#i think mickey on the other hand would be a little wary of her and super protective of ian around her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unbridgeabledistances · 3 years

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hi<3 okay i am finally writing the new kotss chapter, and once again here is a lil contemplative snippet of tumblr-drabble length as a preview for when i write the whole thing in a day or two!😌💜 (mostly bc i am feeling sleepy and sappy this morning about mickey’s growth and just. cannot get over it.)

hope u enjoy<3

He fucking loved the dog, okay?

When they were first waiting in that overly-bright room in the dog rescue center (or whatever the fuck it was called) with Ian sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, and Mickey had seen the bundle of fur with its paws hitting the ground, a scrawny puppy with a swollen belly and a protruding ribcage— he’d immediately known he was in trouble.

First, because there was no fucking way that Ian was going to let them leave this place without it, since he practically made heart-eyes the second the puppy stumbled its way over to him— and second, because Mickey was absolutely, totally sure that he was going to fuck this up. Even reading the fucking description on the website on Ian’s phone screen, “comes from a troubled past and needs a loving home,” made something twist in his gut— because how the fuck was Mickey supposed to provide something like that?

Mickey didn’t take care of shit like this, like fragile puppies or babies or anything he could mess up— and he especially didn’t let in anything more than he could handle losing, anything soft and helpless and innocent that he couldn’t let slip between his fingers on his own accord. He’d learned that shit early, when whatever whispers and soft traces of touches on his cheeks were ripped away by the pry of Terry’s calloused hands— when one day, when he was fifteen, he and Mandy and everyone else didn’t have a mom anymore. Losing his mom, losing his family after years on the road, even losing fucking Terry those now months ago; all of that shit compounded and pressed on the walls of his ribcage in a way that Mickey himself didn’t really understand, and apparently was oozing out of him in a fucking dog shelter as he stood there frozen, in the face of a helpless frame on wobbly legs with silky grey fur.

For some reason, even though he and Ian had been talking about the dog in the abstract for days now, something about seeing the dog scared him shitless— because taking care of shit was objectively scary, and Mickey was shit out of practice with it. He’d never been good, comfortable, at holding something fragile in his hands, something that he could mess up in a second with a slip of judgement. Mickey was great at getting shit done, but with something like this— well, honestly, he wasn’t sure if he trusted himself enough, to not make those split-second choices that Terry made, the ones that left cigarette burns on his sides and snapped his jaw out of place and left him with so many aching wounds that only became more dark and cavernous through the years.

I’m gonna fuck this up.

What if he got too mad and kicked the dog, what if he fed it the wrong shit and it withered away and became more frail than it already was, what if it ran away or got hit by a car or got fucking shot by a stray bullet in a shitty neighborhood? It felt scary to choose to care about something this fragile, to sign up for the loss and the ripping ache that would follow if Mickey overreacted or fucked something up or made a slip-second misstep. In the Milkovich family, loving was a liability— a promise that someone you cared about could get pummeled and bloodied and beaten in front of you, could get handcuffed and dragged upstate for months or years in the blink of an eye. When Mickey was fifteen, scratching “FUCK LOVE” and “STAY THE FUCK OUT” signs on pieces of cardboard with Sharpies he’d stolen from the dollar store, he’d made a promise to himself to harden himself against that weakness— against that loss.

And then, of course, freckle-faced chicken-legged Ian Gallagher showed up at his doorstep anyways.

So he’d let himself love Gallagher—and eventually he’d let himself love Franny after she plopped herself in his lap one day, wearing a princess tiara talking a mile a minute about monster trucks; and he didn’t even mind hanging out with Liam once in a while on those late nights in the Gallagher house, when Ian would be working a double shift and he and Liam flopped on opposite sides of the couch, watching shitty cartoons in a comfortable silence as the glow from the TV screen flickered on their faces.

But none of that felt like a choice—all of those people, those warm bodies to love, just fell into Mickey’s lap; so it wasn’t Mickey’s fault, really, if shit hit the fan. It wasn’t like he made the choice to love them in the first place— it just happened.

But adopting a dog (or having a fucking kid, like he knew Ian wanted)— that was a choice. That was telling something, someone, that you were ready to take care of them; that you were ready to lose everything when they inevitably got taken away, that you were ready to pour all of your fucked-up bullshit into someone and hope that you weren’t the reason why they turned out screwed up. It just seemed like too much; and in the face of the tiny fucking furball that Ian was cooing over as he sat cross-legged, Mickey’s immediate impulse was to keep his distance and tether himself into the linoleum floor miles away.

But of course Ian had done that fucking thing only he had the power to do, and melted whatever iron walls Mickey had soldered into place with a gentle Mick, d’you wanna pet her?— and of course the fucking dog had to nuzzle her goddamn tiny wet nose into Mickey’s hand, and give a too-trusting lick to his palm as she rolled over onto her back, exposing her vulnerable belly even after whatever fucking dog-fight bullshit she’d been through— and immediately Mickey couldn’t couldn’t see a timeline in which they didn’t wrap this fucking mutt up in a soft towel and take her home to the dog bed in their apartment and get her healthy on gourmet fucking dog food from a monogrammed tin bowl.

So even though it drove him fucking crazy that she was so fucking skinny, and the entire first night when she’d slept curled on the bed he kept waking up and googling the best dog foods and exercise regimens and refilling her water bowl at the kitchen sink like an obsessed fucking maniac— he really couldn’t help it.

Against every instinct, he’d chosen to love when he didn’t have to— and he was starting the realize that maybe that shit wasn’t a weakness.

“So, I hear you guys’ve got a new mascot.”

Tommy was ambling in the front door, right on the dot of their 2 P.M. opening time, with Kermit skittishly following a few paces behind him.

Ian rolled his eyes from behind the bar when he thought Mickey wasn’t looking (fucking traitor).

“Yeah, I think the whole neighborhood knows by now. Someone’s been a little too eager with the dog photos.”

Which— fuck that. So what if he fucking posted a few pictures of Baz to the mostly-defunct Alibi Facebook page that Kev had given them the login info to, some of which featured Baz wearing Mickey’s sunglasses when they were partway through a walk? Nobody needed to know that Mickey alone was behind that shit— Ian liked taking dog photos too, even though they were never as good as Mickey’s, and mostly just featured the moments Mickey was passed out on the couch with Baz sleeping on his chest.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Ian grinned and turned towards Mickey. “Nothin.’ Just nice to see that you’re growing into the whole dog parent thing. Though it is kind of turning into a stage mom thing.”

Mickey furrowed his brows. “Fuck you. The customers love her. It’s good for business.”

Ian held up his hands in surrender, still smirking—which just cause Mickey to shove him gently in his sternum.

“It’s not my fault Baz is the prettiest pit on the fucking Southside.”

In the corner of the bar, Baz was sitting on her cushion that they’d bought at a boujee pet store down the road, to keep downstairs at the Alibi so they could keep her other dog bed upstairs— and when Tommy and Kermit came into the room her ears immediately lifted, her tail twitching excitedly at the new faces. Tommy just gave a wary side-eyed glance to the dog pillow before plopping himself onto his usual stool, but Kermit nervously crouched beside the cushion and gave Baz’s chin a scratch.

“Ey! Paws off the princess until you drop some money on a beer, Kermit. I didn’t haul myself down to the empty bar on a Monday afternoon to watch you pet my fucking dog.”

Kermit shuffled to his usual seat beside Tommy at the end of the bar. “She’s cute. I didn’t realize pit bulls could be so scrawny.”

Baz was already filling out fast in the few days she’d been living with them; but it was true that she was still small and wiry for her age. Mickey made sure they got some sort of fresh dog food shit from the pet store that they had to keep in the refrigerator (even though Ian insisted kibble was fine, like a fucking cheapskate) to get her strength up, and he also got a bunch of fucking vitamins, like salmon oil and shit to make sure her coat was shiny—and yes, okay, maybe he also bought her a badass collar with spikes on it, and maybe he also dropped money on one of those engraved pet tags in the shape of a skull and crossbones that said “Bazooka Gallagher-Milkovich” on it with the Alibi’s address on it. He couldn’t fucking help it; they had a steady stream of cash coming in from crowded nights, they were planning on doing Ian’s karaoke shit once a month, and Mickey felt like they could afford to spend money on shit like this—like they could afford to do this right. And because of Mickey’s doting, even though Ian had started to take Baz for runs in the morning, it was no secret that she liked Mickey ever-so-slightly more than Ian; when they were laying in bed at night Baz would always hop up and curl into Mickey’s side and leave inches between her and Ian, causing a surprised chuckle to escape Mickey’s lips the first time it happened as he scratched behind her ears. Ian just stared at him, with some sappy fucking smile on his face.

“The fuck’re you looking at?”

“Nothing. Just glad we took her home.”

Mickey rolled his eyes, but felt a smile creeping onto his lips despite himself. “Yeah. Me too.”

“And I’m definitely not jealous of a dog right now.”

It was later in the evening and the bar was pretty empty, a standard for a Monday night— Mickey had been trying to train Baz to stay on her cushion now that she’d learned how to sit and lay down on command; much to the amusement of Tommy and Kermit, who kept fucking distracting her. If Mickey had his way, he’d train Baz to bark at Kermit whenever he said something stupid (the guy just got on his fucking nerves, what could he say)—but of course Baz had other plans once she realized Kermit was the one of the pair who would pet her, and kept nuzzling her head onto Kermit’s thigh and thumping her tail on the floor.

“I thought pit bulls were supposed to be vicious.”

“Fuck you, Kermit. That’s fucking… dog racist, or some shit.”

Kermit just meekly looked down at his half-empty beer glass, as Ian came in the front door from where he was bringing in the sandwich board from the curb, not expecting any more customers for the night. He reached down to ruffle Baz’s fur along the way.

“How’s our girl doing?”

“Pretty good. Once these assholes get out of here we can called it a night.”

Tommy scoffed at that. “Milkovich, we’re some of your most loyal customers— hell, we’re your only loyal customers. I think we deserve more than insults.”

“Oh yeah? You gonna go drink the day away somewhere else?”

Tommy faltered for a moment, and raised an eyebrow. “Touche.”

“Alright, bozos. Time to pack up. No one else is coming in tonight, we’ll see you tomorrow. Me and Ian have better shit to do.”

Tommy drained the last of his beer, placing a wad of one-dollar bills on the countertop and giving an exaggerated salute. “Until tomorrow, gentlemen.”

When they left the bar and the doors were locked, Ian’s shoulders started to shake with laughter. “Jesus. I never thought I’d be at a point in my life when I’m dependent on the consistent generosity of Tommy and Kermit, but here I am.”

“More like consistent alcoholism.”

Ian smirked, then flopped to sit on a barstool opposite the countertop from Mickey, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Are you fine taking Baz out? I’m kinda tired, wanna get a start on dinner.”

“Yeah, man. Works for me.”

They’d been living with each other in the Gallagher house for months, sure, but they were still new at doing this— at only accounting for each other’s schedules, at divvying up tasks like walking the dog and cooking dinner and doing fucking dishes rather than just coasting on someone like Debbie getting them by. Things were different now— things were settled and quiet, in a way that still made Mickey like he had to rub his eyes extra hard to clear them in the still, dark mornings in the apartment, like he wasn’t convinced this shit was real.

After dinner they sat cross-legged on their bed, watching a movie on Ian’s old beat-up laptop with Baz sitting between them and chewing on one of her toys that squeaked loudly every few seconds (this one was a stuffed animal in the shape of a police officer, because in Mickey’s own words at the pet store, “ACAB motherfucker”)— and later that night, wrapped in the smell of laundry soap on clean sheets and dog shampoo, Mickey slept easily.

Maybe this was something he could trust himself to hold on to.

#catch me laying in bed & ignoring my exams & instead writing This #ily all i hope u are having good thursdays<3 #gallavich #gallavich fic #shameless #shameless fic #bazooka gallagher milkovich #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #ian x mickey #ixm

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

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In the Arms of the Anus

Fandom: Spider-Man, Thor Pairing: Roger Harrington/Grandmaster Rating: T Word Count: 8883

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, @spiderman-homecomeme!!!

Summary: While people all over the world are finding their soulmates, Roger Harrington can barely find time to grab a sandwich. Clumsy, anxious, and stagnating in a mediocre marriage, it's a miracle that he still believes in love.

Today's the day the universe rewards that belief.

Three things about Roger Harrington: he’d just tripped on the sidewalk, he worried daily that he was developing a bald spot, and, at the age of 36, he felt he still believed in love as strongly as did the little girl in his building who’d made all the residents Valentine’s Day cards the year before.

The cards—which Roger had found endearing while his wife had been baffled to the point of annoyance—had been wedged into everyone’s mailbox sometime on the afternoon of last May 19th, and maybe that was why he thought of them today, exactly a year later.

It was helpful, he found, to consider love in markers of time passing, or just numbers. The anniversary of those Valentine’s cards would always be 271 days early, leap year or not. Roger had been married twice, longer the second time. He had zero children, and that was alright with him because he wasn’t totally sure that he did want kids and, anyway, he was too profoundly stressed about the welfare of the teenagers he taught at Midtown to comfortably imagine himself as a fulltime parent.

His wife was cool. Significantly cooler than he was. She drove out of the city to hike every other weekend (he had never joined her and hoped to never be called upon for woodsy companionship), had once performed an emergency tracheotomy on a friend at a dinner party, and had a tattoo on her hip that predated their relationship, which made it consequently, eternally, enigmatic, no matter how many times she told the objectively trite story of its acquisition. Also, she was a casual shoplifter, which made him very, very nervous in a way that he found difficult to differentiate from how he felt when he was turned on.

He was the kind of person who consistently forgot to take his glasses off before stepping into the shower. She was the kind of person who would run into and recognize a famous race car driver at Whole Foods (that had happened) or fake her own death (that had not happened—knock on wood!). Essentially, what and who his second wife was was the natural successor to his first wife (the reckless young bride to his insomniac young groom), who had in turn been the natural successor to the only other romantic encounter of his life worth mentioning: a kiss on the cheek at a birthday party on the day the Berlin Wall fell. Roger had been seven.

So his romantic history was speckled and, in two out of three cases, spoke a little too loudly of a need for legally-recognized codependence. So he didn’t feel like a man anyone would ever get a tattoo in honour of. So his wife had been a little unkind in the long pause before her negative when he’d asked her if she thought he was getting a bald spot. Roger still felt that love was going to happen for him. Hopefully sustained in his current marriage, but if not, there was always what Julius Dell had taken to (highly unscientifically) calling the Love Wave.

If Roger decided to be really delusional, he could pretend that the Love Wave was to blame for his stumble over uneven concrete on his way to grab lunch. That he was finally feeling its cosmic tug. Not that he would be the last to sense it—the inexplicable force that had lately begun guiding people the world over to their new partners—but every day that he didn’t, he feared his wife would feel it first and go careening out of their life together in a Thelma and Louise-style launch that somehow left her intact and him feeling like he’d plummeted to his death at the bottom of a canyon. Sometimes, when he thought about it, he imagined feeling that impulse to go to this destined soulmate and pictured it leading him home. Not in some metaphorical way, but literally home, to the apartment he shared with his wife, to find her arriving at the same time, the two of them matched up, the universe endorsing their marriage.

The reality was that he was a man with clumsy feet (and knees and elbows) who’d forgotten to pack himself a lunch and had just enough self-awareness (though probably not dignity) not to believe that eating in the cafeteria with his students was something he would be able to socially recover from.

He thought about a poorly-cut-out pink heart glued to a fold of red craft paper. He went to buy a sandwich.

At the deli, Roger waited in line and didn’t so much allow his mind to wander—like a dog off-leash in a dog park—as feel his mind jerk insistently away—like a dog on-leash, trying to snap a dropped slice of pizza off the sidewalk. He was violently not present as his thoughts migrated from Valentine’s Day cards to lesson plans to the anxiety he always felt over the fact of never seeming to have enough power to go with the tremendous sense of responsibility he felt for all situations in which he was even remotely involved. He would have, should have, continued to shuffle vacantly forward in line, except that the man ahead of him grumbled something that drew his focus.

What he grumbled was: “Even the Sorcerer Supreme should be able to spare a minute to decide what kind of sandwich he wants.”

Now, Roger Harrington was a man of science, but he was also a man who had previously enjoyed a close friendship with the Hulk (and if anyone challenged him on specific parameters within that assertion, Roger knew that he would cry). Aliens swarmed the sky like clouds of bees. There were compilation videos of Spider-Man nearly getting hit by city buses that could’ve been designed expressly to see how hard Roger could flinch. For a clumsy man with the unathletic, knock-kneed gait of Pippi Longstocking, Roger did his best to roll with the supernatural punches. Hey, this was how science worked too: just because there wasn’t a precedent yet didn’t mean there never would be. Just because he couldn’t explain something didn’t mean no one could. Sorcerers? Alright. There could be sorcerers.

“Sorcerers?” Roger blurted to the man, overeager to expel the word.

All other words had fled to the back of his mind, twitching in an agitated cluster, leaving just the one to be snatched frantically from the surface. Like fishing. (Roger had never been fishing. One of his greatest fears was having a live fish somehow jump into his shoe and stepping on it by accident.)

“Uhhh,” the man droned. He looked uneasy. If Roger knew how to make his eyes a little less wide in situations like these, he would’ve done it.

“No, yeah, sorcerers, sure,” Roger swiftly backpedaled. “I’m a teacher.”

As if being a teacher equaled knowledge of sorcerers. As if that were a normal unit of the high school curriculum. Roger’s understanding of sorcerers began and ended with Mickey Mouse in a blue wizard’s hat. He wondered if that was sort of the standard look.

The man did not appear reassured. Roger thrust his hand forward.

“Roger Harrington, Midtown Tech.”

Face still wary, his deli companion shook hands.

“Wong.”

“So, this sorcerer of yours didn’t pick a sandwich?” The line shuffled forward and, now in reach of the long glass case of food, Roger attempted to lean his elbow casually against it, misjudged the distance, and jerked back upright again before he could fall over.

“No… You heard that part too?”

“If I could hear the part about the sorcerer, why wouldn’t I be able to hear the rest?”

“I think most people would’ve been so fixated on the sorcerer thing that they wouldn’t really absorb the part about the sandwich.”

“Just got sandwiches on the brain, I guess,” Roger said.

God, if Wong knew a sorcerer, odds were that he was a sorcerer too. (Roger based this on being a teacher with almost exclusively teacher friends and acquaintances.) He was making it sound like he cared more about sandwiches, he knew he was. He stared silently at Wong for a few painful seconds and wondered if the man could tell that he had worked for a sandwich shop as a teenager—the role of wearing a full-body sandwich costume and standing on the sidewalk, trying to attract people into the shop.

But Wong surprised him by nodding.

“You could get one of everything,” Roger heard himself suggest.

He was not typically one to make suggestions, but rather one to panic when other people did and he was in the position of having to choose between them. He could never decide on a restaurant for he and his wife’s now few-and-far-between date nights, or provide straightforward feedback when she asked for his opinion on her clothing choices… which movie they should see… what they should buy for her friend’s sister’s housewarming gift...

Oh god, she was probably going to fake her own death and his biggest anxiety was knowing that someone would ask him to choose the casket!

“I have like…” Wong jingled his pockets and extracted a fistful of coins that, when he opened his hand, Roger saw belonged to several different currencies. “…six bucks.”

Like a mirror with a delay, Roger patted his own pockets to locate his wallet. He flipped it open to reveal something promising and terrifying: he’d forgotten to return the school credit card after the last field trip he’d chaperoned. He shouldn’t, but… sorcerer.

“I think this’ll cover it,” Roger said. “It’s for emergency expenses.”

“Like lunch?” Wong asked doubtfully.

“I could be very hungry.”

“They sell seventeen different types of sandwiches here.”

“I could be very, very hungry.”

Wong shrugged in evident acquiescence and Roger marvelled that it was so simple for him to accept this act of generosity. Roger couldn’t recall the last time someone had been as generous towards him. Wait, yes he could. The Valentine’s Day card. Well, handing over a credit card that wasn’t technically his didn’t exactly equate to presenting his ticket at the Love Wave gates (not that there were such things—not that he’d know), but he was hoping to trade this generosity up for a different magical experience in the near future.

When they reached the front of the line for service, Roger ordered a total of eighteen sandwiches. (And received an undisguised groan of complaint from the people still in line behind himself and Wong.) While they waited, Roger buzzed like the posterchild for over-caffeination, doing his best not to let his excitement translate into erratic movements.

Of course, once the sandwiches were presented and paid for, it only made sense for Roger to help Wong carry them all. His own ham-and-Swiss was stuffed into one of the three bags and they were all bulging, threatening to spill. If one of them ripped on Wong’s journey back to wherever he had to take them, who would be there to gather the sandwiches into their arms so that Wong wouldn’t have to leave them on the ground? Roger was clearly the best (only) person for the job.

And if they talked on the way? That would be natural. If Wong stared at him with abrupt, unyielding suspicion the instant Roger attempted to negotiate a visit with this ‘Sorcerer Supreme’ in exchange for buying his lunch? Yeah. Yeah that suspicion would be fair.

“Not for my sake!” Roger defended as Wong blinked back at him. “For the kids!”

“The Sorcerer Supreme isn’t a birthday party magician.”

“No, I would never imply that! These are bright kids. They’d be there to learn, respectfully. They’ve had their own traumatic encounter with Spider-Man already so there wouldn’t be any clambering to meet another person with superhuman powers!”

“What did Spider-Man do to traumatize them?”

Wong looked interested now, in an entertained sort of way. Meanwhile, Roger was having a flashback of his life flashing before his eyes inside the Washington Monument.

“Actually, he saved us,” Roger explained. “That’s not the point. It would be purely educational. You and the Sorcerer Supreme would call the shots. As long as it wasn’t anything dangerous.”

“Dangerous? We would never put children at risk!”

Roger was about to clarify that he hadn’t meant to imply that they would when he realized Wong seemed to be taking this as a reason to prove himself, or to make the other sorcerer prove what he’d just said.

