#tropical techno

[babychaosworld]

I’ve noticed there aren’t many Namor playlists on Spotify.

So, I made one 🌊🐚💦🫧

hope you enjoy & danceeeee 🐍🪶🧜🏾‍♂️

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for December 19, 2015; #100.

Public Service Broadcast “Sputnik”

Fuzz “Bringer Of Light”

Spectres “Sea Of Trees”

Destruction Unit “Judgement Day”

Killing Joke “Euphoria”

Sleaford Mods “Teacher Faces Porn Charges”

Ariel Pink “Dayzed Inn Daydreams”

Tame Impala “New Person Same Old Mistakes”

Deerhunter “Ad Astra”

Neon Indian “Annie”

Prayers ft. Travis Barker “West End Girls”

Phil Western “NSA”

Oneohtrix Point Never “Mutant Standard”

Holly Herndon “Morning Sun”

AFX “Serge Fenix Rendered 2″

Algiers “Irony. Utility. Pretext.”

M.I.A. “Swords”

Hanin Elias ft. Noia “Scream” (Fantome RMX)

Omar Souleyman “Bahdeni Nami” (Four Tet RMX)

Cold Cave ft. Black Rain & Genesis P. Orridge “Comprehension”

Soft Moon, The “Desertion”

JK Flesh “Offering”

Consumer Electronics “Murder Your Masters”

Prurient “Dragonflies To Sew You Up”

Tropic Of Cancer “I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over”

G.L.O.S.S. “G.L.O.S.S. (We’re From The Future)”

Second of two Winners Of '15 broadcasts; show #100.

[iamlisteningto]

tropical interface’s OM1

[djhamaradio]

Duppy Echoes: 12:00 - 02:00 - Sunday 16th 2023

A Dance floor Suspended in time and space

Ozila - Wola Wola (South Africa)

Nese Alkan - Tut Kalbimi Tut (Turkey)

Milton - Mizik Nou (Haiti)

Logg - On The Line (New York City)

Pascal Latour - Lage Yo

Unlimited Touch - In the Middle

Bana - Rintchie Rintchie

Birdbone Unlimited - Heart Attack

Nicolaas Jaar - Mi Mujer

Senga Ferreira - Tomorrow never comes

Donny Hathaway - Memory of our love

01:00 - 02:00 Sunday

Femi Kut - Truth Dont Die

Mbongwana Star - Shegue

Bazare D Pablo - Nassima

Koffi Olomide - Micko

Orlando Divo - Beleza

Jura Soundsystem - Canafe Denim

Celia Cruz - Un Bemba Pal Yemaya

Shina Williams -

Osunlade - Cantos

Joy Orbison - Burn

African Folk Joint - Houwenema

Mala - Cuba Electronic

[motion90affect]

"Mixing Hypnosis" | Phonk | House |Tropical House | Electronica | Dubstep

[sashmaster]

HOUSE FUSION RADIO on Mixcloude the LIVE RADIO for ELECTRONIC MUSIC!

[weisskalt]

Tripstasy by Tropical Sludge is a hypnotic journey that should have your third eye lost into a fantasy rainforest with dripping psychedelia & deep analogue stimulation. The mesmerising & downtempo atmosphere will transport you into a surreal dreamland, perfect for introspective listening.

Ni Moya takes us deeper into the rainforest with a driving techno rework reminiscent of 90s Goa/Psy, a deadly bassline and smashing 808, opening the space for a utopian awakening for any doof sunrise.

Credits: Music by Tropical Sludge Remix by Ni Moya Mastered by World Frequencies

Bandcamp + other links

[anarchy-and-piglins]

Thinking about Techno who works in a mermaid research/rehab facility and the three mermaids who are super attached to him.

Techno is not a marine biologist. He's a college student who picked up a janitor job at the place for some extra cash. He's only supposed to clean the walkways and maybe feed the mers by throwing fish in the tank occasionally. But somehow, he ends up with three mers who have taken a liking to him and the scientists don't bother discouraging the bonding since it makes them easier to handle.

