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lucyandthepen · 10 months ago

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last young renegade | jjh

summary: your valentine’s day plans with jaehyun may have gone down the drain just a little. (okay — a lot.)

pairing: jaehyun x reader verse: canon, idol!verse rating: t warnings&tags: reader & jaehyun are in an established relationship, quite frankly there is nothing too out of the ordinary in this fic which is a shocker, it’s a rewritten fic so pls excuse any errors I may not have caught! word count: 5.02k

a/n: happy 2024 friends and family !!!!!! and advanced happy birthday to the man who created valentine’s day, he who is perhaps my first love in nct, jaehyun! this is actually just a fic I’ve been hoping to re-write a bit from before, and since it’s valentine’s themed, what better time to post it!! Enjoy enjoy, and may this year bring more fun, laughs, love (and debauchery) to this blog!

Yᴏᴜ sᴀɪᴅ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ sɪᴄᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛɪʀᴇᴅ ᴏғ ɪᴛ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴏʀɴɪɴɢ, ɴɪɢʜᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴀʏ.

♡ jaehyunnie ♡ I know I said birthday dinner but practice is running so late ㅠㅠ ♡ jaehyunnie ♡ Can we meet after? I’m sorry ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ How about I call you when we’re done? Maybe 11:30?

At times like this, you often wonder if it’s all worth it.

You know thinking that way is counterproductive, not to mention a little unfair. You knew exactly what to expect, getting into an under-wraps relationship with an idol, and so far, it’s lived up to most of your assumptions, and then some. It doesn’t help that Jaehyun, even just by name, tends to attract an unbelievable amount of attention. You know you can’t blame him; it’s not like he wants to be high on the radar every time, either. For some reason, though, you seem to be looking for something or someone to blame, which you also know is a dead end. You have no one to pin the blame onto apart from yourself by frequently generating doubts that keep your mind running around in circles.

It’s not even the sneaking around that gets tiring; it’s the waiting — waiting on calls, waiting on free time, waiting on a good opportunity to do something that doesn’t involve him suddenly getting pulled out to attend to one of many of his celebrity responsibilities. Over the last few years that you’ve dated, NCT has only ever gotten more popular; with that popularity came the fact that the public eye was trained on them, focusing on every microscopic detail of their lives. Jaehyun hates that more than anything, which is why he’s given up on trying to avoid it by practically escaping it altogether, locking himself up in the dorm with you when he has his precious few days off.

While it’s true that you definitely don’t miss having to play espionage when going out for a cup of coffee with him, you’ve also managed to memorize every single inch of Jaehyun’s room, which isn’t good for your mentality, you’re pretty sure. You have to keep reminding him to open the window whenever the both of you are in there, because all you do is stay in and watch English movies without subtitles to see who can understand the most without asking questions (obviously, he always wins) while eating food he runs up and down the stairs to get every other hour. And while him trying to imitate the British accents on these shows is genuinely funny, you’re starting to suspect even he’s starting to get tired of watching Harry Potter over and over again. Twenty hours sounds like a long time unless you spend every twenty-hour period you have together marathoning the exact same films. Much to both of your disappointment, your suggestion to watch it totally out of order did not make it cooler.

Still, you suppose it’s not all bad. Jaehyun also taught you how to play Fortnite on a couple of his days off back to back, and while you hadn’t been as good a player as you both had hoped, he’d still patiently waited for you every time you got lost on the map. He’d even given you his account’s password with the sentiment that this was him ‘taking things to the next level with you,’ and you get to log into his account and play whenever you want; he doesn’t even get mad when you’ve wasted all the stuff he’s farmed on your subpar gaming skills. And, well, the bigger picture was that you loved him. Based on how much effort he put into the relationship, plus the bonus of his trust in you when it came to his Fortnite account, you could at least be confident in that he returned the sentiment.

Except, sometimes, you still wonder if it would be easier for the both of you if he flew solo and didn’t have a girlfriend that tanked all of his player’s ammo and health kits and generally made a fool out of his cute little avatar while he was out breaking his back onstage.

You aren’t sure if Jaehyun’s been noticing the turmoil in you; you’re not that good at hiding how you feel, anyway, but if he has, he hasn’t said anything thus far. You do observe how much more he texts you when he has free time, which makes you feel doubly bad, because you know that he’s spending precious minutes he could be resting with on talking to you instead, which isn’t the best trade-off for someone who’s constantly busy — and thereby constantly tired — like him.

♡ jaehyunnie♡ ___________ I’m going to practice again, okay? Wait for my call ㅠㅠ You I’ll wait for your call ♡ ♡ jaehyunnie♡ I love you ㅠㅠㅠㅠ ♡ jaehyunnie♡ You love me too — a lot, right? I’ll keep my phone now, but I’ll make sure to check that you said so. ㅋㅋㅋ You Right! ㅎ I love you a lot! ♡

When the clock hits 12:01, and your phone is silent, your mind starts working on overtime again. It’s only when the special ringtone you’ve set for him comes to life at half-past midnight that you break your train of thought and put on your socks so you can meet Jaehyun at your front door.

You’ve made a rule — sort of like a deal — between the two of you that apologies aren’t necessary when work holds you up. You’ve cashed in on that deal a couple of times, but you’re both aware that it’s more for Jaehyun’s sake than anything else, and he keeps to his word on that much when you open the door and duck into his car. All he does is smile at you, and you smile back, and for the rest of the car ride, everything seems okay.

He always asks you about your day — unfailingly, at any chance he can. It’s never an off-handed question, either; Jaehyun takes great pride in his memory, and the sweetest thing about him is that he’s dedicated a good deal of it to knowing almost everything about you. Right now is no different. He asks you about your team manager, what you had for lunch; he grills you on if you took your vitamins today and if you got to break in the new shoes you bought online — the ones you’d been pining over for the last three months. He even asks you about the guy from the neighboring department who keeps asking you out for after-work drinks.

“He wanted to go to Hongdae tonight,” you tell him as he slows for a red light. “There’s some new pub of his friend’s doing a soft opening there tonight.”

“You could have gone.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Good.” He glances at you, a grin slowly spreading on his lips. “Because I lied. I might have minded a little. Or, you know, a lot.”

“Don’t tell me after all these years, you’ve turned into the kind of boyfriend that doesn’t let his girlfriend go out without him.”

“That’s impossible for me, and you know that,” he chuckles. “You can do whatever you want, whenever you want. Just not with that guy from the other department.”

“Don’t worry.” You tinker with the little charm dangling on your phone — half of a flat, metal heart dangling from a gold chain that Jaehyun had given you two years back on your birthday. He keeps the other half, but since he can’t freely attach it to any of his belongings, he keeps it wedged between the back of his phone and its case. You like watching him change the backing because he does it so carefully, like he’s worried the other half of the heart is going to break if he rips off the case willy nilly. “I told him my boyfriend and I were going out on a date tonight, so he backed off. Although he did wonder why I keep talking about a boyfriend he’s never seen.”

“And? What did you say?”

“I said it was none of his damn business.”

Jaehyun laughs loudly, and you go along with him, but you don’t miss how tired he looks when he sobers down, the green light illuminating all the shadows on his face as he steps on the gas again.

Nothing good is open this late at night — that is, nothing you haven’t seen before. You hadn’t even expected to go out at all, but since it was the day before Valentine’s Day as well as his birthday (or it would have been, if you hadn’t waited until midnight), Jaehyun had wanted to do something special without having to run into a huge crowd of couples on the day itself. Your only option is this from-out-of-town carnival that’s set up in tents and even has a medium-sized ferris wheel by the edge of the metal barricade. The parking lot is practically empty when Jaehyun pulls into a slot; you joke that he should break one rule and park in two slots, which he smugly replies to by saying he couldn’t park badly even if he tried.

He tucks your hair back behind your ears as he loops the strings of a face mask around them, using another one for himself. Between that and the brim of his cap, you can barely see his eyes. The only knowledge that you have that you’re walking next to the man you love is that he takes your hand in his, slender fingers finding their way between yours.

The carnival is half-closed when you get to the middle of it; there are still a few stragglers, but half the kiosks have their lights off already. There’s a woman dressed in flashy clothes standing on a patch of dead grass a few feet away, and she’s holding a hoop that a ginger cat is jumping through. Jaehyun steers you to them, and you stand there for a good five minute watching the cat roll on the ground and stand on its hind legs, but you can tell it’s been going it at for most of the day because at one point, it just ignores the lady, opting to weave its way between Jaehyun’s and your legs instead. You do have a pretty good time when he picks it up and cradles it in his arms so you can pet it for a second, but it just hisses when its owner approaches and jumps out of his hold, disappearing behind a row of trash bins.

Jaehyun doesn’t have anything in his wallet apart from his credit cards and 50,000 won, and the coin machine operator says he only has enough coins left to break down 5,000 won for the games, so you end up having to jog back to his car so you can fish out some coins from inside his glove compartment. You come up with a grand total of 1,500 won, and you have to sheepishly go back to the coin machine operator to change four 100 coins and a couple of 50s just to get the last 500. Jaehyun tells you to hold onto the three coins so he doesn’t run off with them entirely and leave you destitute.

You learn you can only do three things at most — you dedicate 500 won for the Ferris wheel entry tickets, which leaves you with 500 won each. The both of you agree on choosing one kiosk to play in, and with only about five left that are open, you don’t really have that many options. You end up dragging Jaehyun over to a stall with a pond filled with those magnetic toy fish, but 500 won only gets you one fishing rod. Since it’s your choice, Jaehyun lets you play, but you feel kind of stupid doing it on your own with him just watching you. In the end, he decides to stand behind you, his arms around your waist like he thinks closer contact isn’t even more distracting. You do manage to fish out 10 fish and win a small bear on a keychain. It doesn’t even pass through your hands as Jaehyun takes it from the stall operator immediately.

“That’s mine!” You whine, reaching out in vain to take it from him; he just holds it high over his head. His eyes are twinkling under the shadow his cap casts over his face. “I worked hard for that.”

“Let me keep this one,” he mimics the pleading lilt in your voice. “I’ll put it on my bag.”

“You know you can’t! Give it back.”

“I’ll win you a bigger one,” he promises. “Let me keep this one. It’s cute. It reminds me of you. I’ll kiss it goodnight before I sleep.” He starts to laugh softly. “And then you’ll feel this weird spirit kissing you at like two in the morning, and you’ll know it’s me.”

Your arms aren’t long enough to retrieve it, and you don’t really want to, so you settle with twisting his ear. He takes it in stride even if he over-acts, making pained noises while leading you to the kiosk he wants to go to. It’s a shooting range stall, and he pays his own precious 500 won for a dart gun. He’s barely paying attention when the guy starts explaining how many points are assigned to each balloon color, more concerned with talking to the bear keychain in his hand and pretending like he’s cooing at you. You have to hit him across the shoulder to get him to focus.

“You need to start picking out what prize you want,” he tells you — the actual you, not the animal keychain version — as he lifts the dart gun.

“I’ll wait for you to finish first.”

“No way.” He tilts his head, closing one eye to steady his line of sight. “Pick already. Or just go for the biggest one.”

“You know that Fortnite and dart guns aren’t the same thing, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m well-motivated.” He grins at you, one eye still shut. He looks like a baby pirate. “Go ahead. Pick the biggest one.”

“Why don’t you just shoot, and we’ll see.”

“Pick it,” he insists. “Tell me you have faith in me. Tell me you love me.”

“Okay, I love you,” you agree. “But I have no faith in you when it comes to this.”

“One out of two is fine,” he concedes, taking aim.

All three of you, including the stall operator, let out a disappointed groan when he misses his first shot. His comes with a sheepish laugh as he reloads, suddenly telling you to pick the second biggest prize instead. You can’t even watch him miss over and over, so you pretend to be interested in a bunch of teenage boys playing a game of cups one stall over, trying not to giggle when you hear him get increasingly more frustrated at himself. When you turn back around, you notice he’s holding two small pieces of gummy candy, offering one to you like a kindergartener. He helps you tug your face mask down so you can eat it.

There’s a food stall nearby that, thankfully, accepts credit and debit; Jaehyun fishes out his card to get you a corndog — only one because he’s watching his weight for the upcoming concert, apparently. This is information you hate hearing but have no say in, and he knows this; you know he does because he says ‘don’t worry about me’ totally out of the blue, like five minutes after the conversation ceases to be relevant.

His phone starts ringing when the food comes out, and he takes a tiny bite of it — more bread than hotdog — before he answers. You know it’s Taeyong by the way he answers.

“Hyung, sorry — can we talk later? I’m out with ____________.”

Taeyong says something loud but indiscernible on the other end. You piece together that it’s about tomorrow’s schedule when Jaehyun speaks again.

“I know. I’ll be home in a bit; don’t worry about it. I haven’t forgotten.”

There’s more garbled speech on the other line; Jaehyun gestures for you to keep eating, and you do, but you more concerned with the morphing expressions on his face than you are with the act of chewing. He’s making noncommittal noises in response to what seem to be commands and reminders. You’re pretty much done with the corndog by the time he says ‘Okay, hyung. Hyung — I’ll see you later, okay?’

“Taeyong hyung says hi,” he tells you once he’s hung up the phone. “He says you still need to give back that book you borrowed from him last year.”

“Oh yeah,” you finish off the last of the food. “I’ll drop it off within the week.”

“Don’t worry about it. He doesn’t actually mean it.”

Jaehyun watches you snap the stick in half and toss it in the trash bag.

“We can go home,” you say finally. His eyebrows shoot up. “You’re busy tomorrow. I forgot.”

“I didn’t forget, and it’s fine.”

“It’s almost two in the morning.” You check your phone to verify. “You probably have to be up in a few hours. You need to sleep, or you’ll die, Jaehyun. I’m too young to be a grieving widow.”

“Let’s at least ride the Ferris wheel,” he suggests. Before you can protest, he tugs you towards the rickety contraption, digging the 500 won out of your pocket and handing it to the bemused operator. He lets you choose what carriage you want because literally no one is on it anymore, and Jaehyun asks for the best carriage. You’re not sure how it differs from the rest, but he makes a show out of guiding you into it, and you don’t miss the corny ‘my lady,’ he mutters under his breath.

It’s small, clearly meant for either a tiny group of children or couples who want to be as close together as possible. It’s also not air-conditioned, and only one of the windows is open, so you end up sticking to Jaehyun’s arm on the way up. The view is still great, though, and you feel his hand settle on your knee as the carriage makes it slow ascent.

The ride up is quiet, and you press your face as close to the glass of the carriage as you dare, but Jaehyun doesn’t move an inch. His hand is still heavy on your thigh, but it doesn’t do anything but lay there. When you’re close to the top, you’re hit with the urge to do something romantic — kiss, maybe, tell him happy birthday, or say ‘I love you’ to him in the most sickening way possible — but when you turn to look at him, you have to hold your tongue.

Jaehyun is asleep, leaning against the corner of the carriage, head tilted down a little. His shoulders are rising and falling slowly, and he’s pulled down his face mask a little so he can breathe better; his lips are slightly parted by the slackening of his jaw. His left hand is shoved in his pocket, like he’d passed out halfway through reaching for something in there.

He doesn’t wake even when you move slightly so you can lean back next to him, rocking the carriage a little — not even when you reach up and adjust his head so he can rest on your shoulder. He breathes deeply, evenly, and you wonder if his ear against your shoulder allows him to hear your heart plummet unfairly to the bottom of your stomach.

You have to shake him to rouse him when the ride comes to an end; when he opens his eyes and realizes what happened, he looks mortified. Instinctively, he opens his mouth, but you fling the carriage door open and step out before he can apologize.

You have a deal, and he knows what he shouldn’t be doing.

His grip on your hand is much tighter as you walk back to the parking lot, and he doesn’t let go, even on the road. The trip back is quieter, maybe because it’s late, or maybe because there are a ton of things the both of you want to say but can’t.

He slows down when he gets to your street, but when he stops in front of your building, he doesn’t immediately unlock the doors to let you out. Instead, he turns to you, licking his lips a little nervously.

“Can you…” he clears his throat because his voice cracks a little on the first attempt. “Can you come back with me? To the dorm?”

“I have work tomorrow, Jaehyun.”

