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gingerteaonthetardis · 3 years

Text

prompts: mutual pining, one bed, declarations of love

pairing: ten x rose

rating: t (for touching... a lot.)

read on ao3. | read yesterday's prompt.

note: this one comes with an extra disclaimer; it got virtually no editing. like, even less than usual. so, please forgive any mistakes.

Rainwater had begun to pool in the soles of Rose’s shoes.

It was fair to say that neither of them had anticipated the sky opening up like this, pouring icy, pin-prick raindrops down over the sullen streets of London. It felt less like autumn than she’d hoped for when dressing for the day, and Rose bounced back and forth from foot to foot, doing her best to keep her already-soaked toes from freezing.

“Doctor,” she murmured over the low patter of rain, “shouldn’t we head back?” She looked hopefully over her shoulder, in what she hoped was the direction of the TARDIS and the ship’s promise of welcoming warmth.

The Doctor mirrored her glance back, but despite the rain soaking his hair—plastering it, in fact, against his forehead like he’d had a bucket of liquid poured directly over his head—his smile didn’t waver, and he made no sign of retreating.

“If you like,” he shrugged. “But aren’t you curious about where London Bridge has got to?”

Rose was not curious; she was freezing. They’d been wandering around eighteenth century London—presumably in search of trouble, based on the Doctor’s lack of focus—all day long, and she was long past tired of living in the past.

But the energized Time Lord was already moving downhill, toward the empty stretch of bank where the bridge was supposed to be, and she really had no choice but to follow.

She picked her way between puddles, hopping around the particularly murky ones; the Industrial Revolution may have been kicking into gear, but modern environmental regulations were rather a long way off. Rose tried to tread carefully, lest she step in something especially disgusting and completely dissolve her already soaked shoes. The Doctor simply trudged ahead, careless of his flimsy plimsolls.

“Couldn’t it just’ve… burnt down or something?” she called out, the rain swallowing her voice. “That did tend to happen, right?”

The Doctor beamed back at her in that way he had—the way that suggested she was asking the right questions, and that he found her tremendously clever. The way that always set her heart racing, even if she was seeing just a fragment of that smile by moonlight. She would’ve blushed if she weren’t so preoccupied with navigating the steep banks of the Thames.

“It did, but that’s not the case here. There’s no rubble! No pylons. No arches. Nothing. It’s just a lot of… well, water.”

“You’re telling me,” she grumbled, leaping over a particularly muddy puddle. Right as she landed on the other side, her traitorous, slippery soles skidded through the mire, sending her careening down toward the water, arms pinwheeling in an attempt to right herself. But her balance was off, and the banks were too steep, and it was so dark, and she found herself crying out—

“Doctor!”

He turned, reaching out reflexively, just in time to catch her against himself. The immediate solidity of him forced her breath out in a huff, flattening her chest against his. Before she could gasp in another breath, his arms curled around her and squeezed tight, stabilizing them both against the downward slope.

“All right?” he asked brightly, almost cheerfully, despite his iron grip.

Her lungs squeezed, and all she could manage was a dull nod.

The damp fibers of his coat abraded her cheek, but she hardly cared, burrowing even further into his lapels. Her heart was fluttering faster than the rainfall from her near-tumble, and it felt dizzyingly good not to be standing of her own power. Maybe it was all the smog of industrial London that had stolen her breath, or maybe it was simple exhaustion, but she didn’t want to move.

She just wanted to stand still and breathe deep, and maybe—if she could get away with it—let herself be held.

It had been a long week.

A long few weeks, really, since the regeneration and then the whole incident with Cassandra and the kiss-that-would-likely-never-be-discussed. He’d been keeping his distance, and she’d been orbiting him like an anxious satellite, trying to work out the exact right distance to be. And it had been… well, exhausting. Unnatural. Wrong.

This, though, was right.

Rose couldn’t say whether or not the Doctor recognized her neediness for what it was. Only he didn’t let her go for a long moment, palms spread flat over her back, the expanse of his body protecting her from the rain. There was no impatience or tension in the way he held her; he seemed quite content, in fact, to let her get her bearings.

“We should find somewhere to spend the night,” the Doctor said, his voice unnaturally quiet, “and keep investigating in the morning. Not much more we can see by moonlight. Well.” He paused. "Not with your human eyes, anyway." His breath sent shivers over her damp scalp, and she had to fight not to squeeze him tighter.

Instead, she nodded mutely, extracting herself from his sodden embrace.

He held her hand as they made their way back up the banks, his footsteps sure. She didn’t slip once.

Rose could never quite understand why the Doctor liked to sleep off the TARDIS.

She theorized that maybe it was a bit like humans going camping—that maybe the Doctor liked to rough it, to prove he could stick it out in primitive conditions. Or maybe he just didn’t have a bedroom onboard for whatever mad, Time Lord-y reason, and he only caught snatches of sleep when they were out in strange places.

She also wondered if he just tended to forget where he parked.

Because there was really no other excuse for dragging her to some pub—presumably a place of relatively ill-repute: her skin-tight jumper and curve-hugging denims didn’t even warrant a glance from the owner—and renting a room for them. The only room available, in fact.

The only room, with only one bed.

She peered around his body, lips pursing at the narrow room and even narrower bed frame, with its spindly posts and dusty-looking canopy. All the accommodations could boast—other than the microscopic bed—was a rickety little nightstand with an oil lamp, which cast a dull glow over the foggy windows. But at least it was dry here, and she itched to take off her clothes and burrow under the heavy duvet, letting it leach away the chill in her bones.

“All right, shift,” she commanded, nudging him out of the doorway and into the little room. She kept her back to the bed—and to him—trying not to think of how they’d be spending the night in closer quarters than usual. “We’ve got to get a fire going.”

Kneeling beside the hearth, Rose felt around for a matchbook or something, and was relieved when she found a tinderbox. The act of starting a fire would give her something to do: something to ruminate on, other than the Doctor standing silently behind her, no doubt watching her struggle—with the flint, and with her thoughts.

They hadn't done anything like this before—not since he'd changed. And while she knew, through a foggy sort of second-hand knowledge, that this new body was basically excellent at kissing, there was a lot more she didn't know about him. How he’d handle this predicament, for example.

Or whether he still cared about her.

He'd assured her that he was the same man, but he wasn't, really. Even if he did have the same thoughts or feelings, he expressed them in such a wildly different way that they probably got lost in translation, coming out as something unknowable and new.

It was a lot to get used to.

Not in a bad way. Just in the sense that it meant he took up quite a lot of room in her thoughts, and she was always—sometimes even painfully—aware of him. Even more than she’d been before, which had already been distracting in the extreme.

And now she’d have to share a bed with him.

"Rose," the Doctor said, and he was standing too close again. She could feel the air shifting around her, and smell that lightning-strike, cup-of-tea, damp-wool smell that signaled his nearness. "Let me worry about that. Why don't you poke around downstairs for some nibbles?"

As if on cue, Rose's stomach growled. The Doctor grinned knowingly as she pulled herself to her feet. And she, grateful for the escape and for the prospect of something warm to eat, scampered out the door.

When she returned from a rather… interesting trip to the kitchen, the fire was crackling happily in the hearth, uncaring of the bitter weather outside, and the Doctor had shed his trench and suit jacket, spreading them over a chair to dry. Beside the chair were his shoes, as well as—Rose suppressed a little grin—bright blue socks with little red-and-white rocket ships on them. The Doctor himself, still in mostly-damp clothes, seemed to be padding around the room barefoot in a restless, thoughtful fashion.

Rose set down the two bowls of soup—some sort of potato and leek concoction that actually smelled quite lovely, or perhaps she was just hungry—on the bedside table, and then hurried closer to the comforting heat of the fire. Her clothes were beginning to stick and chafe, and if she didn't get out of them soon, she'd almost certainly catch cold.

"All the bread was too stale to be worth eating," she remarked blithely, "but there was some soup left, and the cook said we could come down for another bowl if we needed."

The Doctor simply nodded, scrubbing at his chin.

"D'you—" she began, hesitant. "I mean, would it be alright if I—"

Rose gestured helplessly down at her rain-stiffened clothes. The Doctor's eyes seemed to trail her hands for only a moment before returning to his pinched, intent perusal of their bedroom. Though what he could possibly be looking for was beyond her.

Perhaps another bed, she mused.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and hated the uncertainty.

