#Those abuse tactics are too real and too bone chilling to be made up whole cloth

[sagevalleymusings]

Ted Lasso is an extremely subtle and nuanced show that we don't deserve and I'm going to defend a character I hate to prove it

So the series finale of Ted Lasso aired last night and I went out of my way to watch it even though I don't have a Hulumaxflix plus account, because I have utterly adored this whole season. I have seen a lot of disappointed fans and negative takes, even outside of the "it's woke now" brigade, and I disagree with pretty much all of the analyses I've seen so far. People are disappointed at the Tedbecca tease that never panned out, they're disappointed Jamie is talking to his dad again, they're disappointed all this stuff they wanted to happen didn't happen, tale as old as time. But I think the issue here is that Ted Lasso is written in the style of a daytime tv comedy while actually being an extremely heartfelt and pained letter to an abusive father that one of our writer was never able to send.

Co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis has gone on record saying the show is about bad dads. And we see examples of this all over the place. Some are more subtle than others.

But the problem with subtle shows is that you have a very wide audience to appeal to. I have seen and dare I say it even enjoyed both Primer and Groundhog Day. But trying to apply the time travel logic of the former to the latter just because they're both time travel movies would be folly. And this is how I feel about Ted Lasso. It has a lot of similarities to a style of show which is usually nowhere near this deep and it makes people expect something of it that it isn't providing. 

How do you know I'm not talking out my ass? Jack Danvers.

I hate Jack Danvers. We get a fucking lesbian for a change and she's an abusive cowardly closeted slut shaming piece of shit.

I love Jack Danvers. Because I knew she was 1) Keeley's financer and 2) a lesbian in under ten seconds of meeting this person, having seen only her shoes.

Jack is quiet and possibly even a little uncomfortable chatting with Keeley in the bathroom. But Keeley's so charming and open that you can't help but appreciate the quiet bonding moment it turns into.

But I've definitely been there. Women are so comfortable talking to each other in the bathroom and it makes me so uncomfortable. There have been so many times I have been made to feel unwelcome in this space and you want to have a chat...  Please go away.

Once it's revealed this is in fact Jack, it comes as a minor shock that Jack is a woman actually. Why is her name Jack if she's a woman?

It's because "my father wanted a boy."

Jack is one of Jason's "bad dad" characters. Which means her actions are a reflection of her childhood environment in a very pronounced way. Slowly but surely, we learn that Jack believes love is conditional.

Jack introduces us to the concept of love bombing and I think because the relationship progresses past that point, the audience is encouraged to forget this, but… love bombing isn't just new relationship energy. It's an abuse tactic. And we're told pretty explicitly that it's an abuse tactic because the person telling us about it is Rebecca, regarding her shitty and manipulative ex husband.

That Jack's relationship starts on this beat is noteworthy, because it sets up the dynamic that Jack believes she can only retain Keeley's affection if she buys it. Why does she think that?

Moving forward, we start to lapse into a false sense of security as Jack loudly proclaims their love in front of the whole office and is planning on showing Keeley off, only to have the rug ripped out from us the second something even slightly bad happens. 

But it isn't Jack's decision to make Keeley read out that apology and then pull funding when she refuses. Not if we're to believe Jack's word on it at least. It was "the board" whoever that is.

Jack peaces out to Argentina before the final shoe can drop, and it displays lastly an absolute cowardice on her part that she didn't even give Keeley the satisfaction of a break up. 

All of this combined makes me realize though that the sudden scrambling retreat is literally the other side of love bombing - we didn't drop that plot point just because we stopped talking about it. The motivations for both actions come from the same place. Jack believes love is conditional. She feels that she must earn Keeley's affection, and sees nothing wrong with withdrawing her own if Keeley doesn't do the same. And also, the actions of her partner reflecting negatively on her means that love can be withdrawn *from her* if she doesn't bow to pressure from those whose respect she's trying to maintain. 

The coming out moments in parallel with this lens are stark. Coming out to the office wasn't just about being open -it was about speed running earning Keeley's love and trust with grand acts of affection. And there are no consequences to coming out to people that far beneath you socially. Jack owns the HR firm that KJPR… might not have? Meanwhile her old college friend does matter. And when Keeley was a successful business woman to show off, that would have been fine. But now that she's part of a scandal? They're just friends. It serves her to come out to the firm in the interest of gaining Keeley's love, and it serves her to keep it hidden from her college friend, to avoid messy questions later that might make her look bad.

