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starry-bi-sky · 3 months

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(Part of this post with older brother danyal al ghul)

...Okay, look. Sam knows she's staring. She knows very well that she is staring. And that if she doesn't stop staring it's gonna draw her unwanted attention, and that will only have to make her explain why she's staring. Which she doesn't want to do.

She's trying not to stare, which she thinks she should get brownie points for. She tries to look away, to find a spot on the wall to stare lifelessly at, maybe she can burn holes into some of these annoying socialites' heads. But eventually her eyes drift, and suddenly she's back to staring again.

Can you blame her though? Damian Wayne looks like a very close mini-me of her fucking best friend. Seriously, it's like looking into a mirror to the past. If that mirror to the past had green eyes rather than blue and a distinctive lack of a facial scar.

The first time she sees him when her parents drag her over to Bruce Wayne to butter up to him she has to do a doubletake. Then a triple take. Then a quadruple take, just for good measure that she was seeing what she was actually seeing. She was sure she looked like one of those stress toys that when squeezed had their eyes pop out comically like a Saturday morning cartoon, that's what she certainly felt like anyways.

Look, Danny's come a decent way from being that scowl-y, jerkish little ten year old she first met when he arrived like the wind to Amity Park five years ago (even if he was still occasionally scowl-y and jerkish), but one thing that's stayed the same is how reserved he is about his home life prior to being taken in by the Fentons.

He doesn't talk about it much, and Sam's come to know that he's very good at changing the subject when it gets brought up. Even after being friends for nearly four years, the only thing she and Tuck know for certain is that he has a little brother that he refers to as 'starlight', whom he cares a lot about but left on really bad terms with. And that he's never met his father, but wants to and knows who he is.

He's never told her or Tucker who he was though, and glancing at Bruce Wayne, Sam is realizing why. She can begrudgingly acknowledge all the good he's done for Gotham, but... well, if Danny told her that Bruce Wayne was his dad, she wouldn't have believed him at all.

But she's starting to see the resemblance, as subtle as it is.

And she sees the resemblance to Damian Wayne, her eyes dropping back down to him as he wears a very Danny-like scowl on his face, arms crossed behind his back as his eyes swept around the ballroom. He was five years younger than Danny, and god it was so, so weird.

His eyes turned on to her, and they locked gazes for a moment.

Involuntarily, Sam makes a startled noise and looks away. Fingers tap against her purse, black and purple and unfortunately a clutch that only held her phone and her wallet in it. She would have kept a knife on her, but her parents put their foot down and there was a security detail at the door. Only in Gotham.

Silently, she was hoping that the little Danny-me didn't say anything. Or at least, he hadn't noticed her staring. Which was a tall order if she ever heard one -- and unfortunately, her silent prayers went unanswered as her mother's eyes dropped down onto her.

"Did you say something, Samantha?" She asks in a sickeningly sweet voice, a sound that makes Sam's skin crawl. Her dad and Bruce Wayne's attention also turns onto her, and she glowers at her mom from the corner of her eye.

"I didn't say anything." Sam says, barely keeping her tone polite as she turned her head away. Her mother clucks her tongue, disapproving, but from her peripherals doesn't pester her more

Bruce Wayne, the bastard, takes that time to turn to Sam and grace her with his dime-a-dozen billboard smiles. "I've been talking with your parents this whole time, Miss Manson, you must be terribly bored. How is your schooling going?"

Sam eyes him up and down. On one hand, she immediately wants to be snarky. It's none of his business what her school life is like, she doesn't care for his fucking small talk.

On the other hand, this was Danny's whole father. Someone who she knows that Danny has wanted to meet for, what she's assuming, his whole life. He's never brought it up much, but she remembers that very quiet, solemn conversation she and Tucker had with him where he admits to having never met his dad. But god does he want to.

And... wait. Sam's eyes narrow, and she meets Bruce Wayne's eyes. Does this man even know Danny exists? She drops her gaze down to Damian, who was staring at her suspiciously, and then back up to Bruce, and she alternates between them.

Why was Damian living with Bruce, but not Danny? Why hasn't Bruce done anything to reach out to him - what was going on with Danny's biological family that Danny had to be separated from them, but not Damian? Danny's always been kinda mysterious, but now things weren't adding up.

