desperate to entertain [mickey/rose, pg]
So in an effort to actually do that "end of the year writing meme" that floats around every year, I actually went back through all of my entires for the past year and tagged them properly, which was fun. I published way more in 2010 than I did in 2009, which is a little strange, considering I don't really have a primary fandom anymore. Regardless! Instead of doing that meme, I figured I'd try the next best thing.
This exists because I was re-watching the first series of Who and was reminded just how much I adore Mickey Smith. Boomtown, especially, is filled with such nice chemistry between Mickey and Rose. ♥ ♥
desperate to entertain
Mickey/Rose, PG
2050 words
Goes AU fairly early. Unbetaed and unbrit-picked, so all faults are my own, although I think I did okay, considering how much I try and immerse myself in British sub-culture. The title is, unsurprisingly, ripped from a song by The National, because their music is pretty instrumental in my success as a writer, true story.
Mickey’s never really expected much. His gran raises him to be a good man, the best man he possibly can be-a man like his father, she says, but there’s only so much she can do with fading memories and arthritic joints.
“You’re the only family I need,” he whispers every night, squeezing her shoulders as tightly as he dares. He spends most of his childhood repenting for the sins of his elders.
;;;
He’s known Rose for as long as he can remember; probably longer than that, and they’re best friends in the easiest way, considering his gran’s flat is only a couple levels away from the Tylers’. He remembers holding Rose as a little baby, her pale fist reaching out and curling around his fingers, grip stronger than a baby’s should’ve been.
She’s his first kiss, because he’s what you’d call a “late bloomer”, laughing as she comes home at four in the morning and stumbling in Shireen’s borrowed heels. He’s not waiting up for her, exactly, just up and taking in the view, and she laughs as she sees him, voice smoke-slurred and low as she says, “Mickey Smith,” vaguely mocking, but fond, too. She socks her fist against his shoulder and it's dark enough out that he can hide his wince.
“Oi!”
“Oi,” she repeats, giggling all over again, leaning over him and bracketing him with her knees, the smell of warm heat and wine drifting from her skin. Her shirt is cut low enough that when she shifts closer, he can see the straps of her bra, and she says, “Mickey Smith, I think you’re sweet on me,” before pressing their mouths together. She’s got too much bravado for a fifteen year-old kid who just last week was tripping over her own feet, but he kisses her back as softly as he can and tries not to think about the fact that she probably won’t remember in the morning and maybe he doesn't want her to. “Oh, Mickey, Mickey,” she says, vaguely mocking and not in the way he’s imagined.
She drops off his lap, tipping her head against his shoulder and she opens her mouth like she’s going to speak again, but doesn’t. She just smiles, soft and young, and it’s less than a minute later that she’s asleep, tiny little snores pushing their way through her nose.
He shifts her over his shoulder and takes her home, setting her down once-and that’s only to get the spare key out from under the mat.
Jackie’s-thankfully-not awake when they stumble in, and Mickey’s not really a big believer in anything, but he’s five years older than Rose’s fifteen, knows how it would look if anyone saw them, even though Jackie’s been more like a mum to him than his own ever had been.
He settles her down on the couch, not wanting to chance the trip to her room, and shifts down on his haunches to tug her boots off, quiet as he possibly can.
;;;
Rose gets engaged to a bloke called Alastair when she’s seventeen and Mickey can hear the loud violence of the row she has with Jackie all the way through the closed doors of his new flat, almost on the entire other side of the building. To be fair, it’s not that large, or that far, and he can’t make out the words, but he can hear the crunch of glass breaking, and the strain in Jackie’s high-pitched cries.
In the hall, Mickey runs right into the commotion. Rose is half-dressed, the straps of her slip thin and silky on her shoulders. She’s wearing boots that make her almost as tall as he is, stumbling in her haste.
She says, “Mickey Smith,” with a smile that’s a little desperate at the corners, like he’s the one person in the world she wants to see. “You can save me. Mum’s pulled a nutter just because Al wants to go to Venice for six months. It’d a minibreak, and we’d be married and back before she knew it, bugger my a-levels.” Mickey must make a face, although he can’t tell and she frowns at him, saying, “Oh, Mick, not you, too.” He doesn’t say anything right away, and she rolls her eyes again. “He’s a good guy.”