Phil is an adult arctic mer. He is friendly enough, but very solitary and reserved - like most arctic mers are. They're prone to hiding. Techno is the only one who can reliably lure Phil out. Phil refuses to show himself when Techno isn't around. Catching him against his will would be stressful and could potentially harm him or the humans involved in the project, so the scientists see only upsides to encouraging Phil's apparent bonding with Techno. Even if Techno is around, Phil will not let any human except Techno touch him, so the scientists sometimes have to guide Techno through what he has to do when they need to do checkups and such.

Wilbur is extremely hostile, and will often attack anybody who comes close to him, his pod, or even his perceived territory. He's of indeterminate species, looks like a deep sea mer but seems to not need to live on the bottom of the ocean, so rather peculiar and his health is very weird. He's very dangerous though, and same as Phil he will not let himself be touched or lured by anybody except Techno for some reason.

Lastly, there's Tommy, a tropic mer. He's actually extremely friendly with humans! Maybe a little too friendly. He has injured and (almost) drowned several people working at the facility because he plays very roughly and is always so eager. He's younger than the other two, not having reached adulthood by mer standards. He's like a happy little puppy except a puppy that is very prone to mischief and doesn't know his own strength. Techno is - again, for some reason - the only human he seems to listen to. Tommy does not care when any other human says "stop" or gives an indication he's hurting them. He doesn't always listen to Techno when he says "stop" but does seem to care when he's hurting Techno. So there's that.

The trio forms a pod - traditionally, species is determined by where a mer is hatched, but they can live anywhere after. Most mer form a pod with other mers of the same species and don't leave the area they're born, but Phil, Wilbur, and Tommy all individually happen to get kicked out or lose their birth pods for whatever reason, ending up together in a strange three-person pod. It's a scientific oddity, which makes them so interesting to study.

They're not going to be happy being locked up forever though. Eventually, they'll get sick of the tank.

And who knows, maybe they'll take their favorite human with them when they leave :3c

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Madeline Ashby’s ‘Glass Houses’

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Glass Houses – published today by Tor Books – is Madeline Ashby's terrifying technothriller: it's an internet-of-things haunted house story that perfectly captures (and skewers) toxic tech culture while also running a savage whodunnit plot that'll keep you guessing to the end:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765382924/glasshouses

Kristen is the "Chief Emotional Manager" for Wuv, a hot startup that has defined the new field of "affective computing," which is when a computer tells you what everyone else around you is really feeling, based on the unsuppressible tells emitted by their bodies, voices and gadgets.

"Chief Emotional Manager" is just a cutesy tech euphemism for "chief of staff." The only person whose emotions Kristen really manages is Sumter William, the boyish billionaire CEO and founder of Wuv. Sumter hired Kirsten because they share a key developmental trait: both were orphaned at an early age and had to raise themselves in a media spotlight.

Both Sumter and Kristen had been in the spotlight even before their parents' death, though. Sumter was the focus of the intense attention that the children of celebrity billionaires always come in for. Kristen, though, was thrust into the spotlight by her parents: her prepper cryptocurrency hustling father, and her tradwife mother, whose livestreams of Kristen's childhoods involved letting the audience vote everything from whether she'd get dessert after dinner to whether her mother should give her bangs.

Kristen's parents died the most Extremely Online death imaginable: a cryptocurrency price-spike sent her father's mining rigs into overdrive, and when they burst into flame, the IoT house system failed to alert him until it was too late. The fire left Kristen both alone and horribly burned, with scars over much of her body.

Managing Sumter through Wuv's tumultuous launch is hard work for Kristen, but at last, it's paid off. The company has been acquired, making Kristen – and all her coworkers on the founding core team – into instant millionaires. They're flying to a lavish celebration in an autonomous plane that Sumter chartered when the action begins: the plane has a malfunction and crashes into a desert island, killing all but ten of the Wuvvies.

As the survivors explore the island, they discover only one sign of human habitation: a huge, brutalist, featureless black glass house, which initially rebuffs all their efforts to enter it. But once they gain entry, they discover that the house is even harder to leave.

This is the setup for a haunted house story where the house seems to be an unknown billionaire prepper's IoT house of horrors. As the survivors of the crash suffer horrible injuries and deaths on the island, the remaining Wuvvies bolt themselves inside, setting up a locked-room whodunnit that runs in parallel.

