Lady Paperclip's Second-Hand Bookshop

paperclipbitch @ 2009-11-07T03:36:00

2009-11-07T03:37:43Z

Because I epically fail at writing things at the moment (hopefully the whole 'being at uni' thing should wear off soon) but could probably do this if anyone cared...

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Links to drabbles.

2009-09-28T14:44:07Z

Three drabbles!

Dead Like Me {Mason, George, Daisy}
(Because I can't write for the show, but this popped into my head)

Merlin {Arthur/Gwen}
(Episode tag for 2x02)

Torchwood {Owen, Ianto}
(A nasty exchange because... oh, boys.)

"Don't Feel Like Dancin'", Britannia High, Jez/BB

2009-09-28T14:29:04Z

Title: Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
Fandom: Britannia High
Pairing: Jez/BB
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5100
Genre: Slash
Copyright: Title is a Scissor Sisters song.
Summary: BB and Ronnie are touring Europe. Jez is trying to rebuild bridges with his father. And no one knows where Lola is...
Author’s Notes: Written in December, believe it or not. I dug it back out again and edited it to a degree that I’m happy with; it may still be silly, but hopefully it will be less so than it was to begin with. Written before I went interrailing, and therefore in no way based on my experiences. With lots of Ronnie because I love her.

Cities come and cities go
Just like the old empires
When all you do is change your clothes
And call that versatile.
- Scissor Sisters

{Rome}

Jez picks up the phone on the fifth ring.

“Hello?”

BB decides not to think too hard about the way that one word makes his mouth curl into a smile.

“Hey man.”

“BB!” Jez’s voice immediately brightens. “Do you have any idea how much this call is costing you?”

“Nothing,” BB responds cheerfully. “I called the operator and charged it to your supermansion.”

“Good idea,” Jez says, which is kind of a relief; BB isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to abuse Jez’s regained fortune yet. “Are you having the most fabulous time ever? Where are you?”

“Rome,” BB replies, “and yeah, it’s awesome. The place is, like, one giant museum, only not in a boring way.”

“Philistine,” Jez says affectionately. “Is Ronnie having fun?”

“The girl is having so much fun,” BB tells him, laughing, though there’s a trace of exhaustion in his tone. “She never winds down, it’s unbelievable. And impressive.”

Jez laughs. “Is she driving you mad?” he asks after a moment, almost tentatively.

“No,” BB tells him quickly. “Which is completely weird.”

“Maybe you’re madly in love with her,” Jez suggests, gleeful teasing in his voice. “You’ll come back from this trip engaged or something.”

“Dude,” BB says. “Don’t make this all wrong and strange.”

“Sorry.” Jez pauses for a moment. “I’m glad you guys are having fun. Have you mailed me presents yet?”

“What makes you think you’re getting presents?” BB asks him. “You’re the one who ditched me.”

“I’m wonderful and charming,” Jez responds. “I deserve pretty Italian presents.”

“Jez, you can buy Italy,” BB points out.

“…Not quite.”

“All right. But you could buy, like, the Vatican or something.”

“Yes,” Jez agrees, “I was just thinking about asking for that for my eighteenth birthday. I’m going to kick out the Pope and have everyone gather in St Peter’s square to watch me sing instead. You can be my backing dancer.”

“I’ve always admired your lack of ambition,” BB says gravely. “It’s definitely your best quality, mate.”

He suddenly really really misses doing the radio show; two months without sitting in a tiny booth talking crap with Jez seems like a horribly long time.

“I miss you,” Jez tells him, calm and practical and not too sentimental. “Like, everyone else has come to see me and you’re miles away. So you totally have to buy me something nice and post it.”

BB rolls his eyes, and doesn’t tell Jez that he and Ronnie posted his present this morning. “So how are things at the supermansion?”

“Super. Mansion-y.”

“I’ll hang up,” BB threatens.

“Fine. Things are going…good. Dad told one of his friends that we’re not going into business together at a dinner party a couple of days ago. You’d think he was confessing I was a murderer or something. I mean, when I came out to him he was cheerfully ringing up everyone and telling them to stop asking when I was going to get a girlfriend, but apparently singing is just too much. But it’s progress, so what the hell.”

“That’s awesome,” BB says, genuinely pleased for Jez.

“And he says hi. I think he might still think we’re dating, I’ll work on that.”

BB discovers that he can’t think of a single thing to say in reply to that, and Jez must realise because he quickly adds: “Danny’s been staying here since Tuesday. He’s all mope-y ‘cause he’s not getting laid.”

“Better watch yourself, mate,” BB warns, grinning.

“He wouldn’t respect me in the morning,” Jez responds, a little too serious for BB’s liking. Like he’s actually considering the possibility of sleeping with Danny.

“Have you heard from Lola?” he asks swiftly.

If Jez notices the hasty change in subject he doesn’t mention it. “…No.”

“Do you think she’s ok?”

“She’s Lola,” Jez says. “She’s probably fine. And Stefan is hardly an evil rapist-slash-murderer, is he?”

“Thanks mate, I feel so much better now,” BB tells him.

Jez laughs. “Seriously, I’m sure Lola is absolutely fine. But I’ve got to get going, BB, Danny and I are taking dad to a matinee of Les Mis.”

“Why?”

“I’m starting slowly,” Jez explains. “Don’t think dad’s ready for Avenue Q yet…”

BB has a mental image of Jez’s dad sitting through You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You’re Making Love) and attempts not to burst into hysterical laughter.

“Have fun,” he says. “I’ll… speak to you at some point.”

“Keep having a brilliant time,” Jez replies, “give my love to Ronnie. And don’t forget my present!”

“Spoiled brat,” BB sniggers, and puts the phone down.

{Amsterdam}

Hi Jez!

I hope you’re having a totally great summer ~~and are having fun counting your gigantic piles of money~~ (sorry, BB says I shouldn’t have put that in but you know I’m only joking and anyway he’s meant to be going to have a shower so we can go out tonight so he should GO AND DO THAT AND STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER).

There we go.

BB is being SO OVERPROTECTIVE, I wanted to buy space cakes and he was all “do you really think getting stoned in a foreign country is a good idea?” Like, whatever. BUT we are having loads of fun and travelling is COMPLETELY BRILLIANT, you should so have come too!!! I get that your dad is important though and he was super nice that time we went to visit you ~~except for the bit where he disowned you~~ so I bet you are having an awesome time.

And if your dad wants to put me through night school so I can be the Queen Of Backstage then- just kidding!!! :)

Hope you got the present we sent you from Rome and that you liked it, it took us ages to find tacky underwear with the Pope on! We were going to get you some clogs here but they’re really heavy and the postage would cost way too much so you’ll just have to have imaginary clogs instead… I will totally find you something fabulous, promise! BB said that you can buy the Red Light District if you decide you don’t want the Vatican, I was like “WTF?!” but he said you’d know what he meant.

Have you heard anything from Lola yet? We tried to call her when we were in Venice but her phone is STILL OFF! Maybe you could like fly out to Australia if you have time? Does your dad own a plane because that would be REALLY REALLY COOL.

Real Dutch pancakes are MADE OF AWESOME, I am totally going to learn how to make them and then we can have them at BH next term. Me and BB are like living on pancakes, they are the best, but we’re going to get totally fat lol. I would send you some but I don’t think they’d travel well, you should definitely have pancakes soon!!!

Ooh, BB is back so I will have to go, we are going to have the best night EVER. And he says my dancing is way better than my singing so I won’t be letting you down ;) Plus I have the most fabulous new shoes, I got them shopping today, I look totally awesome. I will just see if BB wants me to say anything…

Ok, he is such a total boy and won’t say he misses you but I KNOW HE DOES, we will totally call you soon and bill it to the supermansion, you don’t mind do you? ~~He wants to know if Danny is still staying with you~~ wait, he says he doesn’t and not to write that, don’t tell him I already did! BB wants to know if you’ve taken your dad to see Avenue Q yet. I totally don’t think you should, Jez, it would freak him out!!!

Have an awesome time and I’ll write again soon.

Miss you loads, plus lots and lots and lots of love,

Ronnie
xxxx

{Madrid}

BB and Ronnie have been in Madrid for all of about twenty minutes, and have already decided that it is way too hot. Spain in August is possibly not the most sensible of places to be, but they’re here now.

His mobile phone starts ringing; BB digs it out of his pocket, while Ronnie gives him a curious look, rooting through her bag for her sunglasses. He’s got used to the helpful texts whenever they cross country borders informing him that hey, just in case he hasn’t noticed, he’s gone into another country and therefore another phone network have taken over for him, but he’s never had a call before.

“Hello?” he asks warily.

“BB!” It’s Jez, sounding freakily excited. “Where are you, man? Have you made it to Spain yet, or are you still in the Land Of Toblerones?”

BB and Ronnie last called the supermansion a week and a half ago; since then no one’s been accepting the collect calls there. Since Jez has no reason to be pissed at him, BB’s assumed the last few times Mr Tyler has been talking to the operator and refusing to accept the charges.

“Madrid,” BB replies. Ronnie finally finds her oversized sunglasses in the bottom of her bag, and raises an interested eyebrow at BB before sliding them on. BB mouths it’s Jez at her, and she gives an excited squeak.

“Awesome,” Jez says, and then something occurs to him. “Did you send me a Toblerone before you left Basel?”

“We sent three like you asked,” BB replies. “Not that you deserve them, since you’ve been blanking us and everything. You’ll get too fat for all your skinny jeans.”

“I haven’t been blanking you!” Jez protests. “And the fat comment was uncalled for, you’re so mean.”

“You haven’t picked up the phone in ages,” BB points out. “That’s totally blanking, mate.”

“It is!” Ronnie calls.

“All right, I’ll make it up to you two,” Jez promises. “Lunch on me and my dad?”

BB frowns. “What, are you going to Western Union us some money or something? Don’t sweat it mate, we’re not broke yet.”

Jez laughs. “You’ll see,” he says. “Can I speak to Ronnie for a minute?”

BB obediently passes the phone over and watches Ronnie get amusingly giggly. She’s perfectly ok with the fact Jez is never going to be interested in her, but maintains that she’s still allowed to have a crush on his awesomeness in spite of that. He digs a map out of his rucksack so he can work out where their hotel is, tuning out Ronnie talking at a mile a minute. The girl is great, but she seriously never stops talking. It’s fascinating. He becomes aware that silence has fallen; Ronnie taps him on the shoulder and hands him back his phone.

“He say what the hell he was going on about?” BB asks, shoving it back in his pocket.

“No,” Ronnie replies, shrugging. “Do you know where we’re going yet?”

They manage to find their way to their hotel and change their clothes; mercifully there’s air-conditioning, and BB decides that he’ll just worry about Jez’s cryptic randomness later. He’s arranged to meet Ronnie downstairs when they’ve both got something a little less travel-crumpled on, and she’s waiting for him, wearing a pair of shorts and her sunglasses again. She smiles when she sees him, and then something seems to catch her eye over his shoulder because she pushes her sunglasses on top of her head, mouth dropping open.

“Oh my God!” Ronnie squeaks, running past BB at someone who’s just walked through the doors, throwing herself into their arms. A tall, skinny boy, with a golden tan and practically white-blonde hair, who picks Ronnie up and spins her around, making her shriek. And BB feels his mouth curling into an utterly embarrassingly broad grin, because it’s Jez. It’s Jez, and he’s here.

Jez puts Ronnie down and smiles almost shyly at BB, who wastes no time in pulling his best friend into a bone-cracking hug. Jez hugs him back just as tightly, and BB can feel him laughing; he can’t seem to shift the stupid grin from his own face. Finally, he lets himself acknowledge the fact he has missed Jez to a ridiculous degree that no one can ever know about.

He’s aware that the hug has gone on just a little too long, and Jez is the first to let go.

“Why are you in Madrid?” Ronnie asks the minute they step apart.

“Dad had a whim about ten days ago,” Jez shrugs. “Possibly he just didn’t want to go and see any more musicals. So we came here. I’d have told you when you last called, but I didn’t know.”

Jez’s eyes look bluer than ever against the tan, and his hair is bleached from the sun. He’s wearing one of the tight t-shirts he normally doesn’t wear outside of the dance studio, and a pair of sunglasses are perched on top of his head. He looks relaxed and happy.

“You should have told us you were here,” Ronnie says, smacking him on the arm.

“Thought I’d let it be a surprise,” Jez replies. “Gonna come for lunch with us then?”

He leads Ronnie and BB onto the street, where his dad is leaning against a gigantic silver SUV, also looking relaxed and cheerful and tanned.

“BB,” he says, inclining his head with a smile, “And… Ronnie, wasn’t it?”

BB grabs Ronnie’s elbow on one side and Jez grabs her on the other side and together they manage to stop her from curtseying.

“Hi, Mr Tyler,” BB says. “Good to see you again.”

They pile into the back of the car, Jez squished between BB and Ronnie, and they keep up a cheerful conversation about their travels, while BB remains horribly aware of where his thigh is crushed against Jez’s.

“So how much longer are you in Spain for?” Ronnie asks.

“Two days,” Mr Tyler tells her. “I’ve got to get back to work, unfortunately.”

“You going back too?” BB asks quietly, raising an eyebrow at Jez. The other boy nods, and BB does his best not to be disappointed.

Mr Tyler parks the car and they all scramble out.

“They do the best paella here,” Jez says brightly. “And I’m not getting fat, you mean bastard.”

BB lets his eyes skim over Jez’s skinny form and pretends that it’s purely scientific. “All right,” he concedes, “you’re not getting fat.”

Jez gives him a toothy grin, and then pushes him and Ronnie towards the restaurant.

{Berlin}

Ronnie is very insistent that they have kaffe und kuchen, so they’re sharing some extremely nice cake when she starts giving BB a very calculating look. They left Madrid four days ago and in two days’ time they’re going to Paris, the last city on their list before they go back to England.

“What’s up?” BB asks, because he’s not used to Ronnie looking this serious. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” Ronnie replies cheerfully, pouring herself some more coffee. “Has anyone heard from Lola yet?”

It’s the eternal question; Jez asked it when BB rang him to check he’d made it safely back to the supermansion, Lauren asked it when she called them in Prague, BB emailed it to Claudine in a cybercafe last night. No one knows anything; just that Lola left with Stefan and hasn’t texted anyone, hasn’t emailed anyone, hasn’t called anyone. Her hotmail account must be crammed with LOLA WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU CALL US messages by now; not that any of it’s paying off.

“Nice try at distracting me,” BB tells her. “Really, what’s up?”

Ronnie shakes her head. “Nothing’s up with me,” she says, all significantly, like he’s meant to know what she’s getting at.

“…Still drawing a blank,” BB shrugs.

Ronnie sighs, almost exasperatedly. “Look,” she snaps, “you do know you’re in love with Jez, right?”

BB drops his fork and stares at her, trying to find something to say but stuck utterly speechless.

“…Oh,” Ronnie says. “Oh, you don’t, do you?”

BB continues to stare blankly at her in lieu of an answer.

“It’s obvious,” Ronnie tells him gently. “Obvious to everyone but Jez, and, apparently, you. That’s why his dad still thinks you’re dating. And really, it’s very sweet. You guys will be such a great couple.”

BB fumbles up his voice, and manages to say: “…Um.” It’s not eloquent, but it’s a start.

“You hugged for about a million hours when we went to the airport with Jez and his dad,” Ronnie adds. “I thought one of you was going to catch on and kiss the other, but you didn’t.”

BB swallows. “I don’t want to kiss Jez!” he protests, the quick and easy denial leaping to his mouth.

“Yes, you do,” Ronnie says pragmatically. She takes a sip of coffee and looks expectantly at BB, who can’t work out what she wants him to say. There’s a couple on the next table over who seem to be listening in with far too much interest, and BB reflects that sometimes it’s really depressing that everyone in Europe speaks English.

“What do you want me to- what should I do?” he manages eventually.

Ronnie takes a mouthful of cake and takes a moment to lick cream off her mouth before responding. “Well, ordinarily I’d send you back to England for a lovely mushy reunion,” she says, “but I really want to see Paris. So you’ll have to do it when we get back.”

BB frowns. “You’ve thought this through,” he says, bemused. “You’ve actually thought this whole conversation through. And, like, planned it.”

Ronnie shrugs. “Look, I think Jez is extremely pretty but I’m really just getting away with as much as I can for my own amusement,” she says. “He deserves to be happy and so do you.”

BB starts on his cake again, for lack of anything else to do. He’s been travelling with Ronnie for the last two months, and she really is a force of nature; she may not be a singer or a dancer or an actress but there’s something amazing about her, vivid and bright and awesome.

“You know,” Ronnie says after a while, “you’re calling the supermansion tonight. You could always have a heartfelt declaration of love over the phone.”

“I’m not standing in a phonebox telling Jez… whatever,” BB protests.

Ronnie gives him a look, narrowing her eyes. “You’d better tell him something more interesting than whatever,” she says firmly.

BB says nothing, drinking more coffee. A moment later, and his phone beeps. He pulls it out of his pocket, half-dreading the message, and is aware of a strange disappointment when he realises that the text is actually from Claudine.

Lola not dead. x

He texts back, demanding more details, and his phone rings a moment later.

“She’s back in London,” Claudine explains. “Without Stefan.”

BB relays this to Ronnie, whose eyebrows attempt to escape into her fringe.

“What happened?” he asks.

“No idea,” Claudine tells him. “But Lauren and I are going to go and see her tomorrow, so maybe she’ll tell us something.”

“Use some of those acting skills you keep telling us you have,” BB advises. “Be sympathetic.”

“Ha ha,” Claudine responds. “That’s just what Jez said.”

BB ignores the interesting lurch in his stomach when she says Jez’s name, because he doesn’t know exactly what it means.

“He not going with you?” he asks.

“Jez hasn’t left his room for, like, days,” Claudine responds, in her calm and callous way of delivering all news, good and bad.

“Why?” he asks quickly.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But Danny’s meant to be going to the supermansion tomorrow, so I’m sure it’s all fine. Got to go, hope you’re having a fabulous time. Kisses!”

Claudine is a force of nature too, BB reflects.

“Is Lola ok?” Ronnie asks.

BB shakes his head. “Maybe?”

He doesn’t tell her about Jez; he’s not sure why. And that night, although he promised he’d call England, he chickens out, and doesn’t.

{Paris}

The traffic in Paris is utterly mad, and on their first day in the city BB saves Ronnie’s life at least six times before he decides to stop counting and just hold her arm any time they get anywhere near a road. It seems strange to think that in a few more days they’ll be back in London, preparing for a new school term; this summer has been so brilliant that he doesn’t want to return, regardless of what he’s going back to.

“Shall we just live here, Ronnie?” he suggests; they’re sat on a bench halfway up the Champs Elysees, watching people hurry past.

Ronnie laughs. “The first time anyone’s ever asked me to move anywhere with them, and it’s coming from a gay guy crazy about someone else. Just my luck.”

It’s actually made the whole thing a lot easier, being stuck in Europe with Ronnie; she’s calmly acknowledged and accepted things that BB can’t quite get his head around, and somehow made all of this ok. He totally feels guilty about leaving the room to laugh when she was singing last term.

Ronnie’s phone bleeps and she pulls it from her pocket, glancing down at a text message and smiling.

“Just my mum checking on me,” she says. “Want to get back to the hotel?”

They get back to their cheap hotel, just by the Gard Du Nord, and head upstairs. Their rooms are next door to each other, and BB hears Ronnie give a happy shriek as she walks into hers. Confused, he quickly leaves his own room and bangs on Ronnie’s door. She opens it, grinning, and BB glances over her shoulder to see Jez sprawled out on her bed.

“Can’t get rid of me,” Jez says cheerfully as BB steps inside, the hotel room door slamming behind him. “Thought I’d come join you for the last few days of your trip, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” BB says, rolling his eyes. “Leave immediately.”

Jez smirks, sitting up on the bed. “Am I taking you both out for dinner?”

“You’re really excited to have all your money back, aren’t you?” BB observes, without accusation.

“I leeched dinner off you guys for ages,” Jez points out, “it’s only fair I repay you.”

“I’m sold,” Ronnie says brightly. “Everyone out so I can change.”

BB obediently takes Jez next door, where they sit on his double bed in a silence bordering on awkward. They’ve never had an awkward silence between them before, never, and it’s strange.

“So you finally left your room,” BB says eventually.

A blush touches the tips of Jez’s cheekbones; his tan is still ridiculously perfect. “I was just annoying my dad for lying about me at a dinner party,” he shrugs. “It just got a little blown out of proportion.”

“Are you still coming back to BH?” BB asks. “Your dad isn’t going to suddenly take you hostage is he?”

“Have the SWAT teams on standby,” Jez suggests. “It could get ugly.” He grins, sweet and sudden. “No, I think it’ll be ok.”

“Good.” BB smiles. “‘Cause I’m not doing the whole damn radio show by myself.”

“You could pretend to be me,” Jez offers. “It would be very creative.”

BB smirks, shoving his shoulder. “Just come back to school.”

Ronnie knocks on their door at that point, and Jez takes them out to a restaurant for huge amounts of mussels and chips, where they mostly talk about Lola and Stefan because apparently Claudine and Lauren couldn’t get the whole story out of her and neither could Jez.

“Lola’s mum practically has her under house arrest,” Jez explains. “She’s understandably pretty freaked out about the whole thing.”

“Hey, you can tell your dad that at least you didn’t run off to another country with your dance teacher,” BB says. “That should totally score some positive points for Britannia High.”

Jez gives him an incredulous look, and then starts laughing.

“Not sure my dad will see it that way,” he says at last.

There’s a general arguing over rooms when they get back to the hotel; Jez wants to share with Ronnie, who has two single beds in her room, while BB is fairly insistent that Jez shares with him because he’s a guy and Ronnie isn’t.

“I’m not particularly interested in ravishing her,” Jez points out. “Plus you only have a double bed.”

Ronnie steps in at this point, and proves that she is utterly impossible to say ‘no’ to; which is how BB finds himself staring fixedly at the ceiling while listening to Jez brush his teeth. He suspects this is Ronnie’s idea of matchmaking, but he kind of feels more like she’s thrown him in at the deep end and he’s flailing about in a way destined to end in drowning.

“It’s ok,” Jez tells him, “I don’t snore.”

He’s wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts, and every inch of him is perfectly tanned; it makes BB wonder exactly what Jez was wearing while getting his tan, and then realises that that really isn’t an ok thing to be thinking about when he’s about to have to share a bed with the guy.

“If you’re really not all right with this,” Jez offers, “I can probably still go and harass Ronnie into letting me have the other bed.”

“It’s fine,” BB insists, reaching over to turn out the light.

Once they’re in the dark, he becomes hyper aware of just where Jez is in relation to him, of the other boy’s breathing, and of how he isn’t going to be able to sleep at any point tonight.

“I’ve missed you, you know?” Jez says after a moment. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that at any point, but I really have.”

They’ve all lived in such close proximity to each other that suddenly being apart for a couple of months is weird enough anyway, but BB knows exactly what Jez means.

“I’ve missed you too,” he says after a moment, and they both leave it at that.

BB just knows that Ronnie is going to glare at him in disappointment over breakfast in the morning.

{London}

“You shared a bed with him for four days and at no point let slip that you don’t feel entirely platonic towards him!” Ronnie’s voice is a furious whisper, while Jez has gone to top-up his Oyster card. “And we were in Paris, the city of love and everything! Could you be any more stupid?”

“Don’t,” BB says simply, wrapping her into a hug. They’re finally back at King’s Cross, term starts in two days, and it’s sort of nice to be somewhere where all the signs are actually in English. “Ronnie… this summer has been fantastic. Thank you.”

Ronnie grins and hugs him back, before kissing his cheek and going off to say goodbye to Jez. They’ll see each other again in forty-eight hours, but it still feels weird to be parting after so much time together.

“Your dad going to buy you back your Knightsbridge flat?” BB asks when he and Jez are on the tube to Waterloo.

Jez shrugs. “I don’t think I need to live behind Harrods to be happy,” he says. “I think I’ll probably keep my tiny crappy flat and be done with it.”

BB smiles. “You heading back to the supermansion?” he asks.

Jez shakes his head. “I… didn’t technically get permission to run off to Paris,” he says, looking sheepish. “I think I’ll just stay in London until dad calms down a little bit.”

It seems that Jez is destined to build bridges with his father and promptly burn them afterwards, but BB is never going to point this out so he just smiles instead. Really, he just thanks God that tube trains are so loud that it’s impossible to have a conversation anyway. He knows that at some point he’s going to have to sort all this out – if only because Ronnie will glare at him for the next ever if he doesn’t – but he can’t think of anything to say that isn’t ridiculous and lame.

“See you Monday,” Jez says when it comes to his stop, clapping a hand against BB’s shoulder and disappearing off the train before BB can say anything in reply. See you Monday. BB feels a smile curl across his mouth and has to swallow it down; he’s glad to be home, glad to be back, in spite of it all.

He gets home to his flat and walks through the rooms; after two months away it feels both familiar and strange, but he thinks he’ll finally be able to settle here, settle without Julius. It was touch and go for a while, but his home is finally starting to feel like an actual home. BB dumps his bag in the corner of the living room, deciding to leave unpacking until... later, anyway. He finds a forgotten can of coke in the corner of his fridge and slumps down on the sofa to channel hop, but there’s a niggling feeling in the back of his mind, a twist of anticipation writhing in his stomach.

BB pointedly ignores it for about three-quarters of an hour and it doesn’t go away. “Damn,” he mutters at last, going to find his jacket.

It’s half midnight and part of BB thinks Jez is just going to refuse to answer the door, but some things are important, some things are worth persevering and missing sleep for. Jez answers the door eventually, hair mussed and eyes very blue. He opens his mouth as though to ask, and then seems to notice the look on BB’s face and closes it again.

“I missed you,” BB says, the words falling out of his mouth, “a lot.” He takes a breath because he’s not saying it right. “I still miss you.”

Jez’s eyes go very wide and before BB can fumble up any more words, he steps forward, curling one hand in BB’s t-shirt, his other hand sliding over the back of BB’s neck. BB catches a glimpse of Jez’s blinding grin before the other boy leans in, pressing their mouths together.

In the minute before his brain turns to mush, BB remembers that he called Jez from almost every city they visited, and Jez followed him both to Spain and France, and that maybe they should have managed to sort this out earlier. Then Jez pulls him into the flat by his t-shirt, laughing against his mouth, and BB really stops thinking altogether.

"Yes; We Were, Once", Desperate Romantics, Gabriel/Fred

2009-09-25T10:58:49Z

Title: Yes; We Were, Once
Fandom: Desperate Romantics
Characters: Fred, Gabriel, Annie [slightly Gabriel/Fred, other pairings hinted at]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4000
Genre: Gen [het/slash]
Summary: “I did not destroy your soul,” Gabriel scoffs.
Author’s Notes: Set eight years in the future after the series ended. I’ve read the book so I know how it all turned out, and I’ve referenced a few things in here. So it’s sort of like a series two of DR, only with stuff I want to happen in it and not nearly as good. Finished because Amazon have sent me an email to tell me my Desperate Romantics DVD has been despatched; OHMYGODFUCKINGYES. Ahem. So I am undoubtedly going to spend the next ever holed up watching the boys and girls all over again.

So rivers merge in the perpetual sea
So luscious fruit must fall when over-ripe
And so the consummated PRB.
- Christina Rossetti

Gabriel has not changed at all in the last eight years; his eyes sparkle in exactly the same way they always did, and though he is older he is definitely not wiser and in any case his beauty is still intact. It seems hardly fair. Fred finds himself absurdly angry about this, though he has been desperately trying to put the muddled years with the PRBs safely behind him. But there is no such thing as ‘safe’ where Dante Gabriel Rossetti is concerned; or ‘appropriate’ apparently, since Gabriel seems to think that there is nothing wrong in embracing Fred in the street as though they are still friends and not men who have not spoken for almost a decade.

Fred presses his lips tight together for a moment, but manages to fumble up a: “How are you, Gabriel?”

He wishes he had not asked as Gabriel pours a veritable waterfall of words over him; he’s living with ‘Topsy’ and Jane, and he’s painting Fanny Cornforth again, and did Fred see his poetry book, and on and on and on.

Fred has changed a little in the last eight years; when Gabriel’s stream of self-absorption ends, he sighs and smiles a little bitterly and says:

“You really haven’t learned anything at all, have you, Gabriel?”

Gabriel’s smile is wolfish. “Oh, I’ve learned all kinds of things; I just choose to pretend I’ve forgotten them.”

Fred wants to say something along the lines of that’s the same as not learning anything, but he knows that it is not.

Gabriel is scrutinising him, and Fred does not like the look he has on his face.

“I read your articles from time to time,” Gabriel tells him. “They got frightfully dull after you stopped communicating with us, but I suppose you were proving a point.”

Gabriel will not ever understand the decision Fred made, and that is fine. He has reconciled himself with that already; though to tell the truth it did not take much reconciliation, and his anger has kept him warm on more than one cold night.

“I’m glad to see you are well, Gabriel,” Fred says, after a moment of brittle silence. “I must be going.”

Attempting to extricate himself before it gets too late; he hates Gabriel with more passion than he ever admired him with in the first place, but he is perfectly aware of the power of Gabriel’s superhuman charisma. Although he would like to consider himself immune, he knows that he is not entirely out of danger yet.

“Come for a drink, Fred,” Gabriel says, catching Fred’s coat sleeve. “One drink, you can tell me what you’ve been doing.” The wolfish smile curls again. “Please.”

Fred cannot; of course he cannot. “One drink,” he grits.

Gabriel slings an arm around his shoulders, laughter ringing bright. “You know, Fred, you really haven’t learned anything either.”

=

The last time Fred saw Gabriel, they were indulging in a spot of grave-robbing just after covering up a suicide. Being around Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a lot like being insane, and generally guarantees that mad, bad, dangerous things will happen. When he was young and idealistic and frighteningly naïve, Fred believed that Gabriel was magical. Now, he just finds him tiresome, though he supposes he should thank him one day for burning away every last shred of his naïveté until only bitterness remained. At the time, it seemed unforgivably harsh, but in the following years Fred has been grateful for his jaded attitude; it has saved him on several occasions. Well, as ‘saved’ as you can be, anyhow, when your soul has been utterly destroyed.

“I did not destroy your soul,” Gabriel scoffs.

They have not had one drink, they have had many drinks, and Fred has paid for most of them even though Gabriel must be positively rolling in tin, or at the very least must have enough to drink himself into a stupor. It is really like the last eight years have not happened at all; Fred half-expects Johnny or Maniac to come in at any minute.

“Did I?” Gabriel adds, looking a little worried now.

“Would you care if you had?” Fred asks.

“Of course I would care,” Gabriel insists, managing to land a heavy hand on Fred’s shoulder on his third attempt. “I loved you like my own brother, Fred.”

“You drove the woman I loved to suicide,” Fred points out. “You helped me into hundreds of pounds of debt. You made my mother never speak to me again.”

Gabriel grimaces. “I’m hardly responsible for your mother’s actions, Fred.”

Fred rolls his eyes; Gabriel is an expert at weaselling out of anything and everything that looks as though it might be his fault.

“The world you dragged me into-”

“You were the one stalking us,” Gabriel reminds him mildly. He gets to his feet. “Another drink?”

Fred wants to say no. Wants to get up and walk away – all right, stagger away – with the remains of his dignity while he still can.

“Everything is your fault in the end, Gabriel,” he mutters, and puts his head on the table. It is sticky, and smells of decades of alcohol sloshed onto its surface.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then,” Gabriel says cheerfully, and Fred closes his eyes as he leaves.

-

“I am disappointed in you, Fred Walters,” Annie says, with a toss of her head. Her hair is still in intricate curls, delicately arranged with a hat of the latest fashion angled carefully on top. It’s years later but she’s still beautiful; her beauty isn’t transient like Lizzie’s was, it wasn’t ever designed to be smothered.

“Are you?” he asks, and hears unexpected sharpness in his voice. Heads turn, and God, Fred hasn’t had a problem keeping within the boundaries of propriety for the last eight years. It seems he has fallen back into all his old bad habits in a remarkably short space of time. He thinks he should be more upset than he really is.

Annie’s expression holds that same disdain it did the last time he ever saw her; the day she rejected his proposal and he, in turn, drove Lizzie to suicide and then threw his own life carelessly away.

“Coming in here with Rossetti draped across your shoulders,” she continues, lip curling just slightly, “like you’re still silly little arrogant boys.”

It stings, to hear her say it aloud; somehow the truth has always hurt more coming from Annie’s lips. She speaks better than ever; the last eight years have smoothed the cracks and rough edges from her accent. Fred remembers accompanying her to class after class, watching as Annie’s spine gradually straightened, her vowels and consonants became separately distinguishable, and her laughter became genteel. Now, Annie walks and talks like she’s been a lady all her life. He finds himself simultaneously admiring and hating her for it.

“It was an accident,” Fred tells her, and does not think about the flush that spread over her breasts as they fucked, the last traces of her rough, guttural giggles as her fingers tangled in his hair. He does not.

“I would not be talking to you if I thought it wasn’t,” Annie informs him crisply. “I didn’t think even you, Fred, were stupid enough to fall back in with him deliberately.” Her lips thin. “Rossetti is bad news.”

Fred marvels at her detachment; she speaks as though none of the past ever happened. Maybe for her, it really hasn’t; perhaps she has managed to shove it all behind her. If she has, she’s certainly done a better job than Fred ever has, but then Annie always had an air of determination that Fred sadly lacked.

After a pause that threatens to become uncomfortable, Fred ventures: “You’ve done well for yourself, Annie.”

“Mrs Thomson,” she corrects swiftly and oh yes; propriety. That again.

“Mrs Thomson,” he agrees, the words sour on his tongue. He feels a bitter smile twitch his mouth. “You have more than I could ever have given you. More than Hunt could ever have given you.”

Annie’s eyes blaze; there, he sees the old Annie Miller, the one who walked willingly to her own slaughter for love of her man.

“I would slap you,” she tells him in a hard undertone.

“I know,” Fred tells her.

He has lost all interest in the paintings at this gallery showing; has even lost interest in Gabriel, who is sparkling drunkenly and arrogantly in another corner. All he can remember is bitterness and rejection, and he loved Annie once in a way that he can never admit, not even to himself.

Annie hesitates, seemingly mulling words over in her head. “You should get as far away from him as you can,” she advises. “Keep a safe distance.”

“Like you did?” Fred asks. He keeps his tone falsely jovial, carefully not to draw attention. Luckily, Rossetti is keeping the attention of half the room single-handedly. “I saw Helen Of Troy, Annie.”

“Mrs Thomson,” she grits, cheeks flushing. Fred wonders if she ever misses who she was, or if she enjoys her place in society, smothered but safe. She does not attempt to defend herself and Fred finds himself feeling oddly guilty.

“I have taken up enough of your time,” he fumbles, trying for proper and no doubt failing miserably. Annie holds out her hand and he kisses it, lingering a second too long. The smallest of genuine smiles curls Annie’s lips.

“It was good to see you, Fred,” she murmurs.

“No, it wasn’t,” he replies, trying to tell her that she doesn’t need to be polite to him, doesn’t need to offer meaningless platitudes.

Her eyes flash. “Yes, it was.”

This is the only way she will ever tell him that she misses him, that maybe part of her loved him once too. Fred smiles weakly, and turns back to Gabriel. He could leave now, walk away from this world again. He isn’t happy here, but he wasn’t happy anywhere else either. He grits his teeth, and walks back over to the man he cannot label as his friend anymore, but he has not yet worked out how to reclassify him.

“You should know better by now, Mr Walters,” Annie sighs behind him. She sounds genuinely sad.

-

A few days later, Fred receives a dignified note asking him to afternoon tea with John Everett and Effie Millais; the edges of the card are gilt and the words are written in a flowing hand that he does not recognise; though he knows all too well the scrawl on the back that says: Rossetti is not invited! His lips twist into a half-smile. So the other PRBs eventually tired of Gabriel too. He wishes he could say that he’s surprised.

Johnny and Effie have had what seems like dozens of children, and everything about them is relaxed and happy and respectable. There are still whispers about Mrs Millais – Fred is still in society enough to hear all the good gossip – but they’ve managed to separate themselves from all that scandal. Gabriel hasn’t changed at all, whereas John seems to have changed entirely. It almost seems like a practical joke that John was ever part of the PRB in the first place. Sitting there looking happy and smug and rich, it’s as though Johnny never fell from grace; never spent those years looking for approval. The nation have taken John Everett Millais to their hearts, and Fred cannot help hating him a little for that.

They make small talk; cheap attempts that taste sour on Fred’s tongue and which feel hopelessly inadequate. There’s a thinness to John’s mouth when he talks about Gabriel, though he still seems to be friends with Hunt. Fred finds it almost a relief to discover that there are some things that acquaintance with Gabriel cannot kill off; he was beginning to wonder. In any case, Johnny isn’t Johnny any more, really; he’s done so well for himself that it stings, and Fred realises halfway down his first cup of tea that he doesn’t really want to drink anyway that they no longer have anything in common but some rather shameful memories; ones that John has managed to put behind him, ones that Fred is incapable of ignoring, much as he wants to.

“This isn’t going to work,” he says, putting the teacup down so hard hot liquid sloshes over the sides into the saucer.

He sees the first flash of genuine emotion he’s seen from John all day streak across his face; something like sadness and resignation. A moment of genuine pain.

“I’m sorry, Fred,” John murmurs.

Effie just looks confused, but she was never caught in the tangle like the rest of them were. She lingered on the edges, and found joy far too quickly.

John walks Fred to the door; Fred wonders if he should feign an appointment, pretend he has somewhere to be. But John knows him too well for that; or, at the very least, John knew him.

“Good luck, Fred,” John tells him, and then abruptly wraps his arms around Fred in the tightest of brotherly hugs. There are too many emotions in it, and Fred hugs Johnny back, hugs him back with all the things they do not have any more.

“I won’t wish you luck,” he murmurs, when they part, unable to look John in the face. “I won’t wish you luck because you do not need it.”

He’s halfway down the street before he hears John close the front door.

-

Gabriel laughs long and hard and loud. Fred’s eyes are blurring; he’s had nothing but John’s tea all day and the alcohol is churning in his stomach.

“It’s not funny,” he sighs. “You’ve made it impossible for me to spend any time in polite society.”

Gabriel’s eyes are still dancing with amusement; Fred doesn’t want to look. “Good,” he says, as though it should be obvious, “why the fuck would you want to spend time in polite society? Why would you want to be like them, Fred?”

Because I have had enough of being like you. Fred doesn’t say it; can’t say it. Gabriel will only have an answer ready that will sound rational until Fred is alone and actually able to think about it.

“I’m not a crazed genius like you, Gabriel,” he mutters, running his thumbnail down a scratch on the table. “I need to communicate with people and you’ve made me forget how to do that. You’ve made me not want to do that.”

Fred doesn’t know why he’s trying to push Gabriel into a guilty confession of some kind. He will not get an apology and he knows firsthand that Gabriel only feels remorse when people are dead, and even then it doesn’t last particularly long.

“I really don’t see what you’re complaining about,” Gabriel says, but his tone is absent; Fred follows his line of vision to find that Gabriel is staring at a woman on the other side of the room. Her head is tipped back and she is laughing; she has the masses of hair that always seem to attract Gabriel and a truly stunning figure just like – oh. Oh, it actually is Fanny Cornforth. She turns her head, gives Gabriel a brilliant grin. Gabriel grins back; Fred wants to ask why he cannot just be content with Jane Burden, with stealing her from her husband in full view of everyone, but asking Rossetti to try being self-aware would be like asking the sun not to rise.

Fred sighs heavily, and finds himself glad that Lizzie is not alive to see this.

“You overthink things, Fred,” Gabriel says at last, when Fanny has flounced off. “You always did. So you don’t fit in with people anymore; so you despise them. What of it? We are better than all of them.”

He believes it, for a moment. Believes it the way he always did.

“Fuck you, Gabriel,” Fred sighs after a moment.

Gabriel’s mouth jerks; he’s heard this a hundred times and always reacts with amusement, Fred knows, but a moment later he’s looking almost thoughtful.

“Would that help?” he asks. “Because if it would, you could, you know.”

Fred has honestly never consciously it, and it feels as though his stomach has become ice. “Jesus,” he breathes. “Just- what- Jesus.”

Gabriel’s grin is cruel, curved obscenely as though cut with a razor. His offer is serious, Fred can tell, but he is mostly making it because he’s a bastard.

“I am going now,” Fred says.

“Think about it,” Gabriel calls after him, the words choked with laughter.

Fred realises, when he’s out on the cold street, that Gabriel has distracted him perfectly from their argument. Which was probably the whole idea.

-

A week later, Fred is having breakfast with William and Jane Morris. Jane looks bored, eyes fixed on something outside the window, and William has always been a man of few words. He wonders if they have actually said anything to each other since they were married; but then they are living with Gabriel, who has more than enough words for the three of them. Maniac repeatedly kicked Gabriel out of his lodgings after mere hours; Fred is sort of sadistically interested in how William and Jane have managed to put up with Gabriel for eight years. Then he catches sight of the smallest of smiles lingering at the corner of Jane’s mouth, and supposes that he knows how she copes with it all.

Gabriel comes clattering downstairs, telling Jane that the studio is all set up – “I’m painting her as Prosperine!” he tells Fred eagerly, though there’s an edge to his expression that Fred refuses to acknowledge – and the two of them giggle their way up the stairs. Fred feels he can safely assume that there will be no painting happening for at least the next hour.

William sighs and pours himself another cup of coffee. Fred wonders how he can stand this; living in this house where he means less than nothing but is nonetheless needed to give this all the pretence of propriety.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Fred asks at last.

William looks startled for a moment, as though he’s entirely unused to conversation. Then he seems to pull himself together. “Not particularly.” His mouth twists into something like a grimace. “I don’t really have anything to say about Dante Gabriel Rossetti.”

“You invited him into your life,” Fred hears himself say. “That’s the worst part.” He sighs, eyes on the cutlery. “I did too. I thought... well, that’s Gabriel for you, anyway. He’s like a flame and we’re all moths, and by the time you’ve been drawn close enough to realise you’re getting burned, you cannot get away. You’re trapped.”

William is watching him, not saying anything at all. Fred swallows, and knows he should stop; Gabriel is upstairs fucking Jane in the name of art, and Morris does not need any cheap helpless advice. He’s remained the same as he was when he first stumbled into the lives of the PRB. Fred hasn’t met Ned again, but he’s heard the stories. About Ned’s long-suffering wife, about Ned’s bewitching mistress who tried to kill herself. Gabriel was proud of that, as though the fact his protégés were destroying themselves as surely as he had destroyed himself was a good thing.

“You invite him into your life and then you have to stand back and watch as he ruins it,” Fred mutters.

William frowns, incredulous. “Are you supposed to be helping?”

Fred shrugs. “No.”

Something approaching a smile skids across William’s mouth. “Good. Because you’re really not.”

-

“Mr Walters.” Annie’s smile is brittle, bright; her eyes are on Gabriel. “Still refusing to see sense, I see.”

Fred is too tired and too bitter to even take umbrage at her tone. “Mrs Thomson,” he murmurs, with a deferential bow. He sighs. “No. Still decidedly blind.”

“Everyone else had the common sense to get away from him,” Annie murmurs, keeping her tone low because who knows who could be listening to them.

“Without him I’m nothing,” Fred tells her, because he has come to realise this over the last few tangled weeks. “Well, with him I’m nothing, but it is less noticeable.”

Annie sighs, genuine misery flickering across her pretty features. “Fred,” she sighs. “Oh Fred, you’re not nothing.”

“I don’t have painting or a fortune of my own or a marriage to escape into,” Fred tells her. “I’ve got Gabriel.”

Most people are gazing at the paintings on the gallery walls; Annie’s husband seems more interested in the wine on offer, but Fred cannot hold it against him. His own interest in art has become increasingly warped over the last few years.

“Please,” Annie says softly, and the brittle woman she was when they last met has melted a little. Fred was happy with her for months; even when he was pining over Lizzie, he loved spending time with Annie. And perhaps, when they fell into the bed together, it was less about Hunt and Lizzie than either of them can ever admit.

None of that matters any more. He wishes that it still did, but it does not. Nothing matters now.

“I don’t even know if I can get away from him anymore,” Fred sighs.

“Promise me you’ll try.” Annie’s eyes are bright, earnest. She wants what’s best for him, he reflects with something approaching surprise. It has been some time since anyone wanted what was best for him.

“I’ll try,” Fred says.

Annie blinks; for a moment her eyes shimmer, and then she turns away from him, gliding across the room to her husband’s side. Fred wonders if he’ll ever see her again. She’s done all right for herself; he hates her less for this than he used to.

“Want to get a drink?” Gabriel asks, when they’re finally leaving the gallery. “I have some friends who could-”

“No,” Fred says, and the word is ambrosia on his tongue. It feels so good he does it again: “No, Gabriel.”

Gabriel sighs. “You tried this before,” he points out.

“I did,” Fred agrees. “I walked away from you before. I know I can do it, now. It is a tried and tested method.”

“You sound ridiculous,” Gabriel scoffs.

“You’re the ridiculous one,” Fred hears himself snap. “You are selfish and cruel and you pull people into your web like a poisonous spider, then watch their lives disintegrate around you. Everything you touch turns to shit, Gabriel. You want what you cannot have and once you have it you cast it aside. And you call all this a perfect way of life.”

Gabriel is sneering now, cold and sharp and it makes him look ugly. “You say all that and yet you cannot bring yourself to leave my company.”

“No,” Fred agrees, helpless laughter bubbling in his voice. “I know. It is entirely possible that I am in love with you, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or at the very least I am as bewitched as poor Fanny, who follows your every footstep, or Jane, who married William because you told her to and then sits around waiting for your return.” Gabriel is silent, expression thoughtful. “I know this,” Fred continues, “and I’m leaving now.”

Gabriel laughs, harsh and cold; the sound echoes off the surrounding buildings. He’s ugly underneath, Gabriel; beneath the sparkling charm and magical all-consuming charisma and that beauty that does not seem to know how to fade, he is ugly, deformed, twisted. People work this out about him and they go away to live their own lives, untouched and untainted. But most of them manage not to stray back. Fred has the horrible suspicion that he is as drawn to Gabriel as he is because of this fundamental repulsiveness.

“You’ll be back,” Gabriel shouts after him. “How long will you be gone this time?”

“Not long enough,” Fred murmurs to himself, and turns the corner.

"He Closes Early On Thursdays", Being Human, Gen

2009-09-21T14:41:43Z

Title: He Closes Early On Thursdays
Fandom: Being Human
Characters: George, Annie, Mitchell
Challenge/Prompt: paliphrase, “Never”
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2520
Genre: Gen
Summary: This is the part where he runs, you know.
Author’s Notes: Fifteen things that didn’t happen in the season finale. I have no idea where this idea came from, but come it did, and I was running a temperature at the time of writing, so... just read and enjoy. Contains various permutations of major character deaths.

I love you so much
I’m gonna let you kill me.
– Florence & the Machine

fifteen.

This is the part where he runs, you know.

Strap of his bag cutting into his shoulder, he waits for Annie. Scans the crowds at the station, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, still pointed, still too sharp. He hasn’t showered and his skin still stinks of fur. His trainers squeak on the floor and he tries not to think of Mitchell. Tries not to wonder if there is anything left to think about. He has made this choice – or someone made it, anyway.

Annie isn’t coming, and he should go back for her. Mitchell would have gone back for her. His feet feel rooted to the floor. This is the part where he is supposed to return to the house and speak reason. But if he goes back to the house he won’t ever be able to leave, and someone should come out of this. That was the point, after all.

He leans against the train window and feels dirty. Houses of ordinary fucking humans and fucking inhumans skim past his eyes, pretty liars, and this will not be enough. This won’t ever be enough.

The ticket inspector’s eyes gloss black.

four.

Annie closes her eyes against the light, against the flickering flames biting the night sky.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she mutters between her teeth.

And then she is.

twelve.

He shouldn’t be nervous, Mitchell thinks. There is no sense in being nervous about something that is inevitable. In any case, he has been doing this too long. It would’ve been easier to have been claimed by Ypres or the Somme, to become a number in stone and spoken of while never being remembered. He liked the twenties, of course. He liked the eighties. He even quite likes it now. But knowing what he knows now, he would rather he had died there in the war. Died, and not ever come back. Not opened his eyes again.

He takes a breath he does not need; takes two. The air feels thick, cold. It has been a long day, so long.

Mitchell turns, and watches Herrick step through the door, out onto the roof.

eleven.

George hides his eyes when Annie opens the door – her door – because childish destructive curiosity is appealing but common sense wins out and there was something in Annie’s eyes. Besides, George has seen enough of the things that darkness and death have to offer, and he has no desire to see any more. He hears her breath hitch, hears Mitchell choke, and then the door – Annie’s door – closes with a quiet, anticlimactic click. He lowers his hand, and the room is the same as it ever was.

The house seems bigger, colder, emptier. Malevolent, yes, that’s the word. Malevolent.

“She’s gone,” he manages, thick with tears and desperation.

“She is,” Mitchell agrees, and his voice breaks on the second word, a sob bursting between his teeth.

It’s a relief when there is a knock at the front door.

two.

Herrick is faster and George’s blood stripes across the locked door.

Nina screams. It must be a lot – your lover a werewolf and dead all in the space of three minutes – Annie supposes. Mitchell is keening, a low soft note of guilt and grief, and she runs into the room, door and walls mist to her. It is too dark in here, air stained deep blue.

“Going to stop me, little girl?” Herrick asks. His teeth and chin are dripping; in the dark the blood is barely crimson. His eyes are starless nights.

“Annie!” Mitchell yells, the single word a study in agony.

The werewolf stops quivering on the floor and goes very, very still. Annie takes her eyes from Herrick’s freshly-stained shirt collar and watches the change in reverse. It’s almost peaceful without the screaming, the howls. Only then it isn’t a wolf, it’s George, and Annie takes a step back because oh God, his head –

“Out of my way,” Herrick snaps.

Annie grits her teeth. “The man I loved killed me,” she tells him, “you can’t do worse than that.”

Herrick studies her for a long moment in the gloom. “No,” he concedes, “but then, I don’t have to.”

George’s blood inexorably spreads across the concrete floor.

ten.

Annie is silent in the passenger seat. Her eyes on the road, arms folded. She has run out of tears and recriminations but the sentiment is so thick in the air he can smell it, can hear its discordant note strung between them.

Run, little werewolf, the white noise on the radio whispers. Run, little werewolf, run. And keep running. Keep on running.

He whimpers, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

six.

The ward is quiet, splashed with sunlight. This isn’t actually the first time Mitchell has been staked, though he’s careful not to bring it up, and in any case the clumsiness of Herrick’s attack leaves a sour taste in his mouth. It’s usually much tidier than this when you’re killing another vampire. Dignified. That sort of thing. He can’t work out if this was more about a warning than a real intent to kill, or if Herrick’s really just a dick.

Josie looks softly sad, picking his hand up from the cover and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “I hate seeing you like this,” she says. “I hate it. I always wanted to see you as infallible, invincible. You know?”

“Well, I’d like that too.” He attempts a grin, because something is wrong here. His senses are scrambled and the closing hole in his chest itches, but something is wrong. He shifts awkwardly, making space for Josie on the bed. She curls into his side as she did when she was younger and they were attempting to be happy, or something like it anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t understand,” he replies.

Josie twists her head to look at him, and her eyes are black. Shining and black. “Herrick came to me and he wasn’t asking any longer,” she tells him. “I think I’m supposed to be a message.”

Oh, Mitchell thinks almost dispassionately, so this is what it feels like when your heart breaks.

thirteen.

George sits in the transport cafe in the middle of nowhere and pretends to read the menu. It’s raining outside and he is not thinking of Annie walking through the door to oblivion, or of Mitchell falling to pieces around a stake in their hallway. He is not.

A smiling waitress comes to take his order, her teeth just a little too long, and George wonders if she is one of them or if she just really needs a dentist. He sends her off with a request for coffee and a cooked breakfast that he doesn’t really want.

“And then what?” he mutters to himself. And gives himself a reply too: “This.”

Really, he wants to tell Mitchell, really, and then what is turning out to be kind of shit.

five.

The moon is still screaming down each bone on his spine when he awakes, though the sun has risen. His nails are full of mud and leaves, and his teeth taste like dirt. George pushes himself into a sitting position, every inch of him full of that bone-deep ache that follows the transformation, where his skin doesn’t fit and never will. Werewolves should have their own language, he thinks, an ability to describe this.

He finds his feet after a moment, twigs and leaves beneath his bare soles. There is a sharp possibility that Mitchell is dead, and he needs to get back to the house, find Annie, run. Oh Jesus, run.

Except that the trees rustle and people are stepping out from behind them, easily surrounding him. No, not people. Vampires.

“I take it the deal’s off, then,” he says, and admires the way his voice manages to stay steady.

nine.

Annie takes her time straightening cups on the sideboard, arranging them according to colour and size. They look pretty, she thinks, and it’s little touches like that that make this a home and not just a mausoleum for the lost and the bored and the exhausted.

Well, it’s none of those things now, anyway. It’s a failed experiment. Too many variables.

Every pan is in its right place, the fucking graters have been returned to their drawers to languish. She even cleaned out the fridge, binned everything that was up to its use-by date, took the rubbish outside. The kitchen has never looked so clean.

Annie surveys her work one more time and then sits down, back to the cupboard beneath the sink. The kitchen is starting to fill with smoke; the living room ceiling has already collapsed. She thinks the fire brigade has been called, but by the time they get here it will be too late. The flames are licking the kitchen doorframe, blackening the paint.

She closes her eyes, and waits.

three.

After the fifth full moon, Nina makes him breakfast in the morning. Tea, toast, bacon, eggs. It’s a nice gesture, but George already knows that it’s just to avoid looking him in the eye.

He hasn’t seen Annie in six days; she claimed she was bored with the domesticity, but he doesn’t believe her and he doesn’t think she expects him to. Maybe she’ll come back. Maybe she found a new door somewhere, walked through it. Maybe there are more ghosts here, maybe she’s found people like her to be with.

Nina sips a black coffee, thumb stroking the edge of the chipped blue mug. It’s an ok flat; one bedroom, but Annie doesn’t sleep and doesn’t spend much time here and they’re muddling through. Fresh start and all that, even if they’re looking over their shoulders every second of every day.

“You shouldn’t have chosen me,” George tells her, halfway through his meal, the sound of his knife scraping the plate too loud in his still sensitive ears.

Nina smiles, eyes on her mug. “Well,” she says, and her voice is still light, so light, “I know that now.”

seven.

Owen looks thoughtful when Annie steps back.

“Good to know,” he says. “Or was that supposed to break me?”

The world wavers beneath her feet.

one.

The blood pouring from Mitchell’s mouth is thick and too red as it spills over his chest and soaks into his shirt. George’s hands flutter over the stake in his chest – this never came up, he and Mitchell never had the by the way, this is what you do if I ever get staked conversation, why the fuck didn’t they have it? – and he looks helplessly at Annie, stuck between life and death, sobbing in desperation.

“You need to go,” he all but screams at her and she shakes her head, eyes on Mitchell quivering against the hall wall. There’s blood spilling across the tiles – Annie died here, now Mitchell is dying here too, and maybe there’s something poetic in that but George can’t see it.

Mitchell’s hand brushes his arm, grips, and he’s trying to speak. But he can’t force the words out and George brings his hands away from Mitchell’s chest, soaked crimson. And then, right in front of his eyes, the blood turns to dust in his palms.

“No,” he breathes, “no, please, please no.”

Mitchell tries to say something again but he’s cracking. Literally cracking, turning to fragments right in front of George, and Annie is screaming, screaming, screaming, and George has no idea what he’s doing because his best friend is there in front of him, disintegrating.
In moments, there’s nothing left at all.

eight.

The world is taken over by vampires and there is nowhere to hide. Nowhere at all. The most they can do is keep running, and George and Annie do; leaping from country to country and continent to continent. Annie sits and cries on full moons, while George transforms where he can; woods, locked sheds, basements. The house burned months ago and she felt herself trying to fade away, but George held her hand until she stopped. Until strength came back. She almost wishes that she’d gone then; at least now she wouldn’t have to see the shimmering rows of black eyes on the streets, hear the screams, walk the pavements the world over spattered with blood.

Herrick’s beautiful new world and the one saving grace is that Mitchell did not live to see it.

They’re killing half the street, and somehow becoming a fugitive did not ever figure in Annie’s plans for what she was going to do with her life. Of course, she has no life now, but whatever the hell this is, she never meant to ever be on the run. Even if she had ever given a thought of the course of her life without Owen, lying curled up under a bed with a werewolf would never have occurred to her.

“They’re never going to stop, are they?” she asks into George’s shoulder.

She feels him sigh. “No. No, they never will.”

fourteen.

Annie has made half the tea in the house, spreading it through the rooms, hot and steaming and such a waste. George says nothing because he knows it’s only Annie’s way of saying how glad she is that none of them are dead. Well, no more dead than they were yesterday, anyway.

“What happens now?” she asks as they sit at their small kitchen table, clasping warm mugs that none of them particularly want to drink. George wonders if Mitchell feels impotent now, anticlimactic, tired. George feels nothing at all and suspects he should be more worried about that than he is. No one is prepared for situations like this, these situations are not supposed to happen to anyone, who’s to say how you’re supposed to react?

Mitchell scrapes up a passable smile that looks halfway real. “Now?” he echoes. “Now, we live happily ever after.”

George thinks of Nina upstairs, doing her best to be accommodating in the shittiest of circumstances, thinks of the taste of vampire blood that still lingers on his teeth, thinks of Herrick’s warning shots.

“I don’t think we do,” he says aloud, and for a moment mourns the man he was two days ago. He is not that man now, analogies from the Bible or not.

Mitchell’s smile becomes more of a grimace, and Annie reaches for George’s hand. Her skin is snow to the touch, malleable and icy. She squeezes and he’s grateful; grateful in spite of it all.

“Would you it kill you to pretend for five minutes?” Mitchell asks on a laugh that doesn’t quite reach his eyes or anywhere that matters. He’s shaken, George knows; shaken and tired and still in pain and probably suffering more about Herrick than he will ever, ever let on. They’re a vampire and a werewolf and a ghost sharing a house that they will probably not get to keep in a situation as precarious as it is possible to be and there isn’t even any milk left in the fridge.

“Yes,” George decides, “yes, I think it might, a little bit.”

paperclipbitch @ 2009-09-14T16:10:00

2009-09-14T15:12:57Z

Hi all

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"Release The Stars", Star Trek XI, McCoy/Uhura

2009-09-11T14:22:42Z

The next day Jim is strutting around the halls of the Academy like he didn’t spend over an hour yesterday royally fucking up the school’s most difficult and infamous exam because he’s an arrogant little shit. His ability to bounce back from anything and everything is impressive, to say the least; Leonard finds himself thinking that he’s more affected by the whole Kobayashi Maru debacle than Jim is, though of course that figures perfectly. He’s the kind of guy who folds his own problems up small and tight and then marinates them in bitterness and liquor until they expand almost uncontrollably; and he tends to do the same with other people’s problems, which is probably part of the reason he dislikes getting close to people in the first place.

“I suppose you being humble for twenty-four hours would be too much to hope for,” Leonard remarks over breakfast.

Jim is stuffing himself with a wince-making amount of fats and carbs – he made a vague reference to how many calories he burned last night, but Leonard really does not want to know and so hasn’t asked for clarification – and washing it all down with about a gallon of coffee. Leonard has a thumping headache, though he has to concede that if Uhura hadn’t gotten to him when she did, he’d undoubtedly be far more hungover than he is now.

“You wouldn’t know how to talk to me if I was humble,” Jim says with his mouth full. Leonard makes an expression of distaste, but Jim ignores him, swallowing and continuing: “You would be disconcerted. Afraid, even. And you would march me over to medical and spend all day running tests on me and poking me with needles and glaring in despair at your tricorder. And you would wail: ‘Jim, oh Jim, what can possibly be the matter with you, old friend, what has become of you?’ You might even weep.”