“He’s twenty-eight,” Mickey’s never-been so aware of their own age-difference when he speaks, and Rose rolls her eyes at him like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“I’m a mature seventeen,” she says, but she shivers a little, and it doesn’t escape Mickey’s notice that she’s not so mature that she’s above leaving her house in only her under-dress and shoes to avoid speaking to her mum again.
“And he’s a young twenty-eight?” Mickey’s mostly going for sarcasm, but he’s rewarded by the way that Rose dimples at him, fingers curling round his arm.
“Exactly,” she says, and then, “So you’ll talk to her for me, then? Ease her down?”
;;;
It turns out that he doesn’t have to, by virtue of the fact that Alastair’s a much younger twenty-eight than they’d even anticipated. Rose catches him in bed with Helena from sixth-form and Mickey can barely stand the sight of Rose for days after that, shoulders slumped in defeat, her mascara tear-blurred.
“I said it, didn’t I?” Jackie says to his gran when they run into each other in the green grocers’. She’s as made up as usual, but Mickey’s grown up looking at her face; recognizes the dark circles under her eyes and the pinched tilt to her smile. “I knew he was trouble.”
His gran says, “It was in his eyes. Our Rose deserved better, didn’t she Mick?”
Mickey’s known Rose for as long as he can remember, but he still gets tripped up at the words our Rose, like some kid. He says, “Yeah, course she did,” and tunes out the rest of the conversation, because it’s easier than rehashing the details.
;;;
Rose likes football matches because, “It’s like community outreach or summat. Those shorts are a gift.” She’s an Arsenal girl, which pains Mickey to the bloody core, and she likens Thierry Henry to some sort of demigod, which is understandable, but repulsive. “He’s handsome,” she says, settled back on the pull-out and wrapped in one of his gran’s flannels. “I could watch him all day.”
“I don’t know why I’m friends with you,” Mickey tells her honestly. She laughs at that, burrowing her head against his shoulder. He can feel her breath through his jumper and he’s too warm, burning up along where she’s pressed against him, her toes tucked under his thigh.
“Oh, sure you do,” she says, tipping her head back to look at him, eyes wide and mischievous. Mickey takes one look at her and laughs, not entirely immune, but close enough that he can fake it.
“You make shit choices in footie, babe,” he says, nudging together their shoulders. “That tells me enough. I should’ve gotten out years ago.”
“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” she laughs, and Mickey’s not sure what makes him do it; he’s nowhere near buzzed enough from his pint and a half, but he leans down and kisses her, just to see what she’ll do, maybe. To try it, because nothing else seems to have worked.
She kisses him back.
;;;
They never have a conversation where he says, “Will you be my girlfriend?” He doesn’t toss her a note asking if she likes him, and they certainly don’t talk about their future or Alastair, or the fact that Jackie didn’t talk to him for a week after that one Thursday she caught him sneaking out at half-five and he didn’t even have his pants buttoned all the way.
He doesn’t think about it, or he tries not to, and if Rose isn’t ready to hear he loves her, well. He hopes he shows her every day anyway, and he thinks she reciprocates, even if she can’t name the sentiment.
;;;
At the tail-end of September, she comes down with what looks and sounds like a cold but that Rose swears is some sort of mutant flu, destined to leave her bed-ridden forever.
“Don’t come near me,” she says when she calls. At least that’s what he thinks she says. She sounds awful, stuffed-up and hoarse, and when she adds, “Even Mum’s agreed to the quarantine,” he laughs harder than he probably should. “You are the worst boyfriend ever,” she mumbles, and not even that sobers him enough to stop his giggles. “I am in pain.”
“I’ll pop by the shop and bring you a cuppa then, yeah? You’ll be right as rain, then.”
“Don’t you come near me, Mickey Smith,” she warns. “I won’t nurse you, and it’s catching.”
“I’ll brave it anyway, Tyler,” he says. “Can’t have you dying on me.”
;;;
There’s an explosion at the shop. Mickey’s popped out to the news agents’ for a minute to grab the paper and a packet of fags when he sees the news report, and the only thing stopping his blood from running cold is the fact that he’d just left Rose in her flat, still bellyaching about her watering eyes and stuffed-up sinuses.
He races back anyway, leaving everything behind and taking the stairs up two at a time. He bursts back in, but his heart doesn’t stop jackhammering in his chest even when he sees her on the couch exactly where he’d left her, swaddled in blankets and surrounded by crumpled tissues.
