and I-"

"Damien, I really don't want to have to deal with you and Marc fighting while I'm already stressed out about making sure he gets his next pill before his last one wears off," she admits in a rush, and Damien winces. "Please, please just stay here, don't fight for like, just a few hours, I promise, and- and everything will be fine. Just keep an eye on the stew and bring him a bowl when it's done, okay? That's your one job. Just that, and not fighting. And preferably not freaking out, either. Can you do that for me, Damien? Please?"

He wilts, just a little, his eyes going soft and his hands pulling her close enough that he can press a kiss to her temple. "Of course. Of course I can. Such small favors you ask of me, my love," he says, very lightly, and she laughs. "Of course. I should be used to the urgency with which your brilliance is needed, by now."

She breathes a laugh, then kisses his cheek before she pulls back from his hands, eying Arum (his own eyes carefully turned away from the both of them again). "You too, okay?"

"Me too, what, precisely?" he mutters. "I will not be going anywhere, and so long as the little songbird does not shoot me I cannot imagine I would have any way of coming to harm."

Damien scowls, but Rilla steps a bit closer to the monster, reaching out to tap the tip of his snout lightly, making him blink and hiss lightly in response.

"A couple hours. Just be nice, for Saints' sake. Or-" she laughs. "For my sake, at least."

Arum frowns (or pouts, more accurately), but something about the way his lip twitches makes her think he's trying to clamp down on a smile, and that makes her feel a little better about this whole thing when she returns to the door.

"Don't have too much fun without me," she says, and as they both splutter she closes the door behind her.

[->]

[lost-in-yujikiri]

LN info compilation: Eugeo’s relationships with his family & Rulid village

Manga panels: Eugeo & his family when he was 11 years old

I wanted to make this compilation of novel details to be a helpful reference for myself & other people (especially anime-only people) to understand Eugeo and what he went through in his life better.

Eugeo’s family includes his father Orick, mother, grandmother, 2 older brothers and 1 older sister Celinia. His grandfather, who passed away when he was 9, used to share countless old tales with young Eugeo, Kirito & Alice, including the tales of legendary hero Bercouli. His family doesn’t have wealth or importance so they have no family name. Eugeo really was at the bottom of the bottoms in terms of social standing, which made him develop an inferiority complex towards others.

1. Eugeo’s family was a barley-farming family, except for him whose Calling was a woodcutter, and for a number of times he was treated unfairly for it. His father was disappointed with his Calling even though it was not his choosing, his older brothers looked down on him for it, and most of his earnings went to his family for the farm. Since he was little because of these experiences he had developed some hidden anger, frustration & jealousy. These feelings were usually suppressed and controlled well, but they would come out whenever he was truly provoked or upset.

- Eugeo’s father first mention in the LN:

Eugeo’s father, Orick, raised a barley field on cleared forestland to the south of the village that had been in the family for generations. He made a show of being delighted when his third son, Eugeo, was chosen to be a Gigas Cedar carver, but inwardly, he was disappointed. They’d be paid his earnings as a carver from the village treasury, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to replace that extra set of hands to work in the field.

Novel excerpt: Volume 9, Prologue I part 5

- Memories of Eugeo’s family that Quinella showed him during her manipulation to invoke his inner frustrations (which unfortunately was cut from the anime ep 19):

It was the spring of his tenth year, the day that all the children in the village were brought to the clearing so that the elder could assign their callings. He watched nervously as Elder Gasfut glanced down at him from the podium and announced a significant surprise: “Carver of the Gigas Cedar.” Still, some of the children around him made envious comments. The carver was a prestigious, hallowed position that had existed since the founding of Rulid, and while he wouldn’t get a sword, he’d at least get to swing a real ax. Eugeo wasn’t disappointed at the time, by any means. He raced back home, clutching the parchment roll tied with a red ribbon, proud to show it off to his family. After the initial silence, it was the middle brother who spoke first. He clicked his tongue and complained that he thought it was going to be the day he didn’t have to shovel the cow poop anymore. Then the eldest brother noted that this threw off their plan for the year’s planting. His father grunted and asked Eugeo when that job would end and whether he would have time for the fields after he got home. His mother disappeared into the kitchen, wary of their wrath. In the eight years since, Eugeo’s role at home had always been small. And yet, the earnings he made as carver went into Father’s care and eventually turned into more sheep and new tools for the farm. Meanwhile, Zink the apprentice man-at-arms got to spend all his salary on himself, feasting on white bread with thick slices of meat and showing off his fancy hobnailed boots and his sword with its smooth leather scabbard. Meanwhile, Eugeo drudged around on his worn-down shoes, with nothing but stale, leftover bread in his lunch sack.

Novel excerpt: Volume 13, Chapter 11 part 5

- One scene that took place during Eugeo’s childhood & after a confrontation with Raios & Humbert that showed his inner anger:

Eugeo knew about the phrase temper tantrum. When he was young, his father had given his eldest brother a wooden sword from the school, and Eugeo was so jealous that he took his own sword, one his father whittled himself, and struck it against a rock outside so hard that it broke. His father explained that this was a temper tantrum, an act of misplaced anger, and was something to be ashamed of. After a good scolding, Eugeo never did such a thing again.

Eugeo turned and left the room, while the other boys laughed and urged him to go ahead with his plan. Once the door had shut behind him, he clenched his fist, ready to smash it against the wall—but he knew he had enough strength to put a dent in it, thus damaging the life of the building. Intentionally destroying school facilities or property clearly violated the rules and would be an example of that “temper tantrum” he’d been warned about. For a moment, he wished for that Gigas Cedar again, its bark so tough that he could smash all his frustration into it without consequence.

Novel excerpt: Volume 11, Chapter 5 part 2 & 3

2. Due to lack of food & resource, to manage population in Rulid Village the oldest sons will take over the house, the younger sons most likely can not have their own family. 

- Eugeo’s monologue right before Tiese’s love confession to him:

Because the harvests in little villages like Rulid were limited, the population had to be carefully managed. Almost without exception, it was the eldest son who took over the house and fields, so (depending on their callings) the later sons were typically forbidden to marry and were bachelors into old age. If he hadn’t met Kirito, Eugeo quite possibly could have led a life of nothing more than chopping at the Gigas Cedar every single day. Just like Old Man Garitta. Now he was living in Centoria among nobles of every stripe—but what would he do if he failed to be school representative after graduating? He could try to get a position within the Imperial Knights or a garrison in some other large town. He could even go all the way back to Rulid to work for his brother. In any case, he’d never need to concern himself with a noble estate.

Novel excerpt: Volume 11, Chapter 5 part 3

- Eugeo’s recall of his life and how he would live a monotonous life of a bachelor woodcutter if Kirito didn’t show up:

Until two years ago, his entire life, as far as he knew it, was to be vainly swinging an ax into a tree that would never fall down. His only sentiment would be to reflect on the memories of his long-lost golden-haired friend as he led a lonely life without marriage or children, dwelling deep in the forest until the day he grew old and handed the ax to a new generation and passed away with no one to tell his tale.

Novel excerpt: Volume 12, Chapter 8 part 1

3. The incident of Alice breaking Taboo Index and arrested resulted in a part of the village & his family ostracizing him for being close friend with her. Coupled with Kirito’s existence getting erased from everyone’s memories, the situation pushed Eugeo to a lonely & depressive state for 6 years that followed. Only after meeting Kirito again at age 17, Eugeo became lively and smiled again.

- Selka’s view of Eugeo’s depressive state and Kirito remarked how different Eugeo was with him:

Selka was quiet for a few moments. She eventually mumbled, “I see…So the reason Eugeo doesn’t smile anymore…is because of Alice.” “Eugeo…doesn’t smile?” “Yes. When my sister was around, he was always beaming. It was hard to find him not looking happy. I was still young, so I don’t remember it that well…but ever since she was taken away, I feel like I never see Eugeo smiling anymore. In fact…even on his days off, whether he stays inside or goes into the forest, he’s always alone…” I found this statement to be a bit strange. Eugeo was rather reserved, it was true, but he didn’t seem to be hiding his emotions from me. During our chats coming to and from the forest and on our break times, he had even laughed, and more than a few times.

Novel excerpt: Volume 9, Chapter 1 part 3

- Eugeo’s recall about his relationship with the village and his 6-year depressive state:

Everyone in the village, including his family, refused to discuss the Integrity Knight’s arrest of the village elder’s daughter, as though even acknowledging it was a taboo of its own. In fact, they’d even begun to shun Eugeo for having been close to her in the first place. But just as the villagers avoided him, so did Eugeo avoid others, as well as his own memories of the incident. Unable to admit his weakness and cowardice, he descended into the murky swamp of resignation, hoping to ignore both his past and future. But then, two years ago, a boy who wandered into the forest without a single possession to his name had found Eugeo and dragged him out of that bottomless swamp.

Novel excerpt: Volume 13, Chapter 10

- Memories of some village people that Quinella showed him during her manipulation to invoke his inner frustrations (which unfortunately was cut from the anime ep 19, again):

Two years after Alice was taken away by the Integrity Knight, in his eleventh summer, Eugeo remembered Zink telling him that now that the elder’s daughter was gone, there was no girl left in the village who would care for him. The look in his eyes made it clear that he thought Eugeo deserved it. He’d been best friends with Alice, the prettiest and most talented girl in the village, and Zink was delighted at his downfall. Ultimately, no one in Rulid ever repaid Eugeo’s sentiments. He had the right to receive what he offered in a fair exchange, but instead, he was denied that privilege.

Novel excerpt: Volume 13, Chapter 11 part 5

4. After Eugeo cut down the Gigas Cedar, his father still wasn’t proud of him despite him completing a task the village considered sacred. His family expected him to stay to work for them, so they were disappointed with his decision of leaving the village. Eugeo still felt guilty for leaving them that way and sometimes thought about helping them, only for all of his considerations to turn to ashes after the Raios & Humbert incident.

- The scene when the village chief called forth Eugeo’s father to commemorate the cutdown of Gigas Cedar:

“I call forth the one who achieved this feat—Eugeo, son of Orick!”

He beckoned to a corner of the square, where a nervous-looking Eugeo stood. The short man next to him must have been his father, Orick. Aside from the hair color, they looked totally unalike, and he appeared more confused than proud. Eugeo proceeded forward at the urging of the other villagers, not his father.

Novel excerpt: Volume 9, Chapter 1 part 5

- Eugeo’s guilt of leaving his family and his thoughts of helping them:

It would be a lie to claim that he had never given it a second thought. When Chief Gasfut asked him what he wanted his next Calling to be on the night of the village festival, he had first considered his family. Up to that point, Eugeo had given his family his entire salary as the Gigas Cedar carver. They were traditionally a barley-farming family, but their fields were small, and the recent run of poor harvests had left them little income. Eugeo’s steady monthly wages were a minor bedrock that he knew his parents and brothers relied upon, even if no one wanted to admit it. Once the Gigas Cedar was felled, that salary was gone, naturally. But if he chose to be a farmer, like his father, they would receive preferential choice of the large, sunny stretches ready to be tilled to the south. Standing at the pulpit amid the excited villagers, Eugeo looked into the hopeful and anxious faces of his family members. His hesitation had lasted only an instant. On one end of the scale was a reunion with his childhood friend, and on the other was the livelihood of his family. The scale tilted, and Eugeo announced that he would leave the village and be a swordsman. Even as a swordsman, he could choose to stay in Rulid and be one of the men-at-arms, ensuring he’d still have a salary. But leaving the village meant leaving his family. The money that Eugeo made and the possibility of new, fertile fields would all go up in smoke. He hastily left the day after the festival because he couldn’t stand seeing the suppressed disappointment and unhappiness in the faces of his parents and brothers. There had been more opportunities to choose a life that supported his family after he and Kirito left Rulid. They competed in the swordfighting tournament in Zakkaria and won the right to join the garrison there. After hard training, they were given a recommendation to North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy—but the commander also offered to keep them around, with the promise of promotions and maybe even a future place as the garrison commander. If he’d accepted that steady salary in Zakkaria and had sent some of it back to Rulid on the regular trading caravan, it could have made things so much easier for his family. And yet, Eugeo had turned down the commander’s offer and accepted the letter of recommendation instead. Along the way to Centoria, and even after joining the academy, a part of Eugeo’s mind had been busy making excuses. He’d be named school representative, win the Four-Empire Unification Tournament, and receive the prestigious rank of Integrity Knight—and then his parents would have riches and comfort beyond their imagination. When he made his triumphant return with Alice, riding a dragon and outfitted in silver armor, his parents would be prouder of their youngest son than anyone could ever be. But two nights ago, when he had drawn his blade against Raios Antinous and Humbert Zizek, Eugeo had betrayed his family for the third time. He gave up on the very real possibility of noble rank in his future…and chose to violate the Taboo Index, sacrificing his common status in the process.

