Lisa would give Len so much shit for falling for a cop of his own tho (sorry, CSI)
oh SO true. the fact that barry is the flash doesn’t even register in comparison—at least being a vigilante is illegal. len is in love with a COP (not a cop) half his AGE (not half his age). lisa is going to win every argument about everything for the rest of their lives. len doesn’t get her a nice enough birthday present one year and lisa is like “aw did you spend all your money on your jailbait piglet this year?” and barry is like “hi lisa i’m right here and also 30. do you want your present from me or not” and she’s like “wow did anyone else hear that ‘oink oink’ just now? 🤔 also yes”
I had this in my drafts forever and was too anxious to post it, but what with quarantine I’ve been going through and throwing some stuff in my queue so, uh, enjoy? I don’t write usually, but I just wanted to get out my thoughts on what might’ve happened post-FOR and pre s1 of lot.
___
After Cisco pulls the bomb from Lisa’s head and the Flash locks her brother away she waits, waits, and waits for their signal. It doesn’t come. It never comes.
She knows he has people who can get a message to her, something is wrong. She uses their system in reverse, and has his boys get a message to him. Less than 4 hours later and her burner phone rings. She picks up the call and already begins to fill her lungs with bluster and annoyance when she hears the smallest breath, the exhale after pain subsides. It sounds like the culmination of the last 30 years of her life, and the last 43 of his.
She swallows, and doesn't have to wait long before he says rough and distant “He's dead.”
She touches the ugly gash on her clavicle without thinking, without even blinking, feeling hollow and alone.
“Cisco didn't..” she doesn’t finish her sentence, and let’s the air take it’s space.
A beat and a nasally sound “’Told them not to.”
She listens for more, but nothing comes. She might as well be on the phone with a mountain.
“... It's done Lis.” And something feels wrong about that, something sounds wrong about him.
“Nothing'll ever be done!” She snaps quick and forbidding, like trying to hold onto a mans arm whose about to jump from the tallest skyscraper.
More nothingness. Her brother always was good at freezing, at
staying so still everything around him just stopped too. Sometimes, when he was still like this she could hear their father’s boots stop their advance, and then retreat, and Lisa's heart would be still too.
“I know what this call is, Lenny, and I'm saying no.”
A breath whistled in through a nose, and a sneer that pulls at the corners of his words.“You almost died Lisa.”
She feels the dry humorless laugh bubble out of her in her distress. “Not the first time.”
“The last time, more like.” Unyielding.
“You can't shut me out of your world.”
A quiet ticking, and then three, and then the sound of a crowd of incarcerated men jeering and shouting on the other end in the distance, the golden sun playing with the dust in the dirty kitchen of their keystone safehouse.
“Mick knows not to call on you.”
“Lenny-” Softer than before, urgent and pleading like that little girl pulling for her brothers shirt sleeve the last time Lewis kicked him out.
“You're out Lisa, for good.” Steady and sharp.
She can feel fear creeping up her chest, and a distance too great to fill forming between her and her brother, and so she pulls.
“What about our plan, huh? What about getting what was ours,
what about that new family you promised me?”
There are tears in her eyes and loneliness in her throat slowly choking her.
She tries to hold in the flood, but unlike her brother she never learned
that lesson.
And she can hear his mind working around her words, twisting them, putting a spin on them, one where she deserves family, and happiness, but he never will.
She thinks he'll deflect, but then she hears it, something she hasn't heard since they were kids; pain she forgot he knew how to show. The sound so small and choked that anyone else would miss it, and then she breaks and sobs openly into the receiver, clutching the phone like he could feel it if only she held on tight enough.
“Never would've been good enough... Not for you.”
She wails, and wishes she wasn't so weak. She can feel every old scare flare up and ache when the whimper hits the back of her throat.
“Lenny, don’t.” It’s a bitten off plea, and her face is hot with rolling tears and mucus draining from her nose. She hears the hint of a smile when he finally speaks.
