#Tommy and Eddie both wear reading glasses

[nubuckleather]

Tommy, Eddie, and Buck all reading in bed together: Tommy’s got a Cold War spy thriller, Eddie’s got a smutty paperback, and Buck has his laptop with sixteen open Wikipedia tabs

[of-a-chaotic-mind]

Hey Bartender

Summary: Reader thinks it's just another shift of bartending but instead meets a drunk golden retriever that sets her up with his best friend.

TW/CW: Eddie Diaz x Reader, Get Together

Requested?: No 

Word Count: 4,087

A/N: I realized I always write reader as a fellow firefighter and wanted to try my hand at not doing that lol. You know I just had to add a drop of angst in there lmao. Anyways, hope you enjoy the read! Much love to all! Requests are Open!

--- Your POV --- 

    It's another Saturday night, and I'm expecting just as many jackasses as usual... Let me tell you, bartending pays well but damn does it suck ass. If I had a nickel for every time a douche bag hit on me, I wouldn't need to bartend, I could just live on my own private island. If I had a dollar for every decent man that ever hit on me, I'd be living on the streets if it weren’t for my weekly paychecks.  

    I drop my bag in the back office and head to the bar, throwing my hair up into a messy bun on the way. When I round the corner of the hallway out into the main area, I can see my coworkers Tiana and Grayson struggling to keep up. I slide through the swinging door with ease and begin taking orders. Soon, the chaos has died down some and I'm able to send Tiana home.  

    A rowdy bunch of college guys, that I see often, come in as she leaves. I raise my voice, "Hey! Don't come in here acting a fool, y'all know better." They sarcastically salute me or wave dramatically before making their way to their favorite table in the corner.  

    A tall, older, and muscular guy takes a seat on the stool in front of me, "You must be the boss lady around here," he states pointing back toward the college kids. 

    I scoff, "Might as well be but no. Our boss tends to only show up when it's slow. What can I get ya?" 

    The man laughs, "Two Jack and Coke, please." 

    I nod and turn around to reach for the Jack Daniels but find it exactly where I had repeatedly told Grayson not to put it, on the top shelf. Placing my hands on my hips, I turn toward my coworker, "Hey, dickhead!" He looks up immediately but I only point in the direction of the bottle I need. He grins with a laugh as he approaches me, grabs the bottle, and passes it down to me. As he returns to the customer, he was helping I gripe, "I swear you only do that to piss me off." 

    He looks at me, still wearing that stupid grin, "Yup, sure do!" 

    I roll my eyes and proceed to finish making my customer's Jack and Coke. When I set the glasses down in front of him, he admits, "If he wasn't making my gaydar go off, I'd be concerned." 

    I laugh, "Yes, Grayson is gay. He's basically my annoying little brother that enjoys making my life difficult." 

    The man laughs, "I'm Tommy," he points behind him, "The one waving his arms around like a crazy person is my lovely boyfriend, Evan." 

    I watch Evan animatedly tell his story for a beat before responding, "I'm (Y/N). What on earth is he talking about?" 

    Tommy shakes his head, "I don't really know. I love listening to him speak, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I zone out because I'm too focused on how pretty he is." 

    This makes me laugh extra hard, "I could see that." 

    Tommy pulls far more than enough cash out of his wallet to pay for the drinks and hands it to me, "Keep the change. See you around, (Y/N)." 

    I nod and watch him leave before jumping because Grayson speaks right in my ear, "He was cute!" 

    I shake my head, "He's gay and taken." 

    Grayson pouts, "Damn... A loss for us both I guess." I laugh and start cleaning up around the bar. 

    Sometime later, I notice something suspicious out of the corner of my eye. There's a gruff looking man leaning far too close to a girl who looks at least half his age. At first glance, I wouldn't even be sure she's old enough to drink but considering they card everyone at the door, she's at least 21 and this man looks to be in his late 40s or early 50s. She is very obviously uncomfortable and from the way her eyes dart around I can tell she's looking for an escape route. 

    I place my hand on Grayson's shoulder, still keeping an eye on her, "I'll be right back." He follows my line of sight and nods in understanding. As I pass the cooler on my way to her, I blindly grab a bottle of water. I step beside her, opposite the man, and place my hand on her shoulder and the water on the table in front of her, "Here's that water you ordered, sweetie." 

    "Aw, I just brought you a drink, Baby. You haven't even touched it yet. You don't need that water, do ya?" the subtleties his voice makes my skin crawl. 

    She avoids eye contact with him as she opens the water and takes a sip before looking me dead in the eyes, "Thank you. Could you point me to the bathroom, please?" 

    I nod, "Sure, I'll walk you there." She hops down from her stool and I put myself between her and the man.  

    I point in the direction we need to go but as she starts that way, the man grabs my right arm, "I think I can handle walking her to the bathroom. Besides, your coworker looks pretty busy over there." 

    I turn slowly to face him. I look down at where his hand is clamped around my right bicep and then back at his face, "I suggest you remove your hand from my body before I remove it from yours." By now everyone in the bar is zeroed in on us. I even notice Tommy, Evan, and a couple of their friends get up from their table. 

    His grip tightens, "I said," spits flecks across my face as he speaks through gritted teeth and with a menacing smile, "I can show her to the bathroom." 

    I wipe my face with my left hand, "Last chance, pal. You have three seconds." I give him a few seconds as promised before using my right hand to remove his hand from my arm, twisting it outwards with a small crack. Anger now replacing the smile on his face, he lunges at me but I drive the palm of my left hand straight into his nose.  

    He doubles over in pain, holding his nose as blood leaks through his fingers, "You bitch!" 

    I glare down at him, "That shit doesn't fly in my bar," I point to the bouncers, snap my fingers, and point down at the piece of shit at my feet. Already on standby, they immediately make their way through the crowd to collect him. I turn to check on the girl and escort her to the bathroom. 

--- Third Person POV --- 

    Bobby and Athena meet the bouncers at the puddle of filth who is still writhing in pain, "My husband is just gonna make sure he doesn't need a stop at the hospital on his way to the police station," she says, as she flashes her badge. The bouncers take a step back to let Bobby work. Athena turns to speak to (Y/N) but finds her already heading toward the bathrooms with the girl.  

    Bobby stands and wipes his hands on a napkin, "Alright, Athena, to the slammer. As far as I can tell she just broke it. No serious damage."  

    Athena nods and looks toward the door where two officers enter. When they approach her, she explains what happened and gives them instructions. A few feet away, Buck leans toward Tommy, "I wonder where she learned to do that." 

    Wondering the same thing, Eddie looks over as Tommy answers, "She had an Army Sergeant's insignia tattooed on her wrist." 

    Eddie nods, "That'll do it." 

    Buck looks toward the bathrooms, "A badass, former Army Sergeant, who can take down a man twice her size...," he looks at Eddie, whose eyes are locked in the same direction, "You should get her number." Eddie rolls his eyes and soon the three are ushered back to the table by Athena and Bobby. 

--- Your POV --- 

    As we arrive at the bathrooms, I wait with the girl in silence. When the door opens and another lady exits, she moves to enter before looking back at me, "Thank you." 

    I nod, "I'll be at the bar if you need me." She nods before entering the bathroom. I make my way back towards the bar and as soon as I round the corner, the college boys in the corner start whooping and hollering. The rest of the bar erupts to join them. I quickly return to the bar, grinning and shaking my head.  

    When the commotion dies down, one of the college kids loudly slurs out, "That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don't fuck with (Y/N)." Many in the bar laugh before returning to their friends and drinks. Not too long later, I watch the girl meet a few friends at the door and make their way to a table. She smiles at me as she passes. I smile back. 

    I take and make a few more orders before letting Grayson know I'm taking a few minutes for a smoke break. After what feels like too short of a break, I'm checking notifications on my phone when I pass Grayson who grabs my shirt. I look at him in confusion, "What?" 

    He nods toward the other end of the bar where Evan is sat blowing bubbles into a fresh Jack and Coke, "said he wanted to ask you something." 

    Still bewildered, I make my way over to Evan, "What's up, Buttercup?" 

    He snaps his head up from his drink and grins at me before slurring out, "I was wondering if I could have your number," and is quick to add, "b-but not for me! I have a hot pilot boyfriend," the grin on his face gets even bigger, "I'm gonna give it to my friend Eddie who's been staring at you all night," he thinks for a split second, "He also seemed very disappointed when he saw you leave a little bit ago."  

    I laugh but before I can say a single word he goes on, "I came up here and asked your coworker if you were done for the night but he said you were just on break so I waited until you came back." He keeps rambling on and on as I grab a sticky note pad and pen from under the counter. I jot my name and number down. Normally, I wouldn't do this but these Evan and Tommy dudes seem decent so I figure their friend Eddie can't be too bad.  

    Evan is still going when I remove the note and press the sticky side to his forehead. He stops abruptly mid word, "Sweet! I'm Buck by the way." With that, it seems our conversation has come to an end as he gets up and returns to his table, not even removing the sticky note. 

--- Third Person POV --- 

    Hen giggles, “I think the golden has retrieved something.” 

    Tommy follows her line of sight and notices Buck stumbling back toward the table with something attached to his forehead; question already locked and loaded for when he's in earshot, "Whatcha got there?" Buck stops and attempts to pose heroically which makes everyone giggle. Tommy reaches up with one hand to remove the note and pats the bench beside him with the other, prompting Buck to plop down and lay his head on Tommy's shoulder. Realizing what his boyfriend has done, he looks over to Eddie, "I believe this is for you," and hands him the note. 

    Confused, Eddie takes the paper and reads it before looking at Buck with a facial expression that reads, "Seriously?" 

    Buck grins proudly as Maddie nudges Eddie, "You so should text her." 

    Chimney grins, "Or if you're man enough you can call her." Eddie glares at him, very clearly annoyed. He looks down at the paper in his hands and thinks for a few seconds before nudging Tommy and Buck out of the booth. He ignores the excited gasps and "ooo"s that break out behind him and makes his way to the bar. 

--- Your POV --- 

    I look up from the beer I'm pouring and notice one of Tommy and Buck's friends heading my direction. I top the beer off and hand it to the college kid in front of me just as the newcomer takes a seat to my left. He's staring straight ahead and hasn't said a word. 

    I wipe my hands off on a towel and grab a glass before crossing the short distance between us, "You're either a whiskey guy or a fruity cocktail guy. What'll it be?" 

    He smiles and tilts his head as he looks at me, "Whiskey, please." 

    I nod and turn around, aiming to grab the bottle of Jack I left on the other counter but find it has mysteriously moved back up to the top shelf. I whip my head in Grayson's direction but his back is turned to me. Placing my hands on my hips I glare up at the bottle. "Do you need me to-" Eddie tries to ask but instead I step up onto a shelf under the counter and climb up to stand on the granite, promptly procuring the bottle, "Guess not," I hear Eddie chuckle behind me as I scrunch up the towel on my shoulder and throw it at Grayson.  

    It nails him right in the back of the head, although not all very hard. He turns around grinning until he notices me still standing on the counter. An expression of fear almost crosses his features before he speaks, "Rodney will have your ass for standing on his counter," a teasing hint of humor in his tone. 

    I flip him off, "Rodney can suck a dick. I'd say you should too but you'd enjoy it too much," I punctuate my sentence by jumping down from the counter. Grayson doubles over in laughter as I turn back to my customer, who is also laughing his ass off. 

    As I pour the whiskey, I ask, "So, are you the Eddie that Buck mentioned?" 

    He looks back at the table where his friends are very clearly pretending to not be watching, minus Buck who is staring at us with his chin in his hands. He looks down at his whiskey, "Yeah," and takes a sip. 

    I tilt my head at him, "You don't seem too thrilled." 

    He makes eye contact with me, "To be honest, my heart is racing a mile a minute. I'm not like wasted or anything but uh," he looks back at the table and then at his glass, "I've got enough liquor in my system right now that when Chimney challenged that I wouldn't call you, I was like, 'Oh yeah? Watch this,'" he looks up at me again, "So, here I am with no clue what to say and possibly making a fool of myself." 

    I can't help but laugh, "I've had plenty of men make fools of themselves in front of me. I promise, you sir, are not one of them." 

    He smiles at this and is quiet for a few beats before asking, "Would it- would it be okay if I called you?" 

    I give him an "are you serious?" look, "Eddie, if it wasn't okay for you to call me, I wouldn't have given Buck my number." I swear I see him blush as he looks down at his glass again, nodding. I hear a customer call my name and grimace, "Give me a sec." He nods so I move to serve the customer and when I return to where Eddie was seated, he's back at the table with his friends. He's left cash on a napkin that has a note scribbled on it: 

I'll call you tomorrow when I can actually form coherent sentences :) - Eddie P.S. Keep the change! 

    I smile softly to myself and look up toward their table to find him already looking my way. I wave and he returns the wave before I slip the napkin into my back pocket and move on to take some more orders on Grayson's end of the bar. 

    The next morning, or rather the next afternoon, when I roll out of bed I immediately reach for my phone. I find a text from an unknown number: 

This is Tommy from the bar. Just in case Eddie loses the sticky note, I added your number into his phone. Figured I'd shoot you a text so you have his :) 

    I smile and lay my phone back down on the side table. My excited anticipation dwindles quickly as hours turn into days of not hearing from Eddie. I'm beginning to think he was just drunk that night and wasn't actually interested. One afternoon, as I'm getting ready for work, I glance at my phone for the millionth time hoping to see something from Eddie. No such luck... I open up the text conversation and my fingers hover over the keyboard trying to decide what to say. This isn't the first time I've done this in the past few days. Once again, I finally give up and shove my phone back in my pocket. I head to work with a pit in my stomach and disappointment heavy in my chest. 

    That evening, Grayson and all of my regulars notice how down I am and a few even try to cheer me up or be an ear to listen, including Grayson who hasn't stopped pestering me about it every chance he gets. "So, did things not work out with Lover Boy?" I brush him off and start wiping down the bar. "Come on, (Y/N). Talk to me," he sighs, "I know I'm a dick sometimes but I do care about you and I don't like seeing you so upset." 

    I take a deep breath as I toss the dirty towel into the laundry bin, "He never called. Never even texted either. And it's not because he lost my number, Tommy saved it into his phone for him." I can't hide the disappointment and hurt in my tone. 

    "Are you serious? Dude was absolutely entranced by you but doesn't bother to contact you?" Grayson asks, dumbfounded. 

    I shrug, heading for the cellar door, "I'm gonna restock. Holler if you need me." 

    He lets me go and as the door shuts behind me, I feel tears prickle against my eyes. Why am I about to cry over some dude I've only met once and only shared a few sentences with? Frustrated, I wipe my eyes and grab a few bottles that I know we need. Half way up the stairs, tears threaten to spill again. Sighing in defeat, I descend back down, place the bottles on a table, and drop to the floor against the wall with my head in my hands. This shit is why I don't let myself get hung up on guys anymore. The tears are flowing freely when I hear the cellar door open, "(Y/N)?"  

    Grayson sounds worried so I answer, "Yeah?" but my voice comes out weak and shaky.  

    I hear his footsteps descend the stairs rapidly before he drops to the floor beside me, "Hey, you okay?" 

    I look up from my hands and make eye contact, "I thought this one was different. I let myself hope. Now look at me, crying on the floor of a dusty ass cellar." 

    Grayson rubs my back comfortingly, "It's okay to cry, (Y/N)." 

    I drop my head back in my hands, "No it's not, not over a man I don't even know. I'm an independent woman who don't need no man. I shouldn't be this heart broken." 

    "First of all, yes, it's still okay to cry. Second, you may be independent but everyone needs somebody to love," Grayson says softly. 

    From the top of the stairs, a voice rings out, "Hey Grayson, quite a few people wanting drinks up here." 

    "We'll be up in a minute," he answers before pulling my face to look at him, "Get up, dust yourself off, and let's go have a good time, okay?" 

    I sigh deeply, "Okay," and wipe my tears. On our way up, I grab the bottles I had set down earlier and by the time we reach the top of the stairs, I've promised myself I won't shed another tear over this man unless he earns it. 

    Later that evening, I'm wiping down the bar again after a rush. In my peripheral, I notice someone take a seat and toss the towel away to tend to them. When I finally look over, my heart starts racing. It's Eddie. He's staring at his hands where he interlocked them on the bar top. I look around, hoping to pass him off to Grayson but find him helping other customers. I take a deep breath before smoothing out my shirt and walking over to Eddie. 

    "What can I get for you?" I ask, attempting to keep my tone friendly and even but it still shakes the slightest bit. His head shoots up and he makes direct eye contact with me. There's something in his eyes that makes me tilt my head. 

    He breaks eye contact and breaths deeply, looking back to his hands, "Listen, I- I'm sorry. I know I haven't called or texted. I tried to several times but I didn't know what to say. Buck says I was overthinking it too much but... I don't know, I just- I didn't wanna fuck it up." 

    A small smile touches my lips but I squash down the hope that's trying to breach the surface, "Eddie, a hello would've been sufficient." 

    He looks up at me and grimaces, "That's what Tommy said but I didn't wanna sound so- so casual I guess?" 

    Bewilderment replaces my smile, "What?" 

    He hesitates a second, "I guess what I'm trying to say is, I didn't want to sound so uninterested when you're all I've been able to think about for days. I also didn't want to sound too interested and scare you off... Which I may have just done anyways," he shakes his head in embarrassment as he looks back down at the bar top. 

    The grin on my face kind of hurts as I tuck my finger under his chin and lift it. His eyes have a touch of worry in them when they lock with mine, "I almost texted you several times too but didn't for the same exact reason." For some reason, I let myself get a little vulnerable, "I may or may not have cried a few hours ago because I was so disappointed that I didn't hear from you..." 

    I pull away as shock etches across his features, "I'm so sorry." 

    I shrug, "Forgiven, as long as you take me out on a date at some point and remember that my number exists in your phone." 

    He grins, nodding, "I will. When are you off work this week?" 

    I look up at the ceiling trying to remember, "All day Wednesday and Sunday and then until 3pm every other day." 

    When I look back at him, he smiles, "How does coffee sound Wednesday morning? 10am?" 

    I mirror his expression, "Sounds great!" 

    I can barely contain my excitement over the next few days and wake up before my alarm even goes off Wednesday morning after tossing and turning all night. I jolt up in bed, checking my phone in a panic, thinking I've slept through my alarm going off. Relief courses through my veins when I realize there's still an hour until it will. Excitement quickly floods that relief out of my system and I hop out of bed with a spring in my step. 

    Sometime later, as I enter the small outdoor café early but too excited to wait, I see Eddie threading his fingers through his hair at a table, having beat me there. I smile brightly and approach his table. He stands as soon as he sees me, pulls out my chair for me, and motions to the coffee in front of it, “I wasn’t sure how you like your coffee but if it’s wrong just let me know and I can order you something else.”  

    I giggle, take a sip and grin, “It’s perfect,” and as I look at him sitting across from me, knee bouncing and fingers fidgeting with his coffee cup I can’t help but think he’s perfect too. 

More 911

Main Masterlist

[butchdiaz]

to open up my arms and give it all to you

rated g, 2.5k, coming out

aka chris diagnoses buck with bisexuality, and the buckley-diaz family is the most family-shaped family ever.

It should be weird, is the thing – Tommy dropping him off at the Diaz house for dinner. But he didn't even bat an eye when Buck said he couldn't do Saturday night because Eddie was attempting to cook a new recipe and Buck had promised to be there to try it. He had just nodded thoughtfully, like prioritizing dinner with a friend over a date wasn’t weird and said, "I’ll just take you out in the afternoon instead." And that was that. Buck has never had a partner like this, someone makes him feel equally valued in both their own life and Eddie and Christopher’s. It's kind of dizzying. They had a flying lesson today – though the word "lesson" quickly became irrelevant when Buck got too distracted by the views of the city and Tommy’s competence to do anything but hold his hand about it over the gearshift. Tommy mentioned something about yoga, which got Buck started on a rant about one of the PTA moms at Chris's school, and how she always wears head to toe lululemon and constantly hits on Eddie despite Eddie very clearly shutting her down every time. And her cupcakes are definitely store bought, which is totally fine, but she acts like she made them from scratch. And she never has gluten free options. It's about five minutes of this before Buck realizes how long his mouth has been moving and he snaps it shut, suddenly self-conscious about how much he just rambled on about going to school bake sales with Chris and Eddie, and thinking that Tommy will probably find that very weird. But then he looks over, and Tommy’s smiling – the smile that causes his whole face to crinkle up in a way that makes Buck’s heart do backflips in his chest. He places a warm, solid hand on Buck's thigh and asks, "Does she at least bring peanut-free options?" And Buck says, "No!" and they both laugh and the sun shines through the glass onto Tommy’s face as his nose scrunches up and Buck's stomach swoops, only partially due to the fact that they are thousands of feet in the air.

read more on ao3!

tags <3 @goldenbcnes @chronicowboy @buckstommy @shitouttabuck @evankinard @ilostyou @911onabc @anirudhpisharody @try-set-me-on-fire @goforkinard @youreonyourownkid @buckttommy @leothil @canonbibuck @bucktommys @bvckandeddie @exhuastedpigeon @wearherlikeanecklace @diazly @eddiebabygirldiaz @hunybody @chaoticeddie @loserlesbianbf @sibylsleaves

[inawickedlittletown]

Glasses (BuckTommy one-shot)

Summary: Buck finds out Tommy wears reading glasses...as inspired by Lou wearing a different pair of glasses in every cameo.

Read on Ao3

-

“You wear glasses,” Buck said, a bit of awe in his voice as he took in Tommy. 

Tommy, who was leaning against the door he’d just opened in just a t-shirt and jeans, no shoes, hair a little messy, and with glasses on, looked hot. Buck wasn’t prepared, it was like in a video game when you reached a new level and your character got more accessories. Buck had reached a different place with Tommy and he was…he was definitely a fan. 

“Hi, Evan,” Tommy said. 

Buck just smiled, letting his voice wash over him…letting his name said by Tommy wash over him. Tommy lifted his arms and Buck wrapped his own around him in a hug. He smelled so good. Clean, mostly like his detergent, and something that was just Tommy. Buck could live in that smell forever, but Tommy let him go and closed the door behind them. 

“How was your shift?” Tommy asked. 

“Nothing crazy. Average stuff. Car accident…kid that got stuck on a roof.”

“There’s always a kid on a roof,” Tommy said with a grin. 

“You’re not wrong,” Buck said. 

Tommy’s house was nice, but small. It was a one bedroom cottage style house with an attached garage that was almost as big as the rest of the house. It was cozy, in a way, and the first time Buck entered it, he’d immediately known that it felt like Tommy. All the parts of him. The cozy living room with the big sofa that was perfect for cuddling on and the kitchen that was just a side of too clean because Tommy didn’t really use it too often. Then, the two car garage where he did indeed have a lift and toolboxes full of tools and also a small home gym that Buck had been left more than a little impressed by the first time he saw it. 

Buck was led right to the living room. Their movie night had been postponed twice already once due to work and once because Eddie asked Buck to keep Christopher overnight. They were watching Love, Actually a movie that Buck had never watched but that Tommy said was his favorite. Buck was excited, mostly because it meant learning more about Tommy. 

In the month that they’d been dating, Buck had never felt so settled and happy. They were taking it slow which was definitely new for him, he wasn’t used to not going hot and heavy from the get go. The furthest they had gone was kissing. Buck loved kissing, every aspect of it. He loved kissing Tommy…the way that it was intimate and the way that Tommy was so reactive and that he took control and left Buck senseless. He’d never kissed so much without it leading elsewhere, but it was okay. It was more than okay. 

Tommy picked up a book he’d left page down on the couch, tucking a bookmark to mark his page before he set it down on the coffee table and atop it, he put his glasses. 

Buck made a whining noise and Tommy’s gaze fell on him and his heated cheeks, eyebrow raised. 

“Evan?”

“Uh. I just…why are you taking them off?” 

Tommy inched closer to him. “You like my glasses?”

Buck could only nod. 

“They’re readers,” Tommy said and he reached Buck. “Can’t wear them to watch a movie.” 

Buck was distracted by how close he was, how he wasn’t even touching Buck, but he had such an effect on him glasses or not. 

“They, uh, they look good on you.”

“Yeah?” Tommy asked. 

“Yes,” Buck said, breathless. “Like a sexy librarian, like you could teach me a thing or two.” 

Tommy’s chuckle, his breath, brushed across Buck’s skin. “I can teach you more than a thing or two, Evan.” 

Why was this man this smooth…this confident…this hot and sexy and so many other things.

Buck reached for him first, hands on his jaw, brushing on the stubble for a second before they both leaned in, their lips coming together and Tommy immediately pulling Buck even closer as the kiss deepened, their tongues meeting in what was becoming a familiar dance, one that still affected all of Buck. 

He could hardly think for the feel of Tommy’s hands on his waist and back, at how he grabbed at Buck’s shirt, pulling it up so that eventually his hands were on bare skin. Buck moaned into the kiss, pulling back when he needed air, but Tommy dragged kisses down his chin and his jaw, sucking at his skin and leaving Buck almost breathless. And then, his tongue was moving on his neck before his lips trailed kisses down and then up the otherside, stopping at his ear.

“Glasses, huh,” Tommy said. 

Buck didn’t know what kind of noise came out of him, he just knew that Tommy pecked his lips and his hands left Buck’s bare skin and that he missed him even though there were merely inches between them. 

“I’ll have to model my collection to you,” Tommy said, almost offhand.

“Your collection?” Buck said, mind finally working with his mouth and tongue to form words. 

Tommy chuckled. “I, uh, lose them all over. Find them all over too.”

Why did Buck find that so incredibly hot. Tommy, smirked knowingly and then he turned on his heel. 

“You want popcorn?” 

Buck could do nothing but follow. He found Tommy reaching into a cupboard and when he turned, another pair of glasses were on his face. The style was different, the frames dark and thicker and the shape rectangular but tapering down on the corners. They still looked good on him and he knew what he was doing going by his smirk. 

Buck crossed the room, backed Tommy into the counter, hands on his hips holding him in place as if Tommy would dare to get away. 

“You are a menace,” Buck said. 

“A menace that sometimes wears glasses that drive my boyfriend crazy,” Tommy said. 

“Joke’s on me, there’s little that wouldn’t drive me crazy about you,” Buck said and then they were kissing again. 

Buck did discover, then, that glasses could get in the way of a vigorous making out session, but that they were easily pushed up to the top of Tommy’s head and that…that made him look hot too.

[woodchoc-magnum]

L*ne St*r Hate Watch 3x13

Disclaimer: If you love this show, don't read this, please have a great day

As always, Eddie Diaz to open:

I am completely unspoiled for this, so let's go

Tommy's hair looks AWESOME

All right so the first emergency is a girl who crashed into a truck with a load of hay, and they rescued her but it turned out she actually wiped out a cyclist and severed his foot. So then there's a jaunty segment of them trying to find the footless cyclist, which is like, weirdly upbeat

Carlos is wearing glasses and I'm… very into it

Very, very into it

TK is attending meetings due to the whole Sadie drugging him thing

Okay so now there's this guy named Cooper (and if you've read the Songs fics, you know I'm instantly intrigued) who has been attending the meetings with TK

Cooper and TK went out to eat after the meeting, and TK asked him to be his sponsor

Carlos is jealous

Ah, what a healthy relationship you guys

Instant jealousy and suspicion

I have a feeling I'm going to be subjected to a lot of TK this episode

Sometimes I get the vibe that Carlos is way more into this relationship than TK is? And I'm not 100% sure that's what they're going for

Omg Tommy's hair game this episode, you guys, it is ON POINT, she looks incredible

There's a hot guy at her grief meeting and she's into him

Tommy's going on a date with him, get it girl

Okay so now it's the middle of the night, and Carlos wakes up alone, and TK is on the phone with Cooper

Trouble in paradise for the world's most solid couple

God damn it, it's a Rob Lowe sex scene, and here I was thinking that maybe this episode would be a little light on Owen

Amy Acker could do better I'm just saying

Owen has now offered to take care of Amy Acker's cat and I'm particularly concerned for the wellbeing of this cat named Horatio, a cat I have not seen yet but am already in love with

He's a hairless cat

Owen still has the dog??

I'm worried about the cat

Amy Acker is worried about Owen meeting her ex so I'm excited to meet him

I wonder if he's gonna get punched

Okay Owen does still have the dog, but Mateo has to move out (temporarily) because he's allergic to cats

WE'RE ABOUT TO MEET THE EX I'm EXCITED

Omg okay so you're sort of led to believe that he's going to be similar to Rob Lowe in appearance? But instead it's this older guy in a baseball cap who looks absolutely nothing like him, so expect Owen spiralling to happen any second now

The good news is that I'm not expecting this dude to get punched

Okay the dude is bald and Owen is SPIRALLING

Now we're back to the world's most solid and stable couple

So TK is going to his second meeting for the day and he's wearing nice clothes – I feel like the show is definitely hinting at the "TK and Cooper might be a thing" angle but I'm betting that when we meet Cooper, he'll be some kindly old guy or something, and Carlos will feel foolish for ever having doubted TK

BUT in saying that… there are some issues to unpack here, like Carlos trying to be supportive and wanting to listen to TK, and TK shutting him down every single time. And then also the fact that TK simply mentions a new guy and Carlos is instantly jealous/worried? That's… not great

We're about to MEET HIM

Oh shit he's hot

I was wrong

He's very hot

Uh oh

Carlos fucking hates him

Judd does not care for cats. Judd has dropped a couple of rungs in my estimation

Owen is spiralling about how Amy Acker's ex-husband is an "older gentleman" and how she said she had a "type"

Honestly, if she does have a type, it's terrible.

They're trying to say that Amy Acker has daddy issues. But honestly, I'm just going to say that she has terrible taste in men

Tommy is going on her date and she looks like a fucking goddess

Grace is such a wonderful friend; I love these two so much

There have been no emergencies since the very first one at the start of the episode, and we are 26 minutes in

These two are both crying over their dead spouses

This is awkward

Okay so we're back with the world's strongest couple and Carlos is pissed

Also it goes without saying that Ronen's acting has been terrible in every single scene, but I think I'm becoming weirdly desensitised to it

Carlos did not cook dinner for TK and he is giving him the cold shoulder

These two cannot even talk to each other?????????

Like… communication. It's genuinely a thing that people in healthy relationships do

I can't even really be on Carlos' side right now because TK hasn't done anything wrong? All this jealousy is coming from the fact that there's some other guy in TK's life that he's talking to, and Carlos is… being very petty about it

That is not healthy behaviour

This whole thing is so passive aggressive. Just fucking talk to each other? You're in a relationship together; you live together – just fucking have a conversation?

Jesus fucking Christ the contrived drama on this show drives me nuts

Okay so Carlos is pissed that TK won't open up to him and is instead relying on Cooper, who TK has now made the point of saying is straight

"It feels like he's getting pieces of you that I don't" see this is worrisome to me

And TK says "you don't want those pieces" which like… fuck. I can kind of understand

I'm not on Carlos' side in this fight you guys fuck

Okay so listen Ronen is a terrible fucking actor in this whole scene

And having to explain to the guy you're in a long term relationship with that like… you need people who have also experienced addiction to talk to, because they understand what you're going through better than people who have never experienced addiction

Carlos is acting irrationally jealous and TK has really given him no reason to worry. Ugh am I defending TK?? fuccckkkkk

Have they eased up on the LS filter this season? I think they have; this show is definitely not as brown anymore

33 minutes and we finally have another emergency

Now the world's most solid couple are looking at old photos, and TK is crying about his mother, and he blew off a meeting

Owen is having a go at Amy Acker about liking older men and he's being a total dick about it

Dump him, Amy Acker. Please, for the love of god, fucking dump him

Owen is breaking up with her??? The fuck?

OH SHIT IT WAS A SWITCH

Amy Acker's ex-husband is a bona fide hottie, the other guy was his father

Owen's just acted like a total dick. Maybe she will dump him? Those were his true colours, after all

SHE'S DUMPING HIMMMMMMMMM

YESSSSSS SHE DUMPED HIM!!!

Okay so now Carlos is pulling TK out of his depression funk and he invited the infamous Cooper over for dinner

And Carlos is doing the trustworthy, gentlemanly thing and leaving them to talk alone

And the world's most solid couple lives to see another day

Honestly... I don't even really know what to say. Carlos kind of acted like a dick in this episode? A jealous dick. I can't even say that this was a problem they overcame together - they never even really resolved it. Carlos just invited Cooper over for dinner and that's that.

This storyline will most likely be completely forgotten so why even bother trying to dissect it

Eddie Diaz to see us out:

[zeldas-cigarette-holder]

Ground Control to Major Tom

ao3

Faustus finally allowed himself to tear his gaze from Zelda’s face to look at the dog, felt his heart nearly stop when he realized that Satan, she had surely gone bloody batshit. It wasn’t a dog, the mere ghost of one — and poorly stuffed, at that.

I don’t truly know why I wrote this, but it ended up way sadder than I had ever expected a story about Zelda’s ugly stuffed dog to be. Tagging as spellwood, but there’s truly no shippy moments unless you read between the lines exceptionally well.

Enjoy xx

It had been ages since he had walked up to the mortuary, even longer since had seen her outside of any professional setting — perhaps decades, he mused to himself as he strolled up the long driveway.

The house looked the same as it had the last time he was there, just a few short months before the Spellman parents’ passing. He had gone to break the news of his engagement to Constance — left with his heart shattered at the shocked, tearful look in Zelda’s eyes. She so rarely showed emotion, it shook him to his core to see it. After that — the image of her mouth agape, eyes welled up with tears she refused to let fall, and the breathy little sound she let out as a response — he did his best to stay away under the guise of it being better for her.

Faustus skipped their parents' funeral, Edward’s wedding, Edward’s funeral, any non-church event held in the Spellman home — couldn't stomach seeing her again, the pain in her eyes. He knew it was cowardly, that he couldn’t manage to be there for the only person he had ever loved despite all of her pain and suffering. He couldn’t stand seeing that look in her eyes — so much pain and hurt and devastation — not when he wanted nothing more than to kiss her.

Truthfully, he wouldn’t have even considered going over if it weren’t for Hilda and her lilting voice, a hint of an accent he hadn’t recalled her having years ago when they last spoke.

But Zelda was alone with the girl — Sabrina — while Hilda was overseas with Ambrose for his trial.

His hand raised to the door, fingers barely brushing the cold metal knocker before the door was flung open, a curious little girl looking up at him. She was almost exactly half Edward and half Diana — face pinched like her mother’s, a fire in her eyes that rivaled her father’s. He found himself smiling warmly at the girl despite all of his hard edges and cool exterior, straightened his tie and felt suddenly small under her scrutinizing gaze.

“Are you the pizza man?” The little girl’s eyebrows were knit together in confusion, her lithe frame still shoved between the wall and the half opened door. “Where’s the pizza?”

“I’m… a friend.”

Why was this so awkward? She was a child, a half mortal child at that. He had sized up demons ten times his age, consorted with the council without the first shake of his hand, but this child had him in a cold sweat.

“Can I come inside?”

“No! What?” She scrunched her nose, hand scrubbing over her face in a way that was so Zelda-like it shocked him. “I don’t know you, you’re not my friend. Why should I let you in?”

