Back by unpopular demand, me. 23. She/They. Stardew Valley hyperfixated. Lover of the Sad Chicken Man and Good Doctor Too many thoughts, not enough time. *powered by lesbian audacity, glitter, and zoloft*
I'm so happy to have you on my little corner of the internet! Here, I share my silly little stories about stilly little characters I enjoy. Iâve been writing fanfic since literally fourth grade, but stopped for a little while because of... idk, peer pressure or something. But that's lame, so here we are! Currently, my obsession is Stardew Valley (Iâm a Shane girlie⊠and Harvey đ)
Here's a silly directory of my silly little blog! You can't get lost, I promise :)
My Works: (on aO3)
The Valley - Shane x Farmer (ft Sam x OC)Â
The Harvest - sequel to The Valley
Player Two - Sam x OC, canon to The Valley
Peppermint Candy - Harvey x Farmer (ft Sam x OC)Â currently on a bit of a hiatus
i wanna paint your face like you're my mona Lisa - Harvey/Shane (Sharvey) smut one shot
Lexâs Kinktober Extravaganza - Kinktober 2025 (ft. Shane, Harvey, Sam, and my SDV OCâs <3)
The Farmer's Almanac: Kintober '26 - coming October 2026
Love Letters - Valentine's Long Weekend '26 (ft. Leah, Harvey, Sam, Shane, and my SDV OC's <3)
My tags:
My Sweet Baby Angels (art of my sweet babies!!)
i am foaming at the mouth (particularly nice Shane and Harvey art)
Moodboards <3 (sdv moodboards)
lexssdvheadcannons (little drabbles and one shots and opinions about our chicken man and the good doctor)Â
âšmy asks are open if you have any requests, questions or need to scream into the void about anything at all!âš
I love to do music tag things (and then force my mutuals to be tagged in it hehe)!! @eemamminy-art tagged me, which is so slay, thank youuuuu ilyyyyyy
Shuffle your On Repeat playlist and post the first 10 songs, then tag 10 people! (I did 5 from On Repeat and 5 from Repeat Rewind so it wasn't all Noah Kahan lmfao, I'm having a Sad Bug Summer)
Robbyâs sabbatical isnât as glamorous as heâd thought it would be.
Heâs sore from hours on the bike. Achy and grumpy. Not sleeping well. Not eating well to the point that heâs craving a salad like crazy, but he keeps getting alerts about cyclosporasis and heâs not about to take that risk when heâs not reliably near indoor plumbing.
He did his damnedest to push everyone away before leaving, so that means heâs not getting many calls or texts and the loneliness starts to eat at him.
Except for one person (two people if you count Whitakerâs plant updates, but Robby hasnât been able to bring himself to answer those texts). One Jack Abbot.
Robby had said he didnât have a best friend on more than one occasion. And he stood by that assertion, maintained that it was true, even to Jackâs face. Because Jack was so much more than a best friend, best friend didnât even begin to describe what Jack was to Robby.
And every day, Jack sent at least one text. Sometimes it was early in the morning after a sleepless night that Robbyâs phone would ping. Sometimes in the middle of the night when Robby was muffling snotty, sobbing gasps in a pillow that smelled either too clean or not clean enough. Sometimes in the middle of the day when he was riding or stopped off to get food or gas.
And Robby read each text over and over. Read them until he could see the words on his closed eyelids. He didnât answer, not yet, but the texts were there. They were a tether for his spiraling thoughts.
Something he could rely on as he went further northwest. Chasing something he couldnât see.
He crossed the border with little fanfare and found a campground to spend the night. As he got settled in a rented tent, he was hit with a thought that made him ache. He wanted to go home.
Not home to the apartment that had been more and more devoid of life with each bag of trash he dragged to the curb. Home to Jack. To Jackâs apartment that was stocked with his favorite beard oil and beers. That had the book heâd been reading last on the coffee table. Had the mug heâd been using for the better part of a decade after a medical student gifted it to him, tucked in the cabinet next to Jackâs.
To Jack.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed in his hand and he squinted at the message.
âHope the trip is everything youâd dreamed of.â
âIt sucks. Think anyone would notice if I bailed early and came home?â
âA certain R1 would notice. Iâd notice. Everyone else? Depends on how good you are at hiding.â
Robby tried to bite back a smile and rolled onto his side, trying in vain to get comfortable.
âI know somewhere I could hide that they wouldnât look. Unless someone were to tell everyoneâŠâ
âI think he could keep his mouth shut if you come home in one piece. Wouldnât even tease you that much, probably.â
âDo you mean it?â
âCome home, Mike. Please?â
Blinking back tears, Robby typed with shaking thumbs.
âI donât want to be on the road anymore. Iâm turning around in the morning.â
âAtta boy. When can I expect you?â
Robby blew out a slow breath and changed the location on his phone maps app.
âItâll be a few days. Think you can wait that long?â
âBrother, Iâm on the edge of my seat already. But Iâll hold out a little longer. Come home.â
Robby swallowed thickly and tried again to get comfortable. Fuck the road trip. He needed to go home. He was starting to realize that maybe, home was a person. His person.
And it wasnât because his diet of the last week had consisted purely of spicy noodles from the Thai place down the road from the hospital, his favorite 12 am grubhub order (though it likely didnât help). No, it was a combination of popping Aspirin like candy and the sheer amount of stress one Michael Robinavitch was putting him under.
Heâd cried tears of relief when Robby had finally texted him back just a few days prior, had nearly called him in the middle of a shift to berate him. Robby was in Canada, but he was coming home. He was coming home and he was alive. Two things heâd only been kind of sure of.
Doubt had crept in a few hours later and the stress was pressing down on him again as he worried that Robby would change his mind. Or that in the worst kind of irony, something bad would happen. Robby would drive while too tired, someone else would swerve, his bike would explode-
Some fears were more logical than others.
But Robby was coming home, and despite the ulcer, Jack had some cleaning up to do. He shoved all his SWAT gear in the guest room, wheeled around the house with the swiffer to dust and mop everything he could, restocked the fridge with an order on his phone, changed his sheets and organized his closet, and cleaned the bathroom.
And that took a grand total of two and a half hours. He was an organized guy.
Jack slumped in his wheelchair, gnawing on some Tums, and blew out a dramatic sigh. He shouldâve downloaded one of those tracking apps on Robbyâs phone. He probably wouldnât have even noticed!
But that wouldâve been a step too far, even for their weird relationship. So he stewed, switching to his crutches so he could go find the clothes he knew Robby liked the most. An old Army tee and sweatpants that were nearly threadbare. A pair of fuzzy socks Jack had gotten from a White Elephant gift exchange. A zip up hoodie that had been left behind at one point or another.
Jack was sweating just thinking about wearing layers in summer, even with the AC blasting. But Robby had always run cold.
Heâd have to put on his leg if he wanted to do any cooking. Which he didnât want to do, but heâd just stocked the house and needed to stop eating Thai food for his poor, poor stomachâs sake. At least for now, heâd be back on Thai before long.
So he begrudgingly sat on the bed and put the sock and liner over his residual limb, reaching for the prosthesis with his other hand. Once it was in place, he was off to the kitchen, with only minimal ache. Heâd take it off as soon as he made some chicken and dumplings and cucumber salad. He doubted Robby had eaten enough vegetables on the road.
He put on some music, the kind Toomarian had called Dad Rock to his face, and moved around the kitchen while popping more Tums. He wanted to reach for a beer, but his stomach protested at the very thought. The good thing about cooking was that it made time move just a little faster.
