#and the way both her and dany try to act so much older but still feel like and want to be children again

[the-witch-of-woods-beyond]

“she tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but some times she felt she was a little girl after all.” HELP 😭😭

[gelu-the-babosa-multiversal]

Hey, hope your day goes well for you!

Not sure if you ever said, but how do you imagine the Burns and the Greenes respond to the news that Cody is a reincarnated Cybertronian God. (And Graham too if he's still Alchemist Prime in your version)

Not sure why this took me so long...

There would be a lot of mixed responses, mostly if the Bots don't give the news in a digestible way. Like for sure Blades is going to scream and be scared for Cody's well-being... this is probably the first time in Cybertronian history that it happens and they are all in that moment..

Even with all the reassurances and fake happy smiles to maintain their human friend calm, there is no calm on Griffin Rock...

Charlie would be the one trying to maintain a calm posture the most. He is so worried but can not show it. We are talking about Cody, his youngest son, the (literal) sunshine of his life. He knows Cody is scared too and tries to save face, that's probably the worst thing Chief has taught his children, and has to come with the consequences of it...

Kade is the older brother, he is probably the most affected of all as he doesn't know what to do... He is the older brother, he should know what to do. He is the strongest of the family but now, Cody just surpasses him on every level, and not in a bad way... but in a way, wich Kade doesn't know how to deal with it. He would need some time to give it a better understanding, but, will be there for Cody.

Dani might be the one who takes it the best like ¨JUST LIKE IN MY ROMANCE NOVEL!!???¨ at first she might think that she knows how to deal with this, after all, this is still Cody, Onyx it was just another guy. But, upon realizing that it was not as easy as it seemed... the nightmares, the visions, the voices that came out of Cody... it was no longer just memories, it was that reality was becoming more like a sad vision with a not-so-happy ending.

Graham (Alchemist) already knew this would happen, exactly when and how much his family would hate it not. Because he and Cody can see the future they both interrupt each other visions unable for one and the other to see each other future... is weird... but he is happy to have one of his brothers back. And no one else will know that he is the reincarnation of a Prime too until he says is all right to know... lets see how much that act lasts.

For the Greene family, oh boy, just a lot of questions.

Doc Greene would give regular check ups on Cody as a request from Charlie and Blades. Blades can handle the Cybertronian stuff but Cody still has a human part that needs to be taken care of.

Baranova is like ¨well thank god I left the sea¨ and remembers that ot has Cody who made her leave the sea...

Frankie is super curious but worried too. No time to waste, there are tests to run and new information to learn. She asks the boost Bot for answers, Highttide. His first answer was, don't let Cody remember how Onyx died...

[signanothername]

Exploring character dynamics: Blades

Blades and Heatwave: Very Older Brother, little brother dynamic. They would die for each other and brag about it later. They would also definitely roughhouse if Blades didn’t any know better. Also Blades trying so hard to imitate HW in part 2 of double villainy. He wanted to be a good leader too

Blades and Chase: Autisim vs ADHD if robots. They balance each other out perfectly. Just put them together and I’m already smiling cause I know I’ll have a good time. “What’s sooner than immediately?” “I have no idea” 

Blades and Boulder: ADHD vs AuADHD. These two are a menace. They always do the craziest things together. I’m honestly surprised the writers didn’t exploit that more. These idiots kidnapped a lion. I love them. I’m also pretty sure that Boulder learned a lot about first aid from Blades since more often than not he’s the one acting doctor.

Blades and Graham: Their episode together makes me so soft 😭 They’re their both the “weakest” members of their active teams and can sometimes overlook how essential they are “At least they found you… that’s important”

Blades and Kade: Imma be 100% honest, I don’t think Blades could take much of Kade, him considering Mr. Pettypaws a better partner says it all. He wouldn’t get angry, just more and more annoyed and sassy.

Blades and Cody: Watching the show, I noticed that Heatwave and Boulder are closer to Cody, while Blades and Chase dare closer to their partners. Still though, this bot was fresh on earth, dealing with the fact that he would have to fly despite his fears and still said “For Cody”.

Blades and Chief: Dad and son. He was so exited to be paired up with the chief, adorable.

Blades and Dani: HSKEBSKA THESE TWO HOLY SHIT!!! Sassy as all can be. Big sister - little brother, man you can feel the love in this relationship. Dare I say it’s the most develop? Like, it doesn’t grow the same way Heatwave and Kade do, but you can feel this closeness. Blades is extremely protective of Dani and Dani is so encouraging of Blades, even when she considers something his doing as silly she’s there for him 🥹 ARGH, when she left for her space mission and he had to transform and didn’t get to say a proper goodbye, that shot of him as a helicopter just there, when she cried the moment she heard his voice 😭😭. How they’re very verbal about their affection and bring the better out of each other (Dani becomes kinder and Blades is always developing his skills) I love them so much. They’re gonna be great leaders in China and I WISH WE GOT TO SEE THAT.

AAAAA THANK YOU FOR THIS ANON THIS IS BEAUTIFUL 😭❤️❤️❤️🌷✨

Allow me to share my thoughts as well :D

Blades and Heatwave: I agreeeeeee!!!! I feel like Blades looks up to Heatwave and admires his skills, and i wholeheartedly believe he tries his best to make Heatwave proud, something he doesn’t actually need to do, cause Heatwave is already proud of him, HW just never says it outright, but you see it in how protective HW is of Blades and how he’d actually do the things Blades ask him to

Heatwave is protective of all his team, but he’s even extra protective of Blades, their relationship reminds me of the lil bro who gets bullied but keeps it a secert only for the older bro to find out and go beat the shit outta the bullies, getting hurt in the process

You know for a fact HW has been in so many fights just to protect Blades, he probably fought people just for looking Blades the wrong way <3333

Blades definitely imitates HW sometimes, probably without actually realizing it chchhc, that one episode of him trying to act hardcore and slaming his fist on his palm only to go “ow” is so adorable and i wholeheartedly believe he’s trying to act how Heatwave does

The leader role kinda doesn’t fit Blades, cause he doesn’t know how to act when pressured which the leader role is full of, it’s a role with so much responsibility tied to it, not to mention Blades is more of a free spirit, putting him under a restrictive role can inhibit his outta the box thinking and creativity, and that’s why in part i believe he tried to imitate HW, cause HW is an amazing leader and Blades doesn’t exactly know how to lead, so he goes for the next best option, imitating his own great leader <3

That obviously doesn’t mean Blades can’t lead, in fact I wholeheartedly believe he can and would be really great at it, he only needs a bit of time to find his own footing, to find himself in the role and to adapt to it, he’d definitely be a lot more carefree as a leader, a leader who makes his team always feel safe to approach him with any problems they may have and it’s heartwarming to think about :D

I think the fact Blades can adapt to so many things no matter what life throws at him is his greatest strength, so you can imagine my joy when Blades is assigned leader to his own rescue team in China <333

———

Blades and Chase: YOU GET ITTTTTT!!!!!!! Their characters balance so well for a variety of reasons cause you have Blades, who’s always anxious and thinks of the worst scenarios that could happen with Chase who’s always calm and thinks logically, which means Chase is the best candidate when it comes to helping Blades deal with his anxiety

Meanwhile you have Blades who understands social situations and innuendos and is very invested in pop culture and you have Chase who literally could never grasp social situations and innuendos for the life of him, and isn’t very good at learning the culture he is in at all, so you have Blades sometimes filling that gap

Their personalities contrast so much and that contrast is what i love the most about their relationship!

Also can I talk about how much I adore how they always take care of each other??? There’s a reason I like to believe these two are Amica Endura!!!! They look out for each other and you can tell they’re really close, they always help each other out and it’s always so damn heartwarming <3333

✨Adhd and Autism solidarity✨

———

Blades and Boulder: NO LITERALLY WISH THE SHOW EXPLORED THEIR DYNAMIC MORE!!

They have a lot in common both are artists, one who loves to paint the other loves to make signs and decorations, both love to explore the world, one through learning about the culture and nature, the other through pioneering, and both are very chaotic, these two probably love to go on adventures together sometimes

And as you said, the fact Boulder knows first aid?? He probably got Blades to teach him, i feel like Blades actually tries to let Boulder teach him about engineering too, kinda like listening to each other interests, but the boredom is infinite and his adhd brain can never allow it gugujgvjvj, it probably goes with Boulder talking for hours only for Blades to admit he didn’t get any of it, Boulder completely understands and is happy Blades gives him a chance to ramble regardless <3333

Hope you don’t mind but- *snatches the AuADHD Boulder headcanon* it’s mine now :)

Also can I talk about the fact Blades is good at dancing and Boulder loves dancing but his size doesn’t help? I like to think these two have dancing sessions sometimes!!

———

Blades and Graham: AAAH SO REAL!!!! Y’know I love how they have that in common, it makes a great connection point for the two

Blades and Graham aren’t physically strong, but that’s not where their worth or importance lies, Graham’s strength is his brain and his knowledge in engineering, he literally saved the lives of the entire island multiple times due to his input, whether by stopping his family from doing something that could potentially be a disaster or finding the source of what is causing problems to begin with (like finding the source of the earthquakes that were happening because of the speaker in “shake up”

Blades is agile and fast, really light on his feet and while all that’s good this is not what makes him important, what truly counts is his quick thinking and his amazing sense of the situation, he’s creative and that’s important in a rescue team where rescues always take an unexpected turn, his loyalty to the team is boundless and he always does what’s needed of him even when it’s completely outta his expertise, and this might seem strange to say, but his anxiety is actually a good thing, cause he sometimes does bring up really good points, his anxiety make him think of how a scenario can go wrong in so many directions that the team wouldn’t usually think about and asks them out loud, making the team stop and think, and that’s also really important

So when Graham and Blades don’t really realize how their existence is so damn important it hurts my heart, cause their perception of themselves isn’t the best, they think they aren’t as important which isn’t true at all

They both think low of themselves when they fail and it hurts to see cause everyone fails from time to time and that’s ok

I adore these two ughhh 😭❤️🌷✨

———

Blades and Kade: TELL ME ABOUT IT CHICCJJV

Like the mere idea of being partners with Kade was completely outta the question for Blades

HW’s and Kade’s personalities clash head on and that’s actually why their dynamic works, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, therefore canceling each other

And it’s honestly kinda funny considering how similar HW and Kade are, they obviously differ in some things, but overall their similarities exceed their differences

Yet we see that Blades is very comfortable dealing with HW, but wouldn’t be comfortable dealing with Kade, and i like to believe it’s in part cause Blades can’t handle really intense people like HW and Kade, but can adapt to them if given time, which Blades did have a really long time to adapt to HW but not so much time to adapt to Kade, so dealing with Kade seems like a nightmare, but we see he does consider it when Kade gives a really good idea only for HW to tell him to “think again”

Overall, I think it would’ve been amazing had we gotten an episode in which Blades and Kade worked together, it would’ve probably been a fave hcchchch

———

Blades and cody: oooh that’s a nice note, I didn’t really notice that!! Tho i’d say Blades definitely loves Cody and loves to spend time with him, “Virtual disaster” is definitely one of my favorite episodes, and I ADORE Blades’ and Cody’s dynamic in that episode

I feel like Cody and Blades get along so well, and Blades definitely acts like an older bro to Cody

Not to mention Cody seems the best at calming Blades when he’s upset, get his mind off the thing that upset him, like when Dani leaves for her pilot testing and Cody tells him “come on, let’s find enough paint for your sign” and we see how that immediately makes Blades feel a bit better :D

Cody seems to understand that Blades is driven by his emotions and that’s what he focuses on when interacting with Blades, and tbh that’s something I feel like Cody and Blades have in common, they both got really big emotions that require someone to acknowledge, and that’s why Cody always acknowledges Blades’ feelings and vice versa

———

Blades and Charlie: I don’t have much to add to what you already said cause that’s literally it hcchchchvjcj

But i’d love to talk about how Charlie seems to entertain Blades’ desires and child like wonder, gives him a chance to explore his world in his own way and helps him live the role <33

Charlie is an amazing dad, both to his biological and Cybertronian kids <333

———

Blades and Dani: OH MY FUCKING GOD THEYRE MY FAVORITE PAIR OF PARTNERS!!! And i agree! I think they’re the most developed!

I think Blades’s and Dani’s relationship is the most complex, Dani loves flying, Blades doesn’t, Dani is a risk taker, Blades has saftey as a priority

Their personalities are quite the opposite of each other, but that’s why they work! Blades teaches Dani patience and kindness and Dani teaches Blades to open up more and accept the danger that comes with his work

Their love for each other is literally radiating through space and time zhhxhdh

You can tell Blades becomes really attached to Dani, the episode where Dani goes to space is proof of it, Blades becoming upset at the idea of her leaving is so damn heartbreaking him going “I hate when she leaves” literally tore my heart in two

But what truly gets to me is that by the end of the episode when they have the talk Dani promised? He says “I hope you get it” he’s so supportive of her no matter how much it hurts him or how much he hates the idea of separating

AND I AGREEEE I WISH WE GOT TO SEE THEIR JOURNEY 😭❤️🌷✨

Goddammit I really wanna say more but know when you love something to the point it’s genuinely hard to put into words??? That’s me with Blades’ and Dani’s relationship they’re SO DAMN ADORABLE AND ID DIE FOR THEM

And since words betrayed me here’s one of my favorite scene of them just HSHSHSJHZHSJSJSJSHHSKAKS

———

Damn this got way longer than what I meant for it, hope you enjoyed regardless dhhdhd

[horizon-verizon]

You’re a whole coon, of course Rhaenyra hates women, especially Black women, she tried to murder a 16 years-old Black girl, slut shamed her, called her racial slurs, and linked Nettles “ugliness/attractiveness” to her Blackness. Rhaenyra literally acted like a pathetic pick me in regard to Daemon and Nettles. If given the chance, Rhaenyra would have enslaved her. TB must truly despise Daenerys to compare her to Rhaenyra, they couldn’t be more different. (The way Rhaenyra is never mentioned in Dany’s chapters and GRRM has never discussed them in conjunction with the other, finally y’all can thanks HOTD for turning her into a progressive and flawless Mary Sue).

And really an insanely privileged white woman dying after putting a bounty on a lowborn Black’s girl head should be a good thing right ? We just gon have to celebrate Rhaenyra death with Nettles.

If you say so, anon, I guess I'm a straight up coon. 🤷🏿‍♀️

I suppose arguing how no one can be a feminist in a medieval world is coonish. I guess that pointing out how unconstructive it is to go "she wasn't a feminist so we shouldn't care about any possible effect her coming into power like the men before and after her have been able to will have an effect on other noble women's power to maybe implement some pro-women stuff in their own domains" to us analyzing why/how Rhaenyra is important to the history of Westeros and Daenerys is coonish.

I guess it's coonish of me to flout so many non-Nettles arguments of Rhaenyra's supposed bad leadership and amorality not once, but TWICE (that I remember), where it clearly just veers into straight up sexism: HERE and HERE....thus coming into why I even bother defending Rhaenyra (in some points).

It's not like I haven't already wrote several time in several posts how Rhaenyra's trying to get Nettles' head reveals much about the Targ-Andal paradigm she grows up in and tries to use to bolster herself through her going after Nettles to the end. It's not like I don't see how essentially different Daenerys and Rhaenyra are as people through the Nettles event as well as how they grow up and come into their positions of power and how/why they desire those roles:

It's not like I haven't already written about the Black Jezebel stereotype at least three times, including on Twitter and here. It's not like I have defended Nettles not just from "dettles" stans but also from people who call themselves Rhaenyra stans while bashing on Nettles and Mysaria, totally misunderstanding both characters and what even a supporting character is.

But sure, I'm a coon bc I don't want to ignore the journey of Rhaenyra's downfall and make distinct where she decided to destroy another woman vs her being the victim. Sure, I'm a whole coon.

And for the last fucking time, "compare" does not always or only mean "these two things are exactly alike and I will show you how"! "Comparison" analyses means that you will list out what traits or developments two things have, what inspirations, and see how they differ and how they don't. And through such a process, you will find out how many and how well/or not these two or more things are alike and how.

For Dany and Rhaenyra, I never said these girls/women were the same person. I said that both women, as women in male-designated positions of power, have to deal with people in world AND out of world must contend with misogynist feelings towards of their not deserving power or leadership on account of their gender, no matter what sort of characterization either had BECAUSE even with the main series not being like F&B, not being a history book, PEOPLE IN THE FANDOM STILL TEND TO MISREAD OR TWIST DANY'S ACTIONS AGAINST HER CHARACTER AND GRRM'S INTENT. Rhaenyra is meant to contextualize that very experience into a real event of catastrophe, she was set against ever since she was 10 bc she was female and another, older woman wanted power denied to her directly bc she was a woman. This is a fact, you nor I can change that. There is a difference between what we learn from the events to make the conclusions of who should rule ideally and what we should shoot for VERSUS thinking of the situation at hand for what it would have been like for the character.

F&B (having been written after the main series) continues even this "analysis" phenomenon; what do people choose to believe when it's a woman at the center of their stories?! No matter her real circumstances or their knowledge of things not present in their understanding of the world and of history?

I also mention, several times, how it is here, Rhaenyra's end, where the Targs lose their dragons because they have assimilated into the intenser patriarchal paradigm already mentioned to the point where they weakened their women's positions by denying them their autonomy and political powers...which plot sequence wise leads to the end of the dynasty as whole and Dany's exile. I'm must be a coon to not want Nettles, a 17 year old, to fuck a 50 year old, esp with her being his bio daughter. No, anon, I am too repulsed with direct vertical incest (parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, etc.).

Then there is how the Bloodstone Emperor and the Amethyst Empress and how the former usurped tha latter and plunged the entire world into mythological "darkness"--thus leading up to the importance of the Azor Ahai, aka Dany, directly seems to reflect how another brother--Aegon II--usurped his older sister--Rhaenrya--and thus the world loses a strong magical tool against darkness "dragons". An obvious link....

In fact, I tend to repeat how different they are as people! There's this whole thread talking abt the very thing I despise abt some critiques of Rhaenyra. I even say many times that Rhaenyra couldn't have the throne after the Nettles letter, that at that point, there needed a "refresh". Up until then, there was simply more reason for us to not think her a real terror except for maybe Addam and Alyn. But I have my misgivings there and it comes down to timing and grief.

No, Rosby and Stokeworth do not count and why? I already wrote why, but for someone who doesn't stan Rhaenyra or is not a fan of hers but actually stans just Daenerys--the previous ozymalek says:

I have myself said several times how I disliked how they rewrote show1Rhaenyra to make her a much less assertive version of herself, and I agree with others how they made her female-friendless. No matter how amoral or moral she was, similarly to Dany, people have written her sexistly in the show. I believe that this is CENTRAL to the point of F&B, how people refuse to see the point of it.

Finally, I really don't see how the hell show!Rhaenyra even is a Mary Sue or a NLOG, bc for the first, she displays no skill she excels over others at. A Mary Sue is:

Show!Rhaenyra, for some reason, seems "perfect" to some people. Esp with Luke saying so in epi 8. I never felt that way, I always thought she (older, not younger) was too meek and that is her great flaw---due to the sexist writing, but if kept at face value, that's the great flaw. Other definition: Who is inserting themselves into her character on the show? you got proof?

A NLOG (not like the other girls) is a Cersei like character who goes out of their way to destroy/diminish most women who are competitors for their power or destroy any semblance of socially-defined femininity and socially-coded feminine "weakness" so as to appeal to the male authority and get privileges. Problem is that EVERY SINGLE FEMALE MONARCH AND WOMAN IN SOME SORT OF AUTHORITY OVER MEN IN EVERY SINGLE PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY had to convince their male supporters that they were the one they should follow to some degree more than any male heir or candidate--during a time where they had to either fight for their "birthright" or they were planning coups (Catherine the Great), came into power through some accident, or whatnot--that their rule was in it for them. There is no pattern of woman-hating or self-hating to define Rhaenyra as a NLOG, where she consistently tries. NLOGs tend to hate women even in their own "race" or group for perceived acts of upheaval and destabilizing their positions of power. Alicent was and she uses misogyny to do so, so Alicent is not Rhaenyra's victim; other way around. Rhaenyra has all reason to despise Alicent, justified even. It's more than the positions, it's the whole targeting since 10 deal and trying to espouse Rhaenyra's inherent unworthiness for power.

So Rhaenyra deciding to do the Rosby/Stokeworth bit is her seeing how her greatest ally, a sexist man, has basically all her ships during wartime and insisting she does not give those girls their father's seats is Rhaenyra choosing wrongly, yes, but something I don't think that you or a small number of women would bow under considering the other shit she was going through. Yes, even black/PoC women. Again, this is not about Nettles but about women vs women (yes with them all being white or white-adjacent) bc I know that this will be the next thing some will say as a counterargument to what I'm saying here.

You are correct, however, in how similar Rhaenyra's behavior abt Nettles is pick-me-ish and NLOG concerning her intent to turn Daemon back to her and how this was her seeing Nettles as competition for "control" over Daemon, who was one of her principal military commands as well as her romantic partner...and like i said once before, this is a reflection on how this Andal-Targ patriarchal paradigm makes its own female "terrors" through misogyny. To ignore the process is to endanger its justified repetition. Yeah, Rhaenyra ends up becoming like Alicent in that way after the consistent losses, and I mean defaulting back to destroying another woman for a simulation of power. This doesn't mean that she was a feminist or that she didn't intend on using the Black Jezebel reasoning to get rid of "competition" to feel more in control. It does mean that her behavior reveals her enmeshment in the xenophobic, aristocratic, patriarchal Targ-Andal feudalist paradigm that she chooses to use to, again, construct more feelings of power at a time where she seemed to feel she was losing more and more--after the betrayals and the deaths of her sons in that moment. And yet if there is anything to be extracted from her narrative it is how that built-in classism (the companion and parent of racism) can become the thing these women default onto to retrieve/gain the agency & power denied to them. I believe this is also where you can draw a core similarity to Cersei, who is rather the starkest extreme example of that classism making up for her internalized misogyny through her Lannister Exceptionalism.