“I would hope not,” Roger said carefully, “because not all of the children I’ve taken on field trips have come back alive and that haunts me.”

“Well, what haunts me is everything I’ve seen and learned from in order to become someone who could now guarantee a safe field trip environment.”

“Well, that would be great.”

“Well, good,” Wong concluded.

Roger looked down at the bag he was holding as he dug out his sandwich. His wrist twisted and he caught the time on his watch. Oh wow, oh no, his lunch break was almost over.

“Ok, deal,” he said quickly. “We’ll come by next Tuesday!”

“I’ll be out here to let you in!” Wong agreed with a parting wave.

Roger took off running in the direction of Midtown and when that got too awful, he wheezed like an asthmatic and waited at the closest bus stop.

—

Roger had expected Principal Morita to say there was no room in their budget for this trip. That they were nearing the end of the school year, that parents and guardians would be reluctant to sign another form for an excursion that Roger could only give a vague, stammering explanation of. At the very least, he’d anticipated the journey via school bus in lurching, stop-and-start traffic to take so long that the kids would revolt; Flash Thompson would lead the complaints that they could’ve walked to their destination faster than the ride took and Roger would feel the primal horror of a confrontation with a self-possessed teenager who wielded the kind of peer influence Roger could only have dreamed of when he’d been Flash’s age.

But no.

Highly improbably (Roger didn’t like to consider it miraculous), things went smoothly. The trip cleared the budget assessment on zero notice because, besides renting the single bus to transport the students, their outing didn’t actually have any costs. Permission slips came back signed. Traffic was light. And dear, dear Flash—who usually gave Roger so much anxiety—slapped the hand Roger raised to shield his eyes from the sun as his students disembarked from the bus, rewarding him with a surprise high-five for getting them out of the classroom on a Tuesday afternoon. It almost knocked Roger’s glasses off.

They were ushered inside by Wong, who was now laying the mystical solemnity on pretty thick. He certainly wasn’t talking about sandwiches or complaining about the Supreme Sorcerer under his breath.

Before Roger could feel too good about himself though, he realized he’d had time to run through his headcount of the students three times without interruption. Normally, something would happen partway through his first count and he’d be uneasy for the rest of the day, sure that one of the kids had fallen down a manhole or been stampeded by a dog-walker’s unruly canine swarm. The universe shoved teenagers into the path of bike couriers with one hand and paired up soulmates with the other. That was just how things went! However, inside this house (or, no, Sanctum, Wong had called it), the air was still and quiet.

“Do you think he’s gonna make himself appear out of thin air?” Roger heard Ned ask at a whisper. “Or out of a wardrobe, or a trapdoor, or one of those boxes people get in to get sawed in half?”

“Those are cheap tricks,” Wong said loudly. He stared unsympathetically at Roger’s motley group, hand closed around his opposite wrist to maintain a serious pose. “The man you’ll be meeting shortly has capabilities that far outstrip those of the kind of magician-for-hire you’d find in a phonebook.”

From behind him, Roger heard Peter ask Ned what a phonebook was.

“What kind of capabilities then?” Flash demanded.

Roger sighed and was turning to reprimand his student when Wong said, “Like this!”

The man faked a sneeze of horrific volume and range, doubling over and cupping his hand around his mouth and nose. When he straightened up and presented his open palm, there was a raspberry sitting in it.

Roger closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself and his teaching career played on a fast-forwarded film reel behind his lids. The Sorcerer Supreme was a no-show; all Roger had accomplished was taking the kids to a weird building to witness a man pretend to sneeze out a raspberry. Midtown Tech was going to fire him. His wife would recognize his unemployment as a reason to leave him. Depressingly, Roger was thinking about how that would almost be a relief—an end to his incessant worrying that they were really kind of a mismatch—and he was thinking it while he blankly watched Wong eat the raspberry he’d just feigned dislodging from his nasal cavity.

He was really unprepared for a different man to come sweeping down the stairs, motion with his hand, and have a red sheet come whizzing down after him to settle itself on his shoulders. Roger blinked. He heard the mixed noises of fright and appreciation from his students.

Then Flash piped up with, “That’s just a trick. It’s wires or something.”

Roger backed into the cluster of his charges and, without taking his eyes off the obvious Magical Guy in front of him, reached over and placed his hand across Flash’s mouth.

Unfortunately, his censorship seemed to be too late. The Sorcerer’s narrowed eyes zoned in on Flash.

“Oh yeah? How ’bout this? Is this just a trick?”

Fingers splayed, the man moved his hands in a precise, practiced way and a window opened up in the middle of the room. No, not a window, but Roger was having a tough time wrapping his head around it. What this non-window showed was something that wasn’t the room, that wasn’t a view of the street, that wasn’t anyplace in New York, if he had to guess.

“You can’t just do it like that,” Wong said wearily. Roger felt himself and his students look from one of the men to the other as though watching a tennis match. “There should be a little more finesse.”

“Look,” the Sorcerer told him. “You don’t get to spring this on me and then expect me to ham it up for the kids. This isn’t a David Blaine show.”

“Maybe you should watch one. You might learn something about showmanship.”

“So, it’s fake, right?” Flash checked.

Dammit, Roger had dropped his hand, distracted as he tried to make out what he was seeing through what he was becoming increasingly comfortable with calling a ‘magic portal’ in his thoughts. He scrambled to take hold of Flash’s shoulder—yanking him back would be bad, but dealing with the fallout of him pissing off somebody who could make magic portals would be much worse—but Flash dodged him, swaggering forward to inspect the Sorcerer’s work.

“What is it? Mirrors? Greenscreen? You buy your tech from Stark?”

“Stark?” the Sorcerer spat out derisively.

Overcome with the terrible feeling that he was about to find out what it looked like when a wizard put a curse on a child, Roger sprang forward. As he did, three things happened: the Sorcerer rotated his wrist slightly, the scene on the other side of the portal changed, and Flash turned to the side.

Without a student to grab onto and pull to safety, Roger’s momentum sent him hurtling through the gateway currently connecting Midtown to parts unknown.

Of all the times to trip, he thought.

—

The world was bright and fast and bad. Actually, Roger was almost positive that what he was seeing wasn’t the world at all, but he couldn’t put a name to where he was any more than he could think of better adjectives to describe it. Unless the Sorcerer Supreme owned a magical slip ’n’ slide that operated at speeds designed to train prospective astronauts for space travel, Roger was no longer in his building.

The colour of the tunnel of light surrounding him turned from something like the intestinal track of a unicorn who ate lightning and nebulas to a dangerous, broiling red. Roger kept waiting for his skin to bubble, his face to melt off. Maybe he was the fabled frog in the pot of boiling water and had failed to notice the heat steadily increasing. Because he didn’t feel hot. He couldn’t tell whether or not he felt cold either and before he could work it out, he finally landed.

It was rough.

He curled his arms up around his head, protecting his face. He hit and tumbled, hit and tumbled, banging his shins and elbows, setting off a series of metallic clangs and thwumps like his body was playing drums made of the contents of somebody’s recycling bin. Roger could see—once, shaking, he was able to lower his arms and open his eyes—that his imagination hadn’t been far from the mark: he was lying in a heap of trash.

Trembling like a baby deer, he got to his feet and assessed his surroundings. There were piles everywhere. Piles of stuff. Roger could identify some of the battered objects, but most were utterly alien to him. This was like the time he’d found his wife’s sex toys all over again.

“Hello?” he called out, because he seemed to be alone. “Hel—”

His throat closed off abruptly when he swiveled in place and noticed the sky. His mouth fell open. Was that what he had just come through? That furious-looking, billowing, volcanic, enormous… disturbance? Weather pattern? Entrance to hell, if hell were a mountain of trash?

Oh man. Where was Spider-Man this time? Roger didn’t know which would come first, but if something distinctly reassuring didn’t happen in the next 30 seconds, he was going to either burst into tears or pee his pants. His cool wife was going to be so bummed to have to declare him dead instead of faking her own death. And his students would be traumatized, having just witnessed their teacher disappear before their eyes. He spent a frantic 17 of his 30 seconds wondering if this were Jumanji and he’d started a game without realizing it; being sucked into a board game was another of his greatest fears, ever since he’d watched the chilling horror film Jumanji in his teens.

“Hello?” Roger croaked a final time.

Some other scientist—a Tony Stark type—would thrive in this scenario, Roger knew. They would scavenge the surrounding mounds of metal, collecting and assembling pieces into some sort of technology that would either get them home or enable communication with a rescue team. Would there be a rescue team for Roger Harrington? Would anyone even try to get him back?

The cry/pee conundrum was looking more like cry with each passing second until suddenly, amongst the broken things Roger was aggrieved to consider the lone sentinels of his demise, some kind of spacecraft touched down. Based on his recent luck, whoever was at the helm was likely here to kill him, but he immediately elected to throw himself on their mercy, whether that meant rescue or just a swifter snuffing out of his life than he would otherwise experience on this sad island of garbage as he died from dehydration, starvation, and exposure to that infernal gateway in the sky.

He mouthed the word “help” more than said it as he staggered forward on legs he could hardly feel. A door in the side of the spacecraft slid smoothly open and party music blared out. Roger flinched back as though he had not heard the sounds of civilization in years.

A woman exited the craft. She wore an expression about as kind as the murderous upside-down mushroom cloud in the sky and when their eyes met, she barked, “Back!”

Roger executed an awkward reverse lunge, pleading hands raised. Ok, now that his time had come, he didn’t want a quick death. Put out of his misery? No, he would learn to live with his misery, the way he’d learned to live with his college roommates, or his wife’s collection of handmade bowls! With food and water to sustain him, he was suddenly confident that he could be successfully miserable for years if this intimidating woman would just leave him to his own pathetic devices.

But then, like a visitation from a tan, eye-liner-wearing angel of indeterminate age, a man in gold robes emerged from the vessel. He beamed like he had always been beaming, and always would be.

Just like that, Roger Harrington got it. He got what Hot Chocolate meant when they sang that they believed in miracles. He got the meaning of Kylie Jenner’s year of realizing stuff. He got why a child would send out Valentine’s Day cards in May and why his wife was so dedicated to her hiking group and why he was here.

“Now, what did I say about that before we left?” the angel seemed to be asking his companion, though he’d locked his eyes on Roger. “Did I say to harass our visitor or did I say to be nice?”

The woman narrowed her eyes at Roger, which he felt more than saw; it was possible that he was crying after all. Tears of joy.

“Harass,” she answered flatly.

The angel chuckled.

“You know, I do like having you around. Before you, I said to myself, ‘Next time, get an enforcer with a sense of humour.’” He sighed as his laughter dwindled. “But you can, uh, skedaddle back onto the ship now. That’ll be all.”

“What if you want to melt him?” she queried.

That was enough to tear Roger’s gaze away from the man and send it zipping nervously to the threatening almost-smile the woman was now directing his way. He’d preferred the murder face.

“Melt him!” the angel said, in a tone that implied her suggestion had been ridiculous. (Roger relaxed. A little.) “Topaz, don’t you realize who this is? Don’t you know?”

She shrugged.

“Trash.”

“No, he’s not trash! Do you think I would’ve left the Grand Arena to retrieve a new gladiator by hand? All those Scrappers don’t do my bidding just so I can dig through the garbage looking for fresh challengers for my champion! I wouldn’t even assign Scrapper 142 this task, and you know she’s my favourite!”

When the woman only grumbled, the man pressed, “You have an unbelievable poker face. Do you really not know why I flew all the way out here for this guy?”

“I’m his soulmate,” Roger blurted, because that was the one thing he did know.

He had no idea what a Scrapper was, or whether the man in front of him was more or less important than the ‘champion’ he’d mentioned, or how his homicidal sidekick planned to melt Roger, but he understood what was happening here. Forget the Love Wave—what had come for him had yanked him violently across solar systems, maybe galaxies. He’d been sucked under by the Love Riptide.

The angel pointed at him and proudly proclaimed, “Correctamundo!”

Then he strode forward and folded Roger into a hug. Roger thought this must be what it was like to be a piece of antique furniture, tenderly wrapped in gold leaf.

“I’m the Grandmaster,” he said.

“Roger Harrington,” Roger offered, feeling that his life was entirely surreal as he cautiously returned the hug.

“As soon as I felt you land on my humble little planet here, I came looking. My orgy guests were disappointed, naturally, but I had to put my interests first. What was I, elected? If they wanted a leader who would pretend to care about everyone equally, they should have organized themselves into a viable political party capable of rivalling my dictatorship, am I right?” He drew back slightly and laughed. “You should see your face! I’m kidding. I would’ve had anyone involved in such a thing put to death. Don’t you worry, Hairball.”

Roger cleared his throat. He’d learned so much in the last few sentences alone. Death. Dictator. Orgy. Any one of those things was a lot to confront and yet… he was calmed by the Grandmaster’s presence. He was alive and unmelted. He’d managed to find his soulmate—a man he’d been almost certain to never meet as things stood with Earth’s individually-impressive but cosmically-insignificant progress with space travel. At long last, the universe had smiled on Roger Harrington.

“Just Roger is good,” he said. If last names ever came up again, he would tactfully correct his soulmate, but with a name like ‘the Grandmaster,’ he doubted they ever would.

“Roger. Anything you say.” Gripping Roger’s shoulders, the Grandmaster leaned in and planted a sound kiss on his forehead with a loud, “Mmmwah!”

He asked Roger if he would like to go aboard his ship, apologizing that it wasn’t the one where he’d just been having the orgy and appearing to check Roger’s face for disappointment. Roger didn’t know what the Grandmaster saw in his expression, but he knew it wasn’t that.

Inside the spaceship, Roger looked around with huge eyes. He hadn’t felt this kind of wonder in a room jammed with so much beyond his understanding since the first time his mom had taken him to the New York Hall of Science as a kid. Everything was bright and white and immaculately clean, and Roger could concentrate on all of it because the Grandmaster had Topaz drop the volume of his party playlist until it was just a low pulse of background noise. Seemingly amused by his awe, the Grandmaster allowed him a peek at the controls before gently herding him into a chamber with seating arranged for socializing. A pneumatic hiss sealed them safely inside and away from the woman’s scowl.

“I really just wanna sit here and, uh, just look atcha, but that look on your face tells me you’ve got about a million questions.”

The Grandmaster settled back into the bench seating, resting his long arms along the top of the seat. Across from him, Roger fidgeted, experiencing sensory overload. Soulmate. Spaceship. Alien planet. He found it hard to decide what to ask first. Was that even polite? Was the Grandmaster just saying that Roger could ask questions when he really wanted Roger to say or do something else? There was an awfully flirtatious look in his eye, the likes of which Roger hadn’t seen directed towards himself in several years.

“What is this place?” Roger asked before he could stop himself. “Where am I?”

“Oh! This is Sakaar! Are you saying you didn’t come here on purpose? I figured you weren’t aiming for a pile of trash, but you really didn’t know where you were going at all?”

Roger shook his head so hard that he had to nudge his slipping glasses back up his nose.

“It was an accident. I fell through a wizard’s—uh, I mean, a sorcerer’s—magic portal. That kind of clumsiness must sound pretty farfetched to someone who’s so obviously…” Roger motioned spastically towards his soulmate, the dictator, with both hands. “…in control of their life.”

The Grandmaster laughed, transparently pleased and preening.

“Oh, Roger, you flatter me.”

He stretched out his leg to playfully tap his shoe (gold) against Roger’s (plain, brown, frayed shoelace). Roger jumped, giddy from an alteration in sea level, possibly, plus life-changing events.

“But it really isn’t so uncommon for people, beings, things… to end up here without meaning to,” the Grandmaster went on. “A lot of junk passes through the Anus. Not that you’re junk, obviously.”

With a winning smile, Roger’s soulmate leaned forward and patted him on the knee. He was a touchy-feely guy, it seemed, and it made Roger cognizant of how very lonely he’d been in his marriage, in the last year especially. How skittish around strangers, how unaffectionate with his friends. This was what he needed, and the universe had understood that.

It took his brain a few seconds to catch up with what his soulmate had said, distracted by the comfort he was taking in his easy warmth.

“The Anus?” Roger asked in a choked voice.

“The Devil’s Anus, to be exact. That enormous, horrifying wormhole out there in the sky!” the Grandmaster explained, gleeful. “Best I can guess, it acts as a funnel for accidental travelers, like yourself. And boy, are we ever grateful for that thing. I’ve never had to post any ‘Help Wanted’ flyers, I’ll tell ya that. We need more people serving drinks? Boom. More entertainers? Boom. More lubricators for the orgies? Boom, the Anus provides, baby.”

Roger didn’t inquire what the duties of a person with the job title ‘orgy lubricator’ entailed; it seemed sleazily self-explanatory. He just nodded.

“And now,” his perfect, golden match continued, “the portal brings me my soulmate. I love that thing. It’s really somethin’, huh?”

“It’s really something,” Roger agreed. “Really, really something.”

“You’re looking just a little stunned there, Rodge. Can I offer you something to eat? A drink? I promise, I’m usually a much better host. I feel like I’m positively, uh, bumbling right now.” He beamed.

This man was so many things at once—possibly too many—but bumbling was so far from being one of them that Roger actually laughed weaky in his state of happy, semi-delirium. He accepted the cold glass that was pressed into his hand, the brush of the Grandmaster’s warm palm across his forehead. He had moved to sit right next to Roger.

“You can get used to this place at your own pace, within reason.” His soulmate chuckled. “Heck, we can stay right here a day or two. My plans are cancelled, and when I stop, the world stops. That’s how it is, being the Grandmaster, and that’s how it’s gonna be for you too. You can give all your worries a big, wet kiss goodbye, my love. You’re living a life of luxury now. A court of sycophants, fights to the death in the evening, orgies on a lazy afternoon. I’m talkin’ a life of pure class—”

“Class!”

“Yeah, baby, that’s what I said.” The Grandmaster was wearing a languid smile as he traced the back of his fingers along Roger’s jaw.

But Roger was suddenly too alert to be lulled by welcome caresses and delicious, exotic beverages.

“I was teaching a class before I fell through the portal,” he said. “I’m a teacher. My students are probably terrified. Some of them might be messed up for life after watching me disappear right in front of them. What have I done…”

“So you gave them a cool story to tell their friends! You don’t need to think about that anymore. Now that you’re living here—”

“I can’t live here!” Roger said, seizing the Grandmaster’s hands in his as he tried desperately to explain. “I have responsibilities as an educator! Jesus Christ, I’m married!”

“Roger. Rodge. Rodge. Hey,” his soulmate said, finally disrupting Roger’s spiral of panic. “That’s all in the past. Do you know how many creatures from just, uh, every darn corner of the universe I’ve made slaughter each other for my entertainment? Thousands, Roger, ok? Thousands. And it’s taught me oodles about life. What I’ve learned is that love is the only thing that matters. What all of those poor bastards scream for in the end is their mom, their partner, their best friend. Now, that doesn’t help them, but it helps us. It helps us understand that we’ve done it—we’ve achieved the one thing in our lives that was worth a damn to achieve. I’m not gonna, gonna now be parted from you, sweetheart. You are the point of me.”

Roger felt himself growing teary at the speech. Yes, this had been a whirlwind—they’d met no more than 15 minutes ago—but he was feeling something just as deep as the love the Grandmaster described. It was a fantasy in the best way, the life his soulmate pictured for them (most of it… maybe not the part about slaughter). But it was a fantasy in the worst way too, something so impossible that Roger felt sick for getting as attached to this man as he already had.

“I can’t,” he said softly. He let his head hang down, solaced when the Grandmaster guided it onto his shoulder and wrapped a protective arm around him.

“Can’t you? For me? Roger, if I put you on a ship and send you back through the Anus, we may never meet again.”

Roger squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to be selfish, but there were people he couldn’t leave in the lurch. People who maybe didn’t care about him in a way that was equal to how he cared about them, but that was how any kind of relationship was, apart from soulmates. There were imbalances. He knew he might not be the most brilliant scientist, the most inspirational teacher, the husband a woman would prefer over the outdoorsy hunk in her hiking group, but he knew who he was: he was someone who couldn’t just walk away.

“We’ll be together again,” Roger said, clutching the Grandmaster’s robes. “After.”

Though he didn’t yet know what ‘after’ would mean.

—

It wasn’t as unexpected as it could have been—Roger had always had a feeling he’d die on a school bus.

The difference between his fears and reality was that he wasn’t departing this world in a fiery crash or zooming out of control between the steel trusses and into the East River. There was confusion, there was chaos, there were screams and the violent honking of horns, but there were elements he couldn’t have predicted. Primarily, the giant alien spacecraft hovering over the city. The ship immediately moved into first place of the most ominous rings in his life (he and his wife were not in a good place). Since its sighting, things had quickly spiraled out of control. Julius had radioed Roger from the other bus of students they were chaperoning to MoMA to report that Ned Leeds had ‘flipped his shit’ and Peter Parker was currently missing. Roger had nearly passed out. The only thing that had kept him conscious was his jittery concern for the rest of his students.

At Midtown Tech, they had drills for almost every eventuality. As of 2012, hostile outer space invasion was actually part of their repertoire, but it had always been assumed they would be at school when it happened, not out on a field trip. The most Roger had been able to think to do was get the kids to a secure location. Which meant getting the buses to a secure location. But the buses were on the bridge, and all over the bridge drivers were panicking, mindlessly stomping on the gas and attempting to swerve around the rest of the vehicles. Above the blood rushing in his ears, he’d heard crash after crash, until their bus was hemmed in and, through the smoking, crumpled hoods of their fellow commuters, the alien ship hung stationary in the sky. Disturbingly tranquil as New York City went to pieces to the tune of apocalyptic dissonance just below.