As he was tossing the cucumber and spinach salad, there was a knock on the door. His heart jumped to his throat and he crossed the living room in three long strides. âYou have a key,â he said as he opened the door, but he wasnât sure if he got all the words out. They stuck in his chest when he got a good look at Robby.
He was sunburnt. Cheeks pink and arms red, ears looking hot and painful. His hair wasnât windswept, it was mussed and pressed down, wet with sweat. Heâd been wearing the helmet. He was hunched in the way he stood when his back was acting up. And his eyes⊠bloodshot and so tired and tearing up.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Robby made a little noise, a keen or a sob or a whine, and Jack pulled him in for a hug. There was a small bag at Robbyâs feet, it looked only big enough for a change of clothes, maybe two, and a few personal items. Had Robby really packed that lightly?
Robby sobbed, full chested, and hid his hot face against Jackâs neck. âI gotcha,â Jack murmured, patting his back. He wasnât wearing a leather jacket, and even for Robby that had to be too hot. But he let him cry for several moments, looking up towards the late afternoon sky as tears of his own fell down his cheeks with each blink. âI gotcha.â
He was able to coax Robby inside and get his jacket off, take a better look at him. He looked⊠well. Bad. Scruffy and tired and like heâd been on a roadtrip to his own death. But he had been, hadnât he? His tee shirt was soaked in sweat, but he started to shiver in the air conditioning.
âOh Mike.â Jack sighed softly. âYou wore your helmet.â
âYeah.â His voice caught. âI got⊠I made it to Canada, and I got scared. Chickened out.â
That broke Jackâs already worn out heart. He stepped forward and pressed his lips to Robbyâs. He didnât have the right words for this. He hoped⊠he needed this to tell Robby everything that he couldnât.
Robby whined, sounding like an old hound for a moment, and his hand came up to cradle the back of Jackâs neck, holding him in place. He tasted terrible. But Jack didnât care. Not right now.
He kissed Robby like heâd only ever kissed Lillian. With all the love he had in him. With every ounce of his being. He needed Robby to stay. Right here, in his arms.
âJack-â
âMike.â Jack stood as tall as he could, pressing their heads together. âGo brush your teeth and shower. Everything else can wait.â
Robby blinked slowly, eyes glassy. ââŠwill you come with me?â
âAlways. Give me one minute. Go get undressed and get in the shower. Iâll be there in one minute.â
He got the chicken and dumplings off the stove, tucked the salad into the fridge, and took off his leg faster than he had in, possibly, ever. Back in his chair, he wheeled down the hall and into the bathroom, finding Robby adjusting the shower knobs. âHey.â
âHey.â Robby managed a tired smile, twisting himself to try and hide his body from Jack.
âNothing I havenât seen before.â He watched Robby closely as he stepped into the spray. âIâm glad youâre home.â
Looking like he might start crying again, Robby sucked in a slow breath. âYeah. Me too.â
chapter nine: i swear i did better this time
title: End of August by Noah Kahan
the one with the facility
I FOUND HIM!!! also: I've never been to rehab. I'm aware that this reads like a mental hospital
Summary:
Daisy Mae Wilde is alone in the winter gray. With a fire in the hearth and snow falling outside, the only thing she can do is lay there and deal with the aftermath of the last nine months in the only way she knows how. Badly. With Shane Cooper a million miles away in a facility desperately clinging to sobriety, she's left to shoulder the magical burden completely alone alongside mountain of secrets no one would understand and a new cocktail of medication to keep her sane. The only people she has to keep her afloat is a brother learning to cope with a life changing disability and his boyfriend dealing with parentification and a family on the verge of crumbling. At least the world didn't stop spinning in the bottom of the mines or on that cliffside. They just don't know that there is a tiny consequence to their bad decisions and unhealthy coping mechanisms whether they get their shit together or not.
wc: 4239
ao3 link
sequel to The Valley
Daisy Mae,
I donât know how to tell you how sorry I am. Everyone keeps telling me different ways to and they all make sense in my head but I canât get the words to sound right no matter what I do. I keep trying and I keep failing and I feel like that tells you what kind of man I am I know Iâm asking for something I donât deserve. But at the same time I know this is something that you deserve to hear.
Iâm so fucking sorry. Iâm sorry you had to find me like that. Iâm sorry you had to see it. Iâm sorry I put you through that and then didnât say goodbye. Iâm sorry that I canâtâ
He stared at the letter for longer than heâd like to admit. Pen down on the desk, fists clenched next to the page. Heâd started and stopped and started again. Yet every single time he went to finish whatever the hell was supposed to be after canât he stopped. So, there he sat not being able to finish the sentence because every version of it he tried in his head came out wrong.Â
Iâm sorry that I canât take it back.
True. Utterly insufficient.
Iâm sorry that I canât explain it in a way that makes sense.
True. Also insufficient. Also possibly not something she wanted explained.
I'm sorry that I can't stop being this way.
He'd crossed that one out in his head before it even made it to the page. Too much. Too close to something he wasn't ready to say out loud even in a letter he hadn't decided to send.
Iâm sorry that I canât be the man that you deserve.Â
Iâm sorry that I canât take back that I was the one who enabled you. Iâm sorry I put you through this. Iâm sorry I ever let you in.
He closed the notebook, crossing his arms over the cover and putting his forehead against his forearms.
He was tired. He was so fucking tired. Heâd been tired for six fucking weeks, and at this point he was convinced he would be tired for the rest of his life.Â
But the thing that kept coming back to him every time his brain started to latch onto the words he needed a fucking drink, was that he wanted to be here. He chose it. He wanted to get better, he wanted to stop drinking. He wanted to be the man that everyone but him, apparently, was convinced he could be.
So, he sat in this room that was too small with his head on the desk as he counted to ten before pushing himself back up. He had shit to do.Â
Every single time he opened his eyes in this room or settled down for the night or thought about it for longer than two seconds, his mind always came back to the fact that this room was too fucking small. In the grand scheme of things, it didnât matter. Heâd brought a backpack full of bullshit, not even enough to fill an entire drawer in the dresser. It wasnât as if he had an excess of things he needed space for, he just felt claustrophobic in the space heâd been confined to for six excruciatingly long weeks with what felt like a lifetime left to go.Â
Maybe the room wouldnât have felt so small if he didnât have a roommate. At the moment, his roommate's bed was empty. Dale had group on opposite mornings than he did and then usually went to the common room after, which meant Shane had approximately two hours of not having to navigate the exhaustion and performance of being around another person.
He wasn't sure how he felt about Dale yet. Six weeks of sharing a room with someone and he still wasn't sure. The man was sixty three, which Shane hadn't expected, though he wasn't sure what he had expected. He'd done this three times in the last ten years, something Shane knew against his will. The older man checked in, checked out, gone back to his life and eventually back to the bottle. He said it without any particularly heavy weight to it, the way you said I've been to Zuzu City or I used to work construction. Just a thing that had happened. Just the path of his life so far. Nothing that deserved remorse or thoughtfulness put behind it.
Shane had stopped trying to find the hopeful reading of that.
He picked up the pen again. Opened the notebook to a different page. The journal his counselor had suggested he use for processing, not drafting letters he wasn't going to send. He stared at the blank page for a moment.
Wrote: I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.
Stared at that.
Crossed it out.