The discourse has to include how we, the readers, over-blame Rhaenyra for things she has either very little control over or what she had no control over and for trying to, again, assert herself (before Nettles). She's a reflection of her times and situation; doesn't mean she isn't still a victim. You don't need to like her. I never asked for people to do so. I don't care if you do or not, I've never needed that. Just don't lie or twist information or ignore clear patterns GRRM establishes that are also important, or try to erase the lines of harm done to her and undo the work GRRM is doing to point out this pattern of misogyny that contextualizes one very key aspect of Dany's journey: sexism doesn't care how good or classist you are, you are a woman so you will be subject to disenfranchisement, distortion of facts, and destruction...if you are not like Dany, who intuitively and "rationally" discovers lanes of power while reintegrating her being to the natural process and relationships between herself and her dragons for the ecological benefit of the entire world (the Others, again). Unlike Rhaenyra, Dany doesn't fall into the ideological "trap" or the noblewoman's save-grace of exploiting of lowborn people AND dragons but intelligently seeks other non-exploitative ways to use her dragons and those inspired by he bravery. This again, does not erase or override the sexism and specific elements of gender politics that tie these two together.

It's a paradox, not a contradiction.

[pens-in-a-jam-jar]

Hi- sorry, was forced to use my main bc for some reason Tumblr doesn't let me ask with my side account for rwd-

Who's who in your Utena au?

*fLAILING!!!* (also yea I think that's like. An intentional thing Tumblr does, not entirely sure why.)

Okay so we of course know Dani = Utena, VR-LA = Anthy. Starting with my strongest choices then going on in no particular order:

Roy is our Wakaba. He has to be. Roy fucking tackling Dani nearly sending both of them tumbling into the courtyard?? Dani initially joining in on the duels over his honor not knowing what the fuck she's truly getting herself into??? Roy being jealous over how much time she spends with VR-LA now???? The Black Rose Arc??????? It's so good It's So Good!!!

For my next strongest choice: MR-SN as Dios. Obviously. If I'm fucking with the theming to be less about gender roles and more about class/caste roles (as is the case when I've changed the 'because you're a girl' line into 'because you are nothing') then of course MR-SN needs to be the image of The Perfect Self-Made Captain In Charge.

However: the situation with Dios vs Akio is weird. Because everyone from Akio and Dios themselves to the visual language the show uses present the two of them as two completely separate people, and Anthy and her brother are clearly not mortal humans. Anthy has been suffering constantly for long enough that the event that started this and the folk tale version of the event passed down culturally bear next to no resemblance to one another. So we could frame it as Dios and Akio being different aspects of the same conceptual being. Dios died in the same way Pan greek god of the wild died. He's dead because people say he is, but he can never be gone forever. In Dios's case, he has been replaced by a version of himself that 'grew up' and 'lost his nobility'. He's still Anthy's older brother, but he is not Dios.

We're gonna make the call that they're to be represented by different characters and have DX-TR be Akio, mainly for his connection to VR-LA and the fact that he canonically killed Dani once.

Emi is Chu-Chu. Enough said. No notes.

I'm choosing a Nanami next because she's my favorite. Davion is our Nanami. Because think about it: Nanami is introduced lashing out at Anthy because Anthy is valued and coveted by the world and has the attention and (as far as Nanami can tell) affection of her older brother who Nanami sees as her whole world. It's infuriatingly unfair to her that Anthy would be (from Nanami's point of view) constantly rewarded with adoration and protection for what Nanami intuitively clocks as an act. Even if it's a 'there's no way, she's too good to be true' kind of impulse, she is right! Anthy performs this perfect feminine damsel image that everyone defines her by, and Nanami cannot fucking stand that seemingly everyone values Anthy over Nanami for ~performing well~. Anthy gets everything just for being fake and that's just not fair! What kind of vampiric freak does that on purpose??

If we are changing the themes to be about class roles and meritocracy instead of gender roles, of course Davion would make an excellent Nanami, because VR-LA himself says 'Competence is not a good look on you, Davion' in canon and he just fuckin' takes it. But what if he had reason to Fucking Hate VR-LA For It? Think of the drama: Davion calling VR-LA captain as a dig because they both know that's not his real station and VR-LA smiling back at him in that unsettling way Anthy smiles at Nanami. Davion realizing Dani is special for some ephemeral reason he doesn't understand despite knowing for a fact she's lower on the totem pole that him and VR-LA, and he shouldn't be bothered by the things she says and does But He Is! Davion being constantly suspicious of both of them yet constantly hovering around them trying to understand.

Another fun casting: Cassimere as Sayoji. Top notch I'd say. Do I even need to explain this one? The exchange diary scenes alone would be fucking hysterical, and the scene of Anthy fully dropping the way she used to speak to Sayonji but with VR-LA and Cassimere? Perfection.

If Cassimere is Sayonji, I would then posit K-LB as Touga and I know that's horribly cursed and their personalities aren't even a little similar, but like think about it: K-LB and Dani interacting with the leadership and ownership they're aiming for in wildly different ways the same way Touga and Utena interact with the idea of masculinity and princeliness in ways that cause them to clash yet that they both almost understand one another over. K-LB being close to DX-TR because DX-TR has promised him the way to view 'something eternal'. K-LB winning VR-LA and chatting with him all chipper-like asking him some of the same questions he's seen Dani ask him and getting different answers. K-LB trying one last time to make some kind of executive decision over Dani and VR-LA at the end, begging them not to listen to End of the World and Dani Just Not Trusting Him. I love it. Tastey drama.

I'm making Elyse, Love and Finbar my Shiori, Ruka, and Juri respectively. This feels really mean to Specifically Elyse but also the three of them would be So Fucking Good for this??? I promise, I promise it's a good idea. I'm so sorry Elyse.

Kyana and Ione as Miki and Kozue? The fuckin' Tastey Drama??? Codependency my (fictional) beloved!! The duels with Miki and Utena, but with Kyana and Dani CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Oh god. I Completely On Accident made it so the badminton scene would be happening between the 3 non-VR-LA members of the og crew absjdhskzbazoxbxg

[mad-hatter5709]

Part 1, probably will be a part two, but I can't promise anything.

“Damian, where did that baby come from?” Tim looks worried, as if he had stolen the baby.

“Tt. Don’t worry about it. Help me keep them from Father. He will inevitably try to adopt the child, but they are mine.” There’s a possessive edge to Damian’s voice, somehow fond in his curt, formal way of speaking.

Damian didn’t know how this happened. He was hung up on idiotic what ifs, but he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what would have happened had he been able to take his clones away before they were brainwashed, had they still been infants. Surely he would be a horrible father.

He looked up, and where a burger place had been, there was now another building. The sign on the front said “Supernatural Clone Adoptions”. He was merely curious. He was 14, much too young to be a father. But he still walked into the building, expecting a rundown, small place with a few babies and young children, maybe a teen around his age or something. Instead, he walked into a luscious field, covered in flowers and bumble bees, trees on a hill a few minutes’ walk away, and over a hundred babies and children, basking in the sunlight, two teens looking to be a bit older than him teaching the older kids how to read and write in the shade of a gazebo, keeping an eye on the rest of the kids as they do. Suddenly, a toddler runs into Damian’s legs, and falls over. Immediately, one of the teens comes running, looking over the kid and picking them up, staring at Damian.

“Oh, hello. You’ve come to adopt, yes? I must say, you look remarkably like a few of the kids. Come to the gazebo, we can talk in the shade.” The teen, a male, speaks, and gestures Damian over to the gazebo. Damian walks over, relaxed but cautious. The other teen, a female, looks up and sees him, greeting him warmly as the male teen soothes the toddler and kisses his forehead.

“Hello, you must be here to adopt. You’re looking for a baby, yes? We have plenty. Oh, where are my manners? I’m Dani, and this is my brother Dan. We run the place. We act as a sort of.. clone protective services? We care for the clones, and make sure to keep them safe from nefarious people. What’s your name? Are you looking for a boy or a girl?” Dani looks at him warmly, holding a baby girl in her arms and rocking her gently as the baby sleeps.

“I’m Damian. But I wasn’t- I’m not-” Damian is quickly cut off.

“oh, nice to meet you Damian! I have just the baby for you, if you’re trustworthy. We don’t know that you’ll be a good father to him, after all.” Dan smirks, not that Damian sees it, and suddenly Damian feels offended.

“Are you insinuating I can’t take care of a child? I am amazing with children, I’ll have you know. I would love that child like they were my own, and I have no problems providing for them. Just because they were a clone, doesn’t mean I would love them any less. I have seen what that can do to a person, my best friend’s a clone and his DNA donor was horrible to him. The donor’s changed, luckily, and they now have a very good father/son relationship. I have never once implied or even thought he was less of a person just because he was created in a lab instead of a womb. I was born in an artificial womb myself.” Damian may have gotten a little carried away, but to think these people he barely knew would say he was incapable of caring for a child!

Dani looks at Damian for a minute, then looks at Dan, and Damian feels a low humming before both Dani and Dan turn to him, and smile.

“I’ll show you him, he’s enraptured by the flowers.” Dan gets up, the toddler he was consoling now playing with the other children, and walks over to a small child, picking him up, and handing him to Damian. Damian looks at the baby in his arms, and holds him close supporting his head. He rocks from side to side gently, as he has seen Richard so with small children after rescues, and he can barely stop himself from cooing at the child.

Masterlist

Dani should Kidnap The Clones.

It's basicly protective custody. Preemptive child services, if you will. NONE of these fuckers out here makin adorable clone baby just cause they want kids!

*kicks down the door to your shady lab* Knock Knock! ITS THE POLICE! *Walker's Shock troopers swarm the place as Dani secures the kids*

Look me in the eyes. You KNOW he'd love an excuse to enforce The Rules on people technically outside his jurisdiction. It's for The Children(tm)! Why, he simply had no CHOICE!

Meanwhile? Dani is shoving all these mal-adjusted Murder Clones into her Lair? Which is? Basicly a Door style Lair she hid inside Danny's Lair for safe keeping. It's shoved behind a vending machine just outside the observatory. And the inside? Goes on for DAYS.

Like national parks and every beautiful beach she ever came across. She smashed together the BEST sights and places she's found in her travels, like a collection. Always adding more. New waterfalls, new noodle shops, new fields of wine grapes. It's... beautiful. Snapshots of every wonderous little thing about Earth, stitched together.

They can't hurt anyone. Can't achieve their "objectives". Are just treated like actual individuals and the children they truely are. Are surrounded by other Clones. So it's NORMAL here. Just? All of it.

But also?

Dani and Dan? Teaming up to make History's Scariest Adoption Agency(TM). Dan runs it. Dan wants to know why EXACTLY you want a kid. Explain yourself to Dan. What are your references? Qualifications. He's doing a home visit to inspect the premises. He BETTER not find any suspicious Labs.

And? It just? Appears out of nowhere. It's powered by Zone Bullshit. One second you're thinking "oh woe is me D:> I will never have a child to fill my lovely home, because of all my Superhero Secrets and also because government bureaucracy!" And the next?

.....wasn't that an out of business taco bell? "Zone Adoptions"?

"....Free Clone Baby?"

Okay that is HIGHLY suspicious and as a hero you are basicly legally obligated to investigate. But now it's bigger on the inside? Fancy waiting room? You are being interrogated? Wait, no, you're supposed to be the one doing the-?

Somehow? You leave with your Clone Son from another Dimension. And a pamphlet. You're scheduled for a home visit in three days. You... you never told them where you live.

Somehow that doesn't seem like it will slow them down.

Did the Fae just Suprise Baby you with a clone baby? Can they DO that? W... what's happening? What days is this? Who ARE YOU PEOPLE?! HUH!?!?

Just? Imagine. IMAGINE. I was gonna say Bruce... but?

Damian.

He finds himself... pondering What Could Have Been. Had his Clones not wanted him dead. Wondering if he could have saved them. If, perhaps, he had found them as infants. Raised them. Could he have given them a good life? Been a good father?

He gets emotional. Fatherly. He's about 14.

Dan's been around Ghosts too long to remember how humans age or how age relates to development. This one TALKS like An Adult. Must be one. Probably just short.

And Damian? Never backs down. The second Dan starts challenging him? His character is flawless and his morals divine. He has never done anything wrong, ever, in his LIFE. Fuck you. And on TOP of that? He not only will be the SINGLE GREATEST FATHER TO EVER FATHER, his home is the most loving and beloved ON THE PLANET!

In entirety of EARTH'S history, no less!

....what are they arguing about?

*is handed a baby and kicked out of Dan's adoption agency*

See you in a few days!

(o.o ) *happy gurgling from the baby* *Damian.exe has stopped working*

Smash cut, after Damian speed runs his stages of grief at his own Dumbass Life Choices, to his rocking back up at the Manor like? Congratulations, Father. I have brought you your first grandson! Do Not ask how I obtained him. It was likely dubiously legal but I will not be returning him. We have bonded.

And just? Annihilating the collective Bats on one go. You did what? You have What?! That is a baby! WHY IS THERE A BABY?! How is there a baby!? WHOS BABY!? *sirens going off and everyone panicking*

Will Damian be allowed to KEEP the Baby? Ha! Hell no. Bruce will. Damian is a child. But it will be a Needlessly Dramatic Bat Cold War Of Dramatic Drama to pry that small cherubic baby from his grip long enough for Bruce to fill out the paperwork.

Child thieving bastard that he is. How dare he. That is Damian's SON! D:<

*happy oblivious baby noises as Alfred feeds him in the background, while the Bats do their Dramatic Custody War*

@hdgnj @babbling-babull @hypewinter @nerdpoe @lolottes @mutable-manifestation

[codenameantarctica]

Daenerys vs Aegon

So, after reading a bit into comments and theories about Young Griff/Aegon - which I certainly should not have done because many of those are really appalling – it seems that basically Dany is a total Queen for the same things for which Aegon gets mocked and abused. LOL!

And that’s when comparing them is completely nonsensical anyway.

It’s measuring up »Character A«, that we saw very little of and have no insight (POV) into, to »Character B«, that we have hundreds of pages on (both 3rd Person and POV) – and then judge »Character A« on the grounds of »Character B«.

From the tiny bits we saw of Aegon, it’s not even possible to create a reliable characterization – not if you’re not just trying to shove bias into the gaps as it suits you and execute some wishful condemnation.

For example, one of the accusations towards Aegon that I read quite commonly is that he is arrogant. Not that I would even see that between the lines – but that’s where I am as positively biased towards him as others are negatively biased towards him. Yet apart from that, Dany has a whole lot of scenes – every time she acts as a Khaleesi or Queen in particular – where she is arrogant or at least tries to be. Furthermore, she constantly goes on about all her titles, about being the blood of the dragon, and demands her people to cross the world with her to get her the throne she believes to be hers. That she is fearing and doubting and insecure, we only know from her POV – and the only reason why we do not know about Aegon’s inner monologue is that we did not see any yet. That, however, does not mean that he is a plain, empty caricature who is all that little bit of Tyrion- and JonCon-POV and nothing more. GRRM does not create plain caricature characters – so it’s very unlikely that there is not very much more to his character than the little we saw.

Another accusation often read is that he is naive and inexperienced – and for this, he is compared to Dany, Jon or Robb. But they WERE exactly that: Naive and inexperienced. They grew from it, but they have been with us for a very long time. We saw them grow from being little more than a child to the characters they are today, or to their demise. But Aegon has been sheltered away until basically today. He studied the world, but he has no experience with people. He, just like the others, will either grow or find his demise. Robb was hugely naive throughout his whole campaign, he was just lucky for a while. He headed out to safe, then avenge his father, and it got turned into a wanna-be-king-megalomania. Dany was a scared, little mouse until she found the strength to grow. Jon was as entitled as a bastard could be and pretty arrogant at that until Donal Noye and the rest of the Night’s Watch set his head right. Or take Renly who proved to be stubborn and naive beyond anything when his entire justification for wanting to supplant his older brother was: “people like me more than Stannis“.

Aegon has no tale like that YET. He has been on a boat, hidden away, sheltered. He is just starting out into the world. So comparing him to where Jon and Dany are today, or where Renly and Robb were before they ended, is really absurd. No matter how far the rest of the story is advanced, he is still at the beginning.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: Dany is a wholesome, fascinating character. She has her flaws and strengths because she is not just a caricature. But exactly that is what makes the way Aegon is treated so unfair.

And regardless if he is Aegon or only Young Griff, he is a boy of ~16 who has not seen much of the world. Yes, Daenerys is younger, but she has also been through a lot of shit already – which is not Aegon’s fault, nor is it his fault, that he is inexperienced.

Yes, he assumes that Daenerys will marry him – but so does Daenerys! When she thinks about the son of her older brother at one time, she believes that, had the boy lived, she would have married him because it would have been natural. Targaryens did that sort of thing. Daenerys grew up with that knowledge, just as Aegon did. The idea, that Dany might have a different idea on the matter, makes Aegon react angrily, though it’s not clear whether he is angry that he has been treated like he is a stupid child by Tyrion, whether he feels offended by the idea that Dany might not accept his hand in marriage – or whether he is completely shocked by the idea that all the stuff he has been fed his whole life might not work out as smoothly. It is so easy to read »spoiled brat« into that, but this is only Tyrion’s POV – and Tyrion was in a very bleak mood at that time. We see Aegon being friendly and gentle, laughing and joking, smart and a good student, helping and even saving Tyrion – yet it is that one moment at the Cyvasse Board that people use to judge his character – though that moment was so much more soul wrenching to him that just him losing the game.

All in all, judging Aegon on the same grounds as judging Daenerys makes absolutely no sense. Nothing of this is his doing, either. He is a young boy who is still trying to find his bearings in a world that probably consists only of lies. He might be just a pawn in a play, or he might be the last dragon, and then he is the rightful heir – no matter if Daenerys likes that or not.

[highlifeboat]

A week.

Bela had been at Donna’s for a week, and Cassandra was slowly being eaten away by the guilt. Daniela moped around and kept asking her moms when Bela was going to come back, but they couldn’t give her a straight answer. It was always “Soon” or “When she’s ready”, and that only seemed to make the redhead pout more. Alcina had gone to Donna’s just the other day to try and convince her eldest to come home, but had returned alone. Cassandra couldn’t eat, and didn’t sleep.

She didn’t often blame herself so much over fights with Bela. Her older sister was sensitive and most of the time Cassandra had considered her crying an overreaction but…. She knew this time it wasn’t.

She knew she’d gone too far, and she hated the feeling it gave her.

That’s probably why she was making the trek to Donna’s house alone in the first place. She was tired of hearing Daniela cry about missing Bela. She was tired of her mother looking stressed about it, and Mia and Zoe trying to tell her it would be okay. She was tired of not knowing if Bela was even still mad at her.

She was tired of fighting with her sister.

And as she banged on the manor’s door, she hoped Bela felt the same.

Cassandra anxiously shifted in place as she waited, rubbing her knuckles together until the door creaked open to reveal Donna and Angie. Donna tilted her head at her niece.

“Do you wanna see Bela?” Angie asked, and Cassandra gave a small nod. “Oooh, I dunno. She’s not gonna be happy!”

“Angie, I swear to God-” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please, Donna, I really need to talk to her.”

The black clad woman let out a low hum, then nodded, motioning for Cassandra to stay where she was as she went to fetch the blonde. The middle sister started to shift again. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to say. She didn’t have anything thought out, and she didn’t have time either, but in a minute Bela stood in front of her, and Cassandra swallowed. She didn’t look… pissed, just tired and upset.

“What do you want?” Bela asked, holding onto the door.

Cassandra struggled to find her voice for a moment. “Uh… I… want you to come home.” She muttered. “Dani misses you, and so does Mother, and Mom, and Ma. And I miss you…” She rubbed her knuckles together.

Bela crossed her arms. “I didn’t go home with Mother, why would I go with you?”

“Because, uh…” Cassandra looked at her feet. “Because… Because I’m sorry?” Bela raised an eyebrow. “I-I know I can be a shitty person, and that it doesn’t seem like I care about you, or your feelings, but I do and I’m sorry. I-I’m sorry for everything.”

The blonde pursed her lips, looking down at the brunette. “...What you said really fucked with me, Cassandra….” She muttered.

“I know.”

“I hear that type of stuff a lot. Mostly from Mother Miranda….” They both wrinkled their noses at the name. “And it hurts in a way you can't understand, but I can deal with that. Hearing it from you, though…. It’s different. It's like being stabbed through the chest."

“I-I know.”

They shared a moment of silence.

“Do you really think I’m… n-not a real girl?” Bela eventually muttered, and Cassandra stared at her with wide eyes.

“No!” Cassandra yelled. “You’re more of a girl than I am! Even before the-I mean when you-Back when-Goddamn it-” She cursed herself. “You’ve always been a girl, Bela! If you feel like a girl, you ARE a girl! No matter what anyone else tells you, you’re my sister. My amazing, beautiful, sometimes bitchy, big sister. A-And I’m happy you are, even when I don’t act like it….” She played with her hands. “What I said, I didn’t mean it. Honestly, I didn’t. I-I was angry, and upset, and… i-it’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have said it at all. I’m really sorry, Bela.”

Bela was quiet for a minute, then sighed. “I’m sorry, too. I said stuff I didn’t mean….” She leaned against the doorframe. “I’m just… tired of fighting with you, Cass….” Cassandra’s ears perked up at the nickname. “We both pushed each other. And I’m sorry, if I hurt you.”

“....Awkward sibling hug?” Cassandra offered, opening her arms, and Bela let out a huffed laugh.

“Awkward sibling hug.” She repeated, and the two shared a minute long embrace before letting each other go. “But if you ever say that shit again, I’ll take out your bones and rearrange them with your organs.” Bela deadpanned, and Cassandra gave a nervous laugh.