“I... would do none of those things,” Leonard points out, reaching over Jim for a coffee refill. Jim smacks his hands away, clutching at it possessively. Uhura offered him coffee in her room before he left, but he declined, thinking he should go and check on Jim. He’s pretty much regretting the decision now. “Don’t go confusing me with one of those girls you’re sexually harassing.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “You’re just going to be judgy at me for ever and ever, aren’t you?”

Leonard shrugs. “Pretty much. For some reason, it never gets old. Possibly ‘cause it’s so damn easy.”

Jim scoffs vaguely and continues eating his artery-clogging breakfast. Leonard waits until he’s distracted by some kind of crispy meat product that’s probably going to take about ten years off Jim’s life, and then liberates the coffee.

He’s pouring himself a cup when Jim asks: “So, where did you disappear to last night?”

“You mean, while you were using our room to have an orgy?” Leonard asks, unable to stop a sour note entering his voice. “Oh God, tell me you’ve disinfected in there.”

Jim blithely ignores him. “You could have stayed,” he offers.

“I don’t want to join in your quest to sleep with every female on campus so that if you ever get that ship you want – which looks pretty damn unlikely, since at the rate you’re going, you’re going to end up court-martialled by the middle of your second year – at least half the crew will be in your thrall.”

Jim’s frustrated sigh turns into a real jaw-cracker of a yawn halfway through, then turns back into a sigh at the other end. It’s pretty fascinating to watch.

“Nice job utterly failing to dodge the question, by the way,” he says, when he seems capable of speech again.

It’s something Uhura’s brought up in the past; clearly Leonard needs to work on his avoidance tactics a little.

“It’s none of your damn business,” he shrugs; it’s a weak response, and they both know it. Jim’s eyes narrow; Leonard can practically hear his brain whirring.

“Did you hook up with Glitter Girl?”

Leonard really thought they were past that; apparently not. “There really is no ‘Glitter Girl’,” he tells Jim, and is mercifully spared any more of this by Uhura sweeping past their table, accompanied by a green-skinned Orion girl that he’s going to assume is the female-Jim roommate.

“Uhura!” Jim says brightly.

She sighs and gazes heavenward, but obediently stops, folding her arms. “What, Kirk?”

“Will you give me your first name if I pass the Kobayashi Maru?”

“You don’t pass the Kobayashi Maru,” she tells him, tone long-suffering, “and anyway, if yesterday is anything to go by, you don’t even stand a chance of failing honourably.”

Jim’s grin spreads; charming and sharp at the same time, and it makes Leonard’s fingers curl into his palm beneath the table. Really, it’s no wonder that people seem to spend half their time trying to punch Jim’s face in; maybe he emanates some kind of pheromones. Leonard should do some research: he could probably write a really interesting and ground-breaking paper on it.

“Then I guess I need a study partner,” Jim drawls. Uhura’s roommate giggles; Leonard lets his head drop into his hands. “What do you say?”

“You come anywhere near me and try to ‘study’, I swear to God, I will shove your PADD so far up your ass-” Uhura begins.

“I’ve had worse offers,” Jim interrupts.

She sweeps off; the Orion girl keeps looking back over her shoulder at Jim, grinning, teeth startlingly white against her skin.

“Wow,” Leonard says dryly, “how does anyone resist you, Jim?”

Later, after an entire day of Jim acting like yesterday didn’t happen at all, shell of cockiness and arrogance utterly intact, Leonard ends up running into Uhura outside medical.

“Sorry,” he offers, “I really can’t stop him. He’s just... Jim.”

She smiles, falling into step beside him. “Actually, don’t ever tell him I said so, but I think I prefer Asshole Jim Kirk to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Jim Kirk. Slightly.”

Leonard can’t help a wry laugh. “Yeah, me too. Which is kind of weird, I never had myself pegged as a masochist.”

Uhura’s expression is momentarily and distractingly flirtatious, though it’s hidden swiftly enough.

“I just wanted to see how you were,” she says after a pause that’s gone on just a little too long.

“I’m fine,” he tells her and then adds, more gruffly: “...thanks. For last night.”

Uhura’s smile is bright and far too sunny. “No problem. Any time.”

She squeezes his arm and then hurries off across the campus, turning to give him a grin over her shoulder, and Leonard reflects dispassionately that he really is completely and utterly fucked.

-

“I never thought I’d be saying this to you, but you need to sound angrier,” Uhura says.

It’s a gloriously sunny day, and somehow Leonard is sitting out on the grass with Uhura, helping her study for her next xenolinguistics exam. He’s not sure that he is at any point going to need to speak Klingon to anyone, but Uhura had looked so pleading and also used the magic words: “I’ve brought lunch”, so now here they are, poring over her PADD and probably getting enough sun to end in horrible amounts of skin cancer.

Leonard just about manages not to roll his eyes. “This is a damn stupid language,” he informs her.

“I’ll just tell that to the Klingons when I’m communications officer, shall I?” Uhura asks, tone heavy with sarcasm. “I’m sure that’ll go down really well.”

He could point out that he never wanted to learn Klingon in the first place and he’s not really sure how this is actually helping her study anyway, but the weather is ridiculously lovely today and Jim is in class for at least the next ten minutes, so Leonard bites back a dozen bitter responses.

“Say it again?”

Uhura repeats the Klingon phrase – Leonard thinks it’s something innocuous, but the sharp guttural nature of the pronunciation makes it sound like the near future is going to involve things like evisceration – syllable by syllable, then cheerfully adds: “Just pretend that you’re talking to Kirk. That usually works for me.”

Oh, he’d just love to tell Jim that, but unfortunately there’ll be no discreet way to slip it into conversation.

Leonard has a go, infusing each awkward jangle of vowels with the tone of voice he usually uses when he’s got back to his room and all he wants is a shower and Jim’s in there stark naked and steaming up the windows.

“Maybe you’re in the wrong specialty,” Uhura tells him, smiling and looking impressed.

“Please,” Leonard says, “if I was in linguistics I’d have to talk to people.”

Uhura laughs. “Seriously,” she says, “you are not nearly as antisocial as you say you are. You cannot hate everybody.”

“I can,” he protests.

“...You like me,” Uhura says, after a moment.

They’re both leant over her PADD and in his peripheral vision Leonard can see sunlight sparkling off her hair. The entire situation is a fucking cliché, right down to the dialogue, but he can’t stop himself from mumbling: “I do.”

Uhura turns to look properly at him and after a reluctant moment Leonard obediently shifts to look at her. Her eyes are very dark and her mouth is just slightly open, an invitation, and Leonard realises that they’re both waiting for one of them to break. Leonard would think that Uhura is waiting for him to kiss her, but she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself and also of making the first move. He’s a second away from abandoning all common sense and finally closing the gap between them when the bell to signify the end of classes goes off, jarringly loud and breaking the moment completely.

“I need to get to medical,” he says, pulling away from her humiliatingly fast. He’s too old for this kind of thing, has gained too much maturity from the bottoms of bottles and the ink of divorce papers, and it’s all too stupid and unlikely to actually happen, but no one seems to have told the universe this.

“I should get to the lab,” Uhura agrees, pushing herself fluidly to her feet. She offers him a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and then strides off.

The Jim voice that has taken up permanent, annoying residence at the back of Leonard’s head sighs heavily and says: you are a fucking idiot, Bones.

He doesn’t bother trying to get it to shut up, because it does kind of have a point. Leonard swears roughly between his teeth, and walks away.

-

It is actually just as well that Jim is supposedly some kind of genius who’s just hiding it really really efficiently, since he never seems to use his free periods for study; he regularly turns up for navigation class looking well-fucked, signifying to Leonard with truly disturbing facial expressions exactly what he’s been doing in his spare time. Sometimes he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have initiated a conversation of any kind on the shuttle, and then definitely shouldn’t have agreed to rooming with the arrogant ass he’d sort of inadvertently befriended, but he doesn’t think like that often. Jim is one of the best things to happen to him in recent years, though of course he won’t ever tell him. Give Jim Kirk an inch and he takes a goddamn mile; and besides, he probably already knows.

Navigation class is pretty much a bust today; ignoring Jim is taking up most of Leonard’s attention, and their instructor is snapping at them in short, largely uninformative sentences. The ceiling above them is full of the star hologram, but looking up into the tangle of lights, Leonard is forced to conclude that if he does end up stranded alone somewhere he is just going to end up dying alone in deep space. Uhura is carefully not looking back at him, and Leonard is just as carefully not contrasting the dark of her hair with the crimson of her uniform, because that way lies certain madness. If Leonard is determinedly not going to let Jim break him then he is damn well not going to let Uhura do it.

It is tiresome being in a classroom with people up to ten years his junior; it serves to remind Leonard just how old he is and also forces him to interact with them all on a level he was supposed to leave behind almost a decade ago. Jim’s got a point when he says that Leonard feels older than he really is; but after an acrimonious divorce and a change of career he didn’t really want in the first place, he has every right to feel irrevocably aged. He’s tired and bitter and far too angry, and all he’s really doing is waiting for everyone to notice this and walk away.

Jim is the first one out of the classroom when the bell goes, heading up the stairs to catch whichever poor humanoid female he’s decided to turn his attentions to this week, and Leonard is about to follow him at a much more sedate pace when Uhura manages to catch his eye, and raises a significant eyebrow. He obediently slows, frowning at her. She half-smiles, before turning away to hurry down to the podium and talk to their instructor. Leonard has generally assumed that their instructor is an asshole who has no time or patience for anyone or anything, but he supposes that while that could be perfectly true, he’s underestimated Uhura. Leonard gradually makes his way down the stairs too, overhearing Uhura’s bright request that the star hologram remain on a little longer for her and Cadet McCoy to do some extra studying.

What the hell? Leonard thinks, but decides he might as well go with it. He’s had no control over his life at all the last few years, just reacted to the situations and people that came up and done his best to preserve some sort of dignity and sanity through it all. He resents people who proudly claim that they just lay back and go with the flow; it isn’t liberating, never getting to be proactive in your own existence. It is scary, and frustrating, and seemingly endless.

When the door has finally closed behind their instructor, Uhura beckons Leonard over. “He’s leant us the hologram,” she says.

“I noticed,” Leonard replies dryly, though he’s inwardly amused. Their instructor must trust them to a certain extent; the last student who claimed they needed to study and was left alone with the star hologram reprogrammed it, so that all the constellations spelled out rude words and formed even ruder images. And Leonard isn’t supposed to know who did that, but Jim was proud of himself for days, with all the boasting that that implies. “Why?” he adds.

Uhura smiles at him but doesn’t reply; a moment later she startles him by sitting down on the floor directly beneath the programme, calling out a list of instructions until the classroom lights dim and the star chart becomes bigger, filling almost the entire room. She smiles at Leonard, crooking a finger to indicate he should join her. He’s hesitant – this is not studying and he really has no idea what Uhura is trying to do – but since he apparently threw his hands up and away from the steering wheel of his existence years ago, he obediently comes to sit beside her.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“You think space is full of disease and darkness and death,” Uhura informs him, parroting his own words back at him in a voice tinged with amusement.

“That’s because it is,” he points out.

Uhura sighs. “That’s not all it is.”

She leans back onto her elbows, gaze turning to the map of silver lights above them, and then right down until her dark hair pools against the floor. Leonard hesitates, but the Jim voice in the back of his head calls him a number of unflattering things until he obediently lies down too. The minute he does, Uhura gives the computer another string of instructions until the stars swirl to surround them, the closest ones actual balls of white fire, the furthest ones little pinpricks. He can see the great curve of a planet in the distance.

“Space is beautiful,” Uhura tells him.

He wants to protest that the prettiest of faces have claws and teeth and weapons beneath their surfaces – something he’s been taught over and over again – but Uhura reaches sideways, grabbing his wrist in her surprisingly firm grip.

“Just... don’t say anything,” she whispers.

He sighs, but obediently stays quiet. He knows a futile argument when he sees one; knows that some days it just isn’t worth the effort, and anyway, Uhura will not stop until she’s won. Instead, he tips his head and looks up into the swirl of galaxies above him, surrounding him. He knows what Uhura is trying to do; trying to show him just how stunning space can be. He also knows that there are hidden black holes, malevolent other races just waiting to destroy Federation starships, new diseases that they have no defences against. Leonard inevitably ends up focusing on the negative side of things, on the what ifs and could bes and dangerous possibilities no matter how small they are. He never wanted to join Starfleet and he never wants to leave Earth, but his options are limited and he supposes it’s about time he accepted the choice that he made, instead of resenting it all the time. It’s in Leonard’s nature to fight the things he cannot change, and he doesn’t think that’s going to stop in a hurry; but maybe it is time to stop wishing he was anywhere but Starfleet, and try to do the best he can with the options he has available to him.

Besides, Uhura has a point; there is something majestic about space, though he’ll of course never admit it aloud.

He won’t thank her, because he can’t; but he can tell her that he’s got her point, and that should be enough. He thinks Uhura knows him better than he ever intended to let her, thinks maybe he’s more transparent than he ever knew. Or maybe it’s just that pop psychology that half the cadets study, that makes them think they know more about each other than they really do. Whatever he ends up saying, Leonard wants to give her something. Something to let Uhura know her effort has been appreciated and understood.

Leonard pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks at Uhura. Her expression is utterly serene, though there’s a yearning in her eyes as she stares at the vastness of space. Starfleet breeds ambition, after all, and there’s a hunger in all its recruits. Hell, maybe in three years’ time, when he finally graduates (well, if Jim hasn’t dragged him into something inadvisable by then that gets them both kicked out), Leonard might have found that hunger too, or something similar enough to it to get by on. He’s distracted from these thoughts as Uhura shifts to look at him, eyes fixed on him with the same intensity of focus that she gave the star map. He’s half-leant over her, frozen with indecision, but while there’s a friendship here he knows that they’ve approached each other since the beginning with the same intent.

If you pussy out on this again, Bones, I will abandon ship, the Jim voice warns. And see how well you do without me.

Uhura’s expression says something startlingly similar, soft fingers reaching up to touch his shoulder before sliding to curl over the back of his neck. Leonard hesitates for one more brittle second that shines like glass, and then he leans down to finally, finally kiss her.

He hears her sigh softly as their lips touch; the part of him that occasionally read Lucy’s romance novels on boring evenings thinks it might be some kind of disgustingly sappy gesture, but in reality he knows it’s more a sigh of oh thank God, about time. They’ve danced around this for longer than they really had to, and Leonard knows this; but they’re here now, Uhura’s long fingers sliding through the back of his hair, her mouth opening beneath his. Letting him take control of the kiss though he knows her well enough to know that if she wanted to she could take charge and he’d let her. Her body is warm and soft beneath his, and Leonard knows that, right now, there is barely a man in the Academy who would not be jealous of him.

Slowly, he pulls back to breathe. Uhura’s lips are shining and her dark hair is still spread against the floor. She is beautiful, almost too beautiful, and Leonard realises that he has no idea how he actually got here. He can see the stars reflected in her eyes; silver sparkling in the deep brown, and this should be ridiculous and cheesy and it kind of isn’t.

This is almost definitely going to turn out to be a problem.

Leonard opens his mouth and Uhura moves quickly, pressing her index finger against his lips.

“If you ruin this moment,” she says quietly, “I swear to God I will end you.”

Obedient – if only because he has no idea what to say to her that won’t come across as either insulting or unbearably clichéd – Leonard decides that maybe talking is overrated right now anyway, and leans down to kiss her again.

-

“Look, you told me to prove it, and I did!” The cadet seems particularly anxious, a thick accent mangling the words. “Really, this is as much your fault as it is mine!”

“I would think of a better defence,” the grey-clad instructor walking beside him says, tone unsympathetic. “Especially since you failed in your objective.”

“Will I get a hearing?” the cadet asks; after a moment’s thought, Leonard manages to place the accent as Scottish. Not one he’s heard very often, and he’s never heard one as strong as this. Then again, this man seems to be pretty upset, which is probably sending his accent into overdrive.

“That’s for Admiral Archer to decide,” the instructor replies, tone still mercilessly non-committal. Leonard grimaces, four steps behind. The man is positively radiating bastard, and he doesn’t pity the red-haired cadet.

“The dog will turn up!” the cadet exclaims. Leonard swallows a surprised laugh; that wasn’t a sentence he expected to turn up in this argument. “I swear, the co-ordinates couldnae been that far off-”

“Save it for the Admiral, Scott,” the instructor snaps, and the two men disappear down a different corridor. Leonard resists the urge to follow (he sort of wants to know how the conversation ends), but that won’t exactly be subtle, so instead he continues down the corridor and outside, where Jim is waiting for him on the building’s steps.

“Bones!” he says cheerfully. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“You wrote the time and place on my head in permanent marker,” Leonard replies, and deliberately does not mention the two hours of using various abrasive products until the words and half his forehead came off. He suspects Jim would only count that as a bonus. “Backwards, so it would come out the right way round when I looked in the mirror.”

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, “and it took ages-”

“You bastard,” Leonard cuts him off. “You are a bastard and I don’t know why they haven’t kicked you out of here yet.”

“Same reason you haven’t gone and asked for a new roommate,” Jim shrugs. “I’m awesome.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Leonard says dryly. “I’m still gonna keep using ‘asshole’.”

Jim doesn’t look all that phased. “‘Asshole’... ‘awesome’... they have letters in common.”

Leonard swallows down a laugh, since he’s still technically pissed at Jim. “You wrote on my head,” he states, “in permanent marker.”

Jim smirks, unrepentant. “Tell me how else I was supposed to get your attention.”

Leonard feels himself frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jim spreads his hands, an almost sensible expression on his face. “You keep disappearing off and you’re never around.” He shrugs. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were getting laid.”

“...And there comes the sex,” Leonard chips in, deciding he should try and navigate the conversation away from here. “We’d been talking for three whole minutes without you bringing it up; is that a new record?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Well, clearly that’s not happening,” he says, but now concern is starting to filter onto his face. “You don’t have some kind of really serious drinking problem do you?”

“Other than the one I have already?” Leonard asks, voice trying for sarcastic and falling a little flat. Jim shrugs, looking a little awkward. “No,” Leonard adds.

“So I don’t have to stage an intervention?”

The idea of James T. Kirk – who is addicted to absolutely everything, and if he isn’t it’s probably only because he hasn’t discovered it yet – trying to stage an intervention is so funny that Leonard can’t help a snort of amusement. Jim is still trying to look at him in a serious and understanding way, which is kind of jarring since it isn’t an expression he wears very often, but a smile breaks reluctantly across his face anyway.

“You’re a bastard,” Jim says.

“You wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t,” Leonard shrugs. “Lunch?”

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, and then frowns at him as they start walking across the campus. “Hey, who says I like you?”

Leonard rolls his eyes and does not bother replying; he seems to have distracted Jim for the moment, though he knows there’s only so long he’ll get away with it. Jim may act like he is, but he isn’t stupid in any way at all. In fact, he’s scary smart, which is one of those things Leonard tries not to think about because it kind of fucks with his view of the universe. As they walk, Jim brightly lists all the reasons why Bones is his least favourite person ever, while Leonard smirks and says ‘right’ and ‘yeah’ and ‘fuck you’ in all the right places. He sees Uhura and Gaila on the other side of the courtyard they’re crossing; Uhura drops him a wink and then strides past, pointedly ignoring Jim.

This whole thing is ridiculous and so high school that it should probably hurt, but somehow Leonard really can’t bring himself to care.

-

The sex is kind of amazing, which shouldn’t really be a surprise; Uhura is younger than him but not inexperienced, and Leonard is no slouch in the sack himself, whatever Jim wants to claim. Uhura has legs that go on for weeks and it is no surprise at all that she likes being on top; he thinks he’d be disappointed if she didn’t. She is passionate and far too sexy and sometimes swears in Romulan when she comes, which is something Leonard never knew he found arousing because, of course, he’s never had the chance to find out before. Sometimes he calls her Nyota and sometimes he calls her darlin’, just because he likes the way it makes her eyes soften. She calls him Leonard, experiments with diminutives of it until he’s forced to stop up her mouth with kisses.

She’s also the first woman he’s slept with since the divorce that he’s actually wanted to sleep with again. He mentions this to Uhura at one point, even though after he’s said it he thinks he probably should’ve kept it to himself.

Uhura arches an eyebrow and he has a horrible suspicion that there’s going to be pop psychology in the upcoming conversation. They’re recreationally drunk – something else for Leonard to get used to; he hasn’t been anything other than numbingly intoxicated for... well, more than a few years – and it’s a good look on her; Uhura’s smudged make-up makes her eyes look larger and makes her more accessible. More human, less goddess, and that’s more of a relief than Leonard will ever tell her.

“Is that a proposal?” she asks, humour bubbling in her voice.

“No,” he snaps, with just a little too much force. He’s not that much older than her, but he’s carrying several decades’ worth of shit around and besides, any thoughts of marriage leave a sour taste in his mouth. Uhura isn’t there yet and, with any luck, she never will be. Leonard wouldn’t wish what he’s been through on anyone, not even Jim on a bad day. Though he has a private theory that marriage itself would wreck Jim well enough on its own, even without the eventual destruction and vicious divorce. He wonders how many of his thoughts have escaped onto his face, and hopes he still looks mildly pissed rather than bitter.

Uhura doesn’t crack for anyone, not even him. Her thumb strokes idly down the side of her glass – some sickly mixture of liquors with an unimaginatively suggestive name – and she doesn’t back away the way anyone else would. He admires her for it, if nothing else.

“Are you saying I remind you of your wife?”

He actually winces at that one, though Uhura doesn’t look repentant. She’s pushing him, he realises, and it should be unfair but everyone in Starfleet is like this. Hard as nails and insufferably curious.

“You don’t remind me of my wife,” he tells her, a sharp tone to his voice that’s almost damning. Uhura and Lucy really are nothing alike, except that they’re both strong women who will probably turn out to be stronger than him in the long run (they’re less brittle than he is, in any case), and right now it’s a relief. It may not always be one, but then that’s something to worry about in the future.

Uhura’s head is tipped to one side, regarding him thoughtfully. Whatever she thinks she can read in him is probably nothing like what he’s actually thinking, but that’s fine. Years of experience have taught Leonard that you rarely want to know what someone else is actually thinking, and that was before he even met Jim.

All she says is: “good.”

Her knee brushes his under the table, and he smiles. None of this is perfect, by any means – with a past like his, nothing will ever be perfect again and no, Jim, he’s being pragmatic, not pessimistic – but, in spite of everything, it’s not half bad.

-

Dorm beds are really not designed for two; they were probably deliberately designed by Starfleet officials in a passive-aggressive way to stop students from getting any, but all it really results in is overcrowding and then awkward pins and needles. Consequently, the moment the warm post-coital haze has dissipated and there has been the requisite amount of cuddling (which neither of them refer to directly, but which seems to happen with an almost sweet sort of inevitability), Uhura finds her underwear and goes to flop on Jim’s bed. She looks incredible, dark hair falling loose around her shoulders. Uhura refuses to wear the kind of slutty underwear most first year female cadets choose – and Leonard knows far too much about the underwear selections of about half their class, either because Jim really doesn’t know when to stop talking, or because he’s found various pairs scattered throughout their dorm room – but that doesn’t make her any less sexy in the sensible white matching set she’s chosen.

“Jim would die if he knew where you were right now,” Leonard can’t help murmuring.

Uhura laughs, and then gets that thoughtful and slightly evil look that Leonard is genuinely starting to dread. She gets off Jim’s bed and goes to hunt through her bag, finally coming out with a small camera.

“If you wanted to make porn you really should’ve been screwing Jim,” Leonard warns idly, because he doubts that that’s Uhura’s real intention.

Uhura makes a face and then returns to Jim’s bed, turning the camera on with a soft bleeping sound. Then she holds it out at arm’s length, leaning back on Jim’s bed and pouting.

“He’ll just use these for jerking off,” Leonard can’t help but warn her.

Uhura laughs, though she’s frowning at the picture she just took. “Yeah, but they’ll drive him mad too.”

Leonard considers this. “He’ll just look at the date and time they were taken when you send them to him, and then he’ll think I let you in.”

Uhura has another go at taking a photo before replying. “So I’ll change the time and date to a time when you’re both in class.”

That could work, Leonard concedes. “You do realise that when you make Jim’s life difficult you’re just making mine even more difficult?”

Uhura is still scowling at the display screen, but she glances up and shoots him a sunny, teasing smile. “You can handle it.”

He can handle it, which is really the depressing part. Any sane person would’ve given up on Jim months ago. Leonard considers his options for a moment, and then sighs, holding out his hand.

“Give me the camera.”

They get three good shots of Uhura lying on Jim’s bed in her underwear looking simultaneously sultry and smug, while Leonard tries to figure out just how unhealthy this is in the grand scheme of things. He decides on very, and then decides that it also probably doesn’t matter; everyone at Starfleet is kind of hopelessly fucked-up anyway.

“This is going to guarantee me about a week of hell, you know,” Leonard remarks. He sort of wants to tell Uhura not to deliberately bait Jim, but that would be like telling the moon not to wane or the Earth not to turn, and he momentarily wonders how he ended up surrounding himself with such stubborn people who have such bad habits. Surely he should be content with dealing with his own sociopathic tendencies.

Uhura looks at him through her eyelashes. “I’ll make it up to you,” she promises, voice low and soft.

Leonard feels his mouth tug into a smile, and doesn’t doubt it.

-

“Uhura is sending me porn!” Jim announces gleefully three days later. Leonard sighs.

“Are you suffering hallucinations, Jim? Has someone slipped you a date-rape drug? Again?”

Jim’s head snaps up from his PADD. “You said we wouldn’t talk about that again. It is that of which we do not speak.”

Leonard shrugs, unable to stop himself from smirking. “I don’t know why they bothered with it anyway, it’s not like you’re not easy enough in the first place.”

“I’m not easy, I’m just not picky,” Jim corrects him. “Which isn’t a bad thing. I could be like you, Bones; when was the last time you got laid?”

About four hours ago, Leonard thinks, but he is not Jim and so does not feel the need to say it aloud. Jim takes his silence as victory, gives him a smug look, and then glances back down at his PADD.

“Uhura’s sent me porn!” he says, tone still unbearably smug.

Leonard is a doctor, not an actor, but feels he might as well go along with all this because if he doesn’t Uhura will make his life hell, and if it comes down a choice between the two he’d rather have Jim tormenting him because at least that’s something he’s gotten used to. He holds out a hand, and Jim obediently gives him the PADD. Sure enough, there are the photographs he took of Uhura, sprawled across Jim’s sheets.

“See, I told you she liked me really!” Jim tells him happily.

Genius or not, Jim has apparently failed to get the point of this exercise; Leonard feels he should probably give him a shove in the right direction, if only because they’ve gotten this far now.

“She seems to be on your bed,” he remarks, doing his best to sound disapproving and disbelieving.

“What?” Jim snatches the PADD back and immediately starts scrutinising the bits that don’t involve Nyota in next to nothing. “Oh my God, she’s on my bed, Bones! Why is she on my bed?”

Maybe Pike is crazed and delusional, maybe Jim is not a genius at all. Leonard shrugs and pretends to return to his studying while Jim continues to stare in horror at the pictures.

“And how did she get in?” Jim asks, continuing to sound panicked. “Apparently she was in here while we were in the library studying that time.”

When Jim says in the library studying what he actually means is that he was trying to seduce one of the librarian’s assistants, while Leonard was there to supervise and try and stop Jim from getting them both banned permanently from the building, since at some point they will probably need to get into the archives. Still, neither of them were in the dorm room, which is the important part.

“I have no idea,” Leonard mutters; he doesn’t sound particularly convincing, but then Jim isn’t listening, so it’s all fine.

“She broke into our room, Bones,” Jim says, waving the PADD around again. Sooner or later he’s going to end up accidentally hitting it against a wall, which is not going to end well. “She broke into our room and took sexy pictures!” He’s looking wildly around, as though expecting to see a transporter pad or a trap door labelled Uhura’s way of sneaking in here. “You know what this means?”

Leonard sighs. “Do I want to?”

“This means war,” Jim hisses.

“Right,” Leonard says, and tries to once again read up on the latest developments in vaccinations.

“Don’t you care?” Jim demands.

“Not particularly.”

Jim sighs in frustration. “She broke into our room.”

“Wasn’t my bed she was lying all over,” Leonard replies, and doesn’t turn around so Jim can’t see his smirk. “I don’t think she even knows who I am, really.”

Jim makes a disgusted noise and goes storming off. Leonard counts to three and then calls up Uhura.

“Mission accomplished.”

-

He can’t explain any of it out loud without the whole thing becoming a little more self-pitying and masochistic than he’s trying to be these days (he thinks Lucy might be impressed if she saw him, but then again she’d probably only be pissed she didn’t manage to break him completely), but the fact is that this cannot and will not last, and Leonard isn’t even sure if he wants it to. Guys like him… well, they get girls, sure, but not the girl, and Uhura deserves someone shinier and happier and considerably less bitter than he is. She deserves someone newer than he is, someone who can give her more than he can because, for one thing, they’d have it to hand over in the first place.

They both know this, though it’s the only thing they won’t discuss. The impermanence of their relationship isn’t something that should be stated aloud.

Uhura keeps teaching him Klingon and Leonard keeps letting her; the insults are creative and enjoyable to spit out and in any case it makes something in Uhura’s eyes sparkle every time he gets something right. She’s a good teacher and since it’s starting to look fairly inevitable that Leonard is going to have to go and work in the ass-ends of space, he might as well have another language of some kind up his sleeve. The sex is as good as it ever was, and surprisingly easy to schedule, since either Jim or Gaila can be pretty much guaranteed to be out slutting about at any given time. And they still enjoy each other’s company; Leonard can’t help thinking that he used to be like Uhura once, except that he was never a woman and he’s pretty much been this abrasive all his life. It’s part defence-mechanism, part general human nature; though he’ll never confess the ratio of the split. Still, there’s something that he recognises there.

Something will break though; something always does. And as weeks go by in a blur of study and Uhura and Jim, Leonard finds himself looking for the hairline cracks, the tipping points, with increasing interest. He doesn’t ever want to lose Nyota as a friend, but he knows he’ll lose her as a lover and he knows it can’t hold on much longer. It’ll probably be for the best; Jim is still driving himself nuts trying to find out how Uhura broke into their room. It’s been on the tip of Leonard’s tongue to tell him half a dozen times, just so he could get some damn peace, but then he’d have to have the rest of the conversation and this isn’t something he wants to talk about. He’s not even sure he can put half of it into words, and Jim won’t be interested in the bits that don’t involve nudity anyway.

Over lunch, after an impromptu Klingon lesson (Leonard learns how to insult someone’s mother in seventeen different slanderous ways, which he’s sure will endear him to any and all Klingons he may get the chance to encounter), Uhura tells him about her new xenolinguistics instructor.

“He’s brilliant,” she enthuses, “and he’s going to teach me Vulcan next year!”

Leonard listens to her excitement without focusing too much on the words; there’s a sparkle in Uhura’s eyes and laughter across her mouth as she tells him about her new teacher. There’s admiration there, which is understandable; and something else, something he doesn’t even think Uhura is aware of yet.

Ah, he thinks, there it is.

He hides his grim smile behind a cup of coffee, and lets her keep on listing her instructor’s attributes; Leonard wonders if it’s significant that she never actually calls him by his name.

Three weeks later she’s in tears and he’s telling her that he doesn’t need to hear it, because he doesn’t. Because he saw this coming long before she did, long before they’d even kissed for the first time. Uhura hugs him tight for a long moment and tells him that they’re still friends, that they’ll still talk, which he takes to mean that they won’t, but he appreciates the thought anyway.

Leonard says nothing, because he’s done this enough times to know that there’s nothing to say that really means anything anyway.

-

The end-of-year examinations keep everyone busy for a while; the library is crowded round the clock and even Jim stops sleeping around for an impressive three weeks while he tries to cram in all the things he failed to pay attention to earlier in the year. Leonard isn’t going to be tested in anything he doesn’t know already, but he welcomes the distraction; he’s in no mood to clamber back into a bottle, but on the other hand he’s tempted to. Nyota Uhura is at least worth it, which is more than he can say for most of the women he’s driven himself to ruin over in the past.

They exchange awkward smiles when they pass each other in the halls, and four days after the break-up that wasn’t really a break up Gaila comes running across the grass to Leonard and wraps him up in a tearful hug. Later, Leonard has to make up a dozen excuses to shut Jim up, and suddenly feels about a million years older than all the people around him. He feels even older when he’s in the library and is approached by a timid-looking Russian kid who looks about eight, asking him to get a volume down from a high shelf. After a moment of wondering whether Starfleet has opened a kindergarten without telling anyone, Leonard obliges and promises the kid that he’ll get his growth-spurt soon; the boy blushes and mutters a mangled thank you in an accent so thick it almost sounds like he’s putting it on.

The minute all the exam after-parties are finished (Leonard is dragged along by Jim, and tends to sit in corners getting quietly and contentedly drunk, and mercifully no young women come over to dump cocktails on him and start inadvisable yet enjoyable affairs) everyone starts counting down to their month-long break before their second year. It’s embarrassingly obvious that Leonard has nothing at all outside Starfleet, but the idea of a break from the increasingly claustrophobic campus and the consistently enthusiastic and over-ambitious cadets is nonetheless appealing.

Leonard comes back to the dorm one night to find Jim has locked him out, which is irritating but not really anything new. He has a horrible suspicion that Jim has some kind of quota for how many cadets he wants to sleep with before the end of the year, and who is Leonard to stop him, just because he’d quite like a shower and get access to his belongings?

“I’m getting a new roommate next year,” he mutters at the door; and knows he probably won’t.

He contemplates his options, and ends up heading for the sports stadium again. At least then he won’t get an audience for his exile; he’s getting pretty sick of the pitying looks people keep giving him. Jim Kirk is infamous, of course, and his long-suffering roommate is becoming pretty well known if only through association. Leonard is seriously going to punch the next person that winces when they pass him sitting in the library or the cafeteria in the early hours of the morning, and says something like: “Kirk locked you out again, huh?”

There’s hardly anyone in the stadium when he gets there; a lanky Japanese guy is running laps, but after one look at Leonard wearily trudging toward the bleachers, he grabs his stuff and disappears. Possibly next year Leonard should work on making people respect him without making them outright fear him, but his notoriously bad temper has stood him in pretty good stead he’s had in every job until now, so he’s not going to bother changing just to suit Starfleet’s unsettlingly highly-strung recruits.

It’s peaceful and quiet and the night air is cool but bearable. Leonard has his PADD with him and uses the time to read about the current advances in emergency surgery – which should be pretty useful when he’s eventually on a starship – and in no way wastes about fifteen minutes imagining how much fun it would be to remove all of Jim Kirk’s vital organs.

A shadow falls across him and he looks up to find Uhura looking down at him, a soft smile tugging at her lips. He has déjà vu for a moment, so strong it makes his chest hurt.

“Kirk having another orgy?” she asks, tone trying for light and just missing it.

“Something like that,” he shrugs. “What about Gaila?”

“There were three guys in there when I left,” Uhura shrugs. “I am never going to be able to touch anything in my room ever again.”

They both grin at each other in momentary camaraderie and then look away uncomfortably.

“Do you want to sit down?” Leonard asks. Uhura’s lips twist, and then she nods.

The silence between them is surprisingly friendly, given everything, but then they were probably better friends than anything else. Leonard will always think she’s beautiful and there’s a spark in her eyes when she looks at him, but he thinks they can cope as they are. He tells her something like this, and she looks almost relieved.

“So you don’t hate me?” she asks, hesitant.

“I hate everybody,” Leonard replies with a wry smile.

Uhura laughs; Leonard lets himself realise just how much he’s missed that sound. “That’s all right then. I won’t take it personally.”

She shivers – the female cadet uniforms don’t leave a lot to the imagination, it has to be said – and Leonard wraps an arm around her shoulders, a gentleman to the last. Uhura leans her head on his shoulder, sighing.

“Where are you going to sleep tonight?” she asks him eventually.

It’s a clear night; the moon shines out crisply and bright. It’s cool but not cold, and Leonard’s been in far worse situations.

“Out here,” he shrugs. “What about you? You got some friends you can stay with?”

Uhura smiles. “Probably.”

She doesn’t move, and they stare at the moon together. One day, Leonard knows, he’ll leave this planet behind and go into space, and maybe he won’t ever come back. He’s surprised at how peacefully he can think that thought, can think it without anger and bile rising within him. Most of that acceptance probably comes from Uhura, he realises; Uhura who carefully reshaped his prejudices and hatred until they were still there but considerably less prevalent. Leonard can never thank her, much as he wants to; but he lets himself rest his cheek against her hair, silently forgiving her for whatever wrongs she thinks she’s done him.

When he next glances down at her, she’s fallen asleep.

-

Most people would see spending their summer in a small battered shuttle with Jim Kirk unjustifiable and inexcusable punishment for any given crime, let alone something chosen willingly; still, Leonard finds himself looking forward to it. He’s got nothing to go back to and neither has Jim, but they’re going to drive around the country at breakneck speed getting inadvisably drunk in inadvisable places and Jim is going to keep seducing people until someone breaks his nose and even that probably won’t slow him down for long, so it’s already shaping up to be a pretty good trip.

Leonard is surprised to feel emotional at leaving Starfleet Academy, even if it’s only for a few weeks, though he doesn’t mention it aloud and outwardly he remains as taciturn and grumpy as usual (“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out you’re a robot, Bones,” Jim remarks, during packing, “except they don’t make robots who’re assholes”). It feels weird, watching streams of uniform-clad cadets disappearing into shuttles back to their home cities, knowing that he’ll wake up tomorrow somewhere other than San Francisco.

Jim is stood beside him, throwing winks and blowing kisses into the crowd.

“Do you have an alphabetical list of every female on campus?” Leonard can’t help asking. “Are you ticking them off as you go?”

“That’s cold, Bones,” Jim replies, waving to a tall blonde girl, who giggles. “I’m nowhere near that calculated.”

“And how’s the alien STD to-do list going?” Leonard can’t help adding, because he refuses to believe that Jim doesn’t have one, just because he hasn’t managed to find it yet.

Jim laughs. “I had this amazing one two weeks ago,” he says, “I was oozing out of orifices I didn’t even know were orifices. I swear, it was interesting enough to go into a medical textbook of some kind. You should have come and looked.”

Jim Kirk is a medical textbook all on his own, but Leonard doesn’t say this aloud. Jim would only take it as a compliment.

“I’ve told you before,” he tells Jim, “I’m your physician in name but not in practice. If I had to patch you up every time you did something stupid I wouldn’t actually be able to talk to you.”

“You don’t talk to me now,” Jim points out cheerfully, making a ‘call me’ sign at a brunette whose underwear Leonard found under his pillow one morning, and God knows that’s a story he doesn’t ever want to hear. “You just snap at me in a judgemental way every time you open your mouth.”

“Well, someone has to.”

Leonard catches sight of Uhura about to get onto a shuttle, and feels a small smile curl his lips. He and Jim know almost everything there is to know about each other by now (Leonard has heard Jim’s I drove my step-father’s car off a cliff story at least six times; Jim sounds less proud every time he tells it, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed this so Leonard isn’t about to point it out) but this is one thing that Leonard won’t ever tell him. Jim doesn’t need to know that he’s almost fluent in Klingon and that maybe he has a little more faith in the world than he had eight months ago. ‘Private’ may be a word that doesn’t seem to be in Jim’s vocabulary – along with other ones like ‘invasive’, ‘depraved’ and ‘sated’ – but it’s one Leonard knows only too well.

Just before she gets on her shuttle, Uhura catches Leonard’s eye and blows him a kiss. Then she ducks into the vehicle and disappears from view. Leonard bows his head for a moment, feeling a sigh in his chest that he’ll never let out. Already, he’s losing the relationship they had, the intensity of those weeks. He suspects by the time they return it’ll be like it never happened at all. It’s probably better that way, but something about it still stings, a low-down ache that’ll fade in time because they always damn well do.

“Did you see that?” Jim demands, an arrogant grin spreading across his face. “Uhura just blew a kiss at me! She likes me! I told you! Maybe next year she’ll finally tell me her first name!”

Leonard resists the urge to crush Jim’s exuberance with a few choice sentences about his extracurricular activities this year, if only because he’s going to be shut up with him for the foreseeable future in a small enclosed space and he won’t be able to handle the teasing with any sort of grace. Sure, he could kill Jim and no jury in the world – no jury in the universe – would convict him, but he’ll spare himself the hassle and the inevitable bruised knuckles anyway.

He puts a hand to the small of Jim’s back, pushing him towards their own transport, towards their Starfleet free weeks.

“Dream on.”

{end}

"Release The Stars", Star Trek XI, McCoy/Uhura

2009-09-11T14:19:57Z

Title: Release The Stars
Fandom: Star Trek (2009 reboot)
Pairing: McCoy/Uhura (and McCoy-Kirk friendship)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 17,000 (yesyes I know I need to be institutionalised)
Genre: Het
Copyright: Title is a Rufus Wainwright song. And album too, actually.
Summary: “Don’t worry,” he tells her. “Jim sometimes makes me want to go out and attack innocent bystanders too.”
Author’s Notes: I must’ve been the one person alive who left the movie and felt the need to write het! Ah well. Begun on the train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and then written in various places in Belgium and Luxembourg, and finished when I got home. I do love Star Trek but there will probably be canonical mistakes anyway, please feel free to point them out so I can fix them. And how half of this ended being about McCoy’s perceptions of Jim, I’ll never know. Also, I was slightly drunk while writing the last 5000 words; please feel free to point out typos/grammatical errors/nonsensical bits. So possibly if it’s terrible there may need to be a sober!rewrite.

I’m still fucking around with character voices, so please be gentle and patient with me!

Yes of course I am speaking in metaphors
For something more in your heart.
– Rufus Wainwright

As the shuttle takes them closer to Starfleet Academy, Jim Kirk falls silent, picking at the blood under his fingernails. He looks like he spent most of last night buried under rubble, or at the very least going ten rounds with a guy intent on caving his face in. Although he’s only known Jim twenty minutes, Leonard suspects it’s probably the latter.

“Have you had someone look at you?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at Jim’s bruised and blood face, t-shirt and hands. Jim shrugs.

“The bartender gave me some painkillers,” he offers. “Then he told me if I ever went back in his bar he’d ‘shoot me in the fucking head’.” He sniffs disdainfully, not quite hiding a wince of pain as he does so. “I’m pretty sure bar staff shouldn’t talk like that, they’ll lose customers.”

“That was probably the general idea,” Leonard replies. The corner of Jim’s swollen mouth twitches into a smile. “God, you look like your night was nearly as shitty as mine.”

The light of competition sparks in Jim’s eyes. “My night was so shittier than yours.”

A young woman sitting opposite them tuts, just loud enough to travel. She’s looking at Jim like he’s some kind of irritating bug she’d just love to squash, and Leonard decides that there’s a story there he doesn’t really want to hear. Jim catches the tut too and looks over at her, sending her a grin that’s surprisingly full of raw charm.

“Oh, you were definitely the high point,” Jim tells her. Her mouth twitches – Leonard can’t tell if it’s a smile or a sneer – and she looks away.

“You got into a bar fight over a girl,” Leonard translates. “My night was shittier than yours.”

Jim is looking at him in a go on, prove it sort of way, but Leonard has had enough of dredging up the dirty remains of his disintegrated marriage, and anyway he’s too damn tired to relate one more night of that ugly argument they’ve been having for two years, which ended with a lighter and all of his possessions going up in smoke. It’s just as well his medical skills are safely packed away in his head, or Lucy would probably have tried to take those too. In any case, here he is; exhausted, dirty, unshaven, heading for the stars because he’s got nothing else left. There was a time when he was going to be prestigious, when he was going to do things that mattered. Now, he’ll count it as a victory if his head doesn’t turn inside out before they reach the Academy.

Leonard says none of this, but some of it must leak onto his face because he sees a flash of what might be pity in Jim’s eyes before it’s swiftly replaced by that perpetual brittle arrogance.

The landing is bumpy and Leonard can feel his knuckles straining white, his nails biting into his palms. Jim is starting to look queasy, probably nursing a hangover on top of whatever injuries he’s wearing like battle scars rather than signs he’s a foolhardy idiot, and Leonard spends a moment of distraction trying to work out how much it won’t endear them to their fellow passengers when they both start puking. The young woman is looking at Leonard and when she catches his eye she gives him the smallest of sympathetic smiles. Leonard doesn’t smile back because his teeth are rattling in his skull, but he feels a rueful sort of grimace somewhere deep down anyway.

After staggering out of the shuttle on shaky legs, Leonard resists the urge to fall to his knees and kiss the ground, if only because most of his body feels like it doesn’t belong to him and he doesn’t know if he would be able to get up again. Jim looks white beneath the dried blood, weaving slightly, and Leonard can’t help but contrast how the two of them look compared to the other cadets, in their spotless red uniforms.

“Hey,” Jim says, as they wander after the others, who all seem to know where they’re going and have so much purpose in their step that it sort of makes Leonard feel sick all over again, “at least you didn’t throw up on me.”

“True,” Leonard agrees. “That’s the first good thing that’s happened to me all month.”

-

About five weeks later, Leonard learns that the woman from the shuttle is called Uhura, because she slaps Jim kind of publicly and it gets recorded and within minutes half the Academy has seen the videos. Leonard isn’t particularly interested – he spends a surprisingly large amount of his time watching Jim getting slapped by women – but it’s always nice to put names to faces.

When he finally gets back to their room, Jim is sitting on his bed looking pissed and sulky.

“Do you need medical attention?” Leonard asks, keeping his tone light and just a little mocking. “Need me to check if any bones are broken?”

Jim gives him a deeply unamused look. “You could check Uhura,” he offers. “I think she broke a nail.”

“Oh dear God.” It breaks out before Leonard can stop it. “What did- no, wait, I don’t want to know what you said or did to her.”

“It was more a case of what I offered to do,” Jim replies, looking a little more cheerful.

“Right,” Leonard manages, for lack of anything else to say. Jim has the remarkable ability to render anyone speechless.

“I think she might be warming to me,” Jim adds brightly.

Leonard does not say you know, blind hatred isn’t always hiding sexual tension, sometimes it’s just plain hatred because he has already learned that there is no telling Jim anything. He also does not say leave the poor girl alone, because that would like telling the sun not to shine or rain not to be wet. Instead, all he does is sigh and mutter: “Right” again.

Jim laughs.

-

Most of them have sneaked off-campus to go to one of the local clubs; a noisy hellhole of cheap, sweet and potent drinks, dreadful music played far too loud, and nauseatingly bright-coloured lights that flash on and off fit to give anyone a fit. Needless to say, Leonard would much rather go to a quiet, badly-lit bar, where no one speaks or looks each other in the eye, and everyone drinks the kind of spirits that burn on the way down, but he lets Jim drag him along anyway – “you are not an old man, Bones, no matter how hard you try to become one, and you are still allowed to have fun, even if you pretend you don’t know what it is” – because it turns out that Jim Kirk is kind of a hard man to refuse anything.

Of course, Jim vanished hours ago on a wave of laughter, purple lights striping his face, and is even now probably getting laid in a bathroom stall or having a Warp Drive (three kinds of spirits mixed with passionfruit juice) thrown in his face again. Leonard drifts through the crowded, noisy room, blue light shining obnoxiously in his eyes, shoes sticking to the floor, and reflects that he does have a profoundly antisocial streak. He finally manages to get to the bar, and is trying to work out which of the drinks sounds most like it will have some kind of real alcohol in it that hasn’t been combined with horrible artificial fruit flavouring or worse when someone pushes in beside him. When Leonard turns to look, he finds Uhura glaring at him, eyelids smeared with gold and mouth pressed in an angry, firm line.

“Your friend,” she spits, “is an asshole.” When Leonard doesn’t respond, she repeats, louder: “Your friend is an asshole. Did you hear me?”

Leonard shrugs. “I was kind of waiting for you to tell me something I didn’t already know.”

Uhura considers him, scowling now. Leonard waits patiently for her to come to some kind of conclusion, and while he does take care not to notice the way the glittery blue dress she’s chosen for tonight clings to every curve on her body.

“You’re an asshole too,” she decides finally.

“Yes, but I do it in a much quieter and less obnoxious way,” Leonard replies, “which just about redeems me.”

It probably doesn’t actually; God knows if he had a dollar for every time his ex-wife called him an asshole he wouldn’t have needed to join Starfleet in the first place, but then being friends with Jim has the advantage of making anything Leonard does or doesn’t do look much better in comparison.

After a moment, Uhura’s scowl softens into the beginnings of a smile.

“You can buy me a drink,” she tells him.

Uhura is slightly drunk and prettier than Leonard is going to let on, but she’s also declared herself Jim’s nemesis; Leonard hasn’t drunk nearly enough to be charitable and he didn’t want to come here in the first place.

“I’m not just a pawn to be used in some kind of game against Jim Kirk,” he says, loudly and clearly and just a little too hard. Uhura looks like he’s slapped her and Leonard knows he should bite back the: “just grow up, ok?” but it tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop it.

Uhura’s eyes narrow and Leonard doesn’t even see it coming before she dumps the nearest glass over his head. Sticky-sweet alcohol and juice run down his neck, soak into his shirt. It takes a moment, but Leonard realises that Uhura looks just as shocked as he feels.

“Oh… my… God,” she says slowly, the words nearly lost under the thudding of the music. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

Even with orange juice sliding unpleasantly down his spine, Leonard can feel his momentary anger ebbing away. He gently takes her arm, and she doesn’t resist.

“Come on,” he says, “let’s take this outside.”

They move through the crowds of people; Leonard catches sight of Jim, dancing, entwined with about three people, golden light sprayed across him, and decides that he’s probably got the room to himself tonight.

When they make it outside, Uhura takes several deep breaths. The air is cold, especially after the heat of the club. Leonard notices, once again, that Uhura’s shiny blue dress doesn’t cover all that much skin. On instinct, he shucks his jacket and drapes it over her bare shoulders.

“It’s a bit sticky,” he all but mutters.

“It’s fine,” Uhura replies. “I mean – thank you. I mean – sorry.” She’s losing composure, that shell of dignity and muted fury that she seems to wear all the time cracking and peeling before his eyes. “God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “Jim sometimes makes me want to go out and attack innocent bystanders too.”

She laughs, blurred and shaky, and the doctor part of Leonard that never switches off immediately tries to work out just how drunk she really is.

“Do you want me to walk you home?” he asks quietly.

Uhura frowns at him. “Don’t you want-”

“I never wanted to be there,” he responds.

Uhura’s lips curl. “Then it’s the least I can do,” she says.

They walk in silence for a while, under glowing streetlights and the hints of stars between them, Uhura’s impractical heels clacking a steady staccato beat.

“I thought chivalry was dead,” she says at last, a half-teasing smile on her mouth.

“Lucy used to say it would be the last thing I’d lose,” Leonard remarks, and reflects that he must be drunk too, enough to loosen his tongue anyway. Lucy had a good go at tearing away his manners and what remained of his better nature, but all she got was his money and his patience; both of which were enough, really. Should have been enough anyway; it didn’t stop her from trying for everything.

“Lucy was your wife?” Uhura asks.

Leonard raises an eyebrow. “You were listening in on the shuttle?” Uhura shrugs, unapologetic. “Yeah,” he sighs, “Lucy was my wife.”

Maybe Uhura sees something in his expression; she changes the subject anyway.

“So if chivalry’s the last thing you lose, what will be the first?”

Leonard considers this. “My mind?”

Uhura laughs again. “Yeah, I’ll buy that.”

-

Jim teases him for longer than is really necessary about the trail of glitter lipgloss still stubbornly there on his cheek the next morning; Uhura’s mouth pressing a kiss there and mumbling I don’t think you’re an asshole at all, secretly. She was wrong, of course, but Leonard wasn’t about to correct the pretty, drunk girl. He’s never going to tell Jim the truth – it’s none of his damn business, for one thing – but the constant so, when am I going to meet your girlfriend? grates quickly.

“You need to get laid, Bones,” Jim drawls the next time Leonard snipes out a you’re not nearly as funny or as clever as you think you are.

“Actually,” Leonard corrects him, “sex generally makes me even more grumpy and taciturn.”

Jim rolls his eyes and flops down onto his bed. “You’re not nearly as unhappy as you’re pretending to be,” he says. When Leonard opens his mouth to protest this, Jim cuts him off with a shake of his head. “No, you’re really not.”

Leonard scowls, because Jim was never meant to become perceptive, but then it’s just another of the jarring discrepancies and contradictions that make up his personality. He’d be a psychiatrist’s wet dream, and Leonard has never been more relieved that he chose not to study psychology: trying to pull Jim apart to see what makes him tick seems too much of a thankless task. You’d get answers, but they wouldn’t be the ones you’d want, and Jim would make the whole thing as difficult as possible because that’s what he does. Leonard, on the other hand, is far too simple; the trick lies in trying to prevent people from figuring it out.

Jim’s expression becomes irritatingly told you so when Leonard fails to reply; he’s lounging comfortably on his own bed, hands folded behind his head. “Seriously, hook up with Glitter Girl and you’ll be much more cheerful.”

Leonard could list twenty different ways that ‘hooking up’ with Uhura would make his life considerably more difficult than it is already, but he doesn’t think Jim really needs to know them.

“I like being the kind of bad-tempered bastard who makes small children cry and people of a weaker disposition cower,” he says instead. “It’s taken my years to get this good at it, why should I undo all my hard work now?”

“You are so full of bullshit, Bones,” Jim singsongs, closing his eyes.

Leonard would really like to be as full of bullshit as he seems to be; he thinks it would make things a lot easier. He opens his mouth to contradict Jim, and then remembers that they’re both so stubborn that there’s no point in getting into an argument, because nobody ever wins. He sighs instead, and leaves Jim to delude himself with victory.

-

Uhura is completely and utterly poised and in control of herself the next time Leonard runs into her; her make-up and posture flawless, her expression even more so.

“Can we talk?” she asks.

Leonard isn’t sure how much of that night Uhura actually remembers; he’s mostly convinced himself that she just sees him as Jim Kirk’s doctor friend and she has no recollection of pouring a drink over his head at all.

“Sure,” he says; he may pretend to have no social skills whatsoever, but he does manage to skirt the edges of downright rude.

Uhura falls into step beside him, dark hair shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight. She looks as good in the red form-fitting uniform as she looked in the blue glitter dress, and Leonard startles himself with the observation; he’s gotten too used to seeing all women as heartless harpies, all of them trapped in Lucy’s shadow. He swallows, angry with himself for being disconcerted.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asks. His tone is civil enough but he catches an edge of ungraciousness in there anyway; he’s too angry and too bitter with the world these days and it’s not always as well-hidden as it probably should be.

Uhura’s lips curl, almost imperceptibly. “You freely admit that you’re an asshole,” she says. “You don’t mess around with words and say things you don’t actually mean, and underneath the scowl you’re actually kind of a gentleman.” Her smile widens. “That actually makes you pretty unique around here.”

It occurs to Leonard that he genuinely has no idea what’s going on right now, and he fleetingly wonders whether this is some kind of practical joke that Jim has set up, before he remembers that the last time Jim went near Uhura she kneed him in the balls and Leonard had to spend an entire night listening to his roommate groan while he refused to do a medical examination, and therefore it’s pretty unlikely that Uhura will be in league with him.

“No matter how much you flatter me, I won’t help you destroy Jim,” he warns.

Uhura laughs. “I don’t need help to do that,” she replies loftily. “And I know it may be an alien concept to you, but not everything is about Jim Kirk.”

Sometimes Leonard has difficulty remembering that he only met Jim two months ago; he struggles to recall a time when he didn’t spend half his life trying to keep his friend from self-destroying, either deliberately or accidentally.

“So what is this about?” he asks.

Uhura gives him a surprisingly patronising look as she replies: “It’s about reminding you there are people other than James T. Kirk and his all-consuming ego in the universe.”

She’s startled him, not that Leonard will ever let on. He’s surrounded himself with so many layers of intentionally spiky personality flaws that he really isn’t used to people actively seeking his friendship.

“Besides,” she adds, with a wicked twinkle in her eyes, “don’t tell anyone I said so, but now you’ve had a haircut and started shaving, you’re not bad-looking either.”

“Jim will never let me hear the end of this,” Leonard muses, half to himself.

Uhura shrugs. “So don’t tell him.”

They’re not in high school and Leonard is too damn old to have a friendship based on sneaking around so his roommate doesn’t find out. Still, there’s something fundamentally appealing in Leonard having an aspect of his life that Jim doesn’t have six different loudly-voiced opinions on. Uhura must see some of this in his face, because she holds out her hand. Leonard barely hesitates before he takes it.

“Nyota Uhura,” she says, shaking his hand with a crushingly firm grip. A little voice in the back of Leonard’s head that sounds far too much like Jim for comfort says: oh, so her first name’s ‘Nyota’, huh? but he ignores it.

“Leonard McCoy,” he replies, amused by the ritual but still finding the idea of a fresh start appealing.

Uhura smiles, but a bell goes off somewhere and she turns toward it.

“Damn, I’m late!” She lets go of his hand, and they both pretend they haven’t been holding onto each other for just longer than necessary. “See you around, Leonard.”

And then she’s running off across the sundrenched grass, while Leonard tries to figure out what exactly just happened.

-

Starfleet breeds ambition, and from ambition comes envy and betrayal and cold, cruel determination, though of course all this is bundled up and labelled ‘efficiency’ in the brochure. While Lucy’s court case stole Leonard’s home and money and friends, and her lawyer worked out a strangely competent case for making Leonard McCoy utterly unemployable on Earth, he took the time to study his options. There weren’t many of them, and he read all the Starfleet Literature that existed for new recruits, watched all the glossy videos, and decided that the one thing he was going to do was not join the Federation with their perky and utterly ridiculous plans for a shiny, bright, united future. Then, of course, the planet was wrenched from his fingers, and space became the sole option. At least Starfleet lets him get a career out of pretending he hasn’t been effectively exiled.

“I never wanted anything but to join the Federation,” Uhura says, one forefinger idly circling the rim of her coffee cup. Her grin is a little sheepish. “Of course, when I was a kid, I was going to be a captain when I grew up.”

“I was going to be a superhero,” Leonard offers. “Then I realised how much time I’d have to spend around the general public.”

Uhura arches an eyebrow. “So you became a doctor?”

Leonard shrugs. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Uhura’s smile as teeth in it. “You really can’t hate people as much as you say you do. Otherwise you’d be living in a cave somewhere.”

“You’re starting to sound like Jim,” Leonard remarks, just because he enjoys the spark of annoyance that the words fire up in eyes. Still, she refuses to be baited.

“And you’re trying to dodge the topic laughably badly,” Uhura replies without missing a beat.

“You’re not going to scratch the surface to find I’m all puppies and starlight and goddamn rainbows underneath,” Leonard warns.

“Good.”

Leonard considers replying, but reflects that there’s only so long you can keep telling someone you won’t like me, go away before the whole thing becomes kind of soul destroying. He enjoys his misery like a vintage scotch but he isn’t a masochist, after all. Uhura is staring down at her coffee cup, blue-painted nails tapping idly against the ceramic. She almost seems to be waiting for something; Leonard mentally sighs and gives it to her.

“So go on, tell me about when you were eight and you ran away from home and managed to hitch your way here because you wanted to be the youngest serving officer ever.”

Uhura looks a mixture of pleased and embarrassed. “You heard about that?”

“Most people have,” Leonard shrugs. “They admire ambition here.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Uhura observes.

Leonard doesn’t try to correct her; it’s really not worth it.

-

Jim skids into his seat beside Leonard a second before the bell rings for class. His hair is a mess and his mouth is incriminatingly red, and his uniform has telltale creases in it. He has the look of a man who’s just had really good sex.

“You have a problem,” Leonard grits from the corner of his mouth. They’re in navigation class (compulsory for all cadets; after all, any of them could end up stranded in a ship somewhere, and at least this way they might all be able to get themselves home); their instructor makes even him look even-tempered, and will have no problem at all kicking them out for talking.

“Not any more,” Jim responds cheerfully, a horrible little smirk unfurling over his lips. He digs a lollipop out of his pocket and unwraps it as their instructor starts the hologram program; the classroom ceiling is immediately scattered with silver star pinpricks. Leonard looks upwards, pointedly ignoring Jim, as his friend begins sucking noisily on the candy.