Novel excerpt: Volume 12, Chapter 8 part 1

5. However, Eugeo’s relationships with some members of his family & village people were not all bad. After recovering memories of Kirito & broke free from Administrator’s manipulation, Eugeo realized there were still some people he had loved, which include: 

“Old Man Garitta, the previous carver. Sister Azalia from the Church. Selka the apprentice sister. Grandfather, who told me stories of the past. My elder sister, Celinia, who cared for me when I was little...”

as well as many other good people he met on their journey, so he didn’t have to be so fixated on the lack of love from his parents & others anymore. (Volume 14, Chapter 12 part 2)

[smolbeandrabbles]

Sway Pt.8 - Danny Rayburn x Reader (Bloodline)

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6  / Part 7 / Here / Part 9 / Part 10

Author’s Note: I wrote some of this way back in January. When this series was going to be 3 or 5 parts... Which is why it took so long to edit, because ‘Sway’ is not that story anymore... And after you read this there’s two left. And I... I just... I’m going to cry so hard when I write that final line, and post that final part...! Disclaimer: I stretched the timeline a little to have Danny down in the Keys a little while longer before Robert dies... None of the Bloodline characters are mine. But she is. And I love her so much. Stole all the dialogue from Danny/Nolan at the bus station from S.2 Ep.10 Also, quote above from S.1 Ep.4 Premise: In the aftermath of the restaurant Danny makes the decision to head back to the Keys.... You follow him down to attend Robert’s funeral, but not for the reasons you might think...

Words: 9133

Warnings: Swearing / 

I just gotta see him with the sun shining on him in the water Chrome aviators on his eyes I wanna hear those waves come crashing in I wanna feel that sand and that wind I wanna go everywhere he's been, hold him again

 ---

She said I know, I know, it don't seem real, She closed her eyes, but the tears flowed through, She said don't hate me, for lovin' you

Oh I could not reassure her, I couldn't say what I had planned, Couldn't put three words together, So I just, took her hand

--- God, I'm down here on my knees, Cause it's the last place left to fall, Beggin' for another chance, If there's any chance at all, That you might still be listenin', Lovin' and forgivin' guys like me I've spent my whole life gettin' it all wrong, And I sure could use your help cause from now on...

Cause' it going to take a miracle, After all I've done to really make her see, That I wanna be a stay man, I wanna be a great man, I wanna be the kind of man that she sees in her dreams, God, I wanna be your man, And I wanna be her man God, I only hope she still believes, In the man I wanna be --- Miami, AM

You had tried everything to keep him here. Even getting angry; following him around your apartment as he packed his things. He was too good for his family, which is why you never understood why he wanted so badly to run back to the Keys. “What are you looking for? Their respect? Their admiration? Danny, their love? They will NEVER give you that. And I don’t know why you can’t see that you are too damn good for your family and they don’t deserve your tryin’!!” You regretted it almost immediately at the hurt look on his face. “They are my family...” He was as right as he was wrong. The only one who even remotely treated him like family was John. You liked John, but he was one man... Danny had a network of ‘family’ here. “...You HAVE a family.” You touched a hand to your forehead “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that... I just... I don’t want you to leave... to go back to them!” He placed his hands on your shoulders, firm but gentle; “Y/N. I can’t stay.”

*

You drove Danny over to his apartment that morning in order for him to pick up a few things. He offered to let you help him, but you couldn’t face that without crying again. Nothing you said worked; he was determined about going and even more determined about staying. Instead, you had picked up Nolan to also say goodbye, and you were now standing outside Bayfront Park metro and bus station waiting for him. You were quiet, because you weren’t sure exactly what to say. Nolan wasn’t too keen on seeing his father leave for the Keys either. It wouldn’t be too bad, perhaps, if you were heading to the party yourself. You couldn’t for two reasons; one was work, and that wasn’t just an excuse you were making, you were about to close a huge deal and Rich only trusted you with it. You couldn’t just walk away for a long weekend; and for the Rayburns?!

The second was if you left, if you went to the Keys... If Danny was really adamant about staying until his life got back on track, then you weren’t so sure even your parents would be able to drag you away from him and back to Miami. They would just have to represent you for a little while. At least you knew they would help see Danny settled.

 He arrived, backpack slung over his shoulder, and crossed to you both. Slipping his hands into yours he kissed your cheek in greeting. You put on a brave face and in that moment, you never wanted to let his hands go. “So, this is it, you’re just running away?” You weren’t sure that was particularly helpful, and your look let Nolan know it. Danny clearly didn’t know how to react, searching around as if anyone in Miami had the answer he himself wanted “…Going back home?” To stop you from joining the 2v1 argument Danny at least found something to say; “The guys that I owe money too… They’re not gonna stop ‘til I pay them back.” He could tell by the way you held his hand tighter that you were dying to say it, all over again. “…Didn’t… uh… Didn’t you get insurance money?” “Nah…” This was only followed by another silence “The cops said it was arson. So, you don’t get paid for that.” Nolan got quiet and looked to the ground. Danny sighed, and for a second rummaged in his pocket; before holding out a key “The key to my apartment… When I get myself set up, and I get on my feet I’m gonna start sending you money, okay? Take it.” It was strange for Nolan to look reluctant to do even that, but you thought it was sweet. It still gave Nolan somewhere to go – not that your place would ever not be an option for him. Money for Nolan… That’s what this was really about… You knew that now, every decision Danny made, it was for Nolan. “Okay… Well…” He turned to the bus, “This is me… Rayburn Express…” with your hand still in his he turned back to you; “…You’ll be coming down right? Your parents will be at the party...?” You hated to bite your lip and shake your head but you had to, “Not this weekend... they will, I can’t...  Of course, when everything is settled down. I’ll make a weekend or week of it...” He nodded, noticing the way you weren’t quite meeting his eyes, he was surprised your mascara wasn’t already running... “Good luck with the deal, you’ll get it. 100%!” Your smile was sad, and your lip quivered “Yeah.”

Danny was decisive, he didn’t want to drag out how much this was hurting you any longer. Pulling you into his arms he rubbed your back; “It’s gonna be okay... I’ll be back before you realise I’m gone...” at your choked breath he realised it was a bad choice of words “We’ve made it through worse... Darlin’ it’ll be okay...” he took your face in his hands and made you look back into his eyes. “I love you...” He kissed your forehead “Don’t ever forget that...” then your lips. However long that goodbye kiss was, it didn’t last nearly long enough. He let you go and turned to Nolan. “Listen…” The silence was back. He was struggling… you were struggling… Nolan was struggling. “What?” “…. Just… Just take good care of yourself, okay?” He reached out and took Nolan’s cigarette from him, as if to make a point, then looked back to you “And take care of her... she’s pretty tough. But she’ll need it...” “Yeah.” Nolan nodded, and Danny realised he was just as sad as you “I will...” Mercifully his bus was called... Danny’s hand left yours only when he could stretch his arm any further. He continued to walk backwards a few paces. And it was the first time you thought Danny might cry about this. “I love you. Both of you!” You felt that was harder for him to say than anything else ever hand been. And he turned to board the bus, gave one last look and wave back and then he was gone. And you couldn’t take it. You turned away, leaning on Nolan’s shoulder for support, your eyes stung with tears you had been desperately holding back. Nolan watched Danny walk up the bus to take his seat and placed his hand over yours. The bus revved into life, making you turn back. Danny took a deep breath and turned to wave to you both waving him off, with possibly the saddest smile you’d ever seen anyone give. He knew he’d be crying too before he hit Miami’s outskirts. As the bus rolled off you dropped your hand and really began crying. It felt like your heart was breaking all over again, and you weren’t sure if it was because of Danny or for him. Nolan pulled you close and enveloped you in his arms. And you realised that he was crying too.

“I’m gonna miss him... Y/N... I’m gonna miss him too...”

 ***

 Islamorada, Rayburn House, AM

You weren’t sure how you felt about the context of the situation you were seeing Danny again in. Seeing him was going to be the best thing that had happened in months... but at his father’s funeral? With what you knew? Your parents weren’t sure you’d want to go, but you’d skipped out the first weekend on pretences of work. And that if he stayed… you would stay. This time it would be different... You hoped. Your black dress was appropriately modest for the situation, yet airy enough for the hot summer sunshine. Your parents hadn’t said you were coming, but were staying at Rayburn House. It would only be one night, but you knew how much it would hurt. Even driving down the driveway was enough to have tears sting at your eyes. At least you could pretend it was about the funeral, you supposed. The gathering was larger than you had anticipated, but allowed you to blend for a minute and take in being back here. You stuck close to your parents as they made the rounds, people you’d recognised from trips up here during the past 3 years… You’d already seen John spot you and try to inconspicuously point your presence out. From what you had heard from your parents (amidst howling with laughter) they had every reason to believe you and Danny had split. WRONG! You smirked into your glass, and then you spotted him. Not in black, no less. His off-white shirt and black jeans marked him out against everyone… That was just like him… Danny was talking with two people you didn’t really recognise, had he ever actually made an attempt to introduce you to anyone here? If he had you’d probably have thought about relocating to the Keys... But as he circulated you couldn’t help but steal glances at him, until finally he looked at you. He blinked hard and then you saw that smile, and he successfully stole your heart again. You smiled back, but remained with your parents... Outwardly Danny always oozed confidence, but you knew this wasn’t easy for him... At one point you found yourself sitting alone trying to take it in. Trying to process what you were here for… Tapping your foot lazily against the porch and liking to be lost in your own thoughts. You didn’t expect any of the Rayburns to come to you – that’s what your parents were here for… "Y/N!!" You were almost surprised to see the call come from John's daughter. "Janey! Hey!!" You embraced her tight as she sat with you "What's goin' on!!" "Oh, the usual...! I'm glad you're here!" "... Oh, really?" "Yeah, for Danny... Unless... Did you guys really...?" "Really what?" You wanted someone to confirm your suspicions "Did you really break up...?? I thought you were good together... I really liked you together." You couldn’t help but feel glad she said it, but you laughed "Nooo... We did not, in fact, break up. The party I heard about. Thought it was hilarious, typically Danny..." you giggled to yourself "Seems like everyone else wanted it to happen..." you looked across at her "You good at keeping secrets?" "Awww...! I can't tell anyone!?" but she grinned, happy to hear the news "Well. Okay, maybe your DAD can know. Is he any good at keeping secrets!?" She snorted "No. He's a detective." "Eh. True..." "Are you staying...?" Her tone was hopeful. You had to disappoint her by shaking your head, "I can't. Or I would sweetie... Obviously I would..." You nodded forwards, both of you watching Danny do more rounds with people. The two friends you had spotted him with before never far away. You were glad he had more than just his family here... Heck, whoever they were were probably more family than his family... "... Will he go back to Miami?" Now she sounded disappointed "I don't know... I guess it depends how long it takes him to decide he's back on his feet..." you sat back "I want him back in Miami. You don't sound like you do." "I think he's really cool." That statement almost surprised you "If he goes back you have to promise to visit more often!!" You sighed "Oh, no! That means coming down here to this awful view!!" She laughed at your obvious sarcasm, but you tapped her "You're an adult. You'll have to visit us in Miami too, okay? That's my condition to your condition!" She beamed at your offer "Okay. That sounds great to me!" “Do me another favour too…” You smiled across to her “Tell him he’s cool. Tell him often, he’ll like that!” She was called back to her parents, but took your hands in hers “I will! Don’t be a stranger!!! Stay longer!!” “Next time! I promise!” * The service was appropriate... You held your moms’ hand tight and respected John’s speech. You’d always respected John, in three years you hadn’t been back frequently, but he always made time to see you when you did; John respected you. Other members of his family were less than accepting and you just wanted to steer clear of that. You weren’t here for negativity, after all. After the ceremony was over your parents went back to their rounds, but you shook your head as you watched Danny walk off alone. It was more important you speak to him... They let you go, understanding, and you slowly wandered after him, this time with a glass of water... You waited patiently for someone else you didn’t recognise to finish their conversation with him before you cut into his thoughts; He looked up as he walked over, conversation with Danny finished, upon seeing you he looked back to Danny and then to you; “Oh my goodness! I’m sorry dear!” “No, no!” You laughed as the older man apologised for taking Danny’s time “You go on!” “Oh no!” He smiled “I’m sure he’d much rather talk to you!” You shook your head “Oh, I dunno...” you walked slowly towards Danny, watching his body language closely. Perhaps now wasn’t the time to tell him what you had really come here for. “Hey...” He was smiling before he turned to the sound of your voice  “It’s been a while, baby girl!” You nearly rolled your eyes “I’d say sorry but... I don’t think I’d mean it...” “Naw, it’s okay... You staying?” He looked back to the waves lapping at the shoreline, taking a sip of beer. “Just tonight...”  “Just tonight??” “I have to go back… One car...” you sighed gently “I miss you.” “I know. I miss you too. You should come visit properly...” You laughed, clearly asking him to come back and stay was still off the table, “You could come back to Miami and visit too, you know.” “Nah, I work here now... I can’t just leave...” “Can’t blame me for trying...” You walked forward until you were in the water, staring out at the vast ocean... “No but I mean it, come down! I’ll take you out... Hey, we could even go down to the other islands for a few days. It’d be good!” You turned back to him “Okay. Sure.” “Soon-ish! Don’t use ALL your holiday up on me...” He joined you “Or you can. I’m not gonna complain...”  “Bet not!” You folded your arms “How are you doing?” “Fine...” You took comfort in the fact he met your eyes and it was genuine. “Yeah! I mean, it’s a job, a house and money... I guess that’s important...” “Is it a life?” “It’s... living?” He searches for the word “I mean, I’m living?” Danny wouldn’t count this as a life until he had what he had in Miami, but even you weren’t sure he could replicate that here. Without you didn’t really matter... Without Nolan, though...? That’s what the money was really about. And you’d checked with the bank. Zero activity. Danny sending cash made you uneasy, but if he banked any checks it would only get swallowed up by all the loans he owed. That damn restaurant... The only problem with pouring his heart and soul into the one thing he was really good at was that it went up in literal flames and then his life went up with it. You had tried nearly everything to keep that man in Miami. But he wouldn’t let you help him, and he refused to stay. You couldn’t help but laugh, “I guess I would rather you were alive...!” “Huh! That’s good to know! I’ll keep that in mind!” He reached for his shoulder instinctively and you had to look away. It made you think back; how you thought it was just a tick, because he did it all the time. When you learned the truth about what it really was... Well, what kind of person got angry at someone at their own funeral? You took a breath, wanting nothing more than to take his hand to stop him. It wasn’t easy for you to think of even now.  He got quiet after that, both of you standing staring out at the ocean. The silence was comfortable, for once, but it wasn’t Danny...  "You know..." he almost laughed "He tried to pay me to leave..." You opened your mouth, well it shouldn't surprise you that Robert would do such a thing. You let your question of "why didn't you!?" go. Deciding the answer Danny would give couldn't possibly be satisfactory. Opting instead for; "Could I pay you to come back!?" You received a half smile. "I don't want your money... I'm getting paid well enough here..." "yeah... It’s how you're getting paid..." "so, Nolan’s getting it?" "uh huh." you nodded, but if he wasn't, you wouldn't see Nolan suffering and Danny knew that too. "Alright..." he was satisfied with that, perching himself back on the edge of the boat. Eventually you had to turn back to him; “I’m Sorry...” “Hmm??” “I’m so sorry...” You pulled him into an embrace “I’m so, so, so sorry...” He wound his arms around you and you were finally with him once more. It’s been months since you had this...  “I miss you...” Was all you heard him mumble into your shoulder “I wish you were here...”

