It happened a couple of times a week that Danny decided to swim before breakfast. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes there were other students there; quite often he swam with Rose. He didn’t think he had ever met Marissa there that early, though, so the sight of her red hair caused some consternation. She was obviously waiting for him. On the one hand, he had spent almost the entire of the previous day with her, so it was pleasing to him that Marissa still wanted to be in his company, and wasn’t bored of his shadowing her every move. On the other hand, the reason he’d been so attached was because of the unpleasant run-in she’d had with Camilla, and Danny suspected that was what had caused Marissa to seek him out that morning. Nevertheless, he couldn’t have helped from smiling when he saw her, and he dropped his swim bag next to her chair - he was already wearing his blue camo swim shorts and his neon orange t-shirt; the bag held his towel and dry clothes for after his swim.

“Hey,” he returned her greeting with a hint of question in his voice, which was soon answered when Marissa handed him a letter to read, confirming his suspicions about her presence there. He felt particularly awkward about the whole scenario, simply because it was between those two particular girls. He had never for a second considered himself to be involved - he knew neither of them liked him that way - and both of them had separately confirmed it had nothing to do with him, but it didn’t make the Lyra feel great about being caught between them. Danny perched on the edge of the adjacent seat and read the short missive over. He had managed to catch Camilla after Marissa had gone back to her commons the previous evening. They’d had a brief talk, which had involved Danny asking for Camilla’s version of events. He hadn’t forgiven her behaviour, because lashing out at Marissa had been unacceptable, but he could understand it, at least.

“Well, that’s up to you,” he said, passing the letter back. He’d known it had been sent, and that Camilla had tried to apologise in person, but that Marissa had been avoiding her, which was a perfectly reasonable reaction to the events, in Danny's opinion. “You’ve not done anything wrong, and you’ve had an apology. If you don’t want to talk to Camilla that’s really your prerogative.” He placed his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. They seemed to be in a strange place just recently, where any physical contact at all was noticeable, like underlined text in a book. They had always hugged and shoved and otherwise touched each other, but never before had it seemed in any way unnatural or obvious.

“I talked to Camilla last night,” Danny admitted. “She is sorry. I’m not excusing her behaviour at all,” he added quickly, moving his hand from Marissa’s shoulder to her hand, instead, “she should never have done or said those things to you.” It was for that reason that Danny had told Camilla he would be staying away for her for a while. She was his friend, but hanging out with her after this seemed to send the message that he was okay with what had happened to Marissa, which wasn’t true at all. EJ was also being strange and distant recently, not wanting to hang out much, and seeming sullen when he did. Camilla would probably be lonely for a while, and Dardanius did feel some sympathy for her situation, but she should maybe have considered that before laying a hand on Marissa.

“You were right about EJ.” Marissa had already guessed the reason for Camilla reacting as she had. “Camilla thinks you and Elijah,” he dropped his gaze, because he found he couldn’t look at Marissa as he asked - they were supposed to be friends and he knew he would betray other emotions - “have been, I don’t know, hooking up, or whatever.” Danny inspected his shoes, even while his hand was still wrapped around Marissa’s. “I guess,” he exhaled and forced himself to maintain eye contact, “I understand a little of how she was feeling.”