Domestic Pairings: The fic
Here are the 8 pairings that got prompts. The other 12 will remain obscure.
2. Otto Flick / Helga Geerhart - doing the dishes (
lost_spook)
"I shall not be required at the Chateau until this evening." Helga moistened her lips slightly, straightened her back, and allowed a husky note to creep into her voice. "Is there anything I can do for you before then, Herr Flick?"
Flick nodded curtly. "There is. Following von Smallhausen's temporary incapacitation, the best Gestapo tea service requires washing." He pointed the handle of his walking stick at Helga. "You will perform this duty."
Helga deflated a little, but nonetheless gave him a brave smile. "Of course, Herr Flick. Where will I find this tea service?"
"On the side table. You will take it to the kitchen on the first floor. You will take care not to damage any of the porcelain items. In the past, it has proved necessary to discipline von Smallhausen for chipping the spout of the large Gestapo teapot. It is unsatisfactory that I must serve senior Gestapo officers from a teapot that dribbles."
"As you wish, Herr Flick." A thought struck Helga. "And I will remove my jacket. It would not do to get soapsuds on it."
"Gestapo soap flakes are strictly rationed," Herr Flick cautioned her. "If you are found to have overused them the loss will be made good from your wages. Do you have any other questions?"
"Not at present," Helga said, obediently rolling up her sleeves.
"Good." Herr Flick set his swastika-patterned teacup back in its swastika-patterned saucer, and held them out to her. "You will commence with this."
6. Vicki Pallister / Steven Taylor - Mowing the lawn (
lost_spook)
"I'm not being unreasonable!" Vicki protested, one hand on the handlebar of the sit-on lawnmower.
Steven continued to grip the other handlebar with equal firmness. "But you've never actually mown a lawn, have you?"
"Have you?" Vicki shot back. "You said you grew up in a Hiveblock. I bet they didn't have a lawn there."
"No," Steven admitted. "Did your tower block have one?"
"You don't know it didn't."
Steven smiled. "That isn't what I asked."
"All right, no, it didn't." Vicki looked momentarily downcast, but quickly returned to the attack. "And then you served on spaceships and space stations and so on, and they didn't have lawns either."
"Granted."
"And if there was a lawn on Mechanus it was the Mechanoids who looked after it, wasn't it?" Vicki patted the driver's seat of the lawnmower. "So what it comes down to is, this is a boy's toy and you're a boy and you want to play with it first."
"That's got nothing to do with it!"
Vicki merely bestowed a cherubic smile on him.
"All right," Steven admitted. "If I agree you're right and I'm wrong, will you let me have first go on the lawnmower?"
"Maybe."
Steven took a deep breath. "It's a boy's toy. Please may I play with it first?"
"Of course you may." Vicki released her grip of the handlebar. "But don't you dare do more than your share, or you'll regret it."
7. Adam Adamant / Georgina Jones - making the bed (romanajo123)
"Miss Jones," Adam remarked, "it would appear that somebody - for what purpose I cannot begin to fathom - has left half a hundredweight of lumber in your flat."
"That's what you're here for," Georgina said patiently. "It's a Swedish flat-packed luxury double bed. I bought it at Peter Jones."
Adam gave the stack of timber another look. "A most reputable department store; at least, that is how I recall it. And yet they dare to pass this off as an item of furniture?" He grasped his sword cane. "I shall have to have words with the proprietor."
"No, that's how it's supposed to come," Georgina explained. "You put it together yourself. But it needs two people. Look." She brandished a sheaf of papers. "These are the instructions. They were in the last box, of course. They always are."
Adam shook his head. "In my day, it was said that no gentleman bought his own furniture. Now people are expected not only to purchase their own furniture, but to construct it?"
"It's quite easy. You just need to hold the bits together while I put the screws in." Georgina glanced down the first page. "This bit's got to be one of the sides. Now I need to put two pegs in this headboard thingy and then it'll slot into these holes. Oh, just put that on the settee," she added, seeing that Adam had removed his jacket and was wondering where he might safely hang it.
"Thank you, Miss Jones." Having dealt with the question of the jacket, Adam joined Georgina as she delved in the packet of fixings. "Allow me to assist you with the headboard."
"Don't worry, I've got it." Georgina guided the panel into the slot that appeared to be marked for it. "Can you hold that there while I screw it in? Oof, it's harder than it looks. Now I need the other end..." She looked from the plans to the two pieces of bed she'd screwed together. "Or maybe that is the other end." She gave the plans another baffled look. "You see, this one's got the doofer at the top, but that one's got the thingummy on the front. Or is it the back?"
"Might I suggest..." Adam began, reaching for the plans.