When you left him to go back to his thoughts, as clearly Danny had many, you wandered back to the gathering only to be caught by John. Who by the looks of him had just been watching you; "How long are you really prepared to wait for him...? Are you gonna wait forever...?" You smiled, looking out to the Ocean "John, you're implying that I am waiting for something. I'm not." He mulled your answer over with interest "Really." it wasn't a question, but you nodded anyway "I’ll wait for him however long it takes... All I want is him to come home." "... People here want the same thing for different reasons..." "Do you?" John inclined his head "I've already put him on a bus once... I'm trying to do what's best for everyone..." "Is it best for Danny, though?" you looked across at him "... He didn't leave Miami and come here because it was his only option. It wasn't. He came here for help - from his family. Hell, he came here FOR a family... Why are you the only person who treats him like... A person?" "Mom treats him well... Meg’s not bad..." you looked like you didn't believe him. So he sighed "We were always extremely close... Danny always came to me for help... It’s what he does..." "So you really are the big brother. I always thought that." "Yeah. I guess... But listen, Y/N... You don't have to worry about Danny, alright. You don't even have to think about it anymore." He waved a hand "and I understand ending it… I do." You laughed "I didn't end it!" He tilted his head “HE ended it?!” You raised an eyebrow to John, because you knew he knew better than to even ask that “I’ll let you think what you think. Just don’t make it the talk of the town.” He gave you a knowing smile, letting you know he’d caught on “Alright. I won’t.”

 * 

“Danny...” He turned to face your father. A little confused as, when looking around, he realised you weren’t there. What could this be about? He hoped Jack wasn’t also about to try to tempt him back to Miami. “Jack!” He gave a smile “It’s good to see you!” He stepped forward, clasping Danny’s hand and giving him an pat on the back “Likewise, Mr.Rayburn. It’s always my honour!” Jack nodded to the old black Chevy truck “Is she yours?” “Oh! Yes Sir. Well, she was dad’s... I fixed her up.” Well. He wouldn’t give Kevin any credit, at least. “Amazing! Looks nearly brand new... ’57 Chevy pickup…” Jack whistled “You don’t see many in working condition! Well done!” Danny nodded in thanks, “of course! The classic ones always run the best, and longest...” Jack began to walk around the truck, studying it thoroughly “Guess it’s the same for classic relationships...” His eyes flicked to Danny’s and Danny wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be hidden meaning in that... “Guess so...” He trod carefully, walking around the car too; “I’ll have to remember that if I ever get to be in a classic relationship.” “Aren’t you? Maybe it’s a little modern classic...” This was odd. They both began circling the car, slow steps... cautious. Danny could feel his heart beat quicken; was this a test?? “How did you get the car running again...?” “Oh! I changed the carb, changed the battery, ignition, cap, rotor… Name it I probably did it!” Jack nodded along, taking it in; “So you made a modern classic...?” Danny stopped for a second letting his visible confusion show on his face; was Jack Ervin using the car as an analogy? “... She could run forever on that...” He had to be. “I’d hope so... It’d mean... never getting a new... car?” Her father gave a different kind of nod, like he was glad Danny was finally catching on. He put his hands on the hood “What are your intentions Mr. Rayburn?” That wasn’t about a car; “Do you intend to go the distance?” Danny stared at his reflection in the hood and bit his lip; “I... am not sure she’s ready to run that many miles... yet....” He tipped his head, not raising his eyes “... I’m not sure I will be driving forever either. Or, if I am the kind of person to take that trip. And for her... I would have to be...” He looked up slowly as Jack folded his arms, but the smile on his face couldn’t be bigger; “I think you underestimate yourself.” Danny put his hands in his pockets and almost guiltily mumbled “So does she...” Jack nearly laughed; “I like you Danny. A lot. And it would be my honour to give you that. So... just... think on it... I think she’d take a drive anywhere, as long as it was with you...” He grinned “I think it’d be a long trip...” he patted the hood again; “Just maybe not in this... not enough seats!” With that Jack gave a mysterious smile and walked back towards the house. Danny didn’t have the chance to give sincere thanks at Jack’s faith in him because the situation became even more confusing. He scrunched his face What?? Then his eyes widened and he looked back at Jack’s disappearing frame oh...! OH!

*

You had been studying the photographs for a while when Danny came back inside. And he approached you slowly as you looked from one to the other, not wanting to startle you. “God. Don’t look at those!” You laughed “You were blonde! I just can’t believe that!” “Why!?” “Nolan. His hair is dark…” You tapped the photo, “God, he looks JUST like you… That’s adorable…” Though, Meg and John both had dark hair. It wasn’t an exclusively blonde family… “Yeah… He gets that from his mom.” “What!? Eve’s hair is blonde too!” “Not naturally.” “Coulda fooled me.” You tilted your head “And baby John? My goodness… What a cutiepie! You were two good looking young men. Bet you got ALL the girls.” He rolled his eyes “Aw, nah! Not John, not you too!” You laughed “Danny – Calm down! There’s only room for one Rayburn brother in my life…” You shuffled through some of the other photos on the table and paused. “Yeah…” Danny looked over your shoulder “…That’s Sarah…” You picked it up, you could have guessed from the necklace… Then just as quick you put it back and shuffled it under the others, looking back to him; “Why put it out?” “She WAS his favourite.” “…But for you?” He leant on the table next to you, brushing his fingers against yours; “Seeing her doesn’t bother me. She was probably my favourite too… Which is why I took her out in the first place…” He sighed “He bothered me… I still get like…” he waved a hand over his head “…Flashbacks- God, No… Let’s…. Let’s not talk about this…” “I’m sorry…” “What?” “I brought it up. I shouldn’t have… My fault…” You looked back to the photos “It’s not your fault. He did what he did. No ‘you’ about it…” He ran his fingers over your arm; “I mean, I’m ok now, right?” Far from it. You thought, but didn’t say it aloud. “No good worryin’ about things you can’t change, Darlin’…”

* Islamorada, Beach, PM-Late "Meet me up the beach a little way later..." "Why are we being all hush-hush about this..." it amused you to say the least "You know my family..." "Eh. John keeps asking me dumb questions." "That's because you keep answering them!!" “Well I had to put him straight.” “AWWW-! And I was starting to have fun!” He smiled; “So, you up for it? Wait until it gets dark, mm’kay?” “Wow. You make me feel like I’m about 15 sneaking out of my parents house!” He gave a shrug “Well that’s what I’m gonna do. Everyone is going for drinks downtown, though, if you wanna do that!” “No!” You shook you head “That does not sound like my idea of a good time.” “Great!” He watched the way his family were currently watching the two of you, you were just trying to ignore it “…After dark! See you then…” He nudged your shoulder gently as he left you, making you shake your head after him. Honestly!

You sat on the steps of your cabin until you saw him appear a little way down the beach. It was dark, but the porchlights illuminated a silhouette that could only be Danny. Three years was a long time to look at the same person; and you knew exactly how he walked. You turned back to tell your parents that you would be back later; because Danny was taking you on a date. Which, you guessed it would be, and collected your things, walking quickly across the beach to him. “And I thought you’d be here before me…?” He took your hand in his before you’d even had a chance to say hello. “Well, I wanted to make sure it was worth sneaking out!” You gave a wink “Where are we going?” He gave a mysterious smile; “Just up here, Darlin’…! It’ll be great. The sky is clear – it’ll be perfect!” “…Why? What are you planning?” “Mmm! You’ll see…!” He pulled you closer so that he could drape his arm around your shoulders, letting you link your fingers with his. "Janey likes you. Like, really likes you." "Oh! Is there a problem with that!" "No...! It's good to see somebody around here likes you!! She doesn't want you to leave!" That had him laughing. "No! Don't laugh this is serious!" He was making you laugh too, "She even had me making conditions about us visiting the Keys more if you come back to Miami." "And what did you say to that?" "Yeah sure, if she comes to see us!!" "Fair trade." "…Really is conditional on you coming back..!" You tilted your head "Also, you didn't get this from me. But she thinks you're cool." "What's wrong with that!? That's sweet! Have I ever been cool before!?" "Exactly!" You snorted, "Wait until I tell Nolan someone thinks you're cool." "He's not gonna believe you!" "I dunno... I think he thinks you’re cool, he's just too cool to say it..." You squeezed him tighter as you cuddled him "I think you're pretty cool too..." He pushed your arm "Aw, stop it! I'm gonna go as red as you usually do!" "Danny! That is not helping!" You could already feel the heat in your cheeks... He laughed "Ah, I don't say it to help...!" Eventually you came upon his truck. And you realised he’d set it up to provide you with a romantic interlude. He could tell by the look on your face that was at least OK; “Look, I didn’t have much time – I just… I wanted some time alone…” You looked to him, your smile as brilliant as ever “It’s perfect!” He sat you down in the truck bed that he’d tried to make as comfortable as possible and pointed back to the sky. As he’d parked his car on the beach and there was very little artificial lighting around, the stars shone brightly allowing him to pick out several constellations. Star gazing. Danny had brought you here to star gaze. He was truly worth more than words. He uncapped a bottle and held it out to you, but you politely declined; “Oh no, I…” “WAIT. You’re not drinking!? What the hell!?” “Uh, did you know that-!” You had some baffling facts up your sleeve from your mom… “God! Stop!” He covered his ears “Drinking is the only thing that gets me through being here!” He was joking, maybe. But, what other excuses did he have to give for you to tell him to get back to Miami? You laughed, but he picked up another bottle; “Drinking alone… Now THAT’S just sad…” “You’re not alone…” You pulled his body closer to yours, laying your head on his shoulder and running a hand over his chest. He hummed, taking a sip and putting an arm around your shoulders, laying you both back amongst the blankets; “Can’t you just pretend?” “You’re gonna waste a bottle on me?” “…I’ll drink it, you just gotta toast with me…” He tapped the other bottle against your shoulder… You took it; “Well, if you insist…” You studied the bottle, shame, it was a good beer. “I do…” He kissed your forehead gently as you clinked your bottles “Cheers!” “Here’s to us!” You said both in unison. Neither of you expecting to say the other thing. Leaving you both laughing awkwardly. But you smiled, more than glad to accept his phrasing over yours. “Here’s to us…”