After class, he has no chance of pretending that Jim Kirk doesn’t exist. Leonard patiently walks down the hall with Jim practically skipping beside him, voice way too loud as he describes in minute detail exactly what he did in his free periods, accompanied by faintly disturbing hand gestures.

“I’m telling you, Bones, this girl could suck the bolts out of a warp drive-”

“I feel like I need to bathe in a vat of disinfectant just listening to you,” Leonard interrupts.

Jim sighs in a put-upon way. “You act like you’re some kind of monk,” he says. “You were married, Bones.”

“Not to a hooker!” The little voice in the back of Leonard’s mind that sounds increasingly like Jim adds something along the lines of more’s the pity, but Leonard kicks it and it goes away.

“Grace isn’t a hooker,” Jim protests, “she’s just… kind of slutty. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he adds swiftly.

“Of course not,” Leonard mutters, sarcasm dripping from the words. He’s saved from more of this by Uhura swishing past, looking especially disdainful.

“Uhura!” James calls brightly after her. “You’re looking stunning today. You really didn’t have to dress up for me, you know.”

“Go fuck yourself, Kirk,” Uhura responds.

“Is that an offer?” Jim shouts. Uhura doesn’t bother replying, doesn’t even pause as she strides away.

“She likes me really,” Jim shrugs.

“No, she really doesn’t,” Leonard tells him, but Jim isn’t listening.

Later, Uhura demonstrates exactly how much she doesn’t like Jim by offering Leonard money to kill him.

“You’re a doctor!” she says. “You could make it look like an accident!”

“I am not going to kill my friend,” Leonard replies with all the patience he can muster. Uhura opens her mouth. “I am not going to castrate him either.”

“I could do that,” she responds grimly. “I just need your door code.”

“I am also not going to give you my door code so you can go in and emasculate my roommate,” Leonard tells her. He can hear amusement threading itself through his tone, but he can see Uhura is still genuinely angry.

“Why not?”

“Because it will be a bitch to clean up.”

She doesn’t smile, but her lips soften a little. “He’s a misogynistic asshole,” she snaps.

“Well,” Leonard concedes, “yes. A little bit. Some of the time.” Uhura’s eyes are still spitting flames, so he adds: “Look, did you ever have a dog as a kid?”

She frowns, looking confused. “My neighbours did.”

“And did it jump on you and hump your leg from time to time?”

Uhura’s mouth has gone thin again. “Where are you going with this?”

Leonard decides to take that as a ‘yes’. “Jim’s kind of like that. Just treat him the same way you treated the dog.”

Uhura arches an eyebrow. “Sterilisation?”

He really has got to get her mind away from going for Jim’s balls with a pair of scissors.

“Jim doesn’t know any better and he doesn’t mean any real harm so you may as well just get used to it because he’s not going to stop.” Uhura scowls. “I’m being pragmatic,” Leonard adds. “Really, that’s just the way it is.”

Uhura considers this. Finally, she sighs. “Fuck you, McCoy, and fuck Kirk too. Ok?”

“Ok,” he replies, and lets her storm off, wondering if Starfleet specialises in selecting cadets with particularly short fuses. He stays out late that night, wandering the grounds, careful not to return to their room until he’s certain that the urge to punch Jim has passed.

-

Uhura doesn’t talk to him for four days, and he’s not about to break first because Leonard’s a stubborn bastard and he doesn’t crack for anyone. Anyone. It’s four days of him being even more monosyllabic and acerbic than usual – “for God’s sake!” Jim exclaims after two, “let me hire you a hooker! Getting laid cannot possibly make this any worse!” – and he spends most of the hours he’s not in class a little more drunk than is really socially acceptable. And he can’t even blame Jim, as much as he’d like to, because there’s no sense in being angry with him. Jim’s a good guy underneath the fact he’s also kind of a whore, and sometimes Leonard feels privileged to see the determined man he is beneath the I’ve walked into the room; everyone drop their panties attitude that’s made him increasingly unpopular with half their classmates (and far too appealing to the rest), and other days it just makes him want to stick needles in Jim until he chooses one personality or the other, because being such a contradiction and mess of oxymorons is doing his fucking head in.

“I’m asking for a new roommate,” Jim warns, day four. He’s out of his cadet uniform, shoulders hunched under his leather jacket, and even if Leonard weren’t childishly ignoring him he would still not want to know whatever it is that Jim has planned. “I’m lodging a formal complaint.”

Leonard sighs, sprawled on his own bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Good luck with that.”

Jim laughs, rummaging through his nightstand. “You think I won’t?”

“You do not do well with authority figures,” Leonard can’t resist reminding him.

“Two sentences in the space of a minute!” Jim observes. “You’re slipping, Bones.” Leonard rolls his eyes and he’s ground his teeth so much in the last few days, he’s probably going to require medical attention of some kind. “Besides,” Jim adds, “once I point out how you’re no fucking fun anymore, they’ll be tripping over themselves to assign me someone new.”

“No one else will ever put up with you,” Leonard can’t resist reminding him. Jim tuts, pulling at his nightstand drawer too hard; it falls to the floor and in a moment the carpet is covered in a truly unsettling number of condoms and at least four kinds of lubricant, including the stuff you can only get in the medical bays, which means that at some point when Jim was meant to be in there to see Leonard or to get stitches for another stupid stunt, he actually managed to steal medical supplies. Leonard looks at the mess and then at Jim. “Case in point.”

Jim laughs, raucous and rough, then scoops everything away in an approximation of tidiness. “I’m going out,” he announces entirely unnecessarily. “Look, Bones; comm a hooker, go out to one of those soul-destroying bars you like so much, I could probably score you some drugs-”

“I’m a doctor,” Leonard points out, “I can score the kind of really good drugs you can only dream about.”

“Then score some.” Jim sighs in a put-upon way, which is a bit rich. “Just let me help you, or help yourself.”

He’s being horribly juvenile and he’s not even entirely sure why (or, at least, he won’t let himself acknowledge it, which is admittedly a different thing), but at this point in time he doesn’t particularly care.

“Enjoy your relentless pursuit of as many alien STDs as possible,” Leonard says instead. Some days, he remains convinced that Jim has a list of some kind and is ticking them off as he contracts them (Leonard has ready access to Jim’s medical records, which really don’t make pretty reading), though that thought is kind of disturbing.

“No fucking fun,” Jim reiterates, as he leaves.

Leonard spends the next hour pretending to study while really quietly simmering, and also reflecting that if he were less of a stubborn ass he’d go and find Uhura and yell at her until some of this started to feel better (although if he were less of a stubborn ass maybe his marriage wouldn’t have crashed and burned quite so spectacularly and then he wouldn’t be here, and that’s never a good train of thought to get started on). He’s startled when the door chimes, and for a moment contemplates not answering. He’s in no mood for one of Jim’s clingy lays to be turning up here, all wide-eyed and horny; something which has happened on more than one occasion, and then Jim wonders why their commanders have reports about him. Still, one of those last shreds of common politeness that Lucy could never manage to take has him telling the door to open anyway.

Uhura is standing in the doorway, looking as carefully composed as she ever is, not a strand of dark hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her uniform.

“He here?” she asks, calmly abrupt.

Leonard tosses the PADD he wasn’t really looking at aside, and sits up. “No.”

“Good.” Uhura walks in, the door swishing closed behind her.

They could waste time with stilted small talk, could try and dance around the issue, could even try apologies that neither of them will mean, but Leonard hasn’t been that patient in years and Uhura will never be that frivolous. Instead, he stands up, crosses the room.

“Jim and I come as a package deal,” he says, catching Uhura’s gaze and making sure he holds it.

“I know,” she says, voice so quiet he nearly doesn’t catch it.

“You can hate him as much as you want but you can’t make me hate him and either you can handle that or you can’t.”

“I know.” Uhura glares at him for a moment, before finally lowering her eyes, a smile that’s nearly rueful tugging her lips. “I just wish I liked you a hell of a lot less.”

It’s the closest he’ll get to an apology as she’ll give him, and that’s fine, because he wouldn’t know what to do with a sorry even if he got one. And Leonard refuses to be thrown by her words, though he knows he could be, all too easily; people don’t like him, not any more. They admire him, they’re in awe of him, they’re scared of him (he’s made a few of the younger medical cadets cry; something Jim remains insistently gleeful about), but Leonard’s best friend is possibly the most obnoxious man alive and his ex-wife had him exiled from the entire planet, so Leonard knows exactly how unlikeable he really is.

“Nicely damning,” he observes.

Uhura shrugs, but she’s still smiling, which isn’t a bad sign.

-

“So, that hooker must’ve really paid off,” Jim remarks brightly, and just loud enough to make half the corridor turn around and stare at him. Leonard’s fingers curl tight around the PADD he’s carrying.

“All that getting punched in the face really must’ve killed off your braincells,” he remarks. “And why the obsession with prostitutes? Contemplating a change of career?”

“Ha ha.” Jim rolls his eyes. “That’s not to say I wouldn’t be the best damn whore ever.”

This competitiveness is really not healthy, but Leonard has given up on pointing this out, just as he has given up on trying to tell Jim anything. Really, he’s just building up ammunition for the major fight that they will one day inevitably have, the one that will probably end in blood. You can’t have two men as volatile as they are in a friendship without it inevitably imploding, though hopefully they’ll be able to put it off for a long time.

“I thought you already were,” he can’t help saying.

Jim stops abruptly, forcing Leonard to come to a halt too.

“I need you to pretend to be nice for about three minutes,” Jim tells him. “Can you do that?”

There’s an expression that’s almost serious on his face, so Leonard obediently shrugs and offers: “I can try.”

Jim starts walking again, forcing Leonard to fall into step beside him. “I’m going to take the Kobayashi Maru test,” he announces.

Leonard’s brain literally cannot process that for a moment; Jim is looking expectantly at him and he can’t come up with a single damn thing to say.

“Wow,” Jim remarks, “I’ve actually rendered you speechless, Bones. Miracles will never cease.”

“The Kobayashi Maru?” Leonard repeats. “You’re going to take the Kobayashi Maru?”

Jim shrugs, looking insufferably smug. “Yep.”

“You can’t take the Kobayashi Maru!” Leonard says. “Grown men leave the room crying, and perfectly sensible people have to come to medical to be tranquilised afterwards.”

Jim shrugs again, in a you’ve told me on several occasions that I couldn’t be called ‘sensible’ in any sense of the word kind of way. “I’m going to do it.”

“Jim,” Leonard says, a little desperately because really this is stupid, “the test is unbeatable. That is the point of it. And people with years of experience can’t pass it. You’ve been here less than five months, and yes, you’re irritatingly precocious and Pike likes you in a way that is bordering on creepy, which is actually probably the only reason you haven’t been kicked out of here for sexual misconduct yet, but it is going to be a complete disaster.” Jim opens his mouth, so he hastily adds: “and not in a fun way.”

“Man,” Jim sighs, “you really need to take some of those drugs you’re stealing from medical.”

Once again, Jim says this loudly enough to get half their fellow students glaring accusingly at Leonard, and he really needs to get some friends who aren’t going to cast public aspersions on his character.

“Anyway,” Jim continues brightly, “I want you there. As one of my crew members.”

“No,” Leonard says immediately. “I do not want to watch you make an ass of yourself. I can do that without having to dress up and play roleplaying games.”

Jim pouts, actually fucking pouts. “Please, Bones,” he whines, “please.”

Leonard sighs, but the fact remains that while he can’t stop Jim from doing stupid things he can be there afterwards to assess the carnage and put it all back together again. It’s just depressing how often the carnage is actually literal.

“Fine,” he mutters, and reflects that stealing drugs from medical is really looking appealing right now. Possibly the only way to get through this is to take as many tranquilisers as his body can stand.

Jim’s grin is broad and insufferable and makes Leonard want to kick him quite a lot until Jim realises just how inadvisable his actions really are. But enough people have beaten Jim up to date and none of it has ever really stuck.

“Thanks Bones, knew I could rely on you.”

And then he’s darting off into the crowds, waylaying a pretty girl with her uniform skirt hitched up way too high, and Leonard sighs heavily because there’s not a damn thing he can do about any of this.

-

The reality is far, far worse than anything Leonard came up with when he was bombarding Jim with prophecies of doom last night. Nothing he listed in their room, while Jim laughed patiently at him with a faintly patronising air of smugness, can compare to this.

Right now, all Leonard really wants in the whole world – in the whole universe – is to be drunk.

A horrible hush has descended over the false bridge, broken only by the soft explosion noises as the Klingon ships due to kill them in minutes come ever closer. Leonard has not asked (because he doesn’t want to know) exactly what Uhura did and to whom in order to get herself into Jim’s Kobayashi Maru exam, but even her expression of smug glee has slid off her face to be replaced with something that, while not quite pity, is bordering on sympathetic. Jim has gone white, all the blood drained out of his face, fingers clenched in the arms of his command chair like rigor mortis. Two cadets on the conn have their heads in their hands. There’s a woman near the back quietly sobbing into her palms. This may only be a simulation of a doomed starship, but the sense of shock and devastation is all too real.

“Cadet Kirk.” A voice comes across the intercom from those watching, and they all jump. This finally proves too much for the crying woman, who starts a soft sort of keening between her teeth. Leonard forces himself to move, getting one of the hypos of tranquillisers out of his pocket that he brought with him, supporting her as he gives her the dose. “Cadet Kirk, let us put you out of your misery.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Leonard can see Jim’s eyes glittering in his wan face, the bloodless line of his mouth pressed flat. Come on, Jim, he thinks desperately, admit defeat. But he knows his friend far too well, and Jim will never do that. Jim cannot do that. Uhura opens her mouth like she’s going to tell Jim to walk away as well; she catches Leonard’s eye, expression helpless, and closes it again.

Jim takes a slow breath, fingers unclenching from the chair slightly. “Cadet Lewis, you are excused,” he says, tone slow and measured. The woman leaning against Leonard as though he’s the only thing keeping her upright right now starts; Leonard helps her get to the door, where there’s already a doctor waiting to take her away.

“I’m finishing this,” Jim adds, for the benefit of the room. Leonard grits his teeth to prevent an expletive from slipping out, while Uhura hangs her head.

It doesn’t take long. No matter how many photons they fire, the ships keep coming; within minutes their life support and navigational systems are hit. The terminals actually explode with real bangs and sparks, drawing shouts and curses from the crew, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re going to die or not because right now everyone is caught up in the simulation, eyes fixed on the screens with terror in their expressions. The screens finally flood with fire, signifying the fact the ship has blown up and they’ve all died.

For a long, horrible moment, no one seems to know what to say; probably because there isn’t anything to say. You cannot win the Kobayashi Maru, but there are ways that you can fail that are commendable anyway. This, though; this is not commendable. This is just pure failure, ugly and messy and inglorious.

You’re supposed to wait for feedback, but no one is surprised when Jim pushes himself out of his captain’s chair and heads for the door, opening it so hard it rebounds off the wall. Uhura flinches and looks to Leonard.

“Hell,” he mutters, and hurries after Jim.

He manages to catch his friend three corridors away.

“Jim! Jim! For God’s sake, stop!”

After a few more steps, Jim spins around.

“Going to say I told you so?” he demands. “Going to tell me that this is all my own fault, caused by my own arrogance? Going to tell me that I’m too young and too inexperienced, so of course it was going to end like this?”

“No,” Leonard responds, keeping his voice as steady as he can. “Not right now, anyway.”

A feeble smile flickers across Jim’s mouth, but he can’t sustain it. “You’re a good man, Bones.”

Leonard shrugs, offering him a half-smile in return. “Some days.”

Jim claps a hand against his shoulder, fingers digging in just a little too tight, and then turns and walks away. Leonard doesn’t try to go after him; he knows that there’s nothing he can do to help.

-

“I’ve been looking for you for hours,” Uhura says. She looks faintly worried, hands on her hips, dark hair haloed by the floodlight directly behind her head.

“Well,” Leonard shrugs, “you found me.”

He’s not sitting in the empty bleachers of the Academy’s sports stadium because he’s hiding, per se; he just needed somewhere discreet and quiet.

Uhura frowns. “You’re drunk.”

Leonard shrugs. “Not nearly drunk enough.” He sighs, indicates the glass bottle that he had a hell of a time sneaking onto the campus. “It’s ok; I will be later.”

Generally, this is the point at which whoever he’s talking to walks away, disgusted, so he’s a little startled when Uhura sits down beside him.

“And you couldn’t have done this in your room?” she asks quietly.

Leonard would’ve loved to have done this in his room, undignified and out of sight, but sadly circumstances prevented him.

“Jim is in our room,” he tells her. “And he’s doing whatever it is that he needs to do in order to get over today, and there were four girls in there with him when I left, so whatever he’s doing doesn’t need to involve me.”

Uhura sighs, but she does not immediately start on her Jim Kirk is a misogynistic man-whore speech, so presumably she understands as well as Leonard does, much as she may not want to.

“So where are you sleeping tonight?” she asks, after a moment of silence.

Leonard shrugs. “Here, I guess.” By the time he passes out drunk, he really won’t care where he is, though he keeps that part silent; Uhura can probably guess anyway. This is a part of his life that he was going to try and leave behind when he joined Starfleet, but there are some days when that just isn’t an option.

Uhura is studying him thoughtfully, head tilted to one side, and he shouldn’t be getting her involved in this. She’s young and pretty and happy and smart and is not dragging a shitload of messy baggage after her and she should stay the hell away from him.

“Don’t you think that’s for me to decide?” Uhura’s tone is neutral and Leonard must be drunker than he thought he was if he’s already reached the accidentally-talking-out-loud stage.

“You clearly have no idea what’s good for you,” he informs her.

She shrugs. “So I’ve heard.” Efficient, still frighteningly collected, she stands up. “Come on, you can sleep in my room.”

“What about-”

“My roommate is the female equivalent of Jim,” Uhura informs him crisply. “She won’t be back tonight.”

“Looks like we finally have something in common,” Leonard mutters, pushing himself to his feet with a little too much difficulty.

Uhura smiles a little, then moves swiftly to help hold him upright as Leonard’s legs threaten to fold beneath him. Her grip is surprisingly strong, fingers digging far too hard into his arm. She bends and picks up his bottle for him. “What-”

“I am not going to try and stage an intervention,” Uhura informs him calmly. “This isn’t the time or the place. And I assume you went to a lot of effort to get this here, so you won’t thank me if we leave it behind.”

He smiles, even if it feels uncoordinated and lopsided. “You’re a good woman, Nyota Uhura.”

She smiles back. “Oh, I know.”

He hasn’t managed to get drunk enough for his coordination to be utterly shot, so after a couple of false starts he manages to walk beside Uhura, through the dark, mostly-empty campus.

“When was the last time you ate?” Uhura asks him, after a few minutes. Leonard shrugs, which turns out to be kind of a mistake, and sways on his feet for a minute. Uhura sighs. “And you’re supposed to be a doctor.”

“Not right now I’m not,” he tells her. Frowns at Uhura in the weak orange-tinted lighting. “And why the hell are you doing this?”

“You looked after me when I was drunk,” Uhura responds, tone carefully neutral again.

“That was throwing-cocktails-over-people drunk,” Leonard reminds her. “I’m not that kind of drunk.”

“Thank God,” Uhura says without missing a beat, “I like this sweater.”

He smiles in spite of himself, in spite of it all; the twist of his lips is rueful and tired. “You’re gonna regret this.”

Uhura doesn’t look at him, keying in the code for her dorm block. “Then that’s my problem, isn’t it?” Her tone is soft, softer than it usually is, and then the door swishes open and they’re suddenly in a hallway with lighting far too bright for Leonard’s blurring eyes. “Come on.”

When they reach her room, Uhura tells the lights to dim, and indicates which bed he can sleep on. Leonard is too tired and too uncoordinated to try and snoop around, but he does manage to spare a thought of just how jealous Jim would be if he knew where Leonard is right now. It’s really a pity he’ll never be able to tell him and rub it in.

With difficulty , Leonard manages to lie down on the bed, reaching to tug his boots off first because even if the sheets’ll be freshly laundered in the morning there’s such a thing as common courtesy. Uhura stands over him, a thoughtful smile on her face.

“Goodnight, Leonard,” she tells him, and reaches down with tender fingers to smooth his hair off his brow.

Oh God, Leonard thinks, swiftly followed by: I’ve fallen for better women than you, missy.

But the problem is, of course, that he hasn’t.

-

{continued here}

"In Shining Armour", Torchwood/Narnia, Caspian/Tosh

2009-09-10T11:04:10Z

Title: In Shining Armour
Fandoms: Chronicles Of Narnia/Torchwood
Pairing: Caspian/Tosh
Challenge/Prompt: crossovers100, 017. Brown
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4200
Genre: Het (and somewhat cracky, what with the crossover and all)
Timeline: Between Something Borrowed and From Out Of The Rain, & post-movie.
Summary: “Well, whatever it is, it looks good wet,” Ianto observes.
Author’s Notes: I don’t know what possessed me, honestly. I liked the idea of Owen and Ianto shamelessly encouraging Tosh to let loose a little, because yay. This is a fic that is crack, and knows that it’s crack. So it’s not particularly literary, but it should hopefully be fun. Although it was super weird writing an Owen and Ianto dynamic with no UST in it at all. *shudders*

It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon when the Rift cracks open and helpfully spits someone out onto the slick pavement outside a McDonald’s. The someone is carrying a sword. There’s lots of screaming.

Owen and Ianto are playing poker on the coffee table, expressions bored, while Tosh searches fruitlessly for something to do, fingers clicking routinely over the keyboards. Gwen’s on her honeymoon – somewhere sunny, it’s all right for some – and Jack is in London helping out UNIT with something. It’s just the three of them and the first few hours they were anxious that suddenly the world was going to end on their watch and Jack would never trust them again; but now nothing’s happening and it’s just plain dull.

“This looks promising,” she calls, and the two men throw down the cards and hurry over to the monitors.

“What is it?” Owen asks. “Is it evil flesh-eating maiming aliens?”

“Yes, Mr I-Can’t-Die,” Ianto rolls his eyes, “because that’s exactly what would improve this afternoon.”

“That’s Dr I-Can’t-Die,” Owen corrects him mildly, fingers skimming over Tosh’s shoulder. “What’ve we got?”

“I don’t know,” Tosh replies, bringing up grainy CCTV footage. “It doesn’t seem to be trying to kill anyone…”

“That makes a nice change,” Owen says, heading to pick up his leather jacket from the back of his chair, pushing his earpiece in. “You coming, Ianto?”

Ianto leans further over Tosh’s shoulder, squinting at the screen. “Well, whatever it is, it looks good wet,” he observes, before turning away to follow Owen.

Tosh watches them out of the door before quickly starting on finding up-to-date coordinates for the men to follow. She glances back at the screen. Their visitor looks like an ordinary man, long dark hair clinging to his cheeks as he gazes around him in bewilderment, a long sword clutched in his hand.

Ianto kind of has a point. She blushes, turning her attention back to the matter at hand.

*

Owen and Ianto return a little over an hour later, both of them soaking from the rain, and leading their prisoner. He doesn’t seem overtly hostile; more confused, staring wide-eyed around the Hub.

“We’re going to examine you,” Owen is explaining loudly, “and then we’re going to try and get you home, ok?”

“Yes.” The word catches a little in the man’s mouth; an accent of some kind pulling at the vowels.

“I think that might actually have been the easiest capture ever,” Ianto remarks, depositing the sword Tosh saw on the video footage on her workstation alongside two intricately carved knives. “He let us disarm him and everything.”

“Do not damage those,” the man warns, waving his cuffed hands at the weapons. “They are important.”

His eyes travel up from the weapons to Tosh herself, and the anger seems to flow straight off his face. The edges of his mouth turn up into a little smile which makes his dark eyes crinkle. He has a lock of hair stuck to his cheek from the rain outside. It looks good wet. Yes, thank you, Ianto.

“I am King Caspian the Tenth,” he says, voice catching on the consonants, accompanying the words with a bow. Tosh hasn’t been bowed at in a long time, and for a horrible moment she wants to burst out into giggles. Ianto’s eyebrows have practically disappeared into his hairline and Owen’s got that I am going to take the piss out of you all afternoon expression.

“Right,” Tosh says, finding her voice again and turning her attention to more practical matters, “well, we’re Torchwood.”

“…Torchwood.” The way Caspian draws the word out is slightly indecent and Tosh glances at Ianto, who is staring determinedly at the ceiling.

“He should re-record all our answering machine messages,” he manages.

“We don’t have answering machines,” Tosh says carefully.

“We should get some,” Ianto murmurs.

“When the two of you have finished drooling over him, I have a medical examination to do,” Owen says, putting a hand on Caspian’s shoulder. “Come on, mate.”

“Couldn’t the maiden do it?” Caspian asks, expression entirely innocent, though his dark eyes are glowing.

“Oh Jesus,” Ianto whispers, turning away, shoulders shaking.

“No, I couldn’t,” Tosh says, wondering if this is all some kind of hallucination and she’ll wake up in a minute to find the guys shooting each other over cheating at poker or whatever. “Go with Owen.”

Ianto’s giving her a be nice sort of expression over Caspian’s shoulder. Tosh ignores him.

“Don’t you have a name?” Caspian continues in a coaxing sort of voice, fixing her with a beseeching look.

“Toshiko Sato.” Tosh manages to remember her own name and to deliver it without stammering, which she feels is reasonably impressive.

Before Owen or Ianto can stop him, Caspian drops to his knees, taking one of Tosh’s hands between his and pressing it to his lips.

“My lady Toshiko,” he says, and the way he pronounces her name is… interesting, “I am at your service.”

“Ok,” she mumbles, praying to God that she isn’t blushing. The others will never let her live this down.

“The sooner we examine you, the sooner we can get you home,” Owen interrupts loudly, pulling Caspian onto his feet again and leading him towards the autopsy room.

“Once you’ve done that, you should take him down to the cells,” Tosh calls, belatedly remembering protocol.

“Who died and put you in charge?” Owen demands.

“I think that might’ve been you, actually,” Tosh replies.

Ianto waits until they’ve gone before giving Tosh a disapproving look.

“What?”

“The man says he’s at your service and you say ‘ok’?” Ianto asks incredulously.

“Well, what was I supposed to say?” Tosh is feeling flustered and she really hates feeling out of control.

“‘Thank you’?” Ianto suggests. “Or ‘it’s an honour’?”

“This isn’t a low-budget Medieval film,” Tosh reminds him. “Can’t you go and offer him a coffee? Everyone likes your coffee.”

Ianto rolls his eyes in a nobody appreciates me kind of way, but does so.

*

“I told him that everyone you get romantically close to dies, and he doesn’t care,” Owen announces forty-five minutes later, coming to join her and Ianto again.

“Why would you do that?” Tosh asks a little desperately.

“Caspian likes you, Tosh,” Owen replies, with a shit-eating grin. “He says he hasn’t seen a maiden as beautiful as you in a long time.”

Tosh knew she shouldn’t have worn a v-neck today, especially not a red one. It was just asking for trouble.

“You should go for it,” Ianto informs her gravely, taking a sip of coffee.

“You’re suggesting I sleep with our prisoner?” Tosh’s voice has got a little hysterical: she’ll have to do something about that.

“Well, he’s not really our prisoner,” Ianto rationalises, smiling, “he’s more our… guest. While we work out how to put him back where he came from.”

“Owen,” Tosh says a little desperately, turning to their doctor, “tell him he’s insane.”

“Well…” Owen shrugs. “Caspian does have nice hair. And a really big-”

“-Sword,” Ianto interjects.

Tosh covers her face with her hands.

“I don’t care about the size of his sword!” she exclaims.

“You should,” Owen informs her brightly. “I did his medical examination. It’s a really big… sword.”

Tosh just about manages to suppress a whimper.

“Really?” Ianto asks.

Owen turns towards him and measures out a distance with his hands that Tosh can’t see because of the angle. She does, however, see the expression on Ianto’s face.

“Wow.”

“Yep.”

“I hate you both,” Tosh tells them loudly.

*

Caspian falls asleep in his cell early evening, which is impressive given how many cups of Ianto’s coffee he’s consumed (“We do not have anything like this where I come from. It is… delicious”). Unprofessional to the last, Ianto uncorks a bottle of red wine and Tosh is feeling just insane enough to agree to at least one glass.

“Jack would support you in this,” Owen points out, toying with an empty wineglass so as not to feel left out.

“Jack’s not here,” Tosh reminds him. “I thought we were trying to look responsible.”

“Jack’s probably following Gwen and Rhys around on their honeymoon,” Owen shrugs, “whatever we do is going to look responsible next to him.”

“Jack’s gone to London to help Martha,” Tosh says.

“Maybe he’s shagging Martha,” Ianto offers on his next mouthful of wine.

“No he’s not, she’s marrying Doctor Gorgeous,” Owen tells him. At the looks on their faces, he smirks. “Haven’t you seen the pictures?”

Ianto considers this. “Maybe he’s shagging Doctor Gorgeous.”

They all burst out laughing.

“If Tosh won’t, you should fling yourself at Caspian,” Owen tells Ianto.

“He’s handsome to an unreasonable and faintly unsettling degree,” Ianto accedes, “but Owen, I’m really not gay.”

“You’re shagging Jack,” Owen says, as though that settles it.

“That doesn’t make me gay, that just makes me human,” Ianto replies.

“Actually, he’s not even that discriminate,” Tosh interrupts.

“Caspian doesn’t seem to be an alien,” Owen offers, “though it would probably be cooler if he was. I mean, sex with aliens is always so…” He glares at his empty wineglass. “I bloody miss sex,” he sighs.

“So you’re saying I should sleep with Caspian so you can live vicariously through me?” Tosh demands.

“No, I’m saying you should sleep with Caspian because he’s got nice hair, good teeth, and is remarkably well-endowed,” Owen replies matter-of-factly.

“I’m not drunk enough for weaponry analogies,” Tosh warns him. “I don’t think I’ll ever be drunk enough.”

Owen and Ianto simultaneously hold their hands up, several inches apart, both of them measuring the same distance.

“Oh,” Tosh says slowly. “Right.”

There’s a long, confused silence. And then Tosh manages to regain a trace of sanity.

“No,” she says firmly, “I mean, what is he? Eighteen? If that?”

“I don’t think they have age consent laws in ‘Narnia’,” Ianto shrugs, pouring more wine – complete sobriety is no longer an option.

“Besides,” Owen adds cheerfully, “from what he’s told us, he doesn’t even have parents to come and attack you with shovels for violating their son.”

Tosh downs half her glass of wine in one go. “I am going to kill you both,” she informs them firmly.

“Flaw in that plan, Tosh,” Owen tells her.

“You’d miss me,” Ianto chips in. “Well, you’d miss my coffee, anyway.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Tosh murmurs grimly, reaching for the wine bottle.

*

The next morning, it’s still drizzling, and Ianto and Owen are both still in the Hub. Tosh is slightly hungover and not at all in the mood for the grins that the men are flashing at her.

“Did you go home at all?” she asks.

“I don’t have a life,” Owen shrugs easily, “didn’t see the point. And Ianto doesn’t ever go home, even when Jack’s not around for a quickie.”

Ianto glares briefly at Owen, and then turns his attention back to Tosh. “We’ve figured out how send Caspian home.”

“Oh.” Tosh isn’t entirely sure how she feels about this fact, and isn’t going to decide how she feels until Ianto provides her with some kind of caffeine. He seems to realise this, gives a put-upon sigh, and goes to get her a drink.

“Our scanners picked up on some sort of energy coming from Caspian’s weapons,” Owen explains, tapping his keyboard to show Tosh the readings. “And the energy matched this big wooden box we’ve had in the archives practically since Torchwood Three was set up, so we went and got it. Although it looks like it has a bottom, it doesn’t.”

“So far we’ve sent through three mugs, six pens, and some pornography,” Ianto adds, handing Tosh a mug.

“Pornography?” Tosh doesn’t want to ask, but does anyway.

“From Owen’s stash in the bottom drawer of his workstation,” Ianto clarifies.

“I don’t need it any more, and of course Ianto thinks he’s better than porn…” Owen smirks.

“I didn’t say that, I just said I had better taste in porn,” Ianto corrects him wearily, and Tosh suspects that it’s been a long night.

“And how do we know that this gateway between worlds actually works?” Tosh asks, clinging to the last vestiges of professionalism. That way, when Jack gets back, at least she can say she tried. “I mean, maybe it kills anyone or anything that passes through it.”

“One of the mugs came back,” Ianto replies. “I think someone threw it back at us, and it’s not broken or anything. It’s safe to assume we can get Caspian home.”

“Then we should do it,” Tosh tells them.

Owen and Ianto are both giving her expectant looks and she doesn’t like it.

“What?”

“Well, you aren’t just going to send him back like some kind of package that’s been sent to the wrong address are you?” Owen demands.

“What do you suggest I do with him?” Tosh asks.

Ianto raises an eyebrow at her in a way that’s nothing short of filthy.

“Oh, Tosh,” Owen sighs. “It’s a little late to play the ‘naïve’ card now.”

“Just because I apparently have more integrity than both of you-”

“Mary,” Owen barely hides behind a cough.

“You’re biologically incapable of coughing,” Tosh tells him, “and that was different.”

“Tommy.” Ianto doesn’t even bother coughing.

Tosh suspects that she’s going to start screaming in a minute.

“Look, it’s just one of the perks of the job,” Owen grins. “And we’ve got a few hours, why don’t you take him out for breakfast?”

“I never thought I’d say this,” Tosh murmurs, putting her coffee down on her workstation in a decided fashion, “but I really miss Jack’s way of looking at these things.”

“He does have that way of making everything look ok, doesn’t he?” Owen muses. “And you don’t even realise until afterwards that maybe you should rationalise your actions a little.”

Tosh laughs slightly. “Are you saying I should be sitting here saying: What Would Jack Do?”

“We all know what Jack would do,” Ianto replies, matter-of-fact.

He and Owen are looking expectant again.

Tosh sighs. “Fine. But only for breakfast, ok?”

Ianto grins. “Good. I’d hate to think all the time I spent finding Caspian some decent clothes was wasted.”

*

Ianto’s definition of ‘decent clothes’ apparently involves inappropriately tight jeans and a loose shirt that falls casually open at the neck. Tosh feels that maybe someone should’ve explained to Ianto that Caspian is not some kind of Barbie doll to dress up for his own amusement, although that would make it sound as though she didn’t appreciate his… efforts. Which she does; she just rather wishes that she didn’t. Everyone around them also seems to appreciate Ianto’s work too; their waitress has walked past their table at least sixteen times more than is really necessary.

“People here are so friendly,” Caspian observes, already on his fourth cup of coffee. Ianto’s created yet another convert; he will be pleased.

Tosh wants to inform him that people here aren’t friendly at all, they’re all just lusting after him, which is something different entirely, but she can’t bring herself to say it.

“Yes,” she mumbles instead, and reaches for another slice of toast.

Caspian is watching her intently through dark eyelashes, and he’s doing what Jack does when he’s trying to seduce people (Tosh has watched him do it a number of times, with varying degrees of amusement and exasperation; she and Owen or Suzie usually ended up placing bets on how long it would take their Captain’s latest victim to crack). With Caspian, however, Tosh can’t help thinking that he’s doing it entirely unconsciously; it doesn’t help.

“You’ve all been so kind to me,” Caspian adds.

“It’s part of the job,” Tosh replies quickly, ignoring the fact that Torchwood’s motto is practically yay creative forms of violence.

Caspian looks thoughtful, lips twisting just a little. Tosh very carefully does not look at them, and misses Jack more than ever. At least if Jack were here he would be being distracting and effortlessly sexy and then Caspian would be lusting after Jack instead, and then this would be Jack’s inappropriate attraction problem, not hers, and since Jack doesn’t even know the meaning of ‘inappropriate’ it would probably all work out fine. Tosh realises that her brain is babbling and when she looks down she finds Caspian’s fingers are brushing hers on the table.

“Just part of your job?” Caspian asks softly, and Tosh doesn’t want to look him in the eye because she knows what she’ll see there and it will make all the voices in her head listing the reasons why this is ridiculous go damnably silent. And really, it is a ridiculous idea, put into her head by Owen, who can’t have sex anymore and therefore wants everyone else to, and Ianto, who is sleeping with Jack and therefore absorbing his world view. She should not listen to them. She should not.

“Well...” she begins, and her fingers are curling to lace through his almost unconsciously. He’s a better person than Mary ever was and there’s something in his innocence combined with weariness that reminds her of Tommy. There’s a soft smile spreading across Caspian’s mouth and Tosh’s breath is catching in her chest.

“Your bill,” the waitress says, slamming the paper down hard enough to make the salt and pepper shakers rattle. There’s a hilariously jealous expression on her face but it’s enough to jerk Tosh back into reality. She pulls her fingers from Caspian’s, and doesn’t look at him as she hands her Torchwood credit card over.

*

“You’re letting the side down, Tosh,” Ianto murmurs.

“Shut up,” Tosh mutters.

“This really isn’t as complicated as you think it is.”

“Shut up.”

“Anyone else would’ve already-”

“Shut up.”

They’re watching Owen do one last medical exam on Caspian before sending him home to Narnia. He’s perched on the edge of the autopsy table wearing his own trousers, elaborately embroidered shirt crumpled beside him. Ianto’s eyes are just a little too wide, and Tosh wants to say ‘I’m not gay’ my arse but decides this isn’t the time to call him up on it. Owen keeps shooting Ianto amused looks, so presumably he’s going to be taking the piss all day anyway.

Owen puts his good hand to a scar on Caspian’s shoulder. Caspian shivers. “Your hands are cold.”

“Side-effect of being dead, mate,” Owen says cheerfully, and Tosh marvels at how unaffected Caspian seems to be at this answer. They’re all still freaked out about it, though they’re trying not to be.

Caspian shivers again, and Owen shoots Ianto and Tosh a pointed glance. It suddenly occurs to Tosh that they’re both leant against the railing perving over Caspian with his shirt off, and that Torchwood really has irrevocably broken them.

“You’re running out of time, Tosh,” Ianto mutters.

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying...”

“Well, don’t.”

Owen rolls his eyes at the two of them, then motions at Caspian. “You can put your shirt back on.”

Tosh does a very good job of not being at all disappointed.

*

“You could be his ‘consort’,” Owen offers, a trace of amused glee in his voice, as Ianto explains the whole travelling-through-a-box thing to Caspian.

“You’re enjoying this far too much,” Tosh tells him.

“Yes I am,” Owen agrees, unabashed. “No one has tried to kill any of us, Ianto isn’t pretending to be a robot, and your embarrassment is, quite frankly, hilarious.”

“I can bruise you,” Tosh reminds him.

“Jack’s going to be disappointed if he gets back to find out we didn’t shag any aliens in his absence,” Owen points out, as though this is a perfectly logical argument. “And since I’m out of the running and Ianto is pretending he has eyes for no one but our Captain, you have to pick up the slack.”

Tosh honestly can’t think of anything to say to that; she eventually fumbles up: “Caspian isn’t an alien.”

Owen sighs.

A moment later, Ianto is shaking Caspian’s hand (and looking very much like he’d like to go in for a hug instead), and Caspian is thanking him for all the coffee. Tosh suspects that he is going to go into horrendous caffeine withdrawal when he gets back to Narnia, and thinks they should probably stop force-feeding all their visitors beverages that they cannot get in their own homelands. Well, either that, or they should start opening chains of Starbucks across the universe and its various dimensions.

Owen shakes Caspian’s hand too, and claps his gloved hand against Caspian’s shoulder. “Take care, mate.”

Tosh can see the frustration on Owen and Ianto’s faces as she holds out her hand to Caspian, but someone has to remain professional here. Caspian raises it to his mouth, and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “It has been a pleasure, my lady.”

“It has,” Tosh manages, and tells herself that she’s only lightheaded because she drank too much last night.

Caspian walks towards the chest that will get him home, and then seems to decide something because he turns back, striding back to Tosh and pulling her into a kiss. She freezes for a second, and then melts into it, into his long fingers tangling in her hair and his soft mouth pressed against hers. There’s a dulled sound, which she suspects is Owen applauding with his glove on, and she swears Ianto is laughing. Later, she is going to spill something like Ribena or soy sauce, and make him clean it up. Right now, though, all she cares about is Caspian’s teeth catching her lower lip, his breath rushing out against her cheek.

“I have wanted to do that since I first saw you,” Caspian murmurs, and it should be clichéd and embarrassing, but coming from him it doesn’t sound that way at all.

Tosh is actually speechless, which is awkward, but Caspian doesn’t seem to mind; he just gives her that charming, boyish smile and then walks away. They’ve propped the giant wooden chest upright so that it’s almost like a doorway; Caspian glances back over his shoulder and then walks through it.

There’s a moment of complete, pure silence, and then Owen says: “Hey, look, you didn’t kill this one, Tosh.”

Tosh throws the stapler from her workstation at him.

*

Jack calls up to check on them that evening, once Owen and Ianto have finished heaving the big chest back into the archives.

“I tried to get through earlier, but you seemed to be busy,” he says. “I like the new answering machine message though.”

Owen and Tosh both turn to look at Ianto. “We don’t have answering machines,” Tosh hisses.

Ianto shrugs, and looks unashamed. “We do now.”

“Oh my God,” Tosh murmurs, head in hands.

“I wondered what you were doing with that recording device,” Owen remarks to Ianto. “I kind of thought it’d turn out to be something kinkier.”

“I’m not you, Owen,” Ianto mutters, which makes no sense at all since he’s sleeping with Jack and the phrase avant-garde has been thrown about.

“Play nice, kids,” Jack sighs, but he sounds far too amused.

Jack rings off after checking they’re not dead and Cardiff hasn’t been eaten by the Rift, and also after being incredibly evasive about what he’s actually doing with his time.

“Tenner says he’s following Gwen and Rhys about,” Owen offers.

“Twenty says he’s trying to seduce Martha,” Ianto replies, and they shake on it.

Later, Tosh is trying to write her report without saying anything incriminating or too personal. Ianto brings her a cup of tea, and leans down to murmur in her ear:

“You know, the way to Narnia hasn’t closed. It probably never will. And it works both ways.”

Tosh considers this for a long moment. “That would be unprofessional,” she says at last, “and in direct violation of at least eighteen Torchwood rules.”

“Twenty-six, actually,” Ianto corrects her, “but not a bad guess.”

Owen is watching them, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“None of this goes in the reports,” Tosh tells them both quickly.

“My report will say that we found Caspian, Ianto force-fed him coffee until he fell into a caffeine coma, we fed him toast, and then we sent him home,” Owen says gravely.

Tosh looks at Ianto, whose eyes are twinkling. “It would be irresponsible,” she tells him firmly, voice wavering.

“It would be fun,” Owen corrects her.

“I can’t,” Tosh says firmly, and does not think about Caspian’s kiss at all.

“Of course you can’t,” Ianto agrees. Owen glares at him, and Ianto continues blithely: “The box is in archive room 15-H, in any case.”

A filthy smirk slips across Owen’s mouth as Ianto wanders over to start tidying up their sofa area.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Tosh warns him, hearing laughter in her voice.

“I just wanted you to know I can cover for you with Jack,” Owen tells her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not.” Owen turns back to his report or Tetris or whatever it is he’s doing on his computer, though his eyes keep flicking back to her.

Tosh thinks 15-H and smiles. She won’t rule out the possibility.

Shiny previews. pause for everyone to go "oooh"

2009-09-08T15:00:31Z

Just to prove that I am vaguely in the process of doing things, in spite of writer’s block, a new laptop I spend more time buggering about with than actually writing stuff on, and real life getting a bit intrusive, here are snippets from things I am actively trying to get finished. Consider this as me trying to placate you, but also to give you shiny previews.

Currently Untitled
Desperate Romantics ~ Lizzie/Annie ~ in which Hunt is in the Holy Land, Annie is bored, and Lizzie is curious.
(Currently at: 725 words)

Footsteps echo up the stairs; too many for it to be Gabriel, unless he’s brought another of the brotherhood back with him. Lizzie sets down her charcoal, wiping her dusty hands on her skirt, leaving dark streaks behind. She turns expectantly towards the door, and a moment later is startled as Annie Miller walks in, a ridiculous confection of a hat angled on her curls. Fred trails after her; sweet, shy Fred, forever caught in the wake of those around him.

“Sorry to interrupt, Lizzie,” he begins, but his words fade into nothingness as Annie begins to wander around the studio, flipping thoughtfully through piles of sketches, picking random objects up and putting them back down again a moment later. Lizzie presses her lips together momentarily; she doesn’t like Annie and the feeling of having her here is sharp and surprisingly intense. She is a cat, her claws unsheathed; but she must hide it. She does not want a row, so she must hide it.

“Is there anything I can do for either of you?” she asks, a weak attempt at politeness that falls flat; but Annie will not notice and Fred is gentleman enough to pretend he has not noticed.

Currently Untitled
Desperate Romantics ~ hasn’t decided if it wants to be Gabriel/Fred or Fred/Annie ~ in which it is eight years after the finale and nothing has changed.
(Currently at: 900 words)

The last time Fred saw Gabriel, they were indulging in a spot of grave-robbing just after covering up a suicide. Being around Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a lot like being insane, and generally guarantees that mad, bad, dangerous things will happen. When he was young and idealistic and frighteningly naïve, Fred believed that Gabriel was magical. Now, he just finds him tiresome, though he supposes he should thank him one day for burning away every last shred of his naïveté until only bitterness remained. At the time, it seemed unforgivably harsh, but in the following years Fred has been grateful for his jaded attitude; it has saved him on several occasions. Well, as ‘saved’ as you can be, anyhow, when your soul has been utterly destroyed.

“I did not destroy your soul,” Gabriel scoffs.

Currently Untitled
Narnia/Torchwood ~ Caspian/Tosh ~ in which Jack isn’t around to stop general madness from happening, the Rift reaches Narnia, and Tosh wants new co-workers.
(Currently at: 2609 words)

“I am King Caspian the Tenth,” he says, voice catching on the consonants, accompanying the words with a bow. Tosh hasn’t been bowed at in a long time, and for a horrible moment she wants to burst out into giggles. Ianto’s eyebrows have practically disappeared into his hairline and Owen’s got that I am going to take the piss out of you all afternoon expression.

“Right,” Tosh says, finding her voice again and turning her attention to more practical matters, “Well, we’re Torchwood.”

“…Torchwood.” The way Caspian draws the word out is slightly indecent and Tosh glances at Ianto, who is staring determinedly at the ceiling.

“He should re-record all our answering machine messages,” he manages.

“We don’t have answering machines,” Tosh says carefully.

“We should get some,” Ianto murmurs.

“When the two of you have finished drooling over him, I have a medical examination to do,” Owen says, putting a hand on Caspian’s shoulder. “Come on, mate.”

“Couldn’t the maiden do it?” Caspian asks, expression entirely innocent, though his dark eyes are glowing.

“Oh Jesus,” Ianto whispers, turning away, shoulders shaking.

Elysian Fields
Doctor Who ~ Rose, Lucy, Mickey ~ in which it takes time to get dimension-travelling devices right.
(Currently at: 1559 words)

“You don’t have to do this,” Mickey tells her quietly, brushing Rose’s hair back and cupping her face with his hands, palms warm against her cheeks. Rose closes her eyes, inhaling, steadying herself. She and Mickey have been broken up for so long that being in a relationship with him now seems like an implausible story they came up with while pissed on cheap wine one night, but she does love him. He’s her best friend and she needs him sometimes so much that it hurts.

“Yeah,” she mumbles, “Yeah, I kind of do.”

Mickey nods with a rueful smile, stepping back a little and letting go of her. Rose misses the contact, fingers curling at her sides.

“Try not to disintegrate,” Mickey tells her.

Rose manages to fumble up a smirk. “Why, will you miss me or something?”

Mickey shrugs. “Yeah, that. And also then I’ll have to be their test subject.”

In Another World, We Might Just Have Gotten Away With It
Gossip Girl ~ Chuck/Dan ~ in which the world is ending and their only chance to survive is, unfortunately, each other.
(Currently at: 2000 words)

“Get in the car,” Dan says, turning keys over in one shaky hand.

Chuck considers this. “No.”

“Oh, right, so you’re going to stay here and die.” The corner of Dan’s mouth jerks a little in an approximation of a smirk, but it’s not a good smirk; Chuck’s practically patented smirking, after all. “Well, at least it’s original.”

“Not that.” Chuck sighs in exasperation, and wonders why he’s wasting time talking to Dan Humphrey anyway. “I mean, you can’t be the one to rescue me. What would I say?”

Dan shrugs. “‘Thank you’?” he suggests mildly. Chuck glares at him, and Dan grins a little wider. “You wouldn’t say anything,” he adds. “You don’t even know my name.”

Chuck actually does know Dan Humphrey’s name all too fucking well, since for a time the guy was utterly impossible to get rid of, and Dan probably knows this, but they’re both going to die soon so that’s an argument to have… ooh, never.

In Such Another Song
Ashes To Ashes ~ Gene/Alex ~ in which something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and Alex rather thinks it’s her.
(Currently at: 500 words)

There’s something reassuring about listening to white noise on the radio. Dull crackles that slither up and down Alex’s spine as she sits very still and stares at the growing mass of pictures and words on the wall.

It looks like the work of a crazy person. She is a crazy person.

She spent hours earlier, searching each channel for a clue of some kind, for news of how she’s doing. Her bones ache, her head is pounding, her eyes can barely stay open, but for all she knows it’s in her head. Alex has lost the difference between reality and imagination, and although Molly is her lifeline, she is all that Alex knows to be true.

The radio buzzes on, hypnotic and peaceful. Alex would love an update, would love to know if she is dying or living or doomed to stay like this forever, but she likes the noise too; there’s no truth in it, but then there aren’t any lies either.

Keys To The Kingdom
Torchwood ~ Owen/Ianto ~ in which there is a massive sprawling AU that is far too complicated and nonsensical to summarise pithily in a sentence.
(Currently at: 14,316 words)

Suzie makes a small noise that indicates she doesn’t at all agree with Jones, and as she turns she catches sight of Owen. Her eyes widen slightly.

“Who’s he?” she asks. “I’m not a bloody circus exhibit, you know. Take him to see the Weevils if you’re giving him the Torchwood’s A Fucking Freak Show tour.”

“He’s Owen Harper,” Jones replies. “We’ve got him in protective custody.”

This is the first Owen’s heard of this, and he says so. Suzie starts laughing, and Jones sighs.

“I need to take him back and see if Jack’s around,” he tells Suzie. “Will you be all right?”

“Does it matter?” Suzie murmurs dispassionately, waving a hand around her half-empty cell.

Jones strokes his hand through her hair again in a gesture of affection that makes Suzie smile reluctantly, and walks back to the door. He smoothes his palm over the glass, and it slides open, immediately closing behind him.

“I’ll come down later,” he promises Suzie. She doesn’t reply, merely looks at him with tired eyes, and Owen follows Jones out.

“Want to tell me what any of that was about?” he asks, once they’re walking back up the stairs again. Owen’s jeans are cold and still sodden against his legs, and exhaustion is beginning to take the edge off his anxiety.

Jones sighs.

“Suzie’s complicated.”

“More or less complicated than your robot ex-girlfriend?” Owen can’t resist pushing. When Jones doesn’t reply – not that Owen was actually expecting him to – he gives up. “What the hell kind of place have you brought me to?”

Mar Desconocido
Heroes/Torchwood ~ Isaac/Suzie ~ in which Hell isn’t quite as it was advertised in the brochure.
(Currently at: 2888 words)

Suzie makes no sign that she’s heard him, folding her newspaper up neatly, pressing down hard on the creases. The street is quiet and, in spite of the bright grey sunlight, kind of cold. A man in a pale fedora walks past; he’s not wearing shoes, and his face looks haggard. He doesn’t so much as glance at them, and in a moment has rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

“This really isn’t what I was expecting from Hell,” Isaac remarks, taking a piece of toast and biting into it. Suzie’s got a point; it’s not horrible, as such, just depressingly mediocre. “I thought it would be more… I don’t know, burning fire and demons and things.”

Suzie laughs shortly. “Well, you know, eternal torment is time-consuming, and generates a lot of paperwork for everyone involved.”

This is surreal, so fucking surreal, and Isaac wants out.

“You’re not kidding, are you.”

“Sadly not.” Suzie takes a sip of her coffee, and makes a face. “I don’t know why I keep ordering this, it’s going to remain forever lukewarm and instant. I miss decent coffee.”

Release The Stars
Star Trek ~ McCoy/Uhura ~ in which everyone does stupid things in their first year at Starfleet Academy.
(Currently at: 11,343 words)

Sometimes Leonard has difficulty remembering that he only met Jim two months ago; he struggles to recall a time when he didn’t spend half his life trying to keep his friend from self-destroying, either deliberately or accidentally.

“So what is this about?” he asks.

Uhura gives him a surprisingly patronising look as she replies: “It’s about reminding you there are people other than James T. Kirk and his all-consuming ego in the universe.”

She’s startled him, not that Leonard will ever let on. He’s surrounded himself with so many layers of intentionally spiky personality flaws that he really isn’t used to people actively seeking his friendship.

“Besides,” she adds, with a wicked twinkle in her eyes, “don’t tell anyone I said so, but now you’ve had a haircut and started shaving, you’re not bad-looking either.”

“Jim will never let me hear the end of this,” Leonard muses, half to himself.

Shakespeare Would’ve Written A Play About Us
Demons ~ Rupert/Mina, Rupert/Luke ~ in which Mina is evil, Rupert is horribly confused and Ruby is vastly unamused about everything.
(Currently at: 1901 words)

“Either smite me or put the gun down,” she tells him. “We may as well be civilised. And in any case we both know you’re not going to kill me, because if were going to you would have done it when I was your little blind pet.”

“You were harmless then,” Galvin grits, but puts the safety on.

“No,” Mina muses, reaching for her teacup. “No, I don’t think I was. I was just… dormant. And you were kidding yourself.”

“What do you want, Mina?” Galvin demands, putting his gun on the coffee table.

Mina shrugs, takes a dainty sip of tea. “A chat,” she replies. “There’s a dearth of decent conversation amongst the scum of the Earth, and I can’t imagine you’re being intellectually stimulated by Boy Wonder and Little Girl.”

“Little Girl is more perceptive than we ever gave her credit for,” Galvin allows.

“If she’s figured out you’re in love with me, you weren’t exactly dong a good job of hiding it,” Mina shrugs, setting her cup down. “The vampire and the man set on smiting her… it’s almost poetic.” Galvin remains silent. “Drink up,” Mina adds. He obediently picks up his own cup, needing something to do with his hands. “Of course, if Little Girl has spotted those rather unGodfatherly feelings you’re harbouring for Luke I’ll have to rearrange my view of the universe.”

tell me a riddle and sing me a rhyme, if you would be a true lover of mine
Merlin ~ Arthur/Gwen, Gwen/Lancelot, Merlin/Arthur ~ in which destiny comes true, and no one can escape getting their heart broken.
(Currently at: 3145 words)

Later, he returns to his chambers drunker than he meant to be, and sends his manservant off on a snap crueller than he intended. The young man looks at him, eyes momentarily compassionate, and then he scurries off. Merlin would’ve stayed, Arthur thinks moodily, before remembering that Merlin was a good friend but not really a proper manservant, and also remembering that he is far too drunk to be having these thoughts. His hands are shaking and he clenches them; he is Crown Prince and somehow it should all have been easier than this.

He crosses to the door that his manservant accidentally left open behind him, slamming it closed. Arthur keeps his palm pressed to the wood for a long moment, then leans his forehead against it, drawing in a hard breath. Slowly, he sinks to the floor, keeping his face against the mahogany, eyes shut tight. He wants to think I cannot do this but he doesn’t have a choice. He has to.

The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly
Heroes ~ Future!Peter/Isaac ~ in which Hiro wasn’t the only one who tried to fuck with the past, and Isaac gains a roommate.
(Currently at: 27,441 words) (yes, really)

“So,” Isaac begins, picking at his food because he feels so damn sick it’s debatable as to whether he’ll be able to keep it down, “Uh, why are you doing this?”

“You need your strength for tonight,” Peter replies, shrugging, telekinetically flicking through one of Isaac’s sketchbooks while he eats.

Isaac is pretty certain he doesn’t want to know the answer, but he asks anyway: “What’s happening tonight?”

“I’m coming over,” Peter tells him.

“You’re already here,” Isaac points out.

“Other me,” Peter clarifies, tone patronising. He refuses to differentiate between two different time period hims, and yet somehow Isaac’s the moron. This relationship is seriously not healthy. “Now me.”

“Can’t we call your past self something else to prevent confusion?” Isaac suggests. “You know, like ‘Keith’ or something?”

“We are not calling my past self ‘Keith’,” Peter hisses, once again reminding Isaac that everyone in the future has had their sense of humour surgically removed.

Isaac manages to eat three pieces of pasta in the frosty silence.

“So,” he says, “Why’s Keith coming over?”

Peter makes his annoyance known by tipping another shelf full of books onto the floor.

“Fucking stop with the trashing of my loft!” Isaac snarls. “It’s pretty much all I’ve got left, leave it the hell alone!”

“I’ll tell you why I’ve come over when I come over,” Peter mumbles.

“Thanks, that makes it all really clear,” Isaac mutters.

This Girl Knows The Difference Between A Bus Crash And A Cover-Up
Primeval ~ Danny/Jenny ~ in which leaving doesn’t signify an end in any way at all.
(Currently at: 1226 words)

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that she has no interest in being who she is, that she has no memory of who she really was, and that she can’t even remember how to be the woman she was barely a year ago.

Lester offered her therapy when he asked her to stay, but her fingers still tingled from frostbite and she wasn’t sure how much it would help. She wants to talk to someone, and is halfway to calling Sarah before she remembers that no good can come of it. She cut her ties, she’s going to be happy now. She has to be happy now.

“I’m fucking tired,” she murmurs into her sofa cushions, stuck with yet another cloying afternoon of nothingness and confusion.

She doesn’t know if Jenny Lewis is becoming Claudia Brown or if she’s just fading away altogether. There’s a scrap of photograph stuck in her bathroom where her mirror used to be; a photograph that isn’t of her.

This Is Why It’s Called A Loss Of Control
House ~ Chase/Wilson, Chase/Cameron, House/Chase ~ in which Chase inadvertently finds himself trying to sleep with everyone, and Foreman is really more amused about the whole thing than he should be.
(Currently at: 8706 words)

At times when Chase thinks that he’s so unstable it’s astonishing that he hasn’t had a meltdown and murdered his colleagues in a horrible fashion yet, he just reminds himself that at least he hasn’t fallen as far as Wilson has. At least he isn’t living in a hotel room, trying to pay off three ex wives and hang onto an abusive best friend. Pointing this out doesn’t get the result he was hoping for, though.

“No, you’re stalking your co-workers and letting your libido get in the way of your diagnostic abilities,” Foreman reminds him. There’s no venom in his voice; it’s possible he’s just gotten tired of insulting Chase. After all, it’s not exactly difficult or anything; Chase sometimes thinks his sole purpose in life is to provide people with blackmail material every time he opens his mouth. “Which I feel is an equally valid breakdown.”

“You’re just bitchy ‘cause I haven’t set aside a day for you,” Chase responds, leaning into the microscope again.

Weight Of The World
Britannia High ~ Jez/BB ~ in which Jez is actually an economics student, but some things are inevitable anyway.
(Currently at: 6341 words)

As they walk over to the restaurant, BB tells Jez all about the voting for the First Year Rep; Lauren and Claudine’s ridiculous sabotage and then Danny coming and taking over the stage with his Epic Charisma.

“Seriously,” Jez remarks, “Danny had better be gorgeous in person, I’m half in love with him already.”

BB raises an incredulous eyebrow.

“No, really,” Jez replies, “As far as I can tell, Danny is exactly my type. You know: the kind-of-a-bastard straight boy with a girlfriend.”

“That’s… not a good type to have,” BB replies, for lack of anything else to say.

Jez sighs dramatically. “Tell me about it.”

For a moment, BB doesn’t want to take Jez to dinner with him after all; then forcibly reminds himself that it doesn’t matter whether Jez decides to fancy Danny or not.