Was he really going to argue with a child?

“I’m friends with Zelda.”

There was a long pause before the girl let out a peal of laughter. She pulled the door a little closer to her, obscuring his view from the inside of the house. Shame, as he was just able to squint down the long hallway.

“That’s how I know you’re a big fat liar. My Auntie Zee doesn’t have friends.”

The sound of heels clicking down the hallway distracted him from whatever witty retort he was going to throw back at the little girl. And her voice. Satan, it was like velvet to him — made his heart ache at how mature and weary she sounded compared to years past. He was almost surprised at how she had managed to completely ignore him for years — to filter in and duck out of Black Mass before he got a chance to speak to her — but Zelda was nothing if not as stubborn as a mule.

“Is that the pizza man? Damn it all to heaven, I’ve only got big bills…” Sabrina stepped back as Zelda flung the door open, wearing a look of exasperation that morphed to slack jawed shock. “Father Blackwood?”

She was as gorgeous as ever — possibly even more gorgeous now that he was looking at her closer and not fifty feet away, hiding in the back of the desecrated church. Faustus felt his heart race at the way she looked so effortlessly gorgeous — in a simple, loose black dress, a stark contrast to her severe wardrobe he usually saw her donning — one hand on the door and leaning against the doorframe.

“What are you doing here?”

“You missed Black Mass, Sister Zelda.”

It was a lie and they both knew it, but he couldn’t think fast with her looking down at him with that scowl that made his mouth go dry. It was the same scowl she wore as a younger witch, always looking down her nose at him in a poor attempt to hide what was glaringly obvious infatuation.

“I haven’t missed a service since…” She paused to think, pushed a stray piece of hair back into the bun that sat atop her head. “Since before you married Constance.”

It was bitter and more spiteful than she had any right being, but there was a self satisfied hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips and a gleam in her eyes despite her uncouthness. She had been itching to say it since he broke the news of his proposal, and it felt so good that she would have kept hurling insults at him if it weren’t for the fact that he was the High Priest.

“Hilda sent you. I’m not a ninny, nor was I born yesterday.”

There was an awkward silence that fell over them, and Zelda wore an expression of smug righteousness. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to slap her or kiss her — tried in vain to keep his lips from twitching up in a bemused half smile and knew he was failing miserably.

“Who is that guy?”

“Sabrina.”

Zelda’s tone was admonishing and she wore a pinched scowl to match. It was almost comical to watch — Sabrina had grown into a near mirror image of Zelda herself, he knew that from his quiet observation of the little girl at church events, just as inquisitive as Zelda had been.

“I told you, I’m a friend.”

“And I told you that Auntie Zee doesn’t have friends.”

Faustus let out a loud, bellowing laugh at that, watched the way Zelda’s face contorted into a grimace to hide her embarrassment. She was exactly the same as she had been the last time they spoke, and yet nothing like her old self.

“Then I’m an old friend.”

“You surely are old. Like, what? Five hundred?”

“Sabrina.”

“What? He said he was old.” She paused, her face pouting in concentration in a way that was undoubtedly learned from her aunt. “Aren’t you going to invite him in? It’s proper.”

It was eerily silent as Zelda stood motionless at the door, her lips pursed into a thin line as she was clearly thinking about turning him away. He almost let her, if it wasn’t for the niggling curiosity at the back of his mind. How was she, really? Was she dating again? Was it anyone he knew?

After what felt like an eternity, she finally stepped away from the doorframe and silently opened the door a bit wider. For someone as big on manners and decorum as she was, Zelda surely didn’t act as such, and the thought made Faustus smirk to himself.

Same old Zelda but new somehow.

Sabrina tugged at the waist of her aunt’s dress and Faustus was shocked at how naturally maternal it was to watch her lift the little girl onto her hip — like she was born to be a mother. It made him wonder why — why she never wanted domesticity with him, why she never had kids, why the world was so unjust and cruel to someone as good as her.

“You can sit in Hilda’s chair.”

“No.” Sabrina’s voice was strong and unwavering, just as Zelda’s had been as a child. “Only Auntie Hilda sits in her chair. Your old friend can sit on that spot.”

She pointed towards the stiff side of the couch across the room, her little eyes narrowed in a near-perfect scowl — would have been perfect if she wasn’t smiling, but Faustus appreciated her feistiness nonetheless. Sabrina would certainly grow into a force to be reckoned with, like all of the Spellman siblings had been in their own way, and Faustus let himself smile at the way Zelda’s eyes nearly beamed with pride at her niece’s assertiveness.

“The house hasn’t changed at all.”

It was a poor attempt at small talk — something he had never been particularly good at —but it was the truth. The same bag of knitting sat on the table by Hilda’s chair, and Zelda’s end table was just as chaotically messy as it had been decades ago, a perfect reflection of her personality. It was a cluttered disaster of spilled ashes, loose napkins with her frenzied notes scrawled across them, precariously stacked books, and empty glasses nested in each other — so completely her that it was almost adorable.

“It’s changed a fair bit since… the incident. You’d know if you kept in touch.”

Zelda sat gingerly in her chair, eyes following Sabrina as she puttered around the room. She was steely and quiet, a challenging gleam to her eyes despite not knowing exactly what she wanted to know. Was she upset that he married Constance? Or was she more upset that he cared so little that when her brother passed — her Eddie, her protector, her everything — he didn’t even care enough to show up at the funeral and see if she was okay?

The question had nagged at her for years, swirling in the back of her mind when she got drunk and nostalgic — a rare occurrence now that she and Hilda had a child to care for — only let herself pull out the old photographs then, and tucked them away safely before her sober self could find them and cry.

“Auntie?”

“Yes, Sabrina?”

“Do you want Tommy?”

There was a hesitation in her eyes at the mention of her familiar, lips back to that tight pursed look that meant the walls were back up again. Faustus idly wondered if he would ever be able to tear them down again, to see her relaxed and smiling and happy.

“You could bring him in here, yes.”

“He’s still alive?”

Faustus’ familiar, though only slightly older, had passed decades ago. He wasn’t sure if he was more impressed with the goblin-turned-dog’s age, or the fact that he was so heaven bent on protecting Zelda that he had stayed around for this many years. Anubis, after several years of Faustus being decidedly less reckless than he had been in his youth, had finally decided it was time for him to pass on. He knew Zelda was reckless, but was that old beagle the only thing protecting her?

“He’s… he’s been around.”

Classic Zelda, he thought, talking herself in circles until he felt like the dumbest person in the room. She had always been good at evading questions like that, a master of building walls so high no one could see over them. It was something she had to have learned from her parents, he had decided over the years, because Edward had been the same way.

“How old is he now? Satan, he’s nearly the same age as Anubis and he passed when? Thirty years ago?”

“He’s old.”

“Just old?”

“Very old. Is that better, Father Blackwood?” Her nostrils flared in annoyance, hand scrubbing over her face in the same anxious habit she had held in her youth. “Why do you care so much about my familiar?”

He couldn’t answer that question, only leaned back and raised his eyebrow.

“He’s heavy. What are you feeding him? Bricks? Stones?”

Zelda let out a puff of laughter when Sabrina came back into the room, pulling the dog from her niece’s grasp and settling him safely at her side. She stroked at his head, fingers moving deftly as though it was unconscious, the grimace slipping from her face and giving way to a relaxed, easy smile.

“Bacon. And stuffing.”

They both laughed as though they were conspiring about something, Sabrina’s eyes pointedly on Faustus in a way that made him feel smaller than he actually was. If the girl were to end up at the academy, he would surely be in trouble, the spitting image of Zelda Spellman reincarnated into a tiny blonde body.

Faustus finally allowed himself to tear his gaze from Zelda’s face to look at the dog, felt his heart nearly stop when he realized that Satan, she had surely gone bloody batshit. It wasn’t a dog, the mere ghost of one — and poorly stuffed, at that.

The dog had never been particularly cute in his prime, always awkward and clambering around with too big paws and too long ears, but there was something about him that had never failed to make Zelda smile that big, unrestrained grin Faustus loved so much. But this poor reincarnation of Vinegar Tom? The poor thing was downright disgusting.

His face was stretched too tight, body lumpy in some areas and sagging in others, and his ears were nearly bare of fur. Surely Zelda had to know that this wasn’t Vinegar Tom — more likely a poorly done art project by Sabrina, if he had to guess — and yet she was worrying his ear between her fingers and cooing as though he was still a pup.

“Zelda… is he alive?”

“Well he’s not dead, Faustus.” She was indignant, eyebrows knit together as she looked down at her familiar. “He thinks you’re dead. What a rude guest, isn’t he, Tommy Boy?”

Faustus wasn’t sure if he was horrified or amused— decided to go with a mixture of both, tried his best to stop the smirk from spreading across his lips lest she smack him right where he sat. There she was, Zelda fucking Spellman of all people, cooing at a dead, stuffed dog as though he was alive and kicking.

“He hasn’t moved since Sabrina brought him in here.”

“Tom doesn’t like men, least of all you.”

“I don’t think he has the ability to like anything because he’s dead.”

There was a tense silence, Zelda’s fingers picking at the dog’s ear with a fervor now. Sabrina, just as well behaved as she had always been during church services, had chosen that moment to leave the room and Faustus wasn’t sure if he was thankful or annoyed.

“Take it back.”

“What?”

“Take it back.”

She was fucking insane. Absolutely bloody bonkers in a way he would have never expected — would have never realized if he had turned away at the door and wished her a good day — much less from her.

“I said take it back.”

“He’s dead, Zelda. That isn’t a live dog… he’s not even stuffed well. What is wrong with you?”

Satan, he wanted to shake her and yell and scream and find the smart, sane Zelda that he once knew. Maybe this is why Hilda had sent him over, to try and talk some sense into her.

“He’s not dead. Tom isn’t dead. He’s my soulmate and he wouldn’t… he wouldn’t leave me.”

Her eyes were glistening with tears she was too stubborn to let fall, her upper lip quivering and damn it, no matter how insane she looked clinging to that dead dog, Faustus wanted nothing more than to hold her and wipe her tears away.

“He wouldn’t leave me like.. like everyone else. Like my parents and Eddie and Hilda—“

“Hilda hasn’t left you, she’s overseas with Ambrose.”

“Hilda and you. And I’m sure Sabrina will leave me too, and Ambrose would if he was allowed to leave this Satan forsaken house, he’s told me that.”

Zelda lifted a delicate finger to the corners of her eyes, dabbed her tears away and let out a very un-Zelda-like sniffle before setting her expression back to the look of annoyance she was so used to wearing.

“So no, Vinegar Tom isn’t dead and he hasn’t left me. Not yet. Just let me have it, Faustus. What do you care if I carry him around?”

He wouldn’t have cared, shouldn’t have asked so many damned questions, but now his heart was achy with guilt and sadness and pity. Pity for that steely, bitchy Zelda he knew centuries ago, and pity for this Zelda sitting in front of him, sniveling pathetically while stroking a dead dog.

Faustus was suddenly glad he hadn’t asked who hurt her, wouldn’t have been able to handle that the answer was him.

“Do you bring him to Black Mass?”

“Only sometimes.”

“And what do you declare a worthy occasion for Tom himself to grace my church with his presence?”

Zelda’s smile reached her eyes when Faustus finally gave in and played along. It was nice to live in the bubble of fantasy — to pretend that for once, someone loved her enough to stay.

"Anniversaries.”

“Of?”

“Deaths, mostly. And the one service a year in which you glorify your marriage to the entire coven like it won’t shatter me all over again.”

It was bitter and cold and so angry that if he was sitting closer, she would have surely spat on him. Zelda had easily broken his heart a dozen times in one short conversation, and yet she looked so fucking smug that it almost angered him.

They both jumped when the heavy wooden door slammed shut, a clatter coming from the front hall before Sabrina raced into the room. A welcome distraction from the serious turn to their conversation, and Zelda looked almost relieved, albeit a touch embarrassed at Sabrina’s clumsy galloping.

“Pizza! Auntie, the pizza’s here!”

Zelda just barely saved the boxes from falling to the floor and ruining their meal, a bemused gleam hiding in her eyes behind a stern tone when she told Sabrina she wouldn’t get a single piece of pizza if she didn’t go wash up first.

“Is your old friend going to stay?”

“He’s just a friend, Sabrina.”

“I should be leaving now, really.” He was shocked when thin fingers clasped around his wrist and pushed him back down into the couch. “Unless you want me to stay?”

She paused for a moment, eyebrows knit together in thought as she fanned herself with a paper plate. It was a look he knew well, the little smirk playing on her lips when she was thinking up a particularly witty retort.

“I don’t care if you stay or if you go, but it’s rather rude to not stay for dinner and make sure I’m okay after you made me cry. Twice.”

Faustus nearly scoffed at her haughty tone and the way her eyes twinkled with mischievous glee. He pretended to focus on the way her hands moved as she served the pizza, the way her hands were decidedly more veiny and frail than he had remembered them being.

“I seem to recall only seeing tears once.”

“The first set gave way to the second.” He pretended not to notice when she delicately placed a piece of pizza crust in front of Vinegar Tom’s nose. “You’re certainly lucky that no tears fell, I would be guilting you from now until the day you die.”

“That would be a rather long time, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if you insult my dog again.”

[roman-writing]

bring home a haunting (3/12)

Fandom: The Haunting of Bly Manor

Pairing: Dani Clayton/Jamie Taylor

Rating: M

Wordcount: 27,332

Summary: Dani almost has her life together, when a familiar face arrives back in town after ten years. A childhood friends AU written with @youngbloodbuzz

read it below or read it on AO3 here

Where once Dani had imagined scenarios of breathlessly rounding a corner to find Jamie there, only to find an empty space and a sense of something — frustration? anger? relief? feigned indifference? disappointment? — now Jamie would be there. Every time. As though their schedules had aligned, suddenly and without warning. Dani couldn't tell if this was a blessing or a curse. Perhaps a mix of both. 

Or — what was it Judy had said? Kismet. 

Dani drove up to the gas station and stepped out of the car. Stanley, the local attendant, jogged out to fill up the tank, and Dani thanked him with a smile. It was an overcast Saturday, but she had dinner at the O'Mara household to look forward to later that evening, and Eddie was off in the next town over helping Tommy build a new deck. Leaving Stanley to handle the car, Dani walked into the shop to idly peruse items she had no intention of buying while she waited. 

Her fingertips were ghosting over the frames of sunglasses that had been on display for at least seven years, when a truck with faded green paint puttered into the row beside her car. Dani's brow furrowed; she didn't recognize that car, and she recognized all the regular cars in this town. Either someone was passing through, needing a top up on their way to some more worldly destination, or someone new had — oh. 

Oh, no. That was Jamie. Jamie was jumping from the high seat, boots hitting the concrete. That was Jamie slamming the door shut and giving Stanley a wave as she made her way into the shop. Before she knew precisely what she was doing, Dani's hand had curled around a pair of large sunglasses and she was sliding them over her face. She angled herself away from the door with the pretense of admiring the glasses in the small smudged mirror perched atop the display rack. 

Behind her the bell jingled. The sound of heavy footsteps and the brush of a draught as the door swung shut once more. Dani held her breath, eyes flicking up towards the mirror. She could see the reflection of Jamie's legs angled in the glass. Even when Jamie turned and strode towards the counter, Dani could feel the tension in her own shoulders until she was wound tight as a spring. 

There was the slap of the service bell and Jamie's unmistakable voice calling out, "Hunter! I know you're back there! C'mon! I'm trying to give you actual money here!" 

The door to the back room swung open, and Dani could hear a sigh. "Jamie," said Hunter, sounding weary. "You couldn't wait five minutes for Stanley?" 

"He's busy, and I need oil." 

"I just sold you some last week." 

"What? Is there a ration enforcement in these parts? Are we still at war with ze Germans? Didn't anyone tell you? That shit's all over, mate." 

"I'm not that old." 

"Bullshit, you aren't," Jamie said, and even without seeing her face Dani could see the teasing grin that came with her tone. "I've seen those medals you parade around every Veteran's Day." 

"Those are for Korea, you dunce." 

"Really? Always thought it was for those damn Boers." 

"All right. All right. I'll get your damn oil. You happy?" He began to stomp back through the rear door. "How many bottles do you need this time?" 

"Make it six," Jamie answered. "Best be safe, yeah?” 

Whatever he grumbled in answer, Dani couldn't hear. She kept her shoulders hunched, reaching for another pair of sunglasses — bigger this time — and jammed them atop the bridge of her nose. Through the windows she could see Stanley finish up with her car, replacing the cap, and then move to Jamie's. Clearly he intended to ring them both up at the same time. Made sense, but that didn't stop her from wishing she could slip away without Jamie noticing her presence. Maybe she could just lie and say she left her wallet at home, drive away, and then come back to pay later when the station was decidedly Jamie-free. 

Jamie herself had vanished from the little mirror. Dani's ears pricked, and she glanced around as surreptitiously as she dared while maintaining the illusion of shopping. There, at the corner of her vision, she could see the slope of Jamie's profile moving through the only two aisles in the whole place. Dani shuffled around in an attempt to keep her back facing Jamie, rather than turn the display rack. She kept her gaze fixed on the mirror, and tried to remain as quiet and unassuming as possible. 

"Don't reckon that pair suits you much." 

With a jerk, Dani glanced over her shoulder. Jamie was leaning her elbows on the short aisle dividing the space between them. She had clearly been shuffling through the magazine section, for she held the latest Wonder Woman comic book edition in her hands, along with some other magazine that bore bold red text over a picture of Cher’s face.

"Oh," said Dani. "Hi, Jamie." 

Jamie did not answer immediately. Instead, she withdrew and wandered around the aisle to stand beside Dani. She tucked the comic book and magazine under one arm, and lifted a hand to point at various sunglasses in silent judgement. Her lips were pursed in thought. She shook her head, pointed to the next, made a face, pointed to the next, and then finally - 

"These," Jamie said, pulling down a pair of pink-rimmed glasses. "Try these." 

Clearing her throat, Dani took off the pair she was currently wearing. Jamie had unfolded the pink sunglasses and was holding them out towards Dani for her to put on. Dani ducked her head slightly to let Jamie slip the sunglasses into place. 

"Oh, yeah," Jamie said. "Those are the ones." 

One hand still occupied with the other pair, Dani reached up to push the ones she wore further up her nose. "Better?" 

"Worse. So much worse." Jamie grinned. "You should definitely buy them." 

With a snort of laughter, Dani pulled them off and put both sets back on the rack. "Still giving out terrible fashion advice, I see." 

Jamie shrugged, the corner of her mouth curled in a grin. "Keeps me honest." 

Turning towards the rack, Dani plucked a pair of vibrant chemical green sunglasses with triangular frames, and held them out to Jamie. "I'll buy the pink ones if you buy these." 

Without a lick of hesitation, Jamie took the sunglasses and donned them. She looked at herself in the mirror. "Really bring out my striking personality, don't they?" 

Dani was biting at her lower lip to keep herself from laughing. "Oh, absolutely. People will see you coming from a mile away now." 

"I was thinking I could use them to direct traffic when the grid goes out. Are they glow in the dark?" Jamie pulled them off to check the tag. 

Before Dani could answer, the door opened and Stanley entered. He looked over at the two of them. "You're all done, ladies. Who should I ring up first?" 

Dani pointed at Jamie, who pointed back at her. 

"No, really," insisted Dani. "You should -" 

"Nah. I'm still waiting on that oil from Hunter. Go on." 

And as if summoned, Hunter reappeared from the back room with a case of oil beneath one arm. 

"Didn't just have six bottles lying around," he said, moving behind the till and scanning the box into the system. "Had to scrounge around in storage. Let's go, Taylor. I don’t got all day." 

He waved at Jamie to approach, like a king beckoning forth a serf. 

"Guess that answers that question, then," Jamie said. She gave Dani an apologetic smile, then strode over to the counter. 

When she placed the two magazines and the sunglasses down, Dani blinked in surprise. "You're not honestly buying those, are you?" Dani asked, stepping into line behind her. 

Hunter rang up all the items, and Jamie passed over some cash. "'Course I am," she said. "The kid'll love them." 

Hunter gave Jamie her change, at which point Jamie stacked the magazines atop the cardboard box of oil and swept them all up beneath her arm. Then, she whipped the garish sunglasses over her nose and ears, said, "Ta," and sauntered out of the service station like she owned the place. 

Dani was still staring after her when Hunter asked, "Was there anything else you wanted?" 

Dani jolted as if from a daydream. She shook her head. "Uh - no. Thanks, Mr. Thompson. I'll see you at Church tomorrow." 

By the time she had paid and walked out to her car, Jamie was gone.

 --

Dani didn’t even have to wait for the end of the day before another run in. No sooner had she stepped into the O'Mara house, than Judy was sighing about having forgotten to pick up onions for dinner. Dani immediately held out her hand for the shopping list, saying, "I'll go. You stay." and Judy gratefully handed it over.

"You're a star," said Judy, pressing a kiss to Dani's cheek and cash into Dani's hand.

"It's no problem," Dani said with a laugh, already heading back towards the front door where her car awaited, parked on the street outside.

Carson trotted after her, intent on coming along to keep Dani company. And also, she suspected, to have free reign over her stereo, where he could blast the latest pop tunes without anyone in the house telling him to keep it down. With a shake of her head and a small smile, Dani drove them down to the supermarket.

It should have been a quick jaunt. Grab what they needed and head back home for dinner. In and out. Completely uneventful.

Dani was bickering with Carson in the produce aisle, when she saw her. Eyes going wide, Dani immediately dropped down to a crouch beside the display of potatoes.

"What are we doing?" Carson whispered loudly as he crouched down beside her. "Did you drop something? Oh, look, I found a quarter."

"That's - uh - That's nice," Dani said, not really paying any attention to him as she lifted her head to peer over the potato display as though peering over the parapets, fearful of incoming gunfire.

Carson did the same, and his eyes lit up. "Hey, is that Jamie? Mom mentioned she was back in town -"

"Shh!" Dani tugged him back down by the back of his leather jacket until the both of them sat on the ground, their backs pressed against a fruit stand.

Carson gave her an odd look. "Okay, this is not what I expected."

"What do you mean?" Dani asked, not really paying him much attention. She dared to peek around the corner, but Jamie must have moved along to a different aisle; she was nowhere in sight.

"Well, for starters, I thought you'd be glad to see her again. Not -" Carson gestured to her with one hand. "- Doing whatever this is."

The tiles were cold beneath her. Dani met his gaze and held it for a moment before turning away once more. "It's complicated."

"Complicated? You two were glued at the hip."

"Yeah, and then she left," Dani said far more sharply than she had intended.

Carson held up both hands in surrender, quarter still stuck between the fingers of his left hand. "Okay. Okay. None of my business, clearly." When she didn't answer him, he said in a low voice, "So, how long are we going to wait here? It's just — I'm hungry. And I am contemplating eating raw spuds at the moment, so -"

"What the hell are you two doing down there?"

And for the second time in less than twenty four hours, Dani nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden sound of Jamie's voice. She craned her neck to find Jamie leaning over a display of garlic and shallots to stare at them in bewilderment. 

Immediately, Carson gave the quarter a flick into the air with his thumb and caught it again. “Found this.”

Jamie’s eyebrows rose and she grinned. “Not bad. And you are -?”

Pushing himself upright, Carson pocketed the quarter and said, “Aw. Don’t recognize me for my devilish good looks? I’m wounded, Jamie.” 

For a moment Jamie’s forehead furrowed in bemusement, and then her eyes widened. “Holy shit. Carson? No way.” 

He laughed, arms opening for a hug which she stepped into without hesitation. While they were having their happy little reunion, Dani rose to her feet and surreptitiously brushed off the backs of her legs, trying to not appear as out of place as she felt. Jamie and Carson parted with hearty pats on the back and full smiles. Jamie let her hand linger on his shoulder for a moment before lowering her arm.

"Look at you," she said appraisingly. "Christ, but you shot up, didn't you? Still the shortest brother, I see."

"Hey, fuck you," he said but his grin only widened. "I bet you're the shortest of the group now. Hey, Dani! Stand beside her and let's see who's taller."

Hesitant, Dani did as she was told. She and Jamie stood back to back, while Carson measured their heights with the flat of his hand. It was like being back in Judy's house as kids, marking growth spurts in pencil on the wall that Judy refused to repaint as the years dragged on, so that to this day it was littered with marks. Except this time, Dani and Jamie were very careful not to touch. Dani could feel the brush of Jamie's bulky jacket against the back of her arm, and she jerked her hand away immediately.

"Hate to break it to you," Carson said to Jamie, "but you're now officially The Shortest. God rest your soul, Jamie Taylor. I hardly knew ye."

When Dani turned back around it was to find Jamie looking genuinely horrified at this news.

"Come off it!" Jamie said, and she checked Dani's legs. "You're wearing heels, aren't you?"

Shaking her head, Dani lifted one foot to prove that she stood in simple flats, whilst Jamie herself wore thick-soled leather work boots encrusted with mud.

"Fuck me," Jamie muttered, while Carson laughed mockingly at her.

Dani cleared her throat and reached for a pre-packaged bag of white onions from the display. "Hey, Carson, we should -" she said with a jerk of her head towards the exit. "Your mom's waiting for us back home to bring these."

His eyes lit up and he turned to Jamie. "You should come over! You know mom. There's always room for one more at the dinner table."

For a brief terrifying second, Dani thought Jamie was actually going to accept his offer, but Jamie only shook her head. “Nah. I got to get back home to the kid before he burns the place down. Some other time, maybe.”

Jamie gave them each a nod, and then continued on her way, picking up a plastic shopping basket as she went. Dani watched her go, jaw tight. When Jamie had rounded the far aisle and vanished from sight, Dani turned to find that Carson was watching her instead. 

“What?” Dani asked, fingers tightening around the netted packaging in her grasp. 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” 

“No,” Dani lied. “It was fine.” 

Carson smiled at her, indulgent and gentle, before nudging her. “I wasn’t lying about starving to death, though. Come on.”

Rolling her eyes, Dani followed him to the register to pay.

 --

It was nearly six in the evening when Dani finally tore herself away from her desk at school the next week. She had run out of papers to mark and classes to plan, no matter what she told herself to the contrary. There was always more work to do, but even she could not deny that there was nothing more to be accomplished now. Not when she could hardly concentrate enough to do more than twirl a pen between her fingers and ignore the growling of her own stomach.

She should go home. She should make dinner. She should do the dishes. Hell, she should probably vacuum. And yet here she was, grasping at any straw that might detain her for another five minutes.

With a sigh, she pushed away from the desk and rose to her feet. Packing everything away, she slung her bag over one shoulder and left, stopping to lock up the classroom behind her. The halls of the school were empty. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows and washed the floor in golden tones that warmed her ankles with every step. As she trotted down the stairs leading to the front door of the school — the janitor would lock up everything at seven, she knew — Dani paused.

Mikey Taylor was still seated against the trunk of a tree on the front lawn. His head rose and he waved in a bored manner towards her. Dani lifted her hand in return. She almost took a step in his direction, before with a shake of her head she steered herself away towards where her car was parked in the staff lot.

It wasn't her business, she told herself sternly. How Jamie raised her little brother was Jamie's prerogative. Never mind that Mikey shouldn't be sitting out here alone for nearly three hours, waiting to be picked up. Never mind that the school library closed at four, kicking out any loitering kids. Lips pressed into a narrow line, Dani yanked open her car door and threw her bag into the passenger seat. It wasn't any of her business. Jamie had made that clear enough ten years ago.

Dani shut the door behind her with a little more force than was strictly necessary. The keys jangled as she stuck one into the ignition. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on the key, Dani paused. From here, she could just see Mikey over the dashboard. He had taken to tearing up grass and making a pile on the ground.

Dani firmly ignored him as best she could, and turned the key. Her car sputtered and groaned. She stopped, then turned the key again, only to be faced with the same results.

"Come on," she muttered, gripping the steering wheel tight.

This time when she turned the key, the engine gasped to life, followed by an awful grinding noise. Dark noxious smoke started to eek up from the seams of the hood. Dani groaned and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel, while the car shuddered beneath her seat. She would need to go back inside to ring a towing company and then ring Eddie and ask him to come get her. Doubtless, he would spend the whole ride home complaining about her car and how she should give it up. 

Great. Just when she thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

Someone rapped on her window. Dani’s head jerked up. She blinked out the driver’s seat window at the sun-drenched silhouette of Jamie Taylor standing just outside. Dani’s hands flexed against the wheel. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in, but then Jamie was tapping at the window again with the back of her knuckles. Opening her eyes, Dani wound down the window.

"Not that I should tell you how to live your life," said Jamie by way of greeting, "but you should really turn off the engine."

Dani twisted the key in the ignition, and the car spluttered and died. The dark smoke that had been threading from the hood was now beginning to fade, though she could still smell something acrid on the air.

Jamie had shifted somewhat so that the sunlight now lanced directly into Dani's eyes. Dani squinted out the window, lifting one hand to shield her brow, and said, "Hi."

"Mind if I have a look?" Jamie asked, gesturing towards the front of the car.

"What?"

"Your engine. Mind if I check?"

"Oh. It's - You really don't have to,” Dani stumbled over the words. “I was just about to run back inside to call a tow -”

“I don’t mind,” said Jamie, briefly glancing at Mikey, who was now sitting in a green truck parked on the street. “Reckon the kid won’t mind either. What’s a few more minutes?”

Finally, Dani gave a relenting nod. "Yeah. Sure. Thanks."

Jamie was already rounding the car to stand before it, her fingers searching beneath the seam of the hood. "Can you pop the bonnet? Should be a lever or summint in there."

Dani scouted around until she found the lever Jamie was speaking of, and the hood popped open with a lurch. She opened the car door and stepped out as Jamie was lifting the hood with a groan of metal on metal and holding it in place with a steel arm latch. The moment she hoisted it up, a cloud of oily smoke bloomed forth, and Jamie waved it away with a cough and a screwed up face. 

"Fuck. That's bleedin' awful," Jamie muttered to herself.

Arms wrapped around herself, Dani moved to stand by one of the front tires. "He's been waiting out here for a while," she said, nodding towards the green truck. "I - uh - I tend to keep an eye on him. From the classroom, I mean. I can see the front lawn from my classroom."

"'Fraid there's not much I can do about that," Jamie said, already bending over to poke around in Dani's engine. "I work long shifts at the botanical gardens. Got to make a living somehow."

"Yeah, but - It's a long time, is all I'm saying."

Gingerly, Jamie touched some sort of spout and unscrewed a cap so she could pull out a long narrow stick of metal from the engine. "Yeah? He say anything to you about it?"

"Well, no," Dani admitted.

"Anybody pick on him?"

"No."

Jamie shrugged, still not looking up from where she worked. "If he's that keen to get home earlier then, he can walk. I used to walk further to school everyday. Remember?"

Nodding, Dani sat on the edge of the car, careful not to get any grime on her skirt from the exposed engine. The car had been sitting in the sunlight for so long, she could feel the burn of metal through the fabric of her skirt. "Yeah," she sighed, shifting slightly so that she wasn’t leaning her full weight on the car. "Yeah, I remember."

Silence fell between them. Dani watched idly as Jamie did this and that, wishing she knew anything at all about cars. Jamie's overalls and band shirt were already dirty, the jean material streaked with mud. An errant leaf was stuck to the sole of Jamie's boots, and her hair was tied back from her face with a bandana. Dani chewed at her lower lip, glancing away when Jamie bent over further so that the torn collar of her t-shirt revealed her collarbones and a length of silver chain disappearing beneath the fabric.

"How long's it been like this?" Jamie asked.

"About six months now," said Dani. "I just got it out of the shop a few weeks ago, but nothing seems to stick."

"Well, whoever worked on it last clearly did a shit job if it's still doing this."

Dani bit back a swell of embarrassment. The mechanic had been under the recommendation of Eddie, and it wasn't as though there were many mechanics to choose from in a place like this. Not any that would take her seriously on her own, anyway.

"Trust me," Dani said, "This is an improvement."

"That bad, huh? Can't make any promises that this'll do much, then. Might be able to patch it, if we’re lucky."

"I thought you could fix anything," Dani replied, unable to keep back a small grin, and something like lead dropped in her stomach at the familiarity of the comment. 

Jamie paused, eyes flicking up to meet hers, standing frozen for a moment. Dani could feel the smile slide from her face, and Jamie turned her attention back to the engine. 

“Would if I could,” Jamie finally said. “But I’m no mechanic. Just a bit of a gearhead in my spare time.” 

Wringing her hands together in her lap, Dani said, "Thank you anyways."

"No problem, Poppins."

Hearing that old nickname again was like an electric shock, like a current racing up her spine and buzzing at the nape of her neck. Dani twisted the gold band of the engagement ring around her finger and bit her tongue to keep herself from saying something she would regret. 

“Well, now,” Jamie grunted a while later, arm still half-buried in the engine of Dani’s poor car, “There’s one problem, right there. Your rear main seal’s leaking all over the place.”

“And that’s -” Dani said slowly, “- bad?”

Jamie continued poking around, leaned over so far she was standing on her toes now to crane her neck and see past all the bits and bobs Dani couldn’t name if her life depended on it. “It’s not great. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed a trail of oil in your garage or driveway? After you’ve parked, maybe?”

Dani nodded.

Even after receiving confirmation, Jamie stepped back in order to crouch down and look beneath the car. “Yeah, there’s some here, too. Thought as much.”

Dani asked, “How bad are we talking here?”

Straightening with a shrug, Jamie wiped at her cheek with the back of one hand, leaving a streak of oil in its wake. She leaned over the engine for another poke around inside. “Means you’ve been slowly running out of oil since you last took this to the shop. If it were the front main seal, it would be an easy fix, but this -” She hissed and yanked her hand back from the hot metal exterior she’d touched, “- ow! Fuck!” Jamie waved her hand through the air for a few seconds before diving back in. “This is a big job. Got to remove the transmission, the clutch, the fly wheel — you get the picture. Hours and hours of work just to get at a five dollar seal. Nothing I can do about it here.” 

“Do I need to call a tow?” Dani asked, already wincing at the bill that was yet to come. 

“Nah,” said Jamie, leaning back and standing up straight. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I have some oil in my boot. Should be enough to get you home, but you’ll need to have it looked at sharpish.” 

Drawing in a deep breath, Dani nodded. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. Maybe Eddie was right. Maybe it was just time to sell it. Maybe it wasn’t worth anything but scrap. Maybe -

“Hey.” 

Dani jerked her head up. 

Jamie had undone the bandana and was now using it to wipe off her hands. Her brows were furrowed, watching Dani with an expression of distant concern, as though afraid to get too close but idling just an arm's length away. Without the bandana, her hair was a mess of fly-aways wisping about her face. Dani had to throttle the urge to reach out and smooth them back. Maybe if it had been a decade ago. But not here, and not now.

Jamie tilted her chin up in a nod towards Dani. "You all right there? Got that look. One that says you're too deep in your own head."

Dani cleared her throat. Her hands itched to move, so she occupied them by running them through her own hair with a sigh of frustration. "Yeah. It's - It's nothing. Really. My car's been having a lot of problems lately, and -" She cut herself off, then laughed ruefully. "It's going to sound stupid, but I just don't have the heart to sell it, you know? So —"

Dani let her hands fall back to her side, but even then they fidgeted; her ragged thumbnails running along each individual pad of her fingertips.

