Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (14/27-ish)
Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (14/27-ish)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - Thanks as usual to jlrpuck who keeps me sane and accurately British.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Just to let you know, I've not forgotten the time-stamp meme, and I will get around to writing every single requested fic, just maybe not for a while.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13
Chapter Fourteen
Athena, once back safely in her room, went immediately in search of her mother and found her in the TARDIS wardrobe.
“What are you doing?” she asked, because Mum was on her hands and knees, tossing shoes out of the way.
“I’m looking for a very specific pair of shoes. These…cute little pink ones.” She sat back and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Your father promised to try to take me to see Elvis again and I wanted these specific shoes. I don’t know why she won’t let me find them.” Mum frowned up at the TARDIS’s ceiling. The lights blinked a bit in displeasure.
Athena sat on one of the room’s trunks, and her mother looked up at her from her perch on the floor. “What’s up?”
“You know, don’t you?” Athena said, suddenly.
“Know what?”
“About the teleport.”
“Oh.” Mum smiled at her. “Of course I do. You and Fort are pretty bloody obvious about it, only someone as thick as your father wouldn’t notice.”
Athena smiled a bit.
Mum’s smile quickly faded. “You’ve been to see Brem,” she deduced. “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Athena assured her, quickly. “He’s fine, he’s…brilliant, actually.” She paused. “He has a girlfriend.”
“Oh,” said Mum after a second.
Athena stared at her. “You knew!” she accused. “You knew that, too!”
“He told me,” said Mum.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because he asked me to keep it a secret. And I always keep your secrets. Would you want me to go and tell Brem one of your secrets?”
“It wouldn’t matter,” retorted Athena, “because I don’t tell you anything I don’t tell Brem. Apparently, that’s not true on his side of things.”
“Theenie,” Mum began.
“No, it’s fine,” insisted Athena. “It’s really fine. I don’t care if he doesn’t tell me things, I really don’t, it’s just that…You don’t really know what it’s like to be us,” she said, abruptly.
“No, I don’t,” Mum agreed.
Athena wanted to say more, about her and Brem, and then stopped herself. To truly explain how it felt to realize that there were whole sides to Brem that she didn’t know about, she would have to discuss those weeks when her mother had not been around-and they never discussed those weeks on the TARDIS. She fell silent and shook her head instead, reaching for a bit of tulle on the rack nearest her.
“Oh, Theenie,” sighed her mother. “You’re so much like me.”
Athena looked over at her, surprised. She’d never really thought about that before.
Her mother had drawn her knees up, and her chin was resting on them, looking at her speculatively. “And Brem’s so much like your father. And here’s what you need to know about them: They’re dreamers, Theenie. They are. Fundamentally. Underneath everything. No matter what they see, no matter what they go through, no matter how they pretend otherwise, they’re dreamers, Theenie. And you and I aren’t that way. We live here, in this very real world with its very real problems, and sometimes they don’t want that, sometimes they need to back away from that. The real world is harsh to dreamers, Theenie, but we need them that way so desperately. That’s our job: To keep them dreaming. Sometimes we just need to protect them. They feel things so much more acutely than they want us to know. When Brem draws back, he does it because he’s so terrified of being hurt. That’s all it is.”
Athena could see that easily-Brem was far more sensitive than he liked to think. What mostly hurt was that he’d seemed to think she would ever have hurt him. Keep them dreaming, she thought. That was her job. She smiled suddenly. “She’s nice. Brem’s girlfriend.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Yes. Her name’s Kate, and she’s pretty, and she seems to get that he’s an idiot but likes him anyway.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” laughed Mum.
********
Kate was almost late for class, which was very unlike her, and almost late to hand in her paper, which the professor pointed out to her. “Almost missed the deadline, Miss Bonneville,” he said, and Kate just smiled at him and kept walking. The professor’s attitude toward her had turned decidedly cold since she had started associating with the Visitor from Abroad.
Kate collapsed into the seat next to Brem and sent him a weary smile. Brem opened his mouth, to ask her how she was, because she looked a bit awful, but the professor said, abruptly, “Mr. Tyler,” and asked him a question about The Old Man and the Sea and he was forced to concentrate for a bit to answer it.
