Could you maybe write something Holloweane? They are my world 🤍
Of course I can, anon! I could've made this maybe the angstiest thing ever, because god only knows the two of them have potential for it,,, but let's save that for Holloweane week, shall we?
"Duke, good god, you need to rest."
Miss Holloway was starting to get the impression that Duke Keane didn't believe in sleep. He was the undisputed king of working himself to the bone, with the excuse that there was always something else to do, or someone else to help. He was in her diner for coffee every morning, and not only because he wanted a good chat with the famous Miss Retro... Because he'd come in groggy and lacking any of the energy he needed for the day, and she'd started insisting on giving him coffee to tide him over.
She was sure he'd forgotten about it, but there was one occasion she caught him sleeping in the backseat of his station wagon between hasty stacks of manila envelopes. After asking him about it, he'd admitted that he just crashed, and that was it for a good hour or more.
At the moment, he was sitting on one of the barstools at the corner of the counter, scribbling hurriedly into a case file and trying to update his notes on something that had clearly gotten his interest. She'd managed a glimpse at his notes, and they were just as haphazard as she would've come to expect from him. Clearly nobody else looked at these files, because his way of organising the notes and data within the file seemed to be... Unique to just him. If it wasn't, she'd be genuinely surprised.
He looked up at her, seemingly registering her presence for the first time, though she'd been standing there on the other side of the counter the whole time, for a lack of anything better to do. "I'm good, I'm on my way to finishing this stack."
She rolled her eyes. "That's not the point... If you keep going now these aren't going to make any sense to you when you next read em!" Somehow, she was going to play into a part of his mind where it made sense to take a break, because she was frankly worried that one of these days, he was going to work himself to death.
"I've gotta write this up again anyway, someone complained they couldn't read my writing, so eventually I've gotta go through this again and type it." he shrugged, looking back towards the paper. Her eyes followed his, like she hadn't already tried to decipher what he was trying to write. Was he seriously using a college notation method to write up official cases? Did she really recognise it as a college notation method?
Maybe this was on her.
"Isn't that all the more reason why you should save it? C'mon, Duke, when was the last time you got a good night in?"
"Why are you so bothered how much I sleep?" the question wasn't malicious in any way, merely Duke playing into his curiosities without looking up from the page he was scribbling on.
"Because it's been the same routine for months now? You come in here every morning before work, and I'm lucky if I actually get to see you alert and well rested before you order the coffee. don't you think there's even a chance you're working yourself too hard?"
His pen stopped. She hadn't realised how much she'd been relying on it as background noise until it stopped scratching against the page.
"Huh."
He was more than aware that she paid attention to him. The two of them had some rather interesting conversations first thing on a morning, but come to think of it, most of those had been fuelled by her absolutely heavenly coffee. At this point, it was a subconscious effort to keep himself going for as long as possible, because that meant he got more done. And if he got more done, then he had more of a chance to get to the conclusion of a case, to reach the point where he could stop and say... Yeah. He finally made a difference. A real difference.
"Y'know, maybe I am..."
Holloway's shoulders dropped with relief; she hadn't even realised there had been a tension there in the first place. Duke's eyes flitted between her, the notes, and an empty space on the desk next to him.
"Just let me-"
"Duke..."
Her hand fell on top of his, stopping him from witing another word (and bringing a sudden flush to his cheeks, but he elected to ignore that one). She gently shifted his hand out of the way, closing the file over the written notes with her other hand. He stared at the glossy sheen on her brightly painted nails until he snapped himself out of his working trance, at least for the time being.
"I'm gonna hold this file hostage if you're not careful, least that'll be one way to actually get you to sleep for once..."
After thinking about this, and coming to the realisation that he was likely going to be back in the morning anyway, he figured that there was only one way to keep him distracted from work long enough to get him to do anything else. "... Could you?"
"What?"