“When you're out, you're out... Live a better life.”
“No, Lenny I can'-”
“Bye, baby sis.”
The call disconnects and she drops the phone like it’s burned her. Her
hand coming up to cover her mouth where the sobs and whines are still coming up with the force of her grief.
A fic every month for the rest of the year? We will be FED 😫🙏🏻🎉 (begging the universe for nothing to go wrong)
🥰🥰 aaaa thank you!! i already picked out which fic it's gonna be for august and started writing the scenes it still needs, i'm feeling really good about this goal! (<- classic day one goal thought but still)
i keep going back and forth on whether to say which one it is, because on one hand accountability, on the other hand, i love changing my mind <3 ...okay, i just read that back to myself, and obviously accountability wins. so! new snippet of the beginning of the 'coldflash babysitting temporarily de-aged!lisa' fic below the cut :)
The meta wasn’t technically de-aging people, as Harry Wells had been reminded everyone for a week straight. But understanding that “technically” required more knowledge of cell biology than Barry had been willing to keep in his brain since college, so he (and everyone else) had just taken to saying “de-aging” more quietly, and only after making sure Harry wasn’t standing behind them, first.
Even if Barry had wanted to wrap his head around the details at some point, he’d missed his chance. Because earlier in the week, the question had been academic. But as of that morning? They had bigger problems.
Or, smaller problems, depending on how you looked at the situation. And Barry had looked at the situation a lot of ways. He’d been having a hard time looking at much else, actually.
Admittedly, Leonard Snart hanging around STAR Labs had that effect on Barry on a normal day. (Which, was just practical, alright? He’d steal something if Barry wasn’t watching him. Or take all the screws out of Cisco’s chair. Again.) But more to the point, it wasn’t a normal day. And if it was normally hard for Barry to look away when Leonard was poking around the Cortex, then it was impossible when Leonard was sitting on the floor instead, cross-legged and patiently teaching a knee-high bundle of curls how to cheat at Go Fish.
Lisa could barely hold the hand of cards Leonard had dealt her, but she shuffled through them clumsily in her lap, then looked up at Leonard with a defiant lift of her chin. “Gimme another card.”
Leonard dropped an elbow to one knee, then rested his chin in his hand. He hadn’t been de-aged a day; the early streaks of silver were still prominent in his hair (moreso, in the two years since he’d been back in Central City). No one on Team Flash had bothered asking why the meta hadn’t de-aged them both, even though they'd been together when it had happened; no one had needed to. The answer was ten feet away from Barry: Leonard, sitting on the floor of the most secure building in the entire city, armed to the teeth with at least eleven weapons (at Barry’s last count), and playing card games with a five-year-old. Two pieces off the board for the price of one.
“And why would I give you another card?” Leonard's question was more of a prompt, his tone indulgent.
Lisa wasn't moved. “'Cause I have to have six.”
“I dealt you six.”
Lisa held her cards up with both hands, inexpertly fanned. “Nuh-uh. You gave me five.”
When Leonard reached for her cards, she rocked back and hugged them to her chest.
“No cheating!"
Leonard’s lips tugged up into a smirk. “Wouldn’t dream of it.’
Lisa broke, giggling, and Leonard pretended not to notice.
“Well, fair’s fair,” he said. “You do need six.” He revealed the deck in his other hand with a magician’s flourish, then held it out to her.
Lisa put her cards face-down on the floor, going serious again, her full attention on the deck in front of her. She put one small hand on the deck, squinted as she placed a thumb and pinky on opposite edges of the top card, then glanced up at Leonard.
Leonard was making a show of looking off to the side at a nearby computer monitor, which had been cycling through a screensaver for at least an hour. So Lisa made her move, slowly picking up her hand, her grip wobbling as she tried to keep the edges of the two cards she’d just lifted off the top lined up with each other.