This is a fantastic dramatic engine for Ashby's specialty: extremely pointed techno-criticism. The ensuing chapters, which flip back and forth between the story of Wuv's rise and rise to a top tech company, and the company's surviving staff being terrorized on a paradisaical tropical aisle, flesh out Ashby's speculation and the critique it embodies.

For example, there's the political culture of Ashby's future America. Wuv are a Canadian company, headquartered in Toronto, and we gradually come to understand that Canada is the beneficiary of an exodus of tech companies from the US following a kind of soft Christian Dominionist takeover (Kristen and Sumter often have to wrangle rules about whether women are allowed to enter the USA in the company of men they aren't married to and who aren't their brothers or fathers).

The flashbacks to this America are beautifully and subtly drawn, especially the scenes in Vegas, which manages to still be Vegas, even amidst a kind national, legally mandated Handmaid's Tale LARP. Ashby uses her futuristic speculation to illuminate the present, that standing wave where the past is becoming the future. Like everything in the shadows of a haunted house tale, this stuff will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

I'm a big Madeline Ashby fan. I have the honor of having published her first story, when I was co-editing one of the Tesseracts anthologies of Canadian SF. I've read and really enjoyed every one of her books, but this one feels like a step-change in Ashby's career, a leveling up to something even more haunting and brilliant than her impressive back-catalog.

Madeline and I will be live at Chevalier's Books in LA on Aug 16 as part of her Glass Houses tour:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-madeline-ashbys-glass-houses-tickets-965286486867

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/13/influencers/#affective-computing

[twisted-confessions]

Y'know what, I'm feeling a little bored.

I don't really have much to contribute to the TWST community besides my writing skills and my editing skills so I figured I'd offer my services!!!

I love making Twst cards of my OC Isabella Haddock and of other peoples Twst OC's like @boopshoops Yuu Shi and Jocia Gains so I'm offering to turn your OC/Yuusona into different rated Twst Gacha Cards for you!!! You can send in an ask with your character and the full details listed below. I'll have examples of Cards and extra request details below the cut.

Please don't hesitate to ask as I have a ton of fun making them and can finish them in less than an hour so request as many cards of your TWST OCs as you want!!! Just make sure you read the details below.

WHAT I NEED TO MAKE YOUR CARD(S): - A full body pose or a pose up to the knees of your oc with a transp. background (if possible) OR -A headshot from the neck up I can paste it over an asset of the students outfits I have (credit to @alchemivich for asset files)

-What type of card it is (R/SR/SSR/Groovy)

-Their dorm (if fanmade, a logo of their dorm)

-The background you want if it's SR or SSR

-The name of the OC (I'll use google translate for the Japanese Kanji if you can't find it)

-Their outfit name (Eg. Tropical Wear, Dorm Uniform etc.)

And then we can go over finer details in a post thread or in a DM. If you don't have full art yet that's fine, just send the request when you do! I'll have these requests open as long as I'm free. Also, NO PRICES!!! I'm doing these for the free fun of it :). I'm open to art trades as a price if you want to make it even. Always love to see more art of my girl and her monster boys (Toothless, Grim and Stitch... the rest of NRC too lol-). All I ask is that if you post the card to please give credit to either me or my main blog @techno-danger

FURTHER DETAILS: Because of my obsession of sticking with Canon, I try to make the cards following their grades, for example if it's a School Uniform I'd default to make it an R card and R's don't have proper artistic backgrounds, only the patterned ones. If you do want to have a card that doesn't follow the grade system (eg. R card with a background, SR PE or School Uniform etc.) PLEASE let me know and emphasize that that's what you want.

R cards and SR cards go to the knees if they stand straight up, otherwise it depends on the pose you draw them in. SSR I'll try to fit the whole body in so keep in mind how you want your OC to look in your card. If you want a pose make sure to draw them in a pose, I'm not a miracle worker or an artist, I'm an inexperienced editor doing this for fun lol.