“It’s still at eleven, isn’t it? I can bring you home before that. You still have some stuff in my room. You can get ready there.”

“Won’t you be too busy?”

“Just—” he sighs softly. “Can you? Please?”

You don’t know how to say no to Jaehyun, and tonight isn’t a night you’re willing to try. It’s why fifteen minutes later, you’re walking through the front door of his dorm. Donghyuck, sitting at his computer in his room with the door ajar, greets you sleepily as you pass by.

Jaehyun steps in the shower with you; you don’t talk, maybe because you’re worried you might wake the others up if you start a full-blown conversation in a bathroom surrounded by other bedrooms. He just passes you what you need, and you do the same for him, and somewhere in between, he kisses you under the spray of the water.

Later, he falls asleep with a face mask on, and you have to peel it off for him and toss it into the trash. The tip of his nose is shiny, and you want to kiss it, but you know it’ll wake him, and you noticed he’d set his alarm to go off two hours from now. He’s set out a couple of earplugs for you so that you don’t hear it, but you don’t put them in. You want to see him before he leaves, even if it’s in the deadest hours of morning, so you just crawl into bed with him. A minute before you doze off, you feel his damp skin press against your neck, his form curled up against your back.

The alarm never wakes you; the sun is out when you open your eyes, and when you check your phone, you see that it’s already half-past nine. You also notice that there’s nothing from Jaehyun on your screen, but you try not to dwell on that, considering that you’d been expecting to wake up to an empty bed. His side of the mattress is cold, which means that he’s been gone for some time.

You don’t know if it’s just because you’re groggy, but your insides still feel like lead when you sit up. The part of you that nags about this relationship is back at full force when you start thinking about Jaehyun going to a pre-recording two hours after spending the last of his energy on you. You start wondering if you’re doing the right thing if it feels like you’re just dragging him down. Your heart clenches tightly when the worst thought hits — maybe, just maybe, he’s tired of you, too.

But you won’t let him go. More to the point — you can’t. He’s the best part of your life; it’d be a cold day in hell if you decided to leave him.

Even the thought of it makes you feel like dying.

Then again, this isn’t all up to you.

You’re rubbing the sleep out of your eyes — and maybe a couple of frustrated tears — when the door creaks open. You see two mugs and his hands before you see the rest of him come through the doorway. Jaehyun whispers a careful good morning as he sets the coffee down on his table, making sure to push his keyboard away to avoid accidents, before sitting down next to you. You notice that there’s an envelope next to one of the mugs; the flap is slightly open, and from under it, a flash of red peeks out.

His hand finds its way back to your knee — it’s his favorite resting place, he’s told you once. Your lap feels like home, he’d joked. Maybe he touches it every so often because it’s like a reset button for him.

He doesn’t ask if you slept well, or if you want to get ready before having your coffee, or if you’re okay. He just squeezes your knee a little tighter. It’s you that has to start the conversation this time.

“How did it go?”

“It went great. You’ll see it on TV later tonight,” he starts rubbing your thigh idly. “You’ll watch it later, right?”

“Of course. I’ll call you and tell you how cool you look.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. When you lapse into silence again, it’s because you’re expecting him to say something, but he doesn’t come out with it directly. You try not to let it show that you’re worried, that you’re skeptical, that you’re wondering if he thinks he’s too tired, too busy for this, too.

You’re expecting him to start how most break-ups start. You know I love you, right? And then the telltale but… would come, and you would have to hold back your tears and smile for him, and tell him you know, and that you understand it isn’t the right time, but maybe one day, someday, when he isn’t everyone’s Jung Jaehyun anymore — only yours.

“You love me, right?”

It’s not what you’d been expecting. Nor is it the playful little text he’d sent — no laughs, no jokes. His expression is somber, mouth pressed into a thin line.

“You know I do.”

“A lot, right?”

“A lot,” you confirm softly.

“Then whatever it is that you’re thinking about us,” he says quietly. “Don’t. Don’t think it. Don’t do it.”

“Jaehyun—”

“I know it’s hard,” his fingers dig into your skin a little. “I know I put you through a lot. I know you think that I’m suffering because of this relationship too. I know everything. But whatever you think I’m going to do, I won’t do it — not ever. So if you’re thinking of it too, I’m begging you. Don’t. Please.”

Maybe he had noticed all this time. A wave of guilt washes over you when you see the pained look on his face; perhaps you were even more transparent than you’d originally thought. You nod slowly to show your understanding, and he continues.

“I know yesterday wasn’t the best you could have hoped for,” he carefully avoids apologizing, although it’s written all over his features. “For me, too. I… I wanted something different. It’ll be better next time. Do you believe me?”

You hear him swallow — his nails are biting into your thigh a little, so you have to gently peel his hand off. Your fingers replace it, tightening around his palm as you nod.

“I believe you.”

“And you trust me, right?”

“With my life.”

“Then can you put your faith in me right now?” He asks. “Don’t panic. Just — just say yes.”

He pats around his pants, finally deciding to slip his hand into his left-hand pocket. Unlike on the Ferris wheel, he manages to extract something, but he keeps it closed in his fist. It’s shaking a little as he takes your hand in his other one, pressing something small and hard into your palm before he curls your fingers over it. His hold keeps your fist closed as he starts talking.

“It’s not immediate. We’ll figure it out. We’ll tell the right people, and they’ll help us tell everyone else — the public, the press. It doesn’t have to happen right now, or any time soon either— not if you don’t want it to. We can take it slow, or whatever. Anything you want — just as long as it’s with me.”

“Jaehyun,” you shake your head, a little dizzy. “What are you talking about?”

He slowly loosens his hold on your fingers, his hand dropping to the same spot on your knee. You’re free to open your fist, and when you do, you can’t help but feel a little stumped.

“I don’t mean now,” he repeats, now sounding doubly worried. “It’s not — It’s just…”

“You’ll get in trouble. We can’t.”

“I won’t. Not if we do this right. Like I said, we can do it slowly. Months — years, however long it takes to do it well. What it is — it’s just… a promise.”

“A promise,” you echo. It does have a nice ring to it.

“That I’m not leaving you. Not ever. And… if you say yes, that you won’t either.”

Your coffee has probably turned cold. Jaehyun is watching you carefully, looking like he’s trying hard not to bite his lip. You look back down at your hand, and he speaks up again.

“You know I love you, right?”

You smile slightly. “No but?”

“No but,” he agrees.

The ring fits nicely on your finger; maybe it’s well-measured from the amount of times he’s held your hand tightly in his.

“Okay, Jaehyun,” you whisper. “I promise.”

When you place your hand on his, he twists his palm, slender fingers gently twirling the ring around the base of your finger.

Minutes later, he hands you your coffee. It’s sweet and milky, the way he knows you like it best. When he settles back down on the bed, you notice his eyes travel to your finger again, a small smile playing on his lips.

Perhaps, in this moment, you finally learn to ask the right questions — not about if it’s worth it, but if he is.

And in this moment, where he sits in silence with you, the sunlight pouring in from his window hitting the tips of his hair and the end of his nose, with the knowledge that his heart is as full as yours, you come to realize that there can — and never will be — any doubt of that.

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flamingpudding · 1 year ago

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Fictober23 Prompt: 25 - "Do I look like I knew that?"

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: -

A/N: Edit - adjusted the last bit a little after rereading this during my break, so that it makes grammatically more sense...

There was no warning. The moment the Waynes had stepped into the main hall of this Gala they had not been prepared for what had been about to happen. The only sign they had gotten was Damian tensing for a split second before the youngest of them booked it across the hall.

Tim and Bruce instantly attempted damage control, distracting all the high society people that had noticed it, while Dick and Jason followed their youngest. Cass had already escaped the gala to the roof before they had set their first foot into the main hall.

But again, nothing could have prepared them for what was happening.

Damian not only had seen something that caused him to sprint across the room no, their Demon Brat had gone a step further and just tackled the kid of someone else over and was now wrestling with the other boy! Holding one of the daggers they must have missed to the other boy's neck.

Surprisingly, the other kid held himself pretty well against Damian. Jason and Dick spent a good five minutes just staring when they had found their youngest, only starting to move again when Vlad Master demanded answers from his child. The apparent guardian of the kid that was currently attempting to get a choke hold on Damian before getting flipped over the shoulder, the boy flipped mid air, landing on his feet.

Before Damian could lung at the other boy again Dick grabbed him, his arm wounding around Damians chest as he held onto his youngest brother that sent quite an impressive death glare towards the other kid that just returned the glare, not with the same intensity but clearly peeved had having gotten attacked out of nowhere.

"Daniel! Explain this instant! You promised me, one gala without a ruckus!" Master was clearly not amused, hopefully Bruce had some sort of peace offering ready. Not that the man needed it, Dick thought, remembering some of the reports he had seen the man on.

The boy, Daniel, turned his glare towards his guardian. "It's not my fault this time! HE attacked me first!" Jason snorted, clearly having heard out of that statement alone that Masters apparently also had a feral kid that attacked someone at a gala before.

"This is no excuse. I know you are still grieving but you can not attack my business partner's children. Wasn't it enough that you broke Andrews Mayors nose last week?"

"He deserved it, he hit a girl in a perverted way."

"Justin Gracer?"

"Made fun of my late parents' profession."

"Daniel."

"Fruitloop."

Dick watched how Masters pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly not happy with his charge. By now Damian seemed to have calmed down too from whatever idea he had gotten into his head. He was still glaring at the other kid but at least it appeared he wasn't going to attack anymore when he hissed at Dick to let go of him. He still kept a hand on his shoulder just in case.

"I am so sorry Mr. Master. It wasn't Daniel that started it. Damian, come on apologies." Dick cut in, causing the other two to pay attention and fully face them. That's when he noticed it. Daniel looked a whole lot like Damian. The older siblings shared a glance before Jason left to get the others, Tim and Bruce were still stuck doing damage control but it should only be a matter of time. What was the best way to bring it up to ask subtitle questions without appearing suspicious?

Dick was just about a question before Daniel apparently beat him to it. "Fruitloop, you did not attempt to clone me did you?"

"Little Badger, why would I do that? I already have guardianship over you."

Dick felt like he was missing something here but he also felt Daniam's shoulder tense below his hand. So that was why he had attacked. Damian thought another clone appeared. He really hoped what Masters and his Charge seid were just some ill timed joke. Otherwise the implications would be very worrisome.

"Mom and Dad didn't keep some other family relations secret did they?" Daniel then asked and Masters looked at them contemplatively. "Well Jack was estranged from the rest of his family while Maddie only had her sister Alicia and as far as I am aware you and Jasmine were their only children."

"Mr. Masters if you don't mind, would it be alright to do a DNA testing? You said Daniel's father was estranged from his family? It would be good to find out now if there is a relation." Dick ignored the glare Damian was sending him now, but this was his best excuse to get the others DNA to test if the other boy was really a clone or not. If he was then the League of Assassins must have done some serious brainwashing, and memory manipulation. This would also be the first clone of Damian that actually had a consciousness of his own.

"Doesn't explain why he attacked me…" he heard the other boy mutter as Master stared at them with narrowed eyes for a while before giving the boy by his side a contemplating look.

"Daniel has lost his family and friends in an incident recently. It would be good if we found any family he could connect with or help with his grief." The man then finally said after a moment before handing Dick a business card with a number to connect them before leading his boy away, leaving the gala for all they knew.

A week later and after a lot of discussion in their Family. The Waynes and Masters meet for the DNA testing. Though the moment Masters and his charge met Bruce both froze, Bruce in his Brucie act blinked innocently at them and asked if anything was wrong.

"Fruitloop…"

"Don't be ridiculous Daniel. I never would have attempted what you appear to be implying."

The boy pointed in at Bruce as he faced his guardian. "Look at him and tell me they don't look alike! He is like a more fit version of Dad! Like he hadn't eaten a single one of mom fudges in years! You have to have an explanation for that!"

"And how would I do that?"

"I don't know! You're the fruitloop one that had cloning equipment in the basement! Who did you buy it from? Some old fruitloop? The one you bought it from, did they try to - i don't know - clone a celebrity for themselves! The papers you had with it clearly stated that it had been used successfully once. It was a second hand bought with super old technology when I demanded you destroy the stuff!"

"Daniel, do I look like I knew that? I never looked in these papers you speak of! I just bought it as a backup plan, that I never needed a little badger! Besides the only one I would have ever attempted to clone with that time frame would have been your mother! I didn't even know your father before college! "

"Why would you buy something without looking into the papers and instruction manuals you get with it?!"

"There was no need for! Why did you even look into that when you had me destroy it anyway?!"

The Waynes looked back and forth between Masters and his charge. The more these two continued to argue the more a sinking feeling started to form in everyone present. It was Tim though that voiced everyone's thoughts as he leaned over to Bruce whispering only one question. "Are we sure there never has been an attempt of someone trying to clone you? It sounds like there had been one, years ago…"

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bangtanhoneys · 5 months ago

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BANGTAN BABY: IN THE SOOP

ARMY had been surprised and delighted when it had been announced that a new series of In the Soop was ready to be released in a matter of weeks. There had been talks for ages about doing another series or at least, something similar to the original that took place all those years ago.

However, there would be a slight change this year. Grace was nowhere to be seen on any of the promotional videos that had been released in the weeks to the premiere date and she hadn’t been seen on the official posters either. It had been expected though as Grace had only given birth to her and Seokjin’s only daughter, Bora, a month ago.

But ARMY should have realised that what you see on trailers and photos, isn’t what you normally get.

The first episode was pure BTS chaos.

The third episode came with major surprises.

As the camera panned along the various rooms, there were signs that maybe the boys weren’t alone as the viewers thought. There was a box of nappies, freshly opened, near the bathroom and in the hallway, there was a brand-new baby stroller and various other items dotted around.

However, when the camera switched to the living area, there was no baby to be seen.

“Waa? What the fuck?” Yoongi yelled at the TV, where the LA Lakers had just lost a crucial point.

“Hyung,” Hobi shushed him from the end of the couch but the basketball player paid him no mind.

No one paid Hobi any attention, their eyes either on the TV screen or on their phones. While they weren’t exactly big basketball fans, they could enjoy the sport and Yoongi’s reactions at the same time so it all equalled great entertainment.

The room became silent when the small monitor on the coffee table came to life.

“Looks like someone is awake,” Seokjin grinned as he pushed himself off the couch and shuffled towards the stairs, straight to the room that he had commandeered for himself, Grace and their little one.

“See,” Hobi warned as he pushed at Yoongi’s good shoulder. “Told you that you were being too loud.”

“I don’t think hyung going ‘what the fuck?’ would have woken up Bora,” Namjoon grinned as he checked the small monitor himself. “Looks like she needed to be changed,” he added as he turned the monitor around to show the rest of them.

All went silent as they watched Seokjin change his daughter and pick her up, holding her close to his chest as he left the bedroom. They could hear his footsteps along the landing, down the stairs and the shuffle as he headed towards the living room.

“Jungkook, take her for me while I get a bottle sorted.”

The young man didn’t need much encouragement as he all but jumped over the back of the couch, and landed without falling over. Quite impressive for a young man who had downed a bottle of soju already and had eaten his weight in pizza. Large hands cradled the small body and Jungkook held his baby sister to his chest, sensibly walking around the couch this time to where he had originally been lounging between Yoongi and Taehyung.

“Was Hyung too loud?” Taehyung teased, reaching out to take a little hand.

Yoongi frowned as he had already turned down the noise from the TV the moment Seokjin had disappeared upstairs and had turned on the subtitles so he could read what was happening instead. If anything, he had been a considerate drunk uncle.

“Who wants to feed her?” Seokjin asked, coming in with a fresh bottle.

Four hands shot up immediately.

Jungkook was more than happy to have Bora in his arms and Yoongi didn’t dare take her in case something happened on the TV that made him jump which left Namjoon, Hobi, Jimin and Taehyung.

“Here you go,” Seokjin said as he handed the bottle to the winner.

Hobi wiggled in his seat in a mini happy dance as he took the warm bottle and with ease, took Bora into his arms and gave her the midnight snack. Jimin, not to be left out of the bonding experience with Bora, sat next to Hobi and quietly asked her how her meal was, and did it taste nice.