"Yeah, 'course, sure," the Doctor chattered mindlessly. "You can use the duvet, if you like. Like one of those robes, you know? That go backwards? With the sleeves?" Rose's brow furrowed in confusion, and his pacing sped up. And then he snapped his fingers in sudden remembrance. "A Snuggie! That's the one!" At her blank expression, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Right. I guess you missed that particular pop culture phenomenon.”

“Doctor,” Rose sighed. “A bit of privacy?”

There was an alarming quality to his rapid blinking, so fast and flustered that she almost wondered if it was some sort of code, but then he just gave a short nod and turned his back to look out the dreary window.

Shuffling out of her damp clothes was more difficult than she’d expected; the clinging denim, the saturated cotton of her socks, the stiff sleeves of her jumper all conspired against any kind of graceful disrobing. It took her several graceless seconds to unhook her bra and slip it out through the neck of her camisole, something she hadn’t done since she was changing in the girls’ locker room for P.E. But when it came to her trousers, she really struggled. Rose had to brace herself against the bed, carefully holding her balance, as her trousers tangled around her ankles.

She mumbled under her breath as her footing shifted, back and forth, trying to escape from the tenacious denim. “Shit.”

“Rose?”

She grunted.

“All right?” She glanced up in time to see the Doctor bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands clenched at his sides. So much tension. It had outlasted one body, traveling seamlessly into the next. At least that never changed.

Rose kicked uselessly at the tangled legs, frustration coiling like the denim.

“Yep. I’ve been in bleeding shackles that were easier to get out of, but I’m f—”

Falling. She was falling.

But instead of hitting the ground, she hit a wall of—of body. Of time-and-tea-and-lightning-strike. Of Doctor.

“Steady on,” he spoke into her hair. “Gravity must have it out for you tonight.”

She couldn’t work out what route he’d taken to get to her, only that he’d caught her. Again. But this time, the only hazard was herself, nothing else could be blamed—and she wasn’t wearing any trousers. A flush climbed up her neck, colouring her cheeks, and she was grateful the Doctor couldn’t see her face.

She had no reasonable expectation for him to hold on to her, to warm the backs of her chilled thighs with his relative heat, or to let her feel the shape of his chest underneath his thin Oxford. But he did; he held her steady while she braced herself against the bedpost. Over her thin camisole, his fingers filled the spaces between her ribs, resting just so. Was he reluctant to let go of her? How did she feel, to him?

She inhaled sharply, breaking her reverie. “It’s not gravity,” she whinged, “it’s these stupid denims.”

He only relinquished her when she twisted away to sit on the bed and remove the ever-stiffening denim, once and for all. As she kicked the offending garment across the floor, he let out a faint huff of amusement, and she realized that he was still standing right there—just seeing her, in her knickers and socks and her top like a second skin.

It probably should’ve felt stranger.

She glanced up to find him wearing a half-smile that she was still learning to read. His hair was mostly dry now, and puffed out as a result, like he’d stuck his finger in a socket or something. And his eyes were wide open.

She was getting used to them, to the way they looked at her, but she was only human—she was still adjusting. How could something—someone—be so different and yet so much the same?

The Doctor, seeming to notice her hesitation, blinked a few more times and stepped back, pointedly not looking at her or her bare legs. As if making up his mind, he spun on his heel and faced the door, and she gratefully buried herself in the bedding, wrapping the coverlet around her chilled body like a shroud. It was a bit itchy and woolen, but still comforting and heavy and blessedly warm. Warmer still was the bowl of soup, which she picked up and cradled carefully in her hands once she felt sure the coverlet wouldn’t drop from her shoulders. She shivered out a soft, “You can turn around now.”

The Doctor spun back, whip-quick, and eyed her makeshift garment for barely a moment before getting back to his pacing.

“Thing is, Rose, without the London Bridge, everything should be different. London as we know it shouldn’t exist. I mean, this bridge has been around almost since the birth of Londinium. It was the primary—really, the only—way of getting across the Thames for hundreds of years!”

The Doctor’s babble was rapid-fire, as usual, and Rose only barely tried to follow it while she sipped at her soup. He went on about the Romans for a good bit: about trade routes and politics. And then he progressed to the housing implications and overcrowding that should’ve been a result of a bridgeless London. He paced the creaky floor as he rambled, no doubt driving the downstairs tenants spare. And the longer he paced, the more Rose became aware of the smallness of the room, his frantic energy filling it up until her own heart started to sympathetically race.

“Doctor,” Rose said suddenly, louder than she meant to.

Her interruption once again stopped him in his tracks. This body really was very jumpy.

“What?”

“Don’t you want some soup?”

Of all the things she might’ve said, this was perhaps the last thing he’d expected. She could tell because his mouth popped open, and his eyebrows jumped high for a moment, and then his gaze turned to her hands, which gripped her bowl and spoon like a lifeline. She gestured to the other bowl, hoping he’d take it and sit down, for pity’s sake, so she could get used to being near him like this—on the thin mattress. Where they’d be sleeping.

Why did it matter so much? Why did it feel like it might be the hardest thing she’d ever done? Why were they both so nervous?

His knees bent, and then he was sitting beside her, silent but for his feet brushing the floorboards. She extended the other bowl of soup, and—

“Thank you,” he said, reaching.

His fingers brushed hers, and she felt the touch like a jolt—like an electric shock, through her fingertips and into the deepest recesses of her body. She felt his hand twitch against hers: a sure sign that he’d felt it, too. Looking down—looking anywhere but at him—Rose chewed her lip.

So that hadn’t changed either.

The spark, the charge that she sometimes felt when they touched skin-to-skin.

She heard the spoon scrape against the bowl, realizing that he’d shifted away. And she wondered about his hands: about how they still fit with hers, and how she could possibly have fallen so easily into feeling what she’d always felt, only for a completely different face. That confusion—that sense of impossibility—had held her in gridlock for days, craving his touch and not knowing how to ask for it. It had surged to the surface when she—when Cassandra—had kissed him, and had never quite receded.

She wanted more than anything to ask him. How, maybe. Or why. How can I still want you? Is there something wrong with me? But that was the problem with them. They didn’t talk about things—about what existed, intangible and impossible, between them. They just let the sparks flare up and die, and hoped that nobody got burned.

She finished her food mechanically, untasting and inattentive. The Doctor was no better; he ate with a focused determination, eyes staring blankly at the floorboards. But by the time they’d both finished—bellies full and silence echoing, empty—Rose was warm enough to feel her own exhaustion. Her muscles were sore from walking on cobblestones all day, and she looked forward to sleep more than just about anything.

“I’m knackered,” she spoke quietly, glancing at him askance. “D’you mind if I turn in?”

She said it in a way that—she hoped—made her lack of expectations clear. He didn’t have to stretch out beside her, if he didn’t want to. He could pace more. Though it might drive her mad.

But the Doctor gestured at the bed between them. “Be my guest.”

He waited patiently as she tried to get comfortable, arranging the duvet around herself while trying not to accidentally show too much skin. It was difficult. Even her bare arms prickled with gooseflesh when the chill air touched them.

In the end, she formed a sort of cocoon around herself, tucking in her fingers and toes, and while she was certain it looked silly, it was perfectly cozy. So long as the Doctor didn’t mind being left with only a corner of the blanket to sleep under. But when she looked back up at him, he didn’t seem to notice her selfishness. His eyes were locked to her face.

And his expression, insofar as she could read it at all, was tensely thoughtful. She smiled at him.

Setting aside his empty bowl and extinguishing the lamp, the Doctor appeared to be preparing to join her in sleep. Her breath hitched, anticipation curling through her stomach, though she couldn’t say why. Nothing was going to happen.

The flames at the hearth provided barely enough to make out the broad strokes of his movement. The drawing up of his legs, onto the bed beside her. His limbs were so long as to nearly hang off, but he solved that quickly, turning to his side and tucking them up. Facing her. Even though she could barely make out his features in the dimness, she knew he was still looking at her. She felt it. He nestled his head against his folded hands—she’d taken the only pillow, come to think of it—and the heat of his gaze extinguished.

His eyes were shut.

For a brief and blessed moment, she thought that would be it. That it would be that easy.

That she could just sleep.

Her own heavy eyelids sunk to half-mast, and then closed.

“Rose.”

His voice seemed lower in the darkness, with the raspy quality of a near-whisper. His breath fanned over her face; he was so close.

Her eyes flew open, suddenly awake. Like she’d never been lulled into comfortable half-sleep to begin with. Her body sang with adrenaline. “Yeah?”