“What’s wrong?” She asks, trying to sit up straighter. Her eyes are wide and worried and he can practically hear her thinking, getting more and more agitated the longer he goes without speaking. “Mick, what happened?”
His throat feels like it’s been coated in sandpaper when he says, “The shop.” Forcing the words out is a struggle, which is stupid, it’s so fucking stupid, but he can’t seem to breathe right. Maybe he’s catching her cold, maybe that’s just it. “There was an explosion at the shop.”
He didn’t think it was possible, but her face loses even more color, going milky white in the pale glow of the television. “Not my shop,” she says, but the tremor in her voice contradicts her words.
They sit together and watch the news, and for the first time in memory, her hand feels too small in his.
;;;
They get married in June.
It rains for a whole week ahead of time and Mickey’s trying not to worry, trying not to take it for the sign that everybody says it is, but it’s difficult when the skies over London are a heavy, steely gray and his nerves are coiled tight.
“I’m so proud of you,” his gran says as they’re leaving the flat, her thin fingers curling tightly over the lapels of his suit jacket, straightening him up. “You’ve loved that girl for years.” Neither of them mention the fact that this is done as much out of necessity as it is of choice.
Jackie rarely mentions her husband, but he likes to think Pete would’ve liked the man he'd become. The doctors say the baby is a boy, and his name is something of an unspoken agreement between them.
“Yeah,” he tells her, blinking away from his wool-gathering. “Yeah, I have.”
It’s still drizzling out when they get to the church and Mickey walks her to her seat, his palms already starting to sweat.
He waits for Rose in the mouth of the church, Simon and Geoff flanking his sides and Simon says, “You can still pull a runner if you want, mate,” indicating toward the side door with a tilt of his head. “Just say the word and we’ll pull the car round.”
“You must be mad,” Geoff laughs, punching both their shoulders. “This tosser? Leave now? He’s been mooning over Rosie since he was old enough to wank, mate. He’s not going anywhere.”
Mickey ignores them, their chatter fading into the white nose that’s rustling through his ears. His hands are clenched in fists and his throat goes dry when he sees the limousine pull into the long, circular drive of the rectory.
Rose is resplendent as she ducks out of the car, laughing at Shireen over her shoulder, head tipped back with mirth.
At the sight of her, the sun decides to shine.
This exists because I was re-watching the first series of Who and was reminded just how much I adore Mickey Smith. Boomtown, especially, is filled with such nice chemistry between Mickey and Rose. ♥ ♥
desperate to entertain
Mickey/Rose, PG
2050 words
Goes AU fairly early. Unbetaed and unbrit-picked, so all faults are my own, although I think I did okay, considering how much I try and immerse myself in British sub-culture. The title is, unsurprisingly, ripped from a song by The National, because their music is pretty instrumental in my success as a writer, true story.
Mickey’s never really expected much. His gran raises him to be a good man, the best man he possibly can be-a man like his father, she says, but there’s only so much she can do with fading memories and arthritic joints.
“You’re the only family I need,” he whispers every night, squeezing her shoulders as tightly as he dares. He spends most of his childhood repenting for the sins of his elders.
;;;
He’s known Rose for as long as he can remember; probably longer than that, and they’re best friends in the easiest way, considering his gran’s flat is only a couple levels away from the Tylers’. He remembers holding Rose as a little baby, her pale fist reaching out and curling around his fingers, grip stronger than a baby’s should’ve been.
She’s his first kiss, because he’s what you’d call a “late bloomer”, laughing as she comes home at four in the morning and stumbling in Shireen’s borrowed heels. He’s not waiting up for her, exactly, just up and taking in the view, and she laughs as she sees him, voice smoke-slurred and low as she says, “Mickey Smith,” vaguely mocking, but fond, too. She socks her fist against his shoulder and it's dark enough out that he can hide his wince.
“Oi!”
“Oi,” she repeats, giggling all over again, leaning over him and bracketing him with her knees, the smell of warm heat and wine drifting from her skin. Her shirt is cut low enough that when she shifts closer, he can see the straps of her bra, and she says, “Mickey Smith, I think you’re sweet on me,” before pressing their mouths together. She’s got too much bravado for a fifteen year-old kid who just last week was tripping over her own feet, but he kisses her back as softly as he can and tries not to think about the fact that she probably won’t remember in the morning and maybe he doesn't want her to. “Oh, Mickey, Mickey,” she says, vaguely mocking and not in the way he’s imagined.
