space bee

˖˙— ᰋ RYLAND GRACE

⊹₊ ⋆ Love Hypotheticals by @bibigo-lover

⊹₊ ⋆ Detox by @stellanovaatla

⊹₊ ⋆ Red Lips and Hushed Sins by @whoisiriss

⊹₊ ⋆ Fly me To The Moon by @scarletmika

⊹₊ ⋆ Can't Scape Your Grasp by @julepod

⊹₊ ⋆ The Odds by @gosverse

˖˙— ᰋ COLT SEAVERS

⊹₊ ⋆ Quiet on Set by @bibigo-lover

⊹₊ ⋆ Easy Lover by @trophyhusbandism

˖˙— ᰋ HOLLAND MARCH

⊹₊ ⋆ Desperation by @barnes-babydoll

⊹₊ ⋆ Tender Two Fingers by @trophyhusbandism 

⊹₊ ⋆ Jackson's Sister by @gosverse

⊹₊ ⋆ Polaroids by @binchidavinci

You took a deep breath of the autumn breeze, shoulders rising. You exhaled. “So, if I asked you if it really was just ‘an offer’, would you tell me the truth?”

Stratt didn’t even bother to look at you. “No.” Well, a half-truth is still better than a full lie.

You were led to the closest car, door open and ready for you to step foot inside. You stopped just outside of it and stared at the sleek interior detailing. The observatory stood tall behind you and you took one final long look at it.

Complicated emotions swirled deep in your chest. You were never the sentimental type, yet you couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for not even saying goodbye. While you weren’t exactly close enough with the rest of your coworkers to call them friends, knowing that they held you with such high regard and respect made it a bit hard to come to terms with.

Though you could also think of it this way. Imagine how lucky they would feel knowing one of their old coworkers saved the world. They could brag about it to all their friends and families. So it wasn’t entirely pitiful.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to second guess yourself now.” Stratt’s voice pierced through your (un)rational thoughts.

You let out a soft scoff. “I don’t second guess myself.” Then stepped into the car.

“Good to know. If you can put that confidence into familiarizing yourself with everything I’m about to share with you, it’ll save us a lot of time,” she said.

A couple stacks of stapled papers were dropped onto your lap. The stacks were so thick you were amazed the staples even managed to hold them all together without bending. You picked up the first one. ‘The Infection’. Whoever came up with these titles should try writing science-fiction.

“Our sun is not the only star dimming. These space dots that make up the Petrova line spread like spores, infecting others,” Stratt explained, breaking down the many diagrams and massive data on the pages. Luminosity readings of stars across multiple planetary systems were listed in columns. “Except one.” She handed you another set. The title on this one read, Tau Ceti. “It’s the only one within eight light-years of all the others that hasn’t dimmed.” You read the charts.

“If you kept up with the news, you should be aware of the ArcLight probe we sent out to collect live samples from the Petrova Line. My team did some testing, and we were able to determine their elemental composition.” You flipped through the papers leisurely like they were the morning newspaper.

Carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. How interesting that a waterbased life form was able to survive on the scorching surfaces of these stars. You could practically imagine a certain someone boasting with arrogance had the cells been made of anything else.

“Astrophage? Nice name,” You whistled. “I like it. Y’know, star eater and all.”

“Save the compliments for the one who named it. He was the one who did the testing and figured out how to breed them,” She said. You raised an eyebrow at that. The way she spoke about this guy made it seem like he was the real deal.

“Right, I’ll be sure to do that,” You mumbled, continuing to flip through the papers.

The data was extensive, not always prevalent, but for general research it was methodical. Guess these Petrova Taskforce people were more capable than you thought. The most recent information was less meticulous than the older papers, but it contained the most important facts, seeing as they figured out what astrophage was made of and how it was able to travel from the Sun to Venus.

“They toot to scoot.” You read the little scribbling on the sidelines—something about that felt oddly familiar—shifting your eyes to glance at Stratt. “How streamlined.” You caught the slight twitch in her expression and the corner of your lip curled up when she sighed.

You shimmied in the car’s comfortable leather seats. The papers shuffled from your movement. “So, from what I’ve gathered so far, astrophage acts like some kind of black mold or algae, but on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. It’s clearly taking energy from the sun and converting it into mass in order to travel through interstellar space. The infrared light it emits is basically a form of propulsion.”

Stratt nodded in confirmation. “That’s exactly what we concluded. Impressive.”

You flicked the papers in your hand. “Even a high schooler would know about Big E’s most famous equation.”

“Big E?”

“The father of modern physics? Every physicist's best friend? Albert Einstein, of course,” you said as if it should’ve been obvious. “What is impressive is how efficient the astrophage is at storing all that energy. Even the Sun has barely converted no more than 0.03 percent of its mass into energy—just the tiniest bit could be used to vaporize half a city.” You were starting to go on a bit of a ramble.

Stratt’s hands were folded neatly on top of her lap. You tilted your head up to look at her. It was like you could almost read her thoughts. The possibilities of what something like this could be used for…

“I’m sure you’re aware of that,” you stated, not breaking eye contact.

“Yes. I’m aware. I also realized I forgot to ask—do you happen to get seasick?”

Right. So space wasn’t the only potential danger you had signed up for.

…

At some point you found yourself being strapped inside a fighter jet. A helmet had been shoved onto your head along with what looked like a bulletproof vest into your arms. You were tossed a bottle of pills and immediately looked up at the man who was supposed to be piloting.

“Shouldn’t I be sober for this?” You asked, reading the label of the pill bottle.

“Only if you want to remember puking your guts out,” he laughed, loud and obnoxious. Great.

The beginning part of the flight wasn’t so bad—until the guy decided he wanted to show off some cool tricks he learned in the academy. The world spun in circles and you felt like you were back on the Gravitron from that amusement park you received free tickets for. You could feel your lunch rising up into your hypopharynx before swallowing it back down. By the time you finally landed, you were left with a massive headache. You reminded yourself that G-force was only interesting in theory and never in practice.

Your shoes touched the sweet sacredness of solid ground and you nearly collapsed right there. “Fuuuuuckk…” You wheezed out into the crisp, ocean air, hunching over your knees. The subtle bobbing of the ship didn’t do much to help your case.

“Is yelling really necessary?” You looked up and saw Eva Stratt holding two cups of coffee. You raised a hand for one of them only for her to move them out of reach. “I need both of these.”

You groaned and dropped your hand back down. “Helps release cortisol—balances out adrenaline rush from inertia—ugh… endorphins… and dopamine… feel better.”

“It sure looks like it’s working.” Smartass. “You can rest for a moment. We’re still waiting for someone.”

“Who?”

Stratt didn’t answer as she sipped her coffee and you didn’t have the energy to pester her about it. Eventually, the nausea faded into a dull warmth settling in your diaphragm. You took a deep breath. You no longer felt like vomiting your entire stomach lining out. Didn’t want to make a bad first impression in front of the genius who solved the mystery of the space dots.

A sharp gust of wind blew through the landing zone and nearly knocked you off your wobbly legs. The screech of tires came to a halt and you watched as the man, who you deemed to be the astrophage mastermind, stumbled out of the jet and almost face planted straight into the concrete. The helmet he wore couldn’t keep the wispy strands of blonde from escaping along the sides and the first thing you noticed when he turned around were the bifocals sitting askew on his nose.

While the average citizen may not recognize him, any modern day scientist in the community would remember his face and scoff at his name. You never thought you’d see this man again after that conference in Denmark.

Stratt greeted him right off the bat. “Dr. Grace, how was your flight?” He gave a hearty thumbs up, but you could see the green in his face. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

The two of you came face to face with each other and you noticed his eyes flickering from your shoes to your face. He recognized you. And you recognized him.

“Funny seeing you here,” You said with a jut of your chin, unable to hold back a smirk. “Though, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

He licked his lips nervously before opening his mouth to speak. The sound of a burp should’ve been enough warning for you to step back. You watched, with unblinking eyes, as he curled forward and threw up right on top of your shoes.

And that was how the reunion kicked off between you and Ryland Grace.

.✦ ݁˖

It had been roughly forty-eight hours since you sent off your deceased companions into the cosmos. Neither you nor Ryland had spoken much to each other.

You had assumed Ryland would’ve stayed by your side like some lost puppy, considering the type of person he seemed to be. But instead, he spent most of his time in what you dubbed as the Solitary Compliance Room, or what he called the Don’t Go Crazy Room. It was projections of Earth’s sceneries, almost made to be painful reminders of what you left behind. You weren’t sure if you were thankful or concerned about his actions, but you decided not to dwell on it too hard.

You sat in the lab reading a notebook you had found in your labeled belongings box. Unfortunately, it only held the basic information about what you already knew, plus some silly doodles drawn along the edges. You didn’t remember drawing those. Not that you remember much anyway. While flipping through it, you noticed some rips along the inside lining. Did someone rip out the pages? Did you? You frowned. Those pages probably contained important details.

Before you could try poking deeper into your memories, an alarm sounded. One of the computer screens flashed a warning window.

ENGINE CUT OFF. Action Needed.

Mary’s voice echoed through the ship. “Approaching Tau Ceti orbit. Prepare for engine cut off.”

Ryland’s shouts of confusion and panic followed after. The words “Pilot Detected” could be heard in the direction of the cockpit along with his desperate refusals.

You wondered if you should go help him. A part of you found the sound of him struggling a little funny. Just a little. But apparently from what you’ve come to understand, you had a conscience, feeling somewhat guilty every time Ryland holed himself up in the projection room.

Standing up from the stool, you went to make your way towards the cockpit—when suddenly, everything became weightless. Your heart leapt to your throat at the abrupt lack of gravity, the same kind of weightlessness when riding one of those drop towers. Having no chance to prepare yourself, you fell forward, tumbling into somersaults in the air. You managed to grab hold of the table that was luckily bolted to the floor and steadied yourself.

A shriek resonated through the corridor. Ryland. You heaved a sigh and proceeded with making your way to where your distressed crewmate was, pushing off surfaces to propel yourself. In just a couple minutes you floated up into the cockpit and saw Ryland spinning in circles on the pilot’s chair.

“You having fun there?” You asked, amused.

Ryland did not find that funny. He frowned, head whipping around every time he spun in the opposite direction. His hands were frantically grasping at the ceiling trying to stop. “Not helping.”

“Just trying to lighten the mood.” You shrugged. “C’mon, it’s not that hard to move around. It’s like being in water. You’re just—swimming in zero gravity instead.”

Ryland went from clawing at the ceiling to clutching the chair like it was a lifeline. “Those are two very different practices! There is no buoyancy or resistance in zero gravity!”

You rolled your eyes. “Tomato, tomahto.” You opened your arms, gesturing for him to let go of the chair. “Just pretend it’s water. Like floating on the surface. You’re not gonna fall.” The chair eventually slowed to a halt and you watched Ryland’s hesitation. His knuckles were almost white from how tight he had been holding onto it. “Just push off a little.”

He lifted his head to meet your gaze, the clear furrow of his brows showed just how much he was overthinking this. “Okay … okay.” He shifted around on the chair. You waited. Your arms wiggled in a notion for him to hurry up and try.

And try he did. Ryland pushed off from the seat. Hard. He came straight at you like a frisbee, arms flailing. You didn’t have time to grab hold of something to pull yourself out of the way. Ryland’s chest collided with your face. His arms circled around your head followed by his legs latching around your ribs. The force sent both of you spinning like two beyblades stuck together around the control room.

At some point your back hit a wall and you let out a muffled groan at the wind being knocked out of you. Your head was at least cushioned by Ryland’s arms but now you couldn’t breathe from how tight he was holding on.

“Mmv..! Gra…!” You tried to yell, yanking at his arms for him to let go. He seemed to realize neither of you were spinning anymore and loosened his grip. You pulled him back just enough to gasp for air. “Jesus Christ!”

You breathed a sigh of relief and opened your eyes. Ryland was staring right back at you. It took a solid ten seconds for you to process the fact that he was basically straddling you against a wall. You both went rigid.

You were so close you could make out the faint carribean turquoise tint in the color of his irises. Ryland’s glasses had slid down to the tip of his nose and you felt this overwhelming need to push them back up. You lifted a hand up and—

“Petrovascope is now operational. Petrovascope is now operational.”

You slammed your palm against Ryland’s chest. Mary’s voice had startled you out of your trance and your body moved before you could stop yourself. The hard shove sent him flying straight into the viewfinder of the petrovascope.

“Shit! Uh—“ You hoped he wasn’t too mad. If anything it was totally his fault.

“I’m fine—‘m fine,” Ryland muttered out as he situated himself around the petrovascope.

You watched quietly as he maneuvered the device, gradually floating over because you wanted to take a peek too. You made sure to keep some space this time, but close enough to see over his shoulder. Tau Ceti’s blinding light shone through as Ryland panned the scope to the right. He flipped the petrova sensor and a streak of maroon red was visible due to the scope’s built-in mode, set to look for the IR light Astrophage emits. It would’ve been beautiful had you not already remembered the fatality of its existence.

“It has a Petrova line… but it’s not dimming.” Ryland mumbled to himself. He continued to pan the scope, following the line.

Your hands found purchase on his shoulders as you pulled yourself closer, forgetting all about your earlier embarrassment. You squinted, eyes trailing along the red thread. Then you spotted something.

“What’s that?” You tapped at a sudden break in the line. Something was blocking it.

Ryland zoomed in on the gap you pointed out. It was a black mass. The same IR light as the Astrophage flashed behind it like some sort of taillight. The petrova mode made it difficult to see what you were looking at so you reached over to turn it off.

Now looking at the midnight blue void, you could faintly make out a trapezoid shape in the far distance. It didn’t seem to be moving. But they say, if a tornado doesn’t look like it’s moving, that means it’s heading straight for you.

“Blip-A detected.”

Your head shot down to look at the sonar map and right there, less than half a kilometer way, the outline of a foreign vessel blinked. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a shadow pass by the window. This had to be a dream right? Or was it a nightmare?

You pushed yourself off from Ryland and floated towards the window. The structure looked like one of those student architectural assignments just from the sheer skeletal framework. What made it even more fascinating yet horrifying was how monumental it was compared to the Hail Mary. A single hit from that thing could probably smash your tiny ship to smithereens. Ryland accidentally bumped into you from behind but you were both too awestruck by the sight to care.

There was only one way to describe this thrilling discovery.

“Holy fucking shit.”

.✦ ݁˖

So you met an alien. It wasn’t anything like those green little goblins or bulbous headed grey monsters people would imagine. It was just a very large rock. With spider legs. Still, it was much better than whatever those Alien vs Predator movies had anything to show.

The only truth humans had regarding aliens was how intelligent they were. Not only did it understand centrifugal force for artificial gravity, it somehow pressurized the tunnel it constructed between the ships with oxygen. Amazing! And all Ryland did was wave his arms around and pose like an idiot.

You learned that it came from a planet in the 40 Eridani system through a little model it sent in a canister—like a letter in a bottle. Ryland labeled the planet as Erid and called the alien an Eridian. You never imagined your first encounter with aliens would be in a state of survival, but you supposed that was how every sci-fi movie started.

Funny how fate worked like that, bringing together two different species across the galaxy, sent out to find a solution to save their home planets.

For now, you were trying to figure out a standardized method in order to communicate. You were grateful Rocky (courtesy of Ryland and his superb naming skills) was intelligent enough to grasp the bare minimum of what you and Ryland were trying to say, followed by many hand gestures. At least he (Ryland also dubbed it a he) had hands too. Or well… whatever you’d call those things… opposable thumbs?

You watched Rocky turn himself into a mummy with the measuring tape Ryland dropped down into the chamber, wincing at how fast he retracted his hand when a blistering heat whooshed up from the opening. The sheer smell of the ammonia wafting in the air was enough to make you wave your hand to disperse it away from your nose.

Rocky seemed oblivious to your and Ryland’s reactions and let out curious chirps and gurgles that sounded like a mix of a chimpanzee-parrot-whale baby. Strangely endearing for a thing that could probably crush you under his weight.

Ryland was trying to get Rocky’s attention with the analog clock he brought out from the lab.

“I don’t think he can see the numbers.” You pointed out, tapping a finger over the plastic. “Doesn’t even have eyes.” You squinted past the barrier. It was complete darkness.

Ryland pondered the thought before rushing back inside, leaving you alone with the alien. You stared at him. He stared—well, faced—back at you.

“Uh… you come around here often?” You asked. Did this thing understand jokes?

Rocky tilted his head—body? They were the same thing at this point—and started chattering away like he was actually explaining himself and his situation. Your mouth fell open and you debated on stating that you were joking or be polite and listen to his story despite not understanding a single thing.

Luckily, your saving grace (heh) returned and redirected everything back to the clock that he had taped up. The numbers were now elevated to make them stick out. A sort of braille solution for their blind friend. And it led to a small victory for them with the alien scurrying off into the darkness and returning with his own version of a clock. This was the start of a beautiful friendship between mankind and extraterrestrial life.

Ryland came up with the idea to record Rocky’s musical notes and input them as specific words. All they had to do was put the separated words together and bam—a sentence will be made. Ryland holds up the mini microphone towards Rocky who was a bit unnerved by the object.

One by one, the two of you were able to complete a comprehensive list of translations. More often than not, you had to be the designated thesaurus, pointing out the dumb or overly complex words Ryland chose to input into the program. You had a bit of your own fun too—adding generational lingo, which to your surprise, Ryland knew quite a handful. Probably from teaching kids.

“It’s giving…” You typed into the computer.

“Giving what?” Ryland asked. “I never understood that phrase.”

“For real?” A grin flashed across your face. “Highkey kinda sus. Can’t even understand the middle schoolers you taught? Crazy.”

Ryland gave you a side eye, glasses sliding down his nose. “I’ll have you know, they said I always passed the vibe check.”

“You give NPC behavior.”

“What? No way. I give main character energy.”

“Cap.”

Ryland huffed in mild bewilderment. “How the heck do you know all these words?”

“I listen and research,” you said with a small shrug. “You hear a lot of different things when you have kids from primary to high school visiting almost every day.” You remembered googling random words and phrases you heard in passing during your break, even going as far as writing them down for future reference.

“You worked at a planetarium, right? Did you like it?” Ryland asked. That was a sudden change in topic and a somewhat personal question.

“Oh, um… yeah. I did. It was… nice. I got to see the stars a lot. And space,” you mumbled out. “There were lots of sculptures of planets and things.”

Wow you were such a great explainer.

You and Ryland just kind of stared at each other for a couple seconds. Your fingers rested on top of the keyboard. Ryland had been leaning towards you in order to see the screen, but now it felt a bit too close for comfort. Who decided sending two socially awkward adults into space to save the world would be a good idea?

“♫♫♩?”

Rocky’s little jingle broke you out of your staring contest and this time it was Ryland’s turn to pull away first. He tugged the laptop back towards him, gripping the edges and clearing his throat.

“Anyway—names! Why don’t you tell us yours?” Ryland said and pointed the microphone towards Rocky. He hoped he was holding the mic steady enough.

“♬!”

Rocky put his two front arms together and began reciting his name. It was like he was presenting himself to some celestial being with that stance. The waveform on the screen went on for a good six seconds before he finished. You’d hate to write a name that long on government documents.

“You done?” Ryland typed Rocky into the computer. “Now, my name—can’t wait to hear this—is Grace. What’s your word for my name?”

“♩.”

The sound Rocky let out could’ve been interpreted as a burp or a fart. Either way, the look on Ryland’s face had you slapping a hand over your mouth to muffle the snort that slipped out. He shot you a glare.

“I bet your name isn’t any different,” he grumbled, raising the mic again to capture Rocky’s translation for your name.

You coughed into your fist to stifle your snickers. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

The Eridian gave a little chirp, his legs shuffling to make sure you were both listening. He does a wiggle, straightens up, and sings. It was a short melody, about three seconds long, but it was a gentle, low hum and smoothly ascended as if following along a musical scale. The lullabic tune reverberated deep inside your chest.

“Oh now that’s just unfair.” Ryland crossed his arms like a child who had gotten the short end of the stick.

You cracked a small smile.

“Thank you, Rocky. That was beautiful.”

Rocky did a happy jig on his toes and nodded in appreciation. The squeaks he let out seemed to signify his content.

.✦ ݁˖

It was late and you were starting to get a bit sleepy from staying awake for so long. So much had happened in the last thirty-six hours that sleep was the last thing on your mind.

You were quietly nodding off next to Ryland in the set of chairs you found buried in storage. A table was placed as a little workstation for the computer. Ryland kept an eye on you to make sure you didn’t topple over in your half-asleep state.

Rocky noticed and it peaked his curiosity. “♫♩♫♫?” Ryland looked at the computer screen. How many humans on Grace ship, question?

A deep pang pulsed in Ryland’s chest as he thought back to their deceased crewmates. “Oh, um…” He pulled his glasses off and began cleaning them with his shirt. “There were four of us and… two died on the way here.” He slid his glasses back on. “I wish I knew why…” The pain of losing two close comrades still hurt, but at least there was still you. “Now it’s only us two.”

“♬♫♩.”

Only us three.

Ryland smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get the chance to admit it, but he was glad, above all things else, that you had survived with him.

“♩♬♪♬♪.”

We save stars.

.✦ ݁˖

“You’re really bad at this.”

You watched as Ryland fumbled and dropped pieces of the model he and Rocky were making of the star system. You were still a bit groggy from your nap. The bubbly squeaks from Rocky laughing at Ryland’s clumsiness made it all the more better to stay awake though. You glanced at the computer. “Even the rock says you’re bad at it.”

Ryland clicked his tongue and pointed one of the metal wires at you. “I don’t see you offering any help.”

You waved an arm in the air. “You’re the science teacher here. That’s your job.”

Rocky crawled down from the ceiling and hesitantly tapped his fingers together. “♬♬♩♩♪?”

“Hm? Why is a school teacher in space, question?” You read. “Tell him doc,” you said, gesturing to Ryland but Rocky started talking again before he could say anything.

“You know what—“ Ryland grabbed the computer and sat down in a makeshift cubicle in the barrier. “Let’s try this.”

For the next twenty minutes, the two of you shuffled through different text-to-speech voices, trying to find the best one to match Rocky.

“How about Stephen Fry? It’s better than the French one,” you said.

“True, but he’s going to sound like he’s reading an audiobook every time,” Ryland pointed out.

“Hm… fair.”

Some were okay, some were straight bad, and you weren’t sure how appropriate it was to have Rocky sounding like Kevin Heart. In the end, you found it. The perfect voice for Rocky. It had a well-versed tone with a slight awkward and nerdy edge to it.

“I like.” Rocky nodded enthusiastically.

“Alright. And, to answer your question, I have no idea what I’m doing in space. I don’t remember,” Ryland sighed. He looked up from the computer and subtly shifted his gaze towards you.

“Neither of us do,” you added, though it came off a lot more nonchalant on your end.

Rocky thought for a moment. “Is okay. Grace and you find out when you and Grace go home.”

He sounded so positive that after all this, they would be able to return home safe and sound. You would’ve believed him if you weren’t already aware of the outcome.

You pursed your lips. Ryland folded his arms across his chest. “… I’m gonna go to sleep,” he said.

You stood with him in agreement. You could use some actual sleep and not just a power nap.

Rocky moved along the barrier in sync. “Mm… no understand, word.”

“Sleep? Uh, it’s like this—“ Ryland practically slams his face against the table.

“Die?! Died! Died!”

Ryland was quick to reassure Rocky, straightening back up and stretching his arms in the air in a gesture of waking up. “I would’ve thought you died too with how hard you put your head down,” you snickered. Ryland rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, goodnight, sir.”

“Night Rocky,” you yawned, waving a hand.

“I watch grace and you sleep.”

You and Ryland look at each other. “That’s a little weird. No thanks.” You continued to head back towards the airlock, but Rocky sounded quite adamant about watching over you, stating how Eridians watch over each other in their sleep because of danger. You didn’t think much of it at first, after all there were no real predators in space.

Then, the tone of his voice shifted. It dropped into a quiet octave like he was afraid to admit something so vulnerable. You stopped walking.

“Rocky watch crew. Many days. Crew not… wake up.”

He was scared. Lonely. The break in his speech tugged bitterly at your heartstrings. There was no way you could ignore his request now.

Two thin mattresses were squished into the concave cubicle part of the xenonite wall. You and Ryland just barely managed to squeeze yourselves underneath it. While it would’ve been spacious enough for one person, Rocky demanded you sleep next to each other so he could watch the two of you at the same time.

“Is it really necessary for us to be like this…?” You mumbled, fidgeting a bit. “You can watch Grace and I’ll just go sleep inside.” Ryland’s shoulder bumped into yours as you squirmed and you halted your movements.

“No. Rocky need watch two sleep together.” His underside made a loud clunk against the barrier.

Ryland cleared his throat. “Well, I’m more of a side sleeper, but, uh…” You met each other’s gaze. You both looked away.

“… goodnight.”

“Yeah… goodnight.”

…

The clank and clatter of machinery echoed through the renovated hangar on the aircraft carrier. The highest quality of equipment and tech filled the large space from end to end, each one occupied by groups of scientists. It had been roughly six months since you were relocated to live and work on the carrier.

You were placed as one of the leading authorities on the project and Ryland was right up there with you. Despite working in separate departments, you often collaborated due to the nature of your fields. He worked in the biology lab while you worked in navigations partnered with the engineering side. To summarize, you figured out how to get from point a to point b, told the engineers what was needed, got yelled at that it was impossible, and then went to Ryland to make it happen. The typical corporate lifestyle—had the entire project been a real business.

A loud clunk rattled you out of your daze and you bent down to retrieve your drink from the vending machine. The one good thing that came out from this whole relocation thing was being able to experience the respective cuisines and cultures provided for all the workers. Chefs and culinary professionals from all over the world were stationed to prepare meals suitable for each person's preference. It was practically a never-ending buffet that only cost you your life.

You picked up the oi ocha drink and admired the packaging. In addition to the exquisite food, the Japanese government supplied a handful of their popular vending machines, ranging from sodas and heated coffee cans to tasty snacks and small meals. You made it your mission to try every single thing inside every single vending machine.

The bottle cap cracked as you twisted it open. You found a comfortable spot on a bench near one of the entrances of the hangar. You took a sip of the green tea.

Bitter.

How unfortunate. You were hoping for some sugar to keep your energy level up. A pair of footsteps grabbed your attention and you felt a change in weight on the bench. You looked to the side.

Ryland sat down just on the other end of the bench. He was munching on a twizzler, the pack nestled in his hand. You wondered if he even realized you were right there. It wasn’t the first time you guys ended up sharing a lunch break, but he seemed a bit preoccupied with whatever he was thinking about.

Your head dipped slightly, the lip of the bottle tucked between your own, and you subtly stared at Ryland. You decided to use this as a chance to commit his features to memory. Not that you had any reason to. Maybe you just wanted to keep in mind the face of your coworker who you’ll genuinely never see again. You had no one else to remember you by. As sad as it was, Ryland was the only one you considered worth remembering. After all, you knew him longer than anyone else on the ship.

You watched as Ryland raked a hand through his hair. The messy look gave him an unusually charming appearance. You don’t think you could ever imagine him with his hair slicked back. His hand scratched at his slightly grown stubble—probably didn’t have the time to shave lately. You wondered what he’d look like if he’d just let it grow out.

And his glasses… did this man even know how to wear them correctly? It’s like he’s never worn glasses before, despite knowing for a fact that he’s had them for over a decade. But you supposed it wasn’t a terrible thing. The metal frames contrasted perfectly with his blue eyes, making the color pop whenever you made eye contact. Which was right now.

Ryland turned his head in your direction and caught you staring. Shit. Should you look away? Or would that just make you extra guilty? You did the next best (worst) thing. You kept staring.

He looked down and then back up. He held out the pack of twizzlers. “Did you want some?” To your luck—or maybe Ryland was just a bit slow—he seemed to have misunderstood your staring for wanting a twizzler.

You blinked. “Oh, uh—I’m, I’m okay.” You took another sip of your drink and your face soured.

Ryland noticed your expression. He fidgeted with the plastic for a second before pulling a twizzler free and held it towards you. “Here.”

“Huh? You don’t have to—“

“Just take it.”

You stared at the artificially red ropes. “Since you’re offering…” You took it and ripped off a piece between your teeth. Sugary sweetness filled your mouth. This was what you needed. “Thanks…” you mumbled, chewing.

“You can have more.”

“… okay.”

The rest of your break was spent eating twizzlers with Ryland. Neither of you talked much. The rustling waves and ocean breeze became a sort of therapeutic ambiance in the midst of world ending chaos.

…

A demonstration was held for the volunteers meant to board the Hail Mary to showcase the properties and power of Astrophage. Dimitri was setting up the spin drive, explaining how it worked and everything. You already knew the ins and outs of the mechanism, having already been in numerous meetings with Dimitri about its technicalities.

Ryland was standing next to you, clearly anxious. He grabbed a latex glove and blew into it, the material expanding like a balloon. You elbowed him in the side. He winced and rubbed the sore spot with a pout. The group of volunteers just shifted their gazes between the both of you. They all shared a single thought.

You somehow found yourself walking back alongside Ryland and one of the volunteers. His name was Yáo Li-Jie from what you remembered hearing from Stratt. Ryland was saying something, you think he was commending Yáo for his sacrifice.

“You would do the same,” Yáo said.

“I would choose not to go at all,” Ryland replied with a nervous chuckle. That got a laugh out of Yáo. “I don’t have the bravery gene that you all have, trust me.” You’re not sure brave was the correct word in your case.

“It’s not a gene. You just need to find someone to be brave for.”

How heroic, you think to yourself.

The group of volunteers dispersed and you paused in your tracks. You watched as their blue jumpsuits blended in with the rest of the scientists, Yáo’s words echoing in your mind. Find someone to be brave for? Were you even allowed to think that way? You didn’t want to lie to yourself. You weren’t a liar.

You thought back to the kid at the planetarium—the subtle tremble in their voice, their fidgeting hands gripping their shirt. Well, it wouldn’t be entirely dishonest, not really. A half-truth was better than a full lie. Your gaze drifted off to the right. Blue eyes met yours.

Ryland was standing just a few feet away. You didn’t realize he had also stopped walking and now you were both staring at each other. Everything around you seemed to just fade away in that moment.

You just need to find someone to be brave for.

Ba-dum. There was a sudden knock inside your chest. What the hell was that? You placed your hand over the spot. It happened again. Ba-dum, ba-dum. It vibrated against your ribs and traveled up your spine into the base of your skull. You felt short of breath and worst of all—you felt hot, like the Sun had regained everything it lost from the Astrophage.

You stole a glance at Ryland. He wasn’t looking at you anymore, in fact he was turned the other way, so you couldn’t see his face. A part of you wished you could. Another part of you questioned if you were going insane. Unbeknownst to you, Ryland was experiencing the same symptoms.

.✦ ݁˖

Ryland sat with his back pressed against the clear xenonite barrier. He had woken up just a half hour ago and was currently on watch duty.

Rocky was sleeping—er at least what Eridian’s considered sleeping. His entire body was frozen, propped up by the beams of xenonite he made. Ryland understood why his species would watch over each other when sleeping. It was like they were paralyzed, stuck in a state of unconsciousness with no way of waking up in time when danger arose.

He observed Rocky for a couple minutes before his eyes drifted down to your slumbering form. You were still sound asleep, curled up underneath two blankets. One of them was his. Ryland was careful not to wake you when slipping away from the cozy space. It was a bit embarrassing waking up to you curled up against his side. You were warm. He almost had to fight himself from wrapping an arm around you and pulling you closer—to keep himself from leaning in and burying his face into that bed head of yours, inhaling the scent of the shampoo you both shared. He must be going crazy thinking such things.

“Mm…”

Ryland held his breath when you stirred. You tugged the blanket higher, bunching the fabric underneath your head and nuzzling into it. An arrow pointed itself straight at Ryland’s heart. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t bear to bring himself to wake you. Not with how peaceful you looked.

Grace and you had an arrangement of sorts, on nights like this if one of you couldn't sleep you could just simply walk into the other's quarters and cuddle up next to them.

A bit strange, on earth maybe, but if you're the only two humans on a floating hunk of metal in space it was comforting. Especially during the first few weeks of consciousness you had on the ship, you both were practically glued to the hip.

You wanted to get up and take the familiar path to his quarters, but for some reason you were too shy to. The reason being, you were beginning to fall for your co-inhabitant.

It was easy really. The proximity helped a lot. But there was just something about him.

The way his chest would press against your back when you took turns looking into a microscope. The way he would feed you noodles when you were too deep into your work to move.

And probably you're favorite, the way his fingers would brush against yours as you handed him lab paraphernalia, and vice versa. It was silly really, almost juvenile, but it made your heart flutter.

Your cheeks warmed at the thought of your blond haired crew mate, even more so when you imagined his blond hair all messy from running his hands through it. Your face was about to explode in the heat, but you were thankfully saved by a sudden knock on you metal door.

You shot up from your position, parting your lips to speak.

"Grace?" You called out, knowing it could only be him, as Rocky had no sense of privacy, and that little hamster ball of his could be heard a mile away.

As soon as those words left your lips your door quickly opened, revealing the man with tousled hair and crooked glasses, he wasted no time explaining his presence.

"I can't sleep," he said, hand behind his head as he rubbed at his neck, looking almost embarrassed.

"Can I stay here tonight?"

The tone of his voice made your heart break ever so slightly, and that had you quickly opening up your blanket, inviting him in.

He gladly took the invitation, slipping in by your side seamlessly, like he was made to be there. As he made himself comfortable you did the same, laying your head on his chest, and splaying your arm across his abdomen.

You lied, this was your favourite thing about him. He was warm, incredibly so. And although the Hail Mary had a regulated temperature perfect for humans, his warmth just felt a hundred times better.

"We haven't done this in a while," his chest vibrated against your cheek as he spoke.

"Yeah, we haven't," you agreed, snuggling deeper into him as wrapped his arm around you. It was second nature, natural even.

"This is nice," he said, fighting a yawn which made you chuckle.

"Already tired I see," you teased.

"What can I say, you help me sleep," he admitted, absentmindedly rubbing your back. A few seconds later you crane your head upward, pushing him away slightly. You did so to take a glance of his face which was already relaxed in sleep, glasses still on.

You sighed at the sight, content, almost dreamy as you slowly removed his glasses, placing them on the small space above your heads before you finally lay back down on his chest.

And with that, in the safety of his strong arms, his heartbeat finally lulled you into a quiet slumber.

The two of you were awoken by the sound of xenonite rolling on the metal floor. The sound had Grace groaning in protest, and you raising your head from his chest in the direction of the sound.

And there he was, Rocky, already by your bed, and if had eyes you knew it would be filled with confusion.

Placing your hand on Grace's chest, not only to push yourself up, but to wake him up. The action was met with another symphony of groans.

"What is it Rocky?" You asked, now fully awake, with Grace rubbing his eyes beside you, finally sitting up as well.

"You both mate? Question," He said, making both your eyes go wide, now you were truly awake.

"No, Rocky, we're just," Grace said, trying to find the words, but he couldn't so you found them for him

"Cuddling," you finished his sentence, cringing a bit at the word, but it was true nonetheless. You were indeed cuddling.

"Not know meaning of word," Rocky said, and you swore he was tilting his head almost like a dog as he looked at you both.

"We're holding each other close for comfort," Grace explained in better terms for the Eridian.

"We couldn't sleep last night."

"I see, I see, I see," the Eridian said, jumping in his xenonite ball.

"So like mate? Question."

"No Rocky," you both said in unison, looking at each other in surprise right after.

"Rocky understand, human mating slow, I let you finish," he announced, before rolling his way out of the room.

This time you both sighed together, comically bringing your hands to your foreheads.

With a sigh and a wave of your hand, you gave Olivia the okay to answer the question. She happily took your permission and ran with it, always the first to answer any questions you posed in class. If only the rest of these damn middle schoolers were as eager as she was.

“Penelope didn’t want to marry anyone else, so she gave them an impossible task,”

“Why does she always know everything?”

Marcus thought his comment was whispered just low enough that you wouldn’t hear him in the first row, but he was never quite that lucky. He quickly shut his mouth and looked anywhere but in your direction the second he caught sight of the disapproving look you were casting directly at him.

“You are exactly right, Olivia. Thank you for answering my question,” there were a few chuckles in the room at the obvious sarcasm laced through your words, as you hopped up onto your desk to relax and get a better look around the room full of kids. “Penelope knew the only person that could string her husband’s bow, was her husband himself. She needed to buy time, especially when these suitors only really wanted to be the ones to inherit Ithaca-”

There was a loud knocking on the door to your classroom that had been left open for the last 20 minutes of class, interrupting your words. You weren’t surprised in the slightest to meet the eyes of none other than Ryland Grace, the science teacher.

“Uh- sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt important book talk stuff. Super important, you uh-you never know when Shakespeare will come up at your future desk job,” the cringe that Ryland physically did at his own comment was easy to see, even from across the room. He gave you a sheepish smile, his glasses barely hanging onto his face from their unconventional spot hanging off of one of his ears. The blonde held up the brown bag in his hand, and you could practically smell the food that rested inside. “I’m early, I’m sorry. Didn’t think you’d want to have a cold burger for lunch.”

“I told you!” Marcus still didn’t understand the concept of a whisper, leaning over to his best friend Jason at the desk beside him, slapping him on the arm. “They’re totally dating!”

“As if Mr. Grace could pull her,”

There was a chorus of snickers and laughter through the class, any semblance of order you might’ve had descending into chaos as every single one of your loveable, little shits just kept casting looks between you and Ryland, who still stood awkwardly in your classroom doorway with reddened cheeks.