When class ended, Kate collapsed against him across the arm of their adjoining seats, her head against his shoulder. “I’m exhausted.”
“Are you?” he said, brushing a kiss over her hair.
“I had to stay up all night to finish that paper.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Can we go to your place and take a nap?”
“You’ve got a class now,” he pointed out, surprised.
“I’m too exhausted to make it through the class, I’ll get the notes later. And Heather’s being obnoxious, I really need some place to crash for a couple of hours.”
“You want to…sleep in my bed?” Brem clarified.
“Brem.” She pulled back. “Honestly, I’m tired, can we skip over the part where you panic and take a million years to grow used to a new idea so I can just go to sleep?” she inquired, wearily, standing up. “Or, better yet, you can do the panicking while I sleep, how’s that?” She slung her bag over her shoulder and waited for him to stand up.
“Do I panic a lot?” asked Brem, anxiously.
Kate just looked at him, leading the way out of the classroom.
“Here, I’ll take your bag, you’re tired,” he said, reaching for it.
“Thank you,” she said, gratefully, and handed it over before taking his hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were staying up all night? I would have kept you company.”
“I had to work, Brem. You’re very distracting.”
“I’m not…I don’t mean to be.”
“I know,” she said, around a yawn.
“Why’s Heather being obnoxious?”
“She just is.”
They had reached his dorm. Brem pulled open the door and held it for her, then followed her down the hallway to his room. Matt was out-class, Brem thought, dimly-and Kate immediately crawled onto his bed and cocooned herself into Brem’s bedspread.
“You don’t want to take a nap with me?” she asked, around another yawn, because he was standing awkwardly by his desk watching her.
“I don’t really…I’m not tired.”
“You could just lay here. But suit yourself. I don’t want to make you panic.” She snuggled her head into his pillow, and he stood by the desk and watched her.
It clearly took her no time at all to fall asleep. She must have been exhausted. He tried to come up with something to do that wasn’t crawling into the bed next to Kate but she looked very warm and very tempting all bundled in the dark green bedspread. Holding his breath, more unsure of his reaction than hers, he lowered himself carefully to the bed next to her, lying down next to her. She moved, murmuring in her sleep, and settled against him, head pillowed against his chest. Brem lowered his lips to her head, resting them in her hair, and thought, as she fluttered slow, sleepy breaths against him. She was so…so…human, he realized. He had known this, he had always known this, but it hit him suddenly, how very, very human. He suddenly wanted to tell his father all about Kate, to ask if this was how it felt, falling in love with a human. Was it supposed to feel this bloody terrifying?
He didn’t know how long they laid there, curled together on the bed, him staring at his ceiling while Kate slept, until she suddenly said, “Brem?”
He’d had no idea she was awake. “Yeah,” he responded. “How did you sleep?”
“Brem, your heart is…”
Brem panicked suddenly, trying to think what to say.
“It…” continued Kate, clearly trying to describe it correctly. “It’s got a weird beat, Brem, it-”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “It’s a…rhythm thing.”
She lifted her head from his chest. “Is it dangerous?”
He looked at her. No, he thought. It was a sign of a superior biology, of advanced evolution, of his ability to live for centuries while her body was so fragile it was terrifying. And here she was, worried about him. “No. I’ve had it all my life, it’s…” He was going to say it wasn’t a big deal, but it was. It was the biggest deal he could think of. “It’s fine,” he said.
She smiled. “Good.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss over his left heart, then settled back against him with a sigh.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked again.
“Yeah. I was short with you earlier.”
“Telling me I panic about everything?”
She laughed. “Have you been laying here panicking about that, too?”
“Absolutely not.”
She laughed again. “Don’t panic. But you’re nice to sleep with. You’re cold, though. Do you want to share the blanket?”
“No,” he said. “I should really get up, I have things to do.”
“Aw, don’t do anything practical. Stay here with me and doze lazily.”
“I’m really not much of a dozer, Kate.”