"Don't let go of the headboard!" Georgina hastily interjected. "I bet it won't stay on by itself. No, I was right the first time. This bit goes here... could you hang onto it as well?"
"Since my arms are not seven feet long, this seems unlikely."
"Don't worry," Georgie reassured him cheerfully. "I'm sure you'll manage. Now where did I put that screwdriver?"
"Might one enquire," Adam said, bending awkwardly to keep the disparate pieces of the nascent bed together, "why you felt the need for a new bed in the first place?"
"Well, I thought the old one had just about had it." A wicked gleam came into her eye. "It's never been the same since we had to subdue Cynthia Jeavons on it. It wasn't built for threesomes, poor thing."
"Miss Jones!" Adam's memories of Miss Jeavons were not happy ones: the woman had combined an angelic face with a devious mind and morals that made Georgie look like a prude.
"Don't worry, I'm sure the new one'll stand up to anything. Bet you we can restrain who we like on it. I'll ask Rosie round if you like: she's always up for anything like a pillow fight." Georgie giggled. "Or we could send for Simms and get him to dress up as a scheming villainess."
"We could, of course, summon Simms now and ask him to assist us," Adam suggested.
Georgina, now kneeling among dismantled pieces of bed, smiled up at him. "Oh, I think it's more fun with just the two of us. Don't you?"
9. Lucie Miller / Karen Coltraine - Dusting (liadtbunny)
"Oh!" The young woman with the feather duster spun round at the noise of footsteps on the stone floor. Her eyes met the newcomer, and she repeated "Oh," with a much more downbeat tone. "It's you."
"Who'd you expect?" Lucie Miller asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Britney Pigging Spears?"
Karen set down her feather duster, folded her arms, and scowled. "The Headhunter said you might show up, if the Doctor translated that inscription in time."
"Yeah, and here I am."
"I can see that." Karen took another look at Lucie. "Where the fudge did you get that maid outfit? Ann Summers?"
"eBay," Lucie said. "Didn't want to get me nice clothes mucky."
"You don't have any nice clothes."
"Rich coming from you. You've got three kinds of outfits: cheap, tacky or cheap and tacky." She gave Karen's severe trouser suit a doubtful look. "You planning on dusting in that?"
"Of course not," Karen said hastily. "I was just about to change when you showed up." She began to unbutton her jacket. "Half a mo."
Lucie turned away. "Look, just 'cos you're my archnemesis you don't have to strip off in front of me all the time. I'm not into you."
"You're still looking," Karen said, divesting herself of her trousers.
"That's just so you don't whack me over the head while me back's turned."
Karen rolled her eyes. "With a feather duster?"
"Better than if you stuck it-" Lucie broke off as Karen, now down to what, in Lucie's opinion, was some extremely sleazy underwear, pulled a maid costume of her own out of her shoulder bag. "Hang on. Did you get that on eBay too?"
Karen shook her head. "Ann Summers," she said, finding to her chagrin she was blushing.
"That's the most unrealistic maid outfit I've ever seen. What is it, PVC?"
"You want unrealistic, try looking in a mirror. I'm amazed you can even fit into it." Karen picked up her duster again. "Look, you do what you want, I'm gonna get the dust off these carvings like the Headhunter said."
Lucie pulled a portable vacuum cleaner from her own bag. "I'm dusting these carvings 'cos the Doctor asked me. And you're not gonna distract me with all that posing in a skanky maid outfit."
"And I," Karen said, putting her nose in the air, "will not pay attention to your attempts to drag this conversation into the gutter."
"That's what you said that time on Zeta Back-End-Of-Nowhere or whatever it was, and look what happened then." Lucie put on the most forbidding expression she could manage. "You'd better not try that trick again, 'cos I won't fall for it this time."
"Fall for it?" Karen's eyes flashed. "You were begging for it!"
"Say that again!" Lucie raised her hand threateningly, realised she was still holding the vacuum cleaner, and got control of her temper. "I haven't got time for this."
She turned to the wall and began to clear the dust from the carvings. From the brief glances over her shoulder, it was plain that Karen was doing the same, starting in the exact opposite corner of the chamber.
Always business first with her, Lucie thought. But, privately, she had to admit that when Karen got round to pleasure, it could be well worth the wait. Particularly if, when that happened, they both still happened to be wearing these preposterous maid costumes.
10. Samantha Briggs / Jamie McCrimmon - ironing (femme_slash_fan)
"Right," Samantha said. "Now you turn the shirt sideways and do up to the buttons. Got that?"
"I don't see why it's got to be so complicated," Jamie muttered, obediently pushing the iron across the damp fabric.