Outside the window, a car pulled into the parking lot. He watched it without meaning toâa dark blue truck, someone's family member arriving for a visit. The driver sat in the car for a moment before getting out. He watched them cross the parking lot and disappear through the front entrance. Then the parking lot was empty again. Just the bare trees and the gray December sky and the thin layer of snow on the ground that hadn't fully committed to sticking on the concrete yet.
His session was at two.
That gave him four hours.
He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the letter and what came after can't. He didn't find an answer that felt like the right thing to say to the woman he loved.Â
.ă»â«ă»ăă»ă..ă»â«ă»ăă»ă
Dr Clark always had a candle lit on her desk. The first few sessions he had, Shane thought it was just a coincidence, a candle lit the way Marnie did after a long, cold day. For warmth and ambiance. It took him five weeks of almost daily therapy sessions to ask why she always had a candle on her desk. Five weeks of different seasonal smells that shifted from pumpkin and apple for the fall to sugar cookie and cinnamon for the winter.Â
The answer heâd given her sounded like some of Emilyâs woo-woo bullshit. For hope, transition, presence, and the illuminating power of knowledge over darkness, sheâd explained. Something about finding your way out of darkness and finding yourself in the light. He watched the candle flicker every time he avoided answering a question his brain had decided was too hard. Too personal. Too much.Â
"How's the journaling going?" She asked.
"Fine."
Dr Clark had a bowl of individually wrapped mints on her desk. She never once mentioned when he reached to take one in an attempt to avoid making eye contact at the beginning of their sessions. Instead, she let him reach for one, turning the plastic over between his fingers. She looked at him over her reading glasses. The look that meant she knew fine was not an accurate report and she was giving him the opportunity to revise it.
"I've been writing letters," he confessed. "To someone back home. Not sending them."
"What's stopping you from sending them?"
He unwrapped the mint. Put it in his mouth. "They're not good enough."
"Good enough how?"
His eyes focused on the flame of the candle. A green one, the scent called Alpine Cheer. It was warmer than usual, less sweet. He appreciated that, some part deep inside of him missing Marnieâs pine scented candles that lived in the living room during the snow covered months. "They don't sound right. I write something and it sounds like an excuse. Or it sounds like I'm asking for something. Or it sounds like nothing." He paused. "She doesn't need any of those things."
"What does she need?"
He turned the mint wrapper over in his fingers. "For me to get better." He said it flatly. The way he said most things in this roomâstripped down, factual, the minimum necessary for it to pass as acceptable. He'd been working on not burying everything under three layers of deflection before it reached the surface. He wasn't very good at it yet.
Dr Clark made a small note. "And how does that feel? Being here and getting better while she's⊠somewhere else."
He looked at the ceiling. "Like the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time."
"Say more about that."
"I should be here," he said, like he was reading it off a wall, a script written in the biggest letters and highlighted in neon. Something that heâd used time and time again to appease a multitude of different therapists. This time, though, he meant it "I know I should be here. This is⊠yeah. I should be here." He stopped, taking a deep breath through his nose as his fingertips dug into the fabric of his jeans at his knees. "But she found me on a cliff in the rain and drove me to Harvey's and I never got toâ" He stopped again. The mint had dissipated against his tongue. He didn't remember finishing it. "There are things I didn't say."
"Things you're saying in the letters."
"Trying to."
Dr Clark set down her pen. That meant she was about to say something she wanted him to actually hear rather than something she wanted him to write down later. He'd learned the tells. "Shane. The fact that you're trying and that you keep trying, even when it comes out wrong is not nothing."
He looked at her, finally.
"You said the letters don't sound right. But you're on what, the fifth draft?"
"Something like that," he shrugged, slumping down in the chair.
"That's not someone who doesn't care. That's someone who cares too much to send something insufficient." She picked her pen back up. "The person you're writing to, do you think she knows that? That you care?"
He thought about that, truly. About the way Daisy looked at him when no one was around. Fuck, the was she looked at him when someone was around. How, time and time again, sheâd told him to you canât decide that for me, Cooper, and kissed him like she meant it. How, despite him being⊠him, she always came back. To a messy bedroom at his auntâs ranch. To the same stool at the saloon. To a mud slicked cliffside in the rain. She always found him, and no matter the outcome, she hadnât left.Â
"Probably," he mumbled. "She's smarter than me."
Dr Clark smiled at him, picking up her pen to scribble something down on her notepad. âFor what itâs worth, I donât think she needs a letter as much as you need her to have it.â
Shane grimaced. âThatâs not helpful.â
"It's not meant to be helpful. It's meant to be true." She looked at her notes. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time tomorrow," he confirmed.
Shane got up and left, taking another mint on the way out without asking.
.ă»â«ă»ăă»ă..ă»â«ă»ăă»ă
Group was in the room with the plastic blue chairs. Uncomfortable. Ones that reminded him of elementary school music class, a sort of nostalgia that felt inappropriate to be floating through his ribcage in rehab. He had group three times a week, a number that he was told would go down in the coming weeks, but he wasnât entirely convinced would happen.Â
Shane had taken the chair closest to the door for the first three weeks on the grounds that proximity to the exit was the closest thing to control he was going to get in this room. His counselor had noticed. Hadn't said anything directly, which he also appreciated.
He'd moved one chair further in last week.
Today there were eight of them. There was the rotationâpeople who came and went, in for a week or two or three and then back to their livesâand then there were the ones who'd been here longer. Shane knew their names now. Couldn't entirely avoid it after six weeks no matter how much he pretended he didnât want to.Â
Someone, Juanita, was talking about her daughter. She did this sometimes, circled back to her daughter the way you circled back to something you'd left unfinished, like maybe if she talked about it enough times it would resolve itself into something she could hold without it hurting. Shane had stopped actively despising group around week four. He still didn't love it. But there was something about watching other people say the true things out loudâthe things that lived at the bottom of everything elseâthat made his own true things feel slightly less like evidence against him.
He didn't talk much. He never did. He answered when addressed directly and occasionally said something when the alternative was sitting in silence so long it became its own kind of statement. Usually, he talked about his sister or his aunt. Very rarely did he talk about his mom or⊠or him. Something that day made him think about Jas more than he usually did, which was already a lot. About the weight of the guilt that seemed to be crushing him like an avalanche of boulders, something bigger than guilt towards any other person heâd hurt. She was just a kid, his kid who had already lost her parents once and he almost did that to her again. How fucking selfish did he have to be?Â
âMy, uh, my kid,â he started, elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped between them. âSheâs seven. She was six months old when my sister and her husband, her parents, died. So, I, uh, I guess that means Iâm the only dad sheâs ever known. Poor kid.â He chuckled, running a hand through his recently trimmed hair. âIâve always tried to do right by her. Sheâs already lost so much, but I just keep putting more shit on top of that.â
He stopped, staring at a crack in the tile as he bit the inside of his cheek. Trying to make sense of all of the words bouncing around his skull like the dvd logo on a television that had been idle for too long. âNo matter what I do, somehow she still loves me. Looks up to me, or whatever. And I just wanna make the kid proud. Be the dad she deserves, because if Roger were still here heâd be a hell of a lot better than I am at this shit.â
He stopped talking.Â
The crack in the tile didnât move. He dragged the toe of his shoe along it, clasping his fingers tighter together as the silence lingered. After a moment of silence, someone said something he didnât catch, and the conversation moved the way it did in these roomsâforward, carefully, one person to the next. He left his part there and Juanitaâs daughter came back into the conversation and the hour moved forward the way hours did.