In the end, the spaceship hadn’t stayed put, but Roger had. The lanes around them were crowded with smashed cars. Glass from shattered windshields glittered on the pavement. Still, more vehicles surged forward as drivers attempted to use the bridge to flee the city; this wasn’t NYC’s first alien rodeo. He hadn’t attempted to force any of his students to remain on the bus—they were some of the smartest and the best of their generation, and he trusted their survival instincts far more than his own—but he did direct the ones who fled to first climb up onto the roof of the bus instead of dropping directly down onto the street and risking injury. Yes, he worried about minor cuts and bruises. Even now.

He thought that Flash was staying with him, and was touched. But then he realized Flash was just gripping his shoulder for leverage as he jumped and grabbed for the emergency roof hatch with his free hand. Roger knew the boy was somewhat neglected by his parents, and so, for the first time, he was happy go hear ‘Hotline Bling.’ It was Flash’s ringtone and it played incessantly as his phone rang and rang until the song, and the sound of Flash running, faded into the distance. Somebody wanted to see that he was safe. Somebody cared about him.

Alone, Roger hunkered down between the seats, knees bent in front of him. He scraped one hand anxiously through his hair and gripped his phone in the other.

He should call his wife. He knew he should. Only, he was afraid that she either wouldn’t pick up or she’d answer and be with the guy from her hiking group. Roger wasn’t even upset; he was glad she had someone, if this was it.

Ever since he’d returned from Sakaar, he’d been different, he was aware that he had. In the past, his wife had been largely responsible for the sundering of their marriage, but Roger knew that he was now pulling away too. It had begun inside him—the tear. He wanted to be with two people for two different reasons. In two places, on two worlds. Commitment clashed with longing. Logical rightness fought emotional rightness. He’d been weak, persuading himself daily to tough it out with his wife (even as he slept on the couch every night because lying beside her made him unhappy), when, for once in his damn life, he wanted to be fulfilled. Somewhere out in the stars, there was a man with blue eyeliner and an entire planet at his capricious command and he was the person for Roger.

If only, he thought, picturing the face he shouldn’t have been able to recall so clearly for the brevity of their encounter months ago. Roger shut his eyes to better remember the Grandmaster, and so he wouldn’t have to see his phone clatter to the bus’s dirty floor when the hand that held it turned to dust.

—

As with his life on regular, non-apocalypse days, not much happened to Roger. Despite his paralyzing breakdown on a school bus, he wasn’t among the billions scattered to the wind like sentient dandruff. He picked himself up and went home. Sure, he was shivering almost out of his skin from the shock, but he didn’t collapse into wracking, snotty sobs until he was safely in his living room, listening to his neighbours’ wails through the condo’s walls.

Roger’s wife wasn’t there, didn’t answer when he called her, and, three weeks later, still hadn’t made contact. It took another two months to hold her wake; the funeral business was booming. Never had so many words been spoken over so many vacant graves. Some members of his wife’s hiking group attended, some had even helped him select the right music and flowers beforehand. They knew her preferences. It felt surreal to be burying a person he couldn’t prove—in any meaningful way—that he’d really known.

With a queasy sense of being very lucky, he accepted that, apart from his marital status, his life hadn’t been upended. His windows weren’t broken, his car wasn’t stolen, the few family members he was out of touch with anyway had also survived. He went back to work before anybody called him in. There weren’t any students at first, just the echo of Roger’s clumsy footsteps tripping over the rug in the staffroom, half-solved equations on the whiteboards in the math classrooms, and the unholy stench of unwashed pinnies when he poked his head into the gym storage room to see if Coach Wilson was around. One day, Roger tipped back in the chair at the front of his own empty classroom and spotted a gigantic cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. It made him think of Spider-Man. He guessed that guy was gone too.

The most important thing for keeping sane was establishing a regimen. Work was a big part of that, but Roger also traveled daily into Manhattan to visit the Sorcerer’s place. It became a kind of pilgrimage. Early on, Wong would come out to say hello, but it was eventually less about commiseration and more of a perfunctory thing. Roger knew (assumed, hoped) that if the Sorcerer ever did return, Wong would let him know and welcome him inside. And then… a portal? And then the Grandmaster? He tried not to think about it too hard. Yearning took up a lot of energy and, when his students began to come back to school in distressingly low numbers, Roger needed to reserve that energy for teaching.

Everything was the same, every day, until it wasn’t.

For a reason he couldn’t rationally explain, Roger knocked on the Sorcerer’s door. While he was waiting—just a few seconds, he planned—a man materialized on the sidewalk right next to him. He tottered and Roger reflexively said, “Whoa!” and grabbed his shoulder to keep him on his feet. Before Roger could hypothesize or ask the man any questions, a teenage girl returned to existence a few feet away. Then a woman holding a toddler tightly in her arms. A little boy. A man with a dog. A bicycle-less bike cop, still wearing his helmet. Releasing the man, Roger spun and pounded against the door with his fist.

Still, no one answered.

Fighting the urge to show up at Midtown Tech, Roger made himself stay put, right there on the Sorcerer’s doorstep.

He waited a long time. As the sun set, New York City rose around him. He watched people hugging, running home down the middle of the street. He fielded unfinished questions as the newly returned began to ask him what had happened, what time it was, what year, before jogging away, more purposeful with every step they took. Roger’s foot began to bounce on the sidewalk and his clammy hands twisted fretfully. It was still another 12 hours before the door opened.

Roger fell backwards into Wong’s shins, delirious from the sickening seesaw between urgency and exhaustion. Everywhere, people were reconnecting. He scrambled to his feet because he wanted to be one of them.

“Is he here?” Roger demanded.

Wong narrowed his eyes slightly, holding the door so it couldn’t be pushed open further.

“Might I remind you that it’s me you’ve been seeing here the last five years.”

“Yeah,” Roger agreed, trying to see past.

“I thought we had developed a rapport.”

Finally, Roger met Wong’s eyes, his own pleading.

“No, yes, you’re right, we have,” he babbled.

“We’re friends.”

“Yes, of course, we are friends. Definitely.”

“So when is my birthday?”

Roger’s mouth hung open as he searched his brain for a piece of information he knew wasn’t in there. A few seconds later, Wong turned mirthful.

“Did you spend the Blip hiding under a rock where there are no jokes? Come inside. We just got back.”

None of the thousands of times he’d come to the door mattered—Roger hadn’t been inside the Sanctum since that first time. He hoped the Sorcerer remembered him.

When he saw the man, Roger’s steps stuttered. The Sorcerer appeared grim and wiped out. He was dirty and he looked older, though Wong whispered to Roger that the Sorcerer had been among the Snapped. Roger understood that, for something to go right and bring everyone back to life, something else had gone wrong. He could dwell on that and awkwardly bow his way back out of there, or he could convince himself that things had gone wrong for him too, and that he’d like them to be righted. He remembered that his soulmate was a dictator and tried to channel that sense of entitlement.

“What do you know about the Anus?”

The Sorcerer blinked.

“What.” The word came out perfectly flat.

“The Anus.”

“I wasn’t that kind of doctor.”

Roger strode eagerly towards him, hands gesturing before his words caught up.

“When I was here about, um, five and a half years ago, I fell through your magic portal—”

The Sorcerer snapped his fingers in recognition and turned to Wong.

“Oh, that’s who this is. I always wondered what happened to that guy.” He looked at Roger again. “How did you get back to Earth?”

Roger hadn’t been prepared to answer this question, just make his demands, and he began to explain what had happened to him, all out of order. The words ‘orgy ship’ had barely left his mouth when the Sorcerer was waving him into silence. His expression told Roger he was sorry he’d asked.

“So you went through the portal…” he prompted instead.

“That’s right! And for a while, I was just falling. I don’t know where I was.”

The Sorcerer stroked his chin.

“The connection must’ve been unstable. I know—one of your students distracted me.”

“That’d be Flash,” Roger said.

“Jesus. This is why I prefer not to be a field trip destination. Normally, the portal would allow you to pass cleanly through one place and into another.”

“And instead he passed cleanly through the Anus,” Wong summarized.

“…Yeah.”

Roger glanced from one man to the other.

“So,” he said, “could you do it again?”

The Sorcerer stared at him.

“The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, but it contains a great deal of vernacular to do with the Mystic Arts, so I’ll save us both some time.”

The last time Roger had defended his intellect and qualifications had been years ago, and he was out of practice. Anyway, he didn’t want a lengthy debate.

“Can’t you just open a portal and shove me through?”

“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a lot going on today. I’ve only entertained you this long because you and Wong seem to be friends. I’m not just going to mess around to humour you.”

“What if you had to do it?” Roger asked quickly, beginning to feel desperate and preparing to metaphorically jam one of his clumsy feet into the closing window of opportunity.

“Uh, let me think about that,” the Sorcerer droned disinterestedly. “No.”

“What if I attacked you and you opened a portal in self-defence?”

The Sorcerer squinted at him in disbelief and befuddlement.

“What?”

But Roger was already gracelessly throwing his weight into a wild, uncoordinated punch.

For once, he didn’t think critically of himself; he told himself that the Sorcerer’s portal sparked up between them because he was intimidated by Roger’s tenacity. And that it didn’t show a clear destination because the Sorcerer’s reaction speed was no match for Roger using the element of surprise. And that he dove purposely through the portal—on a mission for love and science and the unknown—instead of tumbling into it sideways because the momentum of his unpracticed punch had gotten the better of his balance. It didn’t matter. His feet went out from under him and he was on his way.

Roger had forgotten how intense the trip was, but he completely recalled the rough landing, bouncing down through a stack of the universe’s lost garbage. He shut his eyes to the whooshing and the brightness and braced himself (probably too early, but he didn’t think he could be too careful on this reckless endeavor).

He felt his body hit open air and gasped as he fell, trying to keep his limbs tucked in. The hat he’d been wearing was torn from his head. Didn’t matter; it wouldn’t have offered much protection anyway. At any moment, his poor elbows and knees would be battered by space junk. Between his velocity and his fear of the coming impact, Roger could hardly breathe.

Music. A familiar voice singing, It’s my soulmate! made his eyes fly open. Right in time to land on his back. Whatever was beneath Roger was soft, but he’d still had the wind knocked out of him and was struggling to fill his lungs. His eyes clamped shut as he began to cough.

“I have no idea how you survived that thing twice, but I sure am glad I caught ya.”

Finally sucking in a stronger breath, Roger opened his eyes and looked up. His glasses were askew. Above him was the opening in the ceiling of a hovering spacecraft, but closer than that, leaning over him, was the face of the Grandmaster. He was beaming.

“Any trouble with the Anus?” he asked.

Roger grabbed for the hand his soulmate had rested on his shoulder and moved it to his chest, right over his heart.

“The asshole who got me here will probably be thrilled to never see me again, but the Anus treated me just fine.”

“Ha!” the Grandmaster barked. His free hand lovingly patted Roger’s windblown hair back into place. “Welcome home.”

#my writing #MCU #spider-man #thor: ragnarok #Roger Harrington #En Dwi Gast (the Grandmaster)#their ship name is Mr. Master and they're what G deserves on her birthday

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clingymickey · 3 years

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Here's some angst for ya! Got to be honest tho I'm more a fluff gal when it comes to writing but got into the mood of writing some angst. So enjoy <33 (It's my first time writing angst btw.). Also please read the tags before you read this.

ALWAYS BESIDE YOU

Panic. That's all he's feeling at the moment. Panic. Panic. Panic. He feels like he can't breathe. Harsh breaths. He jolted up awake. Eyes wide open, face and palms sweaty, shoulder's stiff, rushed breathing; right there beside him is his husband, his partner, lover, family, with a concerned and wary look on his face. His hands running up and down his back comforting him, making him feel safe.

"Hey, Mickey, Mick, what's wrong?" Ian asks worriedly.

Eyes look towards him, his breath still harsh. He's trying to think of words to say but nothing comes out.

"Hey, breathe, Mick, just breathe" he says softly. "Just follow me, alright."

His chest rising, and as it deflates, warm air brushing Mickey's cheek. He tries to follow the same; soon his breaths slowly becoming steady again.

"Thank you," Mickey finally lets out, voice a little hitched. "I really needed that."

Ian says nothing except for an accepting nod and his hands holding his head tight.

"You wanna talk about it?" Ian asks calmly once the tension died down. It's fine if Mickey doesn't want to talk about it, he knows whatever it was bothering him, it would be hard for him to talk about.

Mickey doesn't reply, and Ian doesn't push it any further.

After a long time, he finally whispers, "I think I had a bad dream."

Well, more like a bad childhood memory than a dream.

"It was Terry" he said with a tone of spite. "He sent me and Iggy for a run, and when I came back, he was standing there with 4 bottles of empty beer next to him, throwing all of my drawings into the flame."

Mickey paused for some time. Chewing his bottom lip with his canine hard enough until it started to bleed slightly – thinking of how to put his words next. Ian's arms still wrapped around his back and head, calming his fear away.

"Drawing is for pussies is what he said," voice breaking a little. "Ain't no son of mine a pussy" Mickey repeats, then wincing, remembering exactly what his father did after he said that.

"He slowly walked towards me and as he came closer his fist met my face sending me towards this glass table we had, my body crashing into that, it became all bloody and bruised up, broken glass pieces everywhere." he says, smiling a little, although his smile not meeting his eyes.

It quickly became silent again, just the sound of their breathing filling up the room, Ian just waiting for him to continue. All he wanted to do at this moment was to hug him and protect him from all the hurtful memories he had, and make him feel safe, but he didn't, instead he gave Mickey his space, wanting to hear from him what happened next. It's not like Ian doesn't know, he very well knows what Terry was capable of doing and what he had done, yet he wants Mickey to tell him, so that he knows he can feel comfortable telling his pain.

"He hit me harder the next time, at least 7 or 8 times, but this time with his gun."

His eyes were glassy with tears forming in the corner of his eyes, his nose becoming red. He's trying to hold it in, not to break, but he fails. Tears running down the side of his cheeks, eyes becoming puffy, letting out a quiet choked cry. Ian's hands steering Mickey's head towards the crook of his neck and just hugging him there, silently promising himself to never let go.

"As he's kicking me, while I'm on the floor, I see Mandy just peeking out from behind the wall," he continues. "She was scared, just looking at what was happening to me, crying, and holding her favorite stuffed animal tight…I could never forget that sight."

"I think that's also when we both realized that I would no longer be able to protect her from Terry."

Ian wanted to say that it wasn't true, that Mickey was always able to protect her no matter what, and that it was fine now because Terry was no longer here to torture them, but he stopped himself and just let Mickey continue.

"You wanna know something funny?" he asks, head tilting up to look at Ian.

"What?" Ian says back, voice sounding a little choked up.

"I never actually felt any pain, after I hit the table rest everything became numb," he chuckled wearily, cool air hitting Ian's chest. "I couldn't feel anything when Terry pistol-whipped me, nothing, except for this feeling like I couldn't breathe, and pain from when Mandy saw me like that."

Mickey let out a sigh.

"After he was done, he came up close to my face, breath smelling like beer and smoke, he told me that if he ever saw me drawing or saw any art of mine, he would do more than what he did to me that day – he'd teach me a lesson he said."

Neither of them said anything afterwards, they'd just laid there holding one another. It was one of those moments where nothing had to be said or spoken, just the presence of each other was enough.

A beat later, Mickey exhaled sharply, shifting his position a little, but making no effort to move out of Ian's arms.

"Thank you," he says again. "Thanks for just you know listening to me and just being there, even if it didn't affect you."

"You don't have to thank me, Mick, I'll always be there for you okay. No matter what, I'll always be beside you. And it does affect me, whatever happened or happens to you, affects me in every way 'cos I love you." Ian says, gently tightening his grip around Mickey.

"I love you too, Ian" he replies softly, finally smiling, this time it reached his eyes.

Later that night, not once did he get a bad dream, worrying himself about Terry.

------

A few days later.

"Hey, Mick, guess what I got you" Ian sings, with a grin so wide it could probably slice his face in half.

"What?" Mickey grumbles, voice hoarse, as he's slowly getting himself out from his slumber.

His eyes immediately go towards the small box that's in front of him on his lap, wrapped up all pretty and nice with a bow resting on top of it.

Was it his birthday? Anniversary? No, he's pretty sure he would remember that. A special occasion?

"What's in this, Gallagher" he mumbles, eyeing his husband suspiciously.

"Why don't you check it, Gallagher." He retorts, with a sly smirk.

Mickey hazardously tears down the wrapping paper, leaving a mess all over the bed and floor, opens the box, and can't believe what he's seeing.

"So do you like it?" Ian questions, unable to read his husband's face right away.

Of course, he likes it, how could he not.

"Fuck yeah, I love it." He says cheerfully, pulling out the drawing book and color pencils.

"Open the book." Ian says making a gesture with his hands towards the book.

Mickey slowly opens the book to its first page, never losing eye contact with Ian as he opens it. Then, he looks down and notices the flyer for drawing classes.

"Now that Terry's gone, you don't have to be afraid, so I thought I could get you this." He mumbles.

Mickey doesn't say anything, just staring between the flyer and Ian, unable to put his happiness into words.

"Soo, is it okay? D-do you like it" Ian stuttered.

"Yeah, yeah, it's okay, it's more than okay in fact." Mickey nods, eyes filling up with tears. "Thank you"

"You deserve it." Ian says back softly.

"You sap." Mickey snickers. "You know what, I think you deserve a treat for this." He says, trying to steer the conversation into playfulness.

"Oh yeah" Ian said, taking the hint.

Mickey leans up to place a peck on his lips. What was supposed to be a small peck turned into a deep and meaningful kiss, with Ian not wanting Mickey to pull back.

"I love you." Mickey pants into Ian's lips after pulling them apart to get some air.

"I know, I love you too" Ian whispered, reminding him of the time when Mickey said those exact words when they were in prison.

#TW: Child Abuse #it took me almost 3 days to come up with this #pretty sure I lost some brain cells #I didn't really expect to be this long #but anyway #gallavich #fanfic

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edelwoodsouls · 3 years

Text

i still pick up at the sound of your call [fic]

"Is that a dalek on tv?" [or: Martha has some choice questions for the Doctor regarding the new Prime Minister's addess]

Inspired by this post

Word Count: 1,799 | Also on Ao3

"Oi, what the fuck is going on?"

The Doctor blinks. Pulls the phone away from her ear, to check the number again, check she isn't hallucinating. She'd hardly believed it when she saw it, hasn't seen those numbers strung together in years, though they're still burned into her mind.

Another life, another time.

Another friend burned to ashes.

She hesitates, for just a moment. Takes a deep breath. "Hey, Martha," she cringes instantly at the hollow lightness of her tone, only drawing attention to the lifetimes between their last words. "What's up?"

A heavy pause on the other end. The Doctor tries to imagine her old companion, for just a moment. She'd promised herself she would check up on her friends from time to time, make sure they were okay, if she could help them from the shadows in any way - but that promise has fallen between the cracks, lost along the way with everything she ever thought was true.

The last time she saw Martha, she saved her life. Moments before her own - his own, back then - had slipped between her fingers.

She'd looked happy. The Doctor could never have predicted Martha and Mickey of all people, but she was glad for them. She had ruined their lives in so many ways by crashing through them, by falling in love with Rose - this was the least they deserved.

So she imagines Martha like that. Curled up on the sofa, cornrowed hair and sparkling eyes. Legs tangled up with Mickey as they watch tv in the burnt orange glow of a dying London afternoon.

Oh, fuck. The tv.

"Uh, hi," Martha answers finally, wrong-footed and uncertain. "I wanted to speak to the Doctor, could you put him on, please? Sorry, I- uh, I'm Martha. Jones. I used to travel with him. I'm guessing you're the new companion? What happened to Donna?"

An unexpected lump rises in the Doctor's throat. Thousands of years - thousands - have passed since she last bothered to check in on Martha Jones. How many companions have been and gone in that time? How many have crumbled to ash beneath her fingers?

She swallows it down, files it under Compartmentalise, and Never Think of Again.

Sunshine. Enthusiasm. Energy. The tenets she's founded herself on this go around. She plasters a bright smile on her face, as if contorting her muscles will trick her tone into believing she means it.

"Just me, I'm afraid," she grins, skipping around the TARDIS to fiddle with the controls to keep her hands busy. "Had a bit of a change of face since you last saw me."

Furious whispers on the other side of the phone, far enough away from the receiver that even she can't hear them. She imagines Martha and Mickey, confusion and surprise warring with each other.

This reveal never gets old.

"Sooo, how've you been? How's Mickey? It's been, what, nearly ten years since you last saw me?"

"Uh, yeah," Martha returns to the phone, hesitant. She's never had to deal with regeneration, really. "I didn't know you could- I mean, when you said you change, I didn't realise that-"

"I can be anything I like! It's great, innit? I could have two heads or green skin if I felt like it. First time I've been a woman, though. Well, first time I remember, I guess. Still haven't been ginger, though. Maybe one day."

"Different face, same amount of energy," Martha laughs, and the sound lifts a weight from the Doctor's chest she didn't even know was there. "Mickey says hi."

"Yeah- hi!" A more distant voice echoes through the phone, startled at being addressed.

"Hi! It's great to hear from you!" She twirls the phone cord around a finger. If there's one thing she always regrets in her lives, it's the way her previous selves treated their companions. Each one with a different idea of relationships, of how things should be done.

This version of her thinks Mickey would be a great companion, if not for her Rose-tinted blinders.

"So, to what do I owe this call? Hope you kids have been keeping out of trouble, though somehow, I doubt it."

"Right!" Martha yelps. The whole regeneration thing definitely threw her for a loop. "Yeah, Doctor, what the fuck is going on? Is that a dalek we just saw on tv?"

"Ah, yeah... it is, yeah."

"And?"

"And I'm sorting it out?" The Doctor glances over her shoulder, towards the corridor the fam disappeared down a few minutes ago to get ready. They'll be back any second.

It's not that the Doctor doesn't want the fam to know about her old companions. They've met Jack, know she hasn't been on her own all this time, but- still.

Her companions don't have the best survival rate. It's selfish, probably, to keep having them, and yet she somehow never goes without them for long.