She drops off his lap, tipping her head against his shoulder and she opens her mouth like she’s going to speak again, but doesn’t. She just smiles, soft and young, and it’s less than a minute later that she’s asleep, tiny little snores pushing their way through her nose.
He shifts her over his shoulder and takes her home, setting her down once-and that’s only to get the spare key out from under the mat.
Jackie’s-thankfully-not awake when they stumble in, and Mickey’s not really a big believer in anything, but he’s five years older than Rose’s fifteen, knows how it would look if anyone saw them, even though Jackie’s been more like a mum to him than his own ever had been.
He settles her down on the couch, not wanting to chance the trip to her room, and shifts down on his haunches to tug her boots off, quiet as he possibly can.
;;;
Rose gets engaged to a bloke called Alastair when she’s seventeen and Mickey can hear the loud violence of the row she has with Jackie all the way through the closed doors of his new flat, almost on the entire other side of the building. To be fair, it’s not that large, or that far, and he can’t make out the words, but he can hear the crunch of glass breaking, and the strain in Jackie’s high-pitched cries.
In the hall, Mickey runs right into the commotion. Rose is half-dressed, the straps of her slip thin and silky on her shoulders. She’s wearing boots that make her almost as tall as he is, stumbling in her haste.
She says, “Mickey Smith,” with a smile that’s a little desperate at the corners, like he’s the one person in the world she wants to see. “You can save me. Mum’s pulled a nutter just because Al wants to go to Venice for six months. It’d a minibreak, and we’d be married and back before she knew it, bugger my a-levels.” Mickey must make a face, although he can’t tell and she frowns at him, saying, “Oh, Mick, not you, too.” He doesn’t say anything right away, and she rolls her eyes again. “He’s a good guy.”
“He’s twenty-eight,” Mickey’s never-been so aware of their own age-difference when he speaks, and Rose rolls her eyes at him like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“I’m a mature seventeen,” she says, but she shivers a little, and it doesn’t escape Mickey’s notice that she’s not so mature that she’s above leaving her house in only her under-dress and shoes to avoid speaking to her mum again.
“And he’s a young twenty-eight?” Mickey’s mostly going for sarcasm, but he’s rewarded by the way that Rose dimples at him, fingers curling round his arm.
“Exactly,” she says, and then, “So you’ll talk to her for me, then? Ease her down?”
;;;
It turns out that he doesn’t have to, by virtue of the fact that Alastair’s a much younger twenty-eight than they’d even anticipated. Rose catches him in bed with Helena from sixth-form and Mickey can barely stand the sight of Rose for days after that, shoulders slumped in defeat, her mascara tear-blurred.
“I said it, didn’t I?” Jackie says to his gran when they run into each other in the green grocers’. She’s as made up as usual, but Mickey’s grown up looking at her face; recognizes the dark circles under her eyes and the pinched tilt to her smile. “I knew he was trouble.”
His gran says, “It was in his eyes. Our Rose deserved better, didn’t she Mick?”
Mickey’s known Rose for as long as he can remember, but he still gets tripped up at the words our Rose, like some kid. He says, “Yeah, course she did,” and tunes out the rest of the conversation, because it’s easier than rehashing the details.
;;;
Rose likes football matches because, “It’s like community outreach or summat. Those shorts are a gift.” She’s an Arsenal girl, which pains Mickey to the bloody core, and she likens Thierry Henry to some sort of demigod, which is understandable, but repulsive. “He’s handsome,” she says, settled back on the pull-out and wrapped in one of his gran’s flannels. “I could watch him all day.”
“I don’t know why I’m friends with you,” Mickey tells her honestly. She laughs at that, burrowing her head against his shoulder. He can feel her breath through his jumper and he’s too warm, burning up along where she’s pressed against him, her toes tucked under his thigh.
“Oh, sure you do,” she says, tipping her head back to look at him, eyes wide and mischievous. Mickey takes one look at her and laughs, not entirely immune, but close enough that he can fake it.
“You make shit choices in footie, babe,” he says, nudging together their shoulders. “That tells me enough. I should’ve gotten out years ago.”