"So," Jamie said slowly. "Buy a new one."

Dani's mouth dropped open, but the words escaped her.

"What? Don't have enough money?" Jamie asked, sounding incredulous. "I know they don't pay you that poorly here. And didn't you just sell your old house?"

"How do you -? How do you know that?"

Jamie gave her a look. "Dani. Please. You think there are secrets? In this town?"

For some reason that simple statement sent a shiver of apprehension down Dani's spine, coiling in her gut like a live snake. She swallowed hard and straightened her shoulders. "I know North Liberty isn't London or anything, but it's not that small."

"If there are more than two thousand people in this place, I'll eat that rear main seal of yours," said Jamie, swatting at the exposed engine with her grimy bandana.

Glaring, Dani huffed and crossed her arms. "It's not the money."

Jamie was winding the bandana round and round the knuckles of one hand. She looked so at ease, leaning against the front of Dani's car, engine oil on her face, one booted foot propped back against the rusty bumper. She could have been a poster. "What's it then?"

Dani lifted her chin. "None of your business."

Jamie blinked, taken aback, eyebrows raised. "Wow." She laughed, but the sound held no real mirth. "Right. Well. Suppose it isn't."

Dani glanced away, arms tightening around her midriff. When Jamie pushed off of the car and began walking away, bandana slung over one shoulder, Dani said, "Where are you going?"

Jamie did not stop. "To get that engine oil."

The little frisson of fear was joined by a curdling guilt and shame. Dani ground her teeth. Her fingers tapped a staccato rhythm against her opposite rib cage, counting seams in bone. There was the banging of a truck door, a scuffling about followed by muffled swearing — ‘Mikey, hand me the - thanks, mate’ — then Jamie was striding back towards her with a squared blue bottle in one hand. 

“I’m sorry,” Dani said, when Jamie had come back into earshot. 

Already Jamie was shaking her head, not looking in Dani’s direction as she made a beeline towards the car. “What was I going to do?” she asked. “Up and leave you stranded here? For the vultures?” Jamie unscrewed the bottle and gestured with the cap towards the empty suburban street filled with sunlight and white picket fences. “It’s bloody dangerous in these parts, you know. Take my life into my own hands even dropping off the kid every day.”

Unable to help herself, Dani gave a huff of laughter. Jamie still wasn’t looking in her direction, but Dani could see the smirk from the slant of her profile as she began pouring oil in what Dani presumed was the right place. Dani watched. She loitered. She brought her hand up to her mouth, realized what she was doing, and dropped it firmly to her side again. In no time at all, Jamie straightened, screwing everything back into place and lowering the rod that held up the hood of the car so that she could drop that, too, and latch it into place by leaning atop it with one palm. The vehicle dipped over its front wheels, suspension squeaking slightly.

When Jamie turned, Dani held her breath and waited for some kind of backlash. 

Jamie patted the hood of the car. “Better take the old girl home, eh?”

Dani nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I will.”

“Wasn’t talking to you,” Jamie said, and her grin was soft. Dani stumbled for a reply, and could form none. 

When Jamie made a motion as though she was going to walk back towards her own truck, Dani blurted out, “Thank you.” 

Jamie’s footsteps faltered for a split second, but then she was continuing on her way. As she passed Dani, she said, “Good night.” 

“Night,” Dani heard herself say as if from miles away. 

 --

The drive home for the most part was uneventful; the car creaked and rattled with every sharp turn of the corner, the old air freshener hanging from her rear view mirror swung gently, and the streets were clear from the evening traffic rush. A normal drive, interspersed with the events of the last few days like a broken film reel on loop. Every single expression that crossed Jamie’s face, the things Dani said or could’ve said, the steady confidence in Jamie’s hands as they delved into her car’s engine. 

At a stoplight, Dani’s eyes strayed to the ring on her finger, the evening sun making it glitter bright. Her stomach twisted tight, and an eyedropper of uncertainty rippled through her. When the noise in her head became too loud, she flicked on the radio where the station Carson had set still played, the sound of Madonna blaring through her tinny speakers and filling the cabin. She set the volume high, and let it carry her the rest of the way home. 

Home, which happened to be a two storey house painted white with dark green shutters and a grey tiled roof, with too neat of a green lawn and a white picket fence. Eddie’s dream house. When he had finalized the deal, he'd picked her up in a rib crushing hug and spun her around, laughing. The day they finally got the keys and moved in, he had insisted on carrying her through the front door and bellowed, “Honey, I’m home!” into the empty house, the sound echoing and loud. She had laughed then, happy to see him so happy. Happy to be a part of that moment with him. Now, as she sat in her idling car in the driveway, staring up at the house, a part of her wished that he'd asked, just once, if she had liked it at all, too. 

She shook off the feeling and pressed the remote clipped to the sun visor to open the garage door and park the car inside. She sat there for a moment, listening to the radio play when the thought suddenly occurred to her — wondering if Jamie still listened to that same jarring music she used to adore. The same kind of music she would play on the boombox shared between the boys, laughing as Eddie and David winced at the aggressive sounds while Carson and Tommy nodded along. Dani particularly didn’t feel one way or the other, merely enjoyed how much fun they seemed to have. 

She cut the engine, leaving her in silence. She stepped out of the car and entered the house, debating with herself the entire way. Eddie wasn’t home yet, the house somehow emptier and colder without him there as a buffer to the long shadows cast against the walls and floors from the evening sun. There was a wariness to her entry, being alone in a house that seemed to have a will of its own, like being locked in a room with a voiceless stranger, trying to get to know one another and utterly failing. Dani set down her car keys and purse with an apologetic wince at the clatter of metal against tile. Shaking herself of the feeling that she was being watched, she went in search of Jamie's old mixtape.

She’d have to go looking for Eddie’s walkman as well, having no idea where he had placed it last. Maybe she could ask him when he came home. The thought made her pause, mid-way through shedding her heels and blazer, acid building in her stomach just at the idea of explaining why she suddenly needed to listen to a tape a decade old. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, cursing under her breath before delving deeper in the house to press play on the answering machine as she went through her evening routine instead.

The crackling sound of tinny voices accompanied her throughout the house like absent ghosts. Dani only vaguely paid attention to the words: messages from Eddie’s friends with plans for dinner parties and dates, Judy reminding them of forgotten tupperware, a tipsy Carson trying to convince them to come to his next show as music blared in the background, Eddie’s coworker reminding him of important dates, Eddie — 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Eddie’s voice echoed through the house, thin and staticky from the machine, “I know you’ll be home before me today, so I just wanted to let you know not to get started on dinner tonight. I’ll be bringing home something. I have some great news. Love you, see you soon.”

And then the house dropped silent once again. Dani sighed, already midway through preparing leftovers from Judy. It was like a sign, a ticking clock counting down ominously, compelling her to abandon the leftovers back in the fridge and leading her towards the corner of the house where she had temporarily placed the simple wooden box without any idea of where else to put it. The idea of hiding it in the closet she shared with Eddie left her skin crawling; it had no place there, not where she already shared so much of herself with him. The attic or basement didn’t feel right either, like she was tucking away those memories, like something to be abandoned. Instead, she had placed it where other stacks of boxes were piled, unopened and forgotten, in a corner in the dining room. A place she knew Eddie hadn’t bothered to touch for weeks, too busy setting up the other vast rooms of the house. 

She twisted her hands as she was lured towards it — like a shining bright beacon, like a lighthouse on storm-battered shores — but when she turned into the dining room, she slowed, her heart plummeting to her stomach. The corner was empty. Void of any labeled cardboard boxes. Her brows furrowed as she stepped towards the corner, a cold sweat sweeping over her skin. 

“Shit,” Dani muttered, her heart crashing against her ribs, her hands clenched into fists.

She spun around on her heels, searching every corner of the room, scattered with an assortment of their shared belongings along the walls and around the long dining table. She rummaged through it all, her hands trembling, panic rising in her throat like bile. 

“Shit,” she repeated, when she came up empty, her breathing heavy.

She ran through the logical possibilities, her mind racing. Eddie decided to finally tackle the dining room. Eddie packed away the contents of the cardboard boxes. Eddie found her box. Eddie opened it to glean its contents. Eddie threw it away.

No. No, he wouldn’t do that. For all his own feelings regarding Jamie, she knew he wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t crack open and toss away the beating heart of Dani’s memories, like it was something foul and rotten. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself, as she tore through the rest of the house, repeating it in her mind like a mantra — he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t —  her breath coming in faster and her eyes burning as she came up empty at every turn. 

It was like the house had eaten it, swallowed it whole. Hungry in its desire to consume anything that didn’t belong. That didn’t fit in. 

After fifteen minutes of searching, her eyes wild and her throat thick, she stood in the middle of the living room. A pressure formed in her chest, slow but familiar as with every shallow breath she took, along came a dull burn that spread across her chest. Dani pressed a hand hard to her breastbone, willing away the pain as her heart pounded against her palm. Dani hadn’t had an asthma attack in years. She couldn't remember the last time she even had one, always so diligent and careful. And of course, it had to be over this of all things. 

The front door clicked open. Dread pooled in her stomach at the sound of Eddie shuffling in. “Hey, I’m home!” he called. 

Dani couldn’t find the words to respond, her breath coming in too fast, too sharp. Every struggling breath pained. 

“Danielle?” Eddie called again when she didn’t respond, and then, “Danielle!” Heavy hands fell on her shoulders, and then her cheeks. “Hey, are you okay? What’s going on? Open your eyes."

Dani hadn’t realized she closed them. She flickered them open to meet Eddie’s concerned face. “Inhaler,” she finally managed to gasp, wheezing. 

He nodded, spinning around to locate her bag, digging through it and pulling out the small blue device before returning to her. He watched silently with a deep frown and thinned mouth as she inhaled her two doses, letting her breathe it in for a moment. 

“Are you okay now?” he asked softly.

She was still breathing heavily, her hands trembling around the blue device, but the low embers in her chest slowly ebbed away. The pressure that had formed a tight knot began to loosen. It was slow going, but the rescue inhaler did its job. Dani pressed a hand back to her chest and nodded, not meeting Eddie’s eyes. His shoulders visibly dropped, sighing and pulling her in towards his chest in a hug. 

“Jesus,” he muttered, “You scared me.” Dani pressed her eyes closed, unable to compel herself to wrap her arms around him. “That hasn’t happened in a long time. What happened?”

Her chest ached. Slowly, she pulled away from him, her trembling hands against his chest. “My things, Eddie,” she murmured, swallowing hard against the tremor in her voice, and finally looked up to meet his frown, “Where are my things?”

His frown deepened. “What things?”

“My box.”

Eddie’s eyes flickered between hers, bewildered. “I’m...what box?” Exhaling sharply, Dani took another step back and rubbed hard at her eyes. “I really don’t know what box you're talking about.”

“In the dining room, Eddie. It - it was a plain box.”

He stared blankly at her, blinking. “There were a lot of boxes in there,” he said slowly, as though patiently explaining to his nephew why dinosaurs didn’t exist anymore. 

Her breath started coming in fast again. “It was a wooden box with a bronze latch,” she said, desperately willing him to remember. He nudged up his glasses, his frown deepening in puzzlement and concern, visibly thinking hard. “Eddie…” she breathed, fighting back the burn in her eyes. 

A light bulb seemed to switch on in his head, his eyes going wide. “Oh!” He snapped his fingers, his mouth pulling into a smile. “Okay, yeah, hold on — just stay there.”

He abruptly disappeared deeper into the house, leaving Dani alone. She breathed slowly, rubbing at her eyes again to vanish any unfallen tears before wrapping her arms around her stomach, listening to Eddie’s footsteps vibrating through the house, down and then back up some stairs. He returned with a triumphant grin, and the sigh of relief that escaped Dani at the sight of her box in Eddie’s hands seemed to make her lungs rattle. She took the box in her grasp and pressed it close to her chest, as if she could tuck it under her ribs. Dani sniffed as she looked down at it, and slowly exhaled. 

“Thanks,” she murmured, like she hadn’t just spent the last half hour spiraling. 

Eddie’s grin slowly fell, chagrin replacing his triumph. “I’m sorry,” he said, burying his hands in his grey pantsuit, “I didn’t know what to do with it, or where to put it. So I put it in the basement.”

Dani nodded absently. The basement. Right. Nine feet below the earth, like a coffin. 

“I really am sorry,” he repeated, softer this time, a hand falling to her waist. 

“I know,” she said, and finally met his eyes, giving him a weak smile. “It’s okay.”

He grinned, warm, and said, “I do have good news, though, to make up for it.”

“Yeah?”

Eddie nodded, gestured behind him, and said, “I got us some dinner too.” Dani glanced over his shoulder where on the side table next to her bag sat a box of pizza and a bottle of wine. Eddie’s hand moved from her waist to her upper arm, gently rubbing it. “Why don’t you put that away, and I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.”

At Dani’s silent nod, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and bounded towards the kitchen with the pizza and wine in hand, but not without another grin. She barely managed to send one back, her mouth twitching at the attempt. She returned her eyes back to the box in her arms, the weight of it suddenly heavier as the exhaustion from her episode finally hit her. Dani didn’t know what to do with it now. There was no other place in the entire house she trusted. Not even her old childhood bedroom; the risk of it falling into her mother’s hands was out of the question. The glove compartment of her car wasn’t totally ideal, but she didn’t like the idea of leaving it on the backseat floor or shoving it away deep in the trunk. It would have to do for now. 

Dani returned to the kitchen where Eddie had shed his suit jacket and tie, his sleeves rolled up as he set the kitchen table with plates and wine glasses. He grinned at her. “Here we go," he said, opening the pizza box with a flourish to reveal a Hawaiian pizza. 

She hesitated for a moment. At the risk of disappointing him with the reminder that a simple veggie pizza was her favorite and that the very notion of pineapple on pizza was an affront to the senses, she offered him a weak grin. "Thanks." She cocked her head at the table, and asked, “What’s the occasion?” 

Eddie’s grin widened. “I may have gotten a little raise.”

“What?” Dani's face relaxed into a smile. “But didn’t you just recently start?”

“Yeah, I know! But they’ve apparently been really liking what I’ve been doing, and —” he paused, seemingly for dramatic effect as his eyes glinted “ — I got an in with Councilman Alan Fields.”

Dani’s eyes widened. “Eddie, that’s amazing,” she said, grasping his arm. 

“I know it’s not much for now and I still have a long way to go yet, but — “

“It’s a start,” Dani finished for him, cupping his chin. “I’m proud of you. I think this does call for some wine.”

He grinned bashfully as she dropped her hand and started towards the counter, pulling at a stubborn drawer to retrieve a corkscrew as Eddie began piling their plates with pizza. “It is a start, isn’t it. Felt like a long time coming too,” he said from behind her, as Dani huffed at the drawer, jiggling it by the handle, “And step one is dinner with Fields and his wife.”

The handle popped off at a strong tug. She blinked down at it, and then, as if now absorbing what Eddie said, she looked back at him, bewildered. “Dinner?”

“Yep, seven o’clock on Friday.”

Dani blinked at him, her stomach turning sour. “The both of us?”

“Yes,” he said, chuckling, his grin indulgent. “We have to start impressing Fields somehow. He has influence all over town, and if I get him on my side then — “ his grin turned smug “ — You may be looking at a future city councilman.”

Dani chuckled breathlessly, her cheeks aching. “That’s great,” she managed to say. 

She didn’t want to ruin this moment, not when it seemed like all of Eddie’s dreams were coming true, handed to him on a silver platter. Dani could see it happening now; she knew that on Friday, she would push down all her exhaustion from a week of teaching, and herding around twelve year olds, and the pulse of anxiety under her skin. She would put on her best dress and style her hair flawlessly, but just enough to seem modest, and play the part of the perfect golden girl turned perfect fiancée. Dani would smile too much and not enough, and Eddie would hold her hand for all the world to see the ring on her finger as if to say, “Here, world. Here we are, the golden couple.” She felt a chill settle over her skin just thinking about it, and wished desperately to feel anything else, wished that Eddie had just asked her instead of — 

“What happened there?” Eddie’s eyes darted towards her hand, his brow furrowing, gesturing towards the drawer handle she held in a tight fist. 

“Oh, um,” she chuckled again, helplessly holding up the handle for him to see, “It broke.”

He snorted. “Make that one more thing for the repair list," he said, and let out a long sigh. A hand at the base of her spine and he gently guided Dani to the table to sit as he took care of it. 

That should’ve been the end of it, the end of the conversation as wine was finally poured and the kitchen radio switched on low as they sat down to eat. She hoped for it — to be given the space to breathe in between sips of wine and let her shoulders sink against the back of her chair, letting her frustrations and the exhaustion from her day to just sink away. Just for a little bit, just long enough for her to let her mask slip until she had to once again pull on the ropes to part the stage curtains open. But Eddie insisted on clinking their glasses together, a curious glint in his eyes as he sipped from his wine. 

“I was thinking,” he started, setting his glass down. A ball of lead sank in Dani’s stomach.

“Yeah?” She took another heady sip. 

“With just a little more money coming in, we could finally afford to start fixing up the place. Like, actually fixing it,” he said, leaning forward on the table, “And just with everything seeming to come together, you could take the lead on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted more time for some hobbies? This is a great opportunity to start. Add a splash of color to the place.”

Dani blinked at him. There wasn’t something right, with the way he was looking at her so expectantly, so pleased with himself. “I don’t have the time for that, Eddie,” she reiterated. 

“Well, obviously,” he said, grinning boyishly, “Not until after you stop working at least.”

Dani stared, her breath shallow, her nails digging into her palms in her lap. Remnants of the indignant fire from earlier, the rush of panic, swelled within her. “I’m not quitting my job, Eddie,” she said, her back ramrod straight. 

He frowned. “Wasn’t that part of the plan?”

“No.”

Eddie leaned back, his expression puzzled, and said, “Oh, I thought we agreed — “

“We didn’t,” she said with more bite than she expected. More than Eddie expected. His eyes went slightly wide, and he at least had the decency to look abashed, pushing his glasses up his nose. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I just thought — the other day you were saying you weren’t looking forward to the parent-teacher conference. I thought it could be good for you, good for us. Especially when — ”

“Dealing with parents is one thing. Kids are another,” she said, the fire quickly leaving her. She sighed. “I love my job. I love my kids. I love how I’m able to help shape their minds and their futures. I don’t want to give that up.”

Not for anything, she didn't say out loud, Not even you.

Leaning his elbows back on the table, Eddie smiled slowly at her, and nodded. “Okay,” he said. A look crossed his face, something between hopeful and knowing. It did nothing to help the whirlpool of dread twisting Dani’s stomach, making her feel sick. “Maybe in the future. Just think about it?”

Dani could do nothing but stare at him. It was like what she said went into one ear and out the other, like it was already written in stone. The next step in fulfilling his dreams, and Dani was just along for the ride, molded and shaped to his expectations. Dani often wondered how strange it was to care for someone so much who loved merely a shadow of her. 

Dani took another sip of her wine, her gaze fixed on her mostly untouched pizza, appetite gone. She should stand her ground, dig her heels in. Set the record straight. Instead, she reset her mask, pulled the rope to part the stage curtains, and tied the other end around her neck. She nodded. 

His face brightened into a smile. Seemingly pleased with the outcome of his wishes coming true, he returned to his pizza. Dani followed suit, forcing down the food, feeling like she could choke on it. 

“In other good news,” Eddie said around bites, his expression vaguely curious, “Did you hear who moved back into town recently?”

“I did,” she said, nodding, not meeting his eyes. “Your mom mention it?”

“Yeah. You must be happy about that.”

Dani didn’t know how to respond to that. Not with the way her skin felt jittery at even the thought of being in the same room as Jamie, and certainly not with the tension just barely underlying Eddie’s voice. Her eyes darted up, catching him staring at her with an expression that to anyone else would seem as passing curiosity, but to Dani, was careful scrutiny. A part of her couldn’t truly fault him for it, after all he had borne witness to the aftermath of it all. But the other part of Dani, the part that never knew how to stop missing Jamie, tensed her shoulders and clenched her teeth, nodding as her eyes darted away and she sipped her wine. 

“I am,” she said, the words surprisingly feeling almost true. “I saw her earlier today, actually. At the school.”

He frowned. “At school?”

“Mikey’s one of my students,” she said. Eddie blinked at her, his expression mystified. “Jamie’s little brother?”

“Oh,” he said, and chuckled. “Wow. Time flies, huh? Still remember him when he was just a baby. Is he anything like how Jamie was? Causing any trouble?”

Dani tensed. “Jamie was a good kid.”

Eddie gave her a look. “Really?”

She fought back a frown, exhaustion settling deeper into her bones. “Anyway, Mikey’s a good kid,” she continued, “Really smart. Quiet. Shy.”

“Is that even possible? A shy Taylor?”

Dani shot him a glare. He backed down with a chuckle and his hands raised. “All right, I’ll take your word for it.”

It was a little easier, after that. Less like the walls of the kitchen were closing in on her, and more like she could finally breathe as Eddie moved on from conversation topics that left her feeling like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin. They talked about their work day instead; how Eddie came to meet Alan Fields, one of the more prominent councilmen in town, and Dani offered anecdotes of her own, the funny things kids said, and how good they’d been. She didn’t mention the car. Not yet. She briefly entertained the idea that she could somehow sneak the car over to the mechanic without Eddie knowing, but realized she wouldn’t know how to explain away the hundreds of dollars missing from the bank, spent on repairing it.  

Dinner flew by fast. Dani washed down the rest of her pizza with another glass of wine. She even managed to laugh with Eddie when she hiccuped after the last sip. He grinned fondly at her, as she gathered their dishes and brought them to the sink to clean them. With her hands sudsy, the two glasses of wine had loosened her shoulders just enough to relax and sway to the radio, set to some oldies station. It took her a moment, as she rinsed a plate while listening to a smooth voice croon, to remember her plight from earlier. The sheer fear and desperation, looking for her box of Jamie’s things. The reason why she went searching in the first place. Just as Dani felt her face fall, hands wrapped around her waist. 

“Leave that,” Eddie said, pressing his temple against her own, his body enveloping her from behind. 

She swallowed hard, managing to refrain from tensing in his arms. “They’re not going to clean themselves,” she said, proud at how steady she kept her voice. 

Eddie began to sway them both along to the music, and said, “They can be done in the morning.” He pressed a telling kiss just below her ear. 

Dani shivered, but for all the wrong reasons. She felt Eddie grin against her skin, chuckling. Distantly, Dani wondered if he could also hear her heart pounding, the blood rushing through her ears. The way her body wanted to curl away from him and up into herself. If she were to glance down at the silver tap, she’d see their distorted forms, pulled in all the wrong directions as they gently swayed. 

“Eddie…” she stumbled out. 

“Come on, leave it,” he insisted, pressing another kiss to her shoulder, “I know I upset you today. I want to make it up to you.”

She could say no, like she’d done before. Citing exhaustion, sleepiness, a headache. She could say she felt like she was slowly being digested within these walls, until inevitably, all that would remain would be the shadow Eddie so loved. 

Would he still love her then? When all that would be left of her to hold would be a shell, a ghost of a person? Would he care? Would Jamie?

The thought was so abrupt and cutting, Dani pressed her eyes shut and bit hard at her lip, her hands stilling under the running water as a dull ache spread across her chest. 

Clenching her teeth painfully, and feeling the skin of her cheeks flush in a fit of indignation, Dani swept the thought away. His arms were warm around her, safe and strong as they’d always been. He still smelt of the same sharp cologne she had gifted him last year. She could want this, she thought faintly. This could be her, if she just tucked away everything else. The perfect loving wife. The girl next door turned childhood best friend turned childhood sweetheart. She wanted this, didn’t she? All those years ago, heartbroken and hollowed out, when she finally said yes, and then never stopped.

Somehow, it didn’t burst out of her. Not when Eddie pressed another soft kiss to the crook of her neck. Not when she turned off the tap and spun in his arms to rake her wet hands through his hair, smiling weakly into a kiss. 

Dani could want this. She could be this. 

 --

The arm slung across her waist felt like an anvil. Holding her down into the too soft sheets and bedding until it felt like she was sinking right into it. There was a heaviness to Dani’s body that she couldn’t shake. She hadn’t moved in over an hour. An hour and thirty seven minutes to be exact. She knew. She counted, her eyes unmoving from her bedside alarm clock as she lay on her back, slowly coming back to her body, still as stone, watching the red numbers flicker minute by minute until it read 12:03am. 

The arm moved, shifting. Dani held her breath as she felt the bed gently shake from the twisting movements next to her. And then it pulled away, the arm lifting from her waist to disappear into the darkness next to her like a phantom. She exhaled slowly, and swallowed hard past the thickness in her throat. 

Dani blinked. 12:04am. 

Slowly, she finally turned away from the alarm clock, her neck screaming at her from holding the position for so long. She winced and slowly sat up, holding the sheets up to her chest. The air was cold against the skin of her back, sending a shiver down her spine. Dani welcomed it, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on them, her body feeling overheated as if a fever was expelling some sickness from her. 

The bed shifted again along with the sound of a soft sigh. Dani raised her head at the motion and finally turned her gaze to the sleeping form on her left where Eddie lay flat on his stomach, his head twisted away from her, his torso rising and falling so slowly she’d almost think he wasn’t breathing at all. Dani knew, if there was any more light in the room beyond the fair trails of moonlight, she would find a star map of beauty marks across his skin. Any other person, any other woman who deeply loved their fiancé would slide closer, pressing the length of their worn and satisfied body next to Eddie’s and would trace those star maps with the tip of their finger. Instead, Dani stared at him, drained and heavy. 

He always slept so deeply after, like all the weight of his love and desire condensed into a single point, taking and taking from her, until he was full and sated, collapsing half on top of her. He’d lay there as his breaths would eventually even out and deepen, slowly pulling away, so sure, so confident that Dani felt the same. There were some occasions Dani could force herself to, taking it for herself in a way that always left him surprised, wanting so much to morph herself into this mask that she’d almost convince herself at the height of it. But, it was an occurrence that was rarer than being struck by lightning, and she’d always feel so empty afterwards. And then there were nights like this — grateful to the dark shadows to conceal her. Grateful that he never looked her in the eye and asked. 

Dani finally pulled away from the bed, silently leaving the too warm sheets, shivering in the dark. She quickly pulled on nearby clothes — a nightgown and a thin robe — and quietly made her way out of the room, stepping over loose floorboards. She made her way downstairs, her fingers skimming the walls to guide her way in the dark, listening to the house creak and groan, settling like a weary creature. She padded her way through to the kitchen, the floor cool beneath her feet, making a beeline to where they left the bottle of wine on the counter. 

Grabbing the bottle in a white-knuckled fist, pulling out the cork and taking a long swig. The house maneuvered her through the shadows, stumbling lightly in the dark, and all Dani could do was watch her own actions, divorced from her own perspective. Watch as she retrieved her keys from the side table and made her way to the garage, generously sipping at wine. When there was nothing left in the bottle, she left it on the floor near the garage entrance to open the passenger door of her car and fall heavily inside, closing it shut just a little too hard in the overbearing silence of the night. 

It was cold, but comforting inside. The air felt different in the cabin. Thinner, dustier, lived in and familiar. For a moment, she rested her head against the headrest and let her eyes slip shut, enjoying the cold and the quiet. She opened her eyes and with a sigh, she reached over to open the glove compartment, carefully pulling out the wooden box to rest on the passenger seat.

Slowly lifting it open, she stared at the contents inside, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. The fear she had felt earlier today had left its residue on her, like chalk dust. It pressed hard against her chest and behind her eyes until they burned as she skimmed her hands over the faded t-shirt. Expelling a trembling exhale, Dani carefully dug through the contents until she unearthed the cassette tape and turned it over in her lap. It appeared physically undamaged, though nothing could be said to what dust and age had done to it over time. Dani didn’t even remember what songs Jamie had cultivated for her, just the distant memory of side A being songs she chose to Dani’s tastes, and side B being more to her own. 

There was only one way to listen to it now. Even with Dani’s confidence of Eddie’s deep slumber and the thickness of the walls of the house, there was still a part of her anxious of the thought of Eddie waking up to find her delving through childhood memories as if shamefully flipping through a dirty magazine. Or worse, thinking she was running away in the dead of night. 

The thought made her pause. It’d be so simple. To just pack a bag, and take off, speeding her way out of town and leaving everything behind to see the world like any small town youth dreamed of doing. It sounded so easy, and so astronomically unthinkable. 

Shaking it off, Dani tensed her shoulders and twisted the engine on, revving it to life. It shuddered and groaned, but remained on with no tell-tale sign of smoke or questionable smells. Dani exhaled slowly, and fiddled with the tape again before finally pushing it in the player and pressed rewind for good measure. She listened to it wind up and finally click to a stop, the sound unusually loud in the silent cabin, ominous and thrilling. 

She swallowed hard and licked her lips, pressing play. 

The sound of layered voices in harmony with sparse melodious instruments filled the cabin, tinny and crackling through the old stereo and the age of the tape. Her mouth dropped open, her breath trapped in her chest. Gradually, Dani sank back into the seat as a voice joined in, a shiver creeping down her spine. Dani couldn’t count the years she hadn’t heard this song, it almost felt like hearing it all over again for the first time, the memory of it crashing into her like a wave. 

Dani curled up on herself, twisting just enough in the seat to pull her knees to her chest and wrap her arms around her legs, a thickness growing in her throat, the pressure building behind her eyes. She bit her lip hard to fight it off, desperately willing it away — the pain borne of being stripped away down to that old exposed nerve. Prodded at and scarred. A wound opened and healed over so many times, it was a wonder Dani remained so recognizable. 

But even as the first song ended and a familiar sparse guitar filled the car, the pain of her teeth pressed against her lip and her nails digging into her palm couldn’t stop the tears spilling down her cheeks. Dani trembled as she exhaled deeply, her breath wobbling, curling further into the seat and resting her head against the crackling leather. 

Five more minutes, she told herself. Five more minutes, and then she’d seal it all away again. She had managed to live with everything else now for years, she could manage another couple more. Dani had grown used to it. Tucking away the memories and the tears, the lost pieces — all for something that didn’t exist anymore.

 --

Parent teacher conferences certainly weren't the highlight of Dani's school year. She was good with kids. Not parents. Especially not parents who she grew up with, and who she remembered from when they attended this very same school together. Some of them had grown up a bit since then, but only some. Most still interacted with her as if talking to a cardboard cut out person, all plastic smiles and tacit social acceptance that they would never speak of times past.

It was rare that anyone new came to live in town at all. Not unless they used North Liberty as a sleeper suburb for the factory plant a good hour drive southeast. Most people who lived here did so all their lives. Just like their parents had. And their parents before them. And even those who tried to venture away somehow found themselves wending back. Like a labyrinth with no exits. Like a glue trap that held one fast by the ankles.

Dani was using the edge of a pen to scrape away some glue that one of her students had gotten onto their desk during the day. The dried glue came away in gouges. She could have left it for the janitor, but he had enough on his plate and she had time before the next set of parents walked into her classroom.

Honestly, this was the last time she allowed glue in class. It would join glitter on the 'banned for life' list.

There was a polite rap of knuckles on the open door behind her.

Without looking up, Dani said, "Come in!" and gave the glob of glue a few last scrapes with the pen before giving up and turning around with a sigh. "Sorry about that, I was just -"

She froze. Jamie was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, watching silently. She still wore her work clothes, but she had left her jacket behind, and the sleeves of her jumpsuit were rolled up so that the definition of her bare arms was stark against the canvas material.

"I - uh -" Dani used the pen to gesture weakly towards the student's desk. "There was a glue disaster."

Jamie tilted her head and said, "Acetone."

Dani blinked. "What?"

"You should use acetone," said Jamie. "Take it right off. No elbow grease required."

"Oh. Right. And I'd - I'd get that where?"

In answer, Jamie pushed herself away from the door frame and made her way through the maze of desks until she stood before her. Dani watched her approach with some alarm, not knowing what was coming. And to think she used to know Jamie so well she could tell what she was thinking just from the barest crease of her eyes.

Jamie stopped and made a small gesture with her hand. "Let me see your fingers."

Completely befuddled, Dani set down the pen and lifted both hands for inspection. Jamie cocked her head and nodded as though that confirmed everything.

"Looks like you've got the solution at home already," Jamie said, meeting her gaze with a soft smile. "Nail polish remover. I'm talking about nail polish remover."

Dani glanced down at her hands. She normally didn't bother painting her nails; it was only a matter of time until she chewed them to bits again. Yesterday evening however she had idly applied a few coats of polish to her nails while sitting with Eddie on the couch, the television screen flickering and sending shadows dancing along the walls.

Curling her fingers against her palms, Dani made a stiff gesture towards her own desk at the head of the classroom. "Of course. Thanks. Shall we -?"

Jamie went without further comment. She had slouched in the chair opposite Dani's desk while Dani lowered herself carefully into her own seat.

"Right. So," said Jamie, her leg bouncing restlessly. "Never done one of these before. What're we talking about exactly?"

Dani pulled a file towards her from across the desk. "We're here to talk about Mikey. His progress. How he's doing. Et cetera."

Jamie nodded. Her gaze roved across the classroom, wandering here and there. She lingered upon the various fixtures of the room in bored contemplation. "You reckon he's settling in all right?"

Dani shrugged. "Better than you did."

A rueful grin was Jamie's reply. "Well, that's not very hard, is it?"

Dani smiled back at her. "No." She opened the folder and quickly flipped through a few pages. "There haven't been any incidents that stand out to me so far. Regarding him fitting in, I mean. Nobody's picked on him or anything, is what I'm saying."

Jamie nodded. "Glad to hear it."

"He's a good kid," Dani said.

"Smarter than I'll ever be."

"Now, I didn't say that."

"True though," Jamie said with self-deprecating flair. “What about his grades?"

Dani plucked at the corner of a page, lifting it up so she could see the paper beneath. "Exemplary, to be honest. His class participation is a bit lacking, but otherwise he's gotten nothing but top marks so far."

"Need me to talk to him about speaking up more in class?"

Dani shook her head and let the page fall back down. "No. Not really. I think that will come in time as he grows more comfortable."

"Right." Jamie was looking directly at her now, and Dani almost wished she would go back to studying the room's contents instead. "Anything else?"

It was difficult not to fidget beneath the weight of Jamie's gaze. Dani found herself shuffling a few of the papers nervously, and forced her hands to go still. "There is one thing, actually," Dani said.

Jamie arched an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said warily.

"It's not - It's not like that," said Dani and she leaned forward in her seat, resting her weight upon her forearms. "I was actually wanting to talk to you about the possibility of Mikey attending some special math courses."

Jamie's brow furrowed. "Why? I thought you just said his grades were fine? Top marks, even."

"No, I'm -" Dani cleared her throat to collect herself somewhat before continuing. "I'm talking about advanced courses. He seems to like math. A lot, actually. And I'd like to encourage that, rather than risk him becoming bored with things he's already mastered."

If anything, Jamie seemed taken aback by this news, sitting upright. "Will that be a lot more work for him?" she asked slowly.

Dani shook her head. "The class is after school. Held in the library for an extra hour. But I won't be giving him homework for regular math, so it should all come out in the wash."