(She's lonely, she knows it. She's not a good person on her own. She clings to these fragments of knowledge and calls it reason.)

"But why is there a dalek on tv, Doctor? New security drones, that's what they're saying. Do they not remember the whole Earth-moving, twenty-seven planets, dalek invasion thing?"

"Or the Battle of Canary Wharf?" Mickey adds, words heavy with an underlying anger. Rose was lost to save the world from daleks, after all.

The least she deserves is to have her sacrifice remembered.

"I'm not sure, to be honest," the Doctor admits, flinging herself onto one of the crystalline seats near the console. "It's incredibly weird, actually. As far as I can tell, the entire human race has forgotten that aliens exist at all. No stolen Earth, no Titanic flying over London or Racnoss star at Christmas. No Battle of Canary Wharf."

"That's- I mean, how does that even happen?"

"I have no idea. Something to do with collective consciousness, I'd guess. Some manipulation from another race wanting to remove Earth's knowledge and wariness of aliens. The Arkangel network is still flying strong in your orbit, after all. It wouldn't be so hard to harness the technology. Maybe even your own governments, or some rogue branch of Torchwood. I never did find Torchwood 2 or 4."

"Then how the hell do we still remember?"

"Probably my fault. You're still keyed into the TARDIS's neural network, so she's protecting you from the effects. Sorry about that."

"No, it's- it's good," Martha splutters. "Are you going to try and fix it?"

"Maybe," the Doctor leans back in her chair, pulling the phone cord as far as it will go. "Once all of this is over, I might look into it. Just to check if it's malevolent or not. It's not a bad thing, necessarily. To forget. Some of things they must have seen..."

She shakes her head to clear it. Can't let herself stop and think for too long, or she might never escape the whirlpool's tide.

"Anyway," Martha says - she always was good at noticing her spirals, circumventing them. "How's Donna?"

Nevermind. She speaks the words lightly, but in a tone that says she noticed the Doctor's avoidance earlier and is bracing for bad news.

"She's great!" the Doctor manages a smile, glad to have something, anything to latch onto that isn't her own thoughts. "Happily married, actually. Won the lottery a few years ago, doing very well for herself."

"That's- that's really good to hear."

"She doesn't remember me." She lets the words fall, as much as she wishes she could hold them close and buried and gone. But Donna needs to be kept safe, and Martha reaching out to her would be- not good. "She doesn't remember anything that happened. I- I had to wipe her memory, after the daleks. It was killing her."

The silence stretches longer this time, and for a moment the Doctor is sure she's broken everything.

"Well, I'm glad she's happy," Martha says eventually. "There are worse fates, right?"

So many of your companions have had worse fates, she doesn't say, but the Doctor reads between the lines anyway.

"Yeah," she breathes.

"And how are you doing, Doctor? You're not alone, are you?"

"No! I'm great, actually. Got my fam. Yaz is really cool, you'd love her. Ryan and Graham are great. Jack's back in town right now, helped me out of prison-"

"Helped you out of where?"

"-and we're just sorting out this whole dalek thing! Should be all over pretty soon. Just, stay where you are."

"You know we can't do that, Doctor." If anything, Martha sounds amused. Determined. Ready to pick up her sword once again, defend the Earth from whatever might be coming.

In this second, everything is right with the world, and she misses Martha Jones in a way that hurts both her hearts at once.

"Well, stay safe at least. I'll call you back when this is done, to let you know."

"Thank you, Doctor. Maybe we could, I don't know- grab a drink, or something. Catch up."

"I'd like that," she replies, and they both know she has very little intent on following through.

Yaz appears at the end of the corridor, eyes bright, smile warm. She's chattering to someone, probably Ryan, completely oblivious, no weight on her shoulders.

The Doctor wishes she could keep Yaz like that, happy, delighted, laughing. Wishes that smile was just for her.

But she might have ruined it forever.

She's learnt to trust the TARDIS over the years, learnt that the TARDIS arrives when she thinks the Doctor should be rather than where the Doctor wants to be. She wants to trust that this, too, was for a good reason. The TARDIS has never led her wrong, in the end.

She has to believe.

"Well, I'll let you crazy kids go be heroes. Beat up some daleks for me, will you?"

"Of course, Doctor," Martha says. The Doctor imagines her smiling, linking fingers with Mickey. "Stay safe out there."

"Always," the Doctor grins. As Yaz and Ryan approach, she jumps up, throws the phone back on its hook and grabs hold of the TARDIS's controls.

"Who was that?" Yaz asks, wary, unsure of how to act around her. They need to sit down and talk, hash out the last ten months - and nineteen years - but now isn't the time.

Unfortunately, the time rarely seems to appear.

"Just an old friend checking in," the Doctor shrugs, avoiding her new companions' eyes. "There's daleks on the tv, haven't you heard? Let's fix that."

She throws the TARDIS into flight with a delighted whoop - after all these years, the thrill of flight never quite fades.

She's lost companions before, but as Martha’s call has reminded her, not all of them have met bad ends.

She refuses to let the fam down on that one, too.

#doctor who #dw spoilers #revolution of the daleks #martha jones #thirteenth doctor #mickey smith #yasmin khan #thasmin #fanfiction #own work #morgan writes

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mrvdocks · 4 years

Text

Plus One

It’s Joyce and Hopper’s wedding. A new member is added to the household, and things get real.

(chapter one)(two)

It’s a Wednesday in February when he returns home and plops down onto the couch. The bar shifts just seemed to get worse. In the span of three minutes, he had to break up a fight, have the bouncer kick out a guy for harassing his manager, and clean a spill a drunk party group had made.

I’m not paid nearly enough for this, he thinks.

A sneeze breaks him from his misery.

“Bless you.” He says with his eyes closed. They shoot open when he realizes you don’t sneeze like that.

He sits up and looks at the moving thing under the pillow. His heart races as he hears some kind of breathing.

Please no, he thinks. We just took care of the plumbing.

He lifts the pillow carefully, expecting to see a pile of rats or mice or worse. Instead, he’s greeted by a sneezing dog.

It’s a Scottish Terrier with big eyes that just seem to interrogate him as to why he interrupted his sneezefest.

“Uhhhhh, where’d you come from?” He scans the apartment, seeing a dog bed at the corner of the lazy boy across from him.

This had to be the work of one person only.

Steve calls out for you, hearing you run out from the bathroom in a hurry and a towel haphazardly wrapped around you.

“What’s the emergency? Oh, I see you’ve met Mickey.”

He’s speechless, looking at you like you’re out of your mind. “Mickey?”

“Yeah, they brought him in today and I felt really bad that they were taking him to the choky tomorrow. I had to save this poor baby. And who can say no to his little eyes?” You singsong the latter half of that sentence in a baby voice, kneeling to ruffle your fingers through Mickey’s fur.

“What if Tony finds out we have a dog? What do we say? We can’t keep him.”

You roll your eyes. “Relax, he’s quiet when he eats the jerky from Tom’s.”

“That’s my jerky!” Steve whines.

“Okay! I’ll get you extra then. Don’t be such a sourpuss.”

Steve glances back to Mickey still staring at him. He puts out a cautious hand, Mickey getting close enough to sniff and then lick.

At least it was nice to have another man in the house.

He runs his hands through Mickey’s surprisingly soft coat, earning a low whimper from the pooch. Mickey lies on his side, clearly loving the scratches Steve is giving him. Steve catches himself smiling, suddenly forgetting the looming threat of eviction for a moment.

He’s wanted a dog since he was six, but his dad would never let him keep one. Not even a goldfish. He thinks maybe if he’d had a dog, he wouldn’t have turned out so cold in his teens. He just wanted to love something and have it love him back.

“Hmm, maybe you’re not so bad.”

Mickey responds by kicking his tiny paws in the air, writhing on the couch.

Steve is so bewitched by the creature he doesn’t even notice when you come back into the room or even left for that matter.

“So, anything from that Sissy girl you were seeing?”

“No,” he pouts, “I mean I think she was scared off by this.” He gestures to himself.

“Oh my god, you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what? I just felt like there wasn’t any long term potential there.”

“You guys went on one date, and you didn’t even kiss! You blue balled her!”

“Okay first of all, who takes their date to their family member’s birthday party and expects a whole relationship to blossom from there? And second, when you’ve been single as long as I have, you just know what you want and what to expect.”

You snicker. “But you don’t know what you want, you have like, the worst standards.”

“Uh, I like to think they’re realistic.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I don’t think it’s fair everyone has to compare to Phoebe Cates.”

“Phoebe was a great product of her time, thank you very much. And, I mean what about Tessa Grey?”

“Tessa Gr - my co-worker?”

Steve nods adamantly. “I would date her. You know if she wasn’t - engaged.”

“Alright we have to unpack that sometime but first why do you always say their names like some sort of serial killer?”

“Because,” he thinks, “they’re firsty-lastys. The same way I’m Steve….”

“Oh please don’t say it.” You cover Mickey’s ears.

“Steve “The Hair” Harrington!”

You groan in response, bringing Mickey to rest on your chest while you put your feet up on Steve’s lap.

“Sounds like someone’s jealous.” He mimics.

“Oh, please. Okay, okay, let’s say for the sake of this being hypothetical, Tessa breaks off her engagement and she shows up here and says, ‘Oh my god, Steve Harrington I would love to have your babies, let’s get married! You can meet my family and eat my famous pasta, wahhhh!’” You flail your hands around for effect, seeing the amusement in his face.

His face screws up, “Geez, am I dating Wario now?”

“That is exactly how she sounds! Plus, you would find something wrong with her and then you’d bail.”

“That is not true.”

“Oh but it is! It’s so true. In fact, anyone as grotesquely tall and hair-obsessed as you cannot be so picky.”

“I’m just trying to make sure I find the -”

“Don’t say it.”

“The one.”

You groan, shoving your face into Mickey’s chest.

“Oh yeah? I don’t see you bringing anyone home. Still not over Danny?”

Your mouth forms an O, you kick his thigh with the heel of your foot.

“For your information, I have been seeing someone.”

This piques his interest. “Who and is he an escaped convict?”

“Okay,” you scoff, rolling your eyes. “I haven’t talked to him but he left his number at the desk so who knows?”

“Hmm, I may be wrong, but I don’t think that was meant for you. You are a receptionist after all.”

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we? But I just have some stuff to take care of beforehand.”

He nods.

“Personal…..maintenance.”

“Yup.”

“Gotta mow the lawn.” You emphasize.

“No yeah, I got you the first time. But come on, let’s be honest here. You’re stalling.”

“For what?”

“Jumping into the unknown. Danny was a huge part of your life so I get what it’s like to lose that connection.”

You laugh sarcastically. “Okay, grandpa are these your words of wisdom? I am totally over Danny. At this point, I can say screw Danny! I have all the time in the world to find someone else!“

You weren’t completely wrong. Danny had been with you since senior year of high school. You thought it would be like one of those fairy tales where the high school sweethearts end up living together in an amazing house surrounded by all these treasures and all that jazz. Nothing could tear you down.

And then junior year of college came and he slept with one of your college friends. You transferred soon after. It was your first relationship, and you just felt like a failure.

You don’t view California so great anymore, instead choosing to uproot yourself and finding the first place you could in New York for cheap.

It worked out fine, you think. It led you to Steve and Robin.

Even though you clowned him for it, you also wanted that special connection. Love that movies taught you but you’d learned the hard way they weren’t going to translate into real life the same way.

“Uh-huh. I mean there’s no shame in it, I was the same way with Nancy.”

“I wasn’t moping around and wallowing in self-pity like you, though.”

“C’mon what was that whole period of just ‘Danny!'” He mimics your voice crying and eating out of an invisible tub of ice cream.

You feign being offended, chucking the couch pillow to him as he catches it and smothers himself with it.

“Your dad’s crazy. Yes, he is.” You pout to Mickey.

Joyce & Jim’s Wedding

Chincoteague, Virginia

March 1-3rd

“I remember during ‘84, Chief Hopper had a special visitor waiting for him in his office to talk to him about the disappearance of her boy. At the time she was just the town’s nut, but I bet no one would guess the wild ride these two would go on to end up here.” The man who Steve tells you was one of Hopper’s officers back home, toasts.

It sat poorly with the guests, including a somewhat already even more pissed off looking Hopper. He seems to get the idea and ends his toast blessing the couple in their late forties.

Jonathan goes up next, greeting the crowd. He’s dressed impeccably, his hair somewhat slicked back and his ring very prominent when the light catches it.

“I would like to thank everyone who came out to help us celebrate. I’m very proud of my mom and at first, I was a little wary about her settling down with someone. Not because I was moody about it but because she’s done so well on her own taking care of me and my siblings. She’s always been both parents to me but Jim,” Jonathan raises his glass.

“I want to thank you for helping us years ago, for believing in us. For being patient with us and sticking with us through thick and thin. My mom lights up every day like a Christmas tree and I think that’s evidence enough for me to happily welcome you into the family. To my mom and Jim!”

“To Joyce and Jim!” The crowd toasts.

The wedding was held in a gazebo near the beach on the East Coast, with Joyce getting married in a white tea-length dress with lacing decorating her collar down to her arms and Jim in a grey suit decorated with one of Joyce’s favorite flowers in his pocket. They’d both changed for the reception, Joyce into a red sheath dress and Jim into a black dress shirt and pants and a blazer matching Joyce’s dress.

You were seated with Jonathan and Nancy and another pair of family friends, talking and catching up with the other nuptials. They both told you the craziest stories about Steve from high school to when they last saw him, all the while he sat mere inches from you and hid behind his hand when something particularly embarrassing came up.

You’d often erupt in fruity laughter, hearing about the time Steve got his Scoops Ahoy uniform stuck in the fridge or when he’d played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time only to lose every time.

“So, how long has this been going on?” Nancy queries, gesturing to you and Steve.

You glance at Steve, lost for words for a moment. “We’re just friends.”

“Yeah, friends,” Steve adds right after you.

“I’ve been rooming with him for the past two years since Robin left.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she concedes. “I always hear you call him Honey over the phone sometimes.”

Your eyes widen. Curse your sarcastic nature.

“Oh no, god no,” You laugh nervously. “I just like to mess with him.”

You drown yourself out with the drink in front of you, leaving Steve to pick up the rest of the conversation.

“We got a dog.” Steve blurts out, trying to fill in for the painfully embarrassing silence.

Jonathan raises his brows, “Really?”

“Yeah, only instead of being the dad of the group back then, I’m a dog dad now.” He reveals.

Nancy and Jonathan laugh, almost as if to help ease both of you back into not being awkward.

“Hey, you guys heard Dustin’s getting married right?” Nancy pouts with her bottom lip drawn out. “He’s so old now.”

“Yeah, Steve loves the little guy.” You blurt. Steve glances at you.

“Last I heard he was starting up some fund for kids with CCD in California,” Jonathan alleges.

“Oh yeah,” Nancy remembers. “The Palm Springs wedding.”

The music begins playing for the guests and Nancy jumps, exclaiming that she loves this song and asks Jonathan to dance with her. They turn to you and Steve and urge you onto the dance floor, but you say you’ll be there in a second.

“What was that?” He whispers in a shrill tone.

“I panicked!”

“They probably think we’re idiots now.”

You cock your head down and glare at him. “These are your friends, Steve. They would never think that. It’s just been a while since you’ve all seen each other they probably understand.”

Steve bounces his leg in response. You put your hand on his thigh, stopping him.

“Look, we are gonna go out onto that dance floor and we are going to find you the best damn lover you’ll ever have.”

He nods rapidly, hooked onto your every word.

You lead him in when a couple leaves, guiding his hand to rest on your lower back and rest your left hand on the lapel of his suit. Your right-hand holds out for his, swaying until you can match the tempo of the music.

“Okay, what about violet in glasses?” You suggest, feeling him turn you to catch a glimpse.

“Too bookish.”

“What’s wrong with bookish?”

“I already have you, don’t I?”

You roll your eyes. “Alright, what about red with the pony?”

“Where?”

“Behind you, rotate.”

He rotates you to the left and makes a face. “Too mean.”

“What? She seems nice.”

“The red makes her seem aggressive.”

You sigh. “Okay, pink with the braid?”

He glances quickly to his right, “Yeah she’s cute.”

“I’ll go and spill my champagne on her and then you just swoop in and dry her off.”

“Is there any way you can do this without assaulting someone?”

“It’s not assault, I’m just very hands-on with this.”

“That sounds like it’s textbook definition.”

“When have you picked up a textbook? Nevermind, you want to try this or not? I haven’t failed you yet.”

He purses his lips, thinking back to the first wedding.

“Don’t. I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

As the song ends you retreat to your table, grab your glass, and start sipping. Steve stays behind, watching you fake stumble and fall against the woman and drench her with the drink. She gasps as the cold beverage hits her, and Steve pulls out one of the fancy napkins from the table.

“Showtime.”

"You think she hates me now?” You say, drawing circles in the sand with your feet.

“You mean because a drunken guest dumped their drink on an expensive dress she was planning on returning?"

You stare at him, unamused.

"I appreciate the try. She just seemed….too hostile.”

“I get it, I mean a guy like you coming up to me and trying to pat my breasts down - I would want to leave too.” You chuckle to yourself.

Steve stands, smacking off the sand on his pants. He takes hold of your shoulders and leans you close to the waves as they crash against your ankle.

“Oh my god, Steve! You know I can’t swim.”

Steve is laughing like crazy, teasing you. He takes hold of your waist in a second, carrying you as far into the ocean as he can while you’re shrieking.

He twirls you as you grip his hands tight, digging your nails into his skin and still screaming to be put down.

“Be careful what you wish for.” He says into your ear and drops you on your ass. The overwhelming cold and seaweed cover your body as you try to stand only to be wiped out by a wave.

Steve is howling in hysterics, clapping like a seal.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna kill you!” You don’t sound too threatening, if anything your wet appearance was akin to that of a wet kitten just meowing in protest.

Steve runs and dodges you, moving in a zig-zag pattern as you try your best to chase him through the water.

“You’ll never catch me!” He fronts.

Anticipating him to move in a pattern, you wait till he moves to the left to start running to the right and knock him down against the sand with a hmph!

“Gotcha!” You exclaim, putting your hands on his chest and completely unaware of the position you’re in.

You’re straddling him, legs on both sides and your face is inches away from his trying to catch your breath. He smells like salt and champagne.

He’s frozen in place too, one of his hands firmly on your lower back.

Your eyes flicker from his to the rest of his face, focusing on the moles decorating his neck. He can smell your perfume still even through the saltwater. It inundates his senses, disorienting him momentarily. Your necklace dangles and touches his chin, taunting him.

This is the moment you’ve been looking for, the one that the movies oh so love to display over and over again. Something in you tells you to do it, to just lean down and see if he tastes like you do.

Instead, he pushes you to the side softly, catching his breath and patting your thigh. “I guess you got me.”

You nod, taking your dress by the ends of it to walk back onto dry land and leave him sitting there. You’d see him back at the hotel anyway.

@mochminnie, @wolfish-willow

#steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x reader #stranger things imagine #joe keery x reader

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dakotafinely · 3 years

Note

I mean if you want too u do that to tho.

(Also let's call the baker lady carol grey she's a serious badass but has a heart of gold. And has 2 granddaughters)

I am LOVING HER ALREADY!!

Alright, alright now I gotta do it, so buckle up kids!

Man, this gets long because I have ideas~ so-

The bullet’s hailed on them like a hell-storm. The sound of them ricocheting scratched against their ears. Leonard lifted himself to take a few shots back whenever he felt he could take the risk.

Danny had a bullet graze his shootin’ arm. And Mickey was trying to find an exit that the police wouldn’t notice. So Leonard was the only thing keeping the police from capturing them completely. Leonard himself was just surprised that the police’s aim was getting better.

“I found one!” Mickey practically shouted, barely heard above the gunshots being fired at them. Mickey lead them into an shaft that had barely enough space to for them to wiggle through. None of them relaxed, even as the hail storm of bullet’s began to fade. Even when they reached the other side and landed themselves in an alleyway of New York City.

Actually, how’d they get topside through a shaft anyways?

“Mickey, why’d you take us topside?” Leonard asked as he helped Danny up. Mickey shrugged “You said you wanted outta there, this was the only exit that didn’t have popo hanging around it.” Mickey responded before he winced. The adrenaline now fading he felt a sharp pain in his tail. Looking down to see a gunshot oozing with blood.

Mickey let out a quiet curse at the pain and curled himself up so the wound would be off the floor, placing pressure on it to stop the blood.

That’s when Carol came by. A white woman with grey roots slowly taking over her hair, placed in a tight floofy ponytail. She was short and hefty and had freckles that looked like constellations on her skin. She was walking by whistling a tune she’d heard on the radio when she overheard the Mud Dogs.

“Mickey when’d you get shot?”

“You act like I’d actually know, all I know is it hurts.”

To see three tall Yokai standing in an alleyway, two with injuries and the third clearly trying to figure out how they’d even get to patch themselves up. She couldn’t help but step in.

“Excuse me,” she spoke, catching the three’s attention with startled stares “you look like you could use some help, I have a good first aid kit in my bakery just down the street. Come on,” she offers with the small tilt of her head out the alleyway. She begun slowly walking over to them as she spoke, trying to get a closer look at them.

Danny has bruises on his face, his clothes torn up from scrapes when they were running away. He held caution as he stared at her, trying to find any hidden motive in her movements.

Leonard had more cuts than Danny did. Scrapes and bruises covering his arms and his torso too. As he kept frequently turning around to shoot off the police and make them lag behind. He was too busy taking a look at Mickey’s most recent gunshot, trying to make sure it hadn’t been infected due to it being on Mickey’s tail.

Mickey also had a gunshot graze his torso, tho it was mostly scab by now and barely bleed when it first appeared. It was what had started the chase, as the police caught them off guard. Shooting at them ruthlessly the whole way through.

“Okay!” Mickey stated enthusiastically, Danny looked at him with a small glare.

“Mickey!” Danny hissed at him, Mickey looked at the rat Yokai with confusion. What? She offered, and they kinda needed the help.