“Hopefully Gigi will be up to joining us tomorrow,” Namjoon commented as he stole the last slice of pizza and ignored Jungkook’s narrowed gaze. “It’s been odd not hearing her nag at us.”

“We had to wait for this little one to be ready to join us,” Hobi grinned as he put the empty bottle on the coffee table and Jimin stole her away, a towel over his shoulder to help her burp.

“I’ll for one be happy to have her back, looking after you six is a right pain in the ass,” Seokjin commented as he finally sat back down, content in the knowledge his daughter was in the right hands.

He did, however, ignore the complaints coming from his brothers.

#bts 8th member #bts eighth member #bts additional member #bts female member #bts fic #bts fanfiction #bangtanbaby

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w3bgrl · 8 months ago

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chan and his 1st child/yt.com

creator. [subtitles/translations.]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 intro: hello my fellow smoothbrained friends. welcome or welcome back! today we will be taking a look at some bangju moments over the past (almost) 6 years with stray kids that never fail to warm my heart <3 if you like these kinds of posts consider interacting or sharing your favorite moment! thank you! now to what we’re really here for :)

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 stray kids survival show

splayed under the blue light from his computer screen, chan’s dexterity over the mouse begins to slow followed by heavy eyes fighting against the cozy weight of gravity lulling him to sleep, his loss against this force signified by his slowed, deep breaths.

[using the track as a lullaby, he goes straight to dreamland]

speeding up the footage reveals a better understanding as to how long he really sat asleep in his chair until a cut transitions to his new position leaned against the back, somewhat sitting up still with the room light shining bright as ever above his head.

[but, it sounds like someone’s at the door!]

soft shuffling footsteps reveal a squinting juyeon with major bed-head. [it’s the members’ mother hen!] carefully she reaches across the sleeping boy to his mouse, sliding it around on his track pad a bit clicking here and there, and then the screen goes black. [taking care of the leader making sure his work was saved. but…] she then turns and waddles out of view again. [what is she doing?]

the audible flip of a light switch shrouds the room in darkness, and from within this darkness, juyeon’s whispered coos could be heard.

[JY: oppa. come on,]

[BC: hm?]

[JY: to bed. everything is saved, just get under the covers.]

[~hardworking leader chan gets tucked in bed by angel juyeon, who looks after the member responsible for the rest. as long as he’s got her by his side, chan’s well taken care of.~]

[JY: sleep well, channie~]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 finding skz running man

stopping near the carousel in the center of the mall chan sighs heavily with his hands on his hips, catching his breath as he scanned over the layout once more. “ah — i really don’t know. i haven’t seen her at all.”

after pausing to listen for any movement within the building - and only hearing the commotion from the other boys - chan turns with a mischievous smile toward the camera man “do you know where she is? have you seen her?”

[meanwhile…]

cut to juyeon narrowly avoiding seungmin as he came down the hall, crouching to duck behind one of the arcade machines just in time for him to pass by without noticing the older girl. the second she decided he was far enough was when she took off in the opposite direction with the cameramen racing to keep up with her.

juyeon comes to a stop once she reaches the main room, the lights from the carousel twinkling in her wide eyes once she spots the blonde boy across the room.

[like a deer in the headlights, billie appears!]

chan is already looking in her direction as he throws his hands up mousily. “wait,” he says, masking the ulterior motives apparent to everyone but juyeon “will you help me?”

“help you?” she repeats, still as a statue whilst chan ambles over to bridge the gap between them. [will she fall for the leader's trick?]

“have you seen felix?”

a suspicious smile grows on juyeon's lips as he draws closer and her own palms raise defensively, taking half a step back from the boy whose mask of innocence had begun to slip the closer he got. "oppa." she says like an accusation. a bright smile dawns on chan's face.

"i'm not after you."

juyeon is now fully backpedaling. [she doesn't believe him] "oppa, have mercy."

there is a brief pause as chan seemingly weighs his options with his eyes still locked on hers, his jolly grin becoming more and more pixy with each passing millisecond before he abruptly lunges forward for her with outstretched hands to grab her nametag. juyeon nearly threw herself into one of the pillars behind her to protect the name on her back.

"please! you're my favorite member!"

chan now stops just before her with eyebrows knitting together before he laughs at her interesting tactic. "i'm your favorite?"

"totally," juyeon giggles "especially when you give me a five second head start."

"more than changbin?" he adds, prodding at her will to bargain. she simply tilts her head.

"who?"

[and with that, the deal is sealed]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 2 kids room

“honestly,” chan starts, removing the lollipop stuffed in his cheek as he sat criss-cross on the blue corduroy couch “i love this hair color on you.”

“really?” asked juyeon with a surprised smile, whose fiery red hair had become a hot topic recently. he hummed.

“i think red suits you well. of course you’re always pretty but the red really catches peoples eye.”

now giggling bashfully, juyeon subconsciously tucked an aforementioned red strand behind her ear to reveal her peachy cheeks, eyes sparkling with appreciation despite her response. "you've been suspiciously supportive recently — i feel like i need to look out for blackmail or something.”

“what is that supposed to mean?!” the leader shrilled, almost pouting, arms flying to fold across his chest teasingly at her insinuation. however, this feigned offense was quickly replaced by the smile accompanying his laughter at her mirroring of his demeanor.

“you know i can’t accept compliments!!”

“well! —” he began with the same chaotic energy before abruptly halting himself to instead dial it back with a nonchalant shrug “that’s okay, at least you know.”

juyeon, peeling open her eyes squeezed shut to hide from the embarrassment, now dropped the arms crossed tight against her chest and subsequently her guard. she spoke in a soft hum to mutter, “it is nice to know, though. i do appreciate it…”

“good. you should know how precious you are.”

“ew!”

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 chan’s room phone call

“hmm…was it a different name?” chan mumbles, more to himself than the stay watching his livestream as he searched for that particular day6 song he wanted to talk about, eyes quickly scanning over the titles in hopes of finding ‘the one.’

“oh! here it is.”

he begins playing ‘i loved you’ before sitting back in his chair to intently listen along with stay. it begins with the buzzing of crickets before jumping right into the members’ gorgeous and clear voices, and after only half a minute or so of nodding his head along with their labelmates past masterpiece, the discernible buzz of his phone against the table quickly catches his attention.

“oh!” he pauses the music to pick up his phone “it’s bibiya! let’s see what chu’s up to.”

chan answers her call below stay’s view, indicating that she’d actually facetimed him, made glaringly apparent by the bloop! as it connected. if that wasn’t evidence enough then surely juyeon’s squeaky voice coming through the speaker did, the leaders face lighting up prior to his laugh.

“sorry!! i just remembered about your live!”

chan quickly turned the volume down as he chuckled “it’s okay! the more the merrier. do you want to say hi?”

“yeah! can stay hear me?”

he nodded, eyes flicking up to filter through the live comments now buzzing with her name.

“helloooo stayyy! is channie entertaining you well? don’t forget about his weekly sunday live like i did. uh…make sure to eat well and get lots of rest!!”

chan would giggle before pulling his eyes from the comments and back to the screen out of view. “do you want me to call you back?” he asked quietly, wary of the audience listening in on the reason why she called “i’ll be done in 30.”

“oh — that’s okay — i just wanted to know if you still wanted to watch that movie with me tonight.”

the leaders eyebrows raised high, eyes panning up to the live almost like a scene from the office before looking back down at the girl on his screen.

“did you forget?”

“no! i remember!” he blatantly lied with a giggle “we’ll sit down to watch it as soon i get home, okay?”

there was an exasperated sigh before her response. “okayyyy. have fun with the rest of your live. bye bye stay!”

chan would mutter his own goodbyes to his bandmate before she hung up, and then his focus would immediately shift back up to the audience before him, a bashful blush dusting his cheeks as he laughed once more.

“i definitely forgot about the movie tonight. don’t tell joong.”

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 dinner w/ billie live

“okay, next!” juyeon turns from the pot of noodles boiling on the stovetop to then grab the jar of alfredo sauce on the counter “this is my favorite pasta of all time — after jjajangmyeon — so we’re gonna use a lot of it.”

the pajama-clad girl then attempts to open the lid using both hands, her face screwing together with pursed lips as she visibly uses all her might to twist the top off. “oh, man,” she wheezes, resting to glance up at the comments before trying again “it’s really on there!”

juyeon now readjusts her grip to get as much of her hand on the lid as possible, her other holding the jar tight as to not drop it before taking another shot at opening the precious sauce, nearly folding into herself at the waist as she once again fails to unscrew the lid.

“jeez! did they glue it on there or something?” she huffs “why is it so difficult? that’s so rude.”

for a moment she stands there in front of the camera, dumbfounded and red-faced as she looks over the jar like there was another method hidden underneath, before holding her index up to the audience now laughing at her struggles.

“hold on,” she says while backing toward one of the bedroom doors she’d banished the boys to while she was on live “don’t go anywhere! i’ll be back!”

thankfully, due to the positioning of the camera she’d set up in the kitchen, stay were still able to see juyeon as she waddled over to knock on one of the wooden doors with mumbles of ‘the stupid jar.’ this door would then open to reveal a comfy-looking and barefaced chan with a smile already on his face as he exited the darkness and entered the living room to take the jar from her.

it would only take him the few seconds of a walk back into the kitchen to then successfully pop open the blasphemous lid that had publicly defeated juyeon. he’d outwardly laugh as she stole the now-opened jar from his hands, a vexed frown on her lips.

“i loosened it for you.”

“oh i’m sure.”

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 stray kids survival show

[the members are hard at work, practicing their performance relentlessly to polish even the smallest of details before presenting themselves before jyp and yg in the morning]

the group looks wholly exhausted as the song then comes to a close, their heaving breaths and faces glistening with sweat acting as a visual indicator to how eager they were to give a good performance in front of not only their own boss but also yg and his trainees, hands flying to rest on their hips as they tromped over to their water bottles.

the boys’ quick disperse from the formation in the middle subsequently revealed a haggard-looking juyeon with her fingers interlocked behind her head. a quick zoom-in on the panting girl would expose her trembling bottom lip as she blinked rapidly before cranking her neck to look up at the lights on the ceiling.

[juyeon looks troubled]

chan, sitting in the right hand corner of the screen as he messed with the speaker, could be seen with his attentive leader gaze on the red-faced girl. to the untrained eye — namely the viewers watching who still didn’t know the members very well — his furrowed brow and pursed lips could easily be read as irritation towards the black sheep of the group. however, the speed with which he stood in order to be by her side after she turned her back indicated otherwise.

[leader chan is quick to check in on his members when they’re struggling]

“hey,” he hummed, placing a hand between her shoulders to seclude them from the other boys “you okay?”

chan’s soothing presence would be the catalyst that revealed juyeon’s true state even as her back was turned to the camera, face hidden from view as her frail, shaky voice exposed the tears she’d fought to conceal.

“yeah — sorry — ts’stupid”

“hey,” he’d say again, now moving to stand in front of her to catch her gaze “what’s up?”

juyeon shook her head, dropping her interlocked fingers to instead wipe the tears on her cheeks. “i don’t know — nothing — i’m good”

“talk to me, joong. you don’t have to find the right words, just tell me how you’re feeling.”

[although juyeon tried to hide her troubles, chan won’t let her suffer alone]

“m’just…scared. what they’ll think — what they’ll say…”

chan’s response was immediate; certain and encouraging as he brushed her hair from her face. “that’s okay, ju. it’s okay to be scared. it’s okay to worry about what people will think, we all do, but you can’t let it eat at you. they’ll say what they’re gonna say, but at the end of the day, you’re still the talented juyeon we know you are — you know you are. don’t let the fear stop you from doing what you love.”

with this, juyeon sighs. she stands there for a moment to take in his encouraging words, marinating his verbal and nonverbal support in her mind before nodding shortly once more.

“we’ll all be there to back you up, ju. always.”

[juyeon may be anxious about tomorrow, but she has her boys to stand behind her, and they’ll defend her to the ends of the earth]

#♡ billie #♡ bangju #skz oc #stray kids oc #stray kids 9th member #stray kids imagines #kpop added member #kpop oc #kpop addition #bang chan imagines #not the happiest with how this turned out but i really wanted something to be up today!#i hope you enjoy and i hope to be posting something new soon!

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reidmania · 1 month ago

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sharpest tool | s.reid

(chapter six, dumb and poetic)

‘You're so sad there's no communication, but, baby, you put us in this situation. You're running so fast from the hearts that you're breakin' save all your breath for your floor meditation. you're so empathetic, you'd make a great wife. well, you crashed the car and abandoned the wreckage fuck with my head like it's some kind of fetish.’

summary; you see spencer for the first time, since he left for his case (and then ghosted you) only its the last place you expected, and provides you with less closure and more confusion

warnings; reader is a (rightfully so) bitch in this, as she should, fem reader, ghosting, miscommunication, its awkward, its sad, so much angst, no comfort, (fluff flashback tho!) mentions reader being able to speak french, reader has long enough hair to tie up, reader is a bow wearing girly.

Taglist; @gghostwriter @lavonee @guiltyyassin @spencersinonlygf @criminalmindssworld @iknwreid @fortheloveofgubler @yokaimoon @sapphirecobalt-1 @eddiesdrummergf @livvyliv15 @lover-of-books-and-tea @sebastiansstanswhore @bloodredrubyrose @sp3ncelle @nemobee777 @jencole214 @hazzarules @ameerakane20 @lucere @cultish-corner @psyches-reid

2.3k words.

SERIES MASTERLIST

“That one looks interesting” you mumbled as you repositioned to sit up a little straighter in bed, leaning closer to the laptop screen as you looked over the upcoming releases at the cinema downtown. It was a french film, sure there was other films in english but none of them seemed as interesting.

“Mhm, do you wanna go see it?” Spencer asked, he wasn’t paying much attention to what you were talking about as he sat behind you, you were placed in between his thighs, your back pressed against his chest, his chin had started by being pressed against your shoulder when the two of you began looking for movies, since then his head had moved to be nuzzled in between your shoulder and neck, placing soft kisses along the skin he could reach, every now and again reaching up to kiss along your jaw.

You leant further back against him with a gentle smile, your head tilting in order to allow him more access to the skin of your neck as he arms wrapped tighter around your waist, pulling your further against him, your hands placing gently against his forearms, every now and again lifting one to scroll through the website. “It doesn’t come out for another month”

He shrugged, “We can go see it when its out.” He mumbled against your skin as he continued to press gentle kisses there. You let out a warm laugh, lifting one hand to run gently through his hair.

“You don’t even know what it is” you said, since he hadn’t lifted his head to look at the screen since it had found place nuzzled into the crook of your neck. You weren’t necessarily complaining and you found it half sweet how he agreed to what you wanted without even knowing what it was.

He huffed slightly, the air coming out warm let leaving goosebumps to raise on your arms as you felt it against the skin of your neck before he tilted his head away to look at the computer screen. There was hardly a second that passed as he read over the description, before he was speaking again. “It seems good. We can go see it.” He said.

You smiled, “Really?” Although you knew either way if it was what you wanted to see, he would make sure you saw it.

“Mhm, it’s in french though, no subtitles” he read what was written. His hand gently slipping under your shirt to rub softly over the skin of your stomach, wanting the skin to skin contact, wanting to just feel that you were there with him. “I can whisper translate to you.” he said.

your heart warmed at the idea of spencer sitting through the entire moving, whispering french translations into your ear, but it also warmed at the fact that he had no idea. “You don’t need to.” You said gently.

He shrugged, “Its no big deal. If you wanna see it, we will see it. I want you to be able to know whats going on”

You let out a hearty laugh as he misunderstood what you meant, you hadn’t told him that he didn’t need to translate for you out of guilt. “Spence, i know french, honey. I will understand.”

He pulled away a little bit. Your head turned back to look at his face, his lips parted in shock and eyebrows furrowed, “you know french? i didn’t know you knew french?” He seemed so offended that he didn’t know this little detail about you until now.

You laughed, “Theres a lot you don’t know about me, spencer reid.”

The lobby is crowded, filled with the low hum of chatter and the smell of popcorn. You stand near the back of the line, staring at the poster for the French documentary you’ve been meaning to see for weeks. The one you were supposed to see with Spencer.

