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#music!virgil
idontknowreallywhy · 7 months
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Play it Out - part 3 of… it’s anyone’s guess at this point…
I promise I am definitely fixing this, the two of them are just taking a really long time about it… and this chapter got quite long before I got anywhere near to the point. Err, enjoy anyway?
This will make even less sense if you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2… (AO3 link)
Virgil carefully stowed his tools in Two’s specifically designed storage compartments and stretched, stifling a yawn. He checked his watch - 2am already! Gordon had bailed and disappeared off to bed a while ago but he hadn’t realised it had got quite so late… he’d got thoroughly absorbed in those calibrations though and it was satisfying to have it finished.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and made his way over to the elevator, turning to look back at the big green behemoth as he waited for the door to open. He was now 3 weeks ahead on his ship’s routine maintenance schedule and she was purring like a kitten. Between the familiar but challenging work and Gordon’s background chatter, he’d been doing a great job of not thinking too much either. Which was… good. Hopefully if he ignored the weird existential angst feeling for long enough it would go away and he’d get back into the more healthy habit of loving his life.
Which he did. 
So. 
All would be well.
As he passed through the lounge he was relieved not to find Scott there working until the early hours again. He’d seemed more tense and frowny than usual the last few days and Virgil was incredibly thankful he’d resisted the temptation to unburden himself to his big brother. The last thing that man needed was anything more to worry about.
Not that he wasn’t eaten up with guilt about it anyway. There was a good reason he was never deliberately untruthful with Scott - it felt like a betrayal even if he knew it was for the best. He was a horrible liar at the best of times, and now he could feel his face burning whenever his brother caught his eye. Every time Scott spoke to him, Virgil’s treacherous heart jumped into his mouth and he was almost overcome by the need to confess everything.
Not that there was much to tell.
Except that he was a fool who needed to get a grip and be grateful.
With stealth borne out of years of practice he crept on silent feet past the rooms of his younger brothers and paused at his own, glancing over at Scott’s. A prickle of… something ran through him and he was seized by the sudden urge to burst in and demand a big bro hug. It had been a few days, in fact, since his last. But Scott slept little enough as it was. Tomorrow, then.
Gosh he was tired. He opened the door and made a beeline for the bathroom, beginning to pull his shirt over his head as he walked. He became vaguely aware of a rustling noise from the vicinity of his right foot and shook it irritably, failing to shed whatever had got stuck to his sock. Flannel tangled over his face he reached down and removed the sock, random scrap of paper and all and abandoned it behind him. 
Once the grease was washed from his hands and teeth thoroughly brushed he drifted back into the bedroom and went to stand at the window. He squinted into the grey, his eyes finding nothing to focus on as the low lying cloud reflected the light from his bedside table straight back at him. He shivered, despite the villa’s consistent, comfortable temperature.
Tracy Island’s sub-tropical winters were very mild compared to those he’d experienced growing up, but the cooler temperatures combined with the frequent sea mists still made him long to hibernate. He pulled the blinds down and shut it out.
Flicking through the playlist on his tablet, he sought a track guaranteed to send him extra quickly into the land of nod for who knew how long he had before a rescue dragged him back into unwelcome consciousness. He smiled with satisfaction as he hit play on the snooze-jackpot - a soaring violin solo by a British composer - and collapsed face first on to his pillow to enjoy the fine arcs of spring green sound swoop and flutter around him like the songbird it celebrated.
And relax.
He was just on the edge of sleep and beginning to drool slightly when the change in texture brought by the woodwind entry nudged him awake again and he realised something was niggling at his sense of peace. With a huff he turned on to his side and opened his eyes. What had he forgotten?
The sock stared back at him.
Virgil considered himself a fairly tidy person, nothing on the military precision of his father or eldest brother but preferring a significant level of order higher than the younger two. An abandoned sock wouldn’t usually bother him however but, well, turned out a lot of irrelevant things were apparently bothering him lately.
He slid out of bed and commando crawled over to the sock in order to banish it to the laundry basket. It made a unexpected crinkly sort of noise and he pulled out the paper, realising with surprise it was a sheet of the fancy monogrammed stuff his dad had stockpiled long ago but nobody ever used in this digital age. Curious.
Humming to himself, he unfolded the note and the bottom fell out of the world.
A week’s worth of dropped eye-contact and excuses slammed into him like a runaway freight train. The background music was drowned out by a sudden high pitched ringing in his ears and a nausea that threatened to overwhelm his senses as he suddenly saw his attempts to hide the truth from his brother’s perspective. He looked at his watch and swore profusely - 3am.