“Danny’s right,” Leonard spoke up, standing up and pointing his pistol at Carol. Who stared at him, un-phased by the gun pointed at her forehead “how do we know you’re not a policemen with a cloakin’ broach?” he growled.

She let out a light huff and a small smiles as she gently moved the gun from her forehead.

“Do you honestly think a policeman would offer help to you?” She asked, almost amused by the idea. Leonard hesitates, before putting his gun away. Danny scoffs a bit.

“Are you kiddin’ me Loathsome? That proves nothing!” he states, begin right in his statement completely.

“Not like we have many other choices Dan,” Leonard retorts before picking up Mickey. Danny reluctantly following behind with no where else to go. Plus, who else was gonna bail his idiot’s out of trouble they get themselves into?

The small group walks down a basically empty street, cars driving by occasionally as they turn to find a small and homey Bakery awaiting them. A small sign hung outside the building that said “Knead Bread? - The Grey’s Family Bakery” in beautiful calligraphy.

Mickey looks smugly at Danny, who sticks his tongue out back at him. Leonard rolls his eyes, knowing what the two are doing without having to look at them.

Carol pulls out a key, hearing the door give a soft click as she unlocked it. Opening it up and turning on the lights.

“Go ahead and take a seat boys, I’ll bring out the first aid kit for ya,” she said, gesturing to the only table in the room with exactly three seats. Leonard plops down Mickey onto the chair and Danny plops himself across from him.

“See Danny, you should know better than to doubt my instincts!” Mickey stated with pride.

“Mickey, your last instinct told you to put jelly and mustard on a sandwich,” Leonard spoke with obvious disgust at just the idea. Crossing his arms and staring with a little bewilderment at the Eel Yokai.

“And it was good! It’s not my fault you didn’t try it!” Mickey retorted with a tiny pout. Carol chuckled as she walked back over, overhearing the boys conversation as she put down the first aid kit. Opening it up and pulling out some bandages and cleaning alcohol.

Silence over fell the room as Leonard and Carol began to patch up the other two with gunshot wounds.

“So, do I get names for you three or is that confidential?” Carol lightly jokes as finished cleaning Danny’s wound.

“Mickey!”

“Danny.”

“Leonard, and you?”

“I’m Carol, so what’s three boys like you running away from the police for?”

Silence again, the three glancing at each other. Carol picks up on the unexpected tension from the question and sighs.

“You don’t have to tell, forgive me. I grew up in the south and being noisy is a way of life there. Sometimes I forget big cities like this don’t like people who ask to many questions,” She rambles a bit, trying to put the boys at ease. It seems to work as Leonard let’s out a small breath of relief. Finishing up on bandaging both Mickey’s wounds.

“So then why’d you move here instead of staying south?” Mickey asked earning a light wack from Leonard. Getting a tiny “Hey!” from the eel Yokai.

“We shouldn’t be askin’ about her life when she’s not askin’ about ours,” Leonard crossed his arms like a parent scolding a child. Something he often had to do with Mickey, who had no sense of boundaries or when something was inappropriate to ask. It was about the respect of privacy.

Carol gave a light chuckle as she finished wrapping up Danny’s arm.

“No, I don’t mind! Call me an open book if you will, now why don’t you kids stay for a little while and have some cookies,” Carol offered, before Danny could reject for the group. His own stomach rumbled, than Leonard’s followed suit.

Carol chuckled at the response “I’ll take that as a yes, come on, I have a fresh batch in the back just from yesterday.” Carol lead them past the counter, the displays empty today. As she hadn’t opened up the shop yet.

Mickey took a glance around, stopping at three pictures.

One was of Carol standing with two beautiful women, one Asian and the other Indian, holding up a small Asian baby with joy. Standing as close to each other as possible. All joyously coddling the baby in the center.

The other was of a black man and a Hispanic woman with Carol in the center. Holding up a baby equally as prideful as the other picture. The two held their arms around her as the grinned at the camera.

The third was of both families with Carol, looping arms with the Asian woman and the black man. Two girls, looking around ten or eleven, sat in front of them, one Asian and the other clearly mixed. The Indian woman hung off the Asian woman, with a gentle hand on the Asian girl in front of them. The Hispanic woman was standing, clearly pregnant with a hand on the black man.

“Who’re they?” Mickey asks Carol, who’s handing out peanut butter cookies to the other two. Who are eating them like it’s their last meal they’ll ever have. Carol walks over and offers a cookie before looking at the photo’s with a smile.

“Ah, that’s my daughter, Evelyn. And her wife, Anika,” she points to the Asian woman “And that’s my son, Dajuan, and his wife Daniela. Those are their kids, Dakota and Valeria respectively.” Carol explains point to each person in the picture.

“Daniela is pregnant with twins we just found out! Due sometime next month,” Carol adds with a glowing smile, Dan and Leonard walking over in curiosity.

“Okay but they don’t look anything like you,” Dan states getting an elbow from Leonard, who shoots him a glare. Dan stares back, come on! Most of the time humans look similar to each other when they’re related!

“Ah, that’s because Evelyn and Dajuan were adopted. Dajuan’s the oldest by a couple years. I adopted him when he was twelve and when Evelyn was ten,” Carol let’s out a small sigh at the memory.

“It wasn’t easy, but eventually the three of us became an inseparable family.” She add as Mickey takes another cookie off her plate. She looks to Danny with a fond smile.

“You act a lot like my boy. Very wary of everyone ya meet, but once you get to know him. You’ve got someone on your side through hell and back.” She hums looking back to the pictures. Danny down at his cookies with a small smile on his face, man she hit ‘em in the soft spot.

“Of course, you’re just like my Evelyn,” Carol says looking to Mickey, who immediately lights up “always curious, always willing to go where ever the wind takes you. But when she sees something or someone she grows close to, she will drop anything to help you.” Carol looks back at the picture and smiles again before sighing.

“Alright you three, best you get home. I have customers due soon and I need to get ready, plus I don’t think other human’s will take so kindly to three Yokai in my kitchen,” she jokes shooing them out through the back door.

They all say a quick, oddly heartfelt, goodbye to Carol. Who directs them to a portal just down the next alleyway that’s far from any police down in the Hidden City. The boy’s have more questions, but as the bell dings in the front, signaling a customer. They part ways.

Heading to one of their three bases to lay low until the police are off their trail.

[The only thing I hate about writing mini-fics is that I NEVER know how to end them, so I hope you liked it! I also hope it’s okay how I made Carol. I just got a whole flood of ideas for while writing this so I had to add them. I hope no one seem ooc, since we don’t see much of the Mud Dogs it’s kinda hard to create pin their personalities ya know? But I hope you guys like it as much as I had fun writing it!!]

#rottmnt #rot tmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt mud dogs #rottmnt ask #thanks for the ask!#ask response #rottmnt loathsome leonard #rottmnt dastardly danny #rottmnt malicious mickey #malicious mickey #dastardly danny #loathsome leonard #rottmnt fanfic

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scxrsgxrd · 3 years

Note

After subby Mickey loses the game, maybe she doesn't punish him right away. She just tells him she's going to later, which drives him even more crazy. She's not even punishing him yet, and he doesn't even know what it will be, but he's dreading it and trying to sweet talk his way out of it. That's when she decides he needs to be quiet, and whips out the new ball gag she ordered online. Maybe she ordered other toys too. Whatever she needs to remind him she's in charge 😈

Anon, you read my mind👀

“What now, mommy?” Mickey’s voice was meek, and he had just lapped up the last drop of his cum off her thigh. The salty taste lingered on his tongue, and he watched as she inhaled deeply, sliding her thumb across his still parted lips.

“Mommy needs to work, baby.” She purred, placing a light kiss on his forehead before she swung her legs off the bed and padded to her desk.

“But.. but,” Mickey started, but she glanced at him over her shoulder, signalling for him to keep schtum.

Mickey gulped, he knew he should comply, that any act of disobedience would only worsen his correction; but he had lost her game, fair and square, and the nagging voice in his head was desperate to know of his punishment, of her prize.

Surely it can’t be worse than the cage, right? Right. Nothing can be harsher than having my dick compressed against a metal cage for the whole damn day.

Mickey nodded to himself, but he knew that he shouldn’t underestimate her. He also knew that he shouldn’t be pushing his luck, but the anticipation was making his head throb, he had to know what she had in store for him, he just had to.

“You know I’ve been a good boy for weeks, I at least deserve a hint.” Mickey whined, standing up and scurrying over to where she was seated, his large hands connecting with her shoulders as he placed a light kiss on the nape of her neck.

Mickey’s girlfriend didn’t have many rules when it came to their domestic life, for the most part she left him to his own devices when they were home together, allowing for him to snuggle up to her on the couch as they watched one of his favourite low-budget horror movies. But, there was one instruction she had laid out on the table: when she was working, Mickey was not to disturb her. Mickey knew this, of course, but any scrap of self preservation was lost to the overwhelming feeling of apprehension he held towards his impending punishment.

The thing about Mickey was that, when he was anxious, the word vomit occurred. Once the word vomit started, there was just no stopping it, and whether she was working or not, it was happening.

“Do you want some coffee? I can make you a coffee.”

“You’ve been working for like, ten minutes, it’s time for your break.”

“I really think we should talk about this. I mean, can’t we play the game again? I didn’t understand the rules.”

“I think a punishment is a little harsh, don’t you? I mean, I could do something else instead? I’ll do laundry for the next month, I’ll cook you pancakes every morning for the next year-”

He was cut off by his girlfriend pushing her chair away from her desk and rising to her feet, humming to herself as she knelt down next to the bed and pulled out a box, a box that Mickey had seen many times before.

“Come here.” She ordered, and Mickey side-stepped his way over to her, wary of whatever instrument she was going to produce from her box. But she sat down, her legs crossed as she waited for Mickey to settle himself down opposite her.

“Now baby, what rule do we have for when I’m working?” She placed the box on her lap, her fingers coiling around something he couldn’t quite see. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip and craned his head upwards to get a peep into the box, but she cocked her eyebrow and shook her head.

“M’not supposed to disturb you.” Mickey muttered, lowering his head to give her the full effect of his puppy dog eyes, his shoulders falling as he stuck out his bottom lip.

“Don’t try that shit with me.” She hissed, setting the box aside as she kept her weapon of choice in her hand: the ball gag she had ordered online a few days earlier.

“You know your mouth can be.. wonderful.” She leant forward to give him a small peck on the lips, retreating almost immediately after her lips had made contact with his.

“But right now, I think you need to be reminded of our little rule, of who exactly is in charge.” She rose to her feet, the ball gag still in her hand as she stepped around the back of him, kneeling down once more. Mickey shivered as he felt her forefinger trace down his spine, her breath on the back of his neck as she unbuckled the gag.

“Open wide.”

He parted his lips as wide as he could, closing his eyes as he felt her reach over his head to position the gag, and seconds later he felt the rubber ball sit just behind his teeth, preventing him from closing his lips. She tightened the strap, buckling it up once she was happy that the positioning was comfortable for Mickey.

“Now, I want you to listen to me. If you want this to stop then you tap on my forearm twice, okay?” She helped him stand up, tilting her head to gaze at him as he towered above her. Mickey nodded, he could already feel copious amounts of saliva building up in his mouth behind the ball, and his jaw was beginning to ache.

“You’re going to keep the gag in until I finish my work, maybe then you’ll learn that my rules are not optional.”

It was only a matter minutes before Mickey felt his stomach gargle, and he watched as his girlfriend suppressed a giggle as she furiously typed in response to an email. Mickey groaned, picturing the leftover pizza he had left from the previous night, which only made him salivate further. He lay back on the bed, hands cradling his stomach as he found himself fantasizing about the pizza he had saved for that night, the pizza that had a stuffed crust and extra cheese.

When he watched his girlfriend close the lid of her laptop he tried to exclaim halleluiah, but it came out as some sort of muffled groan. He frowned and furrowed his eyebrows, deeply hating the fact that he couldn’t vocalise his relief at the end of her work day.

She approached the bed, and Mickey whipped round so that she had easier access to the buckle, but she laughed. This laugh wasn’t a hearty one though, it was a mischievous one, the one she used whenever she had thought up a new correction for Mickey.

“You look so pretty with that gag, little boy.” She stroked her hand through his hair, and Mickey felt his cheeks flush at her praise.

“So I figured I might keep it in a little longer. See, that’s not the only thing I bought.” A smirk formed on her lips, and Mickey’s eyes widened slightly. He knew that this was it, that her reward for winning her game was forthcoming.

Her box was still on the floor, and she laid her eyes on the other toy she had purchased: the spanking paddle. She snaked her fingers around the handle, bringing it before Mickey’s gaze so that he could study it for a few seconds.

“I want you on your hands and knees honey, with your cute little ass in the air for me.” She gave him a smile, but he knew it was disingenuous. Mickey positioned himself on all fours, and he felt her stroke the paddle against his left ass cheek, giving it a small tap before moving on to his right ass cheek. He could already feel the excitement getting to him, the glimmer of agitation in his stomach as she kept sliding the paddle against his ass.

She wasn’t going to spank him right away; she wanted the eagerness to build up within him before she made her first move. It wasn’t long before Mickey was trembling, a muffled whine leaving him as she continued to only lightly tap him with the paddle. He jolted as she slid the paddle between his legs, pressing it against his cock, making his back arch and another, louder whine erupt from him. Once she felt that he was already hard, she knew it was time for her to begin.

The paddle balanced in her hand as she angled it towards his left ass cheek, bringing it outward before slamming it against him, the noise echoing around the room as it made contact with Mickey’s skin. Mickey groaned, the faux leather was harsh against his soft skin, the stinging sensation beginning to spread across the cheek as he fisted the bed covers beneath him.

“You like that, baby? You want another?” Before Mickey had chance to respond she spanked him once more, and this time a bright red mark greeted her once she pulled back. She knew that as this was Mickey’s first time with a paddle, she had to take it easy on him.

Her hand grabbed his right ass cheek, giving it a small squeeze as she watched Mickey shudder, his knees buckling slightly as she rolled her palm against him. There was pre-cum leaking onto the bedcovers, and saliva dripping down Mickey’s chin and onto the pillows beneath him. She set the paddle down and tapped on Mickey’s hip, indicating for him to position himself so that he was facing her.

When she removed the ball gag Mickey rolled his jaw left to right, he was sure that he’d had lockjaw, that once she removed the gag he’d never be able to speak again. But, after a few minutes he was able to comfortably close his mouth again, and there was one thing he knew couldn’t wait any longer.

His pizza.

He sprang off the bed, almost forgetting about the spanking he had just endured, and immediately winced and doubled over. The stretch of jumping up had only irritated his already sore ass cheek even further, but he was determined to get to his pizza, even of it was the last thing he did.

His girlfriend watched, her face a picture of confusion as Mickey did a kind of jump skip down the stairs, and after each step she could hear his “ow, eee, oo.” until he had finally reached his pizza. There was a loud, distorted squeaking sound as Mickey plonked himself on the couch to the devour every last scrap of the Italian delight he had been daydreaming about.

As much as she wanted to reprimand him for shooting off without paying her any mind, she couldn’t help but feel a smile spread across her lips at his almost adorable yet bratty tendencies.

#subby!mickey #mickey stuff #mickey drabble #villains 2019

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yikeswtfmate · 4 years

Text

Strange Times || Ch. 4

previous part // Strange Times - Series Masterlist // next part

Summary: Y/N’s found a buyer, but Raymond is less than happy about it. He just hopes his worries won’t become reality.

Pairing: Raymond (Charlie Hunnam - The Gentlemen, 2020) x Reader

Warnings: swearing; mentions of violence

A/N: SURPRISE! i know i promised a drabble, but i’m guessing you won’t mind this instead 😇 now i can take a break from it again until you start getting restless again 😂 joking!....unless...

A/N 2: ok, i know! and you’ll know why i’m sorry after you’ll have read this BUT in my defence, this is already 2,600 words long and i had to stop somewhere, or it would’ve gotten to at least 5,000 if not more

Mickey is starting to lose his patience with Y/N. Watching her over the rim of his glass, he notices there’s something off about her, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Rosalind’s not home yet, having had to finish some other business or another at the garage, which is a shame because sometimes he needs her to understand his own sister.

He’s annoyed with how secretive Y/N’s been, and although he’s trying to give her space, as his wife warned he should, he’s dissatisfied with the morsels of information she’s been feeding him. This is not right, and he knows all too well how stubborn she could be, so even if she’d be in deep shit, the little asshole would still not tell him.

He grinds his teeth, intent on having a chat with Ray, because that fucker’s been like a fucking vault as well. Are they hiding something from him? He wonders, his gaze shifting to the man who’s yet again seated next to Y/N on the sofa. Mickey’s eyebrow twitches involuntarily when he catches the look that passes between those two, and what the fuck is going on.

“Right, so pleasantries aside, I have good news.” Y/N speaks up, tearing her eyes away from Ray. “I have a buyer.”

Ray takes a sharp intake of breath, and leans towards the bottle of whiskey that’s been sitting before them. Mickey closes his eyes for a brief second, hoping and praying to all that’s fucking mighty his sister did not stir shit up again. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted her when she’d only tell him it’s about the business. He knew there was something fishy when she’d just disappear for hours and days on end and reappear with a bright smile and a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Y/N, what the fuck did you do?” Mickey demands, and his jaw is clenched, eyes shut as he tries to gain some semblance of composure.

“Solved your shit, that’s what I did.” She shrugs, grabbing the whiskey for herself and pouring some more in her own glass. “Look, I really don’t want to listen to your whole spiel about how I’m not supposed to interfere, and how this is your shit that you have to deal with. We’ve already established you fucked it up royally last time. All of us here know that I don’t really have anything to gain from you selling, except to not have to listen to you bitch and moan all the time about how tired and stressed you are.”

There’s a moment of reluctant acknowledgement from him so she continues. “I have my connections here, and believe it or not, a pair of tits and some brains actually got me further than your little game with Berger did. Now.” Y/N places the glass on the table and interlaces her fingers on her knees, waiting for their full attention. “Are you interested in what I have for you or not?”

Raymond sighs beside her. He doesn’t like this more than he likes the drunkards that shout as they pass his house at 2 in the morning, but the truth of the matter is that Mickey does want to sell, for all the bravado he’s been putting up for the past year. Plus, even though he’s known Y/N for close to two months now, she’s had plenty of opportunities to show him just how clever she is. He supposes there’s no point in dismissing what she has to say, for all the wariness he’s holding in his heart, and not just because she’d be up to bash Mickey’s face in.

Ray can see the same thoughts going through his boss’ head. He can read them right in the small crease on his forehead and the tick of his jaw. He doesn’t like it more than he does, but he’ll have to at least hear what she has to say.

Mickey stands up, hands in his pockets, and Ray already knows he’ll start pacing around the room until he’s completely satisfied. They will be in here for a long time, and having Y/N involved, it can only mean that this plan will have to be not only airtight, but bulletproof and secured in bubble wrap, just to be sure.

This plan is not airtight, and Ray definitely doesn’t like it. He has a feeling in his bones that this will go sideways, but he keeps his mouth shut. He’s already expressed his thoughts to Mickey, who didn’t want to hear it. For all the holes Ray’s tried poking through Y/N’s plan, she seems awfully confident this Oscar Christie would come through. He can’t understand exactly why Mickey agreed to everything in the end, but Ray can just fucking hope it’s not because he’s getting desperate to sell. It could only mean it could get sloppy. Again. And he sure as fuck does not want this to get sloppy when Y/N is right in the middle of it.

He is still wary, and after the fifth time he’s got Y/N’s voicemail, he’s starting to feel more jittery than he should in normal circumstances.

“I think we should go in.” Ray mutters, with a shake of his head, not tearing his eyes away from the warehouse.

It’s dark, and there’s only one functioning lamp in the whole lot and if that doesn’t seem foreboding he’d eat his own fucking hand. He doesn’t like that Y/N is in there alone, a request Christie made clear that if broken, the whole deal’s off. He doesn’t like that this does not take place like a normal conversation in a bar or Mickey’s office or anywhere else more civilised for that matter, because what the fuck are they? They are just selling weed, for fuck’s sake, why the fuck is Y/N in a fucking dark warehouse like an animal being prepared for slaughter? Sure, they’ve done a lot of shit in warehouses themselves, but that’s just it. A lot of unspoken of shit.

“Would you stop shaking your fucking leg?” Mickey snaps. “We agreed on giving her half an hour. I don’t like this either, but she still has 5 more minutes.”

Ray is ready to bound out the door when the time’s up and Y/N is still nowhere to be seen. The sound of a phone cuts through the tension and silence that’s been stretching between the four men in the car. He turns to Mickey, who takes out his phone and reads the message, and Ray feels like the wind is knocked out of his lungs when he sees his boss throw the door open and bolting towards the warehouse without an explanation.

Bunny and Big Dave quickly follow after him, guns at the ready, but it takes Ray one more second to react before running blindly after them. They find Mickey frantically searching what Ray realises with a sinking dread to be an empty building. Christie is not here, his men are not here, but most importantly, Y/N is not here.

“Boss, what is going on?” Bunny asks quietly.

Mickey mumbles something unintelligible, forcing Big Dave to fearfully prod further, awaiting an explanation.

“THEY TOOK MY FUCKING SISTER!”

The words bounce off the empty walls, and Raymond feels like he’s spiralling down into insanity.

Two hours later, they have a request for ransom. Mickey is to give up the business in exchange for nothing, and Christie will gracefully allow him, his wife and his sister to leave the country without having all of them hounded down and killed. He would accept any man who’d like to stay on for him, but he supposes – correctly – that they’re all too loyal to Pearson to even offer. He’ll even let Mickey keep the money he already has, just out of the goodness of his heart. Cunt.