“Good threat….”

“Oh, it’s a promise.” The older sister smiled. “Let me say goodbye to aunt Donna and Angie, and I’ll take you home.”

Cassandra blinked, watching Bela disappear inside for a moment.

Well, at least she wasn’t mad at her anymore.

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Max Dennison

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

- You met Max after he moved to Salem. The two of you were in the same History class and sat fairly close to each other. Because of this; and the fact that you’re drop dead gorgeous, he quickly developed a crush on you.

- It doesn’t take long for him to shoot his shot but there is a period in time where he’s waiting for the right moment to say something and just doing the typical “I have a crush on you” things.

- When Max has a crush, he’ll do whatever he can to see them more; making sure he’s behind them on his bike as they begin to walk home, sneaking glances at them in class, strategically sitting at a lunch table where he’ll be able to watch them or standing close to their locker.

- Once he’s had enough of just watching, he’ll move on to using any excuse he can to seem cool and/or talk to them. This is usually when he begins to come up with a plot to ask them out and it’s not long after that he actually does so.

- Max asks you out only about a week or so after he moves to Salem. He was just planning on giving you his phone number or asking if you’d like to hang out sometime but things didn’t really go as planned.

- He’d wanted to go out and explore the town by himself but his parents forced him to take Dani with him while they continued to unpack. So, he begrudgingly let his sister join him on his adventure, figuring that the worst that could happen was her slowing him down and slightly annoying him.

- They’d gotten a good ways into town without a hitch; besides Dani forcing him to pick flowers, and Max had just about let his guard down. Well, that was until he saw you.

- He immediately froze in place, greeting you in surprise as you just so happened to turn and spot them. Dani immediately connected the dots as to who you were, she’d heard her brother secretly fawn over you more than once.

- It was only after you glanced down at his hand that Max remembered he was holding his sisters wildflower bouquet. He laughed nervously, raising his hand a bit and trying to make himself seem less like a loser as he explained he was looking after his little sister …and her flowers.

- While Dani is undoubtedly an adorable sweetheart, she is also somewhat devious. She uses this delightful coincidence to get her way, mentioning that Max was “just about to take her to the park”. He was just about ready to kill her before you chimed in.

“Aww, that’s so sweet!” Bingo.

- He immediately acted as though that was the plan all along and invited you to join them while Dani smiled at her obvious success. A cute boy asking you to go to the park with him and his little sister, why wouldn't you agree?

- So you joined the two of them, laughing and watching on fondly as he played with Dani and getting to know each other more and more whenever she went off to do something on her own. You wound up staying there for hours and probably would have stayed even longer if Dani hadn’t mentioned that her feet hurt and that she was tired. 

- If Max had learned anything at all, he learned that you thought it was cute when he was nice to his sister, so he offered her a piggyback ride as the three of you walked home. When you arrived at your house, he set Dani down and walked you to your door. 

”Well, if you ever want to go to the park again, you know who to call.” He smiled, handing you his number before joining back with his sister. 

“Dani? Have I ever told you that I loved you?” The little girl couldn't help but smile at her goofy older brother. 

- The two of you had your first actual date a few days later. He took you to the movies, then to go get some ice cream, and finally you wound up back at the park you’d gone to, sitting on the swing and eating your dessert. 

- He told you that you had something on your face, smiling as he leant in and kissed the corner of your mouth before slowly making his way to your lips. 

- It was in that moment; with your lips pressed against his, that Max thought to himself maybe Salem wasn’t so bad after all. 

- Innocent pda all the time. He just can’t help himself when you’re standing right there and looking so adorable.

- Handholding whenever you can. You swear he’s gonna learn how to be ambidextrous with how much he wants to keep your hand in his.

- Soft, chaste kisses.

- Cheek kisses. He can never hold back a smile when you give him one.

- He likes keeping his arm around your waist while you walk together. He likes how perfectly you fit into his side.

- Tight hugs. He does that thing where you give the person a squeeze and sorta sway with them while you hug, it’s very nice.

- Hugs from behind. He always presses a kiss to your head before he pulls away.

- This boy literally daydreams about cuddling his crush; he’d adore cuddling you anytime, anyplace. He usually wants to be the big spoon but he’d be up for any type of snuggling.

- He leans his head on yours whenever you rest your head on his shoulder.

- Hanging out with him in his widows walk, stargazing or watching the sunset/sunrise.

- He really doesn’t care what the two of you do as long as you’re together.

- Typical teenager dates: going bowling or roller skating, watching movies, getting pizza or ice cream; things like that.

- He tries to make you laugh with little impressions and exaggerative comedic routines.

- Getting teased a lot. He’ll pop out from behind corners to spook you, jokingly mock you and your little superstitions, and attack you from behind, wrapping his arms around you and growling while nuzzling his face into your neck. He thinks your reactions are cute.

- Watching him play his drums. Sometimes he’ll try and teach you how to play, othertimes he’ll just try to show off.

- He really wants you to think he’s cool and to be in awe of him. He’s constantly trying to show off and peacock for your attention.

- He’s quite fond of nicknames and pet names. He uses special ones though, something uniquely you.

- He keeps your photo framed on his nightstand or tucked under his pillow. He kisses it like every morning and night, occasionally talking to it when you’re mad at him or when he doesnt know what to do in a situation. It’s cute ...in an odd way.

- He’s in awe of you everytime he sees you dressed up or after a long time of not seeing each other. Sometimes he just can’t believe how beautiful you are.

- The amount of doodles he’s made of you while in class couldn’t even fit in a normal sketchbook.

- Dani is always interrupting the two of you, busting into his room and jumping between you as you sit on his bed or forcing her way between you two on the couch. She winds up accompanying you on a few of your dates, especially when his parents are busy. He can’t say he’s completely upset about it though, he likes watching you interact with her.

- You and her are probably best friends and occasionally hang out on your own without Max. She’s definitely spilled some embarrasing facts/secrets about Max whether one front of him or not.

- He’s sort of embarrassed by his family and their shenanigans. He turns bright red whenever they start acting all excited/childish. You cant imagine his relief when you assure him that you think its cute.

- He has a little sister so even though he’s a fairly typical teenage boy; he has that “I actually respect females” mindset. To an extent of course, he still can’t help but think about your yabbos from time to time.

- There isn’t a lot that grosses him out anymore since he was already a little grown up by the time his parents had Dani. He had to go through all those yucky baby phases so he has no problem holding your hair as you puke, bandaging your cuts, dealing with periods, wiping dirt off of you, and so on. Life’s gross, he’s accepted that a long time ago.

- Standing up for him. He finds it both embarrassing and touching at the same time.

- Letting him rant to you about how much he misses LA. He always absentmindedly adds on that you’re the only good thing to come out of Salem and it never fails to make you melt.

- Comforting him. He has a tendency to blame himself when things go wrong or work himself into a fit when something bad happens. You try to make sure he doesn't while also making him feel better. He’s always there for you when you need it as well.

- He’s a sweetheart and an adorable one at that. He’s always trying to make you feel better whenever he can and; overall, just being super nice to you. Making sure you’re happy is very important to him.

- He’s got a hard time keeping his mouth shut; he just cant help but say what he wants and not inconspiciously or very quietly either. You’ll oftentimes have to get him out of a situation before he starts more trouble than there has to be.

- Bringing out the best in each other.

- He sends a glance your way whenever someone mentions lovers, couples, or otherwise romantic things. It’s sort of like he’s saying “yeah, I’ve got one of those” or making future plans for the two of you in his head.

- Riding your bikes together or walking alongside him while he purposefully keeps pace with you on his.

- Going on stupid little adventures. They may be a bit reckless but they sure are fun.

- He’s somewhat of a pushover. He can very rarely resist your pleading/puppy dog eyes, especially when its combined with affection. You could genuinely stop him in his tracks with a single touch.

- You’ve definitely convinced him to let you put a face mask on him, braid his hair or do his makeup. Dani may or may not have been present or at least walked in on the two of you. She has not let him live it down since.

- He’s not scared of the supernatural; at least not yet, or spiders/insects, so he leaps at the chance to “protect you”. He tells you to “fear not” as he “vanquishes the beast”, delicately pushing you behind him and killing the thing or calling out to whatever ghouls may be lurking around.

- He insists in walking you home, mainly because it gives him the chance to spend more time with you.

- A trait he’s developed as an older brother is being protective of his loved ones. He won’t let anything happen to you; if he can help it, and usually has a pretty good plan when trying to get you out of trouble.

- He’s not an extremely jealous person. People being outwardly flirty or interested in you would tick him off but he reasons that you want him, not them and then he’s fine. Old boyfriends don’t bother him either, he’s your new and improved boyfriend; what would you want with them.

- He lashes out when he’s upset so you’ve definitely had your fair share of fights though they never last for very long. He immediately feels bad when he notices he’s actually hurt you and does whatever he can to apologize.

- He starts off with a genuine apology before he trying to explain himself, making a few little comments to try and get you to smile afterwards. Once you seem to forgive him, he shyly opens his arms and smiles as you go to hug him.

- He tells you that he loves you a lot; he just can’t help it. Everything you do makes him want to shout it out to the world.

- Prior to meeting you, he didn’t want to go to Salem at all, but now that he has you? He can’t bring himself to even think about leaving it.

[thiswasinevitableid]

For the meet Ugly- 13 with Danbrey?

Here you go! I went SFW on this one

13: we make contact before trying to steal the last seat on the subway/bus/train and I end up in your lap and fuck you, I’m going to stay here because I’ve had a really long day and this seat was mine

The bus is not as fun as she remembers.

When Aubrey was a little kid, her mom would use the bus to take her to the museum or the movies or, on the best days, the magic store. Yes, the Little’s had a nice car, but her mom believed that not only was the bus better for the environment, it was a way to remember that there was nothing scary about being around people who come from all sorts of circumstances (Aubrey later learned this was due to her mom once being at a PTA meeting where hands were rung over children using public transportation being exposed to “unsavory” people).

“The world is full of all kinds of people, firebug. That’s not something to be scared of.”

She wipes her eye surreptitiously under the West Virginia sun. You’d think she’d have learned not to think about mom in public by now.

The bus line she’s using for her tour is inexplicably crowded; half these towns are on their way to being ghosts but somehow she’s always fighting for a seat. She doesn’t like her chances for this leg of the ride, since she got distracted reading about the history of Doc Martens and ended up towards the back of the line.

By some luck, there’s one seat left as she squeezes onto the bus, using her body to keep people from elbowing the fabric carrier containing Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD. But in the time she takes to turn to sit, someone else slips into the spot, so fast it’s almost inhuman.

“Um, excuse me, but this was my seat.” She turns to confront the thief and finds herself looking at a young woman about her age, with honey-blonde hair and hazel eyes which, were she not tired and grumpy, Aubrey would have lots of compliments for.

“No, it wasn’t. I got here first. You’ll just have to stand.”

“That’d be fine if it were just me.” The bus pulls away from the curb, “but it’s bad for Dr. Harris Bonkers to be suspended for too long.” She adjusts the bunny bag, hoping his big brown eyes and wiggly nose will make her case for her.

“Awww” the blonde coos, booping him through the mesh, “don’t worry little guy, you aren’t going too far. You’ll be fine if your person stands for a little bit.”

“It’s not a little bit, it’s twelve hour trip to my next stop!”

A smile full of understated charm and triumph, “It’s thirteen to mine.”

“Aw beans.”

“......are you going to get out of my lap at any point?”

“No” Aubrey turns her head to look out the window, “this is a good seat, even if there’s someone in it. I’m staying.”

It’s not her finest moment, to be sure. But she’s tired and heartsick so she is staying in this seat, damn it. The other woman grumbles something and slumps back against the black seat.

They hit the next stop, but not enough people get off, so she stays in her mystery lady’s lap. Her seat(mate) pulls a baggie of granola from the pocket of her definitely-not-cute-at-all overalls and crunches it louder than necessary by her ear.

“Uh, your rabbit is trying to get out.”

Aubrey glances down to see the mesh front straining as Dr. Harris Bonkers attempts to reach the granola.

“Don’t beg, young man, it’s rude.”

“Can he have a piece?” She holds up a dried strawberry.

“Um, sure.” Aubrey watches as she unzips the top of the carrier and let’s the rabbit nibble the treat from her hand. Aubrey’s a little jealous.

They don’t say anything to each other, but the rabbit gets two more treats before they reach the next stop. The person who’s spent the whole trip asleep in the window seat next to them jerks awake and hurries off the bus. Aubrey scoots into it before anyone can dare challenge her.

They’ve just turned onto the highway when she says, “Thanks. For, um, for sharing your granola.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And I’m, um, I’m sorry for sitting on you.”

“Yeah that wasn’t great, but if someone was going to sit on me I’m glad it’s the cutest passenger on the bus.” She points at Dr. Harris Bonkers, but keeps her eyes on Aubrey.

“We’re both kinda tired. We had a show late last night and we’re nervous for the one tomorrow.”

“Show?”

“I’m a magician and he’s my assistant. I’m known as the Lady Flame” she snaps and finger-guns, setting off a flashpaper, “but you can call me Aubrey.”

“Ma’am, no smoking on the bus!”

“Sorry!” She calls to the driver.

“I’m Dani” the blond boops Dr. Harris Bonkers again, “whose this guy?”

“Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD.”

“Nice to meet you, doctor.”

“Are, um, are you just traveling for fun?” She unzips the carrier enough for them both to pet him.

“Not really. I was running an, uh, an errand. I’ll be glad to get back to Kepler.” She fiddles with something in her pocket, “could I see more of your act?”

“I think that might get me thrown off the bus.”

“Don’t you have pictures?” Dani smiles.

“Oh duh, right, here, I even got someone to take some videos.” She scooches closer, Dani closing the remaining distance to rest their shoulders together. As they move through the videos, Dani is noticeably excited, even claps a few times. When Aubrey’s battery dies, they say “fuck” in sync.

“...want to play ‘I Spy?”

“Hell yeah.”

The next three hours pass in a flash, the two of them laughing and trading stories, all the while both cuddling closer to the window (to better play the game, of course).

They reach a travel hub, the driver informing everyone that they’ll leave in an hour on the dot. The two of them select a Dennys, since in Aubrey’s experience they tend to ignore her bringing in an eighteen pound rabbit.

She charges her phone while they eat, Dani getting corned beef hash, (“not as good as the one my friend makes back home”) while Aubrey has pancakes. She gets a little syrup on her cheek and nearly asks Dani to clean it off for her. With her tongue.

It’s dark when they get back to their seats, but the driver keeps the A.C cranked to the point that Aubrey is shivering. Dani pulls a shawl from her backpack, draping it around them both like a blanket as the trees become nothing more than vague shapes in the dark.

They talk about Aubrey’s tattoos, about the garden Dani has back home (“lots of veggies, you’d like that, wouldn’t you buddy?”). Last night starts catching up with Aubrey, yawns threatening to steal her attention from the way the light catches in Dani’s hair.

“Wanna see more videos?” That’s low energy flirtation, right?

“Of course.”

As she opens the videos, she hits an older album and an image of her and her mom fills the screen. She freezes, like the highbeams of the past are barrelling towards her and all she can do is watch.

“Aubrey?” Dani touches her cheek.

“Um, sorry.” She shoves the phone in the pocket of her jacket, “I, my, my mom died a little while ago. That was her. Um. I guess that was obvious. Sorry.”

Dani’s fingers find hers, interlacing them gently, “I’m so sorry, Aubrey. I...I get it. My family is, well I made some choices that mean I’ll never get to see them again. I, the reason I went on this trip was because I heard one of my brothers might have, uh, done the same thing. He hadn’t.” She sighs, “I don’t even know if they’re all still alive.”

“That sucks. This all. Fucking. Sucks.”

Dani nods, rests their heads together, “You know what doesn’t suck? Meeting you.”

“Pfffft” Aubrey smiles through her tears, hoping the joking noise will hide her blush.

Dani cups her cheeks, “I’m serious. Getting to know you feels like, like rounding a corner and seeing your house after years away. I, this is going to sound silly but please tell me you’re stopping in Kepler for a show?”

“I’m not but I, um, I guess I could still stop off there? If you really wanted me to.” Something about Dani’s smile, the warmth in her eyes, soothes her grief to sleep for now.

“I do, fireblossom, so much.”

Aubrey blushes, “Think you might be my first fan; no one else ever requests a show.”

Dani kisses her cheek, “I might even request one in private.”

“I could get into that” she yawns, “damn it, I don’t wanna sleep. I wanna keep flirting with you, cutie pie.”

Dani shifts their luggage, scoots sideways and guides Aubrey’s head down into her lap, “Get some rest, Aubrey. Just being able to look at you is enough for me.”

“Awww” Aubrey nestles against her stomach, “you’re so cute...just a...cutie...pie...zzz”

The last thing she feels is a kiss on the forehead and Dani tucking the shawl around her.

-----------------------------------------------

Aubrey does not want to get off this bus; Dani is cuddled up next to her, telling her about what kind of flowers she’d grow her, when he stops come up.

“Whelp….this is me.”

Dani helps her off the bus, passing her the carrier containing a sleeping Dr. Harris Bonkers. Then she smirks, “is your balance pretty good.”

“Yeah? Wh-mmphhoh” She holds tight as Dani nearly knocks her off her feet in a kiss. She tastes like the strawberry poptart they split for breakfast and is not making it any easier to say goodbye.

“Promise you’ll come see me in Kepler?’ Dani murmurs against her lips.

“Promise.”

A kiss on the nose, then a longer one on the mouth that makes Aubrey feel like she’s going to go up flashpaper. Then Dani is gone, off towards Kepler. A town Aubrey has no knowledge of and no idea how to navigate. And she didn’t get Dani’s last name.

“Fuck.” She says to the rabbit.

The rabbit simply snuffles in reply.

-------------------------------------

A few hours after her most catastrophic show to date and getting a gun pointed at her, Aubrey walks into Amnesty Lodge and finds a certain face, haloed with golden hair, waiting for her by the fireplace.

[jaskierswolf]

I Can Do Better

Prompt: Cockwarming Relationships:  Valdo/Jaskier Rating: E Content Warnings: smut, humiliation, cock warming, dom/sub relationship, sub!Jaskier, orgasm denial Summary: After Jaskier disrupts Valdo's class at Oxenfurt, Valdo decides to treat Jaskier a lesson. 

For @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

Also a prompt fill for the wonderful @hailhailsatan​. I hope I did your idea justice! Thanks to @officerjennie​ and @dani-dandelino​ for giving this a read through.

__________

Jaskier strutted down the corridors of Oxenfurt, tubes of parchment in his arms, whistling a merry tune. His long overcoat whipped around his legs when walked, giving him a dramatic flare that he adored. Honestly, the dress code for the professors at the university was one of the main reasons he kept returning each winter, that and the extra coin. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the infuriatingly handsome Valdo Marx, his rival since they were both teenagers and budding young bardlings. Valdo had always gotten under Jaskier’s skin. He was a year older and Jaskier had really looked up to him in his first year. That all changed when Valdo decided to steal Jaskier’s work. So naturally, Jaskier had stolen Valdo’s work right back, and thus their infamous rivalry began. 

The sex had come shortly after. 

There was just something about wrestling another man to the ground in a local tavern that made Jaskier feel flustered. It was inherently homoerotic, their hands grappling at each other’s clothes, gripping tightly as they both tried to get the upper hand, and well, Jaskier was easily seduced. He’d been hard by the time he’d managed to pin Valdo on his back, his heart racing from more than just the exercise. A bead of sweat had trickled down Valdo’s temple and his skin was glistening in the candlelight, looking completely and utterly debauched under Jaskier’s thighs. That had been his demise. Valdo had taken advantage of his distraction and overthrown him. The two bardlings had barely made it back to their room before they were kissing and panting, trapped in a heated embrace. 

And it had never really stopped. 

They’d snipe and snap at each other with every breath… until they were alone. Once they were alone then all pretenses went out of the window. Valdo easily took charge and to Jaskier’s surprise… he let him. The confidence that oozed from his rival turned lover was intoxicating, and Jaskier wanted to please him. He wanted to submit in a way that he rarely did. The rules between them were quickly established as they began to explore the new side of their relationship, making mistakes and finding solutions until it was almost as easy as breathing. 

As adults and professors at the university, nothing had really changed from their days as students. Jaskier only taught for a term during the winter. He was still, primarily, a travelling bard, and barker to the White Wolf. So he liked to make the best of his time with Valdo. 

Even if that meant harassing the professor in his classroom. 

Jaskier pushed open the door to the lecture theatre, not attempting to be quiet. He wanted Valdo and his students to know he was there. The room fell silent as the door crashed against the wall, and a dozen pairs of eyes turned to face him. 

Perfect. 

Jaskier smirked at the professor at the front of the room, winking at him as he gave a cheeky wave. “Don’t mind me, Marx. Please, carry on.”

“Julian, don’t you have somewhere better to be, instead of interrupting my classes?” Valdo sneered, dark brown eyes glaring daggers at him across the room. 

Jaskier laughed, jumping onto one of the empty desks at the back of the class. “You would think, my classes are fully booked after all, but I have a free period and I find it ever so fascinating to see how others work. We can’t all have my natural charm and charisma.”

“Get out, Julian.”

“But Professor, can’t he stay?” Tilda, a sweet redhead, asked from her spot at the front of the class. She had signed up for Jaskier’s class this year but unfortunately there just hadn’t been space. “Professor Pankratz’s classes were full, and most of us missed out.”

“See,” Jaskier drawled, never taking his eyes off Valdo, giving him a coy smile, “even your students want me here. I suppose it must make a change from listening to you drivel on about… what are we supposed to be learning about? Iambic pentameter?” he scoffed. “I practically invented that, darling.”

Valdo had gone a delightfully red colour, his cheeks flushed, either embarrassed or enraged, Jaskier couldn’t quite tell. Either way, he was fucking loving it. Winding Valdo up was one of his favourite parts of winter. That and fucking Valdo, sometimes even both at the same time. 