“So you’re…”

“Tragically single? Oh yes,” Jez responds with a shrug. “I’m too picky for my own good, really. And I don’t want to date an Economist, because then I’d be stuck discussing the Stock Market all the bloody time and there’d be no escaping.”

“Why do you do it to yourself, man?” BB asks.

Jez grins, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Buggered if I know.”

"On Futons And Casual Domesticity", Britannia High, Jez/BB

2009-09-02T11:59:37Z

Title: On Futons And Casual Domesticity
Fandom: Britannia High
Pairing: Jez/BB
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1305
Genre: Pre-slash
Summary: “Yes, BB,” Jez replies, tone thickly sarcastic. “I want you so much that I dragged you furniture shopping with me so I could jump you in public on a cheap futon.”
Author’s Notes: I am actually currently working on a very long and very silly BH AU, but I found part of this on my harddrive and thought I would tidy it up and make it pretty and stick it online in the meantime, because the world always needs more of the boys, especially since ITV axed the show, just like they axe everything I like ever. Ahem. Anyway, set somewhere in the middle of the series.

“Dude.” BB folds his arms, attempting a glare. “You do not need a leather sofa that big. No one needs a leather sofa that big.”

Jez pouts, stroking the smooth black couch he’s sitting on. “My other sofa was way bigger than this.”

“Yeah.” BB throws himself down beside him. “But you don’t have the option of being a spoilt little rich boy any more, so suck it up.”

Jez’s pout deepens.

“It won’t fit in that shoebox you live in,” BB adds.

They glare at each other for a moment, but BB refuses to back down.

“You’re too sensible,” Jez sighs finally.

“Isn’t that why you brought me here?” BB waves a hand, indicating the horribly overcrowded and noisy hell that is Ikea on a Sunday. “So you would come back with actual useful stuff?”

Jez nods reluctantly, pushing himself off the giant leather sofa and heading through the throngs of frustrated, picky and harassed-looking people to hopefully find something more practical. BB is feeling claustrophobic and keeps accidentally walking into the stupid display furniture as he tries to follow. He suspects Jez is the only person in the world he’d willingly put himself through this for, which isn’t really a helpful thought, so he’s trying to ignore it. Really, they should’ve just ordered pizza and done all this online in like, a third of the time.

By the time he manages to track Jez down, the other boy has started being rational and has picked out a fairly cheap futon that they can probably get through the door.

“For when I inevitably have to sell my bed because I’m flat broke again,” Jez explains lightly, spread out comfortably over the sofa like he already owns it. The annoying crowds of complaining people don’t seem to be bothering him at all; BB wishes he could say the same. He only wants this many people around him if they’re begging for an autograph, and even then he’d like some security between him and them.

“Hey,” Jez says, breaking into his thoughts, “Help me unfold this, would you?”

It’s probably too crowded in here for them to be messing about with mattresses and so on, but then they kind of have to test it before Jez buys it so BB does so, trying not to bump into too many people. Jez throws himself down the minute they’ve got the bed assembled and it’s probably not going to collapse. He grins smugly up at BB, who folds his arms across his chest.

“Comfy?”

Jez indicates the space beside him with a wave of his hand. “Join me?”

BB raises his eyebrows incredulously.

“When I sell my bed on ebay so that I can eat I may still, at some point, want company,” Jez points out. “I need to check if this can take two.”

BB rolls his eyes. “Man, you are such a slut.”

This earns him a glare from a mother dragging her small child behind her, but that’s her own fault for not leaving it in the brightly-coloured crèche downstairs, as far as BB is concerned. With a long-suffering sigh, he lies down beside Jez. This turns out to be an improvement, because flat on his back he can’t see the majority of the people surrounding them; they’ve got a little island of quiet that’s about as wide as Jez’s futon. It could be worse.

“This is really why you wanted me to come with you, isn’t it?” BB asks, squinting against the bright ceiling lights that are now shining directly in his eyes.

“Yes, BB,” Jez replies, tone thickly sarcastic. “I want you so much that I dragged you furniture shopping with me so I could jump you in public on a cheap futon.”

“Dude,” BB says, rolling his head to look at Jez. The other boy immediately blushes, bringing his hands up to cover his face.

“Sorry,” he says, and it comes out muffled. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

For the first time, it occurs to BB that there are things about this situation that could make him uncomfortable, and then he wonders why he hasn’t noticed them until now. It’s not a line of thought he particularly wants to pursue.

“It’s cool, man,” he replies. “And we both fit on here, so I say you take it.”

Jez looks thoughtful. “Maybe I just won’t buy a bed at all. Save money that way.”

“Your dad still not talking to you?” BB asks carefully.

Jez shifts, looking away from him. “He sends me emails about once a month; asking, you know, whether I’ve got tired of living on instant noodles yet.”

“Have you?”

Jez gives him a sparkling smile. “How could I? There are so many exciting artificial flavours to choose from.”

BB smiles back. “Did you tell him that?”

Jez looks a little sheepish. “Yes. But then he accused me of being facetious, so I don’t think he’s going to be buying me anything pretty anytime soon.” He sighs, then adds: “And I need a lot more furniture and I don’t really want to have to stay in Ikea until I die, so, comfy as this is, we should probably move on.”

“You do that,” BB says, as Jez sits up. “Come back and wake me up when you’re done.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Jez tells him. “You were foolish enough to agree to come with me, now you have to deal with it.”

He gets to his feet, and offers BB a hand. BB sighs, taking it and letting Jez pull him up.

“Only a couple more hours,” Jez offers. “And then maybe I’ll let you buy me lunch.”

“Tempting,” BB mutters, as they wander into the crowds again. Something occurs to him. “Am I going to have to be your Stand-In Boyfriend with all your new furniture?”

Jez rolls his eyes. “What a filthy mind you have,” he says, tone all sweet innocence, “I’m not going to be shagging any future boyfriends on every flat surface in my home, you know.”

This time, it’s Jez who gets the glares from offended mothers; BB wonders vaguely if they’re going to end up getting kicked out for upsetting the other shoppers.

“Why not?” BB asks, though he gets the feeling he probably shouldn’t. He’ll only regret it.

Jez stares at him like it’s obvious. “It’s flat-pack furniture that I am going to have to assemble myself,” he points out. “It’ll collapse, you know it will. And I don’t want to have to explain to Nugent that I’m dropping out of Britannia High from a back injury caused by inadvisably energetic sex on a wobbly Ikea table.”

BB chokes, but reflects that he was kind of asking for it.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, “Maybe we could have that as a topic on the show: stupid reasons for dropping out of school.”

“You’re not putting my sex life on air,” Jez says sharply.

“Lack of sex life,” BB reminds him.

“You don’t know that,” Jez says, straightening up and preening a little.

“You’re not getting laid,” BB cuts him off. When Jez raises an enquiring eyebrow, BB adds: “If you were, you’d have an actual boyfriend to go furniture shopping with, not me.”

Jez considers this. “I’d probably take you furniture shopping anyway,” he offers.

Considering that furniture shopping isn’t exactly the most exciting or interesting of things they could be doing in their time off, BB feels surprisingly gratified when Jez says that, which is probably not a good thing.

“Look at us getting all mushy by the kitchen cabinets,” he says; then registers what he’s said. “You don’t need kitchen cabinets, Jez, let’s go and find something that you do.”

He slings an arm around Jez’s shoulders and together they navigate their way through the Sunday shopping chaos.

"Don't Linger Love, Come Take My Hand", Hamlet, Horatio-Ophelia centric

2009-08-27T11:13:03Z

Title: Don’t Linger Love, Come Take My Hand
Fandom: Hamlet
Characters: Horatio, Ophelia; Hamlet, Laertes
Challenge/Prompt: paliphrase, “Never”
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7300
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Title is from Ophelia by Jon Boden.
Summary: Horatio looks down at the trembling woman encircled in his arms and feels something break, something that he did not know that he had until now.
Author’s Notes: Not that I expect anyone to read this, I just wanted to write it and I’m very proud of it. I’ve fucked with the timeline a little, but plausibly so. I saw Jude Law’s Hamlet, which inspired me to write this. Ophelia’s appearance here, and her death, are inspired by the painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais (I’ve a renewed interest in it because of Desperate Romantics, but it’s always been one of my favourite paintings). Slightly Horatio/Ophelia if you squint, but it’s not meant to be that sort of story, though there is a very creepy Polonius/Ophelia undercurrent that you may try to ignore.

Ophelia
She’s the girl
Wearing flowers in her hair
Wearing sorrow in her eyes
Sighing secrets to the autumn air.
Jon Boden

There’s blood on the flagstones, thickly red and sharply accusatory. The court is in uproar, though Horatio suspects that most of them are enjoying the scandal just a little too much. Their prince has gone truly mad; gone from the quiet instability where he stalked the halls and laughed at air and wept with gleeful melancholy. Now, he has started slaughter; impulsive, ill-thought-out slaughter, and who knows where this will end? Horatio has never had much time for Polonius; a fumbling fool of a man burbling in unintelligent riddles, sly and sneaking and it was really only a matter of time before he received a dagger through a curtain – it was just bad luck that it happened to be Hamlet who got there first. Still, this should not have happened.

“What have you done?” he asks quietly.

Hamlet’s arms are full of corpse and the man that was once Polonius is oozing scarlet, leaving a gory trail through the castle.

“Give me a hand,” he says, breathless, hefting Polonius a little as though he is carrying a sack. Horatio supposes that, to a certain extent, he is. Horatio sighs, but obediently picks up Polonius’ legs, helping Hamlet take the weight.

“We must be quick,” Hamlet mutters urgently, torchlight glinting off shining eyes and teeth. “You must not be found with me.”

Horatio will aid his lord in anything – and indeed, he is right now helping Hamlet to hide a body – but he does see the appeal in not being labelled as an accomplice.

“We should take him to the chapel-” Horatio begins.

“There will be time enough for that,” Hamlet interrupts. “I am sure the king will arrange it all.”

They’re leaving erratic drips and dribbles of crimson in the halls; Hamlet’s shirt is stained. Horatio swallows hard. He knows Hamlet is unravelling faster than anyone has really realised, but he finds it all almost too much to stomach: Hamlet is using the body of a man he’s murdered as a pawn in this never-ending game with Claudius. Polonius may have been foolish and was certainly irritating, but he deserves more than this. More than being lugged, leaking blood, through the halls of Elsinore.

Horatio says none of this, following Hamlet up a flight of stairs. One of Polonius’ hands flops free, bumping against every step. Horatio bites the inside of his lower lip, and wonders if Hamlet has forgotten that he is only supposed to be pretending to be mad. Horatio feels dully nauseous, eyes unable to focus on anything. Hamlet has gone too far and Horatio fears for both of them.

“Here,” Hamlet says, backing into a corner and unceremoniously dumping Polonius against the wall. Horatio lays Polonius’ legs down, and is about to try and tidy the corpse up a little when Hamlet pushes him back. “Don’t touch him,” he hisses.

“He deserves dignity,” Horatio snaps.

“He lived with little enough of it,” Hamlet snaps back, voice icy cold and Horatio suddenly does not recognise his friend at all. He opens his mouth to say something – something unforgivable, something too cruel – but then he hears footsteps below.

“Go, my friend,” Hamlet insists. Horatio runs down the corridor, hearing Hamlet muttering: “Safely stowed” to himself behind him.

Horatio doesn’t stop until he is two floors away, where he locks himself into a room and collapses against the door. He presses his forehead to the splintered wood as he slides slowly to the floor. He breathes for a while, until the dizziness passes; though when it does, the tears come. Sobs rip relentlessly at his ribcage, helpless misery choking every breath he tries to take.

When Horatio is finally calm, he gets to his feet. When he looks down, he sees that his shirt is smudged with condemning scarlet.

.

Horatio is pulling the laces on his clean shirt when the noise begins. A woman is screaming, and he has the horrible feeling that he knows who she is. He swallows hard, culpability twisting in his stomach, though it is not his guilt to bear. But Hamlet has already dismissed his role in all of this, and someone has to acknowledge what has happened today.

He steps out of his room, walking towards the source of the wailing. He hears hurried, erratic footsteps on the flagstones; he rounds a corner and sees a woman running towards him. Dark skirts tangling around her legs, flaming red hair flying loose behind her, face chalk white; Ophelia is sobbing, grief echoing off the stone. Horatio steps forward, catching her in his arms as she runs past.

“I must go,” she says, thin hands pushing ineffectively at his chest. “I must see my father.”

Her eyes are flushed red, thin lips bitten bloody. Horatio looks down at the trembling woman encircled in his arms and feels something break, something that he did not know that he had until now.

“Ophelia,” he says quietly. “Oh, Ophelia.”

“I must see my father,” she mutters wildly, staring down the corridor, twisting frantically in his hold. “He is with the King, but he will see me. I am his daughter, he will see me.”

Horatio is glad that there is no one else here. Ophelia is a little girl, frightened and quivering, and there should not be an audience to this.

“Have you been spoken to?” Horatio asks. Ophelia ignores him, struggling and peering down the hall. “Ophelia,” he insists, and she raises her troubled eyes to his face. “What have you been told?”

“They say-” Ophelia chokes over the words, but manages to say: “They say my father is dead. But he is not. He is not.”

Horatio swallows hard, but he owes it to her not to be evasive. “Your father is dead, Ophelia.”

“No!” She hits his chest, her small fists raising little more than momentary stings. “No, you are a liar! A liar!”

Her words dissolve into sobs, and Horatio strengthens his hold around her as her legs give way. She weeps against his chest, long wails of devastation that make Horatio feel worse than ever. He closes his eyes, resting his cheek against her dishevelled curls as Ophelia’s tears seep into his shirt. When he opens them again, vision blurring a little, he can see out of the window; can see Hamlet, flanked by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are both intently pretending that they’re not guarding him, walking away. Swathed in coats, with servants carrying baggage for a journey. The king has acted quickly, Horatio reflects. Perhaps it is for the best.

When Ophelia starts to quieten down, from sheer exhaustion if not from a cessation of grief, Horatio whispers:

“You need to rest, my lady.”

Ophelia says nothing, but allows him to lead her back to her room. There’s a maid there, wringing her hands and looking distraught. Horatio murmurs words of inadequate explanation, and leaves Ophelia with the maid. He tells himself that he is doing the right thing; and retires to bed himself, to lie and stare at the dark ceiling and not sleep.

.

In the following days, Horatio is sent for twelve times by the King and Queen, and he does not go. There is nothing that they can possibly have to say to each other; at least, nothing Horatio wants to say, which he is willing to concede is different. Still, he has picked his loyalties and it seems a little late to change them; even if it is exhausting to be the only living person that Prince Hamlet trusts.

Ophelia does not sleep; her eyes grow bruised and dark, her hair untamed and tangled, while she bites her lips red. She slaps her maidservants, though she does not seem to notice what she is doing; her temper is quick to flare and dissipates swiftly, leaving her a quiet husk afterwards. Horatio has never seen grief take anyone like this before; but then Ophelia is alone, her brother journeying home from France, and no one much cares about her fate. He, in all honesty, should not care. But he carried her father’s bloody corpse through the halls and Hamlet was the one who tore himself to shreds for some idea of love for her, and then changed his mind and spat it all back at her in an inglorious mess, and someone must still care about Ophelia. Someone must.

“My father,” she breathes, fingers knotting in her lap, “My father, oh, he was a great man, the things he knew – such things he knew, he was the cleverest man I think. No, I know, he spoke such riddles, I could not follow him, I played such games for him – I was his prettiest jewel, he said, but then he did not say, and my brother… oh, my brother, he was clever too. Will he come back, do you think?”

Horatio has been listening to the fluttering cadence of Ophelia’s voice; she breaks off every few words to cough, her throat dry, before resuming her rambling. He realises belatedly that she has asked a question.

“He is returning, my lady,” he says.

There is a fire lit in the room; Ophelia complains of the cold constantly. She was wearing a shawl when Horatio came to her this morning; her breakfast laid untouched on her table. He has been trying to tempt her to eat some, cold as it is, but she ignored his words and he gave up in despair. Now, the shawl is draped carelessly over a chair back, and Ophelia is staring at the flames as one transfixed.

“I know things that my brother does not; I could not tell him, he wouldn’t’ve have loved him, else; and it is right for a son to love his father, is it not? It is right for a daughter to love her father too, I loved him as I should, though he asked the strangest things, but I did my duty. I was a good daughter, you know.”

It lasts like this for hours at a time; occasionally court attendants come to check on her, and listen to Ophelia’s words with looks of confusion and perturbation. They’re looking for meaning in them; Horatio has the horrible suspicion that he does not want to know the meaning, and instead sits back and lets waves of syllables envelop him, wishing he knew what it would take to quiet her, calm her. He doesn’t know if she is mad, or if her grief has made everything too fluid, or if there’s no difference between them.

Horatio gets up and fetches Ophelia’s shawl; she’s started rocking herself, arms folded around her body as close as she can. He carefully drapes the garment around her thin shoulders, folding it under her chin. Her hands come up and cover his; slender and shivering. He is about to pull away when her fingers tighten against his skin, and her eyes focus on his face.

“My lord Horatio,” she says, and sounds startled. “What are you doing here?”

I have sat with you for three days straight, Horatio thinks, but doesn’t say it; Ophelia is unsettled enough as it is.

“I came to talk to you, my lady,” he replies.

Ophelia seems to think about this; then her hands drop, and she lets go of him. Horatio takes a step back, feigning propriety.

“I fear I have nothing much to say for myself these days,” Ophelia murmurs, in a stronger tone than she has had in a long time.

“I am sure that is not true, my lady.” Horatio feels wrong-footed; at least when Ophelia was ignoring him and burbling in strings of nonsense he felt that he knew what his role was. Now, there is too much formality, and he is confused.

“Oh, it is.” Ophelia sighs, drags the shawl further around her. She raises her head after a moment, as though struck by a sudden thought. “Any news from my lord Hamlet?”

Horatio does not know if Ophelia is aware that Hamlet killed her father; he has not told her, but it is entirely possible that someone else has. Gossip is rife, people’s tones tinged with the glee of shock.

“He is bound for England,” Horatio responds, in as neutral a tone as he can manage.

“I see.” Ophelia twists her bitten mouth. “My father never liked him, you know,” she sighs.

Horatio has no idea what to say.

“But then,” Ophelia continues quietly, “I do not think my father really liked anyone.”

“He liked you, my lady,” Horatio tells her.

Ophelia looks momentarily troubled; she begins to wind a hank of her thick red hair around her wrist. “Yes,” she agrees miserably, “Yes, he liked me.”

She doesn’t speak again, as outside the sun begins to set over Elsinore.

.

Singing wakes Horatio from an uneasy slumber; a thin warble outside his bedroom door. He sits up in bed and frowns, unable to comprehend why he can hear it, and then, as he wakes up a little more, realisation sinks in. He gets up and runs over to his door; already, a white figure is disappearing at the end of the corridor. Horatio hurries after her, following Ophelia’s thin, sad singing.

“I never grieved you, nor yet deceived you, and I would surely be your bride…”

Ophelia carries a lantern held before her, which throws eerie shadows up the walls. She wears her diaphanous white nightgown which drifts around her body in the drafts as though she is underwater. Her feet are bare on the stone floor; they look small and pale and cold.

“Will you not go back to bed, my lady?” he asks quietly.

She turns, surprised; her large eyes stare at him from behind the thick curtain of her hair. Ophelia doesn’t seem to comprehend what is happening; her bloodless lips part, then close, as though uncertain what to say.

“You should rest,” Horatio says quietly. He does not want to wake up the castle; does not want anyone else to know just how badly Ophelia has cracked, though he suspects the days of covering it all up and hoping that she will heal are over. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that Ophelia will ever recover; she is too far gone now, sunk too deep into her own loss.

Ophelia’s eyes are dark in the half-light. They flicker over Horatio, then up to the ceiling, then down to the floor. She is shivering, mouth quivering.

“Let me take you to bed,” Horatio says.

Ophelia’s gaze meets his immediately. “You would husband me?”

“No!” Horatio’s response is swift and sharp with his scared vehemence. “No, Ophelia, lord no. But it is cold out here.”

“Oh.” Ophelia looks at her bare feet. “You could, if you wished to,” she adds after a moment of contemplation. “My father is not around to care.”

Horatio reflects that this is what despair is; it would not be possible for his spirits to sink any lower. He wants to shout, or weep, or find Hamlet and beat his lord bloody. But he can do none of these things, so he holds his hand out to Ophelia. She stares, uncomprehending, then manages to take it. Her fingers are frozen.

“Come, my lady,” he murmurs, and leads her back through the halls to her own chambers. They are mercifully empty – Horatio does not want to be found alone with Ophelia in her rooms in the middle of the night – and he manages to persuade Ophelia into the bed, tucking the blankets in around her. The fire has gone out, and her eyes glisten by candlelight. “Sleep, lady Ophelia.”

Her eyelids flutter, the lashes catching gold in the feeble light. “You will not leave me?”

“I will not leave you,” Horatio replies, and lets her take his hand, holding it too tight in her own. After a moment, her eyes close, and he sits there beside her until she is breathing evenly, before he gently disentangles his hand from hers, presses a kiss to her palm, and slides her arm beneath the blanket too.

The halls are cold and dark and damning as he returns to his own bed.

.

Ophelia’s moments of sanity become less and less frequent in the following week. Instead of visiting Ophelia for a few hours a day, Horatio finds himself staying at her side from sunrise to sunset. No one seems to know what to do with her; court physicians come and fill her with tinctures and solutions and teas until Ophelia’s eyes are heavy and her body is weighted down with supposed medicine until her fingers can barely move. Horatio does not know what to do either, but he suspects she has been constrained and restrained for too many years, so that is the last thing Horatio wants to do with Ophelia. He will let her increasing madness reign, because in it she has finally attained freedom. It is breaking his soul to watch, but she is free.

After two more nights when Horatio is woken by Ophelia drifting past his door with her miserable lament echoing off the stone, he takes to spending the nights in the passageway outside her chambers. Wrapped in a cloak, it’s as cold inside the castle as it was on the battlements when they all awaited Fortinbras’ invasion breathlessly; then, they did not know that the greatest threat to their state came from inside Elsinore. Horatio paces the corridor for hours until exhaustion forces him to sit down, back braced to the wall beside Ophelia’s door. When she finally ventures out, half-asleep, half-awake, he takes care to walk her back inside again, to talk her into true slumber. Some nights it takes longer than others; sometimes she knows him and acts indignant, while at other times she calls him Hamlet or Laertes or, one unbearably claustrophobic night, father. Horatio does his best to set her at ease, telling her stories he thought he had forgotten from childhood, or murmuring soothing nothings until her eyelids droop.

Rain lashes the windows of the castle, and the King wishes to see Horatio again. He has given up on excuses; now, he just sighs at the servants who bear summons, and they turn and leave without bothering to ask him for an accompanying polite message. He doubts anyone will actually look for him here. No one comes to see Ophelia, but for two maids, who try their best though the fear and misery is building in their eyes whenever they look at her. Horatio cannot blame them, though he wishes he could.

More often than not, he just wishes that Laertes would return home from France faster, though it is becoming more and more evident that he will not be able to help Ophelia.

Halfway through a fading monologue on the emotions of raindrops and how quickly their lives are smashed flat, Ophelia’s eyelids flicker and when she next looks at Horatio she seems surprised.

“How long have you been there, Horatio?” she asks.

She does not often recognise him; he is becoming used to it.

“Not long, lady Ophelia.”

Nodding her head absently, as though she has not really heard his reply, Ophelia gets to her feet, wanders over to the window. Her hair is a mess of curls down her back, while her face is gaunt because she will not eat. She presses her fingertips to the glass, sighing slowly and sadly. Horatio watches her carefully; she is lucid enough to know who he is and who she is, but he knows from past experience that it cannot last long.

“I am ill, aren’t I?” Ophelia says at last.

“Do you feel ill, my lady?” Horatio asks her.

Ophelia does not turn. “I feel tired,” she says, “But there is not any point in lying to me. I have been told enough pretty lies of late, and my father is still slain.” She coughs, the hacking cough that is taking hold of her. “But my memories are in pieces, and I have taken too much medicine.” She waves a slender hand behind her, towards her table clutters with bottles and herbs and jugs. “I must be ill.”

Horatio says nothing, stays in his seat beside the fire and digs his fingernails into his palms.

When Ophelia finally turns, there are tears on her cheeks. “What will become of me? My father is dead and my brother only cares in absentia and I have lost my lord Hamlet’s favour and no man will marry a woman who is as ill as I am.”

Horatio cannot say anything, and curls his fingers harder, watching as Ophelia walks back over and sits down beside the fire, ignoring her chair in favour of slumping on the flagstones. The firelight glows off her beading tears.

“I will marry you,” Horatio says at last, voice barely above a whisper. “If your brother cannot care for you and if you do not get any better, then I will marry you and care for you, Ophelia.”

Perhaps it is guilt; but it is more than sheer responsibility now. Even lost in her own head, there is something about Ophelia that Horatio cannot help but like. She lies down, swathes of red hair falling across the floor as her father’s blood once did.

“Would you like that?” he asks softly.

Ophelia turns bright eyes on him. “Like what?” she asks. “What were we talking about?”

There’s a slurring quality to her voice; Horatio realises that her mind has drifted again. He slowly opens his hands; his nails have bitten so hard into his palms that he’s bleeding.

“Nothing important,” he tells her.

She smiles at him for a moment, then seems to recollect something because her face falls and she rolls onto her side to gaze at the fire again.

Horatio bows his head and listens to the soft hiss of the rain outside until his eyes are clear.

.

Uneasy rumours are trickling in from the borders; Laertes has arrived back in Denmark only to gather together an army and decide to exact revenge in that way. Horatio can understand why he would do this; but he wishes that Laertes would hasten to the castle. He hopes that Ophelia might gain some sort of clarity when faced with her beloved brother. She is even less in connection with the world than usual; Horatio follows her around the grounds and forests as she collects flowers, mud building up on her dress and hands, leaves and branches caught in her hair. Ophelia sings more than she speaks now; drifts of old love songs, or drinking songs so filthy that Horatio cannot help but wonder who taught them to her in the first place.

He asks her, later, as they walk back to Elsinore; Ophelia is humming softly but seems more aware of her surroundings than she was earlier. There’s a focus in her eyes that is not often present, and he means to take advantage of this while he can.

Ophelia looks thoughtful, shedding petals as she walks. “My brother knows a great many things,” she murmurs. “My father knew them too, he taught some of them to me, though I wish he had not.” She drops her gaze to the ground, hanks of flaming hair falling over her face. “I want my brother to come home,” she mumbles, apparently to herself. “Our father is dead, why does he not come?”

Her sobs spill abruptly from her; she sinks to the ground, dropping flowers from her hands as she buries her face in her palms. Horatio crouches down beside her, stroking a hand back through her soft curls.

“He is on his way, my lady,” he says quietly.

Ophelia’s only response is a shuddering sob. Horatio knows that this latest lapse is entirely his fault, so he pulls her hands away from her face and wraps his arms around her.

“I want my brother,” she whispers, mouth moving against Horatio’s throat. Her thin, spidery fingers dig into his shoulders, clinging tight. “I want Laertes. Where is he?”

“He is coming, Ophelia,” Horatio replies, holding her tight. Ophelia pulls away from him, looking anxiously around the clearing. “Laertes? Laertes! Where are you? Come home, Laertes, save me from father. He comes… oh, Laertes, he comes to me in the night with his fingers in the strings of my nightgown, and tells me that he is only acting for the best…”

She trails off into another skein of sobs, and Horatio holds her tight against his chest, his own tears soaking silently into her hair.

If he did not think that her brother is Ophelia’s last chance, Horatio would kill Laertes when he finally arrives. Would kill him for all that he refused to see, would kill him for leaving Ophelia alone this long. Dappled sunlight falls across the forest, and Ophelia is smearing dirt onto the back of Horatio’s shirt, and perhaps Hamlet was inadvertently right in his actions after all.

“I will make this right, Ophelia,” he promises when her crying finally quietens. Ophelia sits up properly, disentangling herself from him, and frowns.

“Make what right?” she asks.

Then she pushes herself to her feet and begins to teeter back towards the castle, picking new flowers as she goes, singing softly to herself.

“And when this pretty little babe is born, oh she must keep it, it is her own…”

Horatio stays on his knees in the mud a while longer, shaking. Finally, when Ophelia is almost out of sight, he gets up and runs after her with quivering legs, afraid of what will become of her if she is left alone.

.

The corridor is colder than ever that night, but Ophelia doesn’t once venture out of her room and as the first clouds begin to go red with sunrise Horatio walks back to his own chambers to sleep grittily. He feels darkly queasy and his head is pounding when he comes back to Ophelia’s chambers three hours later. She is pacing restlessly, dressed in a white gown, hair combed for once. She looks, for the moment, utterly lucid, and Horatio wishes he could greet that realisation with relief.

“I have asked for an audience with the queen,” she says.

“You have done what?” Horatio asks, unable to understand exactly what is happening here.

The flowers Ophelia picked yesterday are in a jug of water on the table, the edges of the petals just starting to go brown.

“I have asked for an audience with the queen,” she repeats.

Horatio does not think that Ophelia should talk to the queen; she should keep herself hidden from where she can be judged.

“What has she said?” Horatio demands.

Ophelia blinks at him as though she does not comprehend the question for a long second.

“I am awaiting her reply,” she manages at last.

There is no way that Ophelia will manage to stay sane for an entire conversation with the queen; she’s disintegrating already. But there is no sense in telling Ophelia this. He takes a deep breath, bows goodbye to her, and then leaves. The moment the door slams behind him, he runs down the halls, feet clattering on the stairs. He gets to the queen just after Ophelia’s messenger; lady Gertrude looks at Horatio with an arched eyebrow. She has, after all, been trying to see him for the last two weeks. He fumbles up a bow, breath catching too hard in his chest.

“I will not speak with her,” Gertrude says, turning back to the messenger. Horatio loosely recognises him as one of the men that have been in and out of Ophelia’s rooms through her insanity, and proceeds to glower at him as he describes Ophelia’s disintegrating condition. It sounds so damning, pouring out of this uncaring stranger’s mouth; but as he listens, Horatio realises that the queen does need to see Ophelia, even if it is a foolish idea, even if it will end in destruction. He tries to work out how to say this in a way that will make the queen agree with him.

“‘Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds,” he says, and feels sick with himself.

The queen agrees, and sends the man off to get Ophelia. Horatio knows that he should stop this, but if this is what Ophelia wants then he will let her have it. She has been denied too many things already, been left behind too many closed doors.

Ophelia’s mind falls apart almost the moment she walks into the chamber. Horatio backs away from the queen and stands in the corner, watching Ophelia shatter and sing and wail with no idea that she even has an audience. The king enters, and Horatio bites the inside of his mouth bloody; but he can only watch, his heart breaking.

When Ophelia leaves, Horatio is already halfway to the door when the king orders him to follow and protect her – as if Horatio would ever do anything different. He dashes after Ophelia, following her reedy humming through the halls. He can hear shouting from outside, and pauses a moment in his pursuit to look from the window; there are hundreds of men outside, yelling and waving lit torches, and this can only mean one thing. Laertes is home. Horatio wishes he could feel more relieved.

He finally catches up to Ophelia outside her chambers; she looks troubled.

“I do not think they care that my father is dead at all,” she says, mouth twisted. The pieces of her mind seem to be sticking back together, though they won’t hold long. “My father gave Claudius everything and he does not care that he is dead at all. No one cares. No one but me.”

Horatio reaches for her but Ophelia pushes him off and disappears into her rooms. He leans against the wall beside the door, taking a slow breath. Hamlet pulled this life apart and has left Horatio to try and fix it, and he cannot. No one can. Not Horatio, not the king and queen, not Hamlet if he still lives, not even Laertes, breaking into the castle with men outside screaming his name. He groans softly, rubbing his hands over his face. He has barely slept since all this began, has forgone eating and rest in favour of trying to hold Ophelia together.

Turning, Horatio slams his fist against the wall, letting out a mangled shout between his teeth. The pain flares, sudden and brilliant, and it does not help. It does not help at all, even as his cry echoes off the cold stone.

Eventually, Ophelia reappears. Her hands are full of the flowers, dripping dirty water down the front of her fresh white dress, and she is singing. Ophelia does not seem to see Horatio as she floats past, feet bare on the floor, tripping and weaving as she walks. He follows, wanting to interrupt her, knowing that he must not. He must let this unfold and remain silent, just as he stepped back as Hamlet ran after his father’s ghost, just as he helped Hamlet carry Polonius’ body through the castle. He is not here to change events; merely to observe them, and to shoulder the pain of the guilt afterwards. If he does not, then no one else will.

Laertes is in the room now, and his face as Ophelia proceeds to sing and scatter her wilting flowers around the room physically hurts Horatio. He looks so devastated, so confused, like he is losing his father all over again. His expression is so like the one that Ophelia wears when at her most miserable that Horatio has to stop himself from walking over and embracing Laertes. Really, he has been acting with the utmost impropriety when it comes to Ophelia; only no one has cared.

Ophelia brings him a daisy, as she hands out her flowers: rosemary and pansies for Laertes, who she seems to have confused with Hamlet; fennel and columbines for the queen, and rue for the king. Horatio feels the bitterest of smiles settle across his mouth. Daisies, the flowers of unhappy and disappointed love.

.

Later, Horatio tracks down Laertes, who is tearing at his hair in a hall and looking murderous. Ophelia has barricaded herself in her rooms, and will not let her maids or Horatio in. Gossip is spreading rife about her, and Horatio has already broken a kitchen boy’s nose for laughing and singing in the cruellest of imitations. His knuckles are stinging, a smudge of blood that is not his own on them.

“Go to your sister,” he says.

Laertes looks surprised, and it seems to take him a moment to even realise who Horatio is.

“She is mad,” he replies, sounding as though he cannot comprehend why Horatio is telling him this.

“It should not matter, if you love her,” Horatio tells him.

“Of course I love her,” Laertes snaps, sounding angered now.

“Then go and be with her. She is ill, so ill, and cannot last long.”

Horatio did not realise he knew this until he says it, and feels a stab of something in his stomach. But it is true; Ophelia’s periods of sanity are getting shorter and she will not cling to normality for much longer, and she is dangerous to herself.

Laertes makes a choking sound, eyes filling immediately. “How do you know this?” he demands.

“I have been caring for your sister while you have not been here,” Horatio says, and reflects that it sounds horribly incriminating. Laertes seems to notice this too, because anger flashes across his wan features.

“If you have laid one finger on her-”

“I have not,” Horatio tells him, keeping his tone placating. “But she needed help and you have not been here.” He cannot stop a note of accusation sliding through his voice.

Laertes seems to crumple. “I have not,” he mutters. His eyes flash on Horatio. “Do you love my sister?”

“I do not,” Horatio responds steadily. Some honesty must show in his eyes, because Laertes seems to cool a little.

“Thank you, then,” he murmurs. “Thank you for all you have done.”

Horatio remembers that he wants to hurt Laertes, for leaving Ophelia at the mercy of her controlling and manipulative father, but the sight of the young man so shattered and lost makes him fold that resolution and put it somewhere else. He and Hamlet always thought of Polonius as a benevolent old fool, and Horatio is realising too late that he was not harmless after all. He regrets not bashing Polonius on more stairs as he and Hamlet dragged his corpse around the castle. But there is nothing that can be done, and Ophelia is all that matters now.

“So you are acting as lord Hamlet’s conscience?” Laertes asks, a sour smile twisting his mouth. He looks so much like his sister, Horatio realises; something he never knew until now.

I am doing this for no one but her, Horatio thinks, but does not say it. Instead, he shrugs and scrapes up a semi-real smile and says: “It would seem so.”

Laertes embraces him briefly, hands clenching too hard on Horatio’s arms, and then starts making his way to Ophelia’s rooms. Horatio smirks ruefully; he is glad that Laertes is being a dutiful and loving brother, but he wishes that he did not have to tell him to be one.

.

As it turns out, Hamlet has not died, but he has managed to kill his childhood friends.

Horatio wishes he could say that he is surprised, but he is not.

His feelings are an awkward mixture when he receives Hamlet’s letter, and supposes that he should hasten to his friend’s side. Hamlet needs someone just as much as Ophelia does; Hamlet who is mad in a way that does not involve songs and flowers, but that does not make it any less genuine. Everyone in Denmark is falling to pieces, and Horatio reflects that if they had just gone back to Wittenburg then none of this would have happened.

Horatio resolves to go down to the docks and find Hamlet later. He knows Laertes has left his sister and gone to speak with the king again, and thinks he should go and see that Ophelia is all right. Today has been too long and his head is pounding, muggy with grief and guilt and futile anger.

Ophelia’s room is empty, and her maids do not know where she is.

Panic rushes through Horatio, clearing his exhaustion and making his veins fizz and spark. He leaves the castle, unsure where he’s going, though he finds a set of footprints in the ground leading towards the forest. Small, bare prints, all five toes marked in mud. Horatio follows the footprints, running as fast as he can, mangling the trail as his boots crush the marks.

He comes to the top of a hill, and can see Ophelia beneath a willow tree growing by the river’s edge. He calls her name, but she does not hear. She is holding flowers, he can see, and is trying to hang them from the willow branches, leaning perilously over the river. Horatio’s heart is pounding and he feels physically sick, frozen for one horrible moment. Ophelia leans too far, and falls into the water. The world starts again, too bright and loud and Horatio starts running, skidding and sliding and nearly falling as he runs down the hill towards the river. He can hear Ophelia singing, snatches of songs that no longer make sense, vague lamentations to the air, and she is not moving, not moving. Not trying to escape the water’s embrace at all and Horatio is shouting, shouting her name, calling at her to move, swearing like a sailor, begging her.

As the land evens out he loses sight of her for a few breathless seconds, but a moment later he’s beside the river bank just in time to see Ophelia dragged beneath the water. Horatio does not stop to think as he plunges in, following the current until he can catch Ophelia and pull her torso above the water. The river around them is full of flowers, flowing away from them, and Ophelia’s white dress is full of water, drifting around and tangling around Horatio’s legs as he attempts to pull her towards the bank. Ophelia’s eyes are still open, but they are glassy, and she is not breathing, her face turning blue. Her abundant mass of crimson hair floats around her like some sort of underwater plant intent on snaring her, and Horatio can still hear ragged pleas escaping from his mouth.

It is with great difficulty that he manages to get Ophelia out of the river, pulling himself up after her. He tries to revive her, pressing on her chest until dirty water spurts from her mouth, but she is not breathing and her heart is not beating and Horatio realises with a sensation not unlike drowning itself that she has died. Ophelia has died, and this time he could not save her.

Gently, hand shaking, Horatio closes her eyelids.

She is lying on the grass, wet and still, and Horatio heaves her up and cradles her in his arms. Her long hair tangles around her, sticking to Horatio’s arms, knotting around his fingers, and he’s shivering because he too is soaked to the skin. He presses his cheek against her hair, rocking her heavy, limp body, bitter sobs wrenching their way out of his chest. If he had been but a few minutes faster… but Horatio knows, just as he always knew, that this was inevitable. Ophelia was lost the minute Hamlet plunged a dagger into her father’s heart, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

After a while, Horatio manages to regain control of himself. He blinks until his eyes clear, and he cannot stay here. Ophelia must be brought back to the castle, she must be buried. People must know. Carefully, Horatio presses a kiss to her cold temple, and stands up, bending to gather Ophelia into his arms. She is heavy, the dress that dragged her to the riverbed making him stagger, but after a moment he has her steady, head lolling lifelessly against his shoulder, one arm hanging limp. As he takes his first steps, Horatio is suddenly, horribly, reminded of carrying Ophelia’s murdered father and has to bite his tongue against another wave of grief.

On the seemingly interminable walk back to Elsinore, Horatio tries not to think of anything at all. Tries not to think of Ophelia embracing him, or wandering her chambers, or singing lost little songs, or weeping against him. The wilting daisy she gave him is crushed and wet in Horatio’s pocket, and she was just a frightened little girl who wanted to be loved and who was destroyed instead.

Horatio tips his head back and stares at the sky, dark gold with sunset, and for a moment honestly believes that he will kill Hamlet himself for this.

.

Laertes and Hamlet make a scene over Ophelia’s grave, ugly words and bared fists. Perhaps Horatio should have told his lord that it was Ophelia who had died and who was to be buried today, but while he loves Hamlet and will follow him anywhere and do anything for him, he could not speak of Ophelia to him. He will not ever be able to speak of Ophelia to Hamlet, not now.

Hamlet loved Ophelia as a lover – at least, he did once – and Laertes loved her as a brother, and they fight over who was the more worthy with barely-concealed hatred. Horatio sighs and stands back and reflects that he did not love Ophelia as a sibling or as a potential husband, but he did love her far more than either of the men in front of him, though he will never be able to mention it and it will be disregarded if he ever does. No one will ever know how he cared for Ophelia.

She deserved better than this; her funeral deserved more than empty words and suspicion of suicide and Hamlet turning up to turn it all into a farce, but it is very nearly fitting. His smile is rueful, and whenever he closes his eyes Horatio can feel her, soaked and heavy, in his arms. There is no one to speak of this to so he will never speak of it, but the memory will never fade.

The king sends Horatio after Hamlet before the funeral is even over, and Horatio contemplates not going, but what good would that do; in spite of everything, Horatio still loves him and will still remain loyal to him. Besides, he has seen how the madness has risen in Hamlet, crawled up behind his eyes and got itself comfortable with its determined claws and sharp inadvisable decisions. Hamlet does not have long left either.

He looks over his shoulder as he trails after his lord; at the black-dressed people feigning grief and guilt for propriety or to cover up their own sins, and wishes that he could be there to throw a handful of dirt into Ophelia’s grave, just so she will know that she is not entirely alone. That he has not abandoned her to her fate. Sighing, Horatio turns away, and keeps his eyes on Hamlet’s back, on his hunched shoulders. Things have unravelled, leaving them here, and decisions are a thing of the past. This cannot end well, and yet Horatio will stand back and let it happen because there is nothing else for him to do.

Silently, Horatio sends up a heartfelt prayer for Ophelia’s immortal soul; for all their immortal souls.

"Bring Your Own Sun", Desperate Romantics, Lizzie-centric

2009-08-20T08:59:00Z

Title: Bring Your Own Sun
Fandom: Desperate Romantics
Characters: Lizzie; everyone [Gabriel/Lizzie]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4310
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Welcome To England by Tori Amos.
Summary: “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”
Author’s Notes: Set between episodes six and seven. I don’t expect anyone to read this, I wrote it for me in about three hours on squared paper. But I’m very, very pleased with this anyway. And although it’s not overtly there, I found a Johnny/Lizzie undertone developing that I enjoyed a lot. Hmmm. I did so enjoy writing crazed, drugged, unhappy Lizzie.

{“do a dance for me”}

The flowers are starting to wilt in Lizzie’s hair, but she pins her smile in place as best she can. She has forgotten how to be natural.

“Do you remember when I nearly drowned you?” Johnny Millais asks; a little drunk, and now Lizzie can see why Gabriel hates him and pretends that he does not: it’s there, a quiet, glittering smugness, an arrogance.

“I wish you’d done a better job,” she mutters.

Gabriel is laughing, eyes too bright; he does not look like a man on his wedding day, but Lizzie is glad he’s pretending to be happy. She flicks her gaze back to Johnny, who looks troubled. This is all your fault, she thinks uncharitably. But she would not wish this on him; no one should know what this feels like. No one.

“Still, you’re married now,” he says, forced joviality in his tone.

It’s sweet, the way he seems to think marriage solves all of life’s problems. Gabriel is smiling, his eyes faraway and haunted.

Lizzie tips her head back and stares at the ceiling. “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”

{baby, it is late, still you pour me a tall one}

Charlotte’s eyes dribble tears and no one looks happy as Lizzie trails after her new husband. She has won, but the victory tastes of ashes. Gabriel is alight with manic energy, and it is sweet the way he tries to hide the shake in his hands; a kindness she wasn’t sure she believed him capable of.

Lizzie gulps greedy, desperate swigs of laudanum when he isn’t looking; her eyes roll back into her head and this wasn’t how she pictured her wedding night when she was pricking her fingers raw in the hat shop. Gabriel smells like a brewery and she wishes she didn’t she didn’t love him because it would all be so much easier if her hatred could claim dominance.

After, her thighs wet, she watches the candle burn down and wonders who Gabriel is thinking of. She knows it is too much to ask, even on her wedding night, that he think of her. Those days are gone, after all.

{“go on, let the liquid take off what you’re on”}

There is stale wedding cake for breakfast; Lizzie licks sweetness off her fingers, slumped on the floor in the corner of the studio. Gabriel snores on, twitching occasionally, and when she blinks Lizzie’s eyes feel wet.

It takes three tries to get to her feet; she’s washing the cake down with forgotten gin and the daylight saws sharply across her vision. Lizzie stumbles across to the bed, where Gabriel sprawls naked and cruel.

“My sister said I should have married Hunt,” she mumbles. “He wouldn’t have had me, you know, but I should have, shouldn’t I? Because this is never going to work, is it?”

She’s crushing cake in her hand, crumbs escaping between her fingers and scattering across the sheets. Her breathing shivers.

“D’you say something, Lizzie?” Gabriel mutters, but he’s still asleep and she doesn’t want him awake. If Gabriel is awake then she will have to face up to the consequences of getting what she always wanted; something deliciously bitter, she is learning.

“No,” she mumbles, a tear catching on her upper lip. “No, go back to sleep.”

{“you’ve been down before” – boy, not like this}

Painting has been stolen from her; Lizzie cannot paint, cannot draw. She hears Gabriel asking her if she has any ideas, but she does not. Her mind is listless, empty, leaking love and rationality, drafts at the corners.

Ruskin’s hands linger too long at her shoulders, but Lizzie knows that he doesn’t know what it is that he wants, and she pities him for she can empathise. God, can she empathise. He worries about her, and she recalls Effie’s dire warnings; but Effie was not ill and Lizzie is. Lizzie is falling apart at the seams and she thinks Gabriel might be glad. Or relieved, in any case.

Lizzie cuts red watercolour across a piece of paper, an imagined splash of blood.

“You have stolen my soul,” she mutters to the air.

{i’m in quicksand, i am sinking fast}

An old tin bath, a dirty dress, and candle flames dancing on the ceilings. And the cold; oh, the cold. Lizzie was Ophelia and it nearly killed her. She thinks Gabriel might be the perfect Hamlet: casting her aside on a forgotten pretext that mattered once. She will not drown herself to spite him, but inch by inch Lizzie crawls into the laudanum bottle, where all is warm and glitters.

“I made you,” she tells Johnny. Afternoon tea, an invitation. She thinks Effie was here once, though now she has vanished. An errand, a pretext; too much of Lizzie’s life is fluid these days. “I made you, Johnny, and all the while you sit there and watch me fall apart.”

She has artlessly struck him dumb; once, Lizzie had pretty words and a sort of sparkling wit that may not have been perfect but which was easy enough to feign. Now, she can barely patch sentences together, stitches between the words failing.

“Lizzie-” Johnny’s voice is soft, tinged with pain.

“All I wanted was to be fucking happy,” she breathes, and she cries too much these days; her eyes feel bruised. “You’re happy, you’re successful; and what do I get? A fucking painting and Gabriel.”

In a moment, Johnny is knelt at her feet, taking her hands in his. He looks scared, wretched; the gloss of smugness has faded, and he is still so young. They are all still so young.

“Tell me what I can do,” he says earnestly. His hands are warm against her cold fingers. “Tell me how I can help you. I’ll do anything, Lizzie, let me help you.”

“No one can help me now,” she sighs. And then she’s sobbing. Johnny gathers her into his arms, and he isn’t enough but she appreciates the effort anyway.

“I suppose you always saw I had a face for tragedy,” she murmurs at last.

Johnny says nothing; just breathes “oh, Ophelia” against her hair.

{“perfect,” he laughed, “‘cause your other half has got himself a devil’s access”}

Laudanum curls thin skeins of warmth through her when she returns home, playing the blushing fresh bride more from memories of her childhood fantasies than reality. Lizzie is laughing too hard, shimmering too bright; she can see tears building in Charlotte’s eyes. This marriage has too many tears in it as it is, and she’s just so tired. Her parents nod and smile; Lizzie reflects that they have washed their hands of her, realising that they can’t save their little girl from this tangle of her own making.

“I’m so happy,” she promises with all her teeth; her mother looks like she needs to believe it. Her father looks more satisfied, but there’s so much he doesn’t see that Lizzie would laugh if she was still capable of being amused by things. Things being what they are, she sips too-hot tea and scatters pretty lies for them to leap upon, crumbs of hope because at least then someone might get out of this without dying inside.

{“welcome to england,” he said, “welcome to my world”}

Fred would probably have blanched when he saw her, except that he’s pale as death already.

“Marriage is eating my beauty,” Lizzie explains over a walk in the park. Her arm looped through Fred’s, her feet tipping over themselves, the path wavering in her vision. “I no longer need it, you see.”

“You’re still beautiful, Lizzie,” he says, not looking at her. His voice quivers, and Fred really is too sweet. Though there’s bile and bitterness and anger within him, linger beneath the surface; it’s become increasingly obvious. He’s drowning as fast as she is, and Lizzie reflects that he was happy once; there’s a dead space behind his eyes that never used to be there.

“You wouldn’t care about me if I hadn’t been beautiful,” Lizzie remarks. He tries to protest this, but she shakes her head and he falls silent. “It’s difficult, being beautiful. It’s not designed to last, but we still take it so personally when it all decays.”

Fred is gazing out over the lake, and furtively swipes at his eyes with his cuff. Lizzie wants to tell him not to be so silly – what right has he to be sad? He’s not married to Gabriel – but lets the moment pass, too tired to see it through.

{“you better bring your own sun, sweet girl”}

“You’ve never been a gentleman,” Lizzie mutters, “Why start now?”

Gabriel looks resentful – he’s covering worse and worse nowadays, but then he’s sober less and less often so Lizzie can’t exactly blame him – and sighs.

“I love you,” he says. He makes an effort to sound sincere, and Lizzie finds herself grateful for this.

“I think you did, once,” she murmurs. “Of course, your problem is that you love everyone.”

Gabriel slams to his feet, anger dancing across his features and rendering them ugly.

“Oh, if we’re going to talk about problems,” he spits, “Do you know what your problem is?”

Lizzie does not flinch. “Yes,” she replies. “You.”

Gabriel laughs, mocking and bitter. “Oh, right, blame it all on me.”

“I’ve done nothing,” Lizzie protests. “None of this is my fault.”

Gabriel sneers; a perfect sneer, one she wants to capture with a pencil because the line his mouth makes is abstractly beautiful. “Ruskin,” he spits.

“I’d rather be Ruskin’s whore than yours,” Lizzie hisses, “At least it pays better!”

Her husband looks as though he’s been slapped; white-faced, he leaves, slamming the door so hard the windows shake.

Lizzie has to count to ten before she actually cares.

{who can stay strong when they only have lies to lean on?}

“We fell in love in the wrong places, Maniac,” Lizzie tells Hunt.

He keeps glancing at the door, as though expecting someone to burst in and put a stop to this. Or perhaps he’s hoping someone will; his mind is broken now. Lizzie thinks she would like to break someone as thoroughly as Annie broke Hunt; at least then she’d know someone cared about her.

“I was naïve,” Lizzie adds, when he seems to be incapable of speech. “You could have touched me and I’d have loved you because I knew no better and we’d have been happy.”

Hunt swallows visibly. “Would we?”

Lizzie shrugs. “Happier than we are now.” She grimaces. “We wouldn’t have fallen for bright flames and got ourselves burned, anyhow.”

“Maybe,” Hunt concedes. He looks awkward, but they both know Lizzie is beyond the help of a card directing her to Dickens’ house for fallen women, and Hunt no longer knows how to communicate with women if he’s not propositioning them with salvation. Celibacy doesn’t suit him; his knuckles are far too crimson.

“You shattered me when you brought Annie here,” Lizzie tells him. “I could blame you for all of this, if I wanted to.”

Hunt looks saddened; Lizzie thinks she may have been too cruel but her feelings are so deadened she can no longer communicate. And anyway, Hunt does so love self-flagellation.

{when your heart explodes is it deathly cold?}

Lizzie paints nothing but coloured streaks for far too long. Ideas are slipping from her; she has forgotten how to like things, how to want things. She has forgotten how to see anything appealing in the world around her. Gabriel has taken the sunshine, and it would all be so much easier if she didn’t love him. She thinks she could enjoy despising him, given the opportunity.

She suspects Ruskin will give up on her eventually; there’s no point in having a protégé who is too drugged and too unhappy and too mad to ever produce any work. And it doesn’t matter if he tries to steady her nerves or not; Lizzie’s nerves are not the problem.

Lizzie suspects he would not have encouraged her to get married as vehemently as he did if he’d known this was going to happen.

{you must let the colours violate the blackness}

It’s not that Lizzie wants to die, because she doesn’t; it’s just that life has not been what it promised to be and so she fills herself with substances that make that crushing betrayal easier to bear. Lizzie thinks of herself trapped in a river, flowers pulled from her slack hands, eyes gazing up at a callous sky that never tried to help. Millais was more prophetic than he knew and Lizzie could happily hate him forever for that; for painting an allegory of her life so perfectly and not even knowing it, keeping it so secret that nobody realised until it was too late. She should have drowned in that tub, should have succumbed; it would have saved her from this, from the future that was not all it said it would be.

Now she’s revered on canvas and sneered at in public; with her expensive dresses and whore’s laughter. Fred fills the papers with the dirty truths and even he looks bored with it all now; Lizzie suspects her mother weeps secretly, her sometime dreams for her daughter dragged through the mud, sodden from the river water.

If only she’d charmed Johnny while she was dying for him. Maybe then she’d have gained stability.

{there is a magic world parallel}

Lizzie waits, impatient, for Gabriel to breathe a name that isn’t hers; she feels like a ghost in this bed, a substitute for a score of other lovers; some Gabriel hasn’t even met yet. He wanted no one but her once; but that was once, and the paint dried, and his passion cooled. Gabriel’s spirit will not and cannot be tied down to anything; Lizzie can barely believe that they’re married now. She supposes it was a stupid whim of Gabriel’s, an idea that he must surely regret now.

She loves him so much, too much; loves him to the extent that she hates him with a passion as bright as her affection ever was. Lizzie shuts her eyes; her body feels heavy and unreal. Lizzie looks up at Gabriel, sweating over her, feeling hopelessly detached, barely acknowledging him working inside her. His eyes are closed, and she wonders if he is trying not to gasp Annie or Jane or Fanny, or some combination of the three.

Still, in spite of all this Lizzie is an artist. And artists take things that are natural and normal, add colour and shine and depth to them, and feed them back better and brighter and more real than they ever were in the first place. So she tips her head back and tilts her hips and wails as hard as she ever did when her body was lined with fire, nails in Gabriel’s back.

And he doesn’t realise, doesn’t know. Gabriel laughs down at her afterwards, looking happier than he has done since they married; he does not realise her deception and for a few delicious seconds Lizzie feels a rush of power that she has not felt in the longest time.

{so leave your daily hell}

Things must be getting bad, Lizzie supposes, for Annie and Effie to be sitting at the table looking earnest. Annie has a basic veneer of manners and posture to try and conceal her less than pretty roots, while Effie is still a lady for all the scandal that has danced around her name; they’re dressed beautifully, elegantly, with the placid façade of happiness or at the very least easily-concealed misery. But Lizzie’s true love has shattered, unlike Effie’s, and she did not learn when to cut her losses and escape, like Annie. Now the two of them are here to shower her with pity and Lizzie can’t work out whether to love or hate them for it; she knows she must be sick for them to deign to talk to each other and to come together to help her.

“Let us take you away,” Effie breathes. “I can bring you to stay with friends of mine. Some fresh air, a change of scenery. Johnny would escort us.”

The idea is almost appealing. “The Ruskins-” Lizzie begins.

“Fuck the Ruskins,” Annie cuts in.

“Gabriel-”

“Fuck Gabriel,” Effie interrupts.

It is easy for them to say; much too easy. Lizzie stays silent, and watches Annie pick through the painting paraphernalia scattered about; there are bottles of laudanum mixed among it all, empty and full, a few too many.

“You need to get off this,” Annie snaps, voice sharp and scared. “Lizzie, it’ll kill you faster than anything.”

Lizzie and Annie have never really liked each other and lord knows where Effie fits into all this. Still, Lizzie is touched by their attempt, touched that they think her worth this.

“We can leave next week,” Effie promises.

“I’m sorry.” Lizzie feels breathless. “I’m sorry, I just – I just can’t.”

She doesn’t know if she’s choosing the laudanum or Gabriel; she supposes they amount to one and the same these days.

{it’s not a question}

Hunt’s studio is warm and quiet and it seems so long ago, kneeling on the floor here, feeling self-conscious and uncertain. Lizzie can’t remember her own feelings without a certain amount of bemused disbelief; she can’t think of herself as ever being that naïve. But she was; she sewed hats and dreamed at night while her father boasted of rightful glory they never really deserved. And then she knelt on the dusty floor of Hunt’s studio and everything changed. There is no evidence of this change; her face is concealed beneath new layers of oil, but she was here once. It was here, in this room, that the old Lizzie Siddal died.

“You’re not yourself,” Hunt half-gasps; he looks aghast.

“No,” Lizzie corrects him, “This is myself now.” Her voice does not sound like her own.

“You’re drunk,” Hunt says, taking a step towards her and then hesitating. Lizzie is; and the last dregs of her laudanum bottle are oozing onto the floorboards at home. Lord knows where her husband is.

“You wanted me once,” she says. “When I was a girl here, knelt for you.” She’s weeping, though she wishes that she was not. “Why wouldn’t you have just taken me then, saved me then?”

Hunt looks wretched; his mouth moves wordlessly. He is not angry, which is nearly a surprise; Lizzie supposes he cannot only be made of dull fury.

She’s plucking at the strings and buttons of her bodice, her own tears dripping onto her bared breasts.

“Want me,” she breathes, falling apart for him, “Want me and maybe it will not be too late.”

Hunt crosses to her, pulling her hands away from her clothes. With tender hands, he closes her torn-open dress; he’s looking at her entirely without lust, pity sparking in his gaze, and Lizzie supposes that she must really have broken. Hunt kisses her forehead.

“I’ll take you home,” he says, more gentle than she would ever have believed he could be.

{if i can fight by your side and withstand anything}

“You dragged your mother into the most godawful lies,” Lizzie remarks to Fred. A sunny day, she thinks Gabriel is with William and Ned, feigning friendship so he can steal Jane. Perhaps tonight, if he comes home, she will ask him how it is going. “All those promises of propriety that you all pissed on.”

Fred flinches; he looks sicker than ever. Lizzie reaches out to him, and a moment later manages to catch his hand. It’s shaking.

“I didn’t know they were lies,” he mumbles.

“Yes, you did,” Lizzie tells him simply. “You just didn’t care. It’s all right. I forgive you.”

She’s gaining clarity, the further she sinks. It’s almost worth it, though Fred looks as though he is being torn apart inside. His love is too selfless, it unsettles her.

“I’m so sorry,” he stumbles.

Lizzie smiles; Ophelia’s tired martyred smile. “I’m sorry too.” Fred frowns quizzically. “Well, it was never going to be you.”

She thinks she sees tears in his eyes as he turns away, but her own vision is clear. There has been too much crying in this marriage already.

{but i forgot you said “girl, if you come…”}

Effie is too understanding, slips too often from the room to leave Johnny and Lizzie alone. Not that there’s anything new to say. Lizzie sips at the tea she’s been given and she’s been shaking for hours. She’s been pale for weeks; it’s astonishing that she has any spirit left at all.

“You’re selfish, Johnny,” she tells him. “Do you know that? I nearly died and all you cared about was your painting.”

Johnny looks at her thoughtfully; there’s misery in his gaze. “I sat up all night because I thought I’d killed you,” he says quietly.

It’s something; and Lizzie finds herself surprised. “You’d have finished it anyway,” she tells him. “The painting was what mattered.”

“Yes,” Johnny agrees. “I would have. But that makes me no different from Gabriel, or from Maniac.”

Lizzie concedes that. “You rip people’s lives apart and stroll on to collect the money,” she sighs without bitterness. She flickers her gaze back to Johnny, whose face is twisted. “Ruskin thinks you have lost your genius,” she says. “But I suppose you have happiness, you no longer need talent.”