She was running her hand up and down his arm, which was distracting. “Tell me a story,” she said. “About when you were young and adorable.”
“I’m not still adorable now?” he joked.
“No, now you’re cute.”
“Ah, an important distinction.”
“A story about you and your sister.”
Brem opened his mouth. There was a profusion of stories he could have told, but the words that came out were, “When I was four years old, my mother disappeared.” He had no idea why he should suddenly be telling Kate this story. Except that it was the central story of his life. Except that maybe it was the only story he would ever tell. The same way every story in his father’s life was somehow the Time War, over and over, in an endless loop, no matter where they went in space and time to try to avoid it.
Kate was very still in his arms. “What do you mean? ‘Disappeared?’”
“She was…She got trapped. Where we couldn’t get to her. Where she couldn’t get back to us. She was there for twenty-two weeks and three days, relatively speaking. I had a birthday while she was away and we never even celebrated it because…”
Kate moved then, picking herself up to look down at him. “But where was she?”
“Another world,” said Brem.
“You mean another country?”
No, he meant the same country on another world. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and wondered why he’d started this story. “She was just trapped, Kate. She couldn’t get to us. We couldn’t get to her.”
“But she came back,” said Kate after a moment of silence.
“Yes. I…”
Kate leaned her head back against his chest, and he was grateful for the contact. “You don’t have to talk about this, Brem.”
“You asked for a story about my sister and me, and this is the story, Kate. This is the only story we will ever tell.”
Kate said nothing. Kate pressed against him. And Brem breathed.
********
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Matt asked him.
Brem was typing up a column he’d written by hand earlier that day. He preferred to write his columns by hand, really. He thought better with an old-fashioned pen in his hand and always had. Well, an old-fashioned pen or a sonic but he hadn’t yet rigged the sonic to have a writing function. Although…Not a bad idea…
“What?” he asked, distracted.
“Thanksgiving? Next week? I know it’s not really your holiday, so I didn’t know what you were doing for it.”
Brem looked at him, focusing fuzzily. “Thanksgiving,” he echoed.
“Yeah. Do you know what it is?”
“Of course I know what it is,” Brem retorted, offended. “I just…haven’t been thinking about it. It’s next week? We have time off?”
“Brem, there aren’t any classes Thursday or Friday next week. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I’m not-”
“Good with schedules,” Matt finished for him. “I know. Are you doing anything for it?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“My parents are coming up. You’re welcome to come to dinner with us.”
“That’s nice,” said Brem. “Thanks. Maybe I will.” It sounded more appealing to him, actually, than calling his family and having them stop by for a few days on the TARDIS. Which was awful, he knew, but…last week he had laid on his bed and acknowledged out loud, for the first time in his life, exactly how much he really was still bothered by…well…He didn’t feel like going back to the TARDIS just yet.
But then Kate was talking about going home to Connecticut, and when she said something about his plans, and he answered vaguely about the invitation from Matt, she said, “Oh, Brem. I just assumed, somehow, that you were spending it with your family. I don’t know why I thought that, really, since they live so far away. I’m sorry, I would have invited you.”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
The conversation began him thinking, though. Everyone was planning on spending Thanksgiving with family except for him. And he had a relative, here on Earth, who he’d been a bit neglectful of, were he honest with himself.
He called his grandmother that night.
“Brem, darling!” she exclaimed, clearly delighted to hear his voice. “How are you, sweetheart? Enjoying university?”
“Yes,” he said, truthfully. “I’m loving it.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, darling.”
“I was calling because…next week is Thanksgiving here. I’ve got a bit of time off, I was thinking of coming to visit.”
“Oh!” Grandma sounded rapturous at the idea. “Really? That’d be brilliant, Brem! When would you get here?”
“Welllllll,” he considered. “I’ll have to buy a plane ticket!” The thought tickled him.
It tickled his grandmother as well, who laughed. “Not used to the idea of one of you lot taking a normal mode of transportation. You’ll let me know what time you’re coming in?”
“Yes,” he promised, and closed his mobile and looked over at Matt. “Matt,” he said. “How, exactly, does one go about buying a plane ticket?"