Without so much as glancing in her direction, Leonard murmured, barely loud enough for Barry to catch: “Don’t get greedy.”
Lisa frowned down at her new cards. She turned them over to check the numbers—Barry had been wrong, there were three, and he had to pass a hand over his mouth to hide a grin—then put two down on her pile on the floor and returned the third to the top of the deck.
“Okay. I got six now.”
Leonard looked back at her and cocked his head. “No. You’ve got eight.”
“Do not!”
Leonard swept her pile of cards up off the floor before she could slap both tiny hands down on top of them. When he held them up to her accusingly, Lisa crossed her arms and refused to look at him.
Leonard waited her out, amusement barely held at bay behind a mask of cool patience.
Lisa gave up after a few seconds. She looked over the cards Leonard was holding out, then looked up at him, expression victorious. “Told you! That’s not eight. It’s seven.”
When she reached out to reclaim them, Leonard caught one of her wrists, feather-light between two fingers. A request, not a restraint. Lisa scowled but held still, and Leonard pulled another card out of her sleeve.
“That’s eight," he said, then tapped her on the nose with the ace.
Her affronted expression was too much; Barry laughed. Two identical blue gazes flashed his way, wary and watchful—a pair of wild animals that Barry had just spooked with a loud noise.
Hey why would you end the sweet hc about len being a bartender with “He’ll walk through that door any day now” why would you do that
because i'm sad and i'm taking you all down with me <3
this is like my third bartender len hc post, eventually i'll just write the fic and i will somehow give it a happy ending i promise
like.... barry's powers are on the fritz, he needs all the help he can get, and then he overshoots a simple jump back in time and ends up in '94 instead of 2014. he doesn't even realize it (thanks, 90s fashion making a comeback) until he arrives at saints & sinners and it looks totally different
and he hears a familiar drawl behind him say, "looking for someone?" and he turns around and gapes at the 22-year-old version of len standing behind the bar, dish towel over his shoulder, who smirks at him and adds, "or is it my lucky day?"
halfway through their conversation, in which barry is trying not to 1) change the timeline, or 2) stare at len's bare forearms where he's got his sleeves pushed carelessly up to his elbows, a little voice pipes up from behind the bar like "who is it! i wanna see!"
and len rolls his eyes but reaches down and hoists a tiny, six-year old lisa up onto his hip
she's wearing a paper burger king crown on top of a wild head of dark curls and she regards barry very seriously for a few seconds, and barry is already having a breakdown and then she nods up at len and goes, "yeah, he's cute" and wiggles out of len's grip with one hand on her crown to keep it in place
and len smiles after her for a second and then looks up at barry with a hint of that smile still on his lips & says "kid sister" with a meaningful look, like he's clarifying something, and barry is like "i have to go right now immediately" & knocks over the barstool as he scrambles to escape before he does something stupid like sleep with leonard snart twenty years before they're supposed to meet
he gets two steps out the back door before he sees the waverider parked at the end of the alley, and he hears a familiar drawl behind him say, "looking for someone?" and when he turns around, len—his len, a len that shouldn't be alive—is leaning against the bricks next to the door, inspecting the handle of the cold gun, and he doesn't look up as he says, "knew i remembered that face from somewhere, first time i saw you with the cowl off"
and barry doesn't know what else to say so he just says "you're not supposed to be alive"
and len glances pointedly around the alleyway, the dated beer cans and cigarette cartons, and finally, finally meets barry's gaze with a smirk and says, "then i guess we're both doing something we're not supposed to tonight"
he pushes off the wall and brushes past barry on his way toward the waverider, then glances back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow in the universal expression for "you just gonna stand there all night?" and barry trips over his feet in his rush to follow after him
lisa gets len a card for mother’s day every year & he always rolls his eyes and throws it away (he does not recycle. he’s a villain) until one year she loses track of the date and forgets mother’s day entirely
and len acts weird the whole day, just like hovering around her apartment and generally being a nuisance, lecturing her about how she should wipe the place down for fingerprints every week so she’s less likely to forget somewhere if she has to leave in a hurry until finally she’s like “okay, thanks a lot mom”
and then she freezes and slowly turns in her chair to look at him and is like “oh my god. are you waiting for your card?” and he’s like “…i have no idea what you’re talking about” and she’s like “you ARE” and he just turns on his heel and leaves in a prickly huff and she laughs so hard she falls out of her chair
the next day len opens the door of the safe house he’s staying in & there’s a hideously ostentatious mother’s day bouquet sitting on his doormat. it’s all lavender and sunflowers and there’s a teddy bear stuffed in their somewhere. he rolls his eyes and chews lisa out over text for drawing attention to one of his safe houses and then he brings the bouquet inside anyway
Hi here's my money for that Barry and Len "guilt versus shame" essay. Thanks! 💰💰💰💰💰 (I drew the dollar signs on the bags myself. I'm crafty)
Anon when I said essay, I meant essay. But alright. Here you go. for you and your hand-drawn dollar signs. Come, take this journey with me. (A journey of character analysis for fun—please, no one take this as reliable psychology.)