.ă»â«ă»ăă»ă..ă»â«ă»ăă»ă
Every Friday at noon, Shane had a meeting with his care team and Marnie on a conference call. Something about his progress. If he needed the 180 days heâd checked himself in for, or if they believed heâd benefit from leaving early. This is on your timeline, his therapist had told him before the first meeting. Something he wanted to believe was true, really. But, at the same time, didnât the facility just want his money? It baffled him if he thought about it too long.
So, just like every Friday, he sat at the end of an oval conference table across from his team. Dr Clark, surrounded by notes and an open laptop with her reading glasses falling down her nose. His psychiatrist, Dr Mohan, in his patterned button down shirts and considerably less notes given their once a week meeting time after his four week period on his meds. His case manager, a man named Brian who always had a travel mug of coffee and a too bright smile as he called Shane buddy and palâsomething that originally made his blood boil, but quickly became something he didnât mind (maybe even liked, but he would never admit that). And the facility coordinator whose name he kept forgetting and felt too guilty about to ask again at week six.
There was a phone in the middle of the table just like always, his aunt on the other line asking the same myriad of questions. He swore she had a notebook full of them, something she went down week after week with varying, and nowadays less concerning, answers.
âListen, Pal,â Brian began after the usual talk of his official status, comments and concerns, and Marnieâs questions. âWe wanted to talk to you about a change in your approved visitors list.â
Shane adjusted in his seat, leaning back to seem nonchalant despite the fact that his heart rate had picked up considerably in his fingertips. âWe've received and approved a request to add someone. Aâ" he checked his paperwork, "âDaisy Mae Wilde."
Shaneâs stomach dropped, eyes going wide ever so slightly at the mention of her name.Â
"She's scheduled a visit for the sixteenth," the coordinator whose name he'd forgotten chimed in. "That's eight days from now.â
The phone clicked back to life. "Shane, honey?" Marnie's voice filled the small conference room, warm and careful in the particular way she got when she was managing something she didn't want to drop. "Are you there?"
"Yeah," he said. His voice came out even despite the fact that he felt like he was at the bottom of the cliffs, being sucked into the tide. He was distantly proud of that. "I'm here."
"She wants to see you," Marnie said. Simple. Like that was all there was to it.
He nodded. Remembered she couldn't see him nodding. "Okay," he choked out.
Dr Clark was watching him with the spine chilling attention she used when she was filing something away for their next session. He kept his face neutral. He was good at that. Had been good at that since he was approximately eleven years old and decided that whatever he was feeling was better kept behind something solid.
"Is that okay?" Brian asked. "If there's any reason you'd prefer toâ"
Silence lingered for a single beat before Dr Clark spoke up. âAre you sure? What comes up now that you have this information?â
He wanted to deflect. To say that it was absolutely nothing. The thing was, he'd been so convinced he wouldn't see her until he got out. He'd built the whole thing around that. The letterâthe crumpled up drafts of the letter, the can't sitting unfinished on the pageâwas supposed to arrive before he did. Was supposed to do the work of explaining things he didn't know how to say out loud, so that when he actually walked back through the door she'd already have the words and he wouldn't have to watch her face while he found them.
Eight days.
âIâmâŠâ His eyes stayed focused on the table, an attempt to not think about the fact that five people were listening to him admit something he shouldnât have been embarrassed about but wholeheartedly was. âNervous,â he finished.
Which was true, as far as it went. What he didn't say was that he had written the letter six times and still couldn't finish it. That there were things he needed to say that he didn't know how to say. Things she didn't know yet. Things that had been sitting in his chest since before the cliff, since the tower and the journal and Rasmodius's face in the torchlight. Things that changed the shape of everything he'd ever known and that he hadn't said to anyone in this building because they were his and Daisy's and nobody else's.
"What are you nervous about?" She asked.
He looked at the table, smooth and perfect veneer under his palm. "Saying the wrong thing."
The meeting went on for another ten minutes. Clarification on his medications, something about adjusting one of the group sessions, a question about how he was sleeping that he answered honestly because Dr Clark would know if he didn't. He said the right things. He nodded at the right times. He thanked Brian for the update and said goodbye to Marnieâher voice doing something warm and worried at the same time as she said goodbye backâand he walked out of the conference room and down the hallway to his room and closed the door behind him.
Dale was back by the time Shane returned to the room. He was doing the crossword puzzle he did every evening, one from a large book someone had left in the common room three weeks ago that he'd been working through one puzzle at a time.
"Seven letters," Dale said without looking up. "Archaic word for sorrow."
Shane sat on his bed, pulled off his shoes. "Anguish."
Dale counted the letters on his fingers. "Huh." He wrote it in. "You're decent at these."
"Read a lot in here,â He shrugged. âAnd I got a smart kid. Gotta keep up."
"Nothing else to do." Dale filled in a few more squares. He said things like that: nothing else to do, nothing ever changes, you get used to it. All with the aggravating flatness of someone who had been around long enough that the observations had stopped feeling like observations and started feeling like the weather. Just the conditions. Just the way things were. Even though they didnât have to be, but he was too proud to let the change happen.
Shane had stopped trying to find the hopeful reading of Dale too.
He lay back on his bed. Looked at the ceiling. The room was very quiet except for the scratch of Dale's pencil and the distant sound of someone in the hallway.
Daisy was coming in eight days and the letter wasn't finished and he wasn't finished and she was going to sit across from him in the visiting room and he was going to have to look at her and say the things out loud without any of the preparation he'd been counting on.
She wants to see you, Marnie had said.
Which could mean anything.
Which his brain was currently interpreting as she's coming to do it in person because she's Daisy and she would never do something like that over the phone. She's going to sit across from him and look at him the way she always looked at him and say something careful and true and that was going to be it. The thing they never officially started, officially ended. In a visiting room with a care team somewhere down the hall.
Shane pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
âNine letters,â Dale interrupted from across the room. âExceptionally bad or dreadful.â
Shane stared at the ceiling. âAtrocious.âÂ
Dale counted. "Huh." The pencil scratched. "You ever notice how much of this thing is just different words for the same bad stuff?"
"Yeah," Shane scoffed. "I've noticed."
"Tenacious, chronic, relentless, atrocious." Dale filled something in. "All just fancy ways of saying it's bullshit that doesn't go away." He turned the newspaper slightly. "Suppose that's accurate."
Shane said nothing.
The parking lot lights came on outside, casting orange rectangles through the window onto the floor between their beds. Dale kept working. The pencil scratched. Shane stared at the ceiling and thought about she wants to see you and tried to find the version of it that wasn't the worst possible interpretation.
He found a dozen.
Dismissed all of them.
"My son came the second week I was here," Dale said, not looking up. "First time. Hadn't seen him in two years. Sat across from me in that room for an hour and a half." He paused, filling in a square. "Didn't come back after that."
Shane closed his eyes.
"Not saying that's how it goes," Dale added without inflection. "Just⊠Visits are hard. People come in thinking they know what they're going to say. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they realize they don't when they're sitting right there in front of you."
"Okay," Shane murmured. To the ceiling. To the dark behind his eyelids.
"Just saying." Daleâs eraser scratched against the paper. "Better to know going in."
The pencil scratched.
Shane didn't say anything else.
He lay there while Dale finished his crossword and eventually turned off his bedside lamp with a quiet good night that Shane returned on autopilot. The room went dark except for the golden rectangles from the parking lot lights. He listened to Dale's breathing even out and slow and he lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about eight days.
Eight days.
