For
fourteenlines, who requested a Doctor Who ficlet.
Title: Bright Raspberry Moon #3
Author:
voleuseFandom: Doctor Who
Character: Mickey Smith
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: I was surprised into loving this man.
Notes: Set after 4.13
In hindsight, Mickey supposed he should have expected his friends to think he was dead. (Though not on the lam for being accused of killing both of the Tylers this time, as Tina joked. And then nobody laughed after she said it, which was worse.)
He borrowed Steve's sofa for the night, and in the morning, he took a walk about town. He stopped by his old flat, picked up a dusty box filled with all the stuff his landlord hadn't tossed in a trash bin.
He bought the biggest bunch of flowers he could find, bright and fragrant and cool. He visited his grandmum's grave, spent twenty minutes breathing in, breathing out. He thought he should say something important, but he'd never been good at speeches like that. He laid the flowers gently down and told her sorry, like he always did.
It was bright that day, but cold. Mickey stood among the dead, and thought.
*
He had to call his mum from a pay phone three times before she finally answered, all wary.
"Who is this?" she asked, her voice more tired than he remembered. "Why are you unlisted?"
Mickey sighed; Mickey laughed. "Mum, it's me. Sorry, I lost my mobile."
"Mickey?"
"Yeah, Mum?"
She didn't answer for a while, and he realized she was crying.
They didn't end up talking long--they never had before--but she made him promise to visit, which he did. He wanted to tell her about Gran, but he couldn't. She wouldn't have believed him, anyway.
*
He acquired a mobile a day and a half later, and it rang as soon as he walked out of the shop. He flipped it open, and laughed at the caller ID: The Doctor, blinking in wide, bright letters.
"Let me guess," the Doctor greeted him, "you're bored and you miss living slightly in the future."
Mickey's hand tightened around the phone. "Maybe a little." He jammed his left hand, fisted, into his jacket pocket. "But I don't want to go back, if that's what you mean."
A familiar pulse filled his ears, and he tilted his head, wondered why nobody else could here it.
"Tell you what, Mickey," the Doctor crowed, "I'll give you a lift to somewhere special."
Mickey grinned and ended the call.
###
A/N: Title and summary adapted from Marisa de los Santos's
Because I Love You. Link courtesy of
breathe_poetry.