With her very name, Jack has been taught that there's a version of herself other people want her to be that she's incapable of reaching. And absolutely nothing we see from her suggests she's worked to unpack that trauma.

Jack is a minor character - a brief love interest in Keeley's life. But her decisions are deliberate and weighty. The good and bad moments are both informed by the same parental trauma, and the writers stick to it. They're true to character, even if it's "bad representation," even if it's not what fans want.

So let's talk about Tedbecca. I will reiterate that this show is about "bad dads" and more broadly about the ways in which who our parents are and how they raised us results in intergenerational trauma that's difficult to disrupt.

Ted and Rebecca are foils for each other. They both have absent fathers (eventually even they both have dead fathers) and they both have emotionally controlling mothers (more on that in a moment). They both are starting a new chapter in their lives because of a divorce, and family is an important component of that divorce. 

And they are both responding to their trauma, especially in early episodes, the way they've always been taught to respond to that trauma. Rebecca schemes vengefully while pretending everything is fine on the outside because she's been taught that the people in her back will not support her. Her mother put up with shitty behavior from her father for years. Then when her father left, her mother turned into a flighty unreliable hypochondriac. She doesn't want to allow Rupert the same power over her, so she reacts like a cornered tiger.

But at the end of the day, what she wants is a family, and in a lot of ways Ted can't give her that. Is Ted going to have one child in America and another in Britain and split his time between the two? Does that sound like the kind of thing Ted would be willing to do? Nor do I think it's what Rebecca really wants because her desire for family isn't just about having a child, but having a stable family unit to come back to, one she didn't really have growing up. Maybe you could see them hooking up, but by the time their relationship has progressed that either of them could have, they've both grown past the desire to do so. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Rebecca needs someone calm and warm and relaxed to come home to, in contrast to her childhood being a parent to her mother, or the cat and mouse dance with her ex husband.

But Ted isn't much better. We see that his father's suicide soured their relationship, but holy crap do I want to talk about Ted's mom.

In every single scene that Ted and his mom are interacting in right up to the blowout fight, she is guilting him into behaving a particular way. She says he "was born nice" but in reality it's obvious that he's extremely used to having to guess at what someone wants and bend his life around that. Ted's mom wants to visit him so *waits around his apartment* until he notices and offers her a place to stay. Ted's mom wants to sleep in the bed while insisting otherwise (but immediately starts having specific plans about what that means re: suitcases don't go on the bed). Ted's mom wants to go to the game and Ted doesn't insist she go, so she sends a text saying she wishes she were there. It is a relentless barrage of emotional abuse.

No wonder Ted is so sensitive to the lies she's telling people, also the whole time. How many fights have they had where he's done something because she asked him to, only for her to turn around and say "I never asked for that" and have that technically be true? And in fact we are explicitly told in the blow out that she responded to her *husband's suicide* by pretending everything was normal.

And then, finally, we get the truth. She's not there because she wanted to visit London (a thing she said explicitly which turns out was also a lie). She's there to guilt Ted into coming home by using his guilt over leaving his son. Is Ted… also a bad dad?

Ted's entire generous, forgiving personality was shaped by these two parents. One, who was a good man despite making what I would say is the only unforgivable act of selfishness, and the other, who is a manipulative woman who demands generosity from the people around her despite never overtly saying such.

Ted isn't just forgiving of Beard because of the guilt and anger over his father's death. He's also willing to go the extra mile for people because he thinks it's his job. 

Ted leaves for Richmond because his wife wants space, but in a lot of ways it's also an act of selfishness. After all, his ex wife says that she didn't want them to take a break, she wanted to know that Ted would fight for their relationship. And he doesn't - in fact he does the opposite. We now have context to know that asking for something without really asking for it explicitly is a trigger for Ted. So he sees what looks like the emotional manipulation of his mother coming from his wife, panics, and runs as fast and as far away from the situation as he can.

That Ted could never be in a relationship with his boss. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Ted needs a relationship where he can be selfish. 

And I think, genuinely, that all of this is intentional on the part of the writers. A relationship with Ted and Rebecca could never have been healthy, because they are the same character, but one of them is fight and the other is flight.