You’ve asked yourself a hundred times why you’re even here. It’s been a month since he vanished from your life—no explanation, no goodbye. Just gone. You’d told yourself you weren’t going to think about him anymore, that it was time to let it go. But here you are, at the very movie theater you both planned to go to, clutching your phone like it’s going to somehow give you the answers he refused to.

The line moves forward, and you shuffle with it, your mind elsewhere. You’re so distracted, you don’t even notice the people behind you until a soft voice breaks through the noise.

“Hey, I love your bow!”

You turn slightly, catching a glimpse of the woman behind you. She’s blonde, with a friendly smile, standing next to a tall man who’s looking down at something in his hands. You don’t get a good look at him—your mind barely registers the compliment, just the vague, polite impulse to thank her.

“Thanks,” you mumble, turning back to the counter, but there’s something nagging at the edges of your awareness. Something familiar about the way the man next to her is standing.

Before you can stop yourself, you glance back again—and this time, your heart stops.

Spencer.

He’s standing right there, next to the blonde woman who just complimented you. His eyes are wide, almost startled when they meet yours. For a second, no one says anything. The air between you tightens, thick with an awkward tension that makes your stomach churn.

It’s like time freezes for a moment. The noise of the theater fades into the background, and all you can hear is the rapid beating of your own heart. You weren’t prepared for this. Seeing him here, like nothing’s changed, like the last month hasn’t been this gaping wound he left behind.

The blonde woman—JJ, you realize now—follows his gaze, and when she sees the look on your face, her smile falters. “Oh,” she says quietly, piecing it together. “You must be...”

You force a smile, even though your heart is hammering in your chest. “Yeah...”

Spencer shifts uncomfortably, clearly unsure of what to say. His mouth opens, but no words come out. You’d find it almost comical, how off-guard he looks, if you weren’t so furious. He was supposed to be better than this—better than just disappearing on you, breaking promises like you didn’t matter.

JJ, bless her, tries to diffuse the awkwardness. “We were just talking about this movie a few weeks ago,” she says, her voice bright but strained. “Spencer said he had plans to see it.”

“Yeah,” you say, the sarcasm slipping into your tone before you can stop it. “Im sure he did.”

Spencer’s face tightens at your words, and for a split second, you see a flash of guilt in his eyes. But it’s not enough. He hasn’t earned the right to feel guilty—not after what he did.

JJ shifts awkwardly beside him, clearly uncomfortable. “I, um—” She gestures vaguely toward the ticket counter, like she’s trying to give you both some space, but the tension is too thick to be diffused so easily.

You turn to face Spencer fully now, your arms crossed tightly over your chest. “So,” you say, keeping your voice as even as possible, “you’re alive.”

He winces at the accusation in your tone, but he doesn’t argue. He just nods, his voice quiet. “Yeah. I...I’ve been working.”

“Working,” you repeat, bitterness surging like bile in your throat. “Right.”

There’s a pause, and you can see the wheels turning in his head, like he’s searching for the right thing to say, but nothing comes. He’s always been good with words, but now, standing here in front of you, he looks like a man completely out of his depth.

The silence stretches on, thick and uncomfortable, and JJ glances between the two of you, clearly picking up on the history she hadn’t been aware of until now. “I didn’t realize,” she says quietly, almost to herself, but you catch it anyway.

You give her a tight smile. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t her fault.

It’s not fine. Nothing about this is fine. You had spent weeks trying to figure out what you did wrong, you didn’t even know why you were here. Why you decided to torture yourself with the night that was suppose to belong to you and him. You told yourself a thousand times that maybe he was too busy, that maybe he had a good reason. But seeing him here, casually buying tickets like nothing happened, makes it all feel worse. Like you were the only one who cared.

Spencer shifts again, looking like he wants to say something but can’t find the right words. “I...I didn’t mean for things to happen like this,” he says softly, and there’s something almost pleading in his tone, like he’s asking for forgiveness.

But you’re not ready to give him that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Right,” you say, your voice colder than you intend. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

JJ gives Spencer a look, something unreadable passing between them. She murmurs something about checking on the tickets and steps away, giving you two some space.

You don’t move. You just stand there, staring at him, waiting for him to say something—anything—that will make this better. That will make you understand why he hurt you like this. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, looking like he wishes he could disappear.

“Im sorry.” he admits after a long pause, his voice low. “I really am.”

You laugh, but it’s not a real laugh. It’s bitter, hollow. “Right.”

He looks like he wants to say more, but you can see the hesitation in his eyes. You hoped he’d say more. That the moment you saw him again he would explain, that there would be a valid reason. Yet standing here, looking at him with all the hurt in the world swirling in your stomach, you know he’s not going to give you the closure you need. He’s too afraid to dive into whatever it is that made him pull away. And in this moment, you realize that maybe you’ll never get that closure—not from him, at least.

“I have to go,” you say abruptly, turning toward the exit before he can stop you. You can’t do this. Not here. Not now.

As you walk away, you can feel his eyes on your back, but he doesn’t follow. He doesn’t call out to you. He just lets you go, like he let you go a month ago.

And this time, you’re the one who disappears.

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beyondthesefourwalls · 2 years ago

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Remember You Even When I Don't (2)

Summary: A training accident, the doctor had told him. A nasty one that led him here, laying in a hospital bed with a splitting headache and an inability to remember the woman sitting beside him. What he did know, though, was that you were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and you felt important to him. That, as it turns out, would become an understatement.

Words: 3.3K

Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw/Reader (no use of y/n, so can be read as unnamed oc)

Warnings: angst, hospitals, memory loss, language.

Notes: The response to part one was so overwhelming in all of the best ways. I'm so glad that so many people enjoyed it! Please let me know your thoughts for part two as well!

This was inspired by a one shot by the lovely @roosterforme and would not exist without her assistance. If you haven't read any of her stuff, please check out her masterlist - you won't be disappointed!

Part One

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The pain medication kept him knocked out for most of the night. He remembers waking up a few times, blinded by pain or uncomfortable in the small hospital bed, but you were there every time. You slept curled in the chair beside him, wrapped in that green sweatshirt. Once, when the pain was what jolted him awake, you woke too. You hit the button for a nurse and smoothed his hair back on his forehead, his skin sticky with sweat despite the coolness of the hospital room.

“You’re okay,” you murmured to him, shushing him gently when he groaned again. “It’ll go away in a minute, you’re okay.”

As the nurses came in and administered him more medication, you stayed right there beside him. Your hand was still in his hair when he fell back into a drug-induced sleep.

Still, though, when he roused to consciousness with the sun shining in through the slightly raised blinds, he wondered if it was all a fever dream and if you ever existed to begin with. He was almost afraid to open his eyes. Yesterday was the only memory he had of you. There was still nothing before that, except for how you made him feel. While confusing, there was no way that a dream could make that up. He opened his eyes slowly, and there you were.

You were leaning back in your chair, watching the tv that was playing on mute in front of his bed. He couldn’t tell if you were reading along with the subtitles you had turned on in an effort not to wake him up or simply watching the moving images. You held what looked like a large cup of iced coffee in your hands.

You were just as breathtaking as he remembered from yesterday. His heart did the same flip that it did when he first laid bleary eyes on you.

He didn’t get to ponder you for too long before you turned your head in his direction and noticed that he was awake. Your eyes widened a fraction and you stared at one another for a moment, and Bradley thought it would be easy to get lost in your gaze.

“Hi,” you whispered, breaking the silence.

“Hi,” he spoke back, his voice rough, but relieved. You were real after all.

“How are you feeling?”

“Less like I got hit by a train and more like I got hit by a truck, so I guess better.”

“Technically, you were hit by a plane. I imagine a train is close enough though.”

It took him a second to get the joke, but the laugh he let out felt good. Mentally, at least. Physically, it hurt his ribs. But you were making jokes with him and he’d take that over you crying again.

“Not many people can say that, huh?”

“No,” she agreed with a shake of her head, “but you’ve always been a special one, Bradley Bradshaw.”

Blushing was an unfamiliar feeling. So unfamiliar that he didn’t realize that’s what he was doing at first, but hearing you say his full name and compliment him, because he knew that’s what you meant, made his face feel warm and his heart race. Your eyes flicked to his heart monitor, but you didn’t comment on it.

“I asked your nurse if you could change since you might be more comfortable in your own clothes,” you said instead, motioning to a duffel bag that was set on the counter on the other side of his room that he didn’t notice before. “She said it’s fine, so I had a few things brought for you this morning. If you want.”

“That sounds great,” he said, because it did. He hated hospital gowns. He hated hospitals, period. “Any chance I can take a shower?”

“No, I’m sorry. But um…they’re going to take you for more testing in a little bit, probably, and they said a nurse will help you clean up and change afterward.”

You looked uncomfortable as you said the words, and he wanted to ask you why, but you pushed on before he could.

“There should be a few pairs of sweatpants and shirts to choose from. If you don’t like anything in there I can get something else.”

“I’m sure whatever is in there will be fine,” he said softly. You were nervous, he could tell. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you nodded in response.

There was a tension settling in the room that he didn’t quite enjoy. He supposed it was unavoidable, all things considered. Despite it, though, you remained in the seat beside his bed, almost within reach of him. Your hair was down this morning, one side tucked behind your ear to keep it out of your face. You were still wearing the Eagles sweatshirt that was too big for you. Your eyes were tired, and he wondered if you got anything more than restless fits of sleep last night.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up last night,” he started, unable to take the silence anymore. Your eyes snapped up to him.

“It’s alright,” you insisted, sending him a small smile that had his heart fluttering again. “This chair is actually more comfortable than it looks.”

He sincerely doubted that, but he didn’t call you out on it. You took a sip of your drink, barely putting it down before bringing it back to your lips for another. The ice rattled in the cup as it moved.

He tried to make out what it was that you were drinking. Coffee, obviously, but he found himself curious as to what your typical order was. Were you just a cream and sugar kind of girl, or did you like flavors? Based on how long the order on the white sticker was, he guessed the latter. He couldn’t quite read what it said, but he could see the name above it. His eyebrows pulled together, causing an ache behind his eyes that he tried to push away. He remembered you saying that you had had a few things brought for him, not that you retrieved yourself, so he assumed whoever went to the home the two of you shared is who stopped and got your morning beverage, as well. For some reason, he felt a furling in his stomach. It was irrational, he knew, but the thought of another man doing these things for you, for him, made him feel something akin to jealousy. That wasn’t fair, he knew. He didn’t know your life or your family or even you.

But he felt something for you. He didn’t exactly know what, but a connection that he’s never felt before existed between the two of you like an invisible string. It was one he found himself wanting to tug on and follow and see where it led.

The unknown was intimidating to him, and that’s what this was. Everything about this was unknown.

“Who’s Pete?” he asked before he could stop himself. He hoped his voice didn’t come out as insecure as he felt.

“What?” you asked, eyes widening and back straightening. He nodded toward the near empty coffee cup in your hand where the name was written above your order on the plastic. Your shoulders dropped and then tensed, which confused him even more.

“Ah.”

“I assume that’s who went and got my clothes? I’m sorry, I just don’t recognize the name.” He was trying, so hard, to pull something up to the front of his mind, but he couldn’t. He didn’t remember being close with anyone with that name. Maybe it was a family member of yours that he had forgotten along with you, but something told him that wasn’t the case. You wouldn’t be looking at him the way you currently are if it was a forgotten father or brother-in-law. You were eyeing him like you were uncomfortable in his presence, like you were scared of what to say to him. It was the first time he saw a look like this from you and he didn’t like it. There was something there, something about this name and him asking that unsettled you.

A knock on the door interrupted the potential conversation, and now Bradley felt frustrated. He had so many questions and he knew the answers resided with you. One of the doctors from the previous day, Dr. Anderson, according to his coat, stepped in, offering a good morning as he scrolled on the tablet in his hand.

“How are you feeling today, Lieutenant Commander?”

The title was still unfamiliar to him. His gut reaction was to correct him, but the last time he did that, he found out he was missing four years of his life and an entire wife, so he refrained.

“I’ve been better.”

“Have you remembered anything overnight?”

He saw you flinch out of the corner of his eye and the ice rattled in that damn coffee cup that he still had so many questions about due to your grip tightening for just a moment.

He clenched his jaw and gave a single shake of his head. “No sir.”

Dr. Anderson set the tablet on the foot of his bed and braced his hands against the plasti footboard, giving him the ability to look at him straight on. “That’s not uncommon,” he assured, though Bradley felt nothing of the sort.

The white coat looked back and forth from the two of you a few times, and Bradley didn’t like the look he had in his eyes when they settled on you for a longer moment before looking back at him again.

“It’s come to my attention that the time you're missing means you may not remember being married. Is that correct?”

Bradley gritted his teeth, but nodded.

“I see.” The doctor seemed to weigh his words for a moment before he spoke again. “Perhaps, Lieutenant Commander, it may be best if we speak in private?”

A flash of anger flared through him at the suggestion. You startled next to him, sucking in a breath as your eyes widened at the words. That protective instinct he had in regards to you had a glare hardening on his face. “Excuse me?”

“Bradley…” your voice was gentle, soft, and it had him settling just a little bit, but his eyes remained on the man in front of him.

“I mean no offense. I want to do whatever I can here to help you get on the road to recovery, but in order to properly treat you, you need to be completely honest with how you’re feeling and your injuries. Having someone who is currently a stranger to you could very well impact that. Would you be more comfortable if she wasn’t in the room with us?”

“She is sitting right there, and no, Doctor, I would not be more comfortable if she weren’t.”

“Lieute-”

“She’s staying.”

Dr. Anderson sighed, which grated on Bradley’s already fraying nerves, but nodded. He proceeded to ask him question after question, inquiring about double vision and how bad his head hurt and if he was having any trouble with the range of motion in his neck. They went over all of his injuries again and what his path to healing realistically looked like. His body should heal with no problem, but his head was trickier.

“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for amnesia,” he was told when he asked, and he hated how nonchalant the doctor was when delivering that news. “The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. You sustained a significant amount of trauma to it that would have been considerably worse if your helmet didn’t take a brunt of the hit. Quite frankly, you’re lucky to be alive, Lieutenant Commander.”

Bradley couldn’t fight the urge to look over at you. You were already staring back at him. You tried your best to smile at him, but he could see the pain in your eyes. He hated that he was the one who put it there. It was overwhelming how much causing you hurt,hurt him in return.

Another knock at the door sounded and Dr. Anderson waved in the nurse standing in the doorway with a wheelchair in front of her.

“I want to take you down for another scan to check on the swelling you had. If it’s gone down more overnight, we’ll be able to get a better view of any damage that perhaps we didn’t see before. We’ll grab some updated blood work and do a few other cognitive tests while we’re at it. Jackie will get you all squared away and wheel you down there.”

He grabbed his tablet off of the bed where he set it earlier, giving Bradley a nod that he returned. Instead of immediately turning and exiting, though, he turned to you.

“Mrs. Bradshaw? Could I have a word outside?”

Hearing you be called Mrs. Bradshaw nearly took the breath out of him. But no, Bradley thought, he didn’t like that idea. Not with the way the doctor had looked and spoken to you a few minutes ago. But the older nurse was already speaking to him, asking questions of her own while unhooking some of the machines he was connected to. You stood up, following Dr. Anderson out of the room without a word. Bradley couldn’t do anything more than watch you leave. The door shut behind you and he immediately felt on edge.

“It’s good to see you awake, Lieutenant Commander Bradshaw,” she commented, helping him slowly swing his legs off the bed after she had raised him more upright and lowered the safety bars. She held onto his arm and waist as he transferred from the bed to the wheelchair she had placed directly beside it. His ribs ached with the motion and his vision blurred as his head pounded. It took him a moment to catch his breath and he found himself having to then breathe through a wave of nausea.

You walked back into the room right as the nurse was unlocking the wheels of the chair. Your face was desperately trying to remain neutral.

“What?” he asked, the concern washing over him taking him by surprise.

“Nothing,” you insisted. But Bradley knew you were lying. Your eyes gave you away. They were so expressive that he felt like he could almost see right through you. He knew you were upset and something he didn’t understand twisted in his chest that you were trying to keep that from him.

“I’ll get him back to you in an hour or two, dear,” Nurse Jackie smiled at you as she wheeled him out of the room.