He thought about the letter. About the can't sitting there on the page with nowhere to go. About all the versions of the sentence he'd tried in his head and crossed out before they reached the paper. About Daisy finding him in the mud in the rain at the edge of a cliff and not leaving.
About the things she didn't know yet.
About the things he did.
Shane Cooper lay in the dark and thought about what he was going to say.
And underneath that, quieter and more certain than anything else: sheâs coming, and despite the inevitable following her in, he was excited about it.
I got tagged by @eemamminy-art AND @daturabloooms which is so cool of them. ilysm
some no pressure tags: @orangemochafrapp @ilex-cassine @spiritedknight @salamandergoo @annetastic1981a @voideydew and anyone else, these are just people I'm not 100% nervous to tag in things haha đ«Ł
ITS WEDNESDAY MY DUDES AHHHHHHH, that means it's Harvest Day tomorrow and that I need to lock the FUCK in to finish chapter 15 here's a little snippet of that!!! And a little snippet of Player Two (which is COMING I JUST NEED TO LEARN HOW TO USE WORK SKINS AND HTML LMFAO)
The Harvest, chapter fifteen: tis the damn season
Daisy Mae found out, mostly by accident when going through her Popâs office in late Spring, that her grandparents had wanted more than one child. A leatherbound journal amongst at least a dozen others was full of entries about fertility struggles and a longing for a large family that slowly faded as the years went on and their child got older. At least they had her.Â
That longing, however, explained why the house her grandparents had was so large. Pop had seven siblings, and Pop and Gram wanted to give their daughter just as many. Six bedrooms and an office that could be converted into another if need be. Most of those bedrooms stayed empty, used as storage. One turned into Gramâs old sewing room.Â
All of that to say, what was now Daisy Maeâs home was built to hold a dozen people and somehow they had found a way to exceed that. The under thirty crowd of Pelican Town had found their way into her living room, sprawled across every piece of furniture and throw pillow she owned in order to wind down and relax after the earlier festivities of the Winter Star celebration.
Player Two, Idle Animation
Sam: video call 2night?
Ethan: don't you have work early?
Sam: yeah but vinny is gonig to the waterpark in grampleton
Sam: and i gotta make his lunch and ur gonna help me decide between pb&j or turkey
Ethan: this requires a video call?
Sam: it requires ur EXPERTISE ethan
Sam: this is a high stakes sandwich situation
Ethan: :O you spelled expertise right!
Sam: ur literally so mean to me :(Â
The winning idea for my ko-fi poll this month was Rob, Mal, and Seb in silly christmas Winter Star sweaters đ A little bit of christmas in July!! I had fun thinking of designs that suited their personalities hehe
Hello! Sign-up is now open. The forms will stay open until August 3rd. Please read them carefully! They inlcude all of the relevant information. Reminder that all the rules of the event and full schedule can be viewed in this post.
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chapter eight: some things you just can't speak about
title: epiphany by Taylor Swift
the one with the visit to the information
y'all where the FUCK is Shane???? I thought this was supposed to be a Shane fic????
Summary:
Daisy Mae Wilde is alone in the winter gray. With a fire in the hearth and snow falling outside, the only thing she can do is lay there and deal with the aftermath of the last nine months in the only way she knows how. Badly. With Shane Cooper a million miles away in a facility desperately clinging to sobriety, she's left to shoulder the magical burden completely alone alongside mountain of secrets no one would understand and a new cocktail of medication to keep her sane. The only people she has to keep her afloat is a brother learning to cope with a life changing disability and his boyfriend dealing with parentification and a family on the verge of crumbling. At least the world didn't stop spinning in the bottom of the mines or on that cliffside. They just don't know that there is a tiny consequence to their bad decisions and unhealthy coping mechanisms whether they get their shit together or not.
wc: 5659
ao3 link
sequel to The Valley
The third time sheâd gotten up that night to pee, she checked the clock. 2:36am.Â
Sheâd gone to bed at eight, after almost falling asleep on the couch for an hour straight while Sam and Ethan watched some awful b-rated horror movie. She tried to stay awake, spend quality time with her brother and his boyfriend for once since the snow set in and showed no sign of leaving. Instead, after jolting awake for the fifth time in less than 60 entire minutes, she retreated up to her bedroom because her body was demanding a night's rest without any consideration for what she wanted or what still needed to be done.
Her body was creating an entire human from scratch, after all. So, she tried to not to feel too terrible about it.
Which was easy, given the fact that she was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.Â
That was six hours ago and she had been up three times to pee since and was now shuffling back from the bathroom in the dark for the third time, navigating the familiar geography of her bedroom by memory and the faint gray light coming through the curtains. Goober had not moved. He was a warm immovable shape at the right next to her spot on the bed, breathing in the deep unconscious way of a dog who had decided his job was done for the evening but still demanding cuddles. Cheesy was on the pillow above her head, snoring at a frequency she could feel more than hear.
She climbed back in, pulled the blanket up, and settled onto her side with her hand resting where it always rested nowâlow on her stomach, palm flat against the small firm curve that had been there for weeks but now she knew what it was and couldnât stop touching it. Subconsciously checking and making sure.
Still there. Still going whoosh whoosh whoosh in the dark without her permission. Good. They were okay in there, and she was going to keep checking every single time.
She closed her eyes, wrapping her free arm around the dog and burying her nose into his scruff. Cheesy stretched, making one of her favorite little chirping sounds as his paw found the side of her face and he resettled practically on top of her head.
The room was quiet except for the white noise of the clock above the door tick tick ticking. The boys were asleep. The farm was quiet. Pelican Town was doing what it did at 2am in winter, which was absolutely nothing at all.
She was almost asleep.
Almost.
âYou look terrible, kid.â
Daisy hadnât ever screamed so loud in her entire life. Not in the kitchen at 13. Not at her cheating ex when she caught him and another woman in their bed. Not when she died in the mines. She shot up in bed, pulling her blanket close to her chest and bringing up her knees in an attempt to shield her stomach.Â
Goober and Cheesy both shot off the bed. The cat darted under it in an attempt to hide from the intruder as his canine brother barked the most aggressive sound Daisy had ever heard from an animal.Â
With her heart pounding so roughly against her ribcage she could feel it in her fingertips, her eyes shot over to the spot that Goober was barking at. There. sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom that she used exclusively as a surface for clothes she wore but werenât dirty and she couldnât put awayâ
Mr Qi.
Sitting in her chair. In her bedroom. At 2am. With his hands folded in his lap and his expression carrying that aggravating quality it always hadâlike he already knew everything that was about to happen and found it faintly interesting and genuinely amusing.
âWHAT THE FUCK?!â She screeched.Â
Yet, before any sort of excuse could be given by the otherworldly man, the door slammed open. Bouncing off the wall, most definitely leaving a hole right where the doorknob hit the plaster.Â
With absolutely zero consideration for any other person in a ten mile radius, Ethan ducked under the doorway. The absurdly tall man ducked beneath the doorway out of pure muscle memory, practically falling into the room. One arm was strapped to his chest in his sling, the other brandishing a Gridball trophy so tightly above his head that his knuckles were white.Â
Absurdly, Daisyâs brain held onto the fact that she recognized it. Breathing through the residual terror, she thought about the trophy shelf on the wall right next to his bedside. He grabbed the biggest one. A solid metal trophy from the last season he playedâquarterback of the year. A solid gold gridball held up by another solid beam. Heavy enough to do damage. Heavy enough to bludgeon whatever poor son of a bitch made his pregnant sister scream like that in the middle of the night.Â
His eyes found his sisterâs frame in the dark immediately. Legs pulled up to protect the baby inside of her out of pure instinct. Breathing, though somewhat irregularly. Alive and well and completely, utterly fine. With his jaw set and chest heaving, his eyes scanned the room slowly after taking inventory of her only to stop as soon as they landed on the man at the other side of the room.Â
He stopped. Completely frozen as his set jaw twitched and his chest stuttered for a single moment as his brain processed exactly what he was looking at.Â
A man, yes. In his sisterâs room at almost three in the morning. Which was already wrong. There had not been a man in her room when heâd gone to bed and checked on her. Passed out with her arm around the dog and the cat curled around her head.Â
No. This was a man. Who was blue.Â
Fucking blue?