As I said, I consider the main conflict between Barry and Leonard not one of good versus evil, but of guilt versus shame. Specifically, the difference between them is that Barry is a character motivated by guilt, while Len is motivated by shame.
(And to get this out of the way - I’m not talking about sexuality, but how Barry and Len relate to the world and other people. I don’t think Len is the least bit ashamed of his sexuality; Wentworth Miller has always said that Len is someone who knows exactly who he is, and I think that’s true).
A more accurate way of talking might be to say that guilt-driven characters are motivated by love, while shame-driven characters are motivated by respect.
I’m going to start with Barry, because guilt-motivated characters tend to be much more straight-forward than shame-driven characters. Barry grew up (with some bumps along the way) in supportive, loving homes. His parents, and later Joe, always treated him with love, which allows Barry to love himself and other people.
Treating children with love is the most basic respect their guardians can afford them, and they’ll always have that basic core of respect to fall back on in the face of outside adversity. (Barry is remarkably hard to ruffle with insults—antagonists always have to target the people he loves, because he just… does not rise to the bait when it’s just his own pride on the line.)
This kind of early exposure to love and respect are fundamental to being able to feel guilt about harming others later in life. Barry was raised to respect and love other people (in the general, “love your fellow man” sense), so he would feel guilty if he hurt someone innocent. The core sense of self-respect and self-love that Barry developed in childhood means Barry’s sense of self can always take the hit when he feels guilty about hurting other people.
Guilt makes us feel, temporarily, unloveable. But because Barry was raised to feel fundamentally deserving of love, he can afford to feel briefly unloveable when he hurts other people—it just means he needs to make amends, and then he’ll be worthy of that love again.
That’s why Barry’s a guilt-driven (or love-driven) character: when he interacts with the world, the thing he’s most afraid of losing is love. He’s never been put in a position where he feels like what he’s missing is respect.
And that’s where he and Len differ. Len’s not guilt- or love-driven; he’s shame-driven.
Len appears to feel zero guilt for hurting innocent people, at least when we first meet him in season 1. And the reason for that is Lewis. As I mentioned, love is a prerequisite for guilt. And unlike Barry, Len wasn’t brought up in a loving home. I highly doubt that Lewis’s love for Len was ever freely given, even before he became physically abusive. And if it was, that sense of self was absolutely ripped away from Len when that abuse started.
As I mentioned, treating children with love is the most basic respect their guardians can give them. By withholding that love, Lewis taught Len that he was inherently worthy of neither love nor respect. Raised in that environment, where violence was the way Len saw power exerted over others, the natural response was for Len to seek out respect, not love. He had nothing to gain from loving others—and therefore, from feeling guilt—because he’d already been taught he could survive without love. What he couldn’t survive without was respect, because disrespect meant becoming the object of violence—first from his father, and later, from the criminal justice system.