Was Danny given up? Does Bruce just not want Danny, but wanted Damian? Why the fuck does Bruce Wayne know about Damian but not her best friend -- or does he know and just not care? He's fought for custody for his adoptive kids before, does he just not want to fight for his other biological son? Does he think Danny's not worth it?

She's never cared much about the Wayne family before, other than to hear about the advancements on WE's eco-friendly tech, but Sam thinks she's gonna have to look into why Damian Wayne was living with the Waynes.

Slowly, with a protective anger beginning to burn in her gut and crawl up her throat, a scowl slowly curls at the corner of her lip as she redirects her glare from her mother onto Bruce. "It's going fine," She says curtly, jutting her chin out defiantly. "Me and my friend Danny started a petition to fix the leaky faucets in the girls and boys' bathrooms in order to conserve more water for the rest of the city."

She eyes his face, waiting to see if anything like recognition flashes through it. And- and nothing. Sam breathes in slowly through her nose, trying to quell the red that's blurring the edge of her vision -- does he just, not know where Danny is?

Her parents however, make vaguely displeased expressions. "Our Samantha is... quite passionate about her pet projects." Her dad says, laughing low and nervously, "she's very vocal about silly things like that."

"Her friend Daniel is perhaps even worse than she is sometimes." Her mother adds on, fanning her face with her perfectly manicured hands with a sigh. "I swear, he's the one that keeps dragging her into these things."

Sam's anger turns on its head, and she whirls on her heel like a fire-breathing dragon. "It's Danyal." It rolls out like instinct. Danny's told them both that he hates the Americanized pronunciation of his name, but in a rare moment of restraint, puts up with it for reasons unknown to her. "And Danny doesn't make me do anything, it was my idea."

The name, Danyal, seems to ring some kind of bell in Brucie Wayne's head, because she sees him and Damian quietly perk up like two cats pricking up their ears. Her eyes flick onto him immediately, something dangerous rearing its head. So Bruce Wayne knows about Danny. And he's not reaching out to him. Is he? She's not sure.

She does know that she's gonna rip his throat out if she finds out that he's known about Danny this entire time and has been ignoring him while favoring his little brother. She'll hunt down Aragon herself and steal his dragon-shifting amulet and wreck house on Bruce Wayne if that's the case. Batman and his league of vigilantes be damned. Her parents don't notice her slowly turning head towards Bruce.

But Bruce does, and she makes direct eye contact with him. His smile doesn't falter, he just tilts his head like a curious puppy and looks at Sam's parents. She hopes Bruce can read minds, she hopes he can hear her threatening him.

"Danyal?" He asks, and Sam doesn't know if she hates the fact that he said it correctly or not. She just continues burning holes into him and hoping he might spontaneously combust.

Her mother waves her hand dismissively, tilting her nose up poshly into the air. "Our dear Samantha's little... foster friend from school," she says, not even bothering to hide her disdain, "a creepy little boy with the most garish scar on his face. He's a rude little thing, not good for polite company."

Scratch that, Sam mentally alternates between ripping into her parents and Bruce. She whirls on them. "Do not talk about Danny that way." She all but snarls, and they all but ignore her.

(She's tearing up the upholstery when she gets home. She's going to paint over the fine china. She's going to do something to make them pay for this.)

"Oh yes, he was taken in by that freaky Fenton family a few years ago." Her dad continues in lieu of her mom, and they both shake their heads disapprovingly. "It's just what our city needs, another menace."

"Danny is not a menace." Sam continues, raising her voice while her hands shake with rage. Her parents finally look at her, but she can already tell that they're going to scold her for raising her voice. She bulldozes over them and jabs her black-painted finger at them. "He's got a bigger heart than the both of you combined."

"Samantha, please." her mom says, exasperated. They both give her disapproving looks, Sam thinks about grabbing champagne off the tray of a nearby waiter and throwing it in their faces. "You defend that boy far too much. What do you actually know about him and his family?"

Sam sets her jaw, puffing herself up like a dragon protecting its hoard. She steps into her mom's space. "I know that he loves the stars; you can ask him anything about astronomy and he could give you an entire lecture on the formation, class types, and various gasses that stars are made up of. He can tell you how the Earth was formed, he can tell you about the visible light spectrum and about light curves, and a whole ton of other stuff that I don't really understand. But Danny loves talking about it."