This show is so, so smart. And I think it's absolutely tragic how much of that smartness is missed because we aren't used to shows with this level of carefully crafted nuance. My god, the scene where Nate comes out of his room and the first shot is an all white hallway with absolutely no distinguishing features? My god. The flex of having the characters singing, and you can hear them walking off, Dani is literally getting louder as he gets closer to the camera! That's studio audio because their breathing doesn't line up with the dancing, but it sure sounds like it was recorded on a soccer pitch. I looked up the name of Keeley's form because I distinctly remember the last scene *not* saying KJPR and turns out in a blink and you'll miss it moment, she changed the name to KBPR to honor the fact that Barbara stood by her when Jack pulled funding.1

I could go on and on and on. There's so many moments where the writers just jam packed meaning and nuance to bursting in this show. 

In the "morning after" scene in the series finale, Ted is wearing a KC shirt, specifically a KC Current shirt, which is a women's professional soccer team. That says a lot all on its own for that being the shirt

In fact, Ted wears a lot of KC shirts on the show. He wears Richmond shirts… when he's at work. 

There's a lot more I could say, and maybe even will. I want to give the jamie/keeley/roy OT3 another look from the top at some point. But I just wanted to get something topical out quickly, because good shows deserve to be showered in praise, and I really think the negative publicity on Ted Lasso specifically is an absolute crime. We can't expect to see writers take a chance on something this detail oriented and nuanced again any time soon if we just skip all the nuance and get mad they didn't doll smash our favorite characters together.

[s-c-r-i-p-s-i]

Desperate Measures

[Dead by Baelight’s Kinktober // Day 1: Ritual]

🖤 🖤 🖤 Seeking privacy, you stray a little too far from the campfire to perform your... daily ritual. Ghostface has been watching and decides it’s time for a little audience participation.

🖤 🖤 🖤 Pairing: Ghostface (Danny Johnson) x Gender-Neutral AMAB Reader

Rating: Explicit

CW: non-consensual voyeurism, choking, spanking, canon-typical violence, smut

Word Count: 3,219

When you first started this ritual, you weren't planning on making it a habit.

Here, every minute of your life was survival mode. Nonessential functions closed until further notice. You were a heart, some nerves, and sometimes, sometimes a brain.

You didn’t get bored; hah, that was rich - there was always something that needed to be done, even in Limbo. You were perpetually exhausted, yeah, but sleep was an impossibility. For the most part, you didn’t get hungry; you didn’t have to eat anymore - although sometimes you were struck with the overwhelming desire to eat one of the offerings meant for the Entity, just to taste something other than blood for once.

And for fuck’s sake, you thought you didn’t get… You know.

Horny.

See; for all intents and purposes your appetite for anything like that was dead. For the longest time. It wasn’t even something you thought about, so… not on your radar, that you didn’t even mourn it. There were other things to worry about.

And then one day Ghostface came around, and it’s like he slammed a live AED on your libido.

Maybe this place was getting to you. You knew you shouldn’t have found a serial killer so goddamn hot… but when death was just a setback, it kind of fucked with your sense of morality. At least, that’s how you tried to rationalize it.

So, how did it happen? You’re still asking yourself that. Assholes weren’t exactly your type. At least… you didn’t think so. Not back on Earth.

But he had your attention immediately. Mostly because you’d never heard a killer speak before. That is, not to you. And in your own language no less.

And boy, did he speak. (And speak, and speak…)

The first time you faced him, you’d been working on a generator and felt a chill rock your body just as it finally hummed to life. That random little bite at the back of your neck that prickled down your spine. Except here, it was rarely random. Here, it always spelled danger.

“Nice work,” He’d cooed, stepping out of fucking nowhere. You’d later learn that he… tended to do that. “Haven’t seen that in awhile. Must be getting slow.”

It was obvious what he was - the mask was a dead giveaway. Killer. But you didn’t move. You were too stunned that he was actually talking to you. “Thanks,” you’d kind of snorted, “I try.” You were still asking yourself ’what the fuck was that’ to this day.

“Oh...” He breathed. “You talk back. I like that.”

And he sounded so genuinely - if maliciously - interested that you had to assume that didn’t happen often; survivors talking to him. That your shitty little, what, comeback? if you could even call it that - pleased him.

“I hope you run, too.” He’d cocked his head - a not so subtle hint to get this show on the road.

“...Is that what-” He wanted, you were about to ask, although you weren’t sure why. Looking back, you think you were just stalling for time, not for any tactical reasons, but just because this was such a novelty to you.