EXAMPLES: R, SR and SSR Cards of my OC Isabella Haddock (designed by the wonderful @boopshoops) and a Bonus Grim I did for fun to match her (RAMSHACKLE DESERVES A DORM UNIFORM DAMN IT-)

Difference between a Full Body Pose and Headshot Only Pose (using @alchemivich's game assets)

Custom Background (aka, not official TWST background assets)

Jocia Gains belongs to Shoopy in her AU, The Creation of A Villain (GO READ IT NOW-). I made this card as part of a thank you gift to her however we don't have any RSA cards so using a background Shoopy gave to me for Bella, I made my own version of RSA's R cards, logo included. I can do this for your OC too if they attend a different school.

If you managed to read ALL of this, thank you so much! You get a secret slice of cake 🍰 I can't wait to bring your OC cards to life!! Have fun requesting!

[canonchallulah]

A wildly self-indulgent AU I'm sure nobody has ever thought of before /s

Instead of Wil coming back to the island for the Egg Event, because of *gestures wildly* all o' that, its Technoblade that washes up on the shores of Isla Quesadilla.

Technolate, as they say.

He washes up in a storm, surrounded by the broken planks of his boat, salt and sand in his hair and his face and his clothing, but he washes up on tropical shores next to a train station and a massive wall that's already been blown up at least once.

It's quiet, but he sees already the signs of settlement. And government. Cringe.

He gets up and wanders. Its early, and quiet, and his head feels distinctly empty in a way that he can't quite place.

(not from the voices, those never go away, but something else. What has he forgotten?)

Despite this, it's not long before he reunites with Fit MC of 2b2t after so many years. They catch up - it's been so long since Earth, since the Antarctic Empire, though the details are... fuzzy. The voices offer their dubious help, but there are whole chunks of time missing. Regardless, Fit is a friendly face, and he's a fountain of information.

And then Fit shows him the adoption center and tells him about these orphans that everyone's adopted. It's all very heartwarming, he's sure, but he's happy to not have anything to do with all this orphan nonsense.

"I mean, are they really orphans if they've all been adopted? There was a certificate and everything." Fit ponders. Techno isn't sure if he agrees, but he's willing to let it be for now, because Technoblade hears a noise in the ceiling, and sees a suspicious trapdoor, and Chat goes wild.

Inside the attic, there's a kid. There's a curly mop of hair huddled in the corner, looking up at the pair, and Technoblade freezes.

"Uh. Hey." He says. Fit approaches the glass wall trapping the kid - like a dog in a kennel, he thinks - and opens the door. Techno stays right where he is by the trapdoor, thanks. "You don't happen to have parents, do you?"

And thats how Technoblade ends up responsible for the life of an orphan.

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for January 27, 2018; #154.

Ngly “XII”

Kamixlo “Splxcity”

Dedekind Cut “Fear In Reverse 2”

Alec Empire “Victims Of Authority”

Chino Amobi “Warszawa”

Gainstage “RGB Sun”

Girl Pusher “Lip Tattoo”

Emptyset “Ground”

Isn’t Ours “Throat Peel”

Appetite “Bordeaux Gallow”

Believer / Law “Foxhole Prayers”

Ciarra Black “Series Of…”

Army Of The Universe “1999” (Alec Empire RMX)

Kyoka “Smash / Hush”

Container “Dripping”

Tzusing “King Of Hosts”

Ancient Methods & Azar Swan “Swallow The Screw”

Ancient Methods & Tropic Of Cancer “It Won’t Take Me”

JK Flesh “Bayley Tower” (RMX)

JK Flesh “Holbrook Tower”

Silent Servant “Dissociation”

Russell Haswell “Hardwax Flashback” (Powell RMX)

Vatican Shadow “Interrogation Mosaic”

Deluxe darkness broadcast.

[kittyball23]

Which tribes besides the Pop Tribe do you imagine the Brozone members fitting into the most?

Rock would probably be my top answer in that, since I do recall the BroZone website stated each of t the brothers' preferred music tastes - JD Pop-Rock, Spruce Tropical Rock, Clay Alternative Rock, and Floyd Soft Rock n' Roll.

I think that they would get along great with the other tribes, too, though, and their members. Clay would probably like the sophistication of the Classical Trolls, Bruce would like the groove/vibes of the Funk Trolls. I could see Floyd jamming to Techno tunes if he gets in the right mood, and John Dory - perhaps as I have heard headcanoned - may take a fancy with Delta Dawn in Lonesome Flats 🙂

[vanillablankcanvas]

Floyd - Cut Ex Boyfriends

After much thought, some of the backstories of these ex boyfriends have not developed as organically as I had hoped. It's like I was adding them for the sake of adding them and trying to stick to the results of that recent poll I did. :P

Only two of them were fully finished. West and Bermuda.