Samantha put her hands on her hips. "You asked why it takes so long to do the ironing. And I'm showing you. Move the shirt across and do the next bit."
"We never bothered with ironing in Prince Charles's army."
"Well, you're not in the army now. You're in our house." Samantha nodded at the progress on the shirt. "And if you don't do this right you'll be for it. Sleeves come next."
"Seems like a lot of fuss about nothing to me," Jamie muttered.
"Look," Samantha said firmly. "When you were in the army, they didn't just give you a sword and say 'stick that in someone', did they? Or a set of bagpipes and say 'play that.' They got you to practise." She looked up at him and added, less firmly, "They did get you to practise, didn't they?"
"Well, mainly with the bagpipes." Jamie's voice was thoughtful. "D'you think if we'd trained more we might have done better at Culloden?"
"That's not my business. What I meant was, if you think it's helpful to practise for charging at people in a berserk rage, why wouldn't you practise how to iron clothes?"
"Oh, well, that's--" Jamie broke off, the words "woman's work" left hanging in the air between them.
Something else was hanging in the air between them, too: a worrying odour of smouldering. Samantha darted forward and snatched up the iron, just in time to stop it burning its way through the shirt.
"You divvy," she said. "If I hadn't been here you could've set that on fire."
"If you'd not been here I wouldnae have been distracted, would I?"
"If you think I'm leaving you alone with a load of washing and a hot iron, you've got another think coming." Samantha set the iron down on the asbestos sheet at the end of the board, and put her arms round him. "Either you're gonna learn to do this right, or admit you're not up to a woman's job. So what's it gonna be?"
12. Dorcas Brandon / Rachel Lake - shopping (femme_slash_fan)
"Please, will you wait in here?" the proprietress of the dress shop asked. "I'm sure it'll only take me a minute to find the very blouse you were speaking of."
She fussed out of the room, leaving Dorcas and Rachel alone. Unhurriedly, Dorcas began to unbutton her black jacket.
"You don't mind waiting, Radie?" she said. "I fear Mrs Ellaby's minute may easily become ten or fifteen."
Rachel shook her head. "I am entirely at your disposal." She helped Dorcas out of her jacket, and set the garment down on a chair. "And it will be a treat to me to see you in something other than--" She caught herself, and blushed. Dorcas had been married to Rachel's brother, and Rachel had been sure that Stanley's death had been the greatest grief either had suffered. Yet now, she had almost expressed a wish that their period of mourning should be curtailed. How could she have formed such an idea?
She looked across at Dorcas, to see how her one-time sister-in-law had reacted. But Dorcas, presently occupied with the fastenings of her blouse, seemed not to have noticed.
"Radie, could you help me?" she asked. "I fear this button has somehow become entangled: I cannot undo it."
Rachel hurried over and gave the button her full attention. It had by some ill chance become caught up in a stray thread; a simple enough matter to disentangle, for a friend with nimble fingers, but far less so for Dorcas herself. Rachel pulled off her gloves, and in a very few moments had the troublesome button undone. With a sigh of relief Dorcas pulled the blouse off, revealing an expensive corset, bare shoulders, and ample evidence that the perfection of her beauty was not restricted to her face.
"Radie?"
With a jerk, Rachel recalled herself. How long had she been staring?
"I am sorry," she muttered. "A moment's distraction..."
Dorcas shook her head. "I have often seen that expression on Stanley's face," she said. There was a new note in her voice, as if her partial disrobing had caused similar veils of convention to fall away in her mind. "I had not thought to see it on yours, but the surprise is a pleasant one."
Rachel felt her hand taken in both of Dorcas's, and gently pressed to Dorcas's barely-clad bosom.
"I see the resemblance extends further," Dorcas went on, dreamily. "Will you kiss me, Rachel?"
They had kissed often enough as friends, but Rachel felt oddly hesitant -- as if she was about to step over a threshold into a dark, unknown room. Nonetheless, she put her free arm around Dorcas's neck, leaned forward, and pressed her lips to Dorcas's.
How long they would have remained like that, Rachel could not have said. In the event, Mrs Ellaby's footstep was heard outside the door, and by the time that good lady had made her entrance, Rachel was once more at a safe distance from her friend, her thoughts in turmoil and her face somewhat flushed.
"On reflection," Dorcas remarked, as they left Mrs Ellaby's establishment, "I am not sure I made the correct choice."
Rachel gave her a blank look. "The necklace?"
"No, Radie, not the necklace." Dorcas slipped her arm through Rachel's, and lowered her voice. "Marrying your brother and not you. Still, I believe we have the time and opportunity to rectify that."
