A/N: Haven't had time to proof-read yet, sorry. I'll do it later.

"Fuck."

Sitting around the breakfast table with sheepish looks on their raccoon-like faces were most of the DJs. Kevin's 'fail-safe' pen had failed to come off. Carl nodded in response to my expletive. I grinned. "When Dad sees you guys…"

"Yup." The Count looked thoroughly unperturbed at the news that his death had been sealed by a few people's reluctance to accept that Kevin was genuinely, irretrievably thick.

I grabbed a bowl and sat down next to Carl. "How hard did you scrub it?" I asked, poking his face gingerly. He flinched.

"Hard," he said in a hurt voice. I stifled a giggle.

"Oh, you guys are screwed."

"It was worth it, though," Simon affirmed. The others nodded emphatically. "And we're not going to let you get off scott-free, Court, you know that." I grinned as he raised his voice so everyone could hear. "All right, guys? If Quentin asks, it was Courtenay's idea."

"What was Courtenay's idea?" We al jumped in unison at the sound of Dad's voice. Angus picked up a cereal box and covered his face. Carl tried to hide his in his breakfast bowl, with little success owing to the amount of milk still left in the bowl. Kevin, bless his soul, sat still with a surprised look on his face, the wide rings of black around his eyes making him look even more owlish than usual.

"Oh," Dad said in amused surprise. Then he shrugged it off. "You should have a listen to Radio Sunshine," he said in a mock-worried tone. "I'm afraid they've gone rather… off the ball."

We all laughed, even Dad. "Turn it on," the Count said eagerly. Dad complied, and sat down at the head of the table.

"I'm sorry about this, folks," the radio burbled happily, "but we seem to be having a few technical tantrums this merry morrow." I made a face at Simon. "But let's move on, let's groove on – here's the new sensational sound from the Move! This is Night of Fear."

I snorted. I'd replaced that with a Christmas carol myself.

"And… no, it's not!" Simon exclaimed triumphantly as someone's grainy recording of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree echoed around the cabin. "I think it's Brenda Lee." Angus and I mimed stashing guns back in our pockets.

A new voice, deeper but just as mindlessly cheerful, came on as the record cut off sharply. "Oh-kay!" it laughed. "Everything is copa sette – because Big Dave is here to the rock and roll rescue!"

Dave blew a raspberry at it. "And let's listen to the palatable platter known as Gary Puckett while Bernard tries to figure out where he left his brain this morning!" There was a smattering of nervous, over-enthusiastic laughter. "And naughty Gary," the voice continued, "is very interested in a very young girl."

I laughed again. I'd seen that record on top of a pile with Gavin Kavanagh carved artfully into it. Sure enough, the record stuck halfway through the very first note. Gavin and I high-fived, awkwardly avoiding each other's eyes.

"Ohoho," Big Dave's voice came back on. "Gary seems to be stuck in that relationship, huh…"

"Not as stuck as you're going to be," the Count muttered.

"But you know who's not stuck in anything," the voice returned, "because they have the best product in the entire world…"

I glanced at Dad. This was going better than any of us could have hoped. Dave chuckled at the sound of his own voice on the radio. "Now this is what I call 'Big Dave'," I said happily.

"Tense? Need to relax? No better way to do so than Night cigarettes. They'll give you cancer, and then you can sleep forever… oh… because you'll be dead."

The Count slapped Dave on the back and took another drag on his own ever-present fag. I couldn't help but giggle at the irony.

Someone on the other side switched off the ad and broke the silence. I sat up eagerly; Brainless Bernard was back. "Okay! I think it's time we went to the weather! Katie, how's the weather looking?"

"Oh!" Gavin called silence over the triumphant chatter that had broken out over the advert. "The weather!"

We were silent, waiting for Katie, everyone's eyes flicking between Dad and Mark. After the tuneless introductory jingle, ("the sun always shines on Radio Sunshine!") there was a pause. Radio Rock held its breath.

"Well the weather is…" the airy, ditzy-blonde voice paused again, then broke into a ridiculous giggle. "Well, it's great. And last night…" the beginnings of a snigger started up in Angus' throat. "Was…" we all looked at Mark with some sort of crude expectancy.

"Heaven."

Much back-slapping and high-fiving ensued. I tell you, a response like that almost made me want to sleep with him, just to see what all the fuss was about. "How do you do that, Mark?" Felicity asked.

Mark either didn't hear it over the congratulations, or just decided not to reply.

"Right," Dad said in a businesslike manner, making us all jump and sober up quickly: now we were in for it, surely. "With Radio Sunshine taken care of –"

"You say that like it was your idea," I butted in, surprised.

Dad smiled thinly. "You all thought I'd be angry, didn't you?"

We nodded dumbly. "If you'd done what you did, and failed, I'd be angry." His grin widened. "But as it stands, I think something had to be done about that… menace… and you handled it in style. Now I think most of you could do with a rest…" he cast an amused look at those of us with blackened faces. "And a decent facewash."

The Count, Dave and I tittered at Angus, Simon, Carl and Kevin, all now rubbing their faces ruefully.

"So Radio Rock rules the waves once more, and 'life will be ecstasy, you and me, endlessly, grooving'."