Bradley was so tired of being cut off when he wanted to speak with you.

“You’ve certainly been a popular patient,” Nurse Jackie informed him as they waited for the elevator.

“Ma’am?”

“That wife of yours has barely left your room, the poor thing. I think the furthest she’s gone is the cafeteria, and that’s only when she was coerced into doing it by your friends, and even then not for long.”

“There’s been others here?” he asked, confused.

“Oh, of course. There’s been a carousel of visitors in this room with usually one or two more in the waiting room. The two of you don’t lack love or support, I’ll tell you that.”

That surprised him. He racked his brain trying to figure out who she could be referring to, but came up short once again. Bradley wasn’t close to many people. Making connections with people was hard in this line of work. He wasn’t usually in one place for long enough to have something genuine, friendships or otherwise. It was a sacrifice he was always content with, made easier by the fact that he bore so many emotional scars from all the love he lost early on in his life. He was man enough to admit that.

But yet here he was, being told that he apparently had so many people he was close to that his hospital room had become a revolving door. He had a hard time believing it.

The thought stuck with him when they got on the elevator and made their way down several floors. He went through the motions of it all, doing what was asked of him and answering all the questions he could, but his mind was elsewhere, searching for something he didn’t know.

The machines scanning his brain made him feel claustrophobic. It was unfamiliar to him because he spent his days locked in the cockpit of a single-seater jet, yet he felt like he was aware of every inch of himself as he tried to lay as still as possible. He was becoming uncomfortable in his skin and feeling things he never did before. This wasn’t him and he couldn’t make sense of it.

By the time he was being wheeled back down the hallway to his room, three hours later, the thoughts had festered so much that they etched a tight scowl on his face. The testing should have only taken an hour at most, which irritated him further.

It didn’t help that you were on the phone with someone when the Nurse, a different one whose name he couldn’t remember, pushed him through the door, only to quickly hang up once you spotted him.

“How’d it go?” you asked, and the nurse was answering for him before he could even process the question.

“Just fine, ma’am.” The response was curt. Bradley watched your face fall at the tone the nurse gave you, lacking the kindness that Nurse Jackie had when she took him away.

“I’m going to help him get cleaned up and changed,” the nurse continued, stopping him near the bed and locking the wheels on the chair so that it wouldn’t move.

You cleared your throat and nodded. “Right. I uh-I can get out of the way.”

“You don’t have to go,” Bradley said, meeting your eyes for the first time since this interaction began.

“It’s okay,” you said, forcing a smile onto your face as you grabbed the duffle you had shown him earlier and set it on the bed. “I um..I’ll leave you to it and be back in a few minutes, okay?”

It wasn’t okay, but he didn’t feel like he had a right to feel like that, so he nodded instead. “Alright.”

The process of getting something akin to a sponge bath and into new clothes was painfully uncomfortable for him. The nurse didn’t say much as she helped him, only giving him direction when she needed him to move a certain way or checking in to ask about his pain level if he flinched too hard.

That part of him that he didn’t recognize wished you had stayed and helped him instead.

By the time he was settled back in his hospital bed, he was tired and in pain. The nurse administered him another dose of painkillers before she made her exit.

Bradley decided he preferred Nurse Jackie from earlier in the day.

He tried his best to relax into the bed, focusing on keeping his body still until the drugs kicked in. He rested his hands over his stomach and paused. For the first time since he had been helped into them, he looked down at what it was he was wearing.

He knew this t-shirt. It was soft and well worn, a UVA logo faded with time. It was one he had had since college. He wondered if it was a coincidence or if you had requested this specific one, knowing he’d recognize it. The thought eased some of the frustration he felt, but it didn’t go away completely.

Bradley didn’t like feeling helpless and out of control of himself, and that’s exactly what he was right now.

You said you would only be gone for a few minutes and he wanted to stay awake so he could talk to you, to maybe finally get a few answers, but the exhaustion from moving around mixed with the pain medication finally kicking in had him drifting off to sleep, your face and name cycling through his mind.

--------

Part Three :: Series Masterlist :: Main Masterlist

*Part 4 and beyond are also on the masterlist!

Notes: Don't forget to comment & reblog! It's so unbelievably motivating.

Tagging those who asked or interacted with part one. I think I caught everyone, but I'm very new to this so apologies if I missed you! Please let me know if you'd like to be added or taken off this list :)

Tag List: @roosterforme - @mak-32 - @hoyaharper - @wildxwidow - @gretagerwigsmuse - @bradshawburner - @iamaslytherin0 - @lilyevanswhore - @too-fangirl-to-fuction - @fav-fanficssss - @benhardysdrumstick - @fandomxpreferences - @acatwriteshere - @1234-angelika - @double-j - @cocoskween - @sunflowersteves - @teacupsandtopgun - @littlezee80 - @sometimesanalice - @je-suis-prest-rachel - @khaylin27 - @infamous-reindeer - @hotch-meeeeeuppppp - @sarahjoestewy-blog - @sunnysidesidra - @notroosterbradshaw - @yanna-banana - @inthestars-unerthesun - @avengersfan25

#bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw imagine #tgm fanfiction #bradley bradshaw x oc #Bradley bradshaw x female reader #rooster x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster fanfic #alli writes #top gun fanfiction #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw fic

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nostalgia-tblr · 2 months ago

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okay but no this is is bothering me now

I hold this wild fandom position that the little rant in Thor 1: No Subtitle, Just Thor where Loki goes on about how Odin hates him and must have a sinister plan in mind should not be taken as the literal truth because it's the paranoid fears of someone shaken and scared, but this does not seem to convince anyone else for some reason.

However! There is one line in it that's definitely, demonstrably wrong, isn't there? The bit about "you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard", because JUST IN CASE any of us have forgotten what happens later in the film:

This is not like when he pretended to be Odin between films, this tells me that there is no legal impediment to Loki being king of Asgard. And you might say "well, duh" but saying that means accepting that A Frost Giant On The Throne Of Asgard was always a real possibility. By raising the foundling as his own legitimate biological son Odin has placed him second in the line of succession after Thor, made no move to exclude this new son, and the lack of any younger siblings suggests no real concern over the fact that Loki is not just the spare he is the only spare.

Odin could simply have admitted that this new prince was adopted (without necessarily saying from where), or claimed he was his own but illegitimate, or some other explanation I can't be bothered to think up right now. The point is, this was not an inevitable flaw in whatever shit plan Odin may or may not have had, it's an intended or at least accepted outcome.

And no, Thor can't just be safely immortal, because then Odin's immortal and Thor isn't needed in the first place.

"Oh but Frigga -" DELETED scene, doesn't count... BUT if it did then Frigga is willing to place a Frost Giant on etc etc even if it's only as a regent and she isn't worried about Odin reacting negatively to that decision when he gets out of his convenient coma.

What I'm getting at, of course, is that at least one part of 'Loki Odinson Reacts To Adoption News (NOT CLICKBAIT!!!)' was clearly bollocks, yet people still quote it as fact and as well as the rest of it which might also be - to use a clever literary term - bollocks.

edit: i used the same screencap again which is Bad but look the meme says the same as this post but in less words:

#thor brackets twenty eleven close brackets #i can't call this meta i'm just pointing out the glaringly obvious here #i hope it's not going be like when i told everyone the emperor was naked and everyone just got mad at me and threw cabbages :(#on the other hand i did get free cabbages out of that incident

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vidavalor · 3 months ago

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Hello! 👋 Just dropping in for a visit to my favourite online pub: your blog *chews on all your posts and slurps down your analyses*

I love the way you spell out the Ineffable Husband SpeakTM for us, and I was wondering what you think about Crowley’s “You don’t dance.” in 2.06, when Aziraphale asked to dance with him?

Crowley is mumbling a bit here & I wasn’t sure at first if he said “you” or “we” or something else, so I checked the subtitles as well. That aside, we know by this point that Aziraphale has done at least 3 I-Was-Wrong dances, so I wonder if Crowley is referring to something else?

Hi, @procrastiel! How's it going, love? Wouldn't say I spell anything out-- I just give my opinion-- but I appreciate the compliment! 💕Crowley's line is definitely "you don't dance" and ohh, yeah, I can deep dive on my opinion on what it means to dance. Deepest of dives-- this went everywhere. 😂 Mother of all metas for the mother of all Good Omens questions... We're having sandwiches-the-food tonight in honor of where your question crosses into God's tongue-in-cheek monologue on how many angels can get down on the heads of those Mrs. Sandwich seamstressing tools-- pins.

This is going to take a route through some heavy analysis of the argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance and a few other things to get the root of your question, so, grab a beverage of choice before diving in. TW: Brief mentions of Satan's attacks on Crowley.

*rubs hands together and cues up the disco music* 😂

What does it mean to dance?

When we talk about dancing, there are roughly four different meanings of the word to look at with relation to Good Omens' story.

One meaning is the first one that comes to mind for most people, which is a physical dance-- as in, moving your body, usually to music.

The music, if it exists, can be in your head, a song you're singing aloud, or one that is playing in the room-- it doesn't matter. If you're moving, any and all of it would qualify as dancing. By this measure? Crowley canonically had seen Aziraphale dance before Aziraphale asked him to dance during The Meeting Ball because, well...

...here is Aziraphale dancing in front of Crowley in the bookshop in 1941:

Crowley's shock in 2.06 cannot be coming from never having seen Aziraphale dance at all, right? They've known each other for thousands of years and if Aziraphale was doing this fucking adorable little shuffle of excitement in the bookshop in 1941 then it's not really a stretch to assume that these two-- who canonically listen to records together in the evenings sometimes-- have danced together before.

In 1941, we see that Aziraphale liking to dance is not something he's actually hiding from Crowley because he's doing this cute little dance in front of him without a second thought. This is also interesting because one theory was that Crowley has no idea about Aziraphale liking to dance at all because he didn't appear to know about Aziraphale learning the gavotte. S2 turns that on its head a bit by saying that Crowley might not yet know about the gavotte-- we don't really know yet either way-- but he definitely does know that Aziraphale likes to dance and he was unsurprised to see him doing so in 1941.

The key thing here is that when they have danced together or in front of one another before? It was likely only in the privacy of the bookshop or another place like it. It was just the two of them.

When Crowley says "you don't dance" to Aziraphale, he's not meaning that Aziraphale doesn't dance at all. He's meaning something more expansive, as we'll look at with the other meanings of dancing below.

The second meaning is a verbal dance. These are interactions between more than one person in which the back-and-forth of what is being spoken has the give-and-take quality of a dance.

There can be different types of verbal dancing. Crowley and Aziraphale's word-nerdy flirting is a kind of verbal dance. It's a birdsong mating dance, especially since they are so hot for words. Being able to verbally entice and keep up with a partner makes flirting-- especially their kind of it-- a kind of dance and it's one they've been doing for thousands of years and both enjoy.

Another type of verbal dance between long-time partners is one that could be dubbed, as Crowley and Aziraphale call it, an "I Was Wrong" dance. This is an apology between partners who had an argument but want to get beyond it. No matter what you think the nature of Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship is, they've known each other for thousands of years and are de facto partnership married at this point so they have An Apology Routine TM. People who have been together a long time and who have the occasional spat often tend to fall into a rhythm with their apologies, knowing what needs to be said to just get to the other side of it, which they'd like to do as soon as possible because they miss each other and don't like being in conflict with one another.

When Aziraphale says he wants "a proper apology... with the little dance" as Crowley tries to get away with not doing the verbal dance that he knows he's going to end up doing lol, what Aziraphale means is that he wants the back-and-forth verbal dance they do as an apology. He doesn't want to just ignore what happened because he was really pissed and he's telling Crowley that he'd appreciate an actual apology and a bit of groveling before he's willing to let it go and move on.

The "little dance" in question isn't a physical dance-- it's basically the same apology dance we saw Crowley do back in S1 here:

When Crowley claimed he doesn't "do the dance" in S2, they both knew that wasn't true and so did we, really, because *points to the above gif* there's Crowley doing the dance in the middle of the street in S1. Claiming he doesn't "do the dance" is sometimes part of the dance if Crowley is the one apologizing as, unless Hell is actively, in that moment, trying to kill him-- like they were in S1-- he gets squirmy about apologies, even if he always eventually says them.

The reason why Crowley does the physical dance that he does during The Apology Dance is actually off of Aziraphale being just as dryly self-deprecating about the two of them and their relationship as Crowley winds up showing he is with The Apology Dance. It's rooted in Aziraphale's use of the word proper.

That word falls into the category in their speak of words like wily, thwart, smitten, demon, fiend, etc.. that have wildly contrasting meanings where they can be said on one level to mean one thing that is acceptable to an audience of angels, demons, or humans, but that also, on another level and within Crowley and Aziraphale's speak, has a funnier, more sexualized meaning.

Proper has an understood meaning of being something that is correct, acceptable, and appropriate. It means decent and respectable. It has a connotation that suggests that something deemed proper falls within the generally-accepted social rules of a society.

Within that word, though? Is the word prop.

I probably do not need to further define that but one sense of the word prop is that it is a theatrical term to describe an object being used in a play. From this, it also come to mean an object being used in sexual play. The humor for Crowley and Aziraphale comes from the fact that proper is a word related to what is considered acceptable in society while bedroom activities involving props have historically been considered "deviant" by those same societies.

The word exists in the sexual meaning in several other scenes in Good Omens. Such as:

Aziraphale in 1941 flirting with Crowley in the magic shop by using the silver rings magic trick as an innuendo-laden stand-in for handcuffs and going on about having a "gift for prop"... and in 2019, when Crowley joked that Aziraphale did not need to do his literal magic act because: "You can do proper magic. You can make things disappear."

Words containing the word thin relate to Crowley and disappear/appear are words with a root meaning of to come into view-- heavy emphasis on the to come part. Crowley sounds like he's talking about Aziraphale's supernatural magic abilities (and he likely also is lol) but he's wording it in such a way as to be really referring to Aziraphale's other skills as a true magician in bed.

Aziraphale, hilariously, teasing Crowley back by joking that making him come is not as fun as pulling a coin out of his ear 😂:

This is also the joke around Aziraphale doing things like popping into view from around corners or doorways or, in my favorite, from the other side of The Bentley in S2, as well as things like Crowley apparating into a space to see Aziraphale. They're magical so they can apparate-- literally appear and disappear from view-- and would do so to meet up with one another at times, as we've seen. It's a visual joke on appear/disappear and the verb to come.

There is also the hilarious "only I can properly thwart the wiles of the demon Crowley" from the deleted 1800 bookshop opening scene-- a sentence made up basically entirely of words with double meaning that make them sound like Aziraphale is saying to Gabriel and Sandalphon that he's the only one who can correctly stop Crowley's evil demonicness when he's also, with the same words, trying to alert Crowley, who has just arrived in the doorway, to the fact that the angels are here to recall him by saying a sentence that is like: but you can't take me back to Heaven! I'm the only one who has the first clue how to shag Crowley right.

So, in S2, Aziraphale is being a bit arch when he says he wants "a proper apology." They both know that he means it in terms of saying he wants a genuine, decent apology and nothing more than that. His dryness in choice and delivery of the word proper is Aziraphale being tongue-in-cheek with Crowley and aligning their history of well-balanced, healthy, sexual power dynamics with the fact that their argument was, at the core, a lot about aspects of trust and control that they *both* struggle with outside of their proper bedroom, where things are very different.

The argument was really a perfect storm of triggering both of their traumas and they both, technically, were right and wrong about things. Aziraphale's apology dance is, essentially, the whole 'our car/our bookshop' that becomes the rest of the season. The reason why it's Crowley doing The Apology Dance, though, is actually less about the subject matter of their argument and more about which one of them fucked up when it came to the stuff the argument shows us that they're working on together.

The argument over Gabriel actually shows us the extent to which they're a couple, in that they've clearly talked about working on things they do which trigger each other's trauma and are trying to be better at it. They're proactively working at trying to get better at arguing, which is the most married thing in creation. This is also indicative of both of them trying to manage different traumas and PTSD that they have and doing the best they can do while still not yet able to fully escape the root causes of those difficulties. That is something which any therapist will tell you is nearly impossible to do but they are both trying anyway and doing a pretty good job of it actually, all things considered. Where can we see this in the argument over Gabriel?