“Class dismissed,” Valdo hissed, a dangerous glint in his eyes that sent a thrill through Jaskier. 

“Now, now, Marx, no need to stop on account of little old me,” Jaskier purred, a little too seductively for being in front of a room full of students but he really didn’t give a shit. 

“I said dismissed!” Valdo snapped, and his students all hurried to scatter, leaving Jaskier and Valdo alone in the room together. “You, Julian, are in trouble.”

“What are you going to do? Tell the Headmaster?” Jaskier giggled, hopping off the desk as Valdo swept past him and out of the room. 

They kept up the charade for the entire walk back to Valdo’s chambers, Jaskier teasing and taunting his lover, and Valdo steadfastly ignoring him. Being ignored stung a little, he preferred it when Valdo argued back, at least then he still had the older man’s attention. Having Valdo’s attention was like a drug, better than any wine or fisstech. Jaskier craved it. Every time he returned to Oxenfurt, it was like he reverted back to the sixteen year old boy that had idolised the handsome second year, so eager to please for just any scrap of affection. 

“Valdo, please,” he whined as they approached his room. 

“Just get inside, Julian.”

Jaskier grumbled but stumbled through the room. It was tidier than his own room, which wasn’t really saying much, but it was less of a tavern room and more someone’s home. There were little knickknacks, portraits hung on the walls and a collection of poetry books all over the room. It was clearly Valdo’s room, whereas Jaskier’s room always looked as if he was half way out of the door, which wasn’t entirely inaccurate. He did only stay for a few months at a time. There wasn’t much point in getting settled in, and he spent most nights in Valdo’s room anyway. 

The door clicked shut behind them and Valdo slid the lock into place. Alone… finally. Dumping his tubes of parchment on the floor, Jaskier grinned and pulled Valdo into a kiss, trying to show much he’d missed the other man during the day, but Valdo remained a statue beneath him. That did nothing to quell the heat of wanton need that had been itching under his skin all fucking day, so he pulled back, pouting at Valdo with wide eyes. 

“Sweetheart,” he cooed, stroking his fingers along Valdo’s collar, “Come on, I know you want me.”

“I’m busy, Julian.”

“With what?”

Valdo scoffed and gestured to the pile of parchments on his desk, an all too familiar sight. The desk in Jaskier’s room looked very much the same, probably even worse, but that was because he was here, with Valdo. 

But Valdo was still fucking ignoring him. 

“I’m in trouble.”

Valdo turned round, with fire in his eyes. “You humiliated me in front of my entire class, Julian. What else were you expecting?”

Shame burned through Jaskier, making him shrink back and he began to feel a little lightheaded, needing to submit to Valdo, wanting to right the wrong, to please him. “I-I just missed you, Valdo. Please.”

“On your knees, Julian. Under my desk.”

Jaskier nodded silently and did as he was told. 

And finally Valdo’s fingers were in his hair, gently coaxing him into a more relaxed state despite the anger and the rage. Jaskier hummed and leant into the touch, nuzzling at Valdo’s thighs as he finally sat down at the desk. Fingers caught under his chin, and Jaskier tipped his head back to look up at his lover. Valdo quirked an eyebrow at him in a silent question. 

Was this okay?

Jaskier nodded, turning to press a kiss to Valdo’s knee. 

Yes.

And then all traces of concern were gone from Valdo’s face, replaced by a cool anger and his fingers tugged harshly at Jaskier’s hair. “I’ve never known such a needy little slut. You’re the reason that people mistake troubadours for whores, Julian. I bet you fall to your knees for anyone that asks.”

Jaskier shook his head, weakly protested but he barely made a sound before his head was yanked back and Valdo’s fingers were shoved into his mouth. “Hmmph.”

“Do not argue with me, little whore. The whole Continent knows your reputation, and you love it, don’t you, being my slut? So desperate for my attention that you have to act out in front of my students,” Valdo scoffed. “Pathetic.”

Jaskier whimpered, suckling at Valdo’s fingers and wriggling on the ground, trying to grind his cock down on his ankles where he was sitting down. He was achingly hard and desperate for some kind of relief. The world seemed to spin, all the blood going to his cock as Valdo continued to stroke through his hair. Valdo’s fingers were pulled abruptly from his mouth, and he let out a pitiful whine.

“Valdo, sir…” Jaskier pleaded.

“And why should I reward you?” Valdo tutted. “You’ve been nothing but trouble.”

Jaskier pouted, his bottom lip quivering. “I’ll be good, I promise. Please sir, I want you.”

He’d never begged for anyone else, Valdo was just his exception. He couldn’t help it. The older bard turned him into a wanton mess, begging and writhing in just a few choice words. It was the cocky arrogance in his dark eyes, almost black hair slicked back with undercuts on either side of his head. He looked every part the gorgeous arsehole that he was, and Jaskier loved him.

“Hmm, I suppose we can come to a compromise, sweetheart,” Valdo drawled, his fingers brushing through Jaskier’s beard. 

“Please,” Jaskier repeated, not able to think of anything more eloquent. 

“You can warm my cock whilst I mark my papers, but nothing else,” Valdo instructed. “Do you understand, Julian?”

Jaskier nodded.

“Good. Now get on with it. If you move or misbehave any more then you’ll be sent back to your room.”

Back to his room, alone. That could only mean one thing. If he acted out this evening then Valdo wouldn’t even let him touch himself when he got back to his room. Jaskier moaned, shifting again on the floor, as much as it was a punishment, the idea of having his orgasm completely controlled by this frustratingly beautiful man, fuck, it was only making him more aroused. He nuzzled against the fabric of Valdo’s trousers before untying the lace, his fingers well practiced even in the dim light. The bastard wasn’t even hard, which only made Jaskier want to try harder to seduce him… but he was only supposed to hold Valdo’s cock. 

No moving, no sucking, no licking, swallowing, humming. 

Dearest Melitele, he was going to die. 

Valdo kept one hand in Jaskier’s hair but returned to his work as promised, steadily ignoring Jaskier as he finally got his mouth around Valdo’s cock. He was good at first, keeping still and working on relaxing his jaw until it was slack around the soft length in his mouth. Jaskier even managed to clear his mind and settle into his task… but not for long. The familiar haze never came and soon he was fidgeting, still hurt that Valdo hadn’t even been a little hard from his flirtations. Across the Continent he was known as an unparalleled lover, and he couldn’t even get his own partner hard. 

It was bullshit. 

And he could do better. 

He hummed softly, tentatively taking Valdo’s cock deeper into his mouth, letting it push right at the back of his throat, before pulling back slightly. A hand pulled at his hair. 

“Stay still, slut.”

Jaskier whimpered, falling back into a comfortable position, but he couldn’t resist trying again. This time he managed to suck at Valdo’s cock, flicking his tongue along the underside and finally he felt Valdo begin to swell in his mouth. He hummed in satisfaction but his victory was short lived and the other man pulled him off his cock with a sharp yank in his hair. 

“No! No, no, no… I can do better, please!” Jaskier protested. 

“You had your chance, Julian,” Valdo sneered. “Get out of my sight, I wouldn’t even pay five crowns at a brothel for you. You’re just pathetic.”

Tears pricked in Jaskier’s eyes but not even that could lessen his arousal. Valdo was absolutely right about him, and he fucking enjoyed it. Being treated like dirt just scratched an itch unlike anything else. He sniffed and wiped away the tears, brushing down his trousers and raising his head up high. “I don’t need you.” 

“Yes, you do,” Valdo chided, raising an eyebrow and Jaskier could see the cold facade start to waver. He knew that if he needed it Valdo would open his arms and they’d spend the night curled up in bed together. It was unlikely that he’d be allowed to get off, but he wouldn’t be left alone. 

Jaskier shook his head. “I-I know where I’m not wanted,” he muttered, his voice hoarse as he tried not to cry anymore than he already was. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Marx.”

“What was that?”

“Sir,” Jaskier mumbled, “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

“Good boy, now get out.”

And he did. He scarpered back to his room, keeping to the quieter corridors to avoid bumping into any students that might be lurking. Sleep didn’t come easy that night, he was too keyed up, desperate to cum but refusing to let Valdo win. He curled up around his pillow case and hugged it, begging for the world of dreams to take him, to ease the burning swell of desire that threatened to consume him.

[incomprehensiblelentils]

@loved-the-stars-too-fondly​ tagged me in a ship meme! I will try to make this interesting lol.

1. First ship

It’s a tie between Aladdin/Jasmine and Simba/Nala, because I saw both of these movies about the same time as a little kid. And my sixth birthday cake had a picture of Aladdin and Jasmine on it, and I used to tell stories about them to myself on the playground, but I had plushies of baby Simba and Nala with magnetic noses that could “kiss.” 

2. First OTP

I am taking this to mean “first fic you felt strongly enough about to produce content for or engage with in a creative/fandom way,” in which case that would be Michael/Mia from The Princess Diaries. I wrote one (1) bad fanfic when I was 13 (about how Michael proposed and then Grandmere threw a fit BUT then he saved her life while they were horseback riding) that’s still on ff dot net somewhere, and I read basically every fanfic for them that was available on ff dot net. I still have an enormous soft spot for them and I reread the books every few years.

3. Current favorite ship

Since I’m on a Dimension 20 kick right now, even though I haven’t read much fanfic yet I’m going to say both Fig/Ayda from Fantasy High and Ricky/Esther/Sofia from The Unsleeping City. Fig/Ayda is incredibly cute because Fig is a tiefling with shapechanging ability who had a string of questionable romantic encounters with much older men before meeting Ayda, the teenage curator of a magic library who is also an autistic Black phoenix. Fig is very impulsive and brash, but also emotionally closed-off and insecure, but she starts bonding with Ayda because Ayda thinks she’s really cool and admires her bravado. Fig doesn���t know what to do with someone who’s so intimidating but cool who seems to really like her, and, well, you can watch this scene where they get together, it’s very good. It contains Fig vomiting into a bush, then saying “I think you’re perfect the way you are,” then skateboarding away in a panic. It’s maybe the most accurate sapphic rep I’ve ever seen.

Ricky/Esther are just two incredibly nice people who get together in The Unsleeping City, but I think that they should also get together with their friend Sofia because of reasons. I genuinely think the canon supports this reading quite a bit.

4. Your ship since the first minute

I have a fun story for this, which is that literally since day 1 of Korra, I wanted her to have a girlfriend (post date: 12/7/11), and the second Asami showed up I was like eyes emoji. And then I dropped off the show after the first season for a few reasons, kind of assuming they would never do an f/f couple and casually shipping Korrasami sort of out of spite, but THEN my friend messaged me immediately after the finale like DUDE YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED. And that was honestly one of the emotional high points of my fandom life.

5. Ship(s) you wish had been endgame

I have...many! Bering and Wells from Warehouse 13 is paramount, obviously, because that is a wound in my soul from which I will never recover. Cartinelli from Agent Carter slightly less so, but I think that was truly the last time that I had real hope for a canon f/f ship. I think Matt/Foggy/Karen should have all been romantic together because Matt/Karen by themselves has weird vibes and I don’t like it. Obviously I think Fitz should have died in the series finale and Skimmons should have been canon, and as far as I’m concerned he died of a brain tumor after that and then they got together. (Daniel is also involved still, he’s a chill dude and I like him and it’s fine.) 

6. Ship you wish was canon

Grace/Dani from Terminator: Dark Fate, because wow did they shoehorn in an incredibly hilarious attempt at mommyzoning Dani (didn’t work, it’s still gay fuckos). But it would’ve been nice if they’d just leaned into it and let the horny lesbian ghost that possessed the screenwriters make it explicitly gay. Also I think Cameron/Donna and Gordon/Joe from Halt and Catch Fire should have been canon because that show is already basically about the world’s messiest polycule anyway, and Joe is canon bi and already treats Gordon like a booty call, and Cameron and Donna act like either romantic partners or bitter/awkward exes, so like. c’mon. Also I think Daisy/Robbie should have been a thing.

7. Ship that most of the fandom hates but you love

Natasha/Bruce is cute COME AT ME. Age of Ultron is a bad movie but they could have been cute!!!!

8. You don’t even watch the show, but you ship it

Uhhhh. Most things I end up secondhand shipping I end up consuming the canon for eventually lol. I was secondhand shipping Cameron/Donna from Halt and Catch Fire last year because my friend was watching it but then I just...also watched it lol. Uhhhh. The Killing Eve lesbians seem fun I guess? I’ll get to that eventually.

9. Ship you wish had a different storyline

I’m digging deep for this one, but Buffy/Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think they had SUCH a cool dynamic that kind of stopped getting explored after season 4, and it’s a bummer. I don’t think they’re like, endgame or true love or anything, but I think they’re sort of the messy pair that can’t completely disentangle from each other, and maybe they don’t even really want to? I think that they couldn’t live in the same house or anything but that they meet up and hang out and probably fuck every couple years, and it’s good.

10. Favorite ship(s) that’s endgame

GAMBIT/ROGUE GOT MARRIED IN THE COMICS. I’M SO PSYCHED. I don’t know if Karolina/Nico from Runaways counts as endgame but I love them, and I also love Gert/Chase. I’m rewatching Nikita and am delighted to know that Michael/Nikita is still very good. Priya/Tony from Dollhouse is also very good. Daisy/Daniel was honestly the best outcome SHIELD could have realistically given me and I was quite happy with it. I don’t know if Magnus Archives ships count but I really like Georgie/Melanie (we stan sapphic accidental apocalypse cult leaders). Oh and I like all the canon Avatar: The Last Airbender ships too.

EDIT: I FORGOT MY BELOVED ARAGORN/ARWEN AND WILL/ELIZABETH (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN).

I’m tagging @swiftzeldas @toriasimmons @dollsome-does-tumblr @theomenroom @zenithofdork if you wanna!

[starring-movies]

The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

*SPOILERS*

Episode 7 - The Two Faces, Part Two

Episode 7 of The Haunting of Bly Manor is mainly a continuation of Episode 3, which has the same name, as we explore more of Peter and Rebecca’s backstory and a lot more questions also start to get answered.

The episode starts as Dani has been tied up and is coming back into consciousness after Miles (possessed by Peter) hit her over the head at the end of Episode 6. As Peter is trying to set his plan in motion, for him and Rebecca to possess Miles and Flora’s bodies permanently, he suddenly gets thrown into a memory. Unlike Hannah, Rebecca and Flora who ‘dream-hop’ through many of their memories, Peter only ever gets put into one of his memories.

The memory that Peter repeatedly gets pulled into is the memory of a time when his mother came to visit him. Peter’s mother knocks on the door and when Peter lets her in, she tells him “I’m out” and that this time she’s out “forever”, because she says “I suppose they’d say I’m cured”. It’s never explicitly made clear where she’s “out” from, but it’s most likely that she’s been released from a mental institution for her failure to help her son when she knew that her husband was molesting him (which is something that is insinuated later in the episode).

Peter’s mother tells Peter that she needs money from him now that she’s been released and so she blackmails him, saying that she’ll show Henry his “juvenile records”, if he doesn’t give her any money.

The scene then moves to the memory which Rebecca has entered, where we find out that “priceless heirlooms” have been stolen from the manor and that Peter had been embezzling money from Henry. From this it becomes apparent that in Episode 5 when Hannah saw Peter stealing a necklace from Charlotte’s vanity, he was stealing it so that he could sell it and give the money to his other to keep her quiet. It seems that Peter was stealing the “priceless heirlooms”, such as the necklace, to give the money to his mother. However, the “quarter million pounds” that Peter embezzled from Henry most likely really was for the purpose that he said - so that he could run away to make a life in America with Rebecca and free himself from his mother’s blackmailing.

A small little detail; is that after Rebecca finds out that Peter is dead, we see her zoned out in one of Miles and Flora’s lessons. On the desk that Rebecca is sitting behind, there are some word blocks that spell out “redrum”, which is a nod to the 1980’s film ‘The Shining’. Mike Flanagan created The Haunting of Bly Manor and also directed the 2019 sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.

It’s interesting to note that in The Shining “redrum” spells “murder” backwards, and Rebecca ends up being murdered by Peter.

This is not the only reference to The Shining, as there was another one in Episode 1. When we see Dani leaving the hostel which she’s been staying at, as she’s shutting the door behind her, we can see that her room number was 217. In the original book of The Shining by Steven King, the haunted room that Jack Torrance enters is room 217 (but in the movie it’s room 237).

As well as these two instances, there is yet another reference to The Shining, also in Episode 1. When Miles and Flora are locking Dani in the cupboard, we get a shot of them just before the shut the door on her. The shot of Miles and Flora standing side by side with one another evokes the memorable shot of the twins in The Shining.

Rebecca tries to suggest to Peter that they still continue their previous plan to run off to America and tells him that she doesn’t mind if people think that she’s “some batty old witch who talks to thin air”. Peter tells her that they can’t do that because he “can’t leave Bly” and he “can’t get past the end of the drive”, but then he discovers that he can possess Rebecca’s body just like he can with Miles’. The two of them devise a plan where Peter will possess Rebecca’s body and he’ll try to leave while still in her body. They carry out the plan the next morning but as Rebecca runs to the boundary of the grounds, Peter is ejected from her body.

This brings up a question of confusion, as in Episode 9 Dani manages to leave Bly with The Lady in the Lake in partial possession of her body and neither of them were thrown out from Dani’s body. Since Dani is able to leave the grounds, the reason that Peter was pushed out of Rebecca’s body must be because he exited her body himself. As he was about to cross the boundary he probably came to the realisation that if he left while still in Rebecca’s body, then he and Rebecca will never be able to be properly together again and so he pulled himself out so that he could think of another way that they could be together. However it also could be that Dani stopped Viola’s gravity well when she invited Viola into herself (we see all the other ghosts are released when this happens in Episode 9), but this still wouldn’t explain Peter’s oddly quiet reaction when he gets pushed out of Rebecca’s body at the manor’s boundary.

This would also make sense of a lot of a few other things as well. It would make sense of the odd reaction that Peter gives after the failed attempt at escape, when Rebecca says “it didn’t work” - he doesn’t look particularly sad that it didn’t work, even though he was so enthusiastic to finally be able leave and be with Rebecca. It would also make sense of when Older Jamie says that “Peter had not been back to find her, he had left her at the boundary of Bly”. Peter disappears for so long because he’s trying to come up with a different plan for them to be able to be with one another.

After trying to leave the manor in Rebecca’ body doesn’t work, for whatever reason, Peter then comes back to Rebecca with his new plan. Peter explains that when he tries to take possession of Rebecca’s body, neither of them mean to, but he always tries to push her out and she always tries to push him out and so the possession is “temporary”. He tells her that there is a way that they can be together forever and able to touch each other but to do this he says he needs to be given permanent possession of her body and for this to happen she needs to invite him in and give him consent. However when he’s explaining this to Rebecca, Peter doesn’t explain that his grand plan for them to be together means that he’ll take over her body and they’ll only be together by being tucked away in a memory together.

After being given consent from Rebecca to have permanent control over her body, which he gets through the phrase “it’s you, it’s me, it’s us”, Peter carries out his plan. Rebecca gets tucked away “in a memory of them”, and although they are together and can touch one another, this is not what she wanted (nor is this what he really promised to her when he got her to give him her consent) and it’s not ideal for him either as he is now left in Rebecca’s body “here, alone”.

Since Peter is now alone in Rebecca’s body and he doesn’t want to continue to be alone, he decides that he’ll drown her body so that they’ll both become ghosts and they will both be together that way. We see Rebecca (possessed by Peter) crying as she walks into the lake, and then we see Peter crying in bed with Rebecca in the tucked away memory, which is how we know that Peter was in possession of Rebecca’s body when she drowned.

But then as the water starts to enter Rebecca’s body’s lungs, Peter leaves and Rebecca herself is forced back into control of her own body again. We see just what type of a person he is, as he leaves her on her own to feel the pain of the drowning. In a parallel to this, this shows us just how much Rebecca cares for Flora, as in Episode 9 she tells Flora that she’ll take over her body before she’s dragged into the lake and she’ll feel everything for her - a completely selfless action considering that she’s already had to endure the pain once.

Like Peter and Hannah, Rebecca immediately turns into a ghost and we see her mourning her body and the betrayal of her trust, as she stands by the side of the lake and cries. This explains to us why, when Rebecca was possessing Flora’s body, she always walked to the lake - because she sits by the lake and mourns her life.

This is the most prominent example of the love versus possession conversation that Dani and Jamie were having in Episode 3. Peter says that he loves Rebecca, but he displays no true love for her at all, to ask for her complete trust and consent and then to betray her by stealing her life. Peter is acting completely on selfishness and is treating Rebecca like a possession who he manipulate for his own personal benefit. To truly love someone is to want the absolute best for them, even if that comes at your own expense; but when Peter makes this decision he isn’t thinking about Rebecca at all, he’s only thinking about his own desires and loneliness.

After Peter drowns her body, Rebecca returns once more to the memory of when Peter gave her Charlotte’s fur coat. The memory was once a very happy one for Rebecca, but now it’s been tainted by Peter’s selfish actions. Rebecca now sees how Peter manipulated her as she says that “I didn’t agree”, she only agreed to them being together not for him to take her life from her.

Peter suddenly gets pulled back into the only memory that he gets pulled into, the memory of his mother coming to visit him. Peter says that from constantly having to return to this memory he feels “like I’m in hell” and his mother says “well, where else would you go”, stating that there is nowhere else that he could go after what he did to to Rebecca.

Peter then gets released from the memory he was being tucked away in and he returns to the attic, where Miles and Flora are in the process of freeing Dani. Peter stops Miles and Flora from letting Dani go and Rebecca returns from her dream hopping.