The Doctor hesitated. His eyes were still closed. She could tell, because there was no weight, no pressure. Only the sound of his voice. “Do I… make you uncomfortable?”

Rose laughed before she could stop it—a sharp, short huff. “What?”

“It’s okay if I do. You can tell me.” He spoke softly, sounding so forlorn that one willful hand stole out of her blankets, reaching across the slim space to touch him. Any part of him. Her fingers landed on his shoulder, cupping the nearly-dry Oxford. She wondered if he’d catch cold from the damp clothes; probably not, with his Superior Biology. “I was telling the truth,” he said, slow and serious, “about regeneration—you never know what you’ll end up with. You can… you can try, of course, to come out a certain way. But it’s no guarantee. Sometimes you end up with halitosis or a weird facial quirk, and sometimes you just end up…”

His voice faded away, into the darkness.

“What? Doctor, I don’t—”

“I’m just saying that… it’s been a little while now.” A few weeks, she wanted to correct him. It’s only been a few weeks! That was like no time at all; he of all people should’ve known that. “And if you still haven’t—I don’t know, adjusted or whatever you need to do, that’s all right. Some people never do get used to the new faces. And if it—that is, me—if I make you uncomfortable now, you can say so. I can… stop.”

“Stop what?” Rose questioned sharply. "Stop being… who you are?"

It was preposterous, a mad suggestion. And something she'd thought they'd already come to terms with.

Can you change back?

Do you want me to?

But he hadn't—he couldn't. And she was beginning not to wish for it anymore. In fact, she hadn't thought of him as anything other than himself since that first strange, hellish day. Now, the only thing she wished for was the feeling of his hand in hers, more and more—so much it scared her.

But he plainly had reason to doubt. It was there in his voice, even if she couldn't make out the details of his face.

"I could stop being so—well, touchy," he paused, and horror crept over her. "I could stop touching you… unnecessarily. And I've got a gob, obviously—fairly certain I'm a verbal processor this go 'round—but I'm sure I could be less communicative—shut up every now and then, if you need a bit of hush."

Rose just gaped.

"Or, if it's just… not working out," he continued, even softer. The muscle in his shoulder rippled and tightened, as if to take a blow. "I could always take you ho—"

"No," she blurted, and her voice bounced over the walls. Her fingers clenched down on his shoulder before releasing him, returning to the safety of her cocoon, stung. "No. I don't mind—I mean, yeah, at first I—" She couldn't finish. She what? Wanted something impossible? "But now I… don't."

The Doctor was quiet.

London was less quiet. The tavern below emitted occasional bursts and gusts of merriment. The rain persisted in pattering on the windowpane. And Rose felt like her heart was the loudest of all, pounding fearfully against her ribs and threatening to crawl up her throat.

She felt him shift, the bed dipping beneath them, but she couldn't tell what he was doing until his hand landed. His fingers curled around hers, easing their grip on the edges of the duvet. They were the only thing securing her inside of her protective shell. His touch was cool and heavy, and her entire body stilled. “So, this… is okay?” Uncertainty was evident in his voice.

“Of course it’s okay,” Rose insisted, her voice hoarse. “You touch me all the time. It doesn’t bother me.” I like it. What’s more, she needed it, to feel safe and connected and grounded.

“No, I mean—” and the Doctor stopped, sounding frustrated. His hand breached the blanket, cool fingers tracing the delicate skin of her wrist, following trails of veins and tendons that he probably knew the names and purposes of. The touch sparked. “Like before.”

Her whole body stilled at his words. Like before.

It was the closest he’d ever gotten to addressing what they’d been building toward, back in his old body. Or even to acknowledging that they were building toward something. She felt sharp and sudden relief, that all of the antagonistic flirting and lingering looks over the console and innuendo and dancing hadn’t just been the product of her fevered imagination. That he wasn’t just a passive recipient of her misplaced affection.

That he wanted her, too.

“Like before,” she repeated, her voice dull in her own ears.

His hand shifted—coaxing her arm back out of the cocoon, leaving a gap in the blanket. And gently, he slid through, his fingers drifting up to her shoulder and then down the curve of her ribs to her waist, and then her hip, which felt starkly bare under the blanket.

She wasn’t cold anymore, but goosebumps still rose and prickled to the surface of her skin. She felt that current, that sensation that made her want to move closer and closer and burrow into him. Instead, she chafed her thighs together, trying to alleviate some of the pressure building inside. His hand shifted with her, sliding down over the hem of her knickers to brush her leg.

She wished she could make out the Doctor’s face, see what he was thinking. Look into his eyes. But all she could do was listen to his words, and feel his gentle touch.

Quietly, he spoke. “Can I?”

Could he what?

“Yes,” she answered, painfully aware of her own breathlessness. Even more aware of his hand skating back up over the rungs of her ribs, fingers catching on thin cotton, to the outside curve of her breast, the column of her neck, the hinge of her jaw, where the pressure of his fingers made her mouth go slack. A prickly, hot sensation traveled down from the base of her skull—awareness of what was coming. Like a premonition.

"I still feel it," he said slowly. "I thought you ought to know. A lot of things have—changed," and his voice snagged on the word, like he was still coming to terms with its shape. "But that much didn't. I don't—I don't think…"

She could feel the warmth of his breath, air from his lungs, fanning over her lips. Her eyes, adjusted to the dark, could make out dim shadow-shapes. Bumps and curves that composed the Doctor's face.

She hadn't yet seen it like this. In the dark. But she felt instinctively that it was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with its features.

"What?"

The sound of him swallowing made her breathing hitch. It was a vulnerable sound, timid. Uncertain. "I don't think I ever could," he whispered, like he was confessing his deepest fear. "Change that."

A log popped in the hearth. All else was silent.

The words came to her like out of a dream: "You won't ever have to."

She was amazed by her own assurance. But it was there, steady under the words. A current of doubtless, unshakeable truth.

"Rose, you can't promise—"

"Yes, I can," she argued. “Open your eyes.” Budding certainty made her bold. If she could carry her feelings for him across two bodies, what more was there? What else could there possibly be to prevent her from loving him?

His eyes fluttered open, a glossy flash of white that caught the scant firelight. The irises, normally that deep, earthy brown, appeared colourless and dark and vast. Like she could fall into them, if she wasn’t first burned by their heat.

"There isn't a face you could have that I wouldn't grow to care for. Because it's your face. Do you see?" She wanted so badly for him to see, she ached with it. "I was scared because I thought it wasn't your face—I thought it was a trick, or a lie, or—I thought you weren't you. But you are.” She laughed, airless and wild. “Of course you are. You're my Doctor."

The possessive slipped out heedlessly, and she barely had the time to worry over it before his lips were crashing into hers. A spark turning into a wildfire.

The hand on her jaw was coaxing, tilting her face up to meet his, angling her just-so, a precision that belied the passion of his mouth against her own. She felt herself opening to it, to his breath rushing out on a gasp as her fingers curled into his hair at his nape, silky-soft and thick. She wanted to hang on for dear life. She did hang on for dear life.

It was the only thing she could hold on to as she became utterly unmoored, lost in the endless heat of the kiss. When her lungs began to burn, she was released, but only long enough for her to hear the rapid-fire of his speech, desperate and rasping. “Rose, I didn’t—thank you, yes, thank you, I am—I am—”

And then she was drawn under again.

She didn’t know how long it lasted. Time, for once, didn’t matter. It was replaced by smaller markers—the space between one breath and the next; the slow roll as she was shifted onto her back, her hands still raking at the chaotic mess of his hair; the beatings of three hearts, separated now only by skin.

“I was so scared,” he mumbled into her throat.

“Me too.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” she swore. “I promise, I won’t.” And then, because she liked hearing it, because the assertion rang true: “My Doctor.” The words seemed to echo across time, stretching backwards and forwards, familiar even as she said them. Like she’d said the same thing a hundred times before, or like she would say it, or like she’d said it in another lifetime.

He groaned, and anything else she wanted to say was swallowed up in another perfect, interminable kiss.

As the fire gradually sank into embers, the room cooling around them in their little bubble of warmth and want, some of the frantic need began to dissipate. Her hands in his hair turned soothing, stroking down his neck, to the top of his spine, where he shivered. “Don’t leave,” he said, but now it was less of a plea than an assurance. “Love you.”