It is in that they each both do something when upset that is a trigger for the other's trauma and has, in the past, caused their discussions to implode, and how they both handle that with one another during this argument. When Aziraphale gets upset and anxious, his anger can take the form of saying words he doesn't mean-- words that are often completely and utterly absurd from an objective standpoint. Think of the bandstand argument, for instance, and Aziraphale's ludicrous attempt to say that he and Crowley aren't friends and-- the best one lol-- that he doesn't even like Crowley.

The audience and Crowley alike know this is bullshit and so does Aziraphale but it's the product of Heaven being a place of emotional repression and Aziraphale's perfectionism, which makes him feel like he's not supposed to ever actually feel the depression and anxiety and anger that he does. When upset, this bubbles up in him and explodes and the results are words he doesn't mean that make him feel terrible, further contribute to his pattern of negative self-thoughts, and hurt Crowley.

In S2, we might also notice, Aziraphale phrases his go-to of telling Crowley it's over as a defense mechanism as saying that Crowley is "at liberty to go", which has an implication that a certain amount of staying was occurring. While Crowley isn't living in the shop to the extent that he's there in the mornings because they're still trying not to get caught, this plus things like "we both get plenty of use out of it [the bookshop], don't we?" indicate that Aziraphale never really notices that Crowley no longer has his flat because Crowley just kind of lives in the bookshop now. He's there every day, to a point that Aziraphale defaulting to his usual anger response of breaking up with Crowley when upset is now phrased in such a way as to try to kick him out of the house. Crowley, though, knows better-- just like how Aziraphale knows better where Crowley's own issues are concerned.

Even though Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean what he says when he's upset and is patient about it (the not even batting an eyelash "you doooo" in response to "I don't even like you" in the bandstand argument), it still hurts. So, that's what Aziraphale is trying to work on and we see that Crowley is working on it with him, an example of that being when Aziraphale is starting to lose it during the Gabriel argument and Crowley's response to it:

Crowley is basically saying honey, you're doing the thing-- and it works. This is what they've agreed upon as a way that Crowley can help Aziraphale when he's upset. He points out that Aziraphale is doing the thing he does, which seems to be something they've agreed on as a strategy for communicating better. He gives Aziraphale room to take a breath and say what he really means. Expressing how he really feels when the emotions are not positive ones is hard for Aziraphale because it involves admitting that he has these emotions in the first place.

So, Aziraphale does his part in their agreement and he rephrases what he was saying into what he actually means: that he would love for Crowley to help him with Gabriel but that if he won't, he won't. He is open about how he feels, which is Aziraphale doing what they agreed to do, and is a world of difference from how they were fighting before. He also expresses it in an especially positive way, as he uses words like 'love' and 'help' to say how he feels and what he needs.

This is why it's Crowley who winds up doing The Apology Dance.

What Crowley does in an argument that triggers Aziraphale is to leave. While, technically, sometimes leaving for a breath is not a terrible strategy in an argument, Crowley's tendency to leave is a flight-or-fight PTSD response that stems from a lack of trust in anyone but himself (and, honestly, often not even himself) to keep him safe. It's honestly not how he really feels about Aziraphale, whom he actually does trust with himself, but he sometimes lets fear and anxiety overwhelm him when triggered by situations in a way that relates to his past traumatic experiences.

Just as Aziraphale's struggle with his more volatile emotions is understandable considering what he's been through, so is Crowley's tendency to panic and bolt. The problem is that, just as Aziraphale's angry words can hurt Crowley, even if he understands where they come from and knows Aziraphale doesn't mean them, Crowley's tendency to leave hurts Aziraphale because it feels to him that Crowley doesn't trust him to make decisions that would keep Crowley safe.

They both are aware that their knee-jerk reactions of running away or sniping in anger are trauma responses and not terribly logical but they're both working on trying to heal enough to not have those responses with one another. In S2, they're stuck trying to manage all of that while still living in an environment that is dangerous for them and in which Armageddon could be around the corner again at any moment-- making it obviously harder to deal with things and also making the fact that they are both doing reasonably well with it all the more impressive and an indicator of how good they are for one another.

(It also makes the end of S2-- a series of miscommunications, some of which are not even their fault, that led to epic fucking disaster-- even more devastating because it doesn't actually reflect the healthy relationship that the beginning of the season emphasizes exists.)

Compounding these issues and part of why they're trying to work on them is that both of them trigger each other's PTSD when they react like this.

Aziraphale's words in anger and his tendency to push Crowley away leave Crowley feeling less secure around the one person who otherwise is the safest person he's ever met while Crowley's tendency to bolt in a panic, instead of staying and working through things, triggers Aziraphale's fear of abandonment (both in general and with Crowley) and, even more so, his terror over losing Crowley.

He's never sure when Crowley goes out the door if he's ever coming back because it's not really safe for him out there and S2 illustrates that Aziraphale has real trauma dating back to the time Crowley was taken in front of him in 1827, shown in him going to the spot in Edinburgh in the present where he lost Crowley and needing to call him from it to hear his voice. And, well, also to get a bonus praise kinky little boost from his partner for a job well done on working on his trauma stuff:

So, long story short, the argument they have over what to do about Gabriel's arrival really illustrates the extent to which they're both trying to manage a great deal of trauma together and, to help one another to do so, they have put some strategies into place for trying to do that more effectively. Aziraphale kept to his end of the bargain in this argument. He used more productive and open words to express how he was feeling. Crowley, though, did not hold up his end of the bargain here. He did when it came to helping Aziraphale with Aziraphale's part of it but he didn't when it came to managing his own trauma.

To be fair to Crowley? This situation was basically the exact perfect storm of a trigger for his PTSD and neither he nor Aziraphale are really going to be able to get much of anywhere significant with healing until all of this Heaven & Hell stuff is over in S3. So, that he fucked this up here is both sympathetic and not terribly surprising. It's also the root of him then spending the season reassuring Aziraphale that he's coming back and part of why he goes out the door in the end of 2.06 but he stays by the car. But, when it comes to just this argument over Gabriel in 2.01, it was Crowley who didn't try and that made Aziraphale upset.

This is where, though, that The Apology Dance shows that they're actually pretty healthy about arguing overall. Just the mention of this having existing for ages is establishing that trying to be better at disagreeing and having this little routine for getting back to a good place and starting to talk more after they've argued is not just something that has existed post-S1 but has been going on for, at minimum, hundreds of years, if not a whole lot longer. In essence, The Apology Dance exists as a bridge back to a place where they are less reactive and can talk through what's upsetting them-- which a lot of evidence suggests they are actually very good at doing with one another.

So, when Aziraphale tells Crowley that he wants "a proper apology", he's already injecting some humor into the moment, even if he is serious about not letting Crowley just skip over genuinely saying he is sorry. He is upset but he also loves Crowley and he's aware that the situation was pretty much the ultimate trigger for Crowley. It's just difficult for Aziraphale to watch because he wants Crowley to feel safe enough to heal more from a lot of this and feels like that he can't fully provide that, even if he is doing everything in his power to help Crowley with it. In a way, it's a foreshadowing how Aziraphale is going to fall in the end of S2 over the temptation of power that he thinks might help Crowley be safe.

The reason why Aziraphale chooses to use the word proper in saying he wants an apology-- and in that particularly dry tone-- is because he is very, very pissed that Crowley walked out the door rather than trusted him to have not put him into danger with Gabriel and to help him manage the situation. He's pointing out that Crowley trusts him implicitly in so many other ways, with the use of the wordplay there being a reference to the fact that he and Crowley have a healthy balance of power and an enormous amount of trust in their relationship overall, for which Aziraphale is using their positive sexual power dynamics as an example.

As different scenes have illustrated, when they mess around with those dynamics, they switch off allowing one another a sense of control over the other, even if the overall dynamics of such situations are never as cut-and-dry as that. The point is that Aziraphale's use of proper here is a direct reference to the fact that Crowley went out the door in a panic-stricken fit earlier but they both know that Crowley does trust Aziraphale to a great degree, and a great example of that to Aziraphale is the fact that Crowley-- as eleven hundred scenes in the show suggest lol-- is very into letting Aziraphale restrain him in bed. The reason why we even know this is because of how the show uses aspects of their sexuality to illustrate the level of trust and intimacy in their relationship.

Just as the wall slam scene in S1 exists to make it abundantly clear how much Aziraphale trusts Crowley and how he has nothing to fear from him by contrasting that with Aziraphale's response to being jumped by the angels in the street, the scenes that are referring to them using restraints, while illustrating that they both do, are centered around Crowley's thing for it, in particular, to help illustrate that he has the same kind of trust in and feeling of safety with Aziraphale that Aziraphale does with him.

The reason why Crowley liking to be tied up or handcuffed is given weight enough that it's a recurring thing mentioned in the story is because of how it's a different level of trust for him than it might be for someone else. While the wall slam scene contrasts Aziraphale's safety with Crowley versus the abuse of the angels, the handcuff thing is showing that Crowley, who is a survivor of attacks that render him unable to move or otherwise assert any control over himself and who has demonstrable PTSD from it, trusts Aziraphale enough and feels safe with him enough to explore with him the complexities of being a survivor of attacks involving a loss of control who also finds sometimes being restrained and giving up some control in bed arousing.

So, Aziraphale's "proper apology" is dryly mocking both of their control and trust issues by use of an example of a place in their relationship where they handle those issues without conflict, and that's in the great communication and ease of care for one another in bed. With use of proper, Aziraphale is subtly pointing out that Crowley is an assault survivor who trusts Aziraphale to him tie him up but he runs out of other situations in a panic, which is an example of the lack of logic that can occur in the face of trauma sometimes. It helps to prove how ridiculous they both are really being in general.

Which Crowley agrees with. Because he knows he was. Trauma isn't logical, it's knee-jerk emotional, and he felt bad about storming out and even worse when he found out from Beez what the repercussions of not helping might be so he's come back, heard the 'proper' comment, and is like fine, yes, you're right. We're ridiculous. I was ridiculous.

This is healthy as all fuck:

It matches the humor Aziraphale put in around his genuine anger with additional humor. It's self-deprecating and ego-free, just an admittance of having messed up and showing he's sorry by being a little ridiculous because how he reacted earlier, he knows, was also a little ridiculous. There's the hearing of proper and responding to that with a mock-submissive, self-deprecating, little dance and a bow and scrape. There's a dry, affectionate mocking of the two of them and their long history of apology conversations that all boil down to the lyrics of the little song Crowley makes up here: "You were right, you were right, I was wrong, and you were right."

The tongue-in-cheek vibe of Yes, you're correct. Are you satisfied now, my king? that pokes gentle fun at both of them and that actually winds up illustrating just how much trust and love there is between them as a result.

Aziraphale finding it hilarious to a point that he's working hard not to laugh long enough to respond with equal humor with the little soft dom-ish "very nice" and then miming a kiss at Crowley showing that they are actually good at this. They allow each other to be imperfect, know how to talk openly about how that makes them feel, and can recover from an argument with humor and affection.

This is also a good example of Crowley being supportive of Aziraphale expressing emotions and of Aziraphale trusting Crowley as someone safe to do that around. Aziraphale told Crowley exactly how he felt and what he needed here in a clear way that expressed his anger and frustration without descension into anything harmful and Crowley listened, acknowledged those emotions, and responded in a way that was supportive and positive.

The argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance is what their relationship is really like when they can speak openly and directly to one another because they have the safety and privacy to do so. They actually do know how to talk to one another and they do it very well. Their present situation as of the end of S2 is more of a nightmare of unfortunate events and misunderstandings and it actually took a lot to get it to go that wrong because, normally, as we can see? It's relatively easy for them to get it right.

So, Crowley's Apology Dance was both verbal and a literal dance, yes, but Aziraphale's bemused response to it indicates he wasn't expecting the literal dance and the fact that Crowley made up and did the literal dance off of Aziraphale's use of proper, as we looked at, indicates that it was something he did for the first time in that moment, rather than how The Apology Dance usually goes.

The usual nature of Crowley and Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" Dance is strictly verbal.

We can tell this by one of the years in which Aziraphale mentions that he did an "I Was Wrong" dance in the past: 1793.

When Aziraphale shows that he's really hurt by Crowley leaving and needs him to apologize, he lists three, prior times when it was Aziraphale who had fucked something up between them and was the one doing The Apology Dance as a result. The three years he uses as shorthand are 1650, 1793 and 1941. While we don't know anything about 1650 right now... and while we know about 1941 but not how it ends so maybe not yet quite enough to say we know why Aziraphale was doing an apology dance (though I would argue that maybe 1941 itself is a bit of a joint apology dance)... the one year here we do know enough about to use to inform our opinion about what their apology dances usually are is 1793.

What Aziraphale is apologizing for in 1793 is the rescue scenario winding up a bit of a disaster because of Aziraphale neglecting to take into account that if Jean-Claude The Executioner was having that much fun cutting people's heads off, he probably was disturbing in other ways as well. While Crowley covers up his reaction to apparating into the room just as Aziraphale is saying "no" and Jean-Claude is trying to get his clothes off, by the end of the scene, we see that Crowley is more bothered than he was letting on.

Jean-Claude becomes the only human in the entire series to date that we ever see Crowley intentionally push straight towards Hell and, in doing so, he renders Jean-Claude unable to form more than muted sounds of protest-- not at all projecting his own experiences of assault onto him or anything. Crowley makes the very dark joke that's in the above gif, savagely mocking a so-common-it's-cliche victim-blaming response to rape, making it clear in doing so what's been brought up for him as a result of what he saw when he first came into the room. Crowley is half out of it for the last moments of the scene and, at one point, sniffs like he's trying not to cry. Aziraphale had meant for it to be a fun, dashing-hero-to-the-rescue type of thing but the torture-happy prison cell atop the trauma trigger is what would make Aziraphale feel the need to apologize afterwards, even though Crowley knew he didn't intend any harm.

So, ask yourself this: did Aziraphale apologize for that by doing a silly dance?

I really don't think he did...

It wouldn't have been appropriate. The last thing Aziraphale would have done then is make light of how they both were feeling about something relating to this kind of trauma. It's not to say there wasn't any humor involved-- particularly, their form of really dark gallows humor-- but not in the midst of the genuine, actual apology. Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" dance in 1793 was a back-and-forth of him verbally apologizing and Crowley insisting that it was fine and then Aziraphale, more or less, you were right and I was wrong-ing with other words until they both were okay to talk more and move forward.

Both of them were alright as a result and clearly had a memorable time in Paris afterwards, as Aziraphale is referencing it as a good example of the two of them working through things together in a positive way when he tells Crowley that Paris, 1793 is what he "wants for lunch" in 2008.

It's really why Aziraphale says he wants 1793 in the first place, when they have a zillion other times he could have referenced. The scene in 2008 is taking place after Crowley went missing the night before on assignment for Hell. Aziraphale doesn't need to be told by this point that Crowley was hurt but they've been in public the entire time since they've met up so there has not yet been a moment to try to really acknowledge it. By bringing up Paris 1793 in response to Crowley saying he wants to lunch, Aziraphale is using it as a shorthand to convey both that he's aware and that they'll handle it, like they always do, and it will all be alright. Paris 1793 seems like it is a particularly memorable example of them managing that to them, so it's the one that Aziraphale brings up.

This also accounts for the discrepancy in Aziraphale's expressions in 2008 when he talks about this particular time. When he first mentions Paris 1793, his response is layered. There's regret mixed in there. Pain. Complicated emotions. His smile to Crowley is kind of flat, like he's trying to remain more upbeat than he actually feels.

It's very different from the cheer of we had crepes! that emerges after Crowley's response to the suggestion is positive. It speaks to Paris 1793 being more complex than only the fun, memorable romp in France that it also was.

So, this would mean that The Apology Dance is usually a verbal thing, even though Crowley did a literal dance along with it in S2. This actually is not terribly surprising because Crowley and Aziraphale's language is an exercise in the literal and the figurative.