“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” she laughs, and Mickey’s not sure what makes him do it; he’s nowhere near buzzed enough from his pint and a half, but he leans down and kisses her, just to see what she’ll do, maybe. To try it, because nothing else seems to have worked.
She kisses him back.
;;;
They never have a conversation where he says, “Will you be my girlfriend?” He doesn’t toss her a note asking if she likes him, and they certainly don’t talk about their future or Alastair, or the fact that Jackie didn’t talk to him for a week after that one Thursday she caught him sneaking out at half-five and he didn’t even have his pants buttoned all the way.
He doesn’t think about it, or he tries not to, and if Rose isn’t ready to hear he loves her, well. He hopes he shows her every day anyway, and he thinks she reciprocates, even if she can’t name the sentiment.
;;;
At the tail-end of September, she comes down with what looks and sounds like a cold but that Rose swears is some sort of mutant flu, destined to leave her bed-ridden forever.
“Don’t come near me,” she says when she calls. At least that’s what he thinks she says. She sounds awful, stuffed-up and hoarse, and when she adds, “Even Mum’s agreed to the quarantine,” he laughs harder than he probably should. “You are the worst boyfriend ever,” she mumbles, and not even that sobers him enough to stop his giggles. “I am in pain.”
“I’ll pop by the shop and bring you a cuppa then, yeah? You’ll be right as rain, then.”
“Don’t you come near me, Mickey Smith,” she warns. “I won’t nurse you, and it’s catching.”
“I’ll brave it anyway, Tyler,” he says. “Can’t have you dying on me.”
;;;
There’s an explosion at the shop. Mickey’s popped out to the news agents’ for a minute to grab the paper and a packet of fags when he sees the news report, and the only thing stopping his blood from running cold is the fact that he’d just left Rose in her flat, still bellyaching about her watering eyes and stuffed-up sinuses.
He races back anyway, leaving everything behind and taking the stairs up two at a time. He bursts back in, but his heart doesn’t stop jackhammering in his chest even when he sees her on the couch exactly where he’d left her, swaddled in blankets and surrounded by crumpled tissues.
“What’s wrong?” She asks, trying to sit up straighter. Her eyes are wide and worried and he can practically hear her thinking, getting more and more agitated the longer he goes without speaking. “Mick, what happened?”
His throat feels like it’s been coated in sandpaper when he says, “The shop.” Forcing the words out is a struggle, which is stupid, it’s so fucking stupid, but he can’t seem to breathe right. Maybe he’s catching her cold, maybe that’s just it. “There was an explosion at the shop.”
He didn’t think it was possible, but her face loses even more color, going milky white in the pale glow of the television. “Not my shop,” she says, but the tremor in her voice contradicts her words.
They sit together and watch the news, and for the first time in memory, her hand feels too small in his.
;;;
They get married in June.
It rains for a whole week ahead of time and Mickey’s trying not to worry, trying not to take it for the sign that everybody says it is, but it’s difficult when the skies over London are a heavy, steely gray and his nerves are coiled tight.
“I’m so proud of you,” his gran says as they’re leaving the flat, her thin fingers curling tightly over the lapels of his suit jacket, straightening him up. “You’ve loved that girl for years.” Neither of them mention the fact that this is done as much out of necessity as it is of choice.
Jackie rarely mentions her husband, but he likes to think Pete would’ve liked the man he'd become. The doctors say the baby is a boy, and his name is something of an unspoken agreement between them.
“Yeah,” he tells her, blinking away from his wool-gathering. “Yeah, I have.”
It’s still drizzling out when they get to the church and Mickey walks her to her seat, his palms already starting to sweat.
He waits for Rose in the mouth of the church, Simon and Geoff flanking his sides and Simon says, “You can still pull a runner if you want, mate,” indicating toward the side door with a tilt of his head. “Just say the word and we’ll pull the car round.”
“You must be mad,” Geoff laughs, punching both their shoulders. “This tosser? Leave now? He’s been mooning over Rosie since he was old enough to wank, mate. He’s not going anywhere.”
Mickey ignores them, their chatter fading into the white nose that’s rustling through his ears. His hands are clenched in fists and his throat goes dry when he sees the limousine pull into the long, circular drive of the rectory.
Rose is resplendent as she ducks out of the car, laughing at Shireen over her shoulder, head tipped back with mirth.
At the sight of her, the sun decides to shine.