Johnny grimaces; she can see where she’s stung him. But he does not argue back.

“Tell me if I can help you, Lizzie,” he says steadily.

“You can’t make him love me,” she sighs. “Not even you, golden boy, can do that.” She sighs again; hurting has lost its appeal. “I liked Bubbles,” she adds. “It wasn’t beautiful, but it reminded me that I once felt like that.”

Johnny pours them both so more tea, sadness flicking at his mouth.

{“…you’d better bring your own sun”}

She finds them in their favourite haunt, drinking and laughing. Gabriel is absent, as usual; Lizzie doesn’t want to know where he is. She doesn’t ask, not anymore. But she slips into his usual seat, and looks at his friends. The Brotherhood have cracked and faded from the over-excited boys she once knew and loved. Lizzie is not the only one unrecognisable now; she doesn’t know whether to be reassured.

“You shouldn’t be here, Lizzie,” Hunt says, looking anxiously about.

“I’m a married woman, I’ll come where I like,” she replies; a feeble excuse.

“We should get you home,” Fred asserts. “Gabriel will worry.”

“He will not,” Lizzie sighs. “Tell me, do you know whose bed he’s in right now?” The men avoid her gaze, and each other’s. “No,” Lizzie murmurs, half to herself. “I suppose there is rather a long list of options.”

Johnny – sweet, selfish Johnny – reaches for her hand. “Lizzie,” he whispers.

She looks at him – John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Fred Walters; such names known by the public but no one knows what corrupted, lost bastards they truly are – and fumbles up a helpless smile.

“He’s just waiting for me to die, isn’t he?”

No one says anything for a long, quiet moment. Finally, Johnny stammers: “I wouldn’t use those exact words.”

“What words would you use, Johnny?” Hunt snaps.

Lizzie curls her fingers, tight, in her skirt. “I want to tell you, every one of you, that you have let me down. And I want you to remember that.”

She gets to the door before they run after her and escort her home, all together. Too little, too late, but oh, her boys are still sweet in their way.

{“sweet girl, you’ve got to bring your own sun”}

Gabriel frowns over drawings, candlelight glinting form his scowl. Lizzie sketches him as he works, pencil shaking in her weak hand. It’s too quiet, and there’s nothing in this room that really matters any more.

“The liquor has run out,” she sighs, “The fireworks have burnt, and this is what we are left with.”

Her husband’s eyes show resentment, and for the first time Lizzie pities him too, not just herself.

“I was dying with or without you,” she mumbles.

“So are you saying I shouldn’t have married you?” Gabriel demands. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“What I wanted?” Lizzie echoes. She’s drugged, her body numb, and she does not know how much longer she will last. “I want – I wish…” She sets down her pencil. “I do not wish I had not met you, but I do wish I had not loved you.”

Anger sparks in Gabriel’s eyes.

“So I have married you for nothing?”

Lizzie exhales, and feels a cruel smile curl her lips; crueller than she knew she could be.

“Well, still, I have you now.”

Her husband is on his feet, storming over to drag her to her feet, his hands too tight at her wrists. Lizzie’s legs cannot hold her and she falls; Gabriel half pulls her, and she hits her head against the table.

“Kill me then!” she screams. “Fucking kill me, because it cannot get worse! Nothing can ever be worth than this, nothing!”

Gabriel drops her arms, horror spreading across his beautiful face. And it is so like Gabriel not to notice things until it is too late.

“What have I done to you, Lizzie?” he asks, tone hushed with shock.

Lizzie stays crumpled on the floor, glaring balefully up at him through her hair. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she snarls.

Tomorrow, Gabriel will forget to care; but still, right now, she can see the full beauty of his remorse. It’s almost enough, as he stares down at her. Lizzie bares her teeth, and he turns away, slamming yet another door behind him.

{just enough for everyone}

Link to drabbles

2009-08-19T12:37:04Z

I got bored and cleaned out my USB drive and so here are 14 drabbles, if anyone is interested.

Ashes To Ashes, Batman, Demons, Doctor Who, Don Giovanni, Gossip Girl, Heroes, Law & Order: UK, Neverwhere, Primeval, Torchwood.

"Like There’s A Part Of Me That I Want To Get Back Again", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

2009-08-10T10:19:18Z

Title: Like There’s A Part Of Me That I Want To Get Back Again
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Owen/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7385
Genre: Slash
Copyright: Deep by Nine Inch Nails (yesyes I know, shush)
Summary: Gleefully AU. “Ianto still believes he’s been in a coma the last couple of years and has been re-recruited to Torchwood One following his awakening.”
Author’s Notes: As with most things O/I that I write, this is sort of fluffy in a brutal way. Well, fluffy by my standards anyway. I came up with the plotbunny in Berlin, but then I watched Torchwood on my ipod on the train to Munich, and got all upset and angry, so I thought I would wait until I got home to actually write it. The plotline is basically personal crack and is therefore kind of silly, but I quite like it anyway.

I have not yet watched CoE as I don’t feel emotionally ready yet. I don’t think it’ll come up, but please bear this in mind in any comments you may choose to leave!

‘Someday’ fades away
Like a memory
Or a place that you’d rather be.
-Nine Inch Nails

It starts – again – as all good things do; with a barefaced lie.

Ianto Jones, in his crisp pinstripe suit, the remains of a black eye still mildew-green on his face, frowns a little at Owen Harper and says: “Have we met before?”

Owen’s a cunt and way out of his depth, and in any case isn’t about to say well, actually, I gave you that black eye the last time I let you come inside me. Instead, he meets Ianto’s gaze square-on, and says: “No”.

-

On returning to the Hub, Owen goes straight to the autopsy room and stays very quiet for far too long, while Gwen and Tosh exchange nervous looks and don’t go to check on him. Eventually, Owen emerges and makes for the coffee machine, filling the Hub with the screams of steam and the crunching of levers being manhandled in a way they’re entirely unused to.

(Yeah, well, Owen thinks savagely, your daddy’s fucked off, you’d better get used to it.)

“Are you going to talk about it?” Gwen asks, when he finally chucks himself into his workstation chair.

“Nothing to talk about,” Owen shrugs.

“Ianto-” Tosh begins.

“-is perfectly happy,” Owen interrupts. “Ianto still believes he’s been in a coma the last couple of years and has been re-recruited to Torchwood One following his awakening. He’s a dedicated worker and perfectly contented as a receptionist, and his superiors have no reason to believe the retcon stamp is going to wear off. Ianto is fucking fine.” He spits every single word, hurt and anger mangling them, while Tosh looks miserable and Gwen looks impassive.

“Well, that’s good then,” she says, in her far too calm Temporary Leader voice.

“Good for who?” Owen demands. “Good for us? With Jack gone and even the teaboy abandoning ship-” (“Owen!” Tosh says sharply, but there’s no one to take offence any more; and besides, Ianto seemed to take great delight in having Owen facedown against the sheets, growling “call me that again” with a threat and promise in his tone) “-or good for Ianto, pottering about contentedly brain-damaged?”

“Ianto made the choice,” Gwen responds, still determinedly calm, “And we will bloody well support him.”

“Fuck that,” Owen mutters. “Or shall we all edit our memories and wander back to our old lives, and let Cardiff choke on the scum of the universe?”

“Shut up, Owen,” Gwen says, and she doesn’t understand at all. Owen isn’t even sure that he understands, and he’s tangled up somewhere in the middle of the whole thing. He picks up his coffee mug, taking a mouthful, and it’s crap of course, because Ianto was the only one who could make the machine dance to his tune. He considers chucking the cup at the wall, but doesn’t. He knows it won’t make him feel any better.

-

Jack vanished without trace six months ago; they all dealt with it badly, viciously. People have died who shouldn’t have died and Owen and Ianto started shagging out of a sort of desperately miserable inevitability. They weren’t surprised; Owen was slightly embarrassed and he suspects Ianto was a little disappointed in himself, but, for all that, there was nothing shocking.

The unusual part, the part that Owen didn’t see coming (because who could?) was the part where Torchwood One picked itself up, dusted itself off, and found a new shiny London office block with too much glass to rehouse itself in. It wouldn’t have happened if Jack were still around, Owen is sure of it; but Jack wasn’t around to stop it and Gwen’s protests were entirely ignored. Prophecies of doom and logical advice and pleading with the Prime Minister did nothing at all; Torchwood One settled itself back in and within weeks it was like it had never been gone.

And then, two weeks ago, Ianto walked into their shiny new briefing room, handed out everyone’s coffee, and then instead of sitting down, stood before them all, hands folded neatly behind his back.

“I want to leave,” he said calmly.

Tosh and Gwen both started speaking, words spilling out of their mouths, desperately insistent. Owen just sat silently, glaring at Ianto, angry with himself because of course he had no fucking right at all to feel betrayed.

-

It’s become Owen’s job to drive up to London whenever Torchwood One clicks its fingers; Gwen says it’s because Jack named him second-in-command and therefore he’s the leader, but Owen knows it’s actually because Gwen is quickly learning all about delegation.

He hates her a lot of the time these days, but he knows that it’s just because he’s got far too much anger building up inside him and it’s got to be released somewhere; he’d hate Tosh too, if he could. But he can’t, so he just snaps at Gwen and ignores most of her orders and gleefully reminds her that they fucked for months every time she tries to bring up her domestic bliss with Rhys.

It’s pissing down with rain and by the time he makes it into Torchwood One’s reception, Owen is soaked to the skin and freezing cold to go with it. Ianto is behind the desk, expression carefully neutral. There’s another receptionist beside him; a woman with a little too much lipstick and her hair scraped back too hard. Ianto takes one look at Owen before abruptly turning and disappearing through a door behind him; Owen’s stomach clenches hard (does Ianto remember?) and he barely registers giving Receptionist Woman his name and appointment time.

“Take a seat,” she says, indicating the immaculate white sofa against the wall. It looks like it should be comfortable, but there’s no give in the cushions at all. Owen’s trainers have left wet marks on the floor and he can feel disapproval radiating off Receptionist Woman.

Ianto reappears; he’s holding a steaming mug in one hand and a towel in the other.

“Here,” he says, holding them both out with something that’s nearly a friendly smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t know how you take your coffee, so I just went with my gut instinct.”

If Ianto had done this for him in the Hub, Owen would have thrown it back in his face with a nasty comment or two, but they’re not in the Hub now and besides, Owen’s already had one acquaintance with Ianto where the other man thought he was a psychopath.

“Thanks, Ianto,” he says, and manages a real smile.

Ianto returns to the desk; Owen dries his face and rubs at his hair until it stops dripping down the back of his neck, before taking a sip of his coffee. Ianto’s got it exactly right, of course.

-

Tosh and Gwen are waiting to grill him the minute he walks back into the Hub.

“It’s three in the morning,” he points out.

“It is,” Gwen agrees. “Does Ianto remember anything?”

“No,” Owen says, tasting the words slipping between his gritted teeth. “Well, he made me a coffee and got it spot on, but then Ianto can do that with people he’s actually never met before, so I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

“Why did he make you a coffee?” Gwen demands, as though she thinks Owen walked into Torchwood One and started immediately trying to take advantage of their secretary. As if Torchwood One would let him take advantage of anything.

“Because it’s his fucking job, Gwen,” Owen snaps back.

Gwen’s face gets cold and hard and it was never like this with Jack; even when it stretched to the point where it all pinged back and Owen was fired, it never got this bad.

“I’m going home,” he announces; Gwen looks like she’s tempted to pistol-whip him with that gun strapped to her jeans, and if she does that Owen really will hit back, and Tosh will not be enough to stop either of them.

Gwen says nothing; spins on her heel and disappears into Jack’s office. Tosh offers Owen a small smile that says too many things and understands more than he really wants her to have picked up on, and says:

“Goodnight, Owen.”

“Goodnight,” he responds, and doesn’t stay and talk to her because he has no idea what he wants to say.

-

“You look less like a drowned rat today, Dr Harper,” Ianto observes a fortnight later, eyes on his computer screen. He looks like a robot, as per usual – like a moving waxwork Torchwood has commissioned to greet people – but Owen can tell that, underneath the tidy Windsor knot, starched collar and carefully folded handkerchief in his breast pocket, Ianto is bored. It’s there, somehow, blindingly obvious because Owen apparently knows Ianto far better than he realised.

Owen shrugs, not wanting to get into a conversation about the weather. He doesn’t want to get into conversation with Ianto at all; he’s acutely aware that he could say the wrong thing and restore Ianto’s memories to their glorious, blood-filled technicolour. And Owen’s a self-confessed bastard, but he doesn’t want to do that. He’ll never be that cruel.

Ianto’s eyes flicker to Owen once or twice, as though trying to read his facial expressions – maybe wondering why he’s not getting a response – but he says nothing and Ianto’s being very subtle about the whole thing anyway.

“You can go through, Dr Harper,” he says at last, voice a study in frostiness.

(You wouldn’t like me if you knew me, Owen thinks, and then corrects that to: you didn’t like me when you knew me.)

-

There are six Weevils in the cells, Owen has six stitches in his left forearm – he had to talk a trembling Tosh through it, but she did a surprisingly neat job – and he hasn’t slept more than six hours in the last six days.

And the coffee machine is still fucking pining. Owen kicks it a couple of times, sending loose coffee beans and espresso cups to die horrible deaths on the floor, but it still refuses to give him anything liquid and caffeinated.

“Ianto fucked you over!” he shouts at the machine, shaking it until it makes desperate clunking noises. “Ianto left you! Fucking get over it!”

“Owen,” Gwen says sharply behind him. “Go home.”

“You don’t get to give me orders,” Owen snaps. “You don’t know what you’re doing any more than the rest of us do! You are not Jack, ok? You’re not Jack!”

Gwen goes very white, and Owen doesn’t know when she last slept either.

“You’re a liability, Owen,” she says at last, voice shaking just slightly. “Go and get some rest.”

And then she’s gone. Owen throws three mugs on the floor in quick succession – smash, smash, smash – breath shuddering in his chest, vision blurring. And when he next looks up, Tosh is watching him, tears in her eyes.

“Why can’t you just admit that you miss him?” she asks, sounding desperate.

“Because I don’t miss Jack,” Owen hisses, “I just miss the way the world was kind of normal when he was around.”

Tosh blinks, and one tear slips down her cheek. It rips something deep down in Owen’s chest – he’s managed to make Tosh cry – but he can’t make himself apologise.

“I’m not talking about Jack,” she whispers.

Owen’s stomach actually disappears, and the world is wavering at the edges from anger and painkillers and sleep deprivation.

“I like it this way,” he states, too loud, too stubborn. “I like that Ianto looks through me, that he has no idea what we’ve done or said to each other, I like that he makes me coffee and doesn’t hand it over with a holier-than-thou attitude. I fucking like it, Tosh!”

Another tear escapes down Tosh’s cheek. “I hate you sometimes, Owen,” she says, and then she walks away too.

-

Torchwood One are all about the power games, so Owen is left sitting in the reception area for over an hour. Ianto is brightly polite to everyone that comes in – the people that have meetings, the conspiracy-seekers who’ve managed to get this far, the lost tourists – and Owen wonders when he learned enough about Ianto to be able to see that Ianto is doing it all on autopilot.

When the woman with the pitiable taste in lipstick comes to take over, Ianto disappears for a while and comes back with a coffee for Owen.

“You look like you need it,” he says, offering a smile, and Owen can’t help but return it.

“Thank you,” he replies, and takes a sip. Ianto has put alcohol in his drink; he looks up in surprise, and Ianto winks at him.

“You’re going to be kept waiting for another hour,” he warns. “Thought you might as well be entertained.”

Owen tries to smile again, but it crumples and fails in the middle and he can’t sustain it. Ianto frowns.

“Are you… all right, Dr Harper?”

Owen shrugs. “My life is in pieces,” he says, offhand. It’s too much and he wants to take it back, but it’s too late now.

“Your leader’s missing, isn’t he?” Ianto says slowly. “I imagine that’s… very hard.”

“It is hard,” Owen agrees, because it’s simplest. Really, hardly anything is about Jack any more, but he tries not to think about that. He sips at his spiked coffee and tries not to look Ianto in the eyes; blue eyes with nothing but concern in them, because they lost all their complicated subtext with three tiny soluble pills.

Owen never thought he’d miss the vicious, ugly complicated subtext, but compared to what he has now…

It’s a relief when Ianto returns to the reception desk.

-

After a particularly gruelling briefing with Torchwood One officials – three members of the public died, and they’re pretending that they’ve lost the alien tech that caused it so that it won’t be requisitioned and abused – Owen goes for a wander around the carpark before he drives back to Cardiff. He needs the air; his head is pounding.

Tucked against one concrete wall of the building, pressed against a fire escape, Owen spots Ianto, sucking intently on a cigarette. He’s startled for a moment, before he recalls that Ianto gave up smoking shortly after Lisa died; and of course, now, Ianto will no longer recall that he stopped. There’s so much stuff that Ianto doesn’t remember; Owen frowns, wondering how Ianto could ever have willingly taken that retcon.

Ianto spots him and smiles, blowing out a stream of grey smoke.

“Want one?” he offers. “You look like you need it.”

Owen gave up the week Katie first started complaining that her short-term memory was shot; but he’s sick of cold, hard eyes and the repetitive demand: well, why didn’t you take better care of the weapon, why didn’t you send it straight to us?

“Thanks,” he says, moving to stand beside Ianto.

“You need to squash up a bit,” Ianto tells him, pointing up at a black camera fixed to the wall. “We need to stay in the CCTV blind spot.”

Owen obediently shifts until their shoulders are touching, pressed together, and Ianto passes Owen a cigarette. He tucks it between his lips and is about to ask for a lighter when Ianto leans sideways and lights it for him, smile soft and understanding. Owen inhales, feeling Ianto warm by his side, and pretends for a moment that nothing at all has changed.

-

It goes on like this for about three months.

Owen puts up with it all – being patronised fortnightly by Torchwood One officials while he slumps in a chair and lies through his teeth as prettily as he can manage – mostly because he likes getting to see Ianto. It’s nice, being around a Ianto that isn’t hostile and bitter and pining over Jack; this Ianto still has his brittle sarcastic humour, his smiles, a light in his eyes that Owen doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

Sometimes, Ianto will slide a soft, cynical comment into his morning greeting, lips twisted, and Owen finds it hard to remember Ianto fucking him hard in Jack’s office chair, thin cold fingers raking through Owen’s hair. It seems like a different life, one that looks stable and full of things compared to the barren wasteland that is his existence now.

The constant fear that the wrong word will slot two years’ worth of horrible memories back into Ianto’s head starts to abate a little; it was really strong retcon, after all, and it would take a lot to break the stranglehold the drugs have over Ianto’s mind. Owen’s more pressing concern is that Ianto will somehow recall that Owen is a total cunt and he hates him; so he scrapes together all the charm he has left, and hopes for the best.

-

Owen is on his way from yet another dull meeting, desperate to get out of the building with its clinical corridors and robot-like staff. Up ahead of him, he spots Ianto hurrying purposefully towards one of the lifts, and then he spots a scientist carrying a huge pile of cardboard files. He opens his mouth to call a warning – the scientist is clearly not looking where he’s going – but it’s too late; there’s a collision, papers flying everywhere.

Ianto is on his knees in seconds, gathering together spilled files and reports. The scientist makes no move to help him, instead looking down at Ianto with a disdainful expression that Owen suspects he wore often enough in that dimly distant past when he and Ianto were something resembling mortal enemies.

“You stupid fucking idiot,” the guy is snarling at Ianto, “Do you know how long it’s going to take to get all this back in order?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ianto mutters; there’s a mutinous edge to his tone, but Owen thinks he’s the only one who catches it.

“‘Sorry’ isn’t really going to cut it, is it, you fucking cretin!” the guy continues, kicking at spilled papers and making the whole thing worse.

It’s like watching re-runs of the last two years, only Owen would probably have brought Jack up by now.

Ianto says nothing, carrying on piling up folders.

“I’ll have you fired for this, you useless piece of shit,” the scientist spits vindictively, and Owen knows all about the power trip being a Torchwood employee gives you, but he’s the only one with the right to talk to Ianto like that, and he can’t stop himself from tapping the man on the shoulder.

“Hey, mate?”

The man turns, and Owen punches him so hard in the face he hears something crack beneath his knuckles. His hand screams with pain, but the bastard is lying on the floor gasping and that’s the important bit.

Ianto watches, expression impassive, eyes wide.

Owen hears a passing woman murmur: “He’s from Torchwood Three. They’re all psychopaths”, like she actually knows anything about them at all.

“You broke my fucking nose,” the scientist burbles, blood sheeting down his face.

“Yep,” Owen agrees, offering Ianto a hand to his feet. Ianto takes it, looking faintly puzzled, but amusement is tugging the corners of his mouth.

“I get off at six,” he says quietly. “I’m buying you a drink.”

“Great,” Owen replies, “After the fallout, I think I’m going to need one.”

-

He gets shouted at, threatened with retcon and various shades of physical violence, and the words official disciplinary enquiry get tossed around a bit, but in the end they let Owen go without any sort of punishment.

Ianto buys him a pint in a pub just around the corner from Torchwood One’s shiny skyscraper, tugging his striped tie off with one hand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, when they’re sitting at a table.

It occurs to Owen that this is the first time he’s been properly alone with Ianto since that night in his flat.

(The night before Ianto was due to retcon the last two years out of his memory; after some embarrassingly violent sex Owen had punched Ianto in the face, and then rounded off the gloriously humiliating evening by shouting abuse at him until the invectives turned into crying, because he knew in seven hours’ time Ianto wouldn’t remember any of it anyway.)

“He was being a dick,” Owen protests.

“A lot of people at Torchwood One are dicks,” Ianto shrugs, but there’s a grin sliding across his mouth. “Are you going to break all their noses?”

Owen shrugs. “Maybe.”

They talk about Cardiff; Ianto tells him about growing up there, tells him things that Owen never knew about Ianto because they never ever really talked. He tells Ianto about growing up in London, leaving out all the messy bits. It’s a civilised conversation – it’s more than a civilised conversation – and Owen finds himself struggling to remember how they could ever have got themselves to the point where Ianto shot him in the shoulder.

“Is your life still in pieces?” Ianto asks, a few drinks later, as they stand beneath a lamppost waiting for taxis.

Owen thinks about this. “It’s better,” he replies at last. “Mostly, it’s just lonely.”

He regrets the words the moment he’s said them, and he’s so busy silently berating himself that he doesn’t even notice the way Ianto is looking at him until the other man leans in, catching Owen’s cheek with one hand, and kisses him.

Owen tries, he really does, but he’s not nearly a good enough person not to kiss back.

-

There’s an awkward moment when Ianto uncovers the bullet scar on Owen’s shoulder; it’s still a little shiny and pink, though at least it’s not as new-looking as it used to be. Owen fobs him off with a story about an alien, before pressing his mouth to Ianto’s neck and successfully distracting him.

In the morning, he stands in Ianto’s bathroom splashing water on his face and muttering: Owen Harper, you are a bad person. A bad, bad person.

It doesn’t matter that the sex was new and different; it wasn’t vicious, they weren’t trying to one-up each other or prove a point. It doesn’t matter that he feels calmer than he has in months. It doesn’t matter because this was meant to be Ianto’s new start in life and instead Owen is clawing greedy handfuls of it back.

When he emerges from the bathroom, he’s terrified that Ianto will be waiting for him with a gun, a why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? on his lips, but instead Ianto gives him a smile and a mug of coffee as he heads off to work. Owen sips the coffee and works out what he’s going to tell Gwen and Tosh when he gets back; obviously, the truth is not an option. He decides he’ll just tell them that he met a girl in a bar, the easy lie that covers a multitude of sins.

-

Owen has worked himself up into a state of tension that’s bordering on insanity by the time he’s next called up to Torchwood One; he knows he’s fucked up and he’s terrified that Ianto will have remembered something. He doesn’t want Ianto to have remembered because for the first time ever Ianto seems to like him and Owen is beginning to suspect that maybe he always…

Well, anyway.

Ianto glances up when Owen walks in and he thinks he sees something dart through Ianto’s eyes, but he can’t work out what it is because it’s gone in a second.

“Dr Harper,” he says, tone measured, giving nothing away.

“Ianto,” Owen replies, and it comes out a little bit more pleading than he’d like but he can’t do anything about that.

“They’re waiting for you upstairs,” Ianto continues neutrally, and buzzes Owen through without looking at him.

After his meeting, he goes back downstairs to find Ianto is not at the reception desk. Owen could leave now, he really could, but instead he wanders into the warren of corridors that all look exactly the same in search of him. It doesn’t take long to track Ianto down; he’s talking to an officious-looking woman who appears to be giving him a very long coffee order list.

“Sorry, I need to borrow Mr Jones for a minute,” Owen says brightly.

Ianto glares at him, and Owen ignores it. The woman opens her mouth to protest, but he adds: “I’m Owen Harper, by the way. My name might be familiar ‘cause I broke a man’s nose here a couple of weeks ago. Can I speak to Jones, please?”

She steps back, glowering at Owen, but there’s a trace of uncertainty there too, which is all he really wanted.

“Are you mentally ill?” Ianto enquires, but there’s amusement flickering around his mouth and it gives Owen a little hope.

“Do you still finish at six?” Owen asks.

Ianto frowns before he says: “Yes.”

“Good.” Owen smiles. “Can I buy you dinner?”

Ianto actually seems to be lost for words, but then he manages: “Um, yes. All right.”

Owen has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s in too deep now, and all he can really do is try to make sure that it doesn’t turn out like last time.

-

“I really thought I was the receptionist one-night-stand,” Ianto remarks, over fusilli and wine. “Which was, you know, fine, but then I thought you were going to turn your attention to Heidi or someone.”

Owen frowns. “Who’s Heidi?”

Ianto rolls his eyes. “The woman I work on reception with? She’s been here every time you’ve visited.”

“Oh.” Well, at least he can mentally call her something other than ‘Woman With No Fashion Sense At All’. “I’m dreadful with names.”

“You remembered mine.” Ianto’s tone is carefully neutral, his gaze on his food. Owen can’t work out what he’s really asking; this, at least, is familiar.

“Well, I’m a sucker for a pretty face,” Owen replies, pouring all the syrup he can onto the words.

Ianto arches an eyebrow, smirking. “Do you really think that’s going to work?”

“Worth a try,” Owen shrugs. “Is it working?”

Ianto considers this, sipping at his wine. “Buy me dessert and we’ll see.” When he raises his eyes to Owen’s, there’s a happy amusement in them that’s unfamiliar but a relief nonetheless.

“What, are you saying you’ll put out for tiramisu?”

“Depends on how good the tiramisu is.” Ianto’s eyebrows flex a challenge, and Owen wants to say come back home so bad that it hurts.

-

“You seem… happier,” Tosh says; it looks like she’s carefully picking her words. She’s not scared of him – God knows Owen’s only too aware that she’s not scared of him – but she doesn’t want to upset him and Owen could love Tosh for that; so few people actually care about him nowadays. “Less like you’re going to spend the day kicking people.”

“Well, I couldn’t be violent and angry forever,” Owen shrugs, avoiding her gaze. They have takeaway coffee – the machine still isn’t working, still won’t play ball for anyone but Ianto – and it’s late. Myfanwy is fluttering happily around in the ceiling, and Gwen has gone home for the night. Everything’s as quiet as it ever is.

“You seemed to be having a good go at it,” Tosh tells him, with a smile that takes the sting from the words.

“Well…” Owen sighs, not sure what to say. “Maybe I’m having a go at maturing.”

Tosh is a wonderful woman and Owen almost loves her for not looking incredulous.

“Things were bad, after Jack disappeared…” Tosh begins, after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “But… you got worse when Ianto left.”

“Tosh-”

“I think he broke your heart,” Tosh tells him. She can’t meet his gaze, but the words come out steadily enough.

“Don’t be stupid.” Owen hears the horror in his voice. He swallows, unable to look at Tosh.

“I think he did,” she persists, picking her empty paper cup from the table and walking over to the bin. “I’m sorry,” she tosses over her shoulder.

Owen can’t reply; doesn’t know how to reply.

-

They eat chips out of paper wandering along by the Southbank; lights shiver over the surface of the Thames, and Owen remembers walking down here with Katie years ago. It’s late, and God knows what he’s going to tell Gwen and Tosh, but right now he doesn’t really care.

“I used to come down here with my girlfriend,” Ianto remarks, eyes on the river. “Years ago.”

Owen doesn’t want to, but he asks what he suspects would be the logical question if he didn’t already know Ianto. “What happened to her?”

“She died,” Ianto responds blandly. I know. I killed her, Owen thinks, and then folds that thought up neatly and hides it at the back of his mind. “In the Canary Wharf battle. The one that put me into a coma.”

Ianto has told Owen bits and pieces about his ‘coma’; Owen has listened patiently, fascinated by the illusion Ianto’s damaged mind has constructed for him.

“What’s it like?” he asks. “Missing that much time?”

Ianto considers this, sucking salt off his fingers. Owen watches, thinking that maybe he should look away, but he doesn’t.

“Soothing,” Ianto says at last. “Sad, but… soothing.”

Owen would have thought that it would have driven the Ianto he knew mad, but then the Ianto he knew before was made up of all sorts of emotions that have since been wiped cleanly out of his mind.

“I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” he mumbles finally, not sure what else to say.

“My last memories of her are of screaming,” Ianto murmurs, eyes back on the river. “It was… well, I’m glad that she’s at peace now.”

Owen thinks about Katie, about how it would be not to recall her dead on the operating table with her brain corrupted. There’s something… something appealing about it. He pushes that thought away too, and for a moment wishes that he’d had his memory removed too, that this conversation was happening on an equal level.

He comes out of this bitter reverie to find Ianto is looking at him, eyelashes casting dark shadows down his cheeks. There’s pity and sadness there, and something Owen can’t read because it’s too dark.

“Come here,” Ianto murmurs, pulling Owen into a kiss that momentarily makes him forget all about just how horrible all this really is.

-

Owen lies to Gwen and Tosh, telling them he’s met a girl in London. It accounts for his late returns from meetings and makes them both smile at him in a way that’s halfway genuine. It sort of makes him feel like a shit, but he can hardly tell them that he’s doing his best to stop Ianto from moving forward with his life. He can see the look Tosh would give him, can hear Gwen’s lecture; the one she’d be completely within her rights to give, the one Owen would deserve.

“I’m glad you’ve found someone,” Gwen murmurs one night, when Tosh is asleep on the sofa and they’re both sitting awake watching CCTV footage.

Owen thinks uncharitably that she’s probably just relieved; she’s probably been wandering around the last few months wondering if Owen was going to try and seduce her again. Of course, that would only be a problem if she thought she was in danger of giving in…

He says none of this aloud, though he’d like to. Instead, Owen takes a sip of his crap instant coffee and tries not to grimace. “Yeah, me too.”

He sighs, offers a tired smile, and wishes that it was all as simple as he’s saying it is.

-

It’s dark in Ianto’s flat, orange-gold light from the lamps outside striping across his bare skin. They’re quiet, but it isn’t the resentful silence of the first time around; it isn’t tinged with anger and mutual disdain. Owen swallows, and reflects that he really shouldn’t have done this, it really isn’t fair. Just because he seems to have got it right so far doesn’t mean that he had the right to rip his way into Ianto’s freedom. And he can’t even come clean and apologise because that- that would end badly.

“You look thoughtful,” Ianto observes, though Owen wonders how he can see his expression; surely it’s too dark for that.

“Mmmm.” Owen wants to feel less guilty about this; wants to stop feeling like he takes advantage every time he smiles at Ianto.

“Do you want to stop this?” Ianto asks, a barely-noticeable edge to his tone. Owen picks up on it immediately. He is the fucking expert on arguing with Ianto, after all. “Trying to find a way to break it to me gently?”

“No,” Owen says quickly, turning his head to look at Ianto. Ianto is staring at the ceiling, street light caught on his eyelashes. “No, it’s not that. It’s just… weird.” Ianto stays quiet, listening, and doesn’t turn to look at him. “The last… arrangement I had with someone that lasted this long didn’t end well.”

Ianto’s expression doesn’t flicker. “What happened?”

Owen doesn’t want to talk about it, especially not here, not now, not to Ianto. He supposes it’s his own fault for bringing it up in the first place. For a fleeting second, he contemplates talking about Katie, but enough of this is a lie already without him adding to it.

“I let him think that he meant nothing to me,” Owen sighs, voice barely audible. “And then he left.”

“You didn’t ask him to stay?” Ianto asks, curiosity threaded through his voice.

“There was nothing I could have said.” Owen tastes anger, despair; he’s momentarily frustrated because Ianto doesn’t get it, but how could Ianto get it? He doesn’t remember.

Ianto takes a slow breath that shivers slightly. “Owen-” he begins.

Owen can’t hear whatever he wants to say. “Go out with me,” he cuts him off.

“What?” Ianto’s eyes are wide with shock.

“Let’s try and do this properly,” Owen continues, knowing that if he stops he won’t see this through and he’ll regret it. “Go out with me.”

Ianto’s mouth moves soundlessly for a moment, and Owen feels his stomach clench.

“Ok,” Ianto says, after a moment. “Ok, what the hell. Let’s do it.”

(Gwen and Tosh will kill him.)

-

Torchwood One are fucking him around again; Owen has been sat in the foyer for an hour and a half. Ianto is having a busy morning, though occasionally he glances over at Owen and smiles, warm and genuine. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing and it makes Owen want to punch himself, but he can’t make himself stop.

In a break in the flow between visitors, Ianto disappears for a moment and then returns bearing coffee.

“Oh thank God,” Owen breathes, inhaling the warm, strong aroma.

Ianto arches an eyebrow. “Do you have some kind of really weird coffee fetish?” he enquires.

Owen grins. “I live on instant down in Cardiff,” he explains, “It’s nice to get near some decent stuff.”

“You poor, underprivileged man,” Ianto says, all smooth amused sarcasm. “Don’t you have a coffee machine or something?”

“We have one,” Owen shrugs. “But it doesn’t like us. So we just use a kettle.”

“…Right.” Ianto still looks amused.

(Owen very carefully does not say anything like the coffee machine really misses you.)

“Dr Harper, they’re ready to see you now,” Heidi calls over. Her lipstick is still hopelessly wrong for her, but Owen is a gentleman and does not point this out on the way past.

-

After Owen leaves the usual grilling – full of questions like and why are you letting the Weevils live? and other such pleasantries – he finds Ianto hovering around in the corridor.

“Come with me,” Ianto says quietly, and Owen obediently follows him through the stark white corridors. It’s like walking through a hospital, right down to the clinical smell. “In here.”

He leads Owen into a room with three industrial strength coffee machines in it, and a whole wall full of mugs. They’re all white and generic looking; Owen picks one up and when he turns it over he finds the Torchwood logo stamped on the bottom.

“Um, this is impressive, but… why are we in here?” Owen asks.

“I’m going to teach you how to work a coffee machine,” Ianto replies. He takes the mug out of Owen’s hands and carries it over to one of the machines. He pulls a couple of levers, presses a few buttons, turns something, and then puts the cup underneath a stream of hot coffee. “There, simple,” he says.

It takes a while for Owen to figure out what he’s doing; what needs to be pushed and when. This is partly because he’s distracted by memories of the last time he and Ianto were near a coffee machine; Ianto was banging his head against the side of it so hard that Owen’s nose was bleeding, and he’d already had a good go at giving Ianto concussion against the wall behind them. Things were angrier then, and Owen knows that he can never, never let Ianto’s memories return; there really is too much to lose.

Finally, Owen has managed to produce a half-decent latte, even if he says so himself. He turns around to give it to Ianto, feeling smug pride spreading his grin, and their fingers entwine around the mug. He opens his mouth, but Ianto’s eyes flicker meaningfully to the security camera mounted on the wall. Ah.

“Bloody Torchwood,” Owen mutters.

“Bloody Torchwood,” Ianto agrees.

-

It’s three-thirty in the morning, and Owen is putting stitches into Tosh’s arm; too many aliens tonight and he’s dreading the paperwork.

“You never talk about your girlfriend,” she remarks.

Owen carefully concentrates on the next suture before he looks at her. Gwen is safely away in Jack’s old office talking to UNIT; and maybe things have gone so far he can’t lie any more.

“That’s because I don’t have a girlfriend,” he says, returning his attention to the task at hand.

“But you said-”

“It’s a boyfriend,” Owen continues. He should turn back, but Tosh’s face is pale with shock and he’s got to distract her from all this somehow.

“Oh, Owen.” There’s something in her tone, like maybe she’s guessing, maybe she’s putting it together. Tosh is a smart one, always has been.

“It’s Ianto,” he adds, putting the final nail in the coffin.

He hears Tosh gasp but she keeps her arm steady; he focuses on sewing the gash back together, unable to look at her.

“Does he remember?” Tosh asks eventually.

“No,” Owen replies. “No. I do, but he doesn’t.” He laughs, though nothing’s funny. “It’s better this time around.”

Tosh remains silent while he finishes neatly, wrapping a bandage around the wound to protect it.

“Are you going to tell me I’m a selfish bastard?” he asks. “Going to tell me that I shouldn’t have done it?”

“You know all that already,” Tosh sighs. “I just…. I just hope it doesn’t end in tears.”

“It probably will,” Owen murmurs, and doesn’t feel any better for having admitted it to someone.

-

Jack comes home, the returning hero, all smug grin and bright eyes – though there’s a hollowness behind them both – and Owen hates it because of course none of them will ever admit how bad it got, how scared they were.

“Miss me?” Jack asks.

“You were gone?” Owen responds, and hates how betrayed he inadvertently sounds.

Jack’s next question, of course, is: “where is Ianto?”

Owen swallows, and lets Gwen do the explaining. Jack looks grave, all the amusement on his face vanished. Tosh glances over at Owen, and he tries not to see the pity there.

Ah well. Owen supposes that he couldn’t have got away with it forever.

Surprisingly, Jack doesn’t demand that they all immediately go to London and drag Ianto back home where he belongs. Instead, his expression almost becomes compassionate.

“Is he happy?” he asks.

Gwen looks to Owen. Tosh looks at her feet. Jack frowns.

“Yeah,” Owen sighs. “I think he’s happy.”

-

Owen accompanies Jack on his trip to Torchwood One, and spends half the journey mentally preparing himself for the inevitable. Because, regardless of whether Ianto remembers or not, one look at Jack and Owen will be out of the picture. It’s the way it works. One look at Jack and you’d murder your own soulmate to be with him for the night.

Ianto doesn’t look up when they walk in; he’s typing industriously on his computer terminal. Owen swallows a resigned smile and thinks: well, it was nice while it lasted.

“Hi,” Jack says, and Owen can tell from his tone that Jack’s being as careful as he knows how to be. “We’ve… got an appointment.”

Ianto looks up, and Owen feels his breath catch with nervous anticipation. But there’s no spark of recognition in Ianto’s eyes. There isn’t even the tell-tale dilation of the pupils. He doesn’t blink.

“Right,” he says. “I’ll just see if they’re ready for you.”

He turns away to make a phonecall. Owen breathes out; he feels like he’s had a gun pressed to his forehead and yet he’s still dodged the bullet. He risks a glance at Jack; he looks wistful.

-

“Are you sure you don’t fancy Jack?” Owen asks, later. Against his better judgement and all that, but he’s feeling helplessly insecure.

“Well,” Ianto says, “He’s certainly very handsome. But he isn’t really my type.”

Jack has gone back to Cardiff; Owen is staying in London on a paper-thin excuse. And he probably should stop unsubtly trying to work out if Ianto remembers Jack at all; the petty jealousy that runs deeper than he’ll ever admit.

“Yeah, but… if he propositioned you, would you say ‘yes’? You know, if it was guaranteed I’d never find out?”

“It’s been nearly an hour,” Ianto remarks, lounging on the other end of the sofa. “How long are you going to keep doing this, Owen?”

Owen should stop. “Yeah, but would you?”

Ianto frowns; Owen sees anger flash momentarily across his features. “Look, Owen,” Ianto begins, and his tone is hard, much too hard, “Once you’ve put yourself in a position to be hurt by Jack Harkness once, you don’t do it again in a hurry, ok?”

For a moment, Owen doesn’t understand. And then he does. Oh God, he does.

“You know,” he breathes. “You bastard. How long-”

“Three days after the first time,” Ianto replies, voice steady though his hands are flexing. “That scar on your shoulder. I woke up and I knew everything.”

Owen can’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say; anger and despair and confusion are flooding through him.

“I was so angry with you,” Ianto continues, and he’s no longer looking at Owen. “I went through all that to get my mind clear and you undid all of it for a one night stand.” He sighs. “Only… then it wasn’t a one night stand, and you only got more confusing.”

“You should have said something,” Owen mutters.

“It was nice,” Ianto protests. “If I told you I remembered everything we’d have gone back to hurting each other.”

“But you knew what had happened to Lisa, what was going on in the Hub, and you still let me-”

“I’m happier living with a lie than I ever was with the truth,” Ianto shrugs.

“That’s bullshit,” Owen snaps.

“I’m not coming back to Cardiff,” Ianto says, and now his voice is steady. “I’m going to carry on working here and pretending that I’ve been in a coma and that I never saw Lisa killed, that cannibals didn’t try to eat me, that I let Jack fuck me over and leave. And you can carry on working on that assumption with me, or you can leave.”

“It’s that simple, is it?” Owen demands.

“It’s not simple at all,” Ianto responds quietly. “You know that. And I’d rather you went along with it because I think we were really getting somewhere, but if you won’t then you won’t.”

Owen sighs. “And what if something happens and you wipe me out of your memory again?”

Ianto says nothing, just watches him. And Owen was lost weeks ago. Slowly, Ianto reaches out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Owen takes it.

-

"You Don't See Me", Iron Man, Tony/Pepper

2009-08-10T10:17:48Z

Title: You Don’t See Me
Fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Challenge/Prompt: 100_women, 083. Here
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2650
Genre: Gen/Het
Copyright: Title is a Keane song.
Timeline: Pre-movie
Summary: Years of this sort of thing have taught her discretion if nothing else.
Author’s Notes: Set pre-movie. These two are just… cute. I couldn’t resist it. Though this is practically gen, I’ve accidentally prevented anything of a relationship-type nature happening. *shocked face* I’m not really achieving anything with this either, it’s just… a few moments tied together.

You’re moving with such irresistible speed
You don’t see me.
- Keane

{i}

Tony’s music is obnoxiously loud and typically whiny as Pepper keys in this week’s security code and enters his basement sanctum. The clicking of her shoes on the floor is lost under the baseline and she plays the little game with herself where she sees how long it takes him to acknowledge her without her provoking a deliberate reaction.

Eventually, Tony seems to remember that the door slid open at one point, which means Pepper must have walked in, and turns. He waves a hand, and the volume drops.

“Morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” Pepper replies, with her practised bright smile, and holds out the tray she is holding.

On it, there’s a Stark Industries mug with a good, strong Columbian roast made just the way Tony likes it, and also a pair of black panties. Well, to call them panties would be kind of a stretch of imagination because what they really are is a scrap of black lace with some elastic threaded through somewhere along the line, but Pepper has already decided that she is not judging. She is very deliberately not judging.

Tony takes the coffee with a vague nod of thanks, and then seems to register the panties. He looks at them for a long moment, and then looks at Pepper, and then looks back at the underwear again.

“Huh,” he says. “There are panties on your tray, you know. I’m not sure that’s hygienic.”

Pepper smiles blandly. “They’re a present,” she informs him.

Tony puts his coffee down on the nearest metal bench and then gingerly picks them up.

“I’m not sure they’re my size,” he says carefully, holding the miniscule lingerie up to the light. “They are my colour, though, so you haven’t failed completely.”

“They’re not from me,” Pepper replies, allowing herself a smile. “Don’t they look slightly familiar?”

Tony gets a hunted look. “Should they?”

“Last night’s… guest wore them,” Pepper informs him. She wants to add: the woman was only wearing her underwear and a really obvious beige coat and some pretty astonishing fuck-me shoes, how do you not remember? but years of this sort of thing have taught her discretion if nothing else.

“Oh.” Tony drops the panties back onto Pepper’s tray. “Yeah, right. Uh… whatshername.” He looks pleadingly at Pepper, as though she will somehow remember who the generic blonde that turned up in the middle of the night mostly naked was. Of course, names are pretty much optional in Tony Stark’s world; and he can’t expect Pepper to know these things for him.

Of course, the fact that Pepper not only knows Tony’s booty call’s name, but also her date of birth, social security number and all her current contact telephone numbers is neither here nor there. Tony doesn’t need to know that she knows.

“Do you want to keep them?” Pepper asks, a teasing note entering her voice.

“They’re kind of slutty,” Tony observes. “Rhodey would lose all respect for me if he saw me wearing them.”

“We could have a Hall of Panties,” Pepper suggests mildly. “Women are always leaving their underwear here; we could put them in glass display cases with discreet plaques or something.”

Tony smiles that crinkly smile that works far too well on everyone, and Pepper curls her toes in her stilettos.

“Go away, Pepper,” he says, tone soft.

She obeys, listening to him turn his music back up somewhere behind her. She throws the panties in the waste disposal.

{ii}

The job interview was a long time ago. By then, Tony Stark was infamous, not just because of his sheer genius, but also because he got through secretaries at an alarmingly fast rate. On the day Pepper was due to be interviewed, there were five other women waiting outside Tony’s office with her. Two of them were blonde and perky and had slits in their skirts that left very little to the imagination. Pepper very carefully did up the top button on her blouse.

Tony was dapper looking and hadn’t grown the goatee thing yet. He also looked bored, though Pepper was reasonably certain that at least two of the other applicants had blown him in an attempt to get jobs – or, at least, to be able to say they’d become notches on Tony Stark’s bedpost (metaphorically, anyway, since there really weren’t any beds involved).

Pepper sat down opposite him with the manila file that contained her CV and references clenched in her lap.

“So,” Tony said, a slow, lazy drawl which implied that, gratuitous oral sex or not, today was being really dull, “Your name is Pepper Potts.”

“Yes.” Pepper attempted a slight smile and inanely wondered whether she should have rolled over the top of her skirt in the bathroom, like she used to do at school an age ago.

Tony smirked back. “Your name is Pepper Potts. Pepper Potts.”

Pepper shifted a little in her seat but didn’t break eye contact. “I’ve heard all the jokes,” she told him calmly.

“I’m sure I could think of some more,” Tony suggested.

“Well, you’d need to spend more time around me,” Pepper told him, keeping a little smile pinned to her mouth.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “You’re hired.”

“You haven’t read my references yet,” Pepper told him, waving her file at him.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Tony shrugged.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Pepper pointed out, and then became aware that she was protesting against getting hired, which hadn’t been her intention at all. She realised Tony had noticed her noticing this, and blushed.

“See you Monday morning,” he said.

She hasn’t gotten around to looking back yet, and it’s been quite a few years now.

{iii}

“We could import chocolate from Belgium or… Canada?” Tony is looking a little lost, pacing up and down with motor oil splashed all over his jeans. Pepper does her best not to wince; she’s going to be the one who will have to clean them, after all. “Where can we get good chocolate from?”

Pepper smoothes her skirt and picks a few imaginary bits of lint off her suit jacket until she feels calm again.

“Can’t you do this with Jarvis?” she asks, and cleverly manages to make it sound not too pleading. “Or Rhodey?”

Tony rolls his eyes as though she’s just suggested the most ridiculous thing ever. “Rhodey doesn’t like me today,” he explains wearily, in the tone he reserves for lesser mortals (in other words, people who aren’t Tony Stark). “He says I have no integrity.” Tony, for want of a better word, pouts. “I have integrity, don’t I Pepper?”

Pepper considers the question for a moment. “You’re a very unique person, Mr Stark,” she manages eventually. “With many good points.”

Tony narrows his eyes at her. “You’re trying to placate me,” he accuses.

“Why don’t we forego the chocolate altogether?” Pepper suggests, swiftly extricating herself from what will almost definitely degenerate into childish bickering. “I mean, the woman is considering having a restraining order put on you, we don’t want to come in too strong.”

Pepper wonders helplessly when she became Tony’s Best Guy Friend alongside the list of other duties she has (Babysitter, Cleaner, Personal Assistant, Confidante, Go-To Girl and, perhaps most importantly, Bringer Of Coffee At Any Hour Of The Day Or Night), but dismisses that feeling because it leads nowhere good and anyway, she hates it less than she’ll ever admit.

“I could write a sonnet,” Tony muses, wiping his oily hands on his jeans and smearing yet more unattractive gloopy substances on the denim. Pepper can already see the expression the dry cleaner will give her when she hands over the filthy Levi’s.

“You’re not fifteen,” Pepper finds herself saying before she has time to think through the sentence properly. “Maybe we shouldn’t scare her off with bad poetry.”

Tony looks wounded. “You don’t know my poetry would be bad,” he protests, doing the pouting thing again.

“You’re a scientific genius,” Pepper tells him. She doesn’t add the second half of the sentence: you cannot possibly be brilliant at everything. Tony smiles at the word ‘genius’ and turns his attention back to the matter at hand: getting a woman who is definitely not interested to sleep with him. And somehow he has roped Pepper into this enterprise, either because she is incapable of saying no to him, or because she’s realised the carnage might be slightly smaller if she’s helping out from the start.

“Well then, you will just have to go and talk to her,” Tony decides firmly. “And be very persuasive and charming.”

“Can’t you just sleep with someone else?” Pepper asks hopefully.

“No.” He’s acting like she’s missing something about this whole process, which is probably just as well because Pepper doesn’t have time to sleep with everyone she meets – if only because someone’s got to pick up the dry-cleaning. She should probably get laid more often than she does, though; it might make her less inclined to go along with Tony’s stalking schemes.

“Fine.” Pepper tucks a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “You know,” she adds, “There’s something worryingly Twelfth Night about this whole concept.”

Tony looks confused for a second, and then says: “Oh, Shakespeare.” It’s the same tone he uses when he says things like oh, first names, and oh, felonies; accepting of the ideas but ultimately dismissive. Then, he adds: “Isn’t that the one with the lesbians?”

“Say any more and I’ll back out,” Pepper warns, smiling in spite of herself. Of course, where Tony is concerned, nothing is sacred, not even great literature.

“Sure you don’t want to go and win her over in drag?” Tony enquires cheerfully.

Pepper rolls her eyes. “I can still hand in my notice…”

{iv}

“Let’s not have sex,” Pepper gasps.

Tony is drunk, possibly less drunk than her, possibly not, but his metabolism is really very impressive. And Pepper thinks she shouldn’t have taken him up on the it’s-your-birthday-let’s-have-a-drink offer, because he’s still Tony Stark. Tony Stark with his face buried in her neck, laughing. There’s an impressively expensive bottle of wine spilling across the table, and three others which are empty.

Pepper knows that Jarvis is technically a computer but she still pictures some kind of British disapproving look emanating from him anyway.

“What?” Tony asks, then seems to realise that he’s slumped against her. He pushes himself upright with his hand pressed against her thigh in a way that’s reasonably inappropriate.

“I’m still your employee,” Pepper provides, as much to remind herself as to remind him. Besides, sometimes she thinks he hasn’t quite noticed that she isn’t a robot like everyone else in the house. Tony’s mind is a scary place, after all.

“Right.” Tony blinks vaguely for a moment. “I should probably do something about that.”

“Are you going to fire me?” Pepper asks, voice surprisingly steady in spite of the drunk thing. “Because this was your idea.”

“I could offer you a raise,” Tony shrugs. He hasn’t moved very far and the heat from his body is bleeding through his shirt and into Pepper in a way that makes her distinctly uncertain.

“I’m not a prostitute,” Pepper mumbles.

Tony looks at her for a moment, taking in her faintly dishevelled appearance.

“No,” he agrees. His smile widens. “You know, I think you’re the first secretary I’ve had that hasn’t tried to sleep with me?”

Pepper sifts through the filecards in her drunken mind for a suitable response. “Oh,” she says. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s just interesting,” Tony tells her. His lopsided smile is ridiculously charming, and Pepper tries to ignore that fact.

“You find everything interesting,” Pepper mumbles, unsure exactly what she’s getting at.

“True,” Tony agrees, making an aborted attempt to get the rest of the wine off the table. He falls sideways instead, and Pepper finds herself with Tony draped across her. Again.

“Tony?” she asks uncertainly.

“I like your perfume, birthday girl,” he mumbles into her shoulder, breath warm against her skin.

Pepper doesn’t tell him it’s the same perfume she has been wearing for the last six years because, well, it’s not really relevant. A moment later, and Tony’s breathing slows and deepens.

“Oh please God, tell me you’re not asleep,” Pepper says helplessly.

Tony doesn’t reply.

{v}

There’s no pinning Tony down to anything, no getting him to do anything or persuading him to give a definitive answer. Pepper is resigned to this by now, although she suspects she’s compromising more than she ever consciously meant to. Tony’s irritating like that; backing you into a corner just as you realise you can never do the same to him. It’s not even as though he has layers of untapped charm; just a crinkled smile and a sort of breathtaking arrogance that somehow becomes endearing from repeated exposure.

It’s possible that Pepper has some kind of tragic mental disease. Or that Tony is putting mind-control drugs in her coffee. It’s the sort of thing he would do; and then, if you confronted him about it, he’d stare back at you with a and what did I do? sort of look, all confusion and kicked puppy.

Really, Pepper wishes she was enough of a bitch to blag her way in anywhere on I work for Tony Stark; then at least she’d get something better out of this. Not that she ever really has the time or the energy to go places that would require her talking her way in anyway. She has no life of her own, because she’s so busy trying to hold Tony’s together. And she wishes that she minded, although she also knows that if she did mind it she’d be insane or at the very least unemployed by now.

The only things she ever gets out of I work for Tony Stark are judgemental looks that cast dreadful aspersions on her virtue, and the occasional pitying smile. As if Pepper would still be working for Tony if she’d slept with him; everyone knows that he loses interest the moment the deal is clinched. And Pepper would like to say that she’s playing a game in order to keep her job and to keep Tony talking to her, but she knows that it’s really just that she doesn’t know where she stands and Tony won’t ever tell her.

“Jarvis,” she sighs in front of a mirror, tidying her hair and trying to work out just how irreparably her mascara is smudged, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

She’s aware that she sounds really desperate. There’s something unsettlingly mirror, mirror on the wall about the question and whatever response she may or may not get, but she hasn’t slept in approaching thirty-six hours and it’s amazing how sleep deprivation takes away things like caring.

“I don’t think I am really in a position to answer that,” Jarvis responds blandly, although he sounds mildly amused and definitely far too judgemental for computer.

“No,” Pepper sighs, tucking a lock of hair into place. “I suppose not.”

She hears a burble of laughter behind her and turns too quickly; Tony looks dishevelled and has a streak of biro on his cheek that he hasn’t noticed. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he’s leaning against the door with an ease that Pepper doesn’t think she’s ever had, though it’s true that she spends most of her life with deliberate poise.

“I think you’re pretty,” Tony offers lightly.

You can’t get anything out of Tony at all, but at times, if you don’t try too hard, he’ll surrender something. Pepper bites the inside of her lower lip, forces herself to inhale and exhale before she says anything at all.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

Tony laughs. “No,” he says, “You weren’t.”

Pepper pretends not to hear the deliberate italics and offers to make him some coffee, turning away to hide her smile.

"Saving The World (And Other Extreme Sports)", Primeval, Becker/Connor

2009-07-29T08:42:48Z

It’s being a very boring afternoon, and Becker has drunk far more coffee than is really wise because he’s got nothing better to do, and it takes five minutes to walk from his office to the coffee machine and back, so at least he’s killing time.

“Go on,” Connor wheedles, appearing from nowhere, “Tell me your name.”

“You’ll laugh,” Becker responds flatly, shoving his mug into the machine and pressing the button.

“Probably,” Connor agrees, “But tell me anyway.”

“Your fixation with my first name is a little creepy,” Becker observes, watching yet more caffeine he really doesn’t need pouring into the cup.

“I live with you,” Connor points out, half in a whisper – no one actually knows about this arrangement, and it’s probably just as well because they would never hear the end of it – “It’s weird that I don’t even know your name.” He frowns. “What do your friends call you?”

“Becker. Beck, if they’re feeling daring.”

Connor starts walking back to Becker’s office with him, even though it’s completely the opposite way to Connor’s lab.

“What about…” He’s silent for a moment, and Becker allows himself to hope that maybe Connor will just let it go. He’s punished for his optimism a second later. “What about people you’re dating, do they get to know your name?”

Becker doesn’t particularly want to have Connor and the word ‘dating’ in close proximity to each other, but he mentally shakes himself and decides that he can deal with this, because he is, after all, not fifteen.

“Yes,” he responds, clipped and hard. Connor either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Becker clearly doesn’t want to follow this line of conversation.

“What, do you tell them after they’ve asked you out?” he continues.

“No, I tend to tell them as an anniversary present,” Becker responds.

“Wow,” Connor says, blinking, “Is it ‘Hitler’?”

Becker gives him a look that would strip paint and probably burn the brickwork underneath. “Go away and electrocute yourself or whatever it is that you do all day, Connor,” he orders mildly, tone snotty but not cruel.

“I will work it out,” Connor promises him.

“Why do you care so much?” Becker asks.

“You’re a mystery wrapped in an enigma,” Connor says cheerfully, “I’m going to figure you out.”

“There’s really nothing to figure out,” Becker says. “I’m really genuinely not interesting.”

“I’m going to carry on disagreeing with you,” Connor replies, and then he’s walking off down the corridor. Becker does a very good job of not noticing at all how tight Connor’s jeans are across his arse, because he’s got to get out of this with a shred of dignity.

=

Their latest prehistoric guests have too many teeth and tiny sinister eyes, and they’re chasing them around a forest in the middle of bloody nowhere. Abby and Danny disappeared ages ago, Sarah has stayed with the anomaly, and Becker is once again with Connor, trying to find one of the creatures that disappeared into the trees. It’s leaving helpful giant footprints, but they haven’t managed to catch up with it yet. Connor runs ahead, even as Becker yells at him not to, and in a moment they’ve found the creature; teeth like needles and an approximation of a homicidal expression on it’s face.

Becker fleetingly thinks that he really should’ve just stuck with fighting people.

The thing is advancing on Connor and Becker can’t get a decent shot between the trees. Connor takes a step back, and then another, but he’s been cornered and both he and the dinosaur know it. Becker tries to think of alternative ways to rescue him, but the only thing that suggests itself is something very, very stupid. If anyone else tried it, he’d tear a strip off them and then hand them over to Lester so he could do the same. Still, Becker can’t get his mind to work out another strategy, and his judgement is horribly, impossibly impaired when it comes to Connor Temple, so he just steps up onto a tree stump and yells as loudly as he can.

“HEY, OVER HERE!” He waves his gun as well, in order to try and attract the dinosaur’s attention. It turns with surprising speed, enabling Connor to get away – which is the important bit – and Becker is about to turn and run like hell when the bloody thing runs towards him. Becker tries to dive to the side but he’s still knocked flying, eventually landing in a crumpled heap at the foot of a huge tree. A nasty pain erupts at the back of his head and his vision blurs. He can’t see the dinosaur – it’s clearly run off somewhere – but Becker suspects that that’s the least of his problems. Becker draws in a sharp breath through his teeth, stunned that he’s still conscious, though he knows he won’t be for long. Blackness is crawling in at the edges of the world, and something that feels horribly like blood is dripping down the back of his neck.

“Becker!” Connor’s voice sounds panicked and thick as he scrambles towards him. Becker blinks a few times, trying to stay together long enough to get Connor out of here. That is his job, after all; to keep the team safe. “Oh God, Becker.”

Connor drops to his knees beside him, reaching to tilt Becker’s head up a little, hands cradling his skull. When he brings them back, his fingers are stained brilliant red, his fingerless gloves suddenly wet. Becker realises that the bleeding is actually quite serious, though that thought is surprisingly placid; he can feel consciousness sliding away from him.

“Connor,” he says, talking too loudly to work through the shock and the concussion, “Connor, you need to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Connor responds, voice trembling. Becker doesn’t have time for this. He pushes his gun at Connor, who reluctantly curls his bloody hands around it.