Everything in it physically exists as well as figuratively exists and that's part of the fun of it for them. It all has to work on the surface level as well as on other levels. There are literal crepes and figurative crepes, for example, while we're on the 1793 topic. Literal fish-- sushi, gravlax in dill sauce, etc..-- and figurative fish, like the two of them. When Aziraphale asked for "the little dance" of light grovel with the apology, Crowley did that by also giving him a literal dance to go along with their traditionally verbal dance. Why? Because Aziraphale called their apology routine a figurative "little dance", so Crowley gave him a literal one to go with it. Eventually, all the figurative has to be at least a little literal in some way. It's why God made sure that an actual nightingale-the-bird was actually singing in Berkeley Square at the end of S1 as her last language lesson to us. There were then now literal angels dining at The Ritz so a literal nightingale sang in literal Berkeley Square.

The S2 Apology Dance is likely then the first Apology Dance that involved a physical dance. I'm not sure that there were others in the past but I think there definitely will be more going forward and that's a good thing since a bit of silliness is very healthy. 😊

Ok, so, back to the "you don't dance" moment... remember ten years ago when I said there were roughly four meanings of dance?

We've defined two of them already: a literal, physical dance and a verbal dance. The other two are the dance of society and dance as sexual euphemism. Historically, these weren't always mutually exclusive things and Good Omens overlaps them in some ways a bit as well.

The dance of society is being an open, active participant in your society. Even though Aziraphale basically built the society around him through being the founder of the street, we've seen how he tends to keep himself one step removed from life on Whickber Street.

It's best summed up by his relationship to The Whickber Street Shopkeepers & Traders Association: he is a member of it but, until S2, he's never hosted the monthly meeting. He doesn't fully see himself as one of them because, as an angel, he's not supposed to want any of this human living stuff, even if he desperately does. He has imposter syndrome for days, feeling like he's always about to be exposed as not really one of them.

Aziraphale does enjoy himself at times. He does engage with the world around him. He just doesn't allow himself to belong to it and his reasons for doing so are not only about his angel feelings.

The human world hasn't always been a place where he fit, either.

It's only been very recently in history-- and Aziraphale has seen literally *all* of history-- when it has been comparatively safe enough for people like him and Crowley to live more openly. It's still not completely safe, obviously and unfortunately, but there is more general acceptance now, more acknowledged human rights and more laws to help secure those rights.

The things that Crowley was hoping were around the corner in 1967-- when England decriminalized homosexual sex between men over the age of 21 and he suggested that maybe he and Aziraphale could go for broke and try being less of a secret-- actually are here by the present of the story in both S1 and S2.

A lot of that is at the root of the humor in S2 as Gabriel's presence in the shop forces Crowley and Aziraphale out onto Whickber Street in the daylight for the first time and creates scenarios in which the shopkeepers-- chiefly, Nina-- are throwing them off by being more comfortable with having their relationship be acknowledged publicly than they are. Part of the joke is that they're still closeted in London Soho in the year 2023 and the humans cannot understand why because Crowley and Aziraphale can't tell them that it's their supernatural world causing them to remain a secret.

It is only relatively recently in human history that people at formal social gatherings like the ones in England that Aziraphale has been to for years danced with anybody they felt like, regardless of relationship or lack thereof to that person. For many years, while someone might stand up with the occasional maiden aunt out of politeness or whatever, most of the time, a request for a slot on a dance card was a declaration of romantic intent. It was done within the public eye and, while matchmaking was often economical more than romantic, it was at the heart of how society functioned.

To dance, in that sense, was to be a part of society.

Aziraphale was never a part of society in that way. Not just because he's an angel who is supposed to remain above the human fray but because he is queer and society, for a long time, was not built to openly accept him. He was on the fringes of it for both supernatural and human reasons. From what we've seen, literal, physical dancing has always been something of a metaphor for this struggle for Aziraphale.

When Crowley says that Aziraphale doesn't dance-- and it's really more, as we've seen, that Aziraphale doesn't dance in public-- what he means it that Aziraphale keeps himself back from being a fully engaged part of the group, out of a fear that it's not for him because both the supernatural and the human worlds have been teaching him for a long time that it is not.

To host a meeting of the local business association and have everyone to his house for a party... to have Gabriel and Maggie under the same roof... to have everyone knowing that Crowley is his partner... to be able to openly dance with Crowley in front of others like the couple that they are, in the same way that the Chengs and Mutt and his spouse are?

That is to dance.

That is Aziraphale trying for a life he's never had before.

It is this form of dancing-- the dance of society-- that Crowley has never seen Aziraphale do before and why he is so in shock when Aziraphale asks him to dance.

This is where we have to talk about what this has to do with the gavotte, the photo from 1941, Mrs. Sandwich, Duns Scotus, and disco... 🪩Yes, I know. Lots to chat about. 😊

Back in S1, as Crowley traps Hastur in his answering machine, we are treated to one of the best parts of God's narration: Her cheeky take on the human philosophical debate around the question:

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

The phrase comes from Protestant theologians in the 17th century who were mocking Catholic scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus-- whose name is quite literally the origin of the word dunce, so overt was the mocking of these dudes' ideas. The show via Crowley also is referring to Duns Scotus in Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings when Crowley mocks the demons by spelling 'residence' as 'residunce' in Aziraphale's entry, joking with him about the fact that the demons will not be able to understand what the entries really contain. So, why the mocking of Duns Scotus and pals?

While it's not totally know if they ever did debate this question exactly, questions very much like it were debated in their circle and others in different parts of the world and these philosophers would get a bit in the weeds in the wrong direction with things. This isn't to say there is a right or a wrong way to think so much as to say the way they chose to approach questions like this was full of absurd focus on the least consequential things someone could look at and failing to really think about how considering these questions at all could impact their understanding of the world around them and contribute to making that world better.

They were not asking questions like: do angels exist in the first place? If they do, do they dance? If so, what makes them want to dance? What would it say about angels and living-- and us and living-- if angels did dance? Why the fuck would they want to dance on the head of a pin when they could dance anywhere? 😂 What does it say about us and our views on angels and ourselves that we're spending a great deal of time and resources debating questions about beings that we cannot even prove fucking exist in the first place?

Instead of considering anything like that, Duns Scotus and pals would spend time just working on the most arcane details of angelic and demonic existences-- on things like trying to figure out if angels could exist in more than one place at once or how small they could get and how they would get that small and how many of them could fit on the proverbial head of a pin and still dance on there?

You know... real, relevant, thought-provoking, big picture questions that we've all asked ourselves at one time or another. 😂

Those mocking questions like this made the question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" a kind of catch-all for pointless debate and it has since become a shorthand phrase meaning basically a bullshit question of no relevance, the debate over which is a colossal fucking waste of time.

Some scholars went so far as to blame those engaging in this type of debate as being responsible for the fall of Constantinople, saying that basically these scholars were sitting around listening to themselves talk on absurd things of no importance to such an extent that it caused mass death and collapsed an empire.

It might be of note then that this question is so notoriously tied to the fall of Constantinople that Good Omens might be winking at the fact that angels dancing around a seamstress might be a prelude to Aziraphale's fall, which some of us think is what's happening at the end of S2.

So, when Hastur and Crowley go into Crowley's answering machine, God jumps in with a little wink to this question in an effort to prevent anyone from focusing on the single most non-important question in all of Good Omens:

How did they get into the answering machine?

The answer to that is that it doesn't matter. They're magical-- that's the answer.

It's not to say that there is not a ton of small detail in Good Omens worth exploring-- and other scenes encourage doing just that, like Shakespeare's "in your role as the audience, could you give us something more to work with?-- but the details worth looking at are ones that will underscore what the story is saying in a bigger picture, thematic sort of way.

God's point here is that if you're hung up on the Magical Technical Whateverness that is stuff like how the angels and demons travel, you're being a bit of a Duns Scotus and trying to solve a mystery that the show has zero intention of ever making be relevant to anything and doesn't really consider much of a mystery in the first place. You can sit there until you're blue in the face doing calculations and looking up scientific explanations and it just simply does not matter. You're barking up the wrong tree because the thing you're talking about has no significant relevance to the story.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is basically the olden days, scholarly equivalent of rolling your eyes at half the comments in an online discussion for any sci-fi show that has ever existed. My friend and I call this kind of debate 'Photon Torpedo Jerk-Off' and what I mean by that is this: if you watch an episode of, say, Star Trek, and you think the most important thing to talk about that happened in the episode you just watched is whether or not these writers were accurate about the range of the photon torpedoes when they had the Enterprise blow up that Klingon warship, then you have missed the point of the episode entirely. If you're sitting around arguing about the sci-fi magical Whatever Tech and not talking about the story you've watched, you don't understand the point of what you've watched.

In Good Omens, the reason why God's monologue about how many angels can dance on the head a pin begins when it does is because it is a very sly joke on Duns Scotus-like debate, using the fact that the questions that were absurd to consider in real life are actually-- hilariously-- among the most pertinent to consider where Good Omens is concerned.

God brings up the pin-dancing question as a way to answer the question of what's happening with Crowley and Hastur going through the answering machine. She amusingly doesn't really answer the question and, instead, starts going on about the parts of "how many angel can dance on the head of a pin?" that should have been the bits being debated-- like whether or not angels dance at all and what if means that they do. Basically, Good Omens' response to how the answering machine bit works is "something something electrons" and they're proud of it and they should be because it doesn't fucking matter, which is why God's monologue in the answering machine sequence is really all about the bigger questions of the show and not the Duns Scotus-y question of "but how are they traveling through the telephone system exactly?" God simply just says that they are and moves onto more relevant things.

Even though the original debate over questions like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" was theological and philosophical, the thoughts behind the absurdity of it very much apply to interpreting works of art. Because of its ties to religion and to angels, it makes for a very humorous way of telling the Good Omens audience that they will not really be explaining much of anything regarding to the technical whatzits of how angels and demons travel through electricity and things like that because that could not be less relevant to understanding the story.

The question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", at one point, also had several variants. One was the same question but wondering how many demons could dance on the head of a pin, while others involved whether or not angels were "sexless"-- a question that was so confusing at the time that several sub-variants emerged as a result because people weren't entirely sure what that question meant...

Was the question asking if angels had a biological sex-- and, if so, was it asking if they had sex organs? Was it asking if the angels had a form of gender which, at the time and with these theologians, was mostly a question of whether or not angels could be what humans would have called male or female, with gender binary ideas of what that would mean intact? Many others thought a question of whether or not angels were sexless might be more directly about whether or not angels had sex.

(Amusingly, that question didn't really ever get asked about demons, as the sexuality around demonic lore has always been pretty notorious.)

The problem with these questions being asked by theologians is that they never took the opportunity to reflect on what it might say about humans and our societies that we thought these the most pertinent questions to answer about angels and demons. They never stopped and thought about the fact that to ask these questions meant they were not sure that this supernatural world that they believed in had the same sort of structure when it came to things like gender, sex and sexuality that humans do and how that is where the more interesting thoughts exist. Just by asking those questions, you could start to follow a path that maybe suggested that they were different from humans and it might be better if humans emulated some of those ideas, right?

But that's definitely not where these guys took this...

When scholastics would approach questions like this, they'd do so to make the concepts of angels and demons fit more securely into the worldview they were promoting. The very conservative would usually say that angels were genderless and also usually "above" sex and things like this reinforced their holiness. The demons could usually fuck because they were evil and nephilim and the like made for the usual brand of good, scary, weirdly sexual Bible stuff. The ones that did think that angels did gender thought angels thought about it in the same very rigidly binary and traditional ways of most societies.

In other words? Theologians took the mythical creatures of angels and demons and made their theories about them fit human societies to further their own, human goals, instead of using angels and demons to reflect upon those human societies and consider how different viewpoints might improve them.

Good Omens is completely sending up this mindset.

In Good Omens, the supernatural characters are a way of poking fun at these kind of humans who approach ideas about what angels and demons might be like with such rigidity and treat their fellow humans in the same way. The angels and demons are basically all queer in human terms by default because, in Heaven/Hell, gender is a constellation, biological sex is a 'do whatever you want with that, if anything at all', and, just like with the humans, asexuality and sexuality and everything along every possible spectrum related to it all exist. For the most part, human prejudice does not exist-- though prejudice itself does, in the form of the "other"-izing of the demons. Some of that human prejudice has slipped through-- see: Sandalphon-- but it's not as ubiquitous as it is on Earth.

The angels and demons in Good Omens come from a world where everyone is sort of assumed straight-out-of-the-box non-binary by default and queerness is more normalized because when your concept of gender begins without rigid ideas about what that is, damn near everyone winds up being what humans would refer to as queer because that umbrella is then basically anyone other than a cisgendered, heterosexual person... and what is a cisgendered, heterosexual person when gender is design-your-own-concept-of-this from the get-go? How would anyone be heterosexual, when the definition of that is rooted in binary views on gender that do not exist in the supernatural world of Good Omens?

The point of all of it is that if humans thought this way about one another more, the world would be a better place. Good Omens is a story about angels and demons that is using them to ask questions about humanity of a lot more value than "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" but, ironically? Some questions that come about as a result of considering that question in a different way-- as God helps us to do with her monologue-- like the question of whether or not angels dance and consideration of what that might mean-- are examples of some of best questions to ask to get to the heart of what Good Omens is saying and what it's story is all about.

In Good Omens, neither the supernatural world nor the human world are perfect. The supernatural characters seek to learn how to really live from the humans but the humans have a thing or two to learn about themselves that the supernatural beings-- with their choose-your-own-adventure ideas relating to gender, in particular-- could show them when it comes to true freedom.

If we made like the supernatural world of Good Omens and placed less focus on defining and labeling gender and sexuality in such strict terms and just looked at everyone else as fellow people and let people present themselves as they like and identify as they like and be attracted to who they're attracted to and love who they love, we'd just be seeing each other all as people-- which is what we all are.

It's also the point of the intentional vagueness of Gabriel's whole situation during his naked arrival in 2.01.

There is a fuckton happening in this scene but one of the biggest is the decision to make it unclear as to what was behind the box-- and that's the point. Are there a couple of hints here and there? Sure. You can make arguments in different directions and, for sure, the decision to make it vague, instead of including a suggestion that Gabriel's for sure Don Drapering it in that moment is a whole decision in and of itself. The point, though, is not to fixate on determining what, if any, situation Gabriel was rocking during his rather challenging Monday morning in S2 but to just ask yourself why it would matter to know?

There's nothing wrong with some idle curiosity, I don't think, but the ambiguity is the point. What would it matter if Gabriel was running in angelic neutral or sporting, as I think the scene is suggesting, some lady parts for the morning? It doesn't change anything about Gabriel because only humans would look at Gabriel and assume that he has a penis and find it shocking if he didn't because many of us are that limited in thought. Only humans would box (bad, unintentional pun lol) him into pronouns as a result and try to tell him that he can't use he/him if he sometimes doesn't have that penis.

All these humans are looking at his body and judging it-- who gives them the right?

Whatever you feel about Gabriel, you do feel for him in that moment because no one deserves to have their body judged by a zillion critical strangers... and isn't that what many of us are doing online? Isn't that what a lot of humans do about everything from gender to sexuality to weight and looks? We categorize and label and put all of these parameters on meeting the standards of those categories when none of it matters and everyone is unique and beautiful in their own ways.

The genius of the supernatural characters in Good Omens is that, in so many ways, they are not free and a lot of their issues overlap with those of the humans but in real, fundamental ways, they have default mindsets that humanity could really benefit from adopting. The Gabriel arrival scene underlines it by turning the camera back around on us by showing us an example of a very masculine person by traditional human standards, implying that his genitalia might differ from what we've been conditioned to expect from a person with his looks, and then making us consider how we feel about that and if maybe the whole idea of these kind of expectations isn't bullshit in the first place.

So... while Good Omens is sending up the limited mindset of the Duns Scotuses of the world, the joke with God's monologue is that, in the context of Good Omens itself?

From the standpoint of this story?

The related questions about angels and dancing and gender and sex that arise from asking the question: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" are excellent questions.

They happen to be questions that, if you're asking them, you're getting into many of the themes of the story and you're looking at how the story is using angels and demons to talk about the experience of human living. What does matter in understanding the story of Good Omens is, ironically, the dumbass questions that these humans were asking back in the day about dancing angels and demons and their relationships to human ideas about gender, sex and sexuality at which Good Omens is poking more than a little fun.