Mickey is pacing again, after having finished nearly an entire full glass of whiskey, thrown over the desk in the middle of the office, kicked a lamp and ripped off the curtains. Ray wishes he could let out his frustration and fucking dread out as well, but he’s forcing his brain to work in overdrive, coming up with a solution whose top priority (and only result he actually cares about) is to get Y/N out of this. His gaze shifts towards Rosalind, who’s sat on the ledge of the window, seemingly ignoring them both, having kept quiet ever since she arrived at the apartment. Ray supposes if there’s anyone in this entire world who understands Y/N completely, it’s her. But before he can place his laptop down in order to go over to her and discuss the idea that’s starting to swirl in his mind, Mickey slams down a hand on the wall.

“Right. Ray, I need you to find out where the fuck this little cunt operates and get me Guy on the phone. We’re smoking this little shit out.”

“You can’t bomb him.” Ray says, an impatient sigh escaping his lips. “If you do that, the next thing you’ll see is Y/N’s body on your doorstep. It will literally mean war.”

“It already means war!” He roars. “I will rip this fucker limb for limb if he thinks he can lay a hand on my sister and get away with it and my business.”

“We’re not bombing him.” Ray says finally.

Mickey turns to his underling, his left eyebrow twitching, jaw clenched so tight he might actually bite through his teeth. His nose is red, but he’s not so drunk that his face would become purple with madness anytime soon. Rosalind is still quiet and to be completely fair, it’s starting to tick Ray off. Why the fuck isn’t she helping? At least to get her rabid husband to calm down enough to start thinking rationally.

“I don’t remember anyone putting you in charge.” Mickey’s voice strangely resembles that of a snake, but Ray’s heard it enough times to not be bothered. At this point in time, Mickey is the last person he gives a fig about. “I am the boss and if I say we’ll smoke them out, that’s exactly what you’re going to arrange.”

“I couldn’t give a dog’s arse what you say, Mickey. This is a stupid plan and it’s bound to get her killed so you can either sit down and shut up until I come up with a plan or sober up enough to help me.”

There’s a beat of silence in the room, enough to hear Rosalind shift in her seat towards them. She looks at her husband, who’s staring incredulously at Raymond, but he’s shocked into silence at the blatant disobedience. For all of Ray’s cold blood, Y/N found his every weakness and became the heart of them.

“I don’t know what little game you’ve been playing with my baby sister, you fucking dickhead, but that does not mean that I will accept you disrespecting me like this.” Mickey sneers.

Raymond stands up, an inch between their faces now. Rosalind watches them warily, sure that if there will be any sudden movements around them, they’d just throw themselves at each other’s throats like rabid dogs.

“I’m not playing any game with your sister.” Ray seethes, a finger pointing to Mickey’s face. “I care about her and I’m trying to get her home safe, without starting a turf war, something that your fucking ego could never understand. Now. Will you fucking sober up so we can sort this shit out or are you going to keep on acting like a little cunt?”

Rosalind jumps up then, pushing them apart right when Mickey gets a hold of Ray’s jacket. She feels the rumbling of their growls in their chests, right under her hands. She hates these stupid displays of masculinity, especially when now is not the fucking time.

“Calm down.” She says.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Ray shouts, anger stretching his patience thin. “This is your fucking fault.” He goes on, finger still pointing at Mickey. “You went on with this motherfucking stupid plan, thinking that just because she’s a bird, she’ll get a better deal out of it than you ever would. Instead of dealing with it yourself or let me fucking do it, you agreed to let her go, when you know you could’ve easily found a way around it, you sick fuck! Or how about this, huh? How about not going forward with it at all for fuck’s sake because it’s not like YOU COULDN’T FIND ANYONE ELSE TO BUY YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS WITHOUT INVOLVING Y/N.”

Raymond ignores the little step forward Mickey takes, and Rosalind’s hand on his chest would do nothing to stop him if they’d actually get around to throwing punches. Ray doesn’t want that though. It would mean more wasted time, and he’s already wasted enough, so he grabs his laptop, set on going down to Coach’s gym. He needs help, and apparently he won’t get any from Mickey anytime soon.

Ray stops in the doorway, and turns to where the two are still standing, watching him. “Listen to me, Mickey, and listen well. She might be smarter than all of us, but you better pray to all that’s fucking mighty that no one even touched her before I get to her or I will fucking rip your eyes out and I don’t give a bloody shit you’re my fucking boss.”

One hour later, Raymond is punching a gym bag, his knuckles are bleeding and sweat is dripping on the mat. The AC does little to relieve the tension in his muscles, and even after chucking his shirt off, he feels too hot, too restless, too panicked to sit still. Coach does everything he can to have a proper conversation with him, although he has to push his glasses up on his nose with every rattle of the bag.

His boys are scattered around the gym, now sitting all quietly, after they’d first gone berserk at the news. Raymond supposes he shouldn’t have been surprised that Y/N’s both met all of them, as well as gotten them all completely smitten.

“You know you gotta talk this out with Mickey, right?” Coach says. “I get that you got at it badly, mate, but he’s her brother. You both want to get her out of this.” A slight rumble from the room makes him roll his eyes. “We all want to get her out of this, but we can’t if we won’t work together.”

Raymond stops with his fist in the air. He looks at Coach briefly, and although he fucking hates to admit it, of course he’s right. Clenching his teeth, he turns around to grab a towel, only to be faced with an obviously just as irked Mickey.

“Rosalind might have a plan.” He says with a nod, enough to show he’s willing to get over their row without hard feelings. “She has some messages from Y/N that she’s sent a few weeks back. Ros thinks Y/N sent them as a precaution in case some shit like this would happen.”

Raymond fixes his glasses and nods, a faint smile on his lips. “Smart girl.”

“I need you and your guys as well, Coach.” Mickey says.

“Whatever you need, Mr Pearson sir.” Primetime offers.

Mickey turns to Coach’s protégés, who are now starting to huddle together, ready to follow orders. A look in Coach’s direction would be enough to know that the man would’ve preferred not to get them involved in this, but he knows damn well this would be an interdiction they would never comply with. So, with a sigh, he nods his assent.

“Let’s get going then.” Mickey says. “I need to have some words with this motherfucker who thinks he can mess with my family.”

***

Taglist:

@myfriendmademedothisxd @alainabooks143 @rvmanova @aisling1985

#raymond x reader #ray x reader #charlie hunnam x reader #the gentlemen #raymond the gentlemen #the gentlemen 2020 #ray the gentlemen #the gentlemen fanfiction #raymond fanfiction #charlie hunnam fanfiction #charlie hunnam fanfic #charlie hunnam fic #charlie hunnam

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timelord-winchester-22b · 4 years

Text

Extraordinary

So this isn’t a request, but just something I finished writing recently and decided to give y’all. Inspired by the song ‘Flowers’ by James Spaite. So, naturally, the character who is the reader’s boyfriend is named James. This is basically unedited, like most of my pieces so be wary of misspellings and such. Hope you enjoy anyhow.

You’d known you would have to introduce them eventually. If everything worked out the way you’d wanted it to, you definitely would have to. You knew from the first date with James that you didn’t want the two of you to go your separate ways. You also wanted nothing less than leaving the Doctor forever. So you’d have to introduce one to the other eventually. You did not expect it to be when the Doctor showed up unannounced during one of your dates. James was in the middle of telling his newest amusing story of a particularly wild co-worker when you saw the Doctor stumble into the very nice doors of the very nice restaurant you were sat in and you spit the expensive wine you had been taking a sip of back into the expensive glass.

“You okay?” James frowned, cutting off his story to glance over his shoulder.

“Oh god” was all you said, placing your glass back down with a sigh as the Doctor finally spotted you, her eyes lighting up as she switched directions to head over to you.

“Do you know her?” James asked, turning to watch you sigh in exasperation. But, although you had told her firmly that she was not to interrupt any of your regular life without at the very least a warning you couldn’t help the excitement that spiked at the sight of her. You knew the moment you saw her that you would likely not get to stick around to enjoy the food you had just ordered, but you also knew that you would probably find yourself in the middle of an adventure much more exciting than the night you had planned. The Doctor called your name, as if the two of you weren’t already watching each other when she reached your table.

“Hi! I know I’m breaking the ‘no interrupting regular human life things’ rule but this is very important and I wouldn’t want you to miss it! Hi, I’m the Doctor!” She finished off with a grin, holding out a hand to James. He blinked at her, obviously taken aback by her forwardness, or maybe the speed at which she spoke, but still held out a hand for her to shake eagerly.

“You must be James then! The fam and I have heard the best things about you! I’m very sorry but I’m afraid I’m going to steal your date. You can come along too if you’d like!” She went on before you could stop her.

“Doctor” You scolded, getting her attention immediately with your tone. “You can’t just pull me out of the middle of a date. Couldn’t this wait until after? You have the time don’t you?”

“Actually this time the answer would be no”

As if on cue, there was an explosion by the front of the restaurant, followed immediately by screams and a few familiar voices shouting “Doctor!”.

You jumped up without thinking, the instincts of a companion kicking in as you followed the Doctor out of the restaurant at a run. You almost didn’t acknowledge James picking up your coat and purse to follow you. You stopped at the ruined front door when the Doctor stopped to shout something to the rest of the Fam outside. Glancing up the street, you felt fear kick in as you spotted the familiar form of a Cyberman. The only reaction you allowed yourself however was a sigh.

“What is that?” James asked from over your shoulder, seeing the recognition in your eyes. You glanced back at him.

“I’m sorry, but I’m gonna need a raincheck on that dinner”

James blinked at you, still looking startled, but nodded and helped you into your coat.

“I’ll keep ahold of this?” He suggested, holding up your purse. “As long as I have this, you have to come back, right?” You couldn’t help the small smile that crossed your face at how well he seemed to be taking the situation. You leaned in to give him a kiss before pushing him away with a smile.

“Keep it safe” You told him, and he nodded, picking up on the second meaning of ‘keep yourself safe’, before leaving. The Doctor took your hand and you ran in the opposite direction, towards the danger.

--------------------

It had been a long night and approaching morning when Earth was safe once more. You and the Fam exchanged glances and relieved sighs when you were sure it was over. Ryan started laughing and the leftover adrenaline mixed with the relief had you and Yaz joining in. Graham looked nearly horrified at you all, shaking his head and the Doctor grinned.

“Hey, weren’t you on a date?” Ryan remembered suddenly.

“Oh no! We interrupted your date didn’t we?” Yaz added.

“Oh my god, James” You remembered. “And he has my phone. Yaz do you think you could..?”

She was already handing it to you and you smiled gratefully, dialling your number and holding the phone to your ear.

“James! You’re okay! Oh, that’s great. Yeah, I know, I have a lot to explain”

--------------------

James took the whole ‘travelling through time and space’ thing very well. Far better than you had, and far better than you had expected him to. Even the Doctor seemed surprised, mumbling something about a PE teacher and someone named Mickey and how they responded. You’d offered to let him come along, with the Doctor and the Fam’s blessing of course. You had all decided that there was always room in the Tardis for more, metaphorially and literally. You were a little let down when he declined, but you understood. This life wasn’t for everyone.

“I’ll be here, something for you to come home to” James told you with a smile when you set off once again for the first time since you’d told him. You smiled back, promising him that you would, and agreeing to be careful when he asked for that too. He watched with a smile as you clambered into the Tardis, seeing the Doctor turn from the console to beam at you before the door had closed completely.

--------------------

It worked. You were a little surprised at the lack of issues with the arrangement, although you certainly weren’t complaining. James was always there for you to come home to, and you made sure to never keep him waiting for too long. You missed him too, of course, so you made sure to have the Doctor drop you home for a bit after every few adventures. You’d come to realize that you seemed more tethered to Earth than any of the Fam, and perhaps they had begun spending more time home too. It was a win for all of you. At least, you had thought it was.

You were settled on the couch and on your phone, laughing at the random updates the Doctor felt the need to supply you with while you were home, when James called your name from the kitchen table. You finished up a reply and sent it as you were looking up.

“We need to talk”

The words filled you with dread. You recognized them from plenty of TV shows and movies and they were never followed by anything good.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, leaving your phone on the table beside the couch to join him in the kitchen.

“It’s about the Doctor”

“You want me to stop travelling with her?” You questioned, the first thing that came to mind.

“What? No! No of course not, that’s your choice. It's more about us”

“You wanna break up with me?”

“Hold on!” He stopped you, placing a hand over yours. “Please don’t assume the worst. You don’t have anything to freak out about right now, okay?” He waited for you to nod before continuing.

“I know I’m very important to you, and our time together is special to both of us” He said, smiling a little when you nodded enthusiastically. “But it would take an idiot to not notice how you feel” You nodded again. “About her” He added, and this time you frowned.

“Just hear me out, don’t say anything” He insisted, stopping you before you could reply. “I’ve seen the way you look at her, how you smile when you see her name on your phone, and how excited you get when you see the Tardis. I know you travel the universe and everything but it’s more than that. You like her, and I mean really like her. I can tell” When you nodded this time, it was a little more hesitantly.

“You are the most amazing person I have ever met, and I am so incredibly lucky to have been your boyfriend. But you are just… extraordinary. And you deserve someone just as insanely amazing as you are. And I know ‘everyone is special’ and all, don’t try to pull that on me. This isn’t about me. This is about her and you. You don’t have to worry about anything, you’ll finish today with a best friend and a partner. You’ll still have your tour guide and your someone to come home to. The roles are just going to be switched, as long as you want it. Okay?” You nodded once more, a sad smile crossing your face.

“I do love you, you know?” You said, and he mirrored your smile.

“I know. But you love her more”

“Yeah”

“And she loves you”

“You’re sure about that?” You frowned, anxiety creeping up. What if she didn’t, and you ended up with nothing?

“I’m certain” He assured you, squeezing your hand gently. “Go give her a call” He gave you a reassuring smile and you held his gaze as you crossed the room to pick up your phone, making a quick call to ask the Doctor to pick you up.

“So” You started awkwardly once you’d hung up. “Nothing.. Nothing changes between us right? I’ll still come home to see you..?”

“Of course” He assured you, moving to hug you. You returned the embrace, gathering the material of his jacket in your hands. “We’ll be roommates. You can come home anytime you want, stay for as long as you want, and bring me stories of the universe” He pulled away and gave you a reassuring smile. “I’ll always be here, something for you to come home to” You heard the Tardis then, the steady, grinding sound of her materializing.

“Now go get your girl” James grinned, and you couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Love you” You told him quickly, giving him a kiss on the cheek before bolting. The Tardis was parked in her usual spot, about ten feet from the front door. You ran out with a grin on your face and the door opened only a moment after and the Doctor stood there, her coat missing and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Those welding goggles she’d taken a shine to hanging around her neck.

“Everything alright?” The Doctor asked, concerned. You never asked her to pick you up earlier than your scheduled time. But you knew if you had waited you’d lose your nerve to do what you had been planning. The Doctor repeated your name and you realized you had stopped at your door, just taking her in. You took a breath, started forward and didn’t stop until you’d all but collided with her, trapping her surprised gasp in a kiss. She tensed at first, and you were terrified in that moment until she relaxed and began to kiss you eagerly back, her hands going to your waist. You smiled into the kiss and felt her doing the same, wrapping your arms around her neck. You heard Ryan and Yaz making some kind of commotion in the background but you elected to ignore that for the time being. The Doctor was smiling as brightly as you were when you parted, but there was confusion in her eyes.

“What about James?”

“We came to an agreement. I’ll still have a best friend and a partner, with a little role reversal. That is, if you wanted to of course. I mean you don’t have to, James had an idea that you liked me as much as I like you and he suggested that I go for it but I guess I-”

“Oh hush” She shushed you, pulling you in for another kiss before you could respond. You didn’t argue.

#doctor who x reader #doctor who #x reader #reader insert #doctor who reader insert #thirteen x reader #thirteenth doctor x reader #thirteen #thirteenth doctor #13 #13 x reader #First Doctor #the doctor x reader #fanfiction #doctor who fanfiction

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mxtantrights · 4 years

Text

✹ 　PART SEVEN (DAMSEL)

HAWKINS, INDIANA

NOVEMBER 7, 1983

"Can I speak with Jessie Glendall please?" A lady who I hadn't met asks my history teacher. She's very lucky that I don't like inhabiting the same space as Carol. I raise my hand in an instant and she looks to me, waves me over.

I don't even wait for Ms.Sean to excuse me.

I grab my bag and my books in my hands and walk to the door. The lady holds it open for me and lets me out before she leaves the classroom. Her hair is long and brown, but it's not styled like any other adult women I know. Seems like she has her own style, it's straight down her back no curls, waves, nothing.

She begins walking down the hall and I follow her. I follow her all the way to her office I presume because she walks in like she owns it and sits in the chair behind the desk. I sit across from her and set my bag and books down in the chair next to me.

I can see a file on her desk. All alone.

I watch as she adjusts her skirt in her seat and then looks at me. "Oh! I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself to you, clumsy me. I'm your college advisor, you can call me Lisa."

Her hand is stretched out for me to take.

College.

"Did I scare you? I'm sorry, I know college is a scary thing to some people. But I'm here to help you with any questions you may have, or any questions you don't have, anything." Her hand is still out as she tells me that.

I take it quickly. "Yeah- no I'm not scared. Well. I- that's a whole thing. But I've only just met you."

"Don't worry. It's actually good to be scared because it shows that you care about your future. So I've go to ask," And I think to myself oh no, here we go. Here we fucking go. "What are your hobbies?"

What?

"I like music- but shouldn't you be asking what I want to be?" I ask hesitantly. It was nice question that not a lot of people ask. It was nice to be asked that.

She laughs a bit at that. "I'm not like everyone else who's asking those questions that scare you. I want to know about you, so I can maybe not scare you. And you can come back here willingly."

I let out a weird sort of chuckle.

"That's nice." It's all I've got.

"I know. So, what about music? You play any instruments? In a band? Choir?" She dives right in and I can feel a bit of relief come to me.

"I'm not in anything but I just got a guitar a few months ago. And I've been singing for as long as I can remember." It felt easy with her, like I was talking to a friend. Someone who wouldn't judge me. Like Benny.

She nods along to the words I say. "So you like singing, and guitar. They have schools for that you know?"

I lean back in my seat. Yeah I know that. I just know that there is no way I'm getting there with my parent's full support. I know that they might tell me no. They might tell me to keep it as a hobby, but not a career path. Theres the tiniest chance that they would be okay with it, to my face. And then behind my back they'll be waiting for me to fail.

I've spent more time thinking about this than I do homework.

"I just don't think it's an actual possibility for me. My brother is in Stanford for Law right now. I feel like if I go to school for music then I'm becoming the black sheep." I try to put into words, but it sounds better in my head.

I watch her nod and then she goes into her drawer. She moves things around quite a lot actually before she pulls out a paper. When she does, she takes a hold of the file in her other hand and holds both up for me to see.

"Jessie I've seen you're grades." She puts bluntly.

Here we go again. Here we go.

"Look, I'm new here I just moved-"

"From Texas I know. And I have your grades from there too and they look pretty good. Now it's not uncommon for this kind of thing to happen but we're in November and your grades haven't picked up at all since you started." She waves the file around with my name on it as she speaks.

"I know but-" She gives me a look that says she wasn't finished so I stop talking.

"I see here that you had music back in sophomore year. Aced that with a 100. And then I see on your schedule right now you aren't taking any arts." She begins and hands me my file. I take it as she continues, "It's my job to see these things and advise you, not tell you like your parents, or pressure you like your friends. And I see a girl who could be doing amazing things."

I scoff and open my file. My grades from Texas are staring me right in the face. I can't lie about it. And I can't hide that 100. What else am I gonna do besides own it?

"Okay. Yeah. Maybe I could. But when I enrolled here the art class was full and so was music. And my dad wanted me to get my required stuff out of the way so I took P.E." I tell her, closing my file back and handing it to her.

She doesn't take it. Instead she holds out the other paper in her hand. I take it and take a look at whats on it. It's a list of art schools. Fricking Juilliard is at the top of it. I didn't even think that was an option for me. If Stanford was impossible then that was whatever comes after.

I look at her, since it's all I can do. I'm not entirely speechless but damn near it.

"I think you should put that list in your file, and start getting real with yourself and others about what you want."

I look back down at the two separate things. The two things that have been forged spirit since I moved here. And she's right. I knew it deep down all this time. I wanted to pursue music, it's been my dream since I could have dreams. I just haven't been confident enough to stand in it.

My hands put the list into my file.

I can't believe it, but then another part of me is just screaming. ABOUT TIME!

I look back up at Lisa. My college advisor. "What next?"

"I'll meet you guys there, over." I hear my brother speak- most likely into his walkie. I don't think he's talking to himself in the mirror or something.

I open his door and place my hands on my hips. "I don't know what you think you're doing but no."

He sighs very loudly, making me close his door and shush him.

Our parents are in bed early tonight. I haven't the faintest clue why but it cut into my guitar time. It's painfully quiet in this house meaning I can most definitely hear my dork brother speaking on his loud ass walkie talkie.

"Jessie! I have to go my friends need me!" He whisper-shouts at me.

Need him for what? It's dark and raining. There is no way he's going out there to play D&D with them right now. It's too dangerous for him to bike, and its way too late.

"It is late, it is raining and I cannot let you go out there." I shake my head at him.

"You have-" He starts yelling but I cover his mouth with my hand.

"Lower your voice!" I whisper again. Can't he take the hint that he needs to be quieter? If he was even gonna get through my parents he was walking into a losing battle. I take my hand from his mouth.

"It's Will, he's missing."

I-

holy shit.

What the fuck?!

"I'm coming with you then. Just meet me downstairs in a minute." I tell him and he nods his head. I walk over to his door before thinking to myself, I hope he doesn't pull some shit with me. I turn back and point at him. "Do. Not. Leave me."

He nods again.

The boys are standing outside of the little makeshift cabin. Their flashlights are shining on something inside but I can barely see with the rain. It's pelting down on me, on all of us so hard I think I might be swimming in it.

"Is it him?" I shout over the loud pouring water.

They don't move.