"Huh." Jamie blinked and sat back further in her seat. "All right, then. I'll have a chat with him tonight. See what he thinks."

"Great," Dani said, and her own smile felt plasticky this time.

"If he doesn't want to do it, I won't force him," said Jamie.

"That's okay. He doesn't have to, if he doesn't want to."

"All right."

Silence settled over them. Dani was staring, fingers tracing the sharp edge of the folder, while Jamie waited.

"That it?" Jamie asked after the seconds had ticked by with neither of them speaking.

Startled by the abruptness of her voice, Dani closed the folder. "Yeah. Yeah, that's - that's it!"

Jamie gave her an odd look, clearly waiting for her to say something, but Dani's mouth was dry, and she had another set of parents coming in fifteen minutes, and she hadn't expected this to go so fast, and -

"Guess I'll be off, then." Jamie stood and jammed her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit, while Dani pushed back her own chair to rise to her feet as well.

"Of course. Have a -" Dani gestured awkwardly towards the exit. "Have a good rest of your day."

“See you around.” 

Jamie was at the door before Dani finally worked up the courage to blurt out, “Do you -? Do you want to grab a coffee sometime? With me?”

Jamie paused and turned in the doorway. "You Yanks and your coffee." Jamie shook her head but she was smiling. "Sure, but I work everyday except Sunday."

"That's fine,” Dani said, hand on the desk as if to ground herself. “We can meet Sunday morning?"

"Don't you have church?"

"They'll be fine without me for one service. Besides, I -” Dani said, “- I want to catch up.” 

Jamie’s smile flickered briefly, and when it returned she appeared reserved, as though she had taken a step further away. In the end all she said was, “Sounds like a plan. Ten?”

Dani nodded. “Ten’s great.”

With one final backward glance, Jamie left. It was as though all the air rushed back into the room in her absence. As though Dani could finally breathe properly again. She dropped back down into her seat, which creaked beneath her weight, feeling dazed, a faint buzzing beneath her skin. 

Footsteps down the hall, and Dani’s head jerked. “Oh! You’re early!” she said, rising to her feet and extending her hand to the latest set of parents. All plastic smiles again and false pleasantries. “Horace. Clara. How nice to see you. Please, sit.” 

 --

Dani arrived at the cafe late. She had parked her car further along down a side lane in town while running a quick errand at the local pharmacy. The car had been acting up on the drive in and she didn't want to risk it breaking down again along the way. So, she turned over her wrist to check her watch, and walked as briskly as she could without outright jogging. By the time she arrived at the cafe, she was slightly out of breath and raking her fingers through her hair to fix how windswept she felt.

She paused at the entrance to drop a hand into her bag just to check that she still had her emergency inhaler. When she had assured herself that it was there, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The cafe was cooler than the air outside. As the door slowly creaked shut behind her, Dani turned her head, perusing the empty tables. Most people at this time of day would be at their local church, and it had felt odd even running chores with so few others on the street. Yet sure enough, Jamie was seated in the far corner at a table with a little handwritten reserved placard atop it. Shrugging at the strap of her handbag, Dani steadied her breathing and walked over.

"Sorry," said Dani. "Car troubles. Again."

Jamie remained in her seat as Dani sat across from her. "No problem," she said. "Did you get the seal fixed?"

Dani nodded and dropped her bag onto one of the spare seats. "Yeah. I did. It's something new now."

"Hmm," said Jamie, looking thoughtful. Then, she shrugged and handed over one of the menus on the table. 

"Recommend anything here, to be honest. Can't go wrong with Owen's food. Trust me."

Dani took the menu, hesitating when she heard a voice call out from the kitchens in a pleasant but surprising English accent, "I heard that!"

Jamie lifted her voice, but kept her gaze fixed on her own menu. "No, you didn't! And stop eavesdropping!"

A man stuck his head through a window cut in the wall between the kitchen and the main room. His moustache twitched in a tell-tale smile, and his dark eyes gleamed with a mischievous light behind thick spectacles. "You know I never pass up the opportunity to bask in praise."

"I'm fresh out of praises today," said Jamie, aiming a pointed glower at him over the top of her menu.

"Oh, forgive me," he said, not sounding the least bit sorry. "Interrupting your date, am I?"

"Hardly," Jamie replied dryly.

Dani's shoulders stiffened. She jerked the menu up slightly higher, hoping to hide the widening of her eyes.

Jamie noticed. Of course, Jamie noticed. “He’s joking,” Jamie said, then lifted her voice so he could hear. “And being a pillock about it, too!”

Behind her, Dani could hear a chuckle, and then the sound of fading footsteps as he — Owen, presumably — went back to puttering around in the kitchen.

Dani cleared her throat. "I know that." When Jamie gave her a questioning glance, Dani continued, "That he was joking. I know."

It was a godsend that there were no other patrons, otherwise Dani might have panicked at the mere insinuation that she was — but, there was no one to listen in. Just a joke. Nothing she needed to worry about.

Those footsteps had returned, and Owen stood beside their table, tucking a pen behind his ear. His striped apron was immaculate, and his sleeves rolled up just below the elbow, but there was a streak of flour at his jawline from where his white-smudged fingertips had brushed. "Tell me," he said, "What can I get you ladies this fine morning?"

Jamie handed over the menu to him. "A pot of English breakfast and poached eggs on toast for me, thanks."

“A classic,” he murmured with an appreciative nod, then turned his attention to Dani, his expression expectant. 

"The omelette and a coffee, please," Dani said.

Owen took her menu as well. "What kind of coffee?"

"Uh -" Dani said eloquently. "The kind with beans in it?"

"Drip coffee?"

"Yes?" she said with a wince at her own ignorance.

"Thank god," Owen sounded relieved. "My barista is at church and I have no idea how to operate that thing." He gestured with the menus towards a gleaming brushed chrome coffee machine that came with its own conical grinder filled with fresh beans. Then he lifted the menus to the side of his mouth and whispered as though the machine might be listening to them, "I think it's sentient. And I know it hates me."

Dani bit at her lower lip to keep a snort of laughter at bay. Owen gave her a parting wink, then strode off towards the kitchens to put together their order. When she turned in her seat, it was to find Jamie watching her with a fond smile that made Dani’s breath catch in her throat. Owen returning with their drinks gave Dani the opportunity to regroup. She straightened in her seat and thanked him with a smile.

"So." Dani reached for the milk and sugar that came with both their drinks. "What brought you back?"

"Right. Straight to it, then."

"I'm - I didn't -"

"No, no," Jamie shook her head. She poured a bit of tea into her cup, only to set the pot back down when the colour wasn't dark enough for her liking. "You know me. Direct is how I prefer it."

Dani held the mug of coffee between her hands despite the burn through a layer of porcelain. "It's just - ten years is a long time to suddenly make a reappearance."

"Maybe I like the attention," Jamie drawled.

Dani gave her a look.

Making a face, Jamie poured herself a cup of tea. "Or maybe not."

She let the silence stretch between them as Jamie poured a splash of milk into her cup. Jamie sipped at her tea and for a long moment said nothing. Then she shrugged, "Dunno. Seemed like a good idea. A fresh start." She gave a rueful huff of laughter. "Must've been what Nan felt like when she first brought me here. A nothing place in the middle of nowhere. Clean slate. All that bullshit."

Dani's thumb traced the handle of the cup. She worried her lower lip between her teeth, building up the courage to admit, "It's good to see you again."

"Could've fooled me," said Jamie, but she was smirking. 

Dani winced. "Sorry." 

"S'alright. I don't blame you." Jamie set down her cup to let the tea cool. "It's good to see you, too."

Something in Dani's chest unspooled upon hearing that. Like finally breathing in a lungful of air after years of a hand around her throat. She could feel her shoulders relax, the tension running out like a thread pulled from the ragged edge of a sweater.

"And how're you?" Jamie asked. "Got that teaching job, like you always wanted. Well done."

Dani's face softened into a smile. "Thanks."

"How long have you been teaching at the school?"

"About three years now."

"Don't know how you have the patience." Jamie leaned her elbows on the table. "Some days I feel mad just having to deal with one. Meanwhile, you've got a whole classroom of the little buggers."

Dani laughed. "You grow to love them. Even the worst ones."

Jamie scoffed. "Pull the other one."

"I'm serious."

"Yeah?" said Jamie, her eyes glinting as she grinned. "Which was the worst you've ever had?"

"Oh, my god," Dani lowered her voice and began the tale of the Willoughby boy in her second year of teaching. By the time she was done, Jamie's expression was a mixture of horrified and amused.

"I would've killed him," Jamie said. "And the world would’ve better off without a possessed devil child."

"And risk the wrath of old lady Willoughby? No, thank you." Dani lifted her mug of coffee for a sip. "But he honestly wasn't that bad all the time. Just...most of the time."

"Have you ever seen the kid step inside a church?" Jamie asked.

Dani shook her head. "Nope."

Jamie made a gesture with her hand as though that proved her point.

“Oh, like you were the best behaved child on the planet.”

“Fuck no. Nan was a saint in retrospect.” Then Jamie added, “An absolute bitch, too. But still.”

Owen reappeared before Dani could reply, and he placed two dishes down on the table in front of them. Dani thanked him, while Jamie murmured a belated "Cheers, mate," before picking up her cutlery.

"If you need anything else," he said, "I'll be the one in the back, singing along to the radio before the rest of my staff can return and tell me how off-key I sound. Bon appetit."

Shortly after he left, Dani could indeed hear a radio being turned up in the other room. Jamie shook her head but did nothing to hide her smile.

"I can see why this place is so popular," Dani said, utensils in hand so she could dig into her own meal. "New faces don't tend to do that well here."

"Food's not shite either," Jamie said.

Mouth full, Dani made an affirmative noise and nodded her agreement.

"So, did you ever make it out of state like you always wanted?" Jamie asked, gesturing with her knife while she spoke. "See the world? Backpack across Europe?"

Dani's chewing slowed. After swallowing, she shook her head. "Not really, no. I ended up attending the University of Iowa, and — well, I guess things just went from there. Came back home. Got a job."

"All the way to Iowa City? The bustling metropolis itself."

"I'd still like to," said Dani. "Travel, I mean. I'm not sure about the backpacking part anymore. Maybe a rental car instead."

"Fancy," Jamie said. "Not missing out on much, really. At least, not the part of Europe that's the UK."

"I thought you never made it to the continent?"

"Yeah, that's right." Jamie paused to drink some more tea. "Still know it's better than England, though."

"Your patriotism is as strong as ever, I see," Dani said with a grin.

"Must be all the time I've spent here." Jamie winked at her and Dani laughed softly. "Went back for a few years when I turned eighteen," Jamie continued. "Saw my older brother and my dad."

Hearing that, Dani's knife and fork went still against the plate. Her eyes darted up, but Jamie was focused on cutting up her own food. "And how'd that go?" Dani asked carefully.

"Badly," said Jamie, and there wasn't the hint of a smile now. "Dad was disinterested. Denny and I almost killed each other. I ran off to live in East London. Had a bit of a brush up with Her Majesty's finest swineherd. Got my act together. Got Mikey back. Came here."

Jamie's hands were tight around her cutlery, and her voice was clipped. Dani watched her, knowing there was more to that story than Jamie would tell. Not today, at least.

"Sounds like fun," said Dani, spearing a bit of omelette on her fork and lifting it to her mouth for a bite.

"About as fun as your story, I reckon," Jamie said. "Did Ed go to the same university, too?"

It felt like some sort of trap. A trick question. As though Jamie already knew the answer and was asking only to make a point. Dani nodded. “Yeah. He did.”

"How many times did he ask you to marry him before you finally caved?"

Dani shot her an exasperated look. "It's not like that."

"Isn't it?"

Dani took a sip of coffee to avoid answering for as long as possible. After a lengthy pause she muttered around the lip of the cup, "Five times."

"That all? Huh."

“Most of them don’t count,” Dani insisted. “We were kids.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Jamie, and her tone gentled. “And things are good?”

“Yeah. Great,” said Dani, setting down her coffee so she could pick at her food rather than meet Jamie’s piercing gaze. “Perfect. Things are perfect.”

Jamie’s eyebrows rose, but she said nothing. Jamie, who hated being lied to. Jamie, who was as keen-nosed for the truth as a sleuthhound with the scent of blood. Dani felt a thrill of anticipation race up her spine, and she readied herself for whatever pointed question Jamie would lob in her direction with surgical precision.

In the end all Jamie said was, “Judy must’ve been over the moon. She finally gets that daughter she always wanted.” 

Dani didn't know what to say to that. She picked at her food, then hummed and said, "Yeah. Though we basically were that for years, until -"

Across the table, Jamie went stock still. When Dani glanced up at her, Jamie's expression was wary, as if waiting for an incoming blow.

Dani set down her cutlery against the edge of her plate with a clink of metal against earthenware. "Do you know how I found out that you'd gone?" she asked quietly, and didn't wait for an answer. "I came over to your house, and your neighbor told me."

She didn't tell Jamie about how she had knocked at the door, about how she had sat around for nearly an hour, thinking that Jamie would be back any moment, about how the neighbor had found her there. ‘Didn't you hear? Oh, geeze. I don't know how to break it to you kid, but -’

Now, Jamie sat across from her, refusing to meet her eye, pretending to be engrossed with pouring out the last dregs of loose leaf tea from the pot. When it became clear that Dani wasn't going to throw her a bone — not this time, not about this — Jamie said stiffly, "Wasn't like I was given much time to say my goodbyes. Child protection services can move pretty quick, when they want to. Barely had time to pack my bags, truth be told."

Dani opened her mouth to speak, but a bell chimed behind them, and her head turned. Someone had entered the cafe and was walking into the kitchen with smiles and apologies to Owen for being late. More people followed, trickling in from the street, hoping for a fortifying brunch after the Sunday service. It wouldn't be long until the tables filled up. Someone recognised Dani and waved at her. She prayed her smile in return didn't resemble a grimace.

"Excuse me," Jamie murmured, pushing her chair back and rising to her feet.

Dani blinked and turned back to face her. "Oh. Where -?"

"Won't be a moment. Just going to the loo."

She half expected Jamie to not return. Maybe she would make a run for it. Scramble out a rear window and sprint all the way home. Dani pushed her plate further away, appetite gone.

True to her word however, Jamie returned not a few minutes later, but she did not sit back down. "C'mon," she said. "Let's get some fresh air."

Dani stood. She slung her bag over one shoulder and opened it to pull out her wallet.

Jamie waved her away. "No need for that."

"But we need to pay," Dani said, pointing to the till, where a young man was taking orders.

"Already handled," said Jamie. She jerked her head towards the exit, where a line was beginning to form.

Hesitant, Dani stuffed her wallet back into her handbag. As they left, a few others took notice and tried to strike up a conversation. There were remarks about how they noticed her missing at church, and they’d wondered if she had been feeling ill. Dani shook her head and smiled and inched her way out of the cafe without being roped into another cup of coffee. Though it was a narrow escape. 

When they had successfully managed to extricate themselves and were wandering down the street, Dani murmured, "Thank you for breakfast."

"No problem," said Jamie. "Where are you parked?"

Dani gestured further up the street. "Pretty far, actually. About ten minutes that way."

"I'll walk you back."

"You don't have to."

"Yeah, but I want to." Jamie shot her a roguish grin. "Not much else to do on my Sundays except hang out with the kid. And you know how siblings are. We get on each others' nerves at the drop of a hat."

"You could've brought him along," Dani said. "He didn't have to stay at home alone."

Jamie shrugged. "He likes it. Means he gets to watch reruns while I'm gone."

"Quite the Wonder Woman fan, I saw."

"Christ," said Jamie, rolling her eyes. "And — what's the one called? Star Hike? Star Something?"

"Star Trek?"

"Whatever. He won't shut up about it. At least Lynda Carter is easy on the eyes."

Dani had to tuck her thumbs into her fists and refrain from agreeing. She steered the topic towards safer waters, and Jamie seemed all too happy to talk about Mikey. They walked, taking their time. And something seethed in Dani's stomach the more they avoided talking about anything of substance. As if they could just pretend everything was fine. It galled, and every word seemed to turn a key like loading a spring, coiling it taut.

By the time they arrived at her car — parked in a quiet side alley beside the pharmacy, tucked away from the main street  — Dani already gripped her keys in her fist. She offered Jamie a tight smile, "I'll see you later, then."

And the worst part was, Jamie was unreadable again. Just as she had been the whole walk. She leaned her shoulder against the brick cladding of the pharmacy's outer wall and nodded. "'Course," she said, but remained standing there, watching.

For a moment Dani met her gaze, silently daring her to say something — anything, so long as it was actually something — before she unlocked her car and lowered herself into the driver's seat. When she turned the key in the ignition, the engine sputtered and refused to catch.

"Not now," Dani muttered to herself. Her eyes darted to the window, to where Jamie stood witness, and she turned the key again. "Shit."

Jamie's voice was slightly muffled through a layer of glass. "Let me have another look."

Yanking open the door and stepping out, Dani said, "No. I'll call a tow this time. The pharmacy has a phone I can -"

Except Jamie was already leaning across her, reaching into the car to pop the hood. "It's fine. Really."

Dani shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Jamie -"

"I can fix it."

"You can't."

"You haven't seen me with a spanner, yet," Jamie said, and she grinned over her shoulder as her fingers sought the latch to lift the hood of the car.

"No, I'm saying — you can't."

Something in her tone made Jamie pause. Dani lowered her hand, only to clench it into a fist, pushing down hard on the knuckle of her thumb. She swallowed, trying to tamp down the nerves that made her feel like she was half-crawling out of her own skin. All that circling around one another — veiled pleasantries and wary exchange of glances — like being inexorably drawn down by the gravity of the very thing neither of them had the courage to voice. 

“I don’t -” Dani started to say, and had to try again when her voice slipped. “I don’t want you to fix my car.” 

Jamie cocked an eyebrow, straightening slowly from where she had been leaning over. "Then what do you want?"

"I want you -" said Dani shakily, "- to talk to me. Actually talk to me."

"Thought I was doing a pretty good job of it until now." Jamie was still grinning, as if with a well-timed joke she might make this whole conversation never happen.

Shaking her head, Dani breathed, "Stop. Just stop.”

“Stop what?” 

“Stop acting like everything's fine. Like this -” Dani gestured between the two of them with sharp little movements “- is fine. Because it's not. And I know you know it."

Jamie’s hand was balanced on the top of the car door, holding it open. She stepped back and shut it, not loudly but firmly. “What’s there to say?”

“You come back after all this time, and you don’t even acknowledge that - that -” Dani grasped for the right words, but the feeling danced just out of reach of articulation, like catching the edge of a bowl on a high shelf with the very tips of her fingers. “Ruth died.”

Jamie’s jaw went tight. “Yeah, I remember. Found her myself, even, if you recall.” 

"And then suddenly you were just -" Dani lifted her hand only to let it drop back to her side "- gone! No goodbye! No note! And I - I had to go on like everything was okay, when it wasn't. Nothing was okay. I wasn't okay.”

“And I was?” 

“No!” Dani said. “That’s not -!”

“You think all this happened because I wanted it?” Jamie asked, making an all-encompassing gesture towards the empty alley. 

“That’s not what I said! I just -!” Dani took a deep breath, trying to steady herself when it felt like the world was rocking on its axis around her. “I missed you. Everyday. I still do."

Jamie stared at her as though the rug had been pulled right out from under her boots. "I'm here now," she said.

"Yeah, but you weren't. Not then. Not when I -!" Dani cut herself off from whatever idiotic thing she'd been about to let slip.

"What the fuck was I supposed to do? I didn’t ‘leave.’ I was taken." Jamie took a step forward, her hands balled into fists at her thighs. "Jesus, Dani, I was sixteen! Sixteen and trying to raise a kid by myself. Can you imagine what kind of disaster I would've -!" But Jamie just turned her head aside, lifting her hand to cover her mouth and shake her head.

"You didn't think to talk to anyone?" Dani asked. "Me? Judy? Or -?"

"Judy? Judy was the one who called social services! And you know what? I'm fucking relieved she did. At the time I was so mad, but now, I -" Jamie swallowed past a burr in her voice. "I couldn't have stayed here even if I wanted to."

For a moment Dani waited, waited for Jamie to say something else, to continue. When she didn't, Dani breathed an incredulous huff of laughter. "What? They -? They un-invent telephones where you went? Never heard of the postal service before?"

Jamie was shaking her head and smiling, an angry rictus grin, as she looked down at her feet and kicked at a loose stone. "Not that simple, is it?"

"Isn't it? God knows I tried to send letters to you. All the time. Even years later."

Jamie still wouldn't look up at her. The line of her mouth was hard. "I couldn't."

"Couldn't?" Dani pressed, and it was her turn to step forward, ducking her head to try and get a good look at Jamie's face. "Or didn't want to?"

"No, I - I wanted -"

"Well, clearly not."

"Dani -"

"Because the Jamie I knew wouldn't have gone down without a fight! The Jamie I knew was -!"

"Jesus fucking Christ! I didn't send you a letter because I couldn't stand it!" Jamie yelled. "Because if it was going to end, then I wanted it over quickly! Put me out of my misery! Send you a letter? Then what?"

Dani's mouth dropped open but no sound came out. Jamie was looking at her now, and her eyes were over-bright, her cheeks flushed, her lower lip trembling. They stood close enough that when Jamie exhaled shakily, Dani could feel the stir of the air. 

Jamie breathed in sharply before she said, "You would've stopped replying. Eventually. You would've slipped away, and I — I couldn't do that. Not this time. Not with you."

The silence stretched between them, terrible and vast. Dani made an abortive movement — to touch her, to do something — but Jamie flinched as if expecting to be slapped. Dani blinked, freezing in place with her hand outstretched, while Jamie ducked her head and wiped briskly at her cheeks. 

"I wouldn't have," Dani said finally, feeling raw, feeling flensed. "I'm still here. I've always been here."

"Yeah. Yeah, y'are." Jamie nodded. She cleared her throat gruffly and straightened.

Slowly, falteringly, feeling brave beyond compare, Dani lowered her hand, only to reach down and touch Jamie’s balled up fist. Jamie started at the contact, her eyes darting down as Dani brushed her thumb against the back of her knuckles until Jamie loosened her hand enough to clasp their fingers together. Dani was enchanted by the way Jamie held her mouth, by the brief flutter of her eyelashes and her unsteady inhalation at that simple touch. 

"So, you missed me?" Jamie gave her a watery grin.

"Of course, I did,” Dani murmured. “You were my best friend."

Jamie nodded, swallowed thickly, but said nothing.

Dani squeezed Jamie’s hand gently, feeling the ghost of that pressure returned before she let go. “Can we -? Can we start over?” Dani asked, and she smiled weakly. “Oh, wow! I'm so glad to see you again! Do you want to catch up sometime?"

Jamie laughed and shoved her hands into her back pockets, rocking in place on her heels. "I'd like that." When she met Dani’s gaze this time, her teeth caught on the side of her lip, a corner of her mouth curling in a smile. “You want to come over for afternoon tea next week?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”

Jamie jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Probably should have a look under your bonnet, though.”

“God,” Dani muttered, darting past her to pull open the car and pop the hood. “I almost forgot about that. I’m sorry - I - ”

Jamie stilled her movements with a warm hand on Dani’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Really. Let me fix it.” 

Mouth suddenly dry, Dani nodded. “Okay.” 

 --

It was by now second nature for Dani to sweep her eyes across her childhood home the moment she stepped foot in it. By all accounts, it was a picturesque two story house with not a picture frame or vase out of place. The floors swept and vacuumed, the plastic plants eased into corners, dusted and shined. But there were things only Dani had a keen eye for. The thin layer of ash collected on windowsills and corners of kitchen countertops. Empty glasses hidden in bathrooms or the back porch. Empty bottles under the sink that needed to be collected and thrown out. Cigarette butts hidden under sofas and chairs — those scared her the most. 

It was simply her good daughterly duty, to check in at least once a week, fearing the day that there wouldn’t be a childhood home to come back to. She was well versed in the nature of it, and not just the fear and the duty, but the side stepping and placating that came along with it. 

“I just don’t see what the issue is,” her mother said, sitting behind Dani at the small round kitchen table, smoking as Dani cleaned the empty glasses piled in the sink. “You’ve always loved reading.”

Dani sighed. They’ve been circling this conversation since morning before church. “I told you, I don’t have the time for a book club.”

“There’s so many other young women your age there, and they don’t have any issues with time,” her mother said, in between puffs. Dani could practically feel her mother’s hard stare on her back. “Weren’t you friends with some of them? Susan? Jackie?”

Dani clenched her teeth, scrubbing particularly hard at a wine glass. “I’m sorry mom, but no,” she said.

Karen exhaled sharply, expelling a stream of smoke. “I just don’t understand you, Danielle,” she said, her voice cutting. Dani’s shoulders tensed. “We always do anything you want in your free time, but any time I want us to do something together, you can’t even bother. Every time. Every time it’s like this with you.”

There it was. You simply just didn’t say no to Karen Clayton. Not without consequence. Dani learned that a long time ago, browbeaten into something smaller and softer for Karen to mold and subdue when her eyes weren’t so glassy and her words weren’t so unsteady. But the past week had lit a flame under Dani’s feet, a sort of weightlessness she hadn’t felt in so long that she didn’t even remember what it had felt like before. 

Still, it didn’t stop Dani from hunching her shoulders in an attempt to curl into herself as Karen audibly stood from her chair, the legs screeching against the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, as if that would soften the blow, rinsing off the last glass and shutting off the pipe.

Karen scoffed as she opened the fridge to pull out a carton of orange juice and a bottle of vodka. When she spoke, the cigarette bobbed between her lips. “No, no. Far be it from me to want to spend more time with my daughter, do something fun together. And the ladies would’ve loved to have you there. They’ll be so disappointed.”

Dani would have laughed if the idea of it didn’t make her feel taut at the seams. There was no fun to be gained sitting in a room with women who either relentlessly taunted her in their youth or whispered behind their books of how Dani was spotted just the other day having dinner with councilman Fields and her perfect fiancé, the promising politician to-be. Nothing to be gained in being her mother’s showdog, paraded around like a prized possession, her mother’s pride and joy. Dani would’ve laughed, if the thought didn’t make her feel hollow.

Instead, Dani frowned, drying her hands on a dish towel as she watched her mother make herself a drink, her mouth pulled tight in a scowl as she poured and mixed, expertly maneuvering the lit cigarette between two fingers. It was her third drink of the day, having already downed two mimosas during lunch. Dani wrapped her arms around her stomach, feeling it curdle uncomfortably as she watched.

As her mother took a long sip, Dani murmured, “Work has just been keeping me busy, is all.”

Karen gave her a look. “Honey, you’re a teacher, what could possibly — “ she cut herself off when Dani’s stare hardened. Karen exhaled sharply, turning away to take another sip and stabbing out her smoke in an ashtray Dani had just cleaned. “Never mind.”

“No,” Dani said, pulling her arms tighter around her. “What were you going to say?”

“I said never mind, Danielle,” her mother repeated, her eyes hardened. She sighed and rubbed her temple. “God, I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

Karen stumbled away, retrieving her pack of cigarettes and lighter from the table before wandering out of the kitchen towards the living room. Dani watched her leave, her breathing shallow and her hands clenched into fists. 

It took a minute longer than usual, to let it ease out of her. To let her shoulders drop from her ears and her fists to relax open. Maybe it was her mother switching on the tv to a loud sitcom. Or maybe it was the orange juice and vodka, still laid out on the counter along with other empty bottles that needed to be thrown out. For one brief intense second, Dani considered combing through the entire house for every single bottle and carton of cigarettes, to empty them down the drain and toss them all in the garbage. 

She took it out on the dishes instead, drying them with a cloth, her movements jerky and rushed. If she wasn’t so focused on it, wasn’t frowning so hard down at her reflection in the glass as she focused on trying to ease the tension in her coiled muscles, maybe then she’d have noticed the knock on the front door a second sooner. Maybe then, she would have remembered — 

“Afternoon, Mrs. Clayton. Long time no see.” Jamie’s distinct voice, cheerful and pleasant as ever, came from the front door. 

Remembered that Dani, temporarily car-less, had made plans for Jamie to come pick her up at the old house.

Dani froze at the sound, her eyes wide at the silent interval, and then: “You have some nerve coming back here and knocking on my door,” Karen said, derision dripping from her voice. 

“Shit,” Dani muttered, and rushed to where her mother stood sentry in the doorway. Just over her shoulder stood Jamie on the porch, hands in her pockets and wearing a grin. A familiar grin, one that Dani knew Jamie had worn in the presence of her mother since they were young, placid and charming but which Dani knew hid its own share of derision. When their eyes met over her mother’s shoulders, Jamie’s grin softened. 

“Hope I’m not too late,” Jamie said. 

“You’re early actually,” Dani said, ignoring Karen’s piercing stare as she stepped aside to make room for Dani by the doorway. She had been hoping for her mother to be distracted by her television and her drinks to leave at the same moment that Jamie was supposed to pull up towards the house, but now — 

“Oh? Early for what?” Her mother asked pointedly.

Dani swallowed hard, pulling her mouth into a tense smile as she finally caught her mother’s gaze. “Oh, um. Jamie and I were going to go have tea. To catch up."

Karen hummed, folding her arms across her chest, sparing Jamie another sharp look, and said, “I didn’t realize you two were friends again.”

Any answer Dani could have given became lodged in the back of her throat. Her eyes flickered towards Jamie to find her already staring back, her expression blank but for the soft curl at one corner of her mouth. That was the rub, wasn’t it. Neither of them had identified what it was they were trying to do here. A tenuous strand of hope was threaded between them that afternoon a week ago, but Dani, feeling like a newborn colt on wobbly legs, wasn’t even sure where she stood in the realm of Jamie letting her back into her life. Wasn’t sure how far she herself was willing to go.

“Well, you have to start somewhere, yeah? A cup of tea’s a good enough place as any,” Jamie said, shrugging, her grin turning mischievous as she looked at Dani, “No matter how rancid.”

Dani would have chuckled at the teasing words if it weren’t for the eager thrill going down her spine at Jamie all but confirming the start of something.

Her mother smiled, the curl of her lips more of a sneer than anything. “I see,” was all she said, arching an eyebrow at Dani.

Dread pooled to her stomach, her muscles tensing as Karen bore her eyes into Dani, displeasure leeching off of her, her lips thin. 

Dani cleared her throat, pulling her mouth into a smile until her cheeks ached. “Well, I um. I just have to go get changed, and then we’ll get out of your hair,” she said, mindlessly reaching her hand towards Jamie, whose face flickered with bemusement. 

Karen's face fell. Far too obediently for her own sake, Jamie took hold of her hand, her bemusement morphing into something more mischievous. A shock almost went up from Dani’s palm up to her shoulder at the touch, Jamie’s hand calloused but warm and dry in her own. Letting herself be pulled in the house, Jamie was already toeing off her boots as she offered Karen a wink. Dani squeezed her hand with a reprimanding look when her mother’s eyes hardened. Jamie didn’t even have the decency to look contrite. 

“We’ll just be a few minutes,” Dani said, pulling Jamie insistently towards the staircase, offering her mother one last weak smile, “Promise.”

Her mother huffed and shut the door, disappearing back into the living room with one last scowl. When she was finally out of sight, Dani immediately dropped Jamie’s hand and led her up the stairs with a murmured, “This way.”

Jamie whistled low. “Your mum's still as charming as ever, I see,” Jamie murmured just behind her. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Dani breathed out an awkward chuckle. “She’s, um. She’s been in a bit of a mood today.”

She expected a sharp retort, the kind of snark only her mother could pull out of Jamie, but instead there was silence behind her. Dani glanced over her shoulder with a frown to see Jamie staring thoughtfully at the framed photos lining the staircase walls as they climbed. Portraits of Dani throughout the years, family photos of just Dani and her mom, and photos with Eddie intermittently spread across the board. It wasn’t anything new or special, photos Dani’s seen a million times that they could’ve faded into the walls, and she wouldn’t have noticed. But as she followed Jamie’s eyeline towards Dani’s high school graduation portrait, Jamie’s eyes lingering intently on it as they passed, a dull ache spread across Dani’s chest and she spun back around, swallowing hard. 

When they reached her bedroom, Dani shut the door closed with a click, the sound uncomfortably loud in the sudden quiet. Six years. Six years of after school hangouts, of homework, of sleepovers, and never once had Jamie appeared so out of place as she did now, standing in the middle of the pale pink of Dani’s childhood bedroom, hands tucked deep in the pockets of her jeans, her expression carefully blank as she took in the scene. 

“Hasn’t changed much,” Jamie said. 

“Wasn’t really any need to,” Dani murmured, still trying to shake off the panic of having Jamie in her room for the first time in a decade, trying desperately not to recall the memories of the last time they had been in this room together.

As if her mind had drifted towards the same place, Jamie’s gaze wandered over to the purple comforters of Dani’s bed, visibly swallowed hard, and promptly meandered away towards Dani’s bookshelf. Feeling as if she’d both seen too much, and not enough at all, Dani cleared her throat and started towards her closet where she still kept some change of clothes, blindly pulling some out. 

With clothes in hand, she froze on the spot and murmured, “Um.”

At the sound, Jamie looked back at her and then down at the clothes she clutched in a fist. She blinked for a moment and then grinned. “Need me to turn around?” She asked, twirling a finger in a circle as a curious pale flush spread across her cheeks.

Dani felt her stomach swoop and drop, her cheeks warming. She chuckled breathlessly. “No, It’s — It’s okay. I’ll just — I’ll be a minute,” she said, and didn’t even wait for Jamie to reply as she darted out the room to change in the bathroom. 

In the time it took to change into jeans and a blouse, she managed to ease the tremble in her hands. To settle the panic of Jamie alone in her room, and of the embarrassment of just rushing out like that. Maybe it was a fool’s hope, to believe that things could’ve been easier after they had finally aired the frustrations of their reality. That things could’ve just inexplicably gone back to the way they were, and it would’ve suddenly been easier to look and talk to Jamie without feeling as unmoored as she did. 

When she returned to the room, she found that Jamie had wandered now over to her vanity, her arms loosely folded as she looked at the photos taped to the edges of Dani’s mirror. Photos that Dani knew contained so many memories that didn’t involve Jamie, memories that Jamie wasn’t around to take part of. Dani took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, hanging her dress on a rack behind her closet door. 

It was simply the new normal, Dani reminded herself. The dawn of their fresh start, something she’d have to keep reminding herself until they finally found their footing, or until they eased their way into something different and new. The thought left her feeling unexpectedly calmer. 

Striding towards the vanity, she caught Jamie’s eyes through the mirror and gave her a small grin. 

“Senior prom looked fun,” Jamie said, taking one last scan of the photos before retreating to the other side of the room just as Dani stepped next to her. 

Ducking her eyes, Dani smiled weakly down at the contents of her dresser. “You didn’t miss much, to be honest,” she said, and began to exchange her modest earring studs to a pair of gold hoops. “Someone spiked the punch and almost everyone got super drunk.”

“You kidding? That’s loads of blackmail material right there for the taking,” Jamie said. “At least tell me you took advantage of that?”