To add to this, we also have the very funny way in which God presents the answers to these questions to us and that involves a wink towards the last type of dancing-- dancing as sexual euphemism.

In the original question of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", the reason why it's a pin is obviously that pins are very, very small but it was sometimes referred to as well as a question of how many angels could dance on the head of a needle? This was because the detractors of this school of thought were creating puns, so they could call the debate of the question things like a "needless point" in their writings-- very Good Omens-y humorous of them. 😊 We're also now bringing into to conversation via needles and pins language related to the make and repair of clothes-- seamstress work-- as being tied to questions of sex and dancing as sexually euphemistic.

The visuals shown to us during God's monologue include Crowley and Aziraphale dancing separately, in different eras, with other beings-- Aziraphale with some humans and Crowley with some demons-- but with an undertone of sex in both scenes that gets at dancing as sexual euphemism. In Crowley's scene in the 1970s/very early 1980s, he and Hastur and Ligur are in some trippy disco sequence in which they are dancing with a pin but the pin is being used as different kinds of sexual dance-related poles.

This is a visual parallel of the innuendo around seamstress-related language in the series, with a pin-- a tool used by those who make and mend clothes-- being used as a pole, highlighting a (hilariously-presented) aspect of sexuality in dance. Mrs. Sandwich runs a bordello but the coded 19th century-era speech of Aziraphale's magic during The Meeting Ball results in her attempting to describe the sex work menu of her girls as being coded in the language of those who make and mend clothes. This comes from sex workers writing on government forms the 19th century that they were seamstresses to evade authorities (why Mrs. Sandwich says her girls stand on their own two feet "like the government said") and a use of seamstress language as euphemistic for sex that overlapped into coded slang of, in particular, homosexual men.

In one part of the disco sequence, Hastur, Ligur and Crowley are going around the pin like it's a maypole, which were involved in courtship rituals and fertility dances. In another moment, the three of them then turn the pin into a stripper pole and bust out some exotic dancing moves, all less using the pin/pole as prop in a seduction of someone else but more seemingly in place of that someone else, with exactly zero awareness of one another.

What the living fuck is this scene, really? 😂 Is the pin really large? Are they very small? Why can I still not stop laughing at the fact that they aren't dancing on the *head* of a pin but with it? Is Hastur trying to make out with the pole? Did Ligur really invent part of The Macarena decades ahead of its time? What perspective is this scene supposed to be shot from? lol Are we all just assumed high at this point from the disco lights and general trippiness of the sequence? Are any of these the most important questions of this sequence? Not by a long shot lol...

*tilts head* hiiiii Crowley...

What's that? Oh, sorry, right, finishing up the epic journey that is this meta... Yes, yes, sorry. Got distracted by the dancing snake... Which reminds me!

We can't talk about dancing as sexual euphemism without mentioning that the little glimpse into Crowley's bedroom in S1 that we see shows us that he has a wooden figurine of a dancing snake on a table in the corner, which seems like a wink towards Crowley and Aziraphale joking about being like the magician or musician who would play music to "charm" snakes into dancing for them. Crowley kept the dancing snake figurine in his bedroom so that is probably the ultimate in dancing as a sexual euphemism possible and it's another indicator that it's hardly the idea of dancing together being a form of sexual overture that has Crowley so confused when he says "you don't dance" in S2. Dancing, in that sense, is not new to them.

So, God's monologue is winking pretty heavily at dance-as-sexual-euphemism. In showing the dancing this way, God is using dancing to mean both literal dancing (as in, when she describes that Aziraphale is the only angel who dances-as-in-moves-to-music because he learned the gavotte) and also as an answer to the question of whether or not some of the angels and demons have sex. While not all of them do or have interest in doing so-- just like with the humans-- having Crowley and Aziraphale both exhibit a sense of sexuality in the dancing scenes here is more than a little suggestive of the fact that they both do.

So, how does that fit into our whole idea of dancing as it relates to a being a part of society?

Both Crowley and Aziraphale are shown dancing in different situations in different eras in which queer people existing on the fringes of society found a place in which they could express themselves-- but they are very different ways of expression.

Aziraphale learns to dance in a private club for wealthy, gay gentlemen and that is the only place in which he dances because he can do so freely there without too much concern that it will have repercussions for him in both his supernatural and his human worlds. Everyone there in the club is someone who also has a sense of secrecy and a need for discretion in common and they're all well-connected enough to ensure that their privacy remains intact. It's through basically finding a safe space in this club that Aziraphale can have a microcosm of what it would be like to exist more openly in the larger society as a whole.

Crowley, on the other hand?

While Crowley also lived through all of these eras alongside Aziraphale and had the same types of social limitations, we see him dancing openly in the liberation of the disco era. Disco changed everything. It was full of people who had never fit into society and gave voice to, in particular, more female, Black and queer people than ever before. The eventual backlash to disco had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the changing attitudes about race, gender, sexual orientation, and sex itself at the heart of it.

The difference here is that disco was free to a point that you could dance with anybody. You and your friends could dance, you could dance with someone you wanted to hook up with, you could dance around to it in your house with your family. It didn't matter. While people had long since abandoned the formal rules of dance in mainstream society that existed in the eras of Jane Austen, by the time disco turned up, popular dance had freed itself to being just about self-expression and having fun. It was still sexy but it was no longer playing a formal role in the matchmaking process of people in society. It's about having fun and doing so in the open and much more free.

This is where we're going to look at what your question has to do with the gavotte and Aziraphale's cotillion ball in S2...

The gavotte scene in S1 is one of the most fascinating scenes in the series because nothing else like it exists in terms of how it is filmed. The scene of Aziraphale dancing the gavotte is filmed in such a way as to suggest we are actually watching a video of him doing so. Part of this comes from the lighting, the slightly jumpy 'old time movie' feel of the scene. But, it also comes from the fact that Aziraphale looks directly into the camera at several moments during the scene, in such a way that it makes it feel like he's not looking at *us* in a fourth-wall-breaking sort of way but that he's looking at a camera that exists within The Hundred Guineas Club and is filming them dancing.

This was likely possible at the time, especially in a club patronized by wealthy men. The Lumiere brothers patented the first movie-making cameras in 1895 so it could be argued that Aziraphale and friends are being filmed using a prototype of that technology. (A bit of film-related technology being a bit too early for the time by our human history standards is also shown on Good Omens in S2, when Furfur has a Polaroid camera just under a decade or so too soon, though some prototypes were in development not long after the time Furfur was shown with one.)

The point is that Aziraphale looks like he's letting himself be recorded dancing. Actually, the point is that Aziraphale looks like he is loving letting himself be recorded dancing and that's an enormous thing...

Think back to 1941 for a moment. Crowley and Aziraphale were nearly killed over the picture Furfur took of the two of them together. No audio/visual evidence of the two of them together exists. If they kept the picture, they've hidden it really, really well because they've been terrified of anyone finding them out. Does this recording of Aziraphale still exist, though? Does he have it? Was he going to show Crowley, maybe after everyone left The Meeting Ball?

Living-- existing-- can mean having a record of that existence. That's actually at the heart of the meta I wrote recently about Aziraphale's excitement over getting the Shostakovich record being about having a recording of a performance with history to him and Crowley.

Being a part of the world can mean letting yourself be a documented part of it.

We are shown that, in the late 1880s, Aziraphale let himself be recorded on video dancing with some human friends... which is to say that Aziraphale let himself live.

He let himself find some kindred spirits, learn something new, be an active participant in a group, and enjoy himself. He let all of that be documented and his kind of manic, unbridled joy over all of it is the mark of how rare a thing this level of engagement is for him.

So, why did he?

Why this dance? What does this have to do with The Meeting Ball?

Notice the backdrop of this scene. Other than Aziraphale and the other gentleman and the walls, there is really only one thing of note in the scene and it is in focus for much of the scene: the chandelier.

The gavotte is both a specific kind of dance and a kind of umbrella term for French folk dances from the 16th-18th centuries and a separate, different dance in the 19th century. It was apparently popular in the court of King Louis XIV, whose reign is referred to several times in Good Omens. (Crowley's gauche imitation Louis XIV furniture in his flat in S1; he was king in the time mentioned by Aziraphale in the French scene in S2; his mistress being Madame du Pompadour, historically credited with originating the hairstyle worn by Crowley since prior to Earth's existence, etc....)

Gavotte comes from gavoto, which meant mountaineer's dance or the dance of the mountain people and which, in turn, came from gavot, which meant a boor and a glutton. A boor is a country person or a farmer but it comes from the Latin bovis, meaning a cow or an ox. Etymologically-speaking? Of course this is the dance Aziraphale learned because the gavotte is a French dance of the ox glutton who enjoys a good "mountain" climb.

(The theory that they wrote The Sound of Music lives on. 😂)

Aziraphale learned the gavotte, of all dances, because he knew that Crowley would find the two of them dancing together to this dance in particular very amusing. He learned this dance in the late 1880s, likely with the intent of maybe, someday, being able to dance it with Crowley, which is likely why he was he was annoyed when it went out of style.

Still, we could theorize that one of the reasons why he allowed himself to be filmed dancing it is to have a record of his efforts to learn it-- not just for Crowley but in general-- and that maybe the chandelier in the bookshop is the one from his long-since-closed gentleman's club. It all shows that Aziraphale has wanted to dance, openly and publicly, both in general and with Crowley, for a very long time.

One of the reasons why he likely miracled everyone into 19th century speak during The Meeting Ball and brought down the chandelier and old style dancing was so that he could finally do just that. It isn't so much that Aziraphale needs to stick to old-fashioned dancing in general as it is that he just wanted to have an experience like those of other humans during that time that he wasn't allowed then to have-- by the rules of the human world, not just because of the dangers from his supernatural world.

But it's 2023 in S2 now. Queer people have been able to get married in England for a decade and partnership rights have been around for even longer. Mutt and his spouse's relationship would have been illegal in nine different ways barely a breath ago but they can live openly now. Gabriel has left Heaven and moved into the guest room. Things feel like there's a chance of change everywhere and Aziraphale has just had it and can't take one more night of Crowley slipping out before dawn so this whole "Maggie and Nina" party?

Do you remember how Aziraphale phrased the idea to Crowley?

Cotillion balls aren't just any ball. While cotillion was a style of country dance kind of like the gavotte, a cotillion ball was a coming out ball for young ladies in society. In parts of the world, they still exist, sometimes called now debutante balls.

What's so endearing about Aziraphale fixating on this idea is that a) Maggie and Nina are both women, which is not a match that would have been sanctioned by a cotillion ball in Jane Austen's day, which makes it sweet that Aziraphale is, in a way, trying to give this traditionally romantic idea of love at a dance to a pair of women who would not have had it be an option for them, historically, which is something to which he can relate but also b) Aziraphale is just really semi-consciously using the idea of a party styled after a coming out ball for women in society as his thinly-veiled excuse to have a coming out party of a different kind, of sorts, for himself and Crowley.

Aziraphale isn't closeted in the sense that he's not actively trying to convince anyone that he's straight (good Frances, what a waste of effort that would be lol) but he'd like to be just like everyone else and not have to hide his partner. In the scene where Mrs. Cheng tells him that she and her husband will be at the party, for example, Aziraphale has this kind of wistful look for a moment. He wants that. He'd like to just be chatting with the neighbors and tell them that yes, definitely, he and his husband will be by later on. It's a season of things like Muriel literally opening the door to them hiding in a closet to talk privately and Crowley insisting in the street to Nina that Aziraphale is not his partner but then saying nothing to correct her when she refers to Aziraphale that way when they're in the bookshop. It's Mrs. Sandwich knowing Crowley in part because she sees him slip out the bookshop side door every night but Nina not knowing him in 2.01 because they're hiding the fact that they're a couple so morning coffee is never a thing until it is in S2. The Meeting Ball is Aziraphale taking steps towards them no longer hiding it by having people over when Crowley is there and letting everyone know or assume that Crowley is his partner.

The party is really for Crowley. Having everyone speak outside of time, the theatre curtains, Gabriel circling with trays of food (which was honestly so funny-- The Supreme Archangel walking around all "try an ox rib" to everyone), the vol-au-vents (etymologically linked to nightingales and some of them seemed like they might have been oyster vol-au-vents), etc.. He did it all to dance with Crowley and ask him to stay.

These two are fucking adorable. Look at this angel, I mean, seriously:

Aziraphale has been hitting that since ancient Rome and he's over here, nervous and giddy like he's at his first middle school dance, so fucking excited to ask that dashing ginger currently having an anxiety attack to dance. They have been basically married for millennia and Aziraphale is standing there like I'm going to ask him, I'm going to really do it, I'm going to hold his hand and dance with him in front of everybody and they're all going to know he's mine. We're going to be like everybody else-- just people on Earth.

It's so damn cute.

So, lastly, there's one thing we have to talk about when it comes to dancing and that's the fact that it is a form of self-expression. This is where Aziraphale and his perfectionism come into play a little.

God, in S1, said that not dancing is one of "the distinguishing" features of angels and that Aziraphale, through learning the gavotte, is the only angel who dances (at least, in terms of literally dancing.) This contrasts with the demons, who all dance, though many of them are not particularly good at it. This is the fundamental difference between angels and demons.

The demons are all demons because they were all willing to express themselves as individuals, which is what dancing fundamentally is. The reason why Aziraphale is the only angel who dances in S1 is because the other angels who know how to dance are all now demons.

Dancing means putting yourself out there a bit. You have to be willing to make some mistakes. You have to be willing to look potentially silly in front of other people and learn to not care as much about it. You have to take some chances. You have to engage with others if you want to dance with other people-- so, you have to participate in the world around you a bit. You have to try new things, like hearing new music and learning new ways to move. You have to be your own person, in the sense that you have to have music you like to move to and decide what you'll look like doing that. You have to let yourself take up some space and work hard at shutting off your damn brain enough to enjoy it.

In the 1941, Part 2 scene that we started this meta out with, we saw Aziraphale openly dancing a bit in front of Crowley, a sign of how comfortable he was and is with him. He doesn't have to be perfect around Crowley. Just as Crowley doesn't have to be perfect around him and is willing to look ridiculous to around him, as in the case of The Apology Dance. Being able to be silly and vulnerable is a sign of trust. When you can lean on people you trust and have that kind of intimacy with them, it can make you feel braver to take some risks in the world as a whole. If you let one person in enough and learn how to dance in one or more ways with just them, you'll eventually feel like you can dance free, no matter who is watching.

In the same scene, Aziraphale admits to his conflicts over going to Goldstone's and how he worries that maybe the things in life that he enjoys are "for professional conjurers only"-- for humans only-- with Crowley helping to quiet that imposter syndrome noise in Aziraphale's mind. Crowley's gentleness and the care in his response are examples of why he is who Aziraphale chooses as a partner and why it's with him that he's long-dreamed of having be his dancing partner when he finally is able to publicly dance alongside others at a ball.

Aziraphale is equally considerate in how he treats Crowley and is not put off by spending their first dance in public together essentially trying to calm what he thinks at first is just Crowley's usual level of anxiety talking, knowing Crowley well enough to know that, for all his talk about wanting to live a more open life together, he's as afraid as Aziraphale is. Crowley is dancing anyway. Aziraphale wants to so that's enough for Crowley to do so.

Aziraphale doesn't need some perfectly smooth first dance out together-- though they dance easily and very well together. It doesn't matter how long he's waited. He cares more about trying to reassure Crowley and ease his stress. They actually aren't as safe as Aziraphale believes them to be at this moment but it's the intent that's sweet. He knows this dance is as scary as it is lovely and, as always, it's important to him that Crowley feel safe.

You have to admit that you're a person to dance.

That's what the dancing is all about.

You have to admit that you have a life and to start to accept that you are allowed one. You have to accept yourself as part of a community to publicly dance with a group. You have to feel ready to host the monthly meeting of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association because to do so is to be a participating member in a community and to be a participating member in a community is to be a person living a life on Earth.

It's not surprising, then, that when Aziraphale gets to a point-- a very delicate point but a point, nonetheless-- of feeling like it might be time for him to claim that life for himself, doing so begins with the first night that he's ever been able to be at a party and, just like a zillion other people before him, ask his partner to dance.

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