To try and convince Miles and Flora to give consent for their bodies to be possessed, Peter says that they’ll be able to go to their “forever house” where they’ll be with their parents forever. The “forever house” is a reference to The Haunting of Hill House where Olivia made blueprints of a “forever home” for the family to live in once they got enough money from flipping Hill House (but when Olivia dies, Hill House becomes the forever home). The “forever house/home” is something that is supposed to symbolise safety and family, however in both Hill House and Bly Manor this isn’t really the case. In Hill house the promise of the “forever home” that Olivia dreamt of was never fulfilled; and in Bly Manor the “forever house” that Peter is talking about is just for Miles and Flora to be permanently tucked away in false memories.

Despite Peter’s manipulation, he does know what love really looks like. He tells Miles that, when he’s tucked away in the “forever house” with his parents, he’ll be “with two people who love you so much, so much. That makes you the luckiest man in the world, the richest person, I wish I could be that rich”. Peter recognises that being in a safe place with two people who love you makes you the “richest person” and was something that he never got to experience himself. Not that this makes his behaviour acceptable, but it may from his childhood where Peter developed a distorted view of love and posession, and so this is why he manipulates others and treats them as his possessions - while Peter is supposed to be the conventional ‘villain’, this fleshing out of his past makes his character much more multifaceted and complex, as well as making his actions much less black and white. This added depth and complication is one of the things that makes Bly Manor and its characters so deeply flawed yet extremely relatable.

When Peter takes permanent possession of Miles’ body, when Miles gets up we can see that his right eye is still blue but his left eye is now brown. This is a sign that the person is no longer completely themselves anymore and we see the same thing happen to Dani’s eyes in Episode 9.

We then see Miles (possessed by Peter) walking with Hannah to the well, to try and get her to come to the realisation that she’s dead. He compares Hannah to the cartoon Wile E. Coyote, who would run off a cliff and just keep going, just as Hannah has died (run off the cliff) but she just keeps going and doesn’t become a proper ghost. Miles explains to Hannah that “when Wile E. Coyote looked down, then he’d fall, only when he looked down”, so he tells Hannah that she also needs to look down in order for her to come to terms with her situation and then she’ll also fall (become a ghost). The looking down that Miles wants Hannah to do is not just an actual looking down the well to see her corpse, but this is also a metaphorical looking down of her seeing the ‘big picture’ and for her to stop being in denial.

Hannah finally looks down the well and sees her corpse. She isn’t interrupted (like when Dani interrupted her doing this in Episode 1), but she’s given a proper moment to take in what she’s seeing, and so she is able to come to process and accept her death - just like Peter got to see and accept his body being dragged away by The Lady in the Lake; and just like Rebecca saw and mourned for her body by the side of the lake.

We then return to Flora and Dani in the attic and we find out that Rebecca only pretended to go along with Peter’s plan and possess Flora’s body. Rebecca tells Flora that “no one should ever need that much help”, showing us that she understands true, selfless love and to ask that much of someone is not caring for them at all. This also relates back to what Peter did to Rebecca, he should have never needed “that much help” from Rebecca as to take her entire life from her.

As well as this, it shows us how much Peter is like his mother. Peter’s mother asked too much of him and, in a way, ended up killing him by blackmailing him for money, which is just as he told her that “I hope you know that, late at night, that you killed your own son”. Peter is just as manipulative as his mother when he persuades Rebecca and Miles to trust him so that he can possess their bodies - needing to ask for “that much help” from a person is not love.

You can read my previous The Haunting of Bly Manor posts here:-

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - Altar of the Dead

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

——————————————————————————

[khaleesiofalicante]

¡Holaa! Bueno, siento que este capítulo va a tener algo grande de Rafael, entonces el español me pareció la mejor opción. ¡Espero que hayas descansado este fin de semana! Y terminado todos los pendientes :)) *inhala profundamente* No estoy lista, pero no importa:

Mina is a Queen!! She is gorgeous, amazing, funny af, just perfect💙

You know? The time I saw the Max snippet from a while back I saw something like this!! Mina telling Max it wasn’t a good idea!! (It was not a good idea to go that way, but I still feel proud of myself😂)

"For god’s sake, his own parents had gone to hell for each other. More than once!" (Not to take sides, but he is kinda right...)

"But they hadn’t told him. They hadn’t told him the hardest temptation was love." Just shoot me already please 🥺🥺

“You and I? For sure. We are definitely going to hell,” I need Mina in my life!!

Abshjdkfbd I'm in pain😭😭 I'm in the dentist Dani!!! I cant cry here!!

Magnus is sus...

Bfkdvdhs please tell me they are going to talk to each other!!!

"In retrospect, they probably shouldn’t have done that. They should have let him get hurt. They should have let him feel the pain. They should have let him heal slowly." This is so accurate. I thinks sometimes parents  hurt their kids doing things to protect and help them. And it's cause they are not perfect, and they were trying their best right?

JDHDJDBD HE CALL HIM HERMANITO🥺🥺 Well, my sister calls me hamster cause she once caught me filing my mouth with grapes to see how many could fit...the lil shit has my contact like that!! Idk, random fact😂

“We are both okay. I’m just worried.” Now that's a lie…

“It has to be love - that shit fucks you up.” Sounds accurate

“I’ve gone too deep. I can’t let you guys drown with me.” Kenidje please, I want them to be happy!!

🥺🥺🥺THEM💙 They really sum up siblings!!

Her lips had the power to make him break the law – and burn the world down if necessary. (I'm a Rosewood supremacy first, human second)

Hdvwkeb he painted her nails!!!

Dani you can't give me Magnus and Rafael feelings and then continue with the angst!! Its cruel!!!

"The older man had accepted it as his reality. And he was only ever been grateful for it, no matter how strange or how sad it became with time." I'm full of feelings, half of which I don't want to look at...

Hdkdbdn too much pain!!! They are having dinner together!!

"Even the high warlock of Brooklyn was not able to say no to that smile. So, Rafael stood no chance." 💙💙

THE FEELINGS!!

"His divine offering." Pain. That's it🙂

This is hurting so much!!!

“What if you weren’t alone?” BITCH NO. PLEASE NO!! I literally screamed!! I can't. It's too much!!

Bitch you too?? Really Magnus??? I cant.

My inmortal squad is just 🥺🥺

Now I want to know Gabriel... They sound interesting...

"So, they had promised each other to do whatever was necessary to stop it from happening again." That squad is superior!!

“I don’t know about that. The last time my children were acting secretive, one of them was fighting a greater demon and the other was bringing her boyfriend back to life. And don’t even get me started on Kit!” My Tessa deserves a break😂

I need Tessa to give me life lessons too!! 🥺

What does Ragnor has with dungeons???😂

Immortals always give me an existential crisis...  But I love them💜

Lmaoo I love Alec😂💙

"I have to do it while I can, Alec wanted to say. I’m catching up for all the ones I am going to miss." I am once again asking you TO TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?? I NEED TO KNOW THE ILLNESS ALEC!!

I love when he gets all simp for Magnus, but not when he gets like this, like he is going to die any minute now!!

“Tempting,” Alec said, nuzzling his nose against Magnus’ neck. “But I am on dad duty tonight.” “But you can also be on dadd-” (I literally screamed 😂😂)

“That’s where Diego lives,” Alec pointed out. “I should ask him if he has seen Rafael around.” (Oh you lil shits!! Can't you connect the dots???)

“Anjali,” the boy whispered – his face shocked. “It’s Anjali.” (Thank you!!!!)

And then his parabatai punched him in the face. (thank you Jace!!!! Love you)

Now I will sleep late reading this instead of doing the work I have... Sounds valid to me

Bejbdks I hate he is so calm!! Wtf dude?? I'm here crying??? And you are smiling??? That's not fair!!

“Magnus,” Alec smiled and held up his hand, his wedding ring shining against the night. “I have more protection charms on me than the entire Clave combined.” I'm crying, its just pain😭😭

“The world is on fire,” Alec pointed out dryly. “Then let it burn,” Alec snapped. “For once, save yourself first.” (ngl, I love world burning related metaphors...)

Because that’s what Alec did and has done his whole life. He took care of people. Jace might be a fighter, but Alec was a protector.💙

No. No no no. Please it's too much😭😭Nooooooo, my tears are literally falling on my computer.  I just need a moment...

That ending!! Not only Alec is dying, now his son is getting his marks stripped. That can cause the third attack.

I have no words other than this was one of the angstiest chapter so far for me and honestly I just want to cry, but i loved it!!!💙💙

¡Espero que tengas un buen día! Y sepas que mi estabilidad emocional ya no existe gracias a LBAF💜💜

I would like to thank Google translate for being so helpful:

SDJFBJSDH ILY.

I loved your reactions. And omg I love world burning related metaphors tooooooo

Sorry about your emotional stability <3

[novelconcepts]

fic: learning a lot (about being alive)

So much of the story is the same. Dani. The kids. The lake. So much of the story is exactly the same--only, this time, there is no gardener working at Bly Manor.

The young woman is tired. Exhausted, if she’s truly honest with herself. She feels as though there must be an endpoint to running, a marker down the road that says a person has gone as far as they are able. Rest now, she imagines that marker saying in a cheerily-bold script. Fall down now. Let go. 

She isn’t there yet, she’s pretty sure. Not quite. She doesn’t know how much a person can be expected to carry, or for how long, but at least...at least she has a little left in the tank, yet. Enough to get her affairs in order, if nothing else. Enough to try a little longer to find solid ground. 

***

It was a matter of escaping home, to start with. A matter of escaping old ghosts and older expectations, and that Dani Clayton found all too quickly how easily ghosts can follow a person across miles and miles of world was...unfortunate. It had been naive, maybe, to think she’d leave Eddie behind with the simple act of crossing an ocean. One of those you never know before you try things.

Try, she did. Succeed, she did not. Not at first.

Still, there were bright spots. Travel hadn’t been a large part of her life back home; Edmund was a homebody, her mother always had opinions to offer when Dani mentioned family trips, and there were the kids at school to consider. Reliability had been her middle name, if not by choice, at least by necessity. She’d been twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, and all she’d seen of the world was small-town Iowa. 

And then, unexpectedly: the thread of courage that had pushed her to break things off with Eddie.

And then, even worse: the screech of tires, the scream tearing from her own throat, the awful gurgling sounds Eddie had made as he lay spread-eagled on the blacktop. 

And then, the worst thing of all: glasses, gleaming bright with no sign of Eddie’s laughing eyes behind them, flashing at her from every mirrored surface in the room.

It had been too much. Too much for anyone to bear, Dani was sure. Who could blame her, for running away? Who could blame her, for needing a little space?

Her mother, for one. Eddie’s mother, for another. Even so, she had gone. Packed three bags, bought a guidebook to Europe, jumped a plane for the first time in her life. Bravest thing she’d ever done--or stupidest--and it had been a week before she’d stopped waking up trembling with adrenaline. 

She had some money--enough to get by on cheap hostels and simple foods--but she’d kept her eyes on the listings in every paper all the same. One in particular seemed to burn a little brighter within the newsprint. A charming manor in the countryside. Two children. Live-in au pair required. 

A good, solid job. Money in her pocket, and a path forward through a world that maybe wouldn’t demand Danielle of her any longer. She’d stretched for it, closed her fist tight around the opportunity. 

Those kids had been wonderful. Strange, at times, but what children freshly mourning their parents aren’t strange? The other adults at Bly Manor, too, had been charming and kind--Owen, with his bad puns and his delicious dishes, and Hannah, who had taken Dani by the arm with motherly affection almost before Dani had even introduced herself. They were good people. For a few weeks, she’d felt more at home than she had ever been with people who had known her since childhood. 

Still, there had been shadows cast over the summer. Miles, aggressive without provocation. Flora, sleepwalking. Owen, unexpectedly losing his mother. Hannah, growing more and more distant. 

And, finally, the night everything comes apart. A lake. A spectral form with a too-solid grip around Dani’s throat. A child, screaming in terror. A phrase, falling from her lips before Dani can even process the words. 

Dani says them like a spell. Dani says like them a promise. Dani says them, and blinks, and Flora is in her arms, squeezing so tight around her bruised neck, she thinks she might pass out. 

She almost tips over in cold, dirty lake water, but someone is splashing toward them. Henry. Henry Wingrave, still dressed for the office, bug-eyed and grasping for his niece with panicky hands. Dani gives her over gladly, feeling as though all the strength has been wrung out of her body. 

None of this makes sense. A summer spent at this house, making a warm little hole in the world for her to crawl into, only to culminate in this? In Owen shouting for Hannah, in Miles shaking all over, in Flora weeping and Henry trying to look as though he isn't about to start doing the same?

She can’t handle it. Suddenly can’t stay here. There’s...something happening beneath her skin, something cold and sharp and terribly foreign, and no one is looking at her. No one is seeing the way her hands convulse as she forces them into fists. 

She hears herself say, “I have to...have to go...” and knows no one is listening. Owen’s gone, sprinting off toward the chapel. Henry and the kids are a mess of hugging, shaking, crying bodies. 

A quick stop in the house, a quick stop upstairs to shuck off sodden sweater and mud-encrusted pants, and then she’s climbing through Henry’s still-open car door. Backing down the endless drive. Leaving the manor and all its eccentric shadows in her wake. 

***

Dani Clayton can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t drive, either, not really, but she’s made it this far. A few miles down the road, to a little village where most everyone is likely to already be asleep. 

There’s a pub next door to an inn, and she thinks, Nobody will care if I stay the night. Just one night. 

She has no idea what comes after. Is sort of afraid to think about it much. Tonight hasn’t made a lot of sense--her brain is still buzzing with it’s you, it’s me, it’s us, with Flora’s screams and her own gargling panic as an impossible hand tightened around her throat--and maybe that’s fine, for now. Maybe one night of not making sense is an acceptable loss. She’ll just walk into this little pub in this little village that doesn’t know her name, and maybe she’ll feel better after a drink. Or two. 

Or seven.

She’s not much for hard liquor, and her tolerance ought to be negligible, but there’s just something about this night that has unbound her. Alcohol is doing very little to take the edge off this gut-wrenching feeling that she isn’t...right. Isn’t quite who she was two hours ago. Isn’t...alone.

No, she thinks with firm certainty, no, that’s the crazy talking. The crazy I thought I fixed after Owen’s mother’s funeral, but maybe not, maybe it’s still...

She tips back her glass, polishing off a scotch she’d never have thought to order yesterday. Her face contorts; it hurts to swallow, even without the burn. She should probably give up, probably head next door and book a room to sleep this off.

“All right there?”

Her eyes snap to the owner of the voice, which is both thickly accented and alluringly curious. A woman--small, brown hair mussed, eyes watching Dani like she sort of expects Dani to start trouble right here in the smallest pub in England--is leaning against a neighboring table. Dani lets her empty glass drop with a thud against oak scored with initials and curse words. 

“Fine,” she answers shortly. The woman’s brows raise. 

“Only,” she says in a voice much more level than Dani’s own, “you don’t look fine. Look a bit like you’ve had the worst night of your life, in fact.”

Why should she care? Dani wonders. She licks her lips. “That,” she says, “would be an understatement.”

She’s too aware that she doesn’t belong in a place like this--smoke hazing the air, men laughing too loudly near the bar--and that a woman like the one watching her through guarded eyes does. Too aware that her pastel sweater and scrunchie probably label her as an outlier even faster than her American accent.

This woman, on the other hand, has the look of someone who spends most nights in pubs like this one. Her face is pretty--very pretty, Dani realizes with the belated interest of one just opening her eyes--but there’s something of a shield around her smile. Her clothes are clean, but not particularly fashion-forward: a pair of jeans, a ratty t-shirt, thin suspenders. She doesn’t look like anyone who has ever wasted a breath on Dani Clayton. 

But she’s raising her glass in a small salute. Dani raises her empty one right back, glancing at it with mild distaste. 

“Another?” the woman asks, still in that attention-grabbing, almost familiar tone. Dani starts to shake her head--she doesn’t accept drinks from strangers, as a rule, particularly strange women who look at her in ways that make her stomach clench--and changes her mind at the last second. Another. Sure. What harm could it possibly do?

***

Jamie’s back strikes the wall of the women’s bathroom with such force, she almost bites her own lip. Might have done, in fact, if not for the other woman’s lips in the way. 

She didn’t get a name, and figures that’s probably for the best. Bad enough she’s going down this road at all on a first glance--Bly isn’t big, and word travels impossibly fast. Jamie’s spent years keeping her head down, avoiding just these such entanglements. 

But the woman has incredible eyes--one bright blue, one a shocking brown--and accepted a free drink with the air of one who desperately needs a good time under her belt. When Jamie slid seamlessly from her own table to the stranger’s, the woman only smiled. When Jamie let her hand rest lightly on the pocked wood, fingertips grazing the woman’s wrist, she’d taken her lower lip between even teeth in a manner Jamie will probably think about for the rest of her life. 

Bathroom, then. Locked door. Bad choice, but one Jamie’s comfortable enough with so long as this woman is kissing her. 

She’s a damn fine kisser, and seems to have no qualms about showing Jamie as much. Her hands are fleeting, desperate, grabbing anywhere she can reach--Jamie’s collar is the current target, gripped so tight, it’s a wonder the thin material doesn’t tear--and she’s kissing Jamie like this is the most natural thing in the world. Like Jamie’s hand sifting through her ponytail, grabbing hold and tugging to urge her closer, is more welcome than that drink had been. Like Jamie, lips parting to accept a seeking tongue, is more welcome than--

Just a girl, Jamie reminds herself. Just a girl without a name, even. American. Probably won’t see her again, so might as well just enjoy what I get now. 

And what she’s getting is good, certainly. The woman has pressed a thigh between her legs, is riding against her with a panting ferocity that makes Jamie woozy. Her mouth slides from the woman’s kiss, searching for more skin to taste, her nose bumping against gold hoop earring as she licks a spot just below the woman’s jaw. A soft groan is her reward, and she grins against the woman’s skin, grazing with gentle teeth as she dips lower--

“Jesus,” she breathes, leaning back. Her fingers brush the woman’s neck below the collar of her sweater. “Hey, are you--”

“Fine,” the woman says, dragging Jamie’s bottom lip between her teeth and biting down hard enough for Jamie to hiss. 

“These,” she says, pulling slickly away again, “look like bruises--”

The woman is staring at her with a hard expression she can’t quite deconstruct. There’s something feverish about the way she looks at Jamie, something hunted and more than a little disconcerting. 

“I’m fine,” she says again, stiffly. “Do you want...?”

She almost sounds nervous, and Jamie realizes the opportunity for a pleasant evening is rapidly diminishing. Push now, push too hard, and this woman is going to turn on her heel and march out of this bathroom. Maybe out of Bly altogether. 

“If you do,” she answers, like this is nothing more than two bodies searching for something to hang on to. She leans back in, half-expecting the woman to shrink away, the moment already in its grave. Instead, she finds herself making an incredibly undignified noise as the woman slides her tongue into her mouth and a hand up the front of her shirt in the same motion. 

It feels both teenage and foolish, arching into a strange woman’s hand in a pub bathroom. Fascinatingly unwise, letting this woman scramble excited fingers against the seam of her jeans. Truly, just idiotic, sinking to her knees and pulling the woman’s trousers down just enough to seek out hot, wet skin with her tongue. 

Any other place, any other time, any other woman, and Jamie would know better. 

It’s just once, she reminds herself, groaning as the woman bucks into her mouth, slick and desperate, her hands tangled hard enough in Jamie’s hair to hurt. One stupid night with one stupidly attractive American. Life’s short. It’ll never come up again. 

***

Dani is pretty sure her head was removed last night and screwed back on the wrong way. 

She wakes in a heap in an unfamiliar bed, still in last night’s clothes. Her hair is a bedraggled mess around her face, her brain slamming itself repeatedly against her skull like a tiny, terribly angry man trapped in a very small room. Her mouth feels like she forgot to close it all night, her lips feel swollen, and her calves feel...weirdly sore. Like she’d spent the night clenching every muscle in her legs. Like she...

Oh, she thinks, quite unable to convince herself to open her eyes. Right. Like she’d spent the evening with a strange woman in a pub bathroom. A strange woman who had...with her mouth...and a wellspring of eager talent...

“Shit,” Dani says in a very small voice. 

If she doesn’t open her eyes, she thinks, there can be no proving she made choices last night the old Dani Clayton would never make. No proving how many scotches she’d downed. Certainly no proof of the woman whose thrusting tongue had caused Dani to...

She cracks one eye open, relieved when she finds herself in an empty and incredibly boring room that can only belong to some kind of motel. The inn, she realizes, sitting up with a wince. She’d made it to the inn, with its twin bed and its single lamp and its sad little flower print on the far wall.

By the looks of things, she made it to the inn alone. 

That makes it better and worse at the same time, somehow.

She’s far too tired and far too hungover--far too something else, too, something that has not at all diminished with the rising of the sun, and she will not look at it, will not think about it, will not--to care how she looks. Staggering downstairs, hair scraped back from her forehead, clothes rumpled, she gives the innkeeper her best approximation of a smile.

“Excuse me, do you serve--”

“Breakfast next door,” the man says dully, jabbing a pen toward the exit. Dani’s mouth twitches, an old anger pressing itself against her ribs. If there's one thing she can’t tolerate on a hangover and an empty stomach, it’s a man speaking to her like she’s not even there.

Forget it, she thinks with some effort. One perk, she supposes, of having dragged herself in at who-the-hell-knew what hour last night is the lack of packing up to do this morning. No bags. No sign she was ever even up there. She’ll just go next door, get a cup of coffee and maybe a little toast, and...

Ah. I stole Henry’s car last night. She heaves a sigh. 

“No breakfast after all?” the man adds as she stands in the doorway, peering out in search of wherever she parked a much-too-expensive vehicle without Henry’s consent. She considers flipping him the bird. Decides no version of Dani Clayton is quite that crass. 

Even one who spent last night riding some strange woman’s--

“No,” she says primly. “No, I should be getting back.”