“You need to go,” Becker says, hearing his words sliding together, “Find Quinn, get back-up. Come back for me if you can.”

“Becker-” Connor’s voice is cracking, but Becker’s vision has become a thin sliver and he knows he doesn’t have much time.

“Bloody go, Temple,” he orders, and tumbles back into the darkness.

=

When Becker finally manages to crack his eyes open his head is literally thudding with pain and he feels horribly nauseous.

“‘Bout time,” someone says; after a moment, Becker’s vision clears enough for him to be able to establish it’s Danny. “I was just starting to get worried.”

Danny’s shirt is stained red right down the front; Becker’s stomach clenches. He’s failed; oh God, not again. He tries to speak, but he can’t get the words to form.

“Hey,” Danny says, reaching to put a strong hand on his shoulder, “It’s ok, Becker, just take a moment.” He seems to notice where Becker is looking, because he adds: “Don’t worry, it’s not my blood.”

Becker frowns; his memories are in shards and his head feels thick and achy.

“It’s yours,” Danny adds, grimacing slightly. “But the doctors seem to think you’ll be ok. You’re a tough bastard, you know? You had us all shit-scared.”

Finally, Becker registers that he’s in the ARC, lying in a sterile white bed. He manages to raise a hand to his head, and his fingers meet the edge of a bandage. Right.

“You’re bloody heavy as well,” Danny adds, with a trace of a real smile.

Becker blinks at him, and then manages to rasp: “All muscle.”

Danny laughs, which attracts the attention of one of their doctors. She hurries over and spends what seems to be an incredibly long period of time prodding Becker and shining lights in his eyes and so on.

“I want to keep you here for observation,” she says at last. “Nothing too serious; you’ve just got a concussion. You were very lucky.”

Becker knows, even if he still feels horribly groggy and his head feels like it’s actually been split open and then inexpertly repaired with duct tape. He swallows, feeling the nausea rising in his throat. Danny helps him sit up, managing to prop Becker’s pillows up with far more competence than Becker would’ve expected from an ex-policeman.

“I’d better go and tell the others you’re awake,” Danny says, clasping Becker’s shoulder with a warm, strong hand. “I’m glad you’re not dead, you bloody idiot.”

“Me too,” Becker responds, and waits until he’s gone before throwing up.

=

Becker had the piss taken out of him something chronic in Special Ops; whenever he has concussion he always ends up vomiting for hours. It’s unpleasant and kind of embarrassing, although the ARC medics are surprisingly nice about the whole thing. Lester has come and told him that the minute Becker can string a whole sentence together and stand upright he is going to be in big trouble, but other than that he’s been lying around feeling like hell and puking into the bowl provided for him, and wallowing in self-pity the rest of the time.

The door opens when he’s hacking up bile and beginning to wish that the bloody dinosaur had just killed him outright because surely that would be better than this, but Becker can’t raise his head. He does jump a minute later, when a gentle hand starts rubbing his back; it’s admittedly comforting, but the sheer indignity of it brings a flush to his cheeks, especially when he manages to force down the nausea and discover that Connor is sitting on a chair beside his bed. He looks like he’s been crying, which makes something inside Becker clench. When he takes his hands away so Becker can lie back, Becker sees that his gloves are missing; Connor’s hands are bare for the first time in as long as he’s known him.

“Sorry I ruined your gloves,” he offers.

Connor half-laughs, though it sounds almost like a sob. “I don’t really care right now about the fucking gloves, Becker.”

Becker cannot have this conversation right now, he really can’t.

“I thought you were dead,” Connor continues, voice shaking. “I thought you were bloody dead.”

Becker swallows, tasting bile rising in his throat again. “I’m not having this conversation,” he warns Connor, swallowing hard. “We cannot have this conversation right now, ok?”

Connor looks like he wants to argue, but Becker bends his head back over the bowl and retches, which effectively shuts him up. He looks wan and scared and almost as bad as Becker feels, which is ridiculous.

“You should go,” Becker tells him, taking one breath and then another one. “I’m fine, I’ve had worse. But I’m not good company right now.”

Connor looks like he might offer to stay anyway, but Becker doesn’t think he can handle that at the moment. He kind of wants to be drugged to sleep right now, and decides he’ll suggest it to the doctor next time she comes over.

“All right,” Connor says at last. “Just… oh… just… God, Becker.”

He looks desperately unhappy and Becker is concussed, and before he can stop himself he’s saying: “Hilary.”

“What?” Connor frowns. “I’m Con-” The penny drops, and a slight smile curls his lips. “Really? Seriously? Hilary?”

“Go away, Connor,” Becker sighs, but he can feel a smirk tugging his lips. The movement hurts, but he can’t make it stop.

“All right,” Connor says, getting up. He looks like he’s going to clasp Becker’s shoulder like Danny did, then seems to think better of it and doesn’t. “Take care of yourself… Hilary.”

“I’m going to regret telling you, aren’t I?” Becker says, as Connor walks over to the door.

Connor turns back, and even though his eyes are red and his face is chalk white, he manages a smile.

“Oh yes.”

=

Being concussed from your own destructive stupidly quickly loses its novelty, but the doctors still don’t let Becker leave; they keep dragging him off to give him MRIs and ask him questions to establish he hasn’t been brain damaged. He’s bored out of his mind and contemplates discharging himself; but Danny refuses to be an accomplice, and Becker isn’t sure he’s up to wandering the ARC in an unflattering – and backless – hospital gown. He spends a lot of time asleep, itching to get up and do something, anything; staying still isn’t something he enjoys.

What is probably a couple of days later – Becker is losing track of time – Connor comes in looking awkward. He dances around whatever it is he wants to talk about for a while, babbling about the Artefact and TV shows and so on while Becker lies back and lets it wash over him.

“Are you going to get to the point any time soon?” he asks, and is almost embarrassed about how fond his tone is.

Connor grimaces, and isn’t looking him in the eye any more. “Abby’s brother told her the truth about Rex,” he says, “They argued and she kicked him out.”

Becker feels like his stomach has vanished, but he doesn’t betray it on his face. “That means you can go home,” he replies, and is impressed when his voice doesn’t crack.

“Uh, yeah, it does,” Connor agrees.

“Sid and Nancy will be pleased,” Becker remarks, even though he sort of wants to lie down and pull the blankets over his head like a small child, and God he hates being under the influence of painkillers. “Abby’s place is much bigger than mine.” He swallows, forces himself to keep talking. “When are you moving out?”

“I’ll be gone by the time you’re discharged,” Connor responds.

Bugger. Becker nearly says it, but manages to swallow it down. “Right. Well, that’s good.”

“Yeah,” Connor agrees, but his voice sounds somewhat flat. “It’s really… good.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Becker’s migraine is bashing itself against the sides of his skull and any minute now he just knows Connor is going to do something like call him Hilary and he’s going to end up doing something stupid like trying to kiss him, which would be futile because Connor is Abby’s and always has been and Becker just counts himself lucky that he got to borrow him for a while.

It’s really a relief when the Anomaly detector goes off.

=

The flat is empty and very, very silent when Becker walks inside, fresh from Lester’s you’re an idiot, Becker, did you know? lecture; it’s eerily tidy and there’s no sound of happy chirping dinosaurs clattering around on the floor. In fact, Becker discovers as he walks around, Connor’s done a truly sensational job of tidying up; he can hardly find any traces that Connor or the Diictodons were ever here. It’s depressing, and Becker firmly decides that it’s the last vestiges of his head injury that’s making his legs shake.

He sits down on his sofa – his sofa again, because Connor won’t be sleeping on it, and little dinosaurs won’t be trying to stake their claim to the cushions – and looks around his living room. The flat suddenly seems larger; the tidiness is unnerving, rather than reassuring.

“You’re being a sentimental fool, Becker,” he says aloud, forcing himself to take his emotions, fold them up neatly, and put them somewhere else.

He makes a cup of tea – taking a second mug out of the cupboard on automatic, before swiftly returning it – and sits back down again. Staring around his damningly empty living room, Becker firmly tells himself that he likes the quiet.

=

Soon enough, things get back to normal; or, at least, as normal as they can be when you chase dinosaurs about for a living. Connor and Abby flutter around the ARC, giggling and teasing each other, while Becker is back to ordering people around and hiding behind an excellent stoic expression. And if he’s avoiding Connor; well, he’s not doing it obviously enough that anyone else will pick up on it, and he doubts that Connor’s even noticed, joined at the hip to Abby as he is.

He takes to staying late at the ARC, working on security with Danny, who seems to enjoy deliberately breaking into their facility in the name of ‘training’ a little bit too much. They drink unhealthy amounts of coffee and pore over blueprints, looking for weak spots, discussing routes Danny’s already taken and how likely it is that other people will think of them.

“What about down here?” Becker suggests, following a ventilation shaft with his fingertip.

“That’s the one you’ve already booby-trapped,” Danny responds cheerily. “Remember the time you teargassed me?”

“I wouldn’t have teargassed you if you’d followed the route you’d told me you were going to follow,” Becker points out.

“I was trying to catch you off-guard!”

Becker smiles slightly. “Then it’s your own fault and you really should stop blaming me.”

Danny laughs; then looks from Becker to the map to his watch. “We need lives,” he observes.

He may have a point; Becker smiles ruefully, and it stings.

=

There are a few traces of Connor and the Diictodons left in the flat; like a couple of mugs with hairline cracks in them and tooth marks on the edge of his wardrobe that are probably never going to fade. Becker keeps finding random shreds of newspaper behind his bookcases and under his kitchen cabinets, and has to keep gritting his teeth against things like nostalgia and regret. After all, even if he had asked Connor to stay, he wouldn’t have said yes.

Becker is bad-tempered a lot of the time now; Danny seems to find it quietly amusing, but everyone else is probably getting sick of him snapping out orders in as few words as possible. His men are starting to look a little anxious around the eyes, although of course none of them will ever say anything. Lester just seems bored by Becker’s taciturn responses during debriefings; take your issues somewhere else, Captain, gets thrown at him more than once.

One morning Becker isn’t paying attention in the shower – he spent too long running around the common, because there’s a certain amount of freedom in physical exercise and he’s getting fucking sick of brooding all the time, so he’s almost definitely going to be late into the ARC – and it isn’t until he gets to work that he realises the shower gel he used wasn’t his. He’s in the locker room, changing into his uniform, and when he inhales his skin doesn’t smell like his any more.

He’s late enough as it is, so he doesn’t have time to shower, and instead spends the whole morning resenting Connor for accidentally leaving a bottle of bloody shower gel behind. It’s innocuous and ridiculous, but every time Becker breathes in it’s a constant, sharp reminder that Connor is gone and Connor is not his and never will be, and really, the whole thing is just crap.

Pull yourself together, Hilary, he mentally chants, teeth gritting, trying to distract himself with paperwork and cleaning his weaponry and patronising his men until he thinks a couple of them are actually going to end up fragging him from sheer frustration next time they’re in the field. But when he finally manages to get a grip on the miserable feelings of rejection and shove them somewhere dark and faraway in his head where they won’t bother him, Becker finally notices the thin coil of arousal lying low in his belly. It’s different, but it really isn’t any bloody better.

The worst part comes in the afternoon, when he bumps into Abby while getting yet another cup of coffee – as if he really needs to be any more jittery than he already is – and she gives him a very confused look, before her eyes narrow in a way that’s far too calculating for any sort of comfort. Becker offers her the thinnest of professional smiles, and does his best not to look like the jealous, moping sod that he actually is.

=

“Are you avoiding me?” Connor asks.

He’s been very sneaky, lying in wait for Becker outside his office so that he can’t escape; Becker would be impressed if he wasn’t too busy wanting out of this conversation, and it hasn’t even begun yet.

Yes. Of course I am. “No,” he says aloud. “Why would I be avoiding you?”

Connor shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his skinny jeans. He’s unconsciously pushed his jeans down so far that there’s a thin sliver of very pale skin visible between the hem of his t-shirt and his waistband, which Becker is not looking at. At all. Really.

“We just… don’t ever seem to see each other,” Connor shrugs.

“Well,” Becker says, keeping his voice steady, “We don’t actually factor that much in each other’s every day lives. Just when we’re all about to be killed by something with sharp teeth and a brain the size of a potato.”

“Right.” Connor looks right at him, then at his shoes, then at the ceiling, then at Becker again. “Um, so I haven’t pissed you off at all?”

Becker is suddenly very glad that he learned to keep all his awkward flailing inside at a very early age, because otherwise he suspects that right now he’d have even less coordination than Connor does.

“No less than usual,” he shrugs, making sure to smile to soften the words. “How are the brats?”

Connor’s smile slides into something a lot more genuine. “They got hold of most of Abby’s shoes on Tuesday,” he says. “Bits of rubber and laces everywhere; so we’re thinking about trying to train them.”

“Oh,” Becker says, smirking, “So when it was just my stuff getting eaten, that was ok, but now it’s your things…”

Connor laughs, and then his expression becomes very serious. “Look, Becker,” he begins.

Becker’s radio crackles into life; he’s needed on one of the other levels. He feels annoyance tinged with relief. “I have to go,” he says.

“Right,” Connor says, “Well, I’ll just… find you later, then.”

And Becker knows that he’s a bastard for sneaking the back way out of the ARC when his shift ends, the secret escape route that only he and Danny know about, but he doesn’t think that there’s anything Connor wants to say that he will actually be able to hear without wanting to do something violent. It probably isn’t important, anyway.

=

An obnoxious ringing wakes Becker up, and he blearily blinks at his alarm clock; it’s stupidly early in the morning. Grimacing, he fumbles for his mobile, glancing quickly at the screen. He expects it to be Lester or someone, but… it isn’t.

“Someone had better be dying,” he grits, because Abby calling him before it’s even light cannot mean anything good.

“I need a hand,” Abby says; her voice sounds small and far away, tinged with sheepishness. “It’s Connor.”

It’s embarrassing how quickly Becker goes from half asleep to instantly alert the minute Connor’s name is mentioned.

“Is he ok?” he demands.

“He’s fine,” Abby replies, still sounding awkward. “He’s… very drunk, though. And Danny isn’t picking up his phone and I didn’t know who else to call.”

Becker wants to say no. Wants to tell Abby to deal with her boyfriend herself. But… but it’s Connor, and he’s already reaching for his jeans.

“Where are you?”

=

Becker isn’t about to claim that he knows everything about Connor, but he did live in extremely close proximity to him for a couple of months, so he’s reasonably certain that getting so drunk he’s almost unconscious is entirely out of character. Abby is grim-faced, silent in the passenger seat of Becker’s car as Connor dozes in the back seat. Her eyes are dark, face occasionally illuminated by orange street lights as they pass by.

“Thank you for this,” she says, at last. “I don’t know what’s up with him, but…” She trails off on a sigh, and Becker immediately decides to deny anything and everything. Not that any of this can be his fault, of course. That would be utterly impossible.

Becker doesn’t bother trying to get Connor to walk when they finally make it back; he just hooks one arm under Connor’s knees and another around his shoulders, and carries him upstairs. Connor is just about conscious, though definitely not aware of his surroundings, and Becker resists the urge to shake him a lot for being so stupid.

“Sofa,” Abby says, jerking her head towards it when she lets them into the flat, before she disappears off into another room. Connor’s eyes open a little, and he frowns.

“Becker?”

“Apparently,” Becker responds, carrying Connor towards the sofa.

Connor groans and buries his face in Becker’s shoulder. “You make my head hurt,” he mumbles.

“No,” Becker replies, a bite in his voice, “That would be the vast quantities of alcohol you decided it would be a good idea to consume.”

Connor doesn’t reply, and Becker carefully lies him down on the sofa, propping a pillow under his head. He can’t stop himself from reaching out and smoothing a hand through Connor’s messy hair; Connor is half-asleep and he mumbles something that might be nonsense or might just about be interpreted as Hilary. Becker snatches his hand back as though he’s been burned, and looks up to find Abby has reappeared with a blanket. She spreads it over Connor’s sleeping form, something almost maternal in her expression.

“Do you want a cup of tea before you go, Becker?” she asks.

Although it’s phrased as an offer, Becker doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that it is. He’s had direct orders barked at him by superior officers that had less actual command in them than Abby’s tone has. Her jaw is clenched, and Becker would honestly rather try and face down another bloody giant dinosaur than refuse Abby Maitland anything right now.

“Please,” he says.

=

Abby busies herself with the kettle, occasionally throwing glances at Becker. He stands very still and tries to look innocent. Apparently, all their noise must have woken up the dinosaurs though, because in moments Becker hears the sound of claws clicking on the floor, and an ecstatic Nancy practically flings herself onto his feet. Becker laughs, in spite of himself, and crouches down to pat her head. She chirrups with delight, and before he knows it Becker finds himself with an armful of excited dinosaur. He straightens up with her squirming happily in his hold, swallowing down a delighted smile of his own, because he’ll never admit to just how much he’s actually missed the Diictodons.

Sid is keeping his distance, but has come padding over too. I knew you liked me really, you little bugger, Becker thinks, but manages not to say it aloud. The final straw, really, is when Rex comes swooping down from wherever he’s been hiding, briefly landing on Becker’s shoulder.

Abby’s expression is one of deep suspicion, and Becker can’t really blame her. It probably does all look rather incriminating.

“Milk and sugar?” Abby asks.

“Milk please,” Becker responds, “And half a sugar.”

Abby’s hands freeze over the tea things, and then she starts moving again. Becker sinks into a nearby chair, Nancy happily settling herself down on his lap. Abby brings two mugs of tea over, all but slamming one down in front of Becker, before sitting down opposite him.

“Connor stayed with you while Jack was here, didn’t he?” she says, launching straight in.

“What makes you say that?” he asks, keeping carefully stoic.

“Nancy’s really comfortable around you,” Abby explains, waving a hand at the little dinosaur, who is now snoring softly against Becker’s knee. “And when Connor first moved back in and made us both tea, he automatically made my tea just the way you like it.”

Becker doesn’t let his expression flicker. “Circumstantial evidence,” he says.

Abby shrugs. “Maybe. But he did, didn’t he?”

There’s really no point in denying it; Abby’s expression clearly tells Becker that she’s figuring a lot of things out much faster than he really wants her to, and there’s nothing at all he can do about it.

“He was sleeping in the ARC,” Becker says. “I offered him my sofa and somewhere relatively safe to keep the Diictodons.”

“Right,” Abby says, clearly processing this information, and is silent for a long moment. Becker sips his tea; it’s far too hot, but right now it gives him something to do to alleviate the awkwardness he’s trying desperately not to feel. Abby glances at Connor, obliviously asleep on the sofa, and then looks back at Becker. “Do you miss him?” she asks.

The question catches him off-guard; of all the questions and accusations Becker was expecting, that wasn’t one of them.

“What?”

“Do. You. Miss. Him?”

Becker tries and fails to construct an answer that won’t make him sound utterly fixated and pathetic, and ends up sitting in silence, incapable of replying. Abby’s expression slides from firm and a little angry to plain murderous, mouth thinning.

“Right,” she says abruptly, in a conversation-over sort of tone.

“It’s not a simple question,” Becker manages at last, against his better judgement.

“Yes, it is,” Abby replies. “There are all sorts of complicated questions I could be asking, but I’m not.”

Becker suddenly wishes for the ability to babble inanely like Connor does; at least then he’d be able to fill up this all-consuming silence. Abby wants more of an admission from him than he thinks he’s capable of giving, and none of this is fair. After a moment, Abby stands up, coming around the table to pick Nancy up off Becker’s lap.

“You should be going,” she says, voice like ice.

Becker makes it all the way to the door before he turns. Abby has put Nancy down – she and Sid are now scampering back across the flat – and is watching Becker go, arms folded, expression homicidal.

“Yes,” Becker says, even though he knows he shouldn’t, “Yes, Abby, I miss him. All right?”

Nausea is twisting his stomach and it isn’t fair of her to do this, it isn’t. Abby walks over to join him at the door, expression softening.

“You know what, Becker,” she says, “I reckon you just act like an officious bastard most of the time to hide the fact that you’re, well, not.”

Becker doesn’t know what he is or isn’t at the moment, which is what happens when half your life is classified and the other half fits firmly in the don’t ask, don’t tell category.

“…Thanks, I suppose,” he says, and catches one last glimpse of Connor asleep on the sofa before Abby shuts the door.

=

Nearly a week later, someone knocks on Becker’s door late one evening. He’s really not expecting to pull the door open to find Connor standing there, an interestingly tormented expression on his face.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

Becker nods, momentarily struck completely dumb, and stands aside.

“Wow,” Connor says, looking around, “It’s really neat in here. Still. No wonder you hated Sid and Nancy so much.”

“I don’t hate Sid and Nancy,” Becker says, and manages not to mention that a very small part of him is secretly hoping that another anomaly will open to the same period and he’ll be able to get a Diictodon of his own. Or maybe two. Connor nods and smiles at the admission, but he doesn’t say anything else. Becker really isn’t used to silence from Connor, and it’s unnerving, to say the least. “Uh… is there a reason you’re here?” he asks.

“Yes,” Connor says quickly, “Yes, definitely a reason.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Becker takes a breath, because one of them needs to stay in control here. He doesn’t have high hopes for this conversation; Connor is not exactly the most confident or eloquent of people, and Becker is almost monosyllabic to a fault, so none of this will end well. And the silence is still stretching itself out, getting comfortable.

“What,” he begins, smiling a little, “Did you suddenly decide you want to sleep another night on my sofa?”

Connor hesitates, takes a deep breath Becker can hear, and then says: “I thought maybe I’d be sleeping in your bed.”

Becker’s brain actually short-circuits.

“Where would I sleep?” he asks carefully, making sure not to break eye contact, determined to be cautious until he’s certain that Connor isn’t just being strange and ambiguous.

“Well, maybe you’d be sleeping there too.”

Becker’s mind screams something like oh fucking hell, Connor has come over here to seduce me, but then can’t come up with anything else. It’s ridiculous; he has such sharp physical reflexes, but his mind appears to have been wiped entirely blank, and he can’t think of anything to say in time.

An impressive flush spreads over Connor’s face as Becker hesitates a second too long, and he turns away.

“Oh God, I should go.”

Finally, Becker’s thought processes grind back into action, and he realises that Connor has been so very brave, coming over here like this; the least he can do is be a little bit brave in return. He reaches Connor in a couple of strides, catching his arm and pulling him around to face him. Connor opens his mouth to say something, but before he can utter a single syllable, Becker does what he’s been wanting to do to shut Connor up for almost as long as he’s known him. He presses his lips to Connor’s, catching the words before they can ever be spoken.

It takes Connor a heart-stopping moment to get with the programme, and then he makes an interesting little noise that Becker just wants to keep, before wrapping his arms around Becker’s neck and kissing him back.

Connor’s mouth is warm and wet and there’s nothing at all shy or awkward about the way he kisses; Becker never wants to surface for air again, but eventually he forces himself to pull back, resting their foreheads together.

“So what brought this on?” he asks softly.

Connor laughs; they’re so close that his breath tickles Becker’s lips, soft and intimate. “Abby may have pointed out that you’ve got kind of a thing for me.”

Becker arches an eyebrow. “Is that what she said?”

“Yep.” Connor’s grinning now, swollen lips curled back from his teeth. “She told me that even though you’re emotionally stunted and startlingly unobservant, you’re crazy about me.” He draws out the word crazy and Becker doesn’t even try to stop himself from leaning in and capturing Connor’s mouth again.

“I am going to have words with Abigail,” he murmurs when they finally part.

“Don’t,” Connor says. “You should thank her, send her some flowers or something.”

“If I send her flowers, the brats will eat them,” Becker reminds him.

“Yeah, but if she hadn’t pointed a few things out to me, I’d still be pining worse than Nancy,” Connor tells him, “And she tore up three of my shirts.”

Becker’s hands are sliding down Connor’s sides without him having any sort of conscious control over them; the urge, the need to touch now he’s got permission is almost overwhelming. His fingertips slide under the hem of Connor’s t-shirt, and he feels as much as hears the other man’s breath hitch.

“So what did you rip up with your teeth?” he asks softly, sliding his hands a little higher, Connor’s stomach muscles fluttering beneath his fingertips.

Connor glances down and then back up at Becker. “Speaking of tearing things off with your teeth…”

Becker hears a startled laugh escape him. “Seriously?” he asks.

Connor flushes slightly, laughing too. “You’re lucky I’m still managing to put together sentences,” he says, “I don’t do this very often.”

“By ‘this’, do you mean propositioning your fellow team-members?”

“Exactly.” Connor’s lips twitch. “Actually, this is my first time.”

“Good,” Becker responds, almost surprised the rush of possessiveness he gets just thinking about Connor doing this with anyone else. He smiles, and suspects that it’s the sort of smile he won’t be able to get rid of for days.

“How am I doing?” Connor flutters his eyelashes, laughter singing across his mouth.

“Not bad from where I’m standing,” Becker replies, “Though I am fairly easy-”

“Here’s hoping,” Connor observes, grinning.

“-I just have one simple rule.”

Connor adopts a faintly serious expression, frowning quizzically.

“If you call me ‘Hilary’ in bed, they will never find your body.”

=

And, for once in his life, Connor actually does what he’s told.

Not that he really gets the chance to say anything much; Becker seals his mouth with kisses as he backs him into the bedroom, stripping them both because Connor’s hands are shaking far too hard for him to have any coordination at all. When he moves to explore the line of Connor’s throat with his lips and teeth and tongue – looks like Connor will need to wear scarves for the foreseeable future, and oh how Becker doesn’t fucking care – Connor lets slip a series of nonsensical sentences; God and please and yes all tangled together until Becker kisses his way back to his mouth, cutting Connor off abruptly.

By the time Connor’s hard against his hip, fingers tangling in Becker’s hair and sliding down his spine, he’s replaced half the words with breathless whimpers and most of the remaining distinguishable sounds seem to form the word please; Becker takes his time sliding the length of Connor’s body – slim but muscled, pale but strong, and there isn’t anywhere he doesn’t want to touch him – just because he’s enjoying reducing Connor’s usual incoherent babble to sheer vowel sounds of want. Connor’s back arches and he spills a dozen swear words when Becker finally takes his cock into his mouth, firm hands keeping Connor’s hips flat to the bed, leaving him entirely at Becker’s mercy.

The words falling from Connor’s red lips have mostly become please and fuck and oh Jesus, all of them scraped raw and hungry, and Becker takes him deeper just because he can, just because Connor’s clawing at the bedsheets and Becker’s hair and his thighs are trembling in a way that is going to imprint itself onto Becker’s memory for oh such a long time.

He could make Connor come now but he doesn’t, wants to drag this moment out until it breaks; instead he leaves Connor flushed and writhing and breathing out desperate streams of obscenities as Becker searches through his bedside drawers. Finally, he presses his mouth to Connor’s, breathing in every sharp exhalation as he slides one finger inside Connor. The other man is twitching beneath him, and when Becker slips in a second finger he begins murmuring into Connor’s ear; a litany of filth, promising Connor that he’s going to fuck him senseless, that he’ll have to call in sick tomorrow and spend the whole day in bed, until Connor is gasping and begging for more, hips twisting as he fucks himself on Becker’s fingers.

Becker’s hands are almost shaking too hard to get the condom on, and Connor is still talking, words pouring out, strings of swearwords and pleas and things that Becker isn’t even listening to because it’s not the content, it’s the sound.

Connor’s legs fit easily around his hips and Becker slides deep with almost no resistance whatsoever; Connor’s swollen mouth is open in a gasp and for one moment he’s beautifully, perfectly silent. Becker sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth and decides that he doesn’t ever want to do anything again except staying in bed doing this. And then he pulls back and thrusts in again, and Connor lets out a mangled broken shout of: “Becker!”

It takes a while to find a rhythm; Connor swears constantly, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, eyes wide, pupils blown wide open with want, while Becker summons up the dregs of his self-control, trying to go slow, trying to be as gentle as he can. But Connor’s voice is disintegrating, cracking over harder and faster and more and oh my fucking God, and before he knows it Becker is slamming into him, breath tearing at his lungs, while Connor’s words eventually just become shapeless shouts.

If Connor is still capable of walking or talking tomorrow, it really won’t be through any fault of Becker’s.

“If you don’t turn out to be a screamer, I’ll be gutted,” Becker pants, propping himself on one elbow over Connor so he can reach between them and curl merciless fingers around Connor’s cock. “Come on, I think there must be a couple of my neighbours you haven’t woken up yet.”

“It’s not bloody funny!” Connor manages, but Becker can feel the laughter – the blissful, smug laughter – erupting from his mouth anyway.

“Yeah, yeah it is,” he murmurs, before thrusting up. Connor’s head tips back, eyes closing; he groans some mangled mixture of Becker and Hilary, and on Becker’s next thrust he gets the scream he’s looking for, Connor’s cock twitching in his hand.

Neither of them last much longer after that; Connor comes in a wordless roar after a few more thrusts, clenching so tight around Becker’s cock that a moment later he follows, burying his face in Connor’s shoulder, a groan sliding out between his teeth.

He pulls out carefully, and Connor looks up at him for a moment, chest rising and falling with his rapid breathing. And then his mouth breaks into the biggest, most ecstatic smile Becker has ever seen on anyone; he feels himself mirroring it, letting Connor pull him down onto the bed, arms sliding easily and naturally around Becker’s waist. It occurs to him that he’s never going to be able to look at Connor again without seeing this – the other man stripped naked but for his fingerless gloves, flushed and well-fucked and blissfully happy – and muses that maybe he’ll send Abby those flowers after all.

=

"Saving The World (And Other Extreme Sports)", Primeval, Becker/Connor

2009-07-29T08:28:47Z

Title: Saving The World (And Other Extreme Sports)
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Becker/Connor
Rating: NC-17 (though you’ll need to read 13,000 words to get to that rating)
Word Count: 14,000 (yes, really)
Genre: Slash
Summary: He’s tempted to say something like this is not a fucking first date but then gets the feeling that that will create all kinds of awkwardness.
Author’s Notes: Basically, let’s say that Becker offered Connor a place to stay instead of Lester, yeah? Known in my head as The Potentially Out Of Character Becker/Connor Epic That Wouldn’t End, because I kept adding things to it. Loose season three spoilers in a couple of places, but it’s essentially AU so: *shrugs* And I don’t care if no one ever reads this, because I just wanted to write it, and it was awesome fun. And I’m using what ITV claims is Becker’s actual real first name ~~so apparently he isn’t actually called “Captain Pretty”, which is sad~~, along with all sorts of my own personal Becker canon since we know hardly anything about him and now never will. And you get smut, because I felt after 13,000 words of angsting there should be payoff. *nods*

There’s a lot to be said for not being compassionate. Oh, sure, it can get you friends, but then friendships are full of complications. Like when they ask you something innocuous like what’ve you been up to this week? and you have to respond with it’s classified; an exchange that has not got any less boring for its constant repetition over the last few years. Black Ops to Dinosaurs and none of it is anything that can be shared over a pint.

Being compassionate can also lead to situations like the one Becker has got himself into now; watching a co-worker and two dinosaurs investigating his living room. The Diictodons seem more interested in scrabbling around underneath his futon and trying to find out whether any of the furniture in the room is edible (Becker’s really hoping that they’ll decide it isn’t), while Connor is going through his CD collection in a way Becker thinks is actually quite invasive. He’s tempted to say something like this is not a fucking first date but then gets the feeling that that will create all kinds of awkwardness.

“This is nice,” Connor says cheerfully, looking around the room, “Very… minimalist.”

Becker thinks something unkind along the lines of I can make you go back to living in the Coffee Machine Room, but for some reason his stupid compassionate mouth doesn’t form the words.

=

Becker goes running every morning at six; it not only helps maintain his fitness – he never gets to go to the gym any more, people at the ARC are forever trying to get themselves dead – but also gets him into a calm mental space for the day. He leaves his flat as quietly as he can manage, suddenly conscious of there being someone else here who probably will not appreciate being woken when it’s barely light, and spends an enjoyable hour running in the nearby park, where there are no dinosaurs of any description at all, and no one looking at him with the faintly accusing aren’t you meant to be head of security, why is Nick Cutter dead? sort of expression that most personnel seem to possess these days.

When Becker gets back home he takes a shower and gets dressed and then is forced to walk through his living room to get to the kitchen; a horrible design flaw he didn’t think of when he bought the place because it never occurred to him that he’d be letting a co-worker and his pet dinosaurs sleep on his sofa. Connor is sprawled on his back, one arm draped off the sofa, looking even younger than usual in sleep and snoring very softly. One of the Diictodons is lying on his chest, while the other is curled up on the floor beside the futon, just beneath Connor’s limp fingers.

It’s a weirdly domestic scene, and Becker suddenly and sharply finds himself thinking about a beloved pet dog he had as a child, before recalling that they ended up having to give him away because they were moving yet again. He clenches his teeth and goes to make some coffee, because there’s nothing like caffeine to wash away the memories of having a father who was far more interested in his rank and his medals than his actual family.

=

“Are they house-trained?” Becker asks, realising a little belatedly that this is something he should have thought of earlier.

It’s a quiet day when no one’s actively tried to kill them – prehistoric creature or human being – and Becker is feeling a little superfluous because everyone else in the ARC seems to have paperwork or things to investigate when they’re not running around after things that have escaped Anomalies, but he’s basically left to polish his gun. Which is in no way a euphemism.

Connor shrugs. “Hopefully?” he suggests.

Becker rolls his eyes. “Am I going to get home to find that your creatures have eaten my flat?”

“They didn’t eat Abby’s flat,” Connor replies. “Plus, Sid and Nancy are herbivores, they’d probably only eat your pot plants. If you had pot plants. Which you don’t.”

Becker resists the urge to roll his eyes again, because everything about Connor kind of makes him want to roll his eyes at him, but they do have to live together for now and he’d prefer a quiet life.

“That’s nice to know,” he says instead.

Connor grins at him, blithe and amused and weirdly endearing, and Becker decides to go and find something else to do. It doesn’t really matter what; just as long as it’s not here.

=

“You cook.” Connor sounds suspicious, prodding at the food in front of him with a fork.

“If this is the reaction I’m going to get, I won’t do it again,” Becker replies tartly.

“No!” Connor pulls his plate a little closer to him, as though afraid Becker will take it away in a fit of pique. He was, admittedly, considering this, but he didn’t think Connor had noticed. “No, it’s just… I didn’t know you could cook.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Becker points out.

“I know you have a dreadful taste in music,” Connor responds cheerfully, and then pulls his food even nearer when Becker glares at him. “Well, ok, maybe not dreadful dreadful, just… um…” He trails off, and prods his dinner some more. “You cook,” he says again, eventually.

“I don’t spend all my time blowing things up,” Becker tells him.

Connor grins. “Well, now I know that.”

Becker is tempted to say something like I am going back to cooking for one from now on, you can carry on living on Pot Noodles and get scurvy but for some reason doesn’t. He allows himself a small smile and watches Connor eating.

Something bumps against his chair, causing him to drop the pasta on his fork, and he looks down to find one of the Diictodons hoovering it up.

“Should dinosaurs eat spaghetti?” he asks Connor.

“I really don’t know,” Connor replies. “They don’t do pet manuals for these guys, sadly.” He peers under the table and looks amused. “She likes you, you know.”

Becker looks doubtfully down at Nancy, who rubs her head against his chair in a strangely cat-like gesture.

“She’s not going to start humping my leg, is she?” he asks.

Connor shrugs. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he responds.

It’s not exactly reassuring.

=

There was a time when Becker had his life in control, though he’s rapidly forgetting what that was like; possibly it was sometime before he finished at Sandhurst, before he started being shipped off to hot countries where things kept exploding and people kept fucking dying around him. Now, of course, his life involves far too many dinosaurs and, at the moment, also involves no privacy whatsoever. His flat isn’t exactly tiny, but he’s not used to sharing it with another person and two dinosaurs who might be quite small but make up for that by being as destructive as possible.

Becker quickly learns how to keep things he really likes as high up as he can, and even learns to get used to the feeling of mild anxiety every time he unlocks his front door; he’s usually faced with two perfectly cheerful Diictodons, generally surrounded by the shredded remains of something Becker forgot to put out of harm’s way. Sid doesn’t like him and Becker swears blind that the creature takes a malicious pleasure in eating his curtains and pulling apart his cushions. Nancy, on the other hand, is almost ridiculously affectionate, following Becker around the flat chirping or waking him up in the morning with the clatter of her claws on his bedroom floor.

The thing Becker really can’t get used to is living with Connor. Connor, with his habit of leaving clothes strewn across the flat, his wide grins that are disarmingly charming, and his inability to ever stop talking. Becker is used to living in a quiet, tidy, empty home, and he certainly doesn’t have that any more. He can’t even bring himself to resent Connor for this invasion of his personal space; Connor is sweet in his own way, making cups of tea all the time, buying things off the internet to replace whatever Sid and Nancy destroy, and being less nosy about Becker’s belongings than Becker feels he would be if the positions were reversed. If he could only get Connor to stop looking puzzled every time Becker wears something that isn’t his military uniform or reveals that there’s more to his life than taking orders and occasionally shooting things, then everything would be absolutely fine.

Becker just wishes, really, that it would all just stop being so weird.

=

“Really, thank you so much for this,” Connor is saying. He’s babbling and Becker is trying very hard not to find it endearing, because he’s horribly aware that if anyone else were talking to him like this he’d be willing them to stop talking and probably being fairly obvious about this wish. “I mean, you know, you’re… you and I wouldn’t have expected you do, well, this, and it’s really… really nice.”

Becker waits for a moment, swallowing down a smile that threatens to erupt over his face, and then carefully says: “Are you done?”

Connor grins sheepishly. “Yeah,” he replies. “I just… wanted you to know I’m grateful.”

Becker nods, not entirely trusting himself to speak yet.

“And I’ll take you out for a drink or something to make up for all this.”

There’s something too appealing about going out for a drink with Connor, and it’s probably that thought that makes him respond without even thinking:

“By ‘this’, do you mean you and your tiny destructive dinosaurs trashing my home?”

The smile slides from Connor’s face and Becker suddenly wants to bite his own tongue out.

“I guess, yeah,” Connor mumbles, looking guilty.

Jesus, Hilary Becker, you really are an antisocial bastard who is incapable of communicating with people when you’re not giving them orders. Becker sighs, and tries to work out something placating to say that won’t actually have to use the words ‘I’m’ and ‘sorry’ anywhere near each other; old habits die hard, after all.

“That was shitty,” he mutters, “I don’t mean it and I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You can mean it if you want to,” Connor offers quietly, and Becker feels shittier than ever.

=

Becker stays late at the ARC the next night, going through various defence strategies with Danny – who takes far more interest in this side of things than Cutter or Jenny ever did – and when he makes it back to the flat he finds Connor has already fallen asleep on the sofa, the television burbling away softly. There’s a Diictodon asleep on his chest, which cracks an eye open when Becker takes a step forward, and gives Becker a look that plainly says that although it tolerates him, if he gets any nearer to Connor he’s going to lose fingers. Becker decides not to risk turning the TV on, and instead heads for the kitchen. The other Diictodon is in there; the newspaper Becker bought this morning is shredded on the floor, though Becker supposes he should be glad his tablecloth hasn’t met the same fate. The little dinosaur immediately comes over to him, twining around Becker’s legs like a cat.

“Hi, Nancy,” he says and neatly steps over her to get Evian out of the fridge. Nancy follows him, butting her head against his calves. “What have you been up to today, other than eating the Guardian?”

Nancy makes a cheerful chirruping noise in response that Becker sincerely hopes doesn’t mean I tore up your duvet – again and then pads off to take a drink out of the water bowl they keep in here for the Diictodons. Becker watches her while he drains his own bottle of water, trying not to let a fond smile creep onto his face. When Nancy’s done, she comes back over and chirrups at him until Becker obediently crouches down and pats her head. In a surprisingly quick move that he doesn’t anticipate at all, Nancy manages to climb onto his lap, pushing at his chest with her little feet until he falls back, Nancy chattering away happily and butting her head against his chin as she stands proud on his ribcage.

“Ok,” Becker laughs, “Ok, you win, ok?” He raises one hand and she snaps playfully at his fingers. “You are a bloody weird little thing, you know that, Nancy?”

She chirps in response and settles down, hard feet digging into his stomach.

“You do realise that you are not actually a cat, don’t you?” Becker asks as she starts making a low growing sound that could be interpreted as a purr. He sighs. “Very well.”

The sound of laughter makes him raise his head; Connor is standing in the doorway looking ruffled and sleepy, grinning down at Becker and Nancy.

“I can kill you in twenty-six different ways,” Becker reminds him, without any real venom. Connor stops laughing, but his grin doesn’t diminish in the slightest.

“I will say that the two of you make a very manly and scary picture, then,” he says, “And I will in no way use the word ‘adorable’.”

Becker attempts a glare that dissolves embarrassingly quickly and Connor starts laughing at him again.

=

It’s a horrible, wet day, and they’re attacked by prehistoric things that fly; Abby spends about an hour yelling at Becker after he narrowly misses actually shooting one with something that isn’t a tranquilliser gun, and Lester spends another hour yelling at him because several members of the public saw rather more than they were meant to, and there isn’t an inch of Becker that isn’t smothered in mud. He thinks about showering at the ARC but learns that Connor is planning on staying behind to play with the Artefact, which usually means he’s there half the night, and decides to head home and appreciate getting the flat to himself for a while. Given how his day is going, he’s expecting to get back to find that the Diictodons have finally managed to chew through some forgotten electrical cables and burn down the whole block of flats, so he’s pleasantly surprised to find they’ve only destroyed the newspapers he left on the floor in the hope it would stop them from eating things he actually wants to keep.

Maybe Becker is finally starting to learn something about keeping dinosaurs as pets.

“You’re going in the kitchen, brats,” he informs them, carefully shepherding Sid and Nancy inside, making sure they have food and water and an old t-shirt of his to entertain themselves with, and then shutting them in. Provided they’re let out again within a couple of hours, they shouldn’t try and eat through his door.

Becker drops his wet clothes into the laundry basket he keeps in the corner of the bathroom, grimacing at the way they peel unpleasantly from his skin. He’s got a splitting headache – not that he’d ever confess to it; he’s got a reputation to maintain, after all – and, really, he’s had fucking enough of today. He heats the shower up as hot as he can stand, hair in his eyes as he watches muddy water swirl down the drain, burning water pounding his sore muscles.

Finally, when he’s used about half a bottle of shower gel cleaning himself up, Becker concedes that he should probably get out and find some painkillers. The bathroom is full of warm steam and it’s all so blissfully quiet. Becker grabs a towel, winding it around his waist, and goes to find some clothing.

He’s crossing the living room as the front door opens; Becker sighs, and reflects that Connor has absolutely bloody perfect timing. He looks a little like he’s been for a swim fully-clothed, hair plastered flat to his skull, clothes soaked through. For a horrible, timeless moment, Connor appears stuck in the doorway, eyes very, very wide, and it’s only his years of practice in communal showers that keep Becker from blushing.

“Shut the door,” he says at last, because one of them needs to remain calm and past experience suggests that won’t be Connor, “You’re making a draft.”

“Right.” Connor is all but flailing; he manages to shut the front door with a slam that makes Becker’s temples ring with pain. “Um, Becker, you’re, um, you know.”

“Well,” Becker responds, voice thick with sarcasm because it’s really the only defence mechanism he has, “It would rather defeat the object if I showered with all my clothes on.”

“Yeah,” Connor agrees, a little smile flashing awkwardly across his lips. He still looks stunned and seems to be flushing enough for the both of them, and Becker is really not in the right frame of mind to deal with this at all. “Go in the kitchen, Connor,” he orders, making sure to stay dignified because his dignity and this sodden towel are really all he has left to him.

Connor practically runs for the kitchen, shutting the door hastily behind him, and Becker walks into his bedroom with his migraine pulsing behind his eyes. Still, he reflects as he dresses, it’s really a miracle that this hasn’t happened daily, and then winces as his brain finally registers the embarrassment he’s been trying to ignore.

“Oh dear God,” Becker says aloud, before muttering a string of expletives which don’t really make him feel any better.

When he ventures into the kitchen, Connor is perched on the sideboard with the Diictodons snapping at the wet laces of his converse.

“Sorry,” he says, and: “I made you a cup of tea.”

The tea is hot and made exactly the way Becker likes it – strong, milky, and with exactly half a teaspoon of sugar in it – and Connor is looking soggy and sheepish and rather sweet.

“Thanks,” Becker says, and tries to ignore the way Connor currently seems to be incapable of looking him in the eye.

=

Stuck in traffic on the way to the ARC, Connor stops hopping between radio stations and shifts in his seat to look at Becker.

“Do you actually have a first name?” he asks.

Becker knew he shouldn’t have offered Connor a lift.

“No,” he responds, without missing a beat. “My parents decided not to bother with one.” Connor is looking incredulous, so Becker adds: “They thought about giving me one, and then they said: ‘well, he’s going to join the military anyway, he doesn’t really need one’.”

Connor laughs, though there’s something besides amusement on his face. “So you were always going to be a soldier, then?”

Becker doesn’t want to get into this conversation; not now, not ever, and certainly not without enough alcohol to kill a normal person. He keeps his expression neutral, willing some kind of dinosaur to appear and eat all the cars in front of them so they can get to the bloody ARC already.

For some reason, the homicidal dinosaurs never come when you actually want them to.

“Yes,” he says, keeping his tone clipped. “Everyone in my family’s been in the military.”

Connor’s expression is just a little pitying, and Becker can feel his teeth gritting, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel.

“When-” Connor begins.

“Look, just because you’re sleeping on my futon doesn’t mean we have to know anything at all about each other,” Becker snaps, a little more venomously than he means to. Connor flinches; Becker wants to apologise, but too many of his buttons have been pressed and he doesn’t trust himself to speak until they get to the ARC and he can become blissfully monosyllabic in the name of professionalism.

=

Becker cooks dinner that night and tells himself that he doesn’t feel guilty for snapping at Connor at all, because he was entirely within his rights to stop the man prying. Except, a little voice in the back of his head that he’s doing his best to stamp on keeps saying, Connor wasn’t really prying, as such, just asking a couple of perfectly logical questions, and Becker shot him down kind of unceremoniously.

Connor trails into the kitchen after a while, Nancy squirming in his arms, and watches Becker work in uncharacteristic silence. Finally, he says:

“Sorry if I screwed up this morning.” His lips twist ruefully. “I spend my whole life with my foot in my mouth, you know?”

“I may have noticed that,” Becker says, smiling a little to take the sting out of the words. “This morning wasn’t your fault, anyway.”

Connor shifts Nancy, who is trying to escape his hold, and says: “I know that sleeping on your sofa doesn’t give me any right to personal information or whatever, but… I never know what’s going in your head, and it’s kind of weird. That’s all.”

Becker reflects that Connor wouldn’t want to know what’s going in his head most of the time, especially given that a small corner of his mind seems to have devoted itself entirely to debating the attractiveness of Connor’s awkward smiles without Becker ever consciously deciding that that would be an ok thing for it to do. But he’s willing to accept that Connor may actually have a point; after all, Becker never has that problem, Connor tends to spend his time talking about anything and everything that crosses his mind; everyone can read between his lines.

After a moment where the only sound in the kitchen is the soft hiss of sautéing vegetables, Becker makes a decision.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” he says quietly, not looking at Connor, keeping his voice as even and expressionless as he can. “Growing up with your father’s achievements and your grandfather’s achievements and his grandfather’s achievements, and everyone expecting even greater things from you. They cast very long shadows, and the prospect of getting out of them is… daunting.”

Connor says nothing for so long that Becker can feel his spine prickling, even as he continues cooking as though he’s completely fine. This is why he hardly ever talks to anyone who isn’t in the military; actual conversations are horribly nerve-wracking.

“Wow,” Connor murmurs, eventually putting Nancy down on the floor where she immediately dashes to butt her head against Becker’s calves, “I think I finally have a corner of the jigsaw puzzle.”

“I’m not nearly interesting enough to be a jigsaw puzzle,” Becker responds briskly, turning the heat off.

“I think you’re interesting,” Connor tells him blithely, and Becker feels something in his chest tighten, which is not fucking helpful.

“That’s because you know nothing about me,” he shrugs, and gets a smile in return. “If you go and get plates, we can eat.”

They talk about nothing in particular over dinner, the inane sort of conversations they’re both getting quite good at, while Becker privately worries about how much he’s really given away.

=

Becker has never bothered coming out to his parents because his father would kill him – or would have a damn good go, anyway – and he really loves his mother far too much to make her watch the inevitable ugliness. The Beckers are a military family full of shiny medals and casual homophobia, and he really doesn’t need any of the shit that would come from by the way, I’m gay. It’s probably something he’ll have to deal with in the future when he never brings a wife and children home, but with any luck he’ll be eaten by a giant dinosaur with an impressive amount of teeth first, and then he’ll never have to deal with it.

Most of his sex life has been shrouded in various shades of sheepishness; he’s not ashamed but discretion has always been more important than anything else, and Becker has never allowed himself to be attracted to anyone around him because of the inevitable locker room awkwardness. In many ways, working at the ARC is easier; oh, the being attacked by dinosaurs is still terrifying and strange, and he’s learned a dozen new ways to die that he never considered when he was simply in Special Ops, but at least the atmosphere is different. No less serious, but there’s some breathing room.

On the phone, spewing cheerful lies and variations on it’s classified to his mother, Becker does his best not to feel guilty about the fact she really knows nothing about his life. Connor is pottering around quietly in the kitchen, making cups of tea and burning toast, and Sid and Nancy appear to have tired themselves out, sleeping on cushions they’ve dragged off his sofa and onto the floor. For once, the flat is peaceful and quiet, though Becker suspects it won’t last long.

“You are all right, though, aren’t you, Hilary?” his mother finishes with, maternal anxiety threaded through her voice.

I am currently living with two knee-high dinosaurs and my over-excitable colleague who wears a vast array of very skinny jeans and who I may or may not have a highly inappropriate crush on. Becker can’t say that to his mother for about twelve different reasons, but the words make his mouth twist ruefully anyway.

“I’m fine,” he promises, and hangs up a couple of minutes later.

“Does your mother know what your name is?” Connor asks, walking back into the sitting room and passing Becker a steaming mug.

“Are you ever going to let that go?” Becker enquires a little wearily.

“No,” Connor replies, with a cheerful grin.

=

It’s been a long day of dashing around after a medieval knight and his very own dragon, and Becker suspects he still has bits of strawberry in inappropriate and unpleasant places. All he really wants is to have a very hot shower and go home, and his goal is very nearly within reach; but, as usual, Connor throws a spanner into the works.

Connor catches Becker before he can make it to the locker room, an anguished expression on his face, a half-grimace, half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth in a way that makes Becker want to track down whoever has made him look like that and punch them until their nose becomes one with their face.

“Um,” Connor begins awkwardly, “Um, Abby, uh, I mean… I need a favour.”

Becker immediately decides that if the favour is to put in a good word for Connor with Abby, he will refuse, because he is not and has never been a masochist. Connor is looking expectantly at him, so Becker keeps his expression entirely blank and says:

“…Right.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Connor promises quickly, “I’ll do whatever you want.” Becker’s mind helpfully throws up an interesting series of images, most of which would probably result in Connor getting him swiftly dismissed for sexual harassment, and a couple of which don’t even look physically possible. Mercifully, Sandhurst taught him how to keep a straight face, and none of his features twitch in the slightest. “Well,” Connor adds, “Please don’t kill me, but, you know, you could skin me… maybe not, that would be untidy, you wouldn’t like that-”

“Are you drunk?” Becker can’t help asking.

“No, agitated,” Connor corrects him, “But I see why you could be confused.”

“Well,” Becker says, “Why don’t you tell me what that favour is before we start talking about whether or not I’ll flay you.”

Connor gives him a very interesting look and Becker has to mentally rewind and check that he actually did put the ‘f’ into ‘flay’.

“It’s Abby’s brother,” Connor says at last. “He’s lost Rex in a poker game, and I need to get him back before someone works out that he’s not actually a rare species of lizard.”

“Why can’t you just ask Abby to help?” Becker asks.

“She can’t know!” Connor says quickly.

“Why not?” Becker frowns. “Surely she’ll kick her brother out, and then you can go home. And that would be a good thing.”

Connor gets a very closed expression on his face that Becker doesn’t think he’s ever seen before, and he turns.

“I’ll sort it out myself.”

Becker sighs, intercepting Connor before he gets to the door, fingers curling around his arm.

“Just tell me what you want me to do.”

=

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in the super weapons cupboard before,” Connor remarks, following Becker inside.

“You can start by not calling it a ‘cupboard’,” Becker replies, flicking the lights on to reveal their giant weapons locker. “And don’t tell Lester I let you in here.”

He walks briskly through the racks of guns, looking for just the right model. Connor follows him a little hesitantly, staring around in fascination. He reaches out to one gigantic gun, and Becker moves quickly to pull his hand away.

“Connor, you’re a surprisingly competent man, but you are rather clumsy. Lester will have a lot of words to say to me if I let you blow your fingers off and none of them will be particularly polite.”

Connor glances up at him, grinning. “You think I’m competent?”

Becker feels himself smiling back before he can stop himself, before he can remind himself that they’re doing a favour for Abby and no matter what Becker does or doesn’t do, Abby will always win hands down. Belatedly, he remembers to let go of Connor’s wrist. “Sometimes.”

=

“I’ll buy you a drink when we’ve got Rex safely home,” Connor offers, when Becker’s sent his men back to the ARC along with the shiny fuck-off weaponry.

“You don’t have to do that,” Becker replies. “I had fun. I don’t often get to use my scary-tough-guy credentials for fun.”

“I’ll buy you one anyway.” Connor hefts the box with Rex in and Becker can hear the lizard creature scrabbling around inside. “Hey mate,” Connor says quietly, lifting the corner of the box and peering inside, “Nice to see you.”

“You just want to buy me a drink so you can get me pissed and try to find out what my name is,” Becker tells him, as they walk over to his car.

“Maybe,” Connor says, smirking a little.

“You’ll fail,” Becker warns him, smirking back. “Better men than you have tried and got alcohol poisoning as I drank every last one of them under the table.”

It doesn’t take long to drive over to Abby’s and Connor invites him up; Becker considers just staying in the car, but part of him wants to see the home that Connor and Abby and their dinosaurs have created together, just so he can remind himself of all the reasons why he really can’t find Connor as distracting as he does.

Connor opens the box and Becker watches a blur of green fly out of it; Connor’s laughing in delight, though Becker can hear relief in his tone too. Rex swoops around the flat for a while, before finally settling down on top of a bookcase, looking at Becker with something even he can tell is suspicion.

“This is Becker,” Connor says, reaching one gloved hand up to Rex, “You don’t need to be scared of him. He’s a good guy. Kind of emotionally stunted, but a good guy anyway.”

He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look at him, and for a long moment Becker can only think something incoherent along the lines of oh dear God I can’t do this.

=

“What does the ‘H’ stand for?” Connor asks over a pint.

Becker raises his eyebrows. “Sorry, what?”

“Your first name begins with ‘H’,” Connor says. “Now I know that, can’t you… fill in the blanks?”

“This isn’t hangman,” Becker can’t help but point out. “And how do you know it starts with ‘H’?”

“I rescued your electricity bill from Sid,” Connor explains. “H Becker.”

“Can’t you train the brats not to eat important documents?” Becker asks, without any real hope.

“You’re changing the subject,” Connor singsongs. “Can I guess?”

Becker sighs, but there are no dinosaurs in the vicinity and he has alcohol now, so he’s feeling more inclined to humour him.

“If you insist,” he says.

“…Harry,” Connor suggests. Becker shakes his head. “Hugo. Uh… Hieronymus.”

“Seriously?”

“I think Hieronymus Becker sounds pretty good,” Connor shrugs. “And it would explain why you keep it quiet.”

“My name is not Hieronymus,” Becker says, with all the patience he can muster.

“Henry.”

“No.”

“Um…Hermione?”

“For God’s sake!” Becker is laughing in spite of himself. “No, Connor, my name is not fucking Hermione.”

“Be cool if it was.” Connor looks thoughtful. “Herman.”

“If you keep this up much longer I will knock you unconscious.” Becker delivers the threat with a smile and gets one in return, but a woman at the next table looks over with some concern. Connor doesn’t look particularly intimidated, merely taking another mouthful of his drink.

“Horatio.”

“Did you google boys’ names beginning with ‘h’?” Becker enquires, trying not to laugh.

“Possibly. Horace.”

Becker actually does start laughing, in spite of his better judgement. “Still no. How many more have you got?”

“Oh, plenty,” Connor responds cheerfully. “By the way, is there a reason you smell overwhelmingly like strawberries?”

It’s possible that Connor is a little tipsy, which doesn’t surprise Becker at all; he looks like a lightweight.

“The dragon threw me into some.” It sounds sort of pathetic and he grimaces, taking a long drink of beer.

“Oh.” Connor looks thoughtful. “I thought maybe you’d started going to the Body Shop; Abby does, you know.”

Becker gazes heavenward, and wishes that he’d decided to have this stupid impractical crush on Lester or Danny or someone with a modicum of dignity and the ability to occasionally not say anything and everything that comes into their heads.

“Ok,” he says carefully, “You are not allowed to speak for the next five minutes, all right?”

“I like strawberries,” Connor mumbles, apparently to himself, but he does obediently shut up.

=

Just for once, Becker reflects, it would be nice if there were dinosaurs that saw the shiny glowing anomaly and decided not to come through it, and just to stay happily in their own homes. That would be really helpful. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened today, and Becker’s got his work cut out for him, particularly since Abby’s being particularly vehement about the don’t you dare shoot any of them thing. Becker isn’t sure what they’re facing up to at the moment; Connor babbled the name at one point, but all he’s really sure of is that they have these big tails with massive spikes on them, and his day is going to become pretty fucking bad if he or any of the team end up impaled.

Danny’s come up with a clever plan that involves getting hold of an unsafe-looking vehicle and driving it at a speed destined to make him dead extremely quickly – as per usual – and Becker is trying not to kill anything since he’s sure that if Abby yells at him he’s going to end up telling her about her brother and what he did with Rex, and he knows Connor will never forgive him if he spills the beans. People are running around, trying to encourage the dinosaurs back through the anomaly, and sooner or later someone’s going to get a spike through their arm or something, Becker just knows it.

“I think they’re nearly all gone!” Connor calls triumphantly; he’s standing by, waiting to lock the anomaly and stop any more spiky bastards from coming through. Becker nods, and then his attention is caught by another dinosaur running towards them, picking up quite a speed considering how heavy these things are. Connor turns towards it too, mouth opening wide, and Becker realises that Connor isn’t going to be able to get out of the way in time. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he throws himself at the other man, knocking him down and aside seconds before the dinosaur rushes past them, so close Becker hears the spikes of the tail whoosh past his ear.

Connor is speaking words faster than he can understand, squirming in a way Becker is determined to ignore, eyes wide with shock. He thinks there’s thanks in amongst the bloody hell and ow sounds emanating from Connor, and he keeps him pinned down, scanning the horizon for Danny or Abby with any remaining creatures. When he glances back down, Connor has quietened down a little, and there’s something horribly close to a moment when their eyes meet, in spite of the nearby sounds of shouting and general destruction. Becker makes the interesting discovery that, when it comes to times like this, he really doesn’t trust himself at all, and it takes all the self-control he’s spent years cultivating not to lean down, not to shift his hand and clench it in Connor’s hair. Not to-

“You’re really heavy,” Connor complains, which wasn’t really what Becker wanted him to say in this situation, but it’s probably for the best. He pushes himself upright, offering Connor a hand to his feet, keeping professionalism firmly in place because it’s really his only hope. Connor has grass in his hair and his hands are trembling just slightly as he turns his attention back to the keyboard.

=

Four days later, Becker walks into his bedroom to find that Sid and Nancy have managed to get into his wardrobe and pull out his dress uniform, the one he graduated from Sandhurst in, and have torn it into pieces. Anger, white and pure and uncontrollable, rips through Becker; he drags the bits of fabric away from the Diictodons with so much force that Nancy skitters across the floor, chirping in alarm.

“Get out of here, you nasty fucking things!” Becker hears himself shouting, storming after them to make sure they go. “You should have been fucking put down the moment you got left behind!”