“Not ever,” she nodded, exhaling slowly, trying to counter the flips her heart wanted to do in her chest. How could loving someone so much cause pain? It ached right through her, down into her bones. She pressed another kiss to his lips, gentle and calming. “Love you, too.” He looked back at her in wonderment, like he couldn’t quite believe it.

She wasn’t sure she could believe it either. She’d spent so long, all those weeks and months, in a haze of doubt and uncertainty, and now it was just gone. There was no room for it between them. Nothing else that needed saying.

After a moment, her mind cleared enough that she could speak again. “Doctor?”

He hummed softly in reply.

“It’s fake.” His eyes blinked open, and his whole body tensed, ready to jump up and run. She ran another reassuring hand through his hair and down his back. “This London. It’s a replica, I think.”

His muscles went lax again. “What makes you say so?”

“Something the cook said,” she shrugged sleepily, wrapping her free arm tighter around the Doctor’s back. The weight of him made something in her calm. “She said ‘the park’ opened late tomorrow, so she’d leave us breakfast, in case we got hungry. And also,” she said, biting her lip, “she was green.”

The Doctor stilled, and then chuckled, warm breath tickling her neck. “Rose Tyler, you are a menace. Why didn’t you say before?”

“I was a bit… distracted,” she answered simply. She landed a kiss atop his hair, which smelled like rainwater and like home, smiling into it when he laughed again. The sound rumbled through her chest, warming her from the inside.

“Explains why the bridge is gone, I suppose,” he said. “Park boundaries. We’ll check it out tomorrow?”

For a moment, her breath caught. He was asking. Leaving the choice up to her, the earnestness in his voice unmistakable, as if it really, truly mattered to him what she wanted. Of course, he’d always cared, in his way. But he was a force of nature—or, perhaps more accurately, a force beyond nature. The Oncoming Storm. She could never hope to stand in his way, or to shape his path the way he shaped hers.

Only, it seemed, she had. Against all odds, she had burrowed her little human way into his hearts. He loved her.

And that changed—everything.

The whispered confessions and heart-stopping kisses, she felt, weren’t the ending point for what was happening between them. In fact, they rather resembled a beginning.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed. He sighed happily, and Rose marveled at the sound. He seemed so—content. All the restlessness she’d come to associate with the Doctor had dissolved away, leaving only the parts of him that were hungry for contact. For love. The parts of him that were hers.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He hummed again, hazy and soft. “Love you, too.”

Then, to her amazement, the Doctor slept.

And so did she.

#the bulk of this was written... in may 2020. CAN YOU BELIEVE???#doctorrose fic marathon #ten x rose #tenrose #tenth doctor #rose tyler #dw fic #fic and chips #timepetals

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98prilla · 4 years

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Deathworlder Down

Set in @delimeful 's wonderful WIBAR AU. Virgil gets sick, and the others struggle to help him, not only with his illness, but the clear underlying emotional issues.

AO3

...

It was quiet, on the Mindscape.

Logan was reading, absently twirling his fingers and hands as he studied, recording information, though he was certain most of it would prove false, as it was the little that was reported about humans. Most were comparable to ghost stories or urban legends, but there were a few that seemed more credible, that he hoped would give some more insight into humans in general.

Roman was off working out somewhere, sparring, he insisted it was just to keep sharp, but they all knew it was because he didn’t trust the human on board not to go feral and kill them any second, despite Virgil’s rather shy and withdrawn personality. Still, at least he was getting his aggression out elsewhere, and not by actually fighting or snarking at the true object of his emotions. He was doing better, still, Logan would give him that, but there was a long way to go.

He could hear Patton pitter pattering about in the kitchen, chirping and warbling to himself, making his lips twitch up into a smile. It had been far too quiet, without the little Ampen aboard, too much silence to drown in. It was a comfort he hadn’t realized he’d grown accustomed to, hearing Patton hum and chirp and sing all day. Now it was also a relief, a steady reminder their friend was back home, safe and sound, and he frowned again, thinking of how close they had come to losing him for good. That they would have, had it not been for Virgil.

Speaking of…

“Patton?” He asked, stepping into the kitchen, the Ampen stopping his trilling as he set the kettle on the stove, giving him one of his warm, happy smiles, that seemed to actually light up the room.

“Yeah, Lo? Everything ok?” Patton’s antennae twitched slightly, and he focused back on the present.

“Yes, I believe so, I was simply wondering if you’d seen Virgil today. He is usually awake by now. I was hoping to discuss some… perhaps sensitive topics, that I picked up on during our vidi.”

It was true. He hadn’t seen much, with how fast it had all turned, and spiraled out of hand, and though Virgil and him had been having question and answer sessions, the ones he really wanted to ask seemed more… personal. So, he’d kept them to himself, and simply continued his observations, and studied up on the information available to him.

And what he’d noticed was… concerning, to say the least. He was certain the human wasn’t sleeping enough. Unlike most species, humans could run on limited sleep for an extended period of time, but he was slowly becoming aware that just because humans had the capability to do something, didn’t mean it was natural or good for them to do it. They could survive grievous injuries that would have killed any other species, but it came at great physical and mental cost. They could survive intense radiation, but they would sicken slowly and die. They could imbibe substances that a single sip would be deadly to himself, but even in small amounts, it inhibited a human’s survival instincts and weakened them.

So just because Virgil was running on, at his best guess, four to five hours of sleep a day, didn’t mean that was anywhere near the healthy range of a human’s normal requirements. He’d noticed some of the side effects so commonly, he’d thought they simply were how humans were, until the Vidi gave him glimpses at others, who lacked the bags under their eyes, the deep bruising, that Virgil always had. Virgil was often unsteady on his feet, “light headed” he called it, he often stared out into space for minutes at a time, without registering anything that was said or happening around him, he ran into things, doorframes, corners of furniture, he stumbled and often had to lean against something to regain his balance.

The other issue was his diet. Logan was absolutely certain that Virgil was not eating nor drinking enough. With his permission, he’d taken his heart rate, he’d calculated how many calories his body must burn, at the least, throughout a day. With no physical activity, no exertion, the very base level of sleep, Virgil was missing at least hundreds, if not nearly a thousand, necessary calories, and that was if he were in a relaxed state, which he never was. The human was endlessly jumpy and frightened and twitchy, and he had admitted that his heart rate was much higher than it should be, most of the time, due to his constant state of high alert. But despite this, he ate nearly the least at meals, always pushing food around his place, making excuses to take small portions, at least half the time Logan was certain he hadn’t eaten at all until he was forced to at their daily dinner together, and only then because he didn’t want to upset Patton. Based on his limited understanding, Virgil was immensely underweight and incredibly sleep deprived, both dangerously unhealthy states for humans.

“oh! I peeked in on him a bit ago. He'd just woke up, said he was going to take a shower. I’m kinda surprised he isn’t out here yet.” Patton frowned, his feathers fluffing in distress.

“I see. I'll go check on him, Patton. Save me a cup?” He smiles as Patton’s face lights up again, only half surprised as Patton jumps at him, hugging him. He carefully supports the Ampen, holding him close, allowing his head to rest against Patton's small, fluffy shoulder.

“Thanks, Lo. For looking out for him.” Patton mumbled, as Logan let him go, setting him back down on the counter.

“Of course, Patton. It’s the least I can do. He deserves to not only be safe, but feel safe. I am happy to help make that happen.” Patton's feathers pulsed his trademark light blue, a sign of happiness, that made Logan’s hands flutter, trying to record the warmth in his chest, as he turns away.

…

He woke up with a groan, pushing the cupboard door open, jumping as his door opened, hitting his head against the back of the cupboard at the sudden movement, breath speeding wildly, before he registered Patton’s head poking in, concerned eyes on him.

“Hey, kiddo. Just checking in. Everything ok?” He sighed, but pushed back his exhaustion, summoning a small smile, making it as reassuring and genuine as possible, not difficult, faced with a small ball of fluff.

“I’m alright, Pat. Just catching up on some zee’s. Was gonna go shower.” Patton nodded, hopping into his arms for a quick snuggle, before chirping a happy goodbye and vanishing out the door.

He slumped back against the pylon behind him with another groan, rubbing his hands across his face, then up into his hair, wincing as he felt his hair stick straight up, matted with sweat. He’d stayed in bed far later than usual, but he hadn’t slept more. The night had been plagued with nightmares and sleep paralysis, filling him with terror so deep he couldn’t even scream, could merely panic until he passed out once more, tossing and turning restlessly.