***

Henry, to her extreme relief, has not even noticed her absence. Things have been a bit hectic, she gathers. The children are all right--as all right as they can be, anyway; they’re still in bed when she sneaks into the house--but they’re the only ones. Henry, seated at the kitchen table with a mug of cold tea between his palms, looks bruised around the eyes. 

“Long night,” he says, though Dani hasn’t asked. “Are you...?”

“Fine,” she says, as bright and cheerful as she can muster with her skull throbbing. “Where’s Hannah?”

Henry looks at her like she’s just buried a kitchen knife between his ribs. Her mouth goes dry. 

Hannah was not, as it turns out, in the chapel last night. Hannah was not anywhere at all. Not the part of her that counts.

“I can’t explain it,” Henry says in a low, urgently exhausted voice. “If I hadn’t...if it had been any other way, I’d have said I hallucinated the whole thing.”

It’s impossible, and yet, Dani can’t discount the story. Something about this house and its grounds, its atmosphere (its lake, she thinks and pinches a torn bit of cuticle to distract from the word), has her believing in things she’d have said were children’s fairytales a year ago. Ghosts aren’t real; anyone with any amount of sanity knows it. And yet...

You. Me. Us. She shudders. 

They’d gone out to the old well first thing, Henry tells her. He and Owen, walking in silence, both knowing what they’d find and knowing just as well that it was an unacceptable discovery. 

“I offered to go along,” he says hollowly. “When the authorities arrived. He wouldn’t hear it. Must have been an accident, they said, a terrible fall...”

How, Dani wonders, does a woman like Hannah Grose fall into a well?

As if that’s really the question. As if the true question isn't how does a woman like Hannah Gross fall into a well, and just continue about her life for the next few weeks without pause?

Ghosts aren’t real. Can’t be, in a sane reality. And yet, the coroners told Henry there were signs of decomposition going back many days. Hannah, who had been talking and laughing at this table just yesterday night, had been down there alone for so long. 

Can’t stay, Dani thinks with sudden venom. Can’t stay here anymore. Isn’t home anymore. 

It’s the same thought she had in that little blue house across the pond, staring at things that had been Edmund’s--had been, for better or worse, theirs--and understanding some changes are permanent. Some places, once haunted by certain kinds of grief, cannot remain your own. 

As if reading her mind, Henry pushes back from the table. “I’d like very much to thank you for your services this summer, Miss Clayton. I truly don’t know what the children--what any of us--would have done without you.”

She tries to smile. The bones of her face ache. Everything about her is a single rabid pulse of pain, except maybe the smallest corner of her mind, the smallest corner of memory where she is back in a dirty pub bathroom, watching a woman sink to her knees, feeling her eyes roll back as that woman touches--

“It was my pleasure,” she says, and isn’t lying, exactly. She’d do it again, she thinks. All of it. The job. The little family she found so unexpectedly. Rescuing Flora from something she can’t, even now, process. She’d do it all again if asked, and do it exactly the same. 

It hurts no less, for that. 

***

“You’re sure?” Henry asks yet again. He’s out of the car, holding her bags out, his face that of a worried father. Dani thinks he’ll make a good one to those kids, in his own way. “You could stay a little longer. I’d never ask you to--”

“I know,” she reassures him, slinging the backpack over her shoulder. “But honestly, it’s better this way. The kids don’t need me hanging around, and I...”

Can feel her, she doesn’t say. Can feel her moving around, way down where I can’t even catch a glimpse of how or why. If I stay there, if I let it, that house will call to her like a magnet again. Like gravity.

“It’s time for a new adventure,” she says instead, smiling. He believes this smile, she knows. Anyone would. She’s gotten so good at faking it. 

He hugs her once, quickly. It is appropriately awkward, and she even laughs a little. Flora, hanging out of the backseat window almost far enough to fall, looks miserable. 

“You’re really leaving?”

“I am.” Bent at the waist, Dani looks the girl in the eye. Flora’s face is uncharacteristically solemn. “But I promise I’ll write. Call, too, if your uncle gives me the number.”

“Where are you going?” Flora presses. Behind her, Miles lays a clumsy hand of reproach on her shoulder. Dani favors him with a small, comprehending smile. Miles has gone through things none of them can fathom, things he may never be able to talk about. She aches for the too-adult cast about his eyes. 

“I don’t exactly know yet,” Dani tells them both. “Like I said, it’s an adventure. Might end up anywhere.”

“But happy,” Flora says uncertainly. “Right?”

“I’m sure,” Dani says, dropping a final kiss to the top of her head, “it will be perfectly splendid.”

She keeps the smile on her face as Henry ushers Flora back through the window and into her seatbelt, as they pull away from the curb and down the curve of Bly’s main intersection. When they turn the corner, disappearing from view, she lets the expression drop with a sigh. 

A week. A week since the lake, since finding Hannah’s body, since the impossible set up shop in her head. A week of Henry learning to parent in a slapdash rush, of Owen’s face more serious than she’d ever seen it, of yet another funeral. Hannah’s had been a quiet affair, properly spiritual as she’d have liked, and Dani had spent the entire thing trying not to think about the last funeral she’d attended. 

And now, a week later, she’s here. Standing in front of Bly’s one and only little pub once more. It’s barely afternoon; she figures this is as good a place as any to sit for a few hours with a beer and her thoughts, until she figures out what comes next. 

Nothing comes next, she finds herself thinking. You’re carrying a time bomb. You can’t understand it, can’t get rid of it, and there’s no one left to hold your hand as you wait for it to go off. 

Defeatist thinking. Stupid, hopeless, miserable thinking. She’s tired, but she isn’t out of the game just yet. 

Make a plan, she tells herself, slipping through the pub’s front entrance and taking a seat at the bar. Get a drink, make a plan. There’s always a next step. 

Except, this time, she doesn’t know if she believes it. Not really. Not knowing things she isn’t comfortable knowing. Ghosts exist, and ghosts can hurt--not just your grasp on the world, not just your sanity, but you. They can throttle. They can manipulate. They can steal the life out from under you, if only you invite them in.

Not that she can say any of this aloud, not ever, not to anyone. 

Get a drink. Make a plan. Something that doesn’t involve Mom, or Iowa, or Danielle. 

She drops the backpack between her knees, slides the other bags under her seat where she can keep an eye on them. She’s sure she looks exhausted in a hooded sweatshirt, a denim jacket, the skin around her eyes nearly purple with sleepless nights. Pub at noon on a Thursday--maybe no one will notice. 

Not that there’s anyone she’s trying to impress.

“Just a beer,” she says when a shape appears in her periphery. “Please.”

“Sandwich as well?”

Her head comes up so fast, something in her neck cramps. The bartender, back to her, is filling a tall glass. Cloth over one shoulder. Brown hair a messy tangle of curls. 

“It’s--it’s you.”

The woman meets her gaze with a smirk Dani is simply not equipped at noon on a Thursday to cope with. 

“Last I checked,” she says calmly, setting the full glass in front of Dani and wiping her hands on the cloth. “Ought to be, too, seeing as how this is my pub.”

***

Oh, this is rich. This is rich, and this is wonderful, and this is fucking bad.

Jamie, who has been watching this woman loiter outside the pub for the better part of ten minutes, has had exactly this long to come to terms with her own misfortune. Ten minutes, to recognize the world is a shallow, cruel prankster. Ten minutes, to recognize this does nothing at all to stop a woman she’s been dreaming of for a week from walking back through her door. 

I know what you look like when you come, she thinks with a recklessness she truly thought she’s outgrown. And now I'm meant to serve you ale like we’re complete fuckin’ strangers. 

For all her nerves, watching the woman hug an older man, lean into a car to speak to some very small children, Jamie thinks she’s still the better off of their twosome. After all, she gets to decide how she’s going to stand--off the side of the bar, furthest from the door, buying time--and when she’s going to make her entrance. This woman?

Well, judging by her wide Bambi eyes, this woman could have done with a little preparation herself. 

“White or rye?” Jamie asks when the woman continues to gape at her. “Or we can get you a fish and chips plate, if it suits you.”

“I don’t understand,” the woman says. Her hand is clenched around her glass like she’s dimly considering tossing it like a grenade and bolting for the door. Jamie hopes she’ll restrain that impulse. Glass would be a bitch to clear up during the impending lunch rush.

“Well,” Jamie says, leaning her elbows against the bar in a show of carelessness. “When you order the fish and chips, see, they come wrapped in a little newsprint. And the grease makes for--”

“I know,” the woman snaps, “what fish and chips are. I just. I...” She lowers her voice, looking around like anyone’s in the mood to eavesdrop. “Do you...remember me?”

For a split second, Jamie is back in the bathroom, biting at soft thighs, loving the way this woman leaves scratches down the back of her neck. 

“Yes,” she says placidly. “I remember.”

“Okay,” the woman says, leaning towards her so far, she almost topples off her stool. “Okay, listen, I don’t--I mean--I didn’t--”

“Mean to do it,” Jamie suggests wryly. She’s heard this song more times than she can count. “Tripped and fell onto my lips, did you?”

“No,” the woman hisses. “I just--don’t normally do that.”

“Women,” Jamie says. It’s sort of nice, how empty the place is. Gives her plenty of time to sarcastically shift away from caring about how this woman is gazing at her. 

“No--I mean, I haven’t. Before. But I’ve wanted--doesn’t matter.” She’s practically playing jump rope with her own tongue, this poor beautiful woman. Jamie takes pity on her. 

“You mean you don’t normally stride into a small-town pub, put away more booze than the meanest local miner, and drag a stranger back to, ah. Improve your evening?”

“Yes.” The woman slumps against the bar, relief shining like starlight in her mismatched eyes. “Yes, exactly.”

“Was an accident, then,” Jamie says with studied calm. The woman shakes her head. Looks like it hurts, frankly, she’s putting so much behind it. 

“Not an accident. Just. Was a really strange night.”

And this, Jamie thinks, is a very strange conversation. The most she’s ever talked to a woman after sex, in fact. Stranger still, she feels like it was always going to happen, eventually. Like this woman was always bound to stroll back through her door. 

“Well,” she says, giving the bar a decisive rap with her knuckles. “I can be an adult about this, if you can. Agree to behave as though I haven’t, ah--”

The woman raises a single finger in warning, her face flushed. “Don’t.”

Jamie laughs. “Right. Anyway.” She extends a hand, takes the one the woman is jabbing in her direction. “Jamie. Bartender, terminally afflicted by the poor decision to settle in Bly.”

“Dani,” the woman says, squeezing her hand with surprising strength. “Teacher. Au pair. Unemployed.”

“All of the above, or one at a time?” Jamie grins. Dani releases her hand, touches her forehead lightly as if warding off a headache. 

“Honestly, I’m not even sure it matters.”

Strange woman, Jamie thinks. “You’re heading out of town, then? Only, I saw your taxi service come and go...”

If she says yes, that’s all this business taken care of before Jamie can bring herself to think on it too hard. It’d be best, she thinks. Best to let this too-beautiful woman swan right back out of her life, let her become little more than a jarringly-electric memory sneaking up on Jamie at odd moments. Jamie’s got a nice little life here in Bly--boring, but simple. She really doesn’t need anything upending that for her. 

“I don’t know,” Dani sighs. “I don’t exactly have a job anymore. Or a place to stay.”

“But?” Jamie turns her attention toward cleaning glasses, if only to keep from staring at this woman. She looks like it’s been days since last she slept, but there’s something about her eyes Jamie can’t seem to stop glancing at. 

“You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t,” Jamie says. Dani’s mouth twists, a crooked little grin that doesn’t sit quite right on her face. 

“Won’t believe me, then.”

Jamie says nothing. Some people don’t take kindly to being told to trust. Some people need more to put their faith behind. She can’t begrudge it of this woman, or anyone. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Dani says, pausing to take a hearty sip from her glass. Her neck looks better, Jamie notes--the finger-shaped bruises have faded to near invisibility. Not that she’s thinking about Dani’s neck. Not that she’s remembering the way Dani sighed and clutched at her back as she kissed--

“I just don’t want to go back,” Dani says, oblivious. Jamie nearly fumbles the glass in her hand, sets it carefully down on the rack. 

“To your old job?”

“Home.” A surprising amount of venom fits into that single syllable, rolling off of Dani’s tongue. Jamie can certainly understand that. 

“So, don’t.” She turns her back, barely able to believe what’s about to come out of her own mouth. It’s foolish. It’s foolish and dumb and silly, and still: “Stay here.”

Dani’s mouth makes a rather funny sound, falling open. Jamie keeps her eyes on the bar mirror, watching surreptitiously for signs of revulsion in the other woman’s face. 

“Could use a waitress,” she goes on, as if this is the most normal conversation in the world. “Just for a few weeks, mind. Through the fall, maybe. Boss man’ll be back by then.”

“Boss?” Dani repeats. Jamie flashes her a quick grin over her shoulder. 

“I don’t actually own the place. What on earth would I do, ownin’ a goddamned pub in Bly?”

***

She doesn’t mean to say yes. It’s complicated, saying yes to Jamie. Knowing what happened between them, and knowing it happened on a night she can’t explain, is bad enough. Knowing all of that and taking a job working alongside the woman every evening?

It’s a bad idea, and, somehow, that’s the only reason she does it.

She can’t explain it, the recklessness living inside her chest. Doesn’t like the feel of it, curled up against her good sense as though it will, at any moment, open its jaws and consume her best judgement. All she knows is there is something waiting for her to trip up. Something waiting for her to give up. Something that may take her at any time, no matter how she feels about it. 

Without something to hang on to--without something to close her fists around, something to focus all of her attention on--she’s going to give in to it. Sooner than she’d like. 

She doesn’t want to go. 

So, she stays in Bly, of all the places to start an adventure. Small, quiet, boring Bly. With...Jamie.

Not with Jamie, she thinks briskly. Not with Jamie-with Jamie. Just. Alongside Jamie. As a co-worker. A normal, casual, my-tongue-has-not-been-in-her-mouth relationship.

She’s been telling herself this for three days. Three days spent learning the ins and outs of the pub, learning how to navigate the unfriendly, untrusting stares of Bly locals as Jamie hovers just off her periphery. It has been...an experience, to say the least. 

“You’re doing great,” Jamie says at the end of the third night. They’ve just ushered the last of the patrons out into the brisk moonlight, and Jamie is in the process of moving chairs on top of each table Dani wipes down. They’re a good team, Dani thinks, a better team than a week of knowing one another has any right to produce. 

“I spilled a drink in a man’s lap,” she says, to distract from this not-entirely-unwelcome thought. Jamie leans conspiratorially close, shoulder brushing Dani’s as she drops her voice to a whisper.

“You only spilled it ‘cuz he bumped you trying to get a look at your ass. Served him right, I’d say.”

Heat climbs her neck, taking root in her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed. “Really?”

Jamie shrugs. “Does that to every girl who walks through that door. Not our most pleasant customer, to be sure, but he orders enough to keep our doors open, so...”

She makes conversation so easily, Jamie. Like Dani’s been here for years, bustling awkwardly between close-set tables, making small talk around drink orders. She makes conversation so easily, and Dani finds herself responding in kind. Nights here, at the pub, wearing a black apron and a smile that gets a little less plastic every time Jamie leans close and whispers a barb about some customer or another, leave her feeling the most stable she’s been in days.

“How’re they treating you next door?” Jamie asks, sliding her half of the tips across the bar. Dani pockets the money without really thinking about it. 

“Good. It’s quiet. I’m...not used to it, yet.”

She doesn’t say the rest--that she misses those kids, misses the way Owen and Hannah would peck at one another like no one could tell how deep their love ran. That she misses small feet tearing up and down a huge staircase. That she misses having someone who needs her waiting just around the corner. 

Can’t say the other part, either. The part where the room is quiet, and the walls seem not to exhale like they did at the manor, and everything is perfectly still...except for the little spot at the back of her head. That spot where she senses something waiting. Something she doesn’t understand, something that is so unbearably silent...and so incredibly furious. 

“Hey--Poppins. Still with me?” Jamie’s hand touches hers lightly, a bare flourish of fingertips across her knuckles. Dani jumps. 

“Poppins?” she repeats, smiling despite herself. Jamie shrugs.

“Said you were a nanny, didn’t you? For those, ah, rich beasties up the way.”

She had said as much, yes--last night, when Jamie asked what brought her out to England in the first place. “You’re as American as they fucking come,” Jamie had said with a grin that made Dani’s stomach feel like it was falling. “What on earth could have led you to Bly?”

Don’t, a tiny part of her had warned. Don’t tell her. There’s so much story, and so much of it is truly crazy. But Jamie had been leaning her hip against the bar, watching her with gentle interest, and Dani hadn’t been able to resist giving some of that story anyway. The simplest version: had to get away from home, wanted to do good in the world, best skills are with kids. Took the job because it was everything she’d thought she’d needed.

“And?” Jamie pressed gently, when Dani had faltered there. “Was it? Everything you needed?”

You. Me. Us. She’d closed her eyes, felt the world swim around her for one excruciating second. When she’d opened them again, Jamie’s hand was on her elbow, steadying.

“I don’t know,” she says now, as she did then. Jamie’s mouth quirks a little to the side, like she wants to smile solely as a reassurance. 

“Long night.”

It was--every night since the lake has been longer than Dani knows what to do with--and she’s not sure she can stand the idea of spending it alone in her room. The inn is warm, well-lit, and makes her feel like a tinderbox seconds from going up. Restless energy, is all--she’d felt it at the manor, too, that pent-up need to leap from her bed and roam the halls each night--but for some reason, it scares her.

Jamie is watching her still, and Dani is struck with the wild notion that she could ask for Jamie’s company. Could ask not to be left alone tonight. Jamie would probably say yes to anything she asks for, and they’d have a good time together. It would be a campfire in the woods, maybe, just a little light to break up the shadows, but it would be better than nothing.

Not fair, she tells herself. Not fair to her. Not with whatever it is I’m carrying now. 

“Thank you,” she says aloud, touching Jamie’s hand quickly, her thumb swiping across Jamie’s skin in a manner so brisk, it might as well not have happened at all. “You probably want to get to bed.”

Something she can’t--won’t--look at too closely in Jamie’s eyes. Something that makes her whole body clench with a need she isn’t capable of dealing with just now.

“Yeah,” Jamie says softly. “G’night, Poppins.”

***

Dani is better at this than she thinks, Jamie sees right away. Not just the serving gig, either; doesn’t take a mastermind, to take drink orders and drop off plates of bad chips to drunk townies. She’s good at the real heart of the job, the reason people like the citizens of Bly flock to the village’s one and only pub. 

She catches sight of her doing this very thing, probably without even realizing, on a Friday night. The room is packed with bodies, sweaty and laughing and half-gone on half-priced ale, and Jamie’s been looking for her for ten minutes. When she locates her at last, Dani is standing in the very back of the pub, hands on her hips, smiling at the oldest woman in the world. 

Jamie moves just near enough to pick up the gist. The woman, a fixture of Bly in her late eighties, still making her weekly venture to the pub, is regaling Dani with what very well might be her life story. And Dani, rather than looking impatient, rather than letting her eyes slide away in search of something else to do, has her head tipped to the side. Her posture is easy, the first time Jamie’s seen it as such, her focus absolute. 

Just listening. Just listening to this ancient woman like there’s nothing going on around her. 

“That was something,” Jamie says in her ear when Dani finally extricates herself from the one-sided conversation and makes her way back. 

“What was?”

Jamie inclines her head toward the old woman. Dani looks embarrassed. 

“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore the other tables, I--”

“Easy,” Jamie says, neatly stepping in the way of Dani’s breakneck sprint toward a panic attack. “You aren't in any trouble, I just can’t recall the last time I saw someone chat her up.”

She watches Dani relax, charmed by the way Dani smiles almost sheepishly.

“She said she’s been here her whole life. Can you imagine that? Staying in one place for almost ninety years?”

“Can’t imagine being anywhere for ninety years,” Jamie says without thinking. Dani’s brows go up, a comedic little arch that pulls at her heart. She hastens to add, “Only mean it’s been...a life. Not always lived with the best of intentions.”

Dani looks interested, and for a terrifying moment, Jamie thinks not only is she going to push, but that Jamie is actually going to tell her. Everything. Home life, foster care, prison term. Everything that stacks up behind her walls to remind her of why she built them in the first place. 

But Dani, thank fuck, only says, “We all have our baggage, right?” There’s something sad about the way she says it, the way she smiles with what Jamie is coming to think of as a half-light. There’s something going on behind a smile like that, and Jamie knows it isn’t safe to even wonder. Isn’t simple, to even consider caring. 

But you do, something whispers. Don’t you? Even knowing she’ll be gone in a couple of weeks, you do. 

“It’s funny,” Jamie says, a quick-change that doesn’t quite cover the heat she feels has cropped up between them. “That she’d come talk your ear off. She’s not much for words most nights. Thought she’d have gotten her fill at old Mrs. Sharma’s funeral last month.”

There goes Dani’s face again, forming that expression of pure surprise. “Wait. She knew Owen’s mother?”

“Who didn’t?” Owen Sharma, Bly’s kindest, least eligible bachelor. If Jamie had a dollar for every beautiful woman who made moon eyes over the man, she’d be up at least the price of a nice meal. 

Shame about his mother, really. Margaret had been at least as kind as her son, prone to slipping Jamie a wink and a chuckle while Owen blatantly missed all flirtation sent his way. It had hurt, seeing her grip on her own mind slip away. Had hurt worse, knowing Owen was up at that big old house only because it was the nearest he could get to Margaret’s deterioration. 

“Good woman,” Jamie says gruffly. “Kind woman. Hated seeing her go, but if I’m honest, maybe it’s easier on Owen this way.”

“He didn’t seem to think it was easier,” Dani says, but there’s a bit of hesitation in her voice. Like she knows what Jamie was trying to say, and maybe she doesn’t like it, but can’t entirely discount the idea, either. 