*** Your parents had packed the car and were saying goodbye to the family when you made your way outside. It was harder to leave him than to watch him leave you. You reluctantly placed your bag in the car, when you realised that Danny wasn’t even among them. Scanning the group twice to make certain, John detached himself and approached you; “He’s out back...” “Oh. Well then, I better go say goodbye.” “You know you don’t have to do that...” “No, John, that’s the problem. I do.” You hugged him tight; “I hope to see you around Y/N...” “If he stays, you will....” You let him go with a sad smile, “If you’ll excuse me...” Skipping past him and walking back through the house, you opened the back door, finding Danny lost in thought raking the beach.  You stood at the top of the steps leaning against the rail to watch him for a minute; “Danny!” He turned instantly at the sound of your voice and dropped everything to run across the sand to you. “Uh Uh! Cigarette out!!” He raised an eyebrow, you’d never had a problem with him smoking before. But, he did as you asked, glancing you up and down as he ascended the steps slowly; “You’re... Really leavin’?” “Afraid so...” “Aw, c’mon, stay...!” “No...I...” “I have a room, you don’t even need to rent a place, I got a car... I’ll drive you to the airport!” “Dan-” “A week! Take a week! Just a week!” “DANNY!” You cut in “I can’t. And you know how bad I want to stay. But I just can’t...” “You’ll come back? Right? And soon? Sooner than it’s taken you to come here now?” “As soon as I get back, I’ll look into it... but I’ve gotta be careful about how often I’m away... remember.” “Why?” “Well, Nolan ought to see one of us.” He groaned just a little “When do you next see him?” “Friday?” Usually he insisted you tutor him in Spanish. He placed a hand to his forehead; “God I’m such a fucking bad father...”  That hurt you, hurt way more than it should; “Danny! No! Don’t say that!” “God, Y/N, but it’s true!” “Nolan wouldn’t want to hear you say that either!” “You know sometimes I think that kid would have had it easier if I’d have stayed out of his life...” You gasped and put a hand to your mouth; “Danny...” You felt a sharp pain in your heart and your eyes started to well up... “Sorry I just... it’s so hard... being here when you’re both up there... and if I ever got you... I just... I don’t know what I’d do...” Then you sobbed and it startled him, and you did it again. “Y/N? Hey...! Baby... Hey... Shhh... Baby girl what’s wrong?!” “I’m sorry...” “What? No, no! It’s all me! Baby I’m sorry..!” “I’m sorry!!” You repeated as he took your hands. You were scared about him leaving you before, now you felt it was almost certain... “I’m sorry!” You sobbed harder, and it was tearing him apart. He’d been the one saying all that stupid shit, what were you sorry for...? “D-Danny...” Your voice wavered “I’m pregnant.” It took him a minute to register if he’d heard you right. And when he realised you were looking back at him, defeated and waiting for him to say something, he realised that he had. He opened his mouth, but his thoughts went blank and nothing came out... and he felt himself go weak, his hands left yours as he slumped to his knees. “No... N-No...” Danny closed his eyes... He could barely provide enough money to support one kid let alone two, what the hell had he gotten you into?! You took a shaky breath, you couldn’t look at him, you couldn’t let him go... Your hands clasped gently around his wrists. Your tears were still running as you stared out to sea, wishing it would come and swallow you up. “I’m keeping it. Whatever you decide to do... and you can leave... if you want to leave, you can...” You trailed off. Because you were not the only one crying. “...Danny...” You whispered it. He still wasn’t looking at you, but his shoulders were shaking, and you could hear him trying to hold the tears in. You let his wrists go gently and tried to remember when last, if ever, you had seen Danny cry... As you let him go, he knelt up. Winding his arms around you and pulling you into him, he placed his head gently against your stomach but didn’t stop crying. You ran your hands through his hair gently. “Danny, I’m sorry...” He shook his head “Stop it...” He pulled you tighter to him “Don’t ever be sorry....” He took a deep breath and let out a groan; “You’re sure...?” “Yes...” You reached into your pocket. You’d had your mom persuade someone to take a scan for you, but you wanted to prove it to him none the less. You held out the tiny ultrasound scan and let him take it. He laughed, almost shakily, running his fingers over it. He took your hand again, before he stood, looking back at you and placing his hands gently on your stomach; “How long?” “Have I known...? About a month...” You brushed the tears from your eyes “I thought maybe before you went, but I wasn’t sure...”  “How far are you?” “Two, two and a half? I’ll start showing soon... But I didn’t want to tell you over the phone or... I had to tell YOU.” He nodded, looking back to the picture “Can I keep this?” “Do you want to?” “Baby, of course I....” He thought about what he’d just said “...God, I really just...” he sighed “Screwed up. Again… And I… I’m never gonna leave you. Please don’t think that I-” he shook his head “look, this time, THIS time I might actually get this right!” “Woah, woah… don’t worry about money! I don’t need you worrying about anything more than Nolan right now!” You stopped his train of thought right there, he was going to do something stupid if he thought about trying to get money together to raise two kids. You could do this one just fine yourself... not alone... just, yourself. “You’re still going to stay?” You we’re hopeful this could change his mind...  “I have to...” His voice was soft, “maybe I can take some time off and come back. You know you can always come relocate here too... don’t you?” Maybe you could, but, anything to get him home...  He studied the scan again. “Do you know what it is yet?” “No!” You laughed “Danny it’s waaay too early for that!” “Aw, c’mon! How am I meant to help you! I can’t even come up with a name yet?” “... Oh! You’ll be lucky if I let you name my child Mr.Rayburn!” You turned at the sound of your dad calling you though the house; “Already?!?” You sighed, “Coming dad!” You looked back to Danny, who pocketed the scan carefully and took your hand again “Don’t be gone too long. I don’t think I can take being away from you again...” “Well, will you at least walk me to the car?” “What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t?” He held out his arm for you to loop yours through “Let’s take the long way ‘round, so I can keep you to myself just a little longer...” You were only too happy to oblige a long slow walk around the back of the house. But even now smart-mouthed quick-witted Danny was quiet ... thoughtful. Content to be in your presence but with his own thoughts, until the glint of gold around your neck caught his eye... He reached out, catching the fine gold chain between his fingers. He pulled until the tiny “D” at the end revealed itself from under your clothing.  “You’re still wearing this?!” “Still?” You had to pull yourself closer to him as he inspected the charm, “I don’t think I’ve ever taken it off.” It might not have cost him a lot, heck it might even have been a joke, but it’s sentimental value to you could not have been understated. Beyond the initial, everything from the weight, to length of the chain meant he knew you and the jewellery you wore. He’d thought about it. Yes, Danny had... You’d never been willing to buy into anything the Rayburn’s had ever told you about him and you knew you never would. From the second you’d walked into his apartment you felt you’d known this man better than they ever would. Danny all but let you go as you rounded the front of the house. Noticing how ‘protective big brother’ John studied you both carefully as he walked you to the car your parents were now in. You were surprised your dad wasn’t jokingly tapping his watch from inside. You turned back to Danny as you got to the door. “Promise me, you’ll come back.” “If you promise me you’ll stay here longer than ONE NIGHT I will promise you anything...” “Okay, well, I’ll look into it when I get home... and I promise...” “Call me. When you get back, I want to know everything. Tell Nolan, he’ll like it.” You weren’t convinced how Nolan would react to having a much younger half-sibling... but you trusted Danny’s judgement, Nolan was a good kid. “I will. Tell him...” you opened the door “And, call you. I’ll call you.” “Yeah well, there was a time I had to be VERY persuasive about that!” “What like 3 years ago? Danny c’mon!” “Oh, I’m not saying I’m not glad!” You laughed “Whatever you say! I’ll call, I promise. Take care, okay? You know I worry!” “Hell, I know...” You hopped into the car, allowing your parents to shout their goodbyes back at him; “See you around Danny!” “Have a good trip back Jack! Maria!” you rolled your eyes and belted yourself in; “I’ll see you soon.” “Sure! We’ll figure it out...” “Yeah... Goodbye Danny!” He closed the door for you “I miss you already.” And he was quite serious, backing away from the car with a sad smile and a wave as your dad started the engine. Your dad put the car in drive and wound down all the windows so you could wave and say goodbye as you accelerated down the drive way. “You okay?” He watched you through the mirror. For a moment you had a smile on your face, but then you shook your head and you felt yourself well up again, you bit your lip... Damn, you thought you missed him before... The Rayburn clan headed inside, but not Danny. His mind was racing as he watched your parents car roll away. He wanted to watch until he couldn’t see it anymore. But he was thinking a million different things about the baby. How could he not see you through all of that? The next 8 or so months were crucial and he was all but stuck here, but he couldn’t tell you that. He couldn’t head back to Miami, he had too much going on here that he needed to do... He took a deep breath again... And then he started running. “Dios Mio!” Your father slowed the car and you wondered what he was doing until you heard it over the sound of the slowing engine  “Hey!! Heyyy!! Wait a minute!!!” Your mom started laughing and you turned around in your seat.  “Stop the car!! Wait!!!” You knew if you were still crying it was happy tears, as you unbelted yourself and couldn’t scramble to open the door fast enough. You were just about out as he caught up, slowing his sprint he grabbed you into a hug, tight to him, he lifted you from the ground and spun you gently, you were once again lost in his embrace. One arm strong and protective around you he stooped just a little and kissed you. And you realised that it was your first kiss in months as you wound your arms around his neck. It was a long kiss, worth it, but not nearly long enough. When he finally let your lips go, he breathed out; “Devan.” “Devan?” “Our baby. Devan... with an a.” “Devan?” You repeated, happier; “I like that...”

*** Miami, Your Apartment, Early AM

It was late. Extremely late. So late it was also extremely early. Your phone buzzed on the night stand, you were curious enough, and hadn’t been sleeping too well. You picked it up and squinted; Danny??? Then sat bolt upright DANNY!!!

You slid your finger across the screen to answer; “Babe!” Your voice probably couldn’t have sounded happier, which was weird because you were actually worried that he was calling you at this time. “What’s up? What’s wrong?” You decided it would probably be the latter. Danny called you almost every day, but it was always at a reasonable time... “Hey... Y/N... I uh.... This is gonna sound crazy... I’m… about a half hour or so out from Miami... I was just wondering if you could pick me up?” You couldn’t answer him fast enough “Yes! Oh my god! Of course, are you coming home!?” You threw the phone on loud speaker and began pulling clothes out of your dresser. “Kinda. I mean, John has... essentially sent me back...” He didn’t exactly sound happy about it “... But uh... Yeah, I’ll be coming to the bus stop. So, I’ll be home.” You didn’t care, selfishly, if he was happy or not. You couldn’t get ready fast enough. “Okay, okay... Baby, I’ll be there. See you soon! I can’t wait to see you!” His laugh was soft “I can’t wait to see you either...”

 You were waiting at the bus stop in loose fitting jeans and a t-shirt, cropped leather jacket around your shoulders to keep the chill off. He stepped off that bus and your heart leapt. He smiled as soon as he saw you and his slow walk turned to a run. He gathered you in his arms; he was back, Danny was finally back where he really belonged. You gathered fistfuls of his shirt as you attempted to pull him closer to you. You needed this, you needed him. Back here. “How are you?” He mumbled into your neck, swaying you gently in his arms. “I’m okay. Things are going well! How are you?” “Yeah. It’s... Good to be back...” You weren’t sure if he was just making it sound genuine, but you would take what you could get. Pulling away from you and holding your shoulders, he studied your face, you couldn’t keep your smile at bay. You had feared you would cry with joy, you were glad to see that hadn’t happened. His hands slid to your stomach; “How’s our baby?” You laughed, loving that he said our, “Devan is fine. All the scans are going well... Healthy... No problems...” you placed your hands over his; “You just need to be here now..!” He smiled at that “Devan, is that what we’re really going for?” “Your idea... Plus it doesn’t have a gender yet, and, I don’t really want to find out...” “Okay...” He knelt down “Devan it is...” He placed his forehead gently to your stomach; “Can you feel anything yet?” “They say 16 to 22 weeks until you can feel the movements, later for kicks... I mean, it’s moving as normal...” “When is your next scan?” You knew he would ask. Danny wanted to model himself as a present father. He wanted to see his second child grow... “You can just go... y’know. I’ll book one tomorrow morning for this week... then you can ‘meet’ Devan for yourself...”