Gavin chuckled. "Yeah," he complimented, and as though that was case closed, Dad switched off the buzzing radio and left the room.


Smoking may not be terribly good for you, (though the Count was the worst chain-smoker I'd ever seen and he wasn't dead yet) but it was quite beautiful. It was dark, and I dangled my fag above black waves as I leaned over the deckrail on the side of the boat. The lights above the cabin doors caught the smoke as it twisted and spiralled into the ether. Lovely.

I heard a door click and the telltale sounds of Cuban heels on the iron deck. I glanced around to see Gavin join me tentatively. "Wonder if they've found our fish yet," he commented.

I smirked. "I don't think they'll ever find yours," I scolded, "but someone'll have gotten a huge surprise when they found mine."

He chuckled. "I don't think they'll be messing with the Count again anytime soon."

"I don't think anybody will be messing with the Count for a while," I mused. I did, however, realise that the apparent end of my vendetta against Gavin also marked the end of the truce in the mock-battle between the Count and I. "Except me, of course. But I'm fearless."

He smiled, but he didn't understand. "Courtenay, I just wanted to apologise," he said. I took a drag on my cigarette coolly and raised an eyebrow for him to continue. "I know Quentin threatened to kick you off the boat after Elenore…" he decided, wisely, not to finish that sentence. "And I know that it was entirely my fault."

I waited, but that appeared to be it. "You know it's really uncanny when you apologise, don't you," I said ambiguously. He chuckled again.

"It's not something I do easily, or regularly," he admitted. "But I think it's important we… get along. I treated you differently to the other DJs and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

I grinned, tapping ash into the North Sea. "Thank you," I said seriously, taking another drag. "You're right," I added. It is imperative we get along, or Dad will probably make good on his threat to get rid of one of us, and despite his big talk that time, it won't be me." I sighed, eyeing him critically. "You survived without this place for two years. I could never do that."

"Dunno if I could do it again, either," he mused. I looked at him, his strong profile framed against the dark, almost handsome in a rugged sort of way. "I left two years ago to find some sort of meaning in life, you know?" he gazed absently out into the night. "Two years later I finally realised that the only place I'd ever find it was the one I'd left to look."

I smiled. That was oddly poetic; maybe Gavin really wasn't that bad. "A friend of mine once said, 'life should have music'. I didn't really understand what she meant… I said, 'life does have music', and she said 'no, I mean like in the background all the time, like a movie." I lifted the cigarette to my lips again. "But it does, you know? You just have to be willing to listen."

"The thing that makes sense of this crazy world," he said, meeting my gaze for the first time, "is rock and roll."

I smiled. Neither of us said anything for a while; in the comfortable silence, my attention fell back onto the prettiness of the smoke curling away from the point of my cigarette. "You know what I really want to be able to do?" I said confessionally.

"What?"

"Blow smoke rings."

Gavin chuckled, hesitated, then carefully plucked the smoking cigarette from my fingers and took a long drag. I watched, wide-eyed, as he puckered up his lips and puffed; from those lips whooshed a perfect doughnut-shape.

My mouth fell open. "Oh my God," I said excitedly. "How'd you do that?" He grinned.

"You just take a really big breath and…" he took another drag on my cigarette and blew another one.

"That's fantastic," I cried, taking the cigarette back and inhaling. I tried to imitate his lip action, but all that came out of my mouth was the usual cloud of smoke.

"No," he said, "you've got to make the ring in your mouth first, and then sort of pop it out. You can't blow it out or it dissipates." I struggled not to laugh as I tried again. This time I was rewarded with a fat, shaky doughnut. I whooped in excitement and offered him the cigarette again.

"It works even better with coke," he said idly, repeating the miracle. I laughed. He handed it back and his eyes lingered on my face. "Look at us," he said softly. "A month ago you were trying to knock me out, and now we're sharing a cigarette."

"Yeah, well," I replied jokingly, "you can do things with my cigarette I could only dream of." To my surprise, he didn't make a dirty joke out of the statement.

"I learned that in Australia," he said instead.

"You've been to Australia?" I asked in surprise.

"Honey, I've been places you couldn't imagine," he said in his throaty radio voice. I laughed again.

The door clicked open. "Oh, I'm sorry," came a distinctly American drawl. "Am I interrupting."

I turned to look at my beloved Count and flipped him the bird. "Ooh, sorry," he said, sounding far too cheerful to be truly sorry. "Looks like I am."

Gavin looked confusedly from my face to the Count's. I knew I didn't look as angry as I was pretending to be, and the Count was even grinning like an idiot. "You two really hate each other, don't you?" he said sarcastically, though he sounded a little confused.

"Absolutely," I said immediately.

"Loathe one another," the Count agreed factually; but the wry grins that told Gavin our hatred was something of an inside joke were almost identical.

"I'm standing here in my favourite place on Earth with the two people I hate most in the whole world," I finished in the same tone. Gavin chuckled again.

"The times, they are a-changing," he commented idly.

I laughed wryly. "You have no idea," I said, and together we turned and went back inside.

Of course, none of us really had any idea at all.

A/N: I'm going to upload my epilogue right now; I apologise in advance for the distinctly Courtenay/Gavin ending. It wasn't supposed to end up like this.

-for you!