Dani gave her a look through the mirror. Jamie rolled her eyes and shook her head, her grin fond. “A goddamn waste,” she murmured, and then unexpectedly sobered. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

Dani froze, her eyes locked on Jamie, feeling her shoulders tense. “For what?”

“For riling your mum up like that. Habit, I guess,” Jamie said, shrugging with a rueful smile, before softly adding, “And also, everything else.”

There was something to be said with the way Dani’s heart immediately softened, her throat going thick at Jamie’s earnestness. The mirror needed a polish, and Jamie’s reflection was slightly smudged, so that she seemed to be standing further away in the background, as though a camera lens had been dialed out of focus. The new normal, Dani reminded herself. “I know,” she murmured, smiling faintly. “Me too.”

Jamie nodded, exhaling shakily and ducked her head to delve deeper in the room. Dani watched her silently through the mirror, brushing out her hair as Jamie wandered around as if she were in a museum, hands tucked away and her expression back to being painfully blank. When she finally reached Dani’s bedside table, she jerked to a stop, staring down at the one thing Dani had never found the heart to remove. The one photo left of Jamie out in the open, the only one framed and resting at her bedside, proving that she was here, that she had once existed in the orbit of Dani’s gravity. 

It was one of Dani’s favorites. Taken when they were around fifteen, sometime in the evening after a long spring day, Jamie holding Dani up in a piggyback ride with Dani’s arms wrapped around Jamie’s shoulders, the pair smiling so big and bright. Dani didn’t even remember what they were doing that day, only that feeling of endless carefree days, when she felt most like herself. 

She watched as Jamie picked up the frame, her face softening until she wore a faint but fond grin. Do you miss it too? Dani wanted to ask. Did you miss me? Instead, she looked away as Jamie’s throat bobbed, feeling again as if she’d seen too much. 

She finished by tying her hair up neatly with a blue scrunchie, exhaled softly, and said, “All done.”

Jamie cleared her throat and returned the photo to the bedside table, and said, “Right.”

The escape out of the house was easier than Dani had expected it to be. While Jamie slipped her boots back on, Dani retrieved a takeout bag she had left on the kitchen counter before bidding her mother goodbye for the day. Karen merely waved with a hum, distracted by the tv, though her mouth was still pulled tight in a scowl. 

They were almost out the front door scot-free when Jamie, clearly unable to help herself, smirked and called out just before the door shut, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Clayton. I’ll have her home by eleven.”

Dani huffed and knocked her elbow into Jamie’s ribs. At Jamie’s grunt, Dani bit her lip to contain her grin and shut the front door. 

“Your elbows are still as sharp as ever,” Jamie said, rubbing at her ribs, grinning widely as they strolled towards Jamie’s truck, as if the fresh air and distance from Dani’s room made it easier. “You Clayton women are pieces of work. Do I have that to look forward to in another twenty years?” she said, jerking her thumb behind her. 

Even as a thrill went down Dani’s spine at the thought of twenty more years of Jamie, she rolled her eyes and said, “Keep talking like that, and you just might.” Jamie smirked in response. 

The truck was warm from the afternoon sun as Dani slid in the passenger seat. There was a faint citrusy smell along with the little tree air freshener as if it had just been cleaned. When she caught sight of a variety of stickers attached to the glove compartment — a collection ranging between Star Wars, Star Trek, cartoons she vaguely recognized, and a legion of silver stars — Dani hid her smile by biting her lower lip. 

“What’s this, then?” Jamie said, gesturing down to the takeout bag Dani held in her lap as she started the engine. 

Dani grinned sheepishly. “Lunch. From Owen’s,” she said, “Can’t visit someone else’s home without bringing something.”

“You don’t have to do that with me, you know,” Jamie said as they took off down the street, not looking at her. “All that social niceties bullshit. All you need to do is bring yourself. S’all I care about.”

Leaning her head against the headrest, Dani watched Jamie’s profile with a soft grin. “It’s a midwestern thing,” she explained. “Besides, I wanted to.”

Jamie spared her a short glance, grinning crookedly. “The kid’ll appreciate that then,” she said, returning her gaze to the road. “My cooking is not up to snuff most days.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Dani. “You did tell him, right? That I was visiting?” she said, lifting her head and sitting upright.

“Oh no, I figured we’d surprise him.” When Dani gave her a look, Jamie rolled her eyes. “Of course I told him. D’you think I’m bloody mad? Imagine you at twelve years old, having a nice day at home when whatsherface from fourth grade comes knocking on your door for an afternoon cuppa with your mum. Christ, I may be a prat, but not that much of a prat.”

Dani laughed, and said, “You’re not a prat.” It was Jamie’s turn to give Dani a look. “Okay, maybe just a little. For comparing me to Mrs. Walker.”

“Believe me. You are miles ahead of that woman.”

A warmth spread across Dani’s chest up to her cheeks. With a pleased grin, Dani turned to stare at the passing buildings and landmarks as they drove by. The drive wasn’t too long, but it was filled with anecdotes of surviving their hard-nosed fourth grade teacher. 

“That’s putting it mildly,” Jamie muttered. “She was mental.”

“Fourth graders can get rowdy.”

Jamie snorted, and shot her a dry stare. “She yelled at you for reading ahead.”

Dani paused. “I actually forgot about that.”

Jamie chuckled as they pulled up to a house. “Right, here we are. Home sweet home.”

Dani eagerly leaned forward to look up at it through the windshield, smiling softly at the modest two story house. Pale grey with white shutters, a small porch right up front, and a bright red door. There were flower boxes along the windows on the first floor, blooming colorfully bright, and as she hopped out of the truck, she could see that there were also beds of flowers growing right along the walls of the house. 

“It’s beautiful, Jamie,” Dani said softly. 

Jamie shrugged. “Front’s all right. Back is a bit more of a mess.”

“Kinda have trouble believing that,” Dani said, enchanted with how picturesque it all looked. 

Jamie rolled her eyes and started up the front steps to the door, swiftly unlocking it. But as soon as Jamie led Dani inside, they both heard the thudding of feet bounding up a flight of stairs and the telltale sound of a door slamming shut. Dani hesitated, shooting Jamie a worried look. 

Rolling her eyes again, Jamie huffed and shut the front door. “Dunno what he thinks hiding is gonna do,” she grumbled, pulling her boots off, gesturing for Dani to do the same. “Gonna have to come down at some point.”

“Are you sure this is okay?” Dani slowly asked, setting her shoes neatly aside on a rubber mat. 

“Seemed perfectly fine when I told him.” Dani gave her a dubious look. “Okay, I bargained pizza for dinner with him, and he promised not to be a git about it, so it looks like pizza’s off the table for now,” Jamie said, her words gruff but still unable to hide a grin. It was charming, but did very little to comfort Dani, worrying her lower lip. Seeing this, Jamie softened. “Look, just give him a minute to settle. You know how us Taylors are.”

Slowly, the tension in Dani’s shoulders eased, and she nodded with a small grin. “Yeah, I do."

Jamie mirrored her grin for a moment before clearing her throat and stuffing her hands in her pockets. “Right, well. How about a bit of a tour?” she said, gesturing broadly to the house, “That’s another thing you midwesterners like doing, yeah?”

Dani grinned dubiously and said, “You realize you are a midwesterner, right?” 

Jamie snorted. “Hardly."

The first thing Dani noticed was how bright it was. Every window they passed was wide open with the curtains tied back, letting the afternoon light bounce across the off-white walls and a warm breeze waft through the rooms. The second thing she noticed was that there were plants everywhere. Greenery eased into corners and on tables and ledges. As Jamie led her through the kitchen to drop off the takeout, Dani smiled at the various plants and flowers propped up on the fridge and counters.

Leaving the takeout bag on the counter next to the sink where a variety of pots rested on the ledge just behind it, basking in the sun, Jamie stepped next to her and gave a curious shake to the watering can that sat in the sink. 

“Ass didn’t even finish watering them,” Jamie grumbled, but at Dani’s chuckle, she shook her head and grinned, turning around to lean her back against the counter. “Guess this is the kitchen.”

“It’s lovely,” Dani said, taking in the white cupboards and dark countertops. She especially liked the small dining table separated by the kitchen island that sat cramped next to the open window overlooking the small glimpse of what Dani could see as the backyard. 

“Tell me how you really feel,” Jamie said. “Needs some work, more like. Feels like every time I empty a box, another magically appears, I swear.”

Dani couldn’t say she knew the feeling. Every box in the house she shared with Eddie that was emptied and packed away felt like one step closer to a locked cage. She didn't say this though, didn’t let it show on her face, not when there already seemed to be a strange sort of stiffness to Jamie’s shoulders as she guided Dani out of the kitchen, gesturing with her chin towards the door that led to the basement with her hands deep in her pockets. Tense eyes that refused to meet Dani’s own as she pointed out the bathroom and various cupboards and closets, like she was nervous as to what she might see in Dani’s expression. 

Like the truck, the house smelled like it had just been cleaned. Floors swept and not a speck of dust in sight, like the house had been cleansed of anything unsavoury. There was something both sweet and unnerving to it. Slowly, as if leeching off the nervous energy from Jamie, Dani wrapped her arms around her stomach, wishing she knew what to say as Jamie guided her towards the living room. 

She wished she could tell sixteen year Jamie how charming the visibly well worn and loved the mismatched furniture was. The same Jamie who was taunted relentlessly for living in the poorest neighborhood in town, but never seemed to care when it came to Dani. Wished she knew how to tell this Jamie, who seemed to think Dani was the kind of person who grew to care about such a thing. Wished she knew how to tell her that every single object, every single plant and knickknack and visible record vinyl was like getting a piece of the puzzle back, like getting little pieces of Jamie back. 

New normal, she reminded herself faintly, meandering away from Jamie to wander around the living room, eyes darting about, hungrily taking everything in.

When her eyes landed on the picture frames lining the mantle, her stomach twisted tightly, and slowly, she neared them. There were only four, and while they were so few, it somehow made them all the more precious given how Dani hadn’t seen a single other photo among the rest of the house. 

The first one she sought was a charming school photo of Mikey, looking just a few years younger, smiling wide with his hair tamed and slicked back from his usual mess of curls. The one next to it was an old black and white portrait of a striking woman who could only be Ruth Heron, square-jawed and stern-eyed even in her youth. The next one Dani actually remembered taking; Jamie on her fifteenth birthday, sitting in front a cake with lit candles, wearing a wide crooked grin as she held a baby Mikey in her lap with Ruth standing just beside them, an arm across Jamie’s shoulders and wearing a rare warm smile. Dani swallowed against a lump in her throat, her grin rueful, memories of that day warming her skin.  

When she reached the last photo, she paused. It was of Jamie and Mikey, though Mikey was much younger than he was now, looking near six years old. Small enough for Jamie to hold up against her hip with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, both wearing near identical smiles. Jamie stood shin deep in water, her pants rolled up to her knees though still damp at the edges, and behind them was nothing but dark blue water. Dani’s hands itched to touch the frame, to pick it up and inspect it more closely. 

“Atlantic ocean,” Jamie’s voice came from behind her. 

Dani jerked the hand away that had been inching across the mantle, spinning around to see Jamie had stepped nearer, hands still in her pockets, shoulders still tense but the corners of her mouth curled faintly. 

“Sorry,” Dani said, balling her hands in fists by her side.

Jamie shook her head. “S’alright,” she said, and shrugged, “Only fair, I guess.”

Dani chuckled, recalling the way Jamie had seemed unable to remove her own gaze from the photos in her childhood house. She gestured towards the photo and said, “You saw the Atlantic?” 

Jamie hummed, her eyes straying to the photo in question, her face softening into a fond smile, and stepped closer. “Scarborough, Maine if you want to get particular about it,” she said, “Water was cold. He didn’t want to get in or let me stray too far. First time he ever let me hold him like that.”

“Good day?” Dani asked, still looking at Jamie.

“Yeah,” Jamie murmured, nodding. 

There was something enrapturing with the pensive warmth in Jamie’s face, eyes distant as though she was recalling that day. But all too quickly, the look was gone, cleared away to a carefully blank expression. 

“Anyways,” Jamie said, clearing her throat, and gesturing with a nod of her head behind her, putting on a grin, “Backyard’s this way.” Dani followed dutifully as Jamie led them to a door near the kitchen, already open save for the mesh screen to let in the breeze. She pulled the screen open and gestured for Dani to take a look. “Remember. Bit of a mess.”

Giving Jamie a look, Dani peeked her head out, feeling distinctly like was looking at an unfinished piece of artwork. There was a porch that encompassed the whole length of the back of the house, painted white and swept clean, various tools and gardening supplies shoved into each corner. The backyard itself was larger than Dani expected, clearly still in the process of being cleared; the grass was cut and weeds removed, but there still remained unwanted bushes and a collection of yard waste bags filled to the brim scattered around. Near the back corner, there were more tools and supplies shucked by an old shed that seemed as if it could give Dani tetanus just by looking at it. It wasn’t as much of a mess as Jamie had made it out to be, but Dani could see the potential in it. 

“Isn’t much yet, obviously,” Jamie said, leaning her shoulder against the wall next to the door, “Haven’t had time to work on it, unfortunately, due to work and all.”

Dani spared her a soft grin before stepping out on the porch, the wood warm beneath her feet, and leaned against the wood railing. “So what’s the plan?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Jamie who stared at her with an odd look for a moment before following her outside and leaning on the railing next to her. 

“The plan,” Jamie said, exhaling as she looked over the yard, “Haven’t thought about it much.”

“Bull,” Dani said. Jamie smirked at her, shaking her head fondly. “Seriously, what’s the plan?”

“All right,” Jamie murmured.

Leaning her chin on her fist, Dani watched as Jamie explained her vision for the backyard, eyes bright and gesturing towards different corners of the grass, pointing out which flowers would go where, and which vegetable plot there. 

“Could use a tree,” Dani offered. “A fruit tree, maybe.”

“What kind?”

Dani hummed in thought. “Apple.”

“All right, where?”

“Somewhere there.” Dani gestured in a vague direction towards the back.  

Jamie chuckled, and said, “That’s where the greenhouse is going.”

Dani rolled her eyes. “Fine, a cherry blossom out front.”

Arching an eyebrow, Jamie grinned. “All right, anything else?”

“I’ll let you know.” The warm breeze brushed against Dani’s skin as they chuckled. When they fell quiet, listening to the trees rustle, Dani straightened after a moment, and said, “I always knew you were gonna do something with plants.”

“That right?” Jamie said, straightening to lean against a pillar, eyes still warm, but there was a guardedness to it now. 

Dani nodded. “You always complained about it, always wanted to do something else when Nan put you to work but,” she paused, eyes drifting back to the yard, recalling those days Jamie would roll on her back in the grass next to Dani after a long day of chores, eyes shut with the faintest of smiles, her nose speckled with sun kissed freckles. Dani’s mouth curved into a warm smile, “You were content after.” 

Her gaze drifted back to Jamie who was watching her with an unreadable expression. Soft as it was, it sent Dani’s stomach fluttering not unpleasantly. And then, Jamie blinked and glanced away, shrugging. “That’s the thing with plants, I suppose,” Jamie said. “Easier than people. Predictable. Good listeners. Give back what you give them.”

Dani’s smile gradually slipped away, and before she could find the words to respond, Jamie pushed off the pillar and gestured to the house. Dutifully, Dani followed her back inside. The rest of the tour went by at speed light with Jamie leading her upstairs, pointing vaguely to three doors she described as another bathroom, her own bedroom, and a spare room they mostly used for things they haven’t found a place for yet, until they reached the last door at the end of the hallway, covered in more stickers. 

“And this’ll be the kid himself,” Jamie said, winking at Dani before knocking hard on the door, "Oi, unless you’ve got a hankering for my dry pasta, I suggest you best get yourself sorted out in five minutes for lunch.”

There was audible scrambling from behind the door. Dani shook her head with a grin as Jamie chuckled under her breath. “Yeah, yeah, fine, I’ll be down,” Mikey called through the door. 

When they returned downstairs to the kitchen, Jamie immediately went about setting up a kettle on the stove to boil. 

“You know, you don’t have to spook him for my sake,” Dani said, watching Jamie comfortably move about in her own kitchen. 

Jamie chuckled, “He’ll be all right. Gives back just as good as I give him, believe me.”

“You mean like all those Star Trek reruns he subjects you to?” Dani said, grinning. 

Jamie groaned. “This entire week’s been a nightmare. You’d have thought it was the World Cup last Monday, and I bet it’ll be the same tomorrow,” she said, “Absolute torture, I’m telling you.”

“I’m sure,” Dani said, chuckling.

At the sound of the floor creaking behind them, they both turned to see Mikey standing in the entrance to the kitchen, fidgeting with his hands and looking just as anxious as he’d been that day Dani first spoke to him about his math homework. 

“Christ, took you long enough,”Jamie said, “What were you hiding from? The boogeyman?”

“Maybe,” Mikey said with a pointed scowl at Jamie who snorted.

Just barely refraining from rolling her eyes, Dani smiled gently down at him, and said, “Hi.”

Catching her eyes, Mikey’s scowl immediately evaporated into a shy anxious grin. “Hi, Miss Clayton,” he said.

“How’s your weekend been?”

He shrugged noncommittally, his eyes flickering away to the floor. “Was okay,” he said, and then twisted his face around as if thinking something through with a great deal of effort before meeting her eyes again and adding hesitantly, “How was yours?”

“I could say the same,” she said, and leaned forward just a little as if divulging a secret, “Though don’t tell Jamie this, but I think it’s gotten a lot better today.”

She was surprisingly pleased when Mikey broke into a grin, and even more so when his face scrunched up in bewilderment, glancing at Jamie dubiously and asked, “Why? Because of her?”

Dani was unable to hold back a snort when Jamie huffed behind her. “Y’know, unless you want the boogeyman to eat your lunch and bite your head off for dessert, I suggest you help set the table.”

Jumping into action, Mikey did as he was told, grabbing the plates Jamie handed to him and a set of cutlery from a drawer to set on the kitchen table. 

“Do you need help?” Dani asked. 

“Nope, you’re our guest,” Jamie said, offering Dani a grin over her shoulder, “You just sit right there, and get yourself comfortable.”

With nothing better to do, Dani settled into a chair at the table, resting her chin on her palm and trying not to watch the pair too closely, but it was hard not to. Not with the way Mikey seemed to brighten from the shy boy she was familiar with to one who bickered quietly with Jamie on who got which favored mug. Not with the way they danced around each other with ease, grabbing things from cupboards and drawers to place on the table. But when Mikey rolled his eyes at another one of Jamie’s quips, snickering and jumping away from a well aimed kick to the back of his legs, all at once Dani could see the ghost of a twelve year old Jamie in his soft features, and she had to finally look away. 

When they finally settled into their chairs adjacent to Dani, teapot on the table and takeout bag in hand, she helped them distribute the three sandwiches she had bought. 

“I wasn’t sure what else to get, so I got us something I remembered you liked,” Dani explained, anxiously watching them unwrap their lunch.

Jamie offered her a grin. “Like I said. Can’t go wrong with Owen’s handiwork,” she said, a glint appearing in her eyes, “But — “

“Oh no,” Dani muttered.

“But,” Jamie repeated, chuckling and opening her sandwich to pull out a pickle that had been peeking out the side, “If I ever see you bring a gherkin into my house again, we’re gonna have some words.”

“Oh,” Dani murmured, her cheeks going warm as Mikey followed suit, leaving the pickles on the side of his plate with an awkward grin. “Sorry. I - um. Guess I forgot.”

“S’alright,” Jamie said, giving the teapot a quick glance before pouring tea in each of their cups, “Next time.”

The thought of a next time sent a thrill down Dani’s spine, her mouth flickering into a pleased smile down at her food, and with a sudden brazenness that surprised even her, Dani reached out to Jamie’s plate to pluck a discarded pickle and eat it. Jamie froze, eyes wide, and laughed. 

“Now why do I get the feeling you forgot on purpose?” Jamie said, eyes bright.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Dani said, shrugging and not meeting Jamie’s eyes.

Jamie laughed again, and without prompting, relinquished both hers and Mikey’s discarded pickles on Dani’s plate with a flourish. Dani caught her eye, grinning in thanks. 

Mikey watched this all with a puzzled frown as he poured sugar into his tea before sliding the small container towards Dani. “Um, Miss Clayton, do you want sugar?”

“Yes, thank you,” Dani said with a grin, tossing in a few teaspoons of sugar. “You know,” she started slowly, reaching for the milk to pour in enough until it was the color of pale bark. “You don’t really have to call me that, I’m not your teacher here. You can just call me Dani.”

When she set the milk back down, she caught Mikey looking at her tea with wide eyes just short of aghast and Jamie shaking her head. 

“Just ignore it,” Jamie said, “And whatever you do, never accept a brew from her. It’s probably poisoned.”

Dani rolled her eyes and kicked at Jamie under the table who shied away, grinning into her sandwich. When she looked back at Mikey, his face was slightly pained. “Okay - um. Miss Dani,” he said, and at Jamie’s snort he glowered at her. 

Dani smiled gently when he bit into his sandwich, chewing roughly. “You know, I’ve always been impressed with your manners,” she said, chuckling when his eyes darted to her in surprise, “I’m just not sure where you’ve gotten them from, ‘cause I know you didn’t get them from Jamie.”

“Oi!” Jamie said. While Mikey had no problems snorting loudly, Dani fought hard to not laugh at the exaggerated look of betrayal on Jamie’s face, biting hard at her lip. “I’ve got plenty manners, thank you very much. Gentlemanly one might say. Perfectly charming.” Dani caught Mikey’s eye and they shared a mischievous grin. “Oh, I see how it is. This is what I get for inviting you over and treating you to my patented Taylor hospitality.” Dani only hummed, hiding her grin as she sipped on her tea. Jamie gave her a dry look and said, “Never again.”

Dani laughed, unable to help herself. A fond grin slowly creeped it’s way on Jamie’s face, shaking her head.

Mikey’s eyes bounced between the two of them curiously, landing on Dani with a small frown. “Miss Cla — Miss Dani?”

“Just Dani is fine.”

Mikey’s face twisted, settling into a stubborn frown, and firmly said, “Miss Clayton — ” Jamie shared a small grin with her out of the corner of her eyes “ — Jamie said you both grew up together.”

“We did,” Dani said, smiling indulgently. 

“Did you also know me?”

“She sure did,” Jamie said, smirking. “Changed your diapers and everything.”

Mikey’s eyes immediately went wide and his cheeks red, hiding his face as he returned to his sandwich. When Jamie chuckled, Dani gave her a look. Jamie merely responded with a sheepish shrug.  

“Hey, you know that photo on the mantel? The one from Jamie’s birthday?” Dani started, patiently waiting for Mikey to meet her eyes. When he did, curious and nodding, Dani tilted her head, her grin soft. “I took that photo.”

His eyes widened, “Really?” At her nod, he took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, and said with his mouth full, “That’s cool.”

Dani chuckled, and after a brief moment of consideration, she spared Jamie a sly look. “And you know,” she said slowly, grinning when Jamie frowned suspiciously at her. Dani ignored the look and turned back to a curious Mikey. “Jamie was telling me that you’re a big Star Trek fan.”

Jamie froze. “Dani.”

Dani continued to ignore her, her grin wide as Mikey’s eyes lit up, straightening in his seat. “Yeah! Are you one too?”

“Dani — “ Jamie tried again, her voice pained.

“I used to watch reruns of the original, and the weird cartoon they made.”

“I have the VHS tapes for all the movies!” Mikey said, “I even taped the new show last week, have you seen it?”

“I haven’t actually,” Dani said, enjoying the horror creeping on Jamie’s face way too much as Mikey seemed to nearly bounce in his seat with newfound energy. “Is it any good?”

“It’s amazing, do you — “ he paused, seeming to slow down, a sudden shyness overtaking him, “Do you wanna watch?”

“Christ, not again,” Jamie groaned, burying her face in one hand, rubbing at her forehead, resignation settling heavy on her shoulders. 

Dani laughed, and said, “I’d love to.”

At the rate Mikey finished his sandwich and tea, lunch was quickly over. Before Jamie could get a word edged in, Mikey shot up from his seat, grabbed their empty plates and cups to dump in the sink, rushed out a breathless, “Thank you for lunch, Miss Clayton,” before dashing into the living room to set up the tv.

Left alone to bask in the aftermath of Mikey’s hurricane of excitement, Dani leaned her elbows on the table, pulling her lips between her teeth to hide her smile as Jamie stared at her. “I’m beginning to think you may be the devil in disguise,” Jamie said dryly. Dani laughed again, unable to help herself as Jamie grumbled under her breath, standing to step towards the sink. “Laughs at me, she does. Who knew human suffering was just a barrel of laughs.”

Shaking her head, Dani stood and followed Jamie to the sink as she opened the tap, nudging Jamie’s shoulder with her own. It earned Dani a grin, the terse edges of Jamie’s mouth gone, leaving only indulgent fondness that seemed to strike hard at Dani’s chest, leaving her somewhat breathless. 

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Jamie said, handing Dani a cloth. 

Dani slowly took it, carefully avoiding Jamie’s hand, and said, “I promise to go easy on you from now on.”

A curious look crossed Jamie’s face, one that Dani didn’t have time to decipher before Jamie was grinning crookedly again. “Best not to make promises you can’t keep," she said, and winked.

Feeling her stomach twist, Dani matched her grin and they both set about cleaning the dishes. Jamie washing and Dani drying in companionable silence, Jamie’s shoulder and arm occasionally brushing up against Dani’s, warm to the touch. Dani wore a soft grin the entire time. When they were done, Jamie dug through her fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer, offering one to Dani, only to shrug when Dani shook her head no, replacing one back.

“I am definitely going to need this if I’m going to survive the next hour and a half,” Jamie said, popping open a bottle. 

Dani blinked. “An hour and a half?”

Jamie snorted, pointing the bottle towards Dani. “You made your bed,” she said, taking a hefty swig. 

Making their way to the living room, Mikey was already set up in the middle of the couch, legs crossed with a remote in hand while the big boxy tv set up on the other side of the room was paused, the screen flickering over a distorted image. Jamie collapsed on one side of Mikey, lounging back with an arm resting on the back of the couch, and her legs stretched out on the coffee table, one leg crossed over the other. Dani meanwhile, sat gingerly on the other side of Mikey, stiffly sinking into the soft blue cushions, her shoulder resting inches away from Jamie’s hand. 

Jamie sighed. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

Mikey knocked his arm into Jamie’s rib. Grunting, Jamie retaliated by flicking his ear. Mikey swiped her hand away, huffing before turning to Dani, and asked, “Ready?”

Chuckling at the sibling antics, Dani nodded. “Ready.”

Dani settled in as Mikey excitedly pressed play, the screen coming to life as planets flew by and familiar music began to play. Dani’s mouth slowly curled into a warm smile. It was as though she absorbed Mikey’s excitement, anticipation buzzing at her skin, nostalgia draping over her like a warm cloak. The memories of curling up next to her dad as they sat through another rerun together weren’t unexpected, but they did spread a warm and somber fondness through her. Her smile faltered just slightly. 

As Mikey murmured along to the intro under his breath, Dani felt eyes on her. Flicking her gaze to her right, she was met with Jamie staring at her with gentle concern. When Jamie arched a questioning eyebrow, Dani shook her head and smiled. Jamie stared for a moment longer, before returning her eyes to the tv, taking a sip of her beer. Dani kept her gaze fixed on Jamie for just a second longer, studying her profile, before returning it back to the show, chuckling silently at Mikey’s murmured recitings. 

It was strangely easy, to sink further into the cushions, to settle in the comfortable silence with Jamie and Mikey, curtains closed to block the glare of the evening light and swinging gently in the breeze. To share another grin with Jamie as a man in out of place medieval looking clothes appeared on screen, Jamie’s feet rocking back and forth. To chuckle when Jamie received another elbow to the ribs as she sipped her beer after muttering a “Cheers, mate,” when the aforementioned man decried human civilization, and Mikey muttered back, “Stop being embarrassing."

Dani got lost in the warmth of it, taken in with Jamie’s teasing and soft grins, and Mikey’s shy eyes and barely restrained eagerness. A slow ache creeping across her chest, pulling apart the fragile seams that held together the longing for what could have been as Mikey, over time, relaxed deeper and deeper on the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest as he slowly leaned his back against Jamie. Dani carefully observed them when he rested his head against Jamie’s shoulder, her heart swelling as Jamie’s eyes slowly drifted down to Mikey relaxing against her side, her face softening in the diffused evening light, a corner of her mouth curling into a faint smile. As though feeling Dani’s gaze on her, Jamie’s eyes darted up and caught her own. Dani’s grin widened as Jamie fondly rolled her eyes, turning back to the tv. 

When the episode drew to a close, a pair of giant space jellyfish reunited once more to the sound of Jamie’s exasperated sighs, Mikey turned back to Dani, eyes bright and eager with questions; if she enjoyed it, what were her favorite parts, who was her favorite character? Dani laughed and answered as best as she could while Jamie left them to it, retrieving another beer from the fridge before returning to listen quietly as Dani and Mikey discussed the episode. But when Mikey began enthusiastically planning for next Sunday, Jamie nudged him in the shoulder with a tisk. 

“Don’t go making plans without asking the lady first,” Jamie said. 

“Oh,” Mikey murmured, looking up at Dani, his eyes shy again. “Do you want to come back next week to watch the next episode, Miss Clayton?”

Dani softened under the stare of his brown eyes, aware that Jamie was watching with a careful blank expression. “I’d love to,” Dani said, and grinned at him, “Only as long as you call me Dani from now on when I’m here.”

Mikey made a face, and finally relented with a nod. Pleased, Dani glanced back up at Jamie whose face was still curiously blank for a moment before she cleared her throat, and said, “Reckon I should get you home in time for dinner then.”

Dani froze. “Oh,” she said, struck by the reminder that there was an entire world that existed outside Jamie’s house that she needed to return to. She swallowed against the discomfort rising in her throat, her mouth flickering with a faint smile. “Guess you’re right.”

Jamie shot her another grin before rising to her feet, ruffling Mikey’s hair and disappearing back into the kitchen. Dani stood, hands fidgeting as she grinned down at Mikey. “Well, it was good to see you,” she said. 

“You too,” he replied softly, just a touch of that anxious tension returning to his shoulders now that there was no longer the topic of Star Trek to play as a buffer between them. 

Dani forced her smile to relax as Jamie returned sans beer bottle, hands tucked into her jeans again as she stood waiting. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school, okay?” Dani said, offering him one last grin, “I really enjoyed watching the show with you.”

Mikey’s smile brightened slightly. “Me too,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

She left him with one last small wave, and let Jamie quietly guide her towards the front door where Dani slipped on her shoes. 

“Thank you,” Dani said softly, “For having me.”

Jamie grinned crookedly. “My pleasure,” she said, and her shoulders bunched up an inch, that same uneasiness from earlier edging its way into the lines of her face. 

Dani hesitated briefly, and said, “He really seems to enjoy it. Sharing it with you.” Jamie’s eyes softened, and she ducked her head to hide it. Heartened at the unexpected shyness, Dani risked adding, “Try to go easy on him.”

Jamie snorted, but nodded all the same. “You don’t have to come watch again, you know. Honestly. God knows I’m already plagued with this obsession of his, don’t need that on your plate any more than I do.”

“I want to,” Dani said, firmly enough that Jamie’s mouth snapped shut, blinking in surprise, “I had fun.”

“All right,” Jamie murmured, a slow warm smile brightened her face.  

“Besides,” Dani continued, “What kind of friend would I be if I disappointed Mikey? If I let you go through that alone?”

“So I passed the test?” 

Dani’s brow furrowed at the question. “The test?” 

“We’re friends again?”

It was like something slammed into Dani’s chest, the way her breath escaped her. A thickness grew in Dani’s throat, her muscles twitching to move, and before she knew what she was doing, she was stepping closer, being pulled in like gravity until her arms were wrapping around Jamie’s tense shoulders and she was pressing her face against the soft flannel fabric of her shoulder. It was like a shock to her system, having Jamie in her arms again, like being jolted back to life. 

“Of course we’re friends,” she murmured, nearly breathless, and after what felt like ages, Jamie’s arms wrapped around her, encompassing her waist and pulling her in close. Dani exhaled slowly, her breath unsteady as she felt Jamie’s shoulders relax, sinking into the hug with a sigh of her own. Distantly, Dani wondered if Jamie could hear Dani’s pounding heart. If she could feel the tremble in her hands as they pressed against Jamie’s firm back. 

She closed her eyes and sank further into it, digging her hands into Jamie’s shirt and breathing her in. The smell of the earth and fresh laundry detergent hidden under Jamie’s preferred sandalwood cologne both comforting and familiar that Dani could’ve smiled into the crook of Jamie’s neck, if only it weren’t for the thickness of her throat. It twisted tight at her stomach until she finally lowered her arms, head ducked. 

Jamie released her immediately, stepping away and clearing her throat. “Right,” she said gruffly, not meeting Dani’s eyes as she raked a hand through her hair, ruffling it up into an unruly mess. 

Dani swallowed hard and smiled weakly at the flyaways she itched to smooth down. Instead, she met Jamie’s eyes and said, “I - um. I should go.”

Jamie nodded. “Yeah,” she said, but when Dani reached to twist the lock open and pull open the door to march out, Jamie chuckled. “Where do you think you’re off to?”

Dani spun around to give her a confused frown. “To dinner at Judy’s?”

“And you were just gonna walk all the way across town?” When Dani merely blinked at her, Jamie laughed and began shoving her feet into her boots. “Haven’t you heard? There’s boogeymen about these parts. Can’t risk letting you get snatched on the street.” Just as she stepped out the door, she turned to shout back into the house. “Be back in a minute, don’t burn the house down.”

“No promises!” Dani heard Mikey call back immediately, like it was a thing they said often. 

Dani grinned at the fond roll of Jamie’s eyes as she locked the front door, and the wide gesture towards her green truck, as if motioning towards a carriage and horse. “After you,” Jamie said.

The drive back was quiet save for the radio playing low on some rock station. Feeling brazen again, Dani turned the dial towards the same station Carson had set in her own car. 

“No one said you could touch that,” Jamie said, mirth in her voice. Dani merely hummed in response with a satisfied impish grin, leaning back in her seat. 

When Jamie finally pulled up to Dani’s childhood home, she set the truck in park and offered Dani a grin. “Well, thanks for lunch.”

“Thanks for tea.”

Jamie grinned. “Next Sunday, then?”

Just as Dani began to nod, the door to the car parked in front of the O’Mara’s house swung open, and out stepped Eddie, as though he’d been waiting the entire time for Dani to return. Her stomach sank, heavy like lead. Even from this distance, Dani could see a puzzled frown shadow his face as he caught sight of Jamie’s truck. 

Jamie exhaled slowly. “Best get on with it then, right? Say my hellos.”

“Sure,” Dani said distantly. 

Pausing for a moment, Jamie snorted. “Think he’s still angry I accidentally set his homework on fire that one time?”

Dani laughed at the memory, and shook her head. “We’re not in high school anymore. I think he got over that years ago.”

The look Jamie gave her was dubious. “I’m putting my life in your hands here,” she said, but when Dani ignored her plight, stepping out of the truck and taking a deep breath, she heard Jamie mutter, “Christ, here we go.”