He piled into your car with his bag. He groaned; "Man I hate that bus ride..." "Why didn't you drive back?" "In that Chevy? Yeah I'd be lucky if it could run the full 4 hours..." He wasn't telling you something. You knew that. But you couldn't ask. He stretched and yawned; "No way I could sleep... I need a shower... Damn... It's gonna be good to be home." "Home?" You couldn't help but smile at that; "Yeah, baby, you are home..."

It might have been pretty early, but when Danny pulled you into that shower you couldn't refuse. There wasn't anything sexual about it, he just wanted to feel something. He needed your affection; after everything in the Keys, Danny just needed you... Letting the hot water run over his body he held you so close, nothing could possibly be too close. He ran his fingers gently over every part of you he could reach, committing you to memory, to his heart... savouring every little piece of you. Feeling the beat of your heart on his skin. But it wasn't just you anymore, you were carrying his unborn child. And Danny thought he'd loved you before. He traced your jaw line, your neck and your shoulders with his lips. But he wasn't the only one whose hands were wandering; you traced his chest, lingering over his heart for just a moment. You could fall asleep to that heartbeat, God you'd missed this. You'd missed him... Up over his arms, across his shoulders; your fingers dancing lightly but no less significantly over his left, Up his neck and into his hair, he pushed his face against yours and you claimed his lips. Resting his forehead against yours, he continued to let the water wash over him; "I love you..." You thought you caught it, faintly murmured. You closed your eyes and whispered; "Say it again..." "I love you..." And it was like hearing him say those words for the very first time.

 ***

 He was restless. He'd been here for four hours, and he already wanted to leave. There was no denying it to yourself. Sure, he held you close to him, you tucked safely into the curve he was making with his body. He ran his hands continuously over your stomach and he tried to get comfortable. But that was the problem. He continued to try to get comfortable. There were a million things going on in his head and you could almost hear his mind racing at a million miles an hour.

You must have eventually drifted off in his arms, because when you awoke it was almost daybreak. The sky was pale and watery. Danny was standing by the window, looking out over Miami as the sun bled into the sky and illuminated the glassy high-rises. You hated that you knew. Gathering your hands to your chest you entwined your fingers with the fine gold chain. Your heart ached. Because you knew. You had to let Danny go, again.

You watched him for way too long, letting these feelings roll around until you felt sick. If you forced him to stay here... He would never be happy. Not until he finished whatever he started. If you let him go... Then you didn't know what you would be letting him walk into. And with his baby on the way, that scared you. Eventually you sat up. "You want to leave... don't you..." He took a breath; when he turned back to you his eyes were guilty. "I don't know if I'm not through with the Keys... Or the Keys is not through with me..." You stood, and crossed to him; "You NEED to go back." You took him in your arms... "Danny. You will never be happy here. With me... with Nolan... with our baby... if you don't finish whatever it is that’s weighing on your mind." "...Y/N..." "I don't… WANT… you to leave. But I can't keep you here if you are going to be like this... I can't make you stay..." "John sent me back." His voice almost wavered as he left your eyes, tapping his fingers gently against your arm. "I don't CARE what your little brother did. Danny. I care about you..." You pulled back from him, "I want you back here more than anything... But I want you to want that too..." You walked back to pick up your clothes, and his, before turning back to him; "Get your things... I'll drive you back to the bus station." You smiled, "Maybe then I'll get my Danny back..."

 You walked hand in hand towards the bus. Danny almost laughed that the dress you had chosen to wear today was the same one you had worn when you'd first walked into his restaurant a little over 3 years ago. He turned, studying you, looking at how truly beautiful you were in the Miami sunrise. Was he really about to leave you all over again? He said the first thing he could think of; "Thank you."

It was so unbelievably sincere that your breath caught in your throat. You pulled him to you by the collar of his shirt; "You listen to me, Danny Rayburn. You get back to the Keys. You do what you gotta do. And you COME BACK to me. We will make things work up here, but I don't want to hear another excuse for you leavin' ever coming out of your mouth. You hear me?" You pulled him into a kiss, deep, exquisite. Savouring the taste of him on your tongue. "You come back to me." It was his turn to pull you into a kiss, each more passionate than the last. He let you go, breathless. You were always good at that. Taking his breath away. Flawless, no matter what. And that initial around your neck. You had always been his, and Danny realised, you would always be his... You would wait for him forever, and yet he quickly comprehended he didn't want to wait that long.

"I promise you. Darlin'. A few more days, and this will all be over... I'll be back in Miami before you know it." He winked "You're the best thing that’s ever happened to me... And you are never gonna realise how much I love you..." You smiled; "Maybe so. But God, Danny Rayburn... If you loved me half as much as I love you, you never would have left. Which is why you gotta go back..." You took his hands in yours and pushed them to your stomach "We will be waiting for you to get off that bus again." "I know..." He kissed you once more, "Alright Baby Girl..." He addressed your non-existent bump "Devan-! I'll see you real soon..." He smiled this time as he stepped backward towards the bus; "Y/N! Don't you dare ever go changin' on me Darlin'!!" You laughed "I won't. Don't you either...!" That made him laugh; "Unfortunately for you... I think I'm gettin' a little too old to change!" He winked, turning to hand over his ticket he stepped onto the bus, then stopped and ran back, gathering you into his arms he gave you one last kiss. And for the first time in your life you knew what they meant by fireworks, a million sparks went off in your head as he tipped your body, making that kiss last as long as he could "Y/N... I love you!" You smiled, hugging him close "Go! Get that bus! Hurry back... Daniel Rayburn. I can't live without you...!" "I know..." He kissed your forehead, then jogged back to the bus, apologetically. You smiled, walking down the side of the bus to where he decided to take a seat. He settled down in the window and took a deep breath, looking across to you. You kissed the tips of your fingers, and stretched your hand to touch the glass. He smiled, kissing the tips of his own, and pressing them to match yours against it. "I love you..." you mouthed it, as the bus started its engine. He shook his head, laughing; "Love you more..." He winked as you stepped back. You waved him off as it started rolling away, and this time, he looked at least a little happy as he waved back to you. This time, he'd promised to come back. And you held Danny at his word. You smiled, continuing to watch the bus until it rolled out of sight. You brushed the single tear from your cheek. And laughed. What was a few more days now? Compared to what you had been through?

 Next time you held Danny in your arms back here in Miami. He would be home. And it would be forever.

---

TELL ME. TELL ME IF YOU SAW THIS COMING OR YOU WERE SURPRISED!?! I NEED TO KNOW. NOW!!!!!

I mean if for any reason you look up the songs / lyrics before you read I suppose ‘It Takes A Man’ by Chris Young told you but...

@stcphstrange​ - Oh God... Tell me there’s more than 2 parts left...!! I’ma cry! 😭 @happyskywhale 

The whole “Devan” thing is not something I can easily explain. I’m sorry if you don’t like it...

Danny’s emotions @ All points in this fic.

[caveatauditor]

Best albums of 2018

A marvelous year! Just because Drake albums are long and boring doesn’t mean the album is dead, you know.

1. Bali Baby, Baylor Swift

This 8-song EP, a fusion of SoundCloud rap, emo confessional, and glitzy synthpop, rocks harder and weirder than anything I heard all year. The spiky synthesizers, bent guitars, drum crunches, scratchy screeches, Bali’s garbled wails, and plastic bubblegum surface combine several modes of abrasion, as the Atlanta rapper hides a harrowing breakup saga beneath bucketloads of noise and the crackling electricity sets her bleeding heart ablaze. “Candy” and “Electrical” are neon new wave ballads distorted into fragility through harshness. Whenever she gets a handle on something, the beat goes squelch and sends her reeling. Oh, to be loud, obnoxious, and heartbroken. She’s been putting out fire with gasoline.

2. Ariana Grande, Sweetener

“Snuggle jams,” tweeted Austin Brown. We all needed snuggles this year! Although “Thank U, Next” and Thank U, Next have somewhat eclipsed the confectionary sugarbomb Instagram’s newly crowned Most Followed Woman released six months earlier, said sugarbomb continues to sparkle. Tired of flaunting her multioctave voice, Ariana leans into her breathy lower register and discovers her capacity for play. Tired of secondhand funk pastiche, Pharrell invents a sunny electrobouncy sound that abounds with pattering percussion, thwocks, squiggles, splashes of electronic color. Contextualized by the devastating, mournful grace of “Breathin” and “No Tears Left to Cry”, her joy feels urgent, beautiful, earned. Behold an album of exquisitely honeyed lightness. I love Sweetener because it’s the musical equivalent of booping someone on the nose.

3. BTS, Love Yourself: Tear

Because they both flatter and subvert even the most boring aspects of contemporary American pop, they broke through in America where countless Korean stars couldn’t, although that didn’t stop BoA and Girls Generation from trying. (I hope we haven’t forgotten BoA’s excellent self-titled English-language album, which includes the funniest Britney impersonations ever recorded.) Slow, moody, blank--these adjectives don’t quite describe BTS, thankfully, but they have reclaimed a rather empty pop style as a site for cognitively dissonant structural innovations, and thus offer hope that said pop style needn’t be so empty. Dense and streamlined simultaneously, stuffing all sorts of wacky noises into what Anglophone hitmakers have defined as a spare, echoey sonic template, these tracks are hard to wrap your ear around at first, but what noises! I could listen to the plinky little drumclicks in “Anpanman” forever.

4. Jonghyun, Poet Artist

“Take the Dive” and “Only One You Need” should play like standard romantic invitations and instead break a cold sweat in sheer terror. On “Hashtag” he’s content to whisper as long as the electric piano matches the beat in his head. “I’m So Curious” coaxes him into a sublimely cozy erotic space. The lightest and most delicate of pop-R&B exercises, shivering beneath an immaculately chilly surface, Jonghyun’s second and final album is beautiful and makes me sad. Rest in peace. 

5. J Balvin, Vibras

The year’s solidest and bounciest Latin trap album is more sweetly melodic than the genre’s norm, but also harsher, which is disorienting. These beats, assembling lumbering, mechanical tanks out of looped vocal samples, clinky xylophones, keyboard scramble, and Balvin’s dreamy drone, are impossible to play in the background; I’ve tried. Maybe those blessed souls who can multitask with music on would feel differently, but every time I play this album I get sucked in, paralyzed by the chopped-up airhorns in “Ambiente”, the guitar strummed through a wind tunnel in “Brillo” (a duet with Rosalia!), the drums beeping in “Ahora”, the angel of death moaning inarticulately throughout “Cuando Tu Quieras”. If I also don’t understand how the hell clubgoers can dance to this music, please understand my bewilderment as admiration.

6. Playboi Carti, Die Lit

The debut was sufficiently spare to retain a semblance of pop functionality; this one’s a shoegaze record, the sound of rap abstracted into a gorgeous blur. The average Carti song is a single giant, repeated, woozy keyboard hook, glitching and jittering around the edges, a transmission from the hazy corner of the subconscious where bliss keels over into numbness and the senses conflate. The rapping is minimal; he chooses his sounds phonetically, not semantically, and gladly disappears beneath the relentless aqueous whoosh. Lyrics, guest features, tempo changes, coherent thoughts--if these things exist, they get swept up too. After years of hearing people moan on the radio about washing pain away with stimulants and such, here’s what it means to be insensate. Although the album wanders a little toward the end, who cares when it’s all one hypnotic song?

7. US Girls, In a Poem Unlimited

The music on this remarkable art-pop document assembles a creepy rubberoid disco groove from shards of glass, sleek rhythm guitar, controlled blasts of distortion, sordid saxophone; Meghan Remy treats white funk as industrial noise. The lyrics compile situation after situation in which women are abused, including a song where St. Peter rapes the narrator before letting her into heaven. Is this what “dialectic” means?

8. Haru Nemuri, Harutosyura

So raucous in the way it arranges sugary keyboard splashes, so catchy in the way it explodes with carefully timed bursts of electric noise, Haru Nemuri’s debut confounds categories. The Japanese noise-pop eccentric crams all the sounds she loves--raw guitars, bubbly synthesizers, anguished screams, conspicuous digital edits--into a glitchy hall of mirrors. For fans of certain video game soundtracks and experimental classical compositions, this is the music you’ve been imagining your whole life; for ordinary pop fans it’s merely the wackiest of syntheses. Either way, Harutosyura is gloriously loud, burning with a fierce rock grandiosity that’s unexpected, hence awesome. When “Harutosyura” gets artificially sped up into a chipmunked vacuum, pauses a moment, and comes back rocking harder than ever, she spirals ever closer to infinite refraction.

9. Erin Lee, Love Song

This strange album comprises ten instrumental pieces for unaccompanied acoustic guitar, plucking out pastoral melodies with a vaguely Mediterranean flavor, like music that might appear in a historical romantic drama featuring sailors, grapes, wine, and such. One could reasonably dismiss this music, but I can’t stop playing it--as with film scores and Snail’s House albums, there are certain qualities that make an instrumental melody intrinsically sentimental, and I’d love to know what they are. In the calmly strummed “My Hometown Harbor”, the sun sets over the water, the boats dock, shouts ring out from the pub several blocks down, and there’s danger in the air. 