Her face twists and scowls, "I know he cares a ton about the environment and about fixing light pollution, and preserving the forests and natural habitats of animals." She nearly jabs her finger into her mom's chest, "I know he loves dogs, and that there's one he feeds every day on the way to school that he calls Cujo, its a St. Bernard puppy and Danny carries him around whenever he sees him after school, and is in the middle of training him."

It's not a total lie, but it's not the whole truth either. Cujo doesn't need food, but Danny gives him it anyways. "I know he likes spicy food and loves movies but specifically only sci-fi and horror, and he hates most martial arts movies. His favorite superhero is the Martian Manhunter, but Batman comes in at a close second." For reasons to her that were pretty unknown, but it didn't matter.

"I know he loves wordplay and making puns, which I would have never expected from him when we first met, but it's so unbelievably Danny-like that I can't imagine him not making puns." And she smiles a little to herself, she remembers the first time Danny intentionally made a pun once and it got startled laughs out of both her and Tucker.

Her smile suddenly falters, and she swallows. Her lips purse up, wobbling, and she very quickly glances over to Damian Wayne, of whom is watching her with a vaguely bewildered expression alongside Bruce.

She turns her eyes back onto her parents. "And I know that he worries a lot, even if he has a shit way of showing it. I know he had a little brother that he hasn't seen since he was adopted by the Fentons, and he doesn't talk about him often but when he does he he calls him 'starlight'." From the corner of her eye, she sees Damian jerk.

"So- so, so what if he's not 'good for polite company'." Sam's voice, embarrassingly, cracks down the middle. But she's so angry over Danny's behalf that she doesn't really care. "Or that he can be mean, and critical, and stubborn. He's learning, and he's becoming kinder by the day. That's more than I can say about you."

(She remembers when Danny finally admitted to her and Tucker being his 'closest friends'. It was sometime before the portal incident, and it felt like a milestone because beforehand he only really referred to them as his companions or allies.)

(At the time, he'd looked unsure of himself. Skittish like a stray in the back of an alleyway, almost shy in his own way. It had come out stilted, slow, like an infant taking its first steps, and it would have been endearing if it hadn't been heartbreaking.)

Her parents rear back like she'd struck them, and her mother holds a hand against her chest in aghast. Sam doesn't care, she blinks the sting out of her eyes. "Samantha." Her mother starts.

Sam cuts her off, "I don't care what you have to say, you-- you pricks." she snaps, around her, there are gasps. Belatedly, she realizes she's grown an audience, but again she doesn't care. "Danny might be an asshole, but he cares. And I'd rather be around someone whose mean but cares, than someone whose nice but doesn't."

With that, she whirls on her foot and turns on Bruce Wayne, who has been silent the entire time with a surprised expression on his face. He starts to shake out of it when Sam turns to him, but she doesn't give him the chance to speak. "Enjoy your party." She snarls, and then stalks away.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dpxdc crossover #dpdc #danyal al ghul au #older brother danny #sam is one protective gal. this scene went differently in my head. way differently. but alas. i am not complaining.#sam: if bruce wayne abandoned my best friend i'm gonna physically transform myself into a dragon and incinerate him. how dare he.#bruce and damian got to watch in real time as a random girl who knows danny suddenly realizes he's related to them. which is comical to me #because she suddenly goes from being disinterested but weirded out by damian. to suddenly looking at bruce like she's gonna kill him #which is very funny to me bc from their pov at first its like this random girl just speedran hating bruce. and then her parents bring up he #friend danny and then she calls him danyal. and suddenly its starting to click into place like 'oh fuck wait we may just have a lead on --#-- finding danyal and his whereabouts.' especially after sam's mom mentions the scar on his face. like wow. what a crazy ten minutes.#not seen but def happened: sam gets her phone out to go text danny in the corner. she's not gonna bring up the bruce thing yet. she needs #a pick me up. related note: danny and tucker know she's gone to some gala thing with her parents but not to a wayne gala. if danny had know #he may have told her that he was related to damian wayne. just to prepare her for that. not so sure on the writing in this one folks #but i also dont wanna go through and edit anything its like half past one in the morning and i also dont wanna wait until morning to post #when i can just do it now. and get instant serotonin. i thought of this scene in various ways. like sam calling damian 'danny' out of shock #and then quickly correcting herself. and then excusing herself very quickly. or her mentioning that damian resembles her friend danny a lot #so she was just thrown off by him. because i def think that could happen if sam has no reason to think that she needs to hide danny from th #waynes. i also thought about her parents mentioning that damian resembles danny a little bit. only for one of them to go 'oh no no couldn't #- be. how insulting to damian since the daniel they know has this horrid scar on his face.' and then go from there. either way i thought #a scene like this would be fun. get to also kinda explore how danny looks like from his friends' povs. of which he is #'our lovable jerk who is an ex-cult member and whom we will maim someone over.'#not a scene that was added but i wanted to: sam mentioning in parenthesis that she and tucker think danny was part of a cult prior to the #fentons. and that sometimes danny will say something alarming and sam and tucker will stare at him until he frowns and goes #“that... isn't normal. is it?” and tucker will clap his shoulder and cheerfully go “no buddy. no it isn't” bc i think the idea is funny.#sam is so focused on the idea that bruce abandoned/ignored/was unaware of danny's existence that she momentarily forgot that bruce may have