(Prison is a conversation for another day, but suffice to say, the dehumanizing treatment incarcerated people face parallels that childhood lack of love, robs them of the self-respect and self-love they need to have healthy relationships with other people, and increases the likelihood that they’ll commit violent crimes, not reduces it).
So Len did whatever it took to survive, and survival meant accumulating respect. There’s an obvious cure to this obsession with respect, of course: 1) love, and 2) safety.
Now, as eager as I am to jump into how Barry helped Len break the cycle of violence, Barry’s not the source of love I want to talk about here. Barry comes in later; when I talk about the love that saved Leonard, I’m talking about Lisa.
Because, listen—I’m as exhausted as you are by the trope of “female loved one is male character’s humanity,” especially where, like in some of the Flash comics, it means killing off Lisa to make Leonard a more ruthless (and, I guess the the theory goes, interesting?) villain. But Lisa isn’t just some crack in Len’s armor; she fundamentally changed Len’s life when she was born.
Len was already somewhere between thirteen and sixteen by the time Lisa was born; for the sake of convenience, let’s put him around 15. (For some more detailed meta about the Sniblings' ages, check out this excellent post by @coldtomyflash). If Len was five when Lewis went to prison, and ten when Lewis came out a much more violent man (see: everything I said about prison earlier), that means Len experienced several years of incredibly traumatic treatment before Lisa was born.
He and Mick were in juvie together at least once when Len was still young enough to be “the smallest kid in there,” and Len was nearly killed. Mick saved him, yes, but the experience had to further numb Len to guilt and reinforce that violence and respect were the only real paths to survival.
And then, Lisa. Len clearly, canonically loves Lisa from the moment she’s born. We know nothing about either of their mothers (and it is pretty likely, given the 15-year age gap between them, that they have different mothers), but they’re clearly both out of the picture—Lisa says Len raised her. Len raised her! Fifteen years old, three years away from being free and clear of Lewis’s house forever, and Len stays to raise her.
Lisa is absolutely the one person keeping Len from sliding fully head-first into the path carved for him by Lewis and reinforced by the prison system. He is still primarily shame- and respect-driven—we see him kill people without any guilt, hell, he tries to derail a train with children on board in season one just to see what Barry will do.
But Lisa taught Len that he’s deserving of love and capable of loving others, and because of that, Len cannot, will not respect Lewis for his violence he rains on them both.It leaves open a door in his mind: Lisa doesn’t deserve to be treated that way, which could mean, if he could ever afford to consider it, that he didn’t deserve to be treated that way, either.
It’s why Barry is so unbelievably smug at the end of “Family of Rogues.” He’s figured it out; he wouldn’t put it in terms like guilt and shame, but he’s cracked it all the same. He always knew Len was like him, was someone who had been forced into violence by his circumstances, and now he has proof. Barry is remarkably unconcerned that Len shot Lewis; he’s briefly surprised, sure, but by the end of the episode he’s visiting Len in Iron Heights and goading him about the good in him.
And that’s where Barry comes in. He’s the crucial second ingredient to that cure for shame—he’s the safety.
He blazes into Len’s life and praises him for things no one else ever praised him for: for his morals, for his mercy, for the way he loves Lisa. He gives him an acceptable out to stop killing (he appeals to his vanity, says he’s good enough at what he does that he doesn’t need to hurt innocents, and they both know it’s an excuse), and he makes it clear that he respects not Len’s capacity for violence, but his desire to escape the need for it.
He also offers Len protection to start making that transition. Len knows, even if neither of them say it, that Barry would drop everything to help him if he called. When Len’s reluctant do-gooding puts him in harm’s way, like with King Shark in ARGUS, Barry does drop everything. He gives up a tool that could save Iris’s life to save Len’s instead. This is not me hating on westallen at all—Barry’s sense of obligation to Len is just that strong. He knows he’s put Len on slippery ground by helping extract him from the safety net he’d built himself out of violence.