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - Thanks as usual to jlrpuck who keeps me sane and accurately British.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Just to let you know, I've not forgotten the time-stamp meme, and I will get around to writing every single requested fic, just maybe not for a while.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13
Chapter Fourteen
Athena, once back safely in her room, went immediately in search of her mother and found her in the TARDIS wardrobe.
“What are you doing?” she asked, because Mum was on her hands and knees, tossing shoes out of the way.
“I’m looking for a very specific pair of shoes. These…cute little pink ones.” She sat back and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Your father promised to try to take me to see Elvis again and I wanted these specific shoes. I don’t know why she won’t let me find them.” Mum frowned up at the TARDIS’s ceiling. The lights blinked a bit in displeasure.
Athena sat on one of the room’s trunks, and her mother looked up at her from her perch on the floor. “What’s up?”
“You know, don’t you?” Athena said, suddenly.
“Know what?”
“About the teleport.”
“Oh.” Mum smiled at her. “Of course I do. You and Fort are pretty bloody obvious about it, only someone as thick as your father wouldn’t notice.”
Athena smiled a bit.
Mum’s smile quickly faded. “You’ve been to see Brem,” she deduced. “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Athena assured her, quickly. “He’s fine, he’s…brilliant, actually.” She paused. “He has a girlfriend.”
“Oh,” said Mum after a second.
Athena stared at her. “You knew!” she accused. “You knew that, too!”
“He told me,” said Mum.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because he asked me to keep it a secret. And I always keep your secrets. Would you want me to go and tell Brem one of your secrets?”
“It wouldn’t matter,” retorted Athena, “because I don’t tell you anything I don’t tell Brem. Apparently, that’s not true on his side of things.”
“Theenie,” Mum began.
“No, it’s fine,” insisted Athena. “It’s really fine. I don’t care if he doesn’t tell me things, I really don’t, it’s just that…You don’t really know what it’s like to be us,” she said, abruptly.
“No, I don’t,” Mum agreed.
Athena wanted to say more, about her and Brem, and then stopped herself. To truly explain how it felt to realize that there were whole sides to Brem that she didn’t know about, she would have to discuss those weeks when her mother had not been around-and they never discussed those weeks on the TARDIS. She fell silent and shook her head instead, reaching for a bit of tulle on the rack nearest her.
“Oh, Theenie,” sighed her mother. “You’re so much like me.”
Athena looked over at her, surprised. She’d never really thought about that before.
Her mother had drawn her knees up, and her chin was resting on them, looking at her speculatively. “And Brem’s so much like your father. And here’s what you need to know about them: They’re dreamers, Theenie. They are. Fundamentally. Underneath everything. No matter what they see, no matter what they go through, no matter how they pretend otherwise, they’re dreamers, Theenie. And you and I aren’t that way. We live here, in this very real world with its very real problems, and sometimes they don’t want that, sometimes they need to back away from that. The real world is harsh to dreamers, Theenie, but we need them that way so desperately. That’s our job: To keep them dreaming. Sometimes we just need to protect them. They feel things so much more acutely than they want us to know. When Brem draws back, he does it because he’s so terrified of being hurt. That’s all it is.”
Athena could see that easily-Brem was far more sensitive than he liked to think. What mostly hurt was that he’d seemed to think she would ever have hurt him. Keep them dreaming, she thought. That was her job. She smiled suddenly. “She’s nice. Brem’s girlfriend.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Yes. Her name’s Kate, and she’s pretty, and she seems to get that he’s an idiot but likes him anyway.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” laughed Mum.
********
Kate was almost late for class, which was very unlike her, and almost late to hand in her paper, which the professor pointed out to her. “Almost missed the deadline, Miss Bonneville,” he said, and Kate just smiled at him and kept walking. The professor’s attitude toward her had turned decidedly cold since she had started associating with the Visitor from Abroad.
Kate collapsed into the seat next to Brem and sent him a weary smile. Brem opened his mouth, to ask her how she was, because she looked a bit awful, but the professor said, abruptly, “Mr. Tyler,” and asked him a question about The Old Man and the Sea and he was forced to concentrate for a bit to answer it.