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tehloserprince · 7 months

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Some folks asked me to post/share this here because they found it useful, so ...

I was a little surprised by the amount of people who thought Gabriel and Beelzebub literally met only three times before deciding they were in love and running off together. It's true that we see three pivotal moments in Gabriel's memories, and I think @neil-gaiman and co. showed the audience these specific moments for a reason, but the writing and visual cues in each of the scenes seemed to be done in a way that would emphasize the passage of time between meetings and the development of the relationship between Gabriel and Beelzebub to the audience.

First Meeting: I believe this one happened not too long after Armageddon failed to materialize. We're given an immediate visual cue from Gabriel, whose outfit is closer to what he wore in S1; he's wearing the same scarf and jacket that he wore throughout that season, and also when he met Beelzebub on the Tadfield airbase. Could be appropriate attire for the season, since we do see Gabriel wearing the coat again a bit later (sans scarf).

At their meeting, Gabriel is seated on the left and Beelzebub is on the right. Their meeting place seems to be somewhere in Russia (away from their home territories). The table is rather large, creating some distance between the two of them. Their body language is also a lot more guarded: legs and arms crossed at times, and they tend to lean away from each other more throughout the conversation. This meeting is short, but there are some sparks between the two of them: the gentle teasing ("well, you lost"/"so did you"), Beelzebub crossing their arms and trying not to smile at Gabriel's "Arma-bloody-geddon" moment, and the shared understanding over the burdens of being the respective Commanders-in-Chief of Heaven and Hell.

It ends with Gabriel leaving quickly after saying it's a pity they'll never speak again, but ...

Second Meeting: ... obviously, they do end up speaking again. When Gabriel enters this particular meeting, he's wearing an outfit closer to what we see him wearing in S2 prior to him losing his memory. Again, possibly a seasonal cue as well. At the beginning of the Second Meeting, Gabriel sits down across from Beelzebub and immediately proposes the idea of "no Armageddon." He would have no reason to do that unless there had been other meetings that deepened their initial connection and made him realize that hey, a victory for Heaven would mean NO Beelzebub, which would kind of suck because he's grown to enjoy their company and their little "work meetings."

While they've built a sort of rapport over their work lives, there seems to be something else simmering beneath the surface. This is reflected in more visual cues: their body language seems more comfortable/relaxed - they lean towards one another as opposed to leaning back and maintaining distance; the table itself is much smaller (meaning they're seated closer together/with less distance between them); and they've also switched sides - Beelzebub is now seated on the left and Gabriel is on the right. Their meeting place seems to be a bar in America, which might mean they've still been avoiding any meetings in their home territories.

Beelzebub is open to Gabriel's suggestion and agrees to it almost immediately. Instead of rushing off like he did after their first meeting, Gabriel remains seated and Beelzebub seems to get a bit flustered by his gaze. They discuss the music playing on the jukebox, and Beelzebub is so much more patient with Gabriel's lack of knowledge than they would have been with anyone else. There are multiple layers to Gabriel's line, "Then ... I also like it." The little subtleties from Jon Hamm and Shelley Conn add a wonderful depth to these short scenes tbh.

At the end of the meeting, Beelzebub straightens up, fixes their gaze on Gabriel, and very pointedly states that there's "no NEED for them to ever meet again," smiling slightly as they wait for his response ("none whatsoever"). The wording there is important because ...