Not poorly lit. Not a trick of the 2am dark or eyes that were too tired. The man sitting in his sister's laundry chair with his hands folded in his lap was fucking blue in a way that had nothing to do with lighting and everything to do with⊠with whatever he was. Dark clothes that seemed to absorb the light around them and give back something that glittered faintly, like looking at the sky between stars. A constellation that moved lazily through the night sky. And a wide brimmed hat with the same dark absorption of light. And eyesâwhen they moved to find Ethan's faceâthat were covered by purple sunglasses. Not those pretentious polarized sun glasses owned by every cool guy wannabe. They seemed to glow faintly purple in the dark, show a version of yourself you never wanted to meet.Â
He was staring face to face at a blue man and the hurt, weak version of himself he was trapped in for the rest of his life.Â
âWhat,â He growled, grip adjusting on the trophy like he was ready to start swinging, âthe fuck is going on?âÂ
âEthanââ Daisy began, finally moving on the bed to reach out for him.
âNo,â He interrupted her calmly. Too calmly. He didn't look at her. Couldn't look away from the man in the chair who was blue and glowing and sitting there like this was simply where he was right now and he had no opinions about it. "No, justâ give me a second."
The man in the chair gave him a second.
Which was somehow worse than anything else he couldâve done.
"Who are you?" Ethan growled.
"Mr. Qi," the man schmoozed. Like that was a complete answer. He reached out a hand. Blue, long and boney fingers and a palm that looked too soft. Ethan just stared at it.
"Why are you in my sister's bedroom?"
"I wanted a conversation."
"At two thirty in the morning."
"Time is somewhat relative to me."
Ethan's jaw tightened. He looked at Daisy then, finally, the full force of his attention swinging toward her. "You're okay," he said. Not a question in the slightest.
"I'm okay," she echoed.
"He didn'tâ"
"No. Heâs not going to hurt me.â
He held her gaze for a moment. Reading her the way he'd been reading her their whole lives, looking for the thing underneath the thing she was saying. Found something complicated. Something that looked like this wasn't entirely a surprise to her.
"You know him?" He asked.
Her lips pressed together in a thin line.
"Daisy Mae." His voice dropped. The quiet version of it, which was worse than the loud one or the low growl. "You know him."
"It's complicatedâ"
"He's in your bedroom!"
"I know where he isâ"
"He's blue, Daisy!"
"I'm aware that he's blueâ"
"He's sitting in your chair and he's GLOWING and you're telling me it's complicatedâ"
"Ethan, I will explain everything, just not right nowâ"
"RIGHT NOW SEEMS LIKE A GREAT TIME!"
"I'm eleven weeks pregnant and it's two thirty in the morning and I've already been up three times to pee and I just got my heart rate down from screamingâ" her voice cracked slightly on the last word, not from upset but from sheer exhaustion, and that cracked something in him too, she could see itâthe anger finding its ceiling and bumping against it. "Please," she said. Quieter. "Tomorrow. I promise. Everything."
Sam appeared in the doorway behind him. Before he could start swinging or yelling or any other worse possibility this man couldâve pulled out of left field.
The shorter man, wearing a confused and half asleep expression accompanied by flattened hair and pajama pants too low on his hips that were not his own, took in the room. At Daisy halfway across the bed reaching for her brother. At Ethan with the trophy still tightly in his grasp. At Qi sitting in the chair reserved for mostly clean laundry. His face drained of all color, eyes widening to a degree Daisy had never seen across this incredibly unserious manâs face.
Ethan caught it. He turned to look at Sam properlyâat that terrified expression. "You know who this is," he accused, voice low.
Sam's jaw worked as he tried to find a proper answer. "Yeah."
"How."
"It'sâ"
"Samson."
"It's a long story," Sam rushed. "And it'sâ Daisy should tell you. It's herâ"
"How long have you known?"
Sam looked at Daisy. Daisy looked at the blanket across her knees.
The silence answered the question better than any excuse ever could.
Ethan looked at the ceiling, just for a moment. Just long enough to decide what to do with that. His hand was still on the trophy, knuckles white. His arm in the sling was just⊠well, there. Strapped to his chest was the bad one, the one that didn't work right anymore, hanging like a flag at half mast. He was still not entirely convinced he didnât have to bash the blue manâs skull in.
âWhat do you want from my sister?â Ethan finally demanded after a moment of utter silence.
âAt the moment, it doesnât concern you,â Mr Qi said, words steady and even.Â
Daisy watched as her brother adjusted the weight of the trophy in his hand. She wasnât entirely convinced he wasnât about to throw it.Â
âNo,â Ethan demanded through clenched teeth. âWhat the fuck do you want with my sister. Now.â
Qi let out a laugh low in his chest. A genuinely amused rumble that echoed through the dim lit room. âYour sister was offered a job and I am here looking for an answer.â
Ethan wasnât satisfied with that, clearly. Not by the way he stepped further into the room until Sam reached to put a hand on his bad shoulder. âE,â Sam pleaded. âGo to bed, baby. Please.â
Ethan didnât move. Of course he didnât. His eyes stayed focused on the blue man in the corner of his sisterâs room with his boyfriend's hand on the shoulder that caused him nothing but grief. And the blue man stayed exactly where he was. Like this was just a normal occurrence for the middle of the night on a weekday.Â
âA job,â Ethan repeated flatly.Â
âYes. A job.â
âFor my sister.â
âFor your sister,â Qi confirmed.
Ethan looked at her with hesitant eyes. She stared back with a familiar gaze, one that had gotten her into trouble approximately as often as it had gotten her out of it. The one he'd never quite been able to say no to. He exhaled through his nose. Long. Slow. Deliberate. After a single moment of a stare off between the two, he deliberately set the trophy down on the edge of her dresser, eyes finding the extraterrestrial man for a beat before ducking out of the room.Â
It felt easy. Too easy, the way he left.
Sam, however, lingered.
He looked at Qi with an expression that was complicated and tired, something that she hadnât seen on him more than once or twice before. All because of recent situations she felt terrible he was even involved in. Then that gaze shifted over to Daisy, softening. "You good?" He asked.
"Yeah," she deflected. "Go back to bed, Sam."
He nodded. Looked at Qi one more timeâthe look of someone wanting to say something and deciding against it. Then he left, pulling the door mostly closed behind him.
The bedroom was quiet.
Daisy and Qi looked at each other across the room.
"You could have knocked," she mumbled, falling back to sit properly on the bed.
"I could have," Qi agreed.
âYou scared the shit out of me.â
âIâm very aware.â
âMy brother almost killed you.â
âIndeed.â
Goober had stopped barking long ago. He was standing at the foot of the bed between Daisy and Qi, hackles still up, tail lowâthe posture of a dog who wasn't sure if this was a threat anymore but wasn't ready to decide it wasn't.