10. Ashley Monroe, Sparrow

“I’m good at leaving,” Ashley Monroe once sang, and these restless songs about departure and existential longing translate the impulse behind Joni Mitchell’s Hejira into country music, where it belongs. Country is the ideal genre for confessions of solitude and rootlessness because it’s supposed to imply rootedness, tradition, community; the juxtaposition conveys a sense of profound rupture. Monroe’s velvet moan and Dave Cobb’s theatrical string arrangements are exemplary bedmates. Hidden beneath a soft, warm glow lies the year’s loneliest album.

11. Gazelle Twin, Pastoral

When I first heard this crunchy slab of avant-dance music, the shrieks and chalkboard scratches and keyboards used as percussive elements jarred; it took several listens to notice that some of the scratches are digitally altered harpsichords, that flutes and sleigh bells adorn the otherwise turbulent tracks, and that Elizabeth Bernholz’s artificially growled lyrics repurpose quotes from Blake and English folk songs into angry social commentary. The segue between “Dance of the Peddlers” and “Hobby Horse” still terrifies me. If the idea of an ironic, politically-minded fusion of electronic dissonance, English folk, and classical music sounds mannered and absurd, you’re not wrong, but that idea’s musical realization is a whirlwind of rage and menace.

12. Amnesia Scanner, Another Life

This Finnish, Berlin-based pair of electronica producers have scored gallery openings and reportedly have many thoughts about technology and modern life, so I don’t doubt they have their avant-credentials in order. What I’m certain of is that these are the funniest EDM squelches I’ve heard in ages--distorted drops, vocoded shrieks, percussive jackhammers, digitally mediated farts and belches, not to mention outrageously catchy hooks. If the hyperactive musical splatter is intended to convey the sensory overload of our modern dystopian age, it also satisfies my own longing for music that bristles with noises, kitsch, stimulus.

13. Ski Mask the Slump God, Stokeley

In 2009, the Albuquerque emo-rap group Brokencyde combined maximalist crunk with bloodcurdling screamo choruses, and were widely panned as a record low point in pop music history. “Even if I caught Prince Harry and Gary Glitter adorned in Nazi regalia defecating through my grandmother’s letterbox I would still consider making them listen to this album too severe a punishment,” claimed one NME review. A decade later, the same exact music is now considered the surreal, groundbreaking, SoundCloud-warped future. Be careful who you mock, lest their ghost come back to haunt you.

14. Rosalia, El Mal Querer

Rosalia’s flamenco-R&B uses cool, exact technological control, sparse electrobeats and syncopated handclaps, to modulate a ferocious natural force, i.e. her singing. A modern adaptation of the anonymous 13th-century novel Flamenca, El Mal Querer is a wild exercise in vocal melodrama, especially because she’s always messing with her voice electronically. Layering her sighs over each other in the endless echo chamber that is “Pienso En Tu Mira”, looping a single note into an isolated stutter in “De Aqui No Sales”, showing off her melisma in “Reniego”, she understands how expression must be filtered through media and is inevitably distorted.

15. Noname, Room 25

The Chicago rapper’s fluttery jazz beats, wispy strings, woodwinds, and hushed rhymes are so calm and thoughtful the music sounds more like slam poetry with accompaniment than any conventional style of rap. By describing love, sadness, police violence, and the banality of daily life in the same cautiously awestruck tone, she depicts an internal resilience that comes into being through the act of aspiration. I love how slight this album is--her modest quietude is a splash of cold water in the face.

16. Sunmi, Warning

The former Wonder Girl refashions herself as a defiant siren-heroine, insisting “Get away out of my face” over electrobeats that crest and surge with military efficiency. Although the singles from this 7-song EP got the attention, her most exquisitely sheathed stiletto is “Curve”, whose bent jazz piano complements a chorus of staccato whispers that should sound inviting and instead exude menace. 

17. Hailu Mergia, Lala Belu

After several reissues of his ‘80s music by Awesome Tapes From Africa, here’s the Ethiopian jazz keyboardist’s first album in forever, looking back on a genre of retro-futurist cocktail music whose benevolent visions of a utopian clubland didn’t come to pass, for how could they, but are ready to be reclaimed. Over relaxed drum shuffles, friendly plinky piano, billowing organ, Mergia coaxes weird noises from skewed, accordionesque synthesizers and dreams about parties where such music could play.

18. Haruru Inu Love Dog Tenshi, Lost Lost Dust Dream

The next time you hear someone complain about SoundCloud rap, please direct them to this eerie, plaintive, whispered exercise in polished incongruence. “I’m Dreaming” captures the moment when you’re still asleep but trying to wake up, straining to clear the clouds from your brain.

19. Camp Cope, How to Socialise and Make Friends

With hundreds of lo-fi Bandcamp mixtapes bouncing around out there, I can’t explain why one guitar band moves me rather than another, but there’s an emotional rawness to this album that rivets. Partially it’s the rhythm guitar sound, which skips along with syncopated flatness and resilience. Partially it’s the sharpness of Georgia Maq’s voice, and the way she uses drawn-out vowels to focus and redirect her sustained roars. Partially it’s the songwriting, which finds an antidote to the world’s grossness in friendship, community, quiet moments of kindness. If you’re exhausted and fed up after a lifetime of taking shit, venting your feelings to the simple clunk of loud guitar music is a pleasure precisely because it’s simple and clunky. “Get it all out/put it in a song,” she insists, endorsing and providing a cathartic fury.

20. Bhad Bhabie, 15

Danielle Bregoli’s ebullient chirps are joyfully defiant only insofar as defiance is a front for insecurity. Aggressive trap beats turned covertly melancholy long ago, but in this context the sadness is unmistakable. Everyone is a public figure in the age of social media, so her anxiety over existing in the public sphere is at once quotidian and heightened. This album is scarier than anyone expected.

[efafxcefwada]

He's a real player's coach

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[secretradiobrooklyn]

SECRET RADIO | 11.14.20

Secret Radio | 11.14.20 | Hear it here.

Artwork by Paige, liner notes by Evan except * for Paige

1. The Wizard of Oz - “Ding Dong” Suite

We were looking for a proper song to get this party started, and damned if it didn’t involve a bunch of delighted munchkins! As much as our hopes for the coming years are muted, the relief at not having to contend with a headlong dictator enjoying full-on democratic support just cannot be overstated. DING DONG Y’ALL!

2. David Bowie - “Look Back in Anger”

I’ve been practicing drums a ton during the pandemic, and I just realized that I’m going to have to spend some time trying to get at this pattern. It’s some of my favorite drumming ever, from one of my top 20 albums ever. In fact, this comes from a very special edition of Lodger, via Brian McClelland, wherein Tony Visconti took the original tapes and completely remixed the album as he always felt it should have been mixed if they weren’t be rushed. To someone who has listened to that record many many times, it sounds like I’ve been next door the album all this time, and I’m finally allowed into the room where it’s playing. So clear and focused and modern!

3. Frank Alamo - “Ma Biche”

A “biche” is a doe, we believe. “It’s something about ‘pretty eyes,’” Paige says, “which would make sense.” Further research, though, reveals that the song is about how much he likes her pretty dark eyeliner. I know the feeling!

4. (Not) Rom JongVak - “Monkey”

Well, this has been a learning process. There’s this great song that I thought was called “Twist (Dance Twist)” by Rom Jong Vak, that we played like a month ago — and then tonight I thought I was playing “Monkey,” by Rom JongVak. Buuut, as I look further, I’m learning that the first song was “Rom Jong Vak Twist,” by Pan Ron… And the song here is I guess called “Rom Jong Vak Monkey,” and I have no idea who it’s by! All of the text on the page is in just boxes where Cambodian text would go, so it’s bound to remain lost. Whoever it is, I sure do enjoy that first aggressive drum fill and the whole weird texture of this recording.

5. Luiz Visconde - “Chofer de Praça”

Paige: “The first times that I listened to this Angolan collection, I really just listened to Os Kiezos, because they did “Muxima.” But then I eventually spread out and found this song. It’s from Angola, between ’65 and ’75.”

6. The Velvet Underground - “European Son”

P: We would go to the Beechwood a little bar around the corner from us in Wicker Park, down the street off Milwaukee Avenue. They had a real jukebox, not a TuneBlast or whatever. It was just a great little dive. They had this record in the jukebox, and we would always put on this song. I suppose that could have been read as an aggressive thing to do, but we’d put on other songs too! It was a good way to stretch your quarters, and it loosens the bar up. And I figured, if they didn’t like this song they wouldn’t put it in the jukebox.

     Once when we were there on a busy weekend night, something was wrong with the jukebox. It was broken. And the bartender opened it up and put like a hundred bucks on it and said, “Everybody play whatever you want, three songs each. It was awesome. Everybody did take turns too, three songs each, all around the bar. It was a really cool night.

7. Fred Astaire - “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)”

What a lovely piano intro! This song is from the 1935 film “Top Hat.” It’s one of those movies where the clever protagonist pursues a girl he has a crush on — or terrorizes a stranger until she submits to his will, depending on whose perspective you take. There are a lot of those — “An American in Paris” is another — and they’re fascinating to watch just by flipping that switch back and forth in your own head. Meanwhile, both movies are chock full of beautiful shots, fabulous scenes, gorgeous songs, and glowing stars. 

     Something about the quality of this recording — a new master or something? — makes it sound like it was JUST recorded. It feels so alive and contemporary, with a lovely little vibrophone solo in the middle. I just 

Martial Solal, “Breathless” soundtrack - “L’amour, la mort”

Note: I remember this story in the reverse, where the truckers announced this gleefully to each other as they marched merrily OUT the door and into the late afternoon, headed towards… what? Whatever it is, I hope they found it and everyone had a great time.

8. Johnny Hallyday - “Nous quand on s’embrasse”

Have you seen “The Wild One”? Can’t you see how much trouble could have been avoided if those leathered-up motorcycle dudes were able to rock out to songs like this one instead of trying to jazz their way forward? They should have been twisting the night away! Alas, instead they had to tear up bars and beat people up to get their kicks. Tough break, kid.

9. Lokassa Ya M’bongo - “Bonne année”

I found this while searching for something else, but it was labeled “l’Instant Vinyl” in the same format as our Assa-Cica record, so had to check it out. M’bongo is a Congolese guitarist — a rhythm guitarist specifically, which doesn’t normally get the love that lead guitar gets in this soukous form. Lokassa Ya M’bongo means “Lokassa the money man,” and he became a session man in demand. He was a big part of the “Congolo-Paris sound,” a phrase I just read that I’m going to have to look more into.

    Bonne année indeed! Still feeling that relief about hopefully getting out from under the thumb of that giant dummy.

10. Velly Joonas - “Stopp, Seisku Aeg!”

The image of Velly Joonas is pretty heart-stopping: she’s absolutely beautiful, in giant glasses and a striped shirt. The song is so confident and strange in its instrumentation, with keys, organ, fiddle, and a super-tight bass/drum combo. I feel like this could have been a big US underground hit in the ‘90s.

11. Eko Roosevelt - “Kilimandjaro”

Such a sincere song! Eko Roosevelt is kind of hit and miss with me, but when they hit, they get completely stuck in my head! The horn parts on “Me To a De Try My Own” do that to me, and so does the eternal chorus of this song. I love the notes in the bridge as they drop further and further down the scale like they’re descending from the mountaintop. And when he gets to the declarations of love at the end — “I love you, my home! I really do, I really do!” — that’s it, that’s the best.

12. Tonetta - “Yummy Yummy Pizza”

I warn you: look up this video (after you listen to the “broadcast” of course) at your own peril. Not because it’s terrible, but because it is fascinating, and it is just one of SO many. They tease you with tiny shreds of information about this Tonetta person, but never enough that you can get a sense of what the hell is going on with… him? Them? Maybe ask Matt and Brian from Tok about it — they got obsessed enough to record an EP of Tonetta songs, which is how I heard about this all in the first place.

13. Prewar Yardsale - “AU Base”

Paige: I was loading a five-disc changer at Jeffrey’s and something about the cover, the name sounded interesting. I put it on and it’s pretty freakin rad. It stood up to my blind listen expectations. I think this is produced by our friend Matt Mason. 

14. Eugenius - “Mary Queen of Scots”

Matt Mason and Jeffrey Lewis make me think of Schwervon!, which makes me think of the Vaselines who they toured with several times, and that brings me to Eugenius, headed by Eugene Kelly. This was a mainstay in Sean’s room when we all lived together, singing the harmonies and air-drumming along. It remains as satisfying as ever, I’m happy to say.