The thought that maybe, just maybe you already wanted to please him was simply too annoying to entertain.

But he interrupted you.

“Yes.”

And this strange mix of almost playful and ruthlessly efficient would be a running theme in your trials against him. He didn’t waste a whole lot of time - even though he very well could have, with how adept he was. No one was ever spared. You never got the impression he was taking it easy on you, or drawing out a chase, or anything like that. Ninety percent of the words you ever exchanged were while you were looping him, or dangling from his shoulder as he strode towards a hook.

And yet, you still found yourself oh so fucking fascinatined by him. It was definitely conceivable that you were just attention starved. That there wasn’t anything else to it. Even among the survivors, there weren’t many you could count as real friends. And yet...

It was to the point where getting caught almost felt like a reward, because it always carried the positive reinforcement of you being able to banter with him for a minute. Which - you like to think you’d gotten a little better at. Always through bouts of struggling, of course; you tried not to be completely useless. For your own sake, if not your team’s. Getting hooked hurt.

Anyway, it was during one of those struggles, one day, wriggling around in his grip and beating his back and being a general nuisance, that it happened. You’d been bitching about -... you didn’t even remember.

And then he decided, “You know; you’ve become awful mouthy.”

And you were immediately riled up, because if anything, it was him that liked to talk just to hear the sound of his own voice - not that you could blame him, because what a sound it was. But you opened your mouth to protest, but before you could get anything out beyond an offended, “You-!” his other hand came down on your ass with a resounding slap.

You’d jolted straight, heat flooding your body at an alarming rate as you suddenly forgot how to string syllables together. Don’t worry. You made several embarrassing, aborted attempts.

“Well.” He mused, and you could hear the smile in his voice as he grabbed your hips to string you up. “Now I know how to shut you up.”

You screamed as the hook pierced through your chest, but he shushed you, breath stuttering with chuckles as he raised a finger to his mask, “Shh, shh, shh, shh, shhh. Don’t ruin it, now.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you ended up in the middle of the fucking woods with your hand down your pants after every other goddamn trial.

It started, as all addictions do, with the simple rationalization ‘It’ll just be this one time. Just to get it out of my system.’ How many times have you told yourself that? Only to end up exactly where you were now - breath quivering like a goddamn junkie as you threw your back against a tree and shoved your shaking hand down your drawers.

Your fingers finally wrapping around yourself was both sweet, sweet relief, and at the same time not. Goddamn. Enough.

It’s just, you couldn’t stop thinking about it. Him. It. Did it really matter? God you wished he’d done more than spanked you. Done more than promptly tossed you on the hook afterwards. That’s how goddamn bad you had it. He hadn’t even done anything else, but for you, it was the sexual awakening of a century.

You hastily stuffed your shirt in your mouth to grant yourself access to your chest, eyes rolling back as you gripped yourself and began to pump, other hand quickly trailing up your chest to tease your nipple between your index and middle fingers.

Always a frantic means to an end. Mechanical abuse. No time to really even fantasize. Which was fine, because that’s all you seemed to fucking do in between these little affairs.

Infuriatingly, though, this constant throttling of your bits meant you were starting to build up a tolerance to your own rough treatment. Still, you tried to get yourself off as quickly as possible. You knew you’d be missed, and -

You felt a bite at your neck, a chill down your spine. The kind that spelled danger.

“Slowly, slowly, it’s too nice a job to rush.” Ghostfaced chuckled, emerging from behind a tree. You saw the mask first, a shock of white in the darkness that nearly sent you into cardiac arrest.

With all the frenzied, nonsensical urgency of someone who’d just seen a bug crawling on them, you flailed in your rushed attempts to make yourself decent, yanking your hand from your pants, spitting the shirt out of your mouth and trying to frantically smooth everything down. It didn’t even occur to you at first, in your lizard brained panic, that he’d already seen everything. Or that no matter how you fixed your clothes, you still looked thoroughly debauched; panting, blushing all the way down to your chest, and your hair all mussed from the tree you were leaning up against. Oh yeah, and the fucking erection you were still sporting.

Your mouth was still bone-dry from the shirt you’d just had stuffed in your mouth all but two seconds ago. “What’re you-?!”

You had about a million questions on your mind. For one - How was he even here? You thought this kind of pocket realm - the one with the bonfire, the holding cell for survivors in between matches - was a sanctuary. The only place you were safe from these fucks.