He felt shivery, cold, and his head spun just a bit as he stood, his stomach turning at the motion, vertigo rocking him as he leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to get his bearings.

“fine. I’m fine.” He muttered, taking a few deep breaths in and out, before making his way to the door, listening for a few moments to make sure he couldn’t hear Roman anywhere nearby, he didn’t think he could handle the Crav’n in his current state.

Which was normal and healthy and perfectly fine. He had to be fine.

He made it to the bathroom with minimal stumbling, his vision barely swimming in and out, as he stripped, and turned on the water, hot enough it would probably burn any other members of their little band, but he just sighed in relief as he stepped in, letting the water run over him, soothe the aches building in his muscles. He let out a sigh, halfheartedly scrubbing at his hair, zoning out as he watched the steam.

As he watched, it seemed to form a shape, to swirl into a nebulous form, and his breathing stuttered, heart stopping, as he stared in fear at the suited figure, one of his captors, a needle stabbing down towards him, and he flinched back, the world blurring and swirling and fading out around him, static roaring through his ears, his heart racing as static filled his vision as well. Distantly, he heard knocks, someone maybe calling his name, then he felt his legs give out, his head hit something hard, and the world went black.

…

“Virgil? Are you alright?” He heard a loud thump, a crash, and his eyes widened, knocking again. “Virgil? If you do not answer me, I am going to enter. Virgil!” Nothing. He threw open the door, breath catching, freezing in place at the sight.

Virgil was sprawled across the bathroom floor, unconscious. His breathing seemed somewhat labored and shallow, and he could hear the slight wheeze to it from the doorway. What caught his eye first were the endless collection of scars, all across his body, covering nearly every inch of his skin, and it turned his stomach, it made him sick, the level of trauma and abuse Virgil must have endured. He’d known it wasn’t good, known he’d been a lab rat, an experiment, a being to harvest then sell off the parts once he was drained dry, but knowing it and seeing the scars, the marks of old burns from the stun batons, was something else entirely. And nothing Virgil had said had indicated the violence against him to be to this extent. He felt another surge of appreciation, for Virgil having protected Patton.

The second thing, that finally forced him into motion, was the small pool of red forming around the human’s head, likely where the back of his skull had impacted with the floor. Quickly, he grabbed a towel from off the rack, and rolled Virgil onto his side, wiping away the blood from his neck and hair, to see where to apply the pressure. He breathed a sigh of relief as he located the wound, surprisingly small, given the amount of blood loss, and he was confident a few moments of pressure would easily stop it.

“ROMAN!” He shouted with all his might, voice shaking and unsteady, hearing the crashing footsteps of the Crav’n immediately, the being sliding into the doorway mere moments later, scales raised to their extremes, teeth bared, ready to fight, no doubt hoping for an excuse to fight the human.

“Logan? What’s-“ Patton darts in around Roman’s legs, eyes widening as he instantly is at Virgil’s side, trembling, eyes wide as saucers.

“I need help. Roman, he’s heavy, I need-“

“Ok. Ok, teach, I got you. Let’s get him dressed, then I’ll move him to the couch. What’s… what happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I knocked and heard a crash, when I entered, he was like this. I suspect it has something to do with his malnutrition and sleep deprivation.” He answered, focusing on carefully pulling Virgil’s hoodie over his head, hands clenching sharply as one brushes his forehead. “he’s burning up.”

“That’s what happens when he’s… when he’s sick. Humans get all hot and shivery and sometimes their stomach hurts and they can’t eat. But that only happened on the… on the ship. When… when it was really bad.” His voice wavered, feathers flattening.

“I would suspect that he has been feeling ill for a couple of days now, if it’s grown severe enough to make him pass out. His normal temperature is around 98.6 to 99, I would estimate his to be closer to one hundred and three. Has he seemed off to you, Patton?”

“He’s spent less time with me. Less time out of his room. I thought he just needed some space, but… but he was trying to hide he was sick, wasn’t he?”

“Why would he do that? Did he think we’d just abandon him like some deathworlder would an injured comrade?” Roman snorted disdainfully, helping pull pants onto the human, though Patton could see the concern hiding behind his outrage.

“Contrarily, he probably didn’t want to be a burden. To use up more of our resources and time. He constantly sees himself as lesser, as the least important of the group, therefore the one who should take up the least space, least time, least amount of food. Surely, you’ve noticed, Roman.”

“I…hadn’t. I’ll take him now, Pat.” He mumbled softly, gently shooing him back as he scooped Virgil into his arms, surprised at how light the human was, his head lolling limply against his chest, his cheeks flushed, while the rest of his face was even paler than usual. He could feel the frantically rapid beat of his heart, his eyes flicking uneasily under their lids, and his scales flattened in concern. As much as he didn’t trust the human, he didn’t want to see him hurting, either. And if what Logan said was true, Virgil had not only been hurting, but hurting himself, out of, what? Loyalty? Worry? He just couldn’t get a handle on him.

Then again, he hadn’t tried very hard to get to know him, or to give him a chance. But there was something in seeing him so vulnerable, without the usual piercing stare and silent slink, that made him soften a bit, made him remember that despite being one of the most fearsome creatures in the universe, that Virgil was essentially a child, by human standards. He was so thin, too. He could count his bones, under that hoodie. No wonder he was always cold, he had no layer of fat on his bones.

And those scars…

Well. It was enough to almost make him rethink his view on Virgil, at least, as he laid him down on the couch in the common area, Patton immediately taking a seat by his head, brushing his hands soothingly through Virgil’s hair, as the human shook, muttering something in his sleep that was undecipherable, though the tone of fear was impossible to miss, as his hand clenched against the fabric.

“We need to break his fever. Blankets, Roman? I’ll get you a washcloth and water for his forehead, Patton. If he wakes, he is likely to be disoriented or possibly even hallucinate, because of the fever. However, I have no doubt he will calm immensely upon registering your presence. You are… his lifeline, Patton.” Patton nodded, continuing to focus on Virgil, doing the coo chirp pattern used to soothe babies, one of the first things Virgil had mimicked back to him, back on that awful ship.

“He’ll… he’ll be ok, right? He just needs some sleep and he’ll be okay?” His voice trembled, and Logan’s hands clasped behind his back, eyes darting as he looked for the right words to say.

“I don’t know. There’s so little information, Patton, I keep looking and there’s just… not enough, to help him, in any meaningful way. There’s no way of knowing if this is just a ‘flu’ or if it is something more severe. I know his heart rate is high and his breathing rasping, but I don’t know if that’s the result of the illness or simply stress, I would give him medicine, but I don’t know what he can have, what would be helpful, and I don’t know what to do if it’s something we aren’t equipped to handle!” He exploded, pacing the floor somewhat frantically, hands flailing wildly, wincing as one smacked the wall. “I don’t know what to do, but wait.” He said, softer, taking a deep breath and rubbing at his hand, looking up as Roman came to stand before him, gently patting one of his arms.

“It’s ok, Lo. No one expects you to have all the answers. We know you’ll do your best. You always do.” Logan nodded, pulling himself together somewhat, striding off to the kitchen, Roman heading down the hall to raid the extra blankets from the closets.

“you’ll be ok, kiddo. I promise.” Patton murmured, nuzzling against Virgil’s cheek, giggling as Virgil mumbles again, leaning into his touch, hand unclenching, face relaxing minutely. When Logan came back, he huffed fondly, Patton curled up against Virgil’s shoulder, just a ball of puffed up blue feathers, pulsing soothingly.

#wibar #wibar au #sickfic #virgil sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #sympathetic virgil #sympathetic roman #sympathetic patton #sympathetic logan #virgil angst #like loads of it #eventual happy ending #flashbacks #anxiety attacks #past trauma #past abuse #minor blood

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aacesignco · 14 days

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lightfastsigns · 14 days

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things-we-used-tc-share · 3 years

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The Town That Never Was

[Image Description: a long road with decaying plants on either side, with text overlayed that reads ‘the town that never was’ in white. A white icon of a clock is placed underneath the text /end ID]

I’m re-releasing the first four chapters as I’ve edited them!

Ships: DLAMP/CALMD, Remile.

Warnings: Cheating is mentioned at some point during this fic in the past, some slight horror themes but in a comedic sort of way, kidnapping is mentioned but again this is like a comedy-horror so there’s not a lot of suspense.

