#keepthanewriting

“Kepler.”

“Yes, Mr. Jacobi?”

“Can we go home now?”

Kepler hesitates. Then, “Absolutely not.”

Jacobi lets out a groan. “Please, sir. I’m soaked to the skin.”

They’ve been sitting in this alley in the pouring rain for ages, watching a window ten floors above them and trying to look homeless. It’s been one of Jacobi’s least favorite missions and that’s saying something.

So much of their job is just waiting. Jacobi hates waiting. It’s enough, sometimes (like tonight) to make him wonder why he ever took the job in the first place. But he knows why. He knows.

Someone shifts in the window and Kepler shoots straight up. Then he sits down again.

“Shadow from the next building over,” he murmurs, jerking a thumb at the open window of the facing window. He gives Jacobi an uncharacteristically broad smile, and the feeling of suspicion that’s been bubbling in Jacobi surfaces in the form of a lemon sour taste in his mouth.

“Sir.”

“Hmm?” Kepler’s still grinning.

“Is there a reason we’re out here?”

“Yep.”

“...is the reason anything at all to do with that window?”

“Not anymore. He went home hours ago when you fell asleep.”

Jacobi hisses out a breath through his teeth. “Is the reason that you wanted to see how long it would take me to notice that we’re here for fucking nothing??”

“Not at all, Mr. Jacobi. I wanted to see how far gone you were.”

“Sir-”

Before he can say another word Kepler has him up against the wall of the alley, lips smashed together, and without thinking Jacobi kisses him back, furious in both senses of the word.

When they finally pull apart they’re both breathless. Subconsciously Jacobi reaches up to swipe a loose strand of hair away from Kepler’s face, cupping his cheek to go in for another kiss, but moments before their lips touch Kepler smirks and pulls away.

“What?” Jacobi demands, angry and exasperated and incredibly turned on.

“You do like me back.” 

@rainbow-mangos-of-the-tardis

Minkowski buries her head in her hands. She can’t quite identify what she’s feeling right now, and she can’t be bothered to psychoanalyze herself before going into…this. All she knows is that she wants a stiff drink and for her head to stop spinning.

“Minkowski.” There’s a firm hand on her shoulder, and she looks up. “Renee. Hey. You okay?”

“I…” she takes a shaky breath, not looking at Lovelace. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Lovelace quirks an eyebrow at her. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I just-?” Minkowski scrubs a hand across her forehead. “I can’t believe this is ending now? We’re gonna go in there, and it’s…it’s down to kill or be killed. This is it. This is…it’s actually the end.”

“I almost can’t make myself believe it,” says Lovelace, and sits down beside her. “But I’ll tell you one thing. If I die bringing Cutter down, I’ll be satisfied with my life.” She tilts her head up at the window, and Minkowski watches as the red dwarf lights her eyes with passion.

“Actually. I’ll tell you two things. The second thing is, uh. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Minkowski feels the breath catch in her throat as she turns immediately towards Lovelace, who catches her chin with one hand and presses their lips together hard. It’s messy and hurried and intense, and when Minkowski pulls away she thinks she can feel tears prickling in her eyes.

“Right,” says Lovelace, standing up and offering her a hand. “Let’s go kill that bastard.”

They’re on one in a long line of endless train rides, and Phil is falling asleep.

“Phil. Phiiiiiiiil.”

Phil groans and sags further against the window. Dan knows he should probably let him sleep, but he’s been alone with himself and his phone for two hours and you can only scroll through tumblr so many times before starting to lose it.

“Phil. Wake uuuuup.”

“Don’t wanna,” Phil mumbles, and his eyelashes flutter. “Feel sick.”

“But you can’t be sick. I’m bored.”

Phil giggles despite himself. “That’s not gonna make me not sick, you...you...coathanger.”

Dan rolls his eyes and slumps next to Phil. “Please, Phil? Let’s play a game.”

“Mhm. Maybe.”

Dan looks up for a moment to make sure no one’s paying attention to them, and then he swoops down and kisses Phil hard on the mouth. Phil’s eyes fly open and he chokes on words for a second. “Dan! Anyone could’ve seen that.”

Dan grins. “Are you awake now?”

“Ughhh. I guess I have no choice,” Phil says, and nudges Dan’s shoulder affectionately with his head.

