For the ships meme: 💕 for Audrey x Siegfried, Beard/Rebecca/Ted, and Dana x Baran
💕 How did they both realize “oh wait, this is actually love”?
This is so lovely and rather than go too insane thinking about canon and fanon and my millions of months-long or years-long feelings I'm just gonna try to paint some hyper-specific moments which are surely happening in one version of the universe or another.
Audrey/Siegfried:
There have been a lot of moments since she arrived at Skeldale all those years ago in which Audrey was afraid she was going to lose Siegfried (to grief, to his single-mindedness, to another woman, even, in those early dark days, to drink). And there have been a lot of moments in which Siegfried was afraid he was going to lose Audrey (to her own family, to the chance of a better happier life, to the moment she inevitably realizes he isn't good enough to keep). One person is afraid while the other is distracted, reverse and repeat. As long as they keep flipping which one's who, they stay in each other's lives, essential and caring and always (maybe always) there. But after Christmas and New Years and everyone trying so hard to be happy because the world is "safe" again, they independently come to the conclusion that something's very wrong with each of them. Siegfried breaks it off with Dorothy as kindly as possible; his heart's just not in it. Audrey spends a bit more time than usual in Sunderland and although she always rallies to play with Mary and help care for her, it's obvious to Betty and Edward that she's struggling.
The first night she's back home, Siegfried dares to ask her what's wrong. It's nearly a fight, the way they trade wrongs back and forth--war always returns because greed always returns, and Siegfried can't keep a woman happy, and Audrey can't commit to a man, and everyone is growing up too fast, and the things they most want to keep hold of are always the things that change.
"But not you," Siegfried says quietly, breaking the rhythm of their conversation. "I've loved every person you've been."
And that's when they know.
Beard/Rebecca/Ted:
Beard and Rebecca grow close while Ted's back in Kansas. He knows all about it--the number of texts from Rebecca that offhandedly mention plans with Beard, the dark-night-of-the-soul FaceTime in which Beard admits to Ted that he's not sure he'd be functioning as a person or as a father during this divorce if it weren't for Rebecca's support. Their friendship with each other seems as natural as his friendship with either one of them. When he moves back, he's profoundly relieved by the ease with which he slots in to their lives. He wasn't expecting it to be simple, and it's not, but it's easy all the same.
But it doesn't become love--at least not recognizably romantically--until the night Keeley hosts a classic party game night at her house and the three of them take Twister for a spin. "Left hand green" was all well and good, and so was "left foot blue," but now it's "right foot red" and the audible ripping of Ted's khakis and Ted realizes it's been a long time since he heard Beard laugh like this, and never with peals of laughter from Rebecca in perfect harmony, and never with the awareness that his own laughter is part of the sound. Their tall, achy middle-aged bodies crumble gracelessly onto the game board and the rest of their lives begin.
Baran/Dana:
They've been getting closer for weeks. It starts with the occasional drink at the end of a shift, and it's so nice having a conversation partner who's equally good at listening and talking that they realize they can be real friends who hang out on days off, too. Baran listens to Dana process her divorce, how disappointed she is that it didn't work out after all these years but how more than anything she's just tired. Dana listens to Baran fret about whether her own divorce (last year) is belatedly messing up her kid because he's been having some behavior issues at school that feel like more of a pattern than the occasional acting out he did at his summer-long day camp. They talk about their coworkers, their parents, their exes, their children. The weirdness of Dana feeling ungrounded in the city she's lived her whole life, and how that pairs nicely with Baran having moved so often that she's afraid to call any place home.
One day it hits Dana like a ton of bricks: it's 7:30 a.m. and she's drinking a cup of coffee Baran brought her from the café near her condo even though everybody knows Baran drinks tea she brews herself, and it occurs to her that she was at a restaurant with Baran until 10 p.m. the night before, and Baran's been tied up with a patient for only fifteen minutes but Dana's already thought of eight things she wants to tell her and oops this is actually what LOVE feels like. She'd forgotten!
She has no choice but to tell her. :)