15. Wednesday Campanella - “Aladdin”

This song is sung in Japanese, not that you’d know from context clues. Tim Gebauer introduced us to this strange Japanese shapeshifter. It was hard to tell if I liked her music or was just amazed by her videos (which you should totally check out). Now I believe it’s safe to say we dig this song. I like how many elements of ‘70s international disco it has, while still sounding super modern. What is weirder to me is that I cannot tell if I would like this song if it was sung in English.

Breathless soundtrack

16. Letti Mbulu - “Mahlalela”

Originally South African, Mbulu managed to escape to the US in 1965 and had a hell of a career. She worked with Cannonball Adderley, Hugh Masakela, Harry Belafonte and Michael Jackson. Quincy Jones said this amazing thing about her: “Mbulu is the roots lady, projecting a sophistication and warmth which stirs hope for attaining pure love, beauty, and unity in the world.” Um, that’s really impressive.

17. Christophe - “Aline”

*Really dig this song, partially I think because it’s in a decent range for me to sing along. I love his desperate delivery and tone of voice. We just learned tonight that Christophe passed away this year at 74 after complications with COVID-19. 

18. Zap Mama - “Brrlak!”

Credit to my dad, Larry Sult, for bringing Zap Mama to our attention. He’s been heavily into marimba music, and played in a marimba band in Bellingham for many years; in fact, he spent many years making the instruments for the band in his woodshop in the basement of their home. Zap Mama is adjacent to that music, though certainly very different. This band comes from all over the world. The main gal was born in &&&&& but found herself in a Pygmy society for awhile, which seems to be where she developed some of those low-high yodels. We saw some footage of her playing, and she did this awesome thing where she held empty airplane bottles just below her lips as she sang, creating a resonance that you can hear here. I love that this whole composition is a cappella.

19. The Buzzards - “High Society”

Years ago, I was whiling away my time in Seattle and stopped into Orpheum Records, right there at the corner where Broadway turns into 10th Ave E. After a half hour of flipping through records I had to know what all the killer albums were that had been playing overhead. Turns out they were all from “The Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit,” a collection of Detroit bands put out by Sympathy for the Record Industry. It was recorded by Jack White and Jim Diamond and it’s full of topshelf tracks, but after all the years, this is the one that we turn out to actually enjoy, and quote, the most. 

    As far as I could tell, there isn’t a version of this song anywhere online, which I personally find disGRACEful!

20. Sleepy Kitty - “Buzzards & Dreadful Crows”

My favorite part of this recording is that I got to sing a couple of guitar parts that I reflexively sing along to on the original.

*This was from a 20th anniversary of “Bee Thousand” tribute show, and we made this recording with Jason Hutto at this studio off Cherokee Street and we recorded a couple others that we did that night. A small run of screenprinted downloads were made. 

Teddy Afro, “Mar Eske Tuwa” credit music

21. Ata Kak - “Moma Yendodo”

Some corrections to what I said in the broadcast: Ata Kak is indeed Ghanian, but I think he might have recorded this in Germany. His is a fascinating little story of determination. This recording comes from a tape that he made about 50 copies of total. It was found by Brian from Awesome Tapes From Africa at a roadside stand in Ghana. He loved it so much that he spent years trying to track Ata Kak down. When he finally did, they found that the original master tapes were all ruined, and Brian’s copy was the only one that they could make a new version from! So that’s what you’re hearing here. 

22. Spoon - “30 Gallon Tank”

Early Spoon is some of my favorite music ever. This is from “A Series of Sneaks,” an album that changed my life pretty much as soon as I heard it. Harvey Danger stopped at a lot of record stores on tour, and at one of them I managed to stumble upon both “A Series of Sneaks” and (I think) Guv’ner’s “Spectral Worship” — what a day! I put this album on in headphones in the van and just listened over and over and over again. Eventually, when our manager announced that we should spend a few weeks between radio festivals headlining a tour with a couple of support acts and asked if we had any ideas, I had a list with Spoon on top and Creeper Lagoon right below that. The tour that resulted was rough for Spoon — they’d just been dropped by their label and were having an understandably rough time — but a fucking thrill for me, because I got to see one of my favorite bands each night. That still stands as one of the absolute highlights of my time in Harvey Danger. Jim Eno is one of the top drummers in my pantheon because he’s such a great composer for the song, and Britt Daniels plays guitar the way I truly wish I did — which he did at the time all on distorted acoustic guitar! 

23. Patrick Coutin - “Fais-moi jouir”

*I meant to put on a different Patrick Coutin song but put this one on by accident and I was like, this is cool, and then I was like “I think he’s saying. . .I think this is pretty. . . explicit. Like Serge and Jane cranked.” As far as I can tell, it definitely is. They don’t teach you these words on Duolingo though. Ha! 

24. Dur Dur Band - “Yabaal”

I mean no disrespect to Dur Dur Band when I say that we didn’t dig the first several songs we heard by them, but this song is undeniable. The groove just digs in and doesn’t stop for anything.

25. Mel Brooks - “High Anxiety”

We’re stepping out on a mixed emotional note, but: we’re not out of the woods yet. I hope we can get through the next couple of months as a nation peacefully and productively, but Paige and I are both in a state of high anxiety about what still seems to be happening daily. Stay safe!

*yet staying optimistic! ’Cause we gotta. À plus tard!

[radical-rad1986]

Ebr commentary

Lol I rambled A LOT. Warning for LONG. I’m not sure how to post this on Tumblr so that people can respond to specific things. Or if I should post this to Slack? I miss messageboards!!

Please please reblog with commentary, don’t respond. It’s too hard to actually see responses. Thank you.

Ep 1: Is Van using an energist-arrow?? It certainly LOOKS pink and not silver. But then again people call H’s pendant red and I see pink.... Pink EVERYWHERE official...

Ep 2: Merle: “You foreigners.” (in H’s room) In the English dub she makes it sound like there’s been other foreigners that have hit on Van??? But I guess if he’s near his dragonslaying rite + crowning then he’s marriable age?? Unless M is referring to the time that the Astons visited?? But would M remember that?? Plus at that time it would have been F being the rite age... (Though assumedly she’d be protective of F too...)

Re the guymelef fight: H is already practicing her dowsing/divinity... by being overly attentive.

Ep 3: “You let two of those bumpkin samurai damage two of my Al-say-dis-units?” Gawd did that line always bother me... “Alseides units” like it’s one word. 

Pyle is named on-screen!

Gawd A do you practice in front of a mirror??

“Castle.” No that’s not a castle A.

I think we discussed the “Give me back my Escaflowne, and give me back my guymelef!” line.

Yeah sure A, traumatize the poor young man EVEN MORE.

A&D dialogue: Subtle A, reeeeal subtle.

D literally has NO IDEA what King Van Fanel looks like?? He goes right through him and focuses on H. Did... Did F hold back that information? Did Zaiback not KNOW? How does D NOT KNOW????? Like I get that H is an intrigue but D’s WHOLE GOAL is the King of Fanelia (and the guymelef Escaflowne).

MM: “Did I get the wrong room again?” Yeah bc he travels through the fort a gazillion times in his life... (Well, that does fit with my headcanon that he’s Therese’s companion and keeps up with A to satisfy Mil.)

V: “What, you’ve heard of Balgus?” WELL DUH. One of three world-famous master swordsmen.

-- We (Drk and I) discovered that there isn’t a complete Series in English. :(( Oh well. *Adds that to To Do list*  So we watched most of it in Japanese with English subs. ... We also had to deal with some weird looping weirdness too. --

Ep 4: I’ve seen D’s “Burn, burn” in Japanese written “Moreo, moreo!” (I think I spelled that wrong.) I didn’t watch the Japanese version much, ever. So I thought it was pronounced “More-ooo, more-ooo!” literally. Not the literal “More-a-oh” that I’m hearing in the subbed ep we’re limited to watching.

Ep 5: Yeah D really doesn’t know who V is. (Flashback to the Castello with V popping out of Escaflowne on the Vione.) I don’t think D truly knows who F is either... Just a Fanelian traitor, not the lost king.

H’s tarot reading: Literal foreshadowing. Its not even “shadow.” More like forelighting. XD

*D approaches Escaflowne* Me: D es el stupid-o.

Holy cow... the Crusade is MINUSCULE compared to the Vione... Like I knew that but it just now hit me...

Ep 6: Dear Mil: They both think you’re strange, so there! XD

Fabric DOES NOT rip like that. ........... LUCK.

Ep 7: Possible Naruto reference with one of the bounty hunter guymelefs??

I agree with Drk, I’m reading too much into it; but it’s still funny!

... It’s really lucky how the Asturian disguise just FLOATS right of Escaflowne instead of, y’know, GETTING CAUGHT on something.

HUH. A lot of the inconsistencies can be explained by PURE LUCK.

Ep 8: Merle “You were nearly sold off to that Meiden guy.” But... HOW DOES SHE KNOW IT WAS MEIDEN???

I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT THE PENDANT ORIGINATED FROM ATLANTIS AND THAT IT AND ESCA’S PINK HOLDER-THING WERE TOO CLOSELY RELATED FOR COINCIDENCE. Headcanon is that there’s four main pendants and four main Ispano guymelefs that were commissioned from the Ispano right at Gaea’s beginning, to be protectors of that world.

Dear V. F didn’t actually try to kill you. I know it looks that way but he didn’t. That was D.

AHAHA V you’ll ALWAYS need H’s help!!

Buncha scary floating fortresses.

Grava’s spewing lies... A totally had nothing to do with Escaflowne’s escape...

A LOT of scary floating fortresses!!!

I think I said this before with Trudy. I don’t think Allen has actually Kissed Millerna before, she’s the one doing all the kissing. My reasoning? The way she stops and is breathless in the carriage. Damn is that a kiss. (Too bad nearly all the kisses in Esca are for manipulation of some sort. :((( )

That is a DAMN LOT of energists.

I wish snake guy had been given an actual NAME.

Ep 9: Varie’s voice and name is SO PrEtTy in the JVA!

Wow. Wowow. I do not remember Varie wailing at Goau’s death?? There seems to be more obvious background noises in the HD version. 

Yes. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Then RUN LIKE HELL is after you; because IT IS.

Hm. H goes straight to envisioning the pendant. Isn’t it ... to early for her to know about her dowsing abilities? Or something? ....... Or is she more focusing on Where are they? and the pendant does its thang?

A river. Perfect. LUCK.

.... So is that one Ds dead? The one stuck in the molten ... filler thing.... from his guymelef? (... Actually I’m pretty sure it’s Miguel. That makes perfect sense. You can here D say “Miguel” and there IS Miguel as a prisoner later. Yeah. That’s the most logical reasoning.)

.... There’s more language in the Japanese version than I remember in the English. (Obv. But it’s still a little jarring.)

So earlier the Crusade was tiny compared to the Vione. Well now it’s MINUSCULE compared to the Freid cargo ship!!

Ep 10: AHAHAHA V is mistaken for A! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Rotfl

... But I guess that just drives home that D didn’t know who V was in the third ep??? LOOOOOOL.

Mil: On her way out “Let’s be friends.” ALSO. THE BAG returns to H.

Oh Mil. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A IS THINKING. 

V’s observation skills don’t falter do they.

.... The Zongi-sucking-Plaktu scene is horrifying in HD. O.o

No H. Not just “anybody.” (Personally I think H has some Atlantean in her.)  ... Yeah Merle. Open your big mouth.

A being a traitor is so much buull sheet. The fact that Chid and Voris fall for it for even a second is ridiculous. Like I get that they’re on edge bc they’d know that Fanelia burned. But. BUT. (I feel like Voris has to have a clue as to Chid’s true parentage too.)

Ep 11: .... I always felt like the positions of H + Plaktu and Chid + Voris should have been reversed... Why is Chid in the cage and H on the carpet? AND WHY ARE THERE BARS AT THE CEILING?? What’s going to get out??

... Huh. That must be a subtitle error. Earth is NOT the name of H’s country. Japan is. Earth is the name of the planet. But that might be a communication /understanding error on Plaktu’s part. 

.... What would have happened in the “vision realm” if Zongi HADN’T grabbed H? He wasn’t meant to die then-and-there, just that H was predicting it. Would they have “jumped” back to the real world?? *Plotbunnies rear their heads*

Poor H. Ripped from her home. Weird visions. Scary visions. Love triangles. DYING.

Chid’s ABSOLUTE JOY that his daddy is back.

Ep 12: DINOSAUR LIZARD THINGS!

Ok Pyle/Crusade Crew: At least V is helping to care for Escaflowne. And he probably didn’t have his own personal Crew to care for Escaflowne. And he damn well DOESN’T have a place to care for Escaflowne now! Rub it in why don’tcha??

WHY is little five year old Millerna IN THE CROWD?? Wouldn’t she be in the balcony like Eries and Grava are at her own wedding?? WHY? She’s FIVE and the PRINCESS OF THE COUNTRY?? I call animator error.