13. Leela / Lish Toos - grocery shopping (romanajo123)
Ludmilla Ivanova had been checking up on a delayed fruit order, but looked up at the sound of the door. A young woman, a stranger to Ludmilla, was standing uncertainly on the threshold of her emporium. With her unstyled hair, crudely-stitched tunic and tanned skin, the newcomer might have been a member of the underclass, who had somehow managed to wander all the way from the Pits to the Palatine district without noticing. But a second glance told her that the girl's tunic was leather; and nobody but the richest could have afforded to import that.
Then a second figure appeared in the doorway, and Ludmilla relaxed. Lish Toos was one of her regular customers; she had her eccentricities, of course, but they were far outweighed by her wealth. And from their body language, it was obvious that this girl was Toos's newest eccentricity.
"Good afternoon, Ludmilla," Toos said politely, ushering her protegée into the store. "Just picking up a few essentials."
"Go right ahead." To nearly all the population of Kaldor, 'essential' would have been the last word to describe Ludmilla's stock. Ludmilla liked to think she dealt in the genuine and the recherché; for a clientele unsatisfied by the Company's offerings, and wealthy enough to afford her prices. As Toos and her companion wandered down the aisle, Ludmilla turned back to her terminal.
"From what beast does this come?" the girl asked.
Ludmilla hurried across to where they stood; the girl was prodding at a stasis-shielded joint of meat.
"That's genuine venison, ma'am," she said. "Imported from New Albion."
"Why is it in a plastic tube?" The girl made as if to reach for something at her belt, but stopped herself. "I cannot tell if it has begun to rot."
"It'll be fresh," Toos said, with an apologetic glance at Ludmilla. "There are strict laws about that sort of thing."
"Were there not strict laws that the metal men do not attack humans?"
"Leela!" Toos looked torn between embarassment and anger. "There's no call to compare Ms Ivanova with the likes of Taran Capel." She looked at the joint in Leela's hand. "And that's far too big. It would take us days to eat."
"In my tribe, if you have food for days it is considered good," Leela answered, sounding puzzled. "Why do you say we should not?"
"I didn't mean that. Yes, we ought to have a good supply, but that doesn't mean we have to get it all from one joint." Toos picked up another sealed package. "Wild boar. Now that's far more manageable. Hold that, will you?"
"Did you bring me just to carry what you gather?" Leela said.
"Of course not." Toos gave her a bright smile. "Let me know if you see anything you want. Just... make sure it's something we can use." She turned back to Ludmilla. "Talking of which, have you got any bananas at the moment?"
Ludmilla had been hoping Toos wouldn't ask that. "Only vat-grown, I'm afraid," she mumbled. "The shipment's overdue."
"Don't worry. Vat-grown will be quite adequate."
Leela gave Toos a suspicious look. "What use do you plan to put these bananas to?"
"I want that to be a surprise," Toos said, with a wink.
20. Rani Chandra / Clyde Langer - Cleaning the loo (liadtbunny
"I think that's the last of it," Rani said. She straightened up, a sludge-covered gardening trowel in her hand. "Got the bucket?"
Clyde reached behind him and grabbed the bucket. "Here."
"Thanks." Rani held the trowel over the bucket, shook it, then grimaced and scraped its contents into the bucket with her gloved hands. "Eurgh."
"Learned your lesson?" Clyde asked.
"Definitely." Rani renewed her attack on the porcelain, this time with a brush. "I'm never going to mistake alien dehydrated rations for caustic soda again. What sort of alien would eat this stuff, anyway?"
"Got to be a starving one." Clyde knelt beside her, bringing his own scrubbing brush into play. "I thought 'evil-smelling' was just an expression before you tried to flush those rations."
"We've probably got used to it by now." Rani changed her grip on the brush. "We'll have to see what Sarah Jane says when she comes back. Do you think she meant what she said about having to burn all our clothes?"
"She was joking," Clyde said, though he was by no means sure of that.
"Remember to do under the rim. You missed a bit there."
"I know, I know." Clyde angled his brush accordingly, and was rewarded with a further quantity of the noisome alien substance. "Actually, I think it's starting to look OK."
Rani straightened again, and gave the gleaming white porcelain an appreciative look. "Yeah, that's not bad at all."
"Except..." Clyde looked around at the bathroom's other fixtures and fittings, and then back at the lavatory. "I'm sure before all this started it was that avocado colour."
"Like everything else in here, you mean?" Rani groaned. "Sarah Jane won't like this."
"Don't worry." Clyde pulled off a glove and patted her on the shoulder. "What's the worst she can do?"
Rani leaned wearily against the toilet bowl. "I really don't want to know."
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