Plot: In Hell, a town of roughly 1,000 people, nothing that is supposed to happen ever happens and everything that physically should happen, does. Logan, a scientist, goes there in hopes of studying the world’s most unfortunate, and miraculous, town. But no one who ever enters ever finds the will to leave again.

Chapter One: The man who can see everything, and the scientist from normality.

Logan has a habit that mostly includes acting first and thinking about his safety a few hours later, usually when he has a burned hand or a broken bone, and then it’s followed by a “worth it!” as he accepts his own recklessness in favour of science. Today is one of those reckless days. Well, so far it’s been a reckless week (and a reckless life), as he’s been driving for about four days now.

He sees the “Welcome to Hell,” sign that has been overgrown by an abundance of tree roots despite the fact there are no trees for miles. The blue-eyed scientist sighs to himself absently as he gets the foreboding feeling that the next week of his life, should things go the way he planned, is going to be a series of these events and as it stands he has been driving far too long to hop out of his car near sunset to run tests on tree roots that should not exist.

The sun is, by the way, setting far too early for this time of year.

As he gets within the town’s boundaries, his car radio fizzles and automatically tunes into the suddenly only available radio station; Logan assumes this is harmless and simply listens to the soft indie beats that are now playing with no issue. The sky; where the sun is setting, is painted in a brilliant red, whilst the sun itself looks to be a somewhat magnificent ball of fire (which, of course, it is, but it doesn’t usually look literally as a ball of fire, you know, the kind when some idiot in class decides to bring a lighter to school and sets the waste paper bin on fire? yeah, that sort of fire). There are tall, black pylons everywhere, and the buildings seem old and are either wooden or Greek, which is interesting because as far as Logan knows, the ancient Greeks never quite got to America, yet these buildings certainly seem very old. Impossibly old.

He already has an infinitesimal amount of questions, and he’s aware that (as warned) that small pile is going to grow over the course of his stay here.

The music stops playing and a voice tunes in over the static waves of the radio “Welcome back listeners,” The dulcet, deep tones rumble against Logan’s ears and if voices could be a point of attraction then Logan would say this is an attractive voice. “A special welcome to the mildly ominous white economical car that just rolled into town full of what appears to be an impressive amount of science equipment, I don’t know who you are but you are apparently quite handsome, so I’m certainly hoping I’ll know you at some point,” Logan flushes a little and as if the radio presenter could see him, he chuckles. “We’ll run into each other, anyway, to the regular listeners this is your usual news on the town,”

Logan pulls up outside the place he had booked to stay but as he turns off the car he can’t help but lean back to listen to the radio presenter some more. “The sun is on fire, but more so than usual, the police advise you don’t look directly into it, or do, I’m not the boss of you and you can make your own decisions for yourself,” Logan snorts a little, shaking his head full of dark curls “Three strange cult-like figures have appeared in the outskirts of the town, on the west side entrance, they don’t appear to be doing anything but simply standing there, if someone has recently attempted to summon a demon or any otherwise ominous presence, please report it to Roman, our town’s exorcist who will help you deal with this problem, unfortunately until he knows exactly what they are, there is nothing he can do to help, thank you Roman, for being as useless as ever,”

The scientist laughs then and finally turns off the radio, grabbing his bag out of the back amongst a whole load of gadgets as he walks up to the front door. He can hear voices on the other side before the front door is thrown open extravagantly to reveal a young man with unruly dirty blonde curls. Logan, who hadn’t even knocked yet, blinks with a perturbed expression “Hello?”

“Hello!” The stranger replies with a smile a little too wide and hazel eyes a little too bright. “Don’t mind Remy, he turns into a cat when he’s anxious, but come on in!” Logan exhales deeply, cheeks puffing out as he shakes his head. “Oh yes, you’re an outsider, you’re probably not used to Hell standards of weird, sorry,” The man picks up the cat and places him on top of the counter before he moves around the other side “You’re staying for a week, yes?”

“That’s the plan,” Logan chuckles “...but I’m told plans don’t tend to work out here.”

“Oh no, they never do, all rooms are booked for at least a month just in case, I’ve added a few extra days on free of charge, we don’t tend to get many visitors so I doubt they’ll go amiss,” The man scans a keycard through the computer system, it fizzes slightly and he hits the side of it before trying again. “There you go, you’re in room 13,” He hands the keycard over “...and if you need me just ring,” he taps the phone “Phone number is on the bedside table.”

“Thank you....?”

“Oh! Emile, I’m Emile, that’s Remy, he’s not a cat, he just looks like one right now,” Remy blinks two wide golden eyes at Logan, he does certainly look like a cat. “He should be back to normal when he’s finished having a tantrum.” Remy hisses in response. “Have a nice night!”

Logan decides that he’s already reaching his limit with weird and he’s only been here maybe half an hour, although his watch has also mysteriously stopped working so there’s no real way to tell. He puts on his pyjamas, climbs into bed and tries to fall asleep.

It takes him an hour and a half to do so. Roughly.

When he wakes up the next morning, and finishes going through the usual human morning routine, he wanders downstairs to find a man who isn’t Emile sat on the chair behind the desk with headphones on. His name tag read “Remy,” and he’s wearing sunglasses inside. Otherwise he’s completely normal; a worn down leather jacket accompanying a black shirt and ripped jeans, hanging off a man who is of normal height and stature for someone in his early 20′s.

“Sorry about being a cat when you got here,” Remy pulls an earphone out to speak, chewing on bubblegum as he does “...me and Emile were having a domestic, how is your room?”

“Adequate,” Logan replies, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “So the turning into a cat thing is that...genetic?” Remy laughs a little and shakes his head.

“In what world would that be genetic?” He kicks his feet off of the table and sits up a little straighter “No, it was a curse.” Logan nods slowly, wondering why one is less likely than the other, and then thinking that he doesn’t want to know why because then he would start thinking like a resident here, and that sounds like a nightmare. “We do have an exorcist, and he’s supposed to really be able to dabble in lots of different type of magic, but so far he’s been unsuccessful.”

The dark-haired scientist recalls the radio presenter from last night “Roman, right?” Remy nods in response.

The door opens then to let in a bright array of sunshine, and Remy scrunches his nose up in distaste, pushing his sunglasses even further up his nose as if that might have been possible. The man that is silhouetted against the door frame looks too bright, but as he speaks, Logan recognises the deep and soothing tone “Good morning, stranger.”

The door closes behind him and the man leans against the wall with a wide grin. His skin is tan, a caramel colour with light blonde hair that has been pushed to the side and back, exposing two-toned golden snake eyes. Logan is starting to regret his journey and coming here at all, and he is certainly not enjoying the way his own heart thunders in his chest, or the slight warmth to his cheeks. Perhaps it’s the sharp angles of the man’s jaw, the snakeskin that covers half of his face, or the gentle radiant glow this man has, but he is...astoundingly beautiful.

Weird shit, Logan can deal with, feelings? Not at all.

“Welcome to Hell, literally, that’s the name of this place. America’s most singularly, scientifically fucked town, where everything that shouldn’t happen, definitely does happen,” The man grins, dark eyes blinking. Logan blinks back, opens his mouth, and then decides he doesn’t have any words in his extensive vocabulary to explain this. “What brings such a handsome young man to the town?”

“Science,” Logan mutters. “I came to investigate the town, scientifically this place is fascinating, a hive of energy that exists nowhere else.” He straightens his lab coat and holds up a device that had been in his hand. “So far I’ve discovered extremely unusual readings, and...” Logan talks, he explains, and the stranger looks at him with an incredibly dopey look.

“Uh-huh,” he mutters as the scientist talks extremely enigmatically, all strangeness and shyness are forgotten as he loses himself in his interest.

“Sorry, I didn’t ask what your name was, I don’t think I caught it last night.” The tan-skinned man smiles softly before shaking his head.

“You didn’t,” Logan doesn’t know how he knows this. “My name is Deceit, but most people call me Dee, I run the radio show,” The scientist smiles and nods, offering a hand for him to shake. Deceit practically purred at the contact to his gloved hand; he can’t help it when someone so pretty comes wandering in, all fair skin and dark hair with such...enticing cobalt eyes, he has to blush a little.

But the moment of bliss is interrupted as the door opens again, slamming behind the second newcomer of the morning. Remy, who clearly does not like having visitors, sighs in annoyance and looks up to a dark-skinned man with long hair and is..dripping in jewellery. The man is holding a book in his hand and he goes to speak before he looks up, only to see Deceit (in which his gaze turns sour) and then Logan (in which his eyebrow quirks, a slow smirk crosses his face and the book snaps shut in his hand). “Remy,” The stranger has an accent that sounded to be somewhat partially American. “You have a visitor?”