“Stay still, Minkowski.”

Minkowski bites back a growl. “I’m trying.”

Lovelace snorts. “Would a kiss help you quit wriggling?”

“Are you bribing me, Captain?” Minkowski asks. She’s trying, she really is, but pain spikes up her wrist every time Lovelace brushes against it, let alone tries to set it. And it’s not that she can’t take the pain, but every muscle in her body is coiled tight and ready to spring at whatever’s causing it. She has to keep reminding herself that this is just Lovelace.

Just Lovelace.

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,” murmurs Lovelace, steadying her own hand against the wall. It’s hard to have any kind of center in 0g. Minkowski finds herself locking eyes with Lovelace every so often, just so she has a basis. Just so she doesn’t feel so upside down.

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt,” she admits. Lovelace grins as finishes securing the brace to Minkowski’s wrist and twines their fingers together.

“There, good as new,” she says. and leans forward to kiss the tip of Minkowski’s nose. She starts to pull away but Minkowski cups a hand under her chin and braces them against the wall, slipping her tongue between Lovelace’s chapped lips and exploring, gentle, easy.

Lovelace puts both hands on her shoulders gently to move her away. “Commander, I’d love to continue, but maybe we should do something about changing the bandages on the hole in the side of your torso?”

Minkowski rolls her eyes but allows Lovelace to bring her back down to the floor. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

It’s late spring and there’s a dusty layer of pollen coating all the trees, my shoes, the stones in the back garden pathway. I take the key out from around my neck and unlock the door to the back of the church.

I head down the carpeted hallway running adjacent to the main church and open the door at the end of the corridor. It looks nothing like a church back here. It’s all rusty pipes and forgotten sheets of drywall, cobwebs and patchy concrete. Ominous clangs sound from the pipes as though keeping time to some ancient song. I hurry over to the ladder.

He’d taken the whole choir up here once, Mr. Davis, and I’d felt like I was back in middle school going on a class field trip. It feels different with no one excitedly whispering in your ear or complaining loudly that they’re thirsty. Feels lonely in the way that an old house feels lonely.

I try not to look down once I’ve reached the top. I’m not afraid of heights, but there’s something about being in that place alone and looking down and seeing all the emptiness that freaks me out. Clinging to the ladder with one hand, I push open the trapdoor with the other, and then wriggle my head and shoulders out into the light and warmth and take a deep breath of fresh air.

Inside the organ, everything smells of warm metal and expensive wood and incense. The stained glass of the windows throws shapes and colors onto each layer of the pipes. Most of them are bigger than me and all of them gleam in the sun in even more colors than the stained glass, like an oil slicked puddle on a rainy day. I step out onto the cramped, polished wood path and kick the trapdoor shut behind me.

It’s a simple job, really. I’m to walk along each tightly winding corridor and make sure there’s nothing stuck to the pipes or in between them; no debris somehow blown in from the outside. I do it every week, just for upkeep, except on the weeks that the real organist can do it. Some days I’d find nothing. Most days, in fact.

But recently there’d been a whole slew of maple seeds. Dozens and dozens of them on every flat surface, stuck between the pipes, clogging them even. I’d spent ages clearing them all away and wondering where the hell they’d all come from. That is until I’d gotten bored enough to start holding races with them in between clearing them out of the pipes, the way you do when you’re little. I’d started two seeds above my head, watching them flutter to the ground- except that they never hit it.

Instead, they grew tiny heads and limbs and faces, and the wings of the seeds broadened until two perfect fairies flapped away, glaring at me reproachfully.

Sometimes he’s in London on a street corner. Sometimes it’s someplace in midwestern  America, on a park bench.

Sometimes he’s back in Scotland. Back home.

Once, he thought, he was in Hawaii. Outside the hotel. Where it happened.

He tried to get up then, but his vision shifted and burned and everything was dark for ages uncountable. When he finally came out of it he hardly remembered what he had been running from.

There were people, he knew, from Before. People and things and words and- and something else. Something he did with words. Something that made his throat hum and his mind blaze. Something that, when he tried to reach out for it, made him feel like a lonely god.

He didn’t think it would be like this. He didn’t think about it at all, before It happened.

No; that wasn’t true. He thought about it all the time, but only when he was drunk.