After a long moment of consideration, Goober crossed the room, stopping directly in front of Qi's chair. The dog looked up at this man who had appeared in the dark and scared his mother half to death and made the other humans upset and decided, apparently, after careful considerationâ
His tail started wagging.
Goober put his head in Qi's lap without a second thought. Qi put his hand on Goober's head with the cocky composure of a man who had been waiting for this outcome.
Daisy looked at Qi. At her mostly clean laundry on the floor. At the glowing purple eyes and the sparkly dark clothes and the hat and the whole impossible fact of him sitting in her bedroom at 2:30am like it was simply where he was.
"âŠdo you want coffee?" She asked. "Or cookies. I have cookies." A pause. "They're from store bought dough, though. I've been tired."
She almost felt like she was tattling on herself at the confession. That, despite wanting a sweet treat, she couldnât even bring herself to stand at the counter and measure ingredients she knew by heart.
Qi regarded her for a moment with the expression of a man who had existed for a very long time and had not expected this particular turn of events. âIf thatâs what you need to have this conversation, then lead the way, kid.âÂ
.ă»â«ă»ăă»ă..ă»â«ă»ăă»ă
The farmhouse kitchen at almost three in the morning was something Daisy had known all too well. A particular, silent quality that didnât deserve to be stepped into, and yet time and time again she ended up right where she was. The yellow light above the stove she always left on because the dark felt too complete without it, casting everything in something warm and something that felt utterly unreal.
Daisy moved through it the way she moved through everything latelyâon autopilot, body doing the familiar things while her brain tried to catch up with the evening. Filled the carafe. Got two mugs from the cabinet. The cookies were in the tin on the counter. Store bought sugar cookie dough, pre-sliced, baked two days ago because she'd wanted something sweet and couldn't summon the energy for anything that required her to be standing up for longer than fifteen minutes. She put them on one of her grandparents' old plates and carried them to the table.
Qi sat down across from her like he'd done it before. Like the farmhouse kitchen table was simply where he was right now and the three in the morning of it was of no particular relevance to him. He just sat and watched her mindlessly do the things around her kitchen that sheâd done a million times before and would do a million times after.
She put a mug in front of him and set the creamer and sugar on the table between themâhazelnut, because that's what sheâd been cravingâand sat down with her own mug and watched him, without comment, add a significant amount of both.
An obscene amount of hazelnut creamer. Two heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
She looked at the cookies. Sheâd put sprinkles on them. Red and green, in preparation for Winter Star just around the corner. She wanted to feel like sheâd done something, even if that something was just pouring the sprinkles straight from the container onto the fresh out the oven cookies. She watched as Mr Qi picked one up and ate it with the same composure he did everything else.
She wrapped her hands around her own mug of too sweet coffee and decided not to address any of it.
"My family," she started without preamble. Because it was nearly three in the morning and she was exhausted and her eyes were already doing the thing where they burned for no reason and she was not going to think about why. "You said you'd been watching my family for a long time. I want to know what that means. Specifically."
Qi set his cookie down. Folded his hands on the table. The gesture of someone who had decided to give her something real, something with substance that she didnât have to do mental gymnastics to figure out when it finally became relevant.Â
"Your grandfather farmed this land for forty years," he began. "He had what you have. A version of it. Oriented outward, toward the valley and the things that live in it. The magical ecosystem of this place responded to him. The Junimos trusted him before they trusted anyone else in a generation." He paused. "He didn't know what it was. He just knew the land felt different than anywhere else he'd ever been. That it gave back what he put in." Another pause. "You've felt that."
She had. Since the first morning she'd stood in the field and put her hands in the soil. She'd thought it was grief processing. She'd thought it was finally having somewhere to put herself.
"And Nan?" She urged.
"His muse." He picked up his coffee. "Which people understood as a romantic notion. It was also a functional one. She had an ability to draw out and stabilize what he carried. To make it workable rather than overwhelming. What she gave him was real and practical and part of why he could do what he did for forty years without it consuming him. Something that lasted long after her death, simply because on a cosmic level, she was still with him." He looked at her steadily. "She was as much a part of this as he was. She just didn't know the name for her part either."
Daisy turned her mug in her hands. The warmth of it spread into her palms.
"My mom," she whispered.
The kitchen went quiet in a different way. Not the comfortable quiet of a house at night. Something with more weight in it. She kept her eyes on the mug, kept her face as still as she could manage. The burning behind her eyes was getting worse and she was not going to do anything about that. The burn was simply a part of her now, with a tiny explanation written in static attached to the refrigerator with a strawberry shaped magnet.
"Lucille," Qi said her name carefully.
"She had it," Daisy confirmed, eyes focused on the steaming coffee in her mug.
"Yes." Simply. Without softening it or inflating it. "A different version than yours or your grandfather's. Oriented inward. Toward human emotional experience. She felt things. Other people's things, her own things. All with a volume and a specificity that had no natural off switch." He looked at his coffee. "She didn't know what it was. Nobody told her. She thought she was broken."
The burning was worse. She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose as she kept her eyes on the mug.
"She wasn't," Qi clarified with a confident certainty. "She was carrying something that was never named for her. Something that could have been understood and worked with, if anyone had known to name it." He paused. "That's different from being broken. Even if the outcome was the same."
A tear dropped onto the back of her hand. She didn't acknowledge it. Wiped it away with her sleeve and picked up the mug and took a sip and looked at the cookie plate. "Ethan has it," she whispered. "The same version she had."
"Yes."
"He's had it his whole life and we thought it was justâ" she stopped, sucking in a painful breath against the burn. "We thought it was just him being sensitive and too much." She looked up. "He needs to know it's real. That it has an actual explanation that isnât⊠that isnât what our dad called it. That it doesn't mean he'sâ" she stopped again.
"Tell him," Qi interrupted. "That's yours to give. Not mine."
She nodded. Added it to the growing list of things that needed to happen. Looked back at the table.
"And my version. You said it's the strongest in the line."
"The strongest I've seen," he said without flattery. Just true accuracy. "Oriented outward like your grandfather's but further. Broader. The magical beings in this valley don't just respond to you. They attach. You've felt it without having words for it."
She thought about the Junimos. The way they'd come to the community center like they'd been expecting her specifically, how they didnât give Shane their bundles in the years heâd known them before her. The way the valley felt different in her hands than she'd ever been able to explain.
"The community center.â
"Was always going to be you. Not anyone else. Not in the way it happened." He held her gaze. "You arrived in March and the valley recognized something it had been waiting for."
She sat with that. The discomfort of finding out that something you thought you chose had also chosen you.
"Pop is buried on this property."
"I know."
"That's not a coincidence."
"Very little is," Qi said calmly. He reached for another cookie.
She watched him eat it. With his coffee and hazelnut creamer and two heaping spoonfuls of sugars. That store bought dough and sprinkles that made her feel less useless. The most powerful magical being she would probably ever meet, eating a pre-sliced sugar cookie at her kitchen table at 3am like it was a normal thing to do.
"Shane," she finally said, the question that had been clawing at her ribs and up her throat since before shit hit the fan finally managing to come out to someone who might have an answer.
He just looked at her.
"Rasmodius." The word landed the way it always did when she said it in her headâwith edges, with the dreaded weight of everything that name carried. "Is Shane his son?"
The kitchen stayed very quiet after her words.
"What do you think?" Qi asked.
"I think yes." She held his gaze. "I've thought yes for months. I need to know if I'm right."