And that’s Barry’s guilt drive in action—because yeah, he loves Len. He cares about him, and he respects him, and that’s love to Barry. He just wants to give Len the chance to love people that way, too. And in the end, Len, despite all his misgivings, ends up letting him.
hello ! please tell me anything you want about the snart siblings. headcanons. anything they’ve said or done that made you think. ANYTHING please i’m starving
Ooh well, one of the things that's always interested me is something we didn't get to see on screen: how Len’s relationship with Lisa changes after he kills Lewis. (tw: discussion of child abuse and parent death)
Len all but raised her; Lisa’s about fifteen years his junior, so there’s a strong parent-child element there, not just siblings. There were periods he was gone, though, and those complicated their relationship, times he was in jail and times he ran, because he was young and didn’t know how to take care of a kid—Lewis certainly hadn’t taught him.
Lewis going away for long stretches put a huge strain on Len to take care of Lisa in her formative years, but they were also some of the only times they felt safe at home. Lisa remembers those as some of the happiest times in her childhood, and Len never mentions the multiple jobs, the other things he had to do to make ends meet, barely older than a kid himself and trying to keep child protective services off their back.
Len worries about what Lewis will do when he comes back after a few years to find Lisa is growing up beautiful, and is resolved to kill him if he detects the faintest hint of that danger. But Lewis doesn’t care about Lisa; he’s never had patience for a daughter, he doesn’t bother training her and Len always puts himself forward to keep Lewis from bringing her on heists.
So Lewis doesn’t care at all about teenage Lisa, still comes roaring after her with broken bottles and belts when Len isn’t there to get between them. Even when Len’s an adult, Lewis is bigger than him, has weight on him, but Len is fast and dangerous and Lewis stops coming after him and starts targeting Lisa instead.
Lisa runs away and Len feels like it’s a failure, hates himself for being relieved. She takes time in National City, years; payphone calls while Len would drive across the country if she just gave the word, needs to see that she’s alright; she’s too good of a liar over the phone, and he never gets anything real out of her.
Then Lewis gets an eight year sentence and Lisa breezes back into Central like she simply decided it was time to live there for a while. She’s twenty-two, a worrying beauty, with keenly weaponized femininity and ruthless ambition to take exactly what she wants from whoever she wants. She demands a place on his crew and Len turns her away, so she seduces the plans out of one of his crew and robs the place an hour before he does, lets him show up to an empty vault.
After that, he lets her in on low-profile jobs. Lisa tests the boundaries, tries to slip his plans every now and then to keep him on his toes, to undercut his authority a bit. She’s the only one Len allows that from; it’s sibling rivalry.
When he kills Lewis, things must change. Lisa’s shown an inclination to trust Team Flash, is friendly with Cisco, but shows no regret for her line of work. She’s only ever been mistreated by men in her life (Len and Mick the only exceptions, at first, then Cisco, then the Flash).
So when Len starts going soft (and he is going soft. He wants to be better, wants to take control of his destiny. He won’t kill innocents, he stops the others from doing it. He talks about the Flash with respect and something like envy. He’s afraid, but changing.), Lisa is troubled by it. It upsets their dynamic, he’s less tolerant of her deviations from the plan. More controlled. Striving towards something. For the first time in their lives, he has something to prove just to himself.
Then their father is dead, and Len did that. Lisa isn’t sad, she’s relieved, but it reopens that wound. It’s a sick feeling realizing she’s an orphan, there’s loss even if it’s not grief.
She hears Len goes quietly for the crime, and Lisa can’t visit but he does call. They speak in code; she’s angry at him for getting caught and his voice is strange: he’s in prison to give himself time to repent, to give himself time to think about what he’s going to do when he gets out. He hasn’t made the decision yet how much to help Team Flash, but Barry’s offer is chasing itself in circles in his mind. So Lisa hears the change and doesn’t know how to move forward without his guidance. She takes up Rogue heists while he’s away, runs with Hartley and Shawna and a few of Len’s crew who respect the blood and her strategic mind.