Your face was surely no better, you were sure you could feel the heat that was emanating off of your skin, as you ran a hand down the burning skin of your face and wondered why you chose to teach these little menaces for the rest of your life. The world decided to be kind to the pair of you though, for once, letting the lunch bell save you from any further embarrassment from a group of 13 year olds.

“Please come to class prepared to actually answer questions tomorrow!” you called out over the hustle and bustle of the class as they grabbed their things, eager to scurry off to their lunch hour and finally eat. “Your unit test is at the end of next week, and I would prefer not to fail all of you.”

They weren’t listening, but by this point in the day you were hungry and didn’t have the energy to try and argue with them.

Any of that tiredness they brought to your bones? It disappeared the second you watched the way they all interacted with Ryland on their way out the door.

Big smiles, every single one of them excited to see the school’s favorite science teacher lingering in the doorway to their English class. You could just barely hear the tail end of one of Ryland’s terrible science puns, something about a hungry planet needing a ‘light snack’ that got a groan out of Marcus. All it did was bring a soft smile to your face, though, one that somehow softened even more at the quick, secret handshake Olivia shared with him before she was out the door.

Then, it was just the two of you, smiling like idiots as you locked eyes across the room again. And god, did you want that fluttering group of butterflies in your stomach to calm down for just a moment.

Having a crush on Dr. Ryland Grace, the former molecular biologist turned San Francisco middle school science teacher, was inevitable from the moment you turned up at the school for your first day over a year ago. Incredibly smart, amazing with kids, and so incredibly handsome you thought your heart stopped beating the first time you saw him–hell, Mrs. Doyle, the math teacher for over 5 years, said there were at least 4 other young teachers that absolutely had crushes on this man. You were far from the first.

He broke that perfect vision of himself you were building in your head within 5 minutes of meeting, tripping over his own two feet and knocking the stack of papers a mile high from the Principal’s hands, but you had only found it even more endearing.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he apologized again, long legs striding across the room and reaching your desk in a matter of seconds. “I had a free period before this, a-and you mentioned this morning you forgot lunch so I grabbed some for both of us-”

“Sal’s?” you questioned, pointing to the bag of foot now sitting on your desk with the familiar logo. “They’re, like, 10 blocks away. Why’d you go that far?”

“Because I know they’re your favorite,”

The flare of heat in your cheeks was instant. Ryland Grace, who rode a damn bike to the school every day, used his free period to ride 10 blocks away and pick you up lunch from your favorite spot, all because you mentioned offhandedly at 7 a.m. about forgetting your lunch for the day.

Well, he certainly didn’t do that for the four fresh out of college teachers that had crushes on him. You’d mentally consider that a hefty win in your book.

“How sweet of you to remember,” Ryland simply waved you off, head turned away as he passed your wrapped burger into your hands, taking up space on your desk chair while you stayed comfortable on top of your desk. “You even remembered tomatoes this time!”

“I forgot them one time and I never hear the end of it,” laughter was shared between you both for a moment as Grace took a bite of his own burger. “I caught the tail end of that discussion. Olivia answering all your questions like a champ?”

“Isn’t she always,” you shot back with another laugh, turning slightly on your desk to better face him. “I swear she’s the only one that I can ever get to answer any of my questions. She might be the only one that does any of my assigned readings.”

“To be fair, can you blame her?” Ryland’s words were muffled slightly by the food in his mouth. You couldn’t even contain the slight smile that grew as he managed to just barely catch the ketchup dripping off his burger before it could smear itself on the stack of papers that needed graded at your desk. “Shakespeare was just…so interesting. Couldn’t get enough of his stuff. Don’t know why your kids don’t want to read it.”

There was silence for a moment, your eyebrow quirked in his direction. The blonde stopped mid bite of his burger, looking back at you quizzically, trying to figure out what he had said wrong.

“You know we’re currently learning The Odyssey, right?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll let you think about that for a second,”

He did, just slowly blinking in your direction. He glanced at the chalkboard behind you, covering in little notes you’d made throughout the class discussion, before they flickered to the copy of the book that sat on your desk. That was finally when you saw the light bulb flicker on above his head, Ryland’s eyes shutting as he let out a loud sigh.

“...that wasn’t written by Shakespeare, was it?”

The laughter that bubbled out of you practically had you throwing your head backward.

“No, but I’m sure Homer won’t be too offended,” feet landing on the ground as you hopped off your desk, you gave Ryland’s shoulder a quick squeeze as you moved past him. “The attempt was cute, though, it was a good try.”

Cute. Why in the world did you let that one slip? You were practically cursing yourself in your head for that one, taking another bite of your burger as you worked to erase the whiteboard to prepare it for your next class. You didn’t dare steal a glance over at Ryland, in fear that your little slip-up was going to ruin everything.

There was only quiet for a moment before the single moment of awkwardness was gone.

“I promise you I know Homer wrote that. I swear!”

The desperation to believe him drew another laugh out of you. Sparing a glance in his direction, Ryland was giving you his best, exaggerated puppy dog eyes, begging you to believe him, as a smile just barely squeaked its way onto his lips.

“Right, of course you did. My mistake. Whatever you say, Ryland-”

“I mean it!” It was his turn to laugh this time, a sound that had those butterflies rattling around once more. “I was just…distracted.”

“Uh-huh, distracted,” as if you were preparing to scold one of your students, you turned to face him fully with a hand on your hip, eyebrow raised expectantly. “By what, exactly?”

If a human being could buffer, Ryland Grace always seemed to be constantly buffering. Your eyebrow remained raised, waiting for him to piece together his response. All he could do was open and close his mouth like a fish, before looking away and taking another bite of his food.

“Nevermind that, just finish your food before it gets cold. I did bike, like, three miles to get that thing,”

With a roll of your eyes that held zero malice what-so-ever, you made sure the blonde could see your next bite of your food, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Back to the previous topic,” you steered the conversation in another direction, wiping off the last bits of chalk on the board and writing down your next period at the top so that you could start the discussion on the reading over again. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get some of these kids to just read the content. They all pay attention in your class!”

“I heard Jason make a comment yesterday during class that Marcus has a crush on Olivia. Maybe they’re too distracted to read,”

You shot him a skeptical look.

“Marcus, crushing on Olivia? He was just making fun of her before you came in the room,”

Ryland averted his eyes, suddenly very interested in his ID badge hanging around his neck from his school issues lanyard.

“W-well, maybe he just doesn’t…know how to express his feelings,” he spared a glance up at you, seeing you were still watching, as he tripped over his words again. “It can be hard for boys–and men–of all ages, to…tell someone how they feel.”

“Well, I don’t know where he’s learning from, but making fun of the girl you like isn’t the right way to go about things,” you shot back.

“Then teach them!” Ryland sounded absolutely ecstatic, that light bulb over his head going off again as he looked like he’d come up with the world’s greatest idea. “Classic literature, there’s plenty of great love stories in there. Get his interest by teaching them about that, so he can learn from them.”

“Alright, give me an example then, Mr. Suddenly an Expert in Classic Literature,”

“Romeo and Juliet,” he said like it was the easiest thing in the world, balling up the remnants of his finished food and tossing it in the bag it came in. “Greatest love story ever told, so great Taylor Swift wrote a song about them.”

“Except they don’t run off and get married and live happily ever after, Ryland. Romeo thinks she is dead and kills himself with poison, and when Juliet realizes he’s dead she stabs herself,”

Ryland’s excitement fell slightly, his mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape.

“...oh,”

“Don’t think that’s what I want to teach young, impressionable pre-teens about love-”

“Daisy and Gatsby, then! He loved her so much he stood on that dock staring at the-the bright yellow light of a stoplight for her,”

“It was a green light and it was the dock light, first of all. I’m not even sure how you could be that off. Secondly, Gatsby is murdered at the end of the book and Daisy doesn’t even attend the funeral, she and Tom move away and pretend it never happened,”

Ryland’s eyes are shut at this point, his fingers massaging his temples and those glasses just barely hanging on from their place around his neck.

“...does anyone not die in these old books?”

The sound of your laughter permeates the room and you sweep over, collecting his trash and combining it with yours. You never even spared him a glance, though you could feel his eyes on you, as you swept the trash away with you to the other side of the room, his voice echoing across to you.

“I’m going to get lucky on one of these guesses!”

What Ryland Grace was really lucky about was how adorable you found him, and how head over heels you were for him, because his lack of literary knowledge was astounding.

❤︎

“I’m sorry, you’re trying to tell me that aren’t currently fucking the eye candy that is the science teacher in room 305?”

“Evelyn!”

Evelyn Doyle was in her late thirties, married since she was 18, and already had three kids with her high school sweetheart. Since you had transferred into Grover Cleveland Middle, you’d become fast friends and she had become a great mentor.

She had, sadly, caught onto your pathetic crush on Ryland Grace before you had even fully realized it, and was now ‘vicariously living through you’ as she always said.

“There’s not a single child left in this entire school right now,” she shot back, gesturing around her empty classroom, as she finished cleaning up anything her students had left around at the end of the day. You rolled your eyes at her excuse, perched on the edge of her desk. “Please, I’m tenured, what are they going to do?”

“I’m more so yelling at you for butting into my love life, once again,” was your reply through laughter. “Ryland and I are good friends, that’s it.”

It was her turn to laugh, finishing up her cleanup around the room before she joined you at her desk, packing her things away into her shoulder bag.

“Oh please, you keep denying that little crush of yours-”

“I never said I was denying that,” you cut her off. “Lord, you realized I liked him before I even did. But he and I aren’t anything besides friends. I’m not lying.”

Your pleas fell on deaf ears, like they typically did when you were around Evelyn. She simply waved your statement off, tossing her bag over her shoulder as you followed her out of her room and down through the quiet of the school hallway. The quietest the hallway ever was, in the hours right after students were sent home for the day. You’d rather be anywhere else, preferably at home, but these mandatory once-a-month staff meetings were unavoidable.

“Whether you’re telling me the truth or not, you have to understand why everyone thinks so–teachers AND students. I think even some parents think so!” The only response she got was an eyeroll, her shoulder bumping into your’s playfully. “He brings you lunch at least once a week, meaning he rides that dingy bike to get whatever you’re craving that day.”

“It’s usually just something random-”

“Constantly in your classroom, or vice versa,” she cut you off, and you quickly realized you weren’t getting a single word into this conversation. “I’m pretty sure Principal Marshall has considered, somehow, moving your classroom closer to his just so he’ll stop being late to classes because he’s busy talking to you.”

Okay…yeah, you didn’t have a retort for that one. Your classroom was on the opposite end of the school building from Ryland’s own, and yet every time he had even a split second he was somehow always leaning in your doorway. Even if it only resulted in a conversation that lasted all of a minute.

Many times those ended with your students having to remind him that the bell rang and he definitely had students in his own class unattended, waiting on their teacher. More than once he’d slipped as he tried to sprint back to his classroom from yours. It didn’t matter how short those little conversations were, though, because every second around him was precious to you.

“Awe, look at you blushing about it-”

You slapped Evelyn’s hand away, throwing her a look of disdain that didn’t really hold any true malice to it.

“Look, all I’m saying is the ball is in his court,” was the response you finally settled on as Evelyn propped the door of the small auditorium open for you to enter. “Ryland is nothing but friendly to me, so if he’s interested then he’s got to show me.”

“You’re acting as if you’ve made your own feelings clear, honey,”

“No, but I clearly don’t do a good enough job of hiding them,”

Speak of the devil: there he was. Ryland’s head shot up the moment the pair of you walked into the auditorium. Those damn glasses hanging down from one side of his face, framing his stubbled jawline perfectly. A smile lighting up his face the second those blue eyes found yours, gesturing to the empty seat beside him.

A packed auditorium, as you and Evelyn were the last ones there. Every seat up practically filled, and yet Ryland Grace sat among a crowd of people, eyes trained on you and a single seat saved for you amidst it all.

All you could feel was the heat in your cheeks, and the touch of Evelyn patting your back as she laughed, voice low but loud enough to hear as she shifted past you to find a seat of her own.

“Doesn’t have interest in you my ass,”

Her words swam through your head with every apology you muttered to the other teachers as you snuck past them in the cramped rows, happily taking the empty seat beside Ryland.

“You didn’t have to save me a seat, you know,” your voice held a hint of teasing to it, but it was soft. Filled with an adoration that you knew you were terrible at hiding. Luckily, Ryland was terrible at picking up on it.

“Wanted to sit next to you,” he whispered back as Principal Marshall began to drone on about updates neither of you particularly cared about. He leaned in close, a hint of his breath wafting over the shell of your ear as he spoke. “You make these slightly less boring.”

Close proximity to this man was your worst nightmare, and the cramped auditorium wasn’t helping. That single touch of his breath against your skin was enough to send a simultaneous shiver down your spine and another round of heat to your cheeks. His suit jacket covered arm rested on the shared armrest between your seats, the edge of his bicep ghosting against the bare skin of your arm with every little shift he made, tapping incessantly against the armrest.

The slight action made you smile. He never could sit still in these meetings, always hated them.

“Did anything fun happen in class today?” you kept your voice low, eyes trained on the principal, as your head tilted slightly over to Ryland so he could better hear you.

“Uh, if you count Madison telling me that she thinks the sun orbits the earth, then sure,” you had to stifle your laugh at that, casting Ryland a side glance as he grinned at you, doing a terrible job of whispering back at you as usual.

“How could she possibly think that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ryland leaned just a tad bit closer, the side of his arm pushed up fully against your own. You could almost hear the smile in his voice without even having to look over at him. “The National Science Foundation estimates that 26% of Americans still think the sun orbits the earth.”

“Jesus, that many?”

“Well, 100% of them are stupid, so,”

Nasty looks from other faculty were shot your way that second you choked on your own breath, slapping a hand over your mouth in an attempt to stop yourself from breaking out into uncontrollable laughter. You gave them the most sympathetic look you possibly could, learning how to breathe normally again before mouthing sorry at them all.

Ryland didn’t care in the slightest for the warning look you shot him, a bright smile on his face as his eyes seemed to trail over every inch of your face.

“If you keep doing this in every faculty meeting, they’re going to separate us, Ry,”

“I met Madison’s parents for the first time last month for parent-teacher conferences,” he continued, ignoring your plea. Instead, he leaned in even closer, eyes locked on yours, and god it was impossible to look away. “They are, 100%, undeniably, part of the Flat Earth Truthers Club.”

You shook your head, a smile creeping back up on your lips. Ryland’s gaze could still be felt on the side of your face as you turned back to face the front, eyes focused back on the principal again in an attempt to pay attention to the meeting.

“Flat earthers are ridiculous. They’re just scared of science,”

“Well, you know what they say…the only thing they have to fear is sphere itself,”

There simply wasn’t enough time to clap your hand over your mouth and conceal your laughter, a split second of it breaking through the quiet of the auditorium. And Ryland? His smile was somehow even brighter than it was before, still locked onto your face, never having strayed once.

“Dr. Grace, is there something you feel needs to be shared with the rest of your fellow faculty?”

Principal Marshall’s voice was enough to knock Ryland out of whatever trance he seemed to have put himself in. Eyes wide as if he’d just seen a ghost, hands barely able to catch his glasses as they almost fell right off of his ear where they dangled, a burst of red spread through his cheeks instantly as his deer-like eyes locked onto the unamused principal.

“I-I uh, no. No, nothing, Principal Marshall,” he scratched at the back of his head, ruffling up his already messy hair, a nervous tick you’d picked up since the moment you’d met him. You simply buried your head in your head, eyes trained on your shoes and Ryland out of the corner of your gaze, terrified to look up at your fellow faculty that you’d already apologized to once. “Just getting super jazzed about faculty updates. Hard to keep it in here. I’m like a mushroom, getting all…hyphae…”

A collective groan sounded through the auditorium at the terrible biology pun that rolled off of him with ease. All you could do was smile into the palm of your hand.

“Please just…pay attention to the meeting, Dr. Grace, before I separate you and your other half,”

Other half. That’s not how she meant it, but it was impossible not to let your mind wander to the idea.

Early mornings. Coffee, the smell of eggs and toast burning in the kitchen. Ryland and his hair that was surely even more unkempt that early in the day. The guarantee that he definitely had about 120 science puns ready to go at any moment.

Late nights. Curled up on a couch. A movie, a shared blanket, warm in the embrace of his arms. The quiet of just being with someone that made you happy in ways you’d never felt before. The promise of another day with them on the horizon.

It was becoming increasingly harder not to think about Ryland Grace like that every day, of what a life with the awkward, endearing science teacher could be.

And as Principal Marshall continued her meeting, and your eyes met the blue ones that were already looking at you: soft, kind, a hint of something you couldn’t understand in them, you could only dream he thought the same thoughts when he looked at you.

❤︎

“Alright, who can tell me the day of the first human space flight?”

Not a single middle schooler, packed into the building’s planetarium, raised their hands at first. Many of them started whispering to each other, confused looks on their faces, but Ryland just waited with a smile on his face. A brave soldier from Mr. Harkin’s class, Damien, finally raised his hand.

“Uh, Mr. Grace? Wouldn’t that…be today?”

“Excatly!” Grace’s clap echoed through the room as he pointed toward the young kid sitting in the front row of seats. “International Day of Human Space Flight, commemorating the first human space flight by Yuri Gagarin. It was a trick question, and you passed my tiny friend.”

Were you excited about losing a chunk of your day to escorting your class to the planetarium, along with other classes in the building, for a special science presentation? Absolutely not, especially not with how terribly your class did on their last The Odyssey assignment.

When you found out that Ryland was giving the presentation during your allotted time? Suddenly, The Odyssey meant nothing to you. Not when you could watch Ryland teach, something he did so effortlessly.

The way he captured every single child’s attention with ease. That glowing smile on his face every time they answered a question right, and simply the way he seemed to love what he taught. You were captivated every time you got the chance to see him teaching the thing he loved so much.

“Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first person in space in 1961 aboard the Vostok 1,” the planetarium was lit up with the night sky, little stars reflecting down. You could almost see them in the students eyes, in their bright smiles as they looked up into the vastness of space. Your eyes trailed to Ryland, already looking at you with a soft smile of his own, before he cleared his throat and moved throughout the room, focusing back on the kids. “Over the course of 89 minutes, his ship traveled to a maximum altitude of 187 miles, as it orbited the Earth.”

“Wait, so we weren’t the first people in space?” one of your students, Lydia, called out. Ryland laughed, pointing over at her.

“No, we kind of sucked,” you rolled your eyes with a grin at Ryland’s statement, though it drew a laugh from all of the kids. “No, America had actually scheduled its first space flight for May 1961, so this was a huge blow to us. It really heated up the space race.”

“He really is good with them, isn’t he?”

Glancing over, Mr. Harkin had saddled up beside you on the edge of the room, head tilted toward you and voice low so as to not disrupt the lesson the kids were being taught. Your gaze drifted back to Ryland as he continued his lesson, eliciting more laughter from the kids. It only brought another soft smile to rest on your lips.

“He is, in a way that I just don’t understand,”

Those blue eyes you’d become so fond of met yours for a moment across the room, face illuminated by the light projecting onto the planetarium’s dome walls. The little grin he wore seemed to drop just slightly, gaze still locked on you but flickering every moment over to Mr. Harkin as he spoke to the students. Harkin’s elbow dug lightly into your side.

“Careful, you’re giving him major ‘heart eyes’ across the room right now,”

You did your best to conceal your laughter, shooting Harkin a look, Ryland’s gaze still felt on the side of your face even as you looked away.

“Why do I feel like I’m about to find out that every teacher in this school has a secret betting ring going on when it comes to Ryland and I?”

“I mean, it’s not a secret. Principal Marshall runs the damn thing,”

“Mr. Grace?” one of the youngest girls in the grade, Aurora, called out, raising her hand up to get Ryland’s attention. “My mom told me the other day that there’s 8 planets in our solar system. What happened to Pluto?”

Ryland went to answer when Mr. Harkin beside you laughed, capturing the attention of everyone in the room, as he shook his head at his young student.

“No, honey, scientists a couple years ago decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore,”

Your eyes flickered to Ryland, who was already staring at Harkin from across the room as he tossed his little crochet earth back and forth in his hand. His response was a bit of a forced laugh.

“Well, your teacher isn’t wrong. Scientists classified Pluto as a dwarf planet a couple years ago,” he explained to the kids, eyes trained on the little crochet sphere in his hands. “But there’s 8 other very important, even closer planets that we should focus on. I mean, who really cares about a tiny, slow planet that takes 248 years to orbit the sun–honestly, he should just accept that he’s slowly falling into obscurity and stop trying to steal the spotlight.”

The room got quiet. Your eyebrow raised slightly, head tilted, as everyone just seemed to stare at Ryland, who had yet to look up.

“Uh, Mr. Grace?” some student in the back called out. “Why did you call Pluto ‘he’? Are the planets boys and girls like us, too?”

Ryland’s head shot up, as if he suddenly remembered he was in a room full of students. His eyes shot to you, his mouth opening, then closing, before he quickly looked away.

“I–well…planets don’t really…I’m not trying to misgender the planets, you know? That’s not for me to decide, that’s for them to–you know what, does anyone else have any other questions that aren’t related to Pluto?”

You really didn’t want to laugh at Ryland, but only he would be able to accidentally turn a lesson about space and planets into almost a lesson on bodily autonomy. He caught your eye, his widening just slightly and you could almost see his cry for help written across his face, but it only made your laughter worse.

It was little Madison that raised her hand next, speaking before she’d even been called upon.

“Are you sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe?”

Ryland hung his head in shame, the shaking of his head evident from across the room as a few of the kids around laughed at the young girl’s comment. You were quick to shoot them a warning look, not keen to hand out any detentions today.

By the time your gaze turned back to Ryland, he was already looking at you. His gaze flickered to Harkin, then back to you, and it was like a light bulb had just flickered on the way his eyes lit up.

“Yes, Madison, I’m sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. And I can show you,” his long legs crossed the room in seconds, his body sliding between you and Mr. Harkin as his hands landed on your shoulders with a tiny little squeeze that sent your heart leaping through your chest. “But to do that, I’m going to need this volunteer that I’m not quite giving a choice.”

“It’s not volunteering if you didn’t ask, Ry!”

You exasperatedly tried to whisper to Ryland as he steered you across the room to stand before all the kids. He only shook his head as a bunch of your own students started cheering for you around the room, only worsening the red that coated your cheeks the second his hands had landed on your body.

“I need you for this,” he shot back hastily, positioning you in the middle of the room, standing in front of you. His body blocked the students from your vision, blue eyes boring down into yours, hands gently squeezing at your upper arms as you begged the blush in your skin to not be too obvious. “You trust me?”

A ridiculous question, because the only answer was yes. You gave him a nod, and Ryland’s smile only widened as he turned back to the kids in the room.

“Alright, kids. Your gorgeous teacher here is the Sun,”

Little oohs and awes sounded from the kids around the room at Ryland’s little slip in of the word ‘gorgeous.’ There was a sting in your bottom lip as you bit into it with your teeth, trying to contain your own smile. Marcus spoke up from across the room without raising his hand, as usual.

“Then what’s Mr. Harkin?”

“Oh, he’s Pluto,” Ryland shot back immediately, nodding his head. “Suits him.”

Laughter rang through the room, the young boys as rambunctious as ever. Ryland met your astonished look with a tiny wink of his own, one that forced a small laugh to tumble from your lips. Then, he began to slowly spin, walking around you in a circle.

“And I am the Earth,” he called out to the kids, and you could only hope he didn’t trip over his own two shoelaces. “The Sun holds 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, which means it’s packing some massive gravity.”

Ryland stopped spinning himself, still moving around you in a circle. He held his hand out toward you, and you slipped yours into it without hesitation, spinning in that circle slowly with him.

“Because the Sun holds such intense gravity, it’s actually pulling Earth into it. But, Earth has such high forward velocity that it actually keeps us moving sideways. Put these two together, and it keeps Earth moving in an almost perfect circle around the sun. Can anyone tell me another fun fact about our movement around the sun?”

The words went in one of your ears and straight out the other. There was no paying attention, not when Ryland’s hand held your own. Soft skin, just slightly rough around the edges, and those blue eyes were so soft, locked onto you as if there was nowhere else he wanted to look.

“Our speed changes!” Olivia called out from somewhere in the back, but you didn’t even try to look and find her. “When we’re closer to the sun in our orbit we move faster, and the further away we are, the slower we move.”

“Very good, Olivia!” Ryland called out, sparing just a quick glance over to the kids in the room as his hand held yours tighter, still spinning slowly together. “Madison, we also know this works because there’s other sun-like stars out there that are also orbited by planets. Like Tau Ceti, which has four Earth-like planets orbiting it.”

“Is the sun important for other things, besides just being the center?”

Ryland’s eyes flickered to you, and you watched as he paused. The slight hesitation on his face, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple for a moment, before those blue eyes locked onto yours and refused to look away.

“I-It is…for a lot of reasons. The Sun is the Earth’s entire reason for existing. The Sun gives the Earth life. The Sun is the reason the world is beautiful,”

Your breath hitched, eyes still trained on Ryland. There was something in his words, something in that earnest, raw look that he had written across his features as he looked at you that added a weight to his words. A weight that sent a tiny chill across your skin, raising the hair on your arms.

“Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing,”

There was quiet across the room. Then, a couple snickers, followed by Olivia’s smug little voice.

“The Sun sounds beautiful the way you talk about it,”

“She is,” his voice was lower, softer than it was before. Until, he seemed to realize what he said, the red on both of your faces spreading further than before as his eyes shot wide. “THE SUN I mean! I-I’m talking about the sun, obviously, b-because this is a science presentation!”

Laughter rang through the room, little chants of your names mashed together coming from some of the kids as the bell rang and saved either of you from further embarrassment.

Ryland, being Ryland, chose that moment to finally trip over his own two feet. You pulled on his hand as hard as you could, saving him from plummeting to the ground as he instead just landed on his one knee.

“Make good choices,” Ryland commented lowly as some of the kids walked past the two of you, still snickering and giggling to themselves. You let go of his hands finally, simply resting it on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Don’t uh, I don’t know, blow up the world during lunch or anything. Or pop those chip bags and give kids heart attacks, whatever you kids do these days.”

You laughed, stepping around Ryland as your kids lined up outside of the room, waiting for you. He shot you a sheepish smile from the floor, and your skin still burned with heat at the memory of his words as you looked at him.

“Every time I think you’re doing well with those kids, they manage to knock you down a peg,”

“Yeah, well, what’s new?”

When you met your class outside, you didn’t let them get a word in before you warned them not to say anything. You could still hear little comments talking about ‘shipping’ their English and Science teachers the entire way back to your classroom.

❤︎

Ryland Grace didn’t understand how he had ended up here.

Well, he did. Calling the leading scholar in his field a “staggering waste of carbon” at a UNESCO conference in Denmark was an easy way to get blacklisted from the field he’d studied in for many years in college. It was an easy explanation for how he ended up teaching middle school science at Grover Cleveland Middle in San Francisco.

Not that he had a problem with teaching! He actually loved it. Loved his kids, loved talking about science. He loved teaching the future little scientists of the world about why every facet of science was awesome. The pay wasn’t great, though.

Especially when it was the reason he rode a bike to school daily.

And there was currently the equivalent of a monsoon raining down from the sky onto the pavement, the reason he’d been standing at the front doors for the last 20 minutes hoping that the rain would simply let up. The heavens didn’t take pity on him, though, and it only rained harder and harder. His rain coat and bike were not meant to withstand heavy rain and damaging winds to this extent. 

Best cast scenario? It takes him a little longer to get home on his usual 20 minute bike ride than normal. Worst case? He crashes and dies, dead in a ditch covered in mud.

“Ryland, please tell me you aren’t thinking of riding your bike home in this?”

Then there was you. You were probably the single greatest reason why he loved teaching at Grover Cleveland Middle. If he ever had the unfortunate chance to meet that scientist from the conference again, he’d thank him this time for being a staggering waste of carbon, because it led him down a path to you.

“I can’t be that bad,” he tried to joke, waving you off as a crack of thunder seemed to shake the entire building, and his fake confidence faltered for a second. He glanced back at you, coat wrapped around your bag instead of yourself in order to keep its contents dry. “Just, you know…the slight threat of bodily harm.”

He really wished the path that led to you was less bumpy and full of himself looking like an idiot, but at this rate he’d take what he could get from the universe.

“Yeah, absolutely not,” was your immediate reply, head shaking as she fished your car keys out of the bag still covered with your coat. “I’m giving you a ride home, can’t risk the best science teacher’s life over a dumb storm.”

Ryland immediately shook his head, turning to face you beside him. He was not letting you risk your own life in the storm for him. If it really came down to it, he’d sleep at his desk. There was a change of clothes he kept in the bottom drawer, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do it.

“I can’t let you-”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” Ryland snapped his mouth shut as you cut in once again, dangling your car keys up in front of him with a little shake. “I…care about you, okay? I want to know you are home safe.”

There was no stopping the immediate heat that filled Ryland’s cheeks, and he knew it. There was red blooming across your own, but Ryland shook all wishful thinking from his mind. The AC unit in this school was unreliable, you were definitely just flushed from the heat. No other reason.

Ryland decided he wasn’t going to put up a fight at this point, but he wasn’t going to let you do this without anything in return. He shrugged the yellow raincoat hanging over his own shoulders off as he kicked the glass door in front of him open, the muffle sounds of the torrential downpour now louder as droplets of water splashed into the front door. He held the jacket out, hanging it above your head to protect you from the rain.

“At least let me save you from getting drenched,”

“You’re going to look like a dog that just had a bath by the time we reach my car,” Ryland only smiled at your joke, and the little giggle that fell through your lips. The close proximity didn’t help as he held the jacket up around you.

“Actually, it’s not windy today,” he shot back with a grin, nodding out the propped open door into the rain. “That means if we run, I’ll be drier than if we walked, because the rain that’s hitting us from above is proportional to time. Though, the rain hitting us from the front is proportional to distance, and when running-”

“Ryland Grace, you are adorable when you get all science-nerd, but if we’re going to run…we should run,”

Ryland was thankful that you couldn’t see the renewed heat flooding his cheeks, as you were both too busy sprinting through the torrential downpour to the staff parking lot.

Being a gentleman (who was head over heels in love with you and too terrified to say a damn thing) was thrown out the window with how fast you were booking it to your car, the idea of shielding you from the rain with his jacket abandoned after just a moment booking it across the lot. He could feel the coolness of the water settling against his skin as it soaked through every layer of clothing he had, every few seconds having to furiously wipe at his glasses in hopes of seeing through them.

None of it really mattered in the end, not when he heard your laugh. The little shrieks of laughter as a particularly big drop happened to fall right in your eyes. Or the laughter as Ryland managed–in his signature fashion–to slip on the final step into the parking lot, and you had to double back in laughter to help haul him to his feet.

He’s spring clumsily through the rain a thousand more times if he got to see you smile like that. And that is why his kids always told him that he was definitely ‘whipped’ for you. Whatever that meant.

The second you had both jumped into your respective seats of your vehicle, doors slamming shut, there was only a moment of silence between the both of you. Ryland felt like his chest was going to explode, remembering why he always hated gym class, his heavy breathing mixed with yours as you both caught your breath, before you locked eyes over the center console.

Then the laughter resumed.

He held his hand to his stomach, feeling an ache settling in as he couldn’t stop his own laughter. Your’s grew slightly louder in his ear as you leaned over, trying to help him wipe at his glasses that were still covered.

“I was right, you look like a wet dog,”

Ryland’s only response was to shake his soaking wet hair like one, a simple reaction that earned yet another shriek of laughter from you and a light slap to his shoulder. You muttered something unintelligible under your breath, but Ryland found himself unable to tear his gaze away from your lips as you started the car and began to pull out of the staff lot. How soft they looked, the way the little beads of water running down your cheeks fell over them.

Whipped. He still didn’t get it, but he agreed wholeheartedly with his kids at this point.

There was no driving fast in this rain, especially when the windshield wipers were moving at their highest programmed speed and it still wasn’t enough. It was quiet in the car for just a moment as you pulled out of the parking lot, but Ryland broke it the second your phone had connected to the car’s bluetooth, music filling the space between him and you.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.

“Frank Sinatra,” Ryland couldn’t help the growing smile on his lips as the familiar song flooded through the car speakers. He kept his eyes trained on the side of your face, watching the little smile grow on your own lips, eyes focused on the road conditions in front of you. “Old books and old music. Didn’t know you had such an old soul.”

“You calling me old, Ryland?”

“N-no!” Ryland immediately back track, hands flying up and shaking back and forth as his eyes went wide. “I might say some stupid stuff some–okay, most of the time–but I know better than to comment on a woman’s age.”

“I’m just teasing you,” he could thankfully hear the sincerity mixed in with the teasing lit to your voice. “But yes, I do enjoy some old music. Always been a big fan of Sinatra, especially this one.”

“It’s a nice song…just not scientifically accurate,” he caught the side eye that you threw his way for just a moment, another crack of thunder banging across the sky and almost shaking the car. Ryland couldn’t help but jump slightly. “Jupiter only has a 3.13° tilt to its axis, so it doesn’t experience seasons like we do. Mar’s would, though, because its axis is tilted at 25°, only 1.5° more than our own tilt…”

Ryland trailed off as the car rolled to a stop at a red light, and he caught you fully facing him this time with a bemused expression written across your face. His smile dropped just slightly as he let out a sheepish laugh, adjusting his glasses as they slid back down the wet bridge of his nose.

“...I went full science-nerd again, didn’t I?”

Your laughter drowned out the rain beating against the roof of the car as your attention returned to the road once more.

“You always do, but I happen to enjoy it very much,”

If only teaching paid more, because the commute to Ryland’s apartment was a lot shorter than his bike ride home every day from work. 

Parked in an open space across the road from the dimly lit apartment building, Ryland Grace hesitated with his hand on the handle of the door. His eyes swept out over the area around the vehicle, still being hounded with rain. The top of his road looked like the beginning of a river, the way the water was rushing down the small incline to pool at the bottom.

“Thanks…for this,” he gestured toward the weather right outside the card.

You moved to respond to him, when the weather alert on your phone propped up on your dashboard sounded out. Ryland could just barely make out the headline: FLASH FLOOD WARNING.

The roads were far too dangerous, and Ryland already knew from various conversations that you lived on the opposite end of town from him.

He…could ask you to stay for the night. Just for safety reasons, obviously! He was quickly trying to work through the pros and cons list in his head.

Pros: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be safe and not driving in this storm.

Cons: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be inside his tiny little apartment that looked like it had been hit by a separate hurricane than the one it felt like they were currently suffering through.

“I should probably get home-”

“Stay,” Ryland cut in, quickly continuing his words after his vague statement. “I-It’s just, the roads are bad, and you live on the other side of town. This storm is just going to get worse, and I-I’d hate to know something happened to you.”

You hesitated, he could tell, shaking your head.

“Ryland, I couldn’t ask you to let me stay,”

He hesitated himself for a moment, every feeling he’d kept bottled up for a year now threatening to escape past his lips. Instead, he settled on echoing your own words.

“I…I care about you. I want to know you’re safe,”

Moments later, he had his rain coat draped over your head as he rushed you inside his apartment to shelter from the storm.

Ryland’s hands shook the entire time as he put his key into his front door’s lock. The last time he had guests over…was never. His apartment was built and designed for him and his brain, scattered with notes and books and piles of arts and crafts that he worked on in order to decorate his classroom. It was not meant for visitors, especially not ones as pretty as you.

“Don’t, uh, mind the mess,” he mumbled, holding the door open and motioning after you, allowing you to take a step inside his apartment as he let out the small breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Chucking off his sneakers, little puddles of water forming below them on the ground, his jacket found its way into a pile with them. Ryland wiped his hands nervously against the thighs of his jeans, the action doing nothing against the soaking went material, as he watched you take in his apartment.

The apartment that looked like it had been ransacked, at least partially. Stacks of books relating to a thousand different topics were stacked on the ground by the tv stand, on top of the coffee table along with the coffee cup he’d abandoned there early in the morning in a haste to get to the school, and and by his desk that had a stack of papers scattered around it after her strewn them about in order to find one specific slip of paper at 11 p.m.

It was a mess, and Ryland regretted everything.

“It’s not messy, it’s homey,” your reply sent a burst of heat through his skin as you turned to him with a bright smile, leaving your own bag and coat by his pile of wet items before gesturing to your own soaking wet clothing. “Do you maybe have something a little less…wet?”

He scurried away into his bedroom, trying to ignore that little section of his brain that took your comment in a MUCH different way.

His bedroom was worse. Ryland wasn’t letting you sleep on the couch, but he surely wasn’t letting you see his room in a state like this.

Clothing was thrown across the room and Ryland quickly ran about, shoving piles of clothing away into corners where he was certain you wouldn’t be able to see any of it. Throwing it into his closet and slamming the door before it could fall out, pushing it down in his laundry basket, kicking it under his bed so it was out of sight and out of mind, whatever he could think of.

“Great idea, Ryland,” he muttered to himself, pulling on a dry pair of sweatpants and a tshirt for himself, trying to shake the remaining water out of his hair as he rummaged for something you could wear. “Almost get the woman you’re in love with killed by letting her drive you home in a monsoon. Invite her to stay the night in your apartment that makes you look like an even bigger loser than you are. Amazing idea. A doctorate in molecular biology and this is the best you can do.”

You were waiting by the couch in his living room, just glancing around at everything with a smile, when he reappeared. Sheepishly, he handed the folded clothing over to you, hand running through his soaking wet hair as he pointed down the hall.