The Diictodons run for the kitchen, chirruping as they go. Connor appears in Becker’s bedroom doorway, looking confused.

“What-” His gaze falls to the dark torn material on the floor. “Oh, Becker, sorry, I’ll-”

“Don’t,” Becker cuts him off. He knows he’s too angry, that he should try and take a breath and choke back some of this fury, but his uniform is in shreds and it’s not so much what it is as what it represents; so he doesn’t really care if Connor’s looking at him with uncertainty and maybe even a certain trace of fear. “Just… just shut your fucking pets up and get the hell away from me. I don’t really want to see you right now.”

He slams his bedroom door in Connor’s face and kicks the useless material, teeth clenched too hard. It shouldn’t matter but it does, it fucking does, and he doesn’t honestly care when he hears his front door close a few minutes later.

=

By morning he’s calm again, a little astonished at how vehemently he lost his temper, and also rather ashamed. Becker emerges from his room to find that, as he suspected, Connor is not here and hasn’t come back all night. He’ll deal with that. First, he knows, he’ll have to check on Sid and Nancy, and approaches the kitchen door with a certain amount of trepidation.

The Diictodons have opened all his cupboards and his fridge, and the room is a mess. Sid seems to be taking a certain malicious pleasure in gnawing Becker’s things, while Nancy eyes Becker with a certain amount of wariness and doesn’t come running straight over as usual. Becker sighs and sits down on the floor, speaking in a low voice.

“I shouldn’t have shouted at you,” he says, “Although you do both need some house training. But I’d never hurt you and hopefully you know that.”

He feels like an idiot but he’s closer to the dinosaurs than he is to most people in his life, and he can’t have them living here for however much longer it will be while being afraid of him. Eventually, Nancy edges over, and when Becker doesn’t make any sudden movements she climbs into his lap, covering him in flour and egg whites.

“Lovely,” he sighs, rolling his eyes, while Nancy chirps her forgiveness, claws catching in his t-shirt. Sid just pulls a cereal box to pieces, which Becker takes to mean that things are going to remain business as usual.

“You like me really,” he tells the Diictodon, who, as per usual, ignores him.

=

It’s still very early when Becker makes his way into the ARC; the corridors are empty and quiet, except for a few of his men, who do a very good job of not looking quizzical as Becker strides past.

Connor, as he suspected he would be, is curled up asleep on a bench in the locker room, head pillowed on his arm in a way that looks really uncomfortable. He looks as small and helpless as he did the first time Becker came across him and found himself saying do you want to sleep on my sofa? It’ll be better than sleeping here, anyway before he really thought it through. He still doesn’t regret the decision, even though he thinks he probably ought to, if only because he’s just tormenting himself with constant temptation.

“Connor,” he says softly, and after a moment the other man jerks awake.

“Becker,” he responds, looking stunned. “Um, look, I’ll sort something out, I’ll-”

“I’m sorry,” Becker tells him, quickly, before he can swallow the words back down and use other, inadequate ones. “Really.”

“Why are you sorry?” Connor asks, frowning. “I’m the one whose pets are ripping up your flat. And I’ve figured it out, I can move out in a couple of days-”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Becker says, sitting down on another bench. “You three can stay as long as you need to. I made the offer, and I’m not retracting it.”

“Thank you,” Connor says, sounding surprised. He smiles. “I knew they’d grow on you.”

They’re not the only ones, Becker thinks, and follows it up with the realisation: I’m really in trouble now.

=
Continued here

"Don't Broadcast This Bit In The Saturday Teatime Slot", RPS, Ben Mansfield/Bradley James

2009-07-27T08:07:54Z

Title: Don’t Broadcast This Bit In The Saturday Teatime Slot
Fandom: RPS [Primeval/Merlin]
Pairing: Ben Mansfield/Bradley James
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2060
Genre: Slash
Disclaimer: If this actually happened, I would die of squee. But it didn’t. Please don't send ninjas to break my legs.
Summary: “Ok,” Bradley says, “That’s it, you do not get to visit this set again. You can fuck off back to Dinosaur Land.”
Author’s Notes: I’m fully aware that this interests no one in the world but me, since it’s badly written and Special Hell inducing. But seriously, have you seen the boys playing Frisbee together?! It’s adorable, and I’ve wanted to write this since before I even knew who Becker or Ben were, and I was just like “look at that sensationally pretty man who is apparently going to be in Primeval hanging out with Bradley James!” (Seriously, where do you think I got the name Captain Pretty from in the first place? I called him that because I was hardly going to remember “Captain Becker”, was I?) And also, it’s only a minute and a half of a video clip, and the guys spend a good third of it gratuitously touching each other. I’m only human, and ever so easily led.

Oh, and just in case anyone does actually want to read this, apparently Ben was auditioning for the role of Arthur when the casting people were all “hey, go be Captain Pretty instead”. So that’s what I’m going on about.

Within about three seconds of meeting Ben Mansfield, Katie loudly announces that she wishes he’d got the role of Arthur instead of Bradley, and then flutters her eyelashes a lot. Bradley good-naturedly calls her a long list of names, beginning with “hussy” and getting increasingly more slanderous, while she smirks at him with a humouring expression.

When Bradley finally runs out of expletives, Ben arches an eyebrow and remarks: “No wonder she prefers me.”

“Ok,” Bradley says, “That’s it, you do not get to visit this set again. You can fuck off back to Dinosaur Land.”

Ben doesn’t listen to him, which is generally how most people react to Bradley’s perfectly reasonable orders, like Colin does not get to talk at all on Thursday afternoons and no one is to bring up the missing video camera incident again. He’s too busy looking casually sexy in his military gear – he’s not wearing torture contraptions calling themselves boots on his feet, or irritatingly bulky chain mail – and flirting outrageously with Katie.

“You’re just sulky ‘cause I kicked your arse at Frisbee,” Ben says later, when Katie has fluttered off to shoot something in her scandalously lowcut and entirely historically inaccurate costume.

“You did not kick my arse at Frisbee,” Bradley protests. “It was raining, I had to go and keep my costume dry.”

Ben just looks amused, and slightly condescending. “Right,” he says, patting Bradley’s mail-clad arm, hand lingering just a little too long.

Bradley scowls, and can’t stop himself from saying: “Arthur would totally kick Becker’s arse in a fight.”

“Please,” Ben says, grinning, eyes lighting up with bemused competition, “Becker spent most of his life in military academies or actually in wars.”

“You should see me handle a sword,” Bradley says, and is slightly how ashamed of how blatantly flirtatious it comes out; he’s doing his best not to look like Katie, so that when he teases her mercilessly later she won’t call him a hypocrite. At least there are no witnesses.

Ben’s lips curl, just a little.

“Becker would shoot Arthur in the head from several feet away,” he points out, fingers stroking the thigh holster Bradley has been doing a very good job of not looking at because it makes his thought processes grind to an embarrassing halt.

“Arthur has Merlin, who is magical,” Bradley reminds him.

“And who would snap like a twig,” Ben adds cheerfully.

“I’m gonna tell Colin you said that,” Bradley says.

“Face it, Bradley, Arthur is going to die horribly.”

“Actually, I think Arthur is kind of magical and immortal.”

Ben’s grinning now, all white teeth and messy hair. “This is true. But I still kicked your arse at Frisbee.”

+

Since they’re filming pretty much next door to each other at the moment, and Bradley has a day off, Ben manages to sneak him into “Dinosaur Land” with very little difficulty.

After seeing Ben as Captain Becker, striding about giving orders in his impractically tight uniform and looking far too comfortable with massive guns, Bradley honestly cannot work out how any members of the Primeval cast and crew actually get anything done. He’s far too distracted, and the only good thing is that Katie and Colin aren’t here to take the piss out of him about his horrible horrible crush and how disgustingly obvious he’s being.

“So, what do you think?” Ben asks, during a shooting break, smirk playing around his lips as though he’s waiting for Bradley to immediately start picking holes in the show and is quite good-naturedly prepared for this.

“I think there should be more sword-fighting,” Bradley informs him gravely.

“Funny you should say that…” Jason Flemying remarks on the way past, paper cup of coffee in hand.

“And me,” Bradley adds quickly. “There should be more me in this show.”

“I don’t know how we manage without you,” Ben says, attempting a serious expression that still crumbles into his practically ubiquitous grin.

Then he’s called back to shooting, and Bradley attempts to watch everything without having a humiliating expression on his face.

+

Later, they’re in Ben’s trailer. Bradley is irritated to find that Ben has a fridge he can keep things in, unlike Bradley’s hotel room in Pierrefonds, and they’re sharing a bottle of wine. Bradley’s had nothing but craft services coffee all day so he suspects he’s going to end up embarrassingly pissed embarrassingly quickly, and although he spends his entire life saying exactly what comes into his head without really thinking it through, generally while his co-stars give him pitying and/or bemused looks, he thinks maybe this is one situation where keeping his mouth shut would be a good idea.

Ben is smoking, and Bradley shouldn’t be distracted by the angle of Ben’s cheekbones every time he inhales, given that he works with Colin Morgan who is, when you get down to it, nothing but cheekbones with some legs attached. Ben’s out of costume – and Bradley is trying very hard not to miss the way the black t-shirt clings to Ben’s muscles – and his hair is flopping messily across his forehead, lips puckered around the cigarette butt. And Bradley is not staring. Really. He is not. staring. at. all. In between drags, Ben is relating his first days on the job; how his thigh holster kept falling off and how he felt like a total twat in front of all the rough tough actual army blokes; Bradley is laughing in all the right places and is just about managing to tell his own stories of navigating a cloak and a sword and how treacherous the combination can be, though he’s sort of doing it on automatic.

If Colin were here, he would be pissing himself.

Ben sucks the cigarette right down to the filter with a crackle of orange flames, then reaches forward to stub it out. Then he straightens up and gives Bradley a confused look, and Bradley belatedly realises that Ben stopped talking about a minute ago and is probably expecting some kind of response.

There are a little Colin and a little Katie in Bradley’s head, and they’re both laughing fit to cause themselves permanent injury. There’s also a little Angel, but although she’s looking sympathetic, her lips are twitching. And oh God, Bradley is definitely drunk.

“You’re quite a strange person, you know,” Ben remarks conversationally.

“I hear that a lot,” Bradley replies.

“I’m not surprised,” Ben murmurs.

Bradley is pissed and doesn’t even have Colin around to watch his back – Colin’s a good guy, fundamentally, and while he’d tease Bradley for ever, he’d get him out of this situation before the whole thing imploded – and Ben is grinning in tight jeans and a blue shirt with slightly too many buttons undone.

“Can I make an observation?” Ben asks, after a moment.

“You’ve already made one.”

“Can I make another one?”

Bradley sits back, sinking a little into Ben’s sofa, and waves a hand in a way that’s just a little regal and that he belatedly realises he’s stolen from Arthur. “Go ahead.”

Ben moves too quickly, and in a moment he’s straddled Bradley’s thighs, hands closing over Bradley’s shoulders.

Bradley blinks. “What the fuck was in that wine?”

Ben’s really smiling now, a shit-eating grin that lights up his whole face. He’s heavy, and has so many muscles that it’s kind of making Bradley want to run for the nearest gym and stay there for the foreseeable future.

“You,” Ben says, voice a low purr, “Do not get to visit this set again. You can fuck off back to Medieval Land.”

Bradley wonders if he is actually hallucinating and just how badly he’s going to be teased by Colin and Katie and Angel when he undoubtedly wakes up naked in a wood somewhere tomorrow with some kind of derogatory word written in Sharpie on his forehead.

Ben’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “You really don’t have a brain-to-mouth filter, do you?” he asks, laughter threaded through his voice.

“So I’m not hallucinating?”

“Not that I know of.”

Bradley frowns. “Then why have I got to fuck off back to Medieval Land?”

Ben leans closer, hair flopping over his forehead and getting in his eyes. “Because you’re distracting,” he all but breathes.

This is why Bradley tries his best not to drink on an empty stomach. He flails as best he can while pinned down by several stone of muscle-y fucking gorgeous actor, and makes a small confused noise.

“Don’t you want to know why you’re distracting?” Ben asks softly, all teeth and bright dark eyes.

“I know I’m distracting,” Bradley replies, “I get told it several times a d-ay…” His voice cracks and fails as Ben slides forward just a little, denim rasping against denim.

“Bradley James, you haven’t been able to keep your eyes off my arse all day,” Ben says, voice soft but firm.

Bradley opens his mouth to protest – something along the lines of lies! all lies! – but a glare from Ben has him closing it again.

“It’s been impossible to concentrate,” Ben adds, still drawing the words out slowly. “Fucking impossible.”

Bradley refuses to let this turn into bad pornography and so does not in any way do something like breathe are you going to punish me? Ben’s lips are curved, eyelashes casting dark shadows down his cheeks, and his hair has fallen over his face in a way that makes Bradley want to reach up and brush it back. He tries to restrain himself, but utterly fails, and before he knows it locks of Ben’s soft, dark hair are tangled around his fingers. Ben catches Bradley’s hand, pulling it down, guiding it… oh. Oh. Bradley finds himself with a handful of Ben’s arse, heat bleeding through his jeans. He gives an experimental squeeze and Ben lets out an interesting little sound between his teeth.

“Happy now?” he asks, slightly breathless.

Bradley’s grinning now, the sort of grin that usually makes Colin roll his eyes at him, but Colin mercifully isn’t here.

“No,” he says, laughter shuddering in his voice, “Not yet. I’m a greedy bastard, you know.”

“So I’m gathering,” Ben replies, “Looks like I’ll have to try harder.”

Bradley tries to reply but Ben’s mouth crashes down on his, warm and wet and tasting of smoke and wine until Bradley is absolutely lightheaded. He pulls Ben closer, teeth digging into his lower lip, and decides that he doesn’t care if this is actually some kind of very strange hallucination, it’s definitely too fucking awesome to try and break out of.

+

Ben’s smoking a post-coital cigarette, hair a wreck, mouth an interesting shade of friction red that Bradley sort of wants to film just so he can keep it forever, only he doesn’t have his camera with him and then he’d probably have to have some sort of explanation for-

“Do you ever shut up?” Ben asks, sounding just like he does when he’s playing Becker, though his eyes are crinkled with amusement.

Bradley shrugs. “Not really.”

It occurs to Bradley that it’s very late and tomorrow he’ll be expected to get up and do things like walk around and form actual sentences, and when he proves himself incapable of doing those things, he’ll have to come up with an excuse, and knowing him he will probably actually say something along the lines of I’ve been shagged senseless by Ben Mansfield, and then Katie will give him that “Oh God, Bradley’s talking” look and Angel will get all giggly and he’ll probably turn around to find Colin’s captured the whole horrible admission on video camera and he’ll be smirking behind the lens.

He manages to keep this entire train of thought in his head and feels very smug about the achievement.

Ben finishes his cigarette and lies back down, just-been-fucked smile playing around his lips, the fingers of one hand idly carding in Bradley’s hair.

“Maybe,” Bradley begins, with no idea what he’s really saying but then that isn’t anything new, “Maybe a fight between Becker and Arthur would end in a draw.”

Ben rolls over, fluidly covering Bradley and smiling down at him before catching his mouth in a kiss that tells Bradley that tonight is in no way over and that he is going to be utterly useless on set tomorrow.

“Well,” Ben murmurs, eventually pulling back, “Until the rematch, anyway.”

"avec mon coeur plein de lumière", Merlin RPF, Bradley/Angel

2009-07-24T08:07:00Z

Title: avec mon coeur plein de lumière
Fandom: RPF [Merlin]
Pairing: Bradley James/Angel Coulby
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2910
Genre: Het
Copyright: Title is from Ojala by Pink Martini (and means with my heart full of light)
Disclaimer: This didn’t happen. I mean, it would be squishy and adorable if it did, but I do get that it didn’t. Really I do. *virtuous nod*
Summary: “‘There is no cure for Bradley James’,” Colin repeats. “I may have that put on a t-shirt.”
Author’s Notes: Sequel to car sans toi il n’y a pas de chanson, because apparently I just can’t get enough of the squishy cuteness that is Angel and Bradley. I am so going to the special hell. Written largely in overwhelming heat in Naples, though I did finally finish it in Vienna.

There are a number of unexpected things that crop up as a result of sort-of dating Bradley James, which Angel thinks she probably shouldn’t be surprised about because, after all, unexpected seems to be the word she’d use to describe the entirety of her relationship with Bradley (if anyone were to ask her to sum it up in one word, which they won’t because a) it’s kind of a secret, and b) Heat magazine doesn’t care about them anyway). Still, there are several random things Angel didn’t anticipate at all; like the pitying looks she gets from half the crew (and, on occasion, the cast), or the way Bradley incessantly refers to her as “my wife” (“We’re not married on the show or off it, stop deliberately misleading people!” “Yet.” “What?” “We’re not married yet.”), or the moments when Bradley is suddenly and startlingly un-Bradley, and is sweet and charming and it’s impossible to believe that he and Colin creep around the Pierrefonds hotel, childishly taking the “Do Not Disturb” signs off people’s doors, or letting spiders they’ve found in their bathrooms loose in Katie’s room, because it always makes her scream. It is often like dating six different people, and pretty much as exhausting as Angel imagines going out with half a dozen people would be.

The interesting part (Angel won’t call it the worst part, because that would sort of imply that she’s not enjoying herself, which she really is – far too much) is the way that she’s got used to the way Whirlwind Bradley has swept through her life and rearranged it all, and now she can’t imagine it any other way.

+

It’s a lovely sunny day, which means Angel is being perpetually blinded by bright light bouncing off polished armour, the stunt guys are probably roasting in their armour/prosthetics combinations, and Colin Morgan is obediently sitting under an array of large umbrellas looking as though someone has not only kicked his puppy, but also murdered it in front of him and then turned it into a tacky handbag. Angel ducks into the shelter with a bottle of water and a smile for him.

“Hello, Vampire Colin.”

Colin reluctantly smiles back. “Hi, Angel. Shouldn’t you be out in the sun frolicking with everyone else?”

It takes her a moment to work out what he’s said – “frolicking” in Colin’s accent is a really interesting tangle of sounds – and then she glances over her shoulder at where various crew members are standing around looking overheated and unimpressed.

“No one’s really frolicking, Colin,” she can’t help pointing out. “I think everyone else wishes they were being followed about by people with umbrellas.”

“I’ll swap,” Colin offers. “Actually, if you don’t get enough sunlight, don’t you… dissolve or something?”

Angel opens her mouth to point out all the reasons why this is wrong, and then remembers that she’s started dealing with all people in her life the way she deals with Bradley, and closes it again.

“Yes,” she says at last, “Yes, you probably do.”

Colin gives her a look that says he’s perfectly aware she’s treating him like Bradley, but a genuine smile is starting to creep across his mouth.

“I may have been wrong,” he says.

“About the sunlight?”

“About Bradley,” he replies.

Angel frowns. “What, you mean when you came to me and begged me to shag Bradley so he’d magically stop being less Bradley-like?” she asks.

“I didn’t put it like that!” he protests, and then looks thoughtful. “I suppose I kind of did. Anyway, I was wrong.”

“What, you want me to stop-”

“No!” Colin says quickly. “No, I just mean that it turns out that that’s just Bradley, he is just perpetually like that.”

Angel nods. “There is no cure for Bradley James.”

“‘There is no cure for Bradley James’,” Colin repeats. “I may have that put on a t-shirt.”

+

It’s impossible to resist the temptation to google yourself, your show and your costars from time to time, especially given how big the Merlin following has become.

“You do realise most of the internet fans seem to think you’re dating Colin, don’t you?” Angel casually drops over lunch, because she lives in perpetual hope that she will one day be able to startle Bradley. He doesn’t even pause in demolishing the sandwich he’s stolen from her (love means never having to say sorry; or, apparently, please may I have some of your lunch).

“I wouldn’t date Colin,” Bradley says dismissively, when his mouth is no longer full. “He’s far too pasty.” He raises his voice and Colin, sat one table over, rolls his eyes. They spent a good hour yesterday bickering over whether Colin looks ‘pasty’ or ‘magical and ethereal’ (“Only girls are ethereal, Colin, like Katie. Oh my God, are you finally admitting you’re actually a girl?” “Fuck off, Bradley.”) and it seems that it is not actually over, much as everyone hoped it would be. “Anyway, aren’t those the same people who think Arthur and Merlin are having some sort of affair?”

Angel opens her eyes very wide and does her best to look puzzled.

“You mean they’re not?”

Bradley rolls his eyes. “And what does your character do all the time? Oh yes; undress Katie McGrath.”

“I do other things occasionally,” Angel offers mildly.

“Yes, like grope Santiago Cabrera,” Bradley replies.

Angel shrugs. “What can I say? It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.” Bradley seems to be actually pouting, so she adds: “Hey, the two of you got to whack each other with sticks in a homoerotic fashion, you have nothing to complain about.”

Bradley smirks. “Fine. When I run off with Colin you can run off with Santiago. I won’t mind, since I’ll be blinded by his skinny whiteness.”

“I’m not the one whose back is peeling off because he overdid the sunbathing,” Colin calls back. “Suddenly ‘ethereal’ is starting to look really appealing, isn’t it?”

Angel sighs and absent-mindedly smacks Bradley’s hands away from what remains of her lunch.

“At least if I was dating Santiago I’d get to eat a whole meal,” she remarks.

“You would,” Bradley agrees. “But you would be robbed of my wit and sparkling company, so your life would be empty and bereft.”

Angel smiles. “Fair enough.”

+

It’s getting late; Bradley and Angel have drunk most of a bottle of two euro wine, and have agreed that they should probably have gone for the five euro bottle because it would probably have tasted more like wine and less like battery acid. Sooner or later they will probably turn on the hotel room TV and see what strange programmes the French People put on in the middle of the night, but for the moment Angel is quite happy to stay sprawled across the bed, barely dressed and contentedly light-headed.

Bradley is searching through his drawers for something, and Angel doesn’t need to open her eyes or turn her head to know what it is.

“I keep telling you, Bradley, that in spite of you and Colin making Merlin and Arthur eyerape each other at every possible moment, this is still a family show and so we will not be making amateur porn for the DVD extras,” she sighs patiently.

Bradley, other than scoffing at the word ‘amateur’, doesn’t bother replying. Angel rolls over and arches an eyebrow.

“Do you have a secret pornstar history you haven’t yet told me about?” she asks.

Bradley shrugs. “Not that I know of.” He turns and gives her a disarmingly charming grin. “I could make one up if you like.”

Angel stretches out a little more on the bed and knows that she will regret this in a few hours’ time when she has to get up for the morning shoot.

“All right,” she says, “Go ahead, tell me the secret history of Bradley James The Porn Star.”

Bradley looks amused. “I don’t know why your name is Angel, you have all these secret pits of depravity.”

Angel has heard this on numerous occasions so doesn’t bother replying, just watches Bradley searching his wardrobe until, with a satisfied little ‘aha’, he uncovers his video camera.

“Family show,” she reminds him.

“It would be educational,” Bradley offers brightly.

“No, it really wouldn’t.”

Bradley sighs and looks prettily long-suffering, before carefully putting his camera on top of his chest of drawers.

“Out of interest,” Angel begins, “What did you do before that camera became the centre of your universe?”

Bradley rolls his eyes in response to what Angel thinks is actually a pretty valid question, coming over to lie beside her on the bed.

“I was a fabulous porn star, Angel, weren’t you listening?”

Angel laughs and decides that next time they will definitely get the five euro wine.

+

The people in Pierrefonds are really too patient with all of them wandering through the shops liberally mispronouncing words and inexpertly using video cameras.

“They must think we’re insane,” Angel remarks as she, Bradley and Tony walk back from yet another shopping trip, laden down with fruit, chocolate and cheap, bad wine. Once again the entirely thing has been recorded by Bradley and his ubiquitous video camera; Angel occasionally wonders what the Powers That Be in charge of the DVD extras actually do with the many, many hours of footage that Bradley provides them with, given that only about half an hour’s worth ever sees daylight. She’s torn between thinking that there is a very giant box of recordings labelled: Bradley James – warning, prolonged exposure may have untold side-effects in a cupboard somewhere, or thinking that they’re all just chucked straight in the bin. It’s not something she’ll ever discuss with Bradley, of course; the more he can be kept in his happy, faintly deluded bubble, the better.

“I think we amuse them,” Tony replies. “I hope we amuse them, anyway.”

“They love us,” Bradley chimes in, with his usual blithe dismissal of things like actual fact. “We brighten up their lives.”

Tony looks as though he is trying not to laugh; an expression a lot of people wear around Bradley, for some reason. “Do we?”

Bradley considers this for a moment. “Well, I do, anyway. They cheer internally whenever I’m around, and wish I came in more often.”

Angel discovered within about three days of meeting Bradley that it is often best just to humour him in any and all situations.

“And I suppose they miss you dreadfully whenever you’re not around?”

“Oh yes.” Bradley nods with certainty. “Everyone’s lives could do with more me in them.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Tony says, a bemused grin flitting around his mouth.

“Maybe we should tell the Pierrefonds people this,” Angel suggests. “Then they might stop flinching whenever we walk in.”

“They don’t flinch,” Bradley scoffs.

“No,” Tony agrees. “They sigh, in an oh, it’s those English actors with the video camera again sort of way.”

Bradley looks like he’s going to protest this, but Angel interrupts: “I bet they wonder if we do any work at all, or if our job is to wander around abusing their language and filming each other buying food while casually insulting the shops we’re in.” She sighs. “They probably wept when we got re-commissioned.”

Bradley sighs excessively loudly. “Maybe they just don’t like you, Angel,” he suggests. “And anyway, it’s free publicity.”

Angel and Tony look doubtful, while Bradley pointedly ignores them.

“You know,” Angel begins tentatively, “You don’t need to film every shopping trip we go on.”

“I’m recording them for posterity,” Bradley says, in his very best patronising tone that he uses a lot of the time as Arthur; Angel half expects him to finish the sentence with a ‘Merlin’.

“What, so in the future we can watch them and go ‘oh yes, this is the time we shopped for grapes and Kinder Buenos, and then you only had a twenty euro note so we got more inadvisably cheap wine’?”

“Exactly.”

Angel considers pointing out that there is something inherently narcissistic about watching recordings of yourself grocery shopping, but instead just smiles and catches Bradley’s free hand with her own.

+

Despite what Bradley may claim, Angel does not spend her entire professional life undressing Katie McGrath, just most of it. They’re having one of those girly conversations over what is definitely an historically inaccurate swishy dress that Angel sort of covets – through she knows it would never suit her, because she is not a willowy goddess-type, unlike some people – and they’re once again establishing that Morgana and Arthur have that interesting slightly incest-y relationship.

“At this rate, we’re never going to get to the marriage,” Angel remarks during a shooting break.

Katie smirks. “First Bradley, now you; you’re both very obsessed with this fictional wedding.”

“Well,” Angel begins, trying to sound reasonable, “It is sort of important. In the legend. You know.”

“Ah, right. Of course.” Katie is still grinning, looking very knowing and not at all convinced. Angel wants to wail: Bradley and I are really not getting married in any way, shape, or form but she can’t even get Bradley to buy it, so she doesn’t bother saying it to Katie.

“You know,” Katie begins thoughtfully after a moment, “You two really do make an adorable couple, considering that one half of that couple is Bradley James.”

Angel really would say something along the lines of: you know, Bradley is really not as bad as you all make him out to be, but she doesn’t because she never does and anyway while it wouldn’t be a lie it’s not exactly the truth either. Bradley is all about the extremes, about a lack of negotiation; things are or they aren’t, something is simple or it isn’t. Angel prefers the grey areas, the pieces in between. She thinks perhaps that’s why they thrive when they probably shouldn’t at all.

“I’m adorable enough for the both of us,” she replies, because it makes Katie smile, sweet and soft and amused.

“Would getting Morgana and Arthur together be a little too incestuous for the BBC Saturday teatime slot?” she asks after a while.

Angel shrugs, and does not say: well, if your cleavage and Colin and Bradley’s bedroom eyes have escaped the censors, some not-actual-incest should be fine. Instead, she says: “Well, it’s not very close to the legend, is it?”

Katie rolls her eyes. “Oh, because the show is sticking so close to the legend.” Angel opens her mouth to reply, but Katie adds, smirking: “Don’t worry, I won’t get in the way of this fictional wedding you and Bradley are so attached to. I’m not after your man.”

“That is ridiculous on about twelve levels,” Angel says.

Katie laughs. “Besides, by the time Arthur and Guinevere get together, Morgana will probably be crazy in an attic somewhere. It will all be very Jane Eyre.”

Angel laughs too. “Well, at least you’ll be the best-dressed madwoman in the attic ever.” She frowns. “Do castles have attics?”

“This one does,” Katie decides.

+

“The thing is,” Angel says, testing the words, “The thing is, we’re actually dating, which is patently ridiculous except for the bits where it’s not.”

Bradley quirks an eyebrow. “I thought I was supposed to the nonsensical one in this relationship. We can’t both be nonsensical, Angel, otherwise this whole thing will crumble and just become a series of misunderstandings followed by sex.”

Angel is fairly certain that that’s pretty much been their relationship thus far, but then realises that Bradley is distracting her from her point with his general Bradleyness, and pulls herself together.

“The thing is,” Angel tries, “Everyone acts like dating you should be this big traumatic complicated thing, and… it really isn’t.”

“Well, no,” Bradley agrees, “But then if everyone knew how awesome going out with me was then it would be awkward; there would be queues and riots and catfights and things.”

Angel smirks. “The breakdown of society as we know it, that sort of thing?”

“Of course,” Bradley agrees. “I’d still pick you,” he adds, “Though you would probably have to fight off Colin.”

“Colin?” Angel echoes incredulously.

Bradley nods, looking virtuous. “Colin is very mean to me a lot of the time,” he says. “Clearly he’s secretly in love with me.”

“Or thinks you’re a cretin,” Angel points out mildly.

“Or thinks I’m a cretin,” Bradley concedes. “But he’s probably secretly crazy about me.”

Well, Angel thinks, there’s never a dull moment. Or a moment that actually makes sense, but ah well.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” she says. “I’ll be on my guard.”

There’s moment of lovely, peaceful silence, and then Bradley breaks it.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he murmurs, and for a second he’s the sensible Bradley she barely recognises. Then he adds: “You know, I’d share my last overpriced strawberry with you.”

You did, Angel thinks, and smiles. “And they say chivalry is dead.”

“It’s not,” Bradley assures her. “I’m King Arthur, I’m like the… uh… king of Chivalry. It’s my middle name.”

Angel arches an eyebrow. “Arthur Chivalry Pendragon?”

Bradley shrugs. “It’s the sort of thing Uther would do.”

“This is true,” Angel agrees. She smiles. “Well, even if going out with you is patently ridiculous, I kind of like it anyway.”

Bradley rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’m so glad,” he says dryly. “Maybe I won’t share my strawberries next time.”

Angel laughs, and thinks yeah, I love you too.

"And I Should Know Better", Spooks, Adam/Lucas

2009-07-21T12:46:31Z

Title: And I Should Know Better
Fandom: Spooks [Half The Truth AU]
Pairing: Adam/Lucas
Rating: 1885
Word Count: PG-13
Genre: Slash
Spoilers: 7x08
Summary: “Because I’m too fucked-up, I’m too fucked-over, and I’m too fucking tired to be anything other than what I am.”
Author’s Notes: The final part. I honestly don’t know how I got here; it was meant to be a little one-shot involving Lucas’ pretty tattoos and my annoyance at the fact I was positively robbed of Adam/Lucas awesomeness. And now… well. I hope this works for everyone (and I may or may not start this series again when the new series starts. No promises, of course, but the possibility is there). Thanks for sticking with me! This was written on the 20th of May on the train from Florence to Rome, when I was going mad with mosquito bites on my knee.

I will not lie to you
But I definitely only gave you half the truth
And I will not lie to you.
- Kaiser Chiefs

The hospital is clean and too quiet though when Lucas shuts his eyes he still sees in tunnels and flashes of white light. His hands are still not shaking and he clings to this because it’s really the only good thing he can find in this whole situation. He’s lost a lot of blood but not too much and the bullet hole has been neatly sewn up so he’ll be discharged soon, to return to the chaos on the grid since Harry was taken. Lucas swallows the sliver of pure panic that threatens to escape along with that thought, and studies his determinedly steady hands instead. His own blood is embedded beneath his fingernails and the painkillers are making the world curl up at the edges. Lucas needs his mind to be sharper than it is right now, but he can’t sustain his adrenalin levels and in a choice between pain and narcotics he’d take pain every time but the decision was made for him, after all.

It’s at moments like this that Lucas really misses his cell; things were angrier there and he measured his sanity in cracks in the concrete, but at least it was all simpler there. At least then he knew who to assign the blame to.

Sitting rigid on the edge of the hospital bed, with its crisp white paper and dully sterile sheets, Lucas methodically begins to organise the messy tangle of emotions and events knotted inside his head, carefully unravelling them and relocating them to the right boxes to be sifted through at a later date when they will no longer hurt. He closes each box and padlocks it, and then kicks them all out of sight into the back corners of his mind, where the hazy ghouls of memories lurk that he will not get too close to. Once that’s been done and he’s perfectly in control of his thoughts and feelings again, without any unwelcome interruptions from sudden recollections, Lucas takes a moment to appreciate the peace and then makes a mental list of all his problems so he’ll be ready with solutions when they finally let him go. It’s a long list and uglier than he’d like, but when it’s done he rearranges it in order of importance and then discards all the things he can do nothing about at this point in time. The list instantly becomes more manageable and Lucas reviews it, trying to find somewhere to begin. A name near the bottom and mentally underlined twice leaps out at him.

Adam Carter.

Lucas isn’t entirely sure that Adam is a problem, but then he has no idea what to class him as, and that in itself is problematic. Adam has altogether too much of Lucas; has gathered together all the spilled shards of weakness and the things he endeavoured so hard to hide and he knows better than anyone – perhaps even better than Lucas – the extent to which Lucas is no longer a person. He has seen into all the deformed empty parts of Lucas’ soul and helped patch up the holes so no one else will suspect and, quite frankly, Lucas has no idea what to do.

Adam has got under his skin deeper than the tattoos and Lucas really doesn’t know how to even begin to get him out again; he gets the feeling it would be even more painful and time-consuming than trying to remove the ink. He’s not sure that he even wants to try and that’s the worst part, the part that no one can ever know. Lucas certainly does not love Adam and he barely even likes him but he does need him, and in finally acknowledging something Lucas has been determinedly ignoring for the last few months he feels something angry and desperate inside him crack. White rage burns through him and for a terrible moment of clarity he believe himself capable of anything, anything at all, to get Adam and all that he represents away from him. Then he swallows and lets all the anger slip back to where it belongs, barely-tethered and squashed between the mental boxes, and reflects that it’s all too late now in any case.

The desperate run across London with the promise of destruction if they failed stole all the breath from Lucas’ lungs. Connie’s placid expression only served to remind him that he had failed; failed Ben who choked in his own blood on a concrete floor, failed Harry who may or may not have deserved it. They split in the tangle of streets; Ros taking Connie, Adam with Lucas. The roads were thick with shadows and Lucas couldn’t get his mind clear for long periods of time, too busy trying to follow a countdown and hold back the memories of a betrayal to think entirely clearly. Adam was pale, face drawn, and it was almost too easy not to remember that less than twelve hours before his body had arched beneath Lucas’ in a bed far too full of exhaustion and guilt.

“I don’t know who to trust any more,” he’d said, voice tight and angry. Lucas has not ever gone in for self-flagellation because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to function, but he could see the fury and helplessness in Adam’s eyes.

“Trust me,” he’d said, the words falling instinctively from his mouth before he had time to rethink them and keep them to himself.

“Why?” Adam asked, and Lucas couldn’t be insulted because it was a perfectly valid question.

They made their way down another street, eyes on rooftops and doorways and parked cars, before Lucas finally responded.

“Because I’m too fucked-up, I’m too fucked-over, and I’m too fucking tired to be anything other than what I am.”

It was too close to the truth and Adam almost looked surprised, though at least he was too much of a gentleman to ask and what are you? because they both knew Lucas wouldn’t – or couldn’t – reply.

Now, London is still whole and Lucas is alone in a hospital with a bandage where a sniper bullet pierced his ribcage, and the determination that he cannot let himself fall so far again. Adam might take what he can get but Lucas cannot give him any more; even being vulnerable to one person is too much and Adam is a liability. Adam is… Lucas isn’t sure what Adam is, but too many lines have been crossed anyway.

A nurse sticks her head around the door.

“You can go, Mr North,” she says, and he hates himself for the moment of hesitation he feels at Mr North because it’s been so long since he was addressed with anything approaching formality. Lucas scrapes up an imitation of a smile for her, and hopes it doesn’t look as ghastly as it feels.

Lucas doesn’t in any way feel disappointment when he gets downstairs to find Jo standing beside a car looking pale but resolute, because disappointment was one of the superfluous emotions he jettisoned while lying gasping on his back with water in his eyes and the word sugarhorse repeated at him in various tones of impatience. In any case, Adam is section chief in name (even if Ros has taken most of the responsibilities from him, since it seems she will not ever slip, will not ever break) and with Harry gone there must be pure chaos.

Jo flickers a tired smile at him and says they were told he shouldn’t drive; Lucas is getting fairly sick of not being allowed to drive anywhere but obediently slides into the passenger seat because it’s not worth the argument. Jo fills him in on what they’ve been doing for the last two hours and Lucas wonders if this is where he is once again despatched to Moscow. If going to Russia again will even help. They fall into silence though it’s different to the silences that Lucas normally shares with Adam; this one is softer, less tense, less expectant. Jo looks lost in her own thoughts and Lucas wants to tell her to invest in a few more boxes before recalling that his method of things is in no way healthy and in no way conducive to remaining sane.

When they park, Jo taps her fingers on the steering wheel a couple of times, and then, carefully, not looking at Lucas, asks:

“Does it get easier?”

Lucas can’t be certain exactly what she means but it doesn’t matter because the answer will always been the same.

“No.” They sit a moment longer, and he adds: “But you’ll learn to live with it.”

Jo nods, expression inscrutable, and they don’t talk on the way to the grid.

Phones are ringing, keyboards sing under the tapping of urgent fingers, and everyone seems to be talking at once. Lucas doesn’t imagine that he got this level of response when he was snatched, but then he’s never been important and he can’t see the sense in bitterness.

Ros makes a beeline for him and her first words are: “we need you in Russia.”

Lucas spends a fleeting second wondering just how many more domes he can fit on his back before he runs out of space.

“Of course,” he says, and when Ros doesn’t give him any more details he realises that she doesn’t know what she needs him to do yet, but she needs him there anyway. It’s almost reassuring, in a strange sort of way.

He accepts the brown paper envelope with all kinds of false identities that will probably not protect him. Apparently his flight leaves in an hour; he feels the merciful kick of adrenalin start fizzing through his tired limbs, giving them a second lease of life.

Adam corners him alone in the corridor, and Lucas is relieved when he’s offered no apology for sending Lucas back to his own personal hell; he doesn’t want one and if Adam gave him one he’d know all was lost.

“About what Connie said…” Adam begins instead.

Lucas is not nearly ready to analyse it was me and test the theory; her words are safely locked away out of sight.

“Do you believe her?” he asks.

Adam hesitates for a split second, but it’s enough. “I think you should believe her,” he says.

“That’s not a ‘yes’,” Lucas points out.

“No,” Adam agrees. “But you should believe her. I think you need to believe her.”

There’s something appealing about false closure, about taking the information offered and settling for it. It wouldn’t be enough, of course, but then there isn’t anything in Lucas’ life that he has enough of.

“I’ll consider it,” he tells Adam brusquely. “I should be going now.”

Adam’s mouth opens and Lucas thinks please don’t say it, because he cannot hear what Adam has to tell him. There is too much and not enough and they’re shattered men who would only be able to pretend for so long. But all Adam does is kiss him, quick and hard, and Lucas can taste grit and ash and echoing lengths of dark tunnels.

“This isn’t over,” Adam tells him, a dozen entangled ambiguous statements and implications in his tone.

“No,” Lucas sighs. “No, nothing’s ever over, is it?”

Adam doesn’t reply, but his smile is wry before he closes the door behind him.

paperclipbitch @ 2009-05-05T18:02:00

2009-05-05T16:03:37Z

Lady Paperclip is officially on hiatus from now until July, because she is interrailing around Europe.

Have a lovely few months people :)

xxxxx

"If You Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

2009-05-01T15:02:52Z

{ix}

Owen shifts uncomfortably on his chair. “You are fucking this up,” he complains.

Ianto resists the urge to snap something cruel at him, because Owen’s skin is beaded with sweat and the open wound on his ribs that Ianto is attempting to stitch closed is oozing in a particularly nasty, infected way.

“Shut up,” he says. “You were the one who taught me to do stitches, if I’m crap at this then you’ve only got yourself to blame.”

Owen makes a small noise of pain in response, and Ianto decides to stay quiet for the moment. Owen looks ghastly; pale and sweating from a fever, his whole body shaking from pain and sickness. He was knifed a few days ago; without decent medical attention the wound has got infected and Ianto thinks this might be a whole new level of self-destructive for Owen that he’s never considered before.

“Why are you doing this, Ianto?” Owen rasps after a while, when Ianto is dabbing more antiseptic on the stitches – thank God for the medical kit Jack provided him with – and hoping he hasn’t done a piss-poor job of sewing Owen back together. He’ll have a fucking ugly scar, but some things can’t be helped. He’ll hopefully be alive, which is the important part.

“Well,” Ianto responds steadily, carefully peeling the backing off a sticky pad of gauze to cover the wound with, “Jack will be vastly unimpressed if I bring back your corpse.”

Owen flinches when Ianto sticks the pad in place. “Right,” he says, “He’ll never let you out on field work again; you’ll have to stay in the archives putting coloured labels on things forever.”

“Exactly,” Ianto replies, with a hint of a smile. He sits back on his heels.

“If I were you I’d let me die,” Owen mutters. “You must hate me.”

He’s flushed from the fever and the sooner they start giving him antibiotics the better.

“I don’t hate you,” Ianto tells him. “I’m angry with you, yes, but then that’s not really anything new.” He carefully pushes himself to his feet. “Why didn’t you come to me, Owen? I’d have helped you.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Owen mumbles; he looks slightly sheepish.

“Not everyone’s you, Owen,” Ianto sighs. “Come on, let’s get you into bed without popping those stitches.”

It takes a while to get Owen over to the bed and to put him into a clean nightshirt Ianto has brought from his house. Owen is skinnier than ever and Ianto spends a moment studying the scars that litter his chest. There’s the round hole of the gunshot wound that Ianto inflicted himself, the ugly scrapes from the time Owen tried to get himself eaten by a Weevil, and the mark above Owen’s hip from the time John shot him. There’s also a brand new scar on Owen’s other shoulder; still pink around the edges and painfully raw looking. Ianto thinks about asking, but decides he doesn’t want to.

“When you’ve finished perving over just how damaged I am, it’s fucking cold in here,” Owen grits.

Ianto pulls the nightshirt over his head and lies him down, wrapping Owen in the blankets. He lifts Owen’s head up and helps him swallow some antibiotics and some painkillers; all that he’s got, and he hopes it’ll help. Owen is still shivering but his eyelids are drooping, and he looks sick and vulnerable, not at all like the man with the animal in his eyes who crushed a man’s hand under his boot.

“You’re going to be ok, Owen,” he says quietly, brushing Owen’s matted hair off his forehead. His skin is too hot under Ianto’s palm. “I know you’re trying not to be, but you will be.”

He moves back; Owen’s hand comes out from the blankets and catches Ianto’s wrist.

“You won’t go, will you?”

Ianto looks around the dingy room, at the pile of bloody bandages still on the table – Owen did a crap job of patching himself up, considering that he’s an actual doctor – at the battered furniture, and then pictures Owen stuck here.

“I won’t go,” he promises, taking Owen’s limp hand and tucking it back beneath the covers.

Owen’s smile is genuine as his eyes slip closed. “Fucking pushover, teaboy,” he mutters drowsily.

“Oh, I know,” Ianto sighs, and watches him fall asleep.

{x}

“I don’t see why you won’t come home with me,” Ianto tells Owen a week later, when he’s pulling the stitches out and Owen is pretending determinedly that it doesn’t hurt.

“Because I haven’t exactly escaped the notice of the law,” Owen snaps, teeth gritted against the pain, “And the last thing we need is for us both to be arrested and hung. Jack will not see the funny side, and – Jesus, Ianto, you really are shit at this.”

“You’re welcome,” Ianto replies tiredly, removing the last stitch. The gash has mercifully healed and is no longer leaking infected fluids, and Owen is taking antibiotics daily so his fever has gone. All in all, he kinds of feels they’ve dodged the bullet, and if they can keep themselves alive for another twenty days then they can go home. “Well, Owen, you do seem to have fucked yourself over here.”

“How was I supposed to know you were coming for me?” Owen demands. “I was here for four months before you turned up with your judgemental eyes and your ‘Oh My God, Owen, those poor people’ schtick.”

“You should have known we wouldn’t have given up on you,” Ianto responds, wiping antiseptic over Owen’s wound again, just to be sure.

“Why?” Owen asks. “None of you actually like me, as is becoming increasingly clear.”

“Owen,” Ianto sighs, standing up, “I have come here day after day and sat by your bedside while you hallucinate and scream, I have slept on more than one occasion on a shitty wooden chair listening to mice run around inside the walls, I have done everything I can to make this just a little easier for you.”

“Yeah, ‘cause Jack won’t shag you any more if you come back and say you’ve killed the team doctor,” Owen responds.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Owen,” Ianto snaps, “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Owen echoes. A crooked little smile steals across his mouth. “What I want, Ianto, is to put on a pair of jeans and a shirt that isn’t filthy, and go to a bar near the Hub and drink some alcohol that doesn’t taste like it’s been made in the landlord’s back garden and has all the pigeon shit in it that that implies, and then I want to chat up a person and go back to their flat and fuck them, and then I want to sneak out the next morning without saying goodbye and stagger into the Hub and have you bring me a latte made exactly how I like it and some painkillers without even being asked, while you look at me with that judgemental expression and also that look you get, like you kind of want to save me and might make it your project once you’ve finished cross-referencing the archives, only you never will because you secretly want me dead.”

“Oh,” Ianto says, and processes this for a while. “I don’t actually want you dead,” he adds eventually.

He’s angry with himself, because he thinks he might have forgiven Owen for everything he’s done simply because he looked so fragile when he was dying. And Ianto knows that Owen will have done worse things to people than what was done to him, but this is Torchwood and somehow they always look out for their own.

“Nice to know,” Owen replies, and his face is shuttered. Ianto wonders exactly what response Owen wanted from him, because he’s getting the feeling he hasn’t given it.

“I think you’ll be all right,” Ianto offers, for lack of anything else to say, “No lasting damage.”

Owen shrugs. “Good,” he says.

He’s so impassive and doesn’t seem to care that he nearly got himself killed that Ianto can’t keep himself from saying: “So you can go straight back to the streets and get back to slitting people’s throats.”

Owen sighs. “Oh, fuck off, Ianto,” he says, his tone heavy and weary. “Really, I’m grateful you didn’t leave me to die in here, ‘cause that would have been particularly shit, but you should go away now. I’ve made my bed, I’m lying in it, there’s no need to piss all over me.” He glowers at Ianto, and then adds: “Oh, and for your information, teaboy, I’ve never slit anyone’s throat.”

“Right,” Ianto says brightly, “Because that would be cruel and undignified.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Owen snaps. “I can’t get out now because I am in too deep. I’ve got to stay where I am and tread water until we get out of here; if I leave now they will kill me. There are people who will find me and kill me and then you really will be in the shit with Jack. So fuck off back to your mansion and leave me here to rot, since you’re obviously itching to get away.”

The disdain in Owen’s tone stings, really stings, and Ianto lashes out without thinking: “God, I bloody wish I had left you to die.”

He tries to leave but Owen storms after him and catches his wrist, pulling him back into the room. His grip is too tight and Ianto is horribly aware that Owen would definitely win any fight they might have; he could beat him to death with his bare hands and there’d be nothing Ianto could do about it.

“What do I have to do?” Owen asks, voice low and rough, one hand tight around his wrist and the other one clenched on Ianto’s shoulder. “Tell me what I have to do to make you happy, Ianto, because I am fucking tired and I cannot do this any more. I just can’t.” His eyes are wild and his voice is cracking. “Tell me, because you’re all that I’ve got to convince me that I’m not some psychotic cunt who’s always lived in this time period. I’m scared, Ianto, and if you keep walking away from me then I don’t think I’ll make it until we can go home. I’m too fucking close to breaking, you must know that.”

His grip is hurting; Ianto can feel where it’ll leave bruises later. “I don’t know, Owen,” he says quietly. “I don’t know, ok?”

He doesn’t say I don’t even know if you can make this better, because he’ll never be that cruel.

Owen lets go of him and steps away; he’s shaking. “Go, then,” he mutters, his voice thick. “Just go, and don’t fucking bother coming back.”

“Owen,” Ianto says, with no idea how to articulate anything at all. Owen won’t turn around; his shoulders are trembling. “Owen.”

But Owen doesn’t say anything and Ianto can’t make himself walk across the room and touch him. He leaves, repeatedly glancing over his shoulder, but Owen doesn’t move.

{xi}

Ianto doesn’t get out of bed for a couple of days; his maids keep coming in with trays of food, anxious little expressions on their faces.

“I think I’m going mad,” Ianto tells one of them. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

She frowns. “Right, sir,” she says. “Would you like me to send for the doctor?”

Ianto considers this. “Do you think he’ll be able to help?”

She looks doubtful. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, shall we leave off calling him for now?” Ianto suggests.

He refuses the food and she bobs a curtsey and leaves him to it. He thinks about doctors for a while; wonders exactly what Victorian doctors do for mad people. He wonders if it’ll involve leeches, and decides he should’ve paid better attention in GCSE history.

After a while, he starts wondering if he’s made up the whole thing; if he’s just an ordinary man who’s gone crazy and started hallucinating a weirdly vivid futuristic world. His life has never exactly been normal, has it, and there’s no way that could be real. No way in the world. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been locked up earlier, really. Ianto dozes restlessly and dreams of women made of metal.

He’s woken at some point by a soft tapping at his door.

“Come in,” he calls. His butler appears, looking irritated.

“There’s a man downstairs, sir,” he says. “He appears to be inebriated and is most insistent on seeing you; I really think I should send for the constabulary.”

Ianto thinks about this and then thinks about getting Owen hung, which is pretty much inevitably what will happen.

His butler looks expectantly at him and Ianto doesn’t know what to tell him. In the silence, Ianto can hear banging sounds coming through his open window; it sounds rather like Owen is attempting to break his front door down, which will not end well at all.

“Tell him I’m coming down,” Ianto sighs.

His butler stiffly inclines his head and leaves, a deeply judgemental expression etched on his face. Ianto lies still for another moment, and then goes to find some clothing.

When he gets downstairs, Owen is standing in the hall looking around, and there are no members of staff to be seen, which is probably just as well.

“What are you doing?” Ianto demands. “My butler was about to call the police!”

Owen stares at him with unfocused, swollen eyes; it looks like he’s been crying. His top hat his lopsided and he’s swaying a little on his feet; Ianto doesn’t want to know what he’s been drinking.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t fucking care, Ianto. I think I’ve gone mad.”

Ianto sighs. “Well, you’re no madder than I am,” he says, and smiles a little at the look Owen gives him. “Yeah, not exactly a comforting thought, is it?” He walks over, and takes Owen’s arm. “Come on, you need to sleep this off.”

As they stumble up the stairs, Owen frowns at him: “Won’t your mini-Iantos be pissed?”

“If you refer to my servants as mini-Iantos again I’ll throw you back on the streets,” Ianto warns. “And no, not really. They think I’m eccentric, which means I can get away with all kinds of things.”

“Am I a thing?” Owen asks, as Ianto pushes him into his bedroom.

“Very possibly,” Ianto replies, pushing Owen over to the bed and helping him to unlace his grubby boots. He offers him a smile. “There’s something reassuring about you turning up at my house, pissed, expecting me to solve all your problems. It’s familiar, at least.”

Owen scowls. “I don’t do that!”

“You really do,” Ianto responds. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

He removes Owen’s top hat for him and pushes him until he’s lying flat; just as he draws away, Owen grabs Ianto’s wrist. Ianto tenses immediately, but all Owen does is press a kiss to the centre of Ianto’s palm, before letting him go and falling asleep.

“I’ve definitely gone mad,” Ianto mumbles, and leaves Owen sleeping to go and try to make plausible excuses to his servants.

{xii}

When Owen starts showing signs of waking up, Ianto has the servants bring up enough hot water for a bath and then gives them all the afternoon off.

“Jesus,” Owen sighs, looking hungover and sheepish, “I wish I’d got here with more money than God.”

“It does help,” Ianto says with a soft smile. “Now get in; I don’t have the means to keep the water hot.”

Owen obediently strips and stumbles over to the tub, sinking into the warm water with a look of delight. Ianto rummages through the case he keeps under his bed, until he finds some shower gel. It’s sort of amusing and sort of devastating watching just how reverently Owen treats the shower gel, after months and months on Victorian soap. Finally, he’s washed all the dirt off, and scrubbed clean and pale it’s even more evident just how scrawny he’s got.

“Where are the mini-Iantos?” Owen asks curiously, when he’s wrapped in a big white towel and looking a little more human.

Ianto thinks I will throw you naked out onto the streets, but knows he’d never act on it.

“I gave them the afternoon off,” he replies. “I told them all you were my disreputable brother.”

Owen arches an eyebrow and Ianto shrugs; they both burst out laughing.

“That’s slightly disturbing,” Owen says. Then the smile fades. “Ianto, I’m losing it. I keep thinking: what if Torchwood isn’t real? What if it’s just this crazy thing I made up because I spend all my time hurting people and my brain needs somewhere else to go?”

“Well,” Ianto points out reasonably, “If your brain was creating a happy place, I don’t think it would create Torchwood. You hurt people there too, you know.”

Owen scowls at him. “Oh fucking thanks,” he snaps. “I’ll definitely come to you whenever something’s bothering me.”

Ianto shrugs. “Being sympathetic isn’t in my job description,” he says, “Which is rather strange, since practically everything else is.”

“It’s ‘cause you’re a robot,” Owen responds, looking almost cheerful. “A little robot teaboy trundling about serving hot drinks and passing judgement on people.”

“‘Little’?” Ianto echoes. “I’m taller than you, Owen.”

“Just for once, Ianto, it would be nice if you didn’t get caught up on the tiny details and saw the bigger picture,” Owen sighs, but without any real venom.

“If I looked at the bigger picture I’d have killed myself by now,” Ianto responds quietly. “You know that as well as I do.”

Owen doesn’t reply, which Ianto takes to mean he agrees, however reluctantly.

The house is too quiet, and Owen is sprawled on his bed, damp and scarred. They’ve got just over a fortnight before they leave here, and Ianto finds himself wondering if they can make it that far without either killing each other or having nervous breakdowns. It all seemed so simple when he was sitting in the Hub getting his vaccinations; find Owen, hang around, go home. He didn’t think about just how long three months really is; he didn’t think about what Owen might have done to himself in that space of time.

“Do you really believe Jack will get us out of here?” Owen asks eventually, slowly, like he doesn’t actually want to hear the answer.

“I have to,” Ianto replies.

“Yeah,” Owen sighs. He covers his face with his left hand, kneading his eyes as though they hurt, then lets his arms fall heavily down at his sides again. He looks at Ianto for so long that it starts making him feel uncomfortable. “I’m glad it was you,” Owen says at last.

Ianto frowns. “You said it yourself; I’m not qualified, I’m far too disdainful-”

“But you’ll take me home,” Owen interrupts. “After what I’ve done, Tosh and Gwen would leave me here.”

“Jack wouldn’t leave you here,” Ianto says.

“No,” Owen agrees. A trace of a smile flickers over his lips. “He’d probably sodding join in.”

Ianto opens his mouth to defend him, but there’s no point; not any more. He sighs. “Yeah, he probably would.”

“I’m pretty sure Jack could put anything I’ve done to shame,” Owen muses. “The man’s a sociopath, after all.”

“If he wasn’t, we would never have found you,” Ianto points out. “Having tracking chips installed in all of us might be bloody scary but it did come in handy.”

“It did,” Owen agrees. His face screws up in confusion and he pushes himself upright. “Shouldn’t you be threatening to brain me for speaking ill of your boyfriend?”

Ianto thinks through a dozen permutations of a reply and settles on: “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Owen looks genuinely surprised. “Oh,” he manages.

“I don’t particularly want to talk about it,” Ianto says.

Owen smiles. “I’ve got all kinds of stories,” he offers.

“I’m sure you have, but I’m also fairly sure that they’ll all either be about the various kinds of violence you’ve inflicted on random people, or they’ll be about your desperate pursuit to contract syphilis before we leave here,” Ianto replies tiredly.

Owen shrugs. “Actually, I haven’t shagged anyone,” he replies. When Ianto arches an incredulous eyebrow, Owen adds: “No, really. Birth control at the moment is shit and an abortion is not only illegal but a death sentence, and the last thing I need to do is start fathering random children in this time period.”

Ianto is privately impressed by Owen’s logic, but doesn’t show it. “You could have shagged guys,” he points out casually.

“I really don’t want syphilis, Ianto,” Owen tells him. “Besides, I think I’ve broken enough laws as it is, don’t you?”

“If the law do catch up with you they’ll probably be more interested in prosecuting you for various kinds of murder, violence, theft and extortion than for the whole homosexuality thing.”

Owen smirks. “Yeah, but the papers’ll love it: Evil Murderous Sodomite. You get the idea.”

“It has a certain ring to it,” Ianto offers. “Maybe I’ll make that your new nickname.”

“I can hurt you,” Owen reminds him.

“Oh, I know.”

Owen’s smirk goes crooked and awkward, and Ianto goes to see if he’s got some clean clothes that will do for Owen. When Owen is dressed and adjusting the angle of his hat, he glances back uncomfortably over his shoulder at Ianto.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” Ianto asks.

“For not making this worse than you had to,” Owen replies.

“I’ve been a shit to you,” Ianto points out.

“Because I deserve it,” Owen says. “But you could have made this worse, and we both know it.” His smile almost becomes a grimace. “And thank you for coming for me.”

Ianto thinks about saying I didn’t do this for you, but it would be a lie. He came for Owen because he couldn’t bear to think of him lost and he will take him back to the Hub and discreetly get him to a therapist and won’t tell Jack any more than he has to, no matter how angry with Owen he is.

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Whatever that’s worth; I just wish I’d got here earlier.”

“I don’t think it would have made much difference,” Owen tells him.

It stings, but Ianto manages: “I’m going to hope it would.”

Owen looks tired and worn and not at all insane, not at all capable of the things Ianto knows that he’s done.

“Thank your mini-Iantos for me,” Owen tells him.

“I don’t think I’ll mention you to them ever again, actually,” Ianto replies.

Owen shrugs. “Fair enough. I’ll see myself out.”

He looks thoughtful for a moment, and then holds out his hand. Ianto wants to stay strong, but Torchwood swallows your morals whole and in any case they’ve all fucked up. He takes Owen’s hand and shakes it; his firm grip telling him that, somehow, they’ll be ok.

Owen smiles, something like relief in his eyes, and then leans forward and kisses Ianto; gentle and hesitant and so unlike the arrogant, vicious Owen that Ianto has come to know that it floors him completely. Before he can do anything more than be surprised, though, Owen pulls away and lets go of his hand.

“See you soon,” he says, and then he’s walking away.

Ianto thinks he’s probably meant to stop him, but he really doesn’t know what to say.

{xiii}

A spate of nights later finds Ianto waiting outside Owen’s house, cold night air seeping into his skin, and he doesn’t want to know what his teammate is doing because there are just some things it’s easier not to have to think about. People who pass him give him wary looks; no one knows who he is but Ianto’s learning to project an air of dangerous, and anyway enough people have seen him with Owen to judge him clinically insane by association.

When Owen finally comes down the street, his shoulders are hunched and his jaw is clenched and he’s radiating pure menace in a way that’s truly unsettling. He doesn’t even have to hurt anyone any more to make a point; there’s a threat in every step he takes, every flash of his dark eyes. It’s impressive, if nothing else.