The cat-like man sighs. “It would appear I have quite a few,” he unplugs the other earphone and tosses them on the table “What do you want, Roman? I told you at this point this curse isn’t that bad, plus Emile finds it harder to shout at me when I’m knee-high to a grasshopper and fluffy,”

That would be some sound logic, Logan thinks to himself, ...if he were not talking about turning into a cat. “That’s fine, there is clearly someone much more interesting to talk to,” The elegant man holds out a hand and wears a grin that is almost a little too revealing. 29 years of not being flirted with and today it happens twice one straight after another.

“As if your two boyfriends weren’t enough Roman, you hop on the poor fresh meat like he’s dessert,” Deceit cuts in, a displeased look on his face as he folds his arms across his chest.

“He certainly looks like dessert,” Roman retorts. Logan thinks blushing is going to become a hobby whilst he’s here and looks over at Remy for help.

“Dee, don’t you have a radio show to host? Roman, don’t you have a demon to maintain? Logan I have no idea what you’re here to do but I’m sure it’s more than being the ruler in a dick-measuring contest between two insufferable assholes.” There’s a beat. Roman has the audacity to blush as if he hadn’t been saying some fairly explicit things by Logan’s standards, but a moment ago.

“Oh well, I’m here too...”

“Logan, dear, you’re cute, but I spent an entire night as a cat, and my better half, who is, by the way, all of my patience and will to listen to other people, is at work, right now I’m as bitchy as I can get, please don’t try and explain to me science unless it’s the science of how to make a coffee so strong my heart will stop...” Remy’s glasses slide down his nose, revealing two bright gold cats eyes, and they narrow as they stare at Logan. “All of you, out.”

“I’ll bring you a coffee, Rem,” Roman mutters as he starts towards the door.

“Thanks, Roman.” He doesn’t sound very thankful at all.

Roman offers to show Logan around town, he asks about the device in the scientist’s hand but anything he says is completely lost on the bejewelled man. Who is, by the way, wearing a lot of jewellery. His hands are covered in rings that have thin chains hanging from them, connecting to bracelets or each other. His nose, lip and eyebrows are pierced twice and the entire left side of his ear has small chains hanging off of them.

He looks like a prince.

“This is the coffee shop, my boyfriends both work here, and they live upstairs too, fair warning, one of them is a demon,” Logan nods a little numbly, unsure what else he was expecting really. Does anything normal happen in this town at all?

They walk in to see a scrawny and sickly pale man behind the counter, to the point where Logan would worry about anaemia until he saw the veins that were completely onyx running underneath the skin. The demon, then. “Welcome to Hell’s Pat-isserie, what may I get you?” His voice sounds bored, but then he looks up and sees Roman and his face lights up.

“Just a latte please,” Logan smiles nervously.

“That will be the cost of your soul please,” The demon’s voice darkens and shakes like lightning, Logan has to admit he felt a slight spike of fear before both the pale man and Roman start laughing.

“Virgil I keep telling you to stop doing that!” Logan looks up at the sound of a new voice, only to inhale sharply by what he’s greeted with. A man, with soft, freckled cheeks and a round face that has so clearly smiled so much, bounces up with stray blonde curls falling around his face. He bats a tea towel at the demon (Virgil, Logan assumes), before fixing Logan with a wide and blinding smile.

Blushing is indeed becoming a hobby.

“Roman, you’re late, help me with the coffee machine won’t you love? It’s jammed again the stupid bloody thing.” The man’s voice is as soft as his appearance dictates, and he hands the tea towel to Roman, who vaults over the counter to help. Then his attention focuses on Logan and he’s not entirely sure his heart can handle those pale blue eyes. “Sorry about these two, they’re a handful, just a latte was it? That’ll be $3.50,” Logan hands over the money with a dazed expression. As he’s handed his change, he can’t resist asking.

“What’s your name?”

“Patton, you?”

“Logan.” Patton smiles again, and Logan can’t help but liken it to the first flowers blooming in spring, and other cheesy metaphors that people come up with when they think about love at first sight.

“Well, Logan, take a seat, and we’ll bring your coffee over shortly,” A pause “...and thanks for keeping Roman out of trouble, it’s practically his day job,”

The scientist can’t help but absently think he’d hold back an inconclusive amount of danger to see Patton smile again. Then he reminds himself that he has a job to do; even if the rate of his own heart around these men is the strangest thing that has happened to him since he arrived in Hell. He can't afford diversions.

#ts sides #ts sides fic #CALMD #dlamp #CALMD/DLAMP

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arabrot · 3 years

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Who Do You Love by John Doran

Who Do You Love?

We drove 5,000 miles of barbed wire.

You’d think that by travelling that distance around a country you could get the measure of it. Especially if the country was only 361 miles from top to bottom and even less from East to West. You’d be thinking reasonably but not accurately.

Despite journeying the equivalent of one fifth of the circumference of the entire Earth in 31 days, all we got to see was the road itself. England endless. What we experienced was just a percentage of a splodge, a smidge of a blotch on the coastal fringe of Europe that deserved neither the sobriquet Great, nor the title United. How did such a small area of land contain such extravagant lengths of major road? In the same way that a human body could house a tapeworm 33 metres long. Probably not comfortably but hopefully not fatally either. Undoubtedly, in May 2015 - general election month - England had beauty to spare: it’s just that none of it was visible from the motorway.

We met on the forecourt of a petrol station near an airport. Heat haze was already starting to rise from the tarmac. The Driver was dressed immaculately in a tight-fitting black suit, shades and wide-brimmed black hat. His concession to non-monochromatic decoration was silver chains carrying cocks and crosses. He looked like Asa Hawkes, the “blind” preacher from Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood - but much thinner. He tipped the brim of his hat hello. This was not his stage hat but his everyday hat. His stage hat, the kind of prairie Stetson featured in the opening scene of Holy Mountain was massive and kept in the kind of box that suggested it was an essential part of a drum kit. It had its own carefully allotted slot in the back of the van with the tons of amplifiers, speaker cabinets, guitars, synthesizers, boxes of books, suitcases full of clothes and bags and bags of oranges we were taking with us. There was only one way to fit all of this stuff into the vehicle, and packing it correctly was like 3-D Tetris. All it took was one giant, impractical hat in the wrong place and then everything had to be taken out again and reloaded in the correct position.

He was the colour of milk, which made the angry red scars up either side of his neck all the more vivid. He looked like the missing link between human being and some future race of Lovecraftian eel-men who would be able to breathe via gills under water.

As well as me and the Driver, there was the Passenger. She looked more like she had stepped straight from the set of Bladerunner than a Jodorowsky or John Huston movie. This was to be their last tour as boyfriend and girlfriend as they were headed straight to a deconsecrated church in rural Sweden to get married as soon as the trip ended. I was merely a temporary guest in their world. A road voyeur with a month long pass.

Within minutes of setting off we hit the M25 we became enmeshed in May Day traffic. I realised that most of the month was going to be spent looking at slow moving traffic on motorways.

But just as driving to Brighton was slow and painful, leaving it the next day was a dream. On the motorway, time stretched and contracted simultaneously in temporal doppler effect. The days seemed longer but time blistered, popped and broke apart pleasantly as the brain switched down a few gears into a near pure experiential mode. There was little to worry about. All I could do was count the pylons and pretend I had a flamethrower to aim at UKIP billboards and hoardings; to luxuriate in motorway sign typography and listen to Maggot Brain as loud as it would go. Miles Davis’ Agharta was the soundtrack to us speeding out of the south up the M1 towards the Rainy City. Al Foster’s ringing, open hi-hat was our fuel. And then it was nothing but John Coltrane, Electric Wizard and NOMEANSNO until we reached our destination. It started raining the second we hit Stoke. And then before long we were on the Mancunian Way heading for Piccadilly in torrential rain, parking the van under a tangle of flyovers. When I planned this jaunt it was a thing of beauty. I took an AA road map and unfolded it until it covered half the floor space in my tiny living room. I took a sheet of stickers from my son’s Thomas The Tank Engine magazine and created a spiral of towns and cities, first round the edges near the coast and then spiraling in toward the centre. Our proposed journey looked like an occult temporal and spatial message only discernable from the god perspective. What I planned was a perfect thing. But after you plan your perfect thing what happens is this: promoters start phoning you up or emailing you. ‘We’ve double booked you with a Stereophonics tribute act’; ‘There’s actually a bar mitzvah on that day’; ‘It’s Record Store Day.’ And then the perfect thing falls to pieces. By the time we hit the road the perfect thing looked like that terrifying film of a spider on LSD trying to spin a web. And there was only one thing worse than a spider on LSD trying to spin a web and that was a spider on caffeine trying to spin a web.