"Keep the file. I'll be back for it tomorrow morning, but you want me to sleep, and there's a bit of me that wants me to sleep too... So-"
She slipped the file under the counter without another word, a smile resting on her lips. "It'd be my pleasure. Now... I swear to god, if you don't sleep tonight I'm burning this."
A laugh escaped him, genuine as it was weary. "Fine, fine, I can take a hint." He stood up from his barstool and took a moment to grin over at her before he turned on his heel and headed towards the door. Before he could leave, he shot a final glance back. "Please don't burn it... That's a week's worth of work..."
"Get some rest, then," she teased, folding her arms.
"G'night, Miss Holloway."
"Goodnight, Duke."
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Share your reunion widobrave thoughts please?? Only if you want to but I would love to hear them!
Apologies for how long this took to reply to! Most of that time has been spent trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that doesn't sound utterly deranged, though conceptually, I understand it kind of is. So, for formality's sake, I am now donning my shippers cap, and am not to be held liable for making more thoughtful/thought out meta on this topic atm. Currently, we are simply living in the Widobrave Enrichment Zone™️.
Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way, let's continue!
Essentially, my widobrave thoughts re: the reunion are pretty deeply tied to whoever said during m9 reunited two-shot that Caleb and Veth were behaving like a divorced couple sharing custody of Luc, because it was a very funny, on-point comparison considering Veth would literally take Luc all the way to Rexxentrum (with Yeza holding down the fort at home, presumably, while they were both gone) regularly enough that Veth was stated as probably keeping spare clothes at Caleb's place. Like Caleb gets every other weekend with Luc and Veth or something. And that vibe to the Luc-Caleb relationship has persisted even seven years down the line to excellent effect. Like, I have derived an incredible amount of joy from Caleb's extremely concerned, angry, and fairly paternal treatment of Luc during the one-shot that really delivered to me the essence of "Caleb is Luc's father with partial custody and suddenly has to take emergency custody of The Child when he wasn't expecting to."
Like I said, none of this is necessarily meant to be productive, thoughtful meta, but it has brought me a great deal of joy and enrichment in my environment nonetheless. And, really, what else can we ask of our joyful shipper's minds but that?
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Maybe Reese and 'there is a prayer in me still' ?
If that prompt tickles your fancy for him.
Atlas | Skye | Puck
⎯
“Think that’s bullshit.”
Your head perks up as you shoot a sidelong glance at Reese, the man seated beside you trying to cover his hand to save the flame dying on his fingers. He’s been trying to light that blasted cigarette for what feels like minutes now. It’s probably only been a few moments, but everything feels much longer when you’re on stakeout like this. The rooftop isn’t exactly the most pleasant position to find yourself in this late at night, the cold air nips a little too harshly at your nose, and the unforgiving edge of the flat apartment roof smells uncannily like fish. You wrinkle your nose a bit. Maybe that’s why Reese is still trying to light the cigarette— to drown out the smells. You don’t know if the smell of smoke is going to help much, though.
“What?” You ask, lifting your head a bit in his direction in order to prompt him to continue. He takes the bait easily, one leg swung over the edge of the roof. Both of yours hang off, turned away from him still though you’re staring at him now.
“‘God makes this go faster.’ That’s what you said, right?” He responds, shrugging his shoulders as his words slur slightly with the cigarette still firmly lodged between his teeth. You catch a flash of his sharp canines. “Think that’s bullshit. No god can speed up time— don’t even really think they’d notice it passing.”
You raise your eyebrows a bit at him now. This certainly came out of left field.
“Where’d this come from?” You ask, huffing out a breath that you meant to sound like a laugh. It doesn’t, but you’re not in the mood to put any fake effort into it. “Midnight stakeouts make you philosophical or something now?”
Reese spares a glance up at you for a moment, shooting you one of his classic ‘you’re so stupid I don’t even have time to explain it to you’ looks. He snorts and a bit of smoke dissipates in the air in front of you from his nostrils.
“I’m just making conversation. You’re the one filling the space with stupid shit.”
You frown a bit at that.
