We’re onto part six of Dirty Laundry and again so much is happening (and we get so mad about it) that we have to break up this section of the story into two parts. This episode we do some last-minute Christmas shopping with Keith and try to make his $40 budget stretch as much as we can, learn about the true cause of mental illness (stomach demons), and then it’s finally time for Keith to confess his feelings to Lance! Will it go well?! Trick question, this is Dirty Laundry and everything is horrible. After that it’s time for us to circle back to talking about The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, since it gets directly referenced in this part of the fanfic, and now that we’re most of the way through Dirty Laundry we can really take a good look at how much it s̶t̶e̶a̶l̶s̶ borrows from said book.

Content warnings: unfortunately we have to continue talking about the ableism surrounding how this story treats its one autistic character, as well as the misogynistic/bizarrely judgmental way in which Dirty Laundry treats that character’s mother. Since we talk about The Secret Life of Bees again in this episode, we also need to give another warning for antiblack racism.