“You can take my bed for the night. Uh, just leave your clothes in the bathroom, I can throw them in the dryer in a bit. I can scrounge up something to eat in the meantime,”

“Thanks, Ry,” your hand reached out, squeezing his upper arm lightly, and he felt the heat in his skin instantly bloom under your touch. “For all of this.”

If it wasn’t for the giant crack of thunder that flickered the lights of the building for a moment and made Ryland jump out of his skin, he would’ve forgotten how to breathe again.

He rummaged through every part of his kitchen, desperately trying to find something that he could make the two of you to eat that also wouldn’t make him seem pathetic. All he could come up with…was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly.

Yesterday. He’d stayed late after the end of the day to help in tutoring. He forgot to go grocery shopping. Ryland let out a sigh at his realization, back to his fridge door and head banging back against the stainless steel, hand running down his face and dragging against his skin as his glasses were knocked off, hanging off of one ear.

“Great,” he muttered into his palm. “Just absolutely freaking great, Ryland.”

Ryland Grace desperately wished he had the guts, the bravery, to just simply tell you how he felt.

From the moment he met you, when you had arrived for your first day at Grover Cleveland Middle, he was a goner. It had been a long time since he’d had a partner, his last one certain that he was too busy with his head in the clouds to pay attention to her, and she wasn’t wrong. But from the moment he looked at you, waving and smiling as you introduced yourself to all of the teachers that had gathered to welcome you, you were suddenly the only thing his brain wanted to focus on.

He had been so focused on you, too busy admiring every inch of you in silence, that in his typical clumsy fashion he tripped over his own two feet and knocked Principal Marshall’s papers out of her hand, spreading them five feet across the floor. But you’d joined him on the ground, laughing lightly to yourself, as you helped him clean up the papers, and Ryland knew he was a goner for you.

It only continued every single day, getting worse, and you somehow became his friend. His only friend, if he was being quite frank. So he tried to hide the way he really felt, too scared to mess anything up. He’d rather have you in his life in any way he could, then mess this up and lose you forever.

Keeping those feelings in was getting increasingly harder in the last few months. Which explained why he’d traveled cross town just to get lunch from your favorite place, or compare you to the sun and basically called you his entire reasoning for living in front of a bunch of children-

Either Ryland was going to blurt it out at some point, or he was taking these feelings to the grave with him.

“Peanut butter and jelly? Sounds like we’re eating like royalty tonight,”

He shouldn’t have looked over at you. He really, really shouldn’t have. Leaning against the opposite wall of the kitchen, hair still damp and dripping onto the cheesy “I had potential” shirt he’d been gifted by one of his students the following year. Sweatpants that were bunched up around your ankles so that you didn’t trip over the length, waist tied in as tightly as possible so they didn’t just slide right off your hips.

Ryland Grace had never thought it possible that you could look more gorgeous than you did every day, but he stood corrected. He felt more in love than he ever had just looking at you right in this moment.

“Sorry, I don’t exactly…live a life of luxury,” Ryland awkwardly laughed as he spoke, pulling out two sad paper plates from the cabinet next to him and flashing them in your direction, shaking them lightly in the air. “Hope this doesn’t ruin my perfectly curated image.”

His eyes followed you as you brushed past him, humming to yourself with a little grin. You fumbled through every drawer in the kitchen, looking for something, when Ryland quickly popped open the one right next to him, showcasing his small selection of utensils. You flashed another heart-stopping grin at him before digging out two knives from the drawer.

“That image cracked a long time ago, Ry. Like that time you let Marcus perform some chemical reaction and got the fire department called to the school,”

The tall blonde groaned to himself, rubbing at his temple as you pushed past him to throw some of the bread down onto the plates and crack open the jars of peanut butter and jelly set out.

“That was one time!” he tried to defend himself, saddling up beside you as you passed him one of the knives. He almost completely missed the opening of the peanut butter jar, eyes too transfixed on the sight of you in his clothing. It was still up in the air if his heart was actually working correctly yet. “I learned my lesson very quickly not to let him handle any more chemicals.”

“Don’t worry. I made the mistake of doing popcorn reading when we were working on The Outsiders. Marcus seemed to end up with every single instance of profanity in the book, which he would yell at the top of his lungs,”

Ryland snapped his fingers, glancing down at you at his side with a teasing smile.

“You know what? That explains that really loud ‘HELL’ I heard across the school a couple months ago. I was so sure that it was going to shatter the windows of my classroom,”

“Oh, shut up! It wasn’t that bad!”

Your laughter permeated the air, elbow digging into his side as you spoke. And when your eyes locked with his, and Ryland got the perfect look at every square inch of your face, he could see it so clearly in his head.

Mornings just like this, where you’d both struggle to get out of the warmth of the blankets. The way he would surely annoy you with his very disorganized morning routine, but he’d make up for it with coffee already set out for you, just as you liked it. The lingering moments by the door, too wrapped up in each other because you didn’t want to leave the peace of this space, even though you were going to the same place.

Late nights, curled together on the couch with some movie playing on TV that neither of you were particularly paying attention to. Whispered words, laughter shared. Kisses that lingered, hands that trailed-

Thunder broke Ryland from his spell, thoughts gone in a flash. He was back in his dingy kitchen, with you just inches away, staring up at him as the picture of true beauty.

“T-This is nice,” he cleared his throat, turning back to his sandwich as he spread his toppings along the bread, heat blooming across his cheeks again. It always did around you. “Making dinner with someone…no matter how sad the dinner is. I haven’t done this in awhile.”

“Right,” your voice responded after a momentary pause. “Sarah, wasn’t it? You were dating her when we first met. What, uh…what ever happened to her?”

“Oh, we broke up a long time ago,” Ryland waved the comment off, shaking his head. “She just, uh, thought my head was too far in the clouds. Didn’t think I wanted to be down here on Earth. She wasn’t wrong. It was for the best, though. She hated…all of this. The rundown apartment, the lack of a car, my love of science. She just never understood it. I was just…too much for her. But she’s with Mark now, so I’m sure she’s happy.”

Ryland chose not to mention that his last relationship had been dead long before it officially ended, the pair not having seen each other in well over a month by that point. If his math was right, which it usually was, Sarah had started dating Mark before she’d even broken it off with him.

He also failed to mention the relief he felt inside when she had called it off, knowing his heart had belonged to you the moment your eyes had locked with his.

Fingertips just barely ghosted over Ryland’s cheek, and he froze in place. Eyes trained on the plate in front of him, he could feel the way your hand curled around his cheek. The way your thumb glossed over his skin, back and forth, and the way your other fingers barely grazed over the shell of his ear. He couldn’t help the way he instantly leaned into the touch, a touch he hadn’t felt in so long.

Ryland turned his head, still resting in the palm of your own, to look you in the eyes. You gave him the softest smile, hand trailing across his cheek and ghosting over his jawline. His eyes watched it move, the way your fingers gently curled around the frame of his glasses dangling precariously from his face, and placed them gingerly back where they belonged, resting on the bridge of his nose.

His breath caught, your body so close to his, as your hand trailed back down and rested on his chest for just a moment, your own gaze flickering to its resting spot while his gaze stayed on your face.

“You are never, and will never be, too much, Ryland. Not for the right person. They’ll love every part of you. The clumsy parts, the nerdy parts, every part that makes you…you,”

The Sun. That’s what you were to Ryland Grace. He meant every word he had said in that planetarium that day, driven by the rare jealousy of seeing Harkin that close to you. 

The Sun was the reason Earth had life. Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing.

Without you…well, Ryland Grace had accepted long ago that he didn’t understand what it was like to truly live until he’d met you.

Your eyes flickered for just a second, and Ryland took in an audible breath, swearing they settled on his lips for just a second. The apartment was quiet, except for the hum of the fridge and the pattering of the rain against the living room windows.

The moment shattered with yet another terribly timed clap of thunder, your body jolting away from his, focus turned back to the counter in front of you, face hidden from his wide eyes.

“Y-you know…I can’t tell you the last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,”

Ryland shook his head, smiling slightly to himself at the little stutter in your own words, turning back to finishing his own food as well. But the moment still lingered in his head, the heat that bloomed from where your skin touched him still lingering.

“Since peanut butter is banned in school for allergies, probably awhile,”

“I almost forgot that rule a couple weeks ago and almost packed peanut butter crackers,” you joked back, before Ryland heard you snap your fingers. “Oh! Speaking of work, did you put yourself down to volunteer for the school dance next week?”

Sandwiches finished off, Ryland packed the ingredients away and stashed them back in their appropriate spots, laughing awkwardly to himself.

“Hah, uh, no I didn’t. I chaperoned last year and kind of left covered in punch, became the kids’ favorite ‘meme’ for a week afterward since one of them got a picture of it,”

He turned back to you. Leaning against the island counter, holding your sad little sandwich in your hands, face still lit up red as you smiled toward him.

“I think so far it's me, Doyle, and Harki, plus Principal Marshal and I think Katie and Dawson from the front office. We could really use another teacher,” he swore the fluttering of your lashes was on purpose just to kill him and his resolve. “Sign-up? For me?”

Well, there was no universe in existence where Ryland said no to a request like that.

Rejoining you at the counter, he held his own sandwich in his hand, reaching out and tapping it against yours as if you were sharing a toast.

“For you? Totally,”

Even as you both took a bite of your sandwiches, eyes still locked together, Ryland felt as if something had shifted in the air. Your eyes were still as kind, your smile still bright, but it felt like there was a new weight to your gaze as you looked at him.

And he swore–and hoped–for just a split second, that your eyes had just flickered down to his lips again.

❤︎

The student council had outdone themselves with this end of the year dance.

As you stepped through the main doors of Grover Cleveland Middle’s building, the smile on your face grew immediately at the sight before you. The walls were lined with little fairy lights, little styrofoam planets hanging down from the ceiling at various lengths, glow in the dark stars right around them and glowing. Silver streamers hung around the fairy lights, with the check in desk decorated with tons and foam and lights behind them to look like twinkling lights in the clouds.

“A space theme?” you called out as the two kids in front of you ducked away from the registration desk. Evelyn Doyle finally looked up from the sign-in sheet, grin growing as she took in the sight of you and rounded the desk. “I hadn’t heard anything from the student council on the theme, but they did well.”

“Nevermind the theme, you’re finally here!” you laughed as you threw her arms around you, reciprocating the hug, before her hands landed on your shoulders in order to get a good look at you, eyes trailing you up and down. “And look at this dress, oh my god!”

The deep yellow dress fell right around your knees, the fabric light and airy as it swooshed through the air with every move you made. Buttons lined the front down to the tie around your waist, leaving just enough room for the little gold necklace resting against your collarbone. You thanked yourself for choosing a short sleeve option, already feeling the heat in the building from how many kids were all packed in and dancing together.

“Thank you,” was the sheepish reply you gave your friend as she let you go. “I’m sorry I’m late, I caught one of my student’s parents in the parking lot and they turned it into a mini parent-teacher conference, sadly.”

“Not a problem,” she waved the comment off, gesturing toward the doors of the gym just off to the left of you both. “Just get on in there, have some fun, and keep those slow dancers at least 12 inches apart at all times.”

If the hallways were gorgeous, the inside of the gym shone even brighter. Bathed in blue and purple, even more little lights twinkled around the room, hung off the walls, the ceilings, and on every surface they could possibly find. Moon and star decals, made by the art students, hung off the walls and from the ceiling, almost glowing under the lights.

Your eyes trailed over all of your children, scattered throughout the room, already having been dancing for at least thirty minutes. The smile on your face grew as you watched each one of them, gathered with their friends as they danced together in groups, or even stood off to the sides and just observed from beyond the dimly lit dance floor.

Mr. Harkin had been stationed at the punch table, and you could hear him from across the room warning these middle schoolers not to try and spike the punch. You could only giggle to yourself, shaking your head at his antics, before your eyes swept over the crowd once more-

The music seemed to stop in your ears, breath hitching, the second you laid eyes on him across the room. Ryland Grace.

He wasn’t in anything fancy. A nice pair of jeans, the worn pair of black dress shoes you’d seen by his apartment door that night. A dark green shirt was tucked into his jeans, adorned with a worn, navy blue suit jacket overtop, and those same glasses almost falling off the bridge of his nose as he spoke animatedly to Olivia.

Ryland looked good. Too good, in your eyes.

For just a second, he looked up, and his eyes happened to meet yours across the room. You thought for sure you’d forgotten how to breathe.

Whatever had happened that night, in the silence of his apartment with only the beating of the rain against the windows and the roof as a witness, had shifted something. From the moment your fingertips had ghosted along his skin, your hand had rested against his chest, and you’d been close enough to see the specs that danced in those ocean blue eyes of his up close, nothing had been the same.

Like the little bubble you had been existing in with your harbored crushed had finally popped. Like a toe had dipped just slightly over a line, and there was no going back from then on.

You always blushed around your friend, every time he’d manage to fumble his way through a comment that borderlined on a kind-of-not-just-friendly compliment. But since that day just a week or so ago, every time he has been within a few feet of you, your face lit up like a hot summer’s day.

Moments where he’d find a second to linger in your classroom door, held a new weight to them. Sharing lunch together, fingers just barely brushing for a second as you both reached for your food, to moments when you’d simply be walking together down hallways, back of hands brushing along each other’s but no one making any moves to stop it from happening.

Something was different, and you weren’t sure you wanted to go back to how things were before. Not after touching his skin, or existing in his orbit like that. Not when you’d seen the side of him beyond these school walls.

You were in love with Ryland Grace. You had been for a long time. And, finally, you were done trying to pretend that there wasn’t at least a small chance that he felt the same.

“I need your help,”

The heated staring contest between you two was broken by the sound to your right. You turned, just to see Marcus standing directly beside you and reaching up to pull on the sleeve of your dress. His hands wrung together, foot tapping incessantly on the ground, and you immediately knelt down in front of him to get a better look at his face that he was trying to hide from you.

“Marcus? Honey, what’s wrong?” you asked gently, hands coming to rest on his arms as you tried to get him to look at you.

“I…I like Olivia,”

Oh. It was one of those problems. The anxiety you felt in that moment finally washed away, an easy smile falling to your lips as you took a quick glance over in Ryland and Olivia’s direction, the former’s eyes still locked onto you from across the room.

“I did hear a rumor about that. Olivia is a great girl,”

“She is,” he said quickly, finally looking at you. His nerves were basically written across his face. “I-I’ve been really mean to her. I didn’t mean to be.”

“I know, honey. Sometimes feelings can be confusing,” you stood up, hands on your hips as you looked down at him with a smile. “Do you want to dance with her?”

“I do,”

You held your hand out toward him with a smile.

“Then why don’t we start by going and apologizing to her?”

With Marcus’s hand in yours, you confidently led him across the room, eyes locked back onto Ryland’s as you approached. He stood with Olivia at his side, who was talking his ear off, a dopey looking grin on his face as he nodded to whatever she said as he continued to watch as you approached him.

“Dr. Grace, I’m sorry to interrupt you and Olivia,” you announced yourself to the pair with a grin of your own, hands on Marcus’s shoulders and you lightly pushed him forward. “But Olivia, there’s something that Marcus here wants to say to you.”

The young boy shuffled awkwardly forward, hands wringing together again as he stood in front of his crush.

“I, uh, I wanted to say I was sorry. For being really mean to you. I didn’t mean it,”

Olivia’s eyes went wide, as she too shuffled uncomfortably for a second. Ryland saddled up to your side, the pair of you sharing a glance as you watched the interaction happen right before your eyes. His hand graced over yours lightly, and it took everything in you not to reach out and lock your fingers with his.

“Oh! It’s, um, it’s okay. Thank you,”

“Say, Marcus?” Ryland called out to them both, catching the boy’s eye and gesturing toward Olivia with a wink. “What do you think of Olivia’s dress?”

“I…I think she looks really beautiful,”

That comment finally seemed to catch Olivia off guard, her eyes wide in shock as she giggled nervously.

“Oh! I…thank you, Marcus. You look really nice too,”

“Thank you,” his posture seemed to straighten out at Olivia’s reaction, like seeing her accept his compliment gave him the confidence he needed. “Do you want to dance with me?”

Olivia shot you and Ryland a look, and you both immediately gave her a thumbs up. Then, your happy eyes could only watch the two pre-teens awkwardly shuffle away together to the dance floor, not daring to meet the eyes of the other.

“Look at us, playing matchmaker for middle schoolers,”

“I think they did that for themselves, we just helped,” you laughed, turning your head. The laughter died on your lips the second your eyes met with Ryland’s, voice low and breathy as you whispered to him through your smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he whispered back just as breathily. His hand came up to the back of his head, running through his hair for a moment, and you could see the red and pink hues that lit up his cheeks. “I got worried when I didn’t see you. I was ready to call you.”

“You could’ve,”

“I’ll remember for next time,” he shot back, hands finding their way to rest in the front pockets of his jeans. His eyes moved back over the crowd, finding your two young students once more. “I’m proud of him for that. That…must have taken a lot of guts to do.”

You followed his gaze, landing on the pair as they danced together, laughing and talking like old friends.

“Like you said before, it can be hard for boys to express their feelings. All he needed was to pull up his big boy pants and ask her,”

Ryland laughed beside you.

“Yeah…I should probably follow in his footsteps,”

You glanced back to him, seeing him already watching you. A single eyebrow raised toward him quizzically, even though your heart felt like it was ready to beat directly out of your chest.

Ryland’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, as if he were trying to force out words that he couldn’t quite seem to get right. You didn’t even realize you were holding your breath, hoping inside that whatever he wanted to say would address the weight that seemed to be hanging between your gazes.

“Stay here,”

There wasn’t even time for you to respond before the tall blonde rushed away, almost tripping as he dashed over to the DJ booth across the way from the makeshift dance floor. He whispered something to the DJ, and you could see the thumbs up he got in return, before he rushed back over to you, panting slightly.

“Ryland?” you questioned softly, the man who held your entire heart without knowing it standing just a foot in front of you with a nervous grin on his face. “What did you just do?”

As if on cue, the song changed, and familiar lyrics floated through the room, bouncing off the walls.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars

“I’m pulling up my big boy pants,” he responded with a nervous laugh, his hand outstretched toward you. “And asking you to dance with me.”

Nothing else existed the second that you slid your hand into Ryland Grace’s without hesitation, letting him pull you in. You weren’t in the school, not in a room decorated for a middle school dance, and certainly not surrounded by middle schoolers and a bunch of faculty that had placed bets on you both.

It was just you and Ryland Grace. That’s all you wanted it to be.

Your arms found a place to rest around his shoulders, fingertips just barely brushing past the strands of hair that tickled the back of his neck. There was a fluttering in your chest the second that his hands made their way to your waist, curling around the divet just above your hip bone, pulling you into him just by another inch.

In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me. Fill my life with song, and let me sing for ever more.

"I didn't tell you yet…,” his voice was soft, words whispered just between the two of you in a crowded room. “But you look beautiful,"

"You don't have to flatter me, Ryland,"

"No, really, you look-"

"Like a banana in this yellow dress?"

He paused. His tongue poked out, running along his bottom lip, and you could see the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple before he spoke again.

"...like the sun,"

You are all I long for, all I worship and adore.

Oh. That fluttering in your chest was back, and suddenly, you weren’t at a middle school dance anymore. You were back in that planetarium, spinning in circles. And this time, there were no doubts in your mind. You were the Sun, and he was the Earth. And what was the Earth, without its Sun?

"Ryland-"

"I wasn't lying,"

You cocked your head.

"...about what?"

"That I knew Homer wrote The Odyssey,"

That drew a short laugh from you, but you could still see the nerves that were laced through Ryland’s smile.

"Right, you were just distracted,"

"I was. By you. I'm always distracted by you,"

In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.

You took a deep breath. He’d crossed the line for you, thrown himself onto the other side, and was waiting for you with open arms. It was just a leap of faith.

“I’m always distracted by you, too. Since the day we met,”

The song faded away, melting into the next. There could’ve been eyes on you both, either from students or from faculty, but nothing would break either of your gazes away from the other.

Ryland took a quick look around the room, before his hands took hold of your own, bringing them down between you both. He gave you a grin, one filled with more happiness than you had ever seen–and you knew your own matched his perfectly–before he tugged you toward the doors of the gym.

“Come with me,”

“Ry, we’re supposed to be chaperoning!”

“I don’t see Principal Marshall anywhere. What’s the worst she could do, fire us?”

“Quite literally, yes!” you shot back with a laugh.

Ryland only shrugged his shoulders, tugging you again, and you didn’t even try to fight back. Your feet simply moved with him.

“Worth it,”

Hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, your laughter echoed off the walls of the empty hallways as Ryland Grace ran you down them, a destination clear in his mind. Every few seconds he’d look back, just smiling at you as his eyes trailed over every single inch of you, before you’d yell at him to look at his own feet before you’d both be sprawled across the linoleum floors.

The door to his classroom was open as you flew inside, hand slipping from his as you caught yourself on the projector cart sitting in the middle of the room. Spinning on your heel, you caught his eye just as he shut the classroom door behind him, and the silence enveloped you both once more. Finally alone, no prying eyes to watch.

The momentarily confidence that seemed to seize hold of Ryland dissipated in that moment. He wiped his hands against the front of his jeans, chuckling awkwardly as he took a few steps toward you.

“What was your plan here, Dr. Grace?” you teased, taking a couple steps toward him as well, too high on the feeling of everything you’d just finally realized. High on the feeling of finally not denying what your heart knew long ago: you and Ryland Grace were never just friends.

“I’m not going to lie,” he shot back, coming to a stop just in front of you, barely an inch or two separating you. “I hadn’t thought this far ahead.”

“Then stop thinking,”

No one had leaned in first. It had been both of you, as if drawn together like two magnets, as your lips finally found one another's.

Goosebumps rose across your skin as Ryland Grace’s mouth moved against yours with an ease that shouldn’t exist between two people that have never kissed before. It was like a perfect dance between two partners that knew each other better than anything.

Your lips never left his, moving against his as if you couldn’t believe you had deprived yourself of this for so long, as your hands wound around his shoulders. Fingers curled into his hair, finally carding themselves through the blonde strands that felt so soft between your fingers.

The slightest little moan, enough to send heat coursing through your body the second you heard it, slipping from Ryland’s mouth into your own. His hands grasped at your hips, winding around your back to press into your lower back and tug you as close as humanly possible, as if he was a starved man that craved to touch you in any way that he could.

His lips were soft, a feeling that you knew you were going to crave for the rest of your life now that you’d had a single taste of them. You pressed further into him, a small mewl tumbling from your own lips and swallowed by his mouth as you pressed every inch of yourself into him, desperate to hang onto the moment in case the world would be cruel and wake you from this dream moments later.

The need to breathe was what finally separated you, but not far. Ryland’s forehead pressed to yours, his breath fanning out across your skin. His hands still gripped at your hips, holding him to you, as yours stayed carded through his hair, nails gently scraping at his scalp as you chest heaved as it tried to level your breathing back to normal.

“If I haven’t made it clear already, you’re my best friend,” his words were breathy, accented by the way he was still trying to catch his breath. But his smile was bright, his eyes almost shining, as he looked down at you. “And I’m completely in love with you. Literally, since the moment we met.”

You laughed, trapped in this little bubble with him, as your hands slid from his hair to instead cup his cheeks. The tip of your nose just barely brushed against his, and he bumped his right back against yours without hesitation.

“I’m completely in love with you too, Ryland Grace. Since the moment you tripped over your own two feet,”

The sound of your laughter filled the empty, dark science classroom again as Ryland’s hands came to scoop you up around your thighs, spinning you in relentless circles. All you could do was hang onto his broad shoulders and smile, his lips peppering a thousand kisses to every inch of skin he could possibly reach.

The Earth needed the Sun, like how Ryland said he needed you. The person that makes it all worth it, that makes the days brighter, that makes this short little life worth it.

⋆.˚✮ Notes: This will follow the plot of the Episode. I tried to avoid using direct quotes, but I wrote this while watching the episode, so it runs closely parallel.  

PS. This took me A WEEK, yall. Also its in parts cause tumbler has a character limit lol. found that out the hard way.

The morning sun spills through the thin curtains in pale gold stripes, warming the small room and the narrow bed within it. John Smith wakes slowly, pleasantly rested, limbs heavy in the way they only ever are after deep sleep. For a moment, he lies still, staring up at the ceiling, watching dust motes drift lazily through the light.

Stretching, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and reaches for the robe hanging from the chair. The floor is cold beneath his bare feet, the old wood creaking softly as he stands. He ties the robe loosely over his pyjamas, still half-asleep, when a knock sounds at the door.

Two quick raps. 

“Come in,” he calls, voice soothed with sleep.

The door opens, and Martha steps inside, balancing a tray in her hands. Steam curls gently from a teapot; the scent of toast and eggs follows her in. She pauses when she sees him standing there in his robe.

“You’re not properly dressed,” she says, tone light but firm, turning to excuse herself. “I can come back if you like.”

John smiles, a little embarrassed, tugging the robe closer around himself. “It’s quite all right, truly. Set it down.”

She studies him for a heartbeat. There is something in her eyes he doesn’t quite understand, then she nods and steps fully into the room. She sets the tray down on the small table with practiced care, adjusting the cup so the handle faces outward.

“You slept well?” she asks.

“Very,” he replies easily. “Rather better than usual, actually. I had an extraordinary dream.”

She drifts further into the room, fingers finding the edge of the curtains. “What did you dream last night?” she asks, casual as breathing.

John shifts his weight, leaning back against the edge of his desk. The wood is cool through his sleeve. He watches her rather than the breakfast, eyes following as she moves, unpinning the day, inch by inch.

She pulls the curtain aside. Sunlight floods the room at once, filling the corners that had been content with shadow. Dust motes leap into view, dancing.

He hesitates. His gaze drifts upward, unfocused, searching the air as though the answer might be written there. “Sometimes,” he begins slowly, “I dream that I’m an adventurer, I suppose. A madman, if you asked anyone sensible.”

She stills for half a second before moving to the other window.

“In the dream,” he continues, warming to it now,“I have a name there,” he adds, almost shyly. “The Doctor.”

Her back is to him, and for one dangerous heartbeat, she lets it show. Her face twists in longing so sharp it nearly steals her breath. She misses him. She inhales, steadying herself. By the time she turns to the second window, her expression is once again perfectly composed.

John doesn’t notice. He’s still looking into nothing, still chasing the echo of a man he doesn’t know he used to be.

“You were there too,” he says suddenly.

Her fingers pause against the curtain tie.

“In my dream,” he explains, smiling faintly, “you were with me. My companion, I think.” He glances at her, amused. 

She gives a quiet huff of laughter as she pulls the curtain open, light spilling across the far wall. “A teacher and a housemaid,” she says lightly. “Never, sir.”

“Oh, quite,” he agrees, grin widening. “But then, I wasn’t a teacher in the dream.”

“No?”

“No. I was a man from another world.” He shrugs, easy and unconcerned. “I imagine that gives one a bit more freedom.”

There is more, another part of the dream, hovering just out of reach, embarrassing in the way dreams so often are when dragged into the light of day. He doesn’t look at her as it surfaces; instead, his gaze fixes on the wall opposite him.

There had been a woman, another of the staff here at the school. Quiet in her own way, kind and clever. The sort of woman whose presence lingers after she’s gone, whose smile he always seems to notice when he least expects it. She has caught his eye more than once in waking life, though he has never had the nerve to do more than exchange polite words with her in the corridor.

In the dream, there had been no such hesitation. In the dream, she had been his wife.

The memory of it makes his ears warm. The way she’d looked at him there, as though she had always known him. They had kissed, just once. Sweet and gentle and simple.  He exhales softly through his nose, almost laughing at himself. The man he is in his dreams is a lucky one. Bold in ways John Smith has never quite managed to be.

He is certainly not about to confess that part of it to the maid standing across the room. Friendly as they are, she is still almost a stranger. And some dreams, especially foolish ones, are best kept private.

She turns back to him with a smile practiced enough to pass for effortless and holds out the folded newspaper. He takes it with a murmur of thanks.

“Monday,” she says lightly. “Don’t let the boys catch you unprepared.”

He glances down at the masthead, eyes skimming automatically.

Monday, November 10th, 1913.

The date means nothing to him beyond its usefulness. Another day. Another timetable. Another small, orderly square in a life that feels comfortably, reassuringly ordinary.

To her, it feels like a weight. He doesn’t remember her. Not the way he once did. Now she is just a maid, a friendly face, someone who brings his breakfast and reminds him of the time.

He has no idea that the dreams he speaks of so casually are memories, that the madman, the adventurer, the man called the Doctor, is not imagination but history. His history.

She wonders, not for the first time, if it hurts him more or her.

Her gaze drifts to the far wall, as if she might see through it. She thinks of her friend. Of the woman who loves him fiercely enough to let him forget her. Wherever she is now, she’s likely doing exactly what she was told, blending in, keeping her head down, working quietly among strangers who have no idea how close they are to the center of the universe.

She always was better at following his orders. Martha was always envious of her for how simple all the chaos was to her.

John clears his throat softly, drawing her back. “Anything interesting in the news?” he asks, already half-smiling.

She shakes her head. “Nothing that concerns you, sir.” Martha straightens, smoothing her apron as if she has suddenly remembered her place in the world.

“I should be getting on,” she says lightly. “Plenty to do.”

John looks up from the paper at once. He folds it neatly, setting it aside before standing, manners drilled into him as firmly as Latin declensions. “Of course. Thank you again, Martha.”

“Have a good day, John.”

“You as well.”

He lifts a hand in a polite wave as she turns for the door, fingers brushing the frame as she steps out into the corridor. She doesn’t look back. The door closes softly behind her, clicking into place with a finality that makes his chest feel oddly hollow.

John stands there for a moment, hand still half-raised, before letting it fall.

John Smith walks down the corridor, the echoes of recited dates and uneven handwriting still ringing faintly in his ears. Lessons finished for now, he moves to retrieve what will be needed for his next lectures.

Down near the stairwell, two women kneel side by side on the tiled floor, sleeves rolled up, skirts tucked carefully out of the way as they scrub at a stubborn patch of grime. The sharp scent of soap hangs in the air.

Martha looks up first. Their eyes meet, and she smiles, polite “Good morning, Mr. Smith,” she says.

He returns it without hesitation, inclining his head. “Yes, good morning.”

He offers a brief, professional nod and continues on, footsteps fading as he takes the stairs, already half-lost to his next task. The moment is brief. Nothing at all.

And yet, as Martha lowers her gaze back to the floor, the smile lingers. Seeing him, even like this, even reduced to manners and distance, still warms something in her chest. 

Beside her, Jenny snorts softly. “You always smile like that when he walks by,” she says, scrubbing with exaggerated effort. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re sweet on Mr. Smith.”

Martha huffs a quiet laugh, dipping her brush back into the bucket. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, I’m serious,” Jenny insists, grinning sideways at her. “Though I don’t know why, considering his head in the clouds.”

Martha shakes her head. “He’s just… kind,” she says after a moment. “Kinder than most.”

Jenny’s teasing softens. “That so?”

“Yes.” Martha keeps her eyes on the floor as she speaks, voice steady. “Especially considering… well.” She gestures vaguely at herself. “Not everyone here is very welcoming.”

Jenny hums, thoughtful now. “That does count for something.”

“It does,” Martha agrees quietly.

Just as they settle back into their rhythm, brushes moving in quiet tandem, footsteps echo down the corridor. Two boys, sixteen, perhaps seventeen, saunter past them, blazers immaculate, shoes polished to a shine neither woman could ever afford. Their voices carry that particular tone of bored entitlement, sharpened by the knowledge that nothing here truly belongs to the people maintaining it.

One of them slows, glancing down at the kneeling women with open disdain.

“Now then, you two,” he says. “You’re not paid to have fun.”

Martha and Jenny are both still at the sound.

“Yes, sir,” Jenny answers quickly, head bowed.

“Sorry, sir,” Martha adds, her voice even, practiced. She keeps her eyes on the floor. They both do. They know better than to meet his gaze. The second boy laughs, a short, sharp sound. He leans closer, hands clasped behind his back as if inspecting their work.

“Though I suppose,” he says lazily, eyes flicking to Martha’s hands, “it’d be hard to tell if the floor’s clean anyway. With hands like that.”

He gestures vaguely, mockingly, at her skin. For a moment, everything in Martha goes very still.

Her mouth tightens into something that might pass for a smile if one didn’t look too closely. Her shoulders remain straight. Her hands do not stop moving, though her grip on the brush turns white-knuckled.

She does not respond. She cannot. The boys laugh, loud, pleased with themselves. Posh scoffs and chuckles, elbows nudging each other as though they’ve just delivered the cleverest line in England.

The boys have barely turned to leave when a voice stops them.

“That will be quite enough.” It is calm, which somehow makes it worse.

They freeze mid-step. Standing a few paces behind them is a woman they both recognize immediately, the new librarian. 

She wore a sensible skirt and a blouse buttoned neatly at the collar. She looks, at first glance, exactly like what she is known to be here: wise, patient, unassuming. The sort of woman who remembers which boys struggle with Latin declensions and quietly slips extra books onto their desks. The sort who stays late to help them catch up without ever making them feel small.

She is kind, and she is respected.

Her eyes move from one boy to the other, taking them in with a measured stillness that makes their smirks falter.

“I happened to hear you,” she continues gently. “And I am deeply disappointed.”

One of the boys scoffs, trying to recover his footing. “We were only joking, miss.”

“No,” she says softly. “You weren’t.”

Behind them, Martha’s breath catches. To the school, this woman is simply another member of staff. To Martha, she is something else entirely.

She is the Doctor’s wife.

The woman who has stood beneath alien skies and never flinched. Who has run toward danger with her chin lifted and her hand steady in his. Who has stared down Daleks and Cybermen and horrors without names, not with weapons, but with the absolute certainty that cruelty does not get to win.

Martha knows that look on her face.

The boys shift uncomfortably.

“You will apologize,” the librarian says. “Now.”

There is a beat of silence. 

One boy laughs weakly. “I don’t see why-”

“Apologize,” she repeats, her voice unchanged. Something in her eyes sharpens. The corridor seems to lean toward her.

The first boy swallows. His bravado cracks, just a little. “Sorry,” he mutters, not looking at Martha.

She tilts her head. “That was not addressed to me.”

Both boys turn, reluctantly, toward the women still kneeling on the floor. Jenny stares back, stunned. Martha lifts her gaze slowly.

“I said,” the librarian adds, “now.”

“I- sorry,” the second boy says at last, face flushed, words rushed and graceless.

The first echoes him, quieter this time. “Sorry.”

“Good,” she says. “You may go.”

They do not wait to be told twice. Shoes scuff sharply against the stone as they retreat down the corridor, their laughter conspicuously absent now.

The librarian turns then, attention settling gently on the two women. Her expression softens, the steel she used so sparingly slipping back beneath warmth.

“I’m sorry you were spoken to that way,” she says. “It was unacceptable.”

Jenny nods, still a little wide-eyed. “Thank you, miss.”

Martha doesn’t speak right away. She looks at her friend instead. The woman who is pretending, bravely, to be ordinary. The woman who loves a man who no longer knows her. The woman who has crossed eternity and still kneels here, defending dignity in a quiet English corridor.

The librarian steps closer, skirts brushing the tile as she approaches them properly now. The authority she wielded a moment ago is gone, folded away like a well-read page, replaced with something warmer.

“Are you both all right?” she asks.

Jenny nods quickly, already scrambling to her feet. “Yes, miss. Thank you- truly. That was very kind of you.”

The woman smiles at her, gentle and sincere. “Of course. No one deserves to be spoken to that way.”

Her gaze shifts then, sharper, and lands squarely on Martha. For just a heartbeat, the mask slips.

Martha looks up at her and smiles, something fond and knowing curling at the edges. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “For stepping in.”

The woman exhales through her nose, lips twitching. “Well. Can’t have my reputation ruined.” She tilts her head, eyes glinting. “Just my civic duty.” A mock serious salute. 

Martha snorts before she can stop herself, laughter spilling out, sudden and real. “God, don’t start.”

Jenny blinks between them. “I don’t think I follow.”

“That’s quite all right,” the librarian says smoothly, patting Jenny’s shoulder. She turns back to Martha, voice lowering just enough. “Come see me later. When you’ve a moment.”

Martha nods, “I will.”

For a second longer, they hold each other’s gaze, two women carrying the weight of a man who no longer knows either of them, two friends standing guard in very different ways.

Then the librarian straightens, smile returning to its public version. “Take care of yourselves,” she says, and with that she moves on, footsteps light as she ascends the stairs.

Martha watches her go, warmth settling in her chest.

Jenny looks at her sideways. “You two know each other well.”

Martha dips her brush back into the bucket, still smiling. “You could say that.”

The stairs creak softly beneath her sensible shoes as she climbs, one hand trailing along the banister out of habit. She doesn’t realize she’s following John Smith’s path, only that this is the quickest way to the headmaster’s office, and that her patience is wearing thin.

“Honestly,” she mutters under her breath, barely aware she’s doing it. “If one more boy insists he definitely returned a book that has clearly vanished into the ether, I may start charging rent for imaginary shelves.”

Her lips purse as she reaches the landing. It is, in her mind, a matter of principle. Books are meant to be returned. Respect for the library is respect for knowledge itself, and she takes both rather seriously. Asking politely has only gone so far, smiles, promises, and nothing delivered. The headmaster, she hopes, might help her devise something firmer. A system. Consequences. Accountability.

