Oh, thank you! I'm glad to have captured that steadiness between them and the hope too. I wrote this as a sort of cheer-myself-up exercise, but ended up feeling a touch melancholy regardless. :) Oh, boys.

Your comments on my stylistics make me extra super happy. I have a fairly strong internal sense of rhythm and sound in language when I'm writing, but I worry it sometimes ends up becoming too self-conscious or distracting to readers--and then I do odd things with punctuation to service it. Anyway, knowing you (as a podficcer) appreciate the way I glue words together is awesome. Thank you so much for your comments on this count. <3 I'm very happy you enjoyed the fic!