Eddie’s eyes lit up when he caught sight of her, stepping forward to pull her in a hug but stopped short when he spotted who followed Dani out of the truck, his eyes wide. “Jamie,” he said, blinking, and chuckled breathlessly. “Wow. It’s been a while.”

As Jamie stepped towards them, Eddie held his hand out. Jamie shook it just once before returning hers to her side as Dani felt Eddie’s arm wrap around her waist to gently pull her in close. 

“Ed,” Jamie said, wearing that same placid smile she wore for Judy at the bistro. Eddie pulled Dani a little closer, his mouth tightening. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah,” he said, “Mom and Carson mentioned you were back in town. Dad even said he caught you down at the hardware store the other day. Seems like you’ve caught up with just about everyone now.”

Jamie hummed with an affirmative nod. “All but Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

At Jamie’s old nickname for the elder O’Mara twins, Dani bit back a snort. Even Eddie chuckled. “Yeah, they live out of town. Got families of their own now,” he explained, and fell silent, seemingly not knowing what else to say. 

“Good to hear,” Jamie said in the ensuing silence, her eyes darting between Dani and Eddie, still wearing that same smile until it morphed into something unfamiliar. “And looks like congratulations are in order for you lot also. Well done.”

Dani’s stomach clenched anxiously, hands slowly balling into fists by her side as Eddie’s smile brightened, pulling her in closer by the waist. “Thanks. We appreciate that,” he said. 

Jamie smirked. “Well, look at you both. North Liberty’s very own royal couple.”

Eddie chuckled, but Dani stiffened. She didn’t know how to respond to that, not with the way Jamie carefully eyed her, her gaze piercing. Dani decided to ignore it, to let her mouth pull into a small smile that strained her cheeks. “Jamie and I were just catching up over tea and lunch,” she explained to Eddie. 

“Sounds nice,” Eddie said, “How’re things going for you now that you’re back?”

Jamie shrugged. “Nothing to complain at home about,” she said, “Got my job at the gardens, Mikey’s top of his class, and I’ve been officially offered an open invitation to dinner at your mum's whenever I find the time.”

Eddie blinked, his voice faintly strained when he said, “Oh, uh. You’re coming to dinner today?”

“Not today, I’m afraid,” Jamie said, and shot Dani a grin, “Promised the kid pizza tonight.”

“Well,” Eddie cleared his throat, gesturing towards Jamie with a polite smile. “We should let you get to it, then. Right, sweetheart?”

Hearing the term of endearment felt like being underwater, the words muffled and deformed in her ears. Her smile was just a second delayed, pulled taut as she glanced up at Eddie. “Right,” she said, exhaling slowly as she returned her gaze to Jamie, immediately catching her eyes. 

Nodding, Jamie’s mouth pulled into a thin smile, the breeze whipping her hair and flannel. “Good to see you again,” she said. 

“You too,” Eddie replied.

Jamie shot her one last look, smile softened and faint, taking a step back and starting to turn away. Just as Dani began to feel the tug of Eddie’s hand on her waist, she reached her hand out to grab Jamie’s. 

“Hey,” Dani said, tugging Jamie to a stop who blinked in surprise as their eyes met. Dani opened her mouth to speak, but for what felt like an eternity nothing came out, until finally Dani said, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

The warm affection that bloomed in Jamie’s eyes nearly knocked Dani off her feet. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jamie murmured, squeezing her hand just once before easing it out of Dani’s with an easy grin, taking another step back, the wind ruffling her hair, and the golden light of the evening sun glowing on her skin as she turned away. 

[renegade2026]

TOM HARDY SAVES THE DAY (NO, REALLY)

One of the most intense actors of our time agreed to take us on a motorcycle tour of his hometown—and then the day spun way off-script.

ERIC SULLIVAN AUG 7, 2018

We're at the first stop on Tom Hardy’s literal tour down memory lane, and he’s already causing trouble. The caretaker of St. Leonard’s Court, an apartment building in the leafy London suburb of East Sheen, comes out to the driveway to say that a tenant has lodged a noise complaint. Hardy leans back in the saddle of the offending source, a Triumph Thruxton fitted with a not-so-subtle 1200cc engine. “Must be hard for someone who’s home at 3:00 p.m. on a Tuesday doing fuck-all, innit?” he says to the caretaker, who’s already in retreat. Then, overriding his knee-jerk snark: “It won’t happen again.”

“I’m the youngest person to own a flat on this block,” Hardy, forty, tells me, sounding both proud and bemused. He bought the place fifteen years ago, moved out six years later, and now uses it as a crash pad for out-of-town guests. He didn’t choose the location for its social scene, if the few geriatric residents shuffling by are any indication. Rather, he was the prodigal son returned: He grew up in the upper-middle-class community, the only child of Chips, an adman and writer, and Ann, an artist. His parents still live nearby.

“Ready for the five-dollar tour?” he asks. Our plan is to trace the path from what he calls his “privileged bourgeois background” to the upper-upper-class town of Richmond, where he now lives with his wife, actor Charlotte Riley, and their child, his second. (He also has a ten-year-old son with assistant director Rachael Speed.) The journey is short in distance—a little more than two miles—but ultramarathon-long in life experience.

“Behind the Laura Ashley curtains, there was naughtiness and fuckeries!” he begins like an overenthused docent. I point out that’s a line he’s delivered many times to many writers. He shrugs. “It’s easier to say that than to go deep-sea diving into it.” To Hardy, a fiercely private man and a reluctant public figure, the canned story serves the useful purpose of making an unsuspecting person feel like they’re getting to know the real Tom. “Should we fuck off?” he asks as we pull on our gear. Except for the beat-up jeans, his five-foot-nine frame is covered in black, from his helmet to his motorcycle boots. We get on our bikes and fuck off.

Five minutes later, just past the prep school he attended as a boy, Hardy spots a commotion, and we pull over. A woman, blood covering her face, lies faceup, half on the sidewalk and half in the street. A few bystanders are crouched around. As Hardy approaches, he says, “I know her.”

It's Mae, the mother of one of Hardy’s childhood best friends. [Some names have been changed.] He drops to one knee and takes her hand in his. Someone in the crowd tells us that Mae tripped while walking her dog. She’s slipping in and out of consciousness.

“Mae, it’s Tommy,” Hardy says. “Squeeze my hand. Keep talking to us. Can you open your eyes?” She moans. He tries out a joke. “Are you Canadian?” he asks. She manages a word: “No. ” He says, “Not even a little Canadian?” She doesn’t reply. By the time the ambulance arrives, Mae is responding, but barely. Shortly after, her son Albert pulls up on his bicycle. When he sees his mother laid out, he bites his fist. Hardy wraps his arms around his friend, both to comfort him and to keep him at a safe distance.

The paramedics load Mae onto a stretcher, and Hardy asks if they can bring Albert, too, then asks again to make sure they remember. They say yes, but they’ll first check Mae’s vitals.

After the ambulance doors close, Hardy turns his attention back to Albert. “Your mom took a whack to the forehead. But I’m not concerned immediately, ’cause she’s responding better than when we arrived. And ’cause they’re not rushing off. You settle in at the hospital, and then we’ll meet you.” Albert protests, but Hardy stops him. “I’m one of your best mates, and I love you.” He slips money into Albert’s pocket. “Just for now,” he says. As soon as the ambulance leaves, bound for Kingston Hospital, he calls Albert’s wife.

For the half hour we’ve been here, Hardy has not stopped moving. He’s talked himself through each step as if checking off boxes on a crisis to-do list. Suddenly, he turns to me and considers our circumstances. We began the day as writer and subject, but that dynamic dissolved the moment he saw Mae. “There was no interview here,” he says. “We find ourselves in a situation where we needed to put everything on hold.” A smile cracks across his face. “Welcome to my neighborhood. I told you there’s always something to find behind the Laura Ashley curtains.”

Private Tom and Public Hardy: These are the two sides that define him. That his time is split between work life and family life, and that his obligations toward both are sometimes at odds, isn’t unique. However, his steadfast struggle to separate them is; he’d be thrilled if never the two should meet. But they do, with increasing frequency, in ways that are beyond his control.

Public Hardy may be an accomplished actor in the U. S., but in his home country he’s a national treasure. In June, he was awarded the title Commander of the Order of the British Empire, which, while not as prestigious as knighthood, is on the same scale. In February, Glamour UK named him the sexiest man of 2018. Madame Tussauds in London recently displayed his likeness reclining on an oxblood chesterfield couch, one arm perched atop the back cushion like an invitation. (“Cosy up to Tom on his leather sofa and feel his heartbeat and the warmth of his torso in what is surely the hottest seat in town,” hypes the wax museum’s site.) He tells well-worn anecdotes to keep Private Tom concealed, and he’s always on alert.

We meet for the first time the day before the accident, at the Bike Shed, a motorcycle club and café in Shoreditch where, last year, he spent his fortieth birthday. It’s Hardy’s favorite place in London—not surprising, as he’s an investor in the company, which plans to open a location in Los Angeles soon. Every few minutes during our conversation, he nods hello to yet another bearded, inked-up passerby. He’s wearing a loose T-shirt and cargo pants with enough pockets to fit all the world. Brown fuzz dusts the crown of his head. A copper beard stippled with gray blankets the lower half of his face.

He answers my first question—how he’s doing—without missing a beat: “I’m tired.” He’s been working a lot, mostly on Marvel’s Venom (October 5), in which he plays the title role, a reporter named Eddie Brock whose body is hijacked by an alien symbiote. Venom has remained one of Spider-Man’s best-known foes since he first appeared in comic-book form in the late eighties. At times, he’s an outright villain; at others, including in Hardy’s hands, he’s more of an antihero. He can’t discuss the plot, but he says the tone of the movie, directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), is “dark and edgy and dangerous.”

The three-month shoot, which ended in January, took him to Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, where the movie is set. “I see America by where the tax breaks are,” he jokes. Next, he headed to New Orleans to play a syphilitic Al Capone in Fonzo, directed by Josh Trank (Chronicle). That crew went hard: nineteen hours a day for six weeks. The day they wrapped, he flew home, threw on a suit, and attended the royal wedding with Riley. (All he’ll say about why they landed the coveted invite is that “it’s deeply private” and “Harry is a fucking legend.”) The work wasn’t the hardest thing; it was, he says, spending such long stretches away from his family.

Yet workwise, Hardy has arrived at what you might call a stakes moment, one that’s twenty years in the making. At the dawn of his career, after landing just two small roles, albeit in big projects—Band of Brothers and Black Hawk Down—he scored his first major part, as the bald, asexual villain in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. But the movie tanked, snuffing buzz over his excellent performance. Five years of forgettable films and a few distinguished stage performances passed before Hardy played lead roles that fully showcased his talents: the homeless drug addict with a heart of gold in the BBC’s Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007), for which he shed nearly thirty pounds, and the most violent inmate in Britain in Bronson (2009), for which he packed on fifteen pounds of muscle.

Physical change is just part of Hardy’s exacting, chameleonlike transformations. “One can embellish with flair or an accent,” he says. “But ultimately you need to ground the character in some form of recognizable truth.” Hardy will talk your ear off about acting theory— Stanislavsky versus Adler, presentation versus representation, the use of clowning and mask work. “I’m a complete geek about it,” he says. But those seams don’t show. At his best, Hardy so thoroughly embodies a character, in both body and spirit, that he all but disappears.

Take a scene from 2015’s The Revenant. Hardy plays Fitzgerald, the coldhearted fur trapper and the target of revenge for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Glass. One night, around a campfire, Fitzgerald makes a veiled threat to a suspicious travel companion. He never raises his voice, but it’s as if he’s ripped out the man’s heart. Hardy’s performance earned him both an Oscar nomination and, after losing a bet with DiCaprio over whether he’d receive such recognition, a tattoo on his right arm that reads leo knows all.

His knack for magnetic unease can inject a blockbuster with edge: Mad Max: Fury Road, Inception, and, most notably, The Dark Knight Rises. But aside from Fury Road, whenever he’s assumed the lead role—Lawless, Warrior, This Means War, The Drop, Locke, Legend, Child 44—the results have come up short critically, commercially, and sometimes both. Venom is Hardy’s most visible role yet.

“Sounds like a lot of pressure, doesn’t it?” he half-jokes. But he says he’s not concerned about box-office returns; as always, he’s consumed with building a good character. He admits he knew little about Venom when he first read the script. “So I spoke to the only person I could really trust in this environment: my older boy.” His comic-book-loving son “was a huge influence on me doing the role.”

Hardy prepped for the movie for more than a year. He undergoes a rigorous process to shape each performance, complete with its own argot. A script is a “case file,” to be “unpacked” via “investigation.” He often begins by using personalities, both real and fictive, as lodestars toward which he guides his portrayal. The voice he developed for Al Capone in Fonzo is based on Bugs Bunny’s; to prove it, he plays me a clip of the raw footage on his phone. Sure enough, he sounds like the cartoon rabbit with a severe case of vocal fry. In Venom, the dual roles of Eddie Brock and Venom reminded him of three wildly different traits of three wildly different people: “Woody Allen’s tortured neurosis and all the humor that can come from that. Conor McGregor—the überviolence but not all the talking. And Redman”—the rapper—“out of control, living rent-free in his head.” Those are not details he revealed to the execs at Sony, which is producing the movie. “You don’t say shit like that to the studio,” he says.

“IF THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST SONY, THAT’S NOT MY FUCKING BUSINESS. IT'S IRRELEVANT.

“If the odds are stacked against Sony, that’s not my fucking business,” Hardy says. “It’s irrelevant.” He burnishes an image of himself as a creative lone wolf, and in the third person no less: “Tom is very mercenary when it comes to work. I cannot give a fuck what the writer, or the director, or Larry in Baltimore thinks about my choices.” (He later clarifies the perspective shift: “Sometimes I talk in the third person because it’s a lot easier to see myself at work as a piece of meat. So when Tommy says he doesn’t give a fuck what you think, it’s only because I give too much of a fuck, and it gets to a point where it stifles me.”) But it’s hard to square his claims of artistic purity with the occasional very non-lone-wolf detail like, “Market research shows that the biggest fan base for Venom is ten-year-old boys in South America.”

If this movie does well, there will be sequels. And if Sony builds its cinematic Spidey universe, Hardy may well appear in those, too. Beyond those commitments, he’s vague about his post-Fonzo plans, most of which don’t involve acting. “What I’d like to do is produce. Write. Direct,” he says. Through his production company, Hardy Son & Baker, he’s working on the second season of Taboo, a moody period drama set in early-1800s London that he stars on and cowrites with his father. The first season was a mixed bag—its premiere ranks as one of the most streamed episodes of any BBC show, but historians criticized its accuracy and U. S. viewers met its FX airing with indifference—yet his stature is such that the BBC green-lighted the second season. He also optioned Once a Pilgrim, a thriller by a veteran of the Parachute Regiment, the elite airborne infantry of the British army; he’s considering directing the adaptation.

Hardy’s future looks rosy. And yet, more than anything, he feels worn down. Physically, sure: He’s walking with a limp. He says he tore his right meniscus on the set of Venom, but he doesn’t know how it happened. “At the end of a job, I normally end up on the side of the road,” he says. “And then carrying the toddler around on my shoulders. . .” He lets loose a two-note cackle. “Things get in the way of looking after yourself.”

But the fatigue is also mental. Maybe it’s because the growing demands of the job, especially the time spent far from his wife and children, are beginning to outweigh its diminishing gratification. When I ask if being forty has changed how he feels about his career, this time he answers in the second person. “You’ve summited Everest. It’s a miracle that you’ve made it anywhere near the fucking mountain, let alone climbed it. Do you want to go all the way back and do it again? Or do you want to get off the mountain and go fucking find a beach?” He tugs his left temple so hard that it looks like the skin might tear. “What is it that draws you to the craft? At this age, I don’t know anymore. I’ve kind of had enough. If I’m being brutally honest, I want to go on with my life.”

After the ambulance leaves with Mae and Albert, Hardy suggests that we stop at a few places on our way to the hospital. Not for my benefit, but for his friend’s. “Albert needs to be alone with his mum and his thoughts,” he says. “He’s going to be taking care of her, so it’s important he pays attention. Sometimes, when there are other people around, that’s hard to do.” Hardy isn’t trying to swashbuckle; he’s thinking of how to best help two loved ones. And, apparently, a guy he just met: Looking me up and down, he says, “We’ve had a bit of a shock ourselves. We could use some sugar.” We set out for a refreshment stand in a nearby park he first came to as a toddler with his mother to paddle around the kiddie pool, and then as a teen with Albert and others to play rugby.

When we arrive, the stand is closed. As we get back on our bikes, a father walks by carrying his son, a chubby boy with an explosion of straw-colored curls. “How old are you?” Hardy asks the boy. “He’s two,” the dad beams.

“When will you be three?” Hardy asks.

“July,” the toddler says softly.

“That’s really soon!” he says. “You’re a bit older than my youngest, who’ll be three in October. Oh, you’ll be a big boy by then. You’re already a big boy. Do you want to sit on my bike?” The boy buries his face in his father’s chest. “I appreciate I’ve made you feel nervous. This is what I will do: I will disappear,” he says, which could double as his two-sentence acting manifesto. He revs his engine over and over. As we depart, the boy watches Hardy, his mouth agape.

We cut into Richmond Park, a twenty-five-hundred-acre expanse that’s equal parts polished and untamed. When something catches Hardy’s attention—stags in the brush, a view of the Thames, a tree with knotted bark—he raises two fingers to his eyes in a V, then points so I see it too, like I’m his Dunkirk wingman.

We pull over at a dead end. With our engines rumbling, Hardy tells me that his parents moved to this part of London to enroll him in the best schools they could afford. The area is among the wealthiest in the UK, but it’s also an economic patchwork where council houses sit blocks away from mansions. “Growing up, you mix and mingle. You can sit in the shit if you want to, or you can make something of yourself,” he says. “Or you can end up under too much pressure and fading out young.”

As a child, Hardy had a strong relationship with Ann, but he butted heads with Chips. Father and son made up years ago, and Hardy resists going into detail about their difficult past. “My father was the most wonderful of teachers in a world that can be cruel,” he allows. “He treated me like an adult, as opposed to changing his persona for his child. There was no filter. Do you understand? No filter.”

In his teens, Hardy wobbled. “The centrifugal force in my life is a natural disposition to not be happy with the way I feel,” he says. That, combined with a robust contrarian bent—“Nine times out of ten, when somebody says, ‘Don’t do that,’ my instinct is to say, ‘That has to be done’ ”—got him into a fair bit of trouble. He hung out with the wrong crowds; he fought in school. “I grew up in the neighborhood being a dick,” he says. “I’ve learned and will continue to learn from being a dick. To try and somehow chisel myself into being a human being so I can respect myself when I look in the mirror. And that’s a procedure that will go on until I die.”

Starting at thirteen, he struggled with alcoholism and other addictions. He still has a soft spot for those with similar demons. In April 2017, when two kids riding stolen mopeds were T-boned at an intersection and tried to run, Hardy, who lived nearby, apprehended one of them. The Sun headline sums up how the press covered the incident: “Tom Hardy Catches Thief After Dramatic Hollywood-Style Chase Through Streets Before Proudly Saying, ‘I’ve Caught the C**t.’ ” He disputes the details of what was reported— “It wasn’t much of a chase; when I found him, he was in fucking rag order”—but that’s beside the point. The tabloids missed the real story: After the incident, he tracked down the kid he turned in and got him help. “He must stand accountable for what he’s done,” Hardy tells me. “But he’s got issues, and he’s in a bad way. Do we just give up on a sixteen-year-old?”

As a boy, Hardy was given second, third, and fourth chances. Along the way, he discovered that acting offered an outlet for his baneful discontent. He attended one drama school, then another, got kicked out twice, and was cast in Band of Brothers before he graduated.

Still, for years, he questioned his chosen path. Hardy even signed up for a Parachute Regiment training course—but never followed through. “Oh, mate, I did so much backpedaling,” he says. “The reality is that where I belonged was not there. The last person defending the realm was Mr. Hardy.” He calls the decision to back out “one of my biggest regrets. I wonder what life would’ve been like. I would’ve loved to have served and been useful.”

In 2003, at twenty-five, Hardy cleaned up with the help of a twelve-step program—he calls it “my first port of call”—and he’s been sober ever since. “It was hard enough for me to say, ‘I’m an alcoholic.’ But staying stopped is fucking hard.” Sitting on his Triumph, at the center of the place that held all the risks and possibilities that would define him, Hardy sounds almost wistful.

We take off through the park. He rides with his legs bowed out, his left hand resting on his knee, and his right hand holding steady on the throttle. When he rips on a vape pen, white plumes swirl around his head and dissipate into the damp air.

We head to Richmond. The town sits within the borders of Greater London, but its roots are as much in the countryside as in the city. Generations of famous Brits seeking refuge have called it home: Queen Elizabeth I liked hunting stags in the park; Charles I relocated his court here to avoid the plague; Mick Jagger lived near the Thames with Jerry Hall, who, though now married to Rupert Murdoch, apparently still co-owns the home they shared.

We stop at a café around the corner from Hardy’s place. The wall between us that crumbled upon seeing Mae—or seemed to, anyway—is fortified just as quickly. When Private Tom reaches playfully for my stack of questions and I instinctively pull them back, he casts a leery eye. “I see I’m not in the circle of trust,” Public Hardy says, when in fact I just got booted from his.

“Can I get a double espresso?” he asks our waiter.

“For sure,” the waiter says. “By the way, big fan. I always know if you’re in a movie, it’s going to be a good one.”

“Thanks. But don’t put your money on that,” Hardy says. “I’ve got to be crap at some point.”

“I would say you’re one of my top three best,” the waiter says. “Action actors,” he clarifies.

“I think I’m a bit too old now for action.”

“Except for the next Expendables,” the waiter jokes.

“I’m tempted to ask who the other two are,” Hardy says after the waiter walks off. “I showed great restraint. Great restraint.” He might claim that the opinions of others don’t matter, but this is driving him crazy. “Who are the fuckers?”

When the waiter returns, I ask. “Mark Wahlberg,” he says without delay, as if he were waiting for the question. Hardy, stone-faced, says nothing. “And Matt Damon.”

Finally, Hardy speaks. “Can I give you this?” he says, handing over a plate, any plate, just to send the waiter on his way. Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Thanks, man. Good company.”

He deals with this sort of thing all the time. “I’ve crossed the line of being a public figure. And I accept that means to a certain degree I’m public property,” he says, “even though I project an image of myself to them,” acknowledging Public Hardy in all but name. Most people he meets are lovely. But “the downside of being overt is you invite darkness,” he says. “It only takes one person to cause real harm.” He defends himself as if someone has called him out. “That’s not being paranoid. That’s just facts.”

“THE DOWNSIDE OF BEING OVERT IS YOU INVITE DARKNESS. IT ONLY TAKES ONE PERSON TO CAUSE REAL HARM.”

By filtering which parts of himself become public, he’s mostly okay with the balance of Private Tom and Public Hardy. Except, that is, when it comes to his children. “I will pose for you, and photos of me and my wife are fine,” he says. “But if someone takes a photo of my kids, all bets are off. I will take the camera off you and beat the fucking shit out of you.” His voice contains no hint of exaggeration. “That’s the one that hurts. My kids didn’t ask for what my job is.” He pauses. “There’s something that really upsets me about the imposition of a grown-up world on a child.”

When we spoke earlier about his relationship with Chips, he said he was working to become a better father by learning from the mistakes of his own. “In trying to protect my children, I’ll probably give them their own dose of problems,” he told me. “But I don’t want them to go through what I went through.”

At Kingston Hospital, we make our way to Mae’s room. She’s feeling better, but dried blood still cakes her face. She and Albert don’t know who or what to expect next, or how long it will be. Hardy asks what she remembers—“Hit the pavement,” she says. “Made a nice sound”—and what still hurts. We unload snacks we brought, and then we wait.

The three relax into a familiar rhythm. Age has smoothed but not erased the boys’ mischief and the mom’s sass. Hardy jokes to Mae, “All right, lovely, want salt-and-vinegar chips with a side of infectious disease? Pick up a little souvenir?” She smirks.

Hardy squeezes some sanitizer onto his hands and rubs it, then reaches for a chip. “Don’t do that,” Mae says. “Wipe off your hands first. It’s not for eating.”

“It’s better than eating disease,” Albert weighs in. “I’d rather be sanitized to death.”

“I’m gonna take my chances,” Hardy says.

“How’s your mum and dad?” she asks.

“Very good, actually,” he says. “It was my mum’s birthday last week.”

“Twenty-one again?”

“I’m glad to see you’re cracking jokes,” Albert says.

“Me too,” Mae says.

When she leaves the room with the help of a nurse, Hardy turns to Albert and delivers a dose of optimism: “She’s walking, mate. That’s a good sign. The next thing we’re going to get is an X-ray, or maybe a CT scan if they’re concerned about bleeding or swelling in the brain. They’ve got to check all the boxes.”

Once Mae is back, Hardy steps out to talk to the nurse without saying why. “Is he using his celebrity powers?” Albert asks me. “Not the first time I’ve witnessed that.” He laughs, then quiets. “But it’s a nice tool to have.”

Hardy returns without explanation. A few minutes later, the nurse comes in. “She’s going to be seen next.”

Like that, Mae is at the top of the list.

Though Hardy is coy about how much he played the fame card, it’s clear his job here is done. As we say goodbye, Mae pulls him in close. “I want you to know that I have plans to see Venom,” she says. “You’ve done something that’s close to my heart. You know I’m a sci-fi freak.”

“You’re gonna enjoy this one,” Hardy says. “This one’s just for you. And for my boy.”

Hardy wants to exert control over his world. The brutal irony is that the more successful he becomes, the more the world controls him. But as we walk out of the hospital, I suggest that while his celebrity might feel like a burden, in the instance of Mae and Albert it was . . . He finishes my sentence: “Perfect.”

At the exit, an orderly chases us down. “Tom! Tom Hardy!” We stop. “I just love your movies. Can I take a picture?” Two more fans follow. He smiles as they gather around in the hospital parking lot and start snapping selfies.

This article appears in the September '18 issue of Esquire.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/amp22627852/tom-hardy-venom-fonzo-september-cover/

[classic-rock-roller]

1. Kevin gets really sick one day, sick enough he struggles even just to move. QR has a show later that night, and there is no replacement singer, so Kevin asks if you’ll fill in for him. What do you do?

“Are you sure? I sound nothing like you. I don’t know how good it will sound.” “You’ll do fine. I trust you.” While it sounded different it wasn’t necessarily bad so it was ok for the one night.    

2. You and Crue are out and on a whim, you all decide to get new tattoos. The kicker is, the boys have all done this before, and they assume you have too, but you haven’t and, truth be told, you’re more than a little nervous. What do you do?

They can tell I’m nervous because I’m trying to rationalize getting one and talking a mile a minute. Nikki would ask if I’m ok and I would tell him this was my first tattoo. The boys would then calm me down and say I don’t have to get one if I don’t want to but I will anyway because I want one. 

3. You’re out bowling with QR, and Kevin is beating everyone. He steps up to take his turn and says, “Watch this, I’m going to get a strike” He exhales then steps up, and when he steps forward to throw, he slips, falls, and the ball just ends up rolling slowly down the gutter. The boys can barely contain their laughter, and Kevin is still on the floor, looking confused. How do you respond?

I go over to him and go, “Hey, Kev, are you ok?” “Yeah, I think I just hurt my back.” I’d help him up and if a little bit later it still hurt I’d take him to the hospital. 

4. You’re sitting in on a QR rehearsal shortly after Randy had left to join Ozzy on tour. They’ve got a new guitarist, and he’s struggling. After he botches the same bit of song for the fourth time, Drew pipes up from the back, “Hey, Greg, d’you mind sucking less?” How do the boys respond and what do you do?

Kevin and Rudy would agree with Drew. I wouldn’t say anything at first because he needs to get more practice. 

5. (Cont’d from 4) Greg tries again at the same spot he’s been struggling with. This time, he nails the first part, but butchers the second. Drew seems satisfied, but Kevin says, “Dude you didn’t suck less, you just sucked different.” How do you and the boys respond?

I’d look at the three of them and go, “Hey, cut Greg some slack. He’s really nervous. And the remarks are just going to make it worse.” They look at him and then apologize for making him so nervous.  

6. You’re having lunch with Crue, and Vince accidentally takes a sip from your drink. “Hey, Vince, that’s mine,” you say. With a deadpan expression, he looks at you and picks up your drink, pours it into his cup, pours the mixture into your cup, downs it all in two chugs, slams the cup on the table and says, “Oops.” How do you respond?

“Well, I hope it was good.” I’d flag down the server and then go, “Excuse me, Can I have another drink, please? The man without manners over there finished mine.”  

7. In your business class, you’ve always admired your classmate, Kevin, from afar. He wears some strange stuff, but this is college, so no one really cares. One day, he’s late, and he runs in without a shirt on. The only open seat is next to you, and he taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey, sorry I’m late, d’you mind if I sit here?” How do you respond?

“Sure...that’s ok.” I’d blush like crazy and keep sneaking looks over at him. Hoping he wouldn’t notice. He probably would and get this huge ass smirk on his face.   

8. You’re in a store with Crue looking for the fitting rooms. Once you finally find them, there’s no clerk to let you in. You’re a little angry since you’ve all got to make the show in an hour. After you wait for the clerk for fifteen minutes, Tommy says, “Fuck this shit, I’m not waiting anymore.” and crawls under the dressing room door to unlock it from the inside. How do you respond?

“Thank you, Tommy. I was just about to do that.” I’d walk in after he opened the door.

9. Kevin and the boys have been running themselves ragged with rehearsals lately, even though the next show isn’t for a month. They want everything perfect. After 2 weeks, Kevin comes home looking sick. You ask him what he thinks he has (to determine how serious the illness is), and he just says, “Oh, it’s just Band AIDS. It’ll pass.” You have no idea what this means. What do you do?

“What the fuck is Band AIDS?” “It just means that I am getting really tired and need to take a break.”  I’d glare at him, “Well, guess who’s not doing anything with the band at all tomorrow.” He’s about to pout when he gets a smirk, “We could do other stuff.” “Nope, you are going to rest all day tomorrow.” 

10. You and Crue are eating pizza after a long day of moving. You’ve all finished except Nikki, who’s got half a piece left and is getting full. He asks the group, “Should I save this for later or just get rid of it now?” Tommy shouts, “NO RAGERTS, EAT IT!” so Nikki shrugs and eats it. Later, when everyone is fixing to go home, Nikki is lying on the couch in pain. “No ragerts!” Tommy says again, to which Nikki replies, “Many, many ragerts.” How do you respond?

“Aww, Nikki, I hope you feel better. Here, let me go get you the tums.” 

11. You all received news a few days ago that Randy was killed in a plane crash. You, Kevin and Co, and Randy’s girlfriend had all been together pretty much since, trying to realize the magnitude of what happened. Randy’s girlfriend has been surprisingly strong throughout the whole endeavor. You get back from the store with Kevin the day before the funeral, and Rudy’s got her in his lap, and she’s lost her grip on reality. He looks at the two of you and mouths silently, “Help me.” What do the 2 of you do?

“Aww, Sweetheart,” I’d take over for Rudy and just sit with her on the couch as she sobbed into me. Kevin would sit next to me and not really know how to comfort her so we’d just sit there in silence for as long as she needed.  

--------------------

1) You, Kevin, and Randy are on an airplane. Randy is in the middle and Kevin is in the window seat. All of a sudden Kevin looks over to you and screams, “Look, lady, I don’t care how much you want it. I’m not having sex with you in the bathroom!” How do you and Randy respond? 

2) You’re helping your mom move some stuff. Randy and Kevin are out in the garage moving some heavy doors. You hear a crash, a bang, glass breaking, and an “Aw, shit.” You run out to see Kevin standing there dumbstruck and Randy laying on the floor knocked out. “The...uh...door fell and hit him on the head,” Kevin says. What do you do? 

3) Randy’s been driving you crazy all morning with practicing guitar. You finally have had enough and once he gets up to do something you put the guitar away. How does he respond when he gets back? 

4) You’re home from work for the day and Randy is out. You’re listening to Crüe and get really into it. At one point you’re standing on the kitchen table singing your heart out to Ten Seconds to Love when you notice Randy. What does he say? 

5) Kevin had been staying over at your and Randy’s house for the night and in the early morning, you come out of your bedroom without doing anything to your hair. Both Randy and Kevin are sitting at the kitchen table. Kevin says as he brings his coffee cup to his lips, “Jeez, do you always act and look like a zombie in the morning?” How do you and Randy react? 

6) You and Randy are in the car and Van Halen comes on. Absentmindedly, you say to Randy, “You know Eddie Van Halen is almost as good as you.” How does Randy respond? 

7) You’re spending the day at the beach with Crüe. Tommy and Nikki convince you to go on the old haunted house on the boardwalk. While in the haunted house, it gets stuck. The three of you are sitting there when all of a sudden one of the props just starts fritzing out. How do the three of you respond? 

8) You are at a wax museum with Kevin and Randy. You get to the Rock section and the two of them stand by their figures. They don’t dare move. When you ask them what they’re doing they go, “Shhh, we want to scare people.” You sigh and take a seat on a bench a few feet away. As people are coming through you hear someone say, “Why are there two each of those wax figures?” What do you do? 

9) While at an amusement park with Crüe, Vince, Tommy, and Nikki run off to do stuff and Mick stays with you. After about an hour you hear over the speaker system, “Would a Miss @osbournebemydaddy please come pick up her ‘children’.” What did the three of them do and how do you and Mick react?

10) You and Randy are having a tickle fight and he pins you down. He continues to tickle you and you keep screaming stop. He stops for a second but only to say, “What will you do to get me to stop?” How do you respond?

11) You and Randy are sitting on the couch when you smile at something in the book you’re reading. He looks over at you and says,  “There it is again.” You look up at him, “What?” “You better not smile for anyone else like that. If you do, I might have to kill them.” How do you respond?

@osbournebemydaddy , your turn, love. :)

[weloseeveryweek]

a change of results

Retrospection is such a human trait, and it seems to come to the fore in sports. Match reports are actually pointless, if you think about it; what for review something that’s already happened and will never happen again? Greatest XIs, players you’d have liked to play with – all these are things that you would have liked to have had but never will. And so this question begs that kind of answer: fantastical, self-indulgent, and nothing more than a wish, a dream.

The go-to result I say when I think of this question is the Champions’ League final of 2009. I remember reading the papers the morning after and being bitterly disappointed. My dad, from the doorway, said, “that was way too easy,” and I said, “but still.” If we’d won that not only would we have been one shy of Liverpool’s record, we would also have been the first team in the modern era to have won it back to back, Madrid be damned.

There are other candidates in this vein, of course. Reversing the 6-1 defeat against City that would have left us with the league; some result in the 94/95 season for similar result; any one of the FA Cup finals we’ve lost; the 1996 semi-final against Germany for England. Any of these are easy to explain. But the real result I settle on, regardless of trophies and glory and everything that’s shiny in our lives, is different from that. Instead of wanting us to win a game, I want us to have lost.