It can't be a dead body right? They would scream out if they saw something like that, I would. Or maybe I'd be paralyzed with fear. Too scared to form words. Too scared to do much of anything.

I take that as a sign to evoke my older sister duties and slightly push them out of the way. As I do, I can see into the cabin. A kid, looking right back at all of us.

"We need to get her out of this rain," I start ordering while taking off my jacket.

The kid isn't saying much of anything. I hand her my jacket, slowly, and she takes it.

"My house." Mike adds.

Yeah because she was definitely not coming home with me and Mickey.

"Alright Wheeler, you're house."

I watch from the staircase as the boys throw their questions at her. We figured out that she's a she when she stepped more into the light. And now she's on Mike's couch, not saying much of anything again. She hasn't said a word since we brought her here.

She sat on the back of my bike and held onto me very lightly.

The boy's start going overboard but before I can tell them to calm down, Mike seems to do so. Seems that he wasn't he tiny asshole I pegged him to be. He brings her some spare clothes from the laundry.

I watch as she inspects them, like she needs to be wary of everything she comes into contact with.

Then she's on her feet, peeling off my jacket and about to pull up her shirt when I jump forward.

"Wait a minute!" I shout with the others.

Mike points to the bathroom and tells her to change in there.

The little girl picks up the clothes and follows his instructions. I see her take herself to the bathroom and look around. Mike tries to close the door to give her privacy but she grips it tight. I think this is the part where I step up.

"You don't want it closed?" I ask her

She takes a second before finally, finally answering. "No."

I watch Mike speak to her, and they both agree to keep the door open a few inches. Mike walks away, back to the other boys. But I stay where I am, turned around of course, to block the crack in the door.

I don't pay attention to their conversation. I’m too in my own head about this little kid.

What the actual fuck.

Where did she come from? Why was she just out in the rain like that? What's her name? Where are her parents? Why doesn't she speak much?

This can't be good.

All roads lead to this is really fucked up. Some fucked up shit is happening here in this small town. A girl, with a shaved head, who can barely speak is just in the woods all by herself. I don't like the way any of this sounds.

"Jessie?"

I look at the boys now who are all looking at me. "What?"

"Mike's plan, did you hear it?" Dustin asks me and I shake my head. He sighs, but tells me anyways. "She'll stay here, then mike will get her to come to his front door in the morning aldrin the bell. And his mom will handle it."

What kind of plan is that?!

No.

"That- and then what happens to her?" I ask them expectantly.

"Who cares, she's not our problem!" Lucas barks back to me.

Not their problem? What? "Well she is now. She is now that we all decided to bring her back here and clothe her."

"Look we can't tell anyone. We'll all be put on lockdown Jessie." Mickey.

He's right. But theres something going on. Maybe because they're kind of too young to see all the scenarios. But I'm old enough to know things. Scary things that happen to people, to girls. I have a really bad feeling about all of this.

What if she's running from something or someone?

She opens the door from behind me and I turn around as she steps closer to me.

My father's feminist agenda is screaming at me. Right now. This is it.

I look down at her, "I don't know if you can understand me or not," I crouch down to be at her level and see her take a breath. "you'll be safe here for the night. With Mike."

She nods her head once at me to let me know she understands. I hope.

All I know is, I feel the need to protect her. Meaning I'm gonna have to wake up bright and early Tomorrow morning to derail Mike's plan. My parents don't come into my room- god I really hope not- and If I have to hide her in my closet for God'sakes I will.

#steve harrington x oc #steve harrington fic #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine #steve harrington imagine #stranger things #steve harrington #heresss part 7 #DAMSEL #okay here's part seven!!#things are picking up #found the read more button!!!

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savsfm · 4 years

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madelaine petsch, twenty-three, cisfemale, she/her. — SAVANNAH WALSH was just spotted out and about in los angeles with their signature VINTAGE DENIM OVERALLS. the paparazzi tried to be subtle, but the ACTRESS caught them snapping pictures and DARTED INTO THE NEAREST SHOP. they jetted off to A SECLUDED, PRIVATE BEACHFRONT before getting asked about HER UPCOMING SERIES FINALE this time, which kinda coincides with their notorious WARY attitude towards fame, doesn’t it?

HELLO hello , i’m bay & this is my sweet lil savannah ! actress , sports fanatic , dog lover , confirmed adhd ball of energy ( as far as you know ) . if she had a label , it’d be the benevolent , and . . . well , let’s just get right into this !

· ☆ . 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜 !

full legal name : savannah raine walsh . –– her mother had a hand in her middle name , and boy was that woman a hippie . age : twenty three . gender : cis-female . nicknames : sav , savvy , little walsh ( when in context with her older brother ) pronouns : ( she/her ) occupation : actress ; sophie turner career claim . inspiration : listen . . . there’s a reason i chose sophie . also jane sloane . details : growing up with just her father and her brother , for the most part , sav was very much the tomboy type , and despite her father’s history in the mlb , the walsh kids often spent time away from him and lived a relatively normal life . this made sav’s climb to fame a bit more of an adjustment , but people seem to love the down - to - earth way she has about her . after wrapping an iconic fantasy series ( think game of thrones ) and starring in a blockbuster ( think dark phoenix ) , everyone seems to be wondering what’s next for america’s favorite sweetheart .

· ☆ . 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 !

micah “mickey” walsh came from nothing . he was a natural born athlete with the drive of a kid who had nothing to lose and everything to gain , and he could’ve stepped right out of high school and onto a minor league baseball diamond , but his parents –– loony as they seemed –– insisted he go to college first , and he spent four years playing for vanderbilt , where he met his wife marnie . they fell in love , hard and fast , and by their senior year , they were throwing together a shotgun wedding in order to say their vows before her baby bump began to show .

the first few years were a whirlwind with mickey never giving up his dreams of having a family and having a professional baseball career. two years in , he was called up to the big leagues , and thus began the ICONIC career of mickey walsh , second baseman and a monster at bat . after three years in the mlb , the walsh family grew , and when SAVANNAH RAINE was born in chicago , illinois , wrigley field filled to capacity celebrated .

three years later , mickey was traded to the boston red sox , and the walsh family moved again . for some time , things were well , and they appeared to be living the dream . mickey loved boston , and boston loved the walshes , so much so , that contract after contract was renewed at fenway . when savannah was five , however , tragedy struck and her mother fell ILL . by the time sav was six , she’d succumbed entirely to her illness , leaving her and her brother , luke , to grow up without a mother .

the walsh family was devastated , mickey taking indefinite time off from his career to be with his children . his parents moved to boston shortly there after to help out with things around the house . mickey tried to keep a happy way about him , but after a season out , everyone could tell he was itching to get back , if only for the DISTRACTION of the game . . . so luke & sav grew up darting around fenway park . they attended every home game , stayed up to watch all of the away games , and they genuinely loved it . babysitters chased after them in exhaustion , and their grandparents did the most they could to raise them right .

savannah was always a FIERY little thing , and it had nothing to do with the red locks she’d inherited from her mother . she was joyful and playful , kind and a lot for any one person to handful . she asked too many questions and had QUITE a knack for theatrics . most of all , though , from a young age , she was simply good . . . and she really never expected to get into acting .

all of that energy had to go somewhere , though , and seeing as she was dramatic as is . . . she was enrolled in dance classes and school theatre projects . she took a liking to acting , starring in school plays and toying around writing her own short films . in high school , savannah was everywhere . . . spread far too thin . but hey ! keeping busy is what this girl lives for !

at sixteen , she enrolled at an acting camp during the summer in los angeles , and this is when she found out that her family and friends weren’t simply full of shit , like she’d assumed . she had talent , and she could make a career of acting . . . and unlike others , her rise was a bit too quick . she spent the summer going to auditions , and her BREAKOUT role was one of her first . . . v much a sansa on game of thrones type of deal .

sav finished off high school through a personal tutor and online schooling , but NOT going to college , for either of the walsh kids , was never an option . so she wagered a gap year from her father , so she could film seasons 2 & 3 of her show . other seasons were filmed during summer months , on breaks , and on long weekends . she SPED through her degree at new york university , and graduated in 3 , freeing up time to act full time .

there’s a GENUINE way about her that just . . . captures people , when she isn’t in character . in interviews , on talk shows , on red carpets . . . she’s just blatantly very soft , very sweet . skeptics think it’s an act , but anyone who KNOWS savannah knows that the only thing she fronts for the camera is constant energy . ya girl is tired . . . all the time , but will never admit to it !

after one of the most watched television series finales of all time and a franchise film –– along the lines of x-men/marvel –– stunning the box office , savannah is taking a moment to SLOW DOWN , because she’s never exactly done so . . . right now , she’s trying to figure out where to take her career next with a pile of scripts sitting at home and the world of the silver screen at her fingertips .

· ☆ . 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 & 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚜 !

like i said , miss savannah is very outgoing , very bubbly . she’s good with people . . . but let it be known that she’s an introvert at heart . my girl is queen of leaving parties early .

definitely the lost-in-a-daydream type , and she’s always been a bit of a QUIET hopeless romantic . less grand gestures and magnificent romantic adventures , more of just . . . a genuine believer in love . which . . . CERTAINLY lines up with the way her life threw her for a loop , just after nineteen , and one (1) nate carpenter absolutely turned her world upside down . it took all of one chance meeting , and sav was completely smitten . despite the fact that their dads kind of sort of ?? hate each other , they are happily planning on spending the rest of their lives together , dipping out of Famous People Things by 9:30pm at the latest .

painfully honest . . . maybe a little too honest. if she’s not careful , she can occasionally say too much and put her foot in her mouth . no amount of media training can REALLY rein it in . . . so her publicist is well paid and honestly . . . she has a hell of a time keeping spoilers to herself , so a lot of interviews regarding big plot lines are often with castmates aksdjfha

has a dog named hercules ! not named after the greek hero . . . or the disney movie . . . but rather named after the massive beast in the sandlot . her hercules is a mutt she rescued as a pup . they’re not really sure what he is . . . only that he’s kinda big and definitely has some german shepherd in him .

sports fanatic af . her dad played professional baseball , and now he coaches for the new york yankees . her brother is a household name for hockey fans . . . and , well , catch her in a bright blue dodgers jersey with the name carpenter on the back , every baseball season !!

she hasn’t TOTALLY grown out of her tomboy-ness . she still wakes up early to go surfing , still does far better in beat up converse than she does in HEELS , insists on the thrill of doing her own stunts , curses like a damn sailor , and loves a good worn in denim . queen ! of ! rocking ! overalls !

thinks about her mom a lot , but tries not to do to the fact that it just fuckin . . . makes her sad and anxious . the grief , she can handle , but the nerves ? her mother died of breast cancer , and savannah STUBBORNLY refuses to get tested to see if she’s got the genetic marker for it .

still visits her grandparents in boston often

has a very .. . strange relationship with fame . she knows it’s fleeting , and she doesn’t really care for her private life being prodded into . in fact , that’s the worst part of it all . it’s taken a toll on her self - esteem , here and there , but for the most part. . . . she tries not to let it get to her . if she could do the acting thing without the fame , she honestly would .

ok that is . . . my girl savannah . i hope y’all love her as much as i do bc i am vERY EXCITED ok !! HIT ME WITH A LIKE & I’LL COME SWOOPING IN FOR PLOTTING !!

#luxuria:intro #* / . . . INTRO . / *#this is a DAMN mess y'all

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daybreak-academy-fanfic · 4 years

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Daybreak Academy: Chapter 44

King Ozzie And Princess Sabi

Summary: In which one of my oldest OCs becomes next year’s new student. Word Count: 1,778 First | Previous | Next ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆

Apparently, being a Dandelion meant that you had to greet future students when they were scheduled to come outside of an open house night. Yes, Ventus had to help. All five of the Dandelions were expected to help. The young boy gave a small groan to himself as he thought the whole ordeal over; how does he continuously find himself roped in this kind of stuff?

“Are we clear on the plan?” Brain asked Ven and Lauriam five minutes before they were meant to start the tour.

“I believe so.” the oldest of the boys agreed. “Ventus is to remain with the prospective student and her guardian for the entirety of the escort. You are going to start out with the group, giving them the school's history while leading them to the main building. Once they reach the main building, I'll replace you and guide them to the dorms. On the way, we'll discuss the house system.”

Lauriam paused for a moment before looking over at Brain.

“Who did you say the legal guardian was?”

Brain smirked. “Get this, you hear of one Mickey Mouse?”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently it’s his brother. Estranged, of course, but the resemblance is still there. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit they call him.”

A small jolt of realization hit Ven. He looked from Lauriam to Brain in confusion. “So does that mean the new student isn't human?”

Brain and Lauriam then looked at Ventus as if he had grown a second head. The youngest of them shrunk a little in embarrassment.

“Daybreak doesn't even accept non-human students, Ven.” Brain told him- his voice holding a hint of mirth.

“Not yet.” Lauriam interjected.

Brain shrugged. “True enough. But we still gotta be on our best behavior. Right Ven?”

“R-right!” the boy stammered. “The very best!”

. . .

Sabrina was a very impatient kid. Bouncing on her toes, she looked everywhere around the front gates for something to do. Oswald, on the other hand, was admiring the school's architecture, mumbling something to himself that it seemed similar to another school they'd looked at. But Sabrina wasn't listening.

“Look alive, princess,” Oswald told her, using a firmer voice to get her attention, “I think our escorts are heading this way.”

Sabrina jumped a little and turned her attention to the two boys approaching them. One of the boys was dressed in nothing but black, accentuated with a fedora with a single red feather poking out. The other was much smaller than the first -maybe even about her height- with golden blonde hair that stuck out in various directions. Sabrina's eyes widened at this boy. Timid as he was, Sabrina knew that she was going to meet a new friend today.

Likewise, once he had gotten a good view of this new girl, Ventus couldn't stop himself from gawking at her. Her raven black hair laid neatly against her shoulders, her chocolate brown eyes twinkled as she thoughtfully studied him. The girl's light skin only seemed to glow under the sunlight, making her stand out to Ven even more.

“Welcome to Daybreak Academy!” Brain happily greeted the rabbit and the girl, snapping Ven out of his thoughts. “It's a pleasure to meet you!”

“The pleasure is ours.” the rabbit smiled. “I assume that you are our escorts for today?”

“You bet!” Brain grinned. “My name is Brain, and my friend here is Ventus.”

Sabrina looked at Brain for a moment before turning her attention to Ven. The boy froze as she headed toward him. Now much closer to him, Ven could barely smell vanilla perfume coming from her. It made his head spin and his heart beat faster than it had been.

“Hi,” she greeted, offering her hand out to him, “My name is Sabrina. Despite what the bunny says, I am not a princess.”

“You should be.” Ven sighed without considering his words. When he did realize what he had said, he quickly shook his head and took her hand. “My name is Ventus.” he then told her, a bit too quickly. “But you can call me Ven if you want. Most people do.”

Sabrina gave him a warm smile as she shook his hand. “The pleasure is mine, Ven.”

“Now Ven,” Brain teased, “I told you to be on your best behavior- which meant not flirting with our guests.”

“Flirting?!” Ven sputtered, jumping away from Sabrina in fright. “I-I wasn't…!”

Everyone started to laugh at him. Ventus could feel himself shrink. This already wasn't going in his favor- why did he decided to be a Dandelion again? These people were ruthless.

. . .

Oswald was the only one who listened to Brain give the school's history. Sabrina instead decided to walk right beside Ventus the entire time. She kept looking at him as if she wanted to say something, but she never did. It made Ven incredibly nervous, to say the least. It was a small miracle when they reached the main building. Brain bid them all farewell before smoothly introducing (and ditching them with) Lauriam.

“You'll have to forgive me if I say anything out of place.” Lauriam told Oswald with a respectful bow. “It's not every day you see someone...” (he paused for a moment, lulling on the correct term) “Not human.”

“It's fine.” the rabbit claimed with a roll of his shoulder. “You'd be amazed of the discrimination some of us face even when we look the same.”

“Oh, really?” Lauriam quite genuinely marveled. “Well, I can assure you that we do our best to combat such issues. Our house system here at Daybreak Academy is meant to bring out the best in students, not to separate them.”

And with that, the second leg of the tour began. Lauriam went on about the houses and how students were sorted- making sure to mention that it was common for siblings to not make it into the same house. All the while, Sabrina continued to make odd faces at Ventus.

“What house are you in, Ven?”

Ventus jumped a little at Sabrina's voice. It was the first time she had spoken to him since their first meeting. She was even giving him a curious little tilt of her head. Oswald and Lauriam didn't seem to be listening; instead going over how the dorms were segregated.

“Leopardus.” he carefully admitted.

“Do you like it?”

Ven absently scratched the back of his head. “Y-yeah, I guess so.” he decided in a wary tone. “Almost all of my friends are in Leopardus. And… and once a month our whole house sets up an art gallery filled with art made by every student. It's pretty cool.”

“Is it hard making friends outside of your house?”

“Um… No? I don't think so. I mean, Lauriam and Brain are in a different house than I'm in, but we all get along pretty well, I think.”

Sabrina studied him for a moment. “Do you think we could be friends?” she casually inquired. “Even if we weren’t in the same house?”

A sudden shock ran up Ven's spine- which he almost snapped as he turned to gawk at her.

“I...” he started to sputtered. “I would...”

“If you do not mind me asking,” Lauriam then curiously brought up- perfectly stopped Ven from finishing his thought. “Would you mind sharing how you two ended up as family? It's not everyday that a rabbit adopts a human.”

A fond smile crossed the rabbit's face, but the girl groaned.

“No…” she whined. “Don't get him started...”

Despite her protest, Oswald could not be stopped at the request.

“It was a few years after my wife Ortensia and I were married.” the rabbit told Lauriam, a fond grin etched on his face. “She and I tried to have kids, but it just wasn't working no matter how we tried. So we decided, 'maybe we should adopt' and went to several orphanages that spring. Then along comes Sabrina, such a sweet little thing, all alone and wearing this real ugly glare on her face as she watched Ortensia and I talk to the other kids. She refused to talk to Orentsia. But for me...”

“I told him his ears looked stupid...” Sabrina grumbled under her breath. “And he laughed.”

“I did.” Oswald confirmed- his grin growing wider. “While Ortensia talked to the other kids, I just sat with Sabrina. We didn't say anything to each other- I wanted her to make the first move, so to speak. By the time Ortensia and I had to go, all the kids Ortensia talked to were begging for her to take them home with her. But when I got up to leave, Sabrina took my hand, looked me dead in the eye with this really blank stare, and said 'Are you going to come back?' And at that moment, I knew she was meant to be ours.”

“So gross.” Sabrina retorted as she pretended to gag.

“It sounds like a lovely story.” Lauriam noted, a small smile appearing on his lips.

“Isn't it?” Oswald hummed. “It's one of my favorites.”

Sabrina let out another groan of annoyance that lead the old rabbit and oldest student into a hearty laughter. He didn't mean to, but Ven also started to chuckle a bit. The girl pouted, less than pleased that everyone was pretty much making fun of her, but she let it slide with a small smile. She wasn't going to admit it anytime soon, but it was one of her favorite stories as well.

. . .

“Thank you for showing us around today, Ven.” Oswald smiled as he shook the boy's hand. “We'll keep Daybreak Academy in mind come late July.”

For what seemed like the millionth time that day, Ven gave a sheepish smile as he nervously scratched the back of his head. “Great to hear.” he said, sounding even less confident than he looked.

“Promise you'll see me at new student orientations in August?” Sabrina curiously asked, looking up at Ven with wide, pleading eyes. He gulped at her. For a fleeting moment, the words 'how cute' floated in his head before he quickly shook them away. But he looked back at her and found he couldn't resist that curious tilt of her head.

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.” he admitted, a small grin making its way onto his lips. Sabrina let out a happy little gasp before letting her own bright smile appear. Ven's heart started to beat faster when he saw it. If she came back, he'd be able to see that smile every day. He liked that thought. He might have even blushed at the thought.

So… how long was summer vacation, again?

#daybreak academy #chapter 44 #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Ventus #Brain #Lauriam #Sabrina #Oswald #Season 1

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melacka · 4 years

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A (very late) DW Secret Santa

Hello @blueyesandleatherjacket, I have a ridiculously late DW Secret Santa for you!

First, I’m so sorry it’s this late. I was travelling for most of Dec/Jan and then was having some issues coming up with the motivation. I chose to use your prompt “ the superior race of the Time Lords can be sick but when they happen to catch a bad cold, Rose is the only one able to help them”.

Title: In Sickness by Melacka

Rating: General Audiences

Pairing: Nine/Rose

Summary: The Doctor is Not Sick, no matter what Rose thinks. And he's turned up at her London bedroom in the middle of the night to prove it.

Word Count: 2388

You can read it on AO3 here or keep reading below.

A huge thank you to @dwsecretsanta for organising the event and sorry once again for it being so late. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Rose woke with a start when she heard a strange noise. Taking a moment to look around her, she remembered that she was in her room back home instead of her room in the TARDIS. Noises were common enough when she was sleeping on the TARDIS, but she always had the comfort of the Doctor’s presence there with her. Always ready to rush to her defence, whether she needed it or not. Now, it was just her and her mum at home and there was a strange noise outside her room. She held her breath and strained her ears, trying to figure out what it was and where it had come from. Just as she had convinced herself that it was nothing and was settling herself back down, she heard it again. Unmistakeable, this time. Someone was trying to get in through her window. Her locked window.

Forcing down her instinctive panic, she slid out of her bed and moved silently to the window, grabbing the nearest heavy object she could reach – one of her boots – and she waited. She didn’t really know what she planned to do with her boot against an unknown intruder, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to wait in bed for them to come in.

After a few moments of breathless silence, she heard a familiar voice curse quietly, followed by a whirring noise she recognised all too well. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and flung the curtain aside, just as the Doctor was slowly opening the window, sonic screwdriver in hand. In other circumstances, she probably would have laughed at the look of shock on his face. It was so rare that she had an opportunity to surprise the Doctor, after all. But right now, she was too annoyed to really enjoy it.