Bermuda is from across the ocean, he is a distant relative in the Techno Royal Family so he is like a Duke or something. Their tribe lives in a tropical lagoon, they have more Polynesian vibes, and their music is more like lo-fi. The spots on his tail are supposed to look like an island whilst the ones on his arm are supposed to look like a tattoo.

West was training to take over the family farm from his dad Quarry but he secretly wanted to be a musician. Floyd was supposed to overstep and try to talk to West's dad for him. Quarry chased him off the farm. Floyd would come back years later to apologise, to find one of West's sisters running the farm. Quarry had given West permission to pursue music.

The other two were Fever and Mojito which I didn't get around to drawing.

Fever was going to be the last Disco Troll. He would preach the return of Disco like a religion. He would take in a homeless Floyd and try to convert him to Disco.

Mojito was a Reggaeton Troll who was Floyd's roommate in 'Under Rageous'. Mojito was in a polyamorous relationship and offered Floyd into said relationship. Floyd tried but decided it wasn't for him.

Feel bad to cut them but some of their stories were too similar to the remaining boyfriends or they just didn't fit into the overall story flow.

But I still wanted you to meet them soooooo tadaaaa

[puhpandas]

Coolsville

(1,413 words)

At a Halloween party during college, Evan's friends ask him a question that gets him thinking. 🎃🕷🍫👻

Evan hadnt expected to enjoy the party. College parties in the movies were always so loud and rowdy, and everyone would always be drinking and being obnoxious and-- its almost like a buffet table of everything Evan doesn't like.

He almost hadnt even gone, but of course, Gregory had somehow wrangled him into going, even without him there by his side, having to stay home to finish his comic page before his deadline. "Come on, Evan, you have to take risks every once in a while. What's the worst that could happen?"

And Evan had truly tried his best to find the answer to that question on the way there. His friends from college, people he met in classes and activities around campus who invited him, were the ones to pick him up.

But it somehow didnt cross his mind that these are his friends, and they-- they know how he is, and they're good friends, so maybe the party wouldn't be as bad as in the movies.

It ended up not being, when he finally arrived and there werent even that many people. The music hadnt shaken the walls or hurt his ears, the place was covered head to toe in halloween decorations, jelly window clings on every glass surface, streamers and balloons and ghost and gravestone shaped cookies layed out, tropical punch food-colored radioactive green on the counters.

It hadnt been like the movies, which are like Evans worst nightmare-- it was fun.

He'd danced badly with his friends, the number of attendants small and not overwhelming. The music turned from techno to spooky quickly, as soon as people in costume started showing up. Evan himself is starting to run out of ideas (so many Halloween's going all out with Gregory is making his internal costume bank run on empty), so he'd had to settle on one half of his homemade duo costume with Gregory; two beanie baby bears, The Beginning and The End.

Any tightness he'd felt in his chest dreading every second he got closer to arriving at the party slowly but surely ebbed as time went on. He munched on the sweet treats, colored frosting turning his tongue orange, and talked with his friends. Norman, who he met joining a birdwatching club, talked about some drama with his ex-girlfriend back in high school, and Kenny, who he met simply after being partnered with him in a group assignment, told an elaborate story about when his dog went missing as a kid and how they brought her home.

Any uncomfortable-ness that could have lingered is nowhere to be seen by the time everything's said and done. Evan's shocked to see the time at 11:28pm when he'd arrived at six, so he shoots Gregory a quick text letting him know he'll be late home.

After reading Gregorys enthusiastic response, Evan heads back into the living room, where the TV is playing some cartoon on mute, Lo-Fi Halloween music is playing softly on the speakers, and everyone except Evan and his friends has cleared out. The cookie plates are empty, the punch bowl almost drained, and Evan's face hurts from how much hes been smiling all evening.