Third Meeting: ... there IS no "need" for them to ever meet again. From here on out, they're meeting solely because they WANT to be in each other's company. They're no longer pretending that their meetings are strictly business, and they're also not limiting themselves to locations outside their home territories. I get the feeling that the Third Meeting the audience gets to see was more like their "first date." Instead of meeting directly at a public location to discuss "business," Gabriel takes Beelzebub to see something important to him. Of course, this is Gabriel we're talking about, and he's taken Beelzebub to see the statue of him in a local cemetery in Edinburgh. But still! The statue is meaningful to him, and he wanted to share that with Beelzebub. They're even standing right next to each other as the scene begins, with Beelzebub's head cocked to listen as Gabriel speaks. Shelley Conn gives us this awesome moment of Beelzebub looking at Gabriel almost wistfully, and mmm do I have Some Thoughts about that entire scene. I've shared them elsewhere, maybe I'll eventually post them over here, but the TLDR is that yeah, I feel like they're wishing Gabriel would look at them Like That. I also think maybe there was some larger doubt re: whether or not the Archangel Fucking Gabriel, God's Messenger, would ever love a demon over their heavenly duty/station. But I digress.

Following their excursion to see the statue, Beelzebub and Gabriel wind up at The Resurrectionist. Gabriel's been wearing that coat again, which could show another shift in the seasons. Instead of sitting across from each other, Gabriel and Beelzebub are now seated next to each other in a cozy booth. The candles and dim lighting give it a romantic feel. Adding to that clumsy sort of romantic feeling, we see Gabriel and Beelzebub each doing something nice for the other just to see them happy. Gabriel performs a small miracle on the jukebox to have it play what has essentially become "their" song, and Beelzebub gifts a fly in return - essentially, a small piece of themselves, as they are the Lord of the Flies after all. It also happens to be the first thing anyone's ever given to Gabriel, a fact that has quite an impact on Beelzebub.

When Aziraphale is talking to the owner of The Resurrectionist, he learns that the jukebox miracle occurred "last year." So we can deduce (detective word!) that Gabriel and Beelzebub had been "dating" for about a year prior to his "disappearance." A year is a long time for them to develop much deeper feelings and intimacy. Not necessarily talking about sex there either, because folks can imagine whatever they want to in that regard. I mean intimacy in the sense of knowing and feeling comfortable with each other. The way they hold hands and have their arms around each other in the S2 finale indicates that they'd gotten pretty cozy with all of that. I mean, come on, look at how happy Gabriel was to see them once his memories were returned and how immediately his entire demeanor changed.

In the brief moments we see Gabriel prior to his memory loss, he's behaving differently from his S1 counterpart, who was a lot more rigid and laser-focused on Armageddon. Even Beelzebub seems a bit changed; that scene with Demon Josh is a great example. Granted, Beelzebub was more subdued/worried about Gabriel in that moment, but it seems like they'd grown a longer fuse and/or were less quick to anger/annoyance. Daydreaming can do that to a demon, I suppose.

I love this pairing; they're such a great example of how loving someone and being loved in return can bring out the "real"/best version of yourself. I'd totally read an entire novel about them. And can I just add once again that the visual cues were so well done? Not just the acting from Shelley Conn and Jon Hamm, who really brought a lot to the table (see what I did there) with their facial expressions and mannerisms, but the actual visual cues in each of these scenes: the way the two of them were gradually seen to be sitting closer until they were seated right next to each other; the shift in body language between meetings; the way they switched sides during each of the meetings we got to see, as opposed to Aziraphale and Crowley having dominant "sides" that we tend to see them on; etc. I could write an essay on this (more than I already have) so I'll have to stop myself now.

Anyway. Screenplays are neat, and it's fun to see how words and imagery combine to tell a much larger story. Of course, you need great actors to really bring it all home, and thankfully we've been blessed with many in Good Omens. Much love to Jon Hamm and Shelley Conn for their work here.

#good omens #good omens 2 #gomens #ineffable bureaucracy #boxfly #beelzebub x gabriel #gabriel x beelzebub #lord beelzebub #archangel gabriel #s2 ep6 #shut up j #listen i just enjoy analyzing media sometimes #especially when it brings me serotonin

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