“We all come here when it’s our time to play,” He explained smoothly, “We burn our offerings in the same flames as you. You just don’t see us. But we see you.” Ghostface sung, stalking closer.

“Besides. I’ve been here a long time. Long enough to know how to traverse the fog. Useful,” he sighed the word as if conceding something, even though you hadn’t said a word, “when one doesn’t have a home.” He stopped right in front of you. “...Useful for watching what naughty little survivors do when they stray far enough away from the flock.” Even with his face hidden behind that mask, you could feel the accusation in the way he cocked his head and crossed his arms expectantly.

“I-” You choked the word out, a second wave of mortified heat rising.

“But you, you were such a good little lamb until just recently. I wonder what changed.”

“Please just…” Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, you mentally pleaded. You wanted to die. You’d rather melt into the ground than hear another minute of him taunting you. You were far too embarrassed, and far too wound up to suffer through whatever the hell he was monologuing on about. Any other time you might have appreciated the opportunity to talk to him without all the pretense of trials. But not. Right. Now.

“You’re having trouble with that today!” He observed gleefully - about your inability to put together a complete sentence, you assumed. “And usually you’re so vocal. That’s alright. Here. I’ll make it easier on ya.” Reaching for the damp, wrinkled up hem of your shirt, he pulled it up, and two gloved fingers stuffed it back into your mouth, feeding it to you until your mouth was full of cotton and he was satisfied.

You just stood there, stupefied.

“What, do you prefer my other method?” And he- he fucking reared his hand back and mimed a spank in the air. Oh my god. You hated him. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here,” he chuckled.

Placing his hands on his hips, Ghostface hummed, long and deliberate. “Come to think of it, you’ve been acting awfully strange for the past, oh, say the past few weeks or so. Ever since I…”

Oh. Oh no.

Your glare morphed into a look of sheer horror. That bastard. He knew? Or was he just a goddamn narcissist and automatically assumed it was about him, and just happened to be right on the money? It’s not like you’d been screaming out his name while you did it. Maybe you just weren’t half as subtle as you thought.

“So - here’s how it’s going to go. It’s been fun, just watching you. Really. But I’ve seen this show enough times that I think I deserve some front row seats, don’t you?” When you don’t respond, he just takes you by the chin, forcing you to nod for him. ”Great!” He throws up a hand, “Then we’re all in agreement. Keep going.”

Ghostface crossed his arms over his chest expectantly, settling in.

He wanted you to…? You push at the shirt with your tongue, intending to speak, but he stops you.

“Nope. Nah. Keep that in.”

O...kay. This was probably the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done, but you were still so stunned that it wasn’t... wasn’t quite sinking in yet. In the back of your mind, you were lowkey convinced this was a prank. A joke. That any second he was going to bust out laughing, tell you ’psyche! Oh my god you actually almost did it.’

But that moment never came.

Slowly, and with no small amount of hesitance, you began dipping your hand back in your pants. You half expected him to complain about how long you were taking, but he didn’t say a word. You guess he did tell you to go slow. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking under the mask, his posture impassive. But you eventually reached your sex and gave it a slow, experimental tug, inhaling sharply at how much more sensitive it felt just knowing that his eyes were on you.

You looked back up for any sign of approval, some sign that this is what he wanted but he hadn’t moved an inch. So you kept going, touching yourself, just a lot more slowly and mindfully than before. The thought of going full monkey brain on yourself in front of him was… not appealing. Plus, it didn’t even seem necessary anymore, with the way your stomach was now fluttering at the lightest touch.

“That’s much better,” He said eventually, and the way he cooed it like he was praising you went straight to your core, hips twitching forward. “If you keep going at that thing like a can of spray paint, you’re liable to rip it clean off. And then what’ll be left for me?”

That imagery wasn’t sexy at all, your nose wrinkling as you cringed at him, but then he said that and all you could focus on was the notion that maybe he was planning on doing more than just watching.

“You want me to touch you?” He asked, clearly sensing your hope.

“MmfHmfh.” Your sorry sound of agreement was muffled by the shirt in your mouth, so you paired it with a pathetic head nod, eyes pleading.

“Shit,” He laughed, “I was just going to bait and switch you, but if you’re going to be so damn cute… I guess I could be generous. Why don’t you show daddy what he’s working with?”