“I’m sorry, do you have something more important to add?” You snap back, eye twitching a bit as you swallow down your frustration just as quickly, looking away. This isn’t going to get you anywhere. But surprisingly, Reese doesn’t snap back right away. You glance back at him and he’s given up on his cigarette, the thing now twiddling between his fingers as he stares off ahead of you, at some distant horizon between the tops of the buildings and the darkened sky. The silence between you two isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it doesn’t sit quite right with you. You don’t know if that’s on him or you.
“Do you believe in that crap?” He voices again, voice a bit quieter now, though it still holds that sting at the end, like some kind of shy scorpion.
“What?” You ask again, before quirking a brow at him. “God?”
He nods quietly. You sigh, turning to look at the same great beyond he is. You wish you could see whatever answers he’s searching for out there. Maybe then it’d be easier for you two to just… talk. You don’t know.
“Kind of a big question, huh?” You reply with a small scoff that isn’t directed towards anyone. You chew on your cheek for a bit. “Why do you ask?”
This time, Reese adjusts himself in his seat, slinging his other leg over the edge so he turns away from you. Despite the distancing, he lowers his head and begins to fiddle with the cigarette again. You’ve been around him long enough to know the tells. He’s nervous. Well— maybe not nervous per se, but certainly thinking about something.
“I don’t know. Just been on my mind, I think.” He sighs and it feels heavy. You don’t interrupt. “I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to believe something like it is true. Not many signs, though.”
It’s your turn to pause now. You glance from him to the sky again, gaze turning higher upwards now. It’s harder to make out the stars out here in the city. But if you peer hard enough, you can still spot the flickers of white spattered gently across the expanse that seems to tumble on towards infinity. You smile a bit.
“I think it’s kind of silly to go looking for signs. Puts a lot of pressure on you to make it real. Besides, they’re probably busy. Time wouldn’t mean much to them, remember?” You chuckle, the cold air feeling a bit less biting now as you take a deep breath. There’s another beat of silence. When you look back to Reese, he’s staring back at you. You expect him to break the moment, but he doesn’t, staring at you like you just said something more meaningful than you believe you actually did. He smirks a bit, then laughs back softly.
“Maybe there’s a prayer in me yet.”
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First Friday of the month time for music
im not entirely sure what this means but i hope it means ppl r gonna start asking me about music every first friday. if this is about Bandcamp Friday:tm:, there's... not actually one going on right now? and moreover i frankly do not pay attention to those anyway; i feel like people reeeeealllyyy overplay the cut the platform takes [it's 15%]. i buy albums frequently and sporadically and any purchase on bandcamp is like infinitely more profitable for the artist than any other site so i don't care.
anyway to facilitate the first part of the answer here's this unbelievably fucked up brazillian rap album @saint-soap showed me a bit ago and which i have since been Obsessed with
i need to lead by saying that i am very much Not A Rap Person:tm: which i understand is typically a You Are Racist red flag phrase 90% of the time, but in my case it's really just because i have a heavy aversion to lyrics in music in general. i have bad speech processing issues and they're usually just Distracting to me, so having such a big focus on them in rap is genuinely overstimulating. i simply cannot handle that many words.
turns out the solution to this is... well, 1, to just have the lyrics not be in a language i can understand gfjnfgj [portugese here obviously, but there's some japanese rap i like for the same reason], but 2. more importantly just to have the rest of the supporting instrumentation be as fucked up and disorienting as possible. can't get overwhelmed by the lyrics if i'm getting overwhelmed by all of it! i love this approach it's continuously punching you all at once and you are never allowed to settle on what any one part of it is doing. keeps you on yer toes & falls neatly under the aesthetic of "music that wants to kill you" that i notably love so much, but without most of the outright anger and aggression of stuff like punk and hardstyle and metal. very cool. "abrasive background noises" can save a lot of things for me and i think it's the logic behind some of my other faves w rapping in them
you just need something really pressing to give some competition to/balance out the vocals
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