Let me take you back almost sixty years, now. There’s a bunch of fellows dressed in natty suits waiting in a German airport. I assume all their ties were red. They’ve had two false starts, because it’s snowing heavily outside, but they’re optimistic about this third time being their last. They board the plane. They’re chatting, talking about cards and home and football, of course. They’re into the semi-finals of the European Cup – who wouldn’t be cheerful?

You know what comes next. Everyone does. I cried once in the National Football Museum and that was at the telegram Duncan Edwards sent to his landlady – ‘all fights cancelled. Flying tomorrow. Duncan.’ There’s this one picture in the Guardian from the 7th of February, 1958, dull and dark, the sheen of the moon or some kind of light reflecting dimly on the pavement. Hundreds, thousands of people are lined along the road. They’re all waiting for something. You can’t make out their faces but some have their heads bowed, some have their hands clasped. On the back of the photograph it says – Old Trafford at midnight, crowds waiting for cortege of coffins of Manchester Utd.

I don’t suppose I can adequately explain the collective grief that a football club experiences when something like this happens. It happened to Chapecoense and the world mourned with them, as they should have, but when you are a fan of that club tragedy is a completely different thing. To understand this you must understand how fans relate to football. I know that we’re fond of saying ‘it isn’t just a game’, but there isn’t any other way to put it. It’s not just a game, pure and simple. It becomes a part of your life; it is that which defines you and that with which you define yourself. When you become a fan of a club you’re buying into a common identity, a culture, a different society. And tragedy affects all of these things. As a Singaporean I’m still affected by the Japanese Occupation even though I hadn’t even been born, because it is a defining moment in our history that shapes it. So too for tragedy in football, and especially when it happens to the team.

Because the team represents the club, represents its values, represents – as it were – your soul; and the Busby Babes were United. Strong and brave and bright and young. I was reading Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man recently and he says that Munich is different from other disasters, like Milan’s, because Edwards and the rest represented the beginning of what could have been a future. It is their unfulfilled, unknown potential that hurts the most. They were already through to the semi-finals – they could have been the first ever English team to lift the trophy. They were already league title winners. They were midway through the FA Cup (and, incidentally, still reached the final that year). Their names could have gone down in history as champions, winners, legends; not sad ghosts so cruelly snatched away, with nothing more than black and white photographs and a memorial every year.

You might think me mechanical for reducing the tragedy to mere trophies. I’m aware that winning isn’t everything, but football is everything, and in football the narrative goes with the most dizzying of wins, the jaw-dropping last minute victories (snatched preferably from reviled opponents). This is not to define their lives in terms of winning – they had families, wives, children, mothers and fathers – but to explain why their loss is felt so keenly. They gave people something to believe in, and taking away a team is like taking away hope. They are your father, brother, son. And you feel the loss just as keenly. Danny Boyle in the Class of ‘92 mentions how the last photograph of the Busby Babes was the biggest photograph in his family album. Eric Harrison says that he was pulled out of class to be told the news, like when a relative passes. In The Football Man, Hopcraft on visiting Dudley (Edwards’ hometown) related this anecdote told by Edwards’ father: lorry drivers with Manchester accents, stopping on the long run home from somewhere south to visit Duncan’s grave.

Sir Alex Ferguson was fond of saying that a club is like a family. When something happens everyone, regardless of how far away they are, feels it. This doesn’t just ripple through support at the time; it ripples through time itself, because of how human it is. At the end of the day eight boys died. The oldest was twenty-eight. Big Duncan was twenty-three. Hopcraft writes about the grief of Edwards’ parents, the way they kept all his medals and England caps and United shirts in his room. In the Dudley Cathedral there is a stained glass window featuring him in his United kit kicking a ball. Football is about remembering. About telling stories. About not forgetting what came before, be it a treble or a tragedy.

The more cynical people in the world have accused Manchester United of turning Munich into a publicity stunt, a circus fest of memorials and pointless sentiment; all right, perhaps there are those who would do that, but I’ve no doubt that any true United fan understands the gravity of the occasion, and behind the so-called memory industry there is a swelling of feeling that manifests itself in the spontaneity of people who gather in the Munich tunnel quiet and solemn. Class of ’92 highlights the comparisons between the Busby Babes and Fergie’s Fledglings, and about the shadow of Munich that settled over the club always. Duncan Hamilton, in his book about George Best, wrote about the 1968 European Cup semi-final against Real Madrid. Bill Foulkes, a Munich survivor, scored the winner, and ‘turns towards his own half, slightly spreading his arms and softly clenching together the fingers of both hands. His face is almost stony.’ Hamilton delves into hyperbole and imagination here, but you can’t help agreeing with him when he posits that one image must have been ‘whirling through [Foulkes’s] mind then. Of men who would never age, would never go grey and would always wear United Red.’

Tragedy has moulded us as a club, for better or for worse. To accuse Munich of being manufactured would be to accuse us of lacking a soul. Yet some stories are better left untold. I know that Munich has added to the club mythology and sense of self and our way of being, but all the same I wish that there was a less awful way of doing this than having to know that twenty-three people died. How much better would it have been for our story, our spirit to have been written in the silver engravings on the bottom of trophies than the stone embossing on shrines. How much more important should the names on that empty lineup against Sheffield Wednesday be filled, that twenty-three families, and United itself, could have gone on.

Which is why the game I would change, even though I know I will never be able to, is a game in the European Cup run of Manchester United in 1957/58. Perhaps instead of winning 3-0 against Dukla Prague on the 20th of November, Pegg and Taylor amongst the scorers, we could have lost 3-0 instead. The next leg was lost 1-0 at home, and we would never have made it through to play Red Star Belgrade. Never stopped at Munich to board a plane. They would have come home from Prague awfully disappointed, their spirits down, a bitter taste in their mouths, faced with insurmountable odds. But they would have come home.

Mark Jones – Roger Byrne – Geoff Bent – David Pegg – Eddie Colman – Bill Whelan – Tommy Taylor 

[nubuckleather]

Buddietommy family beach day

Buck and Christopher scheming trying to decide whether they should try to team up with Tommy to bury Eddie in the sand or team up with Eddie to do it to Tommy

Eddie just wants to read his book (it’s one of those romance novels with a cartoon couple on the cover he’s finally comfortable taking out in public As A Man)

Tommy really wants one or both of his boyfriends to tell him he looks good in his new aviators

Clipboard Buck has a regimented sunscreen application schedule but he’s so focused on making sure the others adhere to it that it’s him with the peeling pink nose and cheeks at the end of the day

Tommy is in charge of the playlist. Christopher likes to tease him about his old man music

Buck insisted on the rainbow stripes beach umbrella. He was not able to convince Eddie and Tommy to wear rainbow trunks

They get burgers and fries from a beachfront restaurant and a seagull steals Only Eddie’s Fries

Tommy enjoys picking up shell fragments and sea glass so Buck can tell him about them. Buck enjoys hiding them all in Eddie’s pockets when he’s not paying attention

Eddie and Tommy split an ice cream. Buck thinks it’s terribly sweet but could never have been convinced to share a cone himself. Christopher got four scoops because Tommy was paying (as Christopher’s not-dad he has the hardest time saying no). Good thing Eddie and Buck have a hard time saying no to Tommy

Eddie can sit back and watch Buck (gamely) and Tommy (griping good humoredly about how he’s too old for this) chase Christopher in the waves and think about how much he loves them, and think about Shannon with peace instead of regret, and feel the most comfortable in his own head that he’s ever been

(Eddie’s the one who gets buried in the sand)

[of-a-chaotic-mind]

I Can't Say Part 3 (Finale)

Summary: Everyone is waiting for Reader to wake up after surgery. Eddie finds out what has been causing her behavior and as soon as she wakes up he apologizes for doubting her. She knows she'll never lose him again after what he does next.

TW/CW: Eddie Diaz x Reader, Make Up, Injured Reader, Hospital Setting

Requested?: No   

Word Count: 3,194

A/N: Our grand total of words for this trilogy is 11,325… I’m ngl was kinda stuck on how I’d get from break up to make up but then I was rewatching season 2 the other night and well… Earthquake it is. Anyways, hope you enjoy the read! Love to all! Requests are Open!

Part 1

Part 2

--- Third Person POV --- 

Hours later, the team has been given the go ahead to go home but every one of them is heading to the hospital in hopes of seeing (Y/N). Hen cleared it with Bobby first but decided it was best if she stayed with Eddie who has been pacing the waiting room the entire time since they sent (Y/N) back. She had sent messages to everyone she could think of, letting them know which hospital they’re at and keeping them updated. Unfortunately, the phones have only just now been able to start working again. Her phone begins exploding with notifications. Carla is bringing Chris as well as a change of clothes for Eddie. Athena says she and the kids are on the way but stopping for coffee and snacks. Karen confirms she’s getting Denny and Mara in the car now with a change of clothes for Hen. Maddie and Jee are on their way too. Every single person that Hen texted, responds except for the 118 members, Talia, and Tommy who all changed out of their gear as soon as they got to the station and piled into Bobby’s truck and Buck’s Jeep. 

Those who responded all trickle in with Athena, May, and Harry bringing up the rear as they drop several bags of snacks and a couple gallons of cold brew on the coffee table that everyone has gathered around. Carla and Chris have convinced Eddie, who is now nursing a cup of cold brew, to sit down and are posted on either side of him, Carla rubbing his back and Chris holding his hand tightly. Karen and Hen are playing patty cake with Jee while Maddie begs the nursing staff for an update. Harry, Denny, and Mara are quietly discussing some video game while they snack. Athena and May share a look before they make their way over to Maddie and gently tug her back to the group. It seems everyone lets out a breath they had been holding when the group of firefighters step through the glass doors. The waiting room is brought to life as everyone greets each other. Eddie on the other hand is rooted to his seat and staring at the floor. 

Just as Bobby is about to place his hand on Eddie’s shoulder, the doctor enters the waiting room. Everyone waits with bated breath as he approaches them, Talia and Eddie both rushing to meet him. He looks around at the rather large group before chuckling, “You’re all here for (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?” Several in the group nod so he continues, “Good. She’s out of surgery. It was a little touch and go but she’s stable. The anesthesia will wear off soon but, due to the amount of blood she lost, it may take her some time to wake up. Once we get her settled into a room, I’ll let you all know.” Everyone nods in understanding and releases the breath they were holding. A few of them thank the doctor as he walks away. Eddie drops back into a chair, laying his head back against the wall, and grabs hold of Christopher’s hand again. Talia is pulls Tommy away from the group to ask him what’s going on between (Y/N) and Eddie, soon finding herself in tears upon hearing the news. Tommy pulls her into a tight hug, hating that he had to break it to her. The others strike up conversations to pass the time. 

A short while later, the doctor returns to the group, “She’s in a room. Anesthesia should be worn off but as I explained earlier, she’s not awake yet. That being said, you can see her now but you’ll have to take turns. I don’t want more than two or three in there at a time. You can find her in room A204.” As he departs, Eddie kisses the top of Christopher’s head and heads to her room.  

Everyone else has their eyes on Talia who hasn’t moved a muscle. Tommy places his hand on her shoulder, “Go.” She looks up at him and around the group with uncertainty but with a nod from Bobby she’s off toward the room as well. 

When Talia enters the room, Eddie is sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the bed from the door. He is holding (Y/N)’s hand tightly, tears streaming down his face, and mumbling under his breath, “(Y/N) please, you gotta wake up for me.” She takes a seat on the other side of the bed and the room falls silent aside from the steady beep of the heart monitor. 

A few moments pass before he clears his throat, “If it weren’t for you, she- she wouldn’t be alive right now.” 

Fresh tears paint her cheeks as she looks down at her lap, “If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.” 

He looks at her, head titled, “What do you mean?” 

“If it weren’t for me, the love of her life wouldn’t have broken up with her, she wouldn’t have been in that therapy office, and she wouldn’t have been run through with rebar,” she admits, struggling to get the words out through her tears. He is immensely confused at first but she clarifies before he can ask, “A few weeks ago I called her because I needed someone to keep me from hurting myself. She came no questions asked. She’s been stopping by to check on me a lot. She always answers the phone when I need her. Selfishly, I made her promise not to tell anyone because I didn’t want my team finding out.” Eddie’s heart breaks as he realizes but she continues, “If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t be in this mess.” 

He reaches his hand across the bed for Talia’s who hesitantly takes it. He looks her dead in the eyes, “You cannot blame yourself for any of this. You did the best thing you could which was ask for help when you needed it. You don’t know where she would’ve been if not in that office with you. It could- it could’ve been much worse.” He pauses for a moment, looking back at (Y/N), “I wish I would’ve just believed and trusted her when she said she had a good reason.” 

Talia wipes her tears away; she still feels terrible about everything but knows (Y/N) would’ve told her the same exact thing that Eddie did. She squeezes his hand gently, “I know I’m not around you and the rest of her new family that much but I’ve heard a lot about everyone.” He looks up at her and she continues, “I’ve heard more about you and Chris than anyone else. She always has a blindingly bright smile on her face when she tells me about you two and I know without a shadow of a doubt that she loves you more than life itself.” Eddie nods as Talia squeezes his hand once more before dropping it and standing up to leave. Before she opens the door, she stops and looks back at him, “She still does. She wouldn’t hesitate for a second to take you back. Hell, I don’t even think she even let you go.”  

Eddie kisses (Y/N) knuckles as Talia leaves, “I don’t deserve it but I hope to god you can forgive me for being so stupid...” 

It’s not long before the door opens again, this time by Buck and Tommy. Eddie does his best to slap on a smile when he sees Chris right behind them. He watches his son take the seat Talia had been in previously and grab hold of (Y/N)’s hand, “Is she gonna be okay?” he asks hopefully looking up at his father.  

Eddie nods reassuringly, “Yeah, she’s just sleeping so her body can recover.” 

Chris nods and looks down at where his hand meets hers, “Where’s her bracelet?” 

“They had to take it off so it wouldn’t get messed up during the surgery and recovery,” Eddie responds. In his peripheral, he sees Buck and Tommy patiently waiting their turn. 

Chris seems deep in thought for a few seconds before stating, “She’s gonna kick their asses when she finds out. I gotta fix it.” With this, he gets up and exits the room on a mission. Buck goes after him, motioning for Eddie to stay put. 

It’s quiet again as Eddie and Tommy listen to the steady beep of her heart. Finally, Tommy takes a seat. Eddie makes eye contact with him, “I’m sorry. Talia told me everything. I know I fucked up and I know she means the world to you.” 

Tommy looks over at (Y/N) face and reaches up to brush her hair out of her eyes as he thinks. Taking a deep breath, he responds, “Just promise me that the next time you think about doing something stupid, we hit the mat first so I can knock some sense into you.” 

Eddie chuckles, nodding, “I will.” It’s quiet again while Eddie debates with himself before finally pulling something out of his pocket and handing it to Tommy, “Does this count as something stupid?” 

Tommy looks down at the ring box in his hand as his smile grows. After opening it, he answers, “Never in a million years.” He closes the box and hands it back to Eddie, “But you should know that Buck was looking forward to helping you pick it out. He’s gonna be heart broken.” 

Eddie puts the box back in his pocket, “Technically, he did help me pick it out. Whether he remembers that or not is a different story.” 

Tommy knits his brows together in confusion, “What?” 

Eddie smiles, “I went with him when he bought you that bracelet a while back. He was looking through the cases while we waited on them to bag it up. I was zoned out thinking about (Y/N) when he slapped me on the shoulder and very excitedly pointed at a specific ring saying, ‘(Y/N) would love this one!’” 

Tommy shakes his head chuckling, “So, you bought it?” 

Eddie shrugs, “Not right then but after a few days of constantly thinking about it, I had to.” Tommy laughs but Eddie’s face drops. At the tilt of Tommy’s head, Eddie adds, “I held onto it, trying to find the right time to ask her but then she started acting weird and...” 

Tommy sighs, “You still have it though. You didn’t let her go.” 

Eddie shakes his head, “I couldn’t. I broke up with her because I was scared of getting hurt but it hurt so much more to do so. I thought maybe if I just distanced myself from her for a while that it would stop but if anything, it got worse.” He takes a deep breath, “I just hope she’ll forgive me because I don’t know how much longer I can take this ring burning a hole in my pocket.” 

Tommy nods, “She will. She’ll do it in a heartbeat but then you gotta nut up and give her that ring.” 

Eddie smiles, “Would it be too much to ask her to forgive me and marry me in the same conversation?” 

Tommy shakes his head violently, “Absolutely not.” 

Eddie laughs, “Good.” 

Over the next few hours, people come and go. Everyone gets their own turn of checking on her and reassuring Eddie that she’ll be okay. Finally, with only Eddie in the room, she stirs. She squints up at the ceiling as she tries to process where she is. The sound of her moving her head to look around alerts Eddie who jerks up from where he lays on her arm, “Hey, you’re okay. You’re in the hospital.” 

She nods, trying to speak but her mouth is dry. Eddie hands her the bottle of water, Carla had brought him earlier, from the side table that and helps her take a few sips. When she pulls away, he sets the bottle back down on the table and brushes her hair from her face, “How are you feeling?” 

She stares at him for a few seconds before whispering, “I’m just glad you’re here.” 

He kisses her knuckles, “Of course I am, baby. I love you so much and I’m so sorry I doubted you.” The confusion on her face prompts him to add, “Talia told me what happened. I can’t believe I ever thought you’d do something like that. I should’ve known you had a good reason.” She smiles softly but he still feels the need to ask, “Will you forgive me?”  

She nods immediately, “Of course.” Out of habit she reaches to fidget with her bracelet but finds it missing, “I’m gonna kick someone’s ass.” 

Eddie laughs heartily, “Chris said you would.”  

She reaches up to cup his cheek, “I love you.” 

He leans into her touch, “I love you too.” 

The moment is interrupted when the door opens again but both are immediately delighted to see Carla opening the door for Chris who is overjoyed to see (Y/N) awake. He takes a seat as Carla waves with a smile before closing the door to give the small family a moment. With one hand, Chris reaches over and takes (Y/N)’s left wrist and wraps her bracelet back where it belongs with the other. She smiles brightly but Eddie is suspicious, “Chris, did you pester the nursing staff for that.” 

He grins proudly, “Yup, I told them my step mom would kick their butts if they didn’t give it to me.” 

Eddie and (Y/N) share an amused look before she ruffles Christopher’s hair, “Thanks, buddy.” He grins and reaches up to take her hand in his. 

Eddie’s eyes flick between the two before he stands and joins Chris on the other side of the bed.  (Y/N) is slightly confused when he places his hands on Christopher’s shoulder and whispers something in his ear. Chris listens intently before nodding incessantly, “Yes! Do it. Do it now.” 

Eddie grins and ruffles his son’s hair, “Alright, alright calm down. I will.” He places himself between Chris and (Y/N). She is utterly bumfuzzled but Chris is dancing in his seat excitedly. Eddie removes something from his pocket and drops to one knee causing her to slap her hand over her mouth. The man smiles up at her, “I know this isn’t at all the ideal time or place to ask you this but,” he looks around the room and then back at her, “I was very recently reminded that we aren’t promised tomorrow, especially in our line of work.” He opens the ring box and holds it up to her, “(Y/N), will you marry me?” 

Chris cheers happily upon hearing her answer, “Yes!” Tears of joy fill both Eddie and (Y/N)’s eyes as he slips the ring on her finger, stands, and kisses her with every ounce of love that he can. 

The couple parts when the door opens again as Buck and Tommy poke their heads in. Tommy grins, immediately noticing the ring on her finger. Slightly confused having missed the small but important detail, Buck stutters, “Sorry, Carla told us she’s awake. Are-are we interrupting something? We can come back later.” 

Tommy pushes past his boyfriend and makes his way to (Y/N)’s right side, making eye contact with Eddie, “I told you she would. Does your leg feel better without that hole burning in your pocket?” 

Eddie nods, laughing as identical looks of confusion settle on (Y/N) and Buck’s faces as Buck paces over to Tommy’s side. Eddie looks down at her, “I showed it to him earlier.”  

Understanding replaces her confusion but Buck is still lost, “What hole? Showed who what? I’m so confused.” (Y/N) holds her hand up to Buck showing off her ring. He gasps for words as excitement floods his entire body and he takes her hand in his to inspect it. None of them notice as the doctor stops in the open doorway, observes what is happening, and then immediately makes his way to the waiting room. After a minute or so, Buck’s face drops to disappointment as he looks up at Eddie and Tommy, letting go of her hand, “I kinda wanted to help pick it out...” Tommy pats his head before wrapping his arm around his waist.  

Eddie shakes his head chuckling, “Do you not recognize it? You were so damn sure she’d like it that you bruised my arm to get my attention.”  

It takes a few seconds but realization finally smacks across his face as he gasps, “This is that ring?”  

Eddie nods as (Y/N) who is admiring the ring confirms, “He wasn’t wrong. I love it.” Everyone smiles as Eddie kisses the top of her head. Before anyone can say anything else, the door opens and their friends and family flood in. Everyone gushes over the ring, offers the couple their congratulations, and states how glad they are that (Y/N) is okay.

Talia takes a seat on the edge of the bed to (Y/N)’s right, “The doctor had to step out of the way of the stampede after he told us you had a ring on that you weren’t admitted with.” (Y/N) laughs, barely able to spot the doctor in the doorway through the crowd of friends and family. She gives him a thumbs up and he nods with a smile as he returns to his rounds.  

She looks to Talia and takes her hand in her own but before she can say it, Talia assures, “I know what you’re gonna say. Eddie already did.” (Y/N) looks to Eddie who is locked in a tight hug from Bobby with a smile on his face that is bigger than she’s ever seen. Talia leans over to whisper in her ear, “You weren’t kidding when you said Tommy is wrapped around Buck’s finger.” As (Y/N) turns back to look at Talia, she spots Tommy who is wrapped around Buck from behind. Both are smiling brightly as Buck and Maddie are already discussing bachelor party plans.  

“They’re next, I’m calling it now,” (Y/N) tells Talia who laughs loudly. Their hands stay locked together as (Y/N) looks back to Eddie who now has an arm around Christopher’s shoulders as they chat excitedly with Carla. Carla notices her looking and nods in her direction as she shoves the two toward her. Eddie takes the hand she offers him and Chris climbs up to sit beside her. An hour or so passes before a nurse squeezes through the crowded hospital room. She smiles at (Y/N) before proceeding to check her vitals and give her fresh bandages. Only when (Y/N) is nodding off and very obviously struggling to stay awake does everyone wish her well, promise they’ll visit again later, and head home. Soon, the only ones left are her boys. She kisses the top of Christopher’s head as she notices he has fallen asleep carefully tucked into her side. She pats the right side of the bed for Eddie to join her. The three of them have to scoot in real close to fit on the hospital bed but after the week she’s had, she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

More 911

Main Masterlist

[chocolatequeennk]

Forever and Never Apart, 20/42

Summary: After taking a year to recover from the Master, the Doctor and Rose are ready to travel again. But Time keeps pushing them forward, and instead of going back to their old life, they slowly realise that they’re stepping into a new life. Friends new and old are meeting on the TARDIS, and when the stars start going out, the Doctor and Rose face the biggest change of all: the return of Bad Wolf.

Series 4 with Rose, part 7 of Being to Timelessness; sequel to Taking Time (AO3 | FF.NET | TSP)

Betaed by @lastbluetardis, @rudennotgingr, @jabber-who-key, and @pellaaearien. Thank you so much!

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12 | Ch 13 | Ch 14 | Ch 15 | Ch 16 | Ch 17 | Ch 18 | Ch 19

Chapter Twenty: The Man in the Brown Suit

In the library, Agatha took the chair in front of the empty fireplace while Rose sat down in the corner, almost out of sight. The Doctor raised his eyebrows, but she shook her head and crossed her legs at the ankles.

“If no one notices I’m here, I might be able to pick up on things you and Agatha miss,” she explained. “Just make sure you don’t block my view when you start pacing, Doctor,” she added, giving him a cheeky smile and a wink.

Agatha looked at the two of them, a funny smile on her face. “Husband and wife, solving crimes together. You remind me of Tommy and Tuppence.”

“Rose has a keen eye,” the Doctor said as he positioned a chair directly in front of the large window. “She always sees things I miss.”

A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Reverend Golightly entered the room, and the Doctor pointed at the waiting chair.

Once he was seated, the Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and started pacing—being sure not to block Rose’s view, as instructed. “Now then, Reverend. Where were you at a quarter past four?”

“Let me think.”

The Doctor’s left eyebrow arched—barely an hour had passed since the professor had been killed. That was hardly long enough for anyone to have forgotten what they’d been doing at the time.

“Let me think,” is a way to stall for time while you figure out how to answer, Rose pointed out.

The Doctor nodded. That was exactly what it felt like to him.

It only took the vicar a moment to recall, however. “Why yes, I remember. I was unpacking in my room.”

“No alibi, then.” The Doctor watched carefully, and the skin around the vicar’s mouth tightened slightly at the casual observation.

“You were alone?” Agatha pressed, giving him a chance to produce an alibi.

The discomfiture disappeared, replaced by a serene smile. “With the Lord, one is never truly alone.” He looked up at the Doctor, clearly expecting to be dismissed. “Doctor?”

The Doctor nodded.

That was a rather neat way to side-step the question, wasn’t it? Rose said as the reverend stood up and left the room.

Yes, it was, the Doctor agreed. And he didn’t appreciate me pointing out that he had no alibi either.

Roger Curbishley entered the room, ending their conversation. The Doctor stared at the young aristocrat, trying to look him in the eye but unable to look away from his disastrous orange-and-white striped tie. “And where were you?”

“Let me think.”

The Doctor pressed his lips together. Is everyone hiding something?

“I was…” Roger tugged on his tie and straightened the knot. “Oh, yes. I was taking a constitutional in the fields behind the house. Just taking a stroll, that’s all.”

“Alone?” the Doctor asked, then watched in astonishment as the most fake smile he’d ever seen stretched across Roger’s face. He’d always thought “pasting a smile on” was simply a metaphor, but the future Lord Eddison might as well have been wearing a paper mask, so bad was his acting job.

“Oh, yes, all alone. Totally alone. Absolutely alone. Completely. All of the time.”

He was with Davenport, Doctor.

The Doctor nodded at Rose as Roger continued his utterly unbelievable description of his afternoon.

“I wandered lonely as the proverbial cloud. There was no one else with me. Not at all. Not ever.”

“All right,” the Doctor cut in. “I think you can go now. Perhaps you can spend the rest of the evening before dinner… alone.”

The tips of Roger’s ears turned red, and he made his way hastily out of the library. Miss Robina Redmond entered next and took the chair. With her ankles crossed and her hands resting in her lap, she looked more composed than either of the two people they’d questioned so far.

“And where were you?” The Doctor took a moment and peered down at Agatha’s notebook, filled with neat shorthand, then he looked back at the suspect.

“At a quarter past four.” She stared at the wall above the fireplace, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Well, I went to the toilet when I arrived, and then um…” Her frown cleared, and her eyes brightened in a smile. “Oh, yes, I remember. I was preparing myself. Positively buzzing with excitement about the party and the super fun of meeting Lady Eddy.”

She’s lying, but I don’t know what about. I don’t think she was the murderer, but she’s definitely keeping something from us.

The Doctor nodded to acknowledge Rose’s comment, then tapped his fingers together and looked at Miss Redmond. “We’ve only got your word for it.”

The socialite’s lips curled in a smirk. “That’s your problem, not mine.”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, but nodded when the young woman inclined her head as if to ask if she was free to go.

“Quite an insolent young woman,” Agatha murmured in the lull between suspects.

“Very,” the Doctor agreed. “But insolence is not necessarily indicative of homicidal tendencies.”

Greeves rolled Colonel Curbishley into the library, then quietly moved out of the way so the Doctor could question him.

“And where were you, sir?”

“Quarter past four?” The colonel twiddled his thumbs. “Dear me, let me think. Ah, yes, I remember. I was in me study, reading through some military memoirs. Fascinating stuff. Took me back to my days in the army. Started reminiscing. Mafeking, you know. Terrible war.”

The older man didn’t look like he was lost in memories of the horrors of war, and the Doctor decided rather quickly that he didn’t want to know what the gentleman was actually thinking about.

“Colonel, snap out of it,” he ordered.

Curbishley blinked. “I was in me study—”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, no, no. Right out of it.”

“Oh, sorry.” The colonel’s face flushed dark red. “Got a bit carried away there.”

“Didn’t you just,” the Doctor said drily, before nodding at Greeves to wheel his employer out of the room.

Lady Eddison was the last to be questioned, as befitted her station. She sat in the chair with her back straight and her hands clasped in her lap.

The Doctor leaned back against the mantel. “And where were you at a quarter past four, my lady?”

“Now, let me see.” Lady Eddison closed her eyes and reached for her necklaces, playing with the large jewel pendant as she thought. “Yes, I remember. I was sitting in the Blue Room, taking my afternoon tea.” She opened her eyes and gave the Doctor a patronising smile. “It’s a ritual of mine. I needed to gather strength for the duty of hostess. I then proceeded to the lawn where I met you, Doctor, and I said, who exactly might you be and what are you doing here? And you said, I am the Doctor… My wife, Rose Tyler—”

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor interrupted when she looked over at Rose. “You can stop now. I was there for that bit.”

“Of course.” She nodded, then a hiccup escaped her, and the Doctor had a sudden suspicion she hadn’t been taking tea in the Blue Room, after all. Lady Eddison closed her eyes and turned her head away in humiliation, confirming his guess. “Excuse me.”

“It’s all right, my lady,” Rose said gently. “If you’d like to go back to your hostess duties, we need to talk about what we’ve learned.”

The older woman was too grateful to be excused to notice she’d actually been dismissed. She fled the room, and Rose watched in amusement as the Doctor and Agatha both paced in front of the fireplace.

“Are we going to question the servants?” Rose asked.

“Not yet,” Agatha said. “If we discover none of the guests or the hosts are the murderer, then perhaps…” She tapped her pen to lips as she paced. “No alibis for any of them. The Secret Adversary remains hidden. We must look for a motive. Use ze little grey cells,” she said, tapping her temple.

“I’m sorry, Agatha,” Rose interrupted. “Did you say no one has an alibi?”

Agatha blinked and looked over at her. “Yes, that’s right. Or did you catch something we missed, Mrs. Tyler?”

“You can call me Rose, please.” She bit her lip; she had no intentions of outing Roger, but she also didn’t want him to be a murder suspect when he was clearly innocent. “It’s just… didn’t you notice how insistent Roger was that he was alone? Like… he didn’t want us to question who he might have been with?”

Agatha’s eyes widened. “You’re absolutely right, Rose. So, the son is having an affair with someone his parents wouldn’t approve of.” She looked at the Doctor. “I see why you insisted Rose question them with us, Doctor. More than a keen eye, she has an innate understanding of people. Somehow, I have a feeling she often helps you in your police work.”

Rose basked in the pride in the Doctor’s eyes, and what he projected over the bond. “Oh, yes,” he agreed, a wide grin stretching across his face. “The higher-ups at Scotland Yard wouldn’t understand, but Rose is an invaluable help in all my investigations. I couldn’t do it without her.”

The author waved her pen at the Doctor. “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” she told him. “For such an experienced detective, you missed a big clue.”

“What, that bit of paper you nicked out the fire?” the Doctor countered.

The surprise on the author’s face amused Rose, and she settled in to watch the game of verbal tennis.

“You were looking the other way.”

The corners of the Doctor’s mouth curled up in a smug smile. “Yeah, but I saw you reflected in the glass of the bookcase.”

A true smile crossed Agatha’s face. “You crafty man. This is all that was left.” She picked up the scrap of paper from where she’d left it on top of the mantel, and the Doctor and Rose both crowded around to take a look at it.

There were only five letters on the charred scrap: aiden. The first letter was almost legible, and Rose leaned closer for a better look.

“What’s that first letter?” she asked. “N or M?”

“It’s an ‘M,’” Agatha said. “The word is maiden.”

“Maiden!” the Doctor exclaimed, making Agatha jump. “What does that mean?”

“Maiden name?” Rose suggested. “We heard the professor say he wanted to check something in the library before the party started. If there was some kind of paperwork… secret wedding license, perhaps? That’s the kind of scandal someone might be willing to kill to hide.”

Agatha put most of her weight on one foot and rested her hand on the opposite hip. “Oh yes, Rose, I believe you are quite indispensable to the Doctor.” She sighed and shook her head. “Sadly, that speculation brings us no closer to finding our Nemesis. Hopefully Miss Noble and Miss Tyler found something more definitive.”

oOoOoOoOo

“Donna, can I ask you something?” Jenny asked as they rifled through the Colonel’s study.

Donna held up a magazine between her thumb and forefinger. The pictures might have been drawings instead of photographs, but she recognised a girlie mag when she saw one. “Oh, I do not want to know what he does with that,” she muttered, then tossed it aside. “Yeah, go ahead Jenny. You can always ask me anything.”

Jenny bit her lip, then nodded once. She couldn’t really back away now, not once she’d brought it up.

“Why are you so defensive all the time?”

Donna’s spine stiffened, and when she spun around to look at Jenny, there were red spots on her cheeks. “What do you mean, defensive? I’m not defensive!”

“You’re doing it right now,” Jenny pointed out calmly. “It’s like… like you have to get angry with people before they can be angry with you.”

Donna’s eyes flashed, and Jenny sucked in a breath. “Oh, that’s it. Because the best defence is a good offence. That’s why all the offensive measures were downloaded into a new soldier’s mind first, so we could protect our weaknesses by making the Hath too weak to attack.”

“We’re done in this room.” Donna stalked past Jenny. “Time to go search the bedrooms.”

It was obvious even to someone who’d only been born a month ago that Donna had no desire to talk about this, but Jenny had her father’s tenacity. She set her jaw and followed after the other woman, barely catching up with her before she disappeared around the corner.

“I don’t understand though, Donna,” she said as Donna flung open the bedroom door so hard that it hit the wall behind it. “You’re brilliant, and so much fun. Why do you constantly expect people to get upset with you?”

Donna pressed her lips together, but Jenny thought she saw her chin tremble and a glint of moisture in her eyes. “I’m not talking about this,” Donna said, but the words didn’t come out as harshly as Jenny thought she’d maybe been trying for.

Jenny hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”

Donna took a deep breath, then nodded once she felt like she was in control again. “Right, let’s get on with this,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what Jenny had said, though. Memories she’d suppressed leaked out—all the times she’d been told that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar, or the irony of her mother saying that she’d never find a man willing to put up with her sharp tongue.

“Did Rose put you up to this?” she blurted out as they went into the next room. They still hadn’t found a clue, not even a trace of the sticky substance the Doctor had called morphic residue.

Jenny crossed the room to the bureau and opened the top drawer. “Did Rose put me up to what?” she asked absently.

Donna stared at her with a hand on her hip. It took Jenny a moment to register the silence, but when she looked up and took in Donna’s posture, comprehension flashed through her eyes.

“Oh!” She slid the drawer of the bureau shut. “No, I just… I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t, but I can’t stop thinking about it. So we might as well talk.” She was gratified to see Jenny shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other. At least she wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with the conversation. “What made you ask that?” she pressed. “If it wasn’t Rose, then…”

Jenny tilted her head and studied Donna for a moment. “It was… I listened to you earlier, when Dad gave you the magnifying glass, and I realised that you don’t know.”