She turns down the corridor, still muttering. “Not even obscure texts, either. Greek primers, school histories- one would think they’d at least lose something interesting-”

She stops short, realizing she’s speaking aloud again.

The habit sneaks up on her sometimes. Thinking out loud, muttering when she’s irritated, or when her thoughts start moving faster than propriety allows. She’d been terribly self-conscious of it once, long ago, apologizing, flushing, trying to swallow her words before they escaped.

'Oh, don’t stop,' he’d said then, eyes bright with delight. 'It’s like listening to the universe sort itself out.'

A smile tugs at her mouth despite herself.

Later, much later, he’d admitted, a little sheepishly, that he’d always found it adorable. Amusing when she was just his companion. Endearing when she became his wife.

The memory slows her steps.

For a moment, the corridor seems longer, quieter. She lets the smile linger, bittersweet but warm, carrying it with her as she resumes walking. There are still rules to enforce, books to recover. 

As if the universe was listening to her, she rounds the corner and there he is. For a moment, the world narrows to the length of the corridor.

John Smith is heading toward her, arms wrapped around a precarious tower of books stacked from his stomach nearly to his chin, loose papers threatening mutiny on top. He walks carefully, brow furrowed in concentration, every step measured as though the fate of the universe depends on keeping the pile upright.

She stops without realizing she has. It steals her breath in the quietest way.

He is still handsome to her. Still him. It doesn’t matter that the face is different from the one she first met, or that the sharp angles and familiar grin belong to another incarnation entirely. 

Still brilliant. Still trying to carry too much at once. Except now it's books and not the burdens of a Time Lord.

She watches him for a heartbeat longer than she should, affection blooming warm and unguarded in her chest. She remembers the first time she saw him, another face, another smile, another impossible man, and how she had known, instantly and irrevocably, that her life would never be the same.

He adjusts his grip, a corner of paper slipping loose. She almost steps forward on instinct, the urge to help him so natural it aches.

My dear, she thinks softly, fondly. You never did learn to ask for help.

For now, she simply stands there and admires him as he approaches, this man who no longer knows her, who believes himself human, who has forgotten the stars and still somehow carries their gravity with him.

As he draws closer, shifting the weight of the books yet again, John finally lifts his eyes and stops short.

It’s her.

The woman from his dream. The one whose face had lingered long after he woke, whose smile had felt impossibly familiar. The librarian. She is also the woman he kissed and called his wife, only in sleep.

She smiles at him first, polite and warm. “Good morning, Mr. Smith.”

His grin comes easily, reflexive. “Good morn-”

The papers slip thanks to just enough distraction. The loose stack slides off the top of the books and flutters to the floor in an undignified scatter. A few pages skid across the wood. One spins to a stop by her feet.

“Oh-blast it,” he mutters, cheeks warming as he stares down at the mess. “I’m so sorry, I- clearly I’ve taken on more than I can manage.”

Before he can try to crouch, she’s already bending down, movements smooth and unhurried. She gathers the papers neatly, tapping the edges together with practiced ease.

“No harm done,” she says lightly. 

He lets out a breathy laugh, half mortified, half relieved. “I was trying to convince myself I could manage.”

“And failing admirably,” she teases gently.

She straightens and hands the papers back to him, then pauses, eyes flicking to the remaining tower of books wobbling in his arms.

“Here,” she adds. “Let me help.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly-”

“Nonsense,” she says, already reaching for the stack. “I’m a librarian. Taking care of books is quite literally my job.”

He laughs again, softer this time. “Well, when you put it that way…”

She relieves him of half the pile with ease, then she places the papers carefully on top of what remains in his arms, straightening them with the same reverence she gives every book.

“There,” she says. “Much safer.”

“Thank you,” he replies, and means far more than the words cover.

As they start walking together, John realizes that he has stopped paying attention to where he’s going. His gaze keeps drifting back to her face, the line of her smile, the quiet confidence in the way she carries herself.

He stares at her, openly now, caught somewhere between admiration and disbelief. Amusement flickers in her eyes, gentle and knowing, but she says nothing, letting him look. 

She adjusts her grip on the books, glancing down the corridor ahead of them. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen the headmaster this morning?”

John blinks, dragged back into the present. “I have, actually. Just after first lesson.” He tilts his head, thinking. “But I’m afraid he was on his way to a meeting. He should be in it by now.”

Her shoulders sag just slightly. “Ah.” She exhales, then murmurs under her breath, “Blast.” The word is soft, unladylike, and entirely sincere.

Almost immediately she straightens, brushing the moment away as though it never happened. “Never mind. I’ll catch him later.”

John hesitates, curiosity getting the better of him. “If you don’t mind my asking, what seems to be the trouble?”

She glances at the books in her arms, lips quirking. “People,” she says simply. “Or rather, people who borrow books and forget they ever did. I’ve asked politely, repeatedly. It’s beginning to feel less like forgetfulness and more like a personal slight against the concept of libraries.”

He smiles at that, warm and sympathetic. “A grave offense indeed.”

“Truly,” she agrees, solemn.

“Well,” he says after a moment, brightening, “I could mention it to my students. Impress upon them the importance of returning what they borrow. A bit of peer pressure can be remarkably effective.”

Her face softens. “That would be very kind of you.”

“Not at all,” he replies. “I’m quite fond of books myself. I’d hate to see them mistreated.”

She smiles then, genuine and grateful, and the sight of it sends a small, inexplicable thrill through him.

“Thank you, Mr. Smith.”

They walk on in companionable silence for a few steps before she glances around. “So,” she asks lightly, “where are we headed?”

He opens his mouth to answer and stops. He looks down the corridor ahead of them, then behind, then back again, “That’s odd.”

Her eyebrow lifts.

“I appear,” he admits, cheeks warming, “to have gone entirely the wrong way.”

She lets out a soft laugh, the sound catching him off guard. “Lost already?”

“Only mildly,” he says, good-naturedly. “I was meant to be taking these to my next class, but I’ve somehow ended up nowhere near the proper stairwell.”

He turns on his heel, sheepish but smiling. “This way, then.”

He leads her down a narrower corridor toward a back stairwell, footsteps echoing lightly against the stone. She follows without hesitation, amusement dancing in her eyes.

She chuckles again. “Distracted, were you?”

He clears his throat. “It does happen.”

They descend together, steps measured, books hugged close as their footsteps echo softly down the stairwell. When they reach the second landing, her attention drifts, and then catches.

She slows, eyes lighting on a small bulletin board nailed into the wall. A brightly lettered flier sits pinned among notices for lost gloves and Latin clubs.

ANNUAL VILLAGE DANCE

“Oh,” she says, stopping outright.

John pauses a step below her and turns back. He watches her read it, the way her mouth curves into a small smile, the way something unguarded flickers across her face.

“I hadn’t realized that was so soon,” she murmurs. “Tomorrow already.”

“The dance?” he asks, following her gaze.

She nods. “Yes.”

For a moment, she seems almost tempted by the idea. Then she glances at him, casual but curious. “Are you attending?”

John blinks. “I-” He looks at the flier, then back at her. “No. I mean, I hadn’t even thought about it, to be honest.”

“And you?” he asks, before he can overthink it. “Were you planning to go?”

She shakes her head. “No.” Then, after a beat, she adds honestly, “It would be fun, I think. But I’ve no one to go with.”

Something quiet slips into her voice then, something more personal. “It’s been a while,” she admits, almost sheepish, “since anyone asked me to dance.”

The words stir a memory she does not invite but cannot stop.

A different place. Soft golden light spilling across the Tardis console room as music hums low and distant. His hands warm and sure at her waist. Her arms loose around his shoulders. His head bowed, temple resting against hers as they sway.

No running. No danger. Just the two of them, breathing together.

The ache blooms suddenly in her chest. She draws in a careful breath, steadying herself, and lets the memory settle back where it belongs, folded away, precious and painful all at once. When she looks back at John, her smile is gentler now, a little sad around the edges but no less sincere.

“I-” He clears his throat. 

She stills, watching him with open curiosity.

He fidgets, shifting the books in his arms, then realizes she’s carrying half of them and flushes deeper. “I mean- well- you said you hadn’t anyone to go with and I—” He laughs, a nervous little sound. “That is, not that I’m assuming you’d want to go with me, of course, that would be terribly forward, and you’ve every right to say no, and I’d completely understand-”

He stops, winces, and barrels on anyway.

“I thought, perhaps, if you were inclined-”

The words tangle and trip over each other. He grimaces, already retreating. “I’m sorry, this was foolish. Please ignore me. I didn’t mean to-”

Her smile stops him. A soft and amused thing that did wonders to encourage him forward. There’s a twinkle in her eye that makes his breath catch. She doesn’t interrupt him. She doesn’t look uncomfortable. She looks fond.

Something steadies inside him. He swallows, straightens, and tries again.

“What I mean is,” he says more carefully, “I would very much like to take you to the dance. If you’d have me.”

For a heartbeat, the world holds its breath. Then his foot slips.

It’s absurdly sudden. One moment he’s standing, nerves buzzing through him; the next, his heel finds nothing but air. The edge of the top step disappears beneath him and his balance goes with it.

The books lurch. His arms flail uselessly as gravity makes its opinion known.

“John!” she cries.

The books hit the stairs first, thudding and skidding, pages scattering like startled birds. She drops the rest without hesitation and lunges forward, heart in her throat as he tumbles backward, limbs tangling, body bouncing down the steps in a graceless, breathless sprawl.

“John- John!” Her voice echoes sharply with panic.

She’s at the railing in an instant, skirts forgotten, pulse roaring in her ears as she stares down at him. All the careful walls she’s built, the restraint, the distance, the rules, crack in the face of the one thing she cannot bear.

Him hurt.

John lies there with a groan, the world reduced to sharp edges and aching noise. Tile presses cold and unforgiving into his back, pain radiating everywhere at once, shoulder, hip, head, too loud for thought, too immediate for dignity.

“-you there,” a voice snaps nearby, brisk and commanding. “You- yes, you. Run and fetch the nurse. Now.”

Footsteps scatter, hurried and obeying. Then she is there again. Right there.

“John,” she says, softly at first. “John, can you hear me?”

The sound of his name cuts through the haze. He blinks, vision swimming, and when his eyes finally focus, she’s above him, kneeling on the tile, skirts pooled at her knees. Her brow is drawn tight in a deep frown, eyes shining a little too brightly with worry she hasn’t quite mastered away.

“There you are,” she murmurs, relief threading through her voice even as concern sharpens it. “Stay with me.”

“I-” He winces as he tries to shift, thinks better of it. “I seem to have… made a bit of a fool of myself.”

Her breath hitches. “Don’t,” she says immediately. “Don’t talk like that.”

She leans closer, hands hovering before settling gently at his shoulders, steadying him, grounding him. “Keep your eyes open, please. Just for me. You may have hit your head.”

“A concussion?” he guesses weakly.

“Possibly,” she says, and the word carries far more fear than she means it to.

He swallows and does as she asks, keeping his eyes on her face. It’s difficult to look away anyway. She’s so close he can see the fine lines of worry at the corner of her eyes, the way her lips press together when she concentrates. Her hands move carefully, checking his temples, his arms, his ribs, fussing over him with an intimacy that makes his ears burn even through the pain.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he mutters again. “I didn’t mean to-”

“John,” she interrupts, firm but gentle. “You fell. That’s all that matters.”

Her fingers brush his sleeve, then his wrist, checking his pulse. The contact sends a strange warmth through him, utterly at odds with the ache in his body.

He laughs faintly, immediately regrets it. “If I weren’t in quite so much pain,” he admits, “this would be rather a pleasant way to pass the morning.”

She exhales a breath that might be a laugh, might be a sob. “You’re impossible.”

John sits carefully on the edge of the chair beside his desk, hands folded in his lap as though he’s afraid moving them might undo him entirely. The school’s nurse, Joan, stands directly behind him, fingers prodding at his head, then tilting it this way and that.

“Any dizziness?” she asks.

“No,” John answers promptly. “Well, only the usual sort one feels after humiliating oneself in a stairwell.”

She hums. “Nausea?”

“No.”

“Blurred vision?”

“No, I- well, no.”

She straightens with a satisfied sniff. “Then you’re quite all right, Mr. Smith. A bruise or two, nothing more.”

Just two feet to his right, the librarian leans back against his desk, arms folded loosely, posture composed. Her expression is calmer now, but the worry hasn’t fully left her eyes. She watches the nurse’s hands carefully, as though memorizing every place they touch him just in case.

The door flies open without warning.

“Sir, are you alright?” Martha skids to a halt just inside the threshold, breathless, eyes wide with concern.

The nurse whirls around. “Excuse me?”

Martha blinks. “I just wanted to see if he was all right.”

The nurse gives her a pointed look. “And you thought bursting into a master’s study without so much as a knock was appropriate?” Her voice sharpens. “You may be staff, but that does not excuse rudeness. Or impropriety.”

Martha opens her mouth. Closes it. Then exhales slowly.

Behind the nurse, the librarian’s lips twitch.

“Oh, right then, my apologies,” Martha says, tone so flat it could frost glass. She backs out into the corridor, turns very deliberately, and raps her knuckles against the already open door.

She steps back inside. “Is he all right?”

John bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

The nurse does not share his struggle. “Yes,” she snaps. “As I just said, he is quite fine.”

Martha folds her arms. “Have you checked him for a concussion?”

The nurse scoffs. “I assure you, I know far more about such matters than you do.”

There’s a brief pause, then the librarian speaks.

“Actually,” she says mildly, “Martha studied medicine.”

All eyes turn to her.

“She’s been keeping up with her studies while working here,” the librarian continues, gesturing vaguely toward the shelves as if the walls themselves are witnesses. “Borrowed several medical texts from the library, in fact. Quite diligent.”

Martha blinks once, then nods solemnly. “Very diligent.”

The nurse’s mouth opens. Closes. Her cheeks color.

“Well,” she says stiffly, straightening her apron. “Be that as it may, Mr. Smith shows no signs of concussion at present.”

“Good,” Martha replies pleasantly.

John looks between them, eyebrows lifted, openly impressed. “I had no idea,” he says to Martha.

She shrugs. “One picks things up.”

The librarian meets Martha’s eyes for just a second, amused, approving, fond.

The nurse clears her throat. “I’ll check on you again later, Mr. Smith,” she says curtly, already moving toward the door.

Once she’s gone, the room exhales.

Martha immediately steps closer. “You scared me,” she says, softer now. “How do you feel?”

“Sore,” John admits. “But remarkably well cared for.”

His gaze drifts, unthinking, to the librarian still leaning against his desk. She meets his eyes, something warm and unreadable passing between them.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “You were.”

And John Smith, sitting there bruised and breathless and inexplicably full of awe, knows with sudden certainty that whatever else today has been, it has been anything but ordinary.

Martha clears her throat and, almost visibly, steps back into her role. She reaches for the scattered papers and the fallen books with practiced efficiency. “I’ll tidy up,” she says, as though she hasn’t already crossed galaxies for the man sitting in that chair.

John nods gratefully. “Thank you.”

She moves about the room, straightening, stacking, restoring order where chaos briefly reigned. The normalcy of it all presses in, a little too tight.

John shifts in his seat, wincing faintly, then glances between the two women. The librarian has in her place by his desk, posture relaxed but attentive, eyes still flicking to him every so often as if checking he hasn’t vanished when she wasn’t looking.

“So,” he says, mostly to fill the silence. Mostly to stop thinking about how close she is. “I was just telling her,” he gestures vaguely toward the librarian, “about my dreams.”

Martha stills for half a second.

Then her eyes lift, bright with sudden interest, as if a switch has been flipped. “Your dreams?” 

The librarian straightens, attention sharpening, the calm concern on her face giving way to something intent. 

John notices both reactions and laughs softly, already a little self-conscious. “Only half of them,” he adds quickly, glancing at Martha. “I mentioned them briefly this morning. Didn’t go into much detail.”

“Oh?” the librarian says gently. “You left out the best parts, then?”

“Well,” He rubs the back of his neck, sheepishly. “That depends on one’s definition of best, I suppose.”

He shifts again, uncomfortable now for reasons that have nothing to do with bruises. “It’s going to sound rather silly,” he warns, waving a hand as if trying to dismiss it before it can embarrass him. “So feel free to stop me if I begin to make a fool of myself again. I seem to have a talent for it today.”

Martha smiles to herself as she continues tidying, but she listens closely. 

John exhales and continues, voice light, deliberately casual. “They’re not ordinary dreams. I’m not myself in them. Or rather, I am, but I’m also someone else. Less concerned with gravity and staircases.”

The librarian’s eyes soften.

“There’s traveling,” he goes on, warming to it despite himself. “Impossible traveling. And danger. And-” He laughs again, shaking his head. “Honestly, it sounds absurd when I say it aloud.”

“It doesn’t,” she says quietly.

He looks at her, surprised.

She smiles, encouraging. “Go on.”

And somehow, with the librarian watching him like that and Martha listening like it matters more than it should, John Smith finds himself wanting, very much, to keep talking.

He hesitates, then adds, almost as an afterthought, as though it hardly counts, “I started writing them down.”

Martha’s hands pause mid-tidy.

The librarian’s head lifts. “You did?”

He lets out a small, embarrassed laugh. “Only for myself. To make sense of them, really. I was going to stop, but it sort of became a habit, then a hobby.” 

“May I see?” she asks. And John finds, rather helplessly, that he cannot say no.

“Well,” He stands, a bit stiffly, brushing off his trousers before moving toward his desk. “I’ve never shown anyone before,” he admits, flustered grin firmly in place as he opens a drawer and pulls out a slim journal, its spine worn from use. “So you must promise not to laugh.”

“I promise,” she says firmly.

He hands it over, fingers lingering for the briefest second before letting go.

She takes it with care, as though it might be fragile, and begins to flip through the pages. Her eyes scan lines of cramped handwriting, then widen just slightly at the sketches scattered between paragraphs, angular towers under alien skies, constellations that don’t belong to any Earthly map, and creatures she recognized. Daleks and Ood, Cybermen and Clockwork Droids. His memories, leaking through in his dreams. 

As she reads, John keeps talking, unable to stop himself now.

“In the dreams, I’m not from here. Not really, I’m from the future.” He laughs softly. “Quite a ways from it, actually. And there’s this- this blue box. Ridiculous thing, bigger on the inside. It takes me to other worlds.”

She turns a page, doesn’t interrupt him, just keeps reading and her smile grows. John notices, and it does something to him.

“Well,” he says, softer now, “I suppose that’s the worst of it. Mad dreams of boxes and stars.”

She finally looks up at him, eyes bright, expression unreadable in the best way.

“I don’t think it’s foolish,” she says simply.

The relief that washes over him is almost comical.

He flashes a big, dopey grin, “I’m glad,” he says. “Because I rather like them.”

And as she turns another page of the journal, of his memories. On the page is a very beautiful sketch of her. The sketch is rougher than the others, lines uncertain, where the rest of the journal is confident. The strokes overlap as if he’d erased and redrawn more than once, trying to get something right. Her posture, the fall of her hair, the cut of her clothes, she recognizes it instantly.

The outfit she wore when he married her. Her breath catches, sharp and quiet.

She remembers the moment with devastating clarity: the hum of the Tardis beneath her feet, his hands warm and steady at her waist, the way he leaned in and whispered his name against her ear before promising himself to her. The universe had felt very small then. Just the two of them, choosing each other.

She doesn’t know how much of that memory has bled into his dreams. If he remembers the words, the vows, the way he smiled like he couldn’t quite believe his luck. But he remembers her. She traces the edge of the page with her thumb, reverent, grateful in a way that tightens her chest.

John notices the pause.

“Oh-” He leans in, then freezes when he sees what she’s looking at. Color rushes to his face at once. “That- well,” He lets out an awkward laugh, rubbing at his neck. “I didn’t mean for that to seem odd.”

He rushes on, eager to explain it away. “You were just- present, I suppose. In the dreams, both of you were,” he adds quickly, glancing toward Martha, who pretends very hard to be rearranging books on the far side of the room. “I thought if I didn’t write it down, I’d forget the details. And I draw better than I write, sometimes.”

He clears his throat. “Please don’t read too much into it.”

She looks up at him then. The same man. The same soul. The same earnestness. Memory or not, he is still him. Still, the man she chose. Still, the man who chose her.

Her smile is soft. Almost tender enough to hurt, “I think it’s rather lovely,” she says.

Something in his chest gives way. He meets her gaze, and for a moment, the world seems to tilt. Neither of them speaks. They don’t need to. Across the room, Martha watches the way they look at each other and feels a strange, aching relief bloom in her chest.

She clears her throat softly, the sound breaking the fragile stillness between them.

For a fleeting moment, uncertainty creeps in. She doesn’t know whether she’s allowed to want him like this. As John Smith, as a man who smiles shyly and stumbles over his words and doesn’t remember whispering vows into her ear among the stars. 

But she lets herself feel something else instead, a strange, out-of-body sort of gratitude. For the first two months after they arrived here, he’d barely looked at her. Polite and distant strangers. It had hurt more than she ever let on. Yet now it’s as though something has shifted, as though whatever part of him remembers how to orbit her has finally found its way back.

He can hardly look away.

John inhales, clearly about to say something, something that makes his shoulders tense and his eyes soften, but then he glances to the side and Martha is still there. He falters, doubt rushing in all at once. His mouth closes. He looks suddenly unsure of his place again, of what he’s allowed to say.

The librarian notices immediately. She smiles at him and then flicks a glance toward Martha that is anything but subtle. Martha catches it and beams.

“Oh,” she says brightly, already stepping back. “Right. I should- yes. I’ll leave you to it.” She pauses at the door, glancing between them, eyes shining. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, John.”

“Thank you, Martha,” he replies, genuinely.

She slips out, closing the door gently behind her.

In the corridor, Martha presses a hand briefly to her chest, overwhelmed with a joy she hadn’t dared to expect. They’re still there. Still them. Even stripped of memory, even buried under months of careful pretending, the connection has found its way back. Like a flame that needed no match to light.

The librarian looks back at John, her smile soft and a little breathless, and whatever he was going to say before suddenly feels possible again.

John breathy laugh that doesn’t quite manage to hide his nerves, “I’m afraid,” he says, glancing anywhere but directly at her, “I’ve made rather a habit of embarrassing myself today.” He grimaces good-naturedly. “At this rate, I’ll have quite a reputation.”

She doesn’t interrupt him. Instead, she closes the journal gently and holds it to her chest, fingers curling around the worn cover as if it’s something precious, which he notices. She watches him with a fondness so deep it nearly aches, her expression soft, full of understanding he can’t quite explain.

The Doctor had rarely been uncertain. He was decisive, brilliant, confident to the point of arrogance at times, when the universe demanded it. A man who spoke with certainty about time, about stars, about things no human should ever have words for.

And yet she recognises him now, just as clearly.

She has walked past his classroom before, slowed her steps without meaning to, listened through the open door. Heard that tone in his voice when he lectured, animated by a confident authority. The same voice he once used to explain the birth of galaxies to her, hands waving, eyes alight with wonder.

The same man.

Even here, even now, John Smith fumbling over his words, uncertain and flushed, she recognizes him. She’s seen this version too. After their first kiss. It was a heated, reckless moment, born of a ‘I refuse to die without doing this’ kind of certainty. And later, safe in the Tarids, when he’d suddenly gone quiet and shy and unsure how to speak to her without frightening her away.

That was just like this.

John Smith is the Doctor, not in face, not in memory, but in everything that matters. The way he looks at her like she is something extraordinary, and is startled by his own feelings.

“You’re allowed to be human,” she says gently. “Especially after a day like this.”

His shoulders ease at that, tension bleeding out of him without his realizing it. “I appreciate you saying so.”

She shifts the journal slightly, still holding it close. “You didn’t make a fool of yourself. I found it all quite charming,” she adds softly. Her brow furrows just slightly, “Aside from you falling down the stairs, that was terrifying. Promise to be more careful, John.”

The way she says his name does something to him.

John’s grin breaks wide and unguarded, giddy in a way that surprises even him. He straightens a little despite the ache in his ribs, nodding quickly. “I promise,” he says. “Absolutely. No more stair-related heroics.”

She huffs a quiet laugh. He laughs too, flustered and bright, eyes shining as if the day’s chaos has finally settled into something wonderful instead of overwhelming. 

Night settles over the village in a sharp, biting November cold. The windows of the pub glow warm and amber against the dark, laughter and music spilling out each time the door opens.

The librarian joins Martha and Jenny at a small table just outside, the three of them wrapped in coats. She fits there easily, no stiffness or awkward sense of rank, just another woman grateful for good company.

Jenny watches her with open curiosity, still a little amazed.

“I have to say,” she ventures, smiling as she leans in, “I didn’t expect you to come out with us. Not many ladies in your position would.”

The librarian chuckles softly. “I find it’s much easier to enjoy life when one doesn’t put oneself on a pedestal.”

Jenny grins at that, clearly charmed. She glances between the two women. “I was wondering, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you and Martha know each other? You seemed awfully familiar earlier today.”

At that moment, the pub door opens again, letting in a burst of cold air along with Martha. She carries two glasses and slows when she hears the question.

She sets one drink carefully in front of Jenny. “Here you go,” she says, then looks up with an easy smile. 

The librarian doesn’t miss a beat, “We came to town around the same time,” she explains smoothly. “Didn’t know a soul between us.”

Martha nods along, picking up her own drink. “We were both looking for work,” she adds. “It just happened.”

“It did,” the librarian agrees warmly, turning her gaze on Martha. “Some friendships don’t require effort. They simply make sense.” There’s a depth to the way she says it that slips right past Jenny, but not Martha.

Martha meets her eyes over the rim of her glass and understands instantly. This isn’t the librarian speaking to a housemaid; this is the Doctor’s wife speaking to his companion. A truth wrapped in a lie, gentle enough to keep them safe.

Jenny smiles, satisfied. “Well, you’re lucky to have each other.”

Martha lifts her mug slightly in agreement. “Very lucky.”

The librarian grins softly and tugs her coat a little tighter around herself, settling back in her chair as Jenny and Martha fall into easy chatter beside her. Their voices blend together but gradually they fade into background noise, like music drifting from another room.

Her gaze lifts above the pub and the tree line, beyond the thin smear of cloud, the stars glitter cold and sharp against the night. She lets herself look at them for a moment longer than necessary.

Once, she saw stars up close. Watched them burn and die from impossible vantage points. Stood on worlds where the sky was a riot of color and light, where constellations meant something different entirely. She remembers leaning against the console of the Tardis, his shoulder warm at her side, both of them quiet for once as they watched the universe pass by.

She misses the hum of the ship, the rush of danger, the running that always followed the Doctor wherever he went. She misses him.

But she still has her husband, just a quieter version now. The thought steadies her. It’s strange, she thinks, how peace can feel almost as frightening as chaos after so long without it. How sitting still, sharing a drink, and listening to laughter can feel like learning a new language. But still, it was nice, even knowing there are murderous aliens somewhere out there, living out their short lives searching for him.

She exhales slowly and lets the calm settle in her bones.

Her mind drifts back to him without effort. She wonders if he’s in his study now, sleeves rolled up, brow furrowed as he grades papers by lamplight. Or perhaps he’s already preparing for bed, moving carefully like he promised, bruises aching just enough to remind him of today.

She wonders if he’ll dream tonight, another memory will surface, of her, of them. Of vows whispered into the hum of a ship that no longer exists in his mind. If he’ll wake with that familiar, puzzled feeling in his chest, carrying love he doesn’t yet have words for.

She hopes so.

The light is brief, a faint blip of green in the sky, so quick it might be mistaken for a trick of the eye, but her smile vanishes instantly. The change in her is so sharp it’s almost frightening.

Martha sees it.

The look she wore, she wore when a Judoon platoon leveled weapons on the Moon. When Daleks revealed themselves in Manhattan. When Professor Lazarus mutated and became something monstrous and hungry. The look she gets when the universe stops being quaint and starts being dangerous.

Her body goes subtly rigid, shoulders squaring, chin lifting as her eyes track the place the light had been. Martha follows her gaze just in time to see the green glow blink out, swallowed by the night.

Her stomach drops.

“Did you-” Martha starts, then stops herself, forcing her voice down, casual. Her heart is already racing. “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” she says quietly. Her eyes remain on the sky, calculating, listening for something no one else would know to hear, as the Doctor taught her.

Jenny frowns, craning her neck. “See what?”

Martha swallows and pastes on a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Probably nothing,” she says quickly. “Just light playing tricks. You know how it is.”

Jenny squints upward again. “Didn’t see a thing.”

The librarian finally looks away from the sky, her expression smoothing back into something almost normal, but Martha knows better. She’s seen this woman go from laughing to life-or-death in a heartbeat, and this is the space right before the storm breaks. She reaches for her drink but doesn’t lift it, fingers tight around the mug.

“How far is the school from here?” the librarian asks, mild on the surface.

Martha answers just as calmly. “Ten minutes. Less, if we hurry.”

Jenny laughs nervously. “Hurry? For what?”

The librarian smiles at her then, completely convincing. “Oh, nothing at all,” she says. “Just librarian’s instincts.”

Martha is the first to see her figure break away from the darker stretch of road, skirts hitched just enough to run, breath coming hard in sharp white puffs. The glow from the pub lamps catches her face as she gets closer, and Martha’s stomach tightens.

“Matron?” she says, already rising to her feet. “Are you all right?”

The librarian stands as well, turning just in time to see the school nurse reach them. Joan slows only when she’s right there, stopping between them and the pub, one hand braced on her chest as she tries to catch her breath. Her eyes are wide and fearful, fixed on the sky.

“Did you see it?” Joan asks, voice thin, barely steady. “The light?”

Martha’s heart sink and the librarian’s posture changed, stepping closer. She doesn’t crowd Joan.

“Tell me what you saw,” she says calmly.

Joan swallows, glancing upward again, as if afraid it might come back. “Something in the woods,” she says. “A light right overhead. I thought- at first I thought it was lightning, but it wasn’t right. It moved.” She lets out a shaky breath. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The librarian nods slowly, eyes sharp, cataloguing every word. “How long did it last?”

“Seconds. Barely that.”

Jenny looks between them, brow furrowed, still seated at the table. “I don’t understand,” she says, half-laughing with unease. “What light? I didn’t see anything.”

John steps out of the pub just then, the door swinging shut behind him with a wash of warmth and laughter he leaves behind. He pauses, hat in hand, clearly mid-excuse to someone inside who has already gone back to their drink.

He looks up and smiles. His eyes find her first, as they seem determined to do now. The librarian. His smile softens, private and pleased, just for her. It lingers a beat too long before he notices the others.

The nurse, pale and shaken. Martha, standing far too stiffly. Jenny, baffled and looking around for answers.

“Oh,” he says, fidgeting with the brim of his hat. “Have I missed something?”

“John,” the librarian says gently.

He takes a step closer, instinctively angling himself nearer to her than anyone else. “Good evening,” he adds, nodding politely to the group. His gaze flicks back to her again, a quiet reassurance in it, before he looks around. “What are we all standing about in the cold for?”

Joan draws a sharp breath and lifts her arm, pointing skyward. “There, look!”

The green light returns, streaking across the sky in a smooth, luminous arc, brighter this time, unmistakable. Joan gasps, breathless all over again. “What is that?”

Jenny lets out a quiet, awed laugh. “It’s beautiful.”

John watches it for a moment, head tilted, expression thoughtful rather than alarmed. “A meteorite,” he says calmly. “Or perhaps just a comet fragment. Bits of rock falling through the atmosphere, burning up on entry. Happens more often than people think.” His voice is steady, confident, pitched carefully for the nurse’s benefit. 

Joan swallows and nods toward the dark stretch of trees beyond the village. “It came down in the woods.” Her voice wavers despite herself.

John doesn’t hesitate. “They always seem closer than they are,” he says gently. “Perspective plays tricks at night. If anything fell at all, it would be miles off. You’re quite safe.”

She clings to the calm certainty in his tone, shoulders easing as she exhales a shaky breath. “Yes, of course. That makes sense.” Her eyes linger on the sky a moment longer before finally dropping.

He notices that she’s steadier but still rattled. “If you’d like,” he offers, already shifting his hat in his hands, “I’ll escort you back to the school. No sense going alone in the dark.”

Joan nods, grateful. “I’d appreciate that.”

John turns back to the others. “Ladies, you’re welcome to join us,” he adds lightly.

Martha answers before anyone else can. Her eyes are still searching the sky. “No, thank you,” she says politely. Jenny lifts her glass and takes a sip, saying nothing at all.

John accepts it with a nod, then looks to the librarian. His smile softens, hopeful in that earnest way of his. “What about you?” he asks. “Would you care to come along?” Even with Joan there, hovering awkwardly at his side, he clearly wants the extra minutes with her.

She meets his eyes and, for a heartbeat, considers it. Then she rests a hand lightly on his arm.

“I’ll stay,” she says gently. “Just to be sure they all get home safely.”

The disappointment flashes across his face before he can stop it, but he covers it just as quickly with a smile, glancing down at where her hand still lingers.

“Of course,” he says. “That’s. . . very kind of you.”

She smiles back, small but sincere, and withdraws her hand.

John tips his hat to the group, then turns to Joan. Together they start down the road toward the school, their figures soon swallowed by shadow and lamplight. The librarian watches him go until he’s out of sight.

The moment John disappears down the road, the librarian turns sharply.

“Jenny,” she says, “Which direction did the light seem to be moving?”

Jenny blinks, startled to be addressed so directly. “Oh- um,” She glances instinctively toward the dark edge of the village. “That way, I think that’ll be toward Cooper’s Field.”

“Thank you.”

The words are barely out of her mouth before she’s moving. She skirts around the table with purpose, coat pulled tighter as she sets off down the road at a brisk, determined pace. The calm librarian vanishes in an instant, replaced by something older and sharper, a woman who has chased danger across planets and knows exactly when time has run out.

“Martha,” she says, already walking faster.

Martha doesn’t question it. She’s falling into step beside her, heart pounding. They break into a near run.

“Oi!” Jenny calls after them, scrambling up from her chair. “Where are you going? It’s dark, and cold, you could get hurt!”

Neither woman slows.

By the time Jenny reaches them, breath puffing out in annoyed clouds, the other two are already moving with urgency, skirts gathered, boots crunching against gravel and frost-hardened earth. The village lights fall away behind them.

Cooper’s Field stretches out before them, far and dark, and utterly ordinary. There is no smoke or scorch marks, no strange debris half-buried in the earth. Just open land and the low sigh of wind moving through winter-dry stems.

Jenny slows first, hands on her hips, breath coming hard. “Well?” she says, looking around pointedly. “This is it. Nothing.”

Martha turns in a slow circle, eyes scanning the ground, the tree line, the sky. Her pulse refuses to slow. “It doesn’t make sense,” she murmurs.

Jenny snorts, rubbing her arms against the cold. “Mr. Smith said it was just a rock, a meteorite. He’s educated, he’d know.” She frowns at them both. “I don’t see why you’d doubt him.”

The librarian doesn’t answer. She steps past them, boots crunching softly as she moves deeper into the field. There truly is nothing but her stomach drops. A horrible, familiar sensation settles in her chest, the feeling she’s learned to trust above all others, the one that whispers you’re missing something.

She stops, breath shallow, turning slowly in place.

“It should be here,” she says quietly. Martha joins her, eyes darting as though willing something to reveal itself. 

Jenny shivers hard, rubbing her arms. “That’s enough for me,” she says, teeth nearly chattering. “It’s freezing, it’s dark, and there’s nothing here. Can we please go home before I lose a toe?”

Martha hesitates, eyes still scanning the field, unwilling to let it go. The librarian feels it too, that wrongness humming just beneath the quiet, but Jenny is right about one thing; there’s nothing more they can see.

Reluctantly, she nods. “All right.”

They turn back toward the village, boots crunching softly over frost-stiff grass, their breath pale in the air. They never know how close they were.

Thirty feet from where they stood, space bends ever so slightly, light folding in on itself. A ship rests in perfect stillness, its hull cloaked, its presence masked from human senses. It had been there the entire time.

Nor do the women yet know of Jeremy Baines, a boy from the school, who had strayed too close to the edge of Cooper’s Field earlier that evening, drawn by the same green light like a moth to flame.

Now he stands somewhere else entirely. Metal walls hum softly around him. Shadows move where they shouldn’t, and something hungry is reaching into him, threading itself through his thoughts, hollowing him out to make room.

The hunters have found their vessel.

Gunfire screams through the air.

“Look out!” The Doctor’s voice cuts sharply and urgently as he grabs for them, brown pinstriped suit already singed at the hem, dirty Converse skidding on metal as he shoves them both toward the open doors of the TARDIS. Bolts of dangerous alien energy snap past, close enough to scorch the wall.

“Doctor!” Martha shouts, ducking instinctively.

“I’ve got you, go, go, go!” he yells back, one hand locked tight around his wife’s wrist, the other already waving wildly as he backpedals, eyes flicking everywhere at once. 

His wife nearly loses her footing, and he tightens his grip, hauling her forward without hesitation. “Eyes on me,” he tells her, fierce and focused for just a heartbeat, like the universe has narrowed to her face alone. “Don’t stop.”

They scramble up the ramp, Martha first, then her, the Tardis doors yawning wide behind them like a promise. The Doctor spins at the threshold, firing one last glare over his shoulder at the chaos chasing them. He dives inside, slamming the doors shut as another volley hits against the blue wood.

Inside, the Tardis lurches, engines roaring to life. Martha grabs the console to steady herself, heart hammering. The Doctor is already moving, fingers flying, coat flaring as he throws switches and cranks levers with manic precision.