How could he have been so short-sighted? So selfish? Of course Scott would interpret Virgil’s avoidance of him as a failing of his own. 
And he knew… he KNEW his big brother experienced rejection as physical pain. He may as well have kicked Scott in the stomach. In fact, that would have undoubtedly been less cruel.
He struggled back into his discarded clothes, panic making him clumsy and his mind flooded with memories of seeking out his trembling brother in the hayloft. Of finding his hero curled up in agony, borderline incoherent and paralysed by the conviction he’d let their overworked and well-meaning but infuriatingly oblivious father down *again*. That he’d never be good enough. 
It had always been Virgil’s job to look him in the eye and promise him that he was.
Not as much had altered in their adulthood as Scott seemed to believe, except that his over-achieving brother hid that pain better from the world. From everyone except Virgil. Because that certainly hadn’t changed - Virgil would always be there for Scott, would always hear that hitch in his breath, the subtle change in the melody of his voice. He would always catch him as he fell, would always seek him out and would never leave him alone.
Until now.
It must have cost his brother so much to write that note and Virgil had just… not showed up.
Stealth abandoned he raced to Scott’s door, only just restraining himself from barging straight through it - he might be peacefully asleep… maybe.
He cracked open the door and recoiled as a blade of cold damp air rushed into his face. 
The room was empty. Bedclothes neat and smoothed down, fluffy scatter cushions at 45 degree angle to the bottom edge of the pillow and… an ancient guitar propped up against the headboard. That gave Virgil pause, Scott hadn’t got that out in… a long time. He reached out and brushed his index finger across the strings. It was in tune. He’d been playing then? 
His attention was caught by the curtains billowing from the open balcony door, the luxurious material making a low whomp whomp whomp as it flapped back and forth.
His brother had returned from duty with an Air Force zero tolerance approach to clutter but a very definite inclination towards soft furnishings. He shuddered to imagine why.
Surely he wasn’t still out there at this time? In this weather?
Thrusting the drapes aside he all but threw himself on to the balcony, the exasperated reprimand almost on its way out of his lips before his brain caught up with the fact that both easy chairs were distinctly empty. Two glasses and a bottle of Virgil’s favourite whisky waited on the table between them. Unopened.
His hands white-knuckled on the balcony rail, as he peered out into the mist, racking his mind for where Scott could be - maybe he would have taken a hazardous, self-punishing run up the volcano? Would he have gone to hide on the beach? There were caves down there and some of them were tidal, would his brother be thinking straight enough to choose a safe place to tuck himself away? His heart hammered against his rib cage as he tried to work out where to start. Should he call John?
He half raised his arm to activate his comm and froze as the faintest of sounds interrupted his train of thought - a shuddering breath and a whisper of a sigh.
Virgil spun around and his already compromised ventricles were strangled even further as the shadow tucked into the tiny space between the far lounger, the wall and an outsized plant pot resolved itself into a tight ball of limbs and a pale chin just visible beneath an oversized hoodie. 
How like his commanding tower of a brother to try to make himself small.
Little music vibe note: the piece Virgil chooses is The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams
All the love to @sofasurf @astranite @womble1 @hebuiltfive for incitement their encouragement, sense checking and specifically detailed discussion of soft furnishings.
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rnbradar · 1 year
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year 1 of collecting R&B albums 📀
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hey, pssst. ride the cyclone fans.
you totally shouldn’t click on this link because it totally won’t take you to a google drive folder which totally doesn’t have a full copy of the 2016 production of Ride The Cyclone which definitely isn’t accessible to anyone with the link
because that would just be terrible
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fizzle-y · 1 year
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Its always “look at the different jane doe designs!” and never “look at the different virgil the rat designs” 😔
he's very special to me
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"Kill them with kindness" wRONG!! VIRGIL THE RAT 🐀🐀🐀🐀🎸💥🎸💥💥🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀💥🎸🎸🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀💥💥
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metamorphesque · 2 years
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embrace (melt into me)
franz kafka (letters to milena, the castle), malcolm t liepke, andy virgil, 이하이 (LeeHi) - '구원자 (Savior) (Feat. BI)
˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗    
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What if! You 🫵 had the greenest eyes 👀 and I was a swingin ⚡️space age 🌟 bachelor man 👩‍🎤 from the planet zolar 🐈? And we walked 🚶‍♂️alone and wondered why (together) ‼️
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khevras · 1 year
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i feel like tumblr would appreciate this more than twitter did
[ID: A tweet by @ khevras that reads, "'im a boy' 'im a girl' well im a rat that that has been slowly eating through the power wire of a fortune teller box eventually leading us both to our deaths" /End ID]
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eepintothewoods · 1 year
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Everything happens like in the musical but they don’t die they’re just in coma and having a shared “dream”.