And then, wasn’t he always drunk? Hadn’t he always been drunk, in that other place from before Everything? There were other things, too; other things besides whiskey in that other place.

Cities and kings and hot tears and someone called Charlotte and the bite of the wind on a rainy day. He had words for these. Used to have words for these. Use to make the words dance; used to make people dance, back in that other place.

When he did think about it, when he was drunk, he always thought he would be on the ocean.

Sailing, he thought. Till we will be sailors no more.

There’s someone coming. A boy. Was he a boy or a man? Everyone looks so much infinitely younger than him now. He reaches up to touch his own face, but it is as smooth as it was that day.

The someone- the boy that could be a man- is looking at him. He reaches a hand out, fingers trembling.

“Please,” he cries, his voice hoarse and cracked as sun baked leather, and the boy cocks his head to one side.

“I do not know the way, sir, but if you wish to come with me, I could use the company.”

He stands then. He hasn’t stood since It happened. The world spins beneath his feet and he feels, once again, suspended.

“We could be like the kings!” the boy laughs, and a smile breaks through his stiff face.

“Kings,” he says finally. “Just sleeping underneath the hills.”

28. ...as a lie

“Rors?”

Rory rolls over and curls one arm around Amy’s chest.

“Mm.”

“Do you ever remember it?”

“Remember what?” he asks, turning his head out of the pillow.

“You know.”

“No, I really don’t,” he mumbles.

There’s a hint of apprehension in Amy’s voice. She’s staring at the ceiling; her eyes glitter in the light from the open window.

“When you were guarding me.”

“Oh.” Rory presses his face back into the pillow. He does remember, but he tries as hard as possible not to. The things his mind did in those two thousand years consist of thoughts he was previously unaware could even occur in a human brain.

And yet.

And yet he couldn’t leave. He could never leave Amy.

“Rory?”

“What?”

“Do you?”

Shit. He’d been quiet too long. “Sorry,” he says in a low voice. “M’ falling asleep.”

“Rory, I need to know.”

He sighs deep into the pillow, then pulls himself up onto his forearms and leans over to drop a kiss on her perfect lips. “No, love,” he tells her. “It’s all faded.”

I’d go out on clear nights and lay down a sleeping bag and try to count the constellations. When it rained I’d put on my raincoat and tiptoe around so as not to slip and stand in the center of the roof, head tipped back to the inky silver night. In the winter I’d pull all the blankets off my bed and wrap them around myself and feel half dead with cold, but it never stopped me.

The first night I was brave enough to call out to the pair of eyes just beyond the moon was enough to decide that.

I must’ve been five or six when I first pushed the screen open, so Selene never seemed strange to me. She was just another friend, like my reflection in the mirror or the odd echo that lived in the tunnel under the bridge. But that’s another story.

They looked like cat’s eyes, or octopus’s eye’s- I could never come close enough to tell. They gleamed like polished bronze, and they always hung in the exact same spot, just to the right of the moon, travelling with it as it rose and fell.

“Hello,” I said one day, and waved.

There was a great rustling sound, like someone moving their hand through a box of loose paper, and the eyes turned to look at me. “Hello, little one. What’s your name?”

“Erin. What’s yours?”

“Selene.”

And just like that we were friends. Every night I told Selene about the dramatic lives of my stuffed animals or what games I’d had at the playground, and, as I got older, what my friends were doing in school and soccer tryouts. She’d make interested “hmm” noises and occasionally ask me what a water fountain was or why my friends all had such odd names. I didn’t think they were odd names at all, but I did my best to explain about the water fountains and whatever else. It never occurred to me that not everyone had a pair of sentient eyes living in the sky above their roof, but somehow I knew enough not to mention it.

The day we moved, two weeks after my thirteenth birthday, I cried myself to sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to go up there and tell her that we were never going to see each other again.

As soon as we got to the new apartment, I claimed the bedroom with balcony access. My parents exchanged a look but said nothing. They knew the move had been tough on me (though not for the reasons they thought) and so they let me have it.

That night, once I was sure they’d gone to bed, I opened the sliding door and snuck out onto the balcony.

Two tiny pinpricks of golden light hung just to the right of the moon.

“Hello, Selene,” I whispered.

I can’t hear her anymore, but I hope like hell she can hear me.