When class ended, Kate collapsed against him across the arm of their adjoining seats, her head against his shoulder. “I’m exhausted.”
“Are you?” he said, brushing a kiss over her hair.
“I had to stay up all night to finish that paper.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Can we go to your place and take a nap?”
“You’ve got a class now,” he pointed out, surprised.
“I’m too exhausted to make it through the class, I’ll get the notes later. And Heather’s being obnoxious, I really need some place to crash for a couple of hours.”
“You want to…sleep in my bed?” Brem clarified.
“Brem.” She pulled back. “Honestly, I’m tired, can we skip over the part where you panic and take a million years to grow used to a new idea so I can just go to sleep?” she inquired, wearily, standing up. “Or, better yet, you can do the panicking while I sleep, how’s that?” She slung her bag over her shoulder and waited for him to stand up.
“Do I panic a lot?” asked Brem, anxiously.
Kate just looked at him, leading the way out of the classroom.
“Here, I’ll take your bag, you’re tired,” he said, reaching for it.
“Thank you,” she said, gratefully, and handed it over before taking his hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were staying up all night? I would have kept you company.”
“I had to work, Brem. You’re very distracting.”
“I’m not…I don’t mean to be.”
“I know,” she said, around a yawn.
“Why’s Heather being obnoxious?”
“She just is.”
They had reached his dorm. Brem pulled open the door and held it for her, then followed her down the hallway to his room. Matt was out-class, Brem thought, dimly-and Kate immediately crawled onto his bed and cocooned herself into Brem’s bedspread.
“You don’t want to take a nap with me?” she asked, around another yawn, because he was standing awkwardly by his desk watching her.
“I don’t really…I’m not tired.”
“You could just lay here. But suit yourself. I don’t want to make you panic.” She snuggled her head into his pillow, and he stood by the desk and watched her.
It clearly took her no time at all to fall asleep. She must have been exhausted. He tried to come up with something to do that wasn’t crawling into the bed next to Kate but she looked very warm and very tempting all bundled in the dark green bedspread. Holding his breath, more unsure of his reaction than hers, he lowered himself carefully to the bed next to her, lying down next to her. She moved, murmuring in her sleep, and settled against him, head pillowed against his chest. Brem lowered his lips to her head, resting them in her hair, and thought, as she fluttered slow, sleepy breaths against him. She was so…so…human, he realized. He had known this, he had always known this, but it hit him suddenly, how very, very human. He suddenly wanted to tell his father all about Kate, to ask if this was how it felt, falling in love with a human. Was it supposed to feel this bloody terrifying?
He didn’t know how long they laid there, curled together on the bed, him staring at his ceiling while Kate slept, until she suddenly said, “Brem?”
He’d had no idea she was awake. “Yeah,” he responded. “How did you sleep?”
“Brem, your heart is…”
Brem panicked suddenly, trying to think what to say.
“It…” continued Kate, clearly trying to describe it correctly. “It’s got a weird beat, Brem, it-”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “It’s a…rhythm thing.”
She lifted her head from his chest. “Is it dangerous?”
He looked at her. No, he thought. It was a sign of a superior biology, of advanced evolution, of his ability to live for centuries while her body was so fragile it was terrifying. And here she was, worried about him. “No. I’ve had it all my life, it’s…” He was going to say it wasn’t a big deal, but it was. It was the biggest deal he could think of. “It’s fine,” he said.
She smiled. “Good.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss over his left heart, then settled back against him with a sigh.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked again.
“Yeah. I was short with you earlier.”
“Telling me I panic about everything?”
She laughed. “Have you been laying here panicking about that, too?”
“Absolutely not.”
She laughed again. “Don’t panic. But you’re nice to sleep with. You’re cold, though. Do you want to share the blanket?”
“No,” he said. “I should really get up, I have things to do.”
“Aw, don’t do anything practical. Stay here with me and doze lazily.”
“I’m really not much of a dozer, Kate.”
She was running her hand up and down his arm, which was distracting. “Tell me a story,” she said. “About when you were young and adorable.”