We stopped for several coffees en route to Sunderland the next day. The weather was beautiful. Fields of golden rape seed glowed under a blue sky. But I gave up counting the UKIP billboards. There were just too many. The purple pound signs zipped past in a blur. We’d been on the road for five days and I hadn’t seen a single sign for Labour. It was almost a relief when we passed a huge hoarding in an arable field next to a broken tractor which proclaimed: “Prepare to meet your Lord!” We pulled in soon after to stretch our legs in front of a petrol station that shared a forecourt with a sex shop wrapped in a large tarpaulin hoarding, proclaiming: “Under new management!” Next door was a garden centre flying a row of ten confederate flags and two Union Jacks. There was a knackered and rusty jet stream caravan serving up plastic cups of filter coffee.

It became clear early on that the Travelodge was our friend. Every Travelodge the Driver, the Passenger and I shared was identical. A family room. One double bed, one fold out couch bed, minimal decoration, very interesting mass produced art, scant furniture, tea making facilities and a portable telly, often chained to the wall. The Travelodge may have had less furniture in it than the average bail hostel and may sometimes have smelled like a suburban pet shop from 1984 but it was totally fine as we were low ranking touring musicians and writers, not visiting dignitaries from Saudi Arabia.

After Leeds, our Travelodge was situated in a motorway retail park so the following morning we walked just a few hundred yards to the Toby Carvery for breakfast. Pushing open the double swing doors we were confronted by a man in stained chef’s whites, with hair pushed under a light blue plastic turban crowning a jowly and crimson face. He was methodically and noisily applying a large cleaver to a foot long cylindrical sharpening steel with a schnick-schnick sound.

“Hello!” said the Driver cheerfully. “Are you Toby?”

The chef looked up slowly and a pendulous and translucent bead of sweat swayed under his nose. His eyes were like drill holes in gammon. Bruised udders of flesh were hanging below each of his nicotine-stained ocular orbs. He was possibly the most hungover man I had ever seen. He jawed away silently, his eyes flickering dully with rage as he started straightening up. The BPM of metal on metal increased. The three of us circled round him gingerly and headed rapidly for the breakfast counter past tables rammed full of people who looked like they were about to die. I had never seen so many morbidly obese people in one place at one time. It was like God’s waiting room with unlimited fried egg.

Oh England, you are sick.

It was only £5 per head and you could eat as much as you wanted but the choice was only bacon, sausages, roast potatoes, black pudding, fried egg, fried bread, beans and mushrooms. The thrill of the open road. Unlimited roast potatoes and bacon for breakfast.

(We spent just one night at the supposedly more upmarket Premier Inn, and it was relatively more luxurious but due to its incomprehensible automated reception machine, it took us an hour and a long conversation with two angry Premier Inn employees to gain access to our room. “Getting into this hotel was like the opening scene from a new episode of Black Mirror”, said the Driver, a recent convert to the show. “There’s nothing like waking up in some shitty English town, before eating some shitty English breakfast before driving slowly down some shitty English motorway for 12 hours before loading into some shitty English venue and playing a shitty gig to ten people before going to some shitty Travelodge just to watch a really well made English TV series which explains to you exactly why everything is so fucked”, he told me gleefully.)

Any hotel room was actually very much like home as long as you had a laptop, a handful of Nick Cave CDs, some Right Guard and a copy of Threads on DVD, which happened to be the exact contents of my overnight hotel bag.

Waking up in another identical Travelodge on another identical Motorway retail park the next day I realised finally that this was literally the worst place for a writer to be during general election month. Nowhere had wifi that worked. It was like being in a bubble of ignorance for 31 days. We had to choose these parks to minimise the chances of the splitter van getting stolen with all of our gear inside it. Every Travelodge we stayed in was essentially the same, surrounded by a handful of other outlets - a Toby Carvery or a Harvester or, if you were really unlucky, both of them. Then maybe also a Costa, a Boots and an Esso petrol station as well. They were all accessible from a motorway roundabout that wasn’t really near anything other than either an airport, a prison or an industrial estate. A vague hangover from reading JG Ballard as a schoolboy led me to believe that there would be some kind of mind-expanding nourishment to be had from this aspect of the venture but these motorway retail parks were all identical. They were the most co-opted and least free spaces of all.

After breakfast, outside, sitting on a wall drinking a cup of tea in the sunshine, I looked intently at a semicircle of rooks surrounding a single bird of their own kind. They were slowly advancing in toward it. The bird in the middle was stock still and not moving. It didn’t look like a friendly encounter. The Driver and the Passenger came out and joined me. The parliament were just about to attack the accused in order to peck it to death but just as the corvine jury bore down, they were disturbed by a loud noise from above. The Red Arrows flew over the Travelodge in formation causing them to scatter It felt almost as if the Driver existed in a bubble of weird, uncanny, apocalyptic and esoteric events that moved with him wherever he roved. But it was also as if he barely noticed any of them. I stood pointing at the sky.

“Yes, yes” he snapped irritably as if he was sick of seeing this kind of thing. “Let’s get in the van and get off otherwise we won’t get to Digbeth in time.”

That night I dreamt that the solid iron core of the Earth was about to slough us all off until the planet stood raw and bleeding in space, just roiling magma with no skin to contain it. The utter indignity of being born between waves, the scions of a pusillanimous age we were all about to be cast into the void with the filthy scab of a country we called England. A flat and unmagical land. A depressing and tawdry place. When I opened my eyes Toby was stood in the corner of the room, sharpening his cleaver, schnick, schnick, schnick, schnick. Empty eye sockets carved out of rancid, fly-blown gammon.

“We have to stop eating lunch at the Harvester!” I sprang out of my fold out bed and shouted at the Driver and the Passenger, waking them from their sleep. “The full rack of ribs is fucking killing me!”

Fuck the Harvester. Fuck Toby Carvery. All of the clothes that were hanging off me on May 1 were now snug and it was only May 12. My ears were ringing with the premonition of some future blue cheese dressing related pulmonary event.

It was easy to see how ruinous life on the road could be, even when you didn’t drink or do drugs. I felt sorry for younger bands who felt they had to go out partying every night after shows. After a couple of weeks it must end up hellish.

The road to Hull was paved with UKIP signs. Only Necrosis by Cadaver played at ear disrespecting volumes kept us sane. It was dark as we drove into town and ghosts lined Ferensway waiting to greet me. The cinema where I’d had my first date in town, the pair of us just turned 18 - watching Shirley Valentine no less, saying, “Imagine being that old” about Pauline Collins and Bernard Hill - was now a bingo hall. The war memorial that I regularly drank sherry in front of on a bench. The Welly nightclub where I saw a punter swan dive off a balcony and go headfirst through the corner of a formica table. When they took him out on a stretcher there was a blanket pulled up over his face. And then down past my old house on De Grey Street and into the car park of the Adelphi. And then the ghosts waved us back out of town.

The drive to Great Yarmouth was gruelling and 13-hours long because of traffic - we got stuck behind no less than three serious road accidents. Bodies strewn across baking tarmac. Bloodied travellers weeping in incomprehension at the hard shoulder. Slow moving the traffic might have been but at least we had plenty of long albums to listen to. Just like a mattress in a shared student house or the narrative flow of the Bayeux Tapestry - Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly sagged in the middle but it was very, very long, making it ideal for the van.

Eight hours later, after the show, we flew down the A47 unimpeded like we were clinging to a rocket, listening to Slayer albums sequentially at full volume, gabbling like a bunch of four-year-olds as we went. By the last day, I felt like I was about to die and constantly on the verge of tears. I didn’t want it to end. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times. It was genuinely the worst of all times. And yet I’d crawl over broken glass to be able to do it all again right now.

You know, if you really want to get the measure of a country don’t drive round it. Take a train or walk. Maybe buy a bicycle or a skateboard or something.

We drove 5,000 miles of barbed wire and parked the splitter van by the roadside.

John Doran, Bangkok, Thailand, December 2017

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