Mun cackling--

Send me two characters and a pose!@danganronpasta​

Bonus because Breaker is an awkward bean who has never been on the receiving end of any sort of affection ever at all:

@dianaflynn22: I’m like 99.999% certain it was you who inspired this latest round of madness. (I just can’t find the link to the Josh-in-cosmos gif you made... which was brilliant).  

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

"He sees you when you're sleeping

He knows when you're awake."

For a long time, Alice had no concept of where the texts were coming from. Whether she was with a patient, doing some emails at her desk, or out for coffee somewhere in the city, the texts would always flow in, and never at any set schedule.

[SMS from: Unknown Number] Good morning, Doctor.

[SMS from: Unknown Number] Did you play those lottery numbers I told you to?

[SMS from: Unknown Number] Pity. They won.

[SMS from: Unknown Number] When the gentlemen who comes to you with the bullet wound to his shoulder takes his painkillers this afternoon, I suggest you give him an improper amount, or there will be consequences.

[SMS from: Unknown Number] Well done, Doctor. I'm sending you something in the post shortly.

And so on. She never replied but every time Alice followed the instructions, her 'luck' seemed to miraculously improve. Disobedience had consequences, all of varying severity. Months wore on, and the texts kept coming.

Privately, she knew who it was. Thought she knew...was fairly sure she knew. Process of elimination on who had that sort of power, but even in her own head, Alice wouldn't process the name. Even in her own head, it was too dangerous.

Summer slipped by, and the leaves changed, and before Alice had a moment to breathe, the shops were putting up their fat little Father Christmas mannequins and playing their endless loops of fifteen predictable Christmas carols. The crimes turned listless along with the dreary weather, criminals and pedestrians alike seeming to fall into a bit of a stupor with the onslaught of early evenings and late dawns, shrouding the city in smoky darkness on a near permanent basis. Alice was applying stitches and following text instructions and splinting broken bones with monotone demeanor that even her irregular patients were beginning to notice.

Maybe that was what prompted her to go along with it, instead of slipping away, as she usually did these days when someone tried to flirt with her.

He was nice enough, anyway. A little quiet, maybe, but maybe she needed quiet. Maybe she needed something normal again, maybe that was why she'd been letting Charles leave messages on her voicemail, why she listened to them late at night when she felt that she could judge herself the least, because no one was around to even think about her existence, but he was, even after the divorce, and maybe that mattered somehow. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Too many maybes.

So she let him buy her a drink. With his mussed hair and his Irish lilt, he was charming without trying, cheerful without overdoing it, and even got her to try one of those ridiculous red-and-green shots that they were selling on special for the holiday season, rolling their eyes in bemused unison when of course they arrived a strange shade of murky brown, because really, what did they think was going to happen when you combined the two in a shot glass? They talked about their jobs, him with machines, her with humans, and how maybe at the end it wasn't really that different of a career path. They talked until last call, when he regretfully mentioned an early start in the morning, but that he wanted to see her again.

He even asked permission to kiss her cheek before he left, and didn't seem offended when she denied. Just smiled that easy, warm smile of his, and told her that he'd see her soon.

Alice sat in the bar a little while afterwards, whiskey half-gone in front of her, napkin near her elbow scrawled with neat black ink. "Jim" and a phone number. She stared absently forwards, mulling over what had just happened, when eventually the napkin drew her gaze again. Pausing, with her glass halfway to her lips, Alice took a second look at the combination of numbers. A set that she knew, and she made the connection even before her mobile buzzed in her pocket.