Her and Len are going to have to hash this out when he gets out, can’t keep having this cyclical conversations on the phone, where he always asks about casualties and what she’s heard from Cisco lately. (Cisco is still wary but allows her company over coffee. Cisco mentions that The Flash really believes in Len, in both of them. Lisa says they didn’t ask for that, they are who they are, thanks very much. Cisco backs off but doesn’t retract his statement. He makes a joke, he’s just saying, he has a design for her costume in mind. And he can do one better than that parka. Lisa gives him an arch look, and they change the subject.)
She’s more in touch with her guilt than Len is, more conflicted about the people she’s killed. She doesn’t let herself dwell on it, but she’s aware that it’s there, and that she’s running from it. So Len is more getting to where Lisa is, which embarrasses him, and takes away some of the stability Lisa has always relied on. It takes time to find their new normal, but Lisa loves Len, and is willing to see these changes through. Len, again, is embarrassed by what amounts to admitting he was wrong, each instance of doing good feeling glaringly obvious and incriminating, because of decades of being trained never to show weakness.
They get to normal eventually, but never talk about it aside from a single comment over dinner. Len mentions something they need to account for to keep the Flash off their backs during the next heist, and Lisa down at her food for a long moment, then glances up at him. This is after Mardon breaks him out, post-Lewis’s death, after almost a year has passed and they’re settling into their new roles, still a little shaky but almost there. Len gives her a flat “What?” and she cocks her head with a smile like she’s just realized something funny, and says, “Sometimes I think that brat’s the best thing that ever happened to us.”
It cuts Len deep, he goes still. The idea that Barry not only changed him, but also changed his and Lisa’s relationship. And they are better; they’re eating dinner together at her apartment, a quiet night, no heat on either of them. Their bastard father is dead and they have enough money to keep them going for years if they decide to take a break, thanks to Barry’s agreement not to chase them down after hours following a successful heist. After a few long moments, Len just spears another piece of food, doesn’t disagree, and it’s as good as an acknowledgement.
(And then he doesn't join the Legends, because, sorry, this man is an anxious control freak and he's not leaving Lisa alone without backup or any way to reach him. And she would probably punch him for trying. It's them against the world, exactly like he always promised her.)
We have the same face, I laid awake
As someone shoved you up against a wall
Quarantined in a bad dream
He's half the man, and you're twice as tall
Up the Wolves, The Mountain Goats
We're gonna commandeer the local airwaves
To tell the neighbors what's been going on
And they will shake their heads and wag their bony fingers
In all the wrong directions, and by daybreak we'll be gone
None of Us, Fruit Bats
And please be careful
When putting your heart out there
Because in this world there are bound to be thieves
You say you're never gonna fall for that
But you haven't seen it all yet
Animal Mask, The Mountain Goats
Frog mask and yellow cape, so desperate to escape
I came to you, hands wrapped in adhesive tape
That was when we were young and green
In the dawning hours of our team
Anxious Animal, Syvia
It’s my shadow in the dark
It’s an audible:
“You will never be enough
You will not amount to much”
Grace, Florence + The Machine
Grace, I know you carry us
Grace, and it was such a fucking mess
Oh Grace, I don't say it enough
Grace, you are so loved
Glory and Gore, Lorde
No-one 'round here's good at keepin' their eyes closed
The sun's startin' to light up when we're walking home
Tired little laughs, gold-lie promises
We'll always win at this, I don't ever think about death
It's alright if you do, it's fine
Dinu Lipatti’s Bones, The Mountain Goats
We stank of hair dye and ammonia
We hid ourselves away from view
You were looking at the void and seldom blinking
The best that I could do was to train my eyes on you