He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he made a sound. Low, in the back of his throat. Noncommittal in a way that was not noncommittal at all.
"That's confirmation!â She exclaimed, pushing her chair back and slamming a hand against the table.
"That's a sound."
"Itâs confirmation and you know it!"
"It's an acknowledgment that you asked a question."
"You're doing the thing," she accsued, leaning back against the chair. "The thing where you give me the shape of an answer without the answer itself. Itâs really annoying, you know.â
"I'm giving you what I can give you tonight."
"Then give me more!"
"Daisy," he said quietly. Not a reprimand. Just her name, and the weight he put into everything that apparently meant more than he was leading on. Trying to calm the situation before it got out of hand. Daisyâs cheeks burned at the way it felt like a parent reprimanding their child for getting too excited about something. "Some things aren't mine to confirm. They belong to other people's stories. Stories that will come to you." He looked at her steadily. "What I can tell you is that you're not wrong to think what you're thinking."
She stared at him. At the purple glasses and the blue of him and the hazelnut creamer still on the table between them. At the cookie in his hand and the constellations continuing to move lazily against his suit. All of a sudden, this all felt ridiculous. Like a fever dream or a psychosis-induced hallucination.
"I'm scared," she finally said, her tone flat and factual. "He's in rehab. He's getting better. He's doing the work and I justâ" she pressed her hand flat against the table. "If he finds out about Rasmodius when he gets out, I'm scared of what it does to him. I just got him somewhere safe. I watched them take him in the ambulance and I drove home in the rain and I have been counting the days until I can sit across from him and now I already have to tell him about the baby and I can't put that on him too, I can't be the reason heâ"
"He's not as in the dark as you think," Qi interrupted.
She went completely still, fist balling up against the wood grain of the table. She looked at him. "What?â
Qi picked up his coffee. Took a sip. Looked at her over the rim of it with that expressionâthe one that meant he had said the thing he had decided to say and had no intention of going further.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that he is not as in the dark as you think."
"What does that mean!?â
"It means," he repeated patiently, "that he is not as in the dark as you think."
"That's the same sentence!"
"It is."
"You just repeated the same sentence at me!"
"Yes."
"That is not an answer and you know it!"
"It's more of an answer than you had thirty seconds ago," he deflected. Entirely unrepentant. "You'll understand it when you see him."
She stared at him. At the complete and total serenity of him. At the hazelnut creamer. At the store bought cookie in his hand. At the purple glasses that showed you something you didn't want to see.
She picked up a cookie and ate it in silence with pointed frustration. Qi watched this happen. She chewed. Swallowed. Looked at the table.
"The job. The steward thing. What would I actually do? If I said yes," she finally asked. The thing she shouldâve asked when he proposed it during the fair, and yet fell away like most things did at that point. Overshadowed by the stormcloud pressing behind her eyes and dampening every single thing swirling through her mind.
"What you've been doing,â he said simply.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being accurate."
"It's not an answer."
"You fixed the community center. You went into the mines. The Junimos found you before you had any reason to find them. The valley has been telling you what it needs since the day you arrived. You've been listening without knowing you were listening." He looked at her steadily. "That's the job. Being present. Paying attention. Acting when something calls."
"But what does that look like," she pressed. "On a Monday morning. Specifically. Do you give me a list? Do I report to someone? Is thereâ"
"It'll come to you," he interrupted before taking another bite of a cookie.
She stared at him with wide eyes. "That'sâ"
"The most accurate answer I have." He picked up his coffee completely unbothered by her death stare.
"You're infuriating!" She exclaimed.
"I've been told," he chuckled, like this was neither surprising nor particularly concerning to him. âBy you, specifically. And your grandfather.â
She looked at the window. At the December dark pressing against the glass. At the snow still falling outside in the quiet of the farm.
"My child," she whispered, her hand falling to her stomach. She looked back at him. "Whatever I decide. Whatever happens. I need you to tell me they're not part of this. That they're safe. That thisâ" she gestured vaguely at the kitchen, at him, at all of it "âdoesn't follow them."
Qi set his mug down. He looked at her with the particular attention of someone about to say something they meant completely without any sort of flourish.
"The valley doesn't want your child. It wants you. Those are different things." He held her gaze, steady and unblinking. "Your child is not a bargaining piece. Not a legacy continuation. Not an extension of what I'm asking of you. Whatever you decide, they are outside of it." A pause. "That's not a dressed up promise. It's just true."
She looked at him. Looking for the seam in it. The place where it was more complicated than it sounded. She didn't find one. "Okay," she murmured. "Okay."
She looked down at the table. At her hand resting there. At the small, sprinkle covered cookies between them that were almost gone.Â
Another tear dropped onto the back of her hand. She didn't wipe this one away, just looked at it for a second. She was in her first trimester of a completely unplanned pregnancy. It was 3am. The most powerful being in the valley was sitting across from her eating store bought cookies with hazelnut creamer and confirming things she'd already suspected while systematically refusing to confirm the thing she most needed confirmed.
"Why did you really come tonight?" she asked, wiping the back of her hand against her cheek. "And I want the real answer. Not the roundabout."
Qi was quiet for a moment.
"Because the valley is getting louder, and you're the only one who can hear it properly. And I needed to know if you were listening." He looked at her. "You are. Even now. Even in the middle of all of this." He glanced at her stomach. Back at her face. "You're still listening."
She looked at the window again.
"I haven't decided anything," she let out a watery laugh.
"I know."
"I might say no."
"You might."
"Would you tell me if I was making the wrong choice?" Suddenly, she was looking at him with the most serious expression heâd seen from anyone in her lineage.
He considered this for a moment, examining the mug in his hands. Strawberry print, fading away from too many cycles through the dishwasher despite the fact that it was not dishwasher safe. "I'd tell you what I know," he finally answered. "What you do with it is yours."
She nodded. Picked up her mug. Found it had gone lukewarm while they were talking and drank it anyway.
"You should go," she finally said, pushing herself up as she grabbed the now empty plate of cookies and plastic creamer container. "I have to be up in four hours."
"You'll sleep in," he said with absolute certainty.
She looked up at him, watching as his teeth practically glowed white against the warm stove light. His gums were even more blood red than she remembered from the first time seeing them. It was unnerving, yes, yet she didnât let it phase her. She just turned toward the sink.Â
"I have things to do,â she insisted.
"The young Mullner kid will come early to tend to the farm. Youâll feel sick and stay in bed. I know.â He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, standing up to bring his mug over to the sink.
She stared up at him. Tried not to think too hard about how tall he was. Taller than Ethan. Taller than any man sheâd ever seen. "How do youâ"
"Goodnight, kid," he said.
"I'm twenty six years old and my name is Daisy Mae, pick oneâ"
But the kitchen was empty. The mug was still in the sink where he'd left it. The creamer in her hand. The sugar in the middle of the table. The cookie plate with nothing left on it but crumbs. Goober blinking up at her from where he'd been sitting at her feet the whole time, tail moving slowly.Â
She sat at the counter for a long moment.
"He's not as in the dark as you think," she whispered to the empty kitchen. The kitchen said nothing back, of course.
She rinsed the mugs. Put the creamer away. Turned off the light above the stove for the first time since she moved in. Went back up the stairs in the dark, hitting the last step in the same spot it always creaked.
Got back into bed. Pulled the blanket up. Put her hand on her stomach.
The farm was quiet. Pelican Town was quiet. The snow was still falling outside the window in the December dark.