The Doctor in three long strides, hands snapping up to grip Martha by the shoulders, “Did they see you?” he demands, eyes wild, voice sharp with an edge she’s only heard when things have gone very, very wrong. “Martha- did they see you?”

Martha sucks in a breath, forcing her racing thoughts into order. “No,” she says, certain now. “No, they couldn’t have.”

With a sharp nod, he releases her and spins away before she can even steady herself, then he’s in front of his wife. His hands come up gently this time, cradling the sides of her head, thumbs warm against her cheeks. The contrast is jarring, but with the same urgency.

“Did they see you?” he asks her, low and intense. “Did anyone see you?”

She meets his gaze without hesitation, breath still ragged but steady where it counts. “No,” she says. “They didn’t.”

For a fraction of a second, his eyes close, then he lets go.

“Right,” he says, already turning back to the console. “Off we go, then.”

He slams a lever down. The Tardis groans its familiar wheez, and tears itself free of the moment, engines screaming as reality peels away. Relief washes through the room.

It lasts exactly one second.

A sharp beep-beep-beep cuts through the air, he looks up at one of the monitors. Gallifreyan script scrolls across it in angry, pulsing lines, meaningless to the humans behind him, devastatingly clear to him.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he groans, running a hand down his face. Then, quieter, darker, “They’re following us.”

Martha steps closer, confusion cutting through her fear. “Doctor, how could they be following us? We’re in a time machine.”

He’s already moving again, darting around the console, fingers flying, switches snapping into new positions. “Stolen technology,” he snaps. “They’ve got a time agent’s vortex manipulator.”

He’s pacing now, agitation radiating off him. He stops dead, hand tangles in his hair, eyes wide, panicked. “They can follow us wherever we go,” he says, “They’re never going to stop.”

He turns to them then,“You have to trust me,” he says. There isn’t even a pause.

“We do,” Martha answers instantly.

“Always,” his wife says, just as firmly. That’s all he needs.

From there, everything becomes a blur, moments snapping past too quickly to hold, The Doctor is already moving, hands flying, pulling open panels Martha has never seen before. He presses something into his wife’s hands: a watch. 

“You keep this,” he says, breathless. “It’s me. In a way.”

Martha frowns. “Doctor-”

“Those creatures are hunters,” he barrels on, pacing, talking too fast now, words tripping over each other the way they always do when he’s terrified. “They can sniff out anyone. And me-” He laughs once, humorless. “I’m a Time Lord, they can track me throught time and space.”

“So we hide,” his wife says immediately.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Exactly. We hide. They’ve only got a few months left, three at most. Short lifespans. We wait them out.”

Martha cuts in, “Hiding won’t work if they can track you.”

“Yes,” he breathes. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I can hide my scent,” he continues, voice steadier now that he’s found the solution. “Rewrite my biology. Make myself human. Properly human. Nothing for them to follow.”

Martha’s blood runs cold. “Doctor-”

“A chameleon arch,” he says, “I’ll store everything I am in the watch, memories, biology, the lot of it, and become someone else. Completely.”

Flashes of it overlap now,  The Doctor explaining faster than either of them can interrupt. His wife gripping the watch like it’s made of glass.  Martha shaking her head even as she understands. The Doctor insisting it’s the safest option. The only option.

“I’ll be human,” he says, voice softening when he looks at his wife. “I won’t remember any of it. You. Me. Us.”

Her chest aches but she nods anyway.

“We wait,” he says. “We live quietly. We let the hunters burn out.”

The memory comes in fragments, violent, unkind ones. The chameleon arch settles over his head with a final, terrible click.

He screams.

It tears out of him, raw and helpless, a sound that doesn’t belong to the man who so often laughs in the face of danger. His body arches against as the arch lights up, energy surging, rewriting him cell by cell. Two hearts falter. One stops. His biology twists, compresses, collapses into Human.

Martha can’t look away, like a train wreck. Horror pins her in place, hands clenched uselessly at her sides.

His wife doesn’t look away either. She stands her ground, fists trembling at her sides, tears streaking silently down her face. Every instinct in her screams to stop it, to pull him free, to take the pain for him if she could, but she knows this is the only way. Knows he chose this. Knows he’d make the same choice again.

“I’m here,” she says fiercely, voice breaking. “I’m right here. You’re not alone.”

He can’t hear her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers to him. “I wish it hadn’t hurt. I wish-” Her voice catches. “I wish I could have made it easier.”

She shakes the memory away like cold water from her hands. The pain, the screaming, the light, it all folds back into the past where it belongs. 

A moment later, Martha comes in after her.

“Hello,” Martha says automatically, back to the doors as she closes them. She pauses, frowns, then huffs at herself. “Honestly, talking to a machine.”

“She’s alive, y’know.”

Martha jumps, and then spots her, leaning casually against the console, peering at her from around the controls with a knowing smile.

“Oh!” Martha presses a hand to her chest. “Don’t do that.”

The Doctor’s wife grins. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

Martha exhales, then laughs despite herself. “You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”

“Occupational hazard,” she replies lightly.

They look at each other for a beat, the weight of everything unspoken hanging between them.

Then Martha smiles properly. “You all right?”

She nods. “I am. Just remembering.”

“Yeah,” Martha says softly. “Me too.” Martha drifts toward the console, fingers brushing familiar edges without thinking. That’s when she notices the monitor.

The Doctor’s face fills the screen, paused, caught mid-gesture as if he might start talking again at any moment. The video he made for them before the arch. Before forgetting.

“Oh,” Martha murmurs. “You too, then.”

The Doctor’s wife follows her gaze, eyes softening for just a second. “Mm.”

Martha folds her arms loosely. “I figured after last night’s… meteorite, we were all thinking the same thing.”

She nods once. “Hard not to.”

Silence stretches between them, thick with unasked questions. Martha glances back at the frozen image on the screen. “What did you think?” she asks carefully. “About what he said. About what we’re meant to do now.”

The Doctor’s wife doesn’t answer right away. She turns fully to Martha instead, expression calm, like shes done this a thousand times, followed impossible instructions and trusted the man who gave them.

“We stick to the script,” she says quietly. “Exactly as he laid it out.”

Martha’s jaw tightens. “Blend in.”

“Blend in,” she agrees. “Live our lives. Keep him safe.”

“And if it gets worse?” Martha presses.

Her eyes harden “Then we do what we have to. Not before, not a second early.”

Martha nods slowly, understanding settling in.

The knock comes just as John is setting his papers into neat piles.

“Yes?” he calls, crossing the room to the door.

When he opens it, Tim stands there, hand respectfully tucked behind his back. One of the brighter boys in his class, though he rarely seems to realize it.

“Sir,” Tim says quickly, as if afraid he’ll be dismissed, “you said I was to pick up a book?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” John’s face softens with recognition. “Come in, Timothy.”

He steps aside to let the boy pass, leaving the door open behind him as Tim moves into the study. 

“It was right here somewhere,” he mutters, lifting a stack of papers, then another. Tim smiles faintly and comes to a stop near the fireplace, waiting as instructed.

John glances over his shoulder. “Your last essay,” he says casually, “was good. Very good. But not as strong as I know it could have been. Your marks are not as high as they could be.”

Tim shrugs, trying for nonchalance. “I’m in the top ten, sir.”

“Yes,” John agrees, straightening slightly. “You are.”

He sighs and abandons the desk, stepping past Tim toward the alcove shelves. “But you could very easily be at the top.” He crouches to scan the lower shelves, fingers trailing along spines. “You lover your head and avoid mocker of your classmates, but you’re clever. Shame to put that to waist.”

Tim’s attention drifts as Mr. Smith keeps talking, something about potential and wasted brilliance and applying oneself. The words blur together once the teacher moves out of sight, voice echoing faintly from the alcove.

That’s when Tim hears it. Whispers overlapping, too many at once. Not loud. He stiffens, heart thudding, eyes flicking around the study. His gaze drifts, the pocket watch sits on the mantelpiece, plain at first glance. Something about it that makes his skin prickle.

He lifts the watch andt’s heavier than he expects. Cool in his palm. His thumb brushes over the strange engraving etched into the casin, symbols that look like gears almost.

The whispers sharpen as it lays un his palm.

“Timothy.”

He inhales sharply.

“Hide us.”

“I’m trapped.”

“I’m waiting. Always waiting.”

His fingers tighten.

“Reach out, boy. Hide us.”

The final whisper cuts through the rest, clear as a bell struck in his mind.

“Time Lord.”

His breath catches. His thumb flips the watch open.

Golden light spills out, liquid and living, flowing within the boring silver casing like sunlight given form. It hums in his bones and vibrated through his chest. 

Tim has always had a knack for it. Guessing answers before the questions were finished. Knowing when to duck before a ball was thrown. Sensing when trouble was coming. He’d told himself it was luck.

This is not luck.

The voices pull at him, pleading. They know his name. They sound afraid. Footsteps approach him. Panic flares, but instinct answers faster. Tim snaps the watch shut and slips it into his pocket just as Mr. Smith re-enters the room, book in hand, still talking.

“…and that’s precisely why you shouldn’t hold yourself back,” John is saying warmly. “You owe it to yourself to see just how far you can go.”

He holds out the book, smiling, entirely unaware. “Here you are,” he says. “And Timothy? Do think about what I said.”

Tim takes it with hands that are only just steady enough. The instant his fingers touch the book, the world shatters.

Creatures of steel chanting in unison. Daleks. Cold, silver giants marching without mercy. Cybermen.  Red eyes glowing in the dark. An Ood, its song aching and mournful. A werewolf lunging beneath a full moon. Flesh respaing, mutated monsters born of human arrogance.

And threaded through it all was Mr. Smith, but not Mr Smith. His face, but a man called the Doctor. The visions slam together, overwhelming and terrifying.

A voice echoes in his mind, “The power of a Time Lord.”

“Timothy?” John asks, concern sharpening his voice. “Are you all right?”

The world snaps back into place. Tim swallows hard, forcing himself upright. His heart is pounding so loudly he’s sure Mr. Smith must hear it.

“Yes, sir,” he says quickly, nodding. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

John studies him for a moment longer, frown faint but genuine. “If you’re feeling unwell-”

“No, sir,” Tim insists, polite, composed by sheer force of will. “Truly. Thank you, for evrything.”

John smiles again, warmth returning. “Any time. I expect great things from you, Timothy.”

Tim manages a smile in return, “Good day, sir.” He turns and leaves before his legs can betray him.

He has no idea that opening the watch, even for that single, stolen second, was enough. Enough for the hunters to catch a wiff of their prey.

He pauses at the threshold just as someone steps into view.

The librarian lifts her hand and gives a light knock against the already open doorframe, more habit than necessity.

John looks up instantly, his face breaking into a wide, genuine smile. “Oh, good afternoon.”

Tim straightens automatically. “Good afternoon, miss.”

She meets his gaze, “Good afternoon, Timothy,” she says warmly. “I hope your studies go well.”

“Yes, miss. Thank you.” His fingers curl tighter in his pocket, knuckles whitening around the watch without quite knowing why. “Good day.”

He slips past her and down the corridor, footsteps quickening the farther he gets from the study. She watches him go, a faint crease forming between her brows.

Then she turns back to John. Her bashful grin blooms slowly, unmistakably human despite all the centuries behind it. “Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” John says, taking a few steps toward her. “So, what brings you by?” he asks.

She lifts one shoulder in a small, almost sheepish shrug. “Nothing important, really. I just wanted to check on you.”

A warm flush creeps up his neck and settles firmly in his cheeks. “Oh. Well. That’s very kind of you.” He gestures vaguely to himself, as if presenting evidence. “I’m quite all right, I promise. The bruise from yesterday’s incident is already fading.”

She nods, visibly relieved. “I’m glad.”

They fall quiet after that. Their eyes meet and stay there, the moment stretching longer than either of them intends.

At last, she draws in a breath. “Well,” she says gently, stepping back, “I should let you get on with your work.” She turns to go.

“Wait.” The word slips out before he’s had time to think better of it. She stops and looks back at him, something hopeful twinkling in her eyes. 

John swallows, fingers curling and uncurling at his side. “I’ve only a few hours left of my duties for the day,” he says carefully. “After classes end, that is.” He hesitates, then pushes on. “I wondered, if you might care to join me for a walk.”

Her smile blooms, “I think,” she says, “that sounds like a wonderful idea.”

The breath he’s been holding escapes him in a shaky, quiet chuckle of pure relief. “Splendid,” he says, far too quickly. “Excellent. I’ll- yes. Then I’ll see you later.”

She inclines her head, eyes warm. “You will.” With that, she properly excuses herself and slips out into the corridor, footsteps light.

John stands there for a long moment after she’s gone, hand pressed to his ribs where the bruise aches faintly. He smiles to himself and returns to his desk, counting the hours without quite realizing he’s doing it.

The sky hangs low and heavy with clouds, the sort that presses the world into muted greys. They walk with their coats pulled tight, breath puffing faint white in the chill, their steps falling into an easy rhythm.

Side by side, but not quite close enough to touch. Just a few inches between their shoulders that feels impossibly like miles to them both.

She laughs at something he’s just said, a bright, unguarded sound that cuts through the cold. John watches it happen like it’s a small miracle, his grin slow and helpless, eyes fixed on the way her smile crinkles just so at the corners. When her laughter fades, he hesitates only a moment before speaking again.

“Tell me about you,” he says. “If you don’t mind. I feel as though I know you, and yet I don’t. Not really.”

She considers that as they walk.

“My childhood?” she asks lightly. “Average. Boring, even. Nothing remarkable. No grand tragedies or triumphs. Just ordinary.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Ordinary doesn’t seem to suit you.”

She smiles at that but doesn’t comment on the irony. “After school,” she continues, eyes forward, “I traveled for a while.”

He brightens instantly. “Did you?”

“Yes.” There’s warmth there, but restraint too. “I wanted to see what was out there.”

“And where did you go?” he asks, genuinely eager.

She tilts her head, thoughtful. “Everywhere my feet could take me.”

He laughs softly. “That sounds like a great deal of ground to cover.”

“It was.”

They walk in companionable quiet for a few steps before he asks the question that’s been forming since the moment she spoke.

“Why did you stop?” he says gently. “Why settle here, of all places, and become a librarian?”

Her pace doesn’t change, but something in her does. She exhales, slow and measured. “Out of necessity.”

He glances at her then, noting the careful way she keeps her gaze ahead, the subtle tightening around her eyes. He doesn’t press, his instinct tells him not to.

“I see,” he says quietly. She nods once, grateful for the understanding. 

He’s quiet for a few steps, boots crunching softly along the path, before another question slips out, “Did you always want to be a librarian?” he asks. “Or did you have some other dream, once?”

She smiles to herself, the expression turning inward. “I’m sure I did,” she says. “When I was in school, something grand, no doubt.” She laughs softly. “But whatever it was feels very small now. Insignificant.”

He glances at her, curious but careful. “What changed?”

Her smile softens. “Traveling did. It has a way of rearranging what matters.” She takes a breath, steady. “By the end of it, the only dream I really cared about was being happily married.”

The words hang in the cold air between them. John’s steps slow, just slightly.

“Oh,” he says. Then, after a moment, hesitant, unsure whether he’s crossed a line. “Did you… ever marry?”

She nods, “Yes.”

There’s no hesitation in it. No doubt.

“There was a man,” she continues quietly, “and I adored him. With my whole heart.” She keeps her eyes forward. “He’s far away now.”

John’s expression changes, more solemn. He nods, assuming what most would. “I’m very sorry,” he says softly.

She sees the shift, understands it immediately, and can’t let him carry that weight for her.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she says, turning to him then. “Not like that. I’m not grieving.” A small smile returns. “In a way, he’s still very much with me. Still here.” She puts a hand to her chest, to the rings that hang from a chain, along with her key for the Tardis, just beneath the layers of her clothes. 

John absorbs that, nodding slowly. “I see.”

He hesitates, then adds, almost apologetically, “I’ve never been married myself. But-” He offers a sympathetic smile. “I imagine loving someone like that never really leaves you.”

“No,” she agrees softly. “It doesn’t.”

He clears his throat, clearly searching for firmer ground. “So,” he says, a little too quickly, “what’s your favorite book?”

She gives him an amused, slightly puzzled look, one brow lifting at the abrupt turn.

He winces. “I’m sorry. That was awkward. I was only trying to lighten the mood.”

Her smile softens, saving him from himself. “You needn’t apologize.”

She thinks for a moment, gaze drifting ahead, and then says, lightly enough, “Jane Austen.”

It’s an easy answer. A safe one.

The truth is something else entirely: a novel from Gallifrey, old even by Time Lord standards, its language strange and lyrical. A story the Doctor once read aloud to her in the quiet of the TARDIS, voice low and careful, sharing a piece of himself he rarely let anyone see.

But she can’t tell John that. So Jane Austen it is.

His face brightens. “An excellent choice,” he says warmly. 

As they reach the village square, their path cuts gently across the grass, boots damp with cold earth. She glances sideways at him, the faintest smile playing at her lips.

“And you?” she asks. “Did you always want to be a teacher? Or was there something else you imagined for yourself?”

He laughs softly, a little sheepish. “Truthfully? I never really thought about it. I just became one.” He shrugs. “But I do enjoy it. More than I expected.”

She smiles at that. “You amaze me, you know.”

He blinks. “I- sorry?”

“I’ve listened,” she admits, almost casually. “When I have a free moment. Your lectures.”

He nearly trips over a tuft of grass. “You’ve- what?”

She laughs at his expression. “Only in passing,” she reassures him. “But I couldn’t help it.”

“Well,” He clears his throat, flustered. “I hope I wasn’t too dull.”

“Quite the opposite,” she says at once. “You explain things so beautifully. You take these complicated ideas and make them feel approachable. As though anyone could understand them, if they only listened long enough.”

He sputters, heat rising to his face. “That’s very kind of you. I don’t know that it comes easily- I just, well, I suppose I like sharing what I know.”

“And you’re magnificent at it,” she says softly.

He looks at her, startled by the way she’s watching him. There’s something dewy in her eyes, something unguarded and sincere, and it makes his chest tighten.

“You are,” she continues, voice steady but full. “Your mind. Your curiosity. The way you care. It’s extraordinary to me.”

He swallows, words failing him for once. “I- thank you,” he manages, utterly sincere. “That means more than I can say.”

The thought hits him all at once and he stops walking. She takes one more step before realizing he’s no longer beside her. When she turns back, he’s moved ahead of her, standing squarely in her path. Not crowding, solid two feet between them, deliberate and respectful.

He looks at her like she’s a question he’s been turning over for days. Weeks. Like the most magnificent puzzle he’s ever been given and is only just beginning to understand.

She stills, breath caught somewhere just beneath her ribs.

“I realized,” he says, smiling a little at himself, “that I never finished asking you something earlier. I was rather rudely interrupted by gravity.”

She lets out a soft laugh, already blushing.

“But before that,” he continues, eyes never leaving hers, “there’s something I ought to say.”

Her heart beats a little faster. She can feel it. He can probably see it.

“I noticed you on my first day here,” he admits. “In the halls, between classes. The headmaster was giving you a tour.” He smiles at the memory. “I remember thinking, quite distinctly, that the building suddenly seemed brighter.”

Her breath hitches.

“You were captivating,” he says simply. “Still are.”

Her head bows without her quite meaning it to, a shy, instinctive gesture, and she smiles as color blooms warmly in her cheeks. She tucks her hands into her coat sleeves, shifting her weight, suddenly very aware of herself under his gaze.

He adores it. Admires the way she squirms just slightly, not uncomfortable, but like she had energy to burn all of a sudden. The way her smile turns bashful and genuine. The way her eyes flick up to his and away again, as though she’s trying very hard not to float off the ground.

His human heart flutters and he knows, with absolute certainty, that this moment matters. She looks back up at him then, eyes bright, waiting. And John Smith, standing in the village square beneath a dull sky, thinks he has never wanted anything more than what he is about to ask.

He opens his mouth and then his eyes flick past her shoulder. Something clicks.

Not consciously, just a sudden, razor-sharp alignment of details: the two men tugging on the pulley above the shopfront, the piano swaying as it’s hauled upward, the rope fraying where it rubs against the edge. The mother turning the corner with a pram, humming to herself, utterly unaware. 

His words trail off mid-breath.

She notices the change in him immediately. “John?”

He steps aside, quick and decisive, reaching down to the bench where a boy sits tossing a ball lazily into the air as his mother watches. John plucks it from the arc without breaking stride.

“I’m sorry,” he says absently, already calculating.

He turns, plants his feet, and throws. The ball leaves his hand with startling precision. It strikes a length of scaffolding pipe with a hollow clang, knocking it sideways just enough to dislodge a loose brick. The brick tips, slides, and drops, smashing into a jug perched on a crate below. The jug tumbles, its base skidding across the ground and rolling directly into the woman’s path.

The librarian spins at the sound. She sees it all unfold, the absurd, impossible chain of events clicking together like a Rube Goldberg machine set into motion by instinct alone.

The woman gasps as the jug skids in front of her, startling her into stopping short. She stumbles back, clutching the carriage and in the next heartbeat, the rope snaps.

The piano crashes down with a thunderous crash, smashing into the street mere feet from where the woman and her child would have been. Wood splinters. Keys scatter. The sound echoes through the square.

The woman screams, stepping backward in shock, pulling the pram with her. People shout. The men above swear loudly and rush to check on the woman and her child. The boy stares at the empty space where his ball had been, mouth hanging open.

The librarian stands frozen. Her heart is pounding with recognition. She turns slowly back to John. He’s breathing a little harder now, hand still half-raised from the throw, eyes fixed on the wreckage as if he can’t quite believe what he’s just done.

He was completely human, yet she’s seen that look before. That instinct. That impossible instinct that arrives before thought, before fear, before hesitation.

John Smith is just as much the Doctor now, as he was two months ago, before they hid. 

John finally looks at her, flushed and a little dazed. “I-” He swallows. 

She’s staring at him. In complete and utter awe, her eyes sweep over him as if she’s seeing him for the first time and the thousandth time all at once, bright with something that steals the rest of his words clean out of his mouth.

“You,” she says, voice low and certain, “are impossibly wonderful.”

He blinks.

She steps closer, near enough that the air between them hums. “Truly,” she goes on, eyes shining. “You never cease to amaze me. Not once. The way you think, the way you act.” She smiles, soft and reverent. “I feel extraordinarily lucky to have met you.”

They are for John Smith, earnest schoolteacher with a bruised rib and ink-stained fingers. And they are for the Doctor, ancient and brilliant and endlessly running.

Her impossible man.

He barely hears himself speak. The words tumble out of him, breathless and ecstatic, carried on the dizzy warmth of the way she’s looking at him. “Would you go to the dance with me?” he blurts. “Tonight. Properly. As my date.”

She laughs, “Yes,” she says like he’s ridiculous for ever thinking the answer might be anything else. “Of course yes.”

His grin breaks wide and helpless, joy spilling out of him as easily as breath. He laughs too, the sound light and giddy, feeling utterly drunk on the way she’s admiring him. They stand there in the village square, smiling and laughing, the danger forgotten for just a moment, the universe held at bay by nothing more than mutual wonder and the promise of a dance.

John’s study is lit low and warm, the fire reduced to embers that glow more than burn. She sits beside him on the leather couch, the day’s excitement finally ebbing into something calm and intimate. They’re close now, his arm stretched along the back of the couch, around her, easy and protective. Her side presses into his, fitting there like it always has.

She holds the journal open between them.

“This one’s newer,” he says quietly, almost shy again. “Last night’s, actally.”

She leans in, shoulder brushing his chest as she looks down at the page. Messy handwriting spills across it, looping and hurried, interrupted by sketches wedged into the margins. Crude but earnest drawings of plastic men mid-motion, arms bent at impossible angles filled the page. A woman with a pleasant smile and kind eyes he labeled ‘Rose’. And then herself, sketched more carefully than the others, lines softened, posture familiar.

Her smile curves as she takes it in.

“Plastic men?” she murmurs, amused.

He chuckles. “Yes. Ridiculous, I know.” He hesitates, then adds, “You were there. With me.”

She looks at the drawing of herself again, touched in a way that makes her chest ache sweetly.

“And Rose?” she asks gently.

“She was… important,” he says, thoughtful. “Brave. Clever. I trusted her.” He glances at her, then admits more openly now, “But you,” He exhales. “You’ve been in a great many of them.”

She stills.

“I didn’t say before,” he continues, voice lower, more honest than it’s ever been. “I suppose I was embarrassed. It seemed forward, dreaming of someone I barely knew.” His smile turns self-conscious. “But you’re always there. A constant. Wherever I am, whatever’s happening, you’re there.”

She lifts her gaze from the page to his face. The look she gives him is soft and utterly undone. Love-sick. Full of a thousand memories he doesn’t have. For a moment, he forgets how to breathe. His heart stutters at the sight of it, and he finds himself leaning in without meaning to, drawn by the way her eyes hold him like he’s something precious. He swallows, suddenly overwhelmed, and laughs under his breath.

“I would always be there,” she says softly. “With you. If that’s something you want.”

His breath catches, actually quivers, and for once, words abandon him entirely. Instead, he leans in. The kiss is tentative, almost stolen. Just a brush of lips, gentle and unsure, like he’s afraid of breaking something precious. It lasts only a heartbeat before he pulls back, color rushing to his face.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs at once, voice low and flustered. “I’ve never-”

The journal slips from her fingers and lands forgotten in her lap.

“John,” she says, already lifting her hands, cupping his face with a tenderness that steals the rest of his words. “Stop talking.”

She pulls him back in.

This time the kiss is certain still soft, still unhurried, but filled with everything she’s held back for so long. He exhales against her lips, melting into it, instinct taking over where memory cannot.

His arm slides from the back of the couch to wrap around her shoulders, drawing her closer until there’s no space left to question. His other hand settles at her waist, thumb brushing slow and reverent against her hip, as if memorizing the shape of her.

He’s lost, utterly lost in her warmth, her closeness, the way she fits against him like this has always been where they were meant to end up.

They part just enough to breathe, but he stays close, forehead brushing hers. His voice was more a breathless murmur against her lips. “I feel like a boy with a terrible crush,” he admits, almost laughing at himself. “Or,” he exhales shakily, “as though I’m quite drunk.”

She pulls back a little more at that, concern flickering across her face. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Is it too much?”

The space between them feels wrong immediately, like a terrible crime has been commited. 

“No no,” he says, reaching for her, fingers curling into her as he draws her back. His voice steadies with certainty. “I’ve never enjoyed anything more than the way you kiss me.”

Her smile turns playful, eyes bright. “In that case,” she teases, “you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Her hands slide from his cheeks to the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair in a way that leaves him utterly undone. When she kisses him again, it’s deeper and he gasps softly in surprise before giving in completely. His arms tighten around her, holding her closer, hands warm and reverent at her waist. He feels unmoored, breathless, like he’s sinking into something wonderful and inevitable all at once.

She makes a small, pleased sound against his mouth, and it’s all the encouragement he needs. His touch grows surer, slower, as if he’s learning her by feel alone.

John Smith has never felt so lost. His breath breaks into a low, helpless sound against her mouth as she presses closer, her touch tracing down from his neck to his chest with an intimacy that makes his thoughts scatter. He knows, some distant responsible part of him, that this isn’t proper. They were coworkers, and unmarried at that. A line once crossed can’t be uncrossed.

But propriety feels very far away when she leans into him like that, when she makes that soft, pleased sound that tells him, quite clearly, that she’s enjoying this every bit as much as he is. Maybe even more, judging by the way she shivers when his hand strokes up and down her waist, edging a little to close to somewhere it had no right to be on an unmarried woman. 

It sends him reeling. For a split second, a reckless thought flashes through him, laying her back on the couch, the world narrowing to just the two of them.

The door opens.

They break apart instantly, breathless, startled, the moment shattering like glass. John jerks back, hand flying up as if caught doing something criminal, heart pounding so hard he’s certain it must be audible. She straightens just as quickly, smoothing her skirt, composure snapping back into place with impressive speed, though her eyes are still bright, cheeks flushed.

John snaps upright, mortified heat flooding his face. “Martha! You can’t just barge in, you- you should have knocked!”

Martha freezes, eyes wide for exactly one second, long enough to register what she’s interrupted, before her gaze flicks to the librarian. The two women meet each other’s eyes. And there it is: a perfectly synchronized, tightly contained smile. Girl to girl, a look full of ‘oh, I see’ and ‘get it girl’ that only someone who knows you well could manage.

Martha bites her lip, fighting a grin. “Sorry,” she mutters, already backing out. “Won’t happen again.” And then she’s gone, the door clicking shut far too cheerfully behind her.

She rises from the couch, and he follows suit, John drags a hand through his hair, breath still uneven. Words tumbling out. “You don’t have to leave. Truly. I mean, you’re welcome to stay, I-”

She steps closer before he can say another word, and she kisses him.

It’s gentler this time. Sweet in the way the first was, making his chest ache. His hands find her waist immediately, like they know exactly where they belong, and he melts into it with a quiet, helpless sigh.

She pulls back just far enough to speak, lips still brushing his. “If I stay,” she murmurs, amused, “we’ll miss the dance.” The meaning lands a beat later.

“Oh,” He flushes a deep red, nodding too quickly. “Yes. Yes, of course. The dance.”

She laughs softly. “Besides,” she adds, teasing warmth in her voice, “I’m rather a wait-for-marriage kind of woman.”

His mouth opens then closes. He nods again, thoroughly undone.

She kisses him once more, chaste, “I’ll see you later.” Then she’s gone.

The door shuts gently behind her. John Smith sinks back onto the couch like his legs have finally remembered gravity, chest rising and falling as he stares at the ceiling. He lifts a hand to his mouth, still feeling the ghost of her kiss, and laughs under his breath.

John Smith feels like the luckiest man in the world.

In the servants’ wing, Martha stands at the small table tucked into the corner of the room she shares with Jenny. A tray is laid out carefully: a fresh pot of tea, two cups, and a small cake on a platter, far nicer than anything she could afford with what she’s paid.

Her smile is enormous. She steps back to admire it, arms folding loosely over her chest, and lets herself breathe for once.

John is getting closer to his wife, even without knowing who she truly is. Even without the memories, the titles, the centuries. The connection is still there, stubborn and undeniable, like it’s woven too deeply into him to ever truly disappear. For the first time in what feels like forever, her shoulders loosen. 

Just a little longer.

The hunters will burn out, their short lives ending as they always do. The watch will open. The Doctor will come back to himself. And the three of them will step back into the Tardis like they were always meant to.

Running again. Together.

Martha looks down at the tea tray, smile softening into something fond and fiercely protective.

“Almost there,” she whispers.

The door creaks open, Jenny steps in, still wearing her coat and gloves instead of her maid’s uniform, cheeks pink from the cold. Martha looks up at once, smiling.

“There you are,” she says easily. “Where’ve you been all day?”

Jenny doesn’t answer right away. She just stands there staring ahead, eyes unfocused, expression oddly blank.

Martha gestures to the table. “I’ve got tea. Mr. Pool wasn’t in the mood this afternoon, so he let me have it.” She grins. “Figured we could enjoy it together.”

A few long seconds pass then Jenny sniffs.

Martha’s smile softens with concern. “Are you all right?” she asks gently, pulling out a chair. “You sound a bit sniffly.”

Jenny blinks. It’s like a switch flips behind her eyes.

“Oh, yes,” she says, a beat too late, more present. “Yes, I must’ve caught a cold. Been out in the chill too long, I expect.”

Martha nods, though her smile fades just a fraction. “You should sit, then. Warm up.”

Jenny crosses the room and takes the seat opposite her, movements smooth, deliberate. She keeps her hands in her pockets and waits, like a computer awaiting an input command. Martha doesn’t notice at first. 

Martha lifts the teapot, steam curling lazily into the air as she pours Jenny a cup.

“You should’ve seen them,” she says with a grin, unable to help herself. “Mr. Smith and the librarian, together. They looked happy.” She chuckles, stirring her own tea. “I’m really glad for them.”

Jenny watches the stream of tea fill her cup. “You seem very invested,” she says mildly. “Why?”

Martha smiles into her mug. “Because they’re my friends. And because, well, they’re made for each other.” She shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s nice to see good people find something good.”

She keeps talking as she stirs, warmth and excitement bubbling over now that she’s let herself relax. “I’m just excited, really. To see them together. To be together again.”

Jenny’s head tilts. “Together again?” she asks. “The three of you?”

Martha doesn’t hesitated, she trusts Jenny, or thinks she does.

“Yes,” she says easily. “We used to travel together, the three of us.” Her smile turns nostalgic. “And we will again. Soon.”

Jenny’s fingers curl slowly around her cup. “You travelled with them?” Jenny tilts her head, eyes fixed a little too intently on Martha. “And where did you travel? Where are you going this time?”

Martha lets out a small laugh and waves it off, stirring her tea. “Oh, it’s complicated.”

Jenny doesn’t smile back. “Complicated how?” she presses. “It sounds fascinating. You should tell me. Tell me now.”

Martha opens her mouth to deflect again, but Jenny repeats herself, voice smoother, insistence sharpening with each word. The longer she talks, the more off she feels. Her eyes don’t quite blink when they should and her smile doesn’t reach them. It’s like watching someone perform humanity from memory.

A chill crawls up Martha’s spine. The Doctor’s wife had told her once, half-joking, half-serious: If you ever think someone’s not human, offer them something no human would ever want. See what they do.

Martha lifts the teapot slightly. “More tea?”

Jenny’s grin widens too eager, haven't even had touched her cup yet. “Yes. I’d like that.”

“Of course,” Martha says lightly. She adds, “Would you like gravy in it?”

A human would recoil, laugh, ask if she was mad.

Jenny doesn’t hesitate. “Oh yes,” she says brightly. “That sounds nice.”

Martha’s smile stays perfectly polite as her heart begins to race. “I’ll just fetch it, then,” she says, already standing. “Won’t be a moment.”

Jenny nods, hands unmoving from her pockets, watching Martha with keen, unreadable interest. Martha turns away, every instinct screaming now, the certainty sharp and cold in her gut.

The moment she’s in the hall, Martha closes the door behind her until the latch clicks into place with the softest sound possible. She stands there for half a second, heart hammering, listening.

She takes three quiet steps away from the door and then she runs. Down the stairs, skirts gathered, boots thudding far too loudly for her liking. Her breath burns in her chest as instinct takes over, every lesson she’s ever learned screaming the same thing at once.

They’ve been found.

Her mind races ahead of her body, already forming the next steps. Get to the Doctor. Get to the watch. Wake him up. Whatever the cost. 

She takes the stairs two at a time now, pulse roaring in her ears, fear sharp and focused rather than panicked. Whatever is wearing Jenny’s face is learning fast, and it knows too much already.

John Smith has had his borrowed peace. It was time to tetire John Smith and bring the Dcotor back.

Plan B, she thinks desperately. Please tell me you left us a plan B.

The sun has only just slipped below the horizon, leaving the sky wih faint streaks of gold as night took over. The dance will be starting any moment now, music tuning up, lanterns being lit, people beginning to trickle in with excited murmurs and rustling coats.

John stands in front of the mirror in his room, fingers working carefully at his tie. He grins at his own reflection like an absolute idiot.

He pauses, takes a breath, adjusts it again and laughs softly under his breath. The heat and urgency from earlier have settled into something calmer now, steadier, though the memory of her is still very much there. The way she smiled. The way she kissed him. 

He smooths down his waistcoat, feeling a little ridiculous and a little wonderful all at once.

“I’ve got it bad,” he murmurs to himself.

The thought strikes him again that he feels like the luckiest man on the planet. To have met someone like her. To have been seen by her. To be adored in return, so openly and sincerely, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A teacher, an ordinary man. Simple ol’ John Smith. The luckiest man alive on planet Earth. 

⋆.˚✮ Notes: This will follow the Episode's plot. There are some changes, though; I took some creative liberties for the final stretch. 

And I tried to avoid using direct quotes from the show, but The Doctor’s ramble on the ship was just too good to change. Paul Cornell did a fab job. Round of applause for Paul Cornell, everyone. Muwa! <3

The courtyard is lit in harsh, uneven pools of lamplight and moon-glow, shadows stretching long and distorted across the stone. Sandbags have been piled hastily along the inner walls, desks and benches dragged out and overturned to make crude barricades. Behind them, boys huddle shoulder to shoulder, fingers white-knuckled around rifles no child should ever have to touch, let alone aim at another living thing. The night has turned bitterly cold, their breath fogs the air in pale clouds, each exhale visible, each inhale shallow and shaky. 

Beyond the gates, the straw army pounds and slashes. The sound is relentless, thuds, splintering cracks, the awful rasp of something that wants in and will not stop.

The Headmaster stands behind them, rigid and unflinching. A man who has already seen war, who wears his service like a badge of honor. To him, this is a duty that would give glory to any man. His voice carries sharp and clear as he issues commands, as if these boys were seasoned soldiers and not students who were meant to be asleep in their beds.

Some of them cry. One boy squeezes his eyes shut for a second, whispering that he wants to go home. Another stares down the scope of his rifle, breath hitching, knuckles trembling so hard the barrel wavers. 

But there is no one else.

John stands among them. The weight of the rifle in his hands feels wrong. His jaw tightens as he looks along the line of boys, sees their fear, their courage, their utter lack of choice. Every instinct in him rebels at the thought of them dying here.

Yet he knows there is nowhere left to run.

He raises his rifle, shoulders squaring as the Headmaster’s voice cuts through the noise like a blade.

“At post!”