“Hang on,” Jamie says, jumping back a few steps. “If you know Owen--”

“Worked with him,” Dani agrees. “At the house. He was our cook.”

Of fucking course. How could I have missed this. “If you know Owen,” Jamie repeats, feeling very certain and very warm all of a sudden, “then you were at the funeral, too.”

The funeral. A surprisingly sunny affair, where the weather was concerned, and utterly miserable in every other way. Jamie, in honor of a woman who once made her feel more welcome in this tiny village than just about everyone her own age, had dressed carefully. Her only black dress. A fine jacket. Neat silver earrings. No one to impress but ghosts.

And she’d felt...incomplete, somehow, standing over the grave. Incomplete and terribly small, as Owen tried to make sense of his mother’s death under the cold stares of fifty strangers. This, they seemed to say with their eyes alone, this is the boy who thought he could get out. Thought he could escape. But Bly calls everyone home, in the end, doesn’t it, Owen?

She’d hated seeing him up there, tears leaking down an uncharacteristically solemn face. Hated the way their eyes followed him as he bowed his head over Margaret’s grave. Owen’s a bit of a prat, a little disconnected, totally unaware of the grip he has on the women of Bly, but he deserved so much better than this. So much better than judging eyes and whispers. 

But, then, who was Jamie to fight his battles for him? This man who might have been a friend, in another life, who is really little more than an occasional customer. She’d shaken her head, tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled pack, and set off a ways for a break from it all. 

And there, behind a tree, had been a woman. 

Jamie hadn’t seen her face. Had, in fact, stood intentionally back a few steps to give the woman a spot of privacy, because the sounds she was making did not invite onlookers. She seemed to have her hands over her mouth, dragging in great hitching sobs that made it sound as though all the air had gone out of the world. 

“All right?” Jamie had asked. Such a stupid, silly thing to say. But the woman had frozen. 

“Yeah.” Voice choked with obvious tears she was just as obviously trying to hide. Jamie had settled the cigarette between her teeth, flicked a lighter, cupped her hands around the infant ember. 

“Funerals,” she’d said, a bit stupidly. No idea why, even. No one in Bly needs her to play nice with their panic attacks. “Truly the worst.”

“Yeah,” the woman agreed, breathless. Jamie could just make out a layer of black dress, cut higher and less conservatively than the village prefers for its more somber events. A bit of black dress, a swatch of blonde hair. Not much else. 

Not my business to look, she’d thought, taking a long drag. Shifted her weight from one boot to the other. Hesitated. 

“S’all right,” she’d said at last. Voice smoke-roughened and more than a little embarrassed by her own forwardness. “I cry three, four times a day, even when there’s no fresh body in the ground.”

“Mmhmm,” the woman replied in a tight voice. Jamie sighed. 

“Only, no one would judge. Or,” she added, thinking of those pinched faces following Owen’s every broken step, “no one who hasn’t earned a punch on the nose for the trouble.”

To her surprise, the woman laughed. Not a big laugh. Just a snort, really, swallowed again just as quickly. Jamie, raising the cigarette back to her lips, fought down a grin. 

“You owe ‘em nothing,” she’d said, with a finality she didn't quite understand. Then, when the woman didn’t answer, a second time: “You owe ‘em nothing.”

Now, with the world of patron and alcohol abuzz around her, she peers into Dani’s face. “You,” she says quietly. “It was you.”

***

What are the odds? That the woman who had talked her down from a small mental breakdown at the funeral had been Jamie. That the woman who had, in fact, sparked something Dani couldn’t explain even to herself had been Jamie. That the woman who, in saying those four tiny words--you owe ‘em nothing--had lit the match she’d used to burn Eddie’s ghost out of her had been Jamie.

“Look a little pale,” Jamie observes. Her hand is loose around Dani’s upper arm, and Dani realizes she is swaying in place. Her heart is a jackrabbit, her head spinning. 

How? How could I not have noticed?

She’d thought Jamie had sounded familiar, hadn’t she? Right at the start, with Jamie raising her glass in a flirtatious little salute. She’d thought that voice rang a bell, and chalked it up to alcohol, to the pounding in her head, to the adrenaline high. 

“Have you ever,” she hears herself say dizzily, “met someone and felt right away you should have known them all along?”

It is an insane thing to say. Jamie ought to bolt for the door, words like that. Instead, brow creased with concern, she leads Dani behind the bar and sets her down on a stool. 

“Stay here a minute,” she commands. Dani drops her head into her hands. 

That night, after the funeral. Hadn’t she been thinking of this woman’s words when she’d taken a bottle of wine and Eddie’s glasses out to the fire? Hadn’t those words been vibrating between her teeth as she’d stared him down, this shadow of the man she’d once loved in all the wrong ways, for the last time?

I owe you nothing anymore, Eddie. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re gone, and I’m sorry I was the--I’m sorry you felt you had to run from the truth. But I can’t live like this. Not anymore. 

Drunk words. Sober reality. She’d woken the next morning feeling for the first time in almost a year like each inhalation actually inflated her lungs. 

“Here.” Jamie, reappearing like a magic trick at her side with a glass of ice water and a damp rag. “You’re off the rest of the night, Poppins. Can’t have you fainting on me.”

“Don’t want to go,” Dani begins blearily. Jamie presses the glass into her hands. 

“Not kicking you out,” she promises. “Just. Stay posted up here a while, yeah? I’ll be back.”

It’s an oath she keeps faithfully for the next several hours, performing a perfect balancing act between serving drinks and checking in with Dani. She ought to be embarrassed, Dani thinks, watching Jamie smile and fill glasses and glance back at her every so often to make sure she’s still where Jamie left her. This ought to be mortifying. 

Why isn’t it mortifying?

She watches Jamie, the natural way she glides from joke to joke, order to order, all steady hand and quick smile, and it’s like...like watching a movie you haven’t seen since you were a kid. A movie you used to put on in the background when you were sick, or sad, or lonely. She feels certain that she still knows all the words, the music cues, the parts where she always had to close her eyes against tears she didn’t yet understand. 

In a month of truly strange events, a month littered with ghosts and terrible heavy silences, this is the strangest yet. Looking at Jamie just in time to catch a wink that makes her hands slip against the glass. Looking at Jamie and thinking, I owe her nothing--and that’s the way it ought to be. 

“Feeling better?” Jamie asks when the doors are locked and there is only wood and glass listening in. Dani nods, clutching the now-empty glass and trying to find an expression for her face that will betray none of what she’s been thinking. 

“I’m sorry. It’s been a strange...” She shakes her head. There are words you can only say so many times before they begin to crumble on your tongue. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Seems as though it does,” Jamie says. She hoists herself up onto the bar, legs swinging, looking very young all of a sudden. Dani smiles. 

“It’s a long story.”

“Got time,” Jamie replies, and though it’s two in the morning, and Dani’s body is heavy with exhaustion, she can’t help leaning a bit closer. With Jamie seated this way, she’s a little taller than Dani for the first time, her eyes searching Dani’s face for clues as to...what? How she came to Bly, really? How she came to this pub, really?

How she came to carry whatever it is she can feel watching her every move, matching her step for step, really?

“You’ll think...” She swallows hard. Closes her eyes. Waits for Jamie to say I won’t, or try me anyway, or think what? Jamie doesn’t. Jamie remains quiet, and when she chances another glance, the expression on Jamie’s face almost undoes the small amount of calm she’s been collecting over the last few hours. She’s never seen anyone just...look at her like this. Like they really do have all the time in the world. 

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she finishes at last, smiling such a hard smile, it feels as though it might snap right off her face. Jamie leans forward, elbows resting on the knees of her overalls. 

“I think you are,” she says, “one of the sanest people ever to walk through this shitty little town.”

And then, without quite knowing why, Dani is talking. About all of it. Dani is spilling things she can’t explain, can’t quantify: about Eddie, about deciding no longer to allow him ownership of her life even in death; about Hannah and the well, the way the woman had been so lovely and so strong and so not there at all, in the end; about the children and their unexpected passengers, about how Rebecca Jessel had tried to the last to rescue Flora from a fate Dani can’t imagine, even now. 

And she tells her about the Lady. 

She tells her about the specter with its hand like a claw, who had picked her up like a squirming sack of flour and dragged her through that house. About how Flora had saved her life in the way only a child can think to try. About how she’d saved Flora in return, even if she can’t explain it. 

Jamie listens. To all of it. Eyes serious, mouth drawn in a gentle frown. She’s nodding, Dani realizes. Nodding, and watching Dani’s eyes the whole time. 

“See?” Dani says at last, and realizes she’s crying. The silent tracks of tears are warm on her cheeks, skidding off her chin and into her lap. She’s crying, and she’s breathing through it, and somewhere deep inside, she thinks she hears the crash of waves. “Crazy. Think I’m crazy. Think I’m going--”

Jamie, so gracefully, she almost doesn’t see the change, pushes off the bar and crouches beside the stool. Her hands find Dani’s, a gentle grip that makes the world stop swaying for a moment. 

“Think you are,” she says in the most determined voice Dani has ever heard, “surprisingly sane. All things considered. And I want you to know, you don’t have to--”

Dani’s got her by the shoulders. Dani’s dragging her upright, surging right off her seat, pressing her back against the bar. Dani, who understands on a level that is conscious and legitimate and wise that this is her co-worker now, and finds she does not particularly care, kisses her with such desperation, she nearly moans into Jamie’s mouth. 

Jamie should push her off. Jamie should be gentle and solid and certain in her dismissal. This is a bad idea. This is a bad--

“I have a flat,” Jamie breathes against her lips. Dani realizes Jamie’s hands are in her hair, Jamie’s mouth is flushed pink, Jamie is looking at her eyes. “I have a flat upstairs.”

***

“I want you to know,” Dani pants against her neck, “I’m not doing this because I’m--”

She hesitates, apparently not quite invested enough in what they’re doing on Jamie’s couch to use the word haunted. Jamie catches one hand, brings it to her lips, kisses each finger slowly. Taking her time, letting her tongue drift from index to middle to ring, watching Dani’s eyelids flicker. 

“Want you to know,” Jamie replies, when she feels certain the welling panic in Dani’s eyes has been effectively banished once more, “you don’t have to explain. And you don’t have to do this, either. If you don’t want to.”

Dani, sitting in her lap, shifting her weight so her torso presses against Jamie’s, gives her a truly hilarious look. “Does this feel like I don’t want to?”

Jamie grins. There’s just something about being in this situation that is funnier than she knows what to do with--Dani, having just told her the kind of life story better suited to a horror film, in her flat, on her couch, kissing her neck. It feels like the wrong genre, somehow. Like the wires of the world have been crossed, and Jamie would give anything to leave them this way. 

Fact is, she hasn’t liked the way anything feels the way she likes this. Hasn’t liked the presence of anyone in her world--her town, her pub, her home--like she likes Dani. 

Known her five minutes, the intelligent, ever-shrinking part of her brain protests, even as she lets Dani coax her head back on the arm of the couch, even as she lets Dani suck gently at the skin just below her ear. 

Kinda knew it after one, she thinks, hands flexing on the back of Dani’s sweater. 

This isn’t like before, she recognizes. Last time, there was a hunger in Dani bordering on feral, like she was running so hard from something Jamie didn’t even know existed that only Jamie’s body had stopped her running right off the edge. Tonight, Dani looks at her and Jamie is confident--confident in a way she’s never been with anyone in her life--Dani is actually seeing her. Actually choosing her. 

“You said,” she hears herself say, even as she’s gripping Dani’s waist. Dani has moved to straddle one thigh now, is rocking slowly back and forth, making soft whimpering noises into every kiss she leaves on Jamie’s skin. “You said there are people you meet...”

Dani groans, and Jamie pulls at her hips faster, harder, liking the way Dani is panting against her shoulder. “You feel you should have known all along,” she finishes, turning her head to kiss Jamie’s lips. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Me too,” Jamie says, her own body straining to get closer. There are way too many clothes between them, she has decided, but it’s up to Dani to take them further. Up to Dani to decide what she’s okay with. After everything she just told Jamie downstairs, it’s the least Jamie can offer by way of comfort. 

When Dani pushes up enough to take Jamie with her, shoving the straps of her overalls down and dragging her t-shirt over her head, she figures she made the right call. 

“You too,” Dani says, looking at her--at her; Jamie feels quite certain this is what it feels like to jump and find yourself flying--as though she never again wants to look at anything else. Jamie nods, pressing their foreheads together, trying to catch her breath even as Dani is sliding curious hands down her chest. 

“Minute I met you. Minute I saw you. So, who’s crazy now?”

Dani laughs, and it’s the sweetest sound Jamie’s ever heard. This is different, she understands, so different from a quick fuck in a bathroom. This is going somewhere, even if neither of them have a map. 

She brings Dani to bed, wanting on some level deeper than decision to do this properly. It feels right, to guide Dani back onto clean sheets and cheap pillows, to help Dani out of her clothes in small, measured movements. It feels, she thinks with the clearest head in the world, like Dani was always supposed to be here. That no matter how the story unfolds, no matter how many roads it takes to get them here, this is the endpoint. Dani, gazing up at her, hair messy, smile angling against Jamie’s mouth. Dani, arching under her hand, saying her name in a sharp, heady way Jamie suddenly can’t do without. Dani, who says she’s crazy, who doesn’t say she’s haunted, clenching tight around Jamie like she was always supposed to be here. 

“Please,” Dani sighs, “Jamie.” And Jamie thinks, Whatever it is, yes. Whatever you need, yes. 

Five minutes, that nearly-banished whisper repeats. 

Knew after one, she thinks again, curling two fingers and watching Dani spiral. 

***

Jamie sleeps like she’s never been afraid of anything hiding in the dark. Lips parted, arms tossed without care, she sleeps more deeply than Dani would have guessed. Even when Dani rises, carefully removing the hand she had kept tucked around Jamie’s middle all night, Jamie barely stirs. 

I haven’t slept like that in years, Dani thinks with a rush of fondness. C’ept maybe last night. 

She wants to blame it on the sex, on Jamie working her over once, twice, three times before she’d even been able to reciprocate. Wants to say only good sex can knock a person out, banish nightmares that have been so present for so long, they’re really more like old friends. 

Wasn’t that, though, she thinks, pulling Jamie’s discarded t-shirt on and perching on Jamie’s side of the mattress. Was something else. 

There is a catharsis, maybe, in telling your story to someone who is really listening. A release not found anywhere else. She hadn’t meant to tell Jamie everything--had certainly not expected Jamie to, if not understand, accept it without a word of discouragement. If Dani had been listening to that story, with all its hidden bumps and screams, would she have been able to nod and kiss the storyteller without so much as a chuckle?

Maybe it depends on the storyteller. Or maybe it’s just Jamie. Jamie, who has seen her naked in two very different ways, and has yet to flinch from either. Jamie, who even now is sleepily rolling onto her back, groping along the pillow where Dani ought to be. 

“Dani?”

Her heart lurches, squeezes, the sound of her name as the first thing out of Jamie’s mouth bringing tears to her eyes.

“Here,” she croaks, and Jamie--eyes still shut against the burgeoning sunlight through thin curtains--stretches until her fingers find Dani’s wrist. Her face relaxes, her smile soft. 

“Thought I’d scared you off,” she says, a joke that isn’t a joke at all. Dani bends over her, kissing her cheek. She can still taste Jamie, can still feel the way Jamie gripped the sheets in both hands as she let Dani explore uncharted territory for what had felt like hours. 

“Not going anywhere,” she hears herself say, and though the terrible silence in her head seems to tighten, she feels as though it is true, somehow. For how long, she can’t say. But there is a confidence in the sentiment all the same, an assured little edge to it like a promise. 

“Good,” Jamie mumbles, curling toward her until her face presses against Dani’s hip. The kiss she leaves is clumsy, but Dani feels the heat of it go straight to her core all the same. 

How can I know I want that kiss every day for as long as I’m here? How can I possibly know that?

“You’re worrying,” Jamie says, nuzzling against her skin, eyes still shut. Dani smiles, sifts gentle fingers through tousled curls.

“How can you tell?”

“I am,” Jamie says in a voice like one tumbling back into sleep, “a genius.”

“You are,” Dani laughs, “still asleep.”

“Nope.” To prove her point, Jamie cracks open one eye. “See? Perfectly present, Poppins.”

Dani is, for the first time in a long time, perfectly present herself. It scares her a little--not as much as the beast scares her, not as much as the weight of exhaustion fitting itself around her shoulders and pressing down scares her, but all the same. This is fear, of a kind. And excitement, of another. 

And hope, maybe. Just a little scrap of it, lining the bottom. 

“I should go,” she says, and Jamie opens the other eye, groaning. 

“You should stay,” she suggests, sitting up and pressing close to punctuate the idea. As small as she is in sleep, she feels like she could take up the whole room, now. Dani licks her lips. 

“We open--”

“When I unlock that door,” Jamie finishes for her, something sly and delicious about the way she’s looking Dani over. “S’that my shirt?”

Dani shrugs, liking the way Jamie’s eyes make her feel like she needn’t have bothered with covering up at all. Jamie cups her cheek, kisses her with all the slow careful energy of a woman revving up for something glorious that might take all day. 

“You’re not...I mean...you remember what I said last night?” Dani doesn’t really want to be saying it, doesn’t really want to drag focus away from the way her entire body goes shock-bright when Jamie’s tongue slips into her mouth. Even as the words are coming out of her, her hands are sliding up Jamie’s body, familiarizing themselves once more with sleep-warm skin. 

“The part about feeling crazy?” Jamie breaks just enough to speak, still within kissing distance. Dani steels herself. 

“The part where I don’t understand what’s happening to me. But it is happening, Jamie. Whatever it is.”

Jamie, holding the back of her head, peers into her eyes. Dani holds her breath, waiting for the flinch, waiting for Jamie--no longer sex-addled--to find some sign of the beast behind her gaze. 

“I only see you,” Jamie says, as if reading her mind. She smiles, almost self-conscious. “I only see you, and I’d...like to keep seeing you. If you’ll stay.”

She should say no. Should say it’s unprofessional at best, utterly unwise on a deeper level at worst. Should say Jamie’s better off without her, everyone’s better off without her, who knows how much time she even has before the thing she’s carrying like a disease comes to call--Jamie, you can’t take this on. It isn’t fair. 

Don’t think fairness much comes into it, a voice very like Hannah’s echoes. She squeezes her eyes shut. 

“Hey.” Jamie isn’t trying to kiss her now, is holding one hand anchored to her ribs like she believes it’s the only thing keeping Dani from floating away. “Poppins. I’m not asking for your hand in marriage, all right? Just...I like you. Like you quite a lot, as it turns out. I’d like to see where...where this goes.”

She’s waiting, Dani realizes, for Dani to laugh at her. To say absolutely not. To say there is no chance in hell. How many women have said as much to Jamie before? How many women have shot her down for less?

I’d like to find out, she thinks with surprise. I’d like to find out everything about her. 

“I can’t make promises,” she says. “I don’t know how much--”

“But you have now,” Jamie says, somehow managing to interrupt without stealing the words from Dani’s mouth. “Yeah? You have right now. In this bed, with me. Wearing my shirt better than I ever have,” she adds, plucking at the hem until Dani can’t fight a smile. 

“Yeah, but--”

“So,” Jamie says, shifting gently until Dani is laying beside her, hip sinking into the mattress, eyes barely a breath from Jamie’s. “I promise today. Here. In this bed, with you...probably not wearing my shirt much longer, if I’m honest.”

Dani laughs. She’s moving toward Jamie without meaning to, their legs tangling. Jamie kisses her once, very softly.

“And I promise you this afternoon, if the morning goes all right. And this evening, if you aren’t screaming up the road by then. Tomorrow, we re-evaluate the whole thing. Decide how we feel then.”

Dani is nodding. Can’t seem to stop nodding.

“Each day,” Jamie says, punctuating every word with a long kiss Dani has no desire to see end, “on its own merit, Poppins. One at a time. If they stack up, they stack up.”

Dani, unable to resist, pulls her close. One at a time, she thinks. I can do that.

***

The young woman is tired. Exhausted, if she’s truly honest with herself. She feels as though there must be an endpoint to running, a marker down the road that says a person has gone as far as they are able. Rest now, she imagines that marker saying in a cheerily-bold script. Fall down now. Let go.

She isn’t there yet, she’s certain. As certain as she gets these days, anyway.  She doesn’t know how much a person can be expected to carry, or for how long, but at least there is Jamie. Jamie, who grins at her as they bustle around the pub like clockwork, who takes her to the stockroom under guise of replenishing the peanuts and has her muffling sighs against an open kiss, who looks at the calendar at month’s end and says, “Y’know, Poppins, boss man’ll be back next week. Thinking I could use a break from Bly. What d’you say?”

One day at a time, she thinks, but the idea of a road trip with Jamie is too much, too wonderful, to say no. It’s only an idea until it happens, she reminds herself. Only an idea until they’re in the car, Jamie’s hand covering hers, Jamie pressing down the gas pedal like the whole world is theirs to claim. 

She’s tired. Been tired a terribly long time, if she’s honest with herself. And maybe that’s just the way it goes, for anyone, even those too lucky for ghosts. Maybe the trick really is just finding someone to be tired around, someone who is willing to hold your hand, learn your secrets, kiss away your monsters. 

She might not be okay forever. Might not even be okay much longer. But Jamie’s making happy murmurs about Vermont and wanting to start a garden, and there’s a light in her eyes that makes Dani feel more alive than she has in months. 

A little longer, then. If the days stack up, so be it. It’s enough, just to try a little longer to find solid ground.

[jess-rewatches-prodigalson]

Killabustas (S2, E9)

My time-stamped thoughts for this episode are below. As always I reference Malcolm’s mental health. A lot. So if that’s going to be a trigger for you, don’t keep reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

0:00 - Are the birds flying past Malcolm’s apartment supposed to be an omen for the rest of the season? Or just some foreshadowing for the bird-heavy episode? .....I’m probably reading wayyy too much into this.