“Doctor?” she whispered, wary of waking her mother.

“Oh – ah—” he said sheepishly. “Hello.”

“Hello?” she hissed incredulously. “What’re you playin’ at?”

She dropped her boot to the floor and quickly turned the light on as the Doctor climbed casually into the room.

“Well that took longer than I expected it to.”

“Keep your voice down,” she said warily. “I don’t want to have to explain what you’re doing in my bedroom to Mum.”

He grimaced at that and she smirked slightly as she closed the window and readjusted the curtains.

“She still doesn’t believe me when I say there’s nothin’ between us.”

“Nothin’?”

“Well, nothin’ for her to be concerned about anyway.”

The Doctor didn’t say anything to this but just nodded stiffly. Rose watched him curiously.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” she reminded him after the silence started to feel awkward. “And why you thought sneakin’ into my bedroom in the middle of the night was a good idea.”

“I just thought I’d check up on you, is all. That alright?”

“Course it’s alright,” she said automatically.

“Well that’s alright, then.”

Rose watched as he started to wander around her room with an air of cheery ease. She’d never realised before just how small her bedroom was until the imposing presence of the Doctor was in there with her.

“And what do you mean, check up on me?” she said suddenly. “I thought you weren’t comin’ to get me ‘til Thursday.”

“It’s not Thursday?” he asked innocently, poking through the jumble of stuff on her dressing table. “My time sense must be off.”

“Doctor,” she said tiredly as she sat back down on her bed. “why’re you here? Really?” When he didn’t answer her immediately, she grew concerned. “When you dropped me off you told me you were going to get some parts for the TARDIS.”

“Yeah.”

“Did somethin’ happen? Are you okay?”

“Course I’m okay.”

He said it cheerfully enough, but she was still suspicious. He paced to the very edge of her room and then turned around and paced back. He bumped her dressing table as he turned to make another lap and she winced at the sound it made.

“Doctor?”

She watched him carefully, looking for any signs that something was out of the ordinary with him. This was hard to do, of course, since there wasn’t much about him that was ordinary, but she’d gotten pretty good at reading him in their travels together and her gut told her that something was wrong.

“You’ve got a lovely room here, Rose Tyler,” he said loudly, and she shushed him quickly. He sent a manic grin her way and she smiled reluctantly back at him. “Very cosy.”

“You mean small.”

“Not at all!” he exclaimed, and she shushed him again, glancing nervously at her door. “’Sides, everythin’ seems small compared to the TARDIS.”

“Guess so,” she said with a sigh, leaning back against her pillows. “If you’re not going to tell me why you’re here, I’m going back to sleep.”

“Sleep?”

“Don’t act like you’ve never heard of it, Doctor. Us humans do it quite a bit.”

“Too much,” he said sulkily.

“I can’t help it if I need my beauty sleep, Doctor,” she said teasingly.

“No point, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“Beauty sleep,” he said. “No point, not for you.”

“Oh.”

She looked down at her hands, reminding herself not to be hurt, that it was just his way.

“You’re already beautiful, Rose Tyler, no help required.”

Her head shot up and she stared at him in shock. He met her gaze for a moment before turning away, clearly embarrassed.

“Doctor—” she whispered.

“Right, I better leave you to it then.”

He glanced at the window and then back at her.

“You don’t have to go, Doctor,” she said gently. “You can stay here.”

“I can?”

“Yeah.” She scooted over and patted the bed in invitation. “You’ll just have to be nice to Mum in the morning, so she doesn’t kick you out.”

The Doctor stared at her, a look of panic on his face.

“Doctor?”

Rose watched him apprehensively as he shook his head violently.

“What?” she said. “What is it? I know my mum can be a bit—”

“It’s not your mum,” he bit out.

“Then what is it?”

He just shook his head again and she stood up slowly.

“Doctor, what is it?” she cried, starting to panic a little herself now. “What is it? Let me help you!”

The Doctor didn’t reply, he just covered his nose and mouth with both hands. She met his eyes and was shocked by what she saw in them: fear. Genuine fear.

“Doctor,” she said, injecting a calm she didn’t feel into her voice. “Whatever it is, we can work it out.”

He stared at her and she nodded reassuringly at him, holding her hands out.

“Please, just let me help you.”

He shook his head again and threw his hands up in front of him.

“Rose, stop! Don’t come any closer!”

She froze immediately, hands still raised towards him, fear eating away at her.

“Doctor,” she murmured quietly again, “what’s wrong?”

His face scrunched up as if he was in pain and he opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“Doc—”

She was interrupted as a sudden bout of sneezing hit the Doctor. He sneezed loudly five times in quick succession as Rose stared at him in disbelief.

“Are you sick?”

“No!” he cried, sniffling a little pathetically.

“I thought Time Lords didn’t get sick.”

“I am not sick. I do not get sick—”

His point was undermined slightly by the enormous sneeze that overtook him mid-sentence. Rose grinned at him and he glared.

“Are you sure you’re not—”

“I’m fine!”

He sneezed again and Rose sighed.

“I understand why you would think I’m sick,” he said, beginning his restless pacing again, “because if you were experiencing the same symptoms, you would definitely be sick.”

“Uh huh.”

“But I can assure you that I am not sick.”

“Course not,” Rose said with a smirk. “So why are you here, exactly? Just wanted to show me how not sick you are?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Doctor, did you come here so I could take care of you?” Rose asked gently, trying not to smile at how disgruntled he looked.

“Course not,” he muttered. “I don’t need taking care of, Rose.”

She handed him a box of tissues and said, “You take care of me when I’m sick.”

“Yes, but that’s because you’re human, I’m not. Superior biology, and all that.”

“Right, how could I forget?” Rose said dryly. “You’re not looking all that superior right now.”

“Oh, very nice!”

“Doctor, you’re tremblin’!”

Rose raised a hand to his forehead, trying to feel if he was feverish.

“Stop fussin’!” he said irritably, batting her hand away. “I’m tellin’ you, I’m not sick!”

“And I’m telling you—”

“Rose?” Jackie called out from behind the closed door. “Are you alright, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, Mum!” she called out, signalling the Doctor to be quiet as she opened the door. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Have you got someone in there with you?” Jackie asked suspiciously. “Is that Mickey sneaking in again?”

Rose glanced nervously at the Doctor who raised his eyebrows enquiringly at her before turning her eyes back to her mother.

“No, it’s not Mickey.”

“Who is it then?”

“Only me,” the Doctor said cheerfully, squeezing his head into the small gap left by Rose. “Evening, Jackie.”

“You!” Jackie said accusingly. “You’re not supposed to be back for another two days!”

“It’s fine, Mum,” Rose said quickly. “He’s just checkin’ in.”

“Oh, is he now? And just how did he get in, then? I didn’t hear the door.”

“Well—”

“Came in through the window,” the Doctor said before Rose could come up with a more reasonable explanation.

Rose closed her eyes, anticipating the explosion. Jackie didn’t disappoint.

“Through the window?” she cried. “Just who do you think you are? Sneaking into my daughter’s bedroom in the middle of the night like some kind of pervert—”

“Who you callin’ a pervert?”

“I always knew you were trouble—”

“Hang on a minute—”

“Taking advantage of a young girl—”

“I would never take advantage of Rose!”

“I’ve half a mind to slap you again—”

“I’d like to see you try!”

“Stop it!” Rose cried, finally running out of patience. “Just stop it, both of you!”

The Doctor and Jackie glared at each other in silence and Rose rolled her eyes.

“Look, it’s my bedroom and it’s my decision, alright? Mum, I promise he’s not here to take advantage of me or anythin’ like that. He just needs my help, that’s all.”

“But Rose—”

“Mum, just trust me, alright? I’m not gonna disappear.”

There was a moment of tense silence before Jackie nodded slowly.

“He’s not feelin’ well, Mum.”

“I’m fine!” the Doctor interjected indignantly.

“He shouldn’t be alone when he’s sick, Mum, please.”

The expression on Jackie’s face softened slightly as she glanced at the Doctor.

“Alright, sweetheart,” she said eventually. “I’ll expect you both for breakfast, shall I?”

“I won’t be—” the Doctor started to say.

“If you’re going to be here at this time of night, you’ll be here for breakfast as well,” Jackie insisted. “We do have standards, Doctor, and I expect you to stick to them.”

“Right.”

“Tea and toast, Doctor, just what you need to feel better.”

Rose grinned at him in triumph.

“But first, bed. Both of you, now.” Jackie leaned forward to press a kiss to Rose’s cheek. “Fully clothed, mind you.”

“Mum!”

“And I’ll see you both in the morning.”

With that, she flounced off to her bedroom and closed the door. Rose slowly closed her own door and turned to look at the Doctor as he sat down on her bed and put his head in his hands.

“Domestics,” he muttered without looking up at her.

“It’s domestic to have people look out for you?” Rose said tiredly. “Come on then, we can argue more about it tomorrow.”

“Over breakfast,” he said sullenly. “With your mother.”

“Yes, that would be the best time.”

“Will Rickey the idiot be joining us as well?”

“Doubt it,” Rose replied with a yawn. “Boots off, Doctor.”

“What?”

“No boots in my bed.”

He stared down at his boots as if he’d never noticed them there before.

“Boots and coat off, everythin’ else is up to you.”

“Right.”

Rose flicked the light off and climbed back into bed, listening to the sound of boots hitting the floor and his leather coat being dropped on her dressing table. He hesitated then and Rose suppressed a giggle.

“Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll not be takin’ advantage of you either.”

“Domestics,” he growled in disgust.

“Come to bed, Doctor. You’ll feel better after a bit of sleep.”

Rose held her breath as he slipped into the bed next to her and tried not to be too obvious as she let it out. She’d never shared a bed with the Doctor before. It certainly wasn’t how she’d pictured it.

Not that she’d pictured it.

Not much, anyway.

She tried to force herself to relax and listened to the comforting sound of his breathing. After a few minutes of peaceful silence, a thought occurred to her.

“You still haven’t told me why you came here,” Rose said sleepily. “If it’s not because you’re sick, why did you come?”

“I couldn’t focus on what I was doin’, the TARDIS kept shockin’ me,” he said simply. “Figured I’d be better off checkin’ in on you then staying by myself getting shocked by my ship.”

“Is this your roundabout way of sayin’ you missed me?”

“I’m sayin’ my TARDIS has started to meddle.”

“It’s okay, Doctor,” Rose murmured, patting him on the shoulder comfortingly. “I missed you, too.”

She settled herself more comfortably against his side, grateful he was there.

“I’m not sick,” he insisted quietly.

“Of course not, Doctor,” Rose agreed.

“I just didn’t want to be alone.”

Rose looked at him in surprise, trying to make out his expression in the dark.

“I don’t want you to be alone either.” She reached down and threaded her fingers through his. “I’m so glad you came here.”

He turned his face towards her, and she could see his wide grin even in the darkness of the room.

“Me too.”

Rose squeezed his hand and then closed her eyes again.

“Good night, Doctor.”

“Good night, Rose.”

#dwsecretsanta #dr who #nine x rose #fanfic #ninth doctor #rose tyler

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blueboxesandtrafficcones · 4 years

Text

The Nuptial Necessity - Chapter 9

A 12xRose Human AU

Despite an unglamorous job description, Rose loves the work she does with The Thistle Foundation, a charity founded by her best friend’s great-uncle. It doesn’t hurt that her boss, her friend’s father, is easy on the eyes. With a great job, wonderful friends and a loving family, life couldn’t be better – except for having someone to share it with.

All of that is threatened, though, when the great-uncle dies – and sets a strange condition for his nephew to inherit, jeopardizing the Foundation and Rose’s future, sparking a chain of events that might just get her everything she dreamed of and more.

Chapters will be posted on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Many thanks to my beta, @stupidsatsuma

Rated: Explicit, for eventual smut

@doctorroseprompts

AO3 | Masterlist

—

Monday

Rose accepted the takeaway containers with a bright smile and handful of bills, skirting around the security desk for the lift, letting out a breath when she made it inside without getting stopped by Mickey. She knew he knew her ‘news’, had barely managed to escape him and his questions that morning, and was relieved to be able to put off the inevitable conversation a little while longer.

Letting herself back into their office suite, she stopped at her desk long enough to grab her tablet and mobile before letting herself into Malcolm’s office.

“Food’s here.”

Malcolm shot up, immediately abandoning his computer in favor of taking the food from her. “Why didn’t you say something? I’d have gone down to fetch it,” he fussed, setting the pizza box on his coffee table and grabbing water bottles from his mini-fridge. “Sit, sit.”

“I was fine,” Rose rolled her eyes, stepping out of her heels before sinking down on the couch and separating two paper plates. “Honestly, don’t- don’t do that.”

“Do what?” He settled next to her, opening the box and plating them a slice each. “What did I do?”

Biting her lip, she accepted the plate, holding it in the air with one hand as the other spread several napkins over the lap of her designer skirt. “Don’t…” She didn’t know how to say it. “Don’t act like anything’s changed,” she finally decided on. “Don’t go all formal and deferential on me, or any shit like that. This doesn’t change anything.”

Making a face, Malcolm sighed. “Fine, if you say so,” he twisted the lid off his bottle. “How’s your morning been so far?”

Really? Small talk? “Productive. Got lots of information about… everything. And before you ask, everything is good with the Gala, right on schedule.”

“What did you find?” He took a large bite of pizza, a stray string of cheese catching on his chin, and for a moment she fantasized about leaning forward and cleaning it with her tongue. Down, girl.

“You have to give notice at your local register’s office at least 14 days prior to the ceremony. Since we’re in different parts of the city we have to give notice separately; I booked us appointments for first thing tomorrow morning, so we can take care of it on our way in. Before you can, though, we need a date and a location for the… the ceremony.” She nibbled on the point of the slice. “We need to document the location, as well as our individual addresses. You need your passport and birth certificate. Proof of your divorce.”

Malcolm snorted. “So, fairly simple then.”

Laughing, she stretched out her leg to prod his thigh with her toe. “It is, actually, once we settle on… specifics.”

“Well, I’ve made some tentative arrangements,” he said, opening up his own organizer. “Though I’d like to hear what you’ve been thinking first.”

That I want this to be real, that I want you to love me as I do you, that I want to spend my life with you. “I’m not particularly fussy on details,” she shrugged one shoulder, watching her fingers pick at the crust of her slice. “Given everything, I think we should go simple, easy, and practical.”

“You may approve of my plan then,” he smiled wryly. “I was thinking the back garden at the Townhouse. My chef does catering on the side, the flower vendor for the Gala can pull something together as a favor, one of Clara’s coworkers DJs on the weekend… Ceremony in the garden, reception in the ballroom, and if you want, honeymoon up at the Estate in Scotland – they’ll be expecting us to honeymoon if they don’t know the truth, and that way you can see the property and meet the staff, and I can check in – haven’t been up there in years.”

Honeymoon. Rose’s smile froze, two separate trains of thought racing through her mind. The first was Jackie would inevitably want details on the getaway – intimate details. I’ll either have to lie about shagging him, or tell the truth that we’re not – neither of those is particularly appealing.

The second track involved them, a private beach, open bar, and unending pleasure under a hot sun. Mhmm.

“Rose?”

“Yeah?” she snapped back to attention, hoping he couldn’t see the warmth in her cheeks as she willed herself not to flick her eyes over his lap. Never gonna happen, Rose Tyler, you need to accept that. “Um, that sounds good. I’ve never been to Scotland.”

“Okay, then.” He took another large bite, watching her thoughtfully as he chewed. “All right?”

Rose nodded, finally digging into her own slice with relish. “Just thinking of everything there is to do.”

“We’ll get it done,” he said confidently. “We make a good team.”

“We do.”

But we could be so much more.

“Thistle Foundation, this is Rose.”

“Well, aren’t you going to ask me?” Clara snapped down the line, and Rose stopped typing with a frown.

“What?”

Her friend sighed heavily. “Am I, or am I not, your best friend?”

“You are.”

“And are you, or are you not, getting married?”

“I am.” Despite the circumstances, a happy little thrill went through Rose at the thought. He’ll have to kiss me, during the ceremony, she realized smugly. Maybe it’ll open his eyes, and he’ll see what’s literally been in front of him all along.

“Well?!”

Rose rolled her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re looking for, and am very busy- what’s up?”

This time, Clara was quiet, almost… hurt? “You don’t have anything to ask me?”

Brow furrowing, Rose wracked her brain for anything outstanding, but came up empty. “No?”

“Oh.” Was that a sniffle? “Okay.”

“Clara-”

“I’ve got to go,” her friend cut her off, a definitely wavery tone to her voice. “Bye.”

And the line disconnected.

Pressing her lips firmly together to hide a smile, Rose went back to working on the Gala program, keeping one eye on the clock.

Ten minutes later the phone rang again, and she was already grinning as she answered. “Thistle-”

“Yes!” Clara screamed. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Are you sure? You don’t seem particularly enthused at the idea,” Rose teased, leaning back in her chair. “I could always ask-”

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

She had to laugh at that, could almost hear down the line her friend vibrating with excitement. “So, just to be clear, you will be my maid of honor?” Glancing up, she caught Malcolm’s eye as he happened past, frowning when he stopped dead with an unsettling expression of horror.

“Of course!” Clara said, “How could I not be? Right, I’ll meet you at yours at half-six so we can start planning. I’ll bring the food. I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you then! I’m so excited!” And with another squeal, not waiting for a response, the line once again went dead.

“Something wrong?” Rose asked, keeping a wary eye on Malcolm as she hung up the receiver. “Changed your mind?”

He slowly shook his head. “No, it’s not that, I just- Well.” He shifted, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose I’d always imagined that were I to remarry, well, that Clara would stand up for me. Be my best man, in a manner of speaking.”

“Oh.” Once he said it it seemed obvious; of course he’d want his daughter at his side. She’d been friends with Clara for just over a decade; he’d had her Clara’s entire life. “Right. I mean- Duh. Um, I can talk to her tonight, if you want- unask her, so you can.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he waved his hand in a would-be casual way, still frowning. “I’ll… find someone else.”

“I have other friends I can ask,” Rose pressed, “it’s fine. Really.”

Malcolm shook his head. “She’s your best friend,” he maintained, “and it’s only natural. Don’t worry about it.”

And he walked away, leaving Rose with worry gnawing at her gut.

How are we supposed to make this work?

Malcolm sank into his desk chair, leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

I don’t know what to do.

It hadn’t even occurred to him, to ask Clara to stand up for him- they’d been thick as thieves most of her life, especially after the divorce and move. Two peas in a pod, Wallace used to laugh, and it had been fitting. Even as she’d grown up and moved out their relationship had remained mostly the same; while they were father and daughter first, she was also his best friend.

But she was also Rose’s, and of course she would stand up for her; it was obvious in hindsight.

His mobile buzzed, and he checked the screen to see an incoming call from Pete Tyler. Shit. “Tucker.”

“Hey, Malc, how’s it going?”

“Good, good,” he answered vaguely, sitting up straight. “How can I help you?”

“Listen-” oh, fuck, that’s not good. “Let’s have dinner, tonight- preferably at yours. I want to talk to you about this wedding.” Shiiit. “How’s seven?”

Malcolm swallowed, clicking the icon on his screen that would pull up his calendar. “Sure. Uh, will Jackie be joining us?”

“No, you and me. Man to man, father to father… that sort of thing.”

“Uh huh.” He sighed. “Sure, seven’s fine. I’ll… grill some steaks, we can talk.”

“See you then.”

The call disconnected, and he dropped the mobile to the desktop with a groan, cradling his head in his hands.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

When Wallace had passed, Malcolm had been at peace with it – the old man had lived a full life, full of charity and happiness, and it meant an end to his suffering. Now, though, seeing what his uncle had left behind for him…

Is it even fucking worth it?

By the time three o’clock came, Rose was more than ready for the day to be over. For the hopeful way she’d started the day, it had certainly ended on a sour note.

Getting married is supposed to be a happy thing – and even though we’re not actually a couple, it’s still not terrible. I could do a lot worse. And, honestly, it’s not like either of us have found our soulmates – even if it’s not love, it can still be companionship. But… it also feels like this is more fragile than I first considered.

“Hey.”

Rose looked up only to find Malcolm looking as bad as she felt. “Hi.”

“That’s me off,” he gestured towards the lift with his thumb. “You might as well head out too. Get a fresh start tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She didn’t hesitate to log off her computer, pushing back from the desk. “Don’t forget to go to the Register’s Office tomorrow – I’ve already given Graham the details, but you’ll need to pull your documents together. I emailed you a list of exactly what you’ll need.”

“Thanks,” he smiled wanly. “Now, get your shit – I’ll walk you out.”

It was only a matter of seconds to be ready to go, and she was startled but pleased when Malcolm helped her into her coat.

“Thanks.”

He didn’t acknowledge it, just gently pulled her hair out from her collar. “Let’s go.”

Settling her purse in the crook of her elbow she walked with him, letting him play the gentlemen. This is nice, she thought wistfully. If only it were real.

“I was thinking,” he said casually, “that after the- well, after, we might as well keep the same hours. I know you seem to prefer to be in before me, but- Obviously it wouldn’t make any sense for Graham to bring you in and then come back for me. If nothing else, I hope this makes your life a little easier – not having to deal with the Tube, and all.”

Her lips twitched in amusement. Is that the best you think you have to offer?

“Plus,” he coughed, as the doors opened and he let her out, “I… I don’t know about you, but it might be nice to have someone around. At the house, I mean. To not… be alone.”

She paused as they stepped out onto the pavement, waving hello to Graham before focusing on Malcolm, studying his expression. Is he blushing? “That would be nice,” she agreed softly. “I do like living alone, mostly, but… it also gets lonely.”

“We can be lonely together,” he offered, quirking his lip, and she grinned.

“Works for me.”

#bbatcfic #ficandchips #Doctor Who #doctorroseprompts #Human!12xRose #Human!Twelfth Doctor #Rose Tyler #Human AU #AU #The Nuptial Necessity

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