The barricade doesn’t give so much as it gives way, the gate buckles inward under the sheer, relentless force of it, and then it bursts open. Scarecrow soldiers pour into the courtyard. They move in a grotesque rush, straw bodies jerking forward. Moonlight catches on empty faces and stitched seams as they flood through the breach.

“Fire!” the headmaster roars.

The night explodes.

The boys fire in panicked bursts, some squeezing their eyes shut as they pull the trigger, others sobbing openly as recoil bruises their shoulders. Bullets tear into straw and fabric, sending hay and dust spraying into the air.

Scarecrow men collapse into pieces. Arms rip free. Heads snap back. Bodies crumple into heaps of straw and cloth, lifeless the moment they hit the ground. The courtyard fills with smoke and the sickly-sweet smell of dry grass torn apart.

John’s rifle stays raised, aimed, but he doesn’t fire. He watches instead, boys cry as they shoot, watches childhood burn away with every pull of a trigger. Straw flies. Enemies fall. The line holds.

At some point, he’s not sure when, his rifle lowers. The noise fades from thunder to echoes, then to nothing at all.

“Cease fire!” the headmaster calls.

Silence crashes down, broken only by ragged breathing and the soft settling of debris.

The courtyard is littered with fallen scarecrow soldiers, torn apart and motionless.

John looks down at his hands. His finger never left the trigger guard. He hasn’t fired a single shot. He stands there, stunned, surrounded by boys who have just killed for the first time. 

The librarian watches from the window, Martha standing close at her side. Her eyes never leave John.

She sees it the moment it happens, the subtle shift in him, the realization settling heavy in his chest as he looks down at the rifle in his hands. She knows it because she has always known him. Because mercy is not something he chooses; it is something he is.

A kind man. A merciful man. It’s why he chose the name ‘Doctor’.

A man who cannot simply take a life.

He’s seen war before, fought in battles so bloody that the stains of them linger as ripples through time. He buried it so deeply it became instinct. Even without memory of the greatest war the universe has ever known, the revulsion remains, etched into him deeper than recall. The Doctor learned long ago what blood costs. John Smith feels it without knowing why.

She exhales softly and turns from the window. “Come on,” she murmurs. Martha follows her out into the night.

The courtyard is eerily quiet now. Smoke hangs low in the air. Straw and torn cloth litter the stone, scattered where enemies fell moments before. The boys stand frozen, rifles still raised, unsure what to do with their hands.

The headmaster steps forward, staring down at one of the fallen figures.

“Good Lord,” he breathes. He crouches, tugging at the remnants of a sleeve, tearing it open.

“Straw. They’re-  they’re made entirely of straw,” he says, disbelief flooding his voice.

A ripple moves through the yard. One of the boys, barely more than a child, turns slowly toward John. His voice is small, trembling.

“Mr. Smith,” he asks, “does that mean we didn’t kill anyone?”

John swallows hard, a painful knot forming in his throat. He doesn’t answer. He can’t. The silence stretches, heavy and full of awe and confusion, as the impossible truth settles over them all.

How could any of this be real?

John feels the weight of someone’s gaze.

He turns.

The librarian stands at the edge of the courtyard, moonlight catching in her hair, eyes fixed on him with an expression that makes his chest ache. Her words from earlier burn fresh in his mind, refusing to fade.

For a heartbeat, he almost holds her gaze, then he looks away.

The headmaster stiffens. It’s nothing anyone else hears, nothing more than a faint shift in the air, a sound too soft to place, but whatever it is, it snaps him to attention. His hand jerks up, and he moves fast, retreating behind the nearest cover.

“Stand at attention!” he calls sharply.

And then everything stops as a little girl steps through the gates, red balloon bobbing gently above her head in the cold night air.

The headmaster steps out from behind cover, lowering his voice. “Lower your weapons,” he orders. “Careful now.”

He walks toward her, concern etched into his features. “My dear,” he says kindly, “you shouldn’t be out here. It’s dangerous.” His tone softens further as recognition flickers. “You’re the Cartwrights’ girl, yes?”

Martha breaks from the line, heart in her throat. “Sir, don’t,” she shouts. “Please, don’t go near her!”

The headmaster stops and turns sharply. “Miss Jones,” he snaps, “that is quite enough. You will not speak out of turn. ”

“She’s dangerous,” the librarian cuts in, stepping forward, her voice calm but unyielding. “She’s involved. You must stay away from her.”

He rounds on her, incredulous. “I will not leave a child standing alone in a battlefield,” he barks.

The irony hangs heavy in the air. Even the boys feel it.

The little girl tilts her head, watching him approach again. “You’re funny,” she says evenly.

He smiles faintly, reaching for her hand. “Come along now. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

“You’re very funny,” she repeats.

And then she lifts her arm, the gun is already in her hand.

There is a sharp, buzzing whine, a flash of green light, and the headmaster is gone. He explodes into ash where he stands, the remnants of him scattering across the stone in a soft, terrible cloud.

The balloon bobs once as the boys stare in horror at the empty space where their headmaster stood moments before. The girl lowers the weapon, expression unchanged.

The girl tilts her head, eyes sweeping the frozen courtyard, “Well?” she asks lightly. “Is anyone going to shoot me?”

No one moves. The rifles shake in young hands. Breath fogs the air. Terror roots them to the stone.

John is the first to break the spell. Slowly, he lowers his weapon. His voice cuts through the silence, steady and commanding, carrying farther than he expects. 

“Enough,” he says. “No more of this.” He turns to the boys. “Retreat inside. Now.”

They hesitate, then obey. One by one, rifles drop. Feet shuffle backward. Fear overrides pride as they retreat toward the doors. The librarian steps forward, placing herself between the children and the girl, gun raised, stance firm. The balloon sways gently. The girl goes quiet, watching, unreadable.

Then Baines emerges from the shadows, gun in hand, “Running already?” he mocks. “How disappointing.”

He lifts his weapon and barks an order into the night. “Reanimate.”

The straw stirs. Bodies on the ground shudder and twitch, straw knitting itself back together with awful purpose. The courtyard begins to move again, too much, too fast.

The librarian doesn’t hesitate. She fires.

Once. Twice. Again and again.

Green flashes from alien weapons answer her shots, stone chips flying as she forces the Family of Blood to dive for cover. Straw men burst apart mid-rise. She advances a step, relentless, fury blazing through every pull of the trigger.

John grabs her arm. “Come on!” he shouts. “Now!”

She fires once more, then lets him pull her back.

Students run. Teachers shout. Doors slam open as bodies flood inside. The courtyard erupts into chaos, screams echoing as the Family of Blood hunts for sport, laughing as they fire after fleeing children.

John drags her through the doorway just as shots rake the stone behind them.

The corridors are chaotic. Boys shout names, grab each other’s sleeves, trip and scramble back up again. Somewhere, glass shatters. Somewhere else, a door slams too hard and splinters.

John is everywhere at once, shoving doors open, pointing, shouting over the noise. “That way! Keep moving! Don’t stop, just run!”

Martha is at his shoulder, hauling a terrified boy to his feet, pushing another toward the exit. The librarian brings up the rear, gun raised, eyes sharp, every sense tuned outward as if she can feel the Family pressing in.

They burst through a rear door into the cold night.

“Go!” John orders, voice raw now. “Run far, don’t look back!”

The boys spill out into the dark, scattering into the trees and fields beyond the grounds. One by one, then in clusters, then finally only a handful left, until there are none.

John turns back to the doorway, chest heaving.

“Right,” he says. “You two, go with them. I’ll stay. Make sure no one’s left inside.”

“No.” The librarian doesn’t even hesitate.

She steps in front of him, blocking the door, gun still in her hand. “You go.”

He stares at her like she’s lost her mind. “Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you here.”

“You have to,” she snaps. “You’re the one they want.”

“And I’m not sending you back in there alone,” he fires back, anger flaring through the fear. “I won’t.”

Martha looks between them, breathless. “We don’t have time for this-”

“She’ll cover you,” the librarian insists, eyes never leaving John. “I’ll hold them off and get the rest out.”

His jaw tightens. “Don’t you dare order me around!”

“Go!” she shouts over him, voice cutting clean through the argument. “Martha, take him to the Cartwrights’ house. I’ll find you there.”

Before he can process it, she’s already turning back toward the building.

“Don’t you dare-” John grabs her arm, anger and fear tangling together. “You don’t get to decide that! You don’t get to just throw yourself into-”

A green blast slams into the wall between them. The impact throws them apart.

“Doctor!” Martha yells, hauling him backward as another shot cracks past where his head had been a second earlier.

He fights her, claws forward, eyes locked on the woman he loves as she’s driven back by the advancing straw men. She stumbles, fires, retreats, and then the door behind her slams shut.

Mr. Phillips’s office, John knows that room, he’d had meetings in there dozens of times. No back exit, no way out. 

“No!” he screams, voice tearing itself raw as straw soldiers flood the corridor, cutting her off completely.

Another blast hits near John’s feet. Martha doesn’t ask anymore. She drags him.

“Doctor move!”

His shoes slip on stone as she pulls him through the door, green fire ripping into the wall behind them. The building roars with violence as they spill out into the night, the school vomiting smoke and chaos into the dark.

He twists, reaching back, eyes desperate but the doors slam shut under a barrage of fire.

She’s gone.

They sprint across the grounds, breath burning, the sounds of battle chasing them into the trees. His heart feels like it’s being torn out of his chest with every step away from her. Once they reach the treeline, John wrenches his arm free. 

“I’m not leaving without her.” His voice is hoarse, the words shaking loose from a place too deep to steady. He turns back toward the school.

Martha grabs his sleeve again. “Doctor, she can handle herself. She’s faced Daleks. She’s faced worse than this. The Family won’t scare her.”

He whirls on her, eyes blazing. “I’m not the Doctor,” he snaps. “I don’t regenerate. I don’t have centuries of plans and tricks and second chances.” His voice cracks. “I’m just a man. And she’s in there alone.”

That stops Martha for half a heartbeat.

Then she plants her feet and meets his gaze, fierce and unyielding. “It doesn’t matter who you are right now,” she says. “What matters is that you stay alive. That’s what she wanted. That’s what she chose.”

John shakes his head helplessly. “I can’t just run.”

“You already did.” Martha says softly. “She told me to get you to that house,” Martha continues, voice gentler now, “now your job is to protect yourself until she can get out and find us. That’s what she’s counting on.”

John falters. He stands there in the cold dark, breath hitching, hands useless at his sides. He has no plan. No idea how to fight a family of monsters wearing human faces.

All he has is the echo of her voice.

“You are the most real thing I know.”

And then

“The Doctor-” Spoken like another man, a ghost, someone she lost and still carries.

He’d convinced himself, in that terrible moment, that she only loved him because of who he resembled. That he was temporary. A placeholder for someone greater.

It doesn’t matter now.

The thought of her hurt, cornered, alone in that building tears something vital out of him. Whatever he is, whatever he isn’t, the idea of losing her shatters him completely.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, barely audible.

Martha’s grip tightens on his arm. “Then let me think for both of us,” she says. “Just, come on. Please.”

John hesitates. Then, broken and desperate and utterly lost, he nods. He follows Martha deeper into the trees, every step away from the school, feeling like a betrayal he will never forgive himself for. 

The Cartwrights’ house is quiet in the way abandoned places always are, like the walls are holding their breath. John sits at the small kitchen table, turned sideways in the chair, one arm draped over the back, his body angled away from Martha. An old pot of tea sits between them, forgotten and ice-cold, a thin film clouding the surface. No one has touched it in a long while.

Martha watches him from across the room, helpless.

She doesn’t interrupt. There’s nothing to say that won’t shatter him further, and she knows it. So she waits, hands folded tight in her lap, listening to the house creak and settle around them.

John stares into nothing.

His mind won’t stop.

He doesn’t want to be the Doctor. He doesn’t want centuries and war and running and loss. He doesn’t want to be a legend or a weapon or a man the universe keeps dragging back into horror because it needs him.

He wants to be human. He wants to be John Smith.

He wants to wake up every morning in the same bed, beside the same woman. He wants to marry her, properly, publicly, with a ceremony and blue flowers and vows. He wants children with her laugh and her eyes, wants to grow old and soft and ordinary. He wants arguments over nothing, quiet evenings, grey hair, aching knees, and a life that ends when it’s supposed to.

And the woman he wants all of that with, he doesn’t even know if she’s alive.

The thought cuts deeper than anything else.

What if she’s dead? What if she died believing he didn’t understand her, believing he thought her love was conditional? What if the last thing between them was an argument he didn’t get to finish? A misspoken mistake, he never forgave her for? 

His chest tightens, breath going shallow. Dark thoughts creep in, unwelcome and relentless, whispering that none of this is fair, that his life was never really his, that even his happiness came with an expiration date.

“Doc-” Martha shifts in her chair, choosing her words carefully. “John, are you alright?”

He doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even seem to hear her. His gaze stays fixed on some distant point only he can see, jaw set, eyes hollowed out by thoughts too heavy to surface.

Martha swallows and tries again.

“You should know,” she says gently, “the Doctor, he’s extraordinary. Truly. Traveling with him was- it was everything. All of time and space, right there in our hands. And he loved showing it to people. Loved sharing it.” A small, fond smile flickers across her face. “That’s why I stayed. That’s why I went with him. Why I trust him.”

She talks about the wonders. The joy. The importance of him. How much he meant to her. To so many others.

John doesn’t react.

Her words wash over him and sink without leaving a ripple. He’s too far inside his own fear, his own grief, to grasp onto any of it. The universe, time and space, legends and heroes, it all feels impossibly distant compared to the simple, aching truth pounding in his chest.

She might be dead, and soon he will be too, so nothing else matters.

Martha trails off, the weight of the silence pressing down on her. She exhales shakily and mutters, more to herself than to him, “It’s not like it matters anyway.” She looks down at her hands. “We can’t do anything without the watch.”

John startles at the sound of a knock at the door, gentle, almost polite.

His head turns toward the door before Martha can even rise from her chair. Hope surges so fast it hurts. He’s on his feet in an instant, crossing the room and swinging the door open-

And it isn’t her.

It’s Tim.

The boy stands on the threshold, pale and shaken, clutching something in his hand like it might bite him if he lets go. When he looks up at John, there’s something older in his eyes than there should be.

“I think,” Tim says quietly, “this belongs to you.”

He holds out the watch.

John’s chest caves in. There it is. The thing that ends him. The thing that proves every fear right.

His hope dies on the spot. He doesn’t take it. He doesn’t even speak.

He turns away, walking back to the table like a man moving toward a sentence already passed, his shoulders slumping, his face gone utterly grave. He sits where he was before, staring at the same empty place, only now the truth has weight and shape.

Martha rushes forward, ushering Tim inside with a whispered thank-you, hands already reaching for the watch. The moment her fingers close around it, her face lights up, relieved and joyful.

“You had the watch this whole time?” she breathes. She turns to John, ready to explain, ready to fix this, and stops.

She sees his eyes; the empty look of a man who’s already dead.

The hope drains out of her all at once.

“Oh,” she whispers. Martha crosses the room in two steps and drops to her knees in front of him.

“John,” she says, soft but urgent, angling herself so he can’t avoid her face. “Look at me. Please.”

He doesn’t respond. His eyes stay unfocused, like he’s already halfway gone.

“We need the Doctor,” she pleads, voice cracking despite her effort to stay calm. “He can fix this. He always fixes things. He’ll have a plan, something brilliant and impossible, and he’ll stop them before anyone else dies. Before she-” Martha swallows hard. “We need him. Right now.”

Nothing.

So she reaches out and presses the watch into his hand herself. The moment the cool metal touches his skin, John jerks like he’s been shocked. His fingers curl reflexively around it, knuckles whitening as he looks down.

Whispers.

He can hear them, not clearly, not as words, but as pressure. Like voices speaking just below the surface of thought. It sends a chill straight through him, raising gooseflesh along his arms.

Tim, hovering near the door, stiffens. “You can hear it?” he asks quietly. “It spoke to me.”

Martha looks between them, confused. “Spoke?”

John swallows, “It’s like it’s sleeping.”

Tim frowns, brow furrowing. “Why did it talk to me?”

John answers without hesitation, the words tumbling out smooth and precise. “Oh, just a low-level telepathic field, you were born with it. Perfectly harmless. Some humans have it. Usually shows up as intuition, good guesses, deja-” He stops dead.

His breath catches sharply, like the sentence has been ripped out of him mid-thought. His eyes widen, horror dawning as he realizes what just happened.

“That-” he whispers. “That wasn’t- I don’t know how I know that.” But the explanation had made perfect sense. Perfectly obvious when it should’nt be. 

“Is that him?” He asks trembling. “Is that how he talks?” John stares down at the watch in his hand, heart pounding, whispers curling tighter around his thoughts.

Martha’s smile trembles,  “Yes, that's him. We need him, John. We need the Doctor. You have to open the watch.”

“What about me?” John snaps, finally, pain ripping through his voice. He clutches the watch like it’s a live thing. “What happens to me? I don’t want to be the Doctor. I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to die. I want-”

The night explodes.

A blinding white-hot flash floods the room, followed by a thunderous crack that rattles the walls. Tim yelps and staggers back from the window. John and Martha both spin toward the light, hearts leaping into their throats.

Before either of them can speak, the front door slams open.

She’s there.

The librarian bursts inside, hair disheveled, breath ragged, eyes blown wide with urgency. “They’re destroying the village,” she says, voice shaking but fierce. “They’re burning it to the ground.”

John drops the watch, it hits the floor with a dull clatter, forgotten instantly.

He crosses the room in a second and crashes into her, arms wrapping around her like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he lets go. A broken sob tears out of him, muffled against her shoulder, the sound raw and helpless and utterly human.

“I thought-” He can’t finish. 

She holds him back just as tightly, one arm firm around his shoulders, the other cradling the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair in slow strokes. She murmurs his name over and over, low and steady, anchoring him while the world outside burns.

Through the window, Tim watches streaks of light carve through the sky, one after another, detonating across the village. Houses erupt. Fires bloom. The night turns violent and bright.

Martha bends, scooping the watch up from the floor, checking it with shaking hands like it might be broken. She straightens, eyes blazing now, not gentle, not pleading anymore.

“John,” she says firmly. “This isn’t a discussion anymore. They’re killing people. Innocent people. He’s the only one who can stop this.”

John clings to the woman in his arms, face buried against her, breathing her in like it might be the last chance he gets.

Martha steps closer, holding the watch out between them. “You have to open it,” she says. “Now.”

John’s hands fist in the fabric of her coat like it’s the only solid thing left in the world.

“I don’t want to be a story,” he sobs into her shoulder, the words breaking apart as they leave him. “I’m real. I’m here. I’m a person.” His breath stutters. “I want to live. I want to grow old. I want this.” His grip tightens. “But if I don’t- if I don’t die- then he doesn’t come back. And if he doesn’t come back-”

He chokes, the sentence collapsing under its own weight.

“I don’t want to die,” he whispers. “But I don’t want them to die either.”

She holds him as if she can physically keep him from splitting in two. Her arms are iron around him now, jaw set, eyes burning as another distant explosion rattles the windows.

Martha’s voice cuts through his sobs, firm and relentless, refusing to let him disappear into her shoulder and the safety of her arms.

“John, listen to me,” she says, talking over him, over the ticking, over the bombs. “People are dying right now. Not later, now. He can stop this. You know he can. He’s the only one who can.”

John shakes his head weakly against his lover’s collarbone. “I don’t want to go,” he whispers. “I don’t want to vanish. I don’t want to be replaced.”

“You’re not being replaced,” Martha insists, even as her eyes shine with unshed tears. “You’re saving them. You’re saving us. You’re saving everyone.”

Another blast flashes through the window. Tim flinches again, hands pressed to the glass, watching the village burn.

Martha steps closer, bringing the watch into John’s line of sight, her voice shaking but unyielding. “If you wait any longer, there won’t be anything left to save. Please. We need him. We need you to bring him back.”

John’s breath comes in ragged gasps. He clings to the woman he loves, torn between the simple, fragile life he wants more than anything, and the horrible fate that the universe is gifting him, like it’s something glorious. 

She pulls away from John so sharply that it steals the air from his lungs. When she turns, there is fire in her eyes, the same blazing, ferocious look he saw in the dance hall. The same look she wore when she called him her husband and stared down armed monsters without flinching.

Now it’s aimed at Martha.

“Stop,” she roars. The word cracks through the room like a gunshot.

Martha freezes mid-breath. Tim recoils, pressing himself back against the wall, eyes wide.

The Doctor’s wife turns slowly, deliberately, her gaze dropping to the watch resting in Martha’s open palm. Then her eyes lift and turn to Tim.

“Why did you have it?” she asks, voice still sharp, but measured now. Controlled.

Tim swallows. “It spoke to me,” he says meekly, shrinking under her stare. “It said it was trapped. That it needed to be hidden. So I hid it.”

Her expression shifts. “You did good,” she says, surprising him. Tim exhales shakily. Then her eyes narrow. “But you should never have opened it.”

He nods quickly, chastened. “I’m sorry.”

She turns back to Martha. Martha opens her mouth, already bracing herself, hands lifting instinctively as if to defend, to explain.

“Zip it,” she snaps. Martha closes her mouth.

John watches all of this like he’s underwater, but when she turns back toward him, the fire dimming just a fraction, his hand finds hers without thinking.

John’s voice comes out small, almost hopeful in its desperation. “We can just give it to them,” he says, gesturing weakly toward the watch. “They can have it. They’ll leave. I can stay.” His grip tightens on her hand. “We can stay. We can get married properly this time. I can live. We can grow old. Isn’t that- isn’t that enough?”

Her face crumples with grief, “Oh, John.” Her eyes shine, filling as she looks at him like he’s already slipping away. “It won’t work. It can’t.”

She takes a breath, steadying herself, forcing the truth through the ache in her chest. “If they get that watch, they’ll use what’s inside it. Time Lord energy. They’ll become immortal, or close enough. And then they’ll hunt. For sport. Whole worlds will burn because of it.”

She shakes her head slowly. “No matter what happens, they cannot have it.”

The hope drains out of him all at once.

He folds in on himself, a broken sound tearing from his chest as tears spill freely now. “I don’t want to die,” he sobs. “I don’t want to stop existing.”

He looks up at her, eyes red and pleading, voice cracking apart. “Why can’t you want that too? Why can’t you want me? Why can’t you love John Smith?” The words tumble faster, tangled with grief and fear. “Was it all a lie? You just love the face. You love him. You love the Doctor- not me.”

“Stop.” She doesn’t shout this time. She interrupts him gently but firmly, like she’s stopping him from stepping off a ledge. “You are the Doctor.”

He shakes his head violently. “No- no, I’m not. I don’t know what he knows. I don’t remember what he’s done. I don’t-”

She guides him down into a chair, pressing softly but insistently until he’s sitting. Then she lowers herself to the floor in front of him, so he can’t look away. She takes his face in her hands.

“You think memory is what makes a person?” she asks quietly. “You think that’s all he is?”

He can’t answer.

She swallows, voice trembling but certain. “The Doctor isn’t his memories, John. He’s his choices. His mercy. His kindness. His refusal to pick up a gun, even when everyone else does.”

Her thumbs brush the tears from his cheeks. “You didn’t fire tonight. Not once. You rang that bell knowing it would put boys in danger because you couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else being taken by surprise. You offered yourself just now to save the world, even though you’re terrified.”

She leans in, forehead touching his. “That’s him. That’s always been him.” Her voice breaks. “And that’s you.”

“I’ve seen a man,” she says softly, “who loves knowledge so much he can’t help but share it. I’ve seen a man who is passionate about everything he does. Who throws himself fully into his work, into people, into caring.” 

She smiles sadly. “A man who thinks quickly. Cleverly. Who can look at chaos and, in a few spare seconds, save a mother and her child with nothing but a ball and instinct.”

“A man who protects. Who provides. Who steps forward when things go wrong, even when he’s afraid.” She looks up at him then, eyes shining. “And I’ve seen his love. His mind. His heart. I’ve seen how wonderful he is.”

“I am so lucky,” she whispers, “that he chose me.”

John’s sobs are quiet. The tears still come, but slower now. He listens and with every word she speaks, something inside him loosens.

She isn’t describing a ghost. She’s describing him.

Everything she says is the very things she’s praised him for since yesterday, the way she looked at him in the halls, at the dance, in his study. The reasons he believed, desperately, that she loved him. His shoulders sag. His breathing evens out, just a little.

Without breaking eye contact with John, she speaks, “Martha, who does that sound like to you?”

Martha doesn’t hesitate. “The Doctor,” she answers, like it’s the simplest truth in the world. “You’re describing the Doctor.”

John turns to her, horror flashing across his face, breath catching in his throat. “No-” he starts.

But gentle fingers guide his chin back toward her before the panic can spiral. Her hand stays there, warm and grounding, thumb brushing the tears from his cheek with infinite care.

“John,” she says softly. “Listen to me.”

He does, he can’t help it when she speaks like that.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that you’d be dying,” she continues, voice calm but firm. “Because that’s not how I see this. Not at all.”

His brow furrows, confusion replacing terror. “But the watch-”

“The watch doesn’t kill you,” she says. “It returns what you already are.”

She leans closer, forehead nearly touching his. “You’re not disappearing. You’re not being erased. You’re remembering.”

“That’s the only difference,” she goes on gently. “Between you and the Doctor. Memory. Everything else- the man I fell in love with, the man Martha knows, the man who won’t fire a gun and can’t walk away from people in danger, that man is already here.”

John stares at her. Awe floods his expression, cutting through the fear like dawn after a long night. His breath goes shallow, “I’m not going to die?” he whispers.

She smiles through her own tears. “No, my love,” she murmurs. “You’re going to remember.”

She doesn’t look away from him as she reaches one hand back toward Martha. Martha understands immediately and places the watch into her palm. She turns back to John and gently sets the watch in his hand, then lays her own hand over his, warm and steady, anchoring him.

“It’s alright,” she whispers. “I’m right here.”

The world tilts. For a heartbeat, John is certain he’s been moved, teleported, displaced, because suddenly he is standing on a beach.

Warm sand beneath his bare feet. His suit jacket discarded carelessly a few paces away. The sun is low and golden, painting everything soft. She’s there, dress simple and flowing, skirts hitched up as she splashes through the shallows.

She turns, grinning, and flings a sheet of water straight at his face. He sputters, laughing, and lunges for her. They tumble together into the surf, his arms wrapping around her as she laughs and wriggles, protesting breathlessly while he kisses her cheek and tickles her sides until she squeals and begs him to stop.

The sound of her laughter is the most real thing he’s ever known.

The vision flickers.

Now they’re in a bed, an odd room with unfamiliar walls, soft lamplight. She’s curled into his side, cheek against his chest, smiling faintly as sleep tugs at her. He’s reading aloud from a book he doesn’t recognize, voice low and gentle.

She hums contentedly, eyes half-lidded, beautiful in a way so intimate it almost hurts. His arm tightens around her without thinking.

Another shift.

They stand on a cliff overlooking a vast stretch of water, wind tugging at their clothes. She leans into him, head resting on his shoulder, his arm secure around her waist.

She’s looking down at her hand, at the ring on her finger. He notices the way her thumb turns it absently, the way her smile softens when she looks at it. He leans down and kisses her temple, then her lips, and she exhales against him like she’s been waiting for it.

The visions don’t feel like dreams.

John’s breath stutters as the room comes back into focus around him, the cold house, the burning village beyond the walls, the ticking watch beneath his palm.

He swallows hard, breath still uneven. “Did you,” His voice wavers. “Did you see that? Did you see what we could have had?”

She smiles at him, “John,” she says gently, “we already did.”

He blinks, confused, and she leans back just enough to reach beneath her coat. Slowly, deliberately, she draws a thin chain out from under the fabric. It glints in the low light.

Hanging from it are two rings and a key.

“Our wedding bands,” she explains quietly, thumb brushing over the familiar metal. “I kept them close. Always.” Her eyes lift to his, easing the fear she sees there. “You don’t have to choose tonight. Not like this. Not under fire.”

Martha opens her mouth, just a reflex, really, and the fire is back in her eyes instantly. A warning so fierce Martha freezes mid-word.

“Sorry,” Martha mutters quickly, snapping her mouth shut and stepping back.

The fire vanishes just as fast as it came.

John notices the control, the resolve, the way she can turn that on and off like a blade sheathed at will. Under different circumstances, he might have found it impressive. Might have found it intoxicating.

Right now, it’s terrifying.

She turns back to him, “I have a plan,” she says. “You won’t like it. Martha won’t like it. No one will.” A grim little smile flickers. “But it will end this. And it will give you time.”

“But we need to move,” she continues. “Right now. So I need to know.”

John looks down at the rings resting in her palm. At the watch in his own hand, ticking softly like a second heart. The memories still feel borrowed, like clothes he hasn’t grown into yet. His fingers tighten.

He hesitates and she understands. She straightens, spine stiff, and addresses the room, though it’s mostly Martha she’s speaking to.

“We’re moving to Plan C.”

Martha opens her mouth, already bracing for disaster, then stops. “Okay,” she says, exhaling. “I hate that, but okay. A plan is a plan.”

The librarian nods once, sharp and decisive. She crosses the room and grabs the alien pistol, the one she’d dropped by the door when John held her. “You stay here,” she tells Martha. “With them. Don’t move.”

Martha frowns. “They can track us.”

“Exactly,” she replies. “So you stay put. They’ve found the Tardis, it’s at the school. If they’re tearing up the village, they’ve probably left scarecrows behind to guard it.”

Martha stiffens. “You’re going back there?”

“If I’m not back in an hour,” she continues, ignoring the protest, “you take John and Tim, you get to the Tardis, and you get the hell out of here.”

Silence slams down.

“What are you going to do?” Martha asks quietly.

The look in her eyes answers before she does.

Tim shakes his head, stepping forward. “You can’t go alone,” he blurts. “That’s stupid. You need help.”

John’s already at her side, hands gripping her arms like he might anchor her to the floor. “Please,” he begs. “Just leave with us. We’ll go together. We’ll hide. I can’t-” His voice cracks. “I can’t lose you.”

Martha’s anger finally boils over. “You’re talking about killing them,” she snaps. “That’s not what he does. The Doctor doesn’t kill. He wouldn’t want this; he wouldn’t be happy with you.”

The room erupts.

“I don’t care if he’s happy, I want her safe!”

 “You can’t just decide this!”

“You’ll get yourself killed!” Tim protests, eyes wide.

“You’re not thinking straight!”

“Enough!” Her voice tears through the room like a shockwave. “The Doctor isn’t here,” she roars. “I am.”

Silence. Utter, stunned silence.

“I am Plan B. Plan C. Plan D—all the way to bloody Z if I have to be.” Her jaw tightens, words sharp with bitter truth. “It’s never been needed with him around. You’ve been spoiled by his brilliance. By the fact that he always finds a way where no one else has to get their hands dirty.”

“But he isn’t here.” Her hand presses briefly to her chest. “I inherit the responsibility.”

She turns on Martha fully now, every ounce of authority she possesses bearing down. “My husband’s life, and everyone else’s, is on the line. So shut up and do as you’re told.”

“If I’m not back in one hour,” she continues,  “you take John and Tim to the Tardis. Switch off the emergency power. Flip the lever, yes, the one you’re thinking of. I’ve already set her to cruise the vortex.”

John’s breath stutters. “Cruise the vortex?”

“She’ll keep you in flight,” she says, not looking at him because if she does, she might falter. “You’ll have to live on board. However long it takes, until the Family dies off.” Her eyes soften, just barely. “Then she’ll bring you back.”

A last stitch contingency she never wanted to use. A plan born of loving the Doctor long enough to know that someday she might have to finish a fight without him.

“Your job,” she says coldly, every word edged like a blade, “is to keep him safe until I’ve dealt with this. That’s it.”

“If anything happens to him,” she continues, voice dropping to a lethal calm, “I will board the Tardis and burn this planet to ash. Then I will find whatever hellhole those things crawled out of, and I will make them wish I’d just killed them.”

She steps closer to Martha, close enough that there’s no mistaking the promise in her words. “The Doctor shows mercy,” she spits. “I am not the Doctor. I am his wife.”

A beat.

“Understood?”

Martha swallows hard, “Understood,” she says quietly, nodding once.

John watches her, heart pounding, fear and love tangled so tightly he can barely breathe. He knows that look. He’s seen it before—in dreams, in flashes, in the way the Doctor stands when the universe is about to be put right, no matter the cost.

But this isn’t mercy standing there. It’s devotion, a fury, a love so vast it’s willing to damn worlds to protect one man.

“Martha.”

Martha looks up, startled. She crosses the room and presses the alien gun into Martha’s hands. “For the scarecrows,” she says. “Or for anything that gets too close to them.”

Martha’s fingers curl around it instinctively. “What about you?”

In answer, the librarian reaches into her pocket and pulls out the sonic screwdriver, holding it up between them. “This is better suited to what I’m doing.”

Martha nods, no argument this time. 

Then she turns to John, and everything else falls away. She’s across the room in a heartbeat, hands on his face, kissing him hard and breathless like she’s trying to carve the moment into both of them. He melts into it instantly, arms wrapping around her, desperate, heart hammering so loud he’s sure she can feel it.

“I love you,” she says against his lips, voice shaking just enough to hurt. “More than anything.”

He believes her. God, he believes her. But the way she says it makes his chest tighten painfully. It feels like a goodbye.

“Don’t-” he starts, pulling her closer. “Don’t say it like that.”

She presses her forehead to his, eyes shining. “Just in case,” she whispers.

His protest dies in his throat. She kisses him one last time, and then she’s already stepping back, already turning away before he can grab her again, before he can beg.

The door opens, and then she’s gone, swallowed by the night. The door shuts behind her with a final, hollow sound. John stands there, stunned, lips still tingling, heart breaking open in his chest as the silence crashes down around them.

Martha grips the gun tightly, exhales shakily, hands trembling at her sides. Tim stares at the floor, wide-eyed. John stands frozen, staring at the door like sheer will might bring her back.

The Doctor didn’t marry her for nothing.

Cooper’s Field is where they’ll be, she could feel it. The meteorite wasn’t a coincidence; there’s no such thing.  She slows as she crosses into it, every sense sharpened.

“I know you’re here,” she murmurs.

She lifts the sonic screwdriver and flicks it on. The familiar whirr cuts through the silence, the blue light sweeping in a slow arc as she scans the space ahead of her. Signals stack. Readings overlap in ways that make her jaw tighten. 

A ship, cloaked, sitting smugly in the middle of a human field like it owns the place.

“Found you,” she mutters.

She steps forward and extends her hand. At first, she felt nothing for a few paces, then her fingers met resistance. Green light ripples outward from the point of contact, fizzing like disturbed water, the illusion peeling back in shimmering waves. The outline of the ship bleeds into view.

She presses her hand flat against the hull and walks, slow and deliberate, palm gliding over cold metal as she circles it. She maps it by touch, memorizing shape and scale, feeling for weaknesses, for seams.

An interruption in the surface, the entrance. She steps inside, green light swallowing the night, leaving Cooper’s Field empty once more, no sign that anything is there at all.

The interior of the ship glows an artificial green, light pulsing faintly through vein-like cables in the walls. Controls protrude from every surface: knobs, levers, ridges, and ports that jut out like scales on a beast. 

She takes only a few steps before she sees them.

All four of the Family of Blood stand ahead of her, backs turned, clustered around the main control bank. Green light washes over their borrowed faces. Baines, Son of Mine, stands at the center, posture loose and smug, hands dancing over controls as explosions bloom across a display. He’s enjoying himself.

She doesn’t announce herself, but it doesn’t matter because they feel her the moment she fully enters the chamber.

All at once, they turn. Recognition flickers across their faces, then surprise, then irritation, then amusement.

She raises the sonic screwdriver. The buzz is sharp, sparks leap from the nearest console. The sonic screams, forcing power through systems never meant to withstand it. Then a flat, miserable whine as the display cuts out. 

Then Son of Mine laughs, “Well,” he says, clapping slowly, the sound echoing too loud in the deadened space. “You could have just said ‘please’.”

“I warned you,” she says evenly. “At the dance. I told you the next time I saw you, I’d kill you.”

Mother of Mine snorts, stepping forward just enough for the light to catch her stolen face. “You’ve lost your weapon,” she mocks, voice syrup-slow. “How tragic.”

She raises her gun lazily, barrel settling on the Doctor’s wife’s chest like this is all terribly boring. The Doctor’s wife moves before any of them can finish a breath. A sharp step in, her shoe slams into Father of Mine’s knee with brutal precision. He buckles with a howl, balance gone, body pitching forward and she takes him.

She twists with his fall, yanking him upright just enough to drag him back against her, his body a shield. One arm hooks under his chin, the other rips the gun from his slack grip in a single, fluid motion.

Metal kisses his skull.

“Don’t,” she says calmly.

Mother of Mine stiffens, fury flashing across her stolen face as she snaps her own weapon up, sights locking on. “How dare you!” she snarls. “You coward, using Husband of Mine like a shield!”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” she says lightly, tightening her hold. “It’s sort of our thing, actually.”

Baines’ eyes flick between them, calculating, irritation sharpening into something closer to unease.

She presses the barrel harder to Father of Mine’s temple. “Second time now,” she adds conversationally. “You’d think you’d learn not to stand so close to me.”

Father of Mine groans, hands clawing uselessly at her arm.

“Drop it,” she tells Mother of Mine, voice still even. “Or I redecorate this ship with whatever passes for his thoughts.”

The green emergency lights pulse.  Slowly, Baines steps forward, and he claps a mocking applause, echoing too loudly in the ship.

“Well done,” he drawls, head tilting as his grin sharpens. “Very dramatic. Very human. But you don’t have it in you. You didn’t before, and you don’t now.”