0:12 - Ugh. Someone give this sweet cinnamon roll a hug. He’s spiralling. He is so close to having a total mental breakdown and it breaks my heart. (but like, I also want to see it because emotional whump is my favourite).

0:23 - “How can I trust you? I know what you did.” This. This is what’s killing Malcolm. The fear that if Gil, Dani, JT, and Edrisa find out what he did for Ainsley they won’t trust him. He’s afraid they’ll abandon him. He’s afraid that they’ll hate him as much as he already hates himself. ISTG the moment they all find out (or tell Malcolm what they suspect) Malcolm will break. That will be the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

0:34 - Anyone else think Malcolm looks completely adorable (yet super sad and scared) when he’s focusing on painting? <3

0:45 - “Why must everything you paint have an exit wound?” I love that this suggests that this isn’t the first mother-son painting session. <3 hahaha

0:47 - “It’s a pear.” It’s heartbreaking that Malcolm didn’t even realize that his pear was bleeding. C’mon Jessica, it’s time for an intervention. Malcolm is breaking in front of you. DO SOMETHING. 

1:01 - NO. DAMN IT FEDAK. I wanted to see Malcolm’s reaction when Jessica told him she was writing a memoir. I wanted to see it so badly. I wanted to see him panic about the fact that she was inevitably going to disclose information about his childhood that he’d rather not have public. 

1:09 - “How much worse you really are.” OOOOOOOOOOHHHH SHIT. I can’t believe he said that to his Mother’s face. hahahaha OMG. Malcolm is a little shit head and I love him. Well, at least I know he’s upset about the fact that she’s writing this book. His jab at Jessica proves that much.

1:42 - Is Malcolm playing matchmaker here? hahaha or is he just trying to get Jessica out of his loft ASAP?

1:53 - “Why didn’t they call me?!?” Can you hear the sound of my heart breaking? I understand why they didn’t call him in on this one BUT it’s not helping Malcolm’s mental health. On top of the fear that he is becoming his father, the stress of covering up a murder, the fear that his sister is going to become a serial killer, his childhood trauma, and usual mental health issues - Malcolm is afraid he’s going to be abandoned if the team finds out about Endicott. This is reinforcing those fears. 

1:55 - “Where should I start?” At least Jessica can see how much pain Malcolm is in. I wish she’d do something constructive about it.

2:00 - “Forget to call someone?” Something about the way Malcolm waltzes into the frame and delivers that line is super endearing. He’s like a little kid running after his older siblings and their friends when they tried to go to the mall without him. <3 

2:05 - Why the hell didn’t Gil just pull a 1x12 on Malcolm and insist Malcolm take a holiday? Hell - he could’ve gotten Jessica to enforce it. The fact that Gil is being super distant with Malcolm is not helping Malcolm’s very fragile mental health. GIL I’M DISAPPOINTED IN YOU (and I have been all season....) :(

 2:12 - “Trauma’s my middle name.” Okay so 1) what is Malcolm’s middle name? If it’s Martin please tell me he changed it when he changed his last name. 2) At least we got a small papa!Gil moment this episode. <3 

2:26 - “Fine.” This is Gil terrified. Remember what Gil said in 1x12? “He was losing it. I mean, I could see that. But I was afraid that I’d lose him.” That’s why Gil is letting Malcolm on this case. He knows Malcolm is losing it and he’s terrified of what Malcolm might do to himself with time on his hands. Gil doesn’t think Malcolm should be working but he knows it’s the only thing he can do to help Malcolm in the short term. 

2:42 - hahahaha Gil’s taken-aback look when Malcolm starts not-so-subtly being a member of the Gillica fan club. hahaha <3

3:00 - Okay. I’m done. Edrisa can’t still think she and Malcolm might happen. I can’t handle this blantant one-sided worship anymore and I’m so glad it’s ending this episode (I hope).

3:07 - “and also, you’re bleeding.” <3 JT looking out for Bright. <3 

3:12 - “Oh. I thought that this was your hobby?” <3 Dani teasing Bright. <3 I love that Dani, Edrisa, and JT are at least giving Malcolm some positive attention right now. It’s good for his fragile mental state. <3 

3:40 - The directing is really good this episode. I’m not usually a person who notices that kind of thing but DAMN. 

“It’s an expression of power and control.” “Sounds like someone with serious anger issues.” Yikes. Why do the ‘cases of the week’ always relate back to Malcolm’s current mental health crisis?!? Malcolm dismembered a body (for Ainsley but still). Now he’s profiling that the act of dismembering a body is an expression of power and control. That reinforces his fear that he’s becoming like Martin. Dani’s distaste and offhanded comment about anger issues won’t help Malcolm’s very real fear of abandonment. Hell, it’s compounding his fears that he’s like his father - the man obsessed with power and control who has a nasty temper when things don’t go his way. 

4:09 - “Our killer derived pleasure from this.” Dani looks terrified when Malcolm says this. Is it just because she thinks this is a gross and scary murder scene? Or is it because she’s connecting the Malcolm+Endicott dots?

4:11 - “budding homicidal psychopath” is this supposed to be foreshadowing that Malcolm is becoming a psychopath? The writers have been suggesting that Malcolm enjoyed cutting up the body all season. .....and I don’t want the story to go that way. Please no.

4:15 - “I think I just became a vegetarian.” hahahaha JT is my hero. I love this dude and his dry but humorous comments.

4:26 - Once again - I can’t rewatch the Martin+Capshaw scenes. Once was more than enough. My basic thoughts on this particular scene? Capshaw and Martin are both gross. I think Martin is desperate for physical contact and Capshaw knows it. I think Capshaw is manipulating Martin (why is a mystery to me). I also think Martin is manipulating Capshaw so he can use her to help him escape.....I do however think Martin is a heterosexual male who is full of lust and physical desires. (which is really gross to me - a sex-repulsed asexual).

 6:22 - I have a serious love-hate relationship with this scene. On one hand, Gil is clearly so so so concerned about Malcolm here and it warms my cold dead heart. On the other hand, the fact that he sends Dani to talk to Malcolm instead of just talking to Malcolm himself kind of pisses me off. Gil’s been really distant with Malcolm all season and it’s killing me. BUT I also kind of understand why Gil is passing off Malcolm to Dani (I don’t agree with it but I digress). All season the writers have been pushing the Brightwell relationship. We’ve seen a lot of really good meaningful conversations between Dani and Malcolm. At this point in time, it appears that Malcolm is willing to open up to Dani more than anyone else. Think about it. Even in season 1 - Malcolm never really opened up to Gil about his mental health. Gil knows that Malcolm won’t talk about his mental health with him - so he’s sending in the expert (Dani). I’m not happy about this but I kind of get it. 

6:39 - OMG. Malcolm excitedly sliding into the room is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. <3

6:44 - “What are you guys talking about?” “You.” Exhibit A. If Malcolm had just responded with “what? why?” or Gil had followed up his statement with “we’re worried about you” we could’ve had a meaningful conversation about Malcolm’s mental health. Right. Here. BUT Malcolm knows why they’re talking about him. Malcolm is deflecting. He doesn’t want to talk about this with Gil. So he rolls his eyes and walks away. Gil shouldn’t have let Malcolm off the hook so easily. :( 

7:36 - “There’s a special place in hell for people who hurt birds.” Ugh. I just want to hug this little cinnamon roll. <3 

7:55 - “Where’d this murder board come from?”  hahahaha I love how JT’s constant mood is “I work with crazy people”. 

8:07 - “You’re a web sleuth.” I love that JT somehow manages to get across that he thinks Edrisa is a complete weirdo but he respects the hell out of her. Also - the fact that JT teases the people he loves is so cute to me. 

8:31 - “Ouf.” This was funny but it also felt a little ooc? Like wouldn’t Gil just cross his arms and say “Edrisa” as a gentle but stern warning? 

8:53 - Does Edrisa have no filter or do people really think about sex this often? As an asexual, I’m genuinely asking.

8:55 - I love how uncomfortable Gil and JT get every time Edrisa starts talking about sex and/or reproductive anatomy. hahaha

9:37 - Did Martin ever kill animals? As a teenager maybe? 

9:47 - “They have all the control over this cages, seemingly inferior creature.” ....is this supposed to be a subtle reference to the Martin/Capshaw thing? Capshaw being the killer and Martin being the inferior animal she’s controlling? 

10:15 - Nope. I’m out. Can’t do it. So gross. 

11:00 - “It’s super gross.” Malcolm is all of us. 

11:08 - Soooo is Martin fantasizing about killing Capshaw after they do sexy things (hopefully consensual ones)?

11:52 - “Oh I’m already crazy.” This is somehow adorable and completely heart shattering. Malcolm is hiding his pain behind humour but he genuinely believes that he’s crazy. :( 

12:00 - Is this the only conversation Malcolm and Edrisa have ever had without Edrisa hero-worshiping Malcolm?......I like it?!?! These two are total weirdos and should definitely be besties.

13:14 - Damn. Edrisa is shining in this episode. <3 <3 

13:33 - “No. You won’t” hahaha JT being the team big brother is so cute. 

13:46 - “You coming?” Malcolm is so soft here. <3 <3 

14:00 - I love everything about this scene. I love how Dani opens up to Bright - even though it’s clearly still painful for her to talk about. I love how attentive and caring Malcolm is. I love how in character they both are. Malcolm is trying to deflect his problems. I love how Malcolm is 100% aware that Dani doesn’t believe his “I’m fine” bs. Dani is trying to get him to open up by sharing some of her own demons with him. Dani looks upset and worried that Malcolm won’t open up - but not surprised. 

15:00 - “I pulled a Bright.” hahahaha OMG. I love that Dani and Malcolm don’t question this expression at all. It suggests that the team has used the phrase “pulling a Bright” before and I am here for it. 

15:27 - This is what I call ‘passively suicidal’. Yes, Malcolm jumps in front of that car because he thinks it will help him solve the case. Yes, it’s technically an action motivated by the will to live. HOWEVER, he doesn’t move out of the way when Dani tells him to. That car is driving slowly. He doesn’t move. Because he’s in a mental state where he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He has moments when he cares about life (like solving a case) but those just aren’t enough anymore. Yes, he looks a little alarmed when the car approaches him - but I honestly doubt Malcolm is frozen in fear. 

15:56 - “You had the right of way. He can’t sue.” Holy shit. First of all - I immediately think Ashton is a douche. Secondly - is this how America works?!?! In Canada we teach our drivers that the ‘pedestrian always has the right of way’.

16:11 - “My super close friends from online.” Honestly - I feel called out. This is how I must sound when mention my internet friends to my family.

16:25 - Sooooo we’re all in agreement right? The fact that Malcolm has hit the left side of his head without medical treatment this many times = 1) mental breakdown sometime before the end of the season or 2) a way to get him out of taking the fall for Endicott.

16:38 - *sigh* can someone please hug this man!?!? He just can’t catch a break. This whole conversation between Malcolm and hallucination!Martin is heartbreaking. It shows that on some level even Malcolm knows he’s going to break soon because his mental health is in tatters. 

17:23 - “She’s not like the others.” Who are the ‘others’? Are these the other people that Malcolm’s had a romantic interest in? Are ‘others’ friends from Malcolm’s past? Or are the others Gil, Edrisa, and JT?  

17:34 - Ugh. Floppy haired. Bruised. Sad. My whump heart is so full. 

17:56 - Does Malcolm not go on the internet? He didn’t know what a sock puppet is? (granted, I’m 24 and I didn’t know either).

18:04 - The firefighter’s name is BLAZE (Blaise)?!? Are you kidding me?

18:24 - “No. No, it isn’t.” Damn. JT is worried about Malcolm. Just look at him. 

18:51 - Do I think it’s weird that this dude is so openly flirting with Edrisa in the middle of a police questioning?!? HELL YES. Do I think it’s weird that Edrisa’s allowed in the questioning??!!? HELL YES. Am I glad they’re giving Edrisa a love interest who isn’t Malcolm? OH HELL YES. ....also Edrisa and Blaze are kind of cute? Like they’re both weirdos and they’re both into each other so ...?!!?

19:47 - Wow. This whole “Killabustas police interrogation” scene is painfully hard to rewatch. Like - the dialogue makes absolutely no logical sense but it had to be there for the plot? Everything is just too convenient. The pamphlets. The fact that these members were all so quick to meet IRL. The fact that these dudes were able to track Alex down so quickly....I mean....who is buying this nonsense?!?!

20:05 - Ugh my asexual ass can’t handle the amount of horny people in this episode. 

20:18 - Anyone else think it’s strange that Gil referred to Malcolm as “Bright” to Jessica?!? I mean, Jessica is Malcolm’s mother. PLUS it feels like Gil is trying to emotionally distance himself from Malcolm?!? 

20:24 - “Remind me to take Malcolm out of my will.” hahahahaha OMG. I love Jessica so much.

20:44 - These Jessica/Gil scenes were a highlight of the episode for me. They’re just so cute. I love how supportive Gil is. I love how Jessica isn’t repressing her feelings with booze during this episode. I love how open about her insecurities Jessica is with Gil. I love how happy they both look. <3 <3 <3 <3 

21:24 - “Some still do.” YES!!!! YES!!!! Keep flirting Gil!!! Don’t give up on her!!! <3 <3 

21:45 - Holy shit. How much does Edrisa get paid?!?! This is a rich person apartment. I’m shook. 

23:05 - Again. I must fast forward through the nasty romantic manipulation that is the Capshaw+Martin scene. The sexual tension made me nauseous the first time. But I WILL say that I think the black guard in this scene - Mr. Benjamin will be the dude Martin maims next episode (from the previews) - not Mr. David. Either that or the black patient in the room. 

25:25 - “Watch out. I bite.” ........I have no words. My asexual ass is shocked, disgusted, and .....kind of proud of Edrisa for going after what she wants (even if she’s super crass about it). 

26:03 - “That’s a seriously twisted mind.” “Sure. The kind I get.” This whole scene is heartbreaking. I honestly can’t tell if Malcolm is projecting himself, Ainsley, or both of them onto the suspect. “He killed for attention” - sounds like Ainsley to me. “Alex was going to out him to the group” ......HOLY SHIT. Does this mean Ainsley’s going to try and kill Malcolm and/or Jessica because she think’s they’ll rat her out?!?!?! “It’s about preserving the group. The Vulture needs them.” - That sounds like Malcolm to me. Malcolm doesn’t want to tell the team about Ainsley because he needs them and he’s scared they’ll abandon him if they find out about Ainsley. 

27:10 - I’m getting secondhand embarrassment from the west coast of Canada.

27:21 - “Our killer would never order take out.” Weak, Malcolm. Weak excuse. 

27:40 - annnnnndd this scene was a hard skip for me. I can’t watch Martin and Capshaw prepare to do sexy things. Nope. ALTHOUGH, I will say: Capshaw’s story about how she ended up in Claremont is interesting. Whether it’s true or not is debatable but it definitely shows that Capshaw is manipulative and creepy like Martin. I have a very strong feeling that Capshaw is a psychopath, serial killer, or sociopath. 

31:00 - Edrisa checking out Malcolm’s loft is everything I dreamed it would be. The fact that she’s clearly in awe of his weapons collection. The fact that she has no regard for his privacy and just starts going through his fridge and sleeping area. The fact that she so openly comments and judges the stuff in his loft (ie. restraints on the bed, lack of food in the fridge). It’s perfect. 

31:27 - “This is the fridge of a very sad person.” LMAO. I love this line so so so much. I love how Edrisa seems to be realizing for the first time just how broken Malcolm is. I love how sheepish Malcolm looks when she unintentionally calls him out. I love how amused Dani is by the whole situation. <3 <3 

32:00 - annnndddd the Killabustas have taken over Malcolm’s loft. They don’t ask for permission to set up his TV. They don’t awkwardly hang out near the door until Malcolm invites them to ‘make themselves at home’ or any of the other common pleasantries us North Americans go through when we visit the homes of acquaintances. They walk right in and claim ownership. It’s kind of beautiful? 

32:13 -......so did they already have Malcolm’s wifi password or am I expected to believe that they either a) have a mobile hotspot, b) are using data, c) web-sleuthed their way into hacking his wifi, or d) Malcolm had his wifi password written down somewhere super obvious inside the house?!?! This is honestly the most unrealistic thing about this episode. It’s 2021. The first time you visit a friend’s house you ask for their wifi password. It’s what you do. 

33:28 - Ok. I like the kiss on the cheek. Very respectful. She clearly would’ve been down for more but he’s a gentleman and I respect the hell out of it. 

33:48 - “I’m sorry Blaze is so jacked.” hahaha OMG Edrisa - Malcolm’s not romantically interested in you. He never has been. Read the room woman!

36:11 - Ashton is Malcolm in this scene. “I’ve been a freak my whole life. I had nothing until that bird video. Suddenly, I was a part of something.” == “I’ve been a freak my whole life. I had nothing until I joined the team. Suddenly, I was a part of something.”

36:38 - “Ashton, it won’t work. Family will only go so far. Because once they know the truth - who they’re really after - they’ll give up on you. And no more family.” Ouch. This hurts. Malcolm genuinely believes that Gil, Dani, JT, and Edrisa are going to abandon him the second they find out what he did for Ainsley. Malcolm thinks they’re going to hate him. Malcolm thinks they’re going to think he’s like Martin - a criminal. A killer. Look at how broken Malcolm looks and sounds here. It’s not just that Malcolm thinks he’s going to be abandoned. It’s that he thinks he deserves to be abandoned. He thinks he’s a monster. 

 37:02 - EDRISA!!! DAMN. I love this badass. <3 <3 So proud of the girl who literally had a panic attack in 1x15 when she had to save a that ‘almost-victim’ by injecting alcohol into him. 

38:05 - My heart is so full. This is honestly one of my top 10 moments of Prodigal Son to date. I love that we see Gil’s new car. I love that he’s working on his car in a police mechanic shop. I love this little glimpse into Gil’s personal life  - the man who likes fixing up old cars with a cold beer while listening to 80s music in an boombox from the 80s. <3 I love the absolute adorableness that is Jessica and Gil awkwardly flirting. 

I love that Jessica - the rich socialite - holds Gil’s wrench without question. Even though she looks a little confused. I love that Jessica comes to Gil this time. He’s been instigating the flirting most of this season. It looks like Jessica’s finally ready to be an equal partner in the relationship.

I love that Jessica - the rich socialite - takes a drink of Gil’s working-class beer with a smile. His social class isn’t beneath her. She doesn’t care about how rich he is - just about the purity of his intentions and the depth of his devotion to her family. 

39:00 - “Oh I remember her. How fiercely she protected her kids.” I LOVE THIS. I love that Gil is attracted to Jessica’s devotion as a mother. I love that the fact that she had children with another man (a serial killer) doesn’t bother him. He loves how fierce, independent, and strong she is and that’s absolutely gorgeous. 

I love who wholesome their romantic moment is. Unlike Edrisa and Martin’s live scenes - it’s not fast, heavy, and physical. It’s slow, gentle, and emotional. Gil and Jessica dance like an old married couple when the song they danced to at their wedding comes on the radio. 

I love the setting of the scene. How they’re dancing in a dirty mechanic’s shop. Jessica is dressed like the rich woman she is and Gil is wearing a plaid shirt rolled up to his elbows. The contrast is striking and beautiful. I love that Jessica isn’t trying to make Gil fit into her social status. She’s not dragging him to rich people galas and forcing him to dress or act like someone he’s not (although he would so do that for her). She’s hanging out with Gil on his turf and she’s delighted about it. <3 

 40:08 - “Do you think you can ever really know someone?” Isn’t this what Malcolm said to Gil in 1x17 as the whole Endicott thing was boiling? You know - a few episodes before the team arrests Malcolm in his loft when he’s in the middle of a mental crisis?!? Is this foreshadowing for the next mental health breakdown?!? (Hopefully a fully mental health breakdown this time?!?!)

40:18 - “Masquarading as someone he wasn’t” Yikes. Malcolm truly believes he’s lying to the team just because he’s not acting like a monster. Malcolm has truly convinced himself that he is his father’s son. 

40:45 - I don’t even care how you feel about Brightwell. The fact that Dani is the only person this whole season who has told Malcolm that he’s not a monster makes her the greatest friend he could ever ask for. 

40:51 - “Ever since Nicholas died.” ....well Dani isn’t a moron so if she didn’t connect the dots before she will now. If we don’t get an intervention next episode I’m going to throw hands. 

40:57 - Why. Does. Martin. Have. To. Ruin. Every. Chance. Malcolm. Gets. To. Begin. To. Heal?!?!

41:16 - “ooooohhhh here comes the kiss” .....honestly though. Martin is every Brightwell shipper.

41:20 - I respect the hell out of Malcolm for shutting Dani down like this. Yes - he absolutely should’ve come clean with her. HOWEVER, he clearly isn’t ready to share this burden and the fact that he shut down the progress of any romantic relationship is really good. Because Dani would be SO MAD if they started dating while he was actively lying to her. It would be the end of their friendship. Forget your Brightwell ship - they wouldn’t even be friends. 

41:40 - “Why are you ruining this!?” Dani had to have heard this. Even if she didn’t....Malcolm was pretty obviously glancing over her shoulder at hallucination!Martin before she left. There’s no way Dani - a detective - won’t be able to figure out that Malcolm is hallucinating. I WANT A MENTAL HEALTH INTERVENTION. NEXT EPISODE. I’M MANIFESTING IT INTO EXISTANCE. EVEN THOUGH I DON’T TRUST FEDAK TO GIVE IT TO ME. I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO HUG MALCOLM. 

42:06 - Honestly thought Capshaw was going to beat the crap out of Friar Pete here. This woman is unstable. Mark my words. She’s going to kill someone (if she hasn’t already). 

I know I kind of shat on this episode a bit but I honestly really liked it? I loved the character development it gave us. Even if the plot was pretty subpar. 

Thanks for hanging out. See you next week. <3 :)