After he settles on the couch, they all get to talking again, Evan seamlessly re-entering the conversation feeling like he never left. He doesnt feel like a burden here, not like he did with his 'friends' in high school. He laughs boisterously as Kenny recounts an inside joke.

At some point, everyone tired and their batteries draining, they switch the topic to something that's just as childish as Evan likes it; Twenty Questions.

The questions are tame at first, like favorite foods and colors, but they get more personal and in depth as time goes on. They ask about first crushes, most embarrassing moments and history with friends.

One question gets Evan to pause, though.

"Okay, okay," Joshua, whos-- great, really, super great and awesome, starts after the giggling dies down enough to get any words out. "I've got one. Let's say you walk into a room, and everyone you've ever known is there-- who are you going to find first?"

Evan blinks, not even having to think. They go around the circle, like they have this whole time, until they reach him. "What about you, Evan?" Joshua asks.

"My brother." His mouth says so quickly he almost surprises himself.

"Really?" Joshua asks, smiling. He's met Gregory before and they got along great. "Why him, out of everyone?"

He only takes a second to respond, but he doesnt think anything he saying has any thought behind it. The words are already in his mouth, so sure when they spill out.

"Who else," Evan says. "if not him?"

Everyone seems to take that as answer enough, Joshua nodding before revealing his own answer. It's like background noise to Evan, who's still staring at the same crumb-riddled Frankenstein shaped paper plate that's been sitting on the coffee table this whole time.

Who else, if not him? Evan doesn't think theres one person in this world he would choose over Gregory. Not Cassidy, no matter how much he loves her, not Cassie, not his family, and certainly none of his blood family.

He tries to think of a scenario where he does. He can't.

It always circles back to Gregory, who found him almost ten years ago now and changed everything. Gregory, who is the sole reason hes here today. Gregory, who did more for him than anyone else. Gregory, who he cant imagine living without, who he wouldnt want to. Gregory, who's always been there for him. Gregory, who caused Evan to become the person he is today.

Gregory, whos the only reason Evan came to this party, met people he believes are real, true friends, had fun on his own, took a risk.

He took a risk over a year ago, when he ditched his family and hightailed it to the Fazbears when he was eighteen. He took a risk when Gregory convinced him he was capable of college, when theyd made plans when they were so young that college felt infinitely far away to Evan. He took a risk when he mumbled his name to Gregory that day, the chance of getting it spat back in his face a real possibility.

Who else, if not him? Evan cant think of a single one.

He gets the sudden urge to text Gregory, and the moment he sets a hand on his phone, it vibrates with a new text message.

Gregory: if u dont come home soon im gonna be asleep when u get here lol

"Evan?" Joshua asks suddenly. Evan jolts, glancing up to look at him. The chatter has stopped, and Josh is staring at him in a way where Evan can tell it's not the first look he's sent. "Are you okay?"

A smile creeps up on Evan's face, wobbly but enough to make his cheeks hurt. "Yeah," He says, rubbing at his thankfully dry eyes. "I just-- think I'm gonna head home soon, yknow?"

Joshua smiles ever so slightly. "Yeah."

Norman and Kenny start awwing, and it makes Evan smile even wider. Joshua grabs his keys after they're done hugging Evan, and they head outside and get in his car together.

Its quiet when they start driving, and Evan sends a text to Gregory before looking at Joshua. "I'm sorry if it seemed like I wanted to leave at the end, there..." He feels the need to say. "I just-- got to thinking."

"About what?" Josh asks.

Evan smiles instinctively. "My brother."

Joshua chuckles, shifting to just one hand on the steering wheel. "I get it. Yknow my parents had another kid when I was like, twelve?"

Evan's eyes widen. "Wow, really?"

"Yeah." Joshua says. "They were worried we wouldn't get along, but... even if it was hard at first, we got close." Evan looks at him from the passenger seat, and the smile on Josh's face is all genuine, pure love.

"Hes nine now." He says. "I think... I think nowadays, I'd do anything for him."

Evan smiles, it's a small, soft smile, and he thinks back to a twelve year old Gregory, a lightning bolt of a kid who struck Evan very suddenly and swept him up in a way he'd never forget.

"Yeah," Evan almost whispers, turning on his phone and looking at the photo of him and Gregory when they were fifteen as his lockscreen. "me too."

ao3