He spreads his hands just a little, inviting. “Go on. Pull the trigger. Let’s see if you’re bluffing like your husband always is.”

Her arm moves. The shot cracks through the chamber, sharp, deafening in the enclosed space.

The beam scorches the deck right where Baines’ foot was a heartbeat earlier. He yelps and jumps back, the smugness finally breaking as the heat kisses too close for comfort. Before anyone can react, the gun is back where it started.

Her face is stone. “That,” she says quietly, “was me being polite.”

Father of Mine trembles against her, breath hitching, the reality of the situation crashing in fully now. Mother of Mine curses under her breath, gun wavering just a fraction.

“Try me again,” she says, eyes flicking to Baines. “I dare you.”

She draws a slow breath, steadying the gun, her voice low,  “This is your last warning. You will leave planet Earth, now. You take your ship and you go so far and so fast that this solar system becomes a bad memory.” Her eyes flick to each of them in turn. “What you’re doing here is a crime against a level five planet. Interference. Mass murder. Predation.”

Her jaw tightens. “And if you think feeding on what’s inside that watch makes you untouchable, if you think immortality excuses you, you’re wrong.” She leans in just enough for Father of Mine to feel it. “You’ll be criminals; the Shadow Proclamation doesn’t care how long you live. It only cares how loudly you scream when it catches you.”

For a heartbeat, she expects something like fear, calculation, or hesitation. She gets none. Baines just smiles like she’s explained a rule they never intended to follow.

Mother of Mine scoffs, curling her lip. “Empty threats.” Daughter of Mine watches silently, head tilted, curiosity outweighing caution.

Their arrogance doesn’t shock her. “Right,” she murmurs, more to herself than to them. “I did try.”

She makes the decision in a single, terrible heartbeat. Mother of Mine first, she’s furthest from her, but she’s armed. Then Baines. Then the child. Clark last, keep him breathing, keep him between her and the rest of them. 

It doesn’t feel good, it feels heavy and wrong and necessary all at once. Better them than him. Better this than the village burning. Better blood on her hands than on John’s conscience.

Her finger tightens.

“Stop!” The voice echoes into the room. “Wait, please!”

Her breath catches. Her head snaps toward the entrance, horror flooding her face so fast it almost knocks her off balance.

John Smith.

He’s stumbling through the open hatch, breathless, hair wild, eyes bright with panic and resolve all tangled together. He looks out of place in this green-lit nightmare.

For a split second, she forgets to breathe.

“How-” she whispers, aghast. How did he find them?

Behind her, the Family of Blood reacts not with fear, but delight.

Baines’ grin spreads slow and satisfied. Mother of Mine laughs softly under her breath. Even the child tilts her head, curious.

“Well,” Baines murmurs, pleased. “How thoughtful of you to bring him to us.”

Her heart drops into her stomach.

“John,” she says sharply, without turning fully away from the Family, gun still locked on Father of Mine. “You were supposed to stay hidden.”

He swallows, stepping closer despite the danger screaming from every surface. “I couldn’t,” he says hoarsely. “I couldn’t just sit there and wait while you- while you did this alone.”

John takes another step toward her. He sees it all now, the way she’s braced, the way Father of Mine is locked against her chest, the gun pressed to his skull. He doesn’t know how close they were to dying, doesn’t know how steady her hand had been a second ago.

“Please,” he says, breathless, panic scraping his throat raw. “Just- just leave her alone. You don’t need to do this.”

He moves too fast. His foot catches on something, maybe the uneven deck, maybe his own shaking legs, and he stumbles. He throws out a hand to catch himself against the wall, hand brushing over the scale-like levers that stud the surface.

John freezes, startled, hand still on the wall. “I-I’m sorry-”

Mother of Mine turns slowly, head tilting as she sniffs the air, lips curling in something like amusement, “Oh, you can smell it, can’t you, family of mine?” she says lazily, eyes raking over him. “Still human.”

Baines laughs, soft and cruel. “You ran all this way just to beg? How sweet.”

She speaks sharply, ready to drag him back by force if she has to, “John, listen to me-”

He doesn’t; he interrupts her to address the Family, “I don’t know what’s going on,” he says, breathless but clear. “I don’t understand any of this. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Baines’ smile widens, delighted.

John swallows and keeps going. “But I know people are dying. Innocent people. And it has to stop.”

Mother of Mine scoffs, amused. “Oh, he is sweet.”

John ignores her, too. “I don’t care about the Doctor,” he says, the words landing like a knife she feels in her ribs. “I don’t care about any of it. I just want you to leave.”

He reaches into his pocket, and her heart stops.

“No!” she shouts, voice cracking as she twists, trying to reach him while still holding Father of Mine pinned. “John, don’t you dare- don’t- run!”

He pulls out the watch.

“This is what you want,” he says, holding it out, arm trembling. “You can have it. It’s yours if you agree to leave her alone. Leave everyone alone. Get off this planet and never come back.”

The ship seems to hold its breath. Baines’ eyes gleam. Mother of Mine’s smile turns predatory. Even Daughter of Mine leans forward slightly, curious. Her grip on Father of Mine tightens involuntarily, gun pressing harder to his skull.

“John,” she pleads now, raw and unguarded. “Please. You don’t know what you’re giving them. You don’t know what that will do.”

He finally looks at her then, and the guilt in his eyes guts her.

“I know you’re doing this for me,” he whispers. His mouth trembles, but he keeps the watch extended. “And I can’t let you die for it.”

The Family watches them like it’s the finest entertainment they’ve had in centuries.

Baines extends his hand slowly, theatrically, like he’s doing John a kindness. John takes a step forward, as he passes her, his shoulder brushes the wall, and his shoulder catches on another row of the scale-like levers.

Baines snatches the watch from John’s hand. For a heartbeat, the universe narrows to that small, silver object resting in his palm. He turns it, admiring the weight of it. All four of them stare, like hungry vultures. 

Baines suddenly grabs John by the collar and yanks him close, face inches away, eyes never leaving the watch. “Don’t be stupid,” he murmurs. “Handing this over doesn’t save your life.”

He shoves John back hard.

John slams into the wall, wind knocked clean out of him, boots skidding. As he goes down, his hands scrape across the protruding levers, click, click, clack, a discordant chorus as systems shift and re-route without permission.

She moves instantly.

Her foot snaps into Clark’s knee again, hard enough to drop him with a howl. She releases him without a second thought and rushes to John, fear slicing through her chest.

“John-” She drops beside him, hands already on his shoulders, checking his head, his ribs, his arms. “Are you hurt? Tell me where it hurts.”

He coughs, shakes his head, then reaches for her instead, hands framing her face in panic. “Are you- did they-”

“I’m fine,” she snaps under her breath, equal parts relief and fury. “You absolute idiot.” She hauls him up, tucking him tight against her side, one arm locked around his back like she can shield him by will alone. He clings to her for a moment, then steadies, keeping a protective hand at her waist even now.

Across the chamber, the Family gathers closer around the watch. They don’t look at the humans anymore. They’re too busy basking, heads inclined, breathing slow and satisfied, sharing a silent, triumphant communion as Baines turns the watch in his hand like a crown.

“Finally, the lives of a Time Lord will be ours.” Baines murmurs, almost ceremonial. He flips the watch open like it’s nothing, just greedy confidence.

All four of them inhale. Desperate breaths, chests expanding as they try to drink in whatever should pour out, power, light, immortality, victory.

Nothing happens. The air stays dead and still. For one strange, suspended second, no one speaks. Then every head snaps toward John at once.

“It’s empty!” Baines snarls, fury exploding through his voice. “You lied to us!”

John stares back at them, wide-eyed, breath shallow, utterly lost. “What, no-”

The librarian’s face twists, fear flashing first, then confusion. She stares at the open watch in Baines’s hand like it’s the most fascinating puzzle she’s ever seen, mind racing, gears spinning so fast she almost forgets to breathe.

“That’s not possible,” she whispers.

John swallows hard, voice trembling as he forces the question out. “Where- where is it?” He looks at the watch. 

“You tell me!” Baines snaps, fury curdling into panic as he hurls the watch across the chamber.

John catches it without even looking, and everything about him changes. His shoulders square, his spine straightens. The frantic tremor drains out of him like dust in space pulled by gravity. Then he sighs, equal parts amusement and disappointment.

“Oh,” he says mildly. “That’s embarrassing.” He rolls the watch in his hands, thumbs flicking over the casing with unconscious familiarity, already half-dismantling it. “You really did think it was that simple.”

The Family of Blood stares at him, bewildered.

“Olfactory misdirection, like ventriloquism of the nose. It’s very elementary in some parts of the galaxy.” He looks genuinely amused as he fiddles with the mechanism.

The Doctor squeezes her arm once, then lets go and steps forward. He reaches into his coat pocket, the watch disappearing as his fingers come back with a familiar pair of glasses. He slips them on, the gesture casual, almost fond.

“Right,” he mutters, already pacing. He moves through the chamber with easy confidence, eyes scanning the walls, the ducts, the cables that snake like veins through the ship’s bones. His wife watches him go, still catching up, recognizing this rhythm. The way his mind unfolds when there’s a problem to solve and monsters foolish enough to stand nearby.

“It has got to be said,” he remarks conversationally, peering up, “I don’t like the look of that hydrokinometer.”

The Family’s heads follow his gaze despite themselves. High above, tucked along the ceiling, a cluster of pipes pulses faintly.

“And that,” he continues, strolling beneath it, “seems to be indicating you’ve got energy feedback feeding all the way through the retrostabilisers-” he gestures vaguely, “feeding back into the primary heat converters.” He stops beside one of those converters, leaning casually against it, and gives it two sharp knocks with his knuckles.

Tok. Tok. The sound echoes.

“Oh!” He straightens suddenly, eyebrows lifting in exaggerated, mocking alarm. Then he turns back to them, and the sarcasm drains from his face. “Because if there’s one thing you really shouldn’t have done,” he says quietly, shaking his head once, “You shouldn’t have let me press all those buttons.”

The ship responds.

A deep, resonant thrum rolls through the deck, lights flaring brighter, systems whining as power surges where it shouldn’t. The Family of Blood stares at him in stunned silence now. Predators are realizing the trap has closed on them instead.

He steps back to her side, fingers sliding into hers, but doesn’t look away from Baines, Son of Mine.

“But, in fairness,” he says mildly, almost kindly, “I will give you one word of advice.”

His face splits into a wide, delighted grin. “Run.”

He yanks her with him, and they move, feet pounding against the deck as alarms erupt all at once. Red light floods the ship, drowning out the sickly green, sirens screaming in protest as systems overload and fail spectacularly.

Behind them, she hears Baines shout, voice sharp with panic. “Out out!”

They burst through the entrance and sprint into Cooper’s Field, grass whipping at their legs as the night air slams into their lungs. She laughs, keeping pace with him as best she can. “I just want you to know,” she shouts over the alarms and the roar, “I have never been more attracted to you than when you’re showing off like this!”

He shoots her a grin without slowing, eyes bright behind his glasses. 

The Family is still running some paces behind them when the ship finally goes. The night fractures into heat and sound, a roar so loud it seems to punch the air out of her lungs.

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate to grab her as the force of it takes them both down hard into the grass. The impact knocks the breath from her chest as they hit the ground, and then he’s there one arm braced beside her head, the other curled around her shoulders, his body a shield as the blast washes over them.

Fire blooms behind them, white-hot and blinding. She squeezes her eyes shut, then risks a glance back, the light stinging tears from them even as it begins to die down into a furious, rolling flame.

He’s practically lying on top of her, hair a mess, refusing to move until the worst of it settles. And then, because she’s alive, because he’s alive, she laughs.

It bubbles out of her, breathless and half-hysterical. “You absolute idiot,” she pants, shoving weakly at his shoulder. “You scared the hell out of me!”

His face breaks into the softest smile, relief written all over it. He leans closer, forehead briefly touching hers. 

“Noted,” he says lightly. “Next time I blow something up, I’ll give you a countdown. More than five seconds sound good?”

She snorts. He chuckles and finally shifts, helping her sit up, then pulling her to her feet with hands that linger just a second longer than necessary, but he’s allowed. Then he turns.

The flames crackle behind them, casting long shadows across Cooper’s Field. A few yards back, the Family of Blood lie scattered on the ground, thrown hard by the blast

The Doctor’s expression hardens as he walks toward them, no grin now, no clever sparkle. She stays with him, shoulder to shoulder, matching his pace. The Family of Blood lie in the scorched grass, slowly pushing themselves up. One by one, they look at them.

Mother of Mine still has her gun clenched in her hand. Her face twists, shock bleeding into hatred, into the kind of rage that has nowhere left to go.

She steps forward and brings her shoe down hard on Mother of Mine’s wrist. There’s a sharp cry as fingers loosen and the gun clatters free. She bends, scoops it up, and walks a few measured steps toward the fire. Without ceremony, she tosses it into the flames. The metal vanishes with a hiss and a flare of sparks.

When she turns back, The Doctor is looking at her. The look in his eyes is something halfway between disapproval and anger, and awe and admiration. Something like joy mixed with sorrow, if there is even a word to describe the blend of the two. The look is gone almost as soon as she notices it.

His gaze drops back to the Family.

They’re scrambling now, fear finally cracking through their arrogance. Son of Mine bares his teeth, rage simmering beneath the surface. Father of Mine wheezes, clutching his side. Daughter of Mine stares up at them, silent and unreadable.

She steps closer and lays her hand gently on his arm. She’s seen that look before, after Rose. After losses, he never lets anyone see him carry. That far-away stillness, like something sharp has lodged itself behind his ribs. But this is not the moment for questions, not with them watching. 

“What now, dear?” she asks softly.

The Doctor doesn’t look at her at first. His eyes stay on the Family, on the way they huddle together in the grass, stripped of their confidence at last.

“Go back to the house,” he says quietly. “Martha and Tim will be waiting. Tell them it’s over.”

She searches his face. “And you?” He doesn’t answer. She nods once, no argument, no protest. She knows better. 

She leans up and kisses his cheek, “I love you,” she says, simply.

His eyes flick to hers for just a second, and something in his expression softens, just enough for her to see it. “I know,” he murmurs.

She turns and walks away.

The Doctor steps forward. The Family of Blood shrink back instinctively.

Son of Mine snarls. “You said you were merciful.”

“I am,” the Doctor replies calmly. “To humans.”

He crouches slightly, bringing himself level with them, his voice almost conversational now. “You wanted to live forever. So I’ll give it to you.”

Fear finally cracks through their faces.

Father of Mine screams as his body is drawn away, compressed, sealed into a living chain, bound and wrapped around by the heart of a collapsing dwarf star, where he will burn and endure and never die.

Mother of Mine is next. She vanishes in a rush of displaced air, sealed into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy. She will be imprisoned there and endure and never die.

Daughter of Mine is placed inside a mirror, every mirror. Trapped and in the background of everyone’s lives, unable to interfere, she will endure and never die.

Son of Mine is condemned to a life frozen in time, locked into a scarecrow, standing watch in an empty field, fully aware, fully alive, as centuries grind past him grain by grain. He will endure and never die.

When it’s done, the night goes quiet. The Doctor stands alone in Cooper’s Field, the fire dying behind him, the stars cold overhead. Then he turns and starts walking back toward the house, toward his wife, toward the people who are waiting for him.

Morning comes softly. The sun is hidden behind clouds that dribble raindrops here and there, like it can’t decide whether or not to commit. Morning dew covers the grass and catches the light of stubborn sunbeams that peak through, a light misty fog rolling over the hills.

She stands on the hill side alone, coat pulled tight around her, hands tucked into her sleeves against the lingering chill. Below her, the field stretches out empty and quiet, as though it has never known war or monsters or the judgment of a Time Lord.

Behind her, the Tardis rests at the tip top of the hill. Martha is already inside, warm and waiting.

Two months is all it’s been since they hid themselves away here. Since the universe narrowed down to classrooms and libraries and tea that went cold on wooden tables..

Two days since she officially met John Smith.

Since she watched him smile shyly in a hallway. Since she saw him fumble with books and stammer over invitations and look at her like she was something miraculous. Since she fell in love with him all over again.

She exhales slowly, breath fogging the air.

John Smith was real. He is real. He always was.

The Doctor appears at her side without a sound. She startles despite herself, breath hitching as she turns, then she laughs quietly, shaking her head. “Honestly,” she murmurs, half to herself. “I should get you a bell.”

He smiles at that, soft and fond, and stays where he is, shoulder to shoulder, close enough that she can feel the warmth of him without him crowding her.

She looks back out over the field for a moment, then reaches up and hooks a finger beneath the thin chain at her throat. “You’ll be wanting this back,” she says gently.

She lifts the chain over her head and lets his wedding band slide into her palm before holding it out to him. His eyes drop to it, then to her hand. She’s already wearing hers again.

He notices the way it sits there now, and how strange it had felt at first when he’d put it on. How he’d kept fidgeting with it, twisting it, adjusting it like it didn’t quite belong yet. A Time Lord indulgence in a very human symbol. But she’d smiled every time she caught him wearing it, so it was easy to get used to.

He looks up at her with a grin that’s all warmth and quiet pride, then holds out his hand, theatrically patient.

“Well?” he prompts lightly.

She snorts under her breath, utterly unsurprised by the dramatics, and steps closer. With exaggerated care, like a knight bestowing a sacred honor, she slides the ring onto his finger.

“There,” she says, finishing with a tiny flourish of her wrist. “Official.”

He flexes his fingers once, admiring it, then lets his hand fall naturally into hers. He goes quiet for a second. She can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes, ideas clicking into place faster than he can sort them. She watches him fondly, already smiling because she knows something is coming.

He looks back at her then, suddenly earnest. “Do you want to get married?”

She blinks. Then laughs, “We are married.”

He shakes his head immediately, dismissing it with a little flick of his hand, already rolling forward. “No, no- well, yes, technically, obviously. But I mean properly. The whole thing.”

She arches a brow, amused, as he launches in.

“A dress, your choice, obviously, though I reserve the right to gasp dramatically. A tux for me. Guests, well, some guests, not everyone I’ve ever met, that’d take centuries. A church, or a garden, or a cliff edge. Cliffs are nice, very dramatic. Reception, dancing, cake. Then a honeymoon, just us in the Tardis for a while.”

She doesn’t interrupt him. She just watches, eyes soft, heart full, as he talks himself in little circles about details that don’t matter at all.

Then he grimaces suddenly. “I suppose I’d need a best man.”

The way he says it, like it’s personally offensive, makes her laugh outright. He stops, mid-spiral, and looks at her. There it is, that lovesick, utterly undone expression he can’t seem to help when she’s around.

“What?” he asks, smiling helplessly. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” she says gently. “That’s why it’s adorable.”

He exhales a quiet laugh and steps closer, hands finding her waist like it’s the most natural thing in the universe. “So,” he says, softer now, “what do you think?”

Her smile softens at his words, the teasing gone. She leans into him fully now, arms sliding beneath his coat and settling around his waist. He responds without thinking, one arm drawing her in at the shoulders, protective and familiar, the other still tucked in his pocket. 

She tilts her head just enough to look up at him. “This sudden desire for a very human wedding,” she asks gently, “does it have anything to do with John Smith?”

He exhales through his nose, a quiet, rueful sound. “Yeah,” he admits. “It does.” He pulls his hand from his pocket and holds it in front of them, turning it so the ring catches the morning light.

“I’ve always loved humans,” he says, thoughtful now. “That’s no secret. Their curiosity, their stubbornness, their way of doing things that makes absolutely no sense, and yet it works. That’s why I keep coming back.”

He watches the ring as he speaks.

“When I first wore this,” he continues, “I thought it was ridiculous. Just a bit of metal, completely useless.”

She snorts softly, but he presses on.

“I still don’t really understand it,” he admits, lowering his hand again, slipping it back into his pocket. “Even after I got used to it. Even after I realised it made you smile.” He glances at her then, a little embarrassed.

“It always felt pointless. A symbol for something I already knew. I didn’t need it to know.” He pauses, then adds quietly, “But that’s the thing. Being John. . . ”

His voice softens, “Being John, I imagined a future. Watching you walk toward me in a dress, standing there and saying our vows for everyone important to witness. John cared about that.”

His arm tightens around her shoulders, just a fraction.

“And you’ve honoured my ways,” he says. “So I want to honour yours,” he finishes. “If you’ll let me.”

She snorts softly and looks up at him, eyes bright with affection. “You’re an idiot,” she tells him fondly, “if you think I’d ever pass up the chance to marry you all over again.”

His grin is immediate, wide and cheeky. He doesn’t even hesitate, just leans down and steals a quick, warm smooch.

Her voice is quiet when she asks it, careful, like she’s afraid the question itself might hurt him. “Did John have a right to be scared?”

He blinks, thrown for a moment, and she rushes to explain, words tumbling out before she can stop them. That she thought it would be like remembering, like waking up. Not like being replaced. That she’d told him he wasn’t dying, that he was real, that he’d still exist somehow, and what if she was wrong? What if she’d given him hope that wasn’t fair?

The thought twists her stomach. 

He listens without interrupting, face softening with every word. When she finally trails off, he exhales slowly, long and measured, like he’s choosing how much truth to give without breaking her heart.

“Yes,” he says gently. “He did.”

She looks up at him, eyes searching.

He shifts his weight, thoughtful. “Regeneration’s the closest thing I can compare it to,” he continues. “When I change, I’m still me. Same memories, same core. But I’m not the man I was before. Not really.”

“The man you met first, the face before this one, he’s gone. Not dead. Just not the one steering anymore. He’s still part of me, all of them are. Buried layers. Echoes.”

His gaze returns to hers.

“John Smith is like that,” he says softly. “He wasn’t erased, he was folded away. Dormant. Still in here.” 

She nods slowly, breathing easier now. “So he’s still there?” she asks.

He smiles, small and reassuring. “Somewhere,” He nods, “he always will be.”

She hesitates before asking, thumb tracing the seam of his coat. “Are you afraid when you regenerate?”

He’s quiet for a beat, then nods. “Every time,” he says honestly. “It’s terrifying.”

She blinks. “But you didn’t seem scared last time. When I saw it.”

He gives a small, wry smile. “That’s because by the time it happens, theres no point in cryin when your aleady.” He exhales. “The worst part is watching people decide whether they still know you. Whether they still want you.”

Her brow furrows. He goes on, gentler now.

“I’ve had people pull away. Treat me differently. Like I’m a stranger pretending to be someone they knew.” His shoulders lift in a small shrug. “I’ve lost relationships that way. They couldn’t make peace with the change.”

She frowns deeply at that, almost offended on his behalf. “I don’t understand that at all.”

He looks at her then, like the answer to an unspoken question has just confirmed itself. His smile turns warm. “I know,” he says softly. “That’s one of the many reasons you’re extraordinary.”

Then, inevitably, his eyes sparkle.

“Also,” he adds, tone shifting, “you stayed exactly the same.”

She narrows her eyes. “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he says brightly, “your interest in me remained hilariously obvious.”

Her mouth falls open. “Excuse you.”

“Oh, come on,” he laughs. “From the start, you fancied me.” He teased with a sing-song tone.

She scoffs, pushing at him. “I was not obvious. And I was certainly not desperate as you make it sound.”

He tilts his head, considering. “I think I recal a time where you .”

“That proves nothing.”

He pivots smoothly, that familiar glint in his eye returning as he nudges the moment lighter. “You know,” he says, pretending to ponder, “you were remarkably protective. Borderline alarming, really.” He gives her a sideways look. “All that glaring and threatening and gun-wielding.”

She scoffs, “Oh, don’t even start, I hated every second. Never make me do that again. I don’t know how you manage everytime.”

“Well,” He grins, “ I do make it look easy.”

She snorts. “You make it look good, too.”

That earns her a slow, knowing smirk. He very much picks up what she’s putting down.

“Mm,” he hums. “Can’t argue with that. You were very impressive back there. You know. Holding a man hostage, quoting the Articals of the Shadow Proclamation like you wrote it yourself.”

She arches a brow. “Oh?”

“I don’t usually go for violent tactics,” he continues lightly, “got my reasons. But something about that fire in you when you were protecting me-” He shrugs, smile crooked. “I almost didn’t mind the gun.”

She laughs, warm and a little breathless. “Almost?”

“Well,” he says, leaning closer, voice lower now, playful but sincere, “let’s just say it was unexpectedly hot.”

“Careful,” she warns. “You’re encouraging bad behavior.”

He kisses her without warning. It’s instinctive, pure reflex, like he’s been holding it back for hours and finally gave up pretending he could. She startles only for a heartbeat before smiling into it, shifting from his side to step fully in front of him, fitting herself into his space like she’s always known where she belongs.

His hand slips from his pocket, joining the other to cradle her face, thumbs warm at her jaw. He kisses her slowly, unhurried, like he’s memorising her all over again.

She pulls back just enough to breathe. He doesn’t let her go far, stealing soft kisses at the corner of her mouth, at her cheek, patient and teasing, until she laughs under her breath and leans back in on her own terms.

She sighs against him, content, arms slipping beneath his coat to find warmth, her hands rubbing slow circles at his back. The familiarity of it settles him. He hums quietly, pleased, a sound that vibrates between them, and nudges at her lip with a gentle flick of his tongue that makes her smile before she gives in.

Somewhere off to the side, there’s the unmistakable sound of the Tardis door opening, a sharp intake of breath, then the door shuts again with a decisive thunk, as if Martha decided, quite wisely, to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

She grins against him, warmth blooming in her chest. Pulling back just enough to look up at him, she tilts her head toward the blue box. “You know,” she murmurs, amused, “we are very much in public.”

He follows her gaze, then looks back at her with zero remorse and a glint of mischief. “Oh, please,” he says lightly. “You started it.”

“I absolutely did not-”

He doesn’t let her finish, leaning in and chasing her lips with a teasing kiss that makes her laugh despite herself. “Started it,” he repeats smugly, brushing another quick kiss against her mouth. She shakes her head, smiling, hands curling into his coat again as she dodges just enough to make him work for it. 

He exhales slowly, the sound heavy in his chest, and when he looks at her again it’s that look. The look he'd given her the night before, when the world was ending, when he was proud of her and furious with fate all at once. When he looked at her like being with her was both the best thing he’d ever done and the cruelest trick the universe had ever played on him.

Her smile falters, she almost asks what’s wrong, but he speaks first.

“I love you.”

She just stares at him, wide-eyed. Breath caught somewhere it won’t move from, because the Doctor doesn’t say that.

He never has, not to her knowlage. Not out loud, instead he shows it with an action that speaks louder than words ever could. He knows too well what love costs. He knows how long it lasts for him, and how briefly it lasts for everyone else. He’s buried too many people who mattered. Watched too many futures end.

The Doctor shows love. He never names it.

And yet here he is, standing in the morning light, ring warm on his finger, saying the one word he’s sworn off across centuries.

Her lips part, but no sound comes out.

“John loved you just as much as I do,” he says, voice low, honest. “More, maybe, because he didn’t have centuries of loss teaching him how to brace for it. He was fascinated by you. Every little thing. The way you spoke, the way you moved through a room, the way you looked at him like he mattered.”

His thumbs trace slow, reverent paths along her cheeks as he speaks, grounding himself in the feel of her.

“He was intoxicated by you,” he admits, a soft, almost fond smile tugging at his mouth. “Thought about you constantly. Woke up from dreams where you were his wife, where he already had everything, and felt jealous of his own dreams.” A quiet breath of a laugh. “Imagine that. Jealous of himself.”

She melts against him, forehead resting to his chest now, arms slipping around his waist as if she might fall if she doesn’t hold on.

“John loved you more than anything,” he continues. “That feeling didn’t disappear when he did. I feel what he felt, what he wanted.”

His voice falters, “And before this face,” he says softly, “before I regenerated, the last thing that man felt was regret. Knowing he’d never said it. Knowing he’d never get the chance to be the one to tell you.”

Her breath catches.

“That regret lives in me too,” he says. He leans his forehead to hers, eyes closed now, stroking her cheeks like he’s memorizing her.

“I didn’t want to risk it happening again,” he confesses. “I didn’t want to be pushed aside and let some future version of me, some stranger in my place, be the one who finally says it. If he ever does.”

He opens his eyes and looks at her, vulnerable in a way only she ever sees.

“I wanted it to be me,” he says. “This version. This body. This moment. I wanted you to know.”

She’s swooning now, heart full to bursting, fingers clutching at his coat as if he’s the only solid thing left in the universe.

She tilts her face up to his, eyes shining. “I already knew,” she whispers. He exhales, relief and love and centuries of restraint loosening all at once, and pulls her fully into his arms, chin resting ontop of her head. 

She presses her face into the warm curve of his neck, voice muffled there, breath tickling his skin when she speaks, “I love you too.”

She stays there a moment, arms snug around him, before lifting her head just enough to ask, quietly, “Do you remember what I said to John? About him being the same man, just without remembering it?”

He nods, “I remember,” he says gently.

She pulls back just enough to look at him, eyes earnest. “I still see it that way,” she tells him. “You’ve got differences, sure. Different habits, but you’ve been the same man since the day I met you. This face. Another one. Or John Smith.” She smiles softly. “It’s still you.”

He knows she means it to comfort him. He feels the care in every word, the deliberate kindness of it, and that effort alone warms something deep in his chest. But it doesn’t change the truth he carries. Not entirely.

Then her expression shifts, playful now, and she adds lightly, “That said, this version is my favorite. Just don’t tell the others.”

He laughs, real and bright, the sound slipping free before he can stop it. “Oh, absolutely not. They’re already insufferable.”

She grins at him, pleased she got that laugh, and he leans in to press a kiss into her hair, holding her a little tighter. Grateful, even if the comfort isn’t complete, for the way she always tries to make space for him exactly as he is.

“You done snogging?” Martha’s voice carries from the open doors of the Tardis, dry as ever.

They both freeze for half a second, then turn toward her at the same time and break into identical, sheepish grins. He clears his throat, suddenly very interested in anything that isn’t eye contact. She laughs under her breath, cheeks warm, and reluctantly lets go of his coat.

“Honestly,” Martha adds, arms folded, unimpressed but not unkind. “You two are unbelievable.”

“Oh, she’s my wife, I'm allowed,” he shoots back lightly, guiding his wife toward the ship. “And it’s called affection.”

“It’s called clingy,” Martha counters, stepping back to give them room. “Chronically so.”

She snorts. “You love it.”

Martha rolls her eyes but steps aside, letting them pass. “Yeah, yeah. I love having to brun the image out of my retnas.” But she’s smiling, greatful her two closest friends are safe.

They board the Tardis together, fingers brushing, laughter still soft between them as the doors close behind. The blue box hums warmly, familiar and alive, like she was excited to show them what waited next.

Earth-616. They were lucky enough to land within the protected perimeter of the Avengers compound. Alarms had flared, and Stark AI systems immediately flagged their arrival as potential incursion, until Bucky, who was currently manning the base while the other Avengers were away, recognized their signatures. He had seen versions of them before. Well, sort of.

“Facial recognition in progress. Welcome, Jonathan Storm, Susan Storm, Reed Richards, Benjamin Grimm. Earth-828 identifiers not found in multiversal registry. Alert: cross-dimensional duplicates confirmed.”

“Facility overseer: Dr. Stark, Stark Industries Executive Director.”

You’ve always had a main conference room reserved on the 41st floor of the Stark Tower—sleek glass walls, walnut wood table stretching across the length of the room, and a buzzing holographic projection of global networks, economic forecasts, and defense analytics. The kind of environment you thrived in. A structured chaos, numbers and negotiations, walls that are tall enough to keep emotions out.

You had just shut down an aggressive pitch from a foreign investor, when your phone lit up on silent mode, flashing a name you rarely ignored. Bucky Barnes—very few people could pull you out of a board meeting, and he was one of them. You calmly and professionally excused yourself, and stepped out into the hallway, your heels clicking against the polished marble floors. You pressed the phone to your ear.

“Barnes?”

Bucky’s voice had that clipped tension you had come to know and recognize right away from past emergencies. “You need to get to the compound. ASAP. Something…or someone showed up. Four of them. Not exactly hostile, but not from here either.”

“And dad?” Your eyes narrowed slightly.

“Still off-world. Cap, Romanoff, Barton, Wanda, everyone’s out. It’s just me here, and them.”

“Alright, I’ll be there in ten, tops.”

That was enough to convince you to go back to the compound. You pivoted, already striding towards your own designated elevator, tailored blazer moving with each swift step. You didn't know then that in a different universe, you had died in Johnny Storm’s arms, and you also didn't know that he would crawl into this one.

The drive to the compound was a big blur of the city lights and thoughts. FRIDAY updated you the en-route, inter-dimensional signatures detected, arrivals confirmed not to be hostile, communications disrupted. Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm—names you recognized from archived reports, not from this universe, but recognized them nonetheless.

Inter-dimensional incursions were not new to you anymore. The multiverse was a broken glass pane, cracked and scattered, forever shifting. But what matters the most was what, or rather who, fell through. By the time you stepped into the compound hangar, Bucky was already waiting. Dog tags, fitted tactical shirt, arms crossed, his vibranium arm flexed as though he was already on edge.

“They’re in the east wing.” Bucky muttered, walking beside you.

“Any aggression?”

“The stretchy one keeps talking science. The rock guy hasn't smashed anything. The woman’s assessing the area, and the fourth one…” he paused briefly. “He’s loud and impatient.”

You entered the main holding room, but it was more like a debrief lounge at this point—bright lights, reinforced walls, and monitors overhead. Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny turned simultaneously when you stepped in, confident and composed—Stark blood running through your veins. Commanding without even trying.

Reed tilted his head lightly, Sue regarded you with both caution and familiarity, Ben grunted something unintelligible under his breath, and Johnny…Johnny went still. You felt it, but you didn't know it, at least not yet. Still, there’s something about the way his expression crumbled for a split second, how his chest stilled and shoulders locked. It was as if the world had stopped rotating for him, and only to restart violently seconds later.

Grief really had a funny way of burning someone alive from the inside out. Johnny had seen your face a thousand times inside his dreams, broken memories, photographs that he could no longer bear to look at. In his universe, you had always been his everything—best friend, fiancée, and the woman who had seen through his flashy charm and fire-wielding ego, but most importantly, the man who could barely sit still long enough to talk about his feelings. You had called him out on his recklessness, you were the one who grounded him.

You had saved him, until he could not save you.

In his universe, he watched you die in his arms minutes before your wedding. He was too late. Johnny never forgave himself for what had happened, and he swore that he would never love anyone again. But now, here you were. Standing before him in a pressed charcoal suit, your Stark Industries pin clipped to your lapel, posture sharp and assertive. Your eyes, while familiar, did not carry the softness that haunted his memories.

You didn't know him. Not at all.

Johnny didn't even blink, and you had no idea why. You didn't even flinch, just crossed your arms slightly, assessing the four of them.

“I’m here on behalf of Stark Industries and the Avengers initiative,” you said calmly. “You are no longer in your home dimension. Earth-616, to be exact.”

Reed stepped forward. “That would explain the shift in vibrational frequency. I’m Dr. Reed Richards, and—”

“I know who you are,” your tone was polite, efficient, but firm. “My father had catalogued the Fantastic Four from multiple universes. Your presence here is abnormal, to say the least, but not entirely surprising.”

Sue exchanged a look with Reed, and Ben shrugged. But Johnny had not moved an inch. His eyes were fixed—burning, with something that is unspoken. Something that is agonizing. He took a shaky breath, stepping forward as though drawn to you by some invisible tether.

“You…” it spilled out of Johnny’s mouth. Barely a whisper, almost like a prayer.

You turned your gaze to him fully then. Johnny’s face—handsome, disheveled, bright blue eyes, and blonde hair slightly askew from whatever chaos they had come through. He looked at you with a strange devastation.

Johnny took another step, his voice breaking a little, with Bucky shifting closer, protective by default. “You’re alive…”

You raised a brow at him. “I don’t believe we have met before.”

Johnny blinked harshly, like he was holding back a tidal wave. He gave a small broken chuckle, but it was devoid of humor, only grief. “Yeah, we have. Or we had.”

“You must be confusing me with somebody else.” You said, remained composed, even as you felt something heavy settled inside the room.

Reed spoke up softly, cautiously. “Johnny, don’t.”

“You…you died in my arms. I couldn't save you,” his voice was raw, hands trembling. But Johnny didn't stop looking at you. “And you’re here. You’re…here. Alive and well.”

Sue closed her eyes briefly as though she had already witnessed this scene before. You inhaled slowly, calm but not cold. You glanced back at Bucky. There was a flash of concern in his eyes—he knew loss, and had recognized it immediately.

You turned back, locking eyes with Johnny. “I…I’m sorry about whatever had happened. But I’m not her.”

Johnny’s jaw clenched, but nodded slowly. It was a tough pill to swallow. “I know,” his voice was a broken whisper. “But you look exactly like her.”

In the silence that followed, you softened, just slightly. There was a small shift in your tone. “I understand. This must be very difficult for you.”

He laughed—painfully, soft, and reverent. “You have no idea.”

You eventually initiated the logistics—secure housing, containment, and possible ways to return them to Earth-828. Reed gave all the data needed as possible, Sue collaborated, while Ben asked about the whole place. Johnny remained mostly silent, but always near you—watching and haunted.

It was already late when the team arrived, finally back from their off-world assignment. The quinjet had landed just before midnight, kicking up a storm of dust and loose papers across the landing pad. But you did not need a visual, you already knew that they were here.