And then they recover both physically and mentally :)
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idontknowreallywhy · 9 months
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A little WIP piece for our favourite Musician’s birthday.
I really really really meant to have completed the ceiling paint mystery one for today but it’s messing with me and I can’t get the ending right, so I’m compensating by starting yet another fic (with my usual music-nerd theme) promoted by my chats with the well of inspiration that is @astranite - thanks for letting me mess around with this one.
Blitzed out in my lunch break and entirely unproof-read… but if I don’t post now I’ll keep prodding it instead of actually doing my job so…
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THE SOUND
“I know what the post-flight readouts say, Brains!”
He breathed in for an adagio 4 then out for the same, allowing the white hot knot of tension between his brows to ease a little. The gap it left behind it was immediately filled with the hollowness of guilt that he’d let himself snap at his old friend. He dug his fingernails into his palms and summoned the overly-calm baritone that was most effective when cajoling his elder brother into something resembling a reasonable response to whatever the latest apparently world-ending catastrophe was.
“I trust your creations and your protocols, I do, but I need you to trust me too. I know her and I know she sounded… off.”
“Off” was an understatement. Two had been shrieking at him all the way home. Oh, her habitual E-pitch purr was there, and the usual harmonics from ploughing through pockets of turbulence. Even the faint echo that told him her fuel tank was nearing empty… that was all a familiar part of the symphony. It was the extra note that made his teeth sting. That sharp wavering whine which defied his attempts to fix a pitch and filled his vision with flashing daggers of sickly neon green instead of his girl’s usual rich rainforest blanket.
Scott’s eyes flicked over to Gordon with an unspoken question. His wingman’s shoulders were a picture of awkwardness and he appeared to be trying to dig through the floor of the hangar with the toe of his boot.
“I couldn’t hear it guys… but you know me, I’ve got the musical subtlety of a rock. I shouldn’t get a say. Maybe we shouldn’t take her up again until Virg has had a look?”
Virgil caught his eye and focussed so hard on trying to convey his overwhelming gratitude that he moo-ed slightly. Coughing loudly to cover his own throat’s betrayal, he straightened and turned to his Commander whose exasperation was already tangible:
“I recommend that Two be grounded until Brains and I can complete a full systems check.”
Scott raised an eyebrow then his expression softened and he delivered a #7 variant of the Scott Tracy “Fine”. Virgil knew from the mid-range pitch combined with the slight increase in airflow towards the end of the word that this specific “Fine” meant “I should really be grumpier about this but I’m too tired and I know you’ll win me over anyway because you’re adorable”.
His long-suffering elder brother spun on his heel and tapped his comm as he walked away:
“John, Two is offline for 24 hours, please reroute anything One and Shadow can’t handle to the GDF.”
Virgil’s gaze had already narrowed on his beloved green behemoth as he pondered the most likely source of the disturbance when he sensed movement on the ground behind him. Gordon was knelt down on one knee, head bowed and the largest wrench in the workshop balanced on his upturned palms.
“Your battle sword, my liege.”
[Nerd note: Adagio is generally accepted to be between 55-65 beats per minute. So it’s a 4 second breath in.]
[Lore note: there are actually 16 Scott Tracy “Fines” and only Virgil can distinguish them all]
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I like you, have some RTC cast photos!
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ridethecycloneasks · 15 days
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ATTENTION RIDE THE CYCLONE FANS
You can now ask all your funky little questions to the kids who experienced the most tragedy on this carnival ride. As of right now they are waiting..
REBLOGS AND NOTES ARE APPRECIATED!!
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shiftythrifting · 8 months
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A "bugged" Watergate carpet souvenir
Box from a Catholic t-shirt subscription service
Ominous doll
The Eternal Teacher's Lament
Happy Meal toy for Batman Returns (note the Frisbee batdisc text)
Assorted trance CDs that I bought
Austin, TX
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wulanvansunshine · 12 days
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No line from Ride the Cyclone makes me emotional…
“we listen to you now space Jesus”
sobs
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real-odark · 1 month
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what if you ☝️wanted to go to heaven☁️ but god said, abandoned warehouse with ominous fortune-telling novelty machine and anthropomorphized bass-playing rat
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https://amanda-386.ftgae.xyz/k/i31a0XU
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