“I don’t know what?” Donna snapped. Whether she’d meant to or not, Jenny had stepped into her biggest insecurity—all the things she didn’t know.

And the smile on the other woman’s face didn’t make Donna feel any better. “That’s just it, Donna,” Jenny said. “You don’t realise how brilliant Dad thinks you are. Well, both of them,” she amended quickly. “But you poke at Dad more than you do Rose, so I feel like you’re more defensive of that.”

Donna snorted. “Oh, yeah. He thinks I’m so brilliant. Me, the human who was stupid enough to get engaged to a man who was conspiring with a giant spider to take over the planet.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why the Doctor and Rose invited me to travel with them, but it wasn’t because of my brain.”

Jenny shook her head. “No, you’re wrong, Donna. Why do you think Dad trusted you to go through the rooms? He knows that if something is out of place, you’ll spot it.”

Donna wanted to believe her, but three decades of experience told her that no one kept her around for her brain. She was so used to the snide comments about her intelligence that she hadn’t even noticed Lance sneering at her until that last day.

She glanced around the room and shook her head. “Well, there’s nothing to spot in here. Come on, next room.”

But the last door in the corridor wouldn’t open. When the knob wouldn’t twist, Donna crouched down, trying to peer through the keyhole.

“You won’t find anything in there.”

Donna squeaked and spun around to glare at the butler, who had appeared out of nowhere.

“Why is it locked?” Jenny asked while Donna was still recovering from the surprise.

The butler straightened and looked down his nose at them. “Lady Eddison commands it to be so.”

His implacable expression pricked at Donna’s temper. “And I command it to be otherwise.” Greeves frowned at her. “Scotland Yard. Pip, pip.”

His nostrils flared, but he acquiesced, pulling a key out of his pocket as he moved around her. Donna smirked as he unlocked the door; sometimes it really did work to be just a little bit prickly.

“So you didn’t actually tell us why it’s locked,” Jenny pointed out. “Lady Eddison commands… but why?”

Donna grinned at the younger woman and gave her a thumbs up over Greeves’ shoulder.

“Many years ago, when my father was butler to the family, Lady Eddison returned from India with malaria. She locked herself in this room for six months until she recovered. Since then, the room has remained undisturbed.”

He pushed the door open and Donna strode past him into a room lit only by the sunlight filtering in through heavy curtains.

“There’s nothing in here,” Greeves repeated, his voice quiet but firm.

Donna tried to stop thinking about Jenny’s questions, and focus on the mystery of the locked room. “How long’s it been empty?” she asked, looking at the short bed and the teddy bear sitting at the foot of it.

“Forty years.”

Jenny snuck past them and ran her fingers over the wooden paneling that went halfway up the walls. “Why would she seal it off?” she wondered.

Donna nodded once and spared a single glance for the butler, who clearly was waiting for them to realise they didn’t need to disturb this room after all. “All right, we need to investigate. You just butle off.” Greeves sighed, but he finally disappeared.

Donna closed the door behind him, then looked at Jenny, who was holding the bear. “Well, if I’m here because they know I’ll spot something, I guess we’d better get to work.”

Jenny put the bear down, then took a deep breath and looked at Donna. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “I just… I only figured this out this afternoon, and it felt important that you know how important you are to all of us. Dad and Rose don’t invite people in the TARDIS if they can’t keep up. I’ve only been around for a month and I’ve already figured that much out.”

“Look, I can’t think—”

Loud buzzing interrupted Donna’s attempt to brush off Jenny’s repeated compliment. Donna shook her head and followed the noise to the window. “Nineteen twenty-six, they’ve still got bees,” she muttered. “Oh, what a noise. All right, busy bee, I’ll let you out.” She smirked and put on a Belgian accent. “Hold on, I shall find you with my amazing powers of detection.”

She pulled the curtain back, expecting that a normal honeybee would buzz into the room, grateful to be free. Instead, she came face to face with a wasp bigger than she was.

“What is that?” Jenny backed up with Donna against the wall as the wasp swung its stinger and used it to break the glass.

Donna shook her head. “That’s impossible.” The wasp flew over to them, and Donna grabbed Jenny’s hand and slowly circled away from the enormous insect until her back was to the broken window.

“Doctor!”

“Dad!”

The wasp flew closer, and sunlight caught and reflected off its eyes. That gave Donna an idea, and she quickly lifted the magnifying glass over her head, focusing the sun into a narrow beam that burned the wasp.

Donna had never known insects shrieked in pain, and she could have happily gone the rest of her life without that knowledge. But the pain incapacitated the wasp for long enough to let her and Jenny run for the door, so she couldn’t regret her actions.

As soon as they were out of the room, Donna flung the door shut behind her. But two inches of solid English oak wasn’t enough to keep the wasp away; its sting slid through the wood like a knife through hot butter. Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and a moment later, to her utter relief, the Doctor, Rose, and Agatha Christie appeared.

“Dad!” Jenny gasped. “There’s a… on the other side…” She shook her head and pointed at Donna.

“It’s a giant wasp,” Donna said, a little breathless herself.

The Doctor blinked at her. “What do you mean, a giant wasp?”

Donna bristled. After everything he saw, a giant wasp surprised him? “I mean, a wasp that’s giant,” she ground out.

Agatha rolled her eyes at them. “It’s only a silly little insect.”

“Ah, Agatha?” Rose pointed at the door, and Donna was gratified to see her finger was shaking. “I don’t think Donna’s exaggerating when she says the wasp was giant.”

The Doctor stared at the sting for a long moment before flinging the door open. “Let me see.”

To his disappointment, the room was empty. He lingered in the doorway for a moment, waiting to see if it was merely hiding, but then he registered the silence, which was more telling than what he could see.

The Doctor shook his head. “It’s gone. Buzzed off.”

“We found it by the window,” Jenny told him, and they ran over to where the curtains were flapping in the breeze coming in through the open window.

“But that’s fascinating.”

Agatha’s words caught his attention, and he spun back around just in time to see her reaching for the sting. Rose grabbed her elbow and pulled her back. “I don’t think we should touch that,” she cautioned.

The Doctor pulled a test tube out of his pocket and slid in between Rose and Agatha and the door. “Thank you, Rose,” he said as he got down on his knees in front of the sting. The insect body part was oozing with morphic residue, so at least now they knew what form the alien took when it wasn’t human.

He snatched Agatha’s pencil out of her hands. “Giant wasp,” he mused as he dipped the pencil in the residue and scraped it into the test tube. “Well, that narrows it down from the tons of other amorphous insectivorous lifeforms, but I still don’t know what it’s doing here—none of the species I can think of live in this galactic vector.”

“I think I understood some of those words,” Agatha said. “Enough to know that you’re completely potty.”

“Lost its sting, though. That makes it defenceless,” Donna pointed out.

The Doctor shook his head. “Oh, a creature this size? Got to be able to grow a new one.”

“Can we return to sanity?” Agatha demanded. “There are no such things as giant wasps.”

“Excuse you.” Jenny crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the author. “I know what I saw. And if there wasn’t a giant wasp, where did that sting come from? It’s not like Donna and I were hiding it in our dresses.”

Rose nodded. “Clearly, there is a giant wasp buzzing around. The question is, why is it here?”

The Doctor dropped the test tube into his pocket and pushed himself to his feet. “Exactly. And not just here, but killing people.”

“Seriously, Doctor.” Agatha glared at him. “Finding a murderer is not supposed to be an Ordeal by Innocence, whereby you absolve everyone of guilt and pin it on a fantastic monster that doesn’t exist!”

At that point, the Doctor ignored the author’s protests. The murderer was an alien, and there was nothing to be gained by wasting time arguing with Agatha Christie over that fact.

The test tube in his pocket was their best clue, and he started down the stairs, intending to go back to the TARDIS to analyse the substance. At least then he’d have a planet of origin, instead of a Destination Unknown.

Rose groaned and nudged him in the side. Really, Doctor? You’re using Christie titles even in your private thoughts now?

He bumped his hip into hers. Oh, come on. It’s fun.

“What are we going to do now, Dad?” Jenny asked as they jogged down the stairs.

Before the Doctor could answer, they heard a thud from the direction of the front lawn. Rose grabbed his hand, and the two of them took off down the stairs at a full run, letting Jenny, Donna, and Agatha trail after them.

The front door was open, letting the unseasonably warm air into the house. Just beyond the door, Miss Chandrakala was sprawled out on the gravel drive, pinned down by a stone gargoyle.

Agatha knelt down by the woman’s head just in time to hear her dying words. “The poor little child.”

Buzzing filled the air, and the Doctor spun away from the dead housekeeper, scanning the skies for the form he knew he would find. Where are you…

“There!” he shouted when he found the wasp, buzzing near the second storey windows. He took off back into the house, shouting, “Come on!” over his shoulder as he reached the door.

He hit the stairs at a run, and a moment later, he heard footsteps right behind him. “Always with the running,” Jenny panted as they went after the wasp.

The Doctor laughed as he grabbed onto the newel post and pivoted to the next flight of stairs.

“Yeah, but this makes a change,” Donna said. “There’s a monster, and we’re chasing it.”

“It can’t be a monster,” Agatha insisted. “It’s a trick. They Do it with Mirrors.”

Rose rolled her eyes when the author dropped the title of one of her future novels into the conversation. The Doctor grinned over at her.

It’s fun, Rose. You should try it.

Their teasing screeched to a halt when the wasp sting loomed in front of them.

“By all that’s holy,” Agatha murmured.

“I don’t see any mirrors here,” Jenny commented. Rose and Agatha both looked at her, but it was hard to tell if she was being cheeky, or just offering an innocent observation.

“Oh, but you are wonderful,” the Doctor rhapsodised as the wasp lowered itself into the corridor.

The giant insect slowly flew closer to them, and they backed up a step.

The Doctor held his hand out. “Now, just stop. Stop there.”

Instead, the wasp lunged at them, sting pointing directly at their faces. They all dove for cover, and it hit the wall just being where their heads had been, leaving a long gash in the wood and paint.

The Doctor looked up carefully, hoping the miss would convince the wasp to fly away. However, it appeared to be preparing for another strike, and the Doctor looked frantically around the hallway for something they could use to defend themselves.

Donna was a step ahead of him. “Oi, fly boy.” She held up the magnifying glass, and the wasp backed away, then turned around and buzzed down the hallway.

“Don’t let it get away!” The Doctor jumped to his feet and raced after it, and everyone else followed him. “Quick, before it reverts back to human form. Where are you? Come on.” He ran around a corner and stopped at the end of a long corridor. “There’s nowhere to run. Show yourself!”

Jenny reached his side just as every door opened. “Well, that didn’t help,” she muttered when each member of the party stuck their heads out into the corridor.

The Doctor scratched at his cheek. “No, it really didn’t,” he agreed.

Lady Eddison walked towards them from the opposite end of the hallway. “Is something the matter, Doctor?”

Rose met her ladyship halfway. “I’m afraid so, my lady. There’s been another murder.”

Lady Eddison covered her mouth with her handkerchief. “Oh, my word. What poor soul has been taken now?”

“Your housekeeper, Miss Chandrakala.”

Roger pushed past Rose to support his mother when she swayed in shock. “Is this really the right place to have this conversation?” he protested.

“Quite right, lad,” his father said. “Let’s take this to the drawing room so we can sit down. It’s almost time for pre-dinner drinks, anyway.”

Roger and Lady Eddison led the way, with the Doctor, Rose, Jenny, and Donna and bringing up the rear.

“So it was one of them, right?” Jenny asked quietly as they went downstairs. “The wasp couldn’t have gotten away?”

The Doctor shook his head. “That hallway dead ends at the master suite. There was no way out except through one of the rooms. And since someone appeared in every doorway, and no one screamed about a giant wasp flying through their room…”

“One of the guests, or Lady Eddison and her family, is an alien,” Donna concluded as the reached the drawing room.

“My faithful companion, this is terrible,” Lady Eddison moaned as she sank onto the couch. She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, dabbing the tears away.

Davenport pushed Colonel Curbishley into the room, then addressed her ladyship. “Excuse me, my lady, but she was on her way to tell you something.”

Lady Eddison sniffed and shook her head. “She never found me. She had an Appointment with Death instead,” she sobbed.

The Doctor stood in front of the window and looked at the group. “She said, ‘the poor little child.’ Does that mean anything to anyone?”

Just like she had during their first round of interrogation, Rose watched people’s faces as the Doctor posed questions to the group. When he mentioned a child, Lady Eddison’s hand spasmed and she looked away from him, but her husband spoke before Rose could point that out to the Doctor.

“No children in this house for years,” the colonel said. “Highly unlikely there will be,” he added pointedly, casting a sidelong glance at his son, and the footman standing directly behind Roger.

Oh, not such a surprise where Roger’s interest lies after all, Rose mused.

Lady Eddison leaned towards Agatha, who was sitting just opposite her. “Mrs. Christie, you must have twigged something. You’ve written simply the best detective stories.”

Reverend Golightly looked at Agatha over steepled hands. “Tell us, what would Poirot do?”

Agatha looked back at him, then at the rest of the party, staring at her for answers. Her mouth opened and closed once, then she shrugged apologetically.

“Heaven’s sake,” the colonel blustered. “Cards on the Table, woman. You should be helping us.”

Agatha shook her head. “But, I’m merely a writer.”

Miss Redmond leaned towards her and put her hand on her knee. “But surely you can crack it. These events, they’re exactly like one of your plots.”

Donna nodded eagerly. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Agatha, that’s got to mean something.”

“But what?” Agatha countered. “I’ve no answers. None. I’m sorry, all of you.” Her shoulders slumped, and she hung her head. “I’m truly sorry, but I’ve failed. If anyone can help us, then it’s the Doctor and Mrs. Tyler, not me.”

All eyes shifted from Agatha to the Doctor and Rose, and the author took advantage of the momentary inattention to slip out of the room. Donna stood up. “I’ll go talk to her,” she told Rose quietly. “I understand what it’s like, feeling like I’ve failed at life.”

Rose nodded as the colonel and Lady Eddison both demanded answers of the Doctor.

“All right, that’s enough!” she said once Donna was gone. “I understand that you all want answers. You’re scared, of course—this whole day has played out like a Three Act Tragedy, and we’ve only seen the first two acts. But standing around demanding answers of the Doctor only keeps him from doing the actual work of solving the case. If you’ll all just please, go back to what you were doing before, I promise you we will give you any information we uncover.”

The party dispersed with minimal grumbling. As soon as they were alone, Rose smiled brightly at the Doctor. “You were right, Doctor. It is fun using her titles like that.”

His eyes were dark, and when Rose gave him a cheeky wink, he groaned and pulled her close. Bloody hell, you’re sexy when you’re being clever, he told her as he bent down to kiss her.

Rose slid her hands over his shoulders and linked them loosely behind his neck. That would be all the time then, right? she teased as she nibbled at his bottom lip.

He chuckled and pulled back to rest his forehead against hers. “Yes, absolutely,” he agreed.

oOoOoOoOo

Donna found Agatha sitting in a gazebo, her head bowed. Flowers were blooming around her, and for a moment, Donna was distracted by the wrongness of seeing roses in December. Then she set that thought aside to mention to the Doctor later.

She stared at the author for a moment, considering what words might convince her that she wasn’t a failure. All she knew of Agatha Christie… Ah. Yeah, that’ll work.

She sat down and waited for Agatha to look up, then said, “Do you know what I think? Those books of yours, one day they could turn them into films. They could be talking pictures.”

A frown creased Agatha’s forehead. “Talking pictures?” She shook her head. “Pictures that talk? What do you mean?”

Bloody hell, time travel is complicated. “Oh, blimey, I’ve done it again.” She’d been sure the switch to talkies happened in the Twenties, but apparently it hadn’t happened yet.

“I appreciate you trying to be kind, but you’re right.” Agatha sighed and stared off into space. “These murders are like my own creations. It’s as though someone’s mocking me, and I’ve had enough scorn for one lifetime.”

That was obviously a reference to her cheating husband, and disappointed love was a subject Donna actually felt fully qualified to talk about.

“Yeah. Thing is, I had this bloke once. I was engaged. And I loved him, I really did.” That was the hardest thing about what had happened. Learning Lance had been conspiring with an alien to poison her couldn’t erase the fact that she’d spent months in love with him. “Turns out he was lying through his teeth. But do you know what? I moved on. I was lucky,” she admitted. “I met the Doctor and Rose—it’s changed my life. There’s always something else.”

“I see.” There were tight lines around Agatha’s mouth. “Is my marriage the stuff of gossip now?”

“No, I just…” Donna suddenly realised how she would have felt if someone she didn’t know came up to her and started talking about Lance, like they knew the whole story. “Sorry.”

Agatha sighed and shook her head. “No matter. The stories are true. I found my husband with another woman. A younger, prettier woman. Isn’t it always the way?”

Donna shrugged. “Well, mine was with a giant spider, but, same difference.”

Agatha actually laughed, finally. “You all talk such wonderful nonsense.”

Donna ignored that. Tempting as it was to argue with the author on the subject of giant insects and arachnids, that wasn’t actually why she’d come after her.

“Agatha, people love your books,” she said, getting to the point finally. “They really do. They’re going to be reading them for years to come.”

Her words seemed to have the opposite effect of what she’d hoped. “If only,” Agatha scoffed. “Try as I might, it’s hardly great literature. No, that’s beyond me.” She drew herself up and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid my books will be forgotten, like ephemera.”

Donna was trying to think of something more encouraging to say when a glint of curiosity crossed the author’s face, and she tilted her head. “Hello, what’s that?” She got to her feet and pointed at a spot in the garden as she strode towards it. “Those flowerbeds were perfectly neat earlier. Now some of the stalks are bent over.” She crouched down in front of the damaged flowers and plucked a small leather case up off the ground.

“There you go,” Donna said. “Who’d ever notice that? You’re brilliant.”

Agatha tapped her fingers against the case. “I think, Miss Noble, that we need to take this to the Doctor and Rose.”

oOoOoOoOo

After everyone left the drawing room, the Doctor, Rose, and Jenny ended up in the small salon. The Doctor pulled the test tube of morphic residue out of his pocket once they were alone.

“I can at least use the sonic screwdriver to analyse this and get some kind of idea about where our murderer comes from,” he said, scanning it with the device as he talked.

“Who is Agatha Christie?” Jenny asked the Doctor and Rose while they waited for results.

Rose nodded at the Doctor, and he grinned and leaned forward in his chair. “One of the most celebrated novelists of all time,” he said. “She writes murder mysteries. Right now, she’s at the beginning of her career, but over the next fifty years, she’ll pen more than a hundred novels, plays, and short stories.”

“Oh,” Jenny said. “So that’s why Donna keeps pointing out how surprising it is that the author is caught in the middle of the kind of story she wrote.”

“Exactly,” Rose agreed. “But it’s happened to us twice, so it’s not really that surprising.”

The sonic beeped, and the Doctor checked the results. “Vespiform?” He leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the arms. “Oh, you’re a long way from home.”

“How far?” Jenny asked.

The door to the sitting room opened before the Doctor could answer, and Agatha and Donna walked in, their eyes bright with excitement. “Doctor,” Agatha said, holding out a leather case, “I think I may have finally been of some use.”

“You know, Agatha,” the Doctor said as he took the case. “You should be easier on yourself. Murder is Easy; solving one is not.”

Rose pressed her lips together to hide her chuckle, and the Doctor winked at her as he flipped back the lid of the case. The first level was full of lock picking tools, and their private teasing was immediately forgotten.

“Ooo. Someone came here tooled up,” he said as he revealed the various levels of the tool case. “The sort of stuff a thief would use.”

Agatha put it together first. “The Unicorn. He’s here.”

The Doctor nodded. “The Unicorn and the wasp.”

Greeves entered the room with a tray. “Your drinks, ladies. Doctor.”

Rose handed Jenny the glass of Scotch they’d suggested she try, then took a sip of her sidecar from the tray. “Thank you, Greeves,” she said once everyone had their drink, and the butler nodded once before leaving the room.

“How about the science stuff?” Donna asked quietly. “What did you find?”

The Doctor pulled the test tube out of his pocket again and looked at the bright yellow goo while he sipped at his drink. “Vespiform sting. Vespiforms have got hives in the Silfrax galaxy.”

Agatha shook her head. “Again, you talk like Edward Lear.”

“But for some reason, this one’s behaving like a character in one of your books,” the Doctor said.

Donna kept talking to Agatha, something about Miss Marple, but Rose tuned it out as a faint sense that something was not right with the Doctor grew to fear as he quickly analysed his own body systems.

She set her drink down and moved to his left side while Jenny went to his right. His panic was obvious to both of them over their telepathic connection.

“Dad, are you all right?” Jenny asked. That finally got Donna’s attention, and she and Agatha stopped talking.

“No,” the Doctor said. “Something’s inhibiting my enzymes.” Pain twisted through Rose’s gut when he doubled over. “Argh! I’ve been poisoned.”

The Doctor’s face contorted, and he raised himself halfway out of his seat as his stomach clenched painfully. Feeling his agonising pain terrified Rose; she tended to see him as almost invincible, physically, though logically she knew he could be hurt.

Jenny looked from him to Rose. “We have to do something, Mum. What do we do?”

Agatha picked up his glass and sniffed. “Bitter almonds. It’s cyanide. Sparkling Cyanide.”

Anger slowly replaced Rose’s fear as she watched the Doctor stumble to his feet. Someone had poisoned her Doctor—had laced his drink with cyanide, expecting it would kill him. She pressed her lips together and wrapped an arm around his waist. They better hope she never found out who they were.

“Listen to Rose,” the Doctor gasped, before leaning more heavily on her.

Usually, his weight would be almost too much for her, but today, her protective anger gave her extra strength, and she shifted her stance and held him up easily. What do you need, Doctor?

Take me to the kitchen, he requested, trying to walk and barely managing it. Rose was practically carrying him to the back of the house. I can stimulate the inhibited enzymes into reversal.

Rose felt her shoulders relax slightly as some of her fear eased, but her anger was unrelenting. Whoever had poisoned the Doctor obviously hadn’t expected him to be able to fight the cyanide’s effect.

A moment later, they crashed through the kitchen doors. “Ginger beer,” the Doctor gasped, getting odd looks from the kitchen staff.

Davenport looked at him askance.“I beg your pardon?”

“I need ginger beer,” the Doctor repeated.

Rose spotted a brown bottle on the shelf and they half-ran, half-hobbled over to it.

“The gentleman’s gone mad,” the cook said as the Doctor took a swig of the beverage.

Rose hadn’t considered what the Doctor might want the ginger beer for, but watching him down half the bottle, she had to swallow back her instinctive protests. Ginger typically impaired a Time Lord’s abilities to safely process potentially hazardous substances. Drinking it when he’d been poisoned seemed counterintuitive, but if he claimed that in this instance it would help, she wouldn’t stop him.

But Agatha Christie would. “I’m an expert in poisons,” she said as he poured the rest of the bottle over his head. “Doctor, there’s no cure. It’s fatal.”

Rose’s vision went hazy for a moment with a tinge of gold. She’d been seething with helpless anger from the moment she’d realised the Doctor was in danger, and Agatha’s comments made her an easy target to lash out at.

“One measly attempt at poisoning him isn’t going to kill the Doctor,” she snarled as the Doctor spewed ginger beer onto the kitchen floor. “Now if you can’t say anything more useful, just stand out of the way!”

Agatha blinked, but she shut her mouth.

I need protein, the Doctor told Rose.

“Donna, Jenny, would you two hold him up?” As soon as they were standing on either side of the Doctor, Rose ran to the long counter that ran along the side of the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers.

Behind her, she could hear the Doctor panting as the pain got worse, and she grabbed onto the counter for a moment as it swept over her, too.

She spotted a jar of walnuts and sighed in relief. “Walnuts,” she cried out, scooping the jar up and spinning back around to the Doctor.

He nodded and shoved a handful into his mouth. Salt next, he told her as he chewed.

Rose nodded and turned back to the counter. What kind of salt? Her eyes landed on something, and she grabbed it and pushed it at the Doctor even as she wrinkled her nose. Anchovies. You’re not kissing me until you’ve brushed your teeth, she informed the Doctor.

Even though she knew it was necessary, her stomach still rebelled when he tipped the jar up and poured it straight into his mouth. One of the anchovies slipped down his chin onto the floor, and she gagged.

“Anything else, love?”

He nodded as he chewed. I need a shock.

Like an electrical shock? Rose turned in a circle, scanning the kitchen desperately for some source of electricity, but there really wasn’t much. The Doctor slumped against the work top, and Rose shoved her hands into her hair.

Donna reached out and put her hand on her shoulder. “What is it, Rose?”

“What does Dad need?”

Rose’s chest heaved as her breaths came faster and faster. “He says he needs a shock, but I don’t know how we’re going to do that because this is only nineteen twenty-six and it’s not like they had defibrillators lying around and oh God, Doctor, I’m not ready for you to regenerate yet.” She swiped angrily at the tears in her eyes.

Donna huffed and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Rose! Calm down!” she ordered. Her firm voice cut through some of Rose’s panic, and Donna smiled at her. “That’s better! Now, what can we use to shock him?”

A speculative look crossed her face, but before she could follow through on whatever idea had just crossed her mind, Jenny spoke up.

“Why don’t you just use your sonic screwdriver, Mum?”

Rose blinked. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that—she even knew exactly what setting to use. Setting 1752 would extract the static electricity in the air so the sonic could act as a conduit, passing the charge into whatever the diode happened to be touching.

She pulled her sonic out of her handbag with shaking fingers as she spun around to look at the Doctor. He nodded frantically as she adjusted the setting, and she knew this was the right thing to do.

“Right,” she muttered as she pressed the device to his chest. “Let’s see if this works.” She depressed the button, and a second later, the Doctor’s muscles seized up.

How long, Doctor?

She needn’t have worried. After five seconds, he staggered back a few paces before tilting his head back and breathing out a long puff of grey, noxious smoke.

Immediately, the dread the Doctor had been projecting disappeared. “Detox!” he proclaimed cheerfully as he straightened up. “I should do that more often, actually.”

Rose ran a shaky hand through her hair, disrupting the carefully arranged curls. “Yeah, I’d rather not if you don’t mind,” she countered.

“Oh, but you were the best part, Rose Tyler.” The Doctor bounced on his toes and shot her an irrepressible smile. “I’ve always thought loving you struck me like a thunderbolt, but I never figured it would be such a literal thing.”

“Doctor, you are impossible,” Agatha said. “Who are you?”

Rose stared at her bond mate, torn between rolling her eyes at his ridiculous pun and running into his arms. She settled for a smile instead, though relief prompted a tiny giggle as well.

“Can’t you tell?” she asked, letting a cheeky smile creep over her face. “He’s The Man in the Brown Suit.”

The Doctor looked down at the ginger beer stains on his suit. “Speaking of, I think I need to get cleaned up before dinner. Donna, why don’t you and Jenny stay with Agatha? If the three of you talk, you might figure something out.”

Donna and Jenny both nodded, and the Doctor turned and held out his hand for Rose. She took it silently, and they walked back to the TARDIS in the fading daylight.

[readingraebow]

It Section Five

Chapters 11-12

1. What happens when Ben goes to the library? He sees Pennywise. He's talking to the librarian and asking if he can get a library card when he hears his name. He turns to look but realizes that no one else has reacted, meaning no one else can hear the voice. So he tries to ~keeps his cool through the rest of his conversation with the librarian even though the voice keeps yelling at him. When he finally does look, Pennywise the Clown is standing on the top landing, inviting him to come up and see him on neutral ground. Ben doesn't. And Pennywise eventually turns into Dracula, though a different version than the movie Draculas. And then Pennywise eventually disappears altogether, leaving behind a single balloon with a note written on it. At first it says "Have a good day! Tonight you die!" since Pennywise had been telling Ben that he's planning to murder all of the Losers Club that night. But then Ben asks after his favorite librarian and learns that she died three years ago, apparently from a stroke even though she was fairly young. Then the message on the balloon changes to say that Pennywise killed her. So Ben leaves the library then, with his new library card and a book he'd happened to grab off the shelf which the librarian thought he wanted to check out. When he gets outside, he notices that it's one of the books he'd checked out that day that he met with the Bowers gang at the Barrens. His boot print is even still on the cover. And he looks at the card in the back of the book and his name is the last one on it. But stamped below it, over and over again in red ink that looks like blood, it says CANCEL.

2. Where does Eddie go and what happens there? He goes back to a street that he thinks he had no connection to but then he remembers that he used to like walking down the street as a kid. At the end of it was a truck depot owned by two brothers who were perpetual bachelors. So Eddie walks down to it and finds that it's closed. He goes to the back of the property to the field where they used to play baseball and remembers when Belch Huggins hit two home runs, one of which they never found the ball. And just as he's thinking this Belch Huggins, who was murdered in 1958, comes back over the wall and looks, um, greaaaat. (Not.) He also starts seeing basically everyone who he remembered from this road, who is now dead, and is just in some kind of state of decay. It, as always, plays on fears.

3. What happens when Bev goes home? So she thinks it still says Marsh on the mailbox and believes she's going to find her dad but instead she finds an old woman named Mrs. Kersh. She finds out that her dad died five years ago and Mrs. Kersh feels terrible about delivering the news so she invites her in for tea and to look around. So Bev explores the apartment to see the changes and then Mrs. Kersh calls her when the tea is ready. Well, while they're talking, Mrs. Kersh starts changing and ~deteriorating. And she says that her dad's name was Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. And that's when things really start deteriorating. The house starts turning into candy since It plays off fears and her greatest fear was Hansel and Gretel because the witch ate children. And her dead dad appears wearing Mrs. Kersh's nightgown and they both start chasing Bev. She manages to get out of the apartment and when she looks back, it's rundown and looks like no one lives there and she wonders if she was ever really inside at all or if she just imagined the whole thing.

4. What do we learn happened to Richie in 1958? What happens to him now? In 1958, Richie witnesses Henry slip and fall in the wet hallway at school. And Richie being Richie, does a voice and everyone laughs and Henry then decides to kill him. So after school, Richie is running for his life and ends up loosing them in the toy section of a department store. So, having lived another day, he's going home and he stops in City Center under the Paul Bunyan statue. Well, the statue ends up "coming to life" and the axe comes down and chops the bench in half where Richie had just been sitting. It also comes off the platform and starts after Richie. But Richie ends up getting away and looks back and everything was exactly as it had been before, like nothing happened. So Richie convinced himself that the whole thing was a dream. Now, however, he goes back to City Center and the statue is still there. There also used to be an annual rock festival every year. There's a poster for this year's concert though it changes to say it's honoring Richie and it's his "all dead" rock show and lists a bunch of dead musicians. At the end it says that Richie is dead too. Well, Richie starts to leave but he looks up at the Paul Bunyan statue, only it's no longer Paul Bunyan. Now it's Pennywise the Clown. Well Pennywise starts taunting Richie and Richie does get away. He gets back to the sidewalk and turns back around and this time finds Buddy Holly as the statue, with his glasses taped just like Richie's had been. Well, a little kid who happens to be in the square starts sobbing uncontrollably and Richie's contacts start burning in his eyes. He gets away but pretty much has to rip his contacts out of his eyes.

5. What does Bill learn from the little boy he encounters? The little boy ends up reminding him of Georgie, only in the sense that Georgie died so close to home. The boy says that he knows a kid called Tommy who he says has "toys in the attic." He says that Tommy saw a shark in the Canal. He said he saw the fin moving through the waters but the boy said that nothing could live in that Canal. Bill, however, tells the boy to stay away from the Canal and the boy asks if that means Bill believes Tommy. Bill says he does and the boy says he does too and sometimes he thinks he has toys in the attic too.

6. What ghost does Bill encounter in Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes?He finds Silver in the window. He goes in to buy Silver and calls Mike to see if he can store Silver in his garage. Mike asks if that means Silver might be important to their mission and Bill says he thinks it is. So he wheels Silver out of the shop, noting that whoever last owned Silver didn't take very good care of it. The back tire is flat, the front tire is bald and the bike basket and chain are both rusty. And as Bill wheels Silver toward Mike's house, he also realizes he can't remember what happened to Silver or how he came to no longer be Silver's owner. He if he sold Silver, gave it away or even just lost it.

7. What does Mike just happen to have in his garage? What is strange about this? He just happens to have a bike tire repair kit. Bill asks if he has a bike and he says he doesn't. So Bill asks why he has it and Mike said he was at the mall a week or so ago and felt strongly compelled to buy it. So he did and, it turns out, it was because Bill would need it. Mike also happens to have a deck of Bicycle playing cards (for Silver's spokes) and clothespins. Bill asks if he just happened to have those too and Mike says it's something like that. And when he hands the playing cards to Bill, they end up flying everywhere and two cards land face up: both the Ace of Spades. When Bill picks them up, one has a red back and the other a blue.

8. What, do we learn, happened to Henry in 1958? What happens to him now?Henry murdered his father in 1958 and ended up in Juniper Hill which is a home for the criminally insane. He was transferred from another facility and has been at Juniper Hill ever since. But he hasn't just been there because of his father's murder. The police pinned all of the other murders on him too. They'd found books belonging to Victor Criss and Belch Huggins in his room as well as Patrick Hockstetter's belt and a pair of Veronica Grogan's underwear. The two latter had both been murdered and Victor and Belch were both still missing. Henry confessed to the murders of Victor and Belch because he's the one who had led them down into the tunnels where he'd watched both of them die. So he felt responsible for their murders. He'd actually won Patrick's belt off of him and he had no idea how Veronica's underwear had ended up in his room but he suspected he did. But he confessed to their murders too because why not. So the police hailed Henry as the killer finally caught and declared the whole matter over and done with. Well, now Henry has started hearing voices which he thinks are coming from the moon. Then he sees Victor Criss, still twelve, under his bed and Victor helps him escape from Juniper Hill. Because, as Pennywise's voice from the moon says, they need him to go back to Derry and kill them all.

  Section Five Reading Journal

Okay so. I honestly found the second chapter in this section the most interesting, mostly because that’s the chapter that actually felt like it advanced the story. The chapter where they each, as adults, go back and see Pennywise just felt super repetitive to me. Like why do we need to see them individually see Pennywise again. Haven’t we already seen that enough in this book?

I am honestly just ready for the two face offs with Pennywise (as kids and as adults) because this just feels like it’s drawing out the story way too much. I was honestly irritated even writing questions because they feel like they’re the exact same questions and answers from other sections.

This book literally does not need to be 1000 pages. It’s just repeating the same thing over and over. Yes, Pennywise plays on their fears. Yes, they all see Pennywise and he taunts them. WE GET IT. CAN YOU GET TO THE ACTUAL STORY, PLEASE?

I like this story, I really do. But I think I like it more because the movie (or the mini series I watched, I’m assuming Chapter 2 will do the same thing) cuts out all the repeats and just gives you the actual story parts.

Honestly, this book is just too long and the last two sections have bored me. I think this book just needs to be them when they’re kids (but without so much setup for each kid and them all meeting) and then way less of them as adults. Because right now it just feels really long and repetitive and I keep waiting for the actual story to start.

I am liking the sections when they’re kids way better than the adult sections. So I’m glad that the next section goes back to them as kids.