I ALSO call animator error on A in his Caeli uniform during the flashback. Mar’s watching his tournament that DETERMINES his possible Caeli status. So he SHOULDn’t be in that uniform. Unless we’re seeing it through Mar’s eyes and she’s daydreaming it?? (I’ll accept it as her daydream. I headcanon she’s a daydreamer.)

Ep 13: The animation of Voris striking the trigger is EXTREMELY familiar. Pretty sure V has Escaflowne doing that somewhere. Which makes sense; reusing animation for money’s sake. 

So. .... ........ HOW OLD is the Freidian castle that SOMEONE thought to put in such a boobytrap??? 

Dear Mahad... Go easy on the poor kid... Though it IS interesting that he says “Those born in Freid ... “ and “Those who rule.” 

Hold your freakin’ horses Dornkirk!

What I never understood: If Freid's religion is based on the Atlanteans. And known Gaea HATES the demon Atlanteans and Draconians. WHY is Freid as a country accepted?? They're Atlanean religion/beliefs must not be a widely-known thing. OR The "Atlantean/Draconian = DEMON" might be a mostly Fanelian thing?? (Backwards country that thinks windmills deter demons. Though there might be actual Science behind that one.)

No H. Keep your boundaries. You might have been a little hysterical but you have EVERY RIGHT.

So the wrong time to say that A’s hair is finally messed up would be Mahad’s death scene... which is also the MaMa scene that BREAKS MY HEART.

Ep 14: SEE?? Mil doesn’t even say “Draconian,” she says “He has wings!” A says “He’s a Draconian!” with NO maliciousness! 

Lol Dryden doesn’t even recognize Mil... though it has been seven-ish years. 

.... Did we talk about D’s “phone home” line?? WHAT IS IT IN THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE? Does D actually say “phone home” bc he knows SOME Earth language?? Does he say something else and the closest English translation is “phone home”?? ?????

Ep 15: The whole “my friend” scene. Just ugh. Mil’s brattiness really shines here. I’m so glad she got character growth!! There are just SO MANY reasons to love Mil. 

Ep 16: LEON. GRANDMA KANZAKI. (Except there’s no proof she’s a Kanzaki. Oh well.)

This F & NE interaction must be more for the viewers... How did NE not know F was a Sorcerer? I find that hard to believe. Though they do say something like “We haven’t seen you in a while.” But his Sorcerer-ship can’t have been that short. Or I doubt NE were away from F for THAT long.

Is it just me or does the Sorercers’ floating fortress have a Freidian feel to it?

Ep 17: (Carryover from 16) Does Folken... outright disbelieve in the (Gate to) the Mystic Valley? I never noticed that before.... Like yeah he’ll follow Dornkirk to the literal end of the earth (figuratively follow the actual man, literally past the end of the known earth). But he won’t believe in the Mystic Valley? He must have believed in the Power of Atlantis / Power Spot in Freid. He got the damn sword-key thing. .... BUT DID HE DO ANYTHING WITH IT? I mean the Vione DOES beat the Crusade to the Gate of Atlantis for crying out loud! (Was the Freidian sword-key more a symbol between Chid and F?)

NO Varie... *Sigh* Grandma is right; H needs to believe in her friends, to have faith in them. Yeah she shouldn’t wish so much... But for crying out loud... She’s been torn from home, visions, scary visions, seen WAR AND DEATH, love triangles. Give’r a break!

DUDE. Leon is killed by Zaiback while ON Asgard, RIGHT? So. SO. Zaiback had a whole MINI FLEET of SNOW-TRAVELLING vehicles there?? And PEOPLE?? That means that a large ship/floating fortress made it across that treacherous “edge of the map”!! WHAT THE WHAT??

Dear Leon... How much time has passed since you saw Grandma? Not that much I don’t think... But still... WEIRDNESS. 

Oh pillar of light... YOU TEASE.

Yeah I’m with Aerika; why didn’t Celena get mentioned in the ghost-Leon scene??? (Yeah time, etc, yadda yadda yadda.)

Waitaminute! Poor V has been fighting ghosts that WHOLE TIME? Then NE show up. :/ Yeah sure, traumatize him SOME MORE. BOOO. 

B-b-b-but... More fighting means MORE FIGHTING.

Of course, not fighting means captured and / or death...

Yeah sure Varie. That’s very loving/motherly.

Wait... ALL of Gaea’s future is determined by V’s will? Nooo... Surely not....

Ep 18: Poor Merle; left behind from her V-sama. ... Not so poor Mil; left behind from not-her A.

... Did Dornkirk actually “alter fate” and bring H, V, and A into Zaiback? If he “altered fate,” therefore ‘redirected’ them... WHAT WAS THEIR ORIGINAL DESTINATION? Their original fate? Did Dornkirk control the pillar of light? Bc later H asks F about the pillar and F is all surprised. (Though it would make logical sense that Dornkirk didn’t tell F everything.)

OR MAYBE DORNKIRK GOT FREAKIN’ LUCKY.

.... Does pre-”saved” Zaiback look Freidian to anyone else...?

There’s a “Destiny Oscillator” in one of the previous episodes. WELL HOLY HELL does “oscillation” come into play in Esca...

Aerika had a snippet of shooting down “Women-hating A” with examples. He’s chauvinistic to / as a fault, yes... But if he ACTUALLY hated women, therefore H, he wouldn’t have let her do the Tarot reading way back when. He wouldn’t have let her decide when V says “Go, we’ll leave from the roof.” He wouldn’t have let her lead / take turns leading..... Boy do I miss Aerika.

Ep 19: ... Yes Four Generals. That’s F’s DIABOLICAL plan. Has been ALL ALONG. Pfffft.

I REALLY want in on that conversation between Mil and D on that X days journey back to Asturia.

Dear H: Don’t argue with Mil’s new maturity. Yeah D prolly talked her into the early marriage bc wartime. But she’ll get over A. She never truly had him in the first place. (Headcanon) She actually grew up with D in her backyard palace. They actually KNOW each other. A little. At least the Mil&D relationship isn’t based on half-truths/lies and lack of knowledge.

ERIES. SToP. WHOSE GRAVE IS THAT?? Encia’s? Marlene’s? Celena’s? (Probably Encia’s.)

Ep 20: Paying less attention to this one as this particular episode seems to be mass MIA on YouTube... We’re suffering through a sped-up and pixelated  version. Though it’s not too bad...

I wonder what the Lovers card actually refers too.... Mil/A or Mar/A? Bc Mil/A weren't actually lovers, not really not truly. But H's visions have never been so... subtle. (The generic Wikipedia says it’s a FUTURE vision of them BECOMING lovers??? WHUT???)

Oh poor H. No girlfriend. The Tower’s prediction was always there. The wedding itself is a grand idea... Just maybe not right now, in the middle of a war. And Zaiback was going to attack either way. Mil has to take her time to learn that Dryden is the man for her.

And yeah mebe he has to leave for the both of them to figure that out.... Meh.

Ep 21:  ... Did Mil and D go change and come back to have that heart-to-heart with H? (And D got bandaged.) Bc... Yeah. Just odd. Prolly animator error. (Or not. I need to watch those scenes closer. Later.)

Ep 22: Rad is losing her attention span. My eyes are hurting from looking at the computer screen for so long. I had originally wanted to cast from the computer to the TV screen but I couldn’t immediately get the mouse and the keyboard to talk to the computer. So I’ve been at my husband’s shiny new dual-screen computer.

Dear MM: Don’t spread false rumors. *Sigh*

Merle. Drama queen Merle.

SHUDDUP ALLEN. NO BIRDCAGES. You didn’t put Natal in one!

Aaaaand the Four Generals start to realize that their Emperor isn’t actually fully about mass conquest....

Dear V: Dragons DO NOT work thata way.

... So F escaped death bc he had Atlantean blood? Bc he was a Draconian? I feel like maybe he was closer to the earth and it’s creatures bc he’s a Draconian... Not that it was Fate. So much... Bah. That’s too much Thinky Thoughts for one day.

*Waves Folken naked torso in front of Konstantya and Pethics*

Ep 23: Well yeah, like hell M WASN’T going to follow her V-sama.

Dear A: ENOUGH WITH THE BIRDCAGE CRAP.

Sewingyoukai:  (T)hey (women) don`t need Allen, just his hair care products.

Yes F; H’s power is CARING. (Sometimes too much.)

Wow A; that’s some horrible proposal.

*Waves naked Dilly torso in front of Drk-stars and Nehasy*

Nope Dry wouldn’t complain about Mil in an apron doing laundry... A WOULD. BIRDCAGE DISCUSSION ENSUES.

Silly H; trust your heart! Trust both of them (to an extent).

Interesting that the pillar of light takes away Dil and not V... But it IS the immediate point where Dil is breaking. And he IS the triggering point of V’s actual RAGE.

V and A in unison: Hitomi!

Ep 24: De ja vuuuueeee.

(Sewingyukai and I accidentally rewatched Ep1: Fateful Confession when we wanted Ep24: Fateful DECISION. LOL. Drk made fandom history and the eps were ordered by name.

Sooo... How much DID H tell Amano about her journey on Gaea?? And it makes him look bad to change subjects... But Fate/reality must go on... And yeah sewingyoukai said he’s moving away from her “nightmare.”

Also. Sewing’s contribution: What if V went through H’s things and asked about the tampons?? XDDDDDDDDDD

AH YES, THAT FATEFUL PICTURE.

I LOVE HITOMI IN STREET CLOTHES!

... That symbol above A’s fireplace must be the Schezar family crest. It’s on Scherazade’s cape (I’m 99.99% certain) and it’s on Leon’s journal. I thought it was a partially-English letter (or Atlantean!!!~~) but that doesn’t make sense either.

It just hit me. Dornkirk must have some Fate Reading Machine too... Or that’s the thing the telescope is looking at? I mean, he’d eventually realize what represents H and V and yadda blah blah etc. But it’s never really named like everything else most other Destiny Things are.

I think I’m on Ep 25 now.

*Cries* V’s maturity in sending H away. “You don’t want me to rely on your powers so I must send you away; I’m respecting your boundaries.”

Dryden leaving... eh.... Reasons yes, Reasons NO.

Well Mil, you’ll be waiting a long time for A bc Celena’s back on the scene (or will be at the end of the episode / Series. GAWD I need to go back to my fanfiction with that scene!!!)

Re: TIME JUMPING Such a headache. I tend to think [Gaea and Earth] are pretty concurrent. Because that's EASY on our poor brains. Sometimes little things like... pocket jump around? "Pocket" meaning outside of actual reality. SewingYoukai: Maybe they jump to the time they’re most needed? Time jumping happens so infrequently. (Or it might be like LOST where it's snuck in.) Bc it happens infrequently it's hard to gauge what's happening, if time jumping is actually happening at all.

JICHA.

I WANT TO KNOW HOW THEY THOUGHT OF THE ENERGIST BOMB. Headcanon is that a spy was at the dragon graveyard and saw the obvious and brought the information back and then some scientists HAULED SERIOUS HIENY to create the bomb. (Personal universe is that a certain UNKNOWN [redacted redacted] was involved.) Yeah the energist bomb has Japanese origins/roots/reference. But in-universe. I WANT TO KNOW.

Ep 26: Holdover from ep 25 ending: Action, Reaction, Reaction, Reaction, etc. Zone of Absolute Fortune. 

Ugh more fighting. Grow up men. (Let women inherit the earth.)

Sewingyoukai and I are debating the Reasons that the Crusade Crew aren’t effected... affected... whatever - by the Zone of Absolute Fortune. We’re thinking some combination of being “covered” by A/H/V’s “lucky/destiny/fate” or a combo of all three AND their past. The rest of the men on the battlefield are (probably) either actual soldiers or men drafted to fight and fed “you’re doing something good for your country and Gaea.” Whereas the Crusade Crew were forced into the military because they were criminals/thieves/etc. 

JUST TELL V YOU LOVE HIM, H. 

V is just going to misunderstand you.

No. DUH. Dornkirk.

I want to see the moments when H goes back home! To whom?? To where?? TO WHAT TIME? Clearly at some point Yukari and Amano get together. So knowing what she knows does H skip the whole “pendant is a pendulum; would you give me my very first kiss” thing?? Sewingyoukai’s very good point: H doesn’t have the pendant anymore! H literally alters the time line.

Was it a dream? Or maybe a vision? No, it really did happen.

My poor brain. My poor eyes too, looking at the screen for about 11 hours straight.

With sewingyoukai: Loving Fanel family ftw! (With Varie teaching F and leetle V how to FLY!) [Re: How does V know how to fly so well??]

MaMa!! NE & Folken! Varie and Goau!!

Mil and Er being sisterly!!!