“Ianto,” he says, and there’s a sliver of surprised in his voice, though it’s tempered quickly. His voice is the rough, low scrape that he uses out in public; Owen Harper stripped bare because it’s so much scarier that way.

“Going to invite me in?” Ianto asks.

Owen gives him a careful, calculating sort of look and then nods.

“All right.”

The moment the door to Owen’s room closes behind them Ianto pushes him up against it, less hesitant than he thinks he should be, given that Owen’s got to be one of the most dangerous men in London.

“Are you sure about this?” Owen asks. His voice is normal again, a little hoarse, a little confused.

“No,” Ianto replies, and then thinks about it. “Yes.”

A smile spreads across Owen’s mouth, a real one, and he kisses Ianto first, all heat and desperation, thin fingers scrabbling at the buttons of Ianto’s coat. They stumble a step away from the door, then two, and Ianto reaches to knock Owen’s top hat onto the floor, clenching his fingers in Owen’s over-long hair. It’s a little too much like anger, this, but it isn’t and there’s no way they’re going to be able to function around each other ever again unless they do this.

The Victorian clothes are hard to fumble their way out of; too many buttons and unfamiliar fabrics and Ianto wishes fervently for jeans and t-shirts and electric light and the myriad of other things that would make this all a little bit easier. Owen’s hands are everywhere, his tongue claiming possession of Ianto’s mouth and Ianto wonders just how long Owen has wanted this.

“The standard Torchwood medical kit comes with condoms,” Ianto informs him a little breathlessly.

“I know,” Owen replies, his voice half a snap. Then he frowns, and a different expression entirely crosses his face. “Have you brought them with you?”

“I came over here to fuck you,” Ianto responds without hesitation, and feels Owen shudder against him.

“Jesus,” Owen says, “You really have been shagging Jack for too long.”

Ianto smirks at him. “Want to do something about that?”

Owen tips his head to one side. “If you’re just doing this because we’re stuck here and Jack is nearly a hundred and fifty years away-”

“None of this is about Jack,” Ianto tells him. “Some things aren’t about him, you know, and this is one of them.”

He can’t read Owen’s expression; it’s too dark in here and anyway the man can be downright inscrutable when he wants to be. There’s a breathless pause and Ianto wonders if this is the moment when he gets his neck broken, because Owen’s just too damn lost.

“Oh bloody hell, Ianto,” Owen says roughly, kissing him again, teeth tugging at Ianto’s lower lip. It’s want and it’s need and it’s too much and it’s not enough and Ianto manages to drag at a few more buttons and then Owen is practically falling out of his clothes; Ianto wonders if the floor will fill their feet with splinters and then can’t bring himself to care.

Owen’s mattress is considerably crap and Ianto wonders if he’ll return to the twenty-first century with a fucked-up back as well as a broken open mind, but then Owen gasps, trapped on his back with one of Ianto’s knees on either side of his hips and suddenly Owen’s spine doesn’t really matter all that much, in the scheme of things.

Ianto traces a line of bites up Owen’s neck, kisses his way back to Owen’s reddened mouth, tries not to count ribs under his hands because Owen is too thin and God knows just how far Owen has fallen and whether this will make it worse or better.

“Go on,” Owen breathes, curling one leg over Ianto’s hip, laying himself open and vulnerable and there was a time, nearly a year ago, when Ianto was lying in a crumpled heap on the Hub floor with his teeth tasting like blood because Owen had kicked him down, when he thought Owen could never be vulnerable and he wanted him dead, and Jesus, how things can change in such a small space of time.

Occasionally, Ianto thinks he shouldn’t really work for an organisation that provides condoms and three different kinds of lubricant in its standard medical kit for all field operatives – or maybe it’s just Jack; there’s really no way of telling – but at times like this he’ll admit it comes in useful. Owen makes an incredibly keening noise when Ianto pushes his legs apart and curls his fingers inside him; Ianto can hear his breath coming in harsh pants as he stretches Owen open.

One of the most dangerous men in London is lying open beneath Ianto and begging for it like a whore and Ianto’s not going to say that that doesn’t intrigue him, doesn’t make a line of heat uncoil low in his stomach.

“Please, Ianto,” Owen rasps, mouth quivering around the words and Ianto swiftly slicks up his cock, bending Owen’s knees towards his chest and slamming into him with very little preamble. Owen’s head tips back and he howls, chest heaving, and Ianto is about to tell him to shut up because this is something they really don’t need someone walking in on – it is illegal, after all – when he reflects that people will just think Owen’s killing someone in here.

“Fucking move,” Owen grits, his eyes glittering in the half-dark. Ianto obeys, half pulling back only to shove straight back in, wrenching another groan out of Owen. It’s too fast and too angry and Ianto has to keep reminding himself that he doesn’t want to hurt Owen; in spite of all of it he doesn’t want to hurt him.

After all, they work for Torchwood; this is how they deal with their problems.

Owen is breathlessly repeating his name until it sounds like a curse, nails digging into Ianto’s shoulders, bony knees digging into his sides. Ianto can’t breathe and doesn’t want to, barely able to keep up with the pace he’s set, fucking Owen so hard he doubts he’ll be able to walk in the morning. He props himself over Owen on one elbow, reaching between them to curl one hand around Owen’s cock and jerk it in time with his thrusts. There’s nothing about this that isn’t too hard and too brutal and Ianto thinks he should slow it down but he can’t, he can’t, and when Owen comes he clenches impossibly tight around Ianto’s cock, spilling hot between them and mangling fuck, Ianto between his teeth.

Ianto keeps pounding into him, while Owen lets out little breathless whimpers every time Ianto catches his prostate, the aftershocks making him weak, until Ianto finally feels his own release building and he roars it into Owen’s skinny shoulder against the scar he shot through it all those months ago.

It takes a long moment before he can pull out, and the silence seems far too oppressive as they both pant, trying to regain some perspective on the situation.

“Fucking hell, Ianto,” Owen breathes at last.

“Yeah,” Ianto murmurs, “That pretty much sums it up.”

They lie in silence for another moment, before Owen says: “Are we insane?”

“Yes,” Ianto decides. “Yes, very probably.”

Owen considers this, and then laughs. “Shit, if the sex stays like that, I don’t care.”

{xiv}

“What if we can’t get back?” Owen asks, the day before they’re due to be rescued. Hopefully. If Jack pulls through.

“Well,” Ianto sighs, “We’re going to have to leave here anyway, before the law catches up with you.” He smiles. “I’ve still got some money, where would you like to run to?”

Owen frowns. “You’re taking this really calmly,” he observes.

“The last thing either of us need right now is for me to have a panic attack,” Ianto points out. “I’ve got to stay calm or I will lose it completely.”

They’re walking through a crowded market place; people yelling and running about and arguing with each other and it’s too much humanity. Ianto wants to go back to the quiet of the Hub, to the coffee machine and the computers and the hours and hours and hours spent in the safety of his own head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto catches sight of someone, and smiles.

“Wait here,” he tells Owen, and hurries through the crowds of people until he catches up with Artful Dodger.

“I’m leaving London tomorrow,” he says. “I wanted to thank you for all your help.”

The boy shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, mister.” He glances past Ianto, and apparently sees Owen. He grimaces. “You really like him, don’t you?”

Ianto shrugs. “Apparently,” he says.

“He’s a monster,” the boy asserts.

“Sometimes,” Ianto agrees. “But then I think sometimes we’re all monsters.” He looks down at the little boy, and realises that there’s still one thing he doesn’t know. “What’s your name?” he asks.

Artful Dodger looks at him for a long moment, narrowing his eyes in calculation, before he says: “Thomas Jamieson.”

“Really?” Ianto asks. “That’s definitely your name?”

Thomas glowers. “Yes.”

Ianto glances around them. “Look, you’ve been good to me while I’ve been here. You’ve helped me a lot when you didn’t have to, so I’m going to help you.”

The boy continues to look warily at him. “What?” he asks.

“Use the word ‘Torchwood’ a lot in public places,” Ianto tells him. When Thomas frowns, he adds: “Trust me.”

“All right,” the boy says finally. “I will.”

Ianto tips his hat. “Best of luck, Mr Jamieson.”

“You too,” Thomas says, and Ianto walks away without looking back.

“What was all that about?” Owen asks, when Ianto returns to his side. “Who was that?”

“That?” Ianto smiles. “That, Owen, was the founding member of Torchwood Three. He was the first man to get sent down to Cardiff to investigate the Rift; he was Torchwood’s golden boy.”

“Bloody hell,” Owen remarks.

Ianto smiles, and wonders if he’s wrecked the future or set history in motion. “Bloody hell indeed,” he agrees.

{xv}

“He’s not coming,” Owen says.

“Shut up,” Ianto replies.

“Your fucking boyfriend’s not fucking coming,” Owen hisses, ugly panic and fury spread across his face.

“Shut up,” Ianto snaps. “Just shut up, Owen.”

It’s been all day and his machine has been silent; no one has opened up a window to the past. It’s starting to look increasingly like they’ll never get home, and Ianto can’t think about that because it makes his insides turn to ice.

Owen is opening his mouth, presumably to yell more obscenities, when the device clenched too tight in Ianto’s hand starts bleeping.

“Oh thank God,” he breathes.

Owen looks at him, anger melted into something that looks a little like panic. “You won’t tell Jack, will you?”

Ianto shakes his head. “He won’t hear it from me,” he promises.

He holds out a hand and Owen takes it; Ianto thumbs the button on the device and the world explodes into blinding white, as all around them the past dissolves into the future.

"If You Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

2009-05-01T14:52:58Z

Title: If You Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Owen/Ianto
Challenge/Prompt: fanfic100, 079. When?
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 12,380
Genre: Slash
Summary: Ianto is sent to rescue Owen from 19th Century London, but he’s less than impressed by what Owen has been doing to survive.
Author’s Notes: Also known as The Inadvisable Owen/Ianto Crack!Fic Of Potential Mental Instability. How’s this for slightly psychotic? I didn’t want to write an historical AU, but after seeing Burn as Bill Sikes in Oliver! (twice) I couldn’t get over the idea of Owen/Ianto in a Victorian setting. Which is where this utterly insane idea came from. I honestly wasn’t going to write it, but then… I did. *is broken* Obviously I’ve barely researched this; but that really wasn’t the object of the exercise. Oh, and I can’t remember when Queen Victoria established Torchwood, so let’s just say it exists, yeah?

Playing the part of a real trouble-maker
But I didn’t care.
- The Passions

{i}

On the third day, Jack finally breaks down and admits that he’s had tracking chips installed in all of them.

Ianto is the only one unsurprised by this, though he thinks he might view Jack slightly differently to the way Tosh and Gwen do. There are enough facets to Jack that they’re probably all right, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ianto believes Jack capable of anything, and Tosh and Gwen seem to think he’ll one day find a line and stop at it.

(He won’t. He can’t.)

While Tosh’s fingers leap over computer keys in her search for Owen’s signal throughout time – the Rift has taken him somewhere but no one has any idea where or even when – Gwen explains to Jack in great detail all the reasons why having tracking chips inside his employees is unethical.

“This is Torchwood,” Ianto reminds her. “There’s no such thing as ‘unethical’.”

Gwen’s mouth thins.

“It’s in the contract, you know,” Jack suggests brightly.

“It isn’t, sir,” Ianto tells him.

Jack gives him a calculating look. “Yeah,” he sighs, “You probably have read the entire Torchwood employee contract, haven’t you, Ianto?”

Ianto inclines his head.

“You could have mentioned this earlier,” Tosh mumbles, blue characters leaping across the screen. There’s alien tech of some kind wired up to the computer, though none of them – with the exception of Jack, of course, who is always the exception – know exactly what it’s actually doing.

“I thought we might find Owen by other means,” Jack tells her.

Jack isn’t fond of letting any of his secrets slip; that has always been painfully clear. Owen has been missing for three days and it’s only now that Jack finally deigns to admit his actions. Of course, Ianto wasn’t expecting any different, but he still has a bitter taste in his mouth. And he hates it, but he’s worried about Owen. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have been; but that was six months ago. A lot can happen in six months.

Too much can happen in six months.

“Time’s a tricky thing,” Jack muses, when Gwen finally runs out of things to yell at him. Invasion of privacy and all that. Ianto decides not to tell her that her flat is bugged; he gets the feeling it wouldn’t be welcome information.

“You are not helping,” Gwen grits.

The computers start bleeping urgently, and Tosh quickly brings up a screen, a curious mixture of anxiety and hope painted clear on her face.

“Well?” Gwen demands, knuckles white on the back of Tosh’s chair.

“…The eighteen-sixties,” Tosh says, sounding blank. “He’s in the eighteen-sixties.” She looks to Jack. “Is he even still alive?”

Jack nods. “The chip would tell you if he was dead,” he says. “It logs heartbeat, that sort of thing.”

“Creepy,” Ianto notes lightly. “Well, can we get him back?”

A frown has crept onto Jack’s face. “First, we need to work out how long he’s been there,” he says.

“Three days,” Tosh tells him. Jack shakes his head.

“The link between the past and the present is… a little odd,” he says. “Three days have passed for us, but for Owen… it could be minutes, it could be decades.”

Gwen’s eyes widen. “Bloody hell,” she murmurs.

Jack leans over Tosh and he types a string of numbers into the computer; Ianto thinks that Jack really knows a lot more about everything than he ever lets on, but knows this isn’t the time to bring it up. They stay silent, watching the computer perform its calculations, and Ianto hopes it hasn’t been decades because Owen can be a dick at times but he doesn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.

“…Ok”, Jack murmurs, tapping the enter key, and after a moment a few more numbers appear. Jack frowns at them, and then announces: “He’s been there three months.”

“Then it’s about time we got him back,” Gwen says. “When do we go?”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Jack replies steadily. “We have to send someone back in time to find him, but while I can get them to within a hundred miles of Owen I can’t find Owen for you.”

“Since you’ve had these incredibly invasive tracking chips installed inside us already,” Ianto says, “Couldn’t you have made them a little more helpful?”

Jack ignores him. “Whoever I send back is going to have to stay there until they find Owen,” he says. “Tosh, you can’t go, we need you here to help get the Rift open to bring Owen back.” He looks at Gwen. “It won’t be safe for you,” he says. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Gwen opens her mouth, then seems to recall eighteen-sixties and shuts it again.

“You’re there, aren’t you?” Ianto says to Jack.

The corner of Jack’s mouth pulls into an approximation of a grimace. “Very possibly,” he replies.

Ianto sighs heavily. “If I contract typhoid I am going to be deeply unimpressed,” he mutters.

{ii}

“There’s enough money in here for me to single-handedly cause an inflation of the economy,” Ianto tells Jack, staring down into his suitcase at the flimsy, strange-looking bank notes.

He feels a little like a pincushion; they’ve vaccinated him against everything they could think of. He has a suitcase full of money and medication, as much alien tech as Jack can weigh him down with, and some weaponry. It doesn’t feel like enough.

Jack is ignoring Ianto’s mild complaints, in the habit he has of ignoring everything that doesn’t quite fit into his world view.

“I’m giving you three days,” he tells Ianto. “Three days to find him.”

Ianto is fairly certain that he doesn’t want to spend three months in Victorian England, and then remembers that Owen has been there for that long already without the precautions Ianto is getting. He steels himself, and wishes he had no better nature for Jack to appeal to. Wishes he still hated Owen enough to want to leave him to his fate.

“And then what?” he asks.

“And then we’re pulling you out,” Jack replies calmly. His expression is resolute. “With or without Owen, we’re bringing you home.”

Ianto forces himself not to ask Jack to promise, because for one thing he knows Jack won’t, and for another it’s showing just a little too much vulnerability.

“I’m not trained for this,” he says quietly.

“No,” Jack agrees, equally softly, “No you’re not.”

He presses a kiss to Ianto’s forehead, sweet and resigned, and Ianto grits his teeth because he doesn’t want Jack to be saying goodbye.

Ianto sighs, thinking fuck this.

“We’re ready,” Tosh calls, the slightest crack in her voice.

Jack lets go of him and Ianto carries his suitcase – his lifeline – with him. Gwen and Tosh are looking at him as though they’re not expecting to see him again; Ianto accepts that they may actually have a point.

“You can do this,” Jack says with more conviction than he’s had in his voice for a long time.

Ianto bows his head, and then, before they can say anything more, reaches for the pulsing device and watches his world dissolve into coloured light.

{iii}

It all works better than it should. Ianto rents a house in a ridiculously upper class area of London, manages to get hold of servants, and somehow no one questions his presence. He dresses in the latest fashions and finds himself thinking that the past is really not that bad a place after all.

It is 1867, and the queen is still tumbled into the deepest mourning for her dead husband. Ianto barely recognises London, and wastes a few days exploring the city, wandering the streets that he will one day walk with Lisa. Sometimes, it feels so familiar it hurts his chest, and at other times it seems another world, let alone another time period. People are different in a way that’s almost indefinable, but he’s learning to blend in.

One of the devices Jack has given Ianto lets him know that Owen is in London somewhere, but it’s a big city with too many cracks to fall between. Ianto hires men to look into what happened to Owen; a man arriving in unfamiliar clothes and a strange way of looking at the world must have been noticed by someone. Owen isn’t dead; someone must have helped him to survive, someone must know where he is.

Days pass in a strange, dizzying way; Ianto makes his own enquiries and pays money to his investigators, who continue to come back empty-handed. Owen has disappeared, but Ianto can’t give up hope. It’s not even that he can’t face what Jack will do if he returns without their doctor; it’s more the fact that somehow, impossibly, Owen is his friend, and Ianto cannot leave him here. He has seen enough of this world to know that to fall into it without money or connections is to drown.

It’s possible that the Victorian version of Torchwood has scooped Owen up and swallowed him whole, though Ianto has worked in the archives for years, and he’s never found any records of someone matching Owen. Still, it’s possible, and if Torchwood have him Ianto knows there’s very little chance of getting him back. There will be very little left of him to get back.

Nearly a fortnight later, Ianto is stopped as he leaves his house in the evening. A little boy, grubby and bright-eyed and nursing a truly horrible-sounding cough, catches his coat. Ianto’s hand flies straight to his pocket, and the boy gives him an incredulous look, an as if I’d be so obvious if I’d just nicked your wallet look. He’s young, but his eyes are too old.

“Heard you’re looking for someone,” the boy says, mangling the words in a thick cockney accent. Ianto tries – and fails – not to mentally label him Artful Dodger.

“I am,” he says carefully, warily.

“I’m good at finding people, me,” Artful Dodger adds.

Ianto is about to shove a shilling at him and tell him to be on his way when he reflects that it can’t hurt, can it? His other avenues are drying up, the men he’s employing starting to look worn and sheepish. Owen has apparently vanished without trace, and maybe Ianto needs someone a little closer to the street.

“All right,” he says. “I am looking for someone. If you can find them for me, you’ll be rewarded handsomely.”

The boy nods, a grin breaking across his dirty face. He’s missing three teeth.

“What’s his name, Mister?”

“Owen Harper,” Ianto responds.

He watches the smile fall from the boy’s mouth, notes him turning just a little pale under the grime.

“Owen Harper?” he repeats, the slightest quaver in his voice.

“Yes,” Ianto confirms. “I need to find him.”

“You don’t want to go finding Owen Harper,” Artful Dodger tells him firmly. “Mister, you seem nice enough for a toff and all, don’t you go getting yourself mixed up with the likes of him.”

Ianto honestly doesn’t know what to do with the warnings but he knows he has to disregard them, and deal with whatever Owen’s done later, when he’s got him.

“I must find Owen Harper,” he states. “Can you help me find him or not?”

Artful Dodger frowns for moment, then seems to reach a decision. “I can,” he says. “Have you got any other clothes, Mister? Ones that are less fancy?”

“I do,” Ianto replies. “Would you… like to come inside the house while I change?”

The boy scoffs. “And have your servants watching me, waiting for me to pinch the silver? Not likely.”

“I won’t be long,” Ianto assures him, and hurries back into the house.

He changes his clothes to plainer ones he acquired shortly after arriving on the off-chance something like this would happen, and, after a moment’s thought, slides his gun under his coat. Ianto’s not going to take any chances.

“Will this do?” he asks Artful Dodger; the boy casts an appraising eye over him.

“Should do,” he says. “Come on then.”

Artful Dodger lives up to his – admittedly imaginary – name; Ianto has to work to keep up with him. They quickly leave the streets Ianto knows, falling into the more disreputable parts of the city, the slums, where the houses are crowded together and the streets are filthy. Ianto tries to keep track of his surroundings, but even with his photographic memory, the streets all look the same, winding together. He supposes this could be a trap, but he thinks he can get out of it if it is, and he tries just to focus on Owen.

They come to an abrupt halt outside what seems to be a pub of some kind. There’s noise coming from inside, cheers and yells and banging, and the sign outside is so grubby and dilapidated Ianto can’t even get a name for it.

“He’s in there,” Artful Dodger informs him, jerking his head towards the door.

Ianto reminds himself that walking into the pub is not nearly as terrifying as dragging Doctor Tanizaki’s corpse down a corridor with the memory of Lisa’s dead eyes on every sob, and pulls himself together.

He drops two guineas into the boy’s upturned palm. “Thanks, Mister.”

Artful Dodger is halfway down a sidestreet before he turns and comes back to Ianto.

“Look, Mister, you seem decent enough, if you want my advice, you should go. Don’t look for Owen Harper.”

“I didn’t ask for your advice,” Ianto tells him, a little icily.

Artful Dodger shrugs. “Don’t mean you shouldn’t take it.”

He nods to Ianto and then streaks away, though Ianto can hear his hacking cough echoing off the walls of the alley.

A particularly loud roar from inside the pub draws his attention to the matter at hand. He takes a deep breath, and reaches for the door.

{iv}

Two young men are fighting in a roped off area. The fight is brutal, visceral; their knuckles are bloody and their faces are bruised, noses running red. Neither of the men is Owen, though, so Ianto carefully shuffles around the screaming crowd, eyes flickering over the patrons.

A worn-looking prostitute drifts over to him, trailing her fingers down his arm in a way that Ianto thinks is meant to be seductive but it actually feels more desperate. He smiles and gently dissuades her, and she flounces off, trailing a mouthful of obscenities, only half of which he understands.

Artful Dodger said Owen would be here, and Ianto strains his eyes against the gloomy lighting, trying to see him. It’s too hot in here, too hot and close and crowded. People barely spare Ianto a glance, mainly focused on their own pleasures, on their own desperate attempts to escape the world they’re trapped in.

One of the fighting men is knocked out; the thud his body makes on the floorboards reverberates through the small building. Ianto turns to look, watching the spectators either crowing over their winnings or yelling abuse. Then, past the edge of the crowd, he spots movement, two men going outside. It should be nothing, but Ianto can’t stop himself from following, certain though he would never be able to say why. He shoulders through the people, not bothering to mumble apologies because they won’t be heard, wondering if he’s just chasing air. Maybe Artful Dodger lied, maybe Owen isn’t here, maybe he’s…

Stepping out of the heat into the cold night, Ianto’s musing are cut short.

One man has the other on the ground, and is systematically beating him to a pulp.

“Thought you could fucking cheat me, did you?” A kick to the ribcage that has the man curling over, spewing blood from his mouth. “Thought you could pull the fucking wool over my eyes, did you?”

It’s the same savage tone of voice that once spat: you’re just a teaboy at Ianto, but he doesn’t want to believe it. He takes a step closer.

“You go home and you tell that whore of a wife of yours that when I pay for goods I expect only the fucking best, understand?”

The man whimpers as his head is slammed into the cobblestones. Ianto flinches, and the attacker must catch the movement, because he looks up.

His face is shadowed by a battered black top hat and is smudged with dirt, but under the bright silver moonlight Ianto can see clearly.

“Owen?” he says softly.

Owen’s dark eyes are cold and hard and unforgiving, but Ianto detects a trace of play along in them, and in spite of himself he does. He doesn’t step in and try to stop Owen, though he wants to; he doesn’t move.

Owen directs a savage kick at the man’s arm, and Ianto hears the bone snap.

“You won’t try and fuck over Owen Harper again, will you?”

“N-no,” his victim slurs.

Owen steps over his body, his boot crushing the man’s hand and bringing one last scream of pain from him. His eyes catch Ianto’s for a moment, and then he turns and walks away.

Ianto follows at a reasonable distance, and isn’t surprised when his mind, seeking reassurance, throws up: I have a gun.

They walk through more twisting streets, until finally Owen stops at a house that looks no different from the dozens of others Ianto has passed today, and pushes open the door. Ianto walks in behind him, follows Owen up a flight of narrow stairs barely lit by guttering candles, before Owen unlocks another door, this one covered with peeling paint. Ianto walks inside, uncertain what to do or say.

Owen shuts the door behind them, walks across to pull curtains across the grimy windows, and lights enough candles to illuminate the room. It’s small, but Ianto doesn’t get to see much of it because Owen throws off his hat and his huge black coat, and stares at Ianto in the dim lighting.

“I thought…” he begins, and his voice is no longer the guttural rasp of earlier, but more like the real Owen, “I thought…”

He comes at Ianto like he’s going to hit him, then just clenches hands in his jacket. Owen is hyperventilating, and though Ianto wants answers he knows now isn’t the time to ask for them. Owen has been here nearly four months with no sign that the team were coming for him. Ianto curls his hands around Owen’s waist to help keep him upright, as Owen buries his face in Ianto’s shoulder and breathes raggedly. He doesn’t cry, but there’s shock and fear and relief there, so much that it’s nearly overwhelming.

Ianto is pinned against the door, and does his best to keep Owen standing, the wave of emotion crashing over him.

“You bastards,” Owen groans at last, “Oh, you bastards.”

“I’m sorry,” Ianto mutters against Owen’s dirty hair, “I’m so sorry.”

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Owen says weakly, “I thought it was too late.”

He pulls abruptly away from Ianto, swaying on his feet. He seems to want to say more, but all Owen manages to spit out is: “You bastards.”

Ianto decides he should wait until the shock is past before he says did I really just see you beat a man half to death? What the fuck, Owen?

“You’ve only been gone three days,” he says instead.

Owen frowns. “No,” he replies. “No, I haven’t.”

“Three days our time,” he says. “Not here.”

“Right.” Owen nods, and Ianto hopes he understands that they didn’t deliberately abandon him here for so long. “Are you taking me home now?”

“In two days’ time,” Ianto responds, and then realises how heavily significant his voice is.

“Oh,” Owen murmurs. “So… another two months, then?”

There’s the first sign of hope in Owen’s dark eyes, and Ianto hates to be the one to crush it. But he has to.

“Another two months,” he confirms.

Owen nods. “You should go,” he says. “We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t have this conversation tonight.”

Ianto understands what he means, and anyway he needs time to collect his thoughts. He needs time to process what he saw Owen doing so he can ask him about it in a way that’s nearly rational.

“I don’t know how to get out of here,” he admits.

Owen’s smile is rueful but nearly genuine. His hair has got longer, he’s lost too much weight, he’s smeared with grime. Ianto wonders exactly how much Owen has changed in the last three months.

“Lefts,” he says. “Just take every left and it gets you back to the… respectable parts of London.” His lips twitch a little more. “I couldn’t find my way around here to begin with either.”

Ianto nods. “Good idea,” he says, for lack of anything else.

“Come back here tomorrow,” Owen tells him. “Seven o’clock, I’ll be here.”

“All right,” Ianto agrees. “Seven o’clock.”

He walks out into the icy cold darkness, and tries to stay calm.

{v}

It’s a bad night. Ianto can barely sleep, his mind replaying what he’s seen over and over again. The relief at finding Owen alive and some degree of well has passed; now, he’s more interested in analysing what he’s seen, what he’s heard. When he shuts his eyes, he can see Owen breaking a man’s arm with a sharp kick, can see the savage twist of Owen’s mouth. There was a look on his face, a look Ianto hasn’t seen in a long time. All of them have wells of darkness and anger within them; they don’t let you into Torchwood without that internal bleakness. It looks like Owen has torn up every last ramification he had against his inner emptiness, and is drowning in it.

Ianto is restless all day, trying to reconcile the shaking wreck of relief that Owen made in his arms with the man in the bent top hat who attacked a man until he choked blood. Three months is a long time; Owen could be anyone by now.

The streets twist and coil around him as Ianto makes his way to Owen’s home. His gun bumps his hip with every step that he takes, and it doesn’t make him feel any safer. He doesn’t know what to say to Owen; Owen who has been changed so brutally by this other time. Ianto can’t blame him but he’s not sure he can forgive him either.

Owen is waiting for him outside his house, wearing a glower that Ianto doesn’t recognise because it’s crueller and scarier than anything Owen ever wore in the Hub. Ianto doesn’t miss the way people walking past edge around him, eyes downcast, flinching if they accidentally catch Owen’s gaze. They’re afraid of him, pure and simple, and that makes Ianto more than a little uneasy.

“Ianto,” Owen says, and his voice is the rough croak again. Keeping up appearances, maintaining the façade, and Ianto feels something like anger uncurl through him. Owen jerks his head and Ianto follows him inside, noting that a woman hurrying past throws him a look that’s easily as anxious as the one she bestows on Owen. Fear through association, and it makes his stomach churn.

The first thing that comes out of Ianto’s mouth, when they’re safely hidden in Owen’s room, is:

“What the hell have you done, Owen?”

Owen removes his battered top hat and runs a hand back through his flattened hair.

“I’ve survived,” he says grimly. In his tone, Ianto can read a myriad of ugly things, and knows that he’s meant to.

“Jesus Christ,” he says quietly, sinking into a chair.

Owen looks tired, but not repentant. “It’s sink or swim here, Ianto. I wasn’t exactly drowning in options.”

“So you built yourself an empire of fear?” Ianto demands.

“Yes,” Owen snarls, “Yes I did, because I wanted to live. I wanted to live in the hope that maybe one day you guys would deign to find me.” He sneers, mouth curling. “Nice to see I don’t even matter enough to have someone qualified as my rescuer.”

It stings, but Ianto has enough sense to know that Owen’s lashing out because Ianto has hurt him, and doesn’t rise to the bait. He stays silent, and counts in his head until Owen visibly calms down. It takes longer than it normally does, which isn’t a good sign.

“So you drew the short straw,” he says, a rueful, awkward smirk tugging his lips.

“Process of elimination,” Ianto replies, and watches Owen work through the thought process, nodding as he realises Ianto really was the only one who could come here.

“How’s the field work going for you?” he asks dryly.

Ianto shrugs. “I can think of things I’d rather be doing,” he replies.

“How long have you been here?”

“A month,” Ianto replies. “You’ve really slid under the radar.”

“Not where it matters,” Owen tells him, tone so deadpan that it sends a stripe of cold down Ianto’s spine.

“People are terrified of you,” Ianto says.

Owen nods. “Yep,” he agrees. He seems to register Ianto’s facial expression, because he sighs. “Better have them scared of me than trying to kill me, yeah? Don’t judge me, Ianto. You’d have done the same thing.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Ianto replies firmly.

Owen laughs, but he doesn’t sound amused. “No,” he says, “No, you wouldn’t have done, and you’d be bleeding in a gutter now with rats eating your eyeballs. I took the lesser of two evils.”

“And just what did you have to do to get everyone to fear you?” Ianto demands.

“You don’t want to know,” Owen tells him. When Ianto opens his mouth to argue, he cuts him off: “No, you really don’t want to know, believe me.”

“Fucking hell, Owen.”

“Jack didn’t send me here with a kiss and a gun and some money,” Owen replies savagely, “I was dumped here and I did what I had to.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Ianto responds, unable to stop himself from being judgemental.

“No,” Owen agrees, “But it’s all I’ve got.” His mouth twists. “I’ve got this room and this hat and other people’s money and the paper-thin excuse that I did it because I had to. You can come along and promise that we’ll get home, but this is more concrete than anything you can give me.”

Ianto sighs, standing up and taking a card from his coat. “My address,” he says, putting it on Owen’s table when the other man doesn’t move to take it. “If you need anything.”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Owen snaps.

“No,” Ianto agrees, making his way to the door. “Anything you want, you can take. You can demand it and people will trip over themselves to get it to you.”

It’s enough for one night. It’s too much for one night.

{vi}

Ianto is keeping servants mostly through throwing money at them and letting them think he’s a very rich but eccentric young man, so that they sigh and shake doubtful heads but don’t pay too much attention to his comings and goings. He doesn’t have a lot to say for himself and never throws dinner parties or has guests, and he knows he’s irritating a lot of his servants because of his inherent tidiness. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have servants at all, but he doesn’t think he could keep a whole Victorian house running without them. At least, not without access to some industrial strength modern cleaning products.

He leaves it a couple of days before going to find Owen again; he thinks they both need breathing space, time to come to terms. Ianto reads books and takes walks in St James’ park and misses being able to do things like filing and disinfecting to distract himself. There’s something very zen about filing; it doesn’t really require much thinking, so you can get the job done while letting your mind wander. But there’s no filing to be done, and Ianto drives himself mad trying to work out what to say to Owen.

Artful Dodger passes him in the street one morning.

“Did you find him?” he asks.

“I did,” Ianto replies.

The boy’s eyebrows lift. “You’re still alive,” he observes. “He must like you. I didn’t think Owen Harper liked anyone.”

“I’m not sure he likes me,” Ianto sighs, but it’s not a conversation he’s about to have. The kid really doesn’t need to know about any of the complicated stupid things Owen and Ianto have done to each other since Ianto begged his way into a job at Torchwood. But there is one thing he can ask Artful Dodger. “Why is everyone so afraid of him?” he enquires.

Artful Dodger laughs. “He’s mad,” he responds simply. “Oh, I could tell you stories about Owen Harper that’d turn your hair white, Mister.”

“Go on,” Ianto says.

The boy shakes his head. “You like him,” he says, “I can see it in your eyes. If you don’t know the truth, I ain’t going to tell you.”

Ianto could push it, but decides not to. He finds a sixpence in his pocket, and flicks it to Artful Dodger, who catches it expertly.

“What’s this for?” he asks.

Ianto shrugs. “Lunch is on me,” he replies.

Artful Dodger gives him a suspicious look, and then a gap-toothed smile.

“You’re all right, Mister,” he decides. “You really ought to stay away from Owen Harper.”

Then he’s off, dodging his way through the crowd.

“I know,” Ianto sighs to no one in particular.

He watches Artful Dodger disappear and reflects that he really should learn the kid’s actual name at some point.

{vii}

It’s getting easier to navigate the tangled streets, Ianto finds, the cool night air stinging his face and hands. He notes a few people giving him distrusting looks; maybe they’ve seen him with Owen and are already working under the assumption he’s a psychopath. Ianto thinks about the things he’s done in his time at Torchwood, and reflects that maybe he is.

He thinks he should probably be more scared than he is; after all, armed or not, these streets are dangerous. There’s a level of brutality here that is rarely seen in his own time, and it’s enough to make his stomach churn.

Round the back of the pub whose name he’s apparently never going to learn Ianto finds Owen, screaming a thick mouthful of expletives and slamming a man’s head repeatedly into the ground. In the shitty lighting, Ianto can see red smearing across the stone, and the man is gasping and whimpering thickly, incomprehensible pleas spilling out.

“Get off him!” Ianto shouts, because he cannot watch Owen do this again. He will not stand idly by and let Owen beat someone to death in front of him.

Owen raises his head, a pure feral anger on his face that Ianto hasn’t seen for a long time, something he thought Owen had laid to rest.

“Turn around, Ianto,” he snarls. “Walk away.”

“No,” Ianto replies, sharp and hard, “Get the fuck off him.”

They glare at each other for a moment in the moonlight, and then Owen cracks his victim’s head against the ground once more and stands up. Ianto is on his knees beside the man a moment later, feeling for a pulse; he’s relieved when he finds it.

“I haven’t killed him, Ianto,” Owen tells him, sounding tired, “He won’t serve as an example if he’s dead.”

“Fucking Christ!” Ianto breathes. “Owen, are you listening to yourself?”

Owen scowls. “Piss off, Ianto,” he mutters.

Ianto has walked away from this too many times. “No,” he responds. “We’re doing this Owen.”

Owen’s face crumples into a weird combination of a sneer and a scowl, and jerks his head.

“We’re not doing this here,” he tells him.

“Right,” Ianto mutters, following him anyway, “‘Cause we wouldn’t want to damage your reputation as a psychopath or anything, would we?”

“That reputation is the only thing keeping me alive,” Owen snarls.

Ianto knows this, though he wishes he didn’t, so he keeps quiet until they’ve walked up the narrow splintery stairs and back into Owen’s room. Owen ditches his coat and hat and turns around, spreading his arms.

“Let me have it,” he says. “Go on, Ianto, do what you do best. Judge the fuck out of me.”

“Well, you do make it so damn easy,” Ianto snaps back, before he can stop himself, and realises that Owen is doing this deliberately. He’s trying to take it down to a petty, trivial level so that they can’t talk about the actual problem here, and Ianto is not going to let him. “God, Owen, I want to say I’m surprised at what you’re doing, but I’m not.”

Owen frowns. “It wasn’t easy waking up one morning to discover that becoming a psychopath isn’t all that hard, if that’s what you mean.”

Ianto arches an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”

Now, Owen looks hurt. “Oh come on Ianto, you can’t seriously believe I would willingly-”

“I’ve just watched you bash a man’s teeth out on a cobblestone, Owen,” Ianto interrupts. “I don’t know what to think about you any more, I really don’t.”

“Fine,” Owen sighs. He looks exhausted. “Well, I suppose we’re done here then, aren’t we?”

“Do you even know what you’ve done?” Ianto demands. “Or do you just sweep it all under a rug and label it I Had To?”

Owen takes three steps closer; he’s shorter than Ianto but that doesn’t make him any less intimidating.

“I know what I’ve done,” he snarls, soft, voice trembling. “I just can’t think about it ‘cause Freud is about ten years old and no one’s invented therapy yet.” There’s something almost pleading in his tone; as though he wants Ianto to let this all go and forgive him. Ianto can’t; Ianto won’t.

“You’re worse than the Weevils,” he says.

Owen swiftly covers any emotional wounds with a sharp scowl. “How’d you make that out?” he asks.

“The Weevils don’t know what they’re doing,” Ianto responds.

Owen’s mouth curls into a truly nasty smile. “You’re forgetting who spent all that time researching Weevils. Don’t fool yourself Ianto; the Weevils know exactly what they’re doing.”

Ianto doesn’t let his expression flicker, and takes a breath. “You’re right,” he says.

Owen looks slightly disconcerted. “I am?”

“Yeah,” Ianto nods. “I think we’re done here. I’ll come and find you when it’s time to go.”

“Don’t bother,” Owen mutters.

Ianto is not in the mood for Owen’s self-destructive shit. “Maybe I won’t,” he snaps.

He doesn’t miss the shock that passes over Owen’s face before he turns and walks away; he doesn’t look back.

{viii}

Victorian London is boring, Ianto discovers. He’s lost interest in exploring the city, and is in no mood to socialise with people he’ll only know for another few weeks, and who died long before he was ever born. He spends most of his time trying not to think about Owen, and subsequently gives way too much thought to the other man. It makes him angry and restless, and he spends hours rearranging the bookcases with an increasingly complicated cross-referencing system until the servants start giving him anxious looks and muttering to each other.

Ianto is very probably insane, and he knows this, but not in the way that they think. He’s hopelessly homesick; missing pottering around the Hub with Jack’s casual propositions at inappropriate times, Tosh’s quiet sweetness, Gwen’s determined sense of justice, and even the Owen they used to have, who was vile to Ianto over cups of coffee but patched him up whenever he was hurt anyway. He misses his flat and his ipod and Dettol and decent coffee and post-it notes and food with actual vitamins in it and television and the internet and clothes that don’t take half an hour to put on.

Besides, he has the horrible suspicion that the others have already broken the coffee machine, because it is his baby and responds to no one but him, and he’s going to get home to it making betrayed clanky noises.

Three months is a long time, he reflects; a hell of a long time, and certainly enough time to go insane in. There are no excuses for Owen, because the man has killed people and tortured people and destroyed people’s livelihoods, and Ianto isn’t sure whether he can forgive him or not, but it makes sense. Owen thought he was stuck here and maybe he is stuck here (Ianto tells himself to trust Jack because if he doesn’t then he’ll succumb to cloying despair) and madness is the next logical step.

He can’t save Owen, though he wishes he could, and he can’t apologise because he has nothing to say. He doesn’t regret a word, and that’s perhaps the worst part.

Ianto sleeps badly at night, and dreams in Weevils and Lisa and thick trails of blood in narrow corridors. Torchwood fucks you up if you’ll let it – actually, it fucks you up even if you don’t – and it puts you into the darkest, most horrific of situations. Being stuck in Victorian London is not the end of the world and is by no means the worst thing that’s ever happened to Ianto, but he’s getting worn out and tired and impatient, and his faith is thinning.

It’s been almost three weeks since Ianto has seen Owen, and he has to repeatedly tell himself that he doesn’t want to seek out the other man because he knows what he’ll find. He won’t find Owen terrified and lost and lonely, he’ll find him angry and vicious and his hands smudged with someone’s blood.

Ianto’s butler comes in when he’s having afternoon tea – admittedly, they do do good tea in this time period; it’s one of the only saving graces – looking particularly disdainful.

“There’s a boy at the door, sir,” he says. “I told him to go but he was most insistent that he see you. Would you like me to call the police?”

Ianto puts down his teacup so hard that hot liquid splashes over the sides. “No,” he replies, “No, I’ll deal with him.”

His butler looks even more disdainful at this, but inclines his head. “As you wish, sir,” he says.

Ianto hurries down the stairs and outside to find Artful Dodger waiting for him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“What is it?” Ianto asks.

“It’s Owen Harper,” the boy replies. “I know you’re his friend.”

Ianto sighs. “That’s one way of putting it,” he mutters.

“Well, it don’t matter,” the boy says, “Either way, he’s dying. I thought you should know.”

And then he’s gone, racing off before Ianto can ask for any details

“Oh,” Ianto says, the breath rushing out of him, “Oh bloody hell, Owen.”

Continued Here

"Looking Through The Mirror", Spooks, Adam/Lucas

2009-04-29T16:07:35Z

Title: Looking Through The Mirror
Fandom: Spooks [Half The Truth AU]
Pairing: Adam/Lucas
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3262
Genre: Slash
Spoilers: 7x07
Summary: “Your place or mine?” Lucas’ smile is grim and a little pained, but he seems to be serious.
Author’s Notes: *points pointedly at rating* While obviously I don’t like what happened in episode seven at all… you know, thank God. Because I was seriously starting to think I wasn’t going to be able to push the guys into a sexual situation, and then this happened. So, you know, at least it paid off in that respect. Love to The Ting Tings’ cover of Standing In The Way Of Control, which is mainly what I listened to while writing this.

Secret mole
Getting it together.
- Kaiser Chiefs

Adam’s hands are shaking as he stands in the arrivals hall at Gatwick. People stream past him and around him, chattering and laughing and yelling and babbling away on their mobile phones, but all he can see when he shuts his eyes is the sticky red seeping across the floor. He swallows, and keeps scanning the crowd. Lucas doesn’t have any baggage to pick up, so he should be out soon. Adam curls his fingers into his palms, resolutely staying calm, and pretends that he’s not searching the crowd for Ben; looking for someone who can’t possibly be there simply because he needs him not to be gone. The world has got smaller around them, smaller and tighter and it’s getting hard to breathe.

Another rush of people come out of the doors, pushing luggage trolleys and bickering and Adam narrows his eyes, quickly dismissing them all. He glances down at his watch, and when he looks up again Lucas has arrived, striding purposefully although he’s looking wan. Adam moves to intercept him, falling easily into step with him. Lucas glances in his direction, and all the breath rushes out of his chest.

“Ben,” he says. The word comes out flat, hopeless; apparently he’s figured out all he needs to from Adam’s expression.

“He’s dead,” Adam murmurs, because he thinks Lucas might need the confirmation anyway. He’s proud of himself; his voice doesn’t break on either of the words, though he expects it to.

Lucas nods, passing his left hand over his face. It’s one domino after another, these days; person after person dying and never any reprieve.

“Connie?” he asks, after a moment.

Adam can’t find his voice for a second, swallowing and finding his throat closed. He tries again: “Yes.”

Lucas sighs, but doesn’t try to say anything. Adam, for his part, has nothing to say either; the silence between them isn’t easy but is at least determinedly mutual, and Lucas follows Adam to his car willingly enough. His exhaustion is palpable but not an issue; not yet.

They drive in continued quiet; Adam calls Ros to confirm that Lucas has arrived back safely, but other than that they remain staring out at the road. Uncomfortable car journeys seem to be becoming their thing; Adam almost wants to laugh, raw and inappropriate.

“This is becoming a pattern,” Lucas mumbles at a red light, as though reading Adam’s mind.

Adam taps his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Do you want to talk?”

The corner of Lucas’ mouth twitches into something that isn’t a smile at all, and he doesn’t reply. Adam wasn’t really expecting him to. It’s easier just to sit and share grief and guilt and fatigue and not look at each other and not say a word and just keep breathing because they’re out of any other options. Adam is fully aware that he doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record for coping with bereavement, and Lucas is a man clawing his way back over the edge. Neither of them are equipped for dealing with anything; Adam wants to scream, or break into angry shards, or kill something. Anything will do.

Lucas rolls his neck to look at Adam, head still resting against his seat. “I have one question.”

“What?”

“Your place or mine?” Lucas’ smile is grim and a little pained, but he seems to be serious.

Adam contemplates his answer for a moment, staring up at yet another red traffic light. He thinks this is maybe a bad idea, but then again it’s also inevitable. Lucas told him that they were crossing a line and could never go back; Adam’s aware that this is another decision that can’t be reversed but they’ve already come this far.

“Yours,” he says, foot slamming down on the accelerator.

Lucas’ lips press together, white, for a moment; Adam can’t tell if he’s apprehensive or pleased or regretting speaking at all. Lucas has his secrets and Adam knows better than to try and interpret them. He doesn’t want to take them, doesn’t want to fold them open and gaze into their depths. And that’s fine, because Lucas is tucking them as far away from daylight as he can. Even if he’s willing to slip for hours at a time around Adam, there’s only so far he’ll allow himself to go.

Adam thinks he’s learning to be grateful for that.

They don’t look at each other as Adam parks and they walk up the stairs to Lucas’ flat. Adam lets him take the lead, trying not to think too much. There’s nothing to overanalyse here; they’re painfully simple. Two men playing with blaming themselves and each other, who have been dancing around each other for weeks; making something more complicated than it should be, or even more complicated than it actually is. Lucas glances at Adam as he slots his key into his door; there’s no question in his eyes but his expression still says last chance to walk away.

Adam doesn’t.

The door slamming is the final change of conditions, the catalyst. Lucas pushes Adam up against the back of his front door, Yale lock digging into his shoulder, long thin fingers curling in Adam’s shirt hard enough to pinch the skin beneath. Adam thinks he’s the one who gasps but Lucas’ mouth fastens to his neck, tongue and teeth sliding against his skin. Lucas smells like sweat and compressed plane air and there’s the subtlest incongruous hint of perfume. Adam presses his hands to Lucas’ shoulders, pushing the other man’s jacket down his arms to pool on the floor, grabbing handfuls of the thin purple shirt underneath. Lucas responds with a scrape of teeth against Adam’s collarbone; Adam can feel him shaking and has enough humility to know that most of it isn’t arousal.

He loses most of his clothes on the path from Lucas’ living room to his bedroom, shirt scattering buttons and falling limply over the back of the sofa, shoes stranded several feet apart on the floor. There’s nothing methodical about it, nothing neat or tidy or considered; all Adam can hear is his own ragged breathing synchronised with Lucas’ as they stumble inelegantly through the flat. Lucas’ shirt falls, leaving Adam with his fingers skimming the tattoos, but for once his attention isn’t caught by the lines bisecting the skin. Lucas is smothered in ugly dark bruises; Adam winces just looking at them. They’re scattered across his chest, his sides, his shoulders; he imagines they’re all down Lucas’ back too.

Lucas’ smirk is sharp and rueful. “You should see the other guy,” he murmurs, and then seems to choke. Adam belatedly remembers that none of them know more than the fact Lucas was in Moscow; no one knows what he’s been doing for the last day, though he thinks he might have an idea. His thumb slides over a purple mark on Lucas’ ribs; the other man hisses, mumbling don’t.

Adam whacks his shoulder on the bedroom doorframe hard enough to make him flinch; Lucas presses his mouth to the red mark, fingers moving deftly on Adam’s belt. They’re the wrong side of desperate, hands skidding greedily over each other, less exploratory and more needy, and Adam thinks it’ll be hard to look back on this with dignity. Which is fine, because while he might have occasionally romanticised tracing the dark lines of tattoos and being kissed breathless he’s also ultimately practical. This is real life, this is what they’re stuck with, and he practically trips, sprawling naked over the mattress. It would be hard to expect anything other than this.

The drawer of Lucas’ bedside table is currently inexplicably on the floor, Adam notes vaguely; he can hear the other man’s zipper sliding down, jeans crumpling to the ground. Lucas climbs over him, one hand against Adam’s back, knee denting the mattress between his spread legs. Adam takes a breath, watching Lucas leaning over the side of the bed, scrabbling through the spilt contents of the drawer; condoms and lubricant, whether he was planning or expecting this situation or not (and Adam thinks not, though who really knows; Lucas won’t ever tell, after all), he is prepared for anything and everything. Always.

Foil packets scatter across the sheets; Lucas’ hands are trembling more, now, and Adam won’t ask him what’s wrong because he already knows and anyway he won’t get an answer. Of course he won’t get an answer. Lucas is still leant over him, their skin pressed together in too many places and Adam doesn’t think they’ll ever be able to get back from this. Lucas bites his shoulder and Adam arches into it, back shifting against Lucas’ chest and he thinks about the tattoos, the tattoos that shouldn’t be sexy because what they represent is so horrific it can never be spoken about.

Lucas doesn’t ask permission but he does hesitate a moment before Adam hears the lid of a bottle popping. A moment for Adam to twist around and say no. To ask for something else. But Adam still doesn’t, knees skidding against the sheets, breathing through his teeth. Lucas’ hands on his arse, fingers cold and unsteady and this could be messy. This could get so messy, and all Adam does is look back over his shoulder and hiss “go on.” Lucas’ lips twitch and a moment later there’s a cool slick finger sliding inside him. He grits his teeth, willing a little of the tension in his body to subside. Not too much, because if he relaxes too much he’ll shatter, but he’s got to ease up a little or this just won’t work. Lucas breathes out, warm breath skittering over Adam’s back, and his finger pushes deeper before slipping back out again.

Adam makes an involuntary noise against the sheets when Lucas curls two fingers inside him; although they’re both shaking with impatience, determined to find anything to distract themselves because the world is too much, just too fucking much, Lucas is being careful and whatever approximation of gentle he’s managed to scrape together and Adam thinks that’s going to sting later. But that’s later, not now. His hips jerk back, pushing against Lucas, hand clenching in the blanket. OhGod mangled in his mouth, and he can hear the way Lucas’ breathing shakes, fingers scissoring Adam open, occasionally skimming deep enough to make Adam’s eyelids flutter, back arching.

By the time Lucas has three fingers inside him Adam can hardly see, broken little noises falling from his lips and he can feel just how badly Lucas is shaking. Please escapes and Lucas pulls his fingers free; Adam can hear the sound of a condom ripping open and he grits his teeth, bowing his head and opening his legs further. He needs, oh God he needs, and when Lucas curls a steadying hand over his hip Adam thinks he’s stopped breathing. Lucas is careful; Lucas is a gentleman, the blunt head of his cock resting against Adam’s entrance for a moment, giving them both time to adjust. Adam takes a breath, and feels Lucas’ fingers tighten against his hips, hard enough that there will be bruises later, as he slowly begins to push in. He’s steady but measured, and Adam screws his eyes shut, willing his body not to move, staying still as Lucas inches deeper until his hips meet Adam’s arse.

It’s almost unreal; Lucas’ tight fingers and the burning stretch of him inside Adam are enough to convince him that this is happening, but although he can feel the other man he can’t see him and Adam wonders if that would make all of this too close, too personal. It’s hard to tell, and there’s a breathless second before Lucas begins pulling back, self-control clearly tumbling away from him, and that’s fine because Adam needs this to be hard and fast and determined because otherwise he’s just going to think about what he could have done and didn’t do and Jo crying with her hands pressed across her mouth in despair.

Lucas clearly feels the same way because he thrusts mercilessly, forceful and certain and almost too hard and Adam groans, pushing back, their skin smacking together loudly in the quiet room. He can hear Lucas’s breathing, unsteady and shallow, setting a pace they won’t be able to keep up, slamming into Adam brutally hard and Adam takes it because he needs it, gasping on every push in. But Lucas stills, quivering mouth pressing against Adam’s spine, and when he pulls out he doesn’t push back in again. Adam isn’t sure he has the words left in his head to ask what’s going on, although that becomes clear when Lucas carefully rolls him onto his back.

He’s flushed, cheeks harsh and red against his white face, lower lip bitten almost bloody, pupils blown wide with lust. Lucas’ chest is heaving, the tattoos rippling on his skin, and they just stare at each other for a moment. Then Lucas leans in, pushing Adam’s legs apart, and Adam obediently bends them, wrapping them around Lucas as he pushes back in. It’s hardly more gentle now, but there’s a human connection that Adam realises he was missing, and he brushes a hand into the back of Lucas’ hair, damp with sweat. Lucas shifts his angle, finding Adam’s prostate and hitting it repeatedly; Adam can hear himself making hungry, desperate noises but Lucas remains silent. He’s never gratuitous in anything; not even with sound.

They’re so close now that their breath mingles; Adam can feel warmth against his open lips as Lucas exhales, intimate as a kiss. And he realises something, as Lucas’ eyes close and his hips shove deep again. This is less about Ben and Connie than either of them want it to be, and it’s probably more about them than they will ever admit.

“Lucas,” he murmurs, just once, the name wavering in his mouth and he feels the shudder that runs through Lucas at the sound. Adam moves the hand not curled over the back of Lucas’ neck between their bodies, curling it around his own cock; the angle is bad but it doesn’t take much, jerking himself in time with Lucas’ thrusts. His head tips back, a moan breaking out of his mouth, and then he’s coming, the world flaring white for a moment.

Lucas is still thrusting into him when Adam regains his perspective, the occasional bumps against his prostate too soon after his orgasm that they’re almost like pain. But Lucas is tipping over the edge, Adam can see, can feel him trembling more than ever. When he finally does come, it’s with a sharp gasp, the most sound that’s come from him so far. Adam clings to him, feeling release crashing through Lucas, cock pulsing inside him until he has to grit his teeth.

There’s a moment of pure silence.

Adam lets out a soft sound between his teeth as Lucas slowly pulls out of him and rolls onto his back, pulling off the condom and neatly wrapping it in a tissue. Adam shifts, all his muscles feeling like they’re seizing, and he knows he’s going to be in pain later. Later, when they’re back on the grid trying to stop the world from falling apart any further. He grimaces, and tries not to think beyond the next couple of minutes. Lucas silently passes him a tissue and Adam carefully wipes his own come off his stomach, glancing sideways just in time to watch Lucas doing the same. Smears of white over the black curves of gnothi seauton, over the curling image that covers his chest, and it makes something in Adam shiver.

They lie on their backs in silence for a while, staring at the ceiling, saying nothing. Adam isn’t sure there’s anything to say, and they’re going to have to move soon, tidy themselves up and get to where they’re needed. Eventually, Adam looks at Lucas. The other man has his arm thrown over his eyes, and something occurs to Adam. The question he knows he shouldn’t ask, but does anyway.

“When was the last time, you know, you…”

Lucas moves his arm, turning his head to look at Adam. “A while,” he says. Adam can read years into that, and thinks he’s meant to; he grimaces, belatedly feeling performance pressure.

“Is it how you remember?” he asks.

Lucas laughs softly. “No. It’s different. Not bad, but different.”

Adam is beginning to suspect that’s how Lucas would sum up most of his life now: not bad, but different. And then Adam thinks that’s everyone’s lives these days, in this stupid world where nothing stays the same for five minutes and often it just gets worse.

“You went back to Moscow,” he says at last.

“I did.” Lucas’ voice is closed, firm, giving nothing away. They’re stripped bare, sheets tangled around their legs, but they’ll never be naked for each other.

Adam’s mind flicks through a dozen questions, none of which he can say aloud. He finally settles for: “Are you ok?”

Lucas is silent for a moment. “I was taken in Moscow,” he says finally. Adam doesn’t reply, waiting. Lucas sighs, and adds: “I wasn’t naïve enough to think I’d never have to go back.” Another pause. “But I hoped I’d have a little more time.”

It’s enough. It’s all Adam’s going to get; Lucas was scared, he realises. Not terrified, not numb, but scared. It’s understandable and plausible and Adam doesn’t try to pry further. The quiet strings warm between them, as they stretch out the moment, prolonging the inevitable.

“I got Ben killed,” Lucas says, entirely unexpectedly. His voice is colourless, his face is expressionless; the starkness of the statement makes Adam feel queasy.

“You didn’t.”

Lucas chokes off a bitter laugh. “Please, I don’t need you forcefeeding me sugarcoated lies so I can sleep at night.”

Adam shakes his head. “Ben already knew. He’d put it together; you just provided the confirmation and the evidence. Ben had worked it out. Honestly.”

Lucas stares at the ceiling for a while longer; after a moment, a single tear drips down the side of his face to be lost in his hair. Just one. The only tear Adam has seen him cry, and he instinctively knows it’ll probably be the only one he’ll ever see.

“You’re not strong enough to hold me together,” Lucas states at last. “And I certainly can’t hold you together.”

Adam sighs. “I know.”

Lucas shifts, rolling over to cover Adam completely. His hands cup Adam’s face before he leans in, their mouths meeting already open. The kiss is deep and desperate and passionate and Adam wonders if this is the last kiss he gets; if this is where they have to acknowledge that to string this along will destroy them both. His fingers curl over the back of Lucas’ neck, pulling him closer, their tongues entwining; it’s very close to sweet. Neither of them are enough for each other and sooner or later they’ll have to face up to it.

In five minutes they will have to get up and wash and dress and return to the grid and try to keep the lid on the world as it boils over far too fast. Reality will have to return and this will not have happened. They will work together and they won’t look too closely at each other and Adam will remember that Lucas doesn’t require friends or family or lovers or anyone. And somehow they will cope with the knowledge that today their little unit has been torn into pieces.

Right now, though, there are five more minutes.

Lady Paperclip's Second-Hand Bookshop

paperclipbitch @ 2009-11-07T03:36:00

Links to drabbles.

"Don't Feel Like Dancin'", Britannia High, Jez/BB

"Yes; We Were, Once", Desperate Romantics, Gabriel/Fred

"He Closes Early On Thursdays", Being Human, Gen

paperclipbitch @ 2009-09-14T16:10:00

"Release The Stars", Star Trek XI, McCoy/Uhura

"Release The Stars", Star Trek XI, McCoy/Uhura

"In Shining Armour", Torchwood/Narnia, Caspian/Tosh

Shiny previews. *pause for everyone to go "oooh"*

"On Futons And Casual Domesticity", Britannia High, Jez/BB

"Don't Linger Love, Come Take My Hand", Hamlet, Horatio-Ophelia centric

"Bring Your Own Sun", Desperate Romantics, Lizzie-centric

Link to drabbles

"Like There’s A Part Of Me That I Want To Get Back Again", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

"You Don't See Me", Iron Man, Tony/Pepper

"Saving The World (And Other Extreme Sports)", Primeval, Becker/Connor

"Saving The World (And Other Extreme Sports)", Primeval, Becker/Connor

"Don't Broadcast This Bit In The Saturday Teatime Slot", RPS, Ben Mansfield/Bradley James

"avec mon coeur plein de lumière", Merlin RPF, Bradley/Angel

"And I Should Know Better", Spooks, Adam/Lucas

paperclipbitch @ 2009-05-05T18:02:00

"If You Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

"If You Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200", Torchwood, Owen/Ianto

"Looking Through The Mirror", Spooks, Adam/Lucas

Shiny previews. pause for everyone to go "oooh"