Maybe you were paranoid, but you felt like that was opening yourself up to get stabbed in the junk. Was it really wise to be so vulnerable around him? You weren’t sure if you trusted him, but Mr. Knife hadn’t made an appearance thus far, and you felt so desperate and full and achy that you just didn’t care.

Hesitantly, you pulled down your pants and drawers down to your thighs, just enough for your cock to spring free, bobbing lightly, crown swollen and shiny and absolutely flushed with arousal.

“Adorable. Now,” He removed the shirt from your mouth, only to press two fingers at your teeth so the end of the finger seams were between them. “Bite.” You did, carefully, and he used the leverage to slip his hand from the glove. Rather than just leave it hanging there, he pushed it back into your mouth like he had the shirt, the disgusting tang of leather and you didn’t want to even think of what else rusting on your tongue.

But it was all worth the sweet relief of his bare fingers finally wrapping around your cock. Your eyes fluttered back almost immediately, moaning around his glove as your head fell back against the tree behind you. Oh, this was wrong, wrong, wrong, but it felt so much better than touching yourself and you’d fantasized about this for so long. It was like honey for your body, the best kind of sweetness building up in your core, every pass of his fingers pushing you closer to overflow.

And it didn’t take long at all, with how long it had been since you’d been touched by another person, with how wound up you already were. You neared the edge fast, your dick twitching in his grip as your hips began to weakly rock, chasing that saccharine end.

And then he stopped.

Motherfucker.

You growled in frustration as your budding climax waned, hips instinctually slanting forward in search of something, anything, and finding nothing. Your gaze flicked up to him, silently asking ’What gives?’

“I said I’d touch you, I didn’t say anything about cumming.”

You nearly spat the glove out and gave him a piece of your mind, but his hand did eventually return, placating you for the time being. Even if his touch was far too light and understimulating at first, waiting until you’d been sufficiently backed down from that edge before building you back up. In due time your head was falling back against the bark, gasping as that feeling in your core started to balloon.

And then he did it again.

This time you really did spit the glove out, catching it in your hand. “I have places to be, Fuckface!”

“Riiiiight.” He drawled skeptically, amusement coloring his tone. “And, it’s Ghostface, actually.”

“Okay, GrossFace, if you don’t fucking finish me off-”

In seconds, his gloved hand was around your throat, leather creaking as he squeezed lightly. “You’ll what? Careful what you ask for, baby, you just might get it,” He warned, pressure slowly increasing. “But you might not like the way I decide to finish you off if you don’t play nice.” His hand eased off your throat, and you were relieved as you were disappointed - because shit, you were actually kind of into it.

“So, let’s go with Danny. Do you think you can manage that, sweetheart?”

Was that… his name? You felt oddly touched that he’d give you that. You hardly knew any of the killers' real names. Not trusting yourself to speak, you nodded, and your reward was his hand coming back to gently wrap his fingers back around you, stroking you slowly.

“Maybe third time’s the charm, huh?”

You weren’t so sure, but you were so backed up it hurt so you let him steer you back to the brink, your sounds growing desperate and so much more audible without anything to muffle them. “Danny, please,” you begged; you could feel yourself nearing that apex again, and if he stopped now you might actually cry.

He hummed, low and thoughtful, but the sound didn’t betray an inkling of emotion.

But he didn’t stop. And soon your climax was crashing over you so hard your knees nearly buckled, the tree at your back the only thing keeping you up as your whole body lurched, dick jumping as it choked up it’s release all over his hand and the forest floor.

Panting, your legs shook as you just stood there a moment, head tipped up to the sky, just trying to recover. You were dimly aware of him snatching his glove back as you felt him yank it from your hand but it barely registered. One by one, questions started to pile up but you were still too whelmed to speak.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Danny spoke first.

“So… Same time tomorrow?”

“I-” You broke, half laughing, half scoffing at the outright absurdity. “Sure.”

You guessed you could start a new ritual.

🖤 🖤 🖤

Thank you for reading!!! 🖤 🖤 🖤 Notes: AHHHHH, I did it, I wrote my first real one-shot. I've been roleplaying for nearly 20 years and it's kind of ruined my motivation for writing by myself but I wanted to break the habit. Thank you to Pugge and Libby for beta'ing this for me, ily both. This piece was written for Day 1 of the 🔞 Dead by Baelight 🔞 Discord server's Kinktober. ((I'm just posting it early because I have 0 self-control)) Anyone over 18 is welcome to join here.