“I’m not still adorable now?” he joked.
“No, now you’re cute.”
“Ah, an important distinction.”
“A story about you and your sister.”
Brem opened his mouth. There was a profusion of stories he could have told, but the words that came out were, “When I was four years old, my mother disappeared.” He had no idea why he should suddenly be telling Kate this story. Except that it was the central story of his life. Except that maybe it was the only story he would ever tell. The same way every story in his father’s life was somehow the Time War, over and over, in an endless loop, no matter where they went in space and time to try to avoid it.
Kate was very still in his arms. “What do you mean? ‘Disappeared?’”
“She was…She got trapped. Where we couldn’t get to her. Where she couldn’t get back to us. She was there for twenty-two weeks and three days, relatively speaking. I had a birthday while she was away and we never even celebrated it because…”
Kate moved then, picking herself up to look down at him. “But where was she?”
“Another world,” said Brem.
“You mean another country?”
No, he meant the same country on another world. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and wondered why he’d started this story. “She was just trapped, Kate. She couldn’t get to us. We couldn’t get to her.”
“But she came back,” said Kate after a moment of silence.
“Yes. I…”
Kate leaned her head back against his chest, and he was grateful for the contact. “You don’t have to talk about this, Brem.”
“You asked for a story about my sister and me, and this is the story, Kate. This is the only story we will ever tell.”
Kate said nothing. Kate pressed against him. And Brem breathed.
********
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Matt asked him.
Brem was typing up a column he’d written by hand earlier that day. He preferred to write his columns by hand, really. He thought better with an old-fashioned pen in his hand and always had. Well, an old-fashioned pen or a sonic but he hadn’t yet rigged the sonic to have a writing function. Although…Not a bad idea…
“What?” he asked, distracted.
“Thanksgiving? Next week? I know it’s not really your holiday, so I didn’t know what you were doing for it.”
Brem looked at him, focusing fuzzily. “Thanksgiving,” he echoed.
“Yeah. Do you know what it is?”
“Of course I know what it is,” Brem retorted, offended. “I just…haven’t been thinking about it. It’s next week? We have time off?”
“Brem, there aren’t any classes Thursday or Friday next week. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I’m not-”
“Good with schedules,” Matt finished for him. “I know. Are you doing anything for it?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“My parents are coming up. You’re welcome to come to dinner with us.”
“That’s nice,” said Brem. “Thanks. Maybe I will.” It sounded more appealing to him, actually, than calling his family and having them stop by for a few days on the TARDIS. Which was awful, he knew, but…last week he had laid on his bed and acknowledged out loud, for the first time in his life, exactly how much he really was still bothered by…well…He didn’t feel like going back to the TARDIS just yet.
But then Kate was talking about going home to Connecticut, and when she said something about his plans, and he answered vaguely about the invitation from Matt, she said, “Oh, Brem. I just assumed, somehow, that you were spending it with your family. I don’t know why I thought that, really, since they live so far away. I’m sorry, I would have invited you.”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
The conversation began him thinking, though. Everyone was planning on spending Thanksgiving with family except for him. And he had a relative, here on Earth, who he’d been a bit neglectful of, were he honest with himself.
He called his grandmother that night.
“Brem, darling!” she exclaimed, clearly delighted to hear his voice. “How are you, sweetheart? Enjoying university?”
“Yes,” he said, truthfully. “I’m loving it.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, darling.”
“I was calling because…next week is Thanksgiving here. I’ve got a bit of time off, I was thinking of coming to visit.”
“Oh!” Grandma sounded rapturous at the idea. “Really? That’d be brilliant, Brem! When would you get here?”
“Welllllll,” he considered. “I’ll have to buy a plane ticket!” The thought tickled him.
It tickled his grandmother as well, who laughed. “Not used to the idea of one of you lot taking a normal mode of transportation. You’ll let me know what time you’re coming in?”
“Yes,” he promised, and closed his mobile and looked over at Matt. “Matt,” he said. “How, exactly, does one go about buying a plane ticket?"
Next Chapter