You waited exactly twelve minutes before heading down. The lights in the hallways were dimmed at night, polished steel and glass of the compound washed in cool, bluish tones, corridor screens still displayed Stark Industries dashboards—satellite updates, global activity patterns, neutral-linked alerts that are synced to your personal feed. The soft hum of machinery surrounding you—familiar and efficient.

When you reached the briefing room, the doors slid open automatically. The mood inside was markedly relaxed, war was over—for now. Whatever battle they had just returned from must have ended in their favor. There was no tension lingering in the air, only the calm disarray that followed adrenaline. The energy was warm, familiar—low laughter, scattered banter, bodies slouched in chairs, and armor half removed. Some had ditched their gear entirely.

They all looked up when you entered the room.

You quickly scanned the room quickly—Steve was leaning back in his seat, forearms resting on his thighs; Natasha stood behind him, arms folded, and a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth; Rhodey was beside Wanda, both of them in quiet conversation; Vision stood off to the side, as if waiting say his thoughts or opinions; Sam was perched casually near the end of the table; and both Bruce and Clint were in the middle of arguing over some minor mission detail. The only one that was not around was Thor, but you already knew he had returned to Asgard for a matter involving the bifrost.

Then there was your father. Tony was standing near the head of the table, his arc reactor glowing faintly beneath his black tactical undershirt, a half-empty espresso in one hand and a proud, tired grin on his face. You walked up to him, professional as ever despite the familial bond.

“Welcome back.”

“Hey, kiddo.” Tony said affectionately, arms open in invitation.

You allowed yourself the briefest lapse in composure, leaning in for a side hug, letting your hand rest on his back. Tony pressed a warm kiss to your temple, a gesture so casual, and deeply familiar that no one inside the room batted an eye.

“You cut another meeting short, didn't you?” He muttered low enough that only you could hear.

“Well I had to, Bucky called.”

“Always dragging you out of your high towers, huh?”

“Only when there’s something important,” you replied, pulling away from the side hug. “And this time, it was.”

“Alright, show me.” Tony’s tone shifted immediately to something serious.

“FRIDAY, let’s begin.” You turned towards the front of the room, and FRIDAY’s interface lit up at your voice command.

The room became silent as the lights dimmed, and the circular holographic projection table came alive, bathing the center of the room in cool light and flickering motion. You did not use the scripts, you didn't need them. You spoke clearly, posture straight, hands resting lightly on the edge of the table as you walked them through everything.

“Earlier today, four individuals arrived through what Dr. Reed Richards had identified it as an unstable inter-dimensional rift. Their molecular and vibrational signatures match that of Earth-828. They are currently contained and housed on-site under temporary status.”

A glowing map of the multiverse expanded across the table, folding over itself with rings and constellations of data. Earth-616 was centered in blue, while Earth-828 glowed in red.

“They call themselves the Fantastic Four. Their existence had been recorded in multiple other universes, though this is the first instance of confirmed cross-universal physical entry into our dimension from their team.” You continued.

FRIDAY had projected high resolution images; Reed’s molecular stretch in motion, Sue’s brief invisibility flicker, Ben’s stone form, and lastly, Johnny, surrounded by flame, hovering in the air with smoldering eyes. You noticed that from the corner of your version, Bruce’s interest.

“They are not hostile,” you clarified. “At least not at this time. Bucky did an initial assessment, and I’ve already spoken to all four.”

“They crash land into our universe and get a five star welcome?” Clint quipped, scratching his chin.

“They didn't crash,” you corrected. “They were pulled. They’re as stranded as anyone would be in their situation.”

Natasha stepped forward. “Do we know what caused the rift?”

“No, not yet,” you replied honestly. “Dr. Richards has a working theory involving harmonic convergence across layered multiversal tears, and one of those may involve our own previously recorded incursions.”

You paused. Then, with a subtle flick of your fingers across the hologram’s edge, you pulled up the compound’s schematics. “I’ve assigned them quarters in the east wing, and they’re secured. Not cells, but isolated enough that we can monitor movement and communication without giving them the impression of imprisonment.”

Rhodey let out a low whistle. “You did all that on your own?”

“I didn't think it's wise to wait for everyone to get back before making the decision.” You said plainly.

Steve nodded in approval. “Good call.”

“I also figured Bruce and Ben would either kill each other or get along splendidly,” you quipped with a faint smile. “So they’re currently as far from each other as the architecture allows.”

A ripple of low laughter passed around the table. Bruce glanced up with a soft smile. “What’s he like?”

“Gruff,” you said. “Surprisingly perceptive.”

“And the others?” Wanda spoke softly from her place near the corner.

“Well, Dr. Richards is brilliant, the kind of mind that could rebuild the whole compound from scratch with a coffee and screwdriver. Susan Storm has tactical precision, she’s already been memorizing layout grids. Then Johnny Storm…” you stopped yourself, a pause. Just long enough for Tony to glance at you. “Johnny Storm has a unique energy, one we should keep an eye on.”

“Flaming hothead,” Bucky offered dryly from the back of the room. “In every sense.”

You didn't bother to correct him, and you didn't speak again for a moment.

Tony folded his arms. “And you’re sure they’re not a threat?”

“If they were, we’d already know by now.” You met his gaze. “They’re shaken, stranded. But I believe they’re sincere.”

Another beat of silence passed. Then, FRIDAY’s voice filled the room. “Would you like me to archive the debrief for full internal access?”

“Yes,” you replied. “Log everything under multiversal priority class. Assign all access clearance to Level 4 and above. Thank you, FRIDAY.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Stark.”

The projection faded, and the room slowly returned to its normal brightness. You took a moment to glance around familiar faces. The family you didn't choose, but in some ways, had grown into. The world was always changing, but this room remained constant, and you took pride in that. However, you remained quiet and stood by the projection table. You could feel her eyes on you before she even spoke. Wanda.

Wanda hadn't moved, nor laughed. Hadn't looked away from you since the moment you faltered during your rundown of the Fantastic Four. Her gaze was calm but piercing, like there was some unspoken understanding etched behind her irises.

A quiet voice in your mind sighed, “you shouldn't be surprised.”

You quickly shot her a glance, lips were still. Wanda hadn't said anything aloud, she didn't need to. It was both a blessing and a curse for you, being known so easily by someone like her. You met her eyes just for a second, Wanda didn't press, at least not yet. But you knew she knew what was running through your mind.

You cleared your throat, drawing the room’s attention again before anyone could fully disperse. “There’s…” you trailed off. “There’s one more thing.”

The tone in your voice was measured with control, you slightly shifted in your balance, and put both hands inside the pockets of your trousers. Your action no doubt pulled everyone’s attention back to you instantly. Your father raised a brow, Natasha tilted her head, Bruce paused mid-step, Sam eased back down into his seat, and Wanda stayed motionless.

Like the good old fashioned way a Stark would break a news, you gave it to them straight.

“There’s a minor issue,” you kept your tone even, professional, though your fingers subtly tapped against the table’s edge. Once, twice, and a third time before you forced them still. “It concerns Johnny Storm.”

There was a sudden flicker of alertness around the room, like soldiers instinctively tightening their grip on imaginary weapons.

“He’s not dangerous,” you clarified quickly. “None of them are, that hasn't changed. But Johnny Storm recognized me somehow.”

“According to what I had gathered from Reed and Johnny himself, my counterpart was a significant person in his life.”

A beat passed, then you said it softly but clearly. It was a truth that felt so foreign and yet inexplicably close.

“In their universe, my counterpart was his fiancée.”

The room went very still, but you kept speaking, voice steady even as your heart betrayed you with its weight. “We were told that we were supposed to get married, but I died minutes before the ceremony. Johnny wasn't able to save her in time.”

You didn't add the rest, not aloud. You didn't say how broken Johnny looked the moment he saw you. How he said your name like it was the last thing anchoring him to reality. How your presence seemed to rip open something deep inside of him. Instead, you forced the breath out of your lungs.

“That’s why he looked at me like that, like I was a ghost. Well I’m not her, obviously. But I think seeing me like this—alive, here, breathing. It was disorienting for him. That’s all.”

Clint leaned back slightly, arms folded. “Damn.”

“That…” Bruce trailed off, frowning thoughtfully, half processing the emotional and multiversal implications. “That kind of trauma layered with alternate universe memory, that’s—”

“Dangerous,” Natasha finished, sharp-eyed. “Not just for this Johnny guy, but for her too.”

Wanda’s voice finally entered the conversation, soft and certain. “It’s not just a memory, he feels it. Every single part of it.” She turned her head towards you slowly, “you’re feeling it too.”

Your fingers curled subtly against the side of the table. Wanda didn't need to ask for permission, she never did because she already knew. Wanda had seen the thoughts that you tried to suppress, like static behind your composure. Not longing or recognition, none of those, but something shaken. Like there was a part of yourself that was trying to remember a dream that somebody else lived. You looked away from her, then back towards the rest of the room.

“But he’s not a threat,” you said again. “He hasn't done anything inappropriate—no aggression, no pushing boundaries. He’s just grieving, and that’s all this is. It does not compromise anything.”

Sam leaned forward. “And you? You good with this?”

“I don’t have a personal attachment, I don’t know him.” You said straightforwardly. “But I understand that for him, this might be difficult. So we treat it like any other psychological impact of multiversal travel. We keep boundaries, we observe.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Rhodey asked gently.

“Yes, and if anything changes, I’ll report it right away. But for now, we give him space, and treat him like we’d want to be treated if our world shattered beneath our feet.”

Your father clapped his hands once, decisively. “Alright, we’ll monitor the situation. But good call telling us, kiddo.”

“Guy crosses universes just to find out his fiancée is alive somewhere else. That’s heavy.” Clint quipped.

“Yeah,” Bucky muttered from behind him, arms crossed. “It is.”

You began collecting your datapad and hologrid controls. One by one, they gathered their gear, drifting out into the corridors with quiet goodnights or murmurs about late night snacks, showers, or sleep. Steve gave you a gentle pat on the shoulder as he passed, Clint threw you a crooked smile, and Bruce placed a hand on your back in a familiar gesture of calm reassurance as he walked past. Your father, Tony, gave you a hug—that fatherly kind, and told him that everything’s okay. Finally, the room emptied until it was just you and Wanda left. She stepped closer to you, voice low.

“I can help, if you want,” she said softly. “I can block him out, or help you anchor yourself if it ever feels too much.”

“Thank you, Wanda.” You replied softly. “I may take you up on that.”

Wanda touched your arm once more, and then slipped out of the room, leaving you and your thoughts alone again. You rubbed at your temple, the lights were low and the room was quiet.

You should get some sleep, you know that, considering you have an early morning meeting with a new investor. Yet, as you stood there all alone in the darkened debriefing room, your mind drifted unwillingly to Johnny again—to the way his voice trembled, the way he said that you died in my arms.

You were not her, but somehow, you felt haunted.

1. Who’s the Cute Boy in the White Jacket?

2. I Can Scratch His Back But He Can Claw Mine

3. Lock Me Down Tonight

4.Jacked and Kind

5.That’s That Me Espresso

6. Don’t Embarrass Me Motherfucker

7. Stay in My Good Graces

8. Paintings With His Tongue

˖⋆࿐໋

a rainbow of silks are spread across your bed as you try to figure out what to wear tonight. if your mother was here, she would know exactly what would look best on you. it's only been three months since her passing yet the ache in your chest grows stronger day by day.

"what are you thinking of wearing tonight?" your aunt asks, lingering in the doorway.

"i'm not sure yet." you sigh, picking at the pretty gowns. "i like the light blue one."

arguably, it was the prettiest in the pile. so simple, you hoped to blend in among the wash of colors in the room tonight. the boning of the corset poked the left side of your ribs a little but beauty is pain.

as you got ready, the nerves started to kick in. by now you should be on your second or third child and pregnant with the next. why was love taking so long to find you?

ever since you were a little girl, you were a hopeless romantic. dreaming of your first kiss and getting married to your knight in shining armor. back home, there was a cruel joke that you were the girl before the wife. you get just close enough before they end it. afraid that the curse would travel with you.

"don't worry." you aunt hums, brushing your hair. "the queen picked you as her diamond for a reason."

"i know, i know." you nod, avoiding your reflection in the mirror. "i just wish mother was here with me."

"i do too, dear."

"she should've seen me married."

a small tear rolls down your pink painted cheeks. it feels like you let her down by not taking a husband before her illness got worse.

men have it so easy. there's no pressure from society put on them. you can marry at fifty to a nineteen year old if you so please because you know that they will marry you out of fear and desperation.

"who says she can't?" your aunts smile reflected in the mirror. "she's still looking down on you, probably working on sending you a lord or a duke for a husband as we speak."

"amusing." you giggle.

"imagine a viscount or a prince!"

both of you laugh at the possibility. viscounts and princes were usually swept up quickly in high society. all of them probably have pregnant wives by now.

"don't get too ahead of yourself."

˖⋆࿐໋

the queens ball was unlike anything you had ever seen. beautiful gardens, bright lights, and people gathered everywhere. inside the ballroom, the chandelier lights almost blind you.

like a hawk, lady chamberlain spots you two. she is an older lady and a close family friend. you haven't seen her since you were a little girl, surprised that she was able to recognize you.

"lady worthington and miss bowery, lovely to see you here!" the woman smiled, wrapping her arms around both of you.

"hello, lady chamberlain." you smile, feeling slightly at ease seeing a familiar face here.

"you look marvelous, sweetie." she smiles, taking in your appearance. at least someone appreciated all the bells and whistles that went into your dress for this evening. "truly like a diamond."

"thank you." you curtsy. a warm rose color rises to the surface of your cheeks at her compliment.

"let's go find that viscount i've told your aunt about." she says.

suddenly, she's pulling you and your aunt over to meet everyone.

quite some time has passed and yet you've only met barton's and a few lords. from one eligible bachelor to the next, it was the same process. you introduce yourself, dance, ask a bit about each other, jump into talks of marriage and children. it was all a bit overwhelming to say the least.

there's no news on a prince yet but lady chamberlain was holding out for a viscount while your aunt held out for a duke. meanwhile, you just needed someone with charm and charisma to save you from these godawful men of the ton.

"i'm going to get a drink." you announce, one the music ends.

in one of the dim corners of the room there was a refreshment table where you poured a hefty amount of wine into your glass and down as much of it –in a very unlady like manner– as you could before another person could find you.

it wasn't long until someone behind you clears their voice loudly.

"i was unaware that they taught women to drink like soldiers in france..."

you spin around quickly to face the man in front of you. he is gorgeous and... huge. dawned in white puffy shirt and a tight black vest with detailed buttons. he towered over you intimidatingly with a small smirk creeping on his lips from shocked expression.

"i-i deeply apologize, my lord. it was just grape juice." you laugh nervously, avoiding his piercing stare.

"hm..." he hums, lifting his hand up and letting his thumb swiftly glide under your lip to catch the bit of liquid there. you watch in awe as he licks the bit of wine off his thumb with a soft groan. "they must make 'grape juice' different in france."

never in your whole life have you been left so speechless. a gentleman has never done more so than touch your hand, let alone act so scandalous. with a satisfied smirk, the man walks away to join a small group of young women. thank goodness that no one seemed to have noticed.

"miss bowery!" lady chamberlain called after you. "i want you to come meet the howletts."

swiftly, you get back to her as she approach a mother and daughter. both of them were stunningly and wore expensive looking gowns with luxurious jewels. lady chamberlains wide smile only made you grow more anxious.

"meet lady howlett and her daughter, the honorable, marie howlett." lady chamberlain introduced.

"lovely to meet you." you say, bowing gracefully before them.

"where is viscount james?" lady chamberlain asks.

"oh! he should be around here somewhere..." the woman looked behind the two of you until she flagged someone down. “there he is!”

the moment that you looked up at the viscount, you feared your heart might explode right then and there. silently pray to the gods above that he won't mention your previous encounter.

"miss bowery, this is my son, viscount james logan howlett." lady howlett announces proudly.

"what a pleasure to meet you, miss bowery." james smirked, trying to get a rise out of you.

"as is it for me, my lord." you curtsy politely, feeling hot under his gaze.

a cloud of lust fogs james mind at the words, my lord fell from your pretty, slightly berry colored lips. the lower his eyes drift from your face, the tighter his trousers get. every exquisite curve is highlighted by the way that the silk fell on your frame, reminding him of the goddesses he had only seen in the finest of paintings.

"might you wish to accompany me to a dance?" he asks, extending his hand to you.

you nod, offering him your gloved hand in return.

the two of you make your way to the dance floor with everyone else. the orchestra begins and you quickly fall in sync with each other.

"how are you enjoying england?" james asks.

"it's quite lovely." you lie.

"better than france?" he questioned with a small tilt of his head.

"no." you giggle softly. "nowhere on earth is better than home."

"i suppose i cannot argue with that."

"have you journed to france?"

"once. when i was younger, i went with my father. he loved france."

"that's why my mother left england. she fell in love with my father when she visited france."

"they must be true romantics."

"oh, most definitely." you smile.

carefully, logan spins you twice. never letting you stumble over your own two feet like most men would.

"i truly am sorry for earlier, my lord. that was completely unacceptable for a–"

"it's alright, sweetheart." the viscount cut you off with a chuckle. "your secret is safe with me."

james looks down to see your big round eyes sparkle up at him with great appreciation. there's a unique feeling blooming deep in his chest that he can't quite put his finger on.

"i heard from some mamas that you are seeking to wed this season." you say, looking elsewhere as the two of you pull apart.

"seeking is such a complex word." he sighs amusingly.

"i imagine it would be difficult to find a future viscountess."

"you have no idea."

all around you, you can see the women openly fawning over the viscount. some fan themselves while other clutch their jewels with either anger at you or lust for him. any of those women would duel to be in your shoes right now.

"do you have a desire to be viscountess?" his question made your heartbeat increase, pounding in your chest.

as a young girl, you watched your family struggle in order to survive so it would be a lie to say that you don't dream of having a tittle. you have a father back in france to take care of in his elder age. but love was your main desire. you would marry a sweet common man as long as he loved you.

"i desire to be loved." you tell him.

the answer caught james off guard. the women of the ton had no issue telling him to his face that they want his tittle or money. none of those women actually cared about love.

"well, my darling, you are quite the fool to be seeking out something as pure as love in a place such as this." james says, pulling you so close that you can feel his heartbeat in his chest and his eyes darken.

"don't be so cock-sure, viscount howlett. i am no fool at all." you glare angrily up at him. "i wish you well on your journey to find such a bird-witted viscountess."

the song ends and you are quick to make an exit. hot on your heels, james follows you outside. perhaps you shouldn't have insulted the viscount to his face but you didn't quite care anymore. this night has been a bust and you aren't any closer to marriage then you were before walking in here.

"miss, bowery..." a man calls, capturing your attention. "would you accompany me to a dance?"

based on the man's appearance, he seems even more important that the viscount. he was definitely the opposite of james. this man wore light grey in places where james wore black. this man had a sweet smile where james had a scowl.

"her dance card is full." the voice behind you threatened.

the gentleman's face fell a little.

"actually, i have one last spot open on my dance card." you smile, showing him the tag tied to your right wrist which had exactly one spot open. "i would love to accompany you..."

"prince harrison." he grins.

you hum, offering your hand. the prince leans down and kissed your gloved fingers before sweeping you off to the dance floor again.

james fumed as he watched you walk away with the prince. lady howlett spots her son alone and walks over to him.

“please tell me that you did not scare off this seasons diamond, james.” lady howlett asked in a low whisper.

“i’m gonna call a carriage” he growls, annoyed.

“dear!”

his mother called after him but he couldn’t care to turn around and stay here any longer.

˖⋆࿐໋

on the carriage ride alone, james is stuck with the image of you. your beauty and the pain in your eyes when james called you a fool. oddly enough, james enjoyed the way you bit back at him. he just wishes that he hadn’t offended you.

apparently you must not be that hurt if you accepted a dance from harrison of all people. not because he wanted to court you but because harrison was barely considered a prince and was a poor excuse of a man. never having to lift a finger a day in his life. never knowing a single struggle. the prince was insufferable.

perhaps it was in james best interest to forget about the beautiful woman he met this evening. she is this seasons diamond after all, desired by too many. james wasn't known to chase the things he desired.

──★

— all day long by @ozarkthedog

Logan fucks you with one of his cigars.

— all's fair in love and viscera… by @sceletaflores

logan wants to spar…

— after midnight by @teamred

logan hates that you never listen to him and you can't stand how he still treats you like a kid. but tonight's your chance to change each other's minds.

— any other way and so contagious by @/teamread

in which your good friend, wade, ditches your planned movie night, but his roommate offers to watch one with you instead. however, logan ends up falling asleep on your shoulder.

— bloodthirsty and animal instinct by @hauntedhowlett-writes

when your next shipment of blood won’t be delivered to the x mansion for another two days, logan offers to help keep you fed. // after helping you out by letting you feed from him, logan asks you to return the favor.

— busy signal by @superhoeva

a phone call interrupts a relaxing logan.

— cliché by @/lovelybucky1

— cravings by @pedgito

with no threshold for pain, logan finds that losing control with you is easier, triggering a thirst that is insatiable.

— dog tags by @spiderispunk

— give me all of that ultraviolence by @joelsgoldrush

you give logan head for the first time.

— guard dog by @/ovaryacted

On another one of your joint club outings with Wade, your boyfriend Logan stands by to make sure you enjoy your night. Once you both arrive at your apartment, he tends to your needs and helps you relax.

— guilty pleasure by @/joelsgoldrush

after saving earth-10005 from impending disaster, wade convinces logan, the alcoholic and easily irritated mutant, to stick around for a while. he’s convinced that nothing good can come out of this experience, until he meets you: the charming bartender with a soft spot for swearing that matches his own. suddenly, sticking around doesn’t seem so bad after all.

— handlebars and morning ride by @wannab-urs

Logan teaches you to ride a motorcycle.

— heart made of glass by @/moonlight-prose

you couldn't control when they could come. the waves of nothingness - of battling with your body and mind in the hopes it would cause a shift. you wanted to control it. he simply wanted to help.

— heavy metal lover by @sceletaflores

the wolverine is a regular at your bar…

— help me hold onto you and one of me is cute, but two though? by @guiltyasdave

Logan deals with feeling guilty after he's accidentally cut you with his claws in his sleep. // Your cat-like mutation gives your life some cat-like qualities… like going through heats.

— intoxicating and intimate by @ozarkthedog

you warm Logan’s cock while he smokes.

— keep quiet by @sinsofsummers

logan can smell how much you need him as soon as you enter the room. what kind of man would he be to let you go unsatisfied?

— knuckle velvet by @ohcaptains

he walks you home, then lets himself in.

— house in nebraska by @venomnyx

Reader gets roped into saving the timeline with ex-best friend Deadpool, coming face-to-face with a variant of Logan that uproots memories she'd long suppressed, only to find that this version of him lost her in his universe, too.

— hunger by @/moonlight-prose

things are set into motion the second logan opens your drawer. suddenly you find yourself the center of a show with only one audience member.

— i want you by @/d1stalker

Logan is jealous of you and Scott's friendship, not knowing your true feelings.

— into the unknown by @yxtkiwiyxt

You, a dedicated doctor in a small town in the Canadian Rockies find your life turned upside down when you meet Logan Howlett, a mysterious man whose mutant abilities leave you questioning everything you know about reality.

— make it hurt by @wannab-urs

It’s difficult being the only mutant at Xavier’s school with regenerative powers. There’s no one you can spar with – fellow professors included – that is on your level. Not when you can kill them, but they can’t kill you. That is, until you meet Logan.

— never alone by @sunflowersteves

basically, you defend Logan and he quite literally goes feral.

— not your man by @studioghibelli

live giveth wolverine, and life taketh away. but sometimes…. the sweet, sweet void intervenes.

— nothing but time by @tonysopranosrobe

Logan likes to take his time with you. Sometimes he gets carried away.

— nsfw alphabet by @wolviensabes

— nsfw alphabet by @robo-writing

— on his six by @superhoeva

logan can't get enough of the xavier's School for Gifted youngsters' newest hire–you.

— one last time by @toomanystoriessolittletime

Three years ago you buried Logan on the day you were supposed to get married. When your friend calls you, telling you that she saw Logan at the bar she was at, you had to check for yourself if she was right. Not knowing that the night would end with you in his bed. And a surprise weeks later you were not ready for.

— origin by @/d1stalker

Two people, one shared past, and decades apart.

— play nice by @kiwisbell

logan and joel put away the claws and put their skills to better use.

— right where you left me by @moonlight-prose

logan was familiar with death. he understood why it happened, what could cause it to occur, and finally how to accept it. so when his family - the people he cared for most - died…he thought he could handle it. only you didn’t die. you left. now he’s found himself in a new universe with a person who wears your face, yet doesn’t hold your memories.

— 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐬 by @/superhoeva

logan can't live without you.

— room for rent by @/hauntedhowlett-writes

logan finds a new roommate.

— salvation and absolution by @elflutter

Logan would worship your body for hours if you’d let him. He can’t help but prolong your pleasure before finding his own. He once told you that it’s because you deserve it so much more than he does.

— say you'll remember me and everything stays, but it still changes by @avocado-writing

in the Void, after leaving the other dead in your own timelines, you and Logan are reunited. // you and logan have a pretty happy life… but there’s still something you want.

— secondhand smoke by @/ovaryacted

Waiting for Logan back at the X-Mansion, he welcomes you into his arms and enjoys his cigar with you on his lap.

— soft edges by @lubdubology

Logan doesn't know how to relax. So you help him.

— sugar by @studioghibelli

if there’s one thing logan loves- it’s fucking you.

— suspension bridge effect by @/d1stalker

You saved one of the younger mutants during a mission, and now he's obsessed with you, much to Logan's dismay

— taste me on your tongue by @/moonlight-prose

the taste of him became an addiction you couldn't ignore. especially when he was adamant on sharing it in multiple ways.

— the honda odyssey by @coweye

The car fight reimagined and it only needed to be like 10% more erotic than the original.

— the place where the pages meet by @/avocado-writing

You’re a bookseller. Logan is picking up a package.

— the worst logan and just logan by @/coweye

You are the deceased-anchor-being-Logan's lover, having found yourself with Laura in the void, you navigate meeting the variant of the love of your life.

— this is ours by @/d1stalker

It's your first time back at your grandparents' farm in years, and while many things are the same, one thing is not: they've hired a new farmhand.

— wish you knew by @/ovaryacted

After coming into Wade’s world following their team effort to save his timeline, Logan attempts to adjust to his new reality. In rebuilding his life from the ground up, your paths collide when he least expects it, throwing him off course.

— vis by @/ozarkthedog Logan's feeling impulsive before a mission and you happen to be within reach aka he fucks you in the jet.

old man logan x reader

— ain’t as good as I once was by @lovelybucky1

— be my baby by @cavillscurls

logan fucks you in your sundress.

— diet pepsi by @flowersforbucky

old!logan x reader limousine sex. inspired by the song diet pepsi by addison rae

— look at me by @silverskyeline

logan can't fuck like he used to, but you don't care. you get on top, gladly taking care of him in return.

— mean!oldman!logan takes you apart by @inkedells

Logan is sick and tired of you treating him like he's fragile. He'll ignore his relentless pain to show you what it's like to be taken apart, rough and slow, then fast and agonizing.

— never is a promise by @/joelsgoldrush

You are everything Logan isn’t: sweet, trouble-free, much younger—and, to top it off, Charles' caregiver.

— quiet drive by @wlwloverwrites

Logan likes quiet drives, but there’s only way that can happen when you’re sitting in the passenger seat.

— speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life by @/moonlight-prose

he knew he loved you when your words begin to piece his heart back together. he knew he loved you when he flourishes at your praise. he knew he loved you when nothing in this world could matter but the sound of your voice telling him you love him too.

— sweetness of the damned by @/moonlight-prose

when night falls and wine overflows in glasses of crystal, logan finds his home in between your thighs.

— the grave of lust by @/moonlight-prose

when his body doesn't work as it used to and the weary bones that poison his soul begin to ache, you take the lead in a dance you know well.

— two's company by @jen-with-a-pen

— white hot forever by @eddies-ashtray

Most days exhaustion plagues him. But tonight, with his last dregs of energy, Logan cooks for you. Though he’s hungry for something far more enticing.

wade wilson x reader

— gtfih (get the fuck in here) by @/teamred

every morning, you see a man and his dog walk past your bakery and all he does is stick his head through the door, inhales deeply, make a comment, then walks out. what gives?

wade wilson x reader x logan howlett

— car fight by @/avocado-writing

— home sweet home by @/teamred

this series compiles moments of domesticity, love, and more featuring logan howlett and wade wilson as your two boyfriends.

— i just want you to make a move by @/avocado-writing

You, Wade and Logan are on a stakeout after reports surface of a drug which only affects mutants. But what happens when you take a hit of it yourselves…?

— jealousy sex by @froggibus

— you & wade helping logan in a rut by @/avocado-writing

— all day long by @ozarkthedog

Logan fucks you with one of his cigars.

— all's fair in love and viscera… by @sceletaflores

logan wants to spar…

— after midnight by @teamred

logan hates that you never listen to him and you can't stand how he still treats you like a kid. but tonight's your chance to change each other's minds.

— any other way and so contagious by @/teamread

in which your good friend, wade, ditches your planned movie night, but his roommate offers to watch one with you instead. however, logan ends up falling asleep on your shoulder.

— bloodthirsty and animal instinct by @hauntedhowlett-writes

when your next shipment of blood won’t be delivered to the x mansion for another two days, logan offers to help keep you fed. // after helping you out by letting you feed from him, logan asks you to return the favor.

— busy signal by @superhoeva

a phone call interrupts a relaxing logan.

— cliché by @/lovelybucky1

— cravings by @pedgito

with no threshold for pain, logan finds that losing control with you is easier, triggering a thirst that is insatiable.

— dog tags by @spiderispunk

— give me all of that ultraviolence by @joelsgoldrush

you give logan head for the first time.

— guard dog by @/ovaryacted

On another one of your joint club outings with Wade, your boyfriend Logan stands by to make sure you enjoy your night. Once you both arrive at your apartment, he tends to your needs and helps you relax.

— guilty pleasure by @/joelsgoldrush

after saving earth-10005 from impending disaster, wade convinces logan, the alcoholic and easily irritated mutant, to stick around for a while. he’s convinced that nothing good can come out of this experience, until he meets you: the charming bartender with a soft spot for swearing that matches his own. suddenly, sticking around doesn’t seem so bad after all.

— handlebars and morning ride by @wannab-urs

Logan teaches you to ride a motorcycle.

— heart made of glass by @/moonlight-prose

you couldn't control when they could come. the waves of nothingness - of battling with your body and mind in the hopes it would cause a shift. you wanted to control it. he simply wanted to help.

— heavy metal lover by @sceletaflores

the wolverine is a regular at your bar…

— help me hold onto you and one of me is cute, but two though? by @guiltyasdave

Logan deals with feeling guilty after he's accidentally cut you with his claws in his sleep. // Your cat-like mutation gives your life some cat-like qualities… like going through heats.

— intoxicating and intimate by @ozarkthedog

you warm Logan’s cock while he smokes.

— keep quiet by @sinsofsummers

logan can smell how much you need him as soon as you enter the room. what kind of man would he be to let you go unsatisfied?

— knuckle velvet by @ohcaptains

he walks you home, then lets himself in.

— house in nebraska by @venomnyx

Reader gets roped into saving the timeline with ex-best friend Deadpool, coming face-to-face with a variant of Logan that uproots memories she'd long suppressed, only to find that this version of him lost her in his universe, too.

— hunger by @/moonlight-prose

things are set into motion the second logan opens your drawer. suddenly you find yourself the center of a show with only one audience member.

— i want you by @/d1stalker

Logan is jealous of you and Scott's friendship, not knowing your true feelings.

— into the unknown by @yxtkiwiyxt

You, a dedicated doctor in a small town in the Canadian Rockies find your life turned upside down when you meet Logan Howlett, a mysterious man whose mutant abilities leave you questioning everything you know about reality.

— make it hurt by @wannab-urs

It’s difficult being the only mutant at Xavier’s school with regenerative powers. There’s no one you can spar with – fellow professors included – that is on your level. Not when you can kill them, but they can’t kill you. That is, until you meet Logan.

— never alone by @sunflowersteves

basically, you defend Logan and he quite literally goes feral.

— not your man by @studioghibelli

live giveth wolverine, and life taketh away. but sometimes…. the sweet, sweet void intervenes.

— nothing but time by @tonysopranosrobe

Logan likes to take his time with you. Sometimes he gets carried away.

— nsfw alphabet by @wolviensabes

— nsfw alphabet by @robo-writing

— on his six by @superhoeva

logan can't get enough of the xavier's School for Gifted youngsters' newest hire–you.

— one last time by @toomanystoriessolittletime

Three years ago you buried Logan on the day you were supposed to get married. When your friend calls you, telling you that she saw Logan at the bar she was at, you had to check for yourself if she was right. Not knowing that the night would end with you in his bed. And a surprise weeks later you were not ready for.

— origin by @/d1stalker

Two people, one shared past, and decades apart.

— play nice by @kiwisbell

logan and joel put away the claws and put their skills to better use.

— right where you left me by @moonlight-prose

logan was familiar with death. he understood why it happened, what could cause it to occur, and finally how to accept it. so when his family - the people he cared for most - died…he thought he could handle it. only you didn’t die. you left. now he’s found himself in a new universe with a person who wears your face, yet doesn’t hold your memories.

— 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐬 by @/superhoeva

logan can't live without you.

— room for rent by @/hauntedhowlett-writes

logan finds a new roommate.

— salvation and absolution by @elflutter

Logan would worship your body for hours if you’d let him. He can’t help but prolong your pleasure before finding his own. He once told you that it’s because you deserve it so much more than he does.

— say you'll remember me and everything stays, but it still changes by @avocado-writing

in the Void, after leaving the other dead in your own timelines, you and Logan are reunited. // you and logan have a pretty happy life… but there’s still something you want.

— secondhand smoke by @/ovaryacted

Waiting for Logan back at the X-Mansion, he welcomes you into his arms and enjoys his cigar with you on his lap.

— soft edges by @lubdubology

Logan doesn't know how to relax. So you help him.

— sugar by @studioghibelli

if there’s one thing logan loves- it’s fucking you.

— suspension bridge effect by @/d1stalker

You saved one of the younger mutants during a mission, and now he's obsessed with you, much to Logan's dismay

— taste me on your tongue by @/moonlight-prose

the taste of him became an addiction you couldn't ignore. especially when he was adamant on sharing it in multiple ways.

— the honda odyssey by @coweye

The car fight reimagined and it only needed to be like 10% more erotic than the original.

— the place where the pages meet by @/avocado-writing

You’re a bookseller. Logan is picking up a package.

— the worst logan and just logan by @/coweye

You are the deceased-anchor-being-Logan's lover, having found yourself with Laura in the void, you navigate meeting the variant of the love of your life.

— this is ours by @/d1stalker

It's your first time back at your grandparents' farm in years, and while many things are the same, one thing is not: they've hired a new farmhand.

— wish you knew by @/ovaryacted

After coming into Wade’s world following their team effort to save his timeline, Logan attempts to adjust to his new reality. In rebuilding his life from the ground up, your paths collide when he least expects it, throwing him off course.

— vis by @/ozarkthedog Logan's feeling impulsive before a mission and you happen to be within reach aka he fucks you in the jet.

old man logan x reader

— ain’t as good as I once was by @lovelybucky1

— be my baby by @cavillscurls

logan fucks you in your sundress.

— diet pepsi by @flowersforbucky

old!logan x reader limousine sex. inspired by the song diet pepsi by addison rae

— look at me by @silverskyeline

logan can't fuck like he used to, but you don't care. you get on top, gladly taking care of him in return.

— mean!oldman!logan takes you apart by @inkedells

Logan is sick and tired of you treating him like he's fragile. He'll ignore his relentless pain to show you what it's like to be taken apart, rough and slow, then fast and agonizing.

— never is a promise by @/joelsgoldrush

You are everything Logan isn’t: sweet, trouble-free, much younger—and, to top it off, Charles' caregiver.

— quiet drive by @wlwloverwrites

Logan likes quiet drives, but there’s only way that can happen when you’re sitting in the passenger seat.

— speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life by @/moonlight-prose

he knew he loved you when your words begin to piece his heart back together. he knew he loved you when he flourishes at your praise. he knew he loved you when nothing in this world could matter but the sound of your voice telling him you love him too.

— sweetness of the damned by @/moonlight-prose

when night falls and wine overflows in glasses of crystal, logan finds his home in between your thighs.

— the grave of lust by @/moonlight-prose

when his body doesn't work as it used to and the weary bones that poison his soul begin to ache, you take the lead in a dance you know well.

— two's company by @jen-with-a-pen

— white hot forever by @eddies-ashtray

Most days exhaustion plagues him. But tonight, with his last dregs of energy, Logan cooks for you. Though he’s hungry for something far more enticing.

wade wilson x reader

— gtfih (get the fuck in here) by @/teamred

every morning, you see a man and his dog walk past your bakery and all he does is stick his head through the door, inhales deeply, make a comment, then walks out. what gives?

wade wilson x reader x logan howlett

— car fight by @/avocado-writing

— home sweet home by @/teamred

this series compiles moments of domesticity, love, and more featuring logan howlett and wade wilson as your two boyfriends.

— i just want you to make a move by @/avocado-writing

You, Wade and Logan are on a stakeout after reports surface of a drug which only affects mutants. But what happens when you take a hit of it yourselves…?

— jealousy sex by @froggibus

— you